The biggest problem with living in a civilization without cars, roads paved to a uniform standard, and where highway robbery is still a problem? It's impossible to make any sort of precise schedule. Which is why it's nearly two in the morning, and three days after we planned to arrive, when we finally come in sight of Konoha's walls.
The last few years have been an adventure. Whoever stole the chakra metal has effectively vanished. There's no sign of anybody using more chakra metal than they've been sold. Nobody is bragging about getting one over on the Iron Samurai. The metal and whoever stole it just... disappeared into thin air as far as anybody can tell.
Which isn't to say that we didn't look for them anyway. And when we couldn't find anything, our orders turned the full force of the Iron military on every bandit, smuggler, or black market dealer we could find. I spent my last few years before becoming a full samurai learning way more than I ever wanted to know about the Elemental Nations criminal underworld, and fighting a lot of missing nin. And probably more than a few nin that weren't nearly as lost as they claimed. Eventually when nothing continued to be found, we had no choice but to give up and move on. Somebody had gotten away with a lot of chakra metal and sent the samurai of Iron on a several year long wild goose chase, and they'd gotten away clean.
I got a lot of help with building my chakra affinities out of it though so I'm not too upset. It was still exhausting though, so my guarding of the quarterly caravans of chakra metal became an unofficial vacation for me. I got to hang out with my friend, and do so in an environment where nothing is expected of me. As much as I love Miku, being in Iron means I have to be the prodigy.
Something that only got worse when I graduated to full samurai at ten. A full five years before standard, and two years faster than anybody has ever managed before. Then suddenly they wanted me doing political missions, high profile bodyguard work, and diplomatic appearances.
I actually had to fight a duel to keep my spot on the Konoha caravan. Apparently it's too minor a duty for somebody of my stature. I'm pretty sure the guy who told me that is part of the group of nobles that's trying to woo me to their side, and he was trying to suck up to me.
That backfired on him something fierce.
Still, even now, two years after becoming a full samurai, and even longer since the hunt for the thief ended, Konoha is still my refuge from the pressure that Iron puts on me. A chance to rest. Which is why I'm more than a little grumpy right now at how much I've been delayed in getting my break.
Also I'm more than a little jealous of Cloud and Nell. Cloud because she can use chakra to just not get tired. So isn't really feeling the late hour or the several day delay in the slightest. Stupid magic horse.
Nell on the other hand is curled up on the back of my saddle and completely unconscious. No reason for her to be awake at the moment, and when she needs to be she'll wake up with no trouble and then go right back to sleep. So she gets to do exactly what I want to be doing right now, and there's no good way for me to share the pain.
Still we're almost to the village. Sure the gates are technically closed right now, but we'll still be let into the village as fast as possible. Nobody wants to leave a shipment of something as valuable as chakra metal out in the open for any longer than necessary.
Which means I'll get to my bed in the Senju compound as quickly as possible. Sure it took them a while to warm up to me enough to consider the idea of hosting me. And Tsunade medically proving that I have no chakra, thus no use for any secret chakra based techniques that they might have, before they actually went through with it. But it got me one of the most comfortable beds I've ever had the pleasure of using, reserved for me whenever I'm in the village.
A bed that I plan on getting to just as fast as I can, and then not leaving again until noon.
Nothing and nobody is convincing me otherwise.
###
"Miss... Miss! You can't go in there! The Princess is still sleeping!"
I groan softly, consciousness returning at the sound of two figures moving around in the outer room of the suite that the Senju were kind enough to loan me to stay in while visiting Konoha. One of the figures sounds human, two legs with a human stride and those sandals that all ninja seem to wear. They sound a few inches shorter than me, and with a significant amount of hair. The second figure is even shorter, maybe coming up to my waist. Two legs again, but their steps and stride rhythm sound distinctly inhuman. Not to mention they sound fuzzy in the way that I've learned in the last few years means fur.
So the one protesting and trying to protect my precious sleeping time is Nell.
Which makes the other...
"WAKE UP!" I oof as a small and dense body lands on me with a significant amount of force. I groan much louder and crack an eye open to find pretty much what I expected. Kushina, wearing her usual tan wrap tunic and green obi. Her vibrantly red knee length hair pooling on the bed behind her as she straddles my hips. The moment she detects my eye opening, even a touch, she starts bouncing up and down on the bed, "Eri~! Get up! It's morning, and you promised to walk me to the academy!"
"What time is it?"
"It's six! Come on get up!"
I try to roll over, but the way she's sitting on me would require me to put forth actual effort, "Too early."
"But today's graduation day! I don't wanna be late!"
"Graduation starts at nine, just like every other day. And I don't even have to be there, lemme sleep."
"No! This is a wonderful glorious morning and you're going to enjoy it with me!" Kushina huffs, then bounces off my bed heading towards the door of the guest suite. "Come on, let's go! Nell! Get her clothes ready!"
I groan again, "Do you know where morning people go, 'Shina?"
"I'll get you dango~!"
"Hell 'Shina, you all go to hell."
###
I'm either being dragged down the street, or walking down it holding Kushina's hand. I'm not entirely sure which. My presence over the last several years has clearly helped her a lot, and she's become an enthusiastic and adorable chatterbox.
The hand holding is something that started on my third visit. I think at first she was afraid that I'd vanish if she didn't keep a hold of me. Now I think she just likes doing it. It's prompted some knowing looks from people, but I don't think it has any significance beyond wanting to hold onto her friend. If for no other reason than because, while Kushina has figured out the difference between boys and girls, she hasn't found a reason to care yet. And given her future, I'm pretty sure she's straight. At the moment I think the hold is helping her pretend that she's not nervous about the coming exam.
She's doing a decent job of it, but I can tell she's nervous. She's only been a part of the regular academy classes for the last year, since Mito died. So she's still very much an outsider there. Something that I think will change when she graduates and gets her team, but it doesn't help her confidence right now.
Which makes her prone to forgetting things, like the dango I was promised.
Where's my dango, Kushina?
I look longingly as we go right past another dango shop, and sigh. "'Shina. Stop, really." I finally interrupt her nervous babble, "You're ready for this. You've trained with me whenever I'm around and Tsunade when I'm not. You've told me you're advanced at sealing even for an Uzumaki, I know you're good in a fight. What exactly are you worried about?"
Kushina fidgets for a moment, "I don't know... this is... this is it! Mito, Tsunade, you, what if I fail? What if I don't do it right, what if..."
"So nothing." I grip her shoulders and jolt her gently, "You're worried about nothing, because there's nothing to worry about. Right?" She nods tentatively. She's just agreeing with me because she thinks she should, not because she believes me.
Damn.
This calls for desperate measures, "Except maybe Minato." The words come casually, Kushina's response to the name is anything but.
Her head snaps up to look at me, her violet eyes blazing and her hair beginning to move slightly as though in a wind. Which it isn't because the air is still, "What? Minato?" Kushina audibly growls, "No. I'm not losing to him of all people. I'm gonna be Hokage, and no blonde, pretty boy is going to stop me!" She grabs my hand again and strides off with a much more determined stride than the nervous one she'd displayed earlier, "Come on! The sooner we get there, the sooner I can kick his girly ass!"
Well, at least she's motivated instead of nervous now.
... On the other hand... I'm not sure Minato is going to survive. Sorry, your sacrifice will be remembered.
###
Alleyways make terrible beds.
Why am I sleeping in an alleyway?
No really, what the fuck happened?
And why can't I move?
Well, the moving thing I can answer pretty quickly. The slowly fading heat in my neck makes me think that somebody tried to break it. And came closer to succeeding than I'd like. Thankfully troll bones are tougher than anybody would expect, probably the only thing that saved me.
So really, what happened?
I remember Kushina waking me up in the morning.
And promising me dango I still haven't gotten.
Not important right now.
Dropped her off at the academy after inadvertently getting her over her nerves by sicking her on Minato.
Then I wandered off to do some training to pass the time. Ending up training with Tsunade, she's trying to refine her super strength technique. Which I took as an opportunity to practice my strength nullifying defense.
Ku claimed he'd used the technique to protect himself from a mountain giant once. Tsunade isn't a giant, she doesn't have the mass to hit as hard as they can no matter how strong she is. But she's pretty good practice even so. Also, her look of confused frustration at my ability to just ignore how hard she hit was hilarious.
We did that for a while then... Then Kushina found us, looking thrilled and sporting a brand new Konoha forehead protector.
This, of course, required a celebration, so we went to Kushina's favorite ramen place. Of course. Tsunade fled at the mention of ramen, so 'we' was just me and Kushina.
...I think I remember planning to go to karaoke afterwards?
I'm not sure, my memories are getting fuzzier. I remember us eating... sort of. Then everything got really weird...
I think we were drugged?
Whoever did it probably tried to break my neck to get rid of me. They heard a crack and thought the job was done, but given how much stronger troll bone is than even the local human bone, I just got some nerve damage instead of getting killed.
I got really lucky.
My regeneration is rather dramatically focused on traumatic injury. It doesn't really respond to other things as well, assuming it does at all. Orally taken drugs would probably work just fine, if not for as long as the dosage would suggest.
Even that though probably wouldn't have me up so soon if they hadn't broken my neck. Which at the very least kicked my metabolism into high gear. And really, I can't have been laying here for too long. This isn't some random overpopulated American city, this is Konoha. Dead bodies don't go unnoticed here for long.
Maybe ten minutes? Fifteen at the outside.
...
Where's Kushina?
The heat in my neck fades away completely and I stagger to my feet.
Kushina's not in the alleyway.
...Which is good. If they'd broken her neck and dumped her body she'd probably actually be dead. She's not here so she's alive... Wait, wasn't she kidnapped at some point?
Fuck!
I take a deep breath, drawing in the world's mana along with the air. My mana begins to refill slowly, as my mana sense explodes. Ten to fifteen minutes. That doesn't sound like a lot of time, but for ninja? The only thing working in my favor is that they'd have to get out of Konoha, subtly before they could really pick up the pace. That would take time.
So hopefully...
I can't sense Kushina, but there is a massive source of pissed off mana radiating from the south east of the city. I can't feel the source, but I know what it is, and I can see which direction it's coming from.
Good enough.
A last few tongues of flame lick out of scratches where I hit the ground while unconscious and I spread my wings. Using the angelic method of flight, I rocket into the sky, no doubt attracting a lot of attention as I do.
Good, that means I'll have back up quickly if I need it.
Clearing the buildings of Konoha, I reorient myself and flap hard, channeling mana reinforcement through my wings as I do for more speed. It's not as fast as just willing myself in a direction, but it's cheaper in terms of mana, so I probably have enough to catch up to the kidnappers. Ninja are fast, but these aren't Leaf ninja, which means they're not going to be as fast in forests as they could be. And flying is almost always faster anyway.
Once I catch up with them, it won't matter how much mana I burn getting there. Once I do, there will be a fight, and they'll bring me all the mana I could need.
###
Tracking the Kyubi's mana takes me over the main gate of the Village, which I really didn't expect. I figured that the kidnappers would be somewhere in the woods running as fast as they could for the closest border. Instead, the extremely angry mana leads me to what superficially looks like a simple merchant's cart. The back of the cart is filled with various boxes and sacks of trade goods.
Except that large one, tucked off to one side.
That box has an Uzumaki and a tailed beast inside of it.
I take a moment to examine the people in the cart with my mana senses, just long enough to determine that they have way too much mana for civilians. Too much for genin or chunin. These are jonin at the least, more likely some form of ANBU analogue. None of which particularly matters to me at the moment. They're ninja, which means I don't have to worry about having the right target for what I do next.
I got some decent height on my way out of the village. I anticipated having to go a lot further to find Kushina. The Kyubi's mana is detectable from a long way off, something that's not true for it's chakra, I've discovered. But I thought I'd need the height for searching and traveling quickly.
It'll work for this, though.
I beat my wings once, orienting myself on the nin driving the cart, then I fold my wings and dive. Peregrine falcons kill their prey by clenching their talons into fists, and then hitting the target from a dive. The falcons can reach two hundred something miles per hour in a dive. I'm not going that quick, but the principle is the same and it works just about as well.
I stretch out into a superman pose, my wings open just enough to keep me on target, and fists stretched out in front of me. I strike the driver right in the back of the head.
Their head explodes like a watermelon struck by a cannon round.
Bits of skull shattered into fragments go flying everywhere. Blood and brain matter explode into a fine mist that I, unfortunately, pass straight through. The moment after impact I flare my wings, braking hard and pulling up as hard as I can from the dive in the moments I have to travel between the cart driver and the ground.
It's not much.
I swing my feet forward to take the impact with the ground, which is hard. Hard enough that I can already feel heat running through my legs, healing whatever damage has been done. I have no time to consider this though, as I still have way too much inertia. My braking redirected that inertia more 'forward' than 'down', but it's still there. I vanish my wings as quickly as I can and pitch forward into a roll which bleeds off most of my forward momentum, the rest vanishing into a slide as I come back to my feet facing the direction I'd come from.
The other occupants of the cart are just beginning to react to what happened. Apparently, even trained ninja can be taken by surprise by that much death from above. There are three of them, two men and a woman. The thing is that none of them look like ninja. They react like ninja, there's no screaming or panicking, just wide eyes and hands darting to belts as they try to catch up with what's going on. But they look like any Land of Fire peasant that I could find in any farming village in the country.
I narrow my eyes slightly and funnel some of my rapidly dwindling mana to my eyes. The world sharpens, my gaze is drawn to the box in the cart where Kushina's mana is coming from, and to various places on the cart's occupants where I assume that knives and various other ninja tools are hidden. Most importantly though the appearance of the three of them has changed.
The weathered but pale skin of the Land of Fire native is replaced by the dark skin native to the Land of Lightning. Their builds have changed from the weathered, hard worn look of somebody whose life consists of constant labor, to the hard chiseled muscle of somebody whose life is constant training.
I run an eye over them trying to figure out what I'm dealing with.
The names of the nations aren't just to sound cool, or because they wanted to keep their names on theme. The five great nations are named after the most common elemental affinity found inside their borders. Why it works this way I have no idea, I'm not sure that anybody has ever actually bothered asking 'why' things are the way they are. It's true, though. So the Land of Fire is named such because there are hugely more people with a fire affinity here than any other affinity.
The Land of Lightning is largely filled with lightning affinity. This is important because given elemental natures tend to affect the personality and fighting style of the people who developed them. Not because of any sort of mystical connection, but because each element requires a different strategy to get the most out of it, and pursuing those strategies tend to shape one's thoughts. Enough of a saturation of people who think in a specific way will have a shaping effect on the culture that they live in, so even people who don't have the given affinity will still end up thinking and acting like they do just from exposure. The Library had plenty to say on all of the elements, and what the results tend to be. And, of course, how to fight them.
Folks with fire affinity tend to heavily favor offense, more fire, hotter fire, and fire held on target longer are the ways to get more out of the element. This results in a huge amount of aggression in a fight. Even if they're generally calm people in general, constant offensive pressure until something breaks is the way they work.
Stone tends to be exactly the opposite. All defense and patience. Weathering whatever comes until a mistake is made or an opening found, then falling on the opponent like an avalanche.
Lightning is trickier. It takes time to charge up, and resolves in a single devastating strike. This leads to a strategy of traps in combat. Not necessarily physical snares or such, but people with lightning affinity tend to lead or push opponents into positions where they find themselves suddenly hampered in some way. Then they'll try to end it with a single blow.
So lots of maneuver combat, pretty good teamwork, and fighting even more like a chess game than it normally is. The solution to this style, according to the library, is pretty straightforward, constant pressure. Don't give them a moment to think, and keep them too busy trying to survive to set anything up.
They seem to have gotten with the program and the kunai have come out. The two men advance on me. The one that was sitting next to the now deceased driver is the eldest of the three, and hops over his teammate's corpse, advancing on me. The younger man that was in the back of the cart with the woman also jumps to the ground, pulling a wakizashi. The two men obviously intend to take me together. Meanwhile, their female companion hops up onto the edge of the cart and starts going through hand signs.
The older man starts talking, but I ignore him. I really don't understand ninja's obsession with battle banter. Or maybe he's trying to stall? It's only been a few seconds since he started talking and the mana build up in the woman is getting worrying.
Can't have that.
I take a deep breath, mentally apologize to Kushina, and scream.
I've come a long way since the dragon in Ke'Kua'Okolani village though. The blast of sound is narrow, focused, and not powerful enough to shatter wood.
Or people.
I compensate for that by hitting the same frequency that I used to steal the mind rape Excalibit. The resonance frequency of the human inner ear. It's a good trick.
Unfortunately, it seems like while I have come far, I haven't come far enough. The two younger ninja, the man with the sword and the woman trying to use a jutsu don't do anything more than stagger. The older ninja, though, claps his hands to his ears and pitches over sideways like a log.
I don't know if it's because I narrowed the blast of sound too much, or I held back too much power trying not to hurt Kushina, but getting caught in the edge of the blast doesn't seem to have done much. Still, I got the most dangerous one. Ninja life is very hard, with a very high mortality rate. So the older the ninja, the more skilled they must be to survive to the age they're at.
The other two don't worry me so much. The female seems to be jutsu focused, which shouldn't be a problem, and the male thinks he's going to get into a sword fight with me.
That's just adorable.
While they're still staggering, I lunge forward at the closest still standing Ninja, the male with the sword. Even staggered, he reacts well. I pull my arms up for an overhead strike, and he responds, shifting his sword to block. The fact I don't have a sword confuses him by the look on his face, but that doesn't stop him.
I do have a sword though.
Black mist and shadow erupt in a narrow bar, engulfing my hands. Then the mist and shadow contracts, solidifies, and Sclamhaire graces the world once more. She comes down on the ninja's sword and shears through it like air, and then proceeds through the ninja with roughly the same effort. The ninja's life force, chakra, and all the other energy that Sclamhaire can reach, thunders through her blade and fills my mana network.
I think I might've overloaded myself again, I can feel the mana straining at my networks' capacity.
Then the female ninja is right in front of me.
How the fuck did she get from the cart to me without me noticing? It's not that far, but I should have sensed her mana build up for a speed technique, or should have heard her approaching even if she didn't. So...
Lightning wreathed hands clap together in my face, and all I can hear is a high pitched whine as I'm flung backwards hard enough to plow through a small tree on my way into the forest at the side of the road.
Slowly I pull myself to my feet groaning. Having Sclamhaire back is wonderful, and the only reason I have enough mana to regenerate the damage from that hit, but I really want my armor back.
"You killed my friends," the remaining ninja growls out, producing two, two foot long rods from somewhere. The lightning that had covered her hands now arc down her new weapons. Some bit of the back of my mind insists that what I'm looking at isn't how electricity works, but given I'm looking at it happening, I ignore that bit. "I'm going to burn you to death a piece at a time."
She seems angry, which I find ridiculous.
Normally I don't really approve of banter in battle. I find it a waste of time, but right now I could use a few more seconds to heal. "What did you expect to happen? I mean, really? You snuck into an enemy village and tried to kidnap somebody. Did you expect to be given tea and cookies?"
The woman snarls and rushes me. Well, I got a few more seconds. I catch her first swing on Sclamhaire getting a nice rush of mana from the impact and the electricity. Then I don't have much more time to think about it. Her weapons fall in a staccato rhythm that I can just barely keep up with. If she was just going for speed, alternating which hand she was striking with each time, I wouldn't really be having a problem. But she doesn't maintain a steady rhythm, sometimes the same hand strikes twice or more in a row. Sometimes she kicks, or knees, or throws elbows in addition to her electrified clubs. And sometimes the two weapons fall together, which is when I have real trouble. Glancing hits that would mean nothing if I had armor, even my samurai armor, cause my muscles to seize and spasm. The occasional return swipe I manage with Sclamhaire never draws more than shallow scratches on my opponent, and worse she's learned from the death of her companion, and never tries to block anything.
Still, I feel like I'm missing something. Both of us are burning through our metaphysical resources at a fantastic rate. She's got more chakra than I do mana, but I can feel her chakra dropping like a rock. She's still got plenty, but I'm getting filled up again with every exchange, and she's not. She doesn't know that I'm not likely to run out any time soon, but this still isn't a pace she can keep up.
She might be trying to win by attrition, but like I thought earlier, she's a lightning user, and that's not how they think...
Shit.
This is stalling. All she's doing is running the setup, buying time for the charge to build. So where...?
Another swipe with Sclamhaire forces her to back up for a moment which allows me to take in my surroundings without distraction for a moment. The ninja I hit with my falcon dive is very dead, a missing head pretty much guarantees that. The older ninja I hit with the debilitating scream isn't as debilitated as I thought. He's managed to climb to one knee, but he's still got both hands planted on the ground, and his head is hanging and doesn't seem to be getting up any further. The other ninja who met Sclamhaire is also very dead, being in two pieces and all.
So where?
The woman is back on me again and I can't afford to look anywhere else. My other senses are still searching the surroundings though. I can't hear anybody else moving up on us, I can't feel any other approaching mana sources either, not even underground or any other unpredictable approach.
A spike of chakra jerks my attention to the kneeling older ninja. His legs have partially straightened and he's lifted his head to look in my direction.
Oh.
Shit.
He's not kneeling, he's in a sprinter's start. That's...
The woman I've been fighting smoothly slides to one side, lightning crawls across his body, then...
I have just enough time to pull Sclamhaire into a block before his lightning covered fist crashes into her flat. He looks gratifyingly surprised as I don't even so much as twitch from the force of his charge. Which is good because I'm stunned for a moment from the sheer amount of mana that just flooded my system. I go from low but sustainable given the pace of combat, to almost full from that one hit.
My body fortunately is well trained enough to act without my mind needing to be involved in every step. I rotate Sclamhaire's point in line with him and thrust forward. He just manages to twist out of the way of my thrust, and I quickly step back behind Sclamhaire just in time to block a kick.
Our minor war of positioning has reversed our positions, so now I'm standing with my back to the cart, and his is to the forest. There's a momentary pause, then he rushes me again and a storm of fists and feet fall on me like rain.
How the hell is this guy still on his feet? His inner ear ought to be mush, his balance shot! So what the hell did lightning man...
I suddenly feel more than a little stupid.
If you practice something a lot, you naturally develop defences to the same thing. While not impossible, electrocuting a master of lightning jutsu is a trick. They handle too much electricity too regularly to not be very good at handling even unexpected charges. The other thing that people that throw around a lot of lightning bolts have to deal with all the time? Thunder.
Hadn't I taken a literal thunder clap to the face just a moment ago?
It's not the same thing as a resonance frequency, but sound is likely a terrible way to try and do damage to these people. The fucker was faking from the moment I screamed at him.
I'm kind of very reluctantly impressed.
I'm tired of playing with these people, though. For the first time since I got launched into the edge of the forest I go on the offensive, and this time my attack is accompanied by small plucks of my mental bow string.
Suddenly the man I'm fighting turns clumsy. His feet are not landing where he intends, his blows are just off target, his blocks are never precisely where he wants them to be. I quickly start taking him apart, in a moment I'll be able to get back to his friend.
Who from a quick check has moved a good distance off to the side of the fight and is building up chakra again like she had been before I cut her teammate in half. It doesn't sound like she's facing me though. It actually sounds like she's pointed at the cart...
FUCK!
I pull the bow string in my mind way back and launch my immediate opponent into the nearest tree just as hard as I can. The crunching sound his impact makes speaks to a probably crippling number of broken bones. I'm not really paying attention to him any more.
I turn to where I can hear and feel the kunoichi and see pretty much what I expected. Hand signs flash as her chakra build up hits a crescendo, and suddenly I'm out of time.
My wings erupt from my back and a single beat combined with the angelic manner of propulsion rockets me forward.
I'm still too late.
An asian dragon made of blue lightning erupts from the woman's thrust forward hand and rushes towards the cart where Kushina is still trapped just as I reach her. I thrust Sclamhaire forward, stretching as far as I can and just managing to get the point of my sword into the construct of destructive energy.
The barest trickle of chakra is drained away from the jutsu. Weakening it, but not nearly enough. Time seems to slow as I frantically strain against nothing, willing just a bit more chakra to be drained away from jutsu. My mind strains, even just a little bit more power drained away will mean just that little bit more of a chance for Kushina to survive.
Then something gives. Something I didn't even notice pulling against. Time speeds up and the entirety of the lightning dragon jutsu is sucked into Sclamhaire like water through a straw. Mana thunders through my network, cracking the pathways, tearing tenketsu and over flowing into the rest of my body. My skin cracks letting the blue glow of mana overload leak into the air.
This bitch just tried to kill Kushina.
In the distance I can feel a number of mana sources rushing towards me from the direction of the village. I guess the lightning dragon jutsu was big enough for them to notice.
They kidnapped her, and then when it looked like they wouldn't get away with her, they tried to kill her.
They were going to keep her prisoner, take away her free will, turn her into a broodmare...
Fury pounds in time with blood and mana in my ears.
I push as much mana as I can into my physical reinforcement technique, and with another scream punch the kunoichi in the face as hard as I can. The curve of her skull abruptly reverses with a crunch.
I take a moment to look back at the older ninja. He's alive, but the smell of blood strengthens every time he exhales.
For a moment I want to go over there and misapply some tattoos to him...
But he's not going anywhere.
So instead I head back for the cart where Kushina is still trapped.
It only takes a moment to rip the top off the crate. I half expect Kushina to come flying out of the crate swinging. Instead I find her tied hand and foot, blindfolded, and gagged lying at the bottom of the crate. I reach down to pull her out, but the moment she feels my hands on her she starts thrashing as much as she can while tied up.
"Kushina! 'Shina!" I yell trying to get through her panic. It seems to work as she pauses at the sound of her nickname. I seize the opportunity to pull her blindfold off, and she looks up at me with wide reddened eyes.
After that it only takes me a moment or two to manifest my athame and cut her bonds. The moment she's free she latches onto me like an acrophobic koala. I hug her back tightly, some part of me is afraid that if I let go of her, she'll vanish again.
"You came," she says quietly enough that even at this range I wouldn't have heard her without my improvements.
"Of course. That's what friends do," I tell her, feeling just a little bit awkward saying it, so I try to lighten the mood slightly, "You do still owe me dango after all."
Kushina begins to shake and I'm suddenly worried that I've made a mistake somehow. I relax a moment later though.
Yeah, she's crying, but she's giggling too.
She's still doing both into my chest when the ANBU finally appear around us from their body flickers.
