Chapter 43: Surprise Motherf*cker

After destroying her private training ground she got with the hat, Tsunade felt numb. She was still a mess by the recent revelation. She felt… violated. Abused in many ways. That someone took her ovums to make children behind her back made her sick. If she could, she would kill Danzo again. And again and again until she got tired of it. She wanted to drown herself in alcohol.

‘I have a son. An 18 year old son.’

She had planned once to have children. Dan was still alive at the time and they were in the middle of the war. With how their relationship was developing she had no doubt that they would have married and started a family had he lived. But he didn’t and all her hopes and dreams died with him. His death messed her up badly. For years she had hematophobia for failing to heal him in the field and it was thanks to Shizune that she overcame it but more importantly she had given up on being a mother. She may not have had the happy marriage of her dreams but she could have had children. She chose gambling and alcohol instead.

‘And all this time I had a son. An orphan son that the village shat upon. Danzo’s little experiment to create a Hokage. Was it luck for us to meet? Something determined by fate? What were the odds for me to meet him and take him as my apprentice? To spend so much time with him that I started considering him as my son. Isn’t that ironic, thinking of my son as my son? And gosh, I slept with him! I slept with my own son! Fuck me! Or not, he’s my son! Watch out what you say Tsunade, damn it! I have a son… Fuuuuuuuck. What am I supposed to do with that? Huh? How am I supposed to interact with-’

“Riku!” she said with a gasp.

She had been so busy feeling angry, sorry for herself and getting her head around him being her child and what to do about it, that she didn’t think about how affected Riku was.

‘Shit! His whole life is a lie. Even before he was born. He’s just the product of a mad man’s experiment. Fuck, how do you deal with that shit in the first place? Damn it! I need to find him. Where does he go when he wants to be left alone? Maybe I should ask… No, Ino and Karin are still on a mission. Hinata? Where is…The hospital! She’s part of the medic-nin program!”

Tsunade shushined away and rushed to the hospital as fast as she could. She went up the third floor and made a stop at the ‘classroom’. Composing herself to not appear like a mad woman, she took a deep breath and opened the door. The doctor stopped on the spot talking, turning his head to see if a nurse needed urgently or not. He was surprised to see Tsunade.

“Hokage-sama? May I help you?”

“Yes. I’m looking for Hyuga Hinata.” the blonde woman said in a whisper as she got closer to the man.

The doctor turned around and looked at the bluenette at the small operating table near the window. She was the only one with a fish moving.

“Hyuga-san? A moment please?”

Confused, Hinata looked up and saw Tsunade. Fear began to grip her heart when she saw the panic expression of the woman. Quickly she made her way to the front of the classroom and followed theHokage outside.

“Is-”

“Do you know where Riku goes when he wants to be alone?” Tsunade asked bluntly, taking Hinata aback.

“I…That depends what for. If it’s for studying fuinjutsu then in his Botib. If not… Either on your head on the Hokage Monument or… South-East. Beyond the residential area and south Nara’s forest. Close to the Naka river.”

“Thank you.”

With the information she wanted in her possession she left in a hurry, leaving a puzzled Hinata. She was not afraid anymore but she was worried. She wanted to follow Tsunade but she knew that if the woman wanted her to come she would have said so. Promising to find what this was all about later, she went back to class.

Tsunade didn’t go outside the hospital immediately. She went to the rooftop first to have a better vantage point. With the proximity of the building to the Hokage Monument it was easier for her to verify that Riku wasn’t on her head.

“Not grandfather, nor uncle, nor sensei. Not even Minato. Mine.” she muttered as she jumped down the building to go to the second location Hinata had spoken about. She couldn’t understand why of all the Hokage it was her head he went to. She knew Naruto went on his father’s because Minato was his hero, like most of the children born the year or after the Kyubi’s attack but Riku didn’t.

‘Uncle and Minato are morons in his eyes so that’s probably why but why not sensei or grandfather?’ she thought as she reached the forest and began to tree hop. ‘Question for later.’

The forest was big and she realized when she reached the river that she landed right in the middle of the bank. Riku could be to her left or to her right. While wondering which side to go, the corner of her eyes saw a stone skip on the water to reach the other side. Turning her head, she saw him a bit more than a hundred feet away, ready to throw another stone. She was about to shushin to his side when a simple thought crossed her mind and stopped her from doing so.

‘What am I going to say to him?’

She didn’t know, no matter how much she racked her brain. Did she accept him as her son instead of just her apprentice? Did she want to? Did he? She wished someone could give her an answer. Since no one would, she decided to winged it. Taking a big breath to ready herself, she shushined to his side. She landed in a swirl of leaves a few feet away.

There was no way he didn’t notice her. Or perhaps there was. Riku tended to be oblivious to the rest of the world once inside his own mind. She walked slowly towards him and spoke up.

“Riku… Are you… alright?”

He threw another stone atop the water. This time it made it to the other side.

“I should be the one asking you that.” he replied not looking at her and instead picked a small handful of flat stones at his feet. He knew what she was talking about. There was no doubt in his mind that Kakashi and Yugao read the folder and shared it on the spot with her.

“I’m… a mess but you-”

“I what? Shocked that my whole life is a lie? That you’re my mother? That I’m an experiment?”

“Yes.”

“No really in truth. I mean… Yeah I was shocked but I got over it quickly.”

“You did?!” Tsunade exclaimed. She was totally flabbergasted.

“Well, yes. I mean… I don’t remember my father at all beside him killing himself in front of me. That was such a dick move that I stopped considering him as my father long ago. With time… he’s just a stranger that I have only this memory of now. My mother… I remember the color purple. She wore a lot of clothes with that color but if you ask me to describe her… I couldn’t. I always thought that… she loved me or rather… I think I convinced myself that she did. Because… What kid wants to know that he’s so awful that even his parents don’t love him? Since my father certainly didn’t love me, I may have doubled down on my mother doing so. The truth is… Ever since you took me in, I thought of you as my true mom. So it doesn’t really change anything if we’re actually blood related or not from my point of view.”

“I-I see.” she replied with a bit of a stutter, her mind still blown.

“What I’m mad about is… That you didn’t have a choice. You didn’t give your consent for… well… Me existing.” he said, throwing another stone.

“To be honest… I don’t quite know how to feel. I’m both happy and furious. Happy because I have a child; something that I gave up on long ago. Furious because… Less because it was without my consent and more because I didn’t carry you to term or raised you.” she confessed with a bit of hesitation.

Riku threw another stone and pondered something. Then sighed for the decision he made in his mind.

“I feel the same but not for the same reasons. I… To think I’m related to that moron and that retard… I just…Ugh.”  he said with the most serious expression and tone she has ever seen him have.

Tsunade snorted, then laughed at how ridiculous his answer was. Of all the things he could be mad about it was the least of them. That he was Minato’s son and Naruto Half-brother. She couldn’t help herself. It was too absurd.

“I also don’t know if I should be proud or ashamed of myself for being a motherfucker.” he added after a beat of silence. He didn’t look at Tsunade when he said that but he knew her face had frozen in shock with her mouth open in a “o” like a fish.

“RIKU!” she shouted at the top of her lungs.

“Yes?” was said in such a cheeky way that she held herself back to glomp him with everything she had.

“T-that’s n-not…”

“Important. It doesn’t change anything. Unless you still can have children? Because otherwise it doesn’t matter.”

“That’s not the point!”

“If you say so.”

“I say so!”

He didn’t insist on this particular topic, it was more a joke than anything and there was more important matter to deal with.

“What now?” he inquired.

“Now? I don’t know.”

“Should I call you ‘mom’?”

“I… That sounds nice.” she replied with a small but genuine smile. “But I don’t think it wise to do it in public for now.”

“Oh, so I’m still your dirty little secret.” he joked with a knowing smirk and his eyebrows moving up and down in a suggestive manner.

“RIKU! I SWEAR-”

“What are you going to do? Send me to my room?”

“...”

That stops her right in the middle of her sentence. Taking a second to think about it, she began to laugh. Riku dropped the stones in his hands and dusted them. Moving toward Tsunade, he took her in a hug. With the difference in height her head reached just below his chin.

“You know… Almost killing me aside, you’re a great mom. You even tone down your drinking a lot. Are you sure, you’re fine with-”

“I am. It’s been years since I thought of you as my son. I wished that had I had one, he would have been like you.” she replied, closing her eyes to feel his heartbeat better. “You are right. Nothing changed. We just know.”

Riku forced himself to stay silent about the ‘nothing changed’ part. The moment was too good to ruin it with a joke about them keeping on having sex.

“I wonder if that’s why we always were in a great mood after cuddling.” Tsunade said.

“Like… our bodies knew when we didn’t?”

“Perhaps.”

“We’re not stopping that.”

“Oh, hell no, we don’t.”

They stayed like that a few more minutes then separated. Tsunade was Hokage and she still had a job to do. So did Riku. Between skimming through Danzo’s secret files and helping Koharu with her arm. He chose the latter.

When he arrived at the hospital he directly went to the elevator, going down three levels. Floor B3 was actually a bunker in case of invasion but was repurposed for the use of Riku’s Time seal during Gaara's rescue mission. Karin and Jiraiya had to both work on it to understand the principle and how to place things in the correct position for everything to work. The Time seal itself, only Karin understood a bit of it.

As such two operating rooms were equipped and not the whole basement. It was still a work in progress and Riku needed to remodel everything with his expansion jutsu. The floor had only six rooms and three operating rooms. That was not nearly enough for what the plan about the floor was about.

‘That will come after the Hiraishin is done. Or half done.’ he mused and asked the nurse at the ‘front’ desk in which room Koharu was.

After getting his answer he walked toward the double door leading to the patients’ room, checked his ID with the chunin guarding the door and went through it. Two doors down and he entered the Elder's room. Her teammates were present too.

“Sandaime-sama, Elders. I’ve come to help.”

“Found a way to heal my arm back into existence?” asked the woman in a bitter tone. Riku paid it no mind, he would be bitter too in her situation.

“Not exactly.” he replied and pulled out his Bos. He turned it to page 56 and unsealed a prosthetic that looked like a real arm.

“... That’s not a dead-”

“It’s not, Elder. That’s the fruit of my research from Sasori of the red sands’ body. You may not know but beside his heart his whole body was just one giant puppet. The difference with normal wooden parts was he kind of recreated the chakra network by simply creating tiny artificial… veins in the wood and manipulated his chakra to make the body parts move like a real body. I was thinking that maybe you would be able to use it too.”

“That’s a good idea and all but that’s a left arm. Koharu needs-”

Riku cut off Homura by simply turning the wrist joint in 180° angle.

“There. I took into consideration the fact that making a right or left arm would take too much time and would be way too expensive when I could just do one for both. Each joint can rotate at 360° in any direction.”

“Ingenious,” said Hiruzen.

“The only problem is the length. It won’t do if the prosthetic is too short or too long.”

Koharu took the arm from Riku’s hand and looked at it with fascination. There were many seals carved onto it and she inquired about them.

“The seals?”

“Most of them are to make the wood sturdier. A few near the wrist are actually storage seals. The biggest ones are for the expansion or shrinkage jutsu. You’d be like a wooden Akimichi, though this arm won’t grow as big or as long and would be easier to break the longer you make it. Finally, the one in the palm is simply a henge. That way nobody would know the arm is not real. The seal needs to be recharged once a week on average.”

Already, Koharu’s mood had changed for the better. Ever the pragmatic kunoichi, she almost didn’t regret anymore the loss of her arm.

“Now let’s see that wound.” Riku said and the woman presented him with her stump. It had healed nicely “Karin finished her healing tag I see.”

“She did. It’s the first time they were used actually.” she commented.

“I’m glad to see my notes could help.” Riku said as he examined further. “Alright, let’s see that length.”

He used the prosthetic arm for a comparison with her healthy one and her amputated one. It didn’t take long to get the right measures and channel his chakra into the correct seal to make the wooden arm shrink a few inches. It has been puzzling to make sure that such a seal wouldn’t mess with the other seals carved into the wood but in the end he succeeded.

“Okay, that’s good. Now the connecting seals.”

He picked up from his book the seals he had thought about when he wanted to connect an actual arm on Hiruzen all those years ago. He put one against Koharu’s stump and activated it, lines of black ink coursing through the whole area. He then created a shadow clone to put the arm against the stump and maintain its position, while Riku made a long series of hand seals. Once done, the area connecting flesh and wood lit and lines of black ink came from the prosthetic side. They linked themselves with the ones from the stump and disappeared.

“The link was successful. It’s attached to you for good. Now try channeling chakra into-.”

Koharu didn’t wait for him to finish his sentence and did it. Her hand made a fist that relaxed quickly. The fingers move independently one by one, then two by two then in random combinations. They all bent in ways that shouldn’t normally be possible.

“I’m impressed by your chakra control and creativity to test it.” the jonin confessed.

“That’s experience for you, young man.”

“Verdict?”

“It’s perfect. I don’t need to get used to it for normal usage. This is really good work.”

“I’m still working on a better sensation. So far it’s your chakra that’s coating the wood that sends to your brain the knowledge that something touched the arm but it’s quite limited. I believe that artificial skin may be able to get back all sensations and feelings. We just have to make it but that’s more Karin’s thing. I could but I have more important duties to take care of.”

“Hiraishin?” asked Hiruzen.

“Yes. I’m almost done with the prototype. I’m still searching for a way to apply the seal offensively.”

“Couldn’t you have just recreated it?” Homura asked.

“You’d catch me dead before I use those idiots’ doodles.” Riku replied with a cool tone. “Now, since everything is in order, I’ll take my leave. Homura-san, be careful. You know what people say about two without three.” was the last thing he said right when he exited the room.

Hiruzen and Koharu couldn’t help but laugh.

“That brat.” commented the third teammate.

“He’s not wrong.” said Koharu.

“That insolence…Definitely Tsunade’s son.” commented Homura.

“Tsunade’s what?!”

“Oh yeah, you weren’t there for that.” remarked Hiruzen who had an amused grin splattered on his face.

“What did I miss?!”

Meanwhile Riku was already back to the ground floor. He was about to exit the hospital when he heard someone shout his name.

“Ri-kun!” Hinata repeated as she closed the distance separating her from him.

“Hello, Hinata.” he answered with a smile.

“Is everything alright?” she quickly asked.

“Yes. Why wouldn’t they be?”

“Hokage-sama came to class an hour ago to speak to me. She wanted to know where you were. She seemed worried and a bit in panic so-”

“You told her where to find me. It’s alright.”

“I thought that… something happened.” she said after a moment of hesitation.

“It kind of did but nothing to worry about. I was about to go back home for lunch. Interested?”

“I only have half an hour before class resumes.”

“You’d have but a second and that would be enough but I suppose the view inside the Botib is not very glamorous. Hmm, maybe I can do something about that. In any case I was thinking of sandwiches. Quick to make and tasty.”

“Then let’s go.”

Riku nodded and they went to the Senju manor. They ate quickly to spend some intimate time together (mainly kissing and some heavy ‘molesting’) before Hinata had to go back. Afterward, Riku stayed home and worked on the hiraishin prototype. A simple bracelet with the seal carved into it. He already had the anchor point to teleport too. Using a shadow clone he gave it the bracelet and made it channel his chakra into it.

The clone disappeared on the spot and Riku rejoiced. For two seconds before being horrified. The anchor point was inside the Botib which was sealed inside his BoS. Quickly pulling it out, he opened the door of the closet and saw the clone inside.

“Holy shit. That works too.” he exclaimed, dumbfounded at the realization that his version of the Hiraishin teleported through dimension. It was more complex than that and not quite true but that was the result.

“What does?”

Tsunade’s voice came from the entrance of the living room. She was looking with pride at her newly found son.

“The prototype. It works.”

“Not really surprising here. You said it did and all you needed was to make the seal itself.”

“No, you don’t understand. It works through dimensions.”

“... Come again?”

“The anchor, or rather the point of arrival was inside the Botib which was inside a storage seal! I didn’t think of that when I began the test!”

“Isn’t it because the anchor and the bracelet while inside a different barrier were inside the same dimension? That’s what you explained to me.”

“Yes but both barriers were in the same dimension to begin with in my explanation. Here, the Botib was in the storage’s seal while the bracelet was in ours. It simply crossed dimensions.”

“I… see. That’s good then.”

“In a way, yes but it’s also very dangerous. Teleporting inside a storage seal? I’m not trying that. Ever.”

“I understand your point.”

“Welcome home by the way.” he said and went to hug her. “Is the day already over?”

“Hmhm.”

“Crap. I forgot to go back to-

“Yugao and Kakashi understand, considering. Yugao has done a great job so far. Tomorrow, sensei is going to help her and I’ll send a few kage bunshin too. You are free to work on your seals or at the hospital. Your choice.”

“The hospital is off limits as long as the basement is not done. I don’t want to deal with villagers.”

“Then help with it.”

“Once I’m done with the hiraishin. By the way, I tested-”

“I know. Koharu showed me. Excellent work.”

“I’ll give you my notes on it later but it’s possible to equip retired veterans if they want to serve again.” he explained, and took her by the hand. He led her to the bathroom.

“And what do you think you’re doing?”

“Share a bath with you, then cuddle.”

“Is that so?”

“You have years of birthday presents to make up for and I chose to share a bath.” he simply said as he began to remove his clothes.

Tsunade just shook her head at how quickly he took advantage of something he had just learned in the morning. She didn’t object though and disrobed too. In the end, Riku sat in front of Tsunade and rested his head on her bosom. He had his eyes closed and was just enjoying the moment in peace. Tsunade found her son cute at that moment and began to let her fingers comb through his dirty blonde hair. Hair like hers. She didn’t hesitate to gently scrape his scalp with her fingernails. That had an unintended effect however.

“Mom…” The more she heard him say that, the more she loved it. “That wasn’t a smart idea.” he said, his eyes closed. She didn’t understand until he pointed out at his penis breaking out of the water. “I guess now I know that my scalp is the way to arouse me on the spot.”

Tsunade sighed. She knew her son well and knew how that blasted thing would have to go down. They already did the deed plenty of times the past two years. There was no need to be shy about it now.

‘Besides, he is a very good lover and returning to my toy is less than appealing.’

Making her decision. Tsunade’s hands moved downwards.