478Jiraiya cornered Tsunami in her apartment after the funeral. "Let's go!" he said. "The sooner we get going, the sooner we can get back with the person we're going to fetch. You'll need to be Naruto for this mission."
"Wait!" Tsunami exclaimed. "You haven't given me the mission briefing yet. I don't know what to bring! And I'll be going as Tsunami or not at all."
Karin was watching with a mixture of curiosity and horrified fascination at the rather typical interaction between the two of them.
"You don't need to bring anything other than your basic gear, Brat," Jiraiya said. "I'll take care of everything, so you don't really need a mission briefing." He jerked his head at Karin, indicating he didn't want to say in front of her recently immigrated cousin.
Tsunami glared at him before gesturing toward Naruto's bedroom. "We can talk privately in there."
Without turning to see if her supposed godfather would follow, she marched into the room. It took a full half minute before Jiraiya appeared in the doorway frowning. He sighed and entered the room, closing the door behind him.
Tsunami crossed her arms under her breasts and waited for him to talk.
"What happened to the chain of command?" he grumped.
"You aren't in my chain of command, Ero-jichan," she replied with a smirk. "Sannin isn't an official title. You're just another jounin until whoever's in charge now that Jiichan is gone says differently. And since this isn't a combat situation, the fact that you're a jounin doesn't mean I have to listen to you. Unless you're the new Hokage?"
They both shuddered in near unison at the thought.
"No," Jiraiya said. "I suppose I can tell you since you'll find out when we find her—we're going to hunt down the new Hokage."
"The new Hokage!?" Tsunami exclaimed. A thought struck her. "Wait! You said
'her.' We're going to go look for Tsunade, aren't we?"
Senju Tsunade was really the only possible female candidate for Hokage—especially when you considered those not in the village. Her face lit up. It was a well-known fact that Tsunade was the granddaughter of the Shodai Hokage and his wife, her Great-Great-Aunt Mito. She did a quick calculation and figured out that this made Tsunade her second cousin once removed.
"This is great!" she exclaimed. "I can't wait to meet another cousin!"
She had another thought. "Karin would be related to her too!"
She rushed out of the room. "Karin," she exclaimed. "We're going to go look for Tsunade! You should come too."
"Naruto!" Jiraiya bellowed. "She wasn't supposed to know! The mission is a secret!"
Tsunami turned to look at the glaring Jiraiya, who was standing in the doorway to Naruto's room.
"What's the big deal, this is a simple courier mission, isn't it?" Tsunami asked. "We go to where she is, tell her she's needed, and then back we come. I didn't even say why you want her."
Jiraiya ground his palm into his temple. "Dealing with someone like Tsunade is never simple, Brat. Now your cousin will have to come with us for operational security. We can't have it leaking out who we're looking for." He glared at her. "Now don't tell anyone else. Not your teammates. Not your sensei. Not anyone. Got it?"
When she nodded abashedly, Jiraiya shook his head. "I had planned on teaching you a technique while we traveled, but that idea is shot now." He turned to Karin. "No offense, Karin-chan, but I don't know you well enough to teach you the kind of technique that I was going to teach the Brat."
"Oh," Karin said, a mixture of flustered and excited. "Was it one of the Yondiame's techniques? The Hiraishin? The Rasengan?"
"What?" Jiraiya spluttered. "Why would I teach her one of those?"
"Well, it's obvious who her father is after taking a look at her as a boy…" Karin said, confused.
The long-term clone, who had been watching the drama since Tsunami had run out of the room, shrugged his shoulders, and said, "I'm honestly surprised no one else has figured it out."
Jiraiya sank onto the couch and massaged both his temples. "The kami preserve me from pre-teens who spout off state secrets without knowing any better."
"It's a state secret? Really?" Karin asked. "The Yondaime's face is on the mountain! And everyone in the Elemental Nations knows he was blond. It's obvious!"
Tsunami chuckled bitterly. "I guess it's obvious to anyone not trained to dismiss me as the village pariah."
Jiraiya had the grace to look embarrassed. He cleared his throat. "Anyway. I guess I'm bringing all three of you along. Pack some basics and let's go!"
Tsunami said, "My long-term clone needs to stay."
Jiraiya glared at her.
She looked away from him and said, "Unless you want to explain to the ANBU commander why his emergency seal order will be late?"
"Fine!" Jiraiya roared. "I'm stepping out. The two of you be ready to go in twenty minutes."
After her angry godfather had left, Tsunami grabbed her long-term clone's hand and started pumping chakra into him so that he would have enough to finish the ANBU seal order while they were gone. She would have to send a Shadow Clone to visit Hinata. She thought that Jiraiya might have a stroke if she told him they needed to wait so she could say good-bye to her teammate like she had promised.
To pass the time while they traveled, Tsunami decided to borrow Jiraiya's original plan and started teaching Karin how to form the Adamantine Attacking Chains that was an Uzumaki signature technique. Karin knew the basics of the technique from her mother, but had not managed to perform it yet. In return, Karin gave her some more tips on how best to use the Mind's Eye Technique to its fullest.
It soon became obvious that Jiraiya did not know exactly where Tsunade was and so they were reduced to chasing down leads. Tsunami and Karin were shocked at the where the leads were taking them. What was Tsunade doing in bars and gambling halls?
"What?" Jiraiya said when asked about it. "Did you expect to find her in a hospital?"
As Tsunade was a famous medic nin, that was Tsunami's vague expectation.
"The shinobi life is not kind," Jiraiya explained. "Old shinobi like Tsunade and me tend to find vices and diversions to keep ourselves saner than not."
She and Karin exchanged looks. Tsunami knew that a lot of the more experienced jounin had oddities, like Kakashi's books and lateness and Gai's "Youth" obsession, but she hadn't realized it was such a common outcome of the shinobi lifestyle.
To her grief, Tsunami discovered another "quirk" of her good-for-nothing godfather. He was a miserly cheapskate. Despite being a "world-renowned" author and high-ranking shinobi, the louse kept trying to steal her wallet to pay for their meals, lodging, and tips for informants.
Finally getting sick of it, Tsunami removed her Leaf Badge before going into the next town. When Jiraiya invariable tried to snag her wallet to pay at a food cart, Tsunami cowered and said, "Don't hit me, Jisan! Please, don't hit me."
Karin figured out what was going on and cowered beside her.
An angry mob chased Jiraiya out of town.
Tsunami and Karin were grinning and laughing when Jiraiya caught up to them.
"Why'd you do that?" he growled. "Now none of my informants in that town will talk to me!"
"That'll teach you to steal from your poor, defenseless goddaughter," Tsunami crowed.
"Poor, defenseless goddaughter, my aged mother's bunions," he muttered. "It was situational-awareness training," he said more loudly.
Tsunami huffed in disbelief. "A likely excuse!"
It was the evening of their fourth day on the road when Naruto was overcome by a rush of memories.
Naruto heard a knock on his apartment door while he was working on some seals for the emergency ANBU order. He frowned. Only Jiraiya ever came to their door and he was out with Naruto's original. He activated the apartment's monitoring seal and was shocked to discover two unknown shinobi standing outside his door. One of them was pretty normal looking, if reminiscent of an older Sasuke. He had a scratched-out Leaf Badge on his forehead. The other was gray-skinned and had gill-like markings under his eyes. He was wearing a scratched-out Mist Badge and had a huge bandage-wrapped sword strapped to his back. Both of them were wearing black cloaks with white-outlined red clouds on them.
What were missing nin doing outside his door? One of them had to be Uchiha Itachi who was one of two S-Rank Konoha missing nin. Maybe if he ignored them they would go away. He gathered up his ninja tools, but he knew that there was no way he could win a confrontation with even one missing nin of Itachi's caliber. The other was likely to be much more skilled than he was too. Plus, he sensed that the Kiri missing nin had chakra reserves approaching those of his original.
"We know you're in there, Kyuubi Brat," an unknown voice called through the door. "Come out and we won't wreck your place."
He didn't like his odds of getting away. He started to disengage the seals protecting his windows so that he could make an attempt when the front door splintered inward. The Kiri missing nin stood there with his bandage-wrapped sword held in front of him. Itachi was standing behind him and said, "Come quietly, Naruto-kun."
Naruto raised an eyebrow. The door had been chakra-reinforced. He hadn't expected them to be able to get in so easily.
"Or don't," said the sword wielder. "Samehada likes the taste of Bijuu chakra. I'll just shave off your legs so you can't run."
"What do you want with me?" Naruto asked, thinking furiously. The sword-wielder would be on top of him before he could make it out the window thanks to his security seals. He made a note for the original to think of escape routes. He doubted that he would survive this encounter. He was fine with that. Shadow Clones were transitory. Even with the fancy seal that stabilized him, he hadn't expected to last forever.
He took out an empty storage seal and started charging it with chakra. A full one might be better, but he had what he had.
"Stay back," he said. "If this storage seal overloads, it will trigger all of these others and blow up the whole building."
"You don't have the guts, Kyuubi Brat," the Kiri missing nin said.
"Don't I?" Naruto said with a raised eyebrow. "I know better to go anywhere with the Clan Slayer. If he doesn't want to kill me right now, I hesitate to consider my fate."
The Kiri missing nin laughed. "Your reputation precedes you, Itachi-kun."
"It appears so, Kisame-kun," Itachi replied without emotion. "If you come with us, I swear to not kill you."
Naruto snorted while continuing to charge the storage seal. "That says nothing about your companion, others, or what you might do short of that."
Itachi remained silent.
His companion snorted. "Even after everything, you are such a goody two shoes, Itachi-kun. Won't even lie to the brat, will you? As if lying was a sin that compared to killing your entire family."
With that, Naruto decided there was nothing for it. With a final surge, he overloaded the seal.
His last memory was of Itachi finally showing some emotion and yelling, "No!" Kisame was swinging his huge sword in front of him.
The next thing Tsunami knew, she was sitting on the ground with Jiraiya and Karin looking down at her, concerned.
"What's wrong, Tsunami-chan?" Karin asked.
She gulped in air to try and compose herself. "Itachi and one other at my apartment. My long-term clone is gone."
"Itachi?" Jiraiya asked. "Uchiha Itachi? Who was the other?"
"Yes," Tsunami said. "Uchiha Itachi and a Kiri missing nin named Kisame."
Jiraiya paled and commanded, "Tell me everything."
"Let's make camp first," Karin suggested. "I don't think Tsunami will be up for more travel today."
"Very well," Jiraiya agreed.
Karin lead the still-dazed Tsunami off of the road while Jiraiya made a campfire and put some water boiling over it. When the water was ready, he prepared some tea and shoved a mug of it into Tsunami's hands.
After a few sips, Tsunami told the story of the last moments of her long-term clone.
"That is disturbing," Jiraiya said. "That Akatasuki would act so brazenly within one of the major villages."
"Who are Akatsuki?" Karin asked.
"A group of S-rank missing nin that appear to be hunting down the Bijuu," Jiraiya said grimly.
"Should we return to Konoha?" Karin asked.
Jiraiya shook his head. "No, our mission is even more important now." He paused thoughtfully before he continued. "We also don't want anyone to investigate how we would know what happened before they Konoha contacted us." He hesitated before adding. "It might be better for everyone if the world thinks that Naruto-kun died in the attack."
Karin gasped.
Tsunami just felt numb. Isn't that what she wanted: the final escape? Why didn't the prospect make her feel any better?
