Disclaimer: If I owned Naruto, it'd be nowhere near as popular as each chapter would take about a decade to come out. Plus, the art would suck.

Warnings: AU, a tiny little weeny bit of language, OOCness and loads of fluff

A massive thank you to my beta; The King in White. As always, you're awesome

XXSASUNARUXX

Naruto didn't quite know what she had done to deserve this.

Well, she did. But she still thought it was a bit of an overreaction. After all, all she had done was a little bit of improvement; spruce things up a bit, you may say.

Looking over her shoulder at the twenty something chuunin angrily following her, she wandered on her chances of convincing them to her point of view. They weren't high.

Catching sight of her masterpiece, her estimation dropped a few places.

So, yes, she may have 'defaced' –their words, not hers- the Hokage monument in a fit of hopefully-soon-to-be-genin excitement; but she had honestly not meant to spill that tin of red paint on the 3rds face! Especially when you saw the position of the spill.

Right under his nose. It looked like she was accusing him of being a pervert! She wouldn't do that, she had respect for the old man.

Though she did call him a pervert to his face nearly daily.

But that wasn't important.

What was were the rapidly gaining chuunin and-

Was that a jonin?

Shit.

Calling on all her luck, she quickly pulled out her invisibility cloak. Or fence disguise, it depended on the type of day she was having.

Turning round the corner, she quickly pulled it on, praying to Kami that they didn't see her.

It seemed to work as the various people sprinted past her, missing her by about an inch. As she waited, holding her breath, as the last person shot by, she felt her adrenalin rush slow down as she realised she was safe.

Grinning, she lowered her invisibility disguise and, sticking out her tongue, mockingly saluted the retreating backs of the various ninjas who thought they were still on her trail. The idiots.

She turned around to go hide in the woods, as she so often did after her various pranks, not wanting to lead people into finding the truth about where she actually lived, and smacked straight into a warm wall.

Or, in other words, Sasuke.

A viciously glaring Sasuke.

She gulped and tried to guess her chances of surviving.

They were pretty high, but that survival would probably be pretty painful.

She nearly hoped for death. Nearly.

Breathing through his nose, Sasuke all but growled, "Naruto, we agreed, no more vandalising!"

"But-"

"No buts! You didn't even tell me you weren't going to come to school!" Looking very much like an irritated mother, crossed arms, disappointed face and all, Sasuke was about to go into full out rant mode when she was quite literally saved by the other mother-hen in her life.

"Sasuke? Naruto?"

A flummoxed looking Iruka rounded the corner of the street, bathed in the light of the sun and with a choir of chubby flying babies with harps flying around his head.

But once he seemed to have gotten over his initial shock, the aura of light seemed to rapidly darken and the babies turned into waves of anger.

Naruto knew it had been too much to hope for.

"Naruto! What have you done!?" Not waiting to give her a chance to reply, he turned to Sasuke. "I thought you said you had to go and get something from your house!"

Sasuke, ever the model student, bless him, had never felt the wrath of a teacher before and clearly didn't know how to function under such scrutiny. Opening and closing his mouth in an eerily reminiscent way of a fish, he floundered for some sort of excuse.

Taking pity on her best friend, Naruto pushed in with,

"Me? I've done nothing wrong, sensei!"

Iruka made an amazingly scary expression at her proclamation of innocence, slow head turn and all.

"Nothing wrong?" He hissed lowly.

"Err, Sensei?" Quite rightly freaked out, Naruto 'eeped' and tried to hide behind the still astonished Sasuke for protection, regretting taking the attention off of him.

"Nothing wrong." The murderous expression on Iruka's face would bring lesser beings to their knees, begging forgiveness for whatever their wrong doing.

But not Naruto.

Ever the knuckle-headed idiot, she chanced a peek out from behind Sasuke and balked at the ominous aura and expression of her normally calm teacher.

"NOTHING WRONG?! NARUTO, YOU DEFACED A PRECIOUS VILLAGE MONUMENT!"

Minutes later, Naruto was tied up in front of the class, sitting perfectly still from the threat Iruka had issued that if she so much as moved a millimetre, she'd be held back a year.

Sasuke had been saved from her position as by the time Iruka had dealt with his blonde haired friend, he had forgotten all about him.

From her position on the ground, Naruto glared at him jealously. He simply raised a smug eyebrow in response.

If looks could kill, he'd have been the meat the Aburame clan fed to their more carnivorous kikaichu.

XXLINE-BREAKXX

Later, when she was being held under the watchful eye of Iruka as she washed the paint off of the Hokage monument, Naruto got what she considered the mother of all shocks.

"So," Iruka began unassumingly. "Are you ready for the genin exams?"

She very nearly fell off the Shodaime's nose.

"What?!" She screeched. Iruka raised an unimpressed eyebrow at her.

"Weren't you listening to me at all after the transformation test?"

Naruto thought about the pounding a blushing Sasuke had given her after she had done the Sexy no Jutsu and decided not to tell Iruka how she'd been unconscious for most of the day.

She scratched the back of her head sheepishly. "Err… no?"

Face-palming, Iruka sighed and settled in for a rant. "Naruto, this will be your third genin exam. You can't afford to mess it up again! Have you even been practicing the clone technique? It's your worst one after all."

Smiling to hide her worry, she was quick to assure him, "Of course! I'll be fine, Iruka-sensei, I've had you as a teacher, after all!"

Though not believing her in the slightest, Iruka smiled back to hide his own uncertainty. Trying to cheer both of them up, he said,

"Hey, Naruto, if you finish cleaning off this paint in the next half hour, I'll treat you to ramen."

Smiling for real this time, Naruto turned back to the monument. "You're on, Sensei!"

Anyone that looked at the Hokage monument for the five minutes after that declaration would later swear they saw the Yellow Flash return to clear the paint off his stone face.

XXLINE-BREAKXX

"Demon!"

"Monster!"

"WHY WON'T YOU DIE?"

I shot up, falling from my bed in the process, clutching my head in an attempt to block out the voices that wouldn't go away.

"You killed them! You killed them all!"

Groaning, I got up. Resigning myself to the fact that I wouldn't be getting anymore sleep tonight. My normal err… dream keeper away-erer, had locked their door in chastisement for the sexy jutsu thing for the last week.

And the door to the medicine cupboard, so I couldn't get anything to make me drowsy, either. Sasuke would worry in the morning when he saw the dark shadows under my eyes, but there wasn't anything I could do about that.

Looking around for something to do for the rest of the night, I spotted the perfect thing. A while back, Sasuke had told me that if I had time for pranks, then I obviously had too much time on my hands. He then promptly handed me some paper, a pencil and an order to scribble.

Me, not liking the thought of less pranking than I was already doing, told him that if he had enough time to worry about my pranking habits then he obviously also needed a hobby. He gave me a superior look and told me he'd take up a hobby of my choice if I did some drawing.

I told him to do baking. Sasuke, the son of a traditional family where women were mostly the housewives and did a lot of the domestic work, wouldn't like the idea. At all.

True to form, he didn't. He scowled foully and said that I was being an idiot and to give him a real hobby. I then threw the paper and pencil at him and told him the same.

He cracked two days and a glittering orange Uchiha compound later. He swallowed his pride and I was treated to the hilarious sight of him wearing a frilly pink apron while baking cookies. It was his mother's, apparently.

But that of course meant I had to follow up and start painting, sketching and just generally doing art. This leads us to now. Picking up a medium sized canvas, I set it on the side of the wall at an angle and fetched my paints. Briefly stopping to switch on the lights, I sat cross legged in front of it and started.

I had got decent in the years that I had been doing it, as you do with any skill you use regularly. Though Sasuke had said I was a natural from the very beginning. I told him that I'd rather be a natural at taijutsu or something, after all art isn't useful in the ninja world.

The thing I was doing at the moment was going to be Sasuke's birthday present. I looked at it again and snorted internally.

Natural talent my arse.

XXLINE-BREAKXX

The next morning, I awoke to the delightful sound of angry bangs on my door. The banger, most probably Sasuke, did not sound happy. In fact, if I listened, I could faintly hear the calm, happy thoughts in his brain being obliterated by an army of irate mini-Sasukes.

"Naruto, wake the hell up! We're going to be late!"

Cracking open my eyes, I realized that I had fallen (quite literally) asleep on the floor. I was still in front of my painting and not far from my hand was the paintbrush, leading me to believe that I had collapsed at some point during the night.

The tranquility of my early morning half asleep thoughts was broken, once again, by the sound of someone trying to break down my door. Thankful that I had locked it in case Sasuke saw my light on at night and come to investigate, thus putting him direct view of his birthday present to be.

I groaned and heaved myself up. There's a high possibility of the door crashing down at any moment and there is no way I'm letting him see me slumped on the floor. He'd freak. And then he'd find out about the bad dreams. Then, he'd freak some more.

His mother hen qualities are really rather amazing for someone who's meant to have more testosterone in their body than oestrogen.

Stretching and hearing the satisfying cracks of my spine I turned around to look for a cloth to cover the painting. In doing so, I caught a glimpse of my very own ramen calendar. With a sickening feeling in my gut and a quick check of my clock I realized why Sasuke was so desperate for me to wake up.

It was the genin exams today.

Ripping open my door (the lock taking way too long to fumble open), the still hammering Sasuke ignored as he fell to the floor- the momentum of his knocks on a surface that was no longer there too much for his balance, I ran to the bathroom.

After hectically doing my morning routine in three minutes flat, I ran back into my bedroom to get changed. Pausing only briefly to kick out a still tapping Sasuke, as he bemoaned to the floor how we were going to be late to the third genin exam.

It's the idiot's own fault for not waking me earlier.

Kind of.

XXLINE-BREAKXX

Sitting in line for the genin exams was probably the tensest moment of her life so far, Naruto mused.

She had lived a sad life, she then decided.

Next to her, as they were sat in register order, Sasuke's leg bounced minutely up and down –the only indication he was at all nervous. Naruto envied him for that, she had deviated in the last few minutes from jumping up and down, squats, screaming inside her head and a bout of hysterical laughter that only served to freak everyone in the corridor out.

The person before Sasuke in the register had just been called into the testing room, meaning, that in the next 10-15 minutes their lives as ninja would be decided.

In response to his imminent doom, Sasuke had stopped the bouncing and instead had gone stock still and reverted to his –as Naruto called it- 'brooding' pose. Steepled fingers, shadowed eyes and all.

In Sasuke terms, it was equivalent to an imminent mental breakdown.

Nudging him reassuringly, she murmured. "How on earth can you be worried? You're top in our class!"

Sighing, he whispered back. "It's not me I'm worried about, it's you."

Naruto didn't know whether to be offended or touched. Obliviously, Sasuke carried on.

"I wish you were before me on the register, I'd know whether to fail or not that way."

"Hey, you know…" She trailed off, not knowing how to continue. "You should just do what you wanna do,"

"-Naruto." He breathed, realizing where she was going.

"No, listen to me! You should stop letting me drag you down! Become a genin, we both know you have the capacity to do so, hell, the whole village knows so –people will be suspicious if you fail! So go on, without me, I don't mind."

"Naruto," he said firmly. "Shut up. You haven't even taken the exam yet." His voice held a hint of exasperated amusement. "You have a good chance of passing if you focus, just like I taught you to –you need three clones, only three." He squeezed my clenched hands; I wondered when he had moved it there. "Plus, we made a promise," he sent a smile at me. "No leaving the other behind, right?"

"Uchiha, Sasuke!" Mizuki's voice called down the corridor, luckily, our hunched over positions veiled our clasped hands from everyone.

Still smiling slightly, Sasuke looked me in the eye and said,

"Our friendship was built on promises, Naruto, and now's not the time for either of us to be breaking them. You'll do fine, trust me. I'll see you on the other side." And walked off.

Bending my head so my long hair obscured my face (I'd left in down in our rush to get here this morning) I smiled bitterly.

It's myself I don't trust, Idiot.

XXLINE-BREAKXX

"Uzumaki, Naruto!" I gulped, it's my turn.

I walked into the room, where the already seated Iruka gave me a reassuring smile, hitae-ate glinting mockingly in the sunlight.

I'd tried it on last week, and I remembered my vow to get it back… permanently, as well as a certain Hokage hat…

Grimacing at my own actions, I thought about how easy it is to act confident about things you view as far off in the future.

Doing a headcount of the leftover forehead protectors on the table and a bit of nifty maths that boggled even my mind, I worked out that Sasuke had, indeed, passed.

Although expected, it still made my stomach drop slightly. I hoped I wouldn't disappoint him.

Mentally slapping myself, I told myself to buck up. I'd do this. I'd get one of those new, shiny hitae-ates and I'd damn well con the old man into putting Sasuke and me on the same team, just like we'd planned on the days when we'd had far too much time on our hands.

Things will work out. They have to. I refuse to let Sasuke try and stint his own progress for me.

Gird your loins, Konoha! Naruto Uzumaki is becoming a ninja today, even if it kills her!

xxENDxx

Hehe, still alive, kind of. Exams suck. Teachers seem to think that unless they pressure us every single day, we will forget that something that will change our lives (sort of) is going to happen soon. But it's still no excuse as to why this is taking so long.

To be honest, I'm just so lazy that my procrastination habits have made me watch/read and then turn to other fandom's, ensuring that the CSTTFOF's plotline is not the only one in my head. As such, although I don't post them, I have loads of plot bunnies jumping around in my mind and this story kind of gets pushed to the back. It does not help that recently the Naruto manga/anime seems to be losing their point and is leaving me rather disappointed and unmotivated. Point is, although I'll try and update quicker, don't hold your breath. I have no idea where this story is going; I'm making it up as I go, so it's likely to be unstructured and jumpy in the timelines.