The Racer and the Rebel

It was a new day for Naruto and Anko Mitarashi. There were new people to meet, new places to go to, and new pockets to find your hands in.

And maybe some new heads to roll.

Just as Naruto imagined, the plane ride from Japan to San Fransokyo was cushy and easy. First class had its perks, and he wasn't just talking about the flight attendants. He was lucky enough to have been gifted heavily salted peanuts and more than three kinds of soft drinks!

He was truly living the high life.

"Hell...o..." Naruto muttered to himself, testing out his new vocabulary. It sounded right to his own ears, but he wasn't sure if he cleared up his accent enough for people to be able to understand. "How ar-e yo-u? I..name is, Mitarashi Naruto."

Though his mother was a much better speaker of English than he was, Naruto knew a few words here and there from her own minimalistic teachings and hearing conversations.

He could feel his mother smiling warmly at him as the two of them left the terminal. She knew he was trying, and that was all that she asked of him. She should have started his English lessons before back when they were in Japan. She knew this was a possibility, and she knew that it would have been easier on them both had the gotten him a teacher.

"Good, Naruto." Anko praised him and ruffled her son's hair. "Now, we will be talking mostly English from now on to help you learn, okay?"

She couldn't help but let out a laugh at her son's continued grumbling. She was only slightly taller than her son was, and yet she was treating him the same as when he was only up to her hip.

"O-kay." He responded to her. "When it... is just you, and myself?" He was unsure what the correct words were. English was so confusing to him. As difficult as it was to use the language correctly, he refused to let simple words from keeping him from having fun in the new territory.

Anko, who was wearing her iconic tan trench coat, reached inside the coat and pulled out two passports from a hidden pocket. Naruto reached for the one closest to him and began to inspect it.

The passport was of himself. His full stated name, and country of origin, as well as the locations in which his passport had been stamped at.

He looked to his mother with a curious eye. Nothing needed to be said between them after she nodded back to him to confirm his thoughts. His steps slowed as her hastened, allowing her to take the lead and meet one of the men checking the passports.

"How are you today, Ma'am?" The burly security guard took her passport with a single hand, his other one ready to take Naruto's passport.

"Just fantastic. The papers were right, Japan is lovely this time of year!" Her accent was gone without a trace. She smiled and laughed to the guard, who couldn't help but to join in. Her eyes lingered to Naruto, who silently passed his passport to the guard while he was distracted.

"Maybe I'll save up enough and take a trip there myself! The wife would love it." He looked at Naruto's passport and handed each of them back to their respective owners. His hand rose to hold the brim of his invisible hat, tipping it to them and smiling.

"Welcome back to America folks!"

It wasn't long until Anko and Naruto retrieved their bags from the return and were on their way. Anko had set up for one of her personal contacts to pick her and her son up from the airport.

The two sat across from one another in the limo that Anko had her contact pick them up in. As requested, it was filled with drinks and food from the San Fran culture.

"San Fransokyo was the first and only attempt by Japan to expand beyond their main territory, having disliked technological growth and expansion before. Though the Japanese were not the first to have arrived in the area, the early Americans did not deny them the opportunity of new land. In time, San Fransokyo became the meeting point of eastern and western cultures. It wasn't until nineteen oh-six that Japan stepped in fully to help the settlement after a massive earthquake that San Fransokyo became the metropolis that it is today."

Anko looked at her son and closed the book in her hands. It was a brief history of the formation of the rather unique city, written in both Japanese and English.

"Thank you for the teaching." Naruto nodded to her lazily. He took a sip of the can of soda in his hand and set it back down in the cup holder. "But, I want to kno-w more about where we... are living now."

He looked back on his life before the sudden relocation to America. It was always just him and his mother. His father was long dead, he knew that much, but nothing about who the man was. His mother told him that he was just another target, some Jason Bourne type. He was the cream of the cream of the crop in his own organization, but was still nothing to Anko.

Naruto was the offspring of a night of passion, a surprise to the killer who didn't have the heart to kill her child. Anko used the resources she had acquired over the years to train Naruto and keep him at his peak. His body had long since adjusted to handling nearly any and all poisons, and was trained in many different areas to be useful in all situations and scenarios. Stealth, espionage, hot weapons, cold weapons, hand to hand, he was formidable in all of it.

In every aspect, Naruto was a ninja.

But there was something that set Naruto even further apart from the rest.

Anko decided that now was a good time to surprise her son, and threw a crumpled piece of paper at the young man with all the force she could muster while trying not to catch his attention.

Naruto could hear the paper piercing the air and could feel the air being pushed around. His hand raised in front of his face, stopping the paper from making any contact with him.

The wadded up piece of paper spun and floated in the air in front of Naruto's hand. With the subtle movement of his fingers, the paper was pushed around to his other hand to be caught.

He unfolded the paper, which turned out to be a brochure of some sort, and inspected the front of it.

"You're going back to school, sochi." The smile Anko cast could be heard within her voice. The smile only grew wider upon inspecting Naruto's joyous change in tune upon reading more into it.

"San Fransokyo school of Technology." Though Naruto never admitted it, he worked wonders with engineering and dabbled in various sciences. He always wondered if he could crack his strange abilities so that he could make them more powerful, or to learn how they truly worked, but his true passion lay within thermodynamics and engineering. "You didn't." He asked in wonder and disbelief.

"I know how many hours you've spent in that workshop you call a garage, Sochi. All of those cars and other motorized things you have in there are more than enough proof to me that you want to more than spending your days racing." She raised a smirk at Naruto upon hearing him chuckle nervously.

The young man scratched his head and laughed, grabbing his drink again and taking another sip. "Racing? That is against the law." He smiled at her innocently. She wasn't buying it, that much was obvious, and he knew that it was nothing more than a little show and joke. "I like working on my cars and other projects, but racing is... ill-eagle and deadly. And I do not need the money either. We have more than enough, mother." The look of innocence did not fade from his face.

Anko laughed at her son. She picked up the history of San Fransokyo once more and continued to read to herself, allowing Naruto to take the time to read up on the brochure that she had given him.

Not more than thirty minutes had passed when the limo arrived at Anko and Naruto's new house.

What was once previously an apartment space was now completely owned by Anko and Naruto. The previous residents of all of the apartments had all been relocated to other apartments within the city without moving fees as an apology for running them out of their homes.

All of the boxes containing their belongings were already shipped to the new house. It was just a matter of them unpacking and decorating the house to their liking. Anko was unwilling to let anyone touch her things other than herself and Naruto. She had trophies of all sorts from the men and women she had killed in her time, not to mention family photos of herself and Naruto as he grew into the fine young man that he was now.

The two of them left the Limo and took their bags with them, stepping into the building to see their plethora of boxes about the main floor.

"Beds should be up. You don't have to stay in the room they're in, but just sleep there for now" Anko told him. She dropped one of her bags down on the floor and walked up the stairs.

Naruto knew the basic layout of the house from the plans that his mother had shared with him many months ago. They had an entire apartment complex to themselves, and any one of the rooms could be his.

He yawned and stretched. Though it was only noon, jet lag and being up for most of the plane ride made Naruto extremely tired.

The two departed for the rooms with the beds in them to get ready for another new day.

Naruto woke up with a groan to the morning light shining on his face. Of course the room that he slept in had to be facing the rising sun, and of course it had to hit him wright in the face as the dawn broke.

He grumbled in annoyance, tossing and turning to move away from the sunlight. His thin blanket was not enough to protect his eyes from the sun, and he had nothing else but his arms to act as shields in the barren room.

Anko burst into the room soon afterward, wearing only her trench coat, a simple bra and matching pair of panties.

"Morning sochi! Any fun plans for this morning?" She yelled into the room. Her voice echoed loud and clear throughout the house, having opened all of the rooms in the building for this specific reason.

Naruto groaned once more. His lazy and aggravated gaze aimed at Anko with the intent to kill, or go away at the very least. She was always like that in the morning, chipper to an impossible point for the sheer sake of annoyance. She always greeted him and woke him up in the mornings, sometimes more or less dressed than she was now. Her lack of clothing never fazed him. She was his mother, and it wasn't like she was hiding anything that he was never aware of. Sometimes she held a knife or gun on her, but nothing biologically surprising.

"Sleep..." He grumbled in reply. "More sleep."

"You've gotten your eight hours, you're fine." She smiled and pulled the blanket off of him quickly, watching with amusement as he curled up to conserve heat and groaned even more and protested to getting up.

He knew that she was not going to stop. She would always find a way to have the last laugh, even if it ended up killing her. If he did prank her, she would return it tenfold. If he were to do anything, she would get back at him. It didn't always have to be right after. Sometimes months would pass before she returned any favors, but always got him back, often times, she would lull him into a false sense of security, making him think she forgot.

Naruto rose slowly. Fighting her was useless. Not only was the smarter and more cunning than he was, but she had trained him from the ground up. She knew everything that he could do and knew at least twelve ways to counter it all.

In the same way that he did not care about seeing his mother in nothing but underwear, Naruto didn't have any shame or embarrassment when wearing only trunks around her. He had some clothes in one of the bags that he had brought up with him. A pair of black pants and an orange and black track jacket, as well, as his favorite headband. He carried the symbol of the Hidden Leaf, the crime organization that his mother worked with for a number of years before retiring to America. They were like family to him, and it was a shame that he had to leave them all behind.

"So there's a little cafe a few blocks away. You won't be starting school for another week or so, so you can get used to the new city." Anko leaned against the frame of the door. "Lucky Cat Cafe, it's called. The head of the Institute told me that one of your classmates lives there."

"I've been meaning to ask you about that." Naruto zipped up the black and orange jacket over a simple black tee shirt. "The Paper. The bro-chur. It says that admittance is gained through some sort of exposition."

Anko shook her head and stepped forward to ruffle her son's hair. "Don't worry, I convinced the Dean to let you in, given your skillset and talent, not to mention your records back in Japan."

Naruto sighed and shrugged. "But it seems unfair." He wasn't one to talk about being unfair, but he knew his passion, and he knew that other people had passions as well. If he were in their shoes, he would sure be mad that some no-name kid from another country just waltzed in rather than showing off their skills like the others. "And what will the others of the school say when they find out that I was just...admitted?"

"If you feel so strongly." Anko pulled out her phone from her trench coat and tapped on the screen. "I'll talk to him. You can't go back to the easy route now, sochi."

Ha already had thoughts and ideas for what he could create to be admitted into the school. While he could have simply taken one of his older projects and put them on the stand, he wanted something new, he wanted a challenge for himself. Something so fantastic and spectacular that it would knock the socks off of everyone in the immediate area.

"You have twenty." Anko's voice pulled Naruto back into the plane of reality. He knew those words all too well, and waited until his mother left the room to bolt out with his hygiene bag and find the nearest bathroom.

Anko held Naruto to her own standards in certain things. She always took twenty minutes or less to fully prepare herself for the day, and expected Naruto to do the same. If she could get fully washed, make her face, do her hair, and get on all of her clothes in only twenty minutes, Naruto should be able to do it in five.

The two of them got themselves ready for the day and met back at the ground floor, where all of the boxes still lay scattered on the ground.

Naruto waited at the bottom of the stairs for his mother. His hair was freshly dried and as spiky as usual. He never needed special products or gels to keep his hair up. His hair was just always up.

He was not at all surprised to see his mother landing next to him from the top of the stair well. She landed unharmed, a soft whoosh sounding as she touched down on the ground. Like Naruto, she was gifted with mysterious abilities to control the wind. She loved jumping and climbing things. It was one of the many things that he took on after her. She was always a fan of hard-core parkour.

"Ready to go?" She asked him.

"Yes." Naruto nodded back, his purple and blonde hair shaking with the motions of his head.

The two left the building and descended upon the hill that they lived on.

A full month passed since Naruto and his mother left their new home for the first time of many. They had gotten to spend their morning at the Lucky Cat Cafe, where they met the owner of the cafe, Cass Hamada. She seemed to run it well enough on her own, though did complain that her two genius nephews lacked the intellect required to get her some sort of robotic help.

Naruto had yet to meet either of the Hamada kids. Tadashi had been working on a new project overtime at the institute, and Hiro had just gotten his high school degree. At only thirteen, Hiro Hamada graduated high school in its entirety. Not even Naruto could laugh at that fact.

But it wasn't the time to think about Naruto's future classmate and his brother.

Now was the time to show everyone his newest invention.

Naruto stood on the circular platform in the large show room, a singular light focused on him as he looked at the onlookers.

He would be lying if he said he was not anxious about getting in. All of the other admittees were just as smart as he was in their own fields. There might have even been some competing for his spot in the same field of thermodynamics and engineering. His English wasn't all that refined either. His accent still got in the way of many English words and sounds

"Hel-lo." Naruto spoke into the microphone to garner attention. "Hello?" He repeated, ensuring that most, if not all of the eyes in the room, were on him. "Yo."

"Technology advances more and more every day, but the world, especially here in America, is troubled by one problem." He paced over the stage, his hands moving with his mouth as he spoke. He stopped pacing to address his topic. He creating knife hands and sliced downwards. "Fossil fuels."

He began to pace once more. "The transition to electricity is slow here. But I have two new creations that will solve the problem." Again, he stopped, his arms spread wide as he stood at the end of the stage.

"Mamushi." He whispered just a moment before jumping off the stage and into the crowd. The onlookers cried and screeched in fear, but none of them were harmed, only treated to the sound of light humming.

Naruto levitated over them almost silently. As they looked up, they saw the young man with a set of mechanical wings, outstretched as far as they would go.

"My first invention for you to see is my winged jetpack." He hovered backwards slowly; rising more and more the closer he got to the stage. "The wings retract and expand, based on the muscles used in your arms and back, and is propelled by two special jets." Naruto played around as he explained, moving all around and spinning. "As fast as a real jet plane, and as small as a toy one."

"The jets are powered using my new fuel. It is unnamed, but is as safe as electricity with the power of...tank...Tank fuel..." He tapered off quietly, landing back down on the ground silently. "Deseel!" He exclaimed. His finger shot up in the air, forcing him to rise once again.

"The fuel is of my own making. I don't want to bore you all with it. It would just sound like I poured fuels into a jar and shook it." He smiled at himself, seeing the positive feedback that his inventions were getting. "I was falling asleep when I thought of the formula, and spent the next few days working on it."

The explanation for his inventions went on without a problem. He wowed the board with his display, and all too soon it was over.

Naruto hovered back to the ground for a final time that evening. With his display over, Naruto took off the backpack and stored it away in the case he had brought it in. While he was putting it away, he noticed a black and purple head of hair fading into the crowd. He had almost mistaken the hair for his mother's but the person walking away lacked Anko's trench coat. He shook his head, wondering who else liked purple in their hair.

Naruto was approached by two people. The first of which was his mother herself, standing next to an older looking man in a sweater vest.

"Great gaki! it went great!" Anko cheered for her son and put him in a head lock to ruffle his hair. "I knew you could do it!"

Naruto laughed and attempted to escape, only to end up having to wait until she released him.

Though silent, Naruto knew that the man in the sweater vest was waiting to speak. His calm and warm smile upon seeing the mother and son duo. His entire demeanor was welcoming.

"I have to admit, Naruto-san. I did have my doubts about you when I was informed about you being invited into our school without having to show at the expo." He stepped forward and bowed the two. "Robert Callaghan. You'll be attending my robotics class."

Naruto was skeptical about the middle aged man. His mother nudged his forward, whispering into his ear.

"He isn't in with the program." Anko whispered into his ear in their native language to evade Callaghan's ears. Even with his ear to an engine most of the time, Naruto's hearing was as good as it could be. "Just that we're foreign. Be polite."

Callaghan seemed not to notice. "Whether the mind comes from next door or overseas, I welcome new people in my class. I can't wait to see what other projects you devise with me and your classmates."

Callaghan's hand rose first, quickly followed by Naruto's to shake. Naruto found it only respectable that he show the older man a similar politeness. He was his new teacher after all, and getting on his bad side would not be good. He didn't seem to be capable of having a bad side, but Naruto knew the saying all too well.

Demons run when a good man goes to war.

"Class starts next school year. I'm sure you'll get along with your classmates swimmingly." He smiled and chuckled to himself, his weight shifting from one side to the other. "I'd say prepare and study up, but I think you'll be just fine."

Naruto wanted the evening to be a racing night, but without a car or other vehicle at his disposal, Naruto could not race. He was sure to not even be counted if he used his new wing pack, so he instead celebrated his entrance with his mother.

The two moved from the Exposition hall to the Lucky Cat Cafe, where Cass Hamada worked, singing jauntily and jovially all the way there.

The door was opened by Naruto, allowing Anko to step in first.

She waltzed in to the cafe as if she owned it. She was so proud of her son for gaining admittance into the institute.

"Oh, hey, it's you two!" Cass smiled the instant that they entered the cafe. "How'd the expo go?" She leaned further on the counter to get a better look at the mother and son duo, wondering how things went.

"Guess who just got into the San Fransokyo Institute of Technology~!" Anko sang aloud, pulling her son into another headlock. Her free hand pointed her thumb at the boy to indicate that she was talking about him.

Cass smiled and hopped in her place. In the month that had passed, Anko spent many of her mornings at the cafe, talking to Cass and getting food for herself and Naruto. Sometimes she would stay longer than anticipated to listen to Hiro and Tadashi's accomplishments in school. It was going to be Tadashi's second year at the institute, Anko heard, meaning that Naruto was going to have someone that knew his way around the campus to help him if he ever needed it.

"Tadashi! Hiro! Come over here and meet our new neighbors!" Cass turned to the stairs leading up to the living quarters of the building.

A young man popped his head out of the paneless window into the kitchen to see who Cass was talking about. His black hair and brown eyes were nothing special to Naruto or Anko, with their purple hair, and blue and amber eyes respectively, but they did get a laugh out of the kiss the cook apron that he was wearing.

He looked at Naruto and inspected him, smiling briefly before pulling back into the kitchen and walking out through the door. "So you're Naruto, huh?" He looked up and down at the young man. "I'm sorry we didn't talk much before the Expo. I've been working on something new, and I'm sure you blew the board away with whatever you made." His hand extended briefly, but was put down before Naruto would shake his hand. Tadashi seemed to have been aware that they were not from America, and bowed to them instead. "Hamada Tadashi, nice to finally meet the both of you."

He turned to the stairs as Cass did, leaning forward and even taking a few steps in that direction. "Hiro! Get your lazy butt down here, we've got guests!"

Naruto and his mother joined in the Hamada tradition of looking at the stairs while waiting for the youngest of them to join the public.

All too suddenly, a yelp came from the stairs, immediately followed by the tumbling of a hooded figure. Naruto had urge to leap and save the falling figure, but the hand on his shoulder kept him from acting upon his instincts.

The figure groaned, a hand reaching to rub his forehead to soothe the pain.

Tadashi laughed and stepped towards the short figure, helping him to his feet. "Nice entrance, goofball. How's your head?" Tadashi pulled the hood off to reveal a mess of jet black hair and tired eyes.

"I'll be fine, just been working a lot." He continued to rub his head, not seeming to have noticed either of the two figures. "Hiro Hamada, nice to meet you two." He spoke unexpectedly, not bothering to look at Naruto and Anko.

Cass laughed anxiously and moved to Hiro's free side, patting his shoulder in an act of comfort. "He's just tired. He's been working day and night on something new, a robot! Can you believe it!?" She jumped and clapped her hands ecstatically, bouncing within a small invisible circle to avoid hitting anyone.

Cass tried just a little too hard to be cool and supportive to her nephews. She was the cool mom, the fun uncle, and the crazy aunt, all rolled into one brunette being. Hiro's nervous laugh and Tadashi's more sincere one showed that they cared for her in return for her efforts, even if she was a little more embarrassing than most guardians.

"A robot?" Naruto inquired. "Can it think on its own? Or is it controlled by the remote?"

"Remote." Hiro answered monotonously. "AI is tricky, and the bot is too small to fit what I need to make it an AI." He began to shift to one side, then the other, wading back and forth slowly as his eye lids drooped lower and lower.

Anko looked at the youngest of the group warily, wondering if Cass should have been fixing him a mug of coffee or an energy drink of some sort.

Cass's head popped up as she bolted into the kitchen. "We need celebration food! For the newest student of the San Fransokyo Institute!"

Naruto laughed with his mother, the two of them being guided to a table by Tadashi while Hiro ascended upon the stairs.

Another hard thud and groan of pain from the stairs turned the three available heads to see what had happened to Hiro this time. None of them saw him at the bottom of the stairs, and Tadashi presumed the best and that he fell down near his room.

"I'll be right back." Tadashi excused himself to help his brother.

Anko and Naruto sat down across from one another at the table, waiting patiently for Cass to deliver their food to them. They both wondered what she was making for them. Naruto doubted that Cass made noodles on a regular basis, being the owner of a cafe, but it did seem more likely that she would prepare dango and other treats for them.

He wondered if the dango she was possibly making was any good. It must have been to some level in order to maintain the cafe, but Naruto was sure that whatever quality it was, it was not as good as his own recipe.

Naruto had taken the initiative to shut down a dango &restaurant in the past when they refused to give them the recipe list. The &restaurant also operated as a black market outlet, which eventually moved to a ramen shack not too far away from there. Anko was not happy that he had shut down the place, but he always managed to make up for it by making her dango using the recipe.

Cass returned with a tray of drinks and foods for the two of them. A small mug of coffee sat on an equally small plate for Anko. It was black, and the mug was surrounded by little containers of creams and sugars if Anko so wished to change it. Naruto had the pleasure of getting a soda. It wasn't nearly as interesting as her mother's coffee, but it mattered little to him.

Naruto dug into the food. He did not care what it was, only that it was consumable and pleasurable to his taste buds. Anko ate at a more humane pace, pausing and stopping every so often to talk to Cass, who sat backwards on one of the chairs.

"So, I take it that Naruto's wing thing went well?" Cass had already been informed by Anko what Naruto had been building, and Anko assumed that it was safe to say that through her, Tadashi and possibly Hiro knew as well.

"Yes." Anko nodded. Her hand wrapped around the mug of coffee. She took a swig and sighed in relief. "The board loved it. It even blew Professor Callaghan away."

Cass bobbed her head, nodding to both Anko and her own unspoken thoughts. "He is a tough cookie to actually impress." She noted. "He's seen a lot of cool science stuff in his day, I know that much. Even Tadashi had a bit of trouble impressing him the first time he tried out for the show."

Cass laughed to herself jovially. She lacked the brains that her nephews had, but her heart lay within the right place. After the fiasco of last year's expo, Cass decided that she would let Tadashi and Hiro perform in peace. She did what she could to help morally, but she was no good with machines like the two of them.

They ate and the chatted the night away. Tadashi had joined them some time later after ensuring that Hiro was alright and off to bed.

Soon enough, closing time came around and Naruto and Anko left the Lucky Cat Cafe for the evening. Naruto decided on waiting to give Cass his dango recipe.

World class black market food doesn't come cheap.

Hello everyone, and welcome to a new story somewhat out of left field, The Racer and the Rebel! This is a challenge that was given to me by my friend and beta, Ogreman, and he is the one who oversaw the creation of this chapter, as well as all of the ones to come.

Like Ice Fox and An Offer You Can't refuse, this fic will be in my main lineup at the moment, and will be seeing updates regularly.

In any case, I hope you all enjoyed the first little chapter, and don't forget to read, rate, and review!

Until next time!