I do not own Naruto – if I did, Kakashi would really be great – like a Sannin etc etc etc… and we'd see what's under his mask.

THANK YOU ONE AND ALL WHO REVIEWED!

It really warms my heart and keeps me going! Keep reading and reviewing!

Believe it or not - this fan fic is now a total of 65,000 words (203 pages) (Microsoft Office doc)! YIKES! But you won't get the latest I wrote, just what I promised! hehehe!

I hope you enjoy the fight scenes!

Revelation of the Wolf: The Glory of the Hatake Clan

Iruka: Step to Strength

"Eh! Eh! Iruka-sensei! You watch! When I get back I'll be so strong I will be able to beat you in a fair match – that Ero-sannin is going to teach me super strong jutsus! What d'you say to that, huh?"

Iruka grinned over his bowl of ramen.

"Naruto-kun, I'm sure you will do amazing – as usual. But or course I will also be busy training…. I'm sure that after a year I'd still be able to beat you."

"Whaaaat? Are you so sure?" Naruto protested. He pouted. "Aaahhhh! Give me more ramen! I won't be eating at the Ichiraku Ramen shop for a long while now."

"Ehhhh? Hey! Stop that! Do I look rich to you?"

"You WOULD say that," Iruka snorted.

"I was there," repeated Kakashi. "Several months ago. I had reached a plateau just as you have reached one."

Iruka looked up.

"What did you do?" he asked.

"What did I do?" Kakashi asked. "You should know what I did. You sit beside Tsunade."

"Uh… she said you were training."

"So you should train too."

"But I have nothing special! Even the Rookie Nine have more special traits individually than me!"

"Yes, but you are the one who taught them everything." Kakashi said. "You're probably – no, you ARE – smarter than the whole bunch. Use those brains of yours. Think up your own jutsus – just like I have. Or do research on some old, forgotten ones – or something."

"Genma…." Iruka said one day as he sat on the back of the lazy senbon fiend, relaxing his headlock. "You said once that I had weakling skills….."

"I did?" A beat. "How drunk was I?"

Iruka considered this for a minute.

"Is that important?" he asked, innocently.

Genma rolled his eyes.

"Well… yeah!"

There was a pause.

Then Iruka.

"What are you like when you're drunk?"

Another beat.

"Well…. I don't know…."

"I thought you said you never got drunk!"

"Well…. When I get drunk, I just get more sarcastic and pessimistic. That's all."

"You're like that ALL the time!" Iruka paused. "You're not drunk all the time are you?"

"Mmmm….. Is that a trick question?"

"Take this seriously, dammit!"

Iruka took the opportunity to pull the laid back Jounin into a rather painful body lock.

"This feels good, Iruka-sensei!" Genma drawled, face into the grass. "How 'bout you?"

Iruka yelped and jumped away.

"Geez!" Genma sighed watching the little pansy Chuunin edge away on his butt. "Hopeless, Iruka-sensei! You failed that test!"

"WHAT THE –"

Iruka screamed and then started to sputter.

"Say it."

"No."

"Just say it."

"NO!"

"Why not? It'll help you feel better…."

"It's a bad example and a bad habit!"

"Well…. You don't have to get so uptight about our training – I always did tell you to train with Kakashi…. Ever imagine getting him into that kind of a hold?"

Genma sighed at the thought.

Iruka went red.

"SHUT UP, DAMMIT!"

Genma grinned.

Mission accomplished! He thought.

"What?" asked Genma. "Gai, I know, has gotten Kakashi under him but of course he would never realize the significance and the opportunity that would give a man…."

Iruka blushed very hard at the thought of pinning Kakashi down to the ground – then his eyes widened.

"WHAT THE HELL? ARE YOU CRAZY? THIS IS KAKA-SENSEI WE'RE TALKING ABOUT!"

"Yeah, yeah." Genma nodded. "He'd kill me… but what can be better than to die in the arms of a sexy man?"

Iruka clenched his teeth, shook his fists and growled.

He is such a bonbon, sighed Genma internally. Just totally kawaii.

He sighed.

Iruka pounced, knocking the wind out of the blonde Jounin, and started to fight in earnest. Punches and blows were exchanged, swear words flew through the air.

"I'M NOT A WEAKLING! I'M NOT A WEAKLING!" screeched the chestnut-haired Chuunin.

"Okay! Okay!" Genma said, pulling away with gasping breaths.

Iruka fell back.

"You aren't anymore."

"Eh?"

"You HAVE become stronger. I'm sorry that I said that – when I'm drunk I tend to regress."

"Regress?"

"Regress…." Genma turned away. "You wouldn't understand, Iruka. You're so young! How could you?"'

"I AM NOT YOUNG, DAMMIT! I'm only one year younger than Kakashi!"

"Who said age had to deal with years?" asked Genma turning to Iruka, his eyes were old and cold and wintery.

Iruka stepped back, shivering.

"When you have seen them fall behind, fall down, many of them never to rise again…. You tend to be… a little cynical about the whole business… ya know? Of course, you see the good in everybody. Just like Hayate, yeah?"

Iruka looked bewildered.

"You see potential, Iruka-sensei. Just as all teachers and examiners do. I saw them fall. I saw them fail. I still see them dying on us, running on us, breaking on us. So. Yes, you ARE young. And who said that is bad? But before you walk this road – before you take a single step – you must ask yourself where it is that you are taking yourself."

"Eh?" asked Iruka, trying to understand the suddenly intense Jounin. "I want to be stronger for Konoha – like you, like Raido, like Ibiki, like Kakashi…."

"Is that such a good thing?" asked Genma.

"What?" asked Iruka. "I don't understand."

"You want to protect somebody special – and you will fight. All well and good. But always remember to have somebody to ground you. If you don't retain that eternal, irritating optimism, you'll end up like us. Asumo and Kurenai in denial, Gai bizarre, Ebisu a peeping tom…. Ibiki…. 'nuff said. Kakashi….. he hasn't been in a decent relationship for YEARS! And I mean, like more than a decade…. I don't know when was the last time he had sex to my knowledge…"

Iruka blushed.

"Do we WANT to know?"

Genma sighed.

"Whatever. That's not the point. The point is – Iruka, you are our strength. Your optimism, your tales, your normality, your innocence is the light at the end of our tunnel. Maybe that's why we all put up with your pansy ways and your general weepiness."

"I am NOT weepy! You're just like Kakashi!" Iruka growled. "I can do bad ass!"

"……Yuh-huh….."

"But! But! I don't want to just watch you walk away! I'm always watching you protect me – can't I protect somebody too?"

"Yep. That's why I'm standing here talking psychology with you." Genma nodded wisely. "Well….. the thing to fear is not death or your opponent but your own nerves. The day you lose your nerve, lose your resolve is the day the enemy wins. That's the day you die, or desert, or crack up or do something equally stupid. And without you…. well…. Jounins like Kakashi will just have one more HUGE disillusionment."

Iruka stared at the grass, running his hands through it.

They depend on me? Me? To be optimistic? That's it? Just being me and always offering hope?

Iruka stood up, face beaming with that particularly gentle soft smile of his. Genma choked on his senbon and sighed.

Iruka is NOT for me.

"Right then! Let's get to it!"

Let's get to it!

Thanks to Naruto, Kakashi and Genma I realized that I don't have to be stuck in the rut of being old weepy Iruka. When I fought against Mizuki, all I thought about was my deficiencies but now I see that anybody can change. And no ninja making fun of my ninja status is going to live long.

All his life Kaka-sensei has used his posture and body language to sucker people into thinking he's incompetent. But I just look at them with my – well – I'm NOT a bonbon – my innocent eyes and they'll think they've run into a young shinobi….

Here's my chance to protect the ones important to me. It's easy being a light at the end of the tunnel…. But this time around, I AM going to do the badass ninja.

I'm going to show them!

Let's get to it!

Iruka's clone trapped the first shinobi in a genjutsu, while his partner fell into a chakra twine trap. The latter was a sitting duck – Iruka finished him off, marveling at the speed he had dispatched his enemy.

Ten minutes, only? It felt like a year.

"KAI!" the Sound-nin yelled, releasing himself from the illusion.

Iruka blocked the man's kicks and blows automatically.

Thank you, Genma-san! Lee-kun!

As their pace picked up, so did his excitement. His opponent darted away to the river.

The river? Why the heck there? Whatever…. Water is good…. Let's race then…..

Iruka put on speed and circling around found himself facing his opponent on the water. Already the Sound-nin had activated a water spear jutsu.

Easy enough to dodge.

"Water Bullet no jutsu!"

The spray of the water in the air turned into small bullets and began to pelt the enemy, bruising him and knocking him off his feet.

Raising his speed, Iruka activated his "Body Flash no jutsu". His dazed opponent couldn't keep up with the speedy, flickering Leaf ninja.

Here, there, everywhere, he battered down on the barely moving shinobi. It was almost too easy. Standing and looking down at the unconscious shinobi, Iruka felt a sense of accomplishment.

A fatal kunai stab and his part of the mission had been completed. Now all he had to do was take Tsunade and run.

As he turned, he heard a dull resounding THUD which shook the earth, followed by another THUD.

Darting back to his hiding spot, he found Tsunade wide awake, trying to stand while yelling at someone.

Iruka stared.

"Pakkun?"

"Yo, Iruka! How's it goin'?"

Their shadowy ANBU escort lit down beside him.

Tall. Grey-haired. Muscular. Mysterious.

And yet not.

Iruka wasn't stupid.

Kakashi.

ANBU?

"Are you alright, Hokage-sama?" he asked worried, shoving back irrelevant details such as Kakashi's ANBU status.

"Well. I'm moving – but I still can't mold chakra. I'm trying to think – what did I eat? And that's the least of our worries."

"Eh?"

Tsunade pointed upwards.

What looked like a scaly tree –

What looked like a scaly tree MOVED.

"Awwwww, shit!" Kakashi sighed laconically. "Not him again!"

He sounded pissed off in a relaxed way. Like he was being forced to go to a dinner he didn't want to go to.

"You – you've met this guy?" stuttered Iruka, staring up at a huge reptile and a tall mysteriously cloaked shinobi standing on top of its head.

Kakashi shrugged, his mask tilted sideways mime-like.

"…… thought I killed him………"

"Well, you obviously didn't do a good job – finish him!" snapped Tsunade crossly.

Kakashi darted away.

"Where's Genma and Raido?" asked the blonde woman anxiously.