-Naruto-

.

Naruto is fully absorbed in the absolute joy that is Ichiraku Ramen, completely unaware of the ninja sneaking up to him...

"NARUTO! WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?!"

Naruto jumps and falls out of his chair, spilling his precious, beautiful ramen, and begins to cry in pure grief over the crime of the spilled food of the gods. Once he finished crying, he looked up in a rage to see who caused this sacrilege, only to see Iruka-sensei. What the heck is he doing yelling like that?! Naruto should sic the cult on him for such crimes!

"Naruto! Answer me! You haven't been in class in weeks! I thought you wanted to become a ninja? You're failing this year!"

What? Naruto could've sworn he'd sent a clone as a stand-in for him in class... Did the clone ditch or something? Naruto didn't want to be held back! That'd be way too embarrassing! Gotta fix this, because Naruto is not sitting through the lectures for this year again! Way too boring!

"Can I pass if I ace the tests?"

"No! You've bombed the last three tests and all the assignments in the last two months because you haven't been there! What were you thinking, skipping so much? You literally can't pass this year!"

Well that sucks. Ugh, Sasuke's gonna make so much fun of Naruto. He should probably figure out how to stop the clone from ditching next year. Oh, well. He can take it out on Iruka-sensei for spilling his ramen. At least next time he'll get some warning.

"Excuse me, I thought I told you I wouldn't take a pathetic Jinchuuriki! What will I say when the other Bijuu make fun of me for not even being able to pass the pathetic human Academy? It'll be humiliating! I don't care if you have to threaten the Hokage himself, you're passing this year! At least try to bribe the teachers or something!"

Huh. Bribe the teachers? That'd probably work. They're plenty corrupt, anyway. And if that doesn't work, Naruto can probably just get Jiji to do something about it. Yeah, Fuzzy's right. Naruto's not gonna have to repeat the year! No more having to deal with the stupid lectures! Maybe he can even bribe his way out of having to show up at the Academy altogether!

"You should still probably show up sometimes. They can't only teach useless garbage there if it's required for ninja. There's probably stuff like standard hand signs for communication or teamwork formations that I definitely can't teach you."

Meh. Naruto can just ask Hinata or Sasuke if an important class is coming up and just skip when they say no. And he can always just bully Kakashi-sensei into tutoring him.

With a new plan of action in mind, Naruto gladly ignores Iruka-sensei's lecture about responsibility and turns back to Teuchi to order more ramen.

.

-Mizuki-

.

The last two months have been heaven. All Mizuki has had to do is be a sort-of ok teacher, spy for Orochimaru occasionally, and just not do something stupid. No worrying about a demon brat messing up his class and torturing him with inane pranks. Ah, yes, this was bliss.

Until said demon brat came crashing through a window demanding for Mizuki to change his grades.

"Hey! Idiot-sensei! Change my grades so I can pass this year!"

Maybe a peaceful school year was just too much to ask. Mizuki was on the verge of saying no (this was his chance to get revenge on the demon for making Mizuki's life so difficult), but the brat shoved a few notes in his face.

"What's this?"
"Get-out-of-prank-free slips. If you're having a rough day, just drop this off with one of my clones and I'll leave you alone for the day, or at least warn you about whatever I've got planned."

No. That's way too good to be true. And all the brat wants is for Mizuki to change his grades? But, that would draw attention to Mizuki! If he's caught messing with files, they might investigate him more and find out that he's a spy! But freedom, even for a day, from the brat's pranks...

"Don't worry about being caught. I've got most of the teachers in on it, so they wouldn't even be able to tell who did it. If people get punished, it'd be the whole school, so why not get in on it?"

"Deal."

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-Hiruzen-

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Hiruzen sighed tiredly for the fifth time this week. It seems Naruto finally realized how poorly he was doing in school and did something about it. Hiruzen figured he'd change his grades, since he seemed to have absolutely no problem with sneaking into places where he shouldn't be and messing with things he shouldn't mess with, but it made much more sense to bribe the teachers. This way, Naruto wouldn't even have to sneak in at all, much less however many times he'd need to in order to pass the Academy without actually showing up to class. The council would have a field day when they found the obvious evidence of bribery and fraud, but what could they really do? It'd just be a headache for everyone involved. Might as well just assure them that Hiruzen was the one doing it, so they'd think he was trying to keep Naruto from being bored and restless. Everyone knows a bored Naruto is a terrifying Naruto.

Yeah, Hiruzen wasn't going to do anything to stop it. He's got a self-preservation instinct, thank you very much. Giving Naruto a reason to be annoyed at him goes against said instinct, and Hiruzen would like to still be sane by the time he finally kicked the bucket. Besides, bribing your way out of trouble is very ninja-like, so Hiruzen doesn't see the point in failing a student who already knows the material because he acted like a ninja.

Iruka might be a little annoyed, but he wants to avoid the apocalypse just as much as anyone else, so he stays quiet.