AN: Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I don't own the series Naruto, however plot ideas and possibly certain jutsu's are mine. There will be mentions of F/F, M/M, and F/M relationships in later chapters, if this bothers you well, get over it.

"Speaking"

'Thoughts'

'Kyuubi/Demon Speaking'

-Flashback-

Halfpace- n. A platform of a staircase where the stair turns back in exactly the reverse direction of the lower flight.

-Outside P.o.V-

Coming into the scarcely furbished room, a red-haired and darkly outfitted girl was dripping with sweat. She meandered her way towards what appeared to be a small bathroom before disrobing and stepping into the steaming cubical. When finished she came back into the living space of her small apartment and sat to eat some dry cereal and a bottled water, still clothed in only one large red towel for her body and a slightly smaller grey towel with yellow daisy designs for her hair. The girl, looking up her wall, spotted a well worn calendar of no particular theme with the day's date circled in red.

At a lightning fast pace the girl rocketed out of her towels, abandoning them and her breakfast at the table, and dove towards a small chest at the end of her bed. Pulling out a black and navy colored jumpsuit, a black mesh top, and a navy cropped tank top the girl quickly robed herself in them. Shooting towards the bottom of the chest she pulled out two thin black hair clips, which she used to secure her long red bangs to the right side of her face, and a navy colored leaf village headband tying it securely around her neck. She dashed out the door, not noticing that it was left slightly open.

-Naruto P.o.V-

Walking through the familiar back alleyways, I sighed softly. 'Not that stupid gaki again,' I thought looking at the boy's shoddily done camouflage. 'He needs to find a new hobby, or some friends, or something. Whatever he does, he needs to leave me be.'

"Ever since I escaped the boy after that meeting with the Hokage, he's been following me around." Muttering under my breath as I saw his chubby fingers reach up to pull down his disguise, a backwards lined sheet made to look like a fence, I activated my Kage no Jutsu and melded into the surrounding shadows. A brief look of bemusement crossed my face as I watched him stumble over his too long scarf and then look around dumbly for my person.

-At the Academy-

Falling asleep in my seat, I was suddenly awoken by what sounded like a heard of rhino's stampeding towards the classroom. Looking up I saw Ino and Sakura, the class's top two kunoichi graduates, pushing against each other in an attempt to reach inside the room first.

Confirming my thoughts, the girls both pushed inside and threw up their arms screaming out, "Goal!" Then proceeded to pant heavily and argue about who reached inside first. Noting this as normal and not worth my attention I settled back down into my seat with my head in my arms and tried to drift back asleep. Soon the noise of angry females surrounded my desk and I made a tactical retreat into a different seat leaving Sasuke to deal with his female admirers on his own.

-Hokage Tower-

"Is that this year's top rookie, Uchiha, Sasuke?" a male voice penetrated through the previously silent air in the room. The Kage simply replied in the affirmative before a red-eyed and brown haired female with delicate facial features, dressed in black mesh and a red bandage like wrap dressed questioned, "The survivor of the Uchiha clan?" Once again the old Kage confirmed the statement as true.

The orb, which had previously been showing the ninja's surrounding the Hokage the male Uchiha, shifted its sight towards a sleeping red-head with her face covered by her arms. A purple haired kunoichi, with a fairly forgettable face if not for her bright red lipstick, wearing the standard green flack jacket, black sweat pants tucked into calf high black ninja combat sandals, and bandaged arms with black armguards over top sighed while looking at the girl her face unchanging. 'Uzumaki, Naruto. Huh?'

-Ninja Academy-

Kick. "-from here on… full…. carry out…. Jonin sensei-" Kick. "-the groups…. determined…. strength…. equal." Kick. Kick. Suddenly jerking awake, I realized that Iruka-sensei had started out giving us our squad assignments. Glancing quickly behind me I was surprised to see Kiba giving me a sheepish look before pointing next to him at the eternally bored looking Shikamaru.

"Now then next, team seven will be Sasuke Uchiha, Nara Shikamaru, and Uzumaki Naruto." A strange feeling of befuddlement overtook me. 'I could have sworn they would have gone with the InoShikaCho combination that has been so successful in the past and that Kiba as the lowest scorer on the exam would be paired with Sasuke and Sakura the highest. I wonder what could have drastically changed the normal team assignments like that?' Confusion still being my main emotion at the time I snuck a glance back at Shikamaru who had Kiba wake me up. 'Is it possible he knew?'

"Team eight will be Hyuuga Hinata, Inuzuka Kiba, and Sakura Haruno." Even more confused I looked to the members of team eight wondering why a team would be made with two kunoichi in it.

Hearing the conversation behind me I saw Ino and Shikamaru discussing something, but only caught the end of Ino saying, "That's why I'm glad I'm not on a squad with you."

"Squad ten. Akamichi Choji, Aburame Shino, and Yamanaka Ino." Ino seemed to deflate at this declaration while Shikamaru didn't even attempt to hold back his smirk at her defeated look.

"Alright that's it. These groups were created to balance your individual talents-" 'That's it! Every team has one support, one ninjutsu based, and one taijutsu based. Well except for this group, however both Shikamaru and myself have never shown any particular talent at anything, just basic skills, and Sasuke was the top student, with the highest marks in everything. The reason that the groups are set up is according to our known skill set!' I thought to myself. "In the afternoon, I'll introduce you to your Jonin senseis. Until then you're all dismissed!"

Walking out of the room I used my only non-academy taught jutsu and slipped into the shadows never noticing the pair of eyes that widened in shock at my sudden disappearance and the pair that followed me even after I had melded into the darkness.

-Later that day Naruto's Apartment-

The purple-haired woman and the old Kage stood in the living space of the small room. "So this is Naruto's room? It's just like Anko said it would be." The woman glanced around at the haphazardly thrown towels and unfinished bowel of dry cereal, before walking over towards the door which had some strange symbols written in black ink around it. "Both Sasuke the last heir of the Uchiha and Shikamaru the young Nara heir will be on your team as well," The Kage said musingly. "I wish you good luck."

"Yes, well the formerly picked teams were unacceptable. Anko informed me that Naruto-chan is like her younger sister and that if I was going to try and take a team this year I should pick her and build the team around her needs." The Jonin sensei said. "Also, you had planned on pairing Hatake with an Uchiha which you know would have led to favoritism of the boy over his peers. I guess this will be interesting either way."

AN: Yatta! Another chapter complete! Okay so a few notes: 1. in an earlier chapter I mentioned that Naruto has seals in her room to prevent intruders, this is true yes. However, the seal doesn't knock people out or anything, it's designed so that when someone opens the door it does two things one- it sends a jolt of chakra through the person if they have an unrecognized chakra signature and two- it alerts Naruto that someone has entered her home with a slight buzzing noise. You can either pretend that she didn't hear it due to her being asleep or that since she accidentally left the door open the whole process was negated, it really doesn't matter in the long run. 2. Yes, Yugao and Anko have some sort of close relationship, I won't specify on what type atm, however I wonder why Yugao decided to stop doing Anbu work this year? Hmmmm? 3. I wanted to thank everyone for the support so far and thank Abdullahsaurus for the correct spelling of Tsuchikage (I couldn't find it ;-; obviously I didn't try hard enough and was just a fail).

Hope to hear more from you all,

Tinker