It all began when team seven failed Ibiki's exam. Apparently, Sakura had caved under the pressure and raised her hand during his test. Needless to say, Kakashi had known immediately that Naruto and Sasuke would not be pleased. He was already picturing (and despairing at) the inevitable damage control he'd have to do now. Maybe he really should have listened to that Iruka chunin…
He was not cut out to be a sensei. Not a day went by where Kakashi didn't curse Hiruzen's descendants for pulling him out of ANBU. He was not a babysitter. He was not good with kids. He was not good at teaching. What he was good at was wiping away threats to the village from the shadows. He should be out there doing S-ranks, not here worrying about three incorrigible genin. If he didn't do those S-ranks, someone else would have to. He imagined one of his old teammates dying in a ditch somewhere… on a mission that should have been his. Kakashi sighed. Alas, there was little he could do.
By the time he managed to track down his cute genin, they'd already left the examination building. He would have to have been blind not to notice the dreadful atmosphere surrounding them. Sakura looked like she was about to cry. Naruto was making a face at her, which was saying a lot, considering the boy's infatuation. Sasuke seemed so angry that he was leaking a small dose of killing intent…
Oh, boy.
Kakashi wasn't stupid enough to try breaking the ominous silence with platitudes, choosing instead to return his attention to his Icha Icha book. For once, both Naruto and Sasuke seemed to have set aside their differences, though this was only so that they could build a joint front against Sakura… Kakashi would have prefered if their first bout of non-combat teamwork had occurred in a different setting.
Wondering what he should do, Kakashi meandered ahead of the kids, leading the three of them back to the red bridge where they usually met in the mornings.
"So." He propped his hip against the railing. "What gives?"
There was an uncomfortable moment of silence.
"We didn't pass." Sakura said weakly.
Sasuke scoffed hatefully and Naruto crossed his arms again.
"Ma, ma. You guys are way too uptight about this. I wasn't expecting you to pass either," Kakashi told them.
"Liar!" Naruto yelled.
"We could've passed no problem!" Sasuke gritted out, staring hatefully at Sakura again.
To be honest, Kakashi wasn't sure the kid had looked at her so many times in a row in the entirety of their acquaintance.
"I did expect you to pass the first stage," he amended. "But I didn't know that your proctor was Morino Ibiki." His lone eye narrowed.
"Even so, we were about to pass," Sasuke bit back, "but she ruined it!"
"Yeah! We still hadn't heard the tenth question!" Naruto chimed in. Kakashi noticed his female student's eyes starting to water and watched with dismay as she turned to lean over the bridge, clearly having begun to cry in earnest and wanting to hide it. The boys hadn't noticed, or at least Naruto hadn't. Feeling awkward, he placed a hand over her head and hoped it didn't feel as awkward to her as it was to him. Comforting twelve-year-olds really wasn't his thing.
"Ma… relax, you two. You'll do a better job next time, ne?" he said lightly.
"Yeah, no!" Naruto shouted. "I wanna be hokage! I don't have time to wait around for an entire year!"
"Neither do I, Kakashi," Sasuke followed up with narrowed eyes.
"Strength doesn't equal rank," Kakashi drawled simply. "Even if you had made chunin (which probably wouldn't be the case), as genin you will have more time to train. So! Let's get to that tomorrow. We meet here as usual. Dismissed."
When no one moved, Kakashi retrieved Icha Icha Paradise from his pouch and stuck his nose in it. This, as far as anyone was concerned, was the universal sign for "bugger off, brats". Still no one had moved so Kakashi lazily waved a hand in dismissal and said: "Shoo."
And that seemed to do the trick.
"Shoo! He says! I'll say, when I'm hokage, no one will tell me that!"
He watched the two boys leave, though Sakura still hadn't moved… or stopped crying. He wanted to sigh. Shinobi life definitely didn't agree with her. Perhaps he should have a talk with her about quitting… He'd let her explain what she had done wrong and then, hopefully the girl would realize on her own that this wasn't her thing. Yes. That was a good plan.
"Uh, Sakura-chan…?" he asked awkwardly.
Unfortunately, Sakura seemed too far gone in her misery to give a proper reply. Kakashi felt really uncomfortable, but was unable to do anything about knew he needed to talk to her, but she wouldn't stop crying.
"Sakura-chan," he tried again, a little desperate. Still nothing. Maybe a change of scenery would help? "Come on," he added. "I know this nice tea shop down the road. Let's go there, ne? Your awesome sensei has free coupons."
At last his words seemed to have reached her. Sakura nodded shakily and followed a few steps behind him, swiping at her eyes. Kakashi did his best to look like he hadn't noticed.
They walked in silence for a while and thankfully it looked like Sakura was starting to calm down. Kakashi had put a hand on her shoulder, hoping it would help, though still peered at his Icha Icha in the other.
They made it to the tea shop.
"My eternal rival!" someone shouted immediately. Oh, great. Just what he needed. A live audience.
"Yo," Kakashi said pleasantly, hoping Gai would leave. Unfortunately, he wasn't alone. Asuma and Tenzo were sitting on a table with him. Great.
Gai rushed forward. "My eternal rival! Had I known you'd come here, I'd have prepared a challenge for us to compete in!"
"Ah, no need, Gai," said Kakashi. His hand went back to Sakura's head, ruffling it reflexively. "I'm actually here with Sakura-chan…"
Please take the hint and leave now.
He did not. Kakashi wanted to throttle him. Deciding that if he ignored Gai he might go, he turned to smile at Sakura. "Let's get some tea." Having said this, he strolled toward the counter, ordering tea for the both of them.
"Hatake," said the old lady in charge. "I swear if you're planning to pay with those odious coupons again…"
"I suppose if you ask so politely, I can't refuse."
He began ruffling through his pockets, pulling out scrolls, papers, an old key chain with no keys, a mask, a senbon that was encrusted with blood…
The counter was getting progressively more cluttered as Kakashi continued to produce things from his pockets. Sakura was starting to look keenly embarrassed on his behalf, but he didn't mind. If she was embarrassed, she wasn't crying. Finally, Kakashi retrieved two crinkled pieces of paper from within a scroll that seemed to be filled with random bills and receipts. With a triumphant swoop, he placed them in the only empty spot on the counter.
"Hatake?" the woman was growling.
"Yes?"
"You're a real piece of work, you know that?"
"I just like my tea better if it's free," he said with a smile. "It has a special kind of flavour." He turned toward her. "Let's get a table, Sakura-chan." Then, he grabbed everything he'd left laying around on the counter between his arms and ambled over to a table. On the other side of the room, he noticed Gai giving hima thumbs up and bobbing his head up and down.
Kakashi turned to glare at him and the others until they finally got the hint and at least had the decency to pretend to be interested in their tea. "So," he said, giving Sakura an expectant look. "Fill me in?"
And without further fanfare, Sakura did. Her tale was not what he had been expecting.
Sakura was staring at the back of Naruto's head as she thought furiously. She could see that her teammate was quaking in his seat. If he raised his hand now, they would all fail but if he didn't and they still didn't pass, he might never become hokage. Even though she knew that she most likely would be able to answer the tenth question, she felt her heart reaching out to Naruto. There was no way he could. For all his determination, academics really weren't his thing. He was so determined, so very set on becoming hokage, on reaching his silly dream… It broke Sakura's heart to think that he might never be able to keep dreaming if he failed this exam. She didn't want to see the light in his eyes fade.
Sakura wondered. Should she raise her hand…?
To be honest, quitting now left a bad taste in her mouth, especially as she had done amazingly well... but no. If there was anything Kakashi-sensei had taught her, then it was this: "those who break the rules are scum, but those who abandon their teammates are worse than scum". She had taken his words to heart.
The idea of giving up, especially after acing the test left a bitter taste in her mouth, but… her team came first.
She raised her hand.
Huh… so she had done it for the sake of teamwork? That was the last thing he'd been expecting to hear. It didn't seem like she was lying either: from the way she told the tale, it sounded like Sakura thought she'd done something terribly wrong… and that, in turn, didn't sit well with Kakashi. Teamwork should be rewarded. Always.
Suddenly, he wasn't so sure anymore about telling her to quit. Of all his students, he wouldn't have expected Sakura to take to his teachings…
She was staring at him, he realized belatedly. Probably expecting him to say something. "Ma, I'm so proud, Sakura-chan. You're going to make your sensei cry tears of joy."
At Sakura's stumped expression, he added:
"You put your teammates' interests before yours, Sakura-chan. Naruto's, especially, and I know you're not as fond of him as Sasuke."
Sakura blushed. That was the understatement of the year and they both knew it. "But sensei… if what I did was right… why did we fail the test? It's not fair!"
"Mmm… how do I put this?" he told her. "Ibiki Morino and I don't see eye to eye about some things. Let's just say we have different priorities... but the way you handled it, attempting to retreat and regroup, you had the right idea. Ibiki's tenth question challenge was encouraging blind courage in genin, which is the fastest way for you to die in real life."
Sakura frowned. "But sensei…" she took a sip of her tea. "Even if he has a different nindo, I should have seen underneath the underneath…" She sighed. "Some ninja I am."
Kakashi shook his head slightly, then propped his feet on the table and reopened his book. But he wasn't done talking, apparently: "Sakura-chan. Morino Ibiki is the head of the torture division here… seeing underneath the underneath is a bit hard with him, wouldn't you agree? You did well, Sakura-chan. Putting the team first."
"Really?" she asked quietly.
He nodded. "The purpose of the first nine questions was to gather information and pass it on to your teammates if they couldn't, which none of you did. In Sasuke's case, cheating must have been very easy for him, and yet he didn't bother to help out Naruto. The only one who came close to being concerned about the team was you, Sakura-chan."
Sakura stared at him with a stumped expression.
"Ch-cheating, sensei?!"
He blinked at her lazily, feeling just as confused. What else was there? "How else would you complete the test? Didn't you mention the questions required advanced calculus?"
Sakura pouted. "So we were supposed to cheat?"
What exactly had this girl done? "Ma… at least that's what I would've resorted to. The sharingan's handy like that."
"You're just lazy, sensei. I bet you could've solved every single question if you tried."
"I wouldn't presume so unless you told me what they were, Sakura-chan."
And so, Sakura told him about the questions. A few had been about tactics, but mostly they were advanced calculus (for trajectory prediction and such), barring one which was about disarming a civilian bomb. And she thought she had answered those? Without help? Kakashi felt his disbelief grow by the second.
"Huh… those chunin went all out," he commented, hoping she'd get the hint. "Most jonin wouldn't know this stuff."
"What about you, sensei?"
"Doubting your awesome sensei already, Sakura-chan?" He wiped an imaginary tear from his eye.
"So you can solve them?" she pressed eagerly.
Of course he could. Most likely, he had been able to since he was her age… not that that was any of her business.
"Maaa. You don't ask a lady her age, nor a jonin his IQ, Sakura-chan. Both will lie anyway. Though I'd still inquire into the others' responses, just to be safe, ne?"
"So can I run my answers by you?" Sakura asked him with puppy dog eyes. "I mean, I know I already failed, but…"
Kakashi took a sip from his tea. Normally he'd have said no, but a part of him was somewhat curious about her apparent confidence. He'd be surprised if she'd answered a single one of those correctly. "I suppose your display of teamwork should be properly appreciated," he allowed after a beat.
"So…?"
"Shoot."
"Oh, well… um, okay." Apparently, the girl had memorised the entire quiz, down to the numbers of every problem. Kakashi felt himself getting impressed despite himself. This kind of thing was something not many genin could do… even so, he had never believed good memory to be a reflection of actual intelligence.
His skepticism proved to be totally unfounded however when Haruno Sakura, civilian born girl, Sasuke fan to the bone, useless honorary member of team seven, proceeded to solve every problem perfectly. There were not many things that could surprise Hatake Kakashi, but today he found himself stumped. He had not seen that one coming.
The test had literally been made so no genin or even chunin could solve it, yet this twelve-year-old girl had, fresh out of the Academy. He wasn't even sure she realized what a big deal that was.
"Looks like you aced it," Kakashi said after a moment. "Neat." It was then and there that he decided: if the girl wouldn't quit, he would have to make sure she didn't die out of incompetence. Clearly she wasn't stupid… Something would need to be done to motivate this particular lovestruck preteen, but hell if he knew what.
Sakura preened, appearing pleased with herself and fist-pumped the air. "Cha! No need to cheat for me!"
"Ah, well…" Kakashi scratched his head. She may be academically gifted, but ninja smarts were clearly a foreign concept to her. "Not in this case, no. But the real test, I think, was to see how good you were at information gathering and communication, not… uh… the elementary equations of ballistics." He smiled uneasily. "How did you know this stuff again?"
Sakura blushed. "Um. I just… like to rationalise stuff. And um… I like solving problems."
"So you studied this in your free time?"
She nodded.
"Well… how should I put this…"
"Yes, I know. It's a waste of time and I should've spent it training, not reading books." She sighed. "It's just… this is the only thing I'm good at. And not just good, but the best. It felt so nice, to, for once…"
So she did know she was kind of lacking in the physical department, huh…
Kakashi decided to test how she'd take some criticism. Very light criticism, mind; he didn't want any water works from her again.
"Sakura-chan, it's fine. I understand. But you know, sometimes we have to practice to get good at something," he said the last part emphatically.
"I know…" Sakura said mulishly. "I'm such a paper ninja."
Well… she wasn't wrong.
"A paper ninja, huh?" Kakashi repeated. "That's not a bad thing, provided you're not only that." No one would be able to tell him he didn't have tact. Kakash patted himself on the back for a crisis well averted. Maybe being a sensei wasn't such a bad thing after all…
Unfortunately for him, team seven not passing had unforeseen consequences. If Sakura hadn't raised her hand, then perhaps Naruto would have slammed his palm on the table and given an impassioned speech to motivate every other candidate. However, this never happened, and as such, out of the two-hundred and fifty original participants, only sixty passed. Ordinarily, getting roped into the role of proctor would have been out of the question for him due to bias, but now…
His misfortune went like this: it was a day like any other of completing dull D-ranks. The monotony had only been interrupted by the fact that Kakashi couldn't find the hokage anywhere to turn in his report… hence his tracking him all around the village, till reaching an unused building that belonged to the kage. Interesting…
"I'm here for my mission report…" he said cheerfully, promptly entering the room where the sandaime was. Kakashi found himself being glared at by the entire council – even Hiruzen seemed pissed. "Am I interrupting something?"
"What do you think?" Danzo, seated next to Hiruzen, spat.
Hiruzen sighed. Today's particular meeting was one he had not wanted to be interrupted. With Kakashi's bad timing, he had (sensibly) feared that man might see it fit to barge in with their guest there, thereby unveiling the last secret he wasn't privy to. As Hiruzen absolutely hadn't wanted that to happen, he'd arranged for Kakashi to be stuck babysitting two genin teams at once for that morning. He should've known that it wouldn't be enough…
"You're interrupting a meeting with the council," he told Kakashi, faux-casually. "Is there something I can help you with, Kakashi?"
"Hmm."
Kakashi eyed the stiff-looking elders dubiously. And Hiruzen knew that look, damn it. He'd seen it every single time before Kakashi stuck his nose into classified business.
"Kakashi?" he prompted.
Kakashi was beginning to suspect something classified was going on… the only question being what. Unfortunately, Danzo seemed to only exist in order to annoy him.
"As it happens, we were just discussing the chunin exams," the elder cut in glibly, a lie if he'd ever heard one. "Did you know, Hatake, that only sixty candidates passed Ibiki's test? The other villages are in an uproar."
Kakashi's eyebrow rose. "Maa… sounds fun."
Danzo smirked. "We have come to the conclusion that neither Anko Mitarashi is not fit for proctoring the second exam in light of the current circumstances." Inwardly, Hiruzen was arching an eyebrow. They had discussed no such thing. "In light of this we have decided," the elder continued, "that you, as our most esteemed jonin, are the perfect candidate for this task, Hatake Kakashi."
Hiruzen shot him a look of alarm, but Danzo merely gazed back calmly, the absolute bastard.
"Ah, come again?" Kakashi asked apprehensively.
Hiruzen's brain, meanwhile, was working a mile a minute. Danzo's impromptu idea wasn't so bad, he thought, as proctoring the second stage of the exams would keep Kakashi busy, hopefully far away from their guest. On the other hand, the very reason why they were having so much trouble choosing the next proctor was because Ibiki had failed too many candidates, to the point of seeming biased and unfair. However, Konoha couldn't just fully bow to the other nation's protests either lest they seem weak. It was a very delicate situation and Kakashi wasn't exactly known for his delicate teaching methods. Unfortunately, Danzo had already spoken up in Hiruzen's name, and if he contradicted him, it would only raise Kakashi's suspicions about the actual topic of discussion… which had been their guest.
Hiruzen sighed.
"Kakashi, the council has spoken. You will proctor the second phase of the chunin exams. Whatever test you may think of is fine – within reason of course…"
"We want a test which will get our guests to simmer down and cease their trivial complaints," Danzo added. "It has to be a fair test; one every candidate has the chance of passing. Should be easy, don't you think, Hatake?"
Kakashi, on his part, was deeply regretting ever being born. "...right."
Meanwhile, in another part of the village, Anko Mitarashi had just been told by a messenger that she would not be the proctor of the second exam after all. She'd been understandably mad about this diss and ran off in a huff. The chance to frighten a bunch of genin had been exciting, damn it. Currently, she was jogging through the forbidden forest in order to deactivate the electricity, hot water and other similar necessities which she'd already instated in preparation of the exam within the tower in training ground 44. She had just crossed about half of the Forest of Death, when a sudden kunai sailing toward her had Anko stopping in her tracks.
She glanced around warily.
"Who's there?" she barked.
Only the sounds of the forest replied, which merely served to unnerve Anko further. She knew that there were no fellow ninja around in a ten kilometer radius. Except, it seemed, an enemy.
"Alright, scumbag," ventured Anko with bravado. "We can do this the easy way, or the hard way. Now come out, before I make you."
"My, my," someone said from behind her. "How impolite. It's rude to call your beloved teacher a scumbag, you know?"
Anko swiveled around and found herself face to face with her former teacher and current criminal: Orochimaru of the Legendary Sannin. She suppressed a violent shiver.
"What are you doing here?"
"Oh? Can't I pay my favorite student a visit?" said the man as he liked his lips ominously.
"I was your only student," Anko remarked coldly. "But that died as soon as you left the village, you filthy traitor."
"Tut, tut. I fear I may have to teach you some manners again."
"Over my dead body!" Anko shouted.
Orochimaru just smiled and hummed. "That can be easily arranged, my dear." And when Anko next looked down, she had a sword protruding from her chest. "Sweet dreams… I fear you won't wake up."
Slowly and yet all at once, the pain began to register until it became unbearable. With a wet gasp, Anko fell to her knees. "W-why?" she choked; her last words.
"Oh? It's nothing personal, honey. I just needed to borrow your face for a while."
And then he slit her throat.