Naruto raised his head warily from his desk, observing his classmates suspiciously. So close... class would be over in a couple minutes. Then he'd be freed from this living hell. It was still beyond him why Arisu and Hiro insisted that they continue to live in the village. Hadn't they learned anything from their past encounters?

'Although,' thought Naruto, his eyes softening as they landed on a certian group of people, 'not all humans are bad, I suppose.' His friends, or as he thought of them, his 'special human pack', sat in front of him, working studiously at last minute work. His eyes traced over each of them warmly. Sakura, the brains of the pack. Her closest friend Ino,the attitude. Shikimaru, the lazy stratigist. Choji, his comrade. Shino, calm and secretive. Hinata, sweet and shy. Kiba, strong and fierce. And Sasuke, Narutos loyal friend and rival. These humans alone were trustworthy packmates.

Then there were Arisu and Hiro, his parent figures, both fox demons who were assigned to raise him. Arisu, a prankster and fierce protector. Hiro, foul tempered and socially akward. Both loving and doting packmates...well, sometimes. He still thought that Arisu might have a screw loose...

Sighing,Naruto turned to look out the window... and nearly fell out of his chair. A dark blue fox was sitting demurely outside the window, looking into the classroom with interest. Okay, maybe she had ten screws loose...

His eye twitched. If it had been him in fox form, anyone giving him a passing glance would assume he was a normal fox. Orange wasn't too far off to be considered normal to the passing glance, which is all humans tend to give anyway. And Hiro with his gray and brown coat would blend in anywhere. But Arisu...no one could ever mistake her blue coat as being normal.

He glared at her and mouthed 'get out... now'. She just stared blankly at him, and he began motioning at her to leave wildly.

"Mr Uzumaki...care to stop goofing off and answer the question on the board?"

Mentally cursing, he turned to face their sensei for the day, Mizuki. He didn't know why, but for some reason Mizuki seemed to hate him...well, hated him more than the other villagers did, which was saying something. Then he gave a little smirk. Well, maybe his fox protectors weren't completely useless. One thing they had taught him was that you could easily read weaker minds. It wasn't like reading a book... it was more like having notions and ideas float into your head.You just had to listen to them. Mizuki was definitely in that catagory of weaker minds.

"4.2296 km per hour. The kunai will miss," he said loftily, watching the teachers face turn an ugly shade of puce before he whirled arround to harass some other unsuspecting students.

He turned back to the window in time to see a look of pride flash across the fox's face before she stood up and dashed away.

Kiba and Ino snickered in front of him, and Choji stopped munching on his bag of chips long enough to flash him a thumbs up.

"Remember," Mizuki cakked just as the bell rang,"your final exams to become ninja will be tomorrow."

The attitude of his pack instantly went from relaxed to excited and tense. 'Hm...' Naruto pondered, 'Just one more day.'