Chapter Text
The headband was there.
First thing. Silver plate. Blue cloth. Crooked where he'd fallen asleep clutching it like an idiot.
Naruto grinned into his pillow so hard his face hurt.
Then the grin slipped because the dream came back in greasy scraps.
Wood wheels rattling over stone.
A streak of orange where orange had no business being.
A clang that hit half a breath before it happened. Splash. Blood.
He sat up fast enough to tangle himself in the blanket and nearly pitch face-first into the floorboards. Good start. Dignified as hell. Truly the bearing of a future legendary shinobi. Somewhere the Hokage Monument was probably nodding in approval. Behold, Uzumaki Naruto, village hero, strangled to death by a blanket.
"Shut up," he told the room, because the room had clearly been thinking shit.
The apartment smelled like old ramen broth, dust, and summer heating up in the walls. Light shoved through the curtains in hard yellow bars and laid itself over the clutter: instant-cup towers, a sock that had given up on life behind a chair leg, three kunai, a plant on the windowsill that might still be alive. Naruto slapped both hands over his face and laughed into them.
Genin.
Academy screwup yesterday. Dead-last yesterday. Village mascot on other people's worst days. Genin now.
He grabbed the headband with both hands and held it up. The metal flashed. For one second the room tilted wrong. The plate in his hands wasn't a plate. It was a slice of sunlight. It was a mirror. It was something catching morning from a place a little to the left of the world.
Naruto stared at it.
"Okay," he said carefully. "Cool. Totally normal. Probably everyone gets haunted by breakfast after graduation. Then by another breakfast. Then Lunch. Then snacks. Get the picture?"
He tied it on anyway. Had to. That thing could have started singing threats in Old Man Third's voice and he still would've worn it. He tied it too tight first, hissed, loosened it, retied it, then leaned over the mirror nailed crooked near the sink.
The mirror gave him the same face it always did. Whisker marks. Sleep-crushed blond hair trying to escape in six directions at once. Blue eyes too bright for this dump of an apartment. But the headband changed the whole deal. Same idiot face. Official idiot face.
He pointed at himself.
"Look at you," he said. "Disgusting. Inspiring. Girls will line up."
The mirror Naruto looked unconvinced. Jealous bastard.
He washed fast, teeth, face, hair if flicking water at it counted, then ripped open a packet of instant noodles and ate half of it dry because he didn't have the patience to wait for water and because victory tasted better crunchy anyway. He kept getting flashes at the edge of his skull, little afterimages from sleep. A wheel. A voice he couldn't catch. The feel of moving before moving. Every time he turned to pin one down, it skittered away.
Dream leftovers. That was all.
People had weird dreams all the time. Sexy dreams. Murder dreams. Dreams where Iruka-sensei turned into a giant squid and failed everybody for bad penmanship. Dreams where Sakura-chan confessed her love to him. Human brains were trash fires. Everybody knew that.
He kicked open the apartment door and bounded into the hall with enough force to wake the old woman downstairs if she hadn't already been awake, which she probably had because old people were creepy and never slept.
Konoha hit him in the face.
Morning noise. Window shutters knocking. A broom rasping across a storefront. Somebody cursing a stubborn cartwheel. Dogs barking like in a gang. The whole village had that summer smell of hot wood, broth, river damp, and leaves. Green everywhere. Green in the trees, green on the flak jackets of shinobi cutting across rooftops, green on signs painted by people trying too hard to make commerce cheerful.
Naruto threw both arms wide.
"Good morning, peasants!" he shouted. "Your future Hokage has arrived!"
A pair of crows launched from a roof in outrage.
An old man arranging buckets outside a bathhouse looked up, squinted, and barked a laugh. "Future Hokage ought to comb his hair."
"This is battle hair," Naruto shot back. "It terrifies my enemies."
"It terrifies hygiene around this bathhouse. Keep moving."
Naruto kept moving, cackling. That's what you did. Hit first. Hit loud. Make them laugh before they could decide what else to do with you.
And for a few streets, it worked beautifully.
He cut through a lane where laundry hung overhead like surrendered flags, hopped a low wall, landed on a sun-hot crate, vaulted off it, and nearly ate shit because somebody had sloshed mop water across the stones. A little girl saw the wobble and gasped. Naruto spun it into a ridiculous bow.
"Demonstration," he said.
She giggled. Her mother yanked her two steps back so fast the girl's sandal slapped the ground.
There it was.
Tiny. Quick. Routine.
The mother's face did that thing faces of grown-ups did when they remembered him all at once. Not Naruto, village idiot. Naruto. Him. The fox-container, the trouble magnet, the bad-luck kid in orange.
She dragged the girl on without a word.
Naruto shoved his hands in his pockets and kept walking.
Fine. Fine. Maybe they were in a hurry. Maybe she hated orange. Maybe she was raising the kid to distrust excellent men with magnificent hair.
At the corner near the pickled vegetable shop, the owner saw the headband, went blank for a second, then said, "Congratulations," with the flat voice of a man bowing at knifepoint.
"Thanks," Naruto said. "Try not to sound so overwhelmed. I know this is big for you."
The man made a face like he regretted having a mouth.
Naruto bought nothing because he had no money because the world hated art, genius, and orphans.
By the time he hit the main market road, he was hungry again. Impressive. Heroic, even. His appetite has always been large. He should get a second headband for appetite alone.
He ducked toward Ichiraku on pure instinct and because if Teuchi-san didn't count as one of the village's few functioning people, then Konoha was even more fucked than advertised.
The ramen stand curtain snapped against his shoulder. Broth smell. Soy. Pork. Heaven with stools.
Ayame leaned on the counter, saw the headband, and lit up. "Well, look at you."
Naruto planted both hands on the counter and thrust his forehead at her like a lunatic. "You may gaze. Many do."
"Mm. Tin plate. Cloth. Face underneath still puzzled."
"Jealousy is an ugly color on you."
Teuchi laughed from behind the steam. "Sit down, genin."
That hit different. Sit down, genin.
Naruto dropped onto the stool before his chest could do something embarrassing and soft. "Say it again."
"Pay first."
"You wound me."
"Good. Means you're alive."
Ayame slid him a bowl on the house before he could argue, which meant he argued anyway out of principle and because accepting kindness too fast made it feel slippery. He lost the argument in three seconds and attacked the ramen with the focus of a starving saint. Broth heat filled his mouth. Salt, fat, noodles with some bite left in them. Real food. Food someone had made on purpose, for him, because they liked his stupid face.
Maybe today would hold after all.
"So?" Ayame asked. "Assigned yet?"
"Later." Naruto swallowed. "I could end up anywhere. Elite squad. Special assassination unit. Secret princess protection mission."
Teuchi snorted. "Princess protection."
"I have a face women trust."
"Women fear collateral damage."
Naruto pointed his chopsticks at both of them. "When I'm Hokage I'll remember this disloyalty."
Ayame tapped the headband plate with one fingernail. "When you're Hokage, maybe tighten that knot. Looks like one hard sneeze and the whole dream falls off."
Naruto reached for it automatically.
The instant his fingers brushed the metal, his stomach dipped.
Street outside. Sun on stone.
A handcart piled with paint tins or milk cans or something else bright and heavy. A little body crouching low. A metal squeal.
Naruto blinked hard.
"You okay?" Ayame asked.
"Yeah." Too fast. "Yeah, fine. Victory's making me light-headed. Happens to champions."
Teuchi gave him the kind look others used when they were trying not to make a big deal out of you being weird. Naruto hated that look on principle. Sometimes also because he wanted it to stay.
He slurped the rest of the broth, thanked them with a grin big enough to pass inspection, and escaped before anybody could ask the question again.
Outside, the market road had thickened. Housewives with baskets. Two shinobi in flak jackets pretending not to eavesdrop on everybody. A carpenter carrying boards on one shoulder. Kids orbiting a candied-fruit stall. Noise piled over noise until the whole street sounded like pots fighting.
Naruto slowed.
There.
The handcart.
It wasn't paint. Milk cans. Six of them, bright in the sun, strapped in with a rope that looked annoyed to be alive. The cart sat angled near the slope where the market road dipped toward a side lane. The delivery guy hauling it was young, maybe thirteen, all elbows and bad luck, arguing with a woman over exact change.
Naruto's skin tightened.
He crossed the road without deciding to. Stopped. Looked around. Nothing dramatic. Nobody bleeding. No assassin dropping from the sky. Just Konoha, doing its usual dance of commerce and bullshit.
A little boy broke from his mother's side and darted after a rolling candy.
The candy bumped once over the stones. Twice. Spun under the handcart.
The boy crouched.
Naruto's mouth went dry.
The cart rope had one thread hanging loose. One. Frayed white at the end.
The left wheel bumped the edge of a stone and gave a tiny sideways hitch.
Metal clicked.
The sound hit Naruto's spine like a hand.
After that it got filthy.
One version: the wheel jumped, the cart tipped, one of the milk cans cracked the kid's skull open like a dropped melon.
Another: Naruto shouted first, lost the second, reached late.
Another: the mother ran, slipped, took the hit herself.
Another, another, another, all of them in one ugly fistful, all of them so fast he didn't have words for them, only impact and white light and the knowledge of where not to be.
He moved.
Quick he understood. Quick was training and hunger and years of dodging things thrown by people too cowardly to hit a kid with their own hands.
This came earlier than quick.
He was already there.
One hand fisted the back of the little boy's shirt and yanked hard enough to make the kid squawk. Naruto twisted, kicked the front axle brace with his heel, and hit the ground on one shoulder as the cart lurched.
The wheel came off.
One milk can slammed down where the boy's neck had been. Another split open on the stones. White flooded the street. The delivery kid screamed. Somebody farther back did too, late and thin.
Naruto rolled up with the child under one arm and stared at the wreckage.
His heart was trying to punch its way out through his throat.
The little boy had started crying from shock and rage, the clean offended howl of someone whose morning had been ruined by a maniac in orange.
"Hey, hey, you're welcome," Naruto said breathlessly. "You are so Rude. I save your tiny life and this is the thanks I get?"
The mother tore in, white-faced, scooped her son from Naruto's arms, and clutched him so hard the kid's crying hit a new pitch. For one second she looked at Naruto like she'd never seen him before.
Then the rest of her face came back.
"You could've hurt him."
Naruto laughed. It came out wrong. "Yeah, that was the problem here."
The delivery boy was on his knees in spilled milk, swearing at the broken axle. "I tightened it. I did, I tightened it this morning, I swear-"
"Kid moved like a cat," somebody said.
"Like a lunatic," said somebody else.
"Crazy bastard."
"Reckless bastard."
"Same thing with him."
Naruto's ears rang.
The market looked too bright. Every edge cut cleaner than it should have. Milk spreading through cracks in the stone. Rope end twitching in the breeze. The little candy dissolving in a white puddle under a broken can. He knew that puddle. He'd seen it ten heartbeats ago. Or in a dream. Or in the half place where his skull had decided to become a haunted house.
The mother backed away with her son, still holding him close, gratitude and old fear wrestling on her face until fear won on points.
"Come on," she muttered to the boy. "Come on."
Naruto stood there while the crowd rebuilt itself around the accident. That was the village's favorite trick. Break, flinch, reset. A carpenter propped the cart. Somebody started helping gather the intact cans. A pair of women were already telling the story in two different versions, one where Naruto had made the whole thing worse and one where he'd saved the kid by blind luck because sometimes even pests were useful.
Naruto could still feel those other versions clawing at him.
Routes. Bad routes. Tiny ugly roads branching off the second before the wheel went.
His hands started shaking.
He shoved them into his pockets.
"Show-off," a bored chunin muttered as he passed.
Naruto grinned at his back on pure reflex. "Sorry, should I have let the milk kill him? Would you like it?"
The chunin gave him a flat look and kept walking.
Naruto waited until nobody was watching him closely. Then he turned down the nearest side lane and leaned one palm against a sun-hot wall.
Breathe in.
Dust. Wood. Somebody grilling river fish farther off. His own sweat going sharp.
Breathe out.
He squeezed his eyes shut. The dream scraps came back meaner now. Wheel. Clang. Orange slash across gray stone. He'd told himself it was garbage from sleep. Fine. Great. Cute theory. Except garbage from sleep wasn't supposed to get into your muscles and move your body around.
"Okay," he said to the wall.
The wall, being a wall, offered no wisdom.
Adults knew things. In theory. That was supposed to be their whole contribution to civilization. They got wrinkles and authority and in exchange they explained why the world did deranged shit every now and then.
Iruka would ask too many questions too fast. Also he'd get that face. The one that said concern so loud Naruto wanted to run through a window.
The old man, though.
The old man collected weird.
Naruto pushed off the wall, adjusted his headband, and started toward the Hokage Tower with a stride that looked swaggering from a distance and felt a lot like retreat.