Chapter 80: Kushina in a New World.

Can't say I was exactly blown away. But not a bad experience either. Maybe we'll make it a thing, just not a regular one, I thought, watching Karin sleep curled against my side.

Morning came. We had breakfast, which was starting to feel like something of a ritual between us, lingered a little longer, then went our separate ways.

This time, I headed to Kushina's. But no, strictly to spend some time with her. Nothing more.

During one of my earlier stories about life since becoming Emperor, she'd latched onto a particular detail: the place where I'd fought a powerful alien. And now, standing in her house, I found myself frozen under the weight of her suspicious gaze.

"Everything alright, Mom?" I asked.

"Hmm," she murmured, pressing her fingers to her lips and sniffing. "Something's off. I just can't prove it…"

"Karin and I don't smell like each other because we actually have decent hygiene after sex."

Her face went from zero to crimson in record time. I was about to keep going, but I stopped myself when I caught her expression. It practically spelled out in neon: say something like Jealous? We could always change that and this woman will either take a swing at me or pass out from embarrassment. Probably the former.

So I let it go. Without pressing the subject any further, I raised one hand, and a tear in space opened beside us.

Then, feeling a firm grip lock around my elbow, Kushina and I stepped out into the Wind Region.

"It's even more haunting in person," she said, taking in the surroundings. We were standing in the middle of a sea of black ash.

In the darkness beneath malevolent clouds, sand melted by plasma had cooled into filthy glass, streaks of green and black that caught the light like the edges of broken bottles. The wind that moved through this place didn't rustle. It creaked, like a door that hadn't been oiled in decades.

On the horizon stood a solitary mountain, packed solid with compressed black ash, somehow never worn down by the storms. Beside it rose a volcano, a scar left by my chakra dragon, which had punched through the earth for dozens of kilometers. The magma had long since cooled, but sulfurous gas still seeped from the cracks along the summit.

All of it was carved through by rays of diverging canyons. Deep ones, with fused walls, stretching far beyond the horizon.

Standing at the edge of one, I could feel Kushina's grip tighten on my arm. That specific kind of grip that comes when a person suddenly feels very small and very insignificant in the face of something vast. I decided to help her out.

"Your power right now isn't actually that far from all this."

"…What?" She turned to look at me, and then understanding settled into her expression. "Right. You gave me a new body. I haven't really tested it yet, but… I can feel it. It's incredibly strong."

"This is a good place for that. We're alone," I offered.

She nodded, a little uncertainly, and stepped away from me, maybe five meters. Then, forming a compact concentration seal with one hand, she extended the other. Chakra erupted around her like a storm, pressing down on everything nearby like a physical weight, and Kushina immediately cut it off, spinning toward me with wide, alarmed eyes.

"It's fine," I told her. I hadn't moved an inch. The surge had barely grazed me. "I'm genuinely a lot more durable than I look."

She gave a careful nod, collected herself, and unleashed the chakra again, channeling it into her hand. And then—

BOOM! A deafening crack echoed like a thunderclap, and from Kushina's hand shot a massive golden beam, dozens of meters wide and kilometers long. The Adamantine Sealing Chains screamed outward, finally stopping somewhere impossibly far away.

"Holy…" Kushina squeaked as everything fell silent, and she tilted her head back to look at the sky. The clouds had literally been blown apart by the shockwave now reaching them, and the glass desert filled with scattered light. She relaxed her hand, and the technique dissolved in a golden flash.

"Yeah," I confirmed. "And your body can do even more than that. Once you absorb Sage chakra on top of it, you'll jump up another tier entirely."

"With that kind of power… No wonder you became Emperor and nobody threatens you."

"They tried. Every attempt was laughably pointless."

I turned toward the canyon and looked down.

"This place became a pilgrimage site after that battle. More than one cult formed in my name here. I declared all of them heresy, then… dissolved them."

"…Worshipping a person is strange, sure. But why dissolve them? They couldn't have actually hurt you?"

"Small parasites are still parasites. I'm an Emperor. I require obedience, not worship. Cults, even those born from genuine devotion, are led by a preacher, not a god. And preachers, regardless of how pure their intentions are, tend to come up with things I never would have ordered. Killing the unbelievers. Human sacrifice. Bodybuilder orgies in my honor." I grimaced. "My dogma is Imperial law. My word is its command. I am building a civilization of reason, one free of blind faith."

Turning to Kushina, I caught the complicated look on her face. So—

"But none of this Empire business touches you." I reached into her long, straight hair and messed it up.

"Hey!"

She gave me an indignant scowl. I smiled warmly in return.

"You don't see me as having any parental authority at all, do you…" she groaned.

"What can I say? Want to spar?" I offered. After a couple seconds of deliberation, she nodded. Someone clearly wanted to at least land a hit on me, and my smile got a little wider at that.

We started careful, light hits, feeling each other out. Then we gradually stopped holding back…

Interlude: Uzumaki Kushina

In the time since her resurrection, and since that sparring session which had ultimately leveled an area the size of a dozen large city blocks, Kushina had somehow found her footing in this new world.

A large part of that was her meeting with a Hokage, not Kakashi, but Hiruzen, who had retreated to the countryside yet still kept one foot in the world's affairs. He told her a great deal and gave her a fresh perspective, both on the world itself and on her son.

His presence alone kept even the most aggressively-minded Kage sitting quietly in their villages with their mouths shut. These days, after so many failed attempts, anyone bold enough to move against the capital of the Empire, which had long since ceased being just Konoha, did so only through schemes of staggering complexity. Even minor crimes, carefully arranged through third- and fourth-hand intermediaries using barely-controllable missing-nin, were now frequently uncovered. The schemers rarely managed to burn their bridges fast enough by eliminating the go-betweens, and once a link in the chain was taken alive, investigators could simply read their minds. The Empire, for all its limitations in covering an entire planet, gave investigators a tremendous edge through precisely that: mind-reading, combined with the ability to monitor internet traffic through sophisticated filters. The minimum threshold required to actually accomplish anything had shot up into the stratosphere. Crime was living through its darkest hour and risked going extinct altogether.

Hiruzen, of course, framed all of it far more diplomatically and went into greater depth, doing his best to present his former ward in the most favorable light possible. Though Naruto himself, if he'd heard that stream of praise, might have raised an eyebrow. He saw himself as a tyrant, steering the world with an iron hand in the direction he wanted it to go. But the substance was the same.

Konoha, like every other village, was changing rapidly. Missions were growing scarcer, but the shinobi hadn't gone anywhere. The old outlet, start a war, loot the neighbors, conveniently reduce the number of mouths to feed, was closed for business. But the Emperor was sharp enough to see where idleness would lead: unemployment, riots demanding things go back to how they were. So, naturally not above learning from the mistakes of past elites, he had begun modernizing the world. Everyone was searching for alternatives, thinking bigger, building new industries to absorb the population that had been freed up. And it had to be said, it was working.

Hiruzen talked mostly about the Leaf. Here, as in the Mist after certain well-known events, what kept people in line wasn't so much fear as a healthy, clear-eyed wariness. Many clans, previously focused exclusively on combat, hadn't resisted the shifting political reality. On the contrary: understanding their position, they had thrown themselves into new ventures, racing to carve out their niche before rivals left them with nothing.

The Hyuga, with their Byakugan, had taken on a share of internal security and strategic oversight duties and channeled their abilities into research centers, especially in medicine. The Akimichi, who were not just ninja but genuinely formidable gourmands, had launched agricultural operations and were building out the food industry at scale. Even the Inuzuka had found a purpose: search-and-rescue, wildlife preserve management, large-scale animal husbandry, and the cultivation of specialized flora.

The Land of Fire was rich in plant life and fertile soil, though mineral resources were on the thinner side. With borders dissolved, logistics had been easy to establish with the Water Region, which offered very different kinds of resources, and with the Iron Region, which provided a steady flow of metals, and really with everyone else too. The Fire Region began scaling up its industry and service sectors in earnest. The latter, thanks to a mild climate, was generating substantial budget revenue, and this was just a few years into active development. Progress was also being made in medicine, education, and cutting-edge technologies built on physical principles, with no small pinch of Fūinjutsu naturally, along with other fields oriented toward civilian life. Several Coliseums had even been built, where shinobi who still clung to the old ideals could put on exhibition fights for a paying audience. The spectacle brought in serious money.

Kushina had listened to all of this in a kind of gentle stupor. Naruto, when touching on the topic of the Empire, had always described it to her in a tone of "went somewhere, brought everyone to heel, told them to get to work, then went off to eat chocolate," as if none of it had ever taken any real effort. Now, feeling the true scale of it more acutely, Kushina found something unfamiliar beginning to stir in her, that particular sense of reverence that almost everyone in the civilized world had quietly developed toward the Emperor.

Which was a mistake. Because the Emperor would later go out of his way to knock that feeling out of her. Not overtly, more through words and mortifying little gestures. But still.

Collecting her thoughts, she turned to what truly weighed on her as a mother.

"Hiruzen-sama," Kushina said, setting down her cup. "Tell me about him. Who he was. Naruto's told me many things, but… I'd like to hear your side of it."

That earned her a deep sigh, and what might have been quiet profanity, though she couldn't be entirely sure she hadn't imagined it.

What followed was a thorough account from a nostalgic old man. Hiruzen remembered what a curious boy Naruto had been, the kind who asked no shortage of inconvenient questions, occasionally driving him to the edge of a nervous breakdown, making him flush with embarrassment, choke on air, and once, memorably, clutch his chest. He recalled their philosophical debates. The way Naruto's incredible stubbornness, bordering on sheer pigheadedness, manifested whenever he got locked onto an idea. The way his desire to make an impression expressed itself, like arriving at the Academy in a palanquin. His analytical mind, his knack for unconventional solutions even as a child: bribes, blackmail, and even the incident when he brought courtesans into the Academy. Not for himself, technically. But still. And then there was his insatiable hunger for complex, even forbidden knowledge, especially anything concerning the nature of the world, chakra, and seals. Plus, of course, various other fits of boundless restlessness.

Kushina listened with an ever-shifting expression. The image of her son was gradually assembling itself in her mind, varied, multifaceted, and on the whole, one she liked. In certain moments, she and the younger Naruto had been remarkably alike, and that brought a warm smile to her lips.

She was genuinely grateful to Hiruzen. He had kept his promise to look after her son. There were moments, of course, where Kushina felt things should have been handled differently. A few things she openly didn't like, her son's visits to courtesans, or the business with a certain Mizuki's torture. But she understood the reasoning behind those choices and grudgingly acknowledged them as more or less sound.

Then she moved to something that nagged at her quietly but persistently.

"Hiruzen-sama," Kushina hesitated, choosing her words carefully. "There's something else. You understand the… nature of what we have. He grew up without me. He shaped himself. To him, I'm, well, I'm his mother, yes. But not the kind he's used to listening to. I wanted to ask, do you know how I might reclaim even a piece of… authority? So I can give him at least some semblance of a normal mother-son relationship."

The old man rubbed his chin and shrugged.

"Honestly, Kushina? It's nearly impossible."

She looked down.

"It's not entirely hopeless," Hiruzen added quickly. "He'll take your opinion into account, I'm sure. But stepping into the role of the senior in the relationship…" The old man shook his head. "No, don't expect that. Not from this one."

Kushina said nothing.

"Well," Hiruzen chuckled, "you can always bribe him with cake. And bat your eyes if you want something badly enough. He'll hardly say no."

"That's not what I meant…" Kushina sighed, but couldn't hold back a faint smile. "Thank you, Hiruzen-sama. For everything."

"Don't mention it, girl. Don't mention it."

After that, she went to find the next familiar face from her past life.

Not that she let it show, but the slight one-sidedness of Hiruzen's account had been palpable. Which only made her want the other perspective all the more: the one from Naruto's teacher. From Kakashi.

The silver-haired boy from her memories, Minato's perceptive student, someone she'd known for years. He'd been through a great deal, but by all appearances had pulled through and grown considerably. He even became Hokage! Kushina had hoped to hear a lot from him.

It didn't quite go that way. Sitting in Hatake's house, she found herself listening to awkward, ever-so-slightly resentful grievances about Naruto.

"…I had shut myself off. Didn't want to get attached and lose someone else… Like I lost you and sensei… So I pushed all the responsibility onto Hiruzen-sama. And my history with Naruto…" The man rubbed his jaw. "It started with him beating me up."

"Serves you right," Kushina said, her voice perfectly level.

"Kushina-san!"

"Twelve years without once checking on my husband's son. You earned it."

Kakashi made a bid for sympathy. "When I was assigned as his sensei, he didn't stop, you know. He'd beat me up regularly. With remarkable consistency!"

Kushina nodded approvingly. "Good."

At that, the man practically fell apart. The red-haired woman sighed and patted him on the shoulder.

"Kakashi-chan. It sounds like you and my son are even. So maybe stop holding onto the past…"

Then Kushina froze. Her own past flared up behind her eyes in a brief, sharp burst. She shook it off quickly, covering it with a defensive laugh, and pivoted hard.

"A-anyway! Kakashi-chan, are you still alone?" She narrowed her eyes with a sly smile. "Look at you, all grown up. Hokage! And no girlfriend?"

"I, uh—"

"You need to think about the future, you know. Can't spend your whole life just training your fingers for hand seals."

"Kushina-san, I don't—"

"Think about it!"

Satisfied with herself, she took her leave, with several new brushstrokes added to the portrait of Naruto.

Next, she went to see the one Hiruzen had asked her to be gentle with.

Jiraiya, whose role in Naruto's life Hiruzen had touched on with conspicuous lightness, happened by some stroke of luck to be in the village. And, to Kushina's surprise, he was actually home. In a house he'd apparently only recently acquired. She didn't even have to fish him out of the bushes near the women's bathhouse, and for that, the hermit had already earned a few points in her book.

Those evaporated quickly enough.

"Kushina?!" Jiraiya stared at her, the door swung wide open. "You… you're really…"

"Hello, Jiraiya."

"I… Oh. Well, come in!" He flashed a goofy grin. "I actually cleaned up in here, by the way. Sensei told me to. Said it was a pigsty, which, fair, up until yesterday. He also gave me a heads-up that you'd… well. That you'd come back."

A pause settled over them.

"…Should we maybe actually go inside?" Kushina suggested, her voice perfectly neutral.

What should have been a touching reunion turned into stilted silence and unnecessary oversharing.

Taking matters into her own hands, Kushina set the pace of the conversation herself, stepping inside and putting a kettle on. Jiraiya, it emerged, didn't know how to do that either.

"Alright. Tell me. What have you been doing all these years?"

His life story turned out to be about as predictable as expected: scouted here, gathered intel there. Jiraiya wasn't stupid enough to bring up his creative excursions to the women's bathhouses in front of her, and steered well clear of the subject.

"Finished that book, of course," he said, treading carefully. "The one whose main character inspired Naruto's name."

"And the others? You kept writing?"

"Oh, sure, yeah, kept at it. Still writing, actually." He scratched the back of his head.

"What genre?"

"Ah, you wouldn't be interested," Jiraiya said, waving it off just a touch too quickly.

At first, Kushina was actually glad that Jiraiya was still the same slightly odd person she remembered, that the years hadn't made him worse. But when the conversation reached his role in Naruto's life and it came out that the man who had promised to be a spiritual mentor had spent twelve years god-knows-where, breaking not just that promise but all contact with Minato too, something complicated settled over her.

"Twelve years, Jiraiya." Her voice went quiet, which was far more unsettling than shouting. "You promised…"

"Kushina, listen, I tried later—"

"You promised to be there. And instead, twelve years of nothing."

She managed to stop herself from driving her fist into the face framed by those long white locks. Partly because, in some strange way, she was even grateful: Jiraiya had stayed away from Naruto while the boy was still forming as a person. Thinking back on certain chapters of the Hermit's history, Kushina privately conceded he likely wouldn't have taught her son anything worth knowing. The kid already had three girls as it was. The mind reeled at what might have been had he spent more time around Jiraiya.

So, only a teacup, launched with precision at the man's thick skull.

"Irresponsible ass!"

"Ow!.."

And she left.

The relationship had taken serious damage. Kushina found she didn't feel particularly sorry about it.

On her way home, she caught herself thinking that she'd changed, too. She'd been more… unstoppable, once. The old her would have tried to actually beat Jiraiya senseless for that kind of negligence. Now, holding herself back came easier. The new body? The experience of death? Something else entirely? She couldn't say. But since the changes seemed to be for the better, she decided not to overthink it.

Several days passed after that. Kushina steadied herself, helped along by the warmth of the new family around her. Eventually, she even accepted Jiraiya's earnest apology when he showed up at the house. The apology was received, but they both understood: the old trust between them was gone. Minato had been the thread that connected her to Jiraiya. And Minato was no longer here. Jiraiya, for his part, had made it conclusively clear that he wasn't someone to rely on. So the communication just quietly faded out.

The new family. This was where Kushina's thoughts kept returning, circling most often and most heavily. Naruto's strange arrangement, three girls, not one. And her own feelings toward her son, feelings she was barely managing to hold down, and yet suppressing them only made things worse, because he wasn't against it either. Whenever her attention slipped, the intrusive, forbidden thoughts crept back in on their own. And yet… could she really just betray Minato like that? Take that step with Naruto? The very thought made her head spin, mostly from embarrassment.

She and Naruto had put the subject on hold. But once he started spending that kind of time with his girls, Kushina began feeling something uncomfortably close to jealousy, and a wanting that had no business existing in a mother.

She sat alone in her room and thought.

The whole arrangement, Naruto and several girls, unsettled her. And what she felt herself seemed to be driving her quietly insane. The norms built into her by society crashed headlong into what she actually experienced toward him: absolute trust, and an attraction that was growing harder and harder to deny. And his words, that nothing was stopping them from deepening what they had, that biologically there couldn't be any consequences, those words rang louder and louder in her head like a bell that wouldn't stop.

In practical terms, nothing was stopping them. But…

Kushina didn't notice how much time had passed until a knock came at the door. Her thoughts stuttered to a halt.

"May I come in?" A familiar voice made her heart lurch.

Uzumaki Naruto's POV

After that sparring session in the Wind Region's wasteland, I kept myself busy with a few personal projects, but I didn't neglect the people close to me. And the state of one of them, Kushina, was starting to concern me more and more. I'd given her a stretch of time to work through things on her own. But when it became clear that wasn't happening, I decided to step in myself.

Sitting beside her now, I could practically feel how on edge she was. She kept pressing her hands together, not quite working up the nerve to start.

"Something's bothering you?" I asked carefully. "Talk to me. Problems are easier with two."

No answer. Only her ears slowly turning red.

Apparently she didn't feel like sharing. Fine. I already had a pretty clear idea of where things stood.

"I still think what we have here is perfectly normal. We're adults, and we're capable of being happy even if it looks unusual from the outside."

A wave of embarrassment rolled off her, telling me I'd hit pretty close to the mark.

I wasn't entirely sure what exactly was holding her back. I figured knowing about my relationship with three girls might have shaken her sense of what was proper. Or, more likely, she might have talked herself into thinking I'd start pulling away from her. But judging by her reaction, it was something else. And I had a pretty good idea what. Still, to get to the real thing, I needed to clear the surrounding ground first.

"Three of them doesn't mean we're running some kind of harem where everyone sees each other once a month. We're a family first." My torso shifted slightly back, then to the side, until I was pressed against her back. I put my arms around her. Kushina's face flushed a shade deeper. "And… we talked it over. None of them have any objection to the family getting a little bigger. In every sense."

The last words detonated in her head. Kushina went completely still, then let out a small, strangled sound, wrenched herself out of my arms, and shot to her feet.

"I… I…" She stared at me, breathing hard. "I… can't."

I raised both hands in a gesture of peace and tried to dial things back. "It's alright. I'm sorry if that landed too hard. I'm not rushing you, not at all." I stood, but didn't move closer.

"No, you forgive me. I was too abrupt—"

"You always have a choice. And even if the answer is no, I'll love you. As my mother. Always."

She looked at me with a whole storm of emotions.

"I need time…" She covered her face with her hands.

"Will it actually help?" My hands lowered slowly. "Because the real reason is Minato, isn't it?"

Kushina flinched. Direct hit.

A crooked smile crossed my face. Didn't think I'd ever be having this kind of conversation, talking to a girl about an ex.

"I think you're still grieving for him. But should you be?"

Her palms slipped down slightly. Tears were beginning to gather in her eyes, a war of contradictions playing out in them.

"Would he have wanted you to hurt like this? To mourn? To let your whole life be swallowed by the past?"

"N-no," came her answer after several seconds.

"He'd want you to live. Just keep living. Wouldn't he?"

"M-maybe…"

"The Minato I've heard about would have said yes. Without question."

"Suffering without reason isn't heroism, it's masochism." I stepped closer and leaned in slightly. "Are you telling me my little masochist just needs someone to put her over their knee?"

Two enormous, tear-filled eyes stared back at me.

"Don't tie yourself in knots over something that doesn't make sense. Minato matters, but that doesn't mean your life doesn't. I'll always be here, waiting for you…"

And noticing that Kushina was about three seconds from venting actual steam, I turned on my heel right in front of her.

"Now you've got something worth thinking about," I said with a smile, making a wide arc around her toward the door.

But at the threshold, I turned back. Might as well fully defuse the atmosphere.

"You know, Karin mentioned she thought it might be nice to try this with you as well. Together, the three of us. She figured it might go easier for you that way. After all, she's got quite the taste for being in charge."

…

Kushina's face turned precisely the color of her hair.

I had just barely cleared the door when a pillow hit the other side of it.

"Pervert!" came the muffled shout from inside.

My own person dissolved into helpless laughter somewhere down the hall.

Mental note: keep spending time with Hinata. Her approach to psychology is scarily effective.

I headed for the lab.

Kushina genuinely needed the solitude, and I needed to go finish laying the groundwork for a very particular project.

The Eye of God.