Never use shadow clones to do paperwork
AN/ I never did like the concept of Naruto suddenly being surrounded by women who all have romantic interest after a dopey speech or two, and are all completely okay with sharing him.
So this is my response to that.
Konoha, 14 ½ years before present time
The secret got out.
A secret that should have remained secret.
But didn't.
The secret that Minato Namikaze was married to one Kushina Uzumaki, and that they were expecting a male child.
It doesn't matter who leaked it. Or what leaked it. Or how it was leaked.
It only matters that it did get leaked.
And as soon it happened, all the Elemental Nations had heard it.
The secret.
The secret that really should have remained secret.
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Village hidden in clouds, a week later
"Raikage-sama!"
Ai looked up from lifting his weights to see at his secretary, Mabui, appear slightly out of breath and more than a little rattled.
He quirked a brow "yes?"
"I have urgent news. It appears that Minato Namikaze is expecting a child with a woman named Uzumaki Kushina."
Ai's eyes grew wide with surprise. This was big news indeed. Whenever a kage secured a progeny, they usually kept it a secret until at least they were old enough to be enrolled as a shinobi, for safety reasons of course. But knowing that there's a kage who had a vulnerable, political bombshell of a child currently being made meant that there was a new dynamic to be had.
"How reputable is the source?"
"Very reputable."
A secured progeny is extremely important information, but it opened up many pathways of action. It really boiled down to what Ai was going to with the information.
He could send assassins to kill the woman and the child in an effort to strike at the fourth hokage's heart. However, that plan was doomed to failure. Even his best assassins would never be able to make it into Konoha, find a woman based only on her name, and kill her; especially due to the fact that she has known relations with the Yellow Flash.
Not only that, but if it was ever found out that Cloud did send assassins, it could mean another war, a war that they weren't prepared to fight yet.
A war that he didn't have the allies for.
Allies.
Wait.
This could be a golden opportunity for Cloud and Leaf to enter an alliance. The war that had just ended had been a stalemate with all sides conceding to a peace-treaty. There was a lot of animosity between the leaf and the cloud at the moment, but Ai could use the information of the Namikaze child to his and the cloud's benefit.
"Mabui, get me an arranged marriage document!" Ai yelled with great gusto all at once.
Mabui, who was standing there watching him think for a solid minute, suddenly stood straight at attention and gave a quick "yessir."
Amongst a population of trained assassins, saboteurs, and spies; one would think that an arranged marriage between two such ninjas of opposing sides would lead to disaster. But Ai had met and battled with Minato on the battlefield more than once. He was a shrewd, cunning, and very powerful man, but most of all, he was kind. Not in the sense that he hesitated to kill, but in the sense that he only killed to protect the people of the leaf village. If there was an event that could tie the two nations together in peace and harmony, Minato would probably accept it.
Now came an equally hard part.
Who was he going to get to give consent that their daughter be married off to a ninja of another nation, a nation that they don't have that best of relationships with?
It had to be within the kage bloodline, that much was for certain. Anything less would be an insult to the hokage.
However, Ai lacked very many female family members.
Ai lacked very many female family members that were nearly newborn.
Ai thought for a moment and snapped his fingers in a way that one could construe he had an idea.
Yugito Nii.
His brother-in-law's daughter.
She wasn't directly related to him, but she was a Jinchuuriki. That was just as good, if not better. She was also 14, but he didn't have much of any other choices.
'This is a great plan.' Ai thought, as he began to sign the information of the marriage on the document that Mabui given him
00000000
Village hidden sand, same time
"And how reputable is this information?" a man with the garb of a kage spoke to a trembling subordinate.
"Very reputable, sir."
The kage for the village hidden in sand sat in thought for a while. While Sand and Konoha hadn't fought together or against each other in any grand scale fights, Sand was still considered one of the weaker ninja villages. The fact that the Hokage was having a child could be used to create an ally that would bolster the military clout of the hidden sand village.
It was a good thing that he had a daughter who was two years old at the moment. Although he wasn't very sure about the prospects of using his daughter for a bargaining chip in political struggle, he had to think of the good of the village and her people.
"Get me an arranged marriage document." He said coldly.
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The village hidden in stones, same time
"And how reputable is this information?" a very short man with the garb of a kage spoke to his secretary
"Very reputable, sir."
The very short man sat in silence for an extremely long time, obviously in thought.
The third shinobi war had been tremendously horrible for their side of the conflict. Well, the war had been horrible for everyone included in the fighting, but it had been particularly horrible for them.
The yellow flash had single handedly decimated about 1000 iwa shinobi, which caused Onoki to create the treaty between them that had just been approved. But even if there was peace between them at the moment, there was a lot of bad feelings involved against Konoha at the moment, and vice versa.
The feelings of hatred that the deaths of many of their shinobi were extremely strong. Strong enough that Onoki knew that war would eventually break out between them again. He had been through every single shinobi world war and had no want to be involved in another.
An arranged marriage between the fourth's son and his granddaughter could potentially create an environment where they would eventually get over their hate of each other. Even if it would be a slow process.
Mostly because the child in question wasn't even born yet, and his granddaughter was only two.
"Get me an arranged marriage document."
"Sir?"
"Just do it"
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The village hidden in mist, same time
"And how accurate is this information?" a short man with a scar running down one said to his spymaster.
"Very, sir"
The fourth mizukage gave the spymaster a blank look.
And remained in that position until the spymaster felt uneasy enough to back slowly away from his commander in chief.
One would have to feel extremely uneasy to even think of do something like that.
'He seems different lately' the spymaster thought to himself, as he went back to his daily work.
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The village hidden in waterfalls, same time
"Is this information accurate" the jonin-in-command said to a chunin.
"Yes it is"
The non-descript man sat in silence for a short while
"Get me an arranged marriage document, this could be our chance to secure a position amongst the big five."
"Y-Yessir!" the chunin gave a nervous and slightly louder-than-it-should-have-been reply once he realized the significance of his task.
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Konoha, 14 years before present time
Minato felt really smart at the moment.
No, he didn't just feel smart, he felt like he was a genius, a god in man's clothes.
Why? A reasonable question.
He just found out the best use of shadow clones known to man.
Eradicating the scourge that all battle hardened veterans with years of experience on the battlefield had to face at one point or another.
Paperwork.
Why is paperwork the scourge of all battle hardened veterans with years of experience on the battlefield? Another good question.
Because meticulously looking through documents, bills, new laws, etc. was just not in the hardwiring of people who survived by making split second decisions that saved their lives and the lives of their compatriots.
And so, he sat back to bask in his brilliance as we watched four different shadow clones work through said paper work. He knew the backlash was going to be a bitch, but at the moment, he just did not care.
He should have cared, as all four of the clones signed a different marriage document at the same time.
When he received the memories, he would just vaguely remember making peace separately with all of the other villages, and brush it off as a delusion as he went to nurse his headache.
And that children, is why you never use shadow clones to do your paperwork. As one child would soon find out the hard way.
Omake 1:
Kushina could feel the lump of her 4 month old pregnancy kick her hand as it rested on her belly.
She giggled in uncontained exuberance. She had been excited beyond belief when she found out that she was going a mother, and even at home when there was nothing happening, she was always smiling contently to herself.
Because she was going to be a mother! And she was going to be the most kick-ass mother in the entire fucking world!
She continued to smile down at the lump that her hand was resting on, when she felt something that worried her. It was like a vibration coming from her belly, kind of like the unborn child was shivering.
Kushina had been briefed on all the stuff about pregnancy, but had never heard of anything like pre-baby shivers. So she immediately got up to go to the hospital to check it out, out of fear that something might be wrong with Naruto.
When she got there and had all the tests that she could possibly go through to convince her that nothing was wrong with the child, she made her way back home and concluded that the whole baby shiver thing must have been her imagination.
AN/ you probably know what I'm getting at, at this point. The concept of the story is basically 'What would happen if Naruto was suddenly married to 5 kunoichi who all didn't know him, hated his guts, or detested the marriage for putting them in a situation that they suddenly became sister wives to each other.'
This story is planned to be a comedy-romance-drama. It's kind of hard to balance all those concepts, but I don't think that this story could have been written any other way.
Mei won't appear immediately, and she won't have much of a presence in the first couple of chapters. But I do mean to make her a big part of the story.