Tetsuo watched the slightly shell shocked Sakura out of the corner of his eye as the group paused for yet another break because the girl couldn't handle a measly twenty-five mile hike. When it came to giving the seemingly useless fangirl a wake-up call, he couldn't have planned things better than how they'd turned out, despite the fact that he hadn't planned for things to turn out this way. With no clothes, weapons, or supplies packed away, the girl would have to put all of her survival training from the Academy to the test in order to live in anything approaching comfort over the next two months. He wouldn't let the girl starve, but he wouldn't be going easy on her either, and he would be instructing Naruto not to go easy on her as well. Considering the Uchiha's attitude, he had a feeling that the boy wouldn't be willingly sharing any of his supplies if at all, and Kakashi seemed to find the whole situation amusing.
That girl would be shaping up long before she got any of her teammates killed the way his friend's teammate who had been just like her had gotten him killed soon after they'd graduated from the Academy. It may be a time of peace now, but that didn't mean that things couldn't go wrong. By the time this trip was over, that girl wouldn't have a neat manicure, and would have learned to settle for nails that had merely been trimmed so they wouldn't get in the way, she would all but forget that lip-gloss existed, and would either learn to take care of her long hair in a timely manner or be forced to get rid of it.
In the Ninja world, long hair was something of a liability. Amongst the more experienced ninja, hair generally wasn't grown out for beauty. It was grown to be a challenge that would goad your enemy into coming within striking range. That was one of the reasons why it was so damn common amongst the Hyuuga, and why both the Shodai Hokage and Uchiha Madara both had hair that went down to their waists. Any moron who tried to grab a ninja's hair, especially in battle, deserved what they got. Especially if they made the mistake of being stupid enough to try getting their hands on a Hyuuga's hair.
That violent "My way or no way at all!" attitude that the girl had clearly inherited from her mother would be going too if he had his say. In order to do so, he would be channeling the girl's violent tendencies towards more productive areas, much as he had channeled Naruto's hyperactivity and propensity for pranks into something that had been useful for his career. Naruto could be an attention-seeking loudmouth at times but, he'd calmed down a great deal from where he'd been when he'd first graduated the Academy. The reason for this had been two years of hard work on his part as well as a particularly violent wake-up call that he wouldn't have wished on an enemy. If you saw Naruto when he was off duty and in a good mood however, you'd be more inclined to draw parallels between him and the boy who had been placed on his team two years ago.
Speaking of Naruto, he could see the boy moving towards his canteen with the intention of offering water to Sakura. While he was tempted to let the girl go thirsty for a while longer, it could be dangerous considering the fact that the girl obviously wasn't in the best of health due to whatever "diet" she had put herself on. Based on how thin she was, her diet had obviously not been supervised by her Instructors, and had likely been encouraged by either her peers, or by her civilian mother who clearly knew nothing of Shinobi life.
He gave the boy a slight nod indicating that it would be alright to share with the girl whom he would have sent hunting for her own water had there been a readily available source nearby. It would be humbling for the girl to be forced to depend on the teammate she had previously treated with a great deal of cruelty and contempt, but right now, that was what she needed. The sooner the girl learned some humility amongst other things, numerous other things, the sooner she would be able to work properly with a team.
After flinching away from Naruto until she spotted the canteen he was holding out to her, the girl greedily gulped down the water that Naruto offered. He would be teaching the girl about conserving water later on, especially because, if he had his way, they would be going to Suna. And, even if he didn't have his way, they would be traveling to Wind Country near the end of their trip anyway.
Suna, which the team would hopefully be going to in January, was located in the middle of a desert that spanned across the vast majority of Wind Country and into parts of Earth, and was hot in the Winter and even hotter in the Summer. Suna, where he'd participated in the Chunin Exams for the second time, and had watched someone who could have conceivably been related to Naruto beat the crap out of his sensei despite the fact that he had to have been at least twice his sensei's age and his sensei had several inches and at least twenty pounds on him. Suna where he himself had become a Chunin. God, he missed that place, and couldn't wait to be back.
It was a good thing that Suna was Konoha's ally because, in order to prepare the team for the Chunin Exams, he had arranged with the Hokage to have the team be placed on a joint C Rank bandit clearing mission in Wind Country in December. Leading up to that mission, the team would be taking a number of high D and low C ranked missions on their way up through Fire Country and into Wind as they trained. After the mission in Wind Country was over, they would be heading back to Konoha at a respectable pace.
A respectable pace for a shinobi that was.
Once the team returned to Konoha, they would be evaluated by an independent instructor. If it was determined that Sasuke and Sakura had reached an acceptable level of skill, they would promptly head out to Suna where they would be entered into the Chunin Exam alongside Naruto. If it was determined that they weren't quite ready for the Exams, they would train like hell until the next Chunin Exam took place, wherever that might be. He personally would be very disappointed if they had to wait until July to participate in the exams, even though it was starting to look more and more like a certainty with each passing minute, despite the fact that Hatake Kakashi himself had agreed to help him out with his insane plan.
If they could pull this off, people would be talking about it for years to come, if not decades. If they couldn't, people would still be talking about it, but for different reasons.
Kakashi wasn't quite sure how he should feel about the situation he was in at the moment. While he was being given the opportunity to teach Naruto like he'd promised Minato-sensei he would, he wasn't Naruto's sensei, and that was all his fault for being late to the all-important meeting which would have netted him Naruto as his student. Naruto's sensei wasn't a bad person, but he also wasn't him.
Two years ago, it had taken Naruto being given to someone else to cause him to approach the boy when he had been given a legitimate opportunity to do so. He knew that he should have been there all along but, even looking at Naruto, who was a cross between both of his parents with a little bit of Obito thrown in for flavoring, was painful. Why he had spent years assuming that the Hokage would give Naruto to him when he graduated the Academy when he hadn't shown any interest in caring for the child before, he didn't know. Because he'd avoided Naruto for so long, he had been forced to pay for this negligence by watching someone else train what should've been his student.
When Shimura Tetsuo's other two students had been promoted to Chunin and decided to fly a bit before coming back to their sensei, he had sensed a potential opportunity and tried to jump on it. His habit of tardiness however had turned around and bit him in the ass this time however, as he'd shown up just a bit too late for the meeting he'd scheduled with the Hokage who had grown tired of waiting for him and forced him to reschedule. By the time he'd rescheduled the meeting and showed up only ten minutes late this time, Shimura had applied for and been given a pair of new Genin to fill the gap on his team, and he was informed that he was excused from babysitting a team he was just going to fail this year.
When the younger Shimura had given him the opportunity to train Naruto like he should have been doing from the start, he had jumped at it since it wasn't like he really had anything better to do with his time at the moment. The thing was, Naruto came with a bit of extra baggage in the form of Uchiha Sasuke and Haruno Sakura. The fact that he had the Sharingan meant that he would have eventually been assigned to give the Uchiha a few lessons at the very least, which made the Uchiha's presence less of a chore since he would be getting at least part of that responsibility out of the way. Haruno Saukura, who would be forced to depend on her wits and her teammates to survive since she had neglected to pack, was another matter entirely however. Under normal circumstances, he never would have bothered with the girl who honestly should have been cut loose from the program.
He didn't really care for dealing with the Uchiha's attitude problem or the Haruno's ineptness but, if he kept telling himself that this was for Naruto, maybe he would get through this, since he'd promised to help out with the training, and it would be a real dick move to change his mind in the middle of it and turn around and go home. It was trying however, considering the fact that they were making the most atrocious time he'd ever made in his career on the twenty-five mile journey to the farm where the team's first mission would be taking place. It was the middle of the night, and they still had five more miles to go, rather than already being there as they would have been if they hadn't had to bring the Rookies along.
Eventually, five miles became four, and four became three, with the pink haired girl whining the whole way. Three finally became two, then one, then, after what seemed like an eternity, they were finally finished, and the pink haired girl completely collapsed. After checking to make sure that the girl wasn't in need of immediate medical attention, and signalling to Shimura that he was going to be sleeping because he hadn't gotten any the night before and maybe three hours total the night before that, he headed into one of the trees to catch a bit of sleep during what remained of the night.
As he closed his eyes, he saw Naruto pulling a blanket from a storage scroll and covering the Haruno girl, who would most likely be completely useless tomorrow, with it. The Uchiha boy, who had promptly sat down on a rock the instant the journey was over, was breathing heavily as if he hadn't been forced to undergo such strenuous activity before. If that was the best the Academy had to offer, he didn't even want to see what the worst was. He'd heard that they'd made the curriculum a bit easier in order to be able to turn out more ninja at the end of the war and after the Kyuubi attack, but this was ridiculous. Back when he'd graduated the Academy, he would have been able to complete the hike they'd just been on with little fuss, and he'd been five. Apparently, the rumors he'd heard about a traitor working at the Academy and sabotaging the students' educations was true.
Naruto sighed when he realized that Sasuke was scowling at him again, most likely jealous over the fact that he barely seemed to have been affected by the little walk they'd just been on. The other boy was completely winded, and he could understand how he was feeling. He'd been the same after his first twenty-five mile hike. Tetsuo-sensei had a bad habit of taking the team on exceedingly long hikes when he thought that they had too much energy to burn. His first hundred mile hike hadn't quite been in his underwear during a thunderstorm, but it had been quite miserable, and the entire team - Tetsuo-sensei included - had been in a foul mood by the time it was over.
There would be no sleep for him tonight. It was already three in the morning, and dawn was only a few hours off. With Kakashi, Sakura, and Sasuke out of commission, it would be up to him and Tetsuo-sensei to take watch until sunup. They could take shifts, but he tended to be extremely groggy if he only got an hour or two of sleep. It would be better for him to remain awake for the rest of the day, and crash at the first opportunity he got after dinner.
"Get some sleep Sasuke." he said to the boy who was finally beginning to catch his breath. "Tetsuo-sensei and I will stand watch."
The boy nodded before unrolling the bedroll that he'd strapped to the top of his pack. This made him wonder exactly how much or how little the boy had packed since he didn't see any storage scrolls stashed in the bag when the boy had opened it to grab a ration bar during one of their breaks. That then made him wonder what Sakura was going to do for clothes since she only had the ones she was wearing. He was probably going to have to loan her just about everything. He had some spare clothes of his own packed away, but the only thing that looked like it might fit her, considering how much taller than him she was, was his orange and blue tracksuit which he occasionally wore while he was off-duty. The only one in that color that had been available at the time he'd purchased it a little over two years earlier had been several sizes too large for him, and was still a bit big on him even now. It should suit her just fine.
Edited 10-5-12