A.N. Heyo here is your third chapter, don't know where the productivity came from, but it made this enjoy, ima heading back into hibernation bbbbbbbyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyeeeeeeeee
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"Nice going knucklehead."
"It is not my fault he was so lazy that he let himself get hit."
"No, he is… not….. huh."
Sakura gave pause, for a moment thinking, all the sensei that were picking up teams, were all, at minimum, Jonin.
'Yeah, he definitely could have dodged that.'
"Well, you still shouldn't have done that"
"Pardon me Miss Snooty Cat, but I distinctly remember both you and even Mr. Stoic being just as annoyed as me, I just did something about it."
"An erasure falling on their head was the best ya got?"
"Hey, I'll have you know that I swore off pranking. We're in the big leagues now, so I'm sorry I didn't have any of my usual supplies on me."
One surprising advantage to Naruto's normal outfit was the amount of stuff he could, well, stuff into it.
Sakura got one last quip of "Well, that oath didn't last long" before opening the roof door to a bored-looking pair of Sasuke and their lazy instructor.
"Damn, how did he get up here, I swear he was still behind us in the classroom."
This got Uchiha to look over at Naruto who he then graced with the most smug smile, that one that makes you want to defenestrate said person, before going back to his brooding.
'THAT IS IT, I'm a genin just like him now, and he still is just as annoying, I am going to leak his damn address to the fangirls'
Unknowence to Naruto, a deep chill ran down Sasuke's back, a new deep sense of foreboding looming over him. This had the unintended effect of increasing his brooding aura and making Sakura's inner fangirl squee.
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All across Konoha, many a fangirl felt a call and a sense of jealousy rose deep from somewhere in their fangirling spirit, even reaching those not a part of the Uchiha fangirl hive mind. Along with two specific individuals who are quite sensitive to such a youthful course, there is only one proper response to such a youthful spirit's cry.
A beautiful, flashy, and bright waterfall and rainbow appeared near the Huyga residence. Though not huge fans of anything on that level, Tenten and Neji were attuned enough to their master and teammate's frequency, so they were able to get their Might Gai grade glasses on, which is about a grade or two above eclipse-grade glasses.
Unfortunately for all the nearby Huyga that were training with their eyes, and even a few who weren't, they had no such items. The screams of many Huyga soothed Neji's soul, patting himself on the back for recommending such a great training ground that just so happened to be near his home. He might not be able to take any direct action yet, but these little bits of rebellion helped. The only thing left for Neji to figure out was the exact activation requirements for his master and teammates' genjutsu (at least that's what he thought that's what it was), but when he did, his family was going to pay.
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Looking up from a little orange book, Kakashi gave them a look over.
"Well, you're all here finally, so let's begin. I am Kakashi Hatake, your temporary Jonin Instructor, and we are here to learn the bare minimum about each other before I send you all right back to the academy."
All this was said with a very fake and very cheery smile under the mask, which was quite impressive, seeing as you could see only about a fourth of his face. If anything, their apparent Jonin sensei was commutative.
There was a raised hand.
"Yes, Miss Billboard… I mean Miss Pinky"
The raised hand was replaced with a tick mark.
"What do you mean by sending us back to the academy?"
"Ahh yes, except for your friend here with three failures under his belt." "OY! ONLY TECHNICALLY!" "You wouldn't have noticed or interacted with those that know. But you have one more test before you're fully qualified Genin, and I'll be your proctor."
Naruto had the reasonable reaction of banging his head into the ground, muttering about 'another damn test' 'Why do we have so many tests' 'ima going to burn the school down and give that old man more paperwork'.
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Hiruzen sneezed, then continued smoking his pipe and reading his student's newest work, thanking his predecessor Tobirama for creating and adding the Kage Bunshin to the Guide to How to Have Free Time as a Hokage that Hashirama had passed down to him.
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"You can stop that, it's a purely practical test, going over all the skills you learned at the academy."
Naruto promptly stopped, showing off a perfectly fine forehead.
'Huh, so he literally and metaphorically has a hard head, good to know. Wait, is the concrete indented?!'
"Now let's get introductions out of the way, please state your name, likes, dislikes, and dreams, and maybe throw in your hobbies. Who would like to begin?"
*Crickets*
"Fair enough, I'll go first. My name again is Kakashi Hatake, I don't care much about telling you what I like and dislike, as for my dreams, you might learn them in the unlikely event you pass."
'WE LEARNED NOTHING!' was shouted in the heads of all three genin.
Two tick marks.
"Let us start with an orange ball of ADHD, and again, name, likes, dislikes, and dreams, and so on."
"Tsk, Well I'm Naruto Uzumaki, I love instant and handmade ramen, and I dislike the time it takes to make ramen. Oh, I have a surprisingly good green thumb, so I like taking care of the garden on top of my apartment. And…" a look of seriousness took over Naruto's face, "... I am going to become Hokage and make this village acknowledge me."
That last part had Naruto holding his fist up before him, almost as if swearing an oath. Sakura gave a small smile, and even Sasuke gave a nod of acknowledgment.
A moment passed.
"My name is Sakura Haruno, I Like plenty of things *glances at Sasuke, I dislike Naruto ""love you too ""and my dream is to stand tall and proud with the one I love."
A quirky eyebrow from Sasuke and a nod of understanding from Naruto.
After a moment, Sasuke deigned to give a response.
"I am Sasuke Uchiha, I do not care enough for likes, dislikes, or even hobbies. I do not have a dream but an ambition. I will bring back the Uchiha name to prominence and hunt down the man who tarnished it."
This time a small but sad smile graced Sakura's lips, as for Naruto, In one of his more rare moments, had an unreadable expression, only giving a nod himself.
A few moments passed, just the barest hints of comradery forming between the eclectic gathering of new teammates.
"Understood, so you are all delusional."
Tick mark number three, BOOM.
Let's slow things down once again, for even untrained ninjas they are still quite fast.
What started off this string of events was the bloodlust that was now pouring out of Sakura. Kakashi had proved he was a slacker, that he was rude, that he had terrible timing, and if looking at that book told her anything, also a pervert. The cherry on top being that he ruined this precious moment with Sasuke and Naruto, though mostly Sasuke.
The first two to react were surprisingly said two boys. Sasuke knew how to read a room and while he had gained some respect for his two teammates for their resolve, was well aware of the ticking time bomb Sakura was becoming over the last few minutes. With a hand sign, he was gone in a whirlwind of leaves.
Naruto could not read a room, but he always had a sixth sense for people's emotional states and had detected Sakura's initial flare-up. When Kakashi had set off the bloodlust, it was pure instinct and the fact he was used to doing this to Sakura that let him know to get away from ground zero. In one of the more helpful instances of his chains assisting him, so far, they wrapped around him and quickly dragged him out of the danger zone.
With both genin gone like the wind, Sakura had a clean shot to Kakashi whose one eye was as wide as a dinner plate, though not for long. Distracted, Kakashi received one of the strongest non-chakra-infused punches he had received in a while and promptly went flying off the building.
How you might ask, did Kakashi Hatake; former Anbu captain, child prodigy, disciple of the 4th Hokage, the ninja of a thousand jutsu, and one of less than five people that had their name on the very short list of potential Hokage candidates for when Hiruzen finally bit the dust, get punched and sent flying off the building, passing out halfway in the air before he finally landed on the street outside the academy?
Like Shinobi, we must look underneath the underneath.
And it is ~*~TRAUMA~*~. *jazz hands*
Kakashi has been around the block and has experienced his fair share of messed up shit. But in this particular case, it is one of the worst from his past. Kakashi was the only one of five people who is alive and was there for the incident-
A sneeze deep in a cave based in the land of rain.
- luckily, he did not remember the entire incident, but the fear, specific scenes, and scars he experienced from then washed over him.
Now what was the trigger? Was it the disturbing amounts of bloodlust coming from one of his genin which frankly on its own would have just left him kinda impressed if a bit concerned? No. but it was enough to load the gun. It was the unique sounds of summoned chains that drew his attention and pulled the trigger for his PTSD. Seeing Naruto, who reminded him of his long-gone teammate and friend Obito-
Another sneeze deep in a cave based in the land of rain.
- who also got dragged away by chains in a very similar fashion.
So there stood Kakashi, who felt scars and fears he thought he would never experience again until after death when Kushina would beat him for not taking care of himself. He also had vague memories of ungodly amounts of permanent pink and purple dye, a crater, his sensei being dragged away by chains as well, and then finally him, Obito, and Minato being surrounded by rings of kanji saying pain and humiliation in one of Kushina's fuinjutsu testing circles, Rin off to the side holding ink supplies for the apply names Red Hot Habanero.
While experiencing all of that, every single defense Kakashi had was down, making him but a simple punching dummy for Sakura.
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About 30 minutes later everyone was back on the roof, the only difference being Kakashi's entire torso being made up of bandages and all his potential students being in various levels of confusion at what just happened.
After Kakashi bounced a few times on the street, almost immediately there was a rumbling, like a stampede of elephants was heading this way. Instead of said stampede of elephants arriving and running over their potential sensei, Might Guy appeared, somehow being summoned after sensing his rival was downed.
What then proceeded could be identified as medical aid, but if you ask every witness who saw said medical aid, their statements would all roughly say that it looked like more of a sparring match. As if Kakashi, even while unconscious and injured, did not want to receive any medical attention from Gai and fought him back.
It took Gai 20 minutes and opening the first of the Eight Gates to get Kakashi all patched up. At no point though, did he subdue him. Instead, in a fantastic show of taijutsu he bandaged Kakashi while fighting him.
It took only an additional 5 minutes to lure Kakashi back up to the roof, where he got hit by some needle of liquid that seemed to have knocked him out. Finally, in the last 5 minutes, team 7 got an abridged version of how to check if a comrade was alive and needed further medical help.
Dumbfounded, Sakura didn't even think about the fact that she raised her hand when Gai asked who knocked Kakashi out. Whatever fear she was about to feel got blasted out of the way by increased confusion when he handed her a schedule and contact information if she ever wanted to learn how to harness the power of her youth.
Finally, Might Gai disappeared without a sound, like a silent and deadly fart.
Not a moment afterward their sensei began to awaken. Looking around, he only saw his pupils giving him confused expressions. Taking stock of his surroundings, he only gave a slight shrug, then proceeded to act like nothing weird had happened. Just stood up, backed up, leaned against the rail, and pulled out his little orange book.
Then there was silence, the crickets, even though it was the middle of the day, were louder than any other sound that could be heard at this moment.
Kakashi coughed. "Well, aren't you all ambitious?" He said in a very guarded tone.
"Well, can't say it was nice to learn that about you all. But with introductions out of the way ill leave you to prepare. Meet me At training ground 13 in two days at Eight A.M. sharp. There you will have to retrieve something from me using all the skills ya got, so no holding back." dropping into a monotone instead of fake cheer Kakashi continued "You got this team, yeah do your best."
Snapping his book shut as if to signal that was the end of their meeting. He left with a final warning to come with an empty stomach.
Then he was gone like that, in a flash, being replaced by a log in a Shinobi vest.
Again Naruto already taking over the mantle of being the mouthpiece of the group said what was on all of their minds. "What the hell was that!"
And there they sat, contemplating what they had just seen. Because just about anybody who had gone through what they had, you would need a couple of minutes to process what just happened. The scenario was so baffling that even the Uchiha had stopped brooding and was just left with a face of contemplation.
Their reverie lasted for almost ten minutes before it was finally broken by a loud growl of Naruto's stomach.
"So, who wants to get some grub?"
In a continuation of the day's strange event after strange event, Sasuke deigned to give another response.
"I can eat"
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Three predators disguised as genin were stalking around a large stand-alone tree, eyes glowing with bloodlust, hunched ready to pounce, and mouths full of teeth letting out burning steam.
It was two days later and the genin of team seven were at the designated training ground three hours after the assigned time, and they were pissed.
Sakura ended up being the first to shake off the rage echo chamber that had been built around the three. Just a few moments later, Sasuke followed suit, having been able to escape the show of emotion after one of the voices left. While he was regaining his composure and rebuilding the facade of stoicism. Naruto kept stalking about, seemingly regressing further until he started to even walk on all fours with his chains starting to emerge as tails, and yes, there were nine of them.
"SAKURA PUNCH!"
"OOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWW!"
'Damn I was so close that time'
"So we agree this can't go unpunished?"
*Grunt of approval*
*Grunt of pain and tears* "y~e~s… owwww."
"Ok you two come up with a plan I am going to get food for us, keep me updated on what you do."
With a happy hop, skip, and jump, Sakura went off to get food or commit a felony (against Kakashi), she'll decide as she walks.
Left alone, Naruto and Sasuke just ended up staring at each other, then slowly started to glare.
*Grunt of annoyance*
Translation: "I'll find and watch Kakashi"
With an about-face, Sasuke started heading toward the Monument of Fire where rumor has it that a gray-haired ninja could be seen trying to make certain names on the monument bigger without damaging the other names.
*Grunt of pain and tears*
Translation "I'll booby trap the training grounds"
Naruto, having realized the folly of swearing off pranking, started pulling out his Jonin grade trap kit he got from a weird snake lady who gave it to him as a bribe to go after certain chunin and jonin.
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Kakashi felt an especially cold shiver go down his back and gave his soundings a quick check. Missing a bit of blue cloth that blended in with the Uchiha monument, he continued to chisel out a larger space for Rin's name.
All the while, he was oblivious to the danger he had put himself into by pissing off Genin that have crushed stones and felled trees with her bare hands, another that knocked out a Kage and regularly dodges ANBU, and one that is related to and shares more than just looks with 'I became an ANBU At Thirteen' Itachi who also has access to the secret Uchiha training room filled to the brim with the pyromaniac clans favorite Jutsu that went all the way to Jonin level.
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Hiruzen couldn't help but cough from how much he was laughing at the scene going on before him.
Kakashi had so far failed every team he had been given, and it had started to get on Hiruzen's last nerve.
Sure, on paper, putting the top of the class, an average kunoichi, and the dead last was balanced. But come on, it's a ninja village, whatever information that widely known was probably missing the important detials. All the Jonin helping plan out teams knew this and would have said something, but Hiruzen had a grudge, and they were perfectly fine not getting in his way. The last person to do that was forced to be his body double for the infamously boring council meeting that could knock you out faster than a Nara going to sleep, forced to stay awake for the whole thing so that they could give the Hokage a detailed report.
That is to say, they knew it was rigged. Sasuke was the top student and was an overall generalist who was quite good at everything, once he chose a specialty he would have an amazing foundation to build from. Sakura, who was seen only for her smarts also had already amazing chakra control and was a potential taijutsu specialist with her hidden strength if she applied herself. Then finally, Naruto, while hated, they were forced to admit had some of the greatest potential, already a trap specialist who was slowly building a devastating repertoire of jutsu that was pouting the frankly ridiculous amount of chakra to use.
After looking underneath the underneath, Hiruzen had created an absolutely stacked assault team not seen since the Sannin were young. And he was laughing his ass off at the results.
Watching Training Ground 13 through his crystal ball, he saw a full display of what should have been a David vs Goliath scenario, turned into a game of whack-a-mole with three mallets in play. Kakashi should not be having a hard time fending off three recently graduated genin, and yet he was doing everything he could to keep the bells away from them.
When he arrived, all he saw were his students glowering and giving him the stink eye for being over FOUR HOURS LATE! Fully unaware that he forged some quite strong bonds of hatred for him. His usual tactic of throwing people off their game with his tardiness had backfired, he was expecting a disunited front, and at first, everything went within expectations.
Why wouldn't it? They just got told they couldn't all pass. Except, they didn't hear that. All that could get past their ears was that they needed to get bells from him using any method they could think of.
He gave them the spiel about the bell test and set the timer
Sakura and Sasuke ran into the woods to get into position, leaving Kakashi to think they were going to do their own thing. Naruto stepped up to get the snowball rolling and expectedly, he ran head-first at him with a not-so-expected attack.
"Chain-style Porcupine attack" Where Naruto once was, a ball of spear-pointed chains exploded in every direction.
'Oh good, seems like he actually took a look at those scrolls I found for him'
He didn't, he just took the one thing he knew about summoning the chains and poured waaaaay more chakra into it.
Kakashi was surprised Naruto seemed to be able to use his chains already and quickly started backing up into the woods the other two had retreated into before. Thus, the snowball finally started gaining full speed, he had just stepped into the most dangerous wooded area outside The Forest Of Death.
Hiruzen at this point was cackling. While nothing could be traced to him directly, he had a not-so-minor hand in the development of Naruto's pranking skill. With a few deals on targets and promises of holding back every once in a while, Hiruzen The Professor came out. He would teach Naruto a thing or two about traps and even give Naruto supplies to practice the new "trap" techniques, giving him grades on how well he did. While he did not think that the setup in Training Ground 13 was Naruto's magnum opus, he would grade it as a masterpiece.
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Kakashi was on the run.
Already he was on his third backup mask, about halfway through his chakra reserves, and had to pop a soldier pill. The three hellions were not giving him a break, thankfully the shock of it all was wearing off and his paranoia was kicking in, and started working overdrive figuring out their strategy.
The first thing thought up and filed away for later was his plans to either sick Naruto or Guy on the idiot in the academy who gave the reports to the Jonin instructors on their potential students. Was it his bad for not checking to see if it was accurate? Yes. But they were still generally accurate, if a bit off. This had to be malicious because the report he got was just plain wrong. Even the Uchiha had been underestimated, which was a big surprise since everybody seemed to worship the shit coming out of his—
FOOMPH
A giant fireball full of shuriken left a neat pile of smashed charcoal where he once was.
'Ok snark and complain later, keep track of the killing intent and orange.'
The three demons of Training Grounds 13 were vicious but sloppy. They were running off of rage, and while showing signs of cooperation, did not know how to work as a unit yet. This gave enough room for Kakashi to not get sent to the hospital. Though it certainly was decimating the local flora.
While Sakura and Sasuke were certainly putting in work, throwing around a lot of fire and in some cases throwing around the trees themselves, Naruto by far was causing the most collateral, having used so much wood for contraptions. There were the classic spike pits and log pendulums. But the amount of sabotaged trees full of explosive traps and specific branches cut to fail under certain pressures?
'Yeah, Yamato is going to be pissed about having to regrow all thes…'
With a quick leap forward, Kakashi just barely missed getting hit by a Naruto clone who quickly flickered away to reveal a henged Sakura. Giving a quick moment to make sure nothing was broken, he was confused for a moment when he didn't hear the jingle of the bells coming from his hip.
Looking towards Sakara, their dangling in her extended fist, was a pair of jingling bells.
'Well, shit.'
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Edit: little bit of grammar but mostly spacing, seriously have no idea how that happened.
edit 2: more grammar and spacing fixes (p.s. don't edit and write fanfiction while having a cold and sneezing your lungs out)
A.n. Well that was fun to write I might get another chapter out soon, no promises though
With a stuffy nose, HeavyAlchemist