Iruka sighed, a headache building up behind his eye sockets. A paper kunai soared by, crumpling when it hit the wall. Most of the class was chattering, adding to the cacophony. Even Shino's kikaichu bugs chirped. Sasuke stewed in a cloud of anger that was almost tangible, glaring whenever an excitable classmate got too close to his personal space. The high-pitched yapping of Kiba's puppy rivaled the shrill pitch of Ino's and Sakura's strident argument. They alternated between yelling at each other and a hapless Naruto.
"Quiet!" Iruka barked, letting loose a sliver of a hint of killing intent at the unruly students before him. Not very much (he was a chunin, after all, and a teacher at the academy), but they were only schoolchildren, and the shock quickly quieted them. As they settled into their seats, Iruka unfolded the paper with the Hokage's seal on it.
"Team 1," he began. He listed off the genin teams, ignoring various shrieks of excitement and groans of disappointment. As he worked his way down the list, he couldn't help but wonder what the Hokage was thinking. An all-kunoichi team? The usual practice of balancing ability-the first in the class, the last in the class, and the top kunoichi-did not seem to be applied here. Instead of Sasuke, Naruto, and Sakura on a team, it was-
"Sasuke Uchiha, Akimichi Chouji, and Aburame Shino, your sensei will be Hatake Kakashi. Team 8 will be Yamanaka Ino, Hyuuga Hinata, and Haruno Sakura. Your sensei will be Mitarashi Anko."
"What? I have to be on a team with Forehead? No fair!" Ino wailed as Sakura glared at her. Hinata blushed and stared at Iruka.
"Quiet!" he snapped at Ino, hoping to nip any arguments in the bud, and continued.
"…Team 10 will be Uzumaki Naruto, Nara Shikamaru, and Inuzuka Kiba, and your sensei will be Sarutobi Asuma." Iruka noted the surprised happiness that flashed across Naruto's face and wondered at the Sandaime's thought process. He shook himself from his thoughts and continued. "Any further questions -"
Just then, the window splintered with the crash of pulverized glass as a dark shape barreled through, landing on top of his desk in a crouch.
"Mm, fresh meat!" Anko flashed a feral grin, widening her eyes as she surveyed the surprised and uncomfortable new genin.
"Anko-san," Iruka interrupted, trying to keep control of his classroom before anything else happened, "I am not quite done with the introductions yet-"
"What was that?"
Iruka swallowed as she turned her uncomfortable gaze on him.
"You're early, Anko-san," he said. "Please wait until I have told the class the required information, and then you may collect your team."
Anko pouted, but agreed.
Unfortunately, his relief was short-lived.
"Hey, you're kind of cute," she said, "How about you buy me dango sometime?"
"Ah…Anko-san," he stuttered, not sure how to respond.
She was already on her way out the broken window, disappearing in a swirl of leaves as the class stared in fascinated silence.
Iruka blinked a few times and recovered as best he could.
"As I was saying, I will leave you in the care of your new senseis. Remember, you are genin now, and that comes with new responsibility. It has been…interesting…teaching you and I wish you all the best." He bowed to them and left the room to Naruto's shout of, "Thanks Iruka-sensei! I'm gonna be hokage, believe it! And then I'll buy you ramen at Ichiraku!"
Iruka lost the fight to keep from smiling and turned in the doorway to wave to the children he had taught for the last several years. He knew that he would see some of them again soon enough, back at the academy for another year. The real genin tests were difficult, and the jounin senseis were fickle.
Sakura turned to Ino, forgetting her rivalry with the other girl in the face of her sheer bewilderment over what had just occurred. "That was our sensei?" She asked, incredulous. "Where does she even want to meet us? She didn't say where."
Ino's brow wrinkled as she experienced a similar feeling of confusion. "I have no idea," she confessed.
"U-um," Hinata coughed, her fingers fidgeting, "I can f-find Anko-sensei. I can use my byakugan. One moment."
Sakura and Ino turned to watch in fascination as Hinata blinked to reveal opaque eyes, a strange pearly white color. Veins bulged in her face as she activated her bloodline limit. After a minute, she spoke again. "Anko-sensei is at the dango stand by the vegetable market." She blinked again and the eerie byakugan disappeared, replaced by her usual dark eyes and timid expression. Sakura and Ino glanced at each other, then at Sasuke, who was paying no attention to any of them, then back at each other.
"Well, let's go, I guess," Sakura said.
"Really, Forehead, what are you waiting for?" Ino asked, grabbing Hinata's hand and charging out the door.
Soon the three found themselves at the dango stand where Anko waited, leaning against the wall.
"So, kiddies, let's get started," she said, eyes narrowed as she looked at the three little girls in front of her. "Introduce yourselves." There was a moment of silence before the pink-haired one took a step forward and bowed in a formal manner.
"Nice to meet you, Anko-sensei. My name is Haruno Sakura, and I was the top kunoichi in the graduating class." (Shannaro! inner-Sakura added in glee, Beat that, Ino-pig!)
Anko looked at her, chewing on some dango. "Next," she ordered, her gaze flickering to Ino, who stepped forward and, mimicking Sakura, bowed.
"Nice to meet you, Anko-sensei. I'm Yamanaka Ino."
"Oh," Anko raised an eyebrow. "Inoichi's daughter?"
"Yes."
"Hm," Anko took another bite of dango. "I used to work in T&I, with your dad." She leaned into Ino's personal space and grinned, too wide, seeing the girl try to mask how nervous she was. "You'll do, I guess."
She straightened back up and turned to the last one, who was shaking and curled in on herself. Anko's lip curled.
"H-h-h-h-h" the girl hiccupped, bowing so deeply she almost toppled over. "H-h-hyuuga Hinata, Sensei!"
"Hiashi's brat?" Anko reached out and grabbed Hinata's shoulder in a vice-like grip, yanking the small girl out of her bow. "Stand up straight and stop mumbling."
Hinata paled. She blinked twice at Anko, looking like she was about to pass out. Ino grabbed her elbow to hold her upright.
Anko surveyed the group in front of her, thoughtfully chewing on a dango stick. The three little genin looked so small and innocent, so naive. She was pretty sure she had never been that innocent, even when she was that small. The curse mark on the back of her neck twinged.
"Well, kiddies, let's see if any of you have any potential to be real ninja. Meet me tomorrow at 5 am sharp."
With that, she disappeared in a swirl of leaves and dust, leaving the three children coughing and confused.
Sasuke sat hunched, chin resting on his interlaced fingers. Shino and Chouji sat nearby. None of them attempted conversation; the only sound that could be heard was the continuous crunch of Choji's bag of chips. There was a small pile of empty shiny bags at his feet, the remnants of the seven bags he had consumed in the past three and a half hours. There was no sign of their sensei. They didn't know anything about the man other than his name.
A few minutes after Iruka had left, and the other teams had been collected by their senseis, a small pug had trotted into the room. The three genin had recognized it as a summons, due to the little blue headband and jacket it wore bearing the Konoha symbol. It stared at them with droopy, disinterested eyes and heaved a long sigh. "Boss says to meet on the roof." Confused but obedient, the boys had made their way to the roof of the school where they hoped answers awaited.
Sasuke glowered at the sky. He should never have trusted that stupid dog. Three and a half hours. So much time wasted, time he could have been training. Their sensei was not going to show up, and Sasuke was furious; how was he supposed to surpass that man and avenge his clan if his jounin sensei was a useless idiot who didn't even show up to collect his team? His initial relief at having avoided a team placement with any of his fangirls or Naruto had been completely replaced by rage, which he fueled by imagining that man's eventual demise in vivid detail. First he would rip out that man's awful red eyes, then he would slice at his spine with a very sharp sword, like Sasuke's mother had been sliced and hacked to death from behind as she kneeled on the floor-
"Yo!"
Sasuke's head whipped around so forcefully that his bangs, tied back by his ninja headband, came loose and tangled in his long eyelashes (Sakura and Ino were jealous of his thick, dark eyelashes which they said were "as pretty as a girl's"). He brushed his hair out of his face and mentally made an appointment with a pair of scissors and the bathroom mirror in the near future. Eyes watering, he scowled at the lean, tall man who leaned against the railing, oozing laziness. His headband slanted over one eye and his silver? gray? white? hair stuck up in every direction, making him at least two inches taller, although his bad posture negated the extra height. He wore the full uniform common to ninja of the Leaf. Faced with this strange enigmatic person, Sasuke wasn't sure what to feel or think, so he decided on his default feeling: anger. He glared an imaginary hole in the man's flak jacket.
"Alright," their strange new sensei drawled. "Why don't you introduce yourselves, one at a time."
Chouji glanced at his dark-haired, silent teammates and realized they were not going to volunteer. So he swallowed his mouthful of salt-and-vinegar chips and spoke up.
"Hi everyone, my name is Akimichi Chouji…" he trailed off, not sure what to say next. "What should I say?" he asked.
"Things you like, things you hate, dreams for the future, hobbies, things like that." Their new sensei replied.
"Well," Chouji said, "I guess I like my family, and my friends, and barbeque. I don't like diets. My dream is to master my clan's techniques and I also want to learn the secret recipe for the sweet and spicy barbeque sauce at my favorite restaurant. My hobbies are training and snacking."
"Mm, as expected from an Akimichi…Alright, next." He pointed to Shino.
"My name is Aburame Shino. I like bugs. I dislike people who talk too much. My dream is to make a lot of money on high ranking missions. Why, you ask? So I can fund insect research. My hobbies are training and taking care of my kikaichu."
"Typical Aburame…" Chouji thought he heard their sensei say under his breath. "Next."
Chouji turned towards his silent teammate, concerned about what Sasuke was going to say. He didn't know the other boy well. The Uchiha clan had always been private and Sasuke was no exception.
"My name is Uchiha Sasuke."
If Kakashi was surprised by the undercurrent of anger in the taciturn boy's voice, there was no sign other than a placid blink of his single eye.
"I hate a lot of things," Sasuke continued, biting out the words, "and I don't particularly like anything. What I have is not a dream, because I will make it a reality-I'm going to restore my clan and destroy that man."
Chouji couldn't help but wonder what he had gotten into, since it appeared that his new teammate was not only an angry loner but also a homicidal maniac. He felt Shino shift next to him, thrown off as well, although the stoic Aburame tried not to show it.
"Mm, as I thought," Kakashi hummed. "Well, you're each unique and you have your own ideas." He sounded as though he was reading from a boring script. "We'll have our first mission tomorrow. It's a task that the four of us will do together-a survival exercise. This is not like your previous training."
Chouji and his teammates watched in tense silence. As prominent members of ninja clans in the Leaf, they were aware that the genin exams were not the final step in becoming a licensed ninja, but their relatives and superiors had always been vague about what the deciding factor was for true graduation. They watched in apprehension as Kakashi-sensei's bland expression morphed into something scarier, a threatening gleam in his single dark eye. He appeared to be enjoying this, and Chouji was mildly worried that their new sensei was a sadist. Although, he thought, no one could be worse than the fearsome woman who had burst into their classroom earlier.
He yanked his attention back to Kakashi-sensei.
"It seems you are already aware, to an extent, but I will reiterate the situation to emphasize the importance of tomorrow's exercise. Of the twenty-seven graduates who have been assigned jonin senseis, only nine will actually be accepted as genin. The other eighteen will be weeded out and sent back to the academy. In other words, this is a pass-fail test, and the chance that you'll fail is at least 66%. The graduation test you already took was to select candidates who might become genin…or they might not. That's how it is. I decide whether you pass or fail. Be at the designated training spot at 5 am and bring your gear. That's it-oh, and tomorrow you'd better skip breakfast so you don't puke."
With that charming warning, he threw them a casual, sloppy salute and disappeared in a swirl of leaves.
Naruto was surprised to learn that Shikamaru and Kiba were on his team. He didn't particularly like Kiba, but Shikamaru was pretty nice when he wasn't asleep, and anything was better than having Sasuke on his team. He was a little sad Sakura wasn't on his team, but also relieved that she and Ino wouldn't be yelling at him all the time. After Iruka-sensei left, their new sensei, Asuma-sensei, had come and collected them. Now, standing by the swing where Naruto had spent much of his lonely childhood, they introduced themselves and Asuma-sensei notified them of their training schedule for the next day. He treated Naruto like he treated Shikamaru and Kiba. Naruto had no idea what to think of that, but he hadn't been beaten up, yelled at, glared at, spit on, or tricked into doing something stupid or painful, so he figured the guy couldn't be too bad.
As their new sensei waved farewell and left, he found himself worrying about this "secondary test" they were going to have the next day. Whatever he proclaimed about becoming Hokage one day, he was aware of his current level. He was at the bottom of the class, and while he might be able to compete against Kiba, the other boy had an advantage in the form of Akamaru. Although Naruto had never seen Shikamaru do anything but sleep through class, he was in fact third-best in the class after Sasuke and Sakura. Naruto had a sneaking suspicion Shikamaru could win without much effort.
He was struggling to resign himself to returning to the academy for another year, realism warring with his strong inborn sense of optimism, when Kiba let out a wild shout.
"This is so cool! I can't believe Sarutobi Asuma is our new sensei! He's the son of the Hokage! The Sandaime Hokage-the God of Shinobi!"
"I didn't realize you were such a history buff," Shikamaru yawned. Kiba shot him a look and said,
"I'm not a nerd! I just know the cool guys!" He crossed his arms defensively.
"Troublesome," Shikamaru muttered and glanced at them, his face unreadable, before ambling away.
"Whatever," Kiba grinned, a feral baring of sharp teeth as he pointed at Naruto, "Watch out tomorrow, Uzumaki! Me and Akumaru will kick your butt and then I'll be a real genin! I'm not going back to the academy!" And with that, he ran off, Akamaru yapping at his heels. Naruto stared after him for a minute, then allowed himself to relax, folding into a miserable pretzel as he sat down on the swing and contemplated spending yet another year at the ninja academy. Even his favorite daydreams, rose-tinted visions of himself as Hokage, showered in gold and free ramen by adoring citizens, couldn't dispel his uneasiness over the test yet to come.