Finally got this one out. The hardest part was writing out the bell test scene in a believable and semi-realistic way.

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Chapter One

"YOU'RE LATE AGAIN!" Naruto and Sasuke winced as Sakura screamed at their sensei.

"Your powers of observation are astounding," Kakashi answered, unperturbed by the volume. "I had things to do, and places to be. Now, are you three ready for my test?"

Three loud growling sounds answered him, leading to a raised eyebrow.

"I see you didn't ignore me in favor of common sense," he continued with a disapproving tone. "You all skipped breakfast."

"B-but you told us to, sensei!"

"If I told you to jump off the Hokage Monument, would you do that? Something for you all to keep in mind: stupid orders are stupid. Don't obey stupid orders. In this case, skipping breakfast is stupid because your body needs energy. If you don't eat, you are handicapping yourself. If you're on a mission, you're making yourself that much weaker and more of a liability to the mission. NEVER skip meals. Understood?"

Three embarrassed nods greeted him.

"Now as for the test, you'll just have to do it with what little energy you have right now. Sucks to fight impaired doesn't it?"

"We're fighting?" Naruto asked. "Who are we fighting?"

"Me," Kakashi replied. "All three of you versus me."

"What?!" Sakura sputtered in concern. "B-but sensei, you could get hurt!"

Sasuke blinked and grabbed at his forehead before slowly pulling his hand down his face. The idiocy of this fangirl…

Kakashi laughed. "Sakura, if any of you really manage to hurt me, then I should quit being a Jonin. It would be a disgrace for three fresh genin to hand me my ass."

The pinkette blushed, feeling extremely stupid at the moment.

"Sakura-chan, we should all attack together. Like he said, he's a jonin. He's better than any of us."

The embarrassed girl whirled around furiously. "Shut up, baka! I know that!"

Kakashi watched as Naruto wilted. Why in the hell does he keep trying when everyone can see she doesn't give a shit about him?

"So anyway, your goal is to get this bell off me in the next hour." He waved his hand with a bell hanging from a red ribbon between his fingers. "You get the bell, you pass the test. You fail, well at least I'll have some idea of where to start training you three."

"So this is an evaluation," Sasuke stated flatly.

"Everything up to this is an evaluation. So far, you're all doing horribly." The genin bristled. "Not necessarily your fault. The Academy's gone to shit since I went through it. But this part is all you. No blaming the Academy for failing here. This is a test of how fast you can learn. So you better give it your all. Got it?"

The genin nodded, and Kakashi hooked the bell to the back of his belt. "Whenever you're ready…"

Surprisingly, Naruto made the first move, dashing forward with a kunai. Kakashi merely stood with his hands in his pockets as the genin approached painfully slowly. Then he bent back to avoid the kunai being thrown at his face. Naruto attempted to use that moment to try and reach out and grab the bell straight off as he ran past, but Kakashi merely flipped sideways over him, landing in a slight crouch before spinning and kicking at thin air. Naruto stopped his charge and turned just in time to get nailed in the chest with a rock that the Jonin had sent flying at him from the kick.

As the orange-wearing genin crumpled to the grass with the wind knocked out of him, Sasuke was already in motion, his hands flying through handseals. "Katon: Hosenka no Jutsu!"

Naruto picked himself off the ground just in time to see Kakashi effortlessly dodge every single fireball while keeping his hands in his pockets.

"Come on," he drawled. "At least make me use my hands, would you?"

Sasuke's eyes narrowed, and he moved into another set of handseals. But he was cut off as his teammate called out his own. "Kage Bunshin no jutsu!"

A wave of orange-clad genin appeared and descended on the jonin. Me and my big mouth, Kakashi thought to himself while he was forced to use his hands to parry or deflect the clones' weak attacks. None of them were actually dangerous, mind you, but it was the principle of the thing. No genin would be laying a hand on him that easily.

The other two stared in awe. "How did he…" Sakura was interrupted by Sasuke grabbing her by the arm and pulling her into the forest.

"You know," the Jonin dusted off his hands as he eyed the angry genin in front of him, "it's not really the smartest thing to attack a jonin head on."

"I'm taking the initiative," Naruto retorted, withdrawing several more kunai. "If you're busy fighting me, Sasuke and Sakura-chan have time to think of something else!"

"So you actually have a plan of some kind," Kakashi mused as he idly dodged two kunai. "Well I wouldn't really call it a plan, but…" Kakashi's eye widened and he spun around, his foot intercepting two clones that had sprang up from the ground below. As they exploded into smoke, he threw himself out of the way as another pair of clones slammed into the ground where he'd been standing. He quickly realized what was going on. Naruto was forcing him to lose track of the surroundings. Well, time to end that.

He created his own shadow clone and shunshined out of there. From his new vantage point, he watched as his clone made short work of the Naruto clones by grabbing one and using it as a flail. He even winced in sympathy as Naruto was smacked away into one of the trees.

"Katon: Hosenka no Jutsu!" Another hail of fireballs erupted from the treeline, accompanied with a hail of shuriken and kunai. Both the remaining Naruto clone and his own shadow clone erupted in smoke as the rain of projectiles dispelled them.

"Where did he go?!" Sakura yelled.

Not bad, the jonin thought as he watched the other two scurry out to drag Naruto back into the forest with them. I'm pretty sure that little spat of teamwork was unintentional, but Naruto had the right idea. It's just a shame those two didn't follow up on it earlier. Part of him wondered whether he wasn't holding back enough. It was clear that at least two of these genin realized just how far out of their league he was, and they seemed to be compensating properly.

But then again, he was restricting himself to defense and non-lethal weapons. Of course, lethality was a question of how much force he put behind something, and he could have quite easily sent that rock into Naruto's temple. But the point stood nonetheless. Shunshin really wasn't fair though. In a real fight, he'd abuse the shit out of that technique, but he had to give them a fighting chance to take the bell.

So no more quick escapes. He'd allow them an opportunity to feel accomplished, and then he'd start beating their asses into the dirt.

"Naruto you baka! You really thought you could take him alone?!"

Naruto spat out a bit of grass, irritated that no matter what he tried, all Sakura did was find fault in his actions. "I was trying to distract him for you guys. Maybe if you'd both attacked earlier before he got out, we might have been able to swipe the bell already!"

"Yeah right! You're just trying to be cool again! You'll never be as cool as-"

"Sakura, shut up!" Sasuke hissed. "Naruto was right the first time. Kakashi is a jonin. We can't just randomly attack him. We have to have a plan and we need to work together. And while we're in here, we all need to be quiet!"

Sakura was stunned that her idol would agree with the dead last, but she complied nonetheless.

"Dobe, how many of those clones can you make?"

Naruto snorted. "I've never kept track. So far, that was the most I've ever made."

A vein pulsed on Sasuke's forehead. "Can you at least do that again?"

"Yeah, why?"

"You distract him with them, and we move in from the side."

The blond rolled his eyes. "In case you didn't notice, that's what I was trying to do before!"

"And you expected us to know that without telling us?"

"I did tell you! Maybe you were just too busy adjusting that stick up your ass to listen!"

"All you said was we needed to take him together. Then you went rushing in ahead like you always do."

"I went and took the initiative!" Naruto retorted. "I made the first move! I went to draw his attention away from you so that you could come up with something better. If you're as good as everyone thinks you are, teme, you're the only one of us with any real chance of getting that bell off him!"

Both genin blinked. The blond never admitted that Sasuke was better than him, and that argument was actually pretty well thought out. Then Sasuke's eyes narrowed and he slugged Naruto in the cheek.

"Ow!"

"You're not Naruto," the Uchiha snapped. "The Naruto I know doesn't plan things like that, and he would never admit that I'm better than him."

"I am Naruto!" the Uzumaki yelled, scrambling to his feet. "What? You think that I'm Kakashi just trying to screw with you?!"

"Kakashi-sensei is a jonin," Sasuke retorted. "He could easily screw with us like that."

"Maa, I don't know whether to be amused or insulted by that."

The three genin froze.

"But if I wanted to screw with you by impersonating Naruto," Kakashi continued as he stepped out from behind a tree, "I'd be sure to mimic Naruto's personal habits and mannerisms perfectly, and you wouldn't have any such hints like an out-of-character moment."

"Katon: Goukakyuu no jutsu!" The fireball slammed into the tree before exploding, creating a cloud of splinters. Kakashi shunshined back down to where he'd been standing for dramatic effect, emerging from the smoke only to get peppered by a hail of kunai that he lazily dodged or deflected.

"Also, maybe you should rethink your position here," he added, noting that the genin were still in the same area, relative to himself. "Holding your ground in the face of a superior opponent is not good tactics."

"I don't retreat!" Sasuke snarled.

Kakashi frowned a bit before shrugging and tossing a kunai with a flash tag. "Suit yourself."

It was only right as the kunai went off that the jonin realized his mistake. But instead of obeying his ingrained instinct to jump away, he kept his feet firmly planted as the genin in front of him vanished in puffs of smoke. From behind, he could hear the young Uchiha call out his fire jutsu once more, and now he elected to move. It was unexpectedly difficult for him, since he was trying to take it easy on them and allow them a chance at winning.

As he hopped away, he saw both Sakura and Naruto converging on him from two sides, each with an arm outstretched towards his back. Once again, he clamped down on his urge to bury a kunai in Sakura's neck while kicking Naruto in the temple, which would have snapped his neck. They were Konoha genin entrusted to his tutelage, not enemy shinobi. Instead, he made a show of vanishing just as Sakura managed to grab the bell and pull it free.

"Yatta!" she screeched, causing both Naruto and Kakashi to wince, even with the distance the latter had put between himself and the pinkette. "I got it! Did you see that, Sasuke-kun?"

Naruto's expression of triumph soured. Didn't his contribution count for anything?

Sasuke smirked slightly, but instantly snapped his head toward the source of a new sound.

"Congratulations, kids," Kakashi drawled. "You managed to work together to get the bell in about twenty minutes. That's exactly nineteen minutes and twenty-five seconds longer than it would have taken a team of fully trained shinobi."

"But we're not fully trained," Naruto protested. "That's why you're our sensei."

"Oh I know that. But you need to know exactly where you three stand at the moment, especially you, Sasuke. That Uchiha pride of yours will be the death of you."

"My clan never refused a challenge!" Sasuke growled.

Kakashi snorted. "Sure they did, the smart ones, anyway. Every single Uchiha that acted the way you did died long before they ever reached chuunin. You know what's the first thing they teach you in ANBU? Anyone?" He looked around to make sure they were paying attention. "It's how to run away. ANBU spends more time running away than doing anything else. Why? Because we need to stay out of sight. Because a fight went sour. Because we need to get somewhere. ANBU are some of the best shinobi in the village, but we usually never fight. I learned that when I went in, and I taught it to everyone on the teams I commanded just like I was taught by my old commander. I even taught it to Itachi."

There it was, that flare of suppressed rage in Sasuke's eyes. Now he really had the boy's attention.

"You run because you are not an army. You run because fighting is not smart when you get down to it. You're usually locked in one place, or you're leaving a ton of evidence behind. And you're exhausting yourself. I've seen countless good men and women die because they got pulled into a fight they couldn't win, because they couldn't get away fast enough or quietly enough. And until you are more experienced, you need to know when and how to run away so you can survive long enough to become strong enough to win your fights.

"So that brings me to the first part of your actual training. Every other day, you three will run, a lot. Tomorrow, we'll be doing body exercises early on, but the day after will be a run day. You will run five kilometers non-stop. And every two weeks, I'll make it longer. After the morning exercise, I'll run you through combat drills, and then we'll do some studying. Two weeks from now, we'll be running missions. Not a day earlier. And if I hear a single complaint about how hard it is, I'll run you through ANBU conditioning training, which is about three times as hard."

Kakashi looked on with satisfaction as all three genin paled. It had been a while since he got to use his instructor voice.

"Now, I want you three to go out and buy some gear. Bandages, ointments, good kunai and shuriken," he stressed, holding up some very worn examples, "wire, protein pills, a sharpening stone, and a notebook and pencil. After that, you're good for the day. But make sure you eat well tonight, and drink plenty of water. You'll be sweating it all off in the workout. And don't forget to bring everything you buy with you tomorrow."

"When I said to make the first move, I did not mean you should throw yourself headfirst into battle, boy," the old man said as Naruto approached the table, nursing his side.

"You were watching me?" the blond growled.

"One of my subordinates was," the man admitted. "It was a very poor performance on your part."

"What was I supposed to do?!" Naruto demanded angrily.

"Shall I start from the beginning?" the old man asked mildly. "When you left here yesterday, what did you do?"

"I went home," the blond muttered.

"And?"

"I went to bed."

"And therein lies your first mistake, boy," the man admonished. "Your sensei told you to be ready and waiting at a certain time in a certain place. He told you the location. What you should have done right away was head over to the training field."

"Why?"

"To scope it out. To familiarize yourself with the operational area. To prepare yourself and perhaps even gain an advantage." The man gestured to himself with his arm. "I have many scars from the times I fought on a battlefield the enemy chose for me. It is not a pleasant experience. Many battles are won or lost before the first blow is struck. Suppose that today's evaluation had been a mission deep in enemy territory instead, and that your opposition had lined the area with traps or were waiting to ambush you. When you arrived there this morning, would you have known it?" Silence greeted the question. "Of course not. Your first mistake is that you did not gather information. You did not take advantage of the time you were given to set the battlefield in your favor. You could have gone there yesterday and laid traps or prepared ambush areas for your sensei. But you did not. Understand?"

"But…" Naruto cut off his own protest, thinking back to Kakashi's words from the day before. The jonin had never said what to do when he left them. There was no reason he couldn't have done what the old man was saying. "I didn't think about any of that," he mumbled.

"Information is more than power, boy. As a shinobi, it is your life. You must always be observant of your surroundings. You must always prepare for the worst. Never pass up any opportunity to make the situation more favorable to yourself. To fight fair is to offer the enemy a chance to win, and in winning, the enemy will harm the village. Therefore…"

"…never fight fair," Naruto finished.

The man nodded. "Your sensei already informed you of the stupidity of foregoing your breakfast. I will simply add this: never compromise yourself unnecessarily. You are responsible for keeping your body in working condition. Do not let yourself become weak. Always ensure you obtain what your body needs, like so."

"Here you are, Naruto!" Ayame called as she walked over with a large steaming bowl of ramen. The main difference was that this bowl had a sizeable serving of meat and vegetables.

"But I didn't…" Naruto trailed off as he turned back to the old man with a question on his lips.

"Do you intend to waste my generosity?" the man smiled, gesturing for the boy to take a seat. "Thank you, Ayame-san."

"You're welcome, Elder Shimura!" the waitress bowed and scurried back to the stand.

Naruto picked up the accompanying chopsticks and grabbed a large clump of noodles. "Elder Shimura?"

"Well I suppose you now know my name, boy," the man smirked. "What will you do with it?"

Naruto slurped slightly as he thought of an answer. "Look you up, I guess?"

"Very good," Shimura nodded approvingly. "Also, you should eat the vegetables in that bowl. Your body requires protein, salt, sugar, vitamins and minerals to function. Vegetables will supply much of that for you."

Naruto eyed the veggies and made a face. "But they're yucky."

"There are many things we may not like but we find are necessary for us. And who knows? You may yet change your mind, boy."

Naruto grimaced, but used his spoon and chopsticks to snag a few vegetables before filling the rest of the spoon with broth and noodles. Then he swept it into his mouth. His expression changed. Somehow, the flavor was different. Not unpleasantly so, but it was a contrast to the fairly salty taste his tongue was used to.

"That wasn't so bad, was it?"

Naruto swallowed before a thought occurred to him. "Why aren't you a sensei, Shimura-san?"

The old man chuckled. "Who says I'm not?"

"Well it's just…when you explain it, it's easy for me to get it. Maybe you should be my sensei."

"Now that would be unfair to Jonin Hatake, would it not?" Shimura admonished. "The Hokage assigned you to him for a reason." He ignored the dark look on Naruto's face. "I'm sure he can instruct you in certain things that I cannot. Besides," Danzo looked over Naruto's head, locking his gaze with another cyclopean shinobi in the distance, "certain individuals have reservations about allowing me to formally train you."

Kakashi warily watched the elder as the man interacted with the Uzumaki. His orders from the Hokage echoed in the back of his mind. While both elder shinobi had immense respect for each other, Hiruzen was loathe to allow Danzo to ruin everything he'd come to cherish about the son of his successor.

The jonin could understand where his superior was coming from. He'd had the experience of interacting with Danzo's ROOT shinobi before. While they were undeniably effective killers, their utter lack of humanity had disturbed him, in part because he'd once aspired to that state in the wake of his teammate's deaths.

And he himself had fond memories of the boy as an eternally cheerful child when he'd been on the guard detail. Letting the boy turn into another emotionless drone was absolutely out of the question.

But so far, Danzo hadn't tried to take that road. He'd listened in on their conversations both times, and the man only seemed to give out information and wisdom that any shinobi would have learned at some point. Granted, it was a bit much to expect a twelve year old to fully grasp the concept of field reconnaissance or target research, but rumor was the man trained his ROOT from childhood. Perhaps he had that aspect down to a science.

He watched as Naruto finished his bowl and thanked the man before turning to leave. He waited for Naruto to move off into the market place before alerting the boy to his presence by laying a hand on his shoulder.

"Hey! What-sensei?"

"I remember how the storekeepers treated you as a kid," the prepared excuse rolled off his tongue, "so I figured I'd go with you."

Naruto blinked. "Really?"

The jonin shrugged. "It's not like I have anything else to do right now."

The boy's face brightened a bit as he walked ahead of him. As they passed through the market, the usual glares met the Uzumaki, only to quickly disappear with a threatening look from the former ANBU captain. Naruto followed his sensei into a small shop.

"Hello again, Kakashi-sempai," the shopkeeper greeted the jonin. "And I see you've brought one of your students here. Showing him around?"

Naruto blinked again, unused to the lack of hostility. Kakashi chuckled. "Naruto, this is Ichijou, a retired ANBU. He runs this equipment shop for shinobi. This is where I go for nearly everything I need on missions."

"Except food," Ichijou laughed. "I'm still hopeless at cooking."

"Remember what I told you to get?" the jonin prompted.

"Uh, bandages, wire, ointment, kunai and shuriken?"

"Also protein pills, a sharpening stone, and a notebook and pencil," Kakashi finished.

"The introductory package, eh, sempai?"

"You know it."

As the man went into the back of his shop, Naruto had a thought. "Sensei, you said he's a retired ANBU?"

"Long story short, he suffered an injury that ended his career," the man answered. "Since then, he's opened up this place as a way to make sure all shinobi are fully prepared for their missions outside. That way, no one else gets forced to retire like he was."

Naruto raised an eyebrow, sensing there was more to the story than that. But any further attempt to ask questions was interrupted by the retired ANBU coming back out with a scroll and setting it on his desk. "This one's on the house, sempai,"

Naruto had been automatically reaching for his gama-chan wallet, dreading the bill when Kakashi put a hand on his shoulder. "No need, Naruto. This is free for you."

"One time offer, gaki," Ichijou warned. "Once you start making money from missions, you'll be paying for these yourself."

Naruto accepted the scroll, tucking it under his arm. "Thanks, Ichijou-san!"

The man waved it off. "Ichijou is fine. Look forward to seeing you around, gaki."

Student and sensei left the shop, and paused outside. "Anything else you need, Naruto? Got food in your fridge at home?"

Naruto made a face, thinking about the overripe or stale foods in his apartment. "Not really," he admitted.

Kakashi's eye narrowed. "Well let's fix that. No student of mine is getting ripped off by anyone."

It was safe to say that the former ANBU captain put the fear of kami into every prejudiced shopkeeper in Konoha. While many were competitors of a sort, there was also a camaraderie that existed. The merchants all pretty much knew each other and shared in village gossip. So when a chilling account of a deadly calm jonin describing in exacting detail what he would do if he discovered his 'demon brat' of a student was being treated unfairly began making the rounds, it was not long before the entire village knew it.

The very next day, after a grueling morning workout session, Kakashi would use this as an object lesson in information gathering.

To everyone's surprise, after the daily torture regimen, Naruto proved to be quite studious, being far quieter and more insightful during the team's lessons than anyone would have expected. He only uttered a few protests at being told to repeat certain drills for hours, and only during that first week. Wrapping and unraveling a bandage around an arm or leg over and over would try the patience of most, but there was considerably less noise than either Sasuke or Sakura were used to from the blond.

Speaking of the other two, Sasuke had shown complete attention to anything Kakashi taught them, reasoning that the man who instructed Itachi surely knew what he was doing. There was only one incident, during the third D-Rank mission their team was on, where he'd exploded in impatience.

"This is what we do?!" he demanded, giving voice the same frustrations the other two genin internalized. "We paint fences, pick vegetables, and walk people's dogs? Why can't civilians do this themselves?!"

"Oh I'm sure they could," Kakashi answered, leaning against an unpainted section of the fence with his nose in an orange book, drawing disapproving glares from several passing women, including one wearing a dress apparently made of ribbons, trailing three fellow genin and a cart of goods. "But these are missions for a reason."

"They're not missions! They're chores! This is beneath us!"

Kakashi snapped his book shut, and regarded his team. "Is it?"

"We're shinobi! We fight! We go out there and defend the village! But the people in our village won't handle their own chores?!"

"Everything has a purpose, Sasuke." Kakashi pushed himself off the fence. "D-Rank missions are a community outreach effort, a public relations gimmick. They allow us to better connect with the people we protect. They make us visible without having to hurt or kill people. Civilians are uncomfortable with that kind of violence. It's better for our villagers that we have an image as friendly protectors, not bloodthirsty hooligans.

"Also, didn't you notice that Imahara-san is sick?" Three blank looks greeted him. "The man was exhausted from coming down the stairs of his house to greet us this morning, and his wife looked concerned for him. There were two pill bottles on his kitchen table that I could see from the doorway. He was limping, and his skin tone was redder than it usually is. Imahara is a frequent customer of the mission office, and he has a history of poor health. Ergo, we are doing this because the man himself cannot. None of this was available in the mission details. You had to look around in his house, and know the client."

Kakashi noted that as soon as he explained all that, Naruto's eyes began flickering around everywhere, trying to apply his newfound knowledge. Behind his mask, he smirked approvingly.

"D-Ranks are a method of training. They let genin get their feet wet and practice critical skills without life-threatening danger. You think this is all pointless? Say a spy decided to impersonate mister Imahara, a man with business everywhere in the village. It's a perfect cover, since the spy could then move around with almost no one being the wiser. How would you be able to tell the difference between that spy and the real deal?"

"From knowing his personal habits, sensei," Sakura chimed in.

Kakashi shook his head. "But you don't know them right now. So again, how would you be able to tell the difference?"

Sasuke racked his brains, but could not come up with an answer. "…you can't," he admitted.

"Exactly. Without being familiar with the village, you are unable to root out a spy, and thus unable to fully protect it. Or alternatively, instead of a spy, it's an assassin. If you knew the man, you'd know his usual hangouts and movement patterns, where you're likely to see him at different times of the day. If he deviated, you could potentially identify him as an imposter, figure out who his target is, and alert them. But again, you don't know the man.

"My sensei told me something that I try to live by, every moment of every day: everything is training. The most pointless thing you can think of is still a form of training. It's up to you to find the value in it, and learn from it. These D-Ranks are an opportunity for you to train your observational skills and develop connections with people. You do the exact same thing on higher ranked missions, except you're more likely to be killed."

The woman and three genin had stopped in the street, all staring with open mouths at the cyclopean jonin, the former in awe and embarrassment that she hadn't come up with that, due to her relative inexperience.

"If you aren't always aware of your surroundings, your situation, and the people nearby, you're more likely to be caught off guard, and taken out by the enemy. Case in point: you see the fence? Wasn't that section unpainted a few minutes ago?"

The three genin whipped their heads around. Sure enough, there was a section of painted fence, and a clone of the jonin standing by, spinning a soaked paintbrush on his finger without a single drop flying off and splattering his flak jacket.

"My clone could have killed you three right there, because you were not paying attention around you. Yes, you were listening to me ramble, but you should always mind your surroundings. You never know-"

Another clone appeared behind the jonin, fist drawn back. Kakashi took his left hand, which had been across his waist, and whipped it toward his left ear without looking behind him. The clone poofed into smoke, and a kunai clattered to the ground.

"-where the enemy might pop up."

All shinobi present gaped at the former ANBU, who laughed internally at their expressions.

"You got all that? Good. Now get back to work."

That was the only time any of them had complained. All three were taking to his instruction like fish to water. Another week later, he was idly listening to the three compare notes from their intelligence gathering efforts while contemplating how fun it actually was to teach genin from the ground up. He next planned to introduce the three to a similarly minded edgy and vicious purple-haired kunoichi. The three genin felt a sudden chill as Kakashi cackled to himself in his mind, imagining the impending screams.

In all the time I've been reading Naruto fanfiction, I have never seen anyone fully explore why D-Ranks are a thing. It's understandable. Everyone wants to get to the fun stuff. But military or intelligence operations in real life are all the same: long periods of boredom punctuated by brief moments of sheer terror and chaos.

Kakashi was an ANBU Captain. He wasn't just a member of a spec-ops unit, he was an officer, in charge of instilling discipline, respect for the chain of command, and functionally an instructor to less seasoned members. Yet in Canon, he slacked off, barely teaching his team anything resembling critical skills. Yes, people in retirement can let themselves go, but someone with his reputation and experience should have done much better at training Team 7 for life as a shinobi.

In here, Kakashi will serve as Sarutobi's agent, attempting to win back Naruto's esteem and keep him from going Danzo's route. Ironically, Danzo has no aspiration to convert Naruto, but nobody trusts his word on that.

In military operations, invisibility is the best armor. If no one is aware of you, you have a tremendous advantage. It's why Pathfinders and Scouts are the most important resources for a battlefield commander. You need to know where the enemy is before you can really hurt them. ANBU, when they're out on missions, would function as deniable guerilla forces. They perform hit and runs. He who fights and runs away lives to fight another day. That ability to disappear without letting the enemy follow them is their number one asset. They are not a massed army. They cannot stand and fight without failing their objectives. In that scenario, training to run away is logically the first thing you'd want to focus on for new inductees, who are more used to straight up combat.

Finally, I'm sure everyone can guess who was cameoing during the D-Rank lecture.