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Iruka twitches in his seat, doing his best to keep from bouncing his knee too much, but not really succeeding if the way his deskmate glares at him is any indication. He isn’t actually sure what her name is, she’s from one of the other classes but all the newly graduated genin have been pulled into one classroom for team assignments, so Iruka is surrounded by people he only knows by sight.
Yoshino-sensei stands at the front of the room, completely ignoring the small cluster of jounin (the ones who have chosen to reveal themselves) behind her, reading names off from the file in her hand. “Team Six will be made up of Hyuuga Noa, Nara Hifume, and Mori Tsubaki! Team Eight will be made up of Inuzuka Kegawa, Kazama Mitsuko, and Sakeme Konbu!”
Every time she calls a team, a jounin either detaches themselves from the group or materializes from seemingly nowhere and leads the new team from the classroom. Iruka fidgets more and wonders if he’d be able to find the hiding jounin with the chakra sonar technique his mom is teaching him. He still needs to focus really hard to use it though, and it would be really embarrassing if he misses his name being called because of it.
“Team Nine will be made up of Uchiha Itsuki, Sakeme Arame, and Sarutobi Hikaru.”
The room is slowly emptying and Iruka can’t help but look around and try to guess which of the dozen or so remaining genin would be his teammates.
“Team Eleven will be made up of Umino Iruka and Uzuki Yugao, please remain seated for now.”
For a second Iruka blinks, unsure if he’s heard right. Two isn’t enough for a team and none of the three remaining jounin so much as twitched.
Yoshino-sensei swiftly and efficiently calls out the last three teams and sends them on their way with their new jounin-sensei before she turns to Iruka and the small, purple-haired girl in the second row; the only two genin left. Iruka only knows her by sight, but she must be Uzuki Yugao. “Come on up here, Iruka.” Yoshino-sensei beckons and Iruka obeys without hesitation. If the past year and a half have taught him anything it’s that Yoshino-sensei is scary .
“Your jounin-sensei is on her way.” Yoshino-sensei reassures them as soon as Iruka slides into the seat next to his new teammate. “She had to fetch the third member of your team and that might have taken a bit more time than planned.”
She looks mildly annoyed, but also a little bit like she thinks it's funny. Which is kind of weird to see, because she’s never thought any of Iruka’s pranks are funny. Usually, she yells when someone is late.
As if summoned, there is a thump in the hallway and the door slides open. “Sorry we’re late! Shisui-kun decided it was a good day for hide and seek, y’know?”
The protest of “I did not!” goes mostly ignored as Iruka whirls around, his eyes wide.
“Kushina-hime!”
“Hey, Iruka-kun!” she grins widely at him and flashes a double thumbs-up. “And that’s Kushina-sensei to you!”
Naruto, securely strapped into his usual harness on Kushina-sensei’s back, grins and waves at everyone. Iruka waves back, feeling a little bit like he’s stepped into a dream.
A boy, taller than Iruka, squeezes past Kushina-sensei and into the classroom. “Hi!” he grins and waves, mirroring Naruto.
It’s Uchiha Shisui. He’d started in the same class as Iruka, but graduated early after only a year and is already famous as “Shunshin no Shisui.” Iruka has seen him around the village, wearing a chūnin vest as he leaves for missions outside the village or trains with Uchiha Mikoto. He has a tantō on his back in much the same way that Kushina-sensei has a toddler.
“They’re all yours,” Yoshino-sensei says, cheerful in a way that makes Iruka nervous as she gathers up her papers and heads for the door. “Try not to break them.”
Kushina-sensei laughs and Naruto joins her, enjoying his mother’s glee even if he doesn’t understand why they’re laughing. “I’m sure they’ll be fine!”
The door closes behind Yoshino-sensei and Kushina-sensei turns her bright smile on Iruka and Yugaō. Her teeth seem sharper than usual. “Great! How about we go somewhere more comfortable to talk, y’know!” She grabs Iruka’s shoulder. “Hold on!” and then she shunshins right out of the classroom.
Iruka’s ridden along when his parents flicker before, but he usually has more warning and he staggers when they land, almost tripping over the tatami before he regains his bearings. Before his head stops spinning, Shisui appears with Yugao on the other side of the room.
It’s Kushina-sensei and Minato-sama’s living room, Iruka realizes. Not the one in the fancy Hokage house where Minato-sama officially lives, but the one in Kushina-sensei’s apartment in Tidepool Town, the district in Old Village where most of the Uzushio refugees settled. Iruka lives one floor up with his parents.
“Everyone sit down!” Kushina-sensei says cheerfully, bustling over to the kitchen to fetch a bowl of berries which she sets on the table as the three of them remove their shoes. She unstraps Naruto from her back and sets him on the ground. “Watch him please, Kakashi.”
There’s a moment of silence that Kushina-sensei seems to take as an agreement because she ducks back into the kitchen and comes out with a tea tray this time. “Come sit! Come sit!” She dances around Naruto as he toddles out into the living room, making straight for his toy basket.
Iruka, used to her speaking to thin air, hurries to seat himself at the table, making sure to claim his favorite cushion. Kushina-sensei winks at him and he flushes, caught. Shisui sits beside him and Yugao slowly sits opposite them, peering out at them from behind her hair.
Kushina-sensei serves everyone tea and makes sure they each have a heaping bowl of berries before she sits back and speaks. Iruka, who was too nervous to eat much breakfast, does his best to not scarf his berries.
“Today we’re just going to talk, get to know each other a bit, y’know.” She grins at them, trickster-sharp. “Tomorrow is when the fun begins. Now!” She chirps as if she hadn’t just kind of threatened them. “I know Iruka and Shisui, and they know me, but none of you know each other so we need to fix that, y’know!” She looks around the table, much more serious.
“We’re a team now. This won’t be the only team you’ll be on, and maybe not even the first team you’ve been on,” She gives Shisui a significant look. “But this is the team you’re on now and will be for at least another year. So we need to at least do introductions!”
“I’ll start! I’m Uzumaki Kushina, jounin. I live here in Tidepool Town,” she gestures to the apartment, which is decorated more in the style of Uzushio than Konoha, with carvings and wall-hangings everywhere. The abstract, spiraling motifs and symbols are more familiar to Iruka than the more florally-based Konoha decorations he’s seen when he visits his classmates or that hang on the walls of the school. He’s sitting across from the largest wall-hanging, which he knows tells Kushina-sensei’s family history, even if he can’t read all of it yet. “I’ve been mostly on reserve duty, but now that Naruto-chan is old enough I can teach you!”
She beams at them and waves at the blond toddler concentrating very hard on building a block-tower in the living room. “That’s Naruto-chan! He’ll come with us to training and on D-Ranks sometimes and sometimes he’ll stay with my husband or Kakashi-kun. That’s Kakashi.” She waits pointedly for a moment before there’s an audible sigh and an ANBU appears in the center of the living room, a few steps away from Naruto. “He’s Naruto and I’s bodyguard, so he’ll be around a lot too.”
Iruka has never actually seen Kakashi-san before in person, though Kushina-sensei talks to him all the time and he has met Minato-sama’s other students a time or two. It’s a bit startling, having an ANBU just standing there.
Naruto looks up and immediately scrambles to his feet, knocking over his block tower as he clumsily hurls himself to latch onto the ANBU’s legs. “Puppies!” He smiles sunnily up at the masked shinobi. “Pease ‘Kashi, puppies!”
Kakashi-san sighs again behind the mask and slowly puts his hands together. “Summoning jutsu.”
A small pug appears in a puff of smoke, only having time to look around and say “really, Boss” in a very grouchy voice before Naruto squeals in delight and plops himself down and holds out his hands.
“Pakkun come!” He opens and closes his chubby fingers as quickly as he can. “Come!”
The pug heaves itself to its feet. “The things I do for you, Boss.” and walks over to plop down in the toddler’s lap. Naruto squeals again and begins petting the dog, very deliberately and gently.
Kushina-sensei laughs, softer than almost any sound she’s made so far today, and thumps on the table. “Anyway, I like ramen and seals and taijutsu.” She turns to Iruka. “You next Iruka-kun, and be sure to say your favorite food, Kakashi-kun’s going to help me cook dinner for all of you tomorrow evening if you pass the test!”
Kakashi-san’s soft and tired “Kushina-san!” is almost drowned out by Iruka’s confusion.
“Test?”
It’s Yugao who asks, her uncertainty disappearing as she leans forward. “What test?”
Kushina-sensei grins at them again and this time it is all teeth. Like a shark. Like a fox. “My test. You graduated from the Academy, but now I get to test you.”
Iruka’s stomach lurches and Kushina-sensei must take pity on them because she leans forward and puts a hand each on Iruka and Yugao’s head. “I have complete confidence in you, y’know!”
Iruka smiles back, stomach settling. Tomorrow, he'll be a genin for real.