Minato met Gai the same way everyone met Gai.

There was a blur of green spandex, large, creepy eyes that seemed to stare into the soul, and a grin that blinded even those that wore sunglasses. There may have also been the thought of What was that thing just now?! that was swiftly discarded as the blur resolved into a human shape. A loud, boisterous voice that tickled at the back of his memory shouted, "Kakashi! I see you got onto your team as well!"

Kakashi, Minato had found, is a very withdrawn, quiet child who hasn't said more than five words to him. "Gai. You got onto a team?"

In three seconds the mysterious child has dragged more words out of Kakashi then Minato. Gai eagerly nodded, shifting a large bag in his arms. At that moment, the stench hit like a wall. Obito gagged, as Rin politely pinched her nose shut. Kakashi ignored it; it was no doubt filtered out by his face mask at least a little.

"Hm." Kakashi did lean back when Gai leaned forward.

"We should have another contest soon, but I'm afraid I can't today!"

"Good!" Obito yelled, finally overcoming the smell, "Now get out of here!"

Minato took as step forward, intending on stopping the fight before it could begin, but Gai flat out ignored Obito. It was like Obito had never spoken when Gai told Kakashi straight up, "We should spar tomorrow!"

"You'll loose." Kakashi stated calmly. Despite his harsh words, his body language remained relaxed and open.

Obito chimed in with another, "You always lose you stupid idiot! Why can't you take a hint and just leave?"

"Who asked you?! Besides, Kakashi is my eternal rival! If I were to give up now it would be-"

"GAI!" The shout came from further down the road, and below. Minato glanced towards the lower street, to see two kids with their protectors unfolded and tied around their heads like protective hats staring up at them. "Gai! You up there?"

Gai waved. "Genma! Ebisu!"

The two children were absolutely covered in manure. They held similar bags under their arms. A tall man, probably their teacher, stood a few feet behind them. If the kids were covered, the teacher was soaked in it. Actually- he recognized the man, just a little. "C'mon Gai! We need to go turn in all of these seals we found!"

"Coming!"

Gai leapt off the building. Minato bit back a yell at the last moment as Gai landed cat-like on his feet. Gai trotted to the two waiting teammates. "C'mon Gai, once we drop these off, our mission of the day will be over and we can go bathe in the river."

Gai nodded, adjusting his bag. The small, bedraggled team of four took off, wearily tromping through the streets. Minato watched them go with a slight frown- why hadn't they dropped off the seals at the warehouse? They were going in the direction of one of the smaller bases that could handle the more dangerous seals…

"Obito, Rin, Kakashi. Go to the field before me. There's something I want to know."

It was bad manners to leave his newly formed team alone, but all three had displayed enough maturity that Minato knew they could make it too the field just fine. "Minato-senpai? Is something wrong?"

"No, I'll catch up with you there. Go ahead and set off now."

Kakashi's eyes were sharp on his back as he dropped to the street below with a graceful, fluid movement. Minato smiled reassuringly at him. He wasn't surprised when Kakashi turned away, ignoring him to focus on his teammates.

It was easy enough to catch up with the other group- follow the manure prints and smell. "Ahhh, Minato."

The slightly older man nodded at him. Minato waved back, "Keitaro. Why are you heading this way?"

"The seals we found are technically dangerous if they're left alone." Keitaro groaned, "The mission scroll said they were harmless, but I know my seals."

Minato smothered a chuckle. "I never expected you to be a teacher."

"I'm not." Keitaro scowled darkly, "I was woken up at three in the morning by an ANBU member dropping off a scroll explaining the situation to me and telling me that I would be their substitute teacher until they found someone who could fill the part full time."

Situation? "What situation is that?"

Keitaro hesitated, shooting a careful glance at the three kids walking in front of them. His voice lowered to a whisper, "Their real teacher was found guilty of selling information to other villages. It's been a huge disaster from start to finish. ANBU is still trying to track him down but they haven't been successful."

Keitaro hefted the bag further up onto his shoulder. "The team would've been flat out disbanded, but they were kept together to keep questions from being raised."

Minato's attention was broken off when the child with sunglasses stared yelling, "How can you have so much energy?! You couldn't have had much more sleep then we did!"

"I didn't sleep at all!" Gai's grin sparkled in the sunlight. It kicked at Minato's memories. "By the time Papa had calmed down it was time for morning laps! We did five hundred this morning before breakfast!"

F-Five… hundred… "Maito Dai. The last time I heard of something so…" Minato paused, manners strangling down the urge to continue the sentence in front of Maito's son. "Ha. What an interesting team."

"Why can't you at least act tired? Genma, why aren't you as annoyed as me?" The child in sunglasses groused.

Genma hummed softly, breaking in with a story of his own, "If you've ever helped take care of younger siblings then getting by on a few hours of sleep is easy enough."

"You're crazy too Genma." The sunglasses announced.

"Ebisu!" Gai shouted, and the three were off and arguing again.

"They've been doing that all day," grumbled Keitaro. "Ever since we arrived too late to get any better jobs… Augh, the day has just been a huge disaster."

"That bad?" Minato laughed.

"Bad? Bad?! You don't know how bad it's been! I was woken up at three with the scroll, I had to pull together all of my gear after just getting off an A-Rank mission, and then it turned out that none of the kids got their scroll until well after the meeting time specified on mine! By the time we had completely sorted everything out all of the good missions were taken and we got a mission to help with cows. Imagine our surprise when it turned out someone had dumped a huge bag of dangerous seals among the manure!" The rant ended with Keitaro grinding his teeth together and eyes on fire.

Minato nodded, and slowly backed up a step. "Sounds pretty bad. But I'm sure it's just a rough start."

Keitaro shook his head. "Rough start or not, I'm ready to hand them off to whoever their real teacher will be."

Minato nodded understandingly as Gai's fist flew into the air and scattered a bit more manure over the street. "I'll leave it too you then."

Gai jumped into the river with the expression of the deepest enjoyment. Genma, already waist deep, wrung out his shirt as he let the river carry away the stench. Ebisu wadded in slowly, wincing at the coldness. "It's s-s-so cold! How do you two stand it?"

"I'm always last for the shower so it's ice cold by the time I get in."

"Ice baths are the best for sore muscles!" Gai splashed a little, scrubbing at the dark stains on his spandex. They weren't coming out.

Keitaro was further up the stream, working on a mission scroll. Genma glanced up the stream at him, before looking back at them. "So, what kind of teacher do you think we'll eventually get?"

"Probably a hard-working one." Ebisu chattered out, dipping down to scrub off more of the manure. "I mean, we're kind of a motley bunch, so they'll need a really good trainer for us." Ebisu pulled off his shirt, rather than wade any further. "I mean, Gai is really bad at everything except taijutsu, and then Genma's got a good all-around skills but he isn't proficient in anything."

Genma blinked at Ebisu- this was the first time he had ever heard an assessment of his skills not from a teacher. And Ebisu said the same sort of things that their teacher did.

"I'm working on getting better!" Gai protested from where he was currently neck-deep. His hair was tugged by the slow current. "I can't help it!"

"Some chakra training would help, don't you think?" Ebisu snapped back. "I mean, I guess if you manage to get good enough at taijutsu it won't matter, but you're not at that point."

Genma had never heard of that either. "Are taijutsu masters really that strong?" He couldn't help the slightly dubious note in his voice. "I've never heard of any before."

Gai shot an arm up from where he had almost disappeared beneath the water. "Then I'll just have to change that and prove taijutsu can hold up against everything!"

Ebisu glanced at Gai, "Not if you don't get better at it."

"I'm still learning."

"But you're learning from your father. And well, Gai. He's… nicer than mine, but he's also weaker."

Genma had never seen Gai put that much hatred and warning in one single look. Ebisu held up his hands in a placating measure. "I get it. You love your dad. But still- it can only get you so far. You're going have to do other training. If you keep up with your current training you'll end up with a huge weak spot to bladed weapons."

"That's true." Genma agreed, wedging himself in-between the two's heating up argument before it could get any worse. "You can't block blades with your fists."

Gai grumbled, but didn't attack like Genma half expected him too. Genma rolled his shoulders back, and glanced upstream. Their temporary teacher hadn't even noticed their discussion. He was too busy filling out what looked to be like an essay on their mission.

"Then Ebisu, we leave it up to you."

"Buh- WHAAAAT?!" Ebisu openly gaped at him.

Genma grinned- "Well, you're the one who could tell what sort of weaknesses we have. Besides, we'll only be doing this until we get a real teacher. After that you don't have to worry about it."

Ebisu looked down at the swirling river. Genma raised his voice a little, letting it carry to where Gai watched them from the water. Only Gai's watchful eyes and nose were visible. "Is that okay Gai? It'll mean extra training."

Gai regarded him for a moment longer- Genma hadn't seen Gai face anything that resembled training with anything less than overenthusiasm, even if it was chakra training that he failed miserably at. "Will it really help?" The words were almost lost on the river. "I've been doing all sorts of stuff, but…"

Was this really Gai? Gai who was legendary for his confidence and the fact that nobody had been able to take him down a peg despite numerous fights? It didn't sound like him.

"I'll do it!" Ebisu announced, apparently as thrown off as Genma was. "I'll show you what kind of trainer I can be."

Gai's uncharacteristic silence broke as Gai erupted from the water like a flying fish. "Then let us work together!"

Genma slapped his hands against his thighs. Perhaps this team wouldn't be too horrible- they were coming to a slow understanding of each other. Ebisu's father wasn't to be talked about at all, and Gai's dad wasn't to be insulted, both of which were understandable enough.

"I think we can make this team work. We shouldn't be the worst team around."

"I hate this team. I want off this team. Is it too late to go back to the academy?" Ebisu moaned as he sank onto the pile of his books. He was taking the title of team organizer very seriously, and Genma had to admit that they were slowly improving from what he could tell. The amount of training was nothing to sneeze at, but since Genma was the one to suggest the entire ordeal, he was going to stick with it through the end.

To be fair to their temporary teachers, each of them had tried to at least start a regular training schedule. It had been tossed out by the next teacher, sure, but Genma figured it was flexibility training. How well could they change and adapt was always a good question that should be answered. It was doing strange things to his sleep cycle, but having younger siblings was the biggest disturbance of them all.

"Are you sure you want to go back Ebisu? You'll be the laughingstock of the academy." Genma replied, folding a paper airplane. He shot it off in the direction of Gai currently trying out a spear.

"It's better then what we'll be doing now! Look at this!"

Ebisu waved a hand at the single scroll. "I tried to get the scrolls that go over the missions we've done, to get a better idea on what we need to work on, but they've all been barred from normal reading. That's odd, right?" Ebisu scowled darkly, "And we still haven't gotten a normal teacher, even though it's been nearly three months."

Genma folded another paper airplane and let it shoot off in Gai's direction. Gai nearly tripped over the spear, before forcing his center of gravity to change. The spear pierced straight through the paper airplane.

"I think we're probably pretty much forgotten about at this point." Genma sighed. "We should give up on having a proper teacher, huh?"

Gai whirled around the spear, using it as a platform to do a kick. Ebisu yelled, "Don't even think about it Gai! Once you get big enough, you'll just snap it in half!"

Gai yelled back, "But what else am I supposed to do with it?! It's getting in the way of all of my limbs!"

"That's why you're practicing!" Ebisu yelled back.

"I don't think a spear is the right weapon for Gai." Genma announced, "Maybe we should think about going in for a comedy troupe instead. Gai backstage, I'll be the joker, and you can be the straight man."

"I refuse." Ebisu grumbled, "I've already done enough research onto the whole training part for us to give up now."

Gai was rubbing off on Ebisu apparently. Ebisu rarely got so fired up about something.

They sat in silence for a short period. Genma toyed with the origami paper for the airplanes, staring up at the cloudy blue sky. "So- all of our missions are sealed from normal reading? Even the ones where we spent the entire time scrounging around manure?"

Ebisu nodded. "It's very odd. And the one mission where it wasn't sealed away was the day you were sick. Gai and I went on a mission with our teacher and we completed it early and went on to training."

"What kind of training?"

"Well, knife training. That didn't go so well. You were there for the end result of that. Gai nearly stabbed our teacher when he decided to appear in the middle of the field."

Oh yeah, he had seen that. It had been almost hilarious to see Gai's dumbstruck face as their temporary teacher found a blade hurtling right between his eyes. That particular temporary teacher had never appeared again. They had made do with picking up their own assignments from the building until their next teacher had abruptly popped into their lives.

"I don't think weapons with blades suit Gai at all." Genma remarked, sidetracked as Gai shifted the spear from hand to hand. "Blunt force trauma suits him a lot better."

"A mace is a little unwieldy."

"There's others."

"Well, he doesn't quite have the needle-like precision required for a senbon like you do."

The two stared at Gai floundering with the spear for a few minutes longer. "Well," Ebisu at last said with a dubious look on his face, "At least this way, if needed, he can pick up any weapon and start using it. I mean, since he has no chakra to really speak of, being able to fall back to regular weapons if he can't use his body would probably be the best."

"I'm sure it'll be fine." Genma started folding another paper airplane. "Gai takes a while to start getting the hang of things."

Genma shot the airplane off, before switching focus. "And what about you?"

"Me?"

"I haven't seen you training any." Genma pointed out. Ebisu suddenly found the scroll in his hands extremely interesting. "If you don't train, then you'll fall behind."

"That's…" Ebisu trailed off. Genma waited, his paper airplanes slowly filling the field. He could be patient and wait. "I didn't… I'm fine."

Genma stifled a sigh.

So Ebisu wasn't ready to open up yet, huh? That was fine; it wasn't like they were in a rush or anything. While other teams were beginning to go out on their own missions, slowly spreading further and further from Konoha, they were stuck within the walls.

"Okay, but if you got anything else to say, I'll listen to it."

Ebisu fidgeted with the scroll in his hands, before shrugging. His sunglasses didn't let Genma see if his eyes were accepting or suspicious, but his shoulders were hunched. Genma leaned back further into his seat. "In another month or so, we should talk to whoever our teacher will be about getting a mission out of Konoha."

"That would be nice." Ebisu said, leaning back slightly. "I mean, it's not like anything will go drastically wrong like high-level nin's attacking us."

a/n: Ages and timing are really confusing in the anime/manga, so I'm just going to hope for the best and try to muddle it out. Also, Ebisu's hobby of training elite ninja starts here, because both Genma and Gai are elite ninja. Though Ebisu could use a little help himself. Gai passed the Chūnin exams at 11, Genma at 13, and Ebisu at 17. Ebisu kinda lagged there, poor guy.