Chapter Text
“Yo!” A girl with brown hair, red clan markings, and a small grey puppy on her shoulder shouts, right in his face.
“Wh-What?! Who are you!?” Naruto sputters, tripping backwards.
The girl grins. “I’m Inuzuka Jin! This is Setsumaru! Who are you?”
Naruto blinks for moment, recovering quickly into a pose with one hand on his hips and his other jabbing into his chest, smile already pasted back onto his face. “I’m Uzumaki Naruto, dattebayo!! I’m gonna be Hokage, so ya better remember it!” He points at her. “Whaddya— wh-what’re ya doin’?!”
Jin had leaned into his face, hands on her hips and their faces nearly touching with their proximity. She was squinting at him, looking straight into his eyes, humming in tight concentration. Naruto leans back, ending up stuck between a desk behind him and the girl in front of him. His hand ends up gripping the desk as he stares at her in mildly panicked confusion. This goes on for several moments, before all of a sudden, Jin nods. She rocks back onto her heels. Naruto slides down the desk a bit, crouching more than standing, still holding onto the desk behind him with both hands. He stares at the girl with wide eyes and tense shoulders, as she stands up straight, pointing at him with one hand on her hips, mirroring his previous position.
“You!” She declares, “Uzumaki! We’re friends now!”
Naruto blinks at the segue.
“What?! Says who?!”
“Says me!!”
“Who even are you?!”
“I told you already!! I’m Inuzuka Jin!! And this is Setsumaru!!”
“Wha- HEY!” Naruto trips over his words as Jin reaches forward and grabs his wrist, yanking him towards the classroom door. “Where’re ya takin’ me?!”
She turns back to grin at him. “I’m gonna show you to Aniki, and then we’re gonna play Ninja Tag!”
Naruto, still with wide eyes but enough presence of mind not to trip over his own feet, follows her in stunned silence down the hallway, her hand still gripping his wrist. She wasn’t holding so tight that he couldn’t get away, if he wanted to- but maybe that was the point? She wanted him to let go? But wait no, that didn’t make any sense, who even was she, he’d never seen her before ever, and wasn’t Inuzuka Dog Breath’s name? Where did she even come from, anyway, he was alone in that classroom to set up his next prank, he didn’t even notice her coming in- Naruto blinks rapidly, squinting his eyes at the sudden sunlight and stumbling forward at the sudden lack of force yanking him forward. He freezes in place, hands on his knees, did she change her mind? Why did she let go so suddenly? Were her parents here? Was she like all the others who wanted to play with him, sharp and freezing and red-
“ANIKI!! OVER HERE!!”
Naruto jerks his up to see the girl waving energetically, both her arms frantically moving above her head. He squints in the direction she was facing, eyes still adjusting to the sun, but in the distance he saw a figure approaching. He rubs his eyes. What’s going on? Nobody wants to be friends with him, he’s tried-
(He’s tired.
Of not being enough, of being hated, of being invisible.)
-he slaps his cheeks. The girl—Inuzuka?—says she’ll play with him, her and her brother, and maybe tomorrow she’ll decide that she hates—that she likes him, and they’ll play more, and be real friends, and maybe her brother will call him a demon—a friend, like she did, and then maybe he’ll be—he won’t be-
“What’re you up to, Gaki?” A male voice asks dryly.
-Naruto jerks his head up, not having noticed he was looking at his knees. He stumbles forward a bit, ending up standing beside Inuzuka—what was her first name, again? He knows she told him—and the boy. He has shoulder-length light blond hair and green eyes, and, overall, looked nothing Inuzuka. In fact, he looked kinda like-
“You look like Ino!” Naruto declared, pointing at his face. The boy immediately glares at him, slapping his hand away from his face. Naruto breathes in sharply and holds it.
“Don’t shove your finger in my face. It’s annoying. I can hear you just fine and it’s obvious you’re talking to me even without the dramatics.” The Ino-look-alike said. Sighing, he drops his glare and continues. “And I look like Ino because we’re siblings.” Quietly, in a way that Naruto was fairly sure meant he wasn’t supposed to hear it, he added, “Unfortunately.”
Using the breath he had held, Naruto shouts, “I didn’t know Ino had siblings!”
For some reason, this makes both of them laugh, Inuzuka more than the Ino-look-alike-sibling.
Naruto swallows a burst of yellowy orange, keeping silent.
Inuzuka smiles, “Don’t worry, it’s an inside joke. Anyway, this is Aniki!”
Naruto crosses his arms and squints. “You don’t look like siblings,” he says. Looking at Inuzuka, he adds, “You look more like Dog-Breath than anything, dattebayo.” You smell like him, too.
Inuzuka’s face shifts several times before she settles on, “Dog-Breath?”
Naruto shrugs. “Ya know, Kiba.”
She and her puppy blink once, twice—she bursts out into laughter, her puppy with her, somehow. “HA, HAHAHA!! DOG-BREATH! Oh, oh it suits him perfectly, that asshole, HAHAHA!”
Naruto looks at the Ino-look-alike-sibling-Yamanaka in confusion. Before he can open his mouth to ask, Yamanaka smirks and explains, “She’s Kiba’s sibling.”
Turning back to the still laughing girl, who had since fallen to ground and was nearly out of breath, though still laughing, Yamanaka reached out a hand to her and sighs, “Stand back up already.”
Inuzuka looks him, takes a deep breath, and continues laughing. Her puppy, though, hops off her shoulder and up to Yamanaka, who catches her with ease.
Tucking the dog to his chest, Yamanaka kicks Inuzuka a couple times while turning to look at Naruto. “I’m Yamanaka Inouza. What’s your name?”
Choosing to ignore the strange interaction, Naruto jumps onto the train of conversation. “My name is Uzumaki Naruto, dattebayo!! I’m gonna be the next Hokage!!”
Yamanaka stares at him. “Why? Do you know what a Hokage even does? What a pain.”
Naruto leans back, arms behind his head, smile pasted onto his face. “I thought you were Ino’s sibling, not Shikamaru’s!” he shouts.
Yamanaka stares off into the distance. “Oh, I wish,” he groans. “I’d get to cloud-watch all day instead of study.”
“You’d still have to study, Aniki,” Naruto leans back from the sound, his eyes immediately finding Inuzuka standing back up. Her lips were still curved into a smile, and she was panting a bit, but she was no longer laughing her ass off. She looks at Naruto and grins.
“No I wouldn’t, I’d just passively absorb all the words around me, like a genius, and I wouldn’t have to study ‘cause I’d already know.”
Inuzuka jerks her head to glare at Yamanaka. “If you die before me, not only will I cry, I will also never, ever, let you live it down”
Yamanaka shrugs. “I don’t see how’d I’d be able to live something down if I’m dead.”
Inuzuka growls, her puppy shifting itself in Yamanaka’s arms to follow suit.
Naruto decides that this would be a great time to talk about something else. Like the question they hadn’t answered yet. He jumps between them and shouts, “I SAID! YOU DON’T LOOK LIKE SIBLINGS!!”
Inuzuka switches her target to him, growling and glaring—(in solid yellow, and Naruto found that he greatly preferred it to the usual dark red he gets)—
“SO?!” she snarls. “THAT DOESN’T MAKE HIM ANY LESS MY BIG BROTHER, OR ME ANY LESS HIS LITTLE SISTER!!”
She looks nearly ready to maul him, but before Naruto can tense up, Yamanaka snatches the back of her shirt, near her neck, lifts her up, and shakes her. She snarls at him instead in response. “PUT ME DOWN! I’LL BITE YOU!”
“No you won’t,” Yamanaka responds, unconcerned. “Chill out.”
“I’LL CHILL YOU OUT-”
“YOU SAID WE’D PLAY NINJA TAG?” Naruto interrupts, feeling more and more uncomfortable.
The growling ceases immediately, and both… siblings turned to look at him with bright eyes. Inuzuka looked up at Yamanaka and said, “Oh, right! Uzumaki and I are friends now, Aniki! And I asked if he wanted to play Ninja Tag and he didn’t say no, so we’re all gonna play Ninja Tag now! Now we have a third! You were saying how boring it was with just us—”
“That was you, actually—”
“Yeah, well, you didn’t argue, so you agree, and now we can play!” Inuzuka shakes herself free of her brother’s grasp, scooping up her puppy before skipping up to him with a smile. “Now C’mon! The four of us can play! Setsumaru and I are a team, of course. Aniki can be it and we’ll have to run! Yeah?” She turns to face Yamanaka, and Naruto followed her gaze—
To find Yamanaka already counting.
“-Shit!” Inuzuka panicks. She grabbed ahold of Naruto’s jacket and starts tugging him away. “C’mon, hurry! Aniki’s fast!”
Naruto makes a decision.
“This way!” he shouts.
“Quiet, what if he hears us!” she shouts back.
“You’re shouting too, dattebayo!”
“I CAN HEAR BOTH OF YOU!” Yamanaka shoutes, even louder.
They laugh and run.