So in all honesty the last chapter was meant to be a one shot but when I uploaded it I forgot to change 'In progress' to 'Complete'. I meant to fix it but so far nearly every review I've gotten was to update. So I sat down and I thought about whether or not I could add anything to what I had already made.

You see the whole concept was to portray something bad happening to a child who can't understand what it was and show his reaction of the reactions of those who can understand the gravity of the situation. So I thought, "Okay, so we saw it from the kid's point of view, now let's see it from the adult's point of view."

And here's that.

Also I want to give the warning that I had to up the rating because this is might just be the bloodiest and yet oddly enough sweetest chapter I have ever written.

By the way I don't own Naruto.

Minato had been gazing out the window intently now for nearly an hour. He waited patiently for something to happen, some kind of attack. With his amazing skills he could sense every movement, hear every sound. He would know without question whether or not what was happening outside was the wind blowing, an animal scurrying, or a prowler waiting for his opportunity to break into his family's home. Yeah he knew he was most likely overcompensating for this afternoon, but he didn't care. He was certain he wasn't getting any sleep tonight anyway after what had happened.

A skilled shinobi such as himself never allows their emotions to get the best of them. They always know how to keep a cool head. However nearly every shinobi would agree that there is one thing an enemy could do to break that emotionless exterior. To truly fluster a shinobi , bring out their uncontrollable sadness, uncertainty, fear, and most of all their wrath.

Just attack a shinobi's child.

He knew this was how it was meant to be. He was the leader of one of the most revered ninja villages in the nation. Both he and his wife had made scores of enemies throughout their lives as all ninja did, not to mention that the boy held a very valuable monster inside of him coupled with the fact that it would still be some time before he would enter the academy and even learn the fundamentals of self defense. Put all that together and he might as well dress his son in a bulls eye. He knew he shouldn't have been surprised, but he couldn't help but sulk. The least he could have done was keep a better eye on the four year old.

The family had decided to go to the park that afternoon. Minato and Kushina would often sit on a park bench and read, or talk, or just sit, relax and enjoy the nice day. Naruto on the other hand would always run around the playground until he exhausted himself to the point where when he got home he couldn't stop himself from napping until dinner time. All in all it was a nice way to spend a Sunday afternoon, or at least that's how it was originally suppose to go.

When they got to the park, Kushina and Minato immediately spotted some old friends who were also enjoying the sunny day and soon the couple began to get lost in a conversation with them.

"Mommy, will you push me on the swing?" Naruto asked his mother. She didn't respond to him immediately, annoying the boy who thought she was ignoring him so he tugged on her blouse a few times asking the question again, until she snapped,

"Naruto, Mommy is talking." She felt horribly guilty for that later.

The four year old huffed. He was bored by the grown up's conversation and decided he would play on his own by the monkey bars. At the time the parent's didn't think it was a big deal. It's not like he was going farther than they could see him but since they weren't paying attention to him anyway that particular fact didn't really matter.

After 20 minutes Minato and Kushina's friends wrapped up their conversation and moved on. The married couple then sat on their favorite bench and scanned the jungle gym for their only child.

Oddly enough though, they couldn't spot him.

"Naruto?" They looked over the entire playground twice and saw plenty of other kids, but not their own.

Kushina got up from her seat and began to search the playground for him. "Honey, are you playing a game? Where are you?" She called out playfully, but after a few minutes looking everywhere her boy would hide she started to grow nervous.

"Okay Naruto. I give up. You win. Come on out." She called.

Little by little the playful smile began to slip off her face and was replaced by a worried expression until finally she began to panic. Her son was not anywhere to be found

She finally went back to her husband. "Minato I can't find him anywhere."

"Okay, let's not panic." He said trying to keep things calm, but in reality he couldn't deny that this was quite troubling. "He can't have wondered off too far. You know how adventurous he can be. He's probably just exploring other parts of the park. You go that way, and I'll check over here." He said pointing into two different directions.

"Ooooh. Unless that boy's in trouble, he's going to be for wandering off when I get though with him." Kushina huffed. She later regretted saying that too.

At first Minato wasn't too worried. His son was a little bit of a troublemaker. This was probably payback for making him wait until they were done talking, but after 25 minutes of scouring the park and finding no sign of the boy. He couldn't ignore the growing worry in the back of his head.

When he reconvened with his wife she looked to be at least three times as worried as he was.

"No sign of him? Did you ask the other kid's parent's if they had seen him?"

"Minato!" She appeared near frantic. "I looked back at the playground and found his shoe prints. There was a set of adult men's foot print's right next to them!"

Now this could have meant anything. Each set of prints could have been made hours a part from each other. Those shoeprints could have been made by one of the parent's of some other kid. Heck maybe those tiny prints could have been made by another kid with similar shoes to Naruto's, but after nearly and hour of looking for a little boy who seemed to have vanished into thin air and being the leader of a village full of highly skilled ninja at your beck and call for any emergency. Minato's brain immediately went to calling up his top tracker ninjas to check the situation out.

And low and behold, they confirmed that the adult male footprint was not of this village's origins.

The news struck both parent's hearts to the core. They couldn't prevent their minds from going to the worst possible case scenario. Kushina almost hyperventilated. They had already lost too much time. If the person or people who took him were skilled ninjas there's no telling how far they had already gotten by now, not to mention the sun would set pretty soon, making it even harder for them to find the culprits under the cover of darkness.

Minato called up four squads of ANBU to check north, south, east and west. To him finding his son was an S rank mission.

Thankfully after 30 minutes the tracker ninja were able to pick up a lead though faint. The Hokage and his wife allowed them to lead the way but as time stretched on and they traveled farther and farther from the village, the parents only grew more and more anxious and frustrated with the squad who could not keep up and soon Minato was a fair distance a head of them.

Then, in the twilight of dusk Minato spotted something in the distance of the forest that seemed to be running away in the trees.

To try and make out what it was, he squinted his eyes only to have them widen in horror. His little boy was limply thrown over a foreign ninja's shoulder with his hands tied. It was impossible to tell what kind of condition the child was in.

The father let out a short quiet gasp only for his shocked, dismayed face to contort into one of rage a second later. He threw one of his special kunai at this ninja and the man was barely able to dodge as the knife embedded itself in the tree only a mere three feet ahead of him.

The enemy stopped dead in his tracks. Facing the enraged father.

"UNHAND HIM NOW!" Minato roared, unable to restrain the fury evident on his face.

"STOP!" The kidnapper yelled he knew he would be no match for the famed yellow flash so in a desperate attempt to get the hokage to back off he readjusted the unconscious child slung over his shoulder by grabbing him by the back of the neck and placed a kunai up against the boy's jugular.

"Take one step closer and I slit his throat!" He threatened, his voice barely covered his desperation.

Minato didn't say a word in response but in a blink of an eye he hirashined himself to where his kunai landed just behind the kidnapper and in an instant he was able to take the knife he held against the four year old and move it so the kidnapper would slice his own throat instead.

"Like that?" Minato hissed as he grabbed his son from the dying man as he fell from the tree clutching his bleeding neck.

Before the Hokage got the chance to inspect whether or not his unconscious boy was hurt he heard his wife yell out "WATCH OUT MINATO! THERE'S MORE!"

Just in the nick of time Minato managed to block one oncoming throwing star at him with his knife and then turn around and stabbed it into another attacker's chest who had planned to come at the father from the other side.

Minato had done this all while his left arm was clutching his little unconscious Naruto close to his chest, but he gently put him down so that he could fight these foes properly and after trying to take his only kid away he most definitely wanted to properly end these scumbags.

While he was taking out the rest of the enemy ninja his wife immediately went for Naruto to inspect his condition.

"Naruto?" Her voice was dripping with desperation. The four year old had the most peaceful look on his face as though he were simply sleeping but Kushina knew better. These monsters had done something to him and that terrified her. If they had knocked him out by bashing him over the head then he might have a concussion. If they had drugged him somehow then there was the possibility he could die from it. What if he overdosed on it? What if they gave him some sort of narcotic that would cause irreversible damage to his still developing brain?

She got on her knees and cut the ropes binding his little hands with a kunai from her weapons pouch. She held his limp body in her arms and shook him hoping to get a reaction out of him." Naruto? Sweetie, wake up."

She began to weep when she received no response. Her voice cracked as she slowly rocked herself back and forth, burring her face into his gold hair. "Honey, mommy's sorry she wasn't paying better attention. You're scarring me. Sniff sniff… wake up and say you're okay. Sob, sob."

"Lady Uzumaki."

"STAY AWAY!" She screeched when she felt a hand on her shoulder. It was her instinct to assume the worst and hold her boy closer and away from whomever it was but she relaxed when she realized that it was only one of the ANBU.

"Lady Uzumaki." The masked ninja spoke calmly. "I am a trained medical ninja. I can examine your son." She offered the distressed mother.

Minato had overheard the entire scene and it only filled him with more rage to see his wife so distressed, especially when he agreed with her concerns. There might very well be something horribly wrong with Naruto.

He held up the last living kidnapper by his neck and seethed "Tell me what you have done?"

The man only gargled in response as his windpipe was being crushed. Minato threw him against a tree nearly knocking him out. "TALK! I KNOW YOU'RE STILL CONCIOUS!"

"Minato!" He heard kushina call out to him. He looked in her direction and saw that she was still clutching onto their boy but this time the child's eyes were open and gazing blearily at him. His soft baby blues were only barely opened and clearly unfocused but even so it was a sign he was waking up.

"He's alright!" Kushina cried out.

Knowing this last scumbag wouldn't be going anywhere anytime soon, Minato rushed over to his son.

He got down on his knees and took a good look at him. Though his eyes were open they were clouded and dazed. It seemed as though whatever they used to knock Naruto out hadn't completely worn off yet because he still didn't seem entirely conscious.

He motioned for the child to look at him and his heart sank a little at how vulnerable and weak his normally bright and outgoing son appeared. Whatever was left of Minato Namikaze's rage had dissipated and left nothing but concern in its place as he softly tried to comfort his poor child.

"Naruto? Can you hear me? Daddy's here. It's okay. Shh. It's all right. Tell me you're okay."

After a minute of just staring at his father with glazed eyes Naruto managed to slur out in a broken voice "Hi dah-yy….."

It lifted his heart a little to see his son begin to come out of it. The medical ninja informed him what she had told Kushina, that he had no injuries and that it was just a standard tranquilizer dart that had knocked him out and it was wearing off now.

That was such a relief to hear. The hokage noticed his disoriented boy shiver in the cold night air and without thinking of how bloody it might be after that massacre, he took off his hokage jacket and wrapped it around his little boy. Kushina practically swaddled him in it as if he were a baby again.

He instructed his ANBU on what to do concerning the kidnappers and he and his family headed home.

Kushina held Naruto tightly all the way home. There was a small part of her that feared if she didn't keep as close as possible someone would just take him again. It was just her protective motherly instincts overcompensating for not keeping an eye on him at the park that afternoon.

She still didn't let him go when they arrived safely back at their own house, and not even when She saw Minato put up even more seals around the premise to give them extra protection. It was only when she got upstairs to her bathroom that she placed him down on the counter. She held a wash cloth under the faucet and dowsed it in cold water then used said wash cloth to clean off Naruto's face in preparation for bedtime. She was grateful that he didn't notice her hand was shaking, her nerves still bothering her after the close call.

He seemed to be more coherent now so the mother tried to probe him for answers to see what he remembered. He couldn't recall anything after being drugged and actually seemed oblivious to the danger he was in that tonight. She was happy to hear that. The less he knew, the less likely he was to be traumatized by the event.

Minato followed his family into the bathroom after he was finished putting up all the seals around their house. He stared tiredly at the two before him and then slowly walked to his son's side. The boy looked much better but his wrists were still reddened from the ropes that were tied too tightly to keep his hands bound.

Minato grasped his son's tiny hand and softly rubbed the reddened area with his thumb, too lost in thought to notice the confused look Naruto was giving him.

The kidnappers must have wanted to make sure he would put up as little of a struggle as possible for when he had awakened. The hokage nearly shuddered at the thought. If he had caught up to those ninja even 10 minutes later than Naruto might have woken still in their custody and this night would have gone much more horrific for the oblivious, innocent boy. Even worse. What if he hadn't caught up to them at all and they had gotten away with his son? He might never have seen him ever again. What a horrible, horrible thought. He wouldn't let his mind go any further in that direction.

He shouldn't have been surprised by any of this. Minato knew how the ninja world worked and there are many dangerous foes in this world who think much more strategically than humanly and many times innocent people would get hurt. Still the idea that a defenseless little kid, let alone HIS defenseless little kid, would be the target of such cruel acts made his blood run cold.

These were the thoughts that ran through Minato Namikaze's head as his wife finished preparing their son for bed and carried him into their bedroom.

She set Naruto down on her and her husband's large queen sized bed and proceeded to pull his shirt over his head to take it off. "Honey its time to get ready for bed. I want you to sleep in here with mommy and daddy tonight, okay?"

The boy gave his mother a confused look and asked "How come?"

The woman had to stop and think for a moment on how to explain this in a way that wouldn't upset the poor boy. If he didn't understand what had happened today then she just wanted to leave it at that. The last thing she wanted was to scare him.

"Well… You know how you sometimes ask to sleep with us whenever you have a bad dream? Well tonight mommy went through something kind of scary and she wants you nearby so she doesn't have any bad dreams." She hoped he wouldn't ask her want had happened to cause her to be so scared. Thankfully his response was a very cute one that only the logic a little kid could come up with.

"I didn't know Ninjas could still get scared."

"Kushina smiled at her adorable, confused looking boy. "It doesn't happen a lot, but when it does, I need a brave little man to help me though it. Will you help, mommy Naruto?"

Naruto grinned back lifting her heart just a little bit at the sight. "Yes! I'm brave! I protect you mommy!"

Just hearing her son say that made her feel so much better. She knew how much he loved his mother and it warmed her heart. Something she was in need of after all that had happened.

She finished getting him into his PJs and tucked him under the covers only to immediately join him.

After only a few minutes the boy was sound asleep. Kushina watched his soft intake of breath and slowly reached over to softy stroke his cheek with her fingertips. His face twitched a little in his slumber from the light contact but he did not stir.

Finally Kushina made herself comfortable in bed and wrapped one arm around her boy to hold him close like a little girl would to a teddy bear. She wanted to keep him close by even while she slept so that she would be right there in case anything happened. She placed one final kiss atop his head before she closed her eyes in an attempt to get some shuteye herself but not before whispering to her four-year-old son.

"I love you very much."

After thinking about it all Minato understood that that was probably all the attacks against his family that he would be facing for the night. The only remaining living kidnapper was now being interrogated for his motivations and if there were anymore they would have to be pretty stupid to try anything else so soon after that failed attempt but the man just couldn't help it. The idea of his son being kidnapped just terrified him so much all he wanted to do was just keep an eye out all night long for anyone else that might be so foolish as to –

"Daddy?"

The slight noise startled the hokage from his musings and on instinct he whipped out a kunai readying himself to attack whatever foolish idiot it may be, but instead was shocked to only see that it was Naruto dressed in his PJ standing at the foot of the stairs giving his father a frightened look.

Minato could just kick himself. He almost attacked the very person he was trying to protect and it looked as though his actions had scared the little boy, the last thing he wanted to do.

He slipped into a more caring demeanor as he put his knife away. "Naruto, what are you doing up?" It's late. You need to get your rest."

The boy gave his father a sad look. "Daddy, are you mad at me? Did I do something wrong?"

"What? No. Of course not." Minato was surprised to hear such a thing from the boy. What brought this on?

The child gazed down at his feet. "Cause you look so upset to see me. Ever since I woke up feeling funny."

Now Minato truly felt awful the last thing he wanted was to dump all of those negative feelings onto his son. He couldn't stand it if Naruto thought that this was in anyway something he should get blamed for when he did nothing wrong. It was those monsters that knocked him out and tried to take him away and it was Minato's fault for not keeping a closer eye on the four year old and he wanted his son to know that somehow.

Immediately he walked over to his son and got down on his knees to be at his level. He put his hands on the boy's shoulders and tried to explain. "I'm not angry with you Naruto. Not at all. I just…. Seeing you like that… Seeing you like THAT… What I mean is… I got mad at some…. Uh, bullies I met today….. I took care of them but I still…. I…. I mean…."

There was just no way to tell his boy the truth without making things worse and the more he tried, the more awful he felt over the whole situation.

Naruto looked very confused. Not understanding a word of what his father was saying but he just smiled and told his daddy what his mother had told him.

"S'okay daddy. Mommy said if you get sacred. We can all be brave for each other tonight."

Minato just stared at his son's smile and his concerns lightened just a little. The boy was right and he didn't even fully understand what had happened. What was most important was that he was just there for his family tonight and the best way to do that was to be by their side tonight.

"….. Yeah." He'd just leave it as that.

He stood up and picked his boy up under his arms and held him up high to see him. Minato gave Naruto a smile and said, "If your mommy wakes up and sees you're not there beside her it'll make her really upset. Let's go to bed."

As he walked up the stairs he held his child close to his chest, relishing in his boy's warmth.

Naruto squirmed a little in his father's hold. "Daddy you don't hafta carry me everywhere. I'm not a baby anymore, I'm big."

Minato only chuckled at the sentiment and held his child closer, his trong arms wrapping around him in a protective mannor. He nuzzled into his soft golden downy hair and resting his tired head on top of his little one. "I know."

Minato laid Naruto down next to Kushina, giving her a soft kiss on her forehead as she slept. He hoped his wife was having sweet dreams. Then he got into the bed on Naruto's other side.

The boy looked up at his dad from his pillow and yawned. "Daddy I'm not sleepy anymore."

Minato got comfortable in bed and looked at his son whose tired looking face betrayed his words. He stroked his son's hair comfortingly and tenderly before covering his droopy baby blue eyes with his large hand.

"Shh, Just try, okay son?" He whispered in his little ear, and within less than a minute the boy closed his eyes on his own this time and fell into a deep slumber with Minato following suit only minutes behind him.

That night as the family of three slept peacefully they would protect each other from the things that they each could or could not truly comprehend.

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