Hey there, how's everybody been? Well, here's another drabble, though it's set a little earlier than the others. If you guys are lucky, I'll post another one tonight, one with Neji torture!
Disclaimer:...I swear to every god there is up there, that we've had this discussion before. Didn't own it then, sure as heck don't own it now.
He practices when no one watches,
They all think he has no contact with it, that he is completely oblivious to it. They think he just sits there, unaware of why they all look at him like that.
But that's not true.
He knows.
He's always known. It's just an easy thing to figure out, and figure it out he has, because he's sitting in the forest, practicing. And somewhere, in the very back of his mind, that he almost misses, there's a voice hissing instructions. It does this all the time, and he only half hears it, because it's such a strange, dark voice. But whenever he runs low on chakra, the voice will whisper something, and chakra comes rushing into his veins like blood. Whenever he's hurt, by his own insane training or some drunk villager who's decided to blame him for…well the owner of the voice, something red, that looks like chakra, but can't be, because chakra is neither red nor visible, will seep out of the wound, then the wound will be gone. He's gotten used to it, and so now he sits, cross-legged and determined, coaxing it out, trying to see what it is that makes them all hate him so much. And as he sits there, all the air around him grows hot and red bleeds out of his very skin and shifts and dances around him like scarves in the wind. He knows, in the back of his mind, that he should fear this, but he doesn't, and even when he looks at his reflection, and his eyes are red, it doesn't matter, because that chakra is protecting him, and helping him somehow. So, he'll go on taming the fire that's in his body for three hours each day, then go home and collapse on the bed, only vaguely aware of the eyes that have followed him.
The next day he stands in front of his new teacher, some weird, one-eyed jounin, with two new teammates and says to himself:
'You don't like this Kakashi-sensei, huh?'
His only response is the feral growl of a caged animal.
I always figured taht it would be much more fun if Naruto knew about the fox early on. i mean, there's a seal on his stomach, wouldn't he wonder about that? And then, I bet he would go and research seals, because, let's face it, Naruto really isn't as dumb as he seems. He comes off, to me at least, as a rather bright child, with a good mind and a strong heart. But people would fear his growing stronger, so he acts like an idiot so he won't be lynched. I mean, he has his own jutsu for God sakes (perverted, yes, but his own) and all those pranks could not have been made up by an idiot. Judging by the pranks, he would have needed to have come up with methods and escape routes, and needed to know times, dates, when and where the chuunin and jounin were at the time, how much time he would have before they caught on, and then the best escape routes. My conclusion? Naruto has a sharp mind that's just been used...creatively. If he were put in a serious situation, given his pranking skills, he could probably come up with a decent, if not totally fool-proof plan, on the spot. Look at Zabuza. He came up with that while fighting. He's not stupid. So I figure he'd have to know something about the seal on his stomach, and figure it out.
Anywho, that's my rant for now. Look for my Neji-torture drabble.
MoS