Forgotten son
More often than not, when a person thinks of family, they think of a mom, a dad, maybe a few brothers and sisters sitting around the dinner table. Smiling and laughing. You would think of love and happiness when you think of a perfect family. However, when Naruto looked at his family, he didn't know what to think. He had read in a book, a few books actually, that a family was supposed to look out for one another. Parents are supposed to look out for their kids. Yet he wondered, "why? Why do they not love me like the others? Is there something wrong with me?" Naruto thought these thoughts as he watched his family train his siblings without him. He was the youngest out of five children, he had two older brothers by the name of Minato Jr. (M.J. for short), and Ryu. He had an older sister by the name of Shio and a twin sister by the name of Narumi.
M.J. was the spitting image of Minato, long, spiky blond hair, but he had green eyes like his mother.
Ryu had long, spiky red hair, and blue eyes like his father.
Shio looked just like her mother but with long blond hair and blue eyes.
Narumi, just like Ryu, her hair was red and spiky, she too had green eyes.
Naruto, on the other hand, was like a black sheep, his hair was blond but not spiky. In fact, it was curly which made his parents wonder who else in the family had curly hair. Also, his eyes weren't just one color, it was two, meaning he had both his parent's eye color which caused Kushina to freak out upon seeing it the first time around. It creeped her out whenever she looked at him. This led her to not look at Naruto very often because of his eyes. Not only that, but he had whisker on his cheeks, along with his twin sister Narumi. This was because when Naruto and Narumi were born, the Kyuubi attacked the village and Minato had sealed both halves of the night tail's chakra into the newborn twins. Minato had sealed yin chakra, the lighter of the two halves, into Narumi, while he sealed the yang chakra, the darker half, into Naruto. Of course, being the type of guy he was, he told the whole village of what he did. Now as the villagers saw it, Narumi had the yin chakra inside of her, yin was normally thought of as good, beauty and everything right with the world, so they thought of her as 'Knonha's Hero' or 'Savior of the village'. They praised her for it and looked up to her as if she was a princess meant to be the queen of the village someday. As for Naruto, he was yang, the dark part of the world that no one wanted to see, evil, they asked for his death so after the sealing. However, Minato wasn't having it and denied them the death of one of his children. Ever since that day, the villagers tried to hide how much they hated Naruto's guts whenever the Hokage was around.
Now back to the present, Naruto and Narumi are four, their birthday being only a few months away. Naruto was up in his room he's been up there waiting for nearly seven hours, why? Because his father told him that he would call the boy down to start training with his sister as soon as he got back from the office. Naruto was waiting passionately for his father to come to get him, he was so happy that his father was finally paying attention to him, so he waited. He waited for another four hours until the sun started to go down, he was starting to get worried that his father wasn't going to come to get him, but he shook that thought away and waited some more. He had fallen asleep during his wait when he woke up, it was already midnight, he panicked and went downstairs. He walked into the kitchen to see everything put away, the dishes washed and the table cleared. He could smell a faint trace of ramen in the air, it wasn't his all-time favorite, but he still liked it a lot, and they had had it for dinner, without him. Saddened by, he went to make himself a sandwich before going back to his room to eat it, when he made it back to his room a thought hit him, "he was probably too busy to teach us today, he'll do it tomorrow of sure", he thought happily as he ate his sandwich. He fell asleep with hope.
The next morning, Naruto got up and got ready for his dad to start training him and his twin sister, he waited and waited, then waited some more. By dinner time, Naruto was tired of waiting and went down to get something to eat, when he made it to the kitchen, his family had already finished eating. He was about to ask what was for dinner when his older brother Ryu and M.J. came in with good news, everyone gathered around them to hear.
"Mom, Dad, I'm am now a Jonin of the leaf!" yelled his brother M.J., everyone cheered.
"Oh yeah, well I've just passed my Anbu test," said Ryu, everyone cheered again. Even though they had just finished dinner, Minato announced that they would be going out to celebrate, everyone quickly cheered and went to go get ready.
Naruto was so happy that his brothers were doing so well, he went upstairs to his room to change his clothes, by the time he came back down the house was quiet. He thought that everyone was still getting ready so he waited on the couch for them to come back. After two hours of waiting, he fell asleep. When he woke up again, he was back in his room and it was day time. His heart sank a little when he realized what that meant, but then he cheered up as he remembered the promise his dad made to train him and his sister, "today's the day!" He thought as he bounded down the stairs, the house was quiet as he sat down on the couch waiting for his father to walk through the door to start his training to become a ninja. He waited in the same spot for hours, he kept waiting and waiting until night fell, he still waited, even well into the night as he fought to stay away. He didn't want to miss his chance again.
He was getting really tired, but he didn't want to fall asleep, so he got up and started stretching for a while, the same ones he saw his older brothers and sister do all the time when they were training. When he was done, he sat back on the couch to wait a few more hours. He was starting to get tired again, plus the sun had already gone down a few hours before, the smile he had faded a bit as he slipped off the couch and went back up to his room. He looked at his bed longingly before falling into it. He was too tired to do anything else, his stomach growled but he was too tired.
The next day he woke up to a bit of a commotion, downstairs, he got up and went to see what it was, he saw his brothers, sister, and mother running around grabbing ninja tools. "What's going on!?" He asked, his voice just loud enough to catch the attention of his mother, she came up to him but didn't look him in the eye for a moment.
"Alright sweety, it's okay, everything's fine okay? We've just got something to do for a little while so that means we'll be away for a little while, but we'll come back as soon as we're down, understood?" Kushina said to him in a calm but an urgent voice, Naruto nodded, "good, now we'll be done for a few days, two days at the most, I'll send a clone to check on you tomorrow with some food, but we'll be right back so after, alright?"
Naruto could sense the urgency in his mother's voice as he nodded his head and watched them leave out the door, he looked around the house for his twin, Narumi but couldn't find her. He was starting to worry about her but then saw the note on the frig that said she would be at a friend's house, so he went back up to his room to play in the library. Reading was the most fun thing to Naruto, he could get lost in a boo for hours and hours, once he was found reading a stack of books for a whole day without stopping. He had already read all of the books for his age group and was already on a higher reading level than his twin, who hated reading. He picked up a few books and scrolls about chakra control, a few jutsus that his family was known for, and sealing, he read until it got dark out so he took a break to turn on the lights in the library and make himself a few sandwiches to eat. When he got back up to the library, he had enough food and snakes in his arm to last him a good week, he set them down when back to reading, unlike most kids his age, Naruto couldn't get enough of books. He read and read, but not only did he read, but he also memorized everything he read as well, he had a photographic memory so he remembered everything that he both saw and heard, and once he read a subject he liked, he would drink it in like a fish in the water. Because Naruto had spent most of his time reading since he was one, his sister Shio had called his 'Prince Bookworm'when he was three, Naruto didn't get that she was making fun of him. He had read a book about worms and he didn't find that he looked like a worm at all, however, she also called him a prince which made him very happy, he liked the thought of being a prince. His brothers had been listening and told Narumi, they all laughed at him and called him Prince Wormington from the Kingdom of Bookiutopia, this brought Naruto great joy, not only did he think that his family thought he was royalty, but there was also a kingdom of books out there somewhere. It took a whole week for his parents to ask why he was calling himself Prince Wormington when he told them it was only the second time that Kushina had looked her son in the eye. There was so much joy in them that shouldn't bring herself to take that away from him, Naruto then spent the rest of the month looking for the Kingdom of Bookiutopia. The day before his fourth birthday, Shio, M.J. and Ryu set up a fake bookstore with the name of the fake kingdom they made up. When he found out about the store he was over the moon. He ran to the store and stayed there all day, his brothers and sister watched him and laughed for a good hour about how they tricked their baby brother.
However, after they had their laugh, they left Naruto at the fake bookstore. They thought that he would only stay for an hour or so after they left, so they didn't bother worrying about him at all. Yet, after they left Naruto stayed there the whole day in the store. The store was really just a large box with a genjutsu on it. When one of the villagers had seen Naruto playing in the box, they went to gather some of his friends so they could finally get their revenge on him. Soon a mob of fifty or so people surrounded the unsuspecting boy. Naruto was ripped out of the genjutsu as soon as they arrived and the villagers that gathered took turns beating him within an inch of his life. By the Naruto had gotten home, it was well past midnight and everyone was asleep. No one came to find him, no one checked so see if he was in his room. No, they just went to sleep, the next day they left for the Kyuubi festival while Naruto was asleep in his bed. Kyuubi had already healed the more life-threatening wounds, he just needed to work on the minor ones. After that day, Naruto never believed anything his siblings said.
With that said, although Naruto wanted to believe that his parents were telling him the truth. The truth that they would come back in two days, he got a distinct feeling that they wouldn't be back so soon.
It has been almost a week since his parents told him that they would be back.
His mom didn't send a clone to check on him as she promised. Luckily he had enough food stashed away for just this type of thing, he didn't think that he would need to use his stash. However, it was becoming more and more clear to him that he was going to need to. There was just enough food in the house to feed just him for a while longer before his parents were to come back. He hoped that his parents would come back soon, until then, he decided to start his own training until his family came back. He started with chakra control first, he didn't have a tree to use, so he used the walls. Another week had gone by and his family still hadn't come back for him yet, "what could be taking them so long?" He wondered to himself as he stared out the window at the end of the second week. By now he had already mastered walking on walls since he couldn't go outside, his father's security seals made sure of that. He used the bathtub in his parent's bathroom to do the water walking exercise next. He mastered it about a day ago, so he was back to waiting. Another week has gone by, making it three weeks all together since his parents left him at home. The food in the kitchen was now dangerously low. Since he had a photographic memory, he remembered seeing where everything was placed. He had pretty much polished off the last of the jutsu scrolls in the family library by now. He was getting bored of waiting and decided to see what he could find in his father's study to read. He came across a bunch of copied files on the clans in the village, he also found a large scroll with the kanji for 'Forbidden' on it. He didn't want to get into trouble if he could help it, so he started with the files first. It's been four weeks and three days now, the month was almost over, his family had not come back home yet. He was at a loss of what to do with himself. He didn't want to read the scroll, it could get him into trouble! But then again, his father wouldn't know, right? With that thought, Naruto went up to his father's study and read the forbidden scroll.
The kitchen was empty now, he only had his stash of food left, he rationed it off so it would last longer. He checked the calendar, on his wall, he was surprised and unhappy that a month and a half has gone by without any sign of his family, he had read the forbidden scroll all the way through now. It made no sense to Naruto as to why his family had to go off and leave him home for so long. Surely being the 'Yellow Flash' and the 'Red Death of Knonha' meant that they wouldn't take so long to take care of something. Big or small, it shouldn't have taken so long, right? Someone had to come home to look after him at some point right? Two full months went by since his so-called family left him behind. He has nothing left to read, his food supply was almost non-existent, but he couldn't just go outside to get something from the store or the market. The doors were still sealed shut, the windows no better, and it was getting cold outside. Without anyone to work the heater, Naruto was starting to feel the chill coming through the walls. Wearing extra layers of clothes helped some, but it didn't seem like the temperature would rise anytime soon. Inside and out. He kept looking outside to see if his family was on their way to the house yet, he didn't see anything. By now he had started practicing fire jutsus to keep himself warm, he practiced other jutsus too just to keep himself busy.
One morning Naruto woke up to the sight of frost forming INSIDE the house. He ran to the closest window only to see a snowstorm, in full swing, by the way. It no doubt had covered the whole house in the snow blanket by now. Naruto then quickly ran all over the house calling out to his family until he was too tired to move, he woke up and repeated the action over and over and over again for the next two weeks. He did everything to get get out of the house when he still couldn't find a soul other than himself. It scared him.
He scratched at the doors.
Threw heavy things at the windows to break it.
He grabbed knives to try and stab a hole in the door.
He even repeatedly threw himself at the doors and windows.
He did this for hours on end for an unknown amount of time until he finally fell unconscious. When he woke up, it was night and he heard the fireworks in the distance. He knew that sound better than anything. Sure the village did do fireworks every once in a while, but these fireworks were different, they had something added to them to make them brighter, flashier, something that made these fireworks stand out from all the rest. He knew now that he was a fool to trust his parents, he felt like an idiot for believing anyone when they told him anything. During his time locked away in the house, no one came to check on him.
No one asked for him.
No one seemed to give a damn about him at all.
It broke his heart as he realized something else. He didn't want to believe it to be true, but it just had to be now. Using the last of his strength, Naruto picked himself up and walked over to the bookshelf in the family room, he took the family album out and dragged himself up the stairs to his room. He closed the door his room and sat on his bed, wrapping himself in the collection of sheets and blankets he had there before looking at the photo album. The first page had a picture of all of them together, the picture was taken when he and Narumi were just born, Narumi was in his father's arms, he was in his mother's arms. While M.J. and Ryu were standing on either side of their mom, and Shio was next to their dad. That was the only picture he could find with him in it.
The only picture in the whole house.
With the Namikaza's
Minato Namikaze was a man that felt on top of the world right now, it took him a few months, but he finally did it. When the Kyuubi attacked the village, he took down the beast by sealing it into his newborn twins. A sacrifice he had to make, he couldn't very well make anyone else give up their child, and it wouldn't work on anyone but a baby anyway. Someone who had yet to fully form their chakra pathways yet. He had to do it, it was for the good of the village for God's sake! So he had to do it, he sealed Kyuubi into both of his twins after separating it, then he told the village of his heroics and that his children should be heroes for what they hold. Then about four years later, the masked man that came with the Kyuubi attack came back. He was training his daughter on how to control the Kyuubi's chakra when it happened. The man just showed up out of nowhere and took Narumi, he just took his baby girl! Minato was normally known as a kind and patient man. But no one that has messed with his family ever comes out unharmed after. Needless to say, Minato formed a team to get his baby girl back, nothing else mattered to him then. The team was made up of, Kushina, Minato Jr, Ryu, Shio, Kakashi, Mito Gui, Asuma, and Kurani, with Minato in the lead. They left to go after the masked man and find his daughter, Narumi. The hunt for the man took a while, but they finally found him in an underground bass outside of fire country. They fought with the man, all of them at once, the man got away once with Narumi in tow but that didn't stop the group from chasing him to the ends of the earth to save Minato's daughter. They found him again and this time when they fought, they killed the masked man thanks to the help of Jiraya coming to their aid at the last minute. They got Narumi to the closest hospital after that. They all spent about a week there to recover from the fight they had with the masked man, they found out that the man was Obito Uchiha, who was thought to have died in the third grate shinobi war. Kakashi never liked Obito, said he was too soft, now he didn't know what to think of the man who used to be his teammate. After the week was over, everyone, except the Namikaze-Uzumaki's and Jiraya, left to head back to the village. Minato and his family talked it over and decided that Narumi should start sage training to protect herself better when neither parent was available. Minato had taught Narumi the shadow clone jutsu so that while doing sage training, it would go twice as fast. The family went with her to Mt. Mioboku to watch over her as she trained. With the shadow clone jutsu, Narumi finished her sage training in a month and a half, her parents were so proud. After that, the Uzumaki and Namikaze's were reversed summoned back to the gates of Konoha after being away for nearly five months straight. They happily made it back to their family home only to find out that it had a huge hole in the roof and most of the side of the house had been destroyed.
They panicked, wondering what could have done this, Minato grabbed a villager that was walking by and asked what happened. "I'm not sure, Lord Hokage, I wasn't close to the house when it happened but by the time that anyone really took notice, it looked like this," said the villager.
"Did anyone see what happened?" Asked Minato.
The villager shook his head, "no sir, we were all at the festival at the time."
"Did anyone get hurt?" Kushina asked this time.
The villager shook his head, "not from this, no... but..." The villager had questions of his own, someone people were wondering if the Kyuubi brat had somehow done this. No one had seen him for a while, so the questions were only piling up. But now that the Hokage was back with this youngest daughter and their youngest son was missing, they could only guess that the boy might be dead now.
"Wait, festival, which one do you mean?" Ryu asked suddenly feeling something tighten in the pit of his stomach.
"Oh, well the Kyuubi festival, of course, Lord Ryu, everyone was there," the villager replied.
"Kyuubi? Wait, that's my birthday festival!" Narumi all but yelled, "I missed my birthday!" She started to cry sadly.
Kushina and Shio comforted her, "now, now, sweetheart. Don't cry, we can still celebrate your birthday," said her mom as she rubbed her back.
Just then Minato finally noticed something, he turned to his family and counted each head. Five in all, "someone's missing," he said.
M.J. looked up at his father, "who?"
Ryo slapped his brother in the back of his head, "hey dummy, isn't it obvious? It Prince Wormington!"
"Wh- wait, oh yeah! The Prince! How could I forget?" M.J. said with a fox grin, "so...? Where is the little guy?"
Shio got up from the ground and slapped her brother upside the head, "we don't know, duh! Are you sure you're dad's son?"
"I look like his don't I?" M.J. asked angrily at his younger sister.
"Whatever," Shio turned to her dad, "do you know where he is, dad?"
Minato shook his head as some of the colors drained from his face, "no, I haven't seen him since we went off to find Narumi."
Shio then remembered seeing her mom talk to him before they left, "have you seen him? Mom are you okay!?" She asked as she turned back to see her mom staring at the house, all the color had left her face. She looked like she'd seen a ghost, "mom? What's wrong?" Shio tried again watching as her mom slowly got up from the ground, she continues to look at the destroyed house, "mom, c'mon, you're scaring me, what's wrong with you?!"
Kushina took a step forward, her eyes filling with water, "he was there."
"What?" Shio asked, "who was, mom, you're not making sense."
"Naruto, he was there," Kushina turned to her family with the tears falling down her face now. "He was there! He was in there, INSIDE THE HOUSE AND I JUST LEFT HIM THERE WHILE WE FORGOT ABOUT HIM!!!! He was in there and I just FORGOT ALL ABOUT HIM! HOW COULD... how could we.... do that.... how could we-no, hOW COULD I DO THAT TO MY BABY BOY?! HE WAS IN THERE AND WE JUST... JUST....we just left him," she was now crying hysterically as her husband and children tried and failed to calm her down.
"Don't worry, Kushina, we'll find him, if he's still in there we'll find him," Minato said.
Kushina pushed him away, "HOW?!" She screamed, "HOW COULD WE! How can we ever hope to find him in that...that...that MESS!?!"
Minato looked from Kushina to the mess of wood and bricks that used to be their home. He turned to look back to Kushina again, he grabbed her shoulders, determination in his eyes, "we well. Just trust me." He stepped away from his wife and looked to his children, "together. We'll do it together, as a family, we will find him." His kids nodded and went over to the house to look through the rubble to find their missing family member. Not knowing that he wasn't there anymore.
To be continued...