Chapter 1: Prologue

*I always hated that Naruto never had any family in canon and how so much would have been different had his parents not died on the night of the sealing. That's why I've always enjoyed reading Naruto neglect stories, they give the author so much room to mold their own version of Naruto because he could turn out so many different ways. Anyways, here is my first try at a neglect story. Note the beginning may seem similar to The Overlooked Prodigy by Rookie14, but after the prologue it should sound completely different. This isn't really going to be much of a crossover fanfic, but I figure I'll say it is just in case.

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, Kishimoto does. One Piece belongs to Eiichiro Oda.

The Will of Fire Still Burns: Prologue

It was October tenth, a day that would be forever engraved into the history of Konoha. October tenth, the day that the Kyuubi no Kitsune escaped from its jinchuriki host and wreaked havoc all across Konoha. Thousands of lives were lost in the rampage, but their fates would not end that night thanks to the few new lives that were just brought into the world.

It had come down to it. The worst case scenario, however they were prepared. After all it is common knowledge that when dealing with female jinchuriki that their seal is at its weakest point during childbirth. And that is exactly the case with Uzumaki Kushina. Not only was she pregnant, but she was pregnant with quadruplets.

That in itself would be a problem if she wasn't an Uzumaki, but she was and that is exactly how she survived the Kyuubi escaping its seal just moment after she gave birth to her final child. And with that she drifted into unconsciousness.

Village Outskirts

Namikaze Minato, the Yondaime Hokage, was just waking up from unconsciousness. The last thing he remembered was sending away the Kyuubi's Bijudama with his most feared justu, the Hiraishin and it blowing up a majority of themajority of the eastern side of the forests surrounding the village walls. After that he warped away the Kyuubi and himself to the outskirts of the village. He remembered retrieving three of his four children from the hospital room where Kushina gave birth and setting up the altar for the sealing. After that everything went black for Minato.

After looking around and noticing that the area was almost completely destroyed, the young Hokage's eyes settled on the collapsed form of Sarutobi Hiruzen. Then his three crying children, each bearing an identical seal on their stomachs. 'Sandaime-sama must have knocked me out and done the sealing himself using the Shiki Fuin that I taught him in case of an emergency.'

Minato silently thanked Hiruzen for making the sacrifice so that he would be able to take care of his children and watch them grow up. He vowed to himself that he would do anything within his power to prevent his children from living the life that normal jinchuriki live. Minato would make sure that they were seen as heroes of the leaf and treated like saviors. He picked up his still crying children and flashed to the hokage tower to deal announce to everyone that the kyuubi was defeated because of his three children and deal with the council while ANBU operatives collected the body of Hiruzen Sarutobi.

The Yondaime's thoughts of that night would lead him through pain and suffering. Pain and suffering greater than the Kyuubi could ever cause, at the hands of the son that he had not once thought about that fateful night.

TIME SKIP 9 YEARS

Uzumaki-Namikaze Estate

A young blonde haired boy could be found in his small room on the second floor, he was sitting on the windowsill his eyes glued to the private training ground in their backyard. His eyes weren't interested in the training ground itself however, they were fixated on the five figures within it. He moved out of the shadows and onto the rooftop so he could see more clearly and perhaps learn a few things that he could practice on his own later. After all, his parents had refused to teach him anything beyond unlocking his chakra at this point while they still actively taught they boys younger siblings.

The boy's features could now clearly be seen. He had sun kissed blonde hair in the same style as his father's, including the two jaw length bangs, and cold grey eyes. He stood at a height of 4'2" which was tall for a nine year old boy. However, the most distinguishing feature about this boy were small clumps of freckles that adorned his cheekbones. This boy was none other that Uzumaki-Namikaze Naruto.

The Uzumaki-Namikaze Compound was huge to be blunt about it. It was as large as the Hyuuga Estate which was right next to it, but there were a few major differences. One of them was that the Hyuuga Estate housed both the main family and the branch family which equals around one hundred people in total, while the Uzumaki-Namikaze Estate only housed six people. It was large mansion with five bedrooms, a guest room, kitchen, three bathrooms, and an absolutely huge study/office where Minato and Kushina kept all of their jutsu and training methods.

The second difference was that the Uzumaki-Namikaze Compound was comprised mostly of large training grounds, as most of the jutsu they practice were quite destructive. But the estate didn't always look like this. No, this whole renovation with the addition of the training grounds were added at the requests of of his siblings so that their training could be more 'efficient'. Really they were just jealous because someone named Hyuuga Hinata said that their estate was bigger while Naruto's siblings were at the Hyuuga Estate to play.

Speaking of the Uzumaki-Namikaze siblings, if you concentrate on where young Naruto is staring you'll find them along with their parents in the distance. Yes, they were quite a distance away, so far that most of the younger Hyuuga's would have trouble seeing them. Naruto had always been gifted with incredible eyesight. Why? Who knows, it is likely that the leftover Kyuubi chakra that he inherited when he was born from Kushina was concentrated into and melded with his eyes.

At the training ground stood the Yondaime Hokage, dressed in his usual attire, standing next to him was his wife Uzumaki Kushina. She wore a yellow short sleeved battle kimono that stopped at her mid thighs with spandex shorts underneath, black tights that reached above her knees, and dark blue shinobi sandals.

Before them were three of their children trying but failing miserably at tree climbing because of their terrible chakra control due to possessing the Kyuubi's yin, yang, and leftover chakra respectively.

There was one thing in common with all three of Uzumaki-Namikaze siblings in the training ground. All three of them looked about three years younger than their older brother Naruto, even though they were only a few minutes apart. The reason why they looked so much younger than their brother was because of the demonic chakra sealed within them. It took a while for the Kyuubi's chakra to adjust to their own chakra networks and even longer for bodies to adjust to the amount of power, close to three years.

The one climbing in the tree farthest to the left was a young girl who stood at about 3'5" she had silky red hair just like her mother's that went down to her mid back and deep violet eyes. She was extremely beautiful for a girl that looked only six years old. She held the Kyuubi's yin chakra. This is Uzumaki-Namikaze Natsuki

The one climbing the tree in the middle was Uzumaki-Namikaze Nawaki who stood at 3'4". he had short spiky blonde hair, bright blue eyes, and three whisker marks on each cheek. He wasn't trying as hard as the other girls and seemed to not really care about the training. He was a bit on the chubby side and could be easily be mistaken for an Akimichi. He held the Kyuubi's yang chakra.

On the far right was Uzumaki-Namikaze Narumi who had made it farther up the tree than the other two because she had less of the Kyuubi's chakra. She stood at 3'5" and had long blonde hair that was tied into pigtails to give her a cute school girl look. Her sapphire blue eyes stared at her parents arrogantly as she had made it fifteen feet up the tree because of her slightly better control while her two siblings had only made it up seven. She too had three whisker marks on each cheek. She held the leftover Kyuubi that was saturating the atmosphere from the large amount of demonic chakra that was used by the Kyuubi nine years ago.

Naruto had seen enough. He climbed down from his position on the roof back into his bedroom after watching his mother and father smother and congratulate their children for 'making it so far up' and 'making so much progress' after a week of continuously practicing tree climbing. 'What a joke. They do the smallest little thing and receive more love and affection than I have my entire life from them.'

He grabbed his pouch filled with kunai and shuriken off of his dresser and left his barren room that had nothing more than the essentials within its confines. He briefly toyed with the idea of telling his parents that he was going to a secluded training ground near the outskirts of the village to do his own training but opted against it after he recalled the last time he wanted to start his shinobi training.

Flashback - 6 months ago

Naruto had just woken up to the sounds of his parents walking around the house getting ready for the day ahead of them. He could hear hear his mother in the kitchen getting breakfast ready and his father was getting his siblings up to start their day. Naruto could hear Natsuki's voice asking what they would be doing for training today. His expression reflexively turned into a scowl and his mind began to wander as he lay in bed, already forgotten. 'Training? They refused to help me at all or even let me train since we unlocked our chakra six months ago.'

Naruto started to remember the reasons his parents told him why they would need to focus on his siblings. He understood that but they haven't been doing anything besides chakra control for the past six months. Naruto was far from ignorant. He was smart for his age, some would even go so far as to call him a prodigy, so he could easily see the gap that their training was putting between him and his family. And he didn't want that.

Our young prodigy hadn't just been laying around all day while the rest of his family trained, he was training too. He noticed early on that after breakfast his mother and father would take his siblings to one of the farther away training grounds to train. They would spend all of their time there until lunchtime came around and they came back, with the exception of his father who made his way to the Hokage Tower for his duties sometime before then.

Naruto would use this window of time to head into his father's study and find a chakra control exercise to train on until his family came back to the house. He had already mastered leaf concentration, leaf spinning, and kunai balancing. He had found out that even with his naturally large reserves, being an Uzumaki, he had naturally good chakra control which made the exercises that much easier for him.

He had also already learned how to preform what most people called 'the academy three' jutsus. Those particular jutsus being the Henge, Kawarimi, and Bunshin. He found them by accident when looking around in his the study and decided to give them a try. He had learned them relatively easily. It only took him a few days to get a good grasp on them and had mastered them a few days after that.

If that was all the academy requires to graduate then he wasn't going to be looking forward to his time in the academy.

Our young blonde made a silent vow, 'One more time. I'll ask for training just one more time and if they refuse I'll start training even harder on my own.'

With those thoughts in mind Naruto got out of bed and started heading downstairs. He saw both of his parents in the kitchen and decided to ask them after breakfast. It was a silent breakfast of pancakes, eggs, and orange juice. He sat at the end of the table, his siblings barely awake sat to his left. Minato Sat at the head of the table, reading the paper to catch up on the daily events. Kushina had already gotten up to do the dishes before training. Naruto decided now to make his request.

"U-um Tou-san? Kaa-san?" he asked in a shy voice.

Both of them looked towards the voice, wondering when he had arrived at the table.

Minato glanced up from the newspaper and gave Naruto a curious look before returning back to his paper. "What is it Naruto? We were about to head off to start Nawaki's, Narumi's, and Natsuki's training."

Kushina was staring intently at Naruto intently now, knowing what he was going to ask.

"It's about that actually...I was wondering...if you could start training me to be a shinobi too, just like them?" Naruto ended hopefully.

His siblings were paying close attention to the interaction going on between their parents and their older brother.

Minato and Kushina both gave him a frustrated sigh knowing he wouldn't like the answer.

It was Minato who responded, "Naruto you know exactly why we have to train them early. If we don't they could lose control of themselves and and hurt a lot of their classmates once all of you start going to the academy. Besides we promised you we would only teach you the basics, and we did by helping you unlock your chakra a few weeks ago. The rest you will learn at the academy."

Naruto started to get upset at those last few sentences, "But the last time you helped me was six months ago! I know you have to help them because of the Kyuubi chakra, but all clan children start learning before they go to the academy!"

Minato was also starting to get a little worked up but before he could get a word in, Kushina decided to interject herself into the argument, "No buts!" Kushina replied heatedly, "You'll learn chakra control, basic jutsu, and taijutsu at the academy!"

Naruto was about to respond but he was cut off, "You will listen to your father, he is the Hokage he knows what's best for you and he said no and that's final! Now go to your room and think about what we've said!" Kushina yelled, her temper getting the best of her.

Naruto didn't say another word, he just did what his mother asked and headed up the stairs to his room. His siblings looked on at the scene with either a confused or a sad look on their face.

Don't misunderstand Kushina and Minato didn't hate Naruto, but they had seen much during their careers as shinobi and had committed unspeakable acts as well. They wanted to have at least one child spared from that fate. Or at the very least, they wanted to let one of their children to enjoy their childhood instead of forcing them to train everyday.

Unknown to them through these beliefs that had already started to push him away from their perfect little family and it would eventually come back to haunt them.

Flashback End

Naruto walked down the stairs and saw that his family had finished their training and were getting ready for lunch in the kitchen. He sighed, hoping they wouldn't ask where he was going.

He walked through the kitchen with them ignoring his very presence. His brother and sisters were dead tired, their form completely slumped over the kitchen table. His mother was the only other one in the room. She was facing the counter, preparing some sandwiches for his siblings after their long day of training. He took this as the perfect opportunity to take his leave.

He rushed to the front door, "Mom, I'm going over to Hana's!" and with that he left.

Kushina looked up surprised, "What? Who was that? I could've sworn I heard someone's voice just now." She looked over confused to see three of her children resting their tired forms on the kitchen table. "I feel like I'm forgetting something...or maybe someone" she decided to dismiss that thought for now and went back to preparing lunch.

Naruto stood in a secluded clearing not too far away from the Uchiha Compound. He liked this place because it was quite the distance away from the other compounds, the park, and the heart of the village. Really it was quite aways away from everything, so it was unlikely that anyone from his family would catch him training, let alone anyone in general. This was one of his more favored areas to train in.

'From what I saw Kaa-san used her chakra to walk up a tree. This is probably the tree walking exercise I read about in Tou-san's study. From what I could gather, I need to figure out the necessary amount of chakra required. Too much chakra and I'll be blown off, too little chakra and I won't stick to the tree's surface.'

He looked at the tree, determination shining in his eyes, and drew a kunai out of his weapons pouch to mark his progress. He began gathering chakra at his feet and sprinted towards the tree.

A teenager, of about eighteen years of age, had been sitting high in a tree above the clearing watching our young blonde making astounding progress with tree walking. He had untamed, wild, and somewhat curly black hair. He wore a black long-sleeved shirt that was common among Konoha shinobi attire and a dark green jounin's vest. His hitai-ate was tied around his forehead spiking up his hair even more.

He had been walking back to the Uchiha Compound from another successful mission and decided to make a detour when he heard the sound of footsteps, a kunai slashing through something, and panting. He decided to satisfy his curiosity and Shunshined into a tree in the clearing once he saw the boy.

From what he could see the boy had only just started tree walking today and was almost halfway up the tree. The panting boy seemed familiar for some reason so he decided to watch for a while.

That is exactly when the boy ran past his other marks and made it halfway up. That is when he saw the boy slip, 'Wait. Blonde hair and with that haircut. Isn't that the yondaime's son! I have to hurry.'

Little did he know the boy didn't slip nor was he out of chakra. As soon as he started to move he sensed a barrage of shuriken coming his way and had to Shunshin to the other side of the clearing.

The boy reached the ground and pulled out a kunai from his weapons pouch, "Who are you and what are you here for?" because of the distance his family put between them and Naruto and his lack of interaction with children his age, he had become somewhat aloof and cynical.

'This isn't what I expected. He actually reminds me a bit of Itachi' the teenager thought.

"I didn't expect you to be able to sense me. How'd you do that anyway?" he asked genuinely curious.

Naruto thought about what guy could possibly want. He noticed that he was a shinobi so one thought crossed through his mind, 'Shit! Did Tou-san send him here to find me? Does he know about my training?

He figured that he should just play along for now, "I suppose I'm somewhat of a sensor. I was able to sense you the moment you arrived in this clearing. I answered your question, now it's your turn to answer mine" Naruto replied in a cold yet demanding tone.

'Yep definitely reminds me of Itachi' teenager mused to himself as he activated his sharingan and smirked, "You're Naruto right? The name's Shisui kid, Uchiha Shisui. I was on the way back to the Uchiha Compound when I saw you training. Why are you out here anyway, shouldn't kids your age be at the academy?"

Shisui noticed that his emotionless look turned into a scowl, "I'm not enrolled in the academy and I won't be given a chance to for three more years."

The raven haired teenager's curious was immediately replaced with one of confusion after he had processed the information and tried to come to a conclusion based on that statement, "...Why is that? most children from clans join the shinobi academy after they turn nine years old. That is unless they are specifically being groomed and trained for the duty of the clan heir."

Naruto let out a dry chuckle that sent a shiver down Shisui's spine for some unknown reason, "I assure you that isn't the case. In fact the title of clan heir will most likely be given to one of my siblings once they turn my age...and that is also the reason I'm not in the academy yet."

"..." after a moment of silence Shisui was about to speak before Naruto raised his hand up.

"You know of the circumstances dealing with the sealing correct?" Shisui nodded, "Demonic chakra can take years to fully assimilate itself into a jinchuriki's body, that's why they tend to be a few years older than they look. That is also the case with my siblings. While we may only be born a few minutes apart, in reality they are close to three years younger than me. For some reason my parents decided to keep us together, so I can't attend the academy until I turn twelve."

"So why aren't your parents supervising your children until then? Surely they can't expect you to sit around and do nothing for three more years." Shisui noticed that Naruto had a deadpanned look on his face as opposed to his angry one he had a minute ago.

Naruto sighed as he began his story from the very beginning...

Naruto and Shisui were starring off into the distance at the setting son as Naruto's tale was coming to a close, "And that is what's written so far in my story. I'm out here because my parents have refused to train me or even acknowledge my existence. I don't want to sit back in the warmth of the Uzumaki-Namikaze Estate while everybody moves forwards with their lives. I want to prove to myself that my existence is worth something, that it was good that I was born."

Naruto looked over to Shisui and noticed he had tears flowing down his face, "Oi stop crying! I didn't mean for this to sound like some sob story! You're a grown man for Kami's sake! And get off of me dammit!" he yelled as Shisui clung to him.

"Sorry kid...*sniff*...it's just that...*sniff*...our life stories are pretty similar" Shisui managed to get out while wiping the tears from his eyes.

"How so?"

Shisui sighed and turned back towards the sunset, "You ever heard of someone named Uchiha Itachi?" Naruto looked at him confused but nodded, "He's my best friend, but he's also some kind of prodigy that the Uchiha clan hasn't produced since the era of Warring States. Even though I'm stronger than Itachi, I'm a different kind of genius. I'm a genius of hard work as Maito Gai would put it."

"I've worked my ass off since before I was your age kid, and still I'm always compared to Itachi. Even my own parents told me that they wished that they had Itachi as a son instead of me. Trust me I get where your coming from."

Naruto let out a small small on that nobody has seen for a long time.

"From what I saw today I can tell that you have the potential to be both Naruto" Naruto looked shocked, this was the first time all day that Shisui had called him his name. It was the first time that somebody had genuinely him like they cared for him.

Shisui noticed the tears in Naruto's eyes that he refused to show, "Itachi has a little sister too, she's about the age of your siblings I think and He's already started training her too...What do you say Naruto... will you become my student?"

That was the final dam. The tears started pouring out of his eyes, "...*sniff*...yes...Shisui-sensei."

Author's Notes

This is my first fanfiction, and I want to make it a good one. To start off my career as an author. The scene with the Kyuubi may seem a little rushed, but I mainly wanted to show how many children were born and how many the chakra was sealed into. Some may have noticed that there is no Obito. I have plans for Obito. Also, I plan on making Nawaki take Sasuke's place as the story's douche. There will be Fem!Sasuke in this fic.

Ages

Naruto: 9

Natsuki: 6 (9)

Narumi: 6 (9)

Nawaki: 6 (9)

Fem!Sasuke: 6

Rest of Rookie 9: 6

Yakumo/Sai: 6

Team Gai:7

Hana Inuzuka: 8

Kakashi, Gai, Kurenai, Asuma: 20-23

Shisui: 18

Itachi: 16

This Fics time line will be a little different because the main timeline corresponds to the age of the rookie 9. I'm also going to make some adjustments to the events that happened in canon.

As far as the crossover goes characters won't really be coming over to the Naruto world, just one or two of the powers and such.