Author's Note: I am going to alternate chapters for this fic. One chapter of developmental differences, one chapter of life differences, and then I will alternate from one to the other. So read this, and then keep in mind that next chapter you're going to see me fictionalize what I just laid out.
Don't say I never tried anything experimental and different.
Azami Development 1
Differences.
In one world, a boy forms in a void of darkness - one X, one Y.
And in another world, the slightest shifting of cells happens - one X, one X.
A girl forms in a void of darkness.
This changes everything, you see.
Her parents are Namikaze Minato and Uzumaki Kushina. She is their first child, due on October 10th. They decide to name her Azami - thistle.
So here is the first distinction. In one world, the parents are expecting a boy named Naruto. And in another, they are expecting a girl named Azami.
In one world, Naruto grows more quickly during gestation. He becomes larger, heavier, physically sturdier, with a thicker skull and a bigger brain. He starts to form as a boy.
In another world, Azami's body matures faster - though it is much smaller and more delicate.
Azami is better able to handle challenges outside the womb by birth. She is less vulnerable to various illnesses, cognitive and behavioral problems, and even death during the early prenatal and postnatal period. Her mouth even moves more often in the womb, an important precursor to suckling and swallowing harder.
Azami responds sooner to external stimuli outside her mother's tummy than Naruto does - kicking, punching, twisting, and turning in response. She also habituates, or ceases responding, to external stimuli earlier.
Meanwhile, Naruto is more vulnerable at birth and more likely to develop developmental issues. Despite his larger size, he is surprisingly more vulnerable to everything from miscarriage to infant death.
Azami is born in a stone cavern lit with torches in clear evening forest air, to a medic nin midwife. After that is a chaos of grabbing, shouting, flashes of chakra and zooming speed, crashing flashes of light and sounds of battle punctuated by odd hours of darkness and terrifying dullness - and then.
Enormous pain in the abdomen. The sounds of soft talking and tears.
The light fades. Nothing. Darkness and silence at last, the real kind, the kind that mean something heavy has happened and the fighting is over.
Over the next few days, instead of her birth parents, Azami becomes accustomed to three new faces - Tsunade's, Shizune's, and Jiraiya's. She spends her first days with her new family in Konoha village.
Though she doesn't know it, her new mother Tsunade has her birth mother Kushina's clan scrolls firmly in her possession. No one could protect Azami from becoming Kyuubi jinchuuriki, but people could become more protective afterwards - first her birth mother Kushina, by demanding as she lay dying that her daughter learn her Uzumaki clan's matriarchal techniques.
And second, by the three now raising Azami, for feeling more protectiveness towards an infant girl than they would have towards an infant boy. And so Azami is raised by adults, sheltered in a way that Naruto is not.
Azami was smaller and easier to deliver than Naruto, and she was tougher in the face of the new world, better to fight off things like infections. She is also less fussy as a newborn than Naruto, her nervous system having matured faster.
Soon, this will become surprisingly important.
Azami is more likely to openly express pain as an infant. She has a keener sense of smell. Her hearing is keener but she is worse at pinpointing and localizing sounds than Naruto. Her vision is worse than Naruto's.
There is no difference between the two in motor skills. However, Azami's motor skills are encouraged less than Naruto's are - the first of many social lessons asking for Azami to be less physical than Naruto.
Azami is more social at an earlier age than Naruto, family or no family. She speaks more words before him, and begins waving, gesturing, and pointing more with her hands earlier than he does. She begins stringing sentences together earlier as she heads towards being a toddler. And though as a toddler Naruto is more likely to pretend he is reading, doing a jutsu, or pounding a hammer - Azami is more likely to imitate gestures such as hugging or rocking a doll.
Naruto, because he is less developed and therefore a fussier and more difficult baby - here is where that becomes important - has internalized more by the time he is a toddler, internalized lessons from his parents that he has to control his emotions. So be toddler age he is less emotionally expressive than Azami, who was a pleasanter baby and also had a family, and thus is more open with the emotions she is experiencing. She is more likely to do things like make eye contact and express open interest. She is even more openly empathetic to others' emotions than Naruto is, relating instinctively in a way Naruto does not. She has even been socially trained to be more empathetic and social, and to have more charming social interactions with the adults in her life.
Azami is held more than Naruto - again, even when accounting for the differences in family structure. She is considered prettier, softer, more delicate, weaker, and finer featured. Anger and distress are discouraged in her, while joy and interest are encouraged. This social training is particularly pronounced in her father figure Jiraiya.
Meanwhile, anger and stoicism are encouraged in Naruto, who is pushed more often in the direction of physical motor skills and sports and is not held as often - not even by the ANBU raising him. Naruto is not trained to be as open and social, nor as charming, and is treated more physically and bluntly. Azami, meanwhile, is trained in more subtle and more verbal nuances. Already, she is not only more empathetic, but more able to pick up on social cues that Naruto cannot.
While Naruto gets things like balls and hammers as toys, Azami gets dolls and hairbrushes. Her baby room is pink instead of blue and while Naruto is more likely to get older-kid baby gifts, Azami is more likely to get age-appropriate infant toys like rattles and mobiles.
And while both prefer a woman as caregiver, Azami has a mother figure in Tsunade and actively begins to emulate her in a way Naruto would not have - even had he lived with Tsunade. Even going into the toddler world, Azami has already admired, internalized, and tried to ape Tsunade's emotional expression, visual attention, and physical mannerisms.
And so, like Tsunade, she becomes blunt, short-tempered, mischievous, prone to vices, and somewhat cynical. But like Tsunade, she is also trained early in how to be verbally razor sharp tongued and wicked smart. By the time she is a toddler, she is definitely a dramatic little prima donna. She is even read to more often being raised by a loving family, and is introduced to the concept of seal puzzles and drawings early on. Here, her difference in early childhood definitely begins to show itself.
Azami's earliest environment also plays a factor in who she becomes. Raised in peaceful and green Konoha village, a relatively wealthy and kind and idealistic place that is mostly feudal village state, before she starts to interact with most others in her village this environment already also shapes the kind of person she becomes. Azami in Konoha becomes more easygoing, innocent, compassionate, and idealistic.
By the time she is a toddler, Azami has pigtails of golden hair with baubles, big blue eyes, whisker shaped cheek markings, a round face, and tan skin. Tsunade dresses her, leading to outfits like button up shirt dresses, lots of eccentric frills and polka dots, big sweater dresses, khaki vests and stripes, simple bolds, bold collars and tiny purses, animal shirts, and big boyish sweatshirts and sweaters.
And so just as Jiraiya gives her more training in what it means being a daughter instead of a son, protective of her as his "little girl," it is Shizune who gives Azami an example of a somewhat shy teenage big sister and it is Tsunade who gives Azami her first lessons in what it means to be a woman.
This is the beginning.