I do not own Naruto. There, I said it.

Many people believe jinchuurikis to become evil or cruel because they take on the traits of the demon within them. Others believe that the lack of love and companions during childhood produces uncaring and uncompassionate killers later. And some suffice it to be a simple rule that all jinchuurikis are evil. But every rule has an exception.

The Naruto Uzumaki you all know and love (or hate) grew up to be loving and passionate for his cause. But how can that be? I have a potential explanation. Perhaps Gaara and other jinchuurikis were evil because they would otherwise have been kind; the lack of love and the absence of safety from foes, even within their village, forced them to become evil. Naruto in this fic is not the jinchuuriki. His mother did not go into premature labor, he was born a couple weeks after the kyuubi attack, but his mother died soon afterwards of grief over the loss of her husband. Naruto's heritage was still kept a secret to protect him from enemies, but he could now have companions within the village because he was not the container of the Kyuubi. He was also fairly safe; he was an orphan, but no one had anything against him.

So when an evil child has the positive influence of companionship, and the neutral influence of a moderately safe environment, you get a neutral child.

Basically, other Jinchuuriki were good little children turned bad, and Naruto was an evil little child who was made good. In my AU fic, he is neutral because he is not the jinchuuriki.

Naruto Uzumaki looked towards the Ninja Academy where he was to spend the next four years training to become a ninja. At that thought, a frown appeared on his face, but it was quickly replaced by an even, neutral, face. That was him; calm, even, and neutral.

From the moment he stepped into the classroom, he was ignored. After all, there was nothing truly unique about him, and though most people had seen him around town, he had never really talked to any of these ninja hopefuls. Besides, he was wearing some of the most normal garb imaginable, a plain navy shirt and loose navy pants, and his blonde hair lay loosely around his head, though it spiked in clumps behind his head.

He slipped into a seat next to the wall. To his left was Shikamaru Nara, a boy whom Naruto knew to be a genius. Next to Shikamaru was Choji Akimichi, a boy whom Naruto really knew little about. He turned to continue looking at the class, and what he saw did not inspire much confidence in his fellow classmates. There was a blushing Hyuuga, and while it was a rare sight to witness a Hyuuga blushing, he did not think much of the girl. There were some girls with strange hair colors and a couple of odd looking guys.

The majority of the classroom was split into two camps. The boys sat on one side, and Sasuke sat on the opposite side with all of his fangirls. The guy (loosely) was practically coated in fangirls. Naruto almost smirked at this; it was odd that the gayest male in the class had the most female admirers. But Naruto eventually became bored and turned back to the front of the class. It was time to learn, a thought which encouraged him to put his face down into his desks. The next four years would be a total waste.

Then, Umino Iruka barged into the classroom.

"Hello 'ninja-to-be's! I'm Iruka, I'll be your instructor for the next four years as you strive to become a ninja! Now, I'm sure you want to learn how to do all the cool stuff that ninjas do, but we will have to get to that later. For now, you must first learn the basics!"

Naruto groaned, before quickly snapping his head up and pretending to pay attention. There was no reason to respond that way; he just had to calm down. He could not afford any extra attention being held on him. Fortunately, Iruka's gaze was drawn towards the sleeping Shikimaru rather than the groaning Naruto.

"I made a wise seating choice after all," Naruto thought.

Iruka then began his lesson. The topic? The origin of Konoha and why it was such a great village. This time Naruto kept his groan internal.

6 hours later

Naruto began his trek home. He was an orphan, but he lived in the middle-class area of the city, which was definitely where Naruto liked to be. As he walked home, he bumped into a small boy with whisker marks adorning his face. The boy quickly scurried to the side of the street before running off. Naruto did not bother to comfort the boy that he had realized a while before was the Kyuubi jinchuuriki; it wasn't his problem.

As Naruto stepped into his apartment and he began to make some food, he thought back to his school day. Iruka had really pushed the "Konoha rocks" message, and had spent 3 hours discussing the 'Will of Fire'. Naruto simply didn't get it. Konoha may have been a bit different than other villages, but it was still just a village. It had powerful kages, but hey, so did other villages. It wasn't that Naruto disliked Konoha, it was just that he wasn't attached. He knew that these gullible children would have kissed the tsuchikage's ass if they had grown up in Iwa.

Naruto thought about the day that everything changed for him. He was 6 and he had gone to the library to read more (he loved reading) when he read a book on ninja and their purpose. It talked about the ranks of ANBU and what a ninja's purpose is. After reading it, Naruto tried to observe these 'jutsu' that he had read about in action. Naruto was immediately rather fascinated; could anyone with enough chakra use these miraculous jutsu?

Naruto did his research. He would have liked to jump into the ninja profession headfirst, but that was not how he did things. He wanted to be a ninja to become strong; so that he could exert his will on others rather than having others' will forced on him. He had read that you needed chakra to perform these jutsu. So Naruto had to find a way to test his chakra level. He had sat down and meditated for a long time, just like a simple book on ninja abilities had told him to, when he had unleashed a large burst of chakra. He knew that such a quantity of chakra was unusual for an untrained pre-genin; if he had to wager, he would guess it was at low-chuunin level. Unfortunately, he had to guess. He had no way to test his strength, to see just how strong he really was. So, he decided that if it was going to be a mystery to him, it would be a mystery to others.

Naruto knew that most great ninja lost battles because their opponent knew the extent of that ninja's abilities. After all, once you were famous, your skills were readily available for all to see. To avoid this, Naruto knew that he had to hide his strength. He learned how to conceal his chakra. He practiced so often, in fact, that he could lower his chakra level to seemingly nothing. He also tested it after exercising vigorously; he had to make sure that he did not evoke the suspicions of anyone around him, lest his cover be blown. So he trained only where no one could see him, kept his chakra levels to a normal level, and kept his apparent fitness at an average level.

Once Naruto had thought about it, he realized that pretending to suck would only hurt him later. Not only would being weak force his instructors to take a special interest in him to help him improve, but then even the slightest slip-up (though in this case that would involve revealing that he did have some skill) would immediately be noticed by a teacher. Instead, average was the perfect place to be. Average students didn't need extra help. As an average student, Naruto, in theory, would be able to survive until he became a jounin (or at least chuunin) without revealing his true skill. Most of all, a gleam of genius by an average student would be quickly tallied up to luck, as Naruto quickly realized.

Once he realized that he should become average in skill, he chose to become average in everything else that he could as well. Average appearance, average attitude, calm and level voice and demeanor, and while Naruto would converse when asked a question, he did not act too social, which helped in preventing him from accidentally revealing any skills.

What Naruto next realized was that while he was concerned about hiding his skills, he needed to develop some. So he exercised rigorously and read about what jutsu he could. He found a chakra control exercise and he practiced his control constantly, so that he could both control his chakra perfectly, and could pretend that he could not control his chakra well at all. It was all part of the plan…..

And he knew that the plan would pay off. It HAD to pay off.

Now then, on to AN. I NEED a beta. I am new to this site and don't know where else to ask. The beta must do a couple things. 1: Keep me going in a straight line. I'll send you my rough drafts, stop me when I'm going waaaaaay out there. 2: Fill in the Japanese script. I don't have time to learn Japanese, so filling in the jutsu/exclamation names with their Japanese translations would be a huge help. 3: Give me some ideas. Sometimes I'll run dry, help me out here! And finally, 4: Help me out with the normal Naruto story information. I can't read every manga, let me know if I mess up on some parts here and there. It is AU, but only insofar as what Naruto can realistically change.

Pairings will be decided on review at some later point. I will update fairly regularly, assuming the view total doesn't stop at 1 or something. Please review my premise and inform me if you have some CONSTRUCTIVE advice. Also, many of the interchangeable variables within this story will be determined by review. Chakra affinity and what jutsus he learns/where he goes will be determined by reviews at the appropriate time. You can think of this as being a make-your-own-adventure book, but with some flexible guidelines. You get to determine how Naruto gets there, I decide how it'll work out for him and what his next moves can be. Naruto will be strong, but even he hasn't been able to test his abilities, so he has no idea how strong he really is. That will probably be a theme. I may clean up chapter 1 later when the rest of the story becomes more solid/people tell me what they need clarified. This story will end up being epic length, with enough support.