"Uchiha Sasuke, Uzumaki Naruto! Get up here!" Mizuki called. "Last match of the day, make it a good one, alright?"
Sasuke walked to the center of the circle, every step he took belying the grace with which he carried himself, and not at all how uncomfortable he actually was. Being stuck in a fighting ring with a bunch of other academy students like a circus animal… how embarrassing.
Naruto pushed past through crowds of students to get to the center of the circle.
"Hey, you guys hear that? The crazy loser's gonna fight!" Kiba yelled, "Oi Sasuke, put him down before he bites you or some crazy shit!"
"Oi, shut the hell up!" Naruto snapped back at the jeers, finally shoving his way to the center of the crowd. The boy set his jaw, and stalked towards Sasuke, stopping an arm's length away. "Oi! Sasuke-teme! You're goin' down, you hear me!? I've been training SUPER hard!"
To Sasuke's credit, he didn't look nearly as uncomfortable as he felt. "You've been saying that all month."
"Hey! Quit tryin' to act cool, bastard!"
Sasuke, for all his relaxed awkwardness, stood there for a moment, looking like he wanted to be anywhere other than where he was right then.
"Nothin to say?! I ain't goin down easily, y'know! I'm gonna-"
Mizuki cut Naruto off with a quick slice of the hand, "Hajime!"
Naruto never had time to react. Thanks to Sasuke's sheer speed and partly due to how unprepared he was, Naruto found himself tumbling backwards as a fist crashed hard into his face. He found himself dazed and sluggish, staring up at the sky while the roaring of a crowd cheered against him. Naruto pushed himself back up to his feet. "S'at all you got, bastard?"
The dark haired boy sighed the martyr's sigh.
...Use… Faster…
"Wh-what?!"
The emotion came faster, harder this time. Sheer and unmitigated sadness laced with anger. He should be better, stronger, faster, smarter. What kind of fox wasn't smart? He wasn't. He was stuck here. Trapped underwater in a cage made of a flesh, watching his other half flounder in the hopes of pleasing a group of childlings.
And just like that, Naruto was lost in loss. A bizarre feeling of hopelessness overwhelmed him,
In his reverie, Naruto never saw Sasuke's foot coming. It crashed into his jaw and knocked him out of the combat circle… and out of consciousness.
Iruka sighed, and ran a hand through his hair.
"Alright, someone get him on his feet and let's get going back inside. It's lunch time."
Sasuke grumbled something, and tugged Naruto up and onto limp feet, then tossed the boy's arm around his shoulder.
Iruka raised an eyebrow as he watched Sasuke drag the boy back into the academy.
...it hurts…
"Shut up..."
A bright blue eye stared back at him beneath writhing shackles made of hooks and nails and numerous seals. Naruto felt trapped, but more than that, overwhelmingly, he felt a complete misery. Being chained and sealed and seeing what was most precious to him taken just out of his grasp. He watched as it walked through misery alone. If he could have, he would have screamed.
His little one.
… hurts…
"I said shut up!" Naruto snapped awake. Anger flashing in his eyes at foreign emotions that'd assaulted his mind while he slept. He began looking around frantically only to find a mostly empty class, occupied only by Uchiha Sasuke.
"...Hell are you lookin' at?" Naruto grumbled.
"Not much." And then he looked away from Naruto, instead opting to stare out the window instead.
"Tch… bastard." Naruto mumbled to himself, trying not to think about how the voice was getting worse. Booming in his head, forcing him to compete with thoughts and emotions that weren't his.
He never really noticed that Iruka walked in until the instructor was standing in front of him. "Naruto-kun, you feeling any better?"
"Yeah… I mean… yeah of course I feel better! Future Hokage, right?!" Naruto huffed, "I'm okay Iruka-sensei."
"Alright," Iruka patted his head, "We've got a pop quiz. Do your best, okay?
Of course, the rest of the students filed in one by one, greeting with their sensei with an enthusiastic, "Hey! Sensei! Pft, you made Naruto sit at the front, huh? Serves him right."
Naruto raised his middle finger.
"Oi! Sensei! Sensei! Hey! Sup loser."
Both middle fingers.
"Naruto..." Iruka's glare had Naruto putting his hands flat onto the desk in a flash.
But then the bustle returned with a vengeance when Sakura and Ino burst in the room and got stuck in the doorframe, "Cow!"
"Forehead!"
"I was here first! Move!"
"Shut up, pig!"
Iruka sighed, and nursed the swelling headache that pounded its way into his head. This was the life… and class he chose. A class of heirs and well to do students, expected to be the best crop of genin in years.
Alongside Naruto.
"H-hello Iruka-sensei."
Iruka smiled not unkindly to Hinata. A young girl with a devastatingly obvious crush on Naruto. He found her to be the complete inverse of Naruto. Quiet, sweet, alarmingly gentle, and frighteningly competent in taijutsu, she was a student that he'd always been endeared towards. She was… inoffensive… if nothing else.
"A-ah, hello Naruto-kun."
Naruto peered at the girl with a dubious eye… but just as soon gave her a cheerful, albeit dubious wave. "Uh… hey."
Hinata looked like she could have died happily in that moment… to have Naruto sit that close for once, and then say hello? To most it was nothing. To her it was enough. And Naruto certainly wasn't used to anyone being friendly for no reason. Maybe sitting him next to Hinata more often would be good for them? Although Iruka frowned as he peered at the door. Shikamaru, and Choji were late. Frowning, he clapped the book in his hands closed, and shot to his feet.
"Alright! Let's get to work, so we need to go over a few things today. First, the academy is now mandating further basic training sessions by the month." Set up specifically to see to Naruto's deficiencies. "Some of you will need remedial training in the basic three tenants of ninja, and I'll be providing the tutoring throughout the week."
Kiba raised his hand.
Iruka sighed.
"What is it, Kiba-kun?"
"I don't wanna say names, but there's only one guy in here that's gonna embarrass us, right?" Kiba released a bark of a laugh, "Hinata, what're you doin' sittin' next to that psycho anyway?"
A few students laughed, the sounds of blatant mocking except for Hinata, who just squeaked and looked away. Naruto's eye twitched, and he looked like he was going to explode, and Iruka's expression was more than a little dangerous.
Just as the boy clutched his desk hard and turned to face Kiba, Iruka spoke up.
"Be quiet, Kiba." His voice snapped, a whip cracking them into silence, "You're all here to learn, and I won't abide you mocking any student for needing help."
Not any more, at least. It was hard not to see what his and Mizuki's actions for the last 3 years had wrought. The students saw Naruto like he did; a joke, some thing to be picked on when the fancy struck them.
"Alright, so today we're covering bunshins and the different kinds you come across..."
Naruto just as soon found himself at the Ichiraku's, his frown matching Teuchi's, as a bowl of ramen was placed in front of him, and alongside that, scroll the size of his forearm.
It was just out of the ordinary enough for Naruto to not dive into his ramen right away.
"Eh? Hey old man, what the hell is this?" Taking the scroll in his grubby hands, the boy unraveled it and read over it briefly, "Eh?"
From the Office of the Sandaime Hokage:
Teuchi of reinstated group: The Butchers, is hereby granted authority and mentorship over one Uzumaki Naruto for the remainder of the Academy year…
"Eh? What's a mentorship mean?"
The ramen chef gave Naruto a flat look from where he stood, and with all the patience he could muster as a man who'd agreed to teach a child, he set his butcher's knife down on the cutting board, and turned to the boy. "It means that during the school year, the hokage wants me to teach you how to fight."
Instantly, Naruto burst into laughter.
"You can't teach me! You just like… I mean you make ramen! And I love ramen! I mean… wait..." Naruto's eyes went wide, and he nearly gasped, "Are you gonna teach me how to make ramen?! Or ramen-fu!? Can I fight with ramen?"
Naruto had no idea what to make of the small, toothy smile that was almost a sneer that Teuchi gave him.
"Yeah kid, that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna teach you how to make ramen." He reached down under the counter and grabbed a small set of chain links, then wrapped them around his right hand and forearm. "C'mere, show me what kind of taijutsu stance you're working with."
"Eh? But I ain't even finished my bowl yet!"
"Hm? Oh right. Here, lemme just..." His fist whipped out, and in a flash the chain around his arm tore through the air and smashed into the bowl of ramen. It shattered, and spilled its contents all over the table. Teuchi ripped the chain back to him, and let it pool at his feet. "Still hungry?"
Naruto froze. In a matter of seconds, his bowl of ramen had been reduced to a puddle of broth on the table. "Uh… no. No I think I can uh…-"
"Great. Stand up and show me your taijutsu. You don't have much time to get your stuff together."
"Alright, alright, fine." Naruto groused and pushed to his feet. "Okay old man, let's see if you can keep up!"
Teuchi balked at the way Naruto stood; his fingers crooked like claws, his back hunched, and legs propped like he were going to start a race. The boy looked more like a wild animal than he did someone trying to practice martial arts. Not like the Inuzuka either… there was no mix of beast and man here… it was all beast. Somehow, the boy looked very, very comfortable like that.
That thought didn't put the ramen chef at ease. Not one bit. "What in the hell? Who taught you that stance?"
To his credit, Naruto didn't seem too unnerved. "I dunno, this is just how I always fought. Why? Should I be doin' somethin' else? It ain't like the guys at the academy ever said anything."
"Nothin'? Kami, so we're workin' from the ground up then." The old man walked over to Naruto and set to adjusting the boy's stance to something a bit more… normal. Fists balled up, and leaned back in a more defensible position. The boy still looked like he had too much wilderness in him, but this looked a bit less… foxy.
"Perfect, if I didn't know any better I'd say you were a natu-..."
...Doesn't fit… wrong...
"SHUT THE HELL UP!" And the boy clutched his head, yelling at the grumbles and emotions of something that'd dug itself so deep inside his head that he could never scratch it out no matter how hard he tried. It growled and bit and snarled and stayed.
Not… thing… get rid of…
Teuchi watched as Naruto stormed off, yelling loudly at nothing.
"How is he?"
Teuchi gave Sarutobi a flat stare, "You don't keep tabs on the kid?"
At the end of the day, Sarutobi's office always smelled like stale smoke, scrolls and tea. The office was, as any hokage would have it, immaculate. Every scroll had its place, every heirloom close at hand, even the ceiling had not a speck of dust on it.
The younger of the two old men scoffed, "Your place is pretty boring, Hokage-sama." Teuchi finally sat down and crossed his arms.
"Not enough bloodied weapons for you, Teuchi?" The old hokage asked, idly filling his pipe with crushed leaves.
"Tch, too easy to forget that what you do is hurt people for money in a place like this. Gimme a day and I can have your office looking the way it ought to."
Sarutobi scoffed, "An oversimplification. Also not why I asked you here." He frowned, and lit his pipe with a simple katon, "How is Naruto-kun's training? I can't trust the reports from the Academy, and Danzou does nothing but give me lists of potential vessels for the Kyuubi."
That statement was enough to sober Teuchi, who slumped in his seat after a deep breath, "...Yeah. About that..." He ran a hand over his balding head, "Kami help me the kid is hearin' voices, and I think he's being taught wrong in class. He doesn't know anything about taijutsu and isn't very comfortable in the stance I showed him."
To his credit, Teuchi ignored the way Sarutobi was staring at him.
"Twice in one day, then. The Kyuubi is speaking to him more and more." Sarutobi took off his hat, and rested it on the desk. A rare show of weakness, "I've done terrible things to that child in the name of protecting the village, and I'd do many, many more."
It didn't come out strong like he'd wanted it to, it came old… frustrated. What happened if the one you try to protect becomes your greatest enemy?
"What did you do to him…?" Teuchi heard himself ask, he wasn't sure if he wanted the answer.
"Classified. Teach him whatever he wants, Teuchi. Whatever he asks. If it is in your power, show him. Keep him happy and content. Try to… try to teach him like he deserves to be taught." Sarutobi reached for a very specific scroll on his desk, and glanced back up to Teuchi, "Go, please. I have a long night ahead of me."
Teuchi stared at his old friend for a long while, "...Whatever you think you're doin, Sarutobi, think it through. Don't put him through anything worse." He stood up from his plushy seat and walked away heavier than when he entered. "We hurt a lot of people, but we don't put down kids without reservin' our place in hell, you know?"
Sarutobi sighed, and unraveled the scroll in his hands, and began reading through potential vessels. A younger root operative, preferably someone of the Aburame faction would be ideal in this case.
"My place has long been reserved, friend."
He circled the name, and continued poring over the list.
Two months later, Konoha council members Nara Shikaku and Yamanaka Inoichi found themselves watching a curious sight while they ate at Ichiraku's ramen. Uzumaki Naruto, the child carrying the nine tails, standing just off to the side of the shop with a single chain looped around his arm.
Shukaku raised an eyebrow at the sight, and turned to look at Inoichi.
"Looks like the third is getting nervous," He said, before thanking Teuchi for the bowl set before him. "And you've got that look on your face again."
"H-huh?" Inoichi blinked, and he found himself staring at the scared face of his friend, "Did you say something?"
Shikaku gestured with his chopsticks, "It's not hard to catch. Any time you look at Uzumaki you get this look on your face like you've seen a ghost, and then you go far away." He raised an eyebrow, "You okay?"
The blonde haired Yamanaka shook his head, "No. No, I'm okay… I just..." He sighed, and broke his chopsticks, "I try not to think about it. Just work… you know how it is."
"Not sure that I do," Shikaku mumbled. He tried not to think about the kind of work Inoichi did, and what that would have to do with Uzumaki Naruto, and instead started eating, "I wasn't aware that hokage-sama was reinstating the butchers."
It was Teuchi that answered, "One shot thing, he wants me to show the kid the basics. We're hoping it gets him through the academy okay." He rolled his eyes, "Oi Naruto, you gonna stand there all day? I told you! 100 straight whips! If you miss it doesn't count!"
When the boy (inevitably) opened his mouth to argue, Teuchi immediately reached under his counter for a chain. Naruto cursed, and went right back to work.
"Old men keep too many secrets for me," Shukaku grumbled, "It's all kinda troublesome."
Inoichi leaned forward, just enough for his voice to carry, "So the third is so worried about him that he's trying to make him that sort of ninja? Can he handle it?"
The ramen chef rolled his eyes, "What? No. Even if he could handle the sort of shit we did," The choking and the strangling and the stringing up of bodies for all to see.. purposely crippling genin to slow a group… He grimaced at the stray thought, "Just the basics on how to handle a chain, he asked to learn, so I'm showin' him."
Shukaku glanced over at Naruto, and found the boy missing more than he hit, but still, the ones that did hit forced the straw dummy to cave in like at the zone of impact. "Kid's got the strength of a beast… looks pretty good." He hummed, "Think you'll have him in shape for the test? I hear they're bumping it a few weeks sooner so that we can get more quality ninja sooner."
Teuchi scoffed, "Rushin' things means ugly results." He sighed, and gave a long suffering gaze to the sky, "We'll see how this goes, I guess."
Five months wasn't a lot of time to teach a boy who knew nothing, everything.
Three months to go.
It wasnt' often that Iruka found himself angry. Annoyed, yes. Irritated, all the time. But furious? No, that was reserved for little boys who were throwing away the concerted efforts of a great many people. But he did this day. He let out a seething breath as he stared down at Uzumaki Naruto, who he had lined up with everyone else in the class.
"Okay, because Naruto-kun decided that our time would be spent defacing a national monument instead of learning how to do henge in class, we're going to henge into the hokage until we get it perfect.
"Oh come on Iruka-sensei," Yamanaka Ino whined, at this point, how much more trouble could she end up in? "Naruto's the one that did it, why not make him do it?"
Naruto, to his credit, did nothing but cross his arms and sulk. "Maybe cuz' you need the practice."
"What did you say to me?" Ino turned to Sakura, her eyes full of murder, "What did the class dobe just say to me!?"
Iruka sighed the martyr's sigh, "SHUT UP!" The class collectively gasped like they'd all been slapped, and in the silence, he spoke again, "Naruto-kun will be starting us off. I want an exact copy of the third Hokage."
Naruto groaned, but stepped forward nonetheless. He tried to ignore the giggling and jeers behind him, and formed a single handseal.
"Henge!"
The class burst into laughter almost instantly at the sight of the squat, almost leprechaun-ish form of the third that stood before them. "Hey! Hey! Shut up!" Naruto tried to shout over their howls, but to no avail.
Iruka was not laughing. His eyes widened at the sight of the henge'd Naruto's shadow… two fox like ears were just… there. Was this a prank? If so, how? Could one even henge a shadow? He shook off the dire chill that ran down his spine. "Naruto."
At his voice, the class snapped to attention.
"Go stand outside, I'll see you after the test."
"Aww, c'mon." The boy whined and huffed and shuffled his feet as he walked out of the classroom without much of a fight.
For a brief moment, Iruka shared a glance with Mizuki. The man's eyes were wide, his chest heaved… his jaw clenched tightly like he was waiting for the boy to explode. Iruka frowned deeply, and gestured to the line of students before excusing himself without another word.
First taking Naruto out for dinner, then a very carefully worded report.
Sarutobi sighed, and ran a hand over his face. "According to academy teacher Umino Iruka, the kyuubi manifested again, this time during a henge. He said that it changed the appearance of the boy's shadow.
The room's only other occupant, Danzou, frowned deeply, and let the silence speak for him.
"I will not hurry Naruto-kun to his death." Sarutobi said, "I have created countermeasure after countermeasure, plan after plan in order to deal with him… but we will not speed him towards death."
Danzou's frown deepened.
"The child is not advancing in his studies at all, and from what Teuchi has told me, his lessons are going worse and worse. He is strong, but inaccurate and cannot think quickly enough. He poses no immediate threat… I believe we should at least give him until he graduates."
Finally, the warhawk spoke, "We cannot afford sentimentality, Sarutobii. It is safer to simply lock the boy up and move the kyuubi. You know I take no pleasure in this..."
A small, sad smile formed on Sarutobi's face. "I know. It is why you will give me this. He is a child, and I would at least see him have one thing to be truly proud of before we take his life. Surely you can understand that, can't you, Danzou?"
"Yes." Came the immediate answer, "I can understand that." For a long while, silence filled the room. "I will vote with you on this." He pushed to his feet, grimacing as his knees pained him, "...Ah… it is going to rain soon."
Sarutobi turned to look out of the office's window, and could indeed see huge, billowing black clouds rolling in from the west, echoes of thunder sounding it.
"So it is… so it is."