Disclaimer: You know, it really sucks that FFnet's URL filter also precludes amusing jokes based around object-oriented programming. Well, amusing to me, anyway.
Shinigan
Chapter 2
After receiving his hitai-ite, Naruto was sufficiently euphoric to run out and start doing missions that day. However, as the Hokage explained, that was not, yet, an option.
Naruto walked into the room. It was one of the Academy classrooms, but not one that Naruto had ever frequented. Two-person desks filled the room in tiers. He was not late, but the majority of his class had already arrived.
Hinata was sitting at a desk next to someone else, whose name he did not know. He stopped beside her desk and grinned at her. "Hey, Hinata-chan!"
Hinata looked quickly up at him, as if startled. She must have been really distracted—normally even without her eyes she could see most of the things around her. Her eyes flicked first to his face, then to the hitai-ite around his forehead. "N-Naruto-kun! You graduated?" She smiled brightly, making him feel suddenly almost as absurdly happy again as when he had gotten the hitai-ite from Iruka-sensei.
"Yeah! Some, uh, some stuff happened," and here his smile faltered for a moment, "last night, which I can't really explain, but it worked out with me getting a merit promotion. So yeah!" He grinned broadly again, casting around for a seat. The one next to Hinata-chan was already taken, so he sat down in the nearest empty one—which, he noticed only as he sat down, put him next to Sasuke-teme. Great. Sasuke turned and looked at him levelly as he sat, but there was no particular malice in the gaze, and in only a moment he turned back to staring at nothing in particular. Naruto hmphed quietly at being ignored, and settled firmly into ignoring the Uchiha in turn.
There was a clatter from the door at the rear of the room, and the sounds of loud female argument. Naruto did not turn around. He recognized the voices of Sakura and whatever-her-name-was who always fought with her, both of whom he disliked, Sakura in particular for hitting him when he tried to ask her out once a year ago, and the other just on principle for her ardent and painfully obviously unrequited pursuit of "her Sasuke-kun". He ignored them, too, until Sakura stormed up beside him and demanded that he move, so that she could sit beside, oh joy, "her Sasuke-kun".
"What?" said Naruto, looking up, rather confused. "No. I'm sitting here. Find somewhere else." He turned back to looking forward, expecting the matter to be finished, and so was startled and annoyed when Sakura grabbed him by the wrist and dragged him out of the chair, dropping him behind it.
Sakura was about to sit down in the chair she had just yanked him out of, when the other girl, the blonde, moved up and disputed her right to it. Sakura brushed her off, claiming first-come, first-served. At this, one of the other girls who already had a seat, who had begun to pay attention when Sakura had knocked him out of the chair, stood up and claimed seniority over Sakura. This set off a wave of other fangirls vacating their seats and disputing who had entered the room first. Many of them had, indeed, come in before Naruto, which set him to wondering why they hadn't just sat beside their precious Uchiha when the seat was empty.
The dispute was approaching the point where it might very well have erupted into physical combat when Naruto stood up. He was still behind the desk, standing between the mob of fangirls and the Uchiha, whose level stare at nothing had become distinctly annoyed and long-suffering.
"OI!" said Naruto, very loudly. This preempted several volleys in the War of the Fangirls, and they all became silent and stared at him. Naruto illustrated his words with large, pointed gestures as he spoke. "I," said he, pointing at himself, "am going to sit here." He indicated the chair that was the object of contention. "The reason for this is that I actually sat here. So, all of you, kindly, buzz off." He sat down and pointedly stared ahead.
The fangirls were, for a moment, shocked silent. Then Sakura growled in anger and again grabbed at Naruto's wrist to deprive him of the seat. She was just about to yank him off the chair again when he broke her grip, causing her to reel backwards for a moment before regaining her balance.
Things might have gone badly for Naruto at that point, being at the focus of the ire of the fangirlish mob, if Iruka had not at that moment walked in the door. He saw almost a third of the class congregated around a single desk, and loudly cleared his throat.
"EXCUSE ME!" he shouted, his head seeming to grow by a factor of three or so. (Naruto had never figured out if that was some sort of genjutsu or merely a psychological effect of being screamed at by Iruka.) The group of girls turned towards him.
"Will this group of new ninja, now legally adults and considered capable of acting maturely in most situations, please sit down?" said Iruka.
The fangirls dispersed, some grumbling quietly. Sakura made a pointed sniff and moved off to take one of the closest seats to Sasuke, which had actually been occupied by another of the fangirls; that girl disputed the seat for only a moment before finding a different one.
Iruka smiled without a trace of his earlier menace. "Thank you!" He then launched into an explanation of the system of teams, most of which seemed designed to, having stoked the egos of the new genin with their shiny new hitai-ite, cut them back down to size for their participation in the world of real ninja. Naruto tuned most of it out; one could not read any of the village history that he had read in the Konoha archives without both the relatively lowly status of genin and the structure of their teams becoming obvious.
The lecture ended with Iruka's preparation to list off the teams themselves. Naruto perked up and began to pay attention. No one he knew was on any of the first six teams called. Then—
"Team seven. Uzumaki Naruto, Haruno Sakura, Uchiha Sasuke." Naruto groaned quietly to himself. The teme and the annoying fangirl. Well, at least Sasuke-teme was an effective ninja. Hopefully no one would expect them to fight anything for a while.
He had kind of hoped to be on a team with Hinata-chan, but he supposed that they could still get together and spar or something. Hinata-chan was hard; even though she wasn't nearly as strong as he was, when she turned on her eyes he just couldn't hit her unless he got a lucky shot. He couldn't think of a better way to get faster.
And speaking of which—"Team eight. Hyuuga Hinata, Inuzuka Kiba, Aburame Shino." Naruto knew the Kiba kid for that dog which he always carried around on his head, and the Shino kid for, basically, being very tall, and a little bit weird. He hoped they were good teammates for Hinata.
XxXxX
Naruto sighed. The last team to be chosen had left with their sensei almost fifteen minutes ago, leaving him, the teme and the fangirl alone in the room. Naruto had become bored and started pacing five minutes ago, and Sakura had, much to the Uchiha's quietly expressed annoyance, taken the opportunity to steal the seat next to him.
Sasuke sat in the same position that he had held, without change, for most of the class. He basically ignored Sakura's sitting next to him and sneaking glances at him, and completely ignored Naruto's pacing and muttering.
After a good hour of this, Naruto was quite thoroughly annoyed, as well as bored. Weren't the jounin-senseis supposed to be good role models? Why was he being so late?
With a snort of annoyance, Naruto came to a decision. He hunted up a sheet of paper in the desk at the front of the room, then grabbed the canister of mostly-spent chalk from the floor below the blackboard at the front and sat down at a desk. He removed a brush and ink—the basic sealing kit—from his pockets and began to sketch the same obsolete storage seal that he had used in the flour traps. When the seal was done, he dumped the canister of chalk onto it and sealed it inside with an application of chakra. Then he set the seal at the top of the doorframe, standing on a chair to do so, and attached it to both the frame and the door so that the door would tear it apart if it opened.
The others had been watching this work, being the most interesting thing happening in the classroom. Sakura was taken aback by the sealing and did not comment, though she evidently wished to. Sasuke turned to look at the sealed paper stuck through the top of the doorframe.
"A jounin isn't going to fall for that trick, fuin-dobe."
Naruto grinned brightly. "Well, you never know."
Sakura decided at this point to step in. "Idiot! You're laying a trap for our sensei! You're going to get in trouble!"
Naruto rolled his eyes. "He's late, it's annoying. Even if he doesn't fall for it it may be entertaining to watch."
Sakura was about to continue the debate when they heard a footstep outside the door. All three genin quieted and turned to look. A hand in a blue, fingerless glove pushed the door open. The seal tore in two, and there was a minor explosion. Chalk dust filtered down from above, and there was a momentary rain of used-up chalk ends.
A white-haired man walked into the room through the now-dispersing cloud of chalk dust. Oddly enough, he didn't seem to get any of it on him; it would have been hard to tell if there was chalk in his hair, but one would assume that it would show up on his blue face mask.
All three genin stared at him for a moment before he spoke. "Well, I have to say that as a first impression, this leaves something to be desired."
There was silence for a moment, and the jounin spoke again. "Meet on the roof of this building in five minutes." Then, without ceremony, he disappeared in a puff of smoke.
XxXxX
The three genin sat on benches atop the Academy building, while the white-haired, masked man leaned against the railing around the edge. The jounin's face was unreadable, but he spoke in a mildly bored tone.
"So, why don't we introduce ourselves? Tell us your names, your hobbies, what you like and don't like, your goals. How about you, Pink Hair?"
Sakura bristled at the name. "Shouldn't you introduce yourself first, sensei?"
The jounin nodded. "Okay. My name is Hatake Kakashi. I like some things, but there are things I dislike. I...have some hobbies. My goals..." He was quiet for a moment, then continued. "Okay, Pink Hair, your turn."
Sakura glared at him, but spoke anyway. "My name is Haruno Sakura. I like..." she blushed slightly and looked at Sasuke. "I don't like loud-mouthed brats who can't keep quiet." This with a glare at Naruto. "My hobbies..." she blushed again and looked at Sasuke. "Goals...I suppose I want a family some day." This with another glance at Sasuke.
Kakashi nodded. "Okay, your turn, Rudimentary Seal Traps."
Naruto grinned at the reference. "My name is Uzumaki Naruto! I like ramen, Iruka-sensei, Hokage-ojiisan, and the bit of the Archive with the seals in it! I don't like..." here his enthusiasm flagged for a moment, "well, a lot of people are idiots. My hobbies are eating ramen and figuring out fun ways of using seals! My goal is to become Hokage!"
Kakashi raised one eyebrow, which was the only expression, Naruto thought, that anyone could actually read on his face, and nodded. "Okay, Staring At Nothing. Go."
Sasuke shifted, a flicker of annoyance crossing his face. "My name is Uchiha Sasuke. I like...well, not many things. I dislike weakness," this with a glance at Sakura, who squeaked slightly, "and tricks." This with a glance at Naruto, who glared at him. "My hobby is training. My goal...my ambition is to revive my clan, and kill a certain person." At this, Naruto's glare turned to a mixture of interest and alarm; he stared at Sasuke for a moment, as if he would say something, but was cut off by Kakashi.
"Okay, well, at least you three aren't boring. So. We begin tomorrow, meeting at 5 A.M. at training ground 13. It's...a training mission of sorts. Don't be late. And," he finished, standing up and turning around, "don't eat breakfast. You'll just throw it up."
XxXxX
Naruto showed up at the bridge leading to training ground #13 at five precisely the next morning. This was quite a bit earlier than he was used to getting up; he had had to sleep early to make sure he wasn't tired for it. Sakura was already there, standing on the bridge, and after only a few minutes Sasuke-teme showed up as well. Then, of course, Kakashi didn't...show...up. They had waited for almost an hour before Naruto lost patience.
"Don't be late? Don't be late, he says? What's he doing telling us not to be late?" Naruto growled, pacing back and forth on the bridge. "We weren't late! He's late! Why's he late?"
Sakura was also annoyed, though she managed to refrain from fidgeting. "If he doesn't show up then I won't get the chance to prove how strong I am to Sasuke-kun..." she muttered, almost to herself. Sasuke's comment about weakness the day before had nettled her.
Naruto lost what remained of his patience after another hour. The sun had risen some time ago; Sakura sat still with a growing look of annoyance on her face, while Sasuke-teme just stood, apparently not noticing the passage of time. Naruto got out his sealing brush and ink and started drawing on the wood of the bridge. "Rudimentary Seal Traps...I'll show him Rudimentary Seal Traps..." he muttered angrily as he worked. Behind him, and unnoticed, Sasuke turned to look at him, staring rather intently at the matrix of seals that he was constructing.
Naruto finished the seal, which looked like another storage seal, then pulled a flash bomb from the pocket where he kept Random Ninja Tools. A tiny seal, just a single symbol, went on the flash bomb, and Naruto pushed it into the storage seal with a flash of chakra. Then he took up a position further down the bridge, across from Sasuke, and drew another seal on the rail near his hand.
He looked up for a moment. "Sasuke, Sakura, when I set this off you might want to close your eyes. I'm going to do it as soon as I see Kakashi-sensei stepping onto the bridge."
Sasuke looked at him with more interest than Naruto had ever seen him show. "What does it do?"
Naruto grinned. "It's a self-triggering storage seal. The basis for a lot of trap seals—you can launch something out of it like an explosive tag or a flash bomb and it'll set it off for you. But Hokage-ojiisan won't let me do trap seals yet," this with a near pout, "so I have to set it off myself."
Sasuke looked at him more intently for a moment, then shook his head. "Fuin-dobe."
Naruto rolled his eyes and stood, fidgeting, next to the trigger seal on the rail.
He managed to stand, ready to trigger the trap, for two more hours, probably a record for Naruto standing still. Eventually, however, he also became bored and sat. It was half an hour more after that when Kakashi, oblivious to Naruto's careful work in preparing a trap for him, appeared on the wrong side of the bridge, with a bright "Good morning!"
"You're late!" yelled Sakura and Naruto, almost in unison. The three genin moved off the bridge to stand in front of Kakashi. Kakashi made precisely no apology for his tardiness, but held up a pair of bells on a string.
"All right! So, the first thing I should tell you is that this is, actually, the final test to become genin. If you fail this, you go back to the Academy. Okay?" This was met with disbelief from Sakura.
"So what was the point of that final exam?" she grumbled.
"Ah, that selects the students who are capable of becoming genin. This selects the student who will become genin. So here's the test. You are going to try and attack me. What you are trying to do is take these bells," he shook the two bells back and forth, and they jingled cheerily, "from here." He tied the string to his belt. "If you have a bell before noon, measured when the sun gets to there," he indicated an arbitrary point in the sky, "then you get lunch. Anyone who doesn't have a bell doesn't get any food. Oh, and they have to go back to the Academy." Kakashi's expression was unreadable, of course, but his voice was gleeful. "Any questions?"
Sakura spoke first. "But sensei, there are only two bells, and three of us."
"How observant of you, Sakura! I guess one of you has a problem, then."
There was a momentary, heavy silence before Sasuke spoke. "Sensei, are we to fight all out?"
Kakashi nodded. "Believe me, you'll need to. Don't hold back on my account."
Naruto raised a hand. "Ah, sensei...last time I fought all out...uh...I didn't really like what happened," he said, his voice uncomfortable.
Kakashi raised an eyebrow. It might even have been both eyebrows, but the one was hidden under his hitai-ite. "Ah. Touji Mizuki, wasn't it?" Naruto nodded. "You don't need to worry about that. Fight as hard as you like. I won't be caught so easily." Naruto nodded in vague relief.
Sakura and Sasuke both had been looking at Naruto oddly during this exchange. Before they could ask any questions, Kakashi cut them off. "Any more questions? No? Good. The exercise begins in three—two—one—and now." He jumped away from them, landing in the middle of the clearing off the bridge.
Naruto stood and shook himself. "All right!" he said, and charged at Kakashi.
As he charged, he formed a familiar cross hand seal. "Kage bunshin no jutsu!" he yelled, and ten clones appeared next to him, charging as well.
Kakashi found himself under assault by all eleven bodies. It was no contest. He moved more quickly than Naruto had ever seen, blocking every blow aimed at him and dispersing the clones right and left. None of them even came close to the bells on his belt. When Naruto himself attacked, going for the bells rather than any hits on Kakashi, he found himself flying backwards from a particularly hard blow to the forehead. He landed and skidded along the ground, panting.
Then stood. "All right, let's turn it up a notch! Tajuu kage bunshin no jutsu!" This time, some thirty clones formed. Half of them charged, while half held back. The half that charged went straight after the bell just like the previous wave, and met a similar lack of success. The half that held back were loading kunai with explosive tags. As Kakashi cut through the first wave of clones with casual ease, the second wave all threw exploding kunai straight at him. Kakashi, not surprised, jumped straight up, letting the exploding kunai land where he was and destroy the remaining assault clones. None of the clones had any kunai ready to attack Kakashi while he was a sitting target in midair, and Naruto cursed himself for not making more.
Kakashi landed unmolested and began taking out clones. Predictably enough, none of them could touch him; he plowed straight through the group of them before he came to Naruto himself. This time, Naruto drew a kunai himself and stabbed at Kakashi with it. He blocked the stroke aside with the armor plate on one glove, then turned the overextended arm into a brutal over-the-shoulder throw that left Naruto upside-down against a tree.
"Good! You've gotten lesson one: fight to kill. You can take the bells off my corpse," said Kakashi loudly. "Or you could, if you could actually kill me." Naruto, disoriented from the sudden flip and near concussion, fell over sideways, groaning.
Sasuke and Sakura had disappeared from the bridge long since. It was at this point that Sasuke came out from cover and attacked Kakashi, hoping that his taijutsu—well superior to the dobe's, anyway—could succeed where Naruto's clones had failed. Unfortunately, that hope was dashed. Kakashi was too fast. Sasuke managed to avoid any knockout blows like the ones dealt Naruto, but he couldn't get close to the bells. After two minutes of straight assault, he had gotten one good shot at them, and had missed.
Giving taijutsu up as a bad job, Sasuke jumped back and made a series of seals. "Katon: Goukakyuu no jutsu!" he muttered, inhaling, and shot a huge fireball out of his mouth at Kakashi. Naruto, having recovered from his disorientation while Sasuke was fighting, sat up and watched, mouth open. "Wow..." he muttered. "I have so got to learn that."
The fireball cleared away, leaving a circled of charred, scorched earth. Kakashi was nowhere to be seen. Sasuke looked around, scowling but somewhat panicky. He swiveled around quickly, staring to both sides, above, and then turning again to cover his back. "Where is he?" he muttered.
He stood still for too long. A hand came up out of the ground where he stood, grabbing his ankle. Sasuke panicked for a moment, trying to break the grip, but failed. Then, somehow, it managed to—drag him down into the ground? What?
Sasuke's head stuck out of the middle of a bare patch of earth as Kakashi rose from the ground as if it were liquid. He crouched in front of Sasuke's apparently disembodied head. "In case you missed it," said Kakashi, dry as dust, "I was below you."
Naruto, completely recovered by this time, started laughing uproariously. "Impressive, teme!" he yelled, getting to his feet.
Sasuke, luckily for his remaining dignity, was facing sufficiently near Naruto that he could focus on him. "Like you did any better, dobe!" he shouted, annoyed. Kakashi stood and faced Naruto as he approached.
"Sorry, Sasuke-teme," said Naruto, getting over his laughter. "It was impressive. It's just also really funny."
Sasuke scowled at him.
Naruto stood straighter, and grinned. "Now I'll show you how it's done. Tajuu kage bunshin no jutsu!" With a much greater puff of smoke, clones of Naruto surrounded Kakashi and Sasuke's head to three ranks deep. Each clone began preparing an explosive tag on a kunai.
Kakashi, knowing what was about to happen, jumped over the group of Narutos to land outside the ring, leaving Sasuke out of the line of fire. Unfortunately, this left him close to several clones, who immediately threw glowing kunai at him. He jumped again, as quickly as he could, and dodged the first volley. Then the second rank of clones threw at him. A hundred kunai converged on him, each glowing with the light of an explosive tag, just as the first volley exploded below him. Kakashi quickly made a single seal. When the smoke of the second explosion cleared, a badly charred chunk of log fell to the ground.
Clones fanned out, looking for Kakashi. Several approached the bridge over which one arrived at the training ground from the rest of Konoha. Naruto still stood in the ring, approximately where he had been.
Kakashi appeared over the bridge, dropping down out of a tree. Two bells still dangled from his belt where they had been. He walked slowly towards the bridge, as if daring the clones near its other end to attack. A clone shouted, and soon most of the original big mob of them was gathering around the end of the bridge.
The original Naruto pushed through the mob to the head of it. "Hey! Kakashi-sensei! Had enough yet?"
Kakashi laughed dryly. "Are you going to stand there talking, or are you going to take a bell?"
Naruto was on the bridge by now. He glanced around, looking for anything he could use to his advantage, then saw it.
He had to stall some more. "Hey, why aren't you attacking? You're only outnumbered fifty to one."
Kakashi rolled his one visible eye. "You can only taunt someone without sounding ridiculous if you have even the slightest chance of beating them." With that, he charged.
Naruto moved forwards and to the side, several of his clones moving up to fill the gap. Just as Kakashi reached the bridge, Naruto slapped the rail in a burst of chakra and shouted "GO!"
The seal trap Naruto had laid that morning, forgotten when Kakashi had apparently bypassed it, set off. The specialized storage seal spat a single flash bomb up to eye level, where it detonated. Kakashi's one eye widened, barely, as he saw it; then it went off.
A wave of clones rushed forwards to attack. They crossed the bridge in seconds, then milled around on the other side. Kakashi was nowhere to be seen.
A clone at the rear of the group yelled a warning. Only a few of the clones managed to turn in time to see Kakashi finishing a group of seals, then slamming one hand into the ground. The earth leapt up in a wave to his command, and that wave swept towards the bridge and the mob of clones. As it hit them, they either dissipated immediately or were thrown into the air to dissipate on landing. The wave stopped as it hit the river. Only the few clones on the bridge itself survived.
Kakashi hit them just as hard as he had before. None of the clones survived, or even got near him. Naruto himself was the target of another long throw, back away from the bridge towards Sasuke. He landed, skidded, fell. Kakashi walked up to him.
"Wow! You almost made me work there. Okay, enough of you. Let's see if Sakura can get a bell. Maybe she's worth making genin."
He disappeared in a sudden cloud of smoke.
Naruto stood up, slowly. His body hurt all over. Being repeatedly slammed around by a jounin could, apparently, be considered harmful. He glanced around, checking to see if Kakashi was still around and planning to throw him through pieces of the landscape again, but saw nothing—until he froze, almost panicking, at the sight of countless thin lines on everything in sight.
Crap. Crap crap crap. It's happening again it's happening again—damn it!
He hyperventilated for a moment, then made a valiant effort to calm down. This is not the time to panic—my promotion is riding on this! He looked around, forcing himself to keep calm at the sight of more of the lines. Hokage-ojiisan said that they were related to the fox's chakra, and I just made like three hundred clones and got beat up by Kakashi-sensei. That must be it. Just ignore them, that's the ticket...
He looked around again, this time forcing himself to ignore the lines and concentrate on what he saw. Still no Kakashi. Sasuke's head stuck out of the ground, facing away from him—it must have driven the boy mad to hear what had been going on behind him without being able to see it.
Naruto brooded about the test for a moment. This is annoying. They can't possibly actually make being able to beat a jounin a condition of becoming genin, that'd just be dumb. He couldn't beat Kakashi at all; hell, Kakashi hadn't even pulled out any high-level techniques until Naruto got the drop on him with a flash bomb in the presence of an army of his clones. Sasuke couldn't beat Kakashi either, and while Sasuke couldn't pull Naruto's one-man-army trick, he certainly had more techniques—Naruto wouldn't be surprised if Sasuke could beat him even with all his clones, if he had anything else like that fireball.
I can't beat him. Sasuke can't beat him. There's no way in Hell Sakura could beat him. What's his game? It couldn't just be an impossible test; there was no way they'd let jounin-senseis pull that on their prospective teams.
Suddenly an idea came to Naruto, without any real logic behind it. He decided to run with it. Jogging around Sasuke's head, Naruto made the cross hand sign. Four clones materialized behind him.
"Hey, Sasuke-teme."
"Hey, dobe. I assume from Kakashi's monologue that you didn't get it that time either?"
"Yeah. I've come to a bit of a realization."
"What's that?"
"It's impossible."
"What?"
"Look at it. I couldn't beat him. You couldn't beat him. I surprised him with that seal trap I set this morning, and all I got out of it was some really-huge-class earth jutsu and getting thrown across the field again."
"Hn. Why?"
"I don't know. But I figure I'll get you out of there, just on general principles of frustrating Kakashi-sensei's intent." Naruto and his clones dispersed around Sasuke, digging with kunai. The process was annoying and the tools not ideal; several of the clones' kunai dispelled on hitting a rock or something, making it go more slowly. Relatively soon, however, they got Sasuke's arms free, and he then cooperated in freeing his legs.
Naruto dispelled the rest of his clones with a bit of relief as their chakra poured back into his system. Usually he didn't get tired, but this was a little taxing even for him.
Sasuke scrambled out of the newly made hole in the ground, brushing dirt off his clothes. Naruto looked at him and laughed weakly, earning a mild glare.
"It's not that funny, dobe."
Naruto finished laughing and shook his head. "It's not that. But I bet Kakashi-sensei was planning on pulling you out of there with an earth jutsu later on. And it probably would have left you just as clean as he was after he finished, um, hiding underground."
Sasuke grumbled. "Thrice-cursed over-clever teachers..." He looked up. "Did you have a plan other than going back to what we were doing?"
"Not really...but I've kinda been in the archives all the time since two years ago, and they tell you all about these teams, right? Like it looks like the team you were on as a genin is really important later on, they kind of stay together until some of them die, or whatever. And they always talk about teams of three. There's no teams of two anywhere, unless someone on the team died or went rogue."
"Yeah, okay. So he's probably not going to fail only a few of us and keep the others."
"Yeah. I bet that whatever this test is, we either pass it or don't as a team. So I guess there's no harm in working together on it, if we're not fighting each other."
"Why would that do any better than what we've been doing? He's a jounin."
"Well, what if you were to henge into me? Then I could make another bunch of clones, and while he's taking them all out you do that fireball thing again. He wouldn't expect it, might not dodge in time, especially if some clones hold onto him."
Sasuke looked at him with mild surprise. "That's a good idea, actually." He looked around. "The question is, where is he? He said something about Sakura, where's she?"
Naruto shrugged. "I don't know. Easy enough to find." He focused his chakra, more difficult than usual, and formed a cross hand sign. "Tajuu kage bunshin no jutsu!" A mob of clones appeared around him and immediately scattered.
Naruto staggered suddenly and sat down hurriedly. "All right, that might have been a little much." He shook his head muzzily. He had used quite a bit of chakra there, especially given that he hadn't gotten any of the last mob's chakra back, because Kakashi had destroyed them all. He waited a moment for his head to clear, then stood up, breathing rather more heavily than usual.
"Now I guess we should just wait until one of them comes back."
Sasuke nodded. "Hey, dobe, what is that technique? It's not a regular clone, obviously."
"It's called shadow clones. Physical clones, that dispel after they get hit hard. It takes a buttload of chakra, though."
Sasuke looked at him rather bemusedly and said nothing. Naruto, still tired, felt no particular urge to continue the conversation. He looked around, seeing nothing out of the ordinary, but noticed that with the latest large expenditure of chakra the lines had grown more distinct. There were none on the ground (which was almost a pity, as it would have made it quite a bit easier to dig Sasuke out), but they covered the trees, the rocks, they were all over the bridge... Naruto closed his eyes momentarily and took a mental step back. Ignore them. Don't freak out.
Then, suddenly, he shook his head and cursed. "Kami damn it, Kakashi-sensei is an asshole."
Sasuke looked up. "Not that I disagree, but what brought this on?"
"He saw one of my clones and just dispelled it. Kind of painfully. He's this way," said Naruto, moving off at a jog in one direction. Sasuke followed.
"Did you see Sakura?"
"He's got her in some kind of genjutsu. At least I assume that's what it is, since she's just sitting there looking horrified while Kakashi stands in front of her."
Sasuke grunted as they continued on. A moment later, they crossed the boundary into the forest proper, and Naruto jumped up into the trees. Sasuke followed. After perhaps a minute, they stopped.
"We're almost there," said Naruto. "You'd best transform into me now, so we don't lose surprise."
Sasuke nodded and made a quick gesture, transforming into a perfect copy of Naruto. Naruto was inclined to laugh at first; Sasuke-as-Naruto looked at him and gave a very Sasuke-like supercilious look. "Keep going, dobe."
Naruto suppressed his laughs as they moved again. It was only another few hundred feet to the edge of the clearing in which Sakura sat, caught in her genjutsu, while Kakashi stood in front of her maintaining it. Naruto landed in the clearing, Sasuke behind him.
"Hey! Sensei! I don't like being ignored! Tajuu kage bunshin no jutsu!" Another mob of clones appeared, half in the clearing, half in the branches of the trees. Naruto himself fell into a squat, winded.
The mob of clones, including Sasuke, charged forwards. Kakashi rolled his single visible eye and flashed at them. He began dispelling them, again, left and right, no clone able to get a shot on the bells at his waist. But unbeknownst to him, one clone in the mob was making hand signs.
It happened suddenly. A flash of fire came from within the group of clones, and a huge, roaring ball of it came out to engulf Kakashi and the six clones he was currently engaging. All the clones immediately dispelled, but Sasuke had seen Kakashi right in their midst as the fireball destroyed them. He kept it up until he ran out of breath, and looked at the target.
This one had made an actual crater. None of the clones nearby had survived. Kakashi was nowhere in sight; instead, a blackened log fell to the ground.
Sasuke cursed. "Again? Seriously?" The henge had dispelled when he put as much chakra as he could into the fire jutsu, leaving him again looking like himself. He looked around frantically, unable to find Kakashi.
The genjutsu on Sakura had broken when Kakashi was distracted by the next iteration attack of the clones. She looked around, confused, only to focus suddenly on Sasuke's fireball. Then, seeing his henge dispel, she smiled happily, only for the emotion to turn again to alarm.
"There! Behind you!" The voice was female—Sakura? Sasuke spun around, dodging to one side, barely avoiding a driving punch from Kakashi. Then it was himself versus Kakashi again, Sasuke barely holding out, now on the defensive. Then, suddenly, a clone of Naruto jumped out from behind Kakashi and grabbed him in an armlock, his legs locked around Kakashi's waist. Kakashi faltered, and Sasuke lunged forwards triumphantly, grabbing for the now exposed bells, when he suddenly felt a really odd twisting motion, as if he was being yanked up into the air, but without going upwards. Then, suddenly, the feeling resolved, and he was standing in the armlock of a Naruto clone, the clone hanging off his back. Unprepared for the sudden weight, Sasuke fell backwards, landing on the clone.
"Ow!"
Sasuke had expected it to simply dispel, but it hadn't. Its grip had slackened with the fall; Sasuke rolled off and looked at it. "Naruto?"
Naruto lay there, rubbing at his nose. Okay, not a clone. "Yeah? That hurt!"
Sasuke rolled his eyes. "Sorry, dobe. Kakashi-sensei did a kawarimi, again, and switched me into the hold."
Naruto got up, still rubbing his nose. He addressed the white-haired jounin, who was standing right in front of them where Sasuke had been. "You are really annoying, you know that?"
"I work at it." Kakashi looked up at the sky, his voice and affect in no way indicating that he had just been exchanging blows. "And time is up. Sorry, no bells for you. Meet me back at the starting position, all three of you." He disappeared in a puff of smoke.
Sasuke stood. "...Damn it." He looked over at Sakura, who stood under the tree where she had been caught in Kakashi's genjutsu. "Are you all right?"
Sakura blushed and nodded hesitantly.
Naruto grumbled. "Cursedly annoying sensei...let's get going. We probably failed that."
Sasuke nodded and followed Naruto out of the clearing, with Sakura hurrying to catch up.
XxXxX
Kakashi sat on the ground, reading some sort of orange-covered book. He looked up as the three arrived, and stowed the book somewhere behind his back. Naruto wondered vaguely what it was, but that was the least of his worries as the three of them stood in a line in front of the jounin.
Kakashi raised his one visible eyebrow; what could be seen of his expression was sardonic. "How'd you like the test?"
Naruto glared at him. "You're annoying, sensei."
Kakashi rose to his feet. "All right, then. Naruto, you have a lot of chakra, but you should work on some more creative uses for it than 'try to beat people up with fifty clones'. Sasuke, I was startled that you could do the fireball jutsu, but if I can dodge it easily it's not a good time to do it. You did better the second time." He turned to look at Sakura, whose eyes were downcast. "Sakura, you did a good job of hiding at first, but you lost concentration on the task at hand. That's why I was able to catch you so easily in that genjutsu. Overall, you're decent fighters. There is definite room for improvement."
Naruto looked at him. "What's your point, sensei? We're just going back to the Academy, right?"
Kakashi laughed sheepishly, one hand behind his head. "Oh, yeah, maybe should have said that first. Team Seven passes, you're all genin now."
Naruto's jaw dropped, and he looked at Kakashi murderously. "What? Then what was all that crap with the bells for?"
Kakashi's visible eye wrinkled in what might have been a smile under the mask. "The test was whether, even in a situation that seemed to require you to compete against each other, you could still work together. Naruto, Sasuke, you did well with that—you managed to surprise me with that fireball, Sasuke. Sakura, you warned your teammate about a threat to him, even though it might have led to him getting a bell instead of you." His face and affect became deadly serious. "Sometimes the rules, or the mission, seem to conflict with your teammates. Your comrades. This is the question: what do you do when you are forced to fight your comrades, or abandon them? And this is the answer: those who abandon the mission, or break the rules, are considered to be worthless. Trash. But those who abandon or betray their comrades are worse than trash. That is the lesson of this test."
Naruto looked pensive for a moment, then nodded. Then, as the words sank in, a broad grin grew on his face. "Hey, we graduated! Yes!"
Sasuke acknowledged the news with only a subtle grin, but it was a visible show of emotion that was not annoyance, which might as well have been a record. Sakura, of course, was looking at Sasuke, but she seemed happy as well.
Kakashi made the eye-gesture that might have indicated a grin under his mask. "Team Seven will begin missions tomorrow. See you then."
As Naruto walked proudly back to the village, he almost managed to ignore the fact that there were still black lines on everything he saw.
A/N: I had a request in a review to make the team Sasuke, Naruto and Hinata, which would fit the theme of various dojutsu. I actually would have loved to have Naruto and Hinata on the same team, but I don't think it would work. Here's why: there's no way, from my 'nail' of Naruto's eyes (and, more importantly, his hospital experience two years before) for Sasuke and Hinata to be on the same team. Kakashi is of course going to train the last loyal Uchiha, and Kurenai has a previous relationship with Hinata that led her to request her; it wasn't just a random thing that I could plausibly run differently. And I think that Naruto's relationship with Sasuke is actually more important to the progress of this fic than his relationship with Hinata; the latter is basically just a fluff thing, whereas the former has real plotting implications. That known, I decided to make the teams canon, because it's fun seeing Sasuke's reaction to fangirls.
I realize, from looking at this chapter again, that it might look a little bit like Sakura bashing. I generally don't like bashing; the only time I've seen it done marginally well it was the worst part of an otherwise excellent fic (I'm referring to Naruto: One Man Team by Ackdam). However, I don't really think this counts; the reason Sakura seems to be treated harshly is because most of it is from Naruto's point of view, and Naruto doesn't have his crush on Sakura here. (Honestly, that was one of the things that most bugged me about canon Naruto early on, and I think it's plausible that, having an actual friendship with Hinata, he would not be so tolerant of being hit every time he tried to make contact.)
I don't think Mizuki has a canon last name; I'm giving him one here, because I think it's likely that that omission is a matter of Mizuki not ever being mentioned in a context in which his last name would be appropriate. Update: Someone referred me to a different source that gives Mizuki's last name as 'Touji'. Apparently Narutopedia has not gotten the message. Edited accordingly.
