Shizune nearly had a heart attack.
The morning had started like always: wake up, bathroom routine, dress, and go to make breakfast for her, Tsunade-hime, and little Naruto-chan. Despite the fact that he was already twelve she'd always call him that in her mind. Not that he minded if she used it in public, really, he was absolutely shameless.
Anyway, Shizune had just entered the kitchen when she received one of the biggest shocks in her life.
Tsunade-sama, her mentor was already there. Awake, dressed for the day, and sipping a cup of tea, Tsunade-sama waved lazily at her.
Shizune checked the clock to make sure she hadn't overslept. She hadn't. The dark haired kunoichi stared at her master, whose eyebrow started to twitch irritably.
"Is there a problem?"
"No, nothing..." Shizune continued to stare for a couple more seconds before blurting out her question, "What are you doing up so early, Tsunade-sama? Not that you can't, on the contrary it's great to see you awake before noon but..."
"Breathe Shizune, breathe. I just thought that I'd rather be ready to make a quick retreat when the shit hits the fan." Her apprentice looked at her quizzically while starting to make breakfast.
As she passed near Tsunade, however, her nose caught a suspiciously familiar scent coming from the blonde's supposed cup of tea.
"Tsunade-sama, that isn't tea, is it?"
"No, it isn't."
"It's sake, right?"
"Want some?"
"How can you be drinking first thing in the morning?" Shizune asked with a frown.
The Legendary medic didn't bat an eyelash and answered calmly, "That's why I am the teacher and you're the pupil, Shizune. You'll find out soon enough, though."
Just then a yell came from another room of the house, followed by a half-naked boy who threw himself into the kitchen with tears in his eyes.
"How could you, mom? My clothes, my precious orange clothes."
"I've left you new ones in your closet." Tsunade answered while sipping her sake. "And what are those?"
Naruto looked down at his only piece of clothing, a pair of pink boxers decorated with red hearts and yellow bears.
"Jiraiya's gift. He said something about girls loving men who don't fear to show a tender side... but that's not it. My clothes, they're not orange anymore! You took away my vitamin C! I need my Orange, it's my Loyalty!"
The blond looked at him puzzled for a second before deciding that she didn't care about what nonsense he was spouting, "You can always go around naked if you don't like your new clothes..."
"NO!"
Mother and son turned towards Shizune, who had shouted out.
"I'm not letting you do that! Firstly it's indecent, and secondly last time you did something like that and Kurenai-san decided to tell me about it; she found me when I was hanging out with Anko! No matter what, I'm not risking to be dragged into another of their insult matches!" Naruto blinked, then turned to look at his mother.
"Don't you think Shizu-nee-chan seems stressed?"
"You're right and apparently I was right about an apprentice of Jiraiya not being good for that kind of thing."
"I hate you two." the dark haired medic uttered dejectedly with a red face.
In the end Naruto was more or less forced to put on his new clothes while Tsunade explained that they were for appearances sake. It was her answer to Asuma's declared intention to nominate his team for the upcoming chuunin exams, and she clearly stated she wouldn't let him participate as a patch of orange.
"But it's like I'm going to a funeral! They're too dark!"
Tsunade rolled her eyes at him, "Well, the chuunin exams usually bring many funerals as results.
Besides, dark suits you."
Naruto's new clothes consisted in a pair of black pants and a grey shirt. The boy was currently glaring at his grey and black ninja sandals, when Tsunade decided to take out her ace and hope he'll let this whole matter drop.
"Look, I've also taken a jacket in the same style of your old one, and its bright red. You like bright red, right?"
He looked at her suspiciously, "Red?"
"Yeah, Shizune thought it'd go well with your eyes. Here." Tsunade threw the jacket at him and continued, "Look Naruto, it's just something to match the exam's atmosphere; if you went with bright orange clothes you wouldn't look threatening. I know that it could be good, but the exam's aim is to show your strength, flashy moves, and all that shit that usually good shinobi avoid doing."
The boy still had a half-frown, then grinned with a mischief gleaming in his eyes and with cockiness in his voice he addressed his mother, "Wanna bet, I know of something orange that will make them all piss their pants in fright?"
Tsunade froze and glanced at him with perfectly concealed worry. If she hadn't been with her for all those years, Shizune would have missed it.
"Naruto, be good please."
The Slug Sannin didn't add anything else on the matter, only that she had work to do at the hospital before she made a run for it. Naruto left soon after to meet with his team.
While he walked to their designed meeting spot, he couldn't help but keep looking thoughtfully at his new clothes.
It wasn't that they were bad, but the orange, the loyalty... itwasn't there anymore. Of course, walking while staring at his plain boring and grey shirt eventually resulted in him walking right into someone.
"Hey little shit, why don't you look where you're going?"
The boy Naruto had bumped into was noticeably taller and probably around fifteen years old. He wore dark blue pants, a sleeveless beige shirt, and a sword, the handle of which was sticking out from the top of his left shoulder.
He had a Kumo hitai-ate around his forehead as well, which kept his blond hair out of the way.
Two other shinobi with the same headband were behind him, one with light brown hair and a scar on his right cheek, the other a kunoichi with long blond hair kept in a ponytail and a mild frown directed at the one who had grabbed Naruto by his shirt.
The adopted Senju glanced at the hand that was holding his shirt, and mumbled his reply with the same passion Shikamaru used to watch the clouds.
"I sense hostility..."
The eye of the Kumo shinobi holding him twitched in annoyance at his calm detachment.
"Naruto!" a yell came from around the corner "Where the hell are you, stupid nutcase?"
The red-eyed boy correctly identified the voice as his charming blond teammate, who in fact reached him soon after, dragging Shikamaru with her. She, however, stopped dead at the sight of the foreign ninja, one of which was still gripping Naruto's new grey shirt.
"So troublesome..."
The young Nara straightened a bit and observed with analyzing eyes the potential threat while stifling a yawn. Ino, however, was for a more direct approach, and addressed the Kumo shinobi with a stern voice that tried to hide her unease at the situation.
"Hey, what do you think you're doing to our teammate? Let him go!"
The blond shinobi put a hand to the hilt of his sword and looked at her menacingly before scoffing, "And why should I listen to a little girl like you, hn? Mind your own business, you'll live longer."
"As she said" Shikamaru intervened, "he's our teammate. And you really are stupid if you think you can get away with attacking a Konoha shinobi in our own village."
Gritting his teeth, the older boy and was about to unsheathe his sword when his female companion spoke up.
"Just let him go Shiro, you're making a scene for nothing. Besides the pineapple-head is right, we're guest here and you'll have to behave, or do you want to go back home and explain why we were expelled from the village before the start of the exams?"
The now named Shiro released his hold on Naruto, who oddly enough had decided to take a line from his friend and had been staring at the clouds calmly for the entirety of the exchange.
As soon as he was free, though, he fixed his gaze on the beautiful girl that had kept in line the sword wielding genin, and grinned widely at her. A second later he was directly in front of her, leaving all present ninja to wonder when he moved, took her hand in his and offered to give her a tour of the village.
"My dear, there's so much to see, I'd be delighted to be your guide."
Shikamaru didn't need to be a genius to notice the two male teammates of the blond take a full step back and tensing their muscles as if preparing to flee. It was a pretty natural reaction, kunoichi were scary that way, and he would have dismissed it, if not for the genuine fear and worry he could perceive coming from them.
It seemed a bit extreme, even for a 'flee-the-troublesome-violent-enraged-female' standard protocol.
The young woman's answer, though, while not exactly polite didn't involve castration or bashing, being a simple dry "No." as she slapped away Naruto's hands from hers. She then turned and left without another word.
Naruto, however, didn't have the time to get depressed as another blond girl, this time his own teammate, grabbed him by the neck of his new shirt and started shacking him roughly.
"You stupid, useless, lazy-ass! What the hell were you thinking? As if Konohamaru and Sakura with those Sand guys weren't enough, you go and nearly get yourself cut up by those Cloud nins! And what's up with that blond bimbo, hn?"
While Ino kept going on about everything that came to her mind, Shikamaru discreetly took a couple of steps back before the troublesome girl decided to give a piece of her mind to him too.
In his office Minato Namikaze, fourth Hokage of Konoha, was going through all the registration forms of the participants of the chuunin exams.
His eyes skimmed through the names of foreign genin and their native villages, but despite Kumo's unexpected choice of sending a good number of teams, the new village of Sound entering the competition, and the Kazekage sending his own children, he always found himself going back to the three rookie teams of Konoha.
Only months out of the academy and they were already trying to raise their rank. They hadn't even fully hit puberty yet.
Minato sighed, scratching the back of his head and looked out of the window at the village he had sworn to protect with his life. He hated having boys and girls so young participate in the exams.
There was no need for them to when the ninja force of Konoha had been growing steadily since the last war, and was currently the strongest out of all the great hidden villages, matching even Iwa's numbers for the first time since its foundation.
"A Photo of Shizune and Tsunade in bikinis for your thoughts."
Startled the fourth Hokage turned to see his old sensei sitting on his desk while staring at him.
"Do they know you have it?" The blond asked with a hint of curiosity.
Jiraiya snorted before answering, "I'm still alive, so no, they don't. Now, are you going to tell me why you've got such a sad face? Don't tell me Shizune-chan already dumped you."
Minato rolled his eyes while silently debating if it even deserved an answer or not. Observing Jiraiya out of the corner of his eyes, however, the blond could see that his old sensei had no intention of leaving any time soon.
He choose to make things easier and just answer the sannin's question before the pervert started one of his embarrassing rants.
"I was just thinking about the exams. Kakashi has entered his team. Asuma and Kurenai did too."
"Oh. They're all rookies, right? Impressive." The comment earned Jiraiya a glare.
"As impressive as it could be, I don't like it. They're so young, just out of the academy, they shouldn't have to bear such responsibilities or take such risks when we have plenty of manpower already!"
The white haired man couldn't help but raise an eyebrow at the sudden outburst, "Why are you letting them participate, then? You're the Hokage, you can hold them back if you want."
Minato flinched and avoided eye contact frowning at his desk.
"Don't you remember what happened the last time I prevented a boy from getting a higher rank despite him being ready only because I thought he was too young?"
Jiraiya took on an unusually stern expression when answering, "Nothing happened. There's no indication that Itachi snapped because of that."
"He was really a genius, you know. He could have been an ANBU captain before his peers even graduated, he was ready for the responsibilities, but I held him back because I thought it would have been unnecessary to push him so much so early. Mikoto and Fugaku seemed somewhat happy to give him a couple more years before letting him join ANBU too..."
"Did you hear what I said?" Jiraiya interrupted him, "There's no proof that Itachi snapped out of frustration for being held back."
Minato's eyes remained unfocused for a couple of moments longer before he shook himself out of his reverie and fixed his gaze on his teacher.
"What did you come here for, anyway, sensei?"
The Sannin sent a mild glare at him for being ignored but answered nonetheless, "My spies have all sent warnings about the exams. One of the teams from Kumo in particular should have members a bit too powerful, but I couldn't find out which one so far. They're being careful; probably suspect they're being watched."
"Do you think they'll attempt to kidnap a Hyuuga? Damn, the heiress herself will compete in the exam, such bad timing..." the Hokage grumbled.
"Aside from them I've received word about the Kazekage having numerous meetings lately, but whoever he's meeting with it's someone who knows how to cover their trail. It could be nothing, but I always prefer to err on the side of caution."
"I'd like to say I trust him not to break our treaties, but between their daimyo giving us missions that should be theirs and the Kazekage's personal ambition it seemed to be only a question of time."
Jiraiya spared him a pitying glance before adding the last bit of intelligence he had.
"And that new village, Oto, I've looked for some info on them, but all I could find is that their leader had spoken with the daimyo of Rice personally and convinced him to allow the village's foundation. That happened two years ago."
Minato looked up at his old sensei with an uneasy expression because it wasn't often that the toad hermit came back with so little to report on a village.
"Yeah I know," Jiraiya interrupted him before the young Hokage could say anything, "I know this isn't much, but this self proclaimed Otokage is really a master in hiding and no one could even tell me where this new ninja village is." A frown marred Minato's face as he thought over this last piece of info.
Hiding a village wasn't easy, yeah the great ninja villages were called 'hidden', but everyone could tell you where they were. Only some of the littlest ones managed to effectively remain off of the charts like Waterfall, and that was usually because of their smaller numbers.
All in all it wasn't really something to worry about, but over the years he had taken up some of his teacher's habits; not the perverted ones, but the habit of basing his decisions upon the saying 'better safe than sorry' was one of them, certainly.
"I'll have someone keeping an eye on the Sound genins too."
Jiraiya nodded, glad that his one-time pupil came to the same decision he himself would have suggested.
He was however surprised when the blond brought up another topic in their discussion.
"Since you're here sensei, I wanted to ask you something about young Naruto. Or rather, I'd like you to read this; it's a report about that mission the rookies went on together, this is the copy for Naruto's personal files specifically, and at the bottom you can find some notes Asuma and Kakashi added."
The white haired legend took the folder and started to read it, skipping through most of it and stared intensely at the final notes. Asuma's went over the talk they had about killing and his intention to have the boy undertake an IQ test. Kakashi's were more unsettling, detailing the feeling he had about the boy's killing intent and his suspects about a possible bloodline limit ability of sorts.
Even with only one eye that brat was too damn observant. Jiraiya pretended to be still reading while thinking about how to go about it: on one hand he had a duty towards the village, and as much as he didn't like it he should tell that Naruto probably had such an ability; but on the other, he didn't want to betray Tsunade's trust, nor had he any desire to make Naruto become a political tool for the council, which as a wielder of an unknown bloodline would be inevitable.
Sighing, he just decided to tell Minato. He may be Hokage, but he also knew when to report something to the council and when to keep his mouth shut. And honestly speaking, he trusted Minato to make the right choice, whatever it'd be.
"Tsunade-sama really has such good taste."
If he could have summed up the energy to, Naruto would have rolled his eyes. Once Ino had finished yelling about his supposed irresponsibility in handling the Kumo-nin, which took way too long in both his and Shikamaru's opinions, she had asked him about his new clothes.
Apparently Ino immediately supported Tsunade's choice to go with neutral colors like black and grey, and yes, the red jacket was great with his eyes.
Naruto idly wondered how much he could make her say or do using the admiration the blond had for his mother, but squashed that thought immediately after.
His Kaa-san had told him to 'try to restrict himself to manipulating only enemies, and please, please not play mental games with the Uchiha'; since his mind was already traumatized enough as it was. A pity, he really liked messing with others' heads. It was fun.
Finally Ino's ramblings came to a stop, and looking in front of them the red-eyed boy realized the reason was that they reached the academy which was where they'd been told to go for the chuunin exams.
Shikamaru yawned, and Naruto couldn't help doing the same. It was infectious. Ino often complained she'd probably catch their laziness disease, but so far they'd been unlucky and she'd remained the troublesome girl she's always been.
Thankfully right now she was too worried about the exam to hit them, and just grabbed their arms to drag them into the building. But while Shikamaru decided to start walking on his own, even if he was dragging his feet, Naruto was feeling really sleepy.
Thus some of the passing chuunin were greeted by the sight of one Yamanaka Ino forcefully dragging a Senju Naruto down the corridor and up the stairs by a leg. A loud 'bonk' marked every step they went up, that being Naruto's head hitting said step.
The whole affair had the side effect of Ino being so focused on her task that she flat out missed the trap set up on the second floor. She was too busy counting the steps, swearing at him for behaving like a three-years old, and generally whining at the physical exertion.
Shikamaru arrived at the third floor soon after them just happy that Ino had forgot what his family did and how it could have saved her the trouble of manually dragging their teammate. The orange haired boy looked at him then at Ino.
"Who is that guy? And who are you, blondie? What's this place? Why are we here? Is there a party? Can I have a strawberry ice-cream with chocolate chips and whipped cream on top?"
The girl turned towards her other teammate with an eyebrow twitching. She really hated being on her team sometimes.
"Three floors, Ino." Shikamaru answered her silent question, "uneven number of hits on his head."
Well, some other times being on her team wasn't so bad. Smiling sweetly, Ino helped Naruto stand up, only to then use his head to open the door of classroom 301, nearly breaking it. The door, not the head.
"Aww... That hurt..."
"Shut up." The bossy mind walker ignored his complains and grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, forcing him to walk to a corner of the room where they sat down, with Shikamaru following while silently and discretely analyzing the competition.
Really, they couldn't have done it better if they'd planned it. Ino and Naruto were acting like a decoy, attracting attention to themselves without really putting up that big of a scene as to make the other teams antagonize them, and no one even glanced at the lazy boy who could then observe everyone calmly and rationally.
There was the fact that they were giving the image of being a weak and inexperienced team, which was dangerous as well as partially true, but being underestimated could turn out to be a good thing for them.
Trying to think about what would be asked of them for the exam and how to overcome it, Shikamaru sat with his teammates and waited.