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Chapter Three: Paint Over Shame

A/N: Yes, third chapter! I hope Naruto's IC here; I was trying to keep his first-half-of-episode-one attitude in mind while writing this. One more chapter of character development after this one, and we can finally begin the first arc! Yosh!

I--I

"Eh? A fight?"

"Stop repeating everything I say; it's annoying!"

The dark-haired girl idling at the back of the room stared at him for a moment, grabbing onto her wrist and rubbing her forearm unsurely. "Is...is this about the paint, Uzumaki-san? I was actually just leaving to go pick it u--"

"Don't try to weasel your way out of this!", Naruto suddenly shouted, making his classmate recoil in shock. "Even though you're way worse at Ninjutsu than I am, I'm the lowest-ranking student in Iruka-sensei's class and you're only the second-lowest!"

She nervously scratched at the bottom of her cheek. "Third-lowest, actually. I study more than Nara-san does."

"Doesn't matter! If I beat you, that would make you the worst student in the class instead, you know!"

"I don't think it works that way..."

"Does that mean you give up?!"

"Absolutely not!", she smiled gently, holding up an index finger. "If Uzumaki-san wants this title, he should have the privilege of telling everyone he won it fair and square! But, Uzumaki-san...I don't have any reason to fight you."

Lowering his arm to hold a hand against his chin, Naruto attempted to come up with a proper wager as his intended opponent shrugged her backpack on and swept more flakes of green off her shoulders.

"How about if you win...", he decided. "You forget about replacing the can of paint?"

She skipped down the classroom stairs and jumped the last step, landing to stand beside him. "Fair trade."

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Considering students and personnel alike had already headed home for the day, the fight would take place outside of the Academy, an area nearby yet still away from intruding eyes (save for the unsuspecting civilian bystander across the street). The two would-be Genin were separated by nothing more than several feet of bare ground; kunai holsters and shuriken packs were left abandoned in a pile at the foot of a nearby tree, beneath a lonely wooden swing.

Naruto had only presented three rules of combat.

"No weapons! No weird tools! No running away!"

She gave him a light smile in agreement, and he charged as fast as his feet would take him.

Naruto leapt and threw a straight punch downwards, easily dodged by the girl's sudden shift in position. He managed to catch the swift upwards kick she countered with; she pressed her hands against the ground to keep balance and tried for his lower abdomen with her other leg, rising to her feet once successfully knocking him away. She rushed in attack, jumping over him to evade his attempt to trip her and trying to get a fast hit in from behind. He avoided her assaults and she blocked his counters; it was almost aggravating how evenly matched they were.

Stepping back, Naruto quickly twisted around, swinging his leg over for a high kick to the head. She spun to face his strike head-on, crossing her forearms to absorb the impact; when his ankle made contact, she immediately grabbed onto it with both hands and yanked him off balance, shifting her feet to sway his weight and throw him to the opposite side of the clearing.

Naruto performed a hasty back-flip, dragging his hand across the ground for stability and landing in a crouching position. She was already running towards him.

He furrowed his brow and felt his fists clench as he observed her unfaltering expression.
That small, content, insufferable smile never left her face for a moment.

Blinded by frustration, Naruto forced his hands together to form a hand seal.

"BUNSHIN NO JUTSU!"

The girl slid to a stop, kicking up a cloud of dirt as a shadowed form appeared from the resulting puff of smoke.

The fog cleared.

Both expressions on the field turned incredulous upon spotting the inanimate, off-color, deathly pale Naruto clone lying in a pathetic crumple on the forest floor, its slack tongue sticking out lazily from its drooling mouth. Naruto growled and kicked it out of frustration, neglecting to remember bunshins were only illusions and in turn falling hard on his behind.

A bird's call echoed mockingly through the following silence.

"Damn it, damn it, DAMN IT!", he finally cried out, running his hands through his hair and falling backwards to lay on the ground. "Why did I even bother?!"

Naruto's temporary rival let out a small cough. "Does...this mean I don't have to--"

"WOULD YOU SHUT UP ABOUT THE STUPID PAINT, ALREADY?!"

"S--sorry."

His angered gaze didn't move from its position on the sky, even when he heard the grass crunching beneath his classmate's feet as she approached him.

"Uzumaki-san, you really shouldn't be so upset.", she insisted, kneeling by his side. "Whether or not you ended up winning, school is over in a few days either way. It's such a short time to be triumphant."

"This isn't about the fight, henjin, it's about getting that freakin' Jutsu wrong! Again!"

"Well, you're not planning to perform the Jutsu like that at the exam, are you? Because...you know, they probably wouldn't let you pass if you did."

"Idiot!", he snapped. "I'm not planning to do it like that, it's going to happen just like it did before! I make the stupid clone all the time, but I never get the Chakra right to move it properly! Why is the exam always on this stupid technique?!"

"So you've been doing it wrong." He saw her shrug out the corner of his eye. "No matter how many times I read over the instructions in the textbook, I can't even make the bunshin in the first place, even though I'm sure I can control my Chakra enough to keep it moving."

"Oh yeah? And how the heck can you be so sure?"

"The book says a bunshin moves with outward Chakra projections onto the illusion, and I've always been pretty good at controlling Chakra outside the body. I could try and teach you, if you wanted."

"Tch!", he scoffed, still glaring daggers at the clouds. "I've failed the graduation exam two years in a row with this same technique, you know! What's a couple days' practice gonna do?"

"We could at least try to help each other out?"

"I don't need your help!", he said loudly, shutting his eyes.

There was another long, uninterrupted silence, somehow less tense than that which had previously ensued. He felt her start tugging at the grass beneath them from boredom, breaking the multiple blades and tossing them asunder to the wind.

"Uzumaki-san...you want to be the Hokage, don't you?"

"Of course I do!", he proclaimed. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"A good Hokage helps villages who are in need, and knows when to accept help when his village is in need. But you don't have to go around helping whole villages to begin acting like a Hokage. You can start by helping the people inside of them. Don't you think it's at least worth a shot?"

Naruto opened his eyes, quickly rising to his feet and towering over her kneeling form. She was still picking at the ground when he saw her, seeming completely lost in her own little world; not only was she covered in blotches of dried green paint, but her fingertips were now also stained from picking at the grass for so long, with countless blades littering her folded lap and tangled within the tips of the lengthy hair resting on the ground behind her.

"Oi, henjin."

She glanced up at him with widened eyes, blinking.

"We can't train if you're sitting on the ground the whole time, you know." Naruto folded his arms behind his head and looked away. "About this whole Chakra project thing...teach me how to move a clone and I'll teach you how to make one. Sound good?"

Patting the grass off of her skirt, she smiled at him. "Fair trade."

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