On the way back from the hokage tower, the jonin senseis of konoha began conversing about their students. Most of their banter was about how surprising the batch of students had turned out to be. This banter continued for about thirty minutes as they had been seated at the hidden tavern that served shinobi that had reached chunin rank or above.
"I tell you, that Kiba kid has some grudge against Naruto, weirdly enough it's not due to anything that he was told about the boy. According to Hinata-san, it's due to his jealousy because of his crush for the girl," Kurenai commented, in an effort to explain her students to the rest of the jonin senseis present.
"I'd say that Kiba student is quite youthful and he'll grow to have quite the spunk and will be a wonderful shinobi!" Gai boomed from across the table.
"I don't know, Gai, you say that about literally any person with spirit or energy," Asuma skeptically shrugged.
"And if we're being honest, Naruto probably has no clue about the jealousy or crush from the both of your students, Kurenai," Kakashi blankly added. "It's not that he's a dunce, although he definitely lacks common sense in most ways, but he's actually a very direct shinobi that I'm certain will reach his goals," he continued, giving a very unusual amount of credit to the blonde.
"Kakashi, when have you ever been so nice when speaking about your students? You usually come in here ready to get rid of them in their test," Asuma poked at the man.
"I dunno, actually. It's probably because he's so similar to Obito and Minato-sensei if I had to guess," Kakashi shrugged, not too certain himself as to why he was giving the boy so much credit.
"And what about the councilwoman's daughter and the Uchiha?" Asuma asked, prodding at the man even more.
"They aren't half bad either, although the Haruno girl could use a little bit of maturit-" Kakashi commented as he looked at Kurenai who was glaring daggers at the man "I'm a pervert, I'll admit that, but a child predator? Really? You don't think that low of me do you?" Kakashi quipped in response to the woman's gaze.
"Seeing as I haven't said anything, and you caught on, I'd say there's a fair chance I'm right, Hatake," Kurenai snapped back coldly.
"Well, that hurts my feelings," he goofily responded, "seeing as I meant her ideals, not whatever you thought I was thinking. The girl seems to see being a kunoichi as a stepping stool to gain Sasuke's attention, which is extremely dangerous for her, seeing as the job isn't for childish things like her love interest in her teammate, but rather a constant life-or-death battle to survive in the battlefield and the guilt that comes with surviving on the battlefield," he explained, once again, shocking everyone around him. "What? Everyone? Are you guys okay? I mean, why are you all looking at me like you've seen a ghost or something?" Kakashi retorted, well aware that their reactions were the result of his unusual pride in his students.
"N-nothing it's just that-" Kurenai stuttered.
"Nah, I'm joking, I get it. You guys don't expect me to actually care about my students, and to be honest, I didn't expect to either, but these kids—they're different. And as for the Uchiha, he still wants to avenge his clan, however not in the way I thought he would," the man added.
"Oh? And how is that exactly?" Anko Mitarashi commented as she entered the tavern and approached the table of jonin.
"Well… I thought he'd want to mercilessly slaughter his brother after Itachi basically annahilated his clan 4 years ago. However, in the introduction I made my students do, he said he wanted to 'defeat' Itachi, not kill him. Along with this he also said he wanted to rebuild his clan to free the spirits of the dead Uchiha of their regrets, which is extremely mature to say, especially from someone who practically had everything snatched from him at a young age," Kakashi answered straightfowardly.
"If I didn't know any better, I'd say it's because of the kid from Kumo," Anko theorized.
"Huh, I was just thinking something similar," Kurenai admitted.
"How so?" Asuma asked, directing his question at both of the women.
"I dunno, I had an interaction with him recently and he seems to be quite mature, yet carefree. He wasn't too bothered by the lack of a "elite" genin title or the benefit of having a three-man cell," she mentioned, answering one part of the question Asuma asked.
"He was extremely analytical in his battle against me a couple of hours ago," Anko pitched in.
"In his WHAT? I'm sorry, did you fight with a genin?" Asuma blurted, astounded at what he'd just learned.
"I wouldn't call it a fight, and it wasn't just one genin. It was both him and the blonde brat on Kakashi's team," Anko retorted. "And as for the "fight" part, I didn't go all out or anything, I just tied them up after catching them, it took about 3 minutes, tops," she added.
"Now, if you could allow me to explain myself, they were following me, hoping to get help for chakra control lessons or something of the sort. Long story short, he tracked me through a smoke created by my jutsu and managed to track me while I was airborne, despite not knowing where I had jumped to as I was hidden when I chose to do so. I wonder why he wasn't chosen as an elite student for a genin cell," she mumbled. It was at this point the violet-haired woman noticed that Asuma was practically floored. Along with a couple of onlookers, but not all of the jonin who were seated at the table they were conversing at were too impressed.
"So… what of Naruto and his friend? Are they-"
"Yeah they're fine, Kakashi, do you expect me to just kill a couple of kids?" she grumbled, a little upset that her reputation still followed her into her adult years.
"That's… not what I was going to ask. I was going to ask if they were learning anything as a result of the interaction you had with them," the one-eyed jonin deadpanned.
"Oh…" Anko awkwardly paused," Yeah, they're fine, I taught them about the leaf exercise and told them not to bother me until they could do it on three leaves at once," she dismissively replied, hiding that she was even slightly worried about being misjudged.
As the jonin conversed in the tavern, the genin they were speaking of were either training, sleeping, or relaxing with their fellow classmates. Sasuke himself chose to relax at home while completing chores around his empty home.
"I really wish someone was here to keep me company, this extremely large house is gonna drive me crazy," he complained as he finished his last dish, ready to take a shower and head off to sleep. On his way to his bed after showering, he began wondering about the Uzamaki clan.
'Hmm… I guess the dobe isn't clanless, afterall,' he thought before getting in bed and drifting off to sleep.
The next day, Kakashi's genin had woken up at 7 am, arriving at the designated training ground for their exercise he'd advised them to be ready by 8 am for.
"It's quite odd that we're all here on time," Sakura coughed, looking at Naruto.
"Ah, well, I had some help getting out of bed on time," Naruto chuckled, as he grimaced at the flurry of shuriken that had startled him awake at 6:30, which came with a note from Lu saying 'Get your lazy ass up, blonde. Signed: Lu Awakatsu.'
"Help? That's funny, I didn't expect you to ha-" Sakura almost quipped, before being interrupted by her stomach growling.
"Don't tell me you-" Naruto began
"Actually listened to Kakashi sensei?" Sasuke input. This led to the boys looking at eachother before silently agreeing to bring out their own individual small boxes of extra food to carry around and offering them to Sakura.
"I-I-I ca-" Sakura muttered.
"Shh… just take the food, it's not like sensei'll know anyways," Naruto advised, rubbing his head with a small, cheeky grin on his face.
After Sakura finished the offered food, she quickly stood up and began thanking the boys profusely, most of it was directed at Sasuke, not that it bothered either of the boys in any specific way. It didn't take as long as the trio assumed their sensei would take, as he arrived at 9 am, not 10 am, like they'd expected him to. For some odd reason they felt like he'd be excessively late to rub his irritating habit in the face of the genin to annoy them.
"I see you three are ready, shall we start?" Kakashi eye smiled ,closing his book then beginning his explanation to the exercise he had planned. "Essentailly, I have two bells on my waist that I expect you three to take from me. The one student who doesn't get a bell… will be demoted to an academy student again. You have until 11:45 am," he explained, pulling out an alarm clock and setting the time to 11:45 am. "And after this alarm goes off, you should have passed the test, are there any questions?" Kakashi blankly inquired.
"Yeah, how come there is gonna be a student going home? Three man cells don't operate on two genin and one leading shinobi," Naruto pointed out.
"I'll request for a replacement, sending the failing genin back to the academy, of course," he smiled as he answered the blonde.
"What if none of us receive a bell?" Sasuke inquired, bringing the idea to the attention of Kakashi.
"That's simple, you'll all be expelled as a result of extremely poor performance as shinobi," he cheekily answered.
"That's extremely unfair, sensei, you don't actually expect us to outperform you twice within two hours and 40-ish minutes, do you?" Sakura accusingly pointed out.
"Being a shinobi is unfair, you live and die for the cause of your village and you are extremely expendable as most villages can get new genin within a couple of days, so such is life," Kakashi loosely retorted. "Now, if you have no more questions—begin!" he exclaimed, which resulted in the three genin quickly retreating to the bushes, waiting for an opportunity to strike.
"Sakura, it's just as you say : this test is unfair, which sensei is very aware of," Sasuke began, "So, I believe the only way we can really get anything over him is-"
"Teamwork," Naruto interuppted, his gaze never leaving the man in front of him.
"It's as the dobe says, we need a plan to get the bells off of him, and I'm sure he's bluffing about the replacement of any of us. Think about it, can he really replace us that fast? Sure, there are genin on the sidelines, but there's a reason why cells are created by the hokage, their synergy. Noone has any of the qualities we have, excluding Sakura, but even then, she's a textbook genius," Sasuke analyzed.
'Sasuke-kun he-' Sakura's thought was broken by the calling of the two boys.
"Sakura? Can you hear us?" they asked in unison, stopping once they saw her blink and come back to her brain.
"Yeah, I can hear you two, loud and clear," she mumbled. After about 15 minutes of planning, Kakashi was finally attacked by his genin, starting with a barrage of kunai and shuriken in pairs of three, rotating around the jonin.
'You'll have to do better than that if you want to get these bells off of me,' the man thought as he shunshinned to the next position that he assumed the kunai and shuriken would come from, coming face to face with his genin, who split up after being sighted by the jonin. He quickly tailed Sasuke, throwing a kunai at the back of his head, only for him to puff up in smoke and cause a mini smokecreen in unison with the other two genin.
'Crap, they were clones,' he deduced, returning to the center of the training ground, only to be surrounded by 12 Naruto clones, who barraged the man with shuriken, to which he responded by effortlessly deflecting the kunai and throwing his own to neutralize the clones in quads. Unbenounced to him, Naruto and Sakura were under the man, using the headhunter jutsu, dragging him down into the dirt, leaving his head the only thing that was visible. This was followed up by a fireball that split into three more after being cast, which he dodged.
"I guess I'll have to try a bit harder," he commented, putting away his book and responding by using his own great fireball jutsu, overpowering Sasuke's. To his surprise, once he touched the ground, he was ensared by wires at his feet that were covered in flames, to which he responded by substituting himself and a nearby log that happened to be in the middle of the training ground.
"Bingo," the three genin thought as Naruto dropped from the sky, using a strong axe kick which was blocked by the man. This block was short lived, however as he was caught again in flaming wires on the ground, which he couldnt exactly retreat from as his hands were quite focused on Naruto's foot. As Kakashi pushed the blonde away, he was uppercutted by Sasuke, who rose from another headhunter jutsu, and lost his bell to sakura, who was right below the noirette. Fortunately for the man, the genins' onslaught was put to a very small halt as they retreated to the bushes again.
"Okay, now we'll go in for a short amount of time for Naruto to create 21 clones so we can distract Kakashi again to get the final bell," Sasuke disclosed, jumping onto the field infront of Kakashi along with Sakura.
"Where's the blonde? Did he run away? Wait, don't tell me, he's going to sneak attack me when you two are distracting me, I'm telling you, that isn't working a second time," Kakashi egged on the genin, to which Sasuke responded by firing two fireballs at the man.
"Has anyone told you that you talk too much?" Sakuke complained as he flipped back after firing off at the man. To his suprise, he was gut-checked by the man mid-flip, sending him barrelling into the field.
"Nah," he cooly responded, "I was told quite the opposite, actually," he said before grabbing the boy by his leg, slamming him into the ground, to which Sakura responded by throwing 2 demon-wind shuriken at Kakashi, which he dodged. To his surprise, two Narutos appeared from behind him, reaching for his bell, but were quickly dissasembled by the man in seconds. When he looked back at the students, they were no longer on the field and now he was faced with 7 trios of genin barraging him with explosive kunai.
"Man, they are really trying to kill me at this point aren't they?" he grumbled as he took the trios out one by one, in clockwise order, until he reached the final team.
"Give it up will ya, you kno-" he began before his world was flipped upside down, and he was in a rope trap, dangling off of a branch.
"Nah, we'd rather do quite the opposite, actually," Sasuke cheekily retorted, reaching for the final bell. Just before he could get the bell, the man substituted away, then neutralized the three genin, but to his amazement, they were all clones. Before he could reposition, however, six hands dragged him down into the dirt, and two reached for the bells.
"Didn't I say that wouldn't work?" Kakashi groaned, before powering out of the ground, pinning Sakura and Sasuke down and tying them to a log-dummy, and speeding past Naruto and chopping him the back of the neck, knocking him out and doing the same he'd done to his two previous genin.
"I did say you were gonna be expelled if you failed, and unfortunately for you…" the alarm rang, " You did exactly that. However, I'll give you two a chance to retain your rank as genin if you just don't feed the blondie, even if he begs for food," he explained, before eye smiling and shunshinning away, at least that's how he made it look. He really went into the trees behind the genin, waiting to see what they'd do once Naruto awoke.
Author's Note: Thank you guys so much for the support! Here's a longer chapter, and extremely early too! I do want to retain a bi-weekly schedule, so chapter seven will likely take longer to be produced. Until then! - Hoodey.