Quiet is golden. Amongst Ninja, Silence is expected. However, any classroom holding one Uzumaki Naruto, silence is extremely suspicious. Iruka paused chalk in hand with fingers poised above the tora he'd just written. This discussion of seals is usually where he'd expect to hear whispers, some shuffling, the sliding of paper, and the occasional sound of notes being taken. His pause did not go unnoticed, there was an energy in the room that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. Something was coming. He decided to bait it.
"Sakura!" he called and he heard a jump, she recovered very quickly it was admirable, really. Her voice had just a twinge of embarrassment, a little fear, and some eagerness. Almost normal but something was still off. "What would I get by adding this Tora?" he said tapping his chalk on the board as he was about to explain. If anyone had read ahead it was her, so he thought it a safe bet she would know.
"Uh…. I think it would make the explosion burn rather than just explode…. Right?" she says then backtracks just a bit timidly. He sighs internally. "Good job, Sakura." He said and starts to turn around
"Can anyone el~" he noticed only too late the tripwire he had touched just behind his heel. He closed his eyes. There was only one person who could pull off something like this, and it wouldn't be anything truly dangerous. He was rewarded with a great burst of sound and a whoosh of powder. He slowly blinked his eyes open and took in thirteen pairs of eyes staring owlishly at him before Inuzuka Kiba broke the dam by laughing, the entire class was in uproar. Iruka sighed and looked down at his now pink uniform coat and could feel that it was all over his face and hair as well, the blast was centered just in front of him, it had taken some really careful ninja wire work to get the blast directed and the line taught enough where he would not be able to stop it. It was real A+ work…. If only the one who had done it would apply this kind of effort to his studies.
"UZUMAKI NARUTO!" He roared and a sheepish tuft of blonde hair rose up from behind the desk he shared with Shino less than three meters away. He'd never even heard him leave his seat. The boy was short, with a smile that stretched nearly ear to ear. There was never a day that went by that the boy was unmentioned for his prolific stream of mayhem and public delinquency. Iruka had heard of some of those pranks and shuddered to think not only the planning but the damage that had been done to those who would call him enemy.
Looking at the sheepish, but proud smile on the boy softened his next words as he sighed. "Stay after class. The rest of you, get out of here!" he said with a sweep of his arm. There was a mad scramble to get out of the classroom. Few would say it, but Naruto really was a certain kind of popular, even if nobody would share a bento with him…. Well, almost nobody. He certainly didn't have anyone he would call friend.
Once everyone had left Iruka sighed and put his hands on his hips looking at the young boy blithely kicking his legs sitting on top of a table, seemingly without a care in the world.
"Neh Iruka-Sensei, what was it you wanted to talk to me about?" he asks innocently. Iruka put a hand on top of his own head and looked down at himself. "What do you think I want to talk to you about Naruto?" He asks and the kid's smile becomes positively vulpine. "How I'm such a good student you're going to pass me and let me be Genin?" he asks so sweetly it gave Iruka a toothache just hearing it. "Er… No." he says lamely then puts on a stern face. "You're going to clean up the mess you made!" he says pointing to the silhouette of pink that had been left and the marks on the ceiling from where the dust plumed. "You know where the cleaning supplies are by now." he says sternly and Naruto pouts. "Ey! Iruka-Sensei I didn't even do that!" he says crossly with an exaggerated frown pulling at his bottom lip. "Naruto, nobody else in class, Not Sasuke, Not Kiba, is going to try something like this, in the middle of class no less." He says and the pout turns into a fierce little smirk. "I will slap the smirk right off your face Naruto if you don't GET THOSE CLEANING SUPPLIES!" he shouts pointing at the door, Naruto jumps up and scurries out of the room nearly slamming into the outside wall in his haste to go down the hallway.
"I swear that kid." he stands there and then reaches into a pocket of his vest to pull out a rag to wipe his face. He pulls the cloth away and frowns at the pristine white cloth with only a stripe in the shape of his hitai-ate. He rewipes his face, really scrubbing at it and only gets the faintest pink sheen. The enormity of what this means takes a full five seconds to sink in. His next words shake the walls with their fury, "NA~RU~TO!" the peals of laughter echoing off the walls.
Naruto went home at dark that day, returning to his apartment in the disused block, his only neighbors at the other end of the building had never so much as said good morning. He came in his front door, checking the tamper seal, then disabling both tripwires and heading in to his swirling mess of a living space. It was small, but he'd heavily modified it, without permission, because from an early age he had been taught one lesson, if nobody knows, nobody cares. For now he had installed far more shelving than most people would ever consider practical, it was loaded with all kinds of things, from dried foodstuffs, to water jugs, to every sort of container imaginable filled with all manner of…. "Goodies". Naruto smiled up at his collection, it brought happiness to his heart to look back on past works, all of these things remnants of one caper or another. He liked to think of it as training.
After all, missions couldn't be too much different from what he had to go through to get half these things done. Like that time he'd defaced the Hokage Monument and it had taken four and a half hours before he let Iruka-Sensei catch him in the middle of the street. The smile that alighted on Naruto's young face was beatific, remembering that chase. But today he didn't have time for that, he had to practice things he was bad at. Tomorrow was the big day, his big chance, he just had to get everything to come together, like he had so many times. Each hand sign flowed smoothly, one then the next then the next. He ran through them four times, just to make sure that he had it right, referencing his notes. He pushed chakra at the end and with a puff he looked at himself in the mirror.
Hiruzen Sarutobi looked back. He got close to the mirror and scrutinized it carefully. Grandpa Hokage had always been good to him. When he was little he had practically taken him in. Naruto took a moment to fondly smile at the memory of more or less having the run of the Hokage's tower. The smile in the mirror startled him and he realized he knew the look. Well, at least the old man had good memories to look back on too. But the grin on Naruto-Hiruzen's face turned positively vulpine as he vanished in a puff back to his considerably shorter stature. Transformation he had down. That much was for sure.
Second, he went back to his notes and read carefully. This is the one that he always messed up. He ran through the seals four times and pushed as much chakra as the technique would take and with a flash of concealing smoke the clone standing beside him was off color, strangely misshapen and seemed almost elastic as it tried to mimic him. He threw up his hands and screamed. What followed was a flurry of activity between the creation of useless clones with increasingly odd deformities he cleaned his floor, made dinner, washed his toilet, and made his bed for the first time in a week.
But still the clones came out wrong, there was something wrong with the technique. He couldn't work it out, it was his ultimate enemy, no matter how much power he put into it it always came out wrong, odd, oversized or sometimes even glowing. That was when he Really tried. His kunai throwing was accurate to eight meters… well good enough at eight meters, same with his shuriken. His wirework was beyond reproach. Nobody would question his skill with that. He bucked in, strapped on his determination headband and started studying for the rest of the test. Most of it was boring garbage, but history and sealing were just the most interesting things, even if they didn't learn anything about sealing really, just some theory. He hoped he got a Jonin-Sensei who was good at sealing so he could learn some. He went to bed that night filled with hope, and a germ of desperate wishing.
_
There is nothing quite as bitter, quite as heavy as failure. Especially when you are so very, very perilously close to success. Two clones, not even just one but two clones for the test and both of them had been so close. If only his hair were longer and face a little wider they might have been mistaken for him.
He sat on the swing set. Staring out at the others running home, or walking with purpose in the case of the more restrained. A few even paused to look his way, with looks ranging from derision (Sasuke, of course), to disappointment, or even just the empty eye of the little blind Hyuuga girl, she looked the longest with her empty white eyes, unseeing but he knew she was looking at him. Even she eventually turned and walked away, unwilling to say a word to the loser. He was so upset that he didn't even hear the sandaled steps until they were right beside him. "Well, That could have gone better, eh, Uzumaki?" a familiar voice asked, and he looked up to see Mizuki, Taijutsu instructor amongst a few other things Iruka-nee didn't teach.
"...yeah." was all he could muster and this seemed to bother Mizuki a bit he adjusted his stance and took a deep breath, "You know. There is still a chance." Mizuki said quietly his mouth almost not moving, but Naruto's ears twitched and he looked up sharply. "Really!?" naruto hissed, disbelieving.
Though never as bad as some others Mizuki had definitely given cause to Naruto to not trust him entirely. The blond remembered well times when the instructor had used his position to treat Naruto unfairly. But desperation is an unkind mistress. "Yes, I'd hate to see your talent go to waste, so I had a talk with some others and we've decided on a slightly harder test, but one that doesn't require the clone jutsu." Mizuki said softly.
"We wanted to wait to talk to you about it, because we didn't want to be accused of favoritism." Naruto's eyes closed back to slits of comprehension.
"I see." Naruto said with a sharp nod. Mizuki's smirk was sharp. "Good, you always were quick enough on the uptake." he said and knelt down. "So here's the test…." and then Mizuki began drawing in the dirt with a finger. Naruto's eyes went wide as the ambition of it unfolded. He smiled, this was a real test of his skills, the place he shined.
It was not full dark, but evening, when the lighting was just worse than people might think enough light to relax but enough shadow to move. He slipped through the streets with long practice being unseen and unnoticed. One amongst dozens, transforming, shifting, disguised. Slipping into the Hokage's tower was easy enough. Mizuki had said this was the hardest part and it would be for someone who hadn't practically lived here as a child.
It was a place of habit and routine. That was what people seldom seemed to get, as long as things pretended to be as you already expected them to be, they wouldn't question small things. No one could maintain sufficient suspicion all the time, it was too exhausting. There were always holes. And Naruto Uzumaki walked through holes like a mouse.
Only one man would be a problem, the Hokage himself. Mizuki told him that he had been alerted to the task and would be looking for him. Naruto smiled to himself as he walked back out the door with a large bag of what looked to be trash in the guise of a civilian. He walked out to the opposite side of the village to his home. Picking a small wooded training ground near where he was supposed to meet Mizuki, that grew far darker than many and erected his little blind into the form of a bush and opened the scroll expecting a cheeky message.
His face fell, and his eyes widened as he looked at the scroll in front of him. This was not some prize for a child. This was Advanced, as his eyes read and figured he saw what he had in his hands. This was not something he should not be holding. He read on hoping somewhere in his young mind he'd misunderstood. But no. No this was not right. He however paused and began copying, knowing the opportunity would never come again, producing a scroll all his own and moving quickly. He had a new mission. To uncover a traitor even as he took his prize.
_
"Ah, Naruto! Good to see you have made it!" Mizuki said stepping from concealment high in the trees. Looking down on the little orange demon standing with the scroll in his arms and the widest grin he'd ever seen "I got it Mizuki Sensei! This means I pass right!?" He said setting it on end to pose dramatically.
Mizuki nodded. "Yep! You little fox demon, as long as nobody caught you." he said an edge filtering into his voice. Naruto's smile dimmed a little bit. "No! Nobody caught me, not even Anbu catch me unless they're really trying!" he said perking back up.
"Good! Now just hand over the scroll and I've got a headband for you for tomorrow. Imagine the shock on your classmate's faces!" he said with a somewhat strained laugh.
"Neh, calling me a demon is a little harsh don't you think?" Naruto asked giving Mizuki a pout as the instructor hopped down from his tree and walked toward Naruto. "Hardly. After all…" he said laying a hand on the scroll and looking Naruto in the eye. "You are one, arn't you?" Naruto didn't flinch, but his eyes widened fractionally.
"You know Mizuki-san… I might have broken your rule a little." Naruto said getting a sheepishly, mischievous smile recovering quickly. Mizuki huffed, "What are you talking about." He said as Naruto cowered a little at the sudden spike of killing intent. "W-well… I didn't get caught…. But…." Mizuki's anger began to bubble as his hand slipped toward his waist. "What are you talking about, if you didn't get caught you pass the test. If you did, you fail!" And the grin returned to the little Uzumaki, different, darker. The blue of his eyes less like a clean river and more like the color of Chakra expressed. "See, I read a little of the scroll… and it didn't look like any academy scroll I'd ever seen..." and Mizuki started moving, the kunai in his hand and headed toward the child even as he felt a hand close on his wrist and the subtle pop of appearance. He looked up seeing four masked Anbu surrounding him. "See… I didn't get caught, but i might have tattled a little…" Naruto said with a smile, no, smiles show pleasure, this showed teeth.
That was the last anyone in the village saw of Mizuki-sensei. His post was absent for five weeks before someone was found to fill it. It was a minor inconvenience, but not so great of one.
_
Naruto was in the Hokage's office with two Anbu standing behind him, guards. His forehead was pressed to the smooth wood of the office as the gentle smell of tobacco wafted to his nose, the sound of shifting papers and the subtle noises of shifting fabric. Naruto felt warm nostalgia he had to ruthlessly crush. This was not him being told to stop doing pranks, or to apologize.
"You do realize that you must be punished for this, even if it was you who uncovered the plot." Sarutobi Hiruzen, Fifth Hokage of Konohagakure no sato said softly, with great weight in his voice.
Naruto considered many answers, he considered pleading, he held back his tears though, no matter how much the disappointment and sorrow in his grandfather's voice hung heavy. Naruto kept his posture of submission and after considering spoke softly.
"I understand Hokage, please accept my deepest apology." He said with his face pressed into the wood. The Hokage took a deep draw of his pipe and let it out slowly. "Naruto, raise your head." he did, but only a little to look up at the man who was both his leader and he felt an attachment to like a grandfather. With something like hope in his eyes he sat back, still on his knees.
"You have done a great service to the Village, uncovering not only a traitor, but a traitor in the academy I founded and spent so long scrutinizing. And for this you should be rewarded."
"Jiji?" he asked in a voice barely a whisper, not daring to say more. The Hokage stood quietly and stepped around his desk. "Naruto, I want you to do something for me." he said motioning with one hand for him to stand. The young boy scrambled to comply standing hands at his sides, serious for once in his life. "Yes, Sir!" he practically shouted in a broken voice. "Perform for me the clone technique, do it as slowly as possible, delay each step as much as you can." he said setting aside his pipe and crossing his hands giving naruto his full attention. Naruto did as his grandfather asked performing each hand sign crisply and then channeling all the chakra he could manage into the technique, putting his all into it to the point where the room glowed blue a moment before the clone appeared beside him, sickly, pallid and shimmering pale blue like an aura before vanishing in a wash of smoke. Naruto hung his head in shame. But rather than sigh Hiruzen started to laugh, a dry chuckle that turned into a full blown guffaw that made naruto want to sink into the floor his body slowly sinking under the weight of his grandfather's derision.
"To think!" the Hokage started and then Naruto felt a hand on his shoulder. "Do not feel so down my boy." he said and naruto's head snapped up with tears in his eyes, yet unshed. At the mirth dancing in the Hokage's eyes and the toothy smile he was seeing so at odds, but he saw not malice. He was not being laughed at… but with, his face must have screwed up in confusion as the Hokage laughed again, but cleared his throat. "Naruto, I want you to try the technique again. This time I want you to focus on on one clone, but three Hundred." The hokage said as he walked back to his desk and pulled open a drawer before waiting with his hands folded on the desk before him. "O-okay." Naruto stuttered as he performed the technique slowly, playing out each step and then focused on creating the legion, again the pale blue glow rose for a moment then the shimmering took up the whole of the room, then the rafters, the windowsills, and outside the windows. Three hundred odd Narutos, perfectly formed, all looked sharply forward with serious expressions quietly waiting for direction for only a moment as Naruto's mouth fell open and he sagged, dumbfounded. "B-b-b-but!? Why!?" He screamed and fell to his knees. Then he heard the Hokage begin to laugh, really laugh, his face turning red with mirth.
"Oh…. I have not been so entertained since you put that kick-me sign on the back of Hisashi Hyuuga." Naruto colored a deep crimson, he remembered the Very tense apology session he had needed to commit for that one. "JIJI!" he declared snapping to his feet, "What happened!? Why did it work!?" he yelled in desperate fury. The Hokage held up a hand and motioned toward the wall and a chalkboard rolled toward him seemingly of its own accord.
"Naruto, what do you know of Chakra Theory?" He asked softly as Naruto bumbled through a holey version of what is taught in the academy with some unexpected insights but he missed the point Sarutobi was going for so he raised a hand to pause the young man and cleared his throat.
"When a technique is conceived…" the Hokage began a piece of chalk in his hand as he began writing. "It is designed with limits and an expected power to be used with, now I will skip the complexities, but it is possible to try to put Too Much power into a technique, doing so will have various effects, but for the more delicate arts it will often cause them to fail. The clone technique is taxing for a child, or, rather, a normal child." the Hokage said sadly and then started drawing something else. "I suppose it is time we had this discussion." he said with a heaviness that made naruto wary. "What discussion, Hokage-sama?" he asked politely, as the fifth looked at the board drawing a familiar seal, sone naruto had seen on his own belly in the mirror more than once. "In a moment, let me finish one lesson at a time." Hiruzen said softly. "Chakra is difficult to manipulate and most people have very little of it to work with. I am suspecting that most of the control techniques taught by the academy did not work terribly well for you?" He glanced back to catch the nod and then nodded as well.
"That is because they are about teaching people with only a tiny cloud of chakra to squeeze a few drops of rain from it." he said as he drew with deft strokes, a few clouds and a light drizzle. Like the summer cloud of Konoha. "Yours however is a Thunderhead. if you do as they do, squeezing and straining, you will let forth a monsoon, rather than a drizzle. Do you understand? Good." he said catching another nod. "You must be taught restraint, as most who have reserves like yours are deep into their career and develop their control early." Naruto's face scrunched up and he looked up at Sarutobi who waited patiently, seeing the question forming. It was a few long moments. "Eh… Jiji, why do I have so much Chakra...?" Naruto was interrupted by the quiet marking of a familiar seal on the chalkboard, something he'd seen himself on his own navel when he tried to practice techniques in front of the mirror. He'd written it off when he found nothing about it in the textbooks he was allowed to access. But now he was more than curious. "This, Naruto, is why." he said slowly circling the seal. "It is a Seal. What is the purpose of Seals? Do you recall?" the Hokage asked gently. Naruto knew this though and responded immediately, "Storage with intent!" he said happily and the Hokage smiled at him warmly
"good, you were paying attention. Storage with Intent, we often store things away, tools, notes, even Chakra itself, but there is another kind of Seal, it may store living things." He said gravely and Naruto's eyes narrowed slightly in concentration. "What kind…" "for our purposes, the living energy of another. And with enough power, the physical manifestation as well." He said softly. "Your birthday, October the tenth. Do you recall what happened October the tenth twelve years ago?" he asked with great gravity, and then watched as Naruto's eyes went wide, then his hands went to his stomach, then looked like he was about to bolt as his eyes brimmed with unshed tears, he went green and teetered on his feet as his breath came in gasps, "I-it's inside me!?" he asked in a tiny squeak. "Yes. On the night of your birth, the Kyuubi no Kitsune was sealed into the body of a young child." Naruto fell to his knees. "That's…. Is that…?" he started and stopped staring at the floor as the tears began to fall, he could no longer hold it in, so great a secret, with such horrible consequence to him. He looked up and the Hokage was unsurprised to see the anger in the young man. "You knew! The village! They all…!" he said and the child thrashed looking back and forth as his hands clenched and unclenched.
"Yes. I knew. The fourth Hokage died creating that seal with his dying breath." Hiruzen said with a sigh and walked back to his desk to sit down with a small grunt and tap out his pipe idly sorting the scraps of tobacco from the ash as he repacked his pipe. "And the Hat fell back upon my head… You were meant to be a hero. The Fourth told me so. But I did not trust in his optimism about the people of this village." Naruto seemed to be getting himself under control. Though the usual glimmer of light in him was twinged the orange of fire. He listened, even now. It was endearing to know that his words were so important to the boy.
"I gathered all those who were near the heart of the fighting, who I believed saw the last moments of the battle. And I swore them to secrecy." he said with grim finality. "I wanted for you to live as just another orphan of the battle, and there were many. But sadly I must have missed someone." He said his jaw flexing as he ground his teeth.
"Some damned fool opened his mouth and word spread like wildfire. The Kyuubi was not dead, it possessed a child. A child with blonde hair." Hiruzen said as he relit the pipe and took a slow puff, then in a gesture that made even the Anbu still standing quietly behind Naruto jump slammed his hand on the table. "And may all the spirits of land and sea bear witness that I was Right! Hatred!" he pronounced in a voice that cowed even the righteous anger of Naruto and banished it like smoke.
"So I declared a Law! Written in anger perhaps, but a law most binding." the Hokage paused again to puff at his pipe in quiet as Naruto sat back on his feet, still on his knees on the floor. "That Any who spoke of the forbidden secret were to experience a most painful death." the Hokage pronounced darkly. And Naruto looked at the floor. "So, yes. I knew. I did everything in my power to let children be children, but sometimes it is not to be. Demons and War." There was a long time, where no one spoke. Naruto, too shocked by all he had just learned, and Hiruzen too trapped in regret and bitterness.
When his pipe finally burned out Sarutobi reached into the drawer he had opened and lifted something small that flashed in the darkness. "Naruto Uzumaki. By order of the Hokage, for passing your examination ex post facto, and for services rendered unto the village by uncovering a traitor in our midst. I promote you to Genin." He said laying the headband on the desk with a soft thunk. Naruto stood up and looked at it his mouth closed and the tears again threatening to fall. "If you still wish to serve this village, knowing what you now know." He added solemnly. Naruto hesitated, a riot of emotions poured across his face as he took the four short steps forward to pick up the Hitai-ite branded with the leaf and hold it to his chest. "No foolin'?" The boy asked and again Hiruzen smiled. "No foolin'." He replied.