Umino Iruka found himself fidgeting nervously as he stood outside the Hokage's office, having been summoned to a meeting in his capacity as an Academy Instructor the night before. As he was an Instructor for the Fall Cycle, he should be on break right now. Actually, he should be at the Missions Assignment desk where he spent most of his breaks because he could neither stand nor afford two months and change of near complete inactivity. That, and dealing with ninja who have problems with the missions given for whatever reason, such as too easy, not enough pay, etc, kept his skills for dealing with unruly students somewhat sharp.
He wasn't the only one waiting outside the Hokage's office. A number of other Instructors including Suzume, the Kunoichi Instructor who shared a name with one of Naruto's teammates who'd gone on to become a Chunin, and Daikoku were amongst the group that waiting there as well. In fact, with the arrival of one of the Spring Cycle First Year Instructors, it looked like every Instructor from the Academy was here.
As he began to wonder why the Hokage had called a meeting that had required the presence of every last Academy Instructor, including the Spring Cycle ones who should have been teaching classes right now, the door to the office opened, and they all filed inside. The Hokage was seated at his desk smoking his usual pipe, as he waited for the Instructors to enter. The man looked exhausted, as if he'd stayed up all night the night before and had only paused to change for the meeting.
"For those of you who are wondering whey you're here, I have decided to revamp the Academy Curriculum, effective immediately." the Hokage said as soon as they were arrayed before his desk. "I have called you all here to get your input on the intended curriculum and teaching methods that I plan to implement."
There were several noises of shock at this because there hadn't been such a radical change in the Academy Curriculum in...Ever.
"I will also be recalling all of the Fall Cycle Instructors back to the Academy in order to re-evaluate every student who may have come in contact with former Assistant Instructor Mizuki aside from Uchiha Sasuke and Haruno Sakura who have already been evaluated effective immediately." the Hokage continued, silencing the noise that the Instructors were making as they speculated on why the Hokage was changing the Academy Curriculum so suddenly seeing as he hadn't made the decision to do so immediately after Mizuki's perfidy had been discovered. "There will be a number of Jounin on hand to give a second opinion of your assessments, and assist in the retraining of any students that might benefit from such."
"Now that the major announcements are out of the way." The Hokage said as he reached over for one of the old and rather dated looking books that had been piled up on his desk. "These are the basic texts that the Academy will now be using. I have already contacted a publisher to update the information contained within to account for recent historical events and advancements in the field."
Daikoku, who apparently recognized the book that the Hokage was holding looked startled for some reason. In fact, all of the Instructors over the age of thirty seemed rather surprised to see the book that the Hokage was holding. He didn't know why though, other than the fact that it looked a bit thicker than the standard textbook.
"What was wrong with the books we've been using?" Suzume, who taught the Kunoichi classes asked. "They seemed to be rather effective."
"Unfortunately, they weren't." the Hokage replied. "While the more child-friendly tone of the texts you've been using until now tended to put the civilian parents' minds at ease, they did little to nothing to prepare the children for life in the field as they were supposed to. As a result, there has been a marked increase in failures amongst Academy graduates over the last decade or so."
His curiosity about what he was now expected to teach his students who may be in serious need of remedial training drove him to break ranks and move forward to where the texts he was expected to teach from were laid out. He moved towards the Hokage's desk which was piled high with books that looked and smelled as if they had been in storage for a long while. He knew the old man would forgive him for this, breach of protocol, as the old man had forgiven him of several similar breaches before.
"May I?" he asked as he reached for one of the First Year texts which looked as if they dated back to the Nidaime's reign.
"Go ahead." the Hokage said, giving him a small smile.
He opened the book. It was a basic reading primer, which was somewhat to be expected, considering the fact that a couple generations before, literacy wasn't as common as it was now, and not all of the children could be taught to read at home. The next book below that was a basic book on weapons handling which had to be gone through before the young students were handed kunai and shuriken and led out to target practice for the first time. He flipped it open, and blanched when he reached the first picture.
Rather than an admonishment from Flopsy the Ninja Rabbit about safe weapons handling like in the current text, there was a rather gruesome image of a young boy who had accidentally stabbed through his hand with a live kunai. This was far more graphic than the image that had been there during his own Academy days which had been a sketch of a badly injured and unhappy boy rather than an actual photograph of a ninja he thought he recognized.
"Ah, yes, that." the Hokage said mildly when he caught sight of his expression. "Uchiha Fugaku's father was messing around with his father's weapons one day, and injured himself. Someone managed to capture an image of the injury before the child was taken to the hospital, and it was passed around the clan as a warning to any other children who might try something similar. It eventually ended up in other hands, and was included in the Academy textbook because it had served as a rather effective warning."
Effective? Heck, it looked like it would scare half the little First Year kids out of the Academy the instant they saw it. He said as much to the Hokage, who had pinched the bridge of his nose, shook his head, and sighed.
Haruno Kita bowed in front of Danzo as he made a formal apology on behalf of his family during the brief audience he had secured with the busy man who was going to be in a meeting with the Hokage soon.
"...and I am sorry for any offense my wife may have caused you." he concluded his apology from where he was crouched on the floor.
"I accept your apology." Danzo, who was just as scary as he remembered him being, replied. "This won't really correct your family's misfortune however, as it wasn't just your wife's slandering of me and my family name that upset the village ninja as you seem to have come to believe. News of your wife's unfortunate mishandling of her daughter's care and training has gotten across the village, and as a result, a number of ninja came to question your suitability as parents. If a person cannot be a proper parent, one tends to wonder what other responsibilities that person may fail at..."
He turned pale as he bowed once more and took his leave of the elder. He had left his daughter's training in his wife's hands because he knew little to nothing about being a ninja, and his wife had the time and the eagerness to involve herself in her daughter's training, meet with the girl's Instructors, and meet with the mothers of other future ninja. Something had apparently gone wrong somewhere, and their precious daughter had suffered without him noticing as a result.
"Why did you apologize to him?!" his wife asked as they left the building. "Considering how rude and unhelpful he was when I asked for his help, that drunk should've been apologizing to me!"
"Do you have any idea who he is?!" he asked his wife, shocked that she would continue to talk like that after everything that had happened. "He's a member of the Hokage's Council of Advisors, which means that in the village hierarchy, he's second only to the Hokage, and you pissed him off! It's no wonder I got fired, I'm amazed that we haven't been killed yet!"
Barako blanched at that, finally beginning to see why he had been adamant that she be quiet for once in her life. Hopefully, the lesson would sink in, and she wouldn't dig their family's hole any deeper. He wanted them to be there for their daughter when she returned, she would obviously be needing them, and needing them to fix whatever it was they had done wrong, if what the old man had said was true.
Tetsuo grinned when they finally got the show on the road after the last checks of the statues were made. They should've been on the road yesterday in order to give the team a bit of a safety margin, and time to prepare before the mission, but they had been delayed by the complete assessments of his new students' skills that he'd been forced to make. The coming mission was one that he was looking forward to, particularly considering the fact that food would be provided.
About a day away from here, as the new Genin walked, a small town that was located near the border between the Land of Fire and the Land of Hot Water was trying to put itself on the map by hosting some sort of autumn cider festival. His team had been given the low C Ranked mission of providing security for the event, which would mainly consist of making sure the drunks didn't get too rowdy. The pay was going to be a bit low for that sort of C Rank, but the fact that they would be given all the food they could eat while they were there more than made up for it. Hopefully, Naruto's version of the C-Rank curse wouldn't kick in and cause things to go too terribly wrong this time...
The town that lay on the road ahead of them was going to be an interesting test for the Haruno girl who was beginning to show signs of progress. It would be interesting to see whether or not she would promptly return to old habits the instant she returned to civilization where she would be provided with most of the comforts of home including a bed, a bath, and food she didn't have to hunt down and prepare for herself. It would also be interesting to see if she returned to that little diet of hers or not after she had learned the true meaning of hunger over this past week. Hopefully, the lessons he'd been trying to impart throughout the entire trip will have stuck, and the girl wouldn't destroy the progress she had made.
Sasuke was less of a concern for him because he was reasonably certain that the boy would behave the same wherever he went unless he got wind of a rumor that his brother was in the area. It was one of the boy's stated goals to kill Itachi after all. Since the presence of Itachi, who by all accounts had avoided Fire Country after the Massacre, was highly unlikely, the boy would most likely stand around brooding until his shift was over when it was his turn for guard duty.
Of the three, Naruto was the most worrisome of all, and not for the reasons most would think. While the risk of him deciding that he liked the new place he'd traveled to where he didn't get glared at, and that he wanted to stay there permanently was slim to none, there was always the chance that they would once again be hit with Naruto's special version of the C Rank curse.
For some strange reason, rather than having something go wrong on only his first C Ranked mission like a normal ninja, something usually went wrong for Naruto on just about every C Ranked mission that he was involved with. The first time this had happened had been when Naruto had had to throw himself under a horse because Satoshi had stolen their travel funds and gambled them away. Afterwards, Naruto had gotten his arm broken in three places while rescuing a baby hawk, nearly gotten himself killed when he had accidentally stumbled upon and broken up a kidnapping ring, and almost died when he ran into a B Ranked Missing-nin in a public restroom, and that wasn't even the half of it.
Somehow, Naruto had come away from each of these encounters alive, mostly unscathed, and with a new friend that he had rescued to boot. One of said new friends happened to be the eternally grateful B Ranked no-longer Missing-nin who had been forced to flee from his village because he had been framed for a crime he hadn't committed, which Naruto had somehow managed to clear him of, enabling him to return home to his family.
He just prayed that something like that didn't happen to the team while they were in town, especially now when they were so fragmented, and didn't look like they'd form into a cohesive unit anytime soon.
Edited 10-5-12