Disclaimer: Naruto is not owned by me.

Author's Note: I know people are waiting on an update for No Thanks Necessary, but I'm having serious issues with the next chapter. I've written it five times and hated ALL of them so it's still akimbo at the moment. Trying to get out of the depressing fictional funk I was slipping into I looked into this notebook of prompts that I had written down when I was bored a long time ago and decided to bang one of them out in an attempt to shake myself free! Hopefully this knocked some of the cobwebs out of my brain and I can get back to working on No Thanks Necessary again!

Four Reasons

There are four reasons Naruto Uzumaki is obsessed with Ramen:

1. It's genetic.

No one would have every thought that the calm, cool, always together Fourth Hokage, Minato Namikaze was a ramen addict to look at him. He was the classic idea of cool. Women fawned over him, men wanted to be him, and he never let any of it get to his head. He was this seemingly impossible being…who was obsessed with ramen.

He was a favorite customer of every ramen stand in town and continued to frequent their establishments after he rose in fame. Occasionally shutting down the places after he ate the noodles faster than the cooks could make them.

Oops.

For Kushina Uzumaki it was the same, though she preferred Ichiraku above all other shops.

Their coupling was both revered and feared by the ramen stands of Konoha, which would be kept in business so long as they could produce the stuff quickly enough when the couple went on their dates.

When Minato found out that Kushina was pregnant he immediately went out and bought baby clothing – a little blue onesie with a steaming bowl of ramen on the front.

2. He has only ever received one cooking lesson in his entire life.

Six-year-old Naruto Uzumaki balanced precariously on the stool, just barely seeing over the edge of the pot and into the boiling water.

"Careful now!" Teuchi had warned him, a gentle hand resting on Naruto's wrist to stop the boy from touching the pot. "It's hot," he pointed out. "Don't touch things on the stove with your skin."

A small hot pad was passed over to the boy, who grabbed it and used it to grab the handle of the pot, to shift it to better cover the flame.

"So get a pot of water and boil it up, then, put in the noodles!"

A bright blue bowl was passed over to Naruto who dumped the contained noodles into the pot with glee as the water fizzed a little bit at the introduction of the starch before settling down quickly.

"Now we need to stir it once in a while so they don't stick."

Naruto took the proffered spoon, long like the ones the orphanage ladies had kept tucked into their belts in case any of the children misbehaved, and quickly stirring the water and watching the noodles swirl about.

"Now tap the spoon," Teuchi's big hand cradled Naruto's as he led the boy through the motions and Naruto felt the warmth of that simple gesture sink deep into his skin. And he had thought for just a moment that this was what it was like to have a family. To feel that warmth all the time.

Every year after that Teuchi would find a handmade card shoved under the grate of the shop in the morning on Father's Day when he came to open the stand. It never said father nor was it signed. But the large Thank You coupled with an orange smiley face was more than enough to identify its source.

It was put in a place of pride on the kitchen table at home, right next to the one from his daughter and later placed securely in a box with knickknacks and memories from his life that he would occasionally shuffle through with pride and a small smile on his face, along with a copy of every school photo Naruto had taken in each succeeding year of school that he had asked for when Naruto had showed up gloomy after school one day, sad because he never had anyone to give any of the photos to. Naruto didn't know it but right under the spot on the counter that he always sat at was a framed copy of the latest picture, with one of Ayame smiling in a frame next to it.

Teuchi didn't realize at first that Naruto had stolen the wooden spoon that they had been using that day. And Naruto had slipped it into his own box, with the word 'family' scrawled on the side, y backward.

3. The first man to pay attention to him for something other than a sense of obligation or guilt: Teuchi

Teuchi had been an involved father as Ayame was growing up. He had asked her about her classes every day and quizzed her on her spelling words and attended every single parent/teacher conference even though Ayame's teachers never had anything more to report than, "Your daughter is a joy to have in class."

So when he had spied Naruto's less than stellar report card laying on the ground, clearly having slipped out of the boy's pocket moments ago as the boy left the stand, he was concerned.

He hadn't known Naruto yet, he had just seen the sad little boy all alone and offered him a bowl of ramen when a customer had left early before he could finish it when a medical ninja had come hurtling towards the stand to tell his client that his wife was in labor. As the dust had cleared from the ninja's departure, Teuchi had seen the little boy standing watching the man go and just called out if he wanted the bowl instead – no charge. The boy had stared unbelievingly at Teuchi for a second before a giant smile had stretched across his face before the child scrambled onto the stool.

Now he held in his hand the grade report of that same child and it was…awful. Math skills lacking, reading below level, spelling was atrocious, science, social studies, everything was awful along with lists of behavioral problems.

So the next day when Naruto showed up again the next day, waiting at the edge of the stand for a moment as though to see if he would be welcomed back, Teuchi served him up a bowl and brought up the report. Naruto had scowled at the report and attempted to snatch it from Teuchi who easily held it out of the child's reach. "School sucks!" Naruto had announced scowling too much to even try to each his ramen.

When Teuchi had finally wheedled out of the boy that he didn't know how to do anything and the teachers got angry when he asked questions. So he had told the boy to bring his homework with him and Teuchi would help him work it out.

He was disheartened to realize that Naruto barely had a grasp on reading and approached everything phonetically and had a tendency to just guess words that he didn't know in the middle of sentences. To the boy's credit though, he did much better than the cook would have thought he was capable of with that method. Sadly, math only seemed possible when he had enough fingers and toes because no one had ever bothered to drill the basics into him like how to break bigger numbers down or carry them over. So Teuchi was grateful for the lack of business he would get whenever Naruto was sitting at his counter because he was able to give the boy the attention that he clearly needed. He'd had a lot of years of being fairly well off. And with the amount of customers he got otherwise, he would still be in the black.

When Naruto actually passed a math test and the teachers had accused him of cheating, Teuchi had been the one to stomp down to the school and confront the teacher after the distraught child had showed up in tears at his stand after school that day, hands red from having suffered the wrath of a swift ruler.

Teuchi could have hugged the young Iruka Umino a few years later when he showed up at the stand because word around the school was that if you had problems with Naruto you brought it up to Teuchi. When the question wasn't "How do I control that boy?" and instead was "How can I help Naruto?" Teuchi silently promised the man half-priced bowls for the rest of his life.

4. The second man to do so: Iruka

Naruto's stomach growled but he ignored it. He had spent all of his monthly allotment already and wouldn't get any more until tomorrow. One night missing dinner wasn't so bad.

He wandered through town, avoiding Ichiraku because he didn't want to take advantage of the man who was so kind to him. He knew that no one ever came to the stand if Naruto was there so he didn't want to go there all the time.

He sighed, kicking at a rock in the road, and jumped when a hand settled on his shoulder.

He turned and saw Iruka-sensei. He didn't need Teuchi nearly as much for homework help as he used to since Iruka became his homeroom teacher, though it was still nice to sit there and get help from the kindly old man.

"Iruka-sensei…?"

"Hey Naruto, I was just about to go get some ramen. Want to join me? Food tastes better with company."

Naruto nodded, a smile beginning to form. He knew it would be Ichiraku, but if he was with Iruka-sensei then he wasn't keeping other people away from Teuchi-jii. "Ramen ramen ramen!" He chanted jumping up and down tugging his teacher with his huge grin filling up his face towards the stand filled with the warmth and memories of his childhood.

"Naruto, calm down!"

"RAMEN!"

There are four reasons that Naruto Uzumaki is obsessed with ramen.

But they are really only divisions of one big reason.

And would any orphan be obsessed with the thing that brings his family together?

End

So - what do you guys think. I don't think it's bad for a little excersize to clear my mind. Hopefully this can tide a few people over until I can get something going for No Thanks Necessary!

Reviews are loved - they help me improve!