A GENJUTSU'S FRAME OF MIND
The months that led to his admission to the Academy were more tense than he would have liked. Kaasan grew quieter, and Otousan often brought her attention back to their little home instead of letting her stare out the window.
Minato felt a bit like a ghost already, and he knew his mother loved him, but he wished he had not been born with chakra at all. (He was in denial about the deep, deep part of himself that was fascinated about the prospect of being a superhuman and doing wonderous things. The inner dreams of every human to throw a fireball are unmatched, after all. And the possibilities seemed endless. Healing with literal magic, running so fast that no one could catch him. It was pure fantasy in the Before.)
His mother brought him to the mandatory doctor check-up five months before the Academy was due to start and four months before he turned five, and he was undoubtedly approved for having a developed chakra core.
"Ah, you seem to have a large chakra pool for a civilian child your age." the doctor remarked. Minato looked at his mother for permission to ask a question, and she nodded her head.
"You can feel my chakra?" Minato asked, and the doctor smiled at him. Their face was round, and the man had a rather stocky build for someone who had an office job. Red marks lined his cheeks, but Minato was not sure if those were clan marks or a tattoo.
"Yes, you also seem to have an inclination towards sensoring based on your chakra scans. When you start to use your chakra, I would not be surprised if you were a natural sensor. However, this is a very limited science, so take my words with a grain of salt."
A sensor... he would be able to feel other people's chakra? "What is a sensor?"
The doctor smiled at him, face warming around the action. "You will learn in the Academy."
Minato was tired of people telling him that.
"Get up." Ugh, the blonde tried to hide his face in the book he was reading, which he only understood half of, about different muscle groups, but Fugaku pushed it down and looked at the pictures of muscles with contempt.
Minato scowled at Fugaku's stupid baby face. "No, I don't want to throw shuriken anymore."
However, Fugaku ignored his words and grabbed the book from Minato's hands, caring very little about what Minato wanted when Fugaku dragged him outside.
"You have not practiced throwing all week," Fugaku announced, and Minato knew he was right, sure, but this was ridiculous. They were both under the age of ten.
"I'm not even in the Academy yet," Minato grumbled, but he started to set up the throwing set to practice anyway. He was nothing but a good listener.
"Hn," Fugaku said, and the boy watched him dutifully count the shuriken and put them in the bag he tied around his shoulder. Fugaku insisted this was necessary to do before training. He said the whole point was to make sure the weapons were good enough quality to practice with, but Minato had no idea how to look for that. Chips? Dullness?
He suspected Fugaku did not know either, because the boy always told him everything like a know-it-all, but for this he just said 'look for imperfections'. So they did this little ritual that was pretty pointless, and Fugaku would make sure the targets were up, which they had to set up because Fugaku would always take them down after.
Baba-san was a neat person.
"What did you learn about in the Academy, today?" he asked, and Fugaku huffed from where he was setting up the targets at.
"Genjutsu." Fugaku replied.
"Genjutsu?" Minato asked. He had heard Baba-san reference it, saying it was nasty work, but he was not quite what it was. From inferring, he knew it was a technique that affected the perception of the mind or the body, but Fugaku looked at him, annoyed, once again.
"Do you not know what Genjutsu is?"
"...No," he admitted.
Fugaku looked disgusted at him, and Minato couldn't help but giggle at it. The expression was really growing on him.
"It is a technique where you alter the perception of others around you by inserting your chakra into theirs. Uchiha partially specialize in this." Then the boy just kept putting up the large targets like he did not drop a bombshell.
"Do you know one?" Minato could not help but ask.
"Yes," Fugaku said, and his shoulders rose from where he was working.
"How does that work?" No seriously, how do you disrupt or mess up the chakra flow to the brain and not cause permanent damage? And does that mean you somehow alter your chakra to attack their chakra pathway?
"You will figure it out in the Academy. I am not your teacher."
"But-" Minato bit his tongue but decided to keep going anyway. "Does it use the nervous system? Does it-"
Fugaku crossed his arms, and his dark eyes looked over him. "I can show you." Which meant that he had no idea how it worked or forgot. Then the words Fugaku was saying to him caught up in his brain, and he realized that a child was asking him if he wanted to experience something he knew nothing about, under no adult supervision, and not even knowing fully how it affected the body.
"You are not casting a genjutsu on me," Minato stated tersely, but Fugaku just walked more into his space.
"Why, are you scared?" Fugaku said, and his eyes flashed, and for a moment, he looked like a cocky child and nothing else.
That silenced Minato right up, and Fugaku took it as him being scared, but Minato was more shocked that Fugaku was acting like a dumb little fucking idiot than anything else. The Uchiha, with his short hair long enough to be put behind him in a small ponytail, face with frown lines from being so serious even at six years old, smirked at him.
Minato’s mouth opened, then closed. Fugaku, for all his know-it-all lectures and stiff posturing, was grinning-just slightly, just enough for Minato to catch it before it disappeared under his usual scowl in Minato's silence.
And that was when Minato realized - Fugaku was having fun challenging him.
He was teasing Minato, pushing him, the same way kids did when they wanted to impress each other but were too prideful to admit it. Or when a kid pushed boundaries with someone they knew would not punish them for it. He had been for weeks, and Minato just followed him around like a loyal puppy.
And if Minato refused, if he flat-out denied Fugaku’s little challenge, then the boy might retreat back behind his usual cold exterior - shoving down whatever fleeting sense of playfulness had made him suggest it in the first place. His reason and discipline would rear its ugly, stupid head.
So, Minato sighed dramatically, crossing his arms. "Fine. But if I end up brain-dead, I’m haunting you."
"Try not to puke on my shoes," Fugaku responded, and Minato felt a specific spike of anxiety along his shoulders at the remark.
Minato didn’t have time to argue because Fugaku stepped into his space, hands already forming the seals. He barely had time to inhale before the world shifted.
The ground and fence line around them simmered like air above metal on a hot day, and the sky kept falling. Once and twice and three times, the earth below him started to feel soft. Which was really concerning, because he was not sinking. What the fuck was happening? His body started to sway, left and right and left and right, and then Minato realized that it was the world that was spinning, not him.
A flicker of shadow passed in his periphery, something just beyond his vision, whispering against the edges of his mind-
And then it was gone.
Fugaku released the genjutsu with a quick flick of his fingers he barely noticed, and Minato’s entire stomach lurched. Minato blinked. He was still standing there, in the same spot, in the same clearing, with the same dumb-looking Fugaku staring at him expectantly.
He barely turned his head before he vomited straight onto the dirt. He managed to miss kneeling in the mess as he fell onto his hands and knees.
"I told you not to puke," Fugaku grunted.
Like he could help it? Minato dry-heaved as his world kept spinning. He felt like he just swallowed a vat of acid. "S-shut up."
"That was just a basic jutsu to warp the senses, you need to get it together." Fugaku insisted further, then he pushed Minato's shoulder back to grip where his neck met his collarbone to stabilize him.
"Come on." Did they teach grounding techniques in the Academy? Or did Fugaku just know this this shit?
Even though Fugaku sounded annoyed, he sat there beside Minato until his world settled. He knew the kid was nice, deep down.
"You should do it again." Minato insisted, and he stood up and tried to steel himself.
"You just puked." Fugaku said, but he could see the other boy perk up at the chance to use jutsu. Huh, how much did Fugaku get to practice on people? Then the other boy cast it without warning him, and Minato puked again when the genjutsu was over.
By the time Baba-san came back, both he and Fugaku were yelled at for an hour by both the old woman and Kaasan for using jutsu unsupervised. Even though Fugaku tensed up, he still looked proud of himself the whole time.