Naru-chan gets kidnapped

When Naruto was three, the peace treaty with Kumo was finalized, after years of negotiations, and to be signed. Although he heard a lot about it, from Minato and Kushina's vicious cursing, Naruto didn't think much of it.

That is, until he heard about how the Hyuuga heiress's birthday party would be on the same day as the signing.

Then, it finally clicked, and Naruto threw what his parents vividly remembered as his first temper tantrum.

~.~.~

Naruto had not been a biddable child, exactly, but he had never cried, and if he had ever wanted something or disagreed with his parents, he had simply gone behind their backs and gotten it by himself.

So it was more out of overwhelming bewilderment than anything that Minato and Kushina agreed to have Naruto visit the Hyuuga compound on Hinata's birthday and then spend the night over.

It was especially mysterious because up until that point, everyone had thought Naruto didn't even know who Hinata was. If they had met, no one could pin down when or how. Hinata had never even left the compound.

"Your son isn't here? I was looking forward to meeting him, and your wife," the Kumo head ninja commented casually, the day of the signing.

It was a good thing Kushina had agreed to be out of the village on the occasion — supposedly in case Kumo attempted another abduction, mostly because Minato didn't want to end up with a dead diplomat because the foreign shinobi couldn't stop himself from making subtly threatening remarks.

Minato smiled blandly. "I was looking forward to seeing A and his brother again," he replied. And not some no-name grunt like you, was implied. The head ninja's expression twitched at the jab.

Then both of them faced the crowd again, putting on their best public appearance world peace faces.

~.~.~

'The things I endure for the sake of my precious people,' Naruto bemoaned internally. In his mind, Kurama snorted. 'Hey! I'll have you know this kimono is really, really uncomfortable! How do people move in these things?'

At least the formal clothing was bright, cheery orange, with patterns of lighter yellow and splashes of white. It stood out quite a bit among the Hyuuga whites, blacks, and browns. The only other spot of color was Hinata's pale lavender.

Speaking of tiny Hina-chan, she was adorable. Naruto was a guy, but he kind of wanted to kyaa and cuddle the cuteness that was the Hyuuga heiress. Even Neji agreed that she was simply precious!

And speaking of Neji…

'I definitely won't fail,' Naruto thought to himself. Even if it meant putting up to all the boring, stuffy Hyuuga elders and wearing stiff, scratchy formal clothing.

However, by evening, it was only love for his friends that was keeping Naruto from dumping some kind of gunk in every silky head of dark hair in sight and dyeing all their clothes bright pink. With his patience stretched to the limit, Naruto actually started acting rather close to his physical age — like a cranky toddler.

"I wanna sleep next to Hina-chan," Naruto insisted, sticking out his lower lip. Blushing, Hinata clung to his sleeve.

The Hyuuga caretakers exchanged a look. They were clearly calculating whether they preferred to face the old fashioned propriety complaints of the Hyuuga elders… or the unhappiness of the Hokage's son, who had once driven the entire cryptology department to tears and the ANBU to murderous rage and deathly fear, by turns.

The Hyuuga shrugged. The choice was obvious — the elders always nagged anyway.

Once they were in bed, Hinata drifted off quickly, clutching Naruto's carrot pattern pajamas with one hand, the other's thumb in her mouth, but Naruto himself sat in silent vigil and meditated.

His natural — as in, like as aspect of nature — stillness meant that the abductor, when he silently ducked into the room, was completely caught off guard.

Naruto opened his eyes, with square, sideways pupils, and he and the masked intruder stared at each other in a silent panorama.

The kidnapper was stunned, but Naruto's problem was different. His first instinct was to attack, but his second instinct reminded him what a terrible idea that was. Hinata was right next to him, and Naruto was not at all certain in his ability to protect her.

So instead, Naruto opened his mouth to scream.

The kidnapper lunged forward, clamping a hand over his mouth. Naruto flailed, deeply annoyed to realize that he was getting overpowered even in Sage Mode. Well, this was a jounin he was wrestling with — trying to wrestle with and failing — who had been chosen to go into a compound of a clan famous for their hand to hand combat.

Finally pinning Naruto, the intruder let out a sigh of relief. It was premature. Next to them, Hinata scrunched up her nose and lowly began to open her eyes. She stared at the intruder and Naruto, who stared back.

She opened her mouth to scream.

The kidnapper didn't have enough hands to cover her mouth too. Instead, with a curse than was completely drowned out by Hinata's high pitched scream, he ran like a powerful, vengeful clan was on his heels. Which they were.

Naruto was surprised to find himself being carried over the man's shoulder like a sack of rice. This… was not part of the plan.

Worse yet, the head ninja was actually rather fast — well, he had been chosen for a reason. He was out of the compound and then out of the Byakugan's average range in very short order, the angered, confused shouts just starting up behind them.

'Wait, what? No! I don't want to go to Kumo!' Naruto thought, more confused than frantic.

Kurama muttered something about lending him some chakra or possibly biting the head ninja's head off, but Naruto ignored him. Drawing on the Kyuubi was a last resort, for a number of reasons.

Instead, Naruto pulled out his dad's kunai — weird shaped and dull as it might have been, it was still a weapon.

He had planned to stab the Kumo-nin with it and make a break for it in the confusion.

Instead, Minato appeared almost literally on top of them, looking somehow both very calm and very murderous.

It was over in very short order after that — in a flash, you might say.

~.~.~

"I won't tell your mom if you don't," Minato said, as he picked Naruto up out of the Kumo head ninja's slack grip.

Naruto only nodded distractedly.

'Oh,' he thought. 'So that's why Mom fell for him.'

~.~.~

Despite being, as Kushina lovingly put it, an "unreliable sissy-boy" — though only around her and sometimes Jiraiya, it should be noted — Minato acted with almost unnatural calm and logic in combat. He could easily analyze almost any situation in an instance and act without hesitation to carry out the best objective course of action.

So even in the middle of rescuing his three year old son, Minato kept a cool enough head to only knock out the Kumo ambassador, instead of killing him like pretty much any other parent would have.

Not to say that Minato wasn't just as furious as any other parent. No one knew what was in the letter he sent to the Raikage, but A had visibly paled as he read it and was left speechless for several minutes. Afterwards, Kumo slunk away with its tail between its legs.

Minato himself thought his response was very merciful. If it had been Kushina dealing with them… There would have been only four great hidden villages left. He was probably right in thinking that.

~.~.~

In fact, the two biggest upshots of the entire fiasco with Kumo's (newest) attempted kidnapping were:

One, Hyuuga Hinata's incredible overprotective crush on Naruto — par for the course, one might think, except the part where Hinata was apparently utterly certain that Naruto needed to be protected and set out to become strong enough to do so — and…

Two, Naruto's realization that, while he couldn't do much fighting himself, he had parents to do it for him. One of whom could teleport to Naruto's location on command.

"This is a terrible idea. Stop thinking about it," Kurama growled.

"It's a great idea," Naruto protested. "Think about it! I don't need to wait years and years before I'm strong enough to take on all these S-rank jerks, and I don't need to worry about how I'm gonna explain why I know they're evil. It's perfect!"

"Getting kidnapped," Kurama insisted, "can never be a good plan. Ever."

"And they're all creeps who like to prey on kids, so they'll make it easy for me," Naruto added, completely ignoring Kurama's wisdom.

The bijuu sighed. There was no hope with him when he got like this.

Like it or not, Naruto was going to get himself kidnapped.

~.~.~

The biggest creepy kidnapper Naruto knew was Orochimaru. So that's where he decided to start.

Naruto wasn't all that clear on how it originally went down, but he knew Orochimaru was still in the village, and while he didn't have any special bloodline, Naruto felt reasonably certain that he could bait Orochimaru with something — the Kyuubi's chakra, the kinjutsu he wasn't supposed to know, the truth about the world that still sounded kind of ridiculous, or even just his excessive knowledge about Orochimaru's own plans and projects.

(That last one was actually as likely to earn him an assassination attempt as a kidnapping, but Naruto didn't worry about such small details.)

In fact, Orochimaru had originally defected two years after Naruto was born. He was running behind schedule. The reason was simple — as much as Orochimaru detested Namikaze Minato, he also acknowledged the Yondaime's power and ruthlessness. Unlike with Sarutobi's indulgence, Orochimaru felt the need to come carefully in all aspects of his research. That included the research that had gotten him caught and chased out of the village.

That same carefulness made it rather difficult for Naruto enact his plan, which stalled at the first step — actually finding and interacting with Orochimaru.

Seeing as how he was already planning to exploit his parents for all they were worth, Naruto decided to make use of his Hokage father and started hanging around Minato's office. Even Orochimaru had to come in for missions at some point, he figured.

Except that Orochimaru didn't come, for weeks.

Eventually, Minato decided enough was enough. "Are you looking for something, Naruto?" he asked.

Naruto looked at him consideringly. "I'm looking for this snake guy," he said finally, mentally shrugging. "I saw him once and he looked really cool," Naruto internally gagged, "and he had a headband, so I thought he'd come in for missions some time, but he hadn't!"

Minato listened to the entire run on sentence with utter seriousness. "I see," he said. "A snake guy? That must be Orochimaru, Jiraiya-sensei's teammate. He's been out of the village, but — tell you what — I'll introduce you two when he returns."

"Great!" Naruto cheered.

'I hope Sensei doesn't find out about this,' Minato thought as his son ran off, his unknown mission back on track. Minato sighed. His office would be a lot more dull without Naruto around.

Not that his staff would see that as a bad thing. They were beyond tired of the coffee in the machines randomly changing to decaf, or cocoa, or gravy.

~.~.~

"It's nice to meet you," Naruto said politely. Not gagging on the words was a struggle.

"…Quite," Orochimaru said, subtly leaning away from the boy.

"I heard you know lots and lots of cool jutsus," Naruto said in his best innocent little kid voice. He latched on to Orochimaru's pant leg, peering up at him with big blue eyes. "Can you teach me some? Please? I want more power." Because that was what Orochimaru liked to hear, right? At least that was what his subordinates were always going on about.

Of course, coming from a supposed three year old, it just sounded really strange.

"Er…" Orochimaru glanced at Minato, who was watching them with a mild, incredibly unhelpful expression. His honed shinobi instincts were certain that someone was trying to lead him into a trap, but for the life of him Orochimaru couldn't figure out what the trap was.

"Pleeeease?" Naruto insisted, now firmly attached to Orochimaru's leg. There would be no escape. It seemed he would have to bring out the big guns, Naruto thought. He braced himself. "I think snakes are really cool. Cooler than…" Naruto swallowed back bile, "…than toads."

"Ah, well…" Orochimaru glanced nervously at Minato again, who was still smiling blandly. And yet somehow Orochimaru felt like a noose was closing in around his neck. Jiraiya, at the very least, would rage at the very notion of his godson preferring snakes to his precious toads.

Was Jiraiya's student the same? No matter how mild mannered and friendly Minato looked, Orochimaru clearly remembered seeing the aftermath of a thousand-man Iwa invasion force going against the Yellow Flash. Only one shinobi walked away from that battle, and it wasn't an Iwa-nin.

"Maybe later," Orochimaru demure with a very awkward smile. "Run along, little boy."

He tried to shake Naruto off his leg, to no avail, and in the end had to resort to a quick snake transformation, in which he no longer had legs at all, to… not escape, because he wasn't running from a three year old, but a… strategic relocation.

"Hokage-sama," Orochimaru acknowledged and quickly closed the door to the office behind him.

"Tch," Naruto clicked his tongue, with a look of thwarted annoyance that was not at all suitable to a child. Narrowing his eyes, he vowed, "He's not getting away that easily."

As Naruto made his own exit via window, Minato called out after him, "Make sure you keep my kunai on you!"

"Okay!" Naruto called back.

~.~.~

Being one of the Sannin, Orochimaru could easily tell when he was being followed — well, Naruto wasn't actually trying in any case.

Every time he would see a flash of gold or orange out of the corner of his eyes, Orochimaru would turn and glare at the tiny feet sticking out under a store sign or a camouflage cloth being clumsily held up. It was all so obvious even an Academy student could see it — theoretically, that made sense since the brat trailing him wasn't even in Academy yet.

But no matter what he didn't, Orochimaru couldn't lose him. No amount of circling, mingling with crowds, ducking into narrow, twisty alleys, hiding his presence or even flat out running helped. Every time, the same flash of color in the corner of his eye, and then a terrible attempt at hiding.

Worse yet, everyone else could see what was going on too, and all the villagers kept eyeing him with something between distrust and sympathy.

Finally, even Orochimaru couldn't take it any longer. "Stop following me, you brat!" he yelled, spinning around and pointing at the tips of yellow hair still visible from behind a shop's tanuki mascot statue.

"But you haven't shown me your snake yet!" Naruto protested. "You promised!"

"No, I didn't," Orochimaru hissed.

Naruto was undeterred. If Orochimaru didn't want to recruit him based on his — supposed — ambition and hunger for power, Naruto would just have to try another way of catching his interest.

Orochimaru felt a shiver inexplicably go down his spine as Naruto's eyes narrowed.

"Is it because we're not in your secret place?" Naruto asked. Orochimaru had to have a bunch of secret hideouts, he figured. "Let's go there, so it'll be just the two of us."

Orochimaru made a chocking sound.

"I want to receive your mark too," Naruto insisted, going all in. "I'll give you my body in exchange!"

'Now he has to kidnap me, to keep me from spilling all his secrets!' Naruto thought triumphantly. Either that, or kill him, but abduction would still come first, Naruto figured.

It was at this point that Naruto finally realized that Kurama had buried his snout his paws and was making weird noises. And the entire street had fallen silent, staring at them.

Then, the frantic whispers started.

"Show him his snake? In a secret place where they're alone? You don't think…?"

"Give him his mark? In exchange for his body? But that's—!"

"Orochimaru… to the Hokage's son?!"

"I always knew he looked suspicious! Like a creeper! A pervert, the bad kind!"

Somebody ran to get the Police Force. Somebody ran to get the Hokage.

Orochimaru turned tail and just ran. Or at least he tried to. Naruto was faster, throwing himself at the man and wrapping his arms around his waist. "Don't leave me!" he protested.

The next moment, Naruto found himself holding the nearby tanuki statue instead as Orochimaru made a quick getaway with a skillful Kawarimi.

But not before Naruto slipped Minato's kunai in his weapons pouch.

~.~.~

In retrospect, running straight to one of his secret labs was not a smart move, but in his defense Orochimaru had been caught entirely off guard and his only thought had been "hide," the safer the place the better.

He in no way expected Namikaze Minato to appear next to him in a flash of yellow light.

Minato hadn't expected it either. He had expected to see his son, hopefully in the middle of a crowded street, which was what he had received a — rather confused — report about. Instead, he saw several things that were quite likely in the category of "forbidden" or at the very least unsanctioned by the Hokage, and he would know, being the Hokage in question.

When Minato turned a politely inquiring look on Orochimaru, the Snake Sannin had already turned into a snake and was slithering away.

Sarutobi he would have monologued at. Doing that with the Yellow Flash was just asking to get a surprise Rasengan to the back. Minato was horribly pragmatic and lacking in appreciation for the dramatic, especially for being Jiraiya's student.

~.~.~

Naruto was disappointed but unsurprised to learn that Orochimaru had managed to escape. He was slippery like that.

But as far as Naruto was concerned, his plan was a great success, if not entirely as he anticipated.

Kurama just groaned a bit and muttered something about not even bothering anymore.

Despite what Naruto thought, his terribly mistaken attempts at provocation aside, Orochimaru was never going to kidnap him, no matter what Naruto did. Because Orochimaru had a strong sense of self preservation and understood that the Yellow Flash on a warpath to recover his only child was not something he wanted to witness — or would survive witnessing.

You would have to be a complete moron, or arrogant beyond all reason, to kidnap the Hokage's son.

Fortunately for Naruto, his next target was just such an arrogant, shortsighted moron.

Danzou even made it easy for Naruto and approached him on his own.

~.~.~

Technically, Danzou tried to recruit Naruto into his little secret army, but since Naruto was still a minor, that was basically kidnapping anyway.

"…to protect our village from the shadows, as a true shinobi!" the old man lectured, as Naruto nodded along with his recruitment speech. "That is Root, those that support the great tree of Konoha. And I believe that you, Naruto, have the potential to become one of—"

"Okay," Naruto agreed, cutting across Danzou's long winded explanation. "I'll join. I mean, joining would be so cool! Please let me be in your secret club, ji… er, Danzou-sama!"

Danzou twitched a little at having his organization referred to as a club, but with stubborn bullheadedness almost equal to Naruto's, pushed through. "Excellent, my boy," he said, with a smile that was more disturbing than encouraging. "Come with me, and I'll show you where you will be trained. But let's keep this a secret between us. So you can… surprise your father with your progress."

"Sure! I won't tell him a thing!" Naruto said, beaming.

'Everything is going according to plan,' both of them thought.

'Kill me now,' Kurama thought, in the recesses of Naruto's mind. '…If he tries to put a seal on Naruto, I'm burning out his other eyeball.'

~.~.~

Hyuuga Hinata had spent the first three years of her life isolated from all but the closest members of her family inside the clan compound. But the fact that the people who surrounded her were close family didn't mean they were kind. No, young Hinata's life was cold and empty, interspersed with harsh training that made her draw into herself even further.

That all changed on her birthday. There, among the distant, untouchable figures of her clan, was a bright spot of color. The strange outsider boy had smiled and taken her hand. He was so warm, so nice, so happy. A little spot of sun in her overcast existence. A sunbeam, a sunflower.

Namikaze Naruto. Hinata was instantly smitten.

Going to sleep that night, Naruto's hand in her own, Hinata felt truly content and… full for the first time in her memory.

Then, she woke up in the middle of night to see a masked stranger taking Naruto away.

Hinata had screamed — not in fear, as Naruto had assumed, but in pure outrage, the kind she hadn't known she was capable of. 'How dare he?!' was her only thought.

She threw her pillow, a small hard block in the traditional style, at the masked intruder, though he dodged skillfully and disappeared — with Naruto! Her sunshine and warmth boy was returned not too long after by his father, but Hinata understood a very important point. Naruto was precious and needed to be protected — or she would be left alone and cold again.

And to protect Naruto, Hinata needed to get much, much stronger.

Hiashi wasn't entirely sure what to make of his daughter's sudden turn to ruthlessness at their next training session, when she violently took out her opponent's knee and stomped on his fingers while he flailed in pain. But he supposed it was an improvement… sort of.

Thoroughly baffled by Hinata's new mindset in combat, which was almost like split personality since she still acted shy and demure otherwise, Hiashi ended up completely missing the other change in her behavior — her new hobby of stalking, er, observing Naruto. With Hinata's natural wallflower disposition and lack of presence, she was able to sneak out of the compound easily, even under the guards' Byakugan.

She was also able to fly under the radar of even Danzou's paranoia, as she shamelessly spied on his meeting with Naruto.

Unfortunately, she wasn't able to follow them into the suspicious tunnels Danzou led Naruto to — a Root base — and her Byakugan couldn't see deep enough.

Well, that just meant she needed a better Byakugan.

At first, Kou tried to protest. Then, Hinata turned to him with the same expression she had given to the two elders she had practically crippled and the third she had almost castrated, and he decided it would be better to just obey his future clan head.

"Here," Hinata said, having dragged him to one of the more desolate parts of the village. "Use your Byakugan and tell me what you see below."

"It… looks like there's tunnels," Kou said slowly, concentrating on his enhanced vision. "And… shinobi, training? Yes, I see Naruto-sama, his chakra is very distinctive… And over there…"

Kou fell ominously silent.

"I think," he said finally, "we need to inform the Hokage. Immediately."

~.~.~

Taking the Hokage's son to a secret training facility, all without the parents' permission, would be bad enough. But that day, Danzou also had another important visitor.

"What do you mean, the Namikaze brat is here?!" Orochimaru hissed, his hands clenching sporadically.

"Is it not obvious? I am taking steps to control the greatest weapon of the next generation," Danzo replied cooly, not in the least perturbed by his once subordinate's hysteria. 'His lineage alone would guarantee a powerful tool, but if I can gain the Kyuubi's power, Konoha will have no equal,' he thought. To Orochimaru, Danzou added scornfully, "Do try to keep your… urges under control."

"I've never done a thing to that little monster! I had never even seen him before that day!" Orochimaru insisted. "And do you really think you can pull something like that behind Namikaze's back? He's dangerous."

Danzou waved away his concerns. "That upstart is in a meeting with several clans for the rest of the day, not to be disturbed. And he lets his brat run around the village with no supervision regularly." Which was just another sign of the so-called war hero's foolishness, in Danzou's eyes. "I'll make sure not to create a spectacle and cover my tracks properly."

'Besides which, I put quite a bit of effort into developing a seal to interfere with Tobirama-sama's Hiraishin. Even if he tried to teleport to his son's side while the boy is here, it wouldn't work,' Danzou thought. Well, at least he hoped so. There hadn't exactly been much chance to test it.

Incidentally, the meeting the Hokage was so occupied with involved the Hyuuga clan prominently, and Hiashi was more than willing to call a halt to the proceedings to listen to what his daughter had to say about a secret organization under the city, who had apparently taken Naruto.

Minato remained calm and expressionless throughout the explanation. "I see. Thank you for telling me, Hinata-chan. Leave it to me," he said, exchanging a look of understanding with the Hyuuga heiress. It was terrifying.

By the end of the day, Root had been disbanded and it's leader was in custody for a number of questionable acts, including abduction, illegal experimentation, and cooperation with a known fugitive.

Orochimaru still managed to get away though.

~.~.~

'Wow, this is so embarrassing,' was Naruto's first thought when he came to. 'I think I actually got kidnapped.' All signs — particularly the fact that he was tied up and being carried over the shoulder of a foreign shinobi traveling at high speed away from Konoha — pointed to just that.

"Wasn't that your entire plan? Getting kidnapped?" Kurama grumbled, in their shared mind space.

"That's different!" Naruto protested. "This isn't on purpose! I wasn't planning to get kidnapped by some… Who are these guys again?"

"Iwa," Kurama sighed.

"Right, some losers from Iwa! I can't believe they caught me off guard like that…" he trailed off, muttering to himself. "And you! Why didn't you warn me?"

Kurama shrugged, then pointedly yawned and turned away. Mostly, it was because he had dozed off — Naruto's life was frankly boring, between the bouts of pure insanity.

"You could take this a little more seriously, you know," Naruto complained. "Aren't these guys supposed to hate my dad? Who knows what they'll try to do to me? I think they even took Dad's kunai."

Despite his words, he didn't seem very concerned either.

"You'll be fine," Kurama assured him, already drifting off again. "She'll be here in a bit, and she's pissed…"

Yes, Kushina's approach was easy to sense, given the waves of murderous intent she was letting off. Even without the Kyuubi's negative emotion sensing, the unfortunate Iwa-nins began to feel cold sweat run down their necks on pure instinct. And then, a crimson demon appeared before them…

They had, in retrospect, worried about the wrong parent.

Minato arrived a few minutes later, using the seal still on Kushina. That was the first time anyone from Iwa was ever happy to see the Yellow Flash. They were very, very happy.

~.~.~

"The Yellow Flash is not to be underestimated," one of the Uchiha clansmen cautioned, at their clandestine coup planning session.

"Maybe if we had something to hold against him," another suggested, "for example, his son…"

There was a moment of thoughtful silence, then he quickly retracted his suggestion. They definitely did not want to go there. Nothing good lay in that direction.

~.~.~