The walk home through the forest was quiet and relaxing for Naruto. Whenever he was there he felt comfortable and at ease. It was always a place where he could think and give himself time to process his thoughts. Maybe it was his inner animal that made him enjoy it so much, or maybe it was just him.
It took Naruto twenty minutes to get to his house. Naruto sighed as he went over the events that went down today at school. He then got his house key out and unlocked his front door.
When he walked in the house was bustling with noises. His mom was in the kitchen doing the dishes, and his dad was in the living room playing video games.
Apparently, his parents didn't notice he walked into the house because they kept doing what they were doing. He thought he was lucky that they didn't notice yet, he quickly tiptoed up the stairs to his room.
He silently closed his door and set his backpack down on his bed and took out all of his assignments, and there were quite a lot of them. He had 12 History assignment, 15 math and ELA assignments, 13 science. He missed two of the classes while he was in the office so there was probably going to be more work once he when to those classes too. Since there were only 12 History assignments he decided to start off with those. History was easy for him anyway, he just thought it was really boring and kind of irrelevant to the everyday life as an adult unless you were gonna work at a museum or become a history teacher or something like that.
Before he started his beloved mountain of work he got changed out of his school uniform and into something more comfortable. He put on a plain orange T-shirt and jean shorts. He didn't touch his hair it was pretty much useless if he tried. he never could figure out why his hair was never able to be tamed, his dad could keep his hair down when he needed to.
'Guess I should start working, or maybe I should go and tell my parents I'm home. They might think I haven't gotten back yet and get worried. Yeah, that works.' Naruto thought. He was completely procrastinating and trying to put off doing his work.
Naruto quietly cracked open his door and peeked out into the hallway. There was still the sound of his mom in the kitchen and his dad playing his very loud first-person shooter game. Slowly and surely he stepped out smirking as he was thinking about trying to scare his parents. Although, pranking and scaring a full-fledged Rumunous like his parents, is near to impossible to do. Still, Naruto thought that maybe today they would be a little too preoccupied to notice.
He was able to keep himself very quiet going down the stairs, he was surprised they hadn't noticed him yet. They usually sensed him by the time he was opening his door. This made Naruto excited, he always tried to scare his parents when he had free time but always failed because of their animals senses, and to make it worse they were wolf Rumunous which had great noses among ten times harder than it would with a lion or coyote Rumunous, those were the most common. He was lucky they were Fox Rumunous, they had amazing hearing and sense of smell which would practically make it impossible for someone to sneak up on them. Though Fox Rumunous haven't been seen for decades and nobody expected one anytime soon. Their bloodline had been thought to have been destroyed and extinct.
Slowly, Naruto stalked into the living room. He stopped and wondered which one of his parents he should try and sneak up on. 'Let's see mom would be very difficult to even get close to and to top it off she's hecka scary whenever I try to pull something. Dad, he... Hm. He's pretty childish.' Naruto pondered, still crouched down looking at his parents. 'Dad it is then!' Naruto decided to try his dad because he was pretty childish and wouldn't try to snap your neck if you attempted to prank one of them.
Since that was decided he started to stalk towards where his father was sitting. He had headphones on and was really focused on that was going on with his game. The headphones were plugged into his phone probably playing music, while his eyes were glued to the TV screen.
Naruto looked back to see if his mother had sensed him, and much to his luck and shock, she hadn't. He wondered if they were just really distracted, they always caught him and he never got this close, and only is mom and dad could ever sneak up on each other. 'Weird' Only a Rumunous can sneak up on a Rumunous because most knew how to mask there presence. Although, some didn't know how to and some didn't know how to control masking their presence.
Minato's back was right in from of Naruto now. He had no idea Naruto was even home so his reaction would be amusing when he notices that he's been home for quite some time.
Minato was really concentrated on his game, Naruto noticed something too. He was playing his game, and he had beaten his high score. For Naruto that was a big no-no, nobody was to beat Naruto's high score.
'Now I definitely need my revenge.' Naruto thought, still advancing on his dad. He was still on all fours crawling towards his father.
Finally, he was in the vicinity to pounce, and pounce he did. Naruto leaped on the back of his dad who screamed like his life was about to be sucked away. Kushina looked over to see what the issue was. She was surprised to see Naruto on Minato's back roughly rubbing his knuckles on his head.
Kashina wasn't worried about Minato, all she was wondering was why didn't she sense him until just now. She had a couple theories of why and how, but it just puzzled her.
Minato still didn't have any idea what was going on unfortunately and was still screaming his lungs out. Kashina sweatdropped at her husband and his screaming. He was supposed to be a Rumunous and by the way, he was screaming you'd think he was nothing more than a child in an adult's body, not a shape-shifting warrior.
"That's what you get for playing my game and beating my high score while I was at school!" Naruto shouted.
"Naruto! I didn't even know you were home! When did you even get here?" Minato stopped screaming and looked back at his son who stopped jamming his knuckles into his head.
"I've been home for about an hour! Believe it!" Naruto said with a mischievous, toothy grin.
Kushina looked at Naruto and studied him. "Naruto, what happened to your face?" She had noticed Naruto's bandaged face.
"Huh?" Naruto completed forgot about his scratched face up until now. "Oh, some jerkwad at school giving me trouble, he's not a big deal."
Kashina also noticed that Naruto said it a bit cheery and not in his usual sad upset voice he used whenever something like that happened. "You seem more cheery than usual. Is the school okay then?"
Naruto slipped off his dad's back and went over to the kitchen table where his mom was standing. Kushina and Naruto sat down at their spots at the table, Minato also got up and sat at the table with them.
"The school's fine, the classes are really boring though," Naruto said.
"Did you make any friends?" Minato asked hopefully. Naruto hasn't been able to make friends and he didn't really want to get close to anyone but his parents after an incident happened with one of his first childhood friends. He loved meeting new people and such, but having to move every single time got upsetting when he made some decent friends. Not getting close was the easiest way to deal with it and putting up a shy act usually helps with weeding out potential friends, but then again it also means there are more bullies and some who are willing to go and talk to you. Hence Kiba, Sakura, and Ino.
"Yeah, I guess you could call them that. They're pretty weird and they showed me around the school and stuff. I sat with them at lunch." Naruto explained.
"Okay, what are their names?" Kushina asked. Naruto cocked an eyebrow. 'I feel like they're interrogating me.' He thought.
"Their names? Oh, Sakura I think it was and Ino." Minato nodded while rubbing his chin, probably thinking about what else to ask.
"Oh, and who was the 'jerkwad' that did that to your face?" Kushina said with a creepy look in her eye that looked as if she was about to murder someone. It seems natural because Rumunous were very protective of their kids, more so the females.
"Um... His name's Kiba." Naruto mumbled his name because he didn't know what his crazy mother would do to him, he was only a human after all and pretty much defenseless against a Rumunous, especially a strong one like his mom. Don't ever stay up late in the night playing video games, you'll get chewed out. And probably quite literally.
Kashina went over and took off the bandage on Naruto's face. "Wow, that kid should cut those nails. Why don't you heal the wound?"
Rumunous can heal wounds almost instantly if they aren't too bad and life-threatening, adolescent Rumunous or those going through the Shifter Stage can do it too, just not as quick. "What would kids at school think if I go back to school and they see the scratches are already healed. It'd be pretty weird to them." Naruto did have a valid point.
Minato nodded his head in agreement. "You could at least heal it a little bit, close up the wound and such. Just leave a couple scars and you should be fine. I'm not going to stitch it up since you know how to heal it and it would be a waste of supplies." Kushina said.
"Yeah, it would," Naruto said as he healed the scratches a little bit to where there were only scars and what looked to be scabs.
"So, how many assignments did they pile on you this time?" Minato asked.
Naruto sunk into his chair at the mention of the assignments. He started crying anime tears and went to grab his assignments. He came back with what looked like a foot stack of papers.
Kushina and Minato sweatdropped at the sight of the work Naruto had to do. "Uh, when are they all due?" Kushina wondered.
Naruto then slammed his head onto the table and mumbled, "Two weeks." Kushina and Minato cringed and went over and patted their son's back.
"There, there. It'll be okay."Minato said trying to comfort him.
"No it won't, I wouldn't be able to finish all of this in two months let along two weeks." Naruto's speech was still muffled due to the fact that his face was still on the table.
Naruto turned his head and made it face his parents. "I'm hungry..."
"Of course you are." Kushina said, "I'm not making ramen though!" She yelled as she went into the kitchen, he could hear her laughing as she walked.
"WHAT!? BUT I WANT RAMEN!" Naruto yelled.
Minato got up and followed Kushina into the kitchen, leaving Naruto to cry more anime tears as he thought about his assignments and having no ramen.
"Are you really not gonna make Naruto and ramen?" Minato questioned.
"Of course I'm going to make him his ramen, it's just funny to tease him like that and see his reaction when I bring him the ramen." Kushina giggled.
"You're cruel sometimes." Minato sighed.
"I'm well aware of that, but it's amusing, ya know?"
Kushina grabbed a pot and started to make the ramen. Minato just watched for a while.
"Hey, Kushina," Minato said breaking the silence.
"Yeah?" She replied stirring the ramen.
"How do you think Naruto was able to sneak up on me and neither of us sense it. He's never been able to do that." Minato was really curious about it.
Kushina paused as she bit her bottom lip and started thinking. "Maybe he's just figured out how to get into our blind spots?" She gave a look that said 'Yeah I know that's not why.' Minato cocked an eyebrow at her.
"We both know perfectly well he was not in either our blind spots," Minato said in a matter-of-factly tone.
Kushina hated that tone of voice and never liked when it was used towards her. She activated her very scary hair float technique. Minato backed away, chuckling nervously. She deactivated her hair float technique, satisfied with her very scared husband.
"Anyway, do you think he was able to sneak up on us because, I dunno, because he's going through the first stage?" Minato asked. Kushina shrugged and went back to making her ramen.
"We won't know for sure until he shows more signs. I mean he most likely his because nobody who isn't a through the Rumunous stages can sneak up on us, but you never know there's always a possibility that we were too distracted, ya know?" Kushina said as she sounded a bit nervous.
"You might want to make more ramen than normal just in case he's still hungry. We'll see if there's another sign in a bigger appetite." Minato said pointing at the ramen.
Kushina nodded and grabbed more ramen from the cabinet and started to cook it.
Naruto looked at the pile of assignments and sighed. 'Might as well start working on them if I'm gonna try to get these done in two weeks...' He grabbed the history assignments that he decided to do earlier and started working on those.
They were really easy just a lot of writing and reading about old people and such. His mom came out of the kitchen with Minato holding bowls of ramen.
"You said you weren't gonna make ramen!" Naruto yelled happily.
"Yeah well I was just teasing, ya know?" Kushina replied, putting Naruto's bowl of ramen next to his assignments. He had managed to get two of the assignments done while Kushina made the ramen.
Naruto rubbed his sore hands before he started on his ramen. He was oblivious to the fact that his parents were studying him carefully while he ate.
They were looking at him for different things. A few of the signs they were looking for were anything on him showing aggression, sharper K-9s, or larger appetite. So far nothing out of the ordinary appeared to them. They wouldn't be able to tell about the larger appetite until he got past his average amount of bowls which was seven. His teeth, well, he didn't really show his teeth when he ate ramen. Plus the aggression part was always hard to tell since he naturally ate fast and sloppy.
'This is gonna be harder than I thought.' Minato and Kushina thought at the same time.
Five bowls passed and they still couldn't tell. They were getting a little impatient with him but they stuck it out.
After a couple minutes, they both started to doze off. They soon were asleep on the table because they were bored. Naruto noticed they were asleep. He shrugged and thought nothing of it. Too bad they were asleep because Naruto got to ten bowls.
Naruto accidentally dropped a spoon, making his parent shoot up alerted. "Sorry, I dropped a spoon." Naruto grinned a toothy grin. Kushina noticed he was showing his teeth and took it as a chance to look at his K-9s. Her sleepiness washed away when she saw his teeth.
Saying they were sharp was an understatement, they looked like they could go through anything even if they barely touched them. It would be bad if Naruto bit his tongue or cheek by accident. That would hurt.
Minato hadn't noticed yet so Kushina nudged him with her foot and slightly pointed to her K-9s and then to Naruto. Minato noticed and yelped.
Naruto dropped the grin and cocked an eyebrow at his dad. 'They're acting weird.' He thought.
"Hey Naruto, how many bowls of ramen did you get through?" Minato asked.
"Oh! I passed my last record! I got to ten bowls!" He grinned again.
Kushina and Minato looked at each other. The bowls they had weren't very small, they were pretty big, so the fact that he got through ten of those bowls was very surprising. Minato, of course, is able to eat about twice the amount of Naruto, he sometimes gets stomach aches though, but it was very surprising for a kid his size. Kushina is about in between the both of them, but on occasion, she can beat Minato by a few bowls.
Kushina knew for sure that these were signs of the Pre-Shifter stage that a Rumunous goes through. Minato also knew. they were both worried that he showed his signs at school, and to top it off it was only the first day for him today so he still had a long way to go before he could get out, and they promised that they would try to keep him in this school longer than they did the rest.
Of course, Naruto was completely oblivious to his changes. He probably wouldn't notice these things until they were physically pointed out. Naruto knew things about Rumunous' because of his parents explaining the facts about them to him, and because they both were Rumunous'. The age for transformation was usually around age ten, after that, you can expect that you're not of the Rumunous transformation capabilities.
Naruto shrugged at his parent's behavior and grabbed his schoolwork. He headed up to his room and set his stuff down on his desk. He then started to work on his assignments again.
He stopped after an hour because is hand was hurting from the writing again, though he did manage to get three more assignments done. Now he only had seven things in history to finish. Although he had done five of the assignments, he still had fifty more to complete overall.
Just thinking about the amount of assignment he had to do tired him out, so he stopped thinking about it and went to take a shower.
Kushina and Minato were sitting in the second-floor living room, across the hall from Naruto's room. They were trying to think of a way to conceal his inhuman add-ons. There was a certain medicine that Kushina could make but it would take three days to make, of course, she started making some so it would be ready. Although she was making the medicine, they needed a better solution now, like right now.
"Well, he hasn't shown aggression yet, so that's good," Minato said, trying to make Kushina relax a bit. She was really tense. He added in an open mouth grin and brought his hands up in a shrug.
"Yeah, I hope he doesn't get the aggression part anytime soon. Especially at school." Kushina said, looking at Minato with a weird expression due to his odd and childish display, "We could get eye contacts for him? His eyes are going to start changing color, and that would be very hard to explain to the school."
Minato nodded in agreement. "I could go get that right now if you want." He said.
"It's past 9:00 are you sure you want to go out this late? Most places are gonna be closed right now." Kushina said.
"Yeah it's no problem, I can get there fast and get back faster. And I'm sure that the grocery store is still open, they don't close until 11." Minato grinned.
"Okay, let me give you a list of things to get, we're gonna need more things for Naruto. Knowing him and his natural appetite and his new appetite we are gonna need way more food for him." Kushina said as she grabbed a paper and pen. She wrote down some things and then handed him the paper. He looked at it and cocked an eyebrow.
"Carrot extract, lemons, ketchup? Are we even gone need these things?" Minato questioned.
"Yes, I need more things to make the medicine. These things go into different medicines I make, each one has a different use in the medicines. Ketchup makes a person who is going through the Pre-Shifter stage tired and makes their energy go down to the energy rate that a regular human would have. The lemon juice makes the aggression dial down a bit, therefore makes them less dangerous to normal people. The carrot extract, well, that's used to help with the sensitivity to sounds, light, and smells. Plus it's funny to see their reactions when they taste it, it's hilarious!" Kushina explained, she said the last part deviously.
Minato sighed at her evil thoughts about torturing their son's taste buds. Though it was pretty funny to see their reactions. He was surprised his wife would actually want to torture Naruto like that even though they both had gone through that, worst year of their lives. Minato grabbed the list from his wife, there were many items on the list. All of it would be pretty expensive, but money for them wasn't a problem since they both had decent jobs and hunted for most of their food, but they did have to get ramen and such for Naruto, meaning they had a lot saved away. One could call them rich if they knew how much they had, but they only used it for certain stuff, making sure to save it for times in need.
Naruto finished his shower and went downstairs too the living room. He saw his dad getting ready to go somewhere. They had two cars but they only used them for work or if they had to do very long distance traveling. His dad transformed into his wolf form, his wolf form was very big. He was at least six foot standing on all fours.
His mom patted him on the underside of his neck, that's pretty much where she could reach. He then ran out of the house very fast in the direction of the town. Kushan saw Naruto looking through the stairs window at his dad. He was smiling because he always thought it was cool.
"Naruto, come on let's go watch a movie!" Kushina said as she beckoned Naruto down from the stairs. Naruto grinned and started running down the stairs, he jumped off the last ten steps.
Kushina and Naruto went to the living room and turned on the TV. "What we gonna watch?" Naruto asked curiously.
"I dunno, let's see what we have." She replied as she looked through the selection of movies, "What are you in the mood for? Comedy, action, horror? Ooh, how about romance?" She teased.
"Ew no! Uhh, let's see what we have for horror and thriller!" Naruto exclaimed.
A majority of their movies were horror and thriller because all of them found them interesting. They would also always wonder how people thought they were scary, the blood and guts looked so fake it was laughable. Maybe it was because they were Rumunous and knew what blood and guts really looked like. But, Naruto would sometimes get scared because he hadn't seen what they really looked like, yet. If you looked through their selection of horror and thriller movies you would find none with werewolves and shapeshifter because a lot of them became offending after a while.
Kushina handed Naruto a pile of movies, there was a lot to choose from. Naruto picked out the five that looked most appealing. Kushina then chose the four that looked appealing out of them, then Naruto picked three, and so on until they got to one and final movie. That last one that was left was Lights Out. They both "ehed" with a shrug at the pick but put it on nonetheless.
They made some more ramen, because they don't do popcorn during movies, and put the movie on. Naruto got freaked out a few times and shivered, it wasn't because of the actual film it was because of the concept. Of course, he did jump at few of the jump scare parts and the loud suspending parts.
Kushina laughed whenever Naruto would latch onto her for his dear life. He really was all talk and no bite, sometimes. She didn't mind him hugging her but he did have a very tight grip and would choke the life out of her each time he surprised her like that.
Finally, the movie ended, it was dark but she could see. She looked over to Naruto who was curled up with his head on her shoulder, sleeping. He looked so peaceful and harmless.
Minato silently walked in through the door carrying lots of groceries and remedy items. He saw Naruto asleep on the couch with his head on Kushina's shoulder. He mentally 'awed' at how cute it looked.
Kushina looked at Minato and smiled. He walked over to Naruto and her.
"We should probably get him up to his room," Kushina whispered. Minato nodded in understanding and he carefully picked up the blonde boy. Kushina followed Minato to Naruto's room and watched as he tucked him in. They both kissed Naruto's forehead and walked out of the room.
They looked back at Naruto's sleeping form and smiled before silently closing the door.
Minato and Kushina went downstairs where all of the remedy ingredients and food were. Kushina went through all of the bags and made sure everything they needed was present. She always had to double check because Minato was very forgetful even when he had a list.
"Alright, everything's here! I should start making the painkillers for Naruto, never know when that will happen, ya know?" Kushina explained while grabbing the necessary items out of the bags and cabinets.
"You sure you want to start this late? It's half past 11:00." Minato asked, watching his wife grab the needed supplies.
"Yeah I need to get this started, it'd be bad if he just started having friggin' bursts of pain out of nowhere and starts yelling and rolling around like a maniac, now wouldn't it?"
Kushina smiled in victory and continued prepping the medicine. Minato never won in those kinds of debates, it was kind of sad if you thought about it... They had lots of those kinds of debates, probably eleven of them every three days. Yet he hadn't won a single one of them, sad.
"The pain medicine won't be ready until the end of this week, so hopefully nothing happens until then," Kushina said. She was already putting the ingredients together, the smell was not very pleasant so far.
"But what if something does happen to Naruto when he's at school?" Minato asked.
"Stop being such a worry wuss Minato." Kushina snapped. Of course, Minato wasn't wrong to be thinking about it, something very well could happen, Kushina just didn't want to think about it, things could go all bad if something happened, "Anyway, it's late we should be getting to bed, don't wanna miss Naruto going school tomorrow."
Minato nodded and they went to bed. The medicine would be fine, it needed to set anyway.
Author's Note: Alright! Chapter 2. In truth, I wrote most of this book in December of 2016, it's 2018 now and as I look back at the first and second chapters, there's a lot of spelling and grammatical errors. My writing style has changed now that I look at it, that should be obvious once Chapter 10 comes out. On Wattpad, I'm 11 Chapters posted. Anyway, thank you for the reviews, it's not much but they're appreciated. Now, I'm going to answer the two I received.
NaruHinaF: Thank you! I'm glad you like the story! And I will be going back to fix any spelling and grammar errors in the first chapter! Thank you for pointing that one out.
thor94: Don't worry Naruto will not remain that way, as you can see in this chapter he has already changed a bit and it explained a bit why he does that. Kiba will get what he deserves later on. And to answer your big question of "Does Naruto know he's a Shifter?" In truth, yes he does. Well, h knows he's of Rumunous blood because of his parents. But, the way it works is kind of complicated. He is having a late start with his transformation because most of the time it starts at age 10. Most of the time, if it does not happen before age 13, you will not have the ability to change into animal form. His parents did not keep the Rumunous thing a secret. It would be kind of stupid if they did because it would be difficult to hide. I can't explain much more without ruining some of the plot-line. I hope some of this made sense.