They trained for an entire week, and with each passing day, Inoichi despaired of their ever making even the minutest improvement. Nara's jutsu remained as out-of-control as ever, and Choza was little help in solving the issue. The primary function of his ninjutsu was expansion, and Inoichi had not yet figured out how to use that to their advantage.

As for himself, he'd relied primarily on basic academy skills, rather than delving into the specialties of his clan. Both Nara's Shadow Possession and Choza's Expansion jutsu were specific to their respective clans as well, yet still Inoichi hesitated. Though most people were generally aware of the nature of the Yamanaka ability, he had never shared with his teachers the extent to which he had learned to control it. Which, he admitted to himself, was still not much. Part of his hesitance stemmed from the fact that he truly didn't know all the consequences of the jutsu. He knew it changed perceptions, and often left the recipient of the jutsu disoriented, but that was not the primary purpose of the technique. Inoichi himself was often left with a vague impression of images and thoughts after using it, memories that he didn't recall from before, emerging in an almost dreamlike state.

The idea of botching it up scared him, and so he skirted around it in training. Perhaps, if they continued to fail as badly as they had over the past week, he would never even get the opportunity to reveal it.

Each night, he returned home more tired than the previous day. Even his mother, who he rarely allowed to see anything other than his content façade, began to see the change. Occasionally, he caught a concerned glance, and more often than usual, she inquired about his sleeping habits.

By the final evening of training that week, Inoichi practically dragged himself home, turning down Choza's offer that they all go out for ramen. Even if he'd wanted to spend more time around his teammates, he didn't think his body and mind could take the extra abuse. The road blurred in his vision as he walked, the thrum of frustration rattling the inside of his skull. Sunlight was dimming the road, and it vaguely occurred to him that if he just sat down here, no one would probably miss him for a few hours. He stumbled slightly, his foot catching on air.

He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to regain his frame of mind. When he opened them, he was surprised to see someone else, standing not too far down the road. Had he always been there?

The man was tall and thickset with muscle, and he stood with arms crossed over his chest. He was a smoker; the acrid stench of it met Inoichi's nostrils even before he reached the man, and the fumes stung his eyes. He seemed not to notice Inoichi until he had almost passed him entirely. As if he suddenly remembered his purpose for being there, he caught up to Inoichi, matching him step for step.

"Hey, kid."

Inoichi was not in the habit of answering to such remarks, so he kept walking.

"I know you're not deaf, kid."

Inoichi raised an eyebrow, certain that the man could see it, but still he continued on his path.

"Kid, I've got to talk to you about something important. It's about your team." He stuck out a hand. "Omaeda Daisuke. That ring a bell?"

That was enough to make Inoichi pause. He turned in the road, glanced down at the proffered hand and then back up at the man's face. He had broad features, and light eyes that revealed nothing of his intent in starting this conversation.

"I'm listening." Inoichi said carefully.

Omaeda dropped his hand. "Yamanaka Inoichi, am I right?"

Inoichi gave him a succinct nod, doing his best to hide his fatigue. The first meeting with his sensei, and it had to be now? Just when Inoichi had believed his luck couldn't get any worse…

"You seem to have appointed yourself the leader of your little squad—"

"How do you know that?" Inoichi hadn't meant to voice his thoughts; in his addled state, they'd simply slipped past his filter.

Omaeda shrugged off the interruption, seemingly unfazed. "Seen a little of your training this week. Listen, kid, we've got to touch base about a few things."

That did not sound promising.

"As I said, I've seen some of your training sessions. I've been selected as your instructor, but I—"

"You're not planning to train us." Inoichi interrupted for the second time, but this time he felt not the slightest inkling of guilt.

The grimace on Omaeda's face was enough to confirm it.

"It's not like that."

"Oh, but it is." Inoichi bit back, and he couldn't keep the fury out of his words. "You're not going to train us, and you come to tell me, so that I, the self-appointed leader, can break it to the rest of the team. Is that it? Because you're too much of a coward to face three kids?"

He put particular emphasis on the last word, spitting it out in a mockery of the casual tone Omaeda had used only moments before.

Almost immediately, he recognized that he had stepped too far over the line. This was not merely a superior, but the person who was supposed to be his teacher. Inoichi could see the anger building in Omaeda's face, the way the muscles clenched, barely controlled, like a storm about to be unleashed.

"That's just it, you're kids!" Omaeda hissed back at him. "You don't have any damn idea of what the real world is even like!"

He looked as though he was about to say more, but he struggled with the words and finally swallowed them. His demeanor changed, relaxing a bit, though Inoichi could still see the ire boiling just below the surface.

"That's not the point though." He cleared his throat. "What I was coming to tell you was this: I've been assigned on a mission."

A mission? When he was supposed to be training three genin? Inoichi thought the story somewhat fishy, but he managed to control his tongue this time.

"It's a relatively short one, if that's what you're wondering. One week, at most. They've been understaffed recently, and I was one of the Hokage's last choices because of the assignment with you three, but sometimes you've gotta do what you've gotta do."

There was enough resentment in that statement that Inoichi knew he was not getting the full story; he stayed quiet nonetheless.

"My proposal is this. You all have until I get back to get into decent fighting shape. Learn a few formations, practice your techniques, work as a team. We'll do an evaluation when I return, and then…" He gave Inoichi a stern look. "…then I will decide whether or not we train."

"One week?" Choza groaned despairingly, his eyes widening. Inoichi only nodded, trying to contain his own disappointment.

He glanced over at the Nara, who he expected to chime in with a statement of defeat at any second.

Surprisingly, none came. Nara sat as calmly as ever, as though the news hadn't affected him at all.

"Then we have no choice but to train."

Two pairs of eyes stared at him incredulously.

"We'll never be ready in time!" Choza shook his head, looking down at his hands.

"We didn't get anywhere in the past week." He added quietly.

"I am inclined to agree with Choza-san." Inoichi said reluctantly. "I do not think we can be up to his standards in such a short time."

"Then you all need to get out of that mindset and pull yourselves together."

They both gawked at him anew; though Inoichi's version of gawking was far less evident than Choza's.

Nara fixed them both with a determined stare. "If we weren't doing enough last week, we train harder. Longer hours, more effort, less breaks."

"Are you… are you sure about this, Shikaku?" Choza looked as nervous as Inoichi felt.

Inoichi found Nara was looking to him, as if for support. When Inoichi said nothing, he spoke again.

"Listen," he muttered with slight annoyance, "when it was my own laziness that was causing me to fail, I was willing to accept it, because it was my responsibility.

"But if this bastard says we can't do it?" His tone changed, imbued with new conviction. "We're going to prove him wrong. He has no right to say we aren't ready, and we're going to show him exactly what we're capable of."

Inoichi almost found himself nodding in agreement, but he caught himself just in time. Agreeing with the Nara? This must be going to his head more than he thought.

Choza, however, was fully convinced. He grinned, all traces of nervousness erased by fervor to accomplish their new goal.

"So when do we start?"

Shikaku just smiled.

As it turned out, Inoichi quickly discovered that part of the fault in their training was the fact that he had been leading. The fact irked him for a short while, but it was quickly supplanted by curiosity when he realized that the strategies Nara developed were actually working.

Their previous training, Nara explained, had focus too much on the use of his Shadow Possession as a major technique rather than a secondary maneuver. They should have instead been focusing on the raw power possessed by Choza, which not only was capable of far more on the offensive, but also provided a distraction for more fine detail work that might be accomplished by his other teammates. Choza, meanwhile, reveled in his newfound usefulness.

Inoichi, they found, was easily the most skilled at basic ninjutsu techniques, as well as detecting the use of particular traps, and as such, was often assigned to the main "mission" that they developed in drills, while Nara provided a chance to subdue an enemy. He still was unable to hold the technique for an extended period of time, which seemed to be the most problematic aspect of their formation, but by the time they finished training on the third day, Inoichi found himself wondering how they had ever thought to train any other way.

Tired, but satisfied, he returned home with a smile on his face. Come what may, they would be ready for Omaeda when he returned at the end of the week.

Dan scanned the file as he walked down the hall, his hands shaking with suppressed rage. This wouldn't have happened if they had just taken his advice and sent a medical-nin, but now…

He sighed and knocked on the door to the Hokage's office.

"Come in." A gravelly voice with an undertone of frustration sounded clearly through the wall, and Dan entered, calming himself before he presented the news.

"Hokage-sama." He inclined his head slightly, and the Third motioned for him to move closer, though he didn't look up from the paperwork scattered haphazardly on his desk. Dan waited to speak until he looked up.

"You have a report, Dan?"

"Yes, sir." Dan replied grimly. He laid the file flat on the desk and opened it, spreading the papers out so the Hokage could see each of them clearly.

The older man's eyebrows furrowed, and as he leaned in to view them more closely, Dan could see lines of worry start to form across his brow.

"This was supposed to be a routine survey mission."

"And yet four men end up dead." Dan replied matter-of-factly, trying to hide how much it pained him. One of those men he had spoken to only hours before he left, wishing him luck on what was supposed to be a simple assignment.

"The bodies have been recovered?" The Hokage sat back in his chair, regarding Dan seriously.

He nodded. "They are being examined as we speak."

The Hokage frowned, folding his hands in front of him. "I want to hear back as soon as we get word of anything."

"Of course, sir." The purpose of Dan's meeting had been mostly to bring these papers to the Hokage's attention, but something about the situation still nagged at the back of his mind. He was almost to the door before he turned around.

"Hokage-sama?"

The older man looked up as though he hadn't even realized Dan was still there.

"Yes, Dan?"

"About one of those men, well…" Dan walked back to the desk and picked up the report on the far left. A familiar wide face stared back at him, though he looked odd without a cigarette clenched between his teeth. The sight sent a pang of guilt through him.

"Well, he was supposed to be training a genin squad, sir."

The Hokage held his hand out for the report, and he scanned it over, his frown only deepening as he read it.

"Omaeda… he was, wasn't he? I thought assigning him on this would just be—"

The end of the sentence was cut off by the sound of the door banging open. A thin figure with spiky dark hair, barely contained by his hitai-ate, strode through the door frame. He stopped to survey the room with interest, as though it hadn't occurred to him that someone might already be occupying it. Seeing Dan and the Hokage, his face broke out into a huge grin, and he ambled forward, leaving the door wide open.

"Hey, Dan! Hey, pops!"

The Hokage scowled. "Would you please shut the door behind you?"

The young man moved obligingly to do so and then came back to stand in front of his father's desk, still grinning like a madman. Dan had to try very hard to contain his laughter at the exchange between father and son.

"What do you want, Tobirama?" The Hokage inquired in a tired voice, as though it were more of a rote response to his son's entrance than an actual inquiry. It made Dan wonder how often the Hokage's son decided to barge into his office.

"Just checking in. I went to visit Mom for a while over at the hospital, but she wasn't too thrilled to see me…" He shrugged. "Anyway, I thought I'd come over here and see if there was anything I could do on my day off! I—"

He stopped suddenly, and his bright smile faltered. Dan could practically see the cogs turning in his head as he looked between the two of them.

"Did I interrupt something?" Tobirama gave an exaggerated grimace. "Yikes. Sorry, 'bout that. Guess I'll head out."

He clapped Dan's shoulder. "Always good to see you. You and Tsunade still okay?"

Dan stammered, and he could feel the color rising in his cheeks. This was not a conversation he wanted to be having in front of the man who was both the Hokage and Tsunade's former sensei.

Tobirama, however, thought it quite funny. He laughed heartily at Dan's fumbling response, elbowing him in the ribs. "I'll take that as a yes. Anyway. See ya, pops!"

He was gone just as quickly as he came, and Dan got the vague impression that a whirlwind had just made its way through the office.

The Hokage shook his head as the door closed. "Some days, I just don't know what to do with that boy."

Dan smiled sympathetically. "He's a fine shinobi. And he's still young."

That drew a laugh from the Hokage. "Perhaps you're right. Wise beyond your years, my boy.

"As for this…" He held up Omaeda's report and placed it back in the folder. "I'll see what I can do. Just don't expect any miracles. They may already be too far gone."

Dan bit his tongue. Over the last week, he had occasionally walked by the training fields. Those boys were anything but too far gone. They were improving markedly.

Still, they needed a teacher; but he wasn't about to express that opinion just yet.

"Thank you, Hokage-sama."

Dan left the office with just the slightest bit of hope. If there was anything the Hokage truly cared about, it was the future generations of shinobi.

He only hoped that consideration would be a factor in deciding the fate of Omaeda's genin team.

A/N: So this is definitely the longest chapter so far, because I felt like the last few were a little short, and I'm trying to set up some important plot points. I think I'm going to try to match this length on future chapters.

I really appreciate the reviews. You all have given me some great ideas and some excellent criticism, so I think I have a better idea of where I need to go with the story. Keep it up, please!

Also, if you see any errors in this chapter, please feel free to point them out nicely in your review. I got inspired to write at like 11 at night, and while my ideas tend to get better late at night, my grammar and spelling occasionally gets worse, especially writing at such a rapid pace.

So, hope you enjoy and thanks for reading!

- Senka Hitomi