Naru-chan's friends and family (part 2)

Being a toddler was an improvement over being an infant, in that Naruto could now walk, talk and, most importantly, eat Ramen.

However, now that Naruto was capable of such feats of independence, Kushina judged it was time for her to return to active duty. Before leaving on every mission, she cried rivers of tears and loudly threatened to murder everyone in a thirty mile radius if her baby had so much as a scratch on him when she returned.

Naruto saw her off with a smile. Being cuddled was nice, but he was getting restless. And when the cat was away — when Mommy was away — it was time to play.

Every time she went on a mission, Kushina cried rivers of tears at being separated from her baby boy. After the first mission, she wasn't the only one crying.

~.~.~

It took Naruto's ANBU guards less than an hour to lose him.

Kakashi, as squad leader and also as Minato's student — thus less likely to be killed — was the one who went to inform their Hokage that his hand picked, trusted shinobi had failed to watch over his son.

Minato didn't get angry, as Kakashi expected. He didn't even appear concerned. "He'll make a fine shinobi, if he can already evade my ANBU," Minato said, smiling.

"Minato-sensei," Kakashi said slowly, "Naruto is missing."

"He knows not to leave the village, and the Sensor Corps haven't any reported any breaches," Minato replied. "So there's nothing to worry about."

"He's not even two yet," Kakashi insisted. "What about wild animals? Or muggers? Or, or runaway carts?!"

"Really, Kakashi. This is Konoha. It's safe," Minato said, smiling. "I'm sure Naruto will turn up in time for dinner."

Kakashi wasn't sure what to say to that, except, "You're telling Kushina-san about this, not me."

"Alright. I don't see why you're so worried. She won't get mad — it was Naruto's idea," Minato said mildly, already having turned back to his paperwork.

'Sensei, you're not going to die on the battlefield. You're going to die because you do something stupid, and your wife finally kills you,' Kakashi thought.

~.~.~

Naruto was back when Minato arrived home for dinner. They had instant ramen, since neither of them could cook — well, Naruto knew how, but he couldn't even reach the counter tops.

"Did you have fun today?" Minato asked, between bites.

Naruto snickered, rather alarmingly. Minato just smiled blandly.

"By the way," he said, "did you take off the Hiraishin formulas I put on you again? Kakashi was getting so worked up, I thought I'd help him, but I couldn't find you at all."

Naruto turned wide, innocent eyes toward his father. Minato didn't believe him for a moment, but he still didn't look concerned either.

"Keep one on you," he instructed. "You never know when we might have a breach."

Naruto held out one hand and made a grabbing motion. "Gimme kunai," he ordered.

Despite the fact that Kushina had been very unhappy the times when she caught Naruto "playing" with his parents' ninja weapons, Minato easily pulled out and handed over one of his tri-pronged kunai. Naruto nodded and pocketed it.

~.~.~

"I warned you," Jiraiya said, without an ounce of sympathy. "I warned about marrying a girl so much like Tsunade. You poor bastard, what did you do? Peek on her in the bath?"

That was what Jiraiya had done, just before Tsunade almost killed him. It was a very memorable experience, and the outcome was rather like Minato's current situation.

"We're married. I don't need to peek," Minato pointed out reasonably, his voice strained with pain.

Jiraiya shook his head. He didn't think he had ever seen Minato this injured — there were more bandages than skin visible. In fact, Minato probably hadn't sustained this many injuries over the course of the entire war, combined. Of course, he was also infamous for his speed and ability to dodge…

"Insufferable know-it-all," Jiraiya muttered.

The village overall seemed oddly unconcerned with their Hokage's poor state of health, including the shinobi forces. Jiraiya thought at least the elders would have been there in Minato's hospital room, nagging.

But everyone had bigger problems. Naruto had somehow managed to replace the sugar next to every coffee machine in the village with salt. All the milk had also mysterious gone bad. And every left sandal had been switched with one a size smaller.

Worst of all, Naruto had timed it just before Kushina's return, so no one dared to retaliate for fear of her reaction.

~.~.~

Naruto was about the only one sympathetic to Minato's injuries. He hadn't actually meant to land the man in the hospital.

"It's okay. But I still don't understand why she was so angry…" Minato said when Naruto came to visit him, bearing reconciliatory instant ramen.

Naruto could only shrug. He loved his mom, but she was really weird.

~.~.~

It took Naruto several months to convince Kushina to take another mission.

Worried about her baby boy, Kushina blitzed through it — at this point, a certain rumor about Konoha's "Akagami" ("a crimson-haired vengeful god," apparently, for the double pun) started up — and came back a week early.

She arrived to find Naruto's ANBU detail struggling to tie him up in a cocoon of ninja wire and haul him away from his newest masterpiece — long garlands of catnip, hanging across one of Konoha's most popular shopping streets, which had been taken over by a veritable sea of cats. The furry mass was undulating and purring up a storm as the ANBU team cursed and tried to keep hold of Naruto's bound, wiggling form.

Cats, ANBU and bystanders all froze as one, then turned slowly to face the source of the killing intent that had suddenly pressed on them. Kushina stood at the end of the street, her crimson hair flying.

"Mommy!" Naruto called out cheerfully, wiggling a little more.

"What," she said in the echoing voice of a wrathfully god, "are you doing to my son?"

The ANBU's screams of utter terror were almost drowned out by the cats' yowling. Almost.

~.~.~

Jiraiya giggled, peering through a hole in the fence of the women's side of the bath. "Yes, that's it. That's the stuff, baby!" he crowed under his breath. "Show me those ripe fruit, those smooth, soft mounds! What's another good word…?"

"Bouncy," Naruto said, one cheek squished against the top of Jiraiya's head, his tiny hands gripping the Toad Sage's surprisingly soft white hair as he sat on the man's shoulders.

Jiraiya nodded absently. "Bouncy, great word. Very descriptive, lots of action…" he muttered to himself.

"Bleh," Naruto made a noise of disgust. "I don' like big boobies."

"Whaaaat?!" Jiraiya demanded, aghast, sitting up straight. "How can you say that? What red-blooded male doesn't appreciate the wonder and glory that is a woman's big, bouncy breasts? The sensation of squeezing that luscious flesh, overflowing between your fingers…"

"Flat and slender is better," Naruto declared. "Like Mommy." And Sakura-chan.

Jiraiya opened his mouth to say something derogatory, only to freeze. "M-Mommy…?" he repeated, breaking out in cold sweat.

Slowly, he tilted his head back, his eyes almost crossing as he tried to catch a glimpse of the toddler sitting on his shoulders. The toddler he had been having a perverted argument with.

"Naru-chan," Jiraiya said, swallowing heavily, "I'll do anything, just forget the last ten minutes and never, ever mention this to your mother."

Naruto pretended to think about it, just to make the super pervert sweat, but finally he grinned and declared, "Teach me jutsu, Ero-Sennin!"

It worked out rather well. He even got Ramen for lunch out of it too.

~.~.~

Kushina, in the middle of an assignment, paused and looked up. Her eyes narrowed, and her long red hair began to move uneasily. "My mother senses are tingling," she muttered. "Someone is doing something stupid to my baby. I better finish fast."

The bandits hiding in the bushes down the road barely had time to scream.

~.~.~

"Minato, there's something weird with that kid," Jiraiya insisted, unusually serious.

"I know. Naruto is definitely special," Minato agreed, not even glancing away from his paperwork.

"That's not it! Are you listening?!" Jiraiya snapped. His sharp tone finally made his old student look up in concern. "That's not being special or a genius, or anything like that. I was on a team with Orochimaru! I taught you! I know what that looks like. That kid knew what I was showing him. He already knew how to mold chakra. More than that, he already knew the Academy three and, get this, Kage Bunshin! Minato, he's only two!"

"Maybe one of the ANBU, or Kushina…" Minato began, but Jiraiya shook his head.

"I checked with all the teams you assigned to guard him. I even told them they wouldn't get in trouble for it. But none of them taught him anything! And I know Kushina wouldn't stand for it!" Jiraiya insisted. "That kid knows way too many things he shouldn't."

"What are you saying, sensei?" Minato asked, his expression growing serious. "What are you suggesting? That he's an impostor? That he's being controlled by someone? …That the Kyuubi is influencing him?"

"I don't know," Jiraiya said unhappily. "But there's something strange going on."

He expected any number of reactions from his student — mostly involving denial, anger or fear for Naruto — but Minato only looked thoughtful for a moment.

"Alright," he said quite calmly. "I'll check the seal. That should settle everything, right? If the seal and the Kyuubi are there, he can't be an impostor. I'll be able to see if there is any distortion in his chakra flow, and since I'll be applying my own chakra, it would break any mind control techniques. Will that settle your concerns, sensei?"

"…And the Kyuubi?" Jiraiya asked. What Minato was saying sounded reasonable, but some instinct told Jiraiya none of the things he suggested were at work anyway. It was something deeper and more complicated than that.

"Sensei, I was just joking about that," Minato said, looking at him with surprise. "That wouldn't make any sense. Why would a bijuu know Kawarimi? What would they even switch with? A mountain?"

~.~.~

"Naruto, I need to check your seal," Minato declared, over their usual instant ramen dinner. He had wisely waited until Kushina was on another mission.

Naruto looked up, a long trail of noodles hanging from his mouth. He noisily slurped them up, then said, "Okaaaaay… How come?"

"I want to ask the Kyuubi something, and I figured I might as well check everything too. We weren't… working under the best conditions that night," Minato said.

Shrugging in acquiescence, Naruto went back his Ramen.

"You're a moron," Kurama told him, in the space between seconds. While Naruto made unhappy noises, the great fox sighed in frustration. "You do realize that no one in this life told you about the seal, or me. Ever."

"…Ah," Naruto croaked. "Oops." Then, he shrugged.

Kurama waited impatiently, but Naruto seemed disinclined to explain. "So?" he finally demanded. "What are we going to do?"

"If he asks, we'll have to tell him," Naruto said reasonably. "I'm not a good liar anyway."

"And what if he doesn't ask?" Kurama said dryly.

Naruto shrugged again.

It was unsurprising. That was the same lackadaisical approach they had taken regarding the other jinchuuriki. They still hadn't told them, B and Yagura in particular, that Naruto wasn't physically the teenager he appeared as in the shared space. Dealing with that had been left up to the individual bijuu, who were not exactly the most proactive of beings to begin with — being ageless and essentially immortal had that effect.

Kurama suspected, though he didn't voice it, that Naruto also didn't want to deal with the fallout of that revelation. Minato and Kushina might have been weird parents who didn't really treat their son according to his age — Kushina's special brand of overprotectiveness notwithstanding — but Naruto didn't want them to treat him differently, to start looking at him like he was a stranger.

Whether that was what they would do, that was Naruto's fear.

Well, if that was his wish… From the start, Kurama had just wanted Naruto to have the family he had been denied. He didn't particularly care if that meant lying to the Yondaime Hokage or whatever.

Fortunately, Naruto and Kurama had decided to leave tampering with the seal for later. Partly because they had foreseen the possibility of a check up, partly because they didn't actually have the key and didn't want to improvise when there was no pressing need, and partly because there really was no particular need.

Sure, the chakra Kurama could give Naruto was somewhat limited with the seal in place, but they hardly expected to do any heavy fighting in the near future. It would have been too hard on Naruto's child body anyway. So there was no harm in waiting — the seal annoyed Kurama, but it wasn't painful or even truly uncomfortable.

Thus, Minato found nothing out of the ordinary when he examined the seal. Inserting a bit of his chakra into its workings, he appeared in the shared mental space, before the great gates.

"What do you want?" the Kyuubi asked with a great deal of disinterest, none of it particularly faked.

Minato didn't answer right away, glancing around instead. He might have been studying his new surroundings, or he might have been looking for Naruto's mental self — currently hiding. Even when Minato finally faced the Kyuubi, his expression remained calm and even.

It was a look Kurama deeply distrusted. How many had the Yellow Flash killed while wearing that same shining leader face? The only thing Kurama knew was that the man didn't hate Naruto or even the Kyuubi itself. But then neither did the little Root spies Danzou set to watch Naruto, as they discovered when Naruto almost tripped over them a couple times. That didn't make them any less vicious or dangerous.

"Naruto is your jinchuuriki," Minato said, instead of answering. "You agreed to this. He is your shield against that masked man."

That… was not what Kurama had expected. "…Yes," he agreed.

"For that purpose, it would suit you best if Naruto becomes strong. And that he does not fall under anyone's influence. Otherwise, your power would simply become someone else's tool," Minato continued.

"…I see. So that's your approach," Kurama said, finally understanding what Minato was aiming for. "'Protect my son'… is that it? If he falls under a genjutsu, I can dispel it. If someone enters his mind, I can drive them out. If he's in danger, I can give him chakra… And the reason I should do so is for my own self-interest."

Regarding Minato for a moment longer, Kurama thought further — underneath the underneath, as they were so fond of saying.

"But that's not all, is it?" Kurama mused. "It's not just that. I could tell Naruto things to turn him against the village, against you, but where would be the benefit of that? Humans are weak alone. The more allies he has, the more people to stand between us and that man. Stirring up his anger and hatred would only harm me in the long run. Well, that's what you're betting on."

"You've thought through it quite well," Minato said, smiling faintly. "As expected of the greatest bijuu."

Kurama snorted. "You're putting a lot of stock in my wisdom. Did you ever consider that I might not be that far sighted?"

"That's why I'm here. To confirm if you are the same as two years ago," Minato said. "I don't know why you changed between being extracted from Kushina and being freed from the masked man's control, but the you of after can see that clearly. That's all I needed to ascertain."

"Or else you would take measures from your end, is that it? Tighten the seal? Invoke that woman's help in suppressing me?" Kurama said, with a taint of bitterness. Minato gave no reaction, but the Kyuubi knew he was right. "After all, a weapon you can't control is worse than useless."

Humans were always like that, seeing the bijuu as just weapons. Naruto, for all that he had once hated the Kyuubi and once drawn on its power blindly, had never considered Kurama a weapon or a tool.

'Then again, I suppose humans see each other as just tools too. Naruto has never looked at anyone that way,' Kurama thought.

"A weapon you can't control might destroy what you're trying to protect. Then, it's something that is better off sealed away forever," Minato said.

'Yes, yes, only hatred can come from my power, I should just stay forever deep in the seal, I heard that from Mito, that damn…' Kurama thought in annoyance, only to trail off at Minato's next words.

"But I believe Naruto can handle even a dangerous weapon, and find the right way to use it," the Yondaime concluded. "That's why I entrusted your power to him, and why I'm entrusting him to you. That power will help him change the world."

"…" Something about statement sounded strange, and Kurama continued to brood about it even after Minato disappeared, apparently satisfied.

It was quite a while later that Kurama suddenly burst out laughing. He could feel Naruto give him weirded out mental looks, but Kurama didn't care.

"Your kid's going to change the world, so you might as well give him the best tool to do so?" Kurama mused to himself, still snickering. "Or is it giving him the strongest weapon to protect himself with? Haha, what a messed up way of thinking!"

Given Minato's absolute faith in Naruto's ability to handle that power — well, and the three dozen contingencies he had probably placed in the seal somewhere, just in case — it made a certain messed up kind of sense. For a shinobi. You bought your kid the best kunai and taught them all your best jutsus, didn't you? Even though both were dangerous in the hands of little genin brats. All so they would have a better chance out in the bloody ninja world. The better armed they were, the longer they would live.

So why shouldn't a bijuu's power be another extension of that?

Or so Minato thought, apparently.

"I can't tell if he's the most loving parent or the worst, stupidest one," Kurama grumbled to himself.

"Argh, shut up! It's the middle of the night! I'm trying to sleep!" Naruto yelled, appearing in front of the cage. "Can't you lose your last screws in the morning, you stupid furball?!"

"Shut up! Blame your idiot father!" Kurama yelled back.

Seriously, what kind of idiot trusted the power to level mountains to this brat?!

(Then again, the Sage of Sixth Paths had trusted him with half the power of a god, so…

(Fathers were stupid.)

~.~.~

Being a genuine idiot, Naruto hadn't even noticed that he had lost Kurama's ability to sense negative emotions since being reborn in the past.

Kurama had purposefully cut that aspect of their connection and held back that ability.

By the time Naruto had originally become able to control the Kyuubi's chakra, he had been accepted as a hero and was out on the battlefield besides.

But back in the village of Naruto's childhood, Kurama had feared that even Naruto would be crushed under the villagers' deep, pervasive fear and hatred. It had been like a choking miasma when Naruto had originally been growing up, though Kurama, drunk on his own hatred, hadn't been affected.

Naruto had only made it to genin through copious amounts of denial, and actually feeling the villagers' negativity, undeniable and ever present… well, it wouldn't be a good thing for his mental state.

But to Kurama's surprise, it… wasn't the same. Some still hated them, of course. There had been many victims in Kurama's initial rampage, and even knowing that the bijuu had been used didn't erase the bitterness for those who had lost loved ones. However, their numbers were so much lower, no longer the majority, but just a small part of the population.

The fear was still there too, but Naruto was so tiny, so loud and so infuriating that almost as soon as he appeared on the scene, every other feeling was drowned out by sheer annoyance. Naruto was very, very good at annoying people.

Kurama had always thought Naruto was an idiot to insist on instilling those feelings in people whose respect he craved, but it finally made sense. That annoyance was made on Naruto's terms, by his actions, so it could also be overcome on his terms, by his actions — unlike blind hated and fear.

From village pariah to village idiot was a step up, unintuitive as that seemed.

That didn't mean Kurama had any intention of letting Naruto have negative emotion sensing any time soon. Unlike Kurama, Naruto wouldn't be able to logically reason through the villagers' emotions — or look at those emotions with a bland detachment.

'Oh, everyone just became terrified for their lives,' Kurama noted.

He had been monitoring the mob chasing after Naruto — who had painted spoilers for Icha Icha Paradise across the Hokage monument the day the book came out. However, the near murderous fury and frustration suddenly turned to horror and crippling fear, with a dash of something almost like religious fervor.

That could only mean one thing. 'Hmm… I guess Kushina's returned.'

And she was standing right behind them, asking what they thought they were doing to her son.

Yes, there was no real need for Naruto to sense negative emotions, the empathetic little brat. Naruto, Kurama thought, just wouldn't be sadistic enough to appreciate the crowd's absolute horror at the sight of red hair flailing wildly.

~.~.~

Elsewhere, in the middle of a release day book signing, Jiraiya sensed that his days were numbered.

~.~.~

~.~.~

Notes: Akagami can mean red hair or red god, depending on the kanji.

But that aside, can you imagine if Naruto had actually grown up with negative emotion sensing? Mito had it without ever establishing cooperation with Kurama, so that's not a requirement. Hell, what if Kurama purposefully allowed Naruto to have it, to feed his "dark" side? That would be almost too mean.