TRUE MASTERY: BEING A SHINOBI
A/N Here's the next chapter. In other news, I've figured out my OC villains. They are not shinobi, they are not civilians. They're not appearing anytime soon.
Hiruzen was not very surprised when Kakashi entered his room and put his sword on the table. He was not very surprised when Kakashi put a letter of resignation on the table. He was, however, slightly surprised, when Kakashi fixed him with a gaze and said, "Gimme the brat."
"Which brat, Kakashi?" Hiruzen asked, knowing fully well which brat Kakashi meant. He was the youngest surviving member of Obito's family.
Kakashi waved his hands. "I'll take both of 'em."
"Both?" the Hokage asked, eyebrow raised. "Do you mean adoption, or as a sensei?"
Kakashi thought for a bit. "As a sensei. Sasuke has one cousin, I think? And I don't want to take in someone who has survived on their own for so long, and then force them to adjust their lifestyle." Perhaps that wasn't a good decision, but Kakashi felt that he had done pretty well on his own, and that adult presence would've been tedious. A case of sour grapes, no doubt, but it made sense to him.
"You realize that it's around half a year more until they graduate?"
Kakashi paused.
"I've seen their records; can't they take an early exam or something?" He really didn't want to wait for half a year. Making others wait for half a year, sure, but even he couldn't spend six months at the hospital. Or at the memorial.
"They could, yes, but there are no free genin right now that could be put on a team with them as the third member."
Kakashi frowned. "None? What happened to those tiny ones? The ones in the Genin Corps?"
Hiruzen coughed. "The Genin Corps… you mean, the same Genin Corps that was disbanded five years ago?" Looking at Kakashi's "Eh?" face, he added, chuckling, "I'm sorry to inform you, that was disbanded five years ago."
"We could totally make a team of two people. They're best friends, I hear, they would be a great duo", Kakashi suggested.
Hiruzen sighed. "You will not let this go, will you?" He was the Hokage, and yet, it seemed to him that people didn't really respect his decisions anymore. To Konoha ninja, he was like the grandpa that sneaked them candy when their parents had told them not to have any, which was why, to foreign ninja, he was like the stranger that gave them candy, that is, not to be trusted.
Kakashi shook his head solemnly from side to side.
Hiruzen let out a long breath. "Fine, I'll sign the papers."
"Great!", said Kakashi, as he began skipping away. Hiruzen barked after him, "Bring me the paper, Kakashi, and I swear, if you're late about it…" He let that threat hang in the air. Kakashi continued skipping, and started whistling too.
Once he was gone, Hiruzen sighed again. "Owl", he said, and Yoshimura the Anbu dropped down from the ceiling.
"Yes, sir?"
"Send Iruka here. If he's taking a class, you take the class." Any other day, that would have been great. An Anbu was generally more knowledgeable than a Chuunin. However, that day also happened to be the first class of the new recruits from the orphanage. And Anbu weren't very well known for their people skills.
This was not going to end well.
"Grapes, grapes, grapes", Naruto muttered under his breath, doodling absentmindedly but furiously on a piece of paper. The piece of paper in question was an exam paper, which they were supposed to solve in the class, but when Suzume-sensei had tried to remind him to solve the paper, he had yelled "GRAPES" at her so hard that her glasses fell off, and then gone back to doodling.
Suzume didn't press, because Iruka had told her beforehand just to let Naruto and Sasuke do whatever they wanted, because they were genii. He had also specifically told her not to let Shikamaru do whatever he wanted, even though he was a genius too.
Speaking of Sasuke, the kid wasn't at school. It was the second day, and Suzume made up her mind to visit his parents about it. The Uchiha and Hyūga were both well known for training their children so hard they couldn't do well in the Academy.
Obviously, no one had told her about the Uchiha massacre.
The class ended, and she took almost all the papers (Naruto refused to give up his, not elaborating any further than "grapes") and left the room.
A different class had just started. Sakura sat at her position, back straight, not moving at all, apart from how much she had to move for breathing. Everyone else was in the same posture, careful not to make any noise. It was different from any other first class, and it would have been a teacher's dream, had the reason not been a very sad one.
Sakura stopped breathing the moment their teacher entered. She looked at him, observing carefully, just like everyone else. His eyes were open and warm, his nose had a scar over it, and his mouth was slightly open in a smile. His hands were spread out on either side of himself, and he radiated a sunny aura.
He made eye contact with every one of them. Reaching her, he gave an encouraging smile, and she realized that she looked terrified.
"Hello, everyone. My name is Iruka Umino. Now, I know you all have been through horrible things, so you may not want to trust me yet, but I hope you do someday." He smiled brightly at that.
Turning to the blackboard, he picked up a piece of chalk and wrote in large letters, 'Being a shinobi'. He turned back around, but before he could say anything, a different man entered the room. "Oi, Iruka, the Hokage wants to see you." He then turned to the class.
"I'm taking your class today. So", he said, turning to the board, "Being a shinobi, huh? Well, most of you will die, and the others will face torture beyond belief, so I might as well show you what it means to be a shinobi."
Unwrapping his arm, he set it on the table. It was covered in scars from elbow to wrist. "Being a shinobi… means PAIN! It means SCARS! It means to watch your comrades die, and it means to be stuck in an enemy prison, hoping DAY after DAY that they don't kill you that day! You brats have gone through nothing in your life yet, I'll bet half of you are spoiled civilian brats who just wanna 'know a bit of ninja stuff' and leave after the mandatory five years. Well, guess what, it's not going to be like that!"
Yoshimura looked around. Almost every single one of them had flinched when he had raised his voice. Brats. One of them had even cried! He turned to Iruka. "This batch is full of weaklings, eh, Iruka? Don't you worry, they'll be toughened up by the time you get back." Then he actually noticed the look on Iruka's face.
Iruka Umino was a very mild-mannered man. He never raised his voice, he certainly never swore, and he was never violent.
"What in the bloody hell is WRONG WITH YOU?!" Iruka positively screeched, slugging the much senior Anbu across the face.
Yoshimura flew across the room, knocking against the wall and falling down. He slowly stood up, dusting himself off. "You know, younger students often ask me how Anbu fight. I tell them that we're too fast for them to understand. But, perhaps", he said, putting his mask back in place, "I can slow it down a little."
Two hours later, the Hokage looked at the stuff on his desk and then looked at Kakashi. "Explain to me, Kakashi, why you felt the need to bring me one of my unconscious Anbu, and a squirming teacher yelling 'I'll kill that bastard'?"
"Well", said Kakashi, sitting down on the desk, on top of the Anbu, "I brought this guy because he was trying to beat up that guy, because that guy punched this guy, because this guy gave his wannabe-Ibiki speech to a class full of the children from the orphanage. And I brought the other guy because he has access to the documents you need to sign."
The Hokage blinked. "Say that again, Kakashi, but slowly."
Before Kakashi could say anything, Iruka started talking, telling the Hokage everything.
"Well, there goes a class of fifty recruits. Kakashi, go and try to salvage the situation, will you?"
"Huh?" Kakashi asked, confused. "Why me?"
The Hokage sighed. "I am grasping at straws here, Kakashi. Fifty recruits are a lot. And also, you have the motivation. You do this, I'll give you the team, no complaints."
Kakashi vanished, shooting through the window (in the wrong direction) as if his life depended on it. Of course, Hiruzen would give him the team anyway. He turned to Iruka to make the arrangements.
Halfway through the next class, Naruto had suddenly looked up from his paper, looked around, and shrieked. "When did I get here?!" There was no one else in the room, the teacher had taken them for shuriken practice.
Huh, he thought. Guess class is over for the day. It's still light out, though. Maybe I should check out the other rooms.
Which was how he ended up in the beginner classes. He would have left the room after muttering a hasty apology, but one of the children (even though some were older than him, they were children in his mind) saying, "Good afternoon, sensei" stopped him in his tracks. A prank opportunity! He mustn't let this go to waste.
He looked at the board, which still said "Being a shinobi". He turned to the class and smiled.
"Being a shinobi is the most freeing thing you'll ever feel in your life. No one can hurt you when you are a shinobi. No civilian would dare to even touch you, with the Konoha headband on your forehead, and no Konoha ninja would either. The chance of death is high, that is true, but your life will not be dictated by much of anything. Being a ninja pays well; a few S-rank missions and you can live freely for the rest of your life. Some healing skills, and no pain is permanent. The skills you will gain in your three years in the Academy, and then in your mandatory five years of service, they are invaluable. If you are skilled enough, you could hold a raw fish in your palms and cook it without a fire. If you aren't, you'll burn it, but it isn't really that hard. You can walk over water and on walls, and if you go into medicine, you could heal anything.
Being a shinobi isn't safe. But you will never be ambushed at night in a dark alley, you'll never have to stay silent against oppression just hoping for mercy, you can take matters into your own hands. If you aren't a shinobi, the chances of you dying are low, but they depend completely on chance, while, being a shinobi, your life and death depends on you and you alone, and that is the greatest freedom that I believe is possible."
Decades later, when ninja historians would try to figure out whether the genius Naruto Uzumaki's powers of convincing were an actual technique, this scene would be brought up many times, because somehow, despite not knowing a thing about the class he was in, not knowing about their past, he gave them the exact speech that they needed to hear.
What these historians would neglect to mention, however, was that Kakashi entered the room moments later, and, seeing the scene in front of him, lifted Naruto (to whom he was a complete stranger at the moment) up, swung him around, and then Shunshin-ed with him to the Hokage Tower at breakneck speed. But seriously, imagine the students watching that. It was hilarious.
The moment they landed, Naruto wrenched himself away from Kakashi and started coughing.
"What the- you're like Sasuke! Don't shunshin with someone if your hand is on their neck, dammit! Oh, hello, old man."
The Hokage smiled. "Hello, Naruto. This man is Kakashi Hatake, and he will be your new sensei."
"Yo", said Kakashi, shooting him a lazy smile.
"Huh?!" Naruto frowned sharply. "I thought- but gramps, you promised that when I became a shinobi, I'd be on the same team as Sasuke!"
"No, I did not, Naruto."
"No you didn't", Naruto agreed, "But it was worth a try."
"And who said Sasuke isn't going to be on the team?" Kakashi asked.
"He is?!" Naruto said excitedly, a smile on his face. He immediately turned it into a solemn look. "Ahem, I mean, oh, he is? Well, guess it can't be helped."
"We still need to call him here, though", the Hokage said. "Naruto, would you mind going to the Uchiha compound to bring him here?"
"Sure, gramps!" Naruto said as he hopped up and went to the door. Before he could open it, however, the door opened by itself, admitting Sasuke into the chamber.
Sasuke gave Naruto an acknowledging nod, and then immediately turned to the Hokage. "Hokage-sama, I would like to request an early examination so I can become a functioning member of the shinobi corps as soon as possible."
Naruto burst out laughing.
The Hokage was smiling too as he said, "Very well. Is today fine for you, my boy?"
"Yes, of course, sir", said Sasuke, bowing his head slightly. Then he turned to Naruto. "What's so funny?"
"We're gonna be on the same team!" said Naruto, enveloping Sasuke in a bear hug.
Sasuke squirmed around, trying to get free. "Okay, I get it, now get off me, you nut!" But he was smiling too.
Kakashi sighed, shaking his head. Yup, one of them is gonna be crushed by a rock. I guarantee it.