Chapter 13 – Ending school

Disclaimer – I do not own Naruto. I do not own Naruko either. I don't even own Julie.

oOoOo
Timeskip – Graduation Day.

A lot of things had happened during these last three years, and two of the most noticeable things were during the second year. One month after the start of the year, the Uchiha massacre happened. The village had been in an uproar for a long time, and Uchiha Itachi was the new most hated man in Konoha, even more than Naruto. Sasuke didn't come to school for two full weeks, and when he finally came back, he was still an asshole, but now he was a dark brooding asshole. She guessed she couldn't really blame him for the dark brooding part, you can't live this kind of traumatic events and come out of them unscathed. But she could still blame him for the asshole part. After that, he tried his best to upstage her, but she had too much of a head start at this point.

She found absolutely sickening to see that it was from this day onwards that the girls became fan-girls, and that Ino and Sakura threw their friendship through the window for him. How could you find having all of your clan murdered attractive? How can you find being brooding and emotionless sexy? She saw that two or three civilian girls were also not into the dark emo hype, but they rapidly succumbed to the peer pressure and pretended to be like the rest. Sakura even once came to confront Yuri, pretending that she also was into Sasuke, and that she was just acting indifferent to make him fall for her. This day, Yuri couldn't resist to pick up one from Kakashi's book and asked her if she said something. It was apparently enough to make Sakura hate her.

Kiba finally understood during the second year that she was not interested, and started to act like a human being. She even noticed he could be pretty pleasant when he was not playing his 'alpha' bullshit.

Shikamaru started to up his game too, visibly taking what she said into consideration. He still didn't care in class, but was doing his best during all the exercises that mattered, and, as she predicted, Choji did the same, and was starting to be a force to be reckoned with. The only one who could best him were her and Sasuke, and even then, it was not every time.

For the first few times they did taijutsu training, they pitted her against the other girls, and, apart from Hinata, it wasn't really fair. Most of them were civilians, they didn't train out of class, they didn't do any physical training, and were even dieting. After asking several times without success to be pitted against the boys, since outside the village, you wouldn't chose what gender you will have to fight, she went and asked to the Hokage to do something. He warned her that if he was giving her the authorization, she couldn't back up, and she would have to fight the boys until graduation. She accepted without any hesitation. She didn't really like to ask favours, but she was training too hard every day to not fight against serious opponents, and Choji was really a serious opponent. Even with the amount of strength training she was doing, he was still clearly stronger than her, and she had to use all her flexibility and speed to win against him. Even Sasuke, despite his flaws, was a really talented fighter, and without all her extra work, she would clearly lose against him.

Despite being, so far, the best of the class in Taijutsu, she knew it was only because she had unfair advantages and was against Academy students, and that it was clearly not her area of expertise. She would end up being competent in taijutsu, but she would never be skilled. She wasn't all that great with Kunai and Shuriken either, she was a bit better with Senbons but it wasn't, again, her best asset. She guessed she would probably have to work on her Kenjutsu once Genin, maybe it would feel more natural to her.

The only other notable thing that happened was at the end of the second year. Apparently, one of the teachers, fed up with Hinata's interference with sabotaging the demon, decided to go and warn Hiashi that he was concerned with Hinata's close proximity with the Uzumaki boy, that the boy would probably try to take advantage of her, and start behaving inappropriately, and that it would be better if Hinata was to take her distances.

Let's just say that Hiashi was not amused. He went to the Hokage, to ask exactly what was wrong with the teachers, that they had no right to tell him how to raise his daughter. When the Hokage asked for explanations, he was not amused either, and Iruka and Mizuki became the teachers for the last two years.

Between the year two and three, Yuri, on the advice of Naruto, decided to come clean with Hinata, and explain the circumstances, everything except the Kyubi, so she wouldn't feel betrayed. At first, Hinata was hurt of being lied to, and that the boy she was crushing on didn't exist at all, but when she thought about the looks that the villagers were giving Naruto, she could understand how unsafe it would be for a girl. She was also thankful that they trusted her and told her the truth even without really needing to, so she promised to keep the secret.

Mizuki was still clearly a demon hater, but seeing what had happened to his predecessors, he was a lot more subtle and smart about it. Genjutsu on tests, blunt kunais, bad advices that looked helpful at first glance, given with a bright smile.

It was during the third year that they started to learn Ninjutsu and that Yuri noticed a trend. Once they had learned one of the three academy jutsus, all the clan heirs were working hard at home to master them, like Anko advised her, while all the civilians considered that, now they knew them, it was good enough. The only exception was Ino, who was working a bit more than a civilian on them, but was still too busy stalking the Uchiha.

She finally learned the Kawarimi, and really loved the skill. Once again, the bonus for mastering the skill were pretty interesting. At first, you could only swap with items that were big enough, like a log, a chair, a table, or bigger. But once mastered, you could swap with small items, like Kunais. Apparently, there was another stage where you could swap with another human being, but she never managed to do it.

At first, she wondered why it wasn't considered as powerful as the Hiraishin. After thinking about it, she realized that, with the Kawarimi, you could swap only once with an item and you would end up exactly where the item was. After that, you had nowhere else to go, except doing another Kawarimi with another item. While with the Hiraishin, as far as she knew about it, the Kunai was not moving, and you could teleport anywhere in a big sphere all around it, and you could do it several time in a row, with only one Kunai.

She was still unable to do a single Bunshin, she only could do twenty at the minimum, but she was really talented at pretending that her Kage Bunshin were normal ones. And for the Henge, well, it was more her signature Jutsu than even her clones. After a long training and a lot of unsuccessful attempts, she even managed to transform into a cat. Once that was done, she learned that the hardest in that skill was not the transformation, but moving around with four legs and a tail. It wasn't a way of walking that was natural at all for a human being, and it took nearly as long as the transformation itself. Even now, she was still too stiff to be a believable cat. She really wasn't in a hurry to try to be a bird.

Fourth year was totally unremarkable. It was just third year all over again. The only new thing that was taught was that, once a month, they were being put under a D rank genjutsu, and they had to get out of it. It was totally stupid. Since they warned you that you were inside a genjutsu, you didn't have to spot it, just flare your chakra and get out of it. The only one who didn't manage was Naruto, but when she asked him later, in private, why he didn't manage, she learned that the genjutsu he was under was a B rank, not the same D rank than the others.

And now, she was waiting in the classroom, ready for the start of the final exams.

oOoOo

In this world, Naruto couldn't care less about Sakura or Sasuke, so there was no 'first kiss' episode.

Ino and Sakura were just plainly annoying everybody, Yuri would have liked to be able to stop hearing from her ears the same way she could with her whiskers, because the screams of a psychotic prepubescent girl were really painful. The worst part was that Sasuke was sitting in the middle of a three seats desk, so both could sit on each side of him, but they were so engrossed in their fighting that they never even realised that.

Finally, both the teachers entered, Mizuki never failing to scowl for a few seconds when spotting Naruto before adopting his usual friendly smile. And, most importantly, finally, the girls stopped shouting.

Before the start of the exams, to 'avoid any chance of cheating', Mizuki suggested they all changed of seats and spread out into assigned places. Iruka couldn't find any reason against that and accepted because after all, it was a sound idea, even if Mizuki did have an alternate motive behind. And, obviously, Yuri, Naruto and Hinata all noticed that Mizuki took a particular care to surround Naruto from all the people who seemed to like him the least in the classroom.

All the morning was only theory. Maths, politics, geography, strategy, chakra theories, ninja rules, etc. Everything was pretty easy, and she was sure that most of the class would have a pretty high score, but when she looked at Naruto, she could see that he must have a pretty advanced genjutsu on his test. He looked like he was really struggling with harder questions than them, and when the genjutsu would dissipate, the answers will not match the questions anymore.

oOoOo

The afternoon, it was physical testing. They started by an obstacle course, then a stamina test, followed by a speed test. She obviously aced this one. She nearly closed her eyes during the obstacle course to make things easier, but she managed to resist the temptation. For the stamina and the speed test, she just decided to turn off her resistance seal by a large margin. The second was Sasuke, then Naruto, her blood clone having never used the resistance seal. Most of the fan-girls were shouting at her, accusing her of cheating for beating 'their Sasuke-kun'. She really wanted to be snarky, but she preferred to just ignore them, it was safer for all their eardrums.

When the Kunai throwing test started, she felt a less confident than for the rest of the exams. It was the skill she worked the less on, and she was sure she could easily be bested by both Sasuke and Hinata. Luckily, and sadly too, the test was, again, stupidly easy. They had to throw five shurikens and five kunais, in ten unmoving targets from an unmoving spot… Because not moving on the field while throwing things to an unmoving ninja was probably frequent. She managed a ten on ten bullseyes, as did Hinata, Sasuke, and surprisingly enough, Ino. Most others had either eight or nine, but Naruto's weapons were completely dull, and, despite throwing as hard as possible, only six managed to stick.

For the Taijutsu portion, instead of fighting against each other, they had to fight against Mizuki, 'for fairness'. They had to either last five full minutes, making him leave the circle, or managing to hit him with a hit that could incapacitate someone in a real fight.

When it was Hinata's turn, she really had a field day. She didn't like the arse, his treatment of Naruto was blatantly obvious for all those who were paying attention, meaning not a lot, and thus, had a bone to pick with him. Instead of her managing to last five minutes, it would be more accurate to say that it was him who managed to last three minutes, then she finally managed to struck a nice junken strike to his stomach, earning her the spar. Yuri managed to suppress a laugh at that, especially seeing the feral grin the girl had when she was leaving the circle. 'Yep, she definitely doesn't lack confidence this time around.'

After a break of ten minutes, so he could catch his breath, the spars could start again. Kiba managed to make him leave the circle in 4 minutes, then it was her turn.

Yuri wasn't in a really forgiving mood, this far, seeing all the blatant cheating the white haired Chunin was doing, that Iruka wasn't even able to spot, so, while she could have played it cool, she just decided to go all out.

For the first time in public, she totally disactivated her resistance seal.

To be fair, in Mizuki's defence, if he had been expecting something like that, he would probably have been able to block, or dodge, but he wasn't expecting that at all. After saluting each other, she just ran full speed toward him, jumped and round house kicked him in the face. It was 'only' high Genin speed, but he had been fighting at academy level speed for two hours now, hence, he was both out of the ring and knocked out in less that ten seconds, that had to be worth a bit of bonus points, right?

The silence was a bit weird, and when she looked around, she could see that everybody was looking at her with wide eyes.

"What? Was that not the goal of the spar?"

Iruka was the first to react. "Hum, yeah, of course. Well. Winner Nakajima Yuri. We're going to take a second break for Mizuki to recuperate."

After the break, the fights continued, Shikamaru held his ground for the five minutes, while Sasuke made him exit the ring in three minutes.

The fight with Naruto was so unfair, that if she had any second guess about kicking him in the face, now she just regretted to not kicking harder. Apparently, Mizuki asked two civilian boys, Masaru and Kuronabe, who hated Naruto, to make some ruckus as soon as the fight started, attracting Iruka's attention. Unfortunately, it worked, and when the scarred teacher was looking away, Mizuki just went full Chunin speed and punched Naruto in the guts.

Yuri could see that Hinata was seething, they shared a glance, but both knew that nothing could be done about it yet, and that it was inconsequential anyway. She was a bit surprised to see that Shino was frowning too, it was the first time in four years that she saw him with a real emotion on his face.

When Iruka finally got his attention back onto what was happening in the circle, all he could see was that Naruto lost, so he declared Mizuki winner in fifteen seconds.

Ino's fight was the same as Sakura's earlier, they both lasted five minutes, only because Mizuki was barely attacking, but it was still obvious to everyone that Ino was more talented than Sakura.

oOoOo

The final exams were back and the classroom for the Genjutsu and Ninjutsu test. As usual, everyone but Naruto managed to escape the Genjutsu. It was really a completely worthless test, as illustrated when Sakura, who was supposed to be the best in the subject, failed to escape the first she encountered that she was not warned about, during Kakashi's bell test.

For the Ninjutsu, Yuri decided to go all out. She did everything silently, without seal or smoke. For the Henge, she transformed into a Senbon, not wanting to advertise the cat form since she didn't consider it good enough. For the Kawarimi, she switched with a pen that was on the other side of the room, and for the Bunshin, she decided to show that it was solid clones, and not just illusions. Unsurprisingly, she aced that exam too, finally earning her Hitai-ate, five years after they both combined their memories.

When it was finally Naruto's turn, he did everything with signs and by calling the technique. He managed to Henge and the Kawarimi without much issue, but when he tried to do the Bunshin, and not the Kage Bunshin, he failed. Iruka then announced that he could not in good conscience allow him to pass this time, but that he could try the following year. Strangely, Mizuki didn't even pretend to defend him, he just stayed silent with a neutral look on his face.

Obviously, Naruto tried to argue, saying that nobody used the Bunshin anyway, but Iruka answered that he failed the written exam, the kunai and shuriken throwing, the taijutsu, the genjutsu and also one third of the ninjutsu. It was pretty hard for Naruto to argue against that, without having the proof that everything had been tampered with, so he just left the classroom in shame.

Yuri was scowling while looking at that, alongside Hinata. She knew that Naruto would go and sit on the swings, looking all sad and defeated. She wondered if Mizuki would take the bait and did what he did in the manga, or if he would wait until Naruto had failed his exams several times. He would be even eager to have an alternate test if he were to do a second fourth year, especially since he wouldn't have Hinata's protection anymore.

While she was wondering that, Iruka came to the class, to congratulate everyone on passing the exams, and that they should gather here at eight o'clock, the following Monday, in one week, for the team placement.

Hinata soon came to talk to Yuri.

"What do we do now?" she asked in a whisper.

"I have a feeling Mizuki is going to try something with Naruto, we should go and check what is happening."

They both went on the other side of the school. Hinata watching with her Byakugan, while Yuri was listening.

"Wow, he looks really dejected." Hinata noted.

"Well, he still wanted to graduate, and being sabotaged all day long is probably not fun at all, so he's probably not acting at all."

"It must be really boring, even if he's a clone, he still worked hard and was totally able to graduate under normal circumstances. And look at all the parents looking at him like he's the worst trash on earth."

"Yeah, I had these looks from my birth to my seven-years-old, you understand why I did all I can to be someone else."

"You know you'll have to tell me why those looks, one day." Hinata added.

"Yes, I know, but for the moment, it's still a S-ranked secret. To be honest, even I should not be aware of why. I just had to gather clues by myself to find out."

"Seriously? Not knowing why you're hated by the entirety of a village? That's a good reason to become completely paranoiac and psychotic." Hinata remarqued, completely bewildered.

Yuri found that pretty ironic that a twelve-years-old graduate could understand that, and not a sixty-years-old Hokage. "I know, right? Oh, look, Mizuki is going to make his move."

"Oh, right. What are they saying?" Hinata asked. Naruto and Yuri told her about her whiskers when they came clean, so Hinata knew that she had the better sight, and that Yuri had the better hearing.

"Mizuki's bullshitting him. He's telling him that's there another graduation method, a 'field test' so to speak, and that he have to go and steal the Hokage's forbidden scroll and bring it in the forest."

"That's nuts. What kind of student would believe that?"

"Well, a student is supposed to be able to trust his teachers. If you can't trust them, who can you trust?"

"I imagine you're right. So, what are you going to do?"

"I'm going straight to the Hokage to report everything. Do you want to come along?"

"I would like to, but I need to report to my father that I graduated with top marks, he'll probably be happy." Hinata answered with a smile.

"Even if it won't be obvious…" Yuri continued. She heard enough about Hiashi in the last four years to know how he would react. "Okay, I'll leave you to it then. If I don't see you before that, I'll see you in one week."

"Bye Yuri. Say bye to Naruto for me."

"Hum. You know what? Come to my place tomorrow, you'll be able to tell bye to him. I will have to dispel him before the team placement."

"Oh right. See you tomorrow then."

"See you, Hinata."

After watching Hinata leave, Yuri went on her way to go see the Hokage, they had a bit of planning to do.

oOoOo

It was less than five minutes later that she was knocking on the door. And she could hear the Hokage telling her to enter.

"Hello Hokage-Sama. How are you doing?"

"Very well. As you can see, I nearly don't have any paperwork to do tonight, and I don't even have clones. And you, how went your graduation exam?"

"For me, very well. For Naruto, not so well, that's what I'm coming to talk about."

The Hokage made a small frown. "I'm listening." He guessed he will have some paperwork after all.

"Mizuki-sensei cast a Genjutsu on his written exams, gave him blunt kunais, used Chunin skill during the Taijutsu, while asking to Masaru and Kuronabe to distract Iruka, then he used a B rank Genjutsu to make sure he couldn't dispel it."

The Hokage could only growl at that, especially since she probably couldn't provide any proof of that.

"Sadly Hokage-Sama, that's not the worst."

"Go on then…" answered the Hokage, fearing the worst.

"Mizuki then cornered Naruto, and pretended that he could take a makeshift exam, like a field test, and that he 'only' had to steal the Forbidden Scroll from your library." Yuri explained.

The accusation was pretty severe, and if it was true, then they had a traitor in their mists. The Hokage looked for a while at Yuri, to see any trace of uncertainty. Maybe she was wrong, or maybe she had misheard something, but he couldn't find any trace of doubt on the young girl's face. And if she was just lying, then she would be the one considered to be a traitor, it would be a pretty stupid thing to do, and so far, she had proven she was far from stupid. "Then I think we have a traitor in our ranks. How do you think Naruto will react?"

"He will play along. He knows that I would come to see you in this kind of situation, so for the moment, he's probably wasting some time, pretending to wait until nightfall. He wouldn't want to make Mizuki thinks he didn't trust him."

"And what would you do in my situation?" Hiruzen obviously knew what he wanted to do, but he was wondering what Yuri would propose.

"Why takes any risk? Prepare a false scroll that looks just like the forbidden scroll, then add inside a paralysis seal that activates as soon as you open it. So, when Mizuki takes it and opens it to check if it's the real deal, you'll have a paralyzed traitor ready for interrogation."

"That's… actually better than what I was thinking. I was thinking about just a blank scroll and a team of ANBU ready to intervene, but I really like the paralysis seal idea. All right, you can wait for me here, I'll prepare the scroll so it will be ready for Naruto to pick up."

Yuri just nodded and went to sit on the couch, it wasn't her job to go and catch a traitorous Chunin as a freshly graduated Genin, she already did her job by reporting it, it was now it the Hokage's hands.

oOoOo

Naruto was running in the forest to the meeting point, with the forbidden scroll on his back. Or probably a fake forbidden scroll, since the Hokage advice had been 'don't open the scroll, but don't hesitate to give it to him'.

He didn't know what would happen when someone will open it, but he was happy to not be the one who will have to find out. Thinking about it, it was lucky that Mizuki never asked him to learn something, but since Naruto in this world was way better than the Naruto in the manga, Mizuki was probably afraid that he would have been able to manage it. In the manga, Mizuki was sure Naruto was worthless.

Naruto could feel a team of Anbu following him from a safe distance, and he also could feel Mizuki approaching the meeting point. Apparently, this time, Iruka wouldn't intervene. Since Naruto wasn't a prankster, and Iruka wasn't running after him every other day, he wasn't an expert at locating and catching him, so at least, he wouldn't be put at risk.

Finally, Naruto arrived at the meeting point, five minutes before the time.

"Hey Naruto. I saw that you managed to get the scroll. So did you manage to learn any jutsu from it?"

"What? That was not in the mission! I just had to get it and bring it here!"

"I didn't ask you? Well, it doesn't matter, just give it to me and I'll make you a graduate."

"Really? Here, take it Mizuki sensei." Naruto answered, throwing the scroll to Mizuki.

While taking it, Mizuki couldn't resist to taunt the demon brat. "By the way, demon, do you know why everybody in the village hates you?" He couldn't wait to see the despair in the eyes of the boy, he was nearly shivering of anticipation.

"You mean the Kyubi? Of course, I know. I've known since I'm seven years old. Why?"

The disappointment on Mizuki's face was absolutely priceless, and Naruto had to do his best to not burst out laughing seeing the dumb look that he was sporting.

Mizuki, for his part, didn't know what to add. All his plan revolved around killing the brat when he was at his lowest, and now, the boy didn't even seem to care, so he was a bit lost. While thinking about something to say that would put the demon down, he decided to check the content of the scroll, just in case the brat messed that up, it wouldn't do him good to bring the wrong scroll to Orochimaru after all.

Naruto and all the ANBU that were looking at the scene couldn't resist to feel a little bit of pity for the white haired traitor. Apparently, the Hokage's version of a paralyzing seal was a huge burst of lightning that electrocuted the one who opened the scroll. It looked so painful that Mizuki didn't even manage to scream in pain.

"Ouch, that must have hurt." Was all Naruto could say, seeing the mess that was twitching on the floor. There was even a little bit of burnt grass around him. "I wonder if he'll be able to answer any question after that…"

It was at this point that the ANBU decided to join Naruto and Mizuki and to secure the latter while he was still out of it.

"We're going to bring him for interrogation now, Naruto-san, I think the Hokage will want to meet you in his office."

"All right, bird-san. I'll go immediately then."

oOoOo

"You wanted to see me, Jiji?" Naruto asked, entering the office. The Hokage was behind his desk, his crystal ball in front of him, so Naruto guessed he saw all that was happening. Yuri for her part, was sitting quietly on the couch, waiting for him, playing with her hair.

"Yes Naruto, so, I wanted to ask, apparently Mizuki completely sabotaged your test?"

"Oh yes. He couldn't teach me anything wrong directly since Hinata was often with me, but he kept giving me tests with Genjutsu on them, blunt Kunais, etc. The only test I genuinely failed during this graduation exam was the Bunshin, because I tried to do simple Bunshin instead of the Kage Bunshin. I'm pretty sure I even manage to answer correctly to the harder written test, but since the answers didn't match the questions in the end…"

"Can you do the Kage Bunshin for me, then, so I can check?"

"Sure Jiji!" Naruto's control wasn't as good as Yuri's one, but he still managed to do three Kage Bunshin without any effort.

"All right. Catch." The Hokage then threw a Hitai-ate to Naruto, who caught it effortlessly, then continued. "I know it's not that important, knowing what will happen soon. But despite everything, and despite your situation, you still earned it."

"Thanks, Jiji!" Naruto answered with a big smile. He may be just a clone, but that was still nice to feel rewarded.

"So, anything else one of you want to add?" The Hokage asked, hoping that he could soon return to his reading.

Naruto just shook his head, but Yuri had something to say: "Actually Hokage-Sama, there is something."

"Oh?"

"You remember, four years ago? I was pretty angry at you for not telling me about the fox, and I was saying that I would do a major prank or two, and you answered that we could work something out peacefully."

"I… may remember something along those lines, yes…" The Hokage answered, wariness filling his voice.

"Well, I have a really good idea of how you can make up to us, you see. I want to talk about the Genin teams." Yuri answered, with a wicked grin on her face.

oOoOo

Fifteen minutes later, Anko was walking along the streets of Konoha, she was coming back from training, and wanted to go and eat something before going back home, when she spotted something peculiar.

In front of the Hokage tower, both Naruto and Yuri were standing, a dumbfounded look on their faces. Both of them seemed totally out of it. A bit intrigued by that, she decided to go and check on them.

"Hey girl, brat. What are you doing here? Wasn't the graduation day today? How did it go?" She asked, but none of them seemed to react, still lost in their thoughts.

"Hey! Girl!" she said, a bit louder, while snapping her fingers just in front of Yuri's eyes. Both of them finally seemed to regain their bearings, and focused a bit on Anko.

"Oh, hey Anko-san."

"What the hell is happening girl, I've never seen you so out of it, you were completely open to an attack." Anko asked, a bit worried at Yuri's unusual attitude.

"Oh, sorry... Right… It's just… I think…" Apparently, Yuri was still a bit at a loss for words, so it was Naruto who completed the sentence.

"She thinks that we just ruined Kakashi's life…"