AN- I don't own Naruto, yadda yadda yadda

CHAPTER 1- ENTER! UZUMAKI AKAHANA!

Uzumaki Akahana, jounin of Konoha, stood between the two other jounin chosen to lead the three teams that would make up the third squad of Group 9, listening to Umino Iruka lecturing the class of newly minted genin, and wondered- not for the first time- why she had agreed to this. Oh, yeah. Sarutobi-jiji asked nicely. That was it. At eighteen, Akahana was one of the youngest ever to make jounin- excluding those hardcases that got fast-tracked into ANBU- and certainly the youngest kunoichi (she had achieved the rank two years ago) do to so. She sported blonde hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, with her hitai-ite on her forehead, and the green tactical vest worn by Konoha chuunin and jounin over her uniform. The uniform was customized, as was a jounin's right- it was black instead of dark blue, and sleeveless. She sported a kunai holster on each thigh, and an equipment pouch on each hip. Also attached to her belt just below the tactical vest was a pair of fingerless gloves made of black leather.

She was uncomfortably aware that she was the lone kunoichi in the middle of a group of eight men. She had been given a difficult team- Inuzuka Kiba, a brash loudmouth with a nasty sexist streak that, being good friends with his older sister Hana, she had heard all about- Uchiha Sasuke, an arrogant prodigy who, though talented, needed taking down a peg or two, and Haruno Sakura, a mindless fangirl of the aforementioned Uchiha who was, at present, a disgrace to kunoichi everywhere- more concerned with her appearance and weight than training. The young jounin had never had the time or the patience for her type.

Umino was starting to read out the teams. Akahana let his lecturing voice just wash over her, keeping an ear open for the words that would let her know that her team wasn't far from being announced.

'Third Squad. Team Seven- Aburame Shino, Hyuuga Hinata and Nakamura Tobio.'

Hatake Kakashi- Akahana's least favorite lazy pervert outside of a mission, and a skilled jounin she respected immensely inside of it- walked out the door, waving for his team to follow him. Team eight next. My turn.

'Team Eight- Uchiha Sasuke, Haruno Sakura and Inuzuka Kiba.'

The three filed down to the front. Akahana almost winced at the sight of Sakura's hair in kill-me pink, but stepped forward out of the line of jounin.

'Team Eight? I'm your jounin-sensei.'

Kiba gave what she could only assume was a snarl of displeasure.

'Why do we have to end up with the weak kunoichi!'

'Baka! Why don't you shut-'

Akahana cut the enraged kunoichi off by placing her hand over her mouth and gave Kiba a smile so syrupy-sweet that it was actually scary.

'I don't think your sister and mother would be too impressed if they knew you'd said that. I've known Hana-neechan since the Academy, and I happen to be on speaking terms with Tsume-sama as well.'

Kiba's face went from angry red to terrified white quicker than blinking.

'I- I'm sorry, Akahana-sensei. I didn't mean that.'

Akahana's smile became more normal once Kiba had backed down.

'Good. As long as we don't have any more problems like that, I won't feel the need to mention it to Hana-neechan. Now, I'll meet you on the roof. Be as quick as possible.'

A quick Body Flicker later she was up there, waiting for her team. Sasuke and Kiba got there first, racing each other, with Sakura lagging behind. Unsurprisingly, the girl lacked stamina.

'Alright, introductions. I'm Uzumaki Akahana, taijutsu mistress. I like Hana-neechan, Anko-neechan, and training. I dislike perverts and people who think kunoichi are weak. Seems like I spend half my time punching one or the other through walls…'

The last was muttered, but in a sort of stage whisper so that the three could hear it clearly. Kiba sweat-dropped, Sakura smiled nervously, and Sasuke didn't react at all. She continued, knowing just what to mention in order to get a response out of the frigid Uchiha.

'My ambitions are to become the first female Hokage and to bring my former teammate, the missing-nin Uchiha Itachi, to justice.'

That got a reaction. Sasuke jumped bolt upright in his seat and stared at her with wide eyes.

She paused to let him process what she had just said, and the pointed to him. 'Alright, your turn.'

Sasuke has stopped staring in shock and was now smirking. This kunoichi didn't look like much, but she had to be training to bring Itachi down too. She could be a great deal of help to him!

'I'm Uchiha Sasuke. I have no likes apart from training, and many dislikes. My ambition is to restore the Uchiha clan, and, like you, Akahana-sensei, to bring my brother Itachi to justice.'

Akahana could feel that they were going to be having a long talk about this sometime in the next week or so. But that didn't matter at the moment. She had to deal with the rest of her team.

'Sakura. You next.'

'I'm Haruno Sakura. My likes…'

She broke off, giggling, and sneaking what she probably thought was a subtle glance at the Uchiha. Akahana was privately congratulating herself that the only sign of annoyance that she showed was a slight narrowing of her eyes.

'My dream…'

Another glance at Sasuke and a smothered giggle. The jounin had had enough, though.

'Alright, now you've finished making it clear that you need to sort out your priorities, it's Kiba's turn.'

Sakura looked scandalized, but Kiba was already talking.

'I'm Inuzuka Kiba! I like my nin-dog Akamaru-'

At this point, Akamaru poked his head out of the neck of his master's jacket and barked.

'- I don't like cats or stuck up prodigies, and my dream is to be a hunter-nin like my tou-san!'

To tell the truth, she hadn't really learned anything new from them- even if she hadn't perused their files the day before, word of mouth had told her more about them than they themselves had.

'Alright. You've got the rest of the day off. That means rest, no training- you'll need to save yourselves for tomorrow. Be at Training Ground Four at seven o'clock- and if you don't know where training ground four is, I suggest you take the time to find out.'

'Sensei? What are we going to doing?'

Akahana smiled creepily, as if she knew something they didn't. Well, she did, didn't she? 'It's going to be a test. This is your real genin exam. What you did yesterday was merely to see whether you could, in theory, become genin. A pre-exam test, as it were.'

Ignoring the scowls (and one outraged yell from Kiba) she Body Flickered over to stand on the guardrail at the edge of the roof.

'Oh, and I suggest you give breakfast a miss. If you don't, you'll probably throw up.'

With that, she stepped straight off the edge into empty space- and fell.

The three genin jumped up and dashed across, wide-eyed with horror. To be fair to them, it did appear that their new jounin-sensei had just attempted suicide (and was likely to succeed) so there was reason to be worried. What they saw, however, when they looked down was not their sensei hitting the ground with a wet-sounding thump, but instead hitting the ground and immediately leaping up again onto the building opposite before stopping and turning around to shout an afterthought to them.

'Don't be late! You'll automatically fail if you are!'

They blinked- and that short moment was all it took for Uzumaki Akahana to disappear, her form swiftly receding into a blonde-haired speck as she raced across the rooftops of Konoha.

Sure enough, Team Seven were waiting for at the training ground the next morning when she turned up via Body Flicker. Akahana didn't waste time, but immediately set about explaining the test.

'Good to see you're all here. Now, the object of this test is simple- you have to get these from me.'

She reached into her equipment pouch and pulled out a pair of- hang on, were those bells?

'This is known as the bell test- every jounin-sensei uses it. If you fail to get a bell within the time limit, not only will you be tied to one of those tree stumps-'

She gestured at three extremely plot-convenient tree stumps to the right of the training ground entrance-

'-And miss out on eating, but you will also be sent straight back to the Academy.'

Sasuke looked determined. Kiba looked angry. Sakura looking scared, raised her hand.

'What's the time limit, sensei?'

'Ah, I hoped someone would have the sense to ask that. You've got an hour. Come at me as if you mean to kill me, or you'll fail. Now, go!'

The three genin immediately vanished into the undergrowth. Akahana calmly removed the gloves from her belt and pulled them onto her hands. Let the games begin!

One hour later, Sasuke, Sakura and Kiba were all lashed securely to the trio of tree stumps, with Akahana standing before them, a look of pure contempt on her face.

'That. Was. Pathetic.'

There was a second's silence, then she continued before any of them could open their mouths to argue.

'Sakura. You got suckered by one of the simplest genjutsu I know. It was supposed to be a distraction so I could take you out- turns out I didn't even need to do that much. I told you yesterday I was good with genjutsu, but you didn't even consider that it could've been an illusion.'

Sakura became very interesting in the grass at her feet, and Akahana turned her attention to the two boys.

'Kiba, Sasuke. You share the same problem- you were both far too headstrong to get the point of this test. I mean- Kami! How arrogant do you have to be to think that you, rookie genin, the lowest of the low, could take on an experienced jounin single-handed! Scowl all you like, Sasuke, but it doesn't make it any less true!'

Akahana took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and then continued in a far calmer voice.

'What disappoints me the most is that none of you figured out what the point of this test was.'

'Teamwork.'

Kiba and Sasuke both turned to stare at the pink-haired girl tied to the middle stump. Akahana quirked an eyebrow upwards.

'What was that, Sakura?'

'I said teamwork! None of us could've gotten a bell alone, but we would've been able to do it working together!'

Sasuke was still scowling.

'What's the point? With only two bells, one of us would've failed whatever happened!'

Kiba's eyes widened as he realized something- clearly having just put all the pieces together, Akahana thought- and then he snarled aloud.

'I get it now! Sasuke, you baka, genin teams are always made up of four people- a jounin-sensei and three genin! You don't get three-man teams! The bells were just a distraction meant to make us fight among ourselves!'

'Well done, Kiba- you're right. If you'd all worked as a team to try and get the bells, I would've passed you all whether you'd gotten them or not. If one of you working alone had somehow managed to get one, you still would've failed.'

'But- that's not fair!'

Akahana gave the wannabe-kunoichi a scathing look.

'We're shinobi, Sakura. We don't play fair.'

She walked away from the stumps a few steps, then turned to face them again.

'I'll be straight with you. The village council has ordered me to pass this team because it happens to have the last Uchiha on it. They have also ordered me to devote my attention almost exclusively to training the last Uchiha all that I possibly can.'

'What! That's-'

She held up a hand to silence Kiba- and, to Sasuke and Sakura's surprise, it worked.

'I'm not finished. Now, the council isn't actually in the military chain of command in this village, meaning that they don't actually have the authority to order me around. They can, however, make my life very difficult if I ignore them altogether. That's why I'm going to give you all a second chance. If you fail this time too, at least the council can't say I didn't try, but if you pass, you'll still have thoroughly earned it.'

Two kunai thudded into Kiba and Sasuke's stumps, slicing neatly through the ropes and freeing them.

'This is how it's going to be. We're going to do the same thing we did before, except without the bells. The three of you will have to take me down to pass- don't worry, I won't be going all out. You're going to have to come up with a plan that utilizes everybody's strengths and make sure everybody's weaknesses are covered- yes, you all have strengths and weaknesses, even if some of them might not be so obvious. Oh, and you're not to feed Sakura or free her. I'll return when you've finished eating so that we can start.'

She Body Flickered away, only going as far as the treeline while weaving a simple genjutsu about herself to fool Kiba's nose, while at the same time directing chakra to her ears in order to hear what they said.

'Alright, I think we should start by going over what we know about her skills. As she said she used a genjutsu on me, although I couldn't tell how advanced it was.' Sakura, obviously. It was Kiba that replied.

'She wasn't joking about being a taijutsu mistress, I'll say that! She's fast- and crazy strong to go with it! Before I attacked her she did something that looked like the clone technique, only better. It was a solid clone, and it used chakra just like she did. I think she called it the shadow clone technique. I didn't see any other ninjutsu.'

'Hn- yeah, her taijutsu is good.' Guess who? 'Like every ninja she knows the Basic Three, and we've seen her Body Flicker several times. I didn't see her use any elemental ninjutsu- or any ranged ninjutsu. She dodged all my Katon jutsu, though.'

'Don't you have to master two elements to be a jounin?' Kiba again. 'Let's just say she's got some elemental jutsu- ranged jutsu even- that she hasn't wheeled out yet. I know she must have a coil of wire on her somewhere- that was how she got me. I swear, I've never seen anyone use wire in a hand-to-hand fight before. Her clones were slinging a lot of stuff around- kunai, shuriken, senbon, you name it! More than she could fit in those little holsters.'

'Hn, she could be using storage scrolls to hold it all.'

'Sakura, what do you think?' A second's pause, and then- 'Sakura! Are you okay?'

'I- I'm just fine.'

The loud stomach-growl the girl produced- well, who else could it be, she was the only one going hungry- stated clearly otherwise.

'Kuso- Sakura, you're not going to be in any fit state to do this. You've got more smarts than we have, so we need you. Here.'

Another second's silence. Then Sakura spoke, sounding confused.

'But Kiba- if you feed me, you'll fail!'

'And if we try and take Akahana-sensei on with you all woozy from being hungry, we'll fail anyway! Sides, she isn't around here anymore. We Inuzuka have good noses- I'd be able to smell her if she were still here.'

'But-'

'Sakura. Take the food.'

Akahana stifled a sigh of relief as he heard Sasuke lend Kiba his support. It was tentative, but it was teamwork nonetheless. She waited until the chewing sounds had stopped and the sound of Sakura swallowing could be heard, then Body Flickered back to stand over all three of them, working another genjutsu so that she seemed to loom over them, all three in her shadow. Her face was stony.

'Any of you care to explain why you chose to disobey a direct order?'

All three trembled under the massive force of killing intent the jounin was emanating. Kiba, trying valiantly to stop himself shaking, was the one to answer.

'She's our teammate. If teamwork's so important, why can't we make sure she gets food so she's ready for the next part?'

Sasuke only gave a grunt and a nod, but the message was clear. I agree. She let them sweat for a few more seconds before canceling the genjutsu, reining in her killing intent, and smiling sweetly.

'Okay. That's fair enough.'

All three sweat-dropped.

'I wasn't serious about the next part. Nobody could expect a team of rookie genin- on their first day as a team- to show anything more than rudimentary teamwork, and that's not enough. Again, I was misdirecting you- I wanted to see if you cared more for about your teammate than the rules. A great ninja once said- 'those who break the rules are trash, but those who abandon their comrades are worse than trash'. Remember that, always.'

Sakura was open-mouthed, as if she could barely bring herself to believe was she was hearing. 'So then- we pass?'

Akahana's thrown kunai freed her from the ropes just as Kiba and Sasuke had been freed shortly before.

'Yes. You pass. But don't get cocky, I meant what I said before. Even if you were rookie of the year, at the top of your game in the Academy- that was just the Academy. You've moved into the big league now, and you're right at the bottom of the pile- there's no-one lower. Accept it- that's the first step towards moving up anyway.'

Sasuke still looked like he was about to argue, but she cut him off.

'Now, I've got to go and report to Hokage-sama. I want you all back here at one for our first training session. Sakura, be outside the Hokage's tower in twenty minutes. I'll meet you there.'

Kiba left, followed by Sakura who cast a backward glance over her shoulder as she went. Sasuke, however, stayed put. Akahana sighed.

'Sasuke, I realize you probably have plenty of questions for me, and I promise you I will answer those questions. After we finish training today, I'll tell you everything you want to know.'

Sasuke scowled, but nodded assent. Akahana smiled, then departed via Body Flicker.

When she entered the Hokage's office, the other eight jounin-sensei were already there, waiting. The Hokage was straightening a small pile of papers.

'Ah, Akahana-san, your timing is impeccable. Kakashi's finished making his report, so it's your turn.'

'Team Eight passed, Hokage-sama. By the skin of their teeth, but they passed.'

The meeting was a short one- Asuma and the remaining three jounin-sensei made their reports, then the group left. It was as she was heading out of the tower to find Sakura that her eyes met the unwelcome sight of Mitokado Homura and Utatane Koharu barring her way.

'Well?'

Akahana schooled her face into complete expressionlessness.

'Team eight passed. I had to give them a second chance that I wouldn't have given them otherwise, but they passed.'

Homura smiled approvingly.

'Good. See that Uchiha Sasuke receives as much attention and training as you can give him.'

With that, the two stepped around her and walked away up the stairs. Clenching her teeth, Akahana walked out of the door- and straight into Sakura, who stumbled backwards and then took another step back when she saw the look on her sensei's face.

'Akahana-sensei! I'm sorry!'

'Oh, don't be, I'm not angry with you. I just had the heads of the council reminding me to neglect you and Kiba to train Sasuke.'

'Are you going to do that?'

'Hell no. It's unconscionable- could end up with you or Kiba getting killed. Bunch of short-sighted fools… and I didn't say that, by the way. Follow me.'

Akahana led the girl to a small café tucked away in a back street, away from the main thoroughfare of the village. Ordering tea and rice balls, she led Sakura to a corner table and sat down.

'What did you want to talk to me about, sensei?'

Akahana kicked back in her seat, allowing herself to relax a little. 'I thought we'd have a little girl to girl talk.'

'What about?'

'Uchiha Sasuke. Remember what I said yesterday? On the roof of the Academy?'

Sakura paled dramatically at the memory of the scornful look her sensei had given her. 'That I needed to sort out my priorities.'

'Exactly. You've spent the last three years mooning over the Uchiha- dieting and fussing over your appearance when you should've been training hard. And don't try telling me kunoichi are weak- in a one on one taijutsu fight, I could take down almost any jounin in this village.'

Sakura looked like she wanted to slide beneath the table, and Akahana realized belatedly she'd been browbeating the girl.

'Sakura, I'm sorry. It's just that I've never had much sympathy- or patience- for fangirls. You see, I was in the same academy class as Itachi, Sasuke's older brother, and it was the same- all of the kunoichi in the class were crazy about him. All but two, actually- Hana-neechan, who's Kiba's older sister, and myself.'

The girl was now looking awed, and a little bit scared. Akahana didn't blame 'You said before that Uchiha Itachi was your teammate.'

'Yes, but that's beside the point. The point is- I think what you want most in the world is not that different from what I wanted most in the world when I was your age- to be acknowledged. You want to be acknowledged by Sasuke, I wanted to be acknowledged by- well, anyone.'

Sakura seemed to be thinking this over as she slowly ate one of the rice balls that had just been set down on a plate in front of them.

'I guess you're right in a way. But- how do I do it?'

'Well, the first part of why Itachi acknowledged and respected me is that I wasn't a fangirl.'

The pink-haired kunoichi gulped, and Akahana had to stifle a laugh.

'Don't look so nervous! You're young- it's not too late to change. My advice to you this- do three things. First, swallow your crush- just push it aside. I know it's easier said than done, but that's the most important part. Second, start training, as hard as you can. Don't worry, I'll help you with that part. It's my job as a jounin-sensei after all. Third- get to know the real Sasuke, because if Sasuke's fangirls are anything like Itachi's fangirls the boy they had a crush on wasn't even the real Itachi- he was just some ideal, fantasy version of Itachi that existed only in their minds. Oh, sorry. I'm browbeating you again aren't I?'

Sakura blanched for a second at the mention of the word 'brow', but realized that logically her sensei wouldn't be trying to get at her- probably didn't even know that most of the other kunoichi at the Academy had dubbed her 'billboard brow'. To tell the truth, Sakura had been in absolute awe of Akahana from the moment she had appeared in the classroom the day before. Up until then, the only kunoichi she had ever met was one of her Academy teachers, Suzume Namida, who focused exclusively on the feminine arts. And then along came this ass-kicking taijutsu mistress of a jounin kunoichi who clearly wouldn't stand any nonsense from anybody. You couldn't really blame the girl for being awestruck.

'Of the three things I told you, I don't expect the first happen overnight- in fact, it's going to take a while. The second, however, we can start on straight away. I want you to go to bed early tonight and set your alarm for five. Be at the training ground at six tomorrow morning.'

Akahana cracked a brilliant smile and gave Sakura a thumbs-up- all in all, it looked scarily reminiscent of Gai's nice-guy pose.

'I'm going to make a kunoichi out of you! Believe it!'