Naruto The Yellow Kitsune

Naruto sat alone on a swing, staring at the children who were currently getting picked up by their parents. Of all the things he wished for, parents and friends were at the top of his list. He often wondered about the looks random villagers would give him; full of fear and loathing. Of course, no one had actually acted on those feelings since the Red Night, supposedly a second Kyuubi attack that only killed thirty people.

"Hey, Naruto! Fight me!" There was Sasuke again, constantly challenging him after he defeated the supposed prodigy of the ninja academy without breaking a sweat. It had certainly been an interesting ordeal- one second Sasuke was charging at him, and then he was eating dirt. Ever since then, Sasuke had been training hard to defeat his new 'rival', without much luck. Now, it was time to go through that again. It was O.K. though, since Naruto liked being noticed a lot better than being ignored.

"Geez, and here I was planning to _not_ kick your but today. Are you a masochist or something?" Naruto began with a tradition insult.

"Shut up, I have to catch up with you someday, and it might as we'll be today!"

"Yeah, yeah. Loser gets to buy lunch?"

"Deal!"

And here was another thing Naruto enjoyed about Sasuke: his willingness to buy him lunch. He wasn't exactly poor as he was being paid a monthly stipend as an orphan and all that, but a free lunch always tasted better than a bought one, especially when he got to annoy Sasuke by eating absurd amounts of ramen at Ichiraku's.

Still philosophizing on ways he could clean out Sasuke, Naruto got punched right in the nose when he turned around to try and intercept the punch, and was forced to take a step back from the blunt force of it. However, the red energy protected him like it always did, shielding his face from injury.

Sasuke's hand was a different matter altogether. After putting all his power into that punch, only to hit a nose that might as well have been made with chakra-tempered steel...

"FUUUUUUUUU-"

"Ah, that really hit the spot. Thanks, Sasuke-chan!"

"Be quiet, dobe." Currently lamenting both the loss of his money and a working hand, Sasuke didn't have the energy to offer a witty retort. Instead, he settled on a heated glare that he knew would melt a hole right through Naruto, in he just believed, if he just-

SMACK!

Naruto grinned as he 'patted' (read: pounded) Sasuke-teme's head right into his bowl of ramen.

"If you just sit there, your ramen's gonna get cold! And then I'll have to sacrifice you to the ramen gods, and poor Itachi-san will have to be at your funeral, and he'll have to talk about just how sad it is that you're leaving, and just how far that stick is shoved up-" Naruto was forced to dodge a flying stool.

Back to Naruto's second favorite pastime, annoying Sasuke, which was surpassed only by large-scale pranks. It was just too funny to watch the bastard's face go all dark and foreboding in reaction to the most harmless jokes. Maybe he could even get Sasuke-chan to swear eternal vengeance, which was actually pretty easy.

"Naruto?"

"Yeah?"

"What're you going to do once you become a ninja?"

"I dunno. Probably make a ton of money of missions and use it to buy a cool house. Oh yeah, and I'll also save a princess, and save the world, or something like that." Honestly, Naruto didn't have many dreams concerning the future besides having fun.

"Well, I'm going to get stronger than my brother and you! Then I'm going to become clan head, and- Hey, are you listening to me?!"

Naruto pretended to pick his nose thoughtfully. Really, he needed to finish plotting his next prank, involving painting the Hokage monument in broad daylight. He surprised himself sometimes with his own cunning. Just barely paying attention to Sasuke's ranting, he quickly finished his fifty-fourth and last bowl of ramen.

"I'm gonna be going now Sasuke-chan. Please, feel free to stay here and stew around in your own inability to win against the great Uzumaki Naruto!" With that, he dashed out the door to avoid the chair that was probably coming his way.

Settling into a comfortable trot, Naruto headed home. He largely ignored the whispers and glares that were shot towards him. Sometimes, though, he would smile brightly at someone who had given him a particularly bad insult, just to trip them up. That was another thing- he could hear very well. Inhumanly well, like some sort of tracker animal. The same applied to his other senses; he could taste supposedly tasteless poison, smell the perfume of a person across the town, feel incredibly tiny breezes, and see the color of someone's eyes from a mile away. He always chalked it up to be some sort of weird bloodline, though no one had ever told him about it, which was strange, as it seemed very useful. He assumed that his red chakra was the same thing. When he talked to Ojii-san about it, he only got a crappy when-you're-older response. Since then, the topic hadn't come up again. He really wanted to know now, though, because he was going to be a ninja, and that info could get him killed. He deserved to know it!

Finally, Naruto got home to his apartment. Throwing open the door, he immediately went to his room and jumped into his bed. It had been a long day; within seconds, he was asleep.

**"So the kit wants to know about his powers now. That means he technically knows about me, since he knows something's giving him his powers, right? So I can bring him here..." **A savage grin and bright red eyes tore through the darkness of the mindscape.

Naruto groaned. He was awake again, and it felt like he had only been asleep for an instant. He rolled over to try to get some more sleep, and hit... Water?! Jerking up, he saw a very large sewer system. Definitely _not_ his room. Had the villagers constructed a sewer system just so they could throw him inside it? Didn't seem likely. Well, only one way to go now. Naruto began trudging forwards.

Walking through the maze of sewers, Naruto spotted something strange. Sometimes, at a crossroads, he could just barely make out something red seeping from one of the passageways. Maybe there was something waiting for him at the end- the same thing that was responsible for the red energy to always surround him, and his boosted senses. _Nah, _he though, _what are the chances of me finding that out here?_ He didn't notice himself soming up to a dead end, in front of a giant cage.

**ROOOAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRR!**

Cue being scared shitless.


End file.

Naruto, Adventure