Well here goes, my third attempt at a fanfic, and the first one to actually make it online, I've got a good feeling!
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"Get up brat!" Was the morning greeting Naruto was used to receiving in the orphanage. What he wasn't used to was the person yelling it at him to actually be in his room. Usually they just yelled through the door and left.
It was with a yawn that the newly six year old Naruto replied, trying in vain to rub some alertness into his eyes as he sat up. It wasn't likely to be a good thing that the old woman had taken the effort to actually enter his room to wake him. Rifling through his sleepy mind, Naruto tried to remember anything he may have done recently that would have gotten him in trouble, but came up blank.
"Don't just lay in bed you idiot! Get up! Today's a very special day you know." The matron said with a smile. This set Naruto on guard. The workers at the orphanage never smiled at him. Naruto pondered what was so special about today for a second before it hit him. Today was October tenth, his birthday, and anniversary of the Kyuubi's defeat. His suspicion forgotten, Naruto couldn't help but get excited. He had seen the parties the other kids got on their birthdays, and while he himself had never gotten one, he had been hoping for one every day as his birthday grew nearer, and now it seemed he was finally getting his wish! Naruto broke into a grin as he hopped out of bed and started getting dressed, the matron stepping out of his room unnoticed with a sneer.
"Come downstairs once you're ready, and bring all your things, to celebrate this special day you'll be getting a new room. You're a little...old for this one." Said the middle-aged woman, smiling another one of those strange smiles. But Naruto was too ecstatic to notice. A new room! He didn't think this day could get any better.
Naruto could hear the matron walking down the stairs as he packed all of his clothes and the few other things he owned into his duffle bag before rushing downstairs, almost tripping down the steps in his anticipation. He stopped upon reaching the main foyer of the orphanage, surprised by the presence of the Sandaime Hokage. His grin returned full force as he jumped to hug the man around the legs.
"Oji-san! Did you come to celebrate my birthday with me?" Asked Naruto as he grinned up at the grandfatherly Sarutobi. That's when Naruto realized that the Sandaime was frowning, and his grin started to slide off his face, something wasn't right. It was then that he noticed every worker in the orphanage was in the room, each with smirks or triumphant smiles on their faces.
The Sandaime noticed Naruto's fading grin and wandering eyes and replaced his frown with a sad smile.
"I'm afraid that I don't have the time Naruto-kun, I'm sorry. I'm here to take you to your new home." Sarutobi could see the confusion in the boy's eyes as he turned to point at the matron.
"She said I'd be getting a new room! What do you mean new home?" The boy's voice was raised and it was obvious that he was beginning to get upset. The matron just sneered down at him.
"You'll be getting a new room brat, don't worry, but I never said anything about it being here." This garnered a few snickers from the other people in the room, but they were all silenced with a sharp glare from the Hokage.
"Come on Naruto, it's time we were going, I have plenty to do today with the annual festival and we have a decent walk ahead of us to reach your new apartment." Said Sarutobi with a kind smile. Naruto was on the brink of crying and after giving a final a glare at the orphanage staff he stormed out ahead of the Hokage and ran off into the forest, tears finally falling from his eyes.
As the Hokage followed at a more sedated pace, the matron of the orphanage let out a sigh of relief. She was finally free! No more having to feed and care for that wretched boy a minute longer. She cared for all the children under her care, but that was one boy she could never bring herself not to hate.
"Finally, I can enjoy my job again." With that the matron turned and ushered her employees to start waking the children for breakfast.
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The Hokage managed to find Naruto easily enough. A few minutes after leaving the orphanage he found him leaning against a tree, sobbing into the duffle bag caught in his knees he held tightly to his chest. The withered old ninja slowly made his way to Naruto, and kneeled down to be at eye level with the boy before placing a comforting hand on his head. The boy seemed to freeze for a moment and looked up, upon realizing who it was he immediately threw himself at the withered old Hokage and began to sob even harder than before.
The old man could do no more than hold the boy and rub his back while he released his sadness. It pained Sarutobi to know that the boy's burden would be with him for the rest of his life, and he damned the fates that would place it with a child as pure as Naruto. He knew that this was the only option, but it still caused his heart to ache every time he saw a villager glare at Naruto as he passed. He could only hope that Naruto would be strong until he could find someone who accepted him.
It was nearly a half an hour until the boy finally managed to stop crying, he simply lay limp in Sarutobi's arms, staring at nothing, until he finally spoke in so quiet a voice the old Hokage nearly missed it.
"Why doesn't anyone want me?"
The old man simply sighed, and grasped the boy's shoulders and helped him stand so he could speak to him face to face. He was going to have to comfort him without the truth, and he didn't like it one bit. He wished he could tell the boy, he really did, but he wouldn't be able to handle it. There's no telling what the boy would do. So he braced himself and let out the speech he had spent years going over in his head.
"Humans are difficult creatures to understand Naruto. They can fret for weeks over one mean thing they said to a friend, or kill dozens with no remorse. People don't see you like I do Naruto. They don't see the kind and energetic boy who wants to enjoy life and make friends. I can promise you though, some time, somewhere, you will find people who accept you. People who will enjoy your companionship and trust. You'll have family and friends one day Naruto. Simply be yourself, and one day, without even realizing it, they'll be there for you."
Naruto looked up at the wise old man with a look akin to awe.
"You really mean it? A family... but no one will ever adopt me..." Naruto said, the hope in his eyes dimmed by the thought. Every time prospective parents would come the orphanage they'd either glare at him or just plain ignore him while they talked and played with the other kids. It just wasn't fair.
"Family is more than just legal rights or blood. I've seen orphans adopted into families and then simply leave at the first opportunity, never to return. Are they more of a family than a group of friends that have been together for years? Anyone can be family Naruto-kun, it just takes time to find the right people."
Naruto simply stared at Sarutobi for a minute after he finished talking, deep in thought. Slowly, a determined look began to creep across the boy's face, until finally he thrust his fist into the air.
"You're right Oji-san! I don't need parents! I'll make a ton of friends and we'll be a family that way!"
The Hokage laughed at the boy's sudden enthusiasm. If Naruto was anything, he was determined. This also presented an ideal opportunity for Sarutobi to talk to the boy about something he'd been meaning to discuss with him soon.
"I think I might have a good idea on where to meet those friends Naruto, how would you like to join the ninja academy?"
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Two years later
Naruto was leaning back in his chair at the back of the room, absentmindedly scratching his palm while he stared at the ceiling. This was his second year at the ninja academy and he was regretting ever agreeing to this. This wasn't the first time. The taijutsu training, weapons practice, and learning jutsu were cool, but that was only half of the program. The other half was theory, history, math, and reading, and was about as interesting to Naruto as a box of rocks.
Naruto was taking a moment to ponder his classmates. He'd been doing this a lot recently, ever since he and Kiba had become friends a few months back after running into each other trying to skip class.
Naruto's eyes fell first upon a black haired boy a few rows towards the front, Uchiha Sasuke. The kid used to be alright, but a few months back his entire clan had been massacred by his revered older brother Itachi. He'd been a lot moodier ever since and the only people willing to risk ticking him off were fangirls trying to score points with sympathy. Suffice to say, it hadn't worked out well for any of them. On either side of Sasuke were Yamanaka Ino and Haruno Sakura, both at the top of Sasuke's fangirl list and both paying rapt attention to Iruka. The chewing out Sasuke had given them would probably last until lunch, and then they'd be right back at it.
To Naruto's right sat Inuzuka Kiba, the blonde's new partner in crime. His friend wasn't going to be much help at the moment though, as the feral looking boy seemed to be enjoying a nice nap. Naruto smirked as he watched one of the boys ears twitch. The first time he'd realized they did that he'd made of the boy non-stop until he punched Naruto square in the face. Kiba had won the ensuing scuffle, and Naruto had been forced to never mention it again.
That was something Naruto hadn't been expecting from his first friendship. Every time they got into an argument they would just fight it out. Whoever won, the fight would end with both ninja trainees laughing and they'd go about their day as if it had never happened. It struck Naruto as a little weird, but he was happy with it, so he let it go. It was actually kind of fitting considering how they had become friends.
Flashback:
Lunch was almost over, and the rest of the day was just going to be that boring book crap. Naruto didn't need to stick around for that. So using his unconquerable genius, the blonde set up a bag of smoke-bombs to go off when someone tripped a trip-wire. Trip they did, as not two minutes later some poor kid walked right into it and fell flat on his face, triggering the giant smokescreen. As the chuunin instructor on lunch duty rushed to see what was going on, Naruto made a break for it.
Only to collide headfirst into Inuzuka Kiba with a shout.
"What the hell?! Watch where you're going dog-boy!"
"Me? You'd better get out of my way dobe!"
The ensuing brawl lasted twenty-five minutes and ended with both boys lying bruised and beaten on the ground, laughing their asses off.
"Not bad loser."
"You're not terrible either dog-breath."
They ended up bonding over the week they spent after hours cleaning the academy as punishment for skipping class, a mutual dislike of "pointless" classes and Sasuke's fangirls went a long way to forging a friendship.
The rest of the class wasn't nearly as loud or attention grabbing as the first four, so Naruto didn't know as much about the rest of them. The Akimichi boy ate constantly, Nara Shikimaru was the laziest person Naruto had ever seen, and it was a pain to get paired up with Hyuuga Hinata. The girl was nice, but whenever the two would spar, Naruto was a bundle of nerves. This was because no matter who won, Hinata would seem upset. If Naruto won, she would ask if he was ok and apologize for beating him, if Naruto won, she would stare at the ground and not talk for a long while. It completely confused the young blonde.
Naruto was torn from his thoughts by a burning sensation from his palms. They'd been coming and going with more and more frequency for the past year. The school nurse passed it off as growth pains, but Naruto hadn't grown all the much in the past year, and the increased time he spent favoring his hands was starting to make him a little nervous.
A few minutes passed, and the pain subsided, Naruto letting out a sigh of relief. After lunch was shuriken practice, and there'd be no way for him to focus if his hands were burning. Naruto spared a moment to tune back into Iruka, hearing something about a guy funding construction back in the time of the shodaime Naruto tuned him back out again. All of this history crap was pointless, they were ninjas, not librarians! This line of thought was cut off as his hands began to act up again, itching, and then burning, but for the first time, they weren't stopping there. It wasn't too long before Naruto felt like his hands were being torn up from the inside, and he couldn't help but grip his desk and let out a yelp of pain.
Naruto didn't like to be the center of attention until he was ready. If he wasn't ready to be the center of attention, then it meant that he had probably been caught setting up a prank that no one would like him for. This also meant trouble for Naruto, so when the entire class turned to see what he was yelping about, he got a little nervous.
"Naruto, you ok man?"
Kiba had woken up after hearing Naruto's cry of pain to see him gripping his desk with white knuckles. Naruto managed a feeble grin in Kiba's direction, before turning to face Iruka when he realized he was asking him a question.
"Naruto, are you all right?"
The teacher had been a lot kinder to Naruto this year, the first year under him Naruto could plainly see hatred in the man's eyes, but at some point, that hatred had turned to concern.
"I don't know Iruka-sensei, my hands really hurt, like something's ripping them from the inside..."
Iruka could see Naruto was sweaty and pale from all the way in the front of the room, and decided to cut the end of the morning short.
"Ok everyone, we're heading to lunch ten minutes early today, be back in here by the usual time. Naruto, come with me, I'll take you to see the nurse."
As everyone emptied out of the room Naruto felt someone sling his arm over their shoulder and lift him up. Naruto turned in surprise to see Kiba grinning at him in that toothy way of his.
"Come on blondie, let's get you to the nurse."
Naruto could only smile. He'd finally found a good friend.
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Naruto was sitting on an examination table in the hospital. Upon reaching the academy nurse's office all the nurse could figure out was that something was in fact wrong with his hands, and recommended he go the hospital to have them take a better look at it. The sensation of tearing flesh had subsided to be replaced with a dull throb about the time he'd arrived at the hospital.
So far he'd been there for two hours, and gone through four doctors, eight hand massages, two needles, and enough disgruntled muttering to put him off human contact for a month. The doctor currently man-handling his hand finished his examination and stood up with a groan as a nurse brought in the results from whatever tests they'd run his tissue samples through.
Naruto's former nervousness had developed into a full-blown paranoia by this point. He'd really gotten into the idea of being a shinobi over the past two years, and any serious problems with his hands could throw a wrench in that plan. Not only would his dream go down the tubes, if he got booted out of the ninja program, his stipend would cease once he turned ten, and he'd have to find civilian work, an unlikely prospect, considering the villages general disdain of him. As a shinobi he would be at least partially funded by the government until he reached chuunin rank.
The doctor dismissed the nurse and set down the clipboard before turning to Naruto.
"Well, from what I can tell there is definitely something going on with your hands. I honestly can't say I have any idea what though. There's an empty space in each of your palms with a bunch of tissue at the center, like a tendril of some kind. There are also a number of solid fragments embedded in the flesh along the cavities. Can you recall anything that may have caused this? A previous injury, a weird feeling after a jutsu? Anything could help us here."
Naruto shook his head.
"No, for the past year my hands have just been itching from time to time, I didn't think much of it until today."
The doctor nodded and frowned at this before stepping out of the room for a few minutes, leaving Naruto to his thoughts. Having a room on the corner of two hallways provided a little entertainment while he waited, listening to doctors tell nurses what this patient needed and nurses telling interns what they were doing wrong. It was honestly kind of interesting to listen to the workings of the hospital staff until a particularly unsettling conversation from a pair of passing nurses met his ears.
"Wait, let's go out the side exit. That Uzumaki brat's in exam room twelve, I'd rather go around."
"You really don't like him do you? I guess it's to be expected..."
As the voices of the nurses faded away Naruto was left in a far more sullen mood than before. It wasn't the first time he'd overheard people talking about him like that, it was just the way his life was, people either didn't like him or they ignored him. When he thought back on it, he'd never gotten a straight answer from anyone on why that was, even the old man would get evasive when he asked.
Naruto was surprised when the doctor walked back in followed by the Hokage. Had he really been sitting here long enough for them to get the Hokage? He hopped down from the examination table with a smile to greet the old man.
"Hey Oji-san! Do you know what's going on? 'Cause I'm really getting bored just sitting around this room."
Sarutobi responded with a chuckle, the boy was always so energetic, that was probably why his grades from the academy weren't what he was hoping them to be.
"Hello Naruto-kun. The doctor has told me all about your strange condition and I think I might have an idea. Let me take a look at your hands."
Once again Naruto was forced to sit through a thorough examination of his palms, though the Hokage seemed to be paying attention more to the lines on his palm then the feeling of his hand. Finally, the Hokage pulled his hands away with a thoughtful hum.
"Naruto, come to my office first thing tomorrow morning, I want to test my theory. Don't worry about missing school, I'll write you an excuse this once."
"Sure thing Oji-san! So does this mean I can go?"
The doctor looked at the both of them and shrugged. He didn't have anything left to do, if the Hokage thought he knew what was going on, he could handle it. Truthfully the doctor was a little unnerved with how casual the Hokage and the village pariah were together.
"Yeah, he can go, we're done here. I'll send the bill to the usual place."
Naruto let out a yip and bolted for the door. Sarutobi frowned, whenever Naruto made a hospital visit the bill always turned out a little higher than was expected. The invoices would cite administering extra tests and precautionary treatments that Naruto could never seem to recall, but without evidence there was nothing the Hokage could do. So he simply followed the hyper blonde out and made his way back to the Hokage tower, he needed a smoke.
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Naruto arrived early at the Hokage's tower the next day, looking haggard. The pain had woke him up around two in the morning and he hadn't been able to get back to sleep, and now there was an angry looking red line across each of his palms, and his hands themselves had begun to feel odd, like there was something moving inside of them.
The receptionist didn't seem much better off than Naruto at the moment. She looked she'd slept at the office that night, and tucked under her desk was a bedroll, indicating that she had in fact spent the night. She had stormed out of her boyfriend's apartment after catching him cheating on her, and had spent most of the night crying. But no one checks under her desk, and no one really pays much attention to the woes of the Hokage's receptionist, so Naruto didn't know any of this as she waved him into the Hokage's office.
Naruto stepped in past the ever-present ANBU guard to see Sarutobi smoking his pipe and rooting through a jar on his desk that was filled clay. The young blonde couldn't help but wonder why the hell the Sandaime had a jar of clay on his desk.
"'Morning Oji-san, what's with the clay?"
The Hokage smirked as he heard him mention the clay.
"This clay is specially purified and supplemented with chakra, and this is going to be what proves to me whether or not my hunch is right. Let me see your hands again."
Naruto obliged, and the old man nodded his head after running a finger across the red line on his left palm.
"Yes, this is just further evidence, you're almost done if this is what I think it is. Well, no use waiting, Naruto, I want you to grab a handful of this clay."
Naruto simply looked at the Hokage with a quirked eyebrow before stepping up to his desk to grab a handful of the clay. The moment his hand touched the clay, Naruto's hand erupted in pain. It was the most agonizing thing the boy had ever felt. Screaming and wrenching his hand away he looked down at his palm to see that where the red line had been before there was now a small opening in his hand! The hole seemed to be twitching and writhing, trying to open itself wider, and it sent spasms of pain though Naruto's arm until finally it stopped, sealing itself up again, leaving nothing but the red line from before. The blonde collapsed to the ground as the pain passed, panting.
"So I was right."
Putting a lid on the jar of clay, Sarutobi walked over to help the boy to his feet, offering him a kind smile and getting a weak grin in return. After a few minutes Naruto was able to catch his breath and asked the question that the Hokage was waiting for.
"What the hell was that?!"
Sarutobi frowned.
"Language, Naruto."
Seeing Naruto just throw him a dirty look, the old man chuckled and launched into his explanation.
"It would appear that you've come into the Kuchisaki bloodline limit."
Naruto simply stared at the Hokage for a minute, then two. The old man was considering poking him to see if he was ok before he suddenly burst into an explosive rant.
"YES! A bloodline ability! This is awesome! I'll totally be able to whip everybody's butts now! They'll never know what hit em! What does it do Oji-san? By the way, Kuchisaki? What kind of a name is that for a bloodline? What about..."
Naruto's abrupt end to his rant had Sarutobi a little concerned, from the look on the boy's face he could tell what was coming, and he was right.
"Does this mean we can find out who my parent were?"
The Hokage sighed, and gestured for the boy to take a seat on the couch against the wall. Rubbing his temple with his thumb and forefinger, the old man began to tell Naruto exactly what he knew the boy wouldn't want to hear.
"Naruto, the only other place this bloodline is known to exist is a small clan in Iwagakure. You were born eight years ago, this was around the time that the last great ninja war was coming to an end. Iwa was our primary enemy during that war, and both of our villages killed plenty of ninjas from the other. There was and still is a lot of animosity between our villages. For you to have this bloodline, it's likely that your mother was a victim of rape by an Iwa shinobi. It's possible that you simply lucked out and share a common ancestor with the Iwa strain, but this is most likely what happened."
Naruto simply stayed silent, staring at the old man with an intent gaze. The question the old man got in response was definitely not the one he had been expecting.
"What's rape?"
The old Hokage only now realized the trap that he'd dug himself into. He'd forgotten that without parents, the boy would have had no one to explain the birds and the bees to him. So now in addition to revealing possibly traumatizing information about the boys origins, he would have to give him a crash course in sex ed as well.
Some days it just didn't pay to be Hokage.
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"That's just creepy."
Kiba and Naruto were sitting by a stream in a training area near the academy, while Akamaru was chasing a butterfly around the clearing.
"That's what I thought at first too, but now that I've got the hang of it the sky's the limit for what I can do with it!"
Naruto was showing Kiba the now fully manifested Kuchisaki. Resting in each of his palms were two human mouths. He could open and shut them at will, and while shut it was impossible to tell his palms apart from anyone else's. It had taken another week of pain and a few weeks of stretching and practice to finally get the mouths to where they could start to be used the way they were meant to be.
"Now stand back Kiba. I'm gonna blow up that huge boulder over there!"
As he spoke, Naruto pointed over to a rock about the size of a small house. Kiba scoffed.
"You wish, if you can blow that thing up with just clay I'll do your homework for a week!"
Never one to turn down a challenge, Naruto responded with an appropriate amount of confidence.
"You're on! I'll shape this clay into a bird and send it and that rock flying through the air. Sharpen your pencil Kiba-sempai, I hope you'll enjoy your extra study time!"
"Please, this next week will be nothing but relaxation while you slave over my work, and I expect you to do it well too!"
With the challenge successfully met, Naruto leaned down and scooped up a handful of clay from the bank, and paused. He just knew that this was going to feel weird. Then he took the plunge, and had his right hand eat it.
It was an odd feeling to be sure, consciously chewing something without tasting it or being able to swallow. He did as the Hokage instructed him and began to channel his chakra into the mouth, trying to concentrate on the form of a bird in his mind while his teeth and tongue shaped the clay. Feeling that it was ready, Naruto spat the clay back out. It only took Kiba a second to react.
"Bwahahaha! What the hell is that?! Some kind of retarded squirrel?!"
Looking down, Naruto was disappointed to note that the clay did in fact look more like a retarded squirrel than the bird he'd been aiming for. He could kind of see the crease where the wings were supposed to be, and the tail almost looked like it had a feather pattern. He hadn't the faintest idea what had happened to the head though, it looked like a damn pumpkin!
"Sh-Shut up Kiba! I just need to practice a little, that's all."
With that, Naruto tossed the squirrel-bird-pumpkin over his shoulder before bending down to scoop another handful of clay, but the moment his strange hybrid hit the ground, the sound of an explosion and the feeling of being launched into a stream of icy cold water was all that Naruto could perceive.
Surfacing quickly and coughing up the water that he'd inhaled, the blonde swam back to shore to see what had happened, and had to stifle a laugh. There was a good meter wide crater where he'd tossed the clay bomb, and about fifteen meters away hanging upside down out of a tree was Kiba, his jacket covered in soot and Akamaru trying to jump up to reach him. Once the humor of the situation had subsided, Naruto realized one of his mistakes.
"Ah, I see what happened, I forgot to focus on how to detonate it, so it just went boom once it hit the ground. Ok, let's try again!"
The speed at which Kiba managed to extricate himself from the tree and run would make Naruto jealous for months to come.
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"Damn it!"
Naruto was ridiculously frustrated. No matter how hard he tried, he just couldn't get the damn clay to form properly. Configuring how to detonate it was easy, but for the life of him the young lad just couldn't manage the chakra control necessary to pull off a reasonable sculpture. Every now and then he'd get a good bird or a perfect squirrel, but then he wouldn't be able to control them properly. He'd even lost one of the birds when it flew off, apparently on its own! Naruto just hoped it didn't hurt anybody.
He'd spent three damn months coming back to this spot by the stream, again and again trying to get his skill with the Kuchisaki up to par. He'd also spent a lot of time thinking about what the Hokage had said about his parents, how his father had probably forced himself on his mother and she had abandoned him or given him up for one reason or another. It made him nauseous to think about it, how he was the result of something so... violating.
So engrossed was Naruto in his thoughts and training that he didn't even notice Hinata watching him from behind a tree. She had been worried about him ever since that day he'd left class in pain, but hadn't been able to work up the courage to approach him at the academy. He'd always disappear at the end of the day as well, and this was the first time she'd managed to follow him all the way to his training ground.
She wanted to talk to him, and to see how he was, but she was just so nervous, what if he didn't want to talk to her? What if he was angry that she followed him? So caught up in her doubts, she didn't see the mutant squirrel made of clay hobble up the opposite side of the tree she was hiding behind, so when an explosion sounded directly above her head, she shrieked in surprise and dove to the side.
"Hinata? Are you ok?! What were you doing back there?"
Naruto had seen her, and rushed over to see if she was ok. Hinata looked up to stare directly into his eyes, and promptly fainted.
This was a situation Naruto wasn't familiar with. So he did what all young boys do when they think they may have hurt someone.
He panicked.
A/N:
Well, that's one chapter done. Please, leave a review, constructive criticism's greatly appreciated. And no, this isn't a naruxhina or naruxsaku. That's the only hint you're getting though!