Chapter 13
It’s been a month since Naruto had come back to life and so far nothing, not a sight, not a word not even a whisper about where Naruto could be and that was driving Minato crazy.
Ever since he was freed from the genjutsu his memories had been hitting him hard, every painful word, every hateful act and every image had been eating him alive for the past month.
Gosh, he was a horrible father.
“please tell me you have good news”, Minato, or in this case a shadow clone asks, standing next to Asuma near the forest of death.
He may be a bad father to his son, but he refuses to be a bad Hokage. Manito didn’t knew if Naruto would ever come back to the village and if he didn’t, he couldn’t blame him but in the impossible off chance he did, Minato would make sure he would come back to better village.
“we’ve been combing everywhere but we found nothing”, Asuma says, taking a drag of his cigarette.
“for…”, Minato was about to say when suddenly a loud crash can be heard.
Down on the ground and giant ball of dust comes flying, crashing through trees and rocks, landing in a clearing.
When the dust settles, a head of red hair can be seen.
“MENMA!!!”, Minato screams.
Now, let’s go back a little.
Naruto, or more precisely, Izuku, was an experienced man; he lived a long life so he knew the importance of a few things.
Info was one of those things. Going in blind is young man’s sport, one of which Izuku had grown tired off as the years passed by him, so he spent the last month or so getting himself acquainted with the world’s current state.
Highlights include, the Uzumaki are alive and thriving, having claimed as spoils of war the tail beast four through seven, the only reason they have four tail beasts instead of eight, is because Kumo and Suna where smart enough to not bring their tailed beasts to a battle against the people who invented how to seal tailed beasts to begin with, while Kiri was able to escape with the Three-tails.
Kumo and Suna also had to pay tough the nose to be able to keep their tailed beasts. However, the real reason why the Uzumaki were able to claim four tailed beasts to themselves was because their jinchuuriki gladly betrayed their villages in exchange of being freed from their burden.
The Uzumaki kept their word and in a smart move, the Uzumaki made sure that being the newly and very powerful Jinforce was an honor and its members where treated with the reverence and respect they deserved. After all, it is like that saying, the walking natural disaster that is not embraced by the village will set it on fire to feel the warm.
Thanks to the new boost in military power, Uzushio spread its wings into diversification, they were always crafty, but now with the power up, the sky was the limit.
With four natural disasters on legs on their side, the Uzumaki clan started a very profitable endeavor, landing money. Wherever a village or a country needs some cash, they turned to the Uzumaki and let us say, the Uzumaki always get their gold, one way or another.
Thankfully they weren’t into the slave trade, quite the opposite, they actively hunted down all slavers into extinction, considering they themselves were one of the favorite targets of such deplorable bastards, kekkei genkai stealing on the other hand…
It isn’t uncommon for the Uzumaki to demand payment in the shape of a individuals of suitable age from illustrious blood lines as guarantees for the loans, thus making sure the clan would always be at the top of the game, adding more and more kekkei genkais to the already long list they possessed.
Rumor has it that
Which also brings a light to the approach of other villages to even a glimpse of anything that can shake the power balance. All the villages were searching for ways to one up the Uzumaki, Konoha included, every village had eyes and ears on the ground and in the shadows, watching and hearing for a glimpse, whispers of anything that could upset the scale in their favor.
At the same time, the Uzumaki where doing the same, ready to snatch for themselves whatever could grow their power even more or dispose of what could in the future become a threat.
Which brings Naruto to his current predicament. He is powerful, probably the most powerful being on this world and that’s not an exaggeration, that’s a fact and in this world, the words of his teacher rings truer than never.
‘power invites challenge, challenge brings conflict and conflict breeds headache’
Don’t get him wrong, there’s no way Naruto would live this life without headaches, if there’s one thing he understands for all the centuries he had lived is that a headache in unavoidable, but he can choose the size.
As much as he hates to admit it, Mito’s words ring truer the more he learns about this world. He could up and leave, live the remaining days this world has to live as a wanderer doing whatever the hell he wants to do, but that would attract the wrong kind of attention, which would escalate until he himself become death destroyer of worlds and he promised himself that was something he would never be.
Izuku isn’t against a massacre or the occasional genocide, but just because he wasn’t against it doesn’t mean he likes doing it although he is vehemently against preemptive genocides always had been and always will be.
So walking around willy nilly racking up a body count every time some dumbass village tries to weaponize him was safely placed at the bottom of his list, but not off the table.
“Naruto!!”, he hears the familiar voice of his brother.
In retrospect, maybe he should not be having this kind of toughs while enjoying a nice and piping hot bowl of pork miso ramen at Ichiraku, but he’d be damned if he wasn’t going to have at least a bowl or two of the food of the gods.
Izuku blames the echoes of Naruto’s soul lingering in the body.
“I’m two feet away from you”, Naruto calmly states, not even dignifying his brother with a look.
“is that really you?!”, Menma asks.
“shut up would ya?”, Naruto says annoyed.
Maybe he should had used a some sort of cloaking or disguise, but hey, what is life without risk?
“it is you!!”, Menma tries to hug Naruto, but stops mid act, “mom and dad are worried sick!!”.
“and what did dear old me did to warrant such reaction from the Hokage and his wife?”, Naruto asks, putting the bowl down after finishing drinking the broth.
“t-that’s not funny bro”, Menma says, his voice trembling.
“last I checked, Lord Fourth only has two children, you and Nemuri”, Naruto says, getting up and putting the money for his food on the counter, “and I’m neither”.
He walks past Menma, ignoring the purple-eyed, straight red-haired version of himself as he makes his way out of Ichiraku’s.
Naruto was glad he had a better sense of style now, instead of wearing that eyesore orange jumpsuit, instead, he opted for a grey hoodie jacket with an eye patch covering his left eye, jeans and ninja sandals.
“were are you going?!”, Menma asks, putting himself in front of Naruto.
“where I’m going is none of your business”, Naruto says, stepping to the right and walking forward.
A small crowd was forming already.
Menma, always the hotheaded, takes a fighting stance.
“I’m not letting you go away; you either come with me or trough me”, he says flaring his chakra.
Fun fact, Izuku wanted to know why his parents and siblings under a genjutsu when one of the sorest points in their relationship was the constant bragging that they possessed the mind’s eye of the Kagura, which Naruto doesn’t have, actually, save for the gigantic chakra pool, Naruto doesn’t have anything else from the Uzumaki side of his blood, his blond hair was proof of that.
So, he took a peek into the past and saw that, the genjutsu, or more precisely, the kotoamatsukami, was cast on his parents and siblings by Danzo right when they were recovering from the whole shit show that happened the night he was born.
“get out of my way”, Naruto says.
“no, I’m not letting you go away!”, Menam says, a little more confident.
Oh yeah, Menma was stronger than Naruto.
“oh?”, Naruto says, with a raised eyebrow, “and what you gonna do?”.
“I’ll take you by force if I have to!”, Menma declares.
“alright”, Naruto declares while shrugging, “fist!”.
There’s a micro second of confusion before a freezer sized magic fist sends Menma flying away creaming.
Ok, does Naruto understands and kind of forgives his family, most likely for himself so he won’t be walking around carrying useless emotional weight? Yes, does he has any intention on being the bigger person and not going for their kneecaps? Oh hell no!!
So, back the where we started.
“you know”, comes Naruto’s voice, he could feel company on the way, after all, the son of the Hokage being sent flying like a rag doll does caught attention, “I was minding my own business, enjoying a nice bowl of ramen, my first bowl of ramen in two years and you have to come and bother me”.
Naruto says as Menma gets up to his feet.
“I’ll tell you this just once, child of prophecy, stay away from me”, Naruto says.
Suddenly, golden chains wrap around him coming from the tree lines.
“I’m not letting you go nii-san!!”, comes the feminine voice of his sister.
Which is a genderbent red-haired version of him, wearing her long hair into two pigtails and wearing the same ugly looking orange and black jumpsuit, but with shorts instead of pants.
“well, well, well if it’s not the prodigious daughter”, Naruto says, slowly turning around, his blue eye meeting her blue eyes, “did you came all the way here to resume your gloating over winning the genetic lottery?!”.
She gasps first, because he should be immobilized, unable to mover after being wrapped in adamantine chains and second because never he had spoken to her like that.
“this is not you, you are not like this!”, she exclaims, tears starting to form.
“I don’t have time for this!”, he exclaims.
His body crackles with lightning and suddenly a current f electricity travels through the adamantine chain, electrocuting Nemuri who screams in agony for a second before falling to the ground stunned.
“multi-shadow clones technique!!”, comes menma’s voice from behind him.
There’s a giant cloud of smoke, engulfing the whole clearing and the sun is obstructed as hundreds of shadow clones comes raining from above and rushing at him.
“rasengan barrage!!”, they all scream in unison each of them holding a sphered of spinning chkra in each hand.
the air pressure changes around Naruto as a spherical chock wave sends the first wave of clones flying away, filling the air with smoke as they pop off.
Naruto doesn’t even speak, he simply closes his right hand, involving it in a green glow and swing it above his head, making seven spheres of pure light appear and fuse together into an even bigger sphere that starts shooting light rays at the speed of light, hitting all the clones nearly simultaneously and sending the original flying against a tree.
“don’t look at me like that”, Naruto says, opening a fox like smile, “did you really tough I would come back from the dead empty handed?”.
He was about to turn around to leave when suddenly, he is trapped by several adamantine chains, he was about to electrocute his way out again when all of a sudden, he feels his body getting heavy as he falls unconscious.
“I knew I forgot something”, he mumbles before passing out, cursing himself for forgetting to place the anti-sharingan wards on his brain.
“Minato!!”, comes Kushina pushing her way through the Uzumake Seal corps and the Uchiha police, “is that…”.
She looks at the form of the passed out blond, still bound by chains as the Seal cops place chakra restraint and paralyzing seals all over his body and she can feel the tears building up on her eyes as a wave of emotion starts to boil inside her.
“yes, it’s Naruto”, Minato says, as he watches as the paramedics treat Menma and Nemuri who were still unconscious.