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// The Will of Fire 05 
// Story: The Many Destinies of Sunset Shimmer 
// by ratedoni 
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If there was one stressful day for any kind of student, no matter the school, it was the first day of classes. Unless one came from an escalator school, it was probable that you didn’t know a single student in your school, which alongside the stress of new classes and other perilous facts of school made for the worst days of one as a student.

Equally important was the last day of classes in general; the moment where you would never have to see those classmates you never liked or the same boring classroom. For one Uzumaki Naruto, the fact that this day would be the last one he would spend in school was bittersweet at best.

Growing up alone at first, the blonde boy was not very popular, usually being ostracized by the citizens and ninjas of the village. Beyond old man Ichiraku and his daughter or the Sandaime, there was no one that would take away the loneliness that was slowly chipping away at whatever he had as heart. Then a storm took over his life and nothing was ever the same again. 

Sunset Shimmer had found him in the street one day when he had been thrown out of a store after trying to buy instant ramen. Naruto wasn’t sure what had happened but after the man started to badmouth Sunset too after she tried to help Naruto, the owner had disappeared several days later. The store had been abandoned after the man had packed his bags and ran away from the village; the last he had heard about him he had become a hermit living in a cave close to Kumo.

The redhead was a force to be reckoned with, and Naruto had been witness of the crazy stuff the woman had done through the years, just like giving Naruto a family. Nothing was official since the Sandaime couldn’t quite sign adoption papers, not that neither of them thought about it, they were simply family, a paper couldn’t change that. The first few months had been so weird for Naruto since he had to follow rules now but after finding himself the happiest he had ever been, he just didn’t care at the end

Naruto took a deep breath and opened the door to be greeted by the same classroom and his classmates. It seemed too big for the amount of students present but Naruto understand that was due to all the students that had been incapable of graduating; mostly civilian kids who had too much of a disadvantage compared to kids of different clans.

The only civilian that had been capable of going beyond the mediocre bar had been the one pinkette that was right now laughing at something her blonde female friend had said. Naruto felt himself smiling too seeing those two together like that. If there was something weird on his life it was the fact that he not only had friends, but that all of them were girls. At first year of ninja academy he had been teased by the Inuzuka boy but the next day he came back with several bruises and what seemed like dog bite marks on his face. It was obvious that both Tsume and Hana had put the boy on his place and since then he never said anything bad about the four friends.

It had been weird to grow up alongside someone like Sakura, who sometimes seemed as intelligent as Sunset herself, while other times she fumbled and made some mistakes in a technique she was trying. As he had understood from his caretaker, Sakura had almost perfect control over her chakra; the problem was that it came from her very low reserves. Just seeing her almost crawl after a gruesome day of training at the hands of the Red Nightmare from Konoha was something that never failed to make him laugh.

At the other side there was the other blonde terror in Konoha, just not in the way Naruto was known as. While the boy was known for pranking -it apparently was now a test for new Anbu to see if they would be able to catch Naruto after a prank-, Ino was infamous for how fast one could be falling for her charming strategies and quick thinking. A favorite of everyone was the time she made Kiba fetch a stick as if he were a simple dog. Even now the Inuzuka boy was wary whenever Ino was close.

Unlike the popular Uchiha fan club, the two were obviously shinobi first, although considering the role model the two had the only thing that could happen would be for those two to become even scarier. Thankfully for him there was a girl that no matter what happened would never change into a killing machine like those two. That was none other than the Hyuuga heiress who at that moment was waving at him with an angelical smile. Naruto felt as if all the worries of the world were being erased by that kind of smile. If there was a friend he truly valued was Hinata and the rest of the Hyuuga clan. Sadly for the blonde boy he had to sit next to the sourest human in all of Konoha.

Just sitting down at Sasuke’s side was enough to depress the loudmouth. Looking at the other girls that made part of the Brat Society, he tried to discern who would like to exchange seats with him, sadly for him the other three members were looking stoically in the direction of the blackboard like every other time.

‘You bunch of traitors!’ He thought before he heard his favorite teacher enter the classroom and start giving his last day speech and team assignation. For his part, Naruto ignored the thick moodiness coming from Sasuke like any other day and tuned out Iruka for a few minutes.

Then everything went sour when he heard the name of who he had to be a team with. Immediately he was up alongside Sasuke complaining about the team they had to make. Apparently Sasuke was against it because he had to be with a dead last, one of Sasuke’s favorite nicknames for Naruto; although, on his mind, everyone was dead last compared with himself.

“I knew that putting you guys together was a bad idea,” a voice came from behind the classroom shocking every student out of their wits. None other than the Red Nightmare was sitting down in the steps for who knows how long, scaring the students witless except for the Brat Society “now, now, I don’t want to hear any complain from either of you three… at least not until you pass my special training.” The amount of killing intent that was emanating from the redhead was enough to make several students faint while Sakura and Naruto simply turned to look at each other.

“Naruto.”

“Yeah?”

“Hug me, I’m scared!” The pinkette basically screamed as Sunset took Sasuke by the head and began to drag him outside much to the shock of both Ino and Hinata.

“Hinata-chan?”

“Yes?”

“Do you have any more of that ointment you make?”

“I prepared several jars in case something like this happened.”

“Well, I suppose we cannot do a thing except pray for our fallen friends.”

“Ino-chan! Don’t jinx them!”