Author's Note: Greetings to all of you lovely denizens of the internet, without whom there would not be too much point in uploading this fanfiction!
I'd like to thank the 24 people who Favorited this story and the 50 people who are Following it. To the people that did both, I'm doubly thankful.
I'd also like to give an extra special thank you to the two people who reviewed.
To cixelsyd758: Don't worry, I completely agree with you. I added something to the Author's note in the previous chapter to clarify, but Renge's plan is not actually the plan for this story. Renge's knowledge of the past and future has made him overconfident in his ability to make what he wants to happen actually happen. He'll get reality checks as things happen that go against his plan, or that he never considered in the first place. Sorry for not making this clear before.
To Sanford9687: While making someone Naruto's twin is hard to do well, authors like JJGrace42 and ElectraSev5n have written amazing stories with that premise. It might be arrogant to assume that I can match them, but I won't know until I try! And since those two are among my inspirations, I won't be forcing anyone's progress to match up to Renge's. Everyone will advance at their own pace.
One last thing I should note, is that I'm not doing a lot of editing in order to reach the 50,000 words by the end of November goal for NaNoWriMo. That means that some things that I feel were written awkwardly will be published with the intent of editing later. For instance, I'm not sure if I properly set up Renge's outburst this chapter. What I'm trying to go for is that due to all of the negativity that he's been feeling along with his overprotectiveness of Naruto caused him to stop thinking and lash out, and that he wouldn't have done that if he was thinking logically.
If anyone thinks that something should be shown/explained/written better, feel free to tell me. If you have a suggestion on how to improve something, feel free to tell me. I might not change anything now, unless it's REALLY bad, but I plan to go over the chapters that I release for NaNoWriMo and improve them after it's over.
Date: October 27
Age of Renge and Naruto: 2 years, 17 days
I should probably clarify how I had expected to be treated in the orphanage before I explain how we were actually treated.
I had expected beatings and discrimination. I had expected that we would be locked in a tiny closet like Harry Potter and given a single thin blanket on top of what could only be called a mattress by technicality. I had expected being cursed at, being insulted, and in general being treated in a way that would kill an ordinary child without having anyone accused of murder.
While I'm not sure whether or not the Head of the orphanage had intended to treat us at least somewhat like that, Hiruzen had put the fear of God (of Shinobi) in her and she didn't dare abuse us.
I mentioned before that all of Konoha's orphanages were overcrowded. The orphanage that Hiruzen sent us to had the second most children in the entire village. I believe that it's because it was built near the Uchiha district, and near the Police Force Headquarters as a result. It was probably considered safe by whoever was in charge of assigning orphans to put them near the police, even with the anti-Uchiha sentiment that had been growing since Kurama's rampage.
The woman that had met us was the Head of the orphanage, and she was terrified of mistreating us. We got the same type and amount of food as everyone else our age, were taught to read and write in the group class, and slept in one of the communal bedrooms with the same blankets and mattresses as all the other two year olds.
The problem was how overcrowded the orphanage was. The Head worked mainly with the older kids, and couldn't spend much time with any individual child. She presumably told the other staff not to mistreat us, but she apparently didn't tell them why.
Considering how stressed and overworked all of the workers were, I believe that she didn't want them to be scared of their own shadows on the assumption that a ninja was hiding in them. Whatever she told them made them behave, but it increased their hate after a few days.
The workers would separate us from the other kids during playtime and keep us indoors "in order to make sure that you two are okay," as one said to us. All of the attention starved children became jealous of us as a result. The irony is that we weren't receiving attention; whoever was watching us would close their eyes or do paperwork and only pay attention if one of us tried to go outside.
Since an extra worker was sent to watch us, work slowed down for all of the other workers. Food took longer to cook, the Head could spend even less time with the children, and sometimes the even more overworked staff would forget to buy things like groceries or blankets for everyone.
One of the older kids figured out that all of this only started after we showed up, and we literally woke up one day to find that every child in the orphanage couldn't stand us. I don't know how they pulled that off with two year olds, but even during classes all of the other students there would stay away from us, which really freaked out the Head.
At the end of the day, the adults neglected us even more than they did the other kids, the children ostracized and insulted us, and our living situation was as sucky as everyone else's with people blaming us for it.
Now, I could have handled all of this without a problem. My little brother, on the other hand, did not take our new living situation well. He wanted friends, attention, and praise from adults when he did well. All that he ended up having was glares, insults that they thought he couldn't hear, a pair of stuffed monkeys, and an older brother that was trying to hide his steadily increasing level of anger.
"Renge?" He asked one day when the other kids were playing together. "Why no one like us?"
Sensing hate from the workers that could see us and some of the older kids, I gave my reply. "Because they're all stupid."
Naruto giggled, and the hate increased.
I'd always been lazy in my previous life. While I liked pacing while listening to music, I didn't like any other form of exercise. It may seem unbelievable to you, but that's how I was. Feeling the sadness from my younger brother and the hate from everyone who was mature enough to feel it put me in a bad enough mood that I was able to push myself to exercise in a way that just planning to do so never could have accomplished.
Since I didn't know what a good exercise regimen would be, I decided to perform a variety of stretches and as much of Saitama's training regimen as I could. Saitama was the powerful protagonist of a Japanese manga called One-Punch Man- you know what, it doesn't matter. His regimen was composed of 100 sit-ups, 100 push-ups, 100 squats, and a 10 km run every day.
Funnily enough, I'd never actually gotten around to reading or watching One-Punch Man in my previous life. I'd just learned about stuff like that from people that I knew that had read or watched it, and I managed to remember a little of it.
The orphanage workers were very confused when I started working out during playtime and break times. After over a week of this, one of them asked the Head about it. She asked me what I was doing after class the next day.
I looked her in the eyes. "I will become a ninja."
Her fear actually managed to increase. I couldn't help but grin at how a sentence from a two year old managed to freak her out. At this point, I was starting to wonder if there was a limit to how scared one person could feel.
She nodded, and walked out of the room with her hands trembling. I realized while doing sit-ups later that day that she didn't have a concept of two-year olds training to become ninja, let alone of their own volition. I'm not sure why I expected her to just think of me as a prodigy and roll with it; she was a civilian, not a ninja.
She also probably didn't want to think of the "Demon brats" as some workers called us when they thought we couldn't hear them becoming ninjas, but that literally only crossed my mind right now. I probably should have asked her about that before she died, but meh.
She was killed after Naruto and I turned seven. The Uchiha Clan Massacre had happened a few months before, and there was a large crime wave as ANBU struggled to replace the Uchiha Police Force after faith in ninja had fallen even lower than after Kurama's rampage.
Older orphans were pressured to leave the orphanage by workers that were worried that the Head would die from overwork, and some left even when they should have stayed for a few more years. One of them was a tall kid named Tsuyoi. He had left the same year that Naruto and I did, and began training under a Uchiha blacksmith at the recommendation of the Head. He wasn't in the district during the massacre, and survived it as a result.
None of the other blacksmiths in Konoha were willing to take on another apprentice, and him not being a Uchiha meant that none of them were willing to give an exception out of pity. The Head couldn't let him back in the orphanage at that point, and she didn't know anyone that could help him.
He decided to commit a mugging in order to get enough money to leave Konoha and try to become a blacksmith somewhere else. He was old enough to remember how life had been before Naruto and I showed up, and he was one of the orphans that hated us when things changed as a result. He knew that even an Academy student could kill him in a fight, so he didn't go after Naruto or I.
The only people in the orphanage that knew that Hiruzen had put us there were the Head, Naruto, and I. Everyone else assumed that the Head had volunteered to take us in like she did to many other kids, and Hiruzen had scared her to the point that she didn't want to tell people otherwise. Tsuyoi had held that grudge for years, and since Naruto and I were beyond his reach, he went after the Head.
She had been returning to the orphanage after rushing out to buy a replacement how-to-read book when an orphan ripped hers to shreds during a temper tantrum. Mizuki of all people had been in the area when he heard the gurgle. She was dead by the time he reached her, but he caught Tsuyoi a minute later. He'd taken her wallet and the gold engagement ring with an emerald set inside that she always had on her, except for the times that she'd let some of the girls hold and wear it under her watchful eye.
Naruto wanted to go to her funeral, so we went. I made sure that we stayed out of sight until everyone had left so that they wouldn't lash out at us. I left a gold-colored ring at her shrine with a plastic jewel colored red-white. I spoke to Tsuyoi later that day and asked him why he did it, and he gave me most of the information that I put here.
That was also the day that I learned her name: Tsubaki Honoka.
In any case, all of that would happen years in the future. At the time, I was simply training while figuring out why she was so scared by my comment. Even if I had known what would happen to her, I would have simply gone on with my life since I wouldn't have been able to do anything about it until right before it happened.
Date: December 24
Age of Renge and Naruto: 2 years, 2 months, 14 days
"Renge, I wanna play outside."
I turned to my little brother. He had been feeling excited about the snow outside all day, but now he was feeling sad about not being allowed to play in it. There was a rule in that orphanage that stated that orphans would only be allowed to play outside in the winter until they were four or older. This was because any child under that age needed more supervision when playing in the snow than the orphanage could afford.
"We can play in the snow when we're older." I assured him.
"How older?"
"Two years older."
"Is that many?"
"Kind of."
"But I wanna play outside now!"
I patted him on the head in order to forestall the temper tantrum that I could feel was coming. "How about if I play with you instead?"
"For how long?" He asked while pouting at me.
"All day long." I said, smiling at him.
"Really?!" He asked excitedly.
I felt a wave of guilt. I had been so focused on training that I had started neglecting my little brother. I intended to be a prodigy, but that didn't mean I had to become Itachi.
"Really." I assured him.
"Yay!" He exclaimed, jumping up happily. "What you wanna play Renge?"
What do two year olds play in the first place? Especially when they can't leave the room that they're in. I tried to think of a sport we could play when my eyes fell on Gohan.
"Let's play Dragon Ball."
"How do you play that?" Naruto asked.
Picking up our monkeys, I grinned at him. Goten wasn't born during the Saiyan Saga, and Gohan wasn't particularly powerful compared to the villains, but I could change things as necessary.
"Two super ninja-monkeys named Gohan and Goten fight the evil ninja-monkey Raditz!" I said dramatically. I wondered if we would eventually play through all of the events of Dragon Ball Z. If so, then I would regret not watching or reading the Buu Saga when I had the chance.
Naruto made Gohan sit on my head as I sat down, pretending to be unable to get up.
"With Gohan holding him down, Goten used his strongest attack on the evil Raditz!" I exclaimed in my best attempt at an announcer voice.
"Ka-Me-Ha-Ho-HA!" Yelled Naruto before charging forward and hitting me in the face with Goten.
Hopefully he'll be able to remember the actual pronunciation of that attack by the time we reach the Cell Saga. He's been pronouncing it a different way every time.
In my Raditz voice, I spoke again. "How? How could I lose… to these little… monkeys?"
"Bad guys always lose!" Said Naruto in his Goten voice.
"I may have lost, but my cousins will be here soon. They are much stronger than me, and they will beat you little monkeys!" Having said Raditz's last line, I overdramatically fell over.
"We win!" Cheered Naruto, jumping around with Goten. Picking up Gohan, I began to jump around with him. Then the dinner bell rang.
"Can we play more later?" Asked my happy little brother as we went to our spots.
Mentally rearranging my training schedule, I smiled at him. "Of course."
Date: February 24
Age of Renge and Naruto: 2 years, 4 months, 14 days
One day, I was struck by the unpleasant realization that I was not dealing with life in the orphanage as well as I thought I was.
It was shockingly cold outside for February. This meant that all of the orphans were stuck inside while complaining about not being allowed to play in the snow. In an attempt to not overwork the workers, a boy and a girl of every age above five were assigned to stay with the orphans a year younger than them. The exception to this were the two six year olds chosen. They got to watch every kid younger than them with a couple of workers.
I could deal with the hatred of the workers. They neglected and separated us, but all of the orphans were neglected and the others hated us even if we could be with them. They glared at us, but they would still do their jobs properly when it came to us, separation from the other orphans aside. They insulted us when they thought we couldn't hear them, but I could take their insults and I would be too busy comforting my little brother after the fact to do anything but inwardly curse them out. Feeling their hatred made me furious, but I turned all of that anger into fuel for my training until I was too tired to be angry anymore.
Overall, the workers were assholes, but they chose to work at an orphanage because they genuinely wanted to take care of children. As such, they weren't actually bad people and wouldn't abuse a pair of two year olds, although some of that may have come from whatever the Head told them. Even separating us from the other kids was to 'protect' them, which I can grudgingly call well-intentioned when looking back at it.
Children are far more innocent. Innocent does not mean good however. Innocent means that they absorb the opinions of others and say or do things in response without ever realizing the consequences.
On most days, they didn't say or do anything because of how closely we were watched and how often we were separated from them. On this day however, the workers were too busy to either separate us or watch over us.
The children assigned to us were told to put all of the two year olds to bed for our naptime. The workers were in other rooms, wrangling as many of the other orphans as they could.
We were all supposed to get extra blankets from the beds of our assigned children due to how cold it was. I was sitting in a corner, trying to read one of the books of bedtime stories to myself. Suddenly, I felt confusion and sadness from Naruto along with anger, amusement, and what I would later realize was the pleasure that comes from someone else's suffering from the six year olds.
"What's going on?" I asked after reaching Naruto.
"They no give blankets. I'm cold." Naruto replied, while looking at me like he was about to cry.
"Demon brats don't get blankets. Use your demon powers to stay warm." The girl said while glaring at us.
"If it wasn't for you two, there would be enough blankets for everyone. Leave us alone!" The boy said loudly.
Their hate was being overshadowed by satisfaction at Naruto's quickly increasing sadness. My little brother sniffled, and I stopped caring about the fact that I was dealing with a pair of six-year olds. Not when they were about to let a two year old freeze to death. Not when they were harming MY LITTLE BROTHER.
Charging at the boy, I punched him in the stomach with all of my diminutive strength. He fell to the ground, clutching his abdomen. I punched him three more times, tears in my eyes the entire time, before the girl yanked me back while calling for a worker. The other two year olds were all crying loudly due to the chaos.
A worker ran in and slapped me hard enough that I saw stars. Another two tried to calm the other two year olds. Naruto and the other boy were crying and feeling red-white. The girl was feeling furious and the worker was feeling more hateful than I'd ever felt anyone feel.
Before things could get any worse, the Head rushed in. "What is going on here!" She demanded fiercely enough that the six year-olds and I answered immediately.
"The red-headed demon brat attacked Shuji!"
"If those demon brats weren't here everyone would have enough blankets!"
"They were trying to kill us by not giving us blankets!"
There was a moment of silence before people started talking again.
"He's lying, how would not giving those two blankets kill them?" Objected the boy that I now knew was named Shuji.
"Those two can just use their demon powers to stay warm!" The girl whose name I still didn't know added.
The Head raised her right hand to silence our arguing while pinching the bridge of her nose with her left.
"Shuji, Chizuru, people can die if they feel very cold for too long. That's why we need to use extra blankets and need to keep the fire going during the winter." The Head explained. Shuji and Chizuru felt confused, but they nodded.
The Head turned to me. "When something like this happens, you need to tell an adult, not start a fight." It would have been a lot more intimidating if I couldn't feel her fear, but I nodded anyway.
Having calmed down, I realized that I was the one in the wrong. Those two were only six; they'd never seen anything to show them that the cold could kill someone. Even if they had, they wouldn't have understood what death was. At most, they would have thought that death meant that people left them, and they would have thought that everyone would be happier if we left. They wouldn't even have been wrong.
I felt guiltier than I'd ever had in this life. No matter my physical age, I shouldn't think of six year olds as adults and should be the mature one in any situation. Turning toward them, I bowed deeply. "I'm sorry."
Naruto was still sniffling, but he awkwardly bowed to them as well. "I sorry."
The six year olds looked at each other, their confusion increasing. The Head turned toward them, and they each muttered an apology. There was barely any of the vibrations that I'd already determined to signify lying, so I assumed that they mostly meant it.
Date: April 2
Age of Renge and Naruto: 2 years, 5 months, 23 days
"You two are coming with me." One of the workers told us while everyone was being let out to play.
I was immediately suspicious, and turned to the Head. She looked the worker in the eyes and then nodded at me. "Give us a minute to grab our monkeys." I told him. He felt impatient, but he allowed us to rush to our bedroom and grab them.
He walked out of the orphanage and began to lead us in a different direction from the one that Hiruzen had brought us from. One of the ANBU followed us from near the edge of my steadily increasing range.
It was difficult for Naruto to keep up, but we made it to our destination before I decided to tell the worker to slow down. It was a small, grassy field with a tiny pond and what looked like a forest on the far edge.
"I don't think that you two should be allowed to play here, but it's not up to me. Don't go into the trees or in the water or you won't be allowed back no matter what I'm told to do." The worker said before walking over to a tree and sitting down against it.
I turned to Naruto who was looking at everything with wide eyes. "Let's play tag." I suggested.
He nodded before frowning for a second. "How do you play?" He asked.
I tapped him on the shoulder. "That means that you're it. Now you have to chase me, and when you catch me, I'll be it."
"Okay!" He said cheerfully. I began running. Once he realized that the game had started, he began chasing after me.
We played tag for an hour. I would always let Naruto catch me whenever he started feeling too frustrated. After we were done, Naruto and I sat down to rest. I gave myself a few minutes before I got up to work on my training regimen. After I'd tired myself out, the worker took us back to the orphanage.
For the remainder of our time in the orphanage, a worker would take us to that little park during playtime while an ANBU watched from the shadows. It would be on our third birthday that I would find out part of why we were allowed to do this.
Date: October 10
Age of Renge and Naruto: 3 years
As expected, Hiruzen returned on our third birthday. What I did not expect was that he would visit us at our park.
Yes I have always been possessive, why do you ask?
The staff had felt more anxious than usual all day. They had also felt more hateful than usual to us. The Head ended up taking us to our park that day.
It wasn't too long after we arrived that Hiruzen showed up. "Hello Naruto. Hello Renge." He said once he reached us, bending down.
"Hello old man." Said Naruto with a cheerful smile. I would have greeted him, but I was distracted by the fact the Head might have actually blacked out for a moment behind us. Based on how the ANBU felt, they were either laughing or holding it in.
Hiruzen stared at Naruto for a moment, feeling confusion. I wondered if this would happen on every one of our birthdays.
"I brought new presents for the both of you." He said, apparently realizing that he could be considered old at this point.
He pulled out a pair of slug-patterned scarves and a pair of rubber slugs from his bag. After squeezing one of the slugs, I realized that it was a bath toy.
Seeing as I doubt that Tsunade got us presents, I guess he's just giving us presents based on himself and people close to him. Has Orochimaru left the village yet? If he hasn't, then I hope he leaves before Hiruzen gets us snake-themed presents.
"I heard that you want to be a ninja, Renge." Wait, he's talking to me. What did he say?
"I decided to let you two use this field in order to help you train." Oh, he's talking about me becoming a ninja.
"Still though, you shouldn't train too hard. You're still young, and you could hurt yourself. There's no need to rush."
I suppose from your point of view there isn't, but from mine I was born a decade too late.
"If you hurt yourself while training, then you will not be allowed to train until you are older. Do you understand?"
I scowled at him, but I knew better than to go against him. He had ANBU watching me, and if he really didn't want me to train then I would be physically stopped from training if necessary. I nodded.
"Good." He smiled at us and patted us on our heads. "I was told that you both have been behaving properly. I'm very busy, but I'll try to spend more time with you on your next birthday."
"Bye old man!" Naruto said, waving him off.
When we got back, I found out that Hiruzen had gotten a new set of clothes, new mattresses, and new blankets for everyone in the orphanage. This cheered everyone up enough that the hate I felt was lessened for the next week.
Chapter word count: 4,251
Date uploaded: 11/06/2022
If there's anything I've learned by writing this chapter it's that every time I try to write a morally bad character I add things to try to justify what they do. On the bright side, this helps me be fair to characters like Hiruzen that I don't like but am trying to be fair to.
I also randomly added that the Tsubaki died as a joke and then ended up writing the entire story of how she died on the spot. Same with Renge and Naruto playing together. I just thought "I haven't shown the twins interacting much" and then I ended up writing that entire scene on the spot.
Until next time!