A/N:
" " : Dialogue,
' ' : Thought,
[ ] : Nano,
{ } : Jutsu and Seal Casts.
A lot of the features of Nano have been tweaked to fit in with the Narutoverse, so a lot of the stuff that those who know Nano are familiar with will change.
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Omniscient POV
After Naruto finishes cleaning up, his face that seemed to hold the world's brightest smile, morphed into a downcast, melancholic visage. It was as if the joy he felt from having someone, or in this case, something's support, when he had never gotten any before had simply withered away.
Naruto's life as he could remember it has not been a pleasant one. He had been born an orphan, with his parents being among those that died in the attack of the Nine Tailed Demon Fox 7 years ago.
He was kicked out of the orphanage that he was by law, meant to stay in, as someone who was orphaned that day. The only good thing he knew had happened to him before Nano, was that he had been knocked out when he was younger and woke up later inside the very apartment that he is still living in, with a small bag that had some money, probably an allowance, and a letter telling him that he would be living here and wouldn't have to pay the rent until he was earning some funds for himself.
And since then, it felt like life and his environment had focused all their malice on him. For the past 3 years, he had been attacked on his birthday without fail by multiple civilians, with it being the worst on his fifth birthday, when he was attacked by a mob of them. The Fox Hunt, they called it.
His 6th birthday wasn't as bad, but he still came back to the apartment with wounds on his torso. His 7th birthday, which was yesterday, was probably the least damaging to his body, as he only had some bruises and a small cut on his lip, all of which had been healed by Nano. She had even gotten rid of his scars.
He knows that while Nano would support him through anything he would choose to do, practically every other person he had met so far would look at him with disdain and hatred.
The adults would try to deprive him, overcharge him or even beat him, and the children, under the instructions of the adults would ostracize and isolate him, giving him no support whatsoever.
He didn't know why they hated him so, or what he could have done that would cause them to feel so negatively about him. All he knew was that every once in a while, he would hear the words 'demon' and 'fox' come out of the adults' mouths.
He never knew for sure if they were linking his existence to that of the beast that terrorized the village 7 years ago, but he had the feeling that such a train of thought wasn't wrong.
Yet at the same time, for him, such a thought was also absurd. How could a 7 year old child be the same as a beast capable of destroying mountains on a whim? Would it not be insanity to believe that he and that existence were one and the same?
Maybe Nano would know the answer to that. "Nano. You there?" He calls out to his assistant. [Yes, Boss. You don't have to worry yourself about me not being available to help you. I'm always here.] Nano says, as if creating her response by analyzing Naruto's feelings.
"Am I cursed?" He asks with a melancholic voice, and she replies concisely. [No. There is no presence of cursed seals on you. However, there is a seal on your abdominal area.] She says, informing him of the reality of what he thought was an elaborate birthmark.
"So this thing's a seal. What's it do?" He asks as he pulls up his shirt, wanting to know if this seal on his body was the source of his misfortune. [The seal on your abdomen has been identified to be the Eight Trigrams Seal, made to contain Tailed Beasts, specifically the Nine Tails.] Her words basically confirmed that the seal was what had caused him to have a shitty life.
If the seal was truly made to contain the beast that terrorized the village at that time, then why him? Couldn't they find anyone else that was more fitting to handle such a thing? Why force this on a child, against their will?
[It's best that I inform you that this does not mean that you're the Nine Tails or its reincarnation. On the contrary, you are your own self, as well as the jailer and prison to the Nine Tails. You are the Nine Tails Jinchuriki.] Nano says.
"Jinchuriki? Can you explain exactly what that is to me?" Naruto asks in slight confusion. [Of course. A Jinchuriki is a person chosen for the highly dangerous and important purpose of containing a Tailed Beast. This containment is usually done by subduing the Tailed Beast, then using a seal to forcefully hold it within a person.] She explains.
"Then why? Why me? Could they not find anyone else?!" He says with tears falling ever so slowly from his eyes. But he couldn't have expected what she said next. [User does not have the clearance required to access this information.]
Hearing that, he looks down with a depreciating smile. "So I'm not even allowed to learn why my life has been like this." He says as he sobs silently. [To gain clearance, you'll have to attain a higher shinobi rank, as well as get stronger.]
"But why?" He asks Nano as he wipes off his tears. [The information you are asking for is one that would needlessly put you in extreme danger if it is ever found out that you know of it.] Naruto nods in understanding. "So I just have to go to the academy and get stronger." He says with a resolute expression.
"Speaking of which, what's the time?" He asks as he looks outside his window. [The time is currently 7:05am.] Nano's words cause him to open the refrigerator and take out the last bit of some yakisoba that he had remaining from last night, and down it as quickly as he could without choking.
"And now." He asks Nano. [7:10am.] He nods, then cleans his mouth with some water, puts on the only embellishments that he has — his red scarf and a pair of goggles with green straps—, heads out of the apartment and locks the door, then begins sprinting towards the Shinobi Academy, through the snow filled streets.
Despite never focusing on training his body, Naruto was able to sprint for 15 minutes straight without stopping. This was owed to his Uzumaki bloodline that had been activated within him, granting him greater stamina, greater recovery and massive chakra reserves, and this was only on the physical part, but that discussion is for another time.
During this sprint, Naruto asked Nano if she could help him not hear the words of other people. She said she could, and applied noise cancelling to his eardrums, blocking out the people's hateful words.
None of them attacked him during his sprint, but he still felt it — their animosity and hostility towards him. "Tch, it's the demon brat. You better stay away from him in school, understand?" A woman said to her son and he nodded, trying to not disobey his mother.
Such sentiments were shared amongst many civilian parents, but this did not mean that only civilians held some hostility towards the boy, as even some shinobi that were patrolling in the village looked at him with sinister schemes running through their minds.
But some other shinobi looked at him with curiosity. "Who taught him how to access his chakra?" One of them asked, as most children, and even adult civilians had no idea how to access their chakra and consciously make it cycle throughout their bodies, yet Naruto had done just that.
"I don't know. Should we report it to Sandaime?" The shinobi next to him said. After a few seconds of silence and watching Naruto sprint away, he responded. "No, there's no need. Sandaime is going to be at the Academy today, so he'll see it for himself." He said, and they turned back to continue their work.
...
Naruto had gotten to the Academy, but what he saw there demoralized him — parents holding the hands of their children, be they civilians or shinobi. And as they notice him, a majority of them begin showing him hostility just from their looks.
Looking away from them, he searches for anyone else that doesn't have a parent with them, like him. His eyes continue to dart around, and he eventually sees one person that had no one with him, a familiar black-haired boy wearing a blue shirt with white shorts and black sandals.
He tries stepping towards him, but as soon as he does so, alarm bells ring in his head, warning him of danger. He looks around, trying to find who it might be that would be trying to kill him. Noticing that using his eyes normally is getting him nowhere, he resorts to something else.
'Nano, can you help me find who it is?' He communicates to his internal assistant. [Activating chakra sight.] As she does that, he looks around again, and sees the sources of the killing intent up high in the trees that surround the Academy.
'Who the hell is that guy for so many shinobi to be watching him that closely?' Naruto thinks to himself as he walks through the gates of the Academy to enter the building. [Going by the tag on the backside of his shirt, he is most likely a member of the Uchiha clan.] Nano says, and Naruto just raises a brow.
'Ah, by the way, turn off noise cancelling.' [Affirmative.] Naruto finally begins to hear the people around him once more, as unpleasant as it is. He does his best to ignore the people with hostility towards him, then he soon notices someone mention the name of the other boy's clan, Uchiha.
Naruto hears different things being said about the boy, but they are all of the same sentiments, that they want their children to get closer to him, or to only be slightly wary of him.
He thought that he was an outcast similar to him, but alas he was just alone for the moment. Naruto stops paying them any attention and enters into the Academy, where he meets a shinobi who seems to be waiting for all the prospective students to make it to the academy grounds before the time for their arrival elapses.
Naruto tries getting his attention, but the shinobi seemingly ignores him. So seeing that he won't respond, Naruto finds a small stool by the side, and sits there waiting, being with nothing but his thoughts and Nano.
Some time later, the shinobi calls all the children to follow him, and they are all soon put into different classrooms and given papers to fill in their information.
Naruto asks Nano for the full range of his information, and she gives him an Augmented Reality write-up that contains all of his information. He moves the write-up and traces everything onto the paper, then submits it to the supervising shinobi.
He leaves the registration point, and moves away to find somewhere to sit. But as he was looking for a place to sit, he came across 3 boys that were shoving a girl. He had a mind to ignore the altercation, but then he heard the words that one of the boys said.
"Haha. If you have the Byakugan, but can't actually get it to work, then you just have weird eyes." The boy's friends laugh at her mockingly. "Haha. Weird eyes. Weird eyes." They say in a mocking song.
This irks Naruto, and he steps forward to confront the boys. He shouts at them, saying it was wrong to do such a thing to someone over something they had no control over.
The boys, angry that he had ruined their fun, attack him. He rushes at one of them and smacks him in the face with a small fist, but the other two grab him and start hitting him, with a few of their blows impacting his head.
After the boys got tired of beating him, they left, angry that they were no longer having fun. Naruto, now in pain, stood up, only to notice that his scarf had been torn in the scuffle. The girl walked up to him shyly, and thanked him for helping her, and she tried returning his scarf to him.
"Don't worry about it. I'm not cold, and you look like you need some warmth, so take it." He says, satisfied that he got the bullies to leave her alone. He then stands up and walks away, still looking for a place to sit.
What he didn't notice was the girl looking at his back, with a blush on her face, and a tight grip on the torn-up scarf. He soon found a place to sit down alone, and waited for the last person to finish their registration.
After the last person finished, they were all guided to the roof of the academy, where an old man wearing white robes and a hat with the kanji for fire on it was waiting for them. This was none other than Hiruzen Sarutobi, the Third Hokage.
"Hello, children." Hiruzen greets them with a small smile while his eyes dart around, as if looking for someone. His eyes land on Naruto and they widen ever so subtly, which doesn't escape Naruto's eyes, thanks to Nano.
What could be the reason that someone as high up as the Hokage would be interested in him? Could it be his status as the Nine Tails Jinchuriki, or as an Uzumaki clan member? Perhaps Naruto may never know.
Hiruzen calls for the children to sit on the floor, for him to teach them a lesson that he has taught to multiple generations of shinobi before them, the importance of the Will of Fire.
As Naruto listened alongside the other children, he couldn't help but come to find himself disagreeing with the sentiment that he was being presented with.
If the entire village was truly a family, then why was he treated the way he had been for so long? Is he not seen as part of the village, or are the ones that keep their eyes on him blind? Is he not part of this village's future?
These questions plagued his mind throughout the time that Hiruzen was talking, but due to Nano, he still clearly heard everything that he said.
After the lecture with Hiruzen, the children were all taken to their respective classes, with Naruto being in Class 1. As he looked around, he noticed that there were a few students that were stronger than the others, at least that's what chakra sight told him.
But he noticed that none of them have nearly as much chakra as he does, which gave him some level of relief. He also noticed that two of these stronger children have their chakra flowing differently, with a considerable bit of it seemingly storing itself in their eyes.
One of them was the Uchiha boy that he saw outside the academy, and the other was a slender girl with dark blue hair in a bowl cut, with bangs framing her face. Looking at her, he recognized her as the same girl that he defended outside the academy.
She looked around, and eventually her eyes met his. He waved at her in greeting, and she shyly nodded back at him, her face red with blush.
He also noticed some of the weaker children looking at him with hostility. But he didn't feel the need to register them in his mind, as he knew that they were blindly obeying their parents, who already had hostility towards him.
...
A few minutes pass, and a shinobi walks into the classroom. He had black hair that was in a rough ponytail, and a scar running across the bridge of his nose. He wore the standard shinobi uniform and flak jacket, as well as the standard Konoha forehead protector as a headband.
"I'm Iruka Umino, and from now, possibly until you graduate, I'll be your instructor." The man says with a stern look on his face. "Now. Why don't you children come up here and introduce yourselves." He started from the front.
They all introduced themselves in front of the class, telling everyone their names, their likes and dislikes, and their goals. Many of them were from civilian families, so their goals weren't particularly lofty or notable, with many of them hoping to make some money then retire safely, or even something as innocuous as getting someone's attention.
In as much as he wasn't paying attention to them, Naruto was still hearing them clearly. He also made sure to register the names of the ones that were stronger than the others, which surprisingly included the timid girl, whose name he had come to find was Hinata Hyuga, from the renown Hyuga clan.
As a matter of fact, every one of the stronger students that were in the class was from one ninja clan or the other. The boy from outside the academy, Sasuke Uchiha, was from the Uchiha clan — granted, he was the last of them in Konoha. The others were from clans that had a level of renown as well.
There was someone from the Aburame clan, someone from the Akimichi clan, someone from the Nara clan, one from the Yamanaka clan, and one from the Inuzuka clan. He didn't know how so many clan members ended up in the same class, but he wasn't going to question it.
Eventually, it reached his turn. As he walked down to the front of the class, his thoughts were plagued with questions. What was his goal for becoming a shinobi? Was it something that was worth paying attention to?
As he got past the front most seat, his goal became clearer to him. To become strong. But was that enough? If he becomes strong, what's to say that there won't be a way for someone to do something to him using their position? With that thought, his goals were set.
"Hello! My name is Naruto Uzumaki. I like ramen, and I dislike people that bully others. And I'm going to become the Hokage, and the strongest shinobi in the world! And you better believe it!" Silence pervaded the room as Naruto made his declaration.
It was an ambition far greater than anyone else had put forward. One that was immediately met with ridicule. "Hmph. What can an orphan like you do?" A pink haired girl with a large forehead said, as if spitting on his goals.
"More than you apparently, seeing as I got here by myself and you had your parents practically hold your hands for you to even get here." Naruto said to the girl, who also happened to have one of - if not - the weakest chakra signatures in the entire class.
Seeing that she couldn't properly rebut him, she called him an orphan once more, mocking his plight. "Is that all? Do you know how many people are orphans, that you just laughed at?" Naruto said, shutting her up.
"There are many people who lost their parents who have become shinobi. So tell me, what gives you the right to mock us for having lost our parents?!" The girl shut up, unable to form any coherent sentences to reply. "Sakura. Step out of the classroom." Iruka said, and her head went down in defeat. She walked out of the class in silence.
"You can go back to your seat, Naruto." Iruka said, now having a somewhat positive image of the boy who has been hated by most of the village. "Okay, everyone. Pay attention." He said loudly, drawing the attention of all the students from Naruto.
"For today, we aren't going to put you through too much. You'll only be familiarizing yourselves with your instructors for each part of your shinobi training, and be undergoing a light bit of physical tests. When we're finished for the day, you can all go back home. Understood?" He said with an intense look on his face.
"Yes sir!" The students answered, and he nodded. "Okay, then. Now, follow me in a single file." He said, and for their sakes, they obeyed. He called Sakura to follow as he left the classroom.
After a few minutes of following him, they eventually reached the academy's training complex, where a few instructors were waiting for them. Most of the students looked around, trying to make full sense of their surroundings, and a few just kept looking straight.
However, Naruto was looking around with a single thought. 'Where the heck is that feeling coming from?!' Ever since he came within 10 meters of the training complex, a thick killing intent had been trained onto him, and he'd been looking for its source.
Eventually, his eyes landed on a male shinobi. He had shoulder length white hair with a green tint, and he was wearing the standard Konoha shinobi uniform, but his forehead protector was on a bandana, rather than a headband.
Naruto had felt hostility from many people before, so he didn't mistake the feeling. What he didn't understood was why this guy's hostility was so intense. It was like the guy wanted to kill him or something.
"These are my colleagues that will also be your instructors." Iruka said, snapping Naruto from his reverie. "This is Daikoku Funeno." He pointed to a large, jovial man with brown hair and a small beard on his chin, who also happened to be wearing his forehead protector as a bandana.
"Hey, Iruka. You can let us introduce ourselves. Don't you think so, Suzume?" The man said with a smile, about to hold the shoulder of the woman standing next to him, but she moved out of his reach just in time.
"Stop playing around, Daikoku." She said, adjusting the pair of glasses on her face. In comparison to her fellow instructors, her appearance made it seem like she didn't take the job all that seriously.
She was wearing a pink kimono and baggy red pants, with a pair of sandals and socks, and her forehead protector, which was in the standard form of a headband. She also had a bit of mesh armor underneath her clothes.
"My name is Suzume Hanamatsu. For you little girls, I'll be your main instructor for learning the art of the kunoichi." She said with a pressuring gaze. "Now, now. No need to be so uptight with them. At least not yet." Iruka said, then turned to introduce the last of the instructors.
"And this is Mizuki. In the event that I'm not present, he'll be your sensei." Iruka pointed at the man that was sending killing intent at Naruto. As he heard the man's name, Naruto marked every detail he could about him, so that he wouldn't forget how the man truly felt about him.
"Okay, then. Now, we're going to start with the physical exercises. And first of those is an endurance and speed test." Iruka said, then guided the students to a very sizable track. "You are to run around the track for 10 laps. If you feel that you aren't able to continue, you are to get off the track, so that you won't block others who are still running. Understand!?" He said, and they nodded or shouted in agreement.
"Good. You are going to head out in groups of 6, and each lap is 300 metres. Boys and girls will be separate." Iruka said, then quickly grouped the students. "First group: Uchiha Sasuke, Inuzuka Kiba, Akimichi Choji, Uzumaki Naruto, Unagi and Hibachi." Iruka called the six young boys, and most of them spoke out, saying they were going to win.
Naruto however, stayed quiet, except for a few courteous greetings to each of them, and focused on the challenge. They all got into position, and with Iruka's signal, they were off.
Chapter End.
Word Count: 4,023