Two years later, and the night before the graduation ceremony that would bring a new crop of genin into the ninja corps that served Konoha, Kakashi was relaxing in a bar with the other jounin who were due to be assigned teams tomorrow. The report was good: despite several misgivings and a few hiccups it seemed that a full class was scheduled for assignment, meaning nobody was going to be shortchanged as had happened in previous years.

Kurenai was currently maintaining an obfuscation genjutsu, a minor technique that would make peoples' eyes simply slide away from the table that they were gathered at as if there was nothing interesting to look at, which was allowing the Copy Ninja to leave his mask down for a change. "So what is it you wanted to talk about, Hatake? You seemed pretty urgent it be discussed before the assignments were finalized."

Kakashi took a sip of the sake that had been delivered to them by a waitress who was well-versed in ignoring genjutsu so she could serve guests without falling prey to the distractions they liked to employ; ninja, especially jounin, took their privacy very seriously, but she had a job to perform as well. As the liquid warmed his core Kakashi licked his lips to savor the droplets left on his lips, and then turned his attention to Kurenai.

"I was thinking that you and I should swap students. Not the whole assignments, of course, just one each."

"I think I can work with that. Who did you have in mind?"

"Hear me out before you go protesting anything. I'd like to put Hinata on my team and give you Sasuke. The boy's hell-bent on revenge and I don't think I can break him of that. ANBU wants me to train him because of the Sharingan but his hasn't even awakened yet and more to the point I think it's more important he learn how to use and counter genjutsu than be given access to a blood limit that will only accelerate his crazy ambitions."

"Interesting points. What about Hinata? Do you plan on teaching her advanced ninjutsu to make up for the lack of other skills brought about by the Byakugan?"

"Perhaps. I'll have to see how well they work together before I finalize any instruction plan, but I wanted to get your input. Besides putting her with someone she looks up to I have a feeling she'll be able to motivate the Haruno girl better than if I were to have Uchiha pulling all the weight for her."

"Well, I'll think about it," was her reply, as at the moment she was more focused on playing footsie with Asuma than on making any critical decisions regarding who she'd be teaching. The sake was definitely getting to her, just not to the point of actual drunkenness quite yet. "I'll tell you in the morning before we deliver the papers to the registration office."

"Good enough for me. Who wants more beer?"

Naruto Uzumaki adjusted the reinforced headband one last time and gave a smile to the mirror, the best one he had in his arsenal. Today he was officially a ninja, today he was going to be assigned to a team and begin the long journey towards his eventual goal of Hokage. He didn't expect it to be easy so he was hoping that his teammates would be able to work with him in realizing every potential he had just like he was going to help them realize theirs.

Though he was technically "dead last" according to his test scores and poor performance when it came to reviewing basic techniques, he didn't need anyone to point out to him that there were plenty of ways in which he more than made up for his academic shortcomings. Not even the grisly stares of some of the more ignorant villagers could wipe the smile off his face today, and a few of the less stupid actually returned it, and it wasn't just because of the metal plate bearing the icon of Leaf shinobi affixed to his forehead.

So pleased was the boy that he almost started whistling a jaunty tune, but that wouldn't really reflect well on him if he walked into the classroom acting like he'd won the lottery. It was a bit of an effort but he managed to calm down enough to take his usual seat dead center, right at the end of the aisle. If the Sasuke Fan Club wanted to act like idiots today they'd have to go through him. In a way he actually felt sorry for the Uchiha, even if he was a bit of a snob. Once, he'd asked Sasuke if he thought the Fourth had ever had to put up with any of that sort of nonsense.

The only reply was a nonchalant "probably", which is more than he'd usually get out of the dark-haired genius prodigy of Konoha, so it had been a bit surprising when he'd elaborated upon that thought. "Someone as famous as him probably had fangirls from every ninja village on the continent, even the ones we were at war with." That idea had been amusing at the time, but now two years later it was just sort of sad. Right on cue, Sakura and Ino tried to get through the door at the same time and promptly started brawling.

"Idiots," Shikamaru said in unison with Naruto and Sasuke. The three of them shared a look and then started laughing. Hearing Sasuke do anything but growl in annoyance was unusual, in a refreshing sort of way. Naruto was the first to recover.

"Hey, guys. Let's make a pact here, OK? No matter what team we end up on, we're still Konoha genin from here on out, so we should do everything we can to make sure we get stronger. Oh, and we gotta help our teams out, too, right?"

"Hm." Sasuke was as expected noncommittal towards that idea, though Shikamaru nodded in agreement.

"Fair enough. It'll be pretty troublesome I guess, but can't be worse than being a team that can't support itself. Say, how did you pass the exam anyway?" Naruto faltered momentarily and offered an awkward smile.

"I'll tell you later. I think we're about to get our team assignments." Sure enough, Iruka had entered the classroom, looking at his students proudly; they were the best he'd seen in ten years as a teacher and if they kept on improving might eventually end up on par with the legendary Sannin. Lofty aspirations for a teacher to have, yes, and yet Iruka didn't feel as though he'd be living vicariously through them.

Shikamaru nudged Naruto's shoulder and gestured; when he looked he saw Hinata smiling at him shyly, a hint of her own pride evident in the carefully regulated expression. From the looks of it she was happy to see him among those graduating from the academy that day. Nobody had ever had any doubt about the Hyuuga, obviously, though Naruto had always thought it was odd how she always tried to be just good enough to get by, even though he knew she was capable of much better and not just for her bloodline.

"All right, everyone, settle down, settle down." Iruka's voice pulled him from his reverie and Naruto fixed his attention on the man with the scar across his face. "I'm sure you're all excited to get your team assignments so I won't hold you up. First though let me congratulate you all for passing the genin exams and being approved to join the ranks of Konoha ninja!" Whispers passed through the gathered students, centered on the fact that Iruka seemed to be missing his badge. Little did they know that it was right there in the room with them.

"From here on out your training and instruction will fall to the Jounin teachers that you will be working with for the next few years. I expect each of you will give him or her the respect that they deserve, the same respect you've shown to me—that goes double for you, Naruto!" Chuckles as the blond blushed in embarrassment, recalling that Iruka was usually the one who ended up catching him after one of his pranks. While the class was sharing a laugh at his expense he was watching the door, seeing several men and women enter. One of them was wearing a mask over the lower half of his face and let his badge cover his left eye.

Iruka was at that point reading off names as each Jounin stepped forward and accepted their students. "…Team Seven assigned to Kakashi Hatake: Naruto Uzumaki, Sakura Haruno, and Hinata Hyuuga. Team Eight assigned to Kurenai Yuuhi: Kiba Inuzuka, Shino Aburame, and Sasuke Uchiha…" Naruto filtered the names out again, looking around in shock. He…wasn't going to be on a team with his eternal rival? And he was stuck with two girls instead? No offense to either of them but how were they supposed to help him get stronger? He'd never even seen Hinata fight and Sakura was useless in open combat. Even if she'd never admit it her taijutsu was worse than his own!

The man in the mask gave a flick of his white hair and gestured for his students to follow. More than a few murmurs persisted as the three genin rose one by one and followed him out into the hallway and from there into Konoha's streets. Inwardly Sakura was seething, crushed that she hadn't been placed on a team with her Beloved Sasuke, relieved that nobody else had been given that opportunity either. But having to be stuck with the idiot Naruto and the unnervingly quiet Hinata…she made Shino seem like an expert conversationalist by comparison. And the way she kept staring at Naruto and blushing! Was she insane?

Hinata on the other hand couldn't have been happier. To be placed with someone as ambitious as Naruto was nothing short of a godsend and she had nothing but respect for Sakura, as well. She knew a little about both, mostly from her observations during classes (as well as a little Byakugan-fueled spying); what she didn't know, however, was what they were like outside of a study environment, how they behaved when put under real stress and most importantly how they would handle having her for a partner. Naruto didn't seem to mind (dimly aware that since he maintained that goofball expression no matter what it wasn't saying much). Sakura on the other hand apparently loathed her very existence. Well if she didn't like it that was her own problem. This was her team now and if she didn't learn to work with it, then they would all suffer.

"Where the hell are we going anyway, Kakashi-sensei?" That remark earned him a thwack on the head from Sakura, warning him to watch his language, followed by a quiet admonition from Hinata that she shouldn't be so rough on Naruto if they weren't sparring. Sakura just rolled her eyes at that comment. Naruto had taken bigger hits than that and not even blinked. One little punch wasn't going to break him.

"Training ground eleven," the masked jounin replied nonchalantly. "Before I agree to train you, the three of you have to pass a little test."

"But didn't we already…" Sakura began before she was cut off by the team leader.

"The academy's tests are too easy. I need to see if the three of you are really cut out to be ninja."

"I remember now!" Naruto piped up after a moment of thought. "They say you've failed every team that's been assigned to you since you became a jounin. Is it true or are people just spreading rumors to make you look more intimidating than you actually are?"

"Naruto, this is probably the only time I'm ever going to tell you this: you're absolutely right. Not one of the teams I have been given have met my standards. Let some other jounin handle them if they want. That's all I'm going to say on the matter. The rest of it you'll have to be smart enough to figure out on your own."

"Good luck with that," Sakura said. "Naruto's denser than concrete. I'm surprised he even managed to graduate after all the times he failed the genin exams." It was Hinata who spoke in his defense, although Naruto was preparing to get loud and obnoxious, similar to the orange jumpsuit.

"Don't be so cruel, Sakura. A good ninja is more than what he learns in a classroom. A good ninja has qualities that can't be revealed just by teaching a curriculum…you should know that better than anyone, bookworm." The pink-haired girl cowed with a glare, not much but enough to satisfy her. Insulting people didn't come naturally to Hinata. Even so she had to try it on for size, although she could probably have done better than 'bookworm' if she really wanted the barb to stick. The problem was she didn't. She just wanted her to lay off of Naruto. He had a hard enough time of it as it was.

Which apparently included having to stave off Konohamaru's latest attempt at being stealthy. The grandson of the Hokage showered praise and admiration upon Naruto for seeing through his disguise, a rather square rock with two eye-holes in the front, along with vindictive blather about how he was going to defeat his eternal rival no matter what it took. Naruto sent Konohamaru packing with less fanfare than usual if reports of the antics between the two were anything to believe, as he was preparing mentally for whatever test that Kakashi had planned for them.

Following that interruption the walk to Training Ground 11 was uneventful; people gave them a wide berth though whether it was due to Kakashi or Naruto neither of the two girls could say for sure. Sakura had never been able to put her finger on it but there was always something both familiar and at the same time alien about his presence. The one time she'd seen him truly angry, which had happened after some hooligans vandalized his apartment, it had been almost tangible during classes. She'd been positively terrified of such vigorous hatred, and she suspected that hadn't even been an outward expression of emotion. Still, the day after that he was all smiles and goofball again, so maybe it had been a fluke.

Sakura never did find out who'd paid for the repairs, but she did know that Naruto handled the actual labor himself. He didn't like other people to do things for him if he could help it. Her dad had said he was just like his mother in that regard, but neither of her parents would elaborate on it, like the whole adult population of the village was sharing some kind of secret.

Training ground eleven was like many of the other ones comprised of variable terrain, though this one in particular favored open fields and several streams rather than dense forests or rocky hillocks. Hinata heard from her cousin that Team Gai often came up here to spar and run endurance exercises, and she noticed that more than a few of the trees had fist marks in them. All three of the genin were focused more on Kakashi at that point, though, eager to discover just what he meant for them to do.

The answer came soon enough. Opening one of his pouches, Kakashi withdrew a pair of bells, tying them to his belt with some string. Not ninja wire or even chakra thread, just plain old cotton string. "The object of this test is to retrieve these bells. You may notice that there are only two; the one who doesn't obtain one by noon forfeits lunch and gets tied to a post. The three of you are free to use whatever techniques you want, but try to avoid any lethal strikes.

"If you have any doubts I advise you to leave now. I'm going to go hide somewhere in that stand of trees over there; you three wait ten minutes and then you're free to come after me as often as you want. Oh, and keep in mind that I do intend to fight back, so use everything you've got." Grinning behind the mask he performed a body flicker, putting some distance between himself and his prospective students.

Almost immediately Sakura's stomach began to growl, followed by Hinata and Naruto in sympathy. They'd received anonymous letters not to eat breakfast before reporting to the class for assignment, and at the time none of them had thought too much about it. But now that lunch was on the line… Naruto looked like he might die, until he remembered something in his thigh pouch. Reaching in he drew out, not kunai or shuriken, but a couple bars of granola along with some dried fruit in a plastic bag, in addition to some fresher nuts and berries.

"Naruto, what…you were stashing food?" Sakura looked at him like he'd grown an extra head. "We weren't supposed to eat breakfast! It has to be part of Kakashi-sensei's test and if we have any food now he could fail us!"

"Yeah, but this isn't breakfast! It's a mid-morning snack!"

"N-Naruto's right. We shouldn't try to fight on an empty stomach… Um, Naruto… why do you have food in your pouch anyway?"

"Oh, that. Yeah, I keep some in reserve just in case the old man's troops are dead set on catching me after one of my little, uh surprises. I've had to hide out in the woods for over a week more than once, so it helps to have something to fall back on if the foraging doesn't go well." At a very basic level and without even realizing that he was doing it Naruto was in that moment demonstrating a truth that they would have reinforced much later on: the enemy wasn't going to play by the rules, and if they adhered to any rigid mode of operation they were just going to wind up dead.

Hinata blushed when Naruto placed the food in her hands, though Sakura seemed to take it as an insult almost, insisting that they had to stick to the parameters of the test or else it was invalidated and they failed automatically. She couldn't deny the rumbling in her belly, though, and finally ate some of what Naruto gave her, begrudgingly as it appeared. Her internal clock registered that five minutes had passed, and she watched with some amusement as Naruto fidgeted around in the bushes, apparently looking for something.

When the girls moved to ask him what he was up to he shooed them away, straightening up with a devious grin. Within minutes he'd run all around every concealed spot that he could find, littering the clearing that Kakashi had left them in with rudimentary booby traps. They wouldn't fool an expert, but Naruto had a plan and it wasn't to let the white-haired jounin know there were traps in the first place.

"Ten minutes is up. I say we charge him head on and beat him down!" Sakura's enthusiasm was admirable, but Hinata, sensing what the orange-jumpsuited boy had in mind, shook her head.

"We won't last in direct combat, not against someone like him. We should…gang up on him and drive him back this way…into Naruto's snare traps." It wasn't likely that Kakashi would try to use clones of any sort with Hinata around to see through them, but he could very easily pick them off all the same. If they acted selfishly and attacked one by one, she explained, his superior skills would put them all on the bench.

Kakashi was already watching them, fully aware of the hazards Naruto had set up, being as the body flicker had just been a distraction so he could hide himself as one of the bushes in the clearing. He had to give them points for breaking the rules already (at Naruto's insistence), but also to remove some as they had clearly not noticed the extra shrub in the area. Oh well, he'd work on observational training with them if they managed to pass his test.

For now Naruto seemed to be the apparent leader; he came up with an idea and they followed, though from the look on his face he'd been expecting them to say something to flesh it out better rather than just tagging along. Not much progress, but they'd only been a team for all of an hour and forty minutes of that had been spent walking to the training ground. Still, to form cohesiveness this quickly, as rudimentary as it was, came as a reassurance to him. Maybe he wouldn't have to fail them after all.

No matter what else, it was becoming painfully obvious that the class clown wasn't as stupid as everyone liked to pretend, demonstrated when he summoned up a clone to watch the clearing while the three real genin headed for the thicket Kakashi had said he'd be hiding in.

As they ran, Sakura posed a question.

"Naruto, since when can you summon clones that look that perfect?"

"Since when…? That's right, I didn't tell you about it. I'm probably going to get into trouble for it but what the hell, you guys are my team now, so no secrets. A couple nights ago Mizuki-sensei managed to convince me to steal a forbidden scroll from the Hokage's tower for him. I don't know why I agreed but he said that he'd let me graduate if I helped out and…well, I've broken into the tower without getting caught before."

"You have? When were you going to tell us?"

"It's not something you go around advertising, you know? But anyway that bastard started going on about how I was just garbage and not worth becoming a ninja. Before I'd shown him the scroll, though, I managed to pick up one of the better techniques from it. That back there? That's a shadow clone. Not an illusion. I'll tell you the rest of the story later. Don't want that sneak Kakashi hearing us coming."

"N-No offense, Naruto, but you are pretty loud even when you're trying to be quiet."

"Er, right. Hinata, you take the left, Sakura, go right and I'll head up the middle. Up into the trees so we can see better and move easier." Again the girls found themselves obeying without any outward protest, jumping up as high as chakra-enhanced leaps would allow and landing on boughs in the canopies of sturdy pines. Without waiting for instruction Hinata activated her Byakugan and did a quick sweep, frowning as she found an apparent lack of any human-sized energy sources. There was a large boar and some rabbits hiding in the denser shrub, but no Kakashi.

What was there, however… Her eyes widened as she recognized the patterns of exploding tags, too late to shout a warning. Sakura had apparently seen them, too, as both Naruto and Hinata felt themselves yanked through a double substitution, dropped on their bottoms twenty yards from the explosion. Naruto yelled for her in shock, thinking she'd been caught in the blast, when the pink-haired kunoichi dropped from the branch she was hanging from.

"I don't think I can do that again. Substituting two people and then myself strained me to my limits." She saw Hinata had her eyes going, and squinted. "Did you see any sign of Kakashi-sensei?" Hinata only shook her head, and pointed back in the direction they'd come from.

"Bastard must have used that movement technique to trick us. But he hasn't dispelled my clone; when Iruka showed up to back me up against Mizuki the other day he sort of stepped in front of a giant shuriken for me so I went nuts and made as many shadow clones as I could. Pretty much a whole army of them, and I knew the instant Mizuki hit them hard enough to kill them. Each one that vanished let me know about it. Didn't feel quite like if he'd hit me personally but still pretty intense."

"Hey wait. Isn't the Shadow Clone technique jounin-level? You shouldn't be able to manage even one, let alone this army you're claiming. On top of the fact that you can't even manage a regular clone or transformation technique unless you're doing that perverted Ninja Centerfold thing." Mention of Naruto's favorite distraction maneuver set Hinata to blushing and feeling fortunate that she'd never had to witness it in its full glory.

"Erm…"

"Sakura, um…" Hinata remembered she was still looking through her Byakugan and shut it down, blushing still as she looked at the two with normal eyes. "How to put this? Naruto has very strongly developed chakra coils. It might be an unrecorded bloodline. But it's rude to pry into Naruto's personal affairs. I am sorry." Naruto just grinned and stopped Hinata before she could finish her apologetic bow, gesturing at the clearing again. Sakura, however, was frowning.

"Kakashi-sensei's supposed to have mastered a thousand techniques. If it is a real shadow clone you left in the clearing then he could put it under a genjutsu and alter the traps without having to discharge your clone. So we'd better be careful going back." Her partners nodded in agreement, and Hinata let a small smile creep out. She was beginning to see what sort of balance this team would have. Not that the girl had any ability to see the future, but Hyuuga clan were required to be able to judge the talents and capabilities of others swiftly and while some members might be inclined to use this as a reason to avoid people, Hinata personally used it to see what a person was like beneath their public façade.

"Okay, how about this? I generate about twenty or so clones, and we stick exploding tags to them so if he pops them, they go off, and if he puts a genjutsu on them they still go off? It'll play a lot of havoc and disarm some of the traps, and between the two of you, you should be able to grab those bells of his."

"But what about you, Naruto? You won't get a bell and will fail the test!"

"So what if I do? It's not as if I can't find some other way of proving that I belong with you guys, right? Nobody's fate was ever decided because of a pair of trinkets."

If things progressed at their current rate, Naruto would end up as the man in charge of planning out operations as well as providing distractions, Hinata mused, while Sakura would be the one providing medium-range support and Hinata would likely get pushed into a close combat role. Whatever the actual outcome was she planned to support her team one hundred ten—no, one hundred fifty percent. Everything she had and more.

"You sure it'll work, Naruto?"

"If it doesn't it'll at least shake him up a bit. I'm not too keen on trying something that crazy but it's the best plan I've got right now."

"Hinata, you up for this? It could be our only chance." The dark-haired girl nodded, setting herself with determination. As Naruto created the clones without any visible strain on himself, the two of them each provided a number of explosive tags, affixing them to each clone's back. Sakura had thought to split the cost between them so nobody's supply got completely depleted, even though Naruto was going to be taking all the risks.

"Okay," she said as she turned her eyes back on. "That bush forty yards ahead and six yards to the left is out of place. It has the right output for a person, but I'm not entirely sure it's a transformation."

"Clones are out the door…now." As Naruto spoke the thirty-odd copies of him charged out of their concealment, yelling like lunatics. The bush Hinata had pointed out flickered, launching a brace of kunai at the copies and as predicted they went off spectacularly. Their owner had enough sense to spread them out so they wouldn't set each other off but even so the effect was astounding, filling the clearing with smoke and flames and all manner of debris.

Kakashi staggered in shock as he hadn't been aware of the fact that Naruto could make exploding clones; then he saw the tag as one made it past him and nearly went off in his face. Clever idea, brat. A little unorthodox but it works. Now if you can just get this to rub off on the other two…

"Tag, sensei, you're it!" The distraction had worked and Kakashi frowned imperceptibly that he could slip up so badly with a bunch of genin. It's a good thing he'd left his book at home, because with these sorts of tactics the fragile little pages. Hinata and Sakura were both dangling a bell in front of him, adopting similar catlike teasing on their faces.

"I guess that means you win. Naruto, that means you get to watch your teammates enjoy a lunch from the vantage point of that pole over there." They followed his pointing finger to gaze at the trio of stakes which had somehow managed to survive the onslaught of walking bombs, and Naruto's face fell.

"Aw man! This just sucks!" Naruto kicked his feet from where he was suspended after being tied up, while Sakura and Hinata sat at the base of the pole, staring into their lunches quietly. Neither of them moved to eat, even though both were hungry enough to need the stamina-restoring meals. Kakashi was about to intervene and force them to start eating when suddenly Naruto smiled. "Time's up!" One last clone vanished in a puff of smoke, and the real Naruto walked into the clearing, his arms full of wild plants, all of them edible.

As the loudmouthed genin sat down facing them the three let out a heartfelt 'Itadakimasu!' and began to dig in, splitting the bounty as equally as they could with a minimum of fuss.

How long are these kids going to keep showing me up? "Well then, since you not only broke the rules I set out at the start of this test, but also retrieved the bells and managed to keep your teammate from being captured, Team Seven…passes!" Pleased looks passed between them as Kakashi smiled and patted them on the head.

"But don't think for a minute that this means things are ever going to be this easy again."