On a lightly clouded summer day, when leaves ruffle in the wind that blows from where Suna is located, Uzumaki Naruto stares at a woman. Oh, it's not an unknown woman – in fact, one might say she is one of those everybody knows and equally as much people like. That's why the boy stares at her with a blank expression.

"Hush now! Demons aren't allowed in my shop." she says once again.

"D-Demon?" Naruto asks shyly, tilting his head. He's ten years old and has heard the word "demon" being thrown at his head over a hundred times. Every time it had been cried in anger or veiled with disgust. This time, though, it's said in such an obvious manner that he stops for a second and thinks.

What even is a demon? Why is he one?

The woman raises her eyebrows and then she nods. "Yes" she says and her voice isn't tinted with any maliciousness, "That's why I can't let you in. You see, I have to pay my bills and it's bad for business to let a demon openly buy things from my shop. After closing hours, you could come back and I'll give you what you want with a small discount for your inconveniences, alright?"

Wide-eyed and baffled, Naruto just manages to squeak out an undignified: "Y-Yeah, sure" before walking away. Initially, he had wished to finally get rid of the garish orange track suit one of the other shopkeepers had sold him for a horrendously high price when he was seven. Well, he could keep wearing it but he's had a growth spurt just a week ago and if he continues growing taller, he'd look ridiculous by the time he makes it to genin. And, of course, while orange is still one of his favourite colours, he has become tired of the obvious dirt patches on the light fabric that came with training outside.

So, he's decided to try out another shop because his allowance is running drier than Sunagakure's desert.
There, in front of the counter, he has met Ueki-san. The conversation was short, a couple of sentences in length but still... it has hit a spot inside Naruto. Ueki-san has talked to him as if it isn't all that bad that he's a demon. As if it's just what he is and not how he is. Naruto can understand her reaction – other villagers really dislike him (some a bit too personally in his opinion) and it would undeniably be dumb for Ueki-san to be seen with a demon.

Then again. The boy looks up from his position on the Academy's swing and wonders just what the hell is so appalling about serving demons.

He realizes with a start that he really has absolutely no idea what a demon is. Naruto palms his face and groans at his own stupidity. For years, he has ignored everyone's words and hasn't paid any attention to them. Now he finds it pretty idiotic not to... after all, most have called him "demon" unanimously. That has to mean something, right? If everybody agrees that he is a demon, he is one. Or everybody else is wrong and from the perspective of a student who's been proven wrong a lot of times, he can safely go with the first option.

Maybe he should find out what he is.

What did Iruka-sensei say? The best source of information is "...the library." Naruto mumbles to himself and blinks. Oh yeah, he's been there once and the clerk at the desk has reacted with a sneer. But he hasn't actually chased him out, the Uzumaki thinks. He deems it safe to go there.

His stomach grumbles so he decides to head to Ichiraku's first. Naruto's a bit concerned because surely it isn't good for Teuchi-san and Ayame-chan to be seen with him either. Ah, well, perhaps it's more profitable to let him eat at the ramen stand as he's pretty much coming to the stand every couple of days.
Do demons like ramen in general or is it just him?

He'll have to look that up.

Teuchi-san greets him with the usual warmth. For a second, Naruto is thrown off by it. Now that he knows for sure he's a demon, he sees the world in a completely different light. Casual conversations that don't involve any bad-mouthing become treasured and people who like him are perceived as brave souls.

Naruto cherishes his three bowls of miso ramen.

Then he bows deeply to a confused Ichiraku Teuchi, thanks him profoundly and heads off towards the library.

"My, my..." the ramen cook mutters under his breath, "What's up with that?"

Naruto greets the desk-nin without any of his usual exaggerated cheer. He's too deep in thought to notice the irritated look his personality shift earns him.

The boy wanders the isles, searching for a common dictionary. Soon, he finds a dust-covered one that has many small tears rippling the thin pages as well as many stains and dog-ears. Well, Naruto guesses, he isn't the only one who's confused about certain words. Somehow, that makes him feel a little bit better...

...however, it sure as hell doesn't ease the sudden bout of nervousness. What if a demon is a really, really bad creature? The villagers always seem very repulsed when they spot him running around freely. What if... Naruto swallows harshly, beads of sweat trailing down his whiskered face... what if he can't be Hokage because he's a demon?

His short fingers carefully skip through the A, B and C sections before focusing on words that begin with de-.

"The moment of truth, huh?" the blond haired boy tries to joke but fails miserably.

Demon, it says. Naruto breathes out harshly, his fingertip tracing the word. "That's me" he thinks helplessly and finally reads on.

Demon – An otherworldly creature, often descended from hell, which is perceived as evil and malevolent. Some ancient scripts state that demons possess large amounts of chakra and can turn into humans at will. Recorded demons are e.g. Bijuu, Oni or Tengu.

Naruto's nervousness deflates drastically. For real?! Just because he comes across (he had to look up "perceived") as evil doesn't mean he automatically is! "So, that's me. Maybe I come from hell and I have a good bit of that weird stuff called chakra. Still don't know what kind of demon I am, though." He muses quietly, scratching his nose nonchalantly.

Firstly, he searches for "Bijuu". Those are some really large beasts like the nine-tailed fox. He inwardly snorts. Yeah, sure he is a giant fox. While he may possess whiskers and is a bit on the foxy side, he isn't the Kyuubi. Nor is he any of the other tailed beasts.

That brings him to Oni. Believe it (or not), Naruto is neither the ghost of a dead person nor exactly downright evil or extraordinarily dumb.

He scowls. Are there other books on demons if the definition of Tengu doesn't fit him? Cause he'd like to know what he is in all honesty.
Huh.

He shouldn't have worried. Tengu are tricksters, have magic powers and there's a subcategory called Amakitsune which would explain why he sometimes hears whispers of "fox" when the villagers talk about him and why he has whiskers. Perhaps he's only half Tengu – this body he has is the real one, Naruto's sure of it.

Alright. He is a Tengu, possibly an Amakitsune, and now?

He sighs, closing the dictionary and putting it back to where it belongs. He rolls his stiff shoulders and absent-mindedly waves the desk-nin goodbye as he walks out of the library with his hands inside of his pockets. What should he do?

Is he allowed to become Hokage? Well, he scrunches up his nose, he'd hope so! They're letting him become a shinobi after all. Why wouldn't he be able to be Hokage?

Naruto sighs. The whole ordeal is so, as his classmate would say, troublesome. He doesn't even know what kind of powers he has as a Tengu! From the general definition of demon he's gathered he has a lot of chakra (whatever the hell that is) but the paragraph on Tengu was too short to truly go into what kinds of magic he can do and how.

He'll have to come back to the library tomorrow and see if there are books specifically on Tengu.

However, it's getting late and the sun is about to set. That means he can shop at Ueki-san's store pretty soon. Thus, he wanders slowly towards his destination.

People around him are sneering when they see him. They're muttering curses under their breath and Naruto's ears even pick up one or two declarations of him being a demon. D'uh...? He frowns at them – making them shrink back in disgust – and wonders why the villagers are all so very hostile. It's not as if he's a bad demon. Tengu aren't worse than Oni and definitely better than bijuu who could turn Konoha into rubble in a matter of mere minutes.

Perhaps they're afraid? Naruto blinks when the sudden thought strikes him. Of course they're scared of another demon, even if it's just a small one like him. They don't know that he isn't as dangerous as the Kyuubi. How should they? Demons are rare, surely, and their first encounter with one had been with one of the most monstrous of their kind.

No wonder they hate him, Naruto thinks sadly. He doesn't really mind that he's a demon, not after having informed himself what kind of creature he actually is, but the fear emitting from his beloved Konoha's citizens makes his throat tighten.

He has to pack the sadness to the back of his head when he reaches Ueki-san's shop. The woman turns the sign from "Open" to "Closed" and nods at him as soon as she spots his blond tuft of hair. Silently, she motions to the backdoor of the establishment and Naruto follows her inside without any words. Blinds cover the large front windows from outside viewers.

"Well, kid, look around, yeah? I'm gonna be right there if you need something." Ueki-san says politely. Naruto scratches his scalp, uttering an unsure agreement. Welp, he's really not used to people being nice to him. It shows.

Ueki Airi's shop is geared towards shinobi attire and disguises. Dozens of different clothing items line up on the pretty dark wooden shelves. The boy swoons at a pair of cool orange trousers before grimacing at the price... and, naturally, he envisions the damage grass stains would do to them. God (or Devil? Satan? What is he supposed to say as a demon in that situation?) no!

He carefully folds them as they were and instead goes to the darker coloured section.

There, he rather quickly finds a cheap but sturdy pair of brown cargo pants. He doesn't need any t-shirts because the black ones jiji brought him are still a bit too large for him so he'll grow into them just fine. There's a dark red, bordering on black hooded jacket he chooses to complete his new choice of style.

The price is fine too. Naruto almost wants to pay but then a blur of colour in the corner of his eye catches his attention. He looks at the masks that hang on the wall with price tags attached to them. A long-nosed red face with slitted eyes draws him closer. His heart aches at the exact shade of red and suddenly he knows he has guessed his heritage right when a familiar word on the mask's tag appears.

Tengu.

Fondly, he decides to also purchase the mask. While he might not be a full-blooded Tengu, one of his parents had been (he feels it, deep inside of him) and he wants to wear something to remind himself that there had been a human and a demon who had loved him enough to give their lives to protect his hometown.

Hokage-jiji had told him when he was six that his parents were shinobi and how they fought for him – to create a future in which he could live happily without having to worry about the Kyuubi.

Ueki-san raises her eyebrow at the mask but other than that, she just professionally puts his items into a bag, tells him what he has to pay – a fifteen percent discount is pretty nice of her, Naruto thinks – and then he leaves, walking home with a warm ache in his heart.

The ten year old spends the rest of the day cradling the Tengu mask gently with a smile on his face.

Naruto wears his new clothes the next day to the Academy. Aside from Kiba's toothy remark about him finally not smelling like shit, nobody but Iruka-sensei says anything about it. The man tells him that he's proud of Naruto's decision, for some reason. It makes the blond boy blush.

Had the jumpsuit really been so bad?

Apparently yes.

He pays a bit more attention to the curriculum. Since his discovery, he has thought about Iruka-sensei a lot. The teacher had never treated him different than any other students. There had been senseis before him who looked down on Naruto because of his heritage... however, Iruka had never done so.

He could at least pay the man back by not totally failing, right? Naruto shivers when he thinks back to the worst day in his Academy history. The boy had tried the genin exams a year prior and, low and behold, failed spectacularly. Not only had his theory test been an astonishing five percent, no, also the nin- as well as the taijutsu portion were absolutely abysmal. Iruka had seemed utterly defeated. Naruto too.

While he may not be ready this year either, Naruto is pretty sure if he actually learns for once the demon will graduate and become a genin.

He now values Iruka-sensei too much not to study hard. He has to be better than any other human shinobi.

When he walks home with actual notes written on the notebook he has brought with him today, Naruto vows to himself, to Konoha, to Iruka-sensei, to Hokage-jiji, to the villagers and even separately to Ueki-san that he'll become the best demon they'll ever see and thus also the first non-human Hokage.

"Believe it!" Naruto thinks with a foxy grin on his lips.

The first steps are difficult. Naruto keeps getting distracted and can't focus on the bland Academy theory at first but when Iruka-sensei's proud face from earlier flashes behind his eyes, the ten year old begins reading. He's always thought books were boring. They are sometimes, don't get him wrong, but he can appreciate the information he gets from them.

The few paragraphs he has to read as a homework exercise are about chakra theory. "Chakra? Wasn't that the stuff I'm supposed to have really huge amounts of?" Naruto muses, scrunching up his nose.

He continues with his reading. At the end of the last sentence, he wants to cry.

No wonder they let a demon attend the Academy! They don't think he could do the Academy three with his great chakra reserves. They're also probably right. Naruto can't even ask his demon parent (who probably used a really convincing human disguise to hide the whiskers and red skin colouration) for help in that matter. He curses loudly and is promptly reminded that the old lady downstairs hates loud noises.

Naruto ignores her frantic broomstick knocking that's somehow strong enough to make the floor of his apartment vibrate. Creepy.

What should he do?

"What the hell should I do?!" he asks again, this time more exasperated. If he can't do any Academy level ninjutsu, he's going to fail without a single doubt.
Kawarimi is a maybe. Henge? Well, he can modify his oiroke no jutsu to function as an advanced version of the Academy henge technique... but what the fuck is he supposed to do with bunshin?

It even says in the book that the bunshin the Academy teaches is basically just a slightly more real genjutsu. And genjutsu, when you have demonic chakra capacity, is practically impossible unless you have near a hundred percent chakra control. Damn. There Naruto had thought he could finally improve and put strength behind empty words.

He forgets himself and begins to cry in rage.

His dream... he has to achieve it – otherwise he wouldn't be able to live with himself!

Naruto's teeth grind against each other and the book lands uselessly on the floor after he chucks it harshly against the crumbly off-white wall.
He doesn't register the footsteps coming closer, too panicked to notice them halting in front of his door.

However, he is aware of the old lady from downstairs being in his apartment all of a sudden. It's hard not to when the end of a broomstick throws him straight at the wall.

"Why are you making such a ruckus, boy?" she asks with her head held high and broom used as a walking stick.

Naruto hisses, rubbing his head. He bites back: "What would you know about ninja stuff, obaa-san?!"

To his confusion, the woman just replies with: "Try me" instead of berating him for his poor word choice.

The ten year old, blinking up at the lady whose hair fades from green to gray and whose shoulders are clad in fine violet robes, blurts out his problem without even thinking for a second.
For a couple of moments, nothing happens. They stare into each other's eyes... then, the woman begins chuckling in amusement.

"What you need, boy, are chakra exercises and anger management." Naruto snorts at the latter part. He's pretty sure banging a broomstick on one's ceiling counts as overtly angry too. "Just go to that teacher of yours and demand them. I don't care whether you're a demon or not. I firmly believe anybody is better than that old coot Sarutobi as Hokage. Now let me watch my series before I throw you out of the window for making me miss it, boy."

With that, the lady strides out of his apartment, leaving Naruto trying to figure out why his life is like a wild rollercoaster ride.