Thank you one and all for the links. Thanks to you I was finally able to confirm that Sasuke is in fact mumbling "Must remove pants."

Side Note: Kaori will be at Otakon this Saturday. She'll be the one wearing boy's jeans and a Desert Punk cap. If you spot her and have the guts to yell "YARD CHICKEN" at the top of your lungs, she may decide to talk to you (or con you into carrying her crap for her).

The Shinobi's Guide to Training
Part Seven: Improving Concentration
By Kaori

"All right, once again we'll be working on your mental defenses." Intoned Kakashi from his wheelchair. The doctor said he was lucky they only severed his thumbs ( courtesy of Ino; Sakura stuck them up his nose afterwards), broke his legs and shoved a log up his…well we won't go there (damn, Shino is brutal) but after all that they took of his pants and used them to hang him by his wrists from the roof of a lingerie store. His thumbs had been successfully reattached and Tsuande said she'd fix his legs when she could look at him without laughing. In the meantime, Jiraiya managed to get the corsets off the unhappy trio (he seems to be overly familiar with women's undergarments… something must be done about that…).

"Didn't we do this already?" whined Naruto.

"Yes, but you all still suck at it so we're going with a new approach."

"Already I don't like this." Muttered Ino. She was dutifully ignored.

"Now before we get started I'd like to welcome Shikamaru back from the hospital." There was scattered applause for the lone chuunin. "I'm also glad to say that Iruka has cancelled the contract on my life."

"What about me?" asked Gai.

"Iruka figures the ninjas he hired will either kill you or will be so repulsed by you that they pay him to cancel the contract." Said Asuma. Gai actually managed to look offended.

"Back to the matter at hand…"interrupted Kurenai. "In order to improve your concentration we're going to be giving each of you a wooden jigsaw puzzle. Don't be fooled though, these puzzles are anything but ordinary."

"What do you mean?" asked Kiba.

"The jigsaw puzzle is 3-dimensional and the pieces will not stay together until the last piece is placed."

"Then how the heck are we supposed to assemble it?" fumed Ino.

"Chakra control." Kakashi replied. "You must use your chakra to keep the puzzle from falling apart before you finish. It doesn't take much to keep it assembled, but you will need to divide your attention between keeping the puzzle together and figuring out the solution." He said as Gai handed each student a box. "Oh, and you each have a different puzzle so don't think about watching someone else to get the solution."

Deciding that distractions were a bad idea, everyone went off to their own little section of the clearing to do their training. Ha! Like that was going to help?

Twenty minutes into the exercise, Shikamaru was about to put the last two pieces into his puzzle when…

"Suiton: Daibakufu no Jutsu!"

"AAARRRRGGGBBBBBLLBBLLL!" Shikamaru and his puzzle were washed away by a torrent of water. "WHAT THE HELL, MAN?" This caused everyone else to loose their concentration in shock and their puzzles fell to the ground.

"What?" blinked Kakashi seemingly unaffected by the young chuunin's outburst but was inwardly as shocked as everybody else. "Surely you didn't expect us to leave you alone did you? A ninja must endure what others cannot. On the battlefield you have no time to be distracted, you must remain focused at all times. Now, begin again."

"Pig-fucking son of an incontinent cockroach…(1)"growled Shikamaru.

"Shikamaru!" gasped Chouji and Ino.

"Tsk…so troublesome."

The puzzle assembly process went on for another forty-five minutes without any interruptions. Then, as Sasuke reached the halfway point, Gai came out of nowhere and pantsed him.

"THE HELL!" yelped Sauske, desperately grabbing at his pants. Ino and Sakura immediately turned to look and got quite a nice view of Sasuke's rear clad in Uchiha clan boxer shorts.

"GYEEEEE!" they squealed and then promptly fainted from excitement. Naruto, wanting to know what all the screaming was about, looked over to see Sasuke still trying to pull his pants up (Gai must have done something) and fell over laughing. Naturally, this got Kiba and Hinata's attention. Kiba cracked up and Hinata fainted from embarrassment.

Sasuke, completely humiliated now, glared at Gai. "And you wonder why Neji hates you."

Fifteen minutes later. "HAIL THE PIE PEOPLE!(2)"

"The hell?" muttered Kiba. The next thing anyone knew it was raining pie. Chouji completely forgot about the puzzle and concentrated on getting as much pie into his mouth as possible. Everyone else just wanted not to be covered in pie and were frantically running around dodging. However, none of this could save them from the bees…

"Who makes a pie out of treacle?" screamed Sakura.

"Shino! Save us!" wailed Kiba.

"No. (3)"

"Bastard!"

And so it went throughout the day. The genins would try to assemble their respective puzzles, and the jounins would do something outrageous to make them loose their concentration. It was only a matter of time before someone snapped…

"YOU ALL DIE NOW!" raged Hinata.

"Run for your lives! Hinata-chan's lost it!" wailed Naruto as he scrambled up a nearby tree.

Five minutes ago, Hinata was just about to put the last piece onto her puzzle (Darth Vader) when Asuma snuck up behind her and covered her in tomato paste. Then everything went Carrie (4).

Hinata started by jyuukening Asuma into the ground. When Sakura and Ino tried to calm her down, they were sent flying into a tree. Nobody quite saw what she did to Kakashi but we can say that Tsunade won't just have to fix his legs.

Sasuke, deciding he didn't want to get involved tried to run for it but ended up attracting Hinata's attention and got jyuukened straight into Kurenai. Kiba and Shikamaru were her next victims; the medic nins had a hell of a time getting them out of the pretzel-like shape she'd twisted them into. Shikamaru evaded detection simply by falling into the bushes and taking a power nap.

Now, she was after Naruto and closing in fast and the poor boy had nowhere to run.

"H..Hinata..n…n…now don't do..a….anything…crazy now!" stammered Naruto, backing up against a boulder.

"Crazy? Crazy?" twitched the bluenette. "Oh you don't know what crazy is…but I'm going to show you…oh yes…show you real good…" a senbon suddenly slammed into her neck. "…meep." She dropped like a sack of bricks and Naruto joined her in relieved unconsciousness."

"It's about time you did something, Genma." Croaked Kakashi. "Do you get off on watching people suffer?"

"Wouldn't you just love to know?" said Genma from his spot in a nearby tree.

This training is actually based on the game show Distraction. I don't know if they ever actually did something like this exactly but in the show, contestants would have to answer questions while the host and his accomplices did horrible/funny things to them (like breaking glass bottles over their heads or giving them a lap dance) or while doing horrible things to themselves (like putting clothespins on their face). I don't know if the show is still running but I found it very amusing the first and only time I got to watch it.

1)Somehow, to me, Shikamaru looks like the kind of person who (when you tick him off enough) can curse like an old sailor. Shino too, but you know he's not going to do it.

2)This line is from an old Gundam Wing fanfiction that I forget the name of. I actually wrote this on the message boards of half the doors on my floor in college one April Fool's Day. The other half said "Bald man strikes again."

3) Small homage to Link and Luigi.

4) Great movie. Never pick on the outcasts, you never know when one of them will go psycho.