Mea Culpa. I was reminded quickly and repeatedly on my comment regarding Naruto's healing. I acknowledge that Naruto is indeed a fast healer. I did indeed miss that point of canon. I have no intention of changing what I have written in regards to the timing of his healing in my story. I still have him fully recovering in a month what would have taken a normal person 6 months to a year, if ever, and without the horrendous scarring that would have accompanied such a burn

The Training Begins

The morning sun shone down on Training Field 16. Naruto walked into the area and waved to Hinata who was sitting on a tree stump. Sakura was off to one side stretching. The sounds of Konoha were muted in the distance by birds and the gurgle of one of the many streams that passed through the ninja village. In the distance, a bell tolled the hour.

"Well, we are on time, I wonder where the old guy is?" Naruto wondered.

The ground suddenly shook as a tremor knocked all 3 genin off their feet. They quickly scrambled up and looked around to see where the shock had come from.

"That was not natural!" Naruto exclaimed.

A shadow fell across Naruto as he said this and Hinata yelled "Behind You!!" and ran off. Naruto looked behind him to see a frog as large as a house coming out of the sky at him. He dove away and rolled into a fighting crouch as the frog landed where he had been standing a moment before.

The frog's tongue shot out at Naruto who dodged again with a roll to his left before jumping further away. He noticed that Hinata and Sakura had both moved away from the frog into the tree line.

Hinata dove away from the incoming frog after warning Naruto and activated her Byukagan. She scanned the immediate area for any other dangers. Sakura had run off to the relative safety of the trees like Hinata had but something else was wrong. The birds were taking flight in a pattern moving towards Sakura as if fleeing from something else.

"Sakura, look out, something is coming at you from behind!!" Hinata yelled out again

Sakura looked and saw a snake the size of a horse appear from nowhere and try to swallow her. Focusing chakra into her fist, she punched the snake in the snout hard enough to cause it to stop and give the girl a chance to move. Sakura jumped back out into the clearing but found herself faced with the giant frog. The frog almost grinned as its tongue lash down at the pink haired girl.

A kunai flashed down into the oncoming tongue as Naruto moved to defend his teammate. A sizzling exploding tag attached to it went off and released a huge cloud of smoke into the clearing. Naruto appeared in the smoke next to Sakura and pulled her with him to land over near Hinata.

"Anything else close by?" he asked. "This is not a coincidence that we get attacked just as the hour sounds."

"Very good, students. You pass." The voice of Jiraiya boomed into the clearing.

The trio looked up to see Jiraiya sitting on the head of the frog in the clearing. The large snake curled around a tree nearby before Anko dropped out of the tree and a smirking Tsunade dusted off her hands as she walked out of the trees from somewhere nearby.

"What the hell was that you old coot!!! That frog could have flattened Hinata!" Naruto yelled

"That, gaki, was your final test as Academy students. All instructors are required to give a test of some kind to make a final decision on whether or not to accept the genin into their teaching. Now, all of you, Sit down and listen," Jiraiya countered.

The team sat and looked at the 3 instructors standing before them.

"Your awareness of your surroundings is horrible," Anko began. "We were all in the area but none of you noticed us. But Sakura managed to dodge my snake so I have to pass them as well."

"You reacted better than I had feared you might to the tremor I caused and were able to avoid the frog from crushing all of you. Too bad. I could have still made the poker tournament in the Capital if it had crushed you." Tsunade added trying to sound uninterested "I guess you pass."

"You called out and helped one another and not simply looked out for yourself." Jiraiya picked up the commentary again. "That means you understand the concept of teamwork and we will not have to beat it into you."

"You mean you tried to kill us to see if we could work together? Naruto screamed

"Mmmm, yeah, pretty much." Jiraiya nodded. "We had a fairly good idea of what you and Hinata can do. I read over a number of the mission reports on the pranks that you two have done for the Hokage. They show a remarkable amount of teamwork, planning and intelligence gathering ability for a pair of mere students. Well into Chunnin level ability for those skills but reports do not show how a person reacts under pressure."

"Pinkie there is the unknown factor of your group. We were already going to be taking the group of you on as students. The Hokage convinced us of that before each of us agreed to this project. She is smart and has excellent chakra control for genin but not knowing much else about her or how she might work with the rest of you, we got curious."

Naruto had kept fuming as Jiraiya went on. "So everyone gets tested like this?" he finally demanded.

"No." Jiraiya replied. "Each instructor has their own test. Some instructors are stricter than others. A few do not even give real tests and prefer to watch the genin at the exams. The students who fail their instructors testing are either returned to the Academy for a brief teamwork course or drop out altogether as ninja."

"Kakashi is the harshest one in the bunch. He goes through the bell test on all of his squads and proceeds to fail each one just to avoid being an instructor," Anko said.

"What is the 'bell test'?" Sakura asked Anko.

"You do not need to know all the specifics on the bell test but here is the general idea. The bell test is when a team of fresh genin is supposed to get a pair of bells from a jonin to see if they understand the value of teamwork. Usually whoever does worst on it or ends up without a bell gets tied to a post."

"Jiraiya got tied to the post when he messed up that one with Sensei." Tsunade added in chuckling. "He got left there all afternoon."

"I only ended up on the post because Sensei did not want your father after him. But, Kakashi finally had a team pass yesterday, even though I think he let them pass. The Uchiha, Inuzuka and Aburame team managed to get the bells away from him this year. The Inuzuka and Uchiha double-teamed him while the Aburame used his bugs to cut the strings on the bells. The Inuzuka's dog retrieved them and Uchiha snatched up both for himself. I do not think he intended for his teammates to get them but since the group showed teamwork, Kakashi passed them. I think some clan leaders wanted him to train the Uchiha alone but Kakashi could not pass the boy solo.

So not counting you three, 21 genin were accepted and passed this time. Most will need a lot of work before testing for chunnin but this year was not even close to an average year. Considering so many got pulled out of the Academy by nervous parents we were lucky to have 24 new genin."

"Enough jabbering already!" Anko interrupted. "We need to get going on these kids and let them know what is going to be happening."

Jiraiya nodded. "We are making a few modifications to the Hokage's plan. He wants a lot of cross training done with you kids. You are all advanced in a few areas but weak in many basic ones. Chakra levels and control and many basic abilities so we are going to be doing a lot more group work than we figured on right away. If you thought the Academy was tough, you are not going to like this schedule."

"6 days a week in the morning you will report here for physical conditioning and teamwork training. The best way to get better physically is to work at it. Ninja can augment their physical skills with chakra but having good physical skills before that means they will be even greater when you learn how to do them with chaka."

"For now, the afternoons will be spent in group teaching sessions. Each of us will have you for 2 days a week. It will also give us instructors some afternoons free to pursue other things. At times, one or more of us might need to leave the village on missions and a different instructor will pick up the slack or we will have someone cover for us for more specialized training. Any questions?

"Um, you mentioned 6 days Jiraiya-sensei." Hinata said. "What about the last day of the week?"

"On the last day, you rest. Nothing else. That is your day to enjoy yourselves. No training, no workouts, no assigned studying. It is your day to kick back and be kids," Tsunade told them.

"But what about training?" Sakura asked.

"Rest is as important a part of training as physical activity," Tsunade replied. "Bodies need time to recover and all the medical treatments I can give will not prevent that. If you try to get in more training time on your rest day, we will know and you WILL get dropped from this."

"Even a training fanatic like Naruto there can burn out if pushed hard enough. Do not think otherwise." Anko added. "If you need some time off even on a day we are scheduled to train, tell us. You girls especially, should realize on some days you will need to stop and deal with things. It's life, it happens."

"There will come times when you will not be able to take breaks and you should be aware of that. On missions or in battle, you cannot call a timeout. You will get prepared for times like that as well, don't worry.

"What about missions? We're ninja not students anymore!" Naruto grumbled.

"Let us worry about when you get into missions, gaki." Jiraiya growled back. "Right now you moved from being Academy students to being apprentices. Apprentices do what they are told like all other genin. But that is enough talk for now."

Anko put up a near feral smile. "It is time for torture, um training. Heh Time for 'training'. 5 laps around the area at full speed. MOVE!"

The next 2 months seemed to fly by for the team as they got into the routine set up by their instructors. Mornings were spent either under Jiraiya or Anko with physical conditioning. They were run into the ground, then dragged up to their feet to run some more. Calisthenics, weightlifting, swimming, gymnastics and tumbling, sparring, proper movement for taijutsu, weapon skills. The team was pushed harder than they had realized they could be pushed. Sakura was at a disadvantage here as she was the physically weakest. Hinata and Naruto encouraged the girl and helped her get through the workouts by offering emotional support. They all got through it together. Each week, the goals were set higher and tougher.

Afternoon group sessions were no easier.

Jiraiya worked on chakra control with them. Naruto had the worst control. As Jiraiya had told them early on, all punishments got given as a team. This also applied to rewards as well. For every exercise, the group worked on it together. Hinata and Sakura were extremely good at theirs but pushed Naruto to focus and by doing so, improved his over all control immensely. Meditation for focus. Leaf spinning gave way to tree climbing. It took Naruto several hours of seeing Hinata and Sakura standing high on the trunks encouraging him before he asked what he was doing wrong. Water walking was nearly as difficult for him but Naruto got to laugh when Sakura exhausted herself near the end of one day and sank like a stone. Other days were spent on the basics of sealing and using seals to store items in scrolls. Drawing simple seals on weapons for retrieval via chakra manipulation came next as the genin grew stronger.

Anko taught the group teamwork topics. Stealth, planning and tactics were her main focus. Naruto had the advantage here once he realized he had been doing all of that for years in his pranks. Hinata was not much behind Naruto. Sakura added a new dimension to the system Naruto and Hinata had perfected months before. They needed new formations for things they knew as a pair. In turn, all three needed to learn the duties in each tactical position of a formation since the team never knew exactly which direction and attack would come from and would need to react accordingly. In planning, Sakura shifted the known balance as well. She had a different perspective on things. As a group they looked over every prank that had been done for the Hokage re-evaluated them with Sakura's view on things. She helped them see a few options Naruto and Hinata had never considered. Anko brought all this training into practical usage. She staged exercises against the various defense points in Konoha, which brought up their skills quickly and provided extra training for the chunnin on guard duty.

Tsunade had the toughest regimen of all in store for them. She provided basic medical training for all of them. Knowledge of anatomy, chakra pathways, bodily functions, herbology and the uses in medicine both helpful and dangerous, first aid and much more. The book knowledge is where Sakura got to shine. Her photographic memory allowed her to absorb knowledge like a sponge. Hinata was never far behind but poor Naruto had the most trouble. Once Tsunade figured out that Naruto worked best when he could see how things worked as opposed to just reading it, his improvement grew much faster. Her impression of the team grew as they all excelled under her teaching. Her attitude improved as well and she shocked them all one day by giving out compliments instead of scathing remarks.

The days off were awkward at first. The girls spent the first days off with family. Naruto was pretty much left to his own devices and ended up eating himself into a ramen stupor or sleeping. Once the girls realized that their teammate was all alone, they began to include him in activities. He got invited out to help the girls shop; i.e. carry the bags. Hinata took him to a movie one time and Sakura asked both to see the museum. They even took time out to work on the city map as they learned things during the week.

The team also saw their former classmates on the days off. The other teams were stuck doing many D rank missions around town. Ino and Sakura spent time trying to update Hinata's wardrobe. Their main purpose was accomplished when they got Hinata to ditch the heavy coat she preferred for a more practical outfit during training. Plain charcoal gray sweat suits replaced it. Ino switched the purchase for a smaller size when Hinata was distracted and the timid girl had a much more visible shape underneath her workout clothes now. In truth, Ino had tried for 2 sizes too small but Sakura had stopped her at one. She knew Hinata would never leave the house with skintight sweatpants on.

Naruto got to spend some time with Choji, Kiba and Shikamaru munching on BBQ and telling tall tales about training to one another. Shino and Sasuke were always invited and Shino would join them on occasion but Sasuke would just sneer and go out to train alone. Kiba embellished the boring D-rank missions very handsomely. To hear him tell it, Tora the daimyo's wife's cat was 6 feet tall with sabreteeth and razor sharp claws. Naruto had no stories to tell in that he had never done a D-rank yet. He did however see the cat often during his morning workouts being chased by various genin teams. He passed on information regarding Tora's habits to Kiba and Shikamaru that made that mission a very simple capture for the their teams.

The downside to all the training work slowly began to grate on Naruto. He wanted to go out on missions. He wanted to learn new jutsu. He was tired of just training and studying that had no purpose at all in his mind. Soon after the 2-month mark he simply refused to work with Jiraiya on control.

"I am sick of this Jiraiya-sensei. I do all the exercises you want but we never DO anything. I want to learn more jutsu!"

"Not learning anything huh? Well then smart guy, I have a task for you. I want you to make me 1 clone. That's it, a single perfect clone. Bet you can't," Jiraiya taunted.

"FINE!" Naruto made the hand signs and a single clone poofed into being. "There! You see!" Then as Jiraiya laughed, Naruto yelled at him in stereo. "What are you laughing at now!"

Hinata answered as Jiraiya just kept laughing. "Naruto, you just made a single clone and you did not even have to focus on it." She grinned at Naruto as she understood why Jiraiya was laughing. "In under a second, you controlled your chakra enough to make a single clone. It would have taken you a minute of focus back at the Academy."

"Way to go, Naruto," Sakura cheered.

Naruto stopped as if pole axed. He HAD just controlled his chakra that well without even realizing it. He tried to act cool to hide his embarrassment over it. "Well, he still could teach us some new jutsu to make use of all this control." Hinata and Sakura just looked at each other for a second before pouncing on the pouting boy and tickling him until he gave up on trying to be grumpy over it.

Jiraiya met with Anko and Tsunade that night. "They are ready for the next stage," he told them.

End Notes: Reading and watching Naruto, I was never comfortable with the fanon idea that only 9 rookies pass the tests. I am quite sure it seems that way if you do not think things through. The teams we see in it are just that; the ones we see. Ten teams are implied in episode 3, so that means at least 30 genin are assigned out. I dismiss Kakashi's statement of a 66 failure rate as being accurate in a literal sense. I see that as mind games on his part. The Chunnin exam in the anime has 72 Leaf genin participating. If you have only 9 genin passing each term, it would take 4 years at 2 terms a year to get that many genin without any dropping out and no casualties at all. Not very likely.

Review responses:

The missing Hyuuga branch member is out on worker's comp and recovering nicely. He is grateful he did not wear the red tunic that morning.

Naruto's problem with fire will be addressed next chapter. It is an integral part of my plot and a way to keep him from seeming overpowered by what he can do already.

My using a number for the dead in the fire was intentional. I wanted it to be seen as a big tragic event. It is the major event on which this AU tangent was founded. Making it have less of an impact by using vague language would make the plot line skewing off canon seem less likely.

Next Chapter: It's All About Control