Game On! 4.0

Chapter 3: Shinobi Of The Leaf

"Aren't you cutting it a bit short?" the chuunin on duty, Kamizuki Izumo teased as a few silhouettes arrived at the front gate leisurely
"It's part of the test." the tall gray-haired jounin commented with an eye-smile
"I've talked him out of being three hours late." the smaller white-haired girl sighed by his side
"So how late are you?" the second chuunin guarding the gate, Hagane Kotetsu, wondered
A shrug "About one hour." the dark-haired teenager was the one to answer "But we still have to drop by the Hokage Tower to get their files."
"Bah, what files, you already know your teams." Kotetsu laughed "Remember I was there when you played that poker game to decide which jounin got who."

"I'm still sure you cheated..." Ren mumbled, eyeing darkly Kakashi "I've just yet to find out how..."
"Please Ren, if you don't cheat you haven't even tried." his Anbu partner laughed "And I know you cheat just as much as I do, you're just a sore loser because I got the better of you."
"Still, I can't believe there's been nine early graduate this year." Kotetsu mused
"Well you know how it went..." Yagami sighed "Kiba, Naruto and Sasuke are always training together, so there wasn't a good reason to hold them back one more year when they've already met the minimal age requirement."
"Then Ayame-chan let drop before Ino how much Sasuke admired Yagami's skills as a kunoichi, and that was enough for the girl to push Shikamaru and poor Chouji to take the exam early." Ren smiled evilly "I'm so proud of my imouto, she's grown tremendously!"
"I still maintain that Hokage-sama was high the day he let you apprentice her..." Kakashi mumbled "She used to be a decent girl, now she's a manipulative demon. The Log protects us from from motivated Naras..." the Hatake wasn't the only one to shudder at this affirmation, while Ren eyed them with an innocent expression all knew to be fake

"And for the last three?"
"Yagami has been dragging Hinata-chan to the pups' training lately. The girl is actually rather good once she forgets all the inferiority complex her clan has hammered into her." Kakashi admitted "I wouldn't have minded having her as a genin either but the council told us it was three kids max, chuunin included." he explained, grumbling a bit at how unfair he felt it was
"Sakura is Ino's childhood friend, and apparently the two are competing for Sasuke's attention, so once Ino decided to apply for early graduation, she did too." Ren added "Still, she's got a good potential hidden under those fan-girl traits to manage to be ready early as a civilian, I'm sure Ayame will show her how a good kunoichi act."
"That or traumatize her..." Izumo mumbled with a shudder
"And the Aburame heir..." Kakashi shrugged "I'm not too sure, but apparently he thought all clan heirs had to try for early graduation since all the other were registering themselves for it, so he did too..."

A few moments later, the trio was leisurely entering a half empty class-room "Team seven! chibi-blond, chibi-dark, with us!"
"You promised you wouldn't call us like that once we earned our hitai-ate!" Naruto protested as he closed the scroll he'd been reading
"Of course he lied..." Sasuke sighed, clearly having expected it "It's nearly pathological with that man."
"Team eight! Pup, Aya-chan, pink-hair with me." Ren completed just as relaxed as Kakashi, that didn't even bother answering to the young Uchiha's accusation
"Aren't team induction supposed to be done... with your team?" Kiba mumbled as the two teams were steered together toward the outskirt of the town
"Well normally there's supposed to be a second test that flush out about 60 percent of the new genin and send them back to the academy." Ren was the one to explain "But since we know pretty much all of you it's not really needed so we already told hokage-sama we'd be keeping you, since we'll be working together closely."
"Er..." Sakura raised her hand hesitantly "Not that I'm not thankful, but well... You don't know me?"

¤.¤.¤

"We've been spying on you all whenever we were in town for the past three months." Yagami was the one to correct
"Eh? But I never saw anything?" the startled pink-haired protested
Kiba snorted "If Yami-chan doesn't want to be seen, she could be standing right beside you and you wouldn't realize."
"What, but... you're so young?"
"I'm a chuunin." the white-haired girl answered
"And the only reason she's not a jounin is that the minimal age to be promoted has been changed after..." Kiba trailed on awkwardly
"After my brother." Sasuke completed with a sigh, not begrudging the other his slip - Kiba and Naruto did tend to share the foot-in-mouth disease "The Nara clan leader gave the hokage a file quite convincing about how promoting shinobi too young led to some mental fragility that could become detrimental in the long term." he clinically explained