From Time to Time

Chapter 7: War

This chapter is short. I'm sorry, I was tired all day and the weather was crappy. I made sure it was good though, so even though it's less words than I would've normally liked, I kept the quality high... I think.

Next week will probably pretty long to make up for it, so no worries.

I'm bad at pranks so I'm sorry if you're disappointed by that, it's harder to write than I thought it would be 😅.

Also, I've mentioned it before but after I finish this story I do plan on going through everything thoroughly and editing. I don't have a beta to do it before chapters go live and if I do it during they'll never get posted because I'll nitpick and never be happy. So small mistakes (weird spacing, too many italics, spelling, weird sentences, etc) will be fixed during then along with any inconsistencies that occur over the course of this story (dates, events that did/didn't happen, etc). So pointing these things out in the reviews is extremely helpful for future reference (both for new chapters and for when I go through to edit).

Quick note: The picture at the top of this has nothing to do with the chapter, I just thought the art was gorgeous and wanted to share it because I wish I had those kind of skills. It's insane. If any of you know the artist please tell me so I can give proper credit (the watermark in the corner is too small to read), I got the picture from pinterest and it didn't link to the original artist.

Anyway...

Onto the chapter!

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Chapter Seven: War

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There were many reasons why Naruto played pranks.

Sometimes it was as a punishment. The villagers were often rude and hated him for reasons he hadn't understood until recently (and even now he still didn't completely understand). They'd glare and whisper. They wouldn't let him in their shops or would give him the worst product available. They bullied him, called him all kinds of horrible things, insulted his abilities. They earned what they got, even if it was nowhere near what they deserved.

Sometimes it was for fun. Naruto didn't have much money or many belongings and no one really liked him so actually having fun (that wasn't at his own expense) was a fairly rare occurrence. Practical jokes were fun, laughing at others instead of being laughed at for once was also fun and if the blond was being honest coming up with pranks and setting them up was fun. It was a learning experience unlike anything they did in the academy. They hadn't done practical lessons often, though when they did it was where Naruto tended to do the best (except Taijutsu spars, not that he'd ever admit it out loud). It was much easier to learn from his mistakes when he could see them. Lectures were boring and he had trouble paying attention but actually doing things was what being a Ninja was. Actually putting something together was much better than a dumb lecture (he meant no offence to Iruka-sensei, though).

Most times, though, it was for attention, though he was loath to admit it. If people weren't glaring at him and whispering behind his back they were more often than not, ignoring him.

When he didn't get the opportunity to talk to the weird redheaded man, who was definitely new (Naruto had seen too many people around the village and there was no way he'd missed someone who stood out so much), he knew exactly how to get his attention. He wasn't very social--he'd only seen him talk to Kakashi-sensei and a few other jounin, never civilians unless he was buying from them. He also didn't leave his house much. He was really weird.

Naruto persevered, though. Kakashi-sensei wasn't going to give him answers and he wasn't great at starting conversations (Iruka-sensei gave him a lecture about it once but it didn't help much) so this was the only way he knew.