Overtwisted

“Kurama says he has a theory about our changes,” Naruto said absently as she adjusted her hood over her hair. For those who knew about the Uzumaki, her crimson locks were a dead giveaway and she did not want the attention the vibrant color would no doubt garner.

Minato also adjusted his own cloak; the trio had procured their clothing from a small village near where they had arrived. He knew he would also attract attention, if not more than his daughter.

After all, the Yondaime was supposed to be dead in this world, from what little information they had managed to get from the villagers.

“So? What did the fox have to say?” Obito asked impatiently when the girl did not continue, arms crossed over his chest. He was the only one who didn’t bother with hiding his face; he wasn’t well-known and he wasn’t conscious about his scars, although he did wear a cloak.

“He says that your counterparts are dead in this dimension,” Naruto winced as the words left her; it was kind of strange when Minato and Obito were right there. “The two of you are apparently filling a void, hence the changes,” she gestured to her now alive father and Obito, who actually was younger.

“What about you?” Minato asked, a little curious. He wasn’t surprised that his counterpart was dead, considering that the Kyuubi’s attack on Konoha had occurred in this world too. But Obito was a surprise; if his counterpart had also been responsible for the Kyuubi, then there was a serious question about how he had died.

If he added up all these tidbits of information, Minato could come to a reasonable conclusion about his daughter’s transformation but he waited for Kurama’s theory.

“My counterpart has to be alive. Kurama says that two of the same soul can’t exist at the same time and I as the ‘outsider’ had to change if I wanted to live.”

Obito studied the girl’s appearance, taking in all the differences. While she still retained her blue eyes, they were now shaped like her father’s and her hair was obviously from her mother. All in all, Naruto looked like a mini-Kushina at the moment, but the Uchiha suspected that she would resemble Minato more than her mother when she grew up and lost the baby fat.

“So you’ve changed on a genetic level while we’re how our counterparts would have been if they were alive,” Obito surmised, not surprised when Naruto nodded in agreement.

“I can’t be ‘Naruto’ here,” she pointed out, not really concerned that her identity was all but stripped away from her. It wasn’t the worst thing that could happen, considering everything she had gone through. “There’s already a ‘Naruto’ here and my DNA was modified to give me a different existence.”

“I’m still the daughter of Namikaze Minato and Uzumaki Kushina,” she said with a smile when Minato opened his mouth, predicting what her father was going to say. “Just not ‘Naruto’.”

Minato pulled the redhead into a hug; he didn’t care if her DNA had changed and made her a different person. She was still his little girl, blood relation or not.

Obito stared up at the redhead perched on a high branch; although she was supposed to be nineteen, she currently looked like a seven-year-old. Not that he had any room to comment. He himself looked like his eighteen-year-old self, not the thirty-three he actually was.

“Why are we going straight to Konoha again?”

The newly dubbed Hikari squinted into the distance, trying to use her diminished sensing ability to find their way to the village. They had decided to give her a new name, now that she could no longer be ‘Naruto’. It was best that they separate her as much as possible from her counterpart, to minimize any chance of jeopardizing her existence. It had been the Kyuubi who had chosen the name ‘Hikari’.

For a grumpy old fox, Kurama sure was sentimental.

“Because I want to check on my counterpart,” Hikari replied, not turning to look at the Uchiha. “From what we’ve learnt, he or she should be around three years old. I’m not sure how the Konoha of this world is treating them and I want to be sure that they're safe.”

Obito snorted but backed down. “Fair enough.”

“Wait, what? What is that supposed to mean?”

Both Hikari and Obito stiffened, the former panicking a little. While Minato had known that his daughter had not had an easy life, he didn’t know the specifics. War was not a good time for spilling life stories and Hikari had moved on long ago.

“Umm…shouldn’t we be going now?! Yeah, let’s go!”

Minato grabbed the back of the girl’s cloak, blue eyes narrowed as he frowned down at her. “You’re not getting away that easily, young lady,” he told her, making Hikari laugh sheepishly. “Now, what did you mean by that?”

Hikari sighed. “Let’s talk as we go, okay?”

“…fine.”

In order to have time for their conversation, the trio walked instead of travelling via the branches. “Let’s see…where should I start?” Hikari pondered, tapping a finger against her chin. None of her early years had been pleasant and she was sure that her father was going to flip.

And he delivered.

Hikari eyed her father warily, inching away from the cold rage emanating from him. “I’ve never seen him this pissed off,” Obito muttered, an eyebrow raised as he watched his teacher. “Well, what did you expect?!” the redhead hissed, glaring at the Uchiha. “He just learnt that I was practically abandoned by everyone! Not to mention the villagers’ prejudice!”

“True,” the dark-haired man shrugged. “Was the entire orphanage involved in your mistreatment?” he asked casually.

Too casually.

Hikari slapped a palm against her forehead, utterly exasperated. “You’re mad too, aren’t you, Obito?” she asked pointedly, jabbing a finger into his side. While she was touched that the two of them were angry on her behalf, she had forgiven the villagers for their actions even if she could never forget most of them. And she didn’t need Minato and Obito attempting to level Konoha in their fury.

Wait.

Scratch attempting.

They would definitely succeed.

“Oi, you two,” Hikari snapped, smacking both men on their forearms and glaring when they looked at her. “There will be no murdering or maiming when we get to Konoha. You will be calm and only look for Naruto, got it?”

Obito harrumphed and turned away while Minato stared impassively at her. “You’ve forgiven them?” he asked quietly.

“Yes. Or well, to an extent. I just don’t want any trouble.”

The blond stared at his daughter for a little longer but finally nodded, although grudgingly. He picked her up and settled her on his hip like a child, wanting the proximity to assure himself that she was safe. Hikari rolled her eyes but went willingly enough, wrapping her arms around Minato’s neck.

They walked in silence for a while, simply reveling in the nature around them. The war against Kaguya and Zetsu had taken a toll on their physical and mental selves; just having time to relax and move at their pace was doing wonders for them.

Hikari piped up after a while, “Hey, are we going to walk straight up to the gates?”

“I thought we’d sneak in,” Obito suggested, looking at her out the corner of his eye. “Sensei and I are supposed to be dead and you shouldn’t even exist.”

“You have a point…what about you, Dad? What do you think?”

“I agree with Obito,” Minato replied, smile a little strained. “The only ones I want to see in the village are Kakashi and your counterpart.”

And he was sure he would punch any villager he came across in the face if they crowded him.

The redhead shrugged, leaning all her weight on her father. “I don’t have a preference,” she mumbled into his shoulder. “As long as we don’t kick up a fuss, I’m fine with anything.”

“Sneaking in it is then.”

Two hours later saw the three of them atop a tree, hidden under Hikari’s seals. “Finally,” Obito muttered, staring at the village looming ahead of them. He hadn’t called Konoha home in years and honestly, he didn’t care to.

As long as he had Hikari, Minato and perhaps this world’s Kakashi and Naruto, he was fine with living in a cave.

A nudge to his elbow pulled him out of his morose thoughts and the Uchiha looked down to see Hikari smiling at him. No doubt she had picked up on his emotions.

Obito looked away and cleared his throat. “Can you sense your counterpart, brat?” he asked gruffly. “I don’t care to go on a wild goose chase around the entire village.”

“I…I can’t actually can’t,” the redhead admitted. “My range has reduced a lot…maybe if I was in the center of the village?”

Minato interrupted them, settling his daughter down on the branch under his feet. “Let me try Sage Mode.”

“Oh, good idea!”

Hikari and Obito backed away a little to give him some space. A few moments later, Hikari sensed the shift into Sage Mode but frowned at the pale green covering his eyelids instead of the customary orange. It seemed like the loss of the Toad Summoning Contract affected Sage Mode but she hoped that the loss was only superficial.

“I can’t tell anything,” Minato said after a few minutes, a thin thread of frustration in his voice as he let Sage Mode drop. “Either your counterpart has a different chakra signature or he or she is not in the village.”

“Likely the former.”

“Kurama!” Hikari blinked; one second she was in the forest and the next in her mindscape in front of the Bijuu. “What do you mean?”

“I can sense my counterpart in the village. If the other brat is the Jinchuuriki, then your counterpart is in there. Can’t pinpoint where though.”

“Huh…thanks, Kurama.”

She passed on the information to Minato and Obito, adding wryly, “I think our best bet is to head to the center of Konoha. I can try to use my emotion sensing to find Naruto. The most amount of ill-intent was focused on me a lot, after all.”

Minato grimaced at the reminder of the villagers’ cruelty towards his daughter while Obito’s scowl deepened. “Kamui can take us there,” he said abruptly. “Come on.”

The air twisted in a swirl atop one of the houses in the middle of Konoha, proceeding to dump three hooded figures on the roof. No one noticed their arrival, because they were still hidden under Hikari’s seals. Said girl took a deep breath and closed her eyes, activating her emotion sensing ability. She had learnt to consciously use it, due to being overwhelmed by negativity during the war.

Minato and Obito stood out because of their proximity, the blond a beacon of suppressed rage and sharp concern while the Uchiha was a mess of frustration hiding hints of worry. Hikari winced minutely at the rush of emotions from all the people around her, ruthlessly ignoring them as she sought to find the emotions she remembered of her childhood.

There.

A tiny pinprick of fear, pain and unbearable despair.

White-hot rage.

That was all Minato could feel upon hearing this world’s Naruto’s current location fall from his daughter’s lips. That child was not his but the Namikaze still felt a connection and to hear what the villagers had done…

To both Hikari and Naruto…

Red Light District.

Minato knew he was fortunate to have grown up in the orphanage instead of on the streets, having heard enough horror stories to know what happened to children there, especially in the Red Light District. If his fury at Konoha had been a flame earlier, it was a literal furnace right now.

‘Good thing Hikari’s seals are so powerful,’ he thought absently as he leapt off a roof, feeling more than hearing Obito and Hikari following him. ‘I would have brought the entirety of Konoha on our heads with the amount of chakra I’m leaking.’

“Down there,” Hikari’s voice interrupted his thoughts and the blond slanted a glance at her to see where she was pointing. There was a dark alley just ahead and the trio stopped on the roof nearest to it. The shadows were too thick to make out anything but silhouettes from where they were standing but Minato could feel a chakra signature in the gloom.

It wasn’t quite recognizable but now that he was closer he could pick out faint similarities to his own daughter’s chakra signature.

“H-Hey! The demon…he ran in there!”

A slurred voice echoed in the alley all of a sudden and three heads snapped in the direction of the source. Obito wrinkled his nose at the stench of alcohol wafting off the man, noticeable despite the distance. Four more men stumbled following the first one. All of them were swaying on their feet, clearly inebriated although it was rather early in the day.

“Demon?” Minato echoed quietly, blue eyes icy as he looked to his daughter for an answer. He already knew who they were referring to but still hoped to be answered negatively.

For her part, Hikari grimaced and turned away. Unlike Minato and Obito who had fixated on the insult, she had noticed something else. ‘Naruto is a boy in this world. Weird, but who cares?’ she shrugged internally before nonchalantly answering her father.

“You know who.”

The sound of shattering glass almost drowned out the whimper but the redhead’s enhanced picked up on it. Hikari was moving before she even realized it, one leg swiping out to knock the drunkard off his feet.

“Stay away from him!”

Unfortunately for her, the man didn’t feel threatened by her small stature and instead yelled, “You little brat! You can die with the demon too!”

The five men advanced on the cloaked girl who stood her ground, completely unconcerned with a bunch of drunk, untrained civilians. But she didn’t need to do anything at all.

“Don’t you dare touch my children!”

Minato dropped down in front of the redhead with barely a whisper of sound, punching the first man in the face. The drunk staggered back into his friends from the force of the blow, clutching his broken and bleeding nose.

“Who the hell…are…y…”

The threatening words drifted off as he took in the dangerous aura emanating from the cloaked man in front of him. He gulped, taking a single step back. However, his friends were too high on the euphoria of having cornered the demon brat and instead launched themselves at the cloaked duo in front of them.

Obito took that moment to leap off the roof, jumping on the walls of the alley as he went down and landed solidly on one of the men’s back, who collapsed with a wheeze. Not losing his momentum, the Uchiha clotheslined another while simultaneously kicking away the man Minato had punched. Obito spun on his heel, grabbing the last two men and crashing their heads together.

All of this took barely five seconds and the five civilians laid on the dirty ground, gasping for breath and aching all over.

The teacher-student duo had not taken it easy on them.

“You’re disgusting,” Minato spat as Obito hopped back to stand next to him, fists still clenched in anger. This wasn’t the Konoha that he and his counterpart had given his life for, even sacrificing his family in the process. “You would dare lay a hand on a child? And revel in it?”

“They’re self-serving idiots with barely any brain cells,” Obito commented offhandedly, arms crossed over his chest.

Screaming when the Namikaze drew a kunai, the cowards dragged themselves to their feet and ran away, yelling about demons and monsters. The two cloaked men growled in unison and made to follow them, but a voice from behind stopped them.

“Dad! Obito!” Hikari snapped, a frown on her face as she pulled her hood down and looked around for her counterpart. “Prioritize!”

Minato forcibly reigned in his anger, pinching the bridge of his nose as he exhaled deeply. “Right,” he muttered to himself. “Naruto’s more important.”

“I’ll leave the both of you to it.” Obito stepped to a corner, turning away from where the five idiots had run, “I’m no good with kids.”

Hikari rolled her eyes at the grumbled words but didn’t comment, listening for any sounds. She narrowed down the possibilities to a bunch of crates stacked a few feet from where she was standing and approached cautiously.

“Naruto?”

“Go away!”

The fear filled shout tugged at her heartstrings, knowing that the others felt similarly, judging by how Minato stiffened, expression going blank, and Obito turned to the side with a grimace.

The redhead walked towards the hiding boy anyway, crouching a couple of feet away. “It’s okay, Naruto,” she murmured in a soothing tone, in an attempt to coax him out.

It worked; a bright blue eye peeked out from behind a half-broken crate, the three-year-old staring at her suspiciously. What Hikari could see of his face was dirty, with streaks of bruised skin visible because of tears. “Hi there,” she whispered, smiling gently.

“Hello…” Naruto replied uncertainly, a trace of doubt in his voice as he took in the two adults standing some distance away. “No hurt me?”

“Never,” the girl said, smile turning a touch sad but she didn’t let it falter. Gesturing to the large bruise covering his face, she asked, “Can I help?”

“Make owie go away?”

“Yeah.”

“…okay.”

Despite the agreement, the toddler still eyed her approaching hand with fear and suspicion, flinching violently when the limb made contact with his cheek.

But the pain he was expecting did not come.

Instead, a warmth spread from the girl’s palm, soothing the pain from the injury. The bruise was gone in a matter of seconds and Hikari rubbed her fingers against the boy’s cheek, wiping away the grime. Naruto giggled at the ticklish feeling and came out from behind the crate. This girl was nice and the two adults behind her weren’t like the bad men who screamed and threw things at him.

“Owie gone?”

“Yeah!”

“Good. Now there’s someone I want you to meet. Dad, get over here!”

Minato spaced out the instant he saw the large purple bruise on the blond toddler’s cheek, red coloring his vision as his fury rose up inside him again.

‘How could people do this to a little boy?’

The older blond was no stranger to the dark side of humans; he had fought in a war and knew what people would do in order to survive. In case of the psychotic ones, what they would do for their own sick pleasure. But to see cruelty of a similar form inflicted on an innocent child was disgusting and Minato wanted to rip out the throats of those involved.

It was Hikari’s call that jolted him out of the dark turn his thoughts had taken and the older blond blinked but smiled to make himself look friendly when the redhead gestured for him. “What is it, Hikari?”

“Here,” she instead said, to the toddler rather than address her father, turning Naruto to face the adult who looked a lot like him. “Say hi to your daddy, Naruto.”

Both blonds froze, one with dawning hope and the other with shock. Minato glanced at his daughter, who mouthed ’Just go along with it’ over Naruto’s head. He understood what she was planning, inwardly marveling at how quickly she had managed to separate herself from her counterpart.

And it wasn’t that he couldn’t see where she was coming from; hadn’t he himself claimed the boy as his own just a few moments ago?

A tug on his pants made Minato shift his gaze from the girl; Naruto was looking up at him with an expression of such heartbreaking hope, blue eyes glistening with tears.

“Daddy?”

“Hi, Naruto…”

Minato swallowed, crouching to be at the boy’s level. He let his smile soften in reassurance and spread his arms in welcome.

And not a moment too soon.

Naruto threw himself at the man with a sob, tiny hands clenching onto the material of the other’s cloak. An arm wrapped around his back in a firm but comforting manner and a hand cradled the back of his head gently. The little blond nestled closer, seeking more of the warmth of the hug.

Finally, he had someone to hug and protect him, just like the other kids.

Minato tightened his grip when the child in his arms cried himself to sleep and not taking his eyes off his now son, he asked, voice hoarse with a hint of unshed tears, “Is it wrong that I want to kill everyone in the village?”

“No. No, it isn’t.”

The reply came from Obito who had inched closer and sat down next to the two blonds, the lines around his eyes tightening when he got a clearer look at the bruises on the child’s skin. The bony arms and malnourished form didn’t help either. “Should have punched those bastards harder.”

A thin crimson eyebrow twitched and Hikari clapped her hands together, startling the two men. “No one is going to kill anyone,” she told them sternly. “Like I said, little Naruto is our first priority and I’ll be damned before I let him down, even if I have to go through both of you.”

“But-”

“No, Dad,” she cut off the Namikaze in an aggressive tone, openly glaring. “You accepted responsibility when you let him consider you his father and you better live up to it. I may be smaller now but that doesn’t mean I can’t kick your butt if I need to.”

Minato winced, reminded of what he had resolved to himself a little while ago. “Sorry, Hikari; I lost my head for a bit there,” he said as he got to his feet, Naruto tucked against his chest. “What are we going to do now?”

“We can either go to the Sandaime,” Obito’s face told the others what he thought about that option even as he said it, “…or we can leave the village.”

“…why the second option?”

“Face it, brat; Sensei and I are more likely to stab someone in the face if we hear one word against your mini-me.” The Uchiha ignored the flailing and protesting that the toddler wasn’t her ‘mini-me’, rolling his eyes when the redhead tackled him. “Besides, you know better than anyone that he’s only going to get a toxic environment in Konoha, even if we disclose his parentage.”

“You’ve got a point,” Hikari grumbled, crossing her arms with a huff. She eyed her father, “What do you think, Dad?”

Minato took in both his children, then looked towards the entrance to the alleyway. His expression twisted into a grimace. “I agree with Obito,” he admitted softly. There really wasn’t much for him in Konoha and it might do all of them some good if they left the village for at least a few years.

“Alright then. Guess we’re going to do some travelling then. I’ve always wanted to explore the world for fun anyway.”

Decision made, the small group disappeared from the dirty alleyway, using a Hiraishin marker Minato had left out in the forest in case things went south.

Hikari trailed behind, looking over her shoulder at the diminishing sight of Konoha. Simply leaving like that wouldn’t solve many things but she accepted that it was currently for the best. Naruto could grow up surrounded by love and happiness; Minato, Obito and herself could use the time to get their bearings in this new world.

There were definitely a lot of loose ends, Kakashi for one, not to mention the multitude of issues that Konoha would have to face.

But those could wait for a little longer.

Just until Minato, Obito and Hikari were a little more stable.