Two weeks later I was back to my old routine as far as anyone else could tell. Playing pranks, doing dirty deeds dirt cheap and being a general nuisance to the general populace of Konoha. And of course, eating excessive amounts of Ramen. It's the food of the gods, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Believe it.

"Little Naruto, well, well," Teuchi said. As I pulled myself onto a stool. "Haven't seen you for a while. How have you been?"

"I've been good," I said. "I made a friend."

Teuchi's eyes widened slightly, but it wasn't really a negative surprise, mind you; he was glad
I had a friend, but he was also aware of what had happened when I tried to make friends with other kids.

"Oh, and what's your friend's name?" he asked.

"Bob," I said with a smile. "He's really smart. He's teaching me all sorts of stuff."

"That's good," Teuchi said. "And where does your friend live?"

"He moved in with me," I replied. "He's really old and said I should take him home."

Now, this would be the part that set alarm bells off in the Supplier of Rameny Goodness's head. Truth be told, if someone told me now what I told Teuchi back then, I'd probably come to the same conclusion. However, Bob, pervert he may be, is certainly, most certainly, not a pedophile, and wouldn't be even if he did have the equipment. This is the start of a major confusion of epic proportions and hilarity, if you look back on it, but was a bit traumatizing at the time.

"Yeah," I said between bowls, "Bob-sensei's teaching me all about stuff. I'm starting to read!"

"That's great Naruto," Teuchi said. "And what kind of things is he having you read?"

"I've got this big book and he's teaching me all about Ma-" I covered my mouth with my hands. Bob was quite careful to get me to NOT TALK ABOUT MAGIC CLUB (first rule, no joke). "Oh, I'm not supposed to talk about that. It's supposed to be a secret."

This would be continuing and increasing the confusion, if you didn't already suspect. When little, impressionable boys start talking about making friends with old people who make them keep secrets, it raises some eyebrows. I have to say this speaks pretty damn highly of old man Teuchi's character. Most any other adult at the time, save for the Old Man and maybe Jiraya and Tsunade if they were around, would have just brushed it off. Teuchi just got this dark little smile and told me to play with his daughter while he took care of some business.

"Okay!" and I went off to play with Ayame.

Now, I wasn't there for this next part, but I got it from other sources later on.

While I was playing some game with Ayame, Teuchi, at a rather determined pace for a civilian, marched right up to the tower and up the stairs to the Old Man's office. He waited impatiently, tapping his foot and slipped in the door the moment it opened, ignoring the calls of the secretary.

"I thought you were keeping an eye on him!" Teuchi demanded to the Hokage, he's the guy I call Old Man, if you didn't already guess.

"Teuchi? What are you talking about?" Sarutobi asked in confusion both at the statement and the Ramen Man's sudden appearance in his office. The other Jonin in the room looked at the two of them with confusion.

"Naruto! Who else?" Teuchi growled, sending shivers up the newly promoted Jonin's spines. You wouldn't think a guy like him could be that scary, but he manages quite well. He then went into detail explaining what I told him earlier and low and behold, they came to the same conclusion. So the Jonin, ANBU, Hokage and Ramen-Man (Greatest Super-Hero Ever!) bustled right over to my place while I played with Ayame. Now, granted I didn't find out about this part for years, but I had naively allowed Bob free reign of my apartment. And what do perverted intellect spirits do when the kids are away? Watch pay-per-view porn on my cable apparently.

In hindsight I'm glad the Old Man jumped to the conclusion, because it would have been hellishly hard to explain that on my cable bill otherwise at four years old.

You see, Bob is tied to the skull, but it isn't his skull and it doesn't have to be his home. He can live in just about anything of the right size and space. He can manipulate people, read books and apparently turn on the TV and all sorts of stuff, but he doesn't have a real body. He says he needs to be back in his skull by sunrise, but even now I'm iffy on what that does to him if he's late. Probably shouldn't push it, just in case. Anyway, Bob was watching porn while he inhabited my TV. To them there wasn't anything or anyone in the room.

So that was when they sent out the guards looking for "an old pervert named Bob." Luckily for us both, I hadn't left the skull right out on the table for everyone to see, as that would have raised a few other flags in the Old Man's head.

Anyway, I received a very stern talking to about letting strange men I've never met into my apartment. Being all of four years old, I just nodded, not realizing they were talking about Bob the Skull.

Years past and I forgot to mention Bob again until it was time for me to enter the Ninja Academy.

"It's almost time," the Old Man said with a proud look on his face.

"Time for what?" I asked as I munched on some inarizushi (which the Old Man usually gave me for my birthday or other special occasions after we went out for Ramen).

"Time for you to join the Ninja Academy," he said with a warm, grandfatherly smile. I looked down, then looked up at him with a puzzled look.

"I'm not sure I wanna be a ninja anymore," I said, shocking the hell out of the Old Man.

"You don't? But I thought you wanted to be Hokage?" he asked.

"Well..." I began. "I did at first, but now I think I'm going to be a wizard instead."

"A wizard?" he asked with much confusion.

"Yup!" I said with a foxy little grin, as most of my grins were back then. "Bob says I've got talent."

"Excuse me, Bob?"

"Yeah, he says I can be a really good wizard," I said with the inarizushi in my mouth (not as good as ramen, but pretty damn good). "He taught me to read and everything!"

"You can read already?"

"Yeah," I said, nodding furiously. "I know all sorts of stuff. Like adding, and subtracting and I know up to times nine!"

The Old Man patted me on the head in his usual grandfatherly way, but I could tell he was proud of me.

"So what does this Bob look like?"

"He's a skull with glowy eyes!" I announced with a winning smile, giving him a big thumbs up. Why can I say? I was like 6 or so. Little did I know, but this was when the Old Man made some gesture and sent an ANBU, who I have come to suspect was a certain silver-haired, one-eyed jonin pervert, back to my apartment who ransacked the place and stole Bob's skull. Luckily for Bob, he was in my TV again, watching a swimsuit competition, so he didn't get completely stolen. For some reason, for weeks after that, Bob was talking about a white haired kindred spirit; however this was also when he started demanded books of a certain orange covered series as payment for his help with my magical studies, so it's not all good.

After we finished my inarizushi, we went back to the tower. I waited outside while the Old Man talked to that dirty thieving ANBU.

"So what did you find?" the Old Man asked. The masked pervert dropped a skull on the desk.

"It's a real skull, but it's damn old," Kakashi reported. "No scarring, chipping or signs of decay from being buried. Comparing to what I've seen, I'd say 'Bob the Skull' is older than the village."

"And your other eye?" the Old Man asked.

"It's got some sort of Chakra attached to it, but there was so much chakra around that apartment that I couldn't tell the source," Kakashi replied.

"But was it anything like that chakra?" the Old Man asked. Kakashi shook his head.

"No, I don't think it has anything to do with the Fox," the masked pervert replied. "Totally different feel. If anything it reminds me more of Jiraiya."

Meanwhile, Danzo (Ancient-Spirits-of-Evil-Make-Me-Mumm-Ra) Shimura was glaring at me with his one eye as he waited impatiently in the waiting room outside the Old Man's office. I glared petulantly back up at him. See, everybody thinks I'm an idiot, but you can't be an idiot if you're a wizard. Wizard comes from the same root as Wise, meaning that it's the knowledge that makes you the wizard, not the magical power. So, I knew he was up to something, so I did my little trick that Bob was telling me all about and tugged on my magic, bringing the Imhotep impersonator's words to my ear.

"You, little demon, will be mine," he muttered, glaring at me with his one eye. He clearly didn't think I could hear him, but I did. "A perfect weapon going to waste. Just another one of Sarutobi's failures. Useless!"

Needless to say I didn't like being called a demon, and I didn't like how he was claiming possession over me, and I didn't like this jerk talking bad about the Old Man. So I punched him. Of course, I used a special punch he wasn't expecting, enhancing my punch with some extra power stored up in the rings I found in another bag in that same box. Since I hadn't released them since I put them on about a year ago (not to mention that they store kinetic energy based on the wearer's movement and I was a hyperactive four year old when I put them on), Clone-Tut went flying through the doors, over Kakashi and the Old Man's heads, out the window. He bounced off one roof top and skidded to a stop on the next.

Heads watched as he flew out the window, then turned back to me with wide incredulous eyes.

"He was being mean to me!" I said pointing out the window, but that's when my ADD kicked in and I noticed a very familiar skull on the Old Man's desk. "Hey, what are you doing with Bob?"

"Naruto," the Old Man said in his careful voice. I'd heard him use the voice before. It's the voice he uses when I play a prank or someone does something really stupid that he doesn't approve of. Me? Not a big fan of that voice. "How did you punch Danzo like that?"

I grinned and held up my hand with my rings. "These store kuk-uh-kin-uh-ken-ah-kan Connecticut energy. And I can release it all at once, and so wham!"

The masked pervert gave me a little eye-smile and nodded. "You wouldn't happen to mean kinetic energy, would you?"

"Yeah! That's it!" I replied pointing at him before turning back to the Old Man. "And the Boris Karloff rip off was talking about how I was a demon, and I didn't like that, and then he said I would be his, and you told me not to talk to strange old men or to get away from them, so I think he must have been what you were talking about, and then he called me a weapon and you a failure, but you're Hokage and so that wasn't true, so I gave him a whammy!" I punched my fist into my palm for emphasis.

"Can you punch Kakashi here the same way?" The Old Man asked, getting a shocked look from Kakashi who started to back away from me with a worried expression. The masked ANBU glanced out the window to where the Mummy was getting back up with the help of some strange ANBU with "root" on their masks. The Mummy looked like he was in quite a bit of pain and suffering.

"Nope, it needs to charge back up," I said. The masked pervert relaxed quite a bit. The Old Man leaned back in his chair and pretended to stroke his goatee. It's what he did to cover up a smile, but I knew him better than most, so I grinned. He was intrigued with what had happened. I knew he wanted to know more.

"I think," he began, "it is time for me to meet Bob."