Super Awesome Beta: Blaizekit

Chapter 14: Why Kushina Never Taught a Genin Team

This was not at all what Sakura had imagined when Kushina-san had offered to teach her water walking since she'd mastered tree walking so fast.

At first she had been surprised and excited when the powerful kunoichi had made her the offer, though puzzled as to why she didn't want to train her son. The redhead assured her she could easily do both while they guarded the bridge and Tazuna-san. In retrospect, that probably should have been the first warning sign.

Naruto hadn't been too happy to learn that his mother would be training his teammate and leave him to struggle next to the teme in their efforts to climb a tree. Especially not after what had happened that morning when they'd sent him outside only to disappear by the time he'd gotten back. He'd been quite upset to find them just randomly missing

Even more so when Kakashi had forbidden him to go looking for them. This was the first time the couple had been out just the two of them since being sealed away in the Kyuubi seal for twelve years; argument or not, he doubted they would let the opportunity slip by. Yeah. No way in hell was the jounin going to risk having to de-traumatize the kid from that.

Fortunately Kushina had come back before too long looking very satisfied as she handed the white handled kunai to her son. When said son asked where his dad was, his mother had patted him on the head and said, "He's on time out until I say otherwise. Ramen time!"

She'd only relented and let her husband back out so he could train with Naruto after it became apparent that leaving their client with only a twelve-year-old girl for protection was just unacceptable. Kakashi was in no shape to do it, so that fell to Kushina. Hence why Kushina had thought to make her offer to Sakura in the first place.

The second warning sign came when Kushina-san had tossed a ration bar at the pink-haired girl and insisted she eat it. "You hardly ate any of the ramen we made this morning, and I'm not training you on a half empty stomach."

"Ah, that's alright. I'm on a diet," Sakura explained, handing it back. Dieting to keep your figure was surely something Kushina-san could understand, being a girl herself.

At least, that's what she had thought up until the redhead had replied flatly, "Would you rather be fat, or would you rather be dead? Because I'll tell you right now, a dieting kunoichi is a dead kunoichi. Eat or die, your choice."

Sakura had chosen to eat.

The third warning sign was probably when they'd gotten to the bridge and the younger girl had looked down at the water. She'd wondered aloud, "How are we going to get the water up here for me to walk on? Some sort of suiton jutsu?"

"You're a kunoichi," Kushina had replied, resting a solemn hand on her shoulder as if imparting great words of wisdom. "You'll live."

Sakura's eyes widened in horror as the woman gave her a great shove that sent her toppling over the rail-less edge. Which was where the pink-haired girl was now, in the ice cold water sputtering obscenities at the redhead above while the crazy lady shouted down belated words of advice.

"It's just like tree-walking! Only... moving. And not solid. Heh. You'll figure it out!"

With that taken care of, Kushina turned to the second task of teaching Naruto. She made a quick kage bunshin, pleased that Minato's bunshin theory was correct and that she could, in fact, make one. Now to see if his other 'fuinjutsu is like paperwork and the bunshins will totally work the same as when I used them to survive being Hokage' theory pans out. They'd had a lot of time to theorize stuff through the night.

"Okay, go and grab some Naruto clones and get him started on memorizing the basics. Let the rest know we made it to the bridge safely and things seem fine here so far; and that, if you're dispersed, it's because I'm being attacked and they should probably send backup to fish Pinky out of the water. Alright?" she instructed quickly.

"Got it!" the clone replied, darting off. "I get to spend time with Minato and Naruto! Yes!"

"Don't rub it in!" she called after it.

"Sucks to be you!"

"You are me!" Kushina growled. Man, her kage bunshin was a jerk.

Meanwhile, Minato was having his own training session. Not that it was anything exciting, more like waiting for Sasuke and Naruto to learn tree-walking enough to use it in spar while he sat and... meditated. A lot. It was a good way to improve chakra control, especially when combined with his chakra sensory technique, but not terribly entertaining.

Actually, now that he was thinking about it, the chakra sensory technique would be something he could teach the pink-haired girl. You know, the one he still couldn't remember the name of for the life of him in spite of Naruto being infatuated with her and probably said her name about a dozen times a day. At least. Seriously, a guy could remember hundreds of different seal strokes and arrays, yet couldn't remember the name of his own son's crush and teammate? Maybe this was a bit of leftover insanity from being sealed up with Kushina for twelve years...

At least this was a relatively harmless form of insanity. The part of his brain that would every now and then spit out another contingency plan to his overall master plan for sneaking into Konoha's prisons and killing that bastard Mizuki was probably not so harmless. Sure it was relatively benign for everyone else except Mizuki (Minato wasn't willing to kill guards to get in since it wasn't like Mizuki was going anywhere for a while) but what about after? Eh, he'd deal with that when he got there. Probably turn its attention on the orange-masked guy that caused this whole mess in the first place.

But he was getting off topic.

The All-Seeing Eye of the Super Thunder God Descending from the Heavens technique (he'd named it himself, though Kushina forbade him from ever saying that name aloud for some reason) was perfect for the girl. It didn't require a lot of chakra to use, and while it didn't need chakra control to work, it certainly helped. The more control you had, the more detail you could gather from it and the wider and faster you could spread your senses.

It was hardly an offensive ability, but it would give her a trick up her sleeve, so to speak, for gathering information. Information was a powerful tool in the hands of an intelligent shinobi, and the girl was intelligent. Well, when she wasn't being a fangirl, anyway. She just needed a bit of time and experience to temper it into something truly valuable.

A part of him could almost see her as an excellent healer-nin, but he wasn't sure how much of that was him projecting Rin onto her. Maybe he'd suggest it to her and see what she thought? Healing wasn't a strength of his, but he did know the basics and maybe a bit more than that. Enough to get her started at least.

Naruto was easy to figure out what to teach. Everything. Starting from most basic to least and prioritizing the techniques only Minato could teach him. Still, his son needed more chakra control before he could even start; and, from where he was sitting, that was only going marginally better than it had gone with is mother. Which was to say... slowly.

He really wasn't sure what to do with the Uchiha kid, other than spar with him to help him improve his taijutsu. He could possibly teach him a few ninjutsu to add to his repertoire, but it was probably best if Kakashi spent more time on the kid to teach him sharingan-y things. Had he even unlocked that yet? Probably not, or he'd have used it in the fight with Zabuza.

He felt a presence at the edge of his senses and smiled as Kushina's clone came closer. He couldn't actually differentiate between a clone and the real person, but he assumed it was from what they'd been discussing last night. He ended his sensory network and stood up when his wife was about a minute away.

"Naruto, could you come here, please?"

The blonde teen hopped up from where he'd last fallen off the tree, "Sure! Are you going to teach me some awesome jutsu?"

"Uh, no, not exactly," Minato replied, trying not to let the disappointment on his son's face get to him. "I can't actually teach you much until after you learn tree and water-walking. Not only does it set the foundation for your chakra control in order to learn future techniques; but trying to be a shinobi without them is like being bird without learning how to fly."

"Now you sound like Iruka-sensei," Naruto pouted.

"Oh, hey, that's right! I need to do something nice for that guy...," Minato muttered mostly to himself. Certainly a good deed like that would offset a bit of the evil he planned for Mizuki, right?

No, wait, probably not. Giving Mizuki to Kushina was probably evil enough to have Karma bite his head off. Good thing he'd never been much of a believer in Karma.

His son was staring at him expectantly and Minato realized he'd forgotten to say why he'd called him over here. He rubbed the back of his head sheepishly for letting his mind wander. "As I was saying-"

"NARUTO!"

"-your mother is coming to teach you fuinjutsu," the Yondaime finished just as a red blur collided with the younger blonde and wrapped her arms around him tightly.

"Man, I have so many hugs to catch up on!" Kushina-clone exclaimed brightly. "So! Are you ready to become a seal master to make all other seal masters jealous?"

Naruto grinned back. "I don't know what that means but it sounds awesome!"

"Oh, it is!" she replied. Then reached into her clothes and pulled out a somewhat thick scroll. "You just gotta memorize about a dozen of these worth of strokes and be able to write them perfectly while blindfolded!"

The horrified look on his son's face made Minato chuckle. "You're getting off easy, she made me do it blindfolded while dodging barrages of kunai."

"That's not until later, he's only twelve!" she replied flippantly.

"I was eleven," Minato dead-panned.

Kushina rolled her eyes. "Yeah, but you're Namikaze Minato, so that hardly counts."

"Why do people keep saying his name like it's famous or something?" Naruto spoke up suddenly, frowning at the two of them. His scowl only deepened when they exchanged one of those 'looks' over his head.

"He still doesn't know?" Kushina-clone asked, a slightly dangerous edge to her voice.

Minato grimaced. "I want to see how long it will take him to figure it out. Besides, I'm kind of enjoying just being 'Dad' and not 'Yellow Flash' or 'Namikaze Minato the prodigy' or... my other title."

"I'm sitting right here, you know!" Naruto called out, then turned skeptical eyes on the elder blonde. "You're really that great? I don't see it."

His dad laughed at that. "That's alright. If I had my way, you'd never have to see it. Unfortunately, life of a shinobi is not so kind. If we have to face off against both Zabuza and that hunter nin, I won't have the luxury of holding back."

"That's only if they're not smart enough to run for the hills the moment you show your pretty face and maybe flash your fancy jacket that's been conspicuously absent the last few days," Kushina retorted.

"What's so scary about his face? And what jacket?" Naruto demanded loudly.

"Never you mind," the redhead relented with a sigh. If her husband wanted to keep his secrets for little longer, she guessed she could oblige him. "We have some sealing strokes to master, and you still have a tree to climb."

Minato shot her a grateful look as Naruto questioned her sanity at being able to do both at once and she began to explain the clone training theory. "I'll be over here relearning chakra control if you need me."

With that, he went back to sitting and meditating, and wondering if he should try chakra strings next. It used about the same amount of chakra as his All-Seeing Eye technique and-

An alarmingly familiar chakra signature crossed into his sensory range and he whipped his head around to stare in that direction. It was already gone, however, and no amount of extra searching in that direction revealed anything more. Hmm... spying on them maybe?

"Minato-sensei?" Kakashi asked quietly as he sat down beside him.

"I think... we're being watched. They're not coming close enough to try anything, though, and I'd rather not pick a fight with an unknown enemy just yet. I'll let you know if that changes," the Yondaime informed.

The jounin nodded and went back to reading his book, though his mentor could still see the faint traces of extra vigilance in him. Minato went back to his meditation, keeping an extra eye out for potential threats. His family was here, and nothing would hurt them on his watch.

A/N- Yay I got this chapter done before Monday! Exciting! :3

Oh! I forgot to mention it last chapter in my rush to go off to work, but I have a beta now! Super awesome wonderful-riffic Blaizekit! If you haven't read her story The Windmill Turns Both Ways, then you're really missing out! I want Chibi-Naru to meet Older-Naru so badly! XD

Also a special thanks to Duesal10 and Igornerd for also helping me out with ideas and random bits of encouragement and inspiration. Those guys have awesome stories to read as well. *hint* *nudge*

Story recommends!

Looking Glass by Random Flyer - This story... is just absolutely amazing. It's Naru and Minato fluff involving mirror dimension hopping. The pacing of the relationship, the plot, the characters... everything is just super well done and I will probably go back and read it again at some point. When I have time. T_T

Rights of Succession by Ekusukallybaa - Another absolutely awesome story. Currently only one chapter, but I have heard a second one is in the works. It's a world where Orochimaru (extremely well done, I've never seen him done so well) becomes Yondaime instead of Minato, and what happens when Minato and co. are exiled because he discovered Orochimaru's dark side and tried to oppose him. Thanks to Igornerd for recommending it to me. XD

Hope you enjoyed the chapter! I love you guys. :3

-Py