Chapter 1: Pain
There once was Naruto Uzumaki, who was born into a world filled with pain, fear and darkness. Naruto grew to know pain so intimately that he saw it as his beloved teacher, guiding his steps to a better future. Since before he could remember, Naruto had lived inside an orphanage, a large building close to the Hokage building alongside hundreds of orphans, caused by the chaos of the Kyuubi attack. The Kyuubi was a nine-tailed red-orange fox who possessed immense power and chakra and caused sheer havoc upon many areas around the Village Hidden in the Leaves. The treatment of all orphans was believed to be one of the most important tasks after such a terrible event, and many volunteers came to assist in the vast work of caring for the poor young children. The first sign of Naruto's entrance into pain came from the vicious contrast of care, compared to every other orphan. Naruto was either left out, neglected or harshly treated where only the very barest of necessities were applied, mainly so that no worker or person could be arrested or executed.
Simultaneously, as Naruto's entrance to the world of pain, the village was undergoing a new law, which came straight after the defeat of the nine-tailed fox. A law forbids all citizens to mention or talk about the nine-tailed fox concerning Naruto, upon pain of death if caught sharing. However, it soon became apparent in the village how much leeway, loopholes and laxity there was upon enforcing said law, especially when the civilian council used their influence to distract the Hokage from taking much notice. After all, much was to be decided and managed after the destruction of the fox. This caused Naruto to fall through the cracks of the system, the very system that the Hokage had wished to protect Naruto. Because of all these things, pain so easily entered Naruto's life, without any sign of leaving. Naruto's very disposition also caused his suffering to be more enhanced, and to understand why this is; it is important to delve into his biology.
Chakra is an energy created by the combination of physical and spiritual energies within each lifeform. Much is known about this energy, or more specifically, how ninjas can use it, but far more is left unknown, allowing many mysteries and unknown effects to go unnoticed. Naruto's case is just as so because one of the biggest contributors to Naruto's pain is caused by his bloodline and burden. His bloodline includes a combination of genetic traits passed down from his parents and it is a process known well by ninja clans such as the Uchiha, whose bloodline is feared to this day.
Naruto's bloodline came from the Uzumaki clan and the Namikaze clan. The Uzumaki bloodline possessed three main traits that carried through from generation to generation with some variety; longevity, chakra density and Mutilple-thought processing. The Namikaze bloodline possessed only a single trait, adaptability. Together, without the burden, Naruto's future as a ninja would have already been very bright indeed. The burden enhanced all of these traits tenfold. This enhancement, combined with the treatment endured and Naruto's perspective, created such a devastating world of pain. In particular, it was Naruto's thought perception that caused the most trouble. Anyone who knew Naruto's mother would know how hyperactive, scatter-shot and short-tempered she could be, with only a handful of high-level ninjas, knowing the cause of this character trait to be. Naruto's plight was far worse since he saw the world at such speeds that everything and everyone moved so slow to him when looking through his eyes. His body was in the same category of slowness, only heightening his frustration and emphasizing his pain. Unfortunately, Naruto struggled to focus on any one thing, making him very distracted, easy to anger and prone to feeling bored.
It was toward Naruto's 5th birthday where the boy reached a breaking point and came to a single decision. 'Why?! Why does everyone hate me? Why do I hurt so much? Why am I so alone? I know! I need to find out everything!'.
What followed were 3 of Naruto's most difficult months, arguably more so than his 4 years of life. With a single focus point, to gain information, Naruto gradually honed every thought towards gathering, processing, analysing, and comprehending information and data he received in his brain. Naruto soon found that the more he focused, the easier it became and that it was better to start with organising his own thoughts and memories first before looking outward. For the first time in his life, Naruto tried to be still, quiet and focused upon one thing. He naturally found a sitting position that was both relaxing and comfortable and spent many hours in meditation. Naruto was still untaught, was not knowledgeable of many words and/or their meaning, but his mind had a universal language, filled with images, sounds and feelings that were gradually organised like a clearing and tidying of a messy room. Only this room was his mind, and with the brilliance of chakra, an actual metaphysical mind palace was formed within these 3 months.
By the end of his 3-month mission for understanding his pain and existence, Naruto possessed an autonomous mental machine, which had processed and churned up every minute memory from as far back as possible. This revealed some difficult truths to swallow.
The first and biggest truth was the object, cause and reason for his pain. The unknown burden that he possessed was now known; the nine-tailed, red-orange fox was sealed inside his body, sealed by the 4th Hokage. Sometimes when his chakra would flare up, an intricate seal marking would appear on his naval. Lots of feelings and emotions were felt and processed through the same machine that brought his breakthrough. After a while of self-reflection, Naruto came to the acceptance of what he couldn't change. He was Naruto Uzumaki, the holder of the Kyuubi. The second truth was that the man who sealed the Kyuubi inside him was, in fact, his very own father. Whilst Naruto didn't know his name; there was no denying who his mother and father were, what they said to him before dying and as he grows in knowledge, he will become aware of what their words mean. The third and most strange truth was that some mysterious dark figure was the cause of the Kyuubi escaping his mother, attacking the village and keeping his father away, long enough to cause havoc.
After coming out of all these revelations, he focused his mind upon the seal on his naval. Immediately his 'eyes' awakened inside a dark sewer-like corridor. A huge stream of data and information was instantly picked up by Naruto, taking a little while to process completely. After this had been done, pure, white light appeared out of nowhere and spread outward. A vast forest area remained, with a large forest clearing around him, where Naruto and a gigantic fox stood.
The fox had a collar and intricate markings all over its body, the same markings on the seal on his naval. Naruto understood everything about the seal, what it could do, what it was doing and more. This only happened because of Naruto's special mind palace and a new ability, which he had just discovered; empathy. It was surprising to Naruto that the Kyuubi, along with vast chakra stores, had an empathic ability to sense negative emotions. Naruto's mind palace and bloodline traits filled this trait out and created a potent ability for him. Because he is attached to the seal, he was just now able to understand its workings and his father intentions for its creation. Along with this came a high-level understanding of words and academic knowledge.
"Greetings, I am Naruto Uzumaki, and I am your warden. I want our future relationship to be a positive arrangement and hope that this token will show you that I am willing to accept you. This domain will tailor certain benefits towards you, such as spawning creatures to hunt, kill and eat. Unless you have any request or question, I will return every year on my birthday to check up on you and to provide you with an opportunity to make a deal for both our benefits. Until next time!" Naruto ended with a slight wave before he vanished from the seal and area, leaving a very silent, inquisitive and suspicious fox alone with far more freedom than it had had since it was released upon Konoha Village. Naruto returned to his mind palace, checked its operation for the last time before returning to reality, to embark upon the second phase of his life's purpose; to understand everything.
The moment Naruto returned to his mind palace, he knew what was soon to happen. Returning to reality shifted his focus from passive to active. And as soon as his mind was active, his body instantly started to glow a subtle dark blue light upon the right side of his head, just as a fist struck that side. Just as the fist made contact, the light and a slight flicker of head motion reflected and absorbed almost all the kinetic energy, leaving only surface-level marks to show the evidence of the hit. After the first hit, many more came from the group of drunk villagers and ninja who chose to release their bottled-up frustrations at Naruto due to the significance of this day, 10th October which was when the Kyuubi attacked 5 years ago.
Some used their fists and kicks; others used weapons, and a couple even used Ninjutsu and Genjutsu against him. Every physical attack was met with a subtle dark-blue glow, a body motion and/or a body tensing at the strike area. The mental and sensory attacks were far harder to defend, requiring Naruto to become more in touch with his chakra to dispel the effects. Like the physical attacks, Naruto was becoming increasingly proficient in reducing almost all the major damage and injury it would have caused. Naruto endured all of this whilst remaining completely silent and calm. He still felt a lot of pain, but this aided in his defence's growth and improvement.
During all of this, Naruto's new empathic ability was growing in leaps and bounds due to the sheer amount of raw emotion felt amongst the attackers. Still, Naruto also sensed the hidden emotions of the ANBU ninjas who were stood close by outside, who decidedly against aiding Naruto. Naruto truly meant it when he decided to understand everything by creating a mental palace that could do all of this and more simultaneously with the same amount of focus. Defending, observing, analysing, anticipating and more occurred under Naruto's perspective, all actively open valves which funnelled more and more information to help Naruto better understand everything. To the attacker's point-of-view unseen force came upon them and knocked them out. From Naruto's point-of-view, he observed a powerful duo of elite Anbu ninja who actually did something to help, rather than the other hate-filled Anbu. Deeper empathic perception relayed more information about the duo and led him to place them into a category of valued people—a list with only 5 on; his parents, this duo and the 3rd Hokage.
The duo split up, with the evident leader with a dog mask, picking Naruto up and vanishing in a swirl of leaves and motion, appearing outside the Konoha Hospital. The fast motion and large distance travelled was all within Naruto's mind. Naruto's all-encompassing sensory perception filled in all of the secrets of the technique and the effect of the body and environment, to the point where Naruto knew how to recreate it. Naruto returned to his passive mode, which allowed him to 'mimic' sleep and focus on health recovery and observation.
After a short while, the Hokage arrived and helped the Elite Anbu bring Naruto to a private Hospital room, the ANBU having been close to killing the incompetent hospital staff who were refusing Naruto entry with trumped-up excuses. The Hokage only had to expose a sliver of his aura to quake the staff in fear of denying him. In his head, the Hokage noted all of this to address it later. When the Hokage, the Anbu leader and the lead Doctor were alone with Naruto in a private room, they all saw a profound release of all manner of tension in Naruto's body. All three men couldn't help but chalk it up to a subconscious feeling of security and trust in their presence and a lack of it outside of this room, which for a child of only 5 should never be the case.
The Doctor shook his head and began to work on Naruto and rapidly due to the Hokage being present. It wasn't long before the boy's injuries were known and shared, revealing a very deceptive result. Naruto's body had all the signs of an extreme torture victim combined with a malnourished and starved child, whilst underneath there was little to no organ damage. His resilience and adaptability were shown to be monstrous. Even with such low nutrition, his body was smart enough to lower all body signals to a minimum, almost like a mini coma-state. The three men were horrified and strangely amazed at Naruto's potential and burden. All three individually swore to do all they could to help this poor boy, a boy who, from their eyes, had such potential and who was saving the entire village by simply existing.
"I'm sorry, Minato, I've failed your son time and again. But I promise to make up now. I will do my best to ensure that your son grows to be a fine shinobi of this village. One who will possess a raging 'will of fire'. "