AN: Hello again, thank you for the very encouraging reviews, I will try not to disappoint. Thank you also for the honorific and spelling tips, they are greatly appreciated. As I work full time I will be updating fortnightly from now on, just so you know.
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto; I just think he's awesome.
Warning: May contain spoilers and/or clichés, if you are bothered or offended by either; why are you reading fanfiction?
'thinking'
"speaking"
jutsu
demon speak
Chapter 1.
It took almost two months for Naruto to fully accept the situation he found himself in. At first he thought himself to be the victim of an elaborate genjutsu, as the last thing he remembered was fighting against Madara alongside Kakashi-sensei. The next thing he knew he was awakening to his old room at the orphanage unable to access his chakra or mindscape and stuck in a body weak from lack of food and exercise.
Only after he had tried to use pain, his only resort as his chakra was inaccessible to him, a number of times to break the genjutsu with no result and a fair amount of time had passed with no change, did Naruto finally accept that he had somehow regressed to his five year old existence. He knew he was five as he recognised one of the orphans playing in the yard below his window as a girl who had entered the orphanage soon after his fifth birthday on the death of her grandmother, her only surviving relative.
Finding himself in such a weak and vulnerable body almost drove Naruto to despair as feelings of helplessness almost overwhelmed him. Until one night when he dreamt of the three most influential teachers of his life standing around his bed, silently telling him to not give up but to keep moving. It was then that he realised that if he was in fact in the past then he had a chance. A chance to save these men, his jiji the Hokage, his master Jiraiya and his team leader Kakashi lost just moments before he himself was hit. At this point in time they still lived and the future was salvageable.
"This time I will be better, I will be stronger," vowed Naruto to himself, "This time I will protect everyone, believe it!"
The orphanage Naruto spent the first six years of his life in was typical of a village recovering from near annihilation. The necessities for survival were provided but in short supply. The Sandaime, being an intelligent if misguided man, realised after the third attempt on Naruto's young life that the people were not quite rational directly after the attack of the nine tailed fox and that the care of one Naruto Uzumaki would have to be spelled out most strongly for it to occur.
Thus he created his famous law to protect Naruto from the hatred of his peers and also the Orphan's Act in which the basic standard of care for orphans was stipulated. The care takers made sure to carry out the letter of the law, in fear of the repercussions if they did not, but only the letter of the law.
As stated in the act orphans were to receive three meals a day though the size of the portions was not stipulated, and so Naruto received three meals a day. It was not the the carers' fault that the standard serving was so small and that there was never enough for Naruto to receive seconds, Naruto being the last alphabetically to be served.
The act stated that orphans were to be washed daily, and so Naruto received his bath with the other orphans. It was not the fault of the carers that after forty children were washed that the bath water would be only luke warm at best when he did so and not at all clean.
As stated in the act orphans were to be housed in clean rooms with at least one blanket each, and so Naruto slept in a clean room each night. It was not the fault of the carers that due to overcrowding in the dorms, Naruto was consigned to a disused supply room. Nor was it the carers' fault that the blankets were thin with only enough for all the children, bar Naruto, to receive two each.
Thus Naruto's experience at the orphanage was that of unrelenting loneliness, hunger and cold. He received enough of the basics to survive but not to thrive.
As he was left alone for much of the time, Naruto took twice as long as the other orphans to learn to talk and quickly fell behind in the group reading lessons as no one would answer his questions. This severely retarded his development the first time around but now with his new knowledge, this negligence became a blessing as no one would notice what he did in the privacy of his room.
'First things first,' he thought to himself, 'I need to meditate. There's not much I can do to improve my body just yet until I can access some more food. But as Jiraiya once said, chakra is a combination of mind and physical power, so if I improve my mind to should help to balance my system and let me access my chakra.'
Naruto had forgotten how much easier it was to think at this age. Most of his chakra was tied up with the still recovering fox and with countering the effects of malnutrition on his body, and so the hyperactive thought processes of his latter life were yet to develop.
The first time around Naruto was too busy feeling miserable to notice but his senses were truly amazing. He could hear the Matron down in the kitchen, two floors below; he could clearly see the treetops outside the village wall over five kilometres away and could literally smell the emotions of those around him.
Naruto had always had great senses; either because of his large chakra reserves or because of the fox's presence, but over time had unconsciously blocked them out. Much like a person living beside a train track would over time not even hear the train, Naruto's senses were greatly reduced through disuse and lack of training. Only through constant training, like that received by the Inuzukas, would such senses be usable later in life, training that Naruto never received.
On their three year training trip, Jiraiya had attempted to retrain Naruto to use his enhanced senses to some degree. 'I had no idea how much I had lost,' thought Naruto as he stared out the window revelling in his ability to see so far and hear so much. 'Thank goodness I remember the training techniques Ero-sannin taught me for retaining my senses. '
Turning away from the window at last Naruto settled himself on the floor at the end of his bed with his legs folded. He laid his hands on his knees, palms up and closed his eyes. Breathing deeply Naruto reached deep inside himself with his mind searching for the wellspring of power residing just behind his navel.
Naruto breathed out as he traced the swirling vortex, mentally following its pathway through his body's chakra network. This was the simplest and most calming of all chakra exercises as the mind is soothed by the gentle flow of energy. Fire monks often used this exercise to clear their minds upon awakening and indeed it was they that taught it to Naruto.
Naruto breathed in and out gently soothed by the feeling of peace that flowed through his mind. 'Six months of this and I should be ready for the next exercise,' he thought, 'There's no need to rush as not much will be happening for a while and my body is not developed enough yet for much else. I need to be ready in a year's time though. I'll need to build up as much strength as I can to survive when I'm thrown out.'
On the night of Naruto's sixth birthday a mob of drunken villagers had attacked the orphanage the first time around. For the first few years of Naruto's life his location had been kept secret and it was thought by most villagers that he had been secluded away from Konoha. But on the night of the sixth Remembrance Festival, a tipsy orphanage worker has let his location slip whilst drinking in a local bar.
The resulting mob was quickly turned away by ANBU but not before they had set fire to the orphanage's front gate. The Matron of the orphanage was justifiably upset but unprofessionally took it out on Naruto, whose increasingly hyperactive behaviour had made him more difficult to control.
Naruto had found himself thrown out through the orphanage's back gate the next morning with little more that the clothes on his back. Luckily the weather had been mild enough that sleeping outside had been no real hardship, but the fear of being so vulnerable and the constant hunger had almost broken him. Until that is he had miraculously happened upon the ramen stand of Teuchi Ichiraku and his daughter, who had brought his plight to the attention of the Hokage, resulting in Naruto receiving his own apartment and monthly orphan stripend on which to survive.
'It will be different this time, I will be ready.'