Chapter 2

In a classroom, Naruto, Sakura and Sasuke were all waiting patiently without much to do. The clock on the wall kept ticking, and the only other sound was that of the birds that occasionally flew near the windows.

While Sakura admired the silent Sasuke who retested his head on both hands clasped together, Naruto was still focused on his own training. Although he seemed to be Leaning lazily on the chair, on his back, near the top most side of his spine, a leaf was currently stuck to his skin, and the same situation repeated itself on the middle of his back.

Don't look at his relaxed appearance. A closer look would reveal the beads of sweat dripping down from his head, and his eyebrows would occasionally twitch whenever his Chakra was suddenly affected by outside interference.

Although the original Naruto couldn't feel it, perhaps because his Chakra control wasn't that good, or maybe because his soul wasn't as strong as his... he could somewhat feel a foreign substance outside of his control acting up every once in a while everytime he used his Chakra.

Although this foreign substance was full of vitality and seemed to somewhat nourish his body, something in this foreign Chakra would disrupt the control he had over his own energy whenever he deemed important to keep it under control. It was almost like something naughty could loosely know his intentions and would then proceed to play some petty tricks on him.

Although the situation was bad, Naruto felt that with enough training and practice, it might even be possible to directly ignore the influence of this foreign Chakra. His reason for thinking so? Well, as someone who only took a few minutes to learn how to use Chakra without any previous experience besides that of his body's memory, he was quite confident.

Of course, he wasn't so stupid as to believe himself as omniscient, who knows what might happen when he tried it later on? It's better to keep an open mind and a ready-to-fail mentality, with enough tests and hard work, he would eventually find the solution.

"Ahh, Sensei is really late. It's been almost four hours past the agreed time. He couldn't have forgotten, right?"

Sakura complained loudly as she rested her head on the table dispiritedly. Sasuke lowered his head and kept silent, but in his mind he was ready to curse the guy. How can a Jonin be so late? At this point, Sasuke was already inclined to believe that he died on his way to the school. Who knows? He saw a meteor once from afar, perhaps he had been hit by one.

It was only when the sky was showing signs of getting orange that a man with white hair and most of his face covered appeared. Opening the sliding doors with a slight push, he took a step inside and glanced at the trio, each sitting on their own table.

"Good evening, I'm the leader of Team 7 and also your sensei, Hatake Kakashi."

Naruto was the first to react, as someone who had been born and lived inside an army for his whole life, he was extremely displeased with Kakashi's lazy and late attitude. In his eyes, such actions were worthy of heavy punishment and even demotion. His commander would never have accepted a soldier who acted like him.

Sakura on the other hand was somewhat bashful as she was caught salivating on the table where she almost fell asleep.

Sasuke, on the other hand, kept his poker face and pretended to have no thoughts even though anyone could read 'anger' on his forehead.

Smiling slightly under the mask, Kakashi pretended that everything was normal and that he wasn't late by almost four hours and said. "Let's go to the rooftop, the atmosphere there is better."

Nodding, everyone stood up and followed him up the stairs.

....

"Alright, why don't you introduce yourselves?"

"Sensei, how should we introduce ourselves?"

Hearing Sakura's question, Kakashi answered somewhat disinterested. "Well, you can talk about what you like, what you don't like, dreams for the future and... things like that."

Hearing his words, a small frown appeared on the faces of everyone.

Naruto who was already angered by Kakashi's attitude was the first to step up and introduce himself.

"My name is, Uzumaki Naruto, I like to train, I dislike people who arrive late, and my dream..." At this point Naruto stopped as if hesitating, he felt that he shouldn't be truthful here, but he wasn't sure if that would be a problem later. Who knows if the people of this world could tell that he was lying or not by using some strange methods. After a moment, he decided on telling only half of his goal. "I want to become strong enough to move unhindered in this world."

When Kakashi heard his words, he felt lost for a moment. Although he doesn't know much about Naruto, the reports on him were quite different from what he was seeing today.

For starters... Naruto's eyes were full of murderous intent. Although it wasn't his first time seeing a kid like that, Naruto wasn't like him who went to a battlefield at the age of five. In the end, he could only attribute it as the influence of the monster sealed inside him.

Other than that, Kakashi was slightly surprised by his dream. With his experience interrogating prisoners, he could tell that not only was Naruto telling the truth, he also seemed to have omitted something. But how could this be? Wasn't his dream to become Hokage? Has his sense of belonging to the village... waned?

Before he could continue his thoughts, the cheerful Sakura stood up with a slight smile and said.

"My name is Haruno Sakura! What I like is..." Sakura stopped for a moment and blushed as she stared at Sasuke. "What I don't like is Naruto, and my dream is... hehehe."

This time, both Kakashi and Naruto had frown on their faces. Although their thoughts couldn't be described as aligned, they both wrote "helpless" next to her name in their minds.

"Alright, alright." Kakashi sighed and looked to the boy wearing a blue shirt with long collared neckline covering most of his neck. "Your turn now."

"My name is Uchiha Sasuke, I don't particularly like anything and there are many things I hate..." Sasuke spoke with his cold and dark complexion. "And I what I have isn't a dream, because It's a fact. I will reestablish my clan, and kill a certain person."

Looking deeply at Sasuke, Kakashi secretly sighed. 'Just as I thought.'

"Alright, everyone has their own personality." Kakashi nodded. "Let's take the introduction out of the way then. Tomorrow we will have our first mission."

"A mission, huh..." Naruto mumbled to himself, wandering how the distribution of tasks worked in this military system called Hidden Village.

Although he had a lot of experience fighting with many types of weapons, including unarmed combat, and different terrains, he never fought unarmored, or with things such as Ninjutsu.

Morever, his experience with stealth ops which should be the main focus of the so called Ninjas was something that he unfortunately lacked.

"That's right, a mission." Kakashi nodded. "Morever it's a mission that the four of us will complete together."

Hearing his words, Naruto noticed something. It seemed that not all missions had to be done with the presence of the team leader, meaning that the ones where he participates must involve a certain degree of danger.

"Sensei, what type of mission is it?" Sakura lifted her hand and asked curiously.

"Ah, about that... hahahaha!"

The trio of graduates frowned upon seeing Kakashi laughing like that. It was like his whole body was filled with malicious intent, and it specially affected Sakura, who had less experience dealing with people like him.

"S-sensei, why are you l-laughing?"

"Well, it's because you guys definitely won't like if I tell you the truth." Stopping at this point, Kakashi swept the trio with his narrowed eyes and then spoke with a deep voice that sent chills down Sakura's spine. "Tomorrow's mission is a survival test."

"Test?" Sasuke frowned a little displeased. "What's the meaning of that? Haven't we already graduated?"

After wasting so many years at the academy, he had finally graduated and given his first step towards his goal, but before he could even dwell on this feeling, his sensei suddenly spoke of a test with such a strange tone in his voice... He couldn't help but think that there was something wrong with this situation.

Sakura was worried too, but her mind could only think of a small possibility of them being separated, she was so lucky to have been assigned to the same team as Sasuke, if an accident happened and they were separated... how would she cultivate the feelings between them?! Horrified by her thoughts, her body shook slightly and her face paled.

Naruto was the calmest of the trio. Having lived in a wasteland where 'tomorrow' is merely speculation and 'today' another test of willpower and luck, he had long learned not to fear things outside of his control. Whether it's fate, luck or divine providence, there was no meaning in fussing about it. If by some random chance he met an enemy that would definitely succeed in killing him or end up eating something that was poisoned, he would just accept his fate and die without regrets.

It's not that he doesn't care, who would be okay with dying? But it's just that there's no meaning in wasting his brain power with something he can't control. If he has time to waste sulking about the inevitable, he might as well give up on his dreams and become a sex toy under one of the higher-ups, at least this way he could get expensive food and lodging for free. Oh, that's not right, the higher-ups were all left behind on Earth...

Everyone had their own thoughts, and Kakashi observed them silently. Giving a thumbs up to Naruto who seemed to be the less affected of the trio, he raised his head slightly and explained. "You see, there's one more test before you guys can truly be considered to have graduated from the academy. And tomorrow, of the 27 students from your classroom who passed the final test, only 9 of you will succeed in becoming Genins, and the remaining 18 will be sent back to the academy. This a test with a minimum of 66% failure rate in general."

"What?!" Sakura exclaimed!

This moment, even Naruto who had been calm all along expressed surprise on his face.

What kind of test could make 66% of the exam takers reprove? Morever, if it's the general results, that must mean it's mostly like that for every classroom. Considering that the Academy had four classrooms for each year, this meant that in average, only 36 Genins were formed every year...