Naruto: Team
The next morning Naruto woke up late again and narrowly avoided drinking the spoilt milk festering quietly in his fridge. The power had obviously 'failed' again. Stupid civilians mistaking me for a mountain-sized chakra fox. If I was the Kyuubi I'd have killed them all years ago. He made do with a pair of oranges, not wanting to be late for the team assignments.
Naruto had already decided to keep his academy persona at least mostly up until he'd determined whether his journin-sensei hated him and discussed it properly with Ame-nee. Depending on who his team-mates and sensei were, it might be safer to keep it up.
He arrived in class before Iruka-sensei, so he wasn't late. However his enthusiasm was swiftly killed by the sight of both Yamanaka Ino and Haruno Sakura arguing about who would get to sit next to 'Sasuke-kun!'. Sasuke was, of course, ignoring them both.
Today that irritated him. If Sasuke told them to stop being so immature and act like real kunoichi they would do it. His stubborn refusal to get involved just made the lives of his other, saner classmates more difficult. Naruto quietly positioned himself so he could look Saasuke dead in the eye and glared at the grumpy Uchiha.
Sasuke's eyebrow twitched, then lowered, matching him glare for glare. Naruto bared a fang-like canine: Oh, you are so on, teme.
Unfortunately another boy jostled Naruto from behind at this point, making the blond fall forward-
-right onto the last Uchiha. The fangirls were silenced as Sasuke's lips met Naruto's. The whisker-marked blond had a split second to categorise his opinion of the kiss -too Young to be my type, too broody by half and far too unwilling to accept much-needed help- before Sakura yanked him away from the black haired boy. Surrounded by irate fangirls, Naruto swallowed nervously and surreptitiously reinforced his entire body with chakra. I am sooo dead. Iruka-sensei, please hurry. I'm counting on you here.
Iruka-sensei arrived and interrupted the beating with his big head no jutsu before the crazed fangirls could actually break any of his bones. Naruto quickly shimmied into the contested seat next to Sasuke, muttering:
"Don't worry, teme: you wouldn't be my type even if I were a girl," which got a snort of almost-amusement from the other boy. Sasuke-speak was a language unto itself, but Naruto was fairly conversant. That last grunt had been a 'thank the kami' and 'it will never be referred to again'. Most Sasuke-speak was body language, with actual vocalisation acting as punctuation or emphasis.
Iruka-sensei finished his incredibly boring speech on their new shinobi duties and announced the teams; numbers one to six were all fangirls and boys from mainly civilian families. Naruto doubted even one of those teams would pass.
"Team seven is Haruno Sakura, Uchiha Sasuke and Uzumaki Naruto! Your journin-sensei is Hatake Kakashi."
Naruto slumped forward and groaned quietly while Sakura ranted, loudly celebrating her 'triumph'.
"Hn, dobe?" Naruto translated this to, 'why aren't you pleased to be on the same team as Sakura?'
"I only pursue her because it's funny, teme," Naruto muttered, face on the desk, "she hates my acting like a fanboy, yet she behaves exactly the same way around you."
"Hn," with a discreet twitch of the lips; 'too true: yes, it is funny after all'.
"And bloody Hatake as well," Naruto rambled on sotto voce; "He's never punctual."
"Hn?"
"Hatake Kakashi is always several hours late to anything short of an A-ranked mission or a national emergency. What? Don't look at me like that teme. So I eavesdrop; It's practically a virtue among ninja."
Sasuke raised an eyebrow and frowned at him assessingly. "Hn."
"Of course I'm not as stupid as I look, teme; no ninja is that dumb. This way people underestimate me. You won't give the game away, will you?"
"Hn." Saasuke turned to look out of the window as Iruka called the final teams. Aburame Shino, Hyuuga Hinata and Inuzuka Kiba under Yuuhi Kurenai, a genjutsu expert and a friend of Anko-san's, made up team eight. Lee's team nine from last year were still genin, so the last team was team ten: Akiminchi Chouji, Nara Shikamaru and Yamanaka Ino with Sarutobi Asuma as their journin-sensei; a new Ino-Shika-Cho team to follow in their fathers' footsteps.
In a way, Naruto was glad no-one was aware of his probable parentage. That would have been a lot of pressure and far too many unreasonable expectations. He had no idea how Sasuke coped. Wait... he doesn't. That explains it.
"Hey, Sasuke, want me to help you escape for lunch?"
"Hn?" Slightly scornful; 'how could you possibly assist me, dobe?'
"I learned a new jutsu earning this," Naruto tapped his hitai-ite, "and now I can make solid clones. I'll henge one to look like you and we can make our escape while the fangirls are distracted by the decoy."
Sasuke paused, obviously torn between remaining detached and aloof and escaping the screaming horde. He eventually dipped his chin in acceptance.
"Excellent," Naruto whispered sibilantly, fingers discreetly forming the cross seal for kage bunshin. Both clones materialised on the ground two stories below the open window, one instantly henge-ing into the last Uchiha.
"See him?" Naruto murmured. "Think you can kawarimi with him, teme?"
"Easily, dobe," Sasuke muttered scornfully, hands already under the desk and performing the needed handseals. Naruto swiftly followed suit and both were outside the academy building and walking towards the centre of the village by the time the lunch bell rang.
"Hey, Sasuke! Want to go for some ramen? I'll pay," Naruto suggested in normal tones.
Sasuke shrugged.
"Fine, be that way," Naruto groused, leading the way towards Ichiraku's ramen stand. "You do know that if you talked more the girls wouldn't find you so cool and mysterious, don't you?"
"Hn," Sasuke grunted, following a step behind and a little to the right of the blonde.
"Well they don't know you're quiet because you have nothing positive to say to them. They just think your tragic past makes you cool." Naruto growled in his throat; "There's nothing romantic about pain. Pain just hurts, making it entirely lacking in redeeming features. It's how you react to pain that counts."
Sasuke looked at him oddly following this outburst, but didn't stop following him.
"And here we are: Ichiraku's, finest ramen in Konoha. Hey, Ayame-chan! I brought a new customer!"
"Naruto-kun! Congratulations on graduating," the ramen girl said warmly. "Who's your friend?"
"This is Uchiha Sasuke, my new team-mate," Naruto said with a broad, foxy smile. "Teme, this is Ayame-chan, her dad owns the stand."
"Sasuke managed a "Konnichiwa, Ayame-san," then sat down on one of the stools and reached for a menu.
"All of the flavours are really good," Naruto said conversationally, still not shouting in his usual idiot fashion. He knew Sasuke would never divulge this new behaviour to anyone else; it wasn't the brooding boy's way. "But I like miso and pork best. Though beef is nice, too..." he trailed off thoughtfully. "Anyway! Pork for me, Ayame-chan!"
"Shrimp," Sasuke said to Ayame, his tone as friendly as Naruto had ever heard it, meaning it wasn't outright sulky.
"Coming up, boys!"
As soon as Ayame's attention was elsewhere Sasuke turned to face Naruto: "What's up with you today, Uzumaki?"
Noting that Sasuke was serious enough to forgo the habitual 'dobe', Naruto responded in kind. "People really don't like me for some reason, Sasuke. It's not the pranks; they hated me before that. I thought it might be my parents but I never knew them so I can't verify that either. So I hide my real self away so people don't try to hurt me. No-one feels threatened by the idiot dead-last, do they?"
Sasuke paused thoughtfully. "You did badly on purpose?"
"Only in class. I'm damn good with kunai and shuriken, as you know, but I was given poorly balanced ones in the exam. And you know exactly how good I am in taijustu."
Sasuke smirked. "You're not bad," he conceded as Ayame served them their ramen.
"Itadakimasu!" Naruto chirped happily, snapping his chopsticks apart, then paused before digging in. "Friends?"
"Hn." Sasuke cracked his own chopsticks apart and started his meal.
"Good enough for me," Naruto shrugged before attacking his own bowl of ramen. He'd barely finished when the memories of one of the dispelled shadow clones reached him and he shivered.
"Dobe?"
"Your clone was just dispelled; your fangirls are seriously creepy, you know. Sakura's going to whine about your escaping into thin air, though."
Sasuke indicated, without making a sound, that Sakura could go hang for all he cared.
"Yes, but unfortunately genin teams always have three members. We lose her now and we won't get to be genin."
"..."
"Yes, it is a shame, but that's life for you. Everyone starts off in a three man genin cell under a journin-sensei. We can't ditch her until we make chunnin."
"Hn," Sasuke said decisively.
"As fast as possible; I'm with you. Shall we wander back?"
The next three hour were sheer torture. All the other journin collected their teams in the first half-hour, leaving Naruto and Sasuke to suffer through Sakura's schizoid fawning, paranoia and growing rage at their sensei's tardiness. Sasuke, forewarned of the journin's habitual lateness, sat and brooded in silence. Naruto blocked his ears with chakra and, after balancing the chalkboard eraser over the door, went over the very interesting new books Ame-nee had given him in his head. One of them was on sign language, another on fan language and a third on standard -in other words non-Uzumaki- sealing techniques. Unfortunately Sakura noticed he was ignoring her and bopped him over the head.
"Baka!"
Naruto blinked. "Did you say something, Sakura?" he asked as the door opened. The three genin turned to look.
There was a thud as the dust-covered eraser bounced off the gravity-defying silver hair of their new sensei. Sasuke smirked, Naruto shoved his fist in his mouth to smother his snickers and Sakura blushed scarlet in embarrassment.
"My first impression of you three is... I hate you. But blondie at least has the right attitude."
Naruto ignored the words; their sensei didn't mean them in the slightest. He was however about the most opaque ninja Naruto had ever seen in either form, his entire being shrouded in a lazy, apathetic persona who reminded the blond rather forcefully of Shikamaru. The cloth mask covering the lower half of his face and the hitai-ite pulled down over his left eye didn't help much, either.
"We'll talk on the roof." The journin shunshined away in a swirl of leaves. Sakura hurried out the door towards the stairs, followed by a slouching Sasuke and a thoughtful Naruto.
He's good, the blond thought. Very good. If I keep the mask up he'll either ignore it or call me on it; there's no way he'll miss it. Most likely to ignore it, I think: he seems rather live-and-let-live, not to mention lazy enough to not bother to dig up my real self if it means less work for him.
Problem is, if I keep the mask up I won't get to learn as much. Decisions, decisions.
Once on the roof the three genin sat down in front of their slouching sensei.
"So... introduce yourselves," the journin said dully.
"Ano, sensei? What do we say?" Sakura asked. Naruto, through unbelievable force of will, prevented his incredulity and disgust from showing on his face.
Is this really the brightest girl in our year?
Hatake Kakashi shrugged negligently. "Names, likes, dislikes, dreams, hobbies."
"Can you go first, sensei? None of us know anything about you," Sakura ventured.
"Sure. My name is Hatake Kakashi. I don't feel like telling you my likes and dislikes. Dreams... never really thought about it, but I have lots of hobbies."
Naruto knew the journin was being irritating on purpose, probably because he was on the opposite end of the 'I love to teach' scale from Iruka-sensei. Kakashi clearly saw them as a passel of annoying little brats wasting his time with their unprofessional attitudes. So I'll let the mask down enough that he can see that I'm not the idiot everyone thinks I am.
"You next," Kakashi said, pointing at Sakura.
"Hai, sensei! My name is Haruno Sakura, I like-" she looked sideways at Sasuke and blushed slightly, "-my hobbies are-" another glance at Sasuke "-my dream is-" another glance at Sasuke, who was scowling blackly by this point, accompanied by a slightly perverted giggle, "-and I hate Naruto!"
The blond widened his eyes, pouted and clutched at his chest with both hands. "But Sakura-chaaaan! You wound me with your words!"
Sasuke snorted derisively while Sakura pointedly ignored him, having missed the sarcasm completely or she would have hit him.
"You next blondie," the journin said, the slight twitch of his mask indicating that he had not missed the sarcasm at all.
"My name is Uzumaki Naruto," Naruto said at a normal decibel level, "I like ramen and geisha, I don't like prejudice, willful blindness and the three minutes it takes instant ramen to cook. Three minutes isn't instant! My dream is to fulfil my potential as a ninja and become the greatest hokage ever. My hobbies... pranks and learning about my clan."
That got a reaction from both team-mates and his sensei, although admittedly Kakashi only raised an eyebrow in mild surprise.
"You have a clan, dobe?"
"Had a clan, teme. The Uzumakis were wiped out about twenty years ago when the village they ruled was razed to the ground," Naruto said shortly. "My mother was probably the only refugee to reach Konoha since I've never met or even heard of another Uzumaki here. I doubt I have any surviving family at all."
"Hn," Sasuke grunted sympathetically.
"Thanks, teme," Naruto said quietly.
"No way that baka is from a noble clan," Sakura scoffed loudly, having missed the interaction between her male team-mates.
"Actually he probably is," Kakashi rebuked mildly. "Of course they were never a Konoha clan, but the village had a long-standing alliance with Uzushiogakure until it was destroyed and the Shodaime's wife was an Uzumaki before she married into the Senju clan. Now it's your turn to introduce yourself, broody."
Sasuke's eyes narrowed. "My name is Uchiha Sasuke. My likes are unimportant and I dislike almost everything, especially fangirls. I don't have any hobbies and my dream, no, my ambition is to kill a certain man and rebuild my clan."
Naruto blinked. "Did that 'certain man' kill the rest of the Uchiha, by any chance?"
Sasuke scowled blackly. "Hai."
"Can I help, please?" Naruto asked hopefully. "What?" he said as the other three ninja stared at him in surprise. "Some of the Uchiha chunnin in the military police were nice to me. They didn't deserve to be slaughtered by some lunatic."
"As if you could keep up, dobe," Sasuke eventually answered, dismissing him completely. Naruto didn't mind, though. The Uchiha hadn't said no.
"Ri-ight," Kakashi said. "Now we all know each-other, we can move on to the real test..."
Naruto scowled thoughtfully into space from his seat on the swing near the academy. He'd been thinking over Kakashi's earlier words on the so-called survival exercise, and had come to the conclusion that his new sensei was as slippery as an eel. So, two-thirds fail, do they? Nine teams created, meaning only three of those will actually become genin. Judging by where the clan kids are, that's our team, Hinata-chan's and Shikamaru's, so long as Sakura doesn't mess it up.
He swung himself forwards a little, wondering where Ame-nee was. She said she always knew where he was due to her bloodline, So Naruto couldn't fathom why she was running late.
"Naru-kun?"
Naruto hopped off the swing and turned to face the speaker. "Nee-chan!" He flung himself forward and hugged her around the waist, mindful of her growing belly.
"How did it go, Naru-kun?"
Naruto made a face. "I've got Haruno and Sasuke on my team. Sasuke's okay, despite being monosyllabic and in desperate need of therapy. Sakura's a rabid, squealing Uchiha fangirl though."
"It doesn't seem like they thought it through, putting her on a team with the object of her obsession," Ame-nee said mildly as she ruffled his hair, "it will divide the team's focus. And your sensei?"
"Chronically tardy Hatake," Naruto said sourly. "He looks like a pretty good ninja, but I really don't think he likes teaching genin."
"Kakashi?" Ame-nee's face lit up. "Kashi-kun is your sensei?"
"Ye- wait, 'Kashi-kun'?" Naruto craned his neck to stare up at his adopted big sister and almost-mother. "Ame-nee-chan, is Kakashi-sensei the Leaf-nin who got you pregnant?"
"Ano, Aa?"
Naruto's usually cheerful face darkened dramatically. "Do I get to kill him?"
"Iie, Naru-kun, you do not. He's asked me to marry him, I love him and I know he loves me. No killing my soul-mate."
"Oh. I still want to threaten him, please?" Naruto begged.
"If you must," Ame sighed. Naruto thought he heard her mutter something like, 'surrounded by overpowered, overprotective men' but he wasn't sure why she'd say something like that. Which reminded him...
"Ame-nee? What do genin have to do in order to pass their journin-sensei's test?" As the only genin on team seven with something approaching a shinobi parent, it was Naruto's duty to investigate. Especially since said almost-parent was his sensei's girlfriend.
"The test is generally geared towards finding out if the genin team in question shows whatever ninja virtues or skills the specific journin-sensei values most. That could be perseverance, stealth, teamwork or the ability to gather accurate and pertinent information, to name a few."
"Can you tell me anything about Kakashi-sensei's test?"
"Well, it's the same test his sensei gave his team, who got it from his sensei, who got it from his sensei the Sandaime before he was hokage, who got it from the Nidaime who was his journin-sensei. I think the Nidaime invented it, but I'm not entirely sure of that."
Naruto's eyes and mouth were almost perfect 'o's. "It's a famous test? A test for future hokages?"
"Infamous is the word," Ame-nee chuckled. "None of Kakashi's teams have ever passed his test before."
Naruto considered this quietly as he followed Ame-nee across town towards her house. If none of his teams have ever passed before, that suggests that the test is not a straightforward one. And Kakashi has already shown he gets a kick out of misleading people. That 'don't eat or you'll throw up' thing, for one. No way will he arrive on time, and two to three hours is plenty of time to digest breakfast in.
Plus, this a test for hokages and future hokages! Now way am I gonna lose!
Ever since Hibana-nee had introduced the blond to the concept of critical thinking, Naruto had taken to it like a duck to water. With Hatake Kakashi, Naruto wasn't going to run out of things to be critical of any time soon.
On that note...
"Ame-nee, you said Kakashi-sensei's your fiancé?"
"Hai, he is."
"Are you living with him?" Naruto firmly ignored what his sensei and surrogate parent were likely doing to each-other and had definitely already done to each-other, considering Ame-nee's pregnancy.
"Hai."
"So, I'm going to have a meal to celebrate my graduation at the home of my journin-sensei, who incidentally will probably fail me tomorrow if my team can't work out how to past his hokage-candidate level test?" Naruto persisted.
"Technically yes, but Kakashi isn't in. He's gone out to the bar with all the other prospective journin-senseis to reflect on the quality of this year's crop of genin and the prospect of failing or teaching them."
"Does he know about you and me?" Naruto asked suspiciously.
"No. I haven't mentioned you yet, mainly because it hasn't come up and I have no idea how to start that particular conversation," Ame-nee said. "We can tell him together after you pass your test if you like."
"You think I'll pass?"
"Of course you will! You're Uzumaki Naruto, my otouto, future hokage and most accomplished ninja of your age group! And even if your team does, through some unlikely disaster, fail to pass, I'll petition Sandaime to make you my apprentice. He wants me to share my skills with the village since I'm so dead-set against actually becoming a Konoha ninja."
Naruto gifted her with a rare, genuine, blindingly happy smile. "I love you, nee-chan."
"I love you too, otouto."
Notes
Aa = indeed; yes
Iie = no
Itadakimasu = traditional thanks spoken over food
Ano = er/um; expression of uncertainty
Nidaime = (great) second; second hokage
Sandaime = (great) third; third hokage
Hokage = fire shadow; title of the ninja with absolute authority over the village of Konohagakure and its ninja
A/N: Two storylines collide. Naruto has met Kakashi and is officially Not Impressed with his attitude.