Undone

Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. Everything belongs to Masashi Kishimoto.

Caught off guard, Naruto jumped on the spot as he saw Kakashi seemingly materialize into the training ground.

"You're actually on time," he cried out, surprised as Kakashi quickly strolled over to stand in front of his students.

"Yes, I'm on time," Kakashi replied evenly, reaching into his pouch and pulling out two silver bells dangling on a piece of red string.

As he did this, he noticed how the attitudes of Team 7 were completely different than yesterday. Rather than looking at him as if he was a joke, Sakura eyed him warily while Naruto seemed less annoying and talkative. Sasuke was his usual self, but it wasn't like the Uchiha would go from brooding emo to smiling, cheerful guy within a day.

"Do you know what these are?" Kakashi asked, dangling the bells in front of his team as they peered curiously at the shiny round objects.

"Bells, obviously," Naruto answered quickly, shooting Kakashi an 'isn't-it-obvious' look.

"Yes, these are bells, my little students," Kakashi began, shaking them so that they created a pleasant clinking sound. "And these will also be your ticket to becoming shinobi."

Naruto blinked, obviously surprised at his words.

"Care to explain why he isn't officially a shinobi yet, Sakura?" Kakashi singsonged, turning to look at the girl.

Sakura cast him an almost fearful look before murmuring, "H-Hai," under her breath.

"Once a student graduates from the Academy and is assigned to a jōnin-sensei, said jōnin is required to issue another exam of their own, this time to see if the student is actually fit to be a shinobi. Passing will make you officially a genin. Failing can either result in you being sent back to the Academy or dropped out of the shinobi program entirely."

"Thank you for the explanation," Kakashi smiled, turning to grin at Sakura as his eyes curved into inverted U's. Sakura looked like he was going to eat her.

"The chance of failure is usually around 66%, as nearly two-thirds of the graduates are cut off at this point," Kakashi continued, gripping the bells tightly in his hand. "There are twenty-seven graduates in this year's class, meaning that eighteen will be cut off, leaving only nine genin. Three teams. This test is relatively easy to understand. Get the bells before noon. I don't care what methods you use, just get the bells. You can use your kunai, your shuriken, taijutsu, ninjutsu, genjutsu, anything."

Sakura seemed to relax slightly at this, her shoulders sagging as she released the tension in her body. Something that resembled a smirk appeared on Sasuke's face. It was obvious. He was feeling that this would be easy, that it would be simple, and that he would definitely ace it.

"It also comes with a catch," Kakashi added, letting his gaze sweep over the group. "No bells, no lunch. I believe that none of you ate breakfast today, correct?"

They only stared back at him. Surely not getting any food wasn't that extreme, right?

"Not passing this exam also means that I'll fail you entirely. Unlike the other jōnin, I will personally go to the Hokage and request that you be dropped out of the program if you can't do this," Kakashi finished, ignoring the gasp of surprise that came from Naruto.

Sasuke, on the other hand, silently retrieved a kunai from his pouch and positioned himself so that he faced the cluster trees, enabling him to get cover as soon as Kakashi called go.

Sakura quickly followed suit, pulling a kunai and a shuriken out of her pouch, gripping one tightly in each hand.

Naruto remained quite still.

"Am I clear?" Kakashi continued, taking the bells and tying them to his kunai pouch, making sure that the knot was secure.

A look of surprise crossed Sakura's face, and she turned to look at Kakashi.

"Yes?" Kakashi asked, nodding in her direction without looking up from his bells.

"Well, um, there are only two bells. But there's three of us..." she trailed off, looking at Naruto and Sasuke as she spoke.

"That is also something for you to keep in mind. There are only two bells. Only two can pass. Think about it for a moment," Kakashi answered nonchalantly, finishing with the knot on his pouch and turning back to look at the three.

Naruto only stood there, crossing his arms and giving Kakashi a curious look.

Sasuke sighed at this and grabbed the blond by the arm, his fingers digging into Naruto's flesh.

"What?" Naruto ground out, obviously annoyed.

"We're doing this together," Sasuke said simply, pointing his kunai at the jōnin.

"Whaddya mean?" Naruto asked, surprised.

"A genin team consists of a three-man squad. Failing one student and keeping only two doesn't make any sense," Sasuke hissed back, scowling.

"Hasn't it happened before?" Naruto asked despite knowing that the question was stupid. He just wanted to annoy Sasuke.

"Yes. And those teams either turned out to be defective or were disbanded shortly after," Sasuke replied icily, obviously irritated with the blond.

"So you're telling me that he would have to pass all three of us?" Naruto asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Yes," Sasuke said simply, turning to look in Kakashi's direction.

The man seemed to be staring off into space as the two boys argued.

"Failing means we get dropped out of the program entirely," the Uchiha reminded as Naruto frowned.

"And if this doesn't work out, one of us will be completely dropped out of the program," Naruto shot back, glaring.

"What does your gut tell you?" Sasuke asked simply, twirling the kunai in his hand as he spoke without looking at Naruto.

Naruto considered this for a moment.

"Fine," the blond replied reluctantly, "but this doesn't mean we're going to be friends or anything of the sort."

"Not like I'd want to anyways," Sasuke snapped back, glaring daggers.

"Are you guys done yet?" Kakashi asked absentmindedly from behind them, sounding very calm for somebody who was probably going to fail all of his students.

"Are you sure?" Naruto suddenly asked again, pulling a kunai out of his pouch.

Sasuke only hned and rolled his eyes, this time deciding to completely ignore the other boy.

"All set," Kakashi murmured under his breath. Hopefully they wouldn't screw this up.

"Begin!"

Three genin dashed off into the trees.

Naruto didn't stay and attack. That's a good sign.

"You distract. I attack," Sasuke stated simply as the three crouched behind a cluster of trees, peering through the leaves at their sensei, who was simply standing there and seemingly admiring the weather.

"Sakura," the Uchiha added, pointing at the girl. "Just try to stay out of trouble and throw kunai."

Naruto decided to bite back his protest of Sasuke bossing everybody around since it wouldn't have done them any good.

"Now," Sasuke hissed out, giving Naruto a slap on the shoulder.

"Yaaaaa!" Naruto cried out as he jumped out of the trees, kunai in hand and heading for Kakashi.

He could hear the sound of Sasuke sighing and face-palming.

His fault for hitting me, the blond thought as he flew towards Kakashi.

Much to Naruto's surprise, Kakashi didn't make any move to intercept the attack, instead remaining quite still as Naruto closed in.

Then he moved.

In a blur, Kakashi was behind Naruto, reaching out to grab him by the arm.

"Katon: Gōkakyū no Jutsu!"

A decent-sized fireball headed in their direction, threatening to burn both of them to a crisp if they didn't run quickly.

Kakashi released Naruto and the blond scrambled away, narrowly missing being scorched by the flames.

This left Kakashi wide open as Naruto hurried for cover.

A barrage of shuriken flew in Kakashi's direction, this time seeming to have come from Sakura.

As Kakashi dodged the projectiles, Naruto ran up behind Kakashi, yelling with joy.

"Gotcha!" he cried out as he lunged for the bells.

And then Kakashi disappeared with a small puff, becoming nothing but thin air.

Naruto stumbled as he lost his balance before falling face down on the ground.

Kakashi stood in front of him, gripping the bells tightly in his hands as he stared down at the blond.

"You pass," the man said simply, the bells jingling in his hands.

Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura stared at him with blank looks on their faces as if he had just grown a second head.

"Do you not want to become genin?" Kakashi inquired, tilting his head to the side.

Naruto blinked. "But we didn't get the bells."

"That was never my objective," Kakashi replied evenly, tucking the bells back into his pouch. "This was a test of team work. You guys demonstrated that you were willing to work together right from the beginning. That's what I was looking for."

Even though Sasuke had to force you into obeying, Kakashi added darkly in his mind.

Naruto still seemed slightly dazed. "So we passed? We're not getting sent back to the Academy?"

"Nope," Kakashi singsonged, gesturing for Sasuke and Sakura to come out of hiding.

Naruto grinned.

"Maybe you're not as bad as I thought," he declared, pointing at Kakashi as he spoke.

"So I heard that you passed them," Sarutobi murmured from his seat at the Hokage's desk as Kakashi stepped into the office.

"I did," Kakashi replied quietly.

"So are you going to follow through with your promise?" the Hokage asked, shuffling through the stack of paperwork on his desk.

"Yes," Kakashi replied, bowing slightly at this.

"And the 'but'?" Sarutobi asked, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips.

"I request that I be given three months to train them," Kakashi answered respectfully, hoping that his request would be granted.

"And why is that so?" Sarutobi asked, tidying up the documents on his desk.

"They possess potential. Lots of it. I want to start by spending time drilling the basics into them before doing anything else. That will take about a month. I can then follow with individual training. Naruto's built for ninjutsu with his enormous amount of chakra and tendency to like showing off. Sakura possesses a natural talent for chakra control, meaning that she would make a great genjutsu user and medical-nin. As for Sasuke, he is a fast learner and will be able to take anything I throw at him. Two months will be used to train them, and by the time I finish, they should be well-organized enough to take down average chūnin, perhaps even weak jōnin."

"That's quite a lot to do within three months," the Hokage remarked quietly as he eyed Kakashi.

"It's possible," Kakashi replied evenly, bowing even more.

A long silence followed as Sarutobi thought about this.

"Fine. But only three months. No more than that."

"Thank you, Hokage-sama."

"For the next month, my little genin, you will be going over the basics of being a shinobi once again. This will involve chakra control exercises, physical training, remedial training, and maybe a few other 'special' methods," Kakashi smiled, seeing Sasuke's frown deepen and deepen as he continued.

"I won't be honing your skills individually until we finish with the basics," Kakashi added, taking pleasure in the fact that Sasuke looked like he wanted to go strangle an innocent bunny.

"However, there is something good that comes out of this," Kakashi added, noticing how Naruto perked up at his words.

"You won't be doing the D-ranks and C-ranks, menial tasks, that the other genin teams will be doing," Kakashi finished.

Naruto raised an eyebrow. "What's so special about that?"

"In D-ranks and C-ranks, we'll have to catch cats, weed lawns, paint fences, and do other pointless stuff," Sakura hissed, jabbing Naruto in the ribs.

The blond's eyes widened. "So while Kiba and the others are wrestling with cats, we'll be training?"

Kakashi nodded.

"YES!"

Naruto's cry of joy could be heard from the other side of the village.

"Three cheers for not having to do boring stuff!"

Kakashi only hoped that his idea wasn't that bad.

After getting over the basics, he would have to get them under different teachers if he wanted to accomplish his goal.

He made the mental note to bully one of the medical-nin in the hospital into teaching Sakura. True, they weren't as good as Tsunade or Shizune, but it was still better than having Sakura stand helpless in the battlefield. The girl was a fast learner, and she could probably surpass her teacher within a year.

As for the genjutsu training, Kurenai still owed him a favor after he managed to prevent Gai from storming her house two months ago.

Naruto was built for ninjutsu. The boy had a massive amount of chakra that would allow him to continuously fire high-level jutsu at the enemy without tiring out running out of reserves. The fact that Naruto liked to show off also helped. The blond would be eager to learn flashy techniques.

Sasuke could probably handle anything he threw at him. It came with along with the Sharingan of the Uchiha Clan.

Kakashi sighed inwardly. Still, teaching Sasuke Chidori wasn't a very good idea. The last time he had seen the boy use the technique, Naruto had nearly been punched through the chest with a fist of lightning.

So no highly destructive offensive techniques for the Uchiha, then.

He'd just have to focus on other things. Genjutsu, taijutsu, and maybe even some kenjutsu. The Chidori can wait until he was sure that Sasuke wouldn't desert the village.

Let's just hope that I don't screw this up...

Author's Notes

And yes, Kakashi was using a Shadow Clone during the bell test. Why else would he be able to do that?

And yes, Kakashi is going to go over the basics first. There's no point in teaching somebody how to perform high level ninjutsu if their chakra control is horrible.

Naruto, I'm looking at you.