Caught in the Whirlpool
Part XVI
Naruto felt immensely relieved when Ken-Ichi finally got some words in edgewise and persuaded his mother to stop making a scene. He reminded her that the younger trainers following him had no idea where they were going and promised to go straight home after he'd finished showing them around. She very unhappily relented and wandered off to complete other errands, leaving them in peace.
"Is your mom always like that?" Naruto asked as they started walking again.
"Naruto!" Sakura hissed.
"She didn't use to be," Ken-Ichi sighed, taking no offense at the blunt question. "When I was little, she seemed like the perfect mom. She gave me all kinds of toys, made sure that I always had new clothes, and there were always brownies or cookies for dessert. She spoiled me almost rotten and my dad was driven crazy because I didn't believe that I had to work to get anything. But on my seventh birthday when my dad brought me a lileep to take care of things started to change."
Naruto blinked. "You have a lileep?"
"It's a cradily now, but yeah," Ken-Ichi shrugged. "I guess that my dad hoped that my mom wouldn't freak out over a grass pokémon since most of those aren't terribly intimidating, but she took one look at it and screamed bloody murder."
"Where did your dad get it?" Sasuke asked.
"No idea," Ken-Ichi replied. "It's a family secret. So even if I did know, I wouldn't tell you."
"Huh," Naruto rubbed at his scarred cheek. "Why doesn't your mom like pokémon?"
"She had a lot of bad experiences with pokémon when she was little. Like, one time when she was three she played rough with an older cousin's mankey and it scratched her arm so badly that she still has a scar from it. And there was another time when she was five or six when she got lost on a family picnic out in the hills and was mobbed by a flock of angry spearow. It seems like at least once a year until she was about thirteen years old there was some traumatic incident that involved a trained or wild pokémon." Ken-Ichi shook his head and sighed. "My mom doesn't really talk about any of it, but her sister, my Aunt Aimi, explained it to me."
"So now she hates all pokémon?" Naruto frowned.
"Yeah," Ken-Ichi nodded. "She really hates it that I've decided to become a pokémon trainer like my dad. She refused to let the lileep stay at the house with us; it had to stay with my dad and I would have to go over to his place every day to take care of it. And now that I have more pokémon, I have to leave them all at my dad's overnight—she won't even let me keep my team with me if they stay sealed in their pokéballs."
"That's not cool," Naruto remarked. "How come you don't live with your dad?"
"With all the money that he pays my mom, and all the financial support that he gives to the rest of his family, he doesn't have enough to buy his own house so he still lives with his dad, my grandpa," Ken-Ichi explained. "In fact, most of my paternal relatives live in that house so there's just no room for me, too. If my dad had his own house, I would've moved in with him years ago." He shook his head tiredly. "I really have no idea how they even dated. It seems like my parents can't be in the same room for five minutes without getting into an argument. They did their best to hide how much they fought when I was a kid, but now that I'm older they don't bother anymore."
Naruto jammed his hands into his pockets. "That sucks."
"The rest of my relatives aren't so bad," Ken-Ichi said. "Aunt Akane loves making treats for me and poffins for my pokémon since she doesn't have any kids of her own. Uncle Ichi and Uncle Ni are always a lot of fun to hang out with. And Grandpa lets me train in the gym whenever I want."
"What's the gym here like?" Sasuke asked.
Ken-Ichi studied the Uchiha for a moment and then snorted. "Don't bother challenging unless you feel like hanging out here for months and losing a lot."
"You think I can't earn the badge?" Sasuke demanded.
"I know you can't," Ken-Ichi responded. "No one can. Not on their first try. Early in my training career I thought that I was hot stuff and challenged Grandpa, and he knocked out my four pokémon with a single attack each from just one of his pokémon. It stung, but he used it to finally get through to me that if I really wanted something, I needed to work for it instead of just expecting to get it."
Sasuke didn't look pleased to hear this information.
Naruto took advantage of the brief lull in the conversation to check and see how Kitsune was doing—
The zorua was nowhere in sight. Naruto stopped and looked around frantically, but the little black fox failed to magically appear. So he did the only thing that he could do: he panicked.
"Gah! Kitsune's gone!"
"Naruto…" Sakura groaned and shook her head in dismay. "Why did you let it roam around after all the times that it tried to escape?"
"I thought she was over that!" Naruto moaned.
"I told you it was a bad idea," Sasuke muttered.
"Well look on the bright side," Ken-Ichi suggested. "We're on an island and that limits the places it can run to, and it's the only one of its kind in the whole country, so we'll find it…eventually."
Naruto clapped his hands over his face and made an inarticulate sound of frustration.
Why?
While the town square was mostly ringed by shops, restaurants, and offices, there was one side that was mostly a blank wall with a wide stretch free of doors and windows, which made it perfect for in-town pokémon battles. This blank wall formed one boundary of the battlefield, and part of the central fountain formed the other, leaving the other two ends open for opposing trainers to stand. When they arrived, Kasshoku and Gin took up one end with their little posse standing behind them, and Minato and Kushina took the other with the red-head positioned closer to the fountain and Genma keeping a safe but supportive distance behind them. Seeing a clear set-up for a battle, people paused in their errands and drifted out of shops and little restaurants to take a look.
"Is there anything I should know about them?" Minato asked quietly.
"Kasshoku's a Biyokuchi and they tend to favor fighting types," Kushina replied. "Their clan lore claims that they brought mankeys and machops to the shores of Uzu no Kuni so I wouldn't be surprised if he has one or the other, or both." Her gaze shifted towards the other man on the far side of the cobblestone field. "Gin's a Retsukai and they love ice types, especially sneasels and weaviles."
Minato slipped his hands into the pockets of his blue hoodie. "Hmm…"
Kasshoku and Gin conferred with each other for a few minutes while the crowd slowly grew, and then one of their friends jogged over to share the terms that they wanted.
"The rules are three pokémon per trainer, one substitution per pokémon, no money stakes, no medicines or berries, and the last side standing wins," the man said.
"Deal," Kushina snorted. No money stakes? How cheap of them.
"Fine by me," Minato agreed.
The messenger returned to the opposing side and passed along their acceptance. The group got into some kind of discussion, probably over some kind of betting pool, and the number of curious spectators slowly grew. Kushina struggled to remain patient and reminded herself that the longer that they delayed the more people would show up to view their humiliation.
"How do you want to start off?" Minato asked.
"Hmm…with eons," she decided.
He nodded his agreement and set Senkou free to bounce in place with excited energy. Kushina sent out Uzu-chan, who waited much more calmly with only the slightest twitch to her tail. But Kasshoku and Gin appeared to be too busy talking with their friends to notice that their opponents were ready to go.
"…Hey!" Kushina finally yelled. "Are you going to keep chatting like a bunch of old ladies or are we going to do this sometime today?"
The two men gave her irritated looks, but finally put out their first monsters.
"Start us off, Tyson," Kasshoku half-grinned.
"Show 'em who's boss, Jack," Gin commanded.
Tyson turned out to be a primeape that made a big show of pounding its boxing-glove-like fists together, stomping its feet, and snorting through its squashed pig nose. Jack was a weavile that swung its hooked claws in wide arcs and sneered at its opponents. The displays were meant to be intimidating, but neither evolved eevee flinched and Kushina swallowed a snort.
"Make your first move," Minato invited.
"Alright," Kasshoku's grin widened. "Tyson, cross chop that chick's vaporeon!"
"Jack, use icy wind on the jolteon!" Gin called out.
The primeape raised its arms and charged and Uzu-chan while the weavile sucked in a deep breath—
"Uzu-chan, acid armor in the fountain," Kushina ordered.
"Senkou, agility and double team," Minato commanded.
The female vaporeon ducked away from the cross chop with more than a foot to spare and flipped into the moderately deep fountain pool, seeming to melt into the water as she did so and becoming incredibly hard to see. The jolteon zipped into motion, skirting the blast of icy wind from the weavile as he ran and ran and ran. With each passing moment his speed increased, and in employing double team he started creating illusory copies of himself that were also running in dozens of different directions. The faster he moved, the more copies he appeared to have, and in very short order the primeape and weavile were completely lost as to which one was the real one.
"Fury swipes, Tyson!" Kasshoku cried.
"Fury swipes!" Gin agreed.
Both pokémon began desperately swiping away with their claws and fists at the zigzagging copies of Senkou, but they only hit the false images and the jolteon took no damage at all.
What idiots… Kushina resisted the impulse to roll her eyes as she watched the monsters keep flailing and their trainers fail to try anything else while Senkou ran circles around all of them. Oh well, I suppose I shouldn't complain about how they're playing right into our hands.
In trying to follow the numerous yellow blurs that were Senkou, the primeape started to get dizzy and stumbled over to the edge of the fountain pool.
"Grab it, Uzu-chan!" Kushina called, and the vaporeon, which had been briefly forgotten due to Senkou's attention-grabbing display, lunged from under the surface of the water, latched onto the primeape's spiky fur, and pulled it into the fountain. "And whirlpool!"
The vaporeon began to circle the fighting monkey at high speed, whipping the water into a shredding whirlpool. The water wasn't terribly deep, but Uzu-chan's power built it up until it rose partially over the surface of the pool like a very squat waterspout. The primeape gurgled and flailed, but couldn't escape and started taking progressive damage.
"Jack, help Tyson!" Gin yelled.
The weavile abandoned trying to land a fury swipe on Senkou and hustled over to the fountain to yank the primeape free—
"Senkou," Minato said, "double kick."
All of the dozens of copies of the jolteon converged on the weavile just as it reached the lip of the fountain and kicked at the ice monster, knocking it into the whirlpool attack with the primeape on the second blow.
"Out of the pool, Uzu-chan!" Kushina chirped, and the vaporeon immediately hopped back out onto the cobblestones.
"Senkou, use discharge," Minato ordered.
The jolteon's spiky pelt crackled with electricity and then a dozen bolts struck the whirlpool, lighting up the whole fountain and frying the drenched pokémon inside. When the blaze of light faded, the primeape and weavile were out cold floating on their backs. Gin looked pale and sweaty as he recalled his weavile back to its ball, but Kasshoku looked furious.
"Alright," the Biyokuchi scowled. "No more playing around. Come out Rhino!"
A rocky rhydon crashed down on the cobblestones, cracking several of them with its earthy bulk, and bellowed a challenge.
"You, too, Titan!" Gin cried.
A metallic steelix kicked up dust and left sizeable cracks in the town square with its tremendous weight and loomed over the entire make-shift battlefield.
Uzu-chan wouldn't have trouble with either new opponent, but Senkou was now at a severe disadvantage since their ground types eliminated all of his electrical attacks and would do terrible damage to him. Minato withdrew Senkou in favor of using his poliwrath, Gama. And Kushina decided to swap her vaporeon for her starmie, Hoshi, just for the heck of it.
Since limited substitutions are allowed, she thought, why not?
"Rhino, get rid of that poliwrath with thunder," Kasshoku yelled.
"Titan, use thunder fang on the starfish!" Gin cried.
The rhydon's drill-like horn started to spin and gather a massive electrical charge, and the steelix's blocky teeth started to spark as it lunged for Hoshi—
"Gama, hydro pump," Minato instructed.
"Double it up, Hoshi!" Kushina grinned.
The poliwrath dashed around to the side and fired an enormous gush of water into the rhydon's flank before its attack was fully charged. Hoshi spun like a multi-armed frisbee, slipped past the steelix's sparking iron jaws, and whizzed to hover over the fountain and blast the metal snake with another hydro pump. The way that the two water pokémon were positioned, and the near simultaneity of their attacks, sandwiched the two opposing pokémon between the two hydro pumps and pounding them mercilessly.
When the water torrents ceased the rhydon was almost out flat, but the steelix with its massive defense and steel-typing still had a good bit of fight left.
"Gama, finish it with focus blast," Minato commanded.
"Make sure of it, Hoshi," Kushina added.
Gama started gathering fighting energy into a dense blue sphere.
"Titan!" Gin panicked. "Use thunder fang, use it now!"
Again the iron snake attempted to use thunder fang—
Hoshi's red gem blazed and the steelix froze, unable to move due to the starfish's psychic powers. The focus blast finished powering up and Gama leapt at the steelix's head, hurling the attack when he was in mid-air. The steelix groaned from the blow to its jaw and, with a little psychic nudge, it collapsed onto the wheezing rhydon and took it out, too.
Gin Retsukai was really pale and sweaty now and fumbled as he withdrew his steelix. Kasshoku Biyokuchi looked downright murderous as he took back the rhydon. With a snarl Kasshoku grabbed Gin's arm and hissed some instructions into the silver-haired man's ear.
"Basan!" Kasshoku bellowed. "I'm counting on you."
"Marshal," Gin gasped hoarsely. "Help us out here!"
A blaziken exploded onto the scene and crowed at the sky, blasting embers from the hot spots on its wrists. The second pokémon was a swampert that shook its fins and croaked and deep bellowing call. They were clearly the duo's first pokémon and probably were the toughest.
"Hmm, I think we should respond in kind," Kushina quietly suggested, and pulled Hoshi back. "Don't you?"
"Fine by me," Minato nodded agreeably, and called Gama back as well.
Hana the venusaur rematerialized first, looking almost bored as she stood quietly and awaited commands. Crusher the feraligatr was only a few seconds behind and entered in a crouched position with his scaly forearms braced on the cobblestones. He sized up his competition and made a disparaging grumbling sound.
"Basan, take out that venusaur with brave bird!" Kasshoku barked.
"Marshal, hit the feraligatr with take down!" Gin cried.
The blaziken darted forward, tucked its arms to its chest, and leapt into the air, gliding close to the ground on its wing-like head feathers while it was surrounded by a fierce blue glow. The swampert was a bit slower to get moving as it charged towards the feraligatr, intent on dealing damage and willing to take some in return—
"Aqua jet!" Kushina ordered.
"Vine whip!" Minato called.
Crusher enveloped himself in water and took off like a missile, crashing into the blaziken and interrupting the brave bird strike only a few inches from the venusaur's nose. Hana didn't even blink and almost casually extruded some of her vines from the plant on her back and whipped at the swampert's feet, tripping it up before it had even tried to change direction to go after Crusher. The swampert ended up face-planting into the cobblestones, while the blaziken tumbled end over end and almost crashed into the fountain pool from Crusher's strike.
"Basan, bounce back!" Kasshoku yelled. "Take down the feraligatr with sand attack and a hi jump kick!"
"Get up, Marshal!" Gin pleaded. "Hit them both with muddy water!"
The fighting fire chicken was quickly back on its feet and it scratched up loose dirt from between the paving stones with its talons to hurl it into Crusher's eyes. While the giant crocodile was trying to shake away the grit, the blaziken leapt high into the air and readied its knee to strike Crusher—
Hana coiled some vines around Crusher's upper arm and yanked him aside, causing the blaziken to miss and dig its knee into the hard cobblestones, doing terrible damage to itself.
The swampert finally lurched back to its feet and stood beside the fountain where it summoned a surf-like wave, oozing mud from its skin to make the water dirty. Hana and Crusher rooted themselves to the ground and turned their backs to the wave, riding it out and taking minimal damage as their types resisted the water attack. But the blaziken, still clutching its wounded knee and squawking in pain, wasn't able to jump out of the way and was swamped by the muddy water. When the water drained away, the blaziken was out cold.
"Gin, you moron!" Kasshoku cursed.
"I'm sorry!" Gin yelped and cringed away from his friend. "Marshal, ice beam! Hit the venusaur!"
The swampert opened its maw and an icy blue glow formed at the back of its throat—
"Protect!" Kushina called out.
Crusher interposed himself between Hana and the swampert, planted his feet, crossed his arms over his chest, lowered his head, and projected a barely visible barrier that harmlessly deflected the crackling ice beam as it fired from the swampert's mouth.
"Now give it a scary face and let's give this fight an aerial finish!" Kushina cheered.
Minato chuckled. "Hana, use sunny day and solar beam"
Hana seemed to give off a reddish glow and the gray film of clouds parted to bathe the entire town square in bright, warm sunlight. Crusher puffed himself up and twisted his intimidating face into a terrifying expression that inspired the swampert to take a step back and hesitate. Then Hana started to run straight at Crusher's back as her large flower drank in the powerful sunlight. The mighty plant monster jumped on the crocodile's back and used it as a springboard to jump high into the air with an added boost from Crusher and all six of her vines pushing off the ground at the same time, and seemed to soar.
I love it when venusaurs fly, Kushina grinned.
And then at the apex of her leap, Hana fired her solar beam.
It took all of Inaho's professionalism to prevent herself from getting mesmerized by the battle and keep her little video camera focused on the action. It wasn't the most exciting or nail-biting fight that she'd ever seen as it was very clear that Minato Namikaze completely outclassed the two local men who had challenged him. No, what really drew Inaho's attention was the woman involved on the Fire Champion's side.
While the battle in the town square was surely a spur-of-the-moment thing set up against strangers, it was clear to her that Minato Namikaze's partnership with this mysterious red-headed woman had serious history behind it. The pair seemed to need far less discussion than their opponents did, they designated targets for their pokémon only half the time, and their battle strategy was cooperative. And it wasn't just the trainers, their pokémon had to be familiar with each other also; they and worked in tandem very well, even defending each other without needing any command.
And as the dust settled from the solar beam to reveal the knocked out swampert, Inaho wondered: Who is this woman?
All the evidence that she could see indicated that this woman had to be an old friend and companion of Minato Namikaze's. But when Inaho looked at the triumphant red-headed woman, she had no idea who she was. She had never appeared once during Minato Namikaze's reign as champion, otherwise Inaho would know her name.
Who is she? Where did she come from? Where has she been?
She switched off her video camera to preserve the battery while the local men vainly argued that the champion's team had cheated somehow despite the fact that they had followed the rules set by the challengers to the letter, and felt a spark of excitement flare inside of her.
This is bigger and better than making up some romance story based on Minato Namikaze and some local woman being in the same place at the same time. This is a real mystery—a real story. This is a lot better than what I had hoped to find!
The crowd of spectators that had gathered to watch the double battle started to disperse. They largely watched the fight in silence and there had been no cheering or booing, only mutters and fragmentary whispers. Inaho frowned and did her best to listen in, seeking some clue or, better yet, a name for the mystery woman.
"…pretty impressive, even when paired with a woman…"
"…what idiots, challenging someone that beat Kenjiro…"
"…could I be like her, Mommy?"
"Absolutely not! You'll never find a husband if…"
"…fluke, just a fluke…"
"…she brings nothing but disgrace…"
"…I wish I could say that I was surprised, but she's always been…"
"…who was she? I've never seen her before."
"Kushina Uzumaki. It looks like the only decent thing she's done since leaving has been to grow out her hair properly…"
Inaho locked her eyes on a sour old woman who'd spoken and what was probably her grandson as the pair wandered away from the improvised battleground. The young man was laden with several shopping bags while the old woman hobbled along with the aid of a cane. She briefly considered tailing them to see what else she could overhear, but since she had the name that she wanted, she charted a course for the Pokémon Center, bumping into several people in her haste.
Listening to that old bat and her backwards opinions would've been more annoying than informative anyway.
Armed with the name of the woman, she could start doing some research on how she related to Minato Namikaze. It would be best to start looking at tournament records during the earliest parts of the man's career and see how often her name appeared around his. And once she had that background sorted out, she'd have to start milking the locals for information on this Kushina Uzumaki.
Komugi owes me big time. I'll call him up and have him do his magic on the Land of Fire League records for me. Depending on what he finds for me, I might just declare us even…
Since none of them but Ken-Ichi knew the area, they had to stick together instead of splitting up to search for the missing zorua to avoid getting lost. Naruto had Bolt riding his shoulder so that the pikachu could help him look for anything that was out of place and Sakura had Shamo the torchic and Sasuke had Dragon the charmeleon out for the same reason. Ken-Ichi refrained from sending out any of his pokémon and did his best to help them scour the streets of Uzu Town.
But their search hadn't gone on too long before they heard some commotion going on nearby. Suspecting that Kitsune could have something to do with it, they'd diverted towards the sounds of what could've been a pokémon battle. And when they reached the town square they ended up sucked in to the spectacle of a feraligatr and venusaur trouncing a blaziken and swampert.
"That was so awesome!" Naruto breathed as the crowd broke apart and scattered. "Did you see that crazy solar beam?"
"Yeah," Sakura nodded. "I didn't think that a venusaur could jump like that."
"It was a very nice combo move," Ken-Ichi nodded. "I wonder who the trainers are…"
"Let's get closer and see—hey!" Naruto squawked as a brunette with an enormous shoulder bag and a chatot fluttering after her almost bowled him over in her haste to get wherever she was going. "Watch where you're going!"
The woman didn't look back or apologize.
"She's not from around here," Ken-Ichi frowned. "How weird; we really don't get tourists in these parts."
"…Well, weren't we looking for something?" Sasuke grunted.
Naruto blinked and then almost spiraled into panic again. "Gah!"
"Well, maybe Kitsune's around here?" Sakura suggested. "If we were attracted to the noise, maybe it was too. Is there anyone or anything around here that doesn't belong?"
They spread out a little and looked around at the rapidly thinning crowd and surrounding businesses. Naruto and Bolt zigzagged through the women, men, and children, looking for a lone pokémon that shouldn't be wandering around or the little girl in the black dress that he'd first seen in the Safari Zone. He dodged a knot of dissatisfied men and—
A flash of red hair stopped him cold.
…Mom?