Daughter of the Kitsune Chapter 2: Departure
I do not own Naruto.
Eight Years Later
High in the mountainous region of the Land of Lightning, an ancient monastery rested tirelessly on the rocky peak that had been its home for centuries. Within one of the large prayer rooms of the ancient building, two teenage girls faced each other while standing on a cushioned mat laid out by the very tall, muscular man that had several hints of grey showing in his brown hair that was watching alongside a brown haired girl that had her shoulder length hair tied up into two buns on the top of her head with a pale, sickly looking red haired woman that was laid out on a futon between the two.
Both of the girls stood across from each other on the mat. Arms forward in their own particular style that they had been taught, violet eyes locked onto the green eyes of the blue haired girl across from their owner, the two of them alert in case their opponent tried to move first. The two sixteen year olds knew not to underestimate the other; mostly from experience that while they had their own unique strengths and weaknesses, so did the other. Both girls were dressed in what the redhead had told them was an orange sports bra and black biker shorts, showing off years of hard training in the form of a well-muscled stomach, arms and legs that while muscular did not take away from their feminine and well-endowed forms. The only thing that distinguished the two of them from the other was their eyes and hair, one having back length crimson red hair with violet eyes, with the other having long blue hair that reached down to her feet unless it was done up in her usual pigtails and bright green eyes. The only other thing that set the two apart appearance-wise was the three whisker marks that adorned both cheeks of the redhead along with her unique vulpine ears and eight white, furry tails that almost always had the other three women of the room loving how soft they were.
It was the young woman with the blue hair that started the fight. Rushing forward, she quickly ran towards her opponent's left before switching to the right in successive moments meant to leave her opponent confused, leaving her opponent wondering where she was going to be next. She then appeared in front of her fox eared opponent and launched a right hook at the side of the redhead's face with speed that would make many a Chunin in the Hidden villages sick with jealousy. Her sparring opponent however was not like everyone else.
She blocked the bluenette's strike with one of her fluffy tails and held it there in a vice grip as the tail wrapped around her appendage and the red haired vixen thrust her right palm forward, trying to hit her well-endowed opponent with a palm thrust to the collarbone.
The keyword being tried…
The blue haired girl was able to predict her opponent's move, quickly grabbing the girl's hand with her free one before she yanked the fox girl off balance and kneed her in the stomach twice before the injured party managed to get her hand free and jump back.
Smirking, the violet eyed girl shot two of her white tails out at her opponent, making her dodge the first before batting away the second with her now free right hand.
"It was stupid of you to try and fight me up close, Touko-chan. You know that I am better than you and Tenten-chan in that regard." The redheaded girl taunted as her tails flowed restlessly behind her back as if waiting to ensnare the younger girl in their grasp to make sure she couldn't get away. Because unlike many taijutsu fighters, they didn't have the advantage of multiple limbs to use like she did, something she was glad that her older brother figure that was currently resting in her seal had taught her when her mother started to train the three of them.
The sixteen year old, Touko, just smiled cheerfully as she kept a close eye on the girl and her tails. What she said was true, the extra appendages that Naruko possessed always gave her an advantage when in a taijutsu battle even if she was more of a practitioner for the arts of Ninjutsu and Fuinjutsu. The tailed Uzumaki taking to the subject of seals like a fish in the cleanest of waters, completing the entire first ten sections within a day and leaving Tenten and her father dumbfounded and jealous at her progress in Tenten's case.
"I know that Naruko-chan," Touko said inside the older girl's head as she tried to come up with a plan of what to do against her opponent. In all truth she wasn't all that much of a Taijutsu person in the first place, she fell more towards the fields of Genjutsu and Ninjutsu that she could perform with her beloved harp. If she had to think about it, Tenten was the most particular person of their group to go towards the physical arts of the shinobi than the others were, the bun haired girl already hard to defeat in a Taijutsu match up even if Naruko used her tails and she had already mastered many Bukijutsu styles when training with her father, though she tended to stick to the use of the sword she currently had sealed in the palm of her right hand, especially when she became a tank when clad in the ceremonial armor of the Uzumaki. "Why do you think I started off fast to begin with?"
"Meh," Naruko said with a dismissive wave of her hand as she got ready to fight the bluenette again while settling into what she liked to affectionately call the Fox Paw style. "Let's get this show on the road!"
Dashing forward, Naruko missed on her first strike as Touko dodged to the left only to curse slightly as one of Naruko's tails narrowly missed her clipping her back. She pushed the offending appendage out of the way before she retaliated with an uppercut to the fox girl's exposed stomach. The Uzumaki blocked the blow at the last second by covering the offending fist with both of her hands and holding it in place before one of her tails grasped her other fist in its grip when Touko tried to punch her in the side. After that, the fight ended quickly as Naruko used her remaining tails to capture all of Touko's limbs, though the younger girl did manage to hit her twice with a kick before her legs were captured and held still.
"Winner is Naruko!" Tenten declared as she stood up from her spot by her father and Kushina, the bun haired girl climbing up onto the mat to hold up Naruko's right arm like some wrestling champion with a sickly Kushina clapping with a smile on her face, always proud of the achievements her daughter had managed to perform. Hideki just laughed at his daughter's antics as he helped Touko disentangle from Naruko's furry grip.
"Well then, I'd say it is time for dinner," the only male of the monastery said as he smiled at the three teenagers before him and he knelt down to pick up the sickly Kushina and walk out the door of the former prayer room-now-sparring room.
"I think that is *cough* a good idea Hideki-kun," Kushina said with a weak smile in the older shinobi's direction. Hideki just smiled back at the woman that had saved him so many years ago and that he had sworn to protect even if he couldn't protect her from the thing that was killing her from the inside.
It turns out that while Kushina had seemed fine for several years after having Kurama ripped out of her seal when the masked man had attacked her and her deceased husband, she was in all actuality getting sicker because they hadn't noticed that when the forty story tall demon was ripped from her, that some of his chakra had stayed inside her and since there wasn't the constant active consciousness of the Kyuubi there to control it, the corrosive chakra had very slowly been destroying her organs and causing them to fail.
The first indication they had that she wasn't as well as she had appeared to be was when one morning four years ago they had rushed to her room after hearing a bloodcurdling scream to find her laying in her futon and she wasn't able to move because every time she did it felt like her muscles were threatening to rip themselves apart.
Of course that subsided after a few hours and she was able to move like nothing had happened that morning and for the next few weeks she appeared to be fine before she suddenly collapsed in the garden much to Naruko and Touko's horror, talking about how she couldn't feel her legs.
After that, Hideki had used some of the medical ninjutsu knowledge he had from his time in the war to diagnose the problem she had, finding small amounts of the Kyuubi's chakra sitting in random parts of her body and after talking to Kurama via a seal he had taught Naruko to use that could allow him to leave his prison for a short while and be in the real world with only one tail like a normal fox, they found out that she only had a few more years to live while getting weaker and weaker until her remaining organs gave out from the remains of his corrosive chakra.
Currently Kushina couldn't move her legs to walk by herself and barely had the strength to sit up straight for more than a minute or to move her arms around his neck while he carried her or feed herself when they ate, almost all the other times she would lay on a futon they had for her in every room or propped up on pillows so she could watch her daughters and Tenten train or mess around and do things most teenage girls would do at their age when stuck inside an ancient monastery. Then there was her malnourished frame, due to her organs failing one by one and her body trying to fight it off while failing the entire time, Kushina had become so thin that you could almost see her bones due to the fact that all of her previous muscle of being a Kunoichi was almost completely gone.
"What are we having today Hideki-kun?" The weakened Uzumaki asked as her daughters, both biological and adopted, talked together with Tenten behind the two adults. "I believe Touko-chan planned on making something special today Kushina-chan," the forty year old blacksmith said with a smile down at the once powerful, yet still beautiful Kunoichi he was carrying in his arms. "But she wouldn't tell me what it was so I guess we're just going to have to wait."
"Hmph…" Kushina grunted with a pout that made her even more adorable despite the fact that she was slowly withering away and began muttering about brats and keeping secrets from her. "Don't worry Kushina-Okaachan," Touko's voice said in her mind with a gentle hum. "It's a surprise I have been working on that will cheer you up."
Kushina smiled back at the blue haired girl that she had taken in, marveling at how all three of the girls had turned into beauties that would make many a woman back in her old village jealous, especially her Naruko and Touko.
Naruko had grown to a height of five four, just one inch short of what Kushina's height had been before she had fallen sick from the chakra corruption. She was wearing a slightly revealing red and white kimono-like shirt that she and Touko had made for her after she out grew her old clothes, it was almost completely red and formed wide sleeves that were capped by white rings that surrounded the edges and went up the sleeve for an inch, the kimono part of the shirt folded over the right side of her torso and was held shut by a black and yellow corset that was in turn held together by a blue, braided rope. At her shoulders, the cloth of the shirt went up in a pointed slightly royal fashion that many of the Daimyo's wore a few centuries back. The only part that Kushina didn't really like about it despite helping Touko make it was the fact that it revealed the top portion of her fellow redhead's c-cup breasts and left most of her shoulders and collarbone bare.
Below that she wore a two sectioned, white skirt with golden vine designs on the top skirt that hung down like a v-shaped tapestry. The lower skirt was rimmed with a red, braided rope and had two golden rings on the sides that she had taken from a couple monk spades that then in turn held a small braid that fell almost to her knees. She was wearing a pair of boots that were capped in a red triangle design that had two red rings each while going down the calf. Lastly, the crimson hair she shared with her mother was tied back in a braid that extended down to the small of her back.
Touko on the other hand stood at a nice five-five and wore a dark blue dress that showed the tops of her well-endowed D-cup breasts and while like Naruko's clothes except for the part where her dress reached her ankles, it left her shoulders and collar area bare, the sleeves of her garment were unattached to the main dress and billowed out around the elbow like many of the musicians that the girl had seen with her original family when they visited different cities and villages. The sleeves were a sky blue that had a golden ring around the edge of the sleeve and on top of her main dress; around her waist she wore a cloth belt that had extensions that reached her feet like flowing ribbons every time she moved. Lastly, her blue hair was tied in its usual pigtails that hung down to her calves and on the inside of her left wrist was a seal that held her favorite harp that Kushina had augmented with seals for her so that she could use ninjutsu with it by plucking it's strings.
The last of the girls, Tenten was the closest to a kunoichi in appearance and was wearing a white and red Chinese qipao shirt that had the red around the edges with the front of her shirt held closed towards the right side by three braids. Her pants consisted of a pair of red hakama pants that would have revealed the sides of her hips and thighs if it wasn't for the bandages she wore to cover her private areas with a red leather halter attached to the inside of her hakama pants that held her mighty scroll of a thousand weapons as the rest of them affectionately called it much to her embarrassment.
Underneath her shirt was a storage seal that Kushina had drawn on her toned stomach for her in permanent shinobi ink that wouldn't show up unless she willed it too much like Naruko's Shiki Fujin seal that housed Kurama. Inside the seal was Tenten's main weapon, an ancient suit of armor from the Uzumaki clan that enhanced the wearer's Fire affinity threefold and allowed them to use the wind affinity with only some prior training. Along with that, Tenten wore a pair of black fingerless gloves that had a seal hidden under them on her palms, the one on her right summoned the sword that matched with the armor of the seal on her stomach and on her left she could summon a golden and purple shield that could deflect almost anything when applying chakra to it unless the chakra the enemy was using at the time was stronger.
While many would consider the brunette plain, she was actually very beautiful in an amazon warrior-like fashion.
Kushina gave a harsh cough as she felt a slight pain in her ribs before Hideki set her down at her seat at the table in the middle of the monastery garden and he gathered several pillows behind her to help the sickly Uzumaki sit straight without having to feel the pain of exertion. He gave her a fork and smiled to her before turning to his own food as he sat next to the tired woman in case she needed some help from him.
Looking around the table, Kushina smiled at the sight of her daughters, Hideki and his own daughter eating while chatting happily like they were all one big happy family, though not all of them were related by blood. The Uzumaki Princess was glad that she had gotten to know them all well and see a large part of all of their lives… Even if some of those parts were hard to handle like how she was currently watching Naruko childishly fighting over the last dumpling with Tenten in a chopstick battle before she remembered how she did the exact same thing with Mikoto when they were that age, only with the Akimichi BBQ meat that was in turn stolen by their other teammate Tsume. She was happy that even though she was dying and the end would probably be more painful than she had ever felt, that she had gotten to see her daughter grow into a beautiful young woman.
'I love you all,' the Uzumaki woman thought with a smile before her vision slowly turned dark, allowing her last sight on this earth to be the panicked faces of Hideki and the teenage girls as she fell forward. Her fox-like daughter Naruko quickly reaching over to her screaming, "Kaa-chan!"
One Week Later
All four of the impromptu family stood before a rectangular patch of misplaced dirt as they stared at the grave of the woman that had loved them; to the girls, a mother that couldn't love them enough, and to Hideki, a comrade that she could never let be in pain or fall like the many others in the war.
They had all been completely startled as they were eating and laughing at each other's' jokes when the red haired woman that had been so much to all of them had fallen forward from her spot on the cushions. Naruko and Hideki had been beyond scared when Kushina wouldn't answer to their calls, Naruko even becoming frantic when her mother wouldn't get up and say that everything was alright, until Tenten had pried the girl off of the woman with the help of her father, and hugged her best friend tightly while Hideki had quickly scooped up the unresponsive body of the woman that had become the center of his life and rushed her off to another prayer room that they had turned into a medical center where they placed all of the medical supplies they either stole or bought from the villages nearby.
However as the older shinobi would find out, they wouldn't be able to save her this time as when he began his medical jutsu he had burst into tears and fallen to his knees on the ground, already knowing the symbolization of the jutsu flickering out right as it began.
It couldn't heal what wasn't alive.
Naruko hadn't left her room for four days after Tenten's father had returned without her mother with a saddened look on his face. When she had finally come out of her room with some coaxing from Tenten and her adopted sister Touko, they managed to get the fox girl over to where Hideki had prepared to bury the last princess of the fallen Land of Whirlpools.
He had placed her frail arms across her chest and closed Kushina's eyes to make it look like she was sleeping instead of being dead. Also apparently, while he waited for his daughter and Touko to bring Naruko from her room, he had secluded himself inside where he had set up his forge in the monastery and had created a coffin from what looked like gold and a crimson material he had somehow found. The coffin's lid had Kushina's appearance before she had become malnourished from her sickness with the crimson material showing as her crimson hair with her copy's eyes closed and hands clasped like she was praying and making her look like a sleeping goddess.
The lower area of her coffin had several different designs like golden vines and leaves that twirled every direction with the exception of the ones in the middle of the sides that had been formed into the swirl symbol of the Uzumaki Clan.
A beautifully designed coffin that many a noble would love to be buried in…
Very slowly, Hideki bent down and moved his massive arms beneath Kushina's body and lifted it into the coffin he had made for his heroine and placed the no longer living woman into the box before moving the lid over the top, completely hiding her from view before he pressed a bloody thumb to the seals on the side that cause the coffin's lid to tighten itself most likely making it air tight and pressing another seal that was on top of the lid in the shape of the Uzumaki swirl that removed all the air from the inside so that she would keep her youthful appearance always.
"Tenten…" Hideki said as he looked over to where his daughter was soothing her fox-like friend with a hug and whispers in her twitching ears. "Come help me please…"
Tenten looked to Touko, receiving a nod in return from the bluenette before she traded places with the girl and watched as Naruko latched on immediately to her surrogate sister. Turning her gaze back to her father, Tenten helped the clearly emotional man place the beautiful coffin into the ground and cover it up with the dirt they had dug up.
After that, the four of them spent hours staring at the tree that stood above the grave, the tree that the once vibrant and youthful redhead had loved to sit while watching her daughter mess around with her friends and guardian.
It would take another three days of grieving after Naruko returned to her room with her best friend and sister staying with her before they would come out.
"Hideki-Otousan…" Naruko said quietly as she looked up at the giant of a man that had been with her family since she was small child. "We… We…"
Tenten placed her hand on her best friend's shoulder and looked at her father as she took over for her emotionally distraught friend, since she had just lost her mother. "Tou-san," Tenten began. "We are planning on leaving the monastery."
Hideki quickly looked up at his daughter's words as he looked at all three of the teenagers that he had been with and watched grow from small troublemaking girls to beautiful women. "W-why are you leaving…?" The man asked as he wiped away a tear from where he had been staring at the grave of one of the greatest friends he could ever have.
"W-we can't s-stay here," Touko's voice spoke up inside his head making him look at the blue haired girl standing slightly behind Naruko. "W-w-we need t-to g-get away for a while…"
Understanding dawned on him as he looked at the three girls, reminded that they had just lost a mother figure so it was especially easy to tell with Naruko as her tails and ears twitched while she stared at the ground beneath her feet, trying to avoid staring at the grave of her mother. Naruko had never known anyone that had died due to having only met the people living on this mountain and clearly didn't know how to handle loss.
The former Konoha Jounin nodded as he wiped his eyes clear of any tears and hugged the three girls to his barrel-like chest. "I understand."
That was all they needed to understand what he meant before he kissed each of them on the forehead like a father would in order to wish his daughters luck in the world. Stopping as he got to Tenten, his own flesh and blood daughter, he stooped down to look the brown haired young woman in the eye, "Keep them safe Tenten-chan, and always remember that strength doesn't come from power or those born into rich clans and families." The man stopped as he hugged her to his barrel-like chest before whispering into her ear, "The strongest power in this world always comes from protecting those precious to you."
His bun haired daughter nodded her head, wiping a stray tear from her eye as she snuck a glance at her surrogate mother's grave and her only two friends in the world. "I will do my best Tou-san," the seventeen year old said as she looked Hideki in the eyes. "And if I fail at that I will push myself beyond that limit. I will always protect those precious to me, even if I must do it after I die."
The man nodded and kissed her forehead before wishing all three of the girls' good luck, especially Naruko since she had never been further than the boundary of the mountain that had been her home for her entire life.
Hours later, he would be watching the three walk out the gates of the monastery and down the mountain to wherever they chose to go and make their new lives. For some reason however the Higurashi blacksmith couldn't help but wonder what the foreboding feeling in his stomach was.
Konohagakure no Sato Week and Half later; Office of the Godaime Hokage
Five figures were standing in front the Hokage's desk, waiting for the tired looking grey haired man sitting in the chair while staring out at the village from the window behind the desk to give them their mission. Standing on the far left of the waiting group was a girl of sixteen with back length, bubblegum pink hair that she kept in a shoulder length ponytail and jade green eyes. She was wearing black biker shorts under a tan kunoichi apron that held her medical pouch to her back; over that she wore a red sleeveless shirt that had white circles imprinted onto it along with black fingerless gloves gracing her hands and black heeled kunoichi sandals. Lastly over her red shirt she wore the traditional Chunin flak jacket that had a medical ninja insignia patch above her heart. This was Sakura Haruno, the personal and second apprentice of Tsunade Senju, a member of the Legendary Three Sannin and the mother of her teammate that was standing two people away; she was an aspiring medic and former fangirl of the Uchiha that stood beside her.
Next to the stoic looking Haruno was her former fangirl crush, the sixteen year old Sasuke Uchiha, the second in line heir of the illustrious Uchiha clan after his older brother Itachi, he was wearing a black kimono shirt that was held closed by a white obi that revealed the top portion of the inside of his chest. The shirt's sleeves stopped halfway down his wrists and had Uchiha fans sewn to the outside of the shoulder of his sleeves; on the back of his shirt, he had a large Uchiha fan. He had his Hitai-ite wrapped around his right bicep and had two metal plates on the backs of his fingerless gloves that also bore the Leaf insignia. His hair was naturally styled into what resembled a duck's butt, something that had earned him many rebuttals as an Academy student from his clan members before his mother set them straight in a way that resembled her presumed dead friend Kushina Uzumaki. He was wearing dark blue shinobi pants that ended inside his calf high, black shinobi boots and on his right thigh he had his weapon pouch. In the belt of his obi, he had a sheathed chokuto that had the Uchiha fan at the base of the pommel and lastly, he was wearing a green Tokubetsu Jounin flak jacket that he left open.
Beside him on his right was his final teammate; a fifteen year old boy with spiky platinum blond hair and forest green eyes that was wearing his usual attire of baggy, grey pants with his white and grey short sleeved hoodie that was worn over a grey long sleeved shirt that matched with his pants. Around his wrists over the top of the shirt were twin green vambraces that connected to his fingerless gloves via the studs at the hand side that made being hit by them very painful. Lastly over his shirt and hoodie, the boy wore his Tokubetsu Jounin flak jacket with several pouches added to it to hold more of his Fuinjutsu seals and his blue hitai-ite was wrapped securely around his forehead. This was Minato Senju, the only child of the Godaime Hokage, Jiraiya of the Sannin and Tsunade Senju, the Senju clan head. He was also the only person in Konoha or the Elemental Nations that had the natural ability to use the legendary Kekkei Genkai of the Mokuton, or Wood Release.
These three made up the infamous team seven that had led the charge to break dozens of expectations and be the most powerful team since the Three Sannin had been formed by the long-since retired Sandaime Hokage.
Over to their left stood three others, one of them was Sakura's twenty-one year old cousin Miyuki Haruno that came from the civilian side of the Haruno family. Miyuki had long pink hair that reached her ass with the bangs hanging down the sides of her face reaching to her breasts and she had a darker shade of green in her eyes than Sakura did and her right eye held a small barely noticeable scar that sat on top of her eyebrow that she had attained from her youth when she tried to seduce the wrong ninja. She was wearing a dark red and very revealing shirt that revealed an ample amount of her cleavage as if she were trying to catch the attention of any man. She was also wearing a segmented skirt that barely showed her exotic black panties to the world and thigh-high black boots that held several dozen hidden kunai that all had poison smoothed onto the blade. Over her shirt, she wore a chunin flak jacket like her cousin, only without the medical cross.
Slightly in front of her was a nineteen year old man that was a bit more on the chunky side, though he did have the necessary muscle build and size for a taijutsu fighter. He had black hair that was slicked back and fell down just past his shoulders, he had cold dark blue eyes that stared at almost everything in the office with a gluttonous greed. He was wearing a ripped sleeveless black shirt that had the insignia for the Fire Daimyo placed in the middle. He was wearing blue shinobi pants with two tanto tied to his belt. On his feet were close-toed, grey shinobi sandals that had steel covering his toes and he was also wearing two wrist guards that completely covered his hands with metal studs on the knuckles. His hitai-ite was placed around his neck just under his chin where the beginning of facial hair was beginning to grow and right above his opened chunin flak jacket. This was Seto Mokuba, the eldest nephew of the Fire Daimyo and the second-in-line for the throne of the Land of Fire.
Standing beside him with absolute adoration in her hazel eyes as she stared at him was the eighteen year old Hiyori Kyaba. Hiyori has platinum blonde hair that came to a stop at the small of her back and ruby red eyes like the Jounin Kurenai Yuhi. She was wearing a tan servant robe of the Fire Daimyo's house with white pants that ended in her heeled kunoichi sandals, around her wrists were bandages and her robes were open slightly to, like Miyuki, show off her C-cup bust in the hopes of catching the object of her affection's attention. Covering her torso, but not the view of her girls' was her chunin flak jacket that had been left open at the front and spread so as to not impede the eyes of her 'lord'.
The door behind Miyuki opened and a man slightly older than the rest of the group in the office that had slightly spiky brown hair and black eyes with a happuri styled hitai-ite covering the sides of his face walked in. He was wearing the traditional Anbu attire of grey armor, black armbands, sleeveless shirt and baggy pants. On his back was the mandatory tanto for all Anbu. However his usual Anbu mask was not in view at the moment for the mission that he had been called to attend. This was Tenzo Yamato, the team leader and one of the only surviving experiments of Orochimaru before the Sannin was found out and went rogue. He was also Minato's former teacher in the use of his Mokuton Kekkei Genkai.
The Hokage sighed as he felt that everyone he had summoned was there and turned around in his seat to take a look at the gathered shinobi and kunoichi. This was Jiraiya of the Sannin, the man hailed as the Toad Sannin and the one who had taken the seat of the Godaime Hokage after his student had sealed the Kyuubi into his goddaughter and said goddaughter had disappeared off the face of the earth with her mother Kushina over sixteen years ago.
He straitened his body from how it had been slumped a few minutes ago and received several pops in return. Then he turned to team seven and the other shinobi that he had called for this specific mission. "Now that everyone is here it is about time to tell you all what your mission is to be."
Everyone stood to attention, even Seto and his loyal fangirl, as they looked to the powerful legend. Jiraiya pulled a manila folder from his grey kimono shirt and placed it on the desk before him. "Your mission is an S-rank, extremely classified mission," he began, expressing the seriousness from just his utterly serious gaze that dared any of them to say a word in the form of interruption. "Last year as many of you know it was reported that the Jinchuuriki of the Yonbi was killed by the Akatsuki, however they were unable to stop the man, a retired Jounin named Roshi who was the container, from activating a self-destruct seal that atomized his body and caused them to lose the Bijuu that he contained. One of my spies in the Land of Hot Springs has reported a short while ago to my replacement that the Yonbi was spotted forty miles away from the country's capital."
He took a moment to breathe and looked at all of them in utter seriousness, making sure they know how important this situation was, he could see that his son and Tenzo already knew the reason they were there for, their Mokuton would be invaluable for this mission, especially with the two working together. "It is this team's duty to ensure that we capture the Yonbi so that we can have a Jinchuuriki of our own since the Jinchuuriki of the Kyuubi was taken sixteen years ago by her mother right after the beast was sealed inside her body. Do you all understand why you are here?"
All of the shinobi and kunoichi in the room nodded their understanding of their task, Seto's eyes taking on a greedy gleam at the thought of being able to harness a Bijuu's chakra for his own purposes and the strength he would gain from the seemingly endless chakra of a Bijuu.
"Good," Jiraiya said as he looked around at all of them. "You may all leave to prepare, make sure you pack extra supplies because I am sure that we are probably not the only ones that will be attempting to capture the Yonbi. Tenzo stay here."
All of the other shinobi left the room with Minato nodding in respect to his Mokuton sensei. "Did you need something of me Hokage-sama?" Tenzo asked as he looked at his leader.
Jiraiya nodded to the Mokuton user, "Yes, as you know I am placing you as team leader," he began getting a nod from his subordinate, "While you lead the team I want you to evaluate the members of squad seven to see if they are worthy of promotion to full Jounin, but I also want you to keep an eye on Seto."
Tenzo raised an eyebrow at that, "Why would you want me to keep an eye on him and why not just have Kakashi-sempai evaluate team seven? He is their sensei after all."
Jiraiya sighed as he rubbed his nose, already tired from the paperwork and having been stuck in the office for three days straight without being able to go home to his wife. "I have Kakashi on a long term assignment in the Land of Rain with Asuma so he can't evaluate them and as for Seto, the boy is becoming increasingly annoying in his demands of others if he wants something, I have been hearing reports that he has sexually assaulted several Leaf kunoichi but none of them will confess that he did it from being too scared of what he would do to them with his uncle's influence or traumatized afterward," the fifty-four year old man gave another sigh. "I want to see how he acts on this mission and if he acts in a way that isn't satisfactory for a shinobi of the Leaf then detain him and turn him over to Ibiki and Anko when you get back, and don't worry about his uncle being angry, he has given his full approval for this since he feels it is not behavior befitting an heir to his throne."
Tenzo nodded and was about to turn to leave the office of his superior when he noticed the man glancing at another folder next to the one about the mission, "There is something more, isn't there?"
Jiraiya nodded tiredly as his wood using subordinate saw a look that almost appeared to be hope flitter across the Sannin's features. "The same informant sent in more information only six hours after the sighting of the Yonbi, apparently he saw a young red haired girl with fox ears and a white bushy tail accompanied by two other girls around her age at one of the hot spring resorts that the country is famous for."
The Anbu immediately got the meaning behind the man's words as his eyes widened at the implications. "They found her…"
It was only a whisper yet the older shinobi heard it and nodded.
"Yes, I didn't want to tell anybody with the whole team here, especially with my suspicions on the Daimyo's nephew," Jiraiya said as he looked out towards the village once again, the grim features that he had held since the disappearance of his student's wife and his goddaughter flickering away for a moment as hope shined in his brown eyes. "If you meet her in the Land of Hot Springs, I want you to try to convince her along with her companions to return to Konoha without using any force, along with Kushina if she is with them. The former council already scared off Kushina with their idiotic talks of killing or weaponizing Naruko while I was being inaugurated and we were cleaning up the destruction caused by the nine tailed demon fox, we don't need to scare the girl herself off as well."
Tenzo nodded, despite his memory loss of his life before being Orochimaru's experiment, he for some reason still had a memory of being a newly minted genin and hearing about how the famed Habanero had vanished with the new Jinchuuriki; he especially knew about the circumstances because Tsunade tended to talk about her regrets while she was drunk when he taught Minato how to use his Mokuton when he was younger. "I will do my best Jiraiya-sama; I'll leave you to it now so I can go prepare for the mission and you can get home to tell Tsunade-sama the good news."
With that, the Anbu disappeared in a flurry of bark pieces only to reappear in his apartment to gather his gear. Back in the office, Jiraiya sighed as the legend thought about how he was going to tell his wife that their goddaughter had been spotted and that they might be able to bring her home along with Kushina if the woman was with her, though he knew that if Kushina wasn't with her daughter to protect her from shinobi that might want to capture her, then she was probably dead.
After another minute of thinking, the old shinobi sighed and bowed his head as he remembered trying to stop the woman from leaving after he had felt her chakra outside the council doors when he and his old sensei were trying to beat some sense into the civilians on the council. However he had been too late, because by the time he reached the doors and opened them, the terrified redhead had already fled back to her hospital room where she proceeded to snatch her newly-born daughter from her crib and flee the village, expertly masking her chakra signature despite the massive size of it once she disappeared into the forest just outside the gates.
He sighed one more time before creating a shadow clone and walking towards the door while looking at the picture of his student that looked so much like his and Tsunade's son.
'I should have tried harder…'
Hello everyone, I hoped you liked that. In this next chapter I will be having the glorious team seven run into Naruko's group. I must admit that while I was writing the part where Kushina died that I cried, I was never really good at getting those emotional scenes. Like many of you are probably wondering, yes I am fully designing Naruko and Tenten after Ahri and Leona, Naruko will have all of the abilities of Ahri minus the ability to suck out another person's life force like she is known for in her lore and the Rasengan will take the place of that orb of souls that Ahri has.
The Uzumaki armor I mentioned in this chapter is designed directly after Leona's armor from League of Legends and has basically all of the same abilities along with, besides making the wearer a log smashing tank, giving the user's natural fire affinity a massive boost and giving them the ability to manipulate wind chakra, or if they already have it, enhances it like with the fire affinity.
Touko's harp as mentioned previously but obviously not shown in the chapter, grants her the ability to manipulate different chakra natures through her music much like Sheik was able to in the Legend of Zelda.
That's all for now, Iskander Mandoraekon signing out. Jae Ne.