((A/N: This is Naruto's perspective from chapter 11, 'A Little Trouble', from when he runs into Rae. It explains why he was being chased, and what he was thinking when he was staring down at Rae. I didn't feel like going all the way through to when Rae buys him Ramen, so this little tidbit should be enough!))


A little boy, no older than four years of age and just barely tall enough to sit in a stool on his own, huffs and pants through his teeth as he runs, as far and as fast as he possibly could. The wind is flying through his hair and his eyes sting from the rush of air across them and it makes him almost want to cry, but he doesn't. He tells himself that he is a tough boy, that something as simple as this couldn't hold him down. It wouldn't make him cry.

He had just been having fun. He had borrowed a bit of money from some mean adults a little over an hour ago, and, yeah, okay, maybe he wasn't exactly intending on giving them the money back, but so what? They were mean. So he borrowed their money permanently, and he had gone to buy some stuff from the ninja store he knew well. He passed that store every day, sometimes pressing up against the glass to get a glance inside.

There were ninja tools and ninja weapons all over the place, and he had always thought they looked so frickin' cool. So he borrowed some money and went in to get something. Anything, really. He hadn't had anything specific in mind.

Then again, when he took a glance at the prices, he nearly went white as a sheet. A clean sheet, mind you, not one of his sheets.

They were all so expensive! Even with all this money he had borrowed from those jerks, he couldn't afford anything! Not a single thing!

At least, he thought so, until he came across these stacks of paper with fancy writings on them and some kanji he didn't know how to read. They were expensive if you wanted to buy a whole bunch of them, but Naruto had borrowed just enough money to buy one of them.

So he bought one, and even thought the shop keeper gave him a wary look - he got those all the time - Naruto ran off with his fancy paper.

Then he realized he had no idea what they even were for. He didn't care for the most part, though. They were from the cool ninja store, so they must be something super cool!

So, of course he went around to some back alley that he knew had a bunch of crates to sit on. It took hours and hours for Naruto to come up with something to do, but even then, he was stuck. He grumbled under his breath and got steadily angrier and angrier, and after a full day of sitting on this one crate doing nothing with this stupid paper that did absolutely nothing cool he finally stood up off the crate, jumping to his thin legs.

"That's it!" He shouted, angrily. He slapped the fancy paper with its' stupid fancy writing down onto the side of the box, almost like pushing a bully up against a wall or something. He started yelling at the paper, telling it how dumb and worthless it was and how he wasted his borrowed money that he could have spent at Ichiraku's and how he was so angry at that dumb paper and, and, and then,

And then the paper lit up blue.

He stared at the paper in awe. He retracted his tiny fist, and when it stuck to the crate, his grin grew and grew until it felt like it would slip right off of his face.

And then the paper caught fire and he began running away.

To be fair, Naruto hadn't exactly intended for the crates to explode.

But they had, and apparently they were filled food or something. Naruto actually almost felt bad about blowing them up for a second, until he looked at the burnt food on the ground and fake gagged. Yucky vegetables. He did the world a favor by getting rid of those things, then.

But then came the part he was most familiar with. The part where the adults started chasing him and throwing kitchen stuff at him - he thinks he once saw them throw a spoon at him and he might have laughed - and then came the part he was also familiar with. The part where he runs into somebody and they both fall to the ground and the person gets the wind knocked out of them. And then came the part he wasn't so familiar with, as he looked up to shout at them as usual, only to find out that they were really pretty.

Like, crazy pretty. Naruto thought that they had to be royalty or something, with such clean, white hair and deep blue eyes that were oh so pretty and oh wow, were those red spots?

And then he saw that they couldn't breathe and he gets up, embarrassed. He gets suddenly angry at himself for almost killing a pretty boy. But then he thinks it's justified, because no boy has a right to look that pretty. He almost thought the boy was a girl for a second, which is a good thing really, because if he were a girl Naruto probably would have confessed his love for that boy right then and there.

And then the pretty boy grabs his hand and starts running with him -with him, Naruto has to remind himself, he's running with me, not from me or at me - and suddenly Naruto is sporting a grin larger than any other grin he's ever had, and he thinks maybe today is a really good day after all.