Chapter Text
It starts with a summoning gone wrong.
Naruto doesn't know much about summoning, but he knows that the dog-mask guy used it once to summon his dog friend, and that he would really like to have a friend, dog or person or otherwise.
He has to wait almost a week to find out more, until the only nice lady at the library – who let him sleep in the storeroom last time his heater broke – is working, since nobody else will let him come inside. That's okay, that's fine. Nothing else he's tried for making friends is working. The most he can get is a laugh from Kiba or Choji when a prank goes well. This is worth a try, even if it does mean a lot of waiting and a lot of reading.
From the library books he can find on summoning, it involves a whole lot of complicated seal work. Naruto doesn't know a whole lot about seal work, either. He knows it involves calligraphy – not Naruto's strong suit, at five he can't even spell the word ‘calligraphy’ yet let alone put it into practice – and that his new sensei-who's-actually-super-nice Iruka is good at making seals.
He spends a school week carefully copying down everything Iruka-sensei says about calligraphy, and seal-making supplies, and pays extra close attention to the lesson on the barrier seals even though Daikoku-sensei is giving that one and he's not nearly as nice as Iruka-sensei. It's boring, like school usually is, but he treats it like groundwork for a new prank and that helps a lot. The boredom will be worth it. If he can use all this research to summon a new friend then he won't have to be bored alone in his apartment anymore.
Everyone else in his class seems to have at least one full-grown person looking after them when they’re not at school, but Naruto hasn’t had anyone minding him most of the time since he left the orphanage last year. Jiji comes to see him sometimes, and if anyone gets really mean then the mask people appear until the threat’s passed, but mostly Naruto’s in charge of himself when he’s not at school. That’s okay, he’s gotten pretty good at climbing up onto the counter to reach the kettle, and he only scalded himself the once pouring the boiling water into the ramen cup before he got the hang of it. It was fine, since he heals really fast.
Naruto doesn’t mind being self-sufficient, since he’s never known any other way to live. But he would like some of the talking about his day, and the cuddling, and the general comradery the other kids talk about.
Dog-mask guy and a couple of the other mask people are nice enough, hovering longer and closer than they have to when someone gets particularly upset with the ‘little demon’, and perching just out of sight when he’s doing something dangerous like chopping veggies and boiling water. Once, even, he’d gone to get the rickety ladder so he could reach the red pepper flakes on the top shelf (whoever set up this apartment before he got here, Naruto doesn’t think they knew how small he is), and by the time he dragged the ladder back, his prize was sitting on the counter within reach.
So he likes the mask people well enough, thinks they might even like him as well, but they’re always so quiet. He wants someone to talk to about his day, and he figures a summon friend will about do the trick. He knows some of them can talk, like the dog-mask guy’s dog did.
After his week split between the library and gathering information at the academy, Naruto is ready to give it a try. It can’t be that hard, right? The dog-mask guy can do it, and Naruto once watched him fall out of a tree. He pilfers the necessary materials from the teachers’ supply room and takes them home to prepare.
He picks a day when the mask people are ones who don’t hover so close. No Dog or Cat, no Jackal, Bear, and Lynx. None of the mask people who seem to care if he’s okay. He doesn’t want them to freak out when he pricks his finger. He doesn’t want them to see if this fails, since they’re sorta the closest thing he has to friends right now and that would be super embarrassing. They can meet his summon friend when he gets one, he’s got room for more than one friend. Naruto’s pretty sure he can be a good friend, if he gets the chance, no matter what the people in the village say.
He’s even prepared for his new friend’s arrival. He bought tea with what precious little of his allowance he could spare for non-ramen purchases so he could make them a cup like Jiji always does when Naruto visits his office.
Lines are meticulously drawn, pieces of incomplete diagrams from the books are combined carefully and held together with Naruto’s best guess at what should go in the blank parts. Iruka-sensei says it’s important that circles in seals be perfectly round, so Naruto draws a dozen wonky ovals before he manages a good circle to serve as a base. Daikoku-sensei says it’s important that barrier seals are symmetrical, since otherwise they collapse on each other. Naruto doesn’t want his seal to collapse on his new friend, so he makes sure all the diagram pieces he puts together are equally distributed.
When he’s reasonably confident in his first attempt at fuinjutsu – another stupidly long word, but all the books insist on calling it that, and Naruto’s trying to be serious about this whole thing – Naruto stands back and examines his work. The lines are as neat as he could manage, given the scale, and it certainly seems symmetrical. All this sealing–fuinjutsu. All this fuinjutsu stuff made more sense than he was really expecting, like the way Shikamaru can always figure out riddles. The Nara never tells him how he’s cheating, just shrugs and says it’s easy to figure out. Naruto will have to apologise to his classmate tomorrow, if it’s anything like this then he doesn’t think Shikamaru was cheating after all.
Satisfied with the quality of his work, Naruto fills the plug-in kettle and sets it to boil. He would have done it earlier so the tea would already be ready by the time his friend got there, but if he leaves the kettle plugged in too long the socket starts to spark so he’s got to boil the water while he’s not focused on drawing the seal right.
The last component Naruto needs is a drop of blood to go in the centre of the array, tying things to his chakra and linking the ritual to him specifically. Problem is, the seal takes up most of the floor space in the one-room apartment, and Naruto isn’t tall enough to reach the middle without being on the seal when it activates. He consults the books, and best he can figure it should be fine. So long as the animal he summons isn’t giant enough to take up the array it shouldn’t cause a problem. Even if it is giant, like a monster toad or a cow or something, it should be fine so long as it’s not violent. Hopefully Naruto doesn’t summon a shark or a bear or anything, because he doesn’t want them to wreck his apartment. It’s nothing special, but it’s home.
Well…maybe a bear would be okay. He’s pretty sure the Bear-mask guy is the one who got the pepper flakes down, so bears can’t be all bad.
Point is, it should be fine if Naruto’s in the array when it activates, so he tiptoes around the inked lines, pokes the tip of his thumb with the tip of a kunai until blood beads up, and lets a couple drops fall into the centre of the big seal.
There’s a flash of white light, blinding Naruto entirely for an instant, then he’s falling through open space.
•••
He lands on soft grass with a thump, except for one ankle, which cracks against a rock in an instant of sharp pain. Not necessarily worse than being shoved to the pavement by an angry shopkeeper, but not better either. By the time Naruto sits up to examine the injury, it’s already starting to swell.
This isn’t exactly what he’d planned. Unless his circle was so good that he summoned a whole field on top of his apartment building, the ritual doesn’t appear to have summoned anyone at all. Maybe it summoned Naruto to this field in the middle of nowhere? Maybe he should have looked more carefully into what standing in the array could do.
Oh well, he’s here now. Better try and find his way home before it gets dark, and then beat himself up over the stupid failed experiment once he gets there. This changes nothing, Naruto is still determined to summon a friend. Just, maybe he’ll let some of the more invested mask people watch next time. Only so they don’t worry if he disappears, not because he needs supervising or something.
The pre-genin squints up at his surroundings, trying to figure out which way home is based on the position of the sun. He wasn’t paying a ton of attention when they learned about navigation, but in his defense he wasn’t expecting to have to use it quite so soon.
Doesn’t really matter, though. Despite his barely passing grade on that unit, Naruto is dead certain the sky should not hold the sun, the moon, and millions upon millions of stars all at the same time. In the absence of any chance at celestial navigation, Naruto wracks his brain for next steps. If you can’t figure out which way is north, find a river. Says Iruka-sensei’s voice in his head. Follow the river, rivers often lead to people and you won’t walk in circles. He strains his ears and catches the barest sound of water running. With a plan of action decided, Naruto sets out for the river.
The woods beyond the clearing are dark and dense, with snarling roots for the little boy to catch his already injured leg on and heavy silence where he would expect sounds of life skittering around. Naruto is used to being scared, he’s scared of villagers all the time. He ignores the hairs on the back of his neck as they raise to warn him that something is wrong wrong wrong, and just keeps following the sound of water. He doesn’t stop to rest his ankle, or to try finding the north star again, and he doesn’t look too closely at any of the too-dark-bad-wrong-wrong- wrong spots between trees.
Eventually – it’s hard to say how long, really, given the state of the sky – he reaches the river. Here, with his instincts not calm but at least not screaming, he does stop to check on his ankle. The swelling is down a little, but not as much as it would normally be because of all the bumps. It’ll probably be fine, most injuries don’t stick to Naruto for long. Kiba once broke his arm and had to wear a sling for weeks, but Naruto is lucky if he goes a week without someone breaking his arm. If he took as long as the Inuzuka did he would never heal before the next injury.
“Who're you?” Asks a voice from the treeline across from him, startling Naruto out of his thoughts. There, with its head tilted curiously, is a wolf. It’s not very big, with rich brown fur and a tuft of white on its chest.
“Me?”
“Who else, stupid?” Naruto shrugs, not entirely convinced there was nobody in the forest he walked through. Still, talking wolf. That’s close enough to a talking dog. Basically a talking dog.
“I’m Naruto.”
“Why are you here, Naruto?”
“I’m going to follow the river. Who’re you?”
“You’re lost?”
“What?”
“You’re following the river, trying to find people. Right? Mama says people live on rivers.”
“That’s what sensei says too!” this seems like it’s maybe bonding, at the very least the wolf hasn’t yelled at him or attacked him yet, and it’s not ignoring him.
“I can help you find your way, if you like.”
“You’re not busy?” Naruto’s not used to being offered help so easily.
“I can make time, but you’ll need to cross the river first.” the little boy peers down at the rushing water warily.
“I dunno.”
“Come on, it’s just a river. You’re afraid of getting a little wet?”
“I’m not afraid of the water.”
“Then what, you can’t swim or something? What kind of baby can’t swim?”
“I can so swim. I’m a really good swimmer” sort of. At least enough to get back to shore when he has to. “Why don’t you swim over here if it’s no big deal?.”
“Then–”
“Enough, Kuri,” growls a second voice from the shadow of the trees. A second wolf emerges from the trees, easily three times the size of the first. This one is taller than any grown up Naruto’s ever seen, and pure white with piercing crimson eyes. Those eyes lock onto Naruto’s, judging. Despite years of learning to run at the sight of danger, and to fight back if running isn’t an option, the little boy freezes. “You are smart not be goaded, little one, these rapids are far too fast. You would be swept away.”
“But Mama,” whines the smaller wolf, apparently called Kuri. “he’s trespassing.”
“He’s not. He smells like wolf.”
“He smells like fox, ” the disdain is clear, even though Naruto can’t read wolf facial expressions. He curls in on himself, just a little. He doesn’t think he smells like a fox, but he knows that tone usually leads to things being thrown at him. The elder wolf snorts at the comment, nodding as she dives into the water. There is no response until she reaches Naruto’s bank. He would flee now, if he could, but whatever was in the dark spots of the woods he walked through is certainly still there. Instead he clenches his fists.
“Peace, little ninja, I will not harm you. You do smell like fox, my daughter is not mistaken.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t apologise for things you have no fault in, little one. You smell like fox, but you also smell of the wolf clan. If you are under the protection of the last Hatake then you are under the protection of the Hatake wolves. I will bear you across the river, and back to the den to wait for your kin.”
“I…uh…don’t think I’ve got a ‘kin’.” The big wolf seems nice enough, and she’s probably actually offering to help, so maybe they can be something like friends? Naruto doesn’t like talking about his lack of family when he can avoid it, but he’s pretty sure honesty is important in a friendship.
“Hm, I see. Well somebody clearly disagrees. What brings you out to such dangerous woods, little ninja, if not protection?”
“He says his name is Naruto,” Kuri butts in.
“Does he, then? Well, little Naruto, my name is Kana. What are you searching for in the spirit woods?”
“I…” honesty is easy, he can at least do that. The worst they can say is no, and that only puts him back where he started this morning. “I’m trying to make a friend.” the white wolf is quiet for a long time, head tilted in an echo of her daughter when she’d first spoken.
“Well we can certainly be friends, Naruto,” she murmurs finally, “but I think you had better come home with us and stay until Hatake comes to find you. There are not many friendly faces in these woods.” and, well, not that the wolves have seemed entirely trustworthy themselves, but they’re definitely better than the lurking things in the shadows between the trees. Dog-mask guy has a talking dog friend, how different is a couple of talking wolves? Even if one is kinda rude.
“All right.” he climbs warily onto Kana’s back, half expecting her to dump him in the rapids.
She doesn’t, doesn’t even jostle him as she swims, and for that alone he trusts her enough to follow the pair into the woods, to a warm cave den on the banks of a peaceful pond, where a handful of other wolves nose at him curiously. Not one of them attacks him, doesn't so much as shoot him a dirty look. Naruto decides it'll be all right to stay here and wait for a while, just in case it turns out someone really is coming to find him out here.
He’s not sure who this Hatake guy is, but if he does come get Naruto like the white wolf says, he’ll be sure to thank him for sharing his friends.