Storm Ch 2

It's been two years since Naruto got his apartment, and one year since he started attending the Ninja Academy. This day finds him in a rare bad mood, well, a visible bad mood. Naruto is actually in what could be considered a bad mood most of the time, especially on this day, October the tenth. Still, he usually manages to hide it behind a face-splitting grin, and a care-free personality.

This particular day, though, on top of it being October tenth, he was shot down by Sakura, (again) failed his genjutsu test, and tripped and fell into a giant mud puddle. Couple that with years of verbal abuse, neglect, wide-spread hatred, and living alone at the age of seven, and you can see why Naruto is letting his bad mood show.

To top it all off, that night was the festival for celebrating the defeat of the Kyuubi, a night he greatly feared. He didn't fear it because of the Kyuubi. No, he feared it because the villagers were especially nasty towards him for some reason. Last year, some drunk people even chased him with broken beer bottles.

He was so lost in self pity that he forgot to activate his extra security measures when he got to his apartment. He didn't even lock the door. He just kicked it closed before walking over to his bed and collapsing on it, not even bothering to remove his sandals.

Naruto's Dream

Seven year old Naruto sat on the swing outside the academy, watching as all the other kids were picked up by their parents. He watched as the parents hugged their children and asked about their children's day. He watched as the children hugged their parents back, and walked off holding hands, while telling them about what happened that day.

He sat there alone, wishing someone would come for him. Wishing that someone would be waiting for him when he finished school, someone who he could hug and get hugs from, someone he could tell about his day. Hell, he'd be happy to have someone ground him, since it would mean that there was some who cared enough about him to care that he did something wrong.

The few friends he had, if you could call them that, all thought that not having parents was awesome, since he got to do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. All they did was complain that their parents were too strict, gave them too many chores, not enough free time, and made them do their homework. Naruto just pretended that not having parents was awesome, and laughed with them as they grumbled about their parents, all the while wishing that he could have some of his own.

He didn't really blame them, though. They had no idea what it was like to be him, what it was like to be hated by almost everyone around him. They thought he got bad grades because he was stupid and lazy and because he skipped class a lot. Of course what they didn't know was that his tests were covered with genjutsu which changed the questions, genjutsu's which were removed before his tests were graded, therefore always making his answers wrong. He couldn't file a complaint, because those had to have a parents' signature, and he didn't have any parents. Even if he could file a complaint, he doubted that they would read it. They would just laugh at him, asking him to prove it, while telling his taijutsu teacher to rough him up a little.

The only teacher who cared at all was Iruka, and even then he couldn't do much. That would be showing favoritism, and could get him in a lot of trouble. All of his other teachers hated him. The taijutsu teacher beat him up, the ninjutsu teacher either used him as a target or ignored him, and on the rare occasion that he actually did show him something, he showed Naruto how to do it wrong. The genjutsu teacher didn't even let him in his class anymore, and the weapons teacher purposely gave him the dullest set of kunai and shuriken in the village, which made it damn near impossible to get them to stick in a target. Hell, he'd probably have a better chance of making a bulls-eye if he threw a cup of instant ramen at it.

Because of this, and the fact that he didn't have any family styles to rely on, his ninjutsu sucked, his taijutsu was worse than a drunk three-year-old, and his genjutsu was non-existent. He was actually good at thrown weapons, but since they didn't stick to the targets, his scores didn't count. Iruka's he did okay in, but that was mainly because Iruka taught history, and wasn't actively sabotaging Naruto's efforts to learn. The only skill he was good at was henge, and that's because Iruka taught him that when he was filling in for the normal teacher, who was out sick.

He could pull of a short distance kawarimi, although it was difficult, and couldn't make a decent bunshin to save his life. His chakra control was almost non-existent, while his reserve were huge, which only compounded his control problem. He couldn't read or write very well, and had problems counting past fifty.

He wore ugly orange jumpsuits because that was the only thing the village clothes shops would let him buy, since they figured it would be easier to find him if he wore bright neon orange. Even then, they charged him triple for the horrid things. His rent was obscenely high too. This left him with almost no money for food, so he ate a lot of instant ramen, not just because he liked it, but because it was cheap.

Naruto was suddenly roused from his dream by someone banging on his door. He quickly sat up, grabbing the one sharp kunai he had, which was a present from Jii-chan on his last birthday. It came in a set, but the rest of them were stolen a short time later. He was unable to keep thinking about much of anything, since his door picked that moment to give in to the pounding, and collapse to the floor.

Naruto looked over at the door way, his eyes wide as he saw who had just hammered his door down. It wasn't just a couple drunk villagers, but a whole bunch of them. They swarmed into hi small apartment, quickly cutting off all of Naruto's escape routes.

"Why are you here?" he finally managed to scream out, "What did I ever do to you?"

"The demon thinks he's innocent!" one of the villagers screamed out, "Can you believe it?"

"You killed our families, you little shit," another called out, "So now were gonna kill you!"

"Wait! I'm only seven! I didn't kill anybody, I swear!" Naruto called out, trying to convince them that he was innocent.

"Yeah, like we're gonna believe a demon like you, good luck with that," a third villager called out, "Enough talk, lets get him, I wanna go back to the festival."

The mob of villagers swarmed the boy, beating him with whatever they could get their hands on. One even picked up a part of the broken door and stabbed him in the thigh with it, making Naruto scream out in pain.

They beat him for another half hour, until a villager got bored kicking him in the face, and decided to try something else. He picked up Naruto's discarded kunai, and walked over to the boy, who was miraculously still conscious. "You killed my parents, my wife, and my son you bastard. You made me have to carve their names into the memorial, so now I'm gonna carve them into YOU!" the man screamed, before beginning to carve the names of his family onto Naruto's flesh. He was forced to stop briefly from Naruto struggling, but quickly solved that by tying him to the wall, arms and legs spread wide, so he couldn't struggle anymore. He then continued to carve the names of his family onto Naruto's chest.

When he ran out of family, he gave the kunai to the next villager in line, who began to carve the names of their deceased family into his flesh. After a while, when his front side was lacking in available space to carve, they turned him around, and continued the process on his back. They were careful about how they did it too. As soon as they felt like Naruto was gonna pass out from the pain, they would stop for a while, letting him get used to the pain.

When he finally did pass out, after a few hours and over seven hundred names, a couple chunin showed up to see what was going on.

"What's going on here?" one of them asked.

"Were punishing the demon," a villager replied.

"Oh, ok, just try to keep the noise down, the neighbors are complaining about all the screaming."

"It's fine, we're just about done with him anyway. We just gotta find a place to finish him off."

"Don't bother. We'll do it. That bastard killed my sister, and I've wanted payback for a while now. I'll hit him with an academy fire jutsu; make it look like he burned this place down by practicing indoors."

"Yeah, kids these days, always screwing around," the other chunin replied.

They then ferried all the villagers out of the building, and then returned to the destroyed apartment. The first chunin was about to start the fire jutsu, but was stopped before he could finish it by the other chunin.

"What?"

"Is there anyone else in this building? I got no problem killing demons, but I don't want to be responsible for burning a bunch of civilians to death."

"Uhhh, I don't think so, but we should probably check. We're on the top floor, so the whole building shouldn't burn down, so long as we watch it. We'll just say we found the apartment on fire, and quickly put it out, but were unable to save the 'poor child' who lived there."

They then scanned the surrounding apartments, finding them all empty. Seems that nobody wanted to live next to the demon.

'Oh well, just makes our job easier,' thought one of the chunins as they returned to the demon's apartment. "We'll both do it. Rumor has it that the demon has a lot of chakra, and almost no control over it, so it'll be more realistic that way."

"Okay," the other replied, as they both launched the unnamed fire jutsu at the demon's unconscious body, shooting an eight foot flame at him. Normally, the technique only puts out a two foot stream of flames, and it's used for lighting campfires and torches and such. But, when a couple of angry chunin are behind it, and have chakra to spare, well, you can imagine the results. Especially when they use it inside a wooden apartment.

Satisfied that the demon was taken care of, they waited on a nearby roof for an appropriate amount of time to pass before dousing the flames, and playing the heros.

Xxxxxxxxxx

When Naruto passed out from the pain, he found himself in a sewer, or at least, what he thought was a sewer. It was dark, and there was ankle-deep water on the floor. The next thing he realized was that he didn't hurt, and upon a closer inspection, realized that he had no injuries at all.

'Huh. I must be dead. Funny though, I thought heaven was supposed to be bright and sunny. The villagers must've got their wish and sent me to hell,' Naruto thought as he began to explore the sewer. As he walked, he noticed pipes running across the ceiling, big ones and small ones. The big ones faintly glowed red, and the little ones faintly glowed blue, and for some reason, their combined glow made a faint green light, which was how Naruto was able to see where he was going.

The thing that unnerved him the most though, was the fact that he seemed to know where he was going, although he also knew that he had never been there before in his life. He was sure he would remember it if he had, and he couldn't remember ever being in a place like this.

Continuing on, he noticed the air getting warmer, as well as there being more of the big pipes on the ceiling, and less of the little ones. Eventually, it got to the point where there weren't any little pipes on the ceiling, and as he turned the next corner, he came face to face with a giant cage.

The cage went up towards where the ceiling should be; it was so high he couldn't actually see it. The bars were as thick as his arm, and spaced far enough apart for him to easily slide through, which told him that whatever was behind them was really big, and probably really strong. He was surprised, then, to find that the only thing holding the cage shut was a small piece of paper, with 'seal' written on it.

Once the novelty of the giant cage started to wear off, he began to notice a sound. It had a rather odd rhythm to it, until he realized that the sound was from something breathing, and based on that breathing, whatever it was, was waking up.

Pretty soon, he could vaguely make out something moving in the darkness on the other side of the bars, and he could tell it was really, really, big. Big as in, bigger that his apartment; heck the thing was probably bigger that his apartment building. He just watched in awe as the thing began to move towards him, but staying far enough back that he couldn't tell what it was.

Eventually, Naruto got sick of waiting, and called out to it, "Hello?"

The only response he got was a pair of gianormous eyes opening, each with a vertically slit pupil, and colored red.

Yep, that confirmed it. Whatever the thing was, it was freakin huge.

"Who are you?"

The question caught Naruto completely off guard. "Uhh, I'm Uzumaki Naruto."

There was a brief pause, and then, "How old are you?"

This time, he noticed the huge mouth the thing had, as well as the fact that it was full of very white, very shiny, and very sharp looking teeth.

"Uhh, I'm seven."

The thing turned slightly away from Naruto, and after a few minutes, Naruto decided to ask it some questions.

"Who are you?" Naruto asked.

"Me? You should know that already. You humans call me Kyuubi."

Naruto's response came as a slight shock to Kyuubi, as he just flopped down onto the watery floor and began to think, which was a pretty far cry from the usual responses. Usually people screamed in fear, tried to attack, or just keeled over dead.

"You don't seem very surprised. Normally when humans hear my name they try to attack me."

"Why should I be? We're both dead already."

"Huh?"

"Well, if you're the Kyuubi, and I can see you, we both must be dead. Cuz, like, the Yondaime Hokage killed you, making you dead, and for me to see dead people means that I gotta be dead too."

Kyuubi just stared at Naruto. It was a surprisingly well thought out argument from a seven year old human, based on the edited bit of knowledge he had.

"You're not dead, or at least not yet. I'm not dead either. I don't know why you think it, but this 'Yondaime Hokage' didn't kill me, he sealed me inside you. I'm the lord of demons; no pathetic human can kill me."

Naruto just sat there in shock, not really able to process what he was just told. As the silence stretched on, Kyuubi was beginning to think that Naruto's mind had cracked, when he suddenly spoke.

"So you're why everyone hates me?"

"Everyone hates you?"

"Yeah. All the villagers glare at me, and call me names like 'demon' and 'monster.' None of the shops sell me stuff, and none of the other kids play with me. Whenever I try to play with them, their parents yell at me and take them away."

That made Kyuubi angry. No demon disrespects children. In the course of its life, even Kyuubi avoided killing children whenever possible.

"What about your parents?"

"I don't have any. I lived at the orphanage until Jii-chan got me this apartment."

Something about that sentence just didn't sound right to Kyuubi. "Lived?"

"Yeah. Jii-chan got sick of the people there abusing me and stuff. They said that a demon should be able to live on its own and that they shouldnt have to take care of me."

They went silent for a few minutes, Kyuubi thinking over how wrong Naruto's life was, and Naruto trying to figure out where they were.

"So, where are we?"

"Hmm? Oh, this is your mindscape."

"What?"

"We're inside your mind."

"Oh how-" Naruto was cut off when it suddenly got really hot in his mind.

"What's going on?"

Kyuubi just focused on Naruto's senses, and came to a startling conclusion.

"Your body is on fire."