Edit: Holy hell, I have no idea what ffn did to my doc, but it totally just mashed the chapter together. It really didn't look that way in the file I had. These people. I should have noticed when the doc was 5000ish words instead of a bit shy of 7000.
Summary: Obsession. It pushes and pulls at you. Some of them are harmless. You start to lie to your friends and mentors. You do things for it. It's almost sentient. And you have a little more respect for other people's obsessions. Those three, they just won't quit, would they?
Author's Note: Because I like these. Like the original WotK, this is written completely on whim. My stories seem to be better received when I do that because they're more creative and shit and less philosophical. Expect lots of fun.
Pairings will fluctuate wildly. Very, very wildly. I think it's hyper unreasonable to assume that kids on the cusp of their teens (when we get to that point) won't experiment. Especially if they're kids that kill people. That's got to give people issues. What it'll end it, I'm not sure. If you disdain relationships which don't fit into your carefully defined pairing, you'd better stop reading, because I'm kind of interested in relationships between people who can't really fit together socially, whether it's between someone like Hinata and Naruto or between three members of team seven or even something exploitative like a teacher/student type deal.
Of course, there won't be much of that in the earlier chapters.
Light My Way
Chapter 1
Lungs
Sometimes I feel like I don't know, sometimes I feel like checking out.
1
Naruto grinned. He was a bit underfed, a bit overly happy and not what someone would expect to be a good ninja when the boy grew up. The cycle, after, from genin to chunin to jonin was also a cycle of personality switches. The genin had to grow up and learn to hide their personalities to make it to the next level. In turn, as they eclipsed the need to protect their identities for safety's sake, they would revert back to what made them who they were rather than the mindless drones they were supposed to be. Most people decided that Naruto would never make it past being a chunin - he was a tad dumb and too loud to afford it.
But damn, he was good at pissing everyone off. It was around noon and the nightly ANBU patrols were hours away from starting. Most ninja weren't awake yet, sleeping off their nightmares and hangovers. The tenth of the shinobi population who had missions out of town had already left and the jonin sensei with their genin teams would only be coming back from their training sessions an hour or two before sunset - that was the optimal time to do their glorified chores in the summer. After all, it was character-building to train in the hot sun.
Therefore, Naruto knew he could get away with painting the Hokage monument orange. He liked the color - not as much as he claimed he did, but after a while, he decided he really did. Orange was so un-ninja. It'd so un-ninja that when he became the best. ninja. ever. everyone would shake their head and everyone would wear orange out of respect. They would paint the monument orange permanently or something.
He pull the string. The contraption which he'd set up - an unholy monster of sticks and string dangling precariously emptied nearly two hundred liters of orange painting he had stolen from a string of hardware stores over the monument. The monument was painted from sunshine yellow to just-shy-of-red, until the dripping paint mixed and marbled somewhat uniformly.
Naruto doused the contraption in kerosene he had also stolen - not from the hardware stores, but from Yakinaku BBQ, which had terrible management and terribly astounding profits, and lit the device he had painstakingly built up. He grinned again. Now, no one would know how he did it. He didn't stick around to watch the wood and plant fibers burn, choosing to leg it to his apartment on the other side of Konoha.
He made it out of the monument's park before he sank straight into the dirt.
"Amusing, Naruto-kun." It was Weasel.
Shit.
Weasel was really, really hard to get away from. He was super cool! He knew so many jutsu! But he really did sound rather amused and curious.
"If you let me out, I'll tell you how I did it." Weasel weighed the trouble he'd be in if he let Naruto loose against how much he wanted to know. The young ANBU member shook his head, almost reluctantly.
"I promise I'll go to the Old Man," Naruto said, looking resigned.
Weasel released the jutsu, expecting Naruto to pop out of the ground softly, but Naruto shot out of his earth jutsu like canon fire and landed on a nearby rooftop.
"Never said when, Uchiha-san!" Naruto shouted as he rolled off the rooftop into an alleyway.
Weasel, known to his family as Uchiha Itachi, cursed under his breath and coughed twice. "Not my problem," he whispered into his communicator, and decided to walk leisurely towards his clan district anyway. He wasn't on Uzumaki watch this week - if he were, he would have undoubtedly chased the boy for anywhere from several minutes to several hours.
But he just knew Naruto was headed in the direction of the divide between Dragon and Dog district, which had been built around the time of the Shodai. The houses and buildings had been done on-demand, and weren't planned. Thus, there were hundreds of little alleyways, even more abandoned buildings which led to other abandoned buildings, and a very large group of yakuza and petty thieves who thought they could challenge the reign of Shinobi.
Itachi, of course, could very easily handle himself, but there, Naruto had an upper hand. The young boy knew the more slummy districts very well - Horse district, which had been slowly approaching gentrification, but still had more racketeering than the rest of the village combined, Snake district, where everyone went for a night of fun and, if lucky, lost only their wallets, and Dragon-Dog, the worst of the lot. Naruto's apartment, of course, was a few scant blocks away from the Hokage's tower in the heart of Dragon district, but it the irony of the poorest district being right next to the heart of Konoha's power that led the young Uzumaki into his adventures.
Naruto swung from what he knew was a rather sturdy beam from the third floor of one apartment building to the second floor of another, landing on a previously prepared mattress.
"Hiroko-nee!" he shouted gleefully. A raspy voice answered him unintelligibly.
"Good morning, Hiroko-nee!" he bellowed.
"Brat!" she screamed. She coughed into the sleeve of her greying kimono. "This is an unreasonable hour."
"It's noon, the sun's up. And take a look at the Hokage monument!" he said, a little softer.
Hiroko drew herself up and wandered over to a small window with a fair amount of broken glass still in it.
"Naruto," she groaned, as she watched the rapidly drying paint. A large dollop was suspended under the Fourth's nose.
"Weasel-san nearly caught me, but I got away, because I'm a brilliant ninja!" he shouted over to her.
Hiroko shook her head. She had been a chunin at some point, but she had charred her lungs trying out a fire jutsu. There wasn't a very reliable retirement plan for chunin and the stipend wasn't quite enough to support her. Added to the fact that she spent most of her nest egg on sake and ineffective treatments for her lungs, she didn't have nearly enough to find an apartment. So she took advantage of her skills and decided to squat in an apartment that no one was sure anyone owned anymore. The rubble was impossible for anyone who wasn't a ninja to climb through on the first floor - even the ninja-folk would have to access it by jumping across a ten foot gap from the next apartment.
But that was abandoned too. Understandably, she was surprised when Naruto discovered her. She went from believing that the spirit of the Fourth was there to haunt her for being mediocre, to believing that the Kyuubi was trying to convert her into some sort of human slave, to believing that Konoha had no love for those who couldn't fight or take care of themselves. But she kind of knew that already.
She couldn't teach Naruto anything but chakra control exercises. Her specialty had been genjutsu and seduction - she knew nearly nothing about hand-to-hand fighting or the large, destructive techniques that she was convinced the boy would someday learn from the village's legends.
Naruto had no affinity for genjutsu at all. She supposed he could become one of the few male infiltration specialists, but she really didn't want to ruin his innocence like that.
Not that he was really too incident to begin with.
From their perch, she had seen his legs dangling off the side of the building as he watched slavers beat their battered 'products'.
The first time it had happened, he had literally jumped from the second floor building into some yakuza, snapping both his own legs and killing the man instantly. Of course, the seven year old boy who could evade even the Hokage's masked secret service would get away barely breaking a sweat. But the boy had learned that even he couldn't solve all the problems without giving her away or getting killed.
"One day, when I'm Hokage, someone's going to paint my monument orange. And it'll be awesome." His face became almost dark.
He practiced the Kawarimi no Jutsu with random objects in her apartment, disappearing all over the place.
"Wouldn't it be cool if I could do that poofing thing like the ANBU?" he wondered.
Naruto had never expressed any sort of sexual desire outside of cheeky imitation before. This was surprising. Hiroko gasped in disbelief, then she chuckled. Oh, of course.
"I'll teach you the Shunshin at some point, Naruto. You shouldn't be too young when learning it - it disrupts your chakra current and you'll have to work extra hard to maintain the little bit of control that I've taught you." Naruto shakily walked several steps up the wall of her 'building' and fell back down onto the rough wooden floor in response. He grit his teeth and tried again.
He wasn't saying anything anymore, which meant he would be at it for several hours at least. Hiroko shook her head and went back to sleep, but not before she heard Naruto mutter Shunshin under his breath several times.
2
"Where the hell were you yesterday?" Iruka shouted, exasperated with his charge. Naruto grinned and scratched the back of his head.
"Well, I had to help this old lady with her cat in the morning and was too tired to wait the two hours before school started, so I took a nap. Then my alarm clock rang, but I killed it by accident. The funeral ended at noon, but I was too sad to come to school."
The entire class stared at him, flabbergasted. If anyone else had said that, they would never, ever, have believed it. But this was Naruto. This sounded exactly like something he would do.
"So it wasn't you who painted the Hokage monument orange?" Iruka shouted, completely disbelieving.
"No," Naruto said, his tone sounding something like a snooty clan brat's. "I'd never disrespect the Hokages like that."
Iruka paused. That was true. Naruto did want to be the Hokage when he grew up - he made that very clear from the start. He waved the boy away.
"I know you did it," said Sasuke from in front of him. The boy didn't even turn around.
Sakura, to his right, looked up at Iruka, then back to Naruto. She was unsure.
Ino, to his left, turned to Naruto sharply, trying to gauge his reaction. Naruto looked a little unsure, but it could mean anything.
"My brother says he approves of you," Sasuke said, turning around this time. He looked as though he had swallowed a large chunk of lemon.
"That's because I'm awesome," Naruto said, his face entirely straight.
"Sasuke!" Iruka shouted. "Of all the people in the class to not pay attention…" he trailed off.
Sasuke turned around, but not before he muttered, "lunch," to Naruto.
Very few people had ever invited him to eat lunch with them. Naruto, in fact, could count the people who did on one hand. He smiled brightly and nodded at Sasuke's back, though he knew the boy couldn't see him. He didn't even notice Sakura glare at him.
"Naruto!" Iruka shouted, quite suddenly.
Naruto's head over the back of Sasuke's shoulder.
"Have you been listening?" Iruka shouted.
Oh no, he was going to be humiliated again. And then Sasuke would think he was too much of a loser to eat lunch with. Then Sakura-chan would never think he was cool and Ino would laugh at him. And if Ino laughed at him, Chouji and Shikamaru would think he was dumb and if they thought he was dumb, then everyone in a clan would follow their lead and-
"Pay attention!" Iruka shouted again. Naruto nodded quickly. "What was the First Hokage's bloodline limit?"
Naruto grinned. He looked at the board and realized today was the lesson on the leaders of Konoha. His grinned brightened.
"Don't know? Well you should have-"
"The First Hokage was known for his Mokuton techniques, the coolest bloodline ever, as the first person in history to have ever blended Suiton, the water jutsus and Doton, the earth jutsus. This allowed him a special type of control over plant life and stuff-"
Iruka groaned at his student's immature explanation.
"Some of the techniques he's known for are capable of things like building houses and entrapping enemies, but his most famous technique is the legendary Bliss-Bringing Hands, which was said to be able to stop the rampaging Bijuu with their ability to negate demonic chakra. Experts agree that other than the Fourth's Hiraishin, it was the coolest thing ever, but don't know anything about it. They theorize that he was capable of doing so because of his you-nicky view on the blend of Yin and Yang chakra. Jiraiya of the Sannin, who trained the Fourth, says that it might be because there are people in the world with instinctive control of Natural chakra, but he's the only one who can say that because he's the only expert on Sage Arts. His grand-daughter, another member of the Sannin, says that the Shodai had a you-nicky love of the everyday man which allowed him to defend them in the name of Konoha - she and Sandaime-jiji call this the Will of Fire. But it might be genetic as well, though no other Senju has expressed the Mokuton…" Naruto finished softly.
The entire class stared at him.
"It's pronounced 'unique', not you-nicky," Iruka corrected, though his head was spinning. "It means special."
"I know a lot about the Hokages," Naruto challenged.
More than I do, clearly, Iruka thought, still shell-shocked.
3
Sasuke sized the Uzumaki up. "You really do want to be Hokage," he finally said. If anything, he could see why Itachi said that Uzumaki was worthy of praise. The boy was stupid as hell. But if they were talking about things that Uzumaki liked to learn about, his genius was apparent.
They were sitting next to the fence on the academy's playground. He was eating his mother's onigiri and a whole tomato. Naruto had instant ramen in an extra-large foam cup.
"Believe it," Naruto confirmed. "I'm going to be the coolest Hokage ever. Even faster and stronger than the Fourth."
"How'd you learn about the Hokages?" Sasuke asked, reluctant to admit that there were things that he didn't know as well as other academy students.
"Oh, I asked the Old Man for scrolls about them."
"Old man?"
"The Sandaime."
Sasuke choked on his onigiri. "You're the Sandaime's student?" he wondered, a flash of jealousy visible on his face.
"No. He doesn't have time to take students. He eats ramen with me once in a while and gives me scrolls."
"Jutsu scrolls?" Sasuke asked, even more interested than he was early.
"No, nothing that cool. He says I have to wait for my jonin instructor to teach me cool jutsu. But he gives me lots of cool scrolls about experimental techniques. No actual hand-seals or anything, but the idea behind them and what other cool people think about them. That's how I knew about the Bliss Bringing Hands. I've learned about some of the Raikages and the Tsuchikages too, because they're Konoha's enemies."
Sasuke would have to ask his family about whether or not the Uzumaki were an important family who died off or something. He'd also ask the boy in front of him.
"Why you?" he wondered.
"Why me what?" Naruto responded between two slurps of ramen.
"Why does the Sandaime look after you?" Surely there were more orphans than just Naruto out there, right?
Naruto shrugged. "He said that my godfather couldn't, that's why."
"Who's your godfather?" Sasuke pressed.
"I don't know. He wouldn't tell me," Naruto said, a frown marring his features. This was abnormal to Sasuke. He'd never seen Naruto frown before - the closest expression was confusion or concentration.
Before Sasuke and Naruto could continue their conversation, Sakura worked up the courage to stalk over at last.
"I've been trying to eat lunch with you for two years, and you chose him?" she said to Sasuke with no small amount of accusation in her tone.
Sasuke glared, but said nothing.
"You've never asked," Naruto said. At least he'd never seen her ask.
"The boy's supposed to ask the girl," she sniffed. "He asked you," she said, suddenly rounding on him.
To be fair, Sasuke had never seen Sakura this hurt. Sure, when he ignored her, she'd just bother him more persistently, but she was never really… angry about it.
She sat down and started eating.
Naruto and Sasuke both stared at her.
"Keep talking!" she half-commanded.
"You weren't invited," Sasuke said, glaring harder. He knew instantly that he didn't mean to be that harsh. Sakura bit her lip and stood up, then walked away quietly.
Naruto threw him a furious glare and ran after her, leaving his ramen behind.
Sasuke made sure no one was looking and tried Naruto's ramen. It tasted really salty, but it was really tasty. And it was good with tomatoes. He supposed he'd eat lunch with Naruto again.
4
"Do it."
"No."
"Do it!" Naruto insisted.
Sasuke sighed as he walked over to Sakura. He was doing this for Naruto. So Naruto would tell him about cool things he didn't know about. So Naruto would show him the secret stuff that someone had taught him. He had shown him the Kawarimi already, and the two had practiced replacing themselves with random things. That was cool. That was more than Itachi had ever thought he was ready for.
"Sakura."
Sakura was eating lunch with a bunch of girls, some of which watched him from a distance, some of which pestered him constantly.
"Will you eat lunch with Naruto," he asked, "and me?" he finished at a much lower volume.
The girls looked scandalized. Sakura looked at them, then at Naruto. Then she looked at Sasuke and instantly stood up.
Naruto was a bit of a loser, but Sasuke was Sasuke, and hanging out with the boys was still a lot cooler than hanging out with other girls. That was why Ino ate lunch with Chouji and Shikamaru.
"Sasuke's showing me how to do some advanced academy katas and I'm teaching him the Henge no Jutsu," Naruto explained hurriedly to Sakura. "What can you show us?"
Sakura's face looked crestfallen. "I don't know how to do anything special."
Sasuke looked more crestfallen than her. "See, I told you she'd be useless," he grumbled to Naruto. Sakura heard him, and looked ready to tear up.
"Oh, I've got it!" Naruto shouted. He brought his voice down to a whisper. "She can let us copy her homework after class."
"What if we get caught?" Sasuke wondered, though he was already planning on changing answers and intentionally answering some things wrong. His father didn't care about his written exam grades much anyway.
"Nah, we'll be sneaky. We can do it on one of the training grounds, or in one of the parks in Rat district." Rat district was a five minute walk from the Academy.
Sasuke decided he'd explain his plan later. For now…
"Henge," Naruto said. A poof of smoke appeared and in his place stood a copy of Iruka-sensei. "You two are in a lot of trouble for planning to cheat," he shouted - not too loud though.
"Iruka-sensei," Sakura squeaked. She couldn't believe she had let Sasuke talk her into-
Iruka sensei giggled and then scratched his head in a very Naruto-esque manner. "See, this is really useful for tricking people," he said. Another cloud of smoke appeared and he turned back into Naruto.
"You nearly gave me a heart attack!" Sasuke grunted. If he had been kicked out of the Academy for cheating…
"Nah," Naruto said. "There's no punishment for cheating on written work. You just can't be caught."
Sakura stared.
"Jiji says that if you're caught, that means you'll be a bad ninja. But you don't really have to know some things to be a genin."
It made sense to Sasuke, though Sakura looked particularly uncomfortable.
"We're cheating right now. We're not supposed to learn jutsu or even use our chakra yet, but everyone in a clan knows how already."
Sakura looked upset again.
It hit Naruto.
"Let me show you how to find your chakra," he said, seemingly more excited at the prospect than even Sakura. "I'll show Sasuke the hand seals and let him try it out for now," he amended when Sasuke glared at him.
5
Naruto knew how to do a Bunshin no Jutsu, but he wasn't ever capable of successfully duplicating himself. It ate him, because Sakura and Sasuke had both gotten it on their first tries.
They learned not to ask where he was learning things from after he came back after an absence with a new technique.
It took a long time for him to make a Water Clone, and even longer to do it saying 'Bunshin no Jutsu'! instead of 'Tsuchi Bunshin no Jutsu!', but he got it.
Of course, he taught it Sakura and Sasuke, but he didn't expect his friends to sink to the ground in exhaustion after simply attempting it.
Sakura was better off. "It was eating my chakra. I could feel myself flow out and so I stopped."
They looked at Sasuke and paled. He was swaying and breathing heavily. His clone looked as though it was in a coma.
"Kill the clone!" Naruto said. "It gives you your chakra back when it dies."
He walked over to the comatose clone and held a blunt kunai to its neck.
"Kill it, Naruto," Sasuke said, looking ready to pass out. Worse, the clone seemed to be taking more and more of Sasuke's chakra.
"I-I can't kill it," Naruto said, his eyes wild. "I can't kill anyone anymore. Not someone who hasn't done anything wrong-"
"I'm going to die," Sasuke growled. He had fallen to his knees. He slowly pushed himself towards the clone and drew his kunai.
"Dispel it!" Naruto shouted, frantic.
"I don't know how to," Sasuke grunted.
Sakura pushed Naruto out of the way and closed her eyes, then stabbed the clone in the chest.
It dissolved into mud.
Sasuke stood up, already feeling a million times better as his headache receded.
Naruto was pointedly staring at a tree. Sakura was sobbing quietly.
"You've killed someone before," Sasuke decided.
"Shut up."
Naruto didn't look at him, but his face was stormy.
"Who did you kill."
"Drop it."
Sasuke did.
Sakura stared at the kunai she had stabbed 'Sasuke' with, its blade coated with the mud which the Earth Clone had been made out of.
"It's alright, Sakura. You didn't really stab me."
She didn't look too convinced.
After lunch, they all handed in applications for their graduation exam.
6
"This is highly irregular," Iruka protested. Technically, academy students were able to take the exam whenever. Sakura had dug the gem out of a rulebook that the Nidaime himself had written when he formed the Academy.
"But we're allowed to, Sensei," Sakura protested. Naruto and Sasuke were strangely silent for some reason. The former looked to be brooding and the latter looked sheepish. "We're going to pass."
Iruka exploded. "You guys haven't even learned how to access your chakra yet! If you can make a clone, I'll eat my hitai-ite!" he shouted, pulling his forehead protector off.
"Bunshin no jutsu!" the eight year old Sakura shouted. A pair of textbook clones appeared.
Iruka stared at his forehead protector.
"You don't have to eat that if you don't want to, sensei," she demurred. Sasuke chuckled. Naruto smiled briefly, then went back to brooding. It didn't look very natural on him.
"Fine," he said. "But the written exam's going to cover stuff that none of you have learned yet."
"Sensei," Sasuke spoke. "The lowest possible passing grade if we get over ninety percent on the practical is a twenty," he said flatly.
Iruka groaned. They had really done their reading.
"Even Naruto could pass with a twenty. And Sakura's going to do really well."
"Fine." Iruka unlocked a cabinet with a key in his desk and pulled out a trio of written exams. "Forty questions. Three hours. Knock yourself out."
He stalked out of the room and they immediately leafed through the exam as fast as they could.
"Okay, Naruto, do problems one to fifteen. That's stuff on Konoha history and chakra theory and you definitely can answer all of them. Sasuke, there's a lot of math problems in the middle and a bunch of questions on chemicals and poisons. I studied really hard for the upper year questions. We'll pass each other answers when we're nearly done," she spoke in a hurry. "I can't believe he left the room."
Naruto stared at his paper. His mood brightened.
1. Explain in three sentences or more how the Academy was established and why.
"Be brief, Naruto," Sasuke hissed, when he caught a glance at the questions.
Naruto almost pouted.
"And don't use words we don't understand, Sakura," he added as an afterthought. Sakura nodded.
Iruka peaked into the room every twenty minutes or so, but by and large, he was busy teaching class.
"I can't believe they thought we wouldn't cheat our asses off. Who do they think we are?" Naruto whispered almost triumphantly.
Sakura finished first. "Okay, here's the plan. You've both copied most of my answers. Sasuke can go do what he wants to edit the answers. Naruto, get most of the harder things wrong, then go crazy on the history section or whatever. No one's going to be able to help me throw a kunai better than I already do."
"I could henge as-"
"No."
7
Sasuke scored the best on the thrown weapons section of the test. It was almost written - he had the best aim and was a tad stronger than Naruto.
Naruto, who had opted to throw shuriken instead of kunai had scraped by, as had Sakura.
The most surprising bit of the test was definitely when Naruto tagged Iruka in the nose with his elbow entirely by accident and nearly broke it, earning himself a higher score than either Sakura or Sasuke.
By the time they were slated to take jutsu portion of the exam, a frantic Iruka who was sure of their passing had notified the Hokage. Somehow, during the process, a handful of the village's most celebrated jonin had figured out that a brace of genius genin. Iruka knew he should have known better than to say anything when Hatake Kakashi of the Thousand Jutsu was in the room.
"Sakura. Show me the Kawarimi no Jutsu," Iruka said. She instantly replaced herself with a table across the room.
He nodded.
"Bunshin."
A pair of clones appeared next to her in the smoke. The original nodded at him and they were dispelled with a hand signal.
"Now, uh… Henge into one of the jonin."
Sakura chose Sarutobi Asuma, the Hokage's son, complete with a cigar. She took a puff on it and gagged.
The Hokage sat up quickly, then realized that though the cigar had lit up as if she'd really taken a puff, there was no smoke issuing forth from her mouth - she was just pretending.
"Pass," Iruka said, almost reluctantly. "Tell Sasuke to get in here."
Sasuke pretty much did the same thing identically, but chose the senbon-chewing Shiranui Genma instead and spat on the ground. He passed.
Naruto walked into the room, fully aware of the fact that the Hokage was in there.
He chose to use the Kawarimi with the Hokage himself and grinned cheekily at the man.
"Henge."
He transformed into the Hokage. The 'Sandaime' smiled and tried to convince everyone that he was the real one, but no one believed him.
"Bunshin, now."
Naruto gulped. "Bunshin no Jutsu," he called out clearly.
"Dispel them."
The Bunshin jumped out the window, presumably to their deaths. Iruka chuckled.
"Pass."
"Wait." The man with silver hair and his hitai-ite over his eye had spoken up. "Do that again."
Busted.
The man took off his forehead protector and a red eye with three slowly spinning black tomoe stared Naruto down.
Shit. Sasuke had told Naruto that the Sharingan could see the motion and nature of chakra. He would have loved one himself - he could have learned so much from it.
"Bunshin no Jutsu," he sighed.
Two more Bunshin appeared.
"Naruto," the Hokage said, no trace of humor in his voice whatsoever, "who taught you how to do a Tsuchi Bunshin?"
Triple, four times busted.
"Sasuke," Naruto squeaked.
The Hokage shook his head. Naruto bit his lip.
"I watched-"
"Do not lie to me, Naruto," the Hokage said seriously.
"Hiroko-nee. She used to be a chunin. I met her in Dragon-Dog."
The Sandaime would be having word with his ANBU soon.
"A Konoha nin!" Naruto protested. "She got hurt and retired. She's twenty eight, and she likes sake, and hates tigers! She's good at Genjutsu, but I can't learn any."
The Sandaime looked between his elite jonin, but he didn't expect any of them to recognize them. Most of them were too young, too old, or had moved through the system too quickly to know an early-retired chunin.
"Take me to meet her."
Naruto shook his head. "She doesn't want anything to do with ninja anymore."
He instantly knew that was the wrong answer.
8
Naruto lead the Hokage and the troop of elite jonin through Dragon-Dog quietly, looking more angry than he usually did and into the abandoned apartment where he slowly ascended to the third floor.
"Hey, isn't this the building where your family used to live, Kurenai?" Asuma wondered. "Is Hiroko squatting in here?" he directed at Naruto.
The boy shook his head, which was somewhat confusing to everyone around him.
"So why are we in here?"
"You can't get into some buildings through the first floor," Naruto said.
They reached the third floor, which looked as though it had seen better days - a whole wall was gone and it was clear that the elements had gotten to the building. There were rotten planks and broken bricks all over the place.
"Only the old man comes with me," Naruto whispered, but everyone had heard him. "I swear, if you hurt her..." he whispered to the Sandaime.
"I am merely curious, Naruto." This was true. But if she posed a threat to the village…
Naruto grabbed the beam and swung.
The jonin gasped, but their fears were unjustified - Naruto had landed on a mattress in another building.
The Sandaime jumped after him and grabbed onto the ledge next to the mattress and flipped himself onto the mattress gracefully.
"That's a hell of a hiding spot," Asuma grunted at last.
The Sandaime and Naruto walked into the room, where Hiroko was lounging on her own mattress, reading some novel with an orange cover and giggling to herself.
"They found out," Naruto announced.
Hiroko saw the Hokage and let out a long groan.
"I'm sorry," Naruto said, looking ready to cry.
"Do not worry," the Sandaime said, though the look in his eyes made Hiroko very, very worried. "I am just here to figure out who Naruto has been keeping from me for so long."
"Hokage-sama," she said, standing up and bowing. "He discovered me when he was exploring Dragon-Dog two years ago. He wanted me to teach him about chakra, and I did."
The Sandaime looked at her for what felt like minutes, nodded, then handed Naruto a hitai-ite. "Congratulations for passing, Naruto. I suppose I will be taking you back to your new teammates."
He turned to Hiroko. "Report to my office sometime today or tomorrow."
He led Naruto back to the opening and grabbed Naruto by the waist, then jumped back until to where the jonin were waiting.
"I believe that this was no cause of concern."
"I told you," Naruto grumbled.
9
"Where do you think they've gone?" Sasuke asked Sakura, as they were left alone in the room.
"They're lecturing Naruto. They definitely found out," Sakura said.
"They have to let him pass. Even if they don't, we won't leave him behind," Sasuke declared.
"He wants to learn. He really, really wants to be Hokage. But more than that, he wants… he wants to be cool. Or powerful or strong, or something. But that makes it sound stupid. It's not like… it's not like how people usually wants things. It's… it's different. It's… more."
"No one can want it that much and not be successful."
"Do you want anything that much?"
"Do you?"
They shrugged and thought in silence uncomfortably.
After nearly thirty minutes, the Hokage and his elite jonin returned. Naruto had tied his hitai-ite around his neck. Sasuke grinned somewhat maniacally. He did, after all, have a habit of checking Naruto right over the chest with his forearm. Naruto saw his expression and unconsciously tapped on the forehead protector.
"We are now at an impasse. Usually, we have a selection of instructors and a list of students before we create our teams. In this case, I must confess to being incapable of properly selecting an instructor. None of you have been in the academy for long enough for a profile to be developed. It is clear that the three of you have either been actively hiding your abilities-"
At this, Naruto shook his head.
"Or we haven't been paying as much attention as we should have." By we, the Hokage clearly meant Iruka, whose face tinged pink.
The Hokage scanned his elite jonin.
"Oh no. No. No. No," Genma whispered, having figured out the Hokage's intentions, chewing on his senbon frantically. The others slowly began to pale.
"But since my normal jonin instructors have shown up with such interest, it is clear to me they have both the free time and the inclination to teach our new generation."
Hatake Kakashi had put his trademark book away and was now sporting an expression similar to that of a Nara deer in the way of a fire jutsu.
"But I don't think it would be a good idea to entrust you to them."
That crafty old man, he'd just wanted to make them sweat, Kakashi realized.
"Your teacher is going to be Uchiha Itachi."
At this, Sasuke's face split into a wide grin. After all, his brother was awesome.
"I will inform him of this tomorrow morning. You will meet him in room…" the Hokage said, looking expectantly at the only Academy teacher among them.
"I think room 322 is free," Iruka said quickly. He taught his class in 321 and the room across the hall never had anyone in it.
"322 it is," the Hokage said. "Get a good night's sleep and a hearty breakfast. You are now ninja of Konoha as Genin Team…" The Hokage struggled for some name or number.
"There are currently six genin teams," someone in the crowd pointed out.
"Team Seven."
Naruto, Sakura and Sasuke looked amongst one another.
Team Seven.
They liked it.
10
They celebrated their victory by going to Sakura's favorite sushi place, several blocks away from the Uchiha district.
"This is a huge honor, by the way," Naruto said. "They put us on genin teams."
Sasuke frowned. Everyone in his family had been on genin teams.
"So around ninety to a hundred ninja graduate from the academy at any given point. There are five classes our age - so many people that our lunch periods have to be scheduled for different times. Maybe fifty or sixty people fail the graduation exam we just took and are held back. But then, everyone's assigned to a team with one of the forty elite jonin," Naruto explained.
"But the jonin can't all watch over genin, right?" Sasuke asked rhetorically. "Some of them work in teams themselves, to do A rank and S rank missions, where bringing genin along would be suicide."
"Yup. So only around a maximum of the thirty brightest and best who also show possibility of carrying the old man's Will of Fire are hand picked by their jonin sensei."
"But we didn't even have to take that test," Sakura spoke up after swallowing one of her rather large cuts of raw salmon. Sashimi, especially fish which only swam in the ocean, was expensive, but Sasuke was in a celebratory mood. And Sasuke was really, really rich. The boy was polishing a large amount of tuna himself. Naruto had opted to go with some of both and seemed to be enjoying it, even.
"Nope! Which means we're well on our way to being cool." He smiled widely. The setting sun cast an orange glow on Naruto. He looked almost like the Fourth atop the Boss Toad Gamabunta's back, riding off to meet his doom against the Nine-Tailed Fox.
Sasuke scoffed, then waved a waiter over. He fished several thousand-ryo notes out of his wallet and left a generous tip.
They walked out of the restaurant with the weight of expectations hanging over them.
"We did it," Naruto said softly. "We did it. There's no way we could have done it alone, so we worked together."
Sakura knew he was having some fantasies of the Sannin.
"Where should we go now?" Naruto asked, secretly hoping his teammates would spend the rest of the day with him.
"Our parents would probably want to hear about this, but it can wait. It was a surprise anyway." They grinned and headed over the park in Rat district where they copied homework off of Sakura for so long.
Naruto smiled.