A/N: I'm done with all the entrance exams! The last few weeks have been wonderfully relaxing! I feel my inspiration returning all the time!

Anyway, EyesLikeLiquidFire asked for more Naruto-Kakashi interaction, and since I was already heading in the direction, I decided to dedicate this chapter to them. Hope they like it.

Also, it was pointed out to me I should bold the jutsus, but personally I always feel that draws the attention away from the story itself, so it really is a conscious decision not to do that. After all, you can't really use bold if/when you're writing a novel, which is what I'm aiming for in the future.

R&R!

'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'

Kakashi-sensei was knocked out.

Kashi-niisan was knocked out.

It didn't really register to Naruto as he stared at his prone sensei lying on the ground. He'd never seen his sensei unconscious. Sleeping, sure, dozing, a couple of times, but out cold? Never.

He was usually like a cockroach, popping right back up.

But now this Momochi Zabuza had forced sensei to use his Sharingan more than was healthy. In fact, Momochi Zabuza had trapped sensei, forcing Naruto to lead the genin in the fight against an A rank missing nin. Of course he'd known immediately that the only way for them to even survive the fight, was to free Kakashi-sensei. The mizu bunshin had gone down easily enough, having only a tenth of the real Zabuza's strength, but he'd still managed to bruise Naruto's ribs when he'd been stepping on Naruto's chest.

Team work with Sasuke-chan had been easier than Naruto had thought, now that he'd apparently seen a measure of his strength in the fight against Oni Kyuki. Sasuke-chan was funny that way, he respected strength.

Sakura-chan though... the girl was problem all on her own. She'd be Sakura-chan for a long time, as opposed to Sasuke-chan who'd soon, after their first chunin exam, graduate to Sasuke-kohai and Sasuke-kun once he made chunin. Or maybe Sasuke-teme, depending on their relationship at the time, really. But Sakura-chan... she'd need a miracle, or at least a harsh reality check, to get anywhere in her life. If he and Sasuke-chan had been anyone else, she'd have died in the Oni Kyuki attack.

But back to sensei.

Who was still on the ground.

Sasuke-chan and Sakura-chan were both looking at him expectanly.

He was chunin, they were genin and their jounin-sensei had been take out of commission, of course they'd defer to him.

"Tazuna, how long to your house?" he asked, turning to the bridge builder.

"It's just half-a-mile," answered the bridge builder. "You can use the guest rooms."

Naruto nodded and formed a few kage bunshi who picked up Kakashi-sensei. "Let's go, he's going to need to be as warm as possible, chakra exhaustion often leads to death by hypothermia. Sasuke-chan, Sakura-chan, you're going to be working on your chakra control while we walk, it'll help you in a battle situation in which you're required to pay attention to more than you chakra control. Make those leaves spin."

Sakura-chan looked at him slightly resentful but nodded.

"Yes senpai," nodded Sasuke-chan, happy to have more training even if sensei was unconscious. It had really become the norm for them for Naruto to give pointers and additional training exercises on top of the team training that Kakashi-sensei held them. Sakura-chan joined them sometimes but not nearly always. The way to Sasuke-chan's heart was through training, Naruto often joked to Kakashi-sensei.

Flashback:

They sat at the counter at Ichiraku's after a day of "team training", or rather D rank missions, discussing the new additions to their daily life.

"Sakura is worse than Rin was in the beginning," Kashi-niisan moaned, his bowl empty and mask back in place, to Naruto's ever present charging.

"But Rin-san grew to a good iryo-nin, right?" asked Naruto, taking a little pause in eating. "Maybe you should take her to the hospital and let her see what not training or bad training does to people. And Sakura-chan has quite damn near perfect chakra control, she might take an interest in iryo ninjutsu. Sure, she'd need to expand her chakra reserves exponentially to be of any real use, but it'd be a beginning for her."

Kashi-niisan shook his head. "Not yet, she's not ready to let go of her romantic vision of what ninjas do. Maybe after their first blood but she's mentally much too young and naive to listen to anything either of us have to say. I doubt even Sasuke could get her to train seriously."

Naruto hmmed. "You might be right, but it would be a good exercise for Sasuke-chan," he commented.

Kashi-niisan turned to look at him more fully. "How so?"

"Well, his social skills are... how should I say it... really fucking shot," Naruto answered bluntly. "He doesn't seem to know how to ask for help, or even when to ask for help. He demands things he has no right in demanding, he expects to be treated in a certain way. I mean, yeah, he seems pretty content when he has something new to learn and train on, but every time he's finished, he just comes up to me and demands another thing to learn. I mean, I'm a chunin so I've got quite a lot of different individual training exercises, but that kid... honestly, sensei he doesn't bother mastering anything, he just learns them to the point in which he can use them. On the other hand, he's skilled for a fresh genin and has the drive to become much more, but he won't get there if he doesn't learn to talk to people, to ask for their help in training him."

"Astute as always, Naruto-kun," Kashi-niisan eye-smiled at him.

"He doesn't seem to care for anyone who isn't strong enough to train him," Naruto shook his head a little just as Ayame-neechan placed his second bowl in front of him. He brightened up. "Thanks Ayame-neechan!" he cheered and fished the bowl for the first bite of noodles.

"The way to a man's heart is through his stomach!" Ayame-neechan laughed jokingly, winking at Kashi-niisan and went back to serving other customers.

Naruto perked up. "You know, that makes me think that the way to Sasuke-chan's heart is through training!"

Kashi-niisan stared at him for a second before bursting out laughing. "I can just see it, you offering to train with him and him showing up with a rose bouquet!" he snickered behind his hand, much like he did when he read Icha Icha.

Naruto flushed when he realized how his words could be intercepted. "I didn't mean it like that, dattebayo! Thanks to that, you can pay! Gimme another miso with pork, Oji-chan!"

"What? Naru-chan!"

End of the flashback:

During the rest of the journey Naruto kept his attention on their surroundings, sensing for other chakra presences, hostile or not, because that oinin that had taken Zabuza's corpse hadn't been hostile, but had turned to be a capable enemy shinobi. With the correct state of mind you could still feel unhostile and nonthreatening while killing someone, and that was an ability Naruto both admired and feared, as he couldn't imagine divorcing his feelings in that way to make himself seem nonthreatening but knew would be an invaluable tool for a shinobi.

By the time they got to Tazuna-san's house, Sasuke-chan was slowly rotating his leaf at a steady pace without faltering in his steps. Sakura-chan on the other hand was breathing heavily, her two leaves spinning rather quickly but her steps slightly unsteady and her eyes glazed over as she concentrated on the leaves.

The two kage bunshin had also taken up leaves, building faux wings out of them, sticking them to their shoulder blades and then flapping them steadily, as if preparing to take flight.

"How do you do that?" demanded Sasuke-chan when the house came to view.

"Do what, Sasuke-chan?" Naruto asked, scanning the water's edge.

"Those leaf wings," was the short answer.

Naruto blinked at him before glancing at the leaf wings his clones had. Grinning, he rubbed the back of his head as he answered. "Well, first I coated all those leaves in my chakra and molded them to that shape. Then I use chakra to keep them on my shoulder blades, but because they're heavier than your normal leaf, it takes more effort to keep them flapping. Kakashi-sensei designed that exercise for me when I had to learn to release controllable chakra from my back for some optimal use of my seals. The back and the feet are the hardest places to release chakra from, see, as feet don't have tenketsu, but the back is always such an absurd context because you never see your own back. Releasing chakra from your back is like moving in a foreign dark room while releasing chakra from your feet is like discovering a new group of muscles."

"Is that how Kakashi-sensei, that Zabuza and you were walking on water?" Sakura-chan joined the conversation.

"Yes, it's a chakra exercise," nodded Naruto. "You already learned the tree walking so I think it's time you learn water walking. It'll be easy in a place like this..." he gestured to the sea surrounding them.

Tazuna led them to the house and opened the door, shouting a greeting. An answering shout came from deeper in the house and soon a pretty enough lady with long bluish black hair came out to greet them, stopping when she saw the ninja.

"Otousan, who are the guests?" she asked warily, eyeing them and Kakashi-sensei's unconscious form. The kage bunshin probably didn't help either.

"Tsunami-chan, these are the ninja I hired for protection," Tazuna introduced them. "Brats, this is my daughter Tsunami-chan."

Naruto stepped up, making Tsunami-san raised her eyebrows, as he knew he was the shortest and looked the youngest. "Nice to meet you, Tsunami-san, I am Uzumaki Naruto, a chunin of Konoha, and behind me are genins Uchiha Sasuke and Haruno Sakura, and our teacher jounin Hatake Kakashi-sensei, please take good care of us," he said with a small bow. "Our teacher is going to need a warm place to rest. Is there some place we could put him? Also, warm tea would help in his recovery as he needs to stay as warm as possible."

Tsunami-san blinked at him a few times before smiling faintly. "Of course Uzumaki-kun, please follow me," she said and led them up stairs to some adjoined rooms that seemed to work as guest rooms. She laid out a futon and started a fire in the small fireplace as the kage bunshin laid Kakashi-sensei down on the futon, covering him with the blankets. Then he took out one of sensei's summoning scrolls, smearing a bit of sensei's blood on it before powering the kuchiyose no jutsu himself.

Sasuke-chan and Sakura-chan were watching him as he worked, the kage bunshin having been dismissed and Tsunami-san having gone to make the requested tea, but started when they were suddenly overwhelmed with dogs.

The dogs were all posturing aggressively, their bodies ready to attack or defend in an instant, but when no enemy was in sight, the little pug with a vest and a hitai-ate stepped forward.

"Naruto? Did you summon us?" it, he, asked.

"Yeah, sorry Pakkun, I know I'm not supposed to, but Kakashi-sensei has exhausted his chakra and his body temperature is going to be plummeting some time soon, and while I'd have no problem keeping him warm myself, I'm sure he'd prefer if it were you," he explained sheepishly. ("Yeah, we know you like cuddling," the pug grunted.) Then he pointed at Sasuke-chan and Sakura-chan, Sakura who had gone wide eyed when the ninken spoke. "Those are Kakashi-sensei's new students, Uchiha Sasuke-chan and Haruno Sakura-chan," he said as the other ninken all nodded to the genin before settling around their master.

"How'd Kakashi get to this condition, kid?" asked Pakkun.

"This mission was supposed to be a run-for-the-mill escort-and-protect C rank mission, but the person after our client hired Momochi Zabuza to kill our client," Naruto explained. "Kakashi-sensei was exhausted by using the Sharingan too much in the battle less than half-an-hour ago."

Pakkun nodded as he settled down on Kakashi's stomach. "You did well kid, getting Kakashi to a warm place as fast as you could. I'm sure he'd be proud of you."

Naruto's smile was strained.

'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'

The blood on the tree trunk mocked him.

He looked down at his healed but blood covered knuckles. They didn't even hurt anymore. It was so unfair that he had an unnaturally fast healing and recuperating rate and Kakashi-sensei laid back at the house for using too much chakra. Naruto knew Kakashi-sensei's chakra reserves weren't anything to sneeze at, in fact he had most chakra out of the serving jounin at the moment, but he also knew his own chakra reserves were big enough to make a kage green with envy.

Kakashi-sensei often said that his biggest blessing was also his greatest curse, and right at the moment Naruto knew it to be true. Because the fight had been on water, he couldn't concentrate on it one-hundred percent as he had to pay attention to staying on top of the water, which led to prolonging the battle, which in turn meant that Kakashi-sensei used his Sharingan too much, leading to the current situation.

He couldn't be caught in such a situation again, he decided. What if when he was a jounin and a sensei, he'd come across someone proficient in water walking and he'd be unable to win simply because his opponent had better chakra control? He'd certainly never be welcomed back to the village and he'd never be made Hokage if he lost his genin team because he couldn't control his fucking chakra.

Biting his lip he looked at the tree he'd been hitting. It was relatively young when compared to the other hundred-year-old trees, but something had been wrong with it even before he started systematically decimating it. The leaves were few and far between, as well as they all had black spots on them from what Naruto could see. If he remembered correctly, and it very well might be that he didn't, that mean that there was some kind of parasite killing the tree slowly. Caring for the trees around Konoha was a C rank mission for recovering chunin and jounin that needed to rebuild their health, but Naruto had been on the mission simply because Kakashi-sensei had been needed to escort Hokage-jiji to the chunin exams in Kumo six months after Naruto's own promotion to chunin. Some of the younger trees that hadn't been grown by the Shodai had had the same symptoms from what Naruto remembered and the Nara who'd been in charge had said that the only way to keep the parasite from infecting others had been to rip the tree up by the roots and then burn the roots without drying them.

Naruto looked at the tree up and down. His hits had already loosened the roots a little. Just a little, mind. It wouldn't fall down on it's own for quite a while without a horrible storm, but rather the earth would once again pack around them tightly. But with a small doton jutsu...

'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'

Naruto looked proudly on his new training log in the middle of the channel that separated Nami no Kuni from Hi no Kuni. Perhaps the most rigorous training he got today was carrying the long, heavy trunk to the middle of the channel using kage bunshin and water walking, or the fuuton chakra exercise he used to cut off the branches of the trunk.

The fuuton chakra exercise was something he'd developed himself, modeled after the leaf cutting exercise. The idea was to coat his hand in wind chakra and generate the sharp energy as blades from the fingertips, like invisible claws. He supposed they were rather like chakra scalpels, but his technique used the natural sharpness of fuuton chakra instead of controlling sharp blades of non-elemental chakra, and his fuuton chakra claws weren't nearly as subtle and controlled as the chakra scalpels he'd seen iryo-nin use on occasion.

With a satisfied air he returned to the shore, popping the joints of his back. Nothing like a bit of physical work to make him feel good.

He walked back to the house with his hand behind his head, whistling a jaunty tune.

Kakashi-sensei would be okay, the sun was shining, birds were singing, Zabuza was dead, the oinin took care of him...

He stopped in his tracks, whistling dying on his lips.

The oinin took care of it...

The oinin took care of it... took the whole of Zabuza when just a head would have sufficed and the body should have been destroyed right away.

The fuck...? The little fucker was one of Zabuza's minions?!

That went against every stereotype in the book!

But then... Zabuza had been trying to assassinate the insane Yondaime Mizukage, meaning he was trying to help Kirigakure rather than hinder it, which in itself was rare for would-be-assassins. And he still had his hitai-ate, wearing it for all to see. He also hadn't scratched it, as was custom for missing nin who had left because they no longer held any loyalty to their village, if they didn't completely discard it. Zabuza probably only took this job with Gato only to finance another coup.

He slapped his forehead. This really wasn't a time to sympathize with the enemy! After the battle, sure, but not before! That made it harder to fight them!

But he needed to tell Kakashi-sensei as soon as possible of Zabuza's survival. With luck, he might be awake already.

With a burst of speed, Naruto ran down the dock to the house, making his way up stairs to Kakashi-sensei's room. In the hallway he passed an apathetic boy dressed in green pull ups, and in the back of his mind he heard Tazuna say something about his grandson crying for three days straight if he died.

"Zabuza is alive," he announced firmly as he opened the door to Kakashi-sensei's recovery room.

Kakashi-sensei was awake, though still laying down and surrounded by his ninken, and he smiled tiredly at Naruto.

Before he managed to say anything, Sakura spoke up. "We already know that, Naruto-baka," she said in a dead-pan tone, like he was stupid for saying it aloud.

"Sensei figured it out," said Sasuke-chan, rolling his eyes from the corner her was sitting in, leaning on the wall.

"But I'm proud you figured it out on your own, Naruto," Kakashi-sensei said, voice tired but warm. "It's things like that they're looking for in the jounin exams, recognizing when things aren't right."

Naruto tilted his head slightly. "I thought that was what chunin exams were for?"

"Oh my young apprentice," chuckled Kakashi-sensei, "chunin exams are multi-layered. I'll tell you more later," he glanced significantly at Sasuke-chan and Sakura-chan, "but for now I trust that you will teach these two something useful in the next week."

Naruto began to smile slowly. That was Kakashi-sensei, alright, trying to wiggle out of actually working. "Fine, but you owe me a jutsu," he bartered.

"Deal, you little rascal," Kakashi-sensei hummed before closing his visible eye. "Now go away, I need to sleep."

"C'mon you two," Naruto said, jerking his head towards the door at the two genin. "Time to learn walking on water, and if you can manage that, I'll teach you a jutsu."

That got the two genin moving, Sakura-chan scrambling to get up and Sasuke-chan seemingly revitalized, leaving a chuckling Naruto behind. He moved to follow them.

Just when he was closing the door, Kakashi-sensei spoke. "Thank you Naruto-kun."

Naruto wasn't sure what his teacher was thanking him about, as it could have been for anything between saving his life from Zabuza to agreeing to teach the two genin while Kakashi-sensei recuperated. But he smiled sincerely.

"Any time, Kashi-niisan."