Tsuchigumo

Peacock Spider

After returning from Nami, Minato had his team take a week long break to deal with the aftermath of the not so C-rank mission. It turned out that since 2 Shinobi of high caliber had been involved, the rank had been risen to low A-rank or high B-rank. Minato had already started working on establishing a merchant road to Nami as well as some profits. Tazuna had to pay a fine for tricking Konoha but he can do that gradually once Nami's economy made a proper come back, as well as paying the proper price for the right mission rank.

Kushina sat with Naruto's head on her lap, braiding his blond locks. Unlike Yukito and Minato, Naruto's choice to wear his hair long was precisely so Kushina could braid them back from his eyes. She braided the top of his head and then weaved them down his back into one thick rope. She liked the way Minato's hair frame his face and thought that it suited all her boys if they do the same so she had let Naruto's front hair grew long but pulled them to the side to braid them with the beads and the seal. She was inspired from pictures of old Uzumaki ancestors that came from the far South where the water and land was as cold as Yuki no Kuni.

Those ancestors came from the mysterious Tenjin Continent and their seafaring warriors were called Vikings instead of Shinobi or Samurai. They had visited the Hidden Continent in hope of establishing a new merchant route but unfortunately they weren't welcomed and by the time their ship crashed into the waters of Uzushio, they had lost most of their wares and was not able to find their way home due to the lost of their ship.

Ship in the Hidden Continent wasn't as good as the ones sailing from Tenjin Continent back then. With their shipwright dead due to a disease he caught after a bad meeting with pirates from Mizu no Kuni, none have the knowledge or skills to build a ship strong enough to take them home. In the end, the Uzumaki Clan had taken them in and slowly, the group of Vikings became part of their Clan through marriage. Those days were so far in the distant past that no one even knew if the story was true or false anymore. But the fact remained, some of their cultures sipped into the Uzumaki's cultures and braiding hairs was one of them.

Rumor also has it that the Uzumaki loud and outgoing persona as well as blunt speech were inherited from their Viking ancestors from the distant land. When she was younger, Kushina had hoped to visit the Tenjin Continent but with her own continent constantly plagued by war and now with a family of her own, she could only set aside that old dream. A dream that she had given up when she heard that she had to come to Konoha. But here, a new dream sprouted and it has slowly come to flourish before her.

Naruto looked at her, "What is it?"

Kushina blinked, "Nothing. I was just thinking about that old dream of mine,"

Naruto tilted his head, "Tenjin Continent?"

She smiled, "Yeah. We don't even know if that is even what it's really called. Only that the last ancestor said to have come from that continent has the name Tenjin so we have been calling that continent with his name. Like an honor to his root and his memory,"

Naruto touched his bead, "Do you think he ever wanted to go home?"

Kushina smiled, "I know he must have wanted to. Being someone far from home myself and knowing that I can never return, I think I know well how he felt," She caressed his hair, "How are you feeling?"

Naruto's eyes dimmed, "I'm not sure, 'ttebayo,"

She patted his hair, "It is alright to feel bad, Naru-chan,"

Naruto frowned, "But...what if he has someone waiting for him at home? What if he has a child waiting for him or a family? I cut his life short. I took something from him that I can never give back. But at the same time...I know that if I didn't do that, he would have taken out Shino and Hinata-chan...."