Haha, I should be filling out a FAFSA form and some scholarships. Anyway, I had another idea, which is never a good thing, and when your motivation to keep going on with school crap is less than zero, it doesn't help. Shit, I don't even know if I want to go to college anymore.

I'm tired, I'm done with everything, and I want to write. This is what ya'll get for now. Sorry for making you listen to me.

ANYWAY: this story is hopefully more than the half-baked idea I started with in 5th hour a few days ago. Title subject to change, as when I started this, it was called, 'But What is It, Really?' and I hated it and it didn't make sense. Also, this is going to be a two-shot thing, but it really depends on how much time I have and how well I use it. No yaoi or parings, but if you squint and turn the fic on its side, you can see a lot of bromance sorta and my frustration at the government.

Also, everyone in this is around 7-8 years old. At least in this chapter, anyway.

SUMMARY IN LENGTH: (AU) Naruto finds a boy claiming to have run away in the forest. Will he arrest this trespasser in the name of the Hidden Leaf, or will they become unlikely friends? Of course, this strange boy has his share of secrets, just what exactly are they?

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CHAPTER 1

The Village Hidden in the Leaves, 10 years ago…

"So what do you really want to be when you grow up?"

The small blonde boy glanced up at the girl standing in front of him. "I told you, Sakura!" he insisted in a frustrated voice. "I'm gonna be the Hokage!"

"Not if I'm Hokage first!"

"I'll beat you with my ninja training!" the boy stood and dropped into a clumsy stance. "I'll fight you right now! I'm really trained! Believe it!"

Sakura sighed. "I'm not gonna fight you, Naruto! I was taught to never hit a girl!"

"I'm not a girl!" Naruto stomped his foot. "I don't even look like a girl! Neji has longer hair than me! He's the girl!"

Sakura laughed. "Really? You should tell Ino that. She's the one who called you a girl in the first place!"

Naruto let out a roar of fury. Being the manly little bugger he was, he wouldn't just sit idly by and let that remark go. No, he had to defend his manliness. At all costs.

"I'll fight Ino, then!"

Sakura shrugged. "Ok, but she's gonna kick your butt. I think I saw her out at the training field, but you should wait—"

Naruto didn't waste a second in bolting toward the gate to leave the village. It was only a short trek to the training field…

…Or so he was told.

He technically wasn't allowed to leave the village yet. The older kids, the ones actually being trained to be shinobi, were lead in groups to the field to practice their jutsus usually every other day. They were always chaperoned by a senior ninja.

Ignoring Sakura's shouts for him to stop being a blockhead and come back, he darted out of the large gate doors and onto the beaten track. He had watched ninja leave the village to train before, so he knew where to go.

At least until he came to a split in the path, one way leading to a wider path, the other to a less-trodden one.

"Um…" Naruto hesitated and ran a hand through his messy hair. "Uh…" Maybe if I follow one path for a little and if it doesn't open up to the training field, I can turn around and take the other one!

"Yeah, that's a good idea," he thought to himself. With an innocent grin, he began walking down the more worn path with the confidence of a much more skilled ninja. The cocky attitude quickly disappeared as the forest became denser and denser, the trail narrower and narrower until the footpath was completely invisible.

"Uh oh…!" he gulped. "Um…anyone there? I'm lost…!"

Of course, no one answered him. He turned completely around and started walking again, this time a little quicker than before, hoping to find the path he had so stupidly strayed from.

"Maybe I should have waited for Ino to come back…" Naruto muttered to himself. Almost as an afterthought, he added, "No, then that would make her think I was more like a girl. I'm a man. I go and meet my destiny head on. I don't wait for it to happen."

Ego boosted to sky-high levels again, he sighed in relief as he spotted the path. He took off at a run, following the twists and curves of the worn-away grass to a rather rickety old bridge—

…A bridge?

"There's no bridge back to the village!" Naruto wailed. "I'm lost! I'll never get to prove Sakura wrong and become the Hokage! I'll never get to prove to Ino I'm not a girl! And I'll never taste a delicious bowl of ramen ever again! I'll never—!"

His crying was abruptly stopped by a sound in a group of bushes nearby. Dropping into the shoddy fighting stance, he faced the direction of the sound. "W-who's there?"

No one answered.

"I'm warning you, I'm gonna be the future Hokage!" Naruto continued, "and when I am, I'll banish you!"

A stick snapped in the bush, and a rather confused squirrel tumbled out of it. Naruto quickly gave up the fighting stance, glad that no one had seen his overreaction.

Trying to rid the blush that was rising to his cheeks, he turned around and nearly ran face-first into someone hanging from a low-growing tree branch.

"Hi!"

"AAAHH!"

Naruto fell backward, spraining his wrist as he tried to cushion his fall. He had no weapons, what if this person was going to kill him? What if he was a bounty hunter who hunted those little ninjas with strange cat whiskers on their faces?

Naruto stared up at the boy that hung by his feet. He was grinning, a light blue glow surrounding his sandals.

He…he's gotta be only a year older than me! And he can control his chakra so well! Naruto momentarily forgot about the pain in his wrist as the boy jumped down, landing expertly on his feet and brushing a mop of bright blonde hair out of his eyes.

"W-who're you?" Naruto stuttered. "And how did you find me? I-I'll fight you!"

"Fight me, un?" the boy's cheerful expression faded. "Why?"

"B-because…" Because you scared me? No, that wasn't a thing a Hokage would say. "Because you're trespassing!" That sounded better.

"I am?" The boy asked. "Oh, I'm sorry, un." He buried his hands in his pockets.

Naruto didn't know what to do next. He had gotten this far, and he was still intact. The strange ninja boy hadn't taken his head off with some strange jutsu yet. This was his moment to be a true leader and take a prisoner back to the Hidden Leaf Village!

"You're going to come with me!" Naruto said, standing up and crossing his arms. Even at his full height, he wasn't taller than the other boy.

"Are you arresting me?" the boy blinked.

"Yeah, as a matter of fact, I am! Believe it!" Naruto grabbed his arm. "You're a prisoner of the Village Hidden in the Leaves!"

The boy pulled out of his grasp. "No, un! You can't do that, yeah!" he began to stutter and add a strange sound after his sentences. "I just got away, un! I can't go back!"

"Why not?" Naruto asked.

The boy stared at the ground. "Because…I'm a freak, yeah."

"You're not that freaky." Naruto said. Why was he saying this? This strange boy was a prisoner of war! The Hokage wasn't supposed to be giving reassurance to prisoners of war! "Look at me, see?"

Naruto traced the strange whisker-marks on his face. "I don't know why these are here or why I got 'em, but everyone seems to think that makes me a freak. You don't look that freaky. Except for your haircut. Do people think you're a girl, too?"

The boy stared at him for a moment. "…Sometimes." He admitted.

"I get called a girl all the time and I didn't even look like one!" Naruto said. "So, how about we be freaks together?"

"Like friends, un? But I thought you were arresting me."

Naruto thought for a few seconds. Here was a strange boy who looked like a girl out in the middle of nowhere, who looked perfectly fine (except for his haircut) and not like a freak. Was he escaping from something? And if so, it was Naruto's duty to make sure he wasn't recaptured. That would be the way of the Hokage.

He shook his head. "Nah."

"Really?" the boy looked a bit happier.

"Believe it!" Naruto grinned. "I'm not gonna arrest you anymore. I'm Naruto! What's your name?"

The boy hesitated a bit. "I'm Deidara, un."

"Wanna go back to my village with me? I won't arrest you."

Deidara shook his head. "No…Like I said, I'm a freak. If they see me, they won't hesitate to really arrest me, yeah."

"Why?" Naruto asked. "You look normal to me!"

Deidara glanced around the forest, as though checking to make sure no one was coming. "Want to see something cool, un?"

"Yeah!"

Deidara fished around for something in his pocket and held out a clenched fist. "Ready?"

"Yeah!" Naruto was practically bouncing with anticipation.

Deidara threw back his arm, launching something white into the air. The object spread tiny wings and drifted back down, where it landed on his head. Naruto poked at the seemingly magical creature that had taken to nesting on his new friend's head. "It's a bird…? Why is it squishy?"

"It's made of clay, un." Deidara said, stowing his hands in his pockets again. "I can make a lot of them…and other things, too. Dragons and bigger birds."

"That's awesome!"

"It is." Deidara nodded. "It's art, un."

"Is this why you'd be arrested?" Naruto lowered his voice. "Because you are so cool that you got kicked out of your village?"

"No…" Deidara reached up with a semi-closed fist and retrieved the tiny bird from his head. "It's how I make them, un. And what I do with them."

"How do you make them? I wanna know!" Naruto grinned. "Will you teach me? Will you?"

Deidara lowered his gaze to his feet. "I can't. I…I was born differently. So I can make these."

"What do you mean?"

Deidara uncurled his fist as the bird hopped up onto his arm. Set into the palm of his hand was a mouth, much like the one on his face except the lips were paler, almost nonexistent.

"See? This is why I'm a freak, un!" Deidara re-clenched his fist. "My village…they chased me out when they discovered them! I don't know why!"

"Why? I think it's cool!" Naruto pointed at Deidara's other hand, the one that was still buried in his pocket. "So you have three mouths? Does your other hand have one too? Can you make a lot of birds at once and have a whole army of them?"

Deidara looked taken aback.

"I don't see how you're a freak! I think you're really cool!" Naruto grinned. "I got these dopy cat whiskers and you've got three mouths! That's way cooler than me!"

"I…un…" Deidara said in nearly a whisper. "Thank you, Naruto. But you've only seen half of it."

Without waiting for a response, he turned around and grabbed hold of the clay bird, throwing it at a nearby tree. With an incredibly loud explosion of tree bark and smoke, a gaping hole was left in the wood.

"They only see me as destruction, un. And maybe they were right. My art is made for destruction." Deidara said.

"Whoa…" Naruto looked shocked.

"Do you still like me now, even after what I've showed you, yeah?" Deidara's voice shook. "Or do you think I'm a freak too, un?"

"Can you blow things up in different colours?" Naruto was practically jumping up and down. "Can you do tiny explosions? Can you blow up an entire forest? Maybe then I can find my way out of here! You're cool, Deidara, believe it!"

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"So what happened to beating Ino up?" Sakura asked.

"I got distracted!" Naruto shoveled ramen into his mouth.

"Obviously. I heard you got lost, too."

"I did, but I got back!" he finished the last of the ramen. "Mmm! I love ramen! When I'm Hokage, I'm gonna make it a law that everyone has to eat ramen!"

Sakura made a face, but it luckily went unnoticed. "Why are you eating so fast, anyway?"

"I got places to be and people to see!" Naruto hopped down from the stool he was sitting on and ran toward the village's exit. "I'll be back soon!"

Sakura watched him go as he ducked around various ninja, shouting apologies as he went.

Naruto quickly left the village and turned down the path he had taken so many times before until he was at the bridge.

"Deidara! Wanna play?" he called. "I brought some clay for you so you can teach me how to make those cool birds!"

A muffled thump caught his attention and he turned, spotting his blonde friend as he stood from jumping out of a nearby tree. "I told you before, un. You won't be able to make it like I do."

"I can try!" Naruto insisted.

"Fine…" Deidara sighed.

The two of them sat facing each other, Deidara trying in vain to explain how the clay was like fine art and you had to find the bird within the clay to set it free. Naruto soon lost interest in it and made his own 'art', throwing the shreds of clay into the air and making lame explosion noises as Deidara shouted, "That is not art, un!"

Despite their short attention spans, they both knew that this friendship would last a long time.

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Lame chapter ending is lame. Pt. 2 coming soon as soon as I fill out these FAFSA forms.

Remember to review, please! I am in dire need of motivation!

Hasta la Vista, Readers!

Lordoftheghostking28