AN: Soooo... This is the first time I attempt to write anything other than school assignments, so it will probably suck. Anyway! This fic will be probably be AU and OOC at quite a few places and will focus on stealth (Although, this is Naruto, so he will have quite a few heavy hitting ability's as well) He will not be godlike, but he will be strong, most likely stronger than Sasuke was early on. There will be some changes to a few characters and events since I believe Kishimoto just kept changing things on the way "Cough" Itachi, Sharingan, Kage power level "Cough"

For reviews I'd be grateful if you didn't just make a stupid comment like "This fic suck, You're an idiot, learn freaking English" or stuff like that, feel free to correct my spelling/grammar, I'm not a native English speaker and I know it won't be perfect, but be sure to tell me what's wrong with either the fic in general or my spelling/grammar so I can actually fix it, if you do, well, Thanks!

I do not own Naruto

Karma's a Bitch

Konohagakure no sato, the village hidden amongst the leaves. It is the strongest and amongst the most peaceful of the five great villages. Well, it should be at least.

"Get back here! You fucking brat!"

'Shit! They found me again!' A blonde haired boy with whisker marks, in an orange jumpsuit, around 8 years old burst out of his hiding place and took off as fast his short legs could carry him, running away from a small group of clearly drunk ninjas. Why was he running away? Because the boy's name is Uzumaki Naruto, the pariah of Konoha, and today was October 10, his birthday.

"Stop running, you little bastard!" A random man in the crowd yelled.

'Yeah right! It doesn't take a genius to figure out that's a bad idea, dattebayo!' Naruto thought, while he tried to spot one of the ANBU that usually stop things before anything happens, but for some reason, only those that just ignore him seemed to be on patrol this particular evening.

'You got to be shitting me! Where the hell is Dog? Cat? Tenzou? Or Weasel, even though his eyes scare the shit out of me!' He thought. No matter where he looked he just couldn't find any of them. He was even starting to suspect that the ANBU he did see was helping the group pursuing him. He changed direction and headed towards the training areas. 'I can lose them in one of the forests, at least I hope so.'

The border to Fire Country

A figure was jumping between the trees at high speed. It was wrapped in a large cloak with a hood, leaving only the figures feet and eyes visible, in various shades of green, brown and red, the cloak seemed to meld with the shadows on the branches and made it hard to focus on it.

"I'll kill them. I'll fucking tear their arms off and beat them to death with them! A simple A Rank my ass! I should send them to Ibiki down at T&I to fucking play with! The damn idiots shouldn't be allowed to play with shit they don't understand!" The figure said with a slightly distorted feminine voice, and as she reached an area that was clear of shadows you could see the blood stains covering her cloak.

"They better pay the fuck up or I really WILL kill them! Gah!" The anger and frustration was almost visible, but the voice also sounded tired. The woman let out a deep sigh. 'I better speed up, I want to sleep in my own bed tonight. I should be able to reach Konoha in a few hours.'

With that thought the figure took off at an increased speed and soon disappeared in a blur.

Back in Konoha a few hours later

'Man those guys where persistent, I almost didn't manage to lose them…' Naruto thought with a sigh as he carefully made his way towards his apartment, making sure he stayed out of sight from the rest of the village.

'What the hell is going on today?! Usually ANBU or Jiji stop them before anything actually happens, why didn't that happen today?!' He thought as he stealthily made his way home. How the hell he managed to be stealthy with a bright orange jumpsuit is a bigger mystery than the meaning of life. He kept asking himself what was different today compared to other days as he made his way up the stairs to his apartment. When he reached his floor he suddenly choked up. The door to his apartment was broken down and there was graffiti on the outside.

'Oh come on! Why can't anything good happen today!' He thought, fighting down the urge to scream so he wouldn't attract attention. He stepped through the door and took in the state the place was in. Everything was smashed. Posters of ramen had been torn of the walls and shredded, the few potted plants he had found thrown out and nursed back to health had been thrown on the floor and stomped on, his photo frames had been smashed and the pictures torn, the chairs and table was nothing but firewood and there was graffiti with insults on several of the walls. His bedroom had feathers all over the place and the bed seemed to have been cut up with a kunai or something and his clothes was ripped. The boy stood there and took in what used to be his apartment with a blank face and slightly wet eyes.

'Why the hell would they do this?! Why can't they just stick to ignoring me, they had to trash my fucking place aswell?!' He thought as he fought back the tears that threatened to fall, if just to keep whoever did this from getting that piece of satisfaction.

"Happy, Fucking, Birthday." He muttered with a strained voice while he clenched his fists.

Outside the mission building

The woman from before, still wearing the same cloak, walked out of the building muttering with an angry and tired voice.

"The fuckers actually thought they could try to talk themselves out of upping the rank, as if they weren't the ones who lowered it in the first place!" She snapped at no one in particular. It seemed now that someone had tried to make a favor for someone and changed the mission from a group mission to a solo mission to make it cheaper. However what would have been an average A rank group mission was a quite hard S rank solo, and it had almost gotten her killed.

"Fuck it. I managed to get my money in the end, and now I'm going to go home and sleep for a Month!" She said while making a Ram seal and preparing to Shunshin home. Disappearing in a swirl of water she arrived, at the completely wrong location.

"Oh come on! I'm too tired to even manage to do a Shunshin correctly?!" She exclaimed while putting her head in her palm. With a sigh she started looking around to see where she actually ended up. She was standing on a roof overlooking one of the poorer areas of Konoha, as she prepared to walk home instead, she noticed a blonde haired boy entering an apartment with a broken down door.

"Great. Just, great. I should just ignore it." She said with another sigh, as she jumped down and slowly and silently made her way towards the apartment. When she reached the top of the stairs she heard a low voice say "Happy, Fucking, Birthday".

Leaning against the doorframe she looked around and took in the trashed rooms and the blonde standing in the middle of the room while clenching his fists, the slight trembling of his shoulders told her he was barely holding back his tears.

Now that she was up close she could easily recognize the boy and probably guess what had happened as well.

'I guess the bastards jumped at the chance to do this to him, as if almost getting their ninjas killed weren't enough, they had to make the brats life even harder than it is as well.' She thought while she kept studying the room. After what seemed to be a short internal discussion she let out a deep sigh.

Jumping at the noise Naruto jumped and turned around in a flash and faced the cloaked figure in the doorframe.

'What the hell, how did he get there, I couldn't hear anything! Is he one of the group from earlier?!' He thought frantically. "Who the hell are you, and what the hell are you doing here, dattebayo?! He loudly said.

The woman just looked at him, she could see the surprise, anger, and small amount of fear in his eyes as he tried to figure out why she was there. She looked over the apartment again and sighed.

"Do you have somewhere else to stay?" She asked in a tired voice.

Naruto blinked, barely noticing that the voice was female, while he went over the question in his head. Before letting out the intelligent reply of "Huh?" While tilting his head a bit.

"I asked, do you have somewhere else to stay?" She said with a small groan as she rubbed her temples, the fatigue of the recent events giving her a slight head ache. "Someone you know that's willing to let you stay until your apartment is fixed?"

Naruto blinked again before narrowing his eyes at her. "Why do you want to know? What does it have to do with you?" He asked suspiciously.

She looked him in the eyes while removed her fingers from her temples. Studying the way he held himself after the question she could easily see the answer.

"That's a no then. I asked because I got a few spare rooms in my home so I could offer you a bed until you can get your place fixed up." She said.

The surprise was evident in Narutos face after the answer before he narrowed his eyes in suspicion again.

"Why would you let me stay at your place? I don't even know you!" He said. Usually he was a lot more trusting, but after what happened today, let's just say he was not in the mood to trust a stranger.

She looked at him for a short while before saying "Would you like the truth, or a lie?"

That was an unexpected answer, however he recovered quickly enough.

"….. I want both, and start with the lie." Experience said he'd probably prefer that one.

She thought it over a short while before shrugging and saying "Okay. I'm offering you to stay at my place because it's the right thing to do."

'So she wants something, but what? It's not like I got something to give her.' Naruto thought before saying "And the truth?"

She started rubbing her temples again before she started explaining.

"3 days ago I got sent on a solo A rank mission. It was supposed to be a rather easy mission, go in, kill the leader, steal some information and get the fuck out of there. However, the fucking Civilian Council had changed the mission from a group mission to a solo mission so the client would owe them a favor and the client would save some money. This led to me having to fight the leader, who was a missing nin, along with his 2 bodyguards, who was also missing nins, all A ranked ninjas. This led to me almost getting killed. It SHOULD have gotten me killed. I must have fucked Lady Luck or something for me to actually manage to kill them even when I was unprepared. Hell, I even managed to complete the damn thing as well. And then when I got back to Konoha, pissed off and tired as hell I actually manage to get it into their greedy little brains that the mission really was an S rank solo mission, and that I should be paid for that, as is stated in the law. Hell that was harder to pull off that the actual mission."

She stopped rubbing her temples and looked into the boy's eyes before continuing.

"So after all this, I am not going to risk there being such a thing as Karma, because if there is such a thing, it's telling me to pay up and help you because my rent is overdue." She finished, and stood waiting for the boy's answer.

Naruto just stood there for a while thinking, he also noticed that there seemed to be BLOOD on her cloak, and quite a bit of it. 'Can I trust her? I don't even know her... Wait... Now I remember! She helped me that time I ran into a stray dog after I got thrown out of the orphanage! How the hell did I forget her cloak? It's kinda hard to miss… But then again I was kinda scared, and it was quite a while ago… And I got to stop rambling.' He looked around once more before sighing.

"Well, it's not like there's a point in staying here." He said bitterly. "I'm still not sure why Jiji didn't stop them though, or had one of his ANBU stop them…" He said, a bit sad, and very afraid that something might have happened to the old man, or maybe, that he had grown tired of him.

The woman looked at the boy, and then swept her eyes around the room. She noticed a note on the floor. She walked in and picked it up, after looking at it she handed it to Naruto. As he looked at it he saw it said 'To Naruto-kun'.

He quickly unfolded the note and read it.

'Naruto-kun, I'm sorry I couldn't speak to you before I left but you were not home when I came by, so I left you this note instead. Unfortunately I have to attend a meeting with the Fire Daimyo and several other minor lords. The meeting lasts 2 weeks, and while I had hoped it wouldn't happen until after your birthday I had no such luck. I hope you understand, I will try and get you something nice while I am in the capital. I will give you your gift and pay for your meal at Ichiraku Ramen when I come back.

Sarutobi Hiruzen

Sandaime Hokage of Konoha

Jiji'

Naruto couldn't help but chuckle at the last part, although he was still sad the old man had missed his birthday, and that he hadn't seen the note earlier.

"So, I take it some of your questions got explained in the letter? Then could you get the stuff you actually want to keep so we can get moving, I'm tired and I want to go to sleep." The woman said getting a bit annoyed at having to stand in a ruined apartment when she was so close to her house and her own bed.

Naruto quickly looked up from the note, as if he had almost forgotten she was there. "Umm… Ok, but could you leave? I don't really want you to see…" He trailed off as if a bit embarrassed.

She just shrugged and said "Sure, you're not the only who keeps their stuff hidden somewhere in your home." Before turning and walking out the door.

Naruto made sure she left before quickly going into his bedroom and walked into a corner and bent down. He twisted a power outlet and a floorboard seemed to pop up a bit and he quickly lifted it and took out a small wooden box before opening it to make sure it hadn't been found. He let out a sigh of relief when he saw that it still had a copy of his photos as well as the few gifts he had gotten from the few people he considered precious. He tucked the box into a large pocket inside his jacket and made it his way out front.

"I'm good to go." He simply said.

The woman just nodded before she grabbed his shoulder. She then made sure to concentrate a bit more this time when she made a one handed Ram seal and disappeared in another Shunshin. When she let go of his shoulder he saw a medium sized house with a large stone wall and a steel gate a bit outside the center of the city as is quite popular amongst ninjas. As they walked up towards the gate Naruto decided to ask his new host something.

"Soooo…. What's your name? If we're going to be living together it might be a good thing to know? Ah, I'm Uzumaki Naruto by the way!" He asked.

She glanced at him for a bit before looking back at the gate. "Akira, Kobayashi Akira." The newly identified Akira said before biting her thumb and stroking her blood on the gate. A seal appeared and the gate swung open. Akira walked through while Naruto took a bit longer while he got over his surprise of the gate opening because she put blood on it!

"Wha?! How… Why did the gate open because you put blood on it?!" He asked when he hurried after her. She glanced at him again before explaining.

"Because there's a blood seal on it, it will only open for me and for people that I've approved of." Akira told him.

Naruto looked amazed that you could do something like that. Maybe if he had one of those things as well they wouldn't have gotten into his apartment… Shaking his head he stopped thinking about that and looked around. The house itself was a one story traditional Japanese house that seemed to be able to house at least a small family, it had a small garden that didn't look all that well tended to other than obvious weeds being removed, he could see what seemed to be a rather large training field out back, containing a pond, some trees, a rocky area and some target dummies, and all around the property was a 5 meter tall wall that seemed to be made of solid stone, most likely made by an Earth jutsu. All in all, it was actually quite impressive.

"Wow, this place is really nice, dattebayo!" Naruto exclaimed excitedly, before thinking about something. "Is it just you that lives here? Or is there anyone else?"

"No, it's just me, and you for now obviously" Akira said with a yawn. "I just thought that I might as well get a real house since I could easily afford it."

Akira opened the door and Naruto followed her inside the house. The inside seemed pretty simple, there was an area just inside the door to leave your shoes and places to keep your outdoor clothes, corridor leading left and an open door on the right, just inside the door you could see a living room and further in you could see a rather large kitchen. The corridor on the left had doors on each side, 2 on the right side and 3 on the left. There was another door at the end of the corridor. The floor, walls and roof all seemed to be of various kinds of polished wood. Naruto and Akira took of their shoes and Akira started pointing out the various rooms.

"Okay, to the right you got the living room and kitchen, there's a door in the living room going out back to the training area which you can use, you're an academy student right?" She said and got a nod in return. "Good, well you can train if you like. On your left is the bedrooms and bathrooms just pick one on the left side, the 2 outer rooms are bedrooms and the one in the middle is the bathroom. There's also silencing seals that will stop sound from going out but will allow sound in, however you can stop sound from coming in as well by turning the lever beside the door, that will stop all sound unless they actually knock on the door. There's an Onsen at the far end of the corridor, and if you enter the wrong half I will kill you, just so you know. Now I'm going to sleep and if you wake me up early I will kill you for that too." She said in a joking tone, while her eyes told him she really would kill him if he woke her up.

Naruto just gulped and nodded quickly.

"Glad we have an agreement." Akira said before she walked over to one of the doors on the right and coming out again with a bundle of clothes, she then walked to the other door and entered the bathroom.

Naruto opened the first door on the left and saw an average sized room with a double bed, a closet, a desk with a chair, a bookcase and a small couch with a table. He looked around for a bit before he took out the box he had and put it on the desk. Taking another look around him he thought. 'This is a lot better than my room.' And went to sit on the bed.

After a while he started to feel hungry and decided to ask Akira before she actually went to bed if he was allowed to take something to eat from the kitchen and started to walk out of the door.

As he left the room he got to see Akira without her cloak on for the first time. She was wearing sleeping pants and a white tank top. She is quite tall, standing at around 175 cm, looks to be around 20 years old or so and although you could see she is well-trained she does not look very muscular. She had short dark gray hair that was a bit spiky and had a 1 cm sling of hair at the back of her neck that reached the bottom of her shoulder blades along with dark green eyes. She has average breasts and a her face looks quite nice.

However Naruto doesn't care about any of that, he's 8 years old.

"Hey Akira, I was just wondering if it's okay if I eat something from the kitchen?" Naruto asked.

"Yeah, sure, as long as you make it yourself. Good night brat." Akira said with a yawn and starts to walk towards her room.

"Hey! I'm not a brat!" Naruto yelled quite loudly. Akira flinched, turns and looks at Naruto while narrowing her eyes. Naruto gulps and repeats the same thing in a much more subdued volume. "I'm not a brat, I'm not."

"You just started screaming just because I called you a brat, that makes you a brat, now Shut Up and let me sleep." Akira says before she slammed the door.

Naruto stood there muttering for a while looking at the door for a short time, after that he made his way to the kitchen and made a sandwich.

"She doesn't have any Ramen… How can she live without Ramen?!" Naruto grumbles before finishing his meal and cleaning up the kitchen. He looks out of the window to see that its pitch black and raining. "Oh well, at least I don't have to sleep outside." He says before preparing for bed. 'This place is actually pretty cool. Maybe I can have something similar when I become a ninja! I will have to speak to the old man when he comes back' was the last thing he thought before he fell asleep.

AN: Well There you have it! The first chapter. It's mostly an introduction. We show Akira and have a reason Naruto stays with her. The fact that the Hokage is out of town will be brought up in the next chapter a bit. Oh, and Akira's cloak of from The Ranger's Apprentice. And I picked her name because I found a reference from an actual Naruto character when I googled it hehe. And don't worry, she will not act like that character.

As for Akira there will not be any romance between her and Naruto, actually there's sort of a hint in there somewhere about that but meh, might remove that altogether.

For romance in general, I have not decided if there will be any at all. However, if there is these girls are not an option: Hyuuga Hinata, Haruno Sakura, Yamanaka Ino. Why? Well it's quite simple really

Hyuuga Hinata: Member of a clan that goes to great lengths to keep the Byakugan inside the clan, and although I quite like her, I don't see her overly shy personality to be strong enough to stand up to her clan if Naruto says he does not want to be a Hyuuga. She will not have crush on Naruto in my fic, not only do I think they are a bit young for that during the academy, I also do not like that if she do have a crush on Naruto you have to hurt her feelings to make her give up (Naruto crushed on Sakura for the whole time in the academy and her feelings was just as strong anyway) She will still admire Naruto's determination however and strive to better herself.

Haruno Sakura: Fan girl and I do not like her, At All, during the first part. I'm not really that fond of her after the time skip either.

Yamanaka Ino: Fan girl and I kinda like the idea of her going with Choji when he get's some more confidence.

If you do want me to try my hand on romance (probably not any lemons) send me a private message instead of leaving a review and tell me who you'd think would go well with Naruto or if there's enough room for me to change them to work. I can work with ages and all things like that, if Kishimoto can change things on a whim in canon, I can do so in my fan fic. That's all! I hope I didn't screw up too badly! Cya!