"Crack!!"
"Rumble~~"
Thunder rolled closer. Through the forest, a group of figures leaped among the towering bushes. The thunder reached their ears, and a flash of lightning briefly illuminated their faces in the shadows, making them easier to see.
"Captain! The storm clouds are almost here. Traveling at night is too dangerous. Let's find somewhere to camp first."
"We still have a long way to go before we reach the village. Safety comes first."
A long scar ran across half the speaker's face, stretching from the corner of his eye down his cheek to his chin. It made the middle-aged man look even more fearsome as he spoke.
"Mm. All right. Go set the traps. We'll rest for the night." The man leading the group seemed to agree with his companion. He leaped onto a thick branch and gestured for the whole team to stop.
Turning toward his companions, he caught a glint of light reflecting off the Konoha Forehead Protector on his head. Then he scanned the surroundings with his pale eyes. After confirming there was no danger, he let out a quiet sigh of relief.
"Heh! All right."
"Whoosh!"
The scarred man answered and darted away. Not long after he left, several figures appeared among the trees and gathered around the pale-eyed man.
This was an expanded ninja squad, and everyone present was a ninja from Konoha. Their leader was a ninja from the Hyuga Clan, one of Konoha's great clans. This mission was extremely important to Konoha. The Third had dispatched two four-person Jonin squads to carry it out, and the leader was Hyuga Daiki of the Hyuga Clan.
"Waaah!" A baby's wail shattered the quiet night. The group, who had just relaxed, tensed in an instant and dropped into fighting stances.
"Sorry, sorry. My little brother woke up." The speaker was a girl of seven or eight. She wore a filthy long-sleeved shirt, its sleeves torn in several places to reveal her pale skin. Her long red hair covered part of her face, and the Uzumaki symbol on the back of her shirt showed who she was.
"Jiuming, be good. Don't cry, okay?" The girl smiled coaxingly at the baby in her arms and rocked him gently, trying to lull him back to sleep. But her smile was so bitter that it did nothing except make the baby cry even louder.
"So getting struck by lightning doesn't hurt at all..."
"It actually feels kind of tingly and nice..."
When Uzumaki Kumei opened his eyes, he found that he wasn't lying in a hospital bed. Surely someone who had been electrocuted should have been taken to the hospital right away. He had no idea why he'd been so unlucky as to get struck by lightning on his way to work. It was the kind of thing that only happened in trashy webnovels, yet somehow it had happened to him.
When he opened his eyes and realized he wasn't in a hospital bed, he instinctively shouted. That was when he noticed his voice sounded different.
"Jiuming, be good. Don't cry, okay?" A slightly chubby baby face filled his vision. As the girl softly tried to soothe him, he suddenly felt his "bed" begin to rock.
"Who am I?"
"Where am I?"
"Who are you?"
Kumei's shout came out as a baby's cry, piercing the night sky. Just as he started wailing again, another flash of lightning streaked across the sky in the distance. A few seconds later, rolling thunder reached his ears.
As the rocking continued, Kumei's eyelids grew heavier and heavier. He wasn't sleepy at all; his mind was perfectly clear. Yet despite that, he closed his eyes again. He wanted to shout, but no sound would come out.
"Sleep paralysis?"
"What was that face just now? She didn't look like a cute nurse..."
His eyes had been forced shut, and everything went dark. As he tried to make sense of what had just happened and figure out his situation, a beam of light banished the darkness, replaced by a vast expanse of white.
In an instant, the outline of a baby took shape in his mind. Fine blue lines began to appear across the baby's body, and as they emerged, Kumei seemed to gain control of this body. A tingling sensation spread through him.
This feeling... it was about the same as getting struck by lightning... and it felt great...
He still couldn't open his eyes, but his sense of touch, smell, hearing, and the rest had returned. He could clearly hear people talking outside.
"Captain! The traps are ready." The scarred man, whose face was scarred on one side, returned to the group. By the time he arrived, the only ones left in camp were Kushina Uzumaki and the Jonin leading the Hyuga Clan squad. Oh—and the baby in Kushina's arms, Kumei.
"Good. Go keep watch." Hyuga Daiki nodded and waved him away.
He had been ordered to travel to Uzushio Village in the Land of Whirlpools and bring back Uzumaki Clan members suited to inheriting the Nine-Tails. Uzushio Village had been cooperative, and he had been allowed to take two people. He had already used his Byakugan on the older girl. She was very suitable...
As for the younger one, he was just an extra. They had brought him along too~
"Kushina, is it all right if I call you that?" Hyuga Daiki was considerate of the girl's feelings and spoke gently.
"Mm." Kushina tightened her hold on the child, as if afraid someone might take him away from her.
"Is this child named Kumei? I heard you call him that just now."
"Is he your younger brother?"
Hyuga Daiki leaned against a tree trunk and spoke casually. As he talked, a soft patter rose among the trees. Rain began to fall, brushing against the leaves before dripping to the ground.
The shelter they were in was a semicircular structure made with Earth Style, which did a good job of keeping out the rain.
"Mm. His name is Uzumaki Kumei. He's my younger brother."
"My real younger brother!"
Kushina had become intensely protective of herself. She was wary of everyone, even though the man in front of her was a ninja from Konoha, a village that had been on friendly terms with Uzushio Village for generations.
"Uzumaki Kumei? He must mean me."
"Good thing I watched so many movies. Otherwise, I wouldn't even understand what people were saying."
"As for why I could learn a language from movies when you can't, it's because I watched the ones with plots—and I never skipped ahead!"
"Kushina? Why does that name sound so familiar?"
"Red hair, Uzumaki..."
Uzumaki Kumei had already guessed who he was now. The outline of the baby in his mind had grown clearer, and something seemed to be flowing through the blue veins across the baby's body. Flecks of white light appeared in the veins and began to move along with the substance flowing through them.
"Good grief, it really is Naruto!"
"I had both my parents, and I was single, but I had a car and a house. My family was about to get demolished and compensated again, and I had a high-paying job teaching sign language. Why did I end up in Naruto?!"
"I don't want this!"
Kushina held the baby in both arms, using her clothes to form a circle around him as if to shield him from every gust of wind. The wind swept the rain through the trees, setting the leaves rustling. The primeval forest, untouched by moonlight, was pitch-black, the oppressive darkness so deep that she couldn't see her own hand in front of her face.
The girl curled up inside the earthen shelter had gone through a devastating upheaval not long ago. Now, the only comfort she had left was the child in her arms.
"Uncle Daiki, how much longer until we reach Konoha?" Kushina asked into the darkness.
"At our pace, we should get there tomorrow afternoon."
"If I carry the child, we could make it by morning."
Hyuga Daiki's voice came from the darkness. Although they were only about a meter apart, Kushina couldn't see him in the dark.
"Afternoon..." Kushina instinctively avoided the question of letting him carry her younger brother.
Silence fell. The night grew quiet once more.
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