Chapter-8

Chapter-8

[Minato's POV]

"What are you doing here Kushina?"

I asked Kushina who had her head poking out while the remainder of her body was hiding behind a tree.

"Ah... I went for a walk"

I narrowed my eyes because of suspicion. She avoids going out at night as she's scared of the dark and she avoids looking me in the eye, It is pretty obvious she's lying but I didn't push for an answer.

"So, did you achieve the Nature Change?"

"No, but I achieved the first and hardest step of it, which is to control the lightning I produce. Now the lightning produced by my chakra will only damage me and produce sound if I want to." I said as I looked at the Kunai in my hand. Achieving Nature change in lightning style is really hard. I still have two more steps to complete, that is to control its power and use the naturally produced lightning for attacks. Well, those are the steps mentioned in the second Hokage-sama's notes given to me by Mito-sama for my birthday.

"That's something to be proud of, you know? I heard some adults struggle to complete this step"

Kushina said as she came out of her "hiding" place. I put back my white hoodie with red stripes back and said,

"That's only because unlike them I got more free time than them, they wouldn't find it as hard if they sat down and thought about how lightning works for some time".

"No matter how much you avoid it you have to agree that you are a genius She said while coming close to me and wiping the wetness off my face with my towel.

"I'm not denying it. I'm just saying that they can also achieve it given more time."

"Anyway let's stop talking about this boring topic, Let me show you what I can do with my [Adamantine Sealing Chains]."

She dragged me to the middle of the training ground forcefully before I could reply. She told me to stand where she stood a moment ago and walked a few meters away and faced me. She crossed her hands, her palms facing her face. I saw a chakra chain coming out from each of her palms. There's something broken about those chains, they do not have a physical body. They are just the manifestation of the user's chakra in chain form. Theoretically one can summon as many chains as they want but it burns out their chakra that much faster. The chain went inside the ground without leaving any trace and I can already guess what's going to happen. Just as I jumped off the ground the chains came out from just where I stood and wrapped themself to both my ankles and pulled me down. I found out that when I tried to gather chakra to use it, it just got absorbed by the chains.

While I was thinking the chain's pull did its job and I fell down on my butt with a thud.

"Ouch!"

"Hahaha! Did you like my trick? '' She laughed and said with a smirk on her face, I could practically feel the smugness in her.

"Yes, it's certainly tricky to break out of. How does it work anyway?" I was genuinely curious about the working principle of her chains.

"Well… how can I explain… It works like this, Let's say I give use 10 units of chakra to make a single chain, then that chain takes 10 units of chakra to sustain itself per minute and if I tie someone with it and he/she tries to gather their chakra it can absorb up to the 10 units I used to create it and the if they use more than 10 units the chain breaks. The absorbed chakra is dissipated into the air. Oba-san said I have to be proficient in yang affinity to summon a physical chain to absorb the absorbed chakra.

"Hmm.. how much chakra did you use to make these two chains?" I asked her.

"Slightly more than your whole chakra reserve, about one-third of mine… shit" Just as she finished I felt the chains holding my ankles disappear and saw her stumbling. I got up and immediately caught her before she could fall. She seemed to have nearly emptied her chakra reserve.

"You should really think before you do stuff like that Kushina" I shook my head as I carried her in my back.

"I just wanted to make sure that you won't escape" I heard her mumble while her hands snaked their way around my neck. I chucked while trying to hide my blushing face and started walking towards the direction of her house when I felt her grip tightening,

"Let's just stay here for a while, I don't wanna go home"

I heard her mumble and felt a silight wetness on my back, I was immediately serious after feeling her cry,

"Did you have a fight with Mito-sama or Tsunade nee-san?"

"No" she answered and her voice was low.

"Then what happened?" I asked.

"Oba-san said we can't be on the same team Minato"

I heard her say in a low tone, signifying how sad she was. I didn't know what to say. I too wanted to be in the same team as her and do missions Why did Mito-sensei want us to be in a different team?

"Why is that?"

I asked in a calm tone not wanting to further push her unstable emotions. She jumped off my back and stood there while saying,

"She said I'm gonna be the next jinchuriki of the Nine-tails, that I can't be in any team."

'So that's it, The Uzumakis are currently in a civil war, Thank Sage she was not called back there. And being a jinchuriki means you will constantly be watched by Anbu till you are able to control your power'.

I sighed in relief which seemed to be misinterpreted by Kushina who,

"Do you feel happy because of me not being on your team!" She pushed me and shouted.

"No, I sighed because I was happy that you were not leaving the village" I quickly replied while dodging her punches.

"I swear I'm not at all happy at that" I finished while getting close to her and hugged her to calm her down.

"You won't hang out with me if you go to another team!"

So that's the cause of her fear. Just what goes on in a girl's mind? Did she really think I would stop being friends with her just because I was assigned to a different team?

"Do you think I will?"

I asked in a shocked tone, She stopped and thought for a while and her eyes gained a new light like she suddenly gained enlightenment, She slammed her fist on her palm in a beating motion,

"That's right I'm your only friend"

My eyes and lips twitch at her statement, I may only have a friend but it's the quality that matters in friendships right? I would rather have one friend like her than 100 friends like my self-proclaimed fangirls who may very well be chasing another victim.

She laughed at my deadpan reaction and leaned on my shoulder, Damn body stop blushing for every 30 minutes, We sat like that without speaking while looking at the river in front of us. I decided to ask further about her current situation,

"So what exactly happened after you went home?"

She told me what happened and boy Mito-sensei is broken, like 200 times the chakra of Kushina! That's like six hundred times mine and that's just from stealing the tailed-beast's chakra, I can't even imagine the power level of someone with a tamed tailed-beast. If Kushina became the next Jinchuriki of the strongest of all the tailed beasts, The Nine-tails, I'm pretty sure that I'd be as good as dead in our future spars. I should step up my training.

"Damn, you'll be broken if you can control the nine-tails won't you?" I said while turning my head to look at the redhead leaning on my shoulder.

"Of Course I'll be! I will control nine-tails in like no time! It wouldn't be that difficult right?"

Just as she finished her energetic reply and stood up punching the air, I laughed and felt that it wouldn't be that easy. I got up and suddenly thought of something that would definitely rile her up,

"Of course, you will, FOX-CHAN!"

I said as I immediately started running not even attempting to look back while laughing as I heard a very angry shout from a crazy red fox,

"Minato Namikaze!!!!!!"

[Mito's POV]

"..... That's all that happened Mito-sama"

"Thanks Katsuyu, you can leave"

She unsummoned herself with a pop, I was happy that Kushina was not feeling sad about her inevitable fate. We, no I don't have another choice other than her, All the Uzumakis are having a civil war, where one half wants to cut off ties with Konoha not wanting to be their 'Slaves and living jails' as they term it while the other half is fighting against it, still remaining loyal to Konoha more specifically Hashi and me, but most of them are old people and they don't have much days left to live.

Kushina is in for a surprise if she thinks she can make peace with the grumpy fox.

"OH PLEASE, HAVE YOU FORGOTEN MADARA?"

I ignored the fox's comment knowing how well it knows to manipulate someone to have any negative emotions.

I could push myself for a decade longer if she really didn't want to right now, But the body and chakra will easily adapt to the beast's chakra if the beast is sealed before the jinchuriki hits puberty where their body and chakra develop at its fastest.

I sat on the bed of my room and took a few bottles of sake from my scroll to drown my sorrows.

Hashirama, my love and the strongest man I knew. Tobirama was the smartest man I knew. Madara, the first male tsundere and the second strongest man I knew. Tsuyoi, my son. Karin my daughter-in-law and Nawaki, my grandson. All of them died, I only knew how Madara died, he got 'crazy' and decided to control the grumpy fox and launch a war on Konoha. At least that was the official story. No matter how arrogant and stubborn Madara was he wouldn't fight Hashi without using any of his Mangekyō 's Abilities. It was obvious he was being controlled by someone/something.

Being devastated by being pushed to kill his best friend and failing to get him out of someone/something's control, Hashi made Tobirama the hokage and searched for the 'thing' he felt during the end of his battle in the end valley. After three years, Katsuyu returned with his corpse which was missing the heart and had multiple holes like being stabbed repeatedly but he still had a smile on his face. That moment brought trauma to me and Tsuyoi.

Tobi was so angry while tears were falling from his eyes, that he locked himself in the Konoha prison for lifetime and death row criminals and didn't allow anyone in for months.

After 9 months he came out while his body was painted in blood, some of the spectators of that scene pissed their pants. He went straight to Hashi's tomb and dug Hashi's coffin out of the ground. He locked both me and Tsuyoi in a water prison which increases the pressure the more the chakra it absorbs.

He took out a scroll and summoned the corpse of some man. He placed a barrier surrounding us. He took out a hair from Hashi's corpse which was still full of yang energy and looked like he was just sleeping. He placed the hair on the corpse and that was the first time I knew the full extent of Tobirama.

He reanimated Hashirama, using his [Summoning: Reanimation Jutsu] which could reanimate the dead. When asked about it, Hashirama just said that when he was sleeping during his search, a hand came out of the ground and pierced him from his back and took out his heart. It all happened within a span of a single millisecond and he only managed to catch the glimpse of a fully black hand. And he immediately entered his sage mode and summoned his sword.

Just as he was about to rush at the black figure that stood before him he felt many things coming from behind and saw multiple black rods that pierced him as he could not move as the black thing's hands were sticking out of the ground, holding his legs firmly.

The rods increased their heaviness to a very high level enough to bring down Hashi who was in his sage mode fall down, but before he could die he saw the figure who killed him, he wore a white kimono and had a long black ponytail and piercing in his face.

After hearing this story Tobirama too searched but couldn't even find the traces and we finally found the flaw of his [Summoning: Reanimation Jutsu], it damages the soul of the user very much and he was very weakened to the point he couldn't even defeat nine-tails so he stayed back to die in a fight like his brother not before modifying the jutsu, which now takes a living sacrifice unlike a dead one and uses the sacrifice's soul as its fuel.

Tsuyoi and Karin both died in a mission, the reason FUCKING UNKNOWN!! I smashed the bottle in my hand and took a deep breath to calm down.

Nawaki died in an accident which left her sister and me depressed. I drank down my sorrows and made myself pass out.