Chapter Text
“Ah Tenzo, there you are.” It was horrible really, the power those five innocent words had to completely ruin his life. If ANBU Cat, code-named 'Tenzo', knew what he was about to be dragged into, he would have turned and run the other way, hidden himself in the depths of an ANBU training ground, and not resurfaced until the crisis was over. Of course ANBU Cat couldn't tell the future and so he didn't know about the ruination of his life that was about to happen, so he answered the Hokage's summons to attend, and promptly realised that he had been trapped. “I have an assignment for you.”
It wasn't unusual for the Hokage to hand deliver assignments to ANBU operatives, but this felt wrong. He swallowed tightly, sensing the ANBU guards in the room seem oddly relieved that they weren't in his position, and wondered if he couldn't escape out the window and through the village to Training Ground 44. It was horrifying this time of year, but he had a feeling that it would be preferable to whatever his new assignment was about to be. A knock sounded and one of the Hokage's administration assistants, a civilian girl who was terrifyingly competent at her job, hired because while civilians were almost the bottom rung in the village hierarchy, civilian administrators came under the direct protection of the Hokage and the Jounin Commander and had the distinct advantage of being able to scold shinobi without rank getting in the way. His gaze immediately flicked down to the scroll in her hand, the distinct blue distaff quite clear, and he felt the urge to run come over him again.
Konoha had a very simple coding system for scrolls:
Black: Death, a scroll carried by team leads to seal dead subordinates in to get them home.
Light Green: Border Patrol, village or country.
Dark Green: Internal Patrol, village or cities.
Light Orange: Courier, including simple missives, the running of messages during war time, and hand delivering sensitive information.
Dark Orange: Garrison, a scroll whose orders garrisoned shinobi at certain stations across the country for a minimum of five years.
Distaff Orange: Hishin, to be garrisoned in the capital city, usually to be embedded with the city Guard.
Red: Assassination
Distaff Red: Investigation and intelligence, including espionage, intelligence recovery or planting, and the spread of disinformation.
Light Blue: Escort.
Dark Blue: Guard.
Distaff Blue: Teacher, either at the Academy or as a Jounin sensei.
ANBU Cat would accept any mission from the Hokage, whether he had to wear the ANBU white or the uniform of the regulars. He frequently took on A and the occasional S ranked missions for the Hokage in the navy and olive uniform, but to receive a teaching assignment? He took the offered scroll and Ayaka quickly sidestepped him, moving out of his immediate range which really was not a good sign.
Ayaka had worked for the Hokage long enough to have an excellent understanding of how she could expect shinobi to react to certain missions. It was an odd feeling - the two ANBU on Hokage guard duty were quite clearly holding their breath, their chakra flickering slightly in anxiety, Ayaka looked entirely dismayed and alarmed and like she would rather be anywhere else, and the Hokage was quite calm as he packed his pipe and lit the weed with a spark of chakra as he hummed a ditty a travelling entertainer (currently keeping Ibiki and the other grey-coats in T&I entertained) had sung the other night. ANBU Cat did not feel relieved by the Hokage's calmness. He glanced at Ayaka who was twisting the hem of her shirt, her pulse had quickened and she was looking like she really really wanted to be anywhere else. He sighed, he had never believed in putting off bad news so he tore the scroll open and stared at the characters. He blinked once, reread the passage, blinked twice and then the room went cold.
Ayaka had stopped breathing, the Hokage had stopped humming, though he looked far too innocent for his own good, and he was pretty sure at least one of the ANBU guards had fainted from the tension.
“Hokage-sama,” he said softly, rolling the scroll up carefully, keeping his focus on the scroll. “Have I displeased you in some way?”
“Not at all, Tenzo-kun.”
“Have I committed a crime, warranting the death sentence?”
“I think you're being a tad dramatic,” the Hokage pointed out mildly, a flash of amusement crossing his face.
“Dramatic! Hokage-sama!”
“Their original sensei has had an unfortunate delay in his mission and won't be back for some time. I find that my hands in this matter are tied. Good luck. Ayaka?” The girl flashed the Hokage a vaguely betrayed look but swallowed and showed more courage than half the shinobi in Konoha as she approached the clearly deranged shinobi in front of her.
“This way please, Tenzo-san.” He woodenly followed the civilian out of the office, not taking in anything until she had him sat down and with a cup of tea in hand. “It's not that bad, surely?”
He looked at her and she paled and took a step back. “This is death.”
She swallowed tightly, unsure of how to comfort the clearly distressed man and he sensed her relief when Genma appeared, promising to take him off her hands. “Come on, Tenzo. Let's get a drink.”
It was tradition for the potential jounin sensei to gather at Group Therapy, one of Konoha's most popular bars if only because the owner was a former shinobi, and he offered special discounts to jounin sensei the night before they picked up their teams. The potential jounin sensei would come together to commiserate with each other, to work out graduation exams and to examine and reexamine their baby genin. Of course being selected to be a jounin sensei was one of the highest honours a jounin could receive, but it would also mean months, if not years, at reduced pay and bound to the village while you tried to mould tiny humans into creatures who wouldn't trip over their feet and die the moment they stepped outside of the village. It wasn't unheard of for a jounin sensei to fail the students because they suddenly couldn't deal with the pressure that was being put before them. In those cases, the Hokage would normally look disappointed at them and their names would be struck from the teaching register before they were sent back out to the field. So coming together was normal.
What wasn't normal was to see a group of ANBU, all in uniform except for their masks which were sealed to be unrecognisable when not on ones face. ANBU didn't normally linger at Group Therapy, they had a preferred watering hole and didn't tend to wander too far. At first they believed the group to be consoling their friend who looked truly miserable and was the only one in a flack jacket instead of the grey armour. It could have been a mission gone wrong, or maybe he was forced back to the regulars, but then he slammed his glass on their table. “If I pass them, senpai will kill me!”
“But if you don't, senpai will kill you anyway,” the ANBU they recognised as Yuugao patted his shoulder and the others laughed as he slumped over, the epitome of misery.
“Didn't senpai like you best of all his kouhai.”
“Just means he'll kill me creatively. What did I do to anger Hokage-sama?” he wailed and buried his head in his arms again, fingers gripping onto his hair as his comrades exchanged grins over his head.
“Cheer up, Ten,” Genma said suddenly. “You have three baby genin to torment, just like Kakashi tormented you.”
Unsurprisingly, this did not make Tenzo feel any better.
Iruka looked over the class of excited children who were trying desperately to sit still, but most were wriggling in excitement (except for a few who were death glaring Naruto, who happened to be anxiously avoiding eye-contact with Sasuke who looked even grumpier than usual. Years of teaching experience suggested that he should ignore that and move on). The recent graduates were always so happy and excited, and it made them realise that the last six years were worth every bit of pain and torment they had had to put up with.
He smiled as he considered the best way to begin the usual lecture about how they were shinobi of Konoha now and what that would mean exactly. He sighed faintly, of the class of thirty, at the most fifteen would go onto team based apprenticeships. The others would go either to specialist fields such as cryptanalysis, medical, or the spying ring, some would choose to return to the Academy to try again in six months, and others would disappear either to civilian life or to be claimed by ANBU for training in either the combat, torture and interrogation, or seduction and infiltration teams.
ANBU had already given him a heads up that at least three of his students were going to be purposefully failed so they could recruit them and he tried not to look at Ami. She was pretty in an unassuming way and he knew that there were a few brothels across the land that Konoha needed spies in, and with her purple hair and the uncommon shade of brown eyes, she would be extremely popular. Still, she could always say no and retire to civilian life and the Temple school. And there were worse ways to serve the village, he supposed.
He had just opened his mouth to begin the lecture when the door opened and a ghoul came into the room. Or at least he thought it was a ghoul? The man looked terrible in his brand new flak jacket, a custom made protector, slumped shoulders with grey skin and bags under his eyes as he shuffled along. (Iruka would later swear to anyone who asked, that he heard a death rattle when the man breathed). “Team seven,” he said in a raspy, depressed sounding voice and Iruka blinked in disbelief. This was one of the jounin the Hokage thought would be a good sensei? By the state of his flak jacket, he hadn't been in the regulars for that long, perhaps this was his ANBU plant? That would make sense. ANBU didn't socialise all that much... Still before he called for Ami, Hibachi and Unagi he double checked and froze, glancing at the man.
“Ah, Yamato-san, I haven't read out the assignments yet-” he stopped when Yamato looked at him, a shiver ran up his spine and he was pretty sure he could see spirits floating around the man. “But that's fine. Team seven is Uzumaki Naruto, Haruno Sakura and Uchiha Sasuke. This is your jounin sensei-”
“That depressed old man?” Naruto shouted over the swell of outrage at the makeup of the team and the pathetic whimpering of the man. Iruka thought he heard something about how senpai was truly going to kill him, and that the Hokage was cruel, but before he could react the man had slumped over to the windows.
“Sensei, how high is the building?” he asked, opening the window and looking out. “Better I kill myself than let senpai get his hands on me.”
“Iruka-sensei!” Sakura looked horrified at the man who had one foot on the ledge and was muttering about farewelling such a cruel world before he gave the ground a considering look. “He's our sensei?”
“Trees. Why do there have to be trees? They'll break my fall,” he slumped over the windowsill in defeat, half hanging out the window, arms swaying in the breeze.
And the jounin thought the academy students were dramatic. Honestly.
“I think I'll apply to the Hokage for a different sensei for you,” he assured Sakura, wondering what was wrong with the man.
Yamato perked up at that and looked at him in wonder, as though the sun were rising at his command. “Would you? You'll take pity on me and ask Hokage-sama to spare my life?”
Iruka sighed as he figured out what was wrong with the man. Apparently he wasn't clinically depressed, merely didn't want to train a team. He pinched the bridge of his nose to keep a brewing headache at bay. “No. I'm not going to tell the Hokage that you don't want to take on a team.”
“Or...” he looked around, desperately analysing the children in the room (who were half looking at him in horror, and half in amusement). “Well how about I take another team!”
“Is this because of me?” Naruto suddenly asked and Iruka glanced at the man from the corner of his eye. Depending on his answer, Iruka would have to get everyone to help him destroy a body and then get them to lie to whomever was sent to investigate the missing jounin, he'd call it training in situational lying in the defence of a colleague.
“Yes!” Yamato nodded glad that someone understood, completely missing the sudden and very pointed flare of killing intent that was suddenly aimed at him. To be fair, Iruka didn't have many chances to work on his killing intent and Yamato had recently faced off against a missing-nin who had been hired to stop the assassination of a daimyou's family. Against that kind of killing intent, an academy sensei didn't really stand a chance. “Senpai will kill whomever takes over your training and I would rather not be him! No offence kid.”
And kunai away, that was not the answer Iruka was expecting.
“Well then...” Naruto adopted a thinking pose, Sakura and Sasuke shied away from Naruto and Iruka wondered if it was too early to start drinking. Alcohol may not solve the problem, but it could make him forget about it. “What if I said that I'd only learn under you?” Yamato blinked and slumped as Naruto continued talking about how it was the perfect plan. Yamato started walking out of the room and Iruka motioned for the three to follow him. It was that or slam the door after the depressed man and hold the students hostage until a more appropriate sensei could be found, and there was too much paperwork involved with the second scenario.
As the door closed, he wished them luck. He also resolved to coax some answers out of Ayaka with dumplings. She may only be a civilian, but she knew everything. And with his evening planned, Iruka called the class to order and began his lecture.
He wasn't sure when the twitch developed. Somewhere between walking into the classroom and getting them out to the training ground. They were bickering and fawning and he was pretty sure he was going to kill them in the middle of the village. Surely they would let him off with a warning - entirely justified homicide. How did these three graduate? How did two of them even get top of the class. If the girl ate more than an apple a day he would eat his protector, and the boy didn't even know the meaning of team work. And the blond! Apparently he thought the difference between talking and shouting was in the number of body parts that were flailing about. It was never ending.
Yamato set them down and stared at them, cold sweat breaking out and he took a deep breath. "Good morning."
...
No response. Oh come on, even the sprouts in ANBU knew better than to keep silent when a superior was leaving room for them to respond.
"Good morning," he tried again and the three exchanged wary looks.
"Morning, sensei," the girl finally chirped.
Chirped.
What self-respecting shinobi chirped? Outside of a mission that was... The three must have seen something on his face because they cringed back as one and he barely contained his glee.
Apparently he could control them. New plan. He would train them up for Senpai, get the worst of their traits dealt with before Senpai could swoop in and refine them. Senpai would be thrilled that he didn't have to deal with such brats.
Ayaka saw Iruka approaching as she left the office and almost wished she could turn and walk back inside, but she had pulled almost three weeks of 19 hours shifts and the Jounin-Commander wanted her to go home. “Dinner.” Iruka said. It wasn't a question, she sighed and resigned herself to a night of interrogation about the placements. She trudged after him. There was a little joint that did ridiculously good dumplings, and Ayaka hadn't had time to make any of her own, so she was okay with his choice. She picked a table as he went to get them food, returning with tea and a promise of food. “So,” he said as he handed her a cup of tea. “Yamato-san seems nice.”
Ayaka gave him a sharp look. “You know I can't discuss this.”
Iruka shook his head. “I know, I know, but they're my kids you know?" he said and refilled her cup. She sighed and picked up the cup again, stifling a yawn.
“Yamato-san is an admirable shinobi. Hokage-sama and the Jounin-Commander both trust him implicitly. He does not dislike the child because of what he holds. He will not show favouratism or pander to the civilian on the team. He is an experienced trainer. That's all I'm saying.” She ignored the server who set down some steamers with dumplings and stared Iruka down. He looked away first. She refilled his cup and took a dumpling, smiling when a plate of tea smoked duck was set down. “Thank you, Iruka.”
Iruka sighed, he forgot that Ayaka was too much of a professional to spill secrets like that. Ah well. He had to try. He leaned forward. "So which teams do you expect to pass or fail?" And then her eyes lit up and they gossiped the night away.