Salutations.
The story will be continued. The story premise is interesting, and I feel I could find entertainment in writing it.
I did some reasonable research on the nature of comas, their causes, and complications that could occur from giving birth. I feel my reasoning for Kushina being in a comatose state is medically valid. If you are more knowledgeable than I in the medical field (you are if you are in the field, as I am not) and I have made a mistake, please do correct me. I would appreciate it.
I tried too hard to use Japanese in my first story, and I feel it suffered because of it. In this one, I am going to use English as often as I can without having it sound weird. (For example, I'll use 'Lord Hokage' instead of 'Hokage-sama', but I'm not going to translate 'Hokage' into 'Fire Shadow.') I don't think I can avoid it when it comes to other name suffixes but...we'll see.
Hiruzen wasted no time. He gave a distinct hand signal to his two Anbu, and they sprung to action. The hooded Anbu cast a genjutsu outside that made it seem as if the area was sealed off with a yellow 'Do not pass' police line. He then took out a pebble from his overcoat, threw it on the ground, and transformed it into a 'Wet Paint: Do not walk' Sign.
His partner quickly went over to Naruto and picked him up. Naruto was still in a dazed state of mind and was content letting things happen around him, until the Anbu tried to get the patient information folder from him. Naruto refused to give it up. The Anbu tried again, and Naruto resisted harder. Not wanting to look bad in front of his lord, the Anbu quit playing nice and forcefully pried it from Naruto's hands.
Naruto started nagging and reaching for the folder. Now, Naruto may have been undersized for his age, but he wasn't so little that the Anbu could hold him in place if Naruto wanted to make a fuss about it. The Anbu looked over his shoulder at his partner, who had finished setting up his henges.
They were ready to move.
As the Anbu holding Naruto got ready to move out, Naruto began screaming and lunging violently for the folder. At a complete loss to do (the Anbu manuals didn't cover this shit), the Anbu looked helplessly at his lord, who gave a tired smile in Naruto's direction. The Anbu understood, and gave the folder to Naruto, who immediately took it and hid it under his orange jumpsuit and glared menacingly at the man holding him.
Hiruzen chuckled. His soldier was only worried about keeping the folder safe. Hiruzen knew after that Naruto wouldn't let that folder be seen by anyone. The folder was fine.
Hiruzen and the Anbu carrying Naruto walked out the door. The hooded Anbu waiting outside cast another jutsu on Naruto to make him look like a child patient. He then dispelled his previous genjutsus.
As the Anbu got ready to leave the hospital, Hiruzen stopped them. He made to close the door quickly, but stopped just short enough so that he had a clear view of the face of the woman laying peacefully on the bed. Hiruzen shook off a lifetime of regrets, with a silent vow to do better from here on. He closed the door softly, so as to not disturb her, though he knew in the back of his mind she wouldn't notice.
Hiruzen beckoned the Anbu carrying Naruto. He inwardly chuckled at the disguise his soldier gave Naruto; it was damn near perfect. The child was neither beautiful nor ugly, truly average in every sense of the word. Totally inconspicuous.
As he made to draw a kunai, he saw some dried blood on Naruto's right hand. He wondered why Naruto had blood there, but this was convenient. Forming seals at a speed that awed the two younger Anbu, Hiruzen created a new blood seal on the door, took some of Naruto's dried up blood, and touched it to the seal. The seal resonated, glowed for a few seconds, then went invisible. Once again, the door was near impossible to open.
As Hiruzen and his escorts walked casually out of the hospital, he was greeted by the entire hospital staff, patients and their families walking by, and the janitorial staff. He gave them smiles back, and exchanged pleasantries with all of them.
Hiruzen and his Anbu plus transformed Naruto walked into Hokage tower. As the receptionist greeted him, Hiruzen asked that 'Nightingale' come up to his office immediately. The secretary nodded and went to her phone. Satisfied, he signaled his Anbu to follow him up to his office.
After climbing too many flights of stairs, they arrived at his office. Hiruzen was a bit winded, but his soldiers' heart rates actually decreased going up the stairs. He cursed their youth, and privately hoped that they would grow old quickly.
Hiruzen looked at the Anbu holding Naruto.
"You can let him down now."
The Anbu did. Naruto worked out the kinks that had developed in his neck. Turning his head left and right, he heard satisfying cracks that felt even better.
Hiruzen smiled as he tapped Naruto once on his forehead, ending the henge.
The smile faded quickly from his face as he looked up at his soldiers. "After I walk into this room and the door closes, put up a sensory barrier. Use a complete one. No one sees, hears, smells, feels, even tastes what is going on. The barrier will be kept up until I give the order to have it dissipated. As you know, the chakra requirements for such a barrier are high. Adding that to the nature of this mission, and I am making this a S-rank mission." He gave a small smile. "It is certainly the easiest S-class mission you will ever be assigned, but it is of no less importance than any mission you have been assigned thus far. Failure is not an option." He took a deep breath, and remembered that life sucked. "Am I clear?"
His Anbu lived up to the name. "Yes, Lord Hokage."
Hiruzen nodded in reply, and began walking to his office. When he got to the door, he realized Naruto wasn't following him. "Naruto. Come with me."
Naruto for his part was having trouble containing his excitement. He had overheard the conversation. He was going to be part of a S-rank mission! Only in his coolest dreams was he doing S-class missions. Beating up 100 enemy ninja by himself using the coolest jutsus ever, and destroying huge monsters by himself and having everyone yell his name.
The Third Hokage's call brought him back to Earth. Okay, so he wasn't assigned the S-rank mission, but no one could argue that he wasn't a part of it. Sasuke would be so jealous! Better yet, maybe Sakura-chan would think he's cooler after this.
With a renewed confidence, Naruto walked to the Hokage's office. He only took two steps before he ran into something soft. He immediately thought he walked into the wall, but he knew that wasn't possible. First of all, the wall wasn't soft. It also wasn't black. It also wasn't curvy. What the hell...
Naruto pondered what he ran into. He poked it for good measure. After a few seconds and still having no idea, he looked up to see what the heck it was. To his utter horror, he realized he ran into a woman. She was wearing black pants. To make things worse, he had poked her butt. He instinctively put his arms up to shield his face. Sakura-chan always hit him there if he did anything stupid. He feared the worst, and prayed it wouldn't hurt too much.
The woman turned around to see who had the audacity to sexually harass her, in front of the Hokage no less. She saw two Anbu, but they were too far away, and she would have felt them jump back. She then looked down, and saw Naruto shielding his face.
She was a little confused, but she realized what happened. She did use shunshin to get to the Hokage's office as fast as she could, and a little boy couldn't be expected to dodge her or sense her arrival. She reached out, lowered his arms from his face, and ruffled his hair a few times to let him know it was okay.
The two Anbu stoically watching were privately quite jealous of Naruto at that instant. That was a nice round, firm butt the kid touched, and he wasn't flying towards the moon.
Naruto was surprised. He expected to be pummeled, so being touched affectionately was quite a pleasant alternative.
He gave her a rueful smile and apologized. "Uh, onee-san? I'm uh...sorry about that."
She smiled. She enjoyed having her mask on at times like this. It was far easier to be open with your facial expressions and just hide them from the world than try to master a poker face and strain your face and be unattractive in old age. Or you could go the Kakashi route and just hide your face even without a mask...
She gave him a nod in response and shrugged her shoulder to let him know it was alright. He gave her a bigger smile afterwards, which almost made her laugh. Containing it, and remembering what she was here for, she put her hand on Naruto's back and walked him into the Hokage office.
Hiruzen watched the exchange with an inward smile. That was a good experience for Naruto.
After she and Naruto walked in the office, he gave one last look at his soldiers. His gaze spoke volumes. Each one gave him a slight nod. Hiruzen turned around, walked into his office, and shut the door.
The two Anbu began forming the seals to create a total sensory barrier. Showtime.
Hiruzen walked to his desk and sat down. Nightingale stood in front of his desk, awaiting orders. Naruto was laying down on top of a sofa near the edge of the room, sleeping without a care in the world.
Hiruzen glanced over at Naruto, then at his Anbu. "How long will he be out?"
"Until I dispel the jutsu or around eight hours from now."
Hiruzen replied by nodding his head. He looked away from her for a few seconds. He glanced at the bookcase, at Naruto, and at the ceiling. Finally, he decided to revive the past.
"Twelve years ago, you were assigned a SS-rank mission of indeterminate length. Restate that mission."
She stood at attention. "Yes. I was to watch over Uzumaki Kushina, wife of the Fourth Hokage, and the mother of Uzumaki Naruto. I was given the task of keeping her relationship with the Fourth and Naruto a secret."
She stopped. Hiruzen waited for her to continue. When she did not, he realized that technically, that was all he asked for. "Elaborate more on the finer aspects of the mission."
She paused. What exactly did he want from her? She supposed she should just take him literally and give a bit more detail on what she had been doing. "Yes. I went to the patient's room once a day to check her status, as is the norm for coma patients. Given the high level of secrecy the mission required, I visited her during the night. I found that two in the morning was the best time to enter her room without being detected. During my nightly visits, I checked her vitals, her brain wave activity, and for any signs that indicated a possibility of her coming out of the coma. For twelve years there has not been a single sign. Her brain wave readings however show that she is not in a vegetative state."
She paused once more to nod in the Third's direction. "Lord Hokage prevented use of the door by sealing it with a blood seal using the blood of the Fourth. I entered the room through her room window. The window was sealed with a high precision chakra frequency seal. Only Lord Hokage and I knew the correct frequency, and only ninja with the highest level of chakra control could create the frequency to the required level of precision."
The past came back to him. He had forgotten that he instructed her in the chakra frequency seal. The mission was ranked higher than S, so by law, there would be no paperwork of it. She had answered many of his questions, and he had pieced together what she said with what he remembered. There was one additional question that needed to be asked.
"Why did you leave her patient information in her room. I will grant that the security was of the highest level. However, as Anbu, I expect nothing but total completeness, and this includes layers of fail-safes. If by some chance the room was infiltrated, an S-rank secret would have been exposed."
She blinked. Her reasoning for that was not the greatest. Crudely summarized, she had taken the lesser of two evils.
"I...sought to limit the number of human interactions with the patient information. By leaving the folder in her room, I ensured that I would be the only person to come in contact with it, given the assumption that the room would not be infiltrated. I had faith in the room's security. I also wanted to limit opportunities to make mistakes. The mission, when assigned, was of an unknown length of time, and the probability that her folder would be seen by outsiders would have increased daily if I carried it with me to and from the patient's room."
Hiruzen sighed. He knew she felt like she was making excuses, but this was not the case. She recognized her limitations as a human being, and with all of her other responsibilities, it would have been impossible for her to not lose the folder even once in a twelve year span. And once was all it would have took to make his life suck far more than it did already.
Her logic was acceptable, and she had been successful in her mission. She had kept the information secret for twelve years. He wasn't going to argue with the results.
"I understand. You did well to recognize your own limitations as a human being. We are human beings first, ninja second. I admit to forgetting that more often than I would like."
Beneath her mask, she smiled. He truly wasn't the kind of man who should be leading a ninja village. He was far too kindhearted. She wouldn't have it any other way.
During her silence, Hiruzen looked at Naruto. The child was sleeping with such a look of peace on his face. He knew the daily struggles Naruto endured, and found it amazing that the child could maintain such optimism and honesty despite it all. Hiruzen knew the optimism was merely a facade that Naruto used to hide his pain.
Hiruzen smiled wistfully. How nice would it be to grant the child his mother.
He looked from Naruto back to Nightingale. The female ninja prodigy who had such massive potential that even Tsunade couldn't ignore. Tsunade may be on an indeterminate leave from the village, but at least she made sure that her skill set would remain. He had originally planned on bringing Tsunade back to the village using this mission. He sent Jiraiya to find her shortly after the Fourth's death. Jiraiya returned in only a few days. He found her, but he did not bring her back with him. Tsunade had sent a message stating that the Nightingale could handle the mission, and would he please stop trying to guilt-trap her into coming back.
There was no doubting Nightingale's skills. When she wasn't his Anbu, she was the acting head of the hospital and two of its departments.
Confident in her medical knowledge, Hiruzen proceeded to ask her a question. He found himself a bit hesitant to ask it.
"You stated earlier that you had found no signs of the patient coming out of the coma anytime soon. Was that right?" She nodded. "I trust that her patient information didn't include her immediate family members?" His eyes narrowed ever so slightly after asking the question. He trusted his Anbu, and she had shown him no reason to not trust her, but he had trouble believing that Naruto could have been worked up to such a state after reading her patient information if her relationship to him wasn't written down."
Behind her mask, she frowned. She wasn't sure if she should have taken that as an insult. "No, Lord Hokage. The names of her immediate family are not written on her patient information."
He figured as much. He just wanted it to be confirmed. Truth be told he really should just look at the damn sheet of paper. However, over his tenure as Hokage, he had grown a strong dislike of paperwork. Convinced that the information on it wouldn't make much sense to him, he decided to just defer to her superior knowledge in this case. The less paperwork he had to read, the better.
However, her answer didn't answer his question.
"Then what was on it that could have brought such an emotional response from Naruto? I confess, I have not looked at her patient information yet. What information is on it?"
She didn't have to think to answer. She had looked at it everyday for the past twelve years. "Nothing that would answer your question, Lord Hokage. It had her gender, blood type, weight, birthday, land of origin, and her name."
Hiruzen twitched after she finished. Her name. Naruto had formed a bond with her through her name. Naruto was the only Uzumaki in the entire village. To find another person who shared his last name would definitely have evoked a strong response, especially considering how lonely the child was.
"Very well. I suppose that question is unanswered for now. I have one more question for you, and you may go." She nodded. "Is there anything we could do to bring her out of the coma? Anything?"
She was confused. This was a question she was not expecting. "No, not to my immediate knowledge. Please understand, Lord Hokage, that we currently know very little about comas. Uzumaki Kushina is our only coma patient, and she has been as much a subject of research as she has been a S-class secret."
The Hokage's gaze narrowed.
She realized her omission. "Under anonymity of course." He relaxed.
She continued. "Even Lady Tsunade did not do much research on the subject. She determined that there was nothing medically that could be done to bring a patient out of a coma. She also learned that a coma patient, while unable to live without intaking nutrients artificially, are still alive, as long as they have brain activity. It is only after brain activity is completely nonexistent that a patient has truly died."
Hiruzen was surprised at how much of that made sense to him. "In other words, because Kushina still has brain activity, she is considered to be alive. However, I'm going by what you said here, she could lose brain activity over time? That's what it seems like to me."
She nodded, a bit pleased that he understood so quickly. "Yes. Her brain can shut down over time, or she could randomly wake up one day, or she could be in a coma until her body dies a natural death."
Hiruzen sighed. This was truly a hopeless situation. There was one light of hope left that he saw, although it was a dim light at that. "You said that there was nothing medically that could be done to wake a coma patient. Is there something that is not medically oriented that can be done?"
She faltered. Damn her precision. "Technically, no. I only added the word 'medically' because of one outlying case."
Hiruzen straightened up. This would interest him. "Let's hear it."
She sighed. She really didn't want to bring this up, as it would give him misplaced hope. "First of all, I want to say I don't believe this works." Hiruzen nodded, and signaled for her to continue. "There was a case a few years back where a construction worker suffered brain trauma from a falling object. He fell into a coma and displayed vitals and brain activity not too different from Uzumaki Kushina's. The two cases are similar in a key factor, which is the origin of the coma. Restricted blood flow to the brain. The construction worker suffered brain trauma from an external object. Uzumaki Kushina suffered a stroke from childbirth complications. In both cases, blood flow was denied to sections of the brain."
Hiruzen's hope increased with every word she said. "What was the difference that allowed him to wake up, and is keeping Kushina in a coma."
"The only noticeable difference is that the construction worker's daughter visited him everyday and spoke to him. She was said to have talked to him everyday for hours at a time, and held his hand the entire duration of her visits. She did this everyday for over three years. He was said to have woken up answering a question she asked him."
Hiruzen fell back into his chair. He had heard a lot of stories in his old life, but never one so incredible. "That...wow. Incredible. The power of love woke him up, don't you think?"
She couldn't help herself. She smiled. She wouldn't have her leader be any other way.
"Maybe, Lord Hokage. I confess that medicine has proven inferior at times to other...rather unorthodox treatments."
He smiled. He knew it was a long shot, but he felt if Naruto did the same, there was no way Kushina was not going to wake up. He had made some difficult decisions in his mind, decisions that could ultimately split the village and result in Naruto's death.
However, he felt it had to be done. He had to try. He had to give Naruto a chance.
"Wake Naruto up, and you are dismissed. Let the two outside know to keep up the barrier."
She bowed and walked over to Naruto. After waking him up, she quickly left the office.
It took Naruto a minute or two to get his bearings. "Hey Old Man Hokage. Was I sleeping?"
The Hokage chuckled. Naruto was everything he could want from a grandchild. If Konohamaru grew up to be half the person Naruto was, it would make him the proudest grandfather on the continent.
"You just dozed off for a few minutes there, Naruto. The lady who walked in with you caught you before you fell to the ground and set you on the sofa."
Naruto wiped his eyes and looked for her, to not find her there. "Hey? Where'd she go?"
"You just missed her Naruto. She had to run some errands for me."
"Ah okay."
Hiruzen abandoned the chair behind his desk and sat next to Naruto on the sofa. He didn't want to be the Hokage while he was talking to Naruto.
"Naruto..."
Naruto's eyes suddenly focused. Staring intently at Hiruzen, he asked, "Oh yeah! What about the woman in the hospital? Uzumaki, uh...Kushina! Yeah! Who is she? Hey Old Man Hokage, who is she?"
Hiruzen gave Naruto a sad smile and motioned for him to calm down. Naruto did, but he couldn't contain his curiosity. He was having a very difficult time remaining still, if all his fidgeting around was any indication.
"Naruto. I'm about to tell you a big secret. You absolutely cannot tell anyone. If you do, the woman in the hospital will die. This is a very important secret Naruto. I am going to tell you, but you must swear on your life that you will not tell anyone, or even hint to anyone that you know a big secret. Okay?"
Naruto was caught off guard; that was definitely not what he expected to hear. Still, he was touched by the fact that the old man was going to trust him with something this important. "I can do it! I'll keep the secret because that's my nindo, my ninja way. I'm not going to let her die."
Hiruzen hesitated. This was it. This was the point of no return. If he continued on from here and Naruto failed, the results would be catastrophic. This was why he should not be the Hokage. A Hokage's interest should always be the welfare of the village. Telling Naruto who Kushina is is most definitely not in the welfare of the village.
However, Hiruzen was swayed by the child's eyes; so pure, so determined, so sure of himself.
He really needed Tsunade or Jiraiya to succeed him.
"Okay Naruto, this is a promise. This is a promise of a lifetime. I will hold you to it. Okay?" Naruto vehemently nodded.
Hiruzen prayed that he would not regret what he was about to do. There were so many things that could go wrong, so many bad endings that could occur. However, he was an idealist at heart, and all he could see was the happy ending of mother being reunited with son. "Naruto, Uzumaki Kushina...she...she's..." Hiruzen stopped to compose himself. This stuttering was not how he was going to tell Naruto.
Naruto was growing impatient by the nanosecond.
"She's what, she's what?"
Hiruzen did not know a smile formed on his face when he uttered the words that could lead to the destruction of his village. He, however, didn't think of it that way. He chose to think of it as words that could erase the loneliness from a tired child's heart.
"She is your mother, Naruto."
AN: Chapter one was far superior than this chapter. I apologize for this.
Comments and constructive criticism are most welcome.
Edit (5/10/10): I'm back home, and chapter three is planned out. Expect it to be much longer than the first two were.
