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Minato Namikaze, Part 3
Minato's distaste for his less-than-savory relatives made for very little contest when deciding to give their son Kushina's last name. Minato was half-tempted to take it himself when they were finally able to get married, though there was that little bit of manly pride that cringed at the thought. For a first name, they decided to name him after the main character in their shared favorite book: Naruto.

Life was going well for the young couple, and recent promotions and the backlog of people asking for their work had them certain that they would continue to do well for their family. They'd decided that they wanted another baby soon, so that little Naruto wouldn't be too much older than his little baby brother(s) and/or sister(s). The day of Minato's eighteenth birthday, Kushina surprised him with news that she was late again. They made an appointment for a couple days later, scheduled for two days before the small wedding they had planned.

They decided to leave Naruto with a sitter that day, their nervous jitters over both the upcoming wedding as well as the possible new baby too great to be able to focus on him as much as they'd need to. They left the hospital with news of the best wedding present they could think of: Kushina was indeed pregnant again. Happily discussing whether they hoped for a girl or a boy, neither of them noticed the reckless, drunken criminal fleeing the police coming from the right of the intersection until it was too late.

Kushina was killed on impact, and Minato wasn't much better for wear. The paramedics worked diligently to keep him alive until he reached the hospital, but during surgery he died on the table. The head surgeon gave up on him, announcing his time of death to a nearby nurse who shuffled off to do the paperwork. The surgeon who had been assisting him, though, didn't want to give up. She took over the procedure and after having endured a little over two minutes of that awful flatline noise, Minato's heart started again. He paid for that time, though, with almost six months in a coma.

In the aftermath, the mix up of paperwork had a living Minato with a death certificate - that had been sent to his next of kin. Even though they knew he still lived, his relatives greedily divvied up the savings that he and Kushina had worked so hard on and sold the house and as many of the young couple's possessions as they could. What they couldn't sell right-off mostly got tossed into boxes in the dusty corner of the attic and forgotten about. As for the child that the rest of the Namikaze family had wished to never be born: he was put up for adoption and given to an orphanage. Years later, Minato would wonder if his mother's religiousness made her believe that the child would be well-cared-for at a Christian orphanage, or if it was somehow to further spite him in his lack of religiosity.

When Minato awoke, he had full retrograde amnesia. He remembered nothing. Well, almost nothing - he remembered his first name and the word 'uzumaki,' and that was all. One of the clueless nurses who returned his personal possessions knew Japanese, and pointed out that the little, blue spiral on his necklace could be an uzumaki - a whirlpool. Something bugged him about the explanation, but it worked, so he guessed it was just his lack of memory bothering him. The doctors all agreed that the memory loss wasn't due to damage from lack of oxygen, but from the initial physical trauma from the accident - and that perhaps one day his memories might be able to be triggered into recovery. He was surrounded by hospital staff, but none of his relatives. Perhaps out of a sense of misplaced pity, the doctor who briefed him on his condition never told him about his fiancee or son. His family, who came to retrieve him when the hospital called, never cared to mention them either. In their eyes, Minato was a clean slate that they could make their meal ticket once again - they weren't going to jeopardize that.