I'll say stuff after the first chapter. Probably.

...


The first time that they had met in Konoha, he had mistaken her for Haruno Sakura.

Naruto was only a genin at that time, and only newly graduated, so he didn't know that she shouldn't have been there by any means. If ANBU had found her before him, she would have been arrested and carted off to Ibiki before she could even feel her arms being twisted behind her back.

It was amazing that she was where she was at that time, Naruto reminisced, but perhaps her resemblance to the Haruno had protected her.

If only he had known where she was from and what she was in the first place.


It's always embarrassing to ask Sakura-chan out on a date. Not because of the way she glares at you or scowls until your blood curdles –even though she's adorable all the same– But mostly because of the after-shock of getting sucker-punched in the face.

Now imagine me asking Sakura-chan out on a date… and then realizing that she isn't actually Sakura-chan, just another girl who looks a lot like her, and who's barely holding back a laugh.

Ya know, I'd rather get sucker-punched in the face.

Well, it was an unpleasant surprise when I actually did mistake someone else for my teammate. And it happened when I was asking the look-alike for a date. But it wasn't so unpleasant to hear her say hesitantly: "Well, I'm not this 'Sakura-Chan', but if you really think I should taste this… Ramen, then sure. Why not?"

Well, I wasn't going to miss out on a chance to educate someone in the culinary masterpiece that Ramen was, especially not someone who was coming along willingly. So I led her out from the street in front of the hokage tower, and we set off towards Ichiraku's.

It was a bright and sunny morning, like every other morning in Konoha. The only major difference was that I actually had a date.

Sure, it wasn't Sakura. Or someone I knew well. Or someone I had even seen before in my entire life. But hey, I'm not picky. Besides, the girl was kinda pretty; in a weird, wintry way.

The girl…

"Uh… Heheh. I forgot to ask, what's your name?"

She paused for a moment, face blank; almost slowing down for a fraction of a second, before she looked back, smiling.

"Aelita."

"Oh, that's a pretty name. Mine's Uzumaki Naruto. Greatest Ninja in all of Konoha, and the future hokage!"

Well, I wouldn't be me if I didn't shout that around every once in a while. It helps in boosting my confidence.

"I'm sure you are," she replied, still smiling genially.

Looking at her a little more closely, I saw that she had these face tattoos that looked a lot like those the Inuzuka had, blood-red tracks tapering down from under her eyes, which was a little weird considering that there were no pinkettes in the Inuzuka.

Pink hair was a strict Haruno trademark.

And her dress seemed very foreign. A pink skirt and shoes that seemed more like socks, with a vest that seemed like a pink and green version of the chunin jacket.

"So Aelita, why haven't I seen you around before? Where do you live?"

"Oh…" Another pause, another time she almost stopped.

"…I'm not from this village."

"Really? Then where did you come from? Another village?"

She seemed at a loss for words… I mentally face palmed. Of course she was from another village. Stupid question.

"What's it like? Is it nearby? I just came back from a mission to- Oh look, we're here!"

The smell of Ramen was wafting out from under the stall, and beckoned by its siren call I hurried over to it, letting Aelita follow behind. Looking back briefly, I noticed her sigh in relief. Maybe she wasn't used to the heat of summertime Konoha.

She took a stool next to me, resting her gauntleted elbows on the table and looking around at the shop, waiting.

It was sad that no-one I knew was walking by at that moment.

Teuchi came along a few seconds later, wiping his hands.

"Ah, Naruto! It's been a long time since you came by, where were you?"

"Hey Teuchi-san! It was on this mission that I told you about before I left, remember?"

His eyes glazed over, probably trying to remember when I'd told him I'd be going.

"It was so cool! Turned out it wasn't just a boring C-rank mission to escort an old Drunkard, It was a completely kickass A-ranked mission to escort the old drunkard! There was this missing-nin, and then- Oh wait, I forgot! Say hi to Aelita-chan!"

"Hi," she greeted cordially, waving a hand in greeting, which was weird considering she wasn't familiar enough with the Ramen-seller to gesture like that to him. Must be a village custom, I thought.

She pulled up a seat next to me and sat down, arms crossed.

Settled down, we had an awkward moment as I glanced here and there, whistling nervously while Aelita drummed her fingers lightly on the wooden table, leaning on her other arm.

I really needed more experience with girls, Damn it.

Rather desperate, I sent an unworded call for help to Ayame, who was smugly watching my discomfort from where she was cooking our order. She answered with a fond look, probably feeling sorry for me, and made a few hand-signs indicating that I should move closer to Aelita, maybe talk about something too.

Make a fool of myself, more like.

Taking in a deep breath and ignoring the sweat on my palms, I took the plunge into a wary conversation that I was going to make up on the fly.

"So… Um…" I swallowed, licking the inside of my suddenly dry mouth.

Aelita, fortunately, interrupted.

"Uh… Uzumaki? I haven't been to the village before. Can you tell me a little about it?" She asked, twirling a finger through her hair. It was mesmerizing to watch.

Uzumaki? And without any honorifics at all? I decided to speak on anyways.

"The village? It's the Village hidden in the leaves, dattebayo! The strongest ninja village with the strongest shinobi that exist! And I'll be the strongest in no time!"

Aelita giggled, looking interested.

Now what to tell her about Konohagakure? Darn, I should've paid more attention to our history classes in the academy. I remembered some lessons about the fourth Hokage though, and I remembered them really well, so I decided to go with them.

"The best shinobi we had were our leaders; the Four Hokages. The fourth one died defending the village from a huge Fox Demon called the Kyuubi no Yoko, so the Third took back the title of hokage. I like the Fourth the best though, he was a real hero. Do you know that he wiped out an entire army of Iwa-nin with one jutsu? And he…"

I jumped from one topic to another, trying to see if I had any interesting dregs of Trivia about my village lying around in the corners of my mind. I must have had a lot, because during the whole of my four minute long monologue, Aelita seemed intrigued. She kept looking at me, smiling and blinking occasionally; sometimes humming in agreement.

I belatedly realized that I was screwed if the pinkette was from Iwagakure.

But she wasn't angry, so I kept talking. Until Ayame brought our Ramen. The brew was especially good; I had to close my mouth just to stop the drool from coming out. All thoughts of talking fled me and I picked up my chopsticks, telling Aelita to do the same.

While I dug in to the delicious noodles with righteous fury, Aelita grasped her chopsticks clumsily, lifting some of her Ramen and passing it through her lips.

Slowly, her face exploded into a grin, showing her teeth, and she exclaimed: "This… This is amazing! This feeling… The flavour, it's all just – Wow, Jere-" She abruptly stopped, hand on her mouth with a blush colouring her unusually pale cheeks.

"I mean... It's really good," she concluded sheepishly. She immediately took another bite.

"I know! It's the most amazing thing in the world! I just can't live without it!" I stared at my bowl whimsically, fixing it with loving eyes.

Ayame-nee-san gave me a thumbs-up from her seat in the kitchen when she heard Aelita's resounding laugh, mouthing 'Keep it up!'

I grinned, emboldened by my success.

I glanced over to her bowl and saw that it was already quite depleted. She must've really liked Ramen. And she didn't even know how to hold her chopsticks right.

I reached over and remedied that quickly, positioning her fingers for her in the way that they were supposed to be resting in. By the time I looked up at her face, it was completely red.

I looked down, quickly realized what was wrong, and let go of her hands, awkwardly looking away.

"Uh… Yeah. They won't slip that way," I lamely finished.

Ayame was snickering her head off. I shot her an angry glare, then resumed eating. She would pay for this later, I swore. Believe it.

The rest of our little date together went by quietly. It was noon, so there was a lot of dust in the air from the carts that went by, but the steam coming from the shop gave the air a semblance of clarity. The heat became rather stifling though, and I noticed that she was squirming and fidgeting in her seat, wiping sweat away from her forehead repeatedly.

"I never knew temperatures could get so uncomfortable…" I heard her mumble.

She needed a change of atmosphere, and fast.

Once we were done with inhaling our food, I left the money on the desk and led Aelita out into the streets, heading for a much open place where the wind would be blowing. I thought of going to a training ground; the grounds were quite like a park, and there was the added bonus of being able to show Aelita off to any present Shinobi.

But I thought of something better. Why not go to the top of the hokage-tower? The walk to the top of the hokage mountain would be too long for Aelita, unless-

"Uh Aelita, are you a ninja?"

Weird. I hadn't thought of asking her that before. Maybe because of her lack of a forehead-protector.

"Uh, no. Not really," She answered, looking downwards.

Well, the hokage mountain was off. The tower would be suitable, then. I knew of a way that even Aelita would be able to climb; there were a series of ledges behind the establishment that could be scaled.

We walked back to where we had met, walking side by side. It was still quite hot, but the wind had calmed Aelita and she no longer felt suffocated. There was a healthy spring to her step now, and she seemed eager to see more of my home village.

We climbed over from behind, evading some Ninja that were crawling out through the back windows stealthily, trading a few words with a janitor, and reading the old adds that littered the stairways and ledges. Aelita could only read Romanji, apparently, and even then she didn't understand what she was reading. I didn't ask her about it though; it probably wasn't polite to know why.

Aelita was quite secretive too. After spending about two hours with her, all I knew about her was that she was probably a civilian, didn't know how to read Kanji, wasn't from Konoha and she really liked Ramen, although she hadn't eaten it before. And she was really good at talking. She wouldn't let me ask anything about her; she would redirect the conversation before I could, and before I knew it, I would be pointing to a building somewhere in the background, telling her about what happened there, or I'd be telling her a story about my days with my team while helping her up a particularly difficult ledge.

But it was fun, even though I was curious. I figured that if Aelita stayed around for long enough, I'd wheedle the answers out of her in time, so I had fun while I could, savoring every moment of what could be called the first date of my life.

When we reached the top, Aelita wasted no time in heading to the edge, looking at the mass of buildings that stretched in every direction, eyes following the mass of people that headed about on their different jobs. Her expression was amazed; I felt a small surge of pride.

"Wow… I've never seen so many people in one place before," she whispered, awestruck.

"Your village must be really small, huh?" I asked. She turned her head towards me, fixing me with calculating eyes.

"Yes. There aren't a lot of people there," she said sadly. I was about to repeat my inquiries, but she cut me off.

"My home is very beautiful though. The forests there… I've never seen trees so tall, or a sky so bright," she chirped, pointing into the distance. I saw her finger extended towards some of the forests in our training grounds.

"They're waaaay taller than those," she teased.

"Oh, they may look small, but those trees hide the worst monsters that anyone has ever seen. Including an evil cat who's probably hiding there right now."

"Monsters?" Aelita asked, suddenly somber.

"Yup! The worst you'll ever see!" I bragged, determined to show that Konoha was the best village and it had everything to offer that her village could, possible even more.

"What kind?"

"Hmm… I've never really seen any, but Iruka-sensei told me that there are huge leeches, centipedes, spiders, and a lot of other things."

"Do they bleed when they die?"

"Huh?" This was the weirdest question that she'd asked from me. Of course they would bleed, what else would they do? Vanish into nothing?

"Of course they do. What do you mean, Aelita?"

"Oh, no reason, just curious."

"Ok…" One of the other things about Aelita that I couldn't understand had just surfaced. She was just too strange to comprehend.

We didn't talk any further. For some reason, she was happy to simply gaze into the distance, tracing the contours of the ledge with her finger tips.

Then she started humming a tune in a voice I knew most girls would kill for.

Whoa.

She might be weird, but she was amazing all the same. It was as if her voice had some deep, primal meaning, something that made sense even if there were barely any words to express it. It was touching, and the emotion it carried was tangible. She sung of contentment, her voice resounding in the air while the sun went further down.

She glanced at me once, eyes shimmering happily, and I smiled back at her.

Who was she? And why was she sitting here with me, of all people? It made no sense, and I was confused. The urge to grab my ears and groan came over me as I was simply unable to think of any explanation to her identity.

Why wouldn't she tell me? Why did she insist on all the anonymity?

…Why did she stop singing?

"Uzumaki, I have to go now."

Time had flown, and it was sunset.

"Why do you keep calling me Uzumaki, Aelita? My name's Naruto."

"Oh? But you said-"

"Uzumaki is my family name."

She apologized, laughing sheepishly.

I sighed, the day with all its pleasure and confusion making itself known.

"Are you sure you have to go? It's kinda early- I can take you home if you want, where do you-"

"Thank you Naruto, but I can take care of myself," she interrupted me once again, placing her hand on my shoulder. "It's nice of you though, thank you. Thank you for showing me around, and… I'll see you tomorrow, ok?"

My crestfallen expression instantly lifted itself into something brighter, and I stood up, helping her along.

We made our way down, Aelita nimbly navigating through the steps that had given her so much trouble on our ascent. Our feet touched the ground eventually, and I caught her hand to stop her from a particularly violent stumble.

We walked on as we were, unwilling to break contact.

"Well… See ya, I guess," I muttered, swinging her hand back and forth lightly.

She swung her hand too, building up some momentum. A large, rapidly spreading blush covered her cheeks then, spreading throughout her face, her neck…

"Good-bye, Naruto." She dropped my palm and walked off briskly in the general direction of the village gates.


If you review, try to focus on any holes in the writing style and flow of this story; like any shifts between first person and third person POVs.

...

X.x