AN: hi all, Bet you didn't think I would update so soon! HEH, me neither. :3

Thank you for the wonderful reviews they are greatly appreciated. I'm never too sure of how a chapter has turned out until the first one.

To all those who have guessed how the story will go, you're all wrong MWHAHAHAHAHA!

No seriously, thanks for the suggestions; I have Naruto's development planned out up till the Genin Graduation, after that who knows so any new ideas would be welcome.

Naruto is based largely on Canon, the premise being that sixteen year old mid-war Naruto has been reset as a five year old with all his knowledge but with the physical limitations of a weak and still developing body.

I'm trying to keep his growth as logical as possible, so let me know if anything doesn't make sense, I will try and answer any concerns within the story.

Right, that's probably the longest AN I'll do, so on with the show!

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 7.

It was compulsory for all children in a shinobi village to complete two years of basic education, such as reading, mathematics and village history, before starting on their career education and this was called Pre-Academy.

The children were taught all together so that they all had an equal level of knowledge and basic fitness before they were split up into the various specialised academies or apprentice opportunities, such as the academy for the merchant class, the various manufacturing guilds and of course the Ninja Academy. Classes were split by social class, all clan student in one class, orphans in another and so on, to make it easier to teach the students at their level.

Naruto was required to attend for six hours a day which he did not really mind as he used the time to further his fine motor training. By sitting at the back of the class and remaining quiet he managed to remain largely overlooked, helped by the fact that the teacher chose to ignore his existence for most of the time, allowing him time to practice his calligraphy and to read up on techniques and skills that he would like to acquire this time around.

Naruto's main regret from his time with Jiraiya was that he never really gotten a chance to learn more than the very basics of Fuuinjustu. Most of the time that would have been spent on the technique had been taken up with first learning how to read and then by correcting his atrocious hand writing and so he only learnt some basic sealing and explosive tags. Jiraiya always played off his disappointment by saying that they had plenty of time to train in the skill later, but of course this never happened.

By practicing his calligraphy now, Naruto hoped to have the level of fine control necessary for advanced Fuuinjustu by the time he met up with his mentor again, so as to never again cause one of his most important people to feel disappointed in him.

All in all the time spent in the classroom was beneficial to his new training regime. He had time to sit and read, the school supplied paper and writing materials so he did not need to use his own dwindling supply, the physical fitness exercises taught at the academy were tailored to the needs of his physical age and nutritious meals were supplied at lunch so as to improve the overall health of the village children and so supplemented his fortnightly grocery deliveries and as such he was eating more and of greater variety. However, all this came at the cost of a higher visibility of his person within the village.

By using the alleyways and shadows to move about the village, Naruto had managed to keep his presence at a minimum so much so that only a handful of people even knew that he was living outside of the orphanage, in stark contrast to his previous life when much of the village had known within a couple of days. But now that he was required to attend the academy, Naruto had found it much harder to stay beneath the radar.

To reach the Pre-Academy building students had to travel down a wide road with very few shadows or side streets. Such an approach was deliberately designed to allow for high visibility of the students at all times as a safety measure, but it also meant that Naruto now had nowhere to hide from the angry, hateful stares of the average civilian.

For an entire month Naruto had been on tenterhooks just waiting to be attacked by the villagers who seemed to go out of their way to gather and stare at him as he walked to and from the school building every day. Their low, rumbling growls of hate echoing in his ears and they called him names and warned him away from their children, until one day it all suddenly stopped as the civilians as a whole started to look right through him.

Naruto had often wondered why he had not been physically attacked more as a child, except for those few instances when he met groups of obviously drunken civilians when he foolishly stayed out late to train or the occasional bully. That is until one night when he had felt the approach of a large group of angry civilians only for them to be met and turned away by his ANBU guards.

He had of course noticed the presence of said guards and had taken comfort in their presence as he had still felt quite vulnerable in his young state and in the thought that the Old Man was looking out for him, though it did mean that he had to be careful to hide any advanced training as he did not want to raise suspicions. He had even made a game of trying to identify his guards from their chakra signatures and from any fleeting glimpses he managed to catch of them.

Groups of civilians attempted to approach him a few more times, both at home and on the training grounds only to be turned away time and again by the ANBU, until word got out around the village that the demon child was guarded. Trusting that their protection was the Hokage's top priority, the civilian's came to the conclusion that the ANBU were there to protect them from the beast and as such he posed no physical danger to them.

But that still left the problem of a demon in their midst disguised as a human child, how were they to deal with this? Almost as one the civilians subconsciously came to the conclusion that they would show Naruto just how unwanted he was by publically shunning him.

Perhaps the most damaging of all psychological attacks, systematic shunning of a person denies the very existence of that person causing a breakdown of the psyche. Eyes look right through and ears do not hear when spoken to. When standing face to face with Naruto it was as though he did not exist to the average villagers, though this did not stop them from watching him as though he was a rabid animal poised to attack when they thought he could not see them or from whispering about "the demon's" audacity to approach them as though he was a "real person" when they thought him out of ear shot.

Such treatment, in his previous lifetime, had resulted in Naruto's almost pathological need for acknowledgement, which had led to his famous pranking sprees, obnoxiously loud persona and rather unhealthy relationships with others. Ironically, though his many pranks had helped develop his espionage skills, the drive to gain acknowledgement through playing the fool had stunted his growth as a ninja as it had turned his focus away from training and towards being a class clown and general screw up and had alienated him from those who could have been his friends.

Thankfully this behaviour had been corrected after years of positive acknowledgement from his friends and mentors as well as his acceptance of himself as a whole during his training at the waterfall of truth, as a result he felt only tired as once again he faced the passive aggressive wrath of his village.

If Naruto had to say who was most likely to have divulged his identity to the populace at large, he would probably point the finger squarely at Muchina-sensei, his civilian born first grade teacher. The man seriously didn't like Naruto and made no secret of the fact.

Before school started all of the teachers from the Pre-academy had been called into the Hokage tower for a meeting with the man himself. The Hokage was extremely pleasant reminding them all in a rather grandfatherly tone of their oaths and responsibilities as teachers in a shinobi village and asking them to treat all their students in a professional manner, all this whilst four large and intimidating ANBU stood silently behind him.

From this some basic ground rules for the treatment of the villages Jinchiriki were laid out. Of course no mention of the Kyuubi was to be made by any of the teachers at any time, Naruto was not to be sent out of the classroom during lessons and all his text books would be examined weekly to prevent any sabotage.

This of course didn't prevent the teachers from ignoring Naruto in the classroom thus forcing him to learn through observation. Muchina-sensei had started the year by calling on Naruto to answer questions in the hope of embarrassing him through his ignorance, but when this plan fell through he fell back on ignoring the boy's questions and belittling him on any given opportunity.

The other students took their cue on how to treat Naruto from the teacher, teasing him and trying to beat him up. However, Naruto's response to this of a sad, disappointed smile, much like what an older brother would give a misbehaving younger sibling, ruined this fun and they too chose to ignore the boy for the most part.

Naruto was glad of this as in his previous life his Academy years had been beset by constant bullying by older students and his peers as his treatment from the adults around him signalled him out as a potential victim. Bullies knew that if they tormented him there would be little to no consequences and in fact some people would even praise them for "keeping the beast in his place".

Though some parents did reprimand their children for their behaviour when they caught them tormenting Naruto, not for any concern for the boy, but rather as they would if their child had taken to poking a rabid dog with a stick. Children who attempted to befriend the boy where warned away in the same manner.

Perhaps now that Naruto would no longer present himself as a victim, he would be able to avoid the more violent and spiteful of his childhood tormentors.