-Part 2-

- 18 - Messed up -

-Minaru-

Minaru breathed in deeply and turned to Naruto. “Come on, give that to me.”, she said and pointed at the papers that were the reason for them coming here.

“But…” The boy started, but she interrupted him with a huff.

She rolled her eyes. “No buts. Come on.” Naruto hesitated for another moment before he placed the papers in Minaru’s outstretched hand.

She had stayed in contact with the boy over the time they spent at the Academy and helped him study on occasion. Now she knew what Raya had meant when she had told her that this Naruto was too different from the one Minaru had been. He was shy, a little timid and simply covering it up by being a loudmouth and not only a little boastful.

He lacked the intelligence her own Naruto had hidden, but made up for it in simple natural talent. But that didn’t mean he was stupid, just a little slower to learn then she had been.

She pulled herself out of her head and raised her hand to knock on the door. “Enter!” a male voice called.

She opened the door and entered the small room. The man behind the desk raised his head and smiled brightly when he saw her. “Minaru-chan! We haven’t seen each other for way too long. What can I do for you?”

“I wanted to show you something and hear your opinion on the matter, Iruka-sensei.”, she said and bowed to him. With a barely audible squeak Naruto mirrored her action.

Iruka raised an eyebrow at their behavior but he nodded. “Of course.” Minaru approached him and placed two sheets in front of him first without the first page to each document.

The teacher scanned both of the documents and smiled. “Pretty good. I see that you’ve studied a lot, Naruto-kun.” Naruto blushed and ducked his head, while Minaru simply placed the first pages on each document.

Iruka became pale when he saw what was written there before turning to her. “What is the meaning of this, Minaru-chan?”, he asked and pointed at the grades.

She sighed. “That’s what I wanted to hear from you. Naruto answered everything in this test right, he left out only one question because he ran out of time. And he came to the same conclusions for deduction questions than myself. I checked every single one of his answers myself. Twice. So how is it possible that I pass with an A and he fails?”, she asked.

She had immediately known something was off when she had seen Naruto sitting on the swing. It had taken her two hours to double check everything but she was absolutely sure there was not a single reason to fail Naruto. Well, except the one that nobody was supposed to know about.

Iruka pulled the papers into a folder and got up from his chair. “I hope you two don’t mind me borrowing these. I’ll get these checked with the Hokage. That’s atrocious. Can I meet both of you for dinner later?”

Naruto’s eyes lit up and he straightened up to look at Iruka. Childlike hope was shining in his eyes. “Ramen?”

Minaru laughed lightly. “Do you even know other food, Naruto?”, she asked and bumped her shoulder against his.

He scowled at her. “Hey, nothing beats Ramen.”

Minaru shook her head with a fond smile. Well at least that hadn’t changed. “Well I would say there are a few things, but that would just go by your head.” She turned to Iruka. “I will need to first talk to Shika, Choji and Ino. We wanted to spend the evening together.”

Naruto turned to look at her. “Why don’t you bring them? If they want to.”, he said.

She smiled at him. “I will ask.” She turned to Iruka one more time. “Well then I guess we will see each other at Ichiraku’s later.”

“Yeah. Later, Minaru-chan.”, he said with a nod.

She turned and left, splitting up with Naruto in front of the building. ‘I didn’t think you would get so involved with this banality.’ Sai’s voice cut through her mindscape.

She had formed a stable connection with him and Shin over the years. Like this they could talk about the ‘Future’ without having to fear being overheard.

‘Is it still a banality if it not only keeps Naruto from becoming a Genin, but also gives a rogue Ninja access to him?’, she asked back.

‘A rogue ninja?’ Shin asked.

‘Yes. We will have to deal with him soon, I think..’, she answered. ‘And I would prefer if we were able to take him out of the picture before he can convince Naruto to do something immensely stupid.’

She could hear Shin’s laughter. ‘Just give the command and we can revive the bear and the wolf.’, he said.

She suppressed the smile while she weaved her way through the streets leading back to the flower shop of Ino’s mum. ‘Not yet. But soon. A little patience.’

‘Patience. The one thing Shin has not gained yet.’, Sai said.

A shopkeeper looked at her like she had grown a second head when she started to chuckle out of the blue. ‘He’s gotten better since you two joined our class.’, she said with a teasing tone.

‘Even a blind hen finds a grain of corn sometimes.’ Sai countered.

‘Hey! I can hear you, you know!’ Shin sounded offended.

Minaru laughed. ‘Oh, we know that, don’t worry!’, she said.

‘I hate you!’ Shin grumbled.

‘No you don’t.’ Sai answered. The only response was a growl from Shin.

-Shikamaru-

“I didn’t know you were friends with Naruto.”, Shikamaru said, looking intently at Minaru when they wandered back home from their dinner at Ichiraku’s. He had his hands buried in his pockets.

The evening had been fun, well it had gotten so after Iruka-sensei and the Hokage had dropped the bomb on them that Naruto’s grades for his final test had apparently been manipulated. The boy was supposed to retake the test under the Hokage’s eyes tomorrow. Naruto had first fallen absolutely still for about a minute before jumping on Minaru and knocking her off her stool. He had chanted thank yous for about a minute, while Iruka-senser had told them that it had been Minaru who had noticed the manipulations.

“I’m not. I just can relate to him.” Minaru said, answering his initial question. She stretched before she turned to him, looking intently at him. “Did you know that he lives in an apartment in the Red Light district, just by himself?”, she asked out of the blue.

He shook his head, his shock getting the better of him enough for his eyes to widen when he looked at her. “Who would house a kid like him there of all places?!”, he scoffed.

She smiled sadly. But there were several emotions he could feel through their bond. Resignation, sadness, pain, anger, longing. He didn’t understand the longing but she continued before he could ask.  “A village that has decided he would be better off dead. Nobody in one of the nicer areas would take him in.” She closed her eyes for a second. “I could have easily been in the same situation as him. I was just lucky enough to be taken in by Ino and her family.”

He wrapped an arm around her, shaken by the mere thought of her in a situation where she had literally no one to protect her. She cuddled up to him and purred lowly, calming his nerves. “I’m glad they did.”, he mumbled, placing his chin on her head.

She laughed lightly and shook her head with a fond smile. “Me too. Imagine we would have met in the Academy. That could have gotten really awkward.”

He blushed. “And even more embarrassing than it already was.”, he stated.

She laughed again. “Come on, Shika. Don’t pretend that it mattered to you what these kids at the Academy said about us.”

A growl escaped him when he noticed a few boys he knew from the Academy staring rudely at Minaru. He could imagine what the dirty looks meant. They had followed Minaru for all of their time at the Academy. “I don’t care about things people say about me. But I can’t stand people who talk bad about you.”, he said.

Minaru followed his gaze and placed a hand on his arm. “I feel the same. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to be someone I am not… And I learned that this is bad the hard way.” She took his hand, pulling him away from the boys and towards his home. “Come on. We don’t want Yoshino-san to be mad at us for being late.”

He nodded. “You’re right.” He looked at her while he followed her down the road. He hadn’t noticed her pretending to be someone else. So what was she talking about? But her still raging emotions told him to let her be for now.

“We’re back!” Minaru shouted once they had entered the main house.

“Welcome home.” His mother rounded the corner with a towel in her hands. She was drying a plate in her hands and looked them over once before smiling. “You should go to bed early. Tomorrow you get assigned to your Genin-teams.”

Shikamaru sighed. “We know that. We’re the ones who took this test today, remember?”, he grumbled.

Once his mother fixed an angry glare at him, he shrugged and lifted his hands in surrender. “You want to use the shower first, Mina?”, he asked, turning to look at the girl.

She shook her head with a soft smile. “No, you go on ahead. I want to talk to Yoshino-san for a minute. I’ll follow you in a minute.”

He nodded slowly. “Okay. Night, Kaa-san.”, he said and trotted down the hallway.

-Minaru-

Minaru followed Yoshino into the kitchen, where Shikaku was sitting at the table, reading over a few reports. “Good evening, Shikaku-san.”, she greeted him with a soft smile.

He looked up and smiled lazily at her. “Evenin. What brings you into the kitchen without our son, little one?”

She sighed and shook her head. “I wanted to warn you that I might have made a mistake.”, she said and started to worry the hem of her shirt.

Yoshino looked at her questioningly. “A mistake? What kind of mistake?”

“We were eating with Naruto earlier and Shika asked if I’m friends with him when we were walking here. I told him a little bit of how he’s treated and how that could have very well been me. He was so angry…”, she explained.

Shikaku looked at her. “Surely you don’t think he was mad at you?”, he asked.

“No.” She shook her head. That would never have crossed her mind. She knew him better by now. Better than about everyone in the village except for Choji she would guess. “But it could affect how he sees others in the village. There is a lot of prejudice when it comes to Naruto-kun or myself. I think he never let himself see that before. But I literally pushed him to see it.” She took a deep breath. “And I’m scared that this could cause him to resent quite a lot of the residents. And the missions for Genin normally come from exactly those people who don’t like Naruto or me. I never wanted to cause problems for you or your Clan.”

Yoshino sighed lightly and went over to Minaru, hugging her tightly. “We know that, Mina-chan. If those people decide to be jackasses they won’t know what hit them once we are through with them.”

Before Minaru could object, she heard Shikaku close his papers with a resounding thud. “Look at me, little one.” She obediently looked over to him. It was rare for him to use his commanding voice with her. “Do you think that Naruto or yourself should be treated like this?”, he asked.

She shook her head. “No. Most of the people here in Konoha love the village in their own way, I think. And I know that this is in fact the case for Naruto and me. So why should we be treated differently than other Genin? We grew up here and learned how to be ninjas from the Shinobi of Konoha, just like everybody else.”

He smiled. “And you shouldn’t be treated differently in my opinion. And if there are people who don’t understand that, we will make them see, but this unfortunately takes time. People can be as stubborn as mules sometimes. I just want you to know something, little one. You don’t need to shoulder everything on your own. You can share your burden with us. All of us, I’m sure the Akimichis and the Yamanaka agree with me.”

“But…” Minaru started, only to be interrupted by Yoshino.

“He’s right, no buts. We invited you into our family, not only because of Shikamaru’s fixation, but because we like you. You could never cause problems for us.” , the Nara matriarch said, running a soothing hand through Minaru’s hair.

Minaru blinked a few times before she smiled lightly. It felt good to have the Clans support her so much, even if she still didn’t think she deserved that support. “Thank you.”, she whispered into Yoshino’s shirt.

She could feel Yoshino laugh. “Don’t thank us for something like that. Like I said. You are family.”

-Shikamaru-

When Shikamaru was roused from his sleep it took him a few moments to understand what had woken him. He checked his surroundings. It was still pitchblack outside and he couldn’t feel or hear anything outside of the room. He still wore the shirt and shorts he had chosen because it was almost stifling hot inside the room. The other side of his futon was cooling down where someone had been lying until a little while ago.

That’s when it hit him. Something was wrong with Minaru. They often slept cuddled together and today had been no exception at the beginning. But where she normally was curled up against him, one hand in his shirt, whenever he woke up during the night, she was now lying in a tight ball at the foot end of the futon. Cold sweat covered her skin and she didn’t move except for a light shivering from time to time. Normally she was moving in her sleep to adjust to his movements or cuddle back up to him when he had had to get up during the night.

And the emotions he could feel from her now - terror, sadness, grief, rage - made it clear what he was seeing. He had never experienced one of her nightmares himself, but he knew she had them regularly ever since they met because he could feel the echoes even in his own sleep, when she was at home with the Yamanakas. But this was the first time she was having one with him right beside her. He had actually thought that his presence soothed her enough to keep the nightmares at bay. So what was different tonight?

Something must have upset her badly. So much so, that even the emotional control she had learned from her aunt didn’t hold up.

“Mina?”, he whispered and placed a hand on her shoulder to try and wake her up carefully. But instead he felt a strange pull at his mind and was thrust from his bedroom right into… hell.