Updated: May 24 2014

My second more-than-a-one-shot-story!

Enjoy!

1. Prologue

If it hadn't been for the gloomy girl next to him, the beginning of the academy days for the bright-and-blonde-like-sunshine-boy would have been good – very good indeed. He had made an attempt in starting a conversation with the girl, but had only received a sharp look that made him feel like he was being mentally sliced in half. He had decided to keep his mouth shut after that.

Uzumaki Kushina had made sure Namikaze Minato got an uncomfortable start of his ninja days.

The truth was, Minato had admired the girl at first – nothing she expected from him or ever would expect at all. She had come bursting in and claimed her place in the classroom – with that shockingly pretty hair of hers - seemingly neither afraid of the people around her nor afraid to be there all by herself. The truth in her sake was that she was scared shitless, but she would never admit that to anyone.

When the boys had begun bullying her during the first break, Minato would've happily stepped in between her and the bullies to make them shut up. He had a certain effect on people that way; not because he was threatening by nature, but because he was a well-known prodigy, one they soon would only dream to surpass in that very classroom. He was also very popular. He was kind, good-hearted and brightened most people's days (save the people he was going to kill in a couple of years). If they ended up on his bad side, they could kiss their hopes of popularity among the girls goodbye.

He was about to jump up to aid the girl who was being teased for the bright, red colour of her hair and her round cheeks, when she did something very unexpected for a girl.

She hit them.

Hard.

And now, the boy and the girl had been assigned seats next to each other, and Minato felt the uncomfortable silence pushing them down. He wanted to compliment her for her actions, tell her that she was cool who gave them the lesson of the year (which included band-aids in various areas) when most girls her age would only sit down in a corner and cry. But when he reached his hand out to wish her welcome to Konoha, he was dead in Uzumaki Kushina's head.

So he kindly shut up and waited for the teacher to finish sorting the papers in his hands.

The teacher introduced her as an intern student from the Whirlpool country. Minato knew about that country; it was small, and besides a very conflicted place. The Eddy village, where Kushina came from, was full of riots between the villagers. Minato assumed the girl had come here because of the riots – maybe her family was in a bad position, maybe they had all moved to Konoha to give her the childhood of a lifetime?

If only he knew how wrong he was.

It took a couple of days for Kushina to speak to him. They had been assigned a task they were to complete with their 'seat partners', which meant that Kushina and Minato were working together.

"Hey, Minato," one of the bullies, Rabi, said behind him while he pulled at his brown hair to make it stand right up. "You can work with us, you probably don't want anything to do with tomato over there."

A vein seemed to snap in Kushina's face, but Minato only looked coolly at Rabi.

"I don't mind."

Kushina snorted. "You just want to grab the opportunity to mock me, don't you?"

Minato was surprised to be addressed by her for the first time. "That's not what I meant," he said calmly.

Kushina shot him another look, but it missed the sharp killing-intent. Instead, she looked a tad bit sceptical, like she was considering the words he was saying. Though she soon had her gloomy look on her again. Minato thought it didn't suit her very well.

"Fine," she mumbled.

"Fine," Minato said as equally calm as always, glad to at least have come to an agreement.

The task proved to be easy for Minato, but not so easy when he had to explain everything to Kushina. She didn't try very hard to understand the task, as though she didn't bother taking it seriously. Minato tried to explain why she had to learn this and how it would come in handy in a real situation, but she only waved him off and continued to stare out of the window.

But even though Kushina was simply useless when it came to the theoretical tasks, she was above average when it came to the physical tests. Way above.

"Top score, Kushina," the teacher said in an impressed tone when Kushina hit three of the marked areas on the wooden dummy thirty feet away. She had hit the dummy straight in the liver, one kidney and in the middle of the face – more or less a direct kill. She looked pleased with herself.

Nevertheless, there were always bullies.

"Ha! Just pure luck," Rabi exclaimed bravely.

"Yeah!" Keigo agreed. "What good is she, anyway? Bet she couldn't do that twice."

The boys shut up once Kushina had grabbed a fourth kunai and thrown it straight towards the wooden dummy's invisible genitalia with a speed of several miles an hour. Minato couldn't keep himself from grinning, and could barely stop even though Kushina glared at him, said "What're you smirking at?" and kept calling him 'stupid' the rest of the day, although she seemed pleased to have silenced the boys as quickly as she had.

Minato never succeeded in making good conversation with Kushina during their academy days, no matter how hard he tried. Kushina had shut everyone out, and in the end, Minato had to close his mouth and accept that he could do nothing but wait until the girl with the pretty hair was ready to open up for friendships. He had tried to congratulate her for her good scores on the shuriken test one day, but Kushina replied with things like him being a jealous little baby, a wimp, a girl. He was enlightened with facts about him looking weak and such, but that she definitely wouldn't bother wasting her time helping him.

In between all of this, she mentioned that she wouldn't stay much longer. Minato had wondered why, but was kindly asked to keep his nose out of her business. That was when he decided he should just wait; if she wanted to be alone, it was her own choice.

Little did he know she hadn't chosen it. She had been sent to the village by force. In the beginning, she didn't even know why she had to move at all, because no one would tell her. She was happy that her older brother had convinced the higher-ups to come with her so she could stay with him instead of being dumped in a foster home or an orphanage, as though she was an orphaned child. Because she wasn't; her parents were in the Eddy village, fighting, and Kushina could barely wait to get back to fight with them. Even her older brother was returning as soon as she had graduated. That was why she trained hard from the beginning to fight, and who cared about the theoretical tests? She wouldn't need them in a physical fight, no matter what the sunshine boy said.

Through the years at the academy, Kushina grew stronger than even most boys their age. And with her growth, she became more closed up. She came to school one day, very distant in her mind. She didn't even bother getting back at the bullies in their everlasting war. Minato worked up the courage to ask her if something was wrong, and at first she only seemed confused and didn't say much more than 'uhm' and 'no', but when he insisted, she went back to her old self and snapped at him. Minato couldn't understand why he was so relieved to see her angry again.

Kushina graduated at the same time as Minato, and was assigned a team in Konoha she was to train with for unknown time (her condition was described as 'dangerous' and 'under supervision', which held her back by force) before she could return to her home town. She ended up on the same team as Rabi and the Inuzuka girl, Tsume (they were low on boys in their class). Rabi couldn't stop ranting about how annoying that Uzumaki girl was and how she nearly made their whole team fail the first test. Tsume, however, would happily beg to differ; she humiliated him with the story of how their team leader had trailed him for ten whole minutes before he eventually had to show himself and ask Rabi where his focus was.

Kushina was happy to be assigned the same team as Tsume. She got along with the girl; she wasn't like those squealing, gossiping girls who would pretend to wave off bad smell whenever they passed, or who regularly came with updates about the life of Minato and who he was currently crushing on. Kushina hated those girls. She wasn't particularly fond of Minato either, but she had to smirk of the thought of him being nicer and talking more to her than he did to those girls.

Minato was only happy that Kushina had begun responding to him. During the first six months as genin, she had grown off a little of the reticence she had had at the academy, which he thanked Tsume for. Her replies were still not very informative or engaged; she was still a bit gloomy whenever anyone talked to her. Plus, she still didn't take him seriously, no matter how much she heard about him being a prodigy, a genius, one of a kind, blah blah blah. He still looked like a flaky girl to her.

It was on the night when she came home from a training session with Tsume, when she found her apartment trashed and the windows and front door broken, when she was attacked three-on-one and led out of the village – it was on that night she would change her view of the girly boy.

As he carried her back home to Konoha, he didn't seem so girly any more.

"Okay … No serious injuries, but you're exhausted. You're staying here tonight."

"What?" Kushina complained in a weak tone. "I'm fine, I can rest at home."

"Unfortunately, you can't," the medic-nin replied sharply. "If anyone makes another attempt at kidnapping you, you won't be able to defend yourself. You're low on chakra and don't have the energy to stand up against ninja of chuunin or jounin level -"

Kushina grumbled. She hated hospitals; they only reminded her of the night Mito-sama passed away and she was honoured with the task of hosting a monster.

"We've set two ANBU outside and two inside your room to watch over you."

Kushina set her eyes firmly at the wall and didn't reply. By the sound of knocking on the door, however, she looked up, heart beating slightly harder.

"Come in," the medic-nin said.

The door was opened, and revealed one of the two ANBU standing guard outside the hospital room.

"Namikaze-kun has requested to visit," the ANBU said with her feminine voice. Kushina felt her cheeks flush and tugged at the quilt covering her legs where she sat against the wall on her bed, and her mind was racing when the medic-nin turned to her for an answer. She nodded shortly, and began fiddling with her hair.

"Send him in," the medic-nin said. "But make sure he leaves after five minutes, Kushina needs her rest."

The ANBU woman stepped aside and let the boy in. Kushina looked in his warm, blue eyes for three seconds of eternity before they snapped back to the wall. Minato entered her room while the medic-nin walked out after having left a mixture Kushina was to drink before she went to sleep.

"How are you?" Minato asked, smiling, when he approached the bed.

"Uhm, fine," Kushina replied. She had tried to keep a steady voice, but exhaustion made it tremble. Minato observed her for a moment before he spoke.

"I can leave and come back tomorrow, if you want -"

"No, stay!" Kushina said before she could stop herself, and her cheeks reached a redness challenging her hair. "Uhm, I mean … It's all right, you know ..."

Minato chuckled, and when Kushina motioned for him to sit down on the bedside, he did.

"You know ..." she said while she tried to release a neglected leaf from her hair, which the medic-nin had made an attempt at combing. "Thank you for saving me."

"You don't have to thank me," Minato smiled.

"No, I'm serious," Kushina insisted, and let out what had bothered her ever since she arrived at the hospital in his arms. "I haven't even been nice to you. I've barely bothered talking to you, yet you fight for me as though we've been friends for years!"

"Kushina," Minato said sternly, and the girl nearly cowered under the intense stare. "Even though we've barely talked, you've never been directly mean to me. I've never taken you for an enemy or a plague, you're a comrade, a friend even."

Kushina blinked. Minato's serious expression turned milder. He reached out a hand.

"Friends?"

Kushina surprised herself when she smiled, and reached out her own to grab it.

"Visiting time is over," one of the ANBU said.

Minato promised to visit her the day after, a promise he held. They soon made regular plans. Not dates, not at all; the plans involved sparring, training, exhausting each other and every now and then sending each other to the emergency room for minor treatments. Bad conscience ended up in a visit to Ichiraku's to treat the wounded a bowl of ramen, or five.

In the end, the two had become inseparable.