Chapter Text
After the Pein invasion, the village of Konoha changed for many, especially Naruto. He came back from Mount Myoboku the instant Granny Tsunade called. He overthrew Pein. Many civilians and ninja alike died, and the village grieved the loss of their loved ones, but life continued. The five nations entered the Fourth Great Shinobi War. The Rain Village and its allies fought and lost. New treaties were signed, new borders were drawn, and new villages burst from the ruins of the former.
However, grief could be used to people’s advantage and disadvantage. It could sway people to do or believe things they didn’t normally do or think about before. Danzo swayed the hearts of the people when Naruto was born and once again after the Pein Invasion. Naruto didn’t know who this Danzo was when he first took Granny’s place as hokage, but Naruto wasn’t going to let it stand. They weren’t even giving Granny a chance to recover, and the guy put a bounty on Sasuke!
Naruto didn’t understand why Sai tried to stop him. He thought he understood.
He didn’t.
Naruto had no idea what he was up against. He had no idea what the damage would be. Granny eventually woke up fully recovered and took her rightful place without a fuss. Danzo died before he could take office while at a Kage Summit. Sasuke had killed him, and no one was heartbroken about it either, not that Naruto knew. He was told only after the fact.
Despite all that, war broke out, and Naruto was nowhere to be found.
Rules could get kinda scary when war reared its ugly head. Rules got bent and often misinterpreted. By the time Granny found him in the bowels of Konoha that few rarely saw, Naruto wasn’t the same. She found him too late.
The village wasn’t the same. The dead would always remain dead, and the living had to continue living. Nothing could go back to the way it was, and war raged on. Naruto lost friends due to death. Others abandoned him out of resentment. Life continued, and the war ended. Life continued, but nothing was the same.
“Naruto, I think it’s about time you got your own genin team,” Lady Tsunade said. Her fingers intertwined, giving her an air of authority, which she had as Hokage of Konoha. She had called him on his day off, but he came as the good little shinobi he was, despite what others thought of him.
“Huh!” Naruto exclaimed. “Why?”
Dismay washed over his face, and his spiky golden hair, which had grown as wild as ever over the past few years, bounced at the exclamation. He even sported his father’s sideburns, though Naruto’s were slightly longer than Minato’s if she remembered the Fourth Hokage’s appearance correctly. They reached his shoulders and had bands around them that made them resemble tassels.
Naruto wore his father’s style of clothes in the new standard jonin vest, making him the practical spitting image of Minato Namikaze.
“You’re twenty years old,” Tsunade retorted. “More than old enough to have a genin team. You’ll oversee Squad 7.”
She gave him a hard stare to add to the point; he was not backing out of this. Naruto needed socialization. He got so little already, not that she blamed him. The village wasn’t pleasant to him even on good days, and Naruto rarely ventured out of his apartment unless necessary, like when Tsunade called him for missions. Naruto lived in an isolated bubble, taking missions requiring little to no contact and assassinations. Missions that were generally done by anbu.
Naruto joined the anbu.
Only for a time. Naruto could hide under a mask, pretend to be someone else, and he could shove all the pain, hurt, misery, loneliness, and agony inside. A nasty trick he no doubt picked up from Kakashi. He was skilled as an anbu, more than she initially thought. That partly worried her. Naruto was almost too good for anbu. It was only then that she realized how many “masks” the boy had. He wore masks that weren’t physical, but he could be whatever demeanor he wanted or needed in a given situation.
Was he ever happy, she began to wonder? Naruto had this loud and excitable nature about him, but was it a front? Maybe. She could never be certain, but Naruto started to learn from Kakashi and Jiraiya. She saw it in action when Naruto became anbu. He wore masks to protect himself, and she let him hide in Anbu.
Regardless, Naruto couldn’t stay there forever. Tsunade gave him space to breathe and heal in anbu. Six months ago, she finally dismissed him from anbu. Now it was time for Naruto to inch back into society, or else he would stagnate.
“Yeah, yeah, I got it,” Naruto mumbled, tucking his hands in his pockets. He made it halfway through the door before Tsunade called him again.
“And Naruto, I’d better not see you fail them for some dumb reason just to get out of this. If they are to fail, it will be because they are not ready.”
Naruto rolled his eyes. “I know that, sheesh.”
While rude, she chose to ignore it for now. He didn’t snap at her, which was an improvement. Since the Pein Invasion, Naruto could get peculiarly snappy when annoyed, not in the childish way he was when he was thirteen, but short-tempered.
He attempted to leave once more when Tsunade called again, this time in a playful tone. “Naruto, aren’t you still forgetting something?”
“What?” Naruto growled, causing Tsunade to sigh. Tsunade held up the poor genin’s files. She could only hope that Naruto would read them.
“Right.” He snatched them away from her and trudged out the door, but didn’t slam it.
Tsunade sighed again, glancing at the picture on her desk. Four years could be so short. “He can get so fussy, neh, Shizune.”
What was Granny thinking?
Naruto kicked a rock in his path. Him, with kids? This was only going to end in disaster, but Granny didn’t see it that way, obviously. Some would get hurt, and he would get blamed. Worse, he would be the one to get hurt most, but that didn’t matter, did it? He should have stayed in anbu longer, but Granny wanted him to be more “social.”
The village was as busy as usual. The villagers and shinobi went about their day. It was a good day that he would ruin. Parents spotted him and skirted their kids away from him, glaring. Some flipped rude gestures or muttered profanities about him under their breath.
Today was his day off, too. He wouldn’t have even left his apartment if Tsunade hadn’t called him. He could have napped all afternoon and played with his seals later. Now, he had genin files to study. A perfectly good day ruined.
“Naruto!” Kiba jumped on Naruto from behind, despite the fact that Naruto could have killed him in thirty different ways in that position. “What’s going on, buddy?”
Naruto lost many friends during the war, but, funny enough, Team Eight grew closer to him whether he liked it or not. Kiba, most notoriously, snooped into his business, and where Kiba was, Shino and Hinata wouldn’t be far behind.
“Granny assigned me to babysit a genin team,” Naruto huffed, and Akamaru nuzzled his nose in Naruto’s hand. Naruto patted him on the head, and the dog woofed in response.
There wasn’t any point in hiding it. Kiba would find out eventually or pester him until he spilled. He was already tired from talking to Granny. He didn’t have the energy to bother to argue with Kiba. If Naruto told him now, he could get the reaction out of the way.
Kiba laughed and slapped him hard on the back. “You with kids! That’s going to be fun.”
Naruto glared daggers, and Kiba backed down sheepishly. “Hey, dude, I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Then don’t say it like that,” Shino said, appearing out of nowhere with Hinata behind him. “Why, because someone will misinterpret it?”
“Sorry, Naruto,” Hinata said in Kiba’s stead. Her hair grew even longer over the years, reaching her ankles when let down. She often kept it in a braid to keep it out of the way. Naruto liked it, in his opinion, but what did he know about things like that? Sakura and Ino always did say his taste in fashion was shitty.
“It’s fine,” Naruto replied curtly. He just wanted to go home. It was his day off. He didn’t want to be out in the first place. The land of sleep was calling his name, not that they cared.
“Hinata and Shino are also going to be genin instructors, too, so it won’t just be you,” Kiba added. “You guys will get the cool guys rank, like me.” Kiba gestured to himself proudly.
Kiba was already a jonin teacher. Naruto could believe Hinata being one. She was calm and collected, with the patience to handle brats, but not Kiba. Naruto pitied Kiba’s students, knowing that their sanity would be at stake with a teacher like him.
“The genin we tested last time were not ready,” Shino retorted, a sour argument that had been going on between the two, which Naruto had heard no end of since. “Yours happened to be.”
“Just means mine are gonna kick all you kids’ asses during the chunin exams,” Kiba cracked up, much to Shino’s ire.
Naruto rolled his eyes and kept walking; leave it to those guys to find him after talking to Granny. He may not have many “friends,” to put it lightly, but they did put a smile on his face, so that was something. Maybe he could still squeeze that nap in.
Kagome glanced at the clock on the wall. It was almost time for class, and Riku wasn’t in class yet. She drummed her fingers against the desk. It wasn’t a normal class day. It was graduation day. There was no way he didn’t pass. Riku was the best in their class.
“I’M HERE!” A green-haired boy yelled at the top of his lungs at the classroom doorway. Kagome let out a small sigh, waving the boy over.
“Oh, there you are, Kagome.” He smiled and ran to sit next to his friend. “Are you excited!”
“Yeah-”
“Hey, what the hell are you doing here?” A genin yelled. Riku and Kagome looked over at a familiar brunette in surprise.
“Wait, really, Sota passed,” Riku snorted. An older student grabbed the small, frightened brunette. Riku didn’t even bother to see what happened next.
“I guess he did. Probably cheated or something,” Kagome rested her cheek on the palm of her hand. Sota could barely hold his own in a fight and fumbled with his gear. “There’s no way he could have gotten in otherwise.”
“Okay, class, settle down,” Iruka hollered, entering the room. Everyone ran back to their seats, and Sota was sporting a new bruise on his right eye. “As of today, you have all become full-fledged ninjas. However, you are all still genin, and you still have many trials to come. From now on, you’ll be in a quad of three and carry out your missions under your Jonin teachers. The squads will be determined to balance group strength. The squads will be formed like this.”
Riku found it all rather dull. Teams! He didn’t care who the other teams were, and Iruka would need to go through the entire class. Riku wouldn’t mind being on a team with Kagome, but who could also be on his team? He could think of a few people.
“Team 7- Ruki Kari.” Riku perked up at the sound of his name. “Kagome Fujimata and Sota Nakamora.”
Sota! Riku and Kagome glanced at the boy in question, who was just as surprised. Riku and Kagome groaned, hiding their faces in embarrassment. They just got the dead last on their quad!
“Naruto,” Hinata exclaimed, jogging up behind him. A smile was plastered on her face. “We came at the same time.”
“So, we did,” he mused. Hinata would be a better teacher than him. He didn’t have the patience for brats, but she did. She put up with him, and that was saying a lot. Naruto knew he wasn’t exactly pleasant to be around since the Pein Invasion, yet she stayed kind and sweet toward him. Even when he was rude to her, as he was yesterday, she would be smiling the next day. “Shino’s not with you?”
“He was right behind me,” she replied, glancing back to see, yes indeed, he was behind her.
Naruto froze. “Sorry, Shino.”
“Sorry for what?” he said in a low tone. “You weren’t looking behind you. This was a misunderstanding.”
“Right,” Naruto replied, wryly. With Shino, it was like eating a bag of mixed snacks without knowing what’s in it. Every bite was a surprise, and you never quite knew what you were going to get next. Even then, Shino was more forgiving with him, too. Naruto still didn’t like getting on the guy’s bad side, in any case.
“Have you met the parents yet?” Hinata changed the subject, and Naruto rubbed his nose at the reminder. Of course, she picked that as a topic change, not knowing the can of worms she just opened.
“Yeah, the first one slammed the door in my face. The second tried to stab me with a kitchen knife. I have no doubt they will complain to Granny about being paired with someone like me and demand a transfer to a different jonin. Honestly, the sooner, the better.”
“Naruto, that’s not nice,” Hinata chided, but it didn’t quite land because of the soft nature of her voice. “Don’t try to fail them on purpose either.”
Why did everyone keep thinking that? He didn’t like people, but he was at least fair. At least, he thought he was, but he was beginning to doubt that if everyone kept bringing it up.
“I’m not.” Naruto opened the door of the academy, letting her in. Hinata was halfway through the door when she paused.
“Wait, what did the third parents do?”
“Oh, I didn’t have to deal with them,” Naruto said. “Kid’s an orphan.”
Hinata’s smile finally fell, which pained Naruto just a bit. He didn’t want to bring her down like that.
Naruto did read the files for the kids. Sota became an orphan after the Pein Invasion. His parents were among the dead on that day. He had been living alone since that day. Pein made many orphans that day, and they flooded the orphanage. The village agreed to a program that gave some kids like Sota apartments and pensions, but they lived alone. Naruto knew firsthand how hard it was to live alone.
Naruto scratched the back of his head. “I wouldn’t mind being a teacher if it weren’t for the fact that my genin will probably hate my guts because their parents taught them that I was some sort of demon.”
Kakashi’s first words to him were that he hated him and his team. Sure, he changed his tune, but it did make Naruto wonder sometimes what it was like being a teacher. Iruka liked it a whole lot, even if he yelled a lot too.
“You don’t know that,” Hinata said. “Give them a chance. They might surprise you.”
“Sorry to burst your optimism, but Naruto is right,” Shino told her. “None of the main clans are graduating this year, are they?”
Naruto shook his head. He wished some were. “They’re all civilian students this year. No doubt that the parents taught their children all about me. Granny tried to stop it by adding it to the school’s curriculum on the importance of Jinchuriki, but I don’t think it was that effective.”
Naruto sighed as they reached the classroom where their students were. “At least if I got a pair of genin from some of the main clans, maybe it will be better. Most of the clans don’t hate me anymore.”
Shino stepped into the genin’s classroom first, and Naruto let himself float to the back, but his face washed over into something more friendly. “I’m here to pick up Team One.”
“I’m here for Team Eight,” Hinata said.
“And I’m here for Team Seven,” Naruto said.
A young boy with green hair jumped up from his chair onto his desk. “Sensei! Why is my teacher a demon!?”
No one moved.
Naruto knew this was going to happen. He knew it was. He saw this coming a mile away. Granny should have seen it coming. This was never going to work. He didn’t need to fail them; they were going to bail on him!
“Riku!” Iruka snapped in a harsher tone than Iruka ever used with him, and Iruka had gotten pretty mad at Naruto as a kid. “Naruto is one of the honorable jonin of Konoha and certainly not a demon. You will respect your new teacher.”
Iruka glared at the boy before turning to his old students with a pleasant smile, as if he had never been angry. “Naruto, Hinata, Shino, the three of you became teachers! It’s good to see the three of you again. I know that these students will be in good hands. Naruto, you’ll have to forgive Riku. He likes to speak his mind more than he should sometimes.”
“It’s all right; I was expecting it anyway,” Naruto replied with a foxy grin.
Iruka frowned. He had learned a long time ago how to read Naruto’s masks. This wasn’t all right. These genin were in for it, to be sure. The pleasant demeanor dropped when Naruto spoke to the three students.
“Team 7! Me on the roof.” Naruto disappeared in a flash.
Naruto sat on the roof railing as he waited for his genin. He had only been waiting a few minutes when the genin reached the roof. The green-haired boy known as Riku didn’t sit. He stood in position as though he were ready to strike. Probably was, Naruto corrected himself. The black-haired girl known as Kagome sat but eyed her sensei suspiciously. Last of all, the brunette known as Sota sat quietly with his head hung low, twiddling his fingers.
“I am not going to have a demon as a sensei,” Riku growled, pulling out a kunai. It was kinda adorable, really. The kid thought he could pose a threat toward Naruto.
“It doesn’t matter what you want, Kit,” Naruto said slyly as his pupils turned into fox-like slits. The three genin scrambled back. Sota ran behind Kagome. Kagome looked up at her sensei in horror. Riku may have been startled, but he quickly recovered, placing himself between his teammates and his demon sensei.
Naruto held up three files. “I would ask for an introduction, but I’m sure you already know who I am, and by looking at your records, you three already know each other.”
“You have our records?” Kagome asked in a small whisper.
“Of course I do.” His long canines flashed as he spoke, smiling gleefully. “The Hokage gave them to me since I’m apparently your new sensei. To sum it up, from what I read and what I’ve seen about you, I hate the three of you. I have been given a loudmouth, a know-it-all, and a coward. I’m looking very much forward to seeing you all fail tomorrow’s test so I can send you back to the academy.”
His smug smile grew wider by the minute as he saw their faces drain to white.
“Test? What test?” Kagome asked. “We’re already genin.”
“Not yet, you aren’t,” he explained. “That was just a test to become a candidate, you could say. Us, jonin teachers, are the final examiners. We have the final say on whether you graduate or not, and based on what I can see, you three will probably fail. The fail rate is 66%. Only nine genin pass each test, sometimes even fewer.”
Naruto’s eyes glowed blood red, and his whiskers grew more prominent. “In other words, I am the one who determines whether you can become a genin. I want you three at Training Ground Four by 5 AM, and if one of you is late by even one second, you will all fail.”
Riku mumbled something unintelligible. “What was that loudmouth? You want to meet at four? That’s a great idea. Might as well fail sooner to get it over with.”
“I never said that!” Riku shrieked.
“You’re right. I know you said 3, but even I thought that was too much,” Naruto chuckled.
“Go to hell, demon!” Riku screamed and lunged to stab Naruto, but Naruto threw him to the ground instantly.
“Riku!” Kagome wanted to help her friend but was too afraid to move, and Sota was visibly shaking, tears running down his face behind her.
“You’re all dismissed,” Naruto said in a low growl. He let Riku go and disappeared.
“Riku, are you okay?” Kagome ran over to her friend.
“Yeah.” He winced as he pulled himself up.
“He’s going to kill us tomorrow!” Sota sobbed.
“Not if I can help it,” Riku muttered. “Whatever we do, we can’t do it alone.”
“The demon has made that clear.” Kagome snarled, remembering what he did to Riku.
“Kagome, do you have a plan?” Riku looked hopeful at his friend.
“I don’t know,” she replied. “I don’t even know what the test is. We’ll need to work together, whatever it is.”
“Right,” Riku agreed. “Sota, you’re coming with us.”
“What! W-why?” Sota stammered.
“To train you,” Riku said, as if it were obvious. “You’re the lowest in the class. We’ll all need to train for tomorrow. We will become genin, and we will beat that demon fox!”
Naruto, Shino, Kiba, and Hinata agreed to meet at the ramen shop for dinner to discuss their new genin. Well, more of the three ganged up on Naruto when he went out to eat that night. He was looking forward to his ramen, and he wasn’t going to abandon his precious ramen. They knew him well and used it to his disadvantage.
“So, what do you think of your teams?” Naruto asked innocently. While his genin might be a lost cause, that didn’t mean that the other genin were. Naruto’s mind still wandered. He didn’t want this team. This team was a disaster waiting to happen. They hated and feared him. He had a kid cry. Naruto hated that he did that. Did the boy believe that he ate children for dinner, like so many parents told their children he did? The green-haired boy was doing what he thought was right and was trying to protect his friend from him.
“Mine will pass,” Shino said, starting on his ramen. “Why, I already ran the calculations. They work well together.”
Naruto’s genin didn’t work well together. One weak chain broke them all. Sota didn’t fit in, and they saw him as a demon. They were doomed to fail from the start. Naruto just wanted tomorrow to come and go already.
“I don’t know, really,” Hinata replied. “They seemed like good kids. I hope they pass. I do like them, but what about you, Naruto?”
Concern laced her voice. Hinata always thought of others. She didn’t like saying negative things about others, but sometimes Naruto would wish she would speak her mind or call something as it was. Why was her team good? What about her team did she see that Hinata saw potential?
“They’re doomed to fail.” Naruto stared down at his ramen and just pushed it around with his chopsticks. This wasn’t a good idea. He knew this was a bad idea. Naruto told Granny this was a bad idea, but no one listened to him. He couldn’t see any hope for them, like his team long ago.
“Don’t count your kids out yet!” Kiba exclaimed, but it came out muffled as he spoke with a mouthful of food.
“Two of my genin are friends,” Naruto replied. “The loudmouth you saw is this year’s rookie. His friend is a know-it-all, and if I have the rookie, it means I have the class dead last. He’s the class loser, and he gets bullied a lot. The kid literally had a black eye. If I do the bell test, they’ll leave him behind. They’re doomed to fail.”
Everything told him they wouldn’t pass. They were bound to fail, but Kakashi passed them. He shouldn’t of. They fell apart in less than a year. Kakashi saw potential, but they never met it. His team was going to fail, but Kakashi gave them a chance. Sasuke was the rookie, Sakura was a know-it-all, and he was the loser. If Sasuke and Sakura were friends, would it have been different? Would the two have teamed up?
“Then they’ll fail. Isn’t that what you want?” Shino eyed him suspiciously, noting that Naruto wasn’t eating. Instead, he picked at the naruto in his ramen.
“I thought so too, but something just kept nagging me. So, I kind of gave them a new perspective to the test.”
“In what way?” Hinata asked.
“Well, they already hate me. So…” Naruto trailed off.
“You made yourself the bad guy,” Shino finished. “You think they’ll work together to try to beat you?”
“Dude, seriously,” Kiba muttered, shaking his head.
It was a terrible idea. Even he knew it. Why did he even do it? They were doomed to fail. Why was he even bothering? They fail, and his life goes back to normal. It’s what he wanted, like Shino said. This was a good thing, but his heart wasn’t in it.
“You haven’t told them what the test is yet, have you?” Shino questioned.
“Yeah, I haven’t told them yet, and they have no idea what to expect,” Naruto sighed and pushed his untouched ramen away, resting his head in his arms on the table. “I don’t know. They could decide to leave the dead last after all. It makes me wonder what would have happened if Sasuke and Sakura had actually been friends. Would we have failed?”
Kiba laughed to Naruto’s surprise. “I don’t think it could have ever happened. Sasuke was too much of a self-centered ass to even make friends.”
“Kiba, language!” Hinata scolded.
Kiba grimaced. “Sorry.”
“Naruto, maybe it’s bothering you because you know they have potential,” Hinata said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Give them a chance. They might surprise you. Your ramen is getting cold. It would be a shame if it went bad.”
He swallowed the knot in his throat. Yeah, the ramen didn’t do anything wrong. It would be a crime if he let go cold.
The three genin rose bright and early. The sun wasn’t even up yet.
“Hah!” Riku boasted. “That demon isn’t even here yet.”
However, they grew less confident as time drew on. Time came and went, and soon it was 8 in the morning, and the demon still wasn’t there.
“Do you think we got the wrong place?” Kagome questioned.
“He would probably change the location without even telling us,” Riku huffed.
“Good morning, Kits,” the demon chirped, bending over the three, and they jolted at his voice.
“Where the hell were you!” Riku yelled. “You said to meet at 4, and it’s 8! That was four hours ago.”
“Oh, is it?” the demon said sarcastically. “I guess my clock is broken then. I’ll have to fix it after you fail the test this morning.”
“You haven’t even told us what the test is yet,” Kagome said.
“Oh, that’s simple.” The demon pulled out two bells, and they jiggled from the red string they were tied to. They looked old, with tarnish, and didn’t jiggle all that pretty. “All you have to do is take these away from me. That’s all.”
“That’s it!” Riku scoffed. It smelled like a trap. “We just need to take two bells from you. That’s so simple.”
“If it were that simple, the failure rate wouldn’t be that high,” Kagome reminded him.
“Let me rephrase that,” the demon said, attaching the bells to his left side. “You each need to get a bell to pass.”
“There are three of us, though.” Kagome pointed out.
“And.”
“There are two bells,” Kagome added. “You’re missing one. Can’t you count?”
The demon grinned evilly. “Oh, no, it just means only two of you can pass. The other one will go back to the academy. So, here’s the deal. Riku and Kagome, you can team up and get the bells if you can, or you can forfeit, and all go back to the academy.”
They gasped. So that was the demon’s plan. He wanted to split them up.
“This is why so many fail,” he continued. “They forfeit. They were weak and couldn’t do the job assigned to them. We don’t need ninjas who don’t follow orders. So, what is your answer, Kits?”
Riku and Kagome glanced at Sota and then at each other. With a nod, Riku stepped forward. They agreed silently.
“We forfeit.”
“Alrighty!” the demon exclaimed. “Know-it-all, Coward, the loudmouth has forfeited. Would you like to try to take the bells instead?”
“No, we all forfeit,” Kagome stated firmly, and Sota stepped forward beside her.
“I would rather go back to the academy than leave them behind,” Sota explained. “These two are the first people to even give me the time of day, and I hope that if we go back to the academy, we can become better friends.”
“Well, I guess it only means one thing then.” The demon’s voice shook in anger but suddenly broke, turning calm like the eye of a storm. “You pass.”
“Huh!”
“Wait, pass?” Riku said.
“How?” Kagome asked.
“I lied.” The demon sat down, crossing his legs with a warm, happy smile. “The bells weren’t the test. The test was whether or not you would leave your new comrades, and you didn’t, even when I pressured you. Those who break the rules are scum, but those who abandon their friends are worse than scum! This is the lesson that my sensei taught me during this test. I don’t care what you think of me. At the end of the day, you will still follow my orders. Failing to do so may result in not only your death but also that of your teammates. You three are officially a team. You are to treat each other like family and protect each other like family.”
“Um, sensei,” Sota whimpered. “Was all that just an act, then? Do you not hate us?”
Riku and Kagome glanced up at their “sensei,” watching their sensei, waiting for an answer. Naruto brought a hand up to his chin to think.
“No, I guess I don’t,” he replied, and Sota burst into a grin. “Meet me at the Hokage tower tomorrow at nine, so we can get our first mission.”
“How long are you going to be our sensei then?” Kagome asked.
How long were they going to have a demon for a sensei?
“Until the three of you become chunin, or our team gets disbanded,” Naruto told the little ones. “I will make you three chunin. I promise that.”
“Okay, we’ll deal with you for now, but you’re still not my sensei, you know,” Riku said, sticking out his tongue.
“Naruto sensei, what sort of mission will we get tomorrow?” Kagome asked.
“D-ranked missions are all we’ll get for about the next three to six months,” Naruto warned as he finally picked himself off the grass. “So, I don’t want to hear any complaining from you, loudmouth.”
“Hey, I’m not a loudmouth, you hear!” Riku shouted.
Naruto put a finger in his ear. “Uh-huh. Sure.”
Naruto was first in Tsunade’s office, much to her disappointment. He didn’t say anything and stood lost in thought until all the Jonin teachers arrived.
“Team one report,” Tsunade said in her Hokage voice.
“Passed.”
Tsunade continued down the list. The rest had reported failure. She had expected this. However, she skipped Team Seven, and no one batted an eye.
“Team eight report,” she said.
“They passed Lady Hokage,” Hinata replied.
“Good.” She thought Hinata would make a good teacher. Nine had failed. After she went through the entire list, she went back to Team Seven.
“Team Seven report.”
“They passed,” Naruto replied.
She knew he was going to do that. “Naruto, I thought I told you that you couldn’t fail them over some- wait, you said passed, didn’t you?”
Naruto was even grinning. “Yup, Team Seven passed.”
She dismissed them, and when all the Jonin left, she noticed that Naruto had stayed behind. Naruto shifted on his feet with something clearly on his mind.
“Is there something you need, Naruto?” she asked.
Naruto sighed, “Why did you give them to me, or why those three? They were doomed to fail. You knew that, right?”
Tsunade raised an eyebrow. “If they were so doomed. How did they pass then?”
“They would rather go back to the academy than betray the dead last in their class,” Naruto answered. “Sota is their dead last. They didn’t step in when he got bullied. They never once stopped it and probably bullied him too. So why step in now?”
Tsunade got up from her seat. She hand-picked those three students. They were for Naruto’s benefit just as much as Naruto was for theirs. “It just shows you that people can change. Besides, you don’t know how long this change will last, or they just saw through the test and were good actors about it.”
Tsunade wrapped him in a warm hug. He was taller than her now. It was amazing to see such a short kid sprout into the tall, lanky man he was now. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” Naruto relaxed in her arms.
“Remember,” she said. “If anything gets too much, you’ll tell me, right?”
Naruto smiled softly. “I will; don’t worry.”
“I’m sorry, but I thought you could use this,” she said. “Think of it as a nice break. Riku is this year’s rookie. Despite what others may think, I think you would be able to handle his attitude best. You would also understand Sota the best. If anyone can give him confidence, it’s you.” Tsunade reached up and ruffled the blond’s spiky hair.
“Later, Grandma,” Naruto chuckled, and Tsunade sighed in relief, glancing back at the picture on her desk.
“See, fussy. I knew he wanted a genin team of his own.”