Chapter 4
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto
Minato and Kushina were peacefully sleeping in their bed, an actual western bed instead of a mere futon, when their instinct woke them, telling them they were no longer alone. The worry was instantly gone when they recognized Natsuki's steps, before she jumped on them both.
"OOF!" Minato called, exaggerating the pain Natsuki caused. When he opened his eyes, he saw she was already completely dressed in clothes and thick jacket, as winter had come early this year. The only thing she wasn't wearing were her shoes, as it was not allowed to wear those in the house.
She smiled at him and Kushina, and jumped up and down on the bed. "C'mon, wake up! It's almost nine! I wanna see my friends. Lets go, lets go, letsgoletsgoletsgo!"
Minato laughed. "Okay okay, we're getting up."
Kushina looked at her daughter. "Don't you want to open your presents first?"
Natsuki shook her head. "Nu-uh. I can open them later, they don't go anywhere. I wanna see my friends!"
Minato and Kushina shrugged and got dressed, Natsuki jumping around like a rubber ball on a sugar-rush, speaking without a single pause, urging her parents to hurry up, before literally dragging the laughing adults outside, still speaking without break.
Meanwhile, Naruto blinked as he stood up. He had really gone overboard last night. He had read through a number of scrolls that the blond woman with the diamond on her forehead had forgotten there, with a dictionary and an encyclopedia for some of the more complicated words, and found a few things that had brought him to put down the basis for two new genjutsu that would be as good or even better as Zekkou Sekai. It would probably take months until they were done, but his first self-made genjutsu had given him a feeling for how it worked and what he had to do, so he was confident that he could finish these new ones faster. After he had those ideas somewhat worked out, he had worked on some seals, before falling asleep at three in the morning. Then all he would have to do was get his reserves up to a level were performing them would not be a gamble that always left him unconscious and only worked once every five tries.
Naruto had wisely decided to try his genjutsu one more time, just to be sure, and was disgruntled to learn that he didn't have enough chakra for it, and that the first time had probably been a fluke caused by adrenaline increasing the amount of chakra in his body to beyond what was normal and safe. Of course, by now he could do it without fainting, but it was extremely draining, plus the entire affair had practically been forgotten already. Still, he was proud with himself, and that he kept pushing his limits to surpass them seemed to be working.
He knew he should have taken it a bit easier on the day before his birthday, but it had been so fascinating. And it seemed he was still the first one up, as he couldn't hear any sound, not counting the chirping of birds, the swooshing of leaves in the trees, the slamming of the front door, the... Wait, WHAT?!
Naruto looked out his window, and his heart ached at the sight. He saw his parents, happily laughing with Natsuki, who was holding their hands and using them as a swing, laughing and talking without rest.
At that moment, Naruto was no longer the genjutsu- and fuinjutsu-prodigy, he was no longer the genius that had outmaneuvered a jonin. He was simply a recently seven year old child that had seen his parents go away without him. He didn't even get the idea to open the window and call out to them. Instead he jumped out of the bed, and ran, barefoot and only in his thin pajamas, down the stairs in the opposite end of the building and to the front-door, the gate to the compound slamming shut the moment he opened the door. Naruto ran as fast as he could, intending to beat on the door to gain his parents' attention. He stretched out his left hand to catch the speed and absorb the impact so that he didn't slam face first into the door, the other hand balled to a fist and ready to slam against the gate.
However, luck was not on Naruto's side today. In fact, Naruto's luck had taken the day off, while misfortune was working double-shifts to catch up with the workload. The moment Naruto's left hand touched the gate happened to be the exact moment Minato activated the seals in the gate.
The first seals went up without a problem, including the sound-blocking seal, which ensured that nobody outside could hear what happened inside. That seal had been placed there back when Naruto and Natsuki had been babies and latter had regularly cried the whole neighborhood awake. Minato had added them to ensure that at least the neighbors got some sleep.
However, as bad luck would have it, Naruto's fingers were touching a number of powerful yet for the naked eye invisible seals that should not be connected. Those seals used Naruto's chakra-pathways, apparently believing them to be mere extensions of the array. However, the influx came from all sides and was simply more than the human body was designed to take. Blood splashed, hitting doorway and ceiling as Naruto's skin ripped open in multiple places. He screamed as he felt the pulse of chakra destroy his muscles and crushed the bones in his hand. Then he was blasted backwards, landing on the lawn, his arm little more than a bag of flesh, bone-fragments and, unfortunately for Naruto, pain-receptors. Through some evil miracle, those had remained relatively intact, and were sending Naruto's brain the information that he was in agony.
Minato glanced at his gate with a frown.
"What's wrong honey?" His wife asked.
Minato looked at her. "I thought I felt a surge from the gate... I'll have to check the seals when we get back, I don't want them malfunctioning when we need them the most."
Kushina nodded, before Natsuki called the attention back to her. "Later dad, now we're going to Hinata's!"
Minato nodded. "Of course we are, Natsuki. The gate's not going anywhere." With that, he turned and left, still a bit concerned about that surge. Then his wife kissed him, and he forgot everything. Natsuki gagged, earning her a playful smack to the back of the head.
Every twitch, the slightest movement, everything sent waves of unbearable pain through his body. Naruto had tried to stay as still as possible while calling for help, but after a minute of shouting and whimpering, he realized that he was wasting his breath, as he recalled that there were silencing-seals on the walls and gate. Nobody would hear him. He looked at his arm, and immediately looked away. It looked bad, and it was still bleeding profoundly. Naruto knew he'd be in trouble if he didn't stop the bleeding, so he tried to stand up. It took three tries, but with inhuman willpower, he fought himself to his feet, and turned to the house, going for the bandages.
The door was closed. Naruto cursed as he tried to open it, but the door stayed stubborn. What Naruto couldn't have known was that when the gate was sealed shut, the house automatically went into lock-down. All doors and windows closed and were impossible to open until the gate was opened, unless they were opened from the inside. Naruto had left the door open in his rush to reach his parents, and now that it shut, there was nobody in the house to let him back in. which meant no bandages, no medicine, no food, and what would get a problem later, no warm clothing.
Naruto wasted another fifteen minutes circling the house, looking for any opening that would grant him access. After finally accepting he was locked out, Naruto decided to improvise.
"UARGH!" He cried as he took off his shirt, his arm sending agony through his body every time the shirt even so much as grazed it. The left sleeve had been obliterated when his arm burst, so Naruto bit into the right shoulder and tore off the sleeve, before, with cries of pain, tied it tightly around his arm like a rope to restrict the blood-flow in that area. Then he, with great suffering, tightly wrapped the rest of the shirt around the bleeding arm as a make-shift bandage. The scroll he had read yesterday had said that these measures should be taken as soon as possible, and that they had saved lives in the past. Also, it had said something about limbs falling asleep with restricted blood flow, meaning that he would no longer feel the limb in question. Which was good, as right now, Naruto really didn't want to feel his arm.
Naruto shivered. Without his shirt, he really felt how cold the day really was, but if he stayed in the sun, he'd be fine. All he had to do was wait just a little time, then his parents would be there to save him. Everything would be fine.
Minato sighed. He had been looking forward to a fairly quiet day, chatting with old friends about this and that and sipping on some drinks, but it was not to be. The chunin-exams were coming up, and Minato had failed to see the consequences for the clan-compounds. The outside was being used for training, and the entire ground was covered with kunai, shuriken and the odd senbon, meaning that the children had to stay and play inside. As in where they were. Minato and the other parents had to permanently keep an eye on their children, and with every compound the group progressed, it was getting more hectic. In fact, things were so hectic that it was by sheer coincident that he had met back up with his wife. She gave him a strained smile.
"They're quite a handful, aren't they? I can't remember any time in the war when I was this stressed." She said.
Minato laughed, before frowning. "Me neither. But I can't shake this odd feeling I'm having. Like I've forgotten something important."
Kushina nodded. "You too? It's on the tip of my tongue, but I just can't... NATSUKI UZUMAKI-NAMIKAZE, PUT THAT DOWN THIS INSTANT!" Said girl pouted, but she obediently placed the jar with the powdered antlers back on the shelf where she got them. Kushina followed her, while Minato turned to his old friend and current host, Shikaku Nara.
"I'm really sorry. She's too hyper."
Shikaku waved him off. "Don't worry about it. All the delicate and expensive stuff is sealed where they can't find it."
Minato nodded and went in the opposite direction his wife had headed. There were already six children running around, including Shikaku's own child who was being dragged by a blond Ino Yamanaka. Natsuki's presents had to be sealed in a scroll by now when not used, and Minato really wished for a break. The first thing he'd do when they were finally at the actual festival and everyone looked over the kids was getting dead-drunk.
Still, the odd feeling never left him, but Minato was kept busy by the steadily growing horde of kids, so he shoved the feeling aside, accrediting it to the surge in his gate, opting to take a look when they were back.
The bitter irony was that he was partially right.
Naruto whimpered. The sun had traveled further, and out of the sun, coldness crept forwards within the shadows. He could faintly see his own breath and that was bad. He again fought himself to his feet, and gracelessly stumbled to the south wall, using his right hand to support himself on the wall, despite the inconvenience.
He felt miserable. For some reason, the wounds were still bleeding, as the torn shirt on his arm still hadn't dried. Even worse, his arm refused to fall asleep, sending agony with every motion. But all moaning wouldn't help him get warm, so he stubbornly set one foot in front of the other, before leaning against the south wall and slowly sliding to the ground.
For a while he distracted himself by going over calculations for genjutsu and seals, but the more time passed, the harder it became to focus. He realized he might be in trouble when he noticed that he had to concentrate to multiply 5m and 7m to get the area of effect for a rectangular 4-point barrier in m². He understood that the loss of blood was slowly becoming a problem, his first aid being meant as exactly that, first aid to prepare for the actual medics to do their magic, and was slowly failing in keeping him up. His vision had also started to become slightly blurry.
Naruto's mind slowly shut down, the higher brain-functions slowly ceasing to conserve energy. He had crawled to the west-wall, so that when his parents came in a few minutes at most, they would see him more easily.
And while his mind dimmed more and more, one thought went through Naruto's mind again and again. It was the same thought that had kept him alive and awake up till now.
'Mom and dad will be here soon. They'll come for you, Naruto. You just have to hang in there for just a little bit longer.'
He didn't even notice when the sun vanished behind the horizon and a light snow began to fall.
Minato sighed. Even directly after the Kyuubi-attack, when seven meetings a day had been considered little work, he had not been so stressed out. These kids had sheer limitless energy, and with every house they visited, it only got worse. The horde of children grew, while the adults opted to stay at home, reuniting with their offspring at the Kyuubi-festival, to which they were currently heading. He already knew what he would do when he finally could take his eyes off that small army of chaos, namely getting shit-drunk. He suspected that having to watch all those children alone was some sick punishment the clan-heads were subjecting him to because they were unhappy with certain decisions with the council, although he couldn't think of one that would warrant such draconian measures.
Finally the many stands of the festival came into view, the setting sun shining through a hole in the clouds, letting the falling snow glow in a magical light. It was a sight that really lifted the spirits with its beauty. He put an arm around Kushina, both smiling, until the sound of gagging reminded him of the little plagues. He looked at them.
"Well, what are you waiting for? Go have fun." They were gone before the words had faded away in the noise of the slowly growing crowd.
Minato pumped his fist. "Freedom! Sake, here we come!"
Kushina shook her head, but she followed him to the stand where a few of their friends were already waving at them. The rest of the evening belonged strictly to the adults, and nothing that even faintly involved someone below fifteen would be mentioned, unless the person in question was a stranger to most or a shinobi that could be embarrassed with stories about old times.
Life was good.
The entire world had become nothing but a dark blur. The silence was deafening, only his weak breathing cutting through the absolute quiet. Everything was so cold.
Naruto couldn't see it, but the snow falling on him had gradually stopped melting, his legs and shoulders now looking whitish, while a white cap seemed to have formed on his head. His body was already too weak and exhausted to shiver. And still one thought kept Naruto clinging to life, even as his body was slowly shutting down.
'They'll be here shortly. Hang on. Just a little bit longer.'
Natsuki was sitting on her father's lap, rocking back and forth. She had had a lot of fun at the festival so far, playing the games like ring-tossing, which was completely different from her shuriken-training, or catching goldfish she could then keep as pets. And the food was great! Of course nothing beat Ichiraku's, but the cotton candy, sugar-roasted almonds and all the other sweets had come close. Now they were sitting under umbrellas, waiting for the real highlight, the fireworks. The festival was great, but seeing the sky illuminated by a thousand colors was always the best thing.
If only she weren't so tired. It was long past her bed-time, but since the academy was nice enough to give the day after the festival off as well, the children could stay up and watch the fireworks without being zombies in the class the following morning.
Natsuki smiled, as she chatted with her friends, who were sitting around them with their respective parents. Her dad smelled a little like sake, but it was okay. She looked at him.
"Dad, how long until the fireworks? How long? Howlonghowlonghowlong?"
Minato smiled. "In five, four," The entire crowd had started to join the count.
"THREE"
"TWO"
"ONE"
BOOM
The fireworks had begun, exactly at the time Minato had sealed the beast, midnight. Everyone laughed, cheered and congratulated each other.
Everyone except for one.
The booming and the sudden eruptions of color in the blur of Naruto's vision had pulled Naruto out of his trance. Although he could not see the fireworks blooming in the sky like giant flowers, his mind instinctively knew what it was.
It was midnight.
His birthday was over.
His body shivered, snow falling off his weakly twitching head and shoulders. He was much to weak to laugh, but hollow chuckles escaped his lips as he understood.
'They forgot me. They forgot I existed.'
He knew that his parents had occasionally forgotten about him for moments when stressed, probably because Naruto had somehow had gained the ability to merge with the background and become invisible, not to mention that Natsuki hogged and horded all available attention like a miser horded money, but he had never thought it was this bad.
For the first time since he woke up, Naruto cried.
The fireworks had lasted almost half an hour, but now they were over. Minato looked at his daughter. "Well Natsuki, time to leave."
His daughter pouted. "Do we have to?" She caught her mother's look, and quickly added "Just asking."
Suddenly a POOF rang through the air and a giant toad appeared, a white-heired man riding it. "JIRAYA THE TOAD-SAGE HAS ARRIVED!" He called, and the parents quickly sheathed the weapons they had instinctively drawn.
"Uncle Jiraya!" Natsuki shouted, jumping at the man who sometimes visited and always told her funny stories.
Minato smiled. "You're back in town sensei? Looks like I have to reinforce the guards around the hot-springs. So, how long have you been here?"
Jiraya laughed. "Just arrived. I couldn't very well just pass Konoha without giving Natsuki here her birthday present."
Natsuki looked up with sparkling eyes. "You have something for me?"
He ruffled her hair. "Of course I do. Who do you think I am?"
"An uncorrectable pervert." Kushina answered.
Jiraya clutched his chest in mock-pain. "You wound me Kushina. However, since I smell the alcohol on you both, I'll let it slide."
Natsuki was impatiently pulling on his leg. "So, what's my present?"
Jiraya puffed his chest. "Well, your parents told me that you have incredible chakra-reserves, so I will grant you the honor, the once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity to... sign the Toad-contract!"
Natsuki's eyes widened, then she jumped up and down in joy. "YAY, I GET TO BE JUST LIKE DADDY!"
Jiraya shook his head, summoned the toad that held the contract and unrolled it. "Now Natsuki, a summoning-contract is special. You have to sign your name, yes, your full name, with your blood, and then leave a hand-print in blood. Then you get to summon toads, just like me and your father."
Natsuki had frowned when she heard she had to sign with her own blood, but she quickly got over it and cut open her hand to write in blood. Once she finished, she looked at Jiraya. "How do I summon?"
Jiraya smirked. "Now that is for your father to tell you. He'll decide when you're ready for it."
Natsuki pouted. "No fair!" She shouted, but she ran off to brag to her friends.
Jiraya laughed again, before looking around. "Well, Natsuki got her present. So, where is the other one? The quiet little blond?"
All color drained from Kushina and Minato's faces.
"Naruto." Kushina whispered. "We left him at home!"
"He probably destroyed the house by now." Minato tried to joke, but his face told of his shock.
Jiraya blinked. "What do you mean, you left him alone. I heard that he seems to be a troublemaker, but don't you think it's a little cruel to punish him on his birthday?"
Kushina shook her head. "We didn't punish him... we forgot."
Jiraya blinked. He didn't believe his ears. "You forgot your own son? On his birthday?"
Minato seemed completely disturbed by himself. "I... we... when we woke up... Natsuki... so much chaos... had to look everywhere at once... there was never a moment's quiet... ah shit." He turned towards the compound, Kushina having retrieved Natsuki in the meantime, and together they ran to the Namikaze-compound.
Minato had somewhat regained his cool by then. He looked at Kushina. "Well, what will we give as an excuse?"
Kushina smiled weakly. "He probably won't forgive us this until he graduates. We have to make it up to him somehow."
Minato chuckled, although it sounded a bit strained. "How about we don't punish for demolishing the house, which he has likely done by now?"
Kushina sent him a stern look. "I'm serious Minato! He's going to be terribly upset, and he has every right to be! How could we forget him?"
Now Minato sobered. "I don't know. We woke up, still half asleep, and Natsuki practically dragged us out the front door and to her friends, the most exhausting because hyper ones first. We never had a real moment's peace until the festival, and at that point, we wanted and did knowingly forget the fact that children even existed. It's not really an excuse, but nobody else mentioned him before Jiraya."
Kushina frowned. "Naruto acts so shy. He always stays in the background. Even though he's there, he doesn't act like he's there. I don't think he has many friends. None of the children even asked where Naruto was, doesn't that make you worry?"
Minato nodded. He was about to say more, but they had reached the gate. Minato looked at it, slightly worried. His instincts told him that he didn't want to see what was behind that gate. He had had that feeling before, and the room he had entered then had been plastered with exploding-notes.
Jiraya noticed his hesitation. "What's wrong? Steeling yourself for the sight of the ruins of your house? Or are you worried that he might have booby-trapped the gate?"
Minato shook his head. "No. well, that too, but I'm getting a bad vibe. And I just remembered that there seemed to have been a slight surge in the gate when I closed it this morning. But, let's go in. KAI!"
The seals glowed, and Minato got a short report. No windows or doors were opened during the duration of lock-down. Apparently Naruto had decided to let out his anger indoors. He opened the gate, and fell into panic before he even looked inside.
Jiraya had smelled the breeze the moment the compound was no longer hermetically sealed, and immediately rendered Natsuki unconscious. Something was very wrong, if the coppery smell of blood was any indication, and he didn't think Natsuki should see whatever it was.
Kushina gagged at the smell, before rushing through the gate. It took all her effort not to scream.
There were bloody hand-prints, just the size of a seven-year-old's hands, going from the front door, which seemed to have a number of scratches, where someone had apparently tried to open it. The prints made a trail on the wall leading around the compound. Kushina rushed off, while Minato stared in shock.
"No door opened. No window opened. They all close in lock-down and can't be opened from the outside. The gate can't be opened, period. But where did all the blood come from?"
Jiraya looked around. He noticed the scratches on the inside of the main gate, and he saw the splatters of blood on the frame. "Minato, look at this. There's blood on the frame, even the ceiling. You said there was a surge on the gate? Could it be he touched the seals when you activated them?"
Minato looked at his former teacher, his mind apparently still unable to puzzle together what was going on. "I... but... It's possible, but then..."
A heartbreaking scream interrupted them, coming from the left side of the house. Minato and Jiraya dashed, the latter taking note that the ground beneath the oddly reddish-brown snow was sticky.
Kushina was holding her child, which she had found leaning on the west-wall of the compound. He had, according to the blood on the wall, including larger stains where he had rested, apparently gone with the sunlight to stay warm. While that was an admirable show of strength, when she had found him, Naruto had been draped in a thin sheet of white. His eyes were dull and unfocused, tears leaving their marks on the inhumanly pale skin. Kushina wailed, holding her son, rocking back and forth.
When her husband arrived, she looked up. Nameless terror was etched on his face. "Kami in heaven, have mercy." He whispered.
Jiraya looked between the two of them, before loudly clapping his hands. "What are you two doing?! We have to get him to Tsunade, NOW!"
Jiraya himself was the most upset one of them all. Admittedly, his contact with the boy, now that he thought about it, had been non-existent, but he could honestly say that he had no fault in what happened to the boy. He had been the one, and shamefully for all clans that were visited, the first and only one, to ask about Naruto's whereabouts, although if he was honest, he only remembered when he had let Natsuki sign the contract, not wanting to look like he preferred a sibling to the other.
When they arrived at the hospital, where Tsunade always resided in such situations, because there was always someone, usually a two- to three-digited number of someones, who drank more than they could stomach, said blond dropped a glass she had been holding, letting it shatter on the floor.
"What the hell did you do with the kid?!" She asked, enraged. She glared at Jiraya. "If you had anything to do with this..."
Said man quickly raised his hands in defense. "I had no part in it! I just got here ten minutes ago!"
Kushina, still clutching her lifeless son, looked at Tsunade. "I beg of you, save my son!"
Tsunade looked at her. "I want an explanation later." She moved a chakra-covered hand to Naruto's head, then to his chest, after prying him out of Kushina's arms and putting him on a stretcher with attached mobile table.
"Don't ask me how, but he's still alive." She tore open the jacket wrapped around Naruto's arm, not that it could be identified as such, and her eyes widened. "Dear kami." she muttered, before her eyes widened. "His heartbeat's fading. We're losing him!" She placed her hands on the boy's chest, sending weak bursts of lightning-chakra to keep the heart going, before looking at the nearest doctor. "Prep me a room ASAP! He won't last much longer!"
The man nodded and ran, Tsunade and a squad of medics attracted by the commotion rolling Naruto after him.
His parents and Jiraya were not allowed beyond the reception.
After nearly ten hours of surgery, both shinobi-style and old-fashioned, Tsunade returned to the waiting parents. Jiraya had gone and parked Natsuki at the Yamanaka-household, stating that a private emergency made it impossible for Natsuki to stay at the Namikaze-compound for a day or two. That was actually true, and he had left before any questions could be asked.
Kushina jumped up and rushed to the blond woman. "How is he? Please Tsunade, tell me he's okay!"
Tsunade snorted. "He's far from okay. But fine, I'll fill you in on the details before I demand my explanation about what happened."
She took a deep breath. "He was heavily injured, to be more precise his left arm was, nearly bled dry and suffering from hypothermia to a ridiculous extent. In his limbs, the body temperature was just barely above freezing, the surface-temperature of his skin in some cases even below freezing. By all rights and every medical text in the history of mankind, the boy should be dead, but we've stabilized him. What was one of the reasons for his heavy blood-loss was that some foreign chakra was stuck in the wounds and prevented the blood from clotting. The boy will live, and surprisingly, there is no damage to his brain. That's where the good news ends."
Minato, who had slumped together in relief, looked at her. "Why? There is no mental damage as you say, and knowing you, he'll make a full recovery. You've fixed worse."
Tsunade shook her head. "No, I haven't. And I said there was no brain-damage. There will probably be tons of mental damage. The wounds had been open for hours as far as I could tell, and the boy must have been conscious to cling to life for that long. So I can honestly say he'll never be the same again."
Kushina bit her lip. "Can't we... remove the traumatizing memory?"
Tsunade shook her head. "Not without altering his entire mind. This will leave physical changes, and looking at those will make him wonder where he got them, which will destroy any block we put up in short time. Unless you want to alter every memory in his head to make him think he's always been like that, it's useless. And even then, there's no guarantee it'll actually hold, as we can't delete memories, only suppress them."
Minato looked at her. "What physical changes?"
Tsunade let out a deep sigh. "His career as a shinobi is almost certainly over."
Jiraya looked up. "Why?"
Tsunade looked at him. "Had you brought the boy in immediately, or at least one or two hours ago, I probably would have been able to get him back to a almost completely functioning condition. But when you brought him, I had to chose between saving his arm and saving his life."
Minato paled. "What do you mean?"
Tsunade gave him a stern look. "Whatever happened to his arm, it was bad. The bones in his hand up to the elbow are completely shattered. All muscles are shredded, most blood-vessels heavily damaged. Also, since the boy restricted the blood-circulation to that arm, something that saved his life, a lot of tissue has simply died. What the boy did was obviously only supposed to last for a few minutes, an hour at most. All in all, that arm is little more than grinded meat with splinters. The skin had multiple large tears, so the arm lost mass. All that I can probably fix in a week or so. However, the real damage was done to his chakra-coils."
Jiraya looked at her, no shred of his usual cheerfulness in his eyes. Damage to the coils was always bad. Those were the lifeline of a shinobi, and if there was something wrong, especially in such a vital area as the hand, the shinobi in question was a sitting duck, unable to use any jutsu requiring handsigns. "How bad is it?"
Tsunade looked away. "They are completely shattered all the way up to the shoulder. Those can't be fixed, and even if by some miracle they do regrow, it will be severely crippled. His left arm will never again mold chakra. Also, the nerves responsible for movement were also damaged. It is almost certain that he will never again be able to move his left arm properly."
She gave a stern look to all three, who shrank under her glare. "Whatever you did, it left Naruto a cripple."
Chapter 4 is complete. Longest one yet, and it'll probably stay the longest one for a while. It'll also be this story's last chapter for a while. I do have other stories, both published and not, that I also need to work on. I also hurt my hand the other day, I fell and lost a fair bit of skin on my palm, so writing is really painful for me right now. I hope you can respect my sacrifice for your entertainment.
I'm not completely satisfied with how this chapter turned out, to be honest. While, against the belief of some, I actually do put some thought in planning out my stories, what I have in mind is usually how it would look as an anime. I think pictures, and try to put it into words, which is surprisingly difficult. Still, for now, it'll have to do. I've been working on it all week, and I'm tired of it.
I realize that I have made things easy for myself by essentially crippling Minato's and Kushina's competence, and of course a shinobi would be able to spot a lie. Assuming of course, he was looking for one. Also, children and adults act differently when lying, especially when the child has yet to make any negative experience with telling lies. People get nervous when lying, because they imagine what might happen when they're found out. A child doesn't necessarily plan beyond 'I say this and everything will be better for me', and not even get the idea they could get caught. Come on, kids think they're invincible until proven wrong. Also, of course there were seals on Minato's compound to keep people out, but those actually have to be activated to work, and with years of absolute peace since the Kyuubi-attack, people, even professionals, may get careless and sloppy. And the Shodaime's barrier does not work the way it's supposed to, because, as I've mentioned last chapter, Kyuubi's youki is still flooding some areas, latching to any living tissue, dissolving it while draining it of chakra and anything else it can use to fuel itself, and also corrupting the barrier.
I know I'm justifying mistakes I made, but hey, if you walk on thin ice, you might as well dance.
And regarding the parents' behavior this chapter, I know it's not that probable, but it is within the realm of possibility. I tried to describe that the situation here was similar to the one that occurred in the good old movie 'Home Alone'. It's not that the parents don't love, it's that their minds are permanently occupied, leaving them no opportunity to actually think about anything but keeping Natsuki and her permanently growing horde of helpers from wrecking complete havoc on wherever they were at the time, as Minato, Hokage or not, could be put under serious pressure from an angry clan-head or five. I call the plausibility of this scenario with the same authority that the makers of 'Home Alone 2' used to explain how a mother could sit in an airplane for what had to be at least an hour and not notice her son was not on board the entire time.
On a different note, my story seems to be attracting high-class critics, sniff. Thanks to Dan for the long overdue criticism on my chapters. I know that they're not as good as they should be, even though I don't think they're really as bad as you make them out. Truth be told, I am more or less speeding through the beginning to reach the point I actually wanted to be by now, meaning Naruto having at least gained his special left arm by now. And the Genzou Bunshin are not genjutsu, they are actual bunshins, even if non-corporal. If you have trouble accepting that, think of them as bunshin stuck in Madara's special intangibility-jutsu. They exist, they are more than images and they cannot be dispelled by disrupting one's chakra, but they cannot interact with the world, nor can they be damaged or dispelled by anyone but the caster. And yes, I know fooling the Byakugan like that was a little unrealistic. However, the four tailed cloak was not blocking the sight on Naruto because it was so much chakra, I'm willing to bet that Killerbee's seven-tailed cloak had more chakra than that, and you could see him just fine, but because blood mixed with it, and probably some more factors. My point being, the chakra in my type of bunshin is not distributed through the entire clone, but more like a very thin sheet. And for those who see chakra, it is designed to be bright. It's not blinding because there's so much chakra, it's blinding because the chakra is supposed to be blinding. And the Kage Bunshin actually made complete and perfect copies of the original, it would not vanish in a cloud of smoke when fatally injured, but bleed and die, nor would the jutsu, not the one calling massive amounts, but the one calling just one, be a mere B-rank. If you go to Narutopedia you'll find that the Kage Bunshin by itself is not a kinjutsu, the version calling hundreds of clones is one. The fatality of that jutsu is being exaggerated by countless writers, not that I really mind. And if the Kage Bunshin were perfect clones, that would not explain the sending information back to the user. I actually believe it creates a clone that fools the Byakugan not because it's a perfect copy down to the chakra-coils, but because it focuses on creating the chakra-coils, which is what the Byakugan looks for. It creates a solid clone out of chakra, that has chakra-coils and essentially uses itself as fuel for jutsu. If you look at the anime, when the Byakugan is shown, you never see stuff like guts or other organs. You see the chakra-coils, a blue flame signifying the chakra-pool, and the very first time it was used and pretty much never again, bones. So it is fooled by the Kage Bunshin because chakra-wise, they are identical to the original.
I said this many times before, I can take criticism. Dan, I don't mind pointing out what I did wrong, go a little easier with the insults, and it won't be a flame. Accept the story as it is, and I'll try to improve it, or if you really hate it so much, then don't read it.
Now onto the Q & A
Q: Why didn't Minato and Kushina notice Natsuki was lying about the picture?
A: Two reasons. I wrote the first one further up. As for the second one, Minato and Kushina saw Natsuki drawing the picture, even if she was just adding names, with their own eyes. They also saw Naruto coming into the house from outside after they had arrived. They already believed it was Natsuki before Naruto could even open his mouth.
Q: Why doesn't he perform the genjutsu again to prove it?
A: Because getting it right the first time was a fluke. It took more chakra than he actually had possessed at the time, and when he tried it in private before showing it to his parents, he found it only works... Why am I writing this? I put it in the story, find it there.
Q: Will Naruto join Akatsuki, Kiri, Suna, Iwa,...?
A: No. after seeing what being dependent on someone brought him, Naruto will not join any organization or village. He might visit villages, but he won't actively join. And yes, I intend to describe what he does outside of Konoha in detail. And Naruto will actually try not to make too big of a name for himself. Publicity only leads to problems. He'll do stuff, but he prefers nobody knows.
Q: Why doesn't he dare Natsuki to do the genjutsu to show she lied?
A: Nobody believes Natsuki did it on her own. They think that the Kyuubi stepped in for the sake of self-preservation and nailed the Iwa-nin, so nobody would be surprised if she couldn't do it on command.
Q: Why didn't anyone suspect Naruto, who showed talent with Genjutsu?
A: What Naruto mastered were low-level genjutsu. That would be like suspecting your 6 year old child is piloting a mysterious Blackbird because he learned how to ride a bicycle very fast.
Q: Pairings?
A: Undecided, though most likely not Hinata, Sakura or Ino.
Q: What happens when Natsuki sleeps in Naruto's bed?
A: I'll probably explain next chapter.
Q: Will anyone train Naruto?
A: He'll be self-taught. That doesn't mean he won't use things he finds or 'borrows' to his advantage, he will simply have no official trainer.
Q: What's the Devil's Arm?
A: Not telling yet, but it is something I invented myself, so it has nothing to do with any game or series.
That's all for now, thanks for reading and
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