Iruka looked at his class. For almost four years now, he had taught them the basics of being a ninja. He knew that they were nowhere near prepared to go around assassinating people yet, and although that gave him the relief that they still had their childhood, it worried him to no end. Many of these children would not survive past their first B rank, and Iruka had always felt that it was partly his fault. He knew that their was a sizable number of them that would not even become Genin, and many would quit the program after they first witnessed death. That was the reason there was so many civilians in Konoha. Some had never even joined the program, but a good number of them were Academy and Genin dropouts, who had lost their drive during the harsh conditioning that they were forced to go through. Iruka snapped himself out of his thoughts. That was no way to think, now that they were graduating. He cleared his throat and the thirty-odd students fell silent. They had learned years before not to incur the wrath of the normally kind and friendly teacher. The Inuzuka in the corner seemed particularly twitchy, but that might have been Iruka's imagination.

"All right everyone, today is the day of the final test, and I hope that you all do well." Many of the kids cheered, and Iruka looked at them with a sad smile. He knew that most of the kids in the room would have a short career in the field, and he had watched many of his own students walk out of the classroom proudly with headbands only to be ilea on their first missions. He cleared his throat, and the noise level, which had been steadily rising with the student excitement, dropped. At that moment, Iruka decided to make a speech that would change the paths of the children in front of him. He began to speak.

"I hope that all of you realize that, although the Academy is accredited as a prestigious school for the Shinobi of this country, you must realize that none of you, are ready for the real world. We, here at the Academy have tried to beat the basics of Nin, Tai, Genjutsu into your heads, as well as History and Tactics. I know that this might seem useless in the real world, but they will be necessary when you have to go on assassination missions to kill people. It is not something that any child, even ones such as yourselves that are about to legally become adults, wants to hear. The Shinobi profession is a dark, painful job that has none of the teachers or Jounin in this village want to tell you about. The glorified battles of the Shinobi Wars were long and bloody, and many of the men and women that returned from them lost a great deal of sanity. The Yamanakas have stated that all our Shinobi are mentally fit for duty, but that does not mean that they are all sane. The Jounin that you meet tomorrow that will become your instructors for the rest of your Genin careers each have something in their past that they might never share with you. Even the pinnacle of our Shinobi, the Densetsu no Sannin fell to this. The Toad Sage dealt with it by uprooting himself from the village and writing smut novels. The Slug Sannin, although the epitome of female grace and power became extremely vain, and has hid her true appearance under a Genjutsu for almost thirty years. She also has a gambling and drinking problem, and has run from the village to escape debtors. The third, and most feared, the Snake Sannin, who competed with the Kiiroi no Senko for the position of Yondaime, abandoned the village after it was discovered that he had been experimenting on the citizens on Konoha in a search for immortality. All three of the most powerful ninja, although hailed by our village as our protectors, all left Konoha to escape the madness that existed here. I'm not trying to frighten all of you, and I know this speech will do nothing to deter some of you, but I hope that all of you understand the dangers of being a Shinobi before you take the headband that proves your loyalty to the village. This speech goes against everything that you have been taught in your life, and I understand that some of you will reject it outright."

For many of the students in the room, both serious students and not, they were seeing their teacher in a new light. For years, he had been the strict disciplinarian who had watched their every move. His history lectures were legendary in most circles as being the most informational and the most boring. But this speech caught all his students' ears. Even the laziest Nara in the class was sitting up straight, looking sharply at the teacher. Iruka now looked like a bitter old man who had watched his friends die before him. He shuffled his papers and closed his eyes. So many students gone… He always mourned for them. They should have received a separate stone. Just the students that had died on their first mission…

He opened his eyes and addressed the class. "It is time for your Final Test of the Academy. Even if you do well on this test, you may not be the best in this class. More often than not, the academy's dobe has become an amazing Shinobi for this village," Iruka noted how everyone in the class seemed to turn to the boy sitting in the back of the room. He continued. "I will now call up the first student. Please sit quietly, and wait for your name to be called."

I know this is very different from my other two stories, but I could not help but think. Iruka must have been a teacher for at least four years before he met Naruto. He must have seen a lot of students in his time at the school.

In this prompt, I wanted to know what would happen if Iruka gave them a speech shattering their ideals of what a Shinobi does versus what the Hokage told them a Shinobi does. If this was the clan heir class that became the Rookie 9, what would have happened differently? Who would have given up right away, and who have turned out differently?

It took me a long time to write this speech. What would Iruka say to the kids to make them better ninja? If anyone actually responds to these prompts I put up, I want this one to be different from the others. The other two stories are merely smut given eloquence, but I want this to be... almost a prologue to an epic. If someone does respond to this, make it focus on one of the kids in the class and the growth that student would go through under their particular teacher.

Signing off,
PM