Stronger

Summary: When Naruto turned six years old, he was kicked out of the orphanage and forced to survive on his own. Spying on some academy students, he learned the Henge no Jutsu and created a new identity for himself in order to live in a world that would like nothing more than to break him. Thus, ten year old Katsumi Makoto was born.

(WARNING! Slash, OOC characters, possible bashing, possible all male multi-pairing, possible m-preg, strong Naruto, possible spoilers, possible grammar and spelling mistakes (tell me if you find any please), erratic updates at best, diverging from canon)

Note: So I am well aware I should't be starting a new story, but I just couldn't stay away from this. So yeah, updates will definitely be erratic, I don't have a schedule for when I write and I can't exactly update a non-existing chapter.

Edited 2016/03/07

Chapter One

Naruto was at the academy and they were teaching the students the Henge no Jutsu. It was apparently a chakra technique that would make you look like someone else and at the moment, it was exactly what Uzumaki Naruto needed. It had been a month since he had been kicked out of the orphanage he had spent his six year of life in and he was already sick of it. He'd spent the days looking for food and whatever money he could find and the nights sleeping in an alley he had found. When he wasn't doing that, he was getting beaten by some villager or another. The only upside was that he learned to hide his presence from the drunk ninja's that would sometimes join.

So now he was outside the ninja academy where a lesson was taking place on how to do a henge and though he could barely hear what they were saying because of the only slightly opened window he was crouched beside, he saw enough to make up for it. He watched, transfixed, as the teacher showed the class the result of a correctly done henge thinking about how helpful it would be if he knew that. He had some money saved up because no-one would let him buy anything from their shops and when they did, it was so overcharged it was barely worth it.

If he could do the henge than he might actually survive past his eight birthday.

At the start, he had waited for Hokage-jiji to find him and help him, but when a week passed and he didn't come, Naruto came to the conclusion that he would need to survive on his own. As such, he had finally found his way to the ninja academy. He could use chakra, but his control wasn't very good, but for a henge, it would need a lot of chakra anyway, right? It was what he needed nonetheless.

After looking as the teacher repeated the process three more times, he left when it was the students time to try. During his time running away from drunk ninja's, they always seemed to find him easier if he used chakra so he could obviously not try it so close to the academy. Once he was at a unused training ground, he quickly started working on the henge. Four hours later, he could do it well enough that he was satisfied. Now the only problem was finding an identity he liked.

The first thing was his whisker-like marks on his cheeks. People could easily tell who he was as as far as he knew, he was the only one with the marks in Konoha. The next was his hair, blond hair was unusual and he would need to change the color. However, he didn't want black or brown hair. After thinking about it for a while, he decided on red. He would keep his hair the same, only slightly longer os it went past his shoulders, and change the color to deep red. He would leave his eyes as they were.

Then came the next problem. Everyone knew how old he was. He would either need to make himself older, especially if he wanted to find a job and get more money without having to steal, or younger and hope he would be welcomed back into the orphanage as someone else. But he didn't want to be younger and he didn't want to go back to the orphanage that he had always hated. He didn't want to know how the Matron would treat him if she thought he was someone else.

Naruto thought and decided that age ten would be best, it would hopefully be old enough for him to get a job somewhere and than maybe he could even buy his own apartment!

Now, Naruto didn't have the best chakra control and had missed a few parts when learning the jutsu, making a new altogether jutsu thanks to the Kyuubi's chakra that had slowly but surely been turned into his own since the Kyuubi was sealed into him. And as he didn't know the henge was supposed to be just an illusion, the result was...different. His henge was solid and physically changed his body until he got the result he wanted. The mix of his own and the demonic chakra easily found the red gene in his DNA and didn't waste any time in pulling it to the front and equally fast aged him around four years. The slightly starved look was still there together with the lean muscles and the blue eyes.

The result was a different person. Of course, there was similarities, but no-one would want to look closer. They didn't want to think that the demon brat would have family somewhere and as such, they wouldn't look closer. To them, Naruto was not human and should stay that way. Thankfully his clothes were big enough that they still fit. The black shirt and orange jacket together with the orange pants were about the only clothes he had.

Naruto looked down at himself and after a few stumbles while he got used to the shift in balance, he started walking away from the training ground. It was time to find work.

During his walking, he came to the realization that he needed a new name. He didn't have a problem with his name, but if he went around calling himself Naruto, then it would ruin everything. He needed a new name that started with different letters and that actually meant something unlike Naruto which meant fishcake and was a ramen topping.

Not that he didn't like ramen, in fact he loved it.

In the end, he settled for Makoto. He would decide on a surname later.

Naruto quickly walked into Konoha. His first order of business was to find a job and then it was to get food. Real food, not scraps from a dumpster.

It was surreal to him. The way the people treated him when they thought he was someone else. It suddenly hit him that he could finally do all of the things he wasn't allowed to before. He would even be allowed into the public library! He was lucky that a genin who had been on babysitting watch at the orphanage had taught him to read and that he picked it up fast. He had been sad when he learned she had died on duty, but maybe now he could go and visit the Memorial Stone for the people who was Killed In Action. He hadn't been allowed to before.

He walked through the market place, trying to figure out something he could do. Eventually he entered a clothes shop. Perhaps he could work as a cashier. Unfortunately, it turned out that the shop wasn't hiring. This process repeated itself until he came across a small weapons store.

The shop was small and the walls were filled with weapons of different kinds and in the left corner, there was even some shinobi clothing. Naruto almost salivated thinking about wearing such clothes himself.

A man walked out from a room with a smile on his face and Naruto bowed and smiled back. "My name is Katsumi Makoto, I was wondering if you are hiring?"

"Aren't you a little young to be looking for a job? You should be in school."

Naruto looked at him in the eyes and tried to let him know he was desperate. I need money. Are you hiring?"

"Alright, I guess we kind find something for you to do."

— —

The next three weeks went by relatively fast as he had something to do. His new boss, Katsu Takeshi, was a kind man in his mid forties that used to be a traveling samurai before he decided to settle in Konoha some five years ago. As such, he wasn't there at the time of the Kyuubi attack and as he hadn't lost any family in it, he didn't have any foul feelings for Naruto. Though he didn't know who Makoto really was, he was kind and Naruto came to the conclusion that he liked working in the shop. Katsu-san even taught him how to properly take care of weapons.

Naruto trained in chakra control in his free time and Katsu-san had sworn he was going to show him the basics of swords. To be honest, Naruto was having the time of his life and by the end of the month he would get his first payment and then he would be able to buy an apartment for himself and get away from the streets. He had never been happier.

Katsu-san came out from behind the shop, a box of kunai's in his hands. "Makoto, you've talked about the academy quite a lot, do you want to become a shinobi?"

Naruto nodded and smiled. "Yeah, I wanna be a kick-ass ninja, Katsu-san!"

"Well, I know you said that you don't have much alone time, so I came up with a solution. If you know enough, you can take the graduation exam at the end of the year. You'll need to know a lot though, but the academy can get you a pass to get into the shinobi part of the library without any trouble. Mostly, this way is used by clan kids that doesn't have enough time to go to the academy. However, because you won't be there at classes, you will automatically be the dead last no matter how well you do on the exam." said Katsu-san.

"Seriously?" Naruto screamed. "Awesome! I'm gonna be a ninja." And thus, he was dancing in his head.

— —

Studying for taking the exam without any help but books was a lot harder than what Naruto had thought. Takeshi — because he insisted he wasn't good with formal stuff, and didn't he call him Makoto? — helped him with kenjutsu and taijutsu. Well, really it was just hand to hand combat but it was better than nothing and he had already checked with the academy. He didn't have to know the academy style taijutsu as long as he knew some form of hand to hand combat that he was passable in. Other then that, what he focused most on was chakra control.

He had become fascinated by genjutsu when he read about it and knowing how to heal himself was always a plus. The problem was that both of those skills required excellent chakra control. Control that he didn't have.

The next year went by fast. Naruto made it a habit of sitting in on lessons at the academy once a month if he had the time, though usually it wasn't with the class he would graduate with if he managed it. He did learn how to erase all evidence of a camp on one of those lessons though. And how to make storage seals. Those he made good use of. Two months after he started working for Takeshi, he rented an apartment. It wasn't anything fancy, in fact it was quite rundown and didn't even have warm water. However, it was far better then before and if he lived there, it would be faster to save up enough money to buy a better place. Besides, ninja stuff and weapons was expensive.

Naruto also met with Sarutobi-jiji and came to the conclusion that he was blind. Naruto started getting money once a month though, and he was pretty sure he was meant to buy an apartment with it. He showed Hokage-jiji the alley where he slept and the Matron was ordered to accept him back into the orphanage. The Matron hated him however, and chased him away just as quickly as before. Naruto didn't much care for it, he quite liked how he lived now.

And so the time passed. Naruto trained the best he could with taijutsu and kenjutsu, hoping that if he got a high enough score on it, it would be enough to negate the things he didn't know. History and books were boring. The only things he really knew of history was that the Yondaime Hokage, Namikaze Minato, was a hero who died fighting the Kyuubi no Youko. Basically, that was all he bothered to know, and he didn't much care for the past either way. He'd also started to learn how to cook. Once Takeshi found out he was an orphan and living on his own — he didn't need to know he had lived on the streets for months before his current residence — he had started to teach Naruto how to cook, saying it was a skill everybody needed.

Naruto wasn't exactly complaining.

"So how are your studies going?" Takeshi asked.

Naruto slurped up the last of the ramen in the bowl and asked for another miso ramen. He really loved ramen. "Good I think. I managed the kawarimi a few days ago and I know the henge. My chakra control is better too. I've been practicing, but no matter how hard I try, I just can't get the bunshin right. They always come out looking dead and colourless." he pouted.

Takeshi laughed. "I'm sure it'll solve itself as long as you continue to practice and train. If you don't try, you will never know."

"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up old man. I'd like to see you try to make a bunshin."

Naruto ignored the mock hurt look Takeshi gave him and shaked his head in a way that suggested he was used to it. He could see Teuchi and Ayame, the owner of Ichiraku Ramen and his daughter, laughing at them. Honestly, sometimes Takeshi acted more childish than he did.

Thinking of his training did little to improve his mood. It was a lot harder to train when he didn't have a teacher helping him. Sometimes he could get some answers out some chuunin and genin's feeling helpful, but it wasn't often. Despite spending around an hour every day doing chakra control exercises, his chakra control wasn't getting much better and he was running out of patience.

Honestly, sometimes he thought it was more work then it was worth. He was six years old for heaven's sake and he had a short attention span. As much as he wanted to be a famous shinobi, he liked working with Takeshi. But then he thought how much he could change the world and the things he could learn. Besides, he wanted to see the world and the easiest way to do that was to become a ninja.

Once he was back at his apartment after eating ramen with Takeshi, he immediatly sat down on the floor and took out the bag of leaves he had. He was up to 16 leaves and thought he had made good progress.

The leaf exercise was a basic one but it was one that was easiest to do and he didn't need to go anywhere special to do it as long as he kept a couple of leaves in his apartment. He started small and gradually added more leaves to his body—and he looked like himself now—and upping the difficulty. It got harder as time passed and he added more leaves, but he needed to do this exercise if he wanted to seriously study medic-ninjutsu. Two hours later, and he went to bed.

Naruto was aware that there was a very large chance he would fail the exam, especially as aside from Takeshi, no-one had trained him. He wasn't a clan kid and didn't have powerful parents that could teach him stuff. But he so wanted to pass. He wanted to be a ninja and he wanted people to respect him. To look at him and see him. Not to call him "demon brat" and throw rotten food at him. To acknowledge him.

Really, he just wanted people to smile at him.