I could talk all day about my death, about how I was such a loser that I couldn't even die properly, how being born for a second time felt, or even how a second childhood sucked. How going through puberty, again, and as a different gender no less was actually worse because I knew what to expect, I could wax poetry on the unfairness of it all, about all the blood and gore I witnessed this time around. I could tell you some light hearted stories about my utterly irrelevant team members, or talk about all the angst I felt about messing canon and thus ending the world around me.

But I won't.

No one cares about that, it isn't all that interesting, all I that matters is that I was celebrating my twenty-first birthday, along with a not so recent promotion from tokujo to jonin, and it hit me.

FUCK CANON

Sarutobi Hiruzen-sama, and that man fucking earned the respect necessary to attach sama to his name even in the privacy of my thoughts, looked at me with a weird expression. I could understand why, I had shown no desire to train brats before, I had in fact, to quote myself; no fucking desire to wipe noses and powder bottoms. So when I walked in a stated my desire to take a team in the next graduation cycle the man had all the reason in the world to look at me like I had lost my marbles.

"Let me get this straight, you want a genin team." I could have a team of chunins or tokujos, as a jonin it was expected that I could lead such a team, even a team of other jonins, if pressed. "Yes, there are reasons, Hokage-sama."

I held up a privacy seal, one of my better ones at that. As a time-traveling, dimension hopping entity that had some clue about the fate of this world I was rightfully paranoid, to the level that my house was the most secure place in the entirety of the elemental nation. Gotta love fuinjutsu.

Sarutobi-sama gave a curt nod, and I activated the seal placing it on his desk. Now I wish that my paranoia wasn't justified, but with the crackling and smoke coming from no less than three different spying seals on desk I felt rightfully justified in my paranoia. "We'll have to check those out another time, but my guess would be…" I quickly glanced at the seals, "Danzo, Danzo, and hmm… would you look at that, it's an Uchiha."

"Back on topic, Hokage-sama, despite my long list of grievances with one-eye, I still do believe you seriously screwed the pooch in respect to our Jinchuriki." Sarutobi-sama raised an eyebrow, and effortlessly conveyed the message 'tread lightly or you will get a front row seat to why I am call Kami no Shinobi' so I quickly moved on. "You could have sacked all those incompetent idiots in the academy and replaced them with mummy-man's zombies, besides our Jinchuriki actually getting an education, it would also make him feel important."

"Yes, that might have actually worked, sadly it's too late for that. However, please do get back on topic, Makoto-jonin." I nodded, Naruto would be graduating in a month or so, it was far too late to do anything about that. "We both know what will happen if the scarecrow gets his little wonder team, a disaster. The man is a clown, at the best of times, and an utter waste of a good jonin slot at worst."

"I know what he would do, first he would ignite the tension between Uchiha-san and Uzumaki-san, 'to create rivalry' as he would put it, however, he has never had an actual rival. Obito-san didn't count, their levels were too far apart, and Gai-san doesn't count, their interactions is just a weird friendship." Taking a slow breath I surveyed the situation, Sandaime-sama was interested. "He doesn't know what it would do to his team, a rivalry means that you aren't acknowledging the other as being competent."

"I see." From the look of his face Hiruzen-sama, the teacher, did in fact see. Insert rant about the traitor and the pervert here. "Now, it could potentially be done, but, and this is important, it would require extreme micromanagement of their training, something the moron wouldn't do, and to keep them on equal footing you would need to hamper the growth of one to let the other catch up."

"Yes, that is the case." Again, I could detect some undercurrents of sadness in his voice, a certain snake and toad no doubt. "This, however, isn't even the worst part. At some point the fool would have to choose between them, and at that point he would fail, because he would abandon Uzumaki-san in a heartbeat."

"That is a serious accusation Akiyama Makoto-jonin." It was, of course, I had it straight from the source, I could vividly recall the hospital scene, where Kakashi dismisses Naruto, not even handing him a jutsu scroll, just a teacher that Naruto shows to have an intense dislike for. "The man is a genius, and as such falls into the trap that all geniuses do, once he has an opinion, he won't change it even if it kills him."

"So, how is this relevant?" I smirked, I could tell that he was looking at me, I had a genius reputation as well, but it was, at least partially, undeserved. "If he hasn't already, he will dismiss Uzumaki-san as talentless shinobi, which just couldn't be further from the truth, and focus on the student that can make it."

"But you can't honestly say that Naruto-kun is talented?" I actually couldn't tell if Sarutobi-sama was testing me, or if he too had dismissed Naruto. It was actually sad, and I couldn't quite keep the anger from flashing across face. "Hokage-sama, that young boy has without any formal instruction, at the best of times, and outright sabotage at worst, managed to cobble together a working taijutsu, get two ninjutsu working, and learned how to run and hide. On his own, without fancy teachers or books, without anything to guide him besides observing others from a distance. Could you honestly have done the same?"

I wasn't sure about Sarutobi-sama, I had technically done it, but I had certain advantages that Naruto didn't. "No, I suppose I couldn't have done that, actually, I don't think it is possible, even the greatest of geniuses require at least some instruction." His expression was actually contrite, it looked like he had dismissed Naruto, at least in part. That, or he hadn't known how much sabotage had been going on in the academy.

"Tell me, what do you have in mind for Naruto?" Sarutobi-sama looked like he was ready to listen now, and so I had to sell the idea. "Several ideas, really, depending on who I could get, but what I really want to make is a team designed to work behind enemy lines."