Hello everyone! I'm back! Sorry it's taken me so long to post a new chapter. I finished this chapter a while back, forgot to post it, and then started to work on chapter four. So ya'll get two new chapters this time! YAY! Reviews are appreciated!

Masashi Kishimoto owns Naruto. I do not.

Dragoness17

Chapter 3

Naomi was roused from her sleep when she felt a smack on the side of her head. She cracked one eye open, saw that Iruka-sensei had started to assign teams, and nodded. Silently expressing her gratitude to Sasuke for saving her from Iruka-sensei's, "No sleeping in class," lecture… again…

As she sat up, a sudden wave of dizziness ripped through her head. She inhaled through her nose and laced her fingers together to rub her thumbs near the corners of her eyes. Resisting the urge to groan, she willed the whirling pain behind her eyeballs to stop. After a few seconds, the dizzy spell receded and she waved off Sasuke's glance of… dare she think it… concern?

'Aw, don't I feel special.' She thought, mentally rolling her eyes.

She turned her attention back to who was being put on which teams but found it difficult because her entire body felt increasingly cold. She managed to ignore the worst of it and instead focused on Sensei, who had just called Naruto's name. Her amusement increased when Iruka-sensei called out Naruto's other teammates. One was Sakura, and the other was none other than he of the thousand emotions, Sasuke Uchiha. He had been placed on a team with one of his worst fangirls, and the one guy that could manage to tick him off in two seconds. She almost laughed but a fierce wave of cold shot through her body and she closed her eyes to resist the urge to shudder violently.

'Please don't let me faint. Please don't let me faint.' She repeated like a mantra in her head.

The chills finally subsided to bearable levels and she exhaled. The whole class was laughing at an argument Naruto and Sasuke got into that she had missed. She laughed so she wouldn't look clueless and listened as a few more teams were called. Then, Iruka-sensei called her name, followed by Akira and Taka.

She looked down at the two boys in the row below hers. They high-fived each other and then turned to her, hesitating momentarily. Akira gave her a thumbs up and Taka grinned happily, albeit somewhat strained. She grinned back but on the inside she was feeling apprehensive. The two boys had been best friends since childhood and she had even played with them sometimes when they were kids. However, the boys' mothers had put a stop to their interactions and she wasn't sure what kind of stories they had filled the boys heads with.

She remembered one incident a long time ago. Since the Sarutobi family had taken care of her until she was old enough to care for herself, Asuma-san had taken her to the playground one day. Taka, Akira, and their mothers had been there too, but they had been too busy talking to really notice who their children were playing with. After maybe an hour or so, Akira and Taka had been called to their mothers. She, having no one else to play with, ran back to Asuma and requested that they go eat some dango. He lifted her onto his shoulders and as they were walking away, she heard them warning the little boys.

"Don't get too close to her, understand? We don't want you to get hurt." One of them had said, not really bothering to lower her voice.

"Yes, her mother came from a very violent country and abandoned her here. It's not safe to stay around her." The other one said, hushed, having a little more tact.

Once they were some distance away, she had asked Asuma, "Why do they say mean things like that?"

Asuma had sighed, smoke from his cigarette blowing into her face. He chuckled as she coughed and swatted it away. "Some people are just afraid of what they don't know or understand."

"But if they don't know what I'm like then they shouldn't say things that aren't true!" She had said indignantly.

"That's true, but people will still do it anyway," was his reply.

She had pouted then, "I'm gonna make it so that everyone knows me! Then when everybody knows me, they won't have anything bad to say!" She ended by crossing her arms with a little 'hmph'.

"Yes, yes." He had said, sighing again.

She had pinched her nose, "Asuma-san, you stink."

He had reached up and poked her in the side. Then he set her down and half-chased her the rest of the way to the dango shop.

The women had been right to some degree. She had been told small, simple details about her past when she was younger, which she accepted easily. When she was older, Sarutobi told her how she had come to live in Konoha.

Sometime in late November twelve years ago, a woman had entered the village with some merchants from the water country. She was carrying an infant that was barely only a few weeks old. When the merchants left the village, the child was not seen with the woman. Later an infant was found in a basket on the steps of the Hokage building. There had been a piece of paper in the basket. It gave her name, birthday, and the names of her parents.

Naomi had accepted this fairly easily as well. Yes, she was different from the other kids who had parents but she had plenty of people who had cared for and loved her. Sometimes, the other kids would tease her about the fact that she had no parents and she would become depressed. Eventually, though, she had reasoned that it was in the past, she could not change it so she just had to deal with it and keep going forward. Which is exactly what she did.

As she grew up, she would smile and be friendly to anyone and everyone, regardless of how they treated her; she developed a compassionate heart and loved to help anyone who needed it. She had been rather oblivious as a child however, only sometimes noticing the mysterious estrangement of many of her friends. If she did notice this, she wouldn't think too much of it and move on to making more friends. Saru-jii had called her a social butterfly once and she had been confused, thinking she had sprouted butterfly wings or something.

She still looked fondly back on those days. The days when her kid logic was the answer to everything, how it had made life seem so simple.

'Too bad it really isn't that simple,' she thought a little bitterly.

As she got older, she began to see the other children's treatment of her. When she was in kunoichi training she was teased about her curly hair. So, she had eventually started wearing it up to hide the curls. Time passed by and she noticed whenever she tried to interact with the other kids like she usually did, they would look at her strangely. Because of this she became withdrawn and quiet around anybody she didn't know very well. She became friends with some people through one way or another, though none were really super close. Many of them would fade out as time passed. The people that she got along with the best were grown-ups whose caution had been dissolved by her polite and energetic demeanor. Besides, who didn't love a cute, innocent, kid?

She was never really included in any of the other children's games, either. She would just, kind of, be there. Usually in the way somehow. Several times she wondered if anything would be different if she acted like Naruto, but she knew she had become too self conscious and awkward to act like that. She often wondered if she had some undiscovered power to turn herself invisible. At least that would help her be a good shinobi, right?

Naomi sighed at her optimistic pessimism, telling herself that she definitely had a social life… probably… maybe.

She brought her attention back to Iruka, who had just finished telling them that they would meet their Jounin senseis later in the afternoon. They were then dismissed for lunch and Akira and Taka were discussing where to go. She glanced over, a silent laugh leaving her throat when she saw that Sasuke had already disappeared to parts unknown. She looked back to her new teammates.

'Maybe they'll invite me to eat with them. We are part of a team now after all,' She thought hopefully, but as she watched the boys make their way to the door, that hope was effectively squashed. 'Oh… Well then… I guess I'll be eating by myself again today.'

She put her head down, feeling another wave of cold sweep over her and she shivered slightly.

"Naomi? Are you coming with us?"

Her head shot up to see the both boys waiting at the door, looking at her. She couldn't be absolutely sure, but were they scrutinizing her?

'Oh dear…'

"Oh! Yeah, sure! Sorry." She chirped, hurriedly grabbing her lunch and following after them.

They didn't make it very far down the hall though before a surge of blinding, piercing cold erupted in her chest. Her eyes rolled back and she squeezed them shut as she fell to one knee. She blindly grabbed the edge of a windowsill and kneeled, hunched over as she fought to pull air back into her lungs.

"Hey, what happened?!" She suddenly heard a voice close to her.

It sounded like Taka. She tried opening her eyes to see who it was, but her vision was swimming so much that she had to close them again to keep from getting sick.

"Are you okay?" She heard Akira ask.

She swallowed thickly, and stood up, "Yes… I'm okay. Just a little dizzy spell is all."

"You don't look okay," Was Akira's reply.

She opened her eyes again, her vision somewhat better, when she felt a warm hand placed on her forehead.

"You're freezing!" Taka exclaimed.

"Seriously?" Akira said, repeating his friend's action. His eyes widened upon feeling the chill on her skin. "We need to get you to the infirmary." He said, his normal jocular tone suddenly very serious.

Naomi, at this point, having broken out into a cold sweat and halfway to passing out, agreed. She used their shoulders for leverage as she pushed off of the wall and began walking at a snail's pace to the nurse's office. Akira and Taka hovered on either side of her, helping to support her if she stumbled or started to list off to one side.

Taka opened the door to the infirmary, she uttered a 'thanks' and walked in. She went over to a bed that was placed near the window in the warm sun and curled up as tight as she possibly could. The sun didn't really help much and the random thought that she must look like a cat flitted through her mind. She heard Akira send Taka off to find the nurse and then start rummaging around in one of the closets. She stayed where she was, curled up and shaking, wondering how in the world this, whatever it was, hit her so fast.

Akira carried a bunch of fluffy looking white blankets into her line of sight and she straightened up to grab a few and wrap them around her. She pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped layer after layer of the blankets around her until the only thing that could be seen in the puffy white lump was her head from the nose up.

'It's like I'm wrapped in clouds!' She thought, her cold delusional mind making her thoughts a bit silly.

Akira was now at the sink on the far side of the room filling up a hot water bottle. He finished and brought it to her. She immediately snatched the warm object and pulled it into her cocoon, pressed between her bent knees and chest.

"Ohmygoodness. Thankyousomuch. You'reawesome!" She gushed, immensely thankful for the warmth the hot water was radiating to her body.

Akira blinked before giving a nervous smile and sitting down in a nearby chair. "Thanks I guess," he chuckled, "You're body temperature is really low for some reason. That should help you stay warm for a little while." He said semiprofessionally.

She nodded and closed her eyes, thinking, "Hey Akira?"

"Yeah?" he answered.

"Do you want to be a medical ninja someday?" She asked as another shiver overtook her.

He looked surprised for a second, "Ah… Yeah. Is it that obvious?"

She smiled, "A little." they then fell back into awkward silence.

Another moment's pause and he spoke again, "My dad was a medic nin. He helped his teammates out a lot." Akira's jokester grin came back to his face for a second, but fell away in the next.

Naomi's brain caught up with what that meant a second too late.

"He died on an S-rank a while back though." He continued before she could backpedal.

Pain stabbed at her chest and she berated herself for her thoughtless comment. "I'm sorry Akira I didn't mean-" She began, but was cut off.

"Don't worry about it! You didn't know!" He grinned again.

She tried to say something else but pain throbbed stronger behind her eyes and she pressed her forehead to the hot water bottle, hissing through her teeth. Just then the door opened and the nurse walked in followed by Taka and Iruka-sensei, who closed the door behind them.

"Why don't you boys go ahead and get ready to meet your Sensei. You can tell them about Naomi-chan's situation." Iruka-sensei suggested.

Akira looked as if he would protest so Naomi spoke up reassuringly,

"It's okay. I'll be fine." She said, giving a little smile.

Akira gave a nod and he and Taka left the room. Minutes passed as the nurse took her vitals and listened to her breathing. As she sat through this, Naomi began to sniffle and her eyelids grew heavy. The Nurse had to peel away the layers of blankets to get her blood pressure. So Naomi was left with a ring of blankets around her on the bed, still clutching the hot water bottle like her life was depending on it.

Quite suddenly, Naomi felt the urge to sneeze. She nudged the nurse away out of habit (she didn't want to sneeze on her) and the nurse took the hint and backed off a little. She inhaled shallowly a couple of times and felt something strange move in her arms. The pressure behind her eyes was building and with each passing moment the chill and dizziness was multiplying and converging in her head. In the next instant, several things happened that Naomi would have to be told about later.

Iruka-sensei lunged forward, tore the hot water bottle from her grasp and threw it across the room, flipping a nearby bed up to shield himself and the nurse. The pressure in Naomi's head compacted behind her nose and she sneezed. The hot water bottle, still in mid-air, expanded rapidly and exploded, sending rubber and what should have been hot water everywhere. However, instead of hot water, chunks of ice flew across the room, cracking the glass of the window.

In the moment that she had sneezed, the pressure in Naomi's head was relieved, but was replaced with a fierce pain that spread like a tsunami through her head and body. When Iruka-sensei and the nurse turned their attention back to her, she had already blacked out from the intense, unexpected agony of the strange sneeze.