Disclaimer: see first chapter. Or, y'know, just assume it's not mine like normal people.

Summary: In which Naruto has an awesome medical condition, Iruka and Mizuki are beaten up, and Hiruzen Sarutobi has a nosebleed. Yup, welcome to canon-land…kinda.

A/N: This would've been up yesterday, but I had to spend an entire evening watching/waiting as one of my closests friends died...and then spend an entire early morning waiting for the attendant paperwork to be sorted. Yeesh.


Fans Anonymous

Chapter 4: …Shall Make Ye Fret

ox-oxo-xo—

The Sandaime Hokage's eyes lingered on the well-worn hitai-ate adorning Naruto's forehead as he came bouncing into his office, Iruka Umino trudging in gingerly behind him with a few bandages in evidence and one hitai-ate short. He negligently triggered the privacy seal as the door closed, having a good idea of how this meeting was going to go.

"Ah, congratulations Naruto! That makes things easier."

Iruka straightened carefully. "Uh, what do you mean by that, Lord Hokage?"

"And excellent work as well, Iruka. Quite frankly, I had been preparing the paperwork earlier to pass Naruto anyway." Hiruzen fixed Naruto with a hard eye, waving the lightly injured Iruka to a seat. "At least, before a certain boy decided to interrupt me…"

"Eh," Naruto shrugged nonchalantly, "you loved it!"

Not the slightest flinch resulted. The fact that, at least…erm, aesthetically speaking Hiruzen had indeed been appreciative of the technique he had half-a-mind to add to the Forbidden Scroll that Iruka had just dropped on his desk, was utterly irrelevant.

"But, hey! Whaddaya mean, you were gonna pass me anyway?"

"Medical condition. Much like young Lee Rock from last year's graduating class, you have a condition that bars you from performing the standard Bunshin for the foreseeable future. The fact that your marks were easily good enough to pass this year apart from the Bunshin allows me to make such an exception."

Iruka stiffened. "Medical condition…?" He sent a laden glance between the Hokage and Naruto, unsure of how to phrase his sudden worry.

The chuunin instructor had been horrorstruck as Mizuki, a seemingly amiable and trustworthy fellow instructor who he had worked with on and off for nearly five years, had not only attacked Naruto (which, had he not been told just a handful of seconds beforehand that Mizuki had in fact been the one to order Naruto to steal the Forbidden Scroll, might have seemed a forgivable action against an apparent thief and traitor), but then proceeded to blatantly and with malice aforethought break the Sandaime's Law. Not that he didn't understand a little how Mizuki felt, having felt like that for some years before the simple impossibility of the ridiculous loudmouthed prankster, little harmless Naruto Uzumaki being the Kyuubi personified filtered into his mind over his time at the Academy.

Whether some sense of grief had merely driven him past the brink, or whether Mizuki had truly been a traitor intending to abscond with the Forbidden Scroll directly to Konoha's enemies, was something Iruka was honestly not sure he wanted to know.

It was somewhat of a surprise, though, that Naruto had seemed to be more insulted than shocked by Mizuki's accusations.

Iruka's attention snapping back to the village's leader, now loading up his pipe as he replied. "No, not the Kyuubi."

He barely repressed a flinch. 'Well, that was straightforward,' he mused, glancing at Naruto.

His student (for now) caught the look and rolled his eyes. "Worst kept S-rank secret ever. The villagers don't talk about it around children, but sometimes I Henge as an adult to buy food." He grimaced. "Get better deals that way. Heard enough clues a couple months ago, went to the Old Man for the truth."

"And I must say you handled it pretty well, Naruto. But anyway… No, Naruto's medical condition has nothing to do with the Kyuubi, though it may well be a byproduct of the seal which contains it." He paused. "Naruto. What can you tell me about the relationship between chakra capacity and chakra control?"

Naruto fell silent for a moment, racking his memory. The Hokage lit his pipe and began puffing on it, while Iruka watched on with a good heaping of fatalistic resignation. For all that his academic marks had improved by a respectable margin, he had if anything paid even less attention in class over the past year—

"It's gotta be in balance, right? If one gets too high, it gets harder to raise the other one… That sound right, Old Man?"

Naruto didn't even bother holding back the triumphant smirk from his face as he caught the surprise on Iruka's scarred mug. If nothing else, at least the textbooks didn't yell at him when they were so boring he dosed off for a few minutes…

"Correct. If one's reserves are too high in relation to one's control, one must perform a great many control exercises to improve how much of that chakra you actually have at your disposal. On the other hand, if one's control is too high in relation to one's reserves, one must perform a great deal of more chakra-intensive jutsu or control exercises in order for one's reserves not to taper off and stagnate at that lower level. Put simply: if your reserves are too high, you will have difficulty performing lower-level jutsu. If your control is too high, you will have difficulty performing higher-level jutsu."

The eye of Iruka's mind turned to earlier that night, and the hundreds of Kage Bunshin Naruto had generated to beat Mizuki into submission. "…Crap. My apologies, Lord Hokage. Sorry, Naruto."

"Huh?"

The Hokage sighed, venting a thick puff of tobacco smoke. "It's all right, Iruka – I think giving Naruto his merit graduation and helping apprehend a traitor to the Leaf earns you a little leeway on this. However, in future it might be worth consulting with your peers regarding special cases such as Naruto and Lee." He turned back to the newly minted genin, and completed his explanation given that the boy seemed a little slow on the uptake tonight – and fair enough, Hiruzen supposed, it had been a long day.

"Now, the Kage Bunshin generates a number of clones, each of which takes an equal split of the originator's chakra. And importantly, one of the reasons that this jutsu was placed on the Forbidden Scroll in the first place was the exorbitant chakra cost in creating them. To put it into perspective: Iruka himself has sufficient reserves to generate perhaps four Kage Bunshin, maybe five if he took a soldier pill immediately beforehand to stave off the immediate, possibly lethal effects of chakra exhaustion. How many did you create tonight, Naruto?"

"A few…hundred…? Oh."

"Yes. High-jounin level reserves – but only academy-level control. As you were this morning, it would take years of chakra control exercises – exercises that are forbidden to be taught to Academy students outside of Clan-mandated training sessions, no less – to get your control to the point where you could perform the Bunshin no Jutsu. You were never going to pass the exam without being exempted from performing that jutsu." He shrugged eloquently. "Hence, the 'medical condition'."

Naruto blinked. Then he glared. "And you planned on telling me this…when, exactly?"

"Tonight, of course. How did you think you 'snuck in' so easily? I was expecting Mizuki to pass on my summons, not send you to steal village secrets."

"Oh! Okay then…" Naruto shrugged, reverting back to cheerful type in the blink of an eye.

"Of course, now that you are a genin, you should ask your new jounin-sensei to teach you tree-climbing, water-walking and kunai-balancing as soon as possible, in that order, and get your control to a serviceable level. Also, once you've gone some way to mastering these, it might be worth generating a hundred or so Kage Bunshin to cut your reserves to one-hundredth of your usual levels, and then attempting the Bunshin."

"Huh, thanks Old Man!" Naruto shouted. But then he became a little hesitant. "Only… Are you sure they'll actually teach me? I mean…" he trailed off, pointing at his stomach.

Hiruzen paused, and thought about that for a short while, considering all the angles.

On the one hand, it was a long-standing tradition for the jounin to smack their new students upside the ego with their own test. There were good reasons for this. And it was the young Uchiha's team, so Kakashi Hatake would be under a great deal of political pressure to pass him. So Kakashi would probably pass them regardless.

On the other hand… it was Kakashi Hatake. The jounin who had peremptorily failed six teams for failing the Shodaime's bell test, which had never been intended to be used to pass or fail brand-new genin teams in the first place. The jounin who had a reputation for laziness unmatched by any in Konoha outside of the Nara Clan. It had in fact been speculated occasionally that the only reason Kakashi offered to take teams at all was that the ex-ANBU regarded it as the equivalent of a paid vacation.

As for Naruto… As much as he hated to admit it, from Naruto's viewpoint there was a potential issue even accounting for his current ignorance of the jounin-sensei's test.

And besides, there was that other little matter, the one that Naruto probably didn't even think he knew about. Yes, Hiruzen decided, that would suffice – simultaneous reward and embarrassment. Much like the Oroike no Jutsu he'd been met with earlier that evening…

"All right… there are two things I am going to tell you about what will happen over the next few days, so I can allay your fears about that. These two things, you must not tell your other classmates – there are good reasons for this. For the two new genin who will become your teammates, however… well, I'm sure you can choose a good time to tell them. And while you're at it, it might be a good idea to consider telling your new teammates about the burden you bear, as well…"

Although, seeing the terrified look on the boy's face, Hiruzen and Iruka did decide to give him a few pointers on how to go about it. For the Sandaime, who himself had witnessed one of the worst possible ways for the truth to come out, it seemed only prudent. And for Iruka, the opportunity to lecture a captive audience when they had to listen to it was well worth the effort.

Of course, Naruto's comprehension of (and interest in) the subject matter improved dramatically once he realised that this, as so many other things he'd begun to think about over the past few months, could also be thought of as a convoluted prank.

—ox-oxo-xo—

Sakura awoke the next morning with a big smile on her face. She was a genin now, she was sure she'd nailed the 'top kunoichi' spot even, and she was one step closer to becoming powerful enough to win Sasuke's heart. She zipped around, getting her gear together, and then got to the breakfast table, and found something that promised to make it even better.

Another package from her mysterious benefactor.

Her solidly civilian parents looked at her with expectant smiles as she tore apart the customary brown paper-and-string wrapping. They might not have been all that happy initially when she started taking being a ninja more seriously, but looking through what the first package contained had satisfied them that Sakura still had her heart set on the rich and potentially powerful heir to one of the most prestigious clans in Konoha's history – she had just set her sights on a more realistic way of going about it in light of new information.

(Try not to think of them too poorly. In the mind of the average civilian of a ninja village, there's an important difference between your daughter wanting to grow up and marry a powerful lord who happens to be a killer as part of his vocation, and your daughter wanting to grow up to be a killer. Can you really blame them for preferring the first motivation?)

And the second package had left them in discreet paroxysms of joy that she was eating properly now. (Or at least, properly for a growing kunoichi – they might not have worried overmuch before the first package arrived, but the state she'd been in before the second one came had been impossible for her parents not to get alarmed about…) Not to mention that the second package had led directly to their daughter deciding to aim at a decidedly less dangerous aspect of ninja life – namely, saving lives instead of ending them.

Sakura ripped open the box, and found a brown envelope, with a single slip of paper inside it.

She read it. Her parents flinched at the squeal, then flinched again at the speed she wolfed down her breakfast and dashed back upstairs.

Mebuki Haruno curiously reached over and picked up the slip.

Well done so far, Sakura – Phase One, complete.

There is a tradition when forming genin teams from graduating academy students. One of the teams is always made from the top scorer of the class, the top kunoichi (or shinobi if the kunoichi came first overall) and the 'dead-last' (the one with the lowest pass mark).
Sasuke Uchiha was the top of the class. You, Sakura Haruno, were the top kunoichi. See where I'm going with this?

Mebuki smiled proudly. "That does explain it…"

Kizashi read it over her shoulder and smiled in turn. "There's something on the other side? I don't think Sakura read it."

And indeed there was.

Three more things:

Phase ONE complete! The wait doesn't end here – you still need to get far stronger. Being on Sasuke's team only makes it easier for him to notice that you ARE getting stronger.
Secondly: this tradition is a D-level secret, but is still a secret. DO NOT tell your classmates.
And thirdly… there's another part of this package. It will find you later on today, in another box, as events permit. Good luck, Sakura.

Sakura returned a little later, with far more care taken of her appearance than she'd mostly bothered with over the past school year, and was shown the other side of the slip. Her eyes glowed even brighter as she bolted out the door.

—ox-oxo-xo—

Naruto ambled into the classroom for the last time (unless he decided to come back for some more pranking fun, of course!), grinning happily at his classmates and fobbing off Kiba's loud query as to his presence by pointing to the hitai-ate resting proudly on his forehead on the way to his seat. Given that Dog-Breath was an Inuzuka, he'd probably pass the real exam, but he could dream, couldn't he?

It was kind of ironic, really – twenty-seven students passing the Academy exam, and only… he quickly ran through the faces …nine, probably would actually stay in their assigned teams. Seven to keep the big clans happy, one because the top kunoichi tended to deserve her spot (and in Sakura's case, she really did), and him because Old Man Hokage was awesome… and a sneaky old bastard, too, when he had to be. His inner sense of fairness had been assuaged though, when Iruka told him that the other genin, the ones who failed, were ran through a remedial post-academy course at a different site before being cycled into the village's administrative areas.

Which, again ironically, was something the ninja saw as a little snub against the civilians and their pushes to get their kids into the ninja forces, and thus in positions of fame, prestige and influence to push their own families' agendas – and something the civilians mostly took as a blessing because it kept their kids out of the firing line.

He wasn't sure how he felt about that, although he couldn't help but wonder how many of the (now ex-)civilian kids knew that already. But he had time to work it out – it was a long road to being Hokage, after all. And besides, what was coming later on today (and tomorrow, too!) made him far more nervous. This would be one of the biggest gambles of his life…with only the tenuous assurance that this was part of the Prank to buoy his confidence.


Ending A/N: Yes, I do realise this was mostly filler. Why do you ask? For me, this chapter was partly a vehicle for a few ideas I'd thought up to potentially explain some of the early Naruto-canon plot holes I've been noticing. (I've been reading a lot of dogbertcarroll's stuff lately. Bite me.) That, and the next chapter was meant to be a part of this too – but a sudden 6K chapter wasn't something I felt like springing on the reader. So the next one will be up tomorrow.

Now, it'd be nice if you reviewed…it'd also be nice if you sent me a million dollars. But sadly there isn't a convenient box provided below for the latter.