Jōnin began to show up for their teams. Sakura got an Inuzuka guy. He seemed nice enough, but I could tell just by looking at him that his test was going to be brutal. Poor girl looked super nervous, and I didn't blame her one bit. Kurenai arrived shortly after, practically radiating excitement. Then came Asuma, unlit cigarette in mouth, but that was the end of the people I knew. The room emptied out, leaving the three of us and Iruka-sensei. Eventually, even he left.
"I'm sure that your jōnin sensei just lost track of time," he assured us before leaving. "I bet that he'll be here before you know it."
Fat chance, I thought an hour later. Naruto had quickly become bored and was messing with everything that could be messed with. The chalkboard fell victim, then some papers that I really hoped weren't important. He frequently checked the hallway for any sign of our sensei.
I sort of dozed off here and there, jolted back to wakefulness everytime Naruto made something clatter. I finally ended up pulling out another book I'd been working on, a historical fiction about a healer in the warring clans era. It was very romantic, and honestly? I was down for it. Personally I shipped the healer with the Senju warrior. Ino shipped her with the Uchiha, and while I could see it, I just thought she had better chemistry with the Senju. He built her a clinic! I had sighed dramatically, pretending to swoon onto my bed.
Regardless. I vaguely kept an eye on Naruto as I read, trying to make sure he didn't get into too much trouble. Iruka-sensei would be pretty upset if we let Naruto break into his desk, though what else he would expect leaving us without an adult, I'm not sure.
"What are you doing?" Sasuke asked exasperatedly as Naruto wedged a chalk eraser between the door and the frame. I could sense a lazily sparking chakra steadily drawing closer. Underneath the calm flow, I felt the tight wire underneath. Who ever it was - and oh boy I really wonder who it could possibly be - was prepared for whatever he encountered.
"Revenge!" Naruto grinned. "This is what our sensei gets for being so late!"
"Tch. Idiot."
"I think it's a good idea," I smirked. Who knows? Maybe the prank would work. It wasn't one of his best, by any means, but… well, anything could happen. "Clearly, he doesn't respect our time, so there's only one way to teach him a lesson." Sasuke gave me a look. I grinned back at him. The lightning chakra came closer. Ooh, this was going to be good.
"Our teacher's a jōnin," Sasuke said quietly. "An elite ninja. You really think he'd fall for that?"
"I sincerely hope so," I frowned. "I'll be really disappointed if he doesn't." Sasuke scoffed again, but kept one eye firmly on the door regardless. There's the twelve year old boy I knew was in there. He was just as invested in this prank as we were, he just didn't want us to know that he was invested. What a dork.
The door opened, and our sensei's hair was covered with white dust as the eraser fell on his head. It was barely noticeable, thanks to its silver color. My mouth curved into a grin as Naruto laughed. Hatake Kakashi looked pretty much like I was expecting. Though seeing him in person did raise one question: What did he put in his hair to make it stick up like that? I needed to get me a bottle of that. It would make for an excellent prank on Ino. Or Shika. Or Chōji.
"I got him, I got him!" Naruto cheered. Sasuke's chakra shifted to disbelief.
"Nice shot, Naruto," I nodded, still grinning.
Kakashi picked the eraser up from the floor and deliberately placed it on the desk. "Hmm… how can I put this?" he mused, rubbing his masked chin. "My first impression of you guys… Well, I hate you." Naruto and Sasuke glanced at each other in surprise.
"It was just a joke," Naruto said quietly. My eyes narrowed. Something wasn't quite right about that. There wasn't hatred in his chakra - the Three knew I knew what that felt like - but it wasn't apathy like his blank face suggested. Curiosity, anticipation. I tilted my head. Something else I couldn't quite recognize. Wistfulness?
"Well, we hate you too, Sensei," I smiled, making sure it didn't reach my eyes. "Can we all move on with our lives now that you're here?" I saw a glint of something in his only visible eye - either sadism or approval - but it vanished before I could decide which.
"Hmm. I suppose so." His eye closed in what I assumed to be a smile. "Let's meet up on the roof, shall we?" Then he vanished.
"Man, our sensei sucks," Naruto muttered.
"I don't know, he's kind of cute," I replied, snapping my book shut. They both gave me a horrified look.
"Who are you and what have you done with Inoko?" Naruto asked suspiciously. "Inoko never thinks guys are cute."
"Maybe that's just because all the guys in our class aren't attractive enough," I replied, staring at Sasuke. He almost flinched. I shoved my book into my bag and began to make my way up to the roof, ignoring Naruto and Sasuke's bickering behind me. Kakashi was waiting there for us, leaning casually on the railing. I lay down on the nearby stairs and stared at the sky. Naruto and Sasuke sat on either side of me, pointedly not looking at each other. I sighed heavily. This team is going to take a lot of work, isn't it?
"Well, then, let's get started, shall we?" Kakashi said. "Why don't you introduce yourselves?" There was silence. That's not ambiguous at all. Or ominous, for that matter.
"You guys could try names, likes, dislikes, hobbies, dreams for the future," I suggested from my lying down position. "Things like that. You go first, Sensei, and show us how it's done." I sat up and grinned.
"Hmm. Well, my name is Hatake Kakashi," he drawled. "I have no desire to tell you my likes and dislikes. My dream for the future… Hmm… I can't say I have one. As for my hobbies… I have lots of hobbies."
"We didn't learn anything," Naruto whispered loudly. As revenge, I guessed from what little I remembered of his personality, Sensei gestured for him to go next.
"Oh! Ok!" Naruto said cheerfully. "I'm Uzumaki Naruto! I like pork ramen, beef ramen, miso ramen, and just about every other kind of ramen! I don't like the three minute wait time for instant ramen! And I don't like Sasuke! My hobbies are eating ramen and training! And my dream… is to become the greatest Hokage! I'll surpass all the others! Then everyone will have to stop disrespecting me and start treating me like I'm somebody!"
"You know, Sasuke, I wonder if he likes ramen," I said dryly. Sasuke snorted. Ha.
"Ok, now for the other blonde," Sensei replied with a bit too much cheer in his voice. Oh damn, putting me on the spot. Nice.
"I'm Yamanaka Inoko," I said, blinking slowly. "I like my immediate family, and my few friends, among sleep and various foods. I don't like people who think they're better than everyone else because of their experience or family, one of my clan elders, and I don't like green beans. I'm an insomniac, so I have lots of hobbies." I nodded at him after saying that. "One of them is creating psychological profiles for people I interact with often. My dream for the future… hmm… doesn't really matter right now. Suffice it to say that I want to become more powerful." I would have to in order to save my father.
Kakashi hummed softly, giving me a look. I stared back until he glanced over to Sasuke, nodding at him.
"My name is Uchiha Sasuke," he droned. "I hate a lot of things, and I don't particularly like anything. What I have is not a dream, because I will make it a reality. I'm going to restore my clan, and kill a certain someone…" I sighed heavily. I felt like this was already becoming a pattern.
"You're such a drama queen, Sasuke."
"Shut up, owl."
"That hurts, Sasuke. Gets me right here." I tapped over my heart before returning my attention to Kakashi. "What now, Sensei?"
"Well, you're each unique and you have your own ideas." He blinked a couple times before continuing. "We'll have our first mission tomorrow."
"What kind of mission are we going to have? Are we going to rescue princesses? Or overthrow an evil warlord?" Naruto asked excitedly.
"It's a task that the four of us will do together," Kakashi said. I got the distinct impression that he was smirking.
"What what what whaaat?" Naruto pleaded.
"A survival exercise," Kakashi replied casually. I could almost hear Naruto's dreams crashing and burning. It sounded a lot like a slide whistle and an exploding tag at the end.
"Whaat?" he complained. "We did tons of those in the Academy."
Kakashi sighed. He seemed annoyed that he had to deal with us at all. At least pretend like you want to be here. "This is not like your previous training."
"What's the catch?" I asked slowly as Naruto scratched his head beside me. Kakashi cocked his head to the side and pretended to be confused. "There's always a catch, Sensei. I can promise you that I'm smarter than I look. So what exactly will we be doing?" A bit of a dark aura began to leak out of our new teacher. He began to laugh softly and menacingly.
"What's so funny?" Naruto whispered to me. "It was a normal question, right?"
"If I tell you the answer, you're not going to like it~" Kakashi said. A smile crept across my face.
"Try us, Sensei," I said.
"Well, of the twenty seven kids who graduated from the Academy, only nine will become genin." Naruto's eyes widened, and even Sasuke seemed a bit surprised. Determined, but surprised nonetheless. "The other eighteen will be sent back to the Academy. In other words, this is a pass/fail test with an extremely high fail rate of sixty-six percent or more. See? I told you you wouldn't like it."
"Then what was that graduation test for, then?" Naruto demanded. "We worked hard to get here!"
"Oh, that? That was just to weed out the completely hopeless, and to select the candidates who might become genin. Or not." He sounded very nonchalant about the whole matter.
I was liking him more and more.
"Whaaat?!" Naruto gasped.
"Well, that's how it is," Sensei smiled. His voice hardened. "I decide whether you become genin or get sent back to the Academy. Be at Training Ground Three with your complete weapon set at five A.M." Naruto fumed next to me, and Sasuke's knuckles were white. I raised my hand.
"Can we go home now? I'm hungry and drowning in testosterone over here."
"Hmm… Yes, you're dismissed. And I just remembered. Don't eat breakfast tomorrow morning, unless you enjoy throwing up." He shunshined away, leaving us behind.
"Well, I think he's a pretty nice guy," I decided, standing.
"Nice?" Naruto spluttered. "He didn't tell us anything about himself, he was insanely late, and he's all around a jerk!"
"I learned quite a bit about him, though. Maybe you weren't paying attention," I mused.
"How did you learn anything about him?" Sasuke finally said. "I hate to agree with Naruto, of all people, but he has a point."
"The fact that he was late can tell us two things: One, he's either forgetful or irresponsible. Two, he just doesn't care about being on time." I held up two fingers. "The fact that he's a jōnin means that it's likely the later. He didn't want to tell us about his likes and dislikes, meaning that it's likely not for the ears of children, or that he just doesn't care about life that much. This is backed up by the fact that he doesn't care about punctuality and the fact that he has no dream for the future. I'd peg his age at around mid-twenties, meaning that he almost certainly fought in the Third War, so probably some kind of trauma in his background as well. If he is in fact in his mid-twenties, then he was just a few years older than us during the Kyuubi attack." Sasuke was too focused on my words to notice, but I saw Naruto's slight squirming. "He said that he has lots of hobbies, but didn't even name one. So again, probably not for the ears of children."
I blinked slowly, allowing the information to sink in. Creating psychological profiles for the past five years meant that I could now make a fairly basic one on the fly. I figured it was a decently useful skill to have.
"If you put that all together, then you find out that our new sensei is almost certainly a man that's had horrible PTSD since he was our age or younger and either can't or won't get therapy for it, has done a lot of things in life that he's not proud of, and deals with the bad memories with things that could be considered perverted. It's pretty obvious." Naruto gaped at me, and Sasuke seemed shocked as well. "... What?"
"It was not obvious!" Naruto shouted. "I never would have seen that in a million years!"
"He's right," Sasuke said quietly. "To have extrapolated that amount of information out of so few words…"
"I've been doing this for a while," I laughed nervously, scratching the back of my neck. "You remember when Naruto shut the school down for a week with one of his pranks? I spent it making profiles for a good deal of people in the clan. I've gotten good at it, I guess."
"Hey hey hey!" Naruto waved his hand. "Have you made one for me?"
"Nooo," I said slowly. "After doing Ino and Shikamaru, I decided that adults are much more interesting than children, and don't bother with them. I'm sure that Sasuke would be an interesting one," I mused, talking more to myself at this point than anything else. I tapped my chin for a moment, thinking. "Anyway! I'm going home now. See you in the morning."
Saying that, I proceeded to get the crap out of there. My new team was a can of worms I would put off opening until absolutely necessary.