Tsume huddled closer to her fiancé as Kakashi stretched his arm out and fumbled for the snooze button on the alarm clock. He yawned and pulled Tsume closer to him, closing his eyes tightly, trying to block out the brutal morning sun.

The door opened and Naruto stuck his head in. "Dad," he whispered loudly. Kakashi groaned. "Dad, we have our test today."

The silver-haired man raised his arm slightly, indicating that he had heard his son and would be up.

Naruto closed the door and Kakashi slipped back asleep.

/\/\

Hana woke up before Kiba. She separated herself from her brother carefully, slipping out of her room and going to Itachi's. She didn't knock, just pushed open the door and trudged in. Itachi was sitting on the bed, fully dressed and staring at the ground.

"Itachi, what did you want to tell me last night?" she asked quietly. Itachi looked up.

"Oh, just wanted to talk about my mission."

"Itachi, are you really going to go through with it?"

She sat down next to him. He sighed. "The Hokage said that I should pretend to do the mission and report to Danzo my 'progress', but I don't know if I can do that anymore. Danzo is getting suspicious. Any day now he's going to ask when I'm going to finish them, and I won't be able to tell him."

Hana stared at the wall. "The Hokage has to do something about it soon. You just have to hold out until then." She stood up. "I have to go wake Kiba up, then I have a mission. Talk to the Hokage again; he might do something about Danzo."

She walked out of his room and back to her own. She noticed that Sakura wasn't in her bed; either she was awake or had slept in Kiba's bed.

Kiba was sprawled out on her bed. He looked so peaceful she almost didn't want to wake him, but she knew that he had to meet his team today for their test. If he was late that wouldn't be good.

"Kiba," she said loudly, throwing a pair of shorts at his head. He groaned and sat up, tossing the shorts to the ground. "You have to meet your team today."

He groaned again and trudged out of the room, leaving her alone. She smiled.

/\/\

Naruto and Sasuke had been waiting at the training field for close to ten minutes before Ino showed up. She and Sasuke walked away a distance and sat down to talk; Naruto leaned against a tree and waited for Kakashi to show up.

After an hour had passed and Kakashi still hadn't appeared, Naruto had been sitting on the ground for so long his butt was asleep. He tilted his head back to stare at the leaves of the tree, muttering curses to himself.

By the time Kakashi finally walked up to them, Naruto was close to crying from lack of food. His father had said not to eat breakfast. Naruto was regretting following his directions.

"You are late!"

Naruto jumped up and glared at his father harshly. Kakashi laughed. "Sorry," he said. "Fell asleep again."

"I woke you up!"

"Didn't matter. Still feel asleep."

Sasuke sighed. Ino glanced at him, and he –almost—smiled at her. She smiled back and turned to Kakashi.

"What do we have to do for our test?" she asked.

"You have to find and rescue a little boy. His name is Kyle; he's from America and is from a very wealthy family. He was visiting and got lost, and it's your mission to find him and retrieve the bells he has. Work together and you'll be done in time for lunch."

Kakashi held up a plastic bag of Ichiraku's Ramen, and Naruto's stomach growled. He frowned at Kakashi angrily.

"Whoever doesn't get one of Kyle's bells will be without lunch, and you will go back to the Academy."

/\/\

Asuma sighed as his students—particularly Kiba and Sakura—fought over who would lead their team. Shikamaru slumped against a nearby tree and closed his eyes. Asuma couldn't tell if the Nara was asleep or not.

"Okay you two," Asuma said loudly, breaking the two siblings apart. "Shikamaru will lead the team. Your mission is to avoid any attacks from me and get to the river on the other side of the training field unscathed. You leave a teammate behind, you're automatically sent back to the Academy. Are we clear?"

"Yes, Sensei," they chorused.

"Good. Go," he said, and they sprinted away in the direction of the river, Sakura dragging Shikamaru behind her.

/\/\

Naruto whined as Sasuke tugged him through the forest, tripping over tree roots and uneven ground.

"Where is this kid anyway?" he groaned. Sasuke shot a glare at him, speeding up to fall in step with Ino. She glanced back at Naruto.

"Let me handle this," she said. "You two obviously can't use common sense."

She took a deep breath, then hollered, "KYLE!" as loud as she could. Naruto felt like his ears were bleeding.

There was a faint answering shout from the right, and Ino lead them to the boy by calling out to Kyle at random intervals. By the time they found Kyle Naruto had tugged his arm free from Sasuke's grip to cover his ears.

Kyle was huddling on the ground at the base of a tree, arms wrapped around his knees. He was staring at the forest floor, oblivious to their arrival. Ino slowly stepped forward to crouch in front of the little boy.

"Kyle," she said in English quietly, a huge difference from the ear-splitting shrieks from moments before. "Kyle, we're here to take you home."

Kyle looked up and blinked. "Oh, hi," he said. Naruto couldn't really understand what they were saying—he knew very little English, barely enough to know how to ask for the bathroom, but Ino seemed to be fluent in the language. He made a mental note to ask her about that later.

"Kyle, do you have any bells?" she asked. The little boy nodded, reaching into his pocket and pulling out two silver bells. Naruto blinked.

"Ino, there are only two there."

Sasuke snorted. "Thank you for pointing out the obvious."

Naruto glared at him. "Whatever,"

Ino stood up and helped Kyle to his feet. "We'll figure out something on the way back."

They trudged back to the training field, the conversation flipping back and forth from English—"I'm hungry"—to Japanese—"How do three people share two bells?"—and Naruto was getting a headache.

"Okay fine," Naruto muttered when they were within seeing distance of Kakashi. It was clear there was no solution to the bells. "I sacrifice myself to go without lunch."

Sasuke stared at him silently; Ino gaped at him with confusion and shock written all over her face. Kyle ran ahead at the sight of Kakashi, who must have been familiar to him. The tall shinobi bent down to say something to him, and Kyle sprinted away again, no doubt to his family.

Ino jingled the bells as they walked up to Kakashi. He smiled. "So you found the bells."

Naruto glared at him. "Yeah, we did," he muttered. "And now I get to starve."

Ino gladly traded the bells for the bag of ramen, glancing guiltily at Naruto. He sat down at by one of the poles and closed his eyes, willing himself to stay strong.

"You two may not share with Naruto," Kakashi said firmly. "I'll be back in fifteen minutes."

Sasuke and Ino started eating their ramen, and Naruto's stomach growled again. Sasuke sighed, stared around to make sure Kakashi wasn't watching, then moved closer to Naruto and offered his ramen to him. The blonde blinked at him.

"What are you doing, Sasuke?"

"I am offering you food, idiot." Sasuke shook his head. "Isn't that obvious?"

"But Dad said—"

"I don't care what Dad said. As much as I hate to admit it, I do not want to see my little brother's funeral at this time in my life."

Naruto smiled and took the ramen, slurping down half the contents before forcing himself to stop. Sasuke was staring off into space with a look, a look that he only had when he was hungry.

"Here, Sasuke," Naruto said, passing the ramen container back to his brother. "There's still half of it left."

Sasuke's dark gaze flickered between the ramen and Naruto before shaking his head. "No, Naruto, you eat it."

"But, Sasuke—"

"Sasuke, at least take some of mine," Ino interjected. She crawled closer to the raven and held out her ramen. "You need to eat something."

"Ino—"

"Sasuke." Ino's eyes flashed dangerously. "Eat the ramen."

Sasuke hesitantly took her ramen and ate some of it, gulping down the cold broth. It didn't taste as good cold, but at least it was something.

"Are you sure you don't want anymore?" he asked worriedly as he made himself stop long enough to look at Ino. She shook her head and smiled.

"No. I usually don't even eat ramen."

If this was a normal day, Naruto would have gasped and demanded they go to Ichiraku's so he could force ramen down Ino's throat, but the blonde was too hungry to object. Sasuke shrugged and slurped up the rest of the ramen.

There was clapping from behind them, and they twisted around to see Kakashi standing there with a smile. "Congratulations," he said. "You all passed."

A/N: I know I changed to test a little bit, but I figured that because it's my story anyways, I could do what I wanted. Besides, I still have the bells, don't I? Anyways, next chapter will be Asuma's team, and then we'll be focusing on Itachi, then the wedding. I honestly didn't expect this story to get this long so fast…chapter 20 already, guys! That's huge!