Author's Note: I'm sorry about any confusion, but I decided to take out the original ch. 2 and replace it with this one for various reasons that will potentially come up in future chapters. Think of the original ch. 2 as non-canon filler? :) In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this & if you don't please let me know. A lot of this writing is about learning to write for me, so please feel free to spread the love/hate/constructive criticism.
Sakurano Naruto
Running away from home and becoming a pirate, it turned out, was not nearly as easy as it should have been. Of course, nothing really was when your mother was half-Hyuuga.
Stupid ninja bloodlines, grumbled Naruto under his breath. Stupid Chiyori and her stupid blabbing, big mouth. So he wanted to be a pirate? What was the big deal? Just because she was so excited about taking the genin exam, didn't mean he had to be too. Besides, on the scale of things he could choose to do with his life, wasn't kick-ass pirate really a much better choice than being a let-me-be-broody-and-kill-things ninja? Pirates had freedom on the high seas, and hats. And, treasure. Well and, really, coolness. But apparently his mother didn't like pirates and didn't care about how awesome being the pirate king would be.
In fact, his mother had been keeping an eye on him…from all 360 degrees of direction…since he'd gotten home from school. She'd already caught him trying to slip out one of the downstairs windows, and made him clean the bathrooms as punishment. Who knew sneaking past her would be harder than toilet-papering the Hyuuga compound? She wasn't even supposed to be a ninja anymore!
Naruto crept out of his room with all the stealth he'd accrued from 13 years of late night ninja-style snack filching (and the occasional prank on a creepy Byakugan obsessed cousin or three). Keeping one hand on the wall for balance, he took a few deep breaths and concentrated on really seeing in the darkness. Soon enough, he felt a kind of warm pull in his head as chakra pooled behind his eyes. Naruto concentrated harder. He'd found lately that sometimes when he really tried, he could see in the dark and almost make out the glow of chakra lines, even if only for a minute or two.
Fortunately, that was all he needed. Snaking his head around to make sure he had a complete view all the way down into the kitchen (and the back door), Naruto quickly memorized the placement of every object and piece of furniture, even the positions of the floorboards outlined in his temporary, black-and-white vision of the world.
Alright! He congratulated himself, step one was complete. Closing his eyes, Naruto ran through the now-perfect mental map in his head and plotted out a course. Roll onto the rug to the left, then he'd be at the stairs, but the dark floorboard protruding slightly at the head of the stairs looked loose, which meant that he'd have to jump over it to keep from making noise. But then his mother might hear the stairs creak. No, if he could jump from the rug directly onto the banister, he could swing down over his father's potted lemon tree, and land between the rubber plant and the giant cactus, giving him a clear straight-run shot at the kitchen and back door. All without making a sound.
Just in case, Naruto ran through a couple more potential routes, and a few back-up/escape scenarios. If he got caught, he couldn't use the "a very sad ladybug flew inside and asked me to set her free and that's why I'm halfway outside" excuse he'd used earlier that day. No, he'd have to escape back to his room. Then, he could blame it all on sleep-walking.
With a smile for his sheer genius, Naruto stepped away from the wall and cat-rolled, landing perfectly onto the rug. Staying in a low crouch, he steadied himself with his fingertips before launching himself onto the banister.
Like clockwork, Naruto congratulated himself again, as he levered himself down between the rubber plant and the giant cactus. Step two was complete, now he just had to run through the French doors into the kitchen, out the back door, and then onward to become the pirate king. Perfect.
"Naruto, you do realize you're trying to sneak outside in the middle of a storm, right?"
Naruto tried his ninja-pirate manly best not to act surprised. And, for the most part he managed not to—until his right foot got tangled with his left foot as he scrambled to get up—causing him to fall into the arms of a rather prickly giant cactus. Fortunately, the thought of his dear mother making him scrub toilets again for trying to sneak out kept him from whimpering too loudly after an initial shrill yelp.
Not that Naruto's father was being terribly solicitous of his be-needled boy. His father would have said he tried his best not to laugh, but Naruto would have said he didn't try very hard since Sakurano Saito was still snickering as he helped pull cactus needles out of his son's arms some minutes later.
"So, what were you going to tell you're mom if she woke up?" Saito asked his bleeding son when he finally managed to stop snickering.
"Sleep-walking," replied Naruto, ruffling out his dark hair to make sure no needles had decided to nest there too. His hair was getting a bit long.
"Ah," managed Saito before turning around just a little too slowly to hide the grin threatening to split his face. Naruto glared at his dad. The two of them looked a lot alike, he knew, though Chiyori always said his dad looked much more refined. But, personality-wise, his dad was just plain strange.
Naruto never understood what his dad found so funny all the time, particularly in situations like this when his poor son was bleeding to death in front of his eyes, but at least one of them was having a good time. And, no, Naruto was not being sarcastic and full of self-pity. Though, actually, and more to the point, "Hey Dad, where'd you come from anyway? I didn't hear you come down the stairs at all."
Naruto had come to expect a certain amount of stealth from his mother. She was his mother, after all, and a ninja academy graduate besides. But, his dad was a florist. Albeit, from a ninja bloodline, but even so, how did a florist sneak up on him?
"Well, my observant ninja…"
Naruto snorted in protest.
"…sorry, pirate son, you see my very wet hair and clothes? That would be because I didn't come down the stairs, I was outside and came in through the garage."
"Outside, in a storm? Why?" Asked Naruto, genuinely puzzled. It wasn't really like his dad to go running around in the rain in the middle of the night. Naruto and his mother, absolutely, but his dad was supposed to be the mature adult in the family.
"Hmmm…" Saito tilted back in his chair until he was peering at his son over his perfectly sculpted nose and chin. Casually, and without looking away, Saito brushed some of the water that kept dripping from his hair, off his shoulders with long, slender fingers. Naruto noticed an unfamiliar gold ring on one of his fingers. It had something red and white embedded in the middle. As he looked from the ring to his father, for a brief instant, Naruto thought he saw his dad's eyes turn sharp as if he were searching his son for…something…but then his dad was his dad again, and Naruto wondered if he'd just imagined it.
"I think that's a story for another night," he said, giving Naruto's head a friendly push. Slowly, he lowered his chair back down to its proper four-footed stance. Naruto wanted to ask him about his ring, but before he could say anything, Saito put up a hand warning him into silence. He pointed upstairs, and gave his son an (almost) sympathetic look, "Especially since, I think we woke your mother up. Now would probably be the perfect time for any last-ditch escape plan you might have?"
Two hours and several jutsu later, Naruto crawled into his bed feeling generally miserable. He'd had to contort himself to fit under the ottoman in the living room at one point, and his cacti-wounded limbs had not responded well, especially since he and his dad apparently missed a few cactus needles in his pants.
On the upside, his mother hadn't caught him, so he had no toilet scrubbing to dread. Although, in the end, she hadn't emerged from her bedroom for nearly half an hour after Naruto's father had warned him away.
Safely ensconced in his blankets, part of Naruto kept naggingly pointing out that he'd totally been had by the old fart. His ingenious plan to run away and become the pirate king had been crushed by his dad's timely arrival, his escape plan (while technically successful and brilliant) ended up being (from a strictly temporal perspective only, of course) a bit pointless and again instigated by his father, he still had his genin exams coming up (since his mother refused to let him leave and become a pirate, and admittedly this one was not his dad's fault), but to top it all off, now that he'd had some time to think about it, the old man hadn't told him a thing about why he was wandering around at night in the middle of a storm wearing strange jewelry.
Diabolical. Naruto growled a bit into his pillow. Well, he'd figure it out. His dad couldn't keep secrets forever, at least not from a genius of strategy and manipulation like him. Today was Wednesday, so he'd have it out of him by Thursday…Friday morning at the latest. And with that taken care of, Naruto would have nothing left to do but fulfill his destiny.
Excellent, he had plans for the rest of the week. First, get out of the genin exam. Second, figure out dad. Third, escape mom. Fourth, run away and become the pirate king.
All good goals, except for maybe number three. Naruto sat up, biting at his lower lip. Now there was a real problem. His ride to Wave Country had said he could only wait one week maybe a week and a half at the latest, but his mother was Watching him. Stupid ninja bloodlines. If he hadn't already been banned from the Hyuuga main house (Tiny incident involving seran wrap and the dojo door. It was hilarious right up until Grand Uncle Neiji woke up), he would've been tempted to go wreak some anti-bloodline limit vengeance in fuschia paint. Though, in all seriousness, he probably wouldn't get two steps out the door before his mother caught him.
If only his grandfather were back. Naruto mulled the idea over and liked it. Grandpa Uzumaki was ten times stranger than Naruto's father, or pretty much everyone else, but his mother always spent so much time panicking or yelling or laughing whenever grandfather was around, she probably wouldn't notice her son was gone until he was sailing from ocean to glorious ocean. He was the perfect distraction.
That night Naruto crossed his fingers and crossed his toes before reaching up to turn off the lights (which was not easy with crossed fingers). Here was hoping Grandpa Uzumaki came back to Konoha before the weeks end. Not that he really believed in that elementary school crap, but hey, this was his dream on the line, anything was worth a shot, right?