Disclaimer: I own naruto, yes. *reaches into pantry and pulls out a can of naruto toppings* See?
Oh, the manga Naruto? I wish I did…
Naruto watched as Iruka stepped into the classroom, holding a clipboard, alone. Apparently, after the graduation test last week, that same night, Mizuki was caught stealing the Forbidden Scroll of Seals from the Hokage's Mansion. The traitor promptly had his ass handed to him by the ANBU Black Ops before being carted to Torture and Interrogation. Naruto only wished he had seen the Chunin's face.
Oh well. More important things were at hand.
"First off, I want to congratulate all of you on passing the Academy: you are all now officially Hidden Leaf ninja!" The scarred man only smiled as the students cheered. "But don't let this little fact get to your head. You're all only Genin; the lowest of the low on the ninja ladder. Your lives as ninja will only get harder from here on out!"
The blonde tuned out the speech, something about making the village proud and bringing honor to their families or something, and glanced over at Sasuke to his left. The raven-haired boy caught the glance, and returned it along with his smirk. Obviously he was thinking the same thing as Naruto.
"Eh? What'dya mean we ain't going to school today, y'know?" Both boys looked over to the retired kunoichi.
"I have a meeting with the Hokage, and it concerns you, Naruto. Trust me, you'll want to hear what we have to discuss. You as well, Sasuke."
There was a pause, before the Uchiha heir shrugged. "Sure, why not?"
And so, after a quick walk to the office (and a lunch stop; Sasuke had never heard a stomach growl as loud as Naruto's had), the threesome found themselves in front of a set of wooden double doors, with Mikoto rapping her hand on it. "Lord Hokage, may I come in? I have Naruto and Sasuke with me."
"Ah, yes; right on time. The door is unlocked." The three stepped inside of the office, and Naruto noticed the elder was moving a stack of papers from his desk to the floor beside him.
Well, all except for one or two. Maybe that paper had something to do with what Miss Mikoto and Gramps were gonna talk about?
Naruto grinned his megawatt grin and waved. "Hey, old man!" Then his face shifted into one of curiosity. "Miss Mikoto said you were gonna talk 'bout something concernin' me?"
"Yes, that's correct. Please take a seat, everyone." Hiruzen gestured to the two chairs he had set up in front of his desk, before turning to Sasuke and waving at the entrance to his office. "There's a chair for you as well, Sasuke, next to the door." The boy nodded and moved the chair so he could sit to the right of his mother, as Naruto was on her left.
"Now, Naruto, do you remember what you had asked me as we were packing up your apartment so you could stay with Mikoto?"
Silence took hold for a second as Naruto closed his eyes in thought and scratched his temple. "Uh… You mean when I asked if I could actually live with Miss Mikoto?"
"Yes." Sarutobi picked up the sheet of paper from his desk and handed it to Naruto. "Do you know what kind of form this is?"
Naruto (and Sasuke, who had stood up and moved behind the blonde) both read the paper as both adults smiled. In about 5 seconds, Sasuke's head shot up and he gaped at his mother, who grinned wider.
Naruto looked back up to the Hokage. "Yeah, this is for adoptions, right? What abou—" His voice failed and his eyes widened as he copied Sasuke in gaping at Mikoto. "Y-y-y—"
"Yes?" the Hokage asked, amused at the students' reactions
"You're adopting him?!" Sasuke near shrieked.
"Yep!" Mikoto nodded. "Of course, that is if Naruto wants me to." She turned to the still-frozen blonde. "Well, Naruto? What do you say? Do you want to come live with us?"
That was what broke him out of his shock, and in response to the question, he threw himself at the woman, grasping her shirt and crying into her stomach, pouring thanks of all kinds out through the tears.
"Well, I think that answers that." Hiruzen circled his desk and picked up the adoption form from the floor in front of Naruto's chair, and sat back down in his, pulling a pen out from the desk and signing the bottom of the sheet after adding the appropriate information to specify it as Mikoto's adoption of Naruto. "Now, Naruto, you need to let Mikoto go for a moment, so she can sign the paper and make it official. Alright?"
The blonde nodded and pulled himself off of the Uchiha Matriarch's stomach, wiping at his eyes. "R-right. Sorry 'bout that, Miss MIkoto." He stopped when he felt her flick his forehead lightly. "Huh?"
"Now, now; none of that. From now on," Mikoto paused and signed where it asks for the adopter's signature, then held the sheet out for Naruto to look at, "you have to call me 'Mom', instead of 'Miss Mikoto'. Okay?" She smiled again.
It would take a minute, but Naruto felt his eyes water again as it finally dawned on him that the woman in front of him, with physical proof in hand, just adopted him.
He grinned right back, the smile so large his eyes closed. "You got it, mom!"
"Team 7:" was the first thing Naruto heard upon returning back to reality. Hopefully he wasn't called yet. "Sasuke Uchiha, Naruto Uchiha, and Tenten Higurashi."
The blonde held a private celebration in his head at the revelation that he and his brother were on the same team. He searched the room and locked eyes with the bun-haired 13-year old girl near the front of the room. She had entered their class at the beginning of the year, Iruka saying that she was in the class ahead of them, but didn't take the graduation exam with the rest of her old classmates on the grounds of wanting to learn more genjutsu.
The weapons specialist gave him a quick grin and turned back to the front as Iruka finished off calling the teams. "You all have one hour for lunch, then you'll report back here for your Jonin-sensei to pick you up." With that, he left, and the students split into groups as everyone headed outside. Tenten stood up as her two teammates walked down to meet her at the front of the room. "So I'm up with the Uchiha brothers, one of whom the school Prank King." Naruto grinned. "You don't look like an Uchiha though," she directed at Naruto.
"Nope," he confirmed. "I'm actually adopted. My birth mom had red hair, which apparently means my dad had blonde."
"Makes sense," the girl conceded. "So, wanna get some lunch? Use this chance to actually get to know each other more than we did during school."
"OOH! We could—"
"No."
Naruto turned to the older boy with an odd mix of a pout and a glare. "And why can't we get ramen?"
"You scare people when we eat ramen." Ignoring the now angry blonde, Sasuke turned to an amused looking Tenten. "There's a barbeque place just down the block from here, if that's fine with you?"
"Sure." Naruto sighed in defeat at her approval. With that, Team 7 left the academy.
One hour later, seats were filled yet again as the newly instated Genin awaited pick-up from their Jonin instructors. After about two minutes of chatter, a pale woman with black hair and red eyes would step through the open door and call for Team 8, causing Hinata, Kiba, and Shino to stand up and follow their sensei out. The Hyuuga heiress cast a quick glance at Naruto, who responded with a quick thumbs up, which sent blood to her face as she disappeared from view.
Time passed by and teams left the classroom, and 90 minutes later, only three people were still inside. Naruto began twitching in his seat. "What the hell is taking our sensei, y'know?!"
"Calm down, Naruto." Tenten moved to placate her hyperactive teammate. "I'm sure there's a logical explanation."
"There'd better be…" he grumbled out in response.
45 more minutes passed before Naruto's ADHD kicked in again. "Alright, that's it, y'know!" He jumped up and ran straight for the blackboard, grabbing an eraser. "This guys is getting his ass pranked!" He moved Iruka's chair next to the door and began fitting the eraser on it.
As Naruto placed the chair back in its original spot and moved to sit back down, his brother spoke up. "You expect that to work?"
As if the Gods themselves were waiting for the line to be uttered, the door opened and a tall, thin man with silver, gravity-defying hair stepped over the threshold, only to pause as the eraser collided with his head and turned his hair chalk-white. Naruto fell over laughing, Tenten looked away and tried to contain her own laughter, and Sasuke deadpanned.
What.
"Okay… My first impression of you three…" The two laughing kids calmed themselves as the masked man spoke up and turned to look at him. He gave the three a lazy stare with his one visible eye. "I don't like you."
"What!" Naruto jumped up from the ground. "If you had been on time, I wouldn't of had ta do that, y'know!"
"Calm down, now." The man waved at the blonde in a placating manner. "Let's meet up on the roof and have a chat, shall we?" With that, he vanished in a puff of smoke. Naruto grumbled incoherently but moved to head upstairs, his teammates behind him.
As he brushed the chalk out of his hair, Kakashi thought back to when his first impression of Team 7 occurred. In hindsight, he really should have expected Kushina's son to do something like prank him. He had hoped some of Minato-sensei's patience had passed on into Naruto; it seems not.
At the creak of a door opening, he gazed at his three students (well, minions, but neither they nor anyone else needed to know) walked onto the roof and down the steps, before they took seats on the bottom step. "Well, it's nice to see you came up here! So, shall we introduce ourselves? You know: likes, dislikes; all that jazz."
The girl, Tenten if he remembered the file right, rose her hand. "Can you go first to show us, Sensei?"
"Hm?" Kakashi blinked. "Sure, I guess that's reasonable. Alright then… My name is Kakashi Hatake. My likes and dislikes are none of your business. Dreams for the future? Hmm…" He made a show of tapping his chin as if in thought, before shrugging. "Well, I have a lot of hobbies."
All three kids deadpanned. "You only told us your name," Sasuke so helpfully pointed out.
"Did I?" He feigned a look of mild shock. "Strange; I normally don't give so much information for free." He shrugged again. "Ah well, nothing I can do about it now. Since you seem so talkative, why don't you go next?"
The ravenette snorted but otherwise complied. "Whatever. My name's Sasuke Uchiha. I like my family, training with Naruto, and salted tomatoes. I dislike people who don't take being a ninja seriously and traitors. Hobbies include the aforementioned training, as well as reading. My dream…no. My goal is to bring a certain man to justice for his crimes and bring the Uchiha clan back to its former glory."
So he's out to bring Itachi back to answer for his crimes. Thankfully that's not all there is to him. Kakashi nodded and turned to the blonde. "Alright, you're up, Spikes."
Naruto blinked and poked one of the spikes that made up his hair, before shrugging. "My name's Naruto Uchiha. I like ramen, training with Sasuke, and plants! I don't like it when people judge someone before getting to know them, and that it takes 3 minutes for ramen to cook." Sasuke seemed to suffer a sudden coughing fit. Naruto glared at him but continued. "My hobbies are training, pulling pranks, an' gardening. And my dream is to become Hokage and prove to the villagers that I'm worth something, y'know!"
The Jonin nodded once again and turned to his final student. "And last, but not least."
"Thank you. My name is Tenten Higurashi. I like weapons of all kinds, from kunai and shuriken to katana and scimitars; as well as seals. I dislike poorly made weapons and people who dismiss any form of ninja art beyond ninjutsu, taijutsu, and genjutsu as superfluous. My hobbies are working in my father's weapon shop, and studying medical jutsu. My dream is to become a kunoichi as well known as Lady Tsunade, if not more so."
One final nod, and Kakashi seemed to eye-smile at the three kids. "Good! Now that that's out of the way, we can move on. We'll have a sort of mock mission tomorrow morning; just the four of us."
"Cool! What're we gonna do?"
Despite not moving any facial muscles, Kakashi's eye-smile seemed to become just a tad more sinister. "Survival training."
A pause, before Naruto exploded. "Hah?! But we did that kinda stuff in the Academy, y'know!"
"This one's different." The Jonin pinned the Genin down with a stare. "The three of you will be up against me." He paused as the information sunk into their heads. "All the teams will be doing this. And of the nine teams that passed this year, only 3 will move on to become Genin full-time. The 66% who fail their test with their instructor will be sent back to the Academy for remedial classes." The kids' expressions turned into those of shock at this bit of news. Kakashi snapped a mental picture. "So if I were you, I would rest up for this." He stood from the rail he had been sitting on and rose his hands into a Ram seal. "Also, I wouldn't eat breakfast if I were you. You'll just puke it back up. See you tomorrow!" And with an eye-smile, he vanished into smoke once again. The three kids gave each other looks of worry and determination.
Woah. 2365 words. Never did something that long before. Hopefully this becomes a thing. Also this was churned out very quickly since the Itachi interlude, but keep in mind I began outlining this about 24 hours after I put up chapter 6. So it'll still be about 1-2 week in between each main chapter.
So I decided to skip to graduation and showed Naruto's official adoption in the classic flashback! I am one lazy fuck. Meh. Also, as one can tell, the winner of my little poll was Tenten! Hooray background characters that Kishimoto claims to "like"!
Ahem.
So chapter 8! Or 7. I dunno. Review and all that wonderful stuff! I am STILL looking for a beta! I was fast about it, but the Itachi chapter DID have a few minor mistakes I didn't catch until I published the chapter and read it as a fanfiction reader and not as the author reviewing it. So anyone interested, please PM me.
Number three is, TV Tropes. Any tropers out there? Fanfic recs? That'd be one of the biggest honors this story could get outside of actually getting a Trope page for itself. I would love the recommender forever and all time.
Adiaŭ!
