Yukiko needed to improve her taijutsu -- there was no way, she said, that she'd be able to learn any effective ninjutsu in only a month. Iruka disagreed. "You don't need anything flashy, but you should learn at least one jutsu -- something to amplify any weapon strikes, to make yourself a little bit faster, or to block attacks," he said.

Naga looked skeptical. "Ninjutsu's hard enough on its own. You want to make Yukiko stick chakra into a weapon?"

"Not exactly. I thought that she might use a small fire jutsu to heat her kunai and shuriken, or a wind jutsu to either push herself out of the way or send her opponent off-course."

Yukiko shook her head. "It's a nice idea, but it won't work. Trust me, I'm terrible at ninjutsu -- I just don't have the knack for using chakra to create physical effects. Why do you think I concentrated so much on genjutsu?"

Now Iruka looked skeptical. "You can't be that bad."

"Want to bet?" Yukiko centered herself, drew up her chakra, and formed the seals for a basic fire jutsu, the one most ninja learned so they wouldn't have to carry matches around. She pursed her lips, pictured a tongue of flame... and blew a thin stream of dry, lukewarm air with a faint tinge of smoke.

She smiled. "Hey, I got smoke. Usually I'm lucky if the air comes out dry."

Naga snickered. Iruka looked stunned. "That's... that's the easiest jutsu..."

"Exactly," Yukiko said, gently whapping Naga with her bandaged arm. "And I can't do it -- I told you I'm terrible at ninjutsu. I can't even do Henge properly; I cheat by using genjutsu to cover up the flaws. The only ninjutsu I ever mastered is Kawarimi, because I couldn't graduate if I didn't. Well, and sometimes I can make an ice jutsu work enough to cool my office a few degrees in the summer, but that's still pretty pathetic."

"You can say that again," Naga said, grinning. "Even I'm not that bad at ninjutsu -- I just don't like it."

Iruka coughed. "Right. And that's something you need to work on. You rely heavily on taijutsu, but if you can't see your opponent, or if he's out of reach, you're in trouble."

"Out of my reach? That's hard to do," Naga said, snaking her arm out and wrapping it around a branch on the other side of the yard. She snapped off a twig and dumped it onto Iruka's head as she reshaped herself to normal. "See?"

"Yes, but do you have leverage?"

Yukiko and Naga looked blankly at Iruka. He sighed. "Look, if I rush at you, you can use my momentum to flip me over your body. But if I'm ten yards away, even if you reach me all you can do is tie me up or use your hand strength. You can't put your whole body behind your attacks and that makes you vulnerable."

Comprehension dawned on Naga's face, and she twitched her shoulders irritably. "Okay. How do I fix that?"

"You use ninjutsu or weapons, something that works from a distance," Iruka said.

"And you should work on strategy," Yukiko added. "Remember the day we met? I caught you in a genjutsu and you didn't think about the situation -- you just tried to hit me. Sometimes you can't win with a direct attack."

"Great," Naga muttered, scowling. "So I need to think and Yukiko needs to kick ass. What about you, Iruka?"

He flushed and scratched the base of his ponytail. "Um..."

"Confidence," Yukiko said with a grin. "He needs to work on his confidence. And integrating his skills -- he's good with weapons and his jutsu aren't bad, but he doesn't use them together."

Naga perked up and shot Iruka a speculative look. "Hmm. I bet I know something else he should fix..."

"Oh?" Iruka asked warily.

Naga fluttered her eyelashes, arched her back, and smiled at him. "Come home with me tonight and I'll show you, Iruka-kun. I'm sure you'll pick it up in no time, with your sword skills."

"Ack!"

"Naga, that wasn't nice," Yukiko said, trying to sound severe -- thirteen year old girls shouldn't be thinking that much about sex -- but it was hard to restrain her laughter at Iruka's spectacular flush and panicked hand-waving. Still... "You shouldn't tease your teammates."

"Really?" a new voice asked. "Who should she tease, then?"

"Kakashi!" Naga glared up at the silver-haired jounin, who was stretched out lazily on a tree branch over her head, little orange book held open in his hand. "What are you doing in Yukiko's yard, you asshole?"

Kakashi shrugged, which looked very odd from a horizontal position. "I happened to overhear Gai lamenting that he didn't have time to help the passionate youth of Konoha strive for victory, and cleverly deduced that he was talking about you. Being a kind, thoughtful man, I decided to check up on you for him."

"You mean you looked through his mail and you're bored," Naga said.

"Well, that is one interpretation," Kakashi admitted. He snapped his book shut, vanished it, and leapt to the ground. "But since I really am a kind, thoughtful man, and you don't have a jounin-sensei, I'm offering my services as a training advisor. When should we start?"

Naga sputtered with frustration. "We've done fine on our own -- who says we need you!"

"Then I suppose you don't want the reports on the Mist-nin and Grass-nin," Kakashi said mournfully, staring at the sheaf of papers that suddenly appeared in his hand. "And after I went to all the trouble of liberating them..."

"Excuse us a minute, please," Yukiko said. She dragged Iruka and Naga to the other side of the yard. "Listen, I know he's a jerk. And I know he probably shouldn't have those reports. But we need every advantage we can get."

Iruka rubbed his scar, forehead furrowed with concentration. "I don't like it. If Kakashi-san really is here because Gai-san is too busy to help us, that's one thing, but if he's only trying to stir up trouble, we should turn him down. Politely," he added, frowning at Naga.

She twitched her shoulder. "I don't see why you care -- he's a jerk. But maybe he can help Yukiko with her ninjutsu." Then a grin slid across her face. "And maybe he'll piss you off enough you'll figure out how to stand up to people, Iruka-chan."

Iruka flushed and scowled. "Just because I'm not as rude as you are..."

"Let's go ask Kakashi exactly where he got those reports," Yukiko said hastily before they could really start arguing.

"You don't need to ask -- I'll be happy to tell you," Kakashi said from right behind her shoulder. Yukiko whirled in shock, hands rising to defend herself; Kakashi blinked and slid back a pace. "Hmm. You seem jumpy -- maybe you should all sit down and relax."

"You... you bastard," Yukiko panted, trying to calm her racing heart. "Don't do that."

"Eavesdropper," Naga muttered. "I bet you did look through the green idiot's mail."

Kakashi's eye drooped in mock sorrow. "Such distrust. Actually, Gai really did ask me to help you -- he leaves on a mission for River Country tomorrow, but he said that if the youth of Konoha were passionate enough about victory to ask for advice, he would see that they got help or he'd run around the village walls one hundred times on his hands. I decided I should spare the gate guards the sight of Gai upside-down."

The three genin contemplated the image of Gai -- green bodysuit, orange legwarmers, shiny hair and all -- walking on his hands around the entire circumference of Konoha.

"Good decision," Naga said after a few seconds.

"I certainly thought so," Kakashi agreed, "but at this point it's up to you three. So... am I your sensei or do I tell Gai to get started?"

The genin exchanged glances, and Iruka turned to Kakashi. "...Welcome to the team, Kakashi-sensei."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Two weeks later, Yukiko ran through a kata designed for close defensive work and quick, disabling strikes. Kakashi had declared that there was no point teaching her any specialized taijutsu attacks -- her goal was to distract and confuse her opponents with genjutsu and close to strike while they were disabled. If people broke her illusions, she would just have to hope they couldn't or wouldn't finish her from a distance.

"Well, you could try throwing kunai -- actually, if you attached explosive notes that would be a good distraction technique -- but your aim isn't good enough for that to be a reliable attack," Kakashi said when Yukiko protested this hole in her defense. "You think fast under pressure, even if your common sense flies out the window. Trick them into closing."

"How? If they break one genjutsu they'll probably break any new ones I try."

Kakashi shrugged. "That's your problem. Now watch closely -- this block flows into a falling backhand or knife strike to the neck, an excellent set-up for a push and foot-sweep take-down move, or for a knockout blow."

He was probably right, Yukiko mused as she ran through the kata again, counting her breaths and slowly ingraining the motions into her muscle memory. The warm air was heavy with the scent of early summer flowers and greasy pollens, gnats swirled in haphazard clusters under the trees, and the sun beat down from a cloudless sky. Her blue jacket lay abandoned over a tree branch and she'd exchanged her usual pants and shirt for shorts and a sleeveless green t-shirt. She was sweating like a pig anyway.

At least Iruka and Naga were working equally hard. Kakashi had set Naga to learning a rare fire jutsu that ignited with snapped fingers instead of an exhaled breath. He also had her extending her arms, grabbing a tree across the yard, and pulling her body to her hands instead of returning her hands to her body. Her hands were covered in first-degree burns and her body was a mass of scrapes and bruises from dragging over the ground or smashing into trees.

On the second day of this regimen, she showed up with a brilliantly purple and blue splotch over her left eye, a souvenir of the first tree she'd hit the previous day. Neither Yukiko nor Iruka dared to say anything after Naga glared at them. They didn't comment on any phase of the rainbow of sickly colors that paraded across Naga's face, and by now her mottled skin seemed as unremarkable as Iruka's scar.

The training did seem to be working; yesterday morning Naga demonstrated the burning hands on Kakashi, to her teammates' stifled laughter. "An interesting tactic," Kakashi said sourly as he rubbed his burned hip. Then he handed her an instruction book on Go and told her to study strategy for the rest of the day.

Naga was not amused.

As for Iruka, Kakashi was giving him more personal attention, inasmuch as Kakashi could be said to give anything 'attention' in the usual sense of the word. He set Iruka to work through weapons kata, or practice speed-throwing shuriken. Kakashi himself lounged in a nearby tree, reading his little erotic books, napping, mercilessly teasing Iruka, ... and now and then, at completely unpredictable intervals, ordering Iruka to perform various ninjutsu techniques without letting down his defense or interrupting his target practice.

Iruka lasted four days before he snapped and sent a barrage of kunai at Kakashi.

The jounin vanished in a swirl of leaves, smacked Iruka over the head with his book, and told him to be a little less obvious in his attacks. "But not bad for a first try," he added. "I was starting to wonder if you were human."

"You... you..."

"The word you want is 'bastard,'" Naga said helpfully, limping past after her latest collision with a tree.

Iruka drew a deep breath. "Thank you, Naga. Kakashi-sensei... you bastard! What's the point of driving me insane?"

Kakashi straightened from his habitual slouch and looked oddly serious. "A shinobi has no use for courtesy and consideration during battle or on missions. Only two things matter: achieving the objective and protecting your team. You can't afford to remember your enemies' humanity. They won't be thinking about yours, and if you hesitate, you'll die.

"The chuunin exam isn't exactly like that, but it isn't like your classrooms either. It's a replacement for war."

"I know that," Iruka said. "I still don't see why you keep insulting me."

Kakashi's eye twinkled and he leaned back against his tree. "When you figure that out, the lesson will be complete. Now pick up your knives and aim at the target, not me."

Fuming, Iruka returned to his practice.

Kakashi, Yukiko decided now as she drifted in the clear yet distant concentration of her kata, was actually not half bad as an instructor, once you saw past his peculiar attitude and strange techniques. The team was learning, and he'd also succeeded in uniting them in efforts to get revenge -- that wasn't a tactic that would work for a regular jounin-sensei and genin team, but since he wasn't going to be leading them on missions, he probably didn't care if they disliked him.

He might regret that after the next week. The team had enlisted Naruto's help in setting up practical jokes and not even the most alert jounin could avoid all of them; Kakashi, with his face stuck in his book, had even less chance of escaping unscathed.

Yukiko grinned and started her kata again.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

The morning of the third test dawned bright and clear, through an indefinable tension thrummed in the air. It felt almost like the faint electric charge preceding a thunderstorm, but in this case it was cause by hundreds upon hundreds of excited chakra signatures. Yukiko wondered, for a moment, if huge public events irritated all ninja as much as they irritated her, or if she was just hypersensitive from too much genjutsu practice and chakra-sensing exercises.

Probably hypersensitive, she decided, since none of her shinobi tenants seemed anything other than innocently excited as they walked past her office.

There was no real point in trying to get paperwork done -- she might have been better advised to sleep in or spend an hour or two on last-minute practice -- but the routine of paying bills, adjusting her weekly newspaper ad to account for a newly empty 2-bedroom, checking through the tenant complaint forms in her office drop-box, and calling the glazier to replace a broken window in 5-D, was soothing. This was something Yukiko knew she could do, and do well. This was something she'd still have even if she crashed and burned a few hours from now. This was -- surprisingly -- something she didn't want to give up even if she passed the chuunin exam and could be a regular ninja again.

She looked up at the knock on her door, startled; she hadn't heard the tiles squeak.

"Who's there?" she asked cautiously.

Someone giggled. Yukiko frowned; that sounded awfully familiar... "Kid, is that you?"

"Yeah!" Naruto rushed into her office in a blur of orange, and danced around her chair. "Hey, hey, Yukiko-san! I found your squeaky tiles! I can sneak up on you now!" He paused and stared suspiciously at her paper-covered desk. "Hey, hey, why are you working? Don't you have your test today?"

Yukiko grinned at the kid, her tension draining away. "Yes, but it doesn't start for a couple hours yet -- all they're doing now is seating the audience and letting the Kage and Masters make speeches about international peace and cooperation. Who wants to sit through that?" She picked up a sheaf of maintenance requests and tapped the kid on the nose; he scrunched up his face and frowned through narrowed blue eyes. "And don't think I can't spot you even if you did find my squeaky tiles -- you have a lot to learn before you can sneak up on me."

Naruto stood straighter -- not that this meant much, given his short stature -- and clenched his fist in determination. "Someday I'm gonna sneak up on you, Yukiko-san. Next year I'm gonna be in the ninja academy and Iruka-san will help me. He's good at sneaking around!"

"True," Yukiko agreed, "but I'm better. Now shoo, kid. Go plan another trick on Kakashi-san."

Naruto's face crinkled in a grin. "Hehehe -- his hair was still pink yesterday! Next time I want to get his stupid books!" He dashed out of the office, leaving Yukiko to contemplate Kakashi's response to the desecration of his precious erotic literature. The jounin hadn't seemed too upset over the dye Naruto had dumped into his silver hair while the three genin pinned him down, but she didn't think he'd be so complacent if his books were threatened; he'd already acted jumpy when Naga wanted to borrow them for late night reading... although, to be fair, Kakashi might simply have been worried about Iruka's reaction to that.

Well, it really wasn't her concern. After today, Kakashi would have no reason to be anywhere near Yukiko's building, and unless he applied to be a real jounin-sensei for some reason, he and Naruto probably wouldn't meet again for nearly ten years, by which point he might well be dead anyway.

After today, she probably wouldn't see Iruka and Naga very much either -- so long as even one of them passed the chuunin exam, their little mismatched team would break up. Even if they all failed they'd have to wait a year before the next exam, and they wouldn't have normal genin missions to keep them together until then. A strange, hollow weight coalesced in the pit of Yukiko's stomach at that thought.

She buried herself in paperwork as a distraction.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Two hours later Yukiko stood at her apartment door and gave her outfit and equipment one last review. Pants taped to her ankles, check. Wire, rope, explosive notes, and a few grenades -- both smoke and flash -- in her jacket pockets, check. Kunai holster filled and strapped to her thigh, check. Hair pulled back from her face, check. Forehead protector, check.

Self-confidence? Yukiko ran over the information on Kakashi's papers. She thought she had at least an even chance of beating the three Grass-nin and two of the Mist-nin. The third Mist-nin and Aburame Kuroko had some defenses against genjutsu, but at worst she could probably manage not to lose disgracefully. She already knew from the second test that Hyuuga Shiro was vulnerable to illusions. So long as she didn't have to fight Uchiha Akaro, she should be okay.

Self-confidence, tentative check.

There was only one thing left. She hurried up the back stairs to Naruto's one-room apartment and knocked on his door. "Kid? If you're in there, the third test starts in half an hour. I can get you into the family seats if you want to watch."

The door slammed open, revealing a stunned Naruto. "Really? Family seats?"

There was something about the way he emphasized that one word... oh. Oh, shit. Now what?

"Yes. Family seats." Yukiko shifted her feet, uncomfortable with the kid's measuring, narrow-eyed stare. He seemed like he expected her to take back the implication, to push him away. She wasn't certain how to reassure him. "...I'd rather have you than my uncle, or even my cousins."

"That's just 'cause they're not ninja," Naruto said, looking unconvinced.

Well, it was true that non-shinobi didn't really appreciate the skill involved in tournament fights, but that wasn't the real reason she'd prefer having the kid there as her family. Yukiko jammed her hands into her pockets, fingering her tools for reassurance. "Look, kid... Naruto... I'd want you there even if you didn't want to be a ninja. You know how a team can be like a family, even though they're not related by blood?"

He nodded warily.

"Well, my old team was like that. And now you're like that for me," Yukiko said quickly, rushing to get the words out. She looked down, not wanting to see Naruto's face if he still didn't believe her.

Several seconds passed in silence, and then a small body hurtled forward and wrapped its arms around her waist. "I've never had a family," Naruto whispered.

Yukiko found her arms creeping around his shoulders, and she squeezed him gently. "Well, now you do." Somehow it was easier to say this time.

"So, so, you're like my big sister, Yukiko-san?"

Huh. Yukiko turned it over in her head, testing the concept. Big sister. She liked it. "Yeah, kid, I'll be your big sister if you want."

"Yeah!" Naruto let go and cocked his head, face scrunched up in thought. "Yukiko-neesan. Yukiko-neechan." He grinned suddenly, lighting up like sunlight bursting through clouds. "Hey, hey, Yukiko-neechan, let's go! You don't want to be late for the test. And I want to watch you kick people's butts!"

A small orange whirlwind latched onto Yukiko's hand and dragged her down the stairs. She couldn't stop a smile from spread over her face as Naruto danced and tugged her through the streets of Konoha. The kid wanted to be part of her family. He wanted to be her little brother.

Self-confidence, check. Today, Yukiko could take on the world.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

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