Pre-Chapter A/N:Another chapter on time? Guess my lock-in is going pretty well. If you haven't already, I recommend turning on notifications for my stuff so you can see when new stuff drops right as it drops. Next four chapters on my patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)— same username as here and link in bio.
XXXXXX- MINATO NAMIKAZE
"So what do we do with the bell?" I asked as I lugged the thing around. It was heavier than it looked, but not so much so that it made it a problem for me to carry.
"Shut up, I'm thinking," Uzume-san said as she looked around the path we were walking on. We had been able to trace the shinobi that had claimed the kill for the First Raikage to have been from a village outside of Iwa itself. Iwa's shinobi records said he'd retired from active service a decade ago and gone back to his village. We hoped that if we found what remained of his family, or the man himself ideally, we would be able to if not find the Lightning Rod, then at least some information on it.
"I don't want to go back to the village again. Escaping Uraume's snooping anbu was hard enough the first time. Lord knows that bitch would tell on me just for the fun of it," she said next. Minato remained silent, judging that he wasn't expected to contribute anything here.
"Okay. This is what will happen," she decided a few minutes later.
"Mikoto, take the bell to Nekobaa. She should be able to hold on to it for us. Give her the password— blue flames circle the silver drain and burn nothing. After that, you come find Blondie and I. We push ahead to find that damn lightning rod," she said.
"And how exactly would she find us? We can't broadcast our presence. We might have decapitated the New Stone, but this still isn't friendly territory," he said, pointing out the flaw in that plan.
"I dare anyone who dares to come on. I'm just itching for a good fight," she said.
"That may be true enough, but if we want to keep this from Uraume-san, and therefore Sensei, we need to fly under the radar," he advised, knowing full well that he had already written Sensei to tell him exactly what they were up to. While the idea of a surprise gift was one he could get behind, he knew there were wider plans at play in the broader landscape that wouldn't deal well with the unstable element that was his Sensei's fiancé being tossed into the midst. Considering Sensei hadn't chased them down, he was going to let things proceed for the time being. At least he would be able to plan around any disruptions.
"I can wait with Nekobaa until you need to head to Wind Country and you can just pick me up on your way there," Mikoto cut in, heading off whatever her Aunt was about to say.
"Sure. That works. Be careful with Nekobaa though. Agree to nothing, not even the most innocuous of requests. They'll give you a place to sleep and food to eat. Accept nothing more than that," she said. Mikoto nodded, and he handed the bell over to her. She held it over her head and then began the long trek away.
"So we have to get moving then?" he asked as she kept her gaze on her niece until she had left the point where Minato could see her. Her red eyes looked like they wanted to sear him as they flicked over to him.
"Yes. Let's," she said, swallowing what she really wanted to say. There was something there, Minato knew. Mikoto's father had been this woman's brother. He had been the one who was supposed to inherit the Uchiha clan. But he had died. The Uchiha elders had crowned Uzume the powerful Jounin rather than the man's daughter who was barely in the academy. It was the right choice, he knew.
The choice that Sensei would have backed. But that didn't mean there was no guilt there. Minato knew well the power of useless guilt. He cast the thought of all the other orphans he had left behind to make it this far aside and followed in Uzume-san's wake as they began to make their own journey.
—
He silently wondered if he was being pranked. This was the second time that this woman was leading them astray.
"We need to have taken a left at the last crossway, Uchiha-san," he said finally once it was clear that she did not have some sort of shortcut.
"Oh?" she asked, turning around.
"Why didn't you say anything?" she asked.
"I thought you knew an alternate route," he said with a sigh as they began to backtrack.
"Why would you ever do such a thing?" she said, turning and stepping in front of him and beginning to make her way back through the narrow mountain pass and he grabbed her hand at the last second, forcing her to stay still.
"What?" she hissed.
"The birds stopped chirping. We have company," he said.
"Of course we do," she chuckled.
"You led us here intentionally," he accused, fighting the urge to sigh and facepalm.
"Of course. Clearing this place of scum is a good supplemental wedding gift for that husband of mine. I'm surprised you never even noticed any of the tracks or signs."
"Kushina is the sensor. Mikoto is the tracker," he said.
"And you just give them orders, do you?" she asked. He remained silent. She sighed.
"There are nineteen of them in this pass by my last count. Probably only two or three worth anything. Here's your first lesson. Bring me all their headbands," she said, before stomping her foot on the ground. Sensei was the greatest master of Earth Release the world had ever known, but it was clear his fiancé was no slouch as she caused the earth to shift and lift a platform for her to sit upon. He hadn't even felt the ground shake. Earth wasn't even one of her primary affinities. This was the level Minato would one day need to reach if he wanted to achieve his dream.
No. Stronger. Sensei was stronger than she was.
"Are you being serious now?" he asked, not quite sure what game she was playing at. They had a mission to run.
"I said bring me their headbands. If you haven't done it in thirty minutes, I'll break both your arms and you will be forced to complete this mission without them," she said.
"You have to be joking. Tell me you're joking," he said, not quite sure if he was doubtful or just begging her to be playing around.
"Time is ticking," she said, looking up at the sky. She looked serious. There were none of the tells in her body language the shinobi academy had taught them to look for to spot a lie. Of course, she had been through the same training, so if she needed to hide that she was lying then she would be able to do that as well. So was he going to take the risk that she was lying? Call her bluff?
Her eyes came down to meet his, and he realised the truth of it. This woman was not lying. She was deathly serious.
And so he body flickered up the mountain, heading for the nook he had spotted just a few seconds ago. If he were watching them, that would be where he did. The woman in the crevice was quick.
His eyes met hers and he was forced to snap his head backwards to avoid a torrent of water sent with enough force to cave in his head. The crevice only had one exit. She chose to take it, jumping straight at him with an outstretched kunai. He forced his whole body backwards, going horizontal on the mountain, maintaining his position with chakra adhesion.
Free from the crevice, she had other options open to her. Like so many people Minato had fought before, she chose wrong. She thought the fact that she had forced him to move twice meant she had a favourable chance. Silly.
He grabbed her wrist like he was snatching the neck of a cobra mid-lunge. He took all her momentum into his body and was unmoved. His Sensei was Shorirama Senju. He had seen true strength. Not this approximation of it. He brought her attack back around on her, twisting her arm and stabbing her blade into her own chest. He snatched the headband from her head before releasing the body to freely fall to the ground.
If he had time, he could afford to be cleaner about it. He spotted the glint of light from another rathole a few hundred metres away. A kanji reflected in the sunlight? Most likely a trap. They knew he was hunting them now and were planning to ambush him. They had done a good job of hiding since. To think that they would slip up now was laughable. He smiled and shot for them.
As Sensei always put it, the best way to deal with a trap is to spring it. They had lured dangerous prey into their snare. It was time for them to find out if they had teeth sharp enough for the killing.
He reached the crevice and wasn't surprised that he was greeted with a rain of kunai from within the second he poked his head within to get a view. He jumped backwards, noticing the glint of purple on the edges of the blades. Poison. There was a good chance it was one of the ones he was immune to— Iwa's entire toxicology research had been integrated into Konoha's, after all— but it was better not to risk it at all. He felt the shift in the air behind him. Of course, it would be stupid if all of them had waited in the crevice for him.
It made more sense for some of them to be waiting outside to deal with him if he tried to flee. He shifted his body, and with a quick manipulation of the wind currents around him, he turned his body to face the man that had been about to attack him from behind. Seeing him change his orientation in midair had shocked the man a fair bit. He never got to recover as Minato pushed himself forwards, closing the distance with a gust forced into his back.
Both of them clashed. He continued to rest against the side of the other mountain while the man fell to the ground, throat slit and headband taken. Minato glanced out, seeing that there had been four of them in the crevice. They were already beginning to spread out.
From the side of the mountain, right beneath his fist came an explosion as a person's hand stretched out from underneath. He replaced himself with a clone right then and there and as the man— more like boy— dragged the clone into the ground and rose on his own, perfectly executing the double suicide decapitation technique, Minato lurked in his blind spot.
One of his fellows called a warning and the boy turned only for a kunai to be buried in his head. Minato snatched the headband right as the body fell to the ground. It landed with another sickening crunch.
One of the older ones had had some attachment to the boy. He jumped straight for Minato, probably falsely believing that the fight would continue from close range. Minato tore his body to shreds with a half bird seal and a dozen drilling wind bullets that left him pockmarked full of holes.
He jumped to the other side of the pass, leaning on the other mountain and making eye contact with the remaining three of the group.
"So we can do this the easy way or the hard way," he said, inviting them to surrender. Uzume had asked for headbands, not heads. They could still be sent back to Konoha for questioning, and if they weren't a threat, maybe they could be given lives of their own one day.
Sadly, those thoughts ended up not panning out. Minato sighed as they shot at him, murder in their eyes. There would be nothing there after he killed them, he knew. At this point, it felt like he had stared into more dead eyes than living ones. These were just going to be another mark in his tally.
—
"One, two…seventeen, eighteen," Uzume-san counted out the headbands he had gathered.
"There's one missing," she said.
"No, there isn't. You said nineteen so I would spend more time looking for one that wasn't here. I scoured this place front to back, top to bottom," he said.
"And where did you not check?" she asked, looking at the ground beneath her.
It exploded as the former Iwa nin realised they had been caught. It was a tall lanky man who fluidly moved to place his kunai through Uzume-san's neck. She didn't even move. Didn't react to the danger at all.
Minato managed to make it in time though. Body brimming with chakra to give him the required strength and speed, he body flickered to close the distance and grabbed the man by his wrist, stopping the blade just an inch shy of skewering his Sensei's fiancé. She still hadn't moved. Minato was shocked that she would place so much faith in him. The Iwa shinobi brought around his other hand, trying to run Minato through.
He pulled on the one he held with all his strength, dislocating the shoulder and forcing him off balance so as to shift the angle of his other strike. It missed Minato by a mile while he spun around, grabbing on to the man's head from either side. With a single twist, he snapped the neck and ended the life. The man fell unceremoniously. Minato didn't bother snatching the headband as he did so.
"Nineteen," he said. She nodded and then rose.
"Let's keep going then," she said.
—
"You think the detour was a waste of time," she said the words on his mind when they had been walking for close to an hour.
"Yes, I do. They weren't all that dangerous. A team of Anbu would have made short work of them eventually," he said.
"Indeed. And when would that have been?" she asked.
"Whenever they became a problem to Konoha's interest," he said.
"And till then what would happen? Those lot definitely weren't harvesting and growing their own food, were they? They were getting provisions from a village or two nearby, I am sure," she said.
"What Iwa shinobi do to citizens of the Land of Earth is not our concern," he answered. Even if he would ordinarily have liked to have been able to say they had a duty to help people being preyed upon everywhere, Sensei had knocked a different lesson into his head. The only problems he ought to solve as a Konoha shinobi were the ones that affected either Konoha itself, or the Land of Fire at large.
"It isn't. And if it was just banditry, it might have been in our interests to let it continue. No. It was something more dangerous than that. The boy you killed. Chances are he was a native to one of those villages before one of the Iwa nin took him under their wing. I recognised three of the stronger ones from the bingo book five years ago, before Iwa fell. Civilian villages produce maybe one child in every hundred with a potential for the shinobi arts, but with time that Mountain Pass group could have expanded to maybe double or triple their number. A dangerous force, I am sure you agree," she said.
"We could have reported their location to the Hokage, though. If that was what you were worried about," he said.
"What? And let him have all the fun? Definitely not."
"It's not like you fought them yourself either."
"No. But I got to watch and see what it looks like when you aren't holding back," she said.
"And what did you learn from that?" he asked, curious.
"That my fiancé is way too good at turning people into clones of him. Both you and Mikoto fight more or less the same. The only unique one in that team of yours is Kushina, and something tells me that's in spite of, and not because of his training," she said.
"Mikoto and I employ very different tactics in battle, and we have different strengths," he said, not able to see her point.
"You get there in different ways, but you both head in the same direction. You both try to do the same thing in every engagement— take out the enemy as quickly as possible. While there might not be any issue with this when you are stronger than your opponents, it leaves you open to feints when you face off against stronger, or equal opponents. As Mikoto has learned," she said.
"She told you about Frost," he said.
"Indeed. She came begging for more training. But she's as strong as she can be right now. What she needs to learn is to think about combat better. Not every fight needs to be brought to an end as quickly as possible. My fiancé fights like that because he can afford to. Ninety-nine point nine percent of shinobi are fodder to him. No one even tries feints against him— they just don't work and there's no point. Against the two of you though? It will be a bloodbath," she said.
"I don't see how trying to end a fight quickly is a bad thing," he said somewhat stubbornly. Sensei was very heavy on efficiency and Minato had ingrained that into his fighting style and built around that.
"There is nothing wrong with it, yes. But not every opening is real. I can't believe I'm the one saying this, but you need to exercise some caution. That man you met mid-air and killed, what would you have done if he had proven just a hair faster as you shot at him with no control due to your wind manipulation? If he had managed to move his blade at the last second, you would have impaled yourself on it," she said, and Minato remained silent as they continued their walk, running over her words in his head.
A/N: Progress made progressively. Next four chapters up on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) (same username as here and link in bio), support me there and read them early.