Burned

Minato is 6

(-)

"To-san, I don't want to go!" Minato protested as Masao pulled him towards the Academy. A group of clan children clustered together on the training ground to the side of the building.

"I'm sure you'll learn something."

"The teachers talk to me like I'm stupid and I don't like it."

"I'll show you a trick before I leave and you can practice it if you get bored, alright?" Masao bargained.

Minato scrunched up his nose but agreed.

"Go talk to your classmates while I talk to your teacher," Masao gestured towards the children.

Minato obeyed and walked towards the other kids after a reproachful look at his father. A boy with triangles on his cheeks and a puppy in his arms caught sight of Minato approaching with his hands clasped behind his back. The children all turned to look at the new arrival.

"Know any cool jutsus?" The boy asked.

"I wouldn't be a very good ninja if I just told you all the things I know."

"You are pretty confident for a little brat," a tall girl with black hair pushed past the Inuzuka and stared down her nose at Minato. The other children snickered.

"It's arrogant to threaten someone you don't know." A chorus of 'ooh's echoed him.

"I am Uchiha Chika and I have been in the Academy for two years. I have nothing to fear from a short and skinny thing like you," Chika retorted angrily. A few of the children stumbled backwards.

"Let me give you some advice, if you manage to become a shinobi, don't judge someone based on appearances, it'll get you killed pretty quickly," Minato answered calmly looking at the other children curiously as they backed away from the enraged Uchiha.

"You will pay for that, you little bastard!" She snarled and stepped forward to punch Minato. He deftly evaded her strike and settled into a bastardized version of his father's defensive stance. The rest of the children scattered, cheering for a fight. The girl lunged forward and aimed a punch at Minato's face. Flinching out of the way, Minato allowed her momentum to carry her past and dropped to the ground in an attempt to trip her. She jumped over his leg, but the power of her punch threw her face down into the ground anyways. Minato stood up quickly and backed away from her.

"Please stop attacking me, Chika-san; I don't want to fight you."

"That's enough, you two," one of the Chuunin teachers stepped between her and Minato.

"He insulted me!"

"I did not!" Minato retorted indignantly. "I told her it was arrogant to threaten me and then gave her some advice. She's the one who called me names!"

"He attacked me!"

"I never touched you!"

"That's enough, everyone go to class, now!" The Chuunin glared at them all angrily.

"She attacked me for no reason and you're not going to do anything." Minato snapped at the Chuunin, who just shrugged.

"I think you taught her a pretty good lesson. If you needed help, I would have done more, but you didn't so it wasn't worth the effort. You have ten minutes to get to class, don't be late." The Chuunin left Minato staring after him, annoyed.

"Minato! Come in here, please!" Masao called from the door of the Academy.

The boy trudged towards his father, who put a hand on his head and guided him towards one of the classrooms.

"I promised a trick you could practice," Masao held out a coin about the size of his thumb and placed it in Minato's palm as they stopped outside the door. He held his own hand a few inches above the coin and with a wash of chakra, made it start to spin on its edge, hovering just above Minato's palm. "Cover it with your chakra and see what you can make the coin do. Now, behave yourself in class and I'll meet you at home this evening."

Minato nodded once with a wide smile at his father. After a brief hug, Minato trudged into the classroom, silently taking his seat in the middle of the room. He placed the coin on his desk and concentrated on covering it with chakra, ignoring the boys teasing each other loudly on the other side of the room. The door opened and the Chuunin teacher walked in with a redheaded girl.

Minato listened politely as the Chuunin introduced his new classmate. He admired the girl's guts. When the class started to laugh at her, he could not help but stand up and unsuccessfully remind the class her goal was not stupid, it was the same as his, she just declared it louder.

He smiled at the girl as she walked past him to her seat and ignored the odd expression she sent his way. He half-listened as the teacher introduced the lesson for the day, the bingo book, and passed around copies of them from different countries, a lesson his father drilled into him the year before and instead focused on trying to spin the coin between his hands under the desk.

"Namikaze!" The Chuunin barked as he noticed Minato's disinterest. "Why aren't Genin in the bingo book?"

"While a majority of Genin are not in the Bingo book, a few have been known to surface due to circumstances which have gained international recognition, most commonly having a Bijuu sealed inside of them or being a close relative to a high-profile target, such as a Kage or extremely powerful Jōnin. The majority of Genin do not have a place because they are not skilled enough to pose a threat or become a target worthy of recognition."

The Chuunin ignored him for the rest of the lesson, during which Minato worked on trying to make the coin spin. Before they moved on to Taijutsu lessons, the boys clustered around the new girl, teasing her. Minato nearly stood up to defend her but remembered what the Chuunin told him earlier. He watched her anger rise and decided against interfering, knowing she would not appreciate the help. Minato barely paid attention to anything for the rest of the day; he spent so much time concentrating on making the coin spin between his palms. Minato was out of his chair and racing out of the classroom as soon as the bell rang, faster than the Chuunin teachers could track.

He wandered along the Konoha streets focusing almost exclusively on the coin, leaving just enough awareness to check for possible danger. He found himself on a secluded path. A familiar chakra signature, the new girl, Kushina, distracted him. From the other direction, one of the boys Kushina beat up earlier appeared with someone else. Minato was about to leave but he decided to wait and see how Kushina would handle the situation.

He watched the scene unfold from a distance. Kushina clearly did not need help once she got angry enough. As the two raced away screaming, she turned to him angrily.

"Well, don't just stand there gaping, I'm sure you have other girls to rescue," she snapped.

Minato opened his mouth to tell her she did not need his help, but she already vanished among the trees. He shrugged and started to walk back towards the village and ask his father about the trick to make the coin spin. He slipped into the hospital and peered over the receptionist's desk.

"Your father just left a few minutes ago Minato-kun," the nurse told him without looking away from her work.

"Thank you, nurse-san," Minato replied before racing home. He slipped off his shoes just inside the door. "I'm back!" He called out to the empty house. "Where is everyone?" Minato walked through the large house his entire clan lived in. For the first time in his memory, it was empty. Not even the old woman, who always stayed in the main room's rocking chair, occupied the house. Minato shoved away the creeping feeling of danger, telling himself he had nothing to fear from an empty house. As he stepped into the main hallway, he bit back a shout of surprise.

A man in a black mask stood working on what appeared to be a bomb in the center of the hallway.

"What are you doing?" Minato demanded. He took a step forward and felt his ankle catch on a thin wire. Before Minato could move, the device exploded. Minato barely had time to cover his skin in a thin layer of chakra before the shockwave struck him, instantly followed by the searing heat. Minato felt his clothes burning away and his skin melting before he struck the end of the hall, screaming.

The first impact knocked the breath out of him and the masked man instantly stood in front of him kunai piercing Minato's chest. Minato focused as much chakra as he could into the man, instantly frying the man's chakra pathways and stopping his heart. A second explosion tore through the air and the man disintegrated in front of Minato. The boy landed on his hands and knees, the kunai falling out of his chest. His arm buckled and he fell heavily on one side, barely conscious. He could hear someone frantically shouting his name.

"To-san?" Minato managed to gasp out through his scalded throat.

"You're going to be fine, Minato, you just need to stay conscious," Masao told him, the panic in his voice terrifying Minato more than anything else. He felt a small bit of his father's chakra in the kunai wound before hands rolled him onto a rough sheet and wrapped him in it. Minato screamed as the fabric rubbed against his burned skin. "You're going to be fine," Masao said again as he lifted the boy into his arms. The father raced towards the hospital. "I need a gurney, NOW!" Masao bellowed and seconds later two nurses raced out with one. Masao laid Minato on it and ran beside the nurses. As they ran into an empty room, nurses ran in with the standard equipment. One nurse tried to put an IV into Minato's arm, but Masao slapped her hands away. "He's living off chakra right now; an IV will disrupt his pathways!" Masao manipulated the gurney until Minato was sitting up slightly and then placed his hands over the boy's chest, healing the near-lethal wound from the kunai. As soon as Masao mostly healed the kunai wound, he switched his hands to the boy's forehead.

Minato screamed and thrashed as Masao forced him back into full consciousness.

"I'm sorry, son, I can't bring you back if you fall unconscious. Somebody hold him down!"

Minato continued to scream as hands touched his blackened skin.

"Minato, listen to me, you have to listen, stop screaming, it's only going to make everything worse, lie still, just like that. I'll be done soon and then you can sleep, bear with me a little bit longer." The nurses pulled their hands off the boy the second he stopped thrashing. "Someone put the IV in, fluids only, and get an oxygen mask on him!"

Minato flinched as the needle pierced his arm and the mask rubbed against his face. "There was no one at home," Minato forced out the words.

"I know, you can tell me everything later. Open your eyes."

Minato immediately began to panic as he blinked his eyes open. "I can't see!"

"That's fine! The room's dark, you'll be fine," Masao reassured him firmly as the nurses exchanged worried looks around the well-lit room.

"To-san, hospitals aren't dark." Minato's lips trembled as tears slipped out of his eyes.

"I'm going to make you go to sleep while I finish healing you, is that okay?"

"No! What's—" Minato suddenly began coughing brutally. Masao automatically laid a hand over the boy's chest and drew out the ash coating the inside of his lungs with chakra. The boy reached up and clung desperately to his father's hand.

"Shhh, I'll explain everything when you feel better."

Before Minato could respond, a second coughing fit wracked him. Masao quickly replaced his hand and forcibly settled Minato's breathing, suppressing the urge to cough.

"Go to sleep," Masao told him firmly and pressed a hand against Minato's forehead.

As soon as he was certain the boy was unconscious, Masao began the tedious process of peeling off melted parts of clothing from his son's body and healing the worst of the burns. The nurses left as soon as they knew Minato was stable. Three hours later, Masao succeeded in healing the third-degree burns to nothing more than awful sunburns. At the same time, he released the technique keeping Minato asleep. In less than a minute, Minato managed to shake off the effects of the forced sleep. Had Masao not been expecting it, Minato would have been stumbling out of the bed in a heartbeat. Holding a hand firmly against Minato's chest, Masao made sure the boy would not be running anywhere. Before Minato could open his eyes, Masao tied a thick blindfold around the boy's head.

"No, you cannot take it off," Masao answered the boy's question before he asked.

"Why?"

Masao just shook his head as he helped Minato dress in a loose hospital gown and shorts, guiding the boy's hands and feet through the proper holes.

As soon as he was dressed, Minato ripped the blindfold off anyways. Bloodshot eyes stared in his general direction, the boy's iris dull grey rather than a vibrant blue. "I can't see," Minato trembled before sliding off the hospital bed and stumbling in the direction of the door. His hands scrambled at a blank section of wall, a few feet to the right of the door. Making sure his footsteps could be heard, Masao walked up and pushed a bit of Chakra into the doorknob. Minato reached towards it and opened the door. His trembling increased as the sounds from the rest of the hospital flooded in.

Minato started in surprise when Masao put a hand on his shoulder and nudged him towards the noise. "You know the way." Curious as to where Minato wanted to go, Masao followed the boy as he pressed himself against the wall and attempted to navigate the hospital. The boy rounded three corners, cut across two hallways and stopped at the dead end of the hall, trembling violently, pressing himself into the corner. Masao took the boy's hands and placed one on his sternum so the boy could feel how he moved and the other on his face so he could feel his expressions. "Where do you want to go, Minato?"

"I-I want t-to go outside," Minato stammered before flinging his arms around his father's neck.

"You were almost there, the door is down the next hallway." Masao picked the boy up and carried him to the door, setting him down on the warm grass. Minato kept a tight grip on Masao's hand as he turned his face towards the sun.

"I can still be a shinobi, right, To-san?"

"You're not going to be blind forever, Mina-chan, your eyes will heal and you'll be able to see again. It's not going to stop you from becoming a shinobi."

"I don't have to be able to see to do Iryo-Ninjutsu, right?"

"No, you don't."

"Can you teach me Iryo-Ninjutsu until I get my sight back?"

"Of course."

"I'm not scared anymore!" Minato turned and grinned widely in his father's direction.

"I know you're not."

"I love you, To-san."

"I love you too, Mina-chan."