Naruto: A Different Beginning
By Smithjohn2020
Chapter 3: The Scarlet Letter
A/N: Hi. Sorry for such a long delay. Those who also read my other story, Naruto: Swordsman of 9 Lonesome Stances, are already aware of my reasons, namely bathroom remodeling, but I'm glad this chapter is posted now.
To get it posted as soon as possible, I forego having my beta check it first. If you find anything, please let me know. I've promised to post it today, so here it is.
Plot unrelated to the title borrowed.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything but the words typed here and the original ideas they convey. I make no profit writing this.
…o.0.O.0.o…
It was April.
Seasons came and went. Shadows cast by the sun never stood still.
A twelve-year-old spiky-haired blond Genin strolled under a path of drifting sakura blossoms blown gently by a warm welcoming breeze that infused the air with sweet pleasantness.
He was alone; he had earlier stretched out his ultra sensitive ears and his fine-tuned nose just to be sure.
He treasured these rare moments alone where he could drop all pretenses and be himself, not worrying about fitting into a persona that he had led everyone into believing.
The blond took in a deep breath and let out a heavy sigh. His eyes glanced down on his moving sandals and the fallen petals they kicked up.
Raising his head, his eyes followed the three petals floating past him, reminding him of his Jounin-sensei and teammates, Hatake Kakashi, Uchiha Sasuke, and Haruno Sakura.
Maito Gai is entering his team this year, and knowing how persistent he can be, he'll nag Kakashi-sensei to death unless he too enters us in the Chuunin Exams next month.
One of the bright pink floating petals circled around a monarch butterfly in mid flight. The avian insect tried but failed to circumvent the twirling pedal and got snatched by the small whirlwind left behind its wake.
Naruto reached out his right hand, gently extending his index finger toward the bedazzled insect and cushioning its landing. As he slowly brought his hand back to examine its decorative wings, the butterfly stood, stretched its wings and lifted itself gracefully into air.
He followed its flight through the drifting pedals and a mischievous smirk appeared on his face.
I wonder how many of them I can catch before the next one hits the ground?
Moving in super speed, Naruto zipped through the falling pedals as if they were frozen in time, plucking them out of the air en passing. He bounced on the front of his feet, spinning away and dodging the higher ones in lieu of going after those closer to the ground.
It all happened so fast that within a nanosecond, all the tiny pinklets hovering in the air disappeared once the Genin came to a full stop and returned to his exact previous position and body movement, giving the appearance of not having moved at all.
492.
He could have grabbed more – a lot more – but those were all that were in the air at the time.
Suddenly, he heard heartbeats coming from 10 meters behind. Pondering over how he could have missed detecting someone approaching his private trail of solitude, his muscles readied for action ….
I've stretched my senses to the borders of Konoha, and yet this person had escaped my detection? How?
… only to realize that the only technique capable of letting a person appearing out of thin air without any detectable chakra leakage was the most feared technique in the Elemental Nations.
Turning toward the person, Naruto smiled.
"Dad, I didn't know you were getting off early today."
Minato was still in his white Hokage robe, which had designs of orange flames licking on its fringes. Even though it was already six in the evening, it was still considered early for him to be finished for the day.
Before replying his son's question, Minato cautiously darted his eyes from side-to-side.
"Naru-kun, I'm giving you another off-the-books mission. It requires your … uh, abilities."
Naruto smiled, while reflexively focusing his senses to detect for possible spies nearby.
"Relax, Dad. The closest heartbeat from us is 300 meters away, behind me actually."
Minato, who was starting to relax, tensed up even more on hearing that. Too close.
"Don't get cocky or think too much of your natural abilities, son. No one knows the full spectrum of what could be accomplished by ninjutsu. Tell me, was there any change in position for the past three minutes?"
Naruto now has a puzzled and worried face, furrowing his eyebrows together as he searched his memory.
"Come to think of it, I don't believe so."
With a frustrated sigh at the carelessness of his knucklehead son, Minato shook his head and ordered their departure.
"We have to leave now! Meet me at our regular place."
With those words, Minato, then Naruto, shunshinned away to the Namikaze family dojo, leaving behind two fading twisters of leaves in their place. A few seconds later, an army of dark, ink-drawn mice passed over the previously occupied grounds, sniffing around, only finding nothing.
Three hundred meters away sat a slender dark-haired boy in black ninja attire with a katana tied to his back. He was holding a ram hand seal with his eyes closed - on the ground before him, an opened blank scroll and an ink brush on top.
…o.0.O.0.o…
Two tunnels of twirling leaves later revealed the Namikaze duo sitting in their family dojo. Minato stared contemplatively and furrowed his eyebrows, pondering over the mystery that was his son.
Sometimes he can be so brilliant, and other times he's even worse of a knucklehead than how his mother describes me.
The twelve-year-old blond sat there bored. Naruto was trying to cross his eyes while navigating his tongue along the upper and lower teeth, soliciting more sighs and occasional headshakes from his father. Finally he got impatient waiting for his father to begin.
"Dad, what's my mission?"
With another heavy sigh, Minato's dejected face was apparent as he remembered the last frustrating attempt at explaining to his son the subtlety of the shinobi way and the danger of underestimating the skills of those around him, especially his enemies.
Naruto, though he lacked patience, was by no means stupid. He knew why his father sighed. In mockery, he too sighed, and in the same exhale, appeased his father by asking the question that was waiting to be asked.
"Dad, I don't get it. Why did you have us meet at our dojo?"
Minato's face twitched in slight annoyance at his pre-teen son.
"You still don't get it, do you?"
Naruto responded with a shrug. If he had wanted to be bothered, he could have come up with an answer himself. However, he really did not care. Having both of his parents around to dote on him had spoiled him rotten. Furthermore, his growing awareness of his … unique … abilities had inflated his ego. Finally, having received regal treatment as the Hokage's son only added fuel to the fire.
Minato sighed for the hundredth time today, having already had a morning ridden with meetings with foreign dignitaries and village Jounins on the upcoming Chuunin Exam, he really did not need this impending headache right now. Rubbing his temples with his index fingers, closing his eyes, he took in a deep long breath to reel in his anger and focused on the more urgent matter at hand.
In times like this, he reminisced about the fond memories of early years when Naruto was more attentive and generally better behaved, if he overlooked the occasional mischief.
It wasn't until last year when Naruto's supernatural abilities emerged and was told to keep them secret from his classmates that the boy started to build up resentment – something he definitely wanted to correct and had been delaying it for reasons that now escaped him. Naruto nearing teenage year did not help matters any.
"Dad, look!"
Minato turned his head to the left, but saw nothing.
"Behind you, Dad!"
Turning his body around, Minato again saw nothing. His eyes squinted in wonderment as he called out his son's name.
"Right…" came from his left.
As Minato turned his body to meet Naruto's voice, another came from his right, "… here …."
Rolling on the ball of his foot toward the voice, he stopped in midstream as he saw his son appeared standing before his eyes and said, "… Dad."
Minato stared dumbfounded at his son, his thoughts were on the Hirashin, but … there were no special kunai arounds.
"How!? You haven't even seen it done yet! Does your mother know?"
Naruto's face sported a wide grin, aglow with pride, as his head bobbed up and down.
"Yeah! She found me experimenting with it in my room and told me to show it to you. She also said that it's not the hira sushi, or whatever. Cool, isn't it?"
Minato could only stare and nod. His face gradually whitened as he realized that it had to something to do with the "S" seal on Naruto's navel.
"Hey, Dad, you have the same look as Mom just before I came to see you."
Naruto's other abilities appeared in quick succession. After his lightning speed came his super strength, hearing and smell. The latest ability boost came in the form of his eyes as in laser beams and x-ray vision.
Along with each power boost came new twists and complexity in his pranks and the agonizing despair of the poor souls targeted by his pranks. One of his most notorious was when he invaded the Hyuugas the day after he got his x-ray vision.
To the young boy, the all-seeing pupil-less white eyes were the ultimate spymaster's must-have. Naruto had always thought that the Hyuugas and their Byakugan were the coolest people with the coolest doujutsu in Konoha. That was until he actually talked to one. Then they became the most arrogant people with the coolest doujutsu.
They also had the perfect eyes to test his stealth skills and his x-ray vision against.
The objective was to sneak into the Hyuuga compound during broad daylight and rearrange something in each room.
Sneaking into the Hyuuga compound was surprisingly easy; it was moving about in the open space before he enters another room and finding which room to enter next that got difficult.
Cautiously he crouched low and maneuver to the first section of the living quarters, where his x-ray vision detected an "X" mark on everyone's forehead under their protectors.
He entered the first empty room he came across. Inside he found a simple room with nothing but a bed pushed against the farthest wall.
"This is just silly. What could I do with just a bed?" he whispered.
Deciding to make lemonade out of lemons, he used his super strength to turn the bed and its frame upside down. Once done, he stood back to admire his work before moving on to the next room.
He found the next few rooms to be equally unexciting. Finally he came into a room with additional furniture – a desk – on top of which there were some sketches of different human poses. He picked them up and looked through them.
"Whew, I'm glad these aren't pictures like those that Kakashi-sensei looks at. It seems like they are sketches of taijutsu moves, and one of them says 'Kaiton.' Hehe, looks like someone's been using the Byakugan to spy out some secret techniques."
He was about to continue on with his verbal analysis, but he heard footsteps approaching the room.
Taking one last look at the drawings and committing them to memory, his hand grabbed a writing brush and moved in a blur, drawing a few smiley faces on some of the drawings before flashing out of there. As he was leaving, he ran by a boy who was in process of taking the next step, seemingly in slow motion.
The boy was a year older in the Academy, and Naruto believed his name was Neji. Moving at the supersonic speed, Naruto zip-zagged into another room before his presence was detected.
To the Neji in normal time, it seemed like a breeze had just blown by.
Deciding not to chance being discovered by Neji who evidently was not against using the Byakugan to spy on his own family, Naruto maintained his warp speed going through the rest of Hyuuga quarters, rearranging beds, searching out secret compartments with his vision, and bringing out the hidden items to view by placing them on the beds.
The whole thing was a big embarrassment to the uptight clan whose elders believed the culprit could only be a Hyuuga using the Byakugan. After a few months of fruitless intense internal investigation, they decided to keep it under wraps. The only people that knew about it outside the clan were Naruto and the ones he boasted it to, namely his parents.
Minato opened his eyes and softly rested their focus on Naruto.
"Naru-kun, I know this is a tough age for you. It isn't fair for you having to carry this burden from birth, hiding your abilities from your peers, and most of all, dealing with growth changes and establishing your own individuality."
Naruto rolled his eyes; his body language screamed, "You have no idea what I go through!"
Putting on his winsome smile, Minato changed tactics.
"I know it may seem hard to believe, but I wasn't always this old. I didn't come out of my mother looking like I do now."
That finally broke the ice and got a chuckle out of the reluctant pre-teen boy.
Minato then schooled his face to reflect the seriousness of what he was about to say.
"Naru-kun, do you know why you need to act like a class clown and hide your abilities from others?"
In a mockery tone, Naruto repeated verbatim what he had heard many times from his mother.
"Because doing so will keep me safe from enemies or factions in the village council that would want to do experiments on me."
Minato brought his hands up to form a cushion to rest his head, making what he wanted to say seemed even weightier.
"That wasn't what I asked." He paused briefly to get the desired puzzled look on his son's face. "What you've given me was that of your parents. I've asked for your reasons."
Now Naruto was really confused.
"Uh … I don't have any reason to keep my abilities a secret. I kinda think it would be cool if my classmates know the truth about me. Plus, didn't you and Mom pound into me the need to be honest?"
Minato then remembered why he had been putting off this talk for so long. Naruto could be quite the litigator if he wanted to, having already picked up a handful of strategies watching his parents' occasional lover spats.
"And we still stand by our words, but not revealing everything about yourself or keeping secrets from your classmates does not constitute lying. I think you know that already."
Naruto heard his father's words and viewed it as an invitation to reopen the subject for discussion.
"So, does that mean I don't have to keep hiding who I am?"
Seeing Naruto still not understanding what he was getting at, Minato was left with no choice but to discuss a topic that was particularly painful for him to do so – in hopes that doing so will reach through that knucklehead son of his – and braced himself mentally for the emotional pain that he would have to deal with later.
"Listen carefully son in what I am about to tell you. I think it's time you know the true history of that seal on your navel."
Naruto was all ears.
"Twelve years ago the Kyuubi attacked Konoha for reasons that we're still trying to figure out. On that same day, we also had warnings that meteor rocks were heading toward us…."
Naruto was about to interrupt his father to let him know that he was taught this at the Academy, but decided not to. He mentally tuned out the part about how the village was evacuated to the Battle Stadium which was turned into a make-shift meteorite shelter and that it was supposed to be his dad fighting the Kyuubi and not the Sandaime.
Then, something his father said recaptured his attention.
"… what was not in the textbooks was that Kyuubi did not kill the Sandaime … my seal did … it was a forbidden fuinjutsu, where the user could call on the Shirigami to seal away anything in return for his soul to be swallowed into the belly of the Death God."
Naruto widened his eyes as he realized the implication of his father's statement.
"The bijuu containment sealing must be done on a newborn so as he grows, his chakra coils can adjust to contain the enormous chakra of the bijuu, and you happened to be the only one that fit the requirements that night. Like I said, I was supposed to be the one out there battling the Nine-Tailed bijuu. It was my life that was supposed to be taken that night."
So, the Kyuubi's in me? Why me? Would I have been orphaned?
Many other questions popped into Naruto's mind, but he dared not interrupt his father's narrative at this moment. He got a feeling that most of them would be answered. One thing was sure: His respect the Sandaime and appreciation for what he had done grew leaps and bound.
"The Sandaime had the Kyuubi detained long enough for the sealing jutsu to take place, but at that misfortunate time, one of the meteorites landed nearby, disrupted the sealing, and allowed the Kyuubi to escape."
Naruto could not wait for his father to get to the answer for this one urgent question.
"So I don't have the Kyuubi in me? Then what's this 'S' seal on my belly?"
"I'm not quite sure…."
… he could see the relief on his son's face at the same time that another worried face formed …
"… My best guess is that it has something to do with that meteorite that landed nearby the sealing. Unfortunately, by the time I got to the scene, it went missing. There was a short trail of it being dragged toward a destination, and then the trail was no more. It probably got snatched up by a large summon of some sort."
Minato paused a moment to compose himself before continuing and to let what he said sink in.
"The only way to find out is to unlock the seal, using a key I've designed for its original purpose, which was to help you control all of the Kyuubi's chakra. But since you don't have the Kyuubi in you, I'm not sure what the consequences will be if we are to use that same key on the foreign seal."
Silence ensued as each processed what was said and what to say next. Finally Naruto broke silence. His voice was mellow and did not contain the usual resentment or sarcasm.
"Dad, I don't understand what this has anything to do with why I would want to keep my abilities a secret."
Those words reminded Minato why he had burdened himself with those feelings again.
"If it had been me that night and if it had been the Kyuubi sealed into you, chances were that your mother who was comatose after giving birth to you would probably never have waken up. Without your mother or me to protect you from the many enemies that I had or so that other villages wouldn't invade Konoha to snatch you up and turn you into their ultimate weapon, my dying wishes were to have you declared an orphan and let you take your mother's maiden name, Uzumaki. I would do that to protect you, my beloved son."
Minato could see that Naruto was moved by what he heard, but remained confused about its application. Giving him a reassuring smile, he continued in a soft and aspiring tone.
"You are now in a similar situation. You have a secret that if it was to be made known to others, not only your life, but the lives of those you love could be in danger. You've never been sick or injured, and I don't think you'll ever be. You probably think that you're indestructible, and you probably are, but what about your friends? What about your loved ones? If your enemies couldn't hurt you directly, they'll go through other means to hurt you. Do you want that? All just for others to know you're stronger and smarter than they are?"
Naruto broke eye contact in shame and looked down onto his hands whose fingers were entwined together, his elbows resting on his lap. Minato could barely make out his son's solemn face hidden behind his draping banes.
"No, I can't … I won't let that happen, even if it means that I'll be forever known as the village idiot."
Happy that he finally got through to Naruto, Minato chirped up with the following words.
"It's not that bad son. Remember others not knowing your tramp cards first means you'll maintain the element of surprise. When you do go all out, remember one things: Dead enemies are the only ones that will keep your secret. That was certainly true of me and my Hirashin."
Naruto's head was still hung, but he did nod in understanding.
"But I have some good news that can let you unleash your full abilities without endangering the lives of those around you."
Naruto looked up at his father at once, his face clearly brightened.
"I have talked it over with Mom, and we both agreed that under urgent situations and you need to use your super speed, you can. And if someone sees you, you can just say that it's your bloodline. People would think nothing of it and would probably get most of them to stop bothering me to teach them the Hirashin once they concluded that it's a bloodline technique."
Nodding his head like the twelve-year-old that he was, Naruto's eyes sparkled to convey the happiness and relief he felt in his heart.
Minato then revealed the one seal that took him longer to create than all others and one of his proudest creation – this one being a product of a father's love.
"There's more, I developed a henge seal that, once activated, will transform your appearance and even mask off your chakra signature without giving off the usual telltale signs of a chakra leak as in a traditional henge. And it doesn't require any chakra to maintain it."
Naruto eagerly anticipated his father's explanation as he watched his father getting ready a Fuin brush and some chakra-infused ink, which strangely was crimson red. On a piece of paper, there were swivels of "S" patterns all over it.
"I named this Keiseki Fuuin." Shape-Track Seal.
Naruto furrowed his eyebrows as he tried to connect the name to what he was seeing, but without success. So he pointed his finger and asked.
"Dad, shouldn't Fuin ink be black?"
Minato answered with a shrug.
"True, but for some reason, this seal can only work if the markings are drawn in sheep's blood. Take your clothes off. This seal I'm going to draw, an overlay of "S" patterns, is quite large and will have to cover your whole body. When I'm done, I'll show you how to activate and release it…."
Naruto was having a hard time containing his excitement. He was already stripped to his boxers.
"… which you'll need to get proficient in before leaving for your mission. You'll activate that seal and remain in henge during all the secret missions from now on."
Minato then pointed to his boxers as well, and Naruto gladly complied.
"Where are you sending me this time, Dad?"
Minato had a mischievous grin on his face when answering.
"I'll tell you after we're done."
…o.0.O.0.o…
A/N: Chapter 4 will come out same time next week.
This chapter is named after Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. Thanks for reading. Please review to let me know what you think.
