Finally beginning to loosen up, that writer's block ...

I'm skipping time like a lil bitch. Two chapters ago - urgh, I flicked a fly on my screen and it fell between the keys, but anyway - was around July? Well, now we're in November.

- Franz Ferdinand: "Brief Encounters" (Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action)

44. So it Begins

If Minato's team of two genin and one half-chuunin should ever fail the chuunin exam, he'd think they'd handle it well enough. He had, after all, expressed several times that they were still young, and younger than most newly-promoted chuunin.

One of the two happened. While Kakashi was finally acknowledged as a fully-fledged chuunin, neither Rin nor Obito passed the test. And while Rin seemed to have accepted defeat soon after and was only happy for Kakashi, Obito was grumpy enough to last a year.

It had all started with Obito's lack of timing and preciseness showing early; showing before the exams had even begun. His knack for finding excuses to show up late and get carried away led him astray before both the first and second stages of the exam, but even though they all passed the written exam, his clumsiness almost failed the trio before the team battle. He expressed that his conscience was clean after having helped an old, fragile lady with her errands, thus doing his duty as a citizen of Konoha, but wasn't all too pleased by being beaten up during the second stage. Minato, who stood watching with the other jounin and the Hokage himself, couldn't stop a loud, painful sigh from letting out, and received both a sympathetic and amused look from the third – however the third made such a face was still a mystery to him – as he tried not to break Kousuke's nose. Minato was not a sore loser, but Kousuke's smile was a bit too wide when his own student, Gai, kicked the crap – or sweets – out of Obito.

So Minato tried not to boast about it when Kakashi beat Kousuke's team almost single-handedly.

During the individual battles, Obito never made it past the first round and was knocked out cold by Gai once more, but in the end, Minato had one student in the finals: Kakashi. Minato watched with anticipation as his student stood up against Obito's defeater, and it turned out to be an interesting match; Gai had, after all, graduated the academy at the age of seven, which was impressive. Though Kakashi was still of a higher level than any of the other candidates, including Gai, so in the end, he had won the whole match.

Minato would have been pleased if Kakashi had defeated Gai to get back at him for beating Obito, or even lied about it; Obito was in such a horrible mood afterwards that an act of camaraderie from Kakashi's side could do him good – though Minato suspected Obito would only stop glooming out of utter shock of finally discovering Kakashi's friendly side, in that case.

And so Minato walked away from the location of the exam, one piece of newly promoted chuunin, one piece of smiling genin and one piece of grumbling, darkening, depressed Uchiha by his side.

"Obito, cheer up," Minato sighed as they walked through a side-street. "There's a new exam coming up after New Years, you have another chance."

Obito didn't reply. Minato decided to try again.

"Weren't you supposed to become Hokage?"

Obito blinked a little and looked up at his sensei. Minato couldn't help but smile a little.

"Forgot about that, did you?"

"Well, no, not really …" Obito replied, continuing to look sulky.

Even though it was a pain in the ass, Minato could understand where Obito's hard feelings came from; it was, after all, not unusual for an eleven year old boy to be let down by something like this. He had finally had the chance to show what he was made of, but had failed in doing so in front of the one person he wanted to be better than. Shortly after, that one person had gone and defeated his opponent easily.

Minato managed to get eye-contact with Rin and signalled for them to go ahead; they did, while Minato placed a hand on Obito's shoulder to stop him and crouched to be somewhat on the same level (he was, after all, somewhat taller than the small boy).

"Obito, listen," Minato said, keeping his voice as kind as he could. "It's not a defeat that you didn't pass the exam today."

"How?" Obito asked, but didn't look at him; instead, he looked towards Rin and Kakashi, who walked slowly away from them, chatting.

"Keep in mind that out of all the candidates at your age, the only ones who passed were the ones who've been out of the academy for at least five years. Now that you have this experience you can come back stronger the next time."

Obito considered this for a moment. "Well, that's true, but …"

"Yeah," Minato said, full of understanding. "But don't worry, we'll have a lot of time to train."

Obito nodded, gazing after his two companions. Minato shifted his gaze back and forth between them, before he suddenly realised why Obito had gone from angry to somewhat … dreamy? He had not only wanted to show his skills off in front of his rival ...

"Is there something going on here that I don't know about?" he grinned. Obito's face broke into a blush and he looked dumbfounded at Minato.

"W – What –"

"I've seen that look before."

Obito let out a frustrated sigh. "Well, it's not gonna happen, is it? Not with that fantastic piece of –"

"Language, Obito."

"Sorry."

"Hey, don't worry about it," Minato smiled. "You're only eleven, you've got years to impress her."

"Easy for you to say," Obito sulked. "You impress everyone, t'was easy for you to get a girl."

"Uh, well," Minato grinned, drawing a hand through his hair. "Did I mention Kushina used to hate me?"

And with that, Obito was convinced he'd not only win the title of Hokage; he'd win the heart of the girl along the way.

It was a short celebration dinner for Kakashi before they parted ways, and Minato could go home. The moment he entered the familiar house, he realised how tired he felt. He took off his shoes and walked towards the living-room.

Kushina sat at the couch, still dressed in her regular mission clothes, heard him enter and turned to speak, but her voice died on the way out.

Minato blinked. "What?"

Kushina tilted her head with a pleased smile. "Well, that's new."

"What, this?" Minato said, pointing at the standard shinobi uniform he was wearing. He had used it on very few occasions: the day he was promoted jounin during the war, during the second stage of the exams and … today.

"Why don't you wear the uniform more often?" Kushina asked. "It's been collecting dust for the past … what, six years?"

"Five," Minato corrected her while he removed his forehead protector, walked over and kissed her on the forehead. "I had to get a new one when I finally started growing. "

"And I've never seen you use it before," Kushina said, touching the fabric and observing it as though she had never seen a standard shinobi uniform before.

"It's …" Minato begun, looking at his shirt while he removed the flak vest. "Too blue."

Kushina raised an eyebrow. "It's too blue."

"Yes?" Minato replied uncertainly.

"Since when did you become so concerned with what you're wearing?"

"I prefer grey."

"Whatever."

Seeing as the sun was setting and Kushina had made him an excellent dinner, the uniform came off soon enough.

During the next few weeks, Minato had begun a new training program with Rin and Obito, but it wasn't rarely he discovered Obito alone on one of the smaller training fields, training by himself. He continuously repeated chakra control, explosiveness of physical attacks and improved his fire techniques even further. He trained so hard Minato began to wonder why there hadn't been a sign of a Sharingan yet, but decided not to mention it; he was sure Obito had thought about it as well, but didn't want to bother him with it unnecessarily.

If Obito had wondered about the Sharingan or not, it didn't show; it certainly didn't look as though it disturbed his training, at least. And so Minato woke up one day in January, said goodbye to Kushina on the way out of the house as she returned from a week-long mission and headed towards the location of the first stage of the chuunin exam in his 'too-blue' shinobi outfit, not at all sure what to expect of his student for the first time.

Hey, look at that. We're in January.