The dim, flickering light of the stone office cast long shadows across the room as the two Uzumaki sat opposite each other. The tension was palpable, thick enough to cut with a kunai. Karin remained perched rigidly on the edge of the velvet armchair, her red eyes narrowed in deep suspicion, while Naruto sat comfortably on the sofa, his posture radiating the calm confidence of a predator at the top of the food chain.
"So, Ms. Uzumaki," Naruto began, his voice smooth and entirely devoid of hostility, his face set in a calm, unreadable mask. "Do you know who I am?"
Karin hesitated. Her brilliant mind raced through the Bingo Books, through Orochimaru's endless files, and through the rumors of the shinobi underworld. But looking at the relaxed, blonde teenager in front of her, she drew a blank. Slowly, she shook her head.
"No," Karin replied tightly, her guard still completely up. "I don't know who you are, and I don't know what you're doing in my facility."
Naruto offered a small, understanding nod. "Well, since you don't know who I am, allow me to properly introduce myself. My name is Uzumaki Naruto. My mother was Uzumaki Kushina of the Hidden Leaf."
Karin froze. The breath hitched in her throat as the surname echoed in the quiet stone room. Uzumaki. Another one. She wasn't alone. But before the relief could even register, a different piece of information clicked into place. The bright blonde hair, the blue eyes, the Konoha affiliation...
"Wait," Karin gasped, her eyes widening behind her glasses. "Naruto? Aren't you... aren't you Sasuke-kun's teammate?"
Naruto's relaxed expression instantly cooled, his blue eyes hardening into chips of glacial ice. "You could call me that. But personally? I have completely severed all of my connections to that guy. He was my ex-teammate, sure. But right now, he is nothing more than a rogue shinobi with a massive superiority complex and deep-seated mental issues."
Karin bristled, her lingering infatuation with the Uchiha pushing past her fear. "How can you say something like that?! He lost his entire clan! He watched his family die! You don't know what that kind of pain does to a person!"
"First of all," Naruto interrupted, his voice dropping into a low, commanding timber that instantly silenced her. "I am very sympathetic to the fact that he lost his family. I really am. But what about us, Karin?"
Naruto leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, his piercing gaze locking directly onto hers. "Can I call you that? Because calling you 'Ms. Uzumaki' over and over feels entirely too awkward for two of the last surviving members of a dead bloodline."
Karin swallowed hard, nodding mutely.
"Good," Naruto continued, his voice softening just a fraction, carrying the heavy weight of shared trauma. "You want to talk about losing a clan? We lost our clan too. And unlike Sasuke, who gets a free pass from half the world out of pity, nobody shed a tear for the Uzumaki. Our homeland of Uzushiogakure was wiped off the map. Our people were slaughtered. We don't even know how many other Uzumaki kids, orphans, or refugees are out there in the world right now. Are we even sure they're alive? Most probably not. Those who did survive the genocide either switched their clan names, dyed their iconic red hair, or went completely into hiding just to survive the prejudice."
Karin looked down at her lap, her hands balling into tight fists. The fiery defense she had for Sasuke withered away under the sheer, undeniable truth of Naruto's words.
"I didn't just stumble upon this hideout on a whim, Karin," Naruto said quietly, his eyes filled with a terrifying, absolute knowing. "If I hadn't sought you out, you never would have known I existed. I did my research. I searched the underground networks. I know exactly what happened to you and your mother in Kusagakure. The Grass Village treated you like cattle."
Karin flinched violently, her hand instinctively rising to clutch her opposite arm—the arm completely covered beneath her sleeve in horrific, jagged bite marks. The memories of the Grass ninja draining her mother to death, and then turning their fangs on her, threatened to drown her in panic.
"We don't even fully know our own clan's history," Naruto pressed on, leaning his head down slightly to catch her evasive gaze. "What really happened, how the coalition managed to break our sealing barriers, why the rest of the world stood by and let it happen..."
Karin's stubbornness flared up, a defense mechanism to shield her fragile heart from the overwhelming grief. "What does it even matter anymore?!" she snapped, her voice trembling. "All of them are dead! We're the only ones left alive! We can't do anything about that now, can we? We can't go back in time!"
"No, we can't," Naruto agreed completely, his voice steady. "We can't even punish the specific nations that initiated the attack, because most of the old guard who ordered it are probably already dead. But because we are Uzumakis, we never leave things half-assed. We don't sit in the dirt and wait to die like the Uchiha did. We survive. We endure."
Karin bit her lip, the anger slowly draining out of her, replaced by a hollow, aching resonance with the boy sitting across from her. "You're probably right," she whispered bitterly. "But why are you here for me now? I'm doing fine here. Sure, Orochimaru is a sick, twisted bastard, but those who are valuable to him get protected. I have food, I have a clean room, and I have authority. The only good thing that snake ever did was slaughter those Kusa ninjas who were coming after me. I'm safe here."
Naruto let out a humorless, dry chuckle. He leaned back into the sofa, crossing his arms over his chest. "Sure. In my book, wiping out those Grass Village scumbags was the one and only decent thing Orochimaru ever did. But I have a massive reality check for you, Karin."
Naruto paused, letting the silence stretch for a fraction of a second before dropping the hammer.
"Orochimaru is dead. I killed him with my own two hands."
Karin's breath completely stopped.
"Kabuto Yakushi has been captured and is currently locked in Konoha's deepest black-site interrogation cell," Naruto continued, his tone entirely conversational, as if he were discussing the weather. "And Sasuke Uchiha? I permanently crippled his curse mark, beat him into the dirt, and dragged him back to the village. He is also locked up."
Karin stared at him, her jaw practically unhinged. The sheer, apocalyptic magnitude of what he was saying shattered her entire worldview in an instant. "No," she breathed, shaking her head aggressively. "No, that's not possible. That's a lie! Orochimaru is one of the legendary Sannin! He's immortal! He can't be—"
"Why is it not possible?" Naruto challenged, completely unfazed by her denial. "Yeah, I'll admit that Orochimaru was one of the Sannin. He was incredibly strong, and his survival instincts were top-tier. But you have to understand one thing about this world, Karin. Maybe Orochimaru was a genius once. Maybe he was the legend of his century, the absolute myth of his era. But he stagnated."
Naruto held up a single finger. "He spent the last ten years relying on stolen bodies, forbidden jutsu, and hiding in the dark. He hadn't truly trained or improved himself in over a decade. And me? I am the Jinchūriki of the Nine-Tails. I don't care how many heavenly curses or kinjutsu that snake possessed; you absolutely cannot beat the sheer, apocalyptic core value of the Kyūbi's chakra when it's wielded by an Uzumaki who actually knows how to use it."
Naruto lowered his hand, his gaze filled with a ruthless, pragmatic truth. "As for Sasuke? He's just an egotistical teenager playing ninja. Sure, he's a bit powerful, and his eyes give him an edge, but do you honestly believe—with your hand on your heart, with no pretentiousness, no stubborn pride, and no fangirl delusions—that Sasuke Uchiha was ever truly capable of handling the elite hunter-nin sent out to kill him? I could have killed Sasuke back at the Valley of the End three years ago. The only reason he survived is because my mission parameters back then were to capture him, not execute him."
Karin was entirely speechless. Her Kagura Shingan was passively active, and her sensory input was screaming at her: He is telling the absolute truth. There was no deception in his chakra. Orochimaru was dead. Sasuke was gone.
"So," Naruto concluded, his voice deadly serious. "You staying here is now infinitely more dangerous than it was yesterday. Before, you had Orochimaru's protection because you were a useful asset. Now? You are a rogue kunoichi sitting alone in a massive prison filled with mutated test subjects and no warden to keep the other Sound ninja in line. When word gets out that the snake is dead, this entire facility is going to tear itself apart, and you'll be the first target."
Karin slumped back into her armchair. The fortress of security she had built around herself had just been completely, utterly annihilated. She was alone again. A stray Uzumaki in a world that loved to chew them up and spit them out.
She looked at the blonde boy—her clan's blood, her potential savior, and the most terrifyingly pragmatic shinobi she had ever met.
"Even if I believe you," Karin said, her voice shaking slightly as her ultimate fear surfaced. "Even if I accept your protection and go with you... what are the chances that your village doesn't just treat me the exact same way Kusa did? What guarantee do I have that Konoha won't just lock me in a hospital and use me as an endless healing battery for their troops?"
Naruto's expression softened entirely. The cold, calculating Jinchūriki vanished, replaced by the warm, protective aura of a true leader.
"I'm not going to force you into anything, Karin. And I'll burn Konoha to the ground myself before I ever let anyone treat an Uzumaki like livestock again," Naruto promised, his voice ringing with absolute, unshakable conviction. "We can make a blood oath later, but for now... let's establish a little bit of baseline trust."
Naruto extended his right arm toward her, his hand curled into a loose fist. "Bump fists with me."
Karin looked at his outstretched hand, deeply skeptical. But the sheer warmth radiating from his chakra signature was intoxicating. It felt like standing near a roaring hearth in the middle of a blizzard. Slowly, tentatively, she reached out her own trembling hand, curling her fingers inward, and gently tapped her knuckles against his.
The moment their fists connected, Karin's eyes flew wide open.
A sudden, massive wave of pure, concentrated vitality rushed from Naruto's knuckles directly into her circulatory system. It wasn't an attack. It was a flood of pure Yang chakra, supercharged by the Nine-Tails and perfectly filtered through his Uzumaki lineage.
A brilliant, swirling aura of warm orange and deep blue light instantly enveloped Karin's body. She gasped out loud as she felt her core chakra reserves—which were usually strained from the constant, low-level stress of surviving in the Sound—rapidly expanding and replenishing to absolute maximum capacity.
The exhaustion in her bones vanished. Her vision, usually reliant on her thick prescription glasses, suddenly snapped into razor-sharp, crystal-clear focus. But the most profound change was happening on her skin.
Karin pulled her left arm back, ripping her sleeve up to her shoulder. Her breath caught in her throat, tears instantly welling in her eyes.
The skin on her arm was completely smooth, flawless, and pale. The hundreds of jagged, horrific bite marks—the permanent, traumatic scars left behind by the selfish shinobi of the Grass Village—were rapidly sealing themselves, dissolving into nothingness under the sheer, regenerative power of Naruto's Yang chakra. Within seconds, there wasn't a single scar left on her body.
She looked down at her arms, tracing the pristine skin with trembling fingers. She couldn't believe it. The physical chains of her trauma had just been wiped away like they were nothing.
She looked up at Naruto, her red eyes overflowing with tears of absolute disbelief and overwhelming gratitude. "How... how did you do this? Why?"
Naruto pulled his fist back, offering her a soft, deeply empathetic smile that carried the absolute weight of their shared bloodline.
"Because an Uzumaki shouldn't have to carry scars left behind by people who treated them like a tool."
The dim, flickering torchlight of the Southern Hideout's administrative office felt entirely different now. For Karin, the suffocating, oppressive weight that had defined her entire existence within Orochimaru's prison had suddenly lifted.
She sat completely frozen in the armchair, her trembling hands resting over the flawless, pristine skin of her forearms. The jagged, horrific bite marks—the physical manifestation of her trauma from Kusagakure—were gone. Completely eradicated by the overwhelming, concentrated burst of Yang chakra Naruto had deliberately channeled into her.
But it wasn't just her skin. Her vision, which had been terribly nearsighted for as long as she could remember, was suddenly piercingly sharp. The ambient chakra in the room was so clear she felt she could pluck it from the air.
Slowly, with a hand that still shook with residual disbelief, Karin reached up and pulled her thick, black-rimmed glasses from her face. She blinked once, twice. The room didn't blur. The edges of the stone walls, the stacks of paperwork on her desk, the relaxed posture of the blonde teenager sitting across from her—everything was in perfect, high-definition focus.
She let out a long, shuddering exhale, dropping the glasses onto the small wooden table between them. The clatter of the frames seemed to break the spell in the room.
Karin took a deep breath, deliberately reigning in her turbulent emotions. She was an Uzumaki. She was a survivor. And as profoundly grateful as she was for the miracle he had just performed, her brilliant, analytical mind refused to simply shut down. Unlike the various fangirls Naruto had encountered in his life, whose brains seemed to short-circuit the moment a powerful or handsome shinobi showed them attention, Karin's intellect was her greatest weapon. She was not going to blindly walk into another cage just because the door was held open by a smiling face.
Her sharp red eyes narrowed slightly as she looked directly at Naruto.
"Alright," Karin said, her voice steadying, regaining its usual authoritative edge. "You healed me. You told me the truth about Orochimaru and Sasuke. I believe you. But that doesn't change the geopolitical reality of the shinobi world. So tell me... if I actually agree to go with you, what exactly should I expect from Konohagakure? What makes your village any different from Kusa, who bled my mother dry, or from Orochimaru, who locked me in a subterranean fortress?"
Naruto let out a slow, heavy sigh. He ran a hand through his spiky blonde hair, a wry, almost cynical smile touching his lips. He had fully anticipated this level of interrogation. In fact, he respected her infinitely more for it.
"Well," Naruto began, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. "First of all, you need to understand the current situation. We are not going back to Konoha. At least, not yet, and certainly not directly."
Karin blinked, completely caught off guard. "What? But you wear their headband. You're their Jinchūriki."
"I am," Naruto acknowledged smoothly. "But Konoha does not know I am here. The Hokage does not know I came to see you, and the village's intelligence division has absolutely no idea you even exist. This mission is entirely off the books. It's my own personal choice. I found out about your existence by raiding one of Orochimaru's encrypted red-box intelligence caches after we neutralized him."
Karin's posture stiffened immediately, her defensive instincts flaring back to life. "Wait... so you're operating completely rogue right now? Why? Are you planning to use me for your own personal agenda outside the village's control?"
"No, Karin. I am not going to use you," Naruto said, his voice entirely devoid of deception, his blue eyes locking onto hers with absolute sincerity. "I came here without letting the Konoha leadership know because, quite frankly, I don't trust the institution of the Hidden Leaf as far as I can throw it. I love the people there—my friends, my surrogate family, the Fifth Hokage. I will bleed to protect them. But the village's political infrastructure is deeply, fundamentally rotten."
He paused, letting the silence stretch for a moment to emphasize the gravity of his words.
"There is a deeply entrenched, idiotic old council of clan elders who still believe they rule the village," Naruto explained, his tone laced with a cold, terrifyingly sharp disgust. "And lurking behind them is a man named Danzo Shimura, a bastard who runs a sanctioned, underground black-ops division. When my mother and father died on the night of the Nine-Tails attack, those bureaucratic vultures systematically seized almost all of the Uzumaki and Namikaze estates, assets, and heirlooms left behind in Konoha. They took my inheritance and threw me into a rundown apartment to grow up as a pariah."
Karin's eyes widened in horror. "They robbed an orphaned infant of their own clan?"
"They did," Naruto confirmed, his jaw clenching slightly. "I think, by now, most of our clan's historical property in the Leaf has been quietly 'redistributed' or locked away in classified vaults. But don't worry about that right now. I have every intention of getting it back from them. And if they refuse to hand over what belongs to our family, I am perfectly willing to extract it from their lifeless hands. But dealing with Konoha's internal politics is a long-term game. Right now, we have a much more pressing destination."
"If we aren't going to the Leaf," Karin asked, her curiosity entirely piqued. "Then where are we going?"
Naruto leaned back into the sofa, his expression shifting into one of deep, solemn reverence. "We are going home, Karin. We are going back to Uzushiogakure. The Village Hidden in the Whirling Tides."
The name hit Karin like a physical blow. Uzushiogakure. The ancestral homeland. The mythical island nation that she had only ever heard about in hushed, whispered rumors before it was violently wiped from the maps.
"Uzushiogakure?" Karin repeated, her voice barely a whisper. "But... it's a ruin. It was completely destroyed decades ago."
"It is a ruin," Naruto agreed, nodding slowly. "But it is our ruin. Since I discovered my heritage, I've wanted to search for clues about what truly happened to our clan. I want to know how the greatest sealing masters in history were overrun. I can sneak into Konoha's archives and libraries all I want, but it isn't going to get me actual results. The history taught in the Leaf is heavily sanitized. They teach the 'Will of Fire' and gloss over the ugly geopolitical betrayals. No matter how much I try to dig in Konoha, I'm only going to find the history written by the survivors."
Naruto stood up from the sofa, pacing slowly across the stone floor of the office. "So, we are going to go directly to the source. There has to be something left there. A hidden vault, an underground archive, a protected blood-seal sanctuary. The Uzumaki were too paranoid and too brilliant to let their entire legacy burn without leaving a failsafe behind."
Karin watched him pace, her mind rapidly processing his grand strategy. He wasn't just a powerful, rogue teenager. He was a deeply pragmatic tactician operating with a level of historical foresight that terrified her.
"So, you don't trust the village that you serve, yet you still eventually want me to go back there with you," Karin stated, synthesizing his points. She crossed her arms, a heavy, melancholic expression settling over her features. "But I want to ask you something, Naruto. Let's say we do all of this. Let's say we go to the ruins, we find the truth, and then we eventually return to Konoha to face down this corrupt council of yours. What happens then?"
She looked up at him, her red eyes shining with a sudden, fierce emotional intensity.
"What are the chances that we can actually get our clan the justice it deserves?" Karin demanded, her voice cracking slightly under the weight of generations of inherited trauma. "What are the chances that we can make the hidden villages pay for what they did to us?"
The room fell completely silent. The only sound was the faint, distant dripping of condensation in the prison corridors outside.
Naruto stopped pacing. He turned to face her, his expression entirely devoid of the usual fiery, optimistic idealism that most teenage shinobi possessed. His isekai background—his knowledge of the absolute futility of the shinobi world's cycle of hatred—shone through his blue eyes with a chilling, ancient clarity.
"Look, Karin," Naruto said, his voice quiet, heavy, and completely honest. "I am not going to lie to you. The chances of getting our clan actual, retributive justice? It's almost zero."
Karin flinched as if he had slapped her. "What? Why?!"
"Because the Uzumaki clan is part of the forgotten history," Naruto explained ruthlessly. "The other major clans of the world don't remember us, and they don't care to. Why would we expect the Hidden Cloud, the Hidden Mist, or the Hidden Stone to remember the tragedy of the Uzumaki when they are too busy plotting their next border skirmishes? Even Konohagakure, our most prominent, sworn blood-ally, conveniently forgot about us the moment the ink dried on the treaties."
He walked back over to the sofa and sat down, leaning forward to hold her gaze.
"I've read the history books they teach in the academy," Naruto continued, his tone laced with bitter irony. "They teach the Will of Fire. They teach how the Senju and the Uchiha built the village. But they conveniently leave out the fact that the Hidden Leaf stood by and arrived too late while the Whirling Tides were slaughtered. They leave out the fact that the very spiral symbol they wear on their flak jackets is a monument to a dead ally they failed to protect."
Karin's hands balled into fists, her nails digging into her freshly healed palms. "If that's true... if the world doesn't care, and we can't get justice... then why even bother going to the ruins? Why dig up the past if it's just going to stay buried?"
"Because I want to know the truth," Naruto stated firmly, his voice vibrating with absolute resolve. "I don't care what the world thinks. I want to know the truth behind what happened to our clan for myself. And more importantly, I want it for the future."
Naruto gestured between the two of them. "We are the last of our bloodline, Karin. Someday, I plan to have a family. I want my kids to learn what happened to their clan. I want them to know why their ancestors were targeted, how they lived, and what they stood for. I refuse to let the legacy of the Uzumaki fade into a forgotten footnote in some dusty Konoha archive."
He paused, letting out a long, slow breath, visibly shifting his mindset from a historian back to a pragmatic shinobi.
"And let me be perfectly clear about something else," Naruto added, his eyes narrowing. "I don't care about vengeance. I really don't. For me, vengeance is a half-assed, hollow pursuit that only ends up getting you killed. Let's say we find out exactly which Kage ordered the strike on Uzushio. What then? I am one hundred percent sure that the generals and politicians who orchestrated the massacre are already dead. And the few who might still be alive? They are ancient, withered old men coughing up blood on their deathbeds. They have already lived their entire lives."
Naruto shook his head, a cynical smirk returning to his face. "What is the point of killing them now? Will slitting the throat of an eighty-year-old retired Kage bring our mothers back? Will it rebuild the Whirling Tides? No. They wouldn't even spare us a second glance. The cycle of hatred is a trap, Karin. And I refuse to be caught in it."
Karin stared at him, completely captivated. She had spent her entire life surrounded by shinobi who were obsessed with revenge, power, and petty blood feuds. Sasuke Uchiha was entirely consumed by the desire to kill his brother. Orochimaru was consumed by his desire to destroy Konoha. But Naruto... Naruto was looking entirely past the bloodshed. He was looking at the future.
"So," Karin murmured, her analytical mind fully accepting his flawless logic. "If we aren't going there for vengeance, and we aren't going there to start a war... what is the tangible benefit of risking a trip to a heavily trapped ruin?"
Naruto's cynical smirk widened into a genuine, downright predatory grin. This was the isekai tactician showing his true colors.
"The loot, obviously," Naruto said, his eyes practically gleaming.
Karin blinked, completely thrown off balance by the sudden shift in tone. "The... the loot?"
"Exactly," Naruto chuckled, leaning back and crossing his arms behind his head. "There are going to be absolute treasures buried beneath those ruins. You and I both know the temperament of our clan. We were hoarders of knowledge. There is absolutely no chance that the Uzumaki elders did not have a massive, subterranean vault filled with S-rank fūinjutsu scrolls, chakra-conductive metals, ancestral weapons, and clan funds sealed away behind blood-wards before the island fell. The invading armies couldn't have breached our deepest seals without Uzumaki blood. Which means the real treasure is still sitting there, just waiting for us to claim it."
Naruto winked at her. "Isn't that right, Ms. Uzumaki?"
Karin stared at him for a long, silent moment. She processed his words, his logic, his undeniable power, and the sheer, audacious pragmatism of his plan. He didn't want to use her as a tool. He didn't want to drag her into a suicidal quest for revenge. He wanted to reclaim their heritage, steal their ancestors' hidden treasures, and build a future on their own terms, completely independent of the corrupt systems that had failed them.
A slow, genuine smile finally broke across Karin's face. It was the first time she had truly smiled in years.
"Ah, fuck it," Karin laughed, a sharp, incredibly relieved sound that echoed through the dreary stone office. "Fine. Your logic is entirely sound, and frankly, I've had enough of living in a snake's den. We are going to Uzushiogakure."
"That's what I like to hear," Naruto grinned, dropping his arms and slapping his hands onto his knees. "But before we can go anywhere near the Land of Eddies, we need to completely strip this place down and get ready for a major expedition."
Naruto stood up, his mind instantly shifting into logistical planning mode.
"A trip to Uzushio isn't going to be a walk in the park," Naruto detailed, counting the requirements off on his fingers. "The island is surrounded by highly volatile, natural whirlpools that never stop churning. It's a geographical nightmare. We are going to need high-capacity sealing scrolls to carry supplies. We need a massive amount of non-perishable food, fresh water, and medical rations."
Karin immediately stood up, her administrative efficiency kicking into high gear. She walked over to her desk and began rapidly pulling out specific keys and ledgers. "I'm the head warden of the Southern Hideout. I have complete, unrestricted access to Orochimaru's primary supply vaults in this sector. We can loot the armory for high-grade ninja wire, explosive tags, standard kunai, and medical kits. As for the sealing scrolls, I have dozens of blanks in the restricted archive. We can pack enough rations to last us three months."
"Perfect," Naruto praised, genuinely impressed by her competence. "That covers the supplies. But we still have a massive transportation issue. We can't just walk to an island, and standard civilian ferries refuse to go anywhere near the ruins because of the whirlpools. We need a highly specialized, reinforced boat."
"Where are we going to get a boat like that?" Karin asked, frowning as she tossed a heavy ring of iron keys onto the desk. "The coastal villages in the Land of Sound and the Land of Fire don't build ships designed to survive the Uzushio maelstroms."
Naruto's grin widened, a confident, knowing look flashing in his eyes.
"We're not getting a boat from Sound or Fire," Naruto corrected smoothly. "Once we finish raiding this hideout for everything it's worth, we are heading straight for the Land of Waves."
"The Land of Waves?" Karin repeated, arching an eyebrow. "Isn't that a completely impoverished, bridge-building nation run by civilian thugs?"
"It used to be," Naruto corrected, remembering his very first C-rank mission with Team 7, long before the reality of the shinobi world had fully hardened him. "But a few years ago, my team and I liberated that country from a tyrannical shipping magnate named Gato. Since then, the Land of Waves has undergone a massive economic boom. They control one of the most prominent shipping lanes on the eastern coast."
Naruto walked over to the desk, looking at the map of the continent Karin had pinned to the wall. He tapped a specific coastal island near the border of Fire and Water.
"I have quite a few massive favors to cash in over there," Naruto explained, his tone completely assured. "The master bridge builder, Tazuna, owes me his life, his family's life, and the freedom of his entire country. His people are the greatest shipwrights on the eastern seaboard. If anyone can build us a reinforced, chakra-plated boat capable of surviving the defensive whirlpools of Uzushiogakure, it's them."
"And if they refuse?" Karin asked, playing devil's advocate.
"They won't," Naruto replied simply. "But even if they hesitate, we have enough looted wealth from Orochimaru's vaults to buy a small fleet. We get the boat from the Land of Waves, we hire a local navigator who knows the coastal currents, and then we set sail for the ruins."
Karin looked at the map, tracing the theoretical route from the Southern Hideout, up the coast to the Land of Waves, and then out into the treacherous, uncharted waters of the Land of Eddies. It was a crazy, highly dangerous plan that defied the authority of every major hidden village on the continent.
It was exactly the kind of plan an Uzumaki would come up with.
"Alright, Mr Uzumaki," Karin said, grabbing a massive, empty storage scroll from the corner of her office and unrolling it across her desk. She looked up at him, her red eyes burning with a newly ignited fire. "Let's go rob a dead Sannin blind, get a boat, and go take back our history.
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