"That's, what, about ten teams out now?" Naruto asked curiously, once in their shared room.

"Three teams - Fuu's, Gaara's, and ours, made it out, but apparently Gaara likes killing people," Tayuya responded, "but I think about ten teams were killed by Gaara on the way here. There's no telling how many are left. I distracted him from the other Rookies and that team with the green jumpsuit guy that seems to hero-worship his mentor."

"He dresses worse than I do," Naruto commented.

"Thank you!" Karin said, hugging her cousin. Said cousin eyed Tayuya with a frown, and Tayuya rolled her eyes.

"Karin wants to get you new clothes," Tayuya said to her.

Naruto paled. "I like my orange!"

"No, we're getting you new clothes," Karin said firmly. "I wonder what color would be good on you."

"Blue and orange," Tayuya said, Karin gaining a thoughtful look at Tayuya's words.

"Huh," Karin said, looking a tad shocked.

"I love my jumpsuit!" Naruto cried.

~:~

Naruto blinked. Neji and Hinata... That reminded her... Nah, it wasn't too important right now. Now, if they were fighting each other, then Naruto would tell him.

Yeah, but that was about as likely as one of the Hyuugas coming out on top.

Naruto decided to unseal a chair and relax, sipping tea with sunglasses on before it was her turn. Just why Kiana had brought several chairs, pairs of sunglasses, and multiple bottles of tea, Naruto did not care.

"Ne, Kiana, did you bring ramen?" Naruto asked, her stomach rumbling. She hadn't eaten it in the past week.

~:~

Jiraiya of the Sannin looked at his sensei as several calls of 'Ita-daki-masu!' came from the big corner that had the members of the Uzumaki clan in it.

"Are they even taking it seriously?" he asked his sensei.

The Hokage sighed. "It's not as if I could ban ramen from the stadium. Apparently its their Holy Food. They have to eat it at least once a week, and they start to get ill if they don't," the Sandaime said flatly.

Jiraiya wanted to see his goddaughter and her family. But he was rather unsure about approaching her since, according to the Sandaime, she was a highly-trained Tokubetsu Genin under Kakashi's tutelage.

And no matter how casual and hilarious the clan of Uzumakis were, Jiraiya had met a few of them before the Fall of Uzushigakure. In serious situations, they were definitely serious - so serious that the perceived notion of their clan being batshit crazy were dismissed by the enemy as they were taken seriously. However, at home and around family, the notion that the entire clan was batshit crazy was proven. Only a few had been remarkably serious (and even then, Kazama had always been a little... Er, he couldn't say 'psychotic', because Kazama was a quite serious man when Jiraiya had met him briefly, but... Well, a bit touched in the head because he'd bicker with his own thoughts, so, yeah.), and even they had their problems. Kamido, Kazama...

Kazama, though, had died not soon after Jiraiya had met him in the Second Shinobi World War thanks to the Fall. And if his sensei hadn't even known about the psychosis of the clan they'd been allies with, then Jiraiya wondered why the Uzumakis here were showing it.

But then again, the Uzumakis who had pretended utter sincerity while snickering like little kids in their heads... All of them were dead, with very few prisoners left.

"You know that time I went to Uzushio, sensei?"

His sensei turned to him.

"With Kazama-sama, Orochimaru, and Tsunade-hime?" he went on.

"Yes," the Hokage said with a slight frown.

"They were batshit crazy when they had no ninja arriving," Jiraiya revealed. "Kazama-sama told them that we'd be there for a month, and that while their politeness was noteworthy, they should just be themselves." Jiraiya smirked at remembering the silence, then the dissolving chaos. The polite clan had turned into one of the rowdiest and friendly clans ever to be seen.

"Winner: Hyuuga Neji!"

Oh, yeah, there was a match going on.

~:~

Naruto looked over, Hinata coughing up blood.

"Well, I guess I should tell them -" Naruto began, sitting up, but she was stopped by Kiana's smirk.

"You're going to win your round, right?" her scary mother figure said.

"Yes," Naruto nodded.

"Good, because if you lose to Kankuro, we'll kill you," Karin said in a poisonously sweet tone before bodily tossing her onto the ground. Naruto managed to save her precious Ramen from falling on the ground, and she slurped up a few more noodles.

"Hajime!"

She was about to drink the rest of the broth when the bowl shattered upon contact with a kunai, as it was a porcelain bowl. Naruto didn't care that her lip was cut and bleeding, or that her entire face was soaked with ramen.

She heard Kiana gasp.

"Oh, shit," the white-haired man, Jiraiya, she thought his name was - said in a horrified tone as wisps of red chakra leaked from her body. Her eyes were blazing red, her anger clear on her face.

She slowly moved her eyes from the shattered bowl to the ninja she was facing's face.

Analyzing him, she spoke in an icy voice.

"One. Sip. Is All. I Had. Left. ONE SIP! ONE SIP OF RAMEN, AND I WAS DONE! NOW LOOK AT THIS, TEME! YOU BROKE THE BOWL AND MADE ME SPILL WHAT'S LEFT OF MY RAMEN, YOU -" she broke off, snarling violently, her features going distinctly Kyuubi-like. But, instead of raking her sharp claws and destroying his body, Naruto held out her hand and summoned her father's invention.

"Take this, you teme! With this, I avenge you, ramen!" Naruto sprang forward. "Rasengan!"

Her hand broke through and hit...

...something that she broke through.

Leaping back, she frowned. There was a gaping hole in his body, but... No blood?

"Son of a bitch! He's got no insides! He's a zombie!"

Kiana facepalmed and threw her empty bowl with unerring accuracy, hitting Naruto in the back of the head and smashing the bowl to pieces.

"You moron, he's a puppet!"

"Oooh," Naruto said as it dawned. "I'm such an idiot. Look, man, I'm sorry," she apologized to the puppet. "I'm just kind of angry. Ramen is sacred to my people."

"Who cares?" the puppet-man asked with a scoff. "That was a pretty flashly move there. Think you could do more flashy moves, kid?"

Naruto's left eye twitched. Violently.

A smirk appeared on her face.

"I can do many flashy moves, teme." She looked to the expectant jounin faces above her, then frowned.

Who - ah.

She closed her eyes.

"Hatake Sakumo," she said under her breath, focusing on finishing off his life. As she descended into the blackness that always occurred, Kurama took over and righted her.

~:~

Sakumo smiled at his son. "How are you doing?" he asked him. His son shrugged, his mask hiding his face.

"I'm doing fine," the kid replied quietly.

Sakumo sighed. "Kakashi."

"I'm fine," the kid replied stubbornly.

"You're not fine. You're angry."

"I'm not mad," the kid insisted. "I'm fine."

Sakumo frowned. Kakashi had been a little... Off, since he entered the Academy. Angrier. He glared at his father more often, and Sakumo wondered if it could be the whispers that were making his son like this.

He didn't know.

A mere month later, Hatake Sakumo ended his own life.

~:~

Naruto kept her eyes closed.

Her hands flew through the handsigns Sakumo had seen in his life. That Sakumo learned - unintentionally - off Kiri ninja.

"Kirigakure no Jutsu!"

Mist flooded the area. Since Naruto had poured her chakra in it, mist blanketed the area.

Then, hidden by the mist, Naruto's hands flashed again.

"Suiton: Water Dragon!"

The mist collected, the water forming into a dragon, and splashing down onto the puppet user.

Kakashi snorted, then started laughing his ass off as Naruto's hands formed a rather familiar set of signs. Moving to fast for the naked eye, Naruto smirked, then plunged her lightning-coated finger in the water before moving back, again too fast for anyone to see.

Sasuke, though, had seen it, but he had ignored her hands. He wouldn't copy her jutsus. He was snickering to himself.

His annoying teammates, a loudmouth and a pink-haired banshee, looked at him funnily.

People looked at the two Sharingan users for a minute before they realized they had seen what she'd done.

A fire started.

"AH!"

The puppet-nin could only watch as his prized puppet was burned to a crisp thanks to water and well-timed lightning.

"I forfeit," the puppet-ninja said, then beating the fire off of the remnants of his puppet.

"Oh, puppet ninja~"

The puppet ninja and everyone watching looked at the strawberry blonde, who was giving him a rather sinister smile.

"You ever interrupt an Uzumaki again, I will be forced to make sure your puppet... Or, I don't know, you, don't survive."

She laughed in a sinister way.

Kankuro fled.