Chapter 12: Father-Son Time
Naruto woke the next morning wondering what the heck he ate last night to cause such a weird dream. He thought he'd gotten over those dreams of where his parents finally showed up to claim their son. Apparently not, though this one had been unusually realistic. Ha, as if there were a magic knife that could turn kage bunshin into parents...
He felt something drop onto his hand and looked down at the small spot of moisture distantly. Ah, he was crying. He quickly wiped his eyes and pasted his fake-it-till-it's-true smile on instead and forced his thoughts on something happier.
He was on his first C-rank mission! The unfamiliar surroundings told him that much, though he wished he had an easier time dividing his dream memories from his actual memories. Had they actually fought that no-brows guy with the giant sword? Or had that been part of his dream? Did Kakashi-sensei really pass out?
Meh, he was sure someone would say something to clear it up when he got downstairs. He got dressed quickly and went to find the others, trying not to think about how awesome it would have been to have had those two from his dream actually be his parents. Even if his 'mother' was kind of scary.
Sasuke had to be up by now or else Naruto would have seen him in the room they shared. So the blonde wasn't surprised to see his stoic teammate sitting at the front table sipping a cup of tea. Kakashi was lying in a futon on the floor off to the side, either still unconscious or just sleeping, Naruto wasn't sure.
"Morning, teme!" Naruto greeted loudly, meandering over to the kitchen to see if there was any food already made, or if they were going to have to eat ration bars for breakfast.
"Hn," the ever-so-talkative Uchiha answered without looking away from the window he was staring out of.
The blonde teen didn't find much in the way of food, but he didn't see something that made him breath catch. There, along the corners of the window, were tiny faintly glowing symbols. Those... those were from...
Sasuke shot his teammate a glare when the blonde nearly knocked over his tea as he scrambled over the table to get to the door faster. Naruto jerked the door open, and hastily scanned the door jam. There! More little black markings; and, when he placed a thumb over a small spiral symbol, the whole array stopped glowing. Just like his... his dad said it would.
They were security seals, set to ignore the current residents of the house and immobilize anyone else. When one of the house occupants pressed a finger against the spiral, it disabled the seal to allow guests in. Normally it would have required a chakra pulse, but his father changed it so the civilians could use it.
Which meant that he hadn't been dreaming! But...
Again Sasuke found himself glaring at his teammate, but this time because the shorter teen had grabbed him by the front of his shirt and brought them face to face. "Where is he?!"
The Uchiha scowled back at the frantic looking blonde, trying to convey just exactly how irritated he was, but when the boy didn't take the hint, he decided be a little less subtle. Taking advantage of his peer's poorly balanced stance, he hooked a foot around the other teen's ankle and initiated a brief struggle which ended with the brunette sitting comfortably on top of his opponent's back with one hand twisting Naruto's arm at a painful angle, and the other resuming its earlier task of sipping tea.
"Where is who?" Sasuke asked.
"My dad! Get off me!" the blonde shouted, partially muffled by the floor and by the pain shooting through his shoulder.
"Hn," came the dark haired boy's reply as he debated over his answer. To tell the dobe, or to let him sit and stew for a while? Choices...
Eventually, it was the memory of a sadistic redheaded woman with chakra chains that decided that ending the torture of the blonde spawn of that woman was probably in his own best interest.
"He dispersed himself after Kakashi-sensei woke up last night." He released the idiot reluctantly.
Naruto rolled to his feet, his eyes searching the room frantically. "Where's the knife?!"
Rolling his eyes, Sasuke fished the special blade out of a pocket. Kakashi had given it to him after the jounin had woken him up to take final watch. "This knife?"
The Uchiha had to snatch his hand back or risk having it sliced in his teammate's rush to take the kunai.
"Kage Bunshin!"
The blonde wasted no time summoning two clones and passing them the knife. Instantly one of them lit up with a bright smile. "Naruto!"
It shoved the blade at the other clone and jumped to tackle-hug the original. When Sasuke snorted, the clone reached up without hesitation to pull the Uchiha into the embrace as well. "Sasuke! Good morning! How are my two favorite boys?"
Naruto couldn't suppress the wide smile that threatened to split his face in two. Sasuke glared irritatedly at a wall, but those who looked closely noticed he wasn't resisting the hug as much as he could have.
"I thought I was your favorite," the other clone spoke with mock hurt in its voice. Then it made a quick hand sign. "Henge."
Naruto looked up to see his father standing there, just like from his dream that hadn't been a dream. Dressed like Kakashi sensei, but without the green vest and mask covering his lower face, the elder blonde smiled cheerfully back.
"Pffft, you're my favorite husband," Kushina clarified, releasing the boys to perform her own transformation jutsu.
"You have other husbands I don't know about?"
Kushina turned to face Minato with a smirk. "Wouldn't you like to know..."
All the noise must have awoken the other inhabitants of the house, because soon Tsunami poked her head into the room. "Oh my, everyone is awake without me! Just hold on a moment and I'll get breakfast started."
"Can I help?" Kushina asked, brightening at the idea of getting to serve her son his first mother-cooked meal.
"If you want to, sure."
"Great! Let's make ramen!" Kushina cheered. Both blondes in the room whipped their heads around at the sound of that mouth-watering word.
Tsunami hesitated as she made her way to the kitchen. "Uhm, that's not really a breakfast food, and I'm not sure we have all the ingredients..."
"No worries," the redhead replied. "We can send Minato and Naruto out to get what we need." She completely ignored the other issue the other woman had brought up.
"Why bother?" a pessimistic voice interrupted from the stairway. "They're all going to die anyway."
Inari stepped into the room and took a seat at the table as far from the others as he could. He seemed completely unaffected by the various frowns and scowls directed his way. Naruto looked like he wanted to say something, but he wasn't sure what after he'd already tried talking sense into the kid last night.
"It's too early in the morning to be worrying about such things," Minato replied quietly, the only one to still have a smile on his face. "What did you need us to pick up, Kushina? Though I'm not sure how much money we have, my vault is still back in Konoha..." His son looked up in surprise at the mention of a vault. He hadn't realized his parents might still have stuff from before their deaths.
Kushina waved a hand in dismissal at her husband's concern. "Kakashi, quit faking sleep and give some money to the sensei you stabbed and the little brother you ignored for twelve years."
The jounin sighed, not moving from his futon. "Trying to get back to sleep is not the same thing as faking sleep," he muttered.
"I know. You were faking. Money," the redhead persisted.
Grimacing, Kakashi pulled his wallet out and tossed it to the taller blonde with his good arm. It wasn't that important, he had more saved up back home. Besides, Kushina was perfectly capable of sealing another limb if he tried to protest.
"Sensei," he called out, making the blondes pause on their way out the door. "Don't forget we still need to plan for that when you come back."
"I haven't forgotten," Minato assured him. "Come on, Naruto. Let's make this trip quick, your mother's ramen is the best in the world!"
"Really? Even better than Ichiraku's?"
"Yep!"
The rest of the conversation was cut off as the father and son closed the door behind them.
The Yondaime frowned at the inadequate selection of meat presented to them at the butcher's shop. He was fairly certain that the ground pork was actually ground cat, and that the beef slabs in the corner were far past spoiled. Most of the market had been like this, but since the vegetables were going to be chopped up and boiled, their freshness hadn't mattered so much. Meat... meat was a different story.
He sighed. He was probably going to have to go hunting for it himself, it wouldn't be the first time. During the war, most shinobi had had to learn to hunt and forage for themselves. Limiting their reliance on supply lines had been too good of a tactical advantage to pass up.
"There's nothing for us here," Namikaze said, leading the way back out onto the street. "We may have to go kill our own meat."
Naruto looked excited at the prospect. "Really? You can hunt? Are you any good at it? Can you teach me?"
The boy was positively bouncing with eagerness and Minato couldn't resist the urge to ruffle his hair affectionately. "Hunting isn't too difficult if you have any chakra sensing abilities and a basic earth jutsu at your disposal. You don't at the moment, but teaching them to you well enough to hunt shouldn't take longer than a couple weeks." He forgot sometimes that what took him weeks to master, often took others months or even years.
Naruto let out a whoop of joy that quickly turned into a startled yelp as his pocket became suddenly lighter. Angrily he whirled around just in time to see a small child dart through the crowd with his Gama-chan in hand. Aw, man, how embarrassing to get swindled by a snot nosed runt in front of his dad? He raced after kid, intent on getting his frog wallet back and redeeming his standing with his father.
"Get back here, brat!"
So intent on his quarry as he rounded a corner down a deserted alley way, he didn't hear his dad call out, or sense the danger up ahead. The kid ducked behind a dumpster, and when Naruto rushed forward to dive after him, something fell from above and struck him hard across the back of his head.
A normal twelve year old would have been knocked unconscious for hours, but Naruto was hardly normal. His Uzumaki heritage combined with the kyuubi chakra combined with his abnormally thick skull meant that he was only dazed for a moment or so. Enough time for his assailant to grab him and hold a sword to his neck.
Naruto's vision cleared just as his father skid to a halt at the alley's entry way. He groaned. Great. Now he was being held hostage too! Super annoyed, and ready to create about a thousand clones to beat this guy into the ground, Naruto started to form the cross hand seal.
That was when a miasma of seething rage and cold fury flooded the area, freezing the teen in place. It was like Zabuza all over again but somehow... much worse. Killing intent, he realized, and whoever was emitting it made the Demon of the Mist seem like a child in a sandbox. He had to concentrate just to keep himself breathing!
Fearfully, he snuck a glance up at the man holding him. Was there another high class enemy hired by Gato?
But the guy was frozen in terror too! Shaking so badly the sword fell out of his hand as he stared straight ahead and unblinkingly at...
Naruto followed the man's gaze and felt his breath hitch at the sight of the blue-eyed demon coming steadily closer. Some vague part of his brain tried to protest that it was his dad but, until a few days ago, that had been a foreign concept, and his panicked state of mind couldn't comprehend it. That figure with the swirling, almost tangible, aura of malevolence surrounding it did not match up with the calm, happy-go-lucky, somewhat clumsy and always-smiling image he'd built up of his father.
And when he spoke, his voice was filled with promises of agonizing death. "Release. My. Son. Now."
When his son had darted away from him in the crowded market place to chase a pick pocket, Minato had chuckled and quickened his pace to follow. He noticed the small spike of killing intent only just a few steps from the corner his son had turned down, and he froze at the sight of a samurai holding blade to his little boy's neck.
"Give me all your valuables or I kill 'im," the swordsman taunted with sadistic glee.
Instantly his mind began calculating a variety of possible strategies. Most of which involved the Hiraishin seal on his son's head. A lot also involved instantly killing the man before he could react and possibly harm Naruto; however, he was reluctant to have his little boy's first experience with death be from him. Especially not if that death involved being covered in blood and/or gore afterwards.
It wasn't helping that images of a dark cloaked figure with an orange one-eyed mask kept darting through his brain. Along with the memory of an explosive tag wrapped baby. He hadn't been fast enough his original body, what made him so certain he could be fast enough in this weak clone one? He ruthlessly stomped down on that doubt, but couldn't quite squash it. This wasn't an S-Class possibly-Madara Sharingan wielding unknown shinobi, this samurai was low Chuunin level, at best!
In the small fraction of a second it took him think all of that, he accidentally let loose a small amount of the killing-intent he had bottled up. Normally experienced shinobi kept a tight hold of the threat they emitted, otherwise they'd never be able to sneak past anything, or ever keep an assassination secret. Now however... with the way the swordsman had frozen up... there wasn't any particular need for stealth, and it did mean he wouldn't have to kill him or even use the Hiraishin...
He was reluctant to do anything that would possibly give him away as the Yellow Flash. He didn't want his seeming resurrection to get back to any of his enemies that may come after him; and, by extension, come after his wife and child. It was unavoidable that it would leak out eventually, but he had hoped to gain as much time to be with his family and train up his son to be able to take care of himself as possible.
Decided, Minato released more of his deadly emotions and watched in satisfaction as the man dropped his sword. Good. His son was almost safe. Slowly, and ominously, he began to walk forward.
"Release. My. Son. Now."
The effect on the samurai was instant, snatching his hands away from the boy as if burned. Naruto scrambled clear and the Yondaime would have stopped to check on him, but he needed to remove the threat first. He stopped just a few feet from the man, making him sweat as he narrowed his gaze dangerously. "You are fortunate I wish to spare my son the sight of me turning your insides into your outsides. Leave. Before I change my mind about hunting you down later."
With a jerky nod the man turned and ran from his presence, not even bothering to pick up his sword. When he'd disappeared from Minato's line of vision, he finally released the oppressive atmosphere. Now he could check on his son.
He turned cheerfully back to the younger blonde. "Naruto, are you al-"
Minato cut off abruptly at the sight of the wide-eyed quivering orange child pressed with his back against the wall. Being stabbed would have been less painful than seeing his own son look at him with that fear in his eyes. He felt like kicking himself. How could he have forgotten? Normally children spent so much time in the presence of their parents they developed a resistance to their blood lust. Babies were born with it even, but they could lose it if either parent wasn't around for a long period of time, though it was much more likely to happen with the father than the mother. Twelve years definitely counted as a 'long period of time'.
'Kami, killing the man would have been less traumatizing...'
A/N - Drama Llamas! Dun dun DUN! Eh, sorry, after writing that seriousness I feel like I need to go get my silly back. D: IGOR WRITE MORE SO I CAN HAVE SOME SILLY! XD
Anyway, so, I developed a new counting system at work that completely baffles my coworkers! It goes: Gaara, Yamato, Jiji, Namikaze, Hime, Inu, Kitsune, Tako-Octo, Kurama, Tobi
If you can figure out how they make sense, then I tip my imaginary hat to you. That was me making them more and more convoluted over a period of six hours so they would stick in my head and I wouldn't lose count. XD Though I did refuse to make Gaara or Namikaze more complicated on the grounds that I love those two...
Story recommends!
The Windmill Turns Both Ways by Blaizekit - I'd be really surprised if you hadn't read this already. It's about a 12 year old Naruto being dropped into the future. An excellently done reverse time travel fic. :3
A New Dawn by Duesal Bladesinger- I always wanted to read a dimension hopping fic that had Naruto and Naruko as siblings. Naruto hasn't even found out about SasukexNaruko going on yet. XD I'm so excited to see that part!
Iryo-nin Kasa (医療忍 傘) by Vaengir - This is an OC-SI done really well. I love the interaction between the OC and Itachi. It's... hilarious. Normally I don't support OCxCanon Character romances, but this one makes me laugh. A lot! XD
All of these are currently updating. :3
Thanks for reading! I love you all!
-Py