Disclaimer: I do not own naruto

Chapter 3

Naruto woke with a bad taste in his mouth.

He tried to stand up but instantly became nauseous and fell to the ground, throwing up beside him as he did. Naruto spat out the rest of the bile that remained in his mouth. Slowly rising to his feet to limit the dizziness he felt, Naruto moved to the entrance of the paper store.

Sitting down on a hard wooden chair, Naruto realised how drained he was. He felt like he didn't even have the energy to get off the chair. Naruto had never felt like this before. He doubted he would even be able to move if someone walked through the front door.

Now that he had thought of it Naruto turned his head and began to watch the front door lake a hawk. After a few minutes, Naruto shook his head, he was just being paranoid.

An hour passed and Naruto finally found the energy to get up. He moved to the rugged mattress he had found a few months ago which he had moved to the corner of the room that acted as his sleeping area. Naruto collapsed onto his bed, falling asleep before he even touched the mattress.

When Naruto one again awoke, he found that not much of his energy had been restored.

This had never happened before. All his life he had woken up feeling refreshed and new, even if he had been dying from poisons or losing blood when he went to sleep.

Naruto knew something was wrong, this new feeling of nausea combined with having less energy than ever, could not be a good thing. Thinking back to the medical books he had read, Naruto realized the symptoms he had could be just about anything. He hoped it was nothing, but decided to keep an eye on his body should another symptom show itself.

Naruto used what little energy he had to get off his bed and walk to the front door intending to walk to the nearby stream to get a drink. He stopped when he heard two thuds outside, a sound he had memorized to be a ninja's landing.

Naruto scurried over to the small panelled window and peeked an eye through. The first person he noticed was the Yondaime and behind him was the man who attacked him last night.

Curious as to why he would come back with the Hokage, Naruto listened in to hear what they were saying. "Here Hokage, this is where I attacked the demon and left him when the seal was damaged." The ninja who attacked Naruto said, standing in front of a puddle of Naruto's dried blood.

The Yondaime seemed to think for a minute before ordering "Asuma, I need you to gather any available jounin and find the demon. I need to look at the seal." The now identified Asuma responded with "Yes sir." Before disappearing. The Hokage followed not a second later in a flicker of yellow.

The part about a seal was put to the back of Naruto's mind when he heard a squad of jounin were now after him.

Jounin were the most dangerous of all ninja, they were the ones able to cause him the most pain. He knew if he wanted to live he would have to leave the village.

Naruto had played with the idea many times during the last year. But what had stopped him from actually leaving was the simple fear of the unknown. He didn't know how the people of other villages would treat him but he had always theorized that they would treat him even worse than he currently was as he would be an outsider.

Naruto locked his fears away and promised himself he would escape tonight. He walked out the front door after making sure there was no one around and ran into the darkness of the alleyways. Making it to the safety of shadows, Naruto was reminded of the lack of energy he currently had.

Breathing deeply, Naruto couldn't stop himself from coughing a few times. He decided he would hide somewhere away from the paper store until nightfall, when he could escape with the cover of darkness. Thinking of a place he wanted to see one last time before he left, Naruto began to move in the direction of the library's ruins.

Naruto pulled himself out from under the fallen support beam he had been hiding beneath. It was now night, the stars were clearly visible in the cloudless sky faintly illuminating the ground around him.

It was now or never Naruto told himself. He began his trek towards the hole in the wall he uses when he goes hunting.

Naruto poked his head out of the hole on the other side, only to quickly pull himself back in as one of the village's patrol ninjas passed right past where he was.

Trying to calm his racing heart, Naruto waited five minutes before attempting to leave again. Slowly crawling out, Naruto looked around before standing up.

It was strange. He had done this a thousand times to hunt but this time he felt a sense of achievement. He felt proud of himself that he was finally doing this. Even though he had no idea what the outside world was like except for what he had read in books.

Naruto knew he never had to set foot in this treacherous village again. Taking a step he noticed that despite his little remaining energy, his feet felt lighter, as if he had just lost half of his already miniscule weight. It made it so much easier to walk even with his low energy.

He felt like his life would finally get better. Naruto felt a smile touch his lips, something that he couldn't remember doing since the ramen duo were still alive.

It was an hour of walking tater that Naruto finally remembered what the jounin and the Hokage had talked about. "They were talking about a seal that had been damaged and me at the same time. Could it be possible that I have a seal on my body that was damaged last night?" Naruto said. Remembering where he had been cut by the jounin, Asuma, Naruto concentrated chakra in his fingers so he could reveal any hidden seals, noticing how hot his fingers became with his chakra in them.

He touched his stomach along where he had been sliced open the previous night and jerked when a seal showed itself, glowing a deep red. He couldn't believe there actually was a seal on him. How had he never noticed this before?

Naruto looked closely at the seal, it looked similar to the Death God Seal that he had seen in one of his fuinjutsu books but it wasn't the same. The Death God Seal was the most powerful containment seal and was only able to be activated by the Shinigami. The seal could contain anything of any size or power within a human host. One could summon the Death God to do the sealing at the cost of their own life.

It was then that it all clicked, the seal, the villagers thinking he was the nine tailed demon fox. Someone had sealed the Kyuubi within him using a variation of the Death Gods Seal. Seeing as the Yondaime seemed proficient in fuinjutsu given the fact he wanted to see the seal when there was the threat of it being damaged, Naruto figured that he was the one who had sealed the Bijuu inside him. He must have altered the seal to allow himself to live by casting it himself instead of the Shinigami. Naruto knew that changing a seal of that magnitude in the way the Hokage did would have caused some adverse side effects, but he just didn't know what they were.

Naruto then had a stray thought, if the Hokage was good enough with fuinjutsu to be able to create a seal at that level then he should realise that he was not the Kyuubi. So why does the Yondaime treat him just like all the other villagers do? Naruto had a feeling there was more to this than what he had already figured out. Pushing through the hurricane of thoughts and emotions, Naruto began to walk again.

Naruto woke to a bright light shining into his eyes. Blinking a few times he accustomed himself to the harsh beams of sunlight.

Naruto had made it to a small town just as the sun had risen and he had decided to rest. He slowly climbed down from the tree he had been sleeping on, to the ground. He looked to the sky and saw the sun was just past the centre of the sky indicating the time to be one o'clock in the afternoon.

Naruto began to walk towards the town he had seen earlier this morning. He needed to know if people treated him the same here as they did back in Konaha. Steeling his nerves, Naruto stepped into the town and walked down the centre of the main street, keeping his head low out of habit and preventing himself with difficulty from diving towards the shadows of the side alleys. After walking through the whole street with not one person paying him any mind, Naruto released a sigh of relief and stopped shaking. He only realised he had been shaking when he was overcome by a calm stillness. But his relief crumbled when he heard the words he hoped never to hear again.

"It's the demon!"

Please review, I need to know if I can improve anything or if I'm doing well with this story or not. The reviews will go to a good cause... getting me motivated to write more for this story. I had a bit of trouble getting this chapter into words but I don't think i stuffed it up. (I hope.) I wont be able to update from Monday through Thursday next week so i will try to get a chapter up by Sunday, but I probably wont make it. Anyway thanks for reading.

also does anyone know if a doc will be taken from a story when its life has ended? it probably wouldn't but i'm just wondering.