A/N: While not the main focus of this fanfiction I do plan on having NaruHina, InoSaku, and probably SasuKari

Sakura leaned against the teacher's stand as she waited. She was assigned to Team Seven, and she was still processing if that was a good thing or not. Sasuke was on her team. He graduated top in the Tai and Ninjutsu areas of the class and second in academics. Still, he was cold and distant to everyone, especially she and Ino, for their time going around with his fan group. Her other teammate was Naruto, who sat at the bottom of the class in all ways. He was... blunt, loud, and currently setting up some kind of prank. She sighed and pushed off the teacher's stand, "Naruto-Kun, what are you doing?"

Naruto laughed, "setting up a prank as punishment for our sensei being late."

Sasuke scoffed, "LIke, a Jōnin would fall for that; it's so simple."

Sakura nodded as she walked over and pulled out a thread of ninja wire "of course, it won't work. That's why we're going to add a second one and see if he gets tripped up."

Naruto laughed with delight, and Sasuke scoffed as he turned away. She knew he'd disapprove, but if she was honest, a chance at getting their sensei back for making them wait this long was going to be worth it, and besides as annoying as Naruto could be, sometimes his pranks were pretty good.

The trio sat and waited for a few more minutes before they heard footsteps coming down the hall. Sakura looked over and noticed Sasuke had turned his attention back to the door. She smiled, hoping this would work. As the door opened, the eraser fell from its spot and landed squarely on the man's head as his ankle caught the wire, and he fell face-first into the room. Naruto laughed as boisterously and loudly as usual, and Sakura tried her best to hide her laughter. Sasuke sat there, disbelief, barely flickering across his face before going back to looking bored and unimpressed.

The first thing she noticed about their sensei as he stood up was his silver hair, and that his hitai-ate covers his left eye. He rubbed his face and quickly glanced between the three of them "hm not a great first impression. Alright, let's go to the roof, and we'll do some introductions."

Naruto grumbled loudly, and Sasuke followed quietly as always. Sakura discretely picked up and rewound her ninja wire up before slipping it into her weapon pouch on her hip. She jogged to catch up. Once they were all on the roof, the sensei who still hadn't introduced himself sat on the railing and looked them over again. "I am Kakashi Hatake. I'll be your Jounin sensei and the leader of Team 7. Let's go around and introduce ourselves. Give me a like and dislike and your dream."

Sakura rolled her eyes as Naruto burst into a spiel about ramen and how he would be Hokage someday. Everyone had heard his speech at least once, but she wasn't sure if anyone believed him. As he finished, she signed to herself and smiled. "Sakura Haruno I like... spending time in my friend Ino's flower shop, and I dislike pushy people who don't get the hint the first time. My dream, I guess, is to be useful to my village and hopefully be as good of a shinobi as my parents."

She smiled as sweetly as she could while Kakashi-sensei gave her a flat look before turning to Sasuke. Sakura looked over her shoulder as he spoke of how he didn't like much of anything and disliked a lot of things. She gulped when he glanced at her. She had been part of the fangirls who would follow him around, but it was short-lived, and she stopped doing that as quickly as she had started. Instead, she spent her time with Ino and the others from their graduation year. She had only really joined in because he was interesting and mysterious, but it also kept the other girls from teasing her as much. "There's a man I want- no, I need to kill. That is my dream, and I won't let anything stop me from achieving it."

Sakura looked on shocked at Sasuke's declaration of wanting to murder someone. She glanced at Kakashi, who didn't seem fazed, unlike Naruto, who was looking twitchy. The silence stretched for a minute before Kakashi sighed and stood up. "Alright, then we've got nothing to do today, but tomorrow we'll meet up at training ground seven bright and early in the morning for a... survival exercise so that I can gauge your ability for myself."

"Huh?! But we've done plenty of exercises in the academy. You should have access to that stuff, sensei." Sakura said before Naruto could blurt whatever he was going to say.

"This won't be like your academy exercises. It'll be the toughest thing you've ever done in your short lives, so rest up." he hopped onto the railing and looked back "Oh, and do be sure not to eat breakfast tomorrow. Wouldn't want you throwing up the whole time." He was gone in an instant leaving the three of them on the academy roof.

That night Sakura picked at her dinner, her nerves getting the better of her. Sasuke's dream had shaken her, and Kakashi-sensei's directions to not eat breakfast were getting to her. "So who's your sensei?" her father was staring at her from across the dinner table.

"Hatake Kakashi," she said simply. She had never heard of him and doubted her parents had until she looked up to see her mother had stopped cleaning and was looking at her father, who seemed equally concerned "Um, do you two know him?"

Her mother smiled "We've heard about him, but never had the... pleasure to meet him ourselves."

She looked to her dad, who nodded, "I'm sure you'll be fine, so did he give you any information on a mission or training?"

Sakura nodded, "he said we had a survival exercise tomorrow he wants to gauge our skills for himself, and he said not to eat breakfast. He didn't want us throwing up during the exam."

Her mother stifled a laugh, and her father smiled gently "we'll set up a good breakfast for this sort of exam, don't you worry."

Sakura just nodded and headed to her room after dinner. She was lying in bed as the sunset when a pebble knocked against her window; she sighed and went over, opening it, seeing Ino standing down there grinning "Ino what are you doing? Why aren't you just coming to the front door?"

"Because it's almost dark out, and I know your parents don't want you out and about after dark, but come on, we gotta talk about our first day with our new teams."

Sakura looked back at her door before slipping out the window and landing in a crouched position, making almost no noise like they taught in the academy. "Ok, but I need to get a good night's sleep. I have a pretty intense survival exercise tomorrow."

Ino made a face of disgust "ugh, I have training tomorrow as well. Asuma-sensei wants to see how well Chouji-Kun, Shikamaru-Kun, and I do with our combo moves."

Sakura laughed as they hopped the fence of her yard and walked the street, heading towards the park. "You three were guaranteed to be a team since you joined the academy, right?"

Ino groaned "yes! My dad would tell me all the time, 'you know you need to spend more time with your future teammates' usually on the way to the Nara or Akimichi clan grounds for some kind of meeting."

"Sounds like being in a big clan is stressful." Sakura bumped her shoulder against Inos.

"Yeah, only if you're an heir or the current head." Ino leaned onto Sakura, "You have it so much nicer Sakura. No one expects you to act a certain way. You don't have all these extra clan responsibilities to take care of and extra training."

Sakura reached around and rubbed her friend's shoulder "I thought you liked the flower shop."

"That's the only place I like doing clan stuff, because there are plenty of ladies who love to gossip, and I can stay informed about what's going on in the village."

Sakura laughed, and the two walked shoulder to shoulder till they got to the park where they sat on the swings and Ino broke the silence "So you got on a team with Sasuke."

Sakura sighed; she knew her best friend was going to bring this up "Yeah, I did so far; he's just as aloof and too cool for all this as he usually seems." she decided to keep his dream of murder to herself.

Ino hummed "I'm so jealous. You get to spend so much time with him now."

Sakura kicked a rock as she swung lightly. "I don't really care. I just hope I can work well with him and Naruto-Kun."

"Ugh, right, you got on a team with him as well. How's that gone so far?"

Sakura giggled "we pulled a prank on our sensei cause he was late. I set up a tripwire, and Naruto-Kun put a chalkboard eraser on the top of the door."

"There's no way that worked, right?"

"Actually, he fell for both of them. That might be why he gave us the exercise tomorrow as punishment for the prank."

Ino rolled her eyes, "Serves you right. You've always encouraged Naruto-Kuns pranks."

Sakura shrugged, "I encourage certain ones, so he doesn't get in too much trouble. I always hate seeing him get chewed out for the really bad ones."

The two talked for a few hours as they sat and walked around the park. Sakura was mostly listening to Ino talk gossip and complain about clan stuff that she could tell Sakura about. Sakura was glad Ino didn't get mad about her being on Sasuke's team. She knew her friend had a crush on him, and for a while, she thought she did as well, but his aloofness had turned her away. Though she couldn't deny he was one of the more skilled members of their graduating year, and she knew if he just acknowledged she had some skill that would mean she was on track to be as good as she knew her parents were.

Once they were back in Sakura's yard, Ino hugged her "we're finally shinobi, so be careful, Sakura. We've got to be the best kunoichi we can be."

Sakura hugged her back tight. "I'll be careful as long as you are ok? Be sure to come back safe and sound, and I'll do that same."

Once they said goodnight, Sakura climbed back into her room and nearly fell out the window when she saw her mom looking at her "how's Ino?"

The next morning Sakura came down to a breakfast of rations. Her father smiled "The best thing to eat are rations. Bland nearly flavorless, and they won't throw your stomach out of balance. I have some extras to give to your teammates if their parents aren't as great of shinobi like yours."

Sakura flinched, realizing she hadn't told them who her teammates were. "Oh yeah. My teammates are Sasuke Uchiha and Naruto Uzumaki."

Sakura's mother smacked her father's head "way to go Kizashi."

She smiled, watching her father defend himself as she ate her bland breakfast and packed away the rations into her pouch. With forced cheerfulness, she waved goodbye to her parents and left. Sleep was trying to force its way back into Sakura's mind as she arrived at training ground seven. She yawned and waved, "good morning."

She was surprised to see Naruto and Sasuke here before her. The two boys nodded to her. Acknowledgment from Sasuke was surprising but not as surprising as Naruto's subdued good morning. It was an unreasonable time to be awake, though, so it was understandable. After some time passed and sensei still hadn't arrived, Sakura pulled out the rations "you two eat?"

The boys shook their heads, "Kakashi-sensei said not to cause we'd throw up." Naruto said, looking at the bars hungrily.

"My parents said it'd be fine to eat this kind of stuff before this kind of thing, so I took some extra if you two didn't eat."

Naruto thanked her and took his share digging in right away. Sasuke looked weary, and Sakura smiled "I promise your fangirls didn't get a hold of them. They're safe to eat."

Sasuke looked like he was about to debate, but his growling stomach stopped him, and he took the bars with a muted thanks. Minutes turned into hours before finally Kakashi showed up, making Naruto and Sakura groan in unison "you're late!" they both shouted.

Kakashi waved his hand, dismissively, "ran into a cat who was giving me trouble and had to ditch him before I could get here. Now the rules for this little exercise of ours." he produced two silver bells on red strings. "Your mission is to get these two bells off me and bring them back to the three training posts here. You have until twelve o'clock any of you who fail to do so... will be sent back to the academy."

The three genin gapped "what?! You can't do that?!" Naruto screeched

Kakashi's eye crinkled around the edges in a smile, "yes, I can. Every Jōnin sensei can decide to give their genin team a final test, and should the genin fail, they will be sent back to the academy. Now once I start this timer, you will begin. Do be sure to come at me with the intent to kill if you don't you won't stand a chance at passing."

Sakura grabbed the collar of Naruto's jacket before he could rush their sensei. Kakashi smiled, and Sasuke spoke, "there are only two bells, one of us is guaranteed to fail."

"Hm, is that so? Oh well... start." he started the timer.

Sakura pulled Naruto along with her as she followed Sasuke, who looked annoyed. The three of them landed in the woods, and Sasuke gritted his teeth and whispered, "Why are you following me?"

Sakura blushed, "w-we need a plan. He's a Jōnin; we can't just run at him."

"Why bother? There's no way all of us can pass."

"Yeah... but we have a better chance of passing if we work together. Once we have the bells, we can decide what to do from there right, Naruto-Kun?'

Sakura needed him to agree. If he did, it was more likely that Sasuke would put up with them and work together. Naruto nodded. "Sakura-san is right. I know you're just a loner, and I could so take him in a fight. I don't want to risk failing this. I just got my Hitai-ate I- I can't lose it."

She wasn't sure how he had graduated, but he was prouder than most, and she had seen him thanking Iruka-sensei before class yesterday, who wasn't wearing his at the time. Sasuke groaned, "FIne. what are we going to do?"

Sakura tapped her chin, "what about traps. We saw them work when he came into the room when we first met."

Sasuke rolled his eyes "no way he'll let us set up traps in here. He's probably getting ready to make some kind of move."

"Oh, oh oh what if we distract him. I can go buy time, and you can set up traps." Naruto bounced excitedly in his spot.

Sakura smiled "That's not bad. You and Sasuke can buy me time. You two are faster and better at taijutsu than me, so once I'm ready, I'll signal, and you can try to lead him back here."

Sasuke nodded, "then once he's in the middle of it all, we ambush him and steal the bells?"

Sakura nodded and looked at her teammates, hopefully. Naruto grumbled, "I don't need Sasuke's help keeping him busy."

Sakura saw Sasuke about to bite back, so she jumped in, "maybe not, but we want to be careful, right? Give ourselves the best chance we can, and besides, a Hokage knows how to lean on others even if he doesn't need it."

Naruto's face lit up, and he agreed to let Sasuke help him keep Kakashi busy. Sasuke looked impressed for a second, but he kept his face neutral when he saw Sakura looking at him.

Kakashi looked around the training field "Hm, they're all near each other planning maybe? They're not hiding very well... looks like two are moving in opposite directions Ah Sasuke and Naruto, of course. Sakura hasn't left her spot yet... perhaps I'll go after-" he took a step back as a kunai thunked into the ground at his feet. He looked up and saw Naruto standing arms crossed on the other side of the open field.

"Come fight me one on one. I'll take you down and beat this exercise all on my own!"

Kakashi groaned internally 'it was going so well for them too.'

Naruto ran at him head-on, but came to a halt as Kakashi reached into the pouch on his hip, and pulled out a book 'guess I'll get some reading done while I deal with this.'

Naruto screamed and rushed him again, throwing wild punches and kicks. Kakashi wasn't very surprised by Naruto's lack of a fighting style and relatively predictable and telegraphed attacks, so Kakashi was able to focus on 'make-out paradise.' He had read this volume a few times, but it was his favorite. Kakashi felt Sasuke approaching from the back and grabbed Naruto's ankle as he went for a high kick, and with a quick turn, he threw Naruto into the river. Kakashi had just enough time to turn and throw his leg up to block Sasuke's kick; he was surprised when the Uchiha, instead of falling back, launched another attack. Kakashi quickly slipped his book back into his pouch as he blocked the continuing volley of attacks. 'He sure is aggressive. Though considering what he's been through, he probably feels the need to be like this.'

Sasuke grunted and backflipped away just in time for Naruto to burst out of the river though there was more than only one of them. At least seven Narutos ran out of the river to rush Kakashi. 'Kage Bunshin?' Kakashi fell back but had to abandon that as Sasuke ran through hand seals. 'A Katon at his age?'

Sakura heard the sounds of fighting in the field, but she didn't have time to worry about the boys; she needed to work quickly and thoroughly. She didn't have much in the way of trap makings, but it should suffice. There were a few explosive tags, kunai or shuriken launching traps, and several pitfalls or snars. She hoped they weren't too much and pulled out her last kunai and tied the explosive tag to the end. Once she was at the edge of the forest, she saw Kakashi throw three Narutos at Sasuke before kicking another Naruto who exploded into smoke. She decided to signal now and threw the kunai at Kakashi, who easily caught it and threw it towards the river where it exploded. The boys untangled themselves and started running to Sakura while throwing several shurikens at Kakashi. Naruto threw in some choice insults to try and egg the Jōnin on into giving chase.

Kakashi rubbed his chin, 'so they're trying to lead me into a trap? We'll let's see how well they did at it.'

He ran into the forest, spotting several traps that were relatively well made, but to a Jōnin of his level, they were easy to spot and avoid most of them. He could see the two boys jumping from tree to tree and followed them through what he thought was a safe path only to realize they weren't as Sakura cut a line and a volley of kunai peppered the tree where he had been standing. The three genin ran deeper into the woods, and Kakashi lost sight of them but quickly found Sakura kneeling on the ground hiding reasonably well. She was looking around frantically for him. 'I suppose I'll take her down first.'

He dropped down behind her, and she faded away 'ah a clone.'

Two camouflage blankets flew away as Sasuke and Naruto rushed him from close up. He grabbed each of them and looked at Sasuke, who was trying to throw a kick. This left him open, and Sakura jumped out from her blanket on the floor and grabbed the bells while Kakashi threw the boys into trees. Sakura hit the ground and threw the bells one to each of them. "Run!"

She scrambled to her feet as the boys took off towards the post. Sakura pulled a kunai out of a tree and stood between Kakashi and the boys. "You're staying behind to keep me busy and buy your team time to get away... that's entirely expected of a shinobi. You're a good kid, Sakura-chan, and probably you're going to be a good shinobi, so I'll apologize in advance for this."

Before she could say anything, she felt his chakra invade her senses, and when she blinked, he was gone. She looked around frantically and spotted Sasuke coming towards her "wait, Sasuke-Kun, not that-" she was too late, and he tripped a wire sending a volley of shuriken into his chest and neck.

Sasuke and Naruto stopped as they heard Sakura scream in the woods. "We should go back and get her!" Naruto shouted as he looked back at the woods.

Sasuke shook his head, "no way you heard that scream she's done, and he's coming for us next."

Before Naruto could retaliate, Kakashi shunshined between the two delivering swift hits to the back of their necks, knocking them out, team seven woke up leaned up against the three training posts. To see Kakashi standing in front of them, "good afternoon, genin glad to see you've all woken up."

Sakura rubbed her head "that was a pretty messed up genjutsu sensei."

"I did apologize in advance for that. You all did well, but you failed."

Naruto punched the ground, and Sasuke looked like barely contained anger, and Sakura sighed defeated. "I guess we'll be going back to the academy?"

Kakashi tapped his chin. "Hm, no, you won't be. You have a lot of work ahead, but you three showed teamwork, which was the point of this. Now follow me. I want to show you something." they stood and followed their sensei to a stone memorial "this is the Memorial stone where those who died in the line of duty are immortalized as heroes. My test was designed to see if you could work as a team even when you know there's no guarantee you'll all survive. You have pretty good teamwork. It could use some work which we'll get to eventually. You three," he looked directly at Sasuke, "need to understand a basic rule: those who break the rules are scum, but those who abandon their friends and comrades are worse than scum. Now any questions?"

Naruto raised his hand as he looked at the memorial stone "yeah, Sensei, who's Kushina Uzumaki? She's got my last name."

Sakura saw Kakashi flinch. "Ask the Hokage, and maybe he'll tell you if not come to me. Anything else?"

The genin shook their heads, and Kakashi smiled. "Good now. I'll see you tomorrow same time, and we'll start training."

As they started to leave, Kakashi put a hand on Sakura's shoulder, "ah not you. We need to clean up the forest of all the traps, and I have questions for you."

Sakura grumbled and trudged over to the woods. "What do you want to know, Sensei?"

"You spent time with Sasuke-Kun and Naruto-Kun before the academy what were they like?"

Sakura hummed as she started disarming and picking up her traps. "Naruto-Kun is the same as always. He would pull pranks and be as loud as he could. I think it was Shikamaru-Kun, who first put in the effort to include him in something which was odd. We would spend time with him at the parks-."

"And the pranks he pulled?"

Sakura blushed "I would try to push him towards less intense ones that he wouldn't get in as much trouble for doing. He's annoying and loud, but fun and always cheerful, he never let the shit adults said to him or did to him get him down. Though not everyone was mean to him, sometimes there would be an adult who would chew out someone for being rude to him when he didn't do anything or pay for damages if his pranks broke something."

Kakashi hummed, "and what about Sasuke-Kun? You looked surprised by his dream."

Sakura slowly wrapped the ninja wire up and looked at the ground. "He was shy in the beginning, always clinging to his brother. We started to get him out of his shell, and he seemed happy then... his family. After that, he just shut down. Then his fangirls started following him around, and he hated it; they were annoying to him."

"Were you part of that?"

She blushed and nodded, "Yes, Sensei. Only for a while, though, it kept the other girls from teasing me. I think he still thinks I'm one of them."

Kakashi patted her head and dropped the last of the trap makings at her feet "don't worry little flower we'll do some trust exercises, and I'll make sure you're all ready for life as a shinobi."

Sakura ran into Ino on the way home, and the two girls complained about their training today as they ate Dango. Ino leaned on Sakura, "ugh Asuma-sensei said we had a lot of work to do before we could be even be considered Ino-Shika-Cho. He's scheduled us for formation exercises for the next week before he'll even let us take a D rank mission."

Sakura patted her friend's shoulder "It'll be ok Ino I have to do trust and team-building exercises Kakashi-sensei didn't even mention when would start missions."

Ino laid her head on Sakura's shoulder "I'm gonna be so sore."

Sakura laughed, "we'll go to the bathhouse at the end of the week. How about that? Wash away the tiredness, so we're both ready for our first missions."

"You're my best friend." she stood up suddenly. "I need to get home though dad wants to run through clan Jutsu with me. I'll see you around Sakura."

Sakura nodded and waved as Ino left. She was going to miss not being able to spend as much time with her best friend as she used to. Days went by arriving at training field seven and waiting for hours with her teammates for their sensei to show up. He would have them run warmups and do solo training before starting a team exercise, a lot of which was sparing against him three on one, or the three of them fighting each other all at the same time. Sakura could tell she was behind her teammates in terms of skill, and it frustrated her, but she couldn't seem to find a way to get ahead. Some days team exercises were swapped out for trust-building. Eventually, on Saturday, after a particularly long sparing session, he motioned for them to gather around. "Alright, my cute genin squad time to teach you how to walk up a tree."

They looked between themselves, and Sasuke spoke up first "we can climb trees sensei. We did it a lot."

"Yes, you have Sasuke-Kun, but have you done it with no hands?"

"No, I don't think any of us had done that before," Sakura said as Kakashi walked over to a tree.

They watched as he planted a foot on a tall tree and started to walk up the tree with just his feet. He stood upside down on a tree branch and looked down at them "You'll have to control your chakra and channel it into your feet at a constant and controlled rate. It'll take time to get it right, so instead of single training, I'll have you do this. Also, tomorrow we start taking missions. They'll be D rank, so don't expect them to be huge or take place outside of the village." he shot Naruto a look before he could protest.

That night Sakura met up with Ino. Who grabbed her and pulled her along. "Come on. We're heading to my place; it's been too long, and my mother had the bathhouse revamped last month so we can use it in peace and quiet without a bunch of chatty baasan."

Sakura laughed as she let her friend pull her along. "Aw, but the chatty baasan love you, Ino."

"Yeah, well, I just want to relax with my friend I'll catch up with them when they come to get flowers from the shop."