Naruto was beautiful.
It was a well-known fact amongst the villagers, shinobi and civilians alike. No matter how much they called her a demon or spat on her good will, she would smile and look upon them with sad eyes that somehow conveyed that she understood. Not only was she beautiful in spirit, her knee length blonde hair, big blue eyes and petite delicate yet slightly curvy features made her the target of envy from her female academy classmates. Regardless of her scant eleven years of age, Naruto was already a looker and would continue to grow in that fashion.
Naruto didn't care about how she looked. All she would see when she looked at herself in the mirror was a sad and lonely little girl in an oversized orange and blue jumpsuit.
It was her first day of her penultimate year in the academy when it finally hit her. She had spent four years at the academy and all she had learnt was what she taught herself. They had taijutsu class that afternoon and as usual, Mizuki had set her up to spar with Sasuke with an evil little smirk on his face.
Naruto had basically spent her years ignoring the negative emotions that poured out of the man in waves whenever it came to dealing with her. She was used to it; it came from almost everyone in the village though varying in strength. Sometimes she wished she couldn't sense negative emotions, but it was what had kept her out of serious harm and for that, she was grateful.
"Sasuke and Naruto! Enter the ring and perform the seal of confrontation." Mizuki's smirk had become a full-blown smile. Naruto knew it was going to hurt.
As she predicted, Sasuke wiped the floor with her ass and didn't even wait to make the seal of reconciliation. She sat on the floor right outside the chalk circle and listened to her classmates laugh and jeer at her. She hung her head and her eyes burned something fierce. Finally, she heard something that stood out to her over the sound of taunts and her feelings of being an absolute failure.
"I don't know why she even tries; she learns nothing the instructors try to teach her." Sakura had remarked to Sasuke, who she had followed like a lost puppy.
"Hn."
Naruto got up and instead of boisterously complaining about Sasuke being a bastard and how she was going to kick his ass 'just you wait!', she was quiet. The matches moved on and Naruto continued to contemplate.
Sakura was right. She only knew what she had taught herself. She was brilliant at trap setting, sabotage and evasion tactics from all the pranks she had painstakingly thought out and executed in the most inconspicuous manner possible. Her strength and speed were far above average and her stamina was unparalleled. Why? Because she trained and used live action simulations by allowing people to catch wind of the pranks being her doing and she will admit she preferred to have negative attention for something she had done rather than something that she had no clue about.
Her taijutsu was abysmal and she knew why. Mizuki spent the least time with her in practice and when he did, the stances he showed her always seemed off. Her ninjutsu was a nightmare and she had no genjutsu skills to speak of.
Naruto went through the whole day contemplating those words and she finally came to a conclusion. If she was only able to learn from herself, that was what she would do exactly that. She was tired of acting the part of a fool who felt nothing and was all talk. She wanted to be able to protect herself in circumstances where she could not run, she wanted to be her natural happy self but not over exaggerate it so it looked like sharp insults and barbed comments didn't hurt.
Naruto didn't stop at Ichiraku that night.
She went straight home, completely stuck in her thoughts and for once, brought absolutely not attention to herself. The people that did notice that she was walking amongst them were disgruntled, but dismissed her with a glare and an angry though or two.
Naruto arrived at her building much faster than she had realized. She trudged up the dilapidated stairs and made her way to her apartment on the third floor.
The first thing she would need is new equipment. But she needed to be undetected so she would be allowed to purchase proper goods. The transformation jutsu was good for that sort of thing and that was coincidentally one of the two academy jutsu she could actually perform.
If she wanted to pass the next graduation exam, she would need to be able to do the clone jutsu, but how would she be able to? Someone had once mentioned that they needed chakra control to be able to perform it properly and she had absolutely no control over the massive amounts she had.
She needed to ask someone for help, but who? There was no ninja that she trusted enough to ask them something so important to her personal development. Naruto really didn't want to stay with her class for another year. She needed to see the Old man Hokage. He was one of the few people who actually saw her as a person instead of a pretty little demon.
Naruto went to bed that night, filled to the brim with determined desperation not to stay in a class of people who spent every day in the past four years hurting her with their insensitivity and callous remarks.
…
Sarutobi Hiruzen was an old man who had spent the majority of his years as the Hokage to his beloved village. The majority of those years were spent with firm belief that his decisions were all for the best. But that did not mean that he did not acknowledge his mistakes, while he took great pride in the fact that there were so few, they were all of the worst kind, like allowing Orochimaru to escape Konoha with his life, the massacre of the Uchiha clan and the one sitting in front of him that very moment.
Minato would have been proud of his daughter. She was happy and smile in the face of adversity, she was beautiful internally and externally and loved her village.
She was not smiling for the first time in five years.
"Naruto-chan, what can I do for you today?" she looked up at him with eyes filled with unshed tears. Hiruzen was shocked, she had never cried, not even when someone had pushed her in front of a moving and she broke her arm.
"Old man, I am so tired." She looked far beyond her years. His heart hurt for the child in front of him. She sighed "How do I control my chakra? I can't make a clone and I want to pass the graduation exam this year. I can't stand my classmates anymore and I don't learn anything from the instructors, regardless of how hard they try."
"I believe I have a few scrolls that may be able to help you out with chakra control. But, I don't think you will be able to do the average clone technique. You have far too much chakra."
"Why?! Why can't I be like everyone else? Why am I a failure? Why do I have so much chakra? Why do I dream of death and destruction? Am I really a monster?" Hiruzen was shocked, he watched as the child tried to unload years of loneliness and frustration in a few minutes.
He couldn't keep it from her any longer, it was killing her inside. He didn't know how he could have possibly thought keeping the reason why everyone hated her secret.
"You are the container for the Kyuubi." She froze and stared.
"What?" her voice was flat and devoid of emotion.
"On your birthday, the fourth Hokage did not kill the nine tailed fox, as a chakra construct that is virtually impossible, so he did the next best thing and sealed it into a freshly birthed infant. You."
"Why me?"
"Your mother was the previous jailer and only one of you bloodlines constitution is able to contain the nine tails. The Uzumaki was a clan famed for their sealing techniques, longevity and massive chakra stores. They were wiped out in the 2nd shinobi war through the combined effort of Iwa, Kumo and Kiri, sustaining heavy losses on all sides." Naruto sat in silence. Not a single tear fell as she stared unseeingly.
"Okay."
Hiruzen stared. He had just revealed to an eleven year old child that the reason why almost everyone in her home hated her and she was an orphan was inside her and all she had to say was okay. No crying or screaming about life being unfair. Just 'okay'.
He shook his head, got up and retrieved the scroll with chakra control exercises and solid clone techniques and handed it to the girl who then proceeded to cheerfully wave goodbye and disappear.
The girl was a gift from the Gods; he now understood and sincerely believed that she was good for Konoha and would perhaps be the best Hokage yet.