Naruto and its contents are the property of Masashi Kishimoto. The following story is a fan work and not intended for sale or commercial use.
Warning: This story includes or will include attempted rape, mild violence, bullying, abuse, and STDS. Any additional triggers or explicit content will be warned for at the beginning of each chapter. There will be no lemons, but characters will be of many sexual orientations, including heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, and pansexual, and in romantic relationships.
AN: The school system in this story is based loosely on the American public school system. For those unfamiliar with it, explanations are provided in story when possible.
Please read, review, and most importantly, enjoy.
Chapter 1: The Jester
The school was deserted, the chill winter air having driven even the most avid partiers into the nearest bar. New Year's Eve was a time for celebrating, not studying; which is why no one was there to see a figure carrying a work ladder towards one end of the school. No one was there to see the figure carrying over buckets of paint. No one was there to see the figure get onto the ladder and start painting on the wall. As the hours passed and December became January with a loud cheer, the figure continued his solitary work, a grin plastered on his face.
Two days later the students returned to school and the news of the prank spread like wildfire. A tarp had been hung over as much of the wall as possible, but that didn't stop the entire student body from knowing that written on the wall in bright orange paint was "Welcome back to Prison. Enjoy your stay." In the same way, lack of witnesses didn't stop everyone from knowing exactly who was responsible: official school prankster Naruto Uzumaki.
School was almost over, and his smile had yet to fade. He'd been surrounded by other students all day, some wanting to know how he had pulled it off, others congratulating him with slaps on the back, even more scolding him for being immature, and all of them wondering how much trouble he'd get into. Naruto thrived on the attention. It didn't matter if it was positive or negative, and it was a rare week where he didn't do something outrageous around the school. No one had been in detention more than he had, but since none of his pranks could be traced directly back to him or were this side of legal, he hadn't been expelled, and the faculty were just resigned to wait until he tripped himself up.
It wasn't only his antics that drew attention. Naruto liked to dress in bright shades of orange, usually with something blue that people would naturally focus on when the brighter color exhausted their eyes. His face was the same, messy blond hair that fell every which way but didn't quite cover his deep blue eyes that always seemed to sparkle with mischief. The image was completed by his trademark goofy grin. Some people saw him for the first time and immediately pegged him for an idiot, but he didn't care. That meant they were noticing him, and once they were noticing him he made sure they could never forget him.
"Naruto!" At the sound of his name Naruto turned around to see Sakura Haruno standing over him with her hands on her hips, an expression of annoyance on her face, making his grin somehow grow even wider.
Like Naruto, Sakura stood out in a crowd. Her long hair fell all the way down her back, and every strand of it was dyed a pale pink, a pleasing shade that looked weirdly natural. They had been in the same schools since elementary and he had never seen her hair any color but pink. Along with her green eyes, it reminded him of spring, specifically the part where he was trapped in class during the best parts of the day, which always filled him with nervous energy. It didn't help that Sakura was usually the one scolding him for not paying attention in class, making that impression even stronger.
A few years ago, she had decided for some reason that she would be the one to get Naruto to pay attention and behave, not something she was ever going to succeed at, but he admired her for trying. For years, Sakura had been Naruto's not so secret crush and a good number of his pranks were aimed at getting her to pay attention to him. She was beautiful, smart, and well mannered, a perfect match for the handsome, hilarious, imaginative, and soon-to-be famous man that Naruto considered himself to be.
"Hey Sakura, want to go out-" he started to say before she cut him off.
"How could you do something so immature," Sakura snapped. "Dropping erasers on people's heads is one thing, but defacing school property is illegal. You could be expelled or worse, arrested!"
"I didn't do it, Sakura," said Naruto with a feigned look of innocence on his face. "As I've been telling everyone else, I have no idea who painted that wall. Why does everyone think I would do something like that? However," he continued, "if I HAD done it, it would be because I knew that that wall of the school is scheduled to be repainted next week anyways," he finished with a grin.
Sakura just gaped at him. "How would you know that?"
"They talked about it at the last PTSA meeting before break," said Naruto.
"You attended a PTSA meeting?" Sakura's disbelief was written all over her face.
"I'm hurt that you don't think that I care about this school!" Naruto said dramatically. "Plus," the grin returning to his face, "I always like to be prepared, just in case."
"You cheeky little-" Sakura began, but at that moment the bell rang and their English teacher walked in.
"Everyone to your seats, we have a lot to go over today."
As everyone sat down, he continued "As Juniors you have only one and a half years left of high school before you graduate. As is the tradition of our school, before you can do that, you need to complete your Senior Project. I'll pass out the instructions now, but to put it simply you're allowed to do anything, as long as it's a learning stretch. Something, anything, you don't already know how to do."
This will be easy, thought Naruto smugly. I can just pretend to learn how to swim or draw. If there was anything he was good at, it was drawing and painting. He'd been forced to learn the skills as some form of alternate behavioral correction method. Sadly, it had backfired and he just used it to pull off more elaborate pranks.
The teacher continued, "Now to make sure you're all putting in the effort and actually learning, you must document at least 15 hours of you working on the project, and have it signed off by an advisor who has experience in your area of study."
Audible groaning could be heard at the teacher's words, but it only got worse from there. "At the end of your senior year you will be presenting your finished product, whether it is something you made or just pictures of what you learned, to a panel of volunteer judges, who will decide how you did.
Naruto buried his head in his hands. So much for pretending. Damn it, they're not going to make this easy on us. How am I supposed to find a topic, much less an advisor? Truth be told, Naruto wasn't exactly an honor student. He was just as surprised as the rest of his classmates whenever he succeeded in moving on to the next grade each year, and the end of this year looked likely to be yet another series of sleepless nights and prayers to any unseen mystical force that chose to listen. He had absolutely no idea what he could even do his project on.
The advisor was if anything an even more difficult hurdle. Naruto barely knew any adults in more than passing, and the ones he did either knew him as a less than model student, troublesome prankster or worse. He tried to stay clear of them as much as possible.
He didn't have any good friends whose parents he could ask, and it wasn't like he had any family friends. His parents had both passed away right after he was born, and except for his "guardian", no one had ever come up to him claiming to have known his parents.
As panic began to set in, he tried to think of way out of this mess. Ok, I just need to calm down, I've been in worse situations than this and I've always come out on top. I may not be book smart, but there's no one cleverer than me. Don't think of it as a school project, think of it as a prank. Yeah, that's it; it's no different than the hundreds of pranks I've pulled off over the years. Both require me to come up with something ingenious then reveal it to others. And there is no one better at pranks than me. Just remember what you're aiming for.
His goal in life was to become successful, rich, and famous, to show all of the people who thought he couldn't accomplish anything that he was worth something, to earn their respect; to give them no choice but to respect him. He had long ago figured out that the only way he could do that was with his own will; even if he had to fight the world to do it nothing would stop him, not the adults who hated him for the trouble he caused, not the students who only thought of him as an amusing troublemaker, and certainly not some stupid school project.
His resolve restored, the young man tuned back in just in time to hear his teacher say "-and the paper will be due the day of the final for this class."
"What!" Naruto squawked, causing the rest of the class to stare. "What paper?"
The teacher glared at him. "The paper I was just talking about Naruto. You need to stop daydreaming and pay attention or you won't be able to pass this class." Naruto glared back at him while the rest of the class laughed, so the teacher took pity on him.
"To reiterate, along with the project, there is also an eight to ten page research paper on any topic loosely related to whatever you decided to do your project on, due at the end of the year, and it will count towards your grade for this class. Your proposal is due…"
As his teacher continued listing all the due dates for the various steps of the project, Naruto zoned out again. Ugh, this paper's going to kill me. How am I going to even pass this class now? For the rest of the class Naruto didn't pay attention to anything that happened, trying to find a way out of the mess he was now in. As the bell rang, he was about to leave when his teacher called him and Sakura aside.
"Both of you need to go to the office right now. Kakashi wants to see you."
Kakashi was the counselor for both Naruto and Sakura. Since he always seemed to have better things to do, neither of them had met with him more than a few times since starting high school, so they were understandably surprised that he would want to see them. They were even more confused that he seemed to want to see both of them at once.
"I mean, I can understand him wanting to see you, since you just painted part of the school, but why would he want to see ME?" Sakura fretted, her fingers worrying at her long hair as they waited outside Kakashi's office. "You don't think he thinks I helped you, do you?" panic slowly turning to anger as she turned to him and pointed accusingly at him, "I swear to god Naruto, if I get kicked out for your mess I'm going to murder you!"
Naruto for his part was slowly inching away from Sakura, hoping Kakashi got there soon so they could find out what this was all about. Sakura resumed pacing while occasionally mumbling things under her breath and glaring at him. Thirty minutes later, Kakashi finally showed up.
"What are you two doing in front of my office?" Kakashi asked in surprise.
"Um, you called us down here, didn't you, sir?" Sakura asked, her voice timid again, her hands folded in front of her.
Damn, she's like a completely different person around him, thought Naruto. Why am I the only one that brings out the angry side of her? Truth be told, Naruto actually kind of liked that side of Sakura. It showed that there was more to her than most people thought, and made him feel special that he was the one she chose to show it to. Why that was never seemed to cross his mind.
"Oh right, completely skipped my mind. Come on in. You too, Sasuke," Kakashi said, looking over his shoulder.
Naruto turned around in horror to see his arch-rival and resident pretty boy Sasuke Uchiha stand up from the corner where he had been sitting unnoticed and coolly breeze past him into the office. That bastard just ignored me! One of these days I'm going to punch him in his smug prick face! Naruto thought angrily to himself as he followed a now blushing Sakura into Kakashi's office.
Kakashi sat down at his desk, pulled out what looked to be a trashy romance novel, and proceeded to read it while they all waited for him to tell them what was going on.
"Hey, you going to tell us why you called us down here, or you just going to continue to jerk us around?" Naruto snapped at him.
Kakashi didn't even look up from his book as he spoke. "Inelegantly put, but you do have a point. As I know you've been told today, you three will each have to complete your senior projects before you can graduate. I called you down here to inform you that as of today, you will be working on your projects together from now until you graduate."
At his words, two shocked voices rang out at once, "What!"