A/N: Hello, people! COVER ART BY: Niyuu_Trickster_Kat!

I don't own Naruto.

I have no beta.

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TAGS for this Chapter: SWEARING.

-I'm writing Ch. 21 right now.

"Now, Yuuki-san, I called you here because I wanted to have a talk about your grades."

Yuuki fidgeted, honestly having not expected Iruka to come to the conclusion so quickly. But yeah. A few months in at the Shinobi Academy and he had gotten used to her presence and the way she handled herself in classes.

She just didn't think he'd pay so much attention to only her to be able to pick out any patterns. An oversight.

"Your grades in the civilian school were top of the year and among the best that school had ever seen. Here, you're stuck somewhere in the middle of the class. I had assumed after some time needed to acclimate, your grades would rise and you'd be in the top for most everything, but you have plateaued instead. Is there anything wrong?"

Oh wow. He was actually one of those teachers who truly wanted all of his students to succeed and actually asked after their home lives to double check. Her respect for him doubled then and there.

"There's nothing wrong, it's just a part of my plan. You've noticed I do perfectly on homework but always manage a certain grade number in all of our exams, yes?"

The man nodded.

"Well I've considered everything already. I'm poor and an orphan. I'm currently earning two stipends from two sources that run out the moment I become a Genin or physically become an adult in the eyes of Konoha. I can't afford to graduate early and I know that me excelling so quickly and in so many courses would draw unnecessary attention I wouldn't be able to fight off."

She paused to make certain he was keeping up.

"And I'm saving up as much money as I can for that first year as a Genin who suddenly has to pay their own bills with a crap pay, because it happens to every orphan. I also don't want to be an early graduate because you remember what the last person to graduate early did under all the stress he wasn't ready to be put under and I don't want to end up like him."

Yes, she just alluded to Uchiha Itachi and what he'd done to his whole clan as a pre-teen on the cusp of teenhood. She maintained the belief that he had been forced into the shinobi life too soon, forced into more difficult missions when he showed ability too soon, and therefore forced into the PTSD-ridden mind of a seasoned veteran shinobi far too soon.

Iruka instantly paled and she didn't know which part of her explanation did it. Mentioning Itachi, understanding the Uchiha situation when apparently most children didn't get told or got a glossed over explanation, or something else entirely.

"So you're deliberately getting the exact same score on every exam so you can stay in the middle of the ranks and graduate on time with everyone else?"

"Yep. I'm picking up what you're putting down, sensei, there's just certain things at play here and I really don't ever want to be so poor again or have to fall into debt just to survive in my own village."

She'd seen the Hana District and all the people out on the corners. They couldn't even get into a life as escorts because they couldn't even afford the basics necessary to at least look put together enough for such a tough job. Konoha, the most prosperous of the shinobi villages, residing in the most prosperous of the elemental nations, had a homeless and poverty problem a mile wide. She was not oblivious to this fact that so many wanted to be.

The orphanage was just one step away from that kind of a life for her and she was doing her damn best to avoid it entirely.

Iruka placed a hand on her shoulder, his face a mask of sympathy. "I'm sorry that you've had to live this way, Yuuki-san."

She shrugged. "Others have it way worse. It's not super bad now and I'm doing better than I ever was before, but it'll be some time before I won't be worried every other day."

"If you can keep up this average you're going for in total during your entire time here, I will leave you to your own devices so long as you continue to do your homework so well and you behave, okay?"

"Thanks, sensei!"

He was awesome. It was no wonder that Loudmouth liked him so much.

Nara Shikamaru didn't know why but he kept getting paired off with everyone but Choji when it came to their exercises. Choji was the most preferable out of everyone, followed quickly by Aburame Shino, Hyuga Hinata, and Yuuki. Only because those three were quiet and not troublesome to be around.

Still, he found himself with Yuuki in certain tasks a lot. Which didn't really make any sense to him. They were very similar even if they had startling differences. So putting such similar attitudes in the same group didn't seem like it would work.

Firstly: Quiet. Sometimes it was easy to forget that both were around because they did very little to draw attention to themselves. And didn't speak when it wasn't necessary to.

Secondly: Sleeping. While not as frequently as Shikamaru, Yuuki fell asleep in class and expressed no remorse for it.

Thirdly: Scoring. Both were perfectly aware of their scoring in the class and maintained their grades with ease. Shikamaru knew what point he couldn't let himself fall below in order to stay in the A-Class. This way he could exert as little effort as possible without it being detrimental and getting him in trouble with his mother. Yuuki seemed to like being in the middle of the class rankings even if he was far smarter than his scores suggested. The fact that he received the same grade on every exam while his homework score remained perfect, was telling.

Fourthly: Observation. While not immediately obvious, the two observed a lot and came to their conclusions very quickly. Not always the same ones but their minds worked pretty fast on them.

So in important ways, they were similar. If Iruka-sensei was trying to foster a harder work ethic, putting them together didn't seem like a smart idea. Yuuki was willing to get work done if he had to, without complaint, but only if it really came down to it. Shikamaru was similar but with actual complaining and making the process hard on everyone involved to get back at them for dragging him into it.

But still, they'd been placed together again for this assignment.

To test their abilities, they'd been dumped in a training ground and told to 'capture the flag'. The longest time available was twenty-four hours before they'd be extracted personally by a Chunin sensei. But if they found the flag before the time ran out, all they had to do was use the flare they'd been given and someone would bring them back to the Academy where they'd have a sleepover until the entire exercise was finished and everyone was accounted for.

Yuuki stared him down. "Can you swim yet?"

"No." He'd have to learn how to if the Academy was serious about these little tests of theirs. And that meant his mother was going to be on him nonstop with training and it was going to be troublesome!

"Then I'll take the river, you search the nearby trees. Sensei said the flag we need is red. If we grab the wrong color we'll have to repeat and I don't want to do that if I don't have to."

"Same. What a drag. Have fun splashing around."

He spent the next twenty minutes wandering around, looking at tree trunks for nooks and crannies and checking the high branches that would be difficult to get to if one couldn't climb. Even spots for possibly dug up earth.

Nothing. And nothing smelled different either so he couldn't pick up any additional scents. Tracking wasn't his area of expertise but even he had some basic skills in it.

"Found it!" Yuuki's voice screamed from the river.

Well that was easy.

When he broke through the treeline, he found the boy shaking his head to get rid of the excess water so it wouldn't drip on his still dry sweatshirt that he had obviously taken off so as to not have it dragging him down all evening. In his right had was a large, red flag.

"The water was deeper than expected and cold as hell. Glad I took this thing off because I need warmth."

Both plopped onto the ground as they waited for someone to show up and guide them out of the grounds. The flare was very bright and let off smoke so someone would come eventually upon seeing it.

Shikamaru cast a look at the other boy whose hands were glowing blue with chakra and running slowly over his exposed legs. Distantly he recalled a note about how Yuuki used chakra to keep warm. He'd told Iruka-sensei that during one of the Leaf Floating exercises. Being a civilian with no shinobi friends or family, already knowing how to use chakra had been a shock to nearly everyone.

Iruka-sensei descended upon them a few minutes later and smiled. "First finished. Not the first to find your flag but the first to capture it at least. Well done. And don't think I didn't notice you climbing trees and actually working, Shikamaru-san."

The proud look on the Chunin's face made Shikamaru flush just a bit. Embarrassment was a drag.

And now he was going have higher expectations placed on his shoulders! An even bigger drag.

Hinata continued to help Yuuki out in Taijutsu. Occasionally Buggy would join in with his own observations though he didn't get up close and personal like Hinata did. The two were very calm compared to many of the other students. Not loud, not obnoxious, not annoying. It was a lovely rapport they'd built up.

Yuuki didn't know if she could call them friends. That was a concept she'd witnessed before, but had never been a part of.

In her nearly nine years of existence, Yuuki had only seen maybe one example of true friendship. And that was between Pineapple and Chubby. According to word around the schoolyard, their families were friends and they'd known each other for quite some time already and remained by each other's side every day. Pineapple judged people by how they treated his friend. If they were rude to him, ignored his existence, or fat-shamed him, then Pineapple hated them on principle and would tell them off.

It was kinda sweet actually. The kind of friend everyone needed.

On the flip side, she'd seen a lot of friendships shift too quickly to keep up with.

In the orphanage there were groups of boys and groups of girls. One day there'd be five boys and then the next one would be outcasted for some dumb reason. Same with the girls. Those friendships seemed very conditional. Komatsuzawa from the civilian school was abandoned by his supposed friends when Yuuki laid him out without remorse. That proved they only cared about him being the most wealthy among them and wanted the benefits they got from associating with him.

At the Academy she'd witnessed other examples. Pinky and Blondie were friends when Yuuki transferred into Class 2-A. And they had been in the Broody Fanclub together to gush about how 'hot' Broody was even though there was no way an eight year old could be hot. That'd be weird as hell.

Some time in the past month or so the two stopped being friends and became these incredibly loud nitwits who had to fight over everything. All because both decided they'd marry Broody when they were all adults and no one else could have him. Like he was some kind of prize. That friendship was destroyed over a boy.

Broody wasn't even interesting! So he was best at most things in class, so what? That didn't mean his personality was great.

Yuuki had actually decided to look him up too and that was how she'd found out about the boy's clan and what had happened last year. It was tragic and depressing and it explained what was wrong with him. But to glorify his lonesome behavior was messed up. She heard some of the girls sighing dramatically over how they 'wanted to heal his broken heart, the poor tragic hero'.

Wanting to date someone just because they didn't die with the rest of their slaughtered clan was…

Yeah.

So with all these examples of how friendships could go south very quickly, she was very hesitant to just claim she had friends. She was friendly with some people and tried to just be decent overall, but no, Yuuki did not have any friends yet.

In a way, maybe it was for the better. Jumping into things she didn't understand wouldn't help her at all.

Out of the corner of her eyes, something black moved, drawing her thoughts back to the present. When she glanced down, she found one of Buggy's bugs on her sweatshirt, crawling up her chest. "Hey, I think your many-legged friend here got lost."

He held up a hand and the creature took flight, rejoining its hive and their partner immediately.

"Thank you for not killing her."

She shrugged. "The crawlies that truly get to me are centipedes and scorpions. The multitude of legs and the weird shapes just don't sit right with me. And some get really fucking huge and their venom is more dangerous the bigger they are."

She shuddered just thinking about them. One time, a centipede the size of her arm dropped down on her head when she was trying to wash her hands in the bathroom at the orphanage. It made a loud 'thunk' when it hit the sink. It was traumatizing.

Hinata giggled into her palm and looked away so as to not embarrass her. Buggy's glasses flashed but he remained silent.

Yuuki liked them a lot.

The Second Year class of the Academy finished without much fanfare. There was a two week vacation between it and the beginning of Third Year. Nothing important happened in that time frame, but Yuuki was able to plot out her new budget for the next year.

When term started up anew, she found some new faces in the room that was missing some old faces. It was now class 3-A and this was where it got interesting when it came to shinobi schooling.

With the five years it took to get to graduation, the classes shrank. A, B, C, D, and E for First Years. A, B, C, and D for Second Years. A, B, and C for Third Years. A and B for Fourth Years. Finally at Fifth Year, remained Class A. With the passing of each year, the best students would move up a class and the worst would stay behind a year or drop out.

So a few students were missing from what was Class 2-A because they'd not passed along to third year classes, and the top students who had been in Class 2-B last year, took their places in the now Class 3-A. And Class 3-B now had some kids formerly of Class 2-C who had been good enough to move up a class.

In Fourth Year it would be the same cycle until their entire graduation year were all in a single classroom. This was how it worked in the Shinobi Academy because not everyone was cut out for the shinobi way of life. Some lost interest, others lost ambition. Some just didn't want to do it at all and were being forced by family so they flunked out deliberately.

The biggest thing to notice was all the clan kids from the former year remained. Of course none of them would leave. The chances of them dropping in class too were slim to none. Having that extra support at home gave them an edge over the rest of the student body. All of them were Heirs or Heir Apparents too so they had to stay.

Yuuki would admit to a bit of jealousy, but she wasn't bitter. She was thinking more along the lines of access to private libraries than special training or Hiden Jutsu. Books were cool, physical exercise was not.

Everyone she preferred had made it through though, so that was nice. In this new year the expectations were even higher, so what passed for a middle ranking last year, would fall toward the bottom of the class this year as things improved and their schedules became more clustered. It would take a few weeks to pick up the new flow and where she should situate herself into it.

"As Third Year students, you will be expected to put more effort into your work. There will be less written work from now on and more hands-on work. Your Taijutsu and Shurikenjutsu classes will be longer. Practical application is going to be pushed more," Iruka told them on the first day back in April.

The first day was just to familiarize them with the new schedule. What they'll be doing and for how long.

She wasn't looking forward to the practical exercises. That meant a lot more work was necessary when she could be resting.

But the lower amount of written work was nice too!

Sometimes being caught between a root and a tree was annoying.

"Yuuki-san, you're up against Shikamaru-san," said Iruka-sensei while looking at his clipboard.

She and Pineapple looked at each other closely, and she turned back to the Chunin to ask, "Can I just give up now?" Fighting him wasn't the birthday present she wanted! Though she'd never gotten a birthday present to begin with.

"Why?" he asked, baffled by her behavior.

"'Cause he's smarter than me so I'll obviously lose."

There was a round of snickers from the majority of the class. And not in the she was such a funny character kind of thing. More of the, no way is he that smart as he was almost the dead last of the class, kind of thing. But hey, if they wanted to be obtuse, then they could go right ahead. Lack of motivation did not equal lack of intelligence and it was a shame that it took years for people to grasp that simple fact.

"Let's get this over with," Pineapple said, stepping into the ring and looking bored as usual.

"Fine," she grumbled.

"Hajime!"

Pineapple stood still. Their approach to battle was very similar. Usually wait for the other person to move first. Though while Yuuki just reacted on instinct, he actually planned out moves and needed distance to do it.

When several minutes passed and it became obvious neither were planning to move, Yuuki sighed. Get it over with, lick her wounds later.

She rushed him, fist raised. As expected, he crouched to avoid the strike but as she'd been prepared for that, she dropped immediately to sweep his legs out from under him. It was a successful play, but he reached out and grabbed her arm to drag her down with him.

Both hit the ground at the same time and she yanked him around, rolling them both out of the ring at the same time.

If she wasn't wearing the bodysuit of mesh armor her knees would have been fucked up. Forethought was so useful. She was a genius!

"You're both out!"

Pineapple groaned and sat up. "That's one way to get it over with," he groused as he stretched out his arm, loosening up the sore muscles from the hard landing he had.

"Make the Seal of Reconciliation."

They did so, and the rest of the matches progressed from there.

Taijutsu was interesting, she just wished she didn't have to pull her punches so to speak. She wanted to fight against someone where using chakra punches wouldn't make her feel guilty.

And when it was over she wanted a big bowl of congratulatory rice to make it all worth while in the end.

A/N: Another chapter is done!

How was it? Let me know.

Ja ne! :D