A slight sealing mishap
"Go ahead, Kushina-chan." Raijin-sama nudged her from behind him towards the sealing array on the floor.
Kushina trudged along, careful not to let her shoes smudge the array. It looked so simple and beautiful, but there were changes to the array that she's never seen done before. The outer diamond had the cardinal directions at the edges, which were par for the course, except they were inverted. North was South and East was West. Inside the diamond was a circle and in between the two shapes were litterings of her name and descriptions of her, they even put in her hair and eye color. Within the circle, that was where the biggest change was. Instead of the usual 5 elements, they changed the traditional character for wind and replaced it with sky. and they all surrounded a symbol for thing.
She'd been surrounded by seals her whole life, learned to hold a brush and paint before learning to walk, but they were always told that the five elements were sacred. The main 5 held the balance with which they manipulated the material world and messing with them would require recalibrating all the other elements to hold together the element they removed. But here, they only changed one element, there was no other rebalancing done. And the symbol in the center should mean that they were trying to summon a thing so that wouldn't affect the calculations.
"How did you balance the lack of the wind in this seal?" Kushina looked up at Raijin, her blue eyes full of questions.
Uzumaki Raijin, her sealing teacher and one of the clan's scholars who practically lived in their library, smiled. His sea blue eyes warming at the bubbling curiosity from the child. Uzushio children grew up with seals and played with them the way ninjas played with chakra and the samurais with their swords. But just like all studies, no one bothered to go deeper that surface level. They just took enough to use it and ignored the complexity in its building blocks. Kushina was one of the rare ones, who would devour seal theory books and would want to understand how each part worked before even putting the tiniest bit of chakra into the seal. That was why he took on the task of being her teacher, even though he knew she would never stay long enough to learn everything.
"The wind balance didn't actually change. We used the word kaze for wind because that's what we're used to, but if you look back to when we first experimented with sealing, the word for sky was also used to define wind or space. See, we wanted to summon something for you, but we're not creating it. So we're going using both space and wind together to pull something here. But you would also need to make sure that you fill the seals in order of fire, earth, lightning, sky, then water. Because your nature is wind and water, not sky and water. The sky will also assist in balancing the lightning so it’s better to do that one after the other.”
Kushina nodded in understanding, slowly digesting what her teacher told her. Raijin waited to see if the girl would have more questions for him.
"Can I borrow the scrolls on ancient seal language when I go to Konoha, sensei? I promise I'll bring it back." Kushina grasped her teacher's robes as she implored him with her eyes to agree.
"You really love seals, don't you?" Raijin laughed, his gold earrings jingled against his long red hair as it joined the sound of laughter. "You don't have to borrow the book. I'll give it to you as a gift to keep you company in Konoha."
Kushina's eyes sparkled as she gave a wide smile.
"I'll learn everything in that scroll and become the greatest sealmaster ever, dattebane!" She declared proudly, raising a fist to the sky.
"Of course." Her teacher replied indulgently, "But first, we have to summon your other gift. Who knows, you might like this pet more than your scrolls."
Kushina nodded and quickly knelt down on top of the North symbol. Although the directions were reversed, the north was still the point of reference and since her chakra would be that reference, it was better for her to start north. She slowly used her chakra to fill out the diamond outline, careful in making sure she didn’t touch the words inside until the diamond was fully filled.
Once the diamond had turned green from her chakra, she slowly filled out her name, then her age, sex, height, hair color, and eye color. When they were all done, she concentrated on the contents of the circle. Fire first because that was directly opposing her water nature, then earth for stability, then lightning, sky, and lastly water. When they all turned green and there was no sign of the seal malfunctioning. She then filled out the center ring, the seal for thing.
The moment the last seal filled with her chakra, the entire lit up and flooded the entire room with light. Kushina cut off her chakra to lift her hands to her face, shielding it from the light. The light was gone as fast as it arrived, allowing Raijin and Kushina to look at what the seal summoned.
There, right in the middle of the sealing circle, sat a young girl, a few years younger than Kushina. Her pink her fluttered around her face as she quickly looked around the room until she settled on Kushina, looking at her with confusion in her bright green eyes.