Chapter 15
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MARCH- 23 MONTHS
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Naruto hated her life. There was no other way to describe her feelings.
'You can do what I do and hate Uchiha's instead? It'll make you feel better.' Suggested Kurama.
'I do, oh I do. But sadly that doesn't mean I hate all of them. Just some.'
'And the Uchiha's currently in our company do not earn your hatred?' he groaned.
'Sadly, no. Shisui was a loyal shinobi through and through. Obito on the other hand is… an awful lot like me when I was a kid.'
'May I remind you, you were pretending to be a ray of sunshine when in all honesty you were as depressing at this Kakashi is.'
'True.' She didn't even try to deny it.
She bought herself out of her head and watched as Minato tried and failed to create the rasengan. He was doing it so wrong she was refraining from cringing.
"Why don't you break it up into three different steps?" she suggested when, once again his failed rasengan blew up.
He got up from his laying down position on the ground and looked at her. Despite the fact the rasengan was a chakra ball he somehow managed to catch fire to a spike of his hair. Thankfully Kakashi was on standby and got rid of the flame.
"What would you do break it down Naruto?" it was never a question if Naruto could or couldn't do something. Thanks to her having already been taught everything she was doing, it made her seem like some sort of prodigy.
She felt fake whenever they called her one, she was by far a prodigy. Although, thinking about the fact she had mastered sage mode within a month whilst Jiraiya and her father had spent longer on made her feel a lot better.
"Well… since your trying to get your chakra to rotate in several different directions I'd get something to show you're getting the right amount of rotation. So… a water balloon. When you spin the water in several directions that should break the balloon. That can be step one. But you mostly have that part down anyway. Just test it out."
Minato nodded and not even a moment later he hiraishined to the shopping district.
"I think Minato sensei just likes you show off. Like a lot." Said Obito who was sat next to her on a boulder in training ground 32.
"No argument there. How many none hand sign jutsu's does he have?" she asked. The topic of the yondaime had been her favourite however Iruka sensei hadn't gone over all the jutsu's the man had known. Only mentioning the hiraishin as it was a key to winning the third war.
"That shouldn't be our concern. Our concern should be what he intends to call it. We all know what his naming skills are like." Spoke Kakashi as he went over a stream of hand signs without using chakra, testing it out.
Naruto, Shisui and Obito shuddered. "What possesses him to name them what he does? What was that one he named the other day? Um… Spiralling flash super round dance howl style three?" she asked more than stated to which the boys of team Minato nodded, Obito more vigorously than Kakashi.
"I wish he'd listen to me when naming them but he insists the names make them far more remember-able." Grumbled Kushina. She had been told off by ero-sennin and was sulking next to a tree as the sennin sat down a few hundred yards from them, meditating.
"I can hear you Kushina. I shouldn't be able to you." Reminded Jiraiya and just as he said so he got up and signalled for Naruto to join him. She bid everyone farewell, giving everyone a kiss on the cheek as she did so- enjoying how everyone still blushed red like a rose.
Naruto sat atop of Jiraiya's shoulder as he took them to their apartment. Once there they changed their sandals for slippers and entered. Jiraiya had a map and other things sprawled across the dining table which he always made sure to move whenever it was time to eat.
Naruto had hardly ever paid attention to it however she noticed today there were a few circles across the map, "Hey ero-sennin. What are the circles for?"
Jiraiya came out from his bedroom clutching an ink jar and brush before looking at what she was referring to. Recognition dawned on his face as he sat down, "Well, it's mostly places we suspect Iwa and Kumo are keeping their supplies. We won't launch any attacks until we know for sure or at least have more information."
Naruto nodded as she furrowed her brows. As hokage, even though they were at peace, she had been told to read each and every report from the second and third war, and thanks to thousands of shadowclones she had managed to do so within two weeks.
She recalled reading where Iwa and Kumo had kept their supplies and where they had been transporting them from. It took her nearly three minutes before she recalled something, "Here, here and here. Ishi, Kusa and Mountains graveyard are where Iwa were keeping their weapons and… this one over here at the border of Taki and Iwa was where they were keeping a supply of food rations. Bridges also. I know lots of bridges were destroyed during the war but mostly Kannabi Bridge. That one was the key to winning the war." She stated as she made her way into the kitchen.
She had grown three full inches and a half during the past year thanks to a nutritious diet and milk so she no longer required help to reach for some things. It could also be because whatever she needed to reach had been moved to the lower draws so she wouldn't require help to reach them.
She looked in the fridge and sighed. Jiraiya had been out of the village for two weeks so there was hardly anything in the fridge or cupboards so she made a shadowclone and had it do some shopping whilst she tried to organise the mess Jiraiya called his desk.
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MAY- 25 MONTHS
Team Kushina stood infront of the hokage in his office receiving their next mission. That alone was cause for alarm, only ANBU of Hunters received their missions from the hokage himself, and as far as Naruto was aware, none of them were either of those things.
"Team Kushina. Your mission will be a dangerous one and that is why you will be teamed with Team Choza as well as one of the sannin. You will all venture to the village hidden in the frost known as Shimogakure. What you will be doing, that information will be told to the leaders only."
"If you don't mind me asking lord third, why can't we know?" asked Iruka as he looked confusedly at the hokage.
Shisui was the one reply however, "In case we're compromised. Shimogakure is close to the land of lightning and we're currently at war with Kumogakure. If any of us are seen we will most likely to be taken and tortured to find out why we risked being so close."
"If we had the information they would get it and the entire mission would be jeopardized and could fall to ruin depending on what it is." She finished when Shisui didn't continue.
Iruka's eyes were wide when he asked, "Would they really torture a bunch of kids?"
Naruto shrugged apathetically, "Better to kill us young when we pose hardly any threat than to allow us to grow strong enough to kill them." His eyes had yet to return to normal size yet he nodded his head in understanding.
War was hard and took its toll on people. This was her second war however the last one she had been a part of had only lasted a few days, this one was going to last years.
"Your mission starts two days from now as Team Choza is on break. This is a B rank and will last a month so pack supplies for that amount of time and make sure to pack warm. There will be no sun in the land of frost even in summer." He signalled they could leave so each of them bowed and left, heading in their own respective directions.
Kushina and Iruka heading to the family district whilst Naruto and Shisui heading to the Uchiha district.
Team Minato had left for a mission and Jiraiya had also been dispatched to the front lines however Naruto and Shisui were babysitting duty for Aunt Mikoto.
Everything she needed to pack was already in storage scrolls back at hers and Jiraiya's place under his insistence. She had four scrolls with a month worth of clothes in for each of the seasons, dry foods in a different scroll and weapons prepared in another. There was also one more scroll with emergency supplies such as an extra pair of boy clothes, spare weapons, makeup, medicine box and pills. Makeup, whilst sounding girly, was necessary when entering enemy territory without getting caught. Hiding her whisker marks, her blonde hair and Kushina's red hair had become very useful especially since the latter was known and wanted across the five nations.
She looked at the sky and guessed it was around noon, they had just finished arrived back in Konoha the evening before from a C rank and had been called in for the debriefing for their next mission. They weren't going to be needed for another hour at least so she dragged Shisui over to the newly opened Ichiraku Ramen.
It looked the same as she remembered however the cloth was whiter and the posters on the inside were a bit different in design however the menu hadn't changed much. Usually after missions the one teammate got to decide where they go for lunch or dinner and usually it was Ichiraku since three out of four members loved ramen however Naruto like to follow Shisui's footsteps and sometimes requested they go get barbeque or go to the Akimichi restaurant where there was a variety of everything except ramen.
The two sat and waited for their respective orders as they discussed the previous chunin exam. They hadn't taken part in the exam and Naruto was relieved. Despite a war going on she knew none of them were ready for such a promotion.
Genma, Ibiki and Anko had all made chunin however Rin and Obito hadn't much to their dismay. Obito had taken it the hardest as he had been training nonstop for a year with the regimen Jiraiya had given him. He hadn't listened to anyone till Jiraiya had wacked him over the head stating that even if he was taught by all three sennin it wasn't power they were looking at but traits in a person themselves.
As they finished and paid, making their way to the district she thought of how much her life changed since arriving. She missed her home yet at the same time she didn't. It had been that Konoha that had done so many wrongs by her and by many of her citizens yet this Konoha, her home, hadn't and it had potential to become something else. Something beautiful that even the darkest parts would be able to enjoy.
She didn't know when she stopped referring to the other Konoha as home and had instead done so to the one she was in now and it showed she had moved on, but not completely.
The Konoha she had been raised in had been her home, she had loved it, served it and protected it to her last breath and now even after death she protects it. Within this Konoha, her new home, she felt safe. She hadn't felt like that till after the fourth war, when Sasuke had returned and promised to keep her safe, had sworn on his brother's name he wouldn't allow anyone to harm her as she had been harmed as a child.
She didn't know when they arrived at the Uchiha main estate, nor had she realised she had changed her footwear. All she knew was toddler Itachi was tugging on the bandages around her lower leg.
She reached down instinctively and picked him up. His reaction was immediate, he smiled and let out a giggle as his cheeks grew pink. He took to one of his favourite activities when in her hold, tugging and pulling at her loose blonde locks. She didn't mind, the astonished and flabbergast look from Fugaku was enough to make her happy whenever the young Uchiha did those things.
She sat down when the matriarch came in with a tray of tea for them, telling them what they needed to know; when his last change was, when he last had a feed, when and how long he had last slept for. It took a few minutes but they managed to shoo the woman out of her home ten minutes before she was needed at her friend's house.
Itachi was a simple and easy to look after child, a lot was easier than the children she recalled babysitting for the D rank missions she had been subjected to.
By three o'clock Itachi had been fed, changed and put to sleep so the two of them left him in his cot, going outside only after Naruto left two clones with him.
The garden was beautiful with its simplicity. There were bushes lining the outer rim of the garden each trimmed into a perfect sphere, on one side there were home grown vegetables and the opposite side held a few colourful plants, and as per the standard Konoha garden, there were several trees of different sizes and different shades of green. The leaves were all a darker shade than the grass so whenever a leaf fell, it was easy to tell and move out of the way or use to trip someone over.
Namely Shisui.
As they were often together they often trained and studied, which of course left Iruka upset that he couldn't join them to which they stated he preferred the company of his family than the two of them. Usually they had a third person with them; Kakashi, Obito, Minato, Kushina, Mikoto or a member of their graduating class.
Out of the fifteen teams that had passed the initial test five made it to genin, the highest number ever. Naruto had raked her memory and she didn't recall anything like this happening and chalked it down to one of the many changes that occurred because of her being there. The maximum during the war had been four.
When she asked Jiraiya if he thought the others were ready he had said, "No one is ever ready for war. However, they know what to do, they are also being led by very competent shinobi who have years of experience. Each jonin instructor took part in the second war and will not allow any harm to intentionally befall their students."
His answer hadn't reassured her in the least, in fact she questioned if he was even in his right mind to say something like that. Taking on a genin team wasn't easy, one had to have lots of mental stability not because genin were brats or hard to look after. No. you needed the stability because of the loss. No one was invincible, one little mistake or oversight could lead to disaster. Take Kakashi, Obito had 'died' during Kannabi bridge then Rin had jumped in front of his chidori. He blamed himself for both of their deaths and then his rocks, Minato and Kushina had been killed as well.
Kakashi lost everyone he loved in such a short amount of time, and within his grief he immersed himself in the darkest depth of the shinobi world. Yet he had still taken on a team even though he could have lost any of them.
She didn't understand any of this till she had taken Konohamaru as her unofficial apprentice and she understood somewhat what it must have been like during the mission in Wave. Seeing Sasuke, who looked dead and seeing Naruto lose control over himself must has stopped the man's heart, yet he never faltered.
"Hey Naruto are you paying attention?" she was shaken, literally, out of her own little world by Shisui who was holding her shoulders in a vice grip.
"Sorry, sorry. I got lost in my head for a bit there." He nodded his head in understanding, she did that a lot after all.
He sat back down with a book, scroll and some ink, "I need help with this one. I'm not sure what it is I'm looking at." He groaned slightly just looking at it and when Naruto had a look she understood why.
Being the students of Kushina Uzumaki had its perks, namely she enjoyed teaching them fuinjutsu, which was a topic she hadn't had much research material on the last time.
"Well… It looks to be a barrier seal?" she asked more than stated, it was another seal she hadn't seen before but she could see the writing at summarised what she understood.
"You don't sound too confident." He replied, chewing his lip piercing- well more of a chakra rod which Pein had. Each member of the team had one besides Kushina, who had her upper ear pierced. It was similar to what the Ino-Shika-Cho trio did but Naruto liked it. A piercing to forever bind their team.
They used chakra rods which were all linked by fuinjutsu so should you charge chakra into the rod, it would release a distress signal to the other rods, the closer you were to the rod in distress the more chakra went into it.
She remembered meeting Shisui's dad for the first time, the day they had gotten their piercings, the man's face had been comical. His face was mostly blank however by Uchiha standards it was dramatic. His eyes widened by a fraction, mouth slightly open and Naruto was sure the man would have activated the sharingan and given a lecture had Kushina not intervened.
"I don't know for sure… Well!" she clapped her hands and began to rub them together, eyes twinkling, "We're just gonna have to break it down now aren't we?!" with that the two of them got to work.
now aren't we?!" with that the two of them got to work.