Disclaimer: Naruto, his friends and the world he lives in don't belong to me but to Masashi Kishimoto. I write this story only for my pleasure and I don't make any money with it.

Chapter One: A Festival

Six weeks had passed since Naruto's arrival at the town where the Icha-Icha-series was published. Things had gone well: the publishing-house had accepted his claim of being Jiraya's heir without any problems. They had even helped him find a small apartment and a job, so that he did not have to worry about his daily needs and had the leisure to explore this place where he had stranded whenever he was not working.

Life here was very different from what he was used to in Konoha, and even from what he had encountered during his journeys with Jiraya, and most of it still seemed pretty weird to him, even the points that were rather agreeable.

Weekends for example. Two days when most people in this town did not have to work... In Konoha the days of the week had names too, after the planets that had been known of old, but this only had religious meaning now, or no significance at all for people who were not religious, as Naruto and most shinobi of the Leaf. Missions happened on any day of the week, no matter what its name, and when a mission was over they got a day off, meaning that everyone had their days off on different days.

Here Naruto had found a job as a waiter, meaning that he often had to work on weekends as well; still he felt the difference between weekdays and weekends: People were more relaxed on weekends, more patient, more ready to chat and have fun and less angry when something went wrong, and Naruto was less exhausted on a Friday or Saturday night, even though there were more guests and they stayed longer and got worse drunk. Weekends were definitely something you could get used to.

What he had not got used to, and probably never would, was being far away from Konoha and the people he loved. Sure, he was living among humans here too, and actually most of them were quite nice, but it was just not the same, they were not the friends he had loved from his childhood. Sometimes in the mornings he would sit in his bed and wonder whether he would ever be able to return to Konoha and see his friends again, and then the world would turn all white, his thoughts stopped, he turned all rigid and it took him some effort to shake it off and get moving again.

It always got better once he had got up, dressed and gone down to the bistro on the other side of the street to have breakfast – he did not care about breakfast on his own, it was nicer to have a mug of cafe au lait and a croissant and a chat with the waitress at the bistro... He would turn his attention from Konoha and his loneliness to his present life in this town, or to the sport pages of the newspapers that were lying out for the guests of the bistro, or, as today, to the festival that was to begin in half an hour.

Festivals were another aspect of this town that he could get used to. There had been one on the very weekend of his arrival, another one two weeks later, and now that spring was turning into summer, there seemed to be one every weekend, with music and fireworks and lots of food and drinks.

So far Naruto had not had any time to really enjoy them. The restaurant he worked at had put up a stand on the site of the festival, where he had to stay during the festival, selling drinks and takeaway food, and being allowed to walk around and have a look at everything only during his breaks. Today however it was his day off, and he would enjoy it all day. His colleagues had told him that it was one of the biggest festivals of the year, with music, dancing, street artists and plays all over the center of town, not to speak of the food stands, and there was also going to be a parade.

The only parades Naruto had seen so far were military opes in the capital of the Fire Country, during his journeys with Jiraya. They took place every few years, and Konoha normally sent a delegation to participate in it. Naruto had watched from the sidewalk, growing impatient before the parade had even arrived, someone had given him a flag to wave, so he had waved it dutifully and cheered when everyone else cheered, and turned to Jiraya to ask him to get somewhere else before even the first mounted troups had passed.

This parade was going to be different. Naruto had been told that it was famous and attracted a lot of tourists every year, even from other countries, and he was eager to see it. It was to begin in front of the town hall, and Naruto was there in time; still he had difficulties finding a place from where he had a good view. He met one of his colleagues, carrying his little daughter on his shoulders, dragging his girlfriend behind him who was looking at some piece of paper and not at where she was going.

"Hi, Naruto, you are watching it too?" the colleague greeted Naruto. "You'll like it, it's loud and funny and colourful, just like you!"

"Yeah, thanks", Naruto answered. "And you're going to watch it with your kid?"

"Sure. She's been talking about it constantly for the last few weeks. Always about how many sweets she would collect."

The girlfriend had caught up. "Let's get somewhere else", she said, "where it's not that crowded. I am afraid of her getting trampled on."

She showed the piece of paper she had been looking at to her boyfriend, and Naruto could also have a look at it: It was a map of the center of town with the course the parade was going to take. There was also a second map with numbers on it, and on the side the numbers were listed again, with the name of the stage or the stand at the site of the number.

"Where did you get this?" Naruto asked.

"It was in today's newspaper", she answered. "In the Morning Messenger."

The little girl on her father's shoulders was getting impatient. "When does it start?" she asked. "I want to get somewhere where I can see!"

Her parents apologized for having to leave. "You want to join us?" Naruto's colleague asked, but Naruto declined: Seeing this little family made him feel lonely and sad again, regretting not only the lack of a caring family during his early childhood but also the loss of his second family, the villagers of Konoha...

He tried to shrug it off and luckily the parade started now: With groups of people on foot, and with carts, pulled by oxen or horses, sometimes four, six or even eight of them. The horses were adorned with a lot of ribbons, and the carts were painted in bright colours and decorated with balloons and little flags, and people were standing on top of them, throwing sweets. The people on foot were throwing sweets too, they waved at the bystanders and these waved back and cheered, and their cheers were genuine. Sometimes it happened that a person standing at the side saw an acquaintance marching in the parade, ran into the street, embraced his friend and for some minutes walked with the parade until he decided that he would watch again. A lot of the people on foot, but also those on the carts were wearing fancy costumes, often men dressed up as women or women dressed up as men, but others just wearing what they perceived as sexy, showing a lot of naked skin and sometimes a lot of naked belly. Others just wore their everyday clothes and looked like ordinary people.

Naruto was not sure what to think of it. It was not what he had expected, though he was not sure what he had expected. Maybe more dignity, the participants of the parade showing more self-respect and not dressing up as caricatures of themselves, fulfilling every popular cliché. On the other hand the parade was meant to be fun, and so Naruto decided to blend in and cheer and scream as everyone else did. He even caught some candies, then he remembered that they were meant for little children and that he should not run for them.

He watched till the last cart was gone, then he turned to the central market place where the festival itself was going to take place. People were busy putting up tables and benches for the visitors, the technicians were testing their amplifiers and loudspeakers, and some stands had already begun to sell food.

Naruto found one that was run by some fanclub for Lesbian Utopian literature which sold really good cakes, so that he bought some and sat down to eat it even though he was not interested in that kind of literature at all. Having finished his cake he went on and got stuck at the table of an anti-AIDS-initiative which offered books and brochures too, but Naruto was far more fascinated by the condoms that were on display, not only in all conceivable colours but also in different flavours, most neatly rolled up, but some spread over bananas, cucumbers or the narrow ends of pears, which Naruto thought a bit obscene.

Jiraya had told what condoms were, "a protection you wear again illnesses you catch from prostitutes", and Naruto had imagined some weird kind of armour, or some ninja garments with some weird symbols of protection, but certainly nothing that was as trivial as some thin plastic foil that served as a physical barrier, and a little bit too obvious about how it was to be used, at least for Naruto's taste.

"You want some of the coloured ones?" the woman at the stand asked him. "They are the same as the transparent standard quality ones of the same firm, just coloured, you won't feel any difference."

She was a middle-aged lady, rather plump, wearing normal, rather boring clothes and looking all in all as if she was a hard-working woman with a job and three kids in puberty who gave little thoughts to wearing fancy costumes as the ones worn by the participants of the parade and who probably had little opportunity to use the items she sold. (Naruto was wrong with this last supposition; she was a married woman after all.)

"Or what about these boxes, to give it to your girlfriend? We sell them with content, but you can refill them, of course, and she can carry the box in her handbag without anyone suspecting what's inside."

Naruto imagined Sakura's reaction if he presented her with one of these boxes. Probably she'd beat him up and call him a pervert.

"Or one of these plushies? They have a zipper on their belly, and you have to keep them filled with condoms if you want them to look cute."

There were mice and kitten and a little dog. Maybe, if I ask her, she will also have a frog with a zipper, Naruto thought. Or a fox.

"I don't have a girlfriend", he said.

"Oh, I am sorry, but we cannot help you in that matter", the woman said. "You will have to find one yourself. But I am convinced that you won't have to search for a long time."

The words did not cheer him up but made him sad, not because he missed having a girlfriend but because he was far from home. Actually he had difficulties imagining finding himself a girlfriend here, and then being torn between staying with her in this town and returning to Konoha whenever the situation had changed so that he could live in Konoha without being a prisoner.

The woman was preparing to show him more of what she sold, and just to stop her he bought a Valentine kit, a cubic box already wrapped up in pink paper with little white hearts and some fancy ribbons. "Everything you need for a romantic evening with your partner" it said on a sign next to the box.

Naruto also took some brochures that were given away for free: He had realized that he needed to know far more than what he had learnt from Jiraya, be it in person or from his books. The kit was rather expensive, but the woman told him that most of the money went to some foundation that supported AIDS-patients.

He went on, deciding to finally get the Morning Messenger with the festival programme inside. Newspapers were also a novelty to Naruto, though not completely: They had a newspaper in Konoha, a rather thin one, which was mostly read by old people who wanted to know who had died and who had had his birthday. (Old meant older than thirty. Ninjas often died on missions and those who had retired from active service needed to know about their friends and acquaintances.) Then there were reports about the annual meeting of the rose gardeners' association or the chicken breeders' club. In the capital of the Fire Country the newspapers actually contained some pages about politics, as the newest announcements of the Daimyou, and who among the noblemen was rising or falling in his favour, and there were two newspapers one could choose from.

Here there was a great variety of papers and magazines, and even papers from other countries were offered, for example those of the Capital of the Fire Country, and even newspapers from countries beyond the ocean the mountains and the desert, where people had no idea about ninjas and spoke a different language. The newspapers contained news about everything, not just deaths and birthdays.

Naruto had taken a liking for the sports pages and the mixed news of the Morning Messenger, which he read either at the bistro where he had breakfast or at the pub where he worked. Everyone here was interested in sports and you simply had to be up to date about the failures and successes of the local football team if you wanted to contribute to the conversation on Mondays.

So he went to the kiosk on the other side of the market place with the intention of buying the Morning Messenger with the festival programme inside, but when he was about to take it out of the rack another newspaper caught his eye: On the front page was a picture of the re-erected Hokage Tower of Konoha, rebuilt at a site where the wall of rock was still intact, and they were already busy cutting the portraits of the Hokages into the wall – the newest one had been the first to be finished.

Naruto read the head line above the picture: "New Hokage: Konoha to be again the Number One of the Ninja World", and below it, in smaller letters: "Military spending rises by fifty percent as defence becomes the first priority. Yet according to rumours the kyuubi's jinchuuriki is still missing."

Naruto took the newspaper out of the rack to have a closer look at the article. He did not notice that someone was approaching him – only that suddenly an arm was around his shoulders, He suppressed an impulse to shove the stranger away, as this was considered impolite in this town.

"Bad news, isn't it?" he heard the voice that belonged to the arm around his shoulders. Naruto, unbelievingly, turned his head: Sasuke was standing at his side.