"We're gonna die," Naruto groaned, collapsing onto the grass in their training grounds. Sakura braced herself on her knees, panting heavily as she nodded in agreement. Sasuke merely grunted, dropping to sit on the ground, sweat dripping down his face.

"Don't be ridiculous!" Kakashi chided, internally cackling at the way the three twitched away from him, Naruto whimpering something about mercy and ramen's salvation (he wasn't going to ask). "I'd never kill you. There's no profit in that. Now, get up and start stretching. You may leave here sore, but if you leave here stiff… I'll make you do twice as much tomorrow."

If he wasn't mistaken, even Sasuke whimpered at that one, before Sakura helped the boys upright and they started their cool-down routine. A well-oiled and practiced one by now, one week after the Forest of Death fiasco.

He'd shown up at nine o'clock the day after their team meeting, as promised, to find they had followed his orders admirably and Sakura had gone above and beyond the ongoing team-building requirement by bringing extra bentos for the boys, who were obviously… ill-practiced, at proper nutrition. Sasuke at least tried, but his diet still left something to be desired.

The less said about Naruto's, the better.

Their strategies for the Iwa-nin were… interesting. They had a plausible one worked out by the time he got there, a few outlandish ones that presupposed a lot of things, but – and here was the important part – none that worked without all three of them participating at their current skill level. No random power-ups or over-estimated skills here – they were each brutally honest about their own and each others' skill set.

That sort of honesty was worth its weight in gold for any shinobi, for them to have developed it this early was fantastic.

Well worth the… conversation, he'd had with the Sandaime that morning. Brutal honesty had saved him there too, after all.

With that honest assessment in hand, he was able to design individualized training incorporated into the team-building exercises he had planned and they didn't argue about it. Oh sure, they complained, everyone did at these things, but they did it. Once he explained what each exercise was designed to overcome or compensate for, they had no objections at all and even asked for ways to make each exercise more challenging once they'd progressed far enough.

He was glad he had given that Iwa-nin a quick death. By now, it was obvious he'd earned it.

"All right, lunch!" he called, the three completing their current exercise before coming back and gratefully taking the calorie packed lunches he'd brought them. That had quickly become a routine once he'd noticed the lunches Sasuke and Naruto brought the second day – Sakura was doing better, but still had a tendency to under-eat – and after the first day he'd brought them, they even agreed to set aside one D-rank per day to fund his food-buying purchases.

So courteous!

"Questions?" he asked after flash-eating half of his lunch. It had only taken four days for them to stop with the attempts to see under his mask while they ate (courtesy some pointed comments about privacy between comrades), but there was no reason to be complacent.

"How many more of these D-ranks do we have to do, sensei?" Sasuke asked, Naruto and Sakura perking up.

"Until what?" Kakashi asked, enjoying their frustrated exchange of glances. He knew what they were after (they still hadn't found his clone observer under genjustu every morning) but wanted them to spell it out. Looking omnipotent was all well and good, but not if they ever managed to actually hide something from him only to assume he already knew about it.

"Until we can do a C-rank!" Sakura burst. She was much less passive now, and was more free with her blows to the head (the face Sasuke had made when she brained him on day three – priceless), even though she'd pulled back with Naruto (another pointed comment, they were marvelous at picking up hints), as well as her opinions. "Ino-buta-chan is – "

"First," Kakashi interrupted, holding up a finger, "Nickname. Reasoning. Now."

"Umm…" she blushed, cutting a glance to Sasuke before she straightened her shoulders and reported, "We were best friends, until we decided that we would be romantic rivals for Sasuke's attention and then the nicknames started. She calls me Forehead, I call her Ino-pig."

Kakashi raised his one visible eyebrow and stared, before turning to Sasuke, newly sullen, and asking mildly, "Sasuke. Your opinion?"

"Stupid," Sasuke replied shortly, "We're twelve. I'm not going to be looking for a romantic partner for years. So instead you throw away a solid friendship for a stupid crush? And then ruin your chances as a shinobi for it?"

"Yeah, what was with the hair thing?" Naruto wrinkled his nose, "Where did you guys get the idea that Sasuke-teme liked long hair? I mean – maybe he does, but that seems weird."

"They stalked me. And spread rumors. And stalked me more," Sasuke replied flatly, before sounding almost insulted as he continued, "And they weren't even very good at it."

"Sakura?" Kakashi asked, stopping the boys with another gesture.

She was horribly red, scar standing out starkly white against her skin, but she managed to say, "I know. And I don't – it's not my focus anymore. I'll stop with the nickname sensei."

"Mah, no need for that, if it's truly a nickname," Kakashi waved it off, relaxing his posture slightly and watching as all the genin echoed it. Unconscious echoing, now, but a good sign for the future. "Affection born nicknames can bring greater unity and a sense of comradeship – but insulting names, when not underscored by amiability as in the case of these two – alienate people. One person, to one team – "

"To one village," they all chorused, Sasuke and Sakura rolling their eyes, while Naruto looked dead serious, as he had since the first time Kakashi had uttered that mantra. Ah well, they'd get it eventually.

They'd better.

"I guess… I don't know, if it's amiable," Sakura said thoughtfully, before shrugging, "So I'll stop and talk to Ino about it. Anyway. Ino was bragging the other day that her sensei was going to get them a C-rank because they were just doing so brilliantly and it was such a shame that Sasuke-kun had me and Naruto-baka – her words! – to drag him down."

Naruto shrugged at the relayed insult, Sasuke grunting again, neither surprised. She'd told them all about it this morning after all, and Naruto – surprise, surprise – had made the connection for their next point.

"So we were thinking, Kakashi-sensei, that we need to do one soon too. I remember Shika complaining about how he'd end up with Ino and Chouji – didn't mind Chouji, but Ino he wasn't looking forward to – because everyone thought they were clones of their dads and their teamwork was supposed to be awesome," Naruto picked up the verbal baton, far calmer and more articulate with daily doses of positive reinforcement from Kakashi and non-hostile, even friendly, banter with his teammates. Ah, the sweet sound of success.

"And we're supposed to be better," Sasuke said shortly. It was adorable the way they designed their arguments so he had to say the least amount possible.

"Sound logic," Kakashi said after a few moments silence to let them sweat, "Now for my response."

He leaned forward slightly and they again echoed him, becoming intently focused on his words.

"You are not ready."

"What?! But sensei - !"

"We have to do one - !"

"But we're doing one anyway," Sasuke said over the other two's exclamations, dark eyes watching Kakashi carefully. "We have to, to prove we have the best teamwork."

"Exactly," Kakashi straightened, wanting each of them to listen to this part, "You are not ready. I've spoken with the other sensei and their students aren't ready either, but there's a certain… cachet, in being the first to take a team out on a C-rank, and they want it. The three new teams this year have equally new sensei, and they're all out to prove something to each other."

"Are you?" Sakura asked, before answering herself, "No, sorry. You have a different audience, right? The council?"

Kakashi nodded, pleased she'd figured that out herself, "Precisely. So we have to do better than them, especially better than the team already rumored to have magnificent teamwork by genetics. Recommendations for preparation, one each, one minute, go."

They all fell silent, finishing their food while they thought over the problem, Kakashi wolfing down the last bit of his own and reading a few paragraphs before their time was up. "Naruto, you're up," he said, looking over the rim of his book at the boy.

The blonde, wearing a dark blue shirt with his orange pants (those would have to go before the mission), straightened to an approximation of sitting attention and said, "There are standard C-rank types, I think – protection for people, messenger duty – things like that. Could we request a specific type and then develop scenarios to work through, maybe? Just so we get some ideas as to what we can do in response to specific situations?"

"Hmm. Sasuke, your turn."

"Shadow clones," Sasuke said bluntly, "Naruto can spam them, but that means he's the only one who gets alerted when one dispels. If Sakura and I could even make one, that'd be useful."

"And Sakura?"

"One new skill each," she said promptly, "I've been looking at field medicine, Naruto has tons of chakra, maybe he could learn a power move or something more draining that's useful. Sasuke is the fastest of us with taijutsu right now, so maybe he could add some weapons into that?"

Kakashi let the three of them have a moment to digest one another's responses before he said, "Good ideas, some problems. First, no we can't request a specific type, Naruto. Second, neither you nor Sakura have the chakra capacity for one shadow clone yet. If you keep training like we have been, it should increase enough for one in a month, in your case, Sasuke, while Sakura, I'm honestly not sure, your rate of growth on your chakra capacity has been fluctuating too much for me to judge accurately. Finally, iryo-jutsu require finer chakra control then you have now, Sakura; if you are interested, I can get you some extra control exercises and a basic jutsu scroll. For the other two suggestions in yours, good ideas but again, difficult to implement in a few days."

"I would be interested," Sakura replied and he nodded, making a mental note to deal with that while they were doing D-ranks.

"So here is what we are going to do," Kakashi said, "I am going to outline a scenario for each of you to think about during today's D-ranks. We'll discuss and dissect those tonight, then new scenarios for tomorrow's lunch. Feel free to exchange ideas tomorrow morning. Inside your scenario, combine two of your already learned skills to have greater impact on the enemy – we've done plenty of team combat drills, I know you can think of some new ones. I will select plausible ones and we'll work on implementation during training tomorrow. Critiques to follow, repeat that the next day, depart for a C-rank in two days time. Tomorrow I'll bring some old C-rank reports from a variety of missions so you have some background reading."

"Uh…"

"We can help with that Naruto," Sakura said promptly. It had taken a couple of days for the other two genin to realize he struggled with reading kanji – Kakashi had very carefully failed at being entirely discreet when he offered to help the blonde learn – and, to Naruto's surprise and Kakashi's smug satisfaction, had immediately offered to help after a few moments of blank shock.

In those moments he could almost see conclusions being drawn by the other two genin – taking into account Naruto's lack of family to teach him, the stares and whispers they'd already been subjected to as a team during the D-ranks and whatever they had witnessed in their Academy years. They were probably mostly wrong, but gave Naruto and himself some breathing room.

He was working on the Sandaime as far as that went, he really was. Between his reports on their burgeoning teamwork and respectful reminders of his ongoing request to speak to Naruto about his heritage (at least his mother for kami's sake!) he was certain he'd give in with regards to one of those revelations eventually.

"Excellent. Sakura, protection detail of one reasonably fit civilian-level individual, here to… Tea. Expected opposition, bandits intending to ransom. Sasuke, messenger duty, commercially classified information on production methods encoded, here to Otafaku Gai. Expected opposition, hired hands from rival companies. Naruto, merchant caravan protection, joint between Konoha and Grass, one team each, here to Kusa and back. Expected opposition, bandit groups after goods and money. Now let's go get today's missions."

The three were so busy mulling over their assignments they didn't say a word as they tossed their food containers and fell into a lovely little team formation in front of him. Sakura, genjutsu reapplied almost absently, she was getting good at that one, was on point, flanked by the two boys. She was the distraction, they were the pincers – from the Iwa plan.

Teamwork, nearly unconscious now, and good PR. The civilians who watched cooed over how the boys were "taking care of" the helpless little girl and "protecting" her under the watchful eye of their devilishly handsome sensei, while the shinobi either took it at face value or read into it and freaked out that Sakura was the power-house of the team and all their previously accepted intelligence on them was wrong.

He pulled out his book and hid his mask – the grin was too gleeful to suppress.

***===***pagebreak***===***

"An insult to one?"

"Is an insult to all," the genin chorused the morning they were to request a C-rank, concluding their little mantra recitation practice during their cool-down. Meanwhile, Kakashi was patting himself on the back for including those C-rank reports – he'd been careful to pick ones from teams with exemplary teamwork, like the later Legendary Sannin, the original Ino-Shika-Cho, even some lesser known, but just as good at working together, teams. For Naruto, he'd included one about his precious Iruka-sensei and one about his (though unknown) father. His mother would have been a little too obvious with the last name, at least until he got permission from the Sandaime.

"Team leader?" he asked, flicking his fingers in command and watching with satisfaction as they immediately formed up.

"Sasuke in-village, Sakura out-of-village shinobi, Naruto out-of-village civilians," they even sighed in unison, so cute!

Naruto's outspoken and… unsubtle, personality had been decided to be the least jarring to civilians, and the most annoying to other shinobi. Sakura, though still obviously not the best kunoichi to anyone with trained eyes, was capable of performing professionally in a way that still escaped Naruto when under stress. Sasuke hated dealing with people, but was willing to admit that in Konoha at least, his name opened a lot of doors with the civilian group and a fair number of shinobi too.

It was given that he himself had overall command, particularly in combat situations. Thanks to an ongoing effort to teach basic hand-signals, they might actually be able to communicate somewhat sensibly in that situation. He wasn't too hopeful though, this would be first blood for all of them (well, except for animals, but while that was shocking for most the first time, it wasn't as bone-deep traumatic as your first human) and once something like that happened, even just the adrenaline from their first serious fight, things like recently learned hand-signals flew out the window.

With any luck, their reflexes and his skill would get them out of this alive and some semblance of whole.

They were growing on him after all. Like that demon mold in his fridge.

"Good. Well then, we're as ready as we're going to get by now, so let's go see the Hokage about that C-rank," Kakashi pulled out his book and ambled along behind them, the three preteens near vibrating with energy as they walked (Sasuke was at least subtle). Clearly they were excited about this C-rank; more excited than nervous, he figured.

Blunt assessment of their lack of readiness aside, they were children, and this was an adventure.

When had missions last been an adventure for him, he wondered? Certainly well before he was their age – actually, given his father's impressive career and equally impressive crash, it had been by the time he was five.

Well, there was yet another reason he always had thought he was doomed as a sensei. Adapting to the shinobi mentality wasn't something he had much experience in – not at the conscious level. And with these three – mostly Sakura, even now – he would have a lot to deal with after their first kills.

Oh kami, Sasuke and kills – either relatively easy or complete psychotic break one way or the other. Damn it! Maybe they could postpone the C-rank? Curse you Itachi! Unfortunately, there was no way around this one, especially since he'd reported to the Sandaime last night on how today would need to play out. At least he had the Hokage's backing on this, otherwise this would get much more complicated.

"Team 7, requesting a C-rank," Kakashi said blandly after they were brought to the Hokage's office, watching out of the corner of his eye as Iruka's head jerked up to stare at them, eyes narrow. The chuunin would know they weren't ready, and cared enough about Naruto to object if he felt strongly enough about it.

"Yeah Hokage-ji- ack! Sakura!" Naruto rubbed the back of his head and sighed theatrically, restarting, "Yeah Hokage-sama, one C-rank please! Happy Sakura?"

"Ecstatic," she replied loftily, Sasuke rolling his eyes on the left.

Had he made them practice this yesterday evening? Yes. Yes he had. If they acted enough, it would come naturally.

"Hmm. Jounin Hatake, you are certain they're ready?" Sarutobi asked, Kakashi looking up from his book and saying simply, "Yes."

A confidently delivered lie, if he did say so himself.

"Very well. Let us see… escort, no, he hasn't arrived yet. Caravan? Gai's team…"

Kakashi glared, not letting any of his panic-induced killing intent seep through, because he was a professional, but if the Sandaime assigned his barely averted disaster of a team to the same mission as Gai this early in the game - !

His lips were twitching around that pipe, the bastard! He was just screwing with him! He knew he'd gotten off too easily for the Forest of Death mess, he should have expected something like this. Shit, he hadn't even thought to brief the brats on current teams they might work with, there were only the four right now and they knew two of the others already! Crap!

"No, not yet, I think," the Hokage continued, setting that form aside and Kakashi almost, but didn't quite dare, sighed in relief. Iruka had no compunctions, and did, eyeing Naruto carefully at the same time before suppressing a shudder.

Naruto. Meeting Gai. Oh kami-sama no! Not until he'd gotten his hooks into the kid and anchored him – he had enough quirks as it was, there was no need to expose him to others!

"Shoreline patrol," the Hokage skimmed the scroll in his hands, expression placid but a miniscule shift of his eyelids indicated pleasure. This was the one they were going to be getting then. "Wave stretch – and then, since you're going that way anyway, a message delivery to a merchant family at Keiharu Port. Whichever order you prefer, Kakashi-kun."

Both scrolls were rolled up and passed to him, he accepted with a bow while Iruka recorded the assignment. He'd go over the mission scrolls in detail later – right now he had to go and get his little minions ready for their first serious mission, at least two weeks too soon.

And here he had hoped that, not being in wartime, if he ever did pass a team, there would be no worry about them being thrown into missions they weren't ready for. Fucking council.

Naruto was now literally shaking with excitement, but managed to keep it under control until they got out of the Tower before exploding with glee, "YATTA! C-rank! Finally!"

Sakura and Sasuke, though less loud, had a grin and smile on their faces, respectively, clearly equally happy at their new missions. Neither required an immediate departure, so he didn't feel any rush when he told them, "Pack for three weeks, meet at the southern gate in two hours. Check each other's gear."

That should take care of over or under-packing, or at least make them think about what they were packing more. Anything else would just be an object lesson, and having to share so they relied on one another would be yet another lesson on teamwork and the importance thereof.

Now, what techniques should he teach them while they were out? Since they could tree-run they'd get there with enough time to spare he would actually be able to double this as a training trip.

Well, some suiton by the sea could always be useful. He would have to get affinity paper – knowing their affinities would make it much easier to slam higher ranking techniques down their throats. Not all that essential when it came to completing missions, but definitely essential when it came to visible demonstrations of strength – which was what the council really cared about.

Then he'd have to find a mission to teach them subtlety and stealth – it was far too valuable a skill to leave them to stumble on by themselves.