Pain.

That's all he felt right now. He did something wrong, he did not know what, but he was getting beaten because of it. He always does something wrong, and it's always the same person beating him.

A small boy, no more than 6 years old, was getting beaten by an angry woman in her fifties. A heavy smell of alcohol was lingering in the air; showing that the woman was drunk.

This wasn't the first time, it happened before many times; the "demon" as she would call him, would somehow make her angry, most often all it took was the sight of him that made her mad. She would usually just hit if or curse him, but once she got drunk, beatings like this were almost a normal thing.

She would mutter several incoherent sentences under her breath while hitting him;

"...filthy demon.. ...you took my daughter... ...it's all your fault...".

She was crying, the rush of emotions was too much for her and beating him was probably the only thing that helped her, or at least that's what she kept telling herself.

He was already full of bruises, his lip was bleeding and he had a cracked rib.

She hit him once more before turning and leaving the room, the last hit was enough to break that rib.

Living as an orphan was not easy, especially if you happened to be this boy.

His name was Uzumaki Naruto, probably one of the better known kids in the entire city-sized village.

-Elsewhere-

A row of big metal bars in a tall room seemingly separating the darkness on the one side from a set of concrete sewer-like corridors on the other side was standing tall, with a small piece of paper in the middle of it. Kanji for "Seal" was written on it, showing that it was actually a large gate.

The floor was covered in water enough water that a grown person might comfortably swim around in. But this water wasn't supposed to be used for fun. This place was Narutos inner mind, all the water representing the sadness of his life. And for such a young kid there was a lot of sadness in his mind.

If you were to turn your attention to the ceiling of the large room you would see a lot of pipes going towards the other side of the gate through the bars, or maybe that's where they were coming from, from inside the darkness towards the rest of his mind.

A keen eye would notice that there were a lot of pipes that did not connect to anything, and if you were to observe from a very small distance, you would notice that all these pipes seemed to be building themselves; all going towards the gate, either from the darkness or from the corridors on the other side.

Several pipes were connected already, and more were close to being finished. One of them only needed a centimetre or two to connect to it's other side. After a short while it did.

Two giant slitted eyes opened in the darkness, as if the owner just woke up.

-Back in the orphanage-

Naruto was being held by one of his caretakers, they were both crying as he held her close, not wanting to let go of her. She hated seeing him like this, beaten up and broken; he was just a kid, a young boy with no family or anyone else who cared for him.

His wounds were not as awful as the last time, she had some medical training and knew that his broken rib is the only serious injury he suffered;

'The fox will fix that in no time, it always does...' she though, thinking for a few moments on how awful it was that Naruto has to rely on the demon that destroyed so many lives.

In the meantime the great fox demon was putting his plan into motion, it understood what was happening on the outside, and the seal was too tough even for him to break through; but he knew that no seal is perfect, and while its power may not be able to burst out, he could influence the body of his jailer in minor ways, such as completely shutting off his own chakra circulation, and since Narutos body is used to the healing properties of the demonic chakra his body would heal slower than a regular person would if the demons chakra stopped helping.

And that's what the demon did, without its power Naruto would not heal on his own.

This could be seen as if the great demon was helping Naruto, but in fact, it had other things in mind, Naruto would often get beaten like this, and every time he did, the fox would have to heal him. If he didn't heal him this time, maybe they would move him to a place where he wouldn't get beaten and the fox would be able to sleep in peace; since that's all it could do in it's prison. The fox wondered about that too, maybe someone would see it as an act of mercy so it decided to give Naruto a few horrifiying nightmares next time the boy went to sleep.

Naruto started coughing, the chakra that would have helped him heal was now gone. He coughed up some blood and the pain didn't go away as it normally did. His body went crazy as it wasn't used to working alone, and as a result he started developing a fever.

His caretaker was completely lost,

'He should be getting better, not worse, what's happening?'

"Naru-kun? Please Naru-kun, what's going on?

She hated seeing him hurt, the only thing that she could keep telling herself was that he would heal up quickly and it would all be good, now that was gone too, and it didn't look like he was going to be better any time soon.

Hospital, that's where he needed to be, that's where everyone else would go when the pain wouldn't go away, that's the place where Naruto needed to be now. He was never sent to a hospital, he healed fast, and whenever he got beaten he would just be left there on the floor of his small room, to crawl back to his bed and literally sleep it off.

She took him to the hospital, rushing through the streets at night, no one else in sight. The number of doctors who worked at night was not big, but still, not many people needed help at this time of day.

Checking the boy into the hospital was a quick process, and he was quickly taken to one of the doctors.

The fox was watching intently, it waited for the oportunity to release a torrent of healing energy into the boys body at any sign of danger, with that much concentration, he would be able to heal any injury in a matter of seconds, giving the boy a chance to run away. After all, the fox would reincarnate into itself again in a few years, in case it's container got killed, but reincarnation was a very painful thing.

Fortunately nothing happened, and the doctor was well on his way to heal all the injuries.

Sarutobi Hiruzen was an old man, he would call himself too old sometimes, but that was only when something troublesome would happen, and he knew that in the past few months he didn't have a strong headache, which meant that there was going to be one very soon.

"Hokage-sama, reporting in, Uzumaki Naruto has been admitted into the hospital." one of his personal guards said as he knelt before him after appearing in a poof of smoke.

"What? Is he okay? What are his injuries?"

"Yes, his injuries are not life threatening, the doctor has requested you to come there at your earliest convenience."

"Right, go ahead and tell him I'm on my way."

After the ANBU guard disappeared, the aged man put on his hat and left the room thinking,

'Is it an assassination attempt? It could be an accident but something tells me there's more...'

He got to the hospital quickly, and the nurse took him straight to the room in which Naruto was. The doctor was already finished treating Naruto and the boy was asleep in a bed, with the doctor filling out his charts and waiting for the Hokage.

"Hokage-sama" the doctor bowed as the man entered the small hospital room.

"How is he, doctor?"

"He's fine... that is, he's fine now; before I treated him he was..." and he trailed off when he saw the boy squirming.

"Please follow me to my office, it's only a few doors away..." the doctor said and left the room with the Hokage following behind him. Once they were inside he continued.

"Basically I have two bad news, the first being, he's getting beaten in that orphanage."

"What? Do you know who it is?"

"Unfortunately, no, the caretaker that brought him here wouldn't say any more, I barely got this much out of her, and after she found out that Naruto would be fine, she left immediately."

The Hokage thought for a few moments about several things, how to find out who did it, and how to punish them being the two main thoughts in his mind.

"You said there were 2 bad news?"

"Yes, you see the "prisoner" should have been able to take care of these kind of injuries in the time it took the woman to get Naruto-kun from the orphanage to the hospital, yet it didn't. For some reason, the dem... the "prisoner" didn't or wasn't able to heal his host." The doctor explained, greatly worrying the Hokage.

"I also managed to check the rest of his body, and I can safely say that he already had more than just a few broken bones in the last several years."

This was enough for the Hokage, he raised his hand even though the man stopped talking,

"I'll stay with him tonight, when will he be able to move?"

"As soon as he wakes up and is checked out, his injuries were not too difficult to heal." the Hokage nodded to that, and left the office.

The old man called for one of his guards and gave a short order before entering the room.

After a few minutes of waiting, he heard a knock on the door; he opened them and welcomed a middle-aged man with long blonde hair.

"Good evening Inoichi, I'm sorry for disturbing you this late in the evening, but I'm not sure if this can wait."

"It's not a problem Hokage-sama, what is it that you needed me to do?" Inoichi asked and Hokage answered by showing him towards Naruto.

"The boy went through a lot, it turns out I was a fool to trust the orphanage, he was beaten many times there, the doctor tells me that some of his bones have been broken."

Inoichi was a member of an interrogations division, and torture was not something unknown to him. But he was also a compassionate man, especially when it concerned kids, he himself had a young daughter of Naruto's age, and harming children was one of those things that he hated in this world.

"What seems more alarming is that the fox isn't healing his latest injuries, and that could mean that there is something wrong with the seal. I would like you to use your clan techniques to check the state of his mind from the inside, maybe you can find out what is happening with him."

This was not something Inoichi was expecting, infiltrating the mind of a jinchuuriki was definitely not a safe thing, but he had to admit that it was something he wanted to try just to see what it was like.

"I'm not sure what will happen, but I can try Hokage-sama." At that, Inoichi started his preparations, visibly tense.

It took only a few moments for him to prepare, and after he was done, he whispered the name of his jutsu and gently placed his hand on Narutos head.

-Narutos mind-

Inoichi found himself in deep water, it was difficult to walk around quickly with all the water, and he thought about trying to swim but decided against it, he never liked it when he had to invade a privacy of another person, and swimming didn't seem appropriate.

He tried his best to find a way through all the corridors and he made himself a mental map of them, even though he knew that they could change in a few seconds sometimes. He was aware that water meant sadness in the minds of most people and while he was wandering around through the long corridor he would eventually find a barred door through which he would see a painful memory from the short life Naruto has lived.

After a while, he was sad as well, the things this poor boy went through were cruel, some people would ignore him, some would curse him, and some would harm him, all the beatings the boy went through were there, each one with its own door, each one more painful than the last one.

Inoichi didn't even notice when he came close to the largest and probably the most important room in the entire place. He saw that the next room was better lighted and went ahead not knowing what he'll see.

He was surprised, to say the least, he was never inside a mind of a jinchuuriki and seeing a giant barred gate with a seal over it was a new experience for him, but he knew exactly what he was looking at.

The great beast seemed to be asleep so he decided to step inside the room, and see if there was anything wrong from the inside. He was as silent as possible in the deep water but then he stopped,

'Wait, if I can actually see the seal, that means that if there's anything wrong with the seal on the body, it should be visible here too, and since it's connected that way, maybe I can imagine myself using chakra in this place...'

His idea worked, and he managed to climb out of the water and stand steadily on it's surface. He then looked up towards the piping,

'Those must be the chakra conduits, if there's something wrong with them, we'll need another expert to fix them.'

With that, he started climbing the straight wall to see the pipes from up close. While he was focused on the wall a single red eye opened and observed him for a while. After a few minutes of inspection he didn't find anything out of the ordinary and he started climbing down towards the water, not wanting to jump down and risk waking the fox.

He looked towards the seal on the gate and thought about looking at it from up close,

'I'm already here, so I could try and check it out from up there, and the fox is supposed to be on the other side of that gate, so I'm fine...' and he slowly walked to the bottom of the gate, and up the central bar towards the paper.

He looked closely at it, he didn't notice anything strange, the ink seemed dry and all seemed fine. He couldn't find anything else to look at and he wanted to see if the paper was sticking to the gate,

'Al right I'll just check if it's stuck, nothing else, I don't want to destroy Konoha just because I was reckless...'

As his hand was approaching the paper both eyes in the darkness opened but he was too close to the gate to be able to see anything behind it.

BANG!

A loud crash was made by 4 large claws hitting the iron gates with enough force to destroy an entire mountain but the gate didn't move at all, but Inoichi did move; he flew back to the entrance of the room, by the time he got out of the water and looked back the claw was no longer visible. Instead there were two giant red eyes watching him from that blackness behind the bars.

If he wasn't a veteran ninja, he was sure he would have filled his pants by now.

"Impudent mortal, why are you here?" The great Kyuubi commanded.

Inoichi was still shaken from the crash and he tried his best to keep his mission in mind.

'It's sealed, it can't hurt me, I'm safe here...'

"Um...I was... um... the... chakra conduits... I mean, the injuries... didn't heal, and the... Hokage sent me..." Inoichi was having more trouble composing his sentences, mainly because during his talking more and more of the fox became visible, and the teeth didn't look pleasant.

"I choose not to heal my prison, and I will refuse to do so, until he is... happy..." The fox spat out the last word, and Inoichi was confused,

'It wants Naruto to be happy, why? Does it have a soft spot for him, that could be beneficial for the village, or considering how we've treated him so far, it could be the fall of us all...'

"That pitiful human child is weak, he cries whenever there is something wrong, his sadness is drowning this place in water, and I. Don't. Like. Water. The giant fox said, emphasizing the last several words."

Inoichi just dumbly nodded and walked away slowly not turning his back to the great demon.

It was dawn when Naruto woke up and he was greeted by that old man he remembered from the orphanage; he would come visit him and always bring a present.

"Ojii-san!" He didn't care where he was, or why he was there, the only important thing was that there was someone who liked him right there. He jumped out of the bed and hugged the old man, the Hokage returning the hug.

"Good morning Naruto, are you feeling all right now?"

After a bit of thinking Naruto remembered what happened last night, and his childish smile disappeared.

"Naruto, I know what happened last night, can you show me the person who hit you last night?"

The boy looked at the floor,

"If I tell anyone she'll hit me again..."

"I wont let anyone hit you ever again, I promise Naruto." The aged man said with confidence, making the boy look at him, his smile slowly reappeared and he nodded.

By the time they got out of the hospital, it was early morning, probably the busiest time of the day in Konoha. It wasn't a long walk, it took them less than half an hour to get to the orphanage, but the boy noticed something.

"Ojii-san, why do people bow to you all the time?" the boy asked, surprised that the people showed such respect for the old man, and yet looked at him with hate and contempt in their eyes.

"Well, that's because I'm the Hokage, I'm a very important person in the village."

"What's a Hokage?" he was still confused.

"The Hokage is the strongest ninja in a ninja village, he is also the leader of that village and most importantly the protector of everyone in the village. And because of that, he is also a very respected person."

After a bit of thinking Naruto continued,

"Do you think I could be a Hokage one day?" His face was hopeful, he was hoping that one day he could rise to such a great position.

"Well, it's not an easy job to do, there are many things that you need to be a Hokage; tell me, why do you want to be Hokage?"

Naruto thought for a while before answering,

"I want to be strong, if I'm strong, no one can hit me; I also want people to respect me, whenever someone looks at me it feels like they hate me." his face was no longer radiating happiness, he was serious about his reasons.

"Your reasons are wrong, Naruto." the Hokage said,

"What? But why?" Naruto was heartbroken,

"If you want to be strong, then train, you will get stronger that way, but physical strength is not all there is to life. You must find people that you care about, you must find people that are precious to you, you must find people whose lives are more important to you than your own life, if you dedicate yourself and all your power to protecting those people, you will be strong and have a full life." it was a bit harsh, but he needed to show Naruto that his life will be hard, and having friends was what he needed.

"If you want respect, then you have to earn it, become powerful but kind, be caring of other people but protective of your friends; show everyone why they should respect you, instead of fearing you."

Naruto was shocked at the truths of life; he didn't know what to say...

"I think I understand; there's something different about me, and that's why all those people hate me, if I want respect, I'll have to show them that they should respect me. Ojii-san, do you have a lot of precious people?" Naruto said, completely serious.

"Yes, everyone in this village is precious to me, and I would gladly give my life to protect any one of them." the Hokage answered, satisfying Naruto. He himself was satisfied with Narutos answer and his spirit,

'He can... no, he will become a great man one day, I'm sure of it.' Hiruzen thought with a small satisfied smile on his face.

The rest of their walk was mostly silent with Naruto thinking of his new goal in life, and Hiruzen thinking of other things. As they arrived in front of the large brown building, Naruto stepped behind his "grandpa", afraid of the bad woman. The Hokage placed a hand on Narutos shoulder and they walked inside together, soon surrounded by all the orphanage staff. The kids that were there were happy, mostly because they remembered the old man from before. The staff was apprehensive, they obviously knew about what happened last night.

After some detailed interrogation and a few new job openings became available at the orphanage, Hokage decided that the matter was settled.

The innocent staff was warned to not keep matters like that a secret but instead report them to someone, Naruto was placed back into the orphanage with Sarutobi planning on spending as much time as he could with him in the next few years.