This is my very first fan-fic. Don't you feel privileged to read it?

Disclaimer: Unfortunately I don't own Naruto or I wouldn't have to write these fan fictions for my supper…WHAT? I'M NOT GETTING PAID FOR THIS?!

Prologue 1

Naruto couldn't help but giggle slightly as he watched the chuunin coming closer to his cleverly concealed pit. The jerk had spit on him the other day in the street, hence this highly personalized prank. He glanced at the bucket lying next to him and couldn't help but smile even wider. The thousands of little ants he had raided from the ant hill out in the woods were roiling and he knew, knew, how absolutely terrified of bugs this specific chuunin was.

It would have been a surprise to his class mates but Naruto was an expert tactician. He knew how to observe his enemy and make an attack that was highly personalized and stylized. He always observed the enemy before the attack and found the perfect weak point. He smiled thinking of the last chuunin he had pranked. The idiot had practically walked into the kunoichi ambush Naruto had cleverly set up.

The startled cry the chuunin sent up was Naruto signal. He dashed forward, the seething bucket of live insects ready. The hapless chuunin managed to look up just in time to get a face full of angry ants. The scream would have done any woman proud and Naruto couldn't help but laugh out loud, enjoying the man's girly cries. The trained chuunin was so distracted by the ants crawling over him and under his clothes that he couldn't summon enough chakra to leap out of the pit.

"Naruto! Damn you, you little demo- Aaah!" the chuunin screamed as he danced around trying to claw the ants out of his clothes.

"HA! Take that. That will teach you to spit on other people, you ba-"

"You're a little young to be cursing like that, I would think," a calm voice from behind him said.

Naruto jumped up and spun around. A hand grabbed collar preventing him from dashing away. Naruto cringed, his hands coming up to protect his head, mentally cursing himself for staying near the scene of his crime. He peered fearfully up at the figure who peered curiously down at the chuunin, still screaming down in a pit. The man was big and his head was bald and covered in scars, but his eyes held amusement as he stared down at the terrified chuunin. "Nicely done, monopolizing on the man's fear." He commented in a low tone. Naruto stared at him in shock. "Eh, boy, focus you're chakra a little more. You're a chuunin act like it."

The chuunin's reply was unprintable.

The scarred man chuckled and finally looked at Naruto whose eyes were narrow. "So I finally meet the little kid who's been making fools of the entire shinobi force."

Not being instantly beaten did wonders for one's courage. "That's right, old man. I'm the best. BELIEVE IT!" Naruto yelled, thrusting his fist in the air, magnificently despite the fact that he was still being held by the collar.

Said old man, who wasn't actually that old, chuckled. "I like you. What's your name?"

"Uzumaki Naruto, the next Hokage!"

That statement brought an arch to the man's eyebrows, but he only smiled faintly. "Well, Uzumaki-san, I am Ikibi."

Naruto's mouth dropped open at the honorific added to his name and he stared at the man in shock. After a moment he shut his mouth. "I like you," he said seriously, nodding his head, "Why haven't I ever met you before, Ikibi-san?"

"I work in the ANBU headquarters," he said, "I don't interact much with outsiders, especially ones of your age group."

"I suppose that makes sense, though I thought you were supposed to keep that sort of thing a secret," Naruto said, his head cocking quizzically to the side.

"That doesn't work well, Uzumaki-san, if everyone already knows who you are and what you do."

"So what do you do?"

Ikibi looked at boy for few moments, measuring him. He was beginning to like Uzumaki Naruto. Probably because the boy seemed to be tuning out the chuunin's screams as effectively as he was. He knew the boy was the Kyuubi vessel and he also knew the boy was attacked quite frequently and occasionally quite seriously. The Hokage-sama always sent him the more serious attackers. The boy could be beaten down or angry and bitter toward s everyone, like the Uchiha child. Instead the boy was friendly towards people who respected him and delightfully vengeful on the people he felt he had been wronged by. In this case the reaction was completely justifiable. "I'm the head torturer for the Hokage."

The boy stared at him for a moment, his eyes narrow. Finally he said something that disturbed and shocked Ikibi. "Do people hate you because of it?"

"No," Ikibi said after a moment of consideration, "But they are afraid of me."

Naruto nodded gravely, and Ikibi noticed they were still standing over the screaming chuunin. "We'd better be going before he attracts more attention with that screaming of his."

Naruto grimaced. "You would think he would have some guts. Those aren't even the black spiders that make you sick."

As they wandered away Ibiki wondered how often the boy was going to keep saying things like that.

3 Years Later

"A shinobi's greatest tool is the mind; either yours or someone else's. Especially when it comes to fear. Fear is the most devastating weapon a shinobi has because it turns your opponent against you. Cultivating a personality that enhances fear is the best tool against enemies. However these personalities often turn out to be repeated to often and can lose their touch as in the case of Mo-"

"Wha'cha doin?"

Naruto looked up from the heavy tome at the boy who stood looking down at him. The pineapple shaped hair was vaguely familiar to him, but the lazy slouch was undoubtedly that of a Nara. He sifted through his earlier memories trying to figure out where he had seen the other boy before. They were about the same age and with that he realized that the boy had slept in the third row the first two months he had been at the Academy.

Nara Shika-something. What was it?

Naruto smiled widely at the boy, his blue eyes lighting up. He rarely saw people his own age since being adopted and apprenticed by Ikibi-niisan three years ago. "Hi, I'm Uzumaki Naruto! What's your name?"

"Shikameru."

That's it! Shikameru. Gotta remember that.

"So, wha'cha readin?"

Naruto blinked, looked down at the thick book in his laugh and then grinned. "It's Ibiki-niichan's study guide for me. It's got lots of different writers and exercises." He smiled proudly holding up the book that looked distressingly thick and complicated to the lazy Nara. "It's personalized."

"Uhh, okay."

They stood like that for a moment before Naruto asked, "You wanna sit down?"

"Yeah," Shikameru sighed in relief as he slumped on the bench. He looked at the blond boy curiously. Nara's were inherently lazy; they really didn't like to bother with anything other than watching clouds. However they were definitely not stupid and even a nine year old Nara knew that there was something different about another nine year old kid sitting in the Information and Interrogation Office's waiting room reading.

Nara's were curious. It wasn't very startling that they were always bored considering that about most anything that piqued their interest was carefully deducted, analyzed, reasoned, and then neatly filed away before it could even begin to become curious. Simply put, life didn't hold enough mysteries to keep the Nara from being bored. And for them bored equaled lazy.

However Nara Shikameru knew there was something different about this situation. His father had brought him here and threatened him, on pain of death (otherwise known as chores; tch, troublesome things) not to tell his mother. The jounin had then proceeded to give the boy a list of things he was to ABSOLUTELY NOT DO on pain of death (real death this time) most of which the boy would have been too lazy to do even if he hadn't been threatened. All in all, his father's actions had told Shikameru that this was a very dangerous, unfriendly place where the jounin were as likely to rip out your eyeballs as they were to slit your throat. Saying that both were very common and that the section even had their own medic-nin.

So it had tickled his interest when he had seen a sunny blond who looked to be about his own age sitting on one of the old worn sofas, the books, empty ramen cup, water bottle and shoes around him showing him to be very comfortable and quite possibly a resident of such sofa.

Since Shikameru wasn't an idiot, just lazy, he knew that Information and Interrogation Offices meant was a more polite civilized, humane way of saying "Home of the Insane Paranoid Spies Who See Enemies Around Every Corner and Usually End up Killing Said Spies, Oh, and their Friends, The Guys Who Like to See Blood, Guts and Pain, Your Friendly Neighborhood Torturers, Reside Here Too".

Shikameru snorted softly. They might as well have put Konoha's House of Many Horrors on the sign. It would have had about the same effect on the population.

"Sooo," the beginning of the blonds' question was drawn out as though he was hesitant to ask, "Do you go to the Ninja Academy?"

"Yeah."

"What's it like?"

Shikameru thought for a second. "Troublesome," he decided.

"Oh," the blond sounded slightly relieved. That made Shikameru curious.

"Why'd ya ask?"

"Oh, well," the blond looked at him and gave a large foxy grin, "Ikibi-niisan won't let me go and I was worried because all the books say that all the real, real good shinobi went to the Academy. So I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing anything."

"Hmm."

They sat in silence a few moments longer.

"Shikameru?"

"Hmm?"

"You wanna play a game?"

That caught the lazy genius's interest. Even if all the people always lost when they played him, the simple act of having someone to strategize against made the game fun. There was a reason the Nara were ninja's instead of genius inventors, or bankers or something else. "You got shougi?"

Naruto's grin nearly blinded him. "Yep, and go too!"

"Hmm...alright."

"YATTA! WOHOO!" Naruto rocketed off the couch, jarring Shikameru and in a quick whirl of legs and arms was practically swarming up a large decorative shelf situated neatly in the cold, neatly decorated room. Shikameru could practically feel the energy coming off the boy and, as if it was some weird disease, he could feel himself becoming a little more energetic. Which meant almost, maybe a normal lazy person.

The blond ran back to him, dumped the game in his lap before running to drag the coffee table sitting a few feet away to their feet, chattering happily to Shikameru who was smiling in a lazy way. The blond didn't seem to be the brightest bulb in the bunch (he meant that as a euphemism, literally the boy could rival the sun) but he really did have enthusiasm.

Reaching out he began to set up his own pieces.

He had no idea how Naruto had done it. He was still staring at the board, shocked confused and perhaps mentally scared for life. It was a draw. A perfect tie. Every piece was completely unable to move anywhere else. Every single piece.

Shikameru's hand shook slightly as his reached out to touch the last piece he had been able to move. He hadn't had a draw in two years and that had been against his father. No one, NO ONE, had ever managed to so completely screw his strategy up. He lifted his head and stared wide eyed at Naruto who was also peering at the board a look of awe on his face. He raised his head and their eyes met.

Wide blue met unnaturally wide black. Suddenly Naruto's face transformed in to the happiest, brightest and probably dumbest smile Shikameru had ever seen.

"That. Was. So. Frikkin. AWESOME!!!" Naruto jumped up and began to dance around. Bounding back and forth between the board and Shikameru's still stunned face. "How did you do that one move in the corner? Do you really always plan every exactly out? It really seemed like you were?! You're so good?! Not even Ikibi-niichan is as smart as you?! Do you…"

As Shikameru stared at the chattering boy, who didn't seem to realize that Shikameru wasn't answering any of his questions, he felt his mouth twitch. Once, twice,...and suddenly a sight that had graced Konoha only once before sprung into existence.

The lazy, classic Nara droop of the boy's lids disappeared as his eyes began to burn with rivalry, determination, and anticipation, his grin lighting his entire face. The Nara had finally found something that interested him. No more time to be lazy. He had a blond to beat so he could go back to being lazy and knowing that the world was right.

"Naruto."

"…and then when you-"the boy stopped and looked at him.

"Let's play again."

Naruto's smile completely matched the Nara's. "Bring it on."