A/N: I talked in an earlier chapter about how there would be six months of training. I'm sticking with that, but not in the conventional sense, the training is going to be more 'trial by fire' than any static '100-push ups and blah blah every day!' I'm doing this because A, I think people learn faster by actually getting real-life experience, and B, it makes for a far more interesting story. In this way, I'll have the team learn some tricks on the way, which they will put into use in the various 'unofficial missions' which will construct Kakashi's training. I'm going to make all of the characters flawed but lovable psyches much as they are portrayed in the manga (except Sakura will actually be a character as opposed to a wallflower). Naruto is still a knucklehead, but he plays up his stupidity for a laugh, also his being a jinchuuriki will be a secret from everyone. You will see him and Sasuke talk about it this chapter. You will find everything in this fic. Another side note, the difference between ninja ranks is going to be much larger in this fic than is depicted in the anime and manga.

Enjoy!

The First Battle

It was to screams that Naruto rose. The sound of Sakura's shriek ripped through him like a thousand shuriken, pierced his heart and wrenched him into a full-on sprint out of his tent and into the daylight. As soon as he left his tent his world went black. Then there was pain resonating everywhere in his head. Sound began to leak back into his silenced world. There was a shrill laugh, and there—there was Sakura's scream again. It was so pained, so hopeless.

"Looky what we have here," the voice elongated every vowel with a desire that made Naruto's skin crawl.

"Stop," Sakura cried. Naruto heard her choke on her words over glistening tears. This time, when the steel pipe connected with his forehead, he did not pass out. But it still hurt plenty. He could feel the blood running against his skin as it poured from the fresh cut. It was warm. The air smelled like sour wine, and his whole body was immobile under a weight he could not identify.

Then he saw Sakura. Her armor had been cut off at the shoulder straps, her nipples peaked out from where the majority of her black undershirt had been ripped from her skin. Her pale flesh juxtaposed harshly against the late morning heat. There were four of them, at least. 'Kumo,' Naruto thought, he could see their headbands. One was holding down her arms while another tore her legs apart.

Naruto saw Sasuke, bound completely and being beaten by a fifth Kumo nin. The enemy ninja was hitting Sasuke repeatedly with what Naruto realized in a moment of horror was their taichou's decapitated head.

Sakura was weeping now, all hope gone from her eyes. Naruto did not look away as they pulled her pants to her ankles. Nor did he look away as they took turns raping her, a few feet from where he lay. Her would never forget the sound of her sorrow, then. Nor would he forget the laughter, the sickening way those Kumo nin thrust into with their hips.

When they were done, all six of them, they cut her throat. They moved to Sasuke next.

"Hey, this one's actually pretty cute too," one of them called out.

Naruto did not know a word for the despair he felt. The way dread festered in his gut and pulled at his very heart until he was sure it would collapse; and as hopeless began to overcome him, a secondary feeling emerged. Rage—from the center of his navel. He would stop them. He would make them pay for what they did to Sakura-chan. He would break his bindings, and then he would claw out their eyes and tear their throats from their bodies with his teeth. He would gorge on their corpses and dance in their raining blood, pulling from the carnal essence of his being Naruto screamed with rage and the whole world turned white.

Everything was gone. No Sakura. No Sasuke. No Taichou. No Kumo Nin. No sunlight or shadow. Nothing.

A hard slap rose Naruto from the dream. Violet eyes shot open, and hands reached up impossibly fast to wrap around Kakashi's throat.

"Calm yourself, Naruto."

Naruto stared blankly at his taichou for a few seconds, then blinked. His eyes faded back to their natural blue, and he relaxed his hand from around his sensei's throat. Then he rushed past the ANBU officer, out of his tent, more out of instinct than as a planned action.

He froze when he saw his teammates. Sasuke was leaning against a tree, next to him Sakura was sitting, her knees brought up to her chest. He could smell the fear on them all the way across the campsite. Sakura's eyes were red-rimmed and the inchoate signs of a breakdown were already showing in the way her pupils seemed to ebb between dilating and constricting. And even though Sasuke seemed calm he could see the violent twitch in the boy's fingers, so very close to his kunai holster. They saw it too.

They had all had the same nightmare, Naruto reasoned. But how? How could they have all experienced the same horrific dream (but even as the thought formed in his head, he knew; he knew the man—no, the monster—responsible for the psychological torture).

"I hope you've all learned a valuable lesson from this ordeal." The masked man had risen from Naruto's tent and was now standing behind him in the center of the small campsite. When had Naruto moved to his teammates' side?

"You," Naruto spat, with all the vehemence and hate he could muster he declared, "you hurt Sakura-chan."

"That's right, the lesson here is quite sim—"

"I'll fucking kill you!" Naruto charged at the masked man with more speed than he knew he possessed. He closed the distance between the two in seconds, his kunai in hand and making a vicious arc towards the ANBU's throat.

Kakashi caught his cute little student's offending appendage by the wrist, then broke it with a swift movement.

Naruto didn't even flinch. He swung his back foot around in a powerful roundhouse kick, aimed to snap Kakashi's neck at the base. Kakashi just used his hold of Naruto's wrist to throw him back against the tree where his teammates watched, still too shocked from the whole ordeal to move. Naruto paused to look down at his wrist, bent back at an unnatural angle, before charging once again at the object of his anger.

This time Kakashi was not so kind. His fist flashed and landed a solid blow on the boy's nose before the genin could even react. Three more blows landed before Naruto even processed that he was being hit. Then another five blows landed with harsh precision—jaw, chin, kidney, ribs, solar plexus—before he could even raise a defense. Kakashi lept back, distancing himself from the truculent child. After a count of three, 3, 2, 1; Naruto fell to the ground, completely wiped out and writhing in pain. Adrenaline leaving his system he regressed to the fragile child he felt after experiencing Kakashi's brutal genjutsu.

"Why?" He pleaded. Sakura hadn't moved from her spot, her arms wrapped tightly around her knees. Sasuke just stared at his fallen teammate with eyes roiled by emotions he had promised himself he wouldn't feel.

"You must always have a watch. What you experienced is exactly what will happen should you be caught without a watch in enemy territory. It could happen even within the boundaries of Konoha. Always have a sentry. This is your first lesson."

"You could have just told us, you sick Fuck!" Naruto spat, still furious.

"There is no warning on the battlefield. Consider yourselves fortunate that was just an illusion." 'Because that memory was real,' Kakashi thought bitterly, remembering things from his days in the Black Ops that he would much rather have forgotten, 'this mask really brings everything back.'

Kakashi set Naruto's broken wrist and wrapped the wound so that the bone would heal correctly, the boy never once meeting his gaze. Kakashi wondered if he had been too harsh with his genin too early into their trip, 'Oh well,' he thought. 'It was a lesson they had to learn sometime.'

"Stand at attention, Team Maggot!" Kakashi ordered. He was slightly impressed when Sakura rose and faced him, eyes still unwilling to commit to his face though. Sasuke stood rigidly, obviously shaken by the whole experience. Actually, he seemed more shaken than Kakashi would have expected of the stoic boy. 'Maybe I touched on a hidden fear of his…' he mused.

"You have 10 minutes to pack up camp, then we leave."

None of the genin moved. They stared blankly ahead; still trying to compute what had just taken place.

"Go!" The words snapped them from whatever state had captured their wandering thoughts and they sprung into action. Sakura vomited up her supper, but immediately went back to packing up her tent.

"Always have a sentry." Kakashi called out to his cute genin as they worked like the good kids they were. Sakura flinched, Naruto growled, Sasuke's eyes glassed over. Kakashi thought back to a conversation with the Hokage that had taken place just before they left. He knew what was haunting Sasuke, though he would say nothing of it for now.

"Sakura-chan, are you okay?" Naruto asked, his tent long since folded into his pack, he moved to help her finish folding hers.

She flinched away from him. Naruto could see from this close that her whole body was shaking, and her eyes were unnaturally wet. The wind turned, catching several of Sakura's stray locks, and Naruto could suddenly smell the urine running down her leg.

"I'll kill him." Sakura returned to her work, ignoring the blonde's promise. Arms still quivering with the weight of the mental trauma. "That bastard, I'm going to kill him."

"Naruto, stop."

"But, Sakura-chan," Naruto protested, "don't yo—"

"Dobe, leave her be." Sasuke said. He had just finished packing up his own tent and was standing in front of the masked ANBU officer.

"But—"

"No 'buts', you're not equipped to help her deal with this."

"That doesn't mean I can't try!"

Naruto turned to Sakura for confirmation only to be stopped in his tracks. Silent tears were pouring from her eyes as she stuffed her folded tent into her pack. Her whole body was trembling and Naruto could feel his heart breaking at the sight.

She zipped up her bag and walked past a dumbstruck Naruto, joining Sasuke and Kakashi.

"Let's go," she croaked.

Naruto was frozen for a moment. Then he nodded once and followed his teammates. The images from the genjutsu cycling through his mind; over and over he saw them, absently he checked his forehead for blood, there was none. The bones in his wrist cried out with the contact, but he ignored the pain. He had known much worse growing up on the squalid streets of Konoha as a child, before the old man had found him and put him in that apartment.

They walked in silence back through the city major. The streets seemed so much more alive now than they had just two days prior. So alive and so distant from the three genin, who had since taken life, watched the violation of their teammates, and experienced the demon of a sensei who would do all but kill them—it seemed—to make a point. Always have a sentry.

At the gates to the city, Kakashi silently handed a scroll the guards on duty, who looked it over once, then nodded them through.

Naruto looked up and saw on the high walls of the city, a squad of masked ANBU watching them leave. Then he saw another squad appear next to them, then another, until the entire wall seemed to be filled to the brim with the Black Ops soldiers.

"Woah," he let out. His teammates turned to look at the spectacle. It must have been the majority of the ANBU forces, an entire platoon from the look of it, watching them depart from the high walls of the city that they called home.

Kakashi turned to see what the commotion was. His years out of the ops had turned him soft, he swore as he felt a smile tug at the corners of his lips. 'Those sentimental fools,' he thought fondly as he turned his back on the village for one final time. He knew they wouldn't back, and if they did—somehow—make it back to Konoha alive, it wouldn't be for a very, very long time. Behind them, the ANBU regiment—in perfect unison—raised two fingers to the sky; a salute to the fallen.

Sakura would break out into sobs every few minutes, remembering the mental assault she had suffered that morning. It was midday and kilometers outside of the city before she finally managed to calm the convulsions in the pit of her stomach and the tears that inexorably followed them.

It had been too real. The feel of their rough fabric as it chafed the inside of her bare thighs. The grass she clutched at with her fingers was prickly on one face and smooth on the other. And the terror. It was so real, it was too real. Genjutsu cannot be created from nothing, the ANBU officer had to know exactly what she felt, he had to have experienced it in order for her to feel it so viscerally. And that thought terrified her most of all.

At some point on their journey out of the city Sakura had realized that the genjutsu she had witnessed was a memory. Their taichou's memory. The thought replenished her once-emptied tear ducts and her snivelling renewed with a nascent fervor. Her teammates flanked her, walking in step as they had been yesterday when rope had held them together—now their union of footfalls was a form of silent support.

The extra weight of her new flak jacket didn't bother Sakura nearly as much as it had the previous days. She wondered with a detached fascination whether to attribute this phenomenon to her current state of despair, or if her body was actually acclimating to the weight. The straps scratched at her bare shoulders, digging into soft flesh with every step.

The only sound in the clearing was the dull thump of their footsteps, unmasked in the middle of day, in the middle of the road, between two major cities—there was no need to conceal their presence here. So they trudged onwards to a chorus of closed mouths and heavy feet. In front of them Kakashi was reading his favorite orange book, occupied with convincing himself that he had done the right thing. If they broke now—from just that, there was no way they would complete this mission. Team Maggot had to complete their mission.

"Where are we going?" Naruto asked, curiosity finally winning over the animosity he still harbored for the masked man. 'That demon,' Naruto thought.

"Oi, Taichou!"

"Oi!"

"Oi, Taichou! Where are we going?!"

"Hm?"

"I said, where are we going?!"

"Oh, well why didn't you just say so?" Kakashi was flashing his trademark 'one-eye-smile', not that anyone could see it behind the Inu mask he wore. He had perfected this game over a lifetime of Gai's 'friendship'. That friendship had, in all likelihood, saved his life many times, though. Too many times, Kakashi had come home from a mission ready to die, the Black Ops had a way of sucking out your will to live—when you saw those things every day (the kind of things he would send these children to see), the little bit of normalcy, the ebullience that seemed to radiate from Gai's green spandex; sometimes Kakashi would admit that the levity Gai brought to their 'challenges' saved him.

"—CHOU, TAICHOU. ANYONE HOME, TAICHOU! TA—oww. Damn teme, that one really hurt!"

"Then shut up."

"I just wanna know where we're going! You do too, asshole."

"Hn."

Naruto growled at the cocky prick. "Maybe I need to teach you a lesson in manners, huh?!"

"Try it, dobe." Sasuke arched an eyebrow.

They were face to face now, glaring daggers at eachother. Sakura could swear that she saw a lightning bolt form between their gaze. Part of her wanted to stop her quarrelling teammates and chastise them for being so... childish. But another part of her—the larger, more fragile part of her—was glad to have some sense of normality renewed. She giggled, only it came out as a cross between a snivel and cough.

"Otafuku Gai," Kakashi said, still walking a few feet in front of them.

"How much longer until we get there?" Naruto asked immediately. "Is it far?"

Kakashi likened Naruto to the mythical Hydra; once one head was cut, two more would grow to take its place. Kakashi shuddered at the thought and returned to his true saviour: Icha Icha Paradise. 'May the Earth-Mother have mercy on me,' he thought. He never subscribed to their fanatical belief system, but the Patron's of the Earth-Mother had the best sayings of any religion Kakashi had ever encountered in his travels. And Kakashi was nothing if not an extensive traveller (and some might claim mass-murderer as well—but he considered that just another part of the job).

Once Naruto realized he wasn't going to get answer he gave up, and the group travelled in a companionable silence for a while. Surprisingly, it was Sasuke who broke that silence.

"Why do you do that?"

"Mmm. Me? Whaddya mean?"

"That. Play the fool."

"Are you calling me an idiot, you bastard?"

"That's exactly what I mean."

"I'll kick your pampered ass!" Naruto put on a show of flexing his muscles and snarling at the stoic Uchiha.

"Naruto." Sasuke's eyes were dead serious. The expression made Naruto fumble, unsure of how to respond.

"I dunno what you mean." He said, an even mixture of nervous and resigned.

"It's just us here, Naruto. There's no one's affections for you to win."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Naruto growled, his voice seething.

"We're your teammates now, Naruto. We accept you however you are. We don't have a choice really," Sasuke added as an afterthought.

Naruto was taken aback for a second, his demeanor sedating back into neutral territory. Then a light flashed in his eyes and he took the offensive, once again bellicose.

"You're no different Uchiha," he spat.

"You don't have to pretend to be some idiot. We acknowledge you."

"You! Don't you talk to me about pretending, as if you're on some high horse. You can't even lie to yourself properly!" Naruto's eyes seemed colder now, more weary. "You claim to be an avenger, that your entire existence is devoted to some bottomless hate.

But that's a lie. A. Big. Fat. Lie. You can't even bring yourself to hate him. At the end of the day, you're just a scared little girl who can't handle the fact that her brother left her behind. That's the problem isn't it? That's what drives you to train so hard, you don't hate him. You hate yourself for being unworthy of him. You hate yourself because he left you here to rot."

Sakura saw it now. The bond between the two enigmas she called teammates. That almost inhuman cunning piercing through Naruto's blue eyes, the cold fury, the self-loathing in Sasuke's clenched fist. The whole world went still in that moment.

As if time itself gave pause to their dispute. Even their sensei had stopped, still facing towards the road, but unmoving. The birds, trapped in mid-flap, feathers rustling against the now intangible breeze—breast muscles straining with the exertion of flight. She could see a leaf, stuck in its descent to earth, pulled loose from its perch by some unknowable force. It floated at her eye level several yards away, the mid afternoon sun catching its spine. There was no wind, not even a trickle—the hands of her ancestors, as the priest had taught her in her youth—before she had attended the academy. Sakura saw the whole world frozen.

Then there was fire.

Rather than jumping away, Naruto charged into it, forearms up to protect his face as he charged into the last Uchiha. Sasuke didn't have time to react and was tackled to the ground, he fluidly wrapped his legs around the blonde's waist, just at the base of his ribs, and squeezed with all his might. Naruto began pounding on Sasuke's face, trying to break through the brooding boy's clumsy guard. The pressure on his ribs was brutal, and he only managed to land a few hits in before he saw the Uchiha form the tiger seal and he went into full panic mode.

Somehow he managed to kawarimi just before the flames would have engulfed his torso. He wasn't fast enough to avoid the heat wave that flashed over him, and he almost passed out immediately from the shock. His skin was blistering in places, and his skin flushed, sweating, and very, very hot. He didn't think about it for more than a second, though, before charging back into the fray.

With a primal roar Naruto swung at the now standing Uchiha. Sasuke stepped under and into the blow, dodging with practiced ease and landing himself well under Naruto's guard. He landed an uppercut to the blonde's solar plexus before jumping back to prevent a retaliatory strike. The blow landed on the boy's reinforced flack jacket and seemed to hurt Sasuke's hand just as much as it did Naruto. Just as Sasuke has expected, Naruto blindly strike out with a left hook, which if connected, could have knocked Sasuke out cold. They circled each other carefully for a few seconds, both panting heavily under the added stress of adrenaline and that morning's events.

Then they were at it again. Naruto rushing in with a wild haymaker, just to pivot at the last second and lunge for Sasuke's exposed front leg. Sasuke reacted on instinct, bringing the knee of his front leg up to catch Naruto square in the nose. The blonde was forced back, off balanced, and Sasuke tried to capitalize on the moment with a powerful right straight only to be caught in his jaw by a roundhouse kick that Naruto somehow managed to pull off before his balance failed completely and he fell to the ground. Sasuke wasted no time in charging after the boy, eager to catch Naruto on the ground where he could pummel the boy freely. He jumped on top of the boy, but somehow Naruto managed to get his guard up in time, catching Sasuke's leg with his own and rolling through with Sasuke's momentum. The resulting scramble created enough space for both boys to stand, breathing even more ragged now. They circled each other once again, waiting for some unknown signal to renew the combat.

Naruto moved first. Or he tried to. Sakura's fist caught him in the back of the head and he crumpled like paper to the ground. Sasuke didn't wait for even a second before jumping after the downed genin. Only his momentum was also stopped by a powerful kick to his stomach. He looked up to see Sakura's furious visage.

"Would you two knock it out for fuck's sake!?" Sakura yelled. She seemed about to say more, when suddenly her legs were swept out from under her by the village's go to prankster. She hit the ground smoothly, using the momentum to roll onto her side and land a sweeping hook to Naruto's temple. Or it would have hit his temple had he not been ducking a kick Sasuke had sent his way. Sakura's fist collided with the ground and pain shot through her arm like a bolt of lightning. Then Sasuke's foot, which had aiming for Naruto's face, collided with her forehead and she was sent sprawling backwards.

Both boys stopped as she rose to her feet. Her legs trembling with the effort, she mustered up every ounce of menace she had in her body. "You're going to pay for that."

The sky was pink and red by the time the melee settled. Naruto's wrist was broken in at least three more places, Sakura was pretty sure she had pulled a muscle in her thigh—which was now spasming uncontrollably—but she was too exhausted to move an inch (let alone get up and stretch it), Sasuke was on his hands and knees, taking turns between dry heaving and gasping for oxygen. Their collective desperate gulps for fresh air rang like music to Kakashi's ears as he sat on a nearby tree, reading his novel of choice, making sure his cute little genin didn't murder each other.

Naruto lay on his back, staring into the abysm of Sasuke's onyx eyes as his rival and best friend attempted to right the lack of oxygen in his blood.

"You're right," he gasped. "I was scared, I'm sorry."

"Hn," Sasuke managed. He noticed the blonde's gaze, still intently regarding his every movement. Sasuke knew what Naruto wanted him to say, but he wouldn't—even if the boy was right. Even if the boy knew things about him that he wasn't ready to admit to anyone yet.

"Well, Sasuke-chan?" Naruto managed to form some semblance of a smile, his breathing starting to regularize.

'How the fuck does he have so much stamina?'

"I'll take first watch. You two get some sleep."

Sakura's gentle snoring was his only response, Naruto's eyes followed him all the way to the base of the tree where their taichou was resting, where Sasuke stood and began his shift as first sentry.

Eventually, the blonde's eyes closed, and he too succumbed to the night, now celebrating overhead. Once he was sure both of his teammates were asleep, Sasuke turned to the masked man. "Do you know too?"

Usually beautiful, tonight Sasuke couldn't shake the feeling that each of the stars overhead was a falling blade. Inescapable, the night sky.

"Oh yes, I know everything about you, Sasuke-chan."