#like even when they are older at 11 and 7 Itachi is STILL being charged with his care | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

crescentmoonrider · 5 years

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Hey, what's one gotta do to get some info on dark time-line Minato, if he ever finds out his team is semi-alive and also why the hell anyone thought letting the snake guys be in charge of children was a good idea? Maybe some cuter stuff on team inadequacy issues too, if you don't mind

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So about that dark timeline Minato. One thing you need to understand is that this Minato has lost his entire team. Obito died in Kannabi and he couldn’t save him, Kakashi died and his body got desecrated, Obito’s eye stolen, and only the Sage of the Six Paths knows what Kiri did to Rin. (Minato has some idea about that, but he manages to keep the thoughts away most of the time.)

Minato has failed as a teacher. All his kids are dead. Minato has failed, and he refuses to fail anyone anymore, refuses to let anyone go through what he did. He will protect Konoha, will protect the children and the future of the village.

And most importantly, he will ensure no one starts a war with Konoha ever again. (Danzo quickly loses relevance.)

This would be bad enough as is, but things get even worse when Rin and Obito escape from Madara. See, their escape was far from sneaky. They actually more or less made Graveyard’s Mountain explode. (Or well, Rin made Graveyard’s Mountain explode and Obito kamui-ed them both away.)

It just so happens that a Konoha team was passing nearby at the time and decided to investigate. And there, buried in rocks and giant bones, laid Madara’s dead body.

Since Madara was more or less a freak of nature at this point in his life, between the face-titty and the weird root-like things in his back, Konoha quickly decides to have a specialist examine the body. Namely Orochimaru.

At that time, Orochimaru was still very much bitter about seeing the hat go to some brat instead of him, and didn’t like Minato at all. He buried himself in his research, careful enough to not leave traces or bodies behind, and when Madara’s body was presented to him it was like a gift from the heavens.

Madara was old, much older than any person Orochimaru had ever seen, and he had managed to somehow find a way around the compatibility issues with the First Hokage’s cells, something Orochimaru still couldn’t figure out. There was chakra residue on his corpse too, heavy and corrupted, much like a bijuu’s, but the report didn’t mention anything about a giant monster.

Orochimaru was intrigued, more curious than ever before.

And more surprisingly, the Hokage brat seemed just as invested in that research. In fact, Minato was helping Orochimaru, offering theories, assisting with the maths that Orochimaru never grew to like. Minato got it. Got him. The curiosity, the fever of research, the seemingly-unattainable goal behind the quest for knowledge.

Orochimaru wants to fight death, and so does Minato in his own way. (Minato doesn’t help with Orochimaru’s more questionable projects, but he doesn’t ask where some of his data comes from either.)

Orochimaru is entirely loyal to Minato, and Minato trusts him.

That last sentence is one of the reasons behind Orochimaru being trusted with team 7, including Minato’s own flesh and blood, as well as the child of Kushina’s best friend.

Another reason is that Orochimaru can help the kids reach their maximum potential. He knows sealing at a high level and will be able to teach Naruto even when away on missions, where Kushina can’t help. He is familiar with the sharingan, and his mastery of ninjutsu will be very helpful to Sasuke once he awakens his eyes and gets to copy the techniques.

Sakura is kind of the outlier here, as there is no parent to please and no clan technique to teach. But she was the first in academy for theoretical knowledge, and Orochimaru knows how to reach out to people with booksmarts. (Later, the discovery of her natural chakra control will make her a perfect student for Kabuto’s techniques.)

All of team 7 feels inadequate in some way.

Naruto in regards to his parents, especially his father. As said in this post, he has trouble with control. He also has trouble with focusing. Academy was very hard on him, as it required him to sit down and do nothing. He was lucky to be interrogated on substitution for his exam. (In truth, no one wanted to fail the Hokage’s son, so they asked him to demonstrate the one basic technique he mastered.)

Ironically enough, he can do rather advanced sealing even though it has a reputation for being extremely complex. Sealing is also not in the academy program, sadly. But even though he is an Uzumaki, and even though both his parents are sealing geniuses, Naruto has to work twice as hard to even understand how things work. Sealing doesn’t come easy to him. He can’t skip steps, has to think everything through, combine seals through addition before going back to take out the redundancies.

(Naruto is 12, and has mastered some advanced sealing. He knows how to make his own and knows to get creative and think outside the box. But when his father tries to explain things to him, he can’t understand, because they don’t think the same. His mother knows how to talk in a way he can follow, but it all seems so natural to her that he feels like a fraud.)

(One day Naruto will manage to control his chakra perfectly, one day he will make the golden chains, one day he will be a worthy Uzumaki, one day he will stand on his own and be someone more than the Hokage’s son.)

Sasuke also has family issues, and Itachi makes up half of them. Itachi graduated at 7, Itachi awakened his sharingan at 8, Itachi made ANBU at 11, Itachi made captain at 13. And father was so proud, always, always, always. Sasuke graduates at 12, already failing in all of Itachi’s steps.

It was always a game of catching up, one that Sasuke never won, not even once. He tried to cheat too, asking Shisui for help, and Shisui did help. (Unlike Itachi, Itachi keeps leaving Sasuke behind, never looking back. It’s unfair that Sasuke’s cousin supports him more than his own brother. It’s unfair that Sasuke’s father never looks at him with the pride he reserves for Itachi.)

(Sasuke is 12, and mastered the Great Fireball in a week. He hasn’t awakened the sharingan yet, but he has a large array of techniques, and his kenjutsu is, by Shisui’s word, pretty good. He chases after his brother and his father’s affection, not paying any mind to the admiration of his peers or the proud look in his mother’s eyes. All he sees is what he doesn’t have.)

(One day Sasuke will awaken his sharingan, one day he will surpass Itachi, one day he will make his father proud, one day he will be the greatest Uchiha, greater even than Itachi or Shisui or even the legends from old times, one day his name will be remembered and Itachi’s will be forgotten.)

Sakura fails the bells-test. No one ever tells her outright, but she knows she has. Orochimaru grabs her hair and cuts it off shoddily, and she can’t do a thing about it. She cries in frustration as Orochimaru taunts her. (He tells her incompetent ninja aren’t worthy of long hair, tells her she is lucky he chose to let her live, and when Naruto’s trap activates and Sasuke steals the bells, she knows she has failed.

Naruto tries to comfort her and pretend they needed her to distract Orochimaru, and Sasuke ensures her hair looks like something, and she should be so happy that he even looks at her. But all she hears are lies, and Sasuke cuts off the hair she grew for him like it means nothing, because it never meant anything but the stupid dreams of a stupid girl. Her teammates are a team already, and she doesn’t fit, is nothing more than a walking academy textbook, and what little anger she doesn’t feel at Orochimaru she directs at herself.

(Sakura is 12 and in a single day she lost all sense of belonging. Orochimaru is cruel, but he was right, and she will change that. She absorbs all he teaches, drinks up every single drop of knowledge like water in a desert, or maybe like poison. She doesn’t look at her teammates, looks past them as she aims to catch up to them, and suddenly she notices everything she didn’t before, the way Naruto’s eyes darken when the Hokage is mentioned, the way Sasuke doesn’t talk about his family. She wonders how she missed that, in the years she spent admiring Sasuke, but then she remembers she didn’t care about him, not really, not as a person so much as an ideal.)

(One day she will be a great ninja, one day she will make Orochimaru take back everything he said, one day she will look at herself with pride, one day she will understand why her team is suffering so much and she will change that, and the world will remember her name.)

Team 7 is a mess, but they grow stronger with adversity. All are starved for recognition, and they push each other up in every thing. Naruto and Sasuke have the longest-standing bond, they work together like a clockwork, pulling out crazy plan after crazy plan, and Sakura is here to ensure the plan actually works and all of them make it out alive. She completes them.

#naruto #naruto uzumaki #sasuke uchiha #sakura haruno #orochimaru #minato namikaze #yumi got asked stuff #anon #Turtle AU #yumi writes #i think read mores dont work for mobile ?? i dont know but if thats the case im very sorry #i got carried away as always #im sorry anon i know you asked for cute stuff at the end but #i dont know how to do that anymore #but if you still feel like asking about this au you can of course do it again #whatevsbla

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