I do not own Naruto :D
Enjoy
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Kumo could do nothing but stare at the dirt underneath her feet as she rocked back and forth on the one lone swing hanging from the one lone low branch on the tree in front of the academy as she waited for Naruto to return.
It didn't make sense. Any of it. They had stated that she was already told that she was not allowed to participate in the graduation exam. But she hadn't. That obviously meant that someone was supposed to tell her. But who? And for what reason? She had been doing an amazing job in the academy, her scores surpassing almost everyone else's scores, so it obviously couldn't be for that reason. If her dad was here, he would have-.
Well what would he have done? Her knowledge of him up until the incident those months ago, had her every thought of him being as a civilian. She knew that the civilian side of him would have given her a hug, told her 'Buck up pup, it happened the way it did because it was necessary." and he would have left it at that. Him as a shinobi though, what would he have done? Would he have gone right up to the ANBU ninjas and told them to let her in? Would he have escorted her straight pass them and to the exam himself? Would he have-.
She stopped short in her thoughts and took a shaky breath. It doesn't matter what her father would have done, because he wasn't there. He was still on his 'mission' as she was to tell it to others when they asked. She missed him so much, and couldn't believe that he hadn't made it back to her yet after he had promised. If he was that good of a ninja that he had kept it a secret from her all those years, that must mean that he's at least a little good, right? So that must mean that snake man would have been no problem for him. If that's the case though, what's taking him so long to get back to her and Naru? What if-
"Kumo!" a voice called out to her causing her to jump slightly.
She regained her composer and looked up at the face that was currently looking down at her before giving a clipped response. "Yes, Mizuki-sensei?"
"I just wanted to apologize for earlier." A crestfallen look fell across his face. "I was under the impression that Iruka-sensei had already informed you. He was after all told last week that you would not be permitted to participate in the genin exams."
"Wha-" everything stopped for Kumo. Iruka knew last week? Why hadn't he told her then? "Why?"
"It's because of your age. The elders thought you were too young to participate, so they made an executive decision." Mizuki kept his eyes trained to the ground, with a small sorrowful look across his face. "But, it's because they wanted to make sure you were properly prepared for life as a shinobi with a different kind of test."
Kumo looked straight at Mizuki joy slowly starting to show itself across her previously blank eyes. "Seriously?!"
"Yes. But it is a test that you have to do by yourself to prove that you can be a shinobi. That's why we couldn't tell you in front of your friends. What do you think, do you believe yourself prepared to take the advanced test?"
She was split on her decision. Part of her said to be weary of anything that he had proposed because of everything that had happened over the last few months that he seemed to be at the center of. The other part of her mind ran rampant as the possibilities of the different situations that she could potentially encounter on this test, and how it could mean that she would be a ninja like Naruto no doubt would end up being. And of course, Naruto would be so jealous to find out that she had passed in a completely separate, if not cooler exam than he had.
"Yes!" Kumo practically shouted, already excited for this new test that she was to take. "What do I do?"
It was easy. Almost too easy for Kumo's liking. Mizuki-sensei had told her that her mission was to steal the Forbidden Scroll from the Hokage's office. The parameters were that she couldn't be caught or seen by any ninja OR civilians, and that meant specifically her friends. He said that by doing this that she would be demonstrating that she would be able to do reconnaissance missions with no difficulty. He also gave the extra-credit task of learning one technique within the scroll, stating that it would demonstrate the ability to learn new things on the move, which is a must amongst shinobi. Those were the things that she was to accomplish by midnight.
Not only was the Scroll not hidden, it was sitting in plain sight within the Hokage's office. All Kumo had to do was to wait for the Hokage to leave the office and as his ANBU would go with him, she would have a clear line to grab the scroll, and to jump out the window, and be on her way.
She had been sitting on the windowsill outside the Hokage's office for several hours now, suppressing her chakra as much as she could as to not attract attention to herself from the occupants of the room. As she sat there, she had stretched her senses out as much as she could so that when the time came, she would know that the office was clear for her to sneak in and snatch the scroll.
While she sat on that windowsill, the Hokage had had several different visitors in his office. Most of them were ninjas bringing mission reports, she knew this because she could feel the tingle of chakra across her skin as a privacy barrier was activated, and then subsequently be deactivated precisely ten minutes later each time. She had spent over an hour in this fashion, feeling the chakra tickle her skin each time the seals were activated, when the first visitor to the Hokage entered and a barrier wasn't erected.
She had taken a deep breath and willed herself to still her breathing, and pushed a little extra chakra to her ears so that she could hear what was being said.
"Ah, Shikaku-kun, what brings you here today?" The voice of the Hokage trailed softly to her ears.
"This is a drag," there was a loud sigh, and Kumo could imagine the man sliding a hand across his face. "I overheard something troublesome this morning."
There was a long pause and Kumo was worried that she had missed a privacy barrier being erected before someone finally spoke again.
"Do go on," it was the Hokage who had spoken up.
"The Uzumaki boy, and the red head he hangs out with showed up at my house this morning." It was stated as if he was talking about the weather. "The girl said something about making sure Shikamaru showed up for his genin exam on time this morning."
"Given the reputation of the boy, that doesn't seem too, 'troublesome'." The Hokage chuckled a bit.
"That wasn't the troublesome bit. I told them that I would handle it and sent them on their way. They left, but they were too willing to let it go, so I followed them. They got to the edge of the compound and then took off running into the forest, straight to Shika's position. Almost as if they were given a map to his exact location." There was a loud audible sigh before the man continued. "The two had come up with a plan to ambush him. A rather good one, too," the last part was spoken lower than the rest. "They cornered him and started questioning him about an incident that had happened at school last week. Where the Inuzuka boy supposedly almost killed the red head because Shikamaru paralyzed her with a shadow-possession jutsu."
There was another long pause and Kumo held her breath while she waited for the next piece of dialogue to happen.
"That is different than how I had heard it happen." It was the Hokage who had spoken up. "It was reported to me by Mizuki that Kiba had decided to use ninjutsu in a taijutsu only fight and the girl became scared and froze due to shock."
"Lies!" Kumo hissed, only to have her eyes widen in shock as she clamped her hands over her mouth and held her breath, hoping that no-one had heard her.
The red-head sat with baited breath waiting for the conversation to continue before semi-relaxing again, and after what felt like an hour the conversation finally began again.
"The girl threatened him, with a branch that she had transformed to look like a knife." There was a small noise, almost as if something was being placed on a desk. "He confirmed her side of the story. Stated that someone put him under a genjutsu, and Mizuki was pretty keen on keeping him away from the girl."
"That's most interesting." There was an audible sigh heard from the older gentleman in the room. "I will have to take a look into this. Thank you very much for bringing this to my attention, Shikaku."
"One last thing, Hokage-sama."
There was a small pause and Kumo could only imagine that there was a small nod of permission happening.
"The girl called me 'Shikaku-Inei-Sama'. Only one person ever called me Inei, and he's long gone to the world. Any idea where she could have picked that up from?"
"Maybe the girl heard of your clan's techniques and thought that it was a good nickname." There was a small chuckle. "You never can tell with children these days."
There was a small 'Tsk' noise made the sound of a door closing, and the office became silent again.
Interesting. Either both of her teachers had missed what Shikamaru had done, or one of the teachers was lying to the Hokage. With her information from Shikamaru, and over hearing what his father had just told the Hokage of, it would lead her to assume that it was Mizuki, but why go through all that trouble to keep her out of becoming a shinobi, and then offer her a back-up test to become a genin? In her few months of being in his classroom, she had never known Iruka to lie to her, and Mizuki always gave her a funny feeling. She also knew that if Iruka had seen Shikamaru using a jutsu to keep her stationary, that he would have called him out on it and given him some sort of a word lashing too.
But there was always the issue of the original genin test that she was supposed to be taking. Iruka had supposedly told her last week that she couldn't take it, but no-one had told her. It would make sense that it was originally Iruka who was covering everything up, well, why would he have to tell her that she couldn't take the genin test when she was too injured to take it anyways due to an in-class injury? It was kind of mind-boggling, but not in the good way if you asked her.
Looking to the horizon, she smiled as she saw the sun start to meet the horizon. Almost go time. She took a deep breath and stood up from her crouching position to hide fully in the shadow that were slowly dragging across the sides of the building and focused on dampening her chakra until it truly felt as that of a civilian child. It was only a matter of minutes now until she could put her plan in to action.
She listened intently as she heard the Hokage stand up from his chair, walk across his office, and then stop halfway as the door opened.
"Good evening, Hokage-sama."
"Ahh, Iruka, you caught me just in time. I was just about to leave."
Kumo frowned and bit back a growl as she heard her sensei's name being spoken.
"My apologies, Hokage-sama. I wanted to bring you the results of the genin exams, like you had requested."
"You're usually a little more prompt than this, my boy. What happened?"
"I was stopped by Naruto on my way out. He really does know how to talk when he's excited." There was a small chuckle, and Kumo couldn't help but smile.
"Ah, Naruto-kun. How did he do on the exams?"
"He passed, with flying colours!" Kumo left out a breath she didn't know she had been holding with that news. "Absolutely stellar results. He performed a Bunshin, Henge, and Kawarimi, as if they were second nature, bullseyes with all his shuriken and Kunai, and a near perfect score on his written exam. In fact, he missed rookie of the year by one point. If I hadn't seen his improvement over the last year or so, I would have thought he had been cheating."
"That is wonderful! You should be proud of yourself for being an amazing teacher Iruka-kun." Their voices started to travel further across the office, and Kumo could hear a door beginning to open again.
"That the thing, Lord Hokage-," the rest of Iruka's sentence was cut off as the door closed behind the two as the left the room.
Kumo stood in the shadows for a further twenty minutes, making sure that there was no-one further in the room. Making sure that there was no ANBU hanging out in the corners of the room, and making sure that the Hokage would not be returning any time soon before she started to edge the window open. Not too much, just enough to squeeze herself through the space between the sill and the bottom of the window.
She lowered herself to the floor without a sound and looked to the prize across the room: The forbidden scroll. She slowly and as quietly as possible walked across the floor until she was standing in front of it. Just observing it. It didn't seem that big and dangerous. Looked just like a scroll to her after all. But it must be important if this was given to her as her task for her exam.
But, if it was that important of a scroll, maybe it was better that it just stay in the Hokage's office, and she not move it at all. It was Mizuki after all, who had given her this task, and he always give her the willies. What to do, what to do, what to do?!
Kumo stood there in the office and took a look around the room, trying to finalize her decision, when her eyes came to rest on one small item lying on the Hokage's desk. And like a light turning on, she had come to her decision and quickly got to work.
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The sun had long set by the time Kumo made it to the meeting spot. It was a large clearing in the forest outside the village walls. The moon had since made its way high in the sky to where it was shining through the leaves and leaving small patches of light that littered the ground as the red head waited for the proctor of her exam.
It was peaceful in the clearing, to a point where it almost made her sleepy. Almost. She knew that until Mizuki came into sight that the test was still going, which meant that if anyone else wandered into the clearing that she could still fail the exam. So, with the scroll tied across her back she left her senses open, searching for Mizuki, and the end of the exam.
Only a few minutes late she could sense the reprieve coming, with Mizuki coming towards her with hurried steps.
"Ah, Kumo! There you are!" There was a false sense of cheeriness in his voice that made her blood run cold as she watched her pale blue haired teacher continue to walk through the clearing "We have to hurry. Come now."
"So, do I pass?" Kumo allowed a confused tone to pass through her voice as she masked her worry.
"Of course. Of course. Now hurry up." The response was hurried, as if the question wasn't listened to in the first place.
"But you haven't seen my extra credit yet!" Kumo could sense that something was wrong, but she couldn't quite place it.
"What do you me-" He turned back to face her, a plainly fake smile still warped across his face. "Oh. The extra credit? I wouldn't worry about that anymore." Mizuki took several steps back towards Kumo, and reached his hands out to her. "You're going to be part of something better now. How about it? Hand over the scroll to me, and we can be on our way."
"What do you mean, Mizuki-sensei? What's going on?" Kumo wrapped her hands tightly around the strap keeping the scroll tied to her back.
"KUMO!" A familiar voice shouted from the opposite side of the clearing as Mizuki and Kumo turned to see Iruka jumping down from the tree line, with his hand on his kunai pouch. "What do you think you're doing?!"
"Iruka-sensei, it's part of my exam." Kumo bit back, as she started to pull the strap from around her shoulders. "You were the one who didn't tell me that I wasn't allowed to take the normal exam. Mizuki-Sensei is only trying to help me become a genin."
"What do you mean? Mizuki was the one who was supposed to tell you. He said he told you a week ago." Confusion dripped from his words, and Kumo could only crinkle her eyebrows as she tried to decipher what was going on.
"Kumo, Iruka was to tell you, and he clearly didn't. He's now just trying to put the blame on me because he doesn't want you to be able to complete the exam. He doesn't want you to become a shinobi. He doesn't want you to have access to power beyond belief."
"Kumo, I don't know what he told you, but there is NO make-up test. There is no special exam. The elders said no, and that's who we have to listen to. We can't go around them."
The girl gripped the strap holding the scroll to her back as tightly as she could as she tried to quickly come to a conclusion of what to do. The older ninjas were coming closer on either side, both of them wanting the scroll, both of them saying the other was lying about who was lying. She couldn't discern who was actually telling the truth, but she could decide that in this state, no-one would get the prize held across her back. Taking in her surroundings she did the only thing she could come up with to get her out of the grasp of the two men: jump.
She jumped as high as she could, her hands barely grabbing the bottom most branch on the tree above her, swung herself on top of it, and started running through the canopies. It was the one thing she was thankful for after coming to this village, because it lived so closely with the forests around it, the children were all taught to run across the limbs of the trees when they entered the academy. Downside to it though, because Kumo had entered so late, she was not quite as adept as the other children, and was prone to losing her footing every once in a while.
She fell to the ground, landing on her arm with a sickening crunch. Stifling a cry, she felt panic rise in her body as she heard the older men behind her, the distinct clinks of Kunai knives ringing throughout the trees. Her eyes darted around her looking for a somewhere, anywhere that she could go to stay out of sight of the men, and she smiled when she found a small hole in a nearby tree. She darted towards it and crawled inside, holding the scroll tightly in her arms, trying to ignore the pain in her left arm.
She pushed her chakra to be as small as possible as she heard a set of feet landing where she had just been moments ago.
"I know you're out there brat! Come out, come out where ever you are!" Mizuki's voice had taken a darker tone to it, and Kumo didn't care for it. "Come-on, I'll trade you information for the scroll." There was a short pause, obviously meant for Kumo to speak up and agree to the offer. "Well, I'll tell you anyways, and then pry the scroll from your cold, dead, hands when I kill you."
His voice was trailing through the clearing. He must have felt her chakra when she landed, but couldn't pinpoint her now that she had started to suppress it again.
"You know that buddy of yours? You want to know why everyone hates him, and by extension-you?" There was a dark laugh at the end of his question, and it chilled her blood. "Well the reason is-"
"Mizuki, no! It's forbidden!" Iruka's voice entered the clearing, and she could hear the sound of a weapon soaring through the air.
"And who's going to stop me?" There was another laugh, and Mizuki started talking again. "The demon nine-tailed fox attacked Konohagakure twelve years ago." Knives clinked together, and Kumo swore that she heard Iruka growling 'stop it' under his breath. "The story goes that the Yondaime Hokage killed it. But that's not true. You can't kill a being made completely of chakra, so he instead sealed it into a baby. And that baby in turn became the reincarnation of the demon himself!"
"STOP MIZUKI!" Kumo gasped as she heard the tell-tale squelch of a weapon cutting through someone's skin, and then a dark laughter.
"That boy was Naruto. He is the nine-taled fox demon. Everyone hates him for killing their families. Even Iruka hates him. Because it killed his parents!
"Lies," The word was gritted out, as if the speaker was in intense pain.
"They hate you for it too. With your bright red hair, you're easy to spot. And with how much the demon has improved since you got here. They start to talk."
A scowl was firmly in place across Kumo's face as she started to crawl out from her hiding hole.
"They say while he's the re-incarnation, they say you are the spirit of the demon, come back to teach him to finish the job he started all those years ago."
Anger rose up in Kumo's belly as she walked from around the tree to face the pale, blue haired teacher.
"Just because there is a demon sealed inside of him, does not make him the demon." She growled out her eyes narrowed. "When you seal a kunai in a storage scroll, does it become the knife?" She reached her right arm into the pouch secured at the small of her back and grabbed a knife. "When you pour soup into a bowl, does the bowl become of the soup?" She left the kunai fly with deadly accuracy towards the center of his face.
"Oh, did I make someone angry?" There was a taunting lilt to his voice as he used a substitution jutsu to switch places with a nearby log. That's alright, that will just make this more fun as I kill you!"
Kumo knew that she was out of her depth as soon as Mizuki started sending volleys of kunai and shuriken at her. She used kawarimi after kawarimi to keep out of the way from being hit with the knives, but after each jutsu, she could feel herself get more and more disoriented as she kept having to move out of the way so quickly to keep out of the way of the projectiles.
"Is that all you can do?" Mizuki cackled walking towards her as she finally came to a stop, pain wracking its way through her left arm. "Let's see if you can dodge this!" He pulled a large fuma shuriken off of his back, and quicker than Kumo could see, he left it fly towards her.
Kumo knew she wouldn't be able to dodge it with how close Mizuki was when he threw it, so she crossed her arms and braced herself for impact. She stood waiting for the blow, only to find herself being knocked backwards, and her back hitting the ground.
She kept her eyes closed for a moment, and felt small droplets of water hitting her face. She cautiously opened her eyes to see Iruka's face just above hers with tears streaming down his face, and the large shuriken protruding from his back.
"Kumo," he choked out. "No matter what happens, I do NOT hate you. Nor do I hate Naruto. You both make me proud EVERY single day with your determination to take on the world despite how others treat you." Tears were streaming down his face now, "I have so much hope and pride for the both of you and what you are going to do in the future, that I know despite this set back, you both will become an extremely formidable shinobi."
"How touching," she could hear Mizuki coming closer. "Such a shame that I'm going to have to kill you too, Iruka. You do know that this could have all been avoided if-" Mizuki kept talking as Kumo sidled out from underneath Iruka, just as he collapsed on to the ground from the shuriken wound across his back.
The rage burning in her belly returned as she heard the things that Mizuki was saying to Iruka. Afterall this time, she couldn't believe that she had trusted him over Iruka in the first place, and for the situation to have turned out like this, she knew that she had to do something to end this whole situation.
"If I give you the scroll, will you let us BOTH live?"
"Kumo, No!"
"Of course, kid."
"He's lying!" Kumo knew that he was lying at this point, but she needed a distraction to be able to get her plan to work.
She pulled the strap from around her shoulders and threw the large scroll as hard as she could at the older ninja. He caught it with ease, and laughed.
"I can't believe you are that stupid!" He walked closer to the smaller child, moving towards putting the scroll across his back.
Kumo quickly launched two knives at Mizuki's face, and smirked as he did exactly what she thought he would: use the width of the scroll to block his face from being hit, the only problem being that only one kunai lodge itself in the scroll, and the other passed straight through, narrowly grazing his cheek.
The look of shock on his face quickly changed to anger as he looked between the scroll in his hands to the red head standing in front of him with a smug look across her face.
"WHAT DID YOU DO?!" His face was turning a bright red in anger as he glared at the younger child.
"It's just a little trick that I learned," Kumo shrugged her shoulders and backed away from the man. "The branches found in the forest here are very useful little tools," the smug look across her face darkened as the 'scroll' in Mizuki's hands turned into a long, gnarled tree branch. "Now," she took a menacing step forward "If you ever hurt MY teacher again, I'll kill you!"
She slowly brought her left arm up to meet her right arm to form a cross, and growled out 'Kage-bunshin no jutsu!' hundreds of clones came into existence, and proceeded to beat Mizuki into a pulp, until he could move no longer.
Kumo cringed as the memories of the clones slowly returned to her, and as the last one poofed away, she walked to the immobile body of her teacher and stared down at him. "Thanks for trying to take advantage of me." She growled out as she turned back around towards Iruka. "Iruka-sensei, are you okay?"
There was a small chuckle from her brunette teacher before he started to answer "I've had a whole lot worse than this before." He pushed himself up into a sitting position, and looked Kumo in the eyes. "Where is the scroll? The real one. We need to get it back to the Hokage."
Kumo scratched at the fabric covering her cheeks, and her eyes crinkled up into an embarrassed smile. "It never left the Hokage's office."
"It what?" Iruka's eyes almost popped out of their sockets at the news. "So, you were bluffing the whole entire time?"
"I guess," she trailed off and looked up towards the sky. "Something seemed fishy about the whole thing, and I mean, he said that I had to steal the scroll. He never said that I had to bring him the real thing after all. My father always said that ninjas are to look underneath the underneath."
"You have a very smart father," Iruka smiled at her accepting her smaller hand as an aid to pick himself up off the forest floor.
"Hayashi, Kumo, you are to come with us immediately." Kumo looked up from her teacher and suppressed a shudder. The emotionless, ivory masks of the ANBU were looking down at her from their full height, and made her feel smaller than she already knew she was,
"As long as you can take Iruka-sensei here to the hospital to get him looked over!" She cheerily answered looking back over her shoulder to her teacher who was leaning heavily on the tree beside him.
An ANBU with an owl mask made a few hand signals, and a second ninja with a bear mask stepped forward put his arm around Iruka's shoulders and promptly disappeared.
Quicker then she could blink, Owl's hand was on her shoulder and the world around her started to shimmer out of view, just to shimmer back into view placing her in the middle of the Hokage's office.
"Thank you, Owl." The hand removed itself from her shoulder and Kumo looked out of the corner of her eye as the man put his right hand across his chest and bowed at the waist before disappearing out of sight.
"That was quite the predicament out there."
Kumo stared down at the ground, her hands folded as nicely as she could behind her back. The pain was still coursing through her left arm, but it wasn't as prevalent as it was an hour or so ago. She couldn't tell if it was because she had become accustomed to the pain or if it had already started to heal.
"But you handled it exceptionally well."
Kumo stole a quick glance up to the older gentleman before looking back down to the ground.
"Hiding the scroll in plain sight, so that if Mizuki had come to check was an exceptional plan. Hiding it as an item so common that any leaf shinobi would overlook it was….." there was a long pause, "ingenious."
Kumo finally looked up at the Kage, confusion in her eyes.
"You made an incredible plan when you realized things were not adding up the way that it should have, and you executed it in such a way that the traitor did not get away with the prize that he had wanted. A prize that would have endangered the whole of Konohagakure. For that, we are indebted to you. And for that, I, as the Hokage of the village am extremely pleased to grant you the rank of Genin via field promotion."
Kumo's jaw dropped, and she started to stutter, words not being able to fully form as she tried to express her confusion.
The elder shinobi simply laughed and pulled out a piece of fabric with a shiny metal plate from his desk.
"But I thought-" words finally started to come out in a sensible order.
"They only forbade you from taking the written test."
"But then-"
"They forget that I am the Hokage of this village, and I handle matters of Shinobi."
"But-"
"At that point, you were a civilian, falling under their jurisdiction. But now, after your show of skills, you are more than deserving of the title of Genin." He picked the hitai-ate off of his desk and handed it to the small girl. "Congratulations. Kumo Hayashi."
The red head slowly stepped forwards and grabbed the cloth from the elder man's hand, and stared at it as it sparkled in the limited light in the office.
"Thank you," she breathed out, her eyes wide in awe, as she tied the strip of fabric around her neck, the metal with the leaf symbol carved into it shining from where it poked through just above the highest clasped button on her jacket.
"You will meet up with the rest of your class, in one weeks' time, to receive your team placements." Hiruzen's eyes were shining with an emotion that Kumo couldn't quite place. "In that time, I would recommend you getting our arm looked at so you are in tip top shape to finally begin your ninja career."
"Yessir, thank you sir!" Kumo crossed her arm across her chest and bowed at the waist as she saw the ANBU do only moments earlier.
"Now head home, Naruto-kun has been worried sick about you."
Kumo gasped, remembering her blonde friend that she had promised to meet hours ago. "Good night sir!" She shouted as she ran out the door as fast as she could, the large wooden doors to the office slamming shut behind her.
"And have I got the perfect team to put you on," Sarutobi chuckled as his pencil scratched across the paperwork in front of him.
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"I still can't believe you became a genin on a field promotion!" Naruto was ecstatic as they bounced through the streets of Konoha the following morning. "And Mizuki was a traitor this whole entire time? I knew there was something up with that guy!"
Kumo just strolled lazily beside her best friend, her arm wrapped tightly to her body to prevent her from causing further injury to herself after the break to her arm the night before. They had tried to go to the hospital to get it fixed but the staff had kicked the both of them out before they could say hello. Her and Naruto had made do with the bandages that they had had in the apartment to keep her arm from being damaged any further while it healed, which lead them to now where they were heading to their favourite ramen stand to celebrate everything, and she meant EVERYTHING.
They were celebrating Naruto passing the exam with flying colours, they were celebrating her field promotion, they were even celebrating finally knowing why they were treated so poorly by most of the citizens of Konoha. It had come as a shock to Naruto to find that he had a thousand-year-old demon sealed into his stomach, but thanks to their fuinjutsu lessons from Minoru, Naruto understood that it didn't make him the demon itself, just the cage the protected the villagers from what was inside.
"Alright Old Man Teuchi! We want one of everything!" Naruto shouted pulling back the curtains to the ramen shop.
"A little ambitious are we today?" A laugh filled the area as the duo sat up on the stools.
"We're celebrating today!" Naruto stated and stuck his hand out and pointed a thumb back at his forehead where his Hitai-ate gleamed. "We're ninja's now!"
"Well that is a cause for celebration. Both of you?" Teuchi looked at Kumo, looking for her headband.
"Yessir!" She smiled, and moved the colour of her jacket slightly to fully reveal the hitai-ate.
"Well congratulations well deserved! Let's get you started with a house specialty!" the stand owner turned his back to the duo as they started to talk between themselves to make their celebratory noodles.
"Did I hear what I think I did?" A voice trailed into the stand and Naruto and Kumo groaned, pausing their conversation, and looking at the curtain that was pulled slightly open.
A mop of brunette hair a top a head with a feral grin was staring in at the two of them.
"I think I did Akamaru." There was a small yap of agreement from the small white dog. "This jokester is pretending that she passed and became a genin." There was a bark of laughter. "We all know that's not true. You were barred from taking it. I hope you realize you even wearing that hitai-ate is illegal."
"For your information, Dog-breath. I did become a genin. The Hokage himself gave me this headbeand." Kumo stuck her tongue out at her canine-esque acquaintance.
"What? I doubt that. The Hokage never gives things to losers. Losers like you that is." Kiba waltzed further into the shop and crossed his arms across his chest.
"It's legit Kiba. It was via field promotion. Hokage himself approved it." Naruto frowned crossing his arms as well. "She's officially a part of the graduating class."
"And they're celebrating. So, you're either going to sit down, or get out of my shop and stop bothering my costumers Inuzuka-san." Teuchi Ichiraku said joining the conversation as he set a bowl in front of the red head and the blonde, with an extra one in his hand for the unruly boy.
Kiba stood for a moment, a scowl across his face, before he finally decided to sit down next to the two.
"I can't believe they let you through, Tomato-paste."
"Nor I you, Dog-breath."
The three of them sat in amicable silence for several minutes until the peace and quiet was disturbed by the clanging of chopsticks against the side of a bowl.
Kiba and Naruto both looked up from their bowls to see Kumo sitting with her head cocked to the side as if listening to something.
"Is every-" Naruto was cut off by the small bark of Akamaru.
"What is it boy?" Kiba questioned the small dog, taking his eyes away from the smaller girl to his side.
"It's a dog." Kumo whispered, and Naruto's eyes went wide.
"Do you mean-?" Naruto's question trailed off as he too let his chopsticks clatter into the bowl.
"One long howl, followed by-"
"Three shorts and a long," Kumo cut Kiba off while jumping down from the bar stool. "Naruto, it's Daisuke." She took off running, leaving Naruto and Kiba staring at her form through the curtains that were waving in the breeze she created when she left.
"Kumo, wait up!" Naruto shouted throwing some cash down on the bar, and taking off running after his best friend
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I hope y'all enjoyed!
I wonder what will happen next….
Ja ne :D