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Riding the lightning is an art of impossible thrill-seekers. Only the most storm-inclined maniacs would brave the squall for the thrill of it. The floating freefall of an unmoored airskiff, the wet chill of cloud-mist caressing your face, the obsidian sharp focus of stirring the moisture in the air until a charge builds and bucks until it finally surges out of your grip, catching the hook of your skiff and launching you with breathless speed. Lighting riding was downright lethal to the unwary and overly cautious both, a heartbeat too fast or too soon carrying disastrous consequences.
Kushina grinned, adjusting thick goggles over her breathing mask, shifting over the magnets under her heavy stomping boots, restlessly eager. Rain lashed around the shadow of a pirate ship that thought itself clever enough to ride the underbelly of a storm right into Uzushio’s ports.
A breath, knees bending, bracing, hands gripping the reins tied to the bow, she dropped the hook and the airskiff launched in a flurry of heat and light and sizzling ozone, the bark of thunder baying at her heels like war dogs.
There’s just enough light to see the wide-eyed terror in the pirates’ faces before darkness descends and Kushina flips sideways and skims over a rear gas balloon, lashing out with a sickle, dragging it through the delicate sack. She flies free of the ship and twists the ship around with a light twirl, losing momentum. Flashes of light and sound resound around her as clanmates converge on the pirate ship with equal, gleeful viciousness.
Hurricane wind buffets her skiff, making it dip and sway as she builds another charge, but Kushina doesn’t fear the storm.
She is the storm.
She laughs, exultant, launching back up and around to rip through an ascending sail, the pirates frantic attempt to level out their tilting ship. More Uzumaki in red and blue uniforms harry them from all sides, teasing, ripping, knocking the ship about with blasts of lightning.
Kushina whoops when the artillery ports slide open, blood pumping, search lights blinking on like the eyes of a great beast, futilely trying to catch a glimpse of more than their shadows. She triggers short ozone blasts, diving with the wind, swooping through the, in her opinion, pitiful attempts at offense. Don’t these morons know Uzumaki are born on the wing? Lightning riders aren’t like airships; they can dodge.
A flicker of brightness catches her eye, a glimpse through the window on the forward keel as a bright yellow light flickers on; figures scrambling around the helm, steam billowing from a burst pipe.
Kushina grinned and surged out in front, dragging the bow around to face the window, bloodthirsty grin stretching under her mask. A shift of her heel depressed a lever to unfurl the sails, catching the wind and lending her buoyancy. Just enough buoyancy to reel her hook back, filter chakra down to agitate moisture to the breaking point, and send a cheeky peace sign at the helm’s crew as a search light comes to rest squarely on her.
Between one heartbeat and the next she shifts the lever to pull the sails in and tosses the hook, blasting through the window with a whoop and a laugh and a shield of golden chains, scattering slag in her wake.
“Uzumaki thunder dog!” One of the helm’s men spit, and Kushina hefts her sickle.
“And proud,” she retorts, sending her chains out to destroy the helm, bursting pipes and wrenching gauges out, breaking levers off at the base, and otherwise ruining any chance of navigating the ship to safety. “Going down, bastards!” She reverses the hook and blasts backwards, reveling in the enraged cursing.
By now the ship isn’t just tilted, it’s sinking and sinking fast.
The outer hull is charred black, the artillery guns so much smoking slag and ruin. Tatters remain of once proud sails and gas balloons, the main engine the only thing keeping the ship plummeting like a rock. A job well done if Kushina doesn’t say so herself. And she’s a princess so why not say it herself, she thought smugly.
Out of the stormy gloom, sleek towing vessels pierce the cloud cover, easily riding the wind close of enough for lightning riders to grab anchors and lock them onto the pirate ship, securing their catch for transport.
Lighting riding was indeed lethal to the unwary and overly cautious both, a heartbeat too fast or too soon carrying disastrous consequences. But the Uzumaki?
The Uzumaki had it down to a science.
There were damn good reasons the floating isles of Uzushio had never been breached, and it wasn’t merely due to their hurricane fence. Not by Sky Country Imperials, not by Mizu Raiders, and certainly not by piddly pirates trying the dumbest, most predictable trick in the book, puh-lease. Uzumaki were born on the wing with storms in their blood; no one got by them.
They were the best in the world.
Mito takes her aside with worrying news after the clean up crew have picked the ship clean of loot and crew, the hustle and bustle of the hanger sufficient to cover their conversation. The Queen of Uzushio stands out like a sore thumb amongst the machinery, grease, and thick jumpsuits in her silks and dainty slippers, but she walks with the steady assurance of one who belongs.
“What’s with the long face, Auntie?” Kushina asks with a quick grin, pulling down her heavy goggles to dangle on her collarbone.
“They were more of them,” She says, grim beneath the finery of her station. Kushina’s buoyant mood sinks.
“What, more? Where are they coming from?” Kushina pushed an errant lock of hair out of her face in aggravation, then stared at her grease blackened glove in dismay. Her beloved airskiff hung on struts, its underbelly pried open for after battle maintenance. “They don’t identify with any faction I know of. I’ve never heard of any Kaguya!”
“Neither have we.” If anything, Mito seemed grimmer at the admission, painted mouth pursed unhappily. A very familiar flavor of unhappiness. Kushina frowned, shucking her gloves and sticking them under her arm, reaching for Mito’s hands, who grabbed back tightly, heedless of the sweat.
“Auntie?” She asks. “What are you thinking? Who’s ass do I need to kick?”
“There’s only one logical conclusion we can come to about the emergence of these Kaguya,” Mito says, finality in the lift of her chin. “They aren’t Sky Folk, Mountain Folk, or Floating Island Folk. Nor are they Moon Folk, which is more blessing than not. There’s only place left they can possibly come from.”
Kushina feels a jarring disconnect when she gets it. “The surface?” She hisses, eyes going wide. “Are you serious? It’s uninhabitable, the pollen would— Oh. That face. You’re making the face you make when you know something I don’t know. Spill, Auntie, what do you know that I don’t?”
Mito sighs through her nose, closing her eyes as if to ask for strength. “Are you aware of why my betrothal to the Senju leader fell through?”
Kushina racks her memory, “Wasn’t he a crazy weirdo who wanted to drag the island into some madcap scheme? And Great-Uncle Ashina told him to him to screw off or he’d shove a storm cloud where the sun don’t shine.” She’s pretty sure that’s how it went. Probably wasn’t even paraphrasing...that much.
“That’s mostly right,” Mito says with a fond roll of her of eyes. Kushina grins unrepentantly. Auntie Mito liked her boldness, said often that Kushina was her favorite relative. “The ‘madcap’ scheme in question…” The corners of her eyes pinched; a more telling sign than any scowl. “The Senju pass down an erratic power over plants. Hashirama has an unprecedented bounty of it. Because of it, he’s gotten it into his head that it might be possible to retake the surface.”
“Huh.” Kushina mulls that over a second. “If I were Great-Uncle Ashina I’d have skipped the threats and gone straight to punting.”
Mito laughs at that.
“So I told him,” she says. The faint smile fades. “If these Kaguya truly are from the surface… We may have been too hasty in dismissing the Senju’s ambition as madness. A pity. Now we have to apologize when we ask them for information. I do so hate doing that.”
“Whoa, whoa, why do we need to ask them for anything?” Kushina demurres, propping a fist on her hip. “For all we know these Kaguya are being assholes because the Senju were assholes to them first. I say we demand they take responsibility and give them a middle finger for good measure!”
Mito gives her a level look. “The Kaguya aren’t here for the Senju. They’re here because they’re senselessly violent raiders who’ve figured out how to flap their arms hard enough to trundle along in the sky and make themselves everyone’s problem. It’s not just us they’re targeting. It’s everyone. If they were just after the Senju there’s any number of people who’d happily point them in the right direction and call it a day, if not a job well done.”
“Ugh, fine,” Kushina grumbles, “I’m guessing you’re telling me this because you want me to go find those weirdos.”
“If you would be so kind,” Mito nods, making her veritable headdress of hairpins chime. “You are a princess of this island, one with a very distinguished combat record. I would trust no other with a mission of this importance.
“Fiiiine, you don’t have to butter me up, Auntie.” Kushina straightens her shoulders. “You know I’ll go anywhere you ask me to. Because it’s you asking. Even if I really, really don’t like diplomacy.” A beat. “But I want the Whirligig.” ‘Cause if she has to go make nice to people, she’s doing it in style.
“Of course, you’ll need speed and maneuverability on your side,” Mito agrees immediately. Maybe too quickly. Kushina squinted, suspicious. “We’ll have you outfitted with the most capable crew we can provide. The whole works. We need to send the right impression, the Whirligig will do nicely.”
“What’s the catch?” Kushina demands.
Mito arched a brow.
Kushina squinted harder in response.
Mito sighed, perfectly put upon, “Minato is our best—”
“Minato?” Kushina cries, incredulous, pulling away. “He’s a ditz! An insufferable ditz! Yeah, I guess he’s good, but he’s flighty as hell. Can’t you send, uh, I don’t know, Genma, maybe? He’s way more tolerable than Minato.”
“Genma can’t take a sloop-class airship through the eye of a needle,” Mito says, far more amused than she should be in Kushina’s opinion. “Whatever his faults, I’m sure they’ll be nicely contained to the helm for the duration of your journey. It’s not like he’s going to be talking to anyone, anyway. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
“Just you wait, Auntie! Something is going to go super sideways on this trip, and now that you’ve said that it’s going to be all Minato’s fault! Just you wait and see,” Kushina insisted, pulling away and pulling her gloves back on, fully intended to finish the airskiff’s maintenance and wash off the excitement of the day. Oh, and she’d have to pack for a trip now, wouldn’t she?
“I’m certain you’ll handle any stray drafts with the decorum of an Uzumaki princess.” Mito inclined her head regally. “If you’ll excuse me, dear.”
“Decorum, right,” Kushina snorted at her back. “I know that’s code for punching people’s teeth in.” But whatever, she had a task to get to and it wasn’t happening any sooner if she didn’t get a move on. She slapped the underside closed and went about bolting it shut, grumbling all the while at the injustice of being stuck in a ship with Namikaze Minato in the foreseeable future.
And speak of the ditzy devil; there he goes on the other end of the hanger, helping lug a sail onto a yawl-class airship.
Kushina rolled her sleeves up.
She wanted to have a word with him.
“Minato!”