Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto. Masashi Kishimoto does, so thank him for Naruto.
Rated to be on the safe side and this chapter will be one of the reasons.
A/N: As I have warned, there will be a bit of pain and angst in this chapter I guess. This one was hard because I didn't want to hurt them and especially not while they are still young, but I said they would have a few problems. Also I know some fans don't like this, but I have developed a bloodline limit for them that will make an appearance and I will burrow one bloodline for them that I so far only seen two people use(but had Naruto obtain it differently). So that means it's not the sharingan, the byakugan, any other clan ability. Last there will be a small skip in here, I want to get to their genin days soon and I'm taking longer than I planned.
"Speaking"
Thinking
"Inner self/ Demon talking"
Demon thinking
The Burden of Three
4. Troubled Childhood
After about two months, Yugao was inducted into ANBU and was serving under Kakashi along side Uchiha Shisui and an odd teen named Tenzo, who preferred to be called the Moku because of his unique ability to do wood jutsu like the Shodai (First) Hokage. Rin spent most of her time in the Hokage's tower reading over the medical notes of Tsunade that the Hokage had given her. Anko had met a young man named Ibiki and he had convinced her to take classes in interrogation and torture, which she seemed to be doing quite well in. Kurenai was home most of the time working on her genjutsu and other training when not on mission because of all the space the home had access to. Though the teams were separated with their activities, they were still able to spend time with each other and the infants. At the moment they were all out in village preforming their individual duty when something tragic was in the process of happening.
It was about two hours since Asuka had given the three their bottles and she decided to see if they were still sleeping from their afternoon nap. She remembered that she was alone with the children since Lei was out for some errands as she walked into the children's room and felt something was strange, but couldn't understand what it was. When she went to the cradles she saw that the babies looked a little red and their faces were scrunched as if they were about to cry. That was when she realized what it was that seemed so strange. The room was always so quiet that anyone with minimum ninja training could easily detect the soft breaths of the babies, let alone the Hokage's sister. Their breathing was kind of irregular and somewhat labored. She placed one of her hands to each their foreheads one at a time and noticed that they all had a very high fever, so high that most would be quite concerned if an adult was that ill.
Asuka ran down the steps as fast as she could and happened to run in to a tired Yugao who had just took off her mask, signaling that her shift was over. Asuka quickly began to speak as soon as she saw the purple haired ANBU, "Oh Yugao, thank Kami that you're here! I was just checking on the babies since they usually take a nap after their feeding and wake up a couple hours later, but when I checked they were looking very ill and they are running very high fevers. I need you to go get a doctor, Rin, the Hokage, or anyone you could think of that could help and make it fast! They might not last long without medical attention." She hurried back to the children's room once she finished and tried not to cry.
To say the young girl was surprised would not have done the her mental state any justice. She was hoping for a nice relaxing evening of talking to the others, learning how to cook from the others with Anko, and maybe playing with the Uzumaki babies. Once the older woman stopped talking Yugao was out of the house and on her way to the Hokage's Tower and the hospital as fast as possible, her exhaustion forgotten.
Asuka paced nervously as she watched over the ill infants and waited for help. She had just left the room toward the front door to see if anyone was nearing the house when Anko and Rin both entered with a fast pace. They were apparently on their way home from their shift ending like Yugao when they ran into the young ANBU and heard the news. They quickly entered the children's room without even acknowledging Asuka's presence. Rin began to try to heal them as fast as she could and had some effect, but it not much since she didn't know the cause and she didn't want to stop because she felt that if she stopped she might loose one.
Anko in a fit of rage turned around quick as a striking snake and grabbed the elderly woman by her shirt, then began yelling "What the hell did you do! I know for a fact that these three were just fine when we left and when we return we find them dying!"
What Anko failed to see was that the older woman was close to losing her own composure when before she was grabbed. Anko's yelling was the last thing needed to break the wall holding back her emotions and the older woman fell to her knees crying while explaining what had happened "...I don't know! All I did was make the give them three bottles each today, bathe them, and watch them a little as they slept before returning to my room for a couple hours to write in my journal. I left but my and their doors open to hear and see anything that happened. Other than that Lei came to my door to tell me he had so errands to run before leaving...I don't know what happened to them. Please tell me that they will be alright! Please..." After that the woman sadden state got the better of her and she could no longer make complete words anymore.
Anko let the woman go and walked downstairs to the kitchen. All of the trouble was stressing her out greatly and aggravated her dormant cursed, causing a little pain in the back of her neck. She took out a glass from the cabinet began to pour some water from the refrigerator, but failed to notice that it was the water used for the formula that the infants drink. After taking a sip Anko's eyes went a little wider and she spit it out immediately. Some say Anko is sadistic, some say that she's somewhat insane, but one thing they learned about Anko's skills is that thanks to her teacher she has a large knowledge of poisons. From that one sip she detected a poison that is usually used by Konoha ninja for assassination and that there was enough in that water to kill a healthy adult male within three hours if a full glass was ingested(she sipped and spit before it could hurt her). She had three thoughts running through her head as she put the glass down and ran up the stairs. So they were poisoned...and boiling the poison-infected formula would have spread it to throughout the liquid and have them drink all of it. I have to admit that, despite being disturbing that someone would poison the bottle water infants, that it's amazing that they survived this long considering most adults would be dead by now. But the real question is who did it...That last thought reached her mind as she entered the room again, only being five minutes since she and Rin arrived home.
Anko spoke as loud and fast as she could "Rin! Their bottle water had a high amount of assassin grade poison in it from the village! You extract it as best you can while I go to the hospital and get some of the antidote." Anko was gone before she even had time to see Rin doing what she said or the fact that Yugao and the Hokage were both in the room.
Now that Rin knew what the problem was she was able to extract the poison from the three little bodies and put it a small jar that she had in her vest. Anko arrived another five minutes later with the antidote and poured it in Rin's glowing hands, one of he antidote's unique features. Some poison antidotes could not be use simply by injecting the patient or having them swallow it because how poisons attacked the bodies, sometimes getting to the more vital areas before they could be neutralized and killing the infected. The mix that Anko had was to be applied to a medic-nin's healing chakra and heal the infected patient much like they heal other wounds, this was developed since most medic-nin have little success removing the poison and healing the infected areas. Rin was good, but would need another month or two to perfect the ability of healing without the aid of antidotes.
Not long after the triplets were resting peacefully in good health and all the adults shared a sigh of relief now that the infants were no longer in danger. With that they all went to the dining room, making sure that the baby-monitor was on before leaving out.(remember they do have some technology) Anko went to the kitchen to get the water and the others waited at the table for her.
When Anko walked in she nearly slammed the pitcher on the table and began to speak with an angered tone, "I'll say this, one of the few things I'm thankful for from my bastard of an ex-sensai is that I can detect a drop of poison in or on just about anything from one taste and there some in this water." She then pulled out a small bag from her pouch and poured some white powder in the water. After a few seconds the water turned white, then dark purple and she began again, "That is a special mix that I made with the help of Mina-sensai, it turns a certain color no matter what liquid it's placed in. First if the liquid has a color or no color the powder will turn it white, then it will change colors depending on what is in it. Staying white means that it's safe, yellow means that it's some kind of drug to knock you unconscious, yellow means a paralysis of some kind, a light violet means that there is some poison in it, and this color that you see means that it's highly concentrated. From what I tasted and can tell this stuff could kill a normal adult male in a couple of hours, a ninja just a few more hours if not doing exerting himself too much, and a baby should have been killed ten minutes after drinking that. I don't know if I should be amazed at them or furious at whoever did this!"
The Sandaime Hokage just stroked his beard as he sat there and spoke his mind, "Well it could be a kekkei genkai (bloodline limit) activating, though I don't recall any of their family resisting such a strong dose of poison. It could possibly be the demons are helping them, after all if the children die the demons die." He noticed that the others were looking at him once he mention a blood limit and sighed as he began to explain, knowing that they did not know their teachers had blood limits. "Their father's ability was hentsuu (adaptability) and their mother's was katoku (inheritance). They are kekkei genkai that are always activated and seldom visible, for that reason most would not notice the ability. The hentsuu ability allows the body to adapt to nearly anything. For instance, if the person with this ability working on speed and strength with weights they adjust faster and gain more than others. Also their bodies are more resilient because of this, their father was a good example of this. Their mother's katoku ability allows the offspring of that person to have the strengths of the strengths and abilities of both parents and five generations prior. So both parents and grandparents were strong with a great about of chakra and endurance, what this means is that they will literally be bundles of energy."
The five listened and was amazed and curious of how powerful the three would be when they are older. They all were thinking about something other than the danger the triplets were in until Yugao spoke a question she had wanted to ask for a long time. "Oh...Hokage-sama, I was wondering what was that strange mark on the babies right shoulders? If it were not for the color I'd assume they were unique birthmarks, but the odd color makes them look more like little tattoos." Once Yugao said that all the others thought back to when they saw the mark she was talking about. On each one of the three infants' right shoulder sat a swirl that looked very much like the symbol that was on the vests that the chunin and jonin wear, the only difference was that the swirl was the reverse of the one that others wore and they were sky blue instead of red.
The Sandaime chuckled as he remembered what the young girl was talking about and guessed he could be truthful since most of the village had forgotten about it. "Well ladies I guess you can say it is a birthmark. As you know in this village we have many clans that are recognized by certain traits or their kekkei genkai, but there was one individual that that thought wanted something for his descendants to have as a means to be recognized as well. He had unique traits, but thought they might not be inherited since his brother showed now signs of his abilities. So he had created a jutsu that would place his clan symbol on his arm and all those that would be a direct descendant of him. He and his brother were the last of their clan, but had a lot of influence on the village's development. Because of their influence the village council adopted an altered version of their clan symbol. Most of the village forgot how we developed our symbol and only a few people even know about the birthmark. At the moment there are only four people in the world that have his mark on their arm."
They all sat there digesting this information for a few seconds and began an hour long discussion about who poisoned the babies, as well as some side talk about their future abilities. They immediately knew that it was someone that wanted them dead because of the demons. Their first thought was to check the source of water and see if that was the cause, but that was proven useless when it was discovered that the water and other drinks in the were untouched. (They used Anko's powder to check a couple ounces of all the opened drinks) Their next thought that someone might have been able to sneak in and poison the water, but is was doubted that anyone would be able to get past four of the best kunoichi and an ex-kunoichi unnoticed.(Asuka was a chunin instructor like Iruka when not helping raise children) There was also the fact that an intruder would not know which pitcher of water was for the babies. Asuka had calmed down enough to realize that Lei still had not arrived back yet.
Lei had arrived about an hour after the realization of his absence hit Asuka. As Lei walked in his room he was in for a very bad surprise. Sitting in the chair at his desk was Kin, Yugao was sitting on the desk, Kurenai was leaning against the wall with her arms folded, and Anko was laying across his bed with a very familiar book in her hand. He recognized it as his private journal that he kept locked in the desk draw and began to panic as he realized that they must have read it.
Anko was just lazily flipping through the pages as if she was just casual reading one of her romance books and looked up at Lei as if just noticing he was there. "Oh, there you are Lei, we were wondering where we disappeared to. We came to your room to find you, but instead all we find is the little book full of the most interesting things just sitting here on your bead begging for someone to read it." She paused for a second to turn the page, while Lei was sweating heavily as he knew that he had his journal locked in the desk and they must have searched his room. "Let's see, father of three, a loving husband, retired two years ago for injury, oldest son killed in jonin exams a few years back, other two sons stayed chunin and were killed in the initial attack of the demons, wife killed in the hospital by stray blast from the demons, and altered files to get closer to the Uzumaki's. Even went to the trouble of waiting a couple of months and getting a very potent poison, which you still had half of in the bottle. Very interesting, wouldn't you say girls?" The others just nodded while glaring at the terrified man.
Lei let out a tired sigh and chuckled. "Well I may be caught, but I still managed to kill those demons. The village will probably thank me. Now that they are gone, I don't care what happens t...what are you grinning about?" He stopped when he noticed a disturbing grin on the girls faces.
Anko decided to speak for the others, "Well it seems that you might have failed in your plans, those little ones are tougher than anyone would give them credit for. Right now they are sleeping peacefully in their cradles, resting from the exhaustion put on their small bodies to fight the poison until we could help."
Lei had paled and started to back out of the room when he bumped into Yugao's ANBU unit. The Hokage was standing behind them and ordered them to take him away. With the problems taken care of the elderly man had put the three children in his sister and the four young kunoichi care, and only those five. He hoped that would help the children live better.
The next six years it seemed were not any better for the Uzumaki triplets it seemed. After the first assassination attempt by Lei, it seemed that others decided to try their luck. Rin had determined that the children had been poisoned nearly every poison known to the ninja world, but there was a good thing about that. Because of the demons healing the children, they were seldom in any real danger and would look as if they were just ill. Also their hentsuu allowed them to build up an immunity to the poisons. Then there were the one that tried to do physical harm without poisons. Within the six year the girls had to stop an assassination attempt almost twice month, which brought the total to over a hundred attempt not including the poisons. That is one reason that the children were seldom left alone outside the house, always with one of them when walking through the village, and never allowed out at night.
Sadly, no matter how much they wanted to, the girls could not go with the three everywhere once they began to explore the area around their home at around five years old. Because of that some villagers or ninja that hated the demons would with until the women would leave the children unattended and attack. To say that the kunoichi were angered by their actions would be an massive understatement. The hospital usually had more than three patients arriving after each attack. Between the attacks and the glares, the children were a little frightened to be around adults they were unfamiliar with. Some of the villagers found a way around the young women by having their children bully the three, but most just made their children stay away from the young.
The saddest moment for the unique family happened when the three were kidnapped. Kurenai, Rin, Anko, Yugao, Asuka, and the Sandaime pretty much turned the village upside-down looking for them, as well as a few ninja that didn't have a problem with them. They did not find the three until a month later looking filthy, starved, beaten, and traumatized. It took almost six months of work to get the children back to their normal hyperactive happy selves. The kidnappers were eventually caught, they stupidly bragged on what they did to the kids to other shinobi. Because it was ninja that kidnapped them, there were many things they could have done in addition to beating and starve the children. But they would not now what that terrible time did to the triplets or what it did for them for a long time.
Some of the thoughts that was going through the Sandaime Hokage's mind disturbed him. It seems that there are some areas in this village that can block my crystal ball. I still don't understand how anyone can do that to children. It took Rin, Kurenai, and Inoichi at least three months to clear all the mental and physical damages done, not to mention the images that Inoichi seen were very disturbing. Odd that he did not come across the demons while in the minds of those three, but after the damage was repaired he did say that they had the most complex minds he seen in anyone. It seems that Ibiki will be able to test the skills he has been learning. Also the burden that caused them all that pain is also the reason that they are even alive now. I guess carrying the demons will be both a curse and a gift for them.
A/N: A simple thing with the children's separate water thing, my older sister and a friend of the family use to keep separate bottles/pitchers of water for their children when they were babies and themselves/visitors. I figured I'd use that.
The kekkei genkai were some ideas that I was considering. The sharingan is often used and I wanted to try something else, though I might take some of the lesser abilities of the sharingan later (most likely how they perceive things to be moving slower and seeing through most genjutsu). Hentsuu I mentioned mean adaptability and katoku means inheritance. I original wanted to have both as combined and come from their father and have their mother have a dormant eye ability that canceled the sharingan, but I turned that idea down. I figured genetic dojutsu (eye techniques) were being overly used and I'll have the demons do something with their eyes later, after all the red eyes should have some abilities if Naruto can react faster when Kyuubi powered.
How hentsuu works I'll use my poison example. If poisoned and a little by a specific poison, they would build up an immunity to it in days and weeks rather than years, but I decided to have poisons still affect them. The will not die from any poison they are immune to, but will be affected to a certain degree depending on how potent it is to them. This ability will also help with training by making them adapt to their routines faster and things of that nature.
The katoku was the one that I really liked. Most if not all kekkei genkai can be inherited by descendants, but some don't pass on. This one works in two parts: 1. it takes some of the traits that the parents had prior to the children's birth and give them to their children, like how I said that because of their parent they will have a extremely large amount of chakra and endurance; 2. if the ancestry of up to 5 generations on either side of the family back had an ability then the they have a high chance of activating that ability. For example if Mina's great-great-great grandfather was an Uchiha and all the defendants of that Uchiha were never able to activate the sharingan up until her, then there is a chance that she could use it. Add the hentsuu ability to the mix would make ability a permanent active blood limit in the family. As a loophole, the two are also a blood limit creator, hentsuu create help unique abilities in then Uzumaki's and the katoku would pass it and their spouses' abilities on to their descendants.
The birthmark I been wanted to explain, but it slipped my mind and I decided to get that out of the way. The idea of the birthmark came from Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits. The main characters (Kharg/Darc) had a birthmark on their right arm, and all those that were descendants of the leader of a clan would have that birthmark somewhere on their body since their father had it on his right cheek I think and their grandfather had it on his back over one of his kidneys. The birthmark I did is like the jewel on the necklace that I mentioned in the first chapter.
Hopefully the next two chapters will cover their academy years and focus more on the Uzumaki's, though I might go a little faster if feel that it's taking too long again. I want to focus on the triplets, but until they get in the academy they have minor roles and I focused more on background info. Right now I'm debating how my story will branch off with their training, so it might take me longer.
Well I hope you like this story so far.
