Mirror into the Future
Chapter Four: Training
"Where is he? He's late!" Naruto groaned as he leaned against the tree.
"You were late?" Rin and Obito asked in shock as they looked over at their usually-on-time teammate.
"I must have a good reason to be late." Kakashi said.
"For once, I agree with you, Naruto. It's been three hours." Sakura commented. Sasuke simply sit next to a different tree with his eyes closed. That's when they say their sensei slowly making his way over to them.
"You're late!" Sakura and Naruto yelled in unison, pointing at Kakashi.
"Sorry. As I was coming here I saw an old lady that needed my help..." Kakashi rambled on about his lie.
"Liar!" Sakura and Naruto screamed furiously.
"Let's begin your training." Kakashi said. The three genin stood in front of him with serious looks on their faces. "It is a very simple test. You must take these two bells away from me by lunch time or you will be sent back to the academy. But, I only have two bells. So only two of you will be able to stay, even if you manage to take the bells." Kakashi, finished with his explanation, pulled out a little orange book and began to read.
"Isn't that the same method you used for us to work as a team, Minato-sensei?" Rin asked.
"Yes. It is." Minato answered, looking over at Kakashi and smiling.
"Let's handle this one on one." Naruto announced cockily before running up to Kakashi, trying to throw a punch. Kakashi grabbed his fist and threw his own punch, which hit a substitution as Naruto hid on top of a tree. The blond looked down at his sensei, preparing his next attack.
"You know... you need to be more stealthy." Kakashi advised his student from behind, scaring him and causing him to fall out of the tree. Naruto quickly did a back flip and landed on his feet.
"Where did he go?" Naruto wondered to himself as he looked around for his silver-haired sensei.
"Leaf Village Secret Jutsu: Thousand Years of Death!" Kakashi said, poking Naruto in his butt hole, causing him to scream loudly and jump far away from his sensei.
Everyone burst out laughing. Rin and Obito fell to the ground, clutching their sides.
"Oh come on. It's not that funny." Kakashi said as he turned his head away to hide his embarrassment.
"You know you just molested a twelve year old." Jiraiya told Kakashi as he wiped his tears away from laughing so hard.
"I can't believe I'm teaching a mini-pedo." Minato joked.
That set everyone off again.
"Stop laughing!" Kakashi yelled.
Sakura sighed as she watched the scene unfold. She watched Naruto fly off somewhere and when she returned her gaze over to Kakashi, she found that he was missing.
"Where'd he go?" Sakura asked, getting up and out of her hiding space to go hunt for him. She started to walk off in a random direction when her sensei appeared right in front of her, pulling her into a genjutsu.
When Sakura opened her eyes, she saw Sasuke standing right in front of her. "Sasu-"
That's when kunai and shuriken started to fly at Sasuke, hitting him all over. Sasuke looked over at her as he was injured and bleeding profusely. Sakura let out a scream of terror before falling down the ground like a rag doll.
Everyone simply stared at this girl as if she was plain stupid for falling for that trick.
"Man, this girl is giving us female ninjas bad names...even if she is a beginner." Rin said.
Sasuke watched Sakura fall down to the ground and he let out a sigh before he jumped out to show himself.
"Oh! You saved me the trouble of having to look for you." Kakashi said apathetically as he turned a page in his book.
"Let's get this over with." Sasuke demanded as he took a fighting stance. "Fire Style: Fireball Jutsu!" Using his first to fingers, he held them in a circle in front of his mouth, and breathing a giant fireball.
"He executed that jutsu perfectly." Obito said in awe as Fugaku looked at his youngest with pride. Mikoto looked on in worry.
Kakashi jumped out of the way before he tried to hit Sasuke, which he turned into a substitution.
"Fire Style: Multi-Fireball jutsu!" Sasuke called from above as he launched a technique that sent out a bunch of mini fireballs in rapid succession. The attack caught Kakashi off guard, causing him to get hit and fall to the floor. Sasuke smirked as he saw Kakashi on the floor. He made his way over and tried to grab a bell when his hand was grabbed and Sasuke was thrown into a hole.
Fugaku looked at his son and smiled but Kakashi still held a smirk on her face.
Sasuke coughed as the dust cleared and he saw his body was under the ground.
"Stay there until I come back." Kakashi ordered cheerfully as he walked away from Sasuke.
Fugaku looked at Kakashi, surprised, and Kakashi just continued to smirk at his future self.
Sakura woke up and started to look around. "Oh no! I have to find Sasuke!" Sakura said as she got up and started to run in a random direction until she heard Sasuke calling her name.
"Sasuke!" Sakura gasped, turning around excitedly as she looked down just to see Sasuke's head sticking out of the ground. She screamed in horror before fainting again.
"Completely useless." Sasuke murmured as he watched her faint.
"I agree." Rin agreed as she shook her head at the girl.
Naruto was wondering by the three poles where he saw the four lunches. "I bet if I eat one, I will gain my energy to eat a bell." Naruto told himself as he grabbed a lunch boxes and was about to eat it when he looked up to see Kakashi. He let out a scream. Kakashi tied him to a pole before going to get Sasuke and Sakura.
"I might not send you guys back to the Academy after all." Kakashi told them.
"Really? All I did was run and faint. You give points for that?" Sakura asked.
"Alright!" Naruto yelled from he was tied up at.
"I think I'm going to drop all three of you guys from the program immediately." Kakashi informed them with a smile on his face.
"Kakashi...that's so cruel." Kushina told him.
"Hey! Don't go blaming me from them being stupid!" Kakashi yelled at her.
"Stop yelling! We're trying to watch." Tsunade growled at them.
Their faces all turned devastated.
"You can't do that! You can't just changed your mind about sending us back to the academy! Why would you do that?!" Naruto yelled in protest.
"Because you don't think like ninjas. You think like little kids, like brats." Kakashi stated simply.
Sasuke got mad and ran at Kakashi, who flipped him over and slammed into the ground, pinning him with a knee in the middle of the preteen's back.
"You think it's all a game." Kakashi continued while Sasuke continued to struggle.
"Let go of Sasuke! You can't hold him down like some type of bug!" Sakura yelled.
"That girl is so annoying!" Rin hissed.
"You don't know what it means to be a ninja. You think it's a game?" Kakashi asked. "Why do you think we put you on squads? Did you ever consider that for one moment?"
"W-What do you mean?" Sakura questioned.
"I mean you never realized what this exercise was about. Not even close." Kakashi stated.
"You've gotten way too serious about your job, Kakashi." Obito told him.
"What's it about?" Naruto asked in confusion.
"It determines whether you pass or fail."
"But..that's what I wanted to ask in the beginning." Sakura said slowly.
"Wow...were we really like that Minato-sensei?" Obito asked. Minato nodded his head and all his students seemed to get a little depressed.
"Use your head! Three people, on the squad. Why do you think they do that?" Kakashi quizzed them with frustration clear in his voice.
"Arggh! How are we supposed to know why you pick three people?! We didn't make up the rules!" Naruto yelled, wanting to pull at his hair.
"It's so basic!" Kakashi finally resorted to yelling. "TEAMWORK!"
They all looked at him, shocked.
"To work together, that's what you mean." Sakura restated.
"Didn't he just say that." Rin sighed.
"That's what I meant. Too late now, though. If all three of you had come at me you might have been able to take them. Well, anyways, it's over." Kakashi finalized.
"Wait a minute." Sakura suddenly said. "You set it up with three people but only two bells. If we worked together only two of us would have gotten the bells, which would have led to group conflict and the squad would break up."
"Exactly. I purposely pinned you against one another." Kakashi told them.
They all looked at him in confusion.
"I wanted to see if you could overcome that and put the squad ahead of yourselves. A genin should have a natural feel for teamwork but it never even crossed your mind. Sakura, you obsessed about Sasuke the whole time instead of helping Naruto, who was right in front of you."
"I'm glad I wasn't so obsessive." Rin sniffed with a hair flip. Kakashi and Obito chuckled uneasily.
"Naruto, you do everything rashly and by yourself, everything."
"So harsh." Obito commented.
"And you Sasuke. You thought the others were so far beneath you that they were worthless. You're arrogance will get you killed one day. Ninjas are in squads because it is better to face enemies with teammates who have your book than to be stupid and face them alone and get killed. Yes, their individual skills are valued but when you put a team together whose skills compliment each other, then you have a force to be reckoned with. Every shinobi understands this. When people put themselves above the squad, it can lead to failure or death." Kakashi said as he pulled out a kunai from his pouch.
"For example...Sakura, kill Naruto now or Sasuke dies."
"Kakashi!" Everyone yelled as they glared at the white-haired teen.
"What are you blaming me for? I haven't done it yet." Kakashi yelled back.
Sakura looked at him with her eyes wide and mouth to the ground. Naruto started rapidly looking back and forth between Sakura and Kakashi.
"That is what happens when on a mission." Kakashi explained, removing his kunai. Sasuke looked rather relieved when he moved the kunai.
"That was r-really scary." Sakura gulped. Naruto let out a sigh of relief.
"The enemy takes a hostage and gives you an ultimatum; someone could end up dead." Kakashi was dead serious as he spun a kunai around his finger before putting it away for good. "On every mission your life is on the line." Kakashi got off of Sasuke and started to walk away.
"Did you ever look at the stone and see the names engraved on it. They're all ninja who are honored as heroes in our village." Kakashi said, seemingly there but not.
"That's it! I know now! I've decided I'm going to have my name engraved on that stone! I'm not going to live and die for nothing like a dog! I'm going to be a hero!" Naruto shouted.
"They're a special kind of hero."
"Huh? What kind of heroes are they? Come on, tell us! Well, WELL?!" Naruto asked.
"They're all KIA."
"That sounds really cool!"
Everyone looked at Kushina in wonder.
"It means Killed in Action." Sakura deadpanned. "They're all dead." Naruto's eyes widened in shock and he looked away in shame.
"This is a memorial stone." Kakashi's voice took on a melancholy tone. "My closest friends, comrades, and even my sensei's names are engraved here."
"Wait! So we died?!" Rin cried in shock. Obito looked down at the ground with a blank look on his face. Minato looked over to Kakashi, who didn't say a word.
"Alright. I'm going to give you all one more chance but I'm going to make it harder on you. You will have three hours to get a bell. Eat lunch now to gain some strength but do not give Naruto any. It is his punishment for breaking rules and trying to eat by yourself and, if anyone tries to feed him, that person will immediately fail." Kakashi told them.
Naruto groaned in protest.
"I make the rules and you get to follow them. Got it? Good." Kakashi disappeared with a small poof of smoke.
Sasuke and Sakura began eating quietly when Naruto's stomach rumbled loudly. Sasuke held his lunch out to Naruto.
"No, Sasuke, if you do that you'll fail." Sakura gasped.
"Kakashi's gone and we need to get those bells as a team. If Naruto's hungry, he'll be even weaker than usual and that will hurt the time, which jeopardizes the mission." Sasuke explained in a bored tone.
Mikoto was proud that her son was willing to be sent back to help out a friend.
Sakura sighed as she went over to Naruto and gave him some of her lunch.
Kakashi suddenly appeared along with a harsh wind.
"You broke the rules." He intoned with a scary look on his face. "I hope you're ready for the punishment!"
Unknown to them, Kakashi started a jutsu which made thunderclouds appear and lightning strike behind him. "Any last words?"
"We're all in this together." Sasuke said.
"Yea! W-We're all in this together." Sakura yelled with determination though her body was shaking like a leaf in the wind.
"Yea, yea, that's right! Believe it!" Naruto stated proudly.
"The three of you are one? That's your excuse?"
The three, well two of them took a fighting stance on either side of Naruto.
"You're still way too serious about everything, Kakashi." Obito commented.
"You pass!" Kakashi said out of the blue as the sky cleared.
They blinked in confusion.
"How did we pass?" Sakura asked.
"You were the first squad to ever pass because you actually managed to think for yourselves. All the others always followed my rules, no questions asked. They clearly weren't ready. A ninja must see through deception for in the ninja world that is one of your greatest assets. Those who break the rules are scum but those who abandon their friends are worse than scum."
"You're going to be a great sensei, Kakashi." Minato complimented proudly. Kakashi smiled from under his mask and nodded his head.
A/N: I hope you guys like this chapter please leave reviews.