“Kushina!” A soft but earnest voice broke into the empty room as a black haired woman pushed into the hospital room. “Are you…”
“I’ll live, Mikoto.” A haggard Uzumaki Kushina responded with a bare twitch of her lips before resuming her solemn gaze towards the baby held in her arms. Tears fell from her eyes as she whispered just loud enough for her friend to hear, “but Minato…”
Pulling a chair up to the side of the bed, Mikoto tried to comfort her friend by rubbing her shoulder. “I’m so sorry… but at least you have something to remember him by, right?” The Uchiha woman tried to point out the only silver lining she could find to help. “What’s her name?”
“Hah.” The redheaded Kushina let out a single laugh, the memory of Jiraiya’s face when she and Minato decided to name the child after the main character from his first book. “We were expecting a boy but I’d never give up my baby Naruko for anything.” Saying that, Kushina smiled for the first time as she stroked the baby’s few strands of blonde hair.
Mikoto noted the odd name but chose not to say anything, just happy to see her friend smile at this delicate time. “You know, Kushina, you should stay with us till… till you get back on your feet. What do you say?”
“Thanks.” The redhead nodded, tears falling from her eyes once more. “Thank you so much…”
“You want to hear a secret, Sa-chan?” The six year old Naruko whispered to her friend as they lay under a large tree.
Sachiko thought about it for a second before silently nodding yes.
Leaning towards the other girl, Naruko put a hand to the side of her mouth and whispered, “I have a fox in my belly.”
Scrunching her brow, Sachiko turned her black eyes towards said blonde’s belly. “No way. You’re making that up.”
“Nu-uh! My mama told me, so it’s true!” Naruko defensively replied in annoyance.
“What did I say?” Kushina’s voice asked up in interest as she walked towards the two girls.
“Na-chan said you told her she has a fox in her belly.” Sachiko stated, hoping that Naruko’s mother would call out the lie; Naruko was always telling tall tales and making up stories.
Kushina put her hands on her hips and narrowed her eyes at her only daughter. “Naruko! What did I tell you about that?!”
“To keep it secret.” The blonde girl cringed slightly before defending her actions, “But Sa-chan’s my friend!”
Her mother just palmed her face as she let out a beleaguered sigh. She had planned on taking her daughter for dango on the way home from visiting her friend’s house but that just got nixed. Turning towards the house to find Mikoto, she waved the girls to follow her. “Come on, girls. We need to have a little talk about this and why secrets are secret.”
“All gone! They’re all gone, Kushina!” Mikoto wailed, as she cried in her friend’s arms.
“I know, I know.” The redhead tried to comfort her friend, rubbing her back as she rocked them both slightly. Across the room, she could see both of their children finally fallen to an exhausted sleep, Naruko having tried to comfort Sachiko but unsure as to what had happened.
“Why would he do this? Why?” Mikoto demanded, tears continuing to fall from her eyes as she implored her friend for an answer, any answer, to the madness that had consumed her son Itachi.
“I don’t know… I just, I just don’t know.” Kushina had no answer to give. After a long length of silence, she offered up, “You and Sachiko should stay here, with me and Naruko. You shouldn’t go back to…” She kicked herself for bringing up the warzone which was the Uchiha district.
“Thank you.” Mikoto whispered earnestly. “Thank you so much.”
“Why don’t you say that again, huh?” Kushina yelled out, shaking her fist at the man lying on the street before her and her daughter.
The man looked up in fear at the irate redhead, twitching from her to her blonde daughter and back.
Seeing that he wasn’t going to say anything, she spit down at him in disgust. “It’s assholes like you that shit all over a good day! The Fourth gave his life to seal that damn fox in my baby girl! If I ever hear you say she’s the fox again, you’ll be missing your teeth! Naruko’s not the fox, she’s the damn jailer, you get it!”
When the man failed to reply, she took a menacing step forward. “Do. You. Get. Me.”
“Ye-yes! I get you! Ma’am!” The man cried out in fear.
“Then get out of my sight!” Kushina yelled in anger, causing the man to flee in a scramble to get away from the pissed off retired Jounin.
Kushina just palmed her face and sighed in defeat. The Hokage just smiled in that grandfatherly way he did as he held a hand on a visibly cringing Naruko’s shoulder.
“Daughter, what have I told you about trying to prank people?”
“Don’t get caught?” Naruko hesitantly replied.
“That’s always a good plan to have.” Hiruzen he stated with a chuckle, thinking about the wasabi flavored tea that had gotten served in the staff break room that morning. It was only by pure chance that the girl was caught, but the blonde girl was now awaiting her mother’s judgment.
Kushina shot her ten year old daughter with a look of slight betrayal, having expected the girl to say something along the lines of ‘don’t do it’ instead. “Alright young lady, I hope you’re ready to work your butt off cause, when we get back to the house, you’ve got a thousand chores to do now!”
“Yes, Mama…” Naruko morosely responded, leaving the Hokage’s side to leave with her mother.
Once they had left the Hokage tower, the elder Uzumaki gave a smirk and stated, “I told you, you should have gone with the laxative creamer instead. Takes longer to work but that’s longer for you to get away.”
“Yes, Mama…” Naruko dutifully replied, rolling her eyes at her mom’s statement.
“Why won’t it work?!” Naruko cried out in frustration, kicking the sickly looking bushin laying on the ground, popping it out of existence.
“I’m sorry, Honey, but there’s some things even I can’t fix and this is one of them.” Kushina replied in remorse.
“But why won’t it work?” The blonde girl asked again, flashing through the beginner jutsu to cause another bad bushin to appear.
“You have too much chakra, Honey.” Seeing her daughter’s confused look conveying ‘How can you have too much’ to her, Kushina shook her head. “Think of it this way, what happens when you fill a water balloon too much?”
“It pops.”
“Well, the jutsu is the balloon and your chakra is the water. You’re just going to have to work harder on your chakra control exercises.”
“But I’m always doing those! They aren’t helping!” Naruko exclaimed as she crossed her arms across her chest.
The redheaded mother cupped her chin and thought about it for a bit. It was true that her daughter was practicing control exercises daily, sometimes for hours on end, with very little to show for it. Unfortunately, she grew up with having the massive Uzumaki reserves issue. The main difference was, instead of having the kyuubi sealed from birth, Kushina had had time to adjust to her Uzumaki heritage before getting her ‘coming of age’ gift and her control went all to hell once again after she had it sealed in her.
Maybe it was time for a different approach to this problem.
“Okay, so we can’t turn down the flow of water into the balloon.” Returning to her analogy she asked, “What if we just made the balloon bigger instead?” Seeing her daughter’s confused but interested look, Kushina smirked. “Let me teach you something called ‘Kage Bushin’…
“Hey! My Kage Bushin aren’t freaking target dummies!” Naruko called out in annoyance, summoning up another four before sending them forward.
Sachiko just smirked as she leaped acrobatically into a nearby tree, flinging another two shuruken into the final bushin of the last wave. Flicking her red eyes towards the next group of targets, she yelled back, “Then stop making it so easy! I know you’re better than this!”
Naruko growled, sweat peppering her brow from the strain of continual use of the jutsu. Sachiko unlocking her family’s bloodline had drastically changed their private sparring sessions. She just had to wonder who would run out first, her chakra or her friend’s weapon pouch.
“Congratulations on passing your tests and earning your hitai-ate everyone!” Ikura-sensei proudly called out, getting the newly graduated ninja to settle down some. “Now that you’ve graduated, you will be split up into teams under a Jounin leader. Listen up while I call out names and your new leader!”
“Okay, team seven; Uzumaki Naruko, Uchiha Sachiko, Haruno Sakura. Again, let me congratulate you girls on working so hard. I think this is the first time in the Academy’s history that there was a tie for top student, let alone a tie of three people!”
The class clapped politely, with a few students calling out their own congrats before Ikura tried to get back order to the room.
“Alright now, your instructor is…”
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(Posted Mon, 15 Sep 2014 20:28)
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