(Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto! Also, yay for Nanowrimo!)
Sasuke noticed something new as team seven took their seats in the roof. This time, somehow he'd ended up between his teammates. He wasn't to make of it, since he was certain it hadn't been a conscious choice on the parts of his fellow genin. Sasuke put it out of his mind. If it was more than just a minor thing, then he'd deal with it later. He definitely had higher priorities at the moment, if their sensei scrutinizing every aspect of the team was any indication. He wasn't being subtle about it either. Which meant either that the elite shinobi didn't care, or that the test had already begun. Sasuke knew where he'd lay odds. Eventually Kakashi decided to break the silence.
"Hmm. Well, I suppose to start with, we should get to know each other." That made Naruto squint in a bit of confusion.
"Neh, how do you mean?"
"Well, i guess we could begin by saying our likes and hobbies, our dislikes, and our dreams of the future. I'll start. My name is Hatake Kakashi. I like a few things, and I have a few hobbies. My dislikes… hmm. And my dreams are my own business. You next pumpkin-kid." The fact that he had essentially said nothing about himself got an angry reaction out of the team, but being called a pumpkin was overkill to Naruto.
"Oy! Don't disrespect the orange! For your information my name is Uzumaki Naruto. My likes include ramen and training. My dislikes include the three minutes it takes to make instant ramen, and people who mock the best color in the world. And my dream is to be the best Hokage the world has ever known, dattebayo!" He stood as he said the last bit with his fist in the air. Sakura made a move as if to slap Naruto in the back of the head, with Sasuke in between her and her target, she thought better of it and instead rubbed her temples like she had a headache.
"Baka, you should focus on more realistic goals." This got Naruto to turn his grin towards Sakura.
"I am being realistic. I've already beaten Hokage-jiji in a fight once after all. Me having that awesome hat is only a matter of time, dattebayo!"
What. Sasuke hadn't gone far enough back to make changes like that, which meant whatever happened had happened in both timelines. Sasuke wasn't the only one looking incredulously at the dobe, and he doubted he was the only one that could read Naruto's body language. The idiot couldn't lie to save his own life, and he was showing none of his hundreds of tells, which meant he was telling the truth. Sakura gave voice to everyone's curiosity.
"How did you beat the Hokage?"
Naruto was surprised, and lowered his hand to rub the back of his neck. "Hehe… classified?" There were the tells. Almost all of them, in fact. Sasuke would get the real story later.
Kakashi waved at the the dobe dismissively. "Mah, whether he did or didn't, whatever. Your turn, pinky."
Sakura stood up straight. "My name is Haruno Sakura. My likes…" she couldn't help but glance at Sasuke and blush, getting a reaction of disgust out of Naruto. "My dislikes are Naruto, and…" she glanced at Sasuke again, "and being weak. My dream… my dream is to become a legendary kunoichi." Sasuke fought the urge to look back at Sakura, but in his head he was gleefully cheering for the death of a fangirl, and the birth of the Sakura he knew and respected.
"And you, emo king?" Kakashi hid it well behind the veneer of boredom, but Sasuke knew he was being evaluated here. Not that he could blame the Jounin, given what happened to his clan. Well, Sasuke was never one to turn down a challenge if he could help it.
"My name is Uchiha Sasuke. I like tomatoes, and getting stronger." No surprises there. "I dislike fangirls, people who suck up to me because of my name," he gave a challenging look to Kakashi, "and instructors who are late." The jounin narrowed his own eye at the uppity Genin. "My dreams, well, I have a goal. My aim is to surpass all the Uchiha who came before me."
Sasuke hadn't raised his voice, but even if he'd yelled like Naruto the reaction would have been the same. There was a tension in the air as if Sasuke had just challenged reality itself to a fight. 'If only they knew.'
Kakashi didn't let the silence last too long. "Okay! Now that that's over with, we can finally move on to the test." Sakura, having started the habit of being the one with all the questions, spoke up.
"What test? We're already Genin, right?" Kakashi silenced her with a deadpan expression.
"No, what you are is the academy's best effort to convince me that it wouldn't be a total waste of my time to train a bunch of snot-nosed brats for the foreseeable future. But now I'm the one making the rule, and I say that I don't feel like you're worthy of my time. But, just so the Hokage doesn't get mad at me, I'll give you all a chance. I'm willing to take one of you. An apprentice, so to speak. You three can decide between you somehow, I don't care. Only one of you will get the opportunity to learn from me." Kakashi shrugged. "The other two will be sent back to the academy. Or you can quit the shinobi program altogether. It doesn't matter to me, in the end."
Sasuke's mind raced. What happened to the bell test? He knew how to handle that. Crap. Now he'd have to improvise. "How long do we have to make our decision?" Kakashi made a show of looking thoughtful.
"Hmm. Genin are slow, and you're all children, so you're even slower. Even so, an hour should be enough time, don't you think? I'll be back in an hour to learn your decision" Kakashi smiled at his dumbfounded team, pulled a book with an orange cover out of his pocket, and proceeded to walk towards the edge of the roof while reading it. "Later!" He stepped over the edge of the roof, and when Naruto and Sakura ran to see him, he'd vanished.
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
Hatake Kakashi was not having the day he'd anticipated when he woke up this morning. The three dossiers he'd reviewed before meeting his team had indicated that the Uchiha kid was a brooding avenger, the Haruno girl was a petulant fangirl, and that his sensei's son was a walking liability. Instead, he'd heard Sasuke's words trying to turn his classmates into something resembling an actual team, the fangirl was willing to be something besides useless, and apparently Naruto had gotten one over on the Hokage? Worst of all, Kakashi knew that if he'd given the bell test, the kids would have seen through the ruse in an instant given their current mental state. Sasuke had essentially ruined his tried and true method of crushing the dreams of children before he'd even had a chance to do so. But Kakashi wasn't an Elite for no reason. He'd prepared contingencies for something like this, even as he'd thought he'd never need to use them. He had an hour to kill, and decided he'd catch up on some reading while he waited at the base of a tree, giggling to himself as he got to the good bits.
When an hour had passed, he returned to the academy, somewhat surprised to find Sasuke guiding Sakura and Naruto through an academy taijutsu kata. They were all facing each other, and it seemed like they were comparing notes. Sasuke looked like he was just going through the motions slowly, Sakura was apparently using dynamic tension in her muscles to increase the inherent resistance in her movements, and Naruto was using the slowed speed to correct stances and poses he should have learned ages ago.
Kakashi was genuinely surprised. None of them showed any evidence of confrontation. He'd expected there to be at least a little fight. "Mou, I guess I didn't make myself clear. Or do all three of you want to go back to the Academy?"
The three students halted in their exercises, and turned to face the Jounin, "Oh, us all being here is just a formality. We've decided to go to the Hokage and request a different sensei. One worthy of our time. I'd say it was good meeting you Kakashi-san, but then, I'm not a liar."
...What? Kakashi had been a ninja for decades. He'd fought, killed, and bled more than most active shinobi ever would. And yet he'd never, in all his years, encountered arrogance on the level the last Uchiha was displaying. Moreover, his words had apparently been expected by the other two, which meant they'd already discussed this amongst themselves. This was further evidenced by the fact that all three had turned to walk away in the general direction of the Hokage tower.
Nonetheless, he was the ranking soldier here, and he needed to regain control of the situation. "Would you care to run that by me again? You almost made it sound like you could convince the Hokage that you knew better than a high ranking ninja such as myself. Do you really think you could convince him that you're anything more than mere children whining about how unfair it is that I'm the one testing you?"
The team slowed to a halt, and Naruto turned to face him. "We've got proof on our side though. I mean, the very first moment we saw you, you fell for my trap with the eraser. Are you sure you're an elite? Maybe you're just an impostor or something. Hokage-jiji would want to know in any case."
Oh that cheeky bastard. Kakashi had let the eraser hit him as a means to make the kids underestimate him, but this was too much. Sakura added her own two cents before he could reply though.
"We could test him and find out, though. I mean, if he really is that weak, then we'd know for sure. And if not, then maybe he might be worthy to teach us after all." Thoughtful expressions crossed the faces of her teammates. Kakashi would have smiled if the situation was different. In his mind, they'd already passed with flying colors. He knew the game for what it was, and decided to play along.
"And what exactly would this little test entail? Hmm?" Kakashi stood from his spot under the tree, book safely back in his pocket. Both Sakura and Naruto turned to Sasuke. It was his turn next, hmm?
"Oh, there's only one rule." Kakashi noticed the intent looks on the faces of the Genin, and subtly tensed his muscles. All reason for subtlety was lost when Sasuke put his hands together in a seal for a technique he thought genin shouldn't be ready for yet. "Don't die. Goukakyuu no Jutsu!"
Sasuke's aim had been slightly off, and Kakashi gave better than even odds that it had been on purpose. They wanted him to go a specific direction. Curious to see what was next, he jumped towards the tree line, only to realize he'd have to jump again as he saw the sun glint off of several wires. He wasn't disappointed to see Sakura hidden in the trees, pulling a wire a certain way and triggering an unholy amount of traps all meant to take his head off from every direction. Every direction but one that is. They wanted him deeper in wooded area. Okay, as far as plans went, this wasn't a bad one for genin. Maneuver him into the trees to hinder visibility and mobility, levelling the playing field a bit, and then drop the hammer on him. If he was correct, Naruto would be playing the next bit.
Not one to disappoint, Naruto, or rather, thirty Naruto's lunged from underground at him as he landed in the woods. Kakashi smirked, thinking it was time to fight back, until Naruto put his hands together in a certain seal. "You lose Kakashi-sensei! HENGE!" There was a massive cloud of smoke, and when it cleared, Kakashi was surrounded by… thirty identical naked blonde women. "Harem no Jutsu!" The 'women' then all latched onto the jounin with super girly cries of "Kakashi-sama!", and Kakashi lasted less than two seconds before his nose acted like a bloody rocket, launching him backwards into a tree hard enough to… make him burst in a puff of smoke?
Naruto was at a loss as to what happened, and dispelled the technique and his clones to better figure out what had happened. Not that he would, as Sakura came flying at him with a scream of "BAAAAKAAAAA!" and delivered a punch to his head strong enough to put him through a tree.
"What the hell, Naruto! That wasn't in the plan! I told you never to use that… technique… in front of me again!" Naruto raised his arms to defend himself from further beatings.
"You told me to use the technique I used to beat the Hokage, so I did!" His words forestalled further violence, as Sakura froze to process what she'd just learned. Sasuke too, had paused for a moment in his walk into the clearing. Naruto's words were too ridiculous to be anything but true, which could only mean one thing. The Hokage, leader of the strongest of the great five shinobi villages, was a pervert. Naruto took no notice of their reaction, since his arms were still in front of his face to defend against any additional violence. "It worked too! You saw what happened to ero-sensei! I didn't think it would actually kill him or anything."
Kakashi chose that moment to enter the clearing. Skilled eyes might have noticed that the mask he was wearing now was a bit cleaner than the one he was wearing at the beginning of the fight. "It didn't kill me. What you saw was a Kage Bunshin. Did you think you were the only one who knew that technique?"
All three genin turned towards Kakashi, taking fighting stances. "Mou, none of that. I've seen everything I need to see."
Naruto looked confused. "What?"
"I've decided you all pass. The goal was to see if I could get you to turn on one another. In my years of being a Jounin, I've never seen a team that would stick together like you guys did. To disobey orders makes a person trash. But to abandon your comrades makes you worse than trash. Above all else, if you can stick together as a team, there's nothing you can't accomplish." Kakashi gave a small eye smile to his newest students, letting them bask in a moment. At least until Sasuke killed it.
"Good to know. We'll remember that when we're training under whatever Jounin the hokage decides to assign us to." Kakashi raised an eyebrow at that. Naruto looked like he was about to explode in laughter, and Sakura could barely stay in character.
"Well, he did technically pass our test. Maybe we should give him another chance?" Sasuke made a show of looking thoughtful at that for a moment, before sighing and nodding.
"I guess."
Kakashi sighed and shook his head a bit. "Brats. Well since you've so graciously agreed," he voiced with no small amount of sarcasm, "I guess from this point we're officially Team Seven." At this proclamation, Naruto lost all sense of composure, jumping into the air with his fists held high, screaming 'Yatta!' over and over again before both Sakura and Sasuke slapped him in the back of the head. "Meet me at the Hokage tower tomorrow at seven for our first mission." Kakashi gave a small wave to his new team before vanishing in a shunshin.
Sasuke let out a small sigh of relief. Today had been a whirlwind of a day. It was rather odd that a day starting with the climactic battle of the fourth shinobi world war was ending with guiding two pre-teens through their genin exam. And now the day was just about over with the test firmly in the rear view. Just for tonight, Sasuke would let himself rest, and work could begin in earnest tomorrow.
A/N Hooray for Nanowrimo! Sorry I didn't get anything done over the weekend. Between a full time job and a kid at home, the only time I really have to write is on my bus rides, and during my lunch break.
The inspiration for this version of the Genin Test is borrowed in part from Kenchi618's story "Better Left Unsaid". Or at least the Omake version. Notice me sempai!
I can already hear questions about consistency of Naruto's behavior in this chapter, and that'll be addressed next chapter. Don't worry, I've got it covered.
Just as a full disclosure reminder: This is first draft material! I'm basically just writing stuff as it comes into my head, and letting the story write itself in places. I hope that's not too much of a deal breaker for you fine individuals, but even if it was... meh. I'm not writing this for you, I'm writing this for me. Okay, I'm kinda writing this for you since I'm publishing it... but it's still mostly for me.
Until next time folks!
