Yukiko slipped carefully into her apartment that night, not wanting to get caught by any of Naruto's traps. Oddly, the kid didn't seem to have done anything yet, and Yukiko grew increasingly nervous as she approached her bedroom. If the rest of the apartment was safe, he must have concentrated on just one room.

She eased the door open and angled her hand mirror to catch the glow of the streetlights.

Oh. No paint, no wires, no tricks. Just a blond kid in an orange jumpsuit curled up on her bed, hugging her pillow and a lightweight blue jacket.

He'd missed her. One day, and he'd missed her enough to sleep where signs of her presence would surround him. She wasn't even that kind to the kid, didn't hug him, didn't do anything special -- how lonely had he been that her fumbling efforts at being a guardian meant so much to him? How hard did he work to hide that ache behind his smiles and constant tricks?

Yukiko grabbed her pajamas, changed in the bathroom, and slipped back into the bedroom. She eased a spare pillow under Naruto's head and draped a blanket over him to keep out the night chill.

Then she dragged a few more extra blankets from her closet and camped out on the floor. It wouldn't be fair to wake the kid just to kick him out -- besides, Yukiko told herself, getting used to poor sleeping conditions was good practice for the second test.

...Oh, who was she kidding.

She just didn't have the heart to disturb him. Not when he clutched her jacket like he was drowning, the same way she'd clutched her parents' clothes when she finally cleaned out their closets for good. Not when he curled around the pillow like an uncaring kami might snatch it away from him, the same way she'd wrapped herself around Ame and Kasumi's chuunin vests after their funerals.

"Good night, kid," Yukiko whispered. "I won't leave you alone if you won't leave me."

Naruto shifted in his sleep, and she took it as an agreement.

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

The second test started at nine o'clock; Yukiko was outside the mission center at eight thirty despite Naruto's myriad attempts to delay her.

"If it's at nine, why do you have to get there early?" he'd asked. "Tell me about the first test -- I'll make you ramen! I'll make you salad! ...I'll eat salad with you!"

"If I go early, I can look around for hints about the test," she'd told him, ruffling his hair. "You want me to pass, right?"

Eventually he'd let her go, waving and grinning madly as she walked away. She wondered, now, how much of that excitement was real and how much was a way to distract himself from being lonely.

Either way, it was exhausting to be around.

Iruka and Naga were waiting for her like the day before, leaning against the side wall of the mission room. Yukiko threaded her way past the other genin teams to join them. "Good morning. Do you have any idea what the test will be?"

"A mission, obviously," Naga said, looking up from her bandaged hands. "Or something like a mission."

"That's all anyone knows," Iruka agreed.

"So we wait." Yukiko sighed and slid down the wall to sit on the floor. Her pack was full, her weapons sharp, and her trap materials ready. There was nothing else she could do to prepare.

At nine sharp, a tall man with an unfortunate bowl haircut, a ridiculous green one-piece outfit, and striped orange legwarmers dashed into the room and struck a dramatic pose. "Welcome to the second test of the chuunin exam! The fiery spirit of youth will drive you to overcome all trials, and I, Maito Gai, the Beautiful Green Beast of Konoha, will guide you along your way!"

The Leaf genin experienced a concerted moment of shame for their village. The foreign ninja merely gaped in stupefied shock.

Gai beamed, revealing unnaturally shiny white teeth, and then sobered slightly. "The second test is a simulated A-rank escort mission, with a risk of assassination attempts, bandit attacks, and encounters with missing-nin. Twenty Leaf jounin will act as your clients, while chuunin of various villages will play the roles of bandits and assassins on your journey to Kashiwa, a village three days' walking distance from Konoha. If you take longer than five days to make the journey, you'll be disqualified. Also, killing will reduce your score; we'd like to end this exam with more chuunin than when we started, not fewer!

"You yourselves will act as missing-nin; if one team encounters another, you can eliminate them or 'kill' their client. If you lose your client, disabling other teams can improve your final score." Gai resumed his beaming smile. "But it's best to see your client safely to Kashiwa and complete your mission with the passion of youth!"

There was a collective blink.

"What happens if our 'clients' actually get injured?" a boy from Hidden Grass asked.

"They're jounin! Don't worry about it," Gai said. "But if that does happen, treat them as real clients. Your mission is to get them safely to Kashiwa; that includes medical care if necessary. They'll be here soon, but don't leave until I give the sign."

Yukiko looked at her teammates to see what they thought of this. Naga seemed eager, but Iruka looked skeptical. "This is a lot more complicated than my last chuunin exam," he said. "All we had to do that time was go into the Forest of Death and bring out a scroll. We didn't even necessarily have to find the hiding places, since we could ambush other teams."

"In my last chuunin exam, we had a simulated war," Yukiko said. "They split the teams into three sides, gave us each a territory, and had us try to take out our enemies."

Iruka winced. "That sounds brutal."

"It was. But only genin were involved -- I don't understand why they're using jounin and chuunin so much this year."

Naga twitched her shoulder. "How else can you do an escort mission? Can't use real civilians, and anyone below jounin could get killed."

"That makes sense, but I don't see why they couldn't pick a different type of mission to simulate. A courier mission, for example -- you can't kill a scroll."

"Who knows?" Iruka shrugged. "In any case, the 'clients' are here."

New Leaf-nin, presumably jounin, slipped through the room and attached themselves to the genin teams. Soon nineteen of the teams had a client and were huddling together to plan strategies.

Nobody had come to Yukiko's mismatched team as they leaned against the wall. They looked at each other, and then Iruka led them over to Gai. "Excuse me, Gai-san. Our client seems to be missing."

Gai lowered his thick brows, consulted a list, and frowned. "Late again, my eternal rival! How very modern of you." He patted Iruka on the shoulder. "Don't worry. You got Hatake Kakashi himself! He'll be here sooner or later."

"Sooner would be better," Naga muttered as they walked back to their spot against the wall.

"Really? I find that later works equally well," a new voice said from behind them. "I stopped along the way to admire the flowers; they get lonely if no one does that now and then."

"Kakashi-san!" Iruka gasped, whirling.

The silver-haired jounin seemed to be smiling behind his cloth facemask; his one visible eye was crinkled upward into a fat crescent. "Yo. And you're Umino Iruka, Tonoike Naga, and Ayakawa Yukiko. Tell me, how did you cheat on the first test?"

Yukiko gulped. "Who says we cheated?"

"Unless you're all experts at traps, scouting, and genjutsu, there's no other way you could have reached such a high team score. Besides, the chuunin reported that you followed suspiciously similar paths through the woodland." Kakashi slouched against the wall. "Don't worry -- you won't be disqualified now. I'm just curious."

"Yukiko is an expert at traps and genjutsu," Iruka said slowly. "She went first, and then used an illusion to show us the way."

Kakashi blinked, then tipped his head in Yukiko's direction. "I thought I saw something around Iruka at one point, but it was too vague to be certain. Impressive."

Yukiko looked at her toes, unaccountably embarrassed. "...I'm not good at anything else," she said. "And I didn't start the real genjutsu until they were inside the field."

"Good planning, in that case."

"It was Iruka's plan. And Naga fought the guards all on her own."

Kakashi nodded again. "Good teamwork, too. You deserved your scores." He pulled a book from his pack and slouched further, looking more like a scruffy bum than a dangerous shinobi. "I have the standard supplies a civilian brings on a three-day trip, but no weapons. Remember that during this test, I'm not a ninja; you have to protect me. I won't let myself get killed, but I won't block any attacks that aren't potentially fatal." He flipped a page and started reading. "Make your plans and tell me when Gai gets around to letting us go."

On an unspoken impulse, the team moved slightly away from Kakashi. "What now?" Iruka asked quietly.

Naga's smile was a little larger than before, but still cockeyed. "You're the leader. Make a plan."

Iruka flushed. "Um. Okay. We have to travel through the forest to a village that's ordinarily three days away. We have to guard Kakashi-san from 'bandit' attacks -- which should be directed against us as well as him -- and from 'assassins' -- who'll only aim at him and will probably be a lot harder to detect. And we might be attacked by other genin."

He frowned, rubbing the scar across his nose. "Somebody will have to stay close to Kakashi-san and be ready to intercept attacks and weapons. The others will play scout and rear-guard... unless we want two people guarding Kakashi-san, in which case we'll only use a forward scout."

"That makes sense," Yukiko agreed. "Who takes which position?"

"I'll guard Kakashi," Naga said quickly. "I'm no good as a scout, and I can block attacks faster than you two."

Yukiko nodded. "You should be forward scout, Iruka. You can spot traps and enemies, and you have a better chance of fighting them than I do."

Iruka frowned. "That leaves you as rear-guard, Yukiko. Are you sure that's a good idea?"

"Skip the rear-guard and have her guard Kakashi with me," Naga said, twitching her shoulder. "She can keep a genjutsu up to confuse people and warn me if I need to move."

Iruka turned to Yukiko. "Can you hold a genjutsu all day?"

Yukiko shrugged. "That depends on the genjutsu. If you want something complicated, of course not. If you just want a small suggestion to overlook Kakashi-san, I can probably do that. But even that eats chakra over a whole day -- if I do that, I won't be able to split the watch at night."

"...And you'd already be tired if we get attacked." Iruka sank into thought, rubbing his scar again. "Okay. This is the plan: I'll travel in front as scout. If I find trouble, I'll signal -- what bird call will work best?"

"Crow," Naga said. "They're common, won't seem suspicious, and are easy to hear. Two caws, wait a beat, then a third."

"Okay. Meanwhile, you two stay with Kakashi-san. If I signal, prepare for a fight and move him to a defensible position. Yukiko, start a genjutsu to hide him, and hide yourself somewhere with a clear line of sight to hit any attackers. Naga, stay in the open to draw enemy fire. I'll move back to explain what I found or help fight."

Iruka looked at his teammates. "Does that make sense?"

They nodded.

"Then let's wait with Kakashi-san until it's time to leave."

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

At nine thirty, Gai rounded up the teams and led them out through the massive gates of Konoha to the forest's edge. "Remember, your goal is the village of Kashiwa, three days' journey east. Your clients will now take you to your starting points -- we're separating you so the fiery passion of competition will be tempered by the caution of experience before you encounter each other. May the spirit of youth lead you to success!" He beamed. The genin responded with blank stares.

"Move out. Don't enter the forest until ten sharp, and I'll see you in Kashiwa!"

As Gai charged into the forest, the twenty teams scattered, heading north and south along the edge of the trees. Yukiko looked at Kakashi. "Where do we go?"

"Nowhere. Somebody has to be in the middle, and that's us." His eye crinkled in a smile. "On the bright side, you don't have to tire yourselves by walking before the test. On the less bright side, you have potential enemies on both sides and they'll all be heading toward you since you're on the direct route to Kashiwa."

Naga shot him a sour look. "That's very reassuring."

"My pleasure. Don't expect any more advice, though; from here on I'm just a civilian on my way home. But I was a witness to a crime near my last job so I may be a target for assassins." Kakashi smiled again. "Don't let me get killed; it would be inconvenient to track you to see how you compensate for that."

The three genin exchanged glances. "We'll do our best, Kakashi-san," Iruka said.

"Good. So... do you play cards?"

Nobody had any better ideas for passing the time, so Yukiko, Iruka, and Naga sat down to play poker for piles of twigs. Kakashi, they discovered, was a card sharp, and disturbingly skilled at calling a bluff. Iruka wasn't half bad either, particularly since his reaction to every hand, no matter how good or bad, was a slight blush; it was, as Kakashi remarked, difficult to look for a reliable tell when a person was being so amusingly distracting.

Yukiko still hadn't figured out if Iruka did that on purpose.

She and Naga quickly lost their store of twigs and watched as Kakashi whittled away Iruka's winnings, keeping up a running commentary and managing to fluster the boy enough that he stopped paying attention to whether Kakashi was bluffing or not.

"For a teacher, Iruka's easy to embarrass," Naga said, leaning over to whisper in Yukiko's ear. "My class would've walked all over him."

Yukiko shrugged. "Actually, he does really well with Naruto -- oh, you've never met Naruto, have you? He's the kid who left the paint in my office the day I met you. Anyway, Iruka's good at keeping him under control. I think he just doesn't know how to deal with adults."

"Or sex," Naga added, lips twitching into a smirk. "Kakashi just has to wink and he's red as a tomato!" She snickered. "Chains were definitely too kinky for him."

She was not going to have this conversation with a thirteen year old girl. "Oh, look at the time!" Yukiko said loudly, standing and dusting off her pants. "It's a minute past ten; we're running behind."

Kakashi grumbled, but the genin hustled him into the forest, loosened their weapons, and fell into their prearranged spots: Yukiko to his left, Naga to his right, and Iruka up ahead, ranging from only a few feet away to out of sight in the distance.

The forest was a wild tangle of fast-growing maples, spindly birches, brambles, berries, creepers, and other opportunistic plants that had sprouted after the previous decade's wars had finally ended and training grounds became more important than a barren no-man's land surrounding the village. Sunlight filtered through the low canopy, green and dappled on the carpet of fallen leaves and ashy soil. Insects hummed in the fresh spring air, and wildlife rustled through the undergrowth in the distance.

There were no paths. There were never any paths leading to or from a hidden village -- ninja collected mission requests in neighboring towns, and any visitors were intercepted and escorted in via meandering routes to avoid the traps and deadfalls surrounding the village perimeter. It wouldn't do for outsiders to start taking shinobi for granted, or for powerful men to decide the world would be simpler if they wiped out the ninja and hired samurai and thugs instead.

Konoha, like the other hidden villages, maintained a careful aura of mystique and inaccessibility. If you couldn't find the village, you couldn't attack the village. And the ninja could clearly find you any time they wanted. Best not to make them angry.

Within an hour, the small team passed from the newly reclaimed forest into the old growth regions. Here the trees changed to oaks and elms, towering giants that spread their limbs out over yards of ground, their leaves casting deep shade to choke the life out of any upstart seedlings. The undergrowth thinned, only ferns and a few evergreen shrubs eking out enough light to survive in the spaces between the giant trees. Deprived of their easy cover and low-lying food, the animals vanished and an eerie silence pervaded the air.

Normally Leaf-nin would have taken to the trees, using the branches to gain cover and high ground over any potential enemies, but the team was escorting a 'civilian.' Never mind that Kakashi could slip through the branches like a ghost, leaving them all behind; he was pretending to be an ordinary man, earthbound, and Yukiko and Naga remained bound beside him.

Yukiko envied Iruka, who could fling himself through the air as he searched for the least obstructed route and circled around hunting for the pretend assassins and bandits they knew would be waiting.

He signaled once just past noon, the harsh calls of a crow prompting Yukiko to tug Kakashi into the shelter of a tree, disguise him, and disappear into the upper branches with a kunai clamped in her teeth and hands ready to form seals, while Naga stood loose-limbed to his side. When Iruka dropped from a tree, kodachi held ready, Yukiko nearly hurled the kunai at him before she recognized his ponytail.

"What was it?" she asked, dropping to the ground and releasing the genjutsu.

"Bandits, I think. I got them both -- they won't come after us once they wake up, right?"

"You took them out of the game; they'll head to Kashiwa to report on your skills," Kakashi said. He looked around the space under the spreading tree limbs. "Say, why don't we have lunch to celebrate?"

Iruka rubbed his nose in consternation, but agreed. They ate a brief lunch, with Iruka and Naga sitting next to Kakashi while Yukiko perched in the tree above them to keep watch. Kakashi finished first despite eating only with one hand; the other held his little orange book in front of his face.

"Are you paranoid about people seeing your mouth?" Naga asked after the fifth time he shifted the book to block her view of his face.

Kakashi blinked. "What?"

"Well, why else are you holding that book so close!"

"I haven't read this story before, and I'm sure Iruka wouldn't consider it suitable for young girls. It's all about sex, after all." His eye crinkled in a lazy smile. "If you really want, I can read it out loud..."

Naga looked at Iruka's spectacular flush and scowl, visibly considered the offer, and then twitched her shoulder. "No. Can't let you distract your guards."

"Your loss," Kakashi said, snapping the book shut and putting away his supplies. "So, when do you think we'll reach Kashiwa?"

"Sooner if we leave now," Iruka said, still scowling. "Let's go." Yukiko dropped from her branch as Iruka hurried out of sight.

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

There was no warning, just a sudden flash of reflected sunlight in midair, glimpsed from the corner of Yukiko's eye. Without thinking, she threw herself at Kakashi, knocking him to the ground as the shuriken skimmed past bare inches from her shoulder.

"I'll flush him out -- guard Kakashi-san!" she snapped at Naga, and ran up the closest tree, forming a concealment genjutsu as she went. Focus, focus, push her chakra outward... there!

The assassin was dodging through the trees, balancing on elastic branches as he whipped shuriken and kunai toward Naga and the indistinct blur of color that marked Kakashi's prone body. Staying in the trees provided cover and rendered Naga's close combat skills useless, but it left one big vulnerability.

Yukiko braced herself against the tree trunk, wrapped her legs around a branch, and wove her fingers through seven seals. "Vertigo no Jutsu."

The world wavered, spun, and dropped from beneath her, gravity pulling in all directions at once, earth and sky fragmenting in her vision until her stomach rebelled and burning liquid rose into her throat, ears ringing and popping at the rapid changes in pressure as she spun through the chaos into the welcoming void of spreading darkness...

She felt, rather than heard, the impact as the assassin lost his balance and crashed to the forest floor.

Yukiko tore her fingers apart seconds before unconsciousness could claim her, and panted with the effort not to vomit. She hated that jutsu, hated the way genjutsu strong enough to have physical effects always looped back on the caster, hated that it left her shaking and helpless, but it was a perfect weapon for this situation, when she had a teammate ready to watch her back and finish the fight.

The assassin reeled to his feet, shaking his head to clear the residual effects of the genjutsu. Drawing another handful of kunai from a holster, he ran at Naga, hurling the knives to cover his charge.

She dodged the kunai, except for the one that would have hit Kakashi -- that one she deflected with the edge of her hand. Blood trickled over her bandages as she spun and snapped a spear-hand toward the assassin's throat.

He twisted, dropping low to slide past her and reach Kakashi, but Naga swept her foot across his path, forcing the assassin into a flip.

In midair, he threw a kunai at Kakashi's gut; it sank into Naga's back instead as she dove over the jounin, tucking and rolling into a somersault and springing up off her hands to launch herself feet-first at the still-woozy assassin.

He stepped to the side and blocked, expecting to knock her off-balance and gain a second to recover, but her legs bent, boneless, cushioning the impact, and her arms shot out across the distance to wrap around his legs and jerk him to the ground.

He hesitated less than a second before drawing another kunai, but that was enough for Naga's tongue to whip forward and pin his arms to his sides and her foot to strike his jaw, dazing him again.

Naga waited, contorted, as Yukiko slowly climbed down from her tree and walked over, pulling a coil of wire from her jacket. Yukiko wrapped the assassin's ankles; then, as Naga held his own kunai to his throat, she pulled his hands behind his back and bound them too. For good measure, she sliced off part of his own shirt and gagged him. He might have accomplices, after all, and there was no point letting him call for help.

Yukiko slumped to the ground. "We forgot to call Iruka," she said absently. "He signals us with crow calls; how do we signal him?"

Naga shrugged. "More crow calls?" She raised her hands to her mouth and cawed, the raucous sound echoing out through the trees.

Behind them, Kakashi pushed himself upright and started dusting off his clothes. The assassin was glaring at Naga, sputtering around his gag.

"What do you want?" Naga said, yanking out the fabric.

He coughed and spat weakly in her direction. "Snake tongue -- I know that bloodline limit. Traitor's blood! Did you laugh while that murderer butchered my family? Did you smile when he came home with bloody hands? Did you help him kill?"

Naga, already pale, went paper-white and jammed the gag back into his mouth.

Yukiko and Kakashi exchanged puzzled looks, but it was Iruka, just returned to check on his teammates, who asked, "Naga? What was that about? You haven't killed anyone, right?"

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

AN: systemman questioned the timing of Naruto's entrance to the ninja academy, given that he managed to fail the graduation exam three times before he finally passed. I can only come up with three explanations. 1) He entered the academy early. 2) He got overconfident and tried to take the exam before he was ready. 3) Various teachers didn't want to deal with him and pushed him into taking the exams, hoping to either get rid of him or discourage him from being a ninja.

Explanation 1 seems a bit implausible, since Naruto isn't a genius and the only early graduates we know of so far were Kakashi and Itachi, both of whom are definitely exceptional. (Also, one graduated during wartime when Konoha needed extra bodies on the front lines, and the other probably had a very influential clan leaning on the Third Hokage to bend the rules.) And I doubt the people of Konoha were enthusiastic about letting the Kyuubi's vessel learn new ways to potentially kill them.

Therefore, I'm inclined to go with explanations 2 and 3, which mean that it's perfectly reasonable for Naruto not to be in the academy during this story. +grin+

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