Naruto was gone. This was the only thought that Sarutobi, the celebrated god amongst ninjas and the third hokage, could have. Guilt and sadness and anger circling his head like starving vultures.

The evidence had been damning to say the least, but there was no evidence of where the young toddler was. Obviously the person who took him was an extremely well trained ninja, as there was no trace of any affiliation and with the Kumo incident attention had lapsed on the boy for a day. That was all the time the kidnapper needed as Naruto was gone the next day with no evidence of where he might be.

For a few weeks after the boy was found missing, things were kept hush-hush, with trackers being sent out of the village to locate the toddler. Sadly they could not find him, because he was unknowingly still within the village walls, and the search had to be stopped as it was spread resources thin.

As winter came to a close and spring began to set in, Sarutobi still held hope in finding the young jinjuriki, but he felt pressure from the council to announce the boy's statues as missing publicly. Truly the civilian council wanted the boy declared dead, but the ninja side of the council knew that claiming their tailed container dead would be declaring a great weakness, while simply 'missing' still held hope for finding the boy.

Posters were made and spread around the village, and after a few weeks began to expand to outside the village and into other areas of Fire country. Tips were sent in about spotting the boy, but all were dead ends, and were also put to a stop after a while for wasting resources.

After a year of searching, the boy was declared dead, causing the civilians and many ninjas to celebrate the death of the 'demon'. But any ninja with a tactical mind or who had known the boy or his family knew what this really meant. The boy had most likely been kidnapped by an enemy village, and was even now being brainwashed into a powerful weapon. Those who knew the boy's parents were the most devastated.

Kakashi felt a great guilt fall onto his shoulders. He had been so hurt after his sensei's death that he had thrown himself into the ANBU and took suicide mission after suicide mission, never stopping to check on his teacher's only child. He felt it was his inattentiveness that lead to the young child disappearing after his short life of abuse by the village. With this extra weight on his shoulders the young man was removed from ANBU after a failed psyche exam, and was stuck on no greater than B-rank Mission for quite some time.

Jiraiya had been contacted after the announcement of Naruto's 'Death' and had been absolutely crush beyond despair. The white haired man fell into a depression, and threw himself into boozing and whoring his way around the nations, only barely keeping up his spy network; enough to make sure the village would not burn to the ground expectantly. Soon Jiraiya became as infamous as Tsunade about being a drunk, but powerful ninja who cracked under the pressure.

Even the great hokage was affected and he seemed to age years over night, but he was still the leader of the village, and as much as it hurt him he had to remain strong for people who lost some of his love. Many other more sinister peoples' plans were thrown for a loop with the boy gone.

At first nothing truly changed from the original timeline, but soon the paths split and diverged. In one universe a young boy was placed into an apartment at four, and the apartment and surrounding area fell into disrepair as no one wanted to live near the 'Demon'. Young children were taught to hate the boy, without knowing why, and many assassination attempts were made on the boy's life. A ramen stall remained a stall because it was known for not turning away the demon brat, and it lost many costumers.

In this story though that does not happen; the area the boy would have lived in flourished, with many new shops and restaurants opening nearby, including an amazing restaurant specializing in world famous ramen. Children were not taught to hate a young child, and soon many forgot the boy had once existed, except those that had loved the young child.

Short, but hopefully filled in some gaps, and will help later chapters make more sense.