Present…
A year later…
Naruto woke bolt upright from his bed, blinking away his sleep as he stared towards the wall at the foot of his bed. Appearing both baffled and drowsy from the exhausted rings around his eyes, he looked around his room momentarily to reacquaint himself with his surroundings… and to possibly get a handle on reality.
Okay, he wasn't at the park, he wasn't in the trees behind his school, he wasn't in his living room, and he certainly wasn't up in the valleys next to the Hokage Monument. Soon determining that he was actually in his room and in his bed, he concluded that the events he had been watching through his eyes moments before were merely memories of a bygone time; turbulent, upsetting and filled with brief glimmers of happiness.
They were what shaped his life up to today.
Groaning, Naruto rubbed the back of his head and picked up his bedside clock. He groaned when he saw the time. "Two-thirty? Still too early!" he thought to his dismay before setting it back down and giving a yawn. "Damn dreams…"
With that curse made to his own biological clock and his adventurous mind, he then laid down flat and pulled the covers back over him.
Hopefully his next dreams wouldn't be so stirring…
XXX
Two weeks later…
Early morning…
Another peaceful night and another beautiful sunrise; a predetermined event that told everyone across the country that all was right with the world. The rays of light from the golden ball that drew across the sky filtered down onto the landscape, illuminating every corner and filling in every shadow. Peaking over the rolling hillsides and forests its magnificent glaze soon reached the hidden village of Konohagakure, which greeted its warmth with a welcoming breeze and the glow of sweet dew built up from the night before.
The blend of nature with human settlement, as well as the manmade marvel known as the Hokage Monument sitting comfortably in the background made the glimmering picture of faultlessness a sight to behold. It was like somebody speed-painted the entire village based on their own thoughts of what the most tranquil place in the world was like every waking hour. If it weren't flying the flag of a shinobi village or was plagued with such a questionable history it would have been paradise.
To the people living inside of its walls though, it was just home. This was precisely what ran through a particular shopkeeper's mind as he prepared to open the doors of his business to the populace. Immediately upon pushing up the roller door of his general items store he stretched his back and greeted the sun with a satisfied yawn. He stepped out onto the street with a delightful smile on his face.
That was until he turned around and looked up at the front of his shop that had been passed down to him from his father and the father before him. A shriek escaped his lips and he jumped further out into the middle of the road.
"Wh-What?! What the hell?!"
It was horrifying. His shop was covered in paintings of various symbols, words that should never be uttered in public and images that were either too abstract to make out or too shocking to even talk about. Not only that, but the poor salesman's building wasn't the only one that was hit by the maelstrom of paint works.
From left to right up and down the neighborhood, every single roof, wall, door, window and fence in sight was covered in the atrocious street art. It wasn't even the good kind of street art either; it was the terrible graffiti, single-colored, time-wasting bullshit you could find anywhere on any sign and there was a shit ton of it. It looked like somebody had just done it on the fly because it sure as hell wasn't done over the entire night, but that wasn't the main problem right now. Almost everyone who was awake at this time and outside was looking up in mortification at their once glamorous suburb.
"What is this?"
"How terrible."
"Disgraceful!"
"It's everywhere, honey! Look! Even the clothes on the line got painted!"
"Who did this?"
As questions and exclamations began filtering out from every villager and shopkeeper present, boisterous laughter suddenly filled the air and forced everyone in the vicinity to crane their heads towards a nearby overpass. There, standing on top of cluster of drainpipes straddling the gap, the culprit responsible for the aforementioned crime stood over the crowd far below with his arms proudly folded, a bucket at his feet and a wide grin on his face.
Dressed in an orange jacket with short blue sleeves with an orange arrow on each sleeve, orange cargo shorts and a pair of ski goggles slapped over his head, the blonde haired menace known throughout the village cast his ominous shadow across the street from the sun now hitting his back, lighting him up like a superhero under spotlight.
The blonde's grin flashed into view once all eyes landed on him.
"That's right! It was me!" the boy with spiky blonde hair exclaimed. "Uzumaki Naruto at your service! Remember that name well… because I'm going to be Hokage some day!"
With that announcement made he wasted no time in making his getaway and took off down the street at speed, leaping across from rooftop to rooftop.
"Come back here!"
"Damn it! It was him again!"
For a ten year old academy student, he was damn quick. The villagers could do nothing except attempt to give chase, point fingers and throw curses at him as he vacated the premises with fleeter feet than a cat running from a garden hose. Within seconds he was out of sight, leaving behind a trail of atrocities and fuming shop keepers.
The owner of the general store growled and crossed his arms, now standing amongst a whole crowd of villagers who had also been attacked by the little menace. "What a nuisance. He's made a big mess."
The man next to him nodded in agreement, "Even if we want to file a complaint he's got no parents we can nag to."
"What'll we do?" another concerned villager asked, a woman who turned out with the rest of the crowd holding up her summer kimono, now covered in colored paint reading the blasted perpetrator's name. "Who's going to pay for all of this?"
By the time the unpleasantness started to waft off of the targets for that day, Naruto was long gone and running down some random road many blocks away. He was still grinning mischievously from ear to ear and giggling non-stop, thoroughly satisfied at what he had been able to accomplish in a short half-hour. If he were a dog, then he would have pretty much claimed that entire area as his territory.
"Suckers," Naruto exclaimed, laughing out loud as the paint bucket he had trailing behind him rattled on the wind. "Naruto: five-hundred! Village idiots: zero!" He stuck his tongue out.
Once he was certain that he had pulled far enough away from the danger zone, Naruto allowed his sprint to slow to a jog before dropping into a comfortable stride. He waded in the satisfaction of seeing all of the villagers' reactions to his latest felony and bathed in the afterglow. However, while he was walking down a quiet suburb way out of reach of anyone bound to be seeking revenge on him, he stopped when he heard a familiar call from nearby.
"I'm heading off mum!"
Eyes training left as his feet carted to a stop, Naruto saw the door to one of the nearby homes open and a boy around his age come running out, shortly followed by whom he guessed was his younger brother and their mother. The parent stopped the younger of the two from running off prematurely by holding out two bento boxes, all neatly wrapped and ready for them. It was a homemade meal only a loving family member could prepare for her children.
"Hold on, sweetie. You forgot something," the mother exclaimed with humor in her voice.
The older boy skidded clumsily and rushed back, looking slightly abashed, "Oops! Sorry, mum!" the youngster laughed, taking the box from her when it was lowered to him. "What did you make for us today?"
"Did you make us omelets?" the younger brother asked eagerly while tackling his older brother in a playful manner. "Is it omelets?" They looked up to see their mother beaming at them.
"Of course. I made a lot."
"Yay!" both cheered excitedly, after which they then ran off with their bento boxes held overhead, like they were trophies won in contest and needed to be elevated. They celebrated their way down the street, looking back to see their mother waving at them.
"Be careful you two," she yelled out to them.
"We will, mum!" the older brother called.
"Love you!"
Naruto's expression sunk as he watched the two siblings head on their way while their mother saw them off from her home's doorsteps. After a few seconds of looking and seeing the parent walk back inside, upon floundering over the memory of the warm bond he saw that they shared as a family the jinchuriki then turned his gaze back to the road ahead of him again and he shuffled on. With his head and spirit set on an extreme low, he began dragging his feet away to wherever he wanted to go next.
Where? Well… that was a question he would really like answered.
Obviously no one was waiting for him back home. No one was waiting for him anywhere.
"This sucks," he muttered, feeling a lot smaller than he had been before; even after all of his big talk to the villagers about becoming Hokage. Speaking of which, after reaching the end of the road and finding himself in some quiet backstreet the boy was able to get a great spectator's view of the entire monument itself laid out on the horizon.
He gritted his teeth and dropped the paint can he was carrying. The yellow splashed over the ground as he pointed up at the vacant expressions of the four historic faces watching over the entire community.
"What are YOU looking at, huh?" Naruto shouted, ignoring the startled looks of a couple of nearby villagers. "Do you think this bothers me?! Being all alone?! Having no parents?! Being the number one loser?! The dead-last?! HUH?! Well screw you?!"
Rubbing his eyes against his arm vigorously to get rid of any tears he was probably holding back, he then brought his fist around and punched it towards the monument.
"Just you wait! I WILL become Hokage someday! And when I do become Hokage and everyone has acknowledged me as the number one ninja in this village, I will have MY face engraved right next to the rest of your ugly mugs!" Naruto bellowed, his voice carrying over the neighborhood and scaring a few birds out of their roosts. "And believe me when I say this, my face will look a thousand times better than all of yours combined!" Once his words echoed into silence, he heaved in several deep breaths of air before straightening his posture and changing his expression.
From an onlooker's point of view, he looked especially proud at his outburst.
"I will become the greatest Hokage there ever will be. Believe it," Naruto declared under his breath with a small smile, before putting his hands in his pockets and marching off. With all of his yelling and vows being spouted at the top of his lungs, he had completely forgotten about the can of paint he'd dragged all the way out here with him. It had served its purpose anyway, so there was no further need for it.
"A Hokage like that needs to be strong and cool! And I'm going to be both!" the blonde recited quietly with a grin. He nodded affirmatively to himself when he parted from the suburb; heading off to God only knew where his body wanted to take him. "I'm gonna get some training in."
It was still early in the morning, he'd had his fun messing with society, and he had a full day of time left to burn. I mean, what else was there for him to do? It wasn't like he