Ch 2: Tests, Missions, and Training

Disclaimer: I do not own any published work such as Naruto by Masashi Kishimoto

Kitara ate a light breakfast of instant ramen, a few cherries, with a single ration bar crumbled into the instant ramen on the day of Kakashi's test, disregarding Kakashi's advice since she knew she would have digested the food by the time the test started, and knowing that she would need the energy if the test was harsh enough to induce puking, since she had never once puked from a test or training before. She brought some food for Sasuke as well; more cherries, his favorite tomatoes and jerky and convinced him to eat it as well by using the same argument she had told herself.

"Kakashi suggested we don't eat breakfast unless we want to puke, but the main thing that would cause puking during survival training is extreme physical exertion. Although it is true that if we ate a huge heavy breakfast it would take less exertion to make us puke, the energy from a light breakfast will help us last longer and do better before we succumb, plus if this survival exercise is so extreme, we would puke regardless, we'd merely be puking bile. Also, Kakashi was late to meet us, so there is a chance he will be late now, we will have fully digested the light breakfast in 30 minutes, so it would be better to eat."

Tomohiro refused to eat, saying he was doing anything that might jeopardize his chance to become a genin, and going against Kakashi's suggestion was not a good idea. Kitara had not brought much food for Tomohiro anyway, just extras of the same things she brought Sasuke.

Kakashi was late again as Kitara had half-expected. Kitara and Sasuke made good use of that time to scout out the training grounds, and stretch to wake up and warm up their muscles. Kitara even made note of good areas to set traps in case the 'survival exercise' used the entirety of the training ground. When Kakashi finally arrived, three hours late, and carrying an alarm clock of all things everyone was annoyed by his pathetic excuse

"I slept in, then encountered a black cat and had to circle widely around it three times to make sure it did not cross my path or give me bad luck" but wanted to get the test over with, so other than some grumbling they did not make a huge fuss. Tomohiro mumbled mostly to himself "He has an alarm clock, why didn't he set it to avoid sleeping in," but other than that he pretended to be fine.

Kitara was already guessing that this might be a pattern if she was on a team with Kakashi, so mentally resolved to figure out something to keep her occupied, or prank supplies to punish Kakashi if his lateness became truly irritating, but since that would require passing 1st she didn't spend too much time thinking about Kakashi's seeming perpetual lateness.

Kakashi was also carrying two bentos for lunch. When Kakashi assigned the bell test, with only two bells that suited Sasuke fine. Kakashi also set a severe time limit and stated that the bento's would be an extra reward for passing, with the loser getting the extra punishment of having to watch the others eat while tied to a post. Tomohiro bitterly complained at that, asking "Why did you tell us not to eat breakfast then, are you really that cruel?"Kakashi countered by saying "I merely suggested you not eat breakfast if you didn't want to puke, but you all want to be shinobi, who need to look underneath the underneath, that in itself was a minor test." Sasuke planned on just him and Kitara passing, and did not want to bother to work with the 'weakling'. Two bells was perfect, since he knew Kitara would not hold him back, but the near 'dead last' would.

Sasuke was already irritated from the long wait and not prepared to take anymore time or think carefully about 'underneath' the obvious. To him grabbing the two bells would be simple, especially with Kitara's support. Kitara realized that there was something off about the test fairly quickly since it was not possible for a genin to manage overcome a jonin, sure they weren't expected to actually take him out merely get two small objects, but he was fully aware that they would be trying to take the bells and would be opposing their efforts. There was also the fact that the academy and Konoha emphasized teamwork and always assigned genin to teams of at least three, Konoha's four-man squad was standard throughout a ninja's career, so for an exception to be made for a lazy jonin did not make sense. However Sasuke had already signaled to her a basic plan to attack then run into a hiding spot by then, so she simply decided to support Saskuke.

She did not particularly want to get close to the pervert Tomohiro anyway. Trying to work with someone she disliked would be worse than trying to work alone, and she was not alone anyway since she was working with Sasuke. She would follow Sasukes's lead and try her best to follow the obvious instructions first, and if that failed she would try to get Tomohiro's help and hope that worked better.

After Kakashi said the test started, both Sasuke and Kitara hid themselves within sight of each other, not hiding extremely well but enough that Kakashi would supposedly not see them, while leaving room for them to signal each other and support each other. Seemingly in boredom, Kakashi took out a familiar orange book, causing Kitara to mentally sigh that so many males seemed to be perverts. After all, of the adult males she knew well only a few did not show perverted tendencies, even her academy sensei had all reacted when she had tested her henge skills by henging into an 'attractive' woman with revealing clothes as a minor prank based on a photo of Tsuande. Still, that book did present an opportunity for an attack; with one eye seemingly blind and the other focused on the book Kakashi was as distracted as he could be.

At Sasuke's signal she threw a spread of shurriken right at Kakashi and two Kunai to either side, while Sasuke used his phoenix flower jutsu with shurriken embeded in the small fireballs. Although weapons from one side and a jutsu from the other should have caught Kakashi, he managed a seal-less kawarmi to a branch just above Sasuke's hiding spot, and lazily kicked out at Sasuke from there. Sasuke dodged of course, then tried to engage Kakashi in taijutsu, with Kitara leaving her own hiding spot, and creating some simple traps in the surrounding branches in hopes that the next time Kakashi used the kawarmi he would set off one of the traps. When Kakashi easily held Sasuke off, not even putting away his book, although he did stop attempting to read it, that angered Sasuke. So after jumping back, hiding briefly behind a bush, then circling around so he faced Kakashi's back Sasuke signaled Kitara again, and she threw shurriken at Kakashi's waistline, hoping to cut the strings of the bells. While Kitara was distracting Kakashi Sasuke prepared his grand fireball technique, which unfortunately took a few seconds to build and shape the chakra if he wanted to make a large one, at Kakahi's back and from a slight angle closer to Kakashi's blind side.

That seemed to work for a second, with 'Kakashi seeming to be crying out in pained surprise, until the Kakashi that was surrounded by fire poofed away to reveal a burned log. Neither Kitara nor Sasuke knew where Kakashi had gone, glancing frantically around to see where he would attack from next, after all if that grand fireball had hit he would have been severely injured so it was unlikely he would remain solely on defence. Then two hands burst out of the ground, grabbed Sasuke by the ankles and dragged him into the ground, leaving only his head and part of his neck above ground.

After making a pithy comment to Sasuke, "Shinobi can attack from any angle, not just front, behind or sides." Kakashi turned to Kitara, thew a large amount of dusty dirt and leaves at her to obscure her sight with some sort of jutsu, then when she jumped away from it he tried to entrap Kitara in a genjutsu of a muddy, bloody Sasuke with sunken eyes and yellowing skin staggering toward her groaning. Though briefly horrified at the looks of a zombie Sasuke Kitara knew it was a genjutsu immediately, after all there was no way Sasuke could have died, become a zombie, and dug himself out of the ground in the three or four seconds her sight was obscured by the dusty dirt and leaves, but she was unable to dispel it to see reality for a few seconds due to needing to form the kai hand-sign and needing to concentrate on disrupting her chakra. She had practiced in the academy, but always in a classroom setting after the sensei had told her he was casting a genjutsu on her and to prepare to disrupt it. Dispelling a genjutsu in a few seconds had given her a passing grade then, but Kitara made a mental note to herself to practice frequently to increase her speed at disrupting genjutsu, after all in battle against real opponents a few seconds without sight could mean the difference between life and death. In that time Kakashi had vanished yet again, not showing up to attack for more than 30 seconds.

This meant that the direct confrontation and partial teamwork just between Kitara and Sasuke that Sasuke had planned out had failed, and as she helped dig Sasuke out of the ground Kitara told him so. "Kakashi-sensei will not be taken out by such direct methods, he is a jonin after all even if a weird, lazy, and perpetually late one, and he has even hinted that we should look underneath the obvious before, so I think we should get Tomohiro involved and try a three-pronged attack. It is a shame we don't have time for a more subtle approach, such as pickpocketing Kakahsi while he is distracted by something else, since that would probably be easier than direct combat if we could get him to let down his guard, but we have less than thirty minutes until noon, so there is no time for that."

Kitara thought that maybe Kakashi wanted to see if they could see underneath his test and work together in spite of being set up to compete. Kitara then thought for a seconds, searching for any potentially useful skills she remembered Tomohiro using during their academy class, and remembered that Tomohiro said he specialized in genjutsu and kenjutsu, so she decided that if he knew one a mid level genjutsu to distract and distort Kakashi's sight would improve their chances and include Tomohiro at the same time. After Sasuke got one of his arms free, she told him "I am going to track down Tomohiro, and ask for his help. He specializes in genjutsu and kenjutsu supposedly, so he can act as a perfect distraction, and you and I can drive Kakashi into a trap I'll have set up." However, when she tracked him down and asked him, saying "I know you say you specialize in genjutsu, so do you know any that could obscure Kakashi's sight subtly enough that he is unlikely to notice he is in an genjutsu immediately? Not one of the flashy ones to scare people like the hell viewing technique, but just something that will allow one of us to sneak up close to him without him noticing."

"I do know a mid-level genjutsu that would do what you say, but it takes more chakra than the low level ones taught in the academy, since it has to infiltrate the chakra system after subtly crossing the distance between me and my target, I have good control but very low chakra reserves, even if I have not been very active I can only perform that genjutsu once a day when my chakra is at its highest level, I have lost some chakra throughout the day and since I did not eat breakfast my chakra level is too low to actually use it until I eat something to recover some or grab some from someone else." Tomohiro said sadly.

"Really? You are saying you are useless due to missing one meal? That is pathetic, if we pass this you will need to train a lot more seriously to increase your chakra. Fortunately for you, I have trained a lot more so have decent reserves, and did not skip breakfast, so I have plenty of chakra to spare, so I will help you help us. I'm not sure, but this test might be more about looking underneath the obvious and seeing through Kakashi's deception, working together as a team despite seeming to be in a competition to get one of the two bells. You have that odd technique to take other people's chakra safely and relatively quickly right? I remember that was the only time you ever won a spar, when the sensei lifted the usual rules of taijutsu only and and allowed us to use one jutsu or weapon. So take my chakra until you have enough to cast that good genjutsu, so you can help Sasuke and I. Although you don't deserve it, if we manage to get the bells I'll give you mine, technically I am younger than most academy graduates so if won't hurt my career much to go back. Just don't try anything perverted, don't try to touch my chest or caress me or whatever, I hate perverts and I've seen you staring at some of our female classmates in a perverted way, this is not an excuse to 'cop a feel'. You should be able to take chakra from any skin contact so only touch my arm."

As she reluctantly let Tomohiro touch his glowing hands to the arm she was holding out, Kitara wondered whether it was worth all this effort, to tolerate a known pervert and let him touch her, even if only on the arm, just to improve the chance at passing. The amount of chakra Tomohiro took seemed little, about the same amount that Kitara usually used for her more complex henges or a kawarmi from a non-prepared object like a rock or tree branch rather than the standard human shaped log or dummy used in the academy, but then again, genjutsu were not supposed to take much chakra. Still, if Tomohiro really didn't have that much chakra to spare he really was pathetic, she thought that only the civilian born fangirl kunoichis would have less than that.

Tomohiro then described the genjutsu he would use, one that was deceptively simple in theory but actually hard, hiding the actions of others by targeting the target's brain, copying their initial impression of their surroundings, then looping that so they would see the same thing so that so they could not notice when there was a change, even obvious movement, rather than making the victim see some strange sight. The genjutsu was limited to sight, so a skilled person would notice sounds, smells, or the touch from contact from someone else, so they could not directly just grab the bells from his belt. The genjutsu would also alter Kakashi's perception of his surroundings to a small amount, making him think everything was normal, nothing new was occurring, so a small amount of noise that made sense from the background would be ignored, but not the whistling of high-speed kunai, or tinkle of a bell.

Kakashi had returned to the original clearing and was reading again, right next to the three posts and next to the memorial rock when Tomohiro and Kitara tracked him down again. Sasuke was already impatiently hiding within the general area. Kitara began to move in a wide circle around the clearing setting more traps, until she found Sasuke glaring at Kakashi a fair distance away while perched in a tree. She briefly whispered out to Sasuke that Tomohiro would use a genjutsu that would make Kakahi ignore anything that would normally be strange, Saskuke could walk up to Kakashi and attack from point blank range, maybe even set up a wire trap around Kakashi, as long as it did not touch skin, make a sharp sound or do something that would smell strongly, so he could prepare for his most powerful but least accurate fire-jutsu. It was unlikely that Kakashi would actually be caught, but it might hurt him a bit or cause him to leap away in a brief panic, or kawarmi with the closest object. Kitara would keep setting up traps, and try to hide near a likely kawarmi spot or tree branch that he might leap to so that she could set them off if/ when Kakashi managed to see through the genjutsu and avoided the fire-jutsu, perhaps managing to actually catch one of his arms or trap him briefly long enough for one of the two to get close enough to cut the strings of the bells.

Kitara had not set up a prearranged signal with Tomohiro beforehand for when the genjutsu was in place, and he was surprisingly good at hiding, she could not find his presence, but figured in a minute or so he would have had enough time to use the genjutsu by now anyway, so she continued layering traps, using wires, thread, springs, rubber-bands, blunted kunai, paint pellets, and the vine-like-small branches of the nearby trees. Kitara had gotten into the habit of always carrying a small sealing scroll full of her normal prank supplies with more in all her extra pockets since even if she liked to research her target and plan out a prank at least a week ahead of time, if she saw an opportunity for a minor prank or one of her repeat pranks such as the first one against the dull sensei she did not want to waste it by having to leave to grab more supplies. The wires or threads could trigger minor and dud explosion tags, smoke bombs and paint pellets or paint-filled water balloons if tugged on hard enough . The rubber-bands loosely held the vine-like small branches back, with numerous blunt kunai and shurriken threaded on the leaves, connected to more thread so that cutting one section of the rubber-bands, thread or wire could set off a veritable mine-field of traps or solely single traps at a time in a chain that could guide someone in the direction of the next trap.

After a few minutes Sasuke quietly sneak-walked up to Kakashi, and loosely planted kunai with obvious wires attached in a loose circle in the ground surrounding Kakashi. Clearly Tomohiro's genjutsu was working, since there was no way Kakashi would have ignored that normally. Although the genin did not know it, Kakashi relied mainly on his hidden sharrigan eye and sense of smell and hearing to detect genjutsu, and with his hidden eye covered and closed to conserve chakra, and with Kakashi actually being distracted by reading a particular section of his Icha Icha book and giggling rather than merely pretending to be distracted, he actually did not notice the genjutsu or the quiet sounds Sasuke was making for a crucial few seconds. As Sasuke blew out his "Dragon Fire Breath" Kakashi noticed the burning smell and sound and hurriedly defended himself with a mud wall/dome, not having enough time to cancel the genjutsu and find out where the attack was coming from. The mud wall/dome worked well though, even without an exact idea of where the attack was, Kakashi defended from all sides and from above, also dislodging the loose wire cage as he churned up the earth. After a second Sasuke stopped his jutsu since it would be wasted against the mud-dome.

Since Kakashi had not reacted the way they had expected to with a kawarmi or by leaping away, they knew they needed to improvise or come up with yet another plan to get him into the trap zone. With yet another failure, even after sort-of working together, Sasuke reluctantly retreated again a bit, but did not bother to hide since he was sick of hiding and they knew they did not have time to meet up for yet another plan. Neither Kitara or Tomohiro had come out of their hiding spots, but both had seen that failure.

All three noticed that the alarm clock was mere minutes away from noon, and thus the end of the test. In desperation, Sasuke signaled Kitara yet again for 'weapon attack to distract or force movement', the same strategy as they had first used back in the very beginning, but this time Kitara had set up multiple traps near all likely kawarmi spots, so hopefully it would work better. The two both attacked at once, with Sasuke using the phoenix fire flower jutsu, shurriken hidden inside, from near point-blank range but scattered enough that Kakashi would have to move in a drastic way to avoid them all, and Kitara threw multiple kunai very fast from the side instead of mere shurriken, while Tomohiro looked on in confused exhaustion from his hiding spot in a bush.

Although neither of the attacks landed, the two did manage to drive Kakashi into one of the traps Kitara had set up. When Kakashi managed to use kawarmi jutsu again to escape the trap and ended up near Tomohiro's hiding place, Tomohiro decided to try to help out by bursting out and attacking head-on with his sword. This failed too of course, but Kakahi now believed they had learned the basic lesson he wanted to impart and were truly working together, but also wanted to draw out the tension and make sure it was not coincidence so after the alarm rang and drawing out the moment, Kakashi announced "You... all...fail and pass..partially!" with an eye smile.

"huh? What?" Tomohiro exclaimed. "How can you partially fail and pass? We didn't get a single bell?"

"Well, you didn't get a bell but you did make a good plan and showed many skills that genin need, so I'm giving you all a second chance. I'm going to tie one of you to a post, Tomohiro since he did the worst and least, then giving you a chance to recover by giving you these two lunches as well as time to plan out a new approach, while I go have lunch elsewhere, don't feed Tomohiri, that is a second punishment after all, but if you three succeed in getting even one bell after this time you will all pass, if you don't Tomohiro will be sent back to the academy or I'll recommend he be dropped from the program, but might let Sasuke and Kitara pass if they impress me enough." After tying up Tomohiro he gave Sasuke and Kitara the two lunches, warning them not to untie him until he got back or feed him, then shushined away, though hiding to listen and watch what they would do.

Once Kakashi seemed gone Kitara and Sasuke glanced at each other than sat near Tomohiro. After a few seconds of opening up the lunches, quite generously proportioned with multiple rice balls and other items Kitara said, "we should feed Tomohiro anyway, it's not like Kakashi would know, and he'd be useless without food since he said he didn't have enough chakra to do much just from skipping breakfast so I had to let him use that strange chakra stealing technique to give him some of mine, and I do not want to have him take yet more chakra from me."

Saskue hnned then said "he'd be pretty useless anyway, the only reason he wasn't dead last was because of that student who couldn't use any jutsu anyway. Besides the two of us can already work together well and will pass if we manage to impress Kakashi, we don't even need a bell now, besides we barely managed to include him in that previous plan anyway, that genjutsu was very useful I'll admit, but there's no way it would work again, no way Hatake-san would let him get close enough to use that chakra stealing technique, and just swinging that sword around would be useless as well."

"I know that, but I truly think Kakashi-sensei's words about 'looking underneath the underneath' or whatever applies to this as well, and we did come much closer when we worked with him, an extra person to help and distract is usually better. Plus the only two person genin teams I've ever heard about is when the third member was injured or killed during war-time, but when things calmed down the team usually added another member from the reserves, those who also lost teammates, or the team was broken up entirely, it does not seem like Konoha would be willing to have a two-genin team during this peace-time. Four-man squads; one jonin and three genin is standard, so even if we do not have Tomohiro we will need a third person anyway. It would be better to have Tomohiro then some stranger we don't know plus if Kakahi-sensei's is lying again as another test like the 'don't eat breakfast unless you want to puke test' we will be failed anyway or forced to go to the genin reserves who don't have sensei's and are not on the track to be promoted, all because we did not see through the deception or we did not show proper teamwork, which I really think that he believes is very important from the hints he has been dropping."

"I suppose your words make some sense, and we did have that light breakfast you recommended earlier so we're not nearly as bad off as him," Sasuke said reluctantly, then held out a rice ball against Tomohiro's mouth. Tomohiro enthusiastically started eating, though was somewhat disgruntled that they had simply ignored him the entire time while debating, and that they had not bothered to even ask for his opinion at all. He had already expected that of Sasuke, but Kitara at least had seemed to be a bit better than that, she had asked for his help earlier after all, and he had done as she asked and proved himself, but here she was saying they should try for a bell just because he was better than a stranger.

Kakashi waited in hiding a bit, not sure what to think of that conversation, they were feeding Tomohiro like he had hoped, disregarding his nonsensical rule not to feed him as a punishment, but their words were not indicating that they really considered him a teammate, just an extra body to increase their chances at passing. Still, they had shown the basics of teamwork earlier, and it was clear that they were both very used to working with each other, they would probably warm up to him with time, as long as Kakashi worked on many teamwork exercises with them...and clearly told them he wanted them to all three work together, that working together as a team with Tomohiro an equal part of the team was the most important thing they could do at this point. Kakashi considered making them go through with the attempt to get a bell and seeing if they came up with a good plan but Tomohiro was clearly still exhausted, even they were showing some signs of that, so there was no way he could believably 'let' them grab a bell. With that thought Kakashi shusined in again, using smoke instead of leaves, and used a minor area genjutsu to imitate storm-clouds and thunder dramatically saying, "youuu...disobeyed meee... youuu...alllll...pass!" with another eye-smile at the end.

This time Kitara joined in on the surprised shout of "What?" that Tomohiro exclamed, while Sasuke scowled then smirked.

" A true shinobi knows how to use or counter taijutsu, ninjutsu, and genjutsu. They follow the shinobi code, they follow the orders of their superiors when they make sense, but know how to improvise when a situation changes. They see underneath the obvious and they see through the deception of enemies, thus seeing 'underneath the underneath.' They do anything necessary to complete the mission assigned to them. However a single shinobi working alone, or even two, could never complete a hard mission. It takes the skills of a good team to complete most missions. Konoha values teamwork, the historical successes of Konoha were due to our good teamwork, especially the legendary teams who were perfectly synchronized." Kakashi lectured.

Kakashi contined to explain; "My test was not only to see that you had the skills to be genin, but also if you had the mindset to be successful genin. I wanted to see if you could put aside your differences and ignore your personal gain or loss to try to complete my mini-mission of retrieving a valuable resource. Thankfully you were capable, all three of you worked together and set up a good strategy that might have worked if I was not such a skilled jonin, it certainly would have worked against a dull or weak chunin at least, so after passing my second mini-test to make sure you knew which 'rules' are important and make sense, then disregarding the one that did not in favor of helping your teammate, I believe that as long as you keep improving, and keep working as a team, you should survive and be capable of completing genin-level missions with my supervision, though you will of course need to work very hard at that."

Kakahsi told the three, "Someone I knew whose opinion I have come to value once said 'Shinobi who break the rules and abandon their mission may be trash, but Shinobi who abandon their comrades are worse than trash.' I want you three to internalize and live those words as my genin and hopefully throughout your shinobi career. Kakashi then nicely unsealed another bento, claiming he had planned to eat it, but they could have it instead as a reward for their teamwork and passing his test. "Keep bonding together as a team, relax and enjoy your success today, tomorrow your career as true genin will start. Meet here again at 8 am in the morning to start taking missions as true genin" and dramatically disappeared in a swirl of fluttering leaves.

After they processed the fact that they had passed the test of Kakashi, they were actually genin now, and would start taking missions right away, Kitara untied Tomohiro and gave him the extra bento. Then she tried to make Tomohiro and Sasuke to get along and work as a team for real, not just by coincidence as had happened previously. As they were eating Kitara suggested "Now that we are officially shinobi lets work together and come up with combos and scenarios that use all of our skills and specialties so we can deliberately repeat that and even better things" Both refused of course, with Sasuke refusing to be "held back by a weakling." Sasuke snarled out "It was your idea to get Tomohiro's help, and it did help somewhat, but that was the only thing Tomohiro did right, he couldn't do anything else. He is a failure in general, and helping us pass was due to luck and our own efforts, he might be a part of the team now, but that does not mean we need to pander to him and change our own combos to include him or imagine up ways he can help."

Tomohiro responded to that with "I don't want to work with an arrogant, entitled, emo-teme like Sasuke, or you after all you just said that I'm just a better option than a stranger, just an extra person to act as a distraction. There's no need to come up with special combos or scenarios for me, I'll just distract people after all. "

Kitara tried one more time to convince them, saying "I'm sorry for that Tomohiro, I just meant that as you are right now just after just using that genjustu you could likely only help us and distract, but we have time now that we are real genin, after all no genin in peace-time is given dangerous or hard missions right away, they get extra time to train with their jonin sensei and do easy missions first. You will get better, but your specialties are already known, we will just be improving your overall state so you can do more later on. Tomohiro-san, I understand that we did not get along in the academy, and only barely here, but we are teammates now, as long as you do not leer at me or act too perverted in front of me I will work with you and help you improve rather than yelling at you or hurting you, and once he gets to know you and sees you working to improve yourself Sasuke will stop acting like a teme."

Tomohiro responded with "Kitara-san, I won't act like a pervert or leer at you, you are a tomboy and not all that pretty to stare at anyway, and I am willing to try to work with you, but unless he stops being so stuck-up I refuse to work with Sasuke-teme more than the minimum to get by, there's no point in coming up with combos or whatever at this time, I just want to go home right now." After that Tomohiro went his separate way, having finished the bento quickly due to still being very hungry.

On the way back to their apartment building Kitara tried to convince Sasuke to try to open up to Tomohiro and stop ignoring him or putting him down. "Sasuke-kun, Tomohiro is not entirely useless, he used that Genjutsu which allowed you nearly land a good jutsu on Kakashi-sensei, it's just because Kakashi-sensei used that mud-dome instead of jumping or using kawarmi that the plan did not work, and Tomohiro does know how to use a sword, which neither of us do." This argument did not work on Sasuke, perhaps because Kitara herself still thought Tomohiro was creepy, not very good, and was slightly insulted by his comment that she was not pretty enough to stare at, so her arguments were half-hearted to Sasuke.

The three met up at 8am, with Kakashi being late again, although only by two and a half hours instead of three, so at least there was some improvement. After waiting 15 minutes Kitara had started working with Tomohiro, trying to see what they could do to help him improve, with not much success since they dared not do any heavy exercise, not sure what mission they would get and sparring would likely end in disaster. The three were still quite irritated when Kakashi arrived, especially since the excuse he used was even lamer and less likely than the first one he used.

"I had to help a little old lady across the street, them put away her groceries." Kakashi said, with yet another eye-smile.

The three were only slightly excited for their first mission, knowing that genin were not assigned glamorous or dangerous missions without experience and extra training from their jonin sensei, but at least they would start getting that experience. Once they arrived at the mission hall, they learned that the 'best' D-ranked missions that prepared genin for harder missions in the future had already been taken by other teams, it was nearly noon again after all.

The first D-rank mission, despite being perfectly within the skills of the genin, took far longer than it should have been because neither Tomohiro or Sasuke wanted to work together, and Kitara was only half-halfheartedly trying to act as a bridge between them, not really liking that she had to be the one to force them to work together, that neither would work together even though it would be more logical and they would do much better if they did work together.

The mission itself was a disappointment, fixing up a semi-decorative fence and repainting it was not what any of them had expected or wanted as their first mission. Only one small section was broken, and the client had left a few new pieces of wood and nails near it so the fence was easily fixed, but all the paint was faded by sun and worn down, not to mention the client wanted it to be a completely different color, it had been painted an off-white and now he wanted it yellow-green. Sasuke took the inner portion of the fence, with Tomohiro taking the outer portion, and Kitara painted the gate and both inner and outer portions near the gate. Due to refusing to work together or communicate, and probably inexperience with such manual labor, the sides of the fence that Sasuke and Tomohiro had started painting had gaps and splotches of unevenly applied paint on the bottom and top which could be considered either inner or outer. Not to mention they 'accidentally' splattered paint on each other.

Kitara had done such things often before to raise money, so took on the hardest task for herself, but when she checked briefly and saw those uneven parts she knew that the client would not accept that, so went over the bad parts and fixed them herself. Since Kitara had to paint not only her section, but fix the gaps and splotches between Sasuke and Tomohiro's sections, the mission took much longer than they wanted it to and they were all dismissed near sunset with no time for training or another mission.

After that first mission, Kitara started training with Sasuke before team meetings and while waiting on Kakashi, trying to include Tomohiro and train him, telling him that D-ranks were no where near strenuous so they could work on conditioning and trying to increase his utterly pathetic chakra reserves when possible, then after getting a repeated assurance that he would not try anything, albeit an insulting one that "you are too much a tom girl, not attractive to me at all, so don't worry about me staring at you or trying to flirt with you or anything like that" to Kitara, she began training with Tomohiro, after their 'official team training' and D-ranks, reporting the progress each made to the other. Kitara only had time to train for an hour and a half with Tomohiro per day, especially since unless it was going through sword katas he constantly complained about the workouts, but it was enough to get an idea of how skilled he was and where his talents lay. Getting tired of his complaints about working out Kitara decided to spar with him instead, with Tomohiro frequently trying to use genjutsu or his sword to actually land a blow on Kitara, whose Taijutsu skill and stamina was way beyond his level given all her sparring with Sasuke.

Team training was also odd and a bit disappointing, Kakashi had them do "trust building and communication exercises" by blindfolding them and having them toss a ball to each other, or tying one of their legs together and having them practice walking or running with three legs, or pass an egg balanced on a spoon to each other with hands tied behind their backs and other such strange things, alternating that with telling them various formations and having them practice move into them at fast speeds, first normally then with one blindfolded then even with two blindfolded and the third only allowed to see out of one eye. Although strange, with Kakashi's sharp eye watching them and occasional bizarre 'punishment when a team exercise obviously failed due to lack of effort, such as forcing them to put on animal costumes, making them eat utterly disgusting food, forcing them to carry each other in 'princess' carry, piggyback, or over the shoulder and whatever else his sadistic mind could think up during those exercises at least they all learned to work together and communicate clearly even with various artificial handicaps, at least for the duration of those exercises

.

Kitara had also continued to try to get them to actually work together even outside Kakashi's supervision, since a lot of the time he ignored them on D-rank missions and only commented or punished if lack of teamwork caused them to actually fail the mission after the fact.

Kitara focused on the fact that Tomohiro was relatively skilled with the sword, for a genin, and was good at genjutsu while talking to Sasuke, trying to convince him (and herself) that this would help Sasuke deal with Itachi because Itachi was known to have focused on those skills, and even though Tomohiro did not have the strength, chakra level, skill or speed of Itachi it would still help to train with him. Kitara also did not forget her own goal of getting respect and becoming a Jonin at least despite the odds against females, which she had picked up from TenTen. She knew she would have to be able to work even with people she did not like in order to reach that goal, so put aside her qualms with Tomohiro and tried to be friendly to him.

When talking to Tomohiro, she pointed out the signals that Sasuke used to warn her of high level attacks so she would not be seriously injured, teaching him the basics of their sign language along the way, the occasional morbid jokes he said, and the fact that his cold, moody glares were mostly a mask to try to deter the fan-girls. After only five successful D class missions in two weeks, with many more near failures, outright failures, even taking a loss in money when they had to buy new groceries because one person got the wrong kind due to mis-communication, or even two spectacular disasters; one when walking some of the Inuzuka dogs, who went wild when seeing a cat and destroyed a bunch of property trying to get it, and the other being their first 'Tora' mission, trying to catch the cat that had caused so much trouble earlier in the week, but again taking an extremely long time, destroying some property, and getting a bunch of minor injuries. That second disaster had a number of contributing factors, but one of them was not communicating properly and going their own way without regard for the others.

Kitara had finally convinced the two shinobi to train together while waiting for Kakashi to show up, lightly sparring with one observing or even practicing two vs one, forcing herself to team up with Tomohiro against Sasuke, and generally acting as a mediator between them. The fact that Tomohiro had improved by at least a little bit and was willing to at least talk to Sasuke with Sasuke, or use the sign language when he didn't trust himself to talk, with Sasuke tying to hide his total contempt of Tomohiro at Kitara's request the three worked together better. Then the D ranked missions started actually being successes, especially when Kitara told them to think of the missions as more training, and even came up with scenarios where the skills used for D ranks could be used for real missions.

Some of those scenarios really stretched Kitara's imagination, but most of them involved them having to infiltrate a place by imitating a civilian, protecting a client with the babysitting mission, tracking down a rouge nin. or criminal with the Tora missions, preparing defenses for an attack with many of the construction missions and so on.

Although it took a long time to catch her in any good time, the mission to catch Tora the cat was one they took multiple times with some success after the initial time when it took eight hours and many minor injuries and property damage due to underestimating her and lack of communication. After buying special short-range communicators Kakashi kept sadistically taking that mission to watch them suffer, or as he said to help their teamwork by forcing them to communicate and work together. They were now managing at least one D ranked mission every day, on rare occasions even two except the days devoted to Kakashi's teamwork exercises and training. After another month and 38 D ranked missions total they were assigned their first C class mission after a successful argument by all three to Kakashi that their teamwork was better and they would never get better without a 'real' mission.

Once Kakashi agreed, he asked the Hokage to look over the non-urgent C-rank missions for something that would be appropriate, something easy that would take less than a month. After internally worrying if the C-rank curse would activate for this team 7 like his own and many other team 7's he requested that their team name be changed to Team Kakashi instead before they actually took the mission.

After two days for the paperwork to be processed, with the Hokage chuckling at the superstition but agreeing, the Hokage also wondered if this was the best time to tell Kitara about her burden, since even an official name change might not be enough to avoid the team 7 C-rank curse. The Hokage knew that the seal was designed to give Kitara access to the Kyubbi's chakra in extreme danger or emotional distress, so if the mission did get dangerous she might access that very recognizable chakra. However the Hokage did not want to ruin her innocence just yet, and knew that once she knew the truth some of her cheerful optimism would be gone. The Hokage decided to compromise, reluctantly informing Kakashi himself of the truth in private after getting him to promise to absolutely keep it a secret, even from Kitara herself unless it actually became an issue on the mission or in future missions since someone needed to know with the potential for danger of Kitara losing control given that there was no hint she had ever used the Kyubbi's chakra other than the tiny filtered trickle that the seal let out continuously.

Kakashi was not very surprised to hear that Kitara was the 'mysterious' Kyuubi container, after all he had easily guessed she was actually Kushina's child and not just given the last name in Kushina's honor, due to her hair color and mentioning pranks as a 'hobby' in their introductions, and to him it only made sense that another Uzumaki would be the best container. He did ask "Why do you want to keep the secret even from Kitara? I understand not letting the village in general know, with the risk of them misunderstanding the nature of the seal and turning on her, but surely Kitara herself deserves to know?"

"So far Kitara has not accessed that chakra even once, she has not needed to. The Kyuubi's chakra is poisonous to others, and very obvious for any sensor's who were alive during the Kyuubi's rampage. Even accessing that chakra once will likely change the nature of Kitara's chakra enough that even the limited medical jutsu she knows now will risk poisoning others. I believe that if Kitara knows she is the container for the Kyuubi it will remove what little childish optimism remains, and as well knowing that chakra is there will make her more likely to try to call upon it in any time of stress. Once that chakra is called upon even once the risk of sensor sensing it will increase, and her secret will gradually be revealed to more and more people" the Hokage said gravely. "So you see, the longer the secret is kept even from Kitara herself, the better. If she does not call upon that chakra, she can remain the promising shinobi she currently is. Perhaps after her first chunin exam or, if you insist, once you decide to nominate your team for the chunin exams we can inform her of the secret" the Hokage finished.

"Ahh, well that does make sense" Kakashi agreed.

Once both the paperwork and the conversation was done, the Hokage called the newly renamed Team Kakashi together and told them of a good C-rank mission they could take. A minor merchant regularly took advantage of the convenience of sealing scrolls even if he could not create them himself, by requesting genin teams with sealing knowledge or a chunin team with the same to create a large number of sealing scrolls from blank scrolls and ink he provided to easily and conveniently carry multiple large barrels full of drinking water. He then made a trip to Suna with massive the amounts of water and wood in the form of those barrels sealed into scrolls, all carried in dull-colored bags in a single cart that could be pulled by hand, along with a few other miscellaneous but not very valuable looking items like food, enough jugs of water for the group but not any extra, bits of leather and so on, sold the water barrels and food for a huge profit to Suna, and then bought metal, fine glass figurines, and other specialties of Suna there, had the original team modify the scrolls to seal the valuable bits of those items, or if they could not hired a team of Suna nin to do the same, then made the trip back to Konoha and sold the Suna specialties to Konoha for a profit.

The merchant made this trip as often as possible, so it was a re-occuring C-rank but he usually waited a week or so after he arrived in either Konoha or Suna to request the return mission in order to recover from the journey and buy new blank scrolls if they had been damaged or were only one time use, as well as commission more of the large barrels be be made by a local he had an agreement with.

The trip would take slightly more than a month, two weeks at a civilian pace to journey to Suna, a few days or full week in Suna, then another two weeks for the return journey to Konoha, but the Hokage knew that both Kitara and Kakashi had some sealing knowledge, Kakashi more than Kitara of course, so could easily make those scrolls and it was a mission with almost no danger due to the route the merchant took, the non-value of his obvious merchandise, and the presence of danger that a genin team and jonin represented. The merchant always specifically asked for a team with at least basic sealing knowledge, and in fact most of the teams with that knowledge were on other missions currently.

After considering for a few seconds, despite the mission taking longer than he wanted his team's first mission to take, Kakashi agreed, though told his team that he was not going to create all the scrolls himself, he would teach them the seals necessary by rote, inspect them for errors and if they were good enough have them input the chakra necessary to activate them in the warehouse the merchant would be meeting them at.

Kitara had only enough knowledge of sealing to create small scrolls that contained one type of item at a time, but with Kakashi's help could easily learn the type of scroll to carry the bulk composite items that barrels of water represented in an hour or less. Kakashi started an informal lesson and tried to teach Sasuke and Tomohiro at the same time as he was showing Kitara, to spread the chakra cost and help his genin since such knowledge was extremely useful but only Sasuke had good enough calligraphy skills to create a few scrolls as long as he was extremely careful. Kitara was quite excited to learn this new seal, and to increase her sealing knowledge, since the academy would not teach practical knowledge of seals, just told genin of their existence so her sealing knowledge had taken long, dull months of reading seal theory from the library, studying the few samples there or from the shops that sold sealing scrolls and explosive tags, begging or bribing the Hokage or an academy sensei to help her, and she still only knew a few basic seals well enough to create them regularly. Also, she was happy about the fact that their sensei was actually willing to teach them seals, since a brief check of the genin section of the library once she had graduated had not been all that much better than the academy section.

Kitara knew the dangers of experimenting with new seals without supervision very well from the one time she had not been so careful and a storage scroll with a minor error had backfired, damaged the item she had been trying to seal, and actually exploded into smoke. Kitara later learned she was lucky it was such a minor and smoky explosion, since the Hokage had told her some people had died due to massive explosions or other extremely odd effects from poorly written seals, though most of the standard seal formula for sealing scrolls and even explosion tags were designed in such a way that minor errors just meant the scroll would not activate at all.

Once Kakashi had tried to teach the three genin, examining their work after that quick lesson, he examined their work. Only Kitara and Sasuke's attempts were deemed passable, since Tomohiro's caligraphy was slightly too sloppy and his chakra reserves too small anyway, so the scroll he created could only seal the equivalent of a gallon of water, which was barely worth the cost of the ink and scroll paper, even if it would be worth more in Suna. Sasuke was satisfied with making three scrolls which held 3 of the large barrels, which could hold about 8 gallons of water each. Kitara wanted to perfect her skills and had chakra to spare, so she made 18 scrolls, 4 which could hold 3 barrels, 5 which could hold 4 barrels, and 9 which held 5 barrels, Kakashi himself created 5 scrolls that could hold 5 barrels, so the merchant was quite happy with the team and promised a small bonus to them for going so far above and beyond his minimum request of sealing at least 20 barrels of water. In fact they had managed to seal every water-filled barrel in the warehouse that the merchant had rented.

The entire team was excited to be leaving Konoha, doing their first serious mission, and seeing another country. Although bandits were known for occasionally attacking merchants along the route, especially before it reached Suna's desert, the presence of a jounin and three genin in full ninja gear was enough to deter the bandits, especially given the small amount and non-valuable merchandise that was displayed in the small cart the merchant carried. The team faced no combat there on the way to Suna. When they reached the desert itself the merchant told them they would be changing the travel time, since a desert was both extremely hot during the day and cold at night. Thus it was best to get up slightly before dawn, the coldest time, start moving relatively fast to generate heat, then continue walking until just before noon, set up a small camp under a tarp to create shade, rest for a few hours, then take up the journey again until a few hours past sunset.

Halfway through the journey to Suna though, just as they were looking for a good spot to set up their midday camp, a giant and very powerful sandstorm started, but even though it was quite a bit larger than usual and raged for an entire day, the merchant had been experienced enough to see the signs and knew the best way to sit out the sandstorm in safety. He asked Kakashi and the team to help him quickly dig a relatively shallow but wide pit just deep enough for both the cart and them to sit comfortably, then drive four long metal stakes deep into the ground at the sides of the pit and tie a heavy duty tarp with strong rope over the cart and the people of their group.

The sandstorm became quite frightening after 3 hours though since it was powerful enough that it almost pulled two of stakes out of the ground and quite a bit of highly abrasive sand and wind came through that side as the stakes were almost pulled out, but Kakashi had noticed in time, had Kitara who was nearest grab one stake and grabbed the other himself to hold the stakes down. He then had his team split up so every ninja could hold one stake down with both hands. The tarp itself developed minor tears which let more sand come through, but not enough to be dangerous. It did make it awkward to eat and drink water, but there were enough lulls that they could let go of the stakes one at a time, with the weaker merchant taking over holding that stake, so they could take short breaks for that. After nearly 12 hours of the sandstorm raging it finally stopped. By that time it was past sunset and everyone was exhausted so after digging out the sides of the pit enough to get out, since the tarp was nearly completely surrounded by sand that was almost a meter deep, and partially covered in sand as well especially in the center, the team and merchant made up their bedrolls, ate a quick meal, and settled down to sleep.

Thankfully for Kakashi's peace of mind that was the only danger the team faced on the journey, though Sasuke had disappointingly grumbled at the lack of opportunity to test himself. Kitara herself was slightly disappointed as well since she wanted to know if her training would work in a real situation. Tomohiro was simply relieved, since although the training with Kitara everyday and even Sasuke some times had enabled him to use his sword more effectively and increased his chakra reserves slightly, as well as his physical skills and stamina in general, he still was not sure of how well he would do in actual combat. Upon arrival the merchant had presented his papers to the guards, gotten a temporary permit to use one of the market stalls to sell his product then led the team to a bare spot behind the nearly empty market stall manned by a local he also had an arrangement with, then had them unseal the scrolls one at a time while he actually held an informal auction for the barrels of water and other items. After two hours they had unsealed all the water filled barrels, with the merchant having already sold most of them as they were unsealed.

He then told the team to meet him at a specific inn unimaginatively called "The Sand-proof Inn" in three days time to prepare for the return journey, since he already knew that Kakashi had enough skill to modify the scrolls to carry whatever valuable items he bought. Kakashi then told the team they could explore the public areas of the village, as long as they stuck together and kept their papers giving them permission to be in Suna handy and that they had a choice to go up to a designated campground at the edge of Suna or pay money out of their own pockets to stay at one of the inns. While they were exploring and making their decision Kakashi would look into getting permission to use one of the Suna training grounds since there was a very useful Suna-specific technique/ chakra control exercise called sand-striding he wanted to teach, as well as continuing to have team training.

After asking about prices the team decided to get rooms at one of the inns for the first night then camp out at the designated campground for the rest of the time since sponge-baths, comfortable clean beds free of sand, and an evening meal were included in the price which was quite costly, but they all looked forward to sleeping in actual beds and getting slightly clean too much to camp out immediately. Still, Kitara consoled herself with the thought of the money from the C rank mission, and the fact that she got to see Suna, which had been quite interesting. The food was quite different from Konoha, with such things as fried lizard and cactus kebobs, a flat bread sweetened with agave, and a few other interesting foods and drinks.

The only ramen stand was quite disappointing for Kitara though, since it was more far more expensive than in Konoha, and she could tell just by looking the quality was much worse than she was used too. Although she knew how unhealthy it was and ate plenty of other things, Kitara usually ate ramen of one sort or another at least twice a week at Ichiraku's Ramen stand in Konoha due to how easy it was to have a variety of toppings and how cheap it generally was. Kitara had been missing ramen since she had eaten none on the journey. Even the so-called instant ramen wasted too much water and was much too salty for it to be a good idea in the very dry desert.

The team met up with Kakashi at the front of the very inn the merchant had shown them and which the merchant had told them he was staying in, and told him their decision to pay for one night at "The Sand-proof Inn" which actually had the most reasonable rates for the services they offered. Kakashi told them he did get permission to use a training ground at the edge of Suna near the sand dunes, and he would meet them in the Inn lobby at 5 am the next morning to lead them there.

For once, likely since there was not much Konoha ninja were allowed to do, Kakashi was only 30 minutes late the next morning. He then lead the team to the outskirts of Suna, where there was a series of three large shaped Sand dunes with a few vaguely person shaped rocks with targets painted on them scattered about and a small cork target on a large boulder in the center of them. Since actual wood was rare in Suna they did not have training logs, but Suna ninjas would bring their own cloth, cork, leather or wood targets to give something the weapon to sink into if they wanted to throw kunai and shurriken, though since wind nature was not nearly as rare many Suna nin used the rocks as they were and practiced sharpening kunai with wind nature chakra, then piercing through the rocks as they were.

This was not the purpose Kakashi had brought them for. Instead Kakashi told them there was a Suna specific technique/ and/or chakra control exercise that was called sand-striding, which allowed ninja to send chakra from their feet into even the loose sand of a sand dune to walk or even run at a fast pace without slipping or sinking into the sand. Konoha had their own equivalents the tree climbing and water walking respectively, but the Suna sand-striding was just different enough and slightly easier that Kakashi wanted to start them on that, then he would teach them tree climbing once they returned to Konoha.

Kitara learned the sand-striding within an hour since she had already known tree climbing, and Tomohiro was not too far behind given his excellent chakra control. Sasuke did not manage that first day, but after they had gone to the campground he practiced on the regular sandy ground for a while, and by late in the next morning he could run up the sand dunes with sand-stride just as fast as Kitara and Tomohiro. Kakashi had 'supervised' from by a shady rock while reading his book, and once Sasuke completed the exercise he set the team to some more team exercises using compacted sand or small rocks in place of his usual props.

At late morning on the third day the team met up with the merchant, who had managed to find all the materials he wanted to buy from Suna, including large special squares of compacted and purified sand of both standard color, reddish color, and a greyish-black sand that were meant to be very easy to turn into good quality tinted glass as well as large ceramic barrel shaped pots full of clay or dried meat and even salt. Apparently the blacksmiths who created quality tools and weapons from metal mined near Suna had already sold most of their stock to Suna natives, so had none to spare for the merchant. The materials the merchant had found were similar enough in shape and mass to the original barrel storage scrolls that Kakashi told the team they only had to change a few strokes of the kanji which defined what was being stored in order to keep the same efficiency that the original scrolls had. Of course by design most sealing scrolls would gradually degrade in efficiency each time they were used or modified, so even the mass of scrolls the merchant had now would likely only last him three or four more uses maximum before he would have to ask for another team to create more for him. The merchant was quite happy with his profit and that the scrolls would even have more than two uses left in them, and repeated that he would give a bonus for the C-rank mission and asked whether they would consider doing this mission again for him in another four or so months. Kakashi said that there were no guarantees in life, but in four months if his genin team was not already on a different mission he would ask if the recurring C-rank was available.

The journey back to Konoha was even more dull than the first, with not even a sandstorm to add an element of danger to it, but Kakashi did have the genin practice their sand-stride technique as much as possible. This was even more disappointing to Sasuke, with even Tomohiro asking if all C-rank missions were this boring, the only reason it couldn't be considered a glorified D-rank was the possibility of danger, the fact that the team had to leave Konoha and fire country, and the sheer length it took. Still, Kitara was happy since she felt they had learned a great deal, and Kakashi had finally moved on from only teaching them team exercises which Kitara felt gave hope that he would teach more in the future. Also with one mostly non-eventful and quite successful C-rank mission they were more likely to get more C rank missions in the future, which were quite rare for genin since mostly C-ranks were taken by chunin, genin had to have their sensei and the Hokage approval first, and could only take certain kinds after the chunin got first choice. Getting actual practical knowledge of how to make a bulk storage scroll with composite items, then modify them after a single use was also a big bonus, plus the new chakra control technique and the knowledge that Kakashi knew enough to teach Kitara more about seals if she could only convince him to teach her, which was awesome in her mind.

Even though that C ranked mission was uneventful, both Kakashi and Kitara decided that the team needed to learn more, since if it had not been uneventful they might have had trouble, and there was the chance of future potentially dangerous C-rank missions. However Kitara knew that Kakashi never taught them anything beyond teamwork, that one seal, and the chakra control exercise as well as repeating what they learned in the academy, though if he followed though with his promise of teaching tree climbing as least Sasuke and Tomohiro would have a chance to improve. Kakashi was lazy enough that it was unlikely that he would teach more, only if a mission required more knowledge would he teach them, which may be too late if there was any combat involved. His quick lesson in sealing and the sand-stride was the only thing he attempted to teach, and even that had pretty much been him slowly writing out the seals and explaining the bare basics of what was involved, then asking them to try to copy him. So Kitara knew she needed to go to another team sensei. Given that she still had occasional random conversations with TenTen, when they saw each other Kitara knew that their sensei was a Taijutsu nut, so she convinced Gai to let them train with his team occasionally, and she watched other teams training as well, spying on various Genin teams and shinobi training or just outright asking.

Kitara already knew the tree climbing excersise, but had not taught Sasuke since she had mentally associated it with her pranks thus not remembered how useful it could be, but watching another sensei teaching his genin reminded her that it was a good skill in general, so she was glad he and Tomohiro would be learning it now. Kitara learned the basics of how to add wind nature chakra to kunai from watching Asuma Sarutobi demonstrate for someone, although she was too far away to hear details. She did know enough to know that Asuma was sending wind natured chakra to his kunai to make it sharper and slightly faster. Although hard to get for a genin, through a through, multi-layered disguise and story Kitara was able to buy a single chakra sensitive paper and found that her natural chakra nature was wind, so eventually she should be able to mimic Asuma's awesome trick.

Kitara even started the elemental training for wind, cutting a leaf with chakra, which she had learned the theory about from the slightly bigger and more useful selection of scrolls available for genins in the Konoha library. She had also picked up another simple D-rank wind technique. Tomohiro did not have the chakra reserves and Sasuke overpowered his climbing, so both of them gave up on the tree climbing exercise after a while, only working on it sporadically when bored. However, both Kitara and Sasuke liked the idea of weights so started wearing them, although they wore no where near the amount Rock Lee wore.

Tomohiro started regularly exercising more, adapting Gai and Rock Lee's crazy regimen for a sword and his less obsessive work ethic. Because Kitara wanted to improve her control she kept at the tree climbing exercise, making it harder for herself and trying to increase her multi-tasking by also sticking various leaves or other materials to her body, often getting up early, staying up late, and trying to practice whenever there were no missions or she was not sparring and training with Sasuke and Tomohiro. After a while she learned her harder version, and started practicing on every different type of surface available to her. It took her a long time to make any progress, but Kitara knew that chakra control was vital to learning new jutsu and using the ones she had more effectively. She could not train to exhaustion since she still needed to be ready for missions and training with Tomohiro and Sasuke, so it took her at least two and a half weeks to be able to climb up her walls as well as trees with leaves, rubber bands, paint pellets, kunai, and anything else she could think of sticking to her while she was climbing, finally managing even when she was not concentrating too hard on that, and she still lost concentration or occasionally slipped or dropped various items.

Overall, Kitara was very happy with her progress, and that of her teams, so resolved to continue working at this pace, although she was becoming increasingly irritated at Kakashi for not teaching anything other than team work exercises and assigning basic conditioning exercises to improve speed, stamina, and strength. Kitara had asked once, with Kakashi responding "My cute little Genin are doing well enough, the basics are very important and you need to know them well to advance even further, there is no need for me to teach you more at this point, although if you want I can teach you another chakra control exercise that will increase reserves if practiced enough, water walking." Kitara was glad to learn of another chakra control exercise, and hoped that learning about something so cool would motivate Tomohiro to finally finish learning tree climbing.

During that time, the team went on many more D ranked missions, taking the mission to catch Tora at least once a week, and were given another C ranked mission two weeks after Kitara had learned her hard version of tree and wall climbing, about a month and a half from the last C rank. This mission was to actually search for and break up a bandit camp. They had to bring camping supplies because it would take more than just a few days. Since Kitara had been saving her money from the missions, she managed to buy the materials to make a large sealing scroll which she then designed to hold multiple miscellaneous items, so she could seal medical supplies, the camping supplies for both herself and Sasuke, fish hooks and lines, and travel food in that. After five days of searching for the bandit camp the team was ambushed by them.

Although it was a surprise to the genin, Tomohiro only froze up for a few seconds before he recovered, and Kitara and Sasuke had been training with dangerous jutsu and kunai involved for so long that the bandits were actually easier, even if there were more of them. So no one was seriously injured, even if they were entirely defensive for a few minutes.

The mission became dangerous when they learned that a B ranked missing ninja was leading the bandits, but Kakashi protected them in his own way by leading the missing ninja away. During the course of the mission Sasuke learned to activate his sharingan. The B ranked ninja had attacked, and Kakashi had used a kawarmi jutsu to escape, replacing himself with a shadow clone instead of a log. However, the bandits had also attacked in numbers while Kakashi was busy dealing with the B ranked missing ninja, so the team had to deal with about 15 semi-trained bandits with a variety of weapons, who knew enough to not get in each other's way too much and how to actually use their weapons. Sasuke activated his sharingan while dodging those many attacks, which could have been deadly if a bandit got lucky. The 15 bandits were skilled and well supplied compared to most bandits due to their ninja leader, so were more of a challenge than normal bandits would be.

Kitara also dodged attacks while deflecting some towards other bandits or away from her teammates, and retreated a bit during this time. Tomohiro took out his sword after those few seconds of frozen surprise and deflected attacks with that while also trying to dodge. All three eventually got over the surprise ambush and started counter attacking the bandits while Kakashi dealt with the B ranked missing ninja. After some very intense fighting, to the genin anyway, the bandits were either seriously wounded, dying, unconscious, or fled, while the B ranked ninja was killed by Kakashi. The entire battle took barely 20 minutes.

Afterward the team was exhausted, and many had cuts and bruises. Tomohiro was the worst wounded, since he had not really had time to use genjutsu he had to rely on his kenjutsu alone. With the bandits not having enough chakra to steal, he had not even been able to recover the chakra he used to enhance his sword so it would not break and would deal more serious wounds. Kitara used her field medicine and bits of medical jutsu to put salve on and bandage the various wounds of the team and herself. After that Sasuke told everyone how he had activated his sharingan in the battle, sounding very smug. That was when Kakashi revealed he had a sharingan eye as well, and would try to train Sasuke in how to use it.

Kitara was trying to deal with the fact that she killed someone,, but suppressed her shock long enough to focus on what was going on. She mentally recited what they were taught in the academy about coping with a first kill, that as a shinobi she was protecting her village.

That information by Kakashi was a shock to Sasuke, and he immediately demanded to know how Kakashi got an Uchiha eye, since he knew that Kakashi was not an Uchiha himself. At first, Kakashi refused to answer, then eventually stated that one of his dying teammates had donated it in the distant past and refused to give more details. Although Kitara was proud that Sasuke had activated his sharingan, she realized that she now needed to work even harder if she wanted to keep up, so remembering that Kakashi had used a kage bushin in the battle at the beginning, even announcing it to the enemy in the form of a taunt, she asked him to teach it to her when he was not busy training Sasuke. Kakashi warned her that it was an extremely chakra draining technique for a genin to learn, considered a kinjutsu when multiple kage bushin were used, but Kitara did not give up. The kage bushin would be much more useful than the academy bushin Kitara could barely use, so she decided to nag him and argue with him until he finally gave in.

A great deal of nagging and convincing went on over the course of a few hours from Kitara that surely just one was within her capability and he had taught her nothing else yet, while they cleaned up from the mission, stripped the bandits of belongings, tied up the survivors for transport and so on. She told Kakashi "I have high reserves of chakra, and in fact kept over charging the academy bushin until I learned the exact method of making multiple bushin after mastering the chakra sticking and using up chakra first. I already know tree climbing, and can use it on walls as well for hours at a time, so a single clone should be possible for me." She also tried to make Kakashi a bit guilty, reminding him they could have died, they had just been in a serious battle, they had actually killed some of the bandits, and she really wanted something positive to focus on to make up for the nightmares that were sure to come.

Tomohiro, realizing he would be left behind (not to mention he might die as missions got tougher) if Sasuke learned to use his sharringan and Kitara learned to use Kage Bushin, decided to put on weights and train more intensely as well as to try to strengthen his chakra reserves. All this took place as the team were cleaning up a bit and searching for the actual bandit base, just in case there were more bandits there. They then journeyed to the village that had commissioned the bandit cleanup mission while transporting the prisoner bandits.

After he reluctantly agreed to attempt to teach Kitara the kage bushin if the Hokage approved Tomohiro spoke up and asked if Kakashi would teach him anything.

Kakashi recommended Hayate Geko to Tomohiro since Hayate was a kenjutsu master and could even use chakra attacks with his sword "he owes me a favor and has been trying to find someone to pass his style onto anyway." Hayate was chronically ill from a poison gas attack in the past so could not go on active missions most of the time, instead stuck with guard duty and various tasks within Konoha, and if Hayate agreed to train Tomohiro as an apprentice then Tomohiro could have a chance to become a sword master eventually. In between many more D rank missions all three trained very hard over the next few months.

The Hokage had swiftly allowed Kakashi to teach Kitara the kage bushin as long as she agreed to be very careful with it. Since the Hokage knew that as the Kyuubi container and a Uzumaki Kitara would have plenty of chakra that aspect did not worry him, but he did warn her of the dangers of memory feedback.

Sasuke and Tomohiro finally mastered the tree climbing exercise and variations. Kitara was already practicing the next step up of chakra control of water walking by then, and promised to teach Sasuke and Tomohiro when they mastered tree climbing. Partially due to both Kakashi's and the Hokage's detailed warnings, and because it was obvious, Kitara had quickly realized the training potential of Kage Bushin, although she was extremely careful not to over use it as per her promise. Kitara had limited herself to one Kage Bushin at a time for the first week, before realizing that she had enough chakra to make more without danger so gradually increased the number of Kage Busin she made one at a time. Kitara made sure that the Kage Bushin always dispelled one at a time though, with at least a minute between dispersal. With the use of Kage bushin to help Kitara quickly learned the basics of water walking, finding it easier than tree climbing had been, though her hard version of combining it with leaf/and or other item sticking was more challenging due to changing her weight. In between missions everyone trained hard. Kitara continued to pick up e-rank jutsu from the Konoha library as well as bits of other skills, not focusing on any more big jutsu in particular but increasing all her skills in general, especially sealing due to now being able to use her kage bushin to set off tags.

Of course training with the others also continued, with Sasuke picking up more fire jutsu and learning how to use them faster, as well as learning to use his wires even more effectively even as weapons in themselves rather than just guides for his inaccurate or extremely short-range but powerful dragon breath jutsu. Tomohiro had finally reached the point that he could have matched Sasuke when he had still been in the academy, and had done enough drills to Hayate's satisfaction to start learning the basics of his moon style, as well as increasing his reserves enough to be capable of using 3 mid-level genjutsu or 9 minor genjutsu per day without needed to take other's chakra.

After 1 month of this regimen, Kitara felt that she had mastered her other jutsu enough to use them effectively and decided to try to learn a new one, though due to wind jutsu rarity she knew it was unlikely there were anymore D-rank wind jutsu avalable, and knew no one would be willing to give her a wind jutsu of a higher rank. So she decided to learn one from another element instead, after all being well rounded meant she would not be too disadvantaged if she faced someone who had an element that canceled out her own, such as Sasuke who she had to be very careful with lest his fire jutsu gain strength from her wind and backfire on her. Though training to use combos, with her strengthening Sasuke's fire jutsu or making her own E-rank to low D-rank fire jutsu he had taught her more powerful was also very interesting. Eventually Kitara convinced Kakashi to write out the instructions for a D-rank earth jutsu on a scroll, the head-hunting jutsu and started training in that as well. Although it took much more chakra than her wind jutsu which came easier to her, she kept practicing, occasionally convincing Kakashi-sensei to help her. Her chakra reserves recovered extremely fast anyway and she had large reserves anyway, the only reason she did not have more trouble with her chakra control was that she had made it a priority to learn and practice chakra control near continuously. So even when she trained close to chakra exhaustion, it was not a great risk and she could recover fast and keep up with team training and completing the D-ranks.

Over two and a half months passed in this way, with team Kakashi taking the re-occurring C-rank from the merchant who journeyed to Suna being the only thing to break up the monotony. After that mission was successfully concluded Kakashi asked if the team wanted to attend the upcoming chunin exams. By then they had been Genin for 7 months, with 3 successful C-ranks and over 90 successful D-ranks they were definitely qualified. Hyuga Neji, Rock Lee, and Ten Ten had already declined or been held back by their Sensei, but they were also a weaker team overall, since they were overspecialized, with both Neji and Lee focused on taijutsu, even if they were very different styles, and TenTen so focused on weapons. In order to compensate for that overspecialization all three needed to be extremely skilled and experienced if they would have a hope of passing. However, Team Kakashi had a broad spectrum of skills that balanced and complimented each other. Sasuke had his Chunin-level taijutsu, wire techniques, and fire ninjutsu, and with his new ability to use his sharringan he could copy other techniques, even if it would take great training to master them to the extent as the original user. Tomohiro had kenjutsu and genjutsu as well as his chakra stealing technique that supplemented his weaker taijutsu. Kitara was well rounded with good taijutsu, kage bushin, mastery of kawarmi, basic healing techniqes, the two wind ninjutsu, two low-level fire ninjutsu and the earth ninjutsu as well as supplemental techniques for thrown kunai and shurriken, including making them slightly sharper with chakra. So Kakashi felt that the team had a good chance at surviving the chunin exam, even though they were rookies.