Disclaimer: These characters do not belong to us. We're not making any profit off this work. This is fan-made only for the fun of it.

Author's Note: Kitsune: I wrote this chapter mostly, with some help on the last bit from Emily. 8D So if you think it sucks, that's why. Aaaanyway... Ino rant time. I found that I'm terrible at writing Ino, because I can't capture her real personality. I have too much fun writing her as a giddy, crazy lesbian pervert. And I need to work on the finer aspects of Ino's and Sakura's rivalry. At the moment it seems pretty shallow... oh well. I'll correct those somehow.

Warnings: Same as last chapter. There's boy x girl in the beginning (NaruSaku and... wait, what?), but we'll change that. Boy x boy (SasuNaru) and girl x girl (InoSaku) eventually. Keep that in mind.

Iruka's morning class was usually pretty chaotic. Iruka was often told that he had a hard time keeping control of his classes, which, he had to admit, was usually the case. The known troublemakers were put in his class because he had "a magic hand" and could "reach out to those kids like no other teacher." Or, so he was told, sometimes.

This year's class, however... he'd had troublemakers in his class before, but he'd never had a combination like this before.

"SASUKE! I HAVE DETENTION BECAUSE OF YOU!"

"NARUTO, KEEP YOUR VOICE DOWN!" Iruka bellowed form the front of the classroom, a tic developing in his temple.

The boy he was reprimanding faced the front of the classroom and shouted right back, "I will when this stupid jerk-" he flung his arm angrily in the direction of the boy sitting next to him with a bored expression on his face, "will stop getting me into trouble!"

"I did no such thing." said stupid jerk replied, a lazy smirk playing across his face. "You threw that basketball at me of your own free will."

"You were taunting me!" Naruto shot back furiously. "You baited me into that!"

"Says who?" Sasuke retorted, pushing his chair up to balance on its back legs.

"Says me!"

"Correct your grammar, moron."

"You said it first!"

At the front of the classroom, Iruka sighed to himself and shook his head. Oh yes, he'd had troublemakers before, but he'd never had such a troublemaking pair like Uchiha Sasuke and Uzumaki Naruto. Those two were like the oxygen to the other's wildfires- they kept egging each other on to no end.

Suddenly, the door squeaked, and the last person to arrive finally arrived. "Good morning, Iruka-sensei! I hope the class didn't miss me too much!" she called with a girlish giggle.

And there it was- the last problem in Iruka's very problematic class.

"Yamanaka Ino, you're late for the third time this week." Iruka rasped, his throat already sore from yelling. "You can't have an excuse this week."

"Of course I can!" Ino laughed, her purse swinging haphazardly from her arm. "I just got asked out by this poor boy who could barely talk! I had to let him down easy, and that took a little while."

"That's not good enough." Iruka sighed again. "That isn't a proper excuse." Surreptitiously, the teacher glanced across the classroom to the front row, where one pink-haired girl was throwing Ino scathing looks.

Iruka was a kind man. He liked to stay somewhat close to his students, and sometimes he prided himself in his ability to read their emotions. High school was a softcore soap opera every day, and Iruka liked to use his ability to keep up with his students' drama, almost like a daily television show that took place all around him. And the latest drama that he was keeping his eye on was the tension rising between Yamanaka Ino, the most popular and shallow girl in school, and her rival Haruno Sakura, who, before Ino had burst onto the scene, had been a shoo-in for the title of prom queen. But Ino instantly captivated the whole student body, and now Sakura hated her.

Iruka groaned to himself. Why did teenagers have to be so complicated?

Rain splattered against the closed windows. A small storm was passing through their city of Konohagakure, and was expected to last a few more days.

Sakura glared off into the window, like a silent protest. Her English textbook was hanging too far off her desk for her to read without craning her neck, and she definitely wasn't in the mood. Of course, she wouldn't have a problem if the stupid new textbook for the new girl would just arrive already...

"Aren't you going to finish the reading?" a sweet voice in her ear asked, and Sakura jumped. Ino was grinning knowingly at her, Sakura's own textbook pulled practically underneath her and away from Sakura. The pink-haired girl flushed and sneered softly.

"I have finished, for your information." she lied through her teeth. Ino's grin widened.

"Really? Then maybe you can answer these questions for me..." she fluttered hopefully.

"What? Of course I can't." Sakura snapped. "Do them yourself."

"Fine, no need to get so angry." Ino snorted, tossing her hair. "You'll wrinkle early the more you frown."

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" Sakura muttered. Ino's eyes snapped and locked on to her so quickly that Sakura blinked nervously.

"What did you say?" Ino asked. Her tone was smooth as usual, but it felt more intent than usual.

"I didn't say anything." Sakura replied with a quick, uncomfortable smile.

Ino's smile dropped, and for a moment, some emotion like hurt flitted across her pretty face, and Sakura could have sworn she heard a small, "I wouldn't like that..." under Ino's breath.

"What?" Sakura asked, surprise painting her voice. Ino's pleasant smile was back in an instant like cover-up.

"I didn't say anything." she singsonged and turned away.

"How immature." Sakura huffed, and turned the opposite way. As she did so, Ino sneaked a glance at the other girl out of the corner of her eye.

"Is... is that a hickey?" Ino cried out suddenly, scandalized. Sakura's hand instantly slapped onto her neck.

"Shut up!" she hissed, her cheeks flaming. "I-It was an accident!" Ino bit her lip, looking awkward. "I told Naruto to stop, but that guy doesn't do anything halfway..." Sakura smiled ruefully, scratching the little red mark.

"Naruto, huh?" Ino repeated softly, in such a tone of voice that Sakura peered into her face with slight concern, but Ino turned her head away too quickly and ran her fingers slowly down her ponytail.

"I don't care. Why should I care? I don't care... I don't..."

Sakura barely heard the whisper, so she convinced herself that Ino didn't mean anything by it. Perhaps she hadn't even said it.

Detention wasn't anything new to Naruto. He landed himself in detention all the time, and part of him was partly proud of his record. But, tonight... tonight, Iruka actually left to go home early.

Not that Naruto could blame him, or anything. He'd had a particularly rough day, Naruto could see the worry lines creasing his forehead. And since he'd been pretty close to Iruka since he first met the man as a child of twelve, Iruka knew he could trust the blond.

"Please, Naruto?" Iruka had said with a slightly pleading tone. "I have to get home, there's a million other things I have to do as well..." He looked so tired, and Naruto was such a softie, that Naruto promised to faithfully stay put for his whole detention. Iruka had hugged him gratefully and said, "Thank you. I'll send someone down when your time is up."

Now, the time was awfully close, and Naruto was getting fidgety. He always did when he was close to freedom. In the past hour, he'd doodled a little stick-figure hero with spiky hair on his desk, complete with pretty stick-figure girlfriend hanging of his arm and evil pointy-headed stick-figure villain brandishing a line at the hero.

Naruto sighed restlessly. The silence was really grating on his nerves...

A squeak which cut through the classroom like a scream shocked Naruto witless, and he jumped up from his chair, heart beating madly. The door to the classroom opened, and Uchiha Sasuke himself peered into the room, frowning.

"Idiot, your detention is up. You can go home now." he informed Naruto, who scowled back.

"Ugh. When Iruka-sensei said he'd send someone, I didn't think he meant you." Naruto stuck his tongue out at Sasuke. "What are you still doing here?"

"Not that it's any of your business, but I'm doing student council stuff." Sasuke said coolly, leaning lazily against the doorframe and swinging the key to the classroom around his finger.

"Oohhh, student council stuff. You're so important." Naruto said scathingly, rolling his eyes and throwing his chair back with a rough scrape. "Spare me."

"You asked." Sasuke shrugged, nearly upsetting the key's haphazard balance around his finger. "You should be lucky I even unlocked this door for you at all."

"Leave me alone, okay?" Naruto almost growled. "I'm too tired for this."

Sasuke's eyes widened a little more, and he shrugged again. "Suit yourself." he caught the key deftly, locked the door, and nodded to Naruto. "You'd better get out of there before I close this door."

Naruto scrambled out of the room and nearly tripped on Sasuke's foot as he did so. When he straightened up angrily to scold Sasuke, he stopped dumb. Sasuke was smiling a little; not smirking, or sneering, or any other manner of unpleasantly superior expressions, he was actually smiling, like the whole situation amused him to no end.

Naruto blinked for a few seconds, and the smile didn't fade from Sasuke's face.

"Do you like what you see?"

That line startled Naruto enough to fling him forward without much thought, and he was down the hallway and out of school before Sasuke could blink twice.

The sun was bright for the first time in weeks. Birds were twittering in the background, the grass was swaying in the breeze... the picture of romantic perfection.

Sasuke hated it.

Watching his blond sitting on the sparkling grass laughing with that pink-haired girl (whom he secretly liked to call target practice) was just sickening. She was smiling sweetly at him while he told some kind of joke, a stupid one, most likely, but she was laughing anyway. Such a girlfriend thing to do. Sasuke tasted something foul in the back of his throat at the thought.

While he was preoccupied with his murderous thoughts, one blond ponytail slunk around the tree.

"I see the way you look at him." a taunting voice drew Sasuke out of his mind. He recognized the voice, however, so there was no need to turn around. Ino stepped into the light, a strange gleam in her blue eyes.

"That little sparkle when you see him looking at you, the murderous glare when she pulls him away." Sasuke shifted his weight surreptitiously to his other foot. "You want him, don't you?" The tone of voice would send shivers down any one's spine. "Those supple lips, the way his clothes define his slightly muscular body when he moves, his big, blue eyes that shine even when there's no light, that soft hair made from a ray of sunshine. Don't you just want to run it through your fingers?" She moved a little closer, dropping her voice to a seductive whisper. "I bet he's got a big-"

"What do you want?!" Sasuke snapped. Ino smirked triumphantly.

"I want her." she said, pointing to the pink-haired girl at Naruto's side. One of Sasuke's brows raised.

"And...?" he asked impatiently. "Do you have a plan?"

Ino hesitated slightly, then allowed a devilish grin to play across her face. "Of course. Fight fire with fire."

The next morning, not one person on the whole campus didn't know of the budding relationship between the school's most popular kids, Uchiha Sasuke and Yamanaka Ino. Naruto and Sakura were confused, of course, because neither of them had ever imagined that their rivals held any kind of affection for each other, but they mostly tried not to think about it.

Author's Note: Kitsune: Ha ha. Hey, look at that. We updated.