Naruto tried to avoid Sasuke's gaze all through his final breakfast at Tazuna's house. He'd initially been shocked when the boy had asked him to train him. The shock rapidly wore off when Sasuke wouldn't stop pestering him about training. He was still trying to decide what to do about the boy's requests. He couldn't brush Sasuke off because, then the Uchiha would become even more determined and wouldn't leave him alone for even a second. If he killed the boy, he may as well go missing-nin, because the Old Man's former teammates and that jerk Danzo would call for his head on a platter and go around the Hokage to get it done like they had done with the Uchiha. Since Sasuke hadn't done anything yet and he himself was not yet popular enough, the rest of the village would be clamoring for his blood as well.
Suddenly, as he began to fall into despair over his limited options, inspiration hit. He'd train Sasuke alright. He'd give Sasuke training that would frustrate him to no end and make the boy never ask him to teach him something ever again.
When Sasuke asked for - or demanded rather - training once again as soon as breakfast was over, he gave the boy the answer he thought he wanted but soon would come to regret if all went well.
"Sure Sasuke, I'll train you." he said grinning evilly.
"Finally." Sasuke muttered.
No "Thank You". That was just like the bastard, always feeling that he was entitled to whatever you gave him and rarely if ever giving anything in return.
"I don't know where I'm going to get an orange tracksuit in your size though." he said cheerfully.
"What is the orange tracksuit for?" Sasuke asked, taken aback.
"Stealth." he replied.
"Father, you're not seriously considering naming the bridge after..." Tsunami said upon hearing the new name for the bridge the locals had spent several years working on.
"Daughter, there are several reasons why I'm giving this bridge that name, and only one of which is because he saved your life and inspired Inari into rallying the villagers. Besides, our main competitors would be close to the sea and therefore more likely to hire shinobi from Mist for any potential demolition missions just as Gato had done, and nobody from Mist would dare attack the Great Uzumaki Naruto Bridge, especially considering the fact that said person would be less than a day's travel away if half the stories I've heard about ninja are true." Tazuna replied.
"Fine. Do what you want father but, I think that boy set a very bad example for Inari and naming this bridge after him will just further encourage Inari's behavior." Tsunami said.
"Inari's behavior?" Tazuna asked wondering what his grandson had done this time, as his mischievous side had reappeared when his depression had disappeared.
"Hatake-san taught Inari a basic jutsu that apparently even civilian children could pick up with enough practice and, well...Young Naruto decided to expand on that lesson before they left. Urameshi-san is currently passed out due to severe blood loss resulting from a massive nosebleed." Tsunami said sighing.
The trip back to Konoha after that second snafu in Wave and the time leading up to the Chunin Exams that Kakashi was seriously considering not entering his team into despite Jiraiya and Tenzo's assurances that they would be able to bring Orochimaru down or at least distract him before he got to Sasuke - who he really could care less about - and possibly injure Naruto had been relatively uneventful. He would have put this year's Summer Exam firmly in the No Way In Hell category if Naruto hadn't been strongly hinting that he wanted to become a Chunin as soon as possible, and that he'd heard that the Exams were coming up soon.
For some strange reason, he found that he couldn't really bring himself to deny Naruto anything he truly had his heart set on, and quite likely that would include even this.
Tomorrow, a messenger bird will once more be circling above the village, and he would have to make his final decision about whether or not his team would be entering the upcoming Chunin Exams. Part of him said wait until Winter, while another part of him said that Naruto might not forgive him for doing so. Another element to his quandary was the fact that Orochimaru had come to the Exams for Sasuke, and if Sasuke wasn't there, Orochimaru's plans would change and the result would become unpredictable. With Sasuke in the Exams however, there was a reasonable chance of predicting what would happen because it had already happened in not only his timeline, but those of Tenzo and Jiraiya as well.
Unlike the last time around, his students' teamwork had actually improved rather than worsened and missions were being completed in record time. The only problems he really seemed to have these days were the number of times angry shinobi had delivered a tightly bound neon pink clad Uchiha Sasuke who had yet again been caught pulling some stupid prank during his off hours when he was trying to catch up on his own training, reading, or sleep. As soon as the boy was released, he would look exceedingly determined, and comment on how much he needed to improve before he left.
An incident that took place during a training session a few days before the Chunin Exams were to be announced had made him start reconsidering his opinions about the Pink Haired Extra Baggage as well. Two days ago, he had watched in surprise as Sakura dragged a woman that could only be her mother to the training field, and stopped in front of Naruto.
"Say that to his face mother." Sakura had snarled.
The woman whom he recognized as being a retired civilian-born shinobi named Mei-somethingorother remained silent, completely intimidated by her daughter who was surprisingly frightening considering the fact that she was a Genin with no real talents to write home about. This had been a rather interesting side to the Haruno girl that he'd never seen before but, come to think of it, had been catching glimpses of in the days before the team had collapsed. Usually, the girl was only aggressive towards Naruto or the other Uchiha fangirls, mainly Yamanaka's brat Ino with whom she had some sort of ongoing rivalry. After Naruto's death and Sasuke's departure, the girl had spiraled into depression and left the ninja program altogether.
"I'm waiting." Sakura said impatiently about a minute later as her mother had yet to make a noise.
The Haruno woman made a squeaking noise, and tried to pull away from her daughter. Sakura however, would have none of it.
"Either say it to his face, or never say anything like that about him or his parents ever again." Sakura said, rather forcefully holding her mother in place in front of an increasingly uncomfortable Naruto.
Naruto ended up telling Sakura to let the frightened woman go.
There was now a rumor amongst the older generations that Naruto was using some sort of mind control on his teammates to force them to do his bidding. The younger generation to which Naruto belonged were more sensible about this, especially after actually hearing from said teammates. Several children were cheering Sasuke on in his "quest to figure out how Naruto had managed to evade the ANBU while wearing bright colors" and a large number of girls were now giving Sakura's mother and several other women around the village death glares for "calling some poor orphan boy's dead mother a whore".
Thanks to the rumor that had been mostly discounted by the younger generation, he'd had to waylay any number of Chunin and Jounin who had wanted to rescue Naruto's teammates from his clutches. Quite frankly, it was getting annoying, and he just hoped that it didn't interfere with the Chunin Exams if his students were entered. Morino Ibiki was proctoring the first part and Mitarashi Anko the second, and he didn't need to be on either of their bad sides.
Iruka felt like tearing his hair out. A couple days ago, after one of the Yamanaka had practically raped his mind, a large number of shinobi had started coming to him for advice about certain disturbing rumors they had heard since he "knew the demon best".
After telling the fifteenth person that day that the reason Naruto's teammates were behaving oddly was because Sakura had heard her mother call a teammate's mother a whore amongst other horrible things one time to many and finally decided to call her on it, and because after Naruto had beaten some extremely strong ninja with a prank Sasuke had stalked him demanding training and he couldn't come up with anything better than dressing the boy in pink and setting him to pranking the village, and that Kakashi was just plain weird and possibly inappropriately attracted to Naruto, and that if they weren't there for a mission they'd better shove off, he found himself destroying his favorite coffee mug by hurling it against the far wall of the Mission Assignment Room, scaring several people in the process.
Soon enough, a sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth person came into the office not for a mission, but to ask about Naruto instead, and he found that he was rapidly running out of things on his desk to destroy.
Tenzo didn't usually drink in the middle of the day but, he was currently off duty and the person he was visiting at the moment was offering. He was rather glad that Jiraiya had gotten the necklace thing cleared up because, he had a strong feeling that his life had been on the line. If the Third Hokage hadn't killed him, the Fifth Hokage certainly would have.
Rather than tell the truth about the time travel despite the fact that the truth had been what he himself had given his captain in order to obtain leave, Jiraiya had opted to go with a story of how Tenzo had decided to win the necklace because he thought that it might give him a chance with a Tsunade who would be desperate to get it back, and upon first holding it an instinct of some sort that was most likely related to the First Hokage's unique abilities had told him that he would be able to use it to help control the demon within Naruto if it ever got out of hand, which caused all thoughts of scoring with the Sannin to fall away as he knew he had to get the necklace to Naruto immediately to keep him and the village safe. The way Jiraiya had painted him to be a hero with both Naruto's and the village's best interests in mind revealed exactly how Jiraiya had become well regarded as a storyteller despite the fact that practically everything he published was considered pornographic material.
Somehow, he had escaped the Hokage's office alive and relatively intact despite the fact that the expression on the Hokage's face seemed to indicate that he knew full well that Jiraiya's story was bullshit. Well, technically, he'd been thrown out the window by and enraged Tsunade who apparently didn't view him as an acceptable potential bed partner, but hey, he was alive.
Now, he and Jiraiya were drinking and trading stories about the Narutos they knew from their respective timelines during what was supposed to be one of the numerous planning sessions for how they would deal with Orochimaru.
In the ANBU building, there was an air of excitement. A new edition of Mist's Bingo Book had just come out, and Rabbit was going to be handing out copies. The instant the completion of those copies had been announced, a line rapidly formed outside Rabbit's office.
New Bingo Books were always fun. While it was a good way to see who the foreign shinobi considered to be Who's Who amongst the ninja of Konoha, there was the added bonus of the fact that it marked open season on teasing the newest entries about the invariably rather entertaining nickname they had just acquired.
After what seemed like forever, the door to the office opened, and one of the captains pulled rank in order to cut ahead of the line and get the first new copy for himself. Moments later, he emerged with a slim volume that he was already leafing through. When he was halfway down the hall, he suddenly stopped. His entire body spoke of the complete surprise that was currently hidden behind his mask.
"What the?...Hell God?" the captain said, before his body language shifted from shock to irritation and he snapped the book closed and stormed back into Rabbit's office.
"Where the hell is the real Bingo Book?" the captain yelled.
There was a nearly inaudible reply.
"LOOK IN THE A-CLASS ENTRIES UNDER U AND TELL ME AGAIN THAT THIS IS REAL!" the captain thundered.
There was another nearly inaudible reply moments later.
"How the hell did that brat acquire an A-Class entry on a C-Ranked mission?" the captain yelled.
With that, everyone became even more keenly interested in the new hot-off-the-presses despite there having been one published two and a half months before Bingo Book from Mist.
Edited 11-3-12