Ryoshi sighed as he sorted through the pile of classwork on his desk. Despite the threats he gave to his students earlier that day, he wouldn't be grading them at all. Graduation was tomorrow and that would be somewhat cruel.

He was an academy teacher, not one of Ibiki's henchmen.

Ryoshi was brought out of his thoughts by a knock on the open classroom window and the sound of a figure slipping in.

"Hey Yoyo." The figure said as they took a seat at the edge of his desk.

"I told you not to call me that." Ryoshi said with a roll of his eyes.

"Well I told you not to give me a genin team."

There was a pause.

"Touché Shidamo, touché."

Shidamo took off his headband and set it on the desk.

"Don't bother getting comfortable," Ryoshi warned as he put the stack of papers in one of his desk drawers, "I'm getting ready to head out."

"What gives Ryoshi?"

Ryoshi smiled. "I figured you'd be the best one for the job."

"Yeah right," Shidamo scoffed. "And what about the hundreds of other jounin out there begging for a bunch of impressionable brats to look after?"

"They don't exist."

Shidamo stretched and let out a yawn. "Well I don't blame em'. Do I at least get to know why you thought it was so important that I get a genin team this year? There's a reason I don't fill out the yearly application forms."

"I already told you," Ryoshi smirked. "You're the best one for the job. Besides, if I told you about your genin team now, then it wouldn't be fair to the other jounins who have to wait until after graduation day."

"Yeah because Tatsuki is definitely getting the team with that weird taijutsu kid."

"After a while you learn that it's best to tell Gai what he wants to know rather than suffer through one of his 'youthful' speeches about the importance of honesty."

Shidamo groaned. "Ryoshi, my sweet Yoyo, please don't keep me in suspense. I'm gonna be spending what could possibly be the rest of my life with these kids!"

"I don't know Shida…"

"Please Yoyo!" Shidamo whined, gripping onto Ryoshi's vest. "I'll even help your class with target practice the next time you ask me!"

"Yeah right, the last time you offered to help you were conveniently assigned a mission the day of practice."

"I can't exactly refuse a mission!"

"Because the Hokage really needed you specifically to rescue a cat from a tree."

The Inuzuka held up his hands in defeat. "Ok ok, I lied."

Silence.

"Oh come on Ryoshi! It was self preservation!"

"..."

"Please."

"Alright fine." Ryoshi slapped Shidamo's hands away and pulled three folders out of one of his desk drawers. "But only because you asked so nicely."

"You were gonna show me regardless of what I said, weren't you?"

"Maybe."

Shidamo leaned over the desk and pinched his friend's cheeks. "Oh Yoyo!" he whined, "I knew those hellions were changing you for the worse, you used to be so nice!"

"Argh, stop it!" Ryoshi cried as he slapped the jounin's hand away again. He then placed the folders on the desk and spread them out. "Who do you want to start with first?"

Shidamo sat up straight and crossed his arms over his chest. "Let's start with lowest scores and work our way up."

"Alright then."

Ryoshi opened the folder closest to him, revealing a picture of a boy stapled to a large stack of documents.

Shidamo let out a low whistle.

"Problem child?" he inquired as he took the folder and looked over the boy's picture.

Ryoshi chuckled. "You don't even know the half of it."

The boy had tan skin, spiky brown hair, and green eyes. He wore a red jacket with blue and white accents over a white shirt and brown shorts. His Konoha forehead protector was tied around his forehead. His appearance was pretty ordinary overall, the only thing that stood out about him being the small scar under his left eye."

"His name is Takahashi Koji, age 13."

"What can you tell me about him?"

Ryoshi sighed. "The kid's a pain to be honest. He's rude, mean, temperamental, and overaggressive. On top of that, he's got some kind of superiority complex."

Shidamo stifled a laugh as he flipped through the contents of the folder.

"A superiority complex with these grades? Seriously? He's average at best."

"Koji's going to be the first shinobi in his entire family and his parents have it drilled in his head that he's destined for greatness or something."

"Ah, that'll do it."

Ryoshi nodded.

Shidamo sighed.

"On the brightside, since you're a jounin I doubt that'll be a problem and besides his whole 'holier than thou' attitude, he's actually a pretty good kid. Koji puts his all into everything he does. He just needs someone to take him down a notch and push him in the right direction."

"Seriously?" The jounin groaned, putting his head in his hands. "Please tell me the other two aren't as bad."

Ryoshi laughed, taking the discarded folder and pushing it aside. He then handed over another one. This one was significantly skinnier. "That's for you to decide."

Shidamo then opened the file to reveal a picture of a girl stapled to a few documents.

The girl had dark skin, long navy blue hair, and blue eyes. She wore a light blue and cream hooded-jacket over mesh armor and black bike shorts. Her Konoha forehead protector was tied around her neck. Despite the girl's overall blue appearance, the thing that stood out to Shidamo was her eyes. Despite their vibrant blue color they seemed dull.

"Shodome Nami, age 12. she came to Konohagakure three years ago."

"Where from?"

"Kirigakure."

Shidamo's eyes lit up in realization.

When Ichirou Umishodo showed up at the village gates begging for asylum, him and his ward were the talk of the village and subject to heavy skepticism. They moved into a old house in the rural part of Konoha and were supervised by Anbu for the first year that they lived there. Shidamo was put on the night watch as one of his first Anbu assignments.

After a moment of flipping he came across a document that made him squint his eyes in confusion. He turned to his friend. "It says here that she stabbed a classmate with a kunai. That can't be true, right?"

"No that's right."

"What?!"

Ryoshi scoffed and folded his arms. "Don't look so worried. It was just a training exercise gone wrong and if you ask me, what happened that day was greatly exaggerated."

"Well what happened then?"

"Since Nami came from Kiri, she only knew mist techniques when she was finally enrolled in the academy. It was a failure on my part to allow her to participate in the sparring session."

"That still doesn't explain why she stabbed someone!"

"Mist taijutsu is very different from Leaf taijutsu, it's based on speed rather than power. It was just a well aimed swipe that Koji didn't know how to block. Nami meant no harm."

The jounin took a second to think. "Koji huh? I bet he didn't take that lying down."

"Not at all." Ryoshi sighed. "Koji did the exact opposite. He felt as if Nami had disrespected him."

"Something tells me that that's not the end of the story."

Ryoshi sighed once more. Leave it to Shidamo to be able to read him like a book.

"Rumors...began to spread about Nami."

"Rumors?"

The chunin nodded. "People began to say that Nami did it on purpose, that she had some kind of motive. The whole class ostracised her. They began judging Nami based on the rumors they had heard about Kirigakure, calling her things like "mist freak' and 'the monster from the Bloody Mist'."

"Poor kid."

"Nami was already a quiet kid, she didn't really fit in with the other children and the incident only made it worse. She went from quiet to almost nonverbal in a matter of weeks."

Shidamo clenched his fists in anger, almost wrinkling the folder in his hands. "Why wasn't anything done? This girl was obviously suffering."

"There's only so much I can do about the pack mentality of the shinobi occupation. If I spent more time with Nami than my other students, i'd be accused coddling and favoritism."

Shidamo let out a resigned sigh and handed the folder back to Ryoshi. "Is there anything I need to know about her personality-wise?"

Ryoshi shrugged. "Nami distanced herself from the everyone after the incident. The only thing I can really tell you for certain is that she's very observant."

The jounin groaned, running a hand through his hair. This genin team was shaping up to be a chore and he hadn't even met them yet.

"Ready to continue?"

Shidamo sighed and pick up the last folder. It was almost as heavy as Koji's. "Ready as I'll ever be."

He opened up the folder and gazed upon a picture of another boy.

The boy had fair skin, chin-length red hair, and violet eyes. He wore a green hoodie and brown pants. His Konoha forehead protector was tied around his head like a hairband. Shidamo noted the all too familiar smirk on the kid's face. It was exactly like the one Shidamo remembered having across his own face when he was in the academy.

The jounin ran his hand through his hair a second time and turned to his friend. "Seriously, you put a prodigy on my team?"

"Yup," Ryoshi exclaimed with a smile that Shidamo thought was a little too bright to have good intentions. Seriously, what did those demons disguised as children do to him?!

"His name is Ishimoto Kenta, age 12, and he's ranked second in the class."

"I won't be dealing with two superiority complexes, will I?" Shidamo whined. The one was enough.

The chunin rubbed the back of his neck, a small tick that Shidamo knew from years of friendship to mean that luck was not on his side.

Of course.

"The kid's an absolute brat." Ryoshi stated, leaning back in his chair and letting out a huff of air. "It still amazes me that he somehow managed to pass at all."

Shidamo's bangs fell in his face has he cocked his head in confusion. Ryoshi was really serving up contradictions today.

"Kenta was a very fast learner and picked up on my lessons quickly but when it came time to demonstrate what he learned or take a test he failed miserably."

"Well that's just stage fright or testing anxiety."

Ryoshi shook his head. "No, it was like he was purposely trying to fail."

"Huh?!"

The chuunin shrugged and began putting the folders back into his desk drawer, "Your guess is as good as mine."

Shidamo groaned and put his head into his hand, letting out a muffled scream.

"Is it too late to go rogue?"

"I already told Tsume. She promised to hunt you down if you tired to get out of this."

A thud echoed throughout the classroom as Shidamo slammed his head down on the desk. Why was this his life?

"Aw Shidamo," A muffled giggle. "I'm sure it'll all turn out fine."

"Eat a branch Ryoshi!"

The chuunin laughed.