"The Log is the truth; it is everything: the child, the lover, the mother, the son."
- The Book of Log
C2: Childhood's Beginnings (Pt.1)
Beta Reader: Izaranna
Today was a day like any other.
The birds were chirping, the babies were burping and everyone was happy. The merchants filtered into the city, while the shinobi exited it; Genin were exuberantly anticipating the sheer awesomeness of heading out on their first C-ranked mission, exhausted Anbu who were on their third S-ranked mission in a row…
Today ended unlike any other.
Ash to ash, dust to dust, fire to fire. The symphonies of death played across the grassy landscape, inciting all those who loved dark putridity into a mad frenzy of howling shrieks and fearful whimpers. The corpses built mountains tall enough to reach the sun, while the buildings tore themselves apart, shattering and smashing and breaking, till the ants could pick up the miserable leftovers.
None of that mattered to one being.
One entity only known to ninja as the Kyuubi, a nine-tailed chakra construct of unimaginable power. But even with all of his power, he could not prevent the one thing he held in the highest of regards from being wrenched away from him.
A Ceremonial throne? Is that…? No, it cannot be! Not again!
The Kyuubi looked at the little blond baby with abject horror in its crimson eyes.
He plans to reseal me into that child?!
The Kyuubi hatched a plan, a very cunning one. Little did he know that being constantly crucified for more than a decade didn't do wonders for one's sanity, let alone improve their scheming skills. Luckily, he was not like most sentient beings—he was pure unbridled chakra – energy given form, and thus his mental fortitude hadn't eroded.
Much.
He shrunk himself by condensing his chakra to loosen the hold of his previous Jinchuuriki's adamantine chains. Being made of chakra, he knew exactly how to manipulate it to his advantage and relished in doing so.
Ah! It's been so long. I might even forgive that accursed Uchiha for controlling me. It's been far too long since I could do… this!
In one swift motion, the Kyuubi manifested his chakra as an extra-long arm with a single finger, the nail long enough to eviscerate a giant. The Kyuubi's movement would have appeared instantaneous to most people, but luckily for Naruto, his parents weren't most people.
In fact, it was slow enough for them to do the quickest thing they could do. They jumped in between the cradle and the claw.
It was futile. The claw was an inch longer than it would have been in most universes, and so in this universe, it was an inch closer to the cradle.
"His lungs! Minato! Apply the seal!" yelled Kushina, her voice heightened by the intensity of the events that have surrounded her for the past hour; her son's lungs being pierced by a nail being one of them.
"The seal could do anything." spluttered Minato, "It might kill him, or send him into another dimension, or…"
Kushina lightly head-butted and screamed at him to quickly apply the seal because after all, what's the worst that could happen? If it succeeded, the Kyuubi would heal him and if it didn't… the woman didn't want to think about that.
Head-butting and screaming at her husband would have been impossible for a mere mortal, considering the ordeal she'd been through in the past hour—a biju extraction, a pregnancy, and being stabbed through the chest. Experiencing any one of those would have left a person starved of energy or dead, but all of those things combined? Well… it was a good thing she defied logic at any rate.
Don't tell me…he's going to seal me into an injured person with the Shinigami's seal.
The blond Hokage summoned a toad and began a series of hand seals.
He is.
This is not good. If I have learnt anything from my last two hosts about using complex seals on injured people, it's one thing;
Don't!
The Shinigami became visible to the Kyuubi.
I can see why Kushina fell in love with this piece of trash. He's good with seals. It's always seals or power with these Uzumaki women.
The Kyuubi was split into two halves—yin and yang—and Minato was trying to control which one went into Naruto. The headache was not helping; in fact, it was extremely detrimental to the cause. No surprise there.
The Yin half went to Naruto, while the Yang, to his father.
The Shinigami disappeared and all was well.
For the Shinigami that is.
Not for Naruto, oh no, definitely not, unless you count asphyxiation being a good thing, which no one ever does. One of his lungs had a gaping hole in it, but it quickly closed as the Kyuubi's power filtered in and once it finished healing him, threatened to take over the boy's mind. The seal activated and the biju's chakra vanished without a trace.
The adamantine barrier faded away as the life drained out of Kushina, however with the last of her energy, she forced herself to grab Minato and make sure both of them fell away from the cradle, but not before whispering three words with as much emotion as she could muster.
"I love you, dattebane!"
Last one doesn't count.
This is the story of how the Kyuubi lost his sanity; his most prized possession.
The rays of the rising sun slowly streamed into the Hokage's Office, lighting up a meeting between the newly reinstated Hokage, Sarutobi Hiruzen, and an Anbu squad.
The sluggish beams of light reflected the feelings of those it touched. Everyone was fatigued by the attack last night and being elite didn't decrease that by one bit.
"Hokage-sama, we have changed Naruto's bedding, cleaned and brought him to you as was ordered." said one of the elite shinobi of the village of Konoha.
"Did you observe any unusual activity from him?" questioned the Hokage, his weariness evident in his voice.
"When we went to retrieve him, he thrashed violently, but a minute later, his fit subsided. After that, he has shown no unusual signs."
The third Hokage yawned, sleepy after last night's events and then spoke, "What do you all think? Where should we place him? Speak your mind."
One of the masked ninja began and the rest followed suit, "He needs to be somewhere where he can be protected. In this climate, it is too easy to assassinate someone."
The second Anbu joined in, "Not the Orphanage then. The owners don't approve of Anbu interference. They don't like anyone much, least of all, the children. He can't live alone either, he can't do much by himself. The kid'll probably starve himself."
The third and final one decided to contribute to the growing discussion, pointedly ignoring the last few sentences from the other Anbu, "It would also make him vulnerable—too many people pass through there, and many new children must have joined it. It would be the perfect time to kidnap a boy, especially Minato's kid, although no one should know that. Hopefully."
The Hokage came to a decision after a moment of contemplation. "Place him in an apartment and have an Anbu squad take care of him until further notice."
The Anbu nodded, disappearing with a breeze, leaving a trail of leaves in their wake.
The Hokage stared at the spot they'd previously been standing, and muttered, "Someone's going to have to clean that up, and it is not going to be me."
A week later the Hokage had ironed out all pressing matters, except for one: the new Jinchuuriki of Konoha, and to do so, he had a plan. A perfect one.
It was the best he could come up with, after all, it could be easily changed at a moment's notice, and as a result, it lacked the need to be fool-proof.
The Hokage readied himself before he faced the masked man in front of him, knowing that it would be slightly difficult to deal with this Anbu.
"Hatake Kakashi." he began in a serious tone.
The young silver-haired Anbu stood up straighter.
"You have a mission of utmost importance; S-rank. It is an internal long-term mission where you will have to take care of… a child."
Kakashi's eyes narrowed behind his mask. He was relatively certain of the identity of the boy in question and he was not amused. Introducing this mission in such a manner and its high profile nature could only mean one thing.
"Hokage-sama, this mission…someone else will be more suitable for it. I don't feel emotionally capable of handling this mission." he said evenly, trying very hard to forget his sensei's smile, him ruffling his hair and laughing as he pouted, sensei's excitement at realising he was going to be a father…surely, the Hokage would understand that he wasn't fit to take on babysitting sensei's final legacy.
The Hokage looked at Kakashi with understanding. "There is no one else more suited to the task, Hound. He will help you as much as you will help him."
The Anbu captain pleaded again with Sarutobi. "Hokage-sama, I can take any number of S-rank missions to compensate for this… failure."
The old man had the feeling that the boy was talking about himself. He was told not to fight in the Kyuubi attack due to his age and was more than likely beating himself up for it. He'd failed everyone in his life. His teammates, his sensei... this mission would help him come to terms with his losses, the Hokage hoped.
"This is exactly to prevent that. I would rather not have a repeat of when you first joined Anbu; emotionless and taking missions of higher and higher risk, to the point where going on them became suicidal."
The room was silent, giving Sarutobi the opportunity to smoke his first pipe since becoming Hokage again.
After a long draught, he continued, "This mission's end date is currently undetermined, so work under the assumption that this will last at the very least a decade. There will be a day squad and a night squad, and I want you to lead the day squad. This arrangement is subject to change, pending trial. Kakashi," the Hokage paused, emphasising the significance of what he was going to say next, "you will need to interact with the child—all of the Anbu will. This stipulation is non-negotiable."
Kakashi unhappily agreed. What other choice did he have?
This would cut into his time on spying on the Hokage for Root. Danzo would need to be reported of this new development. The Anbu muttered an affirmative and left.
Kakashi was not happy with the blond demon he had to put up with.
Only a few months had passed and the moment the blond could crawl, he caused mayhem wherever he went. Chewing on everything and anything in sight, from knives to feet; the Anbu learnt to keep everything away from Naruto, higher than he could reach without chakra.
This did not prevent the boy from trying his very best and when his squad rotated out after a month, he had to babysit the greens too.
The baby frankly scared him—a hyperactive bundle of joy some would say, but Kakashi wouldn't be fooled by such flowery sentimental words. This was exactly why he hated children.
He once found him on top of a cupboard. How? No one knows; no chakra was used. He even checked it with his Sharingan. The blond simply grinned at him as he was brought down.
This was not the first time he found the child in an unusual place, and it certainly wouldn't be the last. The blond demon went absolutely everywhere without any compunctions—no kitchen counter, stove or closet was safe from his climbing. The idiot had nearly burned his pudgy hands only last week because he'd knocked a pot of boiling milk onto his hands, and he'd nearly given himself third-degree burns by sticking his hand into the stove.
All of this, to Kakashi, paled in comparison to the way Naruto crawled.
Unnatural was the only way to describe it. He started crawling like normal babies, unsure of himself and constantly falling over—this was fine. Acceptable even.
However, after a month or two, he crawled with extreme accuracy. He had no way to describe it. If he had a Byakugan then perhaps he could explain the mechanics behind it better, but with his trained senses, he knew that babies were not supposed to crawl like that—softly, quietly and without any wasted movement.
In a few words, he hated his placement, but luckily Danzo hadn't minded it. In fact, he was quite happy and told him to bring him reports about the unnaturally unnatural baby.
In stark contrast to his attitude, one of his new compatriots was cooing at the baby, quite happy with her placement—rookies always seemed energetic.
"Could this be a trend?" Kakashi wondered. "Perhaps by the time the placement is over, every Anbu will have at least once been a part of this mission? It is good practice for hand signs I suppose. After all, the Hokage did say that all commands must be given via hand signals."
Not even a year had passed and the boy could walk properly and was beginning to talk; this required further evaluation, or so Danzo-sama had said.
Kakashi was not happy—the boy was starting to look more and more like Minato-sensei. His blond tuft of hair was a dead giveaway. Sensei's hair colour was unique, no one else had a shade quite like his.
He was certain that being able to walk and talk before his first birthday was unusual, which further proved his point that the boy was unnatural. Danzo-sama seemed to take a great interest in it. No one else cared, they just went 'Aren't you a good boy?' and tickled his tummy. Even the Hokage did that. Why could no one else see how creepy Naruto was?
The silver-haired Anbu felt that either the boy was a genius (and considering who his parents were, that theory was extremely plausible) or perhaps the Kyuubi's seal was failing. Minato-sensei was amazing at sealing, almost as good as his wife, but that did not mean that he was infallible.
After all, if he had been, Obito wouldn't have died.
He would ask Danzo-sama, Kakashi decided. He would ask him whether he could tell the Hokage about his theory and convince him to get Jiraiya-sama to come and check his student's seal work, just in case the seal was actually affecting Naruto's mental acuity.
Talking about negative behaviour, the boy's unnaturalness did not only encompass the way he walked, it also affected how fast he did so.
Every once in a while, in the middle of walking, the boy would automatically stop and fall face flat. Not like a typical baby (of which he had done plenty of missions regarding taking care of them when he was a genin), but rather as though all of his muscles had ceased to move all at once.
Very strange.
Today, Jiraiya of the Sannin had visited Naruto and checked his seal.
It appeared to be functioning well—a little too well.
The Sannin said that there was no trace of the Kyuubi in the boy, it was as if he was not even a Jinchuuriki, and on top of that, he had civilian level reserves, which was concerning considering that Uzumaki genes were dominant according to Jiraiya-sama and that it should have overshadowed Minato-sensei's civilian chakra genes. Perhaps this is why the boy was blond and not red-haired?
Jiraiya-sama hypothesised that, because Minato-sensei had applied the seal on an injured person, something had gone wrong, and it was extremely likely that the chakra suppression ring in the seal had been modified so that it was constantly suppressing the boy's chakra—the boy probably had a large chakra capacity but just couldn't access it.
The Sannin stayed for the rest of the day, playing with Naruto. He even left him a little toad toy which the boy took to carrying around everywhere with him.
A year later, the Hokage decided that Naruto was old enough to read books—simple ones, of course—and begin learning how to write. Kakashi had been on a mission in the past year, one which had opened his eyes to Danzo's duplicitous nature.
His mission partner could manipulate wood which was supposed to be impossible, so naturally, he broke into the Hokage's residence to obtain more information, as wood manipulation was a unique mutation of the first Hokage. It was quite easy and it made him wonder whether there was a reason as to why such a high profile location was easily infiltrated.
Whilst in the building, Kakashi was caught by the Hokage and instead of being sent to T&I, the Hokage answered his question.
The results were, to put it simply, revealing.
Kakashi learned the error of his ways and informed the Hokage about Danzo's plans to assassinate him. Kakashi dealt with it and all was well, but unfortunately, without evidence, Danzo could not be incarcerated for his deeds.
After all was said and done, the Hokage decided to come to Naruto's house.
"Naru-chan?"
The third Hokage entered the building and was greeted with emptiness.
No baby was there to be found. He even tried detecting him using chakra, but to no avail. Sarutobi was about to call the Anbu but stopped when he saw a really small baby crawl into view from the shadows.
The baby looked at him with large eyes and smiled before squealing, "Jiji!"
Naruto crawled extremely fast towards the Hokage, before sitting upright and gesturing questioningly towards the bag the Hokage was carrying with him. "Wha's this?"
The Hokage sat down in front of Naruto and lifted a book from his bag, "I have brought books for you." said Hiruzen, while taking the time to carefully enunciate each syllable. "This is a book."
The Hokage shook the book in his hand to emphasise his point and then pointed towards the box that magically appeared in front of him, "And these are a lot of books."
Naruto looked at him with wide eyes, soaking up each word, "Book?"
"Yes. Since I will be going to a summit for a few weeks, I will not be able to help you read them, so if you want…" The man opened up one of the books and pointed at the pictures inside, "You can open and look inside them until I come back."
The blond stood up and tried to reach something which the wizened man took to mean that he wanted the book.
"You want this book?" The Hokage looked at Naruto with a hint of surprise and handed it over.
While giving Naruto the book, he noticed that his pudgy hands were already filled… with fabric; namely, the Hokage's hat. Naruto looked at him solemnly and then giggled, prompting a light-hearted chuckle from the old man.
After half an hour, the Hokage left, leaving a smiling Naruto behind. The door slammed shut and Naruto's demeanour changed to a more inquisitive one as the Anbu melded into their surroundings.
Naruto watched and watched (discreetly of course!) until the Anbu posted in his room walked to one of the toilets and foolishly forgot to signal to another Anbu to replace him—after all, he had done this multiple times before.
Naruto looked around to make sure no one was present and then opened the book that the Hokage gave him earlier. His eyes glazed over as he looked at the book, which abruptly caught fire and burnt without leaving a trace.
Naruto began to cry, attracting all the Anbu in the vicinity like a moth to a flame.
One of the Anbu walked up towards Naruto and ran a scanning jutsu on him.
"He has a headache." the Anbu muttered to himself, tapping his shoulder. A puff of smoke appeared and dispersed to reveal a first aid kit. The Anbu took out a bottle of child-friendly analgesic and motioned to another Anbu to retrieve some milk.
The masked man fed Naruto and gave him the medicine.
As soon as the medicine was administered, Naruto pointed at the bottle and said loudly, "Milk bottle!" before rapidly naming everything in the room.
The Anbu looked gobsmacked.
They knew that Naruto was a fast learner, but being able to accurately name objects were abilities none of them felt a one-year-old boy was supposed to have. They did what anyone else would do and pretended that absolutely nothing unusual had happened.
The Anbu stationed in Naruto's room was a different one now, and she approached Naruto to tickle and praise him for "knowing all these things already!"
Naruto sat down in the middle of the room next to his book and toy box, holding his frog tightly, before turning his back to the Anbu and stretching out his hand.
His eyes glazed over and after a minute, he got up and walked towards the book box. He reached out to pick up a book, but before he could, his eyes glazed over. This time, however, the book his hand brushed past disappeared without the flames that had previously accompanied it.
The boy continued making the books vanish until his head began to hurt again. He stopped and just laid down on the rug and drifted off to sleep.
object_Player(Naruto_Uzumaki):logging[out]_initialising[sleepmode]
Naruto steadily worked his way through all the books and, after a week, he was done. He then tried communing with the Anbu in his room.
"I 'ave no mo' books!"
The Anbu in his room looked at him funnily, before walking towards the boy's book box and opened it, "They should all be in…"
The Anbu reached inside to take out a book, "Here?"
He looked inside the box to find it empty.
"Eh?!"
He turned around and began interrogating Naruto, who was the only one apart from the Anbu that had access to the book box, and the baby, in his loudest and most ominous voice, had only one explanation.
"They van'ed!"
The Anbu blinked, and then looked at the box, and then blinked again, before knocking on the door in a standard sequence to summon the rest of the Anbu.
They arrived and after a flurry of signs, their captain shunshin'd away while the rest began searching around the house for the missing books. After ten minutes, the Anbu captain returned through the door with the Hokage in tow, who noticed Naruto curled up on the rug.
"What's wrong, Naru-chan?"
The blond baby looked at the Hokage with the cutest eyes he could muster and said, "No mo' books!"
"No more books?"
"Mhmm!" he nodded in the most woebegone fashion he could manage.
The Hokage looked at the Anbu that escorted him with a face that betrayed many emotions, the most prominent one being exasperation, "Why did you not just buy more books for him?"
The Anbu went up to the door and knocked in the same pattern as the Anbu before him did, to summon all the Anbu in the house. They arrived and the captain tapped one and guided him to the Hokage who then repeated his question to him.
"Hokage-sama…" The Anbu spoke to the old man with uncertainty, "We explored the entire house for Naruto's books, but failed, so we then utilised jutsu to find them, but even then we failed, so we then tried to search for any traces of anyone else in the house as there might have been a chance, however, slight that—"
The Hokage interrupted the Anbu by raising his hand, "Enough, I get the picture. Just go and get him more books."
"The same?"
"The very same. After all, he probably hasn't finished them and would probably want to read them all, isn't that right Naru-chan?"
Naruto shook his head and exclaimed, "No, Jiji! I would like mo' books! New books! Diff'ent books! Tens mo'! Hundreds more! Cause I fin'shed the old ones."
The Hokage looked Naruto in the eye and Naruto held his gaze. After a few moments, the Hokage broke eye contact and asked the child whether he wanted a room filled with books.
"Like a lie-bray-rie?"
"Exactly like one." the Hokage nodded indulgently.
The boy let out an exclamation of happiness.
The Hokage turned to the Anbu and asked them to convert one of the free rooms into a library. Soon after getting the details sorted, he decided to leave, noticing that Naruto had disappeared sometime during his instruction-giving.
As he reached the door, he suddenly felt a weight lifted off his head.
He turned around to see a grinning Naruto sitting on top of one of the kitchen cupboards, giggling cutely as he tried on his hat.
"Now how did you get up there Naruto?"
The Hokage brought down Naruto and tickled him, simultaneously stealing back his hat with Kage-like expertise.
As soon as he put Naruto down onto the floor, the baby hugged his leg and murmured a goodbye. Hiruzen smiled as he patted his downy head.
"Now then Naruto, be a good boy and stay safe. Don't cause too much trouble for the Anbu, okay?"
"Okay!" exclaimed the boy with a grin as he let go of his leg and waved good-bye with his pudgy hands.
R&R (Suggestions and advice are always welcome!)