A/N #1: The original idea for this story belongs to VoltBlast. Thanks for letting me take this cool idea and run with it.

A/N #2: This story will mostly follow the canon manga storyline, but Naruto will have new adventures as well, which I am very excited for. Please bear with me, I will update when I can, as often as I can. I plan for some romance and fun things later on, but not yet. Naruto is just a young twelve-year old boy, after all.

Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Masashi Kishimoto, not me. If I had the rights to Naruto... *drools*. On to the story!

Chapter 1: Team Selection Day

Naruto Uzumaki was feeling extremely frustrated. It was his first day as an official genin of Konoha, and all he had done was sit in a classroom all day waiting for his sensei to show up! He had sat through all the other teams being announced and their respective sensei coming to the classroom to pick them up. He cursed his rotten luck. Sakura-chan had gotten paired with Sasuke Uchiha and the new kid from Mizu, Kou Nagase on Team 7. Naruto would have given up ramen for a month if he could trade places with either of them! He even had to sit through the pathetic prank they had set up for when their sensei eventually arrived around noon.

"If I had to wait on my sensei to show up for three hours, there's no way I would have let him off that easy. Instead of a stupid eraser falling on his head, that silver haired weirdo with the mask would have received three full water balloons on his head when he walked in," Naruto grumbled to himself.

Iruka-sensei had told Naruto that he was filling an unexpected vacancy on his new sensei's team. So Naruto reasoned that he had to wait until his stupid sensei showed up, otherwise he wouldn't be placed on a team. Naruto was definitely going to risk anything that would prevent him from becoming a ninja, so he just sighed and put his head on the desk, bored out of his twelve-year old mind. The young blonde glanced up at the clock on the wall. TWO P.M! His sensei was going to pay for when he finally arrived! Well, that was if he arrived at all.

Naruto scanned the classroom for anything that could be used to prank his sensei for being so late. His eyes fell on the eraser from earlier.

'No, that was done already. I have to go bigger and better than that,' thought the young ninja. Then he saw the chalk next to the eraser.

"Perfect!" Naruto grinned. He retrieved two sticks of chalk from the board, sat down at his desk, and went to work. He started grinding the chalk down into a fine powder. With how frustrated he was at being left here all day, Naruto crushed the chalk to a fine dust within minutes. He gathered all the chalky dust and gathered it into a compact shape. Once there, he poured all of the powder into one of the many little cherry bombs that he carried with him. Naruto had discovered these miniature explosives were useful in all sorts of situations, weren't lethal, could be filled with whatever substance you pleased, and were especially great for pranks. So Naruto placed the chalk dust filled tools in perfect position on the door frame. When it was opened, the chalk bomb would fall on his unsuspecting sensei, covering his face and uniform in chalk dust. It would be comedy gold!

The young prankster returned to his seat, satisfied with his work and grinned with anticipation. Naruto waited and waited, but his sensei still didn't show up. Disappointed, Narrator's thoughts migrated back to the other teams that were selected. He knew that there were 28 students including him, and there were nine teams. Everyone was selected for a team but him. The young genin wondered if it had anything to do with the fact that he was the nine tails' Jinchuuriki.

'Iruka sensei saved me yesterday, and didn't care that I was the Nine Tails, so that can't be it. Why did I get singled out again?' Naruto wondered. 'Who did I piss off this time?'

Naruto racked his brain for people who held grudges against him for pranks he had pulled, but couldn't think of anyone who would make his life more hell than it already was. He sighed in defeat, and reviewed the events of the day. The blonde contemplated the previous teams selected that day. The blonde didn't really know anybody else besides the people on teams seven, eight, and ten.

Team eight was comprised of Hinata Hyuuga, Kiba Inazuka, and Shino Aburame. Naruto didn't really have anything against those three, except for Kiba. That guy seriously got on his nerves sometimes. Not as much as Sasuke though. No one got on his nerves as much as Sasuke did. Naruto couldn't figure out what Sakura saw in him.

'The really shy girl, the super introverted weirdo, and the loud annoying dog boy all on one team,' thought Naruto absentmindedly. 'I'm glad that I'll be on a different team than Kiba.' He felt a little bad about Shino and Hinata having to deal with him, but dismissed the thought quickly.

Naruto moved on to team ten, the other team that he knew people on, team ten. Team ten's members were Shikamaru Nara, Ino Yamanaka, and Choji Akimichi. He didn't know them all that well. Shikamaru was lazy, Choji ate a lot, and Ino was just another Sasuke fan girl. They knew each other since their parents made the famous Ino-Shika-Cho combination.

'They've all been friends forever. Of course they would be put on the same team,' reasoned the young genin.

"So who in the hell is my mystery sensei?! AND WHY ARE THEY SO LATE?!" Naruto grumbled.

"DYNAMIC ENTRY!"

Startled, Naruto turned to see a green-clad shinobi burst through the door with a forceful flying kick, nearly knocking it off of its hinges as he rocketed into the room. A side effect of the sudden and forceful move was that the chalk Naruto had painstakingly set up fell harmlessly to the ground. Cursing his ridiculously rotten luck, the young genin turned to see a man with the thickest eyebrows he had ever seen smiling brightly right at him.

Now for Naruto, this was the last straw. First, he had been forced to wait in a classroom for over FIVE HOURS by himself with no food or anything to keep him busy. Then on top of being late, his new sensei ruined his awesome prank by bursting through the door and wasting a perfectly good chalk bomb. Last, but not least, this bushy-browed, green-clad, bowl-headed IDIOT was daring to smile at him after what he had been through! Naruto growled menacingly.

"WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?! DO YOU EVEN KNOW HOW LONG I'VE BEEN WAITING?! AND WHY THE HELL ARE YOU STILL SMILING AT ME?!" Naruto screamed.

The green-clad shinobi just grinned wider. "I AM MIGHT GUY! AND I AM LOOKING FOR ONE UZUMAKI NARUTO! IS THAT YOU?" he bellowed.

"Yeah, that's me. So? What do you want with me?" Naruto answered back angrily.

"Well Naruto, I'm your new sensei! Welcome to Team 9! Here is your welcome gift!" Might Guy produced a package. "Go on, open it!" Guy said excitedly.

Naruto skeptically looked up at the giddy Jonin, then back down at the bundle. It was wrapped in nondescript brown paper with rope tied across it vertically and horizontally. The young blonde rarely received presents since he lived alone and was hated by almost the entire village, and the few presents he did receive were from the Third Hokage, who didn't give out gifts very often. So Naruto didn't have a second thought as he tore into the packaging. The paper yielded to an orange uniform identical to Might Guy's, except with yellow leg warmers. Naruto's eyes lit up, all anger forgotten. It was destiny for him to be on this man's team!

"Wow! You even got this for me in my favorite color? Why?" Naruto questioned.

"This is going to be your new training uniform, Naruto. And I heard from Iruka that you like the color orange. So it was simple, really," Guy said nonchalantly.

The young blonde held his new uniform up with awe. "Thanks Guy-sensei, I love it! Orange is my favorite!" Naruto exclaimed happily.

The bushy-browed jonin grinned. "Well take this as an apology for showing up late, and I'm happy to have you on the team. We'll see what you're made of tomorrow. Show up at training field #19 at eight A.M., and you will start your training, and you'll get to meet your teammates!"

Naruto nodded excitedly. His new sensei didn't seem like a bad guy. Sure he was a little weird, looked kind of funny, and showed up late, but he definitely made up for it with that awesome gift. The young blonde vowed to make a good impression and train hard for his new teacher. Naruto was still very curious about why he was singled out, as well as why there was an empty spot on this youthful man's team.

"U-Um sensei?" began Naruto nervously.

"Yes, what is it my pupil?" Guy responded.

"Why me? There was a whole class of new genin that got put on teams. Iruka-sensei told me I was a replacement for an unexpected vacancy. What happened? Is that person ok? Are they coming back? Will I have to give up this uniform?!" the young blonde panicked, clutching the uniform to his chest.

Might Guy chuckled. "Calm down, Naruto. I know you have lots of questions for me, but I need you to wait until tomorrow. I can say that you are going to be on my team for the foreseeable future, Naruto. And you won't have to give up the uniform, even if something happens. It's a gift," the jonin finished with a smile.

Naruto felt his eyes water at the unexpected kindness. "T-T-THANK YOU GUY-SENSEI!" he cried with joy.

"No problem, Naruto. Now I expect you to work extremely hard. Take the rest of the day off, and remember; meet at training field #19 at eight tomorrow morning," he stated.

The genin nodded frantically. "Yes Guy-sensei, I'll be there." Unable to hold his tears back any longer, Naruto rocketed out of the room to dry his now free-flowing tears of joy.

'I can't believe it! I'm finally going to be a real ninja! AND MY SENSEI IS AWESOME!' Naruto celebrated internally as he raced toward Ichiraku's.

The Green Beast of Konoha couldn't help but smile at the youthful enthusiasm of his new pupil. 'He is very youthful indeed,' he thought to himself. "It must have been really rough for him growing up for Naruto to react like that to my simple gift,' he reflected sadly. 'Hopefully I'll do right by him as his sensei. I'm definitely not perfect, though.'

The jonin kicked himself mentally. He couldn't keep beating himself up over Lee's accident. All of his students were counting on him to be their strong teacher, and he vowed not to let them down. He had to stay strong for all of his students, and especially for Lee. Might Guy gathered himself, sighed, stepped out of the classroom and headed to the hospital.

Feel free to give me any sort of feedback or ask any questions you may have. I'm always open to suggestions, and I'm always trying to improve. Thanks again to my beta for setting my grammar straight.

Steeltoedsandal