Greetings to all.

I recently re-read the arc that featured Naruto's mother. Well not feature, but introduced her. Doing some minor research, I found out that she was 'presumed dead.' I thought her death was confirmed. After reading that, a story idea kicked in.

This story features a Naruto with the same personality in the anime/manga. Maybe a bit more deceptively intelligent, but not overly so. Set very early on in the timeline...as of now he is not even a ninja.

I hope the next few minutes are at least mildly entertaining.

Disclaimer: The author of this fanfiction is not Masashi Kishimoto, and consequently cannot own Naruto. This fanfiction is not written for profit, and has/will not earn any profit in any manner whatsoever. If there is a better and more complete disclaimer than this one, why the hell can't I be the best at anything.

Disclaimer applies for all subsequent chapters in this fanfiction.

The incessant beeps were driving him mad. He knew he was alive, and didn't need a damn machine beeping every second or so to remind him. Maybe the doctors and nurses were really stupid and they were the ones that needed to be reminded. This train of thought lost its humor quickly, as he didn't want his life in the hands of idiots.

Or maybe the doctors and nurses thought he was the stupid one who needed to be reminded that he was alive, and that he could die if he tried that idiotic stunt again. It's not like he knew the rope would snap when he tried to pain the third Hokage's face. Naruto thought the blame should have gone to the guy who gave him the rope in the first place.

Or, maybe he just needed to get the hell out of here.

Naruto looked at his immediate surroundings. He was used to the view, as he was a regular visitor (patient) of the beautiful hospital, and lately, they've been putting him in the same room. It was awfully nice of the hospital staff to give him the room closest to where the doctors and nurses usually are, so that they can get to him faster if something wrong happens.

Or so he was told. He knew better.

Yes, the hospital staff wanted to be able to get to his room quickly. But not for the sake of saving his life. Oh no; they did it so they can stop him from trying to escape.

The darn doctors really earn their money at the hospital; no one escapes. No one. Under the pretense of 'it's so we know that your body's okay', they hook you up to way too many machines. In the past, it wasn't really a problem. His injuries were far less serious in the past, and they didn't bother hooking him up to machines that made a sound.

--- Flashback ---

In the trip to the hospital before they started putting him in his current room, he managed to leave that room and almost made it to the stairs. He pulled off a brilliant henge of his attending doctor and waltzed out without any problems to speak of. Everyone thought he sucked at the henge technique because he never did it successfully in class. No one would have guessed it was him. It was brilliant.

...Until said doctor came out of the bathroom and walked right in front of him.

They forced him back in to the room and threatened to numb his legs temporarily with some chemical so that he couldn't walk if he tried to escape again. While his very angry doctor was reattaching the machines to him again, Naruto made a point to express his annoyance the best way he knew how. By throwing the birth mother of all temper tantrums.

It took the irate doctor over five minutes to perform what would have been a thirty second task with any other patient. Before leaving, the doctor kindly asked Naruto to try to escape again, so that he could legally perform procedures to restrain incorrigible, forever wandering children.

There were a lot of big words in there. The ninja school really didn't emphasize vocab.

In conclusion: Naruto had no idea what the doctor said. How could he?

Not five seconds after the doctor left, Naruto transformed into the nice nurse who gives him dinner and is responsible for him overnight. She is nice because she always gave him an extra milk carton. Should heaven's angels descend to Earth, their visage would be that of this nurse.

Naruto strode out of the room with as much confidence he had the first failed attempt. He noticed that he was getting some puzzled looks from the hospital staff, but dismissed it as trivial. He remembered to hide his whiskers, and his henge was very good, so he figured there was nothing wrong.

He neared the men's bathroom where he first attempt failed. Holding his breath, he sped up ever so slightly to pass it.

As the number of steps past the bathroom increased with every step, Naruto thought his escape was all but assured.

However, higher forces than what Naruto could comprehend hated his guts or something, because he ran into the nurse's best friend of all darn people.

She looked at him confusedly.

"Yumi? Why are you here? Didn't they move you to nights? I remember you getting angry when they did that to you, and especially when they put you in charge of the brat."

Naruto's heart wavered ever so slightly. There were precious few people in his life who cared for him. He thought this nurse Yumi was one of them, or could definitely become one of them. She thought he was a brat? What did she really think of him?

Curiosity overwhelmed Naruto. He had to know.

"The brat...do you mean Naruto? He's not a brat...I think he's a sweet kid. He always gets so happy when I give him an extra carton of milk."

Yumi's friend narrowed her eyes. Something was fishy.

"Sweet kid? You ranted over ten minutes telling me you hated having to work nights, and well over half an hour on not wanting to watch the brat. I'm only calling him 'brat' because that's what you referred to him as. More times than I bothered counting."

As Naruto's wavering heart began to crumble, the nurse saw fit to speed up that process. Doctors and nurses are good at that. Making you feel pain. They think it's okay if it only hurts for a short time.

She quickly glanced around her to check for people listening, and when she was convinced there were none, went on to say, "I know you said you hated the brat, and that you only gave him the milk carton so that Hokage-sama doesn't think you're being negligent. Weren't you happy at how badly you had him fooled?"

Oh...god.

He needed to get out of there. It almost didn't matter if he got caught now. It didn't even matter if he escaped from the hospital. He just needed to walk away from the spot his feet were rooted to.

Thinking quickly, Naruto came up with a rather good excuse. "Listen, I forgot to do something yesterday night, and I came back to fix it. Don't tell the doctor okay? I don't want to get in trouble because of the...brat, you know?"

Yumi's friend noticeably perked up, and nodded in response. "Okay Yumi. No problem. Hey listen, you want to grab some breakfast tomorrow? It'd be dinner for you, but breakfast for me! I'll even make it my treat. You can forget about the damn brat for a few minutes. I'm sure you'll love that."

Would she really. "That sounds great, I'll see you tomorrow at the cafe then."

Naruto got a smile in response. "Okay. It's a date. I'll see you tomorrow." The nurse went to the third floor.

Naruto just stood there stoically for a few seconds. At least it felt that way to him. Minutes, hours, could have passed by. Who knows. After he was done, he composed himself the best he could given the circumstances and quietly walked back to his room.

He dispelled his jutsu, got on his bed, threw the blanket over his entire body, buried his face in his pillow, and began crying his heart out.

He promised himself he wouldn't do this. Never again. But it was so damn hard. He wanted someone, anyone, to accept him for who he is, like him, maybe even befriend him. He had tried too many times, because he failed every single time. He knew this pain. He knew it hurt. He knew it hurt a lot. As a result, he had given up trying to get someone to like him.

But Yumi. She was likable. She smiled at him. She talked to him. She listened to him. She made an effort to get to know him, and he slowly warmed up to her efforts, eventually to the point that he was telling her everything about him, his past, his present, his future. Everything. She listened with a smile, and always gave him words of encouragement.

He didn't want to try anymore. Then Yumi came along. She was, in essence, his last try. He put a lot of effort into her, gave everything he had to get her to like him, enjoy being with him, and maybe, just maybe, have her call him a friend.

And like all of his previous attempts, he failed. Iruka-sensei said in class that history always repeats itself.

He should have known better. He does now.

But that doesn't stop the pain.

--- End Flashback ---

Steeling himself, Naruto planned this one out. This mission was do-or-die. Mission objective: escape from the hospital.

It would sound funny to everyone except him.

The first obstacle would be the machine beeping each time his heart beats. In a previous stay, right before he tried to escape, he simply peeled the electrode placement off his skin, which sadly made the machine make a constant 'beep' sound indicating he was dead, which brought every doctor and nurse on the entire floor to his room.

Mission result: Massive failure.

He learned from when he transformed into Yumi that if you just turn the machine off, the doctors don't care. Well they might, but not in the time interval he needs to escape.

As to who he was going to transform to, he decided it would be Yumi's friend. He (Naruto) has never met her before, so no one would know it was him in a henge.

He was going to use the stairs on the other side of the hospital, away from the floor's reception area. It'd take more than twice as long to reach the stairs, but the route would have far less doctors and nurses in the way.

Confident in the plan, he began the mission.

He turned off the machine and removed all the wires connected to him.

He went to his room's bathroom and transformed into Yumi's friend. He double-checked his henge in the bathroom mirror, and found it to his liking.

He left the room and made a left, not a right.

He walked carefully down the corridor. There wasn't a doctor or nurse in sight. Everything was going according to plan.

He almost made it to the end of the corridor when he felt a sharp pain on his right hand. A little boy had shot out from one of the rooms, pretending to stab something with...a fork. Naruto winced in pain and checked his hand. The little boy apparently had been running at full speed, as the fork was stuck in his hand. He held his hand out much like a woman would check her engagement ring. The fork was perfectly vertical, rooted fairly deeply into the skin. Sighing, Naruto pulled out the fork, and his hand began bleeding copiously.

The boy began to cry, saying 'I'm sorry' increasingly louder and quicker. The boy's mother came out to see what was wrong, when she noticed the fork impaled in the nurse's hand. The mother gasped, put a hand to her mouth, and said that she was very sorry her boy did that. Naruto, not wanting to make a big deal of the situation, smiled in response, and said it wasn't a problem, but please don't give sharp objects to little children. The mother quickly nodded and took her son back into the room. Naruto could hear the boy being disciplined not too shortly after.

Naruto moved on. However, he had a problem. It wasn't the bleeding--that had already stopped. He had amazing healing abilities that no one else had. He wondered why he had it, but he wasn't complaining. That fall from the Third Hokage's nose would have killed him otherwise.

No, the problem was the blood that had built up in the short time he was bleeding. There was a significant amount of it on his hand, and if he didn't get it cleaned soon, it was going to drip. He couldn't wipe it off his clothes, as the clothes were from his henge. If he wiped the blood on clothing he was wearing from a henge, the blood would go right through the henge. Basically, everyone would know he was using a henge. He didn't want that.

He looked around for a bathroom. He had never been in this area of the hospital before, and could not find one. He was walking very fast now, almost to the point it was noticeable. He had managed to keep his composure, but if he didn't do something soon, the blood was going to get on the floor.

He got to the end of the corridor and looked around. The stairs were too far for him to get to before the blood made things too messy. There were a few other rooms, a window, and bingo, a janitor's closet. That would surely have paper towels or something for him to wipe the blood with.

Naruto casually walked over to the janitor's closet and performed a rudimentary escape-class jutsu, a simple one for opening basic civilian locks. Iruka-sensei had praised him for picking up this jutsu very quickly, and would he please stop transforming into a naked blond teenager each time he assigns a henge test.

Naruto chuckled. Iruka-sensei's reactions to the sexy jutsu were priceless.

He turned the doorknob. It didn't give.

Confused, he performed the jutsu again. No luck. He tried a third time. It didn't budge.

Naruto knew he was very good at this jutsu. Iruka-sensei had brought out more complicated locks for the class to open as the went on, and only he and Sasuke could break the hardest lock. Sasuke was better than him at a lot of things, but when it came to opening civilian locks, they were even.

This meant only one other thing. This door's lock wasn't a simple civilian lock.

Which made no sense, because this was a hospital, and what the heck are you going to have in a hospital that needs a ninja lock?

The blood was slowly seeping from the top of his hands on to his fingers. If he didn't wipe it off soon, his henge was ruined.

Naruto looked at the lock again, this time, more closely. He noticed after a few seconds that there was something on the lock. Some symbol. Naruto blinked a few times. Then a light bulb went off in his head when he remembered a particularly boring lecture given by Iruka-sensei where he fell asleep no less than four times. He glanced up at the door in mild shock. This was a seal.

What the heck was behind a hospital door guarded by a seal?

He had no time to ponder that train of thought, as he saw a doctor walking to his current position. The doctor was at the end of the corridor, farther than where the stairs were, but the doctor would definitely know something was wrong if a nurse tried to open a door with a seal on it. Naruto began growing frantic. His only other option was to go back to the room, and there was no way in hell that he was staying in the hospital any longer than he needed to, which is for about eight minutes, six of those minutes to confirm that he was alright. Once again, he had awesome healing abilities.

He looked at the door again. Seal or no seal, this door had to be opened now.

He grabbed the doorknob and started twisting it with all his might, hoping it would open. He didn't know much about seals because he was so inattentive in the only lecture on seals they had, so there was always the chance the seal would break if he tried hard enough. 'Never give up.' Good words to live by.

But once again, like so many things in his life, he was trying, only to fail. That doctor was going to get here any second, he was going to get caught, they were going to paralyze his legs for a few hours so he'd have to be in the hospital for a few HOURS, and should the worst befall him, he'd have to get dinner from Nurse Yumi, who he really didn't want to see anymore.

Naruto began exerting more force on the doorknob. He was shaking his hand violently, desperate to get it open. In his desperation, he failed to remember to keep the blood on the top of his hand, and a few drops fell on to the floor, the door, the doorknob, and the seal.

The seal began to glow in response.

Naruto stopped immediately, wondering what the heck was going on.

The seal glowed for a few seconds, then began to dim out, but unlike before, it dimmed out until it faded entirely.

Naruto had no idea what just happened. He was very confused, but this wasn't the time to satisfy his curiosity.

He went to try to open the door again, except this time, he heard a 'click.'

The door opened.

Naruto couldn't believe his good luck and quickly went inside, closing the door behind him.

Now inside the janitor's closet, Naruto made some key discoveries.

First of all, and the most obvious observation he made: this room wasn't a janitor's closet. It was another hospital room.

The second observation he made was equally as obvious: the room was very dark.

He dispelled his henge, thinking he didn't need it anymore, as people thought this was a locked room, and looked around. He noticed windows on the other side of the room, but the shades were lowered. He was amazed at how little light there was in the room, considering it was around two in the afternoon. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness of the room, he could make out more objects in the room. There was a chair, a sink (with paper towels next to it), a counter with a lamp on it, some more of those darn hospital machines, and next to those, a bed.

Naruto backed up slightly.

There was a person on that bed.

He took a few seconds to compose himself and lower his heart rate. His heart had been on extra-fast mode since he saw that doctor walking towards him. Once his heart slowed down to beat at its normal rate, Naruto began to hear a faint sound. He knew this sound well. It was the stupid 'beep' the machine makes each time your heart beats.

Naruto immediately became sympathetic to the person on the bed. They make you hear it too huh...gotta be annoying.

First things first, he walked over to the sink, washed his hands, got all the blood off, and dried them using the paper towels. He noticed that his hand had no holes in it. Once again, his incredible healing abilities kicked in. He wouldn't even get a scar. Awesome.

The next thing to do was leave the room and hope that the doctor passed by, get to the stairs, and out of the hospital. Then he could finish that masterpiece on the Third Hokage's face.

However, the damn beeping noise became too much for him to ignore, and he went over to the bed to see who he should be feeling sorry for.

His eyes had adjusted, and he could see very well in the dark, but this darkness was too much even for him. He went over to the counter near the bed, and turned it on. Afterwards, he looked at the person's face.

Naruto half expected it to be some super ugly man that no member of the hospital staff wanted to see the face of. Or someone horribly disfigured. Or someone who looked exactly like Sasuke. Either way, he was not at all prepared for who was sleeping on that bed.

It was a woman.

After getting past that fact, Naruto made some other observations. She had long, very long red hair. She had a golden pin in her hair that held some of her hair to the left side of her face. Naruto couldn't believe his eyes. She was beautiful.

Sakura paled in comparison to this woman. His sexy jutsu and this woman's beauty didn't deserve mentioning in the same sentence. There was something about her that just seemed so beautiful to him. She had a beautiful face, no question there, but her beauty transcended just physical beauty. To him anyways.

Naruto then looked at the rest of her body. Most of it was covered by a blanket, but her arms were outside the blanket. Naruto flinched. Her arms were thin, too thin. They were skinny. She had no fat and no muscle on her arms. She reminded him of a baby; if you use too much strength, they break.

On second glance, Naruto noticed her face and neck also were skin and bones. Naruto began to get angry. Why weren't these doctors feeding her right? Even he got dinner everyday from a nurse who hated him, and this woman couldn't be a more hated person in the village than he was, so why wasn't she getting any dinner? He was confused; it made no sense.

His thought went on and on about the injustices done to this woman. All the while, he stared at her. He was transfixed, captivated, call it what you will. He felt he could just simply sit here and look at her all day, and he could remain still enough to do it. She had a calming effect on him that Iruka-sensei would have paid a thousand S-rank mission pays to have.

God, was she beautiful.

Why was she so beautiful?

Why is she in a dark room by herself, with no one giving her food? And why did her door have a seal on it? Naruto was thinking up more and more questions as time went on, and it bothered him. Wanting answers, he looked around in the immediate area. There were the same machines that he was hooked up to, but he didn't know what any of them did, except for the beep making heart machine, so he looked elsewhere. He looked under her bed and found nothing. The top of the counter had nothing.

Growing frustrated, he began walking around the room to find any information about her. He felt an insatiable need to know, an effect Iruka-sensei would have paid 500 S-rank mission pays to have so he could use it on Naruto to focus on history.

The room was pretty barren except for those things he saw when he first entered the room. There was nothing else. No chairs for visitors, no television, no dinner table, no...nothing. It was so weird. He didn't understand.

He made his way back to her bed when he noticed something at the foot of the bed. He walked over there to find a folder. The folder was labeled 'Patient Information.'

Naruto facepalmed. He had been to the hospital often enough. He should know where these things are kept by now. He opened the folder, and the first page was a cover page, because all it said was 'Confidential Information: S-CLASS'. Naruto almost laughed. If it was confidential information, they wouldn't leave it in the open like that. Especially if it was a S-Class secret. It was probably some deterrent to make sure people didn't read it for whatever reason.

He flipped to the next page and saw her picture next to her patient history. This picture of her was how he imagined she should look. She had a smile on her face, she was eating dinner everyday, and she looked to be in good physical condition; was she a ninja?

He was considering that idea when he read her name. After that was her birthday, homeland, etc.

He never made it that far.

The folder fell from his hands after reading the final character of her name.

His body tensed like it had never before. Never in his worst moments of feeling fear had adrenaline kicked in like it was right now. A flurry of emotions escaped from his heart, each one competing with the others for dominance.

Naruto could do little more than be completely still. His brain was having trouble absorbing this information. It was just a name. It technically didn't mean anything. Also, there could be many people with the same last name. Who knew how many Uzumakis lived in Konoha?

Naruto felt his lungs beginning to get angry. He realized he wasn't breathing. He commanded himself to breathe, and he let out a deep breath.

After resuming normal breathing, he began to shake uncontrollably. So much had just happened. He was just now beginning to realize what could be.

Naruto willed himself to stop shaking, and when he couldn't do that, stop shaking as much. He managed that, and he shakily bent down and picked up the folder and its contents.

He looked at the patient history page again, wondering if he made a mistake in reading the name. He prayed he didn't.

Sure enough, he did not. He had read the name correctly. U-zu-ma-ki Ku-shi-na.

Uzumaki Kushina.

Uzumaki.

Naruto's brain almost exploded once more.

He looked from the smiling picture in the patient history to the face of the woman in front of him, in a deep sleep, so skinny, and barely breathing. He had to really focus to see her stomach moving up and down to see that she was breathing. He glanced from the picture to her face back and forth, to see if it really was her.

Then he read her name again.

Uzumaki Kushina.

The emotional battle waged in Naruto's heart had produced two victors. A smile broke out from his face, and the winning emotions were of such magnitude that he failed to keep standing. He fell to his knees and not shortly thereafter, tears fell from his eyes. There was no pillow to block the sounds of crying this time. He cried hard and loud, overwhelmed with his discovery.

After Yumi, he vowed to never do this again.

But this woman, with the simple possession of a name, made him feel more, want more, than anything he's ever had in his life.

It was just a name.

No, it was more than that. The name held the two victorious emotions in his heart: happiness and hope.

Happiness, because he might not be alone anymore.

Hope, for a better future than the past he's suffered.

Naruto cried for what seemed to him an eternity, which was only in fact, a few minutes. He was mostly done now, and slowly but surely began to gather himself.

As he made to stand, the door violently opened and slammed into the wall.

Naruto jerked and looked fearfully at the door, subconsciously thinking that someone might be coming to take him from her.

No such thing would happen, as the man in front of the door was the one person who hadn't failed him so far.

Old man Hokage.

Naruto briefly thought the old man would look better if his face had the make up that he painted on the monument. This wasn't the time for that though.

The Third Hokage, Lord Sarutobi Hiruzen, opened the door that had been sealed with a blood seal. Blood seals are simple, very powerful, and there was next to no chance the blood seal would be broken.

The Hokage would later on reminisce that Naruto got himself in the hospital way too often for there to be next to no chance.

However, hindsight is 20/20, and right now, Sarutobi had a most problematic situation in front of him. Uzumaki Naruto had found the room where his mother, Uzumaki Kushina, had been in a coma for the past almost twelve years.

Of course, he was one of less than three people in the world that knew of the relationship between those two.

As Naruto began to speak, the old Hokage realized that the number of people possessing this knowledge was going to go up by one in the not too distant future.

"Hey, old man Hokage...she has the same last name as me. Do you...do you know who she is?"

A review regarding the content is most appreciated.

I hope this first part was to your reading pleasure. If not, I suppose I'm sorry.