1. Warning
"Uzumaki Naruto!" Itachi's monotone voice greeted Naruto, making him gasp, especially after seeing his appearance, covered in blood and a tanto in his hand, "I have come to warn you!"
Naruto's blue eyes widened as they met Itachi's dangerous red which spun as a pattern of three-blade shuriken appeared in place of previous tomoes.
"Tsukiyomi",the last thing he saw before his world turned red and black. He found himself running away from something while shinobis in black cloaks with red clouds on them chased him. Their headbands represented different villages, including the great five, though every headband had a line cutting through the engraved insignia.
"Run Naruto-Kun...Run...", he heard Itachi speak, "The Akatsuki will hunt you!"
His eyes fell on the cloaked shinobis who were chasing him, now each of them was seen singlehandedly dominating entire platoons of shinobi while causing destruction all around.
"Each one of them, S-ranked. Some are stronger than me. Some stronger than the Hokage," Itachi's voice continues as Naruto sew one of the cloaked figures who had a swirly mask phase through incoming kunai and shuriken as if he were a ghost, and then stabbing three ninjas one after other effortlessly, a sharingan peeking through one eyed hole of swirly mask.
"We will come for you, Naruto-kun," Itachi continued, "So, grow stronger if you wish to survive... otherwise you will be nothing but a corpse..."
Itachi would have continued but a malevolent chakra which he clearly remembered from nearly seven years ago, washed over him and the red and black world of Tsukiyomi started to crack.
"Impossible!" The fourteen-year-old clan slayer murmured to himself, "The genjustu should be unbreakable, with only control in the mangekyo sharingan of the caster..."
As the genjutsu world shattered, leaving Naruto barely conscious, two large slitted red eyes opened in the dark. Naruto washed up in red chakra as the angry voice of the owner of the feral eye growls to no one, "That retched sharingan!"
Itachi composed himself after being thrown out of 'his' genjutsu and remarked to Naruto warily. He still keeps a composed face as he speaks, "Get strong if you want to survive. We are coming for you!" and left in the murder of crows. Naruto never noticed one of the crow's eye pulse as it focused on him, neither did he notice the four-bladed shuriken in the peculiar red eyes of said crow.
--X--
For two days Naruto didn't get out of his house. Not that many cared. The Hokage had sent ANBU unknown to Naruto, and they had reported that he was right. Well, physically he was, but the mental effect of the information Itachi had given him, combined with the effects of Kotoamatsukami, had a deep impact on his juvenile seven-year-old mind.
For Naruto had abandoned his dream of becoming Hokage and getting people to acknowledge him. He didn't care. He wouldn't have time to appease people when he would be busy fighting for his survival anyway. He didn't have enough time and he was going to be hunted by ten S-rank ninjas, every one of which was capable of destroying armies alone. Hell, Itachi who was their youngest member had single-handedly slaughtered his own clan, which was also boasted as the strongest clan of Konoha. And he was fourteen years old... just fourteen!
Though it also gave him hope. After all, if Itachi could do it, why couldn't he?
At that moment, he promised himself that he wasn't going to waste his time anymore by playing silly pranks and smiling at the cold-hearted people who seemed to hate his existence. He would train, day and night if it took... but he was going to be strong enough to survive what was coming for him.
--X--
Putting on the red jacket, with Uzumaki swirl on the left side of the chest while ignoring the orange jumpsuit, old Naruto would have preferred, Naruto left for the forest, where he could train without being bothered. The place was a treasure trove in the eyes of Naruto. He could easily find discarded kunai and shuriken, and even though he would usually have to clean the blood stains off them, it was still better than dealing with hateful civilian villagers who would sell him bad-quality ninja tools for very high prices. He wasn't stupid enough to not know that he was being overpriced, only in past, he was willing to deal with it. Unfortunately for them, the new Uzumaki Naruto didn't have the patience to deal with them.
He had learned to bypass the said hatred by usinghenge,which was arguably his strongest ninjutsu so that he could get necessary supplies at a fair price. Alas. for all his love for ramen, he had found out how only eating that would hinder his physical growth and that was a big no-no for shinobi. However, it also made him appreciate the kind owner of Ichiraku's after he learned how the man had added extra nutritional ingredients to his ramen when he and his daughter had figured that Naruto's main diet consisted of fast food. Fortunately, this dilemma was also solved by the forest. By hunting and scouring for herbs, he was able to stabilize the healthy intake of nutrients necessary for his growth. He was also grateful for the nice red-eye lady, who helped him identify the correct herbs he was looking for. Though he was quite exasperated by her companion- the snake lady, who he was sure spent much time of hers in the same forest he trained. Not that he will ever say anything about it. Not only was she very scary, but she had also helped him refine his throwing technique and accuracy some of the time.
Though he had vowed to not waste his time appeasing the ignorant population of Konoha, he couldn't help but be grateful for at least a part of the shinobi population. Like the thick eye-browed man and his very similar-looking protege who was only a year older than Naruto. Thanks to the spandex wearer's limited tutelage and the presence of his protege as his training partner, his taijutsu was getting better day by day. Sure it was quite embarrassing in the beginning when he wouldn't last even a few seconds against Lee, but they never belittled him. They even went ahead and praised him when he didn't seem to give up. Though he caught the subtle corrections Gai-sensei had made in his form and gritted his teeth in frustration, knowing that his instructors at the academy had screwed him over. Thankfully, he now just ignored said instructors, practising the forms like Gai had instructed him to do. It did lots of good. After all, he had defeated the Inuzuka kid- Kiba, last week, shocking everyone as Kiba was the second-best in taijutsu, just behind the last Uchiha.
Another thing that had his interest was Fuinjutsu, an art deemed so tough that it was not even taught in the academy. He didn't understand why though. When he had first seen the explosive tag in the forest, he was easily able to understand the squiggles. It had all made sense, and he was able to make the tags of his own, completely shocking Gai-sensei and the snake lady. However, they still couldn't help him learn more because fuinjustu scrolls were only available for those rank chunins and above. They could get into serious trouble if they are caught sneaking him those scrolls and they also didn't want him to take unnecessary risks while experimenting on such a dangerous subject. Not that it stopped Naruto from copying the 'squiggles' if he saw them and later breaking them down and adding the 'seals' to his pocket of skills. After all, it would make him stronger and that was his goal.
Unfortunately, he was deemed too young for the cool ninjutsu techniques, he had witnessed the older ninja did. Of course, that didn't stop him from copying the hand signs of 'Gokakyu no jutsu (fireball technique)', from the last Uchiha, even though it took him more than ten tries. Sasuke's hand signs were fast, the kid was called a genius after all. Sadly, while he was able to learn the technique in about three weeks, and he didn't even feel the so-called 'drain', the adults had warned him about, his fireball jutsu wasn't as impressive as Sasuke's, no matter how hard he tried to improve it. He was quite sad about it until he overheard one of the jounin talking about 'elemental affinity' to his genins. He was hooked, and after eavesdropping...ahem... listening to Jounin's lecture, he was excited to learn about his. Unfortunately, chakra papers were not something an orphan like him could get his hands on.
Though after months of spending his stipend on dango bribes, he finally grinned as he took the chakra papers from snake lady, completely not noticing the grin on Anko's own face.
"Wind...", he murmured to himself, frowning, as he knew it was the rarest elemental affinity to have and there were only a handful of wind users in Konoha. While it might have made him happy, being special, he knew that meant fewer resources to focus on. He didn't lose his confidence though and after sneaking in the 'shinobi archive' for the first time, he was able to get his hands on a few d and c-rank techniques. Of course, he failed when he tried to use the techniques. Well, other than 'Fuuton: Reppusho (Wind style: Gale palm)', which happened to be easy enough, expelling the chakra from his hand. What he really faced trouble with was the other two techniques 'Fuuton: Toppa (Wind style: Breakthrough)' and its more chakra-intensive version'Fuuton: Daitoppa (Wind Style: Great Breakthrough)'.
The idea behind the fireball technique was easy enough, what with using friction to heat your chakra and then expelling the chakra in the form of a fireball. Of course, the mechanism behind 'Katon (Fire style)' techniques was written in the academy book as an example, so he knew how to do it. He didn't know how to do it for wind. If anyone else had seen him perform the 'Fuuton: Reppusho', they would have told him that what he expelled by his hand was actually his raw chakra and not wind chakra, which meant he actually couldn't do any wind techniques. Alas, it was not until after a long time, when Naruto had tired himself out for weeks after facing continuous failures, that his problem was noticed. Unfortunately, the one who noticed was serious bad news.
Naruto has been able to somehow sense, to an extent, if others have malicious intentions towards him, ever since the day Itachi had warned him about the Akatsuki. It was also one of the reasons, he mostly stayed away from the heavily populated areas as to be honest, for nearly everyone... well other than older shinobi, he was persona non grata. It also strengthened his resolve to not bother with those hateful idiots anymore.
Anyways, the person who found him after his constant bouts of failure to learn the wind techniques, was quite peculiar, even considering he was a shinobi. One-third of his head and his right arm were literally covered with bandages and he had an odd scowl ever-present on his face. And he seriously gave Naruto creeps, more than literally hundreds of those ignorant civilians combined.
Still, while he resolved to be careful around the man, he wasn't going to let the only possible help he could get, walk away. Especially not after learning that the man- Danzo was one of those few wind-users in Konoha. It started a completely new journey for Naruto. Though Danzo was not present with him in most of the cases, he was always under observation of Danzo's creepy ANBUs, who were even creepier than usual ANBUs. Under his tutelage, Naruto learned a lot about wind elements, and Naruto was grateful for the opportunity. Not that he would ever say so. He was sure being in debt to Danzo was something he didn't really want. Fortunately, for the time being, Danzo's only plan regarding Naruto was strengthening the 'weapon' of Leaf. He had of course presented the option before Hiruzen but was denied as Hokage knew it would be bad for Naruto's conditioning. Not that the Hokage could tell many things about it as he wasn't a prime example of child conditioning, even under Hiruzen Sarutobi's watch.
While everything was going great in the academy, there was still a major problem. For all his tremendous improvement, even in the more studious fields like History of Shinobi and Shinobi Tactics, Naruto still couldn't manage a clone. He failed every time in doing so and it frustrated him to no end. Even after years of practicing, recommended chakra control, Naruto was just unable to do so.
Finally, when he was ten, a year before he graduated from the academy, Danzo came to the rescue again, and as much as he hated being in Danzo's debt, he couldn't deny that the solution was something that would change his whole life. Especially when he 'discovered' a secret about it.
'Kage bunshin no jutsu (Shadow clone technique)'was a B-rank, chakra-intensive forbidden technique recommended only for those, who had jounin level reserves or more and certainly not for ten-year-old academy students. But it was something the said ten-year-old academy student needed. Naruto had, of course, figured out his gigantic reserves, which even shadowed most of the jounins'. The only way he could make an illusionary clone, was if he had perfect chakra control rivaling Tsunade's, which was quite impossible. The B-rank kinjutsu also had a secret that Naruto found out completely by accident, and he couldn't help but grin after knowing about it. The 'transfer of memories' from clone to his person along with his ability to create and maintain a large number of clones was something he was fully ready to abuse to get strength faster. Of course, it wasn't until he was knocked out for a complete day after dispelling nearly a hundred clones who were training and studying different things, he learned his lesson to use the cheat in moderation. Well, now the clones not only helped him in training but also to earn some money. He would have them prepare the low-level fuinjutsu tags like, explosive tags, one-barrier tagsandfire suppressiontags and use henge to sell them at a lower price. He became so popular that the owner of Higurashi Shinobi tools had to approach him and make a deal with him so that he didn't affect the market so much. After getting a good deal, which would provide Naruto stable income, other than the money he would earn for doing missions in future, he accepted it with a satisfied grin on his face. He had always wanted to move out of his dingy apartment but didn't have money to do so. He believed that he would be able to do so soon.
--X--