Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto. Masashi Kishimoto does.
Take note, the storyline occurs during Naruto's training with Kakashi in the Shippuden arc. There are one or two mentions of events that occured in the filler episodes about Naruto's fear of ghosts, but they are not that crucial. I'm sure everyone who watched the Naruto Shippuden movie should know this fact by now.
Scare Season
Prologue:
Despite being an orphan, little Naruto had never grew up alone. If he remembered correctly, in the early years of his life, he often found himself crawling around a spacious room with frantic energy, grabbing spare pieces of paper off the well oiled floor to tear and chew on before a wrinkled, old hand would tug the drool covered paper away gently. The hand would sometimes reach up to pat his head fondly, and Naruto would glance up to see a similarly wrinkled face smiling at him in amusement.
"No, Naruto," a voice would chide softly after that. "These are not for eating."
Naruto had liked that voice with the smiley face. It was always nice to him unlike some of the other faces he saw, though they are nothing but a blur now. But it was alright, since those faces were not important. Smiley wrinkled-face, whom he would later know as the Sandaime, was the most important face to him then. Nothing else mattered.
Then he grew older and upgraded to tottering around the office. The room was just as, if not even more, fascinating to him now that he could start understanding the world around him a little better. Wrinkled-face still sat around and watched him as he grabbed documents off the floor or steal a small scroll off a pile somewhere, stopping him only when Naruto started to feel destructive (crumpling and shredding up the sheets) or particularly adventurous (climbing up the shelves).
The Sandaime dreaded the day the boy could run.
It was obvious the Sandaime was getting on his years, and could not keep up with the additional ball of energy bouncing around his office. Being reinstated as the Hokage had been tough on the once retired old man, and juggling his job while looking out for Naruto was tedious. To make matters worse, the council had been putting increasing amounts of pressure on him to toss the boy out, arguing fiercely that it was unbecoming of the leader of Konoha to associate himself with the demon that wrecked their village.
Of course, as the Hokage, Sarutobi had to have the village's best interest at heart. Though he personally didn't agree with the council and adamantly refused their wishes, he must admit something had to be arranged for the child. He did care for the boy a whole deal, but he couldn't look after him as well as he would have liked with so much responsibility on his hands.
Hence one day, Naruto found himself seated on wrinkled-face's lap, staring quizzically up at the old man once again.
"...Naruto?" the elder asked. "How would you like to meet someone new?"
The small blond scrunched his face up in confusion.
From there on, everything went to hell quite literally, and little Naruto had no idea.
-
-14 years later, Shippuuden arc-
A little over four years ago, team seven took its first baby step into the shinobi world. They were a little group of misfits and though young, had already made somewhat of a name for themselves (among the Konoha nin at least), but for all the wrong reasons.
It must have been the biggest news of the decade (or somewhere close): Copy-ninja Kakashi was finally taking a genin team! What a shock! After years of ruthlessly failing every trio of rookies sent to his care, this was a rather big surprise. Of course some said it was because of Uchiha Sasuke, last survivor of the Uchiha massacre. The members of the Uchiha clan had always been seen as geniuses, and few doubted that Sasuke was any different. Then there was Haruno Sakura, the smartest graduate in class, if her test scores were any indication. She was a pride to the kunoichi of Konoha. With such promising students, who would refuse such a team?
But of course, human nature tends to lead men to view the more negative side of things. Despite having such famous individuals in the group, team seven was actually more notorious than anything else.
And it was because of one Uzumaki Naruto: the blonde haired, orange wearing prankster, loudmouth, three times failure of the genin academy exams, and most importantly...Konoha's own demon brat.
Naruto was the very opposite of the perfect child every parent imagined their child to be. And being the vessel of the nine-tailed demon fox, his reputation was practically at rock bottom. But then, appearances could be deceiving. Over time, slowly but surely, Naruto managed to demonstrate his determination and abilities even with the little amount of skill he had, and started to worm his way into the hearts of many people.
Iruka was damn proud of him; Kakashi was surprised; Tsunade and Jiraiya were both very fond of the blond; Anko found him interesting (and fun to mess with); Ibiki was impressed, and so did a bunch of other chuunins and jounins alike.
Then about a year later, Naruto was cowering at the foot of Tsunade's desk, muttering about how he did not want to go on a mission because he didn't like ghosts.
Iruka was bewildered ("I didn't know that."); Kakashi didn't know what to think; Tsunade and Jiraiya were both annoyed and amused; Anko was very amused ("Pff! I'm scarier than any ghost! But damn am I going to mess with his head later!"), and Ibiki scoffed.
After a year of hard work, Naruto's reputation was a tad destabilized. In the next three years when he was away training with Jiraiya, this news, together with the other stories some of the genin knew, spread like wildfire among those who were close to the blond. When he returned, Yamato and Sai who were made an addition to the group soon knew about it too.
Yamato couldn't be more curious...and pleased.
Though he was supposedly a near emotionless Anbu who was seriously dedicated to his work, Yamato has a sadistic sense of humour. It wasn't every day that you came across a shinobi that was scared so easily after all. You just couldn't let such an opportunity slip.
What harm could it do anyway?
-
Two days later, Kakashi was alarmed when his blond student suddenly shrieked and toppled right off the wooden ledge he was on, creating a splash as he fell into the deep waters below. Hauling his charge out of the water while inquiring what was wrong, the copy-ninja watched as the youth only trashed for a bit and looked upwards frantically at the spot where he fell from, not saying a word.
It was worrying.
"...Naruto?" he asked cautiously, placing a hand on the blond's shoulder only to jerk back again as the other flinched badly and whipped his head around.
Wide, blue eyes regarded him for a moment before recognition settled in. The youth flushed in embarrassment and turned away, laughing off the matter nervously. Kakashi decided not to push.
Training was ended early that day, and Kakashi walked Naruto home.
Only one saw the slightly guilty look Yamato had on his face.
-
TBC