Chapter 5 – Bells

Ringing.

Ring.

Ring.

If he had to hear one more sound out of those bells he was going to scream. It is one thing to be buried up to your neck, as embarrassing as that was, but it was another to have the man who put you there stand in front of you and shake bells like there is nothing better for him to be doing with his time.

Ring.

"Will you stop!" Sasuke knew his face was red, always was when he got angry, but there was nothing for him to do but yell. No way of removing himself from the situation without help. Help. That thought niggled at his mind. There was something important that he was missing but he didn't have time to dwell on it right at this moment. Kakashi was still standing in front of him with that bell. Bastard.

"You'd think that as a member of a family that exceled in genjutsu you wouldn't have fallen for such a weak one, it wasn't even anywhere near the top. Though you did impress that you were capable of avoiding me while I was underground if you weren't distracted, I was actually keeping that second lesson for your teammates. Now ill have to find something to replace it. Oh well, doesn't really matter in the long run now does it? Your still buried and I still have my lovely, lovely bells."

Kakashi moved his hand closer to shake them in his face and Sasuke contemplated the damage he could do with his teeth if the hand moved closer still. "I don't have to read your mind to tell what your thinking Sasuke and it's not going to happen. Nope, never eve-"

It was immensely satisfying watching his torturer go flying backwards, even if it wasn't by Sasuke's own actions. He glanced back as far as he could and caught sight of a mop of blonde hair. Understandable, Sakura wouldn't have been able to sneak up on the distracted Shinobi quite so well. The grin however he could do without, it was actually rather off putting.

"Get me out of this." He demanded, unable to do much more than move his head. The jutsu would probably be quite impressive if he hadn't been on the wrong end of it.

"Ask nicely and maybe I will." The grin seemed to grow more and more obnoxious the longer he stared at it. A minute seemed to pass before the grinding of his teeth was more painful than the seizing of his buried limbs.

"Get me out of here and I'll teach you something." He finally relented, unwillingly but knowing it was for the best.

"You know you could have just said please like any other normal person in the world. It's not that hard to say. Come on sound it out with me Puh-lee-se."

Naruto placed his hands on the dirt around Sasuke and seemed to force chakra into it, which apparently loosed the ground enough for him to be pulled out. "The jutsu uses chakra to forcefully bind the dirt, making it nigh impossible to break without extreme brute force so don't feel so bad about being unable to escape by yourself. There's a reason shinobi are put on teams."

The blonde last words brought back the niggling that he was missing something and now that he was out of the ground he could concentrate on that.

Shinobi, while being considered extremely dangerous and merciless while doing their duty, all start at the same place. Some may have a better aptitude for the arts than others but they all start being ignorant of those skills and untrained in espionage and warfare. When you think of it this way it makes sense that new shinobi – gennin – are put into teams with stronger and more trained individuals in charge. After all, it's not like you can trust the gennin who are slightly trained but don't have the experience to make proper – and safe – use of such skills.

That's why the current exam doesn't make all that much sense to Sasuke. It had been repeated over and over again all through his childhood, before a certain age, that the power of those in your team could make or break a mission that could mean yours, your loved ones or your villages live and livelihood.

Kakashi was telling them the complete opposite and on a ranking on who to believe, Kakashi the consummate liar balanced against the moral upbringing of his clan, his clan won. After all, no one knows better than his clan.

So team it was, single shinobi – especially gennin – do not last long in the field without someone to watch their backs. Of course that all only worked if those on his team were not useless weaklings who did not deserve to be shinobi. Only time will tell, but if there was no improvement he would have to work out a way to get a better teacher or team. No matter who they were, the clan does and always will come first.

(Line)

Kakashi was enjoying himself greatly, watching the frown lines on Sasuke's face get deeper and deeper with every ring of the bell. He was in fact enjoying himself so much that he didn't notice the blonde menace until he was literally in his face – or his foot was anyway. It was times like this that he was extra happy to have his lovely mask on hand; who knows what the boy had been walking through.

None of this changed the fact that he had just been knocked ten or so meters by a foot in face. So instead of charging back, he decided to watch – this had nothing to do with the embarrassment that he did not feel – and see if it what he saw in the morning was at all possible going to become a trend. The two boys might even pass if they kept to that standard. But that all depended on what they decided.

So he watched and waited and noticed that in all the years that he had been hidden away from the rest of the world Naruto had grown up – not so much mentally if his loudness and bright colours had anything to say – but given the last time he had seen him was when he was five and felt that the Hokage's office was the best place to hide while avoiding the academy it was quite noticeable.

The brightness and outgoing personality hadn't changed all that much, if anything the boy seemed to be louder in general. However there were a few things that he had picked up on that did not make much sense. The incident in the classroom was something that weighed heavily on Kakashi's mind. That had not been the reaction that was expected of the boy especially – as he had noted before – the reports noted a rather obnoxious crush on Sakura. And while he knew that was incorrect now, it created a doubt about anything else that was recorded about Naruto.

His surprising ability with chakra was another. It took more control than realised to successfully break the burial jutsu and even more to do so without creating a cloud of dust. But Naruto had done it without any adverse reaction from the soil what so ever.

The teasing however was on par with both the reports and Kakashi's own observations and it was actually Sasuke's reaction that was a surprise. He had considered the boy to be more standoffish than he was currently acting and there had been no evidence prior to this morning's actions that the boy had any emotions or relation to those in his class other than general annoyance. Even if it was more of a deal than anything resembling friendship.

Well that was two potential students accounted for, and one was someone to the east stomping her way through the undergrowth like an ungainly boar.

(Line)

Sakura had no idea where she was, nor did she know where the rest of her team was. Which was a pain to be honest, as she knew that she needed their help to do even the slightest amount of damage to someone who was considered one of the more elite members of the shinobi army. Given Kakashi's apparent age he would have to be one otherwise he wouldn't have made it to that age. Of course there was a chance that he was riding on the coat tails of a council member or a great clan but given that Sasuke was in the same team she really doubted it. It would do the village no good to stunt the growth of the last Uchiha.

None of that mattered if they didn't pass though. So first was to find them. She hadn't even seen their apparent sensei yet and that was worrying her. Before anxiety set in she heard voices coming from somewhere nearby and changed her heading.

It wasn't until a minute or so that she realised that the voices weren't getting any louder and the trees seemed to repeat themselves over and over again. While she might not have been the best in their year for ninjutsu, theory and chakra control were like breathing. Because of that genjutsu had been one of her preferred studies even if the books available to academ7 students were more theory than any techniques – apparently they thought that such things would have an impact on their mental health, something to do with disassociating yourself from who you are. She didn't really understand but the lead-up training that was in those seemed to settle her mind quite a bit. Mother however did not see much point in genjutsu as users were often overlooked for those who had more brute force and what Sakura needed was to be noticed, so her interest in genjutsu had been put on hold. It was good that she remembered most of what she had been reading though otherwise she wouldn't have noticed what was going on around her.

But she did and a kunai across the top of her arm, painful enough to jolt the system into waking up but clean enough to have only a little blood, it wouldn't do if someone could smell her. She just hoped it didn't scar.

With the genjutsu gone, so where the voices but now she had no idea where in the forest she was and there was someone much better at this hunting her down – and who seemed to be playing with her. Dodging a poorly thrown kunai she made for the heavy shrubbery with hopes of at least masking herself from her attacker.

Well that was the plan until she ran into a tree that had not been them moments ago and had its edges blur slightly with the surroundings.

"You did well with defusing the genjutsu but really, whoever only uses one? Sure the second one was simple and would really do anything to a properly trained shinobi but still an academy student should know better than to trust their sight alone. After all it is easy to slightly mess with someone's depth perception without them noticing. After all you didn't even notice the tree standing in front of your very own face now did you."

The voice was bland like the ration packs that they had had on academy training camps, their supposed substitute for the sealed food that shinobi took with them. And it made her feel equally disgusted. She really should have noticed the tree.

(Line)

By the time they had found Sakura, she had been gagged and tied to a tree and was looking marginally pissed off about it. There was also a rather red mark of her forehead with 'Watch for falling branches' scribbled all over it and circles around her eyes which were just daring them to laugh.

Naruto warily removed the gag and tried to keep his fingers as far from her mouth as physical possible. While they may be shinobi, it all meant nothing when someone could chomp through bones without even trying. That's ignoring the possible infections that could occur.

"When I get my hands on him I'm going to wring his scrawny neck and hang him from his so loved trees." Sakura grumbled, yanking at the ropes as Sasuke cut his way through them. "Then I'm going to find all of his orange books and burn them in front of him. You know what he did? After drawing on my lovely face he sat there and giggled like perverted child and even decided to read some of the horrible, horrible book out loud. I'll never forgive him; I didn't need to hear any of that."

Naruto wisely decided not to comment on any of that and just poured water on one of the bandages he kept with him just in case. Sakura was grateful enough that she stopped ranting long enough to scrub at her face.

"Off?"

"Kinda? Only visible if you're looking for it."

"I'm going to kill him."

"Quite sure that's not actually allowed at this stage and killing ones supposed teacher is most definitely frowned upon in Konoha. We only have so many shinobi as it is."

"Fine, I'll just give him something to think about for a long, long time."

"That's better."

While Naruto was preventing their disqualification, Sasuke did the thinking he had needed and came to the realisation that he should have had at the beginning of the test.

"We need to work together to pass."

(End Line)

I'm slowly but surely adding more to each chapter, maybe one-day ill make it to 10,000 per chapter. Maybe.