Chapter 4

After Naruto woke up, the rest of the day just reminded him of why he had spent so much time alone. In the late afternoon sun he sat on the street of the Hidden Leaf Village, watching children play and adults shop. Sometimes he would go out to greet them but they would always recoil in what he recognized as fear.

When he approached the children to ask them what they were playing, they ran away as they screamed for their parents. When Naruto offered to help carry or even buy groceries for some of the adults of Konoha they told him to get lost. Today when he offered to help an old woman carry her bags she slapped him across the face, a gesture he was rather familiar with. While he was normally confused by this and chalked it up to the rumor of poor grades when he was a child, Naruto fully understood now.

What Kakashi-sensei said today made sense. He thought. Somehow, the rest of the leaf village knows I have the monster or whatever inside me. The rest of the village is mean to me and shuns me no matter how good my grades are. I mean, I became a tokubetsu jonin and they act like I’m a murderer. Kakashi…how did they find out? What…what even is this thing?

“Naruto,” a familiar voice said.

Naruto turned around to be greeted by four people. Kakashi, Sakura, Sasuke and Hinata stood beside him as they watched him sit on the sidewalk. Sakura looked at him indignantly, Sasuke looked like he couldn’t care less what was going on, Hinata looked too afraid to look at Naruto and Kakashi gazed at him with concern. The newly promoted ninja stood up and scratched his head in confusion.

“What are you guys doing here?” he asked.

“Oh no,” Sakura said. “Kakashi-sensei…why don’t you just leave him here? Nobody likes him.”

“That’s not true,” Hinata said, her eyes never leaving the ground. “Some people can see Naruto for the good person he is. He offers to help people shop all the time. We should respect him.”

“Naruto,” Kakashi said. “I want you to join our team. Team 7.”

The newly promoted ninja stood up, somewhat confused.

“Huh?” Naruto asked. “Me?”

“That is your name, isn’t it?” Kakashi asked. “I thought you knew that newly promoted chunin and above usually work in teams. Your’s will be ours.”

“Yeah but…” Naruto said before hanging his head. “Why would you want a ninja as bad as me on your team?”

“Bad is not the word to describe you,” he replied. “Nowhere close. By all accounts, you’re an above average chunin. Just because you didn’t meet the high expectations you set for yourself doesn’t mean you have nothing to offer the village.”

The village… Naruto thought.

He began to remember that many of the high ranking members of the Hidden Leaf demanded he never be on a ninja team. Iruka was one of those. His excuse had always been the lack of chakra Naruto possessed but even as the ninja made up for that with better chakra control, his former academy teacher was against it.

Was…? Naruto thought. Was it because he knew of the demon inside me? I thought…I thought almost no one else knew of that except me? Were they afraid of me going onto the battlefield and…and losing control? But how could Iruka know? How could anyone know?

“Besides, you’ve been on teams before,” Kakashi said. “As a genin you went with other genin to conduct missions quite a bit.”

“Yeah,” Naruto groaned with a dull glare. “I went potato farming and looked for lost pets as a genin. D rank missions or C if I was lucky. Not the same as real missions.”

“Well as a chunin you’ll get plenty of B rank missions and maybe an A rank mission if you’re feeling up for the challenge,” his academy teacher said.

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Naruto felt a shot of hope course through him.

“R-Really, Kakashi-sensei?” he asked. “Really…A-rank missions?”

“Yes,” he answered. “And more challenging missions than the average ninja your age since you’re a tokubetsu jonin.”

“Yeah!” Naruto shouted, punching his fists together. “Definitely! I’ll show you that I’m a true jonin already! Better yet…I’ll show you I’m stronger than a jonin!”

“Oh, Naruto,” Sakura said with a roll of her eyes. “You’re so weak as it is…what…you think you’re stronger than Kakashi is?”

Sasuke groaned in exasperation.

“How arrogant,” Sasuke said. “To think you’re above a jonin’s rank when you barely qualify as one yourself.”

“Yeah well-!” Naruto said.

He raised his fist as he readied to give Sasuke the dressing down of a lifetime before his arms lost all strength.

“Wait!” Naruto yelled as he pointed at Sasuke. “Why am I on the same team as him?! The least he could do since showing me up is to stay away from me! If he’s higher rank then shouldn’t he be on a different team?!”

The newly promoted jonin rolled his eyes. Hinata laughed a little while Sakura seemed to groan in anger. As Sasuke averted his eyes from looking at Naruto as though disgusted with his mere appearance, Kakashi sighed deeply.

“For one,” he said. “Tokubetsu jonin are often considered equal to jonin on missions if the former excels in combat. It’s not that wide a gap. So you and Sasuke could be considered roughly the same if going on assignments requiring combat. We don’t like to put ninja, especially recently graduated ninja, with immense gaps in power and experience on the same squad. ”

“Sensei,” Sasuke said with anger.

His fists clenched in irritation. He usually didn’t show his emotions, whatever anger produced his chakra usually lying dormant beneath his calm expression. Sasuke looked Kakashi out of the corner of his eye with a quiet rage.

“Please don’t put me on the same level of this brat in front of me,” Sasuke said. “If I really am a jonin then I shouldn’t have to waste my time with his dawdling, weak self.”

Kakashi chuckled to himself.

“The reason for this is two-fold,” he said. “Statistically speaking, ninja of relatively the same age range work better together than those of a wider gap of years. So it’d be unwise to stick you on a team where you wouldn’t fit in.”

Sasuke groaned in irritation again.

“And the second is that you have to realize how rare it is for a ninja to just skip two ranks ahead after one test,” Kakashi said. “This means that, while on paper you might be qualified to be a jonin, you don’t have the experience most do. This sets a dangerous precedent where you’re not as used to real combat as most ninja. Even most chunin years older than you can boast more real skill in battle due to having to fight constantly.”

The ninja turned away, huffing in pure annoyance as it looked like he was almost ready to fight.

“To think I’m being dragged down by those weaker than me,” Sasuke said. “Again. Story of my life.”

“Oh,” Naruto said, smiling.

This means I’m not as bad off as I thought I was. Naruto thought. If Sasuke lacks experience then it means I can show him up on the battlefield. I just got to pick a mission where I can fight to prove I’m better than him.

As Naruto schemed about all the ways he could outshine Sasuke, he then looked to Hinata. The girl was looking down, almost afraid to speak or communicate with anyone. The girl who was so nice and friendly to him should have plenty of people who liked her but it seemed like she was almost as alone as Naruto. And if he remembered correctly, Hinata was sort of like Shikamaru in that she didn’t bother putting much effort into her ninja training.

“Hey,” Naruto said. “Kakashi-sensei…why is Hinata on this team?”

She looked up at Naruto mentioning her name before blushing and then turning away. Sakura leered at Hinata with a certain suspicion as she did this. Kakashi chuckled a little.

“Hinata is a Huyga,” he said. “Most of her clan at this age can use the Gentle Fist with some amount of proficiency. While Hinata’s use of this technique is average, even average use of it means they can normally win any battle involving hand to hand combat. So…she’s shown herself to be a tokubetsu jonin with the specialty of taijutsu.”

“Oh,” Naruto said. “Good for you Hinata!”

The girl smiled, finally looking directly at him for what felt like the first time.

“Thanks Naruto,” she said. “But…I’m not really as good as you or the rest of our team. I was just born with the Byakugan. I’m nothing special since my whole clan can do it. But Naruto…”

Her smile was killing him it was so bright.

“You’re truly amazing,” Hinata said. “You earned every bit of prowess you have. To be thought of as so low and end up where you are now…I think that makes you a better ninja than all of us.”

Naruto couldn’t smile. Not out of sorrow but because something happened inside him he couldn’t explain. A smile couldn’t do justice to what he was feeling right now. Hinata had shown Naruto something that no one save maybe Jiraiya had.

Is…He thought. Is this love?