What if Naruto stepped in to prevent Ami from teasing Sakura before Ino could befriend her? Watch as the unlikely duo takes Konoha and the Shinobi world by storm.

Chapter 1 - A Hit To The Head

-.x.X.x.-

"Sh-Shut up!" The pink haired girl stammered out her defense, but still the larger girl pressed forward, shoving the smaller one down to her butt.

"Sakura, you know how big your forehead is?" Ami's cruel tone made it obvious what she thought of Sakura's forehead. "It's as big as a Billboard!"

The gaggle of young girls behind Ami, all of whom were students at the Academy, grinned and laughed at Sakura's predicament. To any adult walking by the park, or supervising from a distance, it would look like the group of girls was having a grand old time, enjoying the nice spring weather that Konoha was experiencing. The late winter rains had come and gone and now spring was beginning to show as flowers bloomed and nature looked more vibrant, freshly rejuvenated by the rains.

However, this was obviously not the case as Sakura had tears welling up in her eyes. Ami and her click placed themselves between the pink haired girl and any prying adult eyes. If no one of any authority saw what happened, it would simply be the word of one girl against the group of them.

"You know, it's obvious that you aren't meant to be a kunoichi Forehead-girl." Ami smiled in faux sympathy. "You could never look pretty enough to be a true kunoichi of Konoha..." Her words and the mocking and jeering words of her group had their intended effect, and Sakura's tears could not be restrained any further. Her green eyes began to redden as the salty liquid drops streamed down her cheek, spilling onto the dusty ground she was kneeling on.

-.x.X.x.-

Ami was right in thinking that no one of real consequence would see what was going on. However she was mistaken in her thought that no one would step in. Uzumaki Naruto, future Hokage, had been watching the children play in the park for what felt like all his life. Of course he wasn't allowed to join in, however that did not mean he could not watch and try to live through them just a little. If he had a mother of father, or even a guardian, they would have told him it wasn't healthy for a growing boy like him to live on the outside, looking in.

But he didn't, and here he was, just now noticing a pretty girl with pink hair surrounded by a group of girls. He recognized them from the Academy induction ceremony that Hokage-Jiji had talked at just a couple of months ago. They were among different classes, which is why he didn't know their names, except for their ring leader Ami, the bully in his class, 1-4.

When his angle shifted enough as he made his way around the perimeter of the park, he saw how they surrounded the pink-haired girl on the ground. He knew her name. Sakura, just like her hair, the Sakura blossom was vibrant pink. She was the only person whose name he knew from the other classes and simply because of her hair color.

Watching from his hiding place, he saw Ami and her friends say something that he couldn't hear over the distance and Sakura burst into more tears, coating her already puffy cheeks and wet skin with more liquid. It wasn't right that they made her cry. It wasn't fair. In the Academy, Ami had to obey the teachers, who told her not to pick on the other students and she never listened. But out here, there was nothing preventing her from making other people like Sakura cry. No adults or parents to step in.

Naruto scanned the adults hanging around the park watching their children from a distance. No one had pink hair like Sakura. In the blonde's mind that meant that there was no one looking out for her. Making up his mind, he darted out from the bushes and ran over to the group of girls. As he neared, he could hear Ami's shrill laughter as Sakura tried to speak. His sharp ears picked up her softer words.

"Shut. Up. Ami."

He needed no further reason. With a shout, he darted into a full sprint and over the last five meters, stutter stepped and leaped over the gaggle of girls, twisted around in mid air and landed between Ami and Sakura. If any shinobi had been observing this, they would have been impressed with his movements. Taking advantage of Ami's surprised silence, Naruto stepped toward her and challenged her. "If you want to pick on someone, pick on someone who can fight back." He cracked his knuckles as threateningly as his six year old fingers would let him and settled into the Academy Taijutusu's opening stance. At least he thought it was the correct stance, but he hadn't really been paying a whole lot of attention to the instructor, who had as a matter of principle, not really paid any attention to him.

His sudden arrival and threat caused some of Ami's friends to scream in terror. Naruto winced at the noise. They were freaking loud, and their shrill voices carried really, really well into the ears of the adults who were scattered around the park.

Before he had a chance to give his speech to them, the adults were on their way over. Some had shinobi training, having been students at the academy for a number of years, but never became genin. Others had actually been or were active shinobi. Most of the people who came to this particular park in Konoha's western district had civilian roots. The few who were able to become shinobi tended to stay close to their own, and away from the clans. The Academy leftovers simply held their anger at not being selected inside for far too long.

Today, everything was going to boil over into violence.

-.x.X.x.-

The first to arrive next to the screaming girls was genin Harisho Yurihara.

The daughter of a minor merchant, she knew just how badly Konoha had suffered after the Kyuubi attack. When she darted over to the girls, she saw one of the torments of her existence. At 16, she had been a genin for more than 3 years, and despite two chuunin exams, was still a genin while the rest of her original genin team were now chuunin serving in Konoha's border patrol. It troubled her to no end how much advantage the clan shinobi had over the rest of the good people of Konoha. In both exams, her other two teammates had been from clans and both times, each of her teammates were promoted over her. They were at least nice enough to disguise their superiority complexes by offering fake encouragement that the next exam would be different for her.

She was at the park to supervise her young cousin on a day off. Harisho Yami was a bright child and easily excitable. If there was trouble in the park, she would not hear the end of it from her aunt for weeks. It took her all of five seconds to take in the gaggle of screaming, gibbering academy aged girls spreading out from the blonde boy and pink-haired girl. The pink hair delayed the genin kunoichi's actions by all of a millisecond. The daughter of councilwoman Hanaro had puffy eyes and tears rolling down her face.

"What's going on here?" she asked, debating how likely it was she would get a straight answer.

Ami spoke up for her group. "He made her cry!" Yurihara could see the scheming girl time her answer so that the majority of the adults coming over to investigate would hear her.

In a matter of seconds the crowd had formed and were shouting at the blonde boy and beginning to throw rocks at him. Unfortunately, their aim was horrible and Sakura got hit in the chest and the side of her head and began to bleed.

"Stop throwing rocks!" Yurihara shouted out in her best voice of authority. She may have been a mere genin, but she had years of D and C-rank missions where she needed to make herself heard. "You hit the poor girl in the head." Her statement caused the crowd to pause and look at the pink-haired girl.

"Hey, isn't that councilwoman Hanaro's daughter?" One of the people in the back murmured loud enough for most of the crowd to hear.

"You idiots hit her, and I'm going to take her to the hospital," Yurihara declared and scooped up the young girl into her arms. After shifting the deadweight to one arm, she grabbed her cousin's hand and all but dragged him away from the park, despite his vigorous protests.

What no one in the crowd noticed until it was too late, was the blonde boy slinking off into the residential streets surrounding the park. As battered and bruised as he was, he knew he would wake up in the morning and everything would feel all better.

-.x.X.x.-

Sakura awoke in the semi-darkness of a hospital room at night. The door was closed, but still the bright hall lights reflected off the polished floor and into her eyes as she lay on her bed. She squinted and began to sit up when the nausea hit her hard. Collapsing back down into her pillow, she groaned. Between the light and her rapid descent into her pillows, her head throbbed fiercely.

Even with the limited training she had gone through at the Academy, she was sure she had a concussion. In addition to a splitting headache, she could feel the swelling on the side of her head as she tried to find a comfortable position on her pillow. One of the stupid people in the crowd must have hit her with a rock they had meant for the blonde boy.

She knew his name was Naruto.

It was hard to go to the Academy and not hear some instructor or another screaming at him to either pay attention, sit down, or stop asking questions. From the books she read, he sounded like the classic example of a trouble student, but when he had shown up, she couldn't have been happier to see him. It it weren't for him, Ami and the other girls in class 1-4 would have continued to tease her. She didn't know what was worse, to have a concussion, or been teased.

While she might have been physically worse off with his help, at least he had tried to help. In that moment, she resolved herself to learn more about the blonde boy.

-.x.X.x-

Naruto was right about his injuries. They had completely healed by the time he woke up the next morning. All that was left was some lingering patches of brown and purple from the rocks. The pain he had felt in his side when he breathed in and out was gone. The same could be said for the finger that had been pointed in a weird direction after a rock had smashed it into the ground. It was back to its normal position and nothing looked wrong with it.

Happy that the pain was gone, he slipped out of bed and threw his night cap on top of his pillow and hastily threw his covers, which had fallen onto the floor during a night of fitful sleeping, back onto his bed. Padding into the kitchen of his apartment, he started to boil water in his kettle. Leaving the water to heat up, he climbed up onto his counter and opened the cupboards attached to the wall. Examining his stock of instant ramen, he decided upon a miso and beef to start the day. His cupboards held, what would be a lifetime supply of ramen for a normal person, about a month's supply of ramen for the blonde boy.

It cost him nearly every spare ryo he had to fill his stomach. What didn't go to paying the generously low rent the manager offered him, and didn't go into replacing his meager shinobi supplies, went into food. He made sure to put a hundred ryo a month into his safety fund, just in case his food got stolen or something, but skipping a meal a week was a good tradeoff for having a reserve of money. Or so Naruto believed.

When he had waited the required three minutes for the ramen to cool, the ramen cups were empty within 30 seconds. Eating quickly, he found, along with drinking lots of water, helped disguise the taste of the cheap ramen and the unknowingly pitiful nutrition it provided. Naruto's theory was that Ichikura's Ramen spoiled his taste for the regular stuff because the hand-made meals from the old man's stand were simply divine. Ramen truly was the food of the Kami.

Today was a normal day at the Shinobi Academy for Naruto. His first lesson started bright and early at 07:45, but when he spared a moment to glance at the clock on his kitchen wall, he was alarmed to see it indicated the time was 08:27.

"Aw man..." Naruto slapped his bare forehead with an open palm. "Iruka-sensei is going to be pissed!"