I am the proud owner of jack shit. (I don't own the Naruto franchise.)

On with the show.

'Another shitty day at the academy.' A small blonde boy wearing a simple t-shirt and pants slowly lugs his school bag down an alleyway on his way home.

He stops at a gutter pipe and looks down at his reflection in a small puddle. Dejection. Humiliation. He breaks his gaze and keeps walking.

'I thought the academy might be my chance to finally make some friends.'

The old man said that ninjas shared some of the closest bonds of all. He just wanted one person to care, to not dismiss him as a moron and take his training seriously. Maybe if he could excel in the ninja arts, people would come to appreciate him. But he was a terrible ninja.

His thoughts cycled through frustration, anger, determination and dejection before he finally made it up the steps to his apartment.

In a haze he fumbled with his key for a minute and stepped into his 'home'. "I'm back." He joked. Alone.

He sighed and set his stuff down. before walking to his bed and slumping into it.

DING DONG

'Go away.'

DING DONG

"Go away." He mumbled into his pillow.

DING DONG

"FUCK OFF!" He lifted his head and shouted at the door.

DING DONG

"ARRRRGH!" He pried himself out of bed and headed back to his door and opened it.

"Delivery for you." A plain man said abashedly with his arm extended, his hand grasping a magazine shaped parcel. Naruto's manga.

"You could have slid that through the mail slot you know." Naruto stated annoyedly.

"Sorry, I'll work on that." The man bowed and left. 'Newb.'

Naruto sighed and took his manga back over to his bed to read. Reading heroic tales and learning about the vivid fictional worlds in different manga served as a pastime for him, perfect to blow off steam.

After about 10 minutes of reading he got heart wrenchingly bored. 'The hero travels to the past to fix things but is conveniently weakened so that he has to rebuild all his skills from the ground up. What a crappy plot.'

Needless to say the manga got binned and Naruto started looking for something else to do.

Skipping the commute and the vivid yet vague description of konoha and the surrounding nature, (yes, i'm sure it's very pretty), we find a small blonde sitting atop a roof watching people walk by in the center of the market district. Grocers, shinobi, what have you.

Soon into this, someone catches his eye. "Mizuki." he rolls the name off of his tongue like shitty ramen. He was the one who ruthlessly humiliated him in front of the class today. Said his chakra control was shit and implied that he was a dipshit.

After a moment of consideration he decided he deserved to be pranked. Any good hard hitting prank tho needed proper planning, so he followed him.

Luckily for him, he had a certain skill for avoiding detection. Chakra suppression and situational awareness came instinctually for him, not that his teachers would bear to notice.

As he followed he noticed the path his sensei was taking seemed to stray further from the village. Still he kept following. Soon enough he found himself in a wooded area overlooking a clearing. "Kabuto." Mizuki said simply.

A bespeckled boy a few years younger than Mizuki appeared from the opposite treeline. "I'm supposed to be at the hospital so let's make this quick." The boy smirked. "Did you manage to acquire a, candidate." He drawled lazily.

Mizuki shot a pointed smirk not unlike the ones he gave Naruto. "Indeed I have, he's very gifted in stealth and being the, host…" He emphasized host with a dark humor to his voice. "...He happens to have great sympathies from the hokage. He's a loner, he's quite widely disliked and he seems to be a bit slow on the academic side of things, so no one will notice if, his grades take a, turn." He giggled maniacally.

"Very good." Kabuto sneered, "Orochimaru will be pleased." At that Naruto had immediately left as quietly as he could. He had always known Mizuki was an ass but apparently he was in on some dangerous shit and trying to pull Naruto into it. He would have to look further into this as well as what Mizuki meant by, 'host.'

Konoha Two years and Three months later

Naruto truly hated the academy. His work was being sabotaged at every turn and at this rate he had no hope for graduation. He could not find a suitable tutor out of anyone in the academy for the three basic academy techniques, weapon handling or hand to hand combat. That didn't matter so much for the last two as he could self teach and train them by breaking them down bit by bit and correcting himself accordingly but he would not half ass something as important as building chakra control or learning jutsu so he may need to find outside help.

In more obscure arts, namely stealth, information gathering and tracking, he continued to excel. With that increase in skill came more information, more evidence and more reasons to gain strength. Not friends though, he wouldn't hold his breath.

One of these, the Uchiha massacre. Old news for the most part, but he had gained knowledge of some more interesting tidbits when he was 'not' breaking and entering. One, he had learned that Itachi did it to prevent a Coup, and that Danzo had been the one to suggest overthrowing Hiruzen in the first place. Danzo had made himself a future target for what he had done to the clan of eye wielding ninja.

The second and biggest reason. The Kyuubi. He was less concerned with the fact that he contained it but the circumstances of its appearance. He had gleaned through some good old fashioned eavesdropping that the Kyuubi had just appeared from nowhere. This story was widely coroberrated.

This puzzled him. Something like the Kyuubi to go from undetected to the village's doorstep? Impossible. Impossible and very suspicious. From his limited pool of ninjutsu knowledge, he had to guess it was a summoning contract or another space/time technique that brought it.

As he Pondered these things not for the first time, he once again thought how great it would be to get some proper chakra training. He had made no headway in finding a teacher so it was time for plan b, manipulation. Who would he manipulate? Hmm… The Hokage may be a good place to start.

AN

There's chapter one. Took me awhile to figure out how to lay out this premise so it would be believable. The premises namesake will be more prevalent in the next couple chapters. Peace.