~Chapter 1: A Giant Ferret with Groceries~

Naruto did not know how to process the sight before him. Oh, he knew the elements that went into it: A ferret and grocery bags. However, these two things didn't seem to be able to come together in his mind.

He found himself asking prudent questions such as: "why is there a ferret in the marketplace?" and "why is it so big?"

"Why is it carrying groceries?" he asked himself out loud. Why his brain chose to voice that question, in particular, we'll never know. The six-year-old mind is quite the enigma. Especially Naruto's. But all of the questions he was asking himself culminated in one blanket thought:

"I have to follow that giant grocery-carrying ferret."

So he did.

After about fifteen minutes of walking and a great many twists and turns, the ferret stopped in front of a simple one-story house. It didn't look much different than any of the other houses in the neighborhood. Well, other than the giant ferret opening its door.

Naruto rushed up behind the ferret just as it was shutting the door with its back paw. He blocked the door with his arm.

"Eh-! Uh! Excuse me!" Naruto attempted to use his manners, despite the ache in his crushed arm, "Are you a giant ferret?!"

The inanity of the question was lost on a mind as young and oblivious as his. It was, quite obviously, a ferret of the giant variety.
A fact it confirmed verbally with a slightly amused "yes".

Naruto stared wide-eyed at the fuzzy mammal before him, "You can talk?!"

"Uh huh," the ferret's words were slightly muffled by the plastic bags hanging from its teeth, but it had, in fact, made words with its mouth.
Naruto didn't quite know how to respond to that. His young brain couldn't process the situation he had found himself in.

"Chi? I can hear you out there. Bring me the vegetables so I can finish the soup!" A voice called from inside the house, "And tell that kid to help you! I don't need you drooling all over the bok choy again..."

Naruto looked between the ferret and the house. He distantly remembered a lesson from his earlier days in the orphanage. Something about strangers and their houses. And candy. He hoped this person had candy. The ferret winked at him and offered the bags to Naruto. He took the bags from the ferret's mouth. They were slimy. Naruto grimaced as he wiped his hand on his pants.

"Gah," the ferret smacked its thin little lips a few times before looking to Naruto, "Thanks, kid. That stuff tastes awful." Then he bounded inside. Naruto followed.

The ferret flipped the light on with his tail as they he went. The inside of the house was sparse. Ridiculously sparse. As in no chairs, couches, tables, pictures, or shelves. Just an empty room with a tatami mat floor. The ferret didn't seem bothered by that. It just kept walking towards the back of the house. When it noticed that Naruto had stopped, the ferret waved Naruto forward with one of its paws.

"C'mon, Maru doesn't like to wait when she's hungry."

The ferret brought him back to another dark area of the house and flipped the lights on again. Naruto jumped a bit when he realized that a person had been standing there. In the dark. Like a weirdo. Naruto, as usual, felt the need to voice his opinion.

"Gah! What are you doing standing in the dark like a weirdo?!" He may have been too loud, but he hadn't cared about volume since the day he was born.

"Cooking," the person replied. The stove, refrigerator, and various cabinets did indeed indicate that he was standing in a kitchen. And the smell coming from the aforementioned stove did seem to imply that food was being prepared. However, Naruto was not one for "imply"s or "indicate"s. He was a man (boy) of action (yelling at strangers).

"Who the hell cooks in the dark?" Naruto yelled, feeling proud of his deduction skills (though what he thought he was deducing, not even he knew).

"Someone who's blind," the person replied, turning around to draw his attention to the piece of white cloth tied over her eyes.

That, amazingly, shut Naruto up. For a few seconds, anyway. Long enough for the woman to turn back to the stove.

"W-what is a blind person doing cooking over a stove?! You could burn your house down!" Naruto rushed forward to turn the stove off.
He stopped, however, when the handle of a wooden spoon smacked down on the back of his hand.

"Ow! Hey!" He looked up at the woman accusatorily, "What the hell, lady!"

"Get out of my workspace," she replied, shoving him back with the back of her leg. Naruto stubbornly resisted.

"You're gonna burn yourself!" He tried to stretch his arm as far as he could, futilely reaching for the knob of the stove. The woman kept him at bay with her leg as she continued to stir the soup.

"Chi, get him off of me, please," she replied evenly.

Chi (the ferret who had been chuckling in the background as he watched them) stepped forward and wrapped his tail around Naruto.

"C'mere, kid," he said, still laughing, "S'best not to annoy Maru-chan too much. She might do worse than smack you with a spoon."

"But-"

"Trust me, kid. She's got it handled. You know how to chop vegetables?"

Naruto shook his head.

"Well, now's a good time to learn!" he used his tail to gently move Naruto towards the counter farthest from "Maru-chan". Chi swung the groceries up onto the counter and had Naruto pull them out. Using his tail, he helped Naruto carefully (read: messily) cut the necessary items. When they were done, Maru came over and picked the vegetables up. She ran her fingers over the pile of green onions that Naruto had jabbed into submission.

"Wow, kid. You didn't just dice, you murdered," she said, almsot amused.

Naruto bristled, "Hey! I've never done this before! Anyway, my name's not kid, it's Naruto! Uzumaki Naruto!"

Maru paused at this, "Uzumaki?"

"Yeah! And I'm gonna be the next Hokage, y'know!"

"Hm, really?" Maru asked idly, not really sounding convinced.

Naruto bristled. He knew when he was getting brushed off! And he would never accept it.

"I will! Then even weirdos like you will learn to respect me, y'know!" he shouted, pointing at her with gusto.

"Oh, is that how being a Hokage works? Earn the title, then be respected? Funny I always thought it was the other way around," Maru said, her voice dripping with saccarine sarcasm.

Naruto recoiled from her words, his usual replies to the skepticism of others flying out of his mind.

"I...uh."

Chi chose this time to intervene, "Let's just eat, right? I'm starved!"

Maru's only reply was to pick the pot up off of the stove and move it to the table in the corner of the room.

Maru ladled the soup into a bowl and handed it to Naruto. He eyed the soup suspiciously.

"How do I know it's not poisoned?" he asked, turning his suspicious gaze onto her.

"You've been here for thirty minutes and it's only occurred to you to be suspicious now?" Maru replied as she spooned out another bowl and set it in front of Chi (who, wisely, just ignored them and dug into his food).

Naruto struggled to come up with an answer as Maru filled the final bowl for herself. Eventually, he just settled on muttering a sullen "whatever" into his bowl. He picked up a spoon, dug in, and-

"Hey, this isn't bad!" Naruto yell-complimented as he slurped down his soup.

"For poison, you mean?" Maru asked, sipping on her own meal.

Naruto paused and looked face was impassive as she continued to eat.

"Heh," his laughter was of the nervous variety, "That's a funny joke, lady. Heh heh...heh."

Maru's face gave nothing away.

"Y-you are joking, right?"

She didn't deign a reply.

It was Chi who gave it away. He snorted into his bowl of soup, splashing it all over the place.

"Ugh, really, Chi. It wasn't so funny that you needed to make a mess." Maru replied, handing him a paper napkin.

Naruto stared at the laughing ferret.

"Is he okay?"

"It's an inside joke."

"Really? Tell me!"

"No. Eat your food."

They lapsed into silence again. Well, sort of. Chi was coughing now because soup had gone down the wrong tube. Other than that, though, silence.

"Didn't your parents teach you about strangers?" Maru asked.

Naruto startled at the sudden breaking of the silence, but quickly allowed his eyes to settle onto his now-empty bowl.

"Don't have any."

"Ah. Do you live at the orphanage, then? Or are other people taking care of you?" He didn't hear any judgment in her voice, but he still felt insulted.

"Why do you care?" he grumbled, dropping his spoon on the table with more force than necessary.

"So Chi knows where to drop you off when you're finished eating," she replied before slurping the last of her soup down, "Do you want seconds or are you ready to go home?"

'It's not home,' Naruto thought.

Out loud he yelled "Seconds!" with a forced grin on his face.

An entire pot of soup later, Naruto was feeling stuffed and sleepy. He leaned his head on the surface of Maru's table, eyes drooping. He was vaguely aware of Maru and Chi talking.

"Wow, he polished off the whole thing," Chi said, sounding impressed.

"Don't be too surprised," Maru replied.

"Heh, I suppose you're right," Chi stood from his sitting position and stretched, "Ahhhh...Well, I'd better get the kid home before the orphanage people call in the ANBU."

"Have fun," she rose from the table to collect the dishes.

"Unless...you want to take him," Chi said hesitantly.

The clanking of dishes paused.

"No thank you."

"Maru..."

"I said no." It was, perhaps, a bit more forceful than was intended because Naruto jolted up from the table.

"Wah! I wasn't asleep!" he looked around with bleary eyes.

Maru turned her back to him and said, "Chi will take you back home."

"Woah, really?" Naruto asked, his eyes lighting up, "Oh man wait until the other kids see me coming home with a giant ferret!"

"I'll do you one better," Chi replied, sidling up to Naruto, "Hop on."

"Seriously?!" Naruto gleefully jumped onto Chi's back. The ferret wasted no time bounding out the door.

Leaving Maru-chan alone to clean up their mess.

A/N: Well, I'm tired now. But here, have a shiny new chapter to read. Lots of baggage to be had. Baggage makes everyone upset. It's heavy. It sits there being useless. It gets stuck on the escalator...I'm losing track of my metaphor, but yeah. Baggage. No fun. But fixable! Slowly, though. Slowly.

Edited: 1/8/19