a beating heart of stone

Summary: During Iruka's first year teaching — on his own, because apparently there is a severe lack of teachers — he loses his curriculum, gets into a low-key fight with Shimura Danzo and accidentally creates an army. To be fair, none of this was planned.

(WARNING! Slash, AU, BAMF-Iruka, Sporadic Updates)

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Chapter 1

To be fair, Iruka actually had a solid plan going in.

At sixteen years old, Umino Iruka had just become a chuunin and decided that he wanted to pass on the Will of Fire to next generation. The best way to do this, he figured, was to become a teacher. So he contacted the Academy, took a bunch of tests to prove he was knowledgable and even had an interview with the Sandaime Hokage, all according to plan.

Then the first day of classes began and he lost his curriculum.

Now, Iruka did memorize it. Theoretically, he knew what he was supposed to teach. Theoretically, he had the knowledge to go with it. Theoretically, he could deal with thirty-one six-year-old kids staring at him with an unnerving focus. Sadly, this was all theoretical.

In actuality, there was a severe lack of teachers after the Kyuubi attack, which wasn't helped by the fact all able-bodied shinobi had to get out in the field or patrol to keep Konoha's reputation and safety up. There was also an unprecedented number of orphans in Konoha, because not only had the Kyuubi wrecked more than a quarter of the village, it had also squashed some smaller villages that got in the way. This meant that there were a lot of kids that had nowhere to go, and who's only real path was to become shinobi. It also meant that they couldn't read or write.

So not only was Iruka a completely new teacher, but he also had to go at it solo, without any help from his colleagues. And thus, in his panic to prepare, he lost the curriculum. He did not, unfortunately, notice this before the class began.

When the students began trickling into his corner classroom after the entrance ceremony where the Sandaime Hokage had held a very moving speech, Iruka was sitting at his desk, staring straight into the air and reevaluating all of his live choices. What made him think he could possibly teach a whole class of kids how to be ninja? It must have been temporary insanity. Unfortunately, he had made commitments and promises now and he couldn't go back on them.

The students, most of them wearing worn-out clothes that led him to the conclusion that they were secondhand, sat down behind the desks and looked out at Iruka with both admiration and distrust.

Iruka died a little inside.

Frowning, he attempted to get his heart-rate under control and picked up the paper with his list of students. He glared at it and spoke somewhat harshly, "We will now take roll call."

Thankfully, this process went by fine. All of the students were accounted for, so that was something. His class was full of orphans, civilians and a couple of kids from minor clans. The most important one was a member of a really far removed Hyuuga branch, but higher than so it didn't go. This lured him in to a false sense of security, which was promptly crushed when he discovered that he did not have his curriculum.

As he tried to locate it without looking like he was panicking and on the verge of screaming in frustration, he ruffled through his papers and glared at his desk. This accomplished nothing, and so he moved on. He could do this. He stood up and rounded his desk, standing in front of the blackboard.

He could not do this.

What was he supposed to be teaching again?

Ninja arts, yes, that's right. He knew this. He totally knew this.

He did not know this.

In a panic and knowing that he had been standing still at the front of classroom for a tense four minutes now, he carefully wrote out his name on the board. Then it occurred to him that they might not know kanji yet, and so he wrote it out in katakana and hiragana as well. Then he turned back to the class and stated, in a voice as sure as he could make it,

"My name is Umino Iruka. I'm your sensei."

Thirty-one tiny little brats stared back at him with a concentration so focused it honestly scared him a little. Were kids always like this? How come he didn't know this before?

"Uhm..." he started and then let the sentence fade when he realized he had no idea what to say. He knew he was supposed to start with teaching them the basics, but how basic were they talking about? And why did his colleagues have to stress the fact that he couldn't bother them today, because first impressions were important and they needed to establish their absolute authority today or the kids wouldn't listen to them, which meant they had no time to help him?

Iruka had actually graduated from the Shinobi Academy, right? Then why couldn't he remember what he had learned there or what the classes were even about?

Ten more minutes passed, and the kids started fidgeting. They were frowning now and Iruka knew, even in the midst of his panicking, that he was about to lose control over them. And then he would be fired and forever banned from teaching, which would suck, because he wanted to teach. He had just... forgotten how.

Iruka took a deep breath and did what he always did when he didn't know what was going on on missions. He diverted the attention to another subject. "Can everybody read what I wrote on the board?"

More then half the class shook their heads in avid no's.

This... could be a problem.

"Okay," Iruka began and this time he knew how to continue. He knew how to read and write. He could teach this. It had to be on the curriculum, right? "today we will be learning how to read."

The following few hours, up until the lunch bell rang, were spent drawing out the hiragana alphabet on the board and having them copy it in notebooks he gathered in a daze from a storage room. He also gave them all pens and then went between them to ensure they were all doing the copying correctly, drawing the lines in the correct order and keeping the ones unfamiliar with pens from pressing through the paper.

After the alphabet, he wrote each of their names on the board and tried to ignore the unsettling feeling of thirty-one kids paying him undivided attention. Why were they paying him so much attention, come to think of it? He had heard all of the other teachers complaining how the kids wouldn't listen to them, how they ignored them even. But these kids just sat still and copied down everything he told them to without a word. To be honest, Iruka was starting to worry he was doing something very wrong. Had he scared them in some way? He supposed he might have been a bit harsh, but that was just his nerves rearing their ugly heads.

Then again, the kids wouldn't know the difference, would they?

He frowned to himself and resolved to speak softer from now on.

During lunch, most of the class stayed in the classroom, together with Iruka. None of the orphans had brought with them anything to eat and while Iruka disapproved of this heavily, there wasn't really anything he could do about it. The orphanage had limited funds and were filled to overcapacity. They didn't have the money or time to spare on making bentos for the kids going to school.

Still, when lunch rolled around, the kids seemed to be getting livelier and less shy. They settled into a couple of different groups as they got to know each other and their interests. Iruka was still kind of panicking at the idea of teaching tiny children how to be shinobi, but he had calmed down a little. It was, at the very least, very heartwarming to see the kids reaching out to each other.

As lunch ended, he saw a change. They were fidgeting more and all of them had trouble concentrating when he attempted to go back to teaching them about hiragana.

This immediately set off his panic again, because what was he supposed to teach them if not reading? He knew stuff about this, he knew that he did, but when he tried to think of it, he drew a complete blank. Could he even throw a kunai anymore?

Through the window, he caught sight of the empty training ground attached to his classroom. It was equipped with a training course, posts and a flat open space for taijustu, and when he saw it, his mind lit up with an absolutely brilliant idea. He didn't know what he was supposed to be teaching them, but there had to be some physical training in the curriculum! He'd just get them started on that and when they lost their excess energy, he'd herd them back inside and continue the only lesson he could think of.

He cleared his throat. "Okay, kids, it's time for physical training now. Let's all go outside!"

The kids didn't cheer, but they definitely perked up. Apparently they really didn't want to sit still. Or they just wanted to learn cool ninja moves.

(Dear god, did he even know any cool ninja moves? Did he know any ninja moves at all?! How in the world did he managed to become a certified teacher?!)

Because Iruka was an idiot that was currently panicking, instead of leaving through the door like a sensible person, he opened one of the windows and jumped out straight into the training ground behind the school. There were actual cheers and then he had to hurry out of the way when the rest of his class followed him.

He was a complete failure as a teacher.

Then there were thirty-one kids staring up at him with stars in their eyes and all he wanted was for the ground to split under him so he did not need to witness this. "Right." he said and cleared his throat needlessly. ""We'll start with stretching and then we'll go ten laps around the track to warm-up."

Weirdly, not one kid complained. Iruka knew that both he and his fellow students had certainly complained a lot, especially about the stretching.

"... Then let's get started."

The following half-hour was spent dragging all of the kids into the proper stretching forms, correcting them when they tried to do things differently or made mistakes. After he was finally satisfied that they wouldn't be pulling any muscles, he led them around the tracks in a fairly slow, even pace for ten laps.

The kids were all puffing and bent over after the ten laps were complete.

Some were even sitting on the ground, sweating and generally just looking absolutely miserable.

As Iruka had been doing the entire day — except when he was absorbed in teaching hiragana — he proceeded to quietly ad discreetly panic and wonder what he had done wrong. Then it hit him that he had probably just pushed them too hard to start with. It wasn't the end of the world. Unless they had broken or torn anything. They couldn't have, right? Right?

Yes, he absolutely sucked as a teacher. Obviously, he would need to start them off slow. He didn't know why he thought differently. He had probably gone too fast too. It was the curse of having been on the same genin team as Gai.

Nonetheless, he couldn't very well push them into more physical exercises in good conscience. This time, when he told them to stretch, they complained.

By the time the stretching was completed, they all looked so exhausted that he didn't have the heart to make them walk again. Instead, he settled crisscross on the ground and told them to crawl closer. He picked up a leaf and held it out over his forehead and then he let it go. It stayed put.

"This," he began. "is the leaf chakra control exercise. You will need to direct your chakra up to your forehead in order to get the leaf to stay put. The longer the better. Any questions?"

One of the orphan girls put up her hand in the air and once he pointed at her, she asked, "Can I only attach it to the forehead? And can it only be one leaf?"

Iruka shook his head and smiled. "No. You can attach it to any body part you want, but the forehead is generally where we begin. And you can use as many leaves as you want, but the difficulty will go up with each one. Anything else?"

Another kid — a boy — put his hand in the air. "What's chakra?"

Iruka actually felt his heart stop. They didn't know what chakra was? Did Iruka know? He did, right?! There was something about energy and, and, something else. He was so, so screwed. "It's the mixing of ones spiritual and physical energies, and when you guide it, you can use it. It's the thing that makes jutsus work. Concentrate and you should be able to feel it, sort of like a ball of warmth in the pit of your stomach. Make sure you don't try to use all of it at once, as that can be highly dangerous."

They nodded, and then they all tried the exercise. Iruka watched on, feeling both proud of them and ashamed of himself as he saw them try so genuinely. Here they were, doing the best they could, and Iruka had gone and screwed up. He had not only lost the curriculum, but he had utterly forgotten what he was supposed to teach them.

And imagine, he had actually been looking forwards to teaching.

Apparently playing around with chakra, which they described as the "funny warmth in their bellies" was a lot of fun and so they stayed outside for another hour before they ventured inside again to continue with the reading and writing class.

Eventually, the last bell rang at three in the afternoon and school was over for the day. In the vain knowledge that he was supposed to assign homework, he told them to keep working on the leaf exercise as long as it didn't make them feel bad. He got a lot of smiles in response and then they ran out of the classroom. Through the window. Because Iruka was a horrible teacher already spreading bad habits.

And then he was alone.

Putting his head in his hands, he leaned over his desk and tried to disappeared into nothing. He could still feel his heart beating like thunder in his chest and panic was still there. He had messed up, he knew he had.

What was he supposed to say during the parent-teacher meetings? What was he supposed to say to the Hokage? To the other teachers? Iruka had made a mess of his class, probably taught them all of the wrong things and the only thing left to do was to come clean. He couldn't keep being a teacher when he knew how much he had screwed up. As much as he loved it and as much as it was what he wanted to do, he had an obligation to his students, to give them the best education possible and he just couldn't provide that. No, he would come clean, he would apologize and hope that he wasn't punished too harshly for his failure.

It was the only thing he could do to fix this.

Taking a deep breath, he calmed down now that there was no trusting kid staring at him with too much faith. Iruka stood from his desk with determination and cleaned it mechanically. It was the right thing to do.

Once he had nothing left to delay time with, he exited his classroom and went to the Headmaster's office.

The headmaster of the Shinobi Academy was a grouchy old man, that had seen too many wars and come out the other side with too many injuries to keep being on active duty. To be honest, he had scared Iruka a little at first, before he had steeled his nerves and decided he had met scarier people out on the field on missions. Iruka knocked on his door and entered the room when the man inside told him to.

The first thing he saw was that the Headmaster was glaring at him. Iruka swallowed and steeled himself. He was here for a reason.

"I'm sorry to bother you Headmaster, but-"

"Then don't bother me!" he was interrupted by the Headmaster before he had a chance to get to the point.

Iruka furrowed his brows and said, "Sorry?"

"You should be sorry." the Headmaster snapped at him. "Do you have any idea how busy I am?! We're still two teachers short, so I've been filling in for them, ones about to go on maternity leave in a few months and we need to find a replacement, the Hokage changed the requirements for graduating again and so we need to find another year of study to fill, concerned parents keep bothering me about all of their silly little worries and the Hokage's advisors are on my ass to make sure everything goes smoothly and on top of all of that, the Hokage wants to change the curriculum again, now that we're at peace and make it softer of all things. I do not have time or energy to deal with whatever mess it is you've gotten yourself into! Now leave!"

And then Iruka was standing outside of a locked door, wondering what he was supposed to do now.

His attempt to talk to the Hokage went the same way, he was prevented from even seeing him, as apparently, he wasn't important enough. All of his tries to approach his colleagues fell through, as all of them were frantically preparing for the next year of classes and so nobody even bothered to listen to him.

Iruka did not get another copy of the curriculum.

Hitting his head on the wall of his classroom, he felt a little bit like throwing up. This?

This was an unmitigated disaster.