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The Shinobi Without Fear

Chapter 4 - New Hope

Hope and fear are inseparable. There is no hope without fear, nor any fear without hope.

Naruto slipped quietly into the classroom a good fifteen minutes early. Iruka had suggested that the other students who had been aware of his failure would be less likely to question his presence if he was there before they were. His sensei had not truly steered him wrong yet, so he'd decided to take that advice. Only a small handful of other students were present, and most of those were either napping or engrossed in their own conversation. He swept his focus around the room, and noticed that Sasuke's usual row was still empty - both the Uchiha and his fans apparently were not the kind to arrive early.

After a brief bit of contemplation, Naruto ghosted over to his friend's usual table and took the spot closest to the door. Sasuke usually took the spot on the window side, so this would leave a gap between them. Close enough to say 'Yep, I'm here.' without getting in his face about it. He wanted to open a dialog, not force the issue seeing as how the latter tactic had always failed so spectacularly. It was yet another piece of advice Naruto had accepted from Iruka in the past few days as they worked to close some of the glaring gaps in his education both social and academic in between attempts at the kage bunshin.

Naruto's introspection was broken by the arrival of Sasuke; he carefully did not advertise his presence and just waited to see what the latter's response would be. There was no reaction at first, Sasuke's attention seeming focused more on his backtrail than what lay in the classroom, but Naruto caught an almost imperceptible hitch in Sasuke's stride when his gaze came forward. His friend made no comment, but slid into his usual spot with no further hesitation. It was a start. Naruto acknowledged the opening with a small nod, but refrained from launching into the conversation he so desperately wanted. He had to let the other boy make the next move; this was the most interaction they'd had without rejection in several years and he knew how fragile the detente remained.

Over the next few minutes the classroom slowly filled up with quiet chatter as the other students filed in. Naruto was growing increasingly nervous at Sasuke's continued silence, wondering if they'd have any chance at reconciliation before team assignments potentially split them apart for the immediate future. His contemplations were broken by the distant shrill noise of Sakura and Ino racing towards the classroom in the throes of another of their inane challenges. A few moments after he first noticed the sound, Sasuke winced off to his side and Naruto could not stop the small smirk that spread on his face. It was impossible to miss how obviously Sasuke ignored most of the fangirls he was saddled with, but it was relatively rare for him to react outwardly. He must have been hoping that would end, now that we're all ninja.

Sasuke was close enough that he had a very clear image from his senses, something Naruto realized Sasuke must be aware of when his eyebrows started twitching in a peculiar pattern. It took him a few moments to decipher the message, and when he did he nearly burst out laughing. Sasuke was making a silent plea for assistance that most people would assume was probably a spastic twitch given that the girls were now clearly audible in the classroom. Naruto flooded his chakra towards the doorway and began the careful process of infusing the door and the frame with it. Before he could make the connection and seal the entrance, it was ripped open and the two girls tried to enter at once. He grimaced, but then quickly grinned when he realized they were jammed up trying to each be the first in the room. The door and frame were already connected, and cloth was pretty easy to infuse…

A moment later the girls nearly popped into the room, only to stop when their clothes seemed to be glued at once to both each other and to the doorway they were coming through. There was a momentary tiny ripping sound, then both girls froze in place. As they frantically attempted to separate themselves and get clear of the door without tearing their clothes, blushing as the room's attention fell upon them, Naruto refocused on Sasuke. His friend had shifted his head just enough to take in the scene in the doorway, and the corner of Sasuke's lips turned up in his signature smirk. When Sasuke turned his head back to the front of the class, his gaze paused first on Naruto, then on the space on the bench in between them, before it continued on to land back on the empty desk at the front of the room. Naruto's grin grew slightly, and he took the silent invitation to slide over and close up the space the girls most likely had been aiming for.

He noticed Iruka approaching the doorway and quickly released the girls. He withdrew his chakra and dropped the cloud to its usual passive potency before their sensei could pick up on what he'd done. Iruka chivvied the two into their seats, along with a few more stragglers that had been sniggering in the hallway, and a grumbling Sakura dropped onto the bench next to Naruto. Her face turned longingly towards Sasuke, seeming to look right past or even through Naruto without really registering him, but at a cough from the front of the room she snapped her attention to the teacher and resumed the appearance of a model student.

Naruto listened with only half an ear as Iruka launched into his speech about teamwork, balanced squads, their future as Konoha shinobi and the importance of listening to and respecting their new Jounin sensei. Naruto had heard several drafts of the speech in the past few days and could probably have recited it almost as well as Iruka at this point. It wasn't until he caught his own name that he tuned back in, rewinding his memory and playing it back as they'd been taught. It was important on infiltrations to be able to notice everything around them even if their attention was primarily elsewhere and still be able to recall it later.

"Team Seven will be Hyuuga Hinata, Uchiha Sasuke, and Uzumaki Naruto. Your Jounin-sensei is Hatake Kakashi." Iruka spared Naruto a brief knowing look before continuing on to Team Eight, but Naruto had already stopped listening again.

Naruto suppressed the urge to flash a brilliant grin at Sasuke, instead settling for a tight nod. Sasuke's hands tightened where they were laced together in front of his face, but otherwise did not react. It was more than he expected but less than he hoped. He turned instead towards their third teammate, and waved enthusiastically at Hinata-chan until she looked back at him. He blasted her full-force with the grin he had wanted to aim at Sasuke, fueling it with the memory of how she had kept her silence all this time. He was rewarded with a shy smile and a tiny wave, the chakra that was brushing intangibly against her face registering the temperature spike he associated with blushing. Huh. Well, I guess she's never really gotten much attention herself. We'll have to fix that!

Naruto turned back to the front of the classroom, and noticed that he was also picking up more heat from Sakura's face. Her expression, however, was nowhere near as pleased. Not a blush, then, that was anger-flush and her chakra, tiny as it was, was rapidly becoming thorny and aggressive. Naruto blanched slightly, and replayed his memory again. Yup. He'd been ignoring Sakura; always a bad idea. He pointed quietly back at Iruka, hoping to stall for a few moments, and almost sighed in relief when she huffed and turned away again. From the way her left temple was pulsing, her fists clenching and unclenching, he wanted nothing to do with being anywhere near her right now. He crossed his hands briefly under the table, hoping no-one noticed the soft 'poof' from the hallway, and hoped his plan would work.

~SWF~

Hinata was desperately trying to calm her racing heart as Iruka dismissed their group for a lunch break, having instructed them all to return in an hour for collection by the Jounin. She had been placed on a team very different from what she had expected, and she had been completely unprepared for the sheer enthusiasm Naruto had displayed towards her. It would be nice to do more than just quietly get along with a few of her classmates; maybe she should see if they wanted to all eat lunch together and start to get to know one another?

Her burgeoning hopes were dashed when Sakura started screeching something to Naruto about not listening to her before, and how he didn't belong on a team with Sasuke-kun and should switch with her. Hinata frowned, team assignments were not like group projects and not something the new genin had any real say in, but then again rationality was often lost around Sasuke for reasons she struggled to understand. Still, she should probably try to intervene before Sakura bashed Naruto over the head again. She started to stand, but before she could complete the action she heard Naruto mutter something unclear. Sakura seemed to take it as an insult, and there was a brief sensation of movement in her vision before Sakura crashed her fist down onto Naruto's head. Instead of the expected cry of pain, however, there was a sudden explosion of chakra-smoke.

Sakura stumbled out of the smoke, sputtering and confused. When it cleared, both Naruto and Sasuke were nowhere to be seen. Hinata quickly glanced around, but it seemed the two boys had gone off somewhere in secret. Probably to discuss their team. Without her.

Hinata held back a small sigh; this was more along the lines of what she had expected. She quietly excused herself from the desk she had been sharing with Shino-san and Kiba-san, the boys she had actually expected to be paired with, and wished them luck with their new teammate. Shino just nodded, and Kiba seemed too distracted with whining back and forth with Akamaru to do more than wave vaguely at her. Some days, it was entirely too easy to understand why Neji-nii-san thought everything was predetermined when the actions of those around them was so easily predictable.

As she settled down in a quiet corner of the academy grounds to eat her lunch, her thoughts wandered back to her missing teammates. It was odd they had both vanished at the same time like that. While she suspected they were off talking somewhere, she also had not ever seen them together since that fateful day in the woods. This, despite the fact that she had occasionally tracked down Naruto outside of the Academy for another surreptitious boost of confidence and motivation. She'd kept up the questionable practice for nearly another year and a half after learning his secret before realizing one day as she had quietly watched him throwing kunai at targets from the very outermost edges of her Byakugan, far beyond his own area of awareness, that the only proper word for what she was doing was 'stalking'. She'd been mortified at the thought, and from then on relegated herself to observing her classmate carefully whenever possible in class instead.

It was very gratifying to observe his progress and mark it against her own; knowing that he too was working hard in a world that refused to acknowledge him helped give her the strength to persevere through her father's strict training and impossible demands.

"Psssst! Hinata-chan!"

She nearly dropped her onigiri in shock when Naruto's whisper cut out of the bushes next to her. Her eyes pulsed in a flash of chakra, and she found him sitting cross-legged in between a few branches. He had a ramen cup balanced on each knee, and another in his left hand with a pair of chopsticks in his right. He waved again, still enthusiastic but restrained enough that the motion did not disturb his hiding spot. She blinked numbly once or twice before her brain managed to reboot. "N-Naruto-kun? What are you doing?"

"Well," he began, only to take a quick slurp of noodle before continuing. "Sorry, gotta eat it while it's hot-ttebayo! But, but I thought since we were teammates now, we should eat lunch together, right?"

"Ah, ah, yes, but...w-why are you in a bush?" She hated that stammer, and she had been working hard to overcome it, but it still struck when she was surprised, confused, embarrassed, or upset. That was, unfortunately, still rather often. Naruto did not say anything, instead he gestured to another part of the yard with his chopsticks while slurping up another mouthful of noodle. She shifted her focus, and saw Sakura stomping off towards one of the benches that lined the nearby walkways. "Ah. Sakura-san is still mad at you?"

"Mm-hmm! She really really wanted to be on Sasuke's team. Ino-chan too, but she gave up faster."

"Ano...how did you get away earlier? That didn't look like a smoke bomb?" She'd been curious about that but had shunted the thought aside in favor of her melancholy. Another bad habit she'd need to erase, but there were many of those according to her clan and it was a very long process to improve any of them.

"Hehehe, you like? I swapped with a clone I had waiting out in the hallway just in case." Naruto paused long enough to rub his head were Sakura had aimed, as though rubbing away a sore spot. "Stings just thinking about it, I almost didn't make it in time. And I guess Sasuke need some space to go brood or something; I lost track of him in the swap and smoke. It's ok. We'll find him later, after Sakura-chan stops being scary!"

Hinata let herself giggle a bit at the thought of Naruto spending the early days of his genin career on the run from the vengeful kunoichi, checking around every corner for a flash of pink hair. The passed the rest of the lunch break in companionable silence, and Hinata found herself feeling rather hopeful about her team dynamic after all. At the very least, it seemed she would be able to get along with at least one of the boys just fine.

~SWF~

Sasuke was not pleased with one Hatake Kakashi. All of the other teams had been picked up promptly after lunch, with the latest of the jounin having been Sarutobi Asuma sidling in nearly fifteen minutes after the others to collect Team 10 with a lazy yawn. He didn't think he'd ever seen a genin give a jounin an earful like Ino had and was grateful once again that at least his team's excitable blond knew the value of silence. He wasn't sure quite when that lesson had sunk in, but he was inestimably grateful for it. It would be hard enough to be on a team with someone who had once been so close without having to deal with his in-your-face personality on full bore at all times.

He let his gaze slide over once again; Naruto was beginning to display the signals he associated with thinning patience and an oncoming prank. On the one hand, that was hardly an appropriate first impression to make on their new sensei. On the other, he was hard-pressed to care given how much of their time had already been wasted. He let his gaze slip to Hinata, who had been sitting in relative silence and stillness since the last of the other students had left. He was similarly relieved that the only kunoichi he would have to deal with on a regular basis would be the one member of their year that did not have some sort of strange obsession with him. The memory of some of the despondent looks that had been cast his way as their bearers had been escorted from the classroom was enough to make him shudder, and he quickly repressed the images. He was remarkably good at that out of sheer necessity.

Naruto shifted again on the bench next to him, and he steeled himself for the coming explosion of motion, having estimated Naruto to be at his outer limit of patience. Instead, the other boy stilled himself again and briefly sighed before turning to face him, expression unreadable.

"Ne, Sasuke...can we talk? I...I have a few things I want to say if we're gonna be working together."

His first reaction is to refuse. He's heard everything the effervescent pre-teen has had to say over the past few years, and none of it has been enough to make up for what happened that day. But, then, he does have to admit curiosity as to how the other boy managed to pass after having obviously failed. He ignored the brief flash of guilt that clenched at his gut, just as he had countless times over the past few years. His duty to his clan far outweighed his debt to Naruto, and his former friend had been the first to betray their promises anyways. Still, if only out of pragmatism...he nodded. That was the best he'd give him for now.

"I, uh. I need to." Naruto paused and swallowed, but as Sasuke's brow started to furrow in frustration Naruto pushed onwards. "I want to apologize. For that day in the Hospital. After, you know. I, I was confused, and scared, and I said the wrong things when what you needed was someone to be on your side completely."

Sasuke felt rage envelop him. Three years?! He's waited three years for this? He opened his mouth, intending to tell him they were done here, but Naruto hurried to finish before he could.

"I…'saw' something that day, Sasuke. Something that might be important, something that confused me, confuses me still. I, I'll tell you everything, if you want to hear it, but only if. Otherwise, I'll never bring it up again, and we'll do it your way. That's what I should have said that day, and I'm sorry I didn't. I-I wasn't sure if I was going to say anything, but if we're going to be on a team together...I wanted to know, can we at least start over?"

Sasuke's mind reeled. This was not what he had expected; he had been ready for a fumbled explanation of Naruto's failure-turned-success, or yet another litany of reasons why they should start training together again. Another tirade about how Naruto was keeping up, how he wouldn't drag Sasuke down, please, please, just can we talk. Not, this. Whatever this was. He'd always thought that Naruto had thrown away their friendship in terror, that he'd been betrayed a second time so soon after the first. These were not the words of a traitor or coward. But then…

"Why didn't you ever come back? I-I know I yelled at you, but I was...I couldn't handle...why didn't you ever come back? I never saw you until they made me come back here." His voice was a hiss of barely-held-together control, and he wasn't sure what would come out if he slipped. It could have been a scream of rage. It could have been a sob. Finding out would mean letting go; instead, he gripped his emotions more firmly and waited.

"I, what? I tried, Sasuke! That nurse, the one that dragged me out of the room, she-she blacklisted me! I'm not allowed to visit you in the hospital, then or now as far as I know. And no-one would tell me when they let you out, and I had no idea where you would go when you did, so I had to just wait, and wait, and then you came back here but you were acting like I didn't exist anymore. I thought - it doesn't matter. I should have found a way. I'm sorry, Sasuke."

Naruto's face was tight with something Sasuke couldn't define, not with the hot lance of guilt currently rammed through his stomach. All this time, he'd thought that the one person he should have had left had just been another betrayer. He'd lumped his best friend in with that man without ever really questioning if he truly deserved the association. Before he could completely get lost in those thoughts, Naruto elbowed him softly in the ribs in an all-too-familiar fashion.

In a louder voice than what he'd used for the brief conversation, Naruto spoke up again. "Someone's coming. I think it's our new sensei."

Sasuke took a single cleansing breath and cleared his emotions as best he could. It was time to focus. Whoever this Hatake Kakashi was, he needed to learn everything he could if he was ever going to achieve his goal. Hinata moved to come sit by them before their sensei could arrive, and Sasuke quickly muttered out of the side of his mouth. "We'll talk later."

Naruto nodded tightly, and beckoned for Hinata to hurry up.

~SWF~

Hatake Kakashi was not looking forward to this latest exercise in futility. Coming of age in the middle of a war had colored his entire outlook on life in general and shinobi operations in particular. Of the many things that left him feeling uncomfortable in the current way of doing things, sending children that made Obito look studious and world-savvy outside of the village with a hitai-ite on their person was questionable at best and dangerous to his sanity at worst. That worst being if he was the one responsible for them. To say that he had high standards and low expectations was to understate both; even when two of the children in question come from notable clans and the last was the orphaned son of two of his most precious people.

He steeled himself for the expected disappointment beneath a careful veneer of lazy grace as he slid open the door to the classroom, but instead of the rowdy delinquent, dispassionate genius, and incompetent heiress that word on the street had lead him to expect, he found three quiet genin candidates sitting in a row, all of them wearing expressions of control over flickering emotions that were shifting too rapidly for him to bother identifying. Huh. And yup, there it was, that face just like sensei's that punched him in the gut every time he saw it. "My first impression...I was expecting more noise. Meet me on the roof within five minutes."

A quick shunshin deposited him at the indicated location, where he leaned back against the roof railing and tilted his head back toward the sky. It put the edge of the Monument just on the corner of his vision, and he let the reminder of Minato-sensei's specific features wash over the more recent memory of the man's son until he could see the differences again. That had been harder than he had expected, even if half his face was now covered between the goggles and the headband. Three sets of feet bounded up the staircase; faster than he'd expected in that too. Maybe he really should actually read those Academy profiles, if only to find out how wrong they were this time. It was usually worth a few apology drinks at the bars from the overworked Academy admins responsible for writing them.

With a lazy wave to indicate where he wanted them seated, he brought his head back down from the clouds and regarded each one of them slowly in turn. The Uchiha was the stormiest of the three, as though something had just upset him greatly and he was struggling to get it under control. Probably the fact that despite being hailed as a genius, he was being forced to work on a team like everyone else. The Hyuuga was quailing a bit under his gaze, as though expecting an immediate and harsh evaluation but determined to prove her worth all the same. Naruto was just giddy and had little shame in showing it; unfortunately he'd have to knock that down a bit but hopefully he could do it without destroying him.

"Right then. Let's have some introductions; likes, dislikes, dreams, I'm sure you know the drill by now." Kakashi waited as the three candidates shuffled their gazes around, clearly looking for someone else to go first, and he marked the first point off against each of them. "I suppose I can start, since you've all forgotten how this works. My name is Hatake Kakashi; I have no interest in telling you my likes or dislikes. Dreams for the future, well, I suppose I have a number of hobbies…"

He reveled for a moment at the collective annoyance on their faces before pointing vaguely in Hinata's direction before making a 'go on, then' gesture at her. The girl wiped the expression off her face and assumed a more proper posture, then executed a semi-formal seated bow.

"M-my name is Hyuuga Hinata. I enjoy sweet foods, especially cinnamon rolls, flowers, and making people happy. I dislike shellfish...and…" Hinata paused for a moment and seemed to gather herself up.

"I dislike causing others harm, but recognize it as a necessity of our duties. My hobbies are...people watching and flower pressing. My dream is to become an honorable kunoichi and to bring change to my clan for the better." Hinata bowed again, then turned along with Kakashi and Sasuke to Naruto who was seated in the middle.

"Uzumaki Naruto, dattebayo! I like cup ramen, and training, and Ichiraku ramen, and friends, and especially Ichiraku ramen when Iruka-sensei is buying! I dislike the three minutes it takes cup ramen to cook! Hobbies, um, I like to practice my traps?" Naruto paused and snickered for an instant, then glanced towards Sasuke and sobered up. "My dream...I will become the greatest ninja of all time, surpassing all of the Hokage, with my friends by my side-ttebayo!"

Kakashi let out an imitation of a thoughtful hum, and turned towards their final member who was staring at Naruto as though he'd just seen a ghost. The expression was gone an instant later and the Uchiha resolutely resumed staring off into middle distance before speaking in a flat, if wavering, tone.

"My name is Uchiha Sasuke. I don't have many particular likes, although I have many dislikes. I don't have a dream as much as an ambition; I will restore my clan and…" Sasuke trailed off for a long moment, before taking a small breath and seeming to force himself to finish. "I will see justice visited upon a certain man."

Up until that point, Kakashi had only been vaguely listening. Self-introductions were essentially required as the initial step of any team-building process and he had heard enough of them to make his ears bleed. While the particulars were not usually something he bothered paying attention to, let alone predicting, he had been specifically warned of Sasuke's single-minded focus on killing Itachi. It was right there at the top of his profile. 'Last Uchiha, genius but not to the scale of his brother whom he wants to kill, top of his class, etc etc.' Judging by the whipcrack noise made by Naruto's neck as his head snapped over to look directly at Sasuke, the first time he'd made any effort at looking at any of them head-on, it wasn't to his expectations, either.

With a mental shrug, Kakashi shoved it off for some future jounin to deal with and launched into his satisfyingly well-rehearsed spiel regarding the bleak future prospects of themselves and their classmates, their hilariously low odds of actually becoming genin (and oh how he loved getting to deliver the part about them not genuinely being genin until and unless he said so, the outrage got him every time), life is hard and everything is terrible, boo-hoo, now go home and get ready to be up at stupid-o'clock tomorrow. Oh, here's some terrible advice and the instruction papers, see you tomorrow, aaaaand shunshin.

It was almost like he'd done this a few times. Still, they'd been different enough from his expectations that he supposed it might actually be worth his time to read their profiles. It was extraordinarily unlikely that Naruto and Sasuke would manage to repair the broken bridge between them in time to pass his test, few people knew how hard that sort of thing was better than Kakashi himself, but hey, teamwork always evolves best under pressure, right? And if he was wrong about that, well, that would just mean he was off of babysitting duty. He would win either way.

~SWF~

Naruto was desperate to talk to Sasuke after the other boy's last words in his 'introduction', maybe his gamble in his own had paid off, but after listening to Kakashi's instructions he knew there was a more immediate problem to solve. He snapped a practiced amount of chakra into the page before him and started tracing his fingers past the lines written upon it. It contained basic information; directions to the training ground, confirmation of the time they should arrive, basic composition of the test - nothing new or useful, really, besides the place they were to meet. He lifted his head and directed his face to one, then the other, of his teammates. "So, uh, if this test is going to be that hard, I think we should swap some information real quick before we all head home for the day."

"Information?" asked Sasuke blandly, looking up from his own somewhat crumpled instruction sheet. Apparently he'd crushed it at some point, probably to show how determined he was (paper was tough stuff after all) when Naruto hadn't been paying attention.

"Yeah, you know, what are our skills, what are our major weaknesses we might need the others to cover, basic team stuff. If we're supposed to survive against a jounin, even one that's holding back, we'll need more than just our individual strategies."

Sasuke grunted an affirmation, and Hinata nodded pleasantly, so they huddled closer on the rooftop to exchange details. Naruto took a deep breath and forced himself to relax as he let it out. Both of them already knew his secret, even if only in the most general terms for Hinata, so he could do this. If only just.

"OK, so I'll go first?" Naruto waited for Hinata's nod and Sasuke's shrug before continuing. "OK. You both know about my eyes, but Hinata-chan needs the details and Sasuke, I've figured out some new tricks. I'm blind, completely so. No blurry shapes, no light and dark, nada. Instead, I keep up a constant cloud of chakra all around me. It goes out about fifty meters, but if I focus it in a particular direction I can stretch it out to almost a hundred. However, my area awareness drops to about ten meters while I'm doing that, so if I need to look long I need some backup in mid-range. Anything that my chakra touches, I can feel almost like I'm touching it with my hands and build a mental image of what I'm looking at."

Naruto paused at a small 'eep' noise from Hinata and turned his face toward her with a look of concern. He could sense her blushing again, furiously this time if he was any judge, but she quickly started waving her hands in some sort of denial. Sasuke let off a sound that was closer to a snort than a grunt and motioned for him to keep going.

"Oookay? Um. Yeah. So I can see around corners or obstacles, and I'm really good at spotting people that are hidden against just normal vision because I can feel them moving through my chakra cloud. Tight spaces make it really hard to move my chakra through, so I can't usually see past clothes to find hidden weapons or supplies, through closed windows or doors, or underground at all. My other senses are all very acute, so I'm sensitive to loud noises and strong smells. Nothing like an Inuzuka; I don't hear or smell things normal people can't, but I'll hear or smell it sooner than most. Any questions so far?"

He got two short headshakes in response, and so continued. "Umm, that's about it for senses. I think you've probably both seen my taijutsu, I focus on evasion for defense and short flurries for offense. It's not my best skill because all the moving stirs up my chakra and gaps can form in the cloud, so I try to minimize my own movements to keep things under control. Shurikenjutsu is pretty good as long as the targets are in my cloud. No bukijutsu yet. My ninjutsu, well. I can do kawarimi, but it turns out my bunshin and henge are all wrong and I can probably never fix them. It's, uh, why I failed at first."

At their confused looks, he grinned sheepishly and snapped off both jutsu. A small horde of monotone Narutos surrounded them, while the original became a monotone Iruka. He held both for a few moments, long enough for his teammates to examine both with a mix of bemusement and disgust, then released them all together. A set of crossed fingers later he performed a quick kage bunshin, creating three clones to stand behind him.

"On the plus side, I learned how to make these guys. They're shadow clones, solid copies with their own share of my chakra. They can scout, perform jutsu of their own, even extend my chakra cloud. Their individual clouds are smaller though, only about 10 meters with a 25 meter focus spike." Two of the clones proffered themselves for a brief inspection, and all three released after a brief round of poking and prodding. "One good hit and they're out, so they're best for scouting and ambush tactics."

"Oh, and I can do some decent traps. I've caught a few genin and chunin in the prank ones, but I don't think I've ever gotten a jounin with them so they're probably only good as distractions at best tomorrow. I'm best at mid range for now, but I'm hoping to work on my close range with both of you once we start training. OH! Super-important~ttebayo! I have to be extremely careful about reading. I do it by putting chakra into the paper and feeling how the paper and ink are different, so I guess I can accidentally set off seals or explosive tags just by, uh, looking at them? So I'll need help there."

To Naruto's surprise, it was Sasuke who volunteered to go next by way of speaking first. "I'm good with shurikenjutsu, and I can do some basic fire jutsu as well as the Goukakyuu no Jutsu. I can do a few trap tricks with ninja wire and cord, but mine are intended to be supplemental to close-range tactics, herding the enemy into range rather than doing any direct damage. I don't have any long-range capability besides thrown kunai, and my Sharingan has not yet awoken so I have no special perceptive abilities. My strongest area is taijutsu. I am...not very practiced at coordinating my abilities with others; I'll do better if you two can support me rather than the other way around."

Naruto was stricken dumb. Sasuke, speaking at length about his own abilities, and more so, admitting he had areas of weakness? He must have shaken his friend up more than he thought, or maybe Sasuke really had just been waiting for Naruto to prove himself?

"A-ano, I am also strongest with taijutsu, but I have a very hard time actually using it in practice. My clan's style, the Juken, is extremely damaging unless either absolute precision is used or we only use the physical strikes, not their chakra extensions." Hinata blushed again and looked away from them both before she resumed speaking. " I, um, I really don't like hurting other people, so I find it difficult to use effectively. However, I have a very solid defense and can help provide cover in close range. I have basic shurikenjutsu, and can use them at longer than normal range thanks to the Byakugan, but I have no ninjutsu beyond those taught here. I am best at close range in combat, or at long range as a scout or tracker."

Naruto grinned. This was more than he had expected by far when he made his suggestion. He took a moment to fall still and try to judge the current time by the feel of the sun on his skin, but eventually gave in and cast his chakra around the side of the academy until he found an open window and checked one of the wall clocks. Thankfully it was one of the older ones, without the glass front, so he was able to check it without having to waste time infusing the whole thing with chakra to feel it from the inside. It was getting late now, and with the early start they were going to have to get…"OK, I think that's probably all we need for now? We don't want to be too tired tomorrow, so we should probably all call it a day and head home to pack and get ready."

The others agreed, and the three shot off into the growing shadows of the early evening.

~SWF~

The next day found a bleary Naruto dragging his feet onto training ground seven a few minutes before five. He collapsed onto the ground between Sasuke, who was leaning against a tree, and Hinata who was standing by the three training posts that stood out on the near end of the field. The three exchanged half-hearted greetings, and Naruto briefly attempted to stir up another conversation about tactics and planning, but Hinata pointed out that they wouldn't know what they really needed to plan for until Kakashi arrived. The conversation, which he had only really started in order to kill the last few minutes until their sensei arrived, quickly petered out.

Thirty long minutes later, there was still no sign of the man. Naruto's patience was wearing thin, and the others did not look much happier. "Dammit, where the hell is he?!"

"Ah, well, he was nearly two hours late meeting us yesterday…" Hinata offered tentatively.

Naruto turned towards Sasuke, and they exchanged a long look. Naruto shrugged and pulled his pack around in front of him to start digging through it. "If he's anywhere near as late as he was yesterday, then we still have at least an hour to kill. I'd say we could spar to get used to how we fight, but we should probably pace ourselves. And I don't know about you two, but I am starving. And, I mean, it's not much, but I do have some cup ramen…?"

"A-Ano, sensei said we shouldn't eat…"

"Yeah, but ramen goes down fast, it'll probably be all out of our stomachs by the time he gets here. And if not, well, I think I'd rather puke ramen than just dry-heave."

There were a few moments of silence, but then Sasuke pushed off the tree and wandered into the woods. A few minutes later he strolled back in and made a small pile of sticks on the dirt near the posts. A quick katon jutsu had them lit, which seemed to be as much of an answer as he was going to give that early in the day, and he plopped down cross-legged near the fire to feed it more sticks as it grew. Naruto grinned at him reflexively as he pulled a collapsible camp pot out of his back and started to stand. Hinata gently intercepted him, shyly taking the pot and pushing him back down.

"I'll get the water since you brought the food and Sasuke started the fire."

They shared a quiet time as the water boiled and the ramen steeped, both of his teammates making a few appreciative noises at having food in them as they ate. Soon everything had been cleaned up and set to right, but there was still no sign of Hatake. Naruto finally snapped, and looked up from repacking his pot with a grin that set both of the others on edge.

"OK, he said survival test, right? And he's a jounin, so no matter what kind of test, it's going to be super-hard, right?" Naruto waited for their nods, which he noted with satisfaction were a bit nervous, and grinned all the more. "Well, if he's going to give us all this time to prepare...I say we prank his ass to Iwa and back."

Sasuke let out a scoff, his tension vanishing as soon as the word 'prank' escaped Naruto's mouth. "Pranks on a jounin, great idea. Let's just quit now and save ourselves the embarrassment."

"Um, well, maybe…" Hinata started to pipe up, only to falter when Sasuke turned his dissatisfied gaze on her instead. She folded in on herself for a moment, until there was a sharp 'pop' noise and she looked up to see one of the used ramen cups fall away from Sasuke's face. Her hands flew to her mouth to stifle the giggle that wanted to erupt; Sasuke looked furious now but it was all aimed at Naruto and it gave her the breathing room to try again. "You know, the only difference between a prank and a trap is whether or not the goal is to hurt the victim…"

Sasuke stopped with his fist cocked back over Naruto's head, the latter having raised a feeble guard despite being nearly doubled over cackling, and this time his gaze was more considering when he looked at Hinata. "Hn. You have a point. Well, ramen-boy, you're the prank expert. What did you have in mind?"

When Naruto regained his breath, he flashed a grateful smile at Hinata before standing up and brushing the dust off the seat of his pants. His hands flashed together into his favorite hand-sign, and in a puff of smoke eighteen clones popped into existence. They quickly fanned out, two moving to flank each of the candidates and the original, with the last twelve grouping into sets of three.

"OK, each of us gets two of me for extra hands and lookouts. Remember, these guys have short cloud range, so pay attention to what's around you and don't leave them to do all the watching. The extras will spread out and try to cover as much area as they can to watch for Kakashi-sensei. As soon as one of them 'spots' him, they'll pop, which will alert me and all the other clones so we can rush back here to the meeting spot. Clones'll finish up any trap that gets interrupted from being done, just make sure you get back here as fast as possible so we don't give away what we're doing."

Nineteen heads nodded in response, and the group scattered into the woods with their supplies.

~SWF~

Several hours of productive trap-making passed before one of the clones finally spotted Kakashi over by some big fancy stone set back beyond the training posts. The clone cast his focus around for a moment, and found nothing in range besides two other lookouts. With a shrug, he pulled a kunai and jabbed himself in the leg. Not a pleasant way to dispel, but doing it the painless way let off a pulse of chakra and he didn't want to let the jounin notice if he could help it. The things they did for the Boss.

~SWF~

The three candidates met up scant seconds later, panting slightly from the sprint. They had started from the outer edges of the ground and worked their way in; the entire place was a virtual death trap. Or it would be, if most of the kunai and other sharp bits hadn't been either blunted training weapons or quick, shoddy wooden carvings dipped in muddy water to hide the color. Still, it should give them something to work with if (when) Kakashi managed to split them up.

When nothing happened after a few minutes, the other two looked at Naruto, with Sasuke the first to recover his breath and pipe up. "I thought your clone said he was nearby?"

"He is! Well, he was at least? He was back there somewhere." Naruto defended, pointing vaguely past the posts. Sasuke and Hinata both stared in the indicated direction, searching closely. When they seemed to have no success, he gestured for them to follow and lead them a little way closer to the stone. Still in a bit of tree cover, he stopped the others and pointed again. This time his voice was a furtive whisper. "Look, there, just in front of that funny stone. He's just standing there with his hands in his pockets, staring at it. That's where he was when the clone spotted him, too."

The others stared at him for a long moment, before they looked back over skeptically. Both let out small breaths when they finally managed to spot him, their eyes having slid right over him each time until Naruto had pointed to the exact spot. They turned almost as one to stare at him instead, and Naruto fidgeted a bit under the intense scrutiny. "I dunno why you couldn't see him before, but remember, I 'see' different. He's really hard to spot, but even jounin have to breathe, and every now and then his jaw shifts like he's talking."

Their scrutiny increased, if anything, and Naruto quickly found himself feeling uncomfortable. With a shrug, he jumped out of the bushes and bellowed the first thing that came to mind. "You're late, sensei!"

Naruto would later reflect on two things in particular that he learned in that moment. First, jounin can throw kunai really fast. Like "Holy crap, thank you for pulling me out of the way of that Sasuke!" fast.

And secondly, jounin can jump really, really high.

A/N: Well hello there! I'm sorry this chapter is coming out late, this week ended up being a lot busier than I anticipated two weeks ago and I barely managed to get as much written as I did in between edits of the first three chapters. Once again this one will be going up with just a basic editing pass for grammar and spelling; I'll do another sweep for any content issues or other less glaring mistakes when I can. (For those of you who haven't read them since they were first posted, all three chapters have seen some revisions. Editing notes appear at the bottom of each chapter when I repost, for those who are curious or just want a quick summary of what I changed without re-reading the whole thing.) Also, my apologies for not getting to the actual test itself; it's nearly one AM as I type this and I've got to get some sleep before I work tomorrow.

Next weekend is looking to be another busy one, so I'll try to spend more time writing during the week so that I don't leave you all waiting longer than I absolutely have to, because holy heck there are a lot of you reading this now. I continue to be utterly thrilled by all the views, favs, follows, and especially reviews! I'll also try and make time to respond to those reviews that included either actionable feedback or questions this week. Thank you all so much for your interest and support!

In particular, I'd like to address one thing in case it wasn't clear from the writing - this Sasuke is both more and less messed up than canon Sasuke was at the same point in time. This one had a friend outside of the clan, which means he already had an attachment that survived past his clan's slaughter, but he also lost that friend (through mutual stupidity, kids make bad life choices, what're ya gonna do) for a long time. However, unlike canon Naruto who had to shove the idea of friendship down Sasuke's throat with a well-placed Rasengan, this one just needs to reconnect and they've already started that process. I do have a plan for how this changes things, and I hope you'll enjoy how things play out differently as a result.

Next time should finish the genin test, and we'll spend some time exploring how this team trains differently from canon T7 for a chapter or three before we move on to the C-Rank From Hell ™.

Also, I'm sorry that I'm not sorry about the unrepentant star wars joke in the chapter title. I realized that the start of the "hope" sequence was chapter four and I couldn't help myself.

Until next time, friends!

~Pebkac42