Chakra Thirst

Kushina's journey was not pleasant for her, as she traveled all the time among trees, alone, covered, and bored; she could only remember over and over again the night of her death.

The urgent feeling to protect her baby from the Kyubi's claw.

Minato's strange and sudden idea of turning their son into the next jinchuriki.

At that moment, she wasn't in her best mental faculties after giving birth and having a giant claw piercing her from side to side shortly afterward, so her mind simply followed the events in the face of her imminent death.

But now that she had her lucidity back, she felt that something was wrong.

How could her husband propose such a thing when he knew what she had to go through in her childhood?

She knew Minato could be gullible, but he wasn't foolish.

In fact, if it weren't for the restrictions of her current body, Kushina would have run straight to Konoha to see how Naruto was doing.

She wanted to use another name for her son, but Minato managed to convince her with his sweet words to use the name of the protagonist of her sensei's book.

At least he didn't try to invent a name for their son; Minato would never admit it, but his naming sense was terrible, as demonstrated by the original names of his techniques.

But getting back to the point, turning their baby into a jinchuriki was strange.

Even more so when Minato decided to split the tailed beast in two to "ease" the burden on their son. Where the hell did he get that idea? It didn't work like that.

She had lived with the Kyubi for most of her life, after the death of Grandma Mito, and she was very aware that it made no sense. With the seal Minato used, splitting the tailed beast in half only limited the maximum amount of chakra the biju could access, but its rebellion to break free wouldn't change.

And the seal wouldn't be affected in the slightest whether it was a whole biju or a half.

In fact, it only weakened the strength of the village's "weapon," devaluing its existence.

Furthermore, her son had been exposed to the Nine Tails' chakra since its formation in her belly, so it actually added another layer of security to the seal.

Kushina couldn't help but shake her head several times, unable to understand why Minato would do something so nonsensical.

"At least I don't have that annoying voice in my head anymore," she said to herself in an attempt to console herself.

Her pace slowed as the earth began to change, and she vaguely recognized the surroundings.

While her task was to obtain the Shinigami's mask, looking at the remaining time, she could deviate a few minutes without a problem.

Her memory was somewhat blurry after so long, but her feet seemed to remember the way to her destination, arriving at what seemed to be a complex in ruins that had been reclaimed by nature over the years.

"I'm home," she thought sadly as she saw the ruins around her; she could almost see a ghost of herself when she arrived home excitedly to be greeted by her mother's embrace.

Kushina passed through the entrance, of which only a broken door hanging from a hinge remained, and walked into the interior of the building's remains.

She never thought she would return to this place, much less in her current state.

She stood in a large square room with the swirl symbol on the wall, its roof almost completely open, and several trees had managed to sprout from the charred wooden floor.

Crouching down and running her hand through the layer of ashes, Kushina found the remnants of the secret spatial seal her family used to safely send her out of the war zone, escorted halfway by Konoha ninjas.

The same Konoha that ignored her pleas for help, including saving Uzumaki's last hope for them to take the youngest children along with some newborn babies.

Only she was accepted "reluctantly" to be the next container of the Nine Tails.

Perhaps Konoha's superiors believed that Kushina had forgotten about the matter over time after making friends and getting married, but the resentment for what they did was always buried in her heart.

When her husband took the position of Fourth Hokage, she tried to be subtle about it, but she wanted Konoha to regain Uzushiogakure's ground. Perhaps she couldn't go back to the past, but she intended to rebuild the village and use it as a "border base" to contain Kirigakure.

At least, that was her purpose on paper.

But to her dismay, the Third Hokage thwarted her attempts with a few words in Minato's ears, that damn stubborn politician.

Sometimes she wondered if Minato loved her more or the village, especially since she noticed that their nights together (extremely scarce to her immense frustration, due to her husband's busy work and his submissive attitude) were particularly passionate when Konoha managed to finish some important project.

"It should have been Konoha that was devastated," Kushina lamented.

She stood up and checked her old room, the storage room, and other places to see their condition. To her growing sadness, she saw human bones in different parts and took her time to give them a burial; it was the least she could do.

She couldn't even identify whose bones they were.

After praying for a minute in front of the new graves, she took a deep breath and turned to walk toward her goal.

"There you are."

On a shelf where multiple masks with similar expressions, but with a unique purpose separately, rested, Kushina took the mask that would allow the Sunagakure boy to release Minato from eternal torment in the Shinigami's stomach.

Rubbing her thumb against the mask, Kushina couldn't help but wonder.

What could her husband know that was so important for someone from another village to go through all this trouble?