Disclaimer: I don't have ownership of Naruto, nor do I own the original concept for this story, or even the original characters(OCs). The original story concept and the OCs are owned by a fellow author on this site named celestial kitten16.
Author's Note: I very much hope that you enjoy the final edit of the first chapter of this story. Since I had originally posted this chapter, it has undergone several edits and I am pleased to finally announce that as of June 12th, 2016, it no longer needs editing. Meaning, that if you have read this chapter before the date of its final edit, you might want to re-read it. :)
The only reason I am able to write such a wonderful story is all due to the author who has given me permission to write it, celestial kitten16. Make sure you read the original story, she has also written a re-write of the original version both of which can be found on her account. Please make sure to give her some credit for her amazing idea and story concept!
The warmth of the setting sun was receding in Konoha, giving way to a foreboding feeling. The gray storm clouds began to blend in with the now darkening sky and the once-gentle winds whipped against his face.
He was Naruto Uzumaki, and at the moment he wasn't paying attention to the now violently lashing winds or even the light drizzle of rain that was bound to get worse. No, none of that mattered because right now, he was downright exhausted. Sure, finding out about the chūnin exams and that run-in with the freaky sand-trio would be tiring, along with finishing all those fruity D-ranked missions Team 7 had to deal with now that their "escort" mission was over, but it had nothing on his abundant amount of energy. What really had him exhausted was constantly lying to the few that cared about him and treated him like a real person. He felt a constant guilt and loneliness whenever he walked through the village only to be greeted by glares and hatred, and it only seemed to get worse when he realized that he was deceiving the small amount of people that didn't hate him for reasons he never understood.
So, he'd been thinking a lot lately about the truth. Ultimately, he knew the Sandaime might object to how he was feeling about, well, everything or maybe even deny the village's obvious malice towards him, but honestly he just couldn't stand lying to anyone anymore. He knew that those few caring people might hate him and be hurt from his lies, but he also knew lying to them anymore would only cause more hatred and hurt. He was willing to shoulder the villager's glares, and now, he's even willing to bear his few friend's anger if it meant not living the lie he'd become accustomed to. To think all of these thoughts and new feelings arose because of that mission to Wave. To think Haku, someone he didn't even know for a week could show and teach him something so important, something so precious that he would cherish for the rest of his life.
It was at that very moment, in the empty streets of Konoha while strolling in the downpour, that he had finally put some action into his decision.
He stopped his walking while in the middle of the abandoned streets and slid a hand into a pocket of his bright orange capris. He pulled out a medicine bottle filled with blue and pink pills and twisted the cap off, dispensing one capsule into his cupped hand, one blue tablet. He brought the cupped hand to his mouth and gulped the medication down and waited a moment before raising two fingers from each hand and combining them to make the ram hand sign, the one used when releasing a henge.
With a puff of smoke there no longer stood the tiny 12 year old boy, but rather an even tinier 12 year old girl. The solemn look the child once wore on her face was replaced by a look akin to relief, then irritation as if she had just now noticed the torrent of rain falling from up above. She tightened her fingers around the sealed medicine bottle that was still clasped in her dainty hands and chucked it far behind her on the road, with all of her strength. She knew she had made her decision, and she also knew there was no more turning back.
Naruto Uzumaki was born a girl; regardless of the masculine name she was given or her henged appearance, but, she was also an orphaned child with a massive burden. She was forced to be the container of the tailed-beast that had just ravaged their village and on the day of her birth no less. Making her situation that much more dangerous for any child, let alone an innocent little girl with no parents to protect her. The Sandaime made it his job to take care of the girl in place of her parents who had died, and for a short time, he did just that, with only the help of a few other trusted shinobi. However, as time passed, the council banned the Sandaime from taking guardianship of Naruto and didn't allow any of those few that helped care for her to take custody either. They even ordered that she no longer live under their care. The order wasn't enough for them though; they wanted to assure that none of those shinobi could help her. So they made sure those shinobi were swamped with time consuming and grueling missions that offered only low pay. In response to all of this abuse, Sarutobi demanded the council stop misusing the shinobi and reluctantly agreed that neither he nor any of those that previously took care of her will shelter her anymore, but there was a catch. He commanded she have her own apartment (funded by the council) and that they won't be able to contact Naruto until she either becomes a shinobi or he/ a trusted shinobi appointed by him is present. Even with an agreement in place saying he would no longer shelter the orphaned girl; Sarutobi couldn't help but still protect her. He decided to teach her a special henge, one very much similar to the Slug Sannin's, Tsunade.
This henge wasn't some kind of illusion and doesn't require the concentration of the academy taught one; this henge uses the chakra coils to physically change the outside of the body and isn't maintained through focus. Not many know of this henge or can even do it due to the amount of chakra that is required, but if you can do it, not even the Byakugan can see the real you. However, even with the magnificent amount of reserves, it doesn't last long without a special seal and can be expelled from outside interference. So the Sandaime created a special type of pill (to replace the kind of seal you'd need) specifically for Naruto to sustain the henge for a certain amount of time and keep it from being expelled even from a third party. He made her promise to always take her pills and never release the henge when she is around anyone or anywhere other than her own home.
This was a big cause for a lot of Naruto's insecurities; she could never understand why she had to hide herself away. She didn't know why the people of the village stared at her, whispered and gossiped about her. She didn't get why it always felt like the villagers could see through her, why it felt like they could tell she was hiding behind a mask, like they could see through her henge. Almost like they could see the vulnerable girl hiding away, but instead of caring, they took advantage of her vulnerability and her need to be accepted. Instead they shunned her, called her a monster, a demon, and a brat. It wasn't until she stole the forbidden scroll to pass her genin exam that she understood the weight those words carried.
Naruto's henged form didn't look all too different from her true-self, but they didn't look exactly alike either, they looked kind of like they could be siblings. They appeared just unalike enough not to be the same, yet similar enough to be related somehow. Her whisker-lined cheeks were a bit fuller than the henge's, giving her face the look of a tomato, especially must be so when she's flustered. Her eyelashes were much longer and thicker, and her lips plumper and more luscious too. She stood even shorter in height than before. Her hair now reached past her hips and her bangs looked a bit similar to that of her henged form, except they were lying flat over her Konoha headband, still spiky but much less so.
After a moment of standing in the rain Naruto had started walking back home to her apartment. She didn't know how everyone was going to react to knowing the truth, but she knew she would need sleep to deal with whatever their reactions where. On her way there she decided to distract herself from those thoughts and focus on something she became curious about after learning of the chūnin exams.
'Why didn't Kakashi-sensei tell us about the exams?' Was her first thought.
'Maybe because you're not ready for them…' a sinister voice rang inside of her head, almost as if in response to her question,
'No. He must've forgotten to tell us! Yeah that's it; he'll tell us tomorrow when we have that team meeting. He knows how much we've improved from that mission to wave.' She managed to drown out the sinister laughing ringing through her head with her own thoughts.
She had begun to take notice of some things after her mission to wave. She realized she was having more stomach and head pains. The pain would get worse when she was injured, or after training. She of course, never once considered going to the hospital to check these things out, for fear of the stares and a hatred of hospitals, but also because it never seemed to last too long or be too bad. Another thing she observed was the voice. The voice appeared to be name-less and never really talked all too much, but when it did, it was always trying to psyche her out or make her feel bad. The voice was loud, and deep, with booming laughter, but strangely enough, she never seemed to be all that afraid of it, almost going as far as to pity it even. For what reason, she had no idea.
She took a shortcut through an alley-way to get home and soon found herself standing in front of her doorstep, now absolutely soaked because of the unrelenting storm. She fumbled through her pouches and got her keys only to find the door already unlocked. She wasn't really all that shocked to find her door already open since she usually forgot to lock it anyway, but she thought she had specifically remembered locking it this morning? She decided she must've been mistaken and didn't even hesitate to turn the handle and walk through the doorway.
Once she was inside however, her state of calm was switched to one of alarm. While she was about to take off her own shoes, she noticed four pairs of men's shoes on the floor and realized there must be people here. She wasted no time in dispersing Kage Bunshin and ordered some to check the perimeter and a few to follow her and check inside of the house. She pulled out a kunai and began to lead the way toward her room.
Once they were nearby the room, all of them hid except for one shadow clone. The one shadow clone was a decoy which she would use to draw out any intruders. The light was off in the room, so the one clone pretended to be Naruto going about her business and casually turned on the light. The second the light was on the four intruders jumped out from their hiding places and screamed "SURPRISE!" much too loudly for Naruto's personal comfort.
From where the real Naruto was hiding, she was silently taking in her surroundings. She noticed her room was cleaned, yet she knows neither her nor Iruka could've cleaned it. That could've only meant one thing considering he was too busy to come by (like he does surprisingly often, kind of like an older brother), it meant that they must have been here long enough to clean it. Cleaning her apartment in itself was already unsettling, but having enough time to do that didn't help the situation any.
The four intruders were a strange bunch, and they all looked to be siblings. Two of them were no doubt, identical twins. They both had spiky, short, red hair that almost looked like a cross between the Teme's and her henge's hairstyle. Their eyes much like the rest of the intruder's eyes were violet. They were taller than her henged form, but not by too much. Both wore dark blue cargo shorts, and forehead protectors. One wore a yellow sleeveless shirt that had a V-neck and under it a black netting shirt that's sleeve reached his elbow. On the back of the shirt was a big red swirl, the same swirl that was on her clothes too. The other twin wore something similar to what his brother was wearing. His shirt wasn't a V-neck though, and rather than wearing the soft light yellow his twin wore, he wore light blue. The shirt also had a hood on the back and he was wearing black biker gloves on his hands.
One of the other two intruders standing beside the twins had blond hair that's color looked exactly like her own. His hair was longer and unlike the rest of them, wasn't at all spiky. His slick hair was parted to the side and half of it was left lying on one side of his face, partially covering one of his violet eyes. He was wearing a black colored midriff sleeveless jacket with a dark blue long-sleeved shirt. On the upper part of the sleeves of the blue shirt was another red spiral just like on the back of his jacket. He wore black shinobi pants and used his forehead protector like a belt. He was taller than the twins by a head and seemed to be the oldest out of all of them, despite not being the tallest or most mature of them all.
The last of the intruders was by far, the tallest of them all. He was much taller than even Kakashi sensei was. He looked just like all the pictures of the Yondaime except his eyes were violet and his hair was red like the twins. Unlike the rest he wore the standard shinobi outfit minus the shoes, complete with an old, worn-out Konoha vest that was missing its collar. He wore a forehead protector around his bicep. His forehead protector was the only one out of the four that had the insignia for the hidden leaf; all the others had protectors with a strange whirlpool engraving on the metal.
The shadow clone acted the part of a surprised Naruto and quickly drew for a kunai. "Wh-who are you and why the hell are you in my home?!" The clone said in an obviously startled voice.
"We told you that hiding was a dumb idea." The crimson-haired twins spoke to the blond man at the same time.
"Shut up, you're-"the blond man didn't get to finish his sentence before a kunai whizzed in front of his face from an angry and startled Naruto clone.
"Answer the question or the next one will be close enough to shave your eyebrows off." The clone said nervously with yet another kunai in her hands by the time she finished her threat.
The blond guy paled slightly. "You really don't know who we are, do you?"
"I know you are four strange men who don't belong in my apartment…"
'Who are these people? Are they famous or something? If they are well-known ninjas then this could be really bad. I think I need to alert Jiji about this, they could be a threat to the village if they're ballsy enough to break into my house and clean it up while they're at it.'
At that moment the twins began to bawl dramatically. "So you don't like us?" They both whined out animatedly.
The tall man with the red hair just sighed a little while pinching the bridge of his nose, as the blond man threw a fit about their immaturity.
"Like you? I have no idea who you guys even are! How am I supposed to like you? Plus you broke into my house! Why are you even still in here? Get out!" The clone said with a sudden outburst of 'bravery'.
Naruto wasn't actually scared, but she was getting pretty anxious at this point. If they refused to leave, there wasn't much she could really do to make them go except alert the shadow clones searching outside and the ones hidden in the room. If things really went down-hill, she would have to use the shadow clones as a distraction and use that to escape the house and alert the Hokage of the intruders. Although it's still risky, it was the best plan she had at the moment for a last-ditch effort of escaping if need be.
The twins suddenly snapped out of their dramatic crying and one of them said "We didn't break into your house."
The other was holding a key in his hand and said, "We got in with this."
"How did you get that key?" The clone was now standing menacingly and seemed ready to attack them, completely contradicting the previous defensive and scared stance she took on earlier. It became painfully obvious that her terrified persona was nothing but a façade with that simple action.
'The only people with keys to this place are Jiji and I, not even the landlords have a key, let alone a bunch of spares to just hand out to strangers.'
"The Hokage gave us the key so we could talk to you." The blond answered.
Naruto eased up a little bit. She didn't trust them or their strangeness and was still far from being off guard, but getting the key from Jiji was the only reasonable answer to explain how they would have gotten one, considering she just saw that she had her key earlier when she went to unlock her already unlocked door.
The clone put the kunai she was clutching back into her pouch and loosened her offensive stance. She was now standing with her arms folded across her chest. "So what do you want to talk about? And who are you guys anyway?"
The blond was about to answer before he was cut off by the tall man with red hair. This was the first time he spoke throughout this whole ordeal. "That's what we came to talk about, Naruto." He paused before speaking again. "We are your older brothers…"
Author's Note: Please leave comments about anything you think might be related to the story! This can include how it made you feel, the quality in which it's written, suggestions for plot twists, and etc. Your reviews are valuable motivators and inspirations! It's due to several reviews that I have edited the first chapter so much and why I am taking Naruto's inner conflicts/character building so seriously. :D
