(Alternative t.i.tle: A Journey Hastened by Seals)Upon regaining consciousness, the first thing Elior became aware of was that of new sensations. He felt a mild sense of gravity, of sound and of being submerged in liquid.
[Good morning. I take it you"re noticing your new physical form.]
"Nnh, good morning, Yuma. Yeah, it"s strange going from a non-physical form to a physical one. How long until my birth?"
[I miscalculated the time a little, but not by that much. You"ve got about an hour or so.]
"Has the Uzushiogakure raid started yet?"
[It started about 3 hours ago. Luckily, your parents had left before it began. One of the elders of the Uzumaki Clan had a hunch about the imminent destruction of the village, and ordered as many as possible to be evacuated in secrecy. Your father, being his son, was among them, despite his desire to remain behind, but your mother was what forced him to agree to escape. We"re about 3 or 4 hours from Konoha, and your mother is having contractions, causing them to stop and camp.]
"Did they escape unharmed?" Elior worried about his parents despite not having been born yet.
[Mostly unharmed, outside of a couple of scratches. Fortunately, most of the ninjas involved haven"t gotten this far out yet, giving your parents a brief respite.]
He mentally sighed, feeling relieved.
[Ah, miscalculated again. Seems it"s happening now.]
Before he could question Yuma"s statement, a sudden onrush of gravity and what could only be described as "swimmers ear" hit his tiny form. Without needing any explanation, Elior began to attempt to speed up his birth with as much as his little body could manage to do, not that it really meant much.
Fortunately, the process went pretty well, all things considered. Elior was soon swaddled in a blanket that had clearly been through many years of usage.
A male voice, his father"s voice, said, "A healthy boy, Asuka." Blinking his newborn eyes to clear his vision, as new as it was, Elior laid eyes on his father; a rather handsome man sporting the characteristic red hair of the Uzumaki, along with deep yet bright blue eyes. His only marking came from a scar that began just beneath his left eye and ran across his cheek to his earlobe.
A new voice, an exhausted female"s, answered after a minute or so, "Good... I was worried... with all of the recent events... I thought it"d be much harder..." Asuka Uzumaki, whose arms Elior was soon placed into, lay on a camping futon, with a blood and fluid-stained travel blanket over her. Her hair was a lighter shade of red than his father"s, but her blue eyes had silver streaks that his did not. Despite her exhaustion and sweaty figure, she held her newborn child with a smile and lightly kissed his cheek. Because of his developing sense of touch, the contact felt ticklish, causing Elior to giggle.
"He"s probably the cutest kid I"ve ever seen," said Elior"s father as he moved to sit beside his wife. "This little munchkin will need a good name."
Her smile unabated, Asuka lightly brushed at Elior"s small head of red hair and said, "I know just the one. Jun. Jun Uzumaki."
"I like it... not as much as I like Ryuuto, though..."
A minor glare was aimed at the man from the new mother, "Takehito..."
He held up his hands in surrender, "Alright, alright, you win, dear..." With a small sigh, Takehito moved so his wife could lean on him for support. "How quickly can you recover your chakra reserves?"
The red-haired mother thought for a moment before stating, "I can recover a third of my reserves in a half-hour. Not enough to fight, but enough to get to Konoha..."
"Okay, dear. To make it there before we get discovered and caught, we might have to leave behind our stuff... Are you okay with that?" Takehito was visibly nervous about this, as he knew what his wife held dear, other than family, was sentimental items.
After a considerable amount of internal struggle, Asuka managed to agree to do so. After all, living is more important than most of the items they had.
Elior, or rather, Jun thought to himself as he listened, "I wonder if I can do something to help... Ah, right, the seals!" After being excited from reminding himself of the seals he wished for, he quickly returned to anxiousness, as he had no way to explain how to use the seals to his parents... "I might have to do something ridiculous for it to work out without being too drastic..."
As his little face was scrunched up in thought, Asuka couldn"t help but lightly pinch his adorable cheeks, making him giggle reflexively. "He"s so cute!" Then her eyes focused on his little wrist, or more specifically the three black dots about the size of a grain of rice thereon, "Are those... seals?"
Takehito followed his wife"s line of sight and thought the same thing, "It looks like it... I wonder what they can do... I"m a bit of a musclehead, the real seal master here is you, Asuka."
"Yes, you are rather thickheaded sometimes," teased Asuka as she continued to examine Jun"s three seals. The latter managed to move his unruly limbs to touch his mother"s left wrist, making awkward sounds of urgency. "What? Hungry? Hold on a minute, sweetie, let mom get... wait... what are these?" As she had begun to remove her upper body clothing, she caught sight of the same wrist Jun had managed to touch, discovering grape-sized seals upon it. "I don"t remember having these."
Jun"s father also took a look at her wrist, just as surprised as she was. Out of a spark of curiosity, he checked his own wrist and saw matching seals as well. "These seals didn"t exist before Jun was born... Is he the cause? He"s only just been born!"
"Who knows? Only the heavens would truly know how they appeared... I"ll inspect one of mine first, see if I can discover what it does."
"Be careful, dear, don"t do anything too risky," cautioned Takehito.
"Compared to our current status as fugitive survivors, I"m not sure this is as risky, but I know what you mean, hun." Channeling what meager chakra she had regained, Asuka guided it to her eyes, which glowed as she attempted to peer into the secret of the seal. 5 minutes pa.s.sed before she stopped from chakra loss, attempting to regain her breath from overusing her chakra in her condition.
"Did you discover anything?"
"I think so... This first seal, the leftmost one, seems to be a s.p.a.ce attribute jutsu... I guess it"s supposed to be similar to Konoha"s Flying Thunder G.o.d Technique (Hiraishin)... I haven"t managed to figure out the destination completely, but it should place us a short distance from Konoha"s gate..."
Takehito took a minute to digest this new information, as did Asuka, before speaking up, "A long-range teleportation seal? Why would the heavens give us such a thing..? Wait... do you think it"s the guidance of the heavens, or maybe our ancestors?"
Asuka shook her head a little as she contemplated, "It"s possible that it"s related to our ancestors, but there"s no way to prove it. As for these seals being the will of the heavens... another answer we"ll never learn... But, there"s one thing I am sure of." Her voice grew strong again as she said, "We"ll be able to get to the safe haven of Konoha if we use them."
Listening to his wife, a small fire of haste came to life inside him as he carefully moved his wife off of him and beginning to pack up their campsite as fast as he could. "Can one seal send the three of us together?"
"From what I managed to decipher, the three seals are linked together, so as long as one of us uses the seal, it"ll activate for the others as well... So, yes, it"ll take all 3 of us, at a cost of one use each. I don"t know the limit for the seal usage, though, so let"s hope for the best."
Takehito smiled with newfound determination as he said, "Asuka, other than Jun"s birth, I doubt anything can be better than this discovery."