(A/N) Kakashi! We've officially hit canon.
Sakura knew of their teacher of course, knew all too well of Copy-nin Hatake, of Friend Killer Kakashi as she'd heard him called all too many times. She knew there was a story behind that, but was too polite to pry into it, since it seemed to be something of a delicate subject.
Either way, he was their teacher, and he was three hours late. Sakura was far from pleased. If he was going to make this sort of showing, she'd have to replace Lee or Neji to get any sort of decent instruction from Tenten on Hiraishin. Not that she wouldn't be doing it anyway, but that was beside the point.
"At this rate we'll just use this team as a rest space. Whoever's sick or tired can just do this and we'll be done with it." Naruto huffed, putting his head on his arms and closing his eyes. Sakura had to agree, although she wasn't going to say it out loud. Their teacher might be nearby.
Their teacher only arrived after another half an hour, immediately whisking them up to the roof to have a chat. And introduce themselves. This was stupid, Sakura would like everyone to know she thought this was stupid. He should've read their files and they already knew each other.
Naruto didn't think much of their new sensei, and wasn't even remotely impressed. Sakura had told them all about this Kakashi while they waited and he wasn't nearly as cool as Sakura made him sound.
He was even late to their test thingy the next morning, which was super rude. Everyone else also had their tests so they didn't bother switching. There was time for that later.
Now if Kakashi would just show up that'd be great. Naruto wanted to get on this then go find some more plants for their garden.
Four hours after the scheduled time, Naruto was ready to just straight up ditch it, but luckily their sensei appeared just in time to make sure Naruto didn't do that. He was totally ready to though.
Apparently they had to get some bells, which Naruto was extremely suspicious about. Last he checked there weren't any fragment teams, no teams with only one or two genin.
They regrouped in a clearing a bit away from their teacher.
"Something's up with this," Sakura muttered, narrowing her eyes back in the direction of their sensei. "There aren't any fragment teams. Pretty sure it's we all pass or we all fail."
"Hey he didn't say we had to have a whole bell," Sasuke commented suddenly. "Just a bell. Part of a bell is still a bell."
"Wait that's genius!" Sakura said, grinning. "He'll be so focused defending the bells themselves, he likely won't even notice little pieces are gone!"
"Perfect," Naruto agreed, grinning. This was gonna be epic.
Why Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke's teacher was sulking as he led them through the streets, Hinata didn't know. As all three looked immensely proud of themselves, Hinata assumed they had also passed their test and were now proper genin. Although their sensei didn't seem too happy about that. Hinata hoped it was alright.
Oh well, they'd know when their sensei all released them for the day so they could go back home and learn of everything that had happened! Hinata couldn't wait. She bet all her siblings passed their tests, not just her team and Team 7.
Shikamaru was honestly curious about Kakashi, so he volunteered to replace Sasuke the next day. He was tired anyway. Plus it meant he could observe Kakashi, see why the genin that were now Team 7 had been picked specifically for him. Last he remembered, Kakashi sent all of his teams back to the academy. What made Sakura, Naruto, and Sasuke so different?
They used the time that Kakashi was late to do the half of the workout they needed to, then still had a while to sit down and take a nap. Well, Shikamaru took a nap, Kiba, subbing in for Naruto, and Tenten, subbing in for Sakura, continued practicing. Tenten with her weapons and Kiba with some solo attacks for himself if he didn't have Keruberosu, who was currently with Choji, who was subbing in for Kiba.
Kakashi arrived almost an hour after they finished with their work out. "Come along! Let's go for a nice run shall we?"
Shikamaru did his best not to groan like he usually would and just got up. He was impersonating Sasuke after all, who didn't complain about more work usually. Kiba and Tenten went along with it easily, still energetic as always and up for more working out.
Kiba didn't particularly like how late the teacher was, whatever his name was, Kaka something he was pretty sure, but he didn't care to remember. On the plus side, there was work to be done, and after an hour or so of jogging around the village, only stopping when they ran into Gai's team, made currently of Naruto, impersonating Tenten(he had the best aim after her), Choji, impersonating Neji, and Torune, impersonating Lee.
For some reason, the second they saw the team, Kakashi immediately turned and started leading them on a wild chase through the streets. Based on the enthusiastic yells as they were chased down by Gai and his team, Gai and their teacher knew each other. Although Kakashi didn't seem particularly pleased to see Gai.
"Petition to threaten to train with Gai and deliberately lead Gai to him every time he's late," Choji whispered to Kiba.
"I'll help," Tenten said dryly. "I'm ready to. And it really isn't that hard to convince Gai to go places. He's always up for a good race."
"Let's tell him after we're done," Torune suggested. "Tenten, I'd switch back, we're doing individual practice once we're done and you know Naruto would get sniffed out then."
"Deal," Tenten agreed, quickly undoing her henge, while Kiba swapped out his henge for one of Sakura, to replace Tenten so Naruto could be, well, Naruto.
Torune assumed the threat had worked, since Ino, Neji, and Hinata came back from the training the next day looking rather pleased with themselves.
"We're leading Gai on a Kakashi hunt tomorrow," Ino said cheerfully. "He didn't take the threat seriously enough. He was five minutes late."
"Noted, will have Lee on his proper team tomorrow so he can lead Gai on the Kakashi hunt," Sakura, who was usually in charge of keeping track of who was where on any given day, volunteered. "It's about time anyway. Neji, Hinata, you two be the others, and Tenten, replace Sakura again so once the two have found Kakashi for Gai, you can switch out with Hinata."
Tenten nodded her agreement. It was time for a Kakashi hunt. Torune hoped it went well.
All in all, it had been a successful Kakashi hunt, Neji couldn't say the last time he had used his byakugan with any amount of glee, but boy hunting down Kakashi had been gloriously vindictive revenge. With Hinata helping, they'd located Kakashi in no time, and hunted him down mercilessly, siccing Gai on him with no quarter. He'd learn to be late to teaching.
"That's what you get for being late," Neji told him, almost pityingly. He felt no pity for the teacher though. "Don't be late next time or this will have a repeat performance."
Kakashi just glared at him. Which was fair.
Sasuke had, of course been warned about the...issues Kakashi had by Ino, who was taking this very seriously and was very determined to at least try and help fix him. Sasuke didn't really get it, but it also wasn't really his place to decide, so he let it be. Kakashi was still lazy and always late, and generally just sorta did the bare minimum of teaching them. For all his thousand Jutsu, Sasuke had yet to see any, and yet to learn any.
Since he was pretty bored in the mornings, since even if Kakashi was on time, their training started later than everyone else's, he started reading through the genin library, looking for fun things to try out. It was going pretty well so far, and Sasuke didn't really find anything he was interested in specializing in, so it looked like he'd just settle for being something of a jack of all trades. Sounded fine to him.
Ino was, of course, keeping an eye on everyone, making sure there weren't any super negative issues popping up because of the move from the academy to genin. It was interesting to see Kakashi every day, since occasionally the clouds receded a bit when he watched them train, like their very presence was helping even just slightly. She was glad it happened sometime and resolved to get him over for dinner properly.
(A/N) Okay I know I'm missing Tenten, Lee and Choji, but I am too tired and this was getting long. So it's stopped here. I won't be posting in June, so I will see you all in July! Bye!
