Uzumaki Naruto was scared. The world spun around him as he thought of one thing: survival. Glancing backwards for a second, Naruto became even more scared. At this moment, Naruto would have liked nothing more then a cup of ramen in his apartment in a warm blanket. Shaking his head to jar those thoughts out of his head, he focused on getting away. There was no time for thoughts like those.

Now there was only time for running. That thought consumed his mind. His entire body, even his soul pushed his legs to stretch faster, run farther. As hard as he pushed, it was just fast enough. Naruto pushed and pushed, with all his might to get away. To get away from those people…

Flashback

The day itself hadn't started off that bad. He woke up, and put his headband on. Looking in the mirror, he'd smiled to himself. As he remembered the events of the last night, his smile diminished. Mizuki had tricked him into stealing the Forbidden Jutsu scroll, by telling him that if he mastered the jutsu in the scroll he'd graduate. In retrospect it was true, but not in the same way as was originally meant.

Still smiling to himself he walked proudly out the door. He cockily strode over to the Ichiraku(sp?) Ramen stand. What he didn't see was the dark glance exchanged between two chunin. He also didn't see them make hand seals, nor did he see them turn to smoke and disappear. Even as the wind blew by, Naruto ate his ramen unaware of the changes happening around him.

In the future, Naruto would regret it. But as for now, he sat in the Ichiraku ramen stand and ate to his hearts content.

End Flashback

However that was the past. All he could do now was focus on running. Even if he understood (to a point) why they were after him, there was nothing he could do. All he could do was hope that the Hokage would step in and save him. Until then, he'd just have to run as fast as he could. Absently he noticed the gate out of Konohana was open. If he'd had more time, he would have wondered why. As for now, he was just grateful, silently thanking whatever deities he could think of.

As he ran past the gates, a fleeting thought occurred to him. What had happened? Glancing back one last time, he was shocked by what he saw. The gate had closed behind him. He couldn't get back in. He was locked out of his own home. A horrible feeling crept up in his stomach, and before he knew it he was crying. Naruto stopped where he was, and wiped the tears from his eyes.

It didn't help, and his slowing down didn't matter. All that matter to him was that he had left his home. Sure he'd been bad with his pranks, but he'd never done anything seriously bad had he? The only bad thing he'd ever done was had the Kyuubi sealed into him. But that wasn't his choice, couldn't people see that? Wiping the river of tears from his eyes, he gave a last fleeting glance to his home. No, it wasn't his home anymore. With a final sob, Naruto turned away from his former home and ran.

He ran as far away he could, far away from his former home. He ran and ran, until he couldn't run anymore. Naruto stood there, panting and looked around. It was a forest obviously, and it was night by now. How long had he ran? Where was he? The last thing Naruto saw before he passed out from exhaustion was the vague outline of a man with long white hair….

A/N: I know it sucks, but I figured I'd try my hand at a Naruto fanfiction. Read and Review please, especially if you going to criticize what I've written.