Author's Note: Given that I haven't even read/watched most of the Naruto series (I got a bit past the Wave mission, then decided anime wasn't for me), you can sure bet I don't own it. With that said, I haven't actually seen most of the series. So this is me working off of what I've read from others' fanfics, a little bit of wikipedia, and pure unadulterated logic of what I think a world with chakra should be like (and sleep depravation, can't forget that). Expect AU conditions.
Inspired/based on a blog post about what actually happens with civilians who know how to use chakra and academy students who fail the teamwork part of the genin exams. I figure learning from past failures is a thing, Kakashi didn't really teach Team 7 anything new before they went to Wave and they seem to be a lot more effective than I'd expect a normal person to be, and what pre-teen kid doesn't want to show his (non-shinobi) friends all the cool new tricks he learned at the Academy? Teleportation, shape-shifting, and illusions could actually be pretty damn useful in everyday life when you think about it.
Expect a lot of OC's, b/c the main characters all passed, and I want to focus on those who failed.
(oOo)
Passing the Academy Genin exam had been easier than he expected. Turns out, most of what determined pass or fail was how well the teachers thought you could handle it based on how you did in class. The last day, the actual exam, was only really important for the students hovering on the edge of failing; it gave them that one final chance to prove to the instructors that they were ready to become real ninja.
He hadn't had any problems. Sure, book work was kind of boring so he didn't bother to memorize the list of clans in the village, and he still couldn't figure out the right way to throw a shuriken, but give him a kunai and there was no one more lethal. Well... no one except actual shinobi, the kids in class that were clan raised and had been practicing before they could walk, and maybe just possibly the girl who worked at the general store on weekends - but she was the academy dropout who taught him in the first place, not to mention almost twice his age.
The three basic jutsu everyone had to do were a piece of cake; Sensei first showed the class how to do them months ago, and even the slowest of the slow had figured them out after the first few weeks. After that it was just "Your hair's too long on the henge, pay more attention to detail," "You really should work on how your distance for this jutsu, never know when it might save your life to get a bit more space," and "The first three clones look good enough to pass, but your fourth is a bit lopsided." Practice makes perfect, especially when his life could be on the line later, but that's all it really was: ironing out the little kinks.
No one actually failed an Academy exam; if one of the students wasn't going to pass the teachers would make sure to give either extra help or subtle encouragement to find another calling.
(oOo)
Perhaps no one failed the Academy exam, but the test after he graduated – the one no one bothered to mention? – was a whole different matter.
He trudged down the road, minus one shiny new forehead protector that he hadn't even had long enough to smudge, wondering how he could possibly explain this to his friends. The girl at the corner general store gave him a sympathetic look and nodded at the tree the people in his class used as an after-school meeting point.
It was well dented with kunai prints where they'd practiced projectile weapons and tree climbing – the first branch was just a bit too high for a twelve-year-old's short arms, but stab a knife in about half way up as a convenient handhold and the rest of the branches were perfect for spending a lazy afternoon. He didn't have any more weapons – they had to be turned in with the rest of his gear when he failed – but the pair of legs and familiar boots dangling from a higher perch said he could probably get a hand up if she didn't shun him for failing.
He trudged up to the trunk, head hanging, not quite willing to see the rest of his friends headbands yet.
"You failed too, huh?" The voice from the branches said.
"…Yeah. Wait, too? You failed? What could your sensei have possibly found to fail you for?"
"Too soft-hearted, bad instinctive reactions, couldn't follow instructions, and to top it all off, my chakra is tiny. All that time spent studying up on obscure chakra theory and he didn't even ask. Just threw a boulder at me and looked kind of pitying when I froze up instead of dodging." She wrapped an arm around a branch to brace herself then dangled a hand to him. He grabbed the hand then kicked off the trunk for a bit more height as she yanked him up to within reach of the first branch in a practiced move. "Five years in the Academy down the drain because they didn't exactly prepare me for my sensei trying to kill me."
"Aren't you going to try again next year? The shinobi that my team would have had said we could go back to the Academy for another chance."
She looked at him, lips quirked in an ironic half smile. "'Too soft hearted'," she said with a slur in her voice. "You know Hirohito and Tohaku, right? My teammates. Tohaku-kun's pretty good, didn't have any problems with sensei suddenly firing off jutsu with lethal intent, but Hiro-kun and I are more theoretical, you know? Jutsu are fascinating, but I just…" She broke off to shiver. Then grabbed a leaf off the tree to fiddle with. "Tohaku-kun managed to keep us moving where I would have stood there like a terrified rabbit. Hiro-kun kept sensei distracted long enough for me to get off an exploding tag in his direction. But then, it exploded obviously, and I thought I killed him. Stupid of me, I know I know, as if someone who wasn't even a Genin could kill a jounin. It's just…" She stared intently at the leaf and started to shred it.
"You know the replacement technique they teach us? Kawarimi. You switch with a log or something so it gets hit instead of you and you're safe. I think there's a higher level of that, something combined with genjutsu. Instead of just switching and the log getting shredded, the jutsu makes it look like you got shredded instead. Really hand when you stop to think about it." She said halfheartedly. "But when you don't know about it…"
"I watched him explode. I killed my sensei, blew him to pieces." The leaf was destroyed, and little pieces drifted off in the slight breeze as she opened her hand to grab another one. "Of course he didn't actually die – like I said, jounin versus genin isn't even close to a fair match – and he took out Hito-kun and Tohaku-kun while I was puking in the bushes. Hito-kun didn't look too well either. Sensei let us sit down for a bit, then told us we failed the test. Tohaku-kun might try again next year, I don't know, but Hito-kun said he wouldn't and I – I can't."
(oOo)
They sat there in silence, shredding leaves and watching the wind blow the pieces away. A few more children they recognized from the Academy walked down the road past the tree, some with headbands but more without. Eventually, one walked up to the bottom of the tree and stared up. He was stereotypically black-haired and black-eyed, but that was offset with a bright red bandanna wrapped around where the forehead protector would have been.
"Hello the tree! Any chance of getting a bit of a lift up?"
"Sure. Come join the fortress of those who failed. Admission cost is one consolation hug and maybe a story about how you screwed up. Maki-chan already told me hers, and I was about to share how horribly I did." The reach-grab-jump procedure repeated and he joined them up in the branches.
"Mind if I share what you told me?" He asked her. She shook her head sharply as if to shake out the memory as well as indicate no. "She managed to catch her sensei in an explosive tag; he dodged but used a genjutsu to make it look like he was hit, and she's a bit shook up about it. Mine's a bit different; not so much mental trauma as physical. The teacher for my team had us fight each other instead of him, winner stays on as apprentice and the other two get kicked out back to the Academy. I lost a few inches of hair in the free-for-all, Shoujiro-san is vicious when it comes to competitions, and in the end jounin-san just decided that we brawled more like brats than genin and maybe another year would do us all some good."
"Well, mine's kind of similar to Ryuichi's, but my team was supposed to retrieve this box from one of the training grounds without being caught. I wanted to henge into another team and pretend to train then make off with it, Hoshiko-chan wanted to make a break for it and fight our way through if we weren't fast enough. Satoru-kun didn't have an idea, but he suggested we try mine then fight when the disguise failed. Turns out the box was a decoy the entire time, and we should have 'confirmed the information before attempting retrieval'. It didn't really help that Satoru-kun's henge ran out halfway there."
"I guess that's it then," Maki said with a sigh. "You aren't trying next year?"
"I don't think it's worth a year relearning what I already know just to fail again. That's another thing my teacher mentioned: 66% failure rate."
"What?" Ryuichi said, bolting upright from where he'd been peering up at the sky through the leaves. "Seriously, two thirds of the class is failed? I know there weren't that many students repeating a year, someone would have noticed if half the class already knew the material."
"Would you want to spend a year learning things you already knew with people who were all younger than you?"
There was silence.
"So, what now?"