A New Chance for Happiness

by deathstalker982

A New Life

Naruto Namikaze lay on a bench in the park trying to get his thoughts in order. His life so far had not been the best.

For the first four years of his life, Naruto had been a happy child with a loving family. His mother, Kushina, was a successful, if minor, actress, someone who was a somewhat popular television star. Dispite being only a minor success, Kushina seemed to be very happy with how her life was so far, and had even turned down a couple offers to star in actual movies, because she wanted to stay where she was and spend time with her family whenever possible. His father, Minato, was the owner of a small restaurant, a ramen place that was kind of out of place in the town of Ponyville, which was in the United States, and therefore not many were used to the Eastern dishes that Minato served there. Dispite this problem, Minato was very successful, his restaurant being frequented by many people from all over town, and it was even where he met Kushina, who happened to love the ramen. They lived in a nice house near a park where Naruto had loved to play as a child.

But all this changed on the night of Naruto's Fifth birthday, when his family had come home from celebrating his birthday to find a man had been robbing their house while they were out. The man had immediately drawn a gun and shot his parents. Naruto had been too shocked to move, but the robber had not shot him, but instead had seemed horrified at what he had already done. Both had been to shocked to move for a good five minutes, and by that time the police had shown up, as a patrol car had been only a block away, and the officers arrested the man and took Naruto to the police station to ask what happened, as well as to help the boy get through the fact that he had just watched his parents get shot. The next day the officers who had found him took him to the orphanage, as Naruto had no other family left. They let him get settled in, but it would be a long while before he would ever get past the fact that his parents were dead, and before he expected to wake up and find out all that happened since was just a horrible dream.

Naruto did eventually get past the fact that his parents were dead, and moved on somewhat, though it took him two years. He spent the next nine years of his life growing up in the orphanage. The orphanage wasn't really that bad, but it was overcrowded and poor, and that meant that whatever money the orphanage had was spent on food, clothing, and shelter for the kids, leaving precious little left over. What was left was usually spend on trying to get all the orphans to go out and experience life, though there was almost never enough money to take them all on whatever trips they had planned, so they almost always had to ask one or two of the children to stay behind so that they could take the others. Naruto would usually volunteer to stay behind, because he never liked to see others sad or disappointed. The few workers at the orphanage were always grateful for this, but it also made almost all of the kids ignore Naruto because he just wasn't with the rest of the group as often as everyone else.

Though that wasn't to say that everything had been bad for him since his parents had died. He made a few friends, such as a girl a year older than him who had come to volunteer at the orphanage every now and then. Rarity was someone he enjoyed talking to, at least when she was not going on about fashion, which he really didn't care for, and he also liked how she seemed to truly care about how the orphanage was doing, rather than just helping out for something else in return, as a few did. The only problem was that at school, which they both attended the same school, she seemed like an entirely different person, and he felt to scared to approach her and talk to her.

Another friend he had made, or rather a person who had made themselves his friend, was a girl named Pinkie Pie. The girl , in his opinion, was the most annoying person he had ever met, but also one of the nicest and most honest people he had ever known. She reminded him a lot of his mother, but without the fiery temper that his mother had. She always seemed to want to make others happy, and he had been grateful for that on more that one occasion. One of the most memorable times was when the power had been cut during a school assembly back when the two were in the first grade. Naruto would never admit it, but he had been scared of the dark since the day his parents died, and when the assembly hall power cut and the room was plunged into darkness, Naruto had panicked and almost had a panic attack at school, but Pinkie had just started to make jokes and, having brought a flashlight for some reason, began to make faces and shadow puppets, and just goof around. Naruto, along with everyone else in the assembly hall, had been grateful that the girl had done so, as it stopped the younger kids, and those who were scared of the dark, from panicking and causing some kind of injury. Naruto was never sure whether it was the flashlight or what Pinkie had been doing that had kept him calm, but he was extremely grateful for it either way.

The final person he knew well enough to call a friend was another orphan, a little girl around seven years old that he considered his little sister, named Scootaloo. Scootaloo was a young girl who had a disability that made her much weaker than most her age, but she still loved sports and wanted to be an athlete herself. Scootaloo would usually stick with Naruto whenever she could, which meant that, often times, she would often volunteer to stay behind on the trips that the orphanage had to leave some behind. The girl was a big fan of the three Elites of the Wonderbolt Academy, an academy dedicated to helping young people master extreme sports. The two would watch the sports tournaments to see the Wonderbolt Elites perform.

But the reason he was lying on a park bench had to do with something that had recently, he had heard the head of the orphanage talking to another worker there that they no longer had the funds to continue to support all of the orphans they had. They would have had to either start to skip meals, or get rid of some of the orphans, and Naruto, being the kind person he was, ran away so that the other children in the orphanage didn't suffer. He could camp out in the park for a few weeks, and when a couple of kids had been adopted, he would come back.

And so now that left him, alone in the middle of the night, staying on a park bench thinking about the many things that had happened in his life.

There was a sudden movement out beyond the wall of the park and Naruto jumped up, suddenly worried that someone had come to mug him or something, but a fog seemed to seep towards him as he slowly moved towards the exit to the park. As he made it to the entrance, he saw Scootaloo looking up and down the street, and as he wondered what she was even doing out there, she spotted him and called out “Naruto!” She ran up to him.

“What are you doing out here Scoot.” he hissed at her, using the nickname that she didn't let anyone but him call her by.

“I was trying to find you.” she said, seeming sad. “You never came back after you went out, and everyone at the orphanage is wondering where you are.” At that Naruto looked guilty, maybe it would have been a better idea to tell someone, or at least leave a note, rather than just leave without telling anyone. “You always come to this park when you want to go somewhere to be alone, so I went looking for you.”

At this Naruto had a bad feeling, and asked “Did you happen to tell anyone that you were going to go look for me?” As he asked, the girl looked down in guilt. Naruto just sighed, and thought that maybe he should take Scootaloo back and stay at the orphanage for the night, he would tell the head of the orphanage in the morning what he planned to do. “Come on, lets go home Scoot.” he said, and took her hand. She agreed and started to walk with him, only to freeze, Naruto had stopped too, but only for a moment, and in that moment he noticed that a fog, thin but prevalent, seemed to have appeared within the last few seconds. He wondered what was going on, and then noticed that Scootaloo wasn't moving. “Scoot.” he said, trying to get the young girl to respond. When that failed to get a response, he took his hand from hers and got in front of her, waving his hand and calling her name quietly, not wanting unsavory people to here and come to see who was talking. When even that failed, he tried to shake her, only to find that no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't even move her an inch. He was about to start panicking when he saw a bright flash from the park. Looking at Scootaloo one more time, he decided to see if whoever made that flash would be able to help him find out hat was wrong with her.

He ran back to the park entrance and saw two girls, one was sitting on the ground and looking around confusedly, while the other was sitting up on a stone column smirking down at her, The girl on the ground he vaguely recognized as the new student that started at school two days ago. “How did I get here?” he heard her mutter to herself.

The other girl spoke up then, greeting her with a simple “Good Evening.” and for some reason sounding rather smug.

“Who are you?” the girl, he thought her name was Twilight, asked, while looking up at the girl on the column, and now that he thought about is, how the heck did she even get up there?

“I have many names.” the girl up on the column said. “But you may call me Luna.” Naruto was thinking that the girl seemed very cryptic, and he wondered what was going on. “I can sense your emitting a powerful aura. Surely your spiritual energy was recently awakened.” At this Naruto was very confused, spiritual energy? What was this person talking about?

“What are you talking about?” the Twilight girl asked, unknowingly asking the same question that Naruto was asking himself.

“Simply put, you are the only one not paralyzed by my spell.” 'So that's what happened to Scootaloo' Naruto thought as he continued to listen in on the conversation going on behind him. The mysterious Luna girl carried on, oblivious to the fact that Naruto was there. “Something only possible if you are protected by your spiritual energy.” At this Naruto wondered if he also had this spiritual energy, since he wasn't frozen like Scootaloo was.

“So you're the one who paralyzed Pinkie and Spike.” Twilight asked, seemingly very calmdispite the fact that it seemed some people she knew were affected. Naruto also caught that one of his friends was possibly in danger from the Luna girl, and he felt himself start to get angry. Suddenly he fell to the ground and gripped his head in pain as he saw images of himself, but he was somehow different. Then words and phrases came to him as well. He was standing in the middle of a forest clearing with what appeared to be a girl. The girl spoke, and he heard “When a person has someone to protect, that is when they become truly strong.” Another image popped into his head, one of him talking to an odd man with silver hair and odd eyes, but the him in this vision was older then he was now. The him that was not him spoke to the man, saying “That's why we endure... We are Ninja. I will never forget. And anyway, that wound means that my friends are still inside me. The real friends are not the ones I created in my dreams not to get hurt… That would be erasing the real ones. It can work as a curse but I don't care… I want to keep the real Neji here!!"

Naruto's head stopped hurting and he slumped the rest of the way to the ground 'What was that, I don't even recognize whoever those people were, and who is this Neji person anyway?' Naruto was too confused to think right then, but his head suddenly snapped up as he saw his friend Pinkie, whom he hadn't even noticed get there, get thrown over 30 feet both away and up, and instincts made him try to get up and throw himself at the girl to try to save her, but he couldn't even get his feet under him, and Pinkie landed hard on the ground. “Pinkie!” that was a shout from Twilight, who had been nearby and was running up to try to help Pinkie. Twilight reached her and gently lifted her up, trying to see if she was injured. “Please, stop hurting her! She didn't do anything to you!” She shouted into the air, and only then did Naruto notice that Luna was now flying with a pair of star-like wings and a tail, all made out of some kind of energy, coming out of her back.

Luna sad something then. “Don't you see? That girl should be severely injured from being thrown that far, but she's only unconscious. Her spiritual energy protected her.” Naruto was relieved that his friend wasn't hurt that bad, but he was still struggling to get up, because it seemed like some oppressive force was trying to keep him in place. Luna continued again, still unaware of him ever being there. “That only means that she too bears a spirit of harmony.” This confused Naruto, as he had no clue what a Spirit of Harmony was. “But unlike you, I feel that she is more connected to her element. For that reason I will harvest her spiritual energy first, and then you!”

At that moment, Naruto broke free of whatever force was holding him in place, and charged forward. He was running entirely on instinct right now and as he jumped at the odd winged girl that called herself Luna, and as he shouted at her a ball of some kind of rotating energy formed in his hand. “I'm not letting you hurt either of them you crazy spirit vampire lady!” he thrust the ball of energy in his hand forward, and it some kind of barrier around Luna. While Twilight seemed shocked at his sudden appearance, Luna seemed to take it in stride, and only muttered “Pathetic.” before a force smashed into his side, and that was all he knew.