A/N

This is my first story, if the summary didn't tip you off on that.

This is set in the normal Naruto universe, though I will clarify a few things that the original is very vague about. In his youth, Naruto is ignored and hated by much of the village, though they only rarely try to physically harm him. Even so they kick him out of stores or increase the prices hugely. Fortunately, the Anbu guarding him take pity and help him out a bit with stopping all attacks, making sure he is properly fed, and otherwise look intimidating. There are other changes that I will go through at the end A/N for those who want to skip them, but they'll be revealed as the story progresses. Anyhow, on with the show!

"Beep! Beep!"

A mop of blond hair twitched.

"Beep! Beep!"

After a very short internal monologue, the owner of said mop of blond hair reached a shaky hand out from below the blanket and grasped for the alarm clock that dared wake him from his slumber. With all the force his arm could muster, he brought a hand down on the top button of the alarm clock, effectively silencing its incessant noise. Satisfied that the ringing sound in his ears had stopped, Naruto brought down the covers.

'We're assigned our instructor today! I can't be late!' was the main thought going through his head as he downed some instant ramen and spoilt milk, having efficiently and meticulously picked out a nicely folded and cheap orange jumpsuit. It might not be the best colour available to a stealthy shinobi, he knew, but what the teachers never seemed to understand is that he could not buy anything more expensive. His brain wallowed on that thought until it was mercilessly crushed – 'no point in thinking negatively, it just means I'll have to work harder!' He reaffirmed to himself.

See, Naruto is not actually the fool the other kids and teachers seem to think him of. However, given his … troubled early life, he puts on a mask of joy and confidence in the hope that it will actually come true, and in doing so has made it seem like he is an idiot. In reality Naruto is highly intelligent – it's one of the few reasons Shikamaru bothered befriending him when he got a brief glimpse of Naruto's intelligence in a class quiz before he could put his mask back on. After challenging him to a shogi match that Shikamaru then lost, he ended up supporting Naruto and respecting him.

Intelligence aside, Naruto is also physically one of the stronger boys. He looks unimposing, but that is more due to a lack of baby fat then muscles, though again this is something he keeps mostly hidden. Using the power in his leg muscles, Naruto jumped out of the window to his rotten apartment and tore down the street, making a beeline for the academy.

Skip - Academy, seconds after the lesson begins

"As I was saying, you are all now fully fledged ninja of Konoha. You make the village proud. Everyone will be … (Distant yell heard) As I was saying, everyone will be split into groups of three with a … (slightly less distant yell heard) What is that noise?" Iruka strode over to the open window, to hear a suddenly not distant yell. "WATCH OUT!"

Stepping back, Iruka watched as a yellow, orange and blue blur sped over his head into the classroom. Jumping off the wall, it rocketed straight into an empty seat near the back, to reveal the face of the number one troublemaker in his classroom, Uzumaki Naruto, with a contagious smile situating itself across the lower half of his whiskered face.

"Naruto! Where have you been?" Going through his memories, Naruto chose a phrase he heard one of his ANBU bodyguards say after arriving two hours late.

"I got lost on the road of life, Iruka-sensei!"

A faint sniggering was heard from a corner of the classroom with a suspicious looking shadow. Iruka sighed. "Naruto, today of all days you shouldn't be so late. Anyways, as I was saying, everyone will be split into groups of three with a jounin sensei to teach you. I'll read out the teams now."

"-And that's team six. Team seven will be led by Hatake Kakashi and consists of Haruno Sakura, Uzumaki Naruto" - A loud cheer could be heard from a certain grinning blond - "and Uchiha Sasuke." Cue a "Hell Yeah!" from Sakura. Shikamaru watched as annoyance briefly flashed over Naruto's face until he schooled it and in a flash was grinning stupidly, shouting something or another about impressing his dear 'Sakura-chan'.

Iruka went through the other teams, and Naruto noticed the three children of the last Ino-Shika-Chou combo were grouped together in Team 10. Team 8 was a tracking team with an Aburame, Inuzuka, and Hyuuga together, though their sensei was a genjutsu specialist. His eyes briefly flickered over to Hyuuga Hinata. He knew she had a crush on him from early on, but after finding out he had explained to her that she needed to be powerful on her own for him to respect her. Though it was a little of a lie (Naruto already respected her for simply putting up with her father), it did mean she threw herself into training and was known for being merciless in battle, but shy elsewhere.

A cluster of Jounin instructors swarmed near the front. Roaming his gaze over them, Naruto noted several famous faces amongst them, like Sarutobi Asuma, the Sandaime's son, or Yuuhi Kurenai, Konoha's genjutsu mistress, but no Kakashi. 'Copy-nin, where are you?'

Skip

Two hours. It had taken two entire hours for their lazy pervert of a sensei to even make an appearance. The simple eraser trap Naruto set up even worked. 'Either he's a rubbish shinobi, or more likely, he knew it would not harm him.' Even after they waited for their sensei for so long, he had the nerve to insult them then expect them to follow him. Sighing internally, Naruto plastered a smile on his face, though his underlying annoyance was still obvious with the way he shook every few seconds as he made his way up to the roof with Sakura and Sasuke.

Skip - Roof

"Now it's your turn, let's start on the right, Naruto."

"I like ramen, pranking, and those masked people who protected me." Kakashi, almost unnoticeably stiffened at this. 'And deception', Naruto appended in his head. "I dislike waiting 3 minutes for ramen to cook, and my dream is to be acknowledged. As for hobbies, training and pranking I guess."

'Sasuke is completely hell-bent on his revenge. He likely will hate me since he views me and sakura to be weighing him down. Sakura is little better. She is so engrossed with Sasuke that she does not even notice he does not care at all, and she is unlikely to view me as anything other than an annoyance. Our sensei, though. I believe he was one of my ANBU guards at some point, and his description of himself revealed nothing, as I should expect of Sharingan no Kakashi.'

"Tomorrow, we'll start our shinobi duties with survival training, but this time I'll be your opponent. Remember, this will be very hard. Of the 27 graduates, only 9 will be chosen to become a gennin. This is a very difficult exam with a failure rate of 67%. Oh… and skip breakfast, you'll puke."

'Hmm. He's not testing us on something we could have learnt in the academy. The bit about not eating breakfast is probably to throw us off… better to eat breakfast and puke then have nothing. Therefore the test will probably be about when to follow rules and when not to.'

That afternoon, Naruto spent a few hours at the training ground, checking out the terrain and training his physical skills. He also checked his gear and his shuriken and kunai accuracy, knowing that against a Jounin he'd have to give his all.

Skip – Training ground 7, two hours after the survival training was supposed to start

"YOU'RE LATE!"

"Here are two bells. Your task is to take these from me before the time's up. Those who don't have a bell by noon get no lunch. I'll not only tie you to one of those stumps, but I'll also eat right in front of you. Come at me with the intent to kill, or you'll never succeed."

'And there's the reason for telling us not to eat. No point in letting him know his threat won't work, though. But first, just to make sure, let's test the reactions of my two teammates.'

Naruto, in a flash, swiped the kunai out of his holster, aimed with a shout, then took a leap forward and nearly threw the knife. However, Kakashi saw this coming and instantly flashed over, grabbed Naruto's arm and efficiently disarmed him. "Calm down. I haven't said start yet."

'Sakura has barely taken her eyes off the Uchiha. She's deadweight and would die first in an actual fight. Sasuke did see what happened, but made no move to help, and from the look in his face, just views this as eliminating the competition. It will be impossible to work together with him.'

"Well, at least you're coming with intent to kill. Ok, ready… Start!"

All four chakra users disappeared in a blur heading towards the trees, though Kakashi reappeared a few meters away with a lazy look on his face. 'They've all hidden well. Though I expected the orange eyesore to stay here. Oh well, I guess he's matured.' With that, Kakashi took out his book, turned a page, then giggled perversely to himself.

Sasuke was jumping through trees to get some distance from their sensei. He particularly took a different route than the two burdens – nothing was going to weigh him down from avenging his clan!

But a rustle ahead stopped him. Pulling out a kunai, he glimpsed Naruto jumping out on to the branch ahead of him with an indifferent look on his face. "Sasuke", he called, gaining the boy's attention. "Look, we have our differences but there is no way we can defeat Kakashi. We have to work together!" 'Hehe, Sasuke will not accept and I know that. But knowing Kakashi, he'll be keeping tabs on what we do. As much as I want to work together and beat Kakashi, this team will never operate functionally. Given Sakura's abilities, or lack thereof, I would guess this entire test is just to assess one person; either me or Sasuke. Teamwork is not the condition for passing!'

"Why would I ever want to work with you? In fact, you're better than Sakura, so you're more of a threat for the bells. Either way, I will get both bells and maybe, just maybe, I'll give the other away at the end. Yeah... I'll take you out now!"

'SHIT. I did NOT think he was that crazy… well, time to get out of here'. And with that, Sasuke gripped his kunai tighter and ran forwards. When he reached Naruto, he swung aiming for an arm. With a crack, the bone broke and Naruto fell backwards with an astonished look on his face. Which lasted for all of a few seconds before popping into a cleanly cut log. '… Huh?'

A blur sped away from the confrontation towards where Sakura was last headed. 'Now to just try and win over the girl and we should be good. Then I might just get a real teacher who takes me seriously! Kami knows I need it…' Seeing a mop of pink hidden in a bush ahead, the demon vessel slowed to a stop. "Sakura! We need to work together to take Kakashi-sensei down!"

She quickly spun around, pretending not to be surprised, with a light dusting of pink on her cheeks. Apparently her one true love had come to help HER! "U-uh, sure, sasu- NARUTO! STOP SNEAKING AROUND! AND ANYWAYS I REFUSE TO GO ON A DATE!"

"Wa-wait! Sakura-cha- Sakura! If you help me, I … uh … um – ah! I won't pester you for dates for a week!" Naruto sweatdropped at seeing Sakura actually consider that for a moment. 'Jeez, am I really that annoying?' "Come on! You don't really think we can take on Kakashi-sensei alone, do you? He's an elite jounin! I'll even give up my bell to Sasuke if we do this!"

"Okay, Naruto. We'll work together. But first we need Sasuke with us!" And with that the pink and blond duo leapt off after the avenger. 'Now, from what I know from scouting yesterday, Sasuke was heading towards a clearing. That's probably where Kakashi will ambush him. We've spent around three minutes here and another three to get there, so we'll arrive just in time to save the idiot. He will realise then that we need to work together. With his support, the team will function enough to pass the test. Though after that… I assume we will be split. A revenge obsessed lone avenger and someone who would do literally anything for his attention do not make a good team. What was Sarutobi thinking…'

"Earth style! Headhunter jutsu!"

"There's Sasuke-kun! I'll save him!"

'Guess that just leaves me to stall Kakashi…' "Oi scarecrow! I'm your opponent now! Multi shadow clone jutsu!"

With a poof of smoke, nine more Naruto copies appeared, then a split second later, two more phased into existence behind the others hidden by the smoke. Eight clones charged the jounin with just simple brawler moves, but their numbers were quickly whittled down by Kakashi over a minute, never taking his eyes off the book. His eye lazily glanced up and saw one more Naruto standing a few meters away, looking determined. He crossed his fingers again, and two more clones appeared. The trio charged at their opponent, dual wielding kunai, and attacked. A shuriken forced Kakashi to dodge to his right; a second clone was waiting there and slashed across, driving the copy-nin further and further towards a corner of the clearing. The third Naruto threw his kunai straight at Kakashi, while multiple shuriken arced around either side of him from the other two, a glint in the sun revealing the hidden ninja wire connecting the shuriken. Their opponent, now realising the only exit is dashing forwards and outrunning the weapons, did just that. Planting his feet on the ground and tucking his book into a pocket, the scarecrow swung around and sped through handsigns – "Earth style! Earth wall!"

The weapons and the earth wall, after becoming trapped, all descended again, revealing the trio of Naruto. 'So it's the middle one who did this… he's hanging back and hasn't engaged me close yet'. Then they all puffed into smoke, leaving Kakashi confused for a second. That second was all that was required; as four hands reached up and dragged him into the ground up to his neck. 'Sigh… it was going so well up to now…' "Let's finish this, shall we?" The copy-nin expelled chakra and tried to move his arms out to perform a quick substitution. 'Hmm? What's this…. Ninja wire already hidden underground for me.' Just then, three spots in three trees in a fifteen meter radius began launching kunai at Kakashi's exposed head. 'Guess there's no choice. Though this is really well planned…' And with that the ninja performed a quick substitution with one of the now emerged clones, while stabbing the second. They both popped and dispersed, leaving Kakashi again alone in a clearing. 'This is happening a lot lately. Must be getting rusty.'

With the real Naruto

Naruto and his other clone had given Kakashi the slip and dragged Sasuke out of the hole. Then all four retreated into the forest. "Dobe! I had him! You ruined everything!" "Yeah yeah, I get it. Look, we need to work to-" Sasuke chose that moment to punch Naruto in the face, kick the surprised Sakura over, then run off to fight Kakashi again. Sakura followed shortly after. Naruto then sat down against a tree to regain his strength with an annoyed look on his face. 'What do I have to do to get them to understand? Should I go after them? Well, there are two bells and three of us. Normal gennin teams have three members. Therefore the bells are here to distract us from the main objective of teamwork, which is working perfectly here. This tells me that the bells themselves are not what grants passing, but instead what Kakashi sees us doing. So far I've played my part perfectly; I've tried to convince Sasuke and Sakura and distracted our opponent to allow them to escape, while showing good combat skills. The only thing left to do is to survive the next few minutes until the time is up. No point in lounging about here, let's observe how the copy-nin fights.' And with that thought, Naruto became an orange blur heading towards the original clearing, where Sasuke and Sakura were headed.

"So nice of you to join us, Naruto. As you can see, Sasuke tried to sneak up on me. And dear Sakura here was also captured." Kakashi gestured to the two tied up students, who both looked down ashamedly. "And there goes the bell! Looks like no-one passed! Oh well, more lunch for me." Cue one of Kakashi's eye smiles.

"So…. Uhh… do we all go back to the academy?"

"No need to look so down, Naruto! No, you shouldn't all go back to the academy at all!-

-You should quit as ninja." All three looked shocked, then outraged.

"So Naruto, since out of everyone here, you did the best; have any idea why you all failed?"

"Well, Sasuke refused to accept my or Sakura's help and even attacked me. Sakura did agree to help, but only because she thought she could save Sasuke. Instead of trying to get the team to work together, she simply went along with whatever Sasuke said. As for why I failed… well, that's obvious. This was a test of teamwork; whole team passes, or whole team fails." Naruto's nearly permanent grin faltered at several points in the explanation.

"Well said. I hope you all reflect on this for next year", spoke Kakashi with a special glare on Sasuke.

'Maybe… maybe Naruto was right… I never stood a chance alone. But I'm not sure if I will be able to take on Ita- Him with a team to back me up…'

'Am I really so obsessed with Sasuke? Maybe I need a rethink… I know he's very cute, but I could have been killed there! I don't want to be such a burden for my next team. I think I've realised that Sasuke respects power, so I'll just have to become strong to win his heart! And if I become the best ninja in the world along the way, so be it!'

Kakashi, seeing the dawning look on his two charges' faces, untied them and led all three back to the academy. There, Sasuke left to do some brooding, though about something other than '101 ways to torture Itachi' this time, and Sakura left without a glance to her love. Naruto struggled to continue maintaining his bright grinning act, until Kakashi spoke. "Naruto, you can wipe the smile off your face now. I know about your mask."

Naruto's visage and posture then changed, from perky, cheerful and slightly relaxed, to a much more sombre mood. His face adopted a scowl, then an impassive, if slightly sad, visage, and his shoulders became more rigid and he stood up straight. Now with the aura of a serious shinobi. "Inu… I know Hokage-sama picked the teams for a reason. He must have known that this team would never work! Why then… Was I set up to fail?!" Frustration crept into his breaking voice as the edges of his eyes, still impassive, started watering. In his troubled mind, he forgot not to call Kakashi by his Anbu name when he was protecting Naruto during his childhood from many attempts against his well-being.

Kakashi also stood up straighter, no longer slouching. His eyes began radiating pride as he smiled again. "Naruto, you should know that I am proud for what you did. And so to is the Hokage, apparently." Naruto perked up at this, looking confused. "How would you like to get some special training under me until the chuunin exams, gennin Uzumaki?"

A/N and SPOILERS

So, as for changes in the 'verse, there are a few things. I plan to eventually bring all the Jinchuuriki together as a sort of allied force to combat the Akatsuki and other enemies of all five villages. There are a few reasons for this: Jinchuuriki are hated, so if they stay in a village they may go all Gaara on them. But sending them to another village is just asking to be invaded. Therefore all the jinchuuriki and a few other powerful shinobi, from all the villages, together ensures they attack no-one (since every village will have representatives). And at the same time, they are not based in a single village so the Akatsuki/other bad people do not have to flatten them. Naruto will, of course, be an influential player, if not leader, in this.

A few other things: I may write Gaara as still being sane and not 'kill everything!' and the Chuunin exams may be a 'trial run' for the alliance between all five villages and their jinchuuriki. And more people will notice the Akatsuki and Orochimaru earlier. The story may end up becoming Godlike later with Naruto's uber clever hax, but hopefully I can keep the fights entertaining enough.

-Battery Staple Cannon, signing off.