This is my first fanfic, and if its liked, I will continue to write to this fanfic. Because it is my first, criticisms are welcome, feedback is appreciated, and flames (well, noone usually likes you anyway :P). No I'm kidding, your feedback is welcomed as well.

Also this will not be a harem unless one of the readers can really change my mind away from that. I do not like to write to canon because it limits creativity in my mind, but at the same time, I will keep some parts of the story as canon because it had a good plot/storyline. Hypocritical? Sure. However, thats how I choose to write. That being said, lets get into the story :) Hope you enjoy!

"Normal conversations"
"Thoughts"
"Kyuubi talking"
"Kyuubi thoughts"

I do not own anything from Naruto, that is all Masashi Kishimoto.

I have revised this chapter to make it easier to read, according to some reviews. Hope its better :)

Chapter 1: The beginnings

Its been 8 years since the tragic incident of the Nine-tailed fox attacking Konohagakure, of which came a boy who the late Fourth Hokage had sealed the demon fox into. Itachi Uchiha watched as the boy walked through the streets with a group of adults following him, yelling out to him, "Demon fox!" "You deserve to die!" "You don't belong here!" "How dare you show your face in this village!" He frowned, knowing that it was not the boy's fault that he had the fox sealed inside him. He was glad he was wearing his ANBU mask as his teammates would not be able to see his frown, because as an ANBU member, you're not supposed to show emotion.

It was his squads turn to watch over the young boy, something directed by the Third Hokage to oversee the boys safety and to make sure that he didn't lose control of the demon fox inside him. Itachi didn't mind looking after the boy at all. The boy reminded Itachi of himself; lonely, sad, misplaced, yet the look in the boy's eyes showed a hidden intelligence. Looking to his right, he saw two other ANBU with him, one wearing a cat-like mask with three red stripes on it, her purple hair reached down to the middle of her back and was held against her back by a five foot katana. Next to her, was a man wearing a bird like mask, with a thick black stripe going through the middle of the mask, he had short spiky black hair.

Itachi turned his attention back to the boy and the group following him as they started to get more violent with the angry mob beginning to throw rocks at the back of the boy's head. As the boy neared an alleyway, Itachi saw someone push the boy into the alley until he was hidden from sight from the rest of village. The angry mob followed the violent aggressor into the alleyway and began to beat the 8 year old boy into a bloodied heap of unconsciousness, until they thought he was dead. The mob left the alleyway, whistling and going in different directions pretending as if nothing ever happened, each of them thinking to themselves, "The demon child is finally dead.

The blond 8 year old boy, Naruto, laid there in a puddle of his own blood as he slipped in and out of consciousness. "Stupid people... what did I ever do to them? Why do they hate me so much?" He thought back to the first time he remembered someone being mean to him.

FLASHBACK

Naruto was 5 years old and was skipping rocks over the lake near the Uchiha compound when a couple of the Uchiha clan members started to call him names and throw rocks at him. He turned around to look at his aggressors, "What did I ever do to you guys to be called such names? I don't even know you all."

The group of teenagers looked amongst themselves, unsure who was going to speak first when a teenager wearing the standard Konoha ninja gear stepped up. "Its because you don't belong here. You're nothing but a hindrance to this village. You have no potential as a ninja and no real reason to be here. So you might as well begone, you filthy demon scum." He grinned as he spoke this to Naruto, seeing the hurt inside his eyes. He decided to walk up to the boy and picked him up and walked over the docks and threw him into the water.

Naruto started to flail his arms about as he had no idea how to swim at the time. Looking back over to the docks, he saw the group of Uchiha members laughing as they walked away. Slowly, Naruto began to keep his head above the water and swam back towards the bank of the lake, soaked and cold from head to toe. After that, Naruto decided that he would become a great ninja and become the Hokage so that everyone had to respect him and acknowledge him. He began reading books about chakra and jutsus, having to resort to stealing books from the library due to the librarian throwing kunai at him to keep him out.

FLASHBACK END

Naruto woke up in a large room that had water covering the floor. "Great, I'm in a sewer or something." He decided to get up and walked around and came to a large jail cell with a tag on the centermost post with the kanji for 'Seal' on it. He was about to step inside the jail cell when suddenly a giant orange fox slammed its front feet down in front of Naruto and glared at him through the cell.

"So, the runt finally decides to show himself. I'm guessing you want my help in healing your wounds again, huh? You really should learn to defend yourself kid." The demon fox grinned at Naruto, as he had already began to heal his containers wounds, which ranged from broken bones to punctured lungs to severe bleeding. The demon fox had no intention of dying so early, not that he really could die, he was a tailed beast after all and was pure chakra, however, the idea that it would take quite some time before he would come back to the realm of reality was undesirable to him.

Naruto looked at the fox incredulously, thinking that he had gone crazy from the beatings. "You're the Kyuubi, aren't you? You're the reason everyone in the village hates me!" Naruto looked at the fox, mad and sad at the same time.

"You've got it all wrong kid!" The demon fox began, rage running through him as he was being judged by this runt of a human,"I was forced to attack the village. A masked ninja pulled me out of my previous container and controlled me with his ocular prowess. Had it not been for him, I would never have attacked the village in the first place! So how dare you accuse me of such things! You're lucky I'm even here considering how often I have to heal your wounds!" Kyuubi slammed his paw on the ground, causing a wave of water to splash over Naruto, which made him frown but made the Kyuubi laugh.

Naruto eyed the fox and sat down, crossing his arms and glared at him. "How do I know you're telling the truth? Everything I've read about you says that you attacked the village out of the blue and killed hundreds of shinobi and villagers. What makes you think I'll believe you?"

The Kyuubi, outraged that someone as small as this child was going to question him, the nine-tailed fox, the strongest of all the bijuus. The fox looked at the child and growled, "You DARE to question me?! After keeping you alive for 8 years, you dare to question ME?! I could have let you die the first time you found yourself shoved into an alley! I could have taken over your body when you were at your weakest and gone on my way! And yet, you sit here, in front of me, the Nine-tailed Fox and question my statements on an event that you weren't even awake for?! How dare you!" The Kyuubi rages on and reaches out to hit Naruto with a swipe of his claw, but Naruto is just out of reach. "Come closer you little shit, so I can show you who you are dealing with."

Naruto just looked at the claws that were swiping away in front of him, frowning, knowing that the Kyuubi was right. He had no idea what actually transpired that night. There were no records of a masked ninja anywhere in any history books that he'd read. He looked up at the Kyuubi and smiled, sort of looking like a fox-like smile with the whiskers he had on each side of his cheek. "You're right Kyuubi-san. I don't know what happened that night. Maybe I should believe you, but why show yourself to me now? After 8 years of torture, why now?"

The Kyuubi looked at the runt before him and brought his clawed paw back behind the barrier. "Its not a matter of me showing myself to you, but you escaping into your mind. Right now, while your broken and beaten body is in the real world, you are here in your mind completely unharmed. And I am here as well, locked behind this sealed barrier until a time you can learn to defeat me. And you will defeat me one day as I refuse to have a weak human as my jinchurikii." The Kyuubi grinned to Naruto, having a hidden meaning behind his words.

Naruto looked at the demon fox, "And how exactly am I supposed to defeat you? You're a giant fox! One of the tailed beasts!"

"I'm going to help train you..." The Kyuubi frowned pausing from his speaking, sensing three chakra signatures closing in around Naruto, "But we'll get to that later. For now, you need to return to reality, three shinobi are coming towards you."

Naruto looked at the fox, "How do I leave?"

"Just stop thinking about escaping from reality and face it." The Kyuubi stated as Naruto nodded and began to leave the sealed mindscape.

Naruto opened his eyes to see a cat-masked ANBU healing him. He slowly turned his head to see a bird-masked ANBU and dog-masked ANBU, smiling softly. He smiled softly at the ANBU members, glad they were helping him and not hurting him, "Thank you Neko-san..." he said softly, "So why are you guys here?" He looked at the ANBU members, taking in their different traits and masks. The cat-masked ANBU had straight purple hair that reached her back with a sword behind her back, the dog-masked ANBU had pitch black hair that went down to his chin with a sword behind his back, while the bird-masked ANBU had spiky unruly black hair with no sword, and all three of them wore the standard ANBU outfits of black leggings, boots, and shirts. "Seems only two of them know kenjutsu."

"We're here on orders of the Third Hokage." Itachi stated through his dog-mask. He felt sorrow for Naruto, the life he had, how he was treated. Noone should be treated that way, let alone the son of the late Fourth Hokage. "However, it seems the villagers who ambushed you believe you're dead..." Itachi looked at his teammates for a split second before looking back towards Naruto, "So, if you like, I can help create you a new identity, a new life, and a..."

He was interrupted by his fellow bird ANBU teammate. "Whoa. We can't do that. Noone is supposed to know our identity and I'm sure if you exposed yourself to him, he would blab or the Hokage would find out."

Itachi thought about this for a second. He looked at his friend, "So you'd rather watch him get back up and beat again?" he countered. His friend just looked at him through his mask, unsure of what to say. He just nodded his head towards Naruto, giving the ANBU captain the go ahead. Itachi grabbed a piece of paper from his pocket and a pencil and wrote down something on it, handing it to his teammate. "Go get these items and then report to the hidden training ground."

The bird-masked ANBU took the paper and looked at it, before looking at Naruto. "He hasn't even said anything about whether or not he wants a new image."

Naruto watched the two talk as he laid there getting healed. As soon as the cat-masked ANBU was done healing him, she helped him sit up. "There you go, good as new. Though you could use some new clothes that aren't so bloody." She looked over to her team captain and nodded. It was their silent communication that made them such a great team, just a simple nod and they already knew what they needed to do. "Naruto-kun, would you like to have a new life?" she asked him sweetly.

Naruto looked at her and then the other two, "What do you mean by a 'new life'?" He wasn't all that sure what they meant.

Itachi spoke up afterward, "What we mean is that we will get you a new outfit, new name, new everything. Basically, you get to start over as someone else. To give an added bonus, I'll even teach you how to be a ninja."

The two teammates looked at him, practically breaking their necks. "You won't even train your own brother, but yet you'll train him?!" the spiky haired ANBU said.

"Naruto is different from my brother, he doesn't seem to have any hate in him."

Naruto stood up and gave a fox-like grin. "Sure! I'd love to have you teach me Inu-sensei! I'll become the best ninja ever, even better than the Hokage! I'll become Hokage and make everyone acknowledge me! Believe it!" He gave a thumbs up to the masked Itachi, happy that someone is actually being nice to him.

Itachi looked at his teammate, "Now will you go pick up those items?" The bird-masked ANBU nodded his head and shunshined away, a wisp of smoke where he once stood.

Itachi looked at the cat-masked woman, "Pick him up and follow me to the hidden grounds." he stated towards his teammate, before shunshin-ing away to the hidden grounds. The purple-haired ANBU got down on a knee and put her arms behind her, signaling Naruto to climb onto her back so she can meet up with Itachi. Feeling his weight on her back as he climbed on, she grabbed his legs as he wrapped his arms around her neck before jumping onto the roofs and traveling to the hidden grounds. It took a couple minutes to get there by roof-traveling. Once there, she put Naruto down and walked over to stand beside her teammate. "We'll wait til Tori-san is here before we begin teaching Naruto." he stated matter-of-factly.

Naruto looked at the two ninjas and sat down crossing his legs. He put his hands together in the form of two connects "U"s and entered back into his mind with the Kyuubi.

"Back so soon are we?" the Nine-tails spoke to his container.

"I wanted to ask you how you were going to train me if I'm already going to be getting trained by Inu-sensei."

"A shinobi could have multiple senseis. Each teacher brings their own expertise to the table. Honestly, if you're being trained by this ANBU, it'll make my job easier as I won't have to explain so much. However, I have more battle experience and have lived a lot longer than this puny human has, so I'll be able to help more as well. Don't think for a second though I'm going to be easy on you just because you're a child." The fox grins at Naruto, wondering how much the boy will be able to take of his training. Naruto just looked at the fox, thinking about what the Kyuubi just said to him.

"Kyuubi, why do you want to train me?"

"I refuse to have a weak container. If you intend on being weak, I'll kill you myself!" roared the Kyuubi, causing Naruto to put his hands up in defense from the wave of winds the Kyuubi caused by his roaring.

"Ok ok. I get it, strong host, many teachers. So when are you going to start training me?"

"That depends on what kind of training this human has for you."

"Thats not fair!"

"Hmph." was all that was said in return before the Kyuubi laid his head down on his paws and began to rest.

"Stupid fox." he thought to himself as he left his mind.

Shisui Uchiha walked through the village's shops picking up what was on the slip of paper. "Why's he going through all this trouble for that boy... well, I have to admit, he is really ambitious. Almost as ambitious as me, maybe he has the same will of fire that I do." He mused to himself, while looking for the final item, a mask. He wandered into the mask shop and was looking around. "Good evening ANBU. What brings you here? Seems you already have a mask." spoke the young shopkeeper. "I'm looking for a mask for a friend, just a plain one for now until they can decide on one for themselves." he looked around, just looking for a plain non-marked masked. "Ah, how about this one, completely white." The shopkeep said as he picked up one of the masks, thinking it unusual than an ANBU would be buying a mask for someone else. He looked up to see the ANBU member nod his head and took it to the register. "That'll be 7,000 ryo." shopkeep said, handing the mask to Shisui. Shisui paid the shopkeep and bowed his head, "Thank you for the mask." He walked out back into the fresh air and put the mask into the pouch he was asked to buy for Naruto. "Hmmmm. I wonder what Itachi will want to teach him first. Probably will want to find out his chakra nature first and then maybe do some demonstration on chakra control to find out how much chakra he has right now, which probably isn't much. However, he is an Uzumaki so he should have a large reserve of chakra. Guess we'll find out soon." Shisui shunshin-ed away to the hidden grounds where Itachi had requested him to meet, showing up in a wisp of smoke.

Naruto was looking around as he heard the rustle of clothes, signaling a newcomer. He looked over to see the bird-masked ANBU handing a pouch to, what he seemed to gather, was the ANBU team captain. "Give the pouch to Naruto." The captain stated simply, looking at Naruto, giving no hint of emotion with his voice. He'd had too much practice on keeping his emotions in check while he was in training to be an ANBU member, the same training his teammates went through. On top of that, he had his own personal things he had to deal with when he was off duty, his own personal demons to fight. He watched as the spiky haired ANBU member tossed the pouch to Naruto. "Open it. You'll find supplies inside." Naruto opened the pouch and dumped it onto the ground in front of him before separating into different piles. He saw different types of tags, two of the ones he noticed most were tags that had the kanji for 'chakra' and 'gravity', there were six gravity seals and two chakra seals. He moved onto the next pile, which was a set of black clothes and open sandals, specifically his size. In the next pile, was a group of 10 kunai and shuriken. Lastly, there was a plain white mask.

"Seems odd to have a set of black clothes and a white mask." He mused to himself as he picked up the mask looking it over.

Itachi looked at Naruto and cleared his throat until he got the boy's attention. He searched for any chakra signatures besides the ones in the clearing of the grounds. Not sensing any, he removed his mask and looked at Naruto. "My name is Itachi Uchiha and I will be teaching you the ways of the shinobi. First things first, you do want to be taught, correct?" he asked of Naruto, seeing the boy nod his head. "Excellent! Well, I don't know about these two, but if they wish to train you as well, they can." He paused a moment to see if they wanted to train Naruto as well, noticing both of them nod their heads.

"Alright, to start off with, the outfit that you see in front of you is the standard ANBU outfit, obviously bought to fit you right now. And the mask is to hide your face, you can get a new mask later when you get the ryo for it. Try not to ruin your clothes as we can't constantly afford to keep paying for new sets if you ruin them." Naruto nodded as he picked up the new set of clothes, glad to see he had multiple sets in the event of damage during training. "Now, do you know the Shadow Clone Jutsu?" Itachi asked of Naruto.

"No Itachi-sensei. I don't really know any jutsu. I know chakra control and thats about it." he responded back, excited he's going to be getting taught his first jutsu.

"Its an A-rank, so don't be surprised if you fail it for awhile." Itachi put his fingers together, and without saying anything, created a shadow clone of himself standing next to him.

"There is an extended version known as the Multi-shadow Clone Jutsu, but all it is is a creation of many shadow clones simultaneously at the same time, usually numbering in the hundreds." spoke the bird ANBU.

Naruto grinned a fox-like grin as he made the cross hand signs and focused his chakra, yelling out "Shadow Clone Jutsu!" A wisp of smoke appeared next to Naruto with a half-baked clone that flopped over before poofing away. "I think it needs more chakra." Naruto tried it once again and once again, came to fail with a disappearing clone. "Hmmm... I think I got it." He made the seals once more and finally created a standing copy of himself. He snickered and stuck a thumb out, "I did it! Believe it! So uh... now what?" he asked, scratching his head.

"Now, we go off and play a game of rock-paper-scissors so you can see the benefit of this jutsu. Which that it transfers its knowledge to the original." Itachi's clone and Naruto's clone went off away from where they could be seen and played a game of rock-paper-scissors, resulting in Itachi's win. After which, the clones poofed away, leading Naruto into the revelation that this will help increase his training. "Alright, now that we got that out of the way, we need to find out your chakra nature." He took a piece of paper out of his pouch and handed it to Naruto.

"What do I do with this?" he asked, flipping the paper back and forth, not really sure what to do with it. He knew about chakra natures, but he had no idea how this piece of paper was going to tell him what it was.

The cat ANBU shook her head, "You send your chakra into the paper. Either one of five things will happen. It'll either split, burn, crumple, crumble, or become wet, each representing one of the five basic elements. For me, I'm a water style user. Itachi-san is a fire style, and Tori-san is also fire style. There's more to chakra nature than just that, but we'll get to that point later down the road, for now, you just need to know which one you're more suited to."

Naruto looked at the cat ANBU and did as was advised and sent chakra into the paper. Much to everyone's surprised, the paper split into five sections, each section acting the same way as the cat ANBU said it would. One section crumbled away into dirt, one section had a tear in it, one section became soggy and limp, one section caught fire, and the last section crumpled together. Each of the ANBU members looked on in surprised with anime eyes that he had a natural affinity to all five elements.

"Well, this is something unexpected, albeit very interesting. Must be the fox that allows him to have an affinity for each nature considering a bijuu is just pure chakra." Itachi thought to himself, unsure how powerful Naruto might become. "Well, seems you have a natural affinity for all five of the chakra natures, highly rare in a shinobi." Itachi stated, tilting his head slightly to the side. "I wonder how vast his chakra levels are..." "Alright, go change behind those trees over there and then come back when you're done." he spoke to Naruto.

"Hai!" Naruto exclaimed, giving a smart playful salute with his trademarked fox grin.

Naruto picked up a set of clothes and ran off behind the trees and changed into the black outfit. They were abit form fitting and they worked well with him. The boots gave added support for kicking and the pants and shirts hug to him so that they wouldn't interfere with training or running. He folded his old clothes up and walked back out, carrying his clothes with him, setting them down.

"Alright, I'm changed. When do we begin training?" ask an overly excited Naruto, grinning happily.

"Soon, Naruto, soon. Next, what we're gonna do is put the gravity seals on you." Itachi stated as he walked over and picked up the four gravity seals. "The gravity seals are activated by pouring chakra into them and increase the feeling of gravity over you. The more you can withstand of the gravity pulling down on your, the stronger you will get. Another benefit to the gravity seals is that..." Itachi was cut off by Naruto.

"Is that when they are not activated, I can move faster and am stronger than when they are activated." Naruto finished up, grinning.

"Actually, thats right." Itachi stated, hearing both his teammates snicker about him being cutoff mid-sentence. Itachi beckoned Naruto over and had him take off the shirt so he could put the gravity seals on each shoulder, before moving onto putting seals on his wrists and ankles.

After Naruto put his shirt back on, he looked around and shrugged his shoulders, "I don't feel any different." he stated dumbly.

The bird and cat ANBU shook their head sadly, before the bird ANBU spoke up, "You need to push chakra into them. The seals are set up so that once chakra is poured into them, they stay at that level. So don't overdo it." As he finished, Naruto nodded and began to mold chakra into the seals and began feeling himself get pulled down more toward the earth, finding it increasingly difficult to stay standing.

"Only put enough chakra into the seals until it starts to feel hard to stand. Once you can stand up easily under that gravity, then we'll continue." Itachi stated as he walked abit away so that he and his teammates could talk amongst themselves about Naruto and what they just witnessed, without Naruto overhearing them.

"He has all five of the elemental natures, who knows what sort of Kekkei Genkai he can create." said Shisui as he ate his riceball. "I mean, not even the First Hokage had all five elements..." he stated thinking back on the legend of the First Hokage, "I have never even heard of anyone having an affinity to all five elements besides Rikudo Sennin and even that is only a myth at best."