Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. I will give the entire staff of Shonen Jump explosive diarrhea if the rights are not transferred to me by October 27th. Trust me, nobody wants that.
Feuds, rivalries, whatever you want to call them... they're awful. It's just that simple. There's no other way around it.
As a clanless kunoichi, I didn't have to deal with them very much, not at first anyway. But I wound up falling in with a person that antagonized a lot of people who had relatives and allies who very much wanted a piece of him and his immediate family, for various and sundry reasons. That was just the kind of guy he was – is. So I wound up seeing a lot of them. I got involved in my share of them as well.
See, here's the thing about most feuds, no one means to start them. You don't think battles have consequences beyond immediate life and death at first, because two warriors generally meet in battle once, since most of them end in death. You're not thinking about anything past keeping yourself alive. But if you kill them, and someone sees it and cares enough to tell the story, word gets around. Then that person's friends and family have a bone to pick with you.
One of them might also be a trained killer, and you might have a reputation at that point, which is super-fun, because guess what? You've got yourself a feud now.
By the way, in this theory you don't even have to kill the first person that I gave in the example. All you have to do is beat them like a drum. If they live, chances are they and their family will still hold a grudge, and you'll also have a feud, because 'pride' , 'honor', 'standing', and all of that good stuff. Because, you know, those things totally matter in the real world. Pride and honor will definitely put food on your kids' table and clothes on their back. That's sarcasm by the way, in case it translates poorly on the written page.
Anyway, feuds are really that easy to start. Unfortunately, they're not that easy to stop.
Even you letting somebody on the other side kill you to make things square won't settle it up, even if that other side is willing to do so, to let bygones be bygones only at the cost of your life. Because chances are, you have loved ones who really enjoy having you around and alive. They would really take it hard if you died, and if someone killed you and they were trained to take the lives of others as well, they wouldn't let it go, no matter what you would have wanted or had planned.
People are selfish, and are instinctively wired to be destructive, contrary to what a lot of optimists would like you to believe about human nature. We have to fight this nature to get anything productive done in life. And as a ninja, it's worse with us. People with the power to fight, that have spent their entire lives learning how to fight, want a reason to fight.
Revenge. The thought of getting even, of killing someone else for the memory of your husband, son, wife, daughter, mother, father, friend, first dog, whatever... well, it's as good of an excuse as any you could think of to head out there and let that destructive nature go.
With that sort of logic, it's really not much of a wonder how the world ended up the way it is right now. And the sad thing is, anyone who says that the first step to fixing it is forgiveness; well, it's pretty obvious they don't know the feeling themselves.
Like I said, it's not that easy to stop.
Tenten – 'End of Clan War Era Memoirs'
Chapter 15: War Games
It smelled painfully of antiseptic and blood. So much so that it stung her sensitive nose relentlessly upon regaining some semblance of cognitive awareness.
Hana hadn't exactly been blessed with good fortune as of late, so when she found herself waking up, body wracked with pain, she half expected to be greeted with the smiling face of an Uchiha.
…Right before being horribly tormented for information mentally, because the first thing she'd done would have been to make eye contact. Saying not to look into their eyes no matter what, and actually managing to pull that particular feat off were two different things entirely. You couldn't just ignore a lifetime habit of human nature with nothing more than battlefield advice to go on without years of training.
If it had been that easy, she wouldn't have been blown off of a cliff.
…
She had been blown off of a cliff.
And with that point sticking in her mind relentlessly, Hana sat up, thrashing horribly until her body told her that such a course of action was a horrible idea from the pain it caused her. A hand set her back down onto the bed, only for her to dig her sharp nails right into the wrist of it, coming dangerously close to hitting an artery.
"Whoa!" Naruto shouted, pulling his now bloodied hand back, "Calm down would'ya? I'm not doing anything wrong!"
She couldn't hear or smell the lie on him, and he seemed more startled than angry or preparing for any sort of escape attempt from her. No security? So maybe she wasn't anyone's prisoner. That was quite the lucky break after the outcome of her little battle with the Uchiha Clan.
"How did I-?" Hana started to ask how she'd survived before remembering that she did indeed have partners that had been right along with her when all hell had broken loose, "My dogs!" She shouted before wincing at a piercing, burning feeling in her nose that almost made her ill.
Oh no, she knew that feeling. Her nose was broken. That would be a big problem, if there hadn't been one already.
"They're okay! They're okay!" Naruto said, placating her with defensive gesture to sate her before she wound up hurting herself worse than she already was, "They're a little banged up, but compared to how you were when we found you, they're fine. More tired than anything else right now really."
Naruto had drawn the short straw so to speak when it came to keeping watch over their injured guest. None of the present party were capable healers in the slightest, so Shino had to fetch a doctor and Kushina had to broker how they needed another room close by for Hana and her pack of ninken.
Tenten watched over Kanako, who was not allowed to be around the unknown, potentially dangerous kunoichi in case something happened. Thus, Naruto was stuck by Hana's bedside, as he was the one who'd brought her back to the inn to begin with, so he could deal with her potential homicidal reaction upon awakening.
In his defense, he hadn't known what else to do when the dog that tackled him dragged him two miles down the beach to where the girl and the rest of her dogs were. It wasn't like he knew the town very well, and he couldn't just leave her there. She'd looked half-dead.
She still felt like it as well, even as Naruto pulled up his chair closer to her bed, just out of immediate lunging range she noticed. Interesting, "So who are you, and what the hell happened to you?"
Fighting the urge to chew the irritating bandages off of her injuries, she answered him only as far as she was willing to, not knowing the first thing about him, "Hana," She said. He needed to be able to call her something, after all.
It was common practice to refrain from giving out one's surname, as you never knew just who might have had enough of a grievance against a family member of yours to take a shot at you out of revenge, but it was kind of worthless in this case. Shino had already identified her as an Inuzuka, almost on sight. The team of ninken, the facial markings, the teeth, were all deader physical giveaways than most clans had.
The door to the room opened and Tenten walked in, holding onto a thick metal canister, "The seal on whatever this is isn't coming off without somebody that really knows what they're doing, so I figured you cou-, oh. She's awake."
Hana tensed up considerably at the prospect of someone breaking open the canister, "Don't do that!"
Naruto looked at what Tenten had brought into the room and went wide-eyed at the sight of it, "Tenten, bring that here, would you?" She did as he asked, and he honestly wished that he hadn't wanted to see it up close when she had, "…The hell?"
Tenten peered over his shoulder trying to make heads or tails herself at what Naruto was looking at. Hanging out with the family that she spent most of her time around meant that she'd have picked up a fair bit of fuuinjutsu in passing, even if she wasn't on their particular level with it, but whatever Naruto could see might as well have been Greek to her.
To Naruto though, he could read it as if it were a foreign language and he were a practicing linguist. It was one of the things he'd actually had a leg-up in as a child, and if you had a particular affinity toward something it was a crime not to try and cultivate it.
Regardless, whatever was inside of the canister, the seals that had been applied to it were so powerful there was no way anyone was getting it open without having the key jutsu to get it open. You couldn't even break that thing open, not even in case of an emergency.
It took Naruto a few minutes of checking the canister over to be satisfied enough with what he could see from a first glance, allowing him to turn his attention back to Hana, who seemed nervous about something, more than likely what was in the object, "What exactly is in here?" He said, tossing it from hand-to-hand, noticing how her eyes were warily following its movements.
On one throw in particular it bounced off of his hand and fell to the floor, eliciting a panicked cry from Hana as it hit. Tenten stopped it from rolling away underneath her foot, having taken note of the older girl's reaction. Rolling her eyes, knowing that Naruto had done that on purpose, Tenten pulled on Naruto's cheek, "Now why'd you have to go and try to give her a heart attack like that, Naruto?"
"It's not gonna break open," Naruto said, his voice warped by Tenten's admonishing tugs, "I just wanted to know if there was something important in it, and if there was she wasn't gonna just tell us."
Hana recovered quickly after realizing that she wasn't infected and took note of the name Tenten had just dropped, "Wait, Naruto? You're that Naruto?" She asked, looking him over and finding herself underwhelmed at what she was seeing, "…You don't look like a guy that made thirty Uchiha Clan members blow themselves up all at once just to take you down."
At his Uchiha rumor being brought up, Naruto took on a sufficiently bashful expression while Tenten gave him a dry look, eventually choosing to temporarily excuse the two of them from the room, "Could we get a minute?" She asked, grabbing Naruto and taking him outside into the hall before shutting the door for some privacy, "Really? It started off as eight, then fifteen, then people said you did it in one move," Tenten hissed quietly at him, "Now she's saying it was thirty, and they were so outmatched they tried to suicide bomb you… and still failed!"
Naruto had to admit, that sounded way cooler than the last one he had heard, "I wasn't the one who made any of that up!"
"You didn't stop it either!"
True enough, but then again, it was a rumor that had gone outside of the country in the span of a month to begin with, "What do you want me to do, send out a press release?"
It wasn't often that Naruto would say something that would stop Tenten's tongue cold, so he learned to savor the moments when he could, like right then, "…Good point. But still, you could downplay it when people actually bring it up."
Naruto gave her a look as if to ask why in the world he would ever do such a thing. The private conversation was then immediately interrupted by the timely call of their temporary guest.
"Just so you know," Hana said from inside of her room, voice muffled by the door, "I can hear everything both of you are saying right now."
The two looked at each other in momentary alarm and confusion. They had been whispering the entire time, and from the sound of her voice, Hana hadn't left the bed. It then hit them that she was of course an Inuzuka, which meant enhanced smell and hearing. Right.
With that settled, Naruto opened the door and walked back inside before clearing his voice, "Ahem, anyway yeah, I'm Uzumaki Naruto, doer of all of that stuff you said, and all around jam-up guy," Hana gave him a listless stare as if to question if he was still going with that story she'd told despite it being obviously debunked, "This is Tenten, and we found you half-past dead on the beach."
Hana frowned, remembering the circumstances she'd been in before she'd lost consciousness, "Well, thank you, but I have to get going."
Tenten looked at her as though she were crazy, "You can probably barely stand up right now, and the vet we got to look at your dogs said that they should sleep for at least the rest of the day. The poor things were totally spent."
Keeping her alive in a raging river would more have more than likely done that to them. She'd been blown off of a high cliff with no small amount of explosive tags, and the last thing she remembered with any sort of clarity was Kiba and Akamaru charging right into the fray.
Oh God.
Reaching out, Hana grabbed Tenten's sleeve almost desperately, "Did you find someone else? Another person? He would have looked like me. My brother."
Taken aback at first, both Naruto and Tenten looked at each other before turning back to Hana and shaking their heads. Her hand slipped off of Tenten's loose sleeve and fell onto the bed with a soft thud. In her head she had already known that it might have been the case, but in her heart she'd hoped that Kiba by some stroke of dumb luck would have just been blown into the river the way she had.
Hana wanted to cry, but she wouldn't. Not yet. Not in front of these strange people. It wasn't the time, and she would find a way to keep it together until she could return to her mother. Only when she had shared the news with her mother and seen her reaction would she allow herself to cry.
At least if the news caused her mother to openly weep, she could at least have someone to cry with.
Still, she couldn't help the moisture that sprang to her eyes, though she quickly wiped it away before even a single tear could fall.
Naruto could almost feel the sorrow rolling off of the young woman. She had clearly been in a serious amount of trouble, enough so that she didn't believe her brother could have survived it if he wasn't with her in the present, "What happened?"
There was an instinctual need to step back when a threatening growl rose from the back of Hana's throat, "Uchiha…"
XxX
(Elsewhere in Town)
"Uchiha?" Kushina asked, wondering how many times she would wind up hearing that clan name before her time on the earth was through, "They're fighting the Inuzuka Clan now? Why the hell would they be doing that? I didn't even know they had anything the Uchiha Clan wanted."
The merchant Kushina had been asking for the lay of the land from simply shrugged his shoulders. The red-haired woman had come through, buying some of his wares and then asking about what was happening around the countryside, her focus specifically on issues involving the Inuzuka Clan. Normally that clan kept to themselves, so there wasn't much to say, but the one thing there was to talk about was quite a doozy.
"The only thing they could have is land," The man told her, "You know how the only way to get around here to the south is through mountain passes and stuff? That's because the forests are where most of them live."
Kushina leaned lazily on the edge of the man's travel cart, arms crossed over her bosom, "So… they want it for what exactly?" The forests in question were too thick to build roads through. The rivers that ran through them split off too often into waterways that were too small to warrant any sort of actual travel route, "I don't get it."
The merchant shrugged, "Beats me. I've got no idea why you ninja-types are so hard-up for killing each other or doing any of the stuff you get up to," He was just telling her what he knew, "Fire doesn't ever have a reason for burning things. It just does. And when that happens there's three kinds of people; those that can stop it, those that get the fuck out of the way-,"
"-Or those who get burned," Kushina finished for him.
The merchant nodded with a smirk, "You might be the first one lady, but I'd like to be the second one. Otherwise I'll probably end up the third."
Granting him a pleasant smile for the bit of information she'd given him, Kushina gave him a slight bow and grabbed the bag with her purchases as she departed, "Sure. Thanks for the help."
Upon walking away, Kushina lost her smile with a heavy sigh. And things had been going so well lately too.
XxX
Shino was always fascinated that Kanako had never been unnerved by his clan's insects. She even did her best to try and remember the names he'd given certain ones. Sure, she always got them wrong, labeling insects that didn't even have names with the names he'd given a particular few, but she remembered all of the names, which was significant enough for him to like her.
Oh, and she was the little sister of the person who was perhaps his best friend. There was that as well.
Either way, Shino had little problems with watching over the youngest member of the Uzumaki-Namikaze union.
Sitting in a chair overlooking the bustling little port town around them, Shino simply allowed Kanako to yank his arm around and tug on his sleeve, as if she were trying to look up in the confines of his clothes or shake the insects out of him, "Where do your bugs come from?"
Some people would have sugar-coated it, or tried to spin it so that a child her age would understand without being alarmed.
"They live inside of my body, like a hive, a nest, or an ant hill. I allow them to do this in exchange for their assistance in battle. I help them, they help me."
Shino was not one of those people.
"Eww!" Kanako giggled, though there was no disgust in her reaction, only guided interest, "Like how big brother has Kurama in him?" She compared.
"Not quite."
Being raised around the extraordinary did certain things in regards to stunting her reaction to outrageous subject matter. To Kanako, Naruto wasn't a jinchuuriki. She didn't even know what that was supposed to be. He was just her brother. It was the same with Shino. He was her brother's friend... and sometimes bugs just so happened to come out of him. Since it was something that she had always been around, it wasn't really so terribly strange to her, just different.
Ball of energy that she was, upon noticing Naruto stepping out onto the upper-level deck, Kanako let go of Shino and immediately ran over to latch herself onto Naruto's leg. Shino turned to greet him when he noticed something odd. His face was a whiter shade than it should have been. Was he nervous about something?
Either way, he simply waited for Naruto to pick Kanako up and set the little redhead on the side of his hip so he could start learning just what was wrong. Tenten had gone to see how he had been doing with that girl they'd found, but hadn't returned with him, so he surmised that their guest had awakened. Was that what this was about?
"Okay," Naruto eventually said, leaning against the railing of the inn's observation area, color coming back to his face now that he could get some fresh air and sunshine, "We've got a problem."
Shino raised an eyebrow, his curiosity really eating at him after watching Naruto come out there, almost pale from whatever he'd come across inside, "A problem you say?" There was always a problem, but they normally didn't elicit that sort of reaction out of someone like Naruto. Even if there were problems, they just seemed to make him louder and more animated, not reserved, "I ask because I couldn't possibly see it as something that bad."
Okay, if that was how he wanted to play it, Naruto had no problems hitting him over the head with the blunt admission stick, "The Inuzuka Clan are fighting with the Uchiha Clan, and to top it off, we have an Uchiha Clan superweapon that they were going to use on them. We can't open it, or destroy it, and I'm pretty sure they can track it."
It was a testament to how well Naruto knew Shino that he could surmise that the slight fidgeting of his body was the equivalent of a complete loss of composure by anyone else's standards, "Where is it?" Shino asked.
"With Tenten and Hana, that's the girl's name by the way," Naruto added, "She and her team ambushed them and stole it before they could get into position to use it. But I think she's the only one who's still alive."
She didn't want to talk about it, and after asking about her brother she'd gone mum on the entire subject of others who had been with her. It might have been down to just those two before whatever had happened that had injured her and sent her into the drink.
"She fell into a river, so the Uchiha probably know the weapon is around here," Shino said, trying to calm down and put things in perspective, "Even if Inuzuka-san had been a day ahead of them after being sent downriver, she's been unconscious for long enough that one could surmise they would not be that far behind now. That is to say, if they are not here as we speak. I can imagine they would be rather frustrated as of now."
"Fustated, fusatered, Fus... fus..." Kanako repeated, slowly working herself into a fit trying to properly pronounce the last interesting word she'd heard Shino say.
"Frus-tra-ted, Kana," Naruto corrected, slowly enunciating for her before turning his attention back to speaking with Shino, "Well, it was a cool vacation, even if it did only last like a day."
The two young men met each other's eyes before Shino spoke up again, "I believe we should begin making plans to leave discreetly, otherwise I believe this entire town will soon pay the price for it."
"Frustrated, frustrated, frustrated!"
XxX
Tenten had kicked Naruto right out of the room when she had determined that it was time to redo Hana's bandages since she was awake. Due to the fact that many of them were covering the entirety of Hana's torso, stomach and shapely chest included, it was quite improper for Naruto to be there. He did not agree with this.
"But I need to stay and watch! There are really good reasons."
"Why?"
"You know, security reasons! In case of uh... err…"
"-In case of boobs?"
"…Well you said it, not me."
"Naruto, get out."
He wasn't anywhere near as bad or as brazen about looking at girls as Jiraiya, but the man had clearly left his mark as one of the young man's mentors.
Either way, once Tenten had begun, the two girls had fallen into something of an uncomfortable silence. Hana didn't feel all that secure with someone sitting behind her, even if it was to wrap bandages, and even if they had already shown to be on-the-level with wanting to help. She was something of a medic, even if she specialized more with animals, and she couldn't find anything bad that they had done to her.
It was awkward for Tenten as well, as she could feel the barely restrained paranoia emanating from Hana. She had to keep from making any sudden moves and make sure Hana always knew what she was going to do and where her hands were going to keep her from freaking out.
"You know," Tenten said, trying to make some conversation to try and break the tension, "Naruto isn't that bad. I mean, yeah, if he could have been a fly on the wall to watch me change your bandages he would have, but still."
Hana reacted enough to speak what had been on her mind at that very moment. She had been markedly underwhelmed by the blond shinobi, "I thought 'Naruto of the Nine-Tails' would be, I don't know, different."
Tenten blocked a wince as she continued wrapping cotton cloth around her fellow female ninja, 'That name again,' "How so?"
"Well... he has a biju inside of him," Hana said, as if that explained everything. When she caught the skeptical look on Tenten's face over her shoulder, she felt as if she'd made a mistake, "Err... I didn't mean anything offensive by it. It's just-."
Tenten assuaged her by sighing and shaking her head, "You expected him to be some kind of jerk, psycho powerhouse throwing his strength around or something because nobody can stand up to a biju's might," She wouldn't have been the first to think so, "That's kind of what we've always expected. We actually count on it at this point."
Hana raised an eyebrow in intrigue, "You count on people being afraid of your leader's son, and not for being a ninja?"
"Minato-sama kind of uses Naruto as a tool... depending on who we deal with," Tenten said with a distasteful scrunch of her nose as she explained, "People are either so impressed with the idea of a jinchuuriki being on their side, or so scared of the idea of starting a fight with the people who have one they'll hear what Minato-sama has to say instead of outright rejecting us, if nothing else."
Shortly after Minato had brought Kushina and they had gone to the Sarutobi Clan's mountains for advisement on how to go about Minato's course of action, Jiraiya had volunteered to take Naruto away for a few months in order to give him a crash course of training. Shino had gone back home to his father for several months around that time for more training and to tell his father of his intention to take part in working closer with Minato in representation of his clan.
While Naruto had been gone, Minato and Kushina had gone back and forth over how they would approach the idea of Naruto's jinchuuriki status. The discussion, which was a light way of putting it because a lot of it involved Kushina shouting at Minato about his decision, lasted for a full month before he'd been able to persuade her that it was for the best.
His reasoning being that Naruto was going to be an object of attention and at times fear in the ninja world regardless, so why not use what was already going to exist regardless for everyone's benefit?
After Naruto's return, this was put into action, as word was spread that the abomination jinchuuriki boy roaming around, which by itself was terrifying enough, was the son of the most dangerous clan-less ninja in the world. That was enough to scare people entirely out of their wits.
It had both good and bad results. It got more than a few clans to hear Minato out. The rumors would scare them enough to make them sit and listen, allowing Minato to somewhat win them over to his side of thinking if only to keep them from being at odds with what would eventually become a force throughout the Elemental Nations. On the other hand, it made other people target them even more before something concrete came of the ninja village idea.
As was mentioned before, the idea of a human containing the power of a biju was an affront to the natural order of things.
It was the decision of a leader, trying to make things go as smoothly as possible. Instead of wasting the effort of fighting the inherent stigma of the jinchuuriki classification, it was being used to shove open enough doors to start bringing things together.
So for the people aware of him, Uzumaki Naruto over a short period of time became known almost solely as 'Naruto of the Nine-Tails', instead of by his surname.
The weapon specialist answered Hana's question with a bit of a sad note to her voice, "I can tell that Naruto doesn't like it. But that's how it's been for years. He'll never say anything because he likes Minato-sama's idea of a place where people don't have to hide their clan names out of fear, or where someone like his little sister doesn't have to learn how to kill people or be killed instead."
Hana's gaze turned downward and Tenten felt like a fool, bringing up Naruto's younger sibling when Hana had lost hers so soon.
*KNOCK-KNOCK!*
"Yo," Naruto's voice called from outside of the door, "Can I come in yet, or is she still not wearing clothes?"
Finishing the wrapping of Hana's bandages, Tenten got up from sitting behind her on the bed and noticed how Hana's entire demeanor had gone stony. She clearly wasn't going to show too many emotions to people like them when she was in such a vulnerable state.
Hana eased her way into a change of clothes, and upon sufficiently covering herself, Tenten called out, "She's fine Naruto. Come on in," For good measure, he wanted for a few more seconds just in case before coming in, carrying Kanako on his back, "So, what's with that serious look?"
He did have a serious look, one that Kanako did her best to mimic, quite successfully at that. God, Tenten loved that child. The only thing stopping her from letting out an 'aw' and teasing Naruto was that it clearly wasn't the time for it.
"Do you think we could get her ready and run for it?" Naruto started off asking, "Like, today? Really soon?" Preferably within the next hour.
Tenten raised an eyebrow at Naruto, wondering just what it was that made him take running away as his first choice. Naruto hated running away. He was never the one to bring it up as a course of action, "It's not a good idea. Her ninken aren't up for putting in any hard yards here, and she isn't either. If we're leaving, where's Shino? Shouldn't he be hearing this?"
Naruto waved off her concerns. Shino was the very first to know, "Shino's busy using his bugs to try and scope out what's going on so we can leave. He's also using 'em to look for mom," Because if Naruto and his friends skipped town without her or without at least letting her know, with Kanako especially, whenever she caught up she would ream him.
Tenten couldn't help but concede that much to him, "Hm, yeah that's probably for the best that Shino's doing it," She admitted, crossing her arms over her chest with a smile, "I mean, no offense, but you aren't exactly boasting a killer track record when it comes to delicate plans."
Naruto rolled his eyes in return. As if that were supposed to offend him. The first part of being at peace with oneself was accepting just who you were, and to Naruto there was no shame in his game, "I seal stuff, punch stuff, and blow stuff up. And if that doesn't work I'm not doing enough of any of 'em," That was pretty much what you were getting with him. He was never going to map out the strategy of the century, "Escape plans aren't really in my wheelhouse. These colors don't run."
"Those colors ran last week," Tenten pointed out, keeping Naruto from puffing out his chest too much, "I should know. I was there, running right along with them."
"Running is definitely good," Hana declared after a moment. She couldn't just sit tight and let the Uchiha Clan get their hands on the weapon canister again, "My brother, and our clansmen, they gave everything they had just to take this virus away. If you can get me to my clan's territory, maybe we can do something with it."
"Well, I hope Shino's insects are doing their thing, because we need to get rolling really soon," Naruto said to the two women, holding up the item that was the source of all of the trouble, "'Cuz I was right. There's a tracking signature seal on it," Both Tenten and Hana recoiled accordingly, "That's the right reaction to have."
Hana took it a step further, "So they can find us now!?"
"Yes and no," Tenten explained, drawing upon the fraction of sealing knowledge she had from hanging around two of the best in the world and one who was trying to get to that level, "They've got our general area, which isn't as bad as it should be, because there are like five inns around this one."
Tracking seals were meant to be used to chase down people who managed to get their hands on something sensitive, and they weren't exactly precise. They didn't have to be. Those chases rarely took place in crowded towns, instead usually happening in forests and other remote locations, where the seal could easily narrow a search area down. So, hooray for seaside merchant hotspots; they were such effective obstacles for bogging down and sidetracking precise fighting forces.
"So they could just swarm around this place," Hana said, getting frustrated at just how difficult it seemed to be to keep a super-weapon out of the wrong hands, "The neighborhood around wherever the canister is will be teeming with enemies until one of them gets close enough to lock right in on us," She stopped in her tracks when she saw Naruto shake his head in the negative, "No?"
Naruto held his eyes closed in a squint as he thought things over, "No, it doesn't work like that. It'd take somebody synched with the tracking seal to find it, and there aren't a billion people out there that can even make them. They're pretty personalized too," He said, trying to simplify just how complex the entire thing actually was, "I mean dad has 'em as a part of the Hiraishin, so that should tell you all you need to know about how advanced those stupid things are. I can't even make any yet."
In the meantime, all they could do was wait for Shino to sweep as much of the area as he could with his insects. If they took off running then and there it would have been more trouble than it otherwise would have been. Amazingly enough, contrary to normal combat logic, allowing themselves to be surrounded was the best way to actually escape in this case.
That didn't make it any less nerve-wracking though.
XxX
(With Minato)
Minato was torn.
The village that Anko and Fuu had showed to him was, in a word, perfect. It was everything he could have wanted out of a location to build his unified ninja clan settlement.
-It had an abundance of natural resources.
-It had plenty of unclaimed space that could go to the clans that would invariably want their own territory to themselves, for privacy and appearances' sake.
-It was in a fairly defensible position that would only become more so after a team of planners got a good look at what they had to work with. With the proper experts they could mold the land to their liking.
-And the people were friendly and actually accepting of a military presence there to dissuade criminals on the highways nearby from attacking their trade both going in and coming out. Commerce seemed to be a big thing with them, which was great for this situation.
It was the perfect center of absolute boredom. If a fire of war had ever touched that land, it definitely hadn't occurred in the last century. And that was something of one of Minato's issues.
One of the problems he had with it all was that they simply weren't aware of just how much trouble going along with this would bring to their doorstep. Anko had truly found a gem, because until this point, the people of that village had little to no dealings with shinobi of any sort.
Experience had already told Minato that his endeavors to bring a sort of understanding and working relationship between multiple clans in his home country had attracted extremely negative attention from several parties that relied on the chaos of open, total war to keep their fists clenched around the profits they earned. That would only get worse once his village came to life. They would have to fight, and more than likely they would have to fight there.
There would be casualties. Civilian casualties. There always were when battles occurred in or near ninja-occupied villages. They would be bringing death and violence to people that had not experienced it before and had little idea just what they were getting into.
They'd had exposure to three examples. Mitarashi Anko had been the worst that they had come across so far, and while she was a tad bit… off, her demeanor was offset by the quite pleasant and well-meaning Fuu. Also, Anko was nowhere near the primary example of just how violent ninjas could be. She really only got nasty when she needed to.
That aside, there was another issue. The fact that the village was in the realm of a daimyo, and he wasn't particularly keen on giving up any chunk of land for Minato's idea. An established military inside of his land holdings, completely unrestricted from his power was not a good idea in the ruler's book. Minato knew. He'd tried to speak with that particular sovereign before. It hadn't gone so well.
"Well if you're feeling slighted, we could just go and off the guy," Anko suggested cheekily, nudging him with her elbow to coerce him, "Come on boss man, you could be in and out so fast, no one would see it was you."
"Everyone would know it was me because I'd be in and out so fast," Minato deadpanned back to her in return, "And then what? I kill a daimyo because he doesn't want anything to do with giving the okay to a consolidated military force he can't control?" He sounded near-incredulous at the mere thought. Doing such a thing would have turned, as his son would have put it, into a 'shit storm'.
Anko shook her head with a scoff, "That guy's an idiot. If he lets us set up shop, we're not going to turn on him for some power grab. Ninjas fight for money."
"Ninjas fight for the chance to make money too. More money than the other guys. That's one of the reasons clans keep going to war with each other now," Minato corrected, getting a glare out of Anko that he simply shrugged off, "...Amongst other reasons too numerous to name here and now. And there are people who would power grab. Whoever winds up leading the village, now or later, might think about doing it and taking control themselves. It'd take a lot of trust for someone to allow what we want."
This was all turning out to be way more trouble than Anko had originally figured it would be worth, "So you're saying that I need to find a place with all of your picky particulars, AND I have to make sure it's in a place where the head honcho will actually let us do our thing without a fight?" She gestured to the entire village around her, "You see this? THIS took three goddamn years to find! You are never going to find an area better than this one, in place where you don't have to build from the ground up."
She was paid well for as long as the mission lasted, so it wasn't that she wanted to move along to a different set of work. No, it was simply the part of her that liked the acknowledgment of a job well done. As a professional, Anko took pride in her work, and in her own humble opinion she had done a kickass job, it was just that the parameters for the mission being completed were so slim it was absurd. Most of the factors were entirely out of her hands altogether.
"I say, fuck it," Anko told Minato, "Go ahead and start. You've got the money, you've got enough clans to get things started in my opinion, and the freelancers will be all over this thing too. By the time anyone who would care notices, it'll be too far along to stop, and anyone who would want to would have to fight us. Tch, good luck with that."
Throwing his weight around wasn't Minato's thing, but Anko in all of her stark bluntness had something there. It was easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission, and all that jazz. Besides, once it was started, stopping it would take more than most forces could bring to bear against them, "Point taken. But I would rather do this without the extreme amounts of bloodshed."
Thought he was aware enough to know that this was a pipedream within a pipedream. There was almost no chance that this would happen without some kind of loss. Probably significant loss. One could hope though, and try to keep those losses from happening wherever they could.
As he looked around, he could see Fuu playing around with the younger kids in the village in an open field. She had an extremely approachable demeanor for a girl that Kakuzu had tried to turn into a human guard dog. With a blink of his eyes he could see that same field razed of its grass by fire, covered in dead bodies of all ages, both shinobi and civilian.
It was something he had to shake off quickly. There was no guarantee that such a thing would come to pass over this, or that it would be to such a degree of devastation.
Anko shook her head, "Eventually, this whole thing's gonna come to a head. This is stepping on a lot of toes as it is, and at some point wherever you set up is going to take a hit. I never thought I'd be the one to say this to the Yellow Flash, but sack up already."
"...What did you say?"
"You heard me," Anko repeated, not backing down in the slightest, "You're literally within running distance of getting what you want off of the ground, and what you want is a village of ninjas. So yes, people are going to get hurt. A lot of people are going to get hurt. But that's going to happen anyway, and you have to believe that what you're doing is better than the alternative. That's why you're doing this, isn't it?"
The fact that the blood spilled from that point forward would be on his hands made Minato felt uncertain. Having run most of his own affairs in the past, he had rarely had to risk more than his own life. When he was reunited with his family and held a measure of responsibility for them that concern had gone up ten-fold; after having a second child, twenty-fold.
Such concerns would only increase as the affairs of an entire village of hundreds, no, thousands of shinobi would become his as well. But that was the price of leadership. And he did believe that this way was better, with all of his heart. He believed that it was worth fighting for. Even dying for, if it so came to that.
Having a dream was nice, but just putting it into motion wasn't enough. He had to oversee it, nurture it, work out the problems with it, "Yeah," Minato said with a chuckle. He'd been cornered into admitting that he was realistically the only person at that point and time who had enough respect/fear/trust of those involved, and the vision to actually want to make it all work. So much for humility, "Yeah it is."
"Well there you go then," Anko said, entirely satisfied with nothing more than Minato's affirmation, "Fuck, I'd rather quit or get fired than keep working for somebody who's so flaky. The way you're going about this isn't exactly great leadership."
"Who says I'd planned to be the leader?"
"Oh, yeah, because there are so many others qualified for the job. No clan head could run this thing without turning it into a closer-knit version of what the Uchiha and Senju are already doing. Face it, putting it all together isn't enough. You're the only one that can head it all up."
"I know," Minato eventually admitted, continuing the tour around the village to observe and introduce himself to the citizens, "Eh, maybe I just wanted to hear you say it out loud."
Wow, and here Anko had been thinking that Minato's son had gotten his cocksure bullshit from Kushina. Apparently a fair amount of that could have been attributed to Minato as well. Who could have figured that?
XxX
(Southern Coast of Hi no Kuni/Kawa no Kuni Border – Seaside Village)
To be a fly on a wall wasn't as worthless a saying as it seemed for some people. People like those within the Aburame Clan.
It didn't take the use of many kikaichu inside of every building within a twenty block radius to set up an effective grid to keep watch for one of two things: Kushina or possible members of the Uchiha Clan.
For Kushina herself, as she made her way back to the inn where she'd left her children, their friends, and their temporary guest, she felt something off in the air around her. Maybe she wouldn't head back just yet. Knowing that there was trouble and being ready for it was one thing, but it was another thing entirely to chance bringing it back to your allies and three-year-old daughter.
So as she noticed an insect fly directly in front of her, just out of range of being an annoyance, she stopped and reached out a hand from the bag of food and other supplies she held to her chest, raising an eyebrow as it calmly landed on her finger, 'Shino,' She thought to herself as she continued walking to avoid rousing suspicion that she was on to the fact that something was going on, 'Is something happening at the inn?'
No, if there was, the kikaichu currently with her would have started leading her right back there instead of sticking with her. Shino might have been a bit unnerving at first glance, but the kid knew how the whole ninja thing worked, and his insects were well-trained for the job.
Before she could take another step forward, mired in her thoughts, she stopped. The insect on her finger flew just a few inches off of it and stopped on the air in front of her. It then began walking vertically on nothing. Not flying. She knew the difference.
So it was like that? Alright then. It made just as much sense as anything else happening today, and if nothing else it was at least timely.
'I hate genjutsu,' Kushina thought to herself before quickly dispelling it, finding herself standing at the end of an alley, away from the main road she knew she had been walking on before getting ensnared in an illusion. Turning around she found herself looking at a nondescript villager, completely unassuming at first appearance, "Drop the Henge already, would you?"
With the jig being up, and the maintaining of the physical alteration only being a waste of chakra at that point, the man did as requested. A puff of smoke blew away to reveal the form of the teenage prodigy Uchiha Sasuke.
"I only wanted to talk," Sasuke said, holding up his hands defensively.
"You could have done that without trying to screw with my head, kid," Kushina shot back, "It's not like I really have any deep-seated gripe with the Uchiha. Civil conversations are totally within the realm of possibilities here. Even now. I'll give you one answer just so long as you screw off right after. Isn't that nice of me?"
"Just one answer?" Sasuke said, a smirk slowly growing on his face at the older woman's banter. She had just as much of a mouth on her as someone else he knew. It fit, seeing as how she was that person's mother, "That seems more like a tease than anything else. Nobody ever had their questions answered with just one response."
Kushina responded with a fake laugh, "Ha, clever. But you're a little too clever for your own good. I might have been inclined to answer as many questions as you wanted, but needless to say you kind of pissed me off just now."
Oh yeah. He'd known it when he'd first seen her, but this was definitely Uzumaki Kushina. No question about it. Long red hair, snappy attitude, and oh goodness the blunt wordplay, "The stories are true. You are easy to anger."
"I don't think anyone in particular likes getting slapped with a genjutsu. My baby was right. You do like to show off…" Kushina informed him, calmly setting her bags down and to the side, "…Not that he has any room to talk really. Come to think of it, I don't either. Huh…" She said in honest thought.
Maybe that was why Naruto didn't like Sasuke? Because he was a showoff too, and one that could do 'cool' things to boot. And maybe Naruto was a big, flashy showoff because she was a big, flashy showoff?
Naruto's mother called him her baby? That was just too good to leave alone. If he saw him anytime soon he was going to rub that one in without mercy, "Alright, now that question," Sasuke said, trying to get things back on course, "Have you seen an Inuzuka girl anywhere around here?"
"And you're looking for an Inuzuka why exactly?"
"That's not really your problem."
Actually, it was, but Sasuke didn't know that. Nor did he have to.
"Well, I can't say that I have," Kushina replied coolly. She wasn't really lying. Yes, she was aware that the girl that her son and Tenten had found was an Inuzuka. That much was obvious to anyone who had ever seen one before, but it had not been confirmed to her by the person in question, so technically she hadn't exactly come across an Inuzuka.
Sasuke's smirk dropped into a blank scowl, "Your clan isn't good at lying. Although that might just be you and your son."
"Well that's just because we're honest folks!" Kushina said, seeing the small vein beginning to form on Sasuke's temple, "See, I always tell the truth, even when I lie. Not that I was lying or anything. But even if I had been, it would have been the truth. Does that make sense? It sounded better in my head."
Oh God, there were two of them. Wait, if there were two of them there was no God, because no divine creator would ever make Kushina and then decide that there needed to be another just like her, only younger and in a different gender.
She was definitely messing with him now. If there was one thing Sasuke didn't take kindly to, it was not being taken seriously and he had a distinct feeling that this lady wasn't exactly looking at him as the battle-hardened veteran he actually was.
He had a definite problem with that. A problem that his pride as a shinobi felt the need to remedy, "So you're not going to tell me?"
"I can't tell you what I don't know dear," Kushina said sweetly before hearing the slide of sharpened metal against its sheath. If ever there was a sound that signified the beginning of a battle-, "Oh kid…" Kushina said, grabbing a handful of her long green dress with an unnervingly pleasant expression spreading across her face, "If you're thinking of picking this fight right now, for your sake I really hope you're as good as advertised."
Before she had even finished her sentence, Sasuke was at Kushina's side, his left hand on her left shoulder, and his other holding his sword, prepared to stab it through the body of the mother of two. Whether he'd managed to get her again in another genjutsu to get that close so quickly or not, she wasn't certain, but she definitely heard what he had to say next.
"No, I'm better."
At that exact moment, Kushina's grin alone could have turned back a pack of wolves. It had been a little while since she'd gotten to fight for real.
XxX
(Elsewhere in Town – Back at the Inn)
Naruto had packed up all of his, his mother's, and his sister's supplies, ready to move out post-haste when a cold chill went down both his and Kanako's spines, causing the little girl to unintentionally bite off an larger-than-intended piece of a cookie she had been given with an audible snap.
While getting her own things ready and helping Hana to rouse her trio of ninken for a quick departure, Tenten noticed the siblings' discomfort, much to her own curiosity, "What was that just now?" She had to get up and make sure Kanako didn't wind up choking on her snack.
"Somebody just did something really stupid, and I'm pretty sure it involves one of my parents," Naruto told her as he put his bag on. Why Kanako reacted to his own premonition, he didn't know. She wasn't even aware of the fact that their parents were dangerous people yet.
Only confirming what Naruto had gotten a premonition of just seconds earlier, Shino opened the door and walked into the room, his calm demeanor belying how fast he'd actually moved from his previous vantage point outside, "We should leave now," He said, "Kushina-sama is fighting. "
Naruto went to pick Kanako up from the bed, wincing a bit at the tight, trembling grasp she'd placed around his neck to keep herself on him, "Well, at least it'll be one hell of a diversion," He was at least glad that everyone was handling everything so calmly. The last thing he wanted to do was panic and start scaring Kanako.
Tenten rolled her eyes and rapped her knuckles off of the shoulder of Naruto's flak vest, before speaking to Shino, "So do you have a route planned for us to get out of here, or are we all about to play the nastiest game of hide-and-seek ever?" Shino just nodded vaguely, "…I don't know what that means."
"There's a route of course. Why would you ever think that there wasn't?" Shino specified with a rhetorical query of his own, "I will lead the way, unless anyone has a problem with this?" He received no dissent from his friends, nor their temporary ally, "Then we should begin."
"What about Uzumaki's mother?" Hana asked, surrounded in a protective manji formation by her ninken, "She's in a fight right now, isn't she? Is someone going to get her?"
"My insects will ensure that Kushina-sama will be able to locate us after she manages to extricate herself," Shino told the Inuzuka girl, "Stepping in the way of Kushina-sama while she's in combat is… unwise."
Kushina was the absolute last person in the current party that any of them had to be concerned about. If there was anyone in the ongoing predicament that needed someone to pray for them, it was whoever she was up against.
With that settled, the temporary team began to calmly head through the halls per Shino's unspoken direction. The five people and three dogs would have looked quite the sight to anyone heading their way, but to maids, cleaners, and the rest of the staff, quite accustomed to the eccentric methods of shinobi, it was just another day.
All that was left was to check out, but the entire time Naruto had been at the front desk paying, Kanako had been having fits, "What's the matter Kana?" He asked, only getting her to bury her face deeply into his shoulder, her tiny arms wrapping around his neck even tighter as he turned to exit with his friends. The sound of her whimpering was damn near heartbreaking, "Shh… it's alright. Mom will be right back in a few minutes, okay?"
It didn't seem to help, however. Kanako poked her head up off of Naruto's shoulder to look in the direction of the man working behind the bar over in the pub area of the inn. The same person that had been working there every day since they'd first arrived over a week before.
The man made eye contact with her, and a stronger grip of terror than before took hold of her heart. As she opened her mouth to say something to the only person around that she could turn to, "Ruto-nii!"
All she could do was shriek his name. She couldn't warn him. She had no idea of the situation or the circumstances. She didn't understand. She had no clue what was happening, or why she felt so scared, only that things felt bad, and when things were bad, big brother was the one who always fixed everything.
Naruto followed her line of sight and felt the mood of the entire building turn after making eye contact with the bartender. Those weren't the eyes of a civ. A sneer crossed the man's face as he threw the bottle he'd been handling across the room right at Naruto. In midflight it exploded in a puff of smoke, transforming into a larger than average shuriken.
The blond jinchuuriki had ducked out of the door before it ever got close enough to threaten him or Kanako, and just like that it all fell apart. They had already been inside, for how long was anyone's guess, transformed to disguise themselves as at least one of the actual staff members, just waiting for them to leave.
Shino heard the thunk of metal stabbing into the doorframe and saw Naruto barreling out of the inn with Kanako, panic on his face. His eyes began to quickly scan the crowd of street-goers, the insects inside of his hive of a body buzzing as his brain ran rampant with paranoia. He was easily able to spot people in the throng who were paying attention to what was going on, but weren't reacting with curious interest or surprise.
Those same people were using the cover of passers-by to hide their hand-seals.
"Move!" Shino raised his voice to an honest to goodness shout, startling the women and the canines into action, following him with powerful leaps off of the ground just as powerful jets of fire bellowed from the mouths of several bystanders.
"Katon: Goukakyuu no Jutsu (Fire Release: Great Fireball Jutsu)!"
The impromptu bonfire in the middle of town whipped the citizenry into a frenzy. Screaming, crying, and outright panic reigned supreme as the several people realized that they had missed and allowed their transformations to fall as they took off after the people in possession of their objective.
Naruto kept Kanako held tightly to his chest, his arms covering any part of her body he deemed vital and at risk as they fled, "No matter what, keep your head down Kana," He told her, "Don't try to look back over my shoulder, okay?" The little redhead muttered an affirmative response and did as he asked.
How did Kanako spot that enemy? She didn't know the first thing about what to look for. And he was in a Henge. She definitely didn't know how to spot a transformation, and it wasn't as if it had been a bad one either. All of those transformed Uchiha Clan members had been disguised well. Come to think of it, she'd been fussing way before any of that had even occurred.
Truthfully, that should have been far messier than it turned out to be. Blood should have been shed, but it hadn't been. Not yet. Kanako had caught the ambush before it had even taken place.
"Incredible. A child that young, and she's sensitive enough to killing intent to pinpoint where it's coming from," Kurama said inside of Naruto's head, honestly amazed. Apparently Minato's prodigious talent hadn't skipped a generation, it had just bypassed Naruto and gone straight to Kanako. No toddler should have been able to do something like that so precisely, "You'd better never have her meet me then," The might biju joked.
'No, you don't think-?' Naruto thought to Kurama, 'You think Kanako sensed that? Are you sure she didn't just see something off?'
"How could an untrained child have seen something that you and all of your friends didn't?" Kurama said, as Naruto could visualize the sight of the nine-tailed fox's tails lazily swinging about within the prison that was his mind, "Or are you saying you're that incompetent? Because it's fine if you are. I mean, I've been saying you suck for years, but-."
'Alright, I get the point, you big red jackass,' Naruto concluded the mental conversation before turning his attention to his friends, "I think my little sister is a sensor," Naruto deadpanned before turning to Hana who was wincing with every fleet-footed step they all took, "Shouldn't you have been able to sniff them out or something?" Perturbed, Hana pointed at her nose that was covered by a bandage, "Oh. Sorry."
There hadn't been any need to remind her anyway. Even with a broken nose, she still had a sense of smell on par with a health human. It had been embarrassing enough that they were able to get that close and surround them before they had been discovered, and Hana hadn't been the one to anticipate either attack.
"Even if I wasn't hurt, they completely drench their scents in something else to overpower the scent of smoke, and the smell of burning wood," Hana explained, face turning red at being put on the spot, "They know how to prepare to fight us! There's a reason we're barely ever the ones attacking them you know! It's not because we like defending."
From the sides, two Uchiha Clan members, a man and a woman, closed in while two came up close from behind, forming an attack formation. The two in the back took aim at Naruto, who ducked and twisted his way out of an attack from a pair of sword-wielders. His hands weren't free, so he couldn't necessarily fight back. Fortunately, Hana had three ninken who were chomping at the bit to get a piece of the people that had defeated them so thoroughly.
"Gatenga (Fang Rotating Fang)!" At her orders, two of the dogs broke away and flew right at the two rear-attacking Uchiha, timing it perfectly with their missed swings on Naruto. That led them straight into Hana's ninken, both of whom were rolling fast enough to inflict the proportionate damage of a buzzsaws their size onto human flesh.
Naruto winced as the two flew past him and turned his head to see the results. One who had overextended on his swing to try and reach him couldn't recover nearly in time and wound up cut into two from the left side of her neck to just under the right side of her ribcage. The other was able to change his course enough to avoid death, but his sword was broken from attempting to deflect even a bit of the attack. The side he'd favored using the weapon with had been mangled up, but given sufficient recovery time he would probably return to fighting shape.
If Hana would have had more say, he wouldn't have. But she couldn't exactly order her ninken to turn around and finish off someone who was wounded, or do it herself, no matter how much she wanted to. One violent kill in two attempts would have to be enough to satiate her desire for vengeance for the time being.
Riled at the sight of Hana's ninken killing one comrade and injuring another, one of the other Uchiha Clan members pulled out a kunai and dove in from a side position to get at the Inuzuka girl in the middle, "You bitch!" Instead, Shino got in his way, but the angered shinobi wouldn't let one interloper by himself stop him, "Get out of the way!"
The blade of the weapon passed through Shino with little give, only for his body to break down into insects that began to cover the unfortunate attacker.
Hana was more overtaken by surprise at Shino not being Shino than the insects that were currently draining an enemy dry of chakra, "Wha-? When did he do that?" Not being able to smell things out was just getting more and more aggravating.
"Mmm, if I had to guess, he probably switched himself out while you two were having a row with each other," Tenten said with a look that spoke of exasperation in regards to their partner's lack of communication. She hadn't noticed him leave either, "Shino isn't really the best when it comes to talking about things."
As good a friend, and as talented a ninja as Shino was, he wasn't exactly number one when it came to establishing an understanding with others. If it was something he felt he could do without talking about it, he would go ahead and do it with little or no warning.
Switching himself out for whatever reason with a combat-ready decoy in the form of an Insect Clone was one of those things. It wasn't that he wound up being wrong a lot of the time, after all, they were moving pretty slowly in order to allow an injured Hana to keep up, but some correspondence in certain moments would have been nice. People were trying to kill them and rob from their corpses after all.
Naruto kept his eyes on the lone Uchiha Clan member keeping pace with them from a slight distance. A good move after watching his three comrades fall at the hands of the most hodge-podge combination of ninjas he had probably ever seen, "Well the escape route lasted like ten seconds before we got caught. I bet you twenty commandos he went ahead to try and clear the way," Naruto remarked on Shino's current absence.
Tenten's interest was piqued, but not because of the "Twenty whats?"
"Commandos," Naruto repeated, taking a hand off of holding Kanako to chuck some shuriken out behind them. The rest of the pursuing Uchiha party had grouped together, presumably to make a plan to try and take them down. They scattered apart, but quickly came back together again, "Pushups I can make you do anywhere, anytime, however many I want until you run out. And you have to drop and do 'em on the spot when I say."
"Did you make this up yourself?"
"No, I kinda… borrowed it."
Borrowed it? From who? "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard," Who would have come up with or inspired such an asinine idea? And still, for some inexplicable reason she desperately wanted to take part in it, "…You're on."
Hana was amazed. These were agents of the man who was trying to bring about a revolution in the ninja world? Three teenagers of varying eccentricity, who could downplay being pursued for death while it was still happening. Yet, in that vein they hadn't been stopped or so much as slowed down since they had taken off.
She wanted to take an opportunity like that, with people who weren't afraid to take the Uchiha Clan on, to stop and fight. She wanted to kill them the way their ilk had hurt and killed her clansmen who had only wanted them gone from their territory. Just thinking about it made her blood was boil to get revenge for her brother. He would have been the same age as the people she was running with right now. Just killing one of their pursuers wasn't cathartic enough.
It was hard to keep her mind on the task at hand. Her mission wasn't to deal damage to their side by thinning their numbers. It was all about the virus canister that they were trying to get away with. Above all else, the Uchiha Clan couldn't get their hands on it again. Anyone aware of that clan knew what rested within it, and just what it could do and would do to an entire population if it was opened.
XxX
It took a matter of minutes for Sasuke to realize something that most others were unfortunate enough to realize within seconds. Even as a mother of two, with a son and a daughter who adored her, and a husband who rose and fell with her as though she were the sun, when battles began, Uzumaki Kushina was a miserable, dangerous human being.
She had grown up in Uzu no Kuni, where war never really touched its shores, but she had spent the majority of her life, from her childhood to her early adult years, fighting tooth and nail against the absolute dregs of the mainland Elemental Nation's war-driven society. She'd become accustomed to the best way to kill an enemy before she'd hit puberty, and had earned a reputation as a feared shinobi of her time.
Then she'd had Naruto, and all of that became unnecessary in the rearing of a child. But it never went away. Every so often in Naruto's youth before the misfortune with Kurama that ended with both of them eventually leaving they did go on missions where fighting was required. That sort of attitude, forged in fire as it was, never left a person. They either became good at turning it on and off, or they became horribly imbalanced in their day-to-day lives.
She'd gotten more in the way of fighting since she'd reunited with Minato and began traveling with him, but had seen very little in the way of no-holds-barred combat since having Kanako, and mostly had to make do with doling out lumps to Naruto and his friends while training with them. Still, every so often she was given an excuse to flip the switch.
Sasuke had given her that excuse. Kushina had been more than thrilled to show him just how badly he'd screwed up in doing so. It was just a matter of hitting him at that point.
Standing on the awning of a nearby building, Sasuke had to blink a few times for his eyes to return to their appropriate width. The street beneath him was a torn, gnarled, cut up mess, and the cause stood serenely in the center of it all, holding onto the green dress she'd been wearing beforehand that had given the image of nothing more than a proper housewife.
Without the garment, Kushina still wore the sleeveless white blouse that had always been visible, but the rest of her outfit was now exposed, revealing a wide black obi tied around her stomach and a dark-yellow battle skirt that ruffled around her thighs. Directly in front of her, she leaned her body on the top of an oversized kunai stabbed into the ground, her arms supporting her on the ring of the weapon.
"Well you can dodge, I'll give you that," Kushina said, very much resembling a cat lazily staring up at its cornered prey that only had one real option, "It's not really doing much to make me tell you anything though. That is why we're doing this, isn't it?"
"You're the most unpleasant woman I've ever met."
"Oh that can't possibly be true."
Sasuke scowled and backflipped up onto the roof as Kushina took the opportunity to jump right up after him. By now he was no longer surprised by how quick Kushina was. As evidence of such, by the time he found himself in the air to change rooftop perches, Kushina had taken his place on the original one.
In midair, Sasuke made five hand-seals as tiles flew up from the top of his intended building and hurled themselves at Kushina, "Kawara Shuriken (Roof Tile Shuriken)!" The tiles were strengthened by his chakra, enabling the jutsu as ideal for urban combat.
Instead of using the width of her large kunai to defend herself, Kushina kept coming forward and instead hacked away, cutting down the empowered tiles in rapid succession, letting the massive weapon fly midswing when there were none left to deal with.
Sasuke landed and tilted his body just out of the way as the sharpened tip of the kunai sailed past him and stabbed into the wall of a neighboring building. A chain connected to the ring of the weapon that Sasuke knew hadn't been there when Kushina had first started using the kunai on him quickly shortened, pulling the red-haired woman in, her hand drawn back to punch a hole clean through him.
It was easier said than done to hit someone like him though, and Sasuke was able to again avoid contact. Kushina's punch missed and drilled a hole in the wall the size of three people. Pulling her hand back, Kushina blew pieces of brick, wood, and plaster off of it, her knuckles cracking with every clench and unclench of her fist.
Looking around, Kushina could no longer see Sasuke or feel his presence, nor could she feel the sort of pressure in the air that came with awareness of one's involvement in a dangerous situation. Had he retreated? How disappointing. He was an interesting one. She definitely hadn't expected him to use tiles of all things to try and kill her.
Reaching a higher position, Kushina was able to see Sasuke moving away along the rooftops, as well as smoke from a fire that had been set elsewhere, and a group of people being pursued by larger numbers. Apparently he didn't exactly need to try getting blood from a stone in his attempt to interrogate her after all. Clearly it was more trouble than it was worth, especially when one could see what he was after from there.
"And now the quick little shit has a headstart," Kushina muttered to herself before preparing to pursue the pursuers, "Good thing I'm still in shape."
This was supposed to have been something of a vacation while Minato took care of some business with Anko elsewhere. That idea was certainly long gone. All of this over one little canister, but it was definitely worth it. There had been hearsay as to what horrors resided within. No one needed to experience that.
And that's the chapter guys. I hope you enjoyed.
On a completely unrelated note, I have to apologize to my homeboy for kicking him in the head while we were sparring this week. But to be fair, you were ducking too far to avoid my jab, it was too much wasted motion, and I warned you about it three times before I finally did something about it.
Oh, it was right there too. He ducked right into it and ate shin. The cleanest shot I've landed in the last four months. If I'd have actually followed through with the kick, I can only imagine.
Still, better me doing it during practice than someone else doing it during an actual fight with bad intentions. I bet he won't do it again. And really, that's what's important, don't you think?
Don't worry, he got me back later… you friggin' bleeding hearts. You're supposed to be on my side here.
Anyway, until next time folks, Kenchi out.