The other genin had all departed with their new instructors. My team alone was left to wait in the classroom. Kakashi was very late. Naruto booby-trapped the door in frustration. The trap was as basic as its maker, nothing but a blackboard eraser held up by the narrow opening of the sliding door. It might well have failed even with the most unsuspecting targets: if the target simply took it slow, the eraser would have dropped harmlessly onto the ground before the target walked through the doorway.

With Kakashi, the trap worked perfectly, powdering the man's hair with a small cloud of chalk dust. Naruto laughed like a moron. Sakura, I could tell, wanted to join him, but was too much of a goody-two-shoes. I was a bit more perceptive, so I didn't find the situation quite so humorous.

Kakashi calmly dusted his hair, then stroked his chin like a proper philosopher. "Hmm, how can I say this?" he wondered out loud. His voice was low, smooth, and soft, the voice of a man used to carrying a big stick. His lower face was hidden by a black cloth mask, and he had his forehead protector pulled down over his left eye, leaving not much room for expression. To compensate, he closed his right eye in a show of good humor. He looked like a real nice guy, nice enough to kill someone while smiling like an angel.

Kakashi proceeded with his philosophizing. "My first impression is…" Here he paused for dramatic effect. "I don't like you guys."

Sakura and Naruto took his words at face value, and were devastated. I watched Kakashi carefully. I sported aviators with mirrored lenses, which allowed me to stare with impunity. Kakashi seemed to derive a good deal of satisfaction from the reaction of the other genin. I wouldn't have been surprised if the guy turned out to be a sadist.

Kakashi led the four of us to the rooftop, where he sat us down for introductions. It had me puzzled for a moment, before I remembered that a ninja like that probably had enough bad memories to traumatize his grandkids. In this case, memories involving indoor spaces, perhaps. I was starting to figure out my new instructor, and I did not like what I was seeing.

The introductions were a disgrace. Words are almost always cheap. With Kakashi, they were often entirely worthless. The man wanted us to share our "likes, dislikes, dreams for the future, and stuff like that." Sakura and Naruto asked him to go first, so Kakashi brushed them off like absolute scrubs. Apparently he had "no desire" to talk about his preferences, no dreams for the future, and "lots of hobbies." It was a most informative introduction.

My teammates were rightfully displeased, but Naruto had an abysmal attention span, and loved the spotlight, so with the slightest prompting from Kakashi, the kid was babbling about his undying love for ramen, and exactly how he liked his ramen, and how much he hated waiting for ramen to cook. He then got a serious glint in his eyes, adjusted his forehead protector like he was about to do something meaningful, and loudly proclaimed his dream of becoming Hokage in order to be acknowledged by the village. Unfortunately, this preposterous proclamation was nothing new to me. In fact, I would argue that making it was easily Naruto's number one hobby.

Sakura's introductions were not much better. The one thing we learned for sure was that she disliked Naruto. The rest was all an unintelligible mess of stuttering and mumbling, but anyone with a lick of sense would have inferred that Sakura's likes, hobbies, and dreams for the future were all terribly romantic, and had an awful lot to do with little ol' me. Again, I considered this a most unfortunate condition for the girl, and I sincerely hoped that her general intelligence, of which I never had any doubt, would soon enough disabuse her of such ridiculous fancies.

At last, it was my turn. Two and a half pairs of eyes stared at me expectantly. My mind raced. I didn't want to expose myself as my teammates had, but neither did I wish to follow Kakashi's tight-lipped example. I gave the matter careful consideration. Thanks to my training, the deliberations lasted only an instant for the others.

My mind made up, I arranged my face in a dumb smile, and began, in an even voice and friendly tone. "My name is Uchiha Sasuke. I guess I prefer to win, and not to lose. My hobby is the consumption of carbonated beverages. My dream is to retire early and find a tropical island where I can lounge and sip champagne all day long." I rounded off the charade by blinking like an airhead.

My performance was a resounding success. Sakura swooned. Kakashi looked at me with some suspicion, and a whole lot of pity. Naruto screamed and whined about how "boring" and "stupid" I was. As usual, he paid me all the compliments a guy could wish for, and as usual, I politely ignored him.

Kakashi eventually interrupted Naruto with some bad news: apparently, there was to be another test before we could really become genin, a test with a failure rate of 66%. The test was to be held the next morning, at the team training ground. We were to show up fully equipped and on empty stomachs. Kakashi explained all this before distributing redundant handouts with the exact same information, as many esteemed educationists and educrats do, even to this day.

I returned home with the clean, cold efficiency of the Body Flicker Jutsu. I wasn't one for casual strolling. I could never get enough time to do all I wanted, and I didn't think the village was much to look at, either.

The house across the street had been converted into a laboratory a couple years back. I would have liked a bigger workspace, but security was paramount. The lab was protected by my very best sealwork. Even after several updates, the whole thing still required quite a bit of chakra to maintain.

To forcefully bypass the system was a tall order. To do so stealthily was, as far as I could tell, physically impossible. My clones did not look up from their work, such was their trust in the security. I sat down on the floor, my back to a corner of the room, and set about rebooting the clones. The then subject of research was the direct creation of pure elements through Earth Release, and progress was slow and painstaking, but steady. The memory transfer was still a horrendous experience. Afterward, I tried to drown my headache in a glass of soda pop, and reflected on the day's events, and the morrow's trial.

Hatake Kakashi would be a difficult one, I decided, but with the work I had done over the last five years, he wasn't anything that I couldn't handle.