Firstly, thank you to everyone who took the time to fave/watch or even simply read my story! Thank you especially to the people who liked it and took the time to review. Love ya! I hope you guys will continue to support me!

I was looking through my story the other day and I realised the little dividers I used between scene changes were missing! I went back and edited them back in. I hope the story wasn't too confusing without them! Oh, and sorry for not updating earlier. I know you want to get on with the story, so I'll put my rough updating timetable at the end for anyone who wants to read that.

Disclaimer: None of the characters, personalities, items or settings belongs to me. They belong to Masashi Kishimoto. I don't even own any Naruto figurines. I just own the plot. Oh, and don't try anything explained in this chapter at home. It hasn't been tested, so I don't know how it would work. Actually…try it at home, and tell me about it…I would love to hear how it turns out!

By the way, this story is still un-beta'd. If someone would like to be my beta, I will be forever grateful.

Chapter 4-Explanation

The light. I can see it. It's…expanding. Will it encompass me; fill me with that warmth? That warmth that I'm already starting to feel, the warmth that emanates from the Blonde-haired boy?

Do I really need that warmth?

How do I know if this warmth is real?

I've never experienced it, even felt it properly before, the strange thing…the strange emotion people call love. The source of that warmth.

How do I know if this love is real?

The wet ground sank slightly under light footsteps as a man dashed across the raining space, wishing to find shelter. Small shoots of newly-grown grass were crushed in his haste, water splashing from the point where his foot grazed the moist earth, emanating from the spot where his toe touched the ground. A few footprints, imprinted into the brown, soggy mud, were the only sign that he had passed through.

He held a slip of paper tightly in a fist, hoping to protect it from the rain. A cloak flowed around him, white, red trimmings at the bottom, now covered in small flecks of brown.

Ah, Kushina wouldn't be happy.

A small mansion appeared in his line of sight, the exclusive training grounds being the land that he was currently running through. His estate was large, yes, but not as large as say, the Hyuuga or Sarutobi estates. The Namikaze clan were not very well known, after all. It was only after his ascension to the position of hokage that his clan became more 'noticed'.

As Minato landed on the small patio of the large house, glad to have escaped from the sudden downpour, he took off his wet cloak, wringing it out lightly. He looked at it with a slight frown. Damn, now it was crinkled and dirty. He shuddered lightly as his neck was exposed to the cold. His damp hair clung to his forehead, only to be ripped from its hold as he shook his head, causing a spray of water to erupt, with him as the centre, drops rapidly escaping from the ends of his bright mane.

As his hand reached for the handle, a pair of voices from inside the house were heard. One was talking animatedly, speaking non-stop. That could only be his youngest son. Another occasionally spoke, only to voice an opinion or a thought. That, he smiled to himself, his face softening, had to be his beautiful wife, Kushina. Besides his eldest son, which he knew was residing in his own room; he felt the chakra presence of another being, small but significant and not altogether unfamiliar.

Reaching into his pocket, a key appeared in his hand, which he inserted into the lock. Turning the handle, he effectively opened the door to a rather spacious living room. Sitting around a small table, all perched on leather couches of various sizes, were a small troupe of three people, the first two, his son and his wife, sat there, talking, just as he expected.

As he had entered, the two paused in their conversation and looked up at him, both of them smiling, happy to know that he was back. He smiled back at the both of them, but seeing the third face, which had also turned when he had come in, he abruptly froze.

"Sasuke? What are you doing here?"

Sasuke did not reply, but stared up at him with a wary face. After a second or two and a small staring contest, he grunted and pointed to Naruto.

Minato turned his gaze to his son, finding bright blue eyes peeking back at him over the rear of the couch. In a flash the head had disappeared and a blurred trail of blonde dashed its way towards its father.

"Dad!"

Naruto gave his father's legs a bone-crunching hug, not caring that his pant-legs he was currently hanging onto were soaking wet. Minato looked down at his son, smiling at the almost a mini-me in everything but personality, giving him a pat and ruffle on the head before kneeling down and giving the boy his own hug.

"How're you, son?" Minato unwrapped his arms from around Naruto, stood up and flashed him a proud grin. "You defeated Mizuki for me, didn't ya? I'm very proud of you. He was a spy for a very bad man. He could have hurt the village if you didn't stop him."

Naruto scratched the back of his head and gave a smile in response, glad of the praise.

Minato softly patted Naruto's still-bandaged cheeks. "I'm glad you didn't get too badly injured, but you'll still have to be a bit more careful." For shinobi, the smell of blood and death was considered the norm, but against an opponent even slightly more powerful than Mizuki, a stray jutsu could easily end Naruto's life. The hokage did not want the fate of a short life to befall his son.

Minato shot Sasuke a glance, still slightly surprised to find the boy in his home. He turned back to Naruto.

"I didn't know you made a new friend."

"D'ya know Sasuke, Dad? Mizuki was hurting him, so I kicked his butt!"

Kushina, still sitting, gave a giggle at Naruto's choice of words. Minato frowned. Were people still hurting Sasuke?

"I'm glad you protected Sasuke-kun, Naruto. Ninjas must help people who need it." The next words of wisdom, he directed to both boys. "Protect each other, ok?"

Both boys nodded, one with enthusiasm and one with only a slight tilt of the head.

He walked down towards his wife and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

"How are you, love?"

"I'm fine, 'ttebane." Kushina let out a laugh. "But you aren't. Go get a change of clothes and maybe a hot shower. You've just been caught in the rain." She him gave a little push. "Go on, we'll be right here."

Minato, realising his…wetness, also noticed the growing puddle on the smooth-tiled floor, and hurried to change out of his soaking attire, but not before he unfurled the piece of paper still clenched in his hand. He quickly bit his thumb and swiped it across the design drawn there, grabbing a bunch of paper, all filed neatly, as it popped out, and placing it on a nearby table.

When he came back, towel around his neck and dressed in casual clothes, Naruto was having a one-sided conversation with Sasuke, Kushina listening in on the side. Although Sasuke almost never replied, Minato noticed that he paid attention to every word Naruto spoke.

Minato was glad that Sasuke had found someone he could trust.

He walked down the last steps and sat next to Kushina on the sofa. All faces turned to watch him.

"You know, today I heard a very strange report in the office. I heard from some of the chuunin stationed outside my office that apparently Hyuuga Hiashi gained a bucket of slime on the head, pink, if I'm not mistaken, and pepper in the face to boot! What a day he must be having! Have any of you…"

Minato was never allowed to finish his sentence. A loud cackle drew his attention to the younger blonde, who seemed to be caught in fits of laughter. Rolling around, he proceeded to wriggle off the couch onto the floor. The whole household erupted in laughter; even Sasuke managed to smile at the scene.

Minato pinched the bridge of his nose. He should have known that it was his son causing all the trouble. It wasn't exactly a good image for him as the hokage.

Kushina, sat next to Naruto, who still happened to be on the floor. She reached out and gripped his shoulders tightly, frowning slightly. Slowly, she opened her mouth.

"Ok, Naruto, howd'ya do it? Spill." Kushina all but shouted, eyes filled with a strange gleam.

Minato groaned softly. Oh boy, not Kushina too. "Actually, you'd better not…"

But the two on the floor paid him no heed.

Kushina continued, "No-one in the Uzumaki household does a prank without telling rest of them how he did it, especially for something big like this, 'ttebane!"

Minato sighed. It was at times like this when he wondered why he had fallen in love with the woman. "…and this is the Namikaze household, not the Uzumaki!"

The mother-son duo was fast past listening. Naruto was about to tell them a rather riveting tale himself. Sasuke was also listening intently, though he, as usual, did not make a sound.

"This prank was a little hard to think up this time… but his face! You should have seen it, mum! It was awesome, wasn't it, Sasuke." Naruto started to snigger as he remembered the priceless look that had appeared on the Hyuuga's face.

Sasuke nodded as an acknowledgement to Naruto's question, the corners of his mouth twitching slightly in recollection.

"So, me an' Sasuke, before we went we needed to prepare a little, you know? First I thought of using a light flashing jutsu to blind the Hyuuga people for a bit, but everyone does that! So I thought of this cool plan. Remember when I was watching mom cook, I accidently blew into the pepper and it went woosh in my face, and we had to wash it out with water?"

Kushina and Minato nodded. Boy, did they remember that day.

"Anyways, so I got mum's pepper…"

"Oh! So that's where it went!" Everyone turned to stare at Kushina. She scratched the back of her head. "Aha, no, Naruto, continue."

"…And me and Sasuke put the pepper into a couple of smoke bombs… oh! But we had to make it really fine and powdery so I got some kage bunshins to crush them a bit. Then Sasuke had an idea to make a double trap! Then we decided to make some sludge! So I got mum's corn-starch…"

This time, everyone ignored Kushina as she snapped her fingers, realising where her starch had disappeared off to.

"…and put water in it, so it's runny when you leave it alone, but hard when you punch it and stuff. Then we put food colouring in it, so it turned pink! Then we put the smoke, no, pepper bombs in one bucket and the sludge in another, and then we creeped into the Hyuuga mansion!"

"Wow, Naruto. The Hyuugas, 'ttebane. Howd'ya do that?" Kushina was impressed.

"It was pretty easy, actually. It was like they were all away somewhere. There weren't any guards or anything."

Minato suddenly had a bolt of realization. Only a few months ago, little Hyuuga Hinata was kidnapped by Kumogakure nin so that they could steal the secrets of the Byakugan. Hiashi had chased the ninja down and killed him to rescue his daughter. The other village had denied all accusations and they instead had blamed the Hyuugas for killing their best ninja. Because of the treaty they had with Konoha, they had demanded the body of Hiashi. Minato had tried to stop it from happening, but if they didn't do it, all relations with Kumo would disappear; war would also have a very likely chance of breaking out between the two great nations. Because of this incident, all the shinobi nations were in an uproar.

But at the last moment, Hiashi's twin brother, Hizashi, volunteered to take his place. Hizashi was of the branch family. When he died, the Byakugan would be sealed away, so that no-one would be able to discover its secrets. Hizashi had died for his brother, who had done nothing but cause him pain. Hizashi had died for his clan, which had counted the few seconds between his birth and the birth of his twin, and made him suffer for it. Hizashi had left his son, Neji, alone in the world.

That was probably where they all were, Minato realised. They were at Hyuuga Hizashi's funeral.

Naruto' latest prank had either angered the clan, or cheered them up. Minato fervently hoped that it was the latter, no matter how slight the chance was. The Hyuugas could be a rather fierce group when they needed, or wanted, to be. Besides, right now was not the right time for a wealthy clan to be snapping at his heels.

It never was the right time.

"So me and Sasuke sneaked into the Hyuuga bathrooms and to set up the prank!" Naruto stopped to snigger. "You know how the Hyuugas' all have those sliding door things?"

Minato nodded, "The shoji screens?"

Naruto turned to his father. "Yeah, those! Anyways, I got the bucket with the pepper bombs and put it onto a cupboard thingy, and I tied two ninja wires on each side of the bucket, one of them a bit longer than the other. Then I got Sasuke to tie the longer one to the door, so when someone came in, the bucket would tip and a few pepper bombs would fall out, and then I taped the shorter one to the wall next to the cupboard, so the bucket wouldn't fall down. When it did tip, the bombs fell to the ground and exploded from the force."

"Ahh" Kushina tapped her chin. "So that's how you got the black powder, how did you get the pink?"

Naruto scratched the back of his head. "Eh, I ran out of imagi…image…creative things… so I just put the bucket on top of the door, ya know, so it falls when the door opens?"

Minato rubbed his hands together nervously. "Well, just your luck that Hiashi Hyuuga happened to walk through that door."

Kushina laughed boisterously. "It's great, isn't it dear, Naruto's learning all the family techniques." She ruffled Naruto's hair with vigour. "You're awesome, kid!"

Sasuke watched the scene with awe. Well, now he knew where Naruto's personality came from.

Minato groaned beside him. "I'm not part of this family anymore," he mumbled to Sasuke, "I don't know these people.

Kushina shot him a playful glare. "I heard that, mister." She grabbed for Minato and Sasuke wildly, pulling all three currently seated into a crushing bear hug. Naruto's giggles and Kushina's full-blown howls were infectious, and soon Minato was laughing too. Sasuke allowed himself a smile. They all fell off the couch in an unruly heap, lungs gasping for air and stomachs quivering.

Sasuke felt a warmth coursing through his body. Today was definitely the best day of his life, far outstripping any other. Today, he had laughed and smiled many more times in just one day than all the days in his life put together.

Although he did not openly show it, he felt more than happy. He felt much more than joyful.

He felt absolutely euphoric.

He finally had a family.

Notes: 'ttebane is a verbal tick that Kushina has, just in case you've forgotten. Its short for dattebane, like how Naruto says dattebayo/'ttebayo. He kinda inherited it from her. Although Naruto's catchphrase/translation for Dattebayo for the anime is 'believe it', both 'ttebayo and 'ttebane can be loosely translated to 'ya know?'.

In the beginning, Minato does not use shunshin/body flicker/teleportation technique to get to his house because the shunshin is actually a high speed dash kinda thing. The faster you run, the wetter you get. Actually…the whole paragraph's just an excuse. He doesn't use shunshin because it would sound boring if he just teleported straight to his house. You see, it was for…um…literary reasons. XD

Oh, and the cornstarch sludge thing actually works! It's really cool! Try it.

To the person who asked Naru-chan's brother was Deidara, sorry! Good guess, but nup! Sorry I couldn't respond earlier, you were a guest. By the way, it's not Kyuubi, either. The way it's going, he's gonna get revealed in one or two more chapters.

For my updating times, I will try to update on this fortnightly, most likely on Fridays or Sundays, maybe other days. I have a general plan for this story, so I kinda know where this is headed, hope I won't stray from that too much…but I update the chapters as I write them, I don't have a whole stack of them hidden away somewhere…sorry, yes, I'm really disorganised. XD Well, hope you guys won't mind too much…

Aiv.