A/N Here's chapter 2. Thanks to gvargas132 for reviewing. I'd like constructive criticism or people just saying that they liked certain things about the story. It helps me figure out how to improve.

It didn't take long for Team 7 to get to the tower. Naruto remained quiet, once in a while fiddling with her pigtails but otherwise merely following Sakura who kept glancing back at her in slight worry while Sasuke took the lead. Sakura didn't really know how to react to this quiet Naruto who seemed on the verge of panic. Not the overdramatic-loud panic he was known for doing merely to raise a fuss, but true panic of identity. She knew she couldn't understand truly how it would feel to suddenly be stuck in the wrong-gendered body, but she found it easier to feel sorry for this quiet, scared blonde girl who was actually kind of cute than the loud obnoxious Naruto that she'd known. She resolved that, even if he found a way back into his normal form, she'd try to be nicer to him. Though the hard part might have to do with the hokage-monument sized crush he had on her. She sighed and figured she'd deal with that if it became necessary. As they walked into the tower, they glanced around. Naruto didn't say anything so Sasuke determined that they were to open the scrolls. When he did, it activated a summoning jutsu and Iruka appeared in front of them with a smile.

"Hey you three, congratu…la…tions. Naruto are you really trying to pull that again?" He finished with a groan as he took in the blonde. Naruto blinked at him and her lip trembled a bit but she didn't respond, so Sakura took charge.

"Um, Sensei we had a bit of an accident in the woods. Perhaps if we can let Naruto get some rest, we can fill you in?" She suggested. Iruka blinked, now realizing the situation was more serious than it appeared.

"Sure, there's an apartment in the tower for your team. Right this way." He led them up a flight of stairs to the living level and let them into their room which contained a small living room, a shower, and three bedrooms. Sakura glanced around, and then turned back to Iruka, deciding to take charge of her team for the first time. "Alright, I'll stay here and help Naruto relax a little. Sasuke, why don't you explain what happened to Iruka-sensei?" She said, grabbing the blonde's hand and then pulling her over to one of the bedrooms and closing the door before Sasuke could so much as 'hn'. Iruka blinked, and then looked inquiringly at the Uchiha, who looked annoyed at this point.

"We got in a fight with a man named Orochimaru." Iruka paled, but motioned for him to continue.

"He captured the Dobe and destroyed his pendant that he always wears. Immediately there was a huge explosion and when the smoke cleared Orochimaru was nowhere to be seen and Naruto was like that and unconscious. He woke up about six hours later and mentioned the connection between his current form and that stupid jutsu he invented, so I activated my Sharingan and told him to try and activate and deactivate it. The immediate thing I noticed was that there was no way it was some type of henge. The handseals were wrong and the chakra behavior was all wrong. My hypothesis was that Naruto was born a girl and the charm on his pendant contained a sealing jutsu to transform him into a boy, and when the pendant was destroyed the fuinjutsu was undone. Unfortunately Sakura immediately assumed my rough guess was the only logical explanation and Naruto began to panic, so I quickly told them that we should head here since we had both the necessary scrolls."

Iruka frowned thoughtfully. He'd never heard of anything like this before. He looked back at his former student. "Thank you for telling me this Sasuke. I'll let the Hokage know and I'll tell Kakashi that you all made it, so expect him sometime soon. Try to help out Naruto, if I know him at all he'll be devastated by this. And…you might want to keep him away from Ino. He'd probably not like to be seen by anyone of your friends, but Ino in particular…" Sasuke nearly blanched at the idea of what the fashionista Ino might do if she caught wind that Naruto was a girl. But he merely nodded at returned to his room.

-Five minutes earlier-

Naruto sat on the edge of his bed, his mind frantically trying to come up with some reason he was stuck as a girl that didn't involve him always being a girl on the inside. But thinking was never his strongest suit, particularly when he was panicked, so he was coming up with nothing. Sakura wasn't entirely sure what to do, but she decided it would probably be best to try and cheer him up.

"H-hey Naruto. Want to go get some ramen?" She asked, knowing this was the one fail-safe way of lightening his/her mood. Naruto looked up, seeming tempted, but sighed and looked down again.

"No. What if the others come in and see me like this?" She replied very quietly. Sakura couldn't believe her ears. Naruto, turning down Ramen? FREE Ramen?

"What, so you're just going to hide in here forever?"

"Sounds like a plan," was the reply. Sakura frowned.

"Since when is hiding something Uzumaki Naruto does?"

"Since he got turned into a girl!" A slight tick started to form on Sakura's forehead.

"So? Are you really going to turn down a chance of free ramen for this?"

"….Yeah, I guess I am." By now Sakura was angry. Enough of this nonsense. If Naruto wasn't going to cheer up on her own, then she'd make her. She grabbed her hand with a huff and pulled her toward the door of the bedroom.

"S-Sakura-chan?" The blonde squeaked. The Pinkette glared at her.

"Alright, you listen and you listen well, missy. You and I are going to get cleaned up, because we're still filthy from that damned forest, and then we are going to go downstairs and get ramen. If you cooperate with me, I'll pretend you're someone else from another village and no one has to know that you're Naruto. I'm a better liar than you so I'll make it fly if we run into the others. If you resist, I'll tell everyone what happened to you and as soon as we get back to the main village Ino will take you shopping for the most girly outfits you can possibly imagine, are we clear?!" Sakura growled. Naruto was quite pale at this time and could do nothing but nod shakily. Sakura smirked at the acquiescence and steered her teammate into the bathroom before locking the door behind them. Naruto seemed lost on what to do so Sakura, as she knew she would have to, commanded, "Alright strip." Naruto's eyes widened.

"Whaaat? You want me to…"

"I know that if I let you in here alone you'll just stall, so we're going to bathe together." Sakura said authoritatively. Naruto swallowed.

"But…but what if I suddenly change into a boy during this?"

"Then I'll get out since you'll probably be happy enough to clean yourself and won't need me to do it for you."

"But then I'll see you…"

"Who cares."

"Me."

"What do you mean you?"

"I don't want to."

"You don't want to what?"

"I don't want to see you naked." Sakura blinked at that.

"I thought you had a crush on me."

"Yeah, so what? That has nothing to do with this." Sakura just blinked again before slapping her hand to her face.

"Naruto you have got to be the most oblivious human being to ever walk this earth. The fact that you were the one to invent that stupid 'sexy no jutsu' is the greatest irony I've ever heard of. But at this point, I'm too tired to give a damn. Strip before I tear your clothes to pieces with my kunai, and then you won't be getting them back."

Naruto gulped and shakily took off her clothes. Sakura watched for a second to make sure she was actually complying before following suit. When both were bare Sakura turned on the shower and pushed the blonde under the spray before following. She smirked faintly as she began scrubbing dirt off the blonde.

"Sheesh you're actually kinda cute like this. You should never go back to being a dirty boy." Naruto glared at her. "I don't want to hear you call boys dirty when you spend your time plotting on how to get Teme to go out with you."

"That's the difference between liking a boy and being a boy. Sasuke might be good dating material, but I wouldn't want to suddenly end up in his body.

"Well the same thing holds true for me. I might like you, but I wouldn't want to wake up in your body one day," Naruto pouted.

"Then why did you invent that dumb jutsu of yours?"

"Mostly so I could eat," Naruto said sourly. Sakura blinked and paused in what she was doing.

"Wait, what?" The blonde sighed and fiddled with the end of her hair.

"Well the first time I had the idea for a disguise it was because I wanted to buy some stuff without all the stores overcharging me or kicking me out." Sakura blinked.

"They what?"

"Nevermind, it's not important, and I'm used to it anyway," Naruto replied offhandedly. "Anyway, my original plan was to use a henge, but when I tried that it tended to fail at critical moments, cause I wasn't all that good at it yet. So I wanted to come up with something more solid than a henge, so I looked up a couple things, asked the Hokage a few things, and eventually came to the idea of transforming into a girl, cause I thought I could try and play cute or something and it'd help me get a few deals. I managed to transform pretty much into what you see right now, only I was younger then, so this form was the same age as me. Of course, now that I know that my whisker marks gave me away, it never worked so I abandoned the idea and resigned myself to either getting overcharged or risking a flimsy henge. But then I was at the hot springs and I overheard a few guys talking about what they liked in girls. And I noticed they were being kinda gross about it, so I went around the corner from them and added a slight henge to the jutsu I developed, made it look older and then got rid of the clothes, so then I walked around the corner and acted like I've seen flirty girls act and they all spouted fountain nosebleeds and passed out. I wasn't sure why, it just seemed kinda weird to me, but I also knew that it was really useful, especially since once they passed out I didn't need to keep the henge on for too long. So I started using it to get food and stuff without running out of money, and then I practiced on Iruka-sensei just for laughs. I even defeated Hokage-jiji with it once."

Naruto giggled faintly as she remembered. Sakura was quiet for a moment as she processed this. Never before did she think such a ridiculous technique had been a lifeline to survival for her teammate. She merely smiled faintly as she finished cleaning off Naruto and got to work on herself.

"Well that was an interesting story to say the least," She commented. Naruto nodded slightly before sighing faintly.

"Sakura, why are you doing all this for me? Before you hated me and yelled at me all the time, and now just because I'm a girl you're being nice?" Sakura shrugged.

"You're not as annoying as a girl." At this Naruto stepped away from her and turned around to regard the pinkette slightly coolly.

"You shouldn't treat me different just because I'm stuck in my own jutsu. If you're going to be nice to me, do it because I'm me, and not someone else. If you don't like me, then don't pretend you do just to spare my feelings, cause that hurts even more in the end." She said so quietly she could barely be heard over the splatter of the water. Sakura was lost for words for several long moments before she could figure out what to say.

"It's not just because you're a girl, thought that helped me figure it out how to put in action something I'd already figured out. When we were on our mission to the Land of Waves, we all had a hard time. In the beginning I thought you were just annoying as usual, but then the thing with the demon brothers happened, and then you did that thing with your kunai afterwards. Everyone could tell you were really upset over not being able to help, and I remember thinking to myself, 'This isn't right. Where's his smile? There's something seriously wrong with the way the world works if Naruto isn't smiling. Yes, when he gets hyper it can grate on the nerves, but it's also reassuring to know that he'll be back again tomorrow grating our nerves again like he always does. That smile is a promise of it. Without that smile, Konoha isn't Konoha. It'd like if all the clocks were turned to random times and no one could figure out what the real time was because they had nothing to reference it. Everything is just chaotic, and everyone would be unsettled because the rhythm of the village got thrown off. By the time that mission was over, that was what I had figured out to myself, but I didn't know how to go about letting you know my thoughts, so I kept them to myself, and whenever I saw you smile, I smiled as well on the inside, even if I got mad at you for being late or something. And then this happened, and once again your smile was nowhere to be found, and since I was the girl here and Sasuke would probably get lost on stuff like this, I wanted to do something personally to get that smile back where it belongs." Naruto stared at her for a few moments before smiling a little.

"Well, it's not quite back yet, but with a friend like you, Sakura-chan, I think I might smile for real again soon enough." Sakura grinned back.

"Well then, let's go get some ramen, I hear that's a good summoning method for that smile." At this Naruto grinned his signature full-watt smile.

"I like that idea." He paused. "But what if the others come in?" Sakura giggled as she reached to turn off the shower.

"Well, I'll keep my promise. I know a good story I can say that should provide you with sufficient cover until we can get you fully sorted out. I can't guarantee it will fool Shikamaru if he's there, but everyone else will probably fall for it. I'm a better liar than you, so keep quiet and let me talk."

"Okay Sakura-chan." They got out and got dressed in clean unisex clothes that had been provided for them. They passed Sasuke who gave them both a blank stare as they came out of the bathroom together but didn't find it worthwhile to say anything. The pinkette and blondie headed down to the meal hall where they got ramen.

A while through their meal Choji, who was rather dirty, came barreling in. Sakura grimaced and leaned close to Naruto.

"Hold on, Choji's here which means Shikamaru and Ino aren't far behind. You need to slow down with your food, and don't eat more than three more bowls, otherwise it will be too obvious it's you." She whispered and quickly got up and disposed of the dozen-odd bowls Naruto had already accrued as she took notice of the new presence and began to carefully eat at a more normal pace. Luckily, after a few days in the forest, Choji was so hungry he wasn't paying any attention to them. A few minutes later, his two teammates came in, having taken the time to wash up slightly. Shikamaru took one look at Sakura and Naruto, muttered, "troublesome", and moved to sit next to Choji. Ino blinked at Naruto and, after getting her own food, went to sit next to them.

"Hey Naruto, why are you in a girl henge?" She asked. Naruto glanced nervously at Sakura who swallowed her current mouthful of food.

"That's not actually Naruto. Said boy wonder got himself conked out good during the trial and is currently upstairs catching z's, and probably flies too going off the amount of snoring that kid is capable of. Seriously, when we're camping out we make him take the first shift of watch so we have time to get to sleep before he starts his snarling," She said nonchalantly, voice conveying amusement as she winked at Naruto. Ino blinked

"Are you sure this isn't Naruto? She's got his whisker marks," She asked curiously. Sakura shrugged.

"Pretty damn sure given how we met her. Maybe she's a relation or something; all the Inuzukas have face tattoos and stuff. Anyway when we found the girl Naruto was standing behind me."

"I thought he could use shadow clones? And that henge he used to prank Iruka-sensei looked just like her," Ino said doubtfully.

"No it didn't, his henge was much older than she is, remember?" Sakura pointed out.

"Well where did she come from then? I haven't seen her before now, not in the previous exam."

"Maybe you just missed her. I know Sasuke and I never saw her until we spotted her in the forest," Sakura replied with a shrug. "Her teammates were killed in there and she was about to be finished off, but Naruto wanted to save her and up and attacked the other team like the knucklehead he is. We drove them off and she gave us her scroll since it did her no good without a complete team." Ino nodded slightly before looking around.

"You said Naruto was asleep, but where is Sasuke?"

"He's probably in the shower. I went in first with this girl to help calm her nerves, she was panicking at the time, and then afterwards we came down here." Shikamaru looked up sharply.

"You showered together with her?" He asked. Sakura nodded. Shikamaru glanced over Naruto once.

"What's her name?"

"Don't know yet. She hasn't said anything, probably still traumatized. I know I would be if my two teammates were taken out like that," Sakura replied, putting her arm around Naruto's shoulders and leaning against her slightly. Ino thought on that before laughing.

"Well, until now I wasn't convinced that it wasn't a clone of Naruto in a henge, but if you say she was in the shower with you Sakura and, didn't react, then there's no way it can be Naruto. Despite the fact that he is pretty much the prank master, he's a terrible actor."

"What about Naruto being a terrible actor?" Tenten asked, as she walked over to them. Sakura grinned.

"You guys pass?"

"Yep yep! It was tough, but I survived the continued presence of mini-Gai-sensei and the broodmaster to rival Sasuke for three straight days," Tenten replied dramatically, throwing herself into a seat with a laugh and high-fiving Ino.

"So what were you guys talking about, and if that's not Naruto, who is she?" Sakura and Ino then proceeded to fill Tenten in on the situation. Tenten seemed amused.

"Naruto might be a terrible actor, but he is perhaps the most oblivious knucklehead I've ever met in my life, so if the fact that Sakura showered with her is your rationale for disproving that cutie over there is Naruto, then I doubt your theory Ino." Ino blinked while Naruto stared at Tenten for a second before dropping her gaze back to her bowl.

"What do you mean? There's no way Naruto could keep his cool if in the shower with the girl he's crushed on for years."

"Maybe, or maybe not. Listen to this. Me and Hinata were once swimming in the river, in our bikinis, yada yada normalcy. Naruto came racing past us at top speed and I called to him, and he stopped long enough to say hi, like he normally did. Hinata instantly dove under water so I swam over and got out of the water to walk over to him, small talk about the weather, whatever. I could kinda tell that his mind was somewhere else so that put me off a little. I'm a kunoichi in a bikini, he should be drooling at the sight of me. So I walked over to him flirty like and everything, and put my arm around his shoulder. The next thing he said was, 'Well nice talking with you Tenten-chan, but I have a date at Ichirakus! See ya!' And just like that he was gone. I practically fell over because I was still leaning on the spot where he'd just been standing." By now Ino was staring openmouthed at Tenten while Shikamaru just seemed amused. Sakura was trying to hold in her laughter while pinching Naruto under the table to not comment unless he wanted to blow his cover, and shut her mouth, which like Ino's was open. Fortunately no one read too much into this.

"That kid is completely dense, but he's not dense enough to not react in any way other than a traumatized girl if in the shower with me naked. In fact, he'd probably get scared and try to run away," Sakura commented in amusement. Tenten glanced at the door.

"Um, Lee-kun is probably on his way down here. If she's scared of loudness you might want to take her back up to your room," She suggested. Sakura looked at Naruto to see what she thought of this, and Naruto nodded slightly, so Sakura groaned dramatically.

"Sheesh, that kid? He's weird enough to make Naruto's crush on me seem almost thrilling by comparison," She muttered, much to Tenten's amusement. Naruto blinked before smiling in slight amusement, but didn't comment. Ino grinned.

"So then does that mean I get Sasuke?" She asked challengingly. Sakura rolled her eyes before sighing faintly.

"Ino, you ever think there might be more to some boys than just good looks and silent-broody demeanor?" Ino blinked, having expected her to start yelling.

"What do you mean?"

"Nothing. Just think about it. Come on kiddo," Sakura said, getting up and heading back upstairs followed by Naruto.