Hey guys happy Easter. Today is Friday so I'm gonna write. I'm quite frustrated. I lost a couple of matches on Rainbow Six Siege.
Had some Easter dinner with the fam! I'm very full right now and in a good mood to do a 1k word chapter or more. I noticed that 1k is not a lot of words. I want to get this fanfic to 100k words in August, my birth month. So I have 4 months to write 97k more words, so around 1k words a day till then. My short term goal is to write at least 3 chapters a week.
I know that baby life isn't interesting so I will be doing a few time skips after this chapter just to add memorable moments. Ill be skipping but ill add the memorable moments in between the years and such!
Enjoy this 3.5k word chapter. took me a couple of days to make and proof read.
Chapter 4 - Life as a Baby!
The first thing Antares learned about his new life was that being a genius did not matter when he couldn't hold his own head up. That was a humiliating discovery.
One moment there had been darkness, pressure, heat, and the distant rhythm of a heartbeat that wasn't his. The next, there had been cold air, blinding light, and a sharp slap of reality that came with lungs that suddenly had a job to do.
Then came the crying.
Not his choice.
His body simply did it on its own, wailing into a room filled with movement, voices, and chakra so vivid it made the edges of his newborn awareness feel raw.
He hated that. He hated the helplessness most of all.
'So this is real.'
The thought came sluggishly, fragmented, like trying to drag a chain through mud. His mind felt heavy, unfinished, not because he lacked understanding, but because his brain was too new to keep up with the storm of awareness inside him.
Still, one fact planted itself deep and hard into the center of his forming self.
'If I'm here... I'm going to reach the top.'
It was not a childish wish. It was not a dream. It was a law.
Around him, hands moved. Someone lifted him. He felt warmth again, softer this time, trembling slightly.
A woman's voice, exhausted yet fierce, broke through the haze.
"Let me see him."
The hands that held him passed him carefully, and then he was in her arms.
His mother.
Even with his limited vision, he could make out enough. Red hair, though darker than the blazing scarlet he'd vaguely expected from old stories. Sharp but tired eyes. Sweat on her brow. A face too young to already carry so much worry.
She looked down at him as if she were trying to memorize every line of his face before the world had the chance to take something from it.
Misaki.
He didn't know how he knew her name at first. Maybe someone had spoken it. Maybe the rhythm of voices had repeated it enough times. Or maybe some newborn instinct had already marked her as the center of his world.
"He's smaller than I imagined," she murmured, though there was a smile trembling on her lips. "And louder."
A low chuckle answered from somewhere near the bed.
"He takes after you, then."
That voice was masculine, steady, carrying the kind of ease that came from a man used to being obeyed without needing to raise his tone. Antares could not turn his head enough to see him properly, but he felt him before he really saw him.
That chakra was sharp, dense, crackling. It rolled off the man in restrained waves, like thunder trapped beneath skin.
Kaminari.
The name surfaced through bits and pieces of overheard talk from before birth, from fading instinct, from the strange way this new world pressed meaning into him even when his body could barely process sound.
His father stepped closer. A shadow loomed over the bed, then a large hand, rough and calloused, hovered near Antares like he wasn't entirely sure what to do with someone so small.
Misaki gave him a flat look. "You can hold him. He won't explode."
"That is not a guarantee coming from this family," the man muttered.
Despite everything, despite the fog in his mind and the weakness in his limbs, Antares almost laughed. Almost.
Instead, a soft bubbling noise left his mouth.
Misaki's tired face softened. "Look. He likes that better than crying."
"He could be choking."
"You're impossible."
"And you married me anyway."
"One of my life's greatest mistakes."
Yet her hand tightened protectively around Antares as she said it, and the warmth between the two adults settled over him in a way he found inconveniently pleasant.
His father finally took him.
The sensation changed instantly. Misaki's hold had been careful and all-encompassing. His father's hold was gentler than Antares expected, but awkward, as though the man was more used to swords, kunai, and battlefield reports than infants wrapped in cloth.
Still, there was pride there, and something sharper beneath it.
Expectation.
The room, now that Antares could focus a little more, held more people than just the two of them. A midwife. An older woman with stern eyes and the measured chakra control of a medic-nin. Another figure near the window, likely a clan elder by posture alone.
Their eyes stayed on him too long.
Judging. Measuring.
That annoyed him on principle.
The medic-nin leaned closer, resting two fingers lightly against his tiny chest. Then she frowned.
"Wait."
The room stilled.
Misaki's expression shifted instantly. "What is it?"
The medic's fingers remained where they were, but her gaze sharpened. Antares felt it then, a strange crawling sensation inside him, like warmth deep in his belly suddenly searching for a way out.
"His chakra..." she said quietly. "It's fluctuating... no, spiking."
His father straightened. "A newborn shouldn't be doing that."
"No," the medic said. "He shouldn't."
Antares felt it more clearly now. Something inside him pulsed. Not once. Twice. Then harder.
It wasn't painful. It was worse than pain in a way, alien, uncontrollable, instinctive. His body reacted before his mind could grab hold of it. Chakra moved through pathways too small, too fresh, too untested, and for one suspended moment he felt like a sealed storm trying to awaken inside a paper lantern.
The lights in the room flickered.
Everyone noticed.
A lamp near the wall dimmed, brightened, dimmed again. The air changed. A sharp scent cut through the room, ozone.
Then came the sound.
Crk.
Tiny. Almost nothing. But in a silent room, it may as well have been thunder.
A thread of pale blue lightning skipped across the metal basin near the bed and vanished.
Nobody moved. Nobody breathed.
Antares, in his father's arms, twitched unconsciously. A spark snapped from his swaddling cloth to the man's wrist.
His father froze.
Misaki pushed herself up despite the exhaustion written all over her body. "What happened?"
The medic stared, face gone pale. "That was lightning chakra."
"Impossible," said the elder near the window, though he didn't sound certain. "Not at this age."
Another tiny flicker danced across the room, this time from the edge of a lantern to a bronze tool laid on a nearby tray.
Antares didn't even realize he was the center of it until the chakra inside him surged again. His fingers curled. His body jerked.
And the window frame crackled.
The room erupted at once.
"Seal the tools. Do not touch him barehanded. Move back."
Misaki's voice cut through all of it, raw and sharp. "Do not treat my son like a weapon!"
Silence slammed back into place. Even the elder flinched.
Antares couldn't properly turn his head, but he heard the shift in the room. The medic lowered her hands. His father said nothing for a long moment.
When he finally spoke, his voice had changed. Not afraid. Not exactly. But no longer casual.
"Kaminari blood."
The elder's jaw tightened. "More than that, perhaps."
Misaki's gaze snapped toward him. "Do not start."
The old man did not look away from Antares. "Lightning affinity this early is unheard of. Reaction during infancy is not normal, even for our line."
"He's a child," Misaki said, every word like a blade. "Not a clan omen."
The elder's eyes shifted to her then, and something old passed between them. Not simple disagreement. History. Loss. The kind that rotted at the roots and stayed there for generations.
"That is exactly why this matters," he said.
Misaki laughed once, bitter and tired. "I know what clan talk sounds like. I was raised on it."
The room went quieter than before. The medic looked down. His father exhaled through his nose.
Antares, despite being barely more than a bundle of cloth and stubborn will, paid close attention.
Uzumaki.
There it was again. Not spoken, but hanging in the room like smoke.
He didn't know everything yet, but he knew enough from fractured memory and instinct to understand the shape of the wound. Red hair. Scattered survivors. A clan broken so thoroughly its remnants had to learn how to live under other names, in other villages, under the wary eyes of people who respected their power and feared it in equal measure.
Misaki's voice dropped.
"I know what happens when a child is born special. I know what people decide he has to become. I know the stories they tell while pretending it's duty."
She looked at Antares then, and for all his newborn limitations, he felt that look down to his soul.
"He is my son before he is anyone's heir."
His father looked between her, the elder, and the child in his arms. Something conflicted moved across his face.
"You think I don't know that?" he asked quietly.
Misaki's expression softened, but only a little. "I think you know. I think the village won't care."
That landed harder than anything else. Because nobody argued.
Outside, distant thunder rolled over the mountains. Or maybe not thunder. Cloud Country's skies carried their own moods, their own temperament. The air beyond the walls of the home felt charged, as if the storm outside had noticed the one born within.
Antares wanted to sneer at the dramatic timing.
Instead, a tiny hiccup escaped him.
The tension broke for half a second.
Misaki stared. His father blinked. Then the medic covered her mouth, badly hiding a smile.
"He picked a strange moment to do that," she said.
"He's mocking us already," Misaki muttered.
"Then he's definitely yours," said his father.
This time even Misaki gave a tired snort.
The elder, perhaps realizing he had already pushed too far, stepped back from the bedside. "Whatever he is, he will need watching."
"He'll need peace," Misaki shot back.
"In this world?" the elder said.
That was the cruel truth of it. No one answered because no one could.
Antares listened, trapped inside a weak infant body, and understood more than they thought he could. Not every word, not every buried implication, but enough.
This was not a peaceful age. Peace existed only in pauses between wars.
Children were born into expectations before they could speak. Clans hoarded strength. Villages sharpened themselves against one another. Anyone with power became either an asset, a threat, or a target.
'Fine,' Antares thought.
His body trembled faintly as the last stray sparks of chakra settled.
'Then I'll become something worse than all three.'
The thought should have felt absurd in a baby. Instead, it felt natural.
His father's grip adjusted, more secure this time. Careful. Protective.
"His name suits him," the man said at last.
Misaki's eyes narrowed slightly. "You doubted it before."
"I doubted naming a child something that sounds like he should arrive with his own legend."
"And now?"
His father looked down at Antares. For a moment, the entire room seemed to center around that gaze, the flickering lamps, the scent of ozone, the hush after fear, the newborn with chakra that refused to behave like a newborn's should.
"Now," he said, "I think he may grow into it."
Misaki's lips pressed together, not quite pleased, not quite unhappy. "I don't want him forced into greatness before he learns how to walk."
"Neither do I."
"But you still sound proud."
"I am proud."
"You sound dangerous when you're proud."
His father grunted. "You sound dangerous all the time."
She smiled then, faint but real. "Good."
Antares approved of her immediately.
The medic began cleaning up the room, though her eyes kept drifting back toward him. The elder left with the stiff bearing of someone already carrying news too heavy for his taste. Outside the window, a faint breeze stirred. Somewhere farther off, another roll of thunder echoed across the peaks.
Or maybe answered.
Misaki held out her arms again. "Give him back."
His father hesitated only a second before returning Antares to her.
The moment he settled against her chest, he felt the difference between them again. Her chakra was warmer than his father's sharp current. Strong, yes, but layered with something else, resilience wound tight around old grief. There was a depth to her that even Antares, not fully formed yet, could feel.
Survival.
That word fit her better than any title.
She brushed a fingertip against his cheek.
"You are not going to become a clan dispute before you even lose your first tooth," she whispered.
His father leaned against the side of the bed. "You say that like he'll ask permission."
Misaki gave him a look. "Don't encourage him."
"He can't even talk."
That almost made Antares want to prove him wrong.
Instead, he opened his eyes a little wider and fixed them in the vague direction of the man's voice.
His father went still.
"...Did he just glare at me?"
Misaki looked down, then barked out a laugh that turned into a wince from the lingering pain of childbirth. "He did."
"That's not normal."
"Nothing about tonight has been normal."
For a moment, the room felt almost ordinary. A mother exhausted after labor, a father too alert to admit he was worried, a child too new for the world and yet already pulling at the edges of it.
Then the lightning returned.
Not from Antares this time.
From outside.
A pale fork flashed beyond the window, lighting the room in white for the briefest instant. In that glow, Antares saw more clearly than before, his mother's red hair like a dark ember, his father's strong frame, the thin lines of old fear hidden around the adults' eyes.
And in that same flash, his own chakra stirred in answer. Not violently, not enough to send sparks leaping. Just a pulse.
Recognition.
The lamp beside the bed flickered once.
Everyone saw. No one spoke.
His father slowly turned toward the window, then back toward the child.
Misaki's hand tightened protectively around Antares.
The silence stretched.
Then she said, very quietly, "I don't care what the clan says. I don't care what the village wants. He will choose his own path."
His father looked at her for a long time. Then he nodded.
"Then we make sure he lives long enough to choose."
That, more than any oath, felt real. No empty promises. No foolish declarations that the world would be gentle.
Just resolve.
Survive first. Choose later.
Antares liked that. It matched the shape of the world he had entered.
His eyelids grew heavy. The strange exertion from the chakra flare, the half-formed thoughts, the overwhelming flood of sensations all dragged at him. He was still only a newborn, ambition or not.
But as sleep began to pull him under, he held on to one last thought. Not because it was dramatic. Because it was true.
He had been born into a storm.
Good.
Storms rose. Storms spread. Storms changed the landscape.
Nestled against Misaki, beneath the hush of a room still unsettled by what it had witnessed, Antares let himself drift.
Outside, lightning flickered over the mountains of the Hidden Cloud.
Inside, a baby unconsciously answered.
And though no one in that room could have said exactly why, every one of them felt the same thing settle into their bones.
This child would not live a small life.
Morning came slower than the night had ended.
The storm had passed, but the air still carried that faint charged feeling, like the world hadn't fully decided to calm down yet.
Inside the room, things were quieter. Too quiet.
Antares lay bundled in cloth, staring upward with intense focus, as if the ceiling itself held answers he couldn't quite reach.
'Move.'
His arm twitched, lifted, then dropped uselessly.
'…bad.'
Frustration came fast and faded just as quickly. His body wasn't ready yet.
A soft snort came from nearby.
Misaki sat propped against the bed, her long red hair slightly messy, falling over one shoulder. Even tired, she carried a sharp kind of beauty, pale skin, deep eyes, and the kind of presence that didn't bend easily.
"He looks like he's thinking too hard," she muttered.
The door slid open. Heavy footsteps followed.
Antares felt him before he saw him. Not sharp like lightning, but dense, heavy, like something that hit hard and didn't move.
His gaze shifted slowly, delayed but accurate.
The figure that stepped in was big even for a child. Dark skin, broad shoulders already forming, wild unkempt hair that stuck out in every direction like it refused to obey gravity itself, and bright green eyes that were too intense, too alive.
Unruly Ay.
He didn't walk in, he entered. Confident. Loud without speaking.
"Auntie," Ay said, grinning as he walked closer. "So this is the baby?"
Misaki didn't even look surprised. "You weren't invited."
"I heard there was lightning," he said. "That means it's interesting."
"That does not mean you come running."
"It does for me."
He crouched down without hesitation, leaning in close to Antares. Too close.
Antares blinked.
This one was different. No control. No restraint. Just force.
Ay grinned wider. "He's small."
Misaki deadpanned. "He's a baby."
"He looks like he's judging me."
Antares stared at him, slow and unblinking.
'…loud.'
Ay laughed. "See? He doesn't like me."
"He doesn't like anyone," Misaki said.
"Good," Ay said. "Means he's not weak."
Before Misaki could stop him, he reached down and picked Antares up.
Wrong. Completely wrong. No support, no care, just raw confidence.
Misaki's voice snapped instantly. "Ay!"
Too late.
Antares was already in the air, held like an object, not fragile, not important, just there.
Ay looked at him, completely unfazed. "He's fine."
"He is not fine," Misaki said. "You're holding him like a weapon."
"I am a weapon."
"That's not the argument you think it is."
Antares processed.
Grip bad. Angle worse. Support basically nonexistent.
'…unacceptable.'
He shifted slightly.
Ay's eyes flicked down. "He moved."
"Of course he moved!"
"He's strong."
"He's uncomfortable!"
Ay adjusted his grip, not better, just different. Still wrong.
Antares made a decision.
If this was how things were going to be, then action was required.
His body reacted instantly.
Warmth. Pressure. Inevitable.
Antares did not resist.
Ay paused mid sentence.
"…?"
A drop hit his arm.
He looked down.
Another drop followed.
Then realization.
"…He peed on me." Ay said in disbelieve
Misaki froze, nd then she barked out in laughter. Hard. Not controlled, not graceful, a laugh that made her wince from the effort.
"I told you!" she choked out. "That's not how you hold him!"
Ay didn't move. At all. Just stared down at the situation.
Processing.
"…He attacked first."
Misaki laughed harder. "He's a baby!"
"He escalated it."
"You picked him up wrong!"
"He responded with force Aunty."
Antares stared up at him, calm, unbothered.
'Correct.'
Ay narrowed his eyes slightly, then slowly a grin spread across his face.
"…I like him."
Misaki blinked. "You what?"
"He fights back."
"He peed on you."
"Same thing."
"That is not the same thing."
Ay adjusted his grip again in a T pose, this time slightly better, though still far from ideal.
"…What now?"
"You give him back," Misaki said, holding out her arms.
Ay didn't move immediately. Instead, he looked down at Antares again, longer this time, not just amused, measuring.
"…He's weird."
"Yes," Misaki said flatly. "We noticed."
"He looked at me like he understood me."
"He didn't."
"That's not a denial."
Antares blinked once, slow, deliberate.
Ay's grin widened.
"…Yeah. He's definitely weird."
He handed Antares back and stood up, completely unbothered by the state of his clothes.
"I'm not changing," he added.
"You are absolutely changing."
"No."
"Yes."
"No."
Misaki pointed toward the door. "Out."
Ay shrugged. "Fine."
He turned, then paused, glancing back once more.
"…He's gonna be strong."
Not a guess. Not a hope. A statement.
Then he left.
The door slid shut. Silence settled again.
Misaki looked down at Antares, still smiling faintly as she began cleaning him properly.
"You're already making allies and being a good little brother," she muttered.
'Brother? - Onii-san'
Antares stared up at her. He didn't understand the words, but he understood the tone. Calm. Warm. Safe.
His body relaxed slightly.
Outside, faint thunder rolled again, distant, answering something unseen.
Unruly Ay outside the house on the tall mountain looks up.. Seeing the thunder he smirks and walks away
Inside, Antares' chakra stirred, small, quiet, but present.
Waiting.
Growing.
And for now, perfectly satisfied.