A/N: This is what happens when it's summer, I can't get time to write, and thus working on major projects is very hard: A Naruto one-shot that I think explains why Naruto is a devout follower of the Church of Ramen instead of the Church of the Log which everyone else chunin-grade and above subscribe to. This also serves as practice for me to test my skills at writing street rats. You, if you read my other works (always remember that history isn't balanced like even the worst-designed video games are) will see more of this type of survivalist when I get to SI Archives Part 10: The Long Night of Solace (formerly "Tales of the Tenth Street Reds")… eventually…

I'm taking Ayame as about 6 years older than Naruto, which means here she is a teen and mostly adult in mentality. I have NO IDEA how the characters act except from reading fanfics, but I'm portraying Ayame and Teuchi as relatively normal people with Bartender Syndrome (Wisdom +2)

Title: Ramen Über Alles

It had been seven years and three days since the Kyuubi attack. Why did Ayame know this? The obvious answer would be that she looked at a calendar. That was, of course, correct insofar as knowing how many years it had been, but as for the number of days… for the past three years she could keep track of at least four days after October Tenth due to the twenty-four-hour long (minimum) riot that always happened on that day, though this year it oddly happened a day late. She had never quite figured out why there would always be a riot on that day since it should have been a solemn day to remember the Kyuubi attack and the Yondaime's sacrifice. Working at her father's restaurant meant that the best they could do was close up shop and pull the sort-of blast doors—Ayame was still not quite certain why they needed sliding doors more than 3 centimetres thick on the front of a restaurant—shut to wait out the riot instead of investigating. After all, they didn't want any potential looters who would probably evade ANBU attention while they were trying to quell the riot.

She was making her way home in the evening, after her father had closed for the night, from looking around one of Konoha's produce markets in the rain when it happened. She stepped in a puddle of mud—she hoped it was just mud—in a moment of inattention… "Ugh…" She grumbled, yanking her foot out of it and looking down so that she could avoid it. Hopefully she didn't have too many mud stains on her clothes… well, no, but there were water splatter marks of… pink? That's not right… I was mostly looking around the vegetables sections today and any marks from near the butchers' shops should be a brighter red than that diluted look, not to mention I would have noticed when checking myself exiting the market… The exit she'd used was among the butcher stalls so she'd checked herself over for unsightly blood flecks after exiting the square. I only made a few steps that could have splattered though after I left the market, that puddle over there for example…

She backtracked and came to the mouth of an alleyway. It seemed a bit neglected, with a damaged trash bin not far in from the exit and a dead-end wall blocking the other end. The rain cascaded off of tarps and hangings situated above balconies above her and her umbrella. Even without the dreary weather Ayame suspected this alley would be dull and boring, but…

She was no more than three steps into the alleyway when she smelled it. Working in a restaurant that prided itself on being clean and tidy meant the smell of raw, fresh meat and blood was obvious to her from even a whiff, along with a vague stench of feces and urine, but… That doesn't make any sense, if someone had been killed or wounded here ANBU would surely have found them sooner than me given their skills, right?

Unbeknownst to her Kakashi Hatake and the few other ANBU who would have given a shit were all either out on missions or had been sent out the morning after by a relieved Sandaime once this year's October Tenth passed with unusual calm. There was a minor riot later in the day on the Eleventh though, she had heard.

She wasn't sure what to expect as some sort of curious instinct made her approach the dented trash bin, the only place the odour could be coming from. She could see that a few bits of it were strangely dented or rent inward as if it had encountered a hard corner too many times… she opened the lid…

She expected to feel nausea, given the odour, what she didn't expect was to spend exactly thirty-four seconds (if her mental count to prevent herself from SCREAMING HER HEAD OFF AND SCRAMBLING BACKWARD ON AS MANY LIMBS AS NECESSARY TO GET AWAY was correct) simply gawking before turning and emptying her stomach contents beside the bin.

The blonde, as she'd decided roughly twenty-two seconds into the long look at the severely messed up thing inside the bin—there was enough dried, brown blood and sticky red fresh blood for what it was to not be immediately obvious beyond something that was or once was alive—looked to be about four or five years old by the size of his frame. He was probably dead, if the amount of blood, vomit and other bodily fluids splattered across the inside of the garbage can was any indication. Some parts of the banged-up metal bin dug into his flesh, caked with sticky blood residue, and Ayame shuddered, wondering what sort of sick fuck—sometimes profanity was the only way to properly express oneself—could do this to a child. She was about to scream for ANBU when she realized something very cold.

This was a ninja village.

The bin was in plain sight.

ANBU were trained to have better senses than normal ninja, who were vastly above civilians like her.

The body had been here for at least a day or two if the blood residue was any indication.

THE ANBU HAD NOT SAVED HIM, NOR TAKEN HIM.

The ANBU let this happen… but why? If he's a fugitive they'd have taken him, unless… Ayame had heard about the Kyuubi being sealed away, having been young enough to witness the attack, and she'd heard whispers among customers about the "demon brat", but if this really was the Kyuubi… why would the citizens want to provoke him? She'd never seen him before, but what she saw now was a child who didn't look to be anywhere near the right age to have been born that night seven years ago, a child beaten most likely to death. His or her emaciated arms were held over his or her head as if desperately warding off attacks, the right wrist was obviously broken and the left hand's fingers mangled in a bloody mess, an end of a bone poking out from the broken left forearm and probably infected by now if he was somehow still alive.

One reason might be because Konoha had an over-abundance of non-sentient lifeforms disguised as humans living inside its walls. Ayame thought this unfortunately probable as she reached a trembling hand in and put her fingers under the child's face to see if he or she—she couldn't tell with how he was curled up—was still breathing. She nearly jumped back in shock at detecting a very slight breeze of air past her fingertips. "How… how is this possible?" She whispered to herself.

She wasn't sure how or where the child could be moved in his current condition, and she couldn't call ANBU either if they were in on this… she needed to get to Konoha General Hospital and get someone, but if she did then it would be easy for someone there chummy with the ANBU who let this atrocity happen to alert them and have them finish the job before she could come back. Her best bet then was to… take him home for now and get him to Konoha General tomorrow morning when there were more people on-duty and he was already within their grounds, and thus less susceptible to attack, not to mention they'd transport him in the daytime when attacking two regular citizens would draw attention, unlike being out at night which would draw potentially hostile ANBU attention.

The smell didn't matter as she forced her umbrella down the front of her clothes and picked up the bin slowly. With measured movements, she began moving. Some might think her plan over-thought, but really, being a waitress at a ramen restaurant was about as epic for information and knowledge gathering as any bartender, with the plus side that no one ever asked about it. She hoped no one accosted her about moving a garbage can now that it was almost nighttime… and fortunately no one did.

"What the hell, Ayame?" Her father exclaimed as he recovered from his shuddering nausea on being shown the contents of the trash can.

"I found him like this, it's been at least a day if not two. He, I think it's a he, is still alive for now, we can't move him now that it's getting dark, because if the ANBU haven't saved or taken him yet they probably are in on it. Getting someone from Konoha General is asking for them to tell some corrupt ANBU that he's not dead yet, so we have to take him there ourselves, and pretend we found him in the morning. It's not like he'd regain consciousness within that time…" Some waitresses were smarter than one might expect.

"That makes an uncomfortable amount of sense, daughter… We need to get him out of that bin and get his wounds disinfected as soon as possible, then bandage them up, I think, if he's to make it through the night…"

Ayame nodded quickly as she got to work cutting the bin off from around the boy, beginning to work on the wounds as they were shown and shivering a bit at the smell and sight that greeted her as she got to the mostly shredded rags that might have been his idea of pants "It's a miracle he's still alive… maybe it was destiny that made me notice the blood in the water I'd stepped in passing that alleyway…"

"He's probably badly dehydrated… and looks badly malnourished too if how skinny he is works for an indication…" Teuchi said over his daughter's half-panicked, half-dazed ramblings, a frown etched onto his face. He suspected he would never look at the people coming to his restaurant the same again, after all, this beating had occurred not a block and a half from his shop and home… it was most likely done by locals. He suspected the sight, up close and personal, far more so than even the Kyuubi attack years ago, would stay with him for the rest of his days. "What did they do to the trash can while the kid was in it to do this much damage?" He whispered to himself as he rinsed the mess away from the boy's butt, of feces mixed with urine and blood, eyes flicking toward the remains of the metal trash can he had cut away from the boy. The container seemed to have been ricocheted around many times between hard surfaces and perhaps even bladed weapons if the dents and tears were any indication, after the kid was forcibly stuffed inside…

It took an hour for the kid to be cleaned up and bandaged enough to look like he'd still be breathing come morning. Teuchi had closed up shop when he saw the kid's state and heard his daughter's explanation, knowing full well that he would not sleep that night "Go to bed, Ayame, you need your rest."

"I cannot, father."

"…I understand."

It was three hours later, as midnight approached, that the kid twitched, making a croaking sound of pain. This meant it would be safe to give him some water, probably… if he was even slightly conscious. The fact that he was reclined horizontally across their flattened-out futon made it easier to get him up enough to offer him a bit of water. One of his eyes was not only stuck shut by some sort of dried gel but horribly swollen and leaking some liquid that looked remarkably like pus… Ayame knew that an infection that produced pus in the eye would most likely have killed already due to the proximity to the brain, so it couldn't be a punctured eye… right?

Why… why didn't they just… "…why didn't they just kill him?" She whispered to herself as she went to get some water.

Her father heard her as he checked inventory to occupy his time and his mind, and the corners of his mouth tugged downward. Some people get off on the suffering of others, such is the way of things… This isn't ninja business, it's not right, even in a ninja village there are limits. There was no point trying to torture a kid to death like that… so why, why would someone, probably many someones, let this happen?

"Father, he's rousing a bit, help me get some water into him."

"He needs salts too, and a bit of energy, from how much blood he lost… A bit of diluted soup stock would probably be the best we can give him, diluted with water from the boiling of the noodles for starch content…" Teuchi said, already preparing said mix, partly from the day's leftovers he'd forgotten to dispose of.

"I suppose… if only we could get him to Konoha General without being accosted now that the sun is down…" Ayame's nails were digging into her palms.

"Keep him steady." Teuchi instructed, ignoring her words. His daughter hurried to comply. The boy cracked an eyelid open slightly as the spoon neared his mouth, but was clearly too wounded or out of it to even think to resist as he was fed a very small bowl of the fluid. After finishing he lost consciousness again after a few minutes.

It was about two AM that Ayame finally drifted off to sleep, chin still propped on her hands, and an hour later her father did too where he was seated staring at the wall above the futon.

The next morning Ayame woke first with the rays of the sun shining in her eyes, groaning as she pried her heavy eyelids open… and suddenly sat up straight at realizing the boy she'd brought in last night was gone. Did ANBU take him? But if they'd left him there for so long… and it's not like it's possible to beat up a kid that badly and have ANBU not notice… why would they take him now? To kill him? Well… I suppose that would be some sort of mercy given how badly he was wounded…

She roused her father at once and they spent fifteen minutes searching the house before they had to open for the day. She was still incredibly angry at herself for falling asleep when she went to put out the week's garbage for the collectors while her father opened the store… and heard some odd sounds from behind the trash bin. She moved it aside and caught sight of one terrified cerulean eye and a mouth half open to take another bite out of a piece of meat. From the size and shape—other than the parts missing from having been eaten raw by the boy—it was from a package that Teuchi had deemed expired three days ago. She had no idea how the hell his right hand was recovered enough to hold the food, but the meat had clearly gone even more thoroughly bad from its coloration and the maggots crawling over it. "Why are you eating that?"

He actually snarled when she grabbed the piece of meat and pulled. "NUUUU…" But his grip wasn't nearly as strong as hers, and when he stumbled trying to get up from the corner he'd most likely—if his mobility was any indication—dragged himself into the slab of raw, spoilt flesh slipped from his grasp. Ayame was promptly horrified as he scrabbled along the ground snatching up maggots that had fallen to the floor and stuffing them into his mouth.

"Stop that! I'll give you some real food!" She said hollowly.

The kid's obviously still unusable left hand was bracing against the ground, using his left elbow, while his right hand was halfway to his mouth when he stopped for a moment, looking up at her suspiciously. "Food?" Then he seemed to remember to continue harvesting the fly larvae from the ground.

Ayame wasn't sure if the correct mental response was puking or screaming, but she said, voice trembling "Yes, real food, not spoiled stuff."

"No one chases me for taking spoiled food, except the ones who attack anyway." The street urchin rasped out in a voice that suggested he had used it little in the previous weeks. There was something looking remarkably like a cornered, terrified animal making a last stand in the one eye darting around as if looking for threats, but Ayame thought that he seemed remarkably mentally stable given how much he must have suffered.

"Yes, I'll get my father to make you some real food."

The boy seemed to deflate, recognizing that he would not win against her anyhow, or maybe it was the fact that he was so starved and injured that he knew he couldn't get away. Ayame was amazed as he shakily stood up, swaying from side to side a bit before she caught him by his right shoulder and steadied him. His immediate response to try to throw her off only yielded a shudder of pain in his small body as his still damaged left hand tried to move hers to no avail.

He had guts though, if the way he looked straight ahead as she led him back into the restaurant was any indication. "Father, I need one bowl miso ramen for the boy." Ayame told her father, poking her head out from the door into the cooking area.

"You found him?" Teuchi said, surprised. "Coming right up. Kami knows the boy needs some food… but aren't we taking him immediately to Konoha Gen—" he cut of looking at the empty look in his daughter's eyes. "Right, miso ramen…"

Ayame stared as the boy stared at the food and the chopsticks he'd been given, before eating with worse manners than the average pig. She stared more as he licked the bowl clean with two full repetitions. Finally she spoke. "What's your name?"

"Naruto Uzumaki."

"Where do you live?"

"Where it I don't get wet if it rains."

"Why were you attacked?"

"I don't know, they keep on screaming at me, something about 'die, demon' or 'monster'… but I know who the monsters are…"

Ayame's frown was growing deeper and deeper "Who are your parents?" He likely doesn't have parents…

"I don't know. You're nice, but I hope the food wasn't poisoned, the last time someone tried I got a bellyache for a day, but it was worth it for that meat bun." He said in a matter-of-fact tone.

"…Naruto, you were hurt very badly… we're going to get you to Konoha General, and my father is going to have a nice talk with the Hokage to get you your orphans' stipend if you qualify, or to find out who and where your family is, okay?" Ayame said slowly, making sure she didn't spook him, or at least trying to.

She didn't expect his look of confusion. "Why would you care?"

"Because… because it's the right thing to do."

"Okay, I'll cooperate…"

Other than Teuchi being shaken nearly to death by the Sandaime as soon as "Naruto Uzumaki" was out of his mouth when talking to the receptionist at the Hokage Tower, nothing particularly interesting happened before that evening, before Naruto would fall asleep in his hospital bed. The family of two had promised to come to visit after closing up shop for the night, and he'd forced himself to stay up until they arrived despite the anaesthetics still lingering in his system from the surgery to save his eye (if not for a certain guest inside him he would certainly have gone blind in that eye despite their efforts).

"Ayame?" He asked as they entered his room.

"Yes?"

"Someday… I'll make them all care like you cared. I'll make them stop hating me. I'll be the one to protect them all, show them that I'm no monster. I'll make them love me. You just… watch…" the eye not covered by a large eyepatch drooped shut as he slipped into sleep.

"I have a feeling he's really going to do it." Teuchi said after a moment of watching the kid glumly.

"I feel it too, father…" Ayame's voice cracked a bit "let's go home. I also feel we'll be seeing him a lot over the coming years…"

And so they would.

Naruto would never quite remember the incident that almost killed him, but one thing lingered from it, an eternal, indelible mark. Ichiraku Ramen would always be his favourite place to eat ramen, and ramen would always be his favourite food. He would not recall why in particular, but what had occurred to him was obvious enough to those who looked for it. Now and forever, in Naruto's mind, among foods and quite a few other things too, there was only one truth…

Ramen Über Alles.

Oh, and as a minor side-note, there was also the fact that he decided he would be Hokage, but that wasn't the point.

XX

A/N: Any future humorous Naruto one-shots I write may feature a Ramen Goddess (cough Ayame cough) to whom ramen is like Gaara's sand and whose signature jutsu (for example, Minato Namikaze's signature is the Hiraishin, or as I've heard it translated, the Flying Thunder God Technique) may well be "Ramen Über Alles" ("Ramen Above All")

REVIEW! (I realize OOC-ness is strong, but I've never watched nor read Naruto, only read fanfics thereof, and wondered why Naruto is fo the Church of Ramen instead of Church of the Log)