Sasuke's fight went much the same way the anime depicted it, and Kakashi put Hinata in a genjutsu, showing her surrounded by many shirtless Naruto's. Just after she fainted, her face bright red, the alarm bell rang. Kakashi dispelled the genjutsu on her before using the Shunshin jutsu to get back to the clearing. When all three not-yet-genin got back to the central clearing, Kakashi said, "Well, I suppose I'll have to tie one of you up…Ah!" Kakashi disappeared momentarily before reappearing where he was, Naruto tied up against the central pole.

Naruto exclaimed, "Hey! Why am Itied up, huh?"

"Because, Naruto, you have the greatest misunderstanding of what a ninja is."

"Actually," Sasuke said, "a better question is why is any one of us tied up?"

Kakashi looked at Sasuke and said, "What do you mean by that, Sasuke?"

Sasuke smirked and reached into his kunai pouch and brought out a bell. Kakashi blinked at the sight and said, "I don't know what you're trying to pull Sasuke, but lying like that isn't going to…"

"Hinata-chan," Naruto said, cutting through Kakashi's words.

"Yes…Naruto-kun?" Hinata said.

"Can you please make the ram and dog seals for me?"

Hinata hesitantly said, "H-hai…Naruto-kun," and did as requested.

Kakashi heard a 'pop' and felt the weight at his hip increase and looked down at the bells, only to see one bell and one kunai with a spike extending from it. He said, "What the…!?" and thought over the entire battle that he'd had with Naruto and didn't remember a single chance that he'd given Naruto to not only get a bell, but also switch it out with a transformed kunai. He said, "When did you…?"

Naruto grinned and said, "I didn't. You did it yourself."

"What…" then Kakashi remembered Naruto's taunt. He said, "Alright Naruto, how did you do it?"

"Well, before the test began, I asked to see one of Sasuke's kunai, figuring that it would be a good idea to have an escape plan if need be. So, I marked it with my Uzufūjin seal and gave it back to him. Then I…"

"Speaking of which…" Sasuke interrupted. "Where did you put it? I didn't see anything different about it at all."

"On the inside ring of the pommel," Naruto explained. After a pause he said, "Anyway…then, when you had me strung up, I used one of the kunai that I unsealed to switch it with the kunai that I'd given Sasuke back earlier by marking it with another seal."

"I hit that kunai away, Naruto."

"Actually, that hit a moment too late and the change had already happened. Then, I released two kunai from my other armguard and placed a transformation seal on one of them, mixing in a gravity seal to lighten it so that you wouldn't be able to tell the difference."

"I see," Kakashi said, as he thought, 'I didn't even see that second kunai. That was a rather annoying, but clearly successful, tactic.' He then turned to Sasuke and said, "Did you know of Naruto's plan Sasuke?"

"No. but I figured it out when I found one of his kunai mixed in with mine."

"Then why did you continue on trying to get a bell, surely you were aware that would already mean that you'd passed?"

"True, but then you would have figured out the ruse, and come at me even harder than you did. You are a jōnin after all."

"I see. That was a pretty brilliant plan you two. But, there's a problem."

"What's that?"

"There's only one bell," Kakashi stated as ominously as he could.

"That's true," Sasuke said. "However…" he flicked it to Hinata. "…you should have it, Hinata."

"Eh! But why? I'm just…"

Sasuke sighed and said, "I know how things are in the Hyūga. You, clearly, are an outlier amongst them. So it's better that you pass this test than either of us."

"But…Naruto-kun was…"

Kakashi sighed and said, "Alright already. You three pass," and released Naruto with the escape jutsu. As he did, he said, "Oh, and Naruto, I suggest that you get rid of that spark from your Uzufūjin."

"Why?"

"Because, every time you used it, it told me exactly where you were going to appear. Why did you include it in the first place?"

"Well, the Shunshin no jutsu uses some kind of a distraction, right? So I figured…"

"I see. But in the case of the Shunshin jutsu, the distraction is implemented where the user is originally." Kakashi paused to let that sink in before continuing on to say, "Not where they are about to appear."

"I see. That makes sense," Naruto said. "I'll also have to do something about if the enemy catches one of them too," Naruto snarkily said.

Kakashi smiled and said, "Do you mind if I hold onto this?" fingering the kunai tied to his belt.

"Eh, I don't care," Naruto said, shrugging his shoulder.

"Thank you," Kakashi said, as he cut the cord with one of his regular kunai. He then put them both into his kunai pouch. He said, "I'll see you outside the Hokage Tower at ten o'clock tomorrow."

Naruto asked, "Why? What are you doing now?"

Kakashi said, "There's some things that I need to attend to," and disappeared in a cloud of smoke.

Naruto said, "I've got to get him to teach me that."

Sasuke asked, "Why? You can teleport around easily enough as it is."

Naruto said, "You'd think so, wouldn't you?" in a thoughtful tone.

Surprised that it wasn't being used as a barb, Sasuke blinked and said, "Seriously though, how do you do it?"

Naruto said, "Fūinjutsu," drawing a tag from his tool pouch. "Here, take a look." Sasuke looked at the marks, confusion written on his face. Naruto sighed and said, "If you don't get it, I'm not going to explain it to you."

"No no, that's not it."

"Then you do understand it then?"

"No. That's not what I meant."

"Then what did you mean?"

"When did you…no. Rather, how, did you learn how to do this?"

"I alleviated some fūinjutsu books from the library."

"Some…why? What's the point of going to all that effort when you can just buy tags from the stores?"

Naruto said, "A few reasons, really. The most important of which is that the ones that I was getting were all hit or miss. Besides, do you really think that I could get that at a store?" nodding at the seal that was now in Hinata's hands.

Sasuke said, "So what did you mean that you don't teleport around?"

"There is a branch of fūinjutsu that makes use of…I'll say warping effects, though even that is not a very good description, called Jikūkan. But that's still beyond what I can do at the moment. The Uzufūjin, is a fūinjutsu application of the Kawarimi jutsu that swaps the user with a marked object, like a tag or kunai."

"And those physical clones?"

"You remember when Iruka-sensei had to leave class in a rush two years ago."

"Yeah. What about it?"

"One of the kids in our class got it in his head that it would be a 'brilliant' idea to send me off to get some spoils left over from a battle that hadn't finished playing out yet. I found a kunai that had some paper attached to it and got embroiled in a game of keep-away with three kunoichi from some village. When it was all said and done, Iruka-sensei took me to see ol' man Hokage and he confiscated the kunai. Two weeks later, I broke into the tower and retrieved it and started training with it. Of course, it didn't really do too much to improve my grades at the academy."

'I should think not,' Sasuke thought, thinking on the weight imbalance that the kunai had had.

"Back to the clones though. The kunoichi all used a jutsu that they called Gen'ei Tajū Shuriken that split their thrown shuriken into a very large number of them. I just kept on trying to do it with the kunai that I got back until it worked and then applied the concept to my body instead of the kunai."

"And the fire style jutsu?"

"Same place."

"I see," Sasuke said. He considered his words for a while before saying, "Naruto…would you teach that to me?"

"Why the hell would I do that?"

Sasuke sighed and said, "I suppose that I probably deserve that."

"I'm not sure that there's much 'probably' about it."

Sasuke grunted and said, "I'm sure. But, at the end of the day, I don't think that you have a natural affinity for fire style jutsu."

"Why's that? It worked pretty good, didn't it?"

"Ye-ess…but with the amount of chakra that you used, you should have produced a stream about twice that size."

"Seriously?!" Naruto exclaimed.

"Yeah. Also, the length of time that you needed to craft it was too long as well."

Naruto sighed and said, "Yeah, well, I suppose that even I can admit that you might have a point there. But, at the end of the day, if I taught it to you, and stopped using it myself, that would leave me with a couple of clone jutsu, and a broken fūinjutsu rendition of the Kawarimi jutsu."

"What about your other fūinjutsu?"

"Sealing tags and explosive tags. Like you said, both available at stores."

"Hmm…alright. How about this then, find out which element, or elements, you have an affinity with, and I'll go through my family's jutsu vault to see what they acquired and turn it over to you."

Naruto said, "Alright, I can work with that. But…how would we go about doing that exactly?"

"Flake that he is, Kakashi's still a jōnin. I'm sure he'd know some way of finding out."

"You know, I really don't like you right now."

"Why's that?"

Naruto sighed and said, "I doubt you'd understand. In any case, do you want a quick lesson on how to make explosive seals?"

"No. Come to think of it though, there is one think that I'm curious about."

"What is it?"

"The kunai that you gave me before…"

"What about it?"

"When I was holding it, it seemed like the only difference between it and the regular kunai that you can get here was the spike near the base of the blade."

"Yeah. The guy at the Yellow Dragon said that a rush job would end up with essentially a misshapen standard kunai. But, at the same time, the only real difference between them and the one that I was training with, is the weight. The aerodyne-whatsits aren't really affected that much."

"You remember that class about the aerodynamics of weaponry?" Sasuke exclaimed, shocked as he had thought that Naruto had been asleep at the time.

"I was paying attention, but the more technical things, I just couldn't get my head around."

XXXXX

As the new teammates started to talk, Kakashi arrived in a swirl of leaves in the office of the Hokage. He said, "Hokage-sama."

"So," Hiruzen said, "how'd they do?"

"Naruto was certainly surprising."

Hiruzen smiled and said, "Yes. He always has been, hasn't he?"

"Yūgao taught him well."

"Hardly."

"What do you mean? He's got her marks all over him."

"Yūgao was watching with Iruka and I questioned her about it. According to her, she only showed him that you could switch places with a person when she did it with him during one of the attacks. Other than that, it was only a few comments here and there when he showed her something that he'd come up with."

"Is that so?" Kakashi asked as he thought, 'That's…going to be rather problematic. If Sasuke starts to feel inferior, then…' none of the shinobi in the room saw it, but Kakashi bit his lower lip as he thought on what he should do to train his team, having planned to focus on getting Sasuke to the level that he would be able to pass the first Chūnin Exam that he could submit them for, and then split his attention between Hinata and Naruto, who he had thought to be on somewhat of a similar level to each other in terms of combat ability. Now he'd have to at least attempt to split his attention three ways, though he'd first have to do something about the kunoichi under his command if they ever wanted to go on even a C-Ranked mission.

Kakashi sighed, prompting Hiruzen to ask, "What seems to be the problem, Kakashi?"

"It's nothing," Kakashi said, waving over his shoulder as he left the office.

When Kakashi was gone, Hiruzen said, "Yūgao."

The purple haired kunoichi appeared from the wall, saying, "Yes, Sandaime?"

"I want you to watch over Team Seven's training. If Kakashi starts focusing on one student over the others, I want you to tell me if Kakashi starts to focus on what will be beneficial for one student over the others, no matter which.

"Hai, Sandaime-sama."