Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. This is fanfiction, after all.

Training Grounds, Konoha – March 1, AK 22

March 1. September 1.

Those were the two days when students in the different ninja academies graduated. They were two different tracks.

In March, the students projected for heavy combat would graduate from the official Academy, while in September, the students projected for support would graduate from the other various support schools and conservatories in the village.

The support academy system was a good way to prevent unnecessary casualties among children and rookie ninjas who weren't suited for battle to begin with. Instead, they could be sent to the medical corps, research and development units, or administration departments. They would be given some combat training at home to slowly bring their skills to a low chuunin level over a decade and would be used as reserves in emergencies.

Many civilian parents understandably elected for their children to take this route. There was the prestige associated with being a ninja without many of the dire costs.

On the other hand, official Academy was filled with clan children who had family expectations to live up to and orphans who had no one to hold them back. Jounin would come to see if they wanted to take on any of the new graduates. The ones who did gained a strong teacher. Contrary to popular belief among the clan children, the ones who failed ended weren't sent back to the Academy but were sent to a basic training program along with the ones who failed the regular graduation exam. This basic training program had them become average chuunin in about a decade. Occasionally, some of them would even become special jounin, ANBU, and jounin, but for the most part, most ninjas who entered the basic training program ended up as mediocre. Not that that was a bad thing. After all, a large bulk of Konoha's ten-thousand-strong army was produced this way.

Only the rare few were granted the honor of being trained under a jounin and even fewer were granted apprenticeship. Konoha did not have the luxury to have most of its hundred or so jounin babysitting children, even if it was a right of passage for jounin to be saddled with brats at least once in their careers.

It just so happened that it was Naruto's turn this year.

Naruto just twitched as he looked at the brats he was supposed to consider as potential students. The ten-year-old kids were fidgeting in excitement at the prospect of being taught by a legend. Naruto sighed. In his opinion, kids engaged in too much hero worship. He personally knew two of them from his visits to his old orphanage and felt a sense of kinship with them, but he wasn't too excited about having to be responsible for kids.

"Alright, we'll be doing introductions even though we all somewhat know one another. I'll begin," he said as the three excited ten-year-olds settled down. "As you all know, my name is Naruto Uzumaki." He scratched his head. "I really don't know what else to say so you might as well introduce yourselves now."

The brown-haired girl wearing pink and yellow and carrying a small cat decided to introduce herself. "My name is Hikari Kamiya and this kitty here is Tailmon. Naruto-sensei, I'm not sure if I ever introduced her to you when you visited. Tailmon usually tries to hide whenever someone visits us. I found her on the streets three years ago and she's been my friend for a long time now. I'm not from a clan or anything so I don't have any special skills of note. Oh and I still have the hair clip you gave me. See, here it is."

Naruto looked at the pink clip on her head as the cat meowed as if to introduce itself as well. Naruto smiled. He often visited the orphanage to donate goods and play with some of the younger children. It was sweet that the girl still kept his gift from a few years ago.

He pointed to the blonde who was dressed in a yellow and turquoise outfit and wore a hat. The boy was carrying a large rodent with rather large ears on his lap. "Next?"

"Takeru Takaishi. I've known Hikari for my entire life because we were family friends. I visit her regularly at the orphanage. I live with my brother right now. This is my pet guinea pig that I received from my parents before they passed away. They said that he's a ninja guinea pig, but I never really see him do anything but eat and poo. His name is Patamon."

The guinea pig squealed and flapped its impossibly large ears. Naruto briefly wondered if the rodent could fly with those strange ears. Considering that it was a ninja animal, it probably had some unusual ability.

Naruto suddenly had a strange vision showing Patamon temporarily expanding and blowing out a burst of air as it screamed Boom Bubble! Pah!

Naruto shook his head. That couldn't be right. His mind was playing strange tricks on him again.

Maybe it was some sort of trend for children to have strange pets these days. The fact that Tailmon and Patamon both had "mon" at the end of their names was probably a fad as well. Ugh…kids… Naruto groaned.

Well at least the last one didn't have a pet. Naruto smiled as he turned to the last one. Ah, it was Daisuke. This one somewhat reminded his old self. "Daisuke, why don't you introduce yourself?"

"Aww…Naruto-sensei, you already know me and they know me from the Academy," Naruto gave him an exasperated look, "Okay, okay! My name is Daisuke Motomiya! I'm going to become the Hokage one day!" Naruto snorted. "And then I'm going to marry Hikari!"

Naruto noticed that his other two students were rolling their eyes at the spiky-haired boy. This must have been a common occurrence at the Academy.

"Sensei, what are we going to do today?" Hikari ask in a polite tone. "Are we going to start missions right away?"

"Don't worry, Hikari! I'll protect you!" Naruto smacked his forehead as the idiotic boy leaned over to hug his crush only to be scratched in the face by hissing Tailmon. "Ow! That hurts!"

Naruto got their attention by leaking some of his aura to subtly make them a bit nervous. "You won't have a mission today. You still aren't official genin."

"What?" Takeru asked in shock. "Didn't we pass the exam?"

Naruto shook his head. "That was just the test to see if you are worthy of being of the rare few to get a teacher. If you fail this test, you'll either have to go back to the Academy to try again next year or go into basic training that most ninjas go through. You still can be ninjas, but you won't have someone watching over you and helping you along the way. I recommend that you try your best for this."

"Well, I'm going to do extremely well on this test!" Daisuke yelled with a fist pump.

"As well as you did on the regular graduation exam, I'm sure," Naruto said sarcastically. "Last place in nearly everything but taijutsu. Good luck impressing little Hikari with those scores."

Everyone had a laugh at Daisuke's expense. "So then what are we doing for this test?"

Naruto held up two bells. "For this test, you'll have to get a bell by noon, which means you have an hour left. The test begins…now!"

Naruto was impressed that the three of them immediately became serious and jumped away to hide. He had half expected Daisuke to stay and challenge him, but it appeared as if Daisuke was smarter than he himself was when he was a genin.

Or maybe he's just not as starved for attention as I once was, Naruto thought darkly.

Naruto just sat down and waited for them to come to him. After all, they would come to him to get the bell.

After fifteen or so minutes, Naruto jumped up quickly when he felt projectiles heading towards his direction. He pushed off the tree with his feet and ducked to avoid the windmill shuriken heading his way.

"Not bad," Naruto complimented as he saw another windmill shuriken underneath the first one. Deciding to go for overkill, instead of trying to jump in between the shuriken, he molded chakra in both of his hands as quickly as he could.

"Rasengan!"

Naruto blew both of the windmill shuriken to bits and swept his hand towards where the shuriken had come from.

Instantly a huge gust of wind erupted from his hands and chased out the screaming Daisuke as trees and bushes were uprooted.

"Hey! Don't you think that's a bit too much, Naruto-sensei? I'm only a kid!"

Naruto only laughed as he flashed through hand signs and created a rotating whip made of water that he was planning on showing Hanabi that evening. "Water Release: Hydro Rotation."

He kept chasing the boy with the whip, all the while cackling with glee. Maybe teaching wasn't so bad after all. I think I understand why Kakashi liked doing this so much.

Naruto froze when he remembered a particular memory. Kakashi had shoved his fingers in there. Naruto shuddered. Naruto knew he could be particularly vicious with his pranks, but he wasn't going to violate his cute little students in that manner. He was not as cruel as Kakashi.

He smirked as he returned to the matter at hand. He just missed Daisuke and slammed his water whip into a tree trunk, blowing it apart. Chasing students with an incredibly dangerous whip was nowhere near as screwed up as what Kakashi did. No one would blame him for being too excessive.

Naruto suddenly felt a tingling in the back of his mind. Genjutsu.

Instantly he snapped it, and parried the kick from Hikari. "Leave him alone!" she yelled.

Naruto raised an eyebrow. Maybe the girl did like Daisuke after all. She seemed rather upset that Daisuke was reduced to cowering behind a large bolder.

Naruto briefly saw an image of Sakura over Hikari before shaking his head. He shouldn't project his own genin team onto the team he was teaching. Daisuke was not him and Hikari was not Sakura. Already, Daisuke was showing much more skill than Naruto ever did and Hikari, unlike Sakura, was showing teamwork with and concern for both of her teammates.

Naruto grabbed Hikari's ankle as she tried another kick and cast a small genjutsu on her while holding her upside down in the air. Ninja Arts: Partial Darkness.

He watched lazily as the girl screamed and writhed.

"Hey, stop hurting her!"

Naruto just held out a lazy hand and grabbed the kunai thrown towards him with only two fingers, much to the shock of his hat-wearing student.

"Oh? Is it your turn now? Oho! I see how it is. You're in love with her!" Naruto taunted.

Takeru suddenly looked shocked and the hard look in his eyes faded. "Aww, not you, too, Sensei! Daisuke always keeps trying to fight me because he thinks Hikari and I like each other."

Naruto didn't respond and threw the girl into Takeru's stomach, knocking them both back. Daisuke landed next to them worriedly.

"Is Hikari okay?"

Naruto watched bemused as the two boys tried to shake Hikari awake. His kids were fresh and raw, but they instinctively knew what was important in a fight. They hadn't even tried to fight alone from the very beginning. Daisuke had implicitly agreed to be the distraction for Hikari and Takeru. The fact that there were only two bells didn't even register in their minds.

Despite the seemingly public displays of dysfunction, the three were close and knew one another well. Already, their teamwork was probably better than any other rookie genin team in history.

I wonder if that's because all three of them are orphans. Orphans want attention and camaraderie more than anything…

"So what are you going to do?" Naruto drawled.

"The girl you both are in love with is down and you have less than five minutes to get your bells."

They both flushed at the mention of love. They looked at each and nodded.

Daisuke stepped forward. "I never really got the hang of this, but…" He flashed through some hand signs Naruto was familiar with. "Fire Release: Fireball!"

Naruto was shocked that the boy knew an elemental technique already. Sasuke had been the only one of their generation to know an elemental technique. No matter what people said about him, Sasuke was still a genius, the kind that only shows up once every decade or so.

Naruto braced himself but then started rolling on the ground in laughter when the "fireball" ended up being the size of a baseball and slower than a snail.

Naruto grabbed his stomach and started kicking the air in laughter as the small fireball zigzagged through the air lazily towards him.

"What the hell was that, you idiot?!" Takeru demanded. "How am I supposed to set off my traps with that as a distraction?"

"Well he's distracted right now!" Daisuke argued.

Naruto just kept on laughing as the small fireball passed over him and hit the tree next to him with a small poof!

Naruto's danger senses suddenly warned him.

"Tch," he muttered before waving his hands and blew all the incoming projectiles away with a large gust of wind.

Boom!

Naruto looked towards his students. "You could have blown up the bells that way, you know."

He was amused when both of his students twitched at his statement. They had probably been expecting an indignant rebuke saying that explosive tags were dangerous. That had been dangerous—well not really—but Naruto wasn't going to give them the satisfaction of knowing that they had even triggered his sixth sense that warned him of danger.

Ding!

"Well, that's time." Naruto held a hand up and released the genjutsu he placed on Hikari.

"Hikari!" Takeru pulled the girl up and gave her a hug. "Are you okay?"

"Takeru?" she asked, clearly dazed. "What happened? There was so much darkness. I couldn't see anything."

"Hikari! We tried to protect you from that bastard of a teacher! He was the one who hurt you!"

Naruto rolled his eyes at the drama and stepped towards his students who were all on the ground. "You failed to get a bell. So you all fail."

"Meow!" Naruto turned to see a little white cat leap past him and land in Hikari's arms.

"Tailmon!" Hikari said as she rushed over and hugged the cat, "You got them! I knew it was the right decision to send you to the marketplace!"

"Hm?" Naruto looked and in its mouth, there were three bells, exactly identical to the ones he had.

Naruto's eyes widened. No way! I can't believe they solved the actual test!

"We pass, Sensei!" Hikari said victoriously. "All you said was that we needed to get a bell. You never said we had to get it from you."

Naruto dumbly nodded, still in shock. The surface test was a test of strength to see if the genin could get a bell. It was impossible and was supposed to alert the genin of a secondary test, a test of teamwork. It was a way to teach the genin that there is always something beneath what is shown to them. Underneath the underneath, however, was yet another test of thinking outside the box. It was true. Naruto never said they had to get a bell from him. But the test was designed to keep people focused only on what was directly in front of them.

He himself was an example of this. People only saw his brash side pulling pranks and declaring that he would become Hokage. His closer friends saw his determination and loyalty under that. No one, however, saw his resentment towards the village and fatigue from serving a village that never truly accepted him. Everyone refused to see his insight, his intelligence, and his pain.

His students had done in one hour what the rest of the village could not in twenty-two years. Naruto smiled. Despite his reluctance to teach, he was happy and proud of his students. They would eventually become amazing ninjas.

"Good job. You pass with flying colors. All three of you."

"Wait…" Daisuke began.

"All that work…" Takeru continued. "All the fighting we did was…"

"…for nothing?" Daisuke said disbelievingly. "Are you freaking kidding me?!"

"Well, I wanted to teach you multiple lessons here. First, you had to know that you couldn't get a bell from a jounin. That should have brought you together. If you can't overcome an obstacle, work together. The essence behind this test was not strength but teamwork. All of you pass on that mark. Hikari came to defend you, Daisuke, and well both you and Takeru worked together. All three of you worked together initially to set up that trap as well."

"Then even if Hikari didn't have Tailmon bring the bells, you would have passed us?" Takeru asked.

"Yes," he said simply. "I was going to see what you would do after I gave you, but not Hikari, the bells. But it's annoyingly clear that both of you would have fought to give up your bell for little Hikari there. She's lucky to have two boys in love with her." Naruto smirked and pointed at the now blushing girl.

"But then, what was the point of Hikari getting the bells?" Takeru asked.

"There's always a different way out. Remember that. As ninjas, we're taught to look beneath what is shown to us, but I want to teach you to look even deeper than that. When you're looking at situations or people, always make sure to keep searching deeper and deeper."

"Does that mean that we're supposed to assume that Daisuke isn't a lovesick idiot?" Takeru asked with a smirk.

"Hey! Take that back, Takeru!" Daisuke shouted as he grabbed Takeru's collar.

Naruto looked at them curiously. Takeru hadn't seemed like the type to start fights, but perhaps Naruto had read him wrong. Takeru seemed just as willing as Daisuke to stir up trouble. Naruto couldn't help but show a little smile. Yes, his students weren't a reincarnation of the old Team Seven. Naruto just had to get over the ghosts of his past.

"Nah," Hikari piped up. "That would make sense if he started to have a crush on me when we became ninjas, but he's liked me for years. He's a legitimate idiot."

"Aww…Hikari…" Daisuke whined. "That was mean."

"Sorry, Daisuke, but you couldn't save me even after promising to protect me," the girl crossed her arms and turned her head to the side. "I would have given you a big reward if you did, too." She made a kissing motion with her face.

She instead went over to Takeru and gave him a hug, which Takeru gladly returned.

They all laughed as Daisuke rolled on the ground in emotional agony and moaned about "lost chances."

Hyuuga Clan Compound, Konoha – March 1, AK 22

Hinata stood at the end of the small pond owned by her family and looked at the reflection in the moon. She had been stressed for the last year or so and had found her new habit relaxing.

It had started when Naruto eagerly accepted when Sakura asked him to be her boyfriend almost two years ago. That had hurt. Hinata had all but poured out her heart for Naruto before and during the last war and still it wasn't enough to win the heart of the boy she adored. After the war, Naruto had politely refused, saying that while he cared for her, he simply did not know her well enough to return her love. Still, Hinata had hoped. She had hoped with time on her side that Naruto would eventually get to know her and return her love. A meal here and a talk there. She did all she could to make herself visible to him.

It still hadn't been enough. Sakura regularly abused him and yet Naruto instantly agreed to commit himself to her. But Hinata, more so than anyone else, knew that Naruto truly loved the other girl.

Naruto getting the girl he always dreamed about and chased after. Naruto finally breaking through to Sakura after his years of persistence and refusal to give up. The story…their relationship had felt so…right.

Sakura was bright, confident, and strong; Sakura was the very antithesis of who Hinata was. Thus, Hinata didn't begrudge Sakura for her relationship with Naruto.

However, when she heard Sakura had died, Hinata had started to hope again. She felt guilty for being happy that one of her friends had passed away, but that guilt felt small in comparison for her desire to be with the one person she adored for her entire life.

But there was still no progress on that end. Naruto was constantly on missions and somehow slipped away whenever she tried grabbing a hold of him. If she didn't know any better, she would say that he was purposely avoiding her.

Then before Hinata knew it, it became March. She had been so engrossed with trying to get Naruto's attention that she had forgotten that Hanabi was turning eighteen that month.

Because the elders had deemed her weak and unfit for the position of clan head, Hinata was not the Crown Princess of the Hyuuga clan when she reached adulthood more than four years ago. Now that Hanabi was turning eighteen, there would be a challenge match. The stronger of the two girls would be named the official heiress and the other would have the Caged Bird Seal placed on her.

It was lose-lose for Hinata. If she won, then Hanabi would be sealed. She didn't want her little sister to be sealed. But if Hinata lost, then she herself would be sealed.

Hinata wasn't too close to Hanabi, but they were still sisters. How could the elders be so cruel so as to pit two sisters in what might as well be a battle to the death?

She was so lost in her thoughts that she didn't even sense the person who came behind her.

"Big Sister?"

Hinata turned around. "Hanabi? What are you doing out here?"

Her sister hesitated and looked uncomfortable.

Hinata smiled. Ah. So that's what it was. Hanabi was sweet on a boy and had been looking to sneak out.

"I just needed some fresh air," Hanabi finally decided. Hinata's gentle smile remained. It appeared that Hanabi wasn't going to admit it.

Hinata nodded before turning to look at the water and started throwing the petals off the flower she was holding into the water. There was a legend that if the petals floated towards the girl who tossed them into the water, the one she loved would come seeking for her. The petals didn't particular float one way or another on most days, but that didn't stop Hinata from trying and hoping the petals would float towards her.

"I usually come here whenever I feel that way," Hinata responded. It was true. Whenever she did get stressed about Naruto, she did end up in front of the pond.

"I see," Hanabi murmured. Hinata knew that Hanabi understood the hidden meaning. "Thinking about him again?"

Hinata gave no response for a minute but merely continued to lightly toss the petals into the pond.

"Not just about him, but yes, I was thinking about Naruto."

Hanabi came to stand next to her. "Can you tell me about him?"

Hinata instantly grew suspicious. Hanabi never talked about boys when she was growing up. Even when boys had showed interest in Hanabi, the girl had not mentioned it at all. This was the first time she showed any sort of interest in a male.

Hinata didn't have proof that Hanabi was interested in Naruto, however. It could still just be an innocent question. She mentally sighed. She really needed to stop letting her feelings for Naruto getting in the way of everything else in her life. Kurenai-sensei kept warning Hinata not to be too obsessed, but it was just so difficult not to be fixated on the only person and thing that gave her life meaning.

"Naruto is the most compassionate and determined person in the world. He never backs down and continues to get back up whenever he's thrown down, always fighting for what he believes in and for those who are in need. A true hero."

"I see."

Silence. Then…

"Why do you ask?" Hinata asked. Even Hinata had to wince at the accusatory tone in her own voice. Calm down, girl. It's Hanabi. She's refined and cultured. There is no way she would go after Naruto anyway.

"Don't worry, big sister. I'm not in love with him or anything." There was a slight pause. "Even if I were in love with him, do you think he loves me? I can count the number of times I talked to him on one hand. I'm just curious because you love him so much. Everyone says he's unintelligent, perverted, and rude."

Hinata nodded, finding herself strangely happy that Hanabi insulted Naruto.

Hinata figured that it was because it meant Hanabi wasn't interested in Naruto but Hinata felt a bit shamed at being happy at someone had put Naruto down nonetheless.

"Hanabi, someday you'll discover that intelligence or the appearance of respect aren't the most valuable things in this life. Naruto may be unintelligent, but he knows his purpose. Naruto may not be respectful to those with positions of power, but I have never once seen him abuse or mistreat anyone. Our own clan has never given a single ryo to an orphan and often scoffs at commoners. Naruto regularly donates at least half his wages to the needy and speaks with them in a respectful manner. The poor, I daresay, would say that Naruto is more respectful that the Hyuuga clan. Our village is blessed to have someone so strong and kind like him."

"He sounds like a wonderful person, big sister. I…" Hanabi paused before going on, "I think I can understand why you like him so much."

Hinata narrowed her eyes at that comment, but chose merely to nod her head. It wasn't healthy to be so paranoid that she would suspect her own sister of trying to steal the man she loves.

"Whenever Naruto speaks to me, I get a warm glow in my heart that makes my life so much brighter. Love is an amazing feeling, Hanabi, and I hope you'll get to experience it someday."

There was just silence as Hinata watched the petals float away from her.

Training Ground Seven, Konoha – March 1, AK 22

"You're late," Hanabi heard as she arrived.

"My apologies, Lord Uzumaki," Hanabi said with her head low. "I was…" she tried to find the right words, "held up."

"I understand." The Sage didn't seem to mind too much as he nodded in acceptance. "Life gets in the way sometimes. What's important is how you play the cards that life deals to you. So shall we begin?"

Hanabi nodded eagerly. The previous night's training session had helped her tremendously. By some stroke of luck, Hanabi had the exact chakra alignment as the Sage. He too used wind primarily and had water as a secondary nature, so he was able to help her far more than anyone else had in the past. And that was all in just one night.

"Unfortunately, as mentioned before, I'm not able to practice at home. But I did review the concepts in my head and practice without the use of elemental chakra," Hanabi replied. "And I did go through the basic motions to incorporate this new technique in my fighting style."

"Great, let's see it now!"

The style that they designed for her the previous night resolved the range issue. According to Uzumaki, the problem with ranged attacks was the high chakra cost. Because the opponent has the ability to see the attack coming, most ranged attacks would not hit and thus made them a waste of energy. The Hyuuga's Eight Trigram Vacuum Palm was required too much chakra and had nowhere near the speed that was required to make it viable option for a battled involving purely ranged attacks.

Hanabi had felt lost at that point. It seemed that what Uzumaki was trying to do was make her both a close-range and long-range specialist at the same time. Was that even possible? Would she be able to switch back and forth between two styles?

It was then that the Sage smirked and told her to forget about trying to incorporate ranged attacks.

She still was stunned by the sheer brilliance of his idea. The Gentle Fist was simply not a style suited for distance fighting so the Sage said that there was no point in trying to use it as such. Instead, supplementary ninjutsu would be used to bring the battle to a point where her Gentle Fist would work.

Instead of chasing her enemies with attacks, she would bring her enemies near to her. This involved using water nature manipulation to create a tiny but durable whip that would cut through the air to grab her enemies and bring them into the range of her attacks. The water whip itself could be used as a ranged weapon as well in an emergency, even though it wasn't quite the deadly kind of weapon she would need in such a fight.

Unless she specifically scheduled a training session in the training grounds, which she couldn't do too often given the thousands of ninjas wanting to use them during the day, she had to train on the clan grounds. And that would reveal that she was trying to use other styles than the Gentle Fist.

So during the day she had practiced the motions using invisible chakra strings. Anyone using a Byakugan would have seen her whipping around a chakra thread, but at least there would be no visible damage to the grounds and most Hyuuga did not use the Byakugan in the clan compound unless training. And those who saw would just assuming that she was practicing chakra control. Now all she needed to do was to go through those same motions using water.

"Water Release: Water Whip," she intoned softly after going through the motions. She felt her chakra be converted to water and then take the shape of a long rope. She faced down Uzumaki and prepared to use the whip to grab him as he instructed her to.

She swung her whip and commanded it to rush towards the Sage only to have it completely broken apart by another water whip, if it could be called that. It looked more like a tiny rapidly rotating vortex of water in the general shape of a long rope.

"Water Release: Hydro Rotation," the Sage remarked as she lost complete control over her own whip. "That was a good first attempt, but you focused too much on creating the form of the whip itself. How it appears doesn't matter. If your whip gets destroyed, then you're just wasting chakra as you try to make it again. You need to create something that won't even get destroyed by a rock. Watch."

Hanabi watched with her Byakugan as the Sage swung the water rope at a nearby rock and smash it to pieces. She noted that there were five different sets of streams of water that were spiraling throughout the rope at independent but all incredibly rapid rates.

"I see," Hanabi murmured. "The velocity of the water was what gave its tangibility, not the water itself. I was too narrow-minded."

Uzumaki nodded. "As are many people." he changed the whip to be a stable rope simple filled with water and repeated the motion at a tree. The whip splashed in a small burst of water and disappeared upon impact. "Chakra itself isn't your weapon, Hanabi. It's how you use chakra that counts. Now try it again. You don't have to use rotation to the extent that I did, but it's what will keep the rope from being destroyed the moment it touches something."

Hanabi pondered for a minute or so, trying to figure out the ideal set of hand signs. "I need it to grab and to hit, but I can't expend too much chakra on it to keep it constantly rotating at a high frequency," she added a few seals, "so maybe only one set of rotation instead of five…"

She created another whip that looked somewhat a cross between her first water whip and Uzumaki's whip and threw it towards the Sage who merely swatted at it. Instead of bursting the instant it hit, the whip wrapped his hand, before expanding and trapping his entire hand in an orb of water.

"Hm…" the Sage looked at his water-covered hand. "Instead of using a tremendous amount of chakra to constantly keep the water rotating in multiple streams, you make it rotating in only one direction and compensate for the relative weakness by responding to changes in the water in real time. You're actually controlling every drop of water in your whip. So it doesn't matter if it bursts momentarily since it's all attached with your chakra; you can just reshape it immediately to trap the entire area. I'm impressed. You took advantage of the fact that you have amazing chakra control. What are you going to call it?"

"Water Release: Burst Whip."

He nodded. Okay, now practice it with your Gentle Fist and I'll give you tips on how you could improve. "I used to be a pure close-range fighter was as well and know some of the difficulties of trying to expand into mid-range and long-range."

For the next half hour or so, she practice grabbing different objects and bringing them closer to her as she rushed towards them for a Gentle Fist strike. She was rather satisfied with the results. She maintained the elegance of the Gentle Fist style by appearing like a ribbon dancer while increasing her reach to at least twenty meters away from her, a vast improvement of her original range of four or five.

"Alright," Uzumaki said. "Test it out on me. I'll let you catch me if I feel your attempts were sufficient enough."

She nodded "Alright."

Water Release: Burst Whip! She yelled in her mind as she converted her chakra into water and then saturated the newly formed water with her chakra.

She noted glumly that Uzumaki was far too quick to be caught by her whip. She instantly created another one and started trying to fence him in. All I need is just one touch. If I can make contact with him…

She felt the tug on her chakra signaling that she managed to hit him and then forced the water to expand and ensnare. Instantly, before he could apply his chakra to attach himself to a surface, she quickly tugged to launch him in the air toward her direction. She quickly released her water technique and raced towards him at top speed to strike him with her Gentle Fist.

She jumped with her palm back and glowing with chakra. Three more seconds until she would hit him.

Two.

One.

"Water Release: Wild Water Wave!"

She sputtered as a burst of water hit her and drenched her before the finding herself sprawled on the ground in the Sage's arms.

"Hey!" she yelled indignantly, shoving her Hyuuga stoicism to the side. "What was that for?!"

Uzumaki laughed at her as he looked up at her. He had somehow teleported himself to cushion her fall. "I never said I would not attack. You can't just expect your enemy to let you hit them. Oh want to hear a joke?" he chortled, "I put out the fire on the firecracker. Haha."

She was not pleased. The joke was incredibly lame and she was not happy being wet. She sat up and raised her chakra-coated palm to strike him when she noted the rather compromising position that they were in. Also, with her clothes soaking wet, she was probably giving the Sage a good idea of what she was hiding under her robes.

The Sage apparently had just noticed the same thing and had turned away while she blushed.

He quickly but gently set her off of him and used a wind technique to dry the both of them off. Unfortunately, that had actually made the problem worse. Apparently, Uzumaki's jutsu for drying them off had a very short reach and they both had to endure being close together for about five minutes as they dried off.

Anyone who might have seen them at that moment would have assumed that they were lovers embracing each other.

There was an awkward silence.

A very long awkward silence.

"I…" he said, not meeting her gaze, "I think it's best if we don't meet for some time."

Still blushing, she nodded.

"Yes, Lord Uzumaki. I feel that would be for the best."

AN: In case you didn't catch it, Naruto's students are all from Digimon Adventures 02. Patamon & his Boom Bubble should have been the dead giveaway. It's simply too difficult to create OCs and develop their characters when I already have to make tremendous effort building up canon characters who have barely been given screen-time (e.g. Hanabi, Ranmaru, and many more later on). So I went with characters that most people should know for Naruto's students so that I wouldn't have to develop them as much. Also, I decided to use the Japanese names for his students (Hikari instead of Kari, Takeru instead of T.K., Daisuke instead of Davis, and Tailmon instead of Gatomon) to keep it in line with the whole Japanese theme of this story. Naruto's students are a minor part of the story so I don't really have too many plans for them. I personally think it would be hilarious if Patamon and Tailmon turned into Angemon and Angewoman in this story, but that might be too distracting. Let me know what you think.

I wrote Hinata's reaction to Sakura based on Naruto Chapter 450, page 5 when Sakura hugs Naruto and Hinata is just watching the scene with a smile. I personally found that it is incredibly difficult to write from Hinata's POV since she's so sweet in canon. Unfortunately, I'm nowhere near that good of a person and as such, I refuse to believe that a person that sweet can exist.