Naruto : Monsters

They knew that somewhere within him, the Kyuubi lived, ever patient, waiting for its chance to escape, just like it did with his mother before him.

And when that day comes, it would want revenge.

...

Konoha remembers all too well the last time the Kyuubi walked the earth, the scars and wounds it left behind were still fresh in their minds. No one wanted to be anywhere near him when that happened.

So yes, they had given him his due, rained on him both praise and glory, and granted him more money than he could spend in a single lifetime, yet they had also bestowed on him more loneliness and solitude than any child deserved.

Like I said before, Heroes were nothing but martyrs. Pain and misery were their only rewards.

And while Sarutobi's plan had failed I could not blame him for his logic. Keeping Naruto's status as a Jinchuuriki a secret was as stupid as it was impractical. 

Jinchuuriki had existed for centuries, and it was a well-known fact that Uzumaki Kushina was the previous Kyuubi's Jinchuuriki. And while she may not have been loved, neither was she feared.

Well, not for her status as a Jinchuuriki at least. Her temper, on the other hand, gave people more than their share of reasons to fear her. Had Sarutobi tried to hide Naruto's status, it would have only been a matter of time until the truth came out.

Even in the original timeline he hadn't bothered to keep it a secret, not really. He only tried to prevent people from talking about it so that their prejudice would not spread to the next generation. And we'll all know how well that worked out.

That was why, despite walking through a crowded street, neither one of us ever came within arm's reach to anyone else. 

Though I wanted to, I could not find it in me to hate them for their fear, not when I had seen more than a handful of people grasp at missing limbs or scars of badly healed wounds, no doubt mementoes from the Kyuubi.

It is easy to blame them, to call them cowards when the Kyuubi was just part of a children's fairy-tale, nothing but a cartoon. It became much harder when I had placed flowers every year on the graves of my relatives who died by its hands that day.

I spared a quick glance over my shoulder to check up on Naruto, worried how he was taking all of this and… and… and he wasn't even paying attention to them, was he?

I thought that it was weird that he was being so quiet. He'd been practically bipolar ever since our fight at the Academy. At first, he would give me looks of suspicion and distrust mixed in with carefully guarded hope.

Then when I dragged him home he wouldn't stand still, he kept jumping from place to place in excitement, talking a mile a minute, only to suddenly stop, turning oddly quiet the next second, looking almost shy and refusing to meet my eyes when I tried talking to him, before switching back over to excitement and repeating the whole thing all over again.

And by the looks of things the blond tyke was back to his quiet phase. He was silently trailing behind me, staring down at where I held his hand in mine, an odd almost disbelieving look on his face.

"Naruto," I called out to him, but he just ignored me and continued to stare down at our clasped hands. "Naruto, can you hear me?" Nope, still nothing. Sighing, I reached out and flicked him on the forehead, "Hey kid, wake up."

"Ow! What was that for?" Finally snapping out of his little trance, Naruto rubbed his forehead while glaring at me. Though I didn't fail to notice how he still wouldn't let go of my hand. "And why do you keep calling me a kid? You're not any bigger than me."

"That's because I was born with an old soul kid. Now," I stopped at a crossroad, "Which way did you say your apartment was again?"

"Oh! It's that one right over there. Come on, let's go." And I swear the kid must have been bipolar because his glare was instantly switched out with a bright smile, and the next thing I knew I was all but lifted off my feet as Naruto rushed ahead, pulling me along with him.

And geez was this kid strong, I swear I almost felt my shoulder dislocate from the strain, it was like being pulled by a runaway horse. It was at that moment I began to understand the downside of befriending someone this hyperactive.

Note to self; keep Naruto away from sugar.

...

"Tada~~~" Naruto threw the door wide open and proudly waved me into his apartment.

The human-rocket, affectionately known as Naruto, had run the entire three miles to his apartment building, tearing through the entryway doors, not even slowing down as he ran past elevators in favour of rushing up the stairs.

The little I had been able to see on my way up here, however, told me a lot about the place. The expensive wallpaper, impeccably clean corridors and most importantly the elevators, a luxury in Konoha, told me that the rent of the place must have been expensive. Something that reassured me, to say the least.

One of the primary reasons why I had so strongly insisted on this 'sleepover' was because I want to examine Naruto's living conditions. So very little is known about Naruto's life before the start of the manga. I knew he was isolated and lonely but that was about it. Everything else was guesswork.

While I had heard many theories from fans about how he was mistreated but I had doubts that was the case. It was never shown in the show, and I had trouble picturing Sarutobi ever allowing something like that to happen. 

He'd have to be unbelievably stupid to allow anyone to provoke a Jinchuuriki. But still, just because I couldn't believe it, doesn't mean it couldn't have happened. The Hyuuga Affair two years ago taught me a harsh lesson on making assumptions.

I had to make sure. Just to be safe. But to be honest, I didn't expect to find anything bad.

Which is why what I saw came as a total shock.

It felt as if someone had punched me in the gut when I got my first glimpse of Naruto's apartment.

"Oh…my…God," The words spilled unbidden from my mouth as I stared in horror at the living room. Stepping forward, being careful not to set my foot in the puddle of spoiled milk split on the ground, "What the hell happened?"

The entire place had been vandalized.

I couldn't even see the apartment's hardwood floor beneath the ocean of trash that flooded the ground along with almost every conceivable surface. Bits and pieces of half-eaten food were tossed around every corner of the room while graffiti covered the walls, ruining what once could have been beautifully coloured wallpapers.

Most of the furniture was wrecked. I spotted what may have once been an elegant green sofa piled up in one side of the room, its insides gutted and its white stuffing spilled onto the floor around it. In another corner was a stack of dirty clothing with a bucket of spilled paint dripping onto the floor next to it.

This…this was worse than I had ever imagined. What kind of people would allow a child to live in a dump like this? There is-

-Wait! Wait-wait, no, this isn't right. Something is wrong here, this is all wrong. Naruto wasn't supposed to be abused or mistreated. He was supposed to be filthy rich for god's sake, why would they allow him to live like this? Did I miss something, was…was I wrong about everything?

"Naruto," the horror I was feeling was clear in my voice as I kept staring in the room. Dear lord was that a broken unicycle on the kitchen counter? "What happened?"

"Huh?" Naruto crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes in confusion at me. "What's wrong with you?"

"Your apartment, who did this to it?"

"Ahh," The blonde's eyes widened with comprehension before he scratched the back of his head with an embarrassed smile. "Sorry about that. I kinda got a bit excited about the Academy last night and couldn't sleep, so I may have overdone it a bit. Ah, but don't worry, the cleaning lady will be here in a couple of days to fix it up."

"Cleaning lady?" I parroted stupidly at him as I felt a suspicion take root and grow in me. "…Naruto, who was the one who did all of…" I didn't have the words to describe the state of the apartment so I just waved a hand around the room, "this?"

"Hmm? Me, of course." Naruto looked at me as if I was asking the obvious, "Who else could it be?"

"You mean the graffiti on the walls, the trash on the floor, the ruined sofa," I looked up as something caught my eye, "and the tomato sauce on the ceiling, all of it was you? Why do you even have tomato sauce in the ceiling, how did it get up there?"

"Tomato sauce?" Naruto glanced up at the large splatter of red on the ceiling, "Oh, that's not sauce. That's just my blood."

I gaped at the madman in the shape of a six-year-old boy as he crossed his arms proudly before him. "I'm going to regret asking, but why do you have your blood splattered all over the ceiling?"

Naruto puffed out his chest. "Ninja training."

"Ninja training." I echoed, feeling my confusion only grow the more he talked.

"Yup," He nodded, "You know how ninjas can jump high, really high. Like, from the ground to over a building high. Well, I was practising my jumping."

"And what, you jumped so high that you bashed your head on the ceiling?"

"Nah, turns out I couldn't jump anywhere near that high." Naruto looked embarrassed as he rubbed the back of his head, though over what I wasn't sure. "That's why I had to use the springs from the sofa to help me." He pointed to the gutted sofa in one corner, where an assortment of springs lay spilled on the floor around it.

I raised a finger, a retort on my lips, before I stopped and just face-palmed. It was quickly beginning to dawn at me, that this boy… was an idiot. 

...

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