Orochimaru grinned evilly as he looked at the figure his Snake clones held. The blonde boy wore blue denim and ankle boots, struggling angrily in the steel grips, despite the arm they were twisting behind him. "You are going to regret this fool!" he spat at him "my father and the others will be here soon to rescue me. Then you will be sorry!"

The would-be conqueror was a tall and thin man with wide yellow eyes and pale skin. Long fingers and a longer opposing thumb. Wide and almost lipless mouth. He was from a planet called Sanin, an all-male race trained from birth as ruthless warriors. No love or gentleness, just hate and greed.

Trained to find other worlds to take over and hold their ever-increasing population it meant whipping away all other life on the chosen world. Only Orochimaru was attempting to take over this one for his own purpose, without his races knowledge. He wanted the earths' population as his slaves, not his people's'.

The Sanin grinned uglier and waved him away, saying as he did in a thin voice to his clones "put him in a cell and give him a strong dose of the venom. I want his companions to have a big surprise when they arrive." As he was hauled away he heard Orochimaru's evil laughter follow him down the hallway of ice. It was the last thing he heard before the strong steel door slammed shut behind him.

A few hours later three clones or otherwise known as Otonins brought in a large glass of the liquid drug. If the alien expected him to drink it willingly he was crazy. This he had discovered long ago was the only drug that affected him time and time again no matter the purity of it.

And it always affected him the same.

They didn't expect him to drink it willingly for while two held him down struggling and cursing a third forced the cup to his lips and the fluid down his throat. When they were sure most had gone down and he hadn't been able to cough it back up they let him go.

Curling himself into a tight ball around his stomach on the cold stone floor he struggled against the drug, groaning in pain as it flowed through his body at an incredible rate. "Excellent" Orochimaru hissed from a camera\view screen and speaker built into the wall above them "Young Namikaze look at me."

After long seconds, almost as if against his will the boys' head snapped up and he hissed from between gritted teeth "yes Master Orochimaru?"

Minato grumbled as he piloted the large stealth jet. He had wanted to go after his son NOW even if it meant by himself, but Itachi had stopped him and after calming him down had told him they would all help. But first they had to go and get Hizashi and his daughter, the girl having gone home for a few months to be with her father and his people who were apparently having trouble with one of the other small tribes. "I know Itachi but I am just worried about Naruto, that Orochimaru will do what he had done to him when he last had him and Kushina" Minato choked off and was unable to continue.

It had been only two years since the six's adventure in the past and their business had been booming. A year ago a woman had come to them with her man missing and at first they had told her maybe he had left her but she brought a folder from a friend in the police of other missing men, all gone with exactly the same MO.

As they investigated these cases they soon discovered the alien called Orochimaru living in a huge Palace hidden deep in the land of Snow, kidnapping human men and turning them into his zombies called Sound nin with an permanent liquid drug called Venom.

At first they had given the creature a fair go, despite Hizashi taking one look at him and warning them he was an evil man and they should destroy him like they had Gato. He told them there was no possibility of changing this one and maybe getting those enslaved men back, to not trust a word he said. When they asked him how he could be so sure about that he answered finally with the Sanin were his ancestors greatest enemies.

"But you're ancestors were the Kohona nin and Itachi's never seen them before" Kushina had protested.

"Not the nins" the man had answered "much earlier than that." Which lead to other questions the man refused to answer, especially about there once being aliens on earth. And the man refused to answer anymore questions or even speak anything on the subject.

They started anticipating any further kidnapping and preventing it, all the time giving the man another go, never believing he was as evil as the leader said he was. That was until what happened five months after they first discovered the alien.

Kushina and Naruto and Minato had gone shopping for the group's food for the month and were headed back to the large van, chatting about what Minato couldn't even remember. They couldn't have been more than ten feet away when ten of the Sound nin jumped out and ambushed them.

Kushina and Naruto were seized and dragged away, struggling and crying out in fear and the ones holding Naruto twisting his arms behind his back so the pain stopped him from using his training to fight and help his mother.

As if the knife to her throat didn't have the same affect.

Minato tried to rush forward and help them, to fight through the group but was knocked to the ground and beaten while four others held him down and helpless. If it hadn't have been for the fact the car park was busy they surely would have killed him, but the next thing he remembered was waking up in the hospital.

Desperately he managed to persuade a nurse to go back to the car park to the van and get a case out of it for him. When she returned with it he took out an expensive looking gold pen, clicking the top and activating the distress beacon built inside. He then told the nurse that when his friends arrived he wished to be released to them and described them, telling her to let ONLY they in for his life was in danger from others.

He then blacked out, pen clutched tightly in one hand so no one could take it from him. When he next woke up he was in his and Kushinas' room in the nins' home and the others were all crowded around him, fear and concern in their eyes and faces. He wasted no time telling them what had happened and they were shocked.

They immediately started to organize a rescue while Minato slept. When they were ready Minato had dressed and even though his legs trembled under him and he was still covered in bandages he told them with his trademark stubbornness he was coming with them. Although all of them had a sense of foreboding about this they agreed, Itachi weaving a jutsu to strengthen him and block the pain.

They left, heading for the underground castle with a growing sense of dread and foreboding the closer and closer they got. This only increased when they searched the cells and found neither of them. The closer to the dungeons they got the clearer the sense and a sense of someone else's pain and horror, of terror and grief. But they convinced themselves they were feeling Minatos' worry and fear.

And that changed when they entered the large chamber with various torture devices and saw the two bloody bodies there. The first they saw was a crumpled red haired body curled on the floor next to a long table, the rack, something sharp shinning between the breasts and blood pooled around it on the floor.

Almost completely naked and burns spread over sensitive and private parts of the flesh was Kushina.

Minato gave a choked scream and ran to his wife's' side, bending to roll her over and knew instantly she was dead and long gone. A long knife with a hilt carved into an cobra was sticking in her back and out between her breasts, a clean kill.

The others moved forward, Kisame kneeling beside a weeping Minato to truly examine her and Hinata, Hizashi and Itachi rushing towards the bloody still figure on his stomach on the table, still tied to the wheels of the rack.

While Hizashi and his sobbing daughter untied the boys' arms and legs the nin examined the boy. His clothes were all torn open at the back to allow easy access for the thick leather whip that had been used to open him from the back of his knees to his neck and to the elbows, not a scrap of skin left on it and blood covering and splattering the table and his undamaged flesh and gravely pale face. His left hand, the fingers were all broken severely and his palms was pierced by both his and his mothers' bloody gold pens with the distress beacons broken.

One of his ankles had been twisted to the wrong side and his cheeks were cut along the scars on his cheeks, reopening them wider. His arms and legs had also bore burns here and there but the worse thing was not only the symbols were gone but also they had seen bone through the mess of his back.

Itachi had looked the boy up and down and then down at his mother and frowned thoughtfully, Noticing a small mark on the boy that made him frown deeper and look back at the dead woman. He took in the dead woman's bloody wrists and ankles and followed a slight trail of blood over to a chain hanging from the roof and one curled up on the floor.

He looked the bloody chains over one after the other and then looked back at the woman thoughtfully again. Hizashi had saw it and slowed his movements down to ask "what is it Itachi?" The nin had answered softly "he did not plan to kill Kushina."

"What do you mean Itachi?" Kisame had looked up from trying to sooth Minato who was rapidly dropping into shock. "Look, the chains are bloody where she worked her wrists and ankles until she was able to use the liquid to slip free."

"So?" Kisame had asked. "There is a slight small vertical cut on Narutos' back among all those horizontal ones left by the whip he used."

"What are you saying?" Karin said softly to him. But Hizashi had figured it out "he meant to kill Naruto and Kushina had no choice but to sacrifice herself for her sons' life." Kisame got it and whispered in awe "she gave herself to save Naruto."

"And it unnerved Orochimaru enough so he would leave them without finishing Naruto and let us in far enough to take them home." The nin nodded solemnly. "But is Naruto still alive after all that blood-loss and injuries?" Rin had asked softly in horror.

As she had spoken this Hizashi had gently eased the boys' bloody and impaled hand down from where the rack had stretched it to and they all heard a thin moan of pain as it moved torn muscles in his shoulders and back full of pain and pulled almost to their breaking point. However the moan was all that came from him, no movement or even a flutter of eyelids. Itachi had spoken "he is alive although barely and shall not last much longer if we do not get him back so I can attempt to try and start to heal this damage."

"Not yet" Minato had suddenly risen from his wife's' body, face full of a murderous fury "first I'm going to kill that son-of-a-bitch."

"No" Itachi had motioned to Kisame and Karin to grab the man who had started cursing and fighting against them, totally loosing it as Naruto had in the cave a year before "he's dead! Let me go!"

"Minato listen to me" Itachi had set eyes with him and used his hypnotism to drive his words home "there is no saving Kushina and revenge can wait. Kushina sacrificed herself so we could save your son before he died, and do you want to make her action mean nothing by making us run around trying to stop you while his life slowly trickles away with his blood? Think about it for a moment, my friend. How would you feel if you lost Naruto as well? Would you ever be able to forgive yourself for throwing his life away for your revenge when you could have saved him? Do you want to be the last of your family again as you were when your parents were killed when you were eleven? How did you feel then and what makes you think this time you will feel any better?"

"All right" Minato had relaxed in the two warriors grips "but once I know he'll truly live I'm hunting that bastard down and giving him a taste of his own medicine. He'll see what it's like dying in so much pain and terror."

"You must do what you think you must" Itachi had nodded and raised his hand, a bubble force field surrounding mother and son and raising them into the air while they had left.

After Kushinas' death they had almost lost Naruto as well. He had just given up it seemed and started to die as well, nothing Itachi could do to stop it or try and bring him back. Minato had spent that entire time waving between terror of loosing his only family left and absolute unquenchable spouts of blind rage and a thirst for revenge against the alien, but for his sons' sake he would leave the room and work out in the gym to get rid of it then return and stay with his child, clutching his good bandaged hand and talking to him, trying to convince him to come back to him.

One day he had come back from such a time in the gym to find a bright light in the room and curled over his son. Terrified it was something of Orochimaru's doing come to finish the job he had called to the others. Itachi had taken one look at it and was soothing the man gently, telling him it was help, not to harm him. The others had been about to ask him how he was so sure when the light faded a little to reveal a familiar figure to some of them, tails curled around the boy.

They had relaxed and Suigetsu sighed "Kyuubi" in relief, then frowned again and looked up at Itachi "why and how is she here? I thought she stayed in our native time."

"She did" Itachi had answered "but she also told him if he ever needed her she would be there for him. This is as good a time as any." They agreed and Minato had frowned "you mean she's that thing Naruto was talking about that year? The thing that made him feel better and more relaxed every time she was near him?" and when they nodded Kisame spoke "with some luck she should be able to convince Naruto to come out of this state he's in and talk to us. He can't die on us."

"I wish to god" Hinata cuddled into her father, tears in her eyes again and body trembling as she obviously wanted to run to the boy and shake him, to plead with him to come back to them. They watched and when she went on for hours they eventually one by one filed away, Minato the last to go when Kisame firmly took his shoulders and said soothingly "there's no telling how long she will take with him. Go find Obito, he needs you to be with him and comfort him."

"But I want to be here for Naruto in case he..."

"We'll call you if there's any change, trust us and leave Kyuubi to her work in peace."

It didn't take long, in fact when Minato walked past his room one hour later he heard soft sobbing. Almost running inside he found the boy awake and laying on his stomach where he had been laid, but attempting to roll over and curl into a ball around himself but his pain and his stiffness was preventing that.

As he watched the boy had tried to roll over again and cried out in pain, this time his body convulsing once, which then pulled his nerves and muscles and made him cry out again. His bandages had started to show a lot of fresh blood.

Minato had rushed forward, trying to soothe him to lie still again and when he continued to try Minato took his good hand in his and just knelt there. He had spoken softly over and over until the boy laid still, tears running from his eyes but not making a sound or speaking a word except for the moans of pain.

"I know Naruto" Minato couldn't help his own tears running down his face as he had dipped his head to touch his sons' forehead with his own. "I know my son" and the two had stayed that way for hours, grieving together and when the others had went past and saw them they had all continued on their way and left them alone. Except for Obito who came forward, curling up in Minatos' arms and started to cry with them.

In the other rooms the others had begun grieving also, Rin and Itachi held Sasuke close while he sobbed and both also had tears in their eyes. Hizashi held Hinata, Kisame was holding Suigetsu and Karin as both the woman and teenager let silent tears flow.

As Naruto had healed and his hand and foot reset, they had discovered just how much the buji had helped the boy. Instead of thirsting for revenge like his father and totally hating the alien he was determined to stop him and save and protect any further victims.

Yet as months went by and they fought him more and more they found his anger and hate of the man seeping through his control. For his sons' sake Minato was forced to put aside his own hate to keep him from stepping over the edge of control.

And it was more difficult for Minato then anyone could know loosing Kushina. He had a secret only his newly dead wife and Naruto and their family doctor knew about. From birth Minato had been different as well, although not like Naruto even though the boy had inherited Minatos' secret.

Minato had a slight and barely noticeable disability.

While the others had noticed his problem they had come to accept it as just Minato, not really realising the truth about the man. He had minor autism. That meant he had spurts of complete removal from the world, where he hid inside his thoughts and mind and no one but Kushina had ever been able to bring him out of it. The others just took this as him being deep in thought and usually waited for him to come out himself.

The other thing was he could barely control his emotions or feelings, which was why he tended to use a blank face, having learnt by his family when his feelings were out of control to use this to cover it up. Kushina had all ways been Minatos' control and link to the outside world, helping him know when and what to do in situations and with her dead he needed someone else. Like Naruto, but he had a weaker case of the same problem.

In Narutos' case he merely had trouble with his emotions, which was why he would freak out if he were touched when he wasn't prepared for it. Not to dumb down what he had experienced when he was eight, which would drive anyone mad instead of making them sensitive to the touch of others.

Thank god for his rescuer and thank god for the therapy.

It was just after he had fully healed that Naruto had insisted that Minato learn the buji's language just in case from both he and Itachi and the man had only continued with it because it seemed to be soothing him.

Minato was brought back from his memories by the knowledge Itachi had just finished talking to him. "Sorry? Did you say something?" The nin frowned thoughtfully at him but to his credit didn't ask about it "I said Orochimaru has gotten his hands on Naruto twice before and has not harmed him since Kushina. You know why do you not?"

"Yeah. He found out how smart he is becoming and wants to use him to find a way to conquer the Earth forces."

"And Naruto knows by now to bide time for us to get there. He shall be fine."

"I hope so" Minato sighed "I hope to god so."

Soon they stood in front of the great marble throne that Hizashi used. Hinata stood beside it and her father, absently stroking her pet black panther between the pricked up ears. Hizashi was speaking to them softly "I told you from the start that the Sanin was evil and would cause the world a lot of suffering."

"We know Hizashi but we all don't have your insight into alien nature and we believe in giving people a far chance! We gave YOU a chance instead of striking you off as a jungle savage!"

The jungle ruler glared at the man, both locking eyes in a test of wills. Minatos' patience with the man had grown thin over the last year or so. "Father" Hinata took her father's hand and distracted him while Kisame pulled Minato aside and spoke in low chiding tones. The girl looked at them and said softly "of course we will come and help you."

"Thank you Hinata" Itachi bowed in gratitude to her, which caused Hizashi to calm and say, "we'll come."