Oh would you look at that, the next chapter of the series is here! And if you're going to ask, I'm considering focusing on this one for chapters daily (if not 2-3 days), while Elsword: The Magician II will be weekly instead. Though don't bet on that. Shit happens. Anyways, last time the Hokage gave the group their orders...now how will their training before the Chunin exam arc go? Find out below...after the disclaimer.
DISCLAIMER: I do not, I say, I do NOT own Naruto, its characters, any of the locations, or the techniques from the franchise. I do however own this story and whatever custom techniques I came up with. If I did own Naruto though, I wouldn't be writing this disclaimer and making myself look like a repetitive idiot in the process. Now shut up to the Copyright Nazis, and enjoy the chapter!
Chapter 4: Training Hell and More
Training Ground 3, Konohagakure, Land of Fire
It was about two days after the group returned from Wave when they met up over at the Third Training Ground, the same one the original Team 7 trio used before Wave, mainly during Kakashi's infamous bell test.
However this time they were joined by Haku. Unlike before however, since her gender had been revealed, why she still wore the same style of clothing, there were at least two differences.
The first being that she obviously no longer wore her mask that she used as a Hunter Nin disguise, showing her slender, beautiful face and chocolate color eyes to all. Second was that while before she bandaged her...assets down to only be noticeable if her clothes were messed up, now she didn't bandage them as tightly.
Of course, Sakura felt her eye twitch for a moment while her inner self was screaming about the injustice of bust size...but she simply ignored it.
Naruto, under a transformation jutsu to hide his fox features, said to the ice user "Hey Haku! If you're here, guess that means you passed!"
Haku nodded with a smile, she had to admit she enjoyed the blond's enthusiasm, it was almost contagious. She then looked over towards Sasuke who simply gave the classic Uchiha "Hnn."
She was now according to the Third Hokage part of Team 7. She had taken her exam yesterday, which was fairly easy since she had been trained by a Jonin level shinobi for years, and unlike him, they weren't basing their test off of wartime standards. Though then again, she also started to wonder if perhaps Zabuza had gone easy on her at times, but decided to not worry about it.
Though of course, one thing that she came to be annoyed about in the village was the blasted civilian council. They straight up demanded that she make them children, even more so if it was with the Uchiha. Fortunately Lord Third was tired of their crap as of late and forbade them from bothering Haku.
However, she was also laughing on the inside since if they knew what she knew about Sasuke, it would make them run around like headless chickens.
What surprised the entirety of Team 7 though, including Haku herself, was of all the things, Kakashi arrived on time.
That's right, for once, he wasn't late.
Sakura's face went pale, Sasuke and Haku's eyes grew as wide as saucers, and Naruto started muttering about the apocalypse.
Hokage's Office
Even the Sandaime from his office felt a slight disturbance, just to check his crystal ball to notice that Kakashi was on time for once.
The Sandaime paused for a moment before he said "Either Kakashi has decided to take his job seriously….or the world is about to end...well, fingers crossed!"
One of the Anbus in the room responded "Oh come on, he's not that bad."
The second Anbu then said "Oh he is, I remember the one time he arrived a DAY late to his own birthday party. Then there was the time when he arrived two hours late to a funeral. For the previous fire Daiymo. That was nearly a disaster."
The first Anbu simply blinked in astonishment before they said "...point taken."
Back at the Training Ground
Kakashi looked at them with a bit of a deadpan before he said "What, am I really that late all of the time?"
"Yes, yes you are." the four members of Team 7...as well as several nearby Anbu members said at the same time.
Kakashi simply shrugged it off before he said "Alright alright. In any case, let's get to work then. First though, Naruto if you would?"
Naruto nodded before making a single Shadow clone for his father to take over. Though since this wasn't a private setting, he stuck with looking like his son.
Minato then said to them "I can't teach you each of you everything, but I will at least give you pointers on what you need. We all have our own strong suits that can be worked on. So in any case, I'll be giving you direction, and Kakashi here will make sure you follow on it."
Kakashi nodded as he said the words that would begin the next month for the group "Alright then, let's begin. Also, even though we're training, we'll still be doing missions, and you know what that means!"
The latter part of said sentence made the entirety of Team 7, minus Minato and Kakashi, groan in unison.
Sasuke's Training
For Sasuke's training, Minato put him under direct supervision of Kakashi, due to his thoughts on how similar their fighting styles were. Kakashi accepted the task with a shrug and Sasuke a 'hnn'.
This ended up including three things, sparring, practice on using the sharingan, and also…
"Okay Sasuke, since you know some fire style jutsus, I want to test your chakra natures, who knows, maybe you have another element available." Kakashi said as he pulled out a piece of paper. Sasuke knew what the paper was for after all, so he simply took it out of his hand and charged his chakra in it. And the results.
"Let's see...oh would you look at that, fire and lightning. While you do have your fire style down to par already, the fact you have lightning makes this quite good for you." Kakashi said to Sasuke.
"And why is that?" Sasuke asked the cyclops jonin.
"Because it's my specialty." Kakashi said with one of his eye smiles.
Sasuke nodded, being ready for anything.
"Now for starters…" Kakashi spoke as he reached into his pouch.
"...light these light bulbs."
...Sasuke wasn't ready for this.
Kakashi laughed as he said "Oh relax, it could be worse. If you had water affinity, you would have to actually go into the water, and yes, I know that secret."
Sasuke looked at him in alarm before he said "...don't you dare tell the loudmouth or the fangirl...I am definitely not ready for that disaster."
"It was your choice you know." Kakashi replied.
Sasuke shook his head before he said "No, more like dad's."
Kakashi thought about this for a moment before he said "...makes sense."
Sakura's Training
While Sasuke was off getting the majority of Kakashi's attention, Sakura could only think of her tasks as a hellish boot camp.
First, not only did she have to quit dieting. She whined about it at first, but with Kakashi nudging Sasuke, Sasuke convinced her that if she wanted to be a worthy ninja, she needed to stop it. So in the end she obliged.
However, it was the second part that made her think of this as a boot camp from hell.
"Come on Sakura! Embrace the power of youth!"
Of all the things Kakashi-Sensei and Lord Fourth had to do to her, it was to have Might Gai, the bowl cut training nut (OF YOUTH!), be her fitness instructor. She would have sworn his regime was inhuman if she didn't see what she first couldn't help but think of Gai's clone, as well as their two other teammates do so as well. Heck, the one with her brown hair set up in two buns, Tenten, she was getting along with out of sympathy.
Besides the end of her dieting and training hell though, she was also reporting to the Konoha hospital in order to learn medical ninjutsu (aka iryojutsu). Lord Fourth said that with her chakra control, she could learn medical ninjutsu or genjutsu quite well. Though she chose the former, mainly because when she told Tenten about her current regime, Tenten told her about the Sannin Tsunade, who was an expert in taijutsu and iryojutsu. And so, she learned from the medical ninja there so that she could at least get herself up to par as a field medic for the team.
Haku's Training
While the others were being trained by instructors or so forth, Haku on the other hand was on her own. Minato had recommended to her to expand her repertoire of ice style jutsu, and possibly water and wind since those were the chakra natures that made up the ice style chakra nature. This meant testing her control over the ice style as well as improving it. And while she did have a decent amount of water jutsu and control due to Zabuza, on the other hand...
"Hmm...this is a bit more difficult than it looks." she thought as she worked on trying to cut a leaf with wind chakra for training. She then looked behind her to see many...many other leaves that were either partially cut, or damaged in other ways.
However, her work on ice style was showing her efforts, she had to admit without Zabuza hovering over her at the moment, she was getting a little creative with it...as the sheer amount of ice and snow all over the training field she was in showed.
And of course she did sense a few other presences lying around, however one presence in particular seemed to scare them from doing anything.
She wondered though just what Zabuza was up to though.
Zabuza's situation
In comparison to Team 7, Zabuza was getting a bit more of a cold shoulder from the village. However, they were quite cooperative with him. But then again, he did have quite a nasty reputation. It was times like this he really wondered what the fuck was he thinking when he slaughtered that class back in Kiri.
In any case though, they ended up accepting his story after several, annoying hours of questioning, and Hiruzen would be sending several Anbu to Mist to get some info from there. Meanwhile he decided with Zabuza's skills and current reputation to put him in the Anbu, which he said would allow him to blend in a bit since all the Anbu tend to wear masks.
Next thing he knew, he was given the codename 'Demon', an Anbu mask that went with that, and a job that Zabuza, just from his first glance, accepted with a "I'll take it!"
His first job with them was to literally guard Haku. The Third Hokage told him that one of his...less savory acquaintances, might attempt to make a move on Haku despite him telling the Civilian Council Haku was to not be disturbed by them. And while he wasn't given permission to kill...he very much enjoyed making from what he could tell were emotionless shinobi, actually feel fear.
Use the girl he considered his daughter as a farm for ice jutsu users? In their dreams!
Though he still couldn't help but let his eye twitch every time Haku was enjoying herself in Naruto's company. Heck the guy he was working with gave a bit of a snicker.
As for said boy…
Naruto's Training...that took place away from the rest of the group so he doesn't need to keep up a transformation jutsu the whole damn time.
If Sakura thought she was being put through the ringer, Naruto had it just as hard. His father was training him in a variety of subjects in a special training ground he made under the Namikaze Estate. At first, Naruto thought it would be great!...but now he knew it hurt...a LOT.
First, there was taijutsu training, in which Minato was working on fixing up all of the errors in Naruto's fighting styles...mainly being...
"Naruto, again, don't run in blind. Think before you do!" Minato said to him after putting him in an arm lock.
"UUUUGGHHH! DARNIT!" Naruto groaned in annoyance.
On the plus side though, he was slowly showing improvement in the subject.
As for his ninjutsu, he was getting help from Minato on wind release, which was revealed to be his natural chakra nature. Though of course he ended up getting quite annoyed at the leaf cutting exercise until Minato recommended using Shadow Clones, revealing the jutsu's secret to him as well. Besides that Minato was drilling Naruto in chakra control exercises. Naruto found himself quite annoyed that due to what happened to him, not only did his reserve nearly double in size...but his chakra control essentially got cut in half. The Kyuubi seemed to enjoy the free entertainment though of first watching Naruto fall off trees over and over, and later fall into ice water at a lake Minato asked Haku to cool down beforehand.
All of the above was better than his genjutsu though. Due to his abysmal chakra control, the fourth simply taught him how to break genjutsus.
As for the training from Kyuubi though…
"...Wow...just...wow"
"Hey! I didn't mean to set the whole tree on fire!" Naruto pouted.
The Kyuubi laughed its evil laugh as it said "Fleshbag, it's called right now, you suck."
Naruto was quite annoyed with the Kyuubi when it came to the training Naruto how to use the Kyuubi's Fox Fire. However it was quite different in learning how to use his new senses. At the point about a month had passed, Naruto's senses were not only controlled, but he even could be said to be better than an Inuzuka. Even the Kyuubi felt like gloating a little that at least one part of the training from the Kyuubi was going better than Minato's.
"Hah! Take that fool! Now it's 3-3!"
Minato ruined its gloating though as he said "You forgot about my little clone trick that you can't do, so actually 4-3."
As a result, in the seal the Kyuubi ended up pouting for a bit at him. It swore that if there was one thing for certain, it wouldn't be letting the Fourth Hokage of all people get the last laugh.
The whole group
However, if there was one thing all of Team 7, minus Kakashi who didn't care and Minato who found it amusing, all despised, it was the D-rank missions.
Varying from cleaning up someone's yard, painting a fence, babysitting, and the horrid, horrid mission of catching the infamous Tora, it was all something they got annoyed about.
On the plus side though, there was one or two C-rank missions that they occasionally did. Of course in comparison to their first C-rank mission, it wasn't as hectic. But then again, most genin didn't get missions that went from C-rank all the way to A-rank because it turned out your client was being targeted by high rank missing nins.
Though one positive result was the team was improving on their bonds with each other, which was in fact the objective of low rank missions. Team-Building.
Plus the pranks Naruto and Haku sometimes pulled on some of the populace. While it made the two closer...I'll be nice enough to leave the civilians some digni...oh who am I kidding? I'll tell you they swapped the merchandise of several shops with Naruto's knowledge of fuinjutsu with Haku doing distractions, messing up many peoples' sense of heat with well timed control of fire and ice. And lastly, painting an entire street's worth of civilian shops, who never sell to Naruto for being the Kyuubi brat, in orange paint, outside AND inside mind you, and with Haku then freezing it afterwards to make it harder to get off. The Third Hokage couldn't help but wonder whether to laugh at the pranks, or blame them for the headaches caused by the civilians afterwards.
However, there was also one other thing that occurred during this time…
With Jiraya
"Do you understand what I mean don't tell anyone?" Jiraya said to the young bluenette girl with pale eyes.
Hinata nodded as she said "I-I do."
Jiraya then asked her "And do you have fear of him?"
Hinata then shook her head as she said "No of course not! I think they make him look c-cute...er cool...I d-don't know which one!"
Jiraya nodded before he the moment of realization popped into his head.
Omikami...is this the Hyuuga they mentioned had a crush on Naruto? Okay one, that's a lucky break for us. And two...that lucky little motherfucker! I know that ice girl is into him too but both of them are gonna grow up to be fine women! It's almost like Minato all over again!...Wait a minute...unlike Minato, Naruto could be put under CRA if he wanted t-
Hinata was a bit weirded out by the perverted grin that seemed to appear on the Sannin's face before she said "Um...Jiraya-sama?"
That happened to snap him out of it as his face got back in order as he said "Right, you're dismissed."
The moment she left, Jiraya quickly pulled out his notebook before writing down furiously while he thought My godson is a KAMI damn gold mine! I have to make sure though he or his eventual women never know I used them as writing material...I do not need a repeat of what Kushina and Mikoto did to me that one time…
In any case, Team 7 trained, Jiraya wrote for his smut in his notebook, Zabuza simply guarded over his step daughter, and the Third Hokage suffered the agony of paperwork, with one or two of those days he had a hangover.
And so, about a month had passed…
And while Team 7 and the other rookie teams remained ignorant of it…
The Chunin exams hosted in Konoha would begin soon.
Minato: Well, I hope everyone's training shows in the upcoming arc.
Sakura: ...I don't know what I hate you more for WVH...what you're doing to Sasuke in this story...or tossing me to Might Gai of all people...
WVH: Do you want to wait til post time skip to be useful?
Sakura: ...
Zabuza: Damn that was cold.
Haku: Indeed, and I'm the ice user here.
Naruto: It's okay Sakura, at least you'll be useful this time around in the Chunin Exams.
Sakura: Thanks Naruto.
Sasuke: As long as we don't have to deal with that white skinned pedo we'll be fine.
Orochi-pedo: You ran-...WVH, what is the meaning of this?
WVH trying to hold back his laughter: In any c-case everyone, d-don't forget to R&R and come back for more!
WVH then runs away laughing from an angry Orochi-Pedo.
Naruto: ...I'm saving that one.
