Naruto Uchiha: the Last Sage of the Six Paths by JH17

Chapter 7: Konoha 12

Naruto's brow furrowed in thought.

"Seems Danzo kept him from cracking at all. Something isn't right here." he thought. "I'll have to find out more about this Danzo guy. Even if it takes me years." Naruto leapt off towards the library in search of answers.

TIMESKIP: 3 YEARS LATER

Naruto stood in front of the academy, resisting the urge to laugh.

"Finally, after today, I'll never have to come back to this place again."

Walking straight in through the front door, he wandered the halls to the classroom, before going up and sitting at his usual spot. As usual, he nodded to Sasuke and Shikamaru. Over the last few years, Naruto and Shikamaru had become almost friends. Not as much as he and Sasuke were, but as close to friends as he could get. To him, even if he wouldn't admit it, Sasuke was almost a brother to him. Naruto shook his head and cleared his thoughts as Iruka began greeting the class.

"Hello class, today is the day of the exam! I hope you're all ready!" He smiled proudly at everyone. "Anyways, we'll start by calling each and every one of you up individually to take the exam. No if's, and's or but's!" He smiled as he heard a few groans. "Let's begin! Hinata, please come here." Hinata nodded quietly and quickly walked towards Iruka. A dozen exams later, it was Naruto's turn to take it. He stood silently from his seat, and made his way to the front of the room. All eyes were on him, curious to see him take the exam. "Alright Naruto, lets start with the Bunshin no Jutsu(Clone Jutsu)." Naruto nodded and held a single handsign "Kage Bunshin no Jutsu." A single clone popped into existence. Iruka's eyes widened at the display "Wh-what? H-how does he know such an advanced jutsu?" he thought, shocked. Naruto, noticing this, smirked and summoned a dozen more. Iruka nearly fainted at the sight of it, while all the students watched confusedly. "O-ok N-Naruto...lets move onto something different" Iruka said as he laughed nervously. "Shuriken Jutsu?" he asked, and Naruto instantly threw a dozen shuriken outlining Iruka perfectly, dispersing the clones as he threw them. Iruka gulped and stared at Naruto. "Ah ha, ah, well, how about a jutsu of your choice now?" He spoke nervously. Naruto supressed the urge to grin widely, as he held his wrist tightly and began to form chakra in his hand. Rotating the pure chakra, he pushed more chakra into it as a blue ball of chakra formed in his hand. A perfect sphere sat, spunning in his right hand with a light whirring noise.

Iruka and many of the students' jaws dropped at the sight. "H-how...how is that possible? N-Naruto..." fumbled Iruka. Naruto turned and looked Iruka dead in the eye and spoke blankly "I taught myself." He let the chakra fade into nothing as he let the Rasengan disperse. Naruto took his headband silently and pulled it over his head, letting it hang around his neck, as he walked back up to his seat. Soon, the entire class had taken their exam, and after a few failures were "excused", Iruka began to call out the teams. "Team 1 is..." and so on and so forth until it came to Team 7. "Team 7: Uzumaki Naruto...?" he said confusedly before continuing "Uchiha Sasuke, and Haruno Sakura. Your Jonin-Sensei is Hatake Kakashi."

Sakura leapt for joy as the two boys smirked at each other. "Seems our little scheme paid off" thought Naruto. Sasuke was having similar thoughts, and soon the rest of the teams had been called and left with their jonin-senseis. This left the three new genin alone to talk until the world's latest nin arrived. "Sasuke, I won't lie, I'm surprised this plan of yours worked." Sasuke smirked as Sakura's ecstatic grin began to fade into confusion. "It's far better than the plan you had, less suspicion." Naruto nodded and Sakura looked puzzled between them. "Scheme? What scheme? What's going on here?" Naruto simply turned and looked back out the window. Sasuke sighed at his antics and began to explain "Well, Naruto and I decided that we should be on one team together. We decided that Naruto would begin to fail everything just to make sure that he'd get paired up with me. Our third member we weren't quite sure about. You do know how the process of picking members for a team is, right?"

"What? Of course I do, psh" she waved it off, "I'm the smartest in the class." "Maybe in book smarts, Sakura, but not in anything else" replied Naruto, who continued to look out the window boredly. "What could you know, you're dead la..." she said as her eyes widened in realization. "W-wait, so, the person with the lowest class grade, goes with the person with the best ninja skills and class grades?" Sasuke nodded "Now you've got it. All that's left now is for Kakashi to show up."