Aggressive Action

Kakashi Takes One for the Team


"As most of you are quite certainly aware of, it is nearing the time of the yearly genin exams."

The assembled jonin nodded in agreement, except for the apathetic Kakashi and the recently promoted Kurenai.

"We will need between ten and twelve ninja to serve as instructors, four or so of whom will stay on to train this generation of Leaf genin," Hiruzen Sarutobi informed them. "Before we begin, do any of you plan to volunteer for a genin cell?"

A few hands went up, including Kurenai's and Asuma's. The Hokage jotted their names on a note, quickly scanning the numbers before frowning. "We're a bit short," he explained, and some of the veterans groaned. Most jonin instructors were necessarily young, as some ninja who'd lived through the Third War were too unstable to be let anywhere near children. However, among those who passed Ibiki's 'sanity test', as Anko had jokingly nicknamed it when she failed by a colossal margin, it was an informal requirement to train at least one team before retiring or dying in the line of duty.

"Everyone who isn't on this list, stand up," the elder Sarutobi commanded, and begrudgingly most of the room stood in near silence, frowns on their faces.
"Sit if you have already passed a team to chunin." Surprisingly, all but one of them collapsed thankfully back into their chairs, leaving only Kakashi on his feet. The one-eyed ninja might have frowned, or smiled, but it was hard to tell considering that three quarters of his face was covered. Inwardly, Sarutobi cursed. To back down now would look ridiculous and project favourtism, but forcing Kakashi to take another team was tantamount to consigning them to failure. Nevertheless...

"Kakashi," the Hokage decided, "you will be on this cycle for another team. Do not fail them for trivial shortcomings this time." It wasn't a suggestion or a request, it was an order.

The Hatake shrugged. "If they have what it takes, they will pass," he muttered. Translation: "Who do you think you're kidding?"

XXX

Despite his draconian pass/fail standards for new shinobi, Kakashi diligently prepared himself for the eventuality that one of his teams might make it through the Bell Test. That meant researching his students beforehand, to see what he was getting into.

Sasuke Uchiha he could understand, and even sympathize with. Clearly the Hokage wanted him to train the boy with the sharingan, whenever he experienced the emotions necessary to develop it. His past suggested psychological trauma, though his mask of indifference did a good job of hiding it.

Naruto Uzumaki, the least talented would-be ninja, had been paired with Sasuke in the time-honoured 'best and worst' combination that had landed him with Obito. Apparently, he was Minato's son, despite carrying his wife's surname. Probably the jinchuriki his former sensei created for the Nine-Tails, then. He appeared to live alone on a small stipend from the Hokage.

Sakura Haruno, easily classifiable as a fangirl. Kunoichi like her followed a predictable trend of growing out of their old crushes, becoming career chunin, and retiring to marry into a larger clan and have children. No bloodline limit, no family techniques, and no skills worth speaking of other than unusually accurate chakra control.

After a day of spying on them, he felt he had a rather clear, if stereotypical view of their personalities. Their only interaction together that he witnessed was one of Sakura hugging Sasuke, which he responded to by kicking her hard enough to send her spiralling down an alleyway, followed by Naruto smashing Sasuke on the head for daring to hit a girl and the dazed Uchiha retaliating with a vicious punch to the gut. He'd seen enough by the time the fistfight wound down to know that putting them on a team was an act of unplanned stupidity.

It was a shame that he was going to fail them (well, Naruto and Sasuke, at least), but even with all the compelling reasons to take them on as apprentice ninja, he honestly didn't consider himself to be the right man for the job. Every time he tried, he inevitably started to compare himself to his own sensei, and then he just felt inadequate as a ninja. They would do much better with another year in the academy, and with a different instructor.

With that in mind, Kakashi packed a pair of brass bells on red threads, a copy of Icha Icha Paradise and an alarm clock into his weapons' pouch, and settled down for the night.

XXX

The very next day, Kakashi cut his time at the memorial stone short to go check on the room where he had instructed Iruka to have his dysfunctional team go. It was on the third floor of a long, rust coloured building, and the wide windows of the meeting room gave an excellent view of the Hokage Monument and the low Konoha skyline. He observed them from the roof of the building opposite them, taking in their appearances.

Naruto wore the same orange outfit as before, now with a forehead protector, but the sleeves were cut raggedly short up to the elbow on both arms, revealing fuinjutsu tattoos webbing across his forearms. Kakashi was a bit surprised, but reasoned that a jinchuriki needed high-grade sealing to contain a demon. He was talking animatedly to Sasuke, who was ignoring him.

Now that he was paying attention, Sasuke was a bit off as well. Nothing noticeable at first, but every once in a while, the air around him flickered with a faint, ghostly purple. It was gone as soon as it came, cycling every thirty seconds or so, but Kakashi really didn't have an explanation for it. He could always examine it with his Sharingan later.

Lastly, Sakura was leaning against a far wall, her nose buried in a book. She was wearing a white robe that fell to the ground and pooled lazily around her feet and hands, leaving only her face visible. Her forehead protector held her length of pink hair back in a brightly coloured mop, the metal plate with the Leaf symbol facing off to one side. Not the most practical way to dress as a ninja, but what did he care?

They didn't seem rattled or even bored by his absence, so Kakashi decided to simply walk in ten minutes early and save them the wait. As he entered, he started hearing bits of their conversation.

"I'm tired of waiting for our new sensei!"

"Hn."

Why does he– hey, I got an idea!" Something light scraped across the floor, coming to a stop by the door.

"Naruto, don't do that."

"Aww, but Sakura! This is gonna be so cool!"

"He's a jonin, moron. Do you really think he'll–"

Kakashi interrupted Sasuke mid-sentence by throwing the door open. Naruto jumped backwards, his arms windmilling gracelessly as he tried and failed to keep his balance on the stool he'd been using. The blackboard eraser in his hand was telling, and when he saw him staring at it, Naruto grinned apologetically and hid it behind his back before toppling to the floor.

Sakura glanced up, noted the result of the ridiculous exchange and snickered. Sasuke just sighed and continued pretending that they didn't exist.

"My first impression of you all..." Kakashi said, "...is that I don't like you guys." Not really, he could only feel the mildness of indifference towards the children, but it was part of the routine to undermine their opinion of him, just like the perpetual lateness and blasé mannerisms.

"Good. I don't like you either," Sakura retorted, putting her book down. Kakashi noticed that the cover bore a geometric pattern that looked vaguely familiar, but the memories stayed just out of reach in his mind.

"Mmm, yes, I'll take that into consideration," he said, kicking the stool aside to survey the room. Sasuke's purple aura was coming more slowly now, only once in the last minute, and Kakashi felt vaguely relieved by that for reasons he couldn't even begin to identify.

"Meet me on the roof in five minutes and we'll get started." Executing a body flicker, Kakashi warped himself neatly to the top of the building and waited.

XXX

For someone with senses as sharp as his, Kakashi was honestly startled when he turned around to see Naruto sitting by the edge of the roof, staring out over Konoha. He hadn't even sensed his chakra signature, which had previously been bold and heady in the air. Seconds after noticing his first genin's arrival, there was the tinkling crash of a shattered window and the arrival of his second, as Sakura launched herself from the third story into the air, executing a nimble backflip and landing perfectly alongside Naruto. The blond boy looked surprised at the display of agility, and for some reason or another tried to hug Sakura, who wordlessly shrugged out of his grip. The tattoos flared with invisible chakra, and he sagged with disappointment.

Kakashi was almost disappointed when Sasuke took the stairs. He'd picked the building specifically because it had extremely inaccessible stairs, making it a pain for civilians to get to the basement or upper floors. No reason to let regular citizens stumble into Torture and Interrogation, after all. The Uchiha walked sedately over to the pair and squatted restlessly next to Naruto, all three of them facing away from Kakashi.

He coughed politely. Naruto glanced backwards, then turned around almost sheepishly, rubbing the back of his head. Sakura and Sasuke followed suit, both moving with almost unearthly grace that neither had exhibited before.

"My name is Kakashi Hatake, jonin of the Leaf," Kakashi announced. "First things first, why don't we introduce ourselves? Likes, dislikes, dreams for the future, that sort of thing. Sakura, why don't you go first?"

'My name is Sakura Haruno, and I like SASUKE! I hate Naruto, and my dream is to–' Kakashi thought uncharitably, only for the pink-haired girl to snort rudely. "Yeah? You go first."

"Very well," her sensei replied. "As I said, I'm Kakashi Hatake. I have very few likes and even less dislikes, and I have some hobbies. My dream for the future is..." he trailed off.

"So all we learned is your f***ing name?" Sakura roared suddenly, coiling in on herself under the robe like an agitated serpent. "What the hell kind of introduction is that?"

"..." There were no words to describe how he felt right then. It was like Kumo had abducted her last night and replaced her with a spy of some kind. Kakashi filed that thought away for examining later.

"Feh, whatever. My name is Sakura Haruno. It's not pinkie, it's Sakura! I like killing for the Lord and I dislike heathens and people who do stupid things to look cool. My dream is to live forever, so I can do all of the other s*** I wanna do."

"... Sasuke, why don't you go next?"

Sasuke finally sat down, looking at each of them in turn. "My name is Sasuke Uchiha. I like being the best and I dislike liars. My dream is to find the truth, and kill everyone who tries to hide it from me."

Words just didn't describe how bad of an idea he thought this was. Nevertheless, in the interest of just getting out of there before the urge to smother them in their sleep grew overwhelming, he turned to Naruto. The boy grinned from ear to ear, highlighting the dark bags under his eyes. Either he'd painted his face yesterday, or stayed up all night for a few weeks in a row.

"My name is Naruto Uzumaki!" he hollered, and a few people on the road below looked up in confusion. "I like Sakura and Sasuke and ramen and the old man and eating ramen and Ayame and ramen! I dislike waiting the three minutes for ramen to microwave, and I hate my balls."

"I'm just going to stop you there for a second," interrupted Kakashi, his visible eye half closed in a parody of happiness and contentment. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but did you just say that you dislike your balls?"

"Yeah," Naruto answered flippantly. "Why?"

"Your balls. As in, your testicles?"

Naruto pointed innocently at his crotch and gave his sensei a look that clearly said 'are you feeling alright?'. "Uh-huh."

"Okay, you can finish," Kakashi said faintly. Sakura snickered at his distress, but offered no explanation.

"My dream for the future is to be the Hokage!" Naruto cried exuberantly, standing up and thrusting his hands triumphantly in the air. Despite himself, Kakashi couldn't help but stare at the seam of his pants, as if his other eye had suddenly become a Byakugan and could divine the boy's inexplicable feelings towards his genitals.

"Sensei, don't stare at Naruto's junk!" Sakura called him out, and Kakashi flinched.

"Konoha officially does not approve of student-teacher relations," Sasuke chimed in morosely. "Ever since Orochimaru–"

Kakashi slapped himself. Hard. All three of them stared at him, and he smiled back in pleasant denial.

"Now that that's over with, here's the information for tomorrow's survival exercises," he said gamely, holding out there slips of paper to the little weir- his genin. Sasuke took one, which immediately burst into black flames in his grip, and Sakura only scanned hers briefly before muttering, "What the f***?" under her breath.

Naruto was still looking at him strangely. "Sensei, if my balls are bothering you too, I understand," he said kindly. "But, uh, maybe we could talk about that later?"

"No, no, it's fine," Kakashi pronounced, like a man walking to the gallows. "Just be at Training Ground Four tomorrow morning. "Don't... don't eat breakfast."

That said, Sakura leapt off the roof, Sasuke walked back down the stairs to street level, and while he watched the boy plod away, Naruto disappeared again. He almost felt like screaming.

XXX

"See these bells?" Kakashi asked, holding up the bane of any beginner ninja's existence. "Your job is to take these from me by any means necessary. Now, if you don't come at me with the intent to kill, there's no way you'll be able to take them, so remember that." He tried not to think about the hungry look in Haruno's eyes.

"You're a jonin," Sasuke pointed out redundantly. "Also, I think you're one of the best jonin in Konoha, from what I hear. Do we have any chance at all of getting those bells?"

"This test does have a sixty-six percent fail rate," he informed them happily. "Obviously, there are two bells and three of you, so if you don't have a bell at the end, you fail! Also, if any of you happen to get a bell, you get lunch in addition to passing." As if they needed any more motivation.

"Just to make this a little more interesting, you have until noon. If I still have both bells by then, you all fail!" He put the little red alarm clock down on a tree stump and set it to 12:00 p.m. "Whenever you're ready."

None of them moved when he hit the button on the alarm clock. Sasuke, Naruto and Sakura just stood there, a calm wind blowing though their clothes, which were the same as those of yesterday. The Uchiha and the Haruno appeared to be wearing different, identical clothes, while the Uzumaki just seemed to have crawled into bed without changing. Nothing happened for a few minutes.

Eventually, one of them spoke. "Well, I guess I'm going first!" said Naruto cheerfully. He walked forward, and his teammates dashed into the forest. The blond pulled out two kunai and threw one at Kakashi, who blocked it with his infamous little orange book, bought hardcover specifically to use as a weapon and piss off his potential students.

"Oi! Are you just gonna read that stupid book while I throw knives at you?" Naruto yodeled, throwing the other knife. His aim was surprisingly accurate, but it was easy enough to just avoid it by leaning a bit to the left, letting it whizz past his ear. Needed to work on his speed a bit, but otherwise it was decent enough.

"Lesson one is taijutsu," Kakashi told him, flipping Icha Icha Paradise open to page sixty.

'Akane leaned over to pick up the fallen sheets, affording Daisuke an excellent view of her beautiful posterior. The sweat coating her body made the skin shine in the dawn light, and that made her even more desirable to him. He reached out, tracing the curves of her–'

"Heh," he giggled, leaning back away from Naruto's high punch and jumping over the leg sweep. The boy growled, renewing his assault, but Kakashi was too much a grandmaster of combat as to allow such an untrained novice to hit him. Moving around the first strike with all of his prodigious speed, Kakashi dropped Jiraiya's masterpiece on the ground and formed a tiger seal, index fingers pointed out.

The Thousand Years of Pain technique was not actually invented by Kakashi. The only jutsu he had ever created in its entirety was the Chidori. Legend had it that the origin of the super ass-poke was Hashirama Senju, who first used it to torment his younger brother. Filled with the sort of misery that compels you to share it with the next generation, Tobirama inflicted the technique on his own genin team, including the Third Hokage. Hiruzen brought the butt-related discomfort to the sannin, specifically Jiraiya, and the Pervert had given a generous poke to Minato Namikaze. Now, properly filled with memories of his own genin exam, one could almost see the unholy light filling Kakashi's visible eye. His fingers were just long enough to reach a certain nerve in the male rectum, which, if stimulated, would make going to the bathroom uncomfortable in the extreme.

He set himself a bit behind Naruto, who was still rebalancing from the punch, and threw all of his weight behind a shot that would put Naruto out of commission. "One Thousand Years of Pain!" Kakashi shouted. And stopped involuntarily as something forced him back.

The intricate black tattoos on Naruto's arms lit up with red chakra, hot and burning through the seals like rage itself. The containers released themselves, pouring out a veritable waterfall of sand onto the grass. It blew itself into a pair of spirals, launching at Kakashi's chest and knocking him clear away from Naruto's ass. The boy looked as confused as Kakashi felt, staring down at himself like he'd just grown a third arm out of his chest.

"Wha–?" he muttered, experimentally rotating his arms and snapping the joints curiously. Kakashi got over his initial discombobulation when the mass of sand tried to pour itself down his throat. Gagging mightily, he used a quick water blast to reduce the sand to mud, which slowly retreated to a pile by Naruto's feet.

"Sand control?" he asked. "Have you ever been to Suna, or met any Sand ninja by chance? That sort of ninjutsu is rather common there, what with all the sand lying around in the desert."

I- no, no I haven't," Naruto confessed. "I don't know how I did that. I'm not sure I even meant to do it."

Seeing that his student was honestly as confused as he was, Kakashi abruptly stood up and retrieved Icha Icha Paradise. "I really don't know what to say," he apologized. "Good for you with the 'intent to kill', I didn't think any of you would actually try to kill me.

XXX

Leaving Naruto in the clearing to puzzle out the meaning of the development, Kakashi moved on to his next victim: Sakura. She might have had some potential, but unlike Naruto and Sasuke, she would have to earn the right to fight him. It took a bit of snooping to find her trail, but the jonin caught up with her in a different part of the woods.

She was by herself, not moving, holding a flat metal disk with both hands near her chest. The hood on her cloak was down, and her head was bowed in meditation. Sakura was murmuring something that he couldn't hear.

Rather than waste time, Kakashi delved into his repertoire of copied techniques, and dredged up one of the most effective ones: a demonic illusion. Unlike regular genjutsu, which altered the senses at the user's behest, a demonic illusion automatically provided certain effects. They usually had hand seals and didn't require much else, which meant that they were susceptible to being copied, also unlike regular genjutsu. The Hell Viewing technique sussed out the target's greatest fear and created an image of it in front of them.

"Lesson two is genjutsu," he whispered to no one in particular, and cast the illusion.

Sakura's eyes popped open, and her hands dropped to her sides, the medallion swinging. "You," she ground out, eyes flaming with fury. "You bastard!" She dropped to one knee, swearing under her breath, but evidently what was happening had passed, because she stood up again almost immediately.

"Come out, sensei," she called, sweeping the forest with her eyes in search of Kakashi. "Such a weak genjutsu can't entangle me!"

"Apparently," he said walking tumbling from his vantage point is a tree before her. "Now we can– whuh?"

Sakura had produced a massive scythe from nowhere, it's single blade dyed bright red and the shaft longer than she was tall. A cable connected the base of the scythe to something inside her robes. Leaping gracefully into the air, she brought the scythe down on his head with a great sweeping arc. Not pausing to think, Kakashi smashed the weapon aside, only for Sakura to use the block to realign herself in midair and strike from the side, and again from the other side, her attacks coming fast and furious despite refusing to land.

"The blessing of Lord Jashin fills me!" she screamed. "Infidels will fall under my blade!"

"I'm impressed," Kakashi commented, ducking under another swing. "Your ogamajutsu is effective, and you've got power and speed, but could you tone it down a little?"

"You told me to kill you, asshole! What the hell did you think I was going to do?"

"Scream and faint," Kakashi said bluntly. "I suppose you're a bit too crazy for that."

The next swing went just a fraction wide, and Kakashi took the opportunity to flick a shuriken into her arm. Nothing serious, just some bleeding and maybe a three-inch-long 'ninja scar', so named because of the shuriken that caused them. The weapon vanished into the folds of her sleeve, and Sakura fell back, panting with exertion.

'That should teach her to listen to her sensei– you have to be kidding me.'

Sakura held up the arm he'd nicked, the bloody shuriken in the other hand, and Kakashi watched in horror as her arm healed itself before his eyes. Giggling perversely, she lifted the ninja star and licked her blood off of it.

"Mmm, that hurts," she groaned in ecstasy, cutting her tongue on the razor edges.

Without further ado, Kakashi threw down a few dozen explosive tags in a circle around her feet and shunshin'd away, almost missing the petrified look on her face as the arsenal of explosives burned their way down the fuses. Maybe a bit of an overreaction, but it was part of his training to use explosive force on people who refused to die when they were killed.

XXX

Naruto looked up from his thoughts when he heard the bang. Across the training grounds, a black cloud of smoke drifted away from a nearby point in a funnel, streaming away from what was certainly the centre of a gory crater by now. Concern for the poor schmuck that had just got creamed outweighed his fear of Kakashi, so the young jinchuriki pushed aside his musings on the nature of the sand and went to investigate. The sand whisked itself back into the seals on his arms and vanished.

XXX

If, at any point, he'd been looking forward to any part of this at all, it was the fight with Sasuke. Uchiha were known for their pride in their children, so it was entirely possible that he'd learned some of the clan's ninjutsu before Itachi murdered all of them. Not only that, but apparently he was a talented ninja in his own right, if not the freak on nature that his older brother was, so maybe the rookie of the year could make up for his teammates abnormalcy.

On the other hand, there was no chance at all that he could get the bells away from him, not that Naruto had a shot either (and the less said about the pink sociopath, the better), so unless they could get their teamwork together, they were history.

Sasuke was walking by the edge of a lake when Kakashi caught up to him, whistling tunelessly. The purple haze was nowhere to be found, for which Kakashi was grateful, but at the same time he looked a little disinterested in the bell test.

"Sensei," he said, not looking up from his own reflection in the lake, "you used to be a member of ANBU, didn't you?"

"That's hardly relevant," the white-haired man replied.

"What did you think of my brother?" Sasuke pressed. "Was he a nice person? Cruel? Was he really a pacifist like people tell me? Was he insane?"

"Not really, no, yes, probably... Do you want a bell or not?"

Sasuke looked at him with black eyes, which bled over into red, three tomoe rotating clockwise in each of them, and then the design changed again. Thin black pinwheels, a black iris and red sclerae; whatever it was, it was not the sharingan.

Kakashi didn't have time to ponder this new development when something big and purple came straight at him. He leapt on top of it, landing on the wrist joint of a titanic ethereal arm. Sasuke doubled over in pain, and a second arm joined the assault, the two of them smashing at Kakashi like a frustrated man swatting at a fly. Logic had no place in the fight anymore, if there was any to begin with, after the second arm grew yet another arm, which joined the first.

"You three really need to stop surprising me, you know," Kakashi growled, readjusting his headband so as to uncover his right eye. He felt the drain immediately as Obito's eye started sucking at his chakra reserves. "That isn't a technique a genin should know..."

Granted, Konoha genin shouldn't know how to control sand, or how to heal themselves immediately, but spontaneously creating a new kekkei genkai? That was just over the metaphorical line.

Sasuke gave him the evil eye between gasps, and the purple chakra construct vanished. The Uchiha formed a few hand seals and exhaled, and a stream of liquid fire spread at Kakashi, who nodded in satisfaction. That was what he'd been expecting from the twelve-year-old. "Good, good, but you're still missing something."

He vanished, the earth swallowing him up and breaking apart under fingers. Kakashi half-swam, half-floated underneath Sasuke, his very essence concealing itself, and with a sharp tug on his ankle he was joined in the ground.

"Nice try, Sasuke," he said maliciously, surfacing just to relish the look of hatred on the boy's face. Maybe that was a mistake, though, because as soon as he looked directly at those not-sharingan in a fit of curiosity, the world around him disappeared. Instead, there were red clouds in a black sky, with violet trees waving in the stiff wind. Sasuke himself was standing, while Kakashi was sucked into the ground up to his neck. He tried to move, but the earth turned to granite where he touched it.

Sasuke, his eyes hidden by his bangs, smirked. "What are you trying to teach us?" he asked idly.

"Well, this was supposed to be ninjutsu, but apparently you've got that covered." This day just kept getting better and better, didn't it? His sharingan wasn't seeing through the genjutsu, and he'd gotten out of practice with dispelling these things.

With that, Sasuke wound up and kicked Kakashi in the head with all the force he could dream of. Despite knowing intellectually that it was just an illusion, getting kicked in the face still hurt like a sonofabitch. It was all he could do not to scream in pain, but thankfully the discordant sensation was too much for Sasuke's control, and the illusion broke.

Somehow, while he had just been standing there, Naruto had take both bells. Sakura had one arm slung over his shoulders, and together they had stolen the objectives from the incapacitated Kakashi. Technically, that was a pass, but damned if Kakashi was going to have anything to do with these brats after this.

"Congratulations," he said wearily. "Naruto, you pass. Who gets the second bell?"

"Sakura!" said Naruto immediately, passing the other bell off to the dead girl walking. She looked at it for a second, then hobbled over to Sasuke and set it down next to his head. "You have it," she said sweetly. "Jashin will reward me for inflicting you on the world."

Well, that met the teamwork requirement for sure. Kakashi seethed, but there was only one thing for it: disobey the Hokage and fail them for trivial reasons. Again moving with preternatural quickness, he snatched the one bell off the ground and the other from Naruto's hand, much to the jinchuriki's dismay.

"You can't f***ing do that!" Sakura burst, and Kakashi rolled his eyes.

'Silly children, I'm a ninja! I can do whatever I want.'

"I'm sorry," he feigned sadness, "but unless you have the bells at noon–"

Somewhere, on a tree stump in the middle of the woods, an alarm clock rang.

XXX

None of them had done anything spectacularly wrong, so Kakashi arbitrarily decided to tie Sakura to the tree stump. Partly because she was the one without a bell at the end, and partly because she annoyed the hell out of him. Right now, she was swearing vengeance against the Hatake family and just generally being loud, so he left her to it while Naruto and Sasuke ate their lunches.

He was especially pleased that none of them were sharing lunches or untying Sakura, although he suspected that they were equally afraid of the girl. At least he had a name to go by now: Jashin. Probably a god or a spirit of some kind, but he had a feeling that he'd met one of his worshippers before.

After lunch, they would fail. It was as simple as that, and afterwards Kakashi could forget all about them. Even now, Akane's sexy, sexy ass called to him from within Icha Icha Paradise, and it was only a matter of time before he could go back to his own private world.

"Hatake, sir." The speaker was a youngish ninja, probably a chunin. "Lord Hokage requests your presence in his office immediately. He wants to discuss something with you."

"I'm watching my genin," Kakashi said irritably, "can this wait?"

"No, sir."

"Very well." He bounded off, hoping against hope to finish the conversation before failing the team.

XXX

Sarutobi was sitting on a tatami mat when Kakashi arrived, his fingers wrapped around a glass orb about the size of a softball. Whatever was inside, it obviously held his attention, but Kakashi couldn't actually see for himself.

"Sit down, Hatake," the Hokage told him softly. Kakashi sat on the floor, twitching impatiently.

"Izumo was just telling me about your genin team," Sarutobi said conversationally. "He says that they were able to take both bells shortly before noon. That's impressive, isn't it?"

"With all due respect, Lord Hokage, they did not exhibit the teamwork skills necessary to succeed in the ninja world."

"You intend to send them back to the Academy?"

"If they do not pass, then yes."

"I specifically told you not to fail them, Kakashi, unless they were clearly unfit for duty. From what I've seen, that isn't the case."

"Hiruzen–"

"Pass them."

"Excuse me?" Kakashi asked incredulously.

"Pass them," Sarutobi repeated. "That is an order. The bell test forces cooperation, but its design also accomodates unusually talented prospects. They are more than ready, and if you find fault with their teamwork, it's your job to remedy that. Understood?"

XXX

When Kakashi got back, Sasuke was brooding, and Sakura and Naruto seemed to have joined him. He really didn't need this kind of stress on his plate, but treason was such a pain...

"Thanks for putting my arm back on," Sakura muttered.

"Don't mention it. How are you still alive?" the blonde boy asked.

"I don't die."

"Good to know," Sasuke said to himself.

"I've got news!" he said with forced joviality. "You pass!"

"... What?" Naruto deadpanned. "I thought you were giving us a second chance after lunch."

"You followed orders, that's good enough for me. Go home, meet me here tomorrow, and feel free to abandon your careers as ninja. No takers? Figures."

Despite it only being about one in the afternoon, Kakashi went home for a beer. Behind him, he could hear Naruto screaming to the heavens about his success and being 'one step closer to being Hokage!', while Sakura threatened to kill them if they didn't untie her.

He was so not ready.


This was sort of inspired by 'A Freak, A Creep & A Psychopath' by Legendary Legacy, so check that out if you want something way better than this. To clarify what just happened, Naruto is the Ichibi jinchuriki, Sakura is a Jashinist, and Sasuke has the mangekyo sharingan. The specifics will be written in later.

Up Next:

Team 7 meets up at the bridge, and Kakashi has a small meltdown.