I've seen a lot of fics out there where Naruto grows up under the constant threat of assassination by citizens of Konoha who hate him. If there were really that many people who were gunning for the kid, someone would have succeeded. The ANBU can't be everywhere all the time. So, I came up with a reason that no one's succeeded.
It's because they were forced to stop trying.
Warnings: Language. But seriously, how polite would you be to the people talking about murdering your child? Also… there is blood. I'm not sure how graphic you would consider this to be, but it is there and you are warned. Also, I'm making some assumptions about Konoha's system of government. If I'm wrong, I apologize in advance. I'm sorry for any spelling errors, too. Tell me and I'll fix them.
Disclaimer: Of course I own Naruto. Everything here is cannon, I just haven't gotten around to illustrating it yet…
No, seriously, how stupid are you people? Of course it's not mine, don't sue, etc.
The Words of the Dying
There is a reason that the Uzumaki whirlpool is the color of freshly spilled blood.
Uzumaki Kushina came awake with a gasp, her hands flailing for the son that had been pulled wailing from her breast the last time the world went dark. Instead they grabbed the starched white collar of the male nurse who had had the great misfortune to have been assigned to monitor her condition. She blinked in confusion as she processed the fact that his hair was black and not blonde, but the information was having a bit of difficulty getting to her painkiller-clouded mind.
"Minato?"
"I am certainly not the late Hokage, Uzumaki-san," the far too-hesitant voice came as hands gently tried to break her death grip on clothing so white it almost seemed to have an inner light source. "Please lie back… you lost a lot of blood in the delivery."
Delivery…baby. Where was her son?
"I want to see Naruto. Where is he?" she demanded, struggling to remain awake.
"The village council is currently meeting to decide the fate of the… of the child," the nurse replied, clearly modifying his reply so as not to upset his current audience. Kushina's eyes narrowed at that as she allowed her hand to slide off the front of the nurse's shirt. The man all but sighed in relief and turned his back on her (the fool) to check the readings from one of the machines she was wired to. That gave her plenty of time to form the seals for the only medical jutsu she had ever bothered to master; a basic level technique that one of her teammates had rammed down her throat after the third time she'd been poisoned on a mission, using the excuse that a water jutsu master who couldn't even cleanse her own body of toxins was a disgrace to the prestigious Uzumaki clan and the entire village hidden in the Whirlpool. That had been a sufficient enough goad for Kushina to train herself to exhaustion for about a solid month before she finally 'mastered' the jutsu, and it still backfired half the time.
It appeared that this time she was lucky, as the faint blue glow behind her eyes heralded her success. It also heralded the birth of a truly agonizing pain in her lower abdomen.
Uzumaki Kushina had been an ANBU in her home village and a Jounin in Konohoagakure. As such, she only allowed herself a tiny whimper instead of the wail of agony that her traitorous throat wanted to voice.
"Uzumaki-san, your heart rate seems to have spiked. I will have to administer-"
The nurse didn't get a chance to say anything else, as he was suddenly face-to-face with a blood-haired demoness, its face drawn in a vicious snarl as it tore electrodes off its body. One by one the life sign monitors behind them flatlined.
"I take it from your words that Minato was successful?" she hissed at him
"Y-yes, Uzumaki-san," the nurse stuttered, this time allowing the strangely familiar address of the Fourth Hokage to slide out of fear rather than knowledge of how painkillers tend to muddle the head. "The Kyuubi will soon be no more."
"If it is sealed in my son than it is no more. Unless you are trying to say something?"
"O-of course not!" the nurse gasped as a deceptively delicate-looking hand tightened around his throat.
"Of course," Kushina sighed, her eyes rolling straight up to heaven. "Damn your naively hopeful stupidity, Namikaze Minato. Looks like the only chance is to…" the woman trailed off, her eyes going somewhere to the distant horizon outside the window. However, when the nurse tried to take advantage of her distraction to try and slip away, her hands once more clenched painfully tight around his throat. "Now, where are my clothes?" The man pointed at a bundle that had been conveniently left wrapped up on the lower shelf of the table beside her bed.
Kushina briefly looked at the now gibbering male nurse and briefly considered breaking his neck for daring to imply that her son was a monster. After all… it wasn't like, if her plan worked, that she would be around to face the reprocussions of her actions…
No. It went against the reason she had abandoned her home village, her nin-do, and everything that made her Kushina first and an Uzumaki second instead of the other way around. She refused to forfeit that.
So the lucky, lucky nurse was simply clobbered over the head. After a moment of thought, she hooked him up to the monitoring machines in her place, just in case someone was checking those. She'd probably put half the electrodes on the wrong parts of the body, but hey, she was in a hurry. The fact that she had had to tear up that lovely white uniform with a kunai to attach the electrodes was just a bonus.
Moving quickly, Kushina donned a pair of slacks, tightening the drawstring belt considerably to compensate for the considerable decrease in her waist size, a black t-shirt with a stylized orange flame, her kunai holsters, and…
Her hands hesitated over her flak vest for a moment before she expertly slit a seam on the left side of the vest and pulled out her old forehead protector, the odd, almost mazelike whirlpool gleaming in the artificial light. She had kept the symbol of her old village over her heart to remind her of where she had come from, but… if she'd heard the implications in the nurse's voice correctly, if Konoha wanted to sacrifice her child, Minato's child… then Konoha could go to merry hell. For the first time in five years she tied the hitai-ite she'd received as a genin to her head, and it felt right. It felt very right.
Bending over to put on her sandals was agony. She knew that the three-story drop out of the hospital window was going to be sheer hell.
"What you are proposing is nothing short of infanticide!"shouted the graying ninja, although the strength of his fury seemed to recede the obvious signs of his age – the receeding hairline, the wrinkles creasing around his eyes and the age spots that were beginning to materialize on his skin – into the background. Even after the assault against the Kyuubi, the sheer amount of killing intent that the formerly retired ninja was bring to bear on everyone in the room was astounding. The sheer amount of rage radiating from his aged form almost made everyone in the room believe that he could and would fufill the threat that his furious glare was bringing to bear on all of them: that he would kill them all with his bare hands. "You spit on Minato's ashes with every vile word you speak against this defenseless child! He is the Yondaime's final gift to us all, and you would murder him out of hand to slake your own cowardice!"
"A gift?" the head of the Yamanaka clan snorted. "The monster that would destroy us, given a new body so that it may try again? It is you, old man, who spit upon the ashes of our fallen hero! Why should we suffer this beast to draw another breath?"
"You are out of line," the head of the Aburame clan said into the stale silence that followed that accusation. The head of the Yamanaka clan dipped his head in acquiescence, but said nothing by way of apology.
And lying in the center of the table, wrapped in a beige blanket for warmth, the newborn Naruto slept on, oblivious of all the tension in the room… as well as the fact that his fate was being decided at that very moment.
"With all due respect Sarutobi-sama, although you were Hokage in the past the council has not yet ruled on whether or not you will be restored to that position, even temporarily, in this current crisis… which leaves Konoha without a leader. In such a case, I believe that a vote would be called amongst the current Heads of the Clans and the Council Leaders," the head of the Uchiha clan, Uchiha Fugaku, announced in a flatly emotionless voice, although something in his almost unreadable black eyes seemed to be pleased. "Honored Elders, if we may?"
"Very well then," the leader of the council agreed. "As the head of the council I myself cannot vote unless there is a tie, so if the clans would be so kind as to start?"
"The Hyuuga Clan expresses its wish that this nightmare be put behind us. To protect my family and my village, I vote that we put the beast to death before its fangs grow in," Hyuuga Hiashi announced.
"The Uchiha Clan also votes in favor of exterminating the demon," Fugaku agreed.
"The Aburame Clan votes nay." After waiting for the sporadic gasps to cease, the head of the Aburame continued. "Within my body I hold several different colonies of kikai bugs. Does this make me an insect?" the man asked, taking off his tinted glasses to truly glare at everyone in the room. Despite the rumors that had accompanied that clan for years, his eye were not compound… although they were completely black, and the iris seemed to be a bit larger than normal. And they held a surprising amount of anger for a clan that had been vaunted for its emotionless logic. "Simply sealing the Kyuubi in Naruto does not make the boy a demon. Killing him at this juncture would not only be illogical, it would be unjust. I refuse, as a representative of my clan, to be party to the slaughter of defenseless babes."
"Look at the marks on his face!" the Yamanaka clan head snapped, pointing to the whisker markings on the infant's cheeks.
"The Inuzuka have both facial markings and fangs. Shall we slaughter them next?" the man asked acidly, replacing his sunglasses and leaning back in his chair as pandemonium erupted. It might have gone on for quite some time as the Council tried to make itself heard over the bickering clan heads had not the doors of the meeting chambers burst open with a resounding crash.
There was something decidedly wrong with the kunoichi standing somewhat shakily in front of them. Maybe it was the way her shoulders seemed to shake with each ragged breath, maybe it was the blood on the kunai clenched in her deathly pale hand… maybe it was the fact that the symbol on her forehead protector was Whirlpool instead of Leaf.
Or maybe it was the blood trickling steadily down her legs.
"What's this bullshit I hear about murdering my only son?"
Kushina was absolutely furious, and that was a good thing. It might, in fact, be the only thing that was keeping her standing.
"Uzumaki-san, you have no son," the Hyuuga snorted contemptuously. "You are obviously overwrought from the strain of tonight's events; we will summon the ANBU to return you to the hospital for proper treatment-"
Unfortunately, the Hyuuga saw everything. Otherwise, her kunai just might have planted itself in the center of his forehead instead of in the far wall. It hit with enough force to almost completely bury itself, leaving only the slightest hint of the steel handle glinting harshly in the electric light.
"I dare you to say that to me again you stuck-up prick," she snarled, drawing another kunai. "I will kill the next person who threatens Naruto. I swear that on what's left of my life."
"You're lucky we don't have you executed here and now for treason, you baseborn whore," Uchiha Fugaku snarled. "Leave now, or your bastard spawn won't be the only corpse in the council's chambers tonight."
Surprisingly, instead of exploding or flinching at the threat, Uzumaki Kushina began to laugh her head off. "Oh, if only you knew!" she howled, tears streaming down her face.
"Are you finally going to reveal the father of your child so he can make a proper woman out of you?" the Uchiha snarled, quite obviously displeased at being laughed at.
"No," Kushina replied, her laughter drying up. "And even if I did name the father, it would do me no good. Like so many others, he gave his life this night to stop the Kyuubi's advance."
"Then why are you protecting that… that creature!" the Yamanaka snarled.
"Because he is my son!" Kushina roared. "Because he is the only child I will ever have with the man I love! Because he is my flesh and blood and my firstborn child!" The looks she got from the assembled leaders of the village that she had called her home for the last five years looked at her with pity or scorn… or without any expression at all. But there was not enough pity there, there were not enough people who would vote for Naruto's life.
Damnit all to hell, she really was going to have to do it after all.
"Sarutobi-sama, how goes the vote?" she asked, more a formality than anything else.
"…not well, Uzumaki-san. But I will not allow them to kill your son."
"…I'll hold you to that," she stated with a rather sickly smile as she drove her kunai into her own stomach. Immediately she fell to her knees as blood poured all over the floor around her.
"Kushina!" the once – and probably future as well, there simply wasn't anyone else strong enough to take Minato's place just yet – Hokage shouted, darting to her side. "What on earth do you think you're doing?"
"A… curse… upon those who gather here… who raise blade and spell against the helpless," she gasped. Most jutsus required seals to cast, but the Uzumaki blood limit techniques required only the right words…
And a portion of the user's lifespan. For this jutsu, she would be using all of it, but that was alright. Her life had been ending anyway, that hospital bed had just been an intermission between herself and Minato in whatever afterlife the likes of them ended up in.
"Medics! Now!" Sarutobi shouted, ignoring what he must think was the delirious rambling of a dying woman.
"A curse upon the unjust… their families and their Clans… upon those who follow them… in the perversion… of the laws of the Kami."
"What is that mad foreigner rambling about?" the Hyuuga – what was that prick's name? – wondered, leaning closer probably out of idle curiousity.
"May those who seek to wipe the Uzumaki from the earth follow them into oblivion. May those who, by action of the hand or action of a proxy, seek to harm the child of my blood face the reckoning of the Kami. May those who seek murder reap it a hundredfold.
"Kinjutsu: Crimson Specter."
The blood that had flowed from her injuries seemed to take on a life of its own, trickling off at an alarming rate in a curving manner to encompass the room, glowing an eerie red almost reminiscent of the Kyuubi's demonic chakra…
And that was the last she saw of it, or anything else for that matter.
Naruto… can you possibly find it in your heart to forgive us for abandoning you?
It took about an hour for Uzumaki Kushina's body to be cleared and for the debating over the success or failure of her final technique to die down. The council chose to reopen the vote.
The decision to spare the life of Uzumaki Naruto was carried through on a narrow margin, but even those who voted against looked decidedly queasy, even the so-called unshakable Uchiha and Hyuuga.
Several years later a rather flashy attempt was made on young Uzumaki Naruto's life involving exploding tags and some unnecessarily destructive fire jutsu. Upon the arrival of the closest ANBU squad, lead by child genius Uchiha Itachi, the enemy ninja fled. The incident was reported to the public as an attempt at sabatogue by a ninja spy from a foreign village.
The fact that the seals on the single dud tag was singularly unique to the Uchiha clan was carefully covered up.
A week later, the Uchiha clan's population dropped from about three hundred to two.
There were no further organized attempts on Naruto's life by village shinobi.
There is a reason that the Uzumaki whirlpool is the color of freshly spilled blood. If Naruto is lucky, he will never discover it.
Can I kill the QuickEdit? Seriously, can I?
I'm going to have nightmares about this, I know I am...
Anyway, if you see any errors please tell me so I can fix them!