Chapter 5 – The wolf in sheep's clothing

Naruto frowned. His neechan hadn't been at school for the last few days and he was getting worried. When he had tried to find her by asking around the Uchiha compound, they just gave him disgusted looks and kicked him out.

It goes without saying that the Uchiha were quite high up his pranking to-do list.

He sat rather despondently on his swing. It where they both had decided to meet up every lunch time, she'd said something about 'you can't live off just ramen!'

Of course, Naruto didn't believe that since, to him, ramen was the food of the gods. But he trusted his neechan and let her feed him at lunch. Even if it was icky green vegetables.

Naruto sighed and began to leave when he heard a familiar voice call out to him. "Naruto!"

He looked up and a grin broke upon his face. "Neechan!" he ran up to her and hugged her tightly, "you made me worry!"

"Sorry about that 'Ruto," she laughed while she got out her bento, "I just caught a little cold. Now, shall we eat?"

"Yup!" he chirped; his previous gloomy mood completely forgotten.

They began exchanging stories about the different things they were being taught about in the Academy.

"Man, Iruka is harsh," he whined, "he made me do the leaf concentration exercise again and again until it stuck on my forehead!"

She raised an eyebrow. "But isn't that an important step in becoming a ninja?"

He grumbled, "yeah, but still…I don't like it! It's really hard."

"Hmm…tell you what," she said after some pondering, "if you master that exercise, I'll teach you a cool new jutsu myself."

The moment 'cool new jutsu' came out of her mouth, his eyes gleamed with interest. Mayue swore she could almost see tiny stars in his sapphire blue eyes.

He narrowed his eyes and scrunched them up in thought. "Wait, it isn't any of the academy jutsus?"

"Yep, something completely different," she confirmed, "that you'll find very, very cool."

"Alright neechan! I'll get this exercise mastered in no time! Believe it!" he stated confidently before running off to find the nearest leaf so that he could practice the exercise.

By the time she had yelled, "Naruto finish your food!" he had already disappeared into the many halls of the school, leaving only a dust cloud in his wake.

Mayue groaned in exasperation, since Naruto had escaped before she could give him his vegetables.

She leaned back against the Hashirama tree she was sitting beneath and was content with watching the passing clouds and listening to the twittering birds.

After a few minutes had passed, her lips curled upwards slightly as she recalled his expression of sheer determination and childish innocence.

"I bet he doesn't even understand that I'm feeding him properly," the girl mumbled tiredly. Keeping up with Naruto was like trying to do one of Maito Gai's absolutely brutal training regimes; it just was impossible.

She had decided to stay in the Academy for the full four years; someone had to keep an eye on Naruto. It'd be easier to be in the same building for the majority of the week instead of being outside the village on a mission. It would also help avoiding the attention of a certain one-eyed bandaged elder. Really something she did not want at all.

Mumbling things about troublesome blonds, she tidied up the chopsticks and bento box, then headed back into her classroom to take another lesson.

Mayue absentmindedly meandered her way towards her classroom when she bumped into a boy who was clearly older than her. Stumbling back, she began to apologise when she realised the brat had done it intentionally.

Briefly mulling over her options, she decided to (reluctantly) apologise to the douche and move on.

Unfortunately, life has that knack of being cruel.

"Sorry about that, are you alright?" she said half-heartedly, then her eyes widened when he struck out with his fist, only missing because of her private training with her parents. (When they saw the state of her taijutsu, they became absolute slave drivers. And you wonder where she got her sadis-cough-teasing streak.)

He growled out in annoyance. "Damn demon fraterniser. My mom says you should go burn in hell with him!"

These words certainly attracted some attention from most the passing bystanders, who stopped to watch what was going on. They kept their distance, though; they knew not to get too near a fight, instead cheering like immature children. Well, they were, but still.

In the meantime, she didn't know whether to be more surprised that the kid knew the word 'fraterniser' or that he had just called her brother in all but name a demon. Regardless, once those words came out of his mouth, his fate was sealed.

It was if a switch had been flipped as the pure anger coursed through her veins. In her rage she didn't realise she had subconsciously activated her Sharingan. Grabbing her bento, she threw it high above where she was standing.

Smiling a sickly-sweet smile, she asked, "I really hope you didn't mean what you just said. It would be such a pity if you needed to go to the hospital for what I'm about to do to you."

He sneered as he rapidly approached her. "I don't need to listen to a demon-lover."

Mayue's smile turned positively feral. "Good," she said simply, before intoning the word, "Kawarimi!"

All her practise with performing the jutsu seallessly seemed to be paying off as the bento box that had been launched in the air by herself suddenly disappeared and switched places with her. She oriented herself in midair swiftly before cocking back her fist and slamming it into the boy's unfortunate unsuspecting back.

He choked as his body crashed into the ground. She landed gracefully and caught the still falling bento box.

The fight had been over far before it had even begun.

Of course, the flare of chakra caught the attention of the teachers and they came to investigate the source. The sight they stumbled upon was a messy short-haired girl, humming contentedly while she sat on top a downed boy with a small crater surrounding both.

For some strange reason the girl was also eating some vegetables from a bento box.

She grinned at the stunned chūnins.

When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade.

It's as simple as that.

Understandably, I did need to receive some sort of punishment for putting a fellow student in hospital, so I was given a nice appointment with Hiruzen so that he could chew me out for injuring a comrade-to-be-maybe.

Of course, the 'chew' part of the sentence was thrown out the window when I told him about what tactless things the boy had said. He had told me not to do it again; evidently it would be pretty bad if people saw an Uchiha student start beating all of their fellow students up, just because they had got a bit angry.

I mean, karma, but I might have overdone it slightly.

…okay fine, quite a lot. Happy?

Anyway, the next day at the Academy, the whispers followed me everywhere. I henge'd into a generic looking student and listened in to one of the circulating rumours about my little brawl with that kid.

I had apparently been given the nickname 'The Wolf', because I was literally a lone wolf most of the time and that I was 'hiding in a sheep's clothing'. Could mean a few other things as well I guess, like how I hide my real skill level, which is probably way beyond an Academy student.

I paused. The debacle I had caused before probably caught the attention of Danzo. Shoot.

…oh well. Let him come if he wants.

A grim smile spread across my face.

I just need to be prepared to take him on.

Mayue stared in disbelief at the glowing blue sphere she held in her left hand.

"That's very much not what I expected," she murmured, entranced by the beauty of the orb. She was in a secluded clearing at the edge of the Uchiha Training Grounds, so that no wandering or training ninja would discover her learning the Rasengan; even she knows that precautions need to be taken.

It had been only two weeks after she'd decided to learn the Yondaime's jutsu, and while she did know the method of training, and all the tips and tricks that came with it, Mayue had expected much more…problems. Obstacles.

She remembered that it was mentioned somewhere in the Naruto series that the Rasengan was 'the apex of shape manipulation'.

In spite of that, it seemed oddly easy to complete the first step, once she'd got the hang of moving her chakra outside of her body. Mayue found out that the further away your chakra is from your body, the harder it is to have fine control over it.

Anyway, Mayue had done exactly like Naruto had exclaimed in the anime, 'just make the chakra swirl in as many directions as possible, and the balloon will pop!'. Which it did.

In all honesty, for her, the second hardest part was trying to do such advanced chakra manipulation outside her body to begin with. She was pretty sure most ten-to-eleven-year olds weren't attempting to learn an A-Rank justu before they had even graduated from the Academy.

The biggest problem she faced when learning the technique was the chakra drain during the second step, which was infusing power into the rotation. Makes her wonder how large Naruto's chakra reserves was in canon to throw these around like they were cheap confetti.

Which reminded her; the sphere was starting to destabilise, bumps were appearing on the previously unblemished surface. Refocusing her chakra quickly, she managed to somehow bring it back it under control.

Right; don't get distracted with dangerous jutsu. Control was key with the Rasengan, being distracted would mean a trip to the hospital, and a few not-so-friendly conversations with T&I. Not her ideal afternoon.

Mayue relaxed as she let the jutsu (carefully) dissipate.

"You all done boss?" her clone called out from behind her.

"Yeah," she sighed, rubbing her neck to ease the stiffness, "dispel and I'll see if I can find Sasuke. Mikoto-kaasan asked me to take care of him, it's still early afternoon."

Stowing away the onslaught of memories she received from her Kage Bunshin, she amped up her legs with chakra and ran towards the familiar blue lake where she knew Sasuke would be.

It was his favourite spot after all.

*Title gained: Ōkami*

Ōkami - wolf

Took some time to get this chapter out, woo!

Unfortunately, I have an announcement to make: the intervals between new updates will become longer and longer due to GCSEs/O-Levels/High-School finals, whatever. Having exams does suck; when I write I feel like I am wasting time I could be studying. It's a terrible feeling ;(.

But, I will continue this story, because, as Jiraiya puts it;

"Let me explain something to you, there is only one thing that matters if you are a shinobi, and it isn't the number of techniques you possess. All you do need, is the guts to never give up." - Jiraiya

And I won't.

Have a happy Easter Holiday!

- Maki-sensei ❤

SEE YOU SPACE COWBOY