Naruto Shippuden: girl from whirlpools

The Body of Evidence

The Girl From Whirlpool

Chapter Thirteen: The Body of Evidence

The occupation of a jonin was very much a sedentary lifestyle. It was the nature of the profession that jonin took fewer missions and longer holidays than the lower ranks (along with bigger paycheques), and it could be the case that in one week Kushina might go on three different assignments while Minato only took one if any at all. A-class missions weren't common, and S-class was even rarer. If Minato kept his ears pricked and stalked the headquarters vigilantly enough, he could usually snag a mission scroll as soon as it became available, though he preferred to take only the ones that sounded challenging – ones the other jonin were inclined to avoid anyway. These were the ones that made the long wait worthwhile.

The indolent weeks spent relaxing around the village were broken up by the occasional flurry of a hectic mission. It was in this was the ebb and flow that Minato began to settle, leaving behind the restlessness of his youth, and growing accustomed to a slower pace in his old age.

He was all of eighteen.

People had returned from the war in dribs and drabs. Yoshi had been followed by Shikaku, who walked into the village hand in hand with his own Yoshino, and looking a little like he regretted the whole thing. It was genuinely touching to see him reunite with the rest of his team, and a relief, for Shikaku's presence alone did a lot to temper Inoichi. If Danzou returned, Minato never saw him, though he later learned he'd gone straight back to commanding his underground ANBU division. There were no further attempts made on Minato's life... that he knew of.

And there was still no sign of Jiraiya returning.

Nevertheless, there were still more than enough people in Minato's life to keep him occupied and distracted (in the 'driven to distraction' sense). If it wasn't the Hokage calling on him for special missions, it was Yoshi tearfully begging him to help find her lost ferret no. 6. Then there was Yoshi's mother who needed to be kept in good graces, though she was much easier to please than her daughter, usually only calling on him to fix her television. She seemed to be under the impression he was an electrician.

'Saru' was far more problematic. Minato was fast running out of excuses not to go for a beer with him, since the guy was convinced that as two of the most important men in Kushina's life, they ought to bond in a manly fashion. But Minato thought that in the rankings of Important Men In Kushina's Life, Minato came a trailing fourth after little Kakashi, little Kakashi's dad, and Saru, in that order. And perhaps what was most annoying of all was that Saru even got along with Sakumo, which was something that had eluded Minato for most of his life.

But still, at the end of every day, Minato could go home to a quiet house where his only other companion was Kushina. Even if she was too busy studying in her room to say a word to him, it comforted him to see her every night... and nowhere near Sarutobi.

Yet some times were more trying than others, such as the day the Hokage called him to his office to hand him a mission personally – the kind that was too important to be recorded in a scroll.

"I'm giving you this mission," the Hokage said, "because to be frank with you I don't know what else to do. The situation has escalated into an emergency, and there are few I can trust these days."

Minato kept his expression neutral, though his heart always thudded with excitement in moments like this. The more challenging the mission, the happier he was. He accepted the honour of being the Hokage's few 'trusted' ones with a slight bow. "I am happy to serve you in any way I can," he said formally.

This always seemed to please the Hokage, but today he just gave a weak smile. "Another child has been taken; a newborn boy from the orphanage," the older man said tiredly. "It's the fifth this year. Overall seventeen people have gone missing since the end of the war, of various ages and gender, and the only thing they have in common is that they are shinobi or from families of shinobi. Possibly even more have been taken during the war itself which were wrongly chalked up as casualties."