The Decemberist : Part II [YonShi, KushiMina, KyuuYon, KyuuOC; R]
Title: The Decemberist: Part Two ∙∙∙ Lookingglass
Author: the_lady_lamb
Genre: Naruto
Sub-genre: Angst/Romance
Summary: (Part II: Chapters XXI-XXV) Namikaze Minato is nothing other than what he makes himself, but he knows that the war that makes itself affront him is not the war he sould really worry about. He just doesn't know how much until he meets Her.
Rated: R for semi-gratuitous violence and sexually suggestive themes.
Author's Notes: What started out small has blown into something I never expected. (For you guys, yukari_rin and fujiwara_san.)
The Decemberist
PART TWO ∙∙∙ LOOKINGGLASS
xxi.
It is indeed (as Kyuubi said) through the acceleration of the Great War that brings him into contact with Kushina, distressingly enough, and he thinks later that without it he would be both incredibly less and incredibly more fortunate. It is a restless game he ends up playing with himself over Kushina; a restless game that he has inevitably played over Shisui for some time now. In being a person based on first impression, he deceives himself into a false sense of security the first time they meet, and so it is that his fate is sealed. (So it is that the strings are all tied into their correct spaces. Their correct knots.)
It all begins with Minato’s decision to go with Hyuuga Hizashi’s ANBU squadron to the Whirlpool Front to Konoha’s north - the Whirlpool is a small village in its decline, reclusive and tightly knit, with large families and long-held grudges against the rest of ninja civilization. Their alliance with the Leaf is new and desperate, a dark and ominous sign of their shinobi’s long-acclaimed sense of pride giving in to necessity at long last. They’re engaged in a perilous battle with the Land of Cloud, a much larger nation that has expressed a desire to extort their jutsu-based connections with the ocean to take revenge on the ninja of the Mist. The Hyuuga have long detested the Cloud and so it is with little resistance that, at the Sandaime’s brief request, a large majority of their remaining ANBU ranked members agree to go.
Minato’s agreement stems from curiosity, really. To his credit, he does not decide to go simply because he hears that it is going on. Sarutoubi comes to him explicitly a few weeks after they begin speaking again, informs him of a strange desire he has for Minato to join the expedition. He’s the fastest ninja they have, he says - the Whirlpool Front needs to be defended so that the Cloud-nin do not descend on Konoha next. The Leaf has neither the strength nor the numbers to deal with them.
So it is that he and Shisui kiss goodbye one morning - she is headed for the Grass and Rain Front to the West. He’s desperately worried about her, worried for good reason since that is the Leaf’s most volatile and hectic front, seeing that the villages that once were individuals, Grass and Rain, have become naught but no-mans-land since they became the only land separating the Leaf and Rock superpowers. She waves it off, though, holds his face gently between her hands, and speaks softly so that only he can hear her, so that the pale morning blooming against the sky seems strange, unromantic in comparison to her.
And she says, gently, “I promise. I’ll be fine.”
And he believes her.
He goes out to meet his own group on the lookout tower of the North Gate, puts on an unfamiliar mask that he has never used and dresses in clothing he would not naturally dress in, and nods to them as if he is a part of their operation and always has been. They nod back to him in the same fashion and Sandaime bids them good luck and Minato takes a long last look at his home. (It is the last he will see of it for almost four solid months.) Kakashi does not come to see him off and so, Minato thinks, it is not like he is leaving permanently at all. (It is not like he is Jiraiya at all.) Guilt does not plague him yet. They all nod to one another in silent greeting, in silent blessing, in silent parting.
They take off and run for nearly two days straight. The Fire Nation is far wider than he thought it was - maps cannot accurately portray how deeply situated Konoha is in it, and they’ve covered more ground than he thought existed in the world. They cover nearly fifty-one kilometers in those two days, never stopping to rest, and when they finally do stop to set up camp, they have to walk another three before they do, since just stopping would cause them to go into a perhaps irreversible paralysis. While they’re pitching the tents they’ll sleep in for exactly nine hours and thirty minutes before continuing, several of the younger members simply collapse and sleep where the fall. Minato avoids doing so only by willpower alone.
When he wakes, Hyuuga Hizashi is sitting respectfully at his side, long black hair held by a tie at the back of his head that is used to hanging much lower on his back. Their masks are off, though Minato in his dazed exhaustion cannot really recall if he took it off or not. His muscles feel sore and beaten in. Hizashi’s pale eyes lock on his as he blinks awake, head throbbing unmercifully.
”…it will get worse instead of better.”
Minato doesn’t have the presence of mind to think on whether that is meant as a comment to strengthen or a comment to degrade. There is a possibility that it is just a statement of a fact, after all. Minato really doesn’t have the presence of mind to think on it. He doesn’t even have the presence of mind to make a reply of any relevance. He says the first halfway coherent thing that comes into his head.
”Your wife’s going to give birth soon, isn’t she?”
Hizashi stands up, posture stiff. ”…you should get your wits about you. We’re due to leave again very shortly.” He seems uncomfortable with the topic, and Minato nods, feeling queasy.
”I’m sorry. That was rude of me.”
Hizashi shakes his head. “It’s fine, Namikaze-kun.” He makes as to leave the tent, opens the flap a ways with the back of his hand. The dying sunlight that thrusts its unruly head across Minato’s face makes him groan unsteadily and Hizashi casts him a calm, disaffected look over his shoulder. “You can’t really understand the politics of it.”
Minato’s voice is floaty in his distress, in his exhaustion. “I’m sorry. I meant to congratulate you about it. I’m sure your child will be a very strong person.” He’s not sure exactly what he’s saying, but can recognize that Hizashi’s taking offense. He strains to pull himself out of the fog of sleep, out of the pained haze he’s still waist-deep in. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it was- That was rude of me. That was rude.”
”Namikaze-kun, really. It’s fine.” Hizashi surveys him in a gentle, analytical sort of way. “You can’t really understand the reason for the event’s sadness. I don’t expect you too. It isn’t for you fret over; honestly, it isn’t for anyone to fret over. I’m not even sure why I do it.” There’s a short silence while the man turns back to the sunset before him, stares into it. “Things are as things are. Escaping…one’s fate…the course of one’s life as it’s been decided…is impossible. My child’s suffering is as inevitable as my own. It’s unavoidable.”
”Do you think the leaders have aspirin?”
”Put your mask on and run it off, Namikaze-kun.” Hizashi pushes his way out of the tent. “Like I’ve said: it will get worse instead of better. Embrace that, or you’ll never make it through.”
xxii.
They run three more days, stopping twice for rest, before they reach the Fire-Whirlpool Nation border. They come to a group halt, standing in a tight octagon on tree branches some ninety feet above the ground. Minato keeps a good hold on his charka control; he has no desire to fall, and there’s an exhausted panicky fear that blankets his stomach now and makes him think that it is more than possible that he might.
They wait for a few minutes before three ninja dressed in uniforms very different from their own (but in masks that are not quite so different from their own) crash into a landing on a few trees just in front of them. From their figures, Minato can see that it is three men - a very tall one with bright red hair unlike any he has ever seen that hangs long down his back, and the other two around average height with brown. Their whole countenance is ever-shifting, and he is reminded, strangely, of the ocean, constantly lapsing and relapsing back into and out of themselves. Their charka wraps around the trees in a liquid fashion rather than simply tethering them to one another. For a long time, both groups simply stand and marvel at one another. Both groups are inevitably curious, just for the sake of their immense differences. This time is no different.
Finally, the man with red hair speaks. His voice is a deep, thrilling baritone, the kind that can make women of all sexual preferences gasp and swoon. “Your troops look rather exhausted, Umino-san.”
Umino Katsuya, a strong man of blunt skill and semi-sweet demeanor, stands a little taller. His mask, a fish, does little to portray his facial expression, but it truly seems that his change in stance makes it look a little prouder of itself. His pride of in his men is distinguished and striking, and it aids Minato’s faith. “I should’ve expected you, Uzumaki-kun. Is it true you’re leading the country’s forces now? I’ve heard your father’s quite ill.”
”Mm, yes. I suppose that’s true.” Minato can hear the man smile, even though his voice is hampered by the piece of wood that covers his face, masks his identity. “He’s quite a stubborn man by nature, of course. I’ve known him for quite a long time, after all.” Minato chuckles softly. He can practically see the man’s expression, regardless of the mask. His voice is vivid in a very precise manner, friendly in a way that’s womanizing and familiar to him. (He trained with Jiraiya for quite a while, after all.) “And I know that he won’t die. Our victory will heal what medicine cannot.”
”A good cause to be certain. Are we in the midst of fighting?”
The red haired man nods and his comrades shift restlessly, as if they are nervous and want desperately to get back to the battlefield so that they might mend things. The one with darker hair speaks, his own voice reedy and thin. “Kaigyo and Keisui have it secured, sir. But we are…we would like to get back.”
Red breaks back in, “On the condition that your troops do not need rest. If they do, they won’t be of use to us until they’ve had some.”
And Minato surprises himself by speaking. (By his resolve.)
”We’re alright.”
Beside him, Hizashi nods with the same automatic intensity.
”We’ll be of service to you in any way we can.”
Red’s smile is back in his voice again.
”Excellent. Welcome, then, to Uzugakure.”
xxiii.
The Whirlpool-nin’s landing of choice turns out to be a large brackish lake only about a kilometer from the ANBU’s original landing spot - it’s a struggle, since it’s most of their first time landing on water from such a height, and while the resident shinobi do so flawlessly, the ANBU have quite a bit of difficulty. Many plunge straight in and have to scramble out and try to look as if that was what they intended on. Minato manages to only sink in to his thighs. Hizashi is the only one who only gets his feet wet, which Minato could’ve guessed would happen.
Red whips off his mask with a flourish, revealing himself to have a long, slender and attractive face, with bright brown eyes and a mouth like Kakashi’s. His comrades do the same, but Umino motions for his own team to keep theirs on.
”The enemy doesn’t need to know what nation we’re from.”
They nod, understanding, and the last few shinobi dejectedly pull themselves up out of the water, which is salty and bad-tasting. Red offers them a sheepish smile, apologizing. “Sorry about that. I suppose we should’ve warned you; you get used to doing it, when you do it all the time. When you grow up this way…well, we kind of forget. It’ll get easier.”
Minato and the rest of them nod obligingly just as another man - this one a head shorter than the taller one in front of them, but with the same eyes and hair (only shorter and shaggier) and a wide, puckish grin on his face - catapults out of the sky and lands in front of them with a small bang. The water pulses away from his feet, rocking beneath them, and Minato, Hizashi, Umino, and one other man are the only Konoha shinobi who manage not to fall back into it with the motion.
The boy looks over at the quizzically. “…what are we, taking applications now? ‘Come join the Whirlpool Nation, we have refreshments’? ‘Three bucks to get in, bring a friend’?”
Their tour guide snorts and ruffles his hair. “Kaigyo. You should be more polite. They’ve come to help us.”
Kaigyo wrinkles his nose. “Yeah, uh, about that? They don’t look too helpful. Seeing that,” he looks around the taller man, counts with his fingers, “all but four of them are now underwater.” He folds his arms derisively. “And I didn’t even land that hard.”
The Konoha shinobi recover, looking disgruntled. One of the Whirlpool brunettes glares at Kaigyo, folding his arms in a similar fashion. “The hell you did. You ought to have a hazard sign taped to your neck. You could sink this whole damn country on your own if you wanted to.”
”Who could?” Another man leaps out of nowhere, but his own landing hardly disturbs the water at all. His hair falls in silky layers that frame his face, another stunning shade of red, his eyes a pale blue that matches the water. “Amenbou,” he says, addressing Red, “what is he talking about?”
”Nothing serious.” Red - Amenbou - glances over his shoulder at them, most of them evidently still nervous that the water will fall out from underneath them. “Our dear friends from Konohagakure are simply learning that salt water has a very different consistency than they’re used to. …and that aerial landings are tricky the first few times.”
Kaigyo snickers. “Is that what all that splashing was about? Too bad I wasn’t here to see it. I bet it was practically photo-worthy.”
”You know,” Amenbou says, voice high and scolding, “you’re really quite a pretentious brat.” He looks over at the unnamed redhead, the newest arrival. “Keisui, I thought you two were leading the opposition.”
Kaigyo rubs the area under his nose lightly. “Princess showed up. Didn’t have to.”
Amenbou groans lowly through his teeth. “Aren’t those stitches in her back still mending?”
”They weren’t bleeding last time I checked.”
”Yes, I’m sure that’ll be her argument, too.”
”I dunno. I think she’s kinda got a point.”
”I’m sure you do.” Amenbou turns to Keisui, folding his arms in an authoritative distaste. “Aren’t we trying that new Cut-and-Run strategy that Ayu-chan came up with? You’re supposed to be backing her up atleast.”
The other two go very, very quiet. Amenbou watches them for a while.
”…don’t tell me they chased you off.”
”Chased Kaigyo off,” Keisui says, rolling his shoulders somewhat lazily. “I just happened to follow suit.”
”You two are perhaps the most useless-“
But he never finishes his sentence, because Kaigyo whips around, searching the close horizon for a second before cupping his mouth to holler out a name that will completely define the next two years of Minato’s life. (The very last two years of Minato’s life.) He cups his hands around his wide mouth and yells into the waterfront:
”HEY KUSHINA!”
The first thing Minato knows of her is her blade - a meter and a half long, nineteen centimeters wide, and six centimeters thick at it’s widest point (which is the center). It is a long, rectangular blade with no sheath or embossing whatsoever, with long sharp edges that can strike through any bone at the right momentum and a wide thirteen-by-thirteen centimeter hole driven into one end of it. It comes down out of the sky and collides with the body of an enemy that springs from the water only a few meters from them, and then keeps spinning, boomeranging back to catch on her wrist, which is nimble.
He doesn’t have time to truly study her - notices only the incredibly short stature (158.5 centimeters tall, he will later learn), the blood-sunrise head of hair that is identical to Amenbou’s, Kaigyo’s, and Keisui’s (her three older brothers; she is the youngest and, much more importantly, the only girl) and the pale blue-gray eyes that seem to match nothing save the very sea itself, which is ironic, since the real ocean is several tens of kilometers to their immediate east. She whips into another hoard of upcoming enemies in a flurry just as a taller, much darker woman lands beside her, and from then on it’s a circus show, and Minato and his comrades simply sit and stare until it’s ended with a clang of metal and a dying groan from one of the Clouds.
Kushina twirls her blade, the infamous Ama-no-Uzume, around her wrist to slow its momentum, and she looks like a very small, busty girl with a hula-hoop. She throws her hand out straighter; it juts out stilly with its edges glinting; she swings it up over her shoulder and breasts by a strap none of them saw before.
”The guys from Konoha, yeah? God, you all look like fags.”
xxiv.
The Uzumaki siblings - and that is what they are - argue the whole time they’re escorting the ANBU to the center of Uzugakure, and while they do so, Minato takes advantage of the distraction and surveys the place that he’ll be (in Hizashi’s words) “trapped indefinitely”.
The Land of the Whirlpool is a very small territory, landlocked between a long strip of no-man’s-land on the Land of Fire’s northern-most border and mountainous Land Hidden in the Clouds. The only way to go is backwards from a militarist standpoint, the west and south being a yet unblockaded but treacherously dangerous coastline, and economically the land is hardy and difficult. With sand soil and a terrain spattered with wide, emerald stretches of forest, and tortured with brackish water of almost three dozen inland seas, the only things that grow are things that have been growing here since the beginning of time. Politically, even, the Land of Whirlpool is an inhospitable one, the residents having been carefully grown of the bitter, twisted, hickory personality of the land they live on; strange and unpredictable except in their pride and honor, the ninja of Uzugakure have been historically friends of no one.
This being said, though, the Village of Uzugakure itself looks far better than he initially expected it to. At first glance, the huts (roofed with water reeds) are barbaric and impractical looking on their stilts, raised above the floodline. But, on actual study, there is no evidence of war left upon them, excepting the occasional house with a closed door. It is these that he watches most confusedly, mostly because of the wide, circular spiral on each of their wood, positioned directly on the woodwork surrounding the door handle.
Amenbou glances back, noticing the catch of his attention, just as Kaigyo and Kushina begin going at it most heatedly. He speaks softly.
”To respect the soldiers that have perished.”
Minato nods vaguely and they move on, the Uzumaki siblings bickering about something he can’t quite grasp because he can’t follow their conversation. They seem to leap without thought from one comment to another, none of them having much of anything to do with one another. He studies the world around him, instead, noting softly and to himself that, save the spiral marks, there is no damage of any real consequence that has been done to the village itself. It is free of offensive blemishes; there are no burned buildings, no craters marking battles, no bodies. Only the solemn silence marks the presence of war here, and it almost seems that, that being the case, their presence here is unnecessary.
He thinks very differently in seconds, as they step into the cement building of the Shinobi Barracks.
The Barracks themselves are a long, two-story building raised off the ground in the same way as the others, and so they walk up a short staircase to get to the double metal doors. It has a very simple internal structure, fundamentally a long, narrow hallway faced on either sides of open-walled rooms of rows upon rows of unoccupied bunkbeds. The hall of beds comprises only three-fourths of the ground floor, leading directly to another sets of doors that opens into an expansive, tiled room comprise of dozens upon dozens of cubicles housing showerheads. The second floor is a cafeteria-style dining hall not unlike the one Minato can recall using with Shisui and Sanosuke during the Chuunin exams.
(It had been a long walk down many stairs, he remembered - Sanosuke’s cheek had still been bruised and so Minato and he were not on speaking terms throughout the entire ordeal. Shisui was patient with both of them, probably because it amused her quite a great deal, and so the memory of it was a pleasant, if slightly choppy and faded one. Minato hadn’t been able to look her in the eye all through that first dinner, the memory of how boldly he’d kissed her on the landing still fresh and embarrassing in his young mind. She had been able to tell, of course, because she was both incredibly psychic with him and a woman, and so she’d gotten him to look at through trickery, and Minato had found his face smarting with an exothermic heat-
”Minato-kun?”
”What?”
And she’d smiled at him, lighting his cheeks on fire.
”You’ll pass the salt, won’t you?”)
”How many of your shinobi are being housed here?”
”All of them.” Keisui folds his arms, glances over. “Roughly a hundred and ninety, assuming I’ve counted right.”
Umino speaks through his mask. “This is a village of almost four hundred, is it not?”
”Their families,” Amenbou says lightly. “With you, our forces almost match our civilian population, though.”
There’s a long silence.
Somebody in the back of the group swears under his breath.
Minato is apt to agree.
xxv.
It is Amenbou’s task, as the Whirlpool-nin’s commanding officer, to divide the Leaf-nin into the cells they’ll be working in; the Uzumaki siblings are four in number, and so the whole of the Whirlpool army is divided and assigned to report to one of each of them. Uzugakure is exactly one-hundred-ninety-two shinobi strong, meaning that without the Leaf-nin, each Uzumaki sibling has exactly forty-eight soldiers under their command. The argument on their way to the Barracks was apparently based on the fact that, with them, the distribution is uneven, with two siblings having fifty soldiers, and the other two having fifty-one. Inevitably, of course, the older siblings - Amenbou and Keisui - are the ones who take care of fifty-one, their seniority being enough to argue their place as decent leaders. Kushina is too young and too brash, and Kaigyo is too unnecessarily rude and condescending. Hours later, as Minato is climbing into his assigned bunk and dwelling on the pain in his chest, he overhears the former arguing with them again, her red voice course with a bitter sense of entitlement.
”I take care of forces you don’t even know you have, Keisui! I’m out there kicking the enemy’s ass while you’re here lounging around and sitting on yours! This is fucking ridiculous!”
Amenbou’s voice is strained, and Minato can tell that he’s the peacekeeper of the family. (Fellow peacekeepers always recognize one another, after all. And, even including the time he punched Sanosuke, that is what Minato has always been. He’s reminded of Obito. His insides constrict unpleasantly. Oh, the cruelly enduring spoils of war.) “Kushina, calm down. We’re not doubting your ability.”
”You are so! Don’t even go there! This whole damn thing is about doubting my ability! I’m not four years old anymore, dammit! I can handle me, and I can handle them, so why don’t you just-“
”Because you’re too energetic. Dammit, do you not get it? Do you not get it?” Keisui’s voice is equally stern and Minato lays back quietly, watching the ceiling and he thinks he knows who is going to win this argument. “We’re in a war, Little Sister. We’re in a war, and there is a chance, every fucking time we’re out there, that everyone we care about is gunna get killed and it’s going to be our fault. Dad’s dying, Kushina. Dying. People around you are dying, people you’ve known your whole damn life! And you just keep going on and on like this is- like it’s a game! Like its some stupid game we’re playing!”
”I do not! I do not!”
”Yeah! Yeah, you do!”
”Both of you stop it!”
”Dammit, I understand the fucking severity of the situation! You bastard! What the hell do you take me for? I’m a shinobi, goddammit, a good one! Better than you! And I’m going to fucking win this fucking war, do you understand me? I’m gunna win while you’re sitting around on your fucking girly prissass and whining about how I’m too young to understand!”
”Yeah, you do that. I hear four-year-olds win wars all the damn time!”
There’s a wicked crack of flesh impacting flesh and a cry from a masculine set of vocal chords and then Amenbou’s voice rises.
”Apologize to your brother, Kushina.”
Silence.
”Apologize.”
Kushina’s voice, still unfamiliar to his ears, most especially in its choked softness, comes out solemnly. He tries to imagine the look on her face, but the voice goes so awkwardly with the cocky grin he was introduced to this afternoon that he cannot. ”I understand the severity, fuckwad.”
Keisui sounds bitterly sardonic. ”Yeah, because slugging me in the face just screams of a mature sense of understanding.”
”Screw yourself.”
And that’s the end of it - she storms back through the double doors to the showers, red hair billowing, face painted in a sovereign, religious anger. Her motion is so violent that it startles Minato a short ways from his pillow, instinctively, and she catches the motion from one of the corners of her storm cloud eyes (they look so familiar, he thinks, which is strange; he’s never seen that color of eye before. They look like a stormy sea, rocked by powerful deities of weather, rain-swollen tides that he has never looked upon himself) and wheels on him.
There is a second when he thinks, idly, that she’s going to scream at him, which makes him deeply uncomfortable, because they hardly know each other, and Minato really doesn’t like being screamed at. It occurs to him that he’s been eavesdropping, inadvertently, and that he should apologize, once she’s finished. He hopes she won’t scream at him. He frowns to himself. He really, really detests being screamed at, since he makes a point of not necessarily associating much with people who scream.
She doesn’t scream at him though. She just looks at him angrily for a long, long time, before speaking very steadily.
”…you’re better looking than I thought you’d be.”
He is baffled by the statement, desperately wary of it. “…thank you.”
”You got a girlfriend?”
Again he is put off his guard, and wavers slightly. Kushina’s pushed him off his carefully constructed center. His sense of safety, sense of self is both thrown off and fitfully misplaced. His eyes cloud themselves and he moves back restlessly, before nodding at her vaguely, still puzzled by her. (The questions are so direct. So tactless.)
The twist of a smirk on her lips is so nasty he’s tempted to recoil from it.
”She must just loathe you.”
She stalks off, then, no doubt satisfied with herself, and he watches her small back silently, chest heaving with a lonely graceless pain. He stays very still from a few moments, Hizashi silent below him, staring out into the unfamiliar darkness until Kushina has long vanished from it. He has not the energy to wonder after her older brothers, nor even after the rest of the world. He is suddenly stricken with an unbelievable tiredness, and he finally turns back to the opposite wall and sinks back into his bedclothes.
Hizashi speaks quietly up to him.
”She doesn’t, you know.”
Minato is silent for a long time.
”…thank you, Hizashi.”
CHAPTERS XXVI-XXX
CHAPTERS XXXI-XXXV
CHAPTERS XXXVI-XXXX
Author: the_lady_lamb
Genre: Naruto
Sub-genre: Angst/Romance
Summary: (Part II: Chapters XXI-XXV) Namikaze Minato is nothing other than what he makes himself, but he knows that the war that makes itself affront him is not the war he sould really worry about. He just doesn't know how much until he meets Her.
Rated: R for semi-gratuitous violence and sexually suggestive themes.
Author's Notes: What started out small has blown into something I never expected. (For you guys, yukari_rin and fujiwara_san.)
The Decemberist
PART TWO ∙∙∙ LOOKINGGLASS
xxi.
It is indeed (as Kyuubi said) through the acceleration of the Great War that brings him into contact with Kushina, distressingly enough, and he thinks later that without it he would be both incredibly less and incredibly more fortunate. It is a restless game he ends up playing with himself over Kushina; a restless game that he has inevitably played over Shisui for some time now. In being a person based on first impression, he deceives himself into a false sense of security the first time they meet, and so it is that his fate is sealed. (So it is that the strings are all tied into their correct spaces. Their correct knots.)
It all begins with Minato’s decision to go with Hyuuga Hizashi’s ANBU squadron to the Whirlpool Front to Konoha’s north - the Whirlpool is a small village in its decline, reclusive and tightly knit, with large families and long-held grudges against the rest of ninja civilization. Their alliance with the Leaf is new and desperate, a dark and ominous sign of their shinobi’s long-acclaimed sense of pride giving in to necessity at long last. They’re engaged in a perilous battle with the Land of Cloud, a much larger nation that has expressed a desire to extort their jutsu-based connections with the ocean to take revenge on the ninja of the Mist. The Hyuuga have long detested the Cloud and so it is with little resistance that, at the Sandaime’s brief request, a large majority of their remaining ANBU ranked members agree to go.
Minato’s agreement stems from curiosity, really. To his credit, he does not decide to go simply because he hears that it is going on. Sarutoubi comes to him explicitly a few weeks after they begin speaking again, informs him of a strange desire he has for Minato to join the expedition. He’s the fastest ninja they have, he says - the Whirlpool Front needs to be defended so that the Cloud-nin do not descend on Konoha next. The Leaf has neither the strength nor the numbers to deal with them.
So it is that he and Shisui kiss goodbye one morning - she is headed for the Grass and Rain Front to the West. He’s desperately worried about her, worried for good reason since that is the Leaf’s most volatile and hectic front, seeing that the villages that once were individuals, Grass and Rain, have become naught but no-mans-land since they became the only land separating the Leaf and Rock superpowers. She waves it off, though, holds his face gently between her hands, and speaks softly so that only he can hear her, so that the pale morning blooming against the sky seems strange, unromantic in comparison to her.
And she says, gently, “I promise. I’ll be fine.”
And he believes her.
He goes out to meet his own group on the lookout tower of the North Gate, puts on an unfamiliar mask that he has never used and dresses in clothing he would not naturally dress in, and nods to them as if he is a part of their operation and always has been. They nod back to him in the same fashion and Sandaime bids them good luck and Minato takes a long last look at his home. (It is the last he will see of it for almost four solid months.) Kakashi does not come to see him off and so, Minato thinks, it is not like he is leaving permanently at all. (It is not like he is Jiraiya at all.) Guilt does not plague him yet. They all nod to one another in silent greeting, in silent blessing, in silent parting.
They take off and run for nearly two days straight. The Fire Nation is far wider than he thought it was - maps cannot accurately portray how deeply situated Konoha is in it, and they’ve covered more ground than he thought existed in the world. They cover nearly fifty-one kilometers in those two days, never stopping to rest, and when they finally do stop to set up camp, they have to walk another three before they do, since just stopping would cause them to go into a perhaps irreversible paralysis. While they’re pitching the tents they’ll sleep in for exactly nine hours and thirty minutes before continuing, several of the younger members simply collapse and sleep where the fall. Minato avoids doing so only by willpower alone.
When he wakes, Hyuuga Hizashi is sitting respectfully at his side, long black hair held by a tie at the back of his head that is used to hanging much lower on his back. Their masks are off, though Minato in his dazed exhaustion cannot really recall if he took it off or not. His muscles feel sore and beaten in. Hizashi’s pale eyes lock on his as he blinks awake, head throbbing unmercifully.
”…it will get worse instead of better.”
Minato doesn’t have the presence of mind to think on whether that is meant as a comment to strengthen or a comment to degrade. There is a possibility that it is just a statement of a fact, after all. Minato really doesn’t have the presence of mind to think on it. He doesn’t even have the presence of mind to make a reply of any relevance. He says the first halfway coherent thing that comes into his head.
”Your wife’s going to give birth soon, isn’t she?”
Hizashi stands up, posture stiff. ”…you should get your wits about you. We’re due to leave again very shortly.” He seems uncomfortable with the topic, and Minato nods, feeling queasy.
”I’m sorry. That was rude of me.”
Hizashi shakes his head. “It’s fine, Namikaze-kun.” He makes as to leave the tent, opens the flap a ways with the back of his hand. The dying sunlight that thrusts its unruly head across Minato’s face makes him groan unsteadily and Hizashi casts him a calm, disaffected look over his shoulder. “You can’t really understand the politics of it.”
Minato’s voice is floaty in his distress, in his exhaustion. “I’m sorry. I meant to congratulate you about it. I’m sure your child will be a very strong person.” He’s not sure exactly what he’s saying, but can recognize that Hizashi’s taking offense. He strains to pull himself out of the fog of sleep, out of the pained haze he’s still waist-deep in. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it was- That was rude of me. That was rude.”
”Namikaze-kun, really. It’s fine.” Hizashi surveys him in a gentle, analytical sort of way. “You can’t really understand the reason for the event’s sadness. I don’t expect you too. It isn’t for you fret over; honestly, it isn’t for anyone to fret over. I’m not even sure why I do it.” There’s a short silence while the man turns back to the sunset before him, stares into it. “Things are as things are. Escaping…one’s fate…the course of one’s life as it’s been decided…is impossible. My child’s suffering is as inevitable as my own. It’s unavoidable.”
”Do you think the leaders have aspirin?”
”Put your mask on and run it off, Namikaze-kun.” Hizashi pushes his way out of the tent. “Like I’ve said: it will get worse instead of better. Embrace that, or you’ll never make it through.”
xxii.
They run three more days, stopping twice for rest, before they reach the Fire-Whirlpool Nation border. They come to a group halt, standing in a tight octagon on tree branches some ninety feet above the ground. Minato keeps a good hold on his charka control; he has no desire to fall, and there’s an exhausted panicky fear that blankets his stomach now and makes him think that it is more than possible that he might.
They wait for a few minutes before three ninja dressed in uniforms very different from their own (but in masks that are not quite so different from their own) crash into a landing on a few trees just in front of them. From their figures, Minato can see that it is three men - a very tall one with bright red hair unlike any he has ever seen that hangs long down his back, and the other two around average height with brown. Their whole countenance is ever-shifting, and he is reminded, strangely, of the ocean, constantly lapsing and relapsing back into and out of themselves. Their charka wraps around the trees in a liquid fashion rather than simply tethering them to one another. For a long time, both groups simply stand and marvel at one another. Both groups are inevitably curious, just for the sake of their immense differences. This time is no different.
Finally, the man with red hair speaks. His voice is a deep, thrilling baritone, the kind that can make women of all sexual preferences gasp and swoon. “Your troops look rather exhausted, Umino-san.”
Umino Katsuya, a strong man of blunt skill and semi-sweet demeanor, stands a little taller. His mask, a fish, does little to portray his facial expression, but it truly seems that his change in stance makes it look a little prouder of itself. His pride of in his men is distinguished and striking, and it aids Minato’s faith. “I should’ve expected you, Uzumaki-kun. Is it true you’re leading the country’s forces now? I’ve heard your father’s quite ill.”
”Mm, yes. I suppose that’s true.” Minato can hear the man smile, even though his voice is hampered by the piece of wood that covers his face, masks his identity. “He’s quite a stubborn man by nature, of course. I’ve known him for quite a long time, after all.” Minato chuckles softly. He can practically see the man’s expression, regardless of the mask. His voice is vivid in a very precise manner, friendly in a way that’s womanizing and familiar to him. (He trained with Jiraiya for quite a while, after all.) “And I know that he won’t die. Our victory will heal what medicine cannot.”
”A good cause to be certain. Are we in the midst of fighting?”
The red haired man nods and his comrades shift restlessly, as if they are nervous and want desperately to get back to the battlefield so that they might mend things. The one with darker hair speaks, his own voice reedy and thin. “Kaigyo and Keisui have it secured, sir. But we are…we would like to get back.”
Red breaks back in, “On the condition that your troops do not need rest. If they do, they won’t be of use to us until they’ve had some.”
And Minato surprises himself by speaking. (By his resolve.)
”We’re alright.”
Beside him, Hizashi nods with the same automatic intensity.
”We’ll be of service to you in any way we can.”
Red’s smile is back in his voice again.
”Excellent. Welcome, then, to Uzugakure.”
xxiii.
The Whirlpool-nin’s landing of choice turns out to be a large brackish lake only about a kilometer from the ANBU’s original landing spot - it’s a struggle, since it’s most of their first time landing on water from such a height, and while the resident shinobi do so flawlessly, the ANBU have quite a bit of difficulty. Many plunge straight in and have to scramble out and try to look as if that was what they intended on. Minato manages to only sink in to his thighs. Hizashi is the only one who only gets his feet wet, which Minato could’ve guessed would happen.
Red whips off his mask with a flourish, revealing himself to have a long, slender and attractive face, with bright brown eyes and a mouth like Kakashi’s. His comrades do the same, but Umino motions for his own team to keep theirs on.
”The enemy doesn’t need to know what nation we’re from.”
They nod, understanding, and the last few shinobi dejectedly pull themselves up out of the water, which is salty and bad-tasting. Red offers them a sheepish smile, apologizing. “Sorry about that. I suppose we should’ve warned you; you get used to doing it, when you do it all the time. When you grow up this way…well, we kind of forget. It’ll get easier.”
Minato and the rest of them nod obligingly just as another man - this one a head shorter than the taller one in front of them, but with the same eyes and hair (only shorter and shaggier) and a wide, puckish grin on his face - catapults out of the sky and lands in front of them with a small bang. The water pulses away from his feet, rocking beneath them, and Minato, Hizashi, Umino, and one other man are the only Konoha shinobi who manage not to fall back into it with the motion.
The boy looks over at the quizzically. “…what are we, taking applications now? ‘Come join the Whirlpool Nation, we have refreshments’? ‘Three bucks to get in, bring a friend’?”
Their tour guide snorts and ruffles his hair. “Kaigyo. You should be more polite. They’ve come to help us.”
Kaigyo wrinkles his nose. “Yeah, uh, about that? They don’t look too helpful. Seeing that,” he looks around the taller man, counts with his fingers, “all but four of them are now underwater.” He folds his arms derisively. “And I didn’t even land that hard.”
The Konoha shinobi recover, looking disgruntled. One of the Whirlpool brunettes glares at Kaigyo, folding his arms in a similar fashion. “The hell you did. You ought to have a hazard sign taped to your neck. You could sink this whole damn country on your own if you wanted to.”
”Who could?” Another man leaps out of nowhere, but his own landing hardly disturbs the water at all. His hair falls in silky layers that frame his face, another stunning shade of red, his eyes a pale blue that matches the water. “Amenbou,” he says, addressing Red, “what is he talking about?”
”Nothing serious.” Red - Amenbou - glances over his shoulder at them, most of them evidently still nervous that the water will fall out from underneath them. “Our dear friends from Konohagakure are simply learning that salt water has a very different consistency than they’re used to. …and that aerial landings are tricky the first few times.”
Kaigyo snickers. “Is that what all that splashing was about? Too bad I wasn’t here to see it. I bet it was practically photo-worthy.”
”You know,” Amenbou says, voice high and scolding, “you’re really quite a pretentious brat.” He looks over at the unnamed redhead, the newest arrival. “Keisui, I thought you two were leading the opposition.”
Kaigyo rubs the area under his nose lightly. “Princess showed up. Didn’t have to.”
Amenbou groans lowly through his teeth. “Aren’t those stitches in her back still mending?”
”They weren’t bleeding last time I checked.”
”Yes, I’m sure that’ll be her argument, too.”
”I dunno. I think she’s kinda got a point.”
”I’m sure you do.” Amenbou turns to Keisui, folding his arms in an authoritative distaste. “Aren’t we trying that new Cut-and-Run strategy that Ayu-chan came up with? You’re supposed to be backing her up atleast.”
The other two go very, very quiet. Amenbou watches them for a while.
”…don’t tell me they chased you off.”
”Chased Kaigyo off,” Keisui says, rolling his shoulders somewhat lazily. “I just happened to follow suit.”
”You two are perhaps the most useless-“
But he never finishes his sentence, because Kaigyo whips around, searching the close horizon for a second before cupping his mouth to holler out a name that will completely define the next two years of Minato’s life. (The very last two years of Minato’s life.) He cups his hands around his wide mouth and yells into the waterfront:
”HEY KUSHINA!”
The first thing Minato knows of her is her blade - a meter and a half long, nineteen centimeters wide, and six centimeters thick at it’s widest point (which is the center). It is a long, rectangular blade with no sheath or embossing whatsoever, with long sharp edges that can strike through any bone at the right momentum and a wide thirteen-by-thirteen centimeter hole driven into one end of it. It comes down out of the sky and collides with the body of an enemy that springs from the water only a few meters from them, and then keeps spinning, boomeranging back to catch on her wrist, which is nimble.
He doesn’t have time to truly study her - notices only the incredibly short stature (158.5 centimeters tall, he will later learn), the blood-sunrise head of hair that is identical to Amenbou’s, Kaigyo’s, and Keisui’s (her three older brothers; she is the youngest and, much more importantly, the only girl) and the pale blue-gray eyes that seem to match nothing save the very sea itself, which is ironic, since the real ocean is several tens of kilometers to their immediate east. She whips into another hoard of upcoming enemies in a flurry just as a taller, much darker woman lands beside her, and from then on it’s a circus show, and Minato and his comrades simply sit and stare until it’s ended with a clang of metal and a dying groan from one of the Clouds.
Kushina twirls her blade, the infamous Ama-no-Uzume, around her wrist to slow its momentum, and she looks like a very small, busty girl with a hula-hoop. She throws her hand out straighter; it juts out stilly with its edges glinting; she swings it up over her shoulder and breasts by a strap none of them saw before.
”The guys from Konoha, yeah? God, you all look like fags.”
xxiv.
The Uzumaki siblings - and that is what they are - argue the whole time they’re escorting the ANBU to the center of Uzugakure, and while they do so, Minato takes advantage of the distraction and surveys the place that he’ll be (in Hizashi’s words) “trapped indefinitely”.
The Land of the Whirlpool is a very small territory, landlocked between a long strip of no-man’s-land on the Land of Fire’s northern-most border and mountainous Land Hidden in the Clouds. The only way to go is backwards from a militarist standpoint, the west and south being a yet unblockaded but treacherously dangerous coastline, and economically the land is hardy and difficult. With sand soil and a terrain spattered with wide, emerald stretches of forest, and tortured with brackish water of almost three dozen inland seas, the only things that grow are things that have been growing here since the beginning of time. Politically, even, the Land of Whirlpool is an inhospitable one, the residents having been carefully grown of the bitter, twisted, hickory personality of the land they live on; strange and unpredictable except in their pride and honor, the ninja of Uzugakure have been historically friends of no one.
This being said, though, the Village of Uzugakure itself looks far better than he initially expected it to. At first glance, the huts (roofed with water reeds) are barbaric and impractical looking on their stilts, raised above the floodline. But, on actual study, there is no evidence of war left upon them, excepting the occasional house with a closed door. It is these that he watches most confusedly, mostly because of the wide, circular spiral on each of their wood, positioned directly on the woodwork surrounding the door handle.
Amenbou glances back, noticing the catch of his attention, just as Kaigyo and Kushina begin going at it most heatedly. He speaks softly.
”To respect the soldiers that have perished.”
Minato nods vaguely and they move on, the Uzumaki siblings bickering about something he can’t quite grasp because he can’t follow their conversation. They seem to leap without thought from one comment to another, none of them having much of anything to do with one another. He studies the world around him, instead, noting softly and to himself that, save the spiral marks, there is no damage of any real consequence that has been done to the village itself. It is free of offensive blemishes; there are no burned buildings, no craters marking battles, no bodies. Only the solemn silence marks the presence of war here, and it almost seems that, that being the case, their presence here is unnecessary.
He thinks very differently in seconds, as they step into the cement building of the Shinobi Barracks.
The Barracks themselves are a long, two-story building raised off the ground in the same way as the others, and so they walk up a short staircase to get to the double metal doors. It has a very simple internal structure, fundamentally a long, narrow hallway faced on either sides of open-walled rooms of rows upon rows of unoccupied bunkbeds. The hall of beds comprises only three-fourths of the ground floor, leading directly to another sets of doors that opens into an expansive, tiled room comprise of dozens upon dozens of cubicles housing showerheads. The second floor is a cafeteria-style dining hall not unlike the one Minato can recall using with Shisui and Sanosuke during the Chuunin exams.
(It had been a long walk down many stairs, he remembered - Sanosuke’s cheek had still been bruised and so Minato and he were not on speaking terms throughout the entire ordeal. Shisui was patient with both of them, probably because it amused her quite a great deal, and so the memory of it was a pleasant, if slightly choppy and faded one. Minato hadn’t been able to look her in the eye all through that first dinner, the memory of how boldly he’d kissed her on the landing still fresh and embarrassing in his young mind. She had been able to tell, of course, because she was both incredibly psychic with him and a woman, and so she’d gotten him to look at through trickery, and Minato had found his face smarting with an exothermic heat-
”Minato-kun?”
”What?”
And she’d smiled at him, lighting his cheeks on fire.
”You’ll pass the salt, won’t you?”)
”How many of your shinobi are being housed here?”
”All of them.” Keisui folds his arms, glances over. “Roughly a hundred and ninety, assuming I’ve counted right.”
Umino speaks through his mask. “This is a village of almost four hundred, is it not?”
”Their families,” Amenbou says lightly. “With you, our forces almost match our civilian population, though.”
There’s a long silence.
Somebody in the back of the group swears under his breath.
Minato is apt to agree.
xxv.
It is Amenbou’s task, as the Whirlpool-nin’s commanding officer, to divide the Leaf-nin into the cells they’ll be working in; the Uzumaki siblings are four in number, and so the whole of the Whirlpool army is divided and assigned to report to one of each of them. Uzugakure is exactly one-hundred-ninety-two shinobi strong, meaning that without the Leaf-nin, each Uzumaki sibling has exactly forty-eight soldiers under their command. The argument on their way to the Barracks was apparently based on the fact that, with them, the distribution is uneven, with two siblings having fifty soldiers, and the other two having fifty-one. Inevitably, of course, the older siblings - Amenbou and Keisui - are the ones who take care of fifty-one, their seniority being enough to argue their place as decent leaders. Kushina is too young and too brash, and Kaigyo is too unnecessarily rude and condescending. Hours later, as Minato is climbing into his assigned bunk and dwelling on the pain in his chest, he overhears the former arguing with them again, her red voice course with a bitter sense of entitlement.
”I take care of forces you don’t even know you have, Keisui! I’m out there kicking the enemy’s ass while you’re here lounging around and sitting on yours! This is fucking ridiculous!”
Amenbou’s voice is strained, and Minato can tell that he’s the peacekeeper of the family. (Fellow peacekeepers always recognize one another, after all. And, even including the time he punched Sanosuke, that is what Minato has always been. He’s reminded of Obito. His insides constrict unpleasantly. Oh, the cruelly enduring spoils of war.) “Kushina, calm down. We’re not doubting your ability.”
”You are so! Don’t even go there! This whole damn thing is about doubting my ability! I’m not four years old anymore, dammit! I can handle me, and I can handle them, so why don’t you just-“
”Because you’re too energetic. Dammit, do you not get it? Do you not get it?” Keisui’s voice is equally stern and Minato lays back quietly, watching the ceiling and he thinks he knows who is going to win this argument. “We’re in a war, Little Sister. We’re in a war, and there is a chance, every fucking time we’re out there, that everyone we care about is gunna get killed and it’s going to be our fault. Dad’s dying, Kushina. Dying. People around you are dying, people you’ve known your whole damn life! And you just keep going on and on like this is- like it’s a game! Like its some stupid game we’re playing!”
”I do not! I do not!”
”Yeah! Yeah, you do!”
”Both of you stop it!”
”Dammit, I understand the fucking severity of the situation! You bastard! What the hell do you take me for? I’m a shinobi, goddammit, a good one! Better than you! And I’m going to fucking win this fucking war, do you understand me? I’m gunna win while you’re sitting around on your fucking girly prissass and whining about how I’m too young to understand!”
”Yeah, you do that. I hear four-year-olds win wars all the damn time!”
There’s a wicked crack of flesh impacting flesh and a cry from a masculine set of vocal chords and then Amenbou’s voice rises.
”Apologize to your brother, Kushina.”
Silence.
”Apologize.”
Kushina’s voice, still unfamiliar to his ears, most especially in its choked softness, comes out solemnly. He tries to imagine the look on her face, but the voice goes so awkwardly with the cocky grin he was introduced to this afternoon that he cannot. ”I understand the severity, fuckwad.”
Keisui sounds bitterly sardonic. ”Yeah, because slugging me in the face just screams of a mature sense of understanding.”
”Screw yourself.”
And that’s the end of it - she storms back through the double doors to the showers, red hair billowing, face painted in a sovereign, religious anger. Her motion is so violent that it startles Minato a short ways from his pillow, instinctively, and she catches the motion from one of the corners of her storm cloud eyes (they look so familiar, he thinks, which is strange; he’s never seen that color of eye before. They look like a stormy sea, rocked by powerful deities of weather, rain-swollen tides that he has never looked upon himself) and wheels on him.
There is a second when he thinks, idly, that she’s going to scream at him, which makes him deeply uncomfortable, because they hardly know each other, and Minato really doesn’t like being screamed at. It occurs to him that he’s been eavesdropping, inadvertently, and that he should apologize, once she’s finished. He hopes she won’t scream at him. He frowns to himself. He really, really detests being screamed at, since he makes a point of not necessarily associating much with people who scream.
She doesn’t scream at him though. She just looks at him angrily for a long, long time, before speaking very steadily.
”…you’re better looking than I thought you’d be.”
He is baffled by the statement, desperately wary of it. “…thank you.”
”You got a girlfriend?”
Again he is put off his guard, and wavers slightly. Kushina’s pushed him off his carefully constructed center. His sense of safety, sense of self is both thrown off and fitfully misplaced. His eyes cloud themselves and he moves back restlessly, before nodding at her vaguely, still puzzled by her. (The questions are so direct. So tactless.)
The twist of a smirk on her lips is so nasty he’s tempted to recoil from it.
”She must just loathe you.”
She stalks off, then, no doubt satisfied with herself, and he watches her small back silently, chest heaving with a lonely graceless pain. He stays very still from a few moments, Hizashi silent below him, staring out into the unfamiliar darkness until Kushina has long vanished from it. He has not the energy to wonder after her older brothers, nor even after the rest of the world. He is suddenly stricken with an unbelievable tiredness, and he finally turns back to the opposite wall and sinks back into his bedclothes.
Hizashi speaks quietly up to him.
”She doesn’t, you know.”
Minato is silent for a long time.
”…thank you, Hizashi.”
CHAPTERS XXVI-XXX
CHAPTERS XXXI-XXXV
CHAPTERS XXXVI-XXXX