Note: Let us all assume that this took when Naruto is a grown-up, maybe after the whole war waged by that one crazy Uchiha - no, not Sasuke, the other one - where everyone joined in to try and kick his immortal arse.
Schooling Prodigies
1.
When he was first asked to take on a triad of reportedly troubled and had-the-potential-to-become-troubled teenagers, the first answer that Naruto could think of was "I'm not a therapist." While it wasn't true that life had changed him from the days when he first accepted his headband, it certainly had worn his bright spirit a little. He liked to think that what he'd lost was a measure of idiocy – only a measure, mind, because what was Uzumaki Naruto without a couple of notches of stubborn stupidity thrown in? In truth, he was afraid that he would make the same mistake Kakashi did and let his team fragment and fall to a billion pieces. And he of all people knew how deep and painfully those shards could cut.
But Tsunade had insisted, and Naruto had accepted, and received a team made up of a little genjutsu mistress-wannabe from the Hyuuga Clan who wore a worn and scratched-up headband that hid an unmarked forehead, a little swordsman who reminded him too much of Uchiha Sasuke and a mini him, except this mini him smiled to hide thorns and bitterness instead of bleeding wounds and tears.
He decided right then and there that if Hell wanted to freeze over and implode it could, but he wasn't about to let this team turn into anything but the most perfect team ever since Kurenai's team.
2.
Everyone in Cell Four, Naruto had also been quick to find out, had their reasons for fighting tied to the dead and vengeance, somehow or someway. Hyuuga Tomoe became a shinobi because there was once a low-born Hyuuga who became her respected and beloved Aniki and was stolen away by the tides of war and overwhelming possibilities. Katsura Kaeru had a shinobi mother to avenge. Kurosawa Tsukimori became a shinobi because his civilian father was murdered in Pain's rampage and he'd been powerless to do anything except for cower and cry, so he'd vowed to become power.
Regardless, Naruto was optimistic. At least the kids had some common grounds. Even though that sort of common grounds gave him the jitters. The way they eyed each other when they first met was enough to almost make him regret ever taking them on. It was like putting three mini Sasuke's together in the same team and expecting them to be nice and chummy with each other. It just didn't happen.
But then Naruto reminded himself – painfully – that Uchiha Sasuke was dead and not the only standard around, and he should stop comparing the kids to him.
That thought helped his resolve somewhat. Somewhat.
When Naruto showed up at Shikamaru's door that night and invited everyone present – Neji (who had been roped into being Shikamaru's chess opponent awhile before), Chouji, Kiba, Shino, TenTen, Lee, and Shikamaru himself – to a night at the bar with him footing the tabs, nobody was surprised. Neji even made a sympathetic face at him, or as much as the Hyuuga can.
Nobody turned down his offers either. Naruto didn't wake up crying the next day because of a bad hangover. He woke up crying because of his suddenly too-light wallet. And not entirely because he was paying for the drinks. He also had to pay for the wall Lee broke after the first sake bottle he had.
At least his bad mood gave his nerves a good steeling-up in preparation for the Bell Test that was supposed to take place that day.
3.
The test was the first surprise Naruto got out of his team. He'd expected all of them to head straight for him and take the every-man-for-himself hint seriously. In some ways they lived up to them, with Kaeru being the one to charge straight at him with sword swinging (but much more skill than Naruto had possessed at that age) while Tsukimori and Tomoe had fled into the camouflages.
Two bunshin, a couple of bent kunai and a few back-flips later and Kaeru was lying in a groaning heap. Then Naruto turned to survey the scene again, wondering (without much hope) if the other two would come to help their teammates.
They didn't come. Not exactly. Instead they sent him a volley of explosive notes (genjutsu-ed into existence) and another volley of shuriken (genjutsu-ed into nonexistence). It was only through Naruto's shadow clone mastery and quick swaps between clones here and there that allowed him to not get poked full of holes.
And then he came to the realization that the bells that were supposed to be clipped to his belt had vanished.
Naruto didn't feel proud. He was impressed, but he was also uneasy. He'd had too many experiences with geniuses to be unaware of the fact that only two of all the ones he knew ever came out all right. But he had called off the test, made the kids show him their bells, and decided to stick with the false promise that only two of them could ever pass.
At which point Tsukimori had grinned cheekily and nodded at Naruto's belt. When he glanced down, the bells were there. When he glanced up, the bells that Kaeru and Tomoe had been holding up to show him were just pebbles.
"I figured if we worked together, it would pay off more," Tsukimori said smugly.
Not only that, but he'd managed to convince the rebellious and sullen-seeming Kaeru and the stone-faced Tomoe to work for him. That was beyond remarkable for a squad of children aged twelve to thirteen, and only had a few months of differences between them. Once again, Naruto felt the strange tug that warned of something he couldn't foresee clearly, for the life of him.
It was only much later in the day, when he'd passed them, taken them out for ramen and observed all three as much as he could – outside of battle, they were still a little cold to each other – that Naruto remembered that these same "children" had lived through a war and a period of rebuilding process.
Perhaps they were just naturally geniuses, naturally cunning, or perhaps their skills had been bred by necessity. The Hyuuga Clan wasn't known for its genjutsu specialists, but the ones who were in existence were only a few notches behind the medic-nins of the same clan in utility. Kaeru was a bastard, but he had had training ever since he could walk. Tsukimori bailed himself out of trouble with just his mind and his tongue.
Whatever it was, Naruto could feel the sharpness of those minds and could almost see the day when it would turn on them. Like it had turned on Orochimaru, on Sasuke. It left him nervous. For a second, he doubted himself.
After a few hours of thinking, though, Naruto eventually realized that it was probably for just that reason that Tsunade had ordered those three minds to be cobbled together into a single team and given them to him. Naruto was a little past the days when Therapy no Jutsu could work instantly and without fail, and children were stubborn yet impressionable little beasts that could go haywire and all wrong if a single wrong step was taken, but perhaps Tsunade was hoping that with constant exposure to his presence, he could help steer them clear of the mad pit both her teammate and Naruto's had fallen into.
It was also the first time Naruto truly realized that he probably had his work cut out for him.
4.
The problem with the kids, Naruto discovered all too quickly, was that they could not be judged based on their mission success rates. Tsukimori more or less plopped down in the chair of the leader, the strategist, and stayed there after the Bell Test. The other two seemed all too happy to let him, although Kaeru grumbled and seemed to chafe under the authority, but he was always reassured by results, and Tsukimori only solidified that trust by trying his damnedest to never lead them astray. Tomoe, ever silent and stoic, offered no opinion. The fact that she followed Tsukimori's lead was enough testament of her faith in him.
No, they were too efficient as far as actual shinobi work went. They didn't seem like children. There were no real feelings between them. They were like little professionals going about their businesses like true shinobi would. The river was not frozen over, but there were glaciers everywhere.
They were well-behaved. They were competent. They were excellent soldiers and minions. They were everything any sensei could ever wish for. They drove Naruto crazy.
They drove him crazy because, once upon a time, when Naruto and Kakashi were lugging down sake bottles after a mission that had rendered Iruka dead and made Hanabi the heir because she was the only one alive, Naruto had asked his old sensei what was the one lesson he couldn't teach in time.
And Kakashi had looked at him with his one gray haunted eye and answered, "Shinobi can be emotionless and methodical all they want, Naruto, but in the end it's the emotions they were so eager to throw away that keep them alive and together."
He hadn't even learned it in time, Kakashi had also confessed. He also wasn't able to pass it on. And look where they were now.
Naruto saw that possibility, that future in this ice-cold team he'd been dealt. This – not the Kyuubi, not Orochimaru, not Sasuke's madness, not his inability to save the ones who mattered the most – was the one thing that made him feel anything that resembled fear.
5.
One day, Cell Four ran up against a situation they couldn't deal with.
It had been, in a stroke of genius (and miserable) coincidence, on one of their first C-rank missions out of the village. They were supposed to go and lend assistance to a farmer who lived right near the border of Fire Country when he'd complained that there were too many wolves lately, and they had found more than wolves. The farmer had been lying. They were ambushed by at least A-rank ronins who wanted Naruto's head on a stick and didn't care about the spares, namely his student.
Usually this wouldn't be a problem because Naruto was, after all, a spammer of the handy Kage Bunshin technique. Except they had come prepared and one of the men had some sort of bizarre bloodline that involved some sort of chakra barrier that repelled even Rasengan and locked the kids away to deal with him while the other two tried their luck with Naruto.
Thirty minutes later, the barrier broke – from within. Hyuuga Tomoe - Hyuuga Tomoe, the ever-silent girl - emerged then, her off-white robes and face and long black hair stained crimson and with a look in her eyes that reminded Naruto unwittingly of a ferocious beast whose nest and young had been messed with, and tossed the completely pulverized and barely-human corpse of her jailor at the remaining ronins.
It took her a moment to process that the other two guys were already knocked out cold and beat up. But at least they were breathing. A little. "Tsukimori is wounded," she reported calmly. "Kaeru is scratched up. Neither are seriously injured, but Tsukimori lost a lot of blood."
Only then did she pass out cold from chakra exhaustion.
A few days later, as Cell Four stagger-limped their way back to Konoha, with Naruto carrying Tomoe on his back (much to her chagrin and humiliation) and a grumbling Kaeru half-drag-half-hauling along a weak and dizzy Tsukimori, their sensei finally managed to weasel the story out of them.
They had been badly overpowered. None of the three had had any clue as to what the bloodline ability was, if it had been a bloodline ability at all, and chakra did not function normally inside that barrier. It had been Kaeru who'd figured out how to disrupt it just for a second, but attacks were incoming and Tsukimori, in what he himself claimed was a streak of madness, had pushed his teammate out of the way and gotten himself heavily wounded in the process.
But it had been Tomoe who'd taken advantage of that second where the barrier failed and revealed their jailor, and it had been she alone who struck him no less than two hundred times with (Naruto would much later learn) chakra-fueled fists, which explained his pulverized state. Tsukimori then quietly estimated that he was probably dead within fifty hits with an unnerved glance at his female teammate. Kaeru had just stayed quiet throughout.
Tomoe had simply mumbled something under her breath that nobody could hear except for Naruto. What he did hear made him smile. It also solidified his opinion that geniuses or not, they were still children.
And children were malleable. Even if some might prefer to call what Naruto was about to do "corruption" rather than "teaching", but whatever. They were his little hellions; he can teach them whatever he wants.
Author's Note: To be honest, I have no idea what I'm trying to do here, except for trying to prove a point maybe. I've always liked stories about Naruto leading a genin team at last after every loopy Uchiha arse is kicked and fun things happen (FINALLY), except that they really didn't because the Narutoverse is built on misery and suffering and war and what am I even saying.
I hope you enjoyed this. Maybe I will update, since it's all Naruto here and even though nobody would probably care about his OC genius students who must be absolute bores simply because they're called geniuses, but it will help round up the story and give something of a finale. I think.
Reviews are always appreciated!