Three Little Kittens Part 8

    *******

    Someone was shaking her, trying to get her to wake up. But it was cold out there, and right now she was soft and warm. Mizako made a little growl of displeasure, brushed the hand away, and tried to snuggle back down under the blankets.

    She couldn’t find them. She must have kicked them all off in the middle of the night again. She rolled over and buried her face in her mattress, which was unbelievably warm and smelled wonderful.

    There was another tentative prodding, this time in her back. “Just five more minutes Kushina,” she muttered. “I won’t be late this time… I promise.”

    There was a pause, and then an urgently whispered conversation began. That was easy enough to ignore. She yawned and let the warm clouds of sleep caress her once more. Again, she was poked much harder and rougher this time. “What do you want?” Mizako asked, keeping her eyes closed.

    “Tohru really needs to pee, only she’s too scared to go outside by herself,” said a young grouchy voice. “I keep telling her to go in the corner but she doesn’t want to ‘cause she’s afraid you’ll beat her for that… Do you want her to use the pot instead?”

    Mizako’s eyes snapped open. Several of previous days events came to her in a screaming rush. She sat up suddenly and instantly regretted it.

    Every muscle she had was cramped and aching. She had pins and needles everywhere. Her mouth tasted sour. Mizako glanced at the three children and then confusedly looked at her surroundings.

    They were still in the shack they had discovered in the middle of that blizzard. She had fallen asleep, sprawled across Ay out of sheer exhaustion. Ay was slumped in a corner of the hut, his head tilted back and a thin string of drool running out of the corner of his mouth. The dull rasp of a snore could be heard echoing in his throat.

    The three siblings were standing in front of her. The shorter boy, Kyo, was giving her a look of scowling disapproval. He was the one who had woken her up. The taller boy, Yuki, was staring at her with a look of wary concern, as if he was waiting to see what action she would take, and what his reaction would be based on that.

    The girl, Torhu, had her knees locked together and was bouncing up and down anxiously.

    The girl’s little dance, was a cue for her own bladder to signal its own pressing issues.  “Right,” said Mizako, stiffly getting to her feet. “Potty break.” She stretched and heard her spine pop at least four times. “Let’s go everyone.”

    The morning was clear, but bitterly cold. Yuki and Torhu were still out in the tree line while Mizako stomped her feet in the snow, trying to bring some flexibility back into her protesting body and trying to keep warm. With her most important biological issue taken care of, her body immediately started to bring up another issue… she hadn’t eaten anything yesterday aside from a few food pills she had hastily gulped down as she ran out the door that morning and that ridiculously overpriced bowl of soup at the farmer’s house. Mizako found herself eyeing the partially dammed up frozen pond and the shallow stream, as her stomach kept nudging her brain.

    She wasn’t half bad at fishing. In fact, back in her Academy days, Mizako  would spend the summer months wading the feeder creeks surrounding Konoha, keeping an eye out for larger trout basking on the muddy bottoms. Even back then she was quick enough that she could scoop them out of the stream with her bare hands and carry them home to a pleased Kushina.

    Of course, she wasn’t about to go wading in the creek now, in these temperatures that would be a recipe for frostbite. Mizako turned and stuck her head back in the hut. She smiled to herself, happy that the owner of the hut had left behind his tattered net and wobbly fishing spear. The shorter boy shot her a quizzical look as she silently took both poles off the wall and tiptoed back outside.

    Kyo got up to follow and hobbled after her on his bruised legs and stood there, arms folded, giving her a suspicious glare.

    “Do you need to go too?” asked Mizako, pointing after his siblings.

    He shook his head. “I already went.”

    “Not in the hut I hope,” said Mizako suspiciously.

    The boy snorted. “Please, I woke up sometime before dawn and went outside.” His lips curled down in a frown. “That big jackass snores like an earthquake.”

    Mizako was about to agree when her still sleepy brain parsed that sentence. “Hey!” she snapped, putting her hand imperiously on her hip. “I thought I told you to watch your mouth!”

    The boy snorted. “I heard what you said… You said you were going to wash my mouth out with soap.” His lips turned up in a smirk. “Is that where you’re heading off to now? To make soap?”

    “Listen to me young man, where I come from young people do not speak that way in polite company!” she said sternly. “Now I told you once before that I would not accept that language in my presence. What do you have to say for yourself?”

    “Who gives a shit what… Ow!” he cried out as Mizako grabbed his ear and pulled.

    “If you are well enough to stand there and swear, you are certainly well enough to help out,” Mizako said coldly.

    Kyo squirmed as she pulled him towards the frozen river. “Hey! Stop it!” he cried. “What gives lady? What kind of a nut job are you?”

    “The kind of nut job who insists on proper manners!” Mizako growled pulling him onto the icy banks of the small frozen over pond. “Now come on over here!”

    Kyo was really starting to struggle now. “I am not going near that water!” he snapped. He was trying to sound tough but there was a quaver in his voice.

    “You most certainly are!” Mizako grunted as she tugged. Kyo was really thrashing about now. She held on to him as she scrambled down the banks of the pond and stomped on  the ice with her heel. It held firm. She knelt, and dug under the snow sullying it with sand and gravel. She found what she was looking for and pulled a fist-sized stone from the frozen mud and tossed it out to the center of the pool. The ice there snapped with a high musical sound and splashed into the sluggish current.

    The weight shifted in her hand. Kyo’s ear started to turn thin and fuzzy in her fingers.  She quickly let go and managed to snag him by the back of the thick shirt he was now wearing. There was a high pitched yowl and the young lion cub trapped in the clothes twisted about wildly, striking out with its claws.

    “What are you doing to Kyo?” called out a terrified voice. Mizako turned and saw Tohru, right behind her. Yuki was some distance away but running towards them across the snow.

    “Your brother needs to learn to stop swearing… so as a punishment he’s going to help me get breakfast!”

    “Don’t make him go in the water!” Tohru called out, running towards them and grabbing the still dangling cub snagged in the shirt. Kyo sank both paws into Tohru’s jerkin and hung there in a scrambling panic. There was a moment of comical swaying as Tohru fought against gravity and lost. She sat down heavily in the snow. “He doesn’t like the water,” she said by way of an explanation, rubbing her sore behind.

    Mizako shook her head. “We’re not going in the water, it’s freezing! We’re going on top of it.” She used the long end of the net to prod around the edge of the pond. She felt it knock against stone and cautiously stepped forward. “Fishermen make these pools  by building stone walls across spawning streams. It gives the fish a safer place to lay their eggs. You can guarantee a larger catch this way.” Using the pole to feel for the wall ahead of her, Mizako walked her way into the center of the pond. “Whatever the season, the wall gives you something to stand on when you go fishing.”

    There was a stumbling noise behind her as Yuki inched his way toward her using her footsteps as a path. “What makes you think there are any fish in there?” he asked curiously.

    Roughly in the center of the pond, Mizako used her net to break through the thin layer of ice. She lifted out the larger chunks of ice with her net to clear the space. Soon she had a small hole of lapping dark brown water. “My Brother’s sensei takes me fishing every now and then. I think Kushina actually approves when I go with him, she says it keeps him out of trouble. Anyway, as Jiraiya-sensei says: “You’ll find fish in practically every stream, lake, and pond. They may not be big, and they may not be anything that you could sell at a market, but there’s bound to be something that you can eat… and really isn’t that the important thing?”

    It was windy out in the middle of the pond and she paused for a moment to warm her hands in her armpits. “So how are you going to catch them?” Yuki asked curiously. “With the net?”

    Both of them turned at a loud crackling of the ice. Tohru, staggering under the weight of a transformed Kyo, who was trying to claw his way up her shoulders, was trying to teeter her way along the dam. Only Kyo’s squirming must have caused her to stray from the path. She staggered on to the ice. It held but it complained loudly. “Careful now,” said Mizako, running back and offering her a hand. “It would be no fun if you fell in here.” She guided the pair of them back to Yuki. With a grunt Tohru unhooked the lion cub from her shoulders and put him down. Kyo yowled a bushy tailed protest, but the girl shushed him and stepped closer to Mizako.

    Mizako lowered herself to the ice and pulled out one of her kunai. Carefully, she started chipping, enlarging the rough hole through the ice. “Oh, we’ll use the net... eventually… we just need some way to get the fish to the surface first,” she said to answer Yuki’s previous question. “Usually, when net or spear fishing, you have to bait the water with something to attract the fish.”

    “Bait it with what?” asked Tohru.

    “Worms, bugs, fish guts,” said Mizako with a shrug at Tohru’s sudden bout of queasiness. “Whatever we can find.”

    Yuki gave her a look. “It’s winter… how are we going to find anything?”

    Mizako gave him a mischievous smile. “I asked Jiraiya sensei the exact same thing once… and he told me, you have to think like a hungry fish.” She stood up from the ice and pulled her spool of tripwire from her equipment pouch and set it down on the dam. Using her kunai, she cut about eight centimetres length worth of hair from the end of her braid. She separated the lock of hair into four parts and began looping them and tying them.

    “Merow?” asked Kyo the lion cub questioningly.

    “What, this?” she asked holding up the knotted hairy loop. “This is what the fish are going to be biting after.” Mizako bunched up a small gathering of her hair and used another strand to tie it around the loop, twisting it into a shape that could pass for the wings of a fly. She held it up for Kyo’s inspection. “See?” she asked him before twisting it onto the tripwire.

    In a few minutes she had four ‘flies’ twisted into the wire and was jerking it away to keep the lion cub from batting at it. “Stop it!” she admonished with a snicker. “We need that!” She tied the wire to the end of the fishing spear and dangled it through the icy hole into the water. “Here,” she said, handing the pole off to Yuki.

    He looked surprised, but held on. “What do I do with it?”

    “Just hold onto it. If you feel something pull on the wire, just lift it up very slowly. We want to attract the fish as close to the surface as we can.” Mizako took the net, and rested its edge right next to the ice hole. Then she waited.

    Those were either the best flies she had ever tied or the fish were starving. Moments after dipping them in the water, Yuki gasped. “Something’s there!” he said excitedly.

    “Good!” whispered Mizako, “Start lifting it out… remember go slowly.” Little by little the wire came out of the water. Soon a pale grey shape could be seen darting up from the murky depths, chasing the line.

    With a deft move that would have made Jiraiya proud, she slid the net sideways into the hole, turned and yanked. Everyone squealed as the carp wildy flopped about in the netting.

    It wasn’t huge, but it was big enough to make her mouth water. She dumped it in the snow right in front of Kyo. “Hold on to that!” she ordered and waved at Yuki to lower the bait again.

    They caught five more, which was most fortuitous because Kyo’s face was buried in the first fish by the time she snagged the second carp. She had to laugh at the innocent look he was trying to give her with his whiskers covered with fish blood and scales.

    The four of them took their catch back to the hut, breaking a handful of sticks off the trees at they went. Ay was still snoring when they entered but started to stir as they built up the fire. He sat up as Mizako lit it and let out a long string of barking coughs. Mizako went over to him as he rubbed his chest and frowned.

    “Are you doing okay?” she asked, pulling at his shirt to check on his wound.

    Ay brushed her off. “I’m tired and sore… but that’s nothing a hot meal won’t fix.” He stared at her and for a second his eyes crinkled in a smile. “And since I’m sure we don’t want to be eating charcoal, you’d best let me do the cooking Kitten.”

    Kyo ate a whole other carp, cooked this time, and passed out almost immediately afterwards. He lay, stretched out, all four paws up in the air, in a puddle of sunlight that streamed in through a small cobwebbed window. Yuki shifted as well and curled up in a tight little ball in the small corner of daylight his brother wasn’t hogging. Despite his insistences that he was fine, Ay started nodding off in the corner of the hut. The last thing he said before he started snoring again was to tell Mizako to wake him when it was his turn to stand watch.

    The sun slowly climbed higher into the sky and Mizako was very happy that the air was warming up. In fact if she could stay out of the wind, it felt almost pleasant. There were a few scattered birdcalls and the occasional thump as clumps of melting snow fell from a bent tree limb. Yesterday had been a very hard day and Mizako felt her eyelids drooping as she sat under the overhang of the hut.

    “Um… Mizako-sama?” They snapped open at the sound of Tohru’s voice. “Would it be okay if I… sat with you for a while?”

    Mizako smiled at the girl and patted her hand on the loose pile of firewood. “That would be great. You could help me stay awake.”

    The girl gave her a hesitant bow and hopped up on the dusty firewood. She sat there for a while, staring at Mizako, kicking her feet back and forth and shyly looking away every time Mizako glanced down at her. She recognized that standoffish behavior. It was the same thing she had done to Jiraiya-sensei when her brother had told a curious six year old Mizako that one of the legendary Sanin was stopping by for dinner. “So,” Mizako started awkwardly, trying to put the girl at ease.  “Did you want to… talk about something?” The girl blushed and wildly shook her head. “Oh, that’s too bad,” Mizako said, hiding her smile, “because I find that talking is the best way to stay awake when you’re standing guard.”

    “Really?” asked Tohru.

    “Really,” said Mizako with a nod. There was a pause as Tohru’s mouth opened and closed a few times. Mizao gave her a nudge. “I mean, if you don’t want to ask me anything that’s fine, but I would really appreciate it if maybe you could try to come up with something…”

    For a second, Mizako thought it might be too much for the girl, but eventually Tohru took a deep breath and blurted out, “How do you get your hair in braids like that?”

    Mizako laughed. Tohru immediately blushed bright red, covered her mouth with one hand and started apologizing. “No no, it’s fine,” said Mizako. “I just wasn’t expecting your first question to be about hair styles, that’s all. Here, lean forward and I’ll show you.” Tohru tilted her head. Mizako took hold of the girl’s greasy, stringy blond locks, examined them for a second, and then produced a small brush from her equipment pouch and began to attack her snarls and tangles. “This will take a moment. I just need to clean this out a bit.”

    “Sorry,” said Tohru with a cringe.

    Mizako smiled at her. “Hey,” she said reassuringly. “It’s not your fault at all.” She scowled at a particularly difficult tangle. “But when we get back to Konoha, the three of you will definitely need a bath.”

    Tohru winced. “Don’t tell Kyo that.”

    Mizako laughed again. “Okay,” she said once Tohru’s hair was brushed to her satisfaction, “here’s basically how it works. You divide your hair into three ropes and then you weave them together like so.” Her fingers flew, up, over, down and cross… up, over, down and cross. “See?”

    Tohru’s mouth was hanging open. “How did you do that?”

    “It’s easy once you get used to it… Here.” Mizako unraveled the braid, took Tohru’s hands in hers and repeated the motions. “There… now you try.”

    Thirty seconds later she was trying to untie the knot in Tohru’s hair. “This is too hard for me,” the girl said despondently.

    Mizako shook her head. “You’re doing fine. I only taught you a minute ago. You just need practice.” Mizako grinned. “You should have seen the mess my hair was in the first time I tried to do this. My mother and brother laughed for a good ten minutes before they tried to untie me.”

    “They laughed at you?”

    “In a nice way… I did look pretty funny.” Mizako put her hands over Tohru’s and went through the braiding motions with her again. “I think my mother had to do this with me a thousand times before I finally got the hang of it enough to do it myself.”

    Tohru was quiet for a while. “So… your mother taught you how to do this?”

    Mizako nodded as her fingers moved. “She insisted. She was a firm believer that all women should have long hair… you should have seen how long hers was… it was the hardest thing in the world for her even to trim off a few millimeters. I don’t think she ever cut mine when I was growing up.” Mizako smiled wistfully. “I was such a wild clumsy child though… all that running about town or in the forest used to snag and snarl my locks something awful. So my mother took to braiding them. I liked it. It kept my hair under control, so I kept doing it.” She paused for a moment to swat at Tohru with her left braid, before using the bristle to tickle the girl’s nose. “Besides, these make great improvised weapons, don’t they?”

    Tohru giggled. “Don’t you get tired of keeping your hair the same way all the time?” She grew embarrassed at Mizako’s questioning look and mumbled an explanation. “One of our masters had a wife who used to complain a lot. She was always saying she needed to try something new.”

    Mizako shrugged. “Sometimes for special occasions I’ll go with something fancier… but most of the time, nope… this is it.” Mizako sighed. ”Honestly, I know that ...some people like my hair loose better, and would prefer it if I wore it down all the time, but trust me, it is much more manageable this way.”

    “What does your mother say when you wear it down?” Mizako’s hands froze for a fraction of a second. “I’m sorry Mizako-sama,” Tohru apologized immediately, “did I say something wrong?”

    “My mother… hasn’t seen my hair in quite some time,” Mizako said quietly. Her fingers began braiding again, almost absent-mindedly this time. “She... died when I was a little girl.”

    There was a sharp inhalation of breath from Tohru as she tore herself away from Mizako, turned on her knees, and bowed. Pulling away like that must have hurt, Mizako was left with long strands of hair twisted between her fingers, but the girl never made a whimper. ”I beg your forgiveness Mizako-sama, I shouldn’t have…”

    “It’s fine Tohru,” Mizako said tenderly, helping her back up. “Really, you couldn’t have known… It happened a long time ago. Usually it doesn’t bother me, but I guess I’m feeling a little sentimental today.” Her hands dropped to her side. “My father was a serving shinobi, going on missions and such. Mother retired from active duty as a medical-nin once she had my older brother, but she still kept working at Konoha hospital…” Mizako’s voice trailed off into silence and Tohru was worried for a moment that she wouldn’t continue, but she shook her head and took a deep breath. “One day, Father never came back from his mission and Mama... Mama just faded away. Nothing I could do or say would bring her back. Minato tried as well once he realised how deep she had sunk, but it was too late. He... We couldn't bring her back to us. One day she was there, the next she... wasn't. A patrol found her shoes and coat carefully folded at the top of the great gorge, and nothing else.” Mizako bit her lip and exhaled. She reached over and gave the girl what she hoped was a reassuring pat. “Here, why don't you give the braiding another go?” she asked with a smile.

    Tohru weaved the hair with her fingers, refusing to look up. She looked at the lumpy misshapen braid in her hands and grunted with disappointment. “I’m sorry Mizako-sama... I can’t do it,” she said bitterly.

    Mizako shook her head. “Don’t give up! You’re getting there! This one is much better than the last one… Here,” she said, taking Tohru’s hands again,” we’ll practice for a bit more.”

    The girl leaned back against her. “Thank you Mizako-sama.”

    “You’re welcome… and please, no honorifics… just call me Mizako.”

    Mizako could hear the smile in the girl’s voice. “Thank you… Mizako.” There was a long silence, broken only by the rustle of hair. After a while Tohru shifted. “Mizako-sa… Mizako, may I ask you another question?” She continued when she felt Mizako’s nod. “When your parents died, were you…” The girl’s voice trailed away, unsure of what to ask. “What happened?” she settled on.

    Mizako grinned and her hands moved a little faster. “My brother happened. Minato is called the definitive genius of his generation. The great Jiraiya-sama, one of the legendary sannin, requested him specifically as a pupil. When the third war broke out, he made a name for himself on the battlefield as the most feared Konoha shinobi… ‘The yellow flash’ they called him.”

    “I heard Ay-sama say they fought,” Tohru said quietly, “It sounded like they were evenly matched… Your brother must be very fierce.”

    Mizako giggled. “You’d think that, wouldn’t you? And he can be very fierce at times… But he’s only that way when he has to be.”

    “Anyway… well before the war… My brother had just been promoted to jonin when my mother… went away. On top of his usual missions, he had been spending a significant amount of time sitting in council meetings and familiarizing himself to the clan heads and the minor lords of the Land of Fire. The Third Hokage, Sarutobi-sama, was grooming him as a possible successor… to be perfectly honest, Sarutobi-sama wanted Jiraiya-sensei to take his place when he retired, but Jiraiya-sensei wanted nothing to do with it… So in a sense, the mantle fell to his prize student.”

    “Minato was under incredible pressure to think of his career and think of the village. He and Kushina had just announced their intentions to get married… he had so much going on in his life already, no one would have blamed him if he let the charities of Konoha take care of his much younger sister.”

    “The same day they announced my mother as ‘missing, presumed dead’ he marched into the Hokage’s office to petition for full parental rights over me and to raise me in his own household. Most people were shocked that such a young man would take on such a heavy, cumbersome chore as raising a four year old. They thought he acted out of guilt, that he was trying to make up for failing to save our mother and was throwing his future away… Behind his back there were a lot of whispers, pointed fingers and tut-tutting. Everyone was talking about how such a promising shinobi was going to be wasted wiping the runny nose on a whiny little girl.”

    “After a few weeks though, all the negative speculation stopped. Somehow he was able to take care of me and continue on doing everything he needed to do.” Mizako shrugged. “Kushina helped him a lot.” Mizako giggled. “Of course, back then ‘help’ mostly meant playing dolls with me whenever I demanded it. As I grew, I began to treat her less like some sort of glorified babysitter and learned to accept her into our family.”

    Tohru yawned and snuggled in closer to Mizako. “What was your father like?”

    Even though the girl’s hands dropped away, Mizako kept on braiding her hair. “I don’t remember that much about my father... Let’s see, he had hair like mine, very dark brown, and eyes of a blue so deep they could look black in the shadows.” Mizako thought for a moment and grinned. “He used to always play the buzzing bee game.”

    “The buzzing bee game?” asked Tohru, a little drowsily.

    Mizako nodded. “He would sing, ‘Here flies the little bee, Buzzing, buzzing along with me!’" She playfully flapped Tohru’s braids as if they were a pair of wings, but as she did so, her smile grew a little melancholy. “I would run away squealing and he would catch me by the waist and twirl me in the air so fast my hair would whip back and forth… And then I’d laugh and he’d laugh and say, ‘There goes the buzzy bee! Bzzz Bzz Bzz! Look at my daughter flying away!’"

    “Mom would always tell him to stop playing such dangerous games... as I could get hurt or get too dizzy and get sick... but I never did. The only times I hurt myself were when I was trying to imitate the things that I saw Father and Minato doing.”

    Mizako gave a little half chuckle. “The very first time I saw Minato use chakra to climb a cliff, I tried to do the same. Surprisingly enough, I managed to get up about half way without losing the control of my chakra flow, but then…” She made a whistling noise and mimed someone falling with her hand.

    “Were you okay?”

    Mizako shook her head and winked at Tohru. “Luckily for me I have the best brother in the world. He hadn't seen me following him, but he heard my scream of panic as I started to tumble back and roll down the cliffside. He was there in the blink of an eye and snatched me out of the air before I hurt myself too much.”

    “I was a mess of scrapes and bruises. To prevent me from being punished by mother, he took me to Jiraiya-sensei to have me patched up a bit so it wouldn't look as bad... when my bruises had started to fade Minato started to train me a little bit on his own. Later on, when I entered the Academy, both he and Kushina would help me out with my assignments. When I graduated and became a genin and Minato became Hokage, I spent my time being personally trained by Kakashi, who was once my brother’s prize student.”

    Tohru sat up against Mizako, fidgeting and thinking. “So… so when you went to live with Minato… Kushina became your new mother?”

    Mizako shook her head. “Kushina is… more like an older sister to me. She can be quite… peculiar at times, but I love her. After all, she put up with me all through my childhood. She could have protested. I’m sure she was looking forward to enjoying her blossoming marriage and living blissfully with Minato… not raising a  grieving four year old. But despite that, she took me in and welcomed me with warmth and care.”

    “We butted heads a lot, especially when I got old enough to enter the Academy. I was such an insufferable brat for a while.” Mizako tossed her head arrogantly and put her hands on her hips. “I was the sister of the Hokage! And who was she? Some refugee from a village that didn’t even exist any more!” she said in a mocking snobbish voice. “Why should I have to listen to her when she told me to eat my vegetables, or do my homework, or go to bed early, or anything at all?”

    “So did you?” asked Tohru.

    “Did I what?”

    “Did you listen to her?”

    Mizako snorted. “Of course I did!”

    “Why?”

    “Because, everyone who spends any time around Kushina learns really quickly, the one thing you do not want to do… is make her upset.” Mizako gave a dramatic shiver. “She doesn’t even have to say a word. All she needs to do is look at you.”

    “Oh,” said Tohru in a small voice.

    “Oh, it’s not like that!” exclaimed Mizako. “She’s not mean, not really… but when she get’s upset… she just… she gets this… look in her eye...” Mizako paused in thought for a second. “She just has these, peculiarities, these ideas about how things should be and how people should behave… She’s very big on respect. Even more important  to her than that though, is swearing.”

    “Really?”

    “Really. No one can swear in her house or within her hearing.” Mizako dropped her voice down to a whisper. “There was this one time that Sarutobi-sama stopped by our house to have tea with my brother. They were going over some huge meeting they just had with the Daimyo... I don’t know what it was about but the Hokage was very worked up over how stubborn the Daimyo was being, and in a moment of frustration called him a... very bad name.”

    “I was playing over in the corner, pretending not to listen, when all of a sudden the door to the den crashed open. Kushina stood there, glaring at the three of us, her red hair flailing about as if there was a hurricane. “Who said that?” she growled in a low rasp. Minato and I must have both involuntarily glanced at the Third Hokage, and she turned her fearsome gaze on the old man. The Hokage upset over the interruption, just stared back at her with a scowl. The tension mounted until I was holding my breath.”

    “It was the Hokage who blinked first. He exhaled slowly, and begged her to forgive a forgetful old man for his use of inappropriate language. Kushina gave a satisfied nod, and slowly shut the door behind her.” Mizako giggled. “Almost nobody can get away with anything crass in Kushina’s presence… The only one I’ve ever known to get close, is Jiraiya-sensei… and that’s because he’s very creative with his words.”

    “Who is Jiraiya-sensei? You mentioned him before,” Tohru mumbled.

    “Jiraiya is one of the legendary Sanin of the Hidden Leaf village... the Legendary Toad sage... the soon to be world famous author… all the women love him and all the men want to be him!” proclaimed Mizako, imitating his voice and striking the best heroic pose she could while sitting down on a woodpile.

    Tohru gave her a very sceptical look. “What’s a Sanin?”

    “In one of the more recent wars, Jiraiya-sensei’s three man squad distinguished themselves in battle. They were given the nickname the ‘The Sanin’...  the three shinobi.” Mizako shrugged. “Of course these days, Jiraiya is really the only one around. One of them left the village and... retired from shinobi life to… travel I guess, and the other is so absorbed in his research that hardly anyone sees him anymore. I doubt you’ll ever meet those two, but when you come back to Konoha with me, you’ll definitely meet Jiraiya.”

    “What’s he like?” mumbled Tohru sleepily. There was a pleased grin on her face.

    “Jiraiya sensei? He has got to be one of my most favorite people! When I was still in the academy, he used to show up at our house all the time unannounced, but that was okay because he was always welcome. Kushina and my brother were always so overworked with missions and duties and me that they would start to snap at each other or me, and then all of a sudden Jiraiya-sensei would breeze right in with that big booming laugh of his, brightening everything up with his jokes and the latest stories of his adventures. At some point he’d always ask me what changed in the village while he was away and I’d offer to show him the new stores that opened, or the hawk’s nest down by the training field, or how that fallen tree blocking the river made the perfect swimming pool. Then he’d laugh and he’d lead me out the door saying something like, ‘Come on Kiddo, let’s leave these poor adults to their chores,’ and we’d head out for the whole day. He’d buy me ice cream and we’d go fishing, or exploring, or sometimes we’d just wander around Konoha. When we got back Kushina and Minato were always more exhausted than ever, and they hadn’t managed to make the tiniest headway on their duties, but they were always in a much better mood.”

    “But what I like about him most of all is that he always has the funniest stories! He would talk non stop the whole time we were out… about old friends, about his new adventures…” Mizako stopped and grimaced. “Of course, now that I’m older I realize why I got into trouble every time I tried to retell his stories during lunch at the academy…  especially that one about the milkmaid… I could never get the innuendo just right. You should have seen the way Yuhi-sensei’s face turned so red that tim. It looked like he was about to explode…”

    Mizako heard a soft rasping noise and looked down. Tohru was curled up, her head resting in Mizako’s lap, snoring. Mizako smiled and kept on stroking the girl’s hair.

    *******