Illusions of the Sunlight

❷・The Fox and the Sage

   It was a dull Tuesday. Everything was as normal as it gets. Both shinobi and kunoichi alike were either training or going on missions fit for their rank. Civilians, living a simpler life, stayed in their homes or went to the market to buy their necessities for food. Merchants were distributing goods and receiving more money in return, vendors doing the same. Children loitered around the playgrounds or the parks, chatting animatedly with each other and playing.

  Ah, yes. Everything was simple; normal. Except for the life of one.

  Uzumaki Naruto, or more commonly known to the villagers as the "demon brat", was taking solace atop his father's stone figure, gazing at the sky blankly. None of the villagers would have guessed that he'd stay on the stone figure of the person who "imprisoned" him in the body of a mortal. They expected him to be a demon in the form of a weak, naive child.

   Scoffing at the thought, the small boy closed his eyes and went back to his inner musings. All of them are blind fools, he thought, a small smirk tugging at his lips. Shame that father had to save them. I would have loved to see this village burn to ash.

  It was apparent as a day that he was no fool; in fact, it was quite the opposite. By no means was he an angel either. The villagers' hatred for his tenant had tainted his heart, and he once quoted, "If they want a demon, I'll gladly give them one,".

   As a child, he hadn't done much to stop the villagers from insulting and at some points, beating him up. All he did was to keep quiet, refusing to give them the sick satisfaction of seeing him in pain. The last thing he wanted to happen was to be known as a weak child, harboring a strong demon.

   By that, he had come across a few ninjas training; he did walk around the village quite often, ignoring the stares of the people around him. He saw them perform the "Academy Three", meaning the Henge, Kawarimi, and the Bunshin no Jutsu. For the first two he did quite well, as he said so himself, but for the clone technique, let's just say that he had known that he had far more greater chakra to have the ability to mold it into such a small amount.

   With the help of the Henge, he had managed to go into the public library as a normal, child civilian who had dreams of becoming a shinobi. He also had the luxury of going into shops and restaurants without being thrown out, and without being treated as the "demon brat".

   Contrary to what you might think, he still hadn't reached the level he had wanted. He was still three years of age, after all. But, he still had grown to be more mature than the rest of the children of the same age, who might have taken their time playing with their toys and and having tantrums.

   Being a jinchūriki has its pros and cons.

   Being one forced him to mature more quickly, and now he had the mind of a fully grown adult. Rational decisions and strategies came to him in a split second, and his genius mind-as the others might call it-helped him cope up with the harsh reality of his life.

   Being one also means that you will be isolated and scorned throughout your life, unless you prove yourself to be different that what your environment may think, and that you are not the monster inside you, but as you, yourself. He had endured that throughout his mere three years of living; and he wasn't sure that he wanted them to change, he was used to it.  

   Deciding that he had lazed around for more time that he had thought, he stood up, dusting his pants up in the process. His feet trudged along the hard soil; the pathway to his home, not that anybody had known where and what it was.