26Despite popular opinion, I did not have a crush on Namikaze Minato, the reason being that I was not a pedophile. I just admired him for his intelligence and work ethic. He managed to become the Fourth Hokage while being an orphan with no bloodlines. His mastery over fuinjutsu (a subject I was still struggling with) was so great that he managed to recreate the second Hokage's flying thunder god technique and was able to seal the strongest bijuu in a baby without any previous preparation or the advantage of mokuton.
I wondered how much better he would be if he recieved teachings from an actual Uzumaki instead of Jiraiya.
"Mito-sensei, how do you feel about taking another student?" I asked while practicing speed writing kanji (an essential skill of a seal master, according to my teacher).
Mito-sensei hummed. "I would not be averse to the idea, if I find someone worthy. Why? Did you have someone in mind, Mishika-chan?"
"There's a boy in our class. He's kind of like a genius. I think he'd be really good at fuinjutsu." I answered. "He's not a clan child, still he's at the top of the class."
"Oh? Is it that Minato boy Kushina was telling me about?" Mito-sensei's voice took up a teasing tone.
"Whatever Kushina has told you about him is a lie because Kushina is a lying liar who lies." I was momentarily shocked by my childish outburst that I had to take a few seconds to recompose myself, while Mito-sensei giggled. "I meant that Kushina has been misunderstanding the situation, Mito-sensei." I continued after clearing my throat.
"Of course." She agreed, somberly. "You can bring him to the compound after classes. I'll assess him to see if he has any potential to learn fuinjutsu."
"Thank you." I replied, smiling gratefully. "You will not regret it."
My decision to get Minato to the sealing lessons wasn't completely altruistic. Even though I didn't have a crush on him, I wished to become friends with him. For one, he was infinitely more mature than the other children my age and I couldn't just rely on Shikaku for any intelligent conversation. Secondly, he was a natural genius in almost all the shinobi arts. Training with him would benifit me by setting a higher bar, ultimately leading me become a more skilled shinobi.
Kushina, however, took this as a confirmation of her being right all along.
"Baa-chan said you wanted to bring Minato to the sealing lessons." She asked, sitting dawn on the desk next to me, smirking.
"I did." I answered as indifferently as I could.
"Ha, I knew it." She shouted and fist bumped into the air.
"Kushina, I just want to be his friend. It's nothing untoward." I said, asking whatever god was out there to get that girl's mind out of romance. To my surprise, Kushina didn't follow up her proclamation with any more lewd comments. Instead, she was looking at me contemplatively.
"What?" I asked, suddenly afraid. Surely, no good would come out of a contemplative Kushina.
"I'm not going to tease you anymore." She declared.
"Why?" I said, reflexively. "Not that I want you to tease me. I'm just curious as to what changed your mind."
She scowled. "Baa-chan asked me to. She said that you were shy. And I was only teasing you because you lied to me when I asked you about him the first time. Now you admitted to wanting to be his friend. That is good enough for me, I suppose."
I knew that if I didn't clear this up right away, this was going to cause problems in future. But I was so relieved that she wasn't going to tease me anymore, that I decided to take anything I was getting.
Inviting Minato turned out to be a bit trickier.
"Namikaze-san." I called out as I saw the blonde leaving the classroom, ignoring the giggling around me.
He turned around and turned red as he spotted me. "Aah, Nara-san. How may I help you?" He asked, stammering.
Uh oh.
"Look kid, I don't care what Kushina has been spreading, I don't have a crush on you." I snapped at his blushing face.
That brought him up short. "You don't?" He asked, his face returning to normal. "Wait, did you just call me a kid? Aren't you a year younger than me?"
"I'm older in soul." I told him the truth. "Look, I wanted to ask if you wished to attend some sealing classes with Kushina and me. Uzumaki Mito is our sensei."
"Really? Mito-sama?" His blue eyes actually started glowing. "Of course, I am honoured to be given a chance to attend. Thank you so much for inviting me, Nara-san."
"Call me Mishika. Less chances of mixing up with Shikaku." I offered.
"Mishika-san. Please call me Minato then." He bowed, making me feel bad that an actual orphan and child had better manners than me.
That was when my brother, as if summoned by his name, appeared. "What's going on here?" He asked, crossing his arms, trying to appear stern. Given that he was a seven year old chibi, it looked more cute than intimidating.
"Ah, Nara-san. Mishika-san invited me to her sealing classes. I was merely thanking her." Minato answered, beaming. Okay, maybe he was a bit less inteligent than I was giving him credit for.
Shikaku's frown deepened.
"Oh, calm down, nii-chan. Minato likes Kushina, not me." I blurted out, before realising that I had no way of knowing that.
"Wha... Wait, how did you know?" Minato flailed, as Shikaku relaxed back to his lazy slouch. God, save me from brothers.
"It's kind of obvious." I answered Minato, lying through my teeth. I had never seen him around Kushina.
"Oh no. Does Kushina-san know too?" He asked nervously.
"Umm...no. If you haven't noticed yet, she's kind of dense."
Minato frowned at that. "That's not a nice thing to say."
"It's true, though." I shrugged.
"Kushina-san is talented in other areas. She is so spirited and determined..." He began.
"Okay. Maybe I can hear all about Kushina's great qualities some other time. We have to go to the Senju compound now. Mito-sensei doesn't like it when we're late."
"Yosh." Minato's grin was back. "Let's learn some sealing."
Just as I had predicted, Minato excelled in the fuinjutsu lessons. According to Mito-sensei, his instictive grasp of the subject was rare even amongst the Uzumaki's. It hard not being jealous, but somehow I managed. I knew what I was getting into when I invited him. I helped that be was humble and actually helped me understand some concepts that the Uzumaki somehow weren't able to explain due to their weirdly wired brains.
Kushina, however, was less than gracious on being beaten, on what was essentially her clan art, by some non-Uzumaki. Apparently, she was only okay with me (if that was her being okay), because, according to her 'I sucked'.
This caused Minato to underperforming intentionally, leading to him getting a lecture by Mito-sensei on treating the sealing arts with the respect they deserved. He never tried underperforming again.
"Couldn't you have picked someone better?" Kushina whined. "He's such a sissy. There's Inoichi if you're interested in girly blonde boys. He's even friends with your brother." She offered eagerly.
"No, thank you." I answered, repeating my kata while standing on the water in a pond in the Senju compound.
Kushina looked on jealously. "How is your chakra control that good? I can't even get the leaf to stick to my forehead. Even genius blondy isn't as good as you."
I didn't stop the smirk forming in my lips on hearing that. Minato might be the top of class rankings and better at fuinjutsu, but there was no way that we could surpass me in chakra control.
"It's just practice." I told Kushina, half truthfully. "Mito-sensei said she'll start teaching me the strength of hundred seals if I mastered this." I had already completed the chakra augmentation technique to increase strength. It wasn't to Tsunade's level but I got me many wins in taijutsu sparring untill sensei barred it classifying it as a ninjutsu technique, since it involved controlled use of chakra. I was back to losing since I couldn't use the sub-par instinctive chakra augmentation like other kids.
"What would the hundred what's it seal do? I would still kick your ass at taijutsu, like I do at sealing." Kushina teased, rubbing salt into the wound.
"You'll have to be satisfied with that, since you're never going to beating Minato." I teased back.
Kushina scoffed. "What does that matter? Your boyfriend isn't coming between our rivalry."
"He's not my boyfriend." I replied automatically.
"Sure." She replied. "Are you done with that? I want to spar, all out."
"The last time we did that, Mito-sensei made us clean the compound. And, no I'm not done. I've to do this for an hour."
"Boring!" She left in a huff.
I continued doing my kata and after a while almost entered a trance, feeling my own chakra and the chakra around moving, all the while balancing on the water. After the last kata, my opened my eyes, only for my concentration to be broken by a flash of bright blonde hair. I only barely managed to avoid falling into the pond.
"Wow, that was amazing." One Namikaze Minato praised, after almost ruining the entire excercise. I resisted to scold him after seeing his earnest and awed expression.
"What are you doing here, Minato?" I asked, walking off the pond.
"Oh, Mito-sensei sent me get you." Of course she did, probably as some kind of test. "When did you learn to do that?"
"Doing what? Water walking?"
"No, though that was impressive too. I meant making the chakra in the air glow like that." Minato said, stopping in my tracks.
"Doing what?"
"Oh, I guess you weren't aware you were doing that. It was pretty cool through." He said. "Listen, I've got to run to the orphanage before lights out. Tell me tomorrow if you figure it out, won't you?"
I nodded distractedly. 'The chakra in the air', did he mean nature chakra? Was I manipulating nature chakra?
"Mishika-chan, Did you complete the excercise?" Mito-sensei asked as I entered the main house.
"Yes, sensei." I answered, tabling the topic of nature chakra for the time being.
"Since, you aren't drenched to the bone, I suppose you are now ready to learn the strength of a hundred seals."
I nodded eagerly.
"Well, there is nothing much to it. You just have to send a small tendril of chakra to the empty gate on your forehead. It shouldn't be more than the chakra required to make chakra string. The gate would store chakra and you would be able to release it during emergencies."
I waited for sensei to continue.
"That's all." She said when I kept on looking eagerly.
I felt my jaw drop. "What? What do you mean by 'that's all'?"
Mito-sensei sighed. "It's not a complicated technique once you have the required chakra control, Mishika-chan. The struggle is to reach the chakra control required. You have already done that."
"Oh." I said dumbly. "But what about 'the hundred seals'?"
"The technique was named such so as to discourage people from trying it on their own. Can you imagine if someone with Kushina's chakra control tried to send continuous chakra tendrils to their head?"
A gruesome image of an exploded head entered my mind. I flinched.
"Yes. I see that you can guess. Now can I trust you to not share this technique carelessly?" Sensei asked.
"Yes, sensei. You can trust me." I replied.
Mito-sensei smiled. "I know I can."
