Haruno Sakura, top kuniochi of her class and beloved member of Konoha, waited patiently for the her name to be called in the team selections. She admitted to a level of curiosity to the results. If they followed traditions, she- as top kunoichi- would be placed on a team with the top boy and the dead last. She was, however, a clanless nobody with no apparent future as a shinobi and putting her on a team with the last Uchiha and village jinchūriki (who she strongly suspected was the child of the fourth hokage, if her rough understanding of the events that night were correct) to be trained by sharingan-no-kakashi himself seemed like a waste. Kiba felt like the more logical choice.
She wasn't worried. Not really. She had stuck with her age group- rather than graduating out early when it was still an option pre-massacre- because it contained eight highly influential clan kids, leaving her free to take up the extra spot and guaranteeing a high quality jōnin sensei. All she'd had to do was rank second in her class (only behind the Uchiha, she wanted to avoid being in the orbit of that kid's entirely unhinged competitive streak for as long as possible), ahead of the other seventeen clanless nobodies. But, Sakura did harbour just a tiny sparkle of hope. Hatake Kakashi was a legend, getting to train under one of the most blood stained shinobi in Konoha was a dream, even with his rumoured eccentricities. Hence why she was sceptical.
"… team seven; Haruno Sakura, Uzumaki Naruto, and Uchiha Sasuke…"
On the other hand, perhaps they were expected her to be worthless and relegated to the team's medic-nin, hence leaving Hatake free to focus the entirety of his attentions on the more important members of the group.
Sakura smiled cheerfully at her teammates (received a dazed expression and a scowl in return), pulled out a book she'd packed just in case, and settled in for the long haul.
Sakura watched the eraser fall onto Hatake Kakashi's head with bemusement, utterly confused as to why the man went through with the obvious trap. She was almost think he was trying to get them to underestimate him if he wasn't-
"WHAHAHAHAHA!" Uzumaki laughed. "YOU FELL FOR IT! YOU FELL FOR IT!"
"Tch." The Uchiha was radiating his complete and utter dismissal of the jōnin.
Sakura felt her eyebrows rise. Completely and utterly incredulous in the face of her teammates not knowing who Hatake Kakashi was.
The Uzumaki she could almost understand, he was ostracised and an idiot about most things, though she'd expected him to know from his pranking endeavours, but the Uchiha? Did he ignore the comings and goings of other human beings entirely? Was he even aware there was a Sharingan user in the village?!
Did neither of them do any kind of research before getting their team placements?!
Sakura internally sighed and simply pasted on a bland smile in the face of the calculating glint in the jōnin's eye as he watched her. She could feel any positive expectations about her teammates draining away by the second.
"My first impression is…" He started and Sakura made sure to look suitably wide-eyed and impressed. "I don't like you guys. Meet me on the roof." He said before shunshining away.
Sakura outwardly sighed and followed the boys.
"Well, let's begin by introducing yourselves." Hatake said, eye-smiling benevolently down at them. Next to her the Uchiha scowled belligerently and the Uzumaki was frowning.
"What do you wanna know?!" The blonde proclaimed. The eye smile deepened sadistically.
"How about your likes, dislikes, your dreams for the future and things like that." Hatake said.
"Hey, hey why don't you introduce yourself to us first?!" Naruto cried and Sasuke nodded once.
"Yes, sensei. We don't know anything about you." Sakura added, unable to completely keep the sarcastic bite from her voice. Hatake shot her a sharp look but neither of the boys seemed to notice. She despaired for them. So did Hatake, if the slight flattening of the signature eye-smile as he watched the pair was anything to go by.
"Oh… me?" He started, the perfect tone of not-giving-a-fuck. "Well, my name is Hatake Kakashi. I have no desire to tell you my likes and dislikes. Dreams for the future… hmm. I have a lot of hobbies."
"All he told us was his name!" Naruto whisper-yelled to them, voice filled with betrayal as if withholding information was akin to murdering the easter bunny rather than a sound tactic for shinobi when dealing with unknowns.
"You! The blonde can go first!" Hatake said, making the Uzumaki puff up with false bravado.
"Yosh!" He cried and Sakura felt her lips twitch as Hatake's face visibly paled a shade. She wondered if she could get Uzumaki to yell about the springtime of youth. "My name is Uzumaki Naruto. What I like is cup ramen and when Iruka-sensei pays for my ramen! My dream is to be the next hokage and have the people of the village acknowledge my existence!"
Sakura did not imagine the quickly buried flash of pain across Hatake's face at the words. She added the moment to her 'Naruto is secretly a Namikaze' mental file.
"Hobbies… pranks I guess." Uzumaki finished lamely.
"Next."
"My name is Uchiha Sasuke. There are lots of things I dislike, I don't really like anything." The Uchiha said, Sakura had to bite back a snort. "And… I can't really call it a dream but I have a certain ambition. To kill a certain man." Sakura supposed it would be hypocritical to criticise the boy for wanting to murder his brother, nor could she say it was a surprise (though judging by the shock on Naruto's face he didn't know who Sasuke was talking about. Did Naruto even know about the massacre?), but she did wonder if he was aware of just how ridiculous he sounded.
"Ok." Hatake sighed, sounding entirely done with the lot of them. "Lastly the girl."
Sakura beamed and put on her best 'sweet-little-angel' persona, eyes widened adorably and tone of voice full of naive optimism. It was the act that made adults see her as entirely incapable of wrongdoing, no matter how compromising a situation they found her in, and children flock to her and willing cater to her every need. There were a lot of benefits to being a cute, pink haired girl rather than a middle aged man of middling attractiveness.
"My name is Haruno Sakura. I like learning kenjutsu and fresh gossip, I dislike wilful ignorance." She said, cutting a quick glance to the boys sitting next to her. Hatake followed her glance with a pained look in his lone eye. Naruto was bouncing in his seat and smiling at her. Sasuke seemed determined to ignore her existence entirely, glaring into the distance. "My hobby is reading." She glanced at the satchel the jōnin kept his infamous porn stash and he narrowed his eye in warning. "My dream is to be an ANBU captain."
Naruto loudly started asking questions and Sasuke scoffed at her but Sakura ignored them to continue smiling up at the jōnin. Hatake, for his part, was watching as if she were an atomic bomb just waiting to be set off. After a moment he sighed.
"Alright, I can work with that." He said and her smile became just a tiny bit more genuine. "So for tomorrow…"
What followed was the typical, over-the-top scare tactics that Sakura mostly ignored seeming as they were clearly targeted at the two boys anyway and accepted the oddly detailed faux mission report feeling little but a detached sense of mirth at the idea that a team with the jinchūriki and the last Uchiha could actually fail.
She was interested in what the test was tomorrow. She knew enough to know that the tests jōnin sensei's give were usually one learned from their jōnin sensei (who learned one from their jōnin sensei and so on), but they tended to be pretty tight lipped about the actual contents of the tests, only sharing them within the close knit shinobi circles. She'd heard rumours that ranged from having to invent a brand new jutsu in a manner of minutes to being dumped in the middle of training ground 44 in the middle of the night. She was positive most of them had been done at some point, but they seemed unlikely options from a man not known for his wilful disregard for children's lives (read: not Mitsarashi Anko) and also faced with a team that was meant to actually pass.
At the very least she was looking forward to getting her ass handed to her by a village legend.