Kakashi looked up at the gathering of jounin and chuunin, it was that time of year again, and he had to decide for the first time if his team was ready for it. Using a manga page he'd found floating on a breeze along the road of life as a bookmark, he really thought about it. They had shown great teamwork and surprising tactics on their mission to Wave, but once they'd gotten back to Konoha everything had fallen apart.
Naruto had settled into the acceptance of his team, even allowing his mask to slip occasionally. Kakashi had noticed that the boy had a keen mind for battle, and if he could manage to get him to settle in for some real teaching, great potential as a ninjutsu user. Sakura had become less of a fangirl and more of a serious kunoichi when the life of her and her teammates were on the line. Even Sasuke had changed, going from the cold, heartless avenger into a stern leader of the team. Kakashi could see him going far with those two supporting him, especially if he could get Sakura into genjutsu and medijutsu training.
Looking up he saw Kurenai and Asuma walking towards the front of the group. Joining them in the lineup, he sighed as he thought back on what had happened within minutes of the team's return to Konoha. First Sakura had ran into Ino and fell back into her fangirling, which got Sasuke to throw up his defensive coldness, and Naruto trying for attention in any way possible. He was faintly aware that Kurenai and Asuma nominated their students, and now all eyes were on him. Lazily he looked the Hokage directly in the eye and shook his head. "I, Kakashi Hatake, hereby do not nominate Team Seven, consisting of Sakura Haruno, Sasuke Uchiha, and Naruto Uzumaki."
The silence of the room was deafening, instead Kakashi pulled out his book and began reading it. After five minutes he looked up with a bored expression and sighed. "I'd also like to ask for a few C-rank missions to keep us out of Konoha until the finals if possible..."
The Hokage cleared his throat, drawing the attention off the oblivious Kakashi and onto him. "We'll deal with that later Kakashi, but for now is there any others that wish to nominate their pupils?"
The meeting wrapped up quickly after that, but everyone had one question on their minds. "What the hell is with Kakashi?"
Calloused hands lowered the page he had finished reading and looked up at the person that had drawn it up. After a ten count Shikamaru nodded and tucked the page into the stack. "We could use that... it would change the entire story... maybe even save us all..."
"Thank you..."