18Disclaimer: see first chapter. Or, you know, think of something funnier.
Summary: In which Naruto baits Iruka into teaching him something – and also, in which Iruka baits Naruto into learning something else.
Fans Anonymous
Chapter 2: Checking It Twice?
—ox-oxo-xo—
It was perhaps a week after Naruto's uncomfortable epiphany that the first real change in his long-term fortunes occurred. And it was one that Iruka Umino approved of wholeheartedly – as a good sign for the rest of Naruto's academic year, if nothing else.
—ox-oxo-xo—
The series of decisions which led to that point would likely have struck most of Naruto's acquaintances as uncommonly well-considered for him… which was a little unfair to the little blond troublemaker, because this concerned something that he really, really wanted. That, and it was almost like a prank if he thought about it the right way.
After doing his best to regain his equilibrium, Naruto had spent a long night awake in bed wondering what he could do to make it up to Sakura for acting like a fanboy, and how he felt about her. What he had come up with could be summarised thus:
1: She was his friend, even if he wasn't hers. Anything else could wait until they were older.
2: He wanted to be her friend. Duh! But…
3: She wouldn't let that happen, unless he did something BIG to change her mind. After all, he'd been fanboying over her for years. (He still shuddered when he thought about that.) And…
4: Somehow, he didn't think a simple apology would cut it. Not that it ever did, come to think of it…
At that point, a lesser mortal might have quailed. But Naruto's will to succeed was never to be questioned, even if his chances at it were mocked on a constant basis. So, he tried to put himself in her shoes and imagine what he could do that would satisfy her in the way of an apology…
…Which, needless to say, didn't work out all that well. So, he tried instead to imagine what he would accept if someone had done something really terrible and was trying to make it up to him. That was a whole lot easier, and his imagination's eye had briefly scampered away into a daydream about endless ramen and awesome jutsu extorted from the hapless supplicant. Then he was struck by another thought:
What if that didn't work? What if whatever that random person had done was something so bad that he might never forgive them? What if Naruto didn't even listen long enough to hear the offers of awesomeness, and just wanted them to leave him alone?
What if Sakura just wanted him to leave her alone?
Well, screw that, Naruto decided. Which lead on to:
5: To be her friend, he had to make it up to her first.
6: He could make it up to her in two ways: by giving her something she really, really wanted, or by leaving her alone. BUT, leaving her alone wouldn't get him any closer to being her friend – he was pretty sure friends weren't meant to avoid each other. And besides, the thought of avoiding Sakura made his tummy hurt.
7: …But, he was pretty sure she didn't like ramen and jutsu, so he'd have to think of something else.
Naruto had tried for a while to think about what Sakura might want. He didn't have that much luck there – he could only think of three things. Defending her from bullies hadn't worked for a long time anyway, and while the thought of repeatedly pranking Ino and Ami did send a evil grin sailing across his face for a bit, Naruto still remembered that Ino was more of a rival for Sasuke's affections than an actual enemy to Sakura like Ami was – and nowadays Sakura's past friendship with Ino put her above Ami in the fanclub pecking order. So as funny as it'd be, it still wouldn't get her to forgive him.
Which, given that just asking her what she would accept as an apology wouldn't work (because she'd probably just tell him to leave her alone…and/or hit him a bunch of times), and unless he wanted to be even more of a fanboy and start stalking her to find out what else she might really, really like apart from him leaving her alone…
…Left just one possible thing. Something that left him grimacing at even the thought of it.
8: The only thing that he knew she really, really wanted… was Sasuke.
On the plus side though, she'd have to forgive him if he managed to pull it off… And also, he was confident that Sasuke didn't want anything to do with her either, so Naruto was pretty sure getting them together would count as a really big prank on the Bastard.
Of course, that left him with the task of making sure that Sakura got her wish of being (shudder) Sasuke's girlfriend. And doing that would be tricky – because Sakura was one of his most persistent fangirls, and Sasuke hated fangirls. But a good few hours of what could pass for logical thinking had left an imprint on Naruto's impressionable young mind that wouldn't wear off for a while, so it occurred to him to wonder: if Naruto wanted to be Hokage and be Sakura's friend, and Sakura wanted to be Sasuke's girlfriend, then what did Sasuke want?
More to the point, how the hell could Naruto find that out?
…
Asking him…didn't work. He tried that the next day at the Academy, and the Bastard just insulted him. (As an adjunct to that failure, Naruto reluctantly decided that it wouldn't be worth betting Sasuke that he should take Sakura on a date if Naruto won a fight between them, at least until he got good enough to guarantee that he could win that fight. Fortunately the bruises he'd picked up from his latest random argument with the bastard had faded as quickly as usual.)
Spying on him…wouldn't work. That's what stalking WAS, and none of his fangirls had succeeded yet.
Which, after another miniature flash of inspiration a few days later, led him to the current situation: Naruto staring up expectantly at Sensei Iruka and waiting for an answer.
—ox-oxo-xo—
Iruka didn't know all that. What he did know was that Naruto had just asked him a question that wasn't about jutsu. A question that couldn't be answered properly without researching the answer. And, Iruka was hoping, a question that Naruto wanted answered badly enough that he would actually research it.
'…Yes,' Iruka decided. 'He seems to really want to know, though damned if I know why. This might really work…'
Ending A/N: …And an even shorter chapter to follow.
Hmmm…
On second thoughts, here's the next one!
Fans Anonymous
Chapter 2.5: (…Nope, Same Title Still Works…) (Or. Does It?)
—ox-oxo-xo—
Naruto yawned and pushed aside his notes, remembering that he had class tomorrow.
Then he shuddered. He had notes. He had lots of notes, notes that he'd made.
It had been a long three weeks since he'd talked to Sensei Iruka about what Sasuke might want. Getting his hands on the books that Iruka wanted him to look at had been kinda fun (the Henge was awesome!), but that was where the fun had ended. Because then he'd had to (shudder) read them.
Has it been mentioned yet that Naruto wasn't very good at reading? Though on the upside, he was getting better at it all the time what with all the research, so he could read the blackboard quicker in class now.
But at last Naruto thought he'd found out everything he needed to. Nowadays he even felt a little bad for the Bastard…not all that much, though. At least he'd had parents once, even if his father was a policeman and sounded like a jerk. And hey, it might even help Naruto win some of their fights.
Sasuke Uchiha, of the Uchiha clan – which was all dead now except for Sasuke, at the hands of his older brother Itachi Uchiha, the S-class missing-nin. So Sasuke had been living alone from the age of six, a lot like Naruto. Of course, the Bastard had been able to afford good food at any restaurant in town on the money left by his dead clan, unlike Naruto. The Uchiha clan was apparently really important for a doujutsu that their members had called the Sharingan, which could copy their opponent's jutsu – which had really pissed him off, until he read on and found out that it needed to be activated by being convinced that the Uchiha was going to die. Still, that was something he'd have to watch out for, which at least wasn't that hard – what with the Sharingan turning their eyes red with little pips in them or something.
He'd read a little more about the other clans while he was at it, wondering what they could do (and whether they could pinch his awesome jutsu in future too). And it was really interesting, if a bit depressing, to read about all the cool stuff they could do that he couldn't. The Hyuuga had their Byakugan, which could see through anything – which had Naruto fuming as he finally got an answer as to why it was so hard pulling pranks on them. And then had him grinning evilly when he reflected that the whole 'see through anything' thing meant that they were all a bunch of perverts anyway, and should therefore be pranked as much as possible in future. Except for Hinata, because she was at least nice for a pervert, and was even nice to Naruto apart from the whole blushing-and-fainting thing.
(It would prove to be well over a year later when the other shoe dropped for Naruto on that one. Fortunately it wasn't on a mission, which was a good thing because the spectacle of Naruto Uzumaki spontaneously rolling around with laughter would probably not have gone down well. As it was, he only narrowly avoided having to explain to Sakura that he was laughing so hard because he'd just realised the significance behind the only girl in their entire academy class not being one of Sasuke's fangirls being the one that could see through his underpants. Friend or not, she would have thumped him really hard for that one…)
Kiba's new puppy Akamaru would grow up to be a real badass, even if he reckoned Kiba would probably always be a blowhard (completely ignoring any sense of hypocrisy that statement should have registered). Shikamaru could learn how to capture people with their shadows. Ino was going to learn how to possess people one day, which was seriously scary in the hands of someone like Ino. Chouji was so fat because his whole clan was fat – only, it was a really bad idea to call them that f-word, because they could make their bodies or even parts of their bodies really big and strong and squish people who pissed them off. And speaking of squishing, Shino Aburame had an entire colony of bugs living under his clothes – which, to Naruto's boyish sensibilities, made him just plain cool. It was just a good thing he couldn't use much chakra, because otherwise he'd be so awesome that he might end up being a challenger to Naruto for the title of Hokage.
He hadn't found anything on the other names in their class, or anything much on the Uzumaki – though apparently they were a clan even if they were mostly dead now except for him, and came from a dead ninja village called Uzushio. Which was something of a revelation to him, because he'd always got the impression from the villagers that his parents had been from Iwa or something, assuming he'd even had parents. But as far as he could find out, he didn't have anything kickass like some of the other clan-kids had…which he actually wasn't all that worried about, because he'd looked up Old Man Hokage's clan while he was at it and discovered that they didn't have anything kickass like that either, except for a summoning contract with monkeys. No – the Hokage had got to where he was by studying his wrinkly ass off and learning everyone's skills the hard way.
Which was really depressing, because if Naruto wanted to be Hokage then it looked like he had to do a LOT more reading.
Naruto yawned again at the thought and climbed into bed.
Anyway, the whole point of all that reading was Sasuke, and what he wanted. And more importantly, how he could use it to make sure Sakura got him.
It wouldn't be easy. The Uchiha Clan had been uptight jerkwads, which was to be expected when most of them were in the Military Police, and Sasuke's dad had been the last one to run it. But the Uchiha Clan had been important, and Sasuke had to know just how important they had been. In the Bastard's position, Naruto knew what he'd want: for his Clan to become important again.
That much, he suspected all the fangirls knew already. Sasuke Uchiha's 'clan' consisted of two people, and only one of them was around to revive the clan. That meant growing the clan back up from scratch – which in turn meant that he would have to get married and have lots of babies to do it.
Naruto sure as hell couldn't see what they all found so attractive about the Bastard. But even he could see that Sasuke was the lone member of a rich clan with an important doujutsu. That had to be one hell of an incentive, not just for the fangirls but for some of their parents.
But the really tricky part came with the other thing that Naruto would want if he was Sasuke: to hunt down the man that had killed his family, and make him pay. Because said Older Bastard was an S-class missing-nin, and Sasuke needed to get a hell of a lot stronger before he could even think about pulling that one off. And besides, what if Itachi came back again and killed Sasuke's new family?
So – add that all up, and Naruto found himself knowing something that Sasuke's legion of fangirls would salivate over: exactly what Sasuke wanted in a girlfriend.
Every last one of them would be disappointed. Because Sasuke didn't want a girlfriend, and wouldn't want one until it looked like he had the chance to take Itachi down. And when he did want a girlfriend, he'd want one who was really powerful – because their kids, the ones who'd grow up to form the new Clan Uchiha, needed to be just as powerful as the old clan if he wanted them to be appropriately kickass.
All of his fangirls would indeed be disappointed. Because all of them spent all their time mooning over Sasuke and primping and posturing to catch his eye now – and none of their time training to be powerful enough to catch his eye when it finally mattered.
On the face of it, Sakura Haruno didn't have a chance. As much as he didn't want to think badly of her, she really didn't train much. She just spent her time reading…
Naruto's eyes, which had been drifting drowsily shut, slammed wide open.
That could work! And Naruto could even help! It was perfect!
And even better, it would count as a truly awesome prank on Sasuke…
Actual Ending A/N: (looks at the word count) Ahhh, that's better. Incidentally, the original spark of inspiration for this story was a divergence from the end of this chapter…which explains much of the parodic overtones of the fic, come to think of it. The original 'ending' will be an omake later on…
…Unless of course, you'd rather see that omake next chapter? Because I could post that instead…
In the meantime, review and so on? Especially if there's an omake you wouldn't mind seeing later.