I don't own anything related to the Naruto franchise

Chapter 1 - Moving out, Settling in, and Jumping Down

Author's Note:

This story has several chapters submitted on another site already, but since formatting them all to work on this site takes a surprising amount of both time and effort, I will submit a chapter once a week until I've caught up to my most recent. For more information, check my bio.

On October the 10th of every year the Kyuubi festival is celebrated in Konoha Ninja Village. Food vendors are contracted to enter the village, upbeat and colorful merchandise is stockpiled and foods from all over the world are brought in for the villager's enjoyment. Great effort is made every year to create a very festive atmosphere, lest Konoha's villagers become the exact opposite instead…

Contrary to the atmosphere that the well decorated village might create, it was always hard to keep the population of Konoha happy during the Kyuubi Festival. The festival was originally brought into being to be an anniversary celebration for the destruction of the Kyuubi, also known as the nine tailed demon fox. The problem with this well intentioned but somewhat naïve plan was that very few villagers were fooled by the propaganda. Despite the Stat holiday and all of the foreign food stalls, October the 10th was still the day of the year that the people of Konoha mourn... It was the day of the year that they remember the Kyuubi attacking their village, flattening their homes and killing their best and bravest. They remember the fear and primal terror that the beast instilled inside of them, even while it was still an hour's travel away. They remember losing their loved ones, family and friends to an implacable, powerful and endlessly vicious beast. It was the day they lost the youngest and strongest Hokage they'd ever had, and it was also... the day that a demon took up residence within their village…

Naruto Uzumaki... The Demon…

Technically, the boy's status as a demon was supposed to be a secret. In a very real way, it was a state secret. By the Hokage's decree, to reveal the fact that Naruto Uzumaki was the demon was punishable by death. Nevertheless, the fact that Naruto was a Jinchuriki was the worst kept secret, in the entire history of secrets, everywhere…

Nobody knew for certain who it was that originally informed the villagers, but their reaction to the news was perfectly obvious... The lion's share of the villagers hated this outcome, hated Naruto, and they wanted him to know it...

October the 10th is the day of the Kyuubi festival... and despite the fact that it's Naruto Uzumaki's birthday, it's also by far… his most hated day of the year…

A dirty and disheveled gray bundle of cloth dashed through the streets like a specter. It was there one second and gone the next, traversing the shadows from one alleyway to the next. The bundle of loose rags covered a human body that was thin, small and moving with a desperate yet quiet haste. The rags were fluttering behind the body as it dashed from one trash can to the next.

"There he is! There's the demon!" By some fluke of timing, a torch wielding villager caught signs of movement down this particular alleyway and the sound of yelling grew from his direction.

"Damn," muttered a high pitched but obviously male voice, from within the bundle of rags. Five year old Naruto Uzumaki had finally been caught by the angry mob and with the worst possible timing... He was currently in a high walled and dead ended alleyway, with no other exit in sight. The boy had vacated his house a few blocks away, when the mob had turned up down the street. While he'd always intended to leave his shabby little apartment, he hadn't suspected that the mob would arrive several hours early or have sentries posted in different locations all around the neighborhood. Naruto Uzumaki would have to beat himself up for his supreme idiocy later, because right now he didn't have the time!

Rapidly scanning the brick walls surrounding him, Naruto hoped beyond hope that he'd find an easily accessible ground level doorway, window or sewer... nothing. Dammit! As he cursed out his current situation, Naruto finally saw it, and his mind immediately became a beehive of activity. There was a rusty drainpipe that traveled about five meters up the wall and then a boarded up window on the other side of the alley…

Could he? Of course the answer was simple. He had to!

There was no time for hesitation! Dashing towards the drainpipe, Naruto leapt up as high as he could before shoving his fingers behind the pipe and against the bricks. Naruto wasn't a physically strong boy because he was far too thin and underfed for that. With that in mind, Naruto cruelly wedged his fingers in between the metal of the pipe and the brick of the wall, allowing the skin of his digits to tear as the pressure kept him hanging. Then, after confirming his plan was doable, Naruto repeated the effort over and over, scrambling up the pipe as fast as his rail thin arms would allow.

"Hurry everyone! He's getting away," yelled a woman from the lip of the alley, as the sound of approaching footsteps echoed off of the nearby buildings.

"Oh don't worry! He won't be getting away! We'll tear apart the whole damned district before that happens!"

Naruto shivered as the enraged man's words elicited excited screams from the rest of the mob below. With his body galvanized by fear, Naruto soon found himself at the top of the pipe, where he looked across the alleyway towards the boarded up window. It was quite the leap... The window ledge was below Naruto now, but it was also about three and a half meters away… Naruto looked down at the gathering crowd of villagers over five meters below and saw that they were trying to destroy his pipe in order to make him fall. He had no choices anymore. He needed to move. Shelving his fear, Naruto took one last deep breath.

As the pipe was finally torn from the wall by the mob below, Naruto sprang into action. Dragging his feet up the bricks, Naruto positioned himself in a crouch against the wall. Then, when he was ready, he released the pipe and thrust out with his legs as hard as he could.

During the next instant, Naruto was airborne, his body was horizontal to the ground in a flying squirrel formation, and he thought that he was going to easily cross the distance. That's when gravity took its toll on Naruto's body, he started dropping like a stone and the bubble burst. In a desperate and seemingly useless effort, Naruto stretched his arms out with all his strength, just trying to span that one or two extra inches that might let him grab onto that ledge. Time slowed down as Naruto fell level to the window and then…

He had it! He'd caught it!

As his body continued its downward trajectory and smashed painfully into the wall, Naruto's fingers dug desperately into the brickwork of the windowsill. Despite the fire growing in both his fingers and now his knees, Naruto hung on for dear life.

"He made it! The demon's going to get away," a woman shrieked out, in a frantic and unhinged tone of voice.

"Someone circle around to the other side just in case he manages to get into the building! The rest of you find some stones and rocks! We're going to knock him down!"

After slowly and painfully lifting his body onto the window ledge, Naruto leaned back against the wooden boards that were barring his way and shook out his abused hands. While he'd won himself a moment's respite, this window was not going to be easy to get through. Naruto knew from personal experience that getting inside a properly boarded up building wasn't an easy task, nor was it painlessly accomplished. This wasn't the first time that Naruto had to knock out a sealed up window, so he was well aware that his hands and knuckles were about to take quite a bit of damage…

Well tough…

There was nothing to be done about it and Naruto was no stranger to injury. Pulling back his right arm, Naruto threw a punch at the boards with every ounce of his strength.

Crack!

Ouch... Naruto's fist immediately started becoming a red and swollen mess, but he knew from experience that he was nowhere near done. He put the pain he was feeling in a less important place in his mind as he focused on the task at hand. He pulled back his fist again and unleashed another punch at the boards.

Crack, crack, crack, crack, crack, crack, crack, crack, crack…..

The damage was just as bad as Naruto had feared it'd be. A cursory glance down at his heavily bleeding hands revealed the bones of his knuckles through a mass of torn up and destroyed skin. It didn't matter. The injuries were completely irrelevant because of one simple fact. It was working... Slowly but surely, one of the window boards was beginning to cave inwards into the building. Ignoring both the searing pain in his hands and the sharp impact of the rocks being thrown at his back, Naruto continued to beat at the window with his tiny, feeble, little arms.

After what felt like an eternity but was most likely just under a minute, the board that he was focusing on finally splintered in half and dropped away into the building. Naruto struggled to see through a mixture of both his tears and sweat to scan the unlit interior of the warehouse.

Wait… What?

There was a masked man standing just a few meters inside of the window... Was that an Anbu?! The building's interior was far too dark to make out any of the mask's details, but it definitely looked like an Anbu secret service member was just standing there inside of the window and staring at him. Something about this Anbu's indifferent behavior was scaring the living Hell out of Naruto. Nonetheless, he still started trying to squeeze his body through the gap revealed by the destroyed board. So far as he saw it, he didn't have a choice in the matter…

The masked man very slowly shook his head as Naruto attempted to wiggle through the hole left by the dislodged board. Then, just a moment before the boy actually made it inside of the building, he acted without a single sign of hesitation…

Slam!

No! Why?!

Naruto had just been violently kicked out of the window by one of the people that were widely considered the paragons of virtue in this village! They were the Hokage's hands, the law of the village! The idea that one of Konoha's Anbu was helping the villagers hunt him like this was…

Naruto could hardly believe it… but then he did… he really, really did…

In a sick, instantaneous moment of sudden realization, Naruto understood just how bad his current situation actually was. An Anbu operative just kicked me out of a window, into the waiting hands of an angry mob! Nowhere was safe in Konoha village. Nowhere was safe and no one could be trusted. It was as heartbreaking as it was true…

Naruto was falling... falling... It felt like he fell in slow motion, as his arms waved in the air in front of his body. It was as if he thought he could grab onto something in the open air of the alleyway…

He couldn't.

Wham! Ugh… Groan…..

The mob scattered to all sides as Naruto fell. Catching the boy would be counterproductive after all. When Naruto landed flat on his back with a piteous groan and a huge whuff of dusty air, the Mob cheered as if someone had destroyed a piñata.

"Well, well, well," the de facto leader of the mob drawled, in a very cheerful and casual tone of voice. "It appears even the vagrants sleeping in this condemned building don't want to share space with filth like you..."

Walking closer, the man looked down at the violently coughing and crying boy, with the utmost levels of disgust upon his face. As the rest of his mob gathered around them, he spit on the boy just to let his friends know how he felt, and then reeled back his right leg, kicking the boy as hard as he could right in the ribs. "Why are you allowed to exist," the man screamed, in an enraged, hatred filled voice, laced with both pain and wild grief. "Why are you alive? Why are we forced to suffer you?" Kick, kick, kick... The man laid into the demon with everything that he had, enjoying every single second of the crackling the boy's ribs were making…

Naruto curled in upon himself in agony, as the man continued to take out some unknown vendetta against his body, and he was powerless to do anything but take it. In his tear filled eyes, Naruto saw about a dozen other people edging towards him and he knew. He wasn't going to be walking out of this alleyway under his own power.

What followed was a beating the likes of which Naruto had never experienced before, which is definitely saying something, because this was not the first time he'd been cornered by pissed off villagers... Soon enough, every one of Naruto's ribs were broken, his face was a puppy mass and his arms were mangled into impossible angles. The members of the mob were laughing, screaming, crying and displaying various other emotions that Naruto didn't have the presence of mind to even begin to figure out. Naruto's entire world was pain and agony but he'd long ago ceased trying to beg for mercy. Mercy wasn't on the agenda, so Naruto hadn't asked for it in over two year's time…

The mob's leader walked up again with a torch in one hand and a canister in the other. After catching sight of the man everyone swiftly moved back.

Through bleary eyes, Naruto saw the man walking up with the canister in his hand. It was only after he spent several moments just staring in confusion that Naruto finally registered what he was looking at. Immediately, his eyes widened into terrified awareness and his battered body began to shake from head to toe. "Nooo... No... Please don't..." Naruto began to struggle again, but between the injuries all over his body and the ropes someone had wrapped around him, he was helpless to move.

"Oh yes..." The leader was giving Naruto a perverse leer at this point, waving the canister back and forth like a child would... "You know, Demon... My one and only daughter died on this day five years ago," he growled out into the silence of the alleyway. "My daughter Minori was the very first member of my family to go the way of the ninja, and we were all just so proud of her... Then mere months after she graduated from the academy, you happened, and my daughter was cruelly ripped away from me… I... will... not... suffer... you... anymore... It's finally time to end this game of cat and mouse we've both enjoyed so much..."

For the very first time in Naruto's living memory, he saw hesitation appear in some of the faces in the alleyway. It appeared that beating him into a bloody mess whenever the opportunity arose was one thing, but outright killing him was a line these people were hesitating to cross. Nonetheless, no one moved from where they were standing. No one moved to intercede. They all just stood stone still, staring at the oil canister as if it was a bomb.

"I'm not going to let your freakish powers heal you this time you damned demon! I'm going to end this once and for all!" When the leader opened the lid of the canister with an audible pop, a strong acrid smell began wafting throughout the alleyway. Several people moved even further away, as the leader unceremoniously started pouring lamp oil all over the curled up and struggling little boy.

Despite knowing that it would achieve nothing, Naruto had no other options, so he'd try to talk to these people one last time. "I... I'm just a boy... Innocent..."

Laughter rang out from many of the people standing in the circle around Naruto. His feeble words of protest seemed to have the direct opposite result, as the mob appeared to become more accepting of their leader's actions rather than less. Naruto just shook his head because these people's actions didn't make a single moment of sense. Naruto snuck around this village on a regular basis and he'd seen it for himself. These people were kind to each other... friendly, well intentioned. So why? Why only him?

"Why?" Unbeknownst to Naruto, he'd asked the question aloud.

The oil canister was empty now, it's contents pooling around Naruto's entire body. The leader had just finished throwing the canister down the alleyway, when he heard the whispered question. "Why? The leader mused cheerfully... "Why you? It's simple really... You're the demon who took so much from us five years ago... and we will not allow this disgusting farce to continue any longer. Enjoy eternal damnation, demon..." Flick spark... The leader had ignited a Fuuinjutsu lighter and was using it to light a cigarette.

Naruto began pulling himself closer to the lip of the alleyway, dragging himself along the ground using his broken arms and pain numbed hands.

The mob laughed at Naruto's struggles, but their voices sounded desperate at this point, hysterical…

The leader took several long hauls of his cigarette and smiled in enjoyment. He'd actually quit smoking a whole decade earlier, but some situations simply demanded a smoke, and this was definitely one of those times... When he'd finished the smoke to his own satisfaction, the man flicked the remaining cigarette at the boy and it dropped into his lamp oil soaked clothing.

Fwooosh!...

"Ahhhhh!" Slapping his hands over the fragile tissue of his eyes, Naruto began screaming and thrashing, as his body became the center of a raging bonfire. He was immersed within an ocean of pain that was so agonizing, he suddenly knew that the mob leader had been right. He was, in fact, being eternally damned for crimes that he couldn't even remember committing.

Some of the members of the mob were freaked out by the lethal finality of their leader's actions, causing them to run away in fear. Other people laughed like anarchists, screaming at the moon, in their insane, adrenaline fueled joy. Most of the mob however, just stood there, staring at the newly created bonfire, with haunted, tortured expressions fixed upon their faces.

"Suiton Suihachi Jutsu!" (water release, hand of waves)

Very suddenly, a large but relatively slow moving torrent of water smashed down upon everyone from the roof of one of the surrounding buildings, completely submerging the enclosed alleyway before draining away out into the street. The fire on Naruto's body was immediately put out, but his clothing was still steaming and his skin was a patchwork of terrible burns. Within that same instant, the soaked villagers that comprised the mob were instantly pinned to the various walls of the alleyway by kunai strung together with metal wire.

When the fire was put out and the culprits were secured, an Anbu member immediately dropped down onto the concrete of the alleyway to take in Naruto's body with barely concealed panic in his eyes. When his face swiveled back up and around to scan the captured villagers, he spoke in a cool but somehow terrifying voice. "If any of you murderous scumbags move even an inch... you die. I've already seen all of your faces and I'll take care of it personally. Do you understand?"

The villagers all just gulped and nodded, with the exception of one man.

"Why are you stopping us at all?! We're only doing what you're too damned cowardly to do for yourself!"

After slowly turning his attention towards the mob leader, the dog masked Anbu suddenly disappeared in a blur of radical speed. When he reappeared less than a tenth of a second later, it was with a knee planted deep into the mob leader's newly shattered ribs.

"Gahhahh! Gasp! cough, cough... Why?" The newly injured mob leader couldn't figure out why he'd been struck like this by an Anbu. By an Anbu who'd been in the battle against the demon five years earlier…

"I just wanted to prove that I'm not too cowardly to brutalize the weak," the Anbu whispered, in a cold and deadly tone of voice. Then, without even a sound to announce his movement, both the Anbu and Naruto were gone.

Naruto Uzumaki would remain unconscious for half a month, but because of his completely absurd regenerative powers, he did eventually make a full recovery. The first thing young Naruto thought upon waking up was that his life sucked and he didn't know why... The second thought that he had was that he needed to get out of Konoha ASAP, if he wanted to remain both safe and unhospitalized. While Konoha was the place that he was born, it was very clear that it wasn't his home... Granted, Naruto's idea of home was a vague one, but he didn't think that Anbu assassins or lamp oil wielding mobs came as part of the package.

It took a very long time for the Hokage to wrestle himself free of the Civilian Council's incessant emergency meetings. For days and days on end the Civilian Council fought against the mass incarceration of what they called "prominent members of the civilian community." It took these council members far too long to understand exactly how furious Sarutobi Hiruzen really was and that Naruto's attackers were never, ever, going to see the light of day, ever again…

By the time the Hokage arrived at the hospital to visit the newly awoken Naruto, the boy was already gone... According to hospital staff, Naruto had waited until the night shift was arriving, before climbing out of his third story room's window using tied up bedsheets. At first, Hiruzen wasn't all that worried about Naruto's sudden disappearance. After all, it was a well known fact that the boy hated being stuck in the hospital for any length of time.

It was only a little over a week later, when Dog reported that Naruto had completely vanished, that the Hokage came to regret both his negligence and lack of common sense. He could only blame his great love for Konoha for his inability to see this outcome as a possibility. He'd never once in his entire life wanted to leave Konoha and under normal circumstances he'd be hard pressed to think of a good reason to want to do so.

Well… No longer…

Hiruzen could clearly see the rotting underbelly of his village for the very first time, and he could clearly see why young Naruto had decided to relocate elsewhere... An honest to Kami angry mob of villagers had attempted to kill Naruto, and he was running for his life as a result… In retrospect, the boy would probably have run even if Hiruzen had tried to make promises of protection. Such promises had been made in the past after all, and yet Naruto had been beaten and abused dozens of times regardless.

The real problem with keeping Naruto safe was that the village was currently understaffed and overburdened in the extreme as they rebuilt their forces, making it nearly impossible to keep a 24/7 protection detail on the boy. Then there was the fact that no one from a clan was allowed to raise him, because to do so would tip the balance of power within the village. After the Uchiha and the Hyuuga clans both offered to raise the boy both with less than savory motives in mind, Sarotobi was forced to create a non-interference law specifically in regards to clans… This law ended up interfering with the Nara family's later attempts to adopt or at least support little Naruto, and the rest, as they say, is history…

In the end, a full search of both the village and the forests surrounding it amounted to absolutely nothing. A full year would pass before Naruto Uzumaki would finally be returned to the village. It wouldn't be because he volunteered to do so…

One year later…

Six year old Naruto Uzumaki stalked through the woods both silently and intently. He was low to the ground, light as a feather and wearing brownish red fox furs to become as hard to see as possible.

Despite the fact that he was moving as carefully as he could, Naruto was actually in a hurry. The sun was already beginning to drop towards the horizon, indicating that it was far later in the day than he'd normally be out hunting. Granted, Naruto strongly suspected that he had preternaturally strong senses, since he could see just fine in even the inky darkness of late night, but that didn't mean what he was doing could be considered safe... Night time was when the more dangerous beasts in Konoha forest became active, which made his current actions a bit of a gamble…

On the other hand, it simply couldn't be helped…

Earlier in the day, Naruto had been far too busy healing from a training injury to get any hunting in, thus, if he wanted to eat fresh meat, he needed to catch it now. He was currently tracking the smell and telltale signs of a deer running through the underbrush…

If Naruto didn't have such an acute sense of smell, he'd have starved not long after he first started living in the forest. It was as simple as that. There are several survival skills that Naruto didn't have the benefit of knowing when he first escaped from Konoha's walls. He didn't know how to make a shelter, how to identify poisonous foods or animals, how to start a fire using flint or how to carve the implements that he needs like fish hooks, bowls and cutlery…

At the time, Naruto was ignorant about basically everything…

Oh sure, Naruto's healing factor allowed him to survive when he was cold below human tolerance, wounded or even poisoned, but even Naruto needed to eat to survive. For that reason, the most important skill that Naruto hadn't possessed was how to hunt, and because of that, he'd gone hungry far too often for his liking. Tracking game was a skill that came both slowly and painfully for Naruto Uzumaki. He was young, loud, clumsy and ignorant, thus even the animals that he might have found purely by chance ran away long before he was within rock throwing distance.

In the end, it was only because the alternative was starvation that Naruto eventually managed to put all of the pieces together. After about a month and a half's time spent eating nothing but bugs, and mushrooms, he began to notice that if he strained as hard as he could with his senses and stayed perfectly still, he could smell the animals that he needed to find. Having to stay still to even locate his prey, in turn, allowed Naruto the chance to notice that the noise he was making was scaring it all away.

Several days after beginning this new, much more patient style of hunting, Naruto finally managed to track down his very first animal in the form of a boar. While in the end the beast got away from his clumsy attempt at an attack, that failure didn't change the fact that Naruto had successfully snuck up on a wild animal for the very first time... Soon after, Naruto created his very first spear by affixing a stone kunai to the end of a long wooden pole.

After quite a while of hunting using this extremely inefficient (smelling the prey) method, Naruto finally started to actually pay attention to his surroundings. Over time, Naruto started noticing the displaced leaves, bark, prints in the soil and droppings that were so frequently laid out for him to follow.

Long story short, learning to survive in the woods had been a long, painful and halting process for young Naruto, but after a year of trial and error, he'd officially become an accomplished woodsman, tracker, hunter and trapper. Naruto had also figured out how to throw his own home made, stone carved kunai, with an accuracy that never failed to make him smile…

Yep, Naruto had become an alpha predator of the forest, to the point that he generally didn't go hungry for lack of successful hunting. Hell, after a certain event happened during his second month living in the forest, Naruto could actually feel his prey moving around out there in the woods. It felt as if the life throughout the forest pressed in upon a sense that he wasn't quite capable of describing. Not only that, but Naruto knew all of the things in the woods that can either kill you or save you. He knew both what to eat and how to prepare it.

The issue of arranging for permanent shelter actually solved itself, about a month after Naruto first arrived in the forest…

One night, as he was sheltering from a storm in a shallow cave, Naruto accidentally stumbled upon something quite a bit bigger. A lever that looked exactly like a rock, opened the back wall of the cave, to reveal an enormous and long forgotten laboratory. While at first Naruto had been extremely excited with his newfound discovery, after giving the lab complex a hurried once over, he'd come to the conclusion that no amount of shelter was worth the nightmares it was going to cause him. The things contained inside of that lab were far too monstrous and terrifying for Naruto to want anything to do with it. When the storm finally ended, Naruto left the cave determined to stay as far away from that lab as possible…

A little over half a month later, Naruto returned to the lab... He returned filled with a grim resolve to carve out a home for himself within the lab complex. The reason that he ended up returning to the cave was as simple as it was persuasive. The laboratory, despite its many faults, was extremely well concealed..

In the time since Naruto left Konoha, he'd spent the lion's share of his time hiding from either Konoha ninja or the many different types of wild animals that make the forest their home. More recently one of Konoha's clans of tracking ninja had started closing in on his location using their hunting dogs and he couldn't take the chance that they might find him. Unfortunately for Naruto, this made the perfectly camouflaged cave system hideout far too perfect to ignore.

Over the next couple of weeks, Naruto spent his every spare moment cleaning out all of the lab's disturbing contents. It wasn't a comfortable task to say the very least. What Naruto wouldn't find out until later was that the ninja that originally used the lab, a man by the name of Orochimaru, had been studying genetic engineering, with a focus on transplanting Kekkai Genkai (bloodline limit abilities) into randomly selected children. This less than ethical experiment was only possible because Orochimaru had been given cell cultures taken from the body of Konoha's very first Hokage, Hashirama Senju…

Hashirama Senju, legendary shinobi and co-founder of Konoha along with Madara Uchiha, went down in history as having radically powerful regenerative abilities, as well as the ability to use a famously rare Kekkai Genkai called wood release. When Senju's extremely virile and chakra saturated cells were used as a medium, they facilitated changes in the human genome that would normally be completely impossible. What the cells couldn't do was target what mutations ended up occurring within the test subject's body. Introducing foreign genetics into a person's body is a lot like herding cats. You might be able to get them moving together, but you have absolutely no control over their final destination…

The unfortunate end result was that Orochimaru's lab was filled with so-called "failed experiments" that were traumatizing just to look at. If these poor deceased children accomplished anything at all in their short and miserable lives, it was to teach Naruto that someone always has it worse. While he may not have had the easiest of childhoods, at the very least he hadn't died after growing forty extra arms or bark for skin or tentacles for eyes…

moving on…

Despite his attempts to remain philosophical about what he was looking at and the mental resiliency his hard upbringing afforded him, Naruto still found himself wanting to puke at some of the things he found within that lab... Then, one day, when the job was nearly finished and the hideout was almost emptied, the "incident" happened, making nausea the very least of his concerns.

Since Naruto was merely a child, he was completely ignorant to the dangers present in normal laboratories, let alone what was waiting for him in Orochimaru's house of horrors. What that meant was that the incident seemed to happen both at random and with no warning whatsoever.

During the last leg of his cleanup efforts, Naruto found himself standing in front of a tray of relatively harmless looking glass vials, filled with a pale green liquid. Up until that point, he'd disassembled and disposed of both extremely sinister looking equipment and glass tanks full of perfectly preserved dead children. Compared to those things, these little glass vials seemed like the most harmless things on the face of the planet. If they were normal vials he'd have been right. These vials were very far from normal and what they contained was the furthest thing from harmless…

What Naruto didn't know was that these vials had some Fuinjutsu calligraphy running down their sides. These Fuinjutsu Runes were designed to generate a powerful gravity well near the bottom of the vials, in order to keep the liquid they contained under extreme pressure. Under normal circumstances, the liquid residing within these vials would be in a gaseous state and keeping it in a more stable form was a very delicate process. Case and point, in the past, when Orochimaru was forced to handle these vials, he'd done so extremely carefully while using a shadow clone, due to the extremely volatile nature of their contents. The vials contained the active ingredient behind all of his experiments, after all. They contained the Senju cells…

Suffice it to say, Naruto had no idea what he was dealing with, which he immediately proved by throwing the vials into a bucket and carrying them around as if they were bottles of mineral water. For a little over ten minutes, Naruto carried these vials through the woods, swinging the bucket back and forth without a single care in the world. Despite his carelessness, Naruto did manage to reach his dumping spot without any incident. It was only then, while he was digging a hole in the loose rocky earth that a random gust of wind knocked the bucket off of the rock it'd been placed upon, and the vials shattered against the ground.

There was no time to react to it all… One second Naruto was using a thick branch to dig a hole in the earth and the next second a small but powerful explosion of released gas had knocked him clear off of his feet to slam hard into his back. After gasping in both pain and shock, Naruto gasped yet again because what he'd just inhaled was definitely not oxygen and stars were filling his vision. While coughing and hacking a metallic smelling gas out of his mouth, Naruto crawled away from the green tinted air. For a desperate ten to fifteen seconds, he pawed his way through an outwardly expanding greenish cloud until finally he emerged into fresh air and collapsed into a heap. The relief he felt about escaping the slowly dissipating green fog was short lived. Soon enough he was in far, far too much pain to be positive about anything at all…

The following three days were nothing but a blur of nightmarish agony and confusion, as Naruto's regeneration ability fought against the damages that the Senju cells were inflicting upon his body. The pure and unweakened Senju cells that Naruto had inhaled were attempting to carry out all of the genetic mutations that Orochimaru had designed them to facilitate, while also attempting to devour Naruto's cells and reproduce. Naruto's body, in turn, was resisting the mutations as much as possible, while trying to destroy the attacking Senju cells.

A microscopic battle of epic proportions took place between the unbelievably prolific and virile Senju cells and Naruto's notoriously energetic Uzumaki cells backed up by the Nine tails's chakra. Over and over again Naruto's body was attacked and mutated only to revert back to normal and regenerate. Every variety of odd transformation presented itself on his body only to molt, drop off, and then heal back to normal. Over time the Senju cells began to lose their momentum only because they were vastly outnumbered and the Nine Tail's chakra was getting in the way. On the other hand, Naruto's cells didn't have the ingrained ability to phagocyte (eat) the invading Senju cells and bring an end to the battle. The end result was that after around 72 hours of struggle a compromise of sorts was reached.

Naruto was changed at the genetic level…

He was still an Uzumaki, of sorts, but he was also, to a certain extent, a Senju. While resisting the more radical mutations, Naruto's body took in and assimilated the Senju cells, incorporating their DNA into his own. This assimilation process was the only thing that saved Naruto from suffering a similar fate to the rest of the test subjects in Orochimaru's lab. It was an event that would change his life in several different ways, both immediate and yet subtle.

When Naruto finally returned to full consciousness and was capable of movement again, he found himself slouched against a wall just inside the entrance of the laboratory. He didn't know how he'd made it back to the lab. He also didn't care. In that moment. he had much bigger things to worry about… While the lab didn't have any mirrors, it did have plenty of glass shards, so Naruto was able to complete a quick once over of his body. Thankfully nothing noticeable had changed. His body appeared to be mutation free. On the other hand, Naruto felt... different..

While his body felt the same from a physical standpoint, Naruto was beginning to notice that his thoughts felt... clearer... faster, quite a bit more insistent. A good example of that insistence was that even as Naruto recognized the fact that he was starving, he was already determined to find out both what had been in those vials and what they'd done to his body. While ignorance may have been acceptable before the incident, his new much more assertive brain was being driven to distraction in its curiosity. Up until that moment, Naruto's priorities had never involved such impractical things as theory or academia. He'd been much more interested in mere survival thank you very much. Now however... the not knowing was driving him right up the wall.

It took several days for Naruto to catch and eat enough food to fend off starvation. This more basic need took up the lion's share of his time, so for a while at least, he was forced to put his cleaning efforts on hold. Eventually however, he had a base of his own to live in, some weapons that had been left behind and one more thing that was pleasing his newly insatiable brain. Books... There was a vast chamber in the lab that was jam packed with shelves and shelves of books.

When Naruto first entered the forest, he hadn't been all that good at reading, a lack that his new, more inquisitive brain simply wouldn't condone... For about an hour every day, he sounded out new words while relying on the context of the surrounding sentences to verify his results, and slowly but surely, his literacy improved... Learning this way was like solving a puzzle, so it was an entertaining use of all the idle moments he encountered at night... Still.. He wasn't what you would call a bookworm yet… not by any stretch of the imagination…

If there was a problem with Naruto's attempts at literacy, then it was the fact that Orochimaru's Ninjutsu books were all about intensely strong and extremely complicated techniques, and the words that described these techniques seemed to actively resist his attempts to figure them out. Hell, even when Naruto actually was able to piece together their meaning, none of Orochimaru's super advanced writings described anything even remotely touching upon things that he could use.

What Naruto really wanted to find was a book that described the basics of Ki control and Chakra manipulation... He never did… Instead, what Naruto had learned about Chakra control, he'd learned by reverse engineering far bigger processes in large scale S class Jutsus… and what that meant was that Naruto didn't know much at all... yet.

That isn't to say that Naruto hadn't achieved anything ast all… He had, and it was awesome! Naruto Uzumaki was in proud possession of a fully unlocked and accessible chakra core... He originally figured out how to access his chakra by accident, while reading about a meditation practice used to strengthen advanced Genjutsu, but this roundabout method made Naruto even more proud of his success, rather than less…

Getting in touch with his Chakra core had increased Naruto's strength, agility and energy levels, to the point that he felt like an entirely new person. He could run, jump and move like an untrained ninja, but so far, he was unable to pull off even the simplest varieties of lifestyle Jutsu…

More recently, as a side project, Naruto was investigating a skill mentioned in one of the books called wall walking. As per the norm, the book had only mentioned Wall Walking as a single step, of the several dozen steps required to create a much larger Jutsu. Thankfully the book had gone into just enough detail that he understood the gist of how it worked. Naruto understood that he was supposed to run chakra throughout his body, down to his feet, and then into the surface that he wanted to stick to. What he didn't know was how much Chakra to put into the wall or what it was supposed to feel like. Due to those gaps in his knowledge, Naruto wasn't having much success. With no one to teach him and no beginner level books to read, Naruto found himself focusing on what he was good at.

Naruto was good at building Chakra pathways within his body. Of course he had no one to compare himself to, so it was possible that most people are the same as him or better. The process really is a rather simple one after all. All you need to be able to do is endure the acutely painful throbbing and burning sensations that you experience, as you push your chakra from your core to the different areas of your body… If you're able to repeat this process over and over, day after day, for several months in a row, then eventually the pathways become permanent and the discomfort begins to fade.

For quite a while now, Naruto had been building these pathways throughout the entirety of his body, so that if he ever did find a beginner's level ninjutsu manual, he'd be able to advance relatively quickly. In the book about wall walking, he'd read that you can stick to a wall with the soles of your feet by channeling chakra through them, but that the pathway the chakra would follow needed to be created first. Naruto liked the idea of being able to channel chakra throughout every inch of his body, so he was focusing most of his efforts on making pathways to every conceivable patch of skin that he had. Naruto didn't have a time frame in mind or a syllabus to adhere to, so this was just a worthwhile diversion that he used to fill gaps in his everyday business.

It was also working... Naruto was saturating his entire body in chakra these days and he was getting a lot out of it.

The long and short of it was that both Naruto's strength and his speed were continuing to increase over time, but he still had no damned clue how to manipulate chakra outside of his body. His attempts to mold chakra so far had met with... mediocre results... A good example of such was that Naruto had hurt himself just eight hours earlier while training. While trying to push as much chakra as he possibly could out through his hands, he'd ended up burning several layers of skin right off of his palms and fingers…

Apparently molding too much chakra at any one point can hurt the user... Go figure…

His lack of progress in ninjitsu aside, there was a lot for Naruto to be happy about these days. For the very first time in his whole entire life, he was an extremely healthy kid. The reasons for this change were somewhat obvious. He was actually eating enough nowadays, which was allowing him to grow at a normal pace and develop the muscle tone befitting his rough and ready lifestyle, and he wasn't being beaten nearly to death on a semi regular basis… Then again, some of his increased vitality might be as a result of ingesting those Senju cells he read about…

All in all, despite the fact that his entire social life consisted of books written by a mad scientist, Naruto liked his new lifestyle far better than the alternative. Then again, his preference didn't actually matter in the slightest... He straight up refused to be treated like a monster for reasons that he didn't know and couldn't possibly change. No… There'd be no joyous homecoming taking place anytime in the near future. Naruto was happy enough living in the forest..

He'd be even happier if he wasn't forced to eat nuts and berries tonight… It was time to get his hands on that deer that he'd been tracking.

Or maybe it wasn't…

All of the sudden, off in the distance, Naruto could hear something crashing through the upper branches of the trees. Immediately and with the ease of long practice, he sank into the deeper darkness of twilight until the unknown ninja passed him by... Naruto was no stranger to avoiding ninjas because he still lived in the forest ringing Konoha village. This area's climate was a consistently warm temperature, and there was plenty of potable water available. At first he'd tried to move further away from Konoha, but in the end he'd returned for the convenience of the area. For obvious reasons, Naruto had been careful to avoid discovery and had become quite skilled at disappearing at a single moment's notice.

MMMMMMMmmmmmm! MMMMMMmmmmm!

When two muffled screams leaked out of a large bag slung over the ninja's shoulder, they immediately had Naruto's undivided attention. The voices were very young, very female, and very, very frightened…

Damn…

Naruto didn't want anything to do with ninjas, but he feared these girls were being treated exactly like he'd been treated…

Damn…

Keeping at a distance, Naruto began tracking the ninja by both his scent trail and the damage that he was doing to the trees that he was crashing through. It wasn't hard to do… The ninja appeared to be zigging and zagging willy nilly all over the forest in a wide gridlike pattern. This Ninja was obviously looking for someone or a group of someones, and he wasn't familiar with the forest. On the one hand, the fact that this Ninja was doing suicide sprints back and forth across the forest made it easier to head in his general direction; on the other hand, Naruto was not a fan of the rendezvous this Ninja was aiming to take part in. He was going to have to get ahead of this ninja, to set up the red carpet for him and his friends.

Thankfully, Naruto knew this forest with the familiarity of a local, so he knew that the ideal place for the ninja to meet up with his buddies was a clearing about a kilometer further ahead. During the next couple of minutes, Naruto was going to make the clearing a funhouse of tricks and traps before anyone even showed up. He was also going to lay dozens of traps along all of his own escape routes.

Despite the fact that Naruto was probably never going to see all of his extra ninja wire and rock Kunai ever again, the trap prep was still more than worth it in his eyes. This next part was important to keep in mind…

Naruto Uzumaki was not a ninja…

As things stood, Naruto would be hopelessly outmatched against even the most inexperienced of genin. It was obvious that the only way to save those girls would be to find a way to distract the Ninjas using his traps. There were a lot of what ifs involved with his current plan, but at least it was a plan... Naruto had finally learned after several months of hunting that without the right kind of preparation, jumping in head first will either spoil the hunt or outright get you killed. For that reason, Naruto had lost the habit of diving in half-cocked and yelling at the top of his lungs (thank the Log).

After he was finished laying traps along several of his potential escape routes, Naruto carefully cased out the location he thought would be the meeting point. As he'd suspected would be the case, there were signs of fairly recent activity all around the clearing, in the form of bent grass and days old footprints. In a forest as large and relatively empty as the one surrounding Konoha, these signs were all the proof that Naruto needed that he was in the right place.

After heaving a sigh of relief, Naruto pulled out some of the metal wire that he'd found in the debunked lab and set to work. Moving as quickly and carefully as he could, he strung up and erected nearly fifty tension traps. These traps were angled to set each other off in a domino effect, in order to turn this clearing into a hailstorm of flying Kunai from every conceivable direction. The Kunais were carefully aimed to fly through the clearing at a minimum height of about crotch level for a grown man, all the way up to the foliage level of the trees. When he was finished with his preparations, Naruto lay within a nearby bush. If all went to plan, he was going to set off the traps as soon as the ninja put the bagged girls down on the ground.

Ten Minutes Later…

After several failed sweeps through the forest, the Hidden Cloud Village ninja named Junko finally found the clearing that he'd been looking for and dropped to the ground. He was from a mountainous country so all of this greenery was foreign to him. Well, no matter... He was still within an acceptable amount of lost time. Now all he needed to do was wait for his compatriots to arrive to help him with the next leg. He was looking forward to the assistance for more than one reason. The bag on his shoulder hadn't stopped roiling and bucking since he left Konoha and he was finding it annoying in the extreme…

With a growl of frustration, Junko slammed the bag down into the earth, and then he grinned when he heard two pain-filled squeaks from within the bag. "Quiet you two," Junko yelled down at the bag. "You'll stay still and you'll stay quiet or you'll learn to regret it!" The bag immediately stilled, although Junko could still hear quiet sobbing coming from within it.

With a few trilling bird noises that were a team specific coded greeting, two more ninja's suddenly dropped down into the clearing, and Junko smiled for the first time since his mission began. "Greetings Korin, Ghatto. Are you ready to..."

Snap, fwip, crackle, whip, fwip!

A wild hailstorm of Kunai careened towards Junko, Korin and Ghatto without any warning whatsoever, causing them all to frantically leap for cover in the trees. Unfortunately, many of the Kunai were flying up and at irregular angles making them nearly impossible to predict let alone dodge in the twilit gloom of the forest. Korin took a rock Kunai in his right thigh, Ghatto's right eye was nicked and Junko himself felt something stabbing into the meat of his upper arm before shattering into hundreds of pieces. Dammit! All that fucking shrapnel would be ridiculously hard to remove! With a snarl of outrage, Junko completed a quick Jutsu to bandage up his arm under a clay-based mold. It wasn't perfect, but it was more than enough to stem the bleeding…

Less than five seconds after the attack began, the three ninjas grouped up again about twenty feet outside of the clearing, huddling in the foliage level of a tree with their backs to one another.

"What the fuck, Junko Sensei," the Genin ninja named Ghatto growled out.

You were followed, Sensei, and now we're being ambushed! I knew this mission was too high level for the two of us!" The second Genin named Korin was clearly letting his fear run away from him, as he was currently saying things that Junko would make him regret saying later.

"Get control of yourselves, you twerps! Junko immediately snapped back in a voice that promised violence if he wasn't obeyed. "I know I wasn't followed! I have literally no damned clue what this is!"

"Sensei! The mission objective is gone!"

All three ninja immediately looked down into the clearing. The bag that should be sitting amidst the scattered rock Kunai was... gone.

"Find them," Junko uimmediatelyh snapped out. "I think we've been tricked by a lone man!"

"Right, let's go!"

Even though Naruto was hopping from tree to tree as quickly as he could while carrying an oversized burlap bag atop his shoulder, Naruto was still attempting to move as quietly as he could. The major hangup with his attempts at anything even resembling stealth was that the bag was making assorted moaning, squealing and terror noises the whole entire time, and it was about to give them all away. With an inaudible sigh, Naruto dove to the ground in between three large boulders and drew in a deep breath before addressing the bag. Now definitely wasn't the time for stage fright but Kami help him he was nervous.

"Listen girls. I'm here to help you and we're already away from the enemy ninja, but if you keep yelling, we're sure to be caught."

…...

…...

"Who are you?" The feminine voice that called out sounded both terrified and determined.

"My name isn't as important as my intentions. You want to go back to Konoha, and I want to help you. Are either of you capable of moving like a ninja at all?"

…...

…...

"Normally Hinata could, but I think she's got a broken leg... I'm untrained. I only just started school. We're both just six years old..."

Naruto just nodded his head in resignation... As much as it would have made his life easier if these girls could fend for themselves, expecting ninja training from kids his own age was unreasonable. "Okay then... Listen, I know you're going to hate this idea, but for now you both need to stay in the bag... I can move fast, kind of like a ninja, and I can carry you both, but not if I don't have something to carry you in..."

…...

As he spoke Naruto had been expecting complaints, but to his surprise neither of the girls began yelling at him. He breathed out a massive sigh of relief because he really wasn't used to dealing with cooperative people…

"Okay we understand. You sound just as young as we are though... How can you possibly?"

"No time to chat, we're moving," Naruto announced, interrupting the girl. "I can hear explosions in the background. I think our pursuers are trying to either flush us out or destroy my traps." With no further explanation, Naruto leapt back into the trees and followed the thin safe route he'd built into his trap fields. He took a moment to be grateful that he'd laid out several traps heading in multiple directions to throw off pursuit.

Junko was getting really damned sick of constantly dodging Kunai and pit traps! Every ten fucking feet what looked like hand carved rock Kunai were flying at him, and it was completely infuriating. "Korin! Summon the vulture and get us some eyes!"

"Got it," Korin called back, as he dropped to the ground. Pulling out a long and thick scroll he used some of the blood pooling down his thigh to activate the summon scroll.

POOF! A large billowing cloud of smoke flew out from the scroll. When it disappeared a large turkey vulture was sitting on the paper.

"How may I help you master?" The vulture spoke in a cultured voice belying both it's looks and it's lifestyle.

"Somewhere in the trees ahead someone has stolen our mission objective. It's a large tan colored bag. We need you to find it." Korin cursed as his thigh bandage welled over with blood again. "Guys, I need to hang back. Now that I've summoned Gatcho, if I pass out he'll disappear. I need to get control of this bleeding."

Junko nodded his understanding and then gestured at Gatcho. "You'll be reporting to us."

Gatcho just nodded with an annoyed look on his face before taking off in the direction they'd indicated.

Naruto hated the fact that he was heading for Konoha again after all this time. At first he'd even thought of taking the girl's back to his hideaway instead. The problem with that plan was twofold. At the moment, his hideaway was actually further away than the village was, and these girls were clearly from high ranking ninja families in Konoha. Why else would they be abducted in the dead of night? Naruto could not afford to give away his home to these girls only to be discovered by Anbu later…

All of the sudden, Naruto's thoughts were dashed by that odd sense that he always gets. He knew that the enemy ninja were approaching, he just couldn't figure out... To the right!

On instinct alone, Naruto stopped jumping through branches in order to curl both of his arms around a nearby tree trunk. Wrapping his body around the tree, Naruto slid around its bulk until he was on the far side. Then, when two Kunai flew by from either side of the tree trunk, Naruto just barely ducked in time as the metal wire connecting them made them bolo back around the tree. Then Naruto was dashing into the woods again, with the sound of rapid pursuit about a hundred yards behind.

"We've been discovered and the enemy are catching up," Naruto explained to the bag, in a very quiet voice. "We're only five minutes away from Konoha now, but I won't be able to shake off these ninja. I'm going to let you out soon and fill this bag with something as a decoy."

"But... What about you!"

"Yeah! I don't want you dying for me!"

The voices were concerned and timid, angry and afraid and yet they were showing Naruto more kindness than he even knew how to deal with. He knew one thing for damned sure though. These girls were going to live.

"I'm none of your concern," Naruto said, in what he hoped was a soothing tone of voice. "I have access to my chakra and I'll be using it to make my escape. I haven't given up on living just yet. When I let you out, I want you to stay low, quiet and under cover." Just as he finished speaking, Naruto saw a rocky overhang with a few convenient logs cut for a fire and he knew now was the time. Dropping to the earth, Naruto opened the bag and carefully lifted the two small and dainty girl's out of it. He wasn't concerned that he'd be recognized while covered head to toe in furs, but he did stay in the shadows as he filled the bag with sticks and logs.

Both of the girls were staring at him as he worked and Naruto's senses were being pressed upon by their intense scrutiny. He'd be happy when he wasn't around people anymore. It felt like their attention was a weight upon his shoulders.

"Girls... Here. Take some of these." After handing the girl's two stone Kunai each, Naruto backed up into the shadows again. "Listen... It's time for you to go... I'll be fine, I promise." Despite his words, Naruto knew for a fact that he was in deep shit. So did the girls, judging purely by the disbelieving looks they were currently giving him. While hefting the bag up onto his right shoulder again, Naruto speared the girl's with his eyes. "Stay low, stay quiet and keep heading towards the moon. Good luck."

"Wait, who are...?"

Then Naruto was leaping through the trees like a bat out of Hell and making all the more noise because of it. Good... He needed the ninja's undivided attention and he needed it now. After less than thirty seconds, Naruto began to hear the hard thwack, thwacking that people who are unfamiliar with tree jumping make, so he knew that the ninjas were following him. Naruto had a tenuous plan but for it to work he needed these men following him closely and at a dead sprint.

Konoha was in an uproar and the Anbu were scattered in every direction imaginable. The heiresses of two prominent ninja clans had been abducted by the Cloud Village's delegate, and as a result, clan politics was unraveling into a shouting match style clusterfuck. Kakashi had never in his entire life been as grateful as he was right now that he was just a faceless Anbu. He was just Dog and that was a damned good thing to be. It also came with its own brand of responsibility. Currently, he was dashing through the forests ringing Konoha, searching for the Cloud ninja and the girl's.

Very suddenly, Kakashi stopped in place on a tree branch, when he saw a vague shape flying in the sky. It was a bearded vulture... Interesting... Bearded vultures live in arid climates and they're definitely not nocturnal... Kakashi immediately began leaping in the direction of the out of place bird.

Without a solid lead to the girl's whereabouts this was his best bet.

After slaloming to the right, Naruto dropped to a tree's lower limbs as three Kunai attached to bomb tags whipped by on his left. He dropped and dropped and then grabbed onto a very low limb just enough to slow his descent. Above him in the foliage level the bomb tags went off and the entire area went to Hell in a hand basket, with flaming debris flying in every direction. Naruto hit the ground hard, rolled and then kept rolling as fiery branches fell down towards him on every side.

Were these guys trying to abduct these girls or barbecue them?

Either way, Naruto still had the bag and he was moving like a bat out of Hell again. Up ahead he saw his destination and he made for it at full desperate speed.

"Hold it you punk! I've got you now!"

A ninja jumped out of the trees in front of Naruto and squared up to stop him... or he tried at least. His right eye was leaking blood all over his face causing him to have to stand at a diagonal angle, and Naruto knew that the man's injury was his only chance to get away from him. In a split second, Naruto threw two stone Kunai at both the man's right shoulder and face.

Pivoting in place to follow the approaching projectiles with his lone remaining eye, the ninja destroyed both of Naruto's rock Kunai with a metal Kunai that he held in his left hand. What he'd forgotten about however was the splash damage that the stone Kunai we're going to make as they exploded into tiny pieces and hit his face.

When the ninja reeled back in pained surprise, Naruto dashed under his right arm as fast as he could. At this point, he was approaching a dense thicket of bushes. He'd done it! He was there! With a warcry filled with both triumph and adrenaline, Naruto leapt through the bushes, only to suddenly find himself completely airborne. It may in fact be a crazy and inconceivable plan, but Naruto had just straight up jumped off a cliff... and not even a second later, the attacking ninja was right there with him…

Naruto grinned up at the mostly blinded ninja as they both fell around a hundred feet to the trees below. Oh sure, the crash landing at the bottom was going to suck big time, but Naruto had survived this particular fall before. He somewhat doubted the ninja falling with him had the same regenerative powers.

"AAAAAAAAHHHHH!"

Naruto almost giggled because yeah that clinched it. The man was fucked and they both knew it. Naruto wasn't really all that bloodthirsty, but he was a hunter. He knew what it was to take a life and these guys were trying to abduct little girls. Looking below himself, Naruto angled his body flat to the ground so that he could hit as many tree branches as possible on the way down.

This was going to hurt…

To Be Continued…

Author's Note:

If you like my writing, want to check on my release schedule + want to help support me, consider visiting my P-a-t-r-e-o-n page

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