The Sandaime Hokage sat at his desk reading the report he'd received ahead of Team Tetsuo's arrival that morning. According to Kakashi, the Genin had handled themselves rather professionally despite the fact that they had been on a mission that was well above their pay grade, a mission that was more difficult than the Chunin Exams generally were. He would of course await the results of the team's debriefing before he made a final decision, but he felt it safe to consider giving the team a couple of in-village D Ranks to make up for the missions they were missing. He didn't expect Uchiha Sasuke and Haruno Sakura to become Chunin their first time out, but based on what he'd read, it looked like they would be able to handle the Exams at the very least. Add in the fact that the two would be two months out of the Academy at that point, and Konoha's stock would go up.
Hopefully, Inoichi's report would be favorable. If it wasn't however, he would have to scrap his and the younger Shimura's plan despite the boost it would have given Konoha's reputation. He wasn't willing to secure that rise in reputation at the expense of a pair of exceedingly promising young Genin who looked to have stellar careers ahead of them. Good ninja were exceedingly valuable, and great ones were worth far more than what could turn out to look like a cheap gimmick if the Haruno and the Uchiha didn't do as well as expected and brought the team down. There was a risk of that happening, considering what the Shimura boy had written of the Haruno girl who had finally started to make some gains in her abilities.
"What are you thinking about old friend?" Homura asked as he and Koharu entered his office uninvited, like they often did when they were bored and had nothing else to do.
"January." he replied as he read the number of Uchiha Sasuke's confirmed kills. The boy wasn't on his brother's level, but ninja like Itachi showed up maybe once a generation at best. Sasuke, who had been named in honor of his father, showed a great deal of promise though. Given a bit of time, and the right training, he could be one of Konoha's top shinobi.
"You can't still be considering..." Koharu started, looking shocked that he would even think such a thing, especially considering what had just happened to the team in question.
"Let's see how they handle their next few missions, and then we'll see." he replied as he read about Naruto's heretofore unknown talent with Seals which would have to be carefully evaluated and directed by a proper teacher, such as Jiraiya, who would be returning for the boy in several months.
"So, what did you come in here for this time?" he asked as he continued to read, noting that the team had passed up on a potential recruit with no actual ties to Kirigakure that the Medical Corps would have been drooling over if the account he was reading was accurate.
"Well, um..." Homura started.
"You were bored." he finished, knowing that that was the case since his teammates had popped by to bother him when they couldn't think of anything else to do more times than he could count over the years.
Koharu and Homura both had the decency to look vaguely guilty. Most people wouldn't have seen it, but he had known them since they were small children, and knew the meaning of every slight shift in their posture, much the way he did with Danzo, whom he had known since he was a toddler.
"I do believe that there were a few more D Ranks than Genin teams ready to take them today thanks to the retraining program." he said with a smile, before deciding to play matchmaker for Homura, since the widow Tanaka, whom Homura had had a crush on back when they were children, had asked for a team to go to the market and fetch her some groceries.
Yamanaka Inoichi frowned as he wrote up the reports on Shimura Tetsuo's students for the Hokage. In his opinion, the team, as it was, would most definitely not be prepared for the Chunin Exams in January despite the fact that the Hokage wanted them to be. He wasn't sure that he'd recommend them for the Exams that were coming up in July next year either.
Things could be considered to be very bad when the Jinchuriki was the most well adjusted of the three. One reason for this had been because Morishita Kinako, who had been falling into addiction since the deaths of two of her students, had taken it upon herself to provide Naruto with some extra counseling alongside what he was providing the boy so Naruto would never again flip out the way he had in Kiri. Another reason for this had been because Uchiha Sasuke was an emotional wreck who had been "excused" from his visits to the Academy counselor by one Assistant Instructor Mizuki who had supposedly been providing the boy with individualized Taijutsu instruction that could only take place during the time period that had been allotted by Sasuke's counselor more than two years ago, and any real progress that had been made had been lost since then. Yet another reason for this was that Sakura, who had seemed so normal on the surface, had created an alternate personality to think and voice any "Socially Inappropriate" thoughts for her so she could remain "Polite, Demure, and Ladylike", as he mother constantly urged her to be.
He felt sorry for Sakura's father. The few times he'd met the man, his impression of him had been "henpecked". It was obvious to him, and the rest of the village that Haruno Kita's main failing was that he was too weak willed to stand up to his wife. As a result of his failure to keep his wife in check, his life had nearly been completely destroyed. The man had lost a job that he had held for fifteen years, had only found another one through sheer dumb luck, and he might end up losing that one as well if the story of the true extent of the damage his wife had caused to his daughter was ever made known.
He felt even sorrier for Sakura. The poor girl had been torn between two worlds for years and, to make matters worse, she'd recently had her illusions about one of them stripped away from her. Learning that the ninja world was nowhere near as romantic as she'd been led to believe had been very traumatic for the girl, and he was afraid that if things weren't taken into hand soon, a third personality might break off, causing incalculable damage to the girl's psyche.
Uchiha Sasuke, on whom his daughter had unfortunately had a crush for years, was on the verge of a total breakdown. All it would take would be a push in the right spot, and the kid would snap like dry kindling and, considering the boy's usual attitude which pushes everyone away, nobody would notice until it was far too late. Fortunately, based on the boy's reaction to his last mission, it didn't look like he would go on a killing spree like his brother had when he broke. Unfortunately however, it looked like he'd be likely to commit suicide, most probably suicide by brother. The boy had spent almost every day of the last four years training himself to kill his brother to the exclusion of all else. Based on his scores though, he was nowhere near Uchiha Itachi's projected level of skill.
All in all, the only member of the team who was even close to being mentally prepared for the Chunin Exams and life as a Chunin afterward at this point was Naruto who hadn't regressed nearly as much as he had feared he would. One thing he would never recommend doing with the boy however was placing him in ANBU. Taking on missions like the one he had just run on a semi-regular basis would be very bad for the boy's mental health.
Sakura had been on her way home from the session she'd had with Ino's father when she had a rather strange encounter. Hyuuga Hinata, whom she hadn't spoken more than ten words to at the Academy, had invited her to stay at her home. Wondering why the painfully shy girl had invited her to a sleepover considering the fact that they had never really been friends, she had asked her as much. Much to her surprise, the girl subsequently informed her that she hadn't invited her for a sleepover, she had invited her to stay. Smiling at the strange girl so as not to upset her, she told her she would consider her generous offer, and got the heck out of there as quickly as she could.
She didn't know what was wrong with Hinata, and she didn't want to know.
That had turned out to be the first of a number of strange encounters she ended up having on the way home. The next one had occurred as she was as she was making her way through the marketplace, having decided to stop to get some anmitsu on the way home in order to calm her nerves after the rather bizarre encounter with Hinata, While she was at the stand that sold some of the best anmitsu in Konoha, an old woman, whom she'd never seen before, had walked up to her, critically looked her up and down, and pulled the front of her dress forward at the waist.
"Too skinny." the woman had said with a scowl before walking off.
On the way home from the market, she had been stopped by a number of ninja who had asked her if she was okay, further disturbing her, as all of the ninja who had stopped her had been strangers. Two more of her former classmates, these two being rivals for Sasuke's affection, and girls who had cruelly teased her for years, had stopped her and offered to let her stay at their homes as well. The weird thing about it was that they actually seemed to be sincere in their offers.
By the time she got home, she was almost afraid of what she might, or worse, might not find when she went inside. Fortunately, things weren't as bad as she feared they would be and, much to her relief, her mother was there to greet her at the door.
She had been relieved to see her mother for all of the five minutes it had taken for her day to go completely to hell. It would seem that her mother hadn't dropped out of her Extreme Mode in the three weeks that she'd been gone, and that the woman had said or done something that had caused the entire village to be concerned for her welfare. Considering the fact that her mother soon started acting like she'd completely lost it, she could see why even people who had previously disliked her were inviting her to live with them.
She had barely gotten in the door before her crying mother, who'd been both shocked and happy to see her, had started sobbing over the loss of her pretty hair, the nicks, blisters and callouses on her hands, the scraped knee, and the scratches on her arms and legs. After crying for a good fifteen minutes, her mother had ordered her to put her shoes back on. Confused, she complied only to be herded her down to the local civilian clinic that she'd been going to since she was a baby. At the clinic, she became beyond mortified as her mother embarrassed her in front of everyone in the waiting room by loudly demanding the doctor come out immediately and give her a full examination and check for sexual abuse.
To her utter humiliation, she was forced to sit in the waiting room for an hour and a half until one of the doctors had time to see a walk-in because, she knew that if she ran, her mother would just kick up a fuss until she cooperated. As she sat there in the toy filled waiting room of the pediatric clinic, she could feel the eyes of all of the other patients and their parents, some of whom were neighbors whom she had known since she was a baby, on her. Eventually, one of the three doctors who ran the clinic had a free slot due to a cancellation, and her mother followed her into the examination room where the doctor had asked her a number of awkward questions that she didn't want to be asked, much less answer in front of her mother. To make matters worse, her mother ended up creating a commotion when she'd refused to strip in order to be "fully examined" by the doctor.
She didn't need to be looked at there. Contrary to what her mother seemed to think, none of her teammates had even considered using her in that manner. She told her mother as much before she stormed off fully aware of the eyes that were following her as she left the building.
Hinata's invitation was starting to look better and better by the minute.
Edited 10-6-12