Guide him, Kushina pleads, life draining from her once vibrant eyes. Guide him, lead him to the right path, keep him loyal and honest and Uzumaki. Guide him.
Her pale lips were stained with dry blood the color of her scarlet hair. Her body was numb with cold in the chilly autumn night.
My prince wreathed in thunder and lightning.
~~~
He had taken to standing in front of the memorial stone before training, in the early hours of the morning. Lately he had been dreaming less and less of warm water and sea-shine, but a dark chilly ocean and blinking starry skies.
He hears the haunting laugh of the ice-smelling boy echoing in his head every morning when he wakes up, and he finds tear tracks tracing themselves down his cheeks.
The wind was quiet. She no longer sang him to sleep, nor did she whisper her sweet melodic riddles in his ears. He felt his insides turn hollow at the very thought, a dull ache seizing his heart. He missed her. His anchor, the one thing that grounded him to the earth.
But when she did, it was always the same thing. A constant reminder to return home, to stay true to his beliefs and stay loyal to his village and friends.
In the cold autumn morning of his twelfth birthday, he stayed in front of the memorial stone in the hours before dawn, long before the Kyuubi festival began. That day, as leaves the same shade of red as his dreams spiraled to the ground in the thunder and lightning arcing through the sky, he traced the name of the Uzumaki girl with his scarred hands as the wind returned to his side to sing.
He cried.
~~~
He has grown tired of waiting. No matter how many hints he drops to the Hokage or his teacher, none of them give him any information regarding the Uzumaki girl. His schedule is now filled to the brink with missions and training, and he rarely has any time for himself.
The next Saturday, after a particularly lengthy C-rank, his team is rewarded with three days of rest. The wind's urges grow stronger and stronger, a constant angry hum by his ear.
There have been a lot of thunderstorms lately. The monsoon is here.
He takes advantage of the dark night, the roaring wind, the flashing lightning and the thunder that goes unchecked. Rain pelts the ground in furious beats, turning dirt to mud and flooding streets. The ninja are called to help.
He makes sure all the civilians are safe, tucked away in the monument away from the storm. Then he retreats to the ANBU archives.
The ANBU are busy with the storm, monitoring the hideouts and keeping an eye on the village walls, patrolling the borders and streets to prevent infiltration and to keep the civilians from running about. Yet there is a squad of ANBU guarding the academy and the Hokage office. There is another squad keeping watch at the Hokage's Mansion, where the Hokage rests and where the archives are stored.
There is a squad of ANBU patrolling the archives. Three squads of ANBU, one for the academy and the Hokage's office, where the jutsu library and the reports archives are. One for the Hokage and his belongings. One specifically for the personal files of all the ninja in Konoha, for all the high-ranked mission reports that cannot be lost.
He hides his chakra. As a natural sensor, he knows that sensing one's chakra signature is easy. Getting into the archives and stealing Uzumaki Kushina's file is hard, but he has come too far to give up, and he had nothing to lose. He only hopes that the reinforced shadow clone he left with his team won't dispel, and he creates another clone before scrambling as close as he can to the archives.
YOU ARE READING
Of Whirlpools and of Tides
Fanfiction'Save him', Kushina prays to spirits of sand and water. Of salt and shine, the ones that she remembered from stories of old. 'Save him, my child of waves and gales. The crown of leaves and sun. Save him, my darling son.' As she feels herself slippin...
