Chapter Four: Escape

Well, it wasn't any worse than being pregnant, Kushina thought to herself as she shoved the other spirit from the body and took over. About the same, really. Ha, that's right. It was the same, almost. She'd already had Naruto's chakra in her body. Ahahaha, take that, Minato! Mommy could mesh better with her son's body than he could. Wait. She was a boy now? Ewww... Note to self: Use Henge at first opportunity.

She took note of her senses. Ah how good it was to breathe again! She took in a deep breath through the nose, inhaling all the scents around her. Ink, blood... oh yeah, fuinjutsu alright. She snapped her eyes open to look at all the swirly black ink marks and kanji that held her in place.

Should have used Naruto's blood, Kushina mused to herself as she noted her current body had no blood tie to the seal. The wind element dampener was in there, as well as a clever little gimmick that would stop Minato from sensing any Hiraishin outside of the barrier. Another that would seize her spirit if the bunshin were dispersed; at least that's what it was meant to do, but between it and the fact that she was actually fuzed and rooted in Naruto through the Kyuubi seal... well, she was almost certain it wouldn't hold her. Almost.

Didn't matter. Naruto had her chakra. Her Uzumaki specialized-just-for-fuinjutsu chakra. These poor fools would never know what hit them.

It was a simple three point seal, probably underestimating her because Minato was a sissy and likely hadn't been that difficult to take out. There was one person at each of the three points, Kakashi, Asuma, and Inoichi. No Shikaku? Huh. Well that just made things easier. His shadows would have been annoying to have to break out of. Shibi and his chakra draining bugs could have been potentially dangerous as well; she was now almost entirely composed of chakra.

Plans already forming in her head, she slipped Minato's Hiraishin blade that had been in her hand into the bunshin's kunai pouch and turned a predatory gaze on the one-eye'd jounin. "Hatake," she growled.

One word could still send a shiver down that boy's spine. Yesss...

The sound of someone clearing their throat to gain her attention, brought her gaze to where she was just now noticing the sandaime stood. She gave him a light smile. "Sarutobi-ojiisan."

She held no malice for this man, the one who had at least tried to help her son. She even bowed respectfully to him as she was supposed to. Well, until she opened her mouth and added cheekily, "Stay out of my way, old man, and I won't have to hurt you on my way out."

Honestly, she was hoping for the element of surprise to get past the sandaime. Fuinjutsu prodigy-master or not, a kage she wasn't. She had a few things in her arsenal that could slow him down, but probably not for very long.

The hokage nodded in acknowledgement of her bow, and twisted a wry smirk at her challenge. "You are the bunshin claiming to be the spirit of Namikaze Minato?"

"Hmm...," Kushina replied thoughtfully, ignoring the question for now and looking back down at the ink on the ground instead. "It is a clever seal, shuts down Hiraishin, that's for sure. Though I'm fairly certain Minato would still be able to break through this. Fuinjutsu on a fuinjutsu master? What are you guys thinking?"

"So you're not the yondaime," Sarutobi concluded, his expression hardening.

"Oh, the bunshin from before was, yes. Me? No. I'm something much worse," her grin widened into something more malicious. "See, after what happened before," here she shot a withering glare at Kakashi and earned another barely-perceptible shudder, "Minato told me I would get to go next. He tried to take it back when he realized you were setting a trap, but Uzumaki Kushina will not be denied."

She brought her hands together to form a seal. "Henge!"

The puff of smoke cleared to reveal her beautiful fiery red-headed self and she breathed in relief. "No offense, but being a boy is yucky."

She bit her thumb, clamping down hard on the pain before it could disrupt her fragile clone form, and began a rapid series of hand seals. It took her longer than it normally would have, but a second and a half wasn't too bad. They couldn't do anything outside the barrier without disrupting it anyway, so she really didn't even need to hurry.

"Back up boys, you do not want to be caught in this," she cackled, leaping up and slamming her bloodied hand to the ground. "Fuinjutsu: Uzumaki Fuin!"

Glowing chakra ink spiraled outwards from her palm, echoing the familiar whirlpool symbol that konoha had adopted as their symbol of friendship. A memory of a hidden village that had once been their ally, been Kushina's home, but was now gone.

Uzumaki, whirlpool, and that was precisely what this seal was. She poured her blue chakra into it, and the chakra ink came to life, flowing like white water rapids as it whirled into its namesake. It tore through the other seal like so much tissue paper, and pulled it down into it's dark depths. On the edge of the seal, the three jounin were forced to leap clear or be sealed with the rest of it.

She launched her chakra chains then; an Uzumaki technique she wasn't sure had carried over to her son, but if it hadn't, apparently she could still use it through him. The chains whipped out like snakes, flooding the room enough to snag the jounin out of the air mid-jump, and also anchored Kushina to the walls so she herself wouldn't be caught in the seal.

The chains wouldn't hold them long, especially not with Sarutobi there, so Kushina took to the ceiling, her hands already flashing rapidly through seals. This technique didn't have a name, it was a technical failure she'd come up with while experimenting with fuinjutsu. To give it a name would be to give it focus, and this, by it's very nature, didn't need focus.

It was an incomplete seal that she latched onto the section of ceiling she was clinging to. Like always, the seal rippled with wrongness as it tried, and failed, to bind the carved stone. However, for just a few seconds while it tried, the stone was caught between reality and the sealing dimension. Solid rock became not solid, and Kushina slipped through to the floor above. One of her most useful failures yet, she mused as the seal failed and flickered out of existence, leaving the stone solid again.

She'd come up through a well lit stone corridor that was thankfully empty. Unfortunately it didn't give her much of an idea for where exactly in the village she was. She wasn't Minato, she couldn't just know by the feel of his Hiraishin seals. Still, if she had to guess, she was probably in the T&I catacombs somewhere. Which meant up was probably the fastest way out.

She needed to get the Hiraishin blade to Naruto as soon as possible and free her husband. With him, finding a safe spot would be simple. Then they could explain to their son, and she could hug her little boy, and Minato could set up something more permanent... but first, escape.

She gave a quick pat to her kunai pouch to assure herself the Hiraishin blade was still there before leaping up onto the ceiling. Up, up, up... had to keep moving before the silent trained death machines caught up with her...

The next floor, she popped up right in the middle of some sort of reception area. Which was of course filled with more than a few shinobi. Kushina found herself dodging kunai and jutsu left and right and she weaved through the crowd. Too many to fight back, even one mistake would get her fragile bunshin body dispersed and she'd be back in that seal.

Fortunately, there were only chuunin present, and Kushina managed to throw down one of Naruto's smoke pellets, performed a quick enhancement seal, and bam, the room was flooded with smoke. She slipped out the door in all the confusion. Finally! Outside.

Except she was on the outskirts of Konaha, and Naruto's apartment was in the center. Greeeat, now she just had to stealth her way through an entire hidden village filled with the most skilled ninja imaginable. Right.

Just keep moving, she urged herself, surging into the trees. Get to Naruto, to Minato, then they could think up a plan. The four she'd left tangled up in chakra chains would be free by now, she had to keep ahead of them. She wasn't the fastest ninja by any stretch of the imagination, that was Minato's claim, and she was in her son's clone's body anyway.

She was beginning to make a mental list of her current assets for a probable encounter with Kakashi, or either of the Sarutobi's, when she nearly ran headfirst into something large, green and very solid. Er, make that two somethings, now that Kushina'd had a good look at them. She was just beginning to form the handseals of a particularly vicious fuinjutsu, when two large hands clasped shoulders and lifted her bodily from the ground.

"Fiery youthful maiden, we beg your forgiveness! How could we have overlooked a beauty such as yourself?! Lee! We must run twice as many laps today as penance for nearly trampling this lovely lily of youth!"

"Yosh, Sensei!"

Kushina was released without another thought and the two were gone, disappearing into the trees. Well. Okay then? Yay for easily distracted Jounin? Shaking her head clear, the kunoichi bunshin raced the rest of the way out of the forest and into Konohagakure itself.

She hadn't been idle all that time running either, she'd been working furiously on an interesting new seal. One that would significantly bolster and bunshin's durability, something she and Minato would need since they were both mid to close range fighters. A normal bunshin probably wouldn't be very good for such a seal, since it would eat away quickly at its small chakra pool, but Naruto had extraordinary chakra reserves, even by Uzumaki standards, and that was something Kushina could work with.

Finishing the final calculation in her head, she wasted no time in putting the new seal to the test. She'd been writing the seal in the palm of one hand with blood from the other as she figure out the logistics (another aspect of this seal was that it would stabilize it so she could draw blood without almost dispersing herself, a definite boon for a fuinjustu user.) and with the final characters in place, she activated it. The blood script, which had trailled all the way down her arm and across the back of her hand, glowed blue before snaking back into the central focus -Kushina usually used the Uzumaki spiral- and she slammed the palm on her forehead. The seal needed to be placed over a major chakra point to work properly, and when it was in place, there was only a faint red spiral left to show it was there.

Instantly she could feel the drain as it pulled her chakra out to weave it throughout the cells of her bunshin body, stabilizing and strengthening them. It wasn't perfect, and had a lot of room for refinement, but it would do for now. None too soon, either.

A slight whistling sound alerted her just in time to drop to the ground and avoid the trio of kunai aimed for her. She turned her drop into a roll and was on her feet again in a flash, facing the silver-haired jounin she had once thought of as a son.

"Twelve years, Kakashi. Twelve. Years," she hissed, the rage and hurt in her voice making the man pause. "Where were you?!"

"I was fifteen and had just lost the last of those I considered family. I was in no condition to be looking after a baby," he replied in a tired voice. "Kushina-san, come back with me and we'll sort this all out with the Sandaime."

"Absolutely not!" Kushina snarled, "My little boy has spent the last twelve years thinking nobody loves him. Nothing is more important right now than me fixing that! So, you'd better get out of my way or I'm going to have to make you."

Chakra swirled around her as she began using it to enhance her strength and speed in preparation to fight if necessary. She was also pretty sure her hair was doing that writhing snake/flickering fire thing that happened whenever she got angry.

There was a split second where Kakashi actually looked like he might let her pass, but then his expression hardened into one of weary determination, and he answered softly, "I'm sorry. I can't let you do that."

They both charged at once.

A/N - Just a note on a few moves with I will be interpreting through the wiki's explanation, and not through common fanfiction beliefs. Henge: an actual physical transformation, NOT an illusion or genjutsu and cannot be dispelled by normal genjutsu breaking techniques. Shunshin: A brief intense burst of speed, not an actual teleport.

Skratt - Why do you have PM's disabled? D: I cannot reply to your review if they're disabled! ;_;

Huh, I dunno why there's a random Gai/Lee cameo in there. I think I was gonna have something of a Kushina prank where she convinced Gai to fight Kakashi because he was unjustly stalking her or something... but then I didn't think it really fit, but didn't want to not have Gai so put that in there instead? Eheh...heh... I'm a bad writer? D:

Anyway, there's chapter four for you! Woo! Okay... I gotta go finish more chapters so I can post more of them...

-Py