This is a remake of the story written by Caexah, I have full permission of the original author to do this. I would like to point out that this story, while running parallel and incorporating the same themes will be going in a different direction, as shown in even this chapter.
Naruto was lonely as a child. He had no friends or parents, always by himself save when the old man hokage would visit, and that was a rare occasion in itself as the old man was always caught up in paperwork or his family, and so was only able to visit the young jinchūriki rarely. He was desperate for someone, anyone to call friend. But no one would ever call him friend, for fear of the beast within him, or for the youth of the village, their parents ire.
He tried to understand why the people of the village seemed to hate him. Why did parents pull their children away from him, take them from a park he would enter, even in the middle of their games? Was it something he did? Something he was suppose to do, but never did? Whenever something like this would happen he would always hear people angrily whisper the same words; unstable, demon, fox and law.
He never got a respite from the loneliness, even in the orphanage in which he lived. The other orphans avoided him on the word of the caretakers, and threats of punishment if they disobeyed. One boy named Han tried to befriend him once, a moment of hope for Naruto, but was swiftly dragged away by one of the caretakers and sent to his bed with no dinner after a firm spanking. That was the only lesson the children needed to never try and befriend Naruto again. The caretakers also made it so that Naruto was the last on the list to get anything, be it clothes or food, and never to get excess. Despite their clear dislike of the boy, the caretakers never physically harmed him, and turned away any of the drunks who took it into their head to go after him.
His loneliness was suffocating for a child, the looks of scorn to much for him, and with no one to turn to he felt it all multiplied. To try to alleviate his loneliness he learned to read, and escaped his life into the worlds of books. Soon the characters in the books became his closest friends. It was not a lot for a child, but it was enough to keep him from falling into a pit of despair.
Eventually when he was six the orphanage threw him out, using some excuse about how no one would adopt any of the children as long as he was there. Being the intelligent child he was he immediately sought out the hokage, who was able to help him by giving him a small apartment that the village had retained as a place to keep foreign shinobi that sought asylum in the village while they were being screened for fraudulence in their reasoning, but had recently been scrapped due to falling into disrepair. It wasn't much, and parts of the wall had holes in them, but it was free and it was big enough for Naruto.
On one of the few days that the hokage had time to spend with Naruto, a week before his birthday, they came across a traveling salesman from a small town not to far away from Konoha. The man made a living by traveling from town to town selling the bits and bobs he collected or made as he traveled, and from his puppet show that he performed for children. The puppet he used was not the best, barely able to pass off for humanoid in shape, but the man had great skill in using the wooden thing, making it appear almost alive.
Naruto was utterly enthralled with the moving doll, so much so that when the traveller mentioned that he sold some smaller puppets, Naruto begged the old hokage to buy him one. The old man didn't, he bought three. It was a smiling Naruto that crawled into bed that night, three crude puppets laying beside him. His movements with the puppets were harsh and crude in the beginning, but he had nothing else to do with his time but read and practice and he made quick progress.
As he grew he began to learn the skills necessary to create puppets for himself. Woodworking to make the puppets form, painting to give them color, sewing for garments and accessories and seals which he picked up reading to ensure they would last. He even learned chakra strings, a technique most commonly found in Suna, from an obscure book from the hokage so as to make his creations more life like.
He modeled his creations after the princesses he had read about in his books, blond hair, blue eyes and dresses of a style known as victorian. He had discovered a love for the style after seeing a picture of a girl in the style in one of his books back in the orphanage.
The more he practiced his craft, in both movement and creation, the more life like his puppets became. The more lifelike they became the further people would distance themselves from him. This however, was not something that bothered him, for he had all the friends he needed now. His puppets danced and played with him as he went through his life, he had gotten proficient enough that he barely had to focus on the puppets as he went through his life. The puppets were with him everywhere he went, floating around his head looking at the world with childlike interest, searching and poking things. He had even learned a special seal that would allow the puppets to change the face they show by rapidly sealing and unsealing the current face they had on, each one showing a different emotion to take them to the next level of realism.
It gave him great joy to see them float and play around, even if it was him that made them do it.
He took them with him when the old man hokage asked him to go to the ninja academy when he turned eight, something that he really did not want to do, but the old man had been so nice to him over the years that he did so anyway. Naruto didn't want to be a ninja, much too dangerous for his taste, he'd rather stay alive, thank you very much! Besides, he did not think fondly on learning to killing people.
Not that they actually taught them to do it.
Well, they did, but it was disguised! The teachers carefully avoided saying that the students would one day have to kill, they did however, tell stories of heroes and always made sure to mention The Will of Fire. They used it to explain why heros would kill, or be killed, to protect their village. It was brainwashing! When an innocent student made their first kill, or had to make a life or death choice during a mission, they would think back on what they were taught and remember those legends, and that would strengthen their resolve to protect their home.
Brain-washing . . .
It highly amused Naruto that a village that prided itself on the value of honesty ( as if ninjas knew the meaning of the word) and teamwork would use such methods on their youth. They prided themselves on their heros and legends as well, so much so that they were attempting to churn them out of their school. Who ever said that heroes were born and not made had never been to Konoha.
One day the class had been sent out to learn how to throw the standard ninja weapons, shuriken and kunai, the class sensei went through a couple impressive routines with the weapons, from spinning them on his finger to fancy throughs. All of it to get the children interested in using deadly weapons. It didn't take much for most of the boys.
Naruto's puppets made a show of struggling to lift the kunais and pass them to Naruto, one even lost it's grip once and landed on it's but, a look of surprise on it's face while the other two laughed. They made cute faces while they struggled to pull the weapons from the wooden targets, shaped like logs in order to not scare away the young students.
The ninjas even used propaganda to fool the civilians into thinking that they were nothing less than saints meant to protect them from the evils of the other countries. The hypocrisy of it all was not lost on Naruto. They praised their own shinobi as heros while condemning the ninjas of other villages for doing exactly what their protectors did.
LB
Naruto stared down at what he considered to be his greatest creation, a life size puppet that followed the basic design of his smaller ones, save for two major things. One was that the puppet had the ability to talk, he may have to control what it says, but it could talk. The other was a special seal he designed on the eyes that allowed him to see what the puppet would see through a special pair of glasses. Admittedly he had some help from Jiji, but it was his idea! It had taken him roughly two years to build the puppet, using the best and strongest materials he could afford, pouring hours into working on every single part of it, and it was finally done. All he had to do now was connect one of his strings to it.
Despite himself, Naruto was nervous. Sure he had created a hundred of his smaller puppets, the small marionettes in question were 'whispering' to themselves shaking with nerves, but he had never attempted to control such a big one.
The marionette in question was designed to be a impressive six feet tall. Naruto had designed her to be many things, a guardian, a maid, and most importantly, a friend. He had crafted a friendly heart shaped face with a delicate nose and wide expressive eyes, though at the moment they were closed. The puppets body looked soft, despite it's being made of wood. He had dressed her in a simple light blue dress with a white apron over it and simple black shoes. All in all one could easily mistake the puppet for a person, and thats what Naruto was going for.
"Here goes nothing," Naruto rose his hand in anticipation and connected a single chakra thread to the puppet. "Time to wake up, Alice." He twitched his finger in a very pronounced way, something he hadn't had to do for a long time.
The puppet slowly got up in a jerky movement, Naruto struggling to move the much larger puppet. He tried moving it with just his finger for a few more minutes, having it perform tricks, before giving it up for a lost cause and trying again with all five of his fingers. This gave him the results he needed as the puppets movement became more fluid and natural.
"Hello Alice." Naruto greeted, smiling like a mad child.
"Hello, Master." Alice returned the greeting with a curtsy. Her voice was rough and scratchy, and lacked any distinctive pitches or nuances that a real person would have. That was to be expected though as it was a prototype seal the old man had helped him make. The old man had spent whatever time he had to spare with Naruto working on this puppet with him. After all, there is only so much a nine year old can do in regards to sealing.
"Good to see you finally got around to 'waking' our friend their Naruto-kun." A voice chortled behind the blond jinjuriki, causing Naruto to jump in shock and his smaller puppets to turn around with looks of fright on their small wooden faces. "You really should pay attention to your surroundings Naruto-kun."
"Jiji!" The young boy rushed his grandfather figure, a look of pure happiness on his face while the smaller puppets danced around him in the air. "I didn't think I'd see you until next week!"
"Yes, well," Sarutobi began as he led Naruto over towards the blonds couch, "I managed to find some time today. Don't tell Misa, but I left a shadow clone behind to take care of the paperwork." The two shared a small laugh. Misa is Sarutobi's secretary, and was always on the old mans case about all the paperwork the old man had to do and did not care for short cuts. She is also a very talented kunoichi that specialises in genjutsu, with her favorite being a recreation of a castration. With a spoon. No one wanted to cross her.
The two talked for a while, Naruto practicing controlling Alice as they did so, before they eventually got to the other reason Sarutobi stopped by.
"Naruto, we need to discuss your performance in the academy."
Naruto groaned, all his puppets adopting a bored or agitated persona and Alice crossed her arms and tapped her foot. "This again?"
"Yes, 'this again'. You need to put more effort into your studies, Naruto. The academy instructors inform me that you're just at the middle of the class. And that's only in the academic work, according to Iruka you are at the bottom of the class in ninjutsu and taijutsu, while being mediocre in genjutsu. Honestly Naruto, how do you expect to be a ninja like this?"
Naruto mumbled something unintelligible.
"What was that Naruto?"
"I said I don't wanna be a ninja jiji!" Naruto shouted, frustrated. He had been trying to tell the old man this for a while, but this was the first time he had said it outloud since the time Sarutobi had asked him to attend in the first place.
The Sandaime cringed at Naruto's words, though he hid it expertly. He had thought that the boy would have grown to accept or even enjoy the prospect of being a ninja, positive that once he began the academy, the son of his former successor would have embraced the shinobi life style. Apparently it hadn't worked out that way. Hopefully if he could figure out why Naruto didn't want to be a ninja he could change his mind.
"Why do you not want to be a ninja, Naruto-kun?"
"I don't wanna fight. I don't like fighting, and I don't wanna kill anybody either! I just wanna read books and play with my puppets."
"But don't you want to protect the village? And you know that reading and playing with puppets won't make you any money."
"I know that I can't make any money reading, and that living off puppet shows is not the smartest, but I could be a librarian! Maybe in the capital! You said the fire capital has the biggest library in the world, right? Maybe when I'm older I can move there and become one of the librarians!" The young boy was practically dancing at the idea, the puppets around him, save Alice who had returned to a neutral standing position, were performing cartwheels and floating all over the place in excitement.
"Thats all well and good, Naruto, but what about the village, your home. It should be at the forefront of anyones mind to protect their home. And I know the thought of fighting is scarey, and killing horrifying, but to protect your home you will be able to move past that. I feel that you have so much to offer, with a few more years and a couple more jutsu, I feel that you could be an excellent protector of Konoha. Maybe one day you could take my place, eh?" The old man nudged the younger boy playfully, though inside he was frowning. If Naruto did not go for it, did not wish to become a ninja of his own free will, then Sarutobi knew that he would have to order the blond to do so. As a jinchuuriki Naruto had no choice in whether he became a ninja or not. The law required him to be one for the good of the village and the country. He would even have to reveal the fox to Naruto earlier than planned.
"Thats nice and all," Naruto began slowly, "But theres one problem."
"Oh? What's that?"
"I don't consider this place home."