Sorry for the...um, incredibly damn way-too-long wait between my posting of the last chapter and this one.

I actually have a good reason why I've been AWOL, though! I brilliantly-yet-stupidly gave myself a huge courseload in the fall semester, and the stress of that killed my ability to write anything until winter break. During winter break I was able to get back to work, and had about half of this chapter finished. I was planning an update before New Years.

Then I got Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for Christmas, and, well, everyone with any knowledge of Zelda games whatsoever knows exactly why I'm updating in mid-January instead.

And I doubt I'll update very soon again: the next college semester is about to start...

(sigh)

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Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto

Claimer: I own THIS version of Naruto, oh yes I do!

…
…

It turned out to be fairly bad – especially if the D-ranked missions they gave to Genin, such as sorting junk, finding lost pets, and wading knee-deep in mud to pull weeds weren't really your thing.

Sasuke was making vows to never be optimistic about anything ever again. If it ended up like this, clearly optimism was very dangerous to one's personal comfort and safety.

Naruto was doing his best not to complain: in a weird way, this stuff was almost kind of fun! It remained semi-entertaining even though the bugs from the second mission or so seemed to think he was a gourmet dinner and had been following him hither and yon ever since.

Whether or not Hinata was enjoying being on a Genin team was a well-guarded secret, even from herself. On the plus side, her natural invisibility was so perfected that most of the trouble on their missions – for example, the bugs stalking Naruto – seemed never to not notice when she was there.

During Team 7's missions, Kakashi could reliably be found sitting in a perch, usually a nearby tree or rooftop, from where he would monitor the progress of his Genin.

Unfortunately, Kakashi's version of 'monitoring' someone primarily involved ignoring him or her completely under all circumstances. This prevented Kakashi from being distracted from reading Icha Icha and giggling at regular intervals.

When they weren't doing their missions (or wondering why the people of Konoha wanted ninja to shop for their groceries), Team 7 was engaged in what Kakashi considered training. As with the missions, the Jounin did not seem to consider his presence a requirement.

"They say that the best way to learn is to teach," Kakashi had gleefully informed them, "And that's why you three will be training each other from now on!"

Kakashi's brilliant scheme was to have the three of them train only together, working as a team, from now on. It was supposed to improve their teamwork as well as their individual skills. Kakashi seemed to think he had discovered an ingenious breakthrough in shinobi training with his little plan.

Naruto, Sasuke, and Hinata used most of the first allotted session to question their instructor's sanity.

In actuality, Sasuke did most of the verbal complaining. Hinata sat nervously and watched, while Naruto nodded whenever Sasuke made a good point. Sasuke's non-shinobi vocabulary was limited, however, so once the dark-haired prodigy finished a particularly lengthy exposition on why this was the stupidest idea in the idiot history of stupid ideas, the team decided to try and actually train.

Some problems became immediately evident.

…

Sasuke, who had unofficially appointed himself the head of Team 7's training (in the total absence of Kakashi) thought that as far as things went, their team could have done far worse than have Hinata for a kunoichi.

The other so-called kunoichi from their graduating class had spent more time and money on ornaments and makeup than on anything practical – or relating towards shinobi training. Half of them couldn't fight worth a damn.

Hinata had joined the Academy after receiving training in the prodigious taijutsu/ninjutsu style passed down the Hyuuga clan lines. To an eye trained to identify possible competition (you had to fight the strong to get stronger, not the weak), Hinata moved in a way that suggested that she knew what she was doing.

The problem was that Hinata couldn't seem to understand how to apply her fighting skills to actual sparring. On top of that, the girl was so timid that she flinched at the slightest hint of an aggressive movement, even ones that had nothing to do with her. This fearful nature resulted in a consistent stream of pulled punches, hesitant movements, and failed blocks. Sasuke and Naruto knocked Hinata down in less than two minutes into every spar they attempted.

Naruto, however, was just a problem. At least Hinata used a single, coherent fighting style.

Half the time, Naruto fought with a wild pattern of moves borrowed or adapted from almost a dozen different basic styles. That was frustrating enough to work with – the rest of the time, Naruto seemed to be making things up as he went along.

The only thing noteworthy about Naruto's crude agglomeration of taijutsu was that it resulted in it being almost impossible to predict what the blonde fool would do next. This infuriating unpredictability had even won Naruto a spar or two against Sasuke during their training.

Sasuke tried not to hold this against Naruto. Obviously, Sasuke's own skills needed improvement, and until he managed to find some useful training, Sasuke would just have to bear the occasional slip.

What was the most frustrating was having a week of this pass with no sign of improvement for any of them. None of the pathetic chores Team 7 was doing – hardly anything worth being called a "mission" – called on any of the skills the three of them were trying to hone.

…

Kakashi was more than willing to admit that his initial assessment of his new (first and only) genin team had been off the mark. Depressing as the kids seemed at first, they were actually turning out to be quite amusing.

Of course, the part of his assessment that included the word 'idiots' was still accurate. The three of them had taken the fairly simple and obvious idea of 'train yourselves' to mean something like 'pretend you're still in the academy and just use each other for taijutsu practice', a completely unrelated concept.

For a genius, Kakashi had decided on the first day, Sasuke wasn't really too smart. This was the kid who thought he could restore the Uchiha clan to its former (albeit overblown) glory?

As Kakashi watched Sasuke and Naruto attempt to spar in the clearing not far from the tree he was perched in, he noted three separate occasions in a single match that Sasuke nearly reached for ninjutsu. Instead of learning anything remotely useful in real fighting, Sasuke was stopping himself from using ninjutsu because he was trying not to reveal what techniques he knew to his teammates!

Kakashi hadn't known many Uchiha personally, but none of them had ever been shy about showing off what they had learned, including things taken via Sharingan – if the Uchiha hadn't had so much clout, they would have been wiped out by other leaf-nin early on for being so obvious when they kept stealing everyone else's precious techniques.

Naruto and Hinata both stayed firmly in the category 'idiot' because they were both firmly taking their lead from Sasuke and not being creative either.

Well, Naruto was managing to be strangely creative, even limited to taijutsu: Kakashi watched with unconcealed delight as the fox-brat sent the Uchiha-brat tumbling head-over-ass with a definitely unorthodox move.

Hinata was trained in Jyuken, which was ninjutsu in its own right. Unfortunately, Hinata had so little faith in her own abilities that made her turns at the sparring deal an absolute joke. This, of course, did nothing to make the girl try any harder and so she had no improvement.

Standing calmly on the underside of the tree branch where he was watching his three genin, Kakashi cast his mind about for something that would break this self-defeating cycle his kids seemed happily stuck in.

'What these kids really need is a really good hard knock to the head,' Kakashi thought to himself, 'Hmm…I wonder how I can arrange that…'

…

"Ooh, my Tora! My precious widdle kitty-witty! Mummy was so worried about you, yes she was. Oh yes she was!"

Tora (the cat) looked distinctly unhappy as his oversized owner squished him, yowling ineffective protests at the top of his little kitty lungs. The scratched, dirty, and generally unhappy genins who had spent the last three hours finding and catching the cat had some sympathy for Tora, but not much.

"Naruto feels kinda sorry for that cat," Naruto announced, once the big cat-lady had managed to jam a struggling, screeching Tora into a cat carrier and left.

Sasuke glared at his teammate. The cat had lead them through every single terrible disgusting place in the woods surrounding Konoha, and Sasuke felt like he was coated in a layer of grime.

Naruto understood what the glare was meant to convey; being on a team with Sasuke had given Naruto a good understanding of how to read Sasuke-stare-and-grunt, which was how Sasuke normally communicated with the rest of the world. Naruto grinned right back, using that one grin that he knew made him look a bit crazy since he also knew it drove Sasuke nuts. Add in the many scratches on the blonde's face from when Tora the cat had tried very hard to claw Naruto's eyes out, and it looked downright creepy.

"Yeah, Naruto's not THAT sorry."

Hinata stood a step away, fairly scruffy-looking herself, and glumly wondered whether the next errand they were needed to run would wait long enough for the three of them to be cleaned up. The sudden appearance of Kakashi's beaming masked face was therefore a bit depressing, since it meant that it was time for more work.

Sasuke only shifted his irritated glare towards this new target when their Jounin-sensei appeared, while Naruto groaned loudly.

"Not another stupid thing," Naruto protested.

"I'm glad to see you too," Kakashi replied, sounding utterly delighted at the idea, "I just so happen to have great news for all of you. The client from our last mission was quite delighted with the mission's success…the poor woman keeps losing her cat every time she visits Konoha, you know, and you three managed the fastest time yet for finding it."

Somehow, none of the genin felt very surprised by the cat's incredible escape record. Sasuke gave a pointed look at their sensei's immaculate state – Kakashi had 'monitored' this mission the same way he had every single other one – which the Jounin cheerfully ignored.

"…So?"

"Well, Shijimi-sama is the wife of the Fire Daimyo, and thanks to her praises on your quick rescue of her cat, I was able to get you all a nice, fun C-ranking mission," Kakashi said, "Though if you don't feel like taking it, I'm sure I saw a D-rank involving sweet potatoes back at the mission desk…"

Unsurprisingly, no one wanted to go for the sweet potato mission. And that was why Team Seven was on the road leading away from Konoha the next day, with a sweaty, drunk, and foul-mouthed man named Tazuna in tow.

…
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