After the wedding, Ayano and Itachi got a house in the Uchiha compound (Naruto was living with them of course) and everything seems to be going well.  That is, until Ayano overheard some of the villagers talking about how she made an ally of the Uchiha, and how she is going to help them take over the village.  She sighs and continues walking to the academy to bring Naruto and Sasuke their lunches.

When she arrives she sees Sasuke by a railing, staring down at something with a blush on his face. Ayano followed his gaze and saw he was looking at a raven haired girl with a lavender bow in her hair.  She was wearing a dark blue dress with black ninja sandals and very light lilac arm warmers.  She was a Hyuga by the looks of it (due to her eyes).

Ayano smirks and walks towards the distracted boy, parking herself next to him and looking down at the girl.  "You like that girl?," she says smugly, which scared the poor Uchiha.  He looks at Ayano defiantly, though the look is ruined by his slight blush telling the whole story.

"Don't do that Ayano-nee," he pouts, which makes Ayano chuckle.

"Alright alright.  Anyway I brought you your lunch."  She hands him his lunch and Sasuke takes it thoughtfully.

"I thought Nii-san was going to bring my lunch today."  He says it accusedly, like a pointed question. 

Ayano's smile turns to a slight frown.  She looks away sighing.  "You know he's busy." 

Sasuke grumbles, crossing his arms and looking away.  Ayano bends down and puts a hand on Sasuke's shoulder.  "You know he'd rather be spending time with you, so don't let this get you down okay?"

He nods, but doesn't look at her.  Ayano looks around, trying to think of something to take his mind off of Itachi.  She notices a girl with short pink hair tied back with a red ribbon and cat green eyes, similar to the Hyuga from earlier.  The girl is half crouched behind a tree, but it is still clear to Hiyori that she is watching Sasuke.  'Perfect distraction!'  "Seems we've got a girl who likes you Sasuke," she says, smirking.  Sasuke instantly groans and glares at the pink haired girl, making her blush a deep red then hide behind her tree.  Ayano looks at Sasuke in shock, then smacks him upside the head.

"Ow, what did you do that for?"  Sasuke clutches his head in pain.  "I only did that because her and a bunch of other girls stare at me all the time.  It's a little creepy honestly!"

Ayano pauses for a second, remembering how Itachi used to be bombarded by girls back at the academy (for the short time they were there anyway), and starts laughing.  Sasuke looks up at her confused.  "What?!  What's so funny?"

Ayano wipes a tear from her eye as she sighs.  "Nothing, nothing at all."  She looks back at the Hyuga girl, who had taken out a book and was reading while eating her lunch.  "So that Hyuga, do you like her?," she asks.

Sasuke looks back at the Hyuga.  "Her name is Hiyori and she's really nice and... pretty."  He mumbles the last part blushing.

Ayano smiles ruffling his hair.  "Crushes are good.  Makes you a little bit more grown up, ya know."

Sasuke looks up happily.  "Really!?!"  Ayano nods and stands up. 

"Welp, I have to go give Naruto his lunch too.  Do your best the rest of the day Sasuke!"  She walks away, putting up her hand in farewell as she goes.  Sasuke nods, waving back.  He would question why she was bringing lunch to such a loser, but that loser is Ayano's brother- if he said something Ayano would probably scold him for it.

Ayano searches for Naruto for a while, then senses his chakra.  She follows it, only to finds that he was in front of a girl protectively and there were some mean boys surrounding them.  She runs over quickly, alarmed.

"Looks like the monster is protecting the freak!," one of the kids cries, and Ayano's eyes widen as they start to beat Naruto up.

"H-Hey stop it!!," she shouts angrily in shock.

The kids look up at Ayano, glaring.  One of the boys says "what do you want?," in a forced tone, sounding like it was a chore to even talk to her.  Ayano glares back, unfazed.  'These little BRATS...'

"To make you stop hurting my brother and this girl... it's rude ya know," she says as she smacks the bullies on the head, forcing herself to keep the smacks to only point five percent of her full strength.  "You're lucky that's all you boys get, I don't take bullies lightly."  She creates a few shadow clones, and they grab the boys by their ears and drag them into the academy for an adult to reprimand them for what they did.

Ayano sighs, looking back at Naruto and the girl.  "You both alright?," she says, concerned but serious.

Naruto gets up slowly and the girl looks at Naruto worriedly.  They exchange a glance.  Then Naruto smiles and says, "yeah I totally had it covered dattebayo."  Ayano gives him a stern look, knowing he isn't telling the complete truth.

"Naruto..."

Naruto cowers under his sister's wrath, but still says defiantly, "nee-chan I'm fine!  Nobody can beat me!"

Ayano rolls her eyes and turns to face the girl, who she could now tell was a Hyuga.  "Now who might you be?," Ayano says sweetly, trying to make the girl feel more comfortable.

The girl looks at her nervously and stutters out, "H-Hinata Hyuga."  With those words, Ayano then remembers that this was the girl that was kidnaped a few years ago by a Hidden Cloud ninja, but was thankfully saved before they left the village.

"Well I'm Ayano Namikaze... Ayano Uchiha now actually," she chuckles to herself.  "Still not used to saying that yet," she adds sheepishly.  "Anyway thank you for being nice to Naruto."  Hinata blushes and nods.

After she got home after the ordeal, Ayano had just began to cook dinner when she heard the door close.  It was Itachi (she could tell by his chakra). 

"You're home early," she says happily, walking towards him to greet him.  Itachi nods as he takes off his shoes.

"They didn't have much for me to do today."

Ayano smiles.  "Well that's good."  

Itachi and Ayano wait for Naruto to come home, unsure why he takes so long to get home these days.  Once he does he seems to always be out of chakra.  Ayano scolded him for coming back so late, a normal occurrence these days, but it seemed like Naruto's mind was on something else.

The next morning, Ayano went shopping when a very angry woman with a child came over to Ayano.  There was a silence in which the child hid behind his mother, who was trying to look intimidating and failing miserably.  She had puffed herself up, but half deflated when Ayano gave her a disdainful look and resumed her search for a particular brand of ramen.  This silence continued for some time, even past when Ayano had found the ramen and started to walk away...

"So you're the one who got my son into trouble?!," the woman suddenly blurted, breaking the silence she'd tried to daunt Ayano into breaking herself.

Ayano looks at her confused then looks down at the child, who was still cowering and using his mother's legs as shelter.  'He was one of the children bullying Naruto and Hinata-chan,' she realized, remembering him as the one who'd spoken to her so rudely only the day before. Sighing, she looked away from the kid to the mom herself.  "Well, your son was bullying my little brother and his friend ya know."

The woman rolls her eyes.  "Well my son said that the kid was bullying him!"

Ayano gave the lady a dumbfounded look.  "Well your son lied ma'am.  He along with few other kids were bullying my brother."  She instantly regretted her word choice as soon as she'd said it, as the woman's face grew more purple than an eggplant.  She looked absolutely livid.

"How dare you say that my son is a liar!!"

Ayano backs up a bit.  "Look ma'am.  I'm sorry but it's true, and if I'm going to be honest a parent should probably have asked the teacher what happened- not their child- just in case."  The woman abruptly tries to slap Ayano, but Ayano grabs her wrist and holds it firmly for a moment.  "Look, I'm just trying to make sure my brother is fine at school.  If I hear people are bullying him, I have no choice but to stop them.  You'd do the same for your son, right?"  Ayano lets go of the woman's wrist, who walks away in a huff sweeping her son along with her.