A/N: I would like to thank the reviews and for all the people that added this story to their favourites and follows.

(A week later)

"Shouldn't you be preparing for the Sports Festival, Naruto? You know I won't mind if you decided to take the whole week off."

Naruto curled her lips into a thin smile as her boss frowned at her. For the past week, her boss had been giving her very 'subtle' hints about what should be her priority. If she was not cleaning the dishes then the woman would comment about it while she was serving the customers. Even when she was changing into her normal clothes, the woman would comment about it.

"I got it under control."

Her boss raised her eyebrow. "Naruto, do I need to remind you that everyone is going to be watching you and seeing your stuff or that my café is on the line here."

The blond-haired girl swirled her head at her boss' words. What did she mean that the café was on the line here? What did she mean that her only safe heaven was on the line? Naruto took several deep breaths as she tried to reign in the storm of emotions that threatened to consume her.

She must not release her temper on her boss because Naruto was no Sakura.

"Boss, what did you do?"

The middle-aged woman laughed nervously and fiddled with her hands as she avoided looking into her eyes. The fact that her boss was acting like a little girl, who had her hand in the cookie jar, worried the teenager. In the two years that Naruto worked under the woman, not once had she seen the woman act like this. Confident and bubbly yes but not nervous.

"I might have made a bet with one of my poker buddies about you."

"I thought you said that you will stop using the café as a gambling chip!"

The woman rubbed the back of her neck. "He was betting a lot of yen since he heard from one of his customers that one of the Heroes' kids was in the Sport Festival! And well I couldn't resist…you know I am weak when it comes to money."

"So, you betted the cafe that your deceased husband build for you because you wanted some extra cash?"

"Now you are making me sound like a bitch." The woman grumbled. "You should be happy that I have confidence in you."

The girl could gape at her boss' childish words and wondered not for the first time if her boss was as really as old as she claimed to be. How could someone bet their own workplace? Their heaven? The woman always reminiscence about how her husband worked so hard to build this place for her. She always went into a dazed as she talked with a lovesick sigh about how the man had been willing to accomplish her wish.

She never thought that the woman would make such a risky gamble. Her boss loved her deceased husband to the point that Naruto wanted to barf about the stories between them. The stories about them were the kind of stories that made a person queasy and almost made you believe that true love exist.

This just proved to Naruto that there was no such thing as true love.

(The next day)

"I'm not joking."

Naruto felt her face heating up as she recalled Todoroki's words from last week. It had been a whole week since the boy accidently informed everyone that she looked beautiful with a smile on her face. It had been a week and she still could not look at the boy in the eye. Was this how Hinata felt whenever she looked at Kiba? She felt like an idiot for teasing the girl about her crush.

She rubbed the back of her neck and twisted her head away as Shouto furrowed his eyebrows at her. Why was she embarrassed? It was normal for a friend to compliment their friend, right? It should not make her feel like an idiot. Yet, her stomach had a pit of butterflies as she recalled the honesty in his eyes when he told her that she was pretty.

No one really called her pretty.

"Uzumaki, did my words from last week make you feel uncomfortable?" Shouto asked her as everyone waited for Aizawa to enter the classroom. The younger boy had a small frown in his face and the blonde felt a sense of dread as the butterflies came back. "I was only telling the truth about your appearance…I didn't mean for my words to upset you or to cause you to avoid me."

Was he serious when he said that he never had fangirls? Naruto asked herself as she willed for her blush to go away. How could no one stalked him? He was polite, kind and good-looking to bit and he actually knew how to compliment people. He also had the naïve thing going for him. There was no way in hell that he didn't have any fangirls.

"Your words didn't upset me." She finally said when she felt the heat in her face died away. "It just took me by surprise."

Shouto frowned at her but did not dare to question her about why it took her by surprise. It was not like she could tell him that no one called her pretty. Everyone used to comment about how she acted like a boy or about the way that she ate. The girls would make fun of the whisker marks in her cheek, telling her that no one would think that a girl like her was pretty.

She curled her hands into a tight ball of fist as the memories of the past washed over her. Monster. Loveless. Ugly. Those were all the words that the girls had used to describe her. This had been their bullets whenever she made fun of their love of Sasuke. They would taunt those words as they reminded her that there was very little chance of someone loving her.

She shoved those memories away and stared at the whiteboard. Love was not something that she should be striving for. Naruto was going to become a hero. She was going to show the world that Naruto Uzumaki was not some girl that allowed her past to consume her. She was going to prove to the council that they had been fools for considering exiling her.

"Uzumaki-san…"

Naruto blinked her eyes and turned her head to look at Momo. The Vice-President was a very pretty girl with her onyx colored eyes and long black hair. Sometimes when she looked at the girl, she wondered if this was what Sasuke would have looked like if he had been a born a girl. However, her classmate was no Uchiha. Despite her limited interaction with her, the girl had shown that she was a warm person.

"Naruto." Her classmate frowned and the blonde smiled tightly. "I don't actually like being called by my last name."

"Can I call you Naru-chan?"

Naru-chan? Was it going to become a habit for everyone to call her by that nickname? It started with Itsuka and then Tsuyu had decided to call her that after USJ. Now it was Momo's turn to ask. Until she came to this part of the world, Hinata had been the only one that called her by that nickname. Sakura had refused to call her by that nickname and Sasuke would rather die than call her by that name.

"I don't mind, Momo-chan."

"Naru-chan, will you like to sit with Jirou and me?" The blond-haired girl tilted her head and Momo smiled. "We would like to get to know you better."

The blue-eyed girl chewed on her bottom lip as her brain processed what her classmate asked of her. Sit with them during their lunch? Was she ready for such a big step? It was true that she knew now that they cared for her but it still felt too soon for her. She felt her head throb as the memories of her childhood flooded through her mind.

As a little girl, she wanted so badly to have friends and she did a lot of stupid things in the hopes of making friends. She tried studying like crazy, only to realize that most of the teachers gave her papers that were not her level. She skipped class with the boys because she thought that they might be the only ones that were willing to be friends with her.

She hadn't done anything and these girls wanted to get to know her.

"I will be happy to sit with you guys."

(Lunch time)

"So Uzumaki…"

"Naruto."

The blond-haired girl could only curl her lips into a large smile as her classmate knitted her eyebrows together. It was starting to become an annoying habit for her to correct everyone when they called her by her last name. If only she had told everyone from the very beginning that she hated being called by her last name. Todoroki and Iida were different since the two of them did not feel comfortable enough to call her by her first name.

"How come you don't spend a lot of time with Bakugou or Midoriya?" Jirou asked her. "The three of you came from the same middle school but the two of them don't seemed to know you all that well."

Naruto thinned her lips before swirling the contents of her ramen. So that was their first question? She mused to herself as she stared at the ripples in her food. It was kind of logical. The two boys should know her very well but she never allowed herself to bond with any of the kids in her middle school. It was true that she protected Izuku but she did not actually know him, all that well.

She hated Bakugou's guts.

"I never had time to bond with the kids in my middle school," she admitted. "I was always too busy studying or working to even consider hanging out with any of them. The only interaction that I have with any of my classmates were when we had group work or when I had to rescue Midoriya from Bakugou."

"So you never went out with your friends?"

"If you asked Explosive Head then he will tell you that I didn't have any friends." They frowned at her response but the girl could only shrug her shoulders. She ignored the voices from the other students and looked at her two classmates. "I used to try and make friends with the other girls in my elementary school but it didn't work out for me."

Momo frowned. "Why?"

"Because they thought I was competition for their crush," Naruto admitted. "There was a boy in my elementary school that was thought to be the cutest boy in our whole school. The other girls would try to stalk him and declare their love for him while I just insulted him because he had everyone's attention. I never understood why they thought that he was good looking since he had the personality of an ass."

Her classmates blinked their eyes like an owl as they processed her words. So she was not the only one that found their behavior weird? Almost all the girls in the Academy had called her a liar for not thinking of her teammate in that way. Only Hinata hadn't found it weird but the girl had a crush on Kiba, which was smarter since the boy was nice.

"So, they didn't become friends with you because they thought that you were trying to get their crush attention by insulting him?" Jirou summarized.

Naruto nodded and that earned chuckles from her two classmates. The joyous laughter of the girls brought a lightness to her heart and it made her wonder if maybe that it was possible for her to be friends with other girls. Itsuka might be her friend but she did not get to see her often. Being the Class President meant that her friend had a lot of duties and could not always afford to spend time with her.

It also did not help that her classmates had a stupid feud with them or so Itsuka informed her.

"The poor guy," Momo muttered. "If they were stalking him then he must have never had a moment of peace."

Naruto laughed. "It was so bad that he begged me to save him from those girls so he could eat his lunch in peace. I told him that there was no way in hell that I was willing to risk my life to protect him from those girls! Do you know how crazy they were? Two girls broke their friendship over him."

"You are kidding? They wouldn't be so stupid as to break their friendship over some guy that didn't even like them?"

The smile on Naruto's face faded as she recalled the day when she entered the classroom and saw that the two girls were sitting in the opposite sides of the room. Even as a little kid, she thought that the whole thing was stupid and pointless. The two of them had something that she only longed to have. They had a bond that she tried to foster with them but denied her.

They threw that bond over a boy.

"They were," Naruto answered. "I don't even know what the big deal was but I just knew from that day on, their friendship was never the same."

"I know you guys were kids but you can't throw your friendship over a boy," Momo said, putting down her chopsticks. "Friendship is for life but crushes come and go. They should have focused more on their education and their plans for their future. If my mother heard me do what they did then she would have given me a huge scolding."

"Did I mention one of them had the highest grades when it came to the books?"

Jirou snorted. "What is the point of having the highest grades when you are not focus in the more important things in life? Throwing away a friendship for a boy is just wrong in so many levels."

The girl tilted her head and listened as her two classmates debate about the issue. So she was not stupid to think that they were wrong? Sakura had called her an idiot and told her that she would understand if she fall in love with someone. Till now, the girl still thought that it was stupid because no boy should be worth it. When there had been rumors about Kiba liking her, Naruto made it a point to tell Hinata that she didn't like Dog Breath.

She made it clear that their friendship meant more to her.

The girl dropped her chopsticks as she realized the irony behind her words. If their friendship meant the world to her then why did she run? Why didn't she tell Hinata that she was leaving? The girl deserved to know the truth. The pain of her fight with Sasuke didn't mean that her friend didn't deserve to know that she was fine. It didn't mean that she should have served ties with her.

She should have told the girl that she was leaving the village but Naruto knew that Hinata would have told her that she was coming with her.

Naruto might have had no one in the village but the girl still had a little sister that loved and worshipped the ground that she walked on.

It was too late for her to tell her that she left the village or how much their friendship meant to her.

She really was a bad person.

So this was the school that Naruto was going to? Jiraya mused to himself as he stared at the looming gates over him. He had spent a whole week trying to find the exact location of the train that stopped between the two continents. It had been difficult to locate the train with the way that the train did not really have a schedule that he could follow. It had been just his luck that the train had stopped in the remains of Uzushiogakure.

It had been an adventure getting to know the people that were going to Japan. Several of them had been civilians that were looking for a better life for their families while some of them had been refugees from Kirigakure, who wanted nothing to do with ninjas. Their behavior reminded him of his young charge and it had been difficult for them to open up to him, but he got there in the end.

Now it was his time to explore the country that he only heard stories about and only seen in television.

He jumped as the gates swung open and several teenagers walked out of the gates. For a brief moment, his mind went frozen as he tried to process the girl's uniform. The perverted part of him was tempted to try and hit on them while the part of him that was Naruto's godfather felt a sense of dread. If he was being tempted by a pair of short skirts then he would hate to wonder the kind of perverts that Naruto was facing.

His goddaughter might be able to break several bare limbs with her bare hand but it was worrying about how short their skirts were.

"See you, Naru-chan!" A girl called out.

Jiraya stood up straight when he heard the word 'Naru-chan'. His heart raced as a blond-haired girl walked out of the gates with a small smile playing on her lips. Was that really Naruto? The last time he saw the girl, she was tiny thing with eyes that were faded to nothing. The last time he saw her, she barely had the body of a woman.

The teen in front of him might have her father's colours but it felt like he was looking at a mini-Kushina except for the fact that she was even prettier than her mother. His stomach fell as he realized that there must be a possibility that there were several boys interested in her.

Why couldn't the girl be ugly?

Now all of his jokes about fendings her from perverts were going to be true.

"Ero-Sennin!"

The Sannin opened his mouth to scold her for her nickname but closed it when the girl launched herself at him. He could not scold her for that horrible nickname. It would be just too cruel for him to yell at her when they hadn't seen each other in nearly three years. He rubbed her back as the girl sobbed against his chest, telling him about how sorry she was for not contacting him.

He should be the one apologizing because he failed in his duties as a Godfather.

"Uzumaki, who is this?"

Jiraya frowned when he saw a bicoloured boy staring at them with curiosity. He flickered his eyes to his goddaughter, who released him from her hug and twisted her body around to look at the boy. The boy was a good looking boy that much he could not deny. In fact, it almost pained him to say that the kid might be one of the best looking boys that he had ever seen.

He was a lot more good looking than that Uchiha teammate that Naruto had and he would have been even more good looking if he didn't have that burnt mark.

"This is E…"

"I'm Naruto's Godfather and who might you be, young man?" The bicoloured boy arched his eyebrow while his goddaughter could only gape at him. He folded his arms against his chest and stared at the punk's eyes. This boy gave him a bad feeling. Not the same bad feeling as the Uchiha. If that was the case then everything would be fine.

"What the hell are you doing, Ero-Sennin?" Naruto grumbled. "Todoroki is my classmate."

If he was just her classmate then why the hell was the girl blushing like a little girl? In Konoha, the girl denied having any romantic feelings when it came to her teammate. She never blushed or anything. In the few minutes that he saw them interact, the girl was blushing as red as her mother used to when it came to her father.

It was his right to be concerned.

"If you are her Godfather then why did you abandon her? Why didn't you visit her when she was in the hospital?"

"Oh god." Naruto muttered, hiding her face behind her hands.

Jiraya curled his lips and stared at the rigid boy. His first impression of the boy was that he was a block of ice that did not care about anyone. The fact that the boy had the audacity to question him and his relationship with Naruto told him that he did care. The kid was a lot better than most of the kids in Konoha, who did not seem to even ask him about why he hadn't visited Naruto on time.

Then again, he never told anyone about the truth of their relationship.

"Because it took the brat nearly three years to even tell me that she was fine," Naruto smiled sheepishly and he ruffled her hair. She blinked and he could only give her a smile, hoping that it would be enough for her to be reassured that they were fine. That he was not really mad about the lack of contact. "And I have business all over the world since I am a famous writer."

It was not like he was lying.

His books were still famous in this part of the world since the big business owner had contacted his publisher to demand the books were published in Japan. They did tell the business owner that he had to altter a few things in the book. The only alteration in the books was where he was born and where he lived but other than those small changes, the book was the same as the ones that he sold in their part of the world.

"Now can I ask what are your intentions to my goddaughter?"

"Ero-Sennin!"

He was going to have so much fun with teasing the girl about her bonds with her classmates.

A/N: Please review.