Okay, since I forgot to add this last time: I totally borrowed that line about children being monsters without the teeth and claws from another story called "Ice and Darkness" by Racke. Hilarious and absolutely worth favoriting if you want a good laugh at Kakashi's misfortune, Sasuke's insanity, Sakura being drugged and drunk to the gills, and the usual amount of craziness around Naruto.

"Uchiha Sasuke, Uzumaki Karin, Uzumaki Naruto... You will be team four and your sensei will be Uchiha Yoruichi."

"YES!" shouted Naruto.

"However, due to medical concerns, your sensei will be unavailable for a week. You will have to wait until she is available," said Iruka.

"Is this because Yoruichi-nee-sama had something come up on her last physical?" asked Naruto.

Iruka said nothing, but it was pretty clear that was the reason.

"Yuki Haku, Kaguya Kimimaro, Yakumo Kurama, you will be team five. Your sensei will be Mitarashi Anko," said Iruka.

Anko wanted to try her hand at a genin team, and since two of the three were from outside the village, this kept people from worrying that the two boys would defect back to their old village.

Iruka went down the list. Once all the children were paired off with their teachers, team four were allowed to leave. Since Yoruichi was dealing with a medical issue, they had the week off before they had to take the final genin exam.

"So any idea why Yoru-nee had to be put on Critical Injury/Maternity leave?" asked Naruto.

"I don't know, but I think it had something to do with the bloody towel I found in the hamper a few days ago."

"What's so weird about that?" asked Karin.

"She wasn't injured and she hadn't taken a shower that morning," explained Sasuke.

"I'm pretty sure I heard coughing from the bathroom too," said Naruto.

"Why do they call it Critical Injury/Maternity leave?" asked Karin.

"Because the only conditions that require that level of restriction are those who have a critical injury, illness, or pregnant mothers. So they just put it together to make it easier to classify," said Sasuke.

"The bad news...it's lung cancer. We usually only see this in Sarutobi members who smoke. The strange thing is that using the Sharingan seems to exacerbate it and make the disease progress faster than normal. This might have been an issue, but you rarely use your eyes except for emergencies or to learn new jutsu from enemies. The good news is that we caught this early enough that it's treatable. You'd have to restrict your Sharingan for the first six months or so, but after that you should be fine. We'd have to keep an eye out in the event it returns, but at least you had the sense to seek help immediately rather than wait," said Tsunade.

"So basically no using the eyes until the kids are at least in their first attempt at the Chunin exams in seven months," said Yoru.

"Exactly. If you have to use them, keep their use limited and do not use the upgraded version. That only made it progress three times faster for some reason."

"Considering you found a way to reverse the damage done to my sight when it's active, that's more than enough reason for me to avoid it."

Unlike other members of her clan, Yoruichi generally didn't use her doujutsu. It was partly because she didn't like the way her clan used to just learn a jutsu and move on without actually practicing with it to make it theirs, but also because she generally didn't leave the village. With how hard it was to train iryonin, she stayed in the village to earn money instead of going on missions. She kept her skills up by training the boys and recently the girls.

Sure, she occasionally went out of the village, but it wasn't nearly as often as before and at least this time she got to know her fellow shinobi instead of acting like an emotionless drone all the time.

When she returned home, she found herself swarmed by the chibi brigade, as she had come to call it.

"Yoruichi-nee, is there something you haven't been telling us?" asked Sasuke seriously. It was so cute when he tried to be intimidating...with the hair that looked like a duck had sat on his his head and liked it so much that it stayed. Sasuke's scowl only grew as he recognized the look in her eyes. "Quit thinking my hair looks like a duck's ass!"

Naruto snickered, but still remained serious.

"But Sasuke-chan, your hair looks like a duck sat on it and stayed!" said Yoruichi with wide eyes.

"No changing the subject Yoru-nee. Why did they put you on Critical Injury leave?"

She looked them in the eyes and sighed.

"The physical turned up something that didn't belong and seems to get worse from using the Sharingan. While it's treatable it also means that I can't use my doujutsu for very long without making it worse. It should be fine by the time you three reach the chunin exam, if you pass the final genin test."

Sasuke's expression was priceless.

"Wait, you're saying whatever this is was made worse by the Sharingan?!"

"Certain diseases don't mix with doujutsu. Cancer is one of them," said Yoruichi. Seeing how freaked out Sasuke was, Yoruichi sighed. "When you awaken your eyes I can tell you what to look for just in case."

That seemed to calm him down.

"What's this about a final genin exam?"

"The first one at the Academy merely weeds out the ones not even worthy of trying. It's a failsafe to make sure the civilians at least have the minimum of training and was originally started to weed out the damn fangirl population. The second one is field testing."

"We already went through field testing at the Academy!"

"But this is primarily temperament and ability. Do the genin interact with each other in an acceptable way? Can they handle a live battle where death is an option? Are they going to be arguing all the time for petty reasons? That sort of thing. You should be glad it's me testing you next week and not Kakashi. He's never passed a single team because he hates children and always does his best to make sure they fail without pissing off Hokage-sama."

"How does he do that?"

"It's called the bell test. For genin who have a small amount of teamwork it's a good way to put them to the test. However Kakashi has this irritating habit of picking those he knows do not like each other, will actively sabotage each other, and then pitting them against one another in an attempt to look underneath the underneath. To put that into perspective, imagine if Sasuke, Naruto and that Sakura girl were on a team...then tell them that only two may become genin while the third returns to the Academy. What would happen?"

Sasuke and Naruto winced.

"She would fawn over me and attempt to sabotage Naruto because she can't stand him, even if he quit asking her out on dates," said Sasuke.

"Which is why Kakashi would fail you. He would attempt to recreate his original genin team, and since it would ultimately fail because Sakura would have great difficulty losing her fan girl issues, it would be a ticking time bomb before one of you snapped. Now I have to undergo a few procedures to get rid of the problem, and I won't be putting you through the same things...but I suppose I can deliver an alternate test for you three."

Karin, Sasuke and Naruto perked up.

"In order to pass the secondary exam, you have to discover one thing. What was Konoha's shinobi system founded upon, and why does it make us different from places such as Kirigakure or Iwagakure? I'll give you only one hint...it's something the Academy, up until recently, hadn't been emphasizing until we brought back the old curriculum," said Yoruichi.

The Civilian Council, who were the primary idiots for nearly ruining the Konoha shinobi genin, had taken away several classes that actually forced the children to learn teamwork without deliberately telling them that was what it was for. Classes where they were paired with others and forced to survive for a full day alone with only minimal supervision from the instructors.

They didn't like how it was harder for the civilian children to become shinobi, so they had lowered the standards down in a way that the shinobi hadn't noticed until it was too late.

These kids were nothing if not inventive. Hearing they didn't have to go through the same tests everyone else did, they split off to ask the older shinobi what made Konoha different from places like Iwa and Kiri.

If it meant Yoru could have an easier time with the surgery later, then she didn't mind having them run around asking questions as her test.

Yoruichi wasn't the only one twitching with repressed laughter. A good portion of the shinobi council was too, especially Tsume.

"Okay, I give. How the hell did you traumatize half the civvies so bad that they had to see the Yamanaka clan for therapy?" asked Yoru looking at her brother.

Without hesitation, all three of her genin immediately pointed at one of the others stating "It was their idea!"

She snickered.

"Alright you three, what did you do?" asked the Hokage, also trying not to smile.

"Are we going to be punished for this?" asked Naruto.

There was a time and place for the truth, especially for shinobi. That time was never and that place only existed as a rumor.

"Not if you come clean."

"Someone, not saying us, may have insinuated that certain council members had their houses on fire," said Naruto with an innocent face.

"We were with Haku and Yakumo's group eating at that Yakiniku place since we were sick of ramen," said Sasuke.

"We might have seen someone running out of the smoke-filled houses with a lot of incriminating evidence though," said Karin without any of the usual tells.

"And the fact that said council members happened to have innocent smoke bombs and not fire in their houses?"

"Smoke bombs?" said Naruto.

"We prefer real explosives, not that cheap stuff," said Sasuke.

"We had nothing to do with what happened," said Karin.

Yoru couldn't help it, she started laughing.

"What do you think, Hokage-sama? Do they fit the usual requirements for Kakashi's test?"

The Hokage quit trying to hide his amusement.

"Well they're showing more solidarity and teamwork than half the green genin..."

"And it saves me the trouble of having to test them later," said Yoru.

The three looked at them expectantly.

"Congratulations you three. Consider yourselves genin."

"What about what happened earlier?"

"Unless they can prove it was you, we're going to pretend it was a harmless Academy Student prank," said the Hokage.

"I love plausible deniability," said Naruto grinning.

"So do I, so do I," said the Hokage and Yoru.

"Let me get this straight. We had to get a flag from Kurenai...and all you had to do was prank the crap out of some civvies?" said Kiba.

"Who said we did it? However we may or may not have been in the areas at the time," said Karin with a straight face.

"Dammit...you guys have all the luck!" said Kiba.

"You too could prank the shit out of some whiny idiots if you learn the cardinals rules of shinobi pranks," said Naruto sagely.

Kiba was listening, as was Shino and Hinata.

"Rule one: there is a time and place for the truth. The time is never and that place exists only in rumors. If you're good enough and cover your ass right, then they'll never pin it on you. Plausible deniability is a wonderful concept that all shinobi live by," said Naruto.

"Rule two: a good shinobi can brag about his deeds so long as he doesn't go crowing to the rooftops about what he did. At least not unless your victim is in another village or better yet dead with no descendants, friends or lovers to avenge them," said Sasuke.

"And rule three: if someone really pisses you off, make a list of offenses and then bide your time until they piss someone else off. Then you can shift the blame to that poor bastard unless they get to them first," chirped Karin.

Team 8 stared at them.

"What?" asked Karin.

"...You put a lot of thought into pranking others don't you?" said Shino finally.

"Let's just say our jounin instructor doesn't mind encouraging a harmless hobby so long as it never comes back to bite them in the ass," said Naruto.

"You suck," said Kiba.

"That's what your mom and sister said last night, dog-breath," said Sasuke.

"DIE!"

"Wow Kiba, I always knew you were gay," said Naruto, cackling as they evaded the Inuzuka. Hinata snickered.