Disclaimer: Don't own Naruto or Full Metal Alchemist, two geniuses own them, not me…
Humankind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. To obtain something of equal value must be lost. That is alchemy's First Law of Equivalent Exchange.
In those days, I thought was its one and only truth, as my teachers carved that into my skull. Then it came.
The Philosopher's Stone.
Those who possess it, no longer bound by the laws of equivalent exchange in alchemy, can gain without sacrifice... create without equal exchange. We searched for it... and we found it.
The shinobi world has been known to throw a monkey wrench into many things I had learned, but this one took the cake.
-Uzumaki Naru, 1917, Age 12
Chapter 2: Return
Naru sighed as she looked at her ruined gauntlets. They were charred and cracked in a few places, the transmutation circles on them were warped.
"Verdammt." She muttered and started to draw a circle on a scrap of paper on her work desk. She stopped after drawing the main circle and looked back at her hands. Awkwardly, she slowly clapped them together and almost hesitantly touched the gauntlets. Naru jumped back when there was a reaction, leaving her gauntlets looking as new as the day they were gifted to her.
Naru slumped back in her desk chair, pressing her palms to her eyes as she recounted the small bit of her tale she had left out.
Flashback
Naru looked back at the giant Gate that had appeared that she attempted to send Minato into a few moments ago.
"Never in my life did I think I would see this."
Minato glared at her. "What is this?"
Naru seemed to be drained of all energy. "This is the end, for both of us."
Not quite.
Naru turned to see that not only had the Gate opened, but the Shinigami had also appeared.
It seems that fate is not set in stone.
Naru screamed as a black tendril shot out from the Gate and pulled her in while Minato had the Shinigami's 'Life' hand was thrust into his heart.
Flashback end
Naru's frame shook as she sobbed. "Was geschieht mit mir?
Hewie whimpered and pawed at Naru's leg in an attempt to get her mind off of what had just happened.
There was a knock at the door. "Naru, are you home? It's just me."
Naru took a deep breath and sighed in relief. It was just Iruka-sensei. She wiped away any tears that had formed and stood up to answer.
"Es gut- I mean, I'm fine sensei! Just fixing up some things around the place!"
She heard Iruka chuckle. "Well, I came to see if you wanted to get some ramen since Tsunade-sama said your stomach could handle it now."
Naru smiled. "Sure! Just a minute!"
The young girl jogged to her door, stopping briefly to look at a picture of herself with two others, a blond young man and a taller one dressed in a suit of armor. She let her fingertips lightly brush the frame.
Tut mir leid,mein Lehrer.
Meanwhile at the Hokage Tower, Minato was talking with his successor.
He gave her a shaky smile. "Never thought that I would see you back in the village, Tsunade."
Tsunade returned the smile with one of her own. "It's good to see you again too, Minato. The village will be overjoyed to hear of your return."
At this point, Minato looked down. "Yeah, all of the villagers minus one. Tsunade, Sensei, what happened to Naru? What happened to my baby girl?"
Tsunade sighed and rubbed her forehead. "The village… took your death harder than you thought. Naru was seen not as the container, but a personification of the beast itself. The children were forbidden to know, but the hatred from the adults was passed onto them."
Minato felt his hands tighten into fists. "The wife of the Shodaime Hokage and my own wife were the containers before her, and they never receive anything like this."
Tsunade held up a finger, as if to prove a point. "That is true, but their statuses as jinchuuriki were kept secret from a majority of the village."
Jiraiya sighed. "I did not get to meet Naru until her first Chunin Exam, due to a majority of the Council voting that it was safer for their jinchuuriki to remain in the village in case anything happened. From what I could tell though, she didn't have the greatest childhood and travelled with someone when she was younger. The only thing that she got from this village in her early years was pain and suffering. Those are all the details I can really give right now."
Minato looked perplexed. "If you didn't meet her for long, then how did she learn how to do all those jutsu without handseals?"
Tsunade stood up from her seat while Jiraiya started shaking him. "What did she call that technique? Where did she learn it? Tell us everything!"
Minato shrunk away a bit. "So, you have no idea either?"
Naru smiled as her order of spicy shrimp ramen was set in front of her. She immediately dug into her food, earning a light scolding from her former sensei.
"Slow down Naru." Iruka scolded.
Naru pouted. "I had to eat hospital food for the last two days. It was like eating cardboard!"
During this exchange, Hewie had snuck his head under his companions arm and eaten the rest of the ramen, leaving only the broth. Naru looked back at her food before sighing and giving the rest to her trusty steed.
"I'll have another bowl please. Miso with some pork bits, egg, and fried tofu please."
"You truly have some strange taste buds, but that does sound pretty good. I'll have the same."
Naru turned around to see the one she almost hated the most entering the shop she liked to visit on an everyday basis. She huffed and put her chopsticks down. "Oji-san, can I also get a bowl of beef ramen? I would like both of those to go."
Iruka gave Naru a sad smile. "I see that you're feeling better Naru."
Naru smiled back as she paid for her purchases. "I'll pay for the last three, sensei. You have a good night."
Minato waved as his daughter walked out the door with her food and dog. "Oh Naru, Tsunade wants to talk to you first thing in the morning."
Naru gave a half-hearted wave along with a muttered 'Wer zum Teufel denkt er, er ist?' as she headed to her small house.
Minato chuckled and gingerly began to eat his order. "That girl is just like her mother."
Iruka laughed as he turned back to his meal. "I dunno Yondaime-sama. I say that she is more like her father."
Minato looked at Iruka with a look of surprise on his face. The chunin smiled and held out a hand. "Umino Iruka. I was Naru's Academy teacher."
Minato smiled and accepted the hand. "Namikaze Minato. Oh, Iruka-san, do you have any idea what language she was speaking just then?"
"Yes, and I believe that you do not wish to know what she just said or anything that she will say in the future."
Naru had bought the rundown cottage when she received her first paycheck as a genin and had been fixing it up ever since. Once her teammates and friends found out about her project, they all spent an entire weekend fixing up the place, painting, and decorating.
It was a small place, with three bedrooms, two small bathrooms, and an open living room that connected to her kitchen and dining area. One of the bedrooms was a library that also housed her study desk and out back was what everyone considered her 'work area', a shed that she could spend hours in just tampering with things to see how they worked, creating new jutsu, or working on something in the name of science.
Naru gave a sigh of content as she finished drinking the broth in her bowl. She felt better whenever she added fried tofu to her dish, as it soothed the savage beast inside of her quite literally. She looked at the mints that were given to all the customers who order out and then looked at the small shrine that she had set up in her 'living room' area.
Staring at the shrine for a few moments, she laid the mints down in front of a few pictures.
"Nina, Armony, Uncle Hughes, I miss you so much."
Naru sighed as she went to her work room. She had a long day and the only way to make up for lost time was to figure out some more jutsu in some scrolls she had unearthed in some ruins she had found during her journey home.
There was another knock at the door.
"Well aren't I just popular tonight."
Naru opened her door, only to find a certain Hokage on her doorstep.
"Um, hi?"
Naru stared at the older blonde for a few minutes. "I'm not interested in anything you're selling."
"Naru, I just want to talk."
"Yes and we can talk tomorrow when I have to see Oba-chan. Now, guten Nacht Yondaime-sama."
Then she slammed the door in his face.
Minato turned to Jiraiya, who was right behind him. "What should I do now?"
Jiraiya chuckled and motioned Minato to follow him. The two older shinobi snuck around the house and to the window that looked into the living room. The two men then peaked in to check on Naru.
They were not stalking her or spying on her, they were checking on her.
There was a huge difference.
Anyway, the two men saw that Naru was sitting on her couch, polishing what looked like a helmet with a long lock of hair coming out of it. Naru started stroking the helmet "Soon... soon, my love, we will be together again. No one will stand between us. No military, no shinobi, no homunculi, no chimera, not even Iruka-sensei's wrath will get in our way." She lifted the helmet "We'll be together, forever. Your 50% and my 85%... forever, and ever." Then she kissed helmet and put it back on a shelf.
"Sensei what is she talking about?" Minato asked his former teacher. When he received no answer, he turned to see Jiraiya taking notes.
"Your daughter is a gold mine." The perverted man giggled.
Minato groaned and dragged his teacher back to the Hokage Tower.
Naru smirked at the window. "Think that they enjoyed the show Hewie?"
Hewie was currently rolling on the floor, laughing. Naru plopped back onto the couch and joined her mostly-canine companion in laughter.
"Tsunade, does Naru hear voices in her head or something?"
Tsunade looked up from her sake dish with a smile. "So she tricked you too?"
Minato looked at Tsunade, then at the sake, then back at Tsunade. With a hefty sigh, he sat down and picked up a sake dish of his own. "Iruka-san is a very nice person. He's let me know a lot about Naru."
AI: So here we have Chapter 2! This was very fun to type up actually. As you can see, Naru has some feelings for a certain knight in shining armor.
Shout Outs:
Naru speaking German- Ametris is the Alter version of Germany. Enough said.
Fried tofu- A favorite food for a kitsune or 'fox spirit'; it's their junk food.
The percent thing- Comes from the FMA manga when Ed proposes to Winry.
Shinigami's hand- According to myth, he has the characters for 'Life' and 'Death' on each of his hands.
