Meetings and matters of the heart

The Haruna matriarch cursed herself for allowing her hopes to get up. The Hokage had accepted an invitation to a council meeting for the first time in six months only for this to happen; he had sent a proxy. And not just any proxy; no he had sent the demon brat and the worst thing was that none of her friends seemed willing to speak up at the travesty. Well she wouldn't stand for it!

Even as Naruto started his carefully planned speech with "In the name of ramen we have all gathered to…" Which was as far as he got before a pink haired woman he thought looked like someone from his class with an "ahem ahem." Recent meetings with the T&I department had taught the woman to refrain from actually screeching her demands.

Naruto looked suspiciously at the one who dared to make use such underhanded coughs to mess with his carefully planned speech on the glory of ramen and how it could make Konoha prosper.

Thinking carefully Naruto wondered if this Ibiki guy who made problems go away wasn't getting lonely again. "Right, the pink haired one will need to talk to Ibiki, that'll calm her down some." Indeed said pink haired one had been looking mightily upset as she actually shook in badly contained rage.

Danzo was grumbling at the unfairness of the proves his old rival had as a Shinobi; when he had finally had the chance to set down a poison trap in the man's council trap just before the beginning of the meeting the man must have caught on and sent the only person in Konoha known for his immunity to all kinds of poison. Really it was like trying to win the favor of the Nidaime all over again with the Sarutobi proving himself at every twist and turn.

As an ANBU agent came out of the shadows and removed the Haruna matriarch from the room the clan heads started to see what was going on. Danzo figured the Sandaime must have been in doubt as to who had messed with the room and so ordered ANBU to take away the first one who acted up. How very clever of him but certainly not good enough to catch him, or perhaps it had simply been a warning that the Hokage was no longer messing around?

While Danzo was busy looking for plots within plots in his crafty old mind Naruto went on with his speech. "As I was saying the powers that be in the glorious mix that makes up ramen have granted me a vision of how you could serve to spread the good news. Yes you guessed it. On October tenth we will hold a glorious feast in light of my birthday." Naruto allowed his carefully built up professionalism to fade away as his mouth continued with "believe it!"

The combination of a devotion to ramen and verbal ticks had a third of the council look around fearfully as they thought the boy's mother must have come back to haunt them.

Seeing their fearful expressions Naruto decided that they needed a little reassurance. "Now, now remember; the cake is a lie."

With this brilliant feat of an oration complete with intertextuality Naruto nodded, turned and left the room.

The grave silence that spread around the room as everyone was wondering just what was going on in their suddenly orange home village allowed most of the men to come to their own sad conclusions only a few of which were true. Shikaku Nara was actually the only one to grasp the complete truth since he was the only one who could imagine pulling such move himself if he had been put in the old man's shoes and so didn't think it beneath the God of Shinobi to put their fate in the hands of a six year old.

One of the civilians, the head of a reasonably wealthy trade family, finally stopped twitching from hearing about talking to Ibiki and spoke. "So eh I guess we'll start preparing for this feast of ramen?" The Ninja clan heads were quite disgusted when the other civilians simply nodded along and started making plans.

Hiashi wondered for a brief moment if his timid daughter had been infected with the same drug that the civilian council seemed to have ingested to make her so scatterbrained. As the man took his leave along with the other ninja council members to leave the civilians to their madness, he dropped that line of thought and so would never know just how close to the truth he had been on that matter, if you counted exposure to Naruto as something you could ingest in any case.

Naruto left the meeting just in time to get to Icharaku ramen stand before the evening rush set in. With a great effort Naruto attempted to fill his bottomless pit of a stomach as he thought of the stroke of genius it had been to take the money from the silly things that had been on Konoha's budget, previously going to Root, and put it in a secret account to pay for his ramen expenses. With an astonishing number of eighteen bowls of ramen Naruto set a new record before heading home to actually practice. The Uchiha had after all performed so well with his kunai throwing that Naruto had felt the need to assign him another batch of D-ranks while he set about decreasing the difference between their levels of skill. While his obvious talent at juggling still stood out since no one else really dared to attempt it after the first training accident the fact that Sasuke managed to throw three kunai at once and still the targets had irked Naruto rather badly. So what if the duck-but-haired boy complained about cleaning public toilet stands and picking up trash and dog poop in the park. Everyone had to make sacrifices for Konoha and that stuff built character. As Naruto caught himself cackling evilly he stopped before anyone could hear him.

Thinking of his birthday that would be coming up in a week Naruto felt glad that he had taken the time to instruct his minions to make the additions to the usual fireworks festival. Really without a feast of ramen it could hardly be called a festival anyway.

Before his mind could be set loose on thinking about the delicious noodle filled course Naruto got back to his training experimenting with variations of the way he had seen Sasuke hold three kunai as he threw them at a log.

Hinata looked at her blonde haired crush as he worked with a determination that she could only dream of achieving. Swooning Hinata left before her family could catch onto her stalki… eh training session. Yes training eh… training tracking, stealth and observation yes certainly the heiress would be training the three basics rather than stalking an unsuspecting Naruto. Nodding to herself Hinata set out and actually impressed her father as with her upbeat attitude in their scheduled training session as well as her total disregard for pain as she was off in her dream world wondering how her prince was handling all the pressure and tasks she had seen him busy with. Funny enough she flowed through her stances much more smoothly when her mind was absent as she wasn't worrying that she might hurt her family members in their little spars and allowed her training to take over.

As Hinata stepped up to spar she wasn't looking out for which child to step towards and so ended up facing a disgruntled Neji.

Hiashi watched curiously as Hinata went through a few swooning moves as she slipped around Neji's defenses and blocked his tenketsu with shocking ease. As the boy fell down and had to be carried away to the medics Hinata proceeded to beat three other older cousins with her random movements that none of them managed to read through making the rest stay warily away from Hinata until the practice was called to a halt.

Yes Hiashi decided, it seemed that things were right in the world. When their only rival clan fell into disgrace and his daughter seemed to gain a touch of genius out of nowhere he could deal with an odd kid leading council meetings as well as the insane members of the civilian council.

As the week went by Naruto forgot about the upcoming celebrations came around being busy with training and making sure that Sasuke got as little rest as possible, `really showing him up like that would he, oh yes the boy would see believe it´. Only the notice that the Hokage had left for him saying that the man would be making a speech let Naruto remember as he went to the office after the academy let out early.

Seeing the ramen unseal itself later that evening in the orange surroundings with firework illuminating everything brought proud tears of joy to Naruto's eyes. The crowd wasn't quite sure what to make of it but most followed Naruto's example in eating their fill, though to a lesser degree.

`Yes all was well in the world´ Naruto decided as he ate his fill. Nothing was out of his powers and chicks were all over him, well at least that one with neat eyes had been when he had woken her up from sleeping in class and she hung over him muttering about "Naruto-kun" making Naruto blush rather badly. In short Naruto was the boss, eh man yes man it was believe it!

(A/N) I'm a little shocked that you say you're feeling sorry for little Naruto. Seriously? In any case it's more of a crack fic, as I'm sure you've noticed, and such things as Naruto realizing his responsibilities and true effects on the world just doesn't happen.