"Ptooey... just my luck. Damn it!"
The kid picked himself up off the ground. Spiky yellow hair. Eyes as blue as the open ocean. And six whisker-like marks across his cheeks, three on each side, making him look like a little fox kit. He spat dirt and swore.
Miyuki's entire body went rigid. One look at those whisker marks and he was already planning his exit.
You could fake the hair. You could fake the build. But nobody in this village had those six lines on their face. Miyuki knew exactly who this was.
Son of the Sage of Six Paths. Future Nanadaime Hokage. The legendary dead-last who'd one day stand at the top of the world. Uzumaki Naruto. And Miyuki had just stumbled into him in a back alley.
"Get back here, you little punk!"
But before Miyuki could slip away and pretend this encounter never happened, several figures closed in from both ends of the alley, boxing the two kids into a corner.
"Well, well. The brat's got a friend."
The leader of the group spotted Miyuki and spat on the ground, his eyes radiating hostility.
He was a young man with long pinkish hair, and despite a naturally timid look about him, he was forcing his face into something mean. The effect was more awkward than intimidating.
"Look, I'm actually not with..."
"BRO! BRO, YOU CAN'T ABANDON ME!"
Before Miyuki could distance himself, the five-year-old dead-last latched onto his leg with both arms, wailing like they'd been best friends for years.
Excuse me? A stampede of confusion trampled through Miyuki's brain. He did not recall signing up to be anyone's big brother.
"Please, man! You look like somebody important. They probably won't mess with you. Just help me out here."
Naruto whispered it fast, quiet enough that only the two of them could hear. Then he looked up and flashed a grin. It was snotty. It was goofy.
And it hit Miyuki like a blast of sunlight.
Was it because he already knew who Naruto would become? Was he reading too much into it? Or did this kid genuinely radiate that much raw warmth even at five years old?
Miyuki sighed. He peeled Naruto's hands off his leg, then turned to face the three adults blocking the alley.
"Fine. What did he do? Someone want to explain?"
"Hmph! We run a ninja tool shop. This little bastard stood right outside our door and told our customers we sell fakes! You tell me if that's not asking for a beating!"
The leader seemed mildly cautious upon seeing Miyuki's composure, but his tone was still hostile as he laid out the situation.
Sabotaging someone's business was about as personal as it got. If the story was true, chasing Naruto down for a beating wasn't exactly unreasonable. At minimum, the kid had earned a smack.
A ninja tool shop? And Naruto said they're selling counterfeits?
"BECAUSE THEY ARE FAKES!"
Before Miyuki could process anything, Naruto's signature foghorn voice blasted through the alley.
"You little..."
"Hold on. How do you know their tools are fake?"
Miyuki cut through the noise, ignoring the three grown men posturing and yelling like it was amateur theater. He was genuinely curious.
If his timeline was right, five-year-old Naruto was set to enter the Academy alongside him later this year. And with the Yondaime dead and the Sandaime unable to show the boy too much favoritism without drawing suspicion, Naruto at this age should have had virtually zero exposure to the shinobi world.
In other words, this version of Naruto shouldn't be able to tell a real shuriken from a paperweight, let alone identify counterfeit gear.
"Yesterday I was playing behind their shop and I heard them! That big guy in the back was in a room with this boss guy, talking about how they just got a shipment of knockoff tools and they were gonna mix them in with the real stock and sell everything together!"
Even surrounded by three hostile adults, Naruto didn't hesitate for a second. He told Miyuki everything he'd overheard without flinching.
"Oh? So that's what happened. Then why didn't you just... never mind."
Miyuki had been about to ask why Naruto hadn't reported it to someone. But halfway through the sentence, he remembered. The kid was five. And practically nobody in this village gave him the time of day. Who would have believed him?
Even in the original story, the only people who'd trusted Naruto early on were Iruka and the Sandaime. Iruka hadn't entered his life yet, and the Sandaime likely hadn't spent much time with him at this age. The kid was genuinely on his own.
"Hey, you three. What he just said. Any of that true?"
Miyuki turned to the trio of adults.
If Naruto was right, this wasn't a joke. Shinobi staked their lives on their equipment during missions. A faulty kunai or a brittle wire at the wrong moment could mean the difference between coming home and not coming home.
"Wh... of course it's not true! You little punks! If you keep slandering Tobiou's Friendly Ninja Tools, don't think I'll go easy on you!"
The leader, the shop owner Tobiou, denied it immediately. But his body told a different story. He flinched at Naruto's accusation. His voice came out thin and hollow. His eyes wouldn't stay still, darting left and right like a cornered animal's.
Yeah. It's true.
Miyuki sighed. Compared to Naruto's admittedly unconvincing testimony, this "friendly" shopkeeper Tobiou was practically confessing through body language alone.
"Doesn't matter either way. I'll just have someone look into it. 'Friendly Ninja Tools,' right?"
Not interested in wasting more words on this guy, Miyuki grabbed Naruto by the shoulder and turned to walk out the other end of the alley.
He was the Hyuuga heir. His connections made Naruto's social network look like a blank page. Getting someone to investigate one shady shop was a single conversation away.
"Wait... you little brats think you can just walk away? Where does that leave us, huh?"
But before either of them took a step, Tobiou and his two employees shifted into a triangle formation, sealing off the exit. They clearly had no intention of letting the boys leave.
"Oh? Going to get physical? I don't mind. But you should think very carefully before you commit to that. Things might not go the way you expect."
Even boxed in by three grown men in a dark alley, Miyuki's face showed nothing. Not a flicker of concern. Because from where he stood, these three were just slightly muscular civilians. They didn't even have chakra. What exactly were they going to do to him?
"Wait, boss... this kid, he might be... I think he's Hyuuga."
One of the employees, a stocky, short man with a head of green curly hair that looked exactly like a broccoli floret, a guy named Pesci, suddenly noticed something important.
Plenty of notable people and clans called Konoha home, but if you had to pick the single easiest group to identify on sight, it was the Hyuuga. Those solid white eyes weren't something you saw on normal people. Anyone with Byakugan that severe in the real world would've been completely blind. The fact that this kid was walking around and staring them down meant only one thing.
"Pesci, you need to grow up. How did you not notice something that obvious from the start?"
The other employee, a man in a dark spider-web patterned suit with short blond hair, Prosciutto, shook his head with a look of tired disappointment.
"So you know I'm Hyuuga and you still want to try something?"
"So what if you're Hyuuga? This is a corner of the village where even the Konoha Military Police don't bother patrolling. One five-year-old going missing? That kind of thing happens all the time, doesn't it?"
Something shifted behind Tobiou's eyes. The desperation of a man who'd decided he had nothing left to lose. He looked at Prosciutto and Pesci and drew a finger slowly across his own throat.
"W-whoa! They're serious! What do we..."
"Shh. Stay here. Don't come out. Just wait."
Naruto, all of five years old, had never experienced genuine killing intent before. His eyes went wide and wet, and he was half a second from crying when Miyuki shoved him sideways into the nearest trash can and slammed the lid shut. Then he piled a bag of non-burnable garbage on top for good measure.
Lid secured, Naruto safely stashed, Miyuki turned back to face the three adults.
And without a shred of hesitation, held up his hand and beckoned them forward.
Come on, then.