They say that if you ever got lost, that you could just follow the north star home. However, one Blonde haired, fresh out of the academy genin didn't need no such thing as he allowed his feet to guide him through the familiar route to his humble abode.
Meanwhile said genin gazes at the starry night sky as he ponders on the days events, absentmindedly he locates the north star which he found to be ironically the same direction of his apartment.
As he walks towards the slums of the village, he is pleased at the fact that there aren't a lot of people out and about at the moment. Otherwise he would have be subjected to the stares and sneers of disgust from the villagers like what usually awaited the "demon brat" outside the comfort of his home.
Said demon brat was none other than Naruto Uzumaki, the kyuubi jinchuriki and village pariah. Son of the famous "Yellow Flash" Minato Namikaze and the "Red Death" Kushina Uzumaki.
Although his parentage was a well kept secret that naruto doesn't even know about. Therefore he was treated worse than stray dogs on a daily by the villagers that were all blissfully ignorant of the fact that they were harassing and abusing their hero's son.
He even used to get beatings from the villagers when he was little so he would run away and try to avoid them. Surprisingly that's how he found out that he was a sensor.
He first noticed when he would run an hide and as they were looking for him, he would "feel" when they were getting close to his hiding spot and relocated to somewhere in the opposite direction they were coming from. Then he started being able to tell how many was chasing him in the first place, without looking. After that it evolved into being able to recognize the "feeling" of people that chased him before as he walking home.
Then one day the academy was teaching all the students how to unlock their chakra. Naruto couldn't get it right because the teacher kept telling him the wrong thing. But before the academy let out that day he caught on to the fact that they were telling him one thing and telling everyone else something else. So that night when he got home he used what he heard a teacher telling a student In the row behind him and it worked. When Naruto unlocked his chakra he felt he had been blind all his life and now he could see.
That day changed Naruto's life for the better, he was now able to avoid certain violent people for longer periods of time and he could find where anybody was at in a 10 mile radius.
He didn't tell anyone about his sensing ability because he knew some how that if they found out, they would have made his life worse than what it already was. So he kept it to hisself and saved hisself the headache, although it was kinda hard to make sure people didnt catch on in a ninja village. He had to be very careful to make sure to let the world around him move and change without reacting to all the new variables that comes in and out of his sensing range.
Although, this being all so new to naruto it made it very difficult to do such a thing.
However, like with everything that naruto does, he was gonna keep this secret to the best of his ability. So he knew that to make sure no one ever found out, that he was going to have to focus even on the little things as well. Such as not letting his eyes even so much as flicker towards things that he could sense going on outside of the academy or through walls of a building. He even made sure to allow hisself to get bump in to people if they were turning the corner at the same time.
But the biggest challenge for him was to act surprised or startled when people came up to him from behind when he could clearly sense them coming without even trying to.
But this faking led him into forming another "mask" that he where's in public to get people to underestimate him or to leave him alone.
He used to have another "mask" of him being a goofy knuckle headed clown that pulls pranks and is always smiling. He used it for attention and to maybe find a good humored friend, but the more he realized that most of the civilians where rotten to the core the less easy it became to where it. He finally decided to get rid of it altogether after he woke in the hospital two days after he was beat up by the villagers.
The mask he wears now is much more easy to maintain because it was basically his normal self just with some changes, such as, his eyes are normally more expressive and now you could regularly catch him with a small smirk on his face.
The dulled eyes and smirk combo is something that he came up with after he imagined a particularly violent villager being beaten up and now begging for forgiveness and the face he made with the glare at an injured opponent that wished you dead and the smirk at the helplessness of said opponent became his go to.
He noticed that when he looked in the mirror at his "mask" that he was reminded of how he would imagine madara would look at dying enemy that threatened his family. It kinda scared him that he was even able to make that kind of face and he thought that it was a little extreme for an every day look. Although naruto was sure that a good impression going to matter that much in a long run he still wasn't naturally that coldhearted so it would feel weird trying to maintain that level of a glare. So to fix the problem he just allowed his glare to relax into a dull stare and he found it perfect.
The dullness of the eyes kept the confrontational villagers from taking his mask as a mug. And the smirk was not large enough to be taken as laughing at someone else's misfortune or a joke. However it was big enough to hide the mirth he felt at certain times and was bright enough to gain a beaming smile from his favorite ramen waitress every time she would see him.
His life was going for the better now because he doesn't get beat by the villagers anymore because for some reason after the last big one had they seemed to have stopped. However, it didn't matter either way now because he was now able to defend himself because he has been training ever sense he unlocked his chakra.
Naruto trained day in and day out so that he didn't feel so helpless against the villagers. Also, so he could protect hisself and his precious people, although he arguably didn't have many, he hoped that that would change.
So he trained…
HARD
He used what he had at his disposal to best he could. He often used left over kunai and shuriken from the training grounds to practice his shurikenjutsu since the his teachers would alway faulty practice kunai, so he figured why not learn with the real thing.
The Blonde haired jinchuriki would run for miles and do countless other exercise like push-ups and sit-ups.
He was lost when it came to Taijutsu for a while, until one day, as he was walking back home with his signature smirk and dull eyed combo on his face, he noticed what looked like his exuberant spandex wearing upper classmate throw something away while holding onto a brown box with a green ribbon.
With naruto being the village pariah, it meant that shops would refuse to sell him items and would take any chance they can to make his life worse, so all his life he had been used to finding scraps and making things work. This means that he wasn't particularly opposed to dumpster diving and he would do it from time to time when looking for something that he otherwise didn't have access to.
In fact he became very intelligent and found a majority of his knowledge early on through finding old and worn out textbooks and scrolls from the dumpster behind the academy. He didn't have to be a genius to realize that he was getting intentionally told false or misleading information, especially when comparing what he was taught to what he learned from a random scroll or textbook.
This allowed naruto to catch up on his book smarts and even allowed him to find rare gems like finding a scroll on chakra control exercises and or a book on advanced ninja theory and tactics.
He even found an old cook book before, even though he still hasn't used it, he figured it could be useful in the future.
So it was safe to say that naruto was familiar with the saying "one man's trashes another man's treasure"
Therefore, Naruto thought it would be best to see if he would find what his hyperactive upper-classmate threw away useful.
The blonde was pleasantly surprised when he saw what looked like old chakra weights for the arms and legs as well as a slightly torn scroll.
He remembered what the chakra weights where and how to use them from a scroll he found 3 months prior. And from his experiences scrolls thrown away by shinobi are usually more valuable than civilians. With lee being in the academy, he hoped it would be good valuable too.
Naruto knowing the value of what he found caused his perpetual smirk to grow into where it became a borderline goofy grin. He quickly then composed hisself and proceeded to slide back into his mask as he started to make his way to his apartment.
Little did he know, the chakra weights would work wonders in assisting him in not showing his growth in skills while he's doing P.E. or sparring with classmates.
He later found out that the scroll covered a Taijutsu style and its kata, the name of the style was the "Strong Fist", which unbeknownst to naruto, was the same style that a jonin by the name of might guy uses.
The scroll illustrates the steps of the style and everything one would need to know about it, like its strengths, weaknesses and even the exercises needed to be done to make the style the most effective.
And naruto would practice the kata and do the exercises a lot, religiously.
He could say without a doubt that he was the strongest out of all his fellow aspiring shinobi. Although, even with all the training he put hisself through he was still never able to get enough chakra control to be able to successfully do the bunshin technique. When he tried to search through his collection of scrolls for an answer it basically said that he had too much chakra and that he needed to do more chakra control exercises to be able to mold the correct amount of chakra for the technique.
Therefor he did more and more chakra control exercises like kunai balancing as well as tree and water walking. He even started making the exercises harder after mastering the exercises by making leaves and small pebbles stick onto him while he would be walking up a tree or water.
It somehow still was not enough and he couldn't do more than causing the a sickly and discolored version of naruto to fall to the ground before disappearing. This in turn caused naruto to be stuck in the academy for two years longer than he wanted to and he ended up taking the graduation test for the third time with everyone in his year.
And just like the last two years he passed everything else without a problem but also like his previous attempts, he couldn't showcase a proper bunshin technique and failed. But this time was different because since he was already 14, which was the graduation age, he wouldn't be able try again next year.
This bothered the blonde a lot because even though he knew he was stronger than the average genin, he still wanted to at least graduate with the rest of his classmate. He looked at the graduation exam as a sort of bench march on his skills.
However, he never really knew how strong he was because he never went all out against an opponent, that is until now
The blonde haired jinchuriki was able to show the fruits of his training when his academy instructor decided it would be cool to make naruto steal the scroll of seals and then attempt to blame him for everything.
Granted, Naruto did know that mizuki was lying through his teeth but he figured since he already failed the exam, he didn't really have anything to lose. He also was never one to not take an opportunity to learn something if the consequences weren't too bad, and mizuki wanted him to learn a Jutsu from a forbidden scroll, which meant that the Jutsu would undoubtedly be powerful.
Therefor, said blonde proceeded to knock the hokage out with his "Oiroke no Jutsu" and left the hokage tower clutching the scroll of seals.
He then made his way to the designated clearing that mizuki told the blonde to meet him at.
It was there that naruto would learn how to make shadow clones and have his first real fight with mizuki after being told how the silver haired chunin hated him and that he thinks naruto is the demon incarnate.
Naruto, already knowing about kyuubi, caught surprised a mizuki off guard from the lack of reaction by the blonde and carried on to beating mizuki to the brink of death after a long drawn out battle.
Naruto had the upper hand for most of the fight, until mizuki started using ninjutsu and had the blonde on the back foot. With ninjutsu being one of the blondes weaknesses due to his lack of options in learning said ninja art, he was left only being able to just barley dodge mizuki's attacks.
That is, until naruto remembered the Jutsu he just learned and overwhelmed the chunin with the sheer amount of clones he was able to produce.
Naruto having the upper hand again, didnt relent until he seen that mizuki was unconscious.
With the battle being over, the whiskered blonde allowed all of his clones to dispel and fell back onto the ground spread eagle.
He wasn't too injured but he was really just trying to let his adrenaline come down and catch his being the only time he ever felt the thrill of battle had the blonde extra exhausted after the fact.
But the blonde new he didnt have too long to rest because the chakra signatures that he felt closing in on his location a while back would be arriving soon.
Sure enough about 20 seconds later he saw looked like a squad of Anbu appear from the treeline. They landed infront of the blonde and told him that he was needed at the hokage tower for questioning.
They then shunshined to the hokage tower but not before naruto notice one of the Anbu retrieve the scroll of seals and mizuki's unconscious body.
At the hokage office, the blonde really didn't get into too much trouble, in fact he would say that everything turned out great considering everything that happened.
The hokage said that he was already made aware that mizuki was sighted acting strangely and how he was looking for naruto by his other chunin instructor Iruka. And with Mizuki was shown to be traitor, the hokage just put all the blame on him.
The Hokage then proceeded to give naruto a headband for defeating mizuki, a mid level chunin, all by hisself. The hokage was confused how he did it when he was the deadlast in his class and didnt even pass the exams. The blonde being humble and not really wanting to broadcast his skills just told him that mizuki underestimated him and that he caught him off guard with his new technique.
The hokage simply nodded and told the blonde he was free to go and told the blond to be at the academy in a week for team assignments.
Naruto, happy at the fact that he was now able to become a genin, allowed his smirk to turn into a grin and aimed it at the Hokage in hopes of showing his gratitude. The hokage returned it with a smile of his own and another nod.
The whiskered blonde then proceeded to slip out the office, closing the door behind him and continuing to make his way home. This is where we find naruto now, walking home with a slightly larger than usual smirk on his face.