Pyrope

by Time Parad0x

Mikoto — a mother of two: one daughter a failure, and the other barely adequate — realizes that there exists another child carrying her blood. One she had always wished for, and protecting him and his happiness becomes her life's mission. Luckily as a clan leader, she just might have the means to pull that off. [Naruto U., Mikoto U., fem Sasuke U., fem Itachi U., Uchiha harem]

2. Chapter 02 - Memories and Treasures

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto

This chapter was edited by PraetorXyn

Chapter 02: Memories and Treasures

Lying in my bed under my covers feigning sleep, I listened closely to every sound in my surroundings. I could hear Fugaku snoring from his room at the end of the hallway, the friction of Sayuri's blanket brought about by the lifting and lowering of her chest, and absolute silence from Izumi's room. A casual look into her memories during supper disclosed that she was out guarding my Naruto tonight.

She would have been the only person in the house I would have had to take extra precautions not to wake. Unlike Fugaku, she was taking missions outside the village: her senses and instincts had been honed by regular brushes with death.

Outside the house was a different matter. From the memories of my Naruto's ANBU detail, I knew they were watching our clan compound. It had been rumored among those of us who regularly wandered into the village proper that the number of ANBU operatives around our compound had seen a notable uptick in recent months — a rumor I knew to be true since my run-in yesterday.

This was odd for a variety of reasons, the most important being that they weren't supposed to be policing the inside of the village. Their stated purpose was to guard vital infrastructure, the Hokage, and the village against outside threats.

Since they had apparently been tasked with watching us, it indicated that the village leadership no longer trusted us.

This fact — at least according to Fugaku's memories — was responsible for swaying most of the undecided and reluctant to see things his and my progenitor's way. It was getting harder to deny the reality that the noose around our necks was getting tighter every day and that this was no longer about someone's pride being hurt — or the villagers not showing the clan the respect and deference it was due according to them — but about survival. At this point — helped along by the village's actions — their coup was the inevitable consequence.

For all I cared, they could go and kill one another until there was no one left. Regrettably, however, the clan still had some uses for my Naruto and me. And in order to submit them to their rightful purpose, I needed a few things from the Uzumaki compound.

Since I couldn't afford to be seen going anywhere near it, I had to make certain my absence wouldn't be noticed. To that effect, the ability I had gained from Obito's Mangekyou Sharingan proved to be useful.

Unlike Minato's Hiraishin no Jutsu — which connects the sealing array on his body to one of his markers like a door he can step through — Kamui puts a room between those two points. This comes with its own sets of advantages and disadvantages. One of the foremost advantages is that it allows the user — once inside the room — to open a door virtually anywhere. It suffices to imagine where you want to go for a door to appear, which is another advantage of the jutsu: just because there is a door doesn't mean you have to cross the threshold. On the contrary, once a door is summoned, it can be used to look upon the other side.

Admittedly, the view is distorted and colorless, and no sound goes through. Unless you move your eyes past the threshold, which will make them visible on the other side. It's quite different from how Minato described pinging one of his tags: a short burst presenting him with a snapshot of the immediate vicinity of his tag's location as his detection jutsu washes over the surrounding area. This — given enough tags — gave him complete awareness of what was going on on a battlefield, not limited to just one point of view that was slow in altering its angle and relative position.

Thus, Kamui certainly wasn't the best spying or battlefield awareness jutsu imaginable, but it served my momentary needs rather well. It allowed the repeated creation of doors high up in the air around the Uchiha compound to search for hidden ANBU operatives. The bird's eye view combined with the superior eyesight of the Sharingan allowed me to identify their hiding spots nearly effortlessly.

With chakra sensors that were worth anything being rarer than a drop of water in the desert — and the occasional sensor the Yamanaka clan produced hardly deserving the name — I only had to make certain that no Hyūga was amongst those watching us since I doubted one of them would miss my sudden disappearance.

The animal mask and cloak most solely relied upon to hide their identity made identifying the ANBU clan affiliations difficult, but it was not impossible if one knew what to look for. In the case of the Hyūga, they had a particular lithe build, essentially no callouses from holding kunai or other weapons on their hands, and they rarely — if ever — turned their heads. While one of those factors alone was insufficient to tell, finding all three made it a near certainty that it was a Hyūga.

Fortunately for me, there didn't seem to be one among them. It was no great surprise the number of Hyūga who found themselves in ANBU was relatively low. Not because of lack of skill on the Hyūga part — Dragon would have given his right arm and leg for a mere dozen of them: their ability to gather intelligence was unmatched — but the caged bird seal made branch members liabilities since they come equipped with torture and deadman switches not under the control of the village.

As a precaution, I also looked outside the Uzumaki compound. All it would take would be a single ANBU seeing me appear out of nowhere to ruin it all. It was presumptuous to assume that the residence of the former Hokage wouldn't be watched, despite it being protected by seals Uzushio would have been envious of.

According to Kushina, Uzushio's downfall hadn't gone by Mito without leaving marks. She used the last years of her life to turn the already formidable protected Uzumaki compound into a venerable fortress. Kushina — on more than one occasion — jokingly said other obaa-sanswould take up knitting in their old age to pass the time, while hers devised new ways to dismember and kill any uninvited visitors. If only half the things I was privy to were accurate, I didn't doubt for a single moment that Obito would have had a few very bad last few seconds had he dared to attack Kushina within her home. Still, thinking about this made me furious, because if not for those precautions the First thought up, she wouldn't have had to give birth inside a cave to protect his precious village, and Kushina would still be alive.

The assumption alone — that no one in the decades since it was built would have stumbled over that secret cave just a few leagues away from the village and deduced its purpose — was outright presumptuous, but the illusion had to be maintained, which was the reason the few ANBU who accompanied them couldn't have been from a clan. God forbid someone with actual skill being part of the team guarding the sitting Hokage, his wife, and their soon-to-be infant child.

If not for Hiruzen losing his wife in the attack — a woman I was convinced he had loved — I would have made sure he wouldn't have lived a day past the attack, since one could argue he was one of the few who profited from their demise.

Still, no matter how hard I tried, I could never shake the suspicion that there was more at play here than even Obito's part suggested. With him dead at Minato's hands, I wasn't sure I would ever get the answers I was looking for.

While my thoughts had run rampant, I had finished scouting the compound looking through the tears in reality. Watching it from a dozen elevated positions confirmed that no one was anywhere near it, let alone watching it. My caution momentarily satisfied, I vanished beneath my blankets and reappeared inside my Kamui dimension.

Reaching beneath my nightgown, I retrieved a sealing scroll. I changed into the outfit the scroll contained, consisting of a black unmarked mask, some simple black pants, a black shirt, and a black hooded cloak. The white silk kimono I wore to sleep was hardly suitable for a night raid.

Steeling myself, I reappeared in front of the main gate of the Uzumaki compound.

This was it, the moment of truth: I would either get my hands on everything needed to put my plan into action, or it would all go up in flames, and with it, the best chance to provide a better life for my Naruto. Taking one last deep breath, I placed my hand on the Uzumaki swirl adorning the stone gate. It was time to find out whether Jiraiya had messed with the seals and locked me out. He was the only other living person I knew of with access to the control seal.

When the gate wings parted before me — splitting the swirl in half — I released the breath I hadn't known I was holding. My anxiety only fully left me when I made the first step past the gate, and nothing happened.

I followed the narrow paved stone path, leading through a small forest encircling the entire compound. It wasn't an easy path to follow, and I don't mean the overgrowth from years without anyone taking care of the plants growing alongside it, nor that I was occasionally forced to cut my way through plant obstructions. The reason it was hard was the memories I was plagued by, wave after wave rained down on my mind with every step I took.

I had walked down this path countless times, whether it was with Kushina, Minato, or both by my side, talking, joking, or just teasing one another, and sometimes — when I was visiting them — I walked it alone. Never once had it seemed so lonely, nor had my heart constricted in such sorrow that only grew worse the closer I got to their home the way it did now.

Halfway there, it hurt worse than when I had watched them die. Deep down, a part of me must have been unable to accept the reality and still held onto the hope they were alive and well, living happily with Naruto right behind the next hill — somehow we had just drifted apart, and one day in the future, we would just run into one another, and everything would go back to how it was.

The only thing keeping that illusion alive was the uncertainty of what awaited me in their home. My body was fighting me every step of the way, not allowing my conscious mind to shatter what my unconscious mind desperately clung onto.

I stopped, hand placed on the trunk of a tree for support as I was warring with myself. My breathing was fast and shallow, and my emotional pain suddenly turned physical. Clenching my breast, desperately trying to get my accelerated heart rate under control, I slumped against the tree. Looking up at the star-spangled night sky, I finally realized that something wasn't right.

It was as if a powerful compulsion prevented me from taking another step in the direction of their home. My eyes advanced to their Eternal Mangekyou state and shattered the last vestiges of my progenitor's genjutsu using his eye ability.

My heart rate began to normalize immediately, and the world felt as if a haze I hadn't noticed was even there had been cast aside.

Kotoamatsukami, it had to be. My progenitor must have planted another suggestion deep within me, not connected to all the other commands he had given me — that's why it hadn't already broken and only weakened when I had gotten rid of the others. This one forced me to stay away from the Uzumaki compound, the only place he wouldn't have been able to reach me.

It became clear — even though I hadn't been allowed near Naruto — why — in all those years — I had never sought solace in their home, why I had never visited to wallow in reminiscences, and why I had never bothered to come here to take a keepsake to remember them by.

Insidious is the only term fitting to describe Kotoamatsukami. Allowing the mind of the affected to justify their actions deserves nothing less. However, now I knew what I was looking for. Sifting through own memories, I began to question every decision I had ever made, looking for anything I had done that seemed out of place. It was only when I was completely convinced, that this time it really had been the last genjutsu compelling me and that I had fully regained my free will did I stand up and resumed my travel.

Emerging from the forest, I came to a stop on the small hill overlooking the enormous building complex in the middle of the clearing. It was a sobering sight to see the once beautiful and well-cared-for garden from my memories covered in weeds. Their growth had gotten rampant with no one here to reign it in, choking the life out of crops, herbs, and flowers.

It wouldn't stay that way for long if I had anything to say about it. At a measured step, I cleared a path through the greenery right up to the front porch of the main building. Placing my hand on the handle was all it took for the door to swing open.

Compared to the garden the inside of the house was the complete opposite: spotless and clean.

My first stop was the master seal in the basement.

I had been in this remote part of the house only once before. During Kushina's pregnancy, shortly after she asked me to become Naruto's godmother, she had led me through this part of the house until we ended up in front of a heavily reinforced door.

She — with a sheepish smile — had reached above the doorframe, and her hand had come back with a key. She had then proceeded to use the key to open the door.

Standing before the very same door, I, too, reached above the doorframe and swept for the key I hoped was still there, since getting access to what was behind that door was instrumental to my plans.

When my fingers curled around what I was looking for, it took a load off my mind. The key was warm to my touch — a step below being unpleasant — and vibrated in my hand, making its displeasure at being wielded by a non-Uzumaki known. It felt like only yesterday that Kushina had had a stern talk with it, explaining in great detail the concept of a godmother before the key allowed me to so much as touch it.

It helped to put into perspective why the whole world considered all Uzumaki to be nuts: talking to a key — you couldn't make that up.

As I placed my hand on the wall, the lights adorning it flared to life, illuminating the spiraling staircase leading deeper into the basement, leading into a small antechamber containing only a single monstrous door on the opposite side of the stairs.

Time had done nothing to lessen the impression I got from the door since the first and only time I had visited. The intricate seal carvings adorning it still gave me that ominous feeling that a single wrong step could be my last.

Looking down at the key in my hands, I couldn't help myself and addressed it. "I'm aware you don't like me, but I need to get into the vault. It's important to protect Naruto, Kushina-chan's son." I couldn't be sure if it would do me any good in dissuading the key from having me killed, but it at least calmed my nerves.

I got my answer when the key's temperature sank. Not wasting any more time, I put the key into the door and with bated breath, waited for the heavy double doors to swing open and give way to the extensive library full of scrolls hidden behind them. Although not nearly as extensive as the Uchiha library full of jutsu we stole with a glance since the conception of our clan, it was still an impressive collection of knowledge encompassing every field of jutsu imaginable, the sole exception being the fūinjutsu section. I doubted there existed a more comprehensive collection in all of the elemental nations short of the lost Uzumaki library on Uzushio.

Fūinjutsu was a shinobi art that wasn't really practiced inside the Uchiha clan since it was the one art in which our eyes didn't grant us a noteworthy advantage over others. While it was helpful to be able to commit a once-seen unencrypted seal memory with perfect clarity, it did little to help one's understanding of it. It only allowed us to recreate an assortment of specific tools, akin to a blacksmith who could only make standard kunai unable to do anything else, even just changing the blade length or the handle being far outside our capabilities unless we put in the same hard work to study and practice any non-Uchiha would have to.

That was what distinguished a true master of this art from the rest: the ability to create seals tailor-made to any given situation — an arduous and long path, most haven't had the patience to follow. This was especially true for members of my clan since there were numerous far easier paths — helped by their eyes — open to them. A path I — regretfully — had barely set foot on, despite both Kushina and Minato having walked it.

Nevertheless, it was still a treasure trove of knowledge, albeit not the reason for today's visit. I would have to spend more time here in the near future than I would preferwhen it came time for me to enter and catalog the Uchiha library I intended to take with me into it.

Without pausing, I removed the key and attached it to the delicate metal necklace around my neck as I stepped through the door leading to the master seal. It was one of four doors, the other three leading to an armory, a forge, and a training room, respectively.

It was a bland room beside some carvings on the walls, ceiling, and floor, all leading into a hip-high pedestal in the middle of the room. Hovering a few inches above the pedestal was a whitish-blue glowing orb roughly one foot in diameter.

I placed my hands on the orb, just as Kushina had shown me. Immediately, the glow of the orb intensified, and the inside began to change. The chaotic milky swirling pattern slowed down, and the white hue separated into an assortment of different colors. At first, they took the shape of letters, then words that combined into whole sentences.

With a mere thought, I selected the guest book and had a look at the last visitors and the dates of their visit. To my great relief, no one had seen fit to enter the compound after the kyūbi attack, so I didn't have to fear any surprises, nor having to track down something that had been stolen. Afteranother thought, I found myself staring at the compound's access list.

My name was listed under Administrator, which I had assumed would be the case. The death of Kushina and Minato had promoted my prior status, and just as I suspected, I wasn't the only one whose status had been bumped: Jiraiya's name was right next to mine.

With what I had planned, the last thing I wanted to deal with was him having access to this house. Nothing good would come of his meddling — not that he had any right to, after abandoning my Naruto.

Without hesitating for a second, I stripped him — the only living person beside me who was allowed to enter the premises without prior permission — of all rights. I was about to remove my hands, having achieved what I came here for when I noticed that the sealing array was months away from failing because it was running low on chakra.

It had never crossed my mind that this could happen. I had never used any seals with an effect that had to be constantly maintained, like barriers. Since there was a chance that someone attempting to breach the compound could deplete the remaining chakra even faster, I had no other choice: I needed to replenish them as far as possible. Relying on them while they might be compromised would be a grave mistake.

Taking a deep breath, I reluctantly started the process. Instantly, there was a heavy drain as my chakra was siphoned away in large gulps. It took the globe a few scant seconds to nearly empty my reserves and leave me panting on my knees.

Despite being aware that the device was created with Uzumaki in mind and prepared for the drain, the speed with which it robbed me of my — for anybody not named Uzumaki — large reserves took me completely by surprise. Not being a sensor, getting such a reminder of how vastly more chakra they had on average truly drove home drove the point of why the Uzumaki were this highly regarded more than Kushina just shrugging off our training sessions ever could have. Thinking on it, the only times I had seen her show signs of exhaustion were when she had spammed high-level ninjutsu like a woman possessed during our spars.

This only hardened my resolve.

I took a few moments to recuperate before I tried to get back up. After a few unsure steps, I left the basement the same way I had entered it. I returned to the lobby of the main house, and — for a moment — just stood there staring up the stairs. It was one of the two large elaborate staircases hugging the right and left corners of the room, each spiraling upwards around a potted bonsai standing ten feet tall in the center of each.

It was the right side my eyes were focused on. I dreaded what I would find up there: the confirmation they were truly gone.

Unfortunately, there was no escaping it: I needed to do this for my Naruto's sake.

With a deep sigh, I began to move once more. As I was ascending the stairs, my fingers were caressing the wide railing Kushina and I had misused countless times as a slide when we were children. I couldn't recall a single instance of us walking down the stairs as normal human beings, not as apes, the wordsMito-obaasan used to chastise us with a grin plastered on her face whenever she caught us doing it.

This was it — the final step — one more, and I would be on the second floor proper. From there, it was twenty more steps to Kushina's room, the first door to the right. I shook off the trepidation threatening to draw me into its grasp once more and at a hastened pace, closed the distance. I allowed myself one last deep breath with my hands around the handle before I pushed it down.

The door opened seamlessly, and I couldn't stop a smile from forming on my lips, as I saw the metaphorical battlefield before me. Scrolls in various stages of being opened were not only strewn around on the large table and took up most of the right wall, but also littered the floor. In some cases, the scrolls were piled into heaps, the occasional clothing article mixed between them. It was like a look into the past. The seals placed throughout the house that prevented dust from settling made the room look like she was still living here and had just stepped out for a minute.

Taking a few steps into the room — careful not to step on anything — I could only shake my head. It was a wonder Kushina could work at all in this chaos, let alone find anything. She was the exact opposite of Minato, being chaos personified while he possessed a near-compulsive need to create order. Sorting and labeling things was seemingly one of his hobbies.

It was no wonder they had separate studies: they wouldn't have lasted a week without killing each other. Apparently, opposites do seem to attract as they say.

Now it was only a matter of finding what I was looking for. I had originally assumed a few hours would provide me with plenty of time to achieve all my goals in coming here. As my eyes roamed the room, I began to doubt that assessment. Well, there was no helping it, and with that thought in mind, I went to work.

I started in the corner. I remembered Kushina hurling things at me whenever her frustration got the better of her. The scroll containing the seal intended to safeguard the Sharingan was no exception when I had told her aboutmy progenitor's decision to refuse to use the seal, rendering all her hard work in coming up with it in the first place for naught as a result. Offering to pay her out of my own pocket for the time she had invested had done nothing to improve her mood.

On the contrary, it had caused the opposite effect, and instead of placating her as intended, I had drawn her ire. It was one of the few truly heated arguments we'd had with each other, as Kushina had been affronted I would think she would take money in exchange for a favor rendered to a friend. That was by that point one of the increasingly rarer instances in which she had proven her nickname had been a well-deserved one.

Age — or the relationship with Minato — had surely been responsible for mellowing her out.

Then again, when it came to Kushina, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't picture age slowing her down. With what we had nearly ended up doing while in the middle of the argument, she had suddenly decided to turn the battle of words into a battle of strength and had tackled me onto her bed.

It definitely had to be the sex with Minato. Nothing else made any sense when it came to her.

I could still recall the feeling of her lips on mine, the hunger as she nearly devoured me whole. Fondly basking in that memory, I caught myself as my fingers absentmindedly traced my lips. Giving in to a sudden urge, I walked over to her bed in the corner of the room and picked up her pillow. Just holding it in my hands allowed me to smell Kushina's scent— still clinging to it after all these years. Bringing it closer to my face, taking a whiff nearly overwhelmed me with all the memories it triggered.

I had to fight the temptation to just lie down in her bed, wrap myself in her blanket, close my eyes, and let myself fall. Ignoring the time constraints I was operating under and the reason I was here in the first place, I couldn't bring myself to do it. This might very well be the only place that kept Kushina's fragrance alive, and the thought of denying Naruto the chance to get to know his mother's scent by lying in her bed because of my selfish desires made me feel sick.

I placed the pillow back onto the bed and then returned to my work, making sure to not disturb this temple any more than absolutely necessary.

I was carefully looking at scrolls for half an hour, and during that time, I came across the craziest ideas and was already reconciling with the fact the seal was no longer here and that I might have to look elsewhere. When I lifted another scroll from the pile and pried it open, I remembered some of the diagrams.

This was the scroll.

Placing it onto an unoccupied corner of the table, I released a seal. A device about the length of a kunai of cylindrical shape with a handle piece appeared. Kushina had designed it. In essence, a seal stamp, allowing one of two possible registered users to apply what she called a micro seal directly to someone's eyeball. Once the seal was applied, should the eye leave the eye socket or the person the eye belonged to died, the seal would activate and destroy the eye.

I picked the device up and moved the slider forward, and a small needle emerged from within the object. All it would take to apply the seal to someone's eye would be pressing it against someone's eyeballs and pushing a little chakra into the handle. Creating a seal no bigger than a dot, it was so small it was barely visible. Moreover, if placed on the eye while the pupil was looking upwards and pulling the eyelid aside, it could be completely hidden, making a distinction between an eyeball with the seal and one without impossible short of a close-up inspection. No one else would ever know it was even there to begin with, meaning that — unlike the Hyūga cursed seal broadcasting for the whole world to see that stealing their eyes was for naught — I had to tell people of its existence to dissuade them from even trying.

This was half the reason for such seals to exist in the first place. It wouldn't do my clansmen any good if their eyes were destroyed after they were stolen, even though the faces the thieves would have made realizing they had been outsmarted might be worth it.

Since this wasn't the only way for someone to get their hands on the Sharingan, I released another two instruments from the scroll. This time they looked more like actual stamps — one for each gender — able to suspend their ability to produce offspring outside the barrier they were keyed to. The original idea was to key it into the detection barrier surrounding Konoha, thereby preventing conception outside of Konoha's walls.

This was a measure that would have served the needs of the Uchiha clan just fine. Kushina even had enough foresight to realize that keying such a seal into a stationary barrier could become an issue, and therefore she had included contingencies. After all, something as simple as a major overhaul of the detection barrier, or it stopped working properly — a far too likely prospect without an Uzumaki present to maintain it — or some other reason why the Uchiha would no longer live inside it would essentially render everyone with the seal effectively sterile.

The instruments themselves could be keyed to selected users — those being the only ones able to apply and remove these seals. The original idea was to link them to the clan head, and the heir or heiress. They were designed in such a fashion that other users could be added only with the consent of one of the keyed-in users. As a precaution, there could only be two registered users of these tools at any given time, and keying in a new user also removed the previous user not assisting in the process from being able to use the tool. The seals themselves — Kushina swore it — were impossible to remove without using these tools. The encryption was unbreakable, randomized, and used the user's chakra to create a different key for every seal applied with the keys being stored within the tools.

It was a nice concept, and I could easily substitute the barrier surrounding Konoha with the one surrounding the Uzumaki compound for my needs. Considering the precarious state my plans would put the clan in, keeping the seals keyed to the barrier surrounding Konoha would leave too many avenues of abuse open for my liking, and while using the Uzumaki compound barrier instead would be more secure, it still was far from ideal. So what I was really after was the original seal Kushina had based it on, which she called a relic of patriarchal society. Originally the seal was intended to ensure that no line theft could be committed, which was achieved by preventing any female marked with the seal from becoming pregnant by anyone except the man whose blood was applied to the tool prior to crafting the seal.

I knew she had sealed it into the same scroll, the height of what her twisted sense of order would allow her to do. As luck had it, she hadn't rearranged it after she tossed the scroll away, and another cylindrical tool appeared after some twiddling with the scroll.

This was it.

None of these seals had the additional functions the Hyūga Caged Bird Seal possessed. To be fair, it had never been intended to be used the way it still was to this very day. Kushina — at first — had been very reluctant to even entertain my request to create a seal to safeguard our eyes. It had taken some prodding, but eventually, she had told me why.

It was not a commonly known fact, but the Caged Bird Seal, had been created by the Uzumaki under false pretenses. Long before Konoha's founding, the Hyūga clan had approached the Uzumaki desiring a seal to keep their criminals in check and to prevent them — in case a prisoner was to escape — from passing on the Byakugan to their enemies. As the Uzumaki realized what the Hyūga had actually used the seal for, to say they weren't happy was an understatement, and this got the Hyūga blacklisted as recipients of Uzumaki seals. From what I had gathered, they had even considered cutting all ties to that particular seal — including waiving the fee the Hyūga had to pay. Seals are expensive, customized reusable seals, in particular, were more so — but ultimately decided against doing it, not wanting to reward them for this. So the Uzumaki-clan — to this day — grudgingly accepted the money just so the Hyūga couldn't hold onto it.

Who would blame Kushina? Not wanting to go into the annals of history as the one responsible for another such folly was quite the understandable sentiment. Not that I would have ever considered such a seal. To inflict pain as a means of control was such a crude and barbaric method and completely unnecessary. All it did was foster resentment in the recipients, and considering that the Caged Bird Seal wasn't foolproof, it was a spectacularly idiotic idea.

No, I would have to rely on different tools to ensure the fealty of my clan. I didn't particularly like the prospect, but I wasn't in a position to be picky about my methods.

That was the moment my eyes fell on a half-opened scroll lying on the table. I could only read a small part, but the words 'prisoner' and 'execution' I managed to decipher aroused my curiosity.

Giving the contents a once over, I had a hard time believing my luck, and the urge to kiss Kushina came over me. Even from beyond the grave, she was still giving me ideas. Admittedly, this time it might actually not be such a bad one. Leave it to her to have seals for which most clans would gladly kill casually lying around with no care in the world.

To be fair, the compound was virtually impregnable, and I had my suspicions about why the door handles leading into most rooms glowed when touched. Still, seals like this were supposed to be locked up behind the thickest door and defenses one could possibly find.

Uzumaki. Time and time again, I was glad they were peace-loving people when they were still around, which hadn't stopped people even back then who considered them to be too scary to be allowed to live. Just looking at what I had lying in front of me — which was just a glimpse of what they were truly capable of if not hindered by moral constraints and aversion to any form of violence — told me that assessment was more than accurate — frighteningly so.

It was a good thing the only thing Kumo and Kiri received from Uzushiogakure was the deaths of their troops. The Uzumaki took them all with them when they wiped the island not only of any sign of life, but also of the evidence that there had ever been a civilization settled there.

The seal depicted on the scroll in two variants would come in very handy. From what I understood, it was designed as a means to execute people. The creator apparently considered it wasteful to just kill criminals when their lives could be repurposed, which was why he intended to give ending their lives some lasting meaning by giving the community something back, essentially making them atone for their sins with their deaths.

In a sense, he succeeded in that with the seal he came up with. Some would even call it poetic justice, because in order to be sentenced to death, you would have to be convicted of a capital crime, which in most cases was murder. So by transferring the life force of the criminal to another person — adding that life force to theirs — he gave back a life, not figuratively, but literally.

According to the description, this meant — among other things — that the remaining lifetime of the donor was transferred to the recipients, thus prolonging their lives. Additionally, the life force could be used to heal terminal conditions, even going so far as being able to regenerate lost limbs.

The first variant in the scroll was a sacrificial altar array intended to be used for executions. The second — more interesting — variant explained how that seal could be used to link two or more people together. In this form, its intended purpose was for it to be used as a death switch on criminals if — for some reason — they needed to be kept alive while still maintaining the means to kill them should they try to escape.

It was noteworthy the sealing matrix was flexible enough that with a few additions, it would allow people connected by it to share a life force with one another, but what I considered more interesting was that the activation of the seal could be tied to preconditions that would trigger the activation of the seal. I already was getting ideas on how to repurpose that seal to fit my needs.

With the detailed instructions of the seal, I might just barely be able to craft what I had in mind following the instructions to the letter even though the particulars went way over my head. This admittedly wasn't exactly a good idea — messing with seals without understanding every aspect of them never was — but the opportunity they presented me with was just too good to pass up, since it was more than just unlikely I would get such a golden opportunity again.

Combined with the detection seal I had found earlier, and the scroll full of paralyzing seals Kushina had crafted to sell, I had everything I came here for and more.

Although it took some effort not to think overly much about why a seal originally intended for parents who grew tired of searching for their wayward children was among one of Kushina's pile of open scrolls. It allowed people marked with it to sense the general direction of one another by tugging at a metaphorical string connecting them so long as they were alive.

Gathering my chakra, I created a single Kage Bunshin — the extent of what I dared to do after I was drained by the orb — and handed the scrolls over to her. Tasked with preparing for what was about to come, she would remain behind.

I reached for the warm key hidden beneath my shirt and activated Kamui. A second later, I emerged unharmed and without incident in the Kamui dimension. I released the breath I hadn't been aware I had been holding, and changed back into my sleep attire before teleporting into my bedroom and slipping beneath my covers. With a smile on my face anticipating what tomorrow held in store, I drifted off to sleep.

Authors Note: Mikoto previously claimed in her thoughts that she was free of Kotoamatsukami was just her assuming that (and not a mistake on my part). She correctly assumed that she had broken the jutsu, which meant she had at least gotten rid of one of the suggestions her father had implanted in her, but that jutsu is just so insidious you simply can't ever be sure you are truly free of its influence.