[Incoming Transmission]

Chapter 11

Back with Tsubaki, right after we left earlier

"No! Naruto-kun!"

Naruto opened his eyes to see Hinata standing in front of him, with one of the shuriken's blades protruding from her back, having impaled her directly through her stomach.

Naruto turned towards Tsubaki with malice in his eyes. "You… you hurt Hinata-chan…"

Tsubaki's eyes widened at hearing that name. 'Crap! That's the Hyuuga clan heiress! I just threw a giant shuriken through the Hyuuga clan heiress's freaking stomach! Hiashi-sama is going to kill me!'

Naruto's eyes turned golden with slitted pupils as he continued speaking. "You hurt Hinata-chan… so I guess I'll have to KILL YOU!"

As Naruto spoke the last two words, golden chakra erupted from his body, before he vanished in a burst of speed, pulling off a stunt similar to another blond shinobi's signature teleportation technique. Then, after throwing Tsubaki all around the clearing with a few heavy, speed-enhanced punches, Naruto stopped, forming his hands into a cross-shaped handsign while shouting, "Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!"

As the smoke generated by the technique cleared, 'Aw crap,' was the only thought that went through Tsubaki's mind before the army of blond clones pounded her into the ground.

Meanwhile, at the Hokage's Office

Danzo turned off the large projector showing the current events concerning Naruto, before turning to the assembled Council of Konoha. "So," he began. "Can I convince you that he is not a demon? He just defended the Hyuuga clan heiress for no other reason than she was his friend, and also aided in the defeat of not one, but two traitors to Konoha. Furthermore, he has aided in safely returning the Forbidden Scroll of Sealing despite not ever being assigned to that task. Oh yes, did I also mention that he did this despite being only a genin fresh out of the Academy?"

Danzo paused in thought, before snapping his fingers. "Ah! That's what I was forgetting! Kaji!"

The aforementioned ANBU member appeared next to Danzo, saluting him along with a questioning, "Hai, Hokage-sama?"

"Get a medic out to wherever Naruto just was and keep the Hyuuga heiress from dying. That would be a Bad Thing, especially at this juncture."

Kaji saluted again, saying "It will be done," before vanishing again.

"Oh, and can somebody get me a cappuccino? All this unexpected action is making me tired."

Back with Naruto

"Naruto-san, you may stop now, the threat has been neutralized."

Naruto continued to pound Tsubaki's face into the ground with his clone army, not even hearing or just outright ignoring Shino's protests. With a thought, Shino sent out his kikaichu towards the army of clones, intent on draining them into submission if need be.

'To take a page from Shikamaru's book, how troublesome.'

Thirty-seven seconds later

Thirty-seven seconds later, Xi arrived at the scene of the beating to find one of his students on the ground unconscious from chakra exhaustion, one on the ground unconscious from blood loss with a giant shuriken sticking out of her, and one on the ground unconscious from sheer boredom and sleep deprivation. Bottom line was, they were all unconscious, as well as the bloody—yet still breathing—mess that was Tsubaki lying in the middle of the clearing.

"Well… I get the feeling I've missed something rather important here."

Day of genin team assignments

"Good morning, graduating class!"

"GOOD MORNING IRUKA-SENSEI!" came the chorused—and extremely loud—reply of the class.

After shaking the ringing out of his ears, Iruka continued his small speech with, "Now, today is a day I'm sure you've all been waiting for, the day that your genin teams are announced!"

A few half-hearted cheers sounded from around the room, causing Iruka to sweatdrop at the sudden lack of enthusiasm. "Now, Team One will be…"

As was usual, everyone pretty much tuned out the team assignments until their name or the name of someone they wanted to be on a team with had their name called.

"Team Seven will be Kiba Inuzuka…"

'Please not me, please not me…' was the thought of a certain pink-haired bansh— I mean, ninja.

"…Sakura Haruno…"

"Crap."

"Yes!"

"…and Sasuke Uchiha. You jounin sensei will be Kakashi Hatake."

"Yes!"

"Crap."

"Hn."

Iruka shook his head at their antics, before continuing with the team placements. "Team Eight will be Shikamaru Nara, Chouji Akimichi, and Ino Yamanaka. Your jounin sensei will be Asuma Sarutobi."

"Meh, expected as much."

"What? I'm stuck with Lazy and Chubby?"

"Calm down, Ino. (nom nom) I'm sure that it can't (nom nom) be all that bad working together. Our dads (nom nom) did just fine, so why can't (nom nom) we?"

Again shaking his head at the antics of the new teams, Iruka continued again. "Now, since Team Nine is still active, we'll move on to Team Ten, which will be Naruto Uzumaki, Shino Aburame, and Hinata Hyuuga. Your jounin sensei will be… um… somebody going by the name Hayashi. Sorry, I don't know them."

The only sign that Shino was surprised was a slight widening of his eyes, conveniently hidden by his sunglasses. Hinata and Naruto, however, both had looks of complete horror on their face.

Hinata managed to stammer out, "H-h-he's a jounin sensei now?"

After receiving a confused nod from Iruka, Naruto stood up and proclaimed to the class, "It has been nice knowing you all, but I'm afraid that I will not make it to tomorrow from our sensei's training program now that he has the entire day to work with us. Goodbye, everyone, we'll see you on the other side."

After Naruto's moving speech, the entirety of the new Team Ten trudged out the door to find some lunch before they entered Hell on Earth, a phenomenon also known as their new training regimen under their sensei.

Thirty-two minutes later, after lunch

The door to the classroom opened, and a person dressed in the standard jounin garb entered the room. He pulled a cigarette out of his mouth, blew out a little smoke, and said, "Team Eight. You're with me."

He then left the room with his slightly dysfunctional team, before a veritable flood of other jounin sensei appeared in the room to get their teams.

Two and a half hours later

Naruto woke with a start from his place on the desk. For some reason, their sensei still had not arrived, but his 'danger sense' was going off in the way it did when he was around and hidden. Naruto looked around not seeing any sign of his sensei, before nudging Hinata awake.

"Hinata-chan. Hinata-chan, wake up!"

Hinata blearily opened her left eye and said stubbornly yet somehow monotonously, "No. I'm asleep right now. I don't care that sensei's watching us, I can sense him too. Go away," and promptly fell asleep again.

Naruto chuckled and shook his head, before glancing over towards the members of Team Seven. A thought began to form in his head, before he chuckled and walked over to Shino. He began speaking to him in a low whisper.

"Hey, Shino."

"Yes, Naruto-san?"

"Do you have the supplies?"

Shino's eyebrow quirked up at this statement, but he wordlessly handed over the Bag. Naruto chuckled in anticipation, and began rummaging through the ridiculously small bag, pulling out impossible amounts of items from within. He then set up the elaborate rig, before handing a single wire to his long-time arch-nemesis, Sasuke Uchiha, with a short, "Here, hold this."

Twenty-nine minutes and fifty-nine seconds later, the rig was fully set up, with Naruto back in his chair, feigning sleep, although he discreetly woke Hinata up to see his prank in action.

Exactly three hours after Asuma had arrived, Kakashi Hatake opened the door to the room, promptly dodging the catapult-launched erasers full of itching powder that action had triggered.

He did not, however, manage to dodge the bucket of water that had been leaning atop the door, nor did he manage to dodge the second volley of itching-powder-filled erasers. After those connected with his torso in various locations, a cup tipped over, spilling marbles across the floor, which the jounin slipped on, causing the bucket to all off of his head.

He sat up to see the six genin in the room laughing at him, even the ever-stoic Sasuke and Shino. He also saw Sasuke holding onto a wire that went up among the rafters. Kakashi glared at him, assuming that he was at least an accomplice to whoever had done this, if not the prankster himself. Sasuke quickly released the line as if it had burned him, not wanting to seem involved with it in any way, unknowingly setting off the last part of the trap, a large bucket of bird droppings dumping over Kakashi's entire body, with the bucket landing on his head.

Although muffled by the bucket, everyone in the room could still hear him say, "Well, my first impression of you three… is that you all are annoying. Especially tall, dark, and broody over there. Meet me on the roof in five minutes."

With a swirl of leaves, the lazy cyclopean jounin disappeared from the room to clean up, before his team quickly left as well.

As soon as Team Seven had completely left the room, a piece of paper appeared on the desk in front of each of the members of Team Ten, each bearing the same message:

"Be at the usual meeting place in under a minute, or you're running ten extra laps."

It took everybody about ten seconds to process this, before Shino disappeared from the room in a burst of speed. Hinata and Naruto followed as fast as they could after Shino, but still only barely made it there, with less than a second to spare. Shino, of course, was already there, being the fastest of the three, as was their sensei.

"Ah, hello everyone! How nice of you three to join me! I was hoping that it would take you longer so that I could have you run those extra laps before the test."

"Forgive me for asking, sensei, but what test? I was under the impression that we had completed the examinations to become genin."

"Well, yes and no, Shino. That test was to see if you had the potential to be a genin. This test is to see whether you are up to the challenge of being a genin. Basically, what I need you to do is…"

The team leaned in to hear him better, but he quickly placed a limb on the forehead of each.

"…TAG! You're all it! If you catch me, you can be a genin! If you can't, five more years of Academy!"

Their sensei quickly disappeared into the trees, with them blinking in surprise. 'Our final exam… is a game of tag?' was the unanimous thought of the three genin, which Naruto voiced.

"We're playing tag? In the middle of the Forest? AS AN EXAM?"

Please excuse any formatting issues that there may be, as well as any grammatical errors. But hey, if you notice them, tell me.

And yes, I did put in a rather large time-skip, and completely omitted any training that happened, but that's okay! I plan to reveal all in a series of flashbacks! Anyway, flashbacks are integral to this story!

Also, don't bug me for more on this story. It's going on hiatus until I finish CoMC, Cit, and Ripples.

And, as always, R&R!

[Transmission Terminated]