Recognition: Chapter II.


I do not own Naruto, if I did, I would probably be writing it rather than fanfiction about -it.

Author's notes:

I just can't seem to begin a story light heartedly. You're going to have to persevere up until the lemons begin kicking in…which should happen soon…hopefully…probably next chapter. I was going to say this chapter, but I seemed to have missed my stop on the train and taken a journey toward a large Tangent, so expect a bit more…shock, PLOT!

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A boy, staring at the ground.

A crowd, voices raised high, disband, and leave his broken body in the field. Slow tears wind their way through the scars and bruises covering the face of the child. He knows not why he has been beaten, why he repulses everyone that he meets.

Even those shy, hesitant youths of about his own age had finally rejected him, deciding that his friendship was not worth the punishment their parents wrought with the news of their 'friend'.

The boy looks up.

In front of him he sees the backs of the villagers, but he is used to this sight. He has never really seen their true faces in anything other than anger or fear.

Again, he wonders why.

Years later, he finds the cause of his pain; he is a beast, a monster, an outcast from birth. With this realisation it also becomes apparent to the boy that he is not alone. Though scarred by the bloody wake of the beast, his sensei, and, later his teammates, accept him as a brother.

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Recalling with a sigh, the adult Naruto pushed himself to his feet.

He had learnt long ago that recalling past memories was pointless. That was why he had originally set his sights on the title of Hokage, to forget about the past by staring jovially towards the future.

Of course, he mused, being born with a monstrous entity capable of destroying the city you lived in with a swish of its tail could put quite a dampener on ones social life, let alone allow you to keep any hope of a romantic connection between you and anyone else.

He'd long ago resigned himself to the lonesome life of the possessed. It was pointless, he reasoned, to pursue anyone that he found interesting, on the grounds that as soon as a relationship became apparent those troublesome villagers would forcibly separate both him and his newfound love for fear of his 'burden'.

That was probably why Hinata kissing him like that had distorted his whole view on romance.

He'd always suspected that she liked him, I mean, whenever the girl came within a mile radius of him she went about the same colour as a…. Naruto paused, thinking of a suitable metaphor…as a really red thing.

Damn, was his next thought, I really have to work on my poetic techniques.

He wondered what Hinata was doing right now…

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Hinata was packing. Quickly.

After recovering from her bold move toward Naruto she had remembered her current mission. It was a milk run, basically, but it would still take a good week, or possibly more, to escort this band of merchants to their destination.

Placing a kunai in the midst of a hasty jumble of clothes, she tucked a few more in between her bedroll, and, as an afterthought, three more in her pockets, one in the side pocket in her coat, one under each shoe heel and one for each sock. Just in case she needed any more support a katana was placed on her back and shurikens dotted all around her persona, and just to make certain she took three more kunai and a few scrolls with her in the pouches. After putting all this together she stood up, checked the placement of her belongings, and fell over…slowly, like a cow unfortunate enough to have attracted the attentions of bored city youths while sleeping.

As she lay on the floor, she reflected on the amount of equipment she needed for this C-ranked mission, and decided to stick to just one or two select sharper pieces of weaponry.

Well, she thought, at least this mission meant that she had another blissful week before she returned to Kohona and had to deal with Naruto.

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Naruto raised his fist into the air. Grinning manically, he'd finally realised why Hinata had kissed him.

It was because he was awesome.

He didn't know why he hadn't noticed this before. Now he came to think of it, he became increasingly certain that the only reason he wasn't the lover of every woman in the city must have been through a combination of fear (because of the Kyuubi) and embarrassment from his own shortcomings.

It made more sense the more he thought about it!

All he needed was a little self-confidence to back him up, and Hinata had certainly given him that by acknowledging him with that fleeting kiss…

Of course, to progress anywhere with any of the other lovely ladies of the village he would have to have a talk with the competition, just to make sure there was no taboo on any of the girls he had his sights on.

And he also happened to know that the resident Romantic Baron of Kohona was, by general consensus, Chouji.

This had surprised Naruto somewhat. This was at least up until Shikamaru, grinning widely, told him that there was another less widely used but infinitely more socially practical usage for that handy Partial Double Size technique of his. It had taken him a while to realise what it meant, and he had blushed slightly when his brain had caught up to speed, but now here in the present it seemed to Naruto that the Ninjitsu would only be useful to somebody with not much size to begin with.

This caused him to grin even wider, and if he was reminiscent of a Cheshire cat beforehand, his current facial expression would put even a feline with a double botox injection into shame.

And so it was that some time later, a beaming and confident Naruto came hurtling toward the town, intent on expanding upon the miraculous feelings that Hinata had allowed him to experience for the most minute of seconds.

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"Hey Hinata, why the bruised arms and black eye?" Grinned Kiba, "I mean, I knew you were off training with Naruto, but you guys really get physical eh?"

"…Don'twannatalkaboutit" mumbled Hinata, still smarting from the bruises inflicted upon her by her own luggage. She was also conscious of the fact that she hadn't actually refuted Kiba-kun's point.

Let him guess, she thought.

As Kiba, Kurenai-sensai and herself turned to walk out of the looming gates of the hidden village, she heard the faintest sound of her name on the horizon, approaching quickly.

A quick scan with Byakugan revealed her fears, it was Naruto, shouting her name from the distance and telling her to wait.

"K..Kurenai-sensai?" She stammered.

"Yes, Hinata?"

"Can we…get going? Soon?" She gulped, darting her eyes behind her, the speck was visible now, just thankfully not audible yet, "…Quite soon? Sooner, in fact?"

Stealing a glance over her shoulder, both Kiba and Kurenai sneaked a look at the thing troubling their cohort. While Kiba grimaced at the approach of one of his long-standing rivals, Kurenai glanced to Hinata, then back to the advancing blur, then finally back to the surrounding forest.

Absolutely sure Hinata could not see her, she smirked slightly as her mind, trained to envisage and react in milliseconds, ran through a couple of possibilities that might find Hinata frantically escaping from her own crush, who was apparently currently busy extricating himself from what appeared to be the remains of a couple of merchant shingles.

She turned back to her group, reduced to three due to Shino's absence, and motioned for them to move off with no delay.

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Out of breath, and, after facing down a very upset merchant, out of money, Naruto watched his best chance of getting laid leave since a very drunk Sakura had wandered into his bedroom the night after his eighteenth birthday, (not that she had remembered any of it, and Naruto simply didn't have the stones to tell her).

Anyway, that didn't count. Sakura-chan was way too off her head to notice anything in her surroundings, and she had called Naruto "Sasuke-kun" the entire time. No wonder he didn't count that as a great self-confidence booster.

Sighing, he wondered whether he should wait the week for Hinata to come back and risk her not remembering or caring about what had happened. The alternate method to this was to try his luck with a few of the other eligible bachelorettes around Kohona. If memory served him correctly, there were at least four female Shinobi of about his age in the village; Sakura and her rival Ino, the weapons expert Tenten and of course Hinata.

On top of this there were one or two older ninja that he was increasingly sure had been caught by him staring a couple of times; Anko, Kurenai and that Medic-Nin who hung around with the old lady…Shizune or something, seemed to fit into this category.

Finally, and he'd almost forgotten this one, there was the common populace. He didn't really expect much from this group, unlike the Shinobi their parents probably didn't find it too much of a taboo to talk about his "little red friend".

He was about to set out on finding a few of those people around his age when it occurred to him that most of them would still be absent on that damn Seed land mission or whatever. He racked his brains to think of any that might not have been picked, or might not have been at the meeting at all.

Wait, didn't Kakashi-sensai pick Ino to serve as Medic-nin on the trip?

-FLASHBACK.-

I thought I saw you up the back there…" Kakashi nodded, gesticulating in Naruto's direction, who lit up, "Ino. I guess we should be taking a medical ninja, after all."

-END OF AFOREMENTIONED FLASHBACK.- (who said flashbacks needed to be long?)

If Kakashi-sensai had picked Ino as medic-nin, that that probably meant that Sakura wasn't needed on the mission!

Right.

Now all he needed was a plan to seduce her.

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Some time later, Naruto stood on the fourth Hokage's nose.

The fact that it was a stone face, carved into the rock wall, would have certainly made the fourth Hokage feel better about it if he were not currently, as it were, dead.

Unfortunately for Naruto, however, the stone face was higher up than the average nasal height of most humans.

A lot higher up.

Looking down upon the city, Naruto debating going through with his plan. It would hurt, oh how it would hurt, but the rewards to be gained far outweighed a few seconds of pain, that is, if he received them.

Crouching on the old stone man's nasal ridge and shuffling backward till he hit the bridge between the eyes, the young Shinobi relaxed himself and mentally prepared for the oncoming agony.

Then, without further delay, he stood up and stepped calmly off the nose.

He expected the screaming rush of air as he plummeted downward and strove to remain in such a position that he would land on his feet, he didn't want any internal organs ruptured or cause any damage beyond the help of the Kyuubi's chakra.

After all, what was a couple of broken bones compared to internal bleeding and organ failure?

He also expected the jolt that shook his body as he bounced off the solid ground. It's just that nobody, no matter how skilled, can fully anticipate the pain.

Naruto howled as he felt his shinbones snap, his feet mangle and his ankles turn in directions ankles had never been designed to face. While he knew that most of these would be healed within minutes, and that he would be fully healed and re-invigorated a few hours from that, the intense throbbing of the here and now caused him to keel over, falling into the hands of some nearby Chunnin who had seen his plight.

He woke in a serene white room, curtains drawn and fluttering in the breeze that blew through his ward. Naruto had woken up in the emergency recovery ward of Kohona Medical Centre more times than he cared to remember, and each one had been accompanied by a brief moment of pure epiphany as he saw his sparkling surroundings.

Brief, because Sakura was standing beside him. From her stance and the look in her eyes Naruto could imagine that if he did not play his cards right on this next line, he would be toast. Even so, he couldn't help but notice how hot the nurses outfit seemed.

What he needed was an opening line that captured the moment of the situation. An opening greeting that both played up his strengths and heroic nature while toadying slightly to her, making it witty might be an interesting side-note too.

While he was postulating this sentence, however, his treacherous mouth intervened and stuttered "..H..Hi, Saku…Sakura…Sakura-chan…?".

You stupid bastard, thought Naruto, why didn't you keep your trap shut for another five seconds and think of something that would defuse the situation? He knew now that his inner self hated him.

Fortunately for Naruto, there was no cry of fury and an accompanying Thud. Unfortunately for Naruto, this was because Sakura was standing head bowed, openly weeping. She didn't seem to have heard him.

For the second time in so many moments, Naruto felt himself saying "Sakura-chan?" Once again, there was no reply; Sakura seemed to be stuck inside her own ghoulish nightmare.

As she looked up, it occurred to Naruto just how much of an idiot he'd been. All he'd wanted to do was wind up in hospital with a few scratches so he could have a seemingly innocuous opening to engage Sakura in conversation, with an added bonus to pity, supplied by his injuries.

What had just hit him was that from the report she must have heard, it must have seemed like he was trying to kill himself.

Shit, he screwed up his face, gripping the covers of his hospital bed tightly, shitshitshitshitshit!

OH…SHIT! He concluded.

This did not seem to be an adequate summary of the situation, and seemed to detract from whatever emotion Sakura was feeling at the moment, so he stopped.

She obviously hadn't heard Naruto cry out those first few times, or seen the subtle tightening of the blankets as he pulled himself onto his shoulders in the bed. Certainly it would have been the only reason that she'd said what she'd said next.

"Why…?" she sobbed into her clenched hands, to nobody in particular, "Why does anything that I try and befriend leave me?"

Momentarily lost for words, Naruto could only stare at her in abject amazement as she continued.

"First my own best friend becomes my worst enemy and rival, then Sasuke-kun…." She paused to arrest the progress of one tear as it flowed down her cheek, "Sasuke-kun left, and I…I couldn't stop him", the hand returned to its original position, "and now you try this".

Evidently speechless, Sakura turned, and made to move out of the ward. A small voice, little more than a whisper, called out.

"Sakura-chan".

Eyes widening, she span round, searching for the source. Her eyes came to rest on the reclining figure.

"…Sakura-chan, I just wanted you to know", gaining confidence, he continued, "that while your friends may desert you, and Sasuke, that bastard, rejects and scorns you at every turn…I just want you to know that, well, I'll always be there for you…until the very end".

She looked up to face him. Gone was the mischievous grin that so characterised his features; instead an expression of extreme concentration occupied an alien position on a face more used to joking oafishly than serious thought.

What surprised her most of all, however, was what she noticed about him.

She noticed sun, playing off the corners of his forehead protector. She noticed sweat pooling under his hair as the boiling sun assaulted him. She stared fixatedly upon so many tiny details, his clenched hands, his golden locks, and finally came to rest on his piercingly blue eyes.

She hadn't ever noticed any of these finer details on him before, so why did she suddenly find herself amazed even at the subtle play of dancing lights across that scrap of beaten metal he called his headband?

"T-th-thank you, N-Naruto-Kun", feeling like a certain lavender eyed shinobi as she stammered away at the short phrase.

"Heh, no problem." Replied Naruto, conscious of the sudden suffix his name had been associated with. Suddenly, scrapping his original plan in the face of an epiphany, his mind formulated a new idea. Placing his hand behind his back, he felt his bandage wraps carefully, thinking.

"Say, Sakura-chan", he grinned uncertainly, "Could you help me out with something quickly?"

'Sure Naruto!" exclaimed the girl, shaking herself mentally from her thoughts and stammer, "what is it?"

"Its these damn bandages. I've gotten an itch on my back because of them and not only can't I scratch it with my arms, but I'm too beat up to get a clone to do it for me".

Lying facing her, so that the only possible way to scratch his back was by placing her arm over his back, Naruto began to guide Sakura toward the source of his discontent. "Lower", he began, "and harder"; Gladdened by the amused, yet perplexed look Sakura gave him at his choice of words, he decided to push it further.

"Lower still, to the right more, left a bit, down…Look, would it be easier for you if the bandages came off?"

As Sakura began to unwrap his constraints, he smiled. It had worked, and better still, Sakura thought it was her idea all along.

Acting as if he wasn't paying attention, the Shinobi allowed his friend to work on the wraps while he stared out of the window. Calculating the exact time necessary for his next move, he sprung into action as the bandages unwrapped just under his waist.

"Sakura-chan, wait! Don't keep going, I'm not wearing….Oh, I thought they'd told you!"

With bruises formed on the entirety of his back and legs, the hospital staff had deemed it wise to not equip Naruto with a standard white gown, instead hoping his bandages would suffice for his modesty. Evidently not.

"Oh!" Replied Sakura, eyes widening as a final whirl uncovered the blonde's nether regions.

It wasn't like she hadn't seen it before. Being on missions together for so long meant there were bound to be times when he had picked an unwise time to change or taken an impromptu shower in a spot he'd thought secure.

Actually, she thought with a blush, there were those times in the Hot Springs when Sasuke was still around. Back then it had seemed like a personal insult that Naruto was slightly bigger down there than her crush, but now…

As her hand travelled absent-mindedly downward, Naruto's breath became increasingly ragged and laboured, until finally he couldn't take it any more. She just looked so damn hot in that skimpy little medical outfit.

"Well, hello Nurse!", both he and a figure perched in the bushes said simultaneously..

.Nesxt chapter:

Suspense! Drama! Love! Changing attitudes of Naruto!


Full credit for the nurses outfit goes to the reviewer of 'The Bet' by Zamrok. I came across this story while writing the end of chapter two and that one review stuck with me. At the time of writing it hasn't been finished due to problems with the author, but it's pretty awesome so far. P.S-I think he should finish it…

Well, enough about others, Chapter III will be a fully-fledged Lemon (or at least part of the chapter, I'm not writing a 3000 word Lemon assuming it's the same size as this chapter).

Expect, hmmm…., maybe the beginnings of NaruTenten or Ino, and possibly some foreshadowing for another strongly supported coupling (No, its not the insanely overused NaruSasu, no Yaoi here).

Peace, and that's NOT all folks,

Arboreal Verdance