DISCLAIMER: I don't own the anime/manga Naruto! …So please don't sue.

Title: To See You Again...
Time-line: AU (because no one knows how they met!) pre-Naruto, Kakashi-Gaiden-ish
Genre: Humor/Romance/(light) Angst
Rating: PG-13

Beware of SPOILERS!

Please enjoy!

Chapter 1: Uzumaki-kun?

When she first met him, they were twelve.

Her genin team was one of the lucky few chosen teams to travel to Konohagakure no Sato for a few months of training. Ever since the founding of the Leaf Village, the Whirlpool Village had been their little ally. And to cement their ties, every year for a few months little genin teams would be swapped for a while. One year a squad from Leaf would come to Whirlpool, and the next it would be reversed.

She'd barely been in the giant ninja village in Fire Country more than ten minutes when she bumped into him…literally. It might've been her fault—she was a stranger there, got lost easily (especially back then), and really shouldn't have been running so fast—but he didn't have to bite her head off the way that he did. After taking in his clear blue eyes, spiky yellow-blonde hair, and prissy-polite attitude, she cussed him out and left him eating her dust.

Later, when she and her comrades were formally introduced to the genin their age, she learned his name: Namikaze Minato. He didn't come from a long line of ninja like many of his classmates did, but he seemed popular enough. A lot of the others appeared rather jealous of him on account that he had a famous teacher. She wasn't sure what to make of his teacher—the white-haired Jiraiya—until a little time later when she spotted him near the hot springs peeping on the women's side…whereupon she decided that he was a pervert, and her shaky opinion of the Namikaze dipped lower.

He seemed to think that he was "all that" and everyone around him apparently agreed. Talented, they said; a potential genius, they said. She didn't see what was so great about him.

When he gave a demonstration of his skills, she saw that maybe—just maybe—there was something to all their talk. It was just a practice spar, but no one from Whirlpool could touch him. Heck, his friends could barely touch him! He was just so damn fast and clever! No little genin had any right to be that fast. His teacher boasted that "his Minato" would make chuunin in no time.

She scoffed at such claims, but secretly agreed.

What followed was a fiercely rivalry—at least on her part. Their first encounter had been on the wrong foot, and the rest of their acquaintanceship went the same way. She challenged him to fights; he beat her every time (although she did always manage to make him bleed a little). She put everything she had into whatever training exercise or D-ranked mission she was given and did her absolute best, but he always seemed to do better with half the effort. The only thing she seemed to out-do him in was in insults; he was just too polite and plain inexperienced to properly insult anyone or come up with a half-way decent come-back.

At first when he started calling her "Uzumaki-kun" instead of "Uzumaki-san" she thought that he was finally picking up the art of the insult. Sure she looked like a boy; she was a tomboy, she wore baggy boy's clothes, she acted like a boy, she was scrawny and underdeveloped, and she wore her blood-red hair chin-length and un-styled. There wasn't anything remotely feminine about her. So really, calling her "Uzumaki-kun" made perfect sense as an insult. It was pretty good; nice and subtle.

But then she did an unforgivably girly thing: She contracted a little crush on the prissy Namikaze.

Her squad and his squad were on a little joint C-rank escort mission. They had to guard a little group of traveling merchants through an area of Fire Country that had suffered a lot of bandit activity. It should've been a walk in the park for six little genin. Their instructors had thought so—neither jounin had gone along.

It hadn't been a walk in the park. There were a lot of bandits. They overwhelmed them with sheer numbers. And she got careless and clumsy and twisted her ankle, and for a few moments was dangerously vulnerable.

Namikaze had been nearby, noticed her distress, and came to her defense. One moment she was alone, staring down an ugly bandit with a rusty sword, ready to slash at her, and the next he was between them blocking the nasty blade with a kunai. He held up against the older, bigger man, then brushed aside his sword and took him down with a quick, calculated blow.

She stared up at him in startled awe. The stern, determined look on his face was so much more awesome than his usual superior little grin that he wore when training. And in that brief moment, that fraction of a second, she saw him as a handsome boy.

Then he flickered away to deal with someone else and the little "moment" was over. Rattled and a little lame, she stumbled to her feet and managed to take out one more bandit in spite of her ankle before it was all over. And then the fight was over, the remaining bandits dispersed in a panic, one of her teammates taped her ankle, and they limped along to their destination.

Afterwards, at the most inopportune times, she'd feel funny around him. If she had something attention-consuming to do, it wasn't so bad, but when she was just mindlessly training in the same general area as him it drove her nuts. She'd feel kinda warm and tingly, and there'd be weird fluttery feelings inside her stomach, and she could never look at him when he was looking at her, or talk quite right when she was trying to speak with him (thankfully she could insult him just fine).

It was an entirely new, entirely horrible experience for her. She hated every second of feeling weird around him. Worse, she started to feel this sick longing for his attention—for him to look at her as a girl instead of as one of the boys. And as a result of all this awful turmoil, she lashed out at him more than ever.

When the six weeks were finally up and it was time to return home to Whirlpool, Namikaze was unfortunately there to see her off. It was made more humiliating because her teammates were starting to suspect her shameful secret crush on the Konoha genin. And of course he just had to say good-bye to her in particular.

"I'm really sorry that we never really saw eye-to-eye, Uzumaki-kun," he'd apologized, only partly sounding forced. "I'm sorry that we couldn't be friends. You seem like a pretty cool guy…when you're not swearing left and right. With your determination I'm sure that you'll be a great shinobi one day."

And it was then that she realized that he hadn't been insulting her all this time. While his tone was a little stiff, he was being very sincere in the things he was telling her; there was no sarcasm at all in his voice. He had honest-to-god thought that she was a boy…

She had grabbed him by his shirt collar with her left hand, cocked back her right, and smashed her fist into his nose so hard he fell down on his butt and his nose started to bleed.

"You moronic, blonde, pretty-boy!" she had howled. "I'm a girl damn it!"

Her teammates had almost sobbed with laughter. And normally she would've been snickering along with them. It had always been funny to be mistaken for a boy before; she'd always been proud of it—proud not to be a sissy girly-girl. But she was just too upset and hurt that the first boy that she thought was cute (not that she wanted to think of him that way) had thought that she was a boy.

With one final glare at her nemesis (and unfortunate object of her unwilling affections) she had spun on her heel and marched off towards home. The rest of her little group caught up with her, still laughing hysterically. All of them were boys too; she was the only kunoichi from Whirlpool that had come (which probably made it worse, Namikaze had probably just assumed that they were all boys with no obvious girl present).

She, Uzumaki Kushina, had wanted to loathe Namikaze, and not just because of her stupid little crush. But once her fiery temper had cooled—after about the third day of traveling—she couldn't help but understand why. She didn't look like a girl, dress like one, talk like one, act like one, or anything. She even preferred to go by "Uzumaki" as "Kushina" was just so…girly. No wonder the genius (keh, some genius!) Namikaze had been so fooled.

And so—quite against her will—a tiny flicker of her stupid, stupid crush persisted. It flared up briefly every now and then when some word or rumor of how awesome Namikaze was reached her ear, but it grew easier and easier to suppress. The years and miles of distance made it easier, she supposed.

She wasn't a little tomboy anymore; she was a rough-edged kunoichi that had just made jounin (so what if it was by the skin of her teeth, it still counted!). Her red hair had grown out a lot since her visit to Konoha. In fact, partly to avoid any confusion on her gender in the future, she made sure to grow it down almost to her butt. No boy had hair that long. And her femininity was finally more apparent when she finally seemed to hit full puberty at fifteen and grew some (small) breasts. She wore tighter, more revealing clothes to make sure that everyone could see. Heck, if it wasn't for her aggressive nature and one-of-the-boys behavior, she could easily be mistaken for a girly-girl at first glance.

At least that's what some of her guy friends told her. She didn't believe them. She just never felt terribly feminine. Sure, she could fake it pretty good. She had to, being a kunoichi and all. A few times she'd drawn "seduction missions" where she'd had to rely on "womanly charms" to pull it off properly.

The only time where she'd ever felt like a girl (emotionally—biologically her menstrual cycle was more than enough to remind her of her female-ness) was when she suffered from her little infatuation with Namikaze. It was a sensation that she ruthlessly quashed. Even if he—by some freakish miracle—found her remotely attractive and somehow returned her feelings, it would never work. He was of the Leaf, and she of the Whirlpool. Allies, yes; but different villages several days' travel apart. She'd never give up her home and she knew that neither would he.

And then there was her career. If she got involved with him—or any man, for that matter—there was the risk of babies. She didn't know how to handle babies. She didn't want to know how to handle babies. Babies meant no more being a kunoichi. Babies meant being a mother and a…ugh…housewife.

No, none of that was for her. It also saved her the trouble of heartbreak and rejection. If she didn't chase after boys, she could train more, further her career, and not get her soft emotional underbelly mangled.

It was a win-win situation all around, really.

But now was not the time to be reminiscing and rationalizing her life choices. Now was a good time to keep her mind on the job. War was raging, and Iwa (the filthy bastards!) had just smashed her home village to pieces. Whirlpool was no more, and soon the surviving ninja would be just as dead.

Just finish this little seduction/assassination and then get to Konoha, she thought. I can't get back at Iwa by myself, but if I join up with Konoha I can get a little taste of vengeance with a chance of surviving. Those rock-brained bastards haven't seen the last of the Uzumaki! Not yet…

Eying her reflection critically in the inn room mirror, she cautiously adjusted her lipstick. If only one of her kunoichi allies (not friends, just a few female ninja that could stand her enough to help her with female things) were around to do her make-up. Kushina knew the basics, but she needed to look awesome and not-herself.

So far she'd put on a few scraps of cloth that was supposed to be a dress and some short heels. She'd dyed her hair black (with the cheap stuff that washed right out after a few showers) to avoid being identified by her distinctive red hair. And now it was the finishing touches on the face…

"Good enough," she muttered and put her make-up (used for mission purposes only!) back in her bag with the rest of her regular ninja gear.

Checking her concealed weapons (a pair of senbon needles in her hair as hair sticks, a few shuriken tucked in the inside hem of her wide sleeves, and a kunai and a slightly longer knife strapped to one leg underneath her skirt) she grabbed a vial of poison powder. Palming the vial so that she could hide it and release it without being caught, she glanced at her reflection one last time before leaving. She hesitated at the top of the stairs to steel herself and put in place her "seductive" mask before continuing on down to the tavern part of the inn…and her target.

The inn was located on what had been the border between Whirlpool County and Earth Country; it was also close to Rain Country—the unfortunate nexus between all five of the Great Shinobi Nations. The tavern contained several Iwa-nin along with a good number of civilians. Hopefully she could poison the Iwa squad and get out before things exploded.

It was smoky and loud and smelled like sweat, booze, and puke in the tavern, but she blocked it out. She was a flirty little slut out to romance some handsome bad-ass ninja. And nothing was going to get in her way.

Kushina slipped through the crowd with cat-like grace, her green-tinged blue eyes scanning the rough crowd for her targets. She spied them in a particularly dark and smoky corner and smirked. Just as she was lazily making her way to them (she couldn't go after them directly, they'd be suspicious) a tiny flash of bright color off to the side caught her attention.

A cloaked and hooded man had just come in from the rain. Peeking out from the shadows of his hood were a few spikes of bright yellow hair. It was a very distinctive shade; it reminded her of—

No. Her blood ran cold. He can't be here! If they catch him, more Iwa-nin will come and it'll be such a mess—I'll never get away! Damn it…

Carefully masking her momentary distress, she changed direction to get closer to the mystery man. For the moment he seemed to escape the notice of the other patrons, but that couldn't last too much longer. If he was who she thought he was, he would be outed quickly. Namikaze Minato was just too famous—or infamous—now to be anonymous anywhere for long.

Just as he slid into a shadowy booth at the side of the room, she reached his little table. Putting on her best sultry smile (which probably sucked, but most losers fell for it long enough for her to work) she leaned against the table with her hip and peered down at his shadowed face. He glanced up at her warily—but he didn't seem overly worried, the cocky bastard—and she was almost one hundred percent sure of his identity.

"Minato-kun," she purred, and carefully judged his reaction. The brief widening of his eyes in surprise and the tightening of his jaw was all she needed to see. She shifted closer and leaned down further on the pretext of flashing him some of her (pathetic) cleavage. "You shouldn't be here, Minato-kun. There's a four-man squad of high-ranking Iwa jounin here, and more are likely to show up soon."

"So," he shrugged, and she had to fight the urge to shiver at his deeper, more mature voice. "I can take them."

Hold it together! "And the ones that come after?" she murmured and edged closer.

"Them too," he grinned faintly.

"I suppose you could, if you want to make a big ugly mess," she shrugged and slipped into the booth beside him. "And normally I'd be all for that. But I'd like to get out of here with my luggage and without a giant pack of hunter-nin chasing me the whole way." She rested her elbows on the table and propped her chin on her fist. "I was just going to poison them and then sneak out the back. Not as satisfying, but cleaner."

He studied her curiously. "Who are you?"

Kushina contemplated answering him. If he remembered her at all, and believed her when she revealed her name, he could react badly even though he was definitely jounin-level by now. But if she made something up, would he play along with her plan and allow her to go for Konoha?

We didn't really part on the best of terms, and I'd rather not have to argue with him. She tapped her chin thoughtfully, doing her best to keep up her flirtatious façade for any watchers keeping tabs on her. I'll see if I can get away with being anonymous…for now.

"Nobody special, just a straggling ally." She tugged at a loose strand of dyed hair. "If you're going to even play at anything undercover, you should use hair dye. Even under that hood it kind of glows."

"So that's how you noticed me, is it?" he sighed, still smiling.

"Mm-hm," she grinned. "So should I go ahead with my poisonous little plot, or should I sneak away before you tear this place apart?"

He leaned back in his seat, deeper into the shadows, and weighed his options. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking. There was still a grin on his face, but his blue eyes were cold and calculating. She played with the cuff of his sleeve while she waited, playing up the shallow flirty slut mask she'd donned. When he made up his mind, he leaned forward again.

"Can I have your room key?"

She didn't hesitate. There wasn't anything in her meager belongings that she thought he'd take offense too, or that she'd be embarrassed of him seeing. Her ID papers were well hidden, so her little ruse was in little danger of being exposed. So with a broad, crooked grin, she slipped her room key from the folds of her skirt and whispered the room number.

As he slipped away to her cheap little room, she reoriented herself on her primary targets. Thankfully no new Iwa-nin had arrived; it was still just the four. It'd be tricky, but she intended to get at least one, and with her slow-acting poison maybe she could get all of them before they felt any effects…

Perhaps it was the high they were on from crushing Whirlpool. Or maybe they were just careless and drank a little too much sake. Whatever the reason, it had been ridiculously easy to spike their drinks with the powder.

That made her nervous.

Keeping up her little act, she made some excuse about fetching another pretty friend from upstairs to join in the fun. The Iwa-nin were greedy pigs and eagerly sent her off with the empty promise of hurrying back soon. Kushina gave them one last little wave as she vanished upstairs…and then shed her mask as she picked up the pace back to her room.

As she suspected, she found Namikaze going through her small pack. There was a war going on and information was precious, whether it be on an enemy or an ally. Closing the door behind her, she noted that he was studying her hitae-ate in the moonlight that streamed in through the single, small window.

"A Whirlpool kunoichi, eh?"

"That's right," she answered shortly, no longer bothering with her flirty false persona. "That was too easy," she muttered, glaring darkly in the general direction of the tavern. "I'm lucky, but I doubt I'm that lucky. I'm getting out of here, if you don't mind?"

"Where will you go?" he asked, lowering his hood so that she could see his face a little better in the poor light.

"I was planning on heading to Konoha," she replied and snatched her things from him. She swapped out her heels for her usual sandals, but changed nothing else. The dress-thing was revealing and all, but she could still run in it well enough. "Is that a problem?"

"It shouldn't be if you have peaceful intentions." He shrugged. "Tell me your name and I can write you a note that should make things easier."

"I'm not giving you my name until I get settled somewhere," she answered and slung her pack over her shoulder. Kushina slapped down some money and the room key on the table—her quick check-out—and headed for the window and the rainy outdoors. "Now if you'll excuse me—"

"Wait!" His arm blocked her way and she had no real choice but to stop. "I can get you out of here faster, but in return I'd like a favor."

She gave him a wary sidelong glance. "What sort of favor?"

He shifted about, suddenly nervous, for a moment. "Go on a date with me?" he blurted out finally.

Kushina stumbled backwards a few steps in shock. "W-what?!" Her mind skittered in a thousand different directions, which all ended up nowhere. "Why?"

"It'd just be a one-time thing, I swear!" he hurriedly assured her, scratching at the back of his head and grinning weakly in embarrassment. "It's just…my friends won't stop teasing me about getting a girlfriend. So I was thinking if I took a girl out once, they'd shut up for a while."

It took several minutes for her rattled brain to make sense of this. "Why not ask some local girl?"

"All the girls that I know well enough to ask are already in relationships," he sighed. "And anyone else who would be interested would want something long-term. You're a kunoichi, a professional. It would be just like doing a job. I'll pay for everything; you just have to play the part."

The increasingly loud noises from downstairs helped her make her decision. "Let me pick the restaurant and we have a deal."

"Done!" he agreed with a broad smile. He grabbed her arms and winked. "Hold on!"

Then it felt like she was flying, falling, being twisted inside-out, hung upside-down, and spun in circles. The dreary inn room was suddenly a dark forest. And there was no rain.

"What the hell!" Kushina choked, dizzy and reeling. "What was that?"

"That was my Hiraishin no Jutsu," he declared proudly. "I invented it myself. Welcome to the borders of the Land of Fire."

"Huh?" She glanced around, dazed. "Really?"

"Really," he smiled smugly. "Konoha is about four days that way," he gestured with his arm. "I have to get back to my mission, so I'll see you there!"

And then there was a flash of yellow light and he was gone.

Kushina swayed and then her rubbery legs gave out beneath her. Her "mission" was over and for the moment she was alone and could afford to let her mind wander or panic as it liked. And it chose to panic.

Namikaze Minato asked me on a date! Oh god he looks so much more handsome now! That jutsu—so that's why they call him Konoha's Yellow Flash! What will he do when he finds out that I was the girl who he thought was a boy and punched him in the nose for it? Oh what am I going to do, what am I going to do, what am I going to do?!

Clenching her teeth, she lightly smacked herself and took a few deep breaths.

Pull it together Uzumaki Kushina! Focus! You can use this! You can bum a free meal off him…it'll be like an apology he doesn't know he's making! And you can get over your stupid crush on him too!

That made her feel better.

Mind whirling with half-formed plans, she got up and started walking in the indicated direction. It would be nice to see Konoha again. The village was so much bigger than hers was…had been (don't think about it, don't think about it, don't—). And it was so pretty! The weather was usually nice; it didn't rain half as much as did back home (don't think—). Unfortunately it was quite landlocked, but no place was perfect.

Hopefully the Hokage will remember me... And remember some good things about me. That will make things a lot easier.

She pulled the senbon needles from her hair and let the long, dyed strands fall loose down her back. By the time she tracked down Namikaze for their "date" she planned on her hair being back to its usual shade of bright red. And she'd dress as a ninja. He wanted a professional and she wasn't about to waste her badly depleted funds on a dress (the dress she was currently wearing she planned to burn).

I will drain his wallet, she gloated, and all the debts between us will be settled. I'll screw with him, get over him once and for all, and then I'll be free! Free in beautiful Konoha to start over and get some payback on Iwa and the Land of Earth!

She threw back her head and cackled at the night sky.

Uzumaki Kushina, you are awesome!