Summary:
What happened to Naruto between age 7 to age nine? How was his training and how he became a loud-mouthed brat? Kakashi made a guest appearance, just a bit.
Author's note:
Kakashi makes a guest appearance, just a bit.
CHAPTER 1
(Naruto's current age: 9)
Two years after the massacre….
Naruto Uzumaki, nine-year-old blonde boy, was in ninja academy since age five. The orphans were allowed to start the ninja academy earlier than others, because it served as an extra supervision for the kids and reduced the burden on the orphanage administration. The wannabe ninja was now living in an old, run down, single-bedroom apartment, which was unsafe and unfit for any human, let alone a child, to live in. After all, despite many misunderstandings, that was what he was, a child.
Lot of things changed in the past two years since Itachi left, for the blonde. A short time after the Uchiha massacre, the hokage arranged for him to live in this apartment, alone. He was grateful to his 'jiji' for the arrangement. He called the Sandaime (Third) hokage as 'jiji'. Naruto suspected that the hokage finding him, suddenly after the massacre and offering the apartment, had something to do with Itachi's parting words to the Konoha's venerable hokage.
His apartment was often raided by drunken villagers, which was to be expected considering, he was a jinchuriki, living in the red-light district of the village, near the bars in the slums.
"Good morning to me!", exclaimed Naruto, to his reflection in the mirror after a cold shower.
He was getting ready to head for the ninja academy. He was long used to coldness. Cold shower, cold glares, cold words and cold hands. It didn't mean he stopped longing for warmth. It just didn't affect him anymore as it used to. He decided long ago, to consider those adversities as survival training. So, he preferred cold showers even on those days when he had hot water. He used hot water on the hot water spring in henge, to continue his water walking chakra control training, to get used to different temperatures.
Speaking of henge, Naruto mastered henge and kawarimi, academic jutsus, shortly after he got the scroll from his benefactor. He took to reading like a fish to water.
At first, learning was difficult since no one taught Naruto how to read and write in the orphanage. But he soon found out the solution to that problem. Glares and scowls in the earlier stages of his short life in the orphanage, made him good at hiding. So, he hid in the trees and dustbin near the civilian school for children since ninjas could find him easily in ninja academy. Any civilian, if happen to see him on occasions lurking near civilian school, only thought he wanted to befriend other children and scoffed at him and warned the children to avoid him. With that gained knowledge from eavesdropping and later befriending the ANBU crow, who lent children reading materials to him, helped a lot. Once he learnt how to read and practised writing, it was a walk in the park, though literal walk in the park was difficult for this blonde. He was particularly interested in calligraphy. It calmed him and later provided useful when he started to learn seals.
Naruto learned things practically comparatively faster than understanding the theory. It led to many headaches for him metaphorically and literally when you have prodigies teaching you. With the help from four distinct characters in life, he bypassed that problem. Once he did, his true genius came to light. In the words of a certain prodigy of the Uchiha clan, he collected all the great traits of his parents and his clan. His intelligence and comprehension rivalled his father, Minato and his creativity and stamina rivalled his mother Kushina. He also had the ever-lasting patience of Namikaze clan along with his maturity to act calmly in all situations. He inherited the Uzumaki temper too. No, it was not getting angry at slight provocation but his stubbornness in his decisions. That was where he his nature of not giving up came from. The true inheritance of Uzumaki showed in his creative use of chakra which helped in the enhancement and understanding of many seals and jutsus.
He was a great observer and liked to understand things better. That way, one day, he could understand human's hatred and grief and find a solution to that problem. For all his genius, the little child, didn't know, it was a question many sought answer for, but none could find a definitive one. Not even Rikodo sennin.
He acted as a dead-last in the academy to hide his skills. It was for his safety, of course. An illiterate and naïve demon was harmed but an intelligent and strong one was likely to be executed. He understood that from an unfortunate experience. Acting like a clown in his class was not hard or suspicious for him, because he was sabotaged in the academy. Any class that taught essential shinobi skills were unavailable to him as he would be sent out for various reasons such as breathing loud or asking smart questions.
Currently, Naruto entered the classroom with a loud and boisterous entrance as always, much to the annoyance of his classmates. He acted out in the academy. He was mostly sleeping in classes, got sent out of classrooms for disrupting classes, played hooky to some lessons and pulled pranks. Those things annoyed his teachers, villagers and most ANBU, but none bothered to think, how could the dead last could evade elite ninjas for hours or how the pranks were harmless. Either he was good at acting or that village was full of ninjas with pea-sized brain, blind to the merits of the orange clad demon brat. But he got nicknamed as 'Konoha's Orange hellion' by most ANBUs. Itachi and ANBU crow, taught him how to evade ninjas in pursuit much earlier.
Not all were blind to Naruto's smarts, of course Nara Shikaku, jonin commander, Morino Ibiki, T&I specialist, few ANBU and his classmates Nara Shikamaru & Aburame Shino were aware of his intellectual pranks. But none of them were aware, how deep his intelligence went.
Contrary to popular assumption, Naruto was neither dead last in academics nor one with worst ninja skills. It was physically impossible for him to be a fool considering his genes.
His father was 'Konoha's Yellow flash and Yondaime (fourth hokage) Minato Namikaze', with his IQ rivalling Naras who were known for their intelligence. Not to mention, Minato's invention of Rasengan, a nature manipulation technique, his skills in seals and Hirashin, a space-time seal hybrid ninjutsu which helped him kill thousands of Iwa ninjas and made him here of Third Shinobi war. He sealed the kyubi after fighting a masked Uchiha.
Naruto's mother was a jonin nicknamed 'Red Hot-blooded Habenero'. No, the red hot didn't represent her hair, but her temper. She single-handedly demolished a platoon of ninjas in the Third shinobi war with her barrier jutsu and ninjutsu techniques. Her use of adamantine chains and her seals were something that should earn her S-class shinobi title, not to mention, she had somewhat control over the kyubi sealed in her. Her achievements were shoved under rags to hide that she was Konoha's weapon.
How could Naruto be a wash out shinobi when he was carrying their genes? Unless there was an external involvement.
Naruto true to his legacy, had both book and street smarts. He mastered two of three academic jutsus easily when he was seven years old, just after Itachi left.
One thing he learned from his short life was that the strongest ninjas could be killed easily. So, he absolutely wanted to master everything he learned, to the point, he could do it in his sleep with minimal time and hand seals. He had to, because he could be attacked in sleep. He mastered henge first as per the advice of Itachi even before moving to the new apartment. He was practising henge before he even got the scroll from Itachi, having find it useful when he observed the upper-class men in ninja academy. He didn't want anyone to know. Once he mastered it, he often evaded his ANBU watchers to his hideout to practice Kawarimi and master his seal less and smokeless techniques.
Naruto was always conscious of his surroundings. After the number of attempts on his life, he developed a seventh sense when he was being watched or followed. But after one particular devastating attack, he became more cautious and made it a point to memorize any and all of sounds and smells around him. His tenant might be the cause for the smelling sense. He was also well aware of the kyubi (nine-tailed demon fox) sealed in him. He knew that was why he healed faster, and that demon helped him more than most humans.
He learnt lot of things from watching animals and birds since children never played with him. It gave him an idea to be loud and obnoxious and pull pranks. If he was loud, he could gather attention. Everyone would know where he was, both his attacker's attention and the few ninjas who were in-charge of reporting his safety to the hokage. It worked. After some time, his loud voice kept the attackers at bay in fear of getting caught by the hokage. Though they were not executed, they knew it was not wise to challenge the authority of their military leader, Sarutobi Hiruzen, Sandaime hokage, who was called God of Shinobi.
It also served another purpose. Whenever, the village got silent for a long time, the hokage started looking for him. The ninjas who were watching him could not avoid informing hokage of his location even if they wanted to. So kidnapping was not in the cards neither was burning his apartment. Slowly, break-ins to his apartment and physical attacks almost stopped. Almost. It also served another purpose. It established a loud mouthed, happy-go-lucky, prankster personality for Naruto that no one bothered to look underneath the underneath. The orange helped too. Look for orange, if you want to look for Naruto. So, if Naruto henged himself in plain shinobi clothes and trained, no one doubted it was him.
Hokage's constant checking on him, once in three months at least, helped the old man to keep eye on the blonde. All the time, when the hokage looked for the boy, he was either playing pranks, eating ramen or being loud and cheerful. Even the magic crystal ball of the hokage's didn't find any discrepancies. Naruto found about hokage's crystal ball, thanks to one loose mouthed ANBU attacker of his.
Naruto found a way to avoid that crystal ball with his sheer brilliance. He timed hokage's check-ins in a way that whenever hokage saw through the ball, all he would see was the image of Naruto he projected not the real one. It was a little bit of calculation on Naruto's part, not any jutsu really. He knew for all the abilities, even the hokage needed sleep, food and rest. So, he did his training and other adventures during that time. After some trial and error, he worked out a schedule. He pulled pranks on purpose and worked out when the hokage found him quicker and slower. He also took a quick glance of hokage's schedule every week, thanks to the non-shinobi secretary's inability to detect henge. Now, it was Naruto who was keeping eye on the village's leader. Naruto understood, if he could fool his friends, he would be able to fool his enemies. He learnt that in some book in civilian's library.
After learning henge, he frequented civilian libraries to earn life skills such as cooking, sewing, home-made medicine, basic manners and hygiene. He also studied different story books to better understand the relationships and different cultures. How else would a disliked orphan learn what the difference between cousin and nephew, and grandfather and godfather was?
Naruto enjoyed reading a lot. In those books, he could let go of everything and immerse in happy endings as long as he liked. He would go to the library when the librarian goes for lunch. Or, he would usually pull a prank, then pull a kawarimi with a stone or other things suited for the environment, leave the ninjas to search for him, or when a particular vengeful teacher, Mizuki, sent him out of classroom, he would go to the library. His most apparent trick was that he would henge into a rat. He got the idea after Itachi disappeared into a murder of crows. But it took some time to realise it was a bad idea to henge into animals inside a forest since you would be targeted by predators, especially non-flying ones. Only after learning shadow clones, did he use it freely but at that point, he need not henge into animals personally for entering library when he could use henged clones into various shinobis. Well, if he made fake shinobi ID cards based on the ones, he stole who came to red light district to pursuit pleasure, it was no else's business but his.
As for learning shadow clones, apparently, Itachi was aware due to excess chakra, Naruto would not be able to use normal clones since Itachi had the same problem. His father explained Itachi had more chakra reserves and hence had to have perfect chakra control. Itachi could later perform an elemental clone rather than a normal one in academy days. Much later, he asked his ANBU senpai, Inu, to teach shadow clone jutsu to him and wrote it down in a scroll and gave it to Naruto when he left. Naruto knew memory transfer of shadow clones after few tries and it only made it life easier for him. No, he could not summon thousand clones and read thousand different subjects at a time and learn it. It was humanly impossible. His brain would fry.
Naruto used shadow clones to master a jutsu rather than learning a new jutsu. He did use shadow clones for reading, but mostly he used for learning not more than five books at a time about a single topic. He would dispel his clones later and meditate every day and every morning to consolidate what his clones learnt and make it his own by drawing reference and jot down notes and questions. He would use his clones the next day to learn more about the same topic to clear his doubts and develop his ideas based on his references. He did spam clones to practice chakra control every day.
Shadow clones to Naruto was as same as a sharinghan to Itachi. It was a tool to fine tune their skills. It was just a crutch not a shortcut for power. But they were not self-righteous and naïve to not use every tool available for them to improve their strength.
Naruto was obsessed with basics of chakra. Crow always told him basics are important. He even went far as to say, three basic academy jutsus and chakra control were more valuable, and they were the basics for most ninjutsus. His Shunshin was developed from simple Kawarimi. Naruto took his words to heart and devoted most of his time in the last two years reading, re-learning and grinding on basic chakra theory and chakra control. Crow gave every ninja thing he owned to Naruto after his untimely demise. Naruto finally made a strict regime for chakra control training after understanding chakra theory better. It served him well, but it was brutal. He vowed to practise it until it becomes as easy as breathing.
Naruto, after his pranks, would return to class or get caught by his sensei Umino Iruka on purpose. The fact that the blonde boy could always be caught, made the time hokage started to look for him in the crystal ball longer as the time went by. The hokage got comforted by the fact that the boy was never once caught on the borders of the village, meaning, he had no intention of leaving the village. Naruto, for all his perceptiveness, could not decide if the old man truly cared for him or it was just all an act to keep him in the village. It didn't matter. For now, he would take any amount of care from the old man he was given, because he was not strong enough to oppose him and his skills were not indispensable to gain support from him. Things could have been lot worse if not for his 'jiji' anyways.
Naruto also took his physical training seriously along with his diet. He did eat ramen, but he burnt calories more. So, he hunted down prey, fished and looked for vegetables and fruits in forests to balance his diet. But he hid his healthy body under his orange jumpsuit. But his height remained unchanged for various reasons that worked as a shield to hide his physical development. His taijutsu suffered because of lack of sparring partner but he found scrolls for that in the library. His clones did not know anything he did not and Mizuki at academy taught him wrong katas. So, he was focusing on weights and researching how to get gravity seals to improve his strength for now.
Currently looking out the window from the classroom, 'The weather is nice' Naruto thought to himself and suddenly a chill breeze swept over him as if questioning his statement. It didn't bother him that much, but he had a feeling something was going to happen today. He could not decide whether it was going to be good or bad.
At the end of the day, he found out it was both. He was duped by the kids and his shot at friendship was, once again, proved fruitless. It was not all bad though. Nara Shikamaru showed conscience and did not have herd mentality. He was someone to be worthy of getting close to.
Naruto observed everything from a tree by using his shadow clone to henge into a bird.
He found that Iruka sensei was not that bad, and his Inu had returned. Just not to him. But it was okay. Inu was safe, at least. He also advised Iruka sensei to see him for what he was and not what he held. His Inu looked different without his ANBU mask. He was wearing a jonin vest with black mask on his face and a hitai-ate covering his left eye. That night, Naruto thanked the Gods for hearing his prayers, and slept with a smile.