Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ None the Wiser ❯ First Impressions ( Chapter 1 )

Title: None the Wiser

Author: The Uke Reformation

Genre: Naruto

Subgenre: Romance/Drama

Summary: There are some things not meant to be said. There are some pasts that you cannot escape. Some people that will always hunt you down. And every once in a while, there are special students that reward you for all your teaching... SasuNaru, yaoi

Rated: R for harsh language, as well as sexual and mature content.

Author's Note: Thankyou, all ho read over the prologue. It's taken me a while to get this one up due to holiday festivities, but they are festivities I enjoy engaging in after all. Next one's comin' right atcha…open wide.

Note: Yaoi. Yama nashi. Ochi nashi. Imi nashi. Nothing you can do. I shall write what I shall write. If you don't like that kind of thing, don't read that kind of thing. Oh, the simplicity. Also, any and all spelling and grammatical errors are my fault entirely - I beg your forgiveness.

Disclaimer: Copyright The Uke Reformation, 2005. All rights reserved.

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None the Wiser

by The Uke Reformation

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Chapter 1

"First days mean free

first impressions."

There was something about first days, Naruto thought, half-waltzing around the bus lane of the parking lot. He had always liked first days. They had always been inviting, to him. A new start. A clean slate. They were a breath of fresh air after you had been swimming too deep for too long in muddy water. He wasn't quite sure why they felt that way to him, but they always had and that wasn't about to change now. He grinned in the early, late August morning.

There was just something about first days.

He heard Iruka practically scream at him from the corner as the first of a long line of buses rolled into the street, and he giggled. Giggled. Well, everybody better get a good look now if they ever wanted to see it ever again. He spun himself back onto the sidewalk, still laughing, Iruka's scolding voice in his ears. He spun a little more, listening to the dolphin chide a little more fiercely with the knowledge that he was being ignored.

"Naruto, I'm serious, don't goof off in the street, the buses are here! You could get run over!"

Yessiree, there was just something about that tone of voice at this time of the morning that he just could not get enough of. Any other day, it would be wearing and irritate him to no end that his associate was so damn maternal. But today, he couldn't have minded it less. It simply made him grin more and spin even faster. The world was running together into little blurs, spins and blotches that made him giggle even more. He could hear Iruka getting more flustered.

"Naruto, are you listening to me?"

He was listening. He was listening as the buses came into the parking lot. He was listening to the ear-splitting shriek of rocks against other rocks against rubber as the tires turned in one, by one, by one. He was listening to the children with their windows rolled down. He was listening to them holler at one another, and talk amongst themselves, and ignore the driver. He was listening to the magical little click as the shuttered doors swung back to let people out. And he was definitely listening to the stares he was receiving.

"Hey...who is that...?"

"Isn't that a teacher?"

"What the hell is he doing?"

"What an odd person..."

Naruto giggled a little more as the students, a large group of around thirty (most of them first-years), began to file out of the buses still looking at him strangely and muttering, and he finally decided he was tired of spinning. He completed a last little twirl, catching himself before he tripped or stumbled, and opened his eyes again, the world whirling around him for a few minutes before his vision untilted itself. He laughed a bit more openly, breathing in the fresh morning air before shouting out his welcome.

"GOOD MORNING EVERYBODY!"

He heard nervous little titters from the girls that scooted away from them. One, a short, blushing little thing with purple hair and crystal eyes waved thinly. He grinned at her and noticed that her blush deepened ten-fold. It made him laugh, in a cheery sort of way. He was even happier when he heard a few tentative "hi"s back in his direction, and spun around when a knuckle rapped his arm sharply.

"It's far too early for anybody to be that loud, sensei."

Naruto face lit up in a smirk. "Great to see you too, Neji."

The sophomore nearly surpassed him in height, coming up to his temples at least, with his dark hair that hung to his sharp, thin hips. His skin was pale, almost as pale as his near-translucent blue eyes, and his legs were long and shapely. He was donned, as were the rest of his peers, in the dark, black and gray school uniforms, but for some reason, Naruto noticed, he had a way of making the dark pants and button-up jacket look much better.

His former student shrugged, looking impassive. Naruto laughed a little more (something he enjoyed doing) and jerked a thumb after the girl who had been blushing before. "That couldn't have been your little cousin, now could it have been? Hinata, who I met at the barbeque last year?"

Neji's expression seemed to darken momentarily, and Naruto knew he had stumbled into rocky territory, as was so easily done with the Hyuuga, it seemed. Family stuff always made the boy turn...icky. He had momentarily forgotten.

However, Neji seemed to, again, shrug it off, after a minute. "I suppose."

Naruto chuckled, trying to find a way to change the subject before things went sour. "So...I didn't get to see you over the holiday." The two of them were walking together towards the steps into the school building, towed along by the large crowd now exiting the buses. "You been avoiding me?"

"Perhaps," Neji said, staring off for a minute before turning back to him. "Why?"

"Oh, just wondered what you were doing with yourself," Naruto grinned down at him. "I got visits from both TenTen and Lee. And, you know me; I just tend to worry if you aren't there with them. Those two won't just keep themselves in line, you know."

Neji's expression remained stoic as he shrugged again, the two of them starting on the stairs. "I was relatively busy. College scouting, studying...the like."

'Meaning you took it upon yourself to work as hard as you could to afford more than just the rent those three months so that you could buy enough gas to go driving all over in a borrowed car looking at all the highest and most refined colleges in the country,' Naruto thought, looking the boy over. From any other standpoint no one would be able to tell the difference. But to Naruto, who had taught Hyuuga Neji for all of last year, it was clearly visible. He was exhausted.

He reached out to touch Neji's shoulder lightly. "Take care of yourself, alright?" His face held a concerned look as they reached the top of the stairs.

Neji stared back up at him as they paused for a moment, people around them jostling by without care, except for glancing at the teacher who had yelled so boisterously, earlier, and the gorgeous boy he now seemed to be counseling with a quite serious air. Finally, the Hyuuga nodded and Naruto took this as a good sign, releasing the student's shoulder with a small nod of his own.

Entering the hall, still by Neji's side, Naruto spotted yet another he'd wanted to hear from over the summer, but had not yet had a chance to interrogate. He put out his hand, waving energetically above the crowd with another of his long-distance yells that should most certainly not be used in the hallways of a private high school.

"OI! CATEPILLAR-BROW!" He added a third line upon spotting who the teacher was speaking with, grinning. "DOG-BROW!"

Maito Gai looked up from speaking animatedly with his favorite student, greeting Naruto with the same loud, voluminous tones as he had been addressed.

"NARUTO-KUN!I GREET YOU UPON THIS FINE MORNING! I, KONOHA'S SPROUTING LEAF OF ACCEPTANCE--" (here he paused to make a ridiculous pose that he no doubt thought amazingly cool) "--WELCOME YOU TO YET ANOTHER OF OUR SCHOOL'S YEARS OF REPETITIVE EXCELLENCE! MAY OUR GREATNESS NEVER FADE!"

He put both of his thumbs up as Naruto strode over to him, Neji following only out of conditioned politeness, smiling broadly as his creepily prefect teeth flashed in the lighting. At his side, Rock Lee started off as well.

"AND I, KONOHA'S BLUE BEAST, GREET YOU, NARUTO-SENSEI, AS I DO THE COMING OF THE SUNRISE OF THE NEW SCHOOL YEAR! GOOD MORNING TO YOU!"

He posed as well, in a way that would've made anyone stare (as it did many of the freshman who were not so used to the antics of the two as was the rest of the student body who passed as if nothing was happening). Naruto ignored it as he had been doing for a good few years now.

"Morning Lee, Gai. How're you two doing?"

"NOTHING BUT WELL, SENSEI!" Lee said, straightening his back and saluting.

"AS WELL AS THE YOUNG BUCK THAT PRANCES INTO THE DAWN, NARUTO-KUN!" Gai did a double of his infamous "nice guy" pose, teeth still sparkling.

Naruto chuckled, giving in to the relative hilarity that they both thought they looked entirely serious doing all of this. Neji, who had the emotional capacity of a brick on most occasions, seemed to have regained his brooding quality and stood quite still, staring unblinking at the two he could often be found naming as his associates.

"See anybody you like so far, Gai?" Naruto said, after stifling himself for the time being.

"Do I not like everyone, Naruto-kun?" Gai said, valiantly defending the whole of the student body from it's resident hyper-active cynic.

"Anyone of Lee's caliber?"

"HEAVEN'S NO!" Gai puffed out his chest with pride. "LEE IS BUT THE BEST STUDENT A MAN COULD HAVE!"

Huge, melodramatic tears streamed down Lee's face. "OH, GAI-SENSEI!"

"You're going to be late to class, Naruto."

A man about a head taller than Naruto, silver-headed with a dark mask that covered half his face, a starched suit and an orange book of undoubtable perverted intentions had appeared out of nowhere. Bandages were slung, lazy and thick, over his left eye. Naruto blinked up at him, noticing that Neji was gone from the corridor.

"Oi, Kakashi, 'sup?"

Hatake Kakashi's visible eye glittered in a knowing way.

"Not your 'on-time' percentage, obviously." He held out his left wrist, where a digital clock blinked.

Naruto swore loudly. "YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME! IT'S THAT LATE!"

Kakashi sighed and plodded slowly back the hall. "Thirty-four seconds and counting, Naruto."

Gai, gripped Lee in a tight hug and sent the boy on his way, moving back into his classroom and shutting the door behind him with a grin and a "good luck!" in Naruto's direction. The hall was almost completely empty. Naruto stomped the ground hard, and swore again.

His room was half-way across the campus.

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Naruto skidded on the tile just outside Room 201, scrabbling frantically in an attempt to retain both his balance and his speed, and just barely succeeding. The soles of his leather shoes had made their first black marks of the school year on the linoleum floor. The laces of one had loosened, one almost flying free. The bell had rung nearly three minutes ago. He swore again, sprinting the length of the hall and catching himself on the handle of his own door at long last.

He swung it, the door banging shut behind him, putting out one of his feet and coming to a screeching halt. He collapsed from the chest down, supporting himself by smacking both hands down upon his knees. He breathed hard, sweating slightly as he panted, taking a few moments to collect himself, finally standing back up once he had recovered and looking around.

Any quiet chatter that had been humming to itself before his explosive arrival had ceased. Students stared back at him, wide-eyed and frozen. A chubby kid in the third row had gone stock still halfway through lifting a potato chip to his mouth.

Naruto was about to start up about it just as a cylindrical metal object flew out of nowhere, connecting with his skull. He fell back with an automatic outcry, hitting the ground with a thud.

“YOU'RE LATE!” and a pointing, accusatory finger were the only antidotes he was offered by a pink-haired girl who stood at the opposite end of the room, a hand on her hip.

Naruto groaned, holding his head for a minute before he dared to glance at the can that had just felled him. Beets. He groaned again.

“Aw, c'mon Sakura-chan, not on the first day…”

The girl came forward, folding her arms across her somewhat insubstantial chest. Her green eyes gleamed eerily in the fluorescent lighting as she glowered down at him, expecting something.

He sighed, accommodating her. “I'm sorry, Sakura-chan. I forgot what day it was so I overslept, and then I got caught up in traffic halfway here because—“

“LIAR!”

Naruto chuckled and picked up the can of beets as he stood again, rubbing his head in an innocent fashion. “Well, my first `beeting' of the school year. Can't say I'm glad…I figured he'd atleast give me a week of preparation beforehand…”

“Me too,” Sakura sighed, the corners of her mouthing slightly upturned in a guilty, knowing smile. “That was the worst excuse I've heard out of you. As if you'd ever forget the first day.” She excluded the insignificant fact that Naruto had never owned a car. For that, he forgave her almost completely.

He had always been one to overact, however. “Oh, c'mon! You'd just beaned me with a can of beets! Who's supposed to think logically after something like that!”

“You seemed to manage it last year!”

Naruto sighed. Okay, now she had a point.

He decided to drop it and nodded to the rosey bangs that feathered down nicely around her soft cheeks. “You tapered it. Looks nicer.”

She smiled widely, flushing slightly at the attention and fingering it in what seemed both a fond and bashful way. “Thanks! Ino did it for me…you really like it?”

“Yeah,” Naruto said with a grin. Ino had rubbed him the wrong way at the beginning of last year. But as it came out that she wanted to be both a cosmetologist and inherit her parent's flower shop, things he thought were honorable dreams to have, they had started to get along better. That in itself had helped him achieve a better relationship with Sakura, seeing as the two were best friends.

However, he stopped in his affectionate nostalgia and remembrance of last year for a second as he thought of something abruptly. He handed the can back to her. “Why aren't you in class, anyway?”

“I've got Iruka first period. He sent me. Says I'm to `beet' you everyday until you get her on time.”

Naruto caught himself just before keeling over. “Oh, how convenient.”

Sakura gave him a sympathetic look. “Should I aim for your stomach next time?”

Naruto nodded with yet another sigh. “Please. And, as it were, your work here is done. Back to class with you.”

Sakura giggled and moved around him. She called “have a good morning, Naruto!” over her shoulder. And then she was gone.

The blonde school teacher watched her go before reaching to rub his head. What a day to forget the Advil. Ah, well. He'd cope for the time being.

Naruto turned to his class, who stared back perplexedly. He sighed for somewhere around the umpteenth time. “I'll tell you one thing,” he finally said to the silence, “I need to get in better shape. I used to be able to shoot that first hall in less than twenty seconds. Geez, I'm a disgrace.” Nobody spoke and he decided it was about time he got on with it. “Anyway!” He brought his hands together quite loudly, his students seeming to start out of a daze. “Let's get this show on the road, shall we?”

“Alright-y, today is your first day as students of Konohagakure Academy. Welcome. Anybody for whom this is not true and are here for a second time—“ he paused to look around suspiciously “—I have no desire to hear about it. Kapish? Kapish. If you want reasons for that…? I dunno. In my experience, I've found that your guys' excuses for that really boring. And personally, I don't like being bored any more than you do.

“I'm not going to list out a bunch of stupid `class rules' because, in my experience, you guys never follow them. In fact, because they're rules you tend to deliberately disobey them. So listen, I'm only going to make you follow one rule, and that's the golden one. Why? Because it's shiny, and I like shiny things. Just treat me like you want me to treat you. Treat your classmates the way you want them to treat you. Because, trust me, you gotta stick with these people all year. They can make your life miserable. I can make your life miserable. Don't mess with that. Just be nice and things'll go very well for you.”

The students watched him with blank faces. `Ooh, tough crowd. Fun.' He spotted Neji's cousin blushing faintly in the back of the room and smiled to himself. `Fun, fun, fun.'

“Kay. Now that that's out of the way, we can get started, hm?” He looked around and shrugged. “I dunno. Sounded pretty to me. At any rate, first things first, we need to get to know each other—“

He could almost feel the groan as his students stooped to remove paper and writing implements from their glossy new binders.

“Hey hey hey! Hold it.” He put his hands up in a stopping gesture. “We ain't filling anything out. Don't worry.” He saw the swooping sigh of relief as everyone put their things aways again, and chuckled. Very fun indeed.

“What we are doing,” he said, once he was sure everyone's things were away again, “is introducing ourselves. What I want you to do - and I'm really serious, I want you to do this, and since I'm not making you right anything, you should be grateful - is to pretend that we are all strangers. All of us. Yes, I'm absolutely serious. I don't care if I've ever met any of you before. From this second onwards, we are absolute strangers. That goes for your fellow classmates as well. I don't care if you've never ever seen one another in your entire lives, I don't care if you've been best friends for eight years. You are strangers.

“Now, with that out of the way, this is your assignment: when it comes around to you, I want you to say whatever it is you want the rest of us to call you, and anything about you that we wouldn't know just looking atcha. Or your birth record,” he added, remembering a trick Neji had tried to pull last year. Sure, he hadn't been able to tell he was 14 by looking at him, but that was so not the point of the exercise.

The students exchanged confused looks.

“Yeah, you heard me right. Your name and one random thing to know about you. Oh, and don't include anyone else in your one random thing package, hm?” Naruto beamed down at them. “Anybody wanna start?”

There was eerie silence before someone had the gall to choke out what everyone was thinking. “D-do we just…raise our hands?”

“Tell yuh what,” Naruto said, putting his hands on his hips. “We'll play Popcorn. Everybody know how to play Popcorn?”

No hands went up. He sighed, doggedly.

“Once you're done with what you have to say, yell `popcorn' and some other random person will go. Got it? Now, then. Who's first?”

Tentative hands went up. There was only one that shot into the air. A red, spiky-haired girl in the front row with dark eyes and a huge t-shirt on over her uniform sat up straighter with automatic eagerness to be called on. Naruto withheld a smirk and pointed at her. “You.”

“My name's Akamaru, and I like dogs!”

“Nice to meet you, Akamaru,” Naruto said smiling at her.

She smiled back at him. “Popcorn!” she cried, cheerily. Naruto noted that she sounded oddly like a coyote when she said it.

A boy in back with dark hair and lines coming off of his eyes, wearing the same sweatshirt, leapt up with a fearsome look. The movement caught Naruto's eye. “I'm Kiba, and my twin sister just stole what I was going to say!”

Naruto raised an eyebrow. “Hey hey hey. No bringing people other than yourself into the picture, Kiba.” This guy made him bristle. “Pick something else to say. You don't have to say you like dogs if you can somehow connect them to yourself.”

Kiba folded his arms grouchily. “Fine…I'm Kiba, and…” - he seemed to ponder something before swelling with ego - “I've owned over forty-two dogs in my lifetime.”

Naruto raised an eyebrow. “Alright. It's a…pleasure, Kiba.” This kid was going to irk him. He could feel it.

“Popcorn,” the boy nodded.

A small girl in back raised her cream-colored hand daintily. Long, dark brown hair trailed down her back. Naruto noticed she was wearing a boy's uniform. That was odd. Oh well. He gestured to her. “Speak.”

She smiled brightly, in a way that didn't seem to reach the depths of her eyes. It was beautiful and heartbreaking at the same time. Naruto was almost shocked that the kid had such an impression on him so suddenly. He hadn't noticed her at the beginning, but now…well, she was stunning to say the least. Scary. Subtle, yet…gorgeous.

“My name is Haku,” she said, “and I am a boy.”

The entire class stared. Naruto nearly fainted.

“You-You're kidding!”

Haku smiled back at him.

“WHOA!” He peered closer. “Tha-WHOA! That is so cool! I thought you were a girl for sure, just in the wrong uniform! That is so cool!”

Haku looked pleased with himself. “Nope. I'm a boy.”

Naruto couldn't help but gawk. It wasn't often he got tricked by the whole androgeny thing. That took skill and a hell of a lot of talent. “That's awesome!”

However, he hung up on something. “Whoa, wait up. Wouldn't that be on your birth transcript?”

Haku smiled gently. “I have none. So no.”

Naruto watched him for a minute. “Okay. Won't delve in any deeper than I'm allowed. But, dude, that is really neat. Jesus. Great to meet you Haku!”

The boy smiled up at him. “Popcorn.”

It was then that the hand raised itself in the back. The pale colored skin it was attached to made the obviously starched and pressed suit seem much darker than it really was. It was a good combination, the black on almost-white, a combination that was matched in that boy's eyes and obsidian-colored, silky-looking hair.

Naruto found himself staring again. Like Haku, it was almost difficult to tell which of the genders the boy in front of him belonged to, although whether he was either didn't exactly matter, beauty-wise. His face and hands were perfect. In fact, everything about him seemed to be perfect.

Attractive. And scary. Real scary.

Naruto mentally shook himself and gestured to the boy, loosely. “Go.”

“Uchiha Sasuke.”

His voice was deep. Smooth. It made Naruto shiver for feelings he didn't completely understand at the moment. It scared the living shit out of him. Something about the name `Uchiha' clicked in the back of his brain. He wasn't quite sure what it was. He stared into Sasuke's face, the dark eyes mesmerizing him, drawing him in. He had the distinct feeling that he was being hypnotized…made weak by a cobra's stare…

“And there is someone I have sworn to kill.”

Naruto's head reeled, and he felt as if he was careening in and out of reality for a brief moment, before shaking himself again, and almost ridding himself of it completely.

“Nice to meet you Uchiha Sasuke.”

The rest of the day seemed to whiz by, and it was only when he received a bottle of Advil tied with a pink bow at lunch that he realized he still had a headache.

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The-Scarecrow signed on at 9:02:56 PM.

BANGUZUMAKI signed on at 9:16:19 PM.

BANGUZUMAKI: boo
The-Scarecrow: Oh, this day is just full of surprises.
BANGUZUMAKI: yea no kiddign
The-Scarecrow: Kidding.
BANGUZUMAKI: dont correct my spelling
The-Scarecrow: Always have, always will.
BANGUZUMAKI: ur so annoying
The-Scarecrow: But of course.
BANGUZUMAKI: D:
The-Scarecrow: Still upset about this morning?
BANGUZUMAKI: yea no fuck
The-Scarecrow: Such a foul mouth.
BANGUZUMAKI: again
The-Scarecrow: It's not my fault, you know. You need to learn to manage your time more wisely.
BANGUZUMAKI: or i could just start running faster
The-Scarecrow: Or you could just be on time.
BANGUZUMAKI: ur one to tlk
BANGUZUMAKI: u just get lucky cuz irukas to distractd by me to do to mucht o u
The-Scarecrow: Your typing is atrocious.
BANGUZUMAKI: dont care
The-Scarecrow: You surprise me, Naruto. Bad day?
BANGUZUMAKI: alittle
The-Scarecrow: What happened?
BANGUZUMAKI: iunno
BANGUZUMAKI: got beetin
BANGUZUMAKI: alredy
The-Scarecrow: No kidding. Iruka's being a real stickler this year.
BANGUZUMAKI: i bet u think its hot
The-Scarecrow: That's not the only thing that has you riled, I assume.
BANGUZUMAKI: im fine we just got some interesting students ths yr
The-Scarecrow: You don't like them?
BANGUZUMAKI: i like them
The-Scarecrow: What's the problem then?
BANGUZUMAKI: nthin
BANGUZUMAKI: u meet haku tday?
The-Scarecrow: The one with chocolate-hair who looks like a girl?
BANGUZUMAKI: yea
The-Scarecrow: I did. Seems to have a large amount of talent when it comes to academics. A wonderful sprinter, as well.
BANGUZUMAKI: cool
The-Scarecrow: Have you had dinner yet?
BANGUZUMAKI: no
BANGUZUMAKI: i thnk ill grab some ramen nd hit the hey
The-Scarecrow: Hay.
BANGUZUMAKI: sure
The-Scarecrow: Go, then.
BANGUZUMAKI: kay
BANGUZUMAKI: good nite
The-Scarecrow: Oyasuminasai.

BANGUZUMAKI signed off at 9:25:03 PM.

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End Chapter 01

I hope that was formatted better. -sweatdrop- It took me a while to realizes the bars that segmented the story were absent during the prologue. I'd also like to tell readers that updates will now be happening fairly quickly…because the chapters, up until the eighth, are already written. Again, gomen na for any excessive mistakes…I type fast, and - at this point in the fic - did not yet have a BETA.

--Lady Lamb