Thank you to the ever lovely Tavina for beta-reading! And thank you to everyone who's been reading and commenting.

I blinked at the unexpected early pre-dawn light, muted and gray, the beginning undertones of pink not yet reaching into the sky. Before me, Sakura was yawning and Naruto was mid-stretch, both with full bags on them. It was the training ground for the bell test. "Not this again…"

The last dream had only been yesterday night; I wasn't sure whether that was better or worse than having a longer gap, but what I did know is I wasn't a fan of the fact that this was apparently becoming a recurring thing. I wondered vaguely if it meant I should give in to my grandmother and tell her I actually needed her prayers for once, for these strange dreams (asking her to stop at all was out of the question, but it would at least redirect her away from my lack of a love life. The last time I had gone over there my aunt went out of the way to inform me the candles at the altar were for me).

"Right?!" Naruto said, far too loudly. "I can't believe he's late!" He shrugged his bag's straps off his shoulders, allowing it to fall onto the ground with a muffled clatter, and scuffed at the ground with the side of his sandal, before dropping onto his bag to sit on it. "How is he supposed to teach us if he can't even show up at the time he told us?!"

Sakura slowly slumped onto the ground. "I can't believe I woke up at three just to get ready and he's not even here…"

"You woke up at three?" I couldn't help but ask.

"I had to take a shower and do my hair," she said, sounding mulish even as she defended herself.

I actually exchanged a look with Naruto, though he looked more baffled than horrified. I just couldn't believe she decided to get up that early for that much effort for this . My own sleep hygiene might not be the best, but that was just excessive.

"Waking up that early just to do your hair is just going to put you at a disadvantage if you're exhausted," I said, trying to approach this delicately. "Did you at least go to sleep early enough to make up for it?"

Sakura blushed, and turned to look away. Right. I would have to take that as a no, then. "I double checked that I packed my bag with all of my ninja tools and made sure they were in good condition," she said, still pink in the face.

"And I practiced last night!" Naruto pumped a fist. "I refuse to go back to the academy, you know!"

I stared at him. I had no idea what Sasuke would have done the night before, but as far as I was concerned, the most important thing to do before any kind of test was to actually get sleep. Cramming was for the desperate and if you had to cram, you were probably screwed anyways. Then again, that seemed to be Naruto's general approach if the canon was anything to go by. And how the dream version behaved. This had to be some subconscious nonsense, though I couldn't possibly guess what it would mean in this context, disguised as anime and manga characters.

Right. I looked down at the packed bag hanging at my own side, and wondered what was going to be inside it. I couldn't remember right now what they made serious use of in the original version of the bell test, just that Kakashi's serious issue with Team Seven was based in the lack of teamwork. Kunai? Maybe some shuriken? At the same time though, I could swear that was just what they already had on them, instead of taking anything from their bags, probably because Kakashi was so severely above their skill level it meant the attempted fights were basically nothing. There were a few traps, but I might have gotten that mixed up with Kakashi's actions, since I was pretty sure he had showcased everything but summoning and sealing.

I ended up lowering into a sitting position, slipping the shoulder strap off and pulling it into my lap to actually take a look inside the bag's main compartment. It was surprisingly filled and well organized, with multiple arrays of shuriken and a few braces of kunai being the most obvious things inside, but there were also a couple coils of what I assumed was ninja wire, along with a few that were plain rope. I looked over at Sakura and Naruto. "What did you two bring?"

Naruto stood up, opened his bag, and then lifted it, only to flip it over, dumping its contents onto the ground. Dull or mismatched kunai that looked like they had been scavenged or bought at different times and uncared for shuriken with chipped edges and streaks of rust made up the majority of the weaponry he had brought with him, but the rest of the pile was more eclectic. Apparently he was used to using it for more than just ninja gear. The plastic bottles of paint were one thing, same with the thicker ropes that he probably would have used for successfully graffiting the hokage monument, and a few already previously used and rinsed out wide sash paint brushes… but I had no idea why there was a package of tofu in there, ominous green blobs floating under the thin plastic. I didn't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't that.

"Did… you bring rotten tofu?" Sakura asked, her color looking wan. The sight must have killed her appetite as well. " Why ?"

"Not on purpose!" Naruto rubbed the back of his head. "I must have forgot to take everything out of my bag! I think the tofu is from the last time I got groceries?"

I looked at the package of tofu with an unsure expression. There was no way that thing could have been in there for only a short bit of time. "How long ago was that?"

"Uh... Two weeks ago?" Naruto didn't sound particularly sure of himself.

The earlier wanness in Sakura's face started to take on a green tinge. I really hoped she didn't throw up. "That's been buried in your bag for two weeks!?"

Naruto crossed his arms, looking away from her, an embarrassed look on his face. "It's not like I did it on purpose, ya know!"

"How many times could it have gotten punctured or opened in the last two weeks!? You've been walking around with a— a spoiled food bomb while we've been getting ready to graduate!" That was starting to get into some serious hypotheticals.

"Not on purpose!"

I didn't want to think about how much growth was inside for it to be bulging the way it was. Or how it looked so ominously green even under the plastic top. The focus on the tofu was beginning to get to me, and I could feel my stomach begin to churn.

I tried to shift attention away from the deathly looking tofu. "Sakura, what did you bring?"

Her eyes widened, and she looked back at me, blushing again. I really wished she would knock that off, but I had the suspicion that as long as I was having these dreams it wasn't going to stop. "Oh! Let me show you, Sasuke," she said, her voice going higher as she tried to sound flirtatious. At least, I assumed that was what she was trying to aim for. That was actually worse than the blushing.

Unlike Naruto, Sakura carefully pulled everything out, laying everything down in orderly rows. She had brought mostly kunai, and not very many shuriken, but other than it being a thing of ratios, what she had packed was pretty much the same as what was in mine, except for the ninja wire. If this wasn't a dream, I would have guessed it would have been because the academy would suggest a standard list of gear to have and carry. Sakura was the type who probably followed the list exactly, regardless of actual needs. As far as Sasuke's gear went, all of the extra shuriken made sense, even though I could only make the assumption that it was because it was a specialty. At least as far as baby would-be ninja could have specialties. Naruto, on the other hand, was just Naruto.

"Since he isn't here yet... we could set the field up for our advantage," I said, thinking. It at least made more sense than what I suspected was going to happen as far as my perception of time went with this dream. I wasn't exactly looking forward to dreaming about being bored and feeling like it took hours.

"Eh? What do you mean?" Naruto squinted at me suspiciously.

"Oh!" Sakura looked eager. "It's a test, right? And he had us bring our ninja gear… Do you think he's going to have us fight him or something?"

"I think so," I lied, vaguely. The bell test was more Kakashi messing with them and gauging teamwork than a straight up fight, but I wasn't going to tell them that. I didn't want to deal with their questions any more than I did the last time I dreamed about them.

Naruto bounced on his feet. "Leave him to me!"

Sakura's eyebrows crinkled together as she looked at him. "You really think you can beat a jounin on your own? We just graduated! And you didn't even pass the exam!"

"No, but I beat Mizuki-sensei! I can do this!" He balled one of his fists in determination.

"What!?" Poor Sakura. Without context, none of this had to make sense. Especially not when it was combined with Naruto's somewhat disjointed way of telling stories.

"Yeah! That's how I saved Iruka-sensei! So I got his headband!" Even I was beginning to have a hard time tracking this.

"Whose headband? I thought you said you got Iruka-sensei's!"

"I did!"

I decided I should try to redirect the conversation before Naruto got any more confusing. "If we're supposed to fight him, we won't stand a chance if he takes it seriously, much less on our own."

"You think we should work together?" Sakura was staring at me a bit too hard, her hands clasped together. I don't think she was imaging the same sort of thing I was thinking. I moved backwards.

"Do we have any other choice?" I asked. As I asked, it occurred to me I had no idea how the dream logic was going to work, when it came to actually trying to fight. The haphazard various classes I took when I was younger sure as hell didn't apply to ninja stuff, but the last few times I had stopped trying to focus too much on anything in these dreams it was like I had gone on automatic. Would it work out like that again?

My question wasn't enough to discourage whatever Sakura was thinking, but it seemed to have triggered something in Naruto. "I'll be better than you at working together!"

I stared at him for a moment before I decided to just give up and accede to whatever he thought he was saying. "That... doesn't really make sense as an answer, but alright then. Fine. Sure you will." I looked at the horizon, which was already hinting at the promise of a clear blue sky. "If he takes as long as he did yesterday, it's going to be a few hours until he even shows up."

Naruto's eyes widened. "Wait. We could have eaten anyways?!" He kicked at one of the wooden posts. I wondered if those were there only for Kakashi's test, or if they were a usual thing for the field.

I shrugged. It wasn't like I actually knew Kakashi's logic, even between the show and manga.

Sakura hung her head, when her stomach grumbled at the idea of eating. "I should have eaten dinner..."

I had honestly forgotten about that part, with her unhealthy diet scheme.

Naruto looked at her in shock. "What!? Why wouldn't you eat dinner?"

"Because I'm trying to maintain my figure!"

"What figure?" Naruto sounded genuinely baffled.

Sakura's eyes narrowed in Naruto's direction. "Shannaro!"

I dragged a hand down my face as Naruto got decked. "You can't just not eat... Besides, that's for-" What would make sense most here? Right. "-civilians who don't do anything and eat too much. If you don't eat enough of the right food while training or on missions, after a while your body's just going to start eating itself and waste away. That's not the kind of skinny you want to be."

"What, like a cannibal?" Naruto sounded horrified, staring between me and then Sakura. He had bounced right back from getting punched. "Sakura's going to cannibalize herself?" He stepped away from her, now. Funny how that made him more fearful than her fists.

"What!?" Sakura looked disgusted. "No! Ugh! That's so gross, Naruto! Eugh!"

Naruto levered a pointed finger at her. "You're the one who's gonna become a cannibal!"

I regretted ever speaking. I could always try to deflect, but I had a feeling that it would only get worse. "That goes for you, too."

"Eh?" The blond looked at me in confusion, now.

"Do you even know what a vegetable is?"

"Yeah! I do eat them, sometimes!" he said, huffily. "They're in my ramen!"

"You can't just live off of ramen, either," I pointed out.

Naruto gave me a suspicious look. "You're sounding like Iruka-sensei. Did he put you up to this?"

"When would he have done that?" Sakura was confused. She wasn't the only one.

I stared at him with dismay. "It doesn't change what I said, unless you feel like staying short forever."

Naruto looked scandalized at the suggestion. "There's no way I'm gonna be some kinda midget Hokage!"

"Then start diversifying your diet," I said, stressing the word, and then looking at Sakura, "and make sure you're actually eating what you need to be." I didn't sign up to play at giving advice in my dreams, but apparently that's how it was going to be. It also made me wonder if in-universe Sakura's parents would even know she was skipping meals or anything. Then again, it wasn't like tweens and young teenagers weren't crafty.

"I think I liked it better when you were just a jerk who kept to himself..." Naruto muttered.

Sakura looked away. I wasn't sure what to make of that.

I only shrugged.

Naruto's attention landed on everything we had laid out again. "Hey! Hey! What if we made a bunch of traps and stuff? That should work! Especially if he takes forever to get here! It's practically a prank!"

I suddenly felt an unexpected surge of sympathy for not just Kakashi, but Iruka as well, before I realized that Kakashi was the instrument by which I was being made to suffer from boredom in what could have been a far more interesting dream. Iruka had at least been inspiring. Kakashi, on the other hand, was Kakashi. Most of my sympathy for him evaporated. "Why not?"

Sakura looked at Naruto with one eyebrow raised, uncertainty playing on her face. "What if we get in trouble?"

"If he didn't want us to rig the field in our favor for whatever he's going to have us do, he would have shown up on time," was my reasoning. If he didn't want us to do certain things, he would have explicitly said as much. It probably didn't count as cheating, if it was all during the preparatory period he had accidentally left us. I was choosing to view this as being more like an open book exam, if it was like anything.

"And if we don't have to fight him?" she pointed out. On top of whatever nerves she must have had over the possibility of being sent back to the academy, I really must have ruined her mood, if she wasn't immediately agreeing with her 'precious Sasuke' in an attempt to score favor.

"Then we either take everything down after he leaves or we leave it all up as a surprise for whoever trains here next." Not that that was particularly ethical, but besides the fact I doubted it would be that lethal, it wasn't like it would matter in a dream.

Sakura made a face. "We're supposed to take everything down once we're finished using any training locations," she said, sounding like she was reciting something from memory.

"Yeah!" Naruto exclaimed, again, ignoring Sakura's comment entirely. "We'll put up a bunch of traps everywhere, and then we'll beat him, and then he's going to have to accept us as his students!" He was way too excited for this time of morning, to the point where I was beginning to wonder if Naruto was actually a morning person . Could dream people even be morning people or night owls?

I had no idea where would be the best place or even where to start with trapping things to put Kakashi at a disadvantage, and everything about Sakura probably meant she wouldn't either. "You're the local menace," I said, looking at Naruto. "How should we do this?"

His eyes widened, and he inhaled as he looked at our surroundings with an expression that I couldn't quite pin at first, before I realized it was intense focus. It wasn't exactly the sort of expression you saw on most middle school aged kids, much less the kind that were full of energy and easily distracted. He took in the field we were in, the wooded area surrounding the field, and the river that was serving as a boundary. Finally, he exhaled. "Well, it's three against one so that means we're the ones who are gonna have to pay real close attention!"

Sakura stared at him as she tried to figure out what kind of logic Naruto was even using, and eventually gave up. I hadn't even bothered to try to figure it out. "Don't you mean... him? We're the ones who have the number advantage."

"No, no! Because see, if you're doing a prank, it gets more complicated with more people, see? See?" Naruto was really getting excited. "It's harder to keep track like that! That's why whenever the old man sends people out after me when I get in trouble on my own it's so easy to get rid of them! They get all mixed up and I can send them down the wrong direction and they all go running!" He started to laugh. "Even though they're all chuunin and even some jounin!" That explained some of his earlier unwarranted confidence, then, if he was equating his ability to evade much more experienced ninja in the village with meaning he could also fight them. "They have to keep track of everyone else, try to find me, not get mixed up with whatever anyone else is trying to do to catch me, and get all tangled up! All I have to do is not get caught!" That sounded a bit too simplistic, but I was starting to see where he was coming from. "I mean, it's harder if Kiba and Shikamaru are with me, but it's doable! We usually only get caught if Shikamaru gets bored of hiding and gives up."

"Because they aren't coordinating even though they're on the same task," I said, realizing. "They're just working in parallel." And in the story Konoha was known for teamwork… how, again?

"Yeah!" Naruto looked cheered on that someone had actually understood what he was trying to get at. "If we really want to get him good, we can't do that! It'd go faster if we split up, but then we wouldn't know who put what traps where, right? Which means any of us could set them off by accident instead of him!" On the one hand, it made sense that Naruto would know what strategy could be, considering all the trouble he was supposed to have gotten into before graduating. On the other hand, apparently he didn't know he even knew what strategy was if it wasn't in the context of making a nuisance of himself.

No wonder Iruka would spend so much time on him, if this was the sort of stuff he would come up with instead of focusing in class. He was trying to keep the village from going into full riot over one pint-sized delinquent prankster.

"I don't know about this..." Sakura said, hesitating. "What if it makes him unhappy with us?"

"He's the one who had us show up at five in the morning and isn't even here yet," I told her. "He has no room to talk."

"Yeah! If he didn't want us to use this extra time, he would have shown up!" That was a bit of a stretch on Naruto's part, but he wasn't really wrong, in that sense. All of this was on him, when it came down to it.

"Then, what should we do?" Sakura asked. She sounded reluctant to address Naruto, but I had basically put him in charge of this by prompting him in the first place.

Naruto looked at all of the gear and then the landscape again. "We don't wanna do this out in the open," he decided. "The trees will be better! He's a lot bigger than us, and traps don't work that great without some way to blend them in anyhow. We can at least hide and distract him a lot better in there, instead." He gave a considering look at the ninja wire. "I dunno about using the ninja wire for this though, it might be too risky."

"How do you mean?" Sakura asked.

"Well, if you're not using it as a weapon on purpose, you've gotta be careful with it, right? It's really easy to cut yourself on it even by accident if you use too much force. And if you don't know where you've used it? You're gonna get caught in it! And like I said, we're the ones at a disadvantage so we don't wanna use something we could get tangled up in so easy," Naruto explained.

I wasn't sure how I felt about Naruto being able to actually use logic. "Won't using ropes stand out too much?" While what Sakura and I had wasn't that thick, I didn't believe for a moment that Kakashi wouldn't manage to spot them.

"Hehe, not if you do it right!" Naruto rubbed his hands together. That was ominous.

In the end, we packed everything back up and went into the woods, letting Naruto take the lead and dictate what kind of traps to use and where. The further from the grass we got, the more it slowly became apparent why Naruto's kunai and shuriken looked like they did; he had no qualms about using them.

Naruto wasn't afraid of abusing his weaponry. He was using his kunai to score marks into the trees or pin thinned and untwined pieces of rope into the trunks and branches of trees, and was driving them deep into the ground. Occasionally he would look around, before running off to stare at something from a different vantage point, and toss a kunai or shuriken from there to check something, or plant them in spots that were blatantly obvious compared to where he actually strung something or set things up to launch if triggered.

At one point he hauled himself into a questionable looking tree with yellowed leaves, only to balance precariously on a narrow branch that was barely able to hold his weight with one hand gripping an even more spindly one above him. He stood there and jumped until we heard a cracking sound as the branch threatened to break below him, before he leapt out of it and made the other tree branches look unappealing or blatantly look like traps. He had Sakura and I plant obvious tripwires on the ground below, making estimates on what would urge Kakashi into the trees at the right distance.

It was a bit terrifying to watch him go at it. He didn't even seem to be aware of how much thought he was putting into everything, just naturally making adjustments naturally based on whatever obstacle he had added before or would result in a forced course correction.

Eventually, Naruto looked satisfied with the level of preparation he had put into it. He had lightened his bag in the process, and made similar dents in the others.

"Won't he notice our bags look empty?" Sakura wondered, looking at hers and mine, before looking at Naruto's. His was practically empty, in comparison.

"Well, we can either stuff them with something, or just ignore it and see if he ignores it too," I answered. I wasn't entirely sure that Kakashi would ignore it if it looked suspicious enough, but he was apathetic half the time in the series, so in theory it could work out. Then again, he was making these dreams a pain in my ass, so maybe not.

"Oh yeah! That's easy!" Naruto climbed into one of the trees again, and before we could ask what he was doing, began to shake leaves, twigs, and other random debris left by birds and other creatures out. "Just put some stuff in there, and some rocks! He probably won't look inside unless you make him think something funny's up."

"Why do I get the feeling you've done this before?" I asked, dryly.

He laughed and rubbed the back of his head, still dropping things out of the tree. "I miiight have forgotten to pack everything a couple times when we had shuriken practice and borrowed from Kiba after the first time I got yelled at? The teachers don't care if they don't notice!"

Sakura looked about as impressed as expected. "Ugh, I wish I was surprised. No wonder your kunai and shuriken look so awful!"

I couldn't believe what I was going to say. "No, it's because he's actually been using them outside of practice," I told her. "Did you see what he was doing the whole time?" His aim wasn't always the greatest when he had been doing this, but if watching him lay traps in the woods was any indication, my guess was that this dream's Naruto was actually used to using them like actual tools, and not just as school supplies. In the name of being a goddamn delinquent, apparently, but still.

Naruto suddenly stopped, mid motion. I didn't like the expression on Naruto's face, up in the tree. It wasn't like Sakura or Ino's expressions when they were looking my way, but it was making me realize I had made a serious miscalculation by defending him. It was too close to praise for Naruto.

"See? Even Sasuke can tell!" Naruto said. Forget dreams, I felt like I was going to have nightmares about this. I never wanted this.

Sakura flushed pink, pouting. "Well, still."

I sighed, and grabbed a few of the longer branches Naruto had dropped to twine them with loose bits of rope into a questionable basket frame, sitting down. It didn't have to be that large, since the bag I— Sasuke, not me — had wasn't that large, compared to Naruto or Sakura's bulkier things. I couldn't believe that this, the one thing I had ever learned and bothered to remember from attending a day camp, was getting used for a dream of all things. Even my mother hadn't appreciated the skill I had picked up. Then again, it wasn't like we had the room for baskets upon baskets upon baskets, and she was probably expecting something she could put on the fridge or put away with the rest of the things she insisted on keeping as 'memories'. The vast majority of my questionable baskets from that summer had ended up distributed to various aunts and uncles, and even a few cousins.

Naruto looked down. "What are you doing?" he shouted.

"I don't feel like stuffing my bag with all of that, so I'm going to make a basket frame so it just looks full," I explained.

Sakura looked intrigued. It had to be more appealing than bulking her bag up with random debris. "Can you show me how?"

"Hey! Me too! Me too!"

I glanced around to see if he had dropped any more suitable branches before I answered. It looked like there wasn't quite enough. "I guess. Grab some more thin branches that are about the length of your arm," I told him, looking upwards.

Naruto immediately snapped a few off and dropped to the ground. Even from the ground the damage was apparent. We had really denuded that poor tree. "Hey, hey, Sasuke! Show us now!"

I had not expected this to devolve into ninja arts and crafts, but here I was.

"Fine." I motioned for them both to come closer, and demonstrated.

It wasn't going to look pretty at all— I was half-assing it pretty strongly and if I was trying to make a real basket it probably would have fallen apart after too long— but for what I was trying to do, it just needed to stay in place, inside the bag. "You need to have at least two crossing each other like this, and then bind them at the center," I explained.

They had significantly less trouble picking it up with my rusty instructions than I initially had under the instruction of an eighteen year old getting paid minimum wage. Then again, they were also significantly less clumsy. Finger dexterity went a long way with something this fiddly. In between some vague corrections, we started to brainstorm on how to lead Kakashi into the trees if we did have to fight him.

It wasn't long before we had managed to carefully shove the questionably made skeletal frames into our bags, all of them held together with the barest amount of branches and rope tied together. My eight year old self would have been horrified at such haphazard work. It was still probably far more effort than needed to throw Kakashi off, but it was better than sitting around dreaming about being bored.

I still couldn't believe he hadn't shown up yet, but it was still relatively early in the morning, if not quite painfully so. After a short shakedown to reduce as much evidence of our plotting as possible— mostly on Naruto's part, considering he had what seemed like half a tree sticking out of his hair and the collar of his jacket— we ended up returning to the open part of the training ground.

We ended up sitting— or lying, in Naruto's case— on the grass again, looking out in different directions trying to see if Kakashi was ever going to show up. The sun had managed to trek further into proper daytime before the complaints started to kick in.

"I should have eaten dinner, I should have gone to bed early, I should have not woken up so early…" Sakura said, out loud.

"I coulda eaten breakfast," Naruto groaned. "I could eat so many bowls of Ichiraku's right now..."

I wasn't going to tell them I felt fine. They probably wouldn't appreciate it. "I can't believe we're still waiting." I paused, as a thought crossed my mind. I wasn't sure why it had bothered to show up. "Do you think we could petition for a different jounin?"

"Oh, you want to get rid of me already? We haven't even started the test yet." When the hell did he get here?

Naruto jumped to his feet with impressive speed, for starting from lying down. "What! You're the one who made us wait forever, again!"

Kakashi idly glanced at the alarm clock in his hand, only looking at the bells. "It's only what, a quarter past nine?" He also had a backpack on. I wondered what he had in there. If this was real, it would be his dirty romances.

"You told us to be here at five!" Sakura joined in, now.

"Did I?" Kakashi asked, casually. He was taking too much joy in this.

"Yes!" Naruto was fired up.

"Oh well." Kakashi shrugged effusively. "Let's get started." He set the clock down on top of the middle wooden post.

"The time on that says 10:08," I noted.

"I looked at the clock when I left," he answered.

Sakura's eyelid began to twitch.

Kakashi pressed down on the top of the alarm, activating it. "It's set for noon," he told us, as he lazily pulled the stringed pair of bells from one of his pockets. "This shouldn't be too hard for you," he said. The man was a goddamn tease. "All you have to do is take these bells from me before noon." He jingled them together, letting them chime. "Those who can't do it won't get lunch. If you can't, you'll be tied to those posts, and I'll eat my lunch right in front of you."

Naruto gripped his head with his hands and Sakura held onto her stomach. I was starting to wonder if I wasn't feeling hungry because it was a dream, or if Sasuke had cheated. Either way, watching this play out and not on a screen or on paper really amplified how much of a jerk move it was on Kakashi's part.

"You only have to get one bell. Since there's two, at minimum one of you will get tied up." Kakashi met all of our eyes in turn. "And whoever doesn't take a bell fails the mission. So someone's getting sent back to the academy regardless." As far as inspiring fear of failure went, he was succeeding in it where Sakura and Naruto were concerned, all while smiling. I wanted to be able to do that someday. For now, I'd have to just settle for vaguely worrying freshmen who only realized there were consequences to their illegal underaged drinking and sudden uncontrolled freedom with only a few heavily weighted papers and the final exam left and none of the reading done. "Or it could be two of you, or even your whole team. You can use all of your weapons, including shuriken. If you're not prepared to come at me with killing intent, you won't be able to take the bells."

"Isn't that dangerous?" Sakura asked, nervously. I guess she hadn't really mentally accepted the possibility of us fighting him, even with all of the traps we had laid.

"Yeah, you're so lazy you couldn't even get here in time!" Naruto said, trying to laugh it off.

"I've noticed that those who tend to complain aren't skilled enough." Wait. While that was intended to be a diss towards Naruto, didn't that comment apply to Obito, too? That was something he had originally said, wasn't it? Kakashi really did have problems. "Just ignore Dead Last here, and—"

Naruto pulled a kunai from his leg holster and readied to throw it at him, halfway into a lunge to give it proper thrust. Even with knowing what came next, I was still unprepared for how fast Kakashi cleared the distance between us, and soon had Naruto by the head in one hand, the other gripping the blond's wrist, angling the kunai at the back of Naruto's neck.

"Don't be in such a rush. I hadn't said start yet," Kakashi said, just slightly more quietly and slowly than he had spoken in before.

Naruto grimaced, trying to pull away, but didn't succeed until Kakashi finally let him go. The vague focus Kakashi had put on display vanished just as suddenly as it had appeared.

"You did at least come at me with the intent to kill," he commented, lazily. "So, I think I'm actually starting to like you guys." What a small mercy. "Get ready…. And start!" It wasn't until I was mid-leap that I realized I had no idea what the hell I was doing.

As much as I was confused by that autonomous response, I still headed straight for the trees. We had agreed upon a spot, but now I realized I wasn't sure if the other two were going to stick to the plan anymore. Sakura might— if she wasn't too rattled by Kakashi's insistence at us making a serious attempt at killing him— but Naruto was rightfully upset at Kakashi revealing that in front of everyone and making fun of him for it. That alone made him more unpredictable than he might have otherwise been. Then again, I was trying to apply serious analysis to fictional characters in a dream, so I was the real fool here.

I hauled myself into the tree we had decided on as a meeting point. To my surprise, Sakura was already in it, only a glint of pink spoiling her hiding spot in the leafiest part of the crown of the tree. I settled onto a branch below her, leaning against the trunk where it was slightly more shaded.

"Sasuke!" she whisper-hissed to me. "Did you see Naruto?"

I shook my head.

"Ugh. I hope he didn't go off to do his own thing…" she said, exasperated. "I can't believe he actually tried to attack our sensei like that!"

"He's trying to provoke us," I said, thinking.

"Naruto's always trying to be annoying," she said, trying to agree with me.

"Not him; Kakashi," I explained. "He's doing this on purpose. Telling us no food and making us get up early enough that we'd be hungry and somewhat tired by the time he even starts his test? On top of being late? Naruto just had the biggest button for him to push."

"You really think it's on purpose?" she asked, dubiously. She still wanted to place her full faith in adults and the educational system. Even I didn't place any faith in the educational system.

"Right now? Absolutely."

After minutes of tense waiting, I spied orange through the leaves, which coalesced into Naruto's shape coming in from the right. At least, I hoped it was him. I realized with a start that it could have been a henge. Naruto already knew where we were supposed to meet, and I didn't think he would be trying to come from the side with how much Kakashi had riled him up. He wasn't that subtle. This was seeking behavior, and neither of us were particularly well hidden.

I hadn't accounted for that possibility earlier.

"Hey!" The possibly-Naruto shouted, from the ground, before he joined us in the tree.

"Naru—" I motioned for Sakura to stop talking, and she cut herself off almost immediately.

"What?" The blond looked confused.

I looked at him suspiciously. "What did you do yesterday that Kakashi wouldn't know about?"

"Huh? What do you mean?"

"Oh!" went Sakura. She had caught on.

"What did you do yesterday when we went to lunch?" I asked again.

A nervous laugh was the answer. "I had ramen! Why are you asking?"

"Nice try, but wrong."

Sakura's gasp was cut off by the pop of smoke as Kakashi ended the henge. "So much for research," he said, idly. The bells were in one of his hands, which he jangled at us.

Sakura bolted from the tree first, heading into the direction of the first layer of traps. I lunged at Kakashi's center of gravity, and even though I mentally prepared for him to dodge—

—he was out of sight before I even had a chance to finish the thought. The bells tinkled teasingly above me. "Ah, you weren't putting all of your effort into that. You're going to need to try harder than that," he said. "First in class means nothing out in the real world. Not with your brother out there."

I didn't really know how to respond to that one. At bare minimum it was actually a ridiculously awful thing to say to anyone, much less an assumed child.

"HEY!" Naruto's indignant shout saved me the effort of having to come up with anything beyond being vaguely dismayed at Kakashi's lack of social skills. "I'm not done with you, you bastard!" He was running through the treetops, a kunai in hand.

"You're kind of late," I yelled in his direction. Wait. I should probably arm myself too, shouldn't I? While I reached into my— Sasuke's?— leg holster, Kakashi dropped onto the same branch I was into a crouch, swinging his leg out in a wide and low kick that was intended to knock me out of the tree. Without entirely being aware of the decision, I leapt barely in time to avoid it.

"He kicked me into the river!" Naruto threw his kunai at Kakashi. There was a clink of metal against metal, and I realized at the same time that not only had Kakashi thrown something to deflect it, it was now angled in my direction.

I wasn't quite at the point where I preferred the bizarre repeat dreams about showing up to work late and discovering the whole campus had vanished and that I needed to cross country to find my advisor somewhere in the middle of Vermont on Pancho Villa's behalf, but we were getting there.

I dropped out of the tree. I didn't trust that going for Kakashi wouldn't just result in him kicking me back in the direction of the kunai's path. It seemed like the sort of behavior he would indulge in.

Kakashi looked down at me from the tree, not even blinking as the kunai whizzed past his head. "Not giving up already, are you?" he asked.

I briefly wondered how terrible an idea the fireball jutsu would be to use in an area like this, filled with trees, before I dismissed it. "Do you need a nap or something?" I returned.

"I'm not that old," Kakashi answered. It almost sounded petulant.

Naruto landed next to me. "Try not to give him ammunition next time, will you?" I said.

"It's not like I meant to!"

"You know…" Kakashi drawled, "I'm not sure how I feel about being talked under." He leapt down from the branch.

We scattered. Or at least, I scattered. Naruto tried to throw a kunai at Kakashi again, except from far too close. What was he doing?

Kakashi immediately deflected the kunai right back at Naruto— who disappeared in a cloud of smoke.

The kunai pierced the rancid block of tofu, which squirted foul looking off-green liquid both in Kakashi's direction and mine before it fell to the ground, draining the rest of its mold-dappled liquid into the soil. I was just out of range, and could barely resist the urge to gag at the smell. My stomach roiled in protest. Kakashi fared far worse: the liquid got him right in the mask.

There was a brief moment as his visible eye widened, he made a gagging sound as he clasped his hands on his knees, actually dropping the bells, and I realized Naruto had made a serious tactical error, the reasons for which were slowly piecing together. If things weren't going to be wildly different before, they definitely were now.

I ran for the bells, skidding past Kakashi to grab them, and bolted in the same direction Sakura had earlier. "Run!" was the only thing I shouted, before I went into the trees.

Naruto joined me shortly after, laughing. "Did you see that!? We really got him!"

"You just effectively stink bombed a Hatake at point blank range," I told him, as everything came together. "They're supposed to have a good sense of smell!" I wasn't sure exactly what bit of the series I was remembering that from, but it seemed reasonable enough. "He was only toying with us before this!"

"Oh, yeah," Naruto went, his laughter cutting off entirely. "I really messed that up didn't I? We need a new plan, huh?" He started to take the lead as we approached the trapped section of woods. We had layered them too thick earlier to do anything but go single file. I wondered if this was going to backfire on us later. Probably. This was too much to get away with.

"Yeah."

"We should find Sakura and see if she has any ideas!" Honestly, that wasn't a bad idea.

"Sounds fine to me." I wondered how much of a head start we had over Kakashi. Assuming that his moment of weakness was more a combination of utter shock and being temporarily overwhelmed from the smell, instead of actually being completely incapacitated, I doubted it would last that long. This was not going to be a great time.

Something went off behind us. Naruto nervously laughed, and sped up, pushing further ahead with his next leap ahead. "How much trouble do you think we're in?"

"We aren't dead," I answered, "So maybe not that much?"

A tree ahead and to the right of us burst into flame, sending the shuriken speeding out from its trap in wild, unpredictable arcs.

I barely tore my eyes away from staring at it before I missed the next branch and lost all momentum. "I take that back." On the one hand he might not be aiming directly at us, but I couldn't come up with any positives to this.

"SAKUUUUURA! SAKURA!" Naruto started shouting. "WE MESSED UP! WE MESSED UP!"

"What? What happened?" Sakura's face peeked out from one of the few safe trees ahead, looking confused. "Wasn't I supposed to try and use genjutsu when he got in here?"

Within a few bounds, we reached the branch Sakura was waiting on, Naruto still speeding ahead. I was just surprised he was still able to remember where the safe path was. I grabbed at her wrist as we passed by, pulling her behind me, ignoring her surprised yell. "Naruto stink bombed him and now we're in deep trouble!" I looked behind just long enough to make sure she was still following.

In spite of her surprise and forced start, she was keeping up. "But you have the bells, don't you? Doesn't that mean the test is over?"

"Doesn't count! We pissed him off!" I really should probably hand at least one of the bells off, but I had a feeling losing momentum right now would be a bad idea.

"But—"

"Evasion now, talking later!" Naruto shouted. He was really taking playing team leader seriously.

The tension only built as we went through the trees, before Naruto came to a sudden stop, immediately turning around so quickly that I nearly clipped into him. "Wha—"

"Naruto!"

"The tree's wrong— the tree's wrong! Back back back back!" was the only babbling explanation we got.

"What do you mean the tree's wrong!? How can a tree be wrong!?" Sakura questioned. Even so, she was still at least taking Naruto's lead and was now ahead of me, just from having the advantage of that little bit of time to turn around sooner.

From the vague direction we had left Naruto's 'wrong tree' behind, we heard an exploding clash of metal bursting outward. That was definitely not a right tree. As far as I was aware, Naruto from the show wouldn't have been able to figure out genjutsu at this point, so it left the question of how he had figured it out, but— wasn't really the time.

It turned out that trying to make a giant trap against a jounin of Kakashi's level was a bit beyond the skill level of completely fresh genin, even with some smarts and teamwork added. Who could possibly have guessed?

After a while, I wasn't sure how long we had spent evading what were becoming increasingly close calls from our various traps being set off by Kakashi, but ahead of me, Sakura was beginning to flag. "Let Sakura take the lead," I called up ahead to Naruto. "We can't keep this pace up."

"I'm fine !" she tried to insist. She sounded breathy even with her protest.

"Huh?" Naruto looked back just long enough to glance at Sakura, before he turned back around. One of the shuriken traps ahead went off, with barely enough time for any of us to stop before we jumped right into the thickest part of its stream. We were forced to stop, even if it was only for a moment. "Sakura, you coulda said something!"

She huffed. "I can keep up!" she insisted. While I felt sweaty— and I didn't want to think how disgusting from sweat Naruto's jumpsuit could be from all of this— Sakura was absolutely drenched. She looked exhausted and worn down.

"For now maybe," I pointed out. "Take the lead."

"But Naruto was the one who laid all the traps!" she tried.

"And? You were paying attention, too, weren't you? It's not like you're dumb," I pointed out. "We're having too many close calls, Kakashi's playing with us, take the lead ." I shoved one of the bells into one of her hands.

She stared at me and then the bell in shock. "...Okay." She sounded a bit firmer.

I threw the other one to Naruto. He was too busy staring at Sakura, and barely realized it was heading towards him until the last moment, which sent him scrambling to grab it without falling out of the tree.

"Getting tired?" Kakashi's voice floated out from somewhere. He didn't sound lazy.

Sakura and Naruto's eyes widened. She steeled herself. "Right." Without any further hesitation, Sakura jumped in the direction of the stream of shuriken, which stopped just before she reached it.

Naruto had followed without a thought.

I kept up the rear. I could have swapped with Naruto, but the idea didn't sit right with me; he was too easily distracted and keeping him in the middle was better, since it was now obvious Kakashi had decided to change the terms of his test. We had turned them over entirely on our own, just by building what was now clear was an incredibly stupid death trap and stink bombing him, so it only stood to reason he would see it differently as well. Whatever the case was, we were probably going to be stuck at this until whenever it was noon. I realized with a start that I was getting way too invested in this.

Sakura's approach turned out to be different in a way I didn't expect from Naruto's. She hadn't just paid attention to the safe path we had made, but the spots Kakashi had already set off. Instead of sticking to the single route we had made, she was sometimes carving through these weak points and sometimes forcing us to go through sections that were still rigged to trigger. It was a bizarre combination of intelligence and brute forcing what was basically a giant puzzle.

"Is it just me or is this starting to get easy?" Naruto asked, mid-leap.

Before I could even tell him to not tempt fate, the branch Sakura had just landed on broke under her. With a shout of surprise, she fell to the ground, Naruto roughly landing right after her. I was the only one who had the chance to stop, and jump to join them.

"You really need to think before you say things like that," I muttered under my breath as I landed. It suddenly occurred to me that at some point in the last few seconds I had armed myself, a kunai in my off hand and shuriken in the other. I hadn't even noticed. Behind me, Sakura and Naruto were getting up.

"Interesting," Kakashi said, as he emerged from the trees. His thumbs were hooked into his pockets.

I experimentally threw a shuriken.

He caught it on a finger. I don't know what I was expecting. Sakura and Naruto walked over to stand next to me, taking defensive positions.

"You three turned out very different from what I was expecting." His gaze leveled on all of us. "From what I understood, I was supposed to be getting a loner prodigy," Sasuke. "An unfocused troublemaker," Naruto. "And a fangirl." Sakura. While technically right, I wondered if he was projecting again. Probably.

"In my opinion, none of you should be going back to the academy." Oh, I knew what was coming now.

Sakura and Naruto cheered.

"None of you deserve to be shinobi." There we go, that was the other shoe I was expecting.

"What!? Why?" Naruto protested.

Kakashi threw the shuriken behind him with a flick of his wrist.

A few seconds later, we could hear the thud of kunai driving into a tree.

"You completely flouted the parameters of the test." He honestly had a point. We had done our own thing completely without much consideration for what he had planned. And in my case, I had even known what he had planned, so it was entirely on purpose.

"Hey! We still got the bells!" Naruto protested.

"Did you, though? Sasuke was the one who grabbed them." He hadn't seen the hand-off, then.

I opened my empty hands, holding the palms out to him. "You never said that I had to keep the bells." As I said that, Sakura and Naruto pulled out the bells I had given to them.

"You didn't take the threat of being sent back to the academy that seriously, did you?" he asked me. "I can always recommend that you be completely dismissed instead and barred from becoming a shinobi. Unless, of course, you take the bells back, and I'll just tell the Hokage the other two should be stripped of their status instead." That would have gone a long way in fomenting distrust and actually ruining everything if I was actually Sasuke.

The other two gasped.

"Bastard!" Naruto was glowering at Kakashi rather impressively now.

"I don't need to be a shinobi if it comes down to it," I said, frankly. I definitely didn't and the whole series had underlined different avenues anyways, not that they really mattered.

"But, Sasuke-!" Sakura looked torn.

"I think the Hokage is at least supposed to be a ninja, though. Otherwise Naruto would be the most embarrassing one ever."

"What?" Naruto looked confused, but turned his attention back on Kakashi. "Hey, you bastard! You can't just make people pick like that!"

"Can't I?" Kakashi asked, lazily. Before I even had time to process it, he moved forward, and I was suddenly driven to the ground, dirt filling my mouth. It tasted like dirt, at least. "Sakura! Kill Naruto, or Sasuke dies." My head was held down at an angle where the only thing I could see was earth and Sakura and Naruto's feet.

"Ah!"

"What?!"

"Shinobi make hard choices," Kakashi said. "And they don't always have easy or obvious answers. Sometimes people will die based on your decisions. You three worked together today, but was it just from chance? Or because you were actually aware of the importance of teamwork?"

"You're a jounin," I said, spitting dirt out of my mouth. Kakashi helpfully ground me into the dirt again, making that earlier effort completely pointless. That had to be on purpose. He clearly held me partially accountable for the tofu incident. "We're genin. Any fight against you is going to be so ridiculously weighed in your favor by default to the point of futility together, much less on our own."

"You would know all about that, wouldn't you?" Kakashi said, idly from above me. "And the two of you? What do you have to say for yourselves?" My eyes widened as I felt the tip of cold metal poke against the back of my neck. This was starting to feel a bit too realistic for my tastes.

"I think you're a real asshole!" Naruto's contribution was both completely indignant and useless.

"About teamwork," Kakashi elaborated, "But I'll take that into consideration… hm. Never."

"Naruto!" I could see the scuffle of feet, as one set stayed firm and another were dragged back from an attempted lunge.

"If you think teamwork is so important, then why are you trying to sabotage it?" Sakura asked. She sounded extremely frustrated. "What's the point of your stupid test anyways if it's set up so no one can pass it?" Oh, this wasn't just turning into a vent, this was an honors student style breakdown. This was starting to devolve for her from 'potentially separated from her crush' to 'first brush with failure for no real reason but the whims of another'. "Have you even ever passed anyone, if this is how you run your stupid test?! What's the point of a jounin instructor who doesn't want to teach!?"

"It's more of a required duty billet than a volunteer status," Kakashi said. He sounded slightly baffled that he was even explaining that to Sakura, whose voice had started to take on a shrill tone near the end. "Any other last words?"

"If you even think you're gonna stop any of us from being ninja, you're wrong!" Naruto insisted. "Believe it! I don't care how long or how hard we have to train, we'll make it! Even if I have to fight the old man over it! You don't get to play some stupid head-games and try and make us fight each other and destroy our dreams!"

"Hmm. Is that really how you feel?" Kakashi asked, languidly.

"Yeah!"

"Then, I guess… you pass." The pressure on my head and the small of my back let up, and I carefully sat up, after spitting out the second helping of dirt. Once I confirmed that Kakashi wasn't just waiting to give me a third mouthful of forest soil, I stood up.

"What!?"

"Huh?"

"That whole thing—" Sakura cut herself off, though I couldn't help but notice that both of her hands were balled into fists. I wondered how far Kakashi would have to push before she eventually tried to punch him.

"Was a test!" Kakashi's single visible eye crinkled into a smile. "You're the first ones to pass. Everyone else has done what I've said, neglecting or even sacrificing their teammates."

"I knew it," Sakura muttered under her breath.

"Ninja must be able to see underneath the underneath. Those who break the rules are trash," Kakashi said, ignoring Sakura's comment and eying me, "But those who would abandon their teammates are worse than trash."

"What about the bells and alarm?" Sakura asked. The fact that the test she thought was the focus wasn't what it was about at all, after what she'd been put through today was apparently still getting to her. She wasn't letting him get off that easy, apparently.

"Oh, I'd like the bells back. And as for the time…" He gestured for us to look up.

Past the treetops, the position the sun was in was far beyond what it should have been for noon.

I groaned.

"What!?"

"Oh no…"

"You were running for your lives an extra three hours," Kakashi said, cheerfully. "Now, I'd love to let you all eat, but I didn't book this training ground for the full day and they issue fines if there's too many weapons and the like left over. You have… maybe an hour to clean up? Unless you want to start your careers as genin in debt, of course."

Naruto squawked in protest, and Sakura looked like she was giving serious consideration to shouting at Kakashi again.

"Oh, and I will say, you should probably do it as fast as you can. They might actually have to pay chuunin to dismantle those traps you put up. We'll have to do it again for training sometime, it'll be a good experience for you."

"Aagh! We get it, we get it!" Without giving us a chance to move, Naruto grabbed both Sakura's arm and mine, dragging us behind as he started running for the nearest still-armed trap.

The last thing I remembered before it started to fade away to warm sunlight was Sakura yelling at Naruto for triggering a burst of shuriken too close to her face.

I rolled over and stuffed my face into the mattress in an attempt to ignore the light coming in through the blinds, before I grunted reluctantly, peeling my face from the sheets to look at my phone.

It was edging past ten AM. While I didn't have any classes I had to go in for today— thanks be to God for Monday-Wednesday classes that did not also spill into Friday— I had still volunteered to help with a college-level open house for the department due to start at noon. The free food was a strong incentive, but right at this moment nothing was more tempting than to not move and indulge in this short, perfect moment of laziness.

Though...

If I showered and got ready now, I'd have enough time to grab and enjoy a coffee from the indie place across from campus instead of settling for whatever budget coffee resided in the dollar donation coffee urn in the departmental office or the heavily roasted nonsense sold at the cafe inside the campus library.

Before I could debate any longer, my phone rang, and I suppressed the urge to sigh when I saw the caller ID display on the screen. No avoiding this. It'd put off the shower, but I could still get everything else ready instead.

" Hola, mamá… "