Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

A/N: (Important: Read please) In this story Naruto starts out as a 13 year old. He knows he is a demon container and that will be mentioned in the beginning. As this is my first story I will ask that if you people must flame me, be light and constructive. I hate critics who tell me what I should change and how I write my story. I write what I want and not what other people want me to. Pointing out any spelling or grammar mistakes is okay though. (I suck at that kind of thing) If you don't like this story then read something else you find interesting. If you do read it, please review. A handful of characters in this are OOC and AU just so you know. READ AND REVIEW PLEASE. Enjoy.

Chapter 1

Uzumaki Naruto yawned and shifted in his bed. He couldn't get comfortable. After hours of training, hours of sweat, blood, and severe body damage, sleeping couldn't have sounded more appealing to the 13-year-old boy. Yet, he could not sleep. Naruto sat up and ran his hand through his messy blond hair.

"I wonder if he's still awake." The blond thought out loud. "Screw it, he never sleeps anyway."

Naruto closed his eyes and let darkness roll over him. He didn't fall asleep. He merely went into a semi-conscious state. Naruto found himself in a dark hallway. The walls were made of metal and leaking pipes were set above his head. The cold water between his toes sent a shiver down his spine. The blond walked down the tunnel only hearing the dripping water and splashes his feet made moving in the water.

"What do you want, Kit?"

Naruto looked up through half-lidded eyes into huge, red glaring ones. Many large, iron bars separated the two from each other. Whatever was in the cage smiled showing its sharp, deadly teeth.

"Could it be you've come to let me devour your soul?" The voice said in a voice that was mocking, sarcastic, sadistic, and just a tiny bit hopeful.

"You wish." Naruto frowned. "Just came to chat. I couldn't sleep."

"Aw, do you want me to tell you a bedtime story?" The voice laughed.

"That would be nice."

The voice growled. "Tch, how I would love to rip you apart right now." The voice spat annoyed at Naruto's behavior.

"That ain't gonna happen any time soon, fur ball." Naruto smirked. He knocked on the cage bars. "Strong as steel."

A huge clawed hand smashed the cage from the inside and cut Naruto across the chest. He hopped back clutching the deep wound.

"Don't get to close, Kit." The voice chuckled. "I could really hurt someone with these."

Naruto spat on the ground and took his blood stained hand off his wound. Steam started to come from the gash as it closed up and new skin formed. Naruto sighed.

"You should treat guests more kindly. You're a really bad host, fur ball." Naruto said.

"I told you to call me Kyuubi! The Great Nine Tailed Demon Fox, Kyuubi no Kitsune!" The voice said threateningly.

"Sorry." Naruto yawned. "Kyuubi doesn't really roll off the tongue. I like fur ball. It's catchy."

The voice growled. "What do you want?"

"Just wanted to talk." Naruto sat down. The water was now gone. The immense chakra coming from the cage kept it at bay. "Besides," The blond continued. "You never finished your story."

"Ha Ha, that's right." The demon chuckled. "I was telling you how I slaughtered your pathetic village."

"Almost." The blond pointed out.

The Kyuubi growled. "If it weren't for that inferior human I would have burned your village to the ground."

"I know that better than anyone." Naruto muttered.

The demon smirked. "It seems like it was only a few days ago." Kyuubi sighed. "I had come a little late. The humans already had all their weapons out; every mortal had come to stop me. I approached the village crushing anything under my feet. I snapped their weapons beneath me like twigs. I cut them all down, I burned many, I even ate some tasty looking ones."

"You're sick, you know that?" Naruto growled. The demon fox just laughed.

"Oh, if you could see the look on their faces. Fear, anger, despair, hopelessness, I savored every kill…and I enjoyed it." The demon cackled with mirth. Naruto twisted his face in disgust. He could sense the blood lust coming from the contained beast. His laughing stopped abruptly.

"But then, HE, came." The demon snarled. "The human mounted on the chief toad. To think he defeated me, a mortal. I greatly underestimated him. I laughed at his hopeless effort at stopping me. One moment he was there, the next he was gone."

The Yondaime Hokage. Naruto pointed out.

"Yes." The Kyuubi nodded his massive head. "I gave him the slightest opening. I didn't try to give him one but he did it. He sealed me inside you. In that split second. I still can't believe it." The Kyuubi chuckled. "I can't even count the many times I told myself it was just a dream, that it was impossible for a mere human to accomplish such a feat. Yet, here we are."

Naruto sighed. The fur ball was quite a talker. "You could make things more short." The boy stated. "You killed almost everyone, the fourth hokage sealed you in me, you and everyone else in this forsaken village make my life hell. Short and sweet."

"Why don't you just kill them?" The Kyuubi suggested evilly. "Oh, how I would love to see this village put down, residents slaughtered, maybe one or two humans impaled on a light post. That would be most entertaining."

"You're graphic about everything aren't you?" Naruto frowned. The demon fox just chuckled.

It's true though the demon container had fantasized about killing a few of the people who glared, hurt, and even beat him when he was young. Naruto didn't hate them though. He strongly disliked them. Most of the villagers knew he was the container of the Kyuubi no Kitsune. It had been made public after the Yondaime had died sealing the fox. The third hokage had announced to all the ninja that the Kyuubi could not be killed by human hands and was sealed away inside a blond haired baby, Naruto. Most of the ninjas spread the word and all the villagers had been furious to know that the demon who killed they're friends and family was still alive. They all saw Naruto as a human form of the Kyuubi and he was treated very harshly for it. They felt that the container was just like the fox and had murdered the Yondaime. Naruto was hurt so many times by the avengers that so happened to the residents of the village. He lost count of the times he was left crying in the abandoned streets of Konoha village lying in a pool of blood that seeped from his cuts and gashes inflicted on him by his attackers. But that had awakened the Kyuubi.

Naruto had been beaten rather hard at the time, having more injuries than what was healthy. He thought he was going to die. He then found himself inside his mind, in a sub-conscious state. He traveled down the now familiar dark, dripping corridors of the Kyuubi's lair only to find the said demon. Being at a preschool age when Naruto found the fox he had been scared out of his mind. He cried out of fear for who knows how long until the Kyuubi had told him to shut the hell up. The demon had told the boy the whole story and why the villagers were so bitter towards him and ended up laughing at him. At that time, something in Naruto broke. He stopped crying and started yelling at the demon calling him a fur ball and cursing the village. He had also made a point that he was the container, not the fur ball himself. The Kyuubi at first had been astonished by this human's behavior towards him. He looked the boy in the eyes who glared defiantly back. The demon laughed and decided to humor the boy…or rather, assist him, per say. When the demon container woke up all his wounds were healed and he began his training. Thus, a sick, sadistic friendship had bloomed.

The Kyuubi told Naruto to train hard to become a ninja, not of Konoha, but of his own man. Naruto had late nights training for hours and hours and, again, more hours. He blew chucks everywhere whenever the Kyuubi pushed him to hard, which was all the time. The private training ground he used smelled like his guts and intestines by the time he finished training. Naruto's long years of training paid off for he could now probably threaten a Jounin. But the blond still had a long ways to go. His bed seemed like heaven in its truest form when he came home. He cherished the two and a half hours of sleep everyday (Bar the long naps he took during class at the ninja academy). However, he couldn't sleep tonight which is what brought him here. Naruto sat up.

"Nice talking to ya fur ball, but I need to get some shut eye. I already wasted forty-five minutes here." Naruto yawned.

"Good night then Kit." The fox replied.

Naruto's eyes rolled back into his skull making his pupils disappear from view. He closed his eyes and reopened them. He found himself back in his crappy apartment. He lied back down on his mattress and stared up at the ceiling.

"Tomorrow's a day off." The blond muttered to himself. "Fur ball is gonna work me until every bone in my body is broken…or shattered." His eyelids drooped until they shut.

BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!

You've got to be freaking kidding me. Naruto growled.

"You know what time it is Kit?" The demon fox cackled from within his body.

"I hate you."

Naruto put on a white sleeveless t-shirt and a pair of black pants. He slipped on some socks and shoes, ate some breakfast, put on the weights the Kyuubi made him get, and hell began.

X.X.X

Naruto upchucked for the eleventh time that afternoon. He had been training for four hours and he hadn't even started on his ninjutsus or genjutsus. He just ran twenty laps around the whole freaking village after his warm-ups, which consisted of doing over two hundred push-ups and sit-ups and using a two-ton boulder as a punching bag. Naruto wiped his bloody fists on his jumper and spat out whatever was left of the vomit in his mouth. Since he had just wasted his breakfast by throwing it up he figured it was a pretty good time for lunch. Naruto stalked off to the village.

"Yo, Ayame! I'll have the usual." The blond boy called as he sat down on one of the stools of the Ichiraku Ramen stand.

Naruto liked ramen. Loved it. Couldn't go a day without it. If you ask anyone who knows about his obsession with ramen they would probably say his body is sixty percent ramen, thirty percent water, and ten percent whatever else makes up the human body. The blond always came here for his three food rituals of the day so he was on familiar terms with the two workers of the small stand. Naruto was their number one customer and made them rich.

"Hard day at the academy Naruto?" The owner of the shop asked looking over the boy's sweating body. Naruto called him old man.

"No. I don't have academy today." Naruto replied bluntly.

"Right right. Here you go." The old man placed a very large bowl of ramen in front of Naruto.

"Would you like a beverage?" Ayame asked smiling.

"No thanks." Naruto responded before grabbing some chopsticks and attacking his meal.

Another customer entered the stand and sat down beside the oblivious boy.

"One medium sized bowl of pork ramen with an egg please." A female voice screeched. Naruto closed his eyes and blocked out the banshee's screams.

"Coming right up!" The old man called.

The woman sat patiently waiting for her ramen. Her eyebrow twitched as the neighboring blond haired customer's slurping and chopping grated on her nerves.

"…Hey."

The slurping continued.

"Hey."

More slurping.

"Hey!"

Louder slurping.

The woman grabbed Naruto's chopsticks and threw them out of the stand. Naruto glared at her a she glared defiantly back.

"You took my chopsticks." Naruto stated simply.

"How else was I supposed to get rid of your awful slurping noises!" She yelled purple hair swishing as she turned towards him.

"Asking me to eat quieter may have helped!" Naruto shouted back.

"Like you would have heard me!" The woman screamed.

"I need chopsticks!" Naruto yelled.

"Get some more!" The woman yelled back.

"Your ramen is ready miss." Ayame interrupted.

Naruto glared at the screeching woman and chucked his ramen bowl at her. Unfinished ramen and soup splashed her silencing her for the moment. The woman gaped at the boy's smirking face. Naruto put some money on the table and shook his head.

"What a waste of ramen." He muttered before walking away. He counted to three mentally and heard screams and shouts behind him. He smiled and walked back to the training grounds.

"Maybe I should have stayed there." He mused as he thought of his next training exercises.

X.X.X

Naruto sighed and wiped away some sweat from his brow. He lied down on the grass and looked up at the sky. He watched some clouds roll by. He had finished about thirty minutes ago with time to spare. It was about four thirty so he thought It'd be nice to go to his hill and relax.

When Naruto was a little kid he always came here to relax. None of the villagers ever went to this part of the forest so he was safe here. The hill was in the center of a patch of trees with a single tree in the center. The tree was bent.

Naruto liked to think the tree was a lot like him, alone and unwanted…different. The other trees stood far away from the crooked tree because it was not like them. A fish out of water. Disfigured. A lone wolf. Much like Naruto himself. He closed his eyes and let the breezy air cool him off.

"Hmm? Who're you?"

Naruto sat up and turned his head to a boy with a careless expression on his face. He had brown hair tied up in a spiky ponytail and was wearing a jacket. Naruto looked at him through half-lidded eyes.

"Does it matter?"

"Not particularly."

The boy lied down a few feet from Naruto and closed his eyes. Naruto looked at him oddly.

"Why are you here?"

"Does it matter?"

Naruto smirked. "Touché."

The two laid there in silence listening to nature's many sounds occasionally whistling to its soft melody of wind and leaves. They laid there for who knows how long. The sun started to set, neither moved. The sun disappeared over the horizon, neither moved. Both were enveloped in darkness, they both got up. They looked at each other.

"Bye." The two boys said in unison.

Naruto walked through the trees aimlessly. Who was that boy? Did he know who he was? Most adults did and their hateful behavior, bar the old man and Ayame, usually rubbed off on children, which is why he had no friends at the academy. Come to think of it…that purple haired chick wasn't hostile towards him at all…sort of.

"I don't feel like walking." Naruto mumbled. He made a few hand signs and disappeared in a puff of smoke.

X.X.X.

Naruto awoke the next morning falling out of bed. He climbed back into bed and looked at the clock. The alarm flashed ten thirty four. Naruto sighed and turned over. So what if he was a little late? It's not like he was ever on time anyway.

After thirty more minutes of sleeping the demon container got up, got dressed, brushed his hair, (not that it helped) and had some instant ramen for breakfast. He left his apartment and headed for the ninja academy.

X.X.X

The teacher at the academy, Iruka, glared down at the casual blond. He was two and a half hours late.

"Why are you late again Naruto?" Iruka asked dangerously.

"Ran out of instant ramen." Naruto answered. "Had to go buy some more. Took me awhile to get it all to my house. Had to go here and there three times."

Iruka's eye twitched. "SIT DOWN!" He yelled.

"Heh heh. Nice job loser." A boy snickered.

"You're pathetic." Another one laughed.

"You want to be a shinobi? Yeah right!" He heard a third one say.

Naruto sat down in his designated spot. He closed his eyes blocking out the oncoming lecture from his sensei and the idiotic insults his classmates were throwing his way. Besides, the Kyuubi had taught him most things Iruka already taught.

"You again?"

Naruto turned and was shocked to see the boy from yesterday sitting beside him.

"Hi." The boy said lazily. "Who are you?"

Naruto smirked. "Does it matter?"

"How troublesome." The boy sighed.

Both boys dropped their heads and fell asleep only to be woken up by Iruka's yelling voice.

"Boys! Class is for learning, not sleeping!" Iruka yelled at them.

"Actually sensei, there is no rule that says you can't sleep in class." Naruto pointed out. Beside him the brown haired boy smiled.

Iruka frowned at them. "Alright wise guy, you clean the floors after class, you too." Iruka pointed at the brown haired boy.

"Yay." He said lazily.

"Both of you should pay better attention in class." Iruka added. "You won't become shinobi if you sleep all the time." Naruto rolled his eyes, if only he knew.

After class the two kids' pencils were replaced with brushes. It took them a few hours to clean the whole place. The duo had barely spoke throughout their extra time in the classroom.

After finishing, both boys headed to the hill. They lied there like they did previously, saying nothing. They stayed like that until it got dark. The boy turned towards Naruto as they got up.

"Who are you?" He asked for the third time.

Naruto smirked and started walking away.

"Shikamaru."

Naruto stopped.

"Shikamaru Nara is my name." He said as he walked the opposite way the blond was going.

Naruto continued walking. "Naruto." He called over his shoulder. Shikamaru stopped and turned towards him.

"Naruto Uzumaki."

Shikamaru studied him for a bit until he returned to his half-lidded lazy look. "How troublesome." He said before walking away.

Naruto smiled and disappeared in a puff of smoke. That's where it started.

A/N: Well, there. Not that good I know. Screwed it up on the "hell began". That sounded retarded.

Please review and tell me if you liked or disliked the story. Any advice or helpful tips would also be appreciated. THE ROMANCE WILL COME LATER. Just thought you should know that.

Anywho, Please review. (Or I'll slit your throat in your sleep)

Kiiam