The Village and the Boy
If Konohagakure was many things, one of them was the proof of humans’ tenacity. Five years after the colossal nightmare known as Kyuubi attack the village, it has gotten back to its feet. Even without Shodaime Hokage himself, they were able to rebuild Konoha back to its prior prosperity. Something their elderly leader take as the proof of Will of Fire.
Of course, the old Hokage neglected to remember how fertile and rich their host country was, how big were the disaster relief funds pouring in from their host country (to increase their grip on the hidden village) and the fact that not all villagers felt anywhere near rebuilding their lives. There are many of them who haven’t come to terms with their loss. Most who were forgiving, refuse to forget. Some were living in hatred, drowned in sorrow and self-hatred as a survivor. Their object of hatred, unknown to them, happened to be the child of their savior. One whose origin was erased by the government, lest the other villages target him.
Jailer of the strongest Tailed Beast in all of the continent as well as the last of the Uzumaki blood. A powerful clan of sealmasters whose mere presence on the battlefield can turn the tide around. A clan whose destruction was caused by the combined might of two great hidden villages. Moreover, he’s the only son of Minato Namikaze, Yondaime Hokage and a Shinobi that scored the highest kill count in the last war.
Naruto Uzumaki’s lineage was one of a kind, not to mention his status.
It was for the best they kept him a secret, but some fools still leak out the fact that he’s a Jinchuuriki. The perpetrators have been caught and got himself a harsh sentence. But Hiruzen Sarutobi, Sandaime Hokage, couldn’t imprison every single person who knew the boy’s status.
So he made a rule forbidding from talking about it directly.
It didn’t stop the parents from forbidding their children play with the poor kid nor it prevent the adult generation from acting cold or contemptuously toward him. But, at least it prevented their secrets from leaking out to outside of the village. The villagers were deterred from acting upon their baser instinct, since their police clan, Uchiha, was very strict in their law enforcement. As far as the Hokage’s concerned, nothing bad will happen to the boy.
Not for the kid, though. He was feeling anything but the best. Neglected in the orphanage, the Hokage himself pulled him from the system and grant him his own apartment and pocket money. The Hokage also ensured that the boy was living healthily, using Kage Bunshin to visit from time to time. That is, until his old and worn body forced him not to exert too much chakra. After that, he had an ANBU follow the boy every day.
Naruto Uzumaki. With his blue eyes, yellow eyes, and slightly sun-kissed skin tone, he’s a splitting image of his father. Thankfully, this similarity is mitigated with his mother’s feature, the round blue eyes and round face. The Old Hokage longed to reveal to him his identity, but he feared Naruto will only make the situation worse with that information.
So he waited.
His works and his family kept his guilt from his mind. Yondaime Hokage left him with more work than ever and he’s not getting younger. His son, Asuma, was still bitter about him, and only visit the village when he wanted to meet his newest grandchild whom he named after the village. Really, no one could blame him for Naruto slipping past his mind.
Naruto himself, like a child with his own money and no one to guide him, live as expected of one.
That means not spending his money wisely and not eating well enough. (Although Hiruzen suspected that the Kyuubi chakra might help in his growing department, but he can’t be sure enough).
Well… Hiruzen trust the ramen stand owner, Teuchi, to give Naruto his daily veggies. And a carton of milk. (And it worked, apparently, if Teuchi refuse to give him more ramen). And not always giving him ramen. That last one was borderline impossible. Maybe Sandaime Hokage had been depending on him too much, but Ichiraku’s not-so-obvious tie to the Uzumaki household means that Naruto was safe there.
Until that shit happened.
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“More please, Teuchi-ojisan” the yellow-headed boy with puppy eyes beg to the owner of Ichiraku Ramen.
Not that It works for Teuchi. Not anymore. Hah. He’s way stronger than that. It takes more than that to break his conviction. He might not be a Shinobi, but he has the nerve of one. Ain’t no brat could compel him with puppy eyes. NONE!
His daughter, however, was not. Well… she would need 30 years to develop that.
“No. Not anymore Naruto-kun. You had your share. Go home and sleep”
This had been the ritual for the past three months. Naruto would whine and Teuchi would still not give him any. Naruto would make him promise for double portion tomorrow morning, and Teuchi would give him double the portion for everything (that include vegetables, but Naruto always selectively forget that fact).
“Fine… Just for tomorrow. You will have double the portion in the morning, but only if you come early!”
“Okay! Thank you Teuchi-ojisan, Ayame-neesan!” Ayame and Teuchi waved at him as he left the establishment.
And so, the boy would leave for his apartment.
Only this time. Someone was in his way.
A middle-aged man holding a half-empty bottle block his path. His breath and body reek of strong odor, extremely pungent. Naruto would learn later that the smell was coming from something called alcohol.
“Damn beast” the drunk man said. It was not an insult that Naruto never heard before, nor it was more malicious. But this was the first time Naruto heard a person say it as loud. People usually whisper it behind his back. When they thought he wasn’t noticing. Those few times when he bought supplies book. Mostly when adult separate their children from him.
It was also the first time for him to have a grown man holding him by the neck and shouted in his ear. His mouth smells so much it made him want to puke here and then, but Naruto was mostly afraid because the man’s grip on him was so tight he could barely breath. Naruto tried using his hands to pry open the man’s grip, but his child strength was no match for the man. And yet, he still tried.
“Hey Daichi.. Calm down, okay?” Naruto register Teuchi and Ayame came out of their stand and try to pacify the man, but he wasn’t having any of it as he swung his bottle around like a mad man he was.
“Fuck off Teuchi, you son of a bitch” the man roared, his face as red as the white of his eyes and his nose full of snot.
“You are cowards! All of you! You don’t have the balls to take what’s yours” The man raved as if he was possessed, bottle pointing to everyone around him. Teuchi and Ayame cursed, at a time like this, the Uchiha Police Force wasn’t around.
“A life for a life! This beast stole my son! My… my son….My son…. Why my son… Goddamn it!” As the man lost his capacity to form a coherent thought, his attention was back to the boy, who was almost fainting from his grip but still trying to pry his fingers away from his neck.
“You stole my son…. I want him back…. Give him back…..” As if he was chanting a mantra, he kept shaking Naruto’s increasingly weakened form by the neck, getting angrier by the second “Give him back… give him back… give him back…. GIVE HIM BACK”
Naruto can faintly register the man’s arm rising his bottle up before swinging it down to the top of Naruto’s head. He closed his eyes, waiting for that moment when the bottle met its target.
One second, he thought that a bottle meeting head was numbing.
Two seconds, he felt liquid dripping down his face.
Three seconds, he felt two powerful arms pulling him closer into a hug. The pungent smell so close to him.
‘What happened?’
Slowly, he opened his eyes. No blood. Nothing. He can feel nothing but the warmth of that middle-aged man, who already dropped his bottle. Naruto’s hands still holding on to the man’s palm, stiff as a board from what had transpired.
“Why my son…. Why, my sweet Yuuto” the man’s voice break into sobbing, “And why are you just a child….”
He felt a wave of grief drowning his mind. A sea of sorrow choking him in ways physical ones couldn’t. It was suffocating. Reminding him of his loneliness in the orphanage. Oppressing despair came crushing down on him. Drowning him.
What are these? The boy thought, confused at first. It made him scared. He couldn’t understand it. He just knew it wasn’t his. But at the same time it was similar to his own pain. If not for the fact that he cling on to his memory of the orphanage, he would’ve accepted it as his own.
As the sobbing man cried even harder, he finally understood the nature of that feeling. Where it came from. What caused it. It was the smelly old man who let his wound fester until there was nothing left but a broken and twisted human being.
And it scared him more than the man threatening to crush a bottle on his skull. The despair the man felt….
At that moment he began to cry, hard, inducing the man to cry even harder too…. They keep crying like that, even as two men with green ninja vests separated them from each other. Then… all was black.
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The Hokage was present when they interrogate the man. While he knew that it could be just a case of a deranged man wanting revenge, he had to be sure it wasn’t some plot made by other villages or even those from within.
Daichi, 50 years old, was tied to his own chair. Ibiki Morino, the head interrogator, asked him various questions, each laced with implied threat of torture. To Daichi’s credit, the man wasn’t scared. That, or he didn’t care. The Hokage didn’t know which. After the standard interrogation, it was the Yamanaka’s turn to probe his head, but Hiruzen made a time for the man to both drink and asking a question of his own.
“Why did you stop?” A simple question, one that Ibiki neglected to ask. Not that Ibiki had to, as he ruled it out as the man chickening out at the last second. However, Ibiki didn’t possess Hiruzen’s wisdom, gained with age. His guts told him that wasn’t it.
An uncomfortable silence passed as Daichi clearly fumbled around inside his head, looking for an answer.
“That fox…. Boy…..He…. Made me see him” Daichi finally answered, which leave Hiruzen more confused than ever.
“What do you mean?” The Hokage pressed on.
“He…. He made me look through his eyes”
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Hiruzen had a sudden feeling that something wasn’t right. What the man said made him think of Yamanaka’s hiden jutsu. One that involved using Yin-release to infiltrate the mind. Of course it couldn’t be possible, Naruto was hardly Yamanaka, even the hair color was not that similar. Nor he was trained in the art.
But what else could that man said if not for that jutsu?
Hiruzen quickly walk the hospital’s hallway, ignoring the night duty nurses curious gaze. He stopped at Naruto’s room. Although Naruto wasn’t hurt in any way, it’s better to be safe than sorry. Besides, he did faint after that encounter.
Hiruzen opened the door, greeted by a nurse and four ANBU stationed at the corners of the room. One of them a man with gravity-defying white hair.
“Good evening, Hokage-Sama” the nurse finished injecting IV needle into the boy’s arm.
“Good evening, miss…. Can I have a moment with Naruto alone?” Hiruzen asked/ordered, and the nurse quietly left the room, leaving Hiruzen and the four ANBU.
“That means all of you” Hiruzen said again. The ANBU team didn’t move, waiting for their captain, the white-haired man, to lead the way.
Hiruzen want to assure Kakashi, the white-haired man, that it was okay, but one of the ANBU was a new guy who didn’t know their relationship and Hiruzen want that to be a secret.
“Now” Hiruzen said with more force this time, and Kakashi relented. The ANBU team left quietly.
Finally alone, Hiruzen step closer to the boy. He looked healthy, at least. Hiruzen let out a weary sigh, that’s the least he could do to the village hero, keeping him healthy.. He watched as Naruto’s eyes moved rapidly, signaling that he’s in a REM-phase of sleep.
‘Must be hard for him’ Hiruzen thought, ‘to shoulder the hate of the villagers like this…. When he should’ve been hailed as their hero.
Hiruzen place his hand on Naruto’s chest. His breathing, heart rate, and body heat seemed to be normal for a resting boy like him. Hiruzen could faintly remember when Asuma was his age, when he got smallpox. How Asuma’s head had moved rapidly to the sides, burning with fever.
He looked at the IV tube that feed the fluid to Naruto’s left arm until he saw something that shouldn’t be there.
‘What is that?” Hiruzen thought as he turned the hand around for a better look.
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Naruto rarely dreams. When he had the chance to, it was mostly nonsense. Swimming in a sea of Ramen while wearing the Hokage hat that’s clearly too big for him. Flying from his apartment to the Hokage monument only to look at his own face carved on the mountain.
Or a redheaded woman and yellow-haired man, exhausted and bleeding from their mouth, saying things he couldn’t make out.
This time he dreamed of a white-haired woman with equally white eyes. The woman wore a headpiece that looks like horns, and a faint line could be seen on her forehead. She wore a white kimono that looked very large for her size. What Naruto focused on the most, however, was her tranquil and serene expression. She was at peace, looking exactly like that one time Grandpa Hokage sit quietly on top of the Hokage mansion, right before he throw paint at him.
He heard himself talking “Haha-ue, look at what I made”
He opened his palms for the woman, who pull his hands gently closer so she could study it. Two marks, one of the sun of sun a waning moon were painted on top of his palms.
“What are these, my sweet Hagoromo?” The woman softly asked him, and he felt warmth that he would imagine having a mother would feel like.
“It’s yin and yang seal. My first fuinjutsu!” he heard himself talking. He wasn’t sure why the woman called him Hagoromo, nor he understood what yin, yang, and fuinjutsu meant. Not that mattered to him. No. What mattered was what happened next.
The Woman smiled for the first time in that dream, a smile that made Naruto feel like he’s a boundless ball of joy. That feeling turned his legs into jelly as the woman kiss both of his palms, and he felt the warmth permeating his whole body as the woman kissed his forehead.
“It is magnificent, son”