Hey guys. Hope you enjoyed the first chapter. I'm on a roll, so I'm going to pump as much out these as I can. I'm a college student, so I'm trying to finish this over this winter break. The characters are listed as Naruto U, Sasuke U, Sakura H, Lee R, because these are the main heroes, who'll each undergo major character arcs to reach the endpoint I have in mind. The rest of the characters are largely static, with some arcs of focus, though they'll all be present throughout the story wherever they should be. That's all for now.
He stared at the brats in front of him and sighed to himself. They didn't really interest him all that much and he wished he was allowed to teach his sensei's son. But it didn't matter, he had a job to do, and he'd do it. Even if the loudmouth brat yelling at him for being late was annoying. He smiled and said, "Now why don't you introduce yourself. Tell all of us about you, like your likes/dislikes, your hobbies, and dreams for the future."
The loudmouth replied, "Why don't you go first?". He sighed to himself again. There was always one brat who said that. Why couldn't they just preserve his air of mystery? It's not like he was going to tell them crap anyway. After giving his typical non-answer, he motioned for the loudmouth to continue.
The brat said, "My name is Kiba Inuzuka. I like beef and I hate people who try to act cool. My hobby is taking walks with Akamaru. My goal is to become hokage and kick ass."
Wow another hokage-wannnabe, how original. He ignored the glare on the second line and said, "Ok Pinkie, you're next."
She glared at him and spat out, "My name is Sakura Haruno. My hobby is playing trivia games. I like umeboshi and anmitsu and dislike people who don't take being a shinobi seriously. My goal is to be a shinobi like the Yellow Flash."
Interesting. It was rare to see a civilian-born with such ambition after attending the Academy. Most of those dreams were lost and replaced with an acceptance of mediocrity. Though his interest was dampened by the fact that she'd blushed and hesitated when stating her likes. Probably a crush, which was a pain to deal with.
"You're next Akimichi."
The kid said, "I'm Choji Akimichi. I like Korean BBQ and junk food. I dislike inedible food. My hobby is buying and sharing snacks. My goal is to be a good shinobi who can protect his friends and family."
Well, wasn't that just adorable. He'd found his favorite to deal with.
"Well let's move past that crap. Have any of you figured out what the team role is?"
The brats just looked stumped as though they'd never considered it.
He sighed. Then with a lightly menacing grin, he said, "A rogue ninja eliminator of course."
"Think about it. The Inuzuka are incredibly skilled at tracking but need a scent to track in the first place. A scent is readily available for all shinobi of the village as they're stored carefully and updated regularly in a special storage area, and so inuzuka are useful when tracking rogue shinobi or shinobi who've been captured from the village. The presence of the Akimichi indicates that a certain amount of power is needed, along with a shinobi who can buy time, both things an Akimichi excels at. Pinkie can sense, can learn genjutsu well, and can be molded freely to suit the team due to the lack of a clan. And training you is me, a versatile shinobi who can teach each of you in your fields and then some."
There were a couple of "Oh's" and "That makes sense". Now that this part was done, it was time to kick things into gear.
"Now that that's done, we're going to have a training exercise tomorrow, so come prepared."
The expected chorus of "What kind of exercise?" came, and he grinned to himself. Man, he loved this part.
Their sensei was toying with them.
At the start of the exercise, Kiba had gone straight to using his Human Beast Clone and went for a combo attack with a scream of "Beast Human Body Technique Secret Art: Fang Passing Fang". Kakashi dodged one of them and kicked the other while ducking underneath while they were still spinning, hard enough that the spinning body sailed straight to the pond, which was frankly a ridiculous show of strength. The other copy of the body barked and chased after its partner. So, he knew which one was Kiba from the beginning. Then when Choji tried a sneak attack with his human boulder jutsu from above, Kakashi just cast a simple genjutsu to make him ram into a tree and then buried him underground, taking him out of the fight. She had managed to come up with a plan, but she needed a distraction. Luckily for her, Kiba managed to recover and charged right back at kakashi. She took advantage of the distraction to charge at kakashi's back with two clones. kakashi quickly noticed, and after dispatching kiba again with a simple wind jutsu to the side, he turned to face her. He quickly identified the real one after dispelling the genjutsu she used to fake the shadows and dust from footsteps she used and swung his fist quickly towards her. But just before it reached, a log appeared out of thin air right before his face.
The substitution jutsu was one of those jutsu everyone uses, but no one bothered to understand. The part that most didn't understand was this: Where do the logs come from? After some research, Sakura found that there existed a dimension which could be easily accessed by almost everyone through the use of some chakra. Said dimension was filled with countless trees that were ever present and couldn't be used up as new ones would grow at an incredible pace. A part of the trunk from any of the trees could be easily summoned and used for the substitution jutsu. Once she figured this out, she worked on casting the summoning part at high speeds. Her hand seal speed was already best in the class.
Kakashi quickly knocked the log out of the way and continued to attack the 'Sakura' in the middle. But in the instant his vision had been blocked, she swapped with her clone on the left, and cast a quick genjutsu to remove her shadow and give her clone a fake shadow. She was closing in on the bells, she could do it. And then Kakashi disappeared. She heard him say "Nice try", felt his leg slam into her back hit the ground, and blanked out.
When she woke up, she blinked twice, and found herself tied to posts along with kiba and choji. And Kakashi was...
She gasped in horror. The bastard was eating their lunches. And he seemed to be particularly relishing her mom's specially made dango. She wanted to punch him in his smug little face. Choji was taking it particularly hard and seemed to be wavering between crying out for mercy and rage quitting.
Kakashi stopped eating and said, "Well then, my cute little genin. Since you failed to figure out the point of this test, let me tell you. It was teamwork. I wanted to see if you would be willing to cooperate and help eac other. But you didn't. Each of you went at it alone, and when choji was trapped, the other two didn't even try to help him. Sakura, your little plan was impressive. But if you had worked with kiba and/or choji and shared it, it might have worked."
Kiba then yelled out, "you said that the leftover member would go without his lunch!". Sakura nodded in agreement. Kakashi followed up with, " Yes. One of you would have had to suffer regardless. But you are teammates, who'll regularly have to put your lives in each other's hands. Not eating lunch for one day seems like a minor sacrifice compared to what you'll have to do for each other later on. And even in that scenario, you could have snuck the third member some of your food."
He then pointed to the memorial stone and said, "Both my teammates have their names written here. One of them taught me this; 'Those who break the rules are trash, but those who abandon their companions are worse than trash.' This is the lesson I want you guys to learn."
She went silent. Kiba and choji couldn't speak either. How were they supposed to react to that story? As each of them were thinking about it, Kakashi smiled and said, " On that note, I'll end this training exercise here. We'll meet here tomorrow, at the same time. It's time for me to beat you chickies into shape."
Well, they were more interesting than he'd expected at least. The Kiba was talented, incredibly fast for his age, and had a good nose to precisely attack while rotating. He was hotheaded, but that could be fixed. A prime example of the inuzuka clan's might. Choji was interesting for the opposite reason. He was uncharacteristically soft for an akimichi, though food seemed to be a strong trigger given the glares he got while eating his lunch. And Sakura was the most interesting one. Being able to go as far as she had was incredible. This team might just be fun after all.
A/N
Well, that's that. hope you enjoyed it. Next chapter, we'll look at Team 8.
Kakashi Hatake
Ninjutsu: 5
Taijutsu: 4
Genjutsu: 4
Intelligence: 4.5
Strength: 3.5
Speed: 4
Stamina: 3
Hand Seals: 5
Total: 33
Notes: Wields the sharingan, with incredible skill, even better than many of the uchihas themselves used to. Chidori/Raikiri is regarded as one of the most powerful lightning-style jutsu ever. Still has room for growth. Widely considered as best hokage candidate after the sannin.
