Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Prologue - Considering the Circumstances

There is a great continent somewhere, its lands diverse and odd, the people dangerous and cunning. Happily adapting to the scorch of the deserts or the merciless sea, humanity has eked out an existence in spite of all the dangers mundane or otherwise that the place has thrown at them. A glancing look at life there would suggest the credit for such persistence is due the emergent great and powerful Elemental Nations, with armies of samurai to fend off any wild giant animals, to maintain order, to keep each other as well as the smaller realms in check. If one wishes to be fair, some credit truly is due to them.

But the lion's share of the work, be it dealing with the extraordinary dangers of the world or the ferocity of fellow humans, has fallen to others. After an age of battling amongst themselves, shinobi have eventually come to form the bodies that allowed humans to fully master their world – ninja villages under the leadership of Kage, in vague and mostly technical vassalage to the feudal lords of their respective nations. They worked tirelessly and on a level far above regular people or even the chakra-trained samurai, allowing their new homes to prosper and their nations to be safe amidst deadly wonders.
Five among them were the most powerful, and of that five, the first to emerge was Konohagakure, the Hidden Leaf.

A village hidden amongst the leaves. A strange name, isn't it? Clouds, mist, even the ever moving dunes of sand or the stony labyrinth of the mountains make sense for hiding a settlement of ninja. But all the leaves ever hidden were individuals, not their actual village, which stood in a perfectly known, visible location, proudly stating it was there, and that there it was to stay. Perhaps it is that quality which made it such a remarkable place, home to so many legends past and current, a place and a people whose daring stubbornness was enough to defy common sense and smack it right in its ugly, necessary-evil-laden face every now and then.

Appropriately there were plenty of notables throughout its history who fit that idea perfectly, and above all else its leaders in one way or other always had that quality about them. First and foremost was of course the First Hokage Senju Hashirama, known for being immensely powerful, a wielder of a power unseen since, a man with wicked political insight and a capacity for persuasion, but when it comes down to it, also a man with a reputation for being a loud buffoon. He made good use of that, but what he was known for was a simple, earnest goodwill. The Second could not have been more different in character from his brother, but he too was a man of passion and stout conviction. More mild in manners, but every bit as brazen were the Third and Fourth, daring to hope for a better, more peaceful future, one with the guts to be just a little bit weak in the hopes that words could bring the peace jutsu could not, the other ruthless when he had to be but someone with the wisdom and kind heart to only use his strength for the protection of his family, village and homeland.

Amongst the many, many tales about the many heroes possessed of such guts and daring, there is one that this story is about. Well, in all fairness the one this story is about is probably the one with the most stories dedicated to him. In some tales he could have merely had red hair more appropriate for his ancestry, in others perhaps he received majestic eyes of legend by a strange quirk of genetics or fate, some other tales recorded a few details like in what era was he born, who his masters and teachers were or how certain key events of his life played out differently.
This is one such story among many, focusing on a certain boy, soon to be a man, and those closest to him. This one spurs off from the most recited tale most visibly at a key junction of many lives in the Village Hidden in the Leaves, in days filled with mourning, tension and insecurity. Such times will inevitably tax a village's ability to run the daily errands, make decisions shortly and swiftly, with a pressing need to defend itself and repair the damage after an attack they failed to foresee.

As such, while this story will indeed focus on the adventures of a select group of people, will certainly aim to have action, romance, drama, the occasional musing on a subject or three with big and hopefully exciting goings on, it does in fact begin in a stuffy office reduced to a jungle of paperwork, the frustrations of its new occupant, the burdens of bureaucracy and a simple decision springing from it all.

Lady Senju Tsunade was not a happy woman. There were numerous reasons for this, generally as well as specifically. Let's not get bogged down in the life issues of a chronically unlucky gambler, an unparalleled medical genius with haemophobia, or someone who has lost too many people too close to her to let the fact ever ease up on her conscience without assistance from a bottle.

The reasons for her unhappiness in this specific moment were more manageable, down-to-earth. To be precise, they had to do with the fact that well before noon she's already been up and hard at work for nine hours (a fate she regarded none but the greenest of genin and anyone directly working under her were suited to), engaged in an uphill bureaucratic battle to merely assess Konoha's forces and current state.
This led to the next factor of unhappiness, with an extra flavour of guilt attached – the mercenary city state she's been entrusted with has clearly seen better days, even before Orochimaru's attack. There'd be many things to discuss with her old Sensei if she had the chance just one more time, but a lot of that would consist of giving the old geezer an earful about making some common sense decisions. Age had got to the man, clearly, and let the effort to further international détente be damned. Especially if it led to your death in the middle of an attempted invasion by some upstarts and aided by your closest supposed ally, with a Tailed Beast almost left free to roam about in the middle of the village to work out its frustrations about humanity and our tendency to seal it and its kind.

Since it was unlikely she'd be granted an audience with the dearly departed, she set that train of thought aside and focused on the work. Things were looking harsh indeed. Fifteen per cent of the forces were outright killed in the battle, another five received injuries too critical to recover from and much of the rest were clearly not going to operate at the top of their game for a good while. The village has practically rolled over, shown its soft underbelly to the rest of the ninja world and may as well have been begging for someone to come in and finish the job, with a great deal of pointy metal objects involved. There were a lot of potential candidates for that.
Speaking of pointy metal, the village's weapons supply was dented significantly, and the medical and other supplies weren't much better off. This was not unknown to the village; some of the very dull but indispensable people in the administration would be happy to present anyone willing to listen with links between such shortages and the greatest conflicts of the age looming on the horizon. Well, they would have, if there wasn't such a high civilian death toll during the festivities and the remaining officials weren't sweating blood trying to put the village's affairs into order. And that was just the most mundane of troubles. The panic that erupted during and after the battle led to considerable property damage – clans were reporting valuable historic property as missing, the sheer damage of the attacks and techniques fired off in the assault would take the better part of a year to recover, and when the Uzumaki brat and his team fought the Sand Jinchuuriki, thankfully outside of the village boundaries, they destroyed a large area of lush forest to boot.

At least that last bit was fairly normal. The one thing Tsunade reckoned was more nerve-wrecking a job than being the Hokage was probably being a proud, beautiful pine or mighty oak tree, at any given time possibly seconds away from being blown up by a stray explosive tag, uprooted by a massive chakra-enhanced gale of wind, suddenly find the soil it lived off of turned to sand, or any number of other nasty things. Ninja liked a good old fashioned fight in the woods. She hoped against hope there was no such thing as reincarnation because she knew exactly what someone with as many things on her conscience as her would come back as, especially given her ancestry. Just in case she preferred to fight in the open, with the added bonus that the lack of cover was a nice little advantage.

All in all, the situation was dire. The report clearly prioritized the most immediate and pressing concerns, with the longer term impact still to be determined. Looking at the pile of immediate files to authorise so that the village can begin to spring back up, at the speech she was soon to give to the elders and clan heads, at all the policies to draft to appropriately respond to the crisis, Tsunade vowed to herself that the next time she'll see Jiraiya she'd make him suffer, even worse than that time in the in the baths. Back then it was mainly the principle of the thing, whereas now she felt getting a bit more personal. And this was just her second day on the job.

To take her mind off of petty vengeance she buried herself further into the endless sea of documents. By and large the climate between villages was at its usual tenseness, everyone watching everyone else for openings, but keeping their peace for now. Orochimaru's move was the first in years to really shake the status quo, in its wake leaving a weakened Leaf and Sand, but the Sound also having expended far too much in the way of resources for a failed invasion attempt, especially for a small and new village. As the new player on the ground refusing to pay their dues to those with seniority, the current tone was mockery of their failure, judgement of their aggression, and on the part of Konoha's traditional rivals, a degree of barely veiled annoyance that the new player did not reduce the Leaf into a sandy crater.
After the initial weakness, Konoha now simply had to step up and mount a proper response. Between Sensei's death and Tsunade's taking the mantle the village elders and clan leaders, even some of the more seasoned of Jounin were speaking less and less of rebuilding and more and more of retaliation. All fine and dandy, but such things did not happen just by themselves, not if you were in the state Konoha was now in. You needed to properly get going again, inspire confidence in potential allies, build up momentum you lost, make damn sure no one would get you in the back while attacking and only then make your moves.

To do all that, she needed manpower. People had to be called back from comfortable early retirements, long-term but non-essential missions had to be cancelled, and valuable experts in cushy positions had to be sent back to the field. All dignified jobs, of course, and a look at the first mission reports to make it to her desk has clearly shown that most of the old guard very much enjoyed being called back, even if for a little while. It did strain the village's bureaucracy and belayed some important decisions, however, as lacking a proper place to go, all these decisions inevitably floated upwards, into her pile. The funds or the new irrigation system for instance have long left the coffers and the materials were coming, but the work shifts of the labourers were yet to be arranged in any form besides the most general of ideas and the man responsible for sorting that out had an unfortunate meeting with a stray kunai. Routine correspondence with the Daimyo was getting nowhere, with info too important to trust to birds and all the runners pulling extra shifts as it was. For another matter many of the examiners for the Chuunin Exam were injured in the initial attack on the arena, and those who didn't were now out on missions so their recommendations never reached the emergency council. Their lengthy analysis still occupied enough space on Tsunade's desk to make her miss the days of simple field promotions – if it was good for her generation, it ought to be good enough for everyone else, right?

One would expect a mercenary city-state of ninja with magical abilities to be willing to leave formalities and pointless red tape to the side, but sadly one finds out quickly that you don't get to be a major power and a successful mercenary city-state of ninja with magical abilities without proper organisation, which brings regulation, and that opens up the floodgates for bureaucracy. In the face of all that, she briefly delighted herself with the prospect of sending out all the pencil pushers to doing some low-grade missions, however certain it wouldn't happen. She needed to shake the Leaf back into shape, step up operations even, gather funds, send a message of an unbroken village.

It was all perfectly doable, but left some questionable areas open. The Academy, for instance, was full of knowledgeable and skilled shinobi, but taking them out to offset a problem now would make things much worse in the long run.
The current body of jounin sensei presented a similar question. She definitely needed them on missions, but without them the genin would only really be allowed to waste their time on simple D rank missions, something she was intending on having the Academy student body take over with. The Uzumaki brat's cohort being what it was and the various clan skills at play in that lot this would simply not be acceptable.

The Chuunin Exam where the whole mess started was of course an opportunity, and finally a problem she felt like she could unravel if she just pulled at the right thread. The very point of the Exams was to find the right genin to advance into the ranks of the small unit commanders, and if she had a good one, at least this problem could be solved. Under chuunin of appropriate skill the current genin could go on C-, maybe even as high as B-rank missions, pulling their weight for the village and gaining some proper experience. She barely had time to skim over the examiner's reports, but their recommendation was a single promotion, that of Shikamaru Nara. She had her fair share of experiences of working with members of the clan, and the report on the boy's abilities itself looked promising enough, but if she was going to pull off what she wanted, one new chuunin just was not going to cut it for that large a group.

What was she to do? Clearly some flexibility was called for if she wasn't to bottleneck the development of the youngest generation of the village. Of course at the centre of the question was Naruto's bunch. Older genin teams were experienced enough to handle themselves under any run-of-the-mill chuunin or even just go by themselves on a tougher mission or two if push came to shove. She could sell that to whatever council oversaw this sort of thing who would doubtless harass her sometime in the future, if only to justify their own existence. But that was the experienced genin, those who have seen over a year of proper action, and those whose jounin could be spared. But with this lot, you clearly had a lot of potential best not squandered, and a lot of political swing behind some of them, should something go amiss on assignment. Then Hokage or not, the clan heads would be on her ass like nobody's business, which did no favours for her wish for a show of strength.

She began leafing through the folder of those genin involved. The files included an overview of each team, the members and a play-by-play of the final matches, right next to the notes Shizune dug up on the preliminary matches. The performance on the exams and a few notes from the instructors hardly gave a perfect picture, but it was a start. To make her idea work, Tsunade needed at least two chuunin who would be in charge and push the rest so that the next time around she could promote some of the more promising ones. By that time the new greenhorns would be out of the Academy, so give 'em a couple of months with their instructor jounin, temporarily transfer them under a new chuunin who by then would have some good amount of experience. This should free up the bigger name and most skilled jounins who could carry important missions by themselves or with a minimal crew, hopefully with the occasional opportunity to reunite them with their old teams.
Thinking up the best way of building up your army with practically child soldiers was truly depressing. But the alternative was even worse, so Tsunade resigned herself that she'd have to commit that little cruelty, promising to herself that at least she'd commit the resources needed to make them as safe and as well commanded as possible up-front. It would take a lot, and would consume some of her best not being on missions for a time, but that was a price she was willing to pay.
The only decision she'd yet have to make was just who it would be who would command the genin.

By the look of things, the Nara kid was precisely what a by-the-books examiner would be looking for. Abilities suited to support the team, an analytical approach, willingness to let others charge in ahead and knowing how to plan for just that. She could see that he'd take to the job like ducklings to water, with the appropriate kick in the backside every now and again. Getting him to a point where she'd really trust him to keep the unit assigned to him safe would take a lot of kicking, but he'd get there.

What she needed to add here was a counterpart, a contrast to the leading style that would naturally come to the Nara.
There are those who lead from the back, but likewise those who lead as a figurehead, taking on dangers in the defence of others. It was somewhat morbid and insulting to the poor kid who just earned a promotion, but thinking back to when her own team became unit leaders, there was a need for people like Orochimaru who could outsmart anything and treated the battle like a competition or game, as well as people like Jiraiya or herself who preferred to lead from the front, cheer their own and frighten the enemy with, if she was honest with herself, big dumb flashy moves that ultimately did the same job as poisoning the enemy's soldier pill supply before the battle. But the big dumb flashy move, the cheer and elation of honest victory just felt far better, damn it, and it did wonders for morale. Then of course after a few years of experience one realises it does not have to be one of the other, and people of one type can really surprise you with ideas or moves taken from the other. Occasionally you'd have people like the Fourth, who would know precisely when and where to strike, with such a force that his enemies were still struggling to rebuild from it decades later.

Regardless of where his future development might take him, Tsunade could see there was little danger of the Nara becoming an Orochimaru, who treated not only battle, but everything else in life a morally weightless competition. But he did, Tsunade was thinking, need a Jiraiya of his own, someone to inspire and keep the troop spirit alive, someone to be a contrast and a bright spot.

To be fair, she didn't jump to the first and obvious conclusion following that train of thought. She has given each participant who made it to the tournament due consideration.
The Hyuuga would hopefully live down his issues, and his match went a good way to ensuring just that. After the preliminary fight against his cousin one should expect some more trouble coming from him, but a certain bright spot came along and kicked some sense into him.
The Uchiha's lateness may have been Kakashi's influence, but it was hardly a good sign to start with. An even less positive sign was that he definitely looked like the sort to eventually end up like Orochimaru unless sufficient preventative action was taken – with the difference that Orochimaru's obsession that twisted him was science, pursuit of knowledge, of all ninjutsu, and wishing to prevent his own death. The Uchiha was in danger of being twisted by something even worse, if a bit more understandable, vengeance on the killer of his clan. Throw in the fact that on several occasions he's become emotionally unstable if the reports in his file were accurate, and Mitarashi's examination of the scenes after Stage 2 of the Exam and the forests where Team Seven fought Gaara suggested he's started to rely on the Curse Mark. Tsunade shuddered to think what someone as messed up as Orochimaru with something as ridiculously powerful as a Sharingan could do. Definitely a 'no' on his promotion. Still, it was not all bad. Kakashi mentioned a friendly rivalry with a certain bright spot, and Tsunade hoped that they might end up as better than how her teammates did.
The Aburame's preliminary match was very promising, but he didn't make it into the finals by virtue of enemy attacks ending the exams, and he was not suited to be a contrast to the Nara, with a quiet, ponderous personality that just plain old lacked the buzz she was after for the type of leader in mind. Still, he was definitely one to watch next time around.

This left one Konoha genin besides the Nara to fight in the final round. This one employed some unconventional tactics both in his preliminary and tournament matches, improvised techniques, managed to get a miraculous second wind from a source obvious to all above a certain age and used it to enhance his speed, strength and perception enough to counter the fabled Kaiten, which all turned out to be a feint that ultimately won him the match.
During his own and other preliminary matches he was a loud nuisance but managed to rally the people he wanted to, and his contribution to the fights on the day of the attack was following an enemy Jinchuuriki, summoning none other than Gamabunta and taking out said Jinchuuriki. Instead of killing or injuring him, the two had a talk, which apparently caused Gaara to become more stable, and as one of the biggest assets in the Sand, he was now pushing to normalise relations with the Leaf, surprising the village elders who only thought of him as a single minded killer freak before.
On a side note this Konoha genin also managed to impress the Hokage candidate, and convinced her to actually take the job. He reminded her of her little brother, shared her lover's dream, and had Jiraiya's annoying, but admirable tenacity. He managed to dislodge her from the mental slump she was in for decades and reminded her of the Will of Fire.

And in doing so he unwittingly handed her far more responsibility, headaches and paperwork than she knew how to resolve, than damned little brat. The least she could do to pay him back was to hand him some of his own, get him a small taste of the job he so hankered for, even if she had to talk Jiraiya into delaying his plans for him a few months. Problem was, the kid also had his share of deficiencies, which had to be hammered out before she could trust him with commanding teams. But then the same went to the Nara, once you looked beyond his obviously suitable qualities.

She made the decision, knowing that before the day was done Kakashi and Asuma would curse her name. Be as it may, she was certain this would benefit the village in the long run, but for now the thing she looked forward to most was the faces of a select few individuals when they first learned of this. Not quite as good as the few times she won big at gambling, that would come later, but even this early little payoff was almost there.