Chapter 3: The Flaw in the Test
The Genin teams were called, one by one. Asuma Sarutobi, a lit cigarette dangling from his lips, collected his trio of Ino-Shika-Cho with a lazy grin. Kurenai Yuhi, with her striking red eyes, gave a soft smile to her new team of trackers. As each Jonin-sensei left, their gaze would inevitably drift to the loud boy in the orange jumpsuit. Their expressions were a mixture of curiosity, pity, and a professional, guarded suspicion. He was a ghost returned, an anomaly in their neat files, and no one knew quite what to make of him.
Finally, only Team 7 remained.
One hour passed. Then two. Sakura's initial excitement had curdled into a furious impatience. Sasuke sat as still as a statue, his eyes closed, though Naruto knew he was perfectly aware of everything. Naruto himself was leaning back in his chair, feet propped on the desk, playing the part of the bored, hyperactive child.
"Where IS he?!" Sakura finally exploded, standing up and pacing. "Every other team is gone! Why are we stuck with the lazy one?!" She whirled on Naruto. "And you! Where were you, really? 'Some old man' isn't an answer!"
Naruto opened one eye, his mask of idiocy firmly in place. "Huh? Whaddya mean? It was a place! With... y'know, rocks and trees and stuff! The old guy was just... an old guy! He was really old!" He gave her a thumbs-up and a grin so wide it looked painful.
Sakura slumped back into her seat, defeated by the sheer density of his feigned stupidity. Sasuke let out a barely audible 'Hn.' This was his team. A fangirl and a moron who couldn't even invent a believable lie.
A full three hours after they were supposed to meet, the classroom door slid open. A tall man with gravity-defying silver hair leaned into the room. His visible eye was droopy and bored. "My first impression of you all..." he said, his gaze sweeping over them, "is that you're a bunch of idiots."
Sakura and Naruto immediately shot to their feet, shouting in unison. "YOU'RE LATE!"
The Jonin, Kakashi Hatake, offered a closed-eye smile. "Sorry, a black cat crossed my path, so I had to take the long way."
On the Academy rooftop, the wind whipped around them. Kakashi leaned against the railing, the picture of casual disinterest. "Alright, why don't we start with some introductions? You know, likes, dislikes, dreams for the future, that sort of thing."
Sakura went first, a blush on her face as she repeatedly glanced at Sasuke. "Well, the person I like is... My hobby is... My dream for the future is..." she squealed, hiding her face. "And I dislike NARUTO and INO-SAN!"
Naruto cried dramatically.
Kakashi's eye turned to the Uchiha. "Next."
"My name is Sasuke Uchiha," he said, his voice flat and cold. "I don't particularly like anything, and I dislike many things. What I have is not a dream, because I will make it a reality. I'm going to restore my clan... and kill a certain man."
The air grew heavy. Good, Naruto thought. Focused. Predictable. Easy to manipulate.
"Okay..." Kakashi said, a hint of unease in his tone. "And you, with the unique fashion sense."
Naruto beamed. "I'm Naruto Uzumaki! I like instant ramen in a cup, and I really like the ramen Iruka-sensei gets me at the Ichiraku stand! I dislike the three minutes you have to wait after you pour the water in the ramen cup. And my dream..." He stood, pointing a finger at the Hokage mountain. "Is to become the greatest Hokage! Then the whole village will have to stop disrespecting me and treat me like I'm somebody! Somebody important!"
Kakashi watched him, his expression unreadable. A loud-mouthed orphan with a hero complex. Simple enough on the surface. "Good. You're all unique, and you all have your own ideas. We'll have our first mission tomorrow." He smiled again, but this time it held no warmth. "It's a survival exercise."
Meet at Training Ground 7 tomorrow at 10 AM. And I wouldn't recommend eating breakfast... or you'll puke."
The next day, under the rising sun, the test was in full swing. Sakura, with her textbook knowledge and lack of real-world application, had fallen for the most basic of genjutsu and now lay unconscious somewhere in the forest.
In a clearing, the real fight was happening. Sasuke, the prodigy, was facing Kakashi. And he was being utterly dismantled.
"Fire Style: Fireball Jutsu!" Sasuke roared, launching a massive orb of flame.
Kakashi's voice droned from behind him. "Shinobi lesson number one: Taijutsu." A swift kick sent Sasuke tumbling. Every move the Uchiha made, every jutsu he attempted, Kakashi was three steps ahead.
While all of Kakashi's attention was on the Uchiha, Naruto enacted his plan. Crouching in the bushes, he held two smooth, gray rocks. With a flicker of concentration, he used a simple Transformation Jutsu, molding them into perfect, gleaming replicas of the bells on Kakashi's hip.
Then, the real power came into play. His Kokugan, unseen by any, activated. With a thought, he targeted the two real bells jingling at Kakashi's waist. Sukunahikona.
They vanished, shrunk to a microscopic size too small to see or hear. In the same instant, Naruto shrunk him and his two fake, transformed-rock bells. He then used Daikokuten to store both the real and fake sets in his timeless dimension. As Kakashi dodged another of Sasuke's kunai volleys, a shrunken Naruto zipped past his hip, unnoticed, and used Daikokuten again to manifest the fake bells, now returned to full size, exactly where the originals had been. The swap took less than a tenth of a second.
The schooling continued until Sasuke was exhausted, tricked into Kakashi's Headhunter Jutsu, and left buried up to his neck in the dirt.
"You're too focused on the Uchiha name, and it makes you arrogant," Kakashi lectured, before disappearing in a swirl of leaves.
Finding a comfortable spot by a tree, Kakashi pulled out his favorite orange book, Icha Icha Paradise. A perverted giggle escaped his lips as he began to read, confident that the test was well in hand.
WHAM!
An unseen force, like a miniature wrecking ball, slammed into his side, sending him flying through the air and crashing into a tree trunk. He landed on his feet, clutching his ribs, his book forgotten on the ground.
"My, my," Kakashi wheezed, his single eye wide with shock. He stared at the spot he'd been kicked from, where Naruto now stood, having returned to his full size. "That's some immense power for someone so small."
Naruto stared back, his blue eyes unblinking. And then, it happened.
Without a hand sign, without a thrown weapon, without any warning at all, metal erupted all over Kakashi's body. Kunai and shuriken materialized from thin air, already embedded deep in his flak jacket, pinning his arms to his sides. Several more pierced his legs, drawing blood. He grunted, his body seizing in pain and shock, his mind racing to comprehend what had just happened. It wasn't a summoning. It wasn't a projection. The weapons had simply... appeared.
Naruto's face broke into a wide, sheepish grin, completely at odds with the brutal, impossible attack he had just unleashed.
"Hehe, told you, sensei," he boasted, rubbing the back of his head. "You're no match for the future Hokage!"
In the Hokage Tower, Hiruzen Sarutobi's pipe fell from his gaping mouth. He stared at the image of his most elite Jonin, impaled and helpless before the very boy he had welcomed back with a chuckle just yesterday. The boy's boastful words echoed in the silent office, no longer sounding like a child's dream, but like a terrifying, undeniable statement of fact.