Medicinal Lullaby

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Medicinal Lullaby is a Naruto fanfiction written by Shivakashi. Starting from just after Naruto finds out about the death of Jiraiya in the series, it deviates from the series canon when a heavily pregnant teenage girl called Kensha shows up on Naruto's doorstep. Kensha is a princess Naruto was hired to guard near the end of his three years of training with Jiraiya who fell for him when he took her out of her Gilded Cage to see the world. They made love on their last night together, but Kensha was forced to flee her overbearing father when she fell pregnant. Naruto decides to shape up and prepare for fatherhood, despite his responsibilities to Konoha.

Then some serious shit goes down...

Epic in scope, the story goes well beyond the bounds of the Naruto manga, following the characters through over a decade of their lives. The story tracks Naruto's growth as not only a father, but as a ninja and eventually as Konoha's greatest champion and defender. Spanning 38 chapters and still incomplete, the story is currently on indefinite hiatus due to a combination of real life events putting the author under pressure and baffled bewilderment at the direction the actual series has gone in sapping her enthusiasm for writing. Hopefully it will some day be resumed.

Tropes used in Medicinal Lullaby include:
  • Adult Fear: Nothing terrifies Naruto so much as the thought of any kind of harm coming to Hitomi.
  • A God Am I: This version of Pain appears to genuinely believe himself to be a god. After Naruto kicks his ass and kills Konan, Pain deems him a devil.
  • Almighty Janitor: Even when acknowleged as the most powerful ninja in Konoha, Naruto still never progresses beyond the rank of genin (to the consternation of his own new genin team). However, as a sage, it's generally accepted that the mundane gradings of ninja don't really apply to him in any case.
  • Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Naruto has learned things that not even sage training could teach him, according to Fukasaku: aura sensing, wind manipulation, and changing a diaper.
  • Aura Vision: An ability of those with demon blood. With it, Hitomi can tell the real Naruto apart from his clones (since chakra can be split, but the soul cannot).
  • A Wizard Did It: Naruto is incapable of explaining how 'youki' (demon power) works- the best explanation he can come up with is "it's magic".
  • Badly-Battered Babysitter: Hitomi is quite a handful for most of her babysitters- both Naruto's clone and the frog-nin Kosuke have a hard time managing her, with Kosuke barely avoiding being eaten by Fuzz-wad.
  • Berserk Button: Madara is fully aware that Hitomi is Naruto's and does not want to press it:

Madara: To attack his daughter would be so immensely foolish it would suggest we have no survival instincts whatsoever. There is no doubt in my mind that Naruto-kun has the power to destroy us, even if he is unaware of it himself, and that girl is the only thing keeping him away from us.

  • Big No: Sasuke gives one when he realises the Amaterasu that he unleashed at Naruto and Naruto redirected back at him has killed his friends (OK, so Juugo survives, but Sasuke doesn't know that).
  • Blood Magic: Naruto writes seals in blood on his "specialised" clones and uses his blood to activate his communication relay with Akatsuki.
  • But She Can't Be Pregnant!: Kensha was on protection when she and Naruto made love, but the power of the Kyuubi was able to overwhelm any feeble human preventative measures. As Ino puts it, he has "super-sperm".
    • Artistic License: Biology: Contraception does not work that way. PHYSICAL contraceptives such as condoms prevent the sperm from even reaching the egg to fertilise it, but chemical ones like the Pill (which is the kind Kensha was on) actually inhibit ovulation, so there isn't even an egg for the sperm to fertilise. Of course, that's not to say that, since Naruto is a fictional series set in an alternate pseudo-mediaeval-Japanese-supernatural setting, she wasn't on some kind of fictional contraceptive which would justify this.
  • The Chains of Commanding: Kakashi is forced to become Hokage after Tsunade has a stroke. He can't stand it and wishes Naruto would accept the position from him already.
  • Cold-Blooded Torture: The chapters where Naruto is held prisoner by the traitorous monks and vivisected alive are genuinely stomach-churning.
  • Cool Big Sis: Moegi apparently becomes this to Hitomi once she gets older.
  • Cool Old Lady: Juhi.
  • Cool Pet: Hitomi adopts a baby fisher cat which she calls Fuzz-wad.
  • Cool Teacher: Naruto ends up as one of these to his genin team, although his initial training session with them makes him drift close to Sadist Teacher by way of Sink or Swim Mentor.
  • Does Not Like Shoes: Naruto gives up wearing shoes most of the time after he starts his sage training.
  • Elemental Powers: Naruto takes his affinity for wind and runs with it, mastering every vagary of its use until he's nearly an Elemental Embodiment.
    • Kurenai and Asuma's son Keiji appears to have the potential to wield all four elements. Naruto, Sakura and Kakashi theorise that a variant of the Rinnegan runs through Kurenai's family, visible in her unique eye pattern, but with the actual powers only manifesting in males, none of who had been born for generations before Keiji came along.
  • Friendly Enemy: Not exactly, as Naruto is more or less indifferent towards Madara, but Madara comes to be genuinely impressed with Naruto and even becomes strangely fond of him. The two remain at least polite to each other when they talk.
  • Gaia's Vengeance: Naruto becomes bound so closely to nature through his sage training that when he unleashes masive devastation during his battle with Sasuke nature's fury at his "betrayal" makes him seriously ill.
  • Gilded Cage: Kensha was being kept in one by her father. Naruto took her out of it in secret to show her the world.
  • Half-Human Hybrid: After absorbing the Kyuubi through his seal, Naruto is left as at least half a demon. Hitomi also inherited demon blood from the kyuubi.
  • Hippie Teacher: By the time Naruto takes on his own genin team he's become so laid back and lackadaisical that Shivakeshi is openly calling him a hippie. He's not too casual about discipline -his students are ninja and carelessness can cost lives, after all- but when his first encounter with them has them tracking him down napping in a tree, you can't help but get this impression.
  • Hot Dad: Chapter 9 is called 'Girls like Boys with Babies'. It's practically a Running Gag that fatherhood has made Naruto extremely attractive to the women in the series. He even has "a brief, horrifying insight" of Hitomi's friend Leela coming on to him when she reaches her teenage years.
  • I Call It Vera: Subverted:

Naruto: I shall call you... Stick!

  • Love Triangle: Juugo falls in love with Karin, despite her being Sasuke's woman, and it's implied they have a secret relationship.
  • Mama Bear: Kurenai; Kakashi even uses the trope by name when she comes storming into the hospital after Keiji collapses from chakra exhaustion.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Let's just say that chapter 26, 'A Most Stupid Plan', is accurately named. While Naruto and co. (Gaara and Killer Bee as well as Killer Bee's students) really don't have any better plans than releasing the bijuu from Akatsuki's sealing statue, it still doesn't seem like such a good idea when the 3- and 5-tailed beasts that manage to evade recapture by Akatsuki apparently start destroying villages.
    • As a result of the above mess-up, 6th Hokage Kakashi adds a big one on top of it when he caves in to pressure and agrees to allow the priests of the Fire Temple to erect a spiritual barrier over Konoha to protect it from demons- unwittingly crippling Naruto, preventing him from being removed to a safe place and nearly killing him. Although in his defence, the entire movement was a giant plan cooked up by Manipulative Bastard Danzo solely to bring Naruto down and Kakashi couldn't have been expected to know that the priests had been subverted.
  • Oh Crap: Juugo has this reaction when Naruto redirects Sasuke's Amaterasu back at them, largely because he realises how suicidally foolish challenging Naruto was in the first place.
  • Kicked Upstairs: Naruto comes to think of the position of Hokage as this, once he realises the position is ultimately a Desk Jockey one. As he puts it, "Hokage is a job for when you retire." Kakashi gets stuck with this when the position is forced on him.
  • Killed Off for Real: Starting with Kisame and Kensha, the series eventually adds Zetsu, Konan, Sasuke, Karin, Suigetsu and even the Kyuubi to the tally.
  • Papa Wolf: Fatherhood really led Naruto to rearrange his priorities; now they go "Hitomi>everything else". If you threaten her, you're dead.
  • Quit Your Whining: In one of the fic's biggest Crowning Moments of Awesome Naruto bluntly calls Sasuke out on his endless, obsessive, self-pitying Wangst.

Naruto: Sasuke, will you do us all a favor and GET THE FUCK OVER YOURSELF?

  • Razor Wind: One of the simpler of Naruto's powers once he masters wind. He uses it to kill Zetsu.
  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Naruto gives a pretty good one to Sasuke when he makes it clear that he's tired of Sasuke's bullshit and has no more tolerance for him. The fact that he's far more poweful than Sasuke at this stage and knows it helps.

Naruto: Let's get one thing straight here Sasuke... I do not want to be here. I can think of a good twenty things I'd rather be doing right now, most of which involve lying down. So I'm going to make this quick, and then I'm going to forget you. I have no tolerance for you any more. [...] I feel like I'm obliged to ask you why you're doing this so suddenly...though I know the reason won't change the outcome of this battle.
Sasuke: I'm about to destroy your village and yet you show almost no concern.
Naruto: Why would I be concerned about you? You're still the same, impulsive child that left the village ten years ago. Apparently Orochimaru gave you power and nothing else. But that was all you wanted, wasn't it? How did that work out for you?

  • Romantic Runner-Up: Hinata actually becomes quite bitter over ending up as this after Naruto hooks up with Sakura.
  • Secret Keeper: When Naruto runs away from Konoha to raise Hitomi somewhere safe, he doesn't let anyone know what he's doing or why except Tsunade, and even she doesn't know where he's hiding out. Until Moegi stumbles across him completely by coincidence and he swears her to silence.
  • Shoot the Dog: After Naruto defeats Sasuke's attack on Konoha, Sakura finishes him off when he tries to take Naruto with him.
    • Although the narrative notes that he was going to die in a matter of minutes anyway, but Sakura killed him to work out her own grudges.
  • Simple Staff: Oh it may look like one, but watch out when Naruto has his Stick!
  • The Spymaster: Naruto becomes this after he's assigned to take over management of Jiraiya's network of contacts and informants. He excels at it.
  • Squee: The girls in the series love to fuss over Hitomi when she's a toddler.
  • Stuffed Into the Fridge: Kensha; Kisame really had no reason to kill her otherwise.
  • Suicide by Cop: Sasuke effectively goes out this way after discovering he's sterile and can never revive the Uchiha clan.
  • Surrounded by Idiots: When Suigetsu continues to insist that attempting to use Hitomi to gain leverage over Naruto is a good idea.

Madara took a moment to ponder why he even allowed Sasuke to keep his intellectually-deficient friends around.

  • Tempting Fate: A harmless example when Kiba is talking to Naruto in hospital after the Battle at the Border for first time in years.

Kiba: I gotta respect you for getting back here in one piece. I mean, going on some super S-class mission for years and then taking the Akatsuki head on? Not to mention killing Kisame...man, I almost forgot about that. Wow...I guess you can't get more unpredictable than that.
Naruto's clone dispels downstairs, letting Naruto know that Hitomi is back in Konoha and racing to see him immediately.
Naruto: You're about to eat your own words, dog boy.

Hitomi: DADDY!

  • Tomboy: Hitomi; she fights with all the boys and hates specialised kunoichi classes like flower arrangement (because they won't let her eat them). Keiji finds her utterly bewildering.

Weren't girls supposed to play with dolls and stay clean?
Weren't they supposed to lose arm wrestling matches against guys?
Weren't they supposed to fuss over their figures rather than instigate ramen eating contests with whoever looked at them wrong?
They certainly weren't supposed to skip out on ikebana and try to worm into the boys' separate practice.

  • Training from Hell: Rather than the bell test, Naruto puts his genin team through this instead. He transforms three of his shadow clones into wild animals then sics them on his new students, telling them to survive for 3 hours without leaving the training area. Fortunately something came up that forced him to finish it up earlier than planned or they may have got seriously hurt.
  • Troll: Madara; he actually thinks it's fun to needle Sasuke until his "perfected facade of indifference" breaks when Danzo comes to join Akatsuki.
  • Unstoppable Rage: When Kisame fatally wounds Kensha, Naruto goes mental on him, channeling the full power of the Kyuubi and forcing poisonous chakra directly into Kisame's skull until he's destroyed.
  • We Hardly Knew Ye: Poor Kensha really only exists to bear Naruto's child then die and leave him as a traumatised single parent.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: Madara, unlike the canon version who was recently revealed to NOT be Madara anyway appears to be this, judging from his inner monologue:

A single, crimson eye surveyed the swarming town of Otafuku Gai over the distance of several acres worth of treetops. So many humans, so many lives. Such a waste.

Alas, Madara always prided himself as one who could look at the big picture. The end would justify the means—despicable they may be.

  • Wise Beyond Their Years: Naruto is forced to become this really quick, but he still has a sense of fun and mischief.