Namikaze Naruto. He may have been called many things demon, monster, murderer (to name a few) – but he was, essentially, the one who kept the villagers and Shinobi sane, happy even. He never gave up because that was his Nindo, his ninja way. Through war he was Konoha's support, through darkness he was their light and through hopelessness he was their hope.

At first many had hated him for the burden he'd been forced to shoulder since birth- namely a teensy, weensy little demon fox with homicidal tendencies. For what they'd deemed to be appropriate reasons they had feared, and thus ostracized him. Not literally, of course; he was made to remain in the village of his origin but was avoided and hated by almost all. There had been hundreds of attempts on his life by the time he was merely 13, still a child by most all definitions. Somewhere along the line he'd realized, though, that if he showed any sign of power things became worse- the beatings came more often and from more people, people told their children to get further away from him than they normally did. If he showed strength they hated him more. So that's when he decided to take on a new alias and so came to live Naruto the dead-last, orange loving nuisance. And his life, although still bad by most standards, became better.

But when you put on a mask, gradually it grows harder to show your real self.

That's why it came as such a surprise when Naruto suddenly stopped being that 'cursed but happy little boy', as people would come to say later, and turned into what they'd all feared from the start; a monster.