1
Regardless of how he likes to privately slack off, Ebisu actually is the single best teacher that Konoha currently has to offer. He made Chuunin on brains, Special Jounin on more brains and true Jounin on prior brains combined with raw experience. Having spent the better part of his career lording over the grandchildren of Sarutobi and his former teammates, Homura and Koharu, Ebisu knows the rudiments of virtually every declassified technique in Konoha. Whether he can do them himself or not is another matter.

So when his three brats--the three soldiers that they're rapidly turning into--show up at the Chuunin Exam boasting A-ranked jutsu, skills and knowledge, Ebisu is content to watch the other Jounin teachers, current and previous, eat crow like it's going out of style. Udon is the only one to make Chuunin, though he has to draw to do it, but Konohamaru advances to the semi-finals with ease and Moegi manages a near-S-ranked version of a former Uchiha fireball attack. While their success is mixed, his team is the only one to make it out of the preliminaries intact.

Later, when the three of them have their first major mission alongside Neji's pack of freaks, it is Ebisu who binds the five Genin and one Chuunin into a cohesive fighting unit. Udon and Takeshi splinter in the heat of battle, but Ebisu saw that coming and prepared them for it; Udon kills eight men singlehandedly and Takeshi survives solo combat with one of the enemy's top subordinates. Konohamaru and Hanabi work together in one of the most awkward-yet-functional pairings that Ebisu has ever seen; he almost levels half the battlefield, she almost levels him but somewhere in between her hands and his flames, the enemy falls. Saiten and Moegi compliment each other perfectly, and while both take injuries, they survive the battle intact.

And as for Ebisu and Neji?

Well, Neji kills a lot of people. But it's Ebisu who gets kissed by the Princess, so everything balances out and, once again, he gets to watch another hotshot Jounin eat crow.
2
One day, an opponent finally has the sense to ask Uzumaki Naruto a simple, straight-forward question: "Why the hell are you doing this?"

Naruto's response is equally simple and straight-forward: "Because it's what I live for!"

He has no idea how right he is.
3
In another lifetime, Orochimaru would've found none of them.

Kidoumaru would've assassinated Hyuuga Hiashi with an arrow to the spine and sparked a war. Jiroubou would've met Akimichi Chouza in battle and bested him outright, but Chouji would come seeking vengeance and there wouldn't be enough left afterward to identify Jiroubou's corpse as belonging to the Hidden Stone. Tayuya would become the Hidden Cloud's equivelent to Anko and Kurenai on mental steroids, and somewhere between killing thirty or more Leaf ninja with a single Genjutsu, she would've met and flirted with both Inuzuka Kiba and Aburame Shino before finding a little black bug on her wrist and hearing a pair of monstrous jaws slamming shut from behind her.

Ukon and Sakon would've gone missing-nin; it would fall to Konohamaru and Udon to kill them on a mission. Ebisu would take near-mortal injuries and Moegi would die in the process, but Genjutsu and a particularly ugly fireball would return the pain a thousand fold.

Kimimaro would still die. Not from his disease, but because Uchiha Sasuke put a Chidori through his face.
4
A little known fact is that Tayuya actually did survive her battle with Shikamaru and Temari. Unfortunately for her, medic-nins from Konoha found her before her injuries could do her in.

To date, Morino Ibiki has visited Tayuya thirty-two times and counting. She became homicidal on the third, suicidal on the eighth and went completely insane on the twenty-fourth. Yamanaka Ino has been using her for body-swap practice ever since.
5
When Enma, the great King of the Apes, first meets Sarutobi's grandson, he's not sure whether he should be disappointed or flat-out enraged. The boy has none of his grandfather's might, none of his spirit and even less of his wisdom and skill. For the longest time, Enma simply amuses himself by playing headgames with the kid.

Then Konohamaru sets Enma's head on fire and storms off, raving about stupid monkeys and idiotic old men.

It's at this point that Enma decides that he really does like Konohamaru.
6
Another little known fact is that the Sandaime Hokage's original name was Sarutobi Sasuke. Coincidentally, this is where Uchiha Sasuke got his name.
7
One of those irritating little ironies is that Naruto is the first kiss for all three of the Rookie Nine girls and two of the boys as well.

For Uchiha Sasuke, it's an accident. Naruto ends up brutalized by the academy's kunoichi for it, but when he looks back on the incident, he's glad they beat the living Hell out of him. After an incident as traumatic as kissing Sasuke, the beating was like a walk in the park.

For Haruno Sakura, it's another random accident. Again, Naruto ends up completely brutalized for it, but when no-one is looked in the aftermath, both of them are smiling from ear to ear. If not for the fact that his face is tinting blue, Naruto would be blushing to the roots of his hair. Everyone confuses Sakura's own blush to be formed from pure rage, and she's honestly glad that they do for more reasons than she's ever going to admit.

For Yamanaka Ino, it is not a random accident. Two days before Naruto is set to leave with Jiraiya, Ino ambushes him and tries to thank him on behalf of Sakura for trying to get Sasuke back. When he tries to brush her off, she gets frustrated, grabs his ears and ends up Frenching him. When it's over, he gives her a look so clueless that Ino spends thirteen minutes laughing at him. Then she kisses him again--on the cheek this time--and walks off.

For Hyuuga Hinata, it's somewhere between deliberate and accident and just plain right. After a battle, with both of them bloodied and hurting for more reasons than either cares to admit, they somehow end up side-by-side, waiting for medical treatment. An awkward conversation leads to handholding, handholding leads to quasi-cuddling, quasi-cuddling leads to liplocking and the first time that Sakura ever thinks that Naruto is out of her grasp is when she enters the medical tent in time to see them sucking face like seasoned veterans, half-naked on the floor.

For Inuzuka Kiba, it is not an accident. It is an atrocity. He and Naruto get involved in a war of pranks, and somewhere between water balloons, mayo bombs, rotten eggs, dog urine, supposedly lost limbs and a few too many loudly spoken cuss words, Naruto gets a very cruel idea. He sneaks a Kage Bunshin into Kiba's room, gets out a camera and performs Sexy no Jutsu. Kiba in turn wakes up to find a hot, naked, ethereal looking blonde giving him the eye and telling him--in a voice that sounds like Tsunade gone horribly right--that she wants it now. A few seconds later, Kiba kisses said blonde.

Then the blonde becomes Sasuke, Kiba gets blinded by a flashbulb and Sasuke explodes in a puff of smoke. The last thing Kiba hears that night is a window shattering, Akamaru barking and a loud, irritatingly mad cackle.

The next day, pictures of Sasuke and Kiba kissing are plastered across every single outdoor wall in Konoha. Needless to say, Kiba cedes defeat and spends the rest of the month trying to salvage what's left of his broken masculinity. Naruto escapes punishment for the simple reason that everyone is afraid of "being Kiba'd."

Coincidentally, no-one has tried to one-up Naruto as a prankster ever since.
8
To date, Aburame Shino has killed the most out of any former member of the Rookie Nine, Gai's team or even the Sand Siblings, though Gaara's run as a homicidal maniac kept him in the lead for a very long time. The only reason Shino took the lead is because of a mission that involved exterminating an entire town and making it look like a divine plague; he and thirteen other Aburame took the job alone. They provided the bugs, but Shino provided the control. To this day, he still remembers the screaming and the countless lights flickering out at night, followed by the somber walk he took through the town the next day.

Shino has since refused to cooperate with other Aburame in missions. The decision has alienated his once close relationship with his father, but it's also strengthened his bonds with Hinata, Kurenai and Kiba. At least he can look them in the eye and not want to scream.
9
In his lifetime, Uzumaki Naruto is somehow tied to no less than fifteen world famous landmarks. Four are named after him, five were made by him and ten were made simply because he was somehow in the right place at the right time for someone to want to immortalize him.

The one that Naruto comes to treasure the most is, ironically, the only one that can't be accessed by tourists: His face on the Hokage Monument.
10
Once upon a time, Jiraiya wanted to become the Hokage.

It was a combination of Sarutobi, Tsunade and Orochimaru who killed that dream. Orochimaru vindictively cheered him on just to watch him fail, Tsunade made it a point of telling him he never had any chance and, when he finally got around to mentioning it to Sarutobi, the old man told him to quit while he was ahead because Orochimaru was already going to succeed him as the Yondaime.

Eventually, by the time Jiraiya makes Jounin, he's become too jaded to really want the job anymore. So he picks a kid--a loud, irritatingly cute, blond-haired, blue-eyed, rude-as-all-Hell pain in the ass--and decides to make a Hokage out of him. That the boy actually wants the job just makes it easier. For a few short years, Jiraiya trains the boy feverishly, and even when both of his other students die horribly, this kid thrives. The road is hard, his mind almost breaks a few times, but when it finally comes time for Sarutobi to select a successor, Jiraiya proudly watches Orochimaru's calm, placid expression shatter into a million pieces when his student's name is announced.

A few weeks later, when Orochimaru has gone missing, his student's place is cemented, Tsunade is long gone and Sarutobi is officially retired, Jiraiya and the old man sit down for sake. Sarutobi says nothing the entire time, but he's the one buying drinks. When Jiraiya finally gets up to leave, Sarutobi actually does speak. It's one of the shortest things he's ever said to Jiraiya, but it's also the first and only time the old ape ever admitted to being wrong.

"You would've made a fine Hokage."

Close to a decade and a half later, when Sarutobi's old teammates approach him for the job, Jiraiya almost laughs in their faces. Instead, he decides to go for another measure of revenge and successfully pawns the job off on Tsunade.

The end result of all of this is that his teacher has died and will never know peace because of a jutsu that Jiraiya invented, the woman who scorned him is now in a job with a 100 percent mortality rate and the thing that was supposed to be Yondaime is completely insane.

It's a hollow victory, but it's a victory that Jiraiya can live with.
11
Another little known fact about Jiraiya is that he actually is quite good at getting women, contrary to what his former teammates and students like to think. To date, he has fathered thirty-seven children by thirty-seven different women in thirty-seven different places across the world. He only has half as many grandchildren, but at least five of them are Shinobi spread across two Hidden Villages.

The irony of this is that two of them, Kankurou and Kiba, actually treat each other like cousins without even knowing it.
12
Something that Tsunade doesn't know--and never will know--is that Dan was actually able to see the future. The moment he met her, he knew he was going to die protecting her. The moment he met Jiraiya, he knew that he was stepping in between two people who he had no business seperating. The moment he met Orochimaru, he wanted to kill him in cold blood.

He couldn't change anything though. He was going to die protecting Tsunade, so he decided to love her and make it a sacrifice to be proud of. Jiraiya was going to hate him, so a small part of Dan's heart went black and decided to relish in it when no-one was looking. Orochimaru, no matter how Dan strengthened himself, was always going to be in a completely different league; Dan couldn't look him in the face without straining to keep from throwing up in fright.

Of all the people he met, the only one that Dan was unable to see the future for was the Yondaime. Dan couldn't see the boy becoming Chuunin, let alone Hokage. He couldn't see him having a future at all, in fact, but he could always hear something around the youth who would one day reign supreme over the Hidden Village of Konoha: A voice. It didn't belong to the boy, it didn't belong to Jiraiya and as far as Dan could tell, it didn't belong to anyone at all.

It was strong and defiant. Rude and irate. Confident but bleeding inside. Something about it filled Dan with more strength than he could comprehend. At the same time, it terrified him more than he could put into words. It was a voice he eventually took to echoing, and by the time he met Tsunade, its words had become his own.

"I'm going to become Hokage," he said. "Because it's my dream."
13
The world would be a far different place, had the Shadow Nation never been formed. Simply put: Shinobi would not exist. For the Rookie Nine and Gai's team alone, the changes would render them nearly unrecognizable beyond their appearance.

Aburame Shino would be a scientist. Inuzuka Kiba would work at a kennel, though he would have aspirations of becoming a bounty hunter. Akimichi Chouji would be a professional sumo wrestler, Yamanaka Ino would be his favored attendant and bodyguard, Nara Shikamaru his most trusted gamekeeper and medicine man. Haruno Sakura would be an underconfident flowershop owner and Uchiha Sasuke would be a well-balanced police officer with dreams of breaking the class system and becoming a samurai. Rock Lee would be a wandering monk-turned-drunkard and TenTen would be a runaway princess hiding out as a blacksmith's apprentice.

The Hyuugas would be a noble family headed by a Daimyo, and Uzumaki Naruto would be a ronin hellbent on taking over a country to gain his familial honor back.

Every single one of them would still meet though. Just as in real life, Naruto would be the key to drawing them together.

He would meet Kiba and inspire him to take up the ideal of bounty hunting; the dog owner would join him in his quest in gratitude. He would kill a man forcing Shino to conduct experiments against his will and the scientist would pay the debt by acting as Naruto's guide to the world at large. He would best Chouji in a wrestling contest and the sumo would become his biggest supporter en route to glory. Sakura would be an unlikely addition; Naruto would accidentally destroy her shop in a battle and Ino would drag her along with them in order to make him keep his promise of replacing it once he becomes famous.

Sasuke would pursue them all relentlessly; Naruto would best him in combat by a hair's width and Sasuke would never forgive him for it. Sakura would draw him into the group and somewhere along the way, he'd become too comfortable with them to care about his defeat anymore.

Lee would not join them, but Naruto would break him of his drinking all the same. He would depart with the solemn vow to meet them again someday, but none of them would ever see him after that. TenTen would join for her own protection, and because Naruto, Sasuke, Shikamaru, Ino and Kiba need a weapons maker and she's the best there is.

The Hyuugas would be the last, and the most difficult. Naruto would somehow win the heart of the eldest princess, Hinata, but her older brother, Neji, would try to strike him down to defend her honor and her pre-arranged marriage to someone else. In the end, Naruto would defeat him, then best the Daimyo himself, marry the princess and finally take over.

In hindsight, maybe the world wouldn't be so different after all?
14
A little discussed but generally well known fact is that Hatake Kakashi, Maito Gai, Yuuhi Kurenai and Sarutobi Asuma are four of the five sole survivors of their respective Rookie Nines. Virtually all of Gai's classmates all have their names listed on the Cenotaph; Kakashi, Kurenai and Asuma's only Cenotaph mate is Obito. Other ninja from those years are still in service, but Genin were selected many times a year back when the lot of them were growing up and Rookie Nines didn't stay rookies for very long.

Among Gai's personal team--the Genin he trained with--are two particularly haunting names: Hyuuga Hizashi and Kajiya ShoSho.

Hizashi is obviously dead. ShoSho, however, was forced into retirement. While Gai is the instructor and the stand-in father figure for ShoSho's daughter, the two haven't spoken more than a few words for almost sixteen years. It isn't a grudge, just a matter of pure awkwardness. TenTen never asks why the two refuse to make eye contact, and when Neji is watching him at the semi-weekly Jounin gatherings, he always notices that Gai drinks for two but leaves the third glass from each of his orders completely untouched.

Lee knows why. But neither Neji or TenTen have ever thought to ask him, and he values Gai's right to privacy and confidence too much to tell them even if they did. It is the first secret he has successfully kept from his teammates, and he isn't proud of it.
15
The night that Uzumaki Naruto was born was, coincidentally, almost the night that he died.

The only reason he is alive today--the only reason Villagers or independently acting shinobi didn't kill him when he was a little boy--is because for the four years he was unable to care for himself, he had ANBU watching his every move and keeping him in good health. Even though ten assassination attempts were made, they were always renegades with nothing to lose and nothing to gain. Uzuki Yuugao's first kills as an ANBU member, and Hatake Kakashi's last kills as an ANBU captain, were fellow Leaf ninja.

The key reason that most people backed off was simple: Sarutobi convinced them that this boy was meant to become a weapon. He didn't believe this himself, neither did the people after a time, but Uzumaki Naruto was left alive to be Konoha's weapon.

So when he answers a question from an enemy in battle with, "Because it's what I live for!" He does so without knowing that he speaks a truth that would shame almost all of Konoha if it were ever told to the children of the generation that wanted him dead.
16
Everytime Uchiha Sasuke thinks of a spiral, he has a consistent mental image of Naruto diving down out of a cloud and headbutting him with enough force to crater the ground at his feet. In this image, he always falters back with a bloody imprint of the Leaf's symbol stamped into his forehead.

He doesn't know why, but it always makes him smile. He doesn't want to know why, because he's afraid that it might make him question everything he's been trying to do since the moment he tipped the picture of Team 7 face down on his dresser.
17
To date, every single shinobi who has ever learned to open the Eight Gates in Konoha has had his or her name put on the Cenotaph. It's a morbid tradition that started with Aian Aika during the first Hidden World War; she gave her life to hold back an entire Sand army and stunted Suna's progress as a Hidden Village right up until the Sandaime Kazekage took charge. The man who taught Maito Gai's sensei, Geiha Kaien, gave his own life leading the charge that avenged the Nidaime Hokage. His successor, Natsubi Iwaimaru, died trying to buy time for the Yondaime to ready Naruto for the Nine-Tails' sealing.

The only practitioners of Konoha Tekken who know how to open the Eight Gates and are not yet dead are Gai himself, and Rock Lee, who first opened the Death Gate less than a year ago. When Lee has acquired Jounin status and starts teaching his own spirited loser in the ways of the Green Beasts, Gai knows that it will be time to put his own name on the Cenotaph. He is at peace with this, or so he likes to think. He's convinced himself to look forward to it, but he can't. That's why he tries to treasure every single moment like it's his last; he knows that he's living his days by the number and he's lucky if he's not already on borrowed time as is.

Lee, however, differs from his beloved mentor and father-figure for two reasons: He is the youngest yet to master the Gates, and he is already coming to terms with the idea that his name is going to end up on the Cenotaph.

In fact, he really is looking forward to it.

Gai doesn't know this, but if he did, he would cry. He would cry for days, and no-one who knew why would blame him for it.
18
Once upon a time, the mentors of the Rookie Nine organized a baseball game to try and let their students be kids for once.

Sasuke went for the blue team. Coincidentally, Ino went with him and dragged Chouji and Shikamaru with her. Sakura, not to be outdone, grabbed the two nearest males--Kiba and Shino--and followed suit. Naruto ended up the sole member of the red team because they needed an umpire; Kakashi was reading porn, Asuma was lazy and Kurenai was too worried about being biased towards her team.

Irate, Naruto used Kage Bunshin to fill his team's ranks. Then he had the gall to Henge every single one of them into 'evil' counterparts of the other team's members; Shikamaru with white hair and an apron, a stunningly accurate portrayal of Chouji without fat, Ino gone bald, Sakura with her hair in an afro and both girls plus all the weight that Chouji had lost, Kiba turned into a rather feminine catboy and Shino made to look like a giant bug zapper with an attitude problem. Kage-Sasuke, on the other hand, was made to wear a pink bodysuit.

And speak with a lisp.

A very girly lisp.

Needless to say: It was war. And by the time it was all said and done, Naruto was the victor and everyone hated his guts just a little more for it.

They all said the ump was blind, but Hinata knew otherwise; her Byakugan was active from start to finish.
19
Jiraiya has, at varying points in time, been higher up off the ground than any other Konoha Ninja in history. To date, the record is when he fought Sarashina. Gama Bunta leapt after Sarashina's dragonfly, it flew too high to grab and Bunta tried to tongue lash it. Jiraiya, in a murderous frenzy since the start of the fight, ran up the side of Bunta's tongue until his face hit the clouds.

Then he jumped. He jumped so high that he couldn't feel any warmth and the air was so still that it felt like moving through solid rock.

When it finally hit him as to how high up he had been, Jiraiya almost threw up. He spent the rest of the week bragging about it to try and keep from remembering just exactly why he had gone after Sarashina in the first place.
20
When Namimaru was a boy, he was taken from his family as part of a hostage system that had been in place since the time of the Shodaime Zenpan Kage. Namimaru, in effect, became the adopted son of the Mizukage of the day, learning Suiton jutsu instead of the fire techniques that were supposed to be his birthright. In spite of an upbringing that was, by all accounts, barbaric and brutal, Namimaru grew up with a strong sense of mercy, honor and devotion to those closest to him. He was the antithesis of everything the Mizukage tried to make him.

Kenzaimaru, on the other hand, went to the Tsuchikage and learned Doton jutsu. He grew cold and jaded, with an underlying sense of idealism and an overbearing ability to break his own heart in order to achieve it. This is what enabled him to manipulate his brother into aiding Kenzaimaru and helping him to assassinate the Zenpan Kage. Because of their actions, the Shadow Nation collapsed and the world of shinobi entered into an era of unprecedented carnage that still hasn't fully settled even after close to eighty or ninety years of bloodshed, death and violence.

Years later, a boy named Sasuke asked Namimaru a question: "Why did you do it?"

Namimaru answered with a tired smile: "Because we, the Shodaime and I, have the spirit of fire. It consumes everything in its path, you know..."

Sasuke frowned. Then he kicked Namimaru in the shins and replied: "Fire destroys, but it leaves the way open for new growth, moron!"

It was this declaration that ultimately lead to Sasuke becoming the Sandaime Hokage before he was old enough to drink legally.
21
Much to his chargrin, Uzumaki Naruto visits a theatre one day to find that his name and likeness apparently belong to a movie character. When asked about this by Jiraiya, he simply elbows the old man in the gut and points out that the actress playing Sakura has implants and the guy playing Sasuke looks like an 'emo-goth fag.'

Jiraiya's attention naturally peters out the moment Naruto mentions the implants.

When they actually see the movie, both are privately amused and disturbed by it for different reasons: Jiraiya is amused that the girl actually does have implants, but disturbed by the fact that the boy playing Naruto looks, sounds and acts more like the Yondaime. Naruto is amused that the boy playing Sasuke really does look like an 'emo-goth fag.'

He's also disturbed by how well the portrayal fits.

Needless to say, Jiraiya and Naruto leave the theatre and don't speak about the movie at all for weeks.
22
A funny thing is that the mission to retrieve Sasuke could--and would--have gone perfectly with just a few token differences.

Had Naruto stayed behind to tangle with Kidoumaru, he would've won in minutes by getting angry and overwhelming the spider-armed ninja with toads. As this happened, Shikamaru would've broken off to tangle with Ukon and Sakon, killing them simply by pinning their shadows and placing a blast slip on each of their respective faces. Kiba and Akamaru would've taken a suicidal gambit and annihilated Tayuya with a well-placed pair of Tsuuga strikes.

Kimimaro's Bloodline would prove a natural enemy to the Byakugan and Jyuuken, and in the end, it would fall to Rock Lee to save Neji for once. Together, even outmatched by the Cursed Seal's power, they would kill Kimimaro with a combination of 64 Hands, a Tekken combo and Initial Lotus into a Kaiten. Both would be hospitalized for the better part of a month, but they'd be laughing like brothers on the way to the hospital.

Naruto would arrive just in time to catch Sasuke at the Valley of the End. Having already summoned a toad just to catch up, the battle would be decidedly different for the simple reason that it would be Sasuke who would be fighting just to keep from being beaten to a pulp. Even when Bunta is finally dispelled and the two have a clash of epic proportions with their final Rasengan and Chidori collision, the mission would still be a success...

Because Gaara would calmly stand in Sasuke's way as he turned to leave, raising a hairless eyebrow and asking a simple question: "Leaving so soon, Sasuke?"

Author's Note: A few things that need explaining...

One is that the Sand Siblings/Inuzuka relation is there because in the manga, Kankurou looks stunningly like Jiraiya as a boy, and Kiba and Kankurou look sorta related. And it's just freaking amusing.

Another is that ShoSho's name means here and there.

The 'emo-goth fag' thing was a one-time happening. Naruto ain't the real world and it sure isn't the Western world either. I didn't put that in as a character bash and I didn't try to Westernize Naruto; I just found it funny. The movie itself is a sorta-mention of the first Naruto movie; there were moviemakers on hand for several scenes and Princess Koyuki is an actress, so...

Coincidentally, Koyuki is also the Princess mentioned in the first of these snippets.

Hope you all enjoyed.

Regards,
The Sh33p