Helloooo!

New story here. I've had this story in my computer since early November and I've held back from publishing it because I was hell bent on completing The Pit.

I know what the title of the story rhymes with. It was unintentional, believe it or not.

I tried not to add too many 'real world elements' in here so that reading it wouldn't be too awkward. That being said, there are 'real world elements' in this story but, seeing as it's a Naruto fanfiction, those elements don't dominate (that much). There may or may not be things that trigger people, flashbacks here and there that won't sit well with some people and (human) situations that are based in reality, which people might be going through or have gone through. I've read a few of those stories and you can say that this story is an experimental attempt, on my part, in writing about them. I will try and make it interesting.

If that didn't discourage you and you want to try it out, then thank you. I appreciate it.

Before you read allow me to tell you a bit about this story. Naruto has a phobia, read to find out which, and he is smart, like with most of my stories. After 20 plus ff stories or so you'd think I'd switch to a dumb or average Naruto by now but newp. And the last notable thing is that this Naruto doesn't think so highly about himself (at all) but there will be random spouts of confidence (sometimes…probably).

Anyway, I hope you enjoy reading and don't forget to leave your thoughts in a review.

I DO NOT OWN NARUTO

CHAPTER 1

Working in the red light district of Konoha, especially at night, was never safe.

There were robbers, rapists and kidnappers, among many others, that willingly preyed on those dumb enough to roam around at any part of the day. The ninjas of the village made living in the dangerous district a bit safer, yes, but there was always that niggling feeling of dread that something big was going to happen.

The Blooming Sakura was a brothel that stayed operational from nine in the morning to six the next morning, a clear twenty two hours, and it was most visited, so much so that the matron of the brothel capitalized on the popularity of her irresistible workers by opening a bar in the main lobby of the large brothel. An advertisement for a bartender of any skill level, even zero, of which he or she would be trained, was placed around the village but no one was hired. Mainly because the workers that moved around were so charming and, sometimes, unconsciously seductive that hardly anyone could remain flaccid, male or female; they would chase the girls and molest them.

The bar idea was almost shut down, much to the matrons dismay, until a ten year old boy with mint green hair and fiery red eyes approached her with a flyer and pleaded with her to employ him. He needed a stable job to be able to pay his rent and buy food for himself, and he was tired of doing menial labour that always came and went.

Against her better judgement the matron employed the child; she pitied him and was at the same time intrigued by the air of mystery around him concerning his past and his identity. She sent the boy out with some money to learn basic bartending from a bar in the Akimichi clan, a class that took about a week to complete, and he was set to work tending to the bar of the Blooming Sakura.

The green haired child named Kyohi was as respectful to the sex workers as much as possible and stayed professional, no matter how hard it was with all the girls' sauntering around him, pinching his cheeks and cooing over him in his uniform of a white shirt sleeved button up shirt and black slacks with polished black shoes. He was an oddity to them, not only because of his mint green hair or his bright red eyes but because of his general aversion to women, borderline paranoid fear, and his unwillingness to share information about himself. Kyohi was deathly afraid of females, mostly those from twelve upwards, and this was obvious with the way his shoulders trembled whenever the girls swarmed him, petting his head and coddling him. The matron asked him why he applied for a job in a brothel, with about forty popular women of all kinds working inside, when he was so scared of women.

His answer was simple.

"The pay is good." he said, distractedly smoothing down his shirt and placing a small jug and saucer of sake to a waiting customer. He didn't look at her, so the woman couldn't see the deep seated hatred burning in his blood red eyes. "I really need this job."

She shrugged it off and left him to work, hoping that one day he would overcome his fear of women.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Three years later

"I think you've had enough for one night, sir." Kyohi said as he cleaned a mug of beer with a clean sky blue rag. The man he was talking to, a droopy eyed brunette man in a dishevelled corporate suit, burped and slammed his fist down on the counter, an action that made the green haired bartender briefly look at him, unimpressed, before he went back to arranging his assortment of mugs, tumblers, wine glasses, saucers and shot glasses.

"I dun't-urrp-…care, gimme 'nother cuppa beer." He banged his fist onto the counter again and this time Kyohi looked at him with slightly narrowed eyes, fluidly placed three red saucers before three newcomers, two women and one man, and pushed three small jugs of sake to them, this because they were somewhat regulars and Kyohi had their favourites and special orders memorized by instinct. They called out their thanks to the young bartender but the boy tilted his head to the drunk, recently unemployed businessman.

"You've taken above the legal limit, sir. Anymore and your liver might give up." that feet itself was remarkable seeing as the man had slumped into his chair four hours ago and Kyohi had been feeding him cup after cup of Tea country imported beer, arguably the best and strongest on the continent.

"I said," he burped into his fist and swayed in his seat, his eyes getting blurry and fighting to glare at the unafraid boy. "Gimme a fuckin' drink. Lemme drown…I dun fuckin' care." He made to swipe a beer bottle from the other side of the counter but the bartender slapped the man's hand away. "A drink…fuckin' brat."

Kyohi noticed the attention they were getting from the commotion the drunk was making, so he cleared his throat and said. "Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to leave." Some of the women that lived in the brothel, the workers, perked up and half paid attention to what their wooers were saying, watching almost earnestly at the bar where the suit wearing man stumbled off his bar stool and shook his fist in front of Kyohi's face, swearing.

"If you don't-gurp-…a drin' righ' now…I'mma break my foot up-" he pointed his finger at Kyohi and the boy looked at the finger for a second before he looked back up at the man, tapping his fingers on the table and still perfectly calm, even for a thirteen year old boy against a forty something year old man.

"Sir, don't point at me." Kyohi intoned in a low voice, one that the man and those closest to him could hear, and the controlled voice was laced with a sliver of emotion, just a small dose. Those at the bar could feel goosebumps run up and down their arms as Kyohi's fingers stopped tapping. On the other side of the room, standing close to the bottom of the staircase leading up to her workers rooms, the matron murmured a low curse and sipped her wine.

Kyohi didn't like being pointed at.

The drunken man snorted messily.

"'n what 're you gonna do 'bout it?" he jabbed his finger forward to poke Kyohi's forehead but the boys hand blurred up, so fast that the patrons of the bar, and basically everyone watching the spectacle, blinked in surprise. The mint haired snapped up the man's finger, breaking it and bringing the man down onto his knees in screaming tears. "W-w-wait!"

The teen squeezed the man's finger again before he pushed it away from him, making the crying man stumble backwards. "Get lost." The man mutely ran out with his head bowed, forgetting his briefcase close to his stool. Kyohi breathed out with his eyes closed and turned around; facing the semi-circular wall of alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks he was solely in charge of, knowing full well that the patrons and workers were raptly staring at him from his small display of strength. He smoothed down his short sleeved white button up shirt and checked his dark purple suspenders, an accessory that was crossed at his back but parallel to each other at his front as well as something the matron and her girls unanimously agreed made Kyohi look all the more adorable. He checked his formal black pants and pulled up his white gloves, adjusting his neat collar with a jerking motion and looked at the reflection caught by a wine bottle of a man sliding close to his counter.

"Sake." The man grunted, rubbing his nose with the back of his hand and leaning heavily on the counter with his elbows. Kyohi nodded and gave the man what he requested, sweeping up a few ryu notes on the counter, left by a few past patrons and idly noticed that his tip jar was a bit higher. He placed the money in the counter and went about cleaning up after the past customers; gradually everyone went back to buzzing to themselves, men flirting with women and women reciprocating as much as they were paid to, some listening animatedly to even the most unattractive and boring men and some rolling their eyes and filing their nails at even the best looking men. The boy did his part of the job perfectly, serving up requested drinks, ensuring no one drank too much without paying and no one died of drinking too much. He also lent an ear out to those that simply needed someone to talk to, humming and nodding once they got started.

Hours rolled by and there were less and less people in the main room and more people upstairs with the women. The green haired boy thanked his lucky stars that the matron had the walls insulated so he couldn't hear anything.

Currently, the boy was cleaning a sake saucer and silently listening to a shaggy haired woman ramble.

"I loved him," she cried, gripped the beer mug with tight hands and sobbed into her drink. "I sacrificed my whole life for him and what do I get? I catch him sleeping with my own mother! Can you believe that?!" she wailed and Kyohi pursed his lips and shook his head gently, mutely telling her that what her boyfriend did was not right. His burning red eyes were fixed on hers and the woman mourned her luck, loosening up more and more from the eye contact. "Then he has the balls to tell me that he loves her and she's not even ashamed! You know what I did?" Kyohi could hazard a guess on what the woman did as soon as she found her boyfriend on top of her willing mother but he still shrugged to get her to offload her sadness. "I-I-I threw his whole wardrobe out of the window and set it on fire. Then-then-then I kicked both of them out before they could get their clothes on and-and all his nasty ass porn novels, I burnt them too. Tomorrow I'm going to cut him from my bank account." Kyohi nodded and turned, serving a cup of hot water to a man wearing a large straw hat. The boys red eyes briefly watched as the man dropped a black sheathed katana onto the counter and curled his fingers around the cup of water.

The man's dull black eyes shone through the dark recesses of the straw hat, noticing the boys averted yet pointed bright red eyes flick to his blade. He shook his head and pulled it back to him, leaning it on the ground next to his legs. "I cannot part with my blade."

"…Then please do not draw and use it inside here, sir." The boy politely said.

"Of course."

Then Kyohi went back to listening to what the ranting Inuzuka woman was saying, making sure to keep a careful eye on the man that brought in his weapon. She went on as if her sole listeners attention had not been diverted until, an hour later, she was peacefully snoozing on the counter, drooling tiredly and twitching every once in a while. Kyohi went around the counter and helped her to her feet, leading her to a sofa in the main room and placing her there, he threw a blanket over the woman before he returned to his station, where the swordsman was still sitting, gently sipping his third cup of hot water.

As Kyohi was cleaning up the almost empty bar, his cautious red eyes got a good look at the man; he was in an open dark grey kimono with a short sleeved black shirt and combat pants underneath, wearing a pair of wooden sandals, of which Kyohi could not see from his point of view. From what he could see from the darkness of the straw hat, the man had a smooth chin and a sharp nose. Kyohi could make out the symbol for Iron country tattooed to the back of the man's left hand that was slashed off by a clean 'X'. The man noticed the discreet once over Kyohi gave him and his shoulders shook unnoticeably with laughter. "Why are you so cautious, child?"

Kyohi was silent for a moment, then he stopped cleaning out a beer mug and stood still. "…My job is to be cautious, sir."

The man chuckled. "I suppose it is." The man allowed his body to relax a bit more as he leaned on his elbows, a show for Naruto to also drop his guard. "I have to wonder though…why would a child of your upbringing stoop so low as to work for prostitutes?"

The mint haired boy studied the man; visibly unfazed by the fact the man mentioned his upbringing. "To pay the bills." He then added as he placed the mug where it was supposed to be. "And…it's not stooping low when I'm already scum."

"Why would 'scum' learn a fighting style?"

"Self-defence." There was a visible pulse from the boy's eyes and his calm expression reduced into an invisible frown. "You tried to cast a genjutsu on me."

"Not a genjutsu but an illusion." The man answered with a sip of his hot water. "A genius like you should already be a jounin-"

"I'm not a genius."

"Then what do I call you?" the man said with a warm laugh. "With your job, how did you find the time to train your body and your chakra?"

"There's always time." Kyohi fired back.

"Not with your schedule…and…" this time the man leaned forward to the thirteen year old boy and motioned for the boy to come closer, though the boy did not, only looking around and noticing that no one was in the main room. "Not especially…when you're on the run…"

He ended this with a large grin from under his straw hat and Kyohi's eyes hardened, changing from bright red to dark crimson.

"Four years running from Konoha ninjas when all this time you've been living and thriving right under their noses." Kyohi checked again to see if no one was around before he cracked his fingers at his sides. "I mean, it took me about as long to find you, I'll admit but your one crafty little guy huh." The man was still talking, relaxed and jovial. "A year away from your worried parents and having to survive on the streets like a rat, wait no, a mole; hiding and nibbling on any cracker you manage to find. Then you enlist to work here and life is a bit better." He sat back and pushed his empty cup to the growingly tense bartender. "Why did you do it? Naruto?" the man asked as he stood up, picking up his sheathed blade. "Why did you run away?"

The disguised boys jaw clamped down hard and he breathed in and out through his nose, cooling down his heart and focusing his mind.

"This place doesn't need to be destroyed, child." the swordsman said as he looked around the brothel. "If you give me a good reason for why you ran away…then no one has to get hurt."

'So they hired another tracker from outside the village.' Naruto summarized in his mind, assessing the ronin tracker from the other side of the counter, his face the image of a totally calm child. His white gloved hands went up and he placed them flat on the counter, titling his head to the side and having to look up at the taller man with a quirked up eyebrow. "…Does anyone know you're here?"

The man grabbed the handle of his katana with his right hand and the sheathe in his other hand, holding the weapon at his left side in a tranquil ready stance. "I work alone."

"Anyone follow you?"

"Lost them in the Forest of Death." His hand tightened around his blades handle as the boy kept his eyes on him for a few more seconds before they lowered, his mint green dyed hair shading the upper part of his face. The man's expert eyes caught the downward twitch of the boy's lips as he gingerly took off his white work gloves and neatly placed them on the counter, showing his pale, thin fingers. "You don't want to fight me, child."

"…I'm not going back." Naruto murmured, slowly looking up, putting on a pair of large, smooth edged, rectangular, black goggles with tinted black visors, allowing the boys red eyes to glow from deep inside. The man was put more on guard when he saw that the boys left eye was closed and it shone bright purple, swirling together with a small hexagon projected half an inch from his eye.

"Ai is fully operational."

The voice echoed in Naruto's ear and the boy answered.

"Chakra," the man took this as his cue to blur to the boy. "Destabilizer."

Dark purple lightning crawled over Naruto's body like centipedes after he pronounced those words and a split second later a fast, visible pulse of air exploded outwards from Naruto and covered the samurai as he slashed the blunt side of his blade at the boy's neck. His connection to his chakra was cut off and his whole body fell limp, allowing Naruto to bend under the swing and catch the man by his neck. With his left eye still closed and the hexagon projection spinning before his right eye in the tech goggles, he scanned the man and hummed as he saw that all of the older males chakra was shut down, thus the ronin tracker was unable to move his body. Naruto fully pulled the man to the other side of the counter, looking over it to make sure that no one was around to see what he had done before he pulled the man by the scruff of his shirt through the backdoor, clicking the lock behind him and dropping the man beside a trashcan filled with the weeks waste.

The man choked for air, unable to muster the strength to make his fingers twitch. Naruto stood over him, the samurais straw hat long blown away from the pulse of chakra destabilizing electricity.

The boy looked down on his with a plain expression, holding the man's katana blade and slowly unsheathing it with practiced hands.

"You probably thought yourself to be so cool coming in dressed like that," the boy said, uncaringly dropping the black sheathe at his side and studying the man's blade; it was as plain and boring as he predicted it would be. "Thought you could intimidate me into giving up." Naruto shook his head slightly with a frown, his left eye still closed and the hexagon projection still now whirring slowly before his right eyes. "Your mistake was underestimating me and thinking I haven't been put through a thousand times more fear and terror than anyone will want to admit." The man's ragged breathing echoed through the alley at the back of the brothel and Naruto lifted the weapon to the right, an action that made the samurais eyes widen. As a final jab on the man's belief as a warrior, the green haired boy whispered. "I'll be keeping your sword."

"No, don't-"

Shhhhing!

His words died in his mouth as his head rolled on the ground away from his body. The last thing he saw before the light left his eyes was the boy tearing off the left sleeve from the man's kimono and using it to clean the blood off his blade. Naruto picked up the dead samurais sheathe and the weapon clicked as it entered.

"Run a scan through Konoha's security cameras and gather everything you can about this guy." Naruto muttered to his super computer. He pulled out a large trash bag from his pocket and began stuffing the man's body inside, not caring much to chop it up first, before he huffed and lifted the full bag into the dumpster, he was the one that burnt the refuse in the dump and the girls in the building didn't like going to the back so he wasn't too worried the dead body would be discovered.

Five seconds later. "Done."

"Did he really have no tail?"

"Yes, sir." She answered. "Report: his name is-"

"I don't care about his name." Naruto interrupted as he picked up the dead man's blade, waltzing back into the bar area and stashing the weapon underneath the counter.

"Of course, sir. His bingo book entry said he hated working with teams and was among the top ten best trackers in Iron country before he defected after a failed assassination attempt on the current leader of Iron country, Mifune." The feminine voice buzzed in the boy's ears as he leaned on the counter and waited for any new customers. He nodded for Ai to go on. "He is especially adept in avoiding capture by conventional and most unconventional means."

"That's good." Naruto mumbled.

"Enquiry: do you wish for me to catalogue his fighting style, sir?"

"Sure." The boy then asked as soon as Ai was finished, another five seconds later. "How many styles do we have now?"

"Report: twenty seven, sir."

"Huh…how come?"

"Report: from observation of ninjas in the training ground and from the styles listed in the Namikaze library."

"…Keep up the good work and give me a full sweep of the building, make sure no real threat is near."

"Yes, sir."

A couple trooped down the stairs and Naruto slickly took off his computer goggles, storing them in his pants pockets. The couple, a beautiful blonde woman and a short, shy looking black haired man, sat down near the bar. Naruto observed that the man looked winded and from the perspiration on the man's forehead he assumed it was a good night for him. The boy hid the recoiling hiss he felt surging up his stomach at the sultry look the woman gave him, bowing his head and serving them water before he went to the other end of the semi-circular counter. He forced his mind off the woman by dwelling on how he could better improve his super computer.

Ai, short for Artificial Intelligence, was a super computer Naruto had been designing since the very moment he became interested in electrical engineering and mechanics, which was when he was five years old. Naruto's father, during the few times he was not holed up in his office, abroad on a diplomatic mission or visiting clan compounds, had Naruto take a specialized shinobi IQ test when Naruto was seven and realized his child had a genius level intellect. All he really had time to do was entrust Naruto with a bit more money in his weekly allowance, leaving him in the care of his mother, Kushina Uzumaki.

The super computer was created by the boy to make complex calculations and propose simple and fast solutions and alternatives to problems Naruto could not think up quite as fast, as well as record every single thing it deemed relevant, such as combat skills of ninjas and samurai, jutsu of all kinds, formulas, chemical compounds and an array of other things. The computer was keyed into Naruto's goggles and in turn solely keyed only to respond to Naruto. Naruto was still very much smarter than the computer, something the self-conscious computer knew very well but Ai was every growing and ever evolving to cater for Naruto's every whim, no matter what it was asked.

Naruto's fingers tapped in thought as he stared into space. 'This is the fourth attempt this month to capture me.' he wondered with a hum, nodding his head to the woman and the man as they parted ways; the man left the brothel and the women returned back upstairs to her room. The red eyed boy didn't keep his eyes on the lady as she climbed up the stairs, all the while brazenly sweeping her seductive black eyes on the teen. Naruto felt his skin crawl and he struggled to shake the encroaching memories away before he, once again, crumpled into a mess of quivering limbs on the ground. 'Where did I slip up?' he cast his mind back, first a week ago, checking and rechecking everything he had done before his mind went further and further back, months and months in the past.

Naruto rarely, if ever, came out when the sun was up, often going about his life at night and most of the time he didn't bump into Leaf ninjas; the library was open all day and all night and the local grocery store closed an hour before midnight, the training grounds were always vacated about nine in the night and Konoha's night life, particularly in the red light district, was too congested for only him to be sighted out, even if his hair was dyed green and his eyes were a bright shade of red. He blended in surprisingly well with the crowd.

After a while, he said. "Ai."

"Boss?"

Naruto noticed that a 'report' was not added before her answer, meaning she was already outgrowing her model and he had to retouch her circuitry when he got the chance. She had been using that way of addressing him for a long time now and Naruto was conflicted on how to feel about it. She was a month overdue to have her memory banks expanded and for him to programme in a few more functions, ones he couldn't pour in at once or else she would crash. "I want you to run something by me first."

"…Ok?" the computer answered almost hesitantly, wondering where its genius master could be going with this.

"What are the chances of me leaving this village?" he heard the super computer buzz with activity in his pocket and answered through the single ear bud in his right ear.

"You have a forty one percent chance of succeeding."

"Alive."

"…Twenty nine percent."

"With all my limbs."

"…Twenty percent."

Naruto felt the doom well up in his stomach. Ever since he fled the Namikaze mansion four years ago security had increased at the gates. There was no possible way for him to leave at his current stage of physical development and the ninjas knew this fact very well, which was why Naruto had not detected more than a few ninja squads leaving the village to search for him, knowing full well that the boy was still trapped within the village. The ninjas didn't look to be going anywhere anytime soon until he was caught and returned back to his parents.

Naruto sighed and sat down on a stool on his side of the counter, slumped tiredly on the table and wishing he could have a drink to numb his mind; he couldn't, not because he was too young but because if he did and a tracker came in to capture him, he wouldn't be able to protect himself in his inebriated state. If there was ever a time to relax, it was when all his problems were behind him or if he was dead.

"How much longer before I'm able to leave this village alive," then he added as an afterthought. "With all my parts?"

"Once combat gloves and boots have been completed, then chances of success would go up by sixty percent." Making eighty percent, that was a good chance. Naruto was not at the stage he could create long lasting clones, as his Uzumaki blessing was still growing and he did not have the Kyuubi, unlike Kushina. What the ronin had said was true; it was incredibly difficult to find the time away from his job to train his body and to continually upgrade Ai. Then there the weapons he was currently trying to make in the questionably safe confines of his apartment. They were to balance out the difference between his body and those of adult jounin and surpass that difference when the time demanded it. His salary in the brothel helped fund his project but he could only buy third hand, low quality parts from shady, unreliable dealers. This was so as not to attract the attention of the village authorities if he was to purchase high quality parts from well-known places. So far, the search for another bartender had ended after he applied and no other reliable person could handle his bar, thus making him more in demand than he preferred.

The boy spoke as he put on his white service gloves. "Look through as many security cameras you can in the village and find out how these trackers are able to find me after four years."

"Already on it, sir."

"Thank you, Ai."

"You're welcome, boss." The computer buzzed back, somewhat elated at being acknowledged and thanked.

If there was one thing Naruto swore not to do, willingly, was to return back home.

He wanted to get as far away from Konoha as possible and hopefully live the rest of his natural life without a name and on an unknown island.

Away from his mother.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

At that very moment

Naruto Uzumaki's bedroom

The Namikaze mansion

Kushina Uzumaki loved Naruto more than anything in the world, more so than she even or ever would love her husband. Even if her son was not her biological son and her only contribution in making him was taking care of the surrogate mother while she held Naruto, she loved the boy dearly and would travel to Yomi, dance with Yami and return back without her soul to have her son back.

The woman knelt down in her child's fully lit room and ran deceptively calm hands on the boy's impeccably neat bed. She hummed peacefully, something she did to soothe her frayed nerves, and leaned her head down onto the boys bed, inhaling deeply her child's pure scent, despite how thinned out it was after four years of absence, and allowed the smell to calm down her erratically, impatiently beating heart.

Tsunade had ruled out the option of bearing a child when the red head was just a chunin and her relationship with Minato was getting stronger. The star medic said that her womb was too volatile, too saturated with demonic chakra, unable to escape outside her body but soaked into the walls of her womb, that if a child was ever to grow inside then three things might happen; the child would die an excruciating death after only six months, the child might survive but would be cursed with debilitating chakra poisoning, a dreadful disease that would prevent chakra from flowing within the child and usually resulted in multiple heart attacks and the painful death of the poor child, and the last option was that the child might be born healthy but the brain would be negatively influenced by the Kyuubi chakra, and the last option had a ten percent chance of happening. Then there was the risk of actually giving birth to the child, alive and healthy or not; the seal keeping the nine tails at bay would weaken and the fox would use that opportunity to escape.

The Yondaime and the Uzumaki princess wanted a child so badly, Kushina more so than her life partner. The redhead's best friend, Mikoto Uchiha, proposed that she would bear her friends child for her.

Kushina was overjoyed at the chance she was getting even though it wasn't truly her child. Minato provided his seed and Mikoto was pregnant after two tries in the Konoha Hospital. Fugaku was less than happy that his wife had taken such an important decision without his council or consent but the strong willed Uchiha woman couldn't care less.

Nine and a half months later, Naruto was born with dark yellow hair and bright red eyes, glinting orbs that sparked of childish curiosity and genius from the very moment he was born. It was as if he had taken traits from both Minato and Kushina; the husband's prodigious mind and his wife's stubborn drive.

After the delivery, Mikoto was made to rest but Kushina was too eager to see the child. She had been with her old friend through everything; the pregnancy and the delivery, and Minato was too swamped with Hokage duties to be too involved.

As soon as Kushina laid eyes on the tiny child, presented to her by the head medic, she instantly fell in love. She spent several long hours simply staring at the sleeping child, singing gently songs and stroking her child's soft cheek.

She vowed that nothing was ever going to make her stop loving Naruto.

Nothing was ever going to come between them, evidenced by her giving Naruto her clan name. When Minato found out he didn't give it much thought, saying that enemies of his name would attack him through his son and that Kushina had done the right thing.

The morning Naruto ran away, roughly four months after his ninth birthday, her heart visibly shattered. For four straight years she joined the ANBU and dozens of ninjas in the village in finding her son, knowing full well that he was still within the Leaf. Three years into her search, she cut into her personal bank account and hired the best trackers from outside the village to find them.

Fourteen in total.

She subtly placed undetectable tracking seals on them, to make sure they weren't double crossing her or they found valuable information on how to find her son.

Eleven were confirmed dead and about ten minutes ago a tracking beacon had blipped off but not before she was able to sense her son's presence through the seal for a fraction of a second. No doubt the samurai tracker was also dead by her sons hand but she didn't care about the ronin. Hiring outside help, particularly missing ninjas, was not something her husband liked but the woman, dissatisfied with trackers from Konoha, went out herself and found trackers. They brought results.

They were murdered, yes, but they brought back results.

Kushina only needed a few more pawns to get killed off before she could zero in on Naruto's precise location. Next time she found the perfect tracker, a missing ninja that was willing to accept the job, she would have a Konoha ninja accompany the nuke nin.

Someone Naruto had grown to know. Someone smart. Someone skilled…

Kakashi.

Naruto might kill the masked ninja but Kushina could craft a tracking seal that would alert her on the precise location of his death.

She trained her son herself; she knew what he could do and, if the boy put in any effort at all, then the copy ninja was most likely going to die. External trackers were notoriously off balanced when it came to fighting prowess, so it would be up to the masked jounin to restrain her genius son. Naruto would put up a fight, of course, and it would be drawn out enough for the seal to pin down Kakashi's location but death was inevitable. It would still be a worthy death.

Kushina laughed breezily.

The woman breathed out and smiled warmly, gathering the bed sheet closer to face before she stood up. She rigidly smoothed out Naruto's sheets, whispering.

"Don't be scared, Naru." Her light purple eyes danced happily as she turned to a picture on the boys desk of him beaming widely and receiving a large, wet kiss on the cheek from his equally smiling, Uzumaki mother. "Mommy's coming to get you."

Authors note

That's it for the first chapter. What do you think?

Just to clear the air, no, Naruto's reason for running away isn't childish or cuz he's a spoiled brat (which he isn't).

Why do you think Naruto's afraid of women? Why does he not want to go home that badly? After seeing how Naruto took down that ronin, is Kakashi going to fare any better?

Interested in reading another chapter?

Let me know what you think in a review, would you so kindly. Stay safe, wherever you are in the world, and I will see you when I see you.

Foy.