My Teacher, Naruto

by Navarre Bouchard-Ripol

Chapter Two

Growing up is hard for anyone, Kushina, but it's especially hard when you grow up alone. Being an orphan is like being trapped in a prison or a cage; nobody can see you, and when they do, they treat you as if you were an animal. Every where I looked when I was young I was met with cold indifference or outright hostility. Parents would scream with horror if they saw me anywhere near their kids. I was treated like a monster, and couldn't figure out what was wrong with me.

Of course, at that time, I had no idea that inside myself I carried the Kyuubi; the strongest Bijuu of the nine. A being of immense power...

...and evil.

I've seen some difficult times since I was a kid, but never as hard or as unbearable as those times. Imagine if every time you scraped your knee you had no mother to scoop you up in her loving arms and kiss away the pain. If every time you did wrong, you had no father to scold you and to instruct you on how to do better. To BE better.

That was the world I lived in, and what made it worse, is I didn't even have any friends. Not one.

But I don't want you to start thinking i've had an unhappy life (so far... i'm still a young gun, you know!). I would actually go so far as to say i've had a happier life than most! Those rough years as a kid taught me the value of love, and how living without it isn't much of a life at all. Friends and companionship is what makes the world go round! Don't forget that. Even hard times are easy when you have someone to confide in. I've been grateful for all of the love that i've received in my life, and you should be too. Never let the small things get you down; in the big picture, you have a family that loves you, and what else matters besides that?

Anyway...Now, all the kids... they had no idea why they disliked me so much. For awhile, I was a pretty sweet kid. All they knew was that their parents couldn't stand the very sight of me, and everybody knows children copy their parents. It made me angry, and when your small like that, you don't really understand your feelings as much, or how to deal with them.

I took to stealing and fighting. I made it my profession to disturb the local peace and had a fuse shorter than your little finger. I was an angry kid, and the future was just a haze; all distorted in the distance. I had no idea where I wanted to be or what I wanted to do. I just survived every day, and looked forward to sleeping and being alone when I got home.

Dreams have a way of being sweeter than reality.

Despite all that, the government always seemed to take a particular interest in my activities. They gave me a place to live and a guy who came over every week to make sure I wasn't dead or living in filth. They were less like caretakers than scientists to me though... like I was a lab rat... always giving me checkups I hated and poking around on me... so detached and uninterested in my plight it was maddening. It was the only real human contact I had and it was meaningless; just like getting a shot. Plus I got the sense the social workers hated me just about as much as everybody else did. They were forced in to the job, and were clearly unhappy about doing it.

Ha ha, I gave those guys a really hard time. There was a new one assigned to me every other week.

I spent a few years like that. I had no ambitions to become a ninja at that time, so I didn't do any training. I ran alot... out in to the woods, when I wasn't busy making some shopkeeper's life miserable in town. I tried often to become friends with the animals, but every time I came near, no matter how good my intentions, they ran like they had a wolf or something chasing them. I gave animals really bad vibes. Looking back on it, they could probably smell the Kyuubi in me, or at least sense it.

My break came when the six-hundredth or so worker drone in a row showed up at my house one day with an application for the Ninja Academy. I was disappointed when I saw him; I kind of hoped they would stop sending them and leave me alone, but this time, I was thrilled. He told me I was a shoe in... that the Hokage had decided that it would be best if I became a service to the Village rather than a disturbance. All I had to do was sign my name.

That was of course, the defining moment of my life. I signed it in the best handwriting I could manage, which was pretty bad, and picked out my best orange-and-blue jumpsuit for the occasion. I didn't sleep well that night... I was so excited I couldn't sit still. Maybe this was my chance to make some friends?

The next day I showed up to class and was greeted by a bunch of familiar scowling faces, but one stood out more than the other.

This is a little embarrassing to tell you, but I had a pretty big crush on your mother for a long time. I saw her as somebody like me; never quite able to fit in or be accepted. Her large forehead, which should have been a source of pride for her (it held a big brain!), she treated a lot like a deformity- which was funny because I felt like a deformity all over... so it was nice to have that in common.

Of course, she disliked me as much as everybody else, if not more. It didn't take long for her to realize she was hopelessly in love with your father, though, much to my disappointment. At that time Sasuke never gave your mom a second glance. Heck, even as team-mates a little later on he never gave her a second glance... but you've probably heard the story behind that already, so I won't stick to that subject.

Yeah, during the early days, all Sasuke cared about was being the best and making the rest of us look like infants. Your dad was and still is big in to obsessions; he has a one track mind and no room to fit anything else. That's why he's such a great Hokage today.

It drove me nuts, needless to say. Here's this guy who's everything i'm not. He's good looking, he's focused, he's talented, and for some weird reason, the more he ignored the people around him, the more they clamored for his attention. I couldn't figure it out... but the more I thought about it the more I just wanted to beat him in to a pulp, or if not that than at least get to be in his shoes for a day.

Well, neither was going to happen, but from then on I dedicated my whole life to training and becoming strong in secret. I made dummies of Sasuke or anybody I really couldn't stand and hung them from my wall and wailed on them until I couldn't lift my arms. I did push ups and pull ups and ran until my legs didn't work either. I thought that, if I became strong like Sasuke, people would love me like they loved him, and then maybe... well... then maybe your mother might have noticed me.

I set my sights high. 'Who was considered the strongest Shinobi in the village?' I thought 'The Hokage, of course!'

So from then on, my Nindo was to become the Hokage, so that people would HAVE to recognize me.