Rules for being Naruto's sensei


The Sandaime Hokage sat in his office, smoking his pipe over the pile of paperwork. He silently prayed that a stray spark from the tobacco would jump at it and start a small fire, but deep down he knew that it was not a solution. That was the downside of running a military dictatorship: he had to put his stamp of approval on almost everything.

A knock on the doors broke him from his musing.

"Enter."

Kakashi entered the room, carrying a piece of paper.

"Hokage-Sama," he greeted.

"Kakashi-Kun, good to see you. I'm guessing you have some questions about the new team you're being assigned?"

"Yes… Iruka-san caught me shortly before I was supposed to go meet them and handed me a… peculiar list." Saying that, Kakashi walked over to the desk and put the piece of paper in front of the Hokage.

"Ah. Good. I was afraid he'd forget."

"Sir… you know the list and what's on it?"

'RULES FOR TEACHING NARUTO' read the title.

"Have you read it? If you ask me, it is rather educational. And very important for you to memorize it."

"They haven't even passed the test yet." Kakashi tried to protest, but the Hokage only raised an eyebrow.

"Hatake-san, did I not already inform you that should the team fail, you will be taking Naruto under your personal tutelage? You know what he holds, but there is also the matter of his… other talents."

"Talents? Is this related to rule number sixteen?"

"Never leave Naruto unsupervised in close vicinity of sealing tools under any circumstances while within fallout distance of Konoha or Fire Capital. Yes." Hokage quoted.

"I know that seals can be dangerous, but surely he's not that bad? He's Uzumaki," he subtly hinted at Naruto's real parentage. That statement held little meaning for most, but both Hokage and Kakashi knew precisely what he meant. "With some basic tutelage, I'm sure he won't blow himself up."

"That's the thing. Ah. You weren't here when it happened." Hiruzen sighed and put his pipe down. "There is a reason why Naruto never has trouble getting instant Ramen at the very least. When Naruto was five, he somehow got his grabby little hands on an introductory book to sealing. It just happened to coincide with the time he started to get banned from stores for starting arguments."

Kakashi cringed. Naruto causing mayhem and getting permanently kicked out of a store was something of a theme. That boy had one dirty mouth on him when he wanted, probably due to the insults some braver villagers threw at him. And where his flat was located.

"Yes. Back then, there was only one store that sold instant Ramen. And the owner decided to refuse to sell anything to Naruto. The boy probably would've accepted, but the owner taunted him about the ramen and alluded a bit too much to his status as an orphan. So, in a stroke of petty, Naruto decided to prank the man in return."

"What did he do?" Kakashi felt that he didn't want to know that, but for the sake of his sanity, it would be beneficial to learn it right now.

"He sealed the man inside his own store. And then had no idea how to let him out."

"Surely Jiraiya-sama would've been able to unlock the seal?"

"Jiraiya-kun was indeed in the village at the time. I suspect he gifted Naruto the sealing book in the first place. That day, we discovered that Naruto has… unique approach to seals."

Kakashi waited for Hokage to explain with rising trepidation.

"Normally, if a seal has a problem, one searches for the source and resolves it. Naruto… patches the problem with another matrix. And every time a new problem appears, he fixes it with another seal on top of what he already made."

"That… that would surely compound until it was not manageable, right?"

"Yes, but actually no." Hokage groaned, feeling his age as he spoke. "There is a point where the issues are so fundamental that an additional seal is the solution."

"Did… how… what… He…" Kakashi felt dread grasp his throat.

"A simple storage scroll made by Naruto can double as a breacher tag if you just reconfigure it to close the flow." Breacher tag was a name for detonating a whole stack of exploding notes at once. They were usually utilized to break the walls of hidden villages.

"What happened with the merchant?"

"Jiraya was able to, after solid three months, defuse the sealing and let the man out. Naruto's seals have the additional upside of being either completely foolproof or volatile enough that even slight tampering can level a whole district."

"There must be some limit." Kakashi pointed out.

"Yes, chakra consumption to jumpstart such seals is enormous. Then again, it's nothing for someone who can create a thousand shadow clones. Even if twenty jonin were to die trying, they would fail to utilize even one of Naruto's seals."

"By the flames…"

"Danzo suggested we give Naruto a month's worth of sealing supplies and release him in the enemy territory. He would be able to cause more damage that way than if he released his tenant probably." Hiruzen sighed heavily. "It's crucial that he doesn't experiment with any more seals in the fallout distance of Konoha."

"Un-understood." Kakashi tripped over the word. He was by no means a seal master, but he knew some basics. Naruto apparently was both a savant and a total idiot when it came to seals. And that was to be his problem now.

-/\/-

Kakashi crawled into Hokage's office. Crawled.

"Was the test truly that terrible?" Hiruzen chuckled at hearing the silver-haired man groan in pain.

"I… made a tactical error…"

Flashback

Kakashi arrived at training ground seven only slightly late. His cute little genins were busying themselves. Naruto was reading the sealing book (luckily with no sealing tools in range), Sasuke was meditating, and Sakura was watching Sasuke meditate.

He quickly explained the test, waving the bells before their noses and taking a step back.

As predicted, Naruto was the first to charge him. He noted that the blond's taijutsu was mediocre at best and his clones lacked any coordination whatsoever. He quickly dispatched all of them and kicked Naruto into the nearby stream. More clones poured out, but he dispatched them all without trouble. The real Naruto tried to sneak behind him and take the bells, but Kakashi turned the tables on him and delivered the thousand years of death.

Sasuke dropped in seconds after. He tried to swipe the bells and engaged Kakashi in a ferocious Taijutsu battle. His style was much more refined, though it clearly still lacked something. Sasuke tried to swipe the bells but Kakashi sent him flying with a spin kick. For a second, he thought that the boy actually succeeded but both bells were still there.

Taking out Sakura was easier than stealing candy from a baby. Some babies in Konoha could fight back.

As the time was running out, he arrived back at the starting point. Then, it all went FUBAR.

Sasuke and Naruto walked out of the forest side by side.

"Oh? Came to try again?"

"Not quite." Sasuke smiled. It was extremely unnerving for some reason. Like a cat that just cornered the mouse that it has been chasing for a whole day. "Give us those bells. Or better yet, pass us. All of us."

"Yeah!" Naruto shouted, joined by Sakura who had only now arrived.

"Sasuke-kun, I've got what you've asked me for." She handed him a scroll with an Uchiha Armory stamp on it.

"Good. Now, Kakashi-sensei. Either you take us on as your genin, or this premium, high-quality sealing set will be given to Naruto. We still have enough time that he can make something."

All blood drained from Kakashi's face. "No. You don't understand."

"Oh well, I tried. Here you go Naruto."

"Yeah! Wait, you've got some sealing tools? Man, I've been searching for years but it seems they've stopped importing 'em some years ago."

Before Kakashi could stop him, Naruto created a hundred or so clones and they all unpacked the sealing tools.

The jonin sent several A-ranked Jutsu in succession to take them all out before they could blow everyone back to the warring clans' era, but by the time he finished the hand seals for the third one three clones managed to somehow make a seal that froze his fire jutsu. Literally. The Phoenix Sage Flower Jutsu fell to the ground as the fireball-shaped ice slowly melted.

"Hey! Wasn't the cooling seal only keep things inside cold?" one of the clones asked.

"Yeah. You moron! You wrote your part of the script upside down!" The second clone bonked the third one on the head.

That was, in no way, shape, or form how sealing should work. It literally broke the laws of the universe. But it seemed no one told Naruto that and the boy just rolled with it. Kakashi saw the seal in question. Part of it being upside down was the least of its problems.

"Ready! Aim! Fire!" four groups of clones finished the work at the same time and aimed the scrolls at Kakashi, who tried to dodge only to start getting sucked in four different directions. Worst of all, he could clearly feel the heat.

"Hey! Those should be exploding." The jonin was quickly learning that a clone complaining spelled imminent doom or headache.

"Ducks-for-brain! Those are explosion seals, not exploding seals." The one Kakashi assumed was the original Naruto groaned watching the groups. "They seal boom, not make boom!"

A round of ooohs echoed across the clearing.

Seal explosion. Normally, those do not work as vacuum cleaners, but Kakashi guessed Naruto had a problem with a trigger so just made it work until it burned out and made it directional. He shuddered, realizing that he was actually starting to understand the madness that was Naruto's sealing.

Or so he thought. The moment he stopped moving due to this revelation, the pull stopped. Then the seals finally fizzled and died out. Motion trigger. An explosion has to move, so motion triggered seals.

"Done!" The original proclaimed. He was holding a sheet of paper about eight times the size of exploding note. It held a complicated seal that seemed to spiral around and go on the margin quite a lot. "Witness my best creation yet. I call it My fire is stronger than yours so fuck you no jutsu!" He proclaimed and activated the seal the very instant.

At first, nothing happened. Naruto just kept pushing and pushing chakra into it. Kakashi threw a kunai at him, hoping to knock the boy out before he finished the activation sequence.

World became fire and the only thing that saved Kakashi was that he had the forethought to unveil his Sharingan when he tried to understand the seal better. He rolled away just in time. Naruto's scroll seemed to cause a constant explosion about the same size as a breacher tag, but two incomplete explosion seals (similar to the ones his clones made) absorbed the force of the explosion but not the heat. That resulted in a stream of superheated air that scorched everything in its path into ash. Kakashi tried to run and Naruto actually shifted, trying to hit him. He never regretted telling someone to come at him with the intent to kill as he did now. There would be no corpse left to identify.

When he leaped in the air, Naruto tried to cut him off. Kakashi forced himself back at the last second, but the entire front of his outfit was set on fire from just being too close to the pillar of flame. The blond tripped and fell on his back, sending the column of flames into the sky. In a flash of lightning, it started raining. The paper tore when Naruto tried to stand up, stopping the fire.

Kakashi's clothes stopped burning when the rain fell on him, making him realize that the only thing he wore now was the back half of his vest and his pants. The entire front was wide open and letting in the breeze. A henge later, he looked mostly okay.

The jonin tried to stand up, but he slipped on the mud and fell face-first into the ground while his ankle remained hooked to the root of a nearby tree.

"Uh… Kakashi-sensei? The bells, they… um… melted." Sakura was carefully holding a pile of hot goo that used to be the bells. She had to use an unfinished scroll to scoop it from the scorched ground.

"Hey! Now we can all pass!" Naruto casually scooped a bit of the goo, rolled it into a ball, and handed it to Sasuke. The Uchiha winced at the burning-hot metal but refused to show weakness. Naruto took another bit and made a ball for himself. "Now we all have the bells."

"You… pass." Kakashi groaned. "But I'm taking the sealing supplies."

"And just when I got it…"

-/\/-