"Oi! Move it Namikaze!"

Only a few minutes into the school day, and he was already eating dirt. Brilliant. The blonde haired boy sat up, groaning a little as he brushed dirt off the pale green shortened yukata he wore. It was brand new, having been sewn by his mother to celebrate his acceptance into the Konoha Shinobi Academy. He would be the first of his immediate family to attend the school, and, ever the proud mother, Shouko Namikaze wanted her son to wear something brand new and respectable for his first day.

And now the white hem of the yukata was stained by mud. At least his pants, a dark olive green, were too dark to show the dirt.

"You know, if you weren't so quiet, they wouldn't push you around like that." A wry voice spoke up from behind him.

The boy whirled around and scowled. "Just because I prefer reading to jumping in mud puddles…" He grumbled, "…doesn't mean that I'm a push over."

The girl rolled her eyes and brushed a lock of short brown hair behind her ear, grinning at the blonde boy. "Of course not, dear." She said tartly. "But it's not because you're a bookworm that you're a push over, it's because you're a mouse who only speaks in whispers."

"I do not!" The boy hissed at her, flushing red. "I can be loud… when I want to be…"

The brown haired girl in the green and white kimono just continued to stare at him flatly, unimpressed. The boy wilted under her gaze.

"Whatever…" He muttered. "I bet I'll beat them in every test, anyway."

At that the girl burst out laughed, and took a step forward to help him brush off some of the dirt that he missed on his shoulder. "Don't be sore." She told him sternly. "Besides, I'm pretty sure that our paper tests aren't going to be the only thing on our report cards here. In order to get good grades, you're going to have to win a few practice spars in taijustsu class too."

The blonde's face fell, reliving all of his dismal attempts at learning how to fight during family training sessions. His father was constantly disappointed at the lack of results from his toothpick bookish son, and the boy had a feeling that he was going to continue to disappoint him for a while, even though he was going to the Academy and getting a proper education now.

"Come on, let's go in!" The girl tugged at his sleeve. "No time like the present to start, right?"

The boy looked a little sceptically at the door to the school, which his 'attackers' had just disappeared through. "Uh… maybe later… you know... after I work up the nerve... I've still got time until the bell..."

A sharp burn of pain felt through the sleeve of his yukata made him yelp. "Biwako!" The blonde wailed. "Why did you pinch me?!"

Biwako glared at him. "No reason." She sniffed. "I just suspected that you were succumbing to the deadly 'Baby no Jutsu', and the only way to stop that technique from turning the sufferer into a whiny little baby is to pinch them. You should thank me. I just saved your life Hisato."

Hisato stared at her grumpily, muttering something about 'unwanted childhood friends' being 'mean'. She just raised her eyebrows at him.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't catch that…" Her eyes narrowed. "It kinda looks like I didn't quite manage to dispel the justu... hang on, let me try again!" She lunged for him, hands clawed, but the blonde boy had had enough, darting out of her reach and stumbling through the doorway of the newly minted ninja academy.

Biwako huffed a lock of dark hair out of her face and rolled her eyes once again. "Stupid." She muttered, following the boy into the building.

A/N:

Soooo... this is a little plot bunny that bit me... and it's not going away. This isn't going to be an epic or anything, expect short little drabble like stuff for now – for some reason it's easier to write this in short snapshots, at least at the moment. I do have plans for this, but we're starting small here: patience.

Me publishing this does not mean that I've abandoned 'A Different Goal', I am currently more than a little frustrated with that fic. I managed to lose a whole chapter somehow, and it depressed me so much that I haven't worked up the motivation to rewrite the chapter that I've already written yet.