Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

I read somewhere that you should tell readers what music you listened while writing the story, because it could add to the experience. For those interested: I listened to the album All The Lights In The Sky from Area 11, and Inhuman Rampage from Dragonforce (beware, Dragonforce is a power metal band).

'Thoughts' 'This is a thought.'

"Speech" "I am talking."

7:27

That was what the alarm clock said, the one situated on the nightstand on the right side of a bed.
This bed appeared to be occupied, judging by the bulge underneath the sheets.

7:27 was the time when a hand slipped through from between the sheets and flicked off the alarm set for making noise in three minutes.

The reason that the owner of said hand had not woken up from annoying beeping noises, could be seen when looking a little to the left of the bed. That was where a window was situated.

Now, normally, when somebody is occupying the bed in a room, it would be logical to assume that the curtains on every window in this room are drawn. A reason being because the sun rises relatively early in the Fire Country, no matter which time of year it is. Another reason could be, because the sun goes down relatively late in the Fire Country too. So if you wouldn't draw your curtains when you went to sleep, you might have trouble falling asleep, or you might wake up a little earlier than you planned.

Unfortunately for the person underneath the sheets of the bed, the curtains in his room were not drawn. This resulted in him waking up an hour and a half before the set time on his alarm.

You may be wondering, "What kind of idiot doesn't draw his curtains when he knows he'll wake up way too early?"

Well, this idiot did, kind of, have an excuse.

The idiot forgot to draw his curtains the previous night because when he got home last night, it was so dark outside, when he shut off his lights, it looked as dark as it would have with his curtains drawn. he came home that late because he had been training in a forest near a training ground.

He was training because of something his Sensei said to him that same day. That something being, "Remember to go to bed early kids, because tomorrow you'll want to be at your sharpest for your shuriken and kunai skill-test." He only took half his Sensei's advice, because he would be practising deep into the night with his weapons.
This may sound unsettling to you, since shuriken and kunai can be pretty dangerous, and a Sensei was grading children for their skills with weapons.
I assure you however, that there is nothing unsettling about children with weapons, because all these children attend the one and only ninja academy of the village.

Including the bundle of sheets. Which was slowly waking up again, after falling asleep three times since he first woke up this day.

A head popped up from the bundle of sheets. The head had a spiky mess of yellow hair adorning the crown. It also had a pair of almost entirely closed eyes, and an enormous goofy grin. This head's owner was named Naruto Uzumaki, and he seemed pretty excited. The reason he was so excited while having a crappy waking up, was because today was the day. The day. The day he would finally beat his rival. He had practised all night for it, so he was sure he would do better than him. He would humiliate him in front of the entire class. And after that, he would ask his crush out.
Yes. It would be a good day to be Naruto Uzumaki.

Before he would inevitably fall asleep again, he hurried out of his bed. He walked into his bathroom, and stood in front of his filthy mirror. He still had his goofy grin plastered on his face while he was busy washing his face and brushing his teeth. Then he realised he was brushing his teeth. 'Oh crap,' he thought, and he proceeded to trying to flush away the sharp minty taste with lots and lots of water, because breakfast would be horrible with that taste in his mouth. After taking a quick shower he went back into his bedroom.

When he had finally fully woken up after a cold shower, he went back into his room and pulled a pair of bright orange pants out of his dresser. He also got a mesh shirt from the next dresser, and an orange and blue jacket from the one next to that one. After checking that his pants were right-side forward, he put them on, grabbed his goggles. and walked into his kitchen while pulling the goggles over his head. He grabbed a cup of ramen, put some water in the cup of ramen, placed it his microwave, where it would be heating up for the next three minutes.
Naruto pulled open another cupboard, and grabbed a glass which he then filled with water. He walked over to his window, opened it, and emptied the glass in the pot on the window's frame. It was a beautiful day, the sun was bright but it wasn't too hot yet, birds were chirping, and the streets were empty apart from an old man who was opening the door to his shop.
A soft, cool breeze could be felt.
He walked back to his counter, dumped the glass on there, and walked over to his table to grab his mesh shirt which he then proceeded to pull over his head.

A bead of sweat formed on his frowning eyebrow. It was suffocatingly hot in his apartment. This sounded like a certain owner of an apartment complex needed some glue in his shampoo.

While adding another thing to do on his mental 'things to do' list for that day, he took his time stretching out and walked back into his bedroom to grab his pouch filled with ninja tools and a strip of bandage.

After having his tools secured on his right leg, he went back to his kitchen and grabbed his now extremely hot cup of ramen, some chopsticks, and his jacket. He walked through his bedroom again and walked out the other door, to his balcony. After having set down his cup of ramen on the small table, Naruto hung his jacket over the back of his chair, and sat down to gobble up his cup of instant goodness, but not before saying a quick "itadakimasu."
When he was done eating, he ran back in his house, hurriedly brushed his teeth for the second time that day, put on his sandals and made sure his front door was locked. He grabbed his keys and put them in his pocket, after which he looked at the clock.

It was now 7:55. That left him with 35 minutes left until the academy classes would start. 35 minutes until everyone would see how awesome he was. Naruto ran outside to his balcony again, slammed his door shut, grabbed his jacket, and bounded off to the training ground next to the academy to get warmed up for his tests.

Naruto was the only one student to arrive this early, much to his surprise. The only person there was Iruka-Sensei, who was just about to enter the academy, probably because he had some teacher stuff to do.

"Good morning Iruka-Sensei!"

"Naruto? What are you doing here? Classes start in half an hour! You're never this early." he said, when Naruto ran over to greet him.

"I just thought I could practise my throwing skills a little bit more and warm up for the tests!"

"..."

"What's wrong Sensei?"

"Naruto... You know the tests are this afternoon, right? We always do the theoretical part of the classes first. There is no point in warming up." Iruka looked a little disappointed as he said this.

"..."

"I knew that." Naruto mumbled. It looked like Naruto got a little too excited when thinking about the test, and forgot this little fact.

Iruka's disappointed face suddenly lit up. "But, it's good that you're so enthusiastic for school. If only we could get you more interested in things like maths for example." He let out a small laugh. "But I imagine that would be near-impossible."

Naruto glared at his teacher, "Yeah it would be. Because it's boring. And your boring lectures about a boring subject don't make it any better."

While Iruka tried to ignore the insult to his teaching abilities, the only visible evidence that he was insulted being a small twitch in his eyebrow while keeping his smile as bright as before, he suddenly thought of something that might help his student. "Hey Naruto." he started.

Impressed that his teacher could maintain a level-headed attitude for once while being insulted by him, Naruto lifted up one eyebrow. "Yes Iruka-Sensei?"

"You just said something about training your throwing skills right? You did remember to train all your other skills right?"

Naruto looked a little confused as he said this. "Huh? I thought this was a test just for shuriken and kunai!"

"It is, but you can do much more with shuriken and kunai than just throwing. I'm sure the other students realized this, so that's why I'm telling you."

"Wow, thanks a lot Sensei!" It took Naruto five seconds to entirely process what his Sensei just said to him. "Hey! I'm not that stupid!"

"Also, you can't use any chakra. No ninjutsu, no enhanced jumps, no nothing. Got it? Every time you use chakra, a point will be detracted from your total score." Iruka thought it would be a good idea to relay the rules he told his students a week ago, because Naruto was asleep in class the first time he told the students about the upcoming test.
"You won't get to use your own tools. You'll have to hand in your tools when we start the test. You'll be provided with four kunai, twenty shuriken, and ten metres of metal wire. We'll be using the obstacle course for this test." This, he hadn't told the other students. This, he was technically not allowed to say to students. He was giving Naruto an unfair advantage. But Naruto didn't know that. 'Well, can't take it back now, can I?' Iruka thought. He supposed giving an unfair advantage to someone who is treated unfairly wouldn't be so bad. That's what friends are for.

When Naruto heard all these new rules and information, his eyes widened. 'What? we're using the obstacle course? I thought this was just a simple throwing accuracy test! And no chakra? This'll be way harder than I thought!' His preparation for the test suddenly seemed to cover a little less than he had thought.

"Naruto... you're not going to tell me you forgot the rules of the test right? I told you them yesterday!" Iruka lied to his student, because none of his students had heard these rules yet.

"No... Of course not Sensei! Who do you think I am? Anyway, I'm gonna practise a little more! See you in half an hour!" he yelled as he ran off around the academy building to the training ground, to try and prepare for the test that afternoon. In his mind he was panicking, Sasuke would be way more prepared for this test, since he knew all these rules yesterday, so he probably trained with them in mind.
He wasn't aware of the amused glance Iruka cast him while he went over to unlock the front door of the academy. 'He's probably thinking about how he's going to beat Sasuke.' He shook his head with a small smile on his face and walked inside to prepare the program for his classes.

Meanwhile, Naruto was sitting in the middle of the training grounds, fretting over the things his Sensei just said.
'Alright, brain, help me out here. We're having a weapons test on an obstacle course. Maybe it means we're going to have to hit targets while running the obstacle course as fast as we can? But Iruka-Sensei said that throwing isn't the only skill with our weapons. So maybe they're going to throw shuriken at us that we'll have to deflect while doing the obstacle course?' He was sure these were skills that were going to be tested, so he was going to train a bit more in them. Deflecting shuriken was out of the option, because you need at least two people for it. That left him with training his throwing while running and jumping. He could do that.

So for the next twenty minutes, Naruto could be seen doing all sorts of weird acrobatic movements while throwing his shuriken at targets, like flips, handstands, and cartwheel turns.
He was running up to the side of a tree, flipped off, and threw a star mid-flip. Then, a loud 'Thunk' could be heard, the implication of him hitting his mark. Another sound could be heard in the background though. It was a crunching sound, like when someone was eating chips. In fact, it actually was.

"Hey, *munch,* Naruto! What'cha doin'?" The person asking was a friendly looking... well fed boy, with brown hair that stood straight up. He wore a pair of black shorts with bandages underneath, a yellow-ish white shirt with the kanji for "Food" on it, and he had two swirls on his face, one on each cheek. Otherwise known as Akimichi Chouji.

"Hi Chouji! I'm just doing some last-minute training for the test this afternoon." Naruto answered.

"Oh, cool. I was thinking about that this morning. It's probably not gonna be what we're expecting, you know, since this will count for the genin exams in a month." It was a pretty smart conclusion, especially considering Chouji wasn't always the brightest light on the Christmas tree.

"Did Shikamaru tell you that?" Naruto had a grin on his face, not unlike usual.

Chouji laughed at how easily Naruto saw through his lie. He guessed it wasn't a very good one, too, if Naruto could see through it. "Maybe. Want some chips?" He offered.

"Sure, thanks Chouji!" Naruto marvelled at Chouji's ability to take almost any insult with a laugh and a smile. They started walking back over to the small
school yard in front of the academy, when Naruto asked: "You nervous for the test?" He wasn't one for walking in silence.

"I am, a little. *Munch* but I think it'll go fine. I've practised a lot for it, so I'm not that worried. " He looked pretty confident to Naruto, but Naruto knew that was because the test was that afternoon, and Chouji would become increasingly more nervous as the test came nearer, even though he didn't have much to worry about. "Are you nervous Naruto? You kind of have a history with ignoring the rules on these sorts of things."

"I'm not that nervous Chouji, because I've got nothing to worry about! I'm more excited about it, actually! You should be too, I know we're going to do great!" he said, as they rounded the corner to the school yard.

Chouji knew that Naruto was just trying to calm him down a little, but even though he was aware of this, it still worked. The not-so-calm confidence from the blond boy was calming in a weird way.

They saw Iruka-Sensei standing in front of the (now open for students) academy doors, enjoying a bit of fresh air before he would go inside a building for a couple of hours straight. Chouji yelled across the school yard: "Iruka-Sensei, I got him like you asked!" Apparently he was supposed to get Naruto from his little training session. When they got closer, Iruka said: "Thanks Chouji, come on in. classes start in about ten minutes."

The two boys went inside to their classroom, to see a couple of people already there. Among them was Nara Shikamaru, a lazy kid, with a haircut that looked like a pineapple. He was scoring just barely above Naruto in classes. He was seated in the middle of the back row and seemed to be comfortably resting his head on his folded arms. Haruno Sakura and Yamanaka Ino were also present, sitting next to Uchiha Sasuke on either side of him. They seemed to be in the middle of a staring (glaring) contest. They were seated one row below the Nara boy.

When Chouji (and Naruto) came in, Shikamaru's face instantly lit up a little. For the past few minutes he had been listening to two troublesome girls having a troublesome argument over nothing. So when his best friend, and his troublesome-but-still-reasonably-good friend came in, you could imagine that he would feel relieved. He lifted his head up, shot them a lazy grin, and waved at them.

Chouji waved back and said: "Good morning." Naruto thought it was necessary to yell "Good morning guys!", because he knew the lazy Nara was revelling his semi-asleep state. Instantly three glares and one exasperated look were shot at him. Surprisingly, it was Ino who didn't glare at him. She just sighed, pinched the bridge of her nose and said: "Could you have entered while making any more noise, Naruto?" Okay, she was glaring now too. Naruto walked over to sit to the right of Shikamaru, so he would sit as close as still possible to Sakura-chan, while Chouji went over to sit to the left of Shikamaru. Ino's glaring eyes didn't leave him though.
Looks like she actually expected an answer out of him.

"Well, like the great student I am, I thought it was my duty to make sure Shikamaru wouldn't fall asleep before classes." Ino just snorted at the sarcastic remark. "It might have also had to do with the fact that Shika here," He patted the back of Shikamaru's head, which was now resting between a hand on each cheek, just hard enough so his chin hit his desk, "put a smoke-bomb in my pants yesterday."
Shikamaru smirked at that while rubbing his chin, until he remembered why exactly he had done that. "That was only because you rigged my lunchbox with one!" Shikamaru looked a little more awake while he angrily exclaimed this. Only Naruto could get him this riled up. Troublesome blonde.

"Well you had that coming because -"

"So, *munch*, Ino, are you worried about the test this afternoon?" Chouji asked her, while Shikamaru and Naruto were arguing to his right.

"Not really, no. I mean, of course I'm a BIT worried, because, you know, it counts for the genin exams, but I definitely think I have a chance of getting the top spot!" She said, getting more excited as she talked on. She may have sounded a bit arrogant, but it had valid reasoning, because she had the highest average of their year. "Or second." She cast a look to her right, where Sasuke was sitting. He didn't seem to care though.

Meanwhile, the class was slowly filling up with students, and Iruka-sensei had come back inside to make some final preparations for his upcoming lectures.

Apparently, Sakura didn't agree with Ino's statement, and she didn't hesitate to let this be known. "Ha! You wish Ino-pig! That spot is mine!" Again, this may have sounded a little arrogant, but like Ino, Sakura was among the top of the class.

Before Ino and Sakura could start another argument, or before Naruto could butt in saying that he was going to get the top spot, Iruka yelled, "Alright students, I'm going to get a cup of coffee and then we're starting class!", saving the class another argument they really didn't want to hear.

Apparently an interruption wouldn't be enough for Naruto to stop boasting. "You guys can suck it! I'm gonna beat all of ya in the test!" He appeared to be challenging the whole class, instead of just the two people who were saying they had a chance for the top spot.

"sure dobe." "No way you're going to get top spot when Sasuke-kun is doing the same test!" "No way a dead last like you could ever get first place!"
Some people (Sasuke, Sakura and Ino) seemed to have little faith in the possibility of him being able to back up his claims.

"You're going to have to beat me if you want that top spot, blondie!" someone challenged. Naruto looked to his right, and he saw that the source of the challenge was seated on the left side of the desks next to him. He had a grey fur-lined jacket, with a white pup sticking out of the jacket, just below the boy's chin. He also had a fang-like symbols on his cheeks. His name: Inuzuka Kiba. Naruto hadn't even noticed him coming in. He had a grin on his face as he challenged the blonde boy.

"You're on! 50 Ryo that I'm getting a higher score than you!"

"Ha! that's not even a challenge! Make it a hundred!" Knowing that Naruto usually screwed up on these sorts of things, because he tended to ignore the rules and do whatever he liked, Kiba took his bet and instantly doubled it.

This was the moment that Iruka-Sensei came back into the classroom, and walked over to stand behind his desk. The class quickly settled down, but Naruto wasn't done talking yet

"A hundred Ryo it is! Don't think that just because you beat me last time it'll be easy now! Mark my words, Naruto Uzumaki will-" That's as far as he got, before Iruka shouted through the class, "NARUTO! SHUT UP AND SIT DOWN! I'M TRYING TO GET MY CLASSES STARTED!" It worked, the twelve-year old was scared shitless. He quickly sat down, because during his boasting he had put one foot on his desk and one on his chair, while pointing at Kiba.

"Why does he always pick on me?" Naruto asked sadly, to nobody in particular.
Shikamaru answered his question. "Because you're troublesome, Naruto."

And with that, class started.

Author's Notes:

What'cha ya think? Stupid? A total waste of time I shouldn't have even bothered with? Do you hate me because my first attempt at writing something isn't exactly like you wanted it? Please flame me in a review then!

So yeah! My first fanfic. I personally think I dragged out the intro a bit. If you noticed a mistake I made, please don't hesitate to say so in a review or a PM. (Also, please review.)

This story is set approximately 1 month before the academy genin exam, if you read over it in the story. I thought the idea of just having to make a bunshin to make it through the Academy was ridiculous, so that's why I'm broadening the exam a bit. As you can see, I am writing this with a friendship between Naruto, Shikamaru, Chouji, and Kiba in mind. It was mentioned in canon that they hung out a couple of times while they made trouble. I want to explore the option of them having a bit of a deeper friendship. Also, Naruto is trying to keep his feelings for Sakura hidden. He doesn't do a very good job of it, but he still tries to. Reason being that he's a bit embarrased about it with his friends making fun of him for it. You know, twelve year old logic.

Pairings: Not decided yet. If it'll even have romance. If I do decide to have Naruto pair up with someone, Don't hope for either NaruHina, NaruSaku, or a harem. I strongly dislike NaruHina for whatever reason, and I've always thought SasuSaku is a better pairing than NaruSaku (Doesn't mean I hate NaruSaku though). Don't hate on me for it, I'm just not going to write a pairing I personally dislike. It's called an opinion.

I came up with this story while trying to fall asleep. Not that exciting, is it? But anyway, did you know that each year, more people die from donkeys than from plane-crashes?
Oh, you don't care? Here: have a badly made bunny.

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