Naruto: Continualities

From the Ashes

Chapter 1: Of Chocobos and Greens

It was a quiet day in Konoha and Uzumaki Naruto was enjoying it by lying on one of the slopes overlooking a small ranch he had created. As he took a draft from his tobacco pipe, he thought about his life. From a very young age, he could still remember the bloody faces of his parents smiling at him through pain and despair. From the beginning, he had been scorned and isolated because of what he contained within his form. At the very start, he was already a legend in the making. It was weird how fate worked.

"Wark!"

Naruto sat up and looked behind him, noticing Gintose, the pride of the ranch he ran, stroll towards him. The blonde took note of the golden Chocobo and waved a greeting as the giant bird stopped next to him and nudged him with its beak, eying the pouch at Naruto's hip.

"Akashi-chan send you on another Sylvis Green run?" Naruto smiled as he pulled out two of the objects Gintose wanted.

The gold Chocobo nodded its head as it took the two greens in his mouth and then bent down to allow the Uzumaki to mount him. Naruto took a quick draft of his pipe and then dumped what remained of the contents onto the ground, grinding out the embers with the heel of his foot before hopping onto Gintose's back with a deft leap born of years of experience and training. Gintose shrugged his wings to make sure his passenger was seated properly and then took off at a galloping pace towards the main stables which were located atop the Hokage Monument. As Naruto held onto his mount, he took note of the Konoha as they crested a hill that gave him a clear view of the cityscape of Konoha. He could make out the tall red gourd-like building with the proud kanji for "fire" marked on it and various other skyscrapers that now dotted the shinobi village of Konoha.

Normally, the trek up the Hokage Monument was quickly done by traversing a series of switchbacks up the west side of the Hokage Monument. While it was wide enough that three men could easily walk on it side by side, it was a different matter for a speeding chocobo. To maintain such a pace required hundreds of runs up and down the mountain and the breakneck speed at which Gintose sprinted up the steps spoke to his sure-footed gait and keen mind. Though the different colors of Chocobo made them unique, the color also imparted a particular adaption or specialty for each chocobo with the most common being the dull sheen of yellow that was most common who were able to carry heavy loads and multiple people across flat terrain. Blue ones could swim across straits and navigate waterways. Brown ones could scale mountains and perform vertical climbing. Chocobo that were pink were gifted with telescopic sight and magnified grayscale sight. Green chocobo were capable of cultivating plants and growing crops.

But the cream of the crop and the rarest of them all was the Golden Chocobo, a chocobo that was capable of all of the above and much more. Perhaps it was an elite or even a "god" among its kind but they were also one of the lazier breeds when it came to work, preferring instead to muddle their time digging up Gyshal Greens and chasing after females. It normally took a shinobi an hour to climb to the top of the Hokage Monument but with his blazing speed and sharp wit, Gintose had arrived within eight minutes and thirty-three seconds upon taking the last step. From that particular end of the trail, it was only another couple hundred feet to the main stables, distance that he covered seemingly almost instantly.

Naruto dismounted at the door, leaping off Gintose's back and then pulling the stable doors open by himself.

"Seems like the genin team I requested did a pretty good job of cleaning up," Naruto sighed as he took a deep breath, enjoying the smell of fresh hay, "Akashi! You okay, girl?"

"Kweh!~" a chirp echoed from a stall on the left as a red-colored chocobo's head appeared, "kweh! kweh!"

Naruto strolled forward as Gintose followed close behind. Entering the stall simply involved pulling the single door outwards. Each stall was about ten by ten feet with plenty of fresh hay to act as bedding for the floor as well as a few blankets that were hung on each individual wall. Naruto walked over to Akashi and rubbed her neck, earning him a nuzzle with her beak as Gintose passed her the two Sylvis Greens in his mouth. She quickly consumed them with two snaps of her beak and gave a happy trill as Naruto brushed her down and checked her vitals. Normally, his wife did the checks during a chocobo's egging or illness but she had been feeling under the weather herself recently and had gone to the main Hospital to get a check-up, which left Naruto with the responsibility of making sure Akashi was doing fine.

"Well, looks like you're fine," Naruto grinned as he pulled out another Sylvis Green and fed it to Akashi, who eagerly munched on the treat, "It'll probably be another month or so but congratulations,"

Akashi gave another happy trill as Gintose pulled a particular blanket off one of the stall walls and dragged it over Akashi's back, making sure that he had secured it over her as she settled down to wiggle out a nest.

Naruto exitted the stall and grabbed a pitchfork and began tossing fresh hay into Akashi's stall and some of the other stalls, "Early night for you, Akashi. The rest of you guys, no excessive frolicking or disturbing the new mother! Alright?"

The other chocobo that were residing in other stalls squeaked and chirped assent as they all began squawking and whistling to the newly announced mother. After finishing the haying, he secured the stall doors and closed the main stable doors, leaving the birds to their own devices.

'Wonder how the check-up is going,' Naruto thought to himself as he pulled out his pipe and began packing in a fresh stub of tobacco.

Dead silence.

"No way. No fucking way,"

"Oh, yes, it is. Congratulations, you are the proud mother of Uzumaki Naruto's child,"

"What? How the hell! I thought Tsunade-sama told me it was impossible for me to have children,"

"Well, considering from your past medical reports, I would consider it nothing short of a miracle. Your ovaries suffered no damage but your uterus was extensively scared. However, the embryo must have been lucky and managed to attach itself to a part of the endometrium that was not scarred,"

"There won't be any problems, right?"

"Well, you'll need to come in for prenatal examinations and eventually, we'll have to run you by the obstetrician. I wouldn't take any chances if I were you. The more important issue is whether or not you want to tell him,"

"He'll go wild. He'll go berserk. Holy crap, he might just have his mind blown. Little bastard has it all in his head that he'd die childless. Shit, this is a lot of responsibility,"

"Well, as a new mother, you need to clean up your mouth. Parents are supposed to be role models and you can start right now. It's not proven but it is believed you can influence your child while it's still growing in your womb,"

"..."

"..."

"Hey, Haruno,"

"Hmmm?"

"How did I get to this... this place? I keep getting the feeling this isn't real all of a sudden,"

"Feeling overwhelmed already? Stay here and calm yourself then. Take as long as you need to sort everything out before you do anything,"

"Kind of hard to stay calm when you're the wife of the future Rokudaime Hokage and you're bearing his damn child when he thought it never possible. I'm a damn orphan, you know? I'm not going to be a good mother because I don't even know how to be one! And not only that, I don't know how to deal with all this!"

"Hey, hey ,hey! Calm down! You're getting ahead of yourself already. It's alright to be scared-"

"I'm not scared!"

"Okay, it's okay to be... wary of the future, but whatever you do, don't let it drag you down,"

"Speak of Naruto, there he is. He's coming down from the top of the Hokage Monument on top of a Sparrowhawk,"

'Ahh, the feeling of soaring,' Naruto thought to himself as the Sparrowhawk he rode on slowly drifted down into Konoha, 'never, ever gets old,'

He caught the familiar glint of red in one of Konoha Hospital's many windows and changed his route with a mental nudge, eager to see his wife and how she was doing. Apparently, they saw him coming for a while because they had left the window open as the Sparrowhawk slowed to a hover a few feet from the window. A quick leap and hope allowed him to jump through the window and land almost gracefully on his feet. Unfortunately, he wasn't being very careful and the tip of his shinobi sandal caught on the windowsill, tripping him up and causing him to land in an undignified heap in front of the two women face-first.

'What a frigging klutz,' his wife thought with a slight sweatdrop, 'what did I see in this idiot husband of mine anyways?'

"Does tasting the floor feel as good as ever?" Sakura joked with folded arms, her eyes dancing with mirth.

"Ahhh, don't tease me, Sakura-chan," Naruto grimaced slightly as he picked himself off the floor, smoothing out the front of his clothes.

If it weren't for the fact that Naruto had whisker marks, people would have sworn that they were looking at a miniature Namikaze Minato, granted his eyes and facial structure were given from his mother. That unruly golden hair of his had grown out past the short cuts he used to have when he was a kid and he was definitely taller than either of the two women, a far cry from how he had been the shortest of the Konoha Twelve. The funny part was that Naruto was still a genin while all the others had become jounin or attained equivalent ranks. As a result, the blond Uzumaki still wore that familiar jumpsuit of his but thankfully, it was the standard dark blue with black stripes along the linings. His jacket, however was a dark orange cloak with black flames along the edges with the kanji for "Konoha no Orenji Hokage" proudly emblazoned in stylized kanji.

He had changed a lot but...

He still liked pretending to be a harmless idiot.

"Oi, you golden hedgehog," Naruto's wife sighed as she pulled her husband to stand straight, brushing off his cloak and smoothing out the wrinkles, "how are Akashi and the others?"

Naruto blinked once and grinned, brushing a stray lock of hair out of her eyes, "Freshly hayed. Akashi is egging and we can probably expect a few chicks by the time winter rolls around,"

"Umm," she bit her lip as Sakura nodded to her out of the corner of her eye, "don't freak out when I tell-"

"Freak out? Why would I freak out? You'll be fine, right? I mean, nothing ever keeps you down, not even me when I try to drag you back to be-" Naruto started but was cut off by a finger on his lips.

Her response was to growl very loudly and say, "Shut up and let me finish, you little turd,"

Naruto clammed his mouth shut and waited.

"I'm going... I'm pregnant," she muttered under her breath.

"Come again?" Naruto blinked owlishly, "I think you said you were pregnant?"

She could only muster a nervous nod, somewhat apprehensive when Naruto stepped back a few times and looked her up and down a few times.

"You don't look pregnant to me," Naruto took a thoughtful pose and nodded a few times.

Sakura sighed in disbelief, "Naruto, you idiot,"

"Pregnant, pregnant, pregnant, how babies are made," Naruto muttered a few times as it hit him, "oh, my god. Oh, my god. Oh, my fucking god,"

"Yes, you're going to be a father," Sakura affirmed with a smile as she picked up a clipboard with a few charts and notes on them, "and don't-"

"YES! YES! YES!" Naruto screamed, throwing his hands in the air, "OH, YEA, YEA, YEA!"

Sakura laid Naruto out with a punch, "THIS IS A HOSPITAL. DON'T SHOUT LIKE THAT!"

Hey, do you remember how this all started? I remember when it all started for me. Normally, you'd see your parents smiling, your father holding your mother from behind while your mother holds you. I remember that bloody night when they stopped the Kyuubi's claw from reaching me with their own bodies. Even as blood dribbled down their chins and excruciating pain wracked their bodies, they continued smiling and told me the three words that made the greatest difference ever.

"Anata o aishiteru!"

The red string of fate that binds you and me together... It really reminds me of their story, the one I heard from my own mother when I was taming the Kyuubi no Youko. I was always lonely when I was growing up. Only those three words kept me going through everything I had gone through. They say shinobi develop insanity in the form of masks in order to cope with their lives. I guess being an idiot was my way of coping with life.

Hey, let's tell the story from the beginning. From the beginning, you knew the end. Remember...