Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto and am in no way associated with Masashi Kishimoto. This story is not for profit, and purely for entertainment. ...Enjoy!
Prolog: Reminiscence
They had all started here.
Konoha was the capital of the Fire Country, and also housed the largest military complex known to the region. Every single one of them had started there as either a product of Konoha City or Konoha Base.
Naruto Uzumaki was a military brat. Konoha was the city that he had grown up in his whole life, though. He was told that his father, Minato Namikaze, met his mother in a town call Uzushigakure whilst he was deployed. Kushina Uzumaki was a beautiful woman. Long, flowing red locks of hair and expressive green eyes with a fiery independence to boot. It had been a beautiful love story about boy meets girl, boy falls for girl, boy marries girl, boy brings girl home.
The only issue is that Naruto had been premature, leading the lovely individuals who helped deliver the blonde haired boy - who oh-so looked like his father - to place Uzumaki as his surname, under the claim that conception was likely before the time of marriage. This was just how the system worked in Konoha hospitals and, as such, that's how it stayed. Minato had been more than frustrated, but unfortunately he didn't have much of a chance to argue; he had been deployed the next week since he was one of the military's top performers. By the time that Naruto was one year old, Kushina had become sick with a terminal illness back on the base. When word reached Minato, he immediately made a request to come home and, on his way, got caught in a cross fire.
Neither made it past the week.
Unfortunately, that was all information that Naruto never learned until the later years of his adolescence. He had grown up entirely believing that he had just been a regular orphan, not even knowing that he was passing his own father's statue for bravery in battle outside of the justice building, and had been brought up in the orphanage on base. Konoha had two schooling systems. One on base, that if parents paid enough money their kids could attend even if they didn't reside on base, and another in the city. It's not that the schooling in the city was bad, it was just that the schooling on base was better. It was something that Iruka, Naruto's kind grade school teacher from his younger years, told him that he should be happy about; at least he was enrolled in the most elite schooling system that Fire Country had to offer.
At the time, Naruto hadn't cared much. He spent his days thinking up schemes and pranking both his classmates and teachers; in retrospect, these actions were a clear cry for attention that he so clearly craved and severely lacked. The blonde couldn't say that he really started to care about schooling until Sasuke Uchiha.
Sasuke Uchiha was a product of the Uchiha Clan, a proud linage of Konoha military who went on to play a large part in the Military Police Force of Konoha. In fact, the Military Police Force was largely run by members of their clan, and Fugaku and Mikoto, Sasuke's parents, were an integral head to the organization. His brother, Itachi Uchiha, was seen as a prodigy and was head of his class every year; it was a shadow that Sasuke lived in, and constantly tried to overcome. When Sasuke was ten, there was a long-lived conspiracy that was brought a head and the Uchihas were brought in for questioning. In the end, it turned out that Itachi had been keeping tabs on odd behavior that his father had exhibited and reported what he had found to the government officials of Konoha: Fugaku and the rest of the clan had been planning treason against Konoha on the basis that there had been underground tension between the clan and the capital, and that Madara, the head of both the clan and the police force, had wanted to level the capital and create a new system. It had been chaos. There were mass executions - because that's how they still did things here - and Sasuke's parents had been some of the first to go. In the end, Sasuke was obviously not seen as a threat and was pardoned along with his brother who assumed responsibility over him for a time, even at his young age. It was at this point in their lives that Naruto and Sasuke's fates seemed to converge.
Sasuke had shut out the world, having previously been the most popular boy in class, and Naruto slowly watched as the boy deteriorated - although this happened to be more socially than academically. It seemed like that was what Sasuke threw all his effort into - academics - maybe in an attempt to escape from the reality of it all, though this was, again, something that Naruto didn't fully contemplate until he was older. Two years after the Uchiha Incident, Itachi, in his guilt over his family, joined a missionary group called the Akatsuki after attaining his GED at sixteen and left to a different part of the world; although, in doing this, he left a now twelve year old Sasuke to fend for himself. Of course, Ino Yamanaka and Sakura Haruno, two of the girls from the city whose parents paid for their education privileges, had immediately offered that Sasuke could stay with them. This had met a quick decline. Instead, Sasuke was taken in by Kakashi Hatake, one of the local ex-military grade school teachers on base, whom had a close friend that had passed while they were deployed in his early days in the military. His name was Obito Uchiha.
At the age of twelve, all of them were beginning junior high school, and while that was a tough time for most, it seemed excruciatingly painful for them. The way that the school was set up was that every student would go through their classes like normal, but they would be assigned two partners which they would commune with for any and every project that they were assigned. Naruto happened to get paired with Sakura and Sasuke. Their progress was actually overseen by Kakashi Hatake, yet he only acted as a moderator when needed.
And it was needed.
Naruto and Sasuke would fight about anything and everything, often leading to physical engagements. One day Naruto would come home sporting a black eye, and the next Sasuke would have a nasty bruise on his cheek. It was at this point that Kakashi told them that rather than just participate in martial arts in gym class, something that was required of all students on base, that they should get involved competitively. And they did. Sasuke excelled at it, as he did with most things, and it pissed Naruto off enough that he actually tried to beat the bastard. For the next two years, he and Sasuke formed an odd bond of friendship through their fights and competitiveness, and on the rare occasion Sasuke had even stood up for Naruto in some physical altercations. One night had actually landed him in the hospital; Naruto had made sure that the guy who did it was even worse off, though. It wasn't exactly common for assaults to happen in Konoha, but when you were in the wrong part of the city and you were considered orphanage rif-raf like Naruto, it wasn't uncommon. And anyway, teenagers were just assholes.
Their group, team seven as it had been dubbed by the school, made it through junior high and even managed to become friendly, having spent so much time going to various places to work on projects throughout the years, and Naruto was so, so happy. Sasuke was the first person he truly felt like he had a bond with, the first person that made him feel like he had some worth, and even if the guy could be a bastard sometimes he knew that they were the best friends that each other had. Sakura, of course, had clung to Sasuke - the cutest guy in school, apparently - at the beginning, but she slowly warmed up to Naruto, having even stuck up for him when some jeering comments were made his way about his position in society. It was something that he was greatly thankful for, and the crush he had on her when they were kids slowly started to fade into something more akin to friendship. They had fallen into a comfortable camaraderie, and, for once, Naruto was content.
Until high school.
It was on the first day that he learned that Sasuke had left Konoha, and he was crestfallen. Sakura told him that she had only found out a day prior when she had run into Kakashi and he told her that Sasuke had gone to chase his brother. Not in the literal sense, but rather Sasuke transferred to a school in the country that his brother was currently in, actually living with him again now that Itachi was eighteen and Sound Country had laws that you could not be a legal guardian until that age. Naruto was hurt that the boy that he claimed was his best friend hadn't even told him that he was leaving, and wondered if he would ever see him again. That was when Sakura reminded him about martial arts. If they both still pursued that, then they would see each other at the country finals each year.
So Naruto trained. He trained and kept his grades high to stay in the program and Sakura became an assistant team manager for Konohagakure High competitive martial arts so that she could cheer him on, herself having grown fond of the idiot and selfishly wanting to see Sasuke as well. It was during these excursions that Sakura met Lee, an upperclassman at Konoha who was extremely enthusiastic and unfortunately infatuated with her, and his friends and teammates Tenten and Neji. Neji was the older cousin of a girl in their grade, Hinata Hyuuga. She was... extremely quiet. And always staring at Naruto.
The first year that Naruto saw Sasuke he had be ecstatic... until Sasuke had knocked him out without a word. The second year, their fight lasted longer, and Naruto was able to get in a few comments edgewise about how mad he was that Sasuke left without a word and, seemingly, with no remorse. The third year Sasuke won, yet again, but this time Naruto didn't grace the bastard with words, rather letting his silence do the talking. Their senior year, Naruto finally won the match, and while he hovered over the raven haired prodigy he simply asked him to come home.
Luckily, Konoha worked in his favor. It housed the one of the most prestigious universities in all the great nations. Yet that still didn't change the fact that the first time that Naruto saw Sasuke walking across campus, he was floored.