DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN NARUTO OR ANY ASSOCIATED CHARACTERS

So I'm glad to see that this story is getting some positive feedback already! A huge thanks to everyone who reviewed, followed, or favorited. I hope to see your ranks swell with the coming chapters. Speaking of chapters, this is the official start to the real story, and we are out of the prologue phase entirely. Anyways, read, review, and as always, enjoy!

Chapter 4 - Scary Sensei

The classroom was abuzz with the usual activity that came with twelve year olds. The girls were completely infatuated with the two male prodigies, much to the disgust of the other males. Except for Shikamaru. That guy wouldn't care if a girl never looked his way for the rest of his life, because in his eyes, they were far too troublesome.

Shino wasn't a chick magnet either, but no one really included him in any of those discussions. That guy's idea of fun was watching an ant pile being built, or a grasshopper taking flight. He wasn't exactly winning any points with the ladies with those kinds of hobbies.

Then there was Choji. The Akimichi heir cared too much about food to even glance a woman's way, unless they were about to eat the last bite of a bag of barbecue potato chips. Then, the guy transformed into a rabid animal and went ballistic until you gave him the last chip.

That left Kiba Inuzuka as the only remaining heir that actually cared about women. He was like the pack leader for the rest of their civilian-born classmates. You'd think a guy with a dog as cute as Akamaru would attract at least a bit of female attention, but not at all.

Every female in the entire class always started their morning by crowding around two boys named Naruto and Sasuke. The pair of them had entered the academy as practically best friends, and were the only ones worth acknowledging as equals in this class. It was understandable that the pair were close, because one of Sasuke's guardians, the famed Fire Storm Obito, was the former student of Naruto's father. That being the case, the two of them spent lots of time at the other's house.

Regarding Naruto, the blonde got perhaps the most attention between the two. Being the son of the Hokage would do that to you. Naruto had passed every test the academy had to offer with flying colors, and Sasuke wasn't very far behind. Even when they went through sparring practice, the pair refused to partner with anyone else, as the only people capable of giving them a challenge were one another.

That friendship had lasted through their entire time in the academy. In fact, the pair of them could have graduated three years ago, but their respective family members had agreed that they needed to remain with their classmates for a while longer and graduate with them. When asked why, Minato, Obito, and Itachi had shrugged off the questions and quickly changed the subject.

But the time had finally come. Their final exams had been three days ago, and everyone in the room were officially genin. Today was the day that they would be assigned to their respective Jonin-sensei. Naruto and Sasuke hoped to end up on the same team together, but they understood if that was impossible. The Academy's philosophy had always been to take the last place student with the first place student, and they highly doubted that the next highest student would be placed on that team. Still, it didn't hurt to hope.

What annoyed Naruto and Sasuke more than anything, though, was the crowd of girls that formed every morning without fail. The only girl in the entire class that didn't crowd their desk was Hinata Hyuga, but she never spoke anyways, so her presence was barely noticeable on a good day.

Even if they did hate all the attention and screaming and begging, they supposed that they had to be grateful that Ino and Sakura weren't into the same person. Said girls were the best of friends outside of class, but often engaged in arguments over who was better, Naruto or Sasuke. Ino always sided with her fellow blonde, while Sakura was absolutely infatuated with Sasuke.

They were the strangest definition of best friends, though. Even when the arguments got so heated that they threatened to turn physical, they always reverted back to their normal selves when Naruto and Sasuke weren't around. Today's argument seemed to be about who had better hair.

Ino insisted that Naruto's spiky blonde hair was just as cool as the Yondaime Hokage's, while Sakura disagreed. She thought that Sasuke's shaggy black hair made him way cooler than the lame Hokage. It was a good thing that Naruto hadn't heard that, because he was fiercely defensive of his father.

The conversation turned into a dull roar when Iruka-sensei walked into the room, carrying a stack of papers against his chest. He set them on the podium at the front of the room and looked up. Immediately, his head dropped in disappointment. Taking a deep breath, he formed a hand sign and activated his Big Head Jutsu.

"GET TO YOUR SEATS YOU STUPID GIRLS!"

"EEK!" the entire crowd of fangirls gasped in fear, scurrying off to find their chairs as Iruka's head returned to normal.

The teacher cleared his throat. "Ahem. Now that that's taken care of, let's get down to your team formations, shall we?"

All of the young ninja nodded eagerly as Iruka began to name off teams. They figured out that he'd saved all of the clan heirs for last, because they were the only nine left in the room after a while. Iruka picked up the next roster and immediately went pale. He glanced up to the assembled Genin with an apologetic look.

"Uh, sorry...I think there may be some sort of mixup. I'll uh...go take care of it," he said as he slid along the wall towards the door. Before any of the Genin could protest, he'd disappeared out the door.

A few minutes later, the entire building shook and cracks began to appear in the glass windows. Strangely, it was Iruka's voice that was doing the damage, and it seemed to be coming from the Hokage's tower.

"BUT HE'S NEVER PASSED A TEAM!"

All nine looked to one another in fear, sweat beginning to form on their brows. They all wondered who would be the unlucky trio to end up with such a hard ass for a sensei. There was apparently a very high possibility that whoever Iruka named would end up returning to the Academy.

"Who do you think it is?" Naruto asked.

Sasuke raised an eyebrow. "The team or the sensei?"

"Sensei."

"No idea for either," Sasuke admitted.

Naruto crossed his arms, his impatience beginning to gnaw at him. He was not the type to sit still and be content for long periods of time, something that he'd picked up from his father.

Sasuke was the same way, he was just better at hiding it. His energy came from Obito, but his concealment of emotions came from Itachi. Not that he'd ever admit that to his brother. His once close relationship with Itachi had taken a huge step back when Itachi had killed Mikoto, their mother.

Itachi had tried to explain to Sasuke that their parents would have died anyways, to which Sasuke replied that Itachi shouldn't have participated in the first place. Itachi was just as distraught over the death of their mother at his hands as Sasuke was, probably more so, but he'd done it to save Sasuke.

Someday, deep down, Sasuke knew that he would forgive Itachi, and that he had already started to, but it would take a while before he could get there. Sasuke had even awakened his sharingan due to those emotions, but he'd promised both Itachi and Obito not to use it during his time at the Academy. They said that he needed to develop his skills without the sharingan before he would incorporate it into training.

Sasuke's head rose when Iruka returned to the room, holding the same papers as before. He regarded the cracks in the windows with a pained expression, but he shook himself out of it and looked back up at the nine remaining Genin.

"Um, Team 7 will be Sakura Haruno…"

Sakura perked up at the mention of her name. She glanced over to Sasuke, hoping to hear his name as well.

"...Naruto Uzumaki…"

Naruto's head immediately impacted the desk in front of him. Sakura had collapsed backwards in her chair out of disappointment. In Naruto's case, he was dreading being stuck with his best friend's fangirl. Sakura's case was obvious.

"...and...Sasuke Uchiha."

Both Naruto and Sakura were suddenly resurrected from their dejected states of mind. "YEAH!" they cheered in unison. What neither of them noticed, though, was that Ino had slammed her head onto her desk in the same fashion as Naruto. All her hopes of being with her crush had just been dashed with a simple sentence.

Iruka smirked in amusement at the cute little Genin. They were in for a rude awakening if they thought petty crushes mattered in the world of shinobi. "The three of you will be meeting your sensei here in an hour, so just hang around until then."

Iruka then named off the other two teams. The next iteration of the Ino-Shika-Cho formation with Shikamaru, Ino, and Choji. To say that Ino was less than ecstatic would be an understatement. She kept making jealous glares at Sakura, then looks of longing towards Naruto.

The other team was Hinata, Kiba, and Shino. They were clearly arranged as a tracking squad. Their use of scents, beetles, and the Byakugan would make in nearly impossible to escape from them in any terrain unless you simply outran them.

Iruka allowed the two aforementioned teams to exit the door before he moved to follow. He seemed to shoot them an apologetic glance as he left the room, which had Naruto and Sasuke wondering: who exactly was this super scary sensei that they were stuck with.

An hour quickly turned into two, then three. Naruto and Sasuke had gotten fed up with waiting, and had started their shinobi training early, practicing throwing shuriken at makeshift targets they'd made out of paper they'd discovered behind Iruka-sensei's desk.

Sakura was content just watching Sasuke work until she got an idea. Catching the two boys' attention, she placed the chalk eraser above the slightly ajar door, meaning that it would fall on the head of whoever came through the door. Naruto and Sasuke chuckled at the prospect, even if they knew that it probably wouldn't work on a Jonin.

They soon got their answer when a shaggy mop of black hair pushed the door open. Just as the eraser began to fall, the man flipped a kunai up past his ear that pinned the eraser to the doorframe, all without so much as a turn of his head. He wore the standard green flak jacket and black long-sleeved shirt and pants. A Konoha headband was secured around his forehead, and he was in the middle of blowing a pink bubble with the gum in his mouth.

Popping said bubble, he sucked the gum back into his mouth and looked down at the three Genin with his most noticeable feature: his eyes. They were blood red, and had three tomoe circling the pupil. They seemed to show no emotion whatsoever. Sasuke and Naruto knew those eyes all too well.

"Big bro Obito?" Naruto asked incredulously.

"You're our sensei?" Sasuke asked in disbelief.

Obito placed his hands in his pockets and sighed. "Yeah. Come on, let's get this over with."

"Hobbies?"

"Dreams?"

"Hopes for the future?"

Obito stared blankly at the three Genin with his sharingan. "That's what I said."

"Well, maybe you could go first and show us how to do it?" Sakura asked.

Obito blinked once, his emotionless eyes seeming to bore into Sakura. "It's really not that difficult, but fine. I'm Obito Uchiha. My hobbies? Don't really have any. Future actions? I'm gonna hunt down a certain rogue ninja and kill him."

The three Genin shivered at the low levels of killer intent that Obito didn't even realize he was putting off. Noticing, he ceased the flow. "Sorry about that. Blondie, you're up."

"Uh, okay, well, I'm Naruto Uzumaki-Namikaze, but you already knew that. My hobbies are training with my dad, eating ramen, and hanging out with Sasuke. My dream is to be the greatest Hokage, even better than my dad!"

"Good. Now you."

"Sasuke Uchiha. Hobbies include hanging out with Naruto and playing pranks on Obito. My dream is to restore the Uchiha clan."

"And now the resident female of the group," Obito turned his head to look at the young, pink-haired kunoichi.

Sakura blushed a bit with all of the eyes on her, mostly from Sasuke's, though. "I'm Sakura Haruno! My hobbies are hanging out with Ino and talking about Sasuke! My dreams for the future are…."

Sakura didn't even finish, as she trailed off, eyes turned to the sky and drool peeking from the edge of her mouth. Obito snapped in front of her face to get her to focus. "Good, now that we've dispensed with the pleasantries, I can get to your training. Meet me at Training Ground Thirteen tomorrow at six a.m."

Obito stood to his feet and smirked down at his three students. "And don't eat breakfast, you'll throw up if you do."

With that, Obito was suddenly gone, and the three of them were back in the academy classroom. Sakura and Naruto looked around as if they were in danger. "What just happened?" the blonde asked.

Sasuke tapped the side of his eye. "That was all a genjutsu."

"So does he even want us to meet him at that training ground?" Sakura asked.

Sasuke nodded. "Judging by that question, I'd say we all saw the same thing, so that's a yes."

Naruto cursed. "Damn sharingan."

Naruto was easily the first to arrive. He was usually up at this hour anyways, as it was the only time that he and his Dad had to train before the Hokage's duties tied him up for the rest of the day. So six a.m. was no big deal for the son of the Hokage.

The same could be said of Sasuke. He and Sakura arrived on the dot,but while the civilian-born girl looked completely exhausted, Sasuke was looking oddly refreshed. Naruto raised an eyebrow. "Why do you look so chipper?"

"I had breakfast," Sasuke said simply.

Sakura gasped. "But Obito-sensei said not to! What if you throw up?!"

"I guessed that Obito would be late like always, so I decided to eat."

"What about you, Naruto?" Sakura asked.

The blonde shrugged. "I usually train with my dad before the sun ever comes up, so I ate a few hours ago."

Sakura dropped her head, inwardly cursing at herself. "Why didn't I think of that?"

Naruto suddenly remembered something that he had stowed away. He reached back into his pouch and produced a small scroll. When he unfurled it, the parchment was shown to contain an odd set of markings arrayed in a circle around one symbol. Naruto made a hand sign, and suddenly, a steaming cup of instant ramen appeared.

"Woah! Is that fuinjutsu?!" Sakura asked, genuinely impressed.

Naruto nodded proudly. "Yeah, my dad taught me. Here."

The cup of instant ramen was passed to Sakura, who looked down at it with surprise. "Thanks, Naruto, but I'm kind of on a di-"

Her words were halted by the grumbling of her stomach, as well as a pair of raised eyebrows from her teammates as they laughed at her predicament. She relented and eagerly dug in, scarfing down the entire cup in a matter of seconds.

"That should hold you over for a while. But knowing Obito, there's a chance that he might not arrive until after noon. In which case, we would have wasted half a day of our lives," Sasuke commented.

"About Obito-sensei, what's wrong with his eyes?" Sakura asked curiously.

Naruto and Sasuke blinked at her, then shared a glance. "You've never seen the sharingan?" Sasuke asked.

Sakura shook her head. "No, never. Is he the only person who has it?"

Sasuke's eyes suddenly flashed red, and two black tomoe formed around the pupil. Sakura did a double take, recognizing nearly the same eyes as their sensei, only Sasuke's still shone with emotion, not like Obito's cold, uninviting eyes. "You have it too? But how come yours only has two tomoe?"

"It's supposed to progress as you get more experienced with it. Normally, it starts out with one, then once you get some experience with it, a second will appear. The final form has three like you've seen in Obito," Sasuke explained before deactivating his sharingan.

Sakura nodded, understanding what Sasuke was saying, even if she still didn't know exactly what the eyes did. "I just thought those were his normal eyes."

Naruto chuckled nervously and scratched the back of his head. "Yeah, well, the thing is…"

"We haven't actually seen his real eyes. He always has the sharingan active," Sasuke revealed. "Hell, he's basically a second brother to me and I haven't seen his real eyes."

Sakura then realized just how mysterious of an individual their sensei was. Sure, he was cold and scary, but that could be interpreted as simply being antisocial, or a facade to scare his new students. But now hearing that Naruto and Sasuke, both of them having grown up knowing Obito, had never even seen his real eyes made her wonder what else their sensei was hiding.

She pushed that to the back of her mind for now, and instead focused on the piece of information she had yet to glean from the conversation. Oddly enough, this was the longest conversation she'd ever had with Sakura, and she wasn't even blushing. Early mornings would do that to you.

"So I got all of that, but what exactly does the sharingan do?"

"Well, I only know what my brother and Obito have told me. It allows you to predict movements and copy jutsu, but it also allows you to cast powerful genjutsu, among other abilities. I don't have much practice with it, because Itachi said that I needed to hone my skills without relying on the sharingan for everything. That would be the reason I still only have two tomoe."

"And how do you get those eyes?" Sakura asked.

Sasuke chuckled. "Well they don't hand them out to civilians. They only manifest in members of my clan."

Sakura looked to Naruto expectantly. "Your dad is supposedly super powerful, right? So why don't either of you have any special eyes?"

Naruto crossed his arm and turned his head away, muttering under his breath about stupid fangirls and how he was totally awesome without any extra help from any special eyes. His mutterings did in fact have some merit to them, because after all, he was the top student in their class that year. Though Sasuke might have inched his way into that spot if Itachi had allowed him to use the sharingan during Academy training.

It seemed to be going well for the newly formed team. Naruto and Sasuke had accepted Sakura as a teammate, even if she still knew next to nothing about them. She thought she knew a lot about her precious Sasuke, but she was finding out quickly just how much she didn't know.

It was also a good thing that they got along so well, because the hours began to roll by as they waited for their sensei. There were only three hours remaining before noon when Obito finally arrived. He yawned into his hand as his three Genin stood angrily to their feet and pointed at him in unison.

"You're late!"

"Yeah, well, I don't really think I have to apologize for helping an elderly woman with her groceries."

"For three hours?!" the Genin demanded.

Obito cleared his throat, his sharingan taking in every detail of the kids before him. Naruto's chakra was easily the brightest and strongest. He even had more chakra than the Yondaime did. Sasuke's chakra was powerful as well, but he didn't have nearly the same reserves as Naruto did, which would hurt him whenever he used his sharingan. That was already a focal point to focus on.

From their files, he knew every detail about them from the Academy instructors. Naruto and Sasuke had excelled in all forms of combat and written exams, but their chakra control was lacking. Sakura, on the other hand, was absolutely useless when it came to combat, but her chakra control was off the charts.

As much as these kids needed some training, Obito still couldn't resist the old bell test. Even if Minato was forcing him to pass this team regardless of the outcome, he still couldn't help but internally grin at the prospect of torturing some Genin for three hours.

"Would you three idiots stop focusing on the imaginary old woman and pay attention?" he asked in annoyance.

"So you admit she was fake!"

Obito facepalmed, and he released a small amount of killer intent that made each of them shiver. "Good, now that I have your attention."

Reaching into his pocket, Obito produced two small silver bells that jingled from the movement. He waved them in front of his three students as if he were attempting to hypnotize them. "You see these? Take a bell from me and you pass."

"You sure you're not missing one there, Big Bro?" Naruto asked, pointing to the two bells.

Obito straightened and clipped them to the side of his belt just like Minato had all those years ago. "As a matter of fact, I'm not."

"Does that mean that whoever doesn't get a bell goes back to the Academy?" Sasuke asked.

"That's right. No matter which way you look at it, at least one of you will fail this test, so I suggest that you come at me with everything you have. I won't even use the sharingan," Obito said.

His three students immediately stared into his eyes, waiting to see his true orbs for the first time. Amused by their reactions, Obito reached into his pouch and produced a pair of sunglasses that he'd liberated from Ebisu. Flicking them open, he slid them onto his face and looked down. "There. Now I can't even cast a genjutsu on any of you."

All three Genin exchanged glances. Somehow, they'd all come to the silent agreement that someday, they would see Obito's real eyes, but that wasn't today. Assuming any of the passed, that is.

"You have until noon to get a bell. If you don't, it's back to the Academy for you. Ready? Start."

Sasuke started off by tossing four kunai at Obito, all of which hit their mark. But it wasn't the sound you would expect to hear when knives his a body. This sounded more wooden. Sure enough, a log with four kunai appeared in place of Obito before collapsing to the ground.

"That was a substitution jutsu," a voice from behind them said. They looked up to see Obito perched in the branches of the nearby tree. He lightly dropped down to the ground, looking to his team with a pointed stare.

"You thinking what I'm thinking?" Sasuke asked.

Naruto nodded. "Yeah."

The blonde crossed his two hands, and seven shadow clones of himself appeared in a circle around him. They rushed towards Obito without even a verbal command and started to engage the Jonin. Six of them kept him occupied while the seventh snuck around behind him and wiggled his fingers when he was close to a bell.

Seeing this, Sasuke lunged forward with a kunai drawn and parried a strike from Obito. Just when shadow clone Naruto stuck his arm forwards to try and grab for a bell, a kunai pierced its head, but not before the real Naruto appeared right next to it. Obito's eyes widened in panic and realization at what the blonde had just pulled off.

The jinchuriki dove forward, arms outstretched for the bells at Obito's waist. The Jonin caught Naruto by the back of his head and thrust him face first into the ground, treating him to a mouthful of dirt. He then delivered a kick to Sasuke's midsection before leaping backwards out of the pair's range.

As Naruto stood to his feet, spitting dirt from his mouth, Obito's eyebrows were raised in admiration and genuine approval. "Your teamwork is superb, able to come up with a plan like that on the fly. Naruto, was that the Flying Raijin? When the hell did you learn that?"

"Oh, dad taught it to me a few weeks ago," the blonde grinned proudly, placing his hands on his hips.

"How did you pull it off? Your dad uses kunai with his jutsu formula on them. You can't just teleport anywhere without a mark."

"You're smart, Big Bro, you figure it out. While you're doing that, Sasuke and I will get a bell."

Obito smirked to himself before Body Flickering into the surrounding forest. Naruto cursed as Sasuke looked at him with the same look Obito just had. "So how do you do it without your dad's kunai?"

"Easy, I just make my shadow clones with marks already on them," Naruto shrugged. Then the blonde got the feeling that he was forgetting something. He and Sasuke turned their heads back to where Sakura was. The pink-haired kunoichi stood there, mouth hanging by her knees.

"What's the matter, Sakura?"

"Uh-you-uh...you guys are insane!"

"Thanks," Sasuke said simply before jerking his head in the direction of the forest. "Let's go, Naruto."

The pair dashed off into the trees, leaving the shocked Sakura standing there alone. After a minute, she seemed to realize that she was supposed to be trying to get a bell, too. Shaking her head, she dashed after her two teammates, in pursuit of their sensei.

I know, I know. Naruto with Flying Raijin, how original. Well, can you blame me? At least his dad actually taught it to him instead of discovering it by some bullshit means like most other fanfics. No matter how you look at it, he could be so much more overpowered, but I know that those make for boring reads, so he'll progress like a normal character. That being said, I hope you all enjoyed!