"Hello, my cute little maybe-genin! Sorry, I'm so late! I got lost in the magical world of a book I was reading, and I had to go on an epic quest to find my way back out!" The silver-haired man chirped at them.
"I've never heard a worse lie in my life" Sasuke.
"Inari-sama save me from this damned buffoon" Naruto.
"Did he really just say that?" Sakura.
"Cha, what a fuckin' moron!" Inner-Sakura bringing up the rear.
All three just stared at the one-eyed jounin. Half shocked he even tried to get away with something so audacious in the first place, and half wondering if he had the balls to keep up the charade.
Kakashi dropped his eye smile and stared back. If his maybe-genin wanted to play, he'd play damn it.
He stared at them and they stared back.
And stared back.
And stared back.
And stared back.
The staring reached the 5-minute mark with not one student even twitching for a second.
Kakashi blinked. Damn today's youth and their shark-like ability to stare so blankly! It was probably all the lessons they went through, having graduated so early Kakashi had technically spent less than maybe 6 months total in a classroom being taught shit and thus hadn't had time to develop the dead-eyed stare that had been used on him just now. Damn.
The maybe-genin looked smug. Kakashi was going to fix that. With violence. Violence cleverly disgusted as training. Violent training.
The maybe-genin had started to sweat under their maybe-sensei's increasingly dark gaze. All three shivered, suddenly feeling like something terrible was waiting in the shadows for them.
"Alright!" Kakashi clapped his hands together sharply, "It's time to get started kiddies." His mask hid his shark-like grin, but he felt the point was gotten across just fine when all 3 looked increasingly nervous.
Kakashi walked past the youngsters to the three tall logs in the middle of the clearing and hopped up to sit on the middle one.
"It's good all three of you came, it makes this more interesting." He knew he sounded giddy but honestly, he was excited for this. This was his chance to make something great of the daughter of his dear Sensei, to do what his Sensei always wanted for him, to lead, to teach! The Uchiha and the civilian went really of no interest to him speaking frankly. He knew the only reason he'd even been given the chance to teach Naruto was that she ended up on the same team as the Uchiha. Hopefully, the boy would try and live up to the hype and move to chuunin quickly so Kakashi could devote his full attention to making Sensei's daughter great.
Blinking to pull himself out of his thoughts of the future Kakashi reached for the thick scroll he had commissioned the same day the kids had taken the first half of their genin test. Unreeling the long scroll was easy with the years of practice he had behind him and the kids only caught a glimpse of the seals neatly written down its length before Kakashi was channeling chakra and tossing the scroll up as high as he could. A kind of chime-gong sound signaled the barrier scroll activating perfectly.
Now they were closed in five miles of forest.
"That," He pointed up, "Was a barrier scroll. A high-level sealing technique that must be ordered from outside the village because Seal Masters: a person that has mastered the art using sealing kanji for battle, are very rare. The one I just activated will last for three days. That's three days and two nights to get these from me." From his hip pouch, he drew two silver bells. "I expect you to come at me with intent to kill, you three will do everything in your power to get these from me or you will fail." He emphasized
The pink one spoke up first, "K-Kill you! But you're our Sensei, wha-what if we hurt you?" He scoffed, "Trust me you won't."
Next was Naruto, "Are there any safe places where we can't attack you? Like your camp, or when you're taking a piss?" Her blue eyes had locked on to the bells the second he took them out of his pouch and as he maybe on purpose let them swing from his fingers just a bit more she tracked that too. Heh, she always had liked shiny things. "No there's not a safe place for me, or you." Her attention snapped up to his face at that. Her gaze was blade sharp.
Sasuke was pissed and just a bit panicked. How did that dope figure out what was going on before him? He was a genius, he came from a whole clan of geniuses! The class idiot shouldn't figure things out before him.
Far enough in the forest, he stopped in the branches of a tree to make a game plan.
The Silver Bastard said to get the bells but there were only two, that meant this was a free for all kind of game. He would get one of the bells, there was no question about that, but which of the other two useless dead weights would get the other was up to debate. Uzumaki might be an idiot that got kicked out of class almost every day, but she wasn't afraid to start breaking noses when people talked shit which was better than Haruno's favorite go-to of hair pulling and bird-like screeching.
Sasuke huffed, took a kunai out of his pack, and started to plan. He had a bell to get.
Sakura could feel her heart fluttering as she raced away from her sensei after Naruto and Sasuke. There were only two bells! Just two! One, two! She was about to start fully panicking, she knew she wasn't the strongest or the most battle capable. Sasuke was the Rookie of the Year for crying out loud! And Naruto, though obviously a complete idiot at classroom stuff, was almost in the top three of the class on combat skills alone and she just knew planning half of those stupid pranks of hers took at least some smarts so Sakura totally didn't understand why Naruto was the Dead-Last when she was obviously smart and THERE WERE ONLY TWO BELLS AND SAKURA WAS GOING TO FAIL A TEST FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HER LIFE AND THEN SHE'D FLUNK OUT OF THE ACADEMY AND THEN SASUKE WOULD NEVER MARRY AND THEY'D NEVER HAVE THREE KIDS AND A DOG AND! AND! AND SOMEONE WAS SHAKING HER!
"Haruno snap out of it!" Uzumaki hissed.
Naruto was so done with humans and their unfun tricks. Honestly, this one wasn't even that clever, the answer was either to work together or kill the other two and take both bells for herself. But she knew trying to kill the village's prize Uchiha was a no go from the get-go. So, teamwork was the only option. Besides Konoha held teamwork in high regard and there had never been a two-man genin team. So, her only challenge was getting two people who had been practically brainwashed by the village to hate and not trust her. No brainer. And no, she wasn't being sarcastic. At all. Ugh!
Settling further into the branches of one of Konoha's huge signature trees Naruto turned her face into the wind and listened to what she brought.
Excuse me how much are the salmon?, the market.
Good job! Now we'll be moving on to taijutsu, the Academy. Her dark eyebrows furrowed as she concentrated on the lighter winds that wound through the trees below.
You're still pulling to the right Shika-chan try again, good a little closer she cocked her head a bit more to the left.
Why are there only two bells!? How am I going to pass?, Bingo! That was Haruno's voice from the north-east.
A chakra enhanced push had her out of the tree and skittering across the treetops, pure momentum keeping her in motion.
Kakashi gave them what he felt was a very generous 8 minutes to freak out before he snapped his book shut and focused his gaze somewhere beyond the tree line in the distance. "Time to play." He smirked and shunshined to the Uchiha first, he heard that the boy was pretty good at ninjutsu when he was eavesdropping on the Academy teachers. It was only best that Kakashi tests his genjutsu sensory then right? Right!