Naruto Uzumaki was five years old when he realized he was different.
Not different in the way the villagers meant when they whispered "demon" behind his back. Not different in the way the orphanage matron meant when she finally threw him out with nothing but the clothes on his back and his ever-present sand gourd. Not even different in the way the Hokage meant when he set Naruto up in a tiny apartment and promised that things would get better.
Different in a way that lived inside his bones. In the way shadows seemed to bend toward him. In the way fire danced at his fingertips when he was angry. In the way he could hear voices—nine of them—whispering in the back of his mind like old friends he'd never met.
Different in the way he felt when things died.
The bird was small and brown and utterly unremarkable.
Naruto found it on his way home from another failed attempt to make friends at the park. The other children had run away when he approached, their parents pulling them close and hissing warnings about the "monster child." It should have hurt. It probably would have hurt, once. But Naruto had stopped feeling that particular pain somewhere around his fourth birthday.
Now he just felt... empty.
The bird was lying on the ground beneath a tree, one wing bent at an unnatural angle. It was still alive, barely, its tiny chest heaving with labored breaths. A cat had probably gotten to it. Or maybe it had simply flown into something it shouldn't have.
Naruto crouched down to look at it.
The bird's eye—the one that was still open—fixed on him with animal terror. It knew, on some instinctive level, that it was dying. And it knew, on that same level, that the thing crouching over it was dangerous.
"It's okay," Naruto said softly. "I'm not going to hurt you."
The bird didn't believe him. It tried to flutter away, but its broken wing wouldn't cooperate. All it could manage was a pathetic flopping motion that left it even more exhausted than before.
"Shh. Don't struggle. It'll be over soon."
Naruto watched.
He watched as the bird's breathing slowed. Watched as the light in its eye began to fade. Watched as the tiny heart, visible through the thin chest, stuttered and stopped.
And when it was over—when the bird was just a small, still body on the ground—Naruto giggled.
It wasn't a normal giggle. Not the happy sound of a child finding something funny. It was something else. Something that came from a place Naruto didn't fully understand, a place that found beauty in endings, peace in silence, satisfaction in the transition from alive to not-alive.
The bird had been suffering. Now it wasn't. That was good, wasn't it? That was... right?
Naruto stood up, leaving the body where it lay, and continued on his way home.
Behind him, unseen, an ANBU operative who had been assigned to monitor the child made a note in his report:
Subject displayed unusual reaction to witnessing death. Recommend psychological evaluation.
Inside the seal, the bijuu were having a crisis.
"He giggled," Matatabi said, her flames flickering with distress. "Again. He giggled at death again."
"It was a bird," Shukaku said, but even he didn't sound convinced. "Birds die all the time. It's not a big deal."
"It's not about the bird, you sand-brained idiot! It's about his reaction!" Matatabi's fire flared brighter. "Normal children don't giggle when things die. Normal children cry, or look away, or ask questions. They don't watch with fascination and then laugh!"
"The kit has never been normal—"
"That's not an excuse!"
"Brothers, sisters," Kurama interrupted, his voice heavy, "we knew this might happen."
The other bijuu turned to look at the Nine-Tails.
"We knew," Kurama continued, "that our presence would affect him. Our chakra, our memories, our... instincts. We've been part of him since birth. Some of that was bound to bleed through."
"So what are you saying?" Gyūki asked. "That we're the reason he's like this?"
"I'm saying we're part of the reason. The violence he witnessed as an infant. The isolation he's experienced his entire life. The way humans treat him, fear him, hate him for something he can't control." Kurama's tails lashed. "We're not the only factor. But we're a factor."
"Then we need to fix it," Chōmei buzzed anxiously. "We need to help him understand that death isn't... isn't something to enjoy."
"And how do we do that? We're sealed inside him. We can influence his emotions, his chakra, sometimes his actions—but we can't have a conversation with him. He doesn't even know we exist as individual entities."
"Then maybe it's time he learned," Isobu said quietly.
Every bijuu went still.
"You want to reveal ourselves?" Son Gokū asked. "To a five-year-old?"
"He's going to find out eventually. The longer we wait, the more he'll feel we were hiding from him. Deceiving him." Isobu's massive form shifted. "I know what deception feels like. How it corrodes trust. We can't build a relationship with the kit on a foundation of secrets."
"He's too young to understand—"
"Is he? He's lived through things most adults never experience. He's been alone since before he could walk. He hears us—he's always heard us, even if he doesn't know what we are." Isobu looked at his siblings with ancient eyes. "He deserves the truth."
The bijuu considered this in heavy silence.
"Not yet," Kurama said finally. "Not while he's still... unstable. If we reveal ourselves now, while he's developing these concerning tendencies, we might make things worse. We need to find a way to guide him first. Help him develop empathy, connection, understanding. Then, when he's ready, we tell him."
"And if he's never ready?"
"Then we tell him anyway. But we try to give him the best foundation we can first."
"How?" Saiken asked glumly. "He has no friends. No family. No one who cares about him except us, and he doesn't even know about us. How do we teach him empathy when he has no one to practice it on?"
No one had an answer.
Three weeks later, Naruto discovered he could teleport.
It happened by accident, like most of his abilities. He was running from a group of older boys who had decided that chasing the "demon brat" was excellent afternoon entertainment. They had cornered him in an alley, blocking both exits, closing in with cruel smiles and clenched fists.
"Nowhere to run, freak," the leader said. "We're gonna teach you a lesson about showing your face in our neighborhood."
Naruto looked at them with empty blue eyes. "I don't want to fight."
"Good. That'll make this easier."
The first punch was thrown.
And Naruto... wasn't there anymore.
One moment he was standing in the alley, braced for impact. The next, he was on a rooftop three blocks away, surrounded by swirling sand that slowly settled back into his gourd.
Naruto looked down at his hands, then at the gourd, then at the distant alley where the boys were staring at the spot where he'd been with expressions of pure confusion.
"Huh," he said. "That's new."
Inside the seal, Shukaku was having a very different reaction.
"WHAT WAS THAT?!" the One-Tail screamed. "WHAT DID HE JUST DO?!"
"He teleported," Gyūki said, sounding stunned. "Using sand as a medium. He scattered into particles and reconstituted somewhere else."
"I KNOW WHAT HE DID! I'M ASKING HOW! I CAN'T DO THAT! I'VE NEVER BEEN ABLE TO DO THAT!"
"Apparently the kit can do things you can't," Matatabi observed.
"THAT'S NOT POSSIBLE! THE SAND IS MY POWER! MY DOMAIN! IF I CAN'T DO IT, HE SHOULDN'T BE ABLE TO—"
"Shukaku," Kurama interrupted, "calm down."
"DON'T TELL ME TO CALM DOWN! THE KIT JUST INVENTED A NEW APPLICATION OF MY ABILITIES THAT I'VE NEVER EVEN CONSIDERED! HOW IS HE DOING THIS?!"
"Because he's not limited by your preconceptions," Kokuō said thoughtfully. "You've had your powers for millennia. You've established patterns, habits, assumptions about what is and isn't possible. The kit has none of that. He just... does what feels natural."
"Teleporting via sand dissolution felt natural?!"
"Apparently."
Shukaku sputtered incoherently for several seconds before finally deflating.
"The kit is insane," he said finally. "Legitimately, certifiably insane."
"He learned from the best," Saiken said, and there might have been a hint of dry humor in the slug's perpetually gloomy voice.
Naruto spent the next week experimenting with his new ability.
He discovered he could teleport anywhere he could see, anywhere he had been before, or anywhere he had sand already present. He could do it instantly, without hand signs, without apparent effort. One moment here, the next moment there, with only a brief sensation of dissolving and reforming in between.
It was, objectively, terrifying.
Naruto thought it was the coolest thing ever.
"I can go anywhere," he whispered to himself one night, sitting on the roof of his apartment building and looking out over the village that hated him. "Anywhere at all. They can't catch me. Can't corner me. Can't touch me if I don't want them to."
The sand swirled around him, responding to his mood. It felt almost... affectionate. Like a pet that had learned a new trick and was eager to show off.
"Thanks, sand," Naruto said, patting the gourd. "You're my best friend."
Inside the seal, nine bijuu felt something complicated at those words.
"His best friend is sand," Matatabi said quietly. "Not a person. Not even an animal. Sand."
"It's better than nothing," Shukaku said, but his voice was subdued.
"Is it? Is being attached to an inanimate object—even one that's partially sentient through you—really better than complete isolation?"
"I don't know. But it's what he has. And we gave it to him." Shukaku's sand swirled in the mindscape, mirroring its physical counterpart. "Maybe that means something."
The other bijuu didn't respond.
There wasn't anything to say.
The Hyuga incident happened on October 10th.
Naruto didn't know that October 10th was his birthday. No one had ever told him. He certainly didn't know that it was also the anniversary of the Nine-Tails attack, or that the village used this day to mourn their dead, or that emotions ran particularly high against him on this particular date.
All he knew was that the streets were more dangerous than usual, and that he should probably stay hidden until the sun came up.
He was doing exactly that—lurking in the shadows near the village's eastern wall—when he saw her.
She was small, maybe his age, with dark hair and pale eyes that seemed to glow in the moonlight. She was wearing expensive-looking clothes and walking with the careful posture of someone who had been trained to move precisely. A Hyuga, Naruto's mind supplied. He'd learned about them from overheard conversations and stolen library books. One of the noble clans. Very fancy. Very powerful. Very not-interested-in-demon-children.
She was also being followed.
Naruto noticed the shadows moving wrong before he consciously identified what he was seeing. Three figures, staying just out of the girl's line of sight, moving when she moved, stopping when she stopped. Professionals. Hunters.
He should leave. This wasn't his business. The Hyuga were one of the most powerful clans in the village—they could take care of their own. Getting involved would only draw attention to him, and attention was bad. Attention led to beatings and hatred and that cold, empty feeling in his chest that never quite went away.
He should leave.
But then one of the figures broke cover, moving with inhuman speed, and suddenly there was a cloth over the girl's mouth and she was struggling and no one was coming to help and—
Naruto felt something shift inside him.
Not the cold emptiness. Something else. Something hot and eager and deeply, terrifyingly satisfied.
He grinned.
It was not a nice grin.
Inside the seal, every bijuu felt the change.
"What is that?" Chōmei buzzed, alarmed. "What is he feeling?"
"Anticipation," Kurama said, his voice grim. "Excitement. He's looking forward to what's about to happen."
"What's about to happen is a kidnapping! He should be scared, or angry, or—"
"He's none of those things. He's hungry." Kurama's tails lashed. "Something is very wrong with our kit."
"Should we stop him?"
"Can we? Look at his chakra—it's already surging. The sand is responding. He's made his decision."
"Then what do we do?"
"We watch. We learn. And we try to understand what we're dealing with."
The bijuu turned their attention to the outside world, where their host was already moving.
The sand dispersed.
Naruto felt himself scatter into a million golden particles, felt the wind carry him across the distance between himself and the kidnapper, felt himself reform directly in the man's path.
The kidnapper—a Kumo ninja, Naruto realized, recognizing the headband—stumbled to a halt.
"What the—where did you come from?!"
Naruto didn't answer. He was too busy smiling.
"Let her go," he said, and his voice was wrong. Layered. Like there were other voices speaking beneath his own, just barely audible.
"Get out of my way, kid. This doesn't concern you."
"I think it does."
"You think wrong." The ninja reached for a kunai with his free hand. "Last warning. Move, or I'll move you."
"Okay," Naruto said agreeably. "Try."
The kunai flashed through the air—and stopped. Caught in a hand made of sand that had formed between the weapon and Naruto's face.
The ninja's eyes went wide.
"You're... you're him. The one they warned us about. The container."
"I'm Naruto," Naruto corrected. "And you're holding something that doesn't belong to you."
"The girl is coming with me. Kumo has been waiting years for a chance to acquire the Byakugan, and we're not going to—"
"I don't care about the Byakugan."
"Then why—"
"I don't care about the girl either, really." Naruto tilted his head, and the grin stretched wider. "I just wanted to see what would happen."
He raised his hand.
The sand rose with it.
Hinata Hyuga was five years old and absolutely terrified.
One moment she had been walking through the village, trying to find her way back to the compound after getting lost during the memorial service. The next, a strange man had grabbed her, pressed something over her mouth, and the world had gone blurry and strange.
She had tried to scream, tried to fight, but her limbs weren't working properly and her voice wouldn't come and everything was happening too fast.
Then there was sand.
So much sand, appearing from nowhere, swirling around her like a golden storm. The man who had grabbed her was screaming—actually screaming—and she could see shapes in the sand, hands and teeth and things that shouldn't exist, and blood was spraying everywhere and—
The sand parted.
A boy stood in front of her. About her age, with blonde hair and strange marks on his cheeks and eyes that were wrong, wrong, wrong—too old for his face, too cold for a child, too pleased with the violence that surrounded them.
"Hi," he said. "I'm Naruto. What's your name?"
Hinata stared at him.
Behind him, the sand was still moving. Still doing things to the man who had grabbed her. She couldn't see what, exactly, but she could hear the sounds.
She really, really wished she couldn't hear the sounds.
"You're crying," Naruto observed. "Why are you crying? You're safe now."
"I... I..." Hinata couldn't form words. The world was tilting dangerously, and she thought she might be sick.
"You should probably go home. Your family is probably worried." Naruto frowned, seeming to notice her distress for the first time. "Are you okay? You look pale. Well, more pale than normal. You Hyuga are all pretty pale, right?"
"What... what did you do to him?"
"The guy who grabbed you?" Naruto glanced back at the sand, which had finally gone still. "Don't worry about it. He won't bother you again."
"Is he... is he dead?"
"Probably." Naruto said it casually, like he was discussing the weather. "He was trying to kidnap you, so I stopped him. That's good, right? I did a good thing?"
Hinata didn't answer. She couldn't. The world was going dark around the edges, and her legs weren't working properly, and she was falling—
Naruto caught her.
"Whoa, careful. Don't pass out yet, you need to get home." He looked at her with something that might have been concern, if concern could exist in those too-old eyes. "Hey. Hey, stay with me. What's your name?"
"H-Hinata," she managed. "Hinata Hyuga."
"Hinata. That's pretty. Okay, Hinata, I'm going to take you home now. Try not to freak out."
"Try not to—what?"
The sand rose around them, and the world dissolved into golden particles, and Hinata did, in fact, freak out.
They reformed in front of the Hyuga compound.
Hinata stumbled away from Naruto, falling to her knees and retching. The teleportation—whatever it was—had left her disoriented and nauseous, and the smell of blood was still in her nose, and everything was too much.
"Sorry about that," Naruto said, sounding genuinely apologetic. "I probably should have warned you more. First time is always rough."
"You... you killed him."
"He was going to kidnap you. Maybe sell you. Maybe experiment on you. Definitely hurt you." Naruto crouched down to her level. "I know it was scary. But he was a bad man, and now he can't hurt anyone else. Isn't that good?"
Hinata looked at him—really looked at him—and saw something she didn't understand.
He was smiling, but it wasn't a happy smile. His eyes were bright, but it wasn't with joy. He seemed genuinely confused by her reaction, like he couldn't understand why the violence had upset her.
"Who are you?" she whispered.
"I told you. I'm Naruto." His smile softened slightly. "And I think... I think you might be my first friend."
"Friend?"
"I saved your life. That makes us friends, right?" Naruto stood up, sand swirling around his feet. "I have to go now. The guards are coming, and they don't like me very much. But I'll come back to visit, okay? Friends visit each other."
"Wait—"
But Naruto was already gone, dissolving into sand and scattering on the wind, leaving Hinata alone in front of her family's compound with blood on her clothes and a story that no one would believe.
The guards found her moments later. They asked what had happened. She tried to explain.
When she described the boy with the sand and the smile that wasn't quite right, the guards went very, very quiet.
"Stay here," one of them said. "I need to contact the Hokage."
Inside the seal, the bijuu were silent.
The violence had been... efficient. Shukaku's sand had done its work with brutal precision, eliminating the threat before it could become a problem. By any tactical standard, Naruto had performed admirably.
But tactics weren't what concerned them.
"He enjoyed it," Matatabi said finally. "Not just the killing—that's understandable, even if it's concerning. He enjoyed her fear. Enjoyed her confusion. Enjoyed being the one with power in that situation."
"He also called her his friend," Chōmei pointed out. "That's... that's new, right? He's never tried to make friends before."
"Is that what that was? Friendship?" Son Gokū shook his massive head. "It looked more like... claiming. Like he decided she belonged to him and now she's his whether she likes it or not."
"That's how Shukaku makes friends," Kurama observed dryly.
"I don't have friends," Shukaku protested. "I have sand. And now, apparently, so does the kit. But the teleporting thing—I still don't understand how he did that!"
"Focus, Shukaku. We have bigger problems than your existential crisis about sand manipulation."
"They're all connected! The kit is developing abilities that even we don't understand! He's also developing psychological patterns that are deeply concerning! And now he's apparently decided to adopt a Hyuga heiress as a pet! We're losing control of this situation!"
"Did we ever have control?" Isobu asked quietly.
No one answered.
"He saved her," Gyūki said eventually. "Whatever his motivations, he did save her. That's something."
"Is it enough?"
"It has to be. We work with what we have." The Eight-Tails' tentacles curled thoughtfully. "The Hyuga girl—Hinata. He called her his friend. That's the first genuine connection he's attempted with another human being. Maybe... maybe she's the key."
"The key to what?"
"To reaching him. To teaching him empathy. He clearly feels something for her, even if it's possessive rather than healthy. If we can nurture that, guide it, help him develop a real relationship..."
"He might learn what it means to actually care about someone," Matatabi finished. "Not as a possession. Not as a pet. As a person."
"It's a long shot," Kurama said. "But it's also the only shot we have."
"So we encourage this? The friendship with the Hyuga girl?"
"We encourage healthy connection. We discourage possessive obsession. And we hope that somehow, despite everything, he can learn the difference."
The bijuu settled into contemplation, watching through Naruto's senses as he ran across rooftops, sand swirling around him, that wrong smile still on his face.
They had work to do.
So much work.
Hiruzen Sarutobi received three reports that night.
The first was from the Hyuga clan, describing the attempted kidnapping of their heiress and her mysterious rescue by a boy matching Naruto Uzumaki's description.
The second was from ANBU, confirming that a Kumo infiltrator had been found—or rather, the remains of a Kumo infiltrator had been found—scattered across a significant portion of the eastern district.
The third was from Inoichi Yamanaka, who had been quietly monitoring Naruto's psychological development for years and was requesting an emergency consultation.
Hiruzen read all three reports, then set them down and poured himself a very large glass of sake.
"Difficult child," he murmured to no one in particular. "Doesn't begin to cover it."
He drank the sake in one long swallow, then poured another.
It was going to be a very long night.
Across the village, in a tiny apartment that smelled like dust and loneliness, Naruto Uzumaki sat on his bed and thought about the girl with the pale eyes.
"Hinata," he said, testing the name. "Hinata Hyuga."
He liked the way it sounded. Liked the way she had looked at him, even if it was with fear. Fear was better than nothing. Fear meant she noticed him. Fear meant she would remember him.
And maybe, eventually, fear could become something else.
"We're friends now," he told the sand, which swirled around him in agreement. "She just doesn't know it yet."
Inside the seal, the bijuu heard this and felt a complicated mixture of hope and dread.
Their kit was learning to connect with other humans.
They just weren't sure if that was a good thing.
The bird from three weeks ago had been buried by then, its small body decomposed into the earth. But Naruto still thought about it sometimes. Thought about the way the light had faded from its eyes. Thought about the peace that had come after the struggling stopped.
Death wasn't scary, he had decided. Death was just... quiet. An ending. A transition from one state to another.
The Kumo ninja had fought against it. Had screamed and begged and tried to escape. But in the end, he had found the same quiet as the bird.
Everyone did, eventually.
Naruto smiled at this thought—his real smile, not the wrong one—and closed his eyes.
Tomorrow, he would visit Hinata.
Tomorrow, he would start learning what it meant to have a friend.
Tomorrow, everything would be different.
Inside the seal, nine ancient beings watched their host drift off to sleep, and wondered what they had created.
"He's going to be okay," Chōmei said, but it sounded more like a question than a statement.
"He's going to be something," Kurama replied. "What that something is... we'll find out together."
It wasn't reassuring.
But it was honest.
And for now, that would have to be enough.
Author's Note: Naruto is concerning everyone, including the readers. The bijuu are having a moral crisis. Hinata has been claimed as a friend against her will. The Kumo ninja learned an important lesson about kidnapping people in front of children who can control sand (the lesson is: don't). Next chapter—Naruto's "friendship" with Hinata develops in ways that concern everyone, the Academy starts and Naruto discovers he has Opinions about education, and someone finally asks the question that everyone's been avoiding: "Is the Jinchuuriki container actually stable, or should we be very, very worried?"
Spoiler alert: They should be very, very worried.
Shukaku would like it noted that he did NOT teach Naruto to teleport. That was entirely the kit's invention. Shukaku is impressed, disturbed, and slightly jealous. The other bijuu are just disturbed. Kurama is pretending he's not proud. He is not fooling anyone.