Chapter 04

Two weeks later…

Early morning…

Another peaceful night and another beautiful sunrise; a predetermined event that told everyone across the country that all was right with the world. The rays of light from the golden ball that drew across the sky filtered down onto the landscape, illuminating every corner and filling in every shadow. Peaking over the rolling hillsides and forests its magnificent glaze soon reached the hidden village of Konohagakure, which greeted its warmth with a welcoming breeze and the glow of sweet dew built up from the night before.

The blend of nature with human settlement, as well as the manmade marvel known as the Hokage Monument sitting comfortably in the background made the glimmering picture of faultlessness a sight to behold. It was like somebody speed-painted the entire village based on their own thoughts of what the most tranquil place in the world was like every waking hour. If it weren't flying the flag of a shinobi village or was plagued with such a questionable history it would have been paradise.

To the people living inside of its walls though, it was just home. This was precisely what ran through a particular shopkeeper's mind as he prepared to open the doors of his business to the populace. Immediately upon pushing up the roller door of his general items store he stretched his back and greeted the sun with a satisfied yawn. He stepped out onto the street with a delightful smile on his face.

That was until he turned around and looked up at the front of his shop that had been passed down to him from his father and the father before him. A shriek escaped his lips and he jumped further out into the middle of the road.

"Wh-What?! What the hell?!"

It was horrifying. His shop was covered in paintings of various symbols, words that should never be uttered in public and images that were either too abstract to make out or too shocking to even talk about. Not only that, but the poor salesman's building wasn't the only one that was hit by the maelstrom of paint works.

From left to right up and down the neighborhood, every single roof, wall, door, window and fence in sight was covered in the atrocious street art. It wasn't even the good kind of street art either; it was the terrible graffiti, single-colored, time-wasting bullshit you could find anywhere on any sign and there was a shit ton of it. It looked like somebody had just done it on the fly because it sure as hell wasn't done over the entire night, but that wasn't the main problem right now. Almost everyone who was awake at this time and outside was looking up in mortification at their once glamorous suburb.

"What is this?"

"How terrible."

"Disgraceful!"

"It's everywhere, honey! Look! Even the clothes on the line got painted!"

"Who did this?"

As questions and exclamations began filtering out from every villager and shopkeeper present, boisterous laughter suddenly filled the air and forced everyone in the vicinity to crane their heads towards a nearby overpass. There, standing on top of cluster of drainpipes straddling the gap, the culprit responsible for the aforementioned crime stood over the crowd far below with his arms proudly folded, a bucket at his feet and a wide grin on his face.

Dressed in an orange jacket with short blue sleeves with an orange arrow on each sleeve, orange cargo shorts and a pair of ski goggles slapped over his head, the blonde haired menace known throughout the village cast his ominous shadow across the street from the sun now hitting his back, lighting him up like a superhero under spotlight.

The blonde's grin flashed into view once all eyes landed on him.

"That's right! It was me!" the boy with spiky blonde hair exclaimed. "Uzumaki Naruto at your service! Remember that name well… because I'm going to be Hokage some day!"

With that announcement made he wasted no time in making his getaway and took off down the street at speed, leaping across from rooftop to rooftop.

"Come back here!"

"Damn it! It was him again!"

For a ten year old academy student, he was damn quick. The villagers could do nothing except attempt to give chase, point fingers and throw curses at him as he vacated the premises with fleeter feet than a cat running from a garden hose. Within seconds he was out of sight, leaving behind a trail of atrocities and fuming shop keepers.

The owner of the general store growled and crossed his arms, now standing amongst a whole crowd of villagers who had also been attacked by the little menace. "What a nuisance. He's made a big mess."

The man next to him nodded in agreement, "Even if we want to file a complaint he's got no parents we can nag to."

"What'll we do?" another concerned villager asked, a woman who turned out with the rest of the crowd holding up her summer kimono, now covered in colored paint reading the blasted perpetrator's name. "Who's going to pay for all of this?"

By the time the unpleasantness started to waft off of the targets for that day, Naruto was long gone and running down some random road many blocks away. He was still grinning mischievously from ear to ear and giggling non-stop, thoroughly satisfied at what he had been able to accomplish in a short half-hour. If he were a dog, then he would have pretty much claimed that entire area as his territory.

"Suckers," Naruto exclaimed, laughing out loud as the paint bucket he had trailing behind him rattled on the wind. "Naruto: five-hundred! Village idiots: zero!" He stuck his tongue out.

Once he was certain that he had pulled far enough away from the danger zone, Naruto allowed his sprint to slow to a jog before dropping into a comfortable stride. He waded in the satisfaction of seeing all of the villagers' reactions to his latest felony and bathed in the afterglow. However, while he was walking down a quiet suburb way out of reach of anyone bound to be seeking revenge on him, he stopped when he heard a familiar call from nearby.

"I'm heading off mum!"