Facing Bad Tropes with Naruko-chan 5 (Patreon)

Facing Bad Tropes with Naruko-chan 5 - (Naruto AU, SI)

Being Uzumaki Menma was a pain.

Truth be told, the eight years-old girl was unsure on why she thought all this hard effort was even truly needed considering how infuriating her parents could be. When she was born, Menma had lived two lovely years.

Her mother cared for her, her father would be around when he wasn’t buried by paperwork, and her sister was… decent. Maybe she should have known that those pouts adorning Mito’s face were not about a whim getting denied, but rather because of jealousy tied to the affection she, a mere toddler, would get over her.

Things were fine up until she got to the age of 4 and she started to be ‘prodigious’. That’s how some tutors called her. Even at the academy she was already labeled as the newest ‘Rookie of the Year and Class’, having secured a formidable understanding of ninja-works from the get-go. Menma loved the praise, even more when those came from her parents but…

That’s where Mito became unbearable.

She knew she could get uppity around her, but once it became clear that the little sister was better-geared for ninja training and future ninja field missions, the red-haired dolt became a true pain as she tried to upstage her and whined anytime that Menma was retelling how she got her newest trophy to her parents.

For a time, Menma was actually self-conscious. Maybe her sister was just feeling sore because she was struggling at the academy and, out of principle, Menma decided to lessen the mention of her achievements.

Her parents would be notified, but it was mostly through teachers and the praise was not answered as earnestly as usual to lessen the unpleasant feeling of being outpaced like this.

Then, as Menma got to age 6, she was stunned when her mother had her called to the living room. The cause for this sudden summoning which saw her mother give her a relentless lecture about ‘not practicing inside the house’.

“But I practice in the courtyard,” Menma reasonably mumbled, thinking her mother would relent on a habit she still kept on doing after her father taught her that.

“Then how come Mito-chan saw you breaking one of Grandma Mito’s vases while training your taijutsu.”

That baffled poor Menma to no end. Yet, even as she tried to defend herself, her mother wouldn’t hear it. To her, this was a ‘spoiled child’ being given too much attention. The spanking that ensued drove a deep case of confusion within her mind, even more as she was being relayed that ‘poor Mito’ would never lie since she is the village’s savior.

Confusion that was slowly replaced by a growing sense of hatred for her older sister. A year went by, and Menma could hardly keep around her own house without being pulled aside by one of her parents and be screeched about something she did.

Another broken vase, next was a frame, then it was some papers that got ink on them and, perhaps the worst possible, what happened when she was grounded from taking part in a competition at the academy because ‘she had been too unruly in the last few months’.

Menma was willing to take a lot as punishment, but having her own wings clipped because of these lies- she couldn’t bear it. Suddenly Mito found her chances to bury her further moved away from reach, with Menma opting to eat at ‘friends’ houses’ rather than back home.

She had some nice people to rely upon in that regard but Menma was stunned when her solid factual rebuttal about the umpteenth broken vase, which saw Mito caught in such a lie, only led to a brief scolding and a head pat for understanding her mistakes.

At that point, any chance to try and win over her parents in the way of common sense was lost. Mito was given immunity due to her odd conditions, which her father was not privy to explain to her as it was a ‘S-Rank secret’, but the more Menma thought about it, the more she realized this could have been another lie.

Step by step, Menma found herself without her family support at the age of eight, and she was keen to wander off late in the day to blow some steam away from the dinner table.

Wandering the village at that hour was so unusual for someone her age and pedigree, but rather than get nagged by the usual civilian willing to coax to her desires, Menma just put on a hat and would go around as a ‘normal kid’. And it was within one of those strolls that she found the Pizzeria.

Well, first Menma found her. She was wandering on her own, aimlessly as usual, and then BAM! she came out of the blue from around one of the corners by the street.

She was running, beaming and all, wearing a black jumpsuit with orange details and carrying a bag for food. Due to her size (and her sizes) the older girl managed to make her trip back, with Menma being bestowed with two large spheres pressing on her face. It was soft, but it was awkward as the one that owned those melons was someone that was just two years older than her.

Bugarino Ruruko was such an oddball to Menma. In a sense, she was like her sister in terms of personality, except she was blonde and far more polite than Mito could ever hope to be.

She was also quickly apologizing over the mess, but while Menma had tried to just pull away from that interaction, the fellow blonde had gasped over the sight of a bruise Menma now sported on her right palm due to the fall and-

“She overworried,” Her father justified sheepishly, with Menma now sitting by one of the stools in front of the main counter of the Pizzeria.

That’s one way to put it, I guess.

Ruruko had pretty much yanked her to get her a bandaid, and that proved to be as embarrassing as interesting as 1) the green log bandaid looked quite cute and 2) this was a place she had only barely heard about.

From Menma’s understanding, her mother didn’t want to visit this place because it was ‘competition’ with Ramen Ichiraku… even though old man Teuchi said that Jonno-san was a friend of both him and Ayame as he was keen to take part to ‘charity competitions’ to favor good causes through those events.

Still, her mother didn’t want to go there and thus the family never visited this place. This was the first time Menma visited a Pizzeria, and she had to say it was a different environment compared to the smaller but more homely place that was Ramen Ichiraku.

As an ‘apology’, she was even given a free dinner meal. It was absurd to imagine accepting such kindness, but Menma was coerced by a ‘crying’ Ruruko and the outrageously nice smell coming from these pizzas.

Without any hesitation, she asked for a menu, and she was given a nice seat with cutlery and a fairly large pizza. The price was insanely cheap for something so huge. And her belly was happy when she was done devouring that lovely ‘Fire Pizza’.

A strange way to make new friends, but while Ruruko did happen to be a good replacement for her dreadful sister, it was her father that got her interested in visiting so frequently.

Instead of telling her parents about her achievements, Menma would wait to tell those to Jonno-san. The man would behave like her father used to before Mito became unbearable, and he would give her some constructive advice over what she could do to even do better.

It was weird to even consider this but- Menma had slowly turned to appreciate Jonno-san as a new father. Time went by, Menma became a fixture of the place, and she ended up preening heavily under Jonno-san’s caring tone.

Enough for her and Ruruko to butt heads on how to split ‘their’ father’s attention between each other. Sure, it was another case of ‘sisterly jealousy’, but instead of the antagonistic point adopted by Mito, Ruruko was actually more playful about it and willing to play in a fair field.

In a sense, Menma loved that kind of rivalry, even starting to be more open about her interest in spending time with Jonno-san with Ruruko around and…

Realize she may have quite a few interests in wanting to be a bit more daughterly than she was right now.

—------d-d-d-d—-----

AN

Menma doesn’t know about Naruko. She knows she had an older twin sister that is ‘no longer around’, so she has no clue on Ruko-chan’s real identity. At the same time, Jonno didn’t tell Ruko-chan about Menma’s last name just yet.

In an odd case of twists, Menma (the lone prodigious avenger that would have mustered the edgiest and darkest route) is now slowly led to a path of success without any of that painful cringeworthy edginess.

Likewise, this will attract a potential ally to Jonno’s Pizzeria in the form of another ‘tropified character’. I have a logical spin on how the trope unfolds, but let’s just say he isn’t fully ‘good’ in this version of the story.

P.S. This is about Menma’s design: She got a dumpy. The point of this is- Naruko is tits, Menma is butt, Mito is flat (and it’s true justice from fate itself).