Naruto: The Videogame

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Wiremaster Naruto... his eyes slipped quietly past the plaque.

Summoner Naruto... he paused and flicked his eyes to the requirements. 'Acquire a summoning contract, end game with positive score.' Interesting, but no...

Crossdresser Naruto... he didn't even pay that one a second glance.

Haremlord Naruto... He was tempted by that one. Oh was he tempted... he was a red-blooded male, after all. Still, he eventually managed to pry his eyes away and continue on his little trek.

Experiment 666, Classification Naruto... This one didn't even have instructions on how to unlock it, just '???'. Dandy.

Berserker Naruto... nifty. Of course, he didn't really find the unlock conditions appealing... 'Live for a year and a half with a pack of wild animals'. Yeah. How about... later. Maybe. But probably not.

Illusionist Naruto was the next to catch his eye, but only because of the more complicated requirements to unlock it. He had to first unlock Jester Naruto, then in that incarnation he had to master the clone technique while in the academy, as well as one other simple genjutsu, then learn another one after graduating, but before taking the second genin test. A quick bit of backtracking took him to the Jester plaque... to unlock that one, he had to play no less than two hundred successful pranks before entering the academy, without being caught, then play at least five hundred more before graduation.

That... that actually sounded kind of fun. Except for the not being caught thing. The only way he could think of to do that would be to be nowhere near the prank when it unfurled... and what the hell was the point of that? The gloating, and then the chase scene after the prank itself was the most fun bit! Even if Iruka caught him every single freaking time... And then he spent hours being lectured... and the punishments...

A glint came to his eye. Alright... if it said he couldn't be caught, then he wouldn't get caught. After all, he had that nifty save option to exploit to its fullest. Advancing the timeline could wait, and he had no real consequences to worry about either! Enough of this angstfest, it was FUN TIME!

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"Hokage-sama! I'm sorry to intrude, but I bring urgent news! Someone... someone has cherry bombed every single public toilet within Konoha's boundaries, all at the same time!"

Sarutobi drew himself up, thankful for the excuse to leave his tower of paperwork behind.

"Who is responsible?"

"We don't know... there are no suspects, sir."

Sarutobi glowered.

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"Hokage-sama! I'm sorry to intrude, but I bring urgent news! Someone has defiled the Hokage mountain, covering it in painted make-up and crude graffiti!"

Sarutobi drew himself up, upset at this newest affront in a string of juvenile pranks, but still preferring to deal with it rather than his mountains of paperwork.

"The perpetrator?"

"Unknown sir."

"As usual..." The Hokage grumbled.

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"Hokage-sama! I'm sorry to intrude, but I bring urgent news! That Bastard has slipped tasteless laxative into the coffemakers in ANBU headquarters, the Jounin-sensei lounge, and the Academy teacher's..."

Sarutobi stood up hastily, and zipped past the messenger on his way to the toilet, accompanied by a sudden upset in his intestinal regions. He'd thought he'd noticed something odd about the coffeemaker that morning...

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"Hokage-sama! I... I don't think you've noticed, but... someone seems to have replaced your hat with a... with a large rubber chicken, Hokage-sama."

Sarutobi slowly lifted his hand upward to confirm that statement.

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"Hokage-sama! I don't mean to disturb, but That Bastard has struck again. This time, Kakashi's volume of Icha Icha Paradise was subtly replaced with their Yaoi-only alternative! He's rampaging through the streets, sir! Nobody can get close to him!"

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"Hokage-sama! Someone... someone left a life size, impressively realistic, and anatomically correct Orochimaru doll stripped naked and tied to Mitarashi Anko's bed! She destroyed the entire apartment complex in her attempt to kill it! We're not sure, but we believe it to be the work of That Bastard."

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"Hokage-sama! Someone has replaced Asuma's trench knives with living fish!"

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"Hokage-sama! That Bastard has stolen the undergarments of every Kunoichi on active duty and run them up a flagpole!"

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"Hokage-sama! Someone has covered every square inch of the walls of the Hyuuga compound with... erotic graffiti! We believe it to be the work of That Bastard!"

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"Hokage-sama! You may not have noticed yet, but That Bastard has cast a genjutsu on your tower! From the outside it appears to be... to be... an animal's phallus! Mothers are blindfolding their children!"

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Naruto erupted in gales of laughter as he looked out on his seven hundredth prank, disguised by just about everyone of the other guys in class doing the same.

Surprisingly, it was even more fun to pull a prank and not get caught, then watch everyone run around like startled chickens trying to figure out who'd done it. And he'd gotten good at leaving no evidence behind. Sure, people had their suspicions. But they suspected a great many things about him, and without cold hard proof he was in the clear.

Also, as time froze and he disconcertingly found himself standing beside himself again, he'd figured out the trick to using the load feature without dying. That was a serious plus. On the other hand, it would be nice if he'd figured it out before getting to the point where he was infinitely familiar with how to kill himself in the swiftest and most painless manner possible, depending on the situation. And it was so simple that he'd very nearly killed himself again out of frustration.

But not quite. Dying still sucked, no matter how familiar you were with it. Of course, he still hadn't figured out a way to get to the invisible floaty around Konoha place without death either, which was why he sighed deeply before tossing the scroll away and restarting time.

Still laughing at the Hokage tower, he pulled a small handful of pilsl out of his pocket and tossed them back. Just one pill had enough concentrated sleeping poison in it to kill a bull elephant within minutes. You'd think that taking so much all at once would be overkill, right? But the fact was that he'd live through any less easily. The Kyuubi's regeneration burned through the poison almost as fast as it workes... so really, nineteen of the pills were just there to buy time for the twentieth to get its butt in gear.

Also, taken in a handful like that, it could easilly be mistaken as him just knocking back some old candy, whereas if he tried to cut his own head off he'd be stopped before he got halfway through his throat by a panicked Iruka. And so long as the Kyuubi was regenerating him, the only way to die of inflicted damage was to either do what Sasuke'd done, and inflict more damage than it could possibly heal, or to completely remove his head from his body.

Yeah... he'd had a lot of time to experiment. He really preferred the pills. No pain, no mess, and as he set his head down he knew that it just looked like he was just deciding to sleep through class.

The only drawback was that commiting suicide had a freaking huge penalty, -1000 points. Five times worse than being slaughtered in combat. On the other hand, he really didn't give a damn, and it was easier than hunting down someone who could be antagonized/tricked/fast talked into killing him.

He heard the strand of music start up as the world blurred, and his eyes closed.

xxx

Jester Naruto came to be when Sarutobi read aloud a childrens book with a clown in it to a toddling Naruto. This book quickly became young Naruto's favorite, but most especially the clown. At the age of two, he proudly proclaimed that he was 'gonna be the bestest clown ever'. Even after being accepted to the ninja academy, he hasn't quite given up this dream, shown in his face-paint and bright colored motley clothes. And his bag of tricks contains quite a few nasty surprises alongside the joke items. -2 to stealth, bonus 1 to Genjutsu, Juggling, Tailoring. 2 to traps, acrobatics. Pivotal in unlocking Illusionist Naruto, Harlequin Naruto.

Naruto took a step back to take in the newly defined statue. It was... colorful. He could certainly see why he'd have problems with stealth. Here was an outfit that made his blindingly orange jumpsuit look like perfectly well thought out ninja-wear. His pants were baggy, and bright yellow, with other blotches of bright color. His shirt was a pale pink, only a few shades off Sakura's hair, but mostly covered by a jacket of shredded rags of every color of the rainbow stitched together, with an occasional bell tied on here and there, and his shoes were two sizes too large, and painted bright red. Then there was his hair, grown several inches longer than he normally kept it, but still spiked out wildly and dyed a pale purple. To match his lip gloss, he guessed. The rest of his face was painted white, except for a red, four pointed star over his right eye and a dark blue teardrop beneath the left.

It certainly cut an impressive picture, if you kept in mind that he wanted to be laughed at. And most of the bonuses made sense as well, though he had no idea what juggling, tailoring, or acrobatics had to do with anything. Well... maybe acrobatics. That was a lot of... jumping and stuff, right? So that might help a shinobi a little. He still didn't get the point of the other two though. He paused, and blew gently at the plaque, revealing a sidenote that had been covered in dust.

Note- Discomfort bonus. Archetype grows generally more and more uncomfortable when in clothes differing from those pictured. The further difference, the more discomfort. Hint- Minor genjutsu can counteract this, making it look like the character is wearing something else, while underneath the illusion the motley remains.

Well, that didn't seem too unreasonable. He shrugged deciding not to put this off any longer. A moment later and...

"This child... is the Hero of Konoha!"

The infantile Naruto sighed deeply. Here we go again.

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Well... that was interesting. Just like the plaque had said, Sarutobi had, for no reason he could discern, and against the flow of events he'd expected, taken time every so often to read that book to him. And then, just two years into this incarnation, he'd suddenly found himself floating nearby through no action of his own, as his small body moved by itself, cheering on the clown and making a declaration of his desire. Sarutobi had chuckled.

And, just like the warning had said, his clothes from that point on had started feeling... itchy. Constraining. And it did indeed grow worse and more distracting over time, to the point that a six year old Naruto went dumpster diving for scraps of cloth to stitch into an approximation of the jacket he needed, complete with a few tarnished, rusty bells.

He'd actually been surprised at how easy it was to stitch the cloth together, when in previous incarnations it had taken weeks of work to learn a simple stitch to mend tears properly. Was that the tailoring bonus? That could actually be pretty neat... it was definitely easier to get ahold of fabric and thread than it was to find someone that wouldn't gouge him on the finished piece.

And the jacket alone had cut the sensations of discomfort down to a minimum for the next week. That was nice, as it had built up to the point where it felt like there were a flock of mosquitoes buzzing in his ears at all times. Then, of course, it started building back up again, and chibi-Naruto began a long term scavenger hunt.

He found a way to get access to a forgotten crate of make-up kits through a broken window in an old warehouse when he was seven. It took him a full six months to figure out how to put the crap on his face properly. Then he started working on how to apply the dye he'd found in the next stack of crates over. Lucky him... they had purple.

He got the yellow pants and the red shoes at the same time, but decided to take a little bit of license with them. He still painted large splotches of color on the baggy pants, but stitched drawstrings into the bottom hems to pull them tight so he wouldn't trip on them. And the shoes were only half a size too large.

The pink shirt cold wait. He was driving enough people away with the rest of it. On the other hand, that was kind of a good thing... the villagers had decided that he'd cracked and he was getting pretty decent service at shops now, as they'd all decided to sell him what he wanted as fast as they could so that he had no reason to stick around. That was no worse than being outright ignored, and it meant he could buy stuff at normal price, so long as he was quick about it! He counted that as a victory. A minor one, but still.

Then it came time for him to begin attending the genin academy. Or, to put it more bluntly... it was fun time again!

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"Uzumaki Naruto?"

The class was silent. Iruka sighed... there was always someone who was late to the first day.

"Is Uzumaki Naruto here?"

A smokebomb went off suddenly, filling the room with a thin cloud of smoke. It would dissipate soon enough, with the windows and door partially open, but it was annoying nontheless.

"Uzumaki Naruto-kun-dono-sama-san is here, to break up the dreary, dull monotony of your miserably pointless little lives with a splash of color and chaos!"

There was a loud 'Donk' sort of sound in the smoke, of Iruka's fist making contact with the back of Naruto's head.

"Ow!"

"Idiot! Don't make trouble in class! Just... just take your seat."

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Iruka groaned in the privacy of his office, massaging his temples and ignoring the neat stack of paperwork on his desk. It was inconcievable. He'd expected Uzumaki to be something of a class clown, but this! It wasn't just a little clowning... it was like there was a constant three ring circus running in his classroom!

In just this first week, Naruto had caused more trouble than Iruka himself had managed throughout his entire education! He didn't know whether to be impressed... or horrified. He'd also somehow managed to co-opt the services of several other genin hopefuls to follow his lead, further amplifying the chaos. Kiba hadn't been unexpected at all, given what he knew about him beforehand, but the Nara had come completely out of left field, given how incredibly lazy the boy was supposed to be. And with him had come the Akimichi as well. Iruka didn't know this, but it had actually taken Naruto several cumulative weeks worth of reloading the save in order to find the right buttons to press to get all of them at once.

Also, while those four were causing problems, he'd had to go straight into practical lessons, rather than going through theory like he'd intended to. The whole point of going through the boring stuff first was to make some of the kids drop out.

Problem.

When Naruto was bored, he didn't say it. He didn't even scream it at the top of his lungs, to get someone's attention. When Naruto was bored, he did something much, much worse. He looked for a way to alleviate that boredom.

Nobody in the immediate area was safe, under those circumstances. Everyone became a possible target.

On the plus side, just about everyone in the class of sixty students were absorbing what he taught them like little sponges. They couldn't really afford not to, given that Naruto was learning just as fast, and would incorporate it into his 'playtime'.

Iruka sighed. There were a total of sixty children in his class. The problem was that his job wasn't just to teach them... he had to whittle their numbers down. Typically, fifteen of those sixty would drop out of the academy and look for different jobs. Of the forty five remaining, only twenty seven would pass the genin examination, and of those, only nine would pass the second, secret exam. Unfortunately, with Naruto's class of pandaemonium thrown into the mix, all sixty of them could probably pass the first exam. It was just a simple bunshin test, after all. An E class Genjutsu that was almost never actually used by shinobi in the field, due to its simplicity.

The only one who even looked like they might consider dropping out at this point was the Haruno girl, who was, for the most part, useless in the practical lessons despite the fact that she'd easily aced the one theoretical test he'd given them with an upper ninety-percent score. Simply put, she was all brains and no brawn. Not that that was a bad thing in itself! If she learned a little trickery, how to use that brain to her advantage, she could become a perfectly decent kunoichi.

The problem was that he could only think of two ways to convince kids to drop out. The first was the one he'd intended to use... lots of boring theory work, written tests, and study on incidental topics that didn't really matter most of the time and that the individual students could look up on their own in the few cases that it did. The problem with that was that one of his students, who shall remain nameless for the moment but incidentally wears a really stupid getup, reacts far worse to boredom than he could have ever planned for. If he tried to go that route, he ended up having to rein in the chaos, and ended up going nowhere, really fast. That brought him to the second plan, a more dubious one.

Run them into the freaking ground!

This plan was a course that was exactly the opposite of the first one. Work them into exhaustion physically first, then drain them mentally with pointless paper exams while they were still slick with sweat. Outside, because if he took a whole class of sixty students back inside immediately after a heavy workout, open windows would to absolutely nothing to get rid of the stench. He nodded absently to himself, realizing that that was his best bet, and opened a drawer in his desk to withdraw a pen and a blank sheet of paper to make a quick outline of the new teaching plan. Maybe start with tree walking? No... that was a bit too advanced. Start with a bit of taijutsu, then the leaf exercise. That would work, and once all, or at least most, of the class had gotten that, move on to laps up and down trees.

His train of thought was interrupted as the trap that had been left in the drawer he was opening triggered, launching its contents at Iruka's head. The banana cream pie slowly slid down the trembling man's face before dropping to the floor. Iruka's eye had begun twitching rapidly.

"NAAA-RUUU-TOOO!"

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A.N.

This was actually pretty fun to write, once I got into the swing of it. I had to go back and read that one where Naruto is raised by the Joker a couple of times to get back into the proper mindset for it, but it's all good. Basically, Jester Naruto is what he plays when he wants to have fun. He's more likely to toss a cream pie than a kunai, or he'll smack someone around with a rubber chicken rather than attack seriously. For those that are interested, Naruto will soon enough figure out a way to switch from one archetype to another unlocked archetype that is in the same line of the first. Like, he could switch from Jester Naruto to Harlequin Naruto, and back again, but not to, say, Haremlord Naruto.

Note, he will not be unlocking that last save possibly in Omake. And you'll just have to wait and see what Harlequin Naruto is like. Speaking of Omake...

OMAKE!

Naruto grinned as he paused just inside the boundaries of the forest of death and began, of all things, dancing to an inaudible tune while chanting something under his breath. If the Chuunin guards were close enough to hear, they'd know that it went something like-

"Left, left, forward, back, circle, back, forward, left, left, forward, forward, left, right, right, right, square, circle, square, right, select!"

-Which of course made absolutely no sense. Then again, niether did what happened next, when Naruto was struck by lightning and lit up with a powerful aura, accompanied by a deep, booming voice from nowhere.

"God Mode: Activated!"

"All right!" screamed Naruto, surging into the forest, his wild aura attracting other chunnin candidates like moths to a flame.