The Marauders _ a Naruto fanfiction by 30CK ~ troutpeoples
Chapter Seven
"Why, Naruto-kun," Kakashi said sweetly, "one would think you weren't happy to see me." He tilted his head slightly and did a little eye-smile. "Did you know you scream like a girl?"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah…" Naruto muttered to himself, a childish pout stretching his lips downward. "Just laugh it up, you great balooga…" He was sitting upright again, his legs splayed with the Shinobi's Scroll between them, and his arms were crossed tightly against his chest. The posture he'd ended up slumping into only made him look more like the child he was acting like. He had tried to jolt himself out of the mood he'd sunk into with a few inner pep talks about how ninja – real ninja, anyway, like how they were in the middle of a battle, because he knew for a fact that a number of chuunin and jounin acted exactly as he was normally – didn't pout like a kid who didn't get his way, but he found that this did absolutely nothing for his mood. If anything, it only annoyed him more, because he knew that he shouldn't be acting like this, but he kept doing so anyway.
The others, being his maybe-could-be-jounin-sensei Hatake Kakashi and Sakura and Sasuke, had taken residence a few meters away, laughing quietly to themselves – some more obvious than others. Naruto knew it wouldn't last too long – after all, the fact that Kakashi had finally shown up was bound to drill through their skulls eventually – but still, the point was that they were all laughing at him.
Getting laughed at was a good thing, usually, lately. Because it usually followed him deliberately making a fool out of himself, through some sort of prank, or screwing up something on purpose – like him using the Oiroke no Jutsu on Iruka-sensei; good times, that was, good times.
Now, however? No, they were laughing at him – even Uchiha Sasuke was laughing at him, even if it was all inside his own bloated head, because he was smirking at him with what could only be described as suppressed mirth – because he just so happened to scream like a girl.
It wasn't his goddamn fault he screamed like a girl. Frankly, he blamed his old man; dude probably had stones like raisins. Seriously, what kind of man passed down a scream like that to his offspring? Hell, he would've preferred a scream like his mom's than this prissy little shriek that he got stuck with. His dad was an asshole for giving him that.
And speaking of assholes…
He sent another scathing glare at Kakashi and called out the mentor's name.
"Yes, Vile Nemesis?" the jounin asked cheerfully.
"You're an asshole."
"I know!" he sang.
Naruto harrumphed and crossed his arms tighter and looked away from his tormentors.
Asshole.
Kakashi, for his part, was waiting rather patiently for his maybe-could-be-team to finally figure out that he had, in fact, arrived, after making them wait a little over three hours. He had expected Sakura to start railing on him the moment he appeared, but apparently he wasn't the only one that found the fact that Naruto screamed like a six year old girl to be extremely hilarious. She had laughed so hard that her face matched her hair for two whole minutes. At the moment, she was calming down, taking larger-than-normal breaths and leaning against a tree, facing away from everyone else.
Honestly, he was a little concerned about her. It really wasn't healthy to laugh that hard, especially at something that had no business in making you laugh that hard in the first place.
Okay, well, honestly honestly, he didn't really care all that much about her well-being, and she could laugh until she was as blue as Sasuke's weird-as-hell Aburame-style shirt. He'd be perfectly alright with that. Maybe she'd pass out so he would have one less genin to work with for the day. And Sasuke? He could keep all his emotions inside until he exploded and sprayed everyone around him with blackish, dark, emo-thoughts, his sticky, icy personality, and the dying embers of what could have been a witty sense of humor. What a shame that would be.
And as for Naruto…well…well, if he died, then life around Konoha would be very boring, wouldn't it? That would suck. But, all in all, it wouldn't change too much, and he pretty much ignored everything around him anyhow. So it wouldn't affect Kakashi in any huge way. He'd live life much the same as he always did: alone, content, crying inside every once in a while but obstinately shoving any depression or despair that he may feel into some dark, deep corner, and having fun making other people miserable. It was a fine life, full of life, laughs, porn, and-
"Oh, hey!" He said suddenly, smacking a fist into his palm once he realized something he forgot. "I forgot to tell you guys that I was here, didn't I?"
Naruto shook his head. Sakura was miraculously cured of her laughter and straightened up like she had an ice cube dropped down her shirt. Sasuke glared at him.
Poor, wounded pride.
"So, yeah. Just…you know…putting that out there," he added, waving his hands in front of him. He could see the pink-haired Haruno advancing towards him, her face now red from anger instead of humor. Her teeth were clenched tight, as were her fists. She didn't look happy, for some reason. You'd think she would be thrilled that he showed up.
"Ka-ka-shi-sensei," she growled menacingly once she stood in front of him.
"Oh, hello Sakura," he answered in his trademark pleasant tone. "How are you today?"
Sakura closed her eyes and breathed deeply. Her fists gradually stopped shaking (as much), and the color receded from her face a little before she opened her eyes again. "I'm fine, Kakashi-sensei. How are you?" She asked the last bit with a perfectly innocent little smile. It was a terrifying sight to behold, and would have sent some of the strongest men screaming in terror.
Kakashi would have been doing so if he had a soul. Luckily, he had sold it years ago for harmonica lessons. On a side note, it was very difficult to play harmonica through a mask.
His hand idly traced one of the small pockets on his flak jacket, where he held his favorite harmonica instead of a summoning scroll, or a small vial of medicine, or a ration bar, or what have you.
"I am well, Sakura," he said, dropping his hand away from the jacket pocket. "I do hope I didn't keep you waiting long."
"Oh, not at all, Kakashi-sensei," she replied in that sweet-as-honey tone. Naruto shuddered violently, as if he had just been submerged in freezing-cold water. Sasuke had the sudden urge to run home and hide under his bed. "Are we going to start with our lesson, Kakashi-sensei?"
"Well, I wouldn't exactly call it a lesson, Sakura, but yes, I suppose we should get on with it." That brought everyone's attention back onto him. He smiled – with his eye, someway, somehow – and continued with, "The Cool Thing, right?"
Naruto practically sprang from his seat on the grass with a soft "sweet!", and bounded over to stand behind Sakura – you really didn't want to be in front of her, or in her line of sight at all, really, when she was acting like how she was now. Sasuke kicked off from the tree that he had been leaning against and sauntered behind the blonde, warily eyeing Sakura as well.
"Neh, neh," Naruto spoke up, suddenly very much not depressed about his girly-scream anymore. "It's the Big Thing, Kakashi, not the Cool Thing!"
"Oh, I wouldn't be so sure about that," Kakashi chided. "It can be both, after all."
"None of us care," Sasuke said, cutting across Naruto, "whether or not it's big or cool." He prudently ignored Naruto's grumbling of how he did too care, and how he was a bastard who took no notice of the little people and their feelings. "Are we going to begin whatever it is that we are supposed to begin today?"
"Absolutely."
There was a long, suffering, maddening silence when Kakashi decided not to say anything more. Sakura was the one who broke it, with a distinct gnashing of teeth that sent several small mammals scurrying for their respective holes in the ground and a reigned-in, expectant, "And?"
Kakashi did a double-take. "Oh, you want specifics?" How annoying.
"Specifics, Kakashi-sensei. Now," Sasuke growled menacingly. Kakashi tilted his head to the side and disappeared.
Suddenly, there was a thump and a grunt of pain from behind the other two genin, and they turned as one to see Sasuke squirming underneath a lounging Kakashi. The older shinobi was using the younger, might-be-shinobi as a seat, a foot-stool, and an armrest all in one.
"Kakashi-sensei!" Sakura gasped, right by Naruto's ear. He winced.
"Why, my dearest little Uchiha Sasuke-kun," Kakashi crooned, digging his elbow meaningfully into the boy's upper spine, "I could have sworn you just gave me an order. Now, correct me if I'm wrong-" and he punctuated his sentence by forcing Sasuke's face a little more into the grass "-but I don't think it is correct protocol for a genin-" Sasuke's arm twisted further towards his own back, drawing out a prolonged grunt of pain "-to be telling the jounin, let alone the jounin-sensei, what he should be doing." He looked up at Naruto and Sakura. "How about you two? Does that sound right?"
"Not really," Naruto replied, not sounding very concerned at all.
"N-no, Kakashi-sensei," Sakura stammered, all the wind having been blown clear out of her sails. She wasn't about to go pounding away at the jounin for doing something stupid or not doing something for a while now. Good. Was about time she learned a little something about positional authority. Or just plain authority, for that matter. You can't just go beat up whoever makes you mad; sometimes, most of the time, actually, you have to grin and bear it and spit vile curses at the person's back and hope to the gods above that they don't have good hearing.
"Good." He looked back down at the pinned Uchiha. "And you?" Sasuke grunted, and Kakashi pressed harder against him, bringing forth a sharp swear and a gasp of pain. "And you?" the jounin repeated, his voice a little cooler than it had been the first time.
"I don't think – aaaah," Sasuke let out a breath as air left his lungs, "that it is proper…Kakashi-sensei," he said shakily.
"Good." Kakashi disentangled himself from the genin and stood up, brushing dirt and the like from his uniform. "Oh, and it's not technically sensei, yet," he added as an afterthought.
Pause.
Erupt.
"WHAT?" Sakura yelled. Really yelled, too, from her place right near Naruto. He cringed when the sound almost destroyed his left eardrum and wisely moved a meter to the side in order to prevent any further inner-ear injuries.
"What…" Sasuke started, a little out of breath. He was quickly cut off by Sakura.
"Kakashi-sensei!" she started.
"Not yet!" the aforementioned jounin replied with cheer.
"Kakashi-sensei!" she tried again, this time ignoring the interjectory denial from the elder shinobi. "What do you mean by that? We were assigned to you, and you to us as our sensei!"
"Yes, yes, that is true. We were 'assigned' to each other," the Hatake agreed, using finger-quotes around the word 'assigned'. "But just because we were 'assigned'," he used the finger-quotes again, "that doesn't mean I have to keep you."
"Eh?"
"So glad of you to join the conversation, my little Moriarty."
Naruto was about to ask who the hell Moriarty was, or if it was an insult or something, but decided against it. Instead he said, "I mean, I know that you weren't our full sensei – or at least I had an idea of i-"
"-Naruto!" Sakura turned on the blonde with a fury. "You knew this?"
"Calm down, Sakura-chan," Naruto told her, holding up his hands in a calming gesture. "I wouldn't say I knew about it, but when Iruka-sensei and Kakashi-kun were talking after we, um, bumped into him by the Killed in Action Memorial over that way-" he jerked a thumb over his shoulder "-Kakashi told Iruka-sensei that he was a 'maybe-could-be-sensei' a number of times, and not a jounin-sensei. Iruka-sensei got kind of annoyed about that. And about the whole…porn thing."
Sakura seemed taken aback, particularly when Naruto uttered the word 'porn'.
"But I really didn't, you know, think about it," the blonde finished with a shrug. Kakashi took up the mantle and continued the gist of the conversation.
"The spawn of Satan is right," he said. "You see, while you kids are given a team number and placed under a jounin-sensei, it is ultimately up to that jounin-sensei to take you, or to reject you." He smiled. "That jounin can do so under practically any criteria he or she chooses, whether it be for lack of talent, lack of respect-" he winked at Sasuke "-or for the fact that the jounin just plain doesn't like you at all."
Naruto started looking distinctly uncomfortable.
"For whatever reasons, the jounin-sensei has the power to reject you as a team. If you are so denied a team position, you are forthwith sent back to the Academy for another year of training."
"WHAT?" Sakura, again, yelled. Luckily, Naruto was standing several meters away from her this time, and did not rupture any particularly sensitive muscles of his. And Naruto, for his part, did pretty much the same, only with a little bit more swearwords.
"You utter bastard!" he growled, taking a step forward. Then Kakashi looked at him. He stopped and quieted down. Sakura felt no such necessity, and proceeded to continue as she was.
"What exactly do you mean? Sent back for an entire year?"
"I believe that is what I said, Sakura," Kakashi said, his tone not-so-pleasant. It did not deter her, nor did it Sasuke, who chose that moment to jump in as well due to selective memory loss.
"That is unacceptable," Sasuke stated firmly, glaring at the jounin with an emotion that was essentially amounting to fervent denial.
Kakashi sighed to himself. Children. He was beginning to get annoyed with this lot.
"Whether or not it is unacceptable to you, Sasuke, is absolutely none of my concern. I do not care about your desire to go as high as you can as fast as you can. I do not care about how long it takes you to get the power you need. I do not care, essentially, about what you believe you need. What I do care about is that the shinobi under my command listen to my commands, with as little backtalk as there can be. Does that sound like either of you?" His gaze flickered between the Uchiha and the Haruno. They did not answer. "No," he said in their place, not wanting to wait the two or three minutes it would take for them to grudgingly speak up, "it does not."
Naruto spoke up, his voice hesitant. "Uh…Kakashi-sensei?"
"Not yet, remember?"
"Right." He was silent for a few minutes, then said, "So, I mean, you're saying that you…you might send us all back to ninja school…just because you don't like us?" Kakashi nodded, giving off a distinct air of pleasantness. "So…how do you decide if…if you don't like someone?"
Kakashi smiled to himself. At least someone was getting guilty about their actions. Good kid, surprisingly.
"Well," the Hatake said out loud, "the biggest thing I use to decide whether or not I like you is, in fact, the Big Thing." The blonde seemed to relax a little, his muscles losing some of their rigid tension. "Were you worried?"
Naruto started and shot a guilty look at the jounin before grumbling to himself. Something that sounded very much like a "No" was heard, but it was so obvious that it meant 'yes' that it wasn't even funny. Kakashi just nodded.
"Relax, kiddo," he told the genin. "I don't hate you nearly enough to kick you off without a good reason – and your…prank…" Queue flashback, queue horrible memories, queue violent, horrified shudder, "…while mentally scarring and just plain bad in taste, is not grounds enough in my mind to give you the boot. Shoe. Sandal. Zori. Whatever."
After another long moment of silence, Sakura took her turn to speak. "So…sensei…" She didn't even seem to hear Kakashi's melodious interjection of 'not yet'. "What exactly is the 'big thing'?"
"It's not 'big thing, Sakura," Kakashi scolded, waggling a finger at her. "It's the Big Thing! With big, capital letters to give extra emphasis on how important it is."
Sakura rolled her eyes and huffed irritably. But she went along with his little game anyway. "Fine, Kakashi-sensei. What is the Big Thing?" Kakashi beamed.
"Oooh, that wasn't just capitalized, Sakura – you went and italicized it! That shows dedication. I think we're going to get along just fine!" He looked like he was about to throw a companionable arm around her shoulders, but two factors presented themselves before he managed to do so. One, the very, very large difference in height; he would have had to get on his knees and still bend over a little to be able to do it from an acceptable height. And two, she looked a little like a snarling bulldog at the moment, and probably would have ripped his arm clean off had he put it anywhere near her person.
He wisely backed off.
She growled, and the jounin decided to remember what she was talking about. "Anyway, as I was saying," he said, his voice bright and chipper for someone who essentially told the genin that he could keep them from being ninja if he wanted to not ten minutes ago. "The Big Thing. It is, essentially…" his voice trailed off and he cocked his head to the side. "…nah. On second thought, why don't you guys tell me what you thought it was, first? After all, you've had an entire day to try and figure it out. I'm sure it drove you mad, Sa…" He looked meaningfully at Sakura, about to finish his sentence with her name, but thought better of it when he saw the expression she had on her face. He switched names midway through the word. "…a-suke."
Sasuke just looked confused.
"Uh…"
"Yes, Arch-enemy?"
"I don't think either one of them is in quite the right mood to answer your questions, Kakashi…"
"That's probably true," the aforementioned jounin nodded in agreement. "What about you, then?"
"Oh, well, Sakura told me that she thought the same thing when I talked to her about it earlier."
"So she'll talk to you, but she won't talk to me?" Kakashi crossed his arms and made a pathetic whining noise in the back of his throat, like that of a small dog. "So not fair."
"No, it's not that. She hit me right after," Naruto assured him.
"Oh, that's okay, then." Cheery, plucky, happy-go-lucky-sensei was back. "So, you were saying?"
"Yeah. So we-" and here he winced very conspicuously, as if realizing that he just let something out that he really wasn't supposed to; he quickly gathered himself and began again, completely ignoring whatever he had let slip. "So I was kind of thinking that it would be something like a three-on-one spar, us versus you, to test where we are for our skill level. Or something like that," he added quickly, unsure of his answer. "And as I said, Sakura-chan thought pretty much the same thing. The Bastard, though…" He sent a sideways glance over at Sasuke, who had lost the confused expression and regained the cool composure he usually donned. "…well, he didn't really have anything to say." Sasuke grunted; Naruto assumed it was of the 'shut up' variety. So he tacked on the word, "Ever." Another grunt, more insistent this time.
Kakashi chuckled a little – and for the first time since they met, it actually sounded like a chuckle, and not some mutated form of a perverted giggle / drunken chortle offspring – and said, "Well, then; you – and Sakura, of course – were quite correct when you said that it was us versus you." He blinked, turned his head too look at an upwards angle, and exuded a faint air of confusion. Then he blinked again, shook his head, and turned his lazy-eyed gaze back towards the only active student of the bunch. "I mean, you three versus me." He nodded to himself – that sounded about right. It wouldn't really be fair if he and Obito teamed up to lay an almighty ass-whoopin' down on the poor boy. Wouldn't be sportsman-like at all. Two on one…how unfair!
"But," he continued, holding up a finger – a significant point pointer, if there ever was one – "you were wrong…mostly," he amended quickly, "…when you suggested that it might be a spar." His significant-point-pointer hand lowered and dipped down to the kunai pouch resting on his right thigh. Something jingle-jangled. "As you could probably figure out, unless you received no education whatsoever during the last ten years of your life, the abbreviated version of Big Thing is a simple BT. Good?" There were several confused nods. "Excellent. Now, BT does not really stand for Big Thing, surprising as it may be."
"So the test's real name isn't the Big Thing," Naruto stated, nodding to himself.
"Yes, Naruto, that's very good," Kakashi complimented him, giving his head a quick three pats, like one would with a small child who just figured out that two plus two does not equal five, nine, or fish. "BT – the official name, that is – is a little something that I like to call…" He withdrew the hand with the point-pointer out of the pouch. Two small golden spheres hung from his fingers, suspended on small lengths of wire. He raised them to shoulder – his shoulder – height and shook them.
Ching-a-ching-a-chinngggg.
"…the Bell Test."
"A test? A test? Why the hell would you actually want one of those? Isn't my taking you and those other two kids on as members of my team and not testing you compliment enough? Doesn't my taking you on without complaint or without such a test simply reaffirm my trust in your abilities?"
"Oh please, sensei, you only took us without complaint because you were too hung over to care who was on your team. Same for you not testing us; I'm going to bet that it's really bothersome to fight with a hangover, huh?"
"Shut up!" Ryuji Suimin, resident alcoholic jounin-sensei of an unfortunate Team 16, was currently walking down the winding, dusty streets of Konoha with a certain someone who he would prefer to just go away yapping at his heels.
"Giving whiny, pathetic little comebacks like a small child really doesn't befit a man of your rank, sensei," chided the 12-year-old Muriki Ryoko, dry wit of her team and the current torturer of her team's leader.
"Does this kind of torture give you a vindictive, perverse pleasure?" the man asked painfully.
"Yes. Yes it does," she replied with a smug smirk.
"It gives you a perverse pleasure?" he asked again for maximum sexual-oriented clarification. "Really? Because I have to tell you, you have some screws loose if annoying me gets you off – no matter how amazingly attractive I am or not." He ignored her warning growl – as well as the telling pink blush filling her cheeks – and raked both hands through his dark brown hair in aggravation. He gave a low swear and muttered, "Where the hell is she?"
"She?" This, whether she was going to admit it or not – she wasn't about to, by the way; just putting it out there, you know, in case you were actually thinking for a minute that everyone was going to stop lying to themselves in this story, because they won't – caught her attention. "She who?"
"Who else?" He squinted behind his oval sunglasses and frowned before gritting his teeth and throwing his hands into the air. "Oh come on! It's past noon already!" He turned his head and looked towards the opposite side of the street and growled again. "Where could she possibly be on such a beautiful, clear glorious mid-day a little bit after noon-time?"
"Uh, sensei?" Ryoko tried, lifting a finger to try and get his attention. Unfortunately for her, his attention was now on a rampage and her small, slender, and very feminine finger was paid no mind as he kept twisting his head from one side of the street to the other as he stalked through it.
"I mean…" he fluttered for a minute, waving his hands in front of him in agitation before he continued with, "Noon, for god's sake! If she's not at a bar already, then I'm going to spare her no mercy…"
Ryoko face-faulted.
Bars. Of course it was bars. And it couldn't be Mars Bars, or Kit-Kat Bars, or a good ol' Hershey Bar, either. It had to be a bar bar. The kind with alcohol. Where one went to get drunk. Where one in particular – and here she gave a meaningful glare at her sensei – went to get drunk very often. Hell, she'd been on his team for – what, two days? Less? – and it was pathetically obvious. He had gone directly to a bar after he ended their first team meeting – which he was hung over for – and had managed to show up hung over again the following morning, when they went to grab a mission.
She cracked a smile. That was when she and Yumi had yelled directly in his ear, possibly rupturing an eardrum, and sending him tumbling down three flights of stairs. He deserved it, though, so what did she care?
She huffed and gave a disgruntled sigh. No matter how attractive she found him – which she did not, she told herself firmly, giving herself a mental equivalent of a slap upside the head – his drinking problem was and would undoubtedly continue to be just that: a problem.
The problem-sensei in question was mumbling angrily to himself, something about making 'that woman' talk to his 'broody, mopey, sarcastic twat' of an older brother, and how he'd 'fix her up quick' with his 'fucking weird-o crazy psycho-voodoo-logical bullshit therapy crap'.
"Sensei?" she tried again.
He swore and flipped the sun off, complaining about 'too bright' and 'sensitive eyes', and pressed his sunglasses closer to his face.
"Sensei."
He seemed to hear her that time, and said, "Eh?" before turning completely and looking directly at her. Or at least, somewhere in her immediate vicinity – he could have been looking at the shapely young woman bending over to pick up an apple from where it had fallen, who he could easily see if he looked just over Ryoko's shoulder. It was awfully hard to tell when he wore such dark glasses. "Oh, right," he said. "Ryoko." He grinned. "What's up?"
She clucked her tongue once and lifted her hand, showing him her index and middle fingers. "Two things, sensei." She waited until he nodded in understanding. When he gave it, she continued, "One: who is 'she'?"
"She? She who?"
The sad part was that he sounded genuinely confused.
"The 'she' that's supposed to be at a bar already, or else you plan on forcing her to talk to your brother," she explained as patiently as she could. For her troubles, she got laughed at. She did not appreciate it.
"Oh, puh-leaze!" Suimin chuckled. "I wasn't going to force her. Christ, I don't think there's anyone alive who can force her to do anything." Ryoko stared at him expectantly. "Ah, right. Anko."
"…who?"
The jounin-sensei did a double-take. "You don't know who Mitarashi Anko is?" Ryoko shook her head, and he gave a low whistle. "Damn," he said in an awed tone of voice. "I thought she was one of those things that everyone knew about; like how Kurenai's a closet lesbian, or the meaning of the phrase 'the pot calling the kettle black', or how when Asuma dies, it's not going to be because he smokes eight packs of cigarettes a day, or how it's a very, very bad idea to eat an explosive note." He shrugged. "You know, one of those things."
"Sure…"
"Anyway, Anko's a drinking buddy." He bobbed his head and, reaching some conclusion, tried again. "Okay, she's a heavy drinking buddy. We only hang out when I want to get completely plastered."
"But you always want to get completely plastered," Ryoko pointed out.
"Absolutely," Suimin confirmed without a shred of shame. "Which means we get to hang out that much more. I have to tell you, she is a lovely drinking partner."
Ryoko shook her head and decided to move directly to the Second Thing before she had an urge to punch something, or – more probable – someone. "Second Thing," she said, holding up her two fingers again. "Why exactly were you planning on getting bottoms-up-drunk this time?"
He looked a little startled, as if she very well should have known the reason for why he would ever do such a thing. "Why, my dear, black-headed little student-girl," he said sweetly, patting her a little on the head. He halted doing so when she swiped at his hand with a spare kunai. He continued in a voice that practically oozed with that obvious, 'why wouldn't you know this?' tone that so many people adopted when speaking to anyone below the age of eight, "My team succeeded in completing their first mission, and I have to celebrate."
"Sensei…" Ryoko groaned, letting her head fall into an open hand. Yes, he wasn't looking too attractive now, was he? Silly little teacher-crushing girl. "Didn't I give you a lengthy lecture about you looking – and succeeding – for meaningless reasons to go drinking just yesterday?"
"…it's very possible," Suimin admitted. "But what would you do if I told you that I drank so much last night that I could barely remember the events of that entire day, let alone that one, stupid, five minute little telling-off?"
"It was a twenty-three minute lecture, sensei."
"…well…that just illustrates my point even more, doesn't it?"
"It's not a good point to be made, sensei."
"Not caring. A point to be made is a point to be made."
Ryoko sighed.
"So, sensei…"
"Yes, student?"
"…do you go drinking whenever anything happens?"
"Of course not!" he exclaimed in a wounded tone. He then continued in a perfectly normal voice, "Only when something awesome happens."
She jutted an eyebrow up and stated dryly, "Nothing 'awesome' happened today, sensei."
"Sure there did! I told you already, don't you remember?" He peered down at her, an eyebrow of his own arching over a blacked-out lens.
"You had better not be referring to how we completed a D-rank mission, sensei," Ryoko all but growled at him.
"Yes I am!"
"It was a D-rank," she shot back with extra heat.
"It was a mission!"
"D-rankers don't even count as missions."
"Yes they do!" Suimin insisted. "And I am obscenely proud of my team for completing one!"
"So proud you decide to celebrate the success and get trashed."
"Yes." Still not a shred of shame on him.
"Sensei, you said that you only go drinking when something awesome happens…"
"Ah, ah, I only go heavy drinking when something awesome happens," he interjected-corrected.
She ignored him and continued, "What things classify as 'awesome' enough to go participate in heavy drinking, then?"
Suimin sighed in defeat and began ticking things off with the voice of a martyr. "Oh, you know…getting sent out on a mission, completing a mission, getting back from a mission, getting laid, getting a girlfriend, breaking up with said girlfriend, a new class graduating from the Academy, someone I know get upped to chuunin or jounin, getting a new team-" he grinned at her "-having a meeting with the Hokage, saving a kitten from being run over by a cart, feeding a hungry stray dog, paying my bills off for that month, paying off the bills for last month, paying off the bills for next month, getting a new kitchen appliance, getting a new bathroom appliance, giving money to that one homeless guy who camps out over by the fake ANBU headquarters, giving money to that one homeless chick who hangs out near Training Area 34, giving money to someone who is not in financial trouble…" He waved his hand in the air in a rolling motion. "…and on and on, so on and so forth, blah blah blah-bity blah, the list keeps going for a long while, really."
Ryoko shook her head. She could honestly say that, if she were asked at that moment, she was ashamed of being on Team 16.
"…the Bell Test," Sasuke repeated in a bland tone.
"Yes."
"We are…supposed to retrieve them from you?" he asked.
"Pre-cisely!" Kakashi answered in an off-key sing-song voice.
"Sensei…"
"Not yet!"
"Oh, would you please cut that out," Sakura snapped. "There's only two bells, sensei." She glared at him, as if to challenge him – as if to dare him to say 'not yet' again, just one more time…
"Very good, Sakura, you can count. I'm very proud of you."
She ignored his condescending tone and said, "Shouldn't there be three bells? One for each of us?"
Kakashi blinked and looked at her, perfectly miming a confused expression. Well, as long as 'perfect' is a matter of perception, that is. Although, to be fair, it is either very hard or very easy to reveal any expression at all when over three-fourths of your face is covered. "One for each of you?" he repeated in a completely baffled tone. "Now why on earth would that be?"
A vein started to pulse on her unnaturally-sized forehead (or so it is said to be), and she ground her teeth as she tried to think of reasons not to listen to that little voice inside her that was screeching for pain, blood, and the torture of small mammals. The list was rapidly decreasing, and she knew that going berserk and slaughtering Naruto and Kakashi – because she could never hurt Sasuke-kun, even if she was insane with rage hotter than the sun – was not really a good idea in the whole of things, so she voted for continuing the conversation, if for nothing but to distract herself from the fact that her blood was boiling in anger. Her voice quivered a little as she attempted to keep her rampant emotions on hold. "It just-makes-sense," she managed to grind out, biting off each word.
To their eternal surprise, Kakashi nodded in agreement. "That's true – it does make sense to have three bells, one for each of you. So why in Jiraiya's name would I only allow there to be two bells?"
"If you're doing something that doesn't make sense to someone else…" Naruto muttered to himself – and jotting down the name 'Jiraiya' in his little mental list of notes; he knew he'd heard it, or seen it before somewhere, but he couldn't remember where at the moment – thinking the question over in his head. "…then you have a damn good reason for it not making sense…" He had a great amount of experience with that. Over half the people that ended up being victims or observers to his pranks over the years had thought his actions made no sense.
"Oh well, I'm sure you'll figure it out eventually," the jounin said, waving his hand for their attention. "For now, though, what you need to know is this: I have two bells. There are three of you. Two – or one of you, provided you are selfish enough, or the other two are unskilled enough – of you must have gained possession of my two bells in…" He reached behind his back and brought out a small alarm clock, seemingly from nothingness – because there had been absolutely nowhere for him to hide it before he pulled it out. He tapped the button at the top of the clock. It let out a small chime, then another. "…two hours," he said.
Surprisingly, it was Sasuke who spoke next. "You said two must have your two bells. What happens to the remaining person?" He, as per custom, managed to state his question instead of asking it as a normal person would.
"Well, that's where the fun part comes in – see, whoever doesn't have a bell by the end of two hours…" he trailed off, to allow for the time it took the genin to lean forward in anticipation. "…will not be part of my team."
"Say WHAT?"
"Oh, you better not be serious, Kakashi!"
"What?"
"And, just like if I don't like you at all, they will be sent back to the Academy for another year of schooling," Kakashi said over their exclamations, "where they will also be carefully re-evaluated on whether or not they should be a shinobi at all at that point, or if they should be held back again."
"Dammit Kakashi, you can't just send us back just because you don't-" Naruto stopped in mid-yell, blinking rapidly. He frowned in thought. It took several moments, but then his eyes lit up.
Kakashi grinned to himself. The class dunce figured it out. Good. Weird – after all, what happened to the class academic, or the class heartthrob/fighter/dreamboat/honor student? – but good. He'd threatened to do the same when he was saying how he would send them back just because he didn't like them. If he was willing to do the same if they didn't get a bell, then that was saying that he wouldn't like them if they didn't get a bell. And since it was absolutely ridiculous for a jounin-sensei not to like someone simply because they couldn't pass one test, that meant that something they did or did not do during the test would cause him to not like them. And the list for the Do category was rather short, if one thought about it:
Impress him with skills in taijutsu, ninjutsu. Finish test quickly, well before the time limit is up. Show him things he hadn't seen before. Show him how well they worked together, as a team, in order to bring him down.
After all, the only way they would be able to get hold of the bells would be if they worked together, anyway. He knew that Naruto had put a few traps up around the area – he had checked the place out before he showed up, after all – and even though they were extensive – there were around thirty, all in all, and some looked like they set off others – they shouldn't hinder him too much. Sakura couldn't do much at all – book-smarts were basically worthless on a battlefield, aside from following instructions for making a trap or some such knowledge like that. And Sasuke, while plenty more skilled in fighting than the others, would pose little more than a distraction from his reading.
Kakashi thought all of this in his head, in the span of only a few seconds. During those few seconds, Sakura had let out another shout with the swearwords of a seven-year-old, and Sasuke had managed to make his childish, angry frown turn back to the broody, melancholy slash shape that his lips usually held, and Naruto was just looking at him, waiting for what he was going to say next, his eyes dancing with anticipation.
"The time limit," Kakashi said loudly, speaking over them once again and gesturing to the ticking clock, "has already begun counting down. You now have one hour and fifty-nine minutes left."
Naruto vanished, leaving Sakura and Sasuke, who looked remarkably dumbfounded. It was a very stark change from their expressions of aloof anger and constipated rage of less than a minute ago.
Kakashi made a little shooing motion with his hands. When they didn't move, he fluttered his fingers a little instead. "Be gone with you," he said. They started, blinked once, and disappeared. Kakashi raised a visible eyebrow in interest and raised his fingers up to his eye. He wiggled them again.
"Damn, I'm good," he said.
Naruto was grinning like a loon. Or maybe like a fox. Perhaps even like a monkey, although that sort of smile was rarely attested too, as monkeys are not the most mischievous of animals, so the metaphor would not be very good. Whatever way he was grinning, though, he was doing it with that aforementioned mischief.
Finally, after almost ten hours of waiting – although a portion of that was spent sleeping, to be completely honest – he was going to get to set off Training Ground Hell. He had spent the entire evening, plus a few hours after midnight, changing the area into a veritable minefield, and had lost his left sandal, sock, and his orange jacket in the process. His hitai-ate, still hanging around his neck – he idly wondered if he was ever going to get around to putting it up on his forehead, where it was meant to be – had gained a layer of mud and another of ash and soot. His pants were practically destroyed, filled with tears and cuts and spotted with blood and burns and mud and grass stains. The right sleeve of his white undershirt had been torn off, when he had needed a rag to clean off his face and hands when they got sweaty or dirty.
He was high as a kite.
And he was going to pass this test, and he was going to make damn sure that Sakura and Sasuke passed it as well, because you couldn't very well have a team with only two people. Stupid Kakashi – anyone who gave the Bell Test a few moments of hard, serious consideration would be able to figure out that what he was really looking for, what he was really trying to stress, was teamwork.
He did wonder why he was the first one to figure it out, though. Seriously – Sakura was easily the smartest, laterally thinking, and Sasuke was more intelligent than himself, he would freely admit to. Two people with more smarts than him, but he was the first to get it? Talk about weird. Oh well; he wasn't about to look a gift-horse in the mouth…which was a really, really weird saying he'd heard a few times that basically meant, from what he'd gathered, 'don't think too much about cool things that happen, just accept them as cool things and move on'.
Anyway, Training Ground Hell. Shino had said earlier that he had to tweak number twenty-eight – also known as Dodge These Shuriken and Win the Prize – a little bit so it could properly set off number thirty-four, The Prize, so that would be his first order of business. He'd leave the rest of the touch-ups to his clones.
A hand seal later and five Kage Bunshin were racing off in different directions. Naruto himself changed his course toward the twenty-eighth trap, which was, luckily, towards where he had seen Sakura and Sasuke disappear to…although he doubted that they were together anymore; he was willing to bet that Sasuke excused himself from her first chance he got, so he had sent one of the bunshin to find and inform Sakura. They both needed to know the goal of this little challenge.
He idly wondered just how long it was going to take for him to convince them that they had to work together. He gave it a little over ten minutes each.
Kakashi, if asked, would say that he was marginally surprised. Immediately after, he would backpeddle and correct himself, saying that he was not quite surprised enough for it to be called 'surprised'. He didn't do such strong emotions; too much trouble.
He was mostly totally-not-surprised because of Naruto's actions. One would normally expect the loudmouth little genin to stand his ground and attempt to duke it out one-on-one with the jounin. Stupid as that would be, it would have made sense with how Naruto had been before he graduated: always trying to prove himself, full of hot air (among other things), and really, really not thinking things through at all.
Now, however…well, something drastic must have happened between then and now. There were several events competing for that spot, at the moment: his finding out about the Kyuubi, his almost dying, his almost seeing Iruka dying, having someone he genuinely trusted betray him so easily (and sadistically), his graduating, his learning of Kage Bunshin…well, let's face it, there was quite a few things that could have prompted this change in his attitude.
He was thinking things out now. He wasn't rushing into situations half-cocked. He wasn't letting his emotions completely control his actions. He was actually using strategy, from what he'd seen of some of the traps that had been set up – some were made specifically to set off others if they missed their original target. It was impressive. Kakashi had a distinct feeling that this Naruto, this new version of the blonde prankster, was going to be much more valuable than the old one could have ever been.
So…what to do now? He couldn't go after Naruto first – it just wouldn't be fair, at least not until he started activating his traps. There was Sakura, but he didn't really want to pick her off first. Even he had a heart. Kind of. Maybe half of one.
So, Sasuke it was.
Kakashi wondered how much of a fight he'd put up, and cast an eye – really, of course he only cast an eye; he couldn't very well cast both eyes, considering one was covered by a two-centimeter-thick piece of chakra-enhanced metal, with a number of special seals etched onto the back to make it an effective barrier between the hidden Sharingan and the rest of the world – about the clearing. If he was right, Sasuke was the one most likely to hang out nearby. Normally he would bet on Naruto, but with him being all different now, that bet would no longer be a safe one. His eye stopped at a point near one of the trees.
Oh? What was this?
The first Kage Bunshin drifted silently along a small trail through the trees, his bright blue eyes darting about. He was, at the moment, the closest of the six to the open clearing of the training area, and thus, the closest of the six to Kakashi. While fairly sure that the Hatake wouldn't go after him, or any of his counterparts, first, just the fact that it could be a possibility was enough to set the clone on edge.
He had been given two assignments to do before Operation: Training Ground Hell went down – told to him in the brief second that he and the original creator had made eye contact before they split up. Number one was to re-arm and readjust trap number four – the one that the Inuzuka had set off earlier – and number two was to double-back around the clearing to check for any other mishaps that needed to be taken care of. Even something as simple (and adorable) as a bunny rabbit could have set one of their lesser traps off, and it was crucial that every single one be in working condition for the grand finale.
He continued on, silent and serious.
Sasuke was silent. He was serious. He was silent and serious. He was no longer a genin, trying to pass a test to be accepted. He was on a mission. He was on a hunt, crouching just outside of the clearing, watching for the enemy. He was kneeling…directly next to a rather obvious trap of Naruto's. He glanced at it, and twitched when he saw a mewling kitten tumbling inside the small catapult-esque contraption. There was a large cup of water suspended directly above it.
He didn't like cats.
He had bad experiences with cats.
And Naruto was an evil, evil little bastard. Throwing a wet cat on someone? Talk about insanely cruel. He was rather glad the idiot had never decided to prank him.
Oh, right. Kakashi. Silent. Hunting.
He cleared his throat and began his inner monologue anew.
He was a silent hunter, his kunai bared like claws, his entire body coiled like a spring and ready to strike. He was a predator, waiting for its prey to reveal itself. When it did, he would attack; he would leap forward and tear it apart with his knives, with his claws. He would-
"Hi, Sasuke."
The Uchiha made a strangled, quiet sort of yell and spun around, his kunai – bared like claws, you know – lashing out towards the unexpected voice. There was a soft "Oi!", followed by a "Stop flailing, you idiot!" and a "Calm down, dammit, calm down!". When everything settled, Sasuke was being pinned on the ground and Naruto was squatting in front of him, looking him seriously in the eye.
"Are you done wigging out?" Naruto asked him pleasantly. Sasuke glared at him.
"Uchiha don't 'wig out'," he responded haughtily. "And they do not stoop to using the words of the commoners like 'wig out'."
"You've used it twice already," the blonde pointed out. "Now listen up, because I have something to tell you…"
Speaking of twice, Kage Bunshin number two was fulfilling his given requirements, which encompassed retracing the path that Umino Iruka-sensei created when he chased after the original creator in order to reset any of the traps that had been set off – first, foremost, and most important being trap number thirteen: Orange and Golden Shower. It was absolutely critical that some of that paint/silly putty/gorilla glue/bubblegum amalgam make its way into Hatake Kakashi's hair. If it didn't, then trap number fifty-two-point-five wouldn't be able to correctly take hold, which would also adversely affect number seventy, and, in the very end, number ninety-four.
His fingers lingered over a worn patch of bark on a tree limb, and he nodded his head in satisfaction. He was still on the right trail. He was about to start moving again when a shine of metal a few meters in front of him caught his attention. He raised an eyebrow and jumped over to it.
Huh…the original creator didn't recall Umino Iruka-sensei throwing kunai.
Then a small bug, which had been all but invisible on the dark grey surface, spread its wings and shot off the weapon, calling the clone's attention to it for a second before it ultimately disappeared into the trees.
He blinked once and let a small smirk flit across his lips.
A form burst through the brush and Naruto was throwing the knife before he realized who it was. It slammed into the tree directly beside the boy's head and he shrieked, lurching to the side and narrowly missing another one of the his traps – the only thing that prevented a fate of silly-putty being plastered over his entire head were two sets of hands that firmly halted his progress towards the ground.
The Aburame of Team 8, apparently, had decided that the kunai had needed to be returned.
Interesting.
He shook his head, deciding to let the original creator think over the actions of his fellow genin, pocketed the kunai, and took off again through the trees. He would deliver it to the original creator in a few minutes.
"Sasuke-kun!"
Oh, this was bad! Where had he gone?
"Sasuke-kun!" she hissed again.
They had run from the clearing together, but after half a minute of jumping through the trees, he suddenly disappeared and she didn't know where he had gone. She stopped immediately – almost in mid-jump, too, which almost resulted in her barreling straight into a particularly large branch – and tried to look for clues, for signs that might have pointed her in a general direction; scraped-off bark, torn branches and twigs, ripped leaves, footprints on the grass below. Nothing had helped; either he was especially skilled in not leaving tell-tale signs of a trail, or she was just that bad at tracking.
Needless to say, the second thing didn't really improve her self-esteem much, so she decided to go with the first option. It made more sense anyways; it was Sasuke-kun, after all, and the Rookie of the Year would be better than other ninja at all sorts of things.
Wait! What if Kakashi-sensei had grabbed him? Kakashi-sensei was far more capable than them, even Sasuke-kun, and would be able to kidnap him without a trace!
Oh no, oh no, oh no! "Sasuke-kun!" Sakura whispered louder, more insistently, more panicked and alarmed. What would Kakashi-sensei do to him if he had captured him? What if Sasuke fought him?
Oh, it would be very cool and Sasuke-like, she knew; he'd show of a number of cool and impressive moves and maneuvers that nobody had ever seen or expected, and he'd certainly keep Kakashi-sensei on his toes longer than her or Naruto, but eventually he'd be beaten. A part of her rebelled (very, very loudly) against that thought, but she knew it was true. Amazing or not, Sasuke-kun was a genin, and Kakashi-sensei a jounin. The difference was far too great.
But what if Kakashi-sensei completely humiliated Sasuke-kun? He wouldn't deserve that! He hadn't deserved it when he had done it earlier, when Sasuke-kun had wanted to know just what the heck the Hatake was talking about. Sure, she had to admit, maybe the way he said it hadn't come out the best, but that was no reason, no reason at all to sit on him, and, and, and treat him like he was dirt, or a child who had gone too far when yelling at his parents. But if they fought, and Kakashi-sensei beat him really easily? Oh, how Sasuke-kun would be hurt! He needed her! He needed her to be there when he fell, so she could help him back up again!
"Sasuke-kun!"
And then a hand fell upon her shoulder.
Sakura yelled the moment she felt its touch. She already had a kunai in her hand and was spinning around, ready to attack who she assumed was Kakashi-sensei, when she caught sight of orange. Unfortunately, this did very little to deter her, as she knew that Kakashi-sensei was also slathered in orange paint, possibly mixed with something else. It wasn't until she saw her assailant's face - with the sapphire-blue eyes, the three scars on each cheek, and the sunset-yellow hair – that it all registered in her mind that this was Naruto, not Kakashi-sensei, but at that point it was a bit late since the kunai clenched in her fist was already racing for the arm that had just detached itself from her shoulder.
She breathed a silent sigh of relief when he managed to twist out of the way to avoid the strike, though she wasn't about to admit it anytime soon. Instead she fell into her more classic reaction when faced with the blonde: misplaced anger.
"Naruto!" she snarled. "I could have killed you!"
"Nah," he replied with an unconcerned wave of his hand. She growled dangerously, but he didn't seem to hear it. "Believe me when I say that you couldn't. Not technically, anyway."
"I almost stabbed you, Naruto. It may not have killed you, but you would have gotten hurt, maybe very badly!"
"Only for a second or two," he said in a placating sort of voice. "In the end, it wouldn't really be a big concern for me, Sakura-chan."
Her jaw clenched tightly as she ground her teeth together. She didn't have time for Naruto and his idiocy, and she didn't want to waste the time wondering why he was being so dismissive. "I have to find Sasuke-kun," she said, perhaps harsher than she had meant to let it out as. She turned to leave, to leap away to another branch to keep tracking the Last Uchiha, but his hand came back down on her shoulder again.
This time she was angry, she didn't have a kunai in her hand, and she knew it was Naruto – which changed everything.
Full of righteous female fury, Sakura spun and slammed her fist directly into his face. She barely registered the crack as he flew off the branch, a small shot of blood escaping his nose.
She didn't really know what she had been expecting – heck, she barely meant to do that, it was just…it was almost a natural reaction by now – be it a loud curse and a rough landing with the ground, be it a joke with ketchup as fake blood, or be it him managing to recover quickly and catching himself on the next branch down. But if she were to be asked, she would admit that she really was not in any way expecting what happened.
Naruto flew back about half a meter before he opened his eyes. They seemed darker than usual. His eyes met her own, and he grimaced and said, like the last word of a martyr, "Seriously?"
And then he exploded in a plume of white smoke.
Kage Bunshin Three had met up with the original creator near Sasuke's hiding place and had assisted in restraining the boy; they both knew that there was a very low chance of him listening otherwise. He listened in silence as the boy was told of the nature of the Bell Test, and he kept quiet when the boy did not at first believe what was being said. It did not concern either version, the original or the clone, very much, because they had been expecting as much.
So he stayed silent, he stayed still, and he waited.
"…I am afraid of saying this out loud, as it probably goes against some natural order, but…what you said does actually make sense."
"Really?"
Sasuke shot him a look. "Yes," he said. "Is that a problem?"
"No, not at all," Naruto replied, grinning. "I just thought I'd have to talk – or, to be more realistic, we would have to argue – for another few minutes before you admitted that what I said is in the ballpark of rational. I thought it'd take five more to convince you that I was right."
"I'm not convinced you're right." He sounded affronted, as if the very idea was ridiculous. Just admitting that he was making sense was bad enough.
"I know." Naruto shrugged. "But I still have five minutes to change that." He opened his mouth to say something else, but it seemed to die in his throat as his face froze. His eyes blinked rapidly for a few moments, and then he relaxed.
Sasuke was left wondering just what the fuck that was about. He was about to voice that thought, only with far more dignity and far less curse words, when he was interrupted by Naruto letting out a curse of his own.
"Shit," he sighed. "Should've just done it myself…" Sasuke raised an eyebrow. "Heh, um…" The class dunce rubbed his neck nervously. "I'll…I'll be right back." And he took a step to the side and vanished into the trees.
Sasuke, surprisingly, waited. He didn't wait patiently, really, or happily – never, ever – but he didn't attempt (too hard) to get out of his captor's clutches. He squirmed a bit, and may have whined pathetically once or twice, and perhaps tried to roll over a few times and crawl to his feet, but other than that he was amazingly complacent. He was in roughly the same shape when Naruto burst back into the small clearing, shaking his head and sending loose blonde hair flopping around. The dirtied hitai-ate, still hung around his neck, knocked into his collarbone several times before it settled, leaving black marks of ash and earth on his white undershirt.
"Back," Naruto said unnecessarily. "Where were we?"
"Well," Sasuke replied evenly, "I was just about to ask you why you froze like you did, so I suppose we should pick up there." Naruto nodded. "So, why did you freeze and run off so suddenly?"
Naruto gave an easy – too easy – laugh and pasted a weak smile across his face.
"Would you believe me if I told you I have seizures?"
Sasuke was silent for a moment. "If it weren't at such a suspicious and bizarre moment…probably."
The blonde shrugged again. "I remembered something," he said in a dismissive voice.
"Right."
Naruto, perhaps hearing the slight edge his teammate's voice had taken, explained a little further. But only a little. "I remembered that, no matter what, Sakura always finds some reason to punch me."
"And that is relevant to anything because…" He was starting to get annoyed with the deliberate question-dodging; it wasn't like the blonde, either. He had always been up-front about anything under the sun – since when did he start being secretive?
Or, a better question: what did he have to keep a secret?
"Because she punches harder than someone with two of their Gates open."
"And that is relevant because?" Sasuke growled.
Naruto cocked his head to the side, then grinned impishly. "Eh," he said, "you'll find out in a few minutes."
"Naruto, I swear…"
"Well, you shouldn't. It's a fucking horrible habit to drop into."
Glare.
"Okay, fine," he gave in in exasperation. "But I'm only doing this so you won't be stunned speechless from the awesomeness of it when we attack Kakashi and I spam 'em." His gaze moved from the Uchiha's face up over his shoulder. He jerked his head slightly, and instantly, the weight that was keeping Sasuke pinned to the ground was removed. The pale-skinned boy grunted as he pushed himself up, standing on two slightly-shaking legs. He stumbled for a moment before regaining his balance and sent another glare at Naruto for good measure. Naruto looked oddly pleased with himself as he told him, "Now turn around."
Sasuke, with one last suspicious look, turned on his heel. He was half-expecting the blonde to bop him in the back of the head and then run off, or blow a raspberry in his ear and dodge the next swing, or perhaps – the most horrible option of all – jump onto his back and demand a piggy-back ride.
What he was most certainly not expecting – hell, seeing Itachi standing in front of him would have made a significant more amount of sense at the time – was an exact replica of the smiling blonde he had just turned his back on.
He jerked back in surprise. His record of events would later edit out that little slip-up. Mass quantities of confusion overloading his mind, he spun around, only to see the same face grinning at him. He snapped his head to the side and looked over his shoulder. Still the same face.
What the fuck?
"Naruto," he said in as calm a voice as he could muster – which, in all honesty, was not very calm in the slightest. "Explain," he ordered firmly.
"Absolutely," the Naruto that was currently in front of him said, the grin sliding off his lips. "You know that there are different kinds of bunshin, right?"
"Of course I did," came the condescending tone. "Regular bunshin, then there are variations of each element, except the air: Earth, Fire, Water, Electricity. There are also Mud, Wood, and some shinobi have speculated of Metal Bunshin." Naruto nodded vigorously.
"This is another kind," Naruto said, indicating the Naruto standing behind Sasuke. "It's called Kage Bunshin." Sasuke scowled.
"Shadow Clone?"
He had never heard of it before…could it be…? Could this jutsu be something that was contained in the scroll that the idiot had begun carrying with him everywhere he went? The one that had impudently went and insulted him when he tried to look through it?
He didn't know, but it certainly warranted further thought.
"Yeah. Personally, I think that the regular ones should be called Kage, and these kinds," and he indicated the other Naruto again, "should be just Bunshin, but apparently some idiots decided that that didn't make any sense, despite it making perfect sense, so…" He shrugged helplessly.
Sasuke stared at him for a number of moments, then he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He slowly let it out, then opened his eyes and looked hard at the blonde. "I'll ask later, you'll tell me later; for the moment, we are doing nothing but wasting time. Do you have a plan of action?"
"A 'plan of action'?" Naruto let out a small chuckle. "Seriously?" A grin grew on his face once again as he spun on his heel and began to walk away, motioning for the Uchiha to follow. "I always have something up my sleeve." He shook his right arm – tan, dirty, and very bare of any such clothing article – and added, "Even when I don't have any sleeves to spare."
He laughed again as he and Sasuke both leapt into the trees and disappeared.
The newest Naruto created made his way towards the dissipation-point of the previous Fourth, the one that had been 'popped' by the original creator's pink-haired teammate. He had been endowed with extra chakra, hopefully enough to keep him from 'popping' from one strike like his predecessor had done. It should be plenty, though, given that this amount allowed him to sustain several two-to-three-centimeter deep kunai wounds and stay around for another four or so minutes afterward, as had been proved in the previous night's tests.
The previous night had been most fortuitous, and not just in the creation of so many traps and calibrating them correctly; no, there had also been plenty of experimentation with the Kage Bunshin jutsu. It had been obscenely revealing of their abilities, and their limits. The original creator had been very pleased with the results.
Kage Bunshin four spotted a flash of pink and red and bolted forward, his injected memories of the previous encounter with the girl plus the instructions from the original creator bouncing at the edge of his thoughts. He could not screw this up. She needed to hear him out, and she needed to believe him. The original creator knew that, even with the Prank, he would not be able to take down the silver-haired jounin. He had said that he needed the other two's help; and, even if he did not believe it, or if he could not understand why the original creator would need the pink-hair, as he'd professed to, he would serve out his assignment. It was what he had been created to do, and to ignore the very purpose of one's life would be to live without purpose.
And living without purpose, well…that's just plain wrong.
Kakashi hummed to himself as he looked around.
It wasn't really a thoughtful hum, or a disbelieving hum, or even a questioning hum – it was more like a 'I feel like I should say something here except I don't really have anything to say right now so I'll settle for a hum' hum.
Sasuke was nowhere near the perimeter of the clearing. Surprising, to say the most. But all that meant was that Naruto had gotten to him first.
He would have gone looking for Sakura next, on his failing of finding Sasuke, if he hadn't known that Naruto would have also found her and ferreted her off to wherever he had taken the Uchiha. He was probably keeping them in some little hidey-hole, safe and sound until he needed them – even if he didn't need them. Because even if his little trap scheme worked – which it wouldn't, by the way – and Kakashi got himself all bound and gagged and whatnot, the other two would still have to play some part in the process in order for him to pass them, and Naruto knew it. So, at some point, all three of his maybe-could-be-students would have to come in and join the party.
Kakashi shook his head as he laughed quietly to himself.
Who would have guessed that the Academy's 'Eternal Dead Last' would be the one to provide the most trouble?
Umino, maybe. Probably. Okay, so that blasted teacher almost definitely knew, and Kakashi thought it quite possible that he had given his student a little pep talk beforehand, giving the blonde idiot permission to go all-out for the Bell Test. No one had ever seen Naruto's 'all-out', Kakashi was sure. For being a prankster and a hellion, everything he had ever done had been small-time, aside from a choice few pranks that revealed a far deeper sadistic streak then most people would have guessed at.
Kakashi was starting to grow wary. Maybe he should have taken them to a different Training Ground before he started the test, somewhere where the blonde hadn't had all day to set up traps.
But!
He relaxed. Because he had the upper hand in this whole situation, no matter what Naruto managed to pull. Some of that hand was composed of the fact that he was a jounin and the three going against him were not, but the majority of it was not. The majority was something completely different. Although he was sure that Naruto had something extra up his sleeve, too, the little dunce.
Still, no amount of 'extra' could bring his maybe-could-be-team up to his level. Not a chance.
None at all.
The final bunshin of the kage quintet crept silently back into the clearing. He'd been watching for the better part of ten minutes, long enough to see the jounin wander around for a little while before picking something up, laughing to himself, and trekking away on the path to the KIA Memorial.
As soon as the man was out of the range of vision, he slid out of his hiding place and made his way over to a small section of grass. Carefully, he slid his fingers in a rectangle over top of it, about one meter long and half a meter wide. Once that was accomplished, he flattened his right hand and dug it into one of the box's corners. The grass came up easily – as it should, seeing how it had been dug up last night – and he tugged it away from the newly-revealed hole.
The hole had six wires stretching width-wise across the top, and was holding some sort of substance – one that should have smelled very, very badly, but the odor was mostly covered by the earth – inside. It was not his job to concern himself with the way it smelled, faint as it was.
He took hold of one of the wires and pulled, hard. It snapped out of the hole, and the other wires came up with it, uprooting a small amount of earth and sending it into the puddle of muck below. A small drop splashed up and smeared against his cheek, and he wrinkled his nose. It didn't smell very good at all, when it ceased being surrounded by so much dirt. He tossed the long length of wire aside and scraped slightly-moist dirt from the side of the wall. He packed small outcroppings onto the sides with care, eight total: three down each length, and one on each width. With that done he took hold of the grass-carpet once again and moved it back over the hole, setting it on top of the ledges he had created. He made sure that the entire thing was completely covered before he deemed his job good enough and moved away. It looked exactly as it had before he pulled it up.
Excellent.
He grabbed the wire and carefully wrapped it around his arm. His first task completed, he stood up and moved back to the treeline. Next up…
His eyes flickered over to trap forty-nine: Sexy Kitten in the Shower, and he smirked. He could just barely make out the little feline still moving about in the bag, and the bucket was still secured firmly above it.
He liked cats. He had good experiences with cats.
He was very tempted to go and cuddle it one last time, before its pleasant mewling and innocent tumbling was interrupted by a very rude and very large splash of water and a forced leap through the air, but he had other things to do. If there was still time after everything finished, and he was still alive, he would spend some quality time with Ranran. One of the clones had named her last night. She was awesome, and so full of fluffy, adorable, kitty goodness.
He shook his head and schooled his expression into one of concentration.
Right. He had more shit to do. Next up, finishing touches to trap ten and, just to wax poetic over everything, he was to end with trap one; the end of the beginning of the end, or something like that.
"Man…" he grumbled. "Isn't there anyone that can stand not to do this damned clichéd theatrical dramatic suspense bullshit?"
The question went unanswered – something that was much more a blessing than a curse at the time. After all, if he had received a response - any response, that is, aside from a muffled kitty-noise from Ranran, should she decide to add her input – it would mean that he was very much not alone in the clearing, and that would be bad, especially if it was the disturbingly-cheery voice of the jounin. That would be very bad, as it would disrupt the plan and make him rather unable to set off TGH (Training Ground Hell).
He jumped into the branches of the tree just above him, and from there leapt to another a few meters away. Hidden in the branches lay trap ten, a slightly-modified crossbow; the bolt it held was fired by having the small catch on the back pulled sharply, which in turn would pull the trigger; it was number nine's job to hit the catch, which shot a number of altered senbon needles up into the air at a sixty-ish-degree angle and into the clearing. The crossbow was aimed at a tree across the clearing.
He unwound the wire from his arm and, with a quick swipe of a kunai, cut it into two smaller pieces. He shoved one into his pocket and held the other tight. As quickly as he could, he tied it between trap ten's catch and its trigger, so that it would fire when the catch was hit. He removed the bolt and tested it, satisfied when the catch snapped up and the trigger depressed, slamming the ejector forward. Nodding to himself, he reset the trap and placed the bolt back in its place, taking care not to disrupt the explosive note wrapped around its shaft.
He gave the crossbow a parting pat and leapt back out of the tree and back into the clearing. He was less than two paces away from trap one – dubbed, due to the seemingly-random suggestion that Irons had given last night, 'Numbah Nigel Uno' – when a chill went down his spine. He froze in mid-step and slowly, very slowly, turned his head towards the entrance of the clearing.
The voice of one Hatake Kakashi chimed like a death toll, chilling for all its warmth and happiness, "Well, hello there."
I'm here and back again, and I know you all love me for it - because, seriously, if you're willing to read over fifty thousand words without the story moving more than a few days, you're dedicated, and you like it, and you are eating out of the palm of my hand. *evil laughter*
I was originally going to stop where Kakashi says, "...the Bell Test.", but then I realized that I told you that the Bell Test was going to START in this chapter, and it wouldn't be fair to all of you to shove it back to the next update. So I just made this chapter extra long; it's almost the length of 2 of my regular chapters. So I am TOTALLY expecting double the normal reviews for this thing (hint: I usually have about 11 or 12 reviews per chapter. Now use that big brain of yours to move your hand and your fingers to make the mouse move, and make the little arrow on your screen go down and CLICK that little review button. Hint. Hint.). No, I don't really care. But it would be nice.
Hint.
There isn't a whole lot to say about this chapter, to be honest. Sorry about the Pranksters not showing up here (having flashbacks to chapter 5), but there wasn't really anywhere for me to put them. I'll try to put them in the next chapter, but no guarantees (though I really hope that they'll show up - it's not really up to me, in the end. It's up to MY FINGERS! *evil laughter, evil finger-wiggle*).
I'll leave you guys here, hope you liked the chapter, and I'll see you next update (hopefully in about two weeks).
(oh, look at that. There is a "Review" button right here. \/ ... or maybe here? \/ ...it depends on how big your window is, doesn't it?)