Kakashi waited for a few moments after escaping the explosion, but no new attack came for the moment.
He knew he had given them time, but clearly they didn't need it for planning, so rather than wait, he decided to go on the offensive and see how they would react.
He considered for a moment whether or not he should put away his book, but decided that it wasn't worth it... and he was at a very good point, so he could read just a little more before putting it down.
Just a bit more wouldn't hurt.
Even with one eye, and even while keeping it mostly on his reading material, he was still able to find a few traces of his little students.
They had clearly not been sitting still all morning; all around, there were signs of them moving about, which did make it slightly more difficult.
But while it might work on a Chūnin, it didn't work on him; he could see which tracks were the freshest.
And so he started to slowly make his way into the forest.
He moved with a practiced ease, a natural rhythm that was as much a part of him as breathing. The forest was a second home, and each rustle of leaves, each snapped twig, told a story. To anyone else, it would have been a cacophony of noise, but to him, it was a symphony of information.
The fresh scuff marks on a patch of moss meant someone had recently passed. The faint disturbance of a spider's web in a thicket of bushes indicated another path. They were clever, spreading their tracks, trying to muddy the trail. But they were Genin, and he was Kakashi Hatake.
He was about to round a large oak tree when a shuriken whizzed past his ear, close enough to part the strands of his silver hair. He didn't flinch, didn't even look up from his book, simply tilting his head slightly to the side as it embedded itself in the trunk behind him.
A classic distraction. Amateur.
He continued forward, only for a kunai to come sailing from a different angle. This one was aimed at his legs. With a sigh, he sidestepped, letting it thud into the ground. Annoying, but still predictable. They were trying to herd him, to funnel him towards a predetermined kill zone.
Despite knowing this, he allowed it, because they were at the very least putting in a lot of effort, and as their teacher, he had to respect that, and crush them ruthlessly.
To show them just how much they still had to learn.
After all, he knew both Naruto and Sasuke could be reckless, and he needed to remind them they were far from their goals and should obediently follow his teachings.
And Sakura? She was no better; she needed a wakeup call as well, to make her put more effort into her training.
The attack came from the front as well, a volley of shuriken, forcing him to jump back, only to realize he had just jumped right into an attack from the back, where a small team of Sasuke and Naruto were waiting.
"Fire Style: Fireball Jutsu!" a clone of Naruto shouted, a massive fireball erupting from his mouth.
That caught him by surprise, because Naruto shouldn't know any ninjutsu like that, which meant it wasn't one of Naruto's shadow clones at all, but one of Sasuke's!
For a moment, he dismissed the Naruto clone as a threat and instead focused on Sasuke's clone, since he was aware the Uchiha knew plenty of ninjutsu, enough to be troublesome.
Yet, that one moment was enough for the Sasuke clone to reveal it wasn't a disguised Naruto clone, but another Sasuke clone. "Wind Style: Great Breakthrough!"
Wind and fire collided, and the wind fed the flames, making the two C-rank ninjutsu gain the power of a B-rank attack, more than enough to threaten even a Jōnin!
Forcing Kakashi to rely on the Substitution Technique to escape harm. He vanished, leaving behind a log, though a log that was now on fire.
The attack had been coordinated, and if it had been real, he might have been seriously injured. He found himself impressed by the tactic.
It fully took advantage of how he would react to different team members; clearly, Sasuke knew what he was doing.
He appeared in a tree a safe distance away, a small smile playing on his lips. He had underestimated them. He had thought they would be too busy fighting amongst themselves to work together, but they had proven him wrong.
Still, he had a few tricks up his sleeve.
"Alright, you got me," he said, raising his hands in surrender. "You guys are pretty good."
"Great Uzumaki Barrage!" the roar of a dozen clones of Naruto shouted as one as they came charging him from all around.
Their taijutsu was poor, and they limited one another, but given the presence of the two Sasuke clones with their ninjutsu, they did put Kakashi in a tough spot.
He had to use the Body Flicker Technique just to escape, and that was a sure sign that the attack had been well executed.
As he reappeared, he saw that the clones were starting to gather again, clearly preparing for another coordinated attack.
He was starting to get a bit annoyed. He had expected to be able to deal with them easily, but they were proving to be more of a challenge than he had anticipated.
'No matter,' he thought. 'This is a good thing.'
Given that he had to accept this team, them being strong was only going to make this easier for him.
Still, he had to show them that their sensei wasn't someone to be underestimated.
With a sigh, he finally closed his book and put it back into his pocket. 'Time to get a little serious.'
-----
Hidden within the dense foliage of a different part of the training ground, Sakura crouched, her heart pounding against her ribs like a trapped bird. This was the part she hated most. The waiting. The inaction. Sasuke-kun and Naruto were out there, fighting, creating a glorious, chaotic symphony of jutsu and taijutsu, and she was just... waiting.
Sasuke-kun's words echoed in her mind. Your job is the most important of all... you have to be the one to take it.
Her gaze dropped to her hands, which she had clenched so tightly her knuckles were white. She wasn't like them. She didn't have a kekkei genkai. She didn't have a monster sealed inside her. All she had was perfect scores on the written tests and an encyclopedic knowledge of... well, textbook theories. Useless, now, in the face of a real Jōnin.
A tremor ran through the ground. A distant boom echoed through the trees. She was amazed at just how strong Sasuke was, and shocked that Naruto wasn't entirely useless.
It hurt to know that she was the one holding back the team, the weakest link.
So she had to prove that he was right to trust her, so she had to play her part well.
"What do we have here?" came the bored voice of Kakashi, shocking her out of her thoughts.
"AH!" she screamed in fright. "Kakashi-sensei!?"
The silver-haired Jōnin looked at the kunoichi before him, and scanned the surroundings. She was alone...
He couldn't help but sigh at that. He had high hopes for this team, but clearly, he had overestimated them.
Naruto and Sasuke were working together, and clearly Sasuke had made the plan, but it seemed that since he saw Sakura as useless, he had abandoned her.
"Why are you here on your own?" he asked, despite having already guessed the truth in his heart.
Sakura looked down, hiding her face from the sharp eye of Kakashi. "Well... there were only two bells, and Sasuke said I was useless, that I would only get in the way," she whispered, nearly in tears.
Hearing her words, Kakashi sighed again. It was indeed as he had expected.
He couldn't help but feel bad for the poor girl; being told something like that by her crush must have been devastating.
He shook his head. "Alright, I won't be too hard on you. Just head back to the training ground and wait for the test to end."
"No," Sakura whispered.
"What was that?" Kakashi asked, not expecting her to refuse.
"I said no," Sakura said, her voice stronger this time as she looked up, her eyes filled with tears and fear, but also a hint of determination. "I won't give up, I want to be on Sasuke-kun's team!"
She slowly stood up and pulled out a kunai, though her entire body was shaking, as if a light breeze would knock her over.
She looked pitiful.
Kakashi just shook his head, slightly impressed by the determination, but the reason behind it was worthless. "Very well," he sighed, starting to mold some chakra to put her in a genjutsu, hoping to maybe wake her up from her fangirl nature.
Yet, just before he cast the genjutsu, a couple of powerful explosions through the forest surprised him. 'What in the world is happening out there?' he couldn't help but think.
Yet, the moment his attention shifted away from the crying, shaking Sakura, she stopped shaking completely, and the kunai she could barely hold before suddenly flew through the air with precision.
Kakashi realized he had been set up, but it was too late. He jumped backward, but the kunai cut the string holding the bells, causing him to leave them behind as he dodged.
The moment the bells fell, Sakura didn't hesitate to leap forward, her earlier pitiful state vanishing as she moved with a speed she shouldn't have had.
She wasn't going for Kakashi, but for the bells.
The moment her hands touched them, she didn't stop moving, instead jumping away and deeper into the forest with her prize.
Kakashi watched her go, his visible eye wide with surprise, though he quickly narrowed it again, impressed by the plan they had laid out for him.
It was a good plan. They had used Sakura's fangirl nature as a perfect cover for her being a decoy. They knew he'd underestimate her, that he'd see her crying and not as a threat.
All of this was because they had used their real weakness, Sakura's weakness, as a weapon against him.
To make matters worse, the constant attacks by the clones in the forest had kept him busy enough that he had become careless.
So, he had been fooled, and he had been fooled well.
While he might not be able to fail them due to Naruto, he had been fully prepared to fail them due to them not working as a team.
But this?
This was textbook teamwork.
They used their strengths and weaknesses to create a perfect plan to achieve their goal.
Something like this was impressive to see in teams that had been together for a long time, but they had only been a team for a day and a half.
This was something he had to praise them for.
No matter what came next, he decided then and there, that he would pass them.
(End of chapter)
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