Here I have Chapter Six for you guys. Brining us to the end of the Academy Arc.

As always, leave a comment and/or kudos if you enjoy this.

"In youth the days are short and the years are long. In old age the years are short and the days long." - Pope Paul VI

It's one day, a couple years later, when a new student joins our class.

Hajime-sensei is still our main instructor, I guess they keep the same instructor for each class of the Academy, with alternating ones for specialty subjects.

Over the years our class has moved around between different rooms of the Academy building. Currently we are at the end of the hall on the second floor. I'm currently looking out the window, with a great view of the Hokage monument. For some reason I'm just now noticing that they put the Third's face up there, it didn't have that when I was a first year. Wish I could have watched it being built. Had they used some type of earth jutsu to carve the stone? Or did they have actual sculptors out there on the side carving it out? This is really making my civil engineering brain go all nerdy. I'm going to have to pay attention when Minato gets his face carved up there.

I'm knocked out of my musings when a loud voice yells into the room.

"Hello, everybody! It's nice to meet all of you!"

I look around to find what high-pitched and hyper-active kid could have possibly made that sound, because I've never heard anyone in our class scream like that. The first thing I spot is bright red hair.

Seeing the hair brings memories to my eyes. It also reminds me that while I've formed some relationships with many characters from the Naruto series and seeing them as actual people, it doesn't stop the events that happen outside my little bubble.

"This is a new student who will be joining us," Hajime-sensei says. "Her name is Uzumaki Kushina. She comes from Uzushiogakure, it might seem odd and I'm sure you all have many questions, but for now just be hospitable and accepting of her."

I hear some mutterings from students around the room. Then, Kushina yells out, "I am going to be the first female Hokage!"

Like any group of kids when they hear someone yell out they have a nearly impossible dream, they laugh. Hard.

I'll admit I may have giggled some too, if only because the scene quite frankly was a little funny. And if I didn't I'd probably get second hand embarrassment from watching everything play out.

"Her hair makes her look like a tomato," someone up front says.

And of course, this is the part where Minato stands up. "I want everyone in the village to acknowledge me and become a great Hokage too!"

It's weird, this is probably one of the first canon scenes I have witnessed, and I doubt it will be the last, especially seeing as how we will graduate within the next year.

Xx?xXx?xXx?xX

The entire class is standing around the sparring ring as Hajime-sensei calls us up in pairs to fight each other. Usually I go up against one of three people: Fugaku, Minato, or Kenji. In our earlier years of the Academy I often won each session, which wasn't saying much compared to how much martial arts knowledge I possessed. Now, the sparring sessions leave me with a quite satisfied feeling and I actually feel physically exhausted. As opposed to just saying I'm tired, which I often do to get out of the extra training sessions Minato wants to hold.

"First up today, Kushina and Mikoto," Hajime-sensei calls out.

This instantly peaks the attention of everyone in the class. I'm not sure if this is the best or the worst pairing the instructors could have put Kushina in on her first day in the class. It's no secret that Mikoto is the top kunoichi. So I can only see this ending up as Kushina getting her face in the dirt or Kushina somehow becoming top of the class on her first day.

It's actually pretty surprising how well Kushina is able to hold her own against Mikoto. They obviously have some type of advanced taijutsu they teach their kids in Uzu. Kushina would probably do pretty well if placed against one of the civilian born kids. But against an Uchiha?

Kushina lands some pretty well aimed kicks and punches. Mikoto will probably end up with some nice bruises come tomorrow. But then Mikoto quickly counterattacks. A faint to the left and sweep of Kushina's left foot had Mikoto pinning Kushina to the ground, her fist mere centimeters away from Kushina's face.

"Winner: Uchiha Mikoto," Hajime-sensei calls out as the two girls stand up, bow to each other and leave the circle.

In the next round, I find myself facing Fugaku. Shit, he's the worst. I already know that no matter what we end up doing this afternoon I'm going to end up sleeping through it.

I come to stand on the opposite side of the sparring ring and face Fugaku. As always, his face has a blank expression, though an aura of confidence radiates off of him. Hajime-sensei motions for us to get in the ready stance and then says "Begin."

Fugaku is quick to start, running up and throwing a right hook to my head. I quickly duck out of the way and swing my left leg under his feet in an attempt to sweep him. He jumps above my legs and comes down with an axe kick aimed at my head. Without thinking I roll over my shoulders and we find both of us are facing each other once again, breathing heavily.

Before he has time to move I start with a skip front roundhouse kick with my left leg followed quickly by a back hook kick. The first kick lands harshly in his midsection, but he is able to block the second by grabbing my foot inches away from his face. Without losing my momentum I flip my hips over my right leg and follow up with another roundhouse kick to his face. It doesn't connect, but in order to dodge Fugaku is forced to let go of my right leg.

Once I land on the ground, I realize Fugaku is behind me as he wraps his arms around my midsection. Before he is able to get a strong grip around me, I slide my right leg behind him and sweep him onto his backside against the ground. I quickly pin his arms to his chest and use my body to pin his legs to the ground. Before I land an elbow strike to his face, Hajime-sensei calls time, announcing me as the winner.

We stand up and face each other, making the sign of reconciliation. Fugaku looks pissed, as he always does when I win, probably more so this time since this was one of our shorter bouts. He then turns around and promptly walks away, sulking most likely.

Returning to my little group of friends, I feel Kenji jump on top of my shoulders. "So it looks like you've won again. What is this 47 to 42 now?"

"Something like that," I say. "What? Have you been keeping track?"

"Maybe," he says. "And just to let you know, against Minato you're 39 to 43."

He's then called away as Hajime-sensei calls him to go against Minato today. He lets out a long sigh. "And I'm 12 to 53 against Minatio, just great."

Xx?xXx?xXx?xX

Over the next six months, Kushina slowly starts to melt into our friend group. She also becomes friends with Mikoto, and tries to make it her mission to make us become friends.

I don't tell her that Mikoto is the primary reason there is tension between us. I personally have no problem with her anymore, she eventually realized that I am pretty much equal to Fugaku in skill level when I put effort into things and got over her Uchiha superiority complex (Fugaku not so much), but there is still some tension. But she still mainly has a problem with me. It might not be helped by the fact that I find it so easy and fun to set her off.

Minato has also grown pretty close to Kushina. Something I honestly find cute as he blushes whenever I see him talking to her. I swear, if my involvement in this world changes their relationship I'd probably never forgive myself.

And next week we have our graduation test.

The actual test is much more detailed than what it was in the Naruto storyline. And broken down into three parts: a sparring portion, a written portion, and a ninjutsu portion.

The sparring portion consists of three five minute rounds each against a different person. You don't necessarily have to win any of the matches, but you are graded on the skills and techniques you show.

The written portion consists of a 50 question exam covering varying subjects that were taught in the Academy to include: history, shinobi strategies and theory, the basic government structure of Konoha, geography, basic survival skills, math, and science based questions. To this day Minato is still bugging me to tutor him on these subjects.

The ninjutsu portion consists of exactly what they showed in the Naruto series. Perform three jutsus: kawarimi, henge, and bunshin. It seems that portion was specifically designed so civilian-born children would have just as much chance of passing as clan-born children, at least on paper. Over the years I have managed to learn and almost perfect the shadow possession jutsu, and I imagine all the other clan-born kids know some jutsus that weren't taught in class.

Each portion of the final exam was worth fifty points. To pass each portion you need to score at least thirty points each. Overall you need a total of at least 105 points to pass. So, even if you score the minimums in each portion, you won't necessarily pass the exam. This is going to put a slight dent in my calculations for the minimum I need to do to graduate.

Too bad they aren't telling us how they score the taijutsu portion, but I guess that would be too easy.

"Are you actually going to try today? Or are you just going to do the bare minimum again?" Mikoto asks me once I sit down at my desk the morning of the exam.

"What's that supposed to mean?" I scowl back at her.

She scowls at me and crosses her arms. If she wasn't so small I'd probably take her seriously, but even as a ten year old, she is still by far one of the smallest kids in the class. "The fact you haven't failed out amazes me. I honestly have no idea why the instructors think you're so smart, I'm pretty sure I have scored higher on just about any written test we've had."

When she finishes her mini rant, I slump down in my seat. "I honestly have no idea," I say around a yawn. "It would also have saved me a lot of headache if they would pay more attention to you than me." And like any good Nara, I let a little 'troublesome' slip under my breath at the end.

She only huffs, and turns around and sits in her seat in front of me. It seems Kushina's plans haven't made any success so far.

"Kotaro," I hear Chojiro say as he taps my shoulder. "Do you think you're ready?"

I look over at him. He looks pretty nervous. He still hasn't really gotten over his confidence problem after all these years, which may be bad when he becomes a shinobi. Maybe I've been too nice to him?

"Yeah, I'm ready," I say as I face him. "You're ready too right?"

He closes in on himself and begins to mumble. "I know that I know everything but.. I just-"

"You got this Chojiro, you're going to pass," I say as I roughly pat his shoulder.

Before he is able to again say he isn't ready, Hajime-sensei walks into the classroom and we all find our seats. Chojiro, as always, sits next to me. I can feel him nervously squirming as Hajime-sensei goes over (for the fifth time in the past week) what would be happening today.

For the first two hours is the written exam. As the test papers are being passed out I again mumble on Chojiro's shoulder. "Just relax, you got this, I spent the last four weeks reteaching you everything, afterall."

The test isn't all that challenging honestly. It's long and time consuming, but the actual questions are pretty easy. And I'm not talking about easy to me, I remember harder questions on our first year exams. This is probably what they do to allow the little child prodigies to graduate so young. Have them take super easy written exams so it doesn't hold back their taijutsu and ninjutsu prowess.

Makes me wonder why exactly they wanted me to graduate early when all I really did was show some advanced knowledge in math and a little bit of skills in taijutsu and ninjutsu. I mean I guess at the time I was better than most of the others in those two categories, but most of the class were on par with my skill level after a couple years.

It takes me fifteen minutes to finish the exam, technically ten, but at first I left five questions blank and went back to answer them because I needed something to occupy myself with for the next hour and fifty minutes. I have no idea why, but for some reason I feel my nerves acting up and can't fall asleep and take a nap like I usually do.

I fill the remainder of the exam time staring holes in the ceiling and at the back of Mikoto's head. Does the Academy staff notice that large stain on the ceiling, have they checked it for water damage? It's definitely water damage. I've seen many buildings over the years fail after people have been looking at those stains everyday for years and not doing anything about it. Also, did Mikoto know that her pigtails are slightly asymmetrical? If I pointed that out she'd probably kick me.

After what felt like forever, Hajime-sensei finally calls for the end of the exam. Instead of telling us to pass our papers to the front, he simply tells us to leave them on our desks and walk downstairs to the outside sparring ring. Man, it looks like we aren't even getting a break.

On our way downstairs, I find Chojiro and ask him, "How do you think you did on the written portion?"

"Oh, it was actually easier than I thought it was," he says after a relaxed sigh.

"See, I told you you would be fine," I say with a smile.

The sparring portion goes much like how I expected it to go. We were each paired up for two rounds, each with a different person. I ended up being put against Fugaku and Minato. Beat Fugaku yet again, lost to Minato yet again.

Then that left us with the final portion: ninjutsu.

It starts after a short lunch break, most of which Minato and I spend calming Chojiro's nerves. Afterwards, we're all again sitting in our seats in the classroom as Hajime-sensei explains to us how this will work. When our names are called, we go to the empty classroom across the hall, perform the jutsu in front of the three instructors, and are told if we graduate or not.

He makes it sound very simple, as if everyone will pass. As if our entire future and everything we've been working towards the last six years aren't riding on the line. Well, maybe that's more dependent on if we pass the test our prospective jounin-sensei will give us in a couple days.

That's something I've come to learn from Shikaku's stories (which he probably wasn't supposed to tell me but he let a couple details slip one day and I kept pressing him for more answers so…). After you graduate, your class is divided into groups of three. Each group is given a test by a prospective Jounin. A lot of the time these Jounin are voluntold into taking a genin team, so they will make their test harder than it's supposed to be in order to purposely fail the team and not have to take the job. Sometimes if you get lucky, you'll get a Jounin that gives you a test that is appropriate for a new genin's skill level.

If you're one of the lucky ones and pass the test, you go through what happened in the naruto series with the Rookie 9 and all that. If you fail, you get put into the genin-corps. It's not technically a career ender, but it does take a lot longer to become a Chunin, go into one of the speciality fields, etc. Honestly from what I was told about it, the genin-corps route sounds a lot more similar to the career and training progression that the military in my Last Life followed.

There has to be some playing around the instructors go through when making the teams though. It can't be just coincidence that all of the clan heirs and main characters in the Naruto series ended up getting a Jounin that passed their Genin.

Chojiro is the first person that is called up to take the ninjutsu portion. I feel both bad and relieved that he is the first. It can't be good for the boy's nerves, and he was looking very nervous all throughout lunch, even though I told him he shouldn't be worried about passing. He won both of his sparring matches earlier. But it also means that he will be the first person to get everything over with.

He seems to take the longest time though, and he is quickly followed by Kenji, Minato, Fugaku, Reika, Tsume, a couple others, and then I am finally called up. As I walk to the front of the room I make eye contact with a few other remaining kids. At least I'm not the last person.

I walk into the classroom across the hall, and it's set up in exactly the opposite way of ours. Three Academy instructors, one being Hajime-sensei, are sitting in the front row of seats, and Hajime-sensei motions me to stand in front of them.

"Ah, we finally get to Nara Kotaro," he says along with a long breath. "So have you finally decided you wanted to graduate?"

I narrow my eyes because, really man, are all these instructors still buthurt that I didn't choose to graduate early? It's like no one questioned anything in the entire history of Konoha. Which given Konoha has only been around thirty something years or so, still seems highly unlikely.

"I guess so," I say with a roll of my eyes. "What do I have to do to get on with it?"

I see the instructor sitting in the middle of the three winces at my wording. The one on the right looks like he wants to murder me. On the left, Hajime-sensei looks like he just wants to be done with me and never see me again. What would he do if I purposely failed this part of the test? He'd probably have to deal with me for another year right? I'm half tempted to do it just so I can watch him burn down the world.

"Why don't you start by showing us a henge?" the middle instructor says, breaking the silence.

"Henge as who?" I ask, this is the decision that always stops me in class. I'm always indecisive on just who I should transform into.

"Anyone you want to," Hajime-sensei says annoyed.

"Ah, okay." I say. Who would be the easiest person to transform into? Probably my brother.

I easily form the hand signs for the henge and go through with the jutsu, making the perfect representation of my brother.

"Seriously?" I hear Hajime-sensei yell. "Your brother? All you changed was your height and your haircut!"

"Hey! You said I could use anyone," I point out to him, still holding onto the transformation.

"Okay, okay, the boy can do a henge," the middle instructor says. If I knew him, I'd be tempted to say that the man also just wanted to get this over with. "Can you show us a bunshin, Nara-san?"

Ah a bunshin. When I was first taught this jutsu I actually did have a little trouble with it. That was until I realized that it was a completely different jutsu than the shadow clones Naruto used. The simple bunshin they teach in the Academy is basically a henge outside your body. It's honestly not used that often in battle. Unless you get really creative or advanced with it, most of the time the bunshins can barely move.

But just like the henge, I easily form the hand signs and perform the jutsu. All the instructors just nod at my attempt and don't say anything. In my Last Life I probably would have been nervous about this response, but now I just assume it's because I did everything correctly and they have nothing to say.

"Okay now for the last one," Hajime-sensei says as he raises a kunai in his hand "Just like the drill we did in class. When I throw this at your feet, do a simple kawarimi and substitute yourself with that chair over there," he instructs, pointing at the chair located by the window.

I nod to him to show I'm ready and he throws the kunai at me. Using chakra I easily perform the jutsu, grabbing hold of the chair and pulling it into the spot I was standing as I jump out of the way.

"Excellent," Hajime-sensei says as he motions me to walk back to the middle of the room.

"Do you want to show us any other jutsus you might know to get some extra points?" one of the test examiners, the one who wanted to murder me earlier, asks.

"No," I say around a yawn.

"Seriously?" Hajime-sensei asks. "I saw you do one of those shadow possession techniques on Shinji last week when he was bugging you. You can't show us that?"

"Yeah, I can show it to you," I say. "But you didn't ask that. You asked if I wanted to show it to you. Which I don't."

He lets out a long annoyed breath, I think I hear him mutter something out like 'i can't wait until I don't have to deal with this brat anymore,' before he grudgingly tells me that I passed the exam and can take a headband and leave to the hallway to join the others.

Taking it from the table I walk out to the hallway. I'm immediately jumped by Chojiro.

"Kotaro! You passed! That's great!" he says as he shakes me by my shoulders.

Once he finally relents for a second, I see that he too has a headband currently tied around his forehead. "You did too Chojiro? I told you you would pass!"

"Yeah, I guess you're right," he says, then takes my headband from my hands. "Here let me tie this for you," he says as he ties it around my forehead, putting the knot at the back of my head.

The weight it puts against my forehead is heavier than I expected. I lift my eyes up to try to look at my forehead, even though I obviously can't see the headband, I do see some of the light reflecting off the metal.

I don't know how I feel about it honestly. I've never worn any type of uniform that required something being tied around my forehead. Sure I have worn helmets and patrol caps a ton, but they felt really different to this. Now that I've worn this for a couple minutes, it feels a bit too big and heavy as well. Just like when I was twelve years old joining the Civil Air Patrol again, being given a uniform that's two sizes too big. I suppose I'll eventually grow into it though.

The leaf symbol and what it means isn't lost on me either. It shows I'm a full-fledged Konoha shinobi. It's weird how simple the process was. Go to the Academy for a couple years, take a graduation exam, then you'll be assigned to a team and sent out on missions. There was no oath to be taken or anything though, no fully written out statement on what unites Konoha shinobi and what we're supposed to be protecting.

Sure you didn't technically need to take the oath to wear a US military uniform. There were organizations like JROTC, the Civil Air Patrol, and others, but those people weren't actually in the military.

It's no wonder there were so many rogue shinobi.

"How's it feel?" Chojiro asks.

"Heavy," I say as I move my head up and down, I'm pretty sure the headband is sliding along my forehead as I do so. I think I'll find somewhere else to tie it to me.

"Are you and Shikaku doing anything to celebrate tonight?" Chojiro asks.

"I don't know, we never talked about it," I say. After all, he and his team were about to test for the Chunin exams next month, they've been pretty busy prepping for it. But they've been doing this until pretty late hours every night. "Why? Do you want to do something?"

"Mmm, my mom was going to make a celebration BBQ tonight. I already invited Minato and Kushina, you can come as well," Chojiro says.

"Sure," I nod. "I can be sure to go. It will be good to hang out one last time before we're split up."

Xx?xXx?xXx?xX

"Yo Kotaro, are you gonna wake up?" Shikaku says as he pokes my shoulder.

I startle awake in my bed. Shit, did I oversleep again? For the amount of naps I take during the day you would think that I could wake up on time, but no. Sleeping in and being late to work is my achilles heel.

"Am I late?" I ask, turning my head just enough for one eye to see Shikaku.

"You got five minutes to leave before you'll be late. Unless you want to run to your last day," he says with a playful smirk on his lips. He knows how much I hate running.

I glare at him as I throw my pillow at his face. "You act like I wasn't the one waking you up everyday your last year."

He easily catches the pillow and laughs at me. "Yeah, yeah, just don't be late this one last time. Or I might actually get in trouble with my sensei."

"Don't you have anywhere to be?" I ask as I start getting dressed. Sage green cargo pants, brown T-shirt and a gray short sleeved sweatshirt. Not that different from what I wore to work everyday in my Last Life., if you don't count the hoodie. At least I don't have to blouse boots here. Although the ninja sandals that everyone wears here (and I mean freaking everyone, even little babies) suck. And I mean I'd rather wear the worst pair of issued steel toe boots I had rather than these things. Whose idea was it to leave your toes forever exposed? Not to mention next to no cushioning. Once I find any other form of shoes I can run and jump in, I'll very quickly switch.

"Here," Shikaku says once I pull the sweatshirt over my head. I look down and he's holding one of those shuriken pouches out to me.

"What's this?" I ask as I take the item from him.

"Your first shuriken pouch," Shikaku says as he flops down on the bed I just got up from. "Think of it as a graduation gift. Figured it would be good that you don't have to go and buy your first one."

"We have to buy these things?" I ask.

"Of course you do," Shikaku says like it is obvious. "What, did you think shuriken and kunai were just given to us?"

Would it be wrong if I said yes? I mean, I never had to pay for bullets in my Last Life. Hell, everything from note books to multi-tools to Chem gear was given to us. I must have slept through that class at the Academy.

At my lack of answer and probably shocked expression on my face, Shikaku laughs."Don't worry. At least Uncle Shiro makes us stuff for the Nara clan. He sells it to us for way cheaper than he does to people outside the clan."

"Oh."

"Now come on, if you take any longer you really might be late for your last day," Shikaku says as he stands up and pushes me out of my bedroom.

"Wait, I haven't eaten breakfast yet!"

"It's your last day, you're only going to be sitting around mostly, you'll be fine," Shikaku says as he pushes me out of the house. Seriously, sending me to school without breakfast? If this was anywhere else this might have be considered child abuse.

Somehow I make it on time to the Academy. As I walk up to my seat, I see that Chojiro is already sitting in his spot next to mine.

"You look terrible," he says when he notices me.

"Slept in, missed breakfast," is all I say.

"Ah," Chojiro says. "Don't worry Kotaro, I have an extra big lunch today, you can have some of mine." Man, did I ever tell you how much I love Chojiro. He somehow always knows and always has what I need.

Just like Shikaku said, this morning is spent mostly sitting around. The Academy instructors give us final out processing and graduation briefs, spending a lot of time stressing "This is what it means now that you've graduated from the Academy," and "As a shinobi you'll be an image and symbol of Konoha…" that sort of thing.

What they said exactly, I have no idea, I sleep through most of it. I've lived through enough similar speeches before, once you hear three you've heard them all.

When they finally get around to announcing team assignments, Chojiro bumps my shoulder. "This is the part you want to hear," he whispers in my ear.

They're already on Team three by the time I realize what's going on, luckily I wasn't placed on any of the first teams.

"Team Six: Akimichi Chojiro, Uzumaki Kushina, Sarutobi Kenji." Oh, what's that?

"Team Seven: Namikaze Minato, Uchiha Mikoto, Nara Kotaro."

The one thing I wasn't expecting was to be placed on a team that didn't have Chojiro. I can tell by looking at his face that he has the same thought running through his mind. Sure there isn't a Yamanaka in our class, but I figured they would at least keep two-third of the trio.

And being on a team with Minato? The kid is cool and all, don't get me wrong, but his sensei is supposed to be Jiraiya. Jiraiya is probably the one person I don't want as my jounin-sensei. Let's be honest here, that man is weird. As in a 'I want to spend the minimum time possible around him, weird.'

After team assignments are announced, Hajime-sensei leaves the classroom after telling us to wait for our new jounin-senseis to pick us up. The various teams make their way to each other and start conversing. Luckily for me, Minato is already sitting right next to me, so we only wait for Mikoto to make her way over to us.

When she does, when doesn't exactly… look too happy.

"Hey Mikoto-chan, How are you today?" I ask as I sit up from the position of my head laying on my crossed arms.

She huffs as she answers. "Why do I have to be on a team with you two losers?"

Which okay… that's a little harsh, isn't it? Minato ranked at the top of the class, above Fugaku even. And myself… apparently I broke the typical Nara rank even though I was trying not to do anything.

But that makes me wonder even more on why the three of us were put on a team together. Didn't team seven typically consist of the top and bottom ranked students of the class. The Academy instructors never gave us the official class ranking list, only told us the top three students, those being Minato, Fugaku, and Mikoto, but given the stunt I pulled with the headmaster a few years ago, I doubt I was anywhere near the bottom.

"Now come one, Mikoto-san, do you need to be so harsh, we're going to be on the same team now," Minato says, trying to ease Mikoto.

Ah Minato, ever the class peacekeeper, it makes me wonder how he becomes the one-man army capable of taking out thousands of enemy shinobi. I guess I'll have a front row seat now.

Mikoto's response is cut short by the front door of the classroom opening, followed by a large man walking in. He's wearing the standard Konoha jounin uniform right now, but the long bushy gray hair flowing down his back is unmistakable.

Oh great, what I've been dreading since I first heard the team assignments.

"Team Seven! Looks like I'm going to be your new sensei!" He screams into the room full of kids. "The three of you on my team, meet me on the roof in five minutes!"

Looking at Mikoto as the three of us walk to the door of the classroom, I can tell she doesn't look too happy with Jiraiya either.