Naruto: The Life Changer

Morning, Twelve Years After The Day of The Kyuubi

The Apartment of Uzumaki Naruto, Slum, Konohagakure no Sato

"What. In. The. Living. HELL?!"

The loud voice echoed throughout the small apartment, making the odd cockroach skitter back into the many cracks in the walls. Within the bedroom, a small boy, one Uzumaki Naruto, lay on his bed facing the ceiling. His eyes were wide with disbelief and astonishment.

Why might you ask?

Floating about a foot and a half away from his face was a small horizontal blue rectangle that had a few words written on it.

[You Have Slept on Your Run-Down Bed.

HP and CP Fully Restored.]

Naruto blinked in half-asleep puzzlement at the notice. Hardly surprising, considering he had only just woken up. The orphaned boy stared at the odd box before slowly forming the Ram handsign.

"KAI! (Release!)" he commanded as he attempted to end the Genjutsu (Illusion Jutsu) that he was certain he was under. When the box didn't vanish, Naruto just shrugged. He had never once successfully dispelled a Genjutsu in his entire life, so he hadn't really expected it to work this time.

Deciding to just ignore the odd blue rectangle, Naruto sat up and stretched, yawning as he did so. He didn't have to go to the Konoha Shinobi Academy today, so he could get some training in without being jeered at by the Academy Sensei.

'Except Iruka-sensei.' Naruto added to himself. Umino Iruka was the only teacher in Naruto's entire six-year long Academy career that didn't discriminate against Naruto in any way, shape or form, preferring to be scrupulously fair with the young blond boy.

Padding out into his hall, Naruto wrinkled his nose at the stench that was left over from the latest 'present' thrown through a broken window by an unknown person. A bag of rotting dog turds judging by the scent. Lovely.

With a sigh, the boy walked to the kitchen and grabbed a clothes peg, a heavy-duty bin bag and plastic gloves from a drawer. Clamping the wooden peg over his nose, which was fairly sensitive to scents, Naruto then pulled on the gloves and got down to the dirty business of dealing with the source of the revolting odour.

For the twelfth time this month.

The citizens of Konoha uniformly despised Naruto for some odd and unknown (to him) reason. Well, the civilians hated him. The various shinobi clans and Konoha Shinobi Forces members just ignored him, except for the Academy staff, who hated him. Except for Iruka-sensei.

Finished with his unpleasant and disgusting task, Naruto walked to the balcony of his apartment, which was on the top floor of the building and looked down. Ah good. The bin was open.

He carefully aimed for the bin and dropped the bag containing the turds. Naruto watched as the bag fell and landed inside the bin with a loud {squelch}.

"Seriously got to find a new place to live. This is stupid." Naruto muttered as he peeled off the gloves and threw them into the kitchen bin before stomping off to the bathroom for his daily 'curse-at-the-useless-pipes-that-don't-damn-well-work' time that most people had a shower during.

He had, on countless occasions, tried to get the Landlord to do something about this. The few times the fat bastard hadn't tossed him out of his office, he had instead been threatened with eviction if he didn't shut up and bugger off.

So, instead of a shower in the morning, Naruto generally bought a large bottle of drinking water from a nearby corner shop -at thrice the listed price- and poured it into a bowl, using soap instead of shampoo. It sucked by comparison to a proper hot shower, but needs must when demons drive.

Because of him smelling a bit ripe, it didn't actually surprise him that he had never successfully asked his crush, Haruno Sakura, out on a date. Naruto smiled a bit as he pictured his emerald-eyed, pink haired love interest. It never failed to cheer him up.

Sure, she punched him out whenever he asked her on a date, but she acknowledged that he was there, that he existed. She had a legitimate reason to dislike him, which he accepted. He admitted to himself that he could stand to tone down the frequency of his date requests, which he did whenever he saw her.

Most of the other kids in his year avoided him or tried to bully him, so he avoided them right back. The rest were either neutral towards him or slightly friendly with him. Sadly, the last group composed of all of the slackers.

Akimichi Choji, who would rather eat than study, Nara Shikamaru, the laziest bastard Naruto had ever met and Inuzuka Kiba, the guy who only stayed out of the position of 'Dead Last' because he could actually use the stupid Bunshin no Jutsu (Clone Jutsu), while Naruto couldn't.

Those three were friends -of a sort- that he hung out with occasionally when he ditched class, before they were dragged back by an irate Iruka.

Naruto yawned again as he walked into his bathroom, but froze as he passed the broken mirror that he had glued together from one a former neighbour had thrown out after his wife had thrown it at him when he came home drunk…again.

Visible in the cracked surface was his head, above which floated a handful of blue words.

[The Gamer]

LV4 - Uzumaki Naruto

After turning to fully view his reflection, Naruto hesitantly waved his hand through the words, half expecting them to dissipate like smoke.

Nope, they were still there. They just…hung there.

"OK, seriously starting to freak out here." he whispered.

Except…he wasn't, for some reason. He was surprised, yes, but panicking? Starting to gibber inanely? Nope.

He flinched a bit when another blue box appeared at the exact same distance the last one has appeared at. He peered at the title.