Well, my recent Danny Phantom fic has been met with little more than silence and so I have left it. I, like most people, post these stories here to get feedback. I post them here solely for the purpose of reviews. I want to read constructive criticism. I want to know what you like and don't like about these stories. And so I will try one more time. I will post this story, and I will ask only that you readers tell me what you think. And sorry about what I uploaded earlier, something happened to it when I changed the file type.
I do not own any of these characters, nor do I make a profit from this piece of fiction. This message holds true for this and any subsequent chapters and will not be shown in any future chapters. That having been said, please enjoy the first chapter of, "Kakashi's Gambit"
"This is Hawk, I'm in position, sensei," said the young black-haired boy as he spied the target from behind the cover of a tree.
"This is Cherry Blossom, in position also," said the pink-haired girl from behind a large boulder several yards away from the boy. "Red ribbon on the right ear, that's definitely the target."
"Yosh! This is Fox, in position and ready to go, dattebayo!" said the young blond boy from the roof of a nearby tool shed. "Let me at 'im, sensei!"
"Geez, Naruto, it's not like we care where you are," said Cherry Blossom with a sneer. "Just shut up and wait for Sasuke to complete the mission."
"Will you both just shut up," said the black-haired boy, Sasuke. "You'll alert the target to our presence."
"Cut the chatter you three," came the voice of their silver-haired sensei. "Team Seven, you have a go for capture, don't screw it up!"
"Understood, sensei," came the bored reply from Hawk. "Just sit and watch, dobe, while I show you how it-"
"Yosh! I'm goin' in! The target's mine, dattebayo!!" came the loud interruption from Naruto. "Watch how awesome I am, Sakura-chan!"
"Damn it, Naruto! I told you to wait for Sasuke!" scolded Cherry Blossom, aka Sakura. "Just wait until I get my hands on you, baka!"
"You idiot, you're never going to catch it like that!" griped Sasuke. "I'll get it so back off!"
Suddenly there was a flurry of motion. Three young people rushed the target, two tried to catch it, one tried to knock the other unconscious, and all three slammed head first into each other and quickly became entangled in an impromptu brawl. Meanwhile, the small cat that was supposed to be their target was swiftly getting away, practically laughing at them. It never even saw the tall, silver-haired man until it was firmly grabbed by the scruff of its neck and hoisted into the air.
"You three are pathetic," said the silver-haired man to the three quarreling kids. "I suppose I have no choice… meet me in your old academy classroom tomorrow morning at seven, and don't be late."
With that said the silver-haired man, Kakashi, turned his back on his three students and disappeared in a swirl of leaves.
Morning dawned bright and early in the hidden ninja village of Konohagakure no Sato, the Village Hidden in the Leaves. Walking side by side this morning were Haruno Sakura and Uchiha Sasuke. Sakura, the young pink-haired kunoichi of Team Seven had found Sasuke not far from his home and decided to join him, as they made their way to the Ninja Academy. Sasuke, who had hoped to get to the academy without being seen, was not pleased by this. Sakura had not stopped talking since she found him and his head was beginning to hurt. She went on and on about his greatness, and their teammate's ineptitude, and their sensei's strange order to meet at the academy. Sure, he agreed with most of what she said, but he was still annoyed all the same by her incessant talking.
They arrived at the academy with about fifteen minutes to spare. Sakura was happy, thinking that she'd get fifteen minutes to spend alone with Sasuke before their teammate, Uzumaki Naruto, showed up to ruin her day. Sasuke was grumbling about how he wished Sakura would go away and let him have fifteen minutes of peace and quiet before having to deal with the blond-haired dobe. Both were shocked when they entered the classroom to see that Naruto was already there, and he seemed to have been there a while, considering how comfortable he looked, lounging at his old desk.
"Hey Naruto! What are you doing here so early," asked Sakura, rushing to catch up as Sasuke entered the room and walked to the front row to take a seat. She was even more surprised when he didn't answer.
Naruto just gave her an impish grin before getting up and walking to the chalkboard. His grin widened as he grabbed the chalky eraser and a stop stool and proceeded to wedge the eraser between the edge of the sliding door and the top corner of the door jamb.
"What the hell, Naruto," sighed Sakura, watching his antics. "Kakashi might have fallen for that on our first day, but there's no way he's going to fall for it twice."
"Cha! Naruto no Baka! Using the same trick twice, how boring!" griped Sakura's inner self, the manifestation of her not so obvious mental illnesses.
Naruto just grinned at her and leaned against the wall opposite to the door, waiting patiently by the window. His patience quickly ended though and he soon began to amuse himself by drawing rude pictures on the chalkboard.
Two more hours later found a battered Naruto, half asleep at a desk, Sakura sulking after a wicked tongue lashing from Sasuke, and Sasuke brooding by the window with a bruise on his cheek courtesy of Naruto's fist. Suddenly the door to the classroom opened and in popped Kakashi's masked face, his single visible eye probing the room.
Down came the eraser, heading for the top of the hardened jounin's head. Suddenly there was a wisp of smoke and where Kakashi had just been standing there appeared a flatfooted Naruto. Kakashi, seeing the trap coming a mile away, had used the kawarimi no jutsu to switch places with Naruto, reclining comfortably at the desk to watch as Naruto's rehashed prank backfired on him. But the joke was on Kakashi. The Naruto that Kakashi had kawarimied with suddenly disappeared with a puff. Kakashi's eyes narrowed with suspicion as he watched the eraser fall towards the floor. It was then he noticed the thin, ninja wire tied to the eraser. His eyes followed the near invisible thread up to a small eye hook in the ceiling then further to a small latch. It was then he realized: Naruto had expected the kawarimi, he'd played Kakashi from the start. The ceiling tile above him had been replaced, turned into a cleverly disguised trap door, the latch to which was connected to the wire which was in turn connected to the falling eraser. Kakashi was so caught off guard by the double trap that he almost didn't react in time. But, thanks to another quick kawarimi with Sasuke, the brooding Uchiha suddenly found himself covered in pink paint which had spilled out from the trap above the seat that Kakashi had just been in.
But something didn't seem right. Where was Naruto? Why wasn't he rolling around laughing at Sasuke's plight? Suddenly, a faint hissing sound came to Kakashi's ears. It was coming from inside the desk he was sitting at. His curiosity getting the better of him, Kakashi looked inside the desk and noticed the inside was plastered with small, burning slips of paper. Kakashi's eyes widened in shock as he saw the exploding tags. There was just no way that Naruto would be that reckless, was there?! Kakashi didn't have time to answer that thought, or even think of an escape route. Suddenly there was a large bang and the slips exploded… into a puff of yellow powder. Kakashi's head and much of his face was covered in the yellow powder and suddenly Naruto was there, laughing his ass off at the fuming, murderous Sasuke and Sakura and the thoroughly annoyed Kakashi.
"That was surprisingly well thought out," thought Kakashi as he gave Naruto a withering look. "Now, if only he could put that talent to use on missions…"
Before Sasuke or Sakura could even get up to attack the blond prankster, Kakashi rose and walked to the front of the class, a serious look on his face.
"Hmm… how can I say this..?" muttered Kakashi, wiping the powder of his face. "My revised impression is… I am ashamed of you all. I should never have passed you three and I am very close to having Team Seven disbanded."
Kakashi gave his three students a very serious glare and for a moment nobody said a thing. Suddenly the silence was broken, by Naruto of course. He was on his feet shouting indignantly, lauding his triumphs and putting a lot of the blame for their low performance on Sasuke. Sakura soon joined in by yelling at Naruto and blaming him for their failures. Sasuke quietly remarked that both of his teammates were useless and that it wasn't his fault they were doing so poorly. Kakashi was not pleased in the least.
"That is enough! You three will be silent and listen!" he all but shouted. "Or so help me I will end your careers as ninja permanently!"
The reaction was instantaneous. Sakura and Naruto backed down and sent timid, almost scared looks towards their normally laid back sensei. Sasuke sent Kakashi an angry glare but held his tongue. None of them had ever heard Kakashi yell, not once in the two weeks since Team Seven began. They knew he was serious.
"Good," said Kakashi in a far more normal tone of voice. "Now that I have your attention, class can begin."
Naruto and Sakura took their seats as Kakashi began writing on the chalkboard. The lack of Kakashi's usual little orange hentai manga had them curious.
"Teamwork," he said, underlining the word on the board. "Since day one that is the lesson I have been trying to teach you three. It seems that so far you have failed to learn it."
"Sakura, in every mission we've had so far you have done everything in your power to pine over Sasuke and insult Naruto. You act so superior to him, but he far outshines you in strength, stamina, drive, and if his pranks are any indication then he even has you beat in ingenuity. Naruto does his best to prove himself and improve upon himself. You, Sakura try to take the easy way out in every mission. Sakura, for all your insults, Naruto is a far better ninja than you."
Sakura looked mutinous and was about to speak but a heated glare from Kakashi stopped her in her tracks. She contented herself by giving sad looks to the desk in front of her. Naruto, meanwhile, looked conflicted. He didn't like Kakashi being so harsh to Sakura-chan, but he liked the praise.
"Sasuke, I have not once heard you say a single kind word to either of your teammates. You hold onto your delusions of grandeur, believing that Sakura and Naruto will hold you back. But out in the real world, you're nothing, and you're even more of nothing without those two covering your back. Sure, you're taijutsu is best on the team and you know how to use your ninjutsu to their fullest potential, but that won't save you if you rush off without backup. Do you honestly think Itachi got as far as he did on his own? Do you think your brother is out there alone? If you want to kill him, you'll have to get through whatever allies he has first, and you'll never be able to do that alone, no matter how much stronger you get. Even Naruto knows that he is nothing without his friends."
Sasuke looked positively murderous. It took a large spike of killing intent on Kakashi's part to keep the young boy from attacking him. Naruto meanwhile was beginning to look smug. Finally, Kakashi-sensei was recognizing his brilliance.
"And Naruto… you're a disgrace," so much for that idea.
"Naruto, you have no focus, no discipline, and almost no brains to go with your brawn. You never think ahead, you never pay attention to the world around you; you're so lost in your fantasies, so eager to make a statement that you constantly screw up your every endeavor. Your skills are pathetic, your control is even worse. You have no chance of being Hokage. Unless you change, unless you start learning to behave like a shinobi, you are better off just giving up your dream because it will never happen."
Kakashi watched as the emotions played across Naruto's face. First surprise, then indignation, then outrage, then seething anger, and finally, thankfully, doubt and disappointment. Perhaps there was hope for Naruto yet.
"None of you even try to work well with each other; you don't pay any attention to your teammates, you simply do not understand each other. If you continue to behave this way when you are out on missions you will die. Am I clear?"
Naruto gave a subdued nod from his seat in the back. Sasuke gave a grunt but refused to meet his eyes.
"Yes, Kakashi-sensei," said Sakura quietly. "But… how can we improve?"
Kakashi smiled, not that it could be seen with his mask.
"I'm glad you asked that, Sakura. I happen to have a plan for that," he said. "A plan to make you three the greatest of all the genins, better even than some chuunin."
The three students were all ears, ready to hear this undoubtedly amazing plan. Kakashi reached into one of the pockets of his jounin flak vest and pulled out three black cloth chokers, each had a small, identical kanji stitched onto the center of them. Each was color coded for each of the three students: pink for Sakura, a dark blue for Sasuke, and orange for Naruto.
"The first part of my plan is to give you three something uniform to connect you all and make you look like a team," said Kakashi, handing one choker to each of them. He grinned to himself as they put them on.
"Good, good. Now for the second part of my plan. Now that you have those on, you won't be able to take them off."
This was met with several loud outbursts of incredulity as they began trying, and failing to remove the chokers.
"Well then, onto the last part of my master plan, shall we?" asked Kakashi, his eye crinkling with his grin.
His students stopped their struggles and glared at him, wondering what more they would have to endure. Suddenly Kakashi was all business once more, his face set in a grim visage.
"Most standard formations, both in and out of combat do not require you to be outside of four yards from each other. And so, until I remove those collars, I mean chokers, from you, that will be as far as you can be from each other. Should one of you move outside of a four yard radius of either of the other two, the chokers will send an electrified pulse of my chakra into all three of you, giving you an agonizing shock. So, from now until I say otherwise, you three will eat, drink, sleep, bathe, and live together. Everything you do you will do together until you do everything in the same way, at the same time, every time."
Kakashi pierced the three shocked preteens before him with a fierce gaze before suddenly smiling.
"Oh, I've also taken the liberty of signing all three of you up for dance lessons," he said, his smiling growing behind his mask. "Attendance is mandatory."
"Have fun," he said with a smile before disappearing in a swirl of leaves with the shunshin no jutsu. When he reappeared at his home across town he could still make out the faint sounds of his students screams of agony and outrage. He laughed to himself and pulled his favorite book from his tool pack, flipping it open to where he left off. He giggled perversely, knowing that the fun was just about to begin.
Well, there you have it. What wonders and trials await our heroes? I hope you enjoyed and please review.