Hello people who still are waiting for an update. This will be chapter 3.

I would like to apologize too for the absence and delay of chapter 3. I had a lot of stuff to do at work and other personal things to solve.

I don't have a clear arc for the academy life, because I don't think the anime/manga showed much of it so I'm a bit lost.

Please let me know if there is something that you want to see happening and what I wrote that is not good, as I said in the first chapter, this is the first time I try to write something.

Chapter 3:

Classes didn't start until 2 weeks after the test results were posted, I was excited and trained every day to do well enough to be a good student. I would go to the free training grounds and find a lot of children, running, throwing shurikens and kunais at the targets and some were sparring with one another. It was like watching a cinematic presentation of what the place was used for.

As I was walking I saw Naruto doing his exercises far away from everyone else, I have to say he was a hard working kid. I approached as he was in the middle of his push-ups. "Hey there friend, How is the training going?" Naruto then did a really hard push to get up in one movement and with a big smile said."Touma! Just in the middle of training, I want to prove to those guys that I can be the best so I need to exercise as much as possible to be at the top". While he was speaking he proudly put his closed fist up for a fist bump, which I fist bumped.

"It's good to see you motivated and not pretending to not know me when I try to talk to you". As I said this he was about to interrupt me, however I continued to speak" Yes, I know why you did it. I don't know why they do this to you, but I know you and you are a good person and my friend so don't worry about it". His eyes were open, almost comically like."Thanks Touma, it is good to have a friend." With that I patted his back."Don't worry I'm sure you will have a lot of friends and for sure be the hokage. But let's stop talking and spar a bit, you know how I suck at fighting."

Some people saw myself and Naruto interaction and started to gossip about it, however none of us were paying attention to it because of the spar, I was trying to remember the movement my father taught me and using it against Naruto's own fighting style and to my surprise, some forms made it way easier to counter some of his attacks, blocking or dodging them. I never got into fights in my previous life, but I have to say that this is fun.

After a while we were too tired to continue so we decided to do some chakra training with the leaf exercise. While doing so I heard some kids fighting and as I opened my eyes I saw Sakura having a not so friendly interaction with some other girls and boys. As I stood up Naruto asked"Touma, are you going too or I will be going alone?" He knew how it felt to be bullied and for sure he didn't like watching it happen and do nothing to stop."Do you really need to ask?" I said while standing up and running over to stop the fight.

"Hey! What are you guys doing?" As soon as I said some of the kids got out of the way I could go and help Sakura get up."Aren't you ashamed of yourselves? 6 older kids picking on an alone younger kid?"I told them and some of them looked like they got the message, but one of the girls, which I think was the "leader", said "And who are you? Are you the forehead's boyfriend?" Sakura tried to speak, however I cut her off."No, however she is my friend and she is more cute and smart than the bunch of you so get lost or I will make sure that your so-called cute face will have some broken teeths." While I was talking to them Naruto arrived and the other kids ran away, because they were afraid of him.

After Naruto's arrival nothing more happened and the group went away. We turned and saw Sakura crying and asked at the same time. "Saruka, everything is ok now, they are gone, are you ok" She looked up to us and spoke in a sobbing voice"Yes, I don't know why they are so mean" and she started crying again. The situation was solved, however the adults saw Naruto near a crying girl and began to blame him for the situation and he told us that he was leaving to not make it worse.

After Naruto left I stayed with Sakura while she was crying and offered to accompany her on the way home, just to make sure people would not bully her again. She then nodded and as she had a bruise on her knees I offered a piggyback and she shyly nodded again. Her home was quite far from the training grounds."So…, how are you doing now? Better?" I asked to try to break the silence."Yes…" she said, and as I was about to speak again she asked."Is it true what you said to them?"."About what part? The part where they would lose some teeths?"."No…, the part…, where…, you told them…, that…" she stopped and pressed her head on my back, so I asked"Told them what?".She then said"that I'm cute"

I then started laughing, this girl really did believe they were speaking the true and that she was ugly."Sakura, I don't know where you got the idea that you anything but a cute and smart girl, so let me tell you a thing, they are probably jealous of you, that is why they were mean to you". At first because of the laughter she was ashamed, however as soon as I told her the truth she asked."Jealous of me? Why?""Because you got one of the best scores in the academy and you are still training and studying to get better"."but they were calling me forehead, that has nothing to do with the academy"."That is the point, the only way for them to affect you or have a sense of superiority against you if calling you names and by the way you try to hide it make it obvious that you are insecure about your appearance, so let me tell you again, you are good the way you are".

She then pressed her face against my back again and went silent for a while. It must have been hard for her to hear all the names they were calling her. Some more minutes of walking we arrived at her house and she dropped from my piggyback and shyly thanked me and went inside.

After this incident Sakura was a bit more friendly with me and didn't bother Naruto's presence when she was with us training, which is always good news. Some people tried to talk shit to her, however she just left and they eventually stopped doing so. I guess she noticed that they would only be mean to her when she was doing better than them and they would then try to belittle her to make her do worse.

The two weeks went by really fast and it was the first day at the academy. Everyone was excited to be there, a lot more children were there too, much more than I remember passing the test, it probably meant that they had more tests the days after and those are the ones that succeeded. After entering the academy the first thing was to find which class I was in, and thankfully I was together with my friends.

The first day was mostly a presentation, with some lessons about the history of the academy, some math classes, ninja book code, physical training, hand seals and sparring. I must say that some of the classes were boring, however I always liked knowing new things so it wasn't so bad. The best part though was the sparring, we got to spar with every classmate. Sasuke was the only one after Naruto that actually put up a fight, however the teacher stopped us due to time.

It was fun to watch as most of the girls went crazy after Sasuke poured a bottle of water on his head to clean some sweat and seeing the boys get mad at him was even funnier.

The weeks went by fast. Most of the classes were about running to build up stamina, basic history of conflicts and questions about hand seals that were needed to perform some basic jutsus. I now have my friend group which was formed by Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura, Ino, Shikamaru, Choji and Hinata. We would train, study and just do whatever together. Sometimes Naruto would convince most of us to prank the hokage which was fun and everytime we were about to get caught he would take the blame, because he knew the old man would not be mad at him.

After the second month the teacher started the class talking about the class ranking system which was a score system that would rank every student based on physical score and grades. I got excited, so did almost all other students but Shikamaru. After that we started the day with a spar and then a race.

Sasuke got first in the spar, I got second, Naruto and Sakura were not that far behind. In the race I managed to get first place, Sasuke was the second place and by a hair Naruto got placed in third, Sakura though did not do great in the race and got placed in the middle of the class, but she was happy to not get last place knowing that she spent almost all of her time studying instead of doing physical training.

After lunch we had a written test about what we had learned so far and was not surprised to see Sakura as the top score, followed by Sasuke, me and for some reason Naruto was at the bottom of the list.