5th MIZUKAGE

Mei Terumi sat on a low table in a tea cafe in the Land of the Rice Fields. She was bored out of her mind. She had been waiting for an hour. She wished she had brought reports to read. She wished she had something to do, or some one to do.

She opened her ninja flip-phone, and against her better judgement, she opened the app called Tinderp. She swiped through the images. All men had set their availability to tomorrow. She wanted today. She wanted right now.

She saw a blonde guy's muscled back, obviously a thirst trap. She skimmed the rest of his profile, saw it was filled with gaudy tourist pictures (quite similar to the ones she had on her profile). He's not my age, she thought. She swiped MEET.

Hi, want to meet at the Kaching Tea Restaurant? My te stood me up, she typed, but erased the letters of the second sentence. Instead she wrote: Restaurant? I'm not really a talker though~ Can you keep me company?

And she thought, Why would any man ever talk to a hot woman if there's no chance of sex? She had to keep it real. At least in the Country of the Rice Fields I can swipe without getting recognized.

She lay her forehead on the table. "Uuugh~"

It wasn't just the lords who wanted to meet him, however. Naruto's heroics had cultivated him quite the following in terms of female attention though he was often oblivious and saw whatever gifts he received as them just being nice to him. This obliviousness wasn't lost on his friend group, particularly Kiba, who often teased him for his lack of success with women. It was because of this that Naruto followed his suggestion to download the Tinderp app.

Naruto didn't want to make his profile too obvious so a lot of pictures had his face obscured or not fully in shot. He wanted whoever he met to like him for who he was and not the status he had attained. When his phone dinged and saw that he matched with someone, he smiled and quickly messaged back.

On my way!

He made his way to the restaurant and it was there he got a shock.

"Lady Mizukage?!" Naruto exclaimed with awe.

He never uses diplomacy. Would it kill him, to keep his voice down? Mei actually kind-of liked that about Konoha ninjas. He was as loud as Tsunade, and she was a whirlwind.

"Ne? Naruto-san, what are-?"

W-what's he doing here?! Did I match with him? Is this a honeypot?

She had known that she swiped right on a thirst trap, but she didn't think anyone she knew would actually show up. Ah, what's the point of making it more difficult for him. If another blond man shows up for a date, I will explain the situation and work things out. I doubt that man will be hotter than Konohagakure's Hero.

"Get this wooden coffin open," ordered Mei Terumi.

The Fourth Great Ninja War had ended, and one way to build up the country of Kirigakure was by raiding Orochimaru's abandoned hideouts, then using the technology in it.

A lot of negative words could be said about the Snake Sannin, but he was thorough in all parts of his work. Otogakure's methods to run a village were water-tight enough to even hold the fishy shinobi of Kirgakure. So it was easy to apply Otogakure's systems to Kiri, and the training regimen, the technology, and the child adoption programs, and the finance structures.

Only the jutsu were often way too dangerous to release to the shinobi population as a whole. So Fifth Mizukage Terumi Mei led jounin raids into the dark depths of the abandoned basements, to crack open walls that pirate raiders had missed. Behind those walls were vast libraries with jutsus vastly marked as mastered. That convinced Mei that Orochimaru was a terrifying creature.

Today the squad had cracked open a hidden storeroom, full of boxes and tubes. So she had stopped at the sealed one marked KONOHA 1, and she had ordered the Uzumaki jounin to unseal it.

"Stand back," said Maelstrom, and her hair flew up as she removed the Uzumaki sealing technique.

The containment seal removed the restraints on the outside, as well as the contents.

Swordsman Chojiro and the Mizukage lifted the lid from the box, and discovered it was not a box. It was a coffin. A shinobi coffin.

Everyone stared at the body.

"Is that the God of Shino-" Maelstrom began, and was immediately interrupted.

"LID!"

Everyone stared, and the Mizukage was already moving while they gawked.

"Lid goes back on!" the Mizukage thundered, and began to put it back with Chojiro's help. They were seconds away from sliding the ridge back into it's slot.

The light disappeared again. His chakra surged in a desperate attempt to free himself, cracking the wooden coffin in one straight vertical line. His hand shot up, not skeletal, not decayed, not pale, holding on to the crack in the coffin's top from the inside, his fingers poking outside, brushed by the rush of air, warm and humid. He towed the lid away. His body rose, like a remnant of ancient history waking from the ground. Another breath.

His eyes alive, not reanimated. His heart hammering. His pulse ravaging his temples. He was perfectly alive, warm. The lid slid away. And Hashirama started to cough from all the dust that bent to his chakra.

"What in the…" he looked around. He saw a boy with glasses. Uzumaki, because by some happenstance they were always there when he awoke. And a woman who seemed too eager, too intense, and too young.

Her throat tightened. So she caught Mealstrom's attention with a gaze. She snapped her fingers, and covertly pointed to the they had made hole in the wall.

Her guard left immediately, vanishing. Mei heard her guard take the staircase with two strides in total.

Meanwhile, Lord First Hokage Hashirama had been coughing. He couldn't hold his breath like a Kiri-nin could.

Now only Mei and her other guard, Chojiro, were left in the dungeon cellar. And they had no means to seal Hashirama. Mei doubted very much that he was alive. But she wouldn't make the mistake of underestimating him. His gamble of immortality had paid off enough that he looked at least reanimated. Is this one of Orochimaru's puppeteering jutsu? Tch... too many questions. Too few answers, she thought. She had to admit he did look alive, and his eyes seemed normal in the low light.

Chojiro raised his sword against Hashirama. He seemed small compared to Hashirama's tall figure, but he stepped in front of her anyway.

Mei, like a chess queen, took a few steps back in the room full of boxes and tubes. The dust began to settle. The broken coffin lid lay on the sides of the Lord Hokage's feet. There's no way we can put him back into the box.

For good communication, she pulled the hat from her back and put it on--perhaps that would mean something to him in his post-post-mortum state.

"Mizukage-sama?" Chojiro asked nervously as the dust began to settle. He was as tense as a snare.

Might digitalise her!

Happy birthday to the Fifth Mixukage, Mei Terumi,

See for yourself. This is my husband, the man lawfully married to me, Fan Chingyu.