I heard the commotion upstairs the moment it started, the place wasn't exactly soundproof. Ren only sounded annoyed instead of alarmed though, even as it escalated, so I figured it was just kids being a nuisance-
"And stay out, you brat!" Thud.
Guess I was right.
Unfortunately, being right did precisely nothing to prepare me for the absolutely deafening racket that suddenly erupted outside barely ten minutes later. There was a crash.
Then a second. A shadow blurred down the slope behind Ren's house, rumbling loudly past the small window.
I ran upstairs and made it out the door just in time to see the runaway wagon smash through Ren's back fence and right into my cart.
CRASH.
No…
"What in the Sage's name did-" Ren stumbled out after me and froze. For a moment.
"That… that devil child! He must have done this!"
"YOU BETTER BELIEVE IT!" Came a child's holler from… somewhere behind. I didn't look.
I couldn't look away from - "THAT'S WHAT HAPPENS TO ALL WHO TRY TO CHEAT THE GREAT UZUMAKI NARUTO!"
Ren ran past me, broom held aloft and screaming bloody murder. I didn't care.
I stumbled past him. Almost tripped in my rush to get to my cart before-but the damage was…
I fell to my knees. I couldn't believe my eyes.
The mess…
The cart was somewhat intact, but that was it. My things were scattered.
Family pictures broken, frames in pieces and glass shards everywhere. And… the urns…
I stared at my children's ashes. Spilled out in trails.
Mixed with the dirt. Mixed with each other where the urns had crossed paths and…
The street had stopped. The crowd was gawking.
I must have lost time because I belatedly noticed Ren's wife next to me, speaking softly and holding out a brush and tray for who knows how long. I took them and stared at them.
I didn't say anything when she knelt in the dirt next to me. I only flinched out of my daze when she began to gather my wife's remains.
Stunned, I did what I could to collect my son and daughter. To try and… separate them back but… Shiori ended up giving me a spare jar for the ashes I couldn't pick apart.
I should've left them at home, I thought numbly. This is a ninja village, I should've expected…
But since when are walls good for anything in a shinobi village? Or fences? They can't even corral five year-old runts.
I didn't finish the repair job. I didn't take the food to go either.
I mechanically answered the questions of the police nin and then walked home in a slump. My eyes were downcast the whole way.
I didn't dare raise them. No chance was too small that I'd spot a head of yellow hair and spit out something I'd end up regretting.
For a long time. Or a very short time.
Possibly shorter than it took me to get home depending on who was on Kyuubi watch duty today. I dragged my feet.
One second of delay was one second I didn't have to turn back and see the desecrated remains of my family.
When I got home, I cleaned up the urns as well as I could and put them back in my little tatami room. I stared at the can with the mixed ashes for a while, not sure what to do with them.
The sight reminded me that Kenzo and Yui had hated playing together, their interests were just so different. I couldn't just mix them back in with the rest, but I wasn't just going to throw them away.
Or maybe I should? Scattering the ashes was a done thing back on the old world, and some people did it here too.
Maybe I'll do it later, I thought glumly. Scatter them from the top of the Hokage tower or something.
But should I scatter the rest too, then?
Hours later, I woke up from a far too pleasant dream of Uzumaki Naruto falling face-first into a pit of tar and feathers after coughing himself to tears on my children's ashes. Kenzo might have let it go, but Yui was a vengeful little creature, I'd been dreading having to take her in hand with the kind of attitude she was developing.
I groaned softly as I turned on the floor, my neck and shoulder stiff. I'd fallen asleep in the tatami room.
Hauling myself upright, I stepped out of the room, past the hallway into the kitchen. It was dark.
Looking out the window, I saw that it the moon had been out for a while. Checking the clock, I saw the hands pointing close to midnight.
I drank a cup of water, poured myself a second and made for my bedroom when I heard a noise from downstairs.
The basement?
I stood frozen, the faint moonlight the only thing in the entire house to see by.
My study was closer than the bedroom, so that's where I went instead, walking quickly to my desk. There I carefully put the cup down and opened the top left-side drawer, reaching underneath to pull out the revolver I'd taped to the underside.
Becoming a gun smith hadn't been on my list of life's dreams in either incarnation, but this was a world where people could move fast enough to leave afterimages. If you wanted to survive against anybody confident enough to go burglaring in a ninja village, especially as a powerless nobody, you either killed them in the first blow or caused a big enough racket as to draw the attention of every allied nin in a mile.
That's what I figured anyway. Guns, bless them, fulfilled both functions at once and then some.
With pistol in hand, I walked silently down the hall. My wife and kids had all been annoyingly light sleepers so moving quietly had been an essential skill for someone like me, who always needed to get up in the middle of the night to answer the call of nature.
Had to renovate swathes of the previous home too, a long and stressful job I made sure I wouldn't need to repeat for this one too soon. There were no creaky floor boards in this house.