21Kinda felt like I rushed this chapter. I reckon you guys will think so too.
Disclaimer: Yeah, yeah. All credits go to Kishimoto and such...
The real one, I mean; not... Whatever.
Red
There were few sociable Konoha shinobi who had yet to step foot in Nagito's shop. Saying it was Nagito's, however, gave the impression that he had started it from scratch. That, of course, was wrong; the shop had been opened by an ancestor of Nagito's during the founding of the village.
Kishimoto Yosuke, he had called himself and laughed whenever he was addressed as 'Kishimoto-san'. To most, he was "a civilian who constantly saw fit to interfere in matters beyond his understanding."
He had laughed whenever somebody told him that. Very rarely had he spoken with those that disapproved of his brand of humor; there were those that found it rather annoying, but they'd caught on rather quickly that he'd never stop.
Some had believed Yosuke to be a spy or saboteur of some sort. With an attitude that constantly garnered the attention of the passerby and a silver tongue that had gotten him out of— and into— so many different brands of trouble that it had long since stopped being funny. In addition to that, Yosuke's little stall sold next to nothing and regardless of that, he had never moved it an inch.
Everyone was left to speculate eternally because only a few weeks after Senju Hashirama was given the official title of Hokage he had vanished. It was— correctly— assumed that he had died so his stall was scrapped and his goods pilfered by the local riff-raff. Eventually, the empty space was taken by a legitimate shop that specialized in weapons.
The 'situation'— because it had not been a situation until it was muddled up— became complicated at six years afterward when a boy of five years was found shouting at the owner of the weapons shop. Eventually, the child was dragged away and forced to explain to an amused Uchiha why exactly he'd deemed it necessary to engage the shopkeep in a one-sided shouting match.
When the brat told the Uchiha woman that his father's shop used to be there, she resisted the urge to give the kid a good smack then and there, instead, asking where exactly his father was— and she was quite certain of the answer.
After she had almost forced the child to come to her home and sat him down with a meal, she went to fetch her husband to explain the situation. The two had finished their conversation quickly and made to confront the boy. When they did, the very first thing they had asked of him was his name.
Kishimoto Yu.
Suddenly it had become well known amongst civilians and a smaller group of shinobi that Yosuke had an unknown son whose birth seemed to coincide with his own disappearance. Such a thing raised questions. Among those was the question of a mother. Nobody had seen Yosuke outside of his job— most were of the belief that he did not actually leave the little stand— and they certainly had not seen him chatting up any women.
As easy as it would have been to simply ignore the child's words, for those who had known Yosuke, it was very obvious that Yu shared far too many of his traits for it to be a simple coincidence.
Sure enough, once Yu was of an appropriate age, he set up his own shop and let things take their course from there, offering companionship to anybody who decided to stop by.
Thus, the cycle continued; whenever a Kishimoto died, in six more years another son would take his place. It was noted that there were only sons. No siblings or such to speak of, let alone a mother that they had seen.
And there were those who'd lived long enough to have been exposed to the earlier sons of the Kishimoto line, who would say that with every generation, the Kishimoto boys were smiling less than their ancestors ever did.
That all comes back to Nagito, the most recent of line— note line because there were no offshoots; one child every time— who was trying his very best to keep his shop running.
He could have taken the simple route and claimed the Yondaime's reign was the cause for his newfound financial struggles but he had known that running a shop that sold hard-to-get items that were 'hard to get' simply because people did not want them and thus said items were rarely made, was likely the worst idea he had ever come up with— he was selling junk, essentially.
It was not that he thought the Yondaime sucked at his job— because he really was not considering the village had come out a war a decade and was still standing— but he just did not like the Yondaime in general. It had nothing to do with man's personality and he was sure of that because he had tolerated Minato just fine when the blonde was a child.
Of course, by now Nagito had tried his best to make sure that the name Kishimoto was not even whispered in the streets and that he had faded completely into obscurity so it was not as if he had to deal with Minato recently.
Uzumaki Kushina was another problem entirely.
Somehow, the girl had gotten it in her head that because they'd spoken to each other as children— far more often than he would like to admit— that made them obligatory friends and because she was older than him she treated him like an estranged little brother who was socially stunted. He was certain that she was aware of how distasteful he found it.
Perhaps it had been his own fault for letting his obvio—
He was choking on the air. For a breath moment, he believed himself to be having a stroke until he had realized it was chakra he was choking on. Disgustingly familiar chakra.
Nagito walked out from behind his counter and took a few wobbly steps outside of his shop. Turning his eyes to the sky, he was met with the all too close form of the Kyūbi no Yōko.
"Oh dear; it's the tenth of October, isn't it?" Now that he was actually paying attention, he could feel the earth shaking beneath his feet.
He let out a sigh. He was so damned tired. He stretched his arms over his head and let them fall to his sides before he walked back into his shop, pulling his futon from underneath the counter. Unrolling it on the floor and slipping inside, he tried his best to relax. Silently, he sent out hope for at least ten minutes of sleep.
Not five minutes later, his shop was crushed under an errant limb of the Kyūbi.
Somewhere in the civilian sector, an evacuation was taking place. A lone woman who had awoken a bit later than she should have and had fallen to the back of the pack came across an infant in the shadow of a collapsed building. The lady was sure that the infant's cries had garnered somebody's attention but as it were, only she had taken notice.
After a brief moment of hesitation and a few tentative steps forward, she ran the rest of the way and scooped the baby into her arms before moving back onto the evacuation route with a bit more urgency in her step.
Three months after the Kyūbi attack, an infant was dropped off at the orphanage.
It came as no surprise to the baby girl; she could not expect a lady who had picked her up off streets in a fit of whimsy, to raise as she would her own child. Though, if her memory served her, staying in the orphanage was far from optimal.
It was a few hours before she was picked up from where she'd been left— because the lady who had left her there had not had the courtesy to knock. When one of the caretakers finally became aware of her she was cold, hungry, and had likely soiled the blanket she'd been bundled in twice-over. The last was only vaguely irritating in a manner reminiscent of a monotonous job done for survival's sake.
As she was picked up— the caretaker gave a restrained look of disgust as she touched a particularly wet spot on the blanket— she idly wondered if the caretakers would find her odd. She had been far from idle in the three months since her birth and she was certain it had shown. Accessing her chakra as an infant had been child's play but she had just as quickly found there was a reason that a child's chakra network wouldn't fully develop for years.
One's Yang chakra— or physical energy— could be directly affected by one's body; hence the physical conditioning all shinobi must endure. The opposite is true as well, seen as shinobi using Yang chakra to supplement their strength. This, however, is only viable in a body where the chakra coils have developed to an appropriate degree, in order to prevent significant damage. Undirected Yang chakra in an infant would almost certainly result in death.Controlled and directed Yang chakra would decrease the chances of death by an amount that was easily disregarded.
This particular infant had been experimenting with her Yang chakra as soon as she'd been able to dredge any into existence. She couldn't really channel her chakra through undeveloped coils without splitting them wide open and killing herself. So she channeled chakra directly through her body whenever she intended to use it. An equally dangerous solution, but at the very least, it wouldn't be fatal if she forced too much through her body. Not as if she had that much to call upon.
The effects the chakra had on her body were both underwhelming and distressing.
The first signs that anything strange had been happening had been a month prior. Exercising constant control over her chakra was a tiring affair and she had taken to sleeping as much as possible when she was not being fed or some other such thing of importance. It was upon awakening from one of these naps that she found it considerably easier to move about and soon enough she had begun crawling about the floor. It took about two seconds to realize the impossibility of that before she disregarded that as well.
The next problem rather quickly after that. She began teething and within two weeks, the first of her milk teeth had come in. It was sharp.
Now, a little less than a month later, she had five separate teeth in her little three-month-old mouth: a cuspid, two molars on the right side of her mouth, and one of those teeth in the front that she did not know the name of.
So yes, she was quite worried that the matron and the others working in the orphanage would... What exactly did she believe they would do? Were they not technically obligated to take in an abandoned child? She was dropped on their doorstep, they could hardly toss her out. They would certainly wait until she could at least take care of herself before throwing out— not that she intended on staying past that point.
She was pulled from her musings— because she was far from truly worried about her state of affairs— when she was laid in a bed that she presumed to be located in the orphanage's nursery. The lady who brought her there— dark hair darker eyes— left quickly, likely to tell the matron of the new arrival. Or had she already? Regardless, she left all the same and the baby girl was left to her own thoughts and the occasional cry of her fellow children.
Perhaps he had always been there or he had only just arrived but suddenly the little girl was all too aware of the boy she knew to be Uzumaki Naruto.
His little bed or whatever it was called was beside her own and at first, she had thought it would not have been a problem. Unfortunately, she lacked the ability to truly ignore something once it gained her attention and for this, she suffered.
The boy was loud. He had a pair of lungs on him that never seemed to give out. A few times, he screamed himself raw— for Kaguya knows what reason— and after a few minutes he would set back to it. She was sure that if Naruto was not who he was, they would have called him a 'spirited baby' but she was rather sure it was the Kyūbi's fault.
It was particularly annoying for the caretakers because he disturbed almost every baby in the room with his crying. In response to his excessive noise, a few of the caretakers— the Sandaime must have made the announcement already— used a bit unnecessary force to quiet him. The first time a caretaker laid a hand Naruto with ill intent, the girl nailed her with a glare. She may have despised children but she hated abusing children more.
Within a week, she heard whispers that they had "placed the demon boy next to the girl with a demon's eyes."
She could have made something of that— the two of them could have become something— but she refused it.
Uzumaki Naruto would gain the strength to imprison gods. She would not limit her own strength by attaching herself to him and supporting him.
She wanted to surpass the boy who would grow into somebody who could make friends out of enemies because he understood their pain.
Most of all, she just did not like him.
At the age of one, she walked with a confidence that contradicted her age and spoke with a fluency that would put most adults to shame. Of course, nobody knew this.
Practicing in the dead of night was a simple enough endeavor. Walking was easy and she had perfected it within two months of her arrival at the orphanage, contrary to speaking which— despite knowing the language intimately— seemed to require some sort of instinct or reflex that she lacked and therefore needed to remake. It hardly mattered; after living but a year, she'd gotten a handle on speaking.
Now she took to pushing her chakra through her coils, a task that was very painful, to say the least. In her efforts to prevent any permanent damage, she'd made it instinctual to channel chakra through herself forming a sort of pseudo network, leaving her coils unaccustomed to her chakra.
It burned when she finally released her hold.
But that was okay. She had plenty of time to get used to it.
She must have looked strange to caretakers.
A little girl who trailed her nails— she noted that they were soon to be akin to claws with how thick they had grown; likely another disturbing effect of her experimentation— along the wall and never spoke unless spoken to. A head of forest green hair that contrasted disturbingly with her eyes. She always kept a fair distance from the other children, shooting them glances whenever one got too close or spoke too loud. Yes, she must have seemed strange.
She was going to be two the next day.
She had spent the last year practicing her chakra control and making sure that her coils were developing properly. While she had wanted to start training her body at the same time, she was not willing to stunt her growth for a head start in her future career.
So, as she continued her walk along the walls, she focused on her core and spun her chakra in spirals, constantly reversing directions.
Dimly, she noted that it would be Naruto's birthday the next day.
'Perhaps I'll write him a card. And get him a present as well.'
When she turned three, she left the orphanage.