Chapter 4: The Inverted Objective
Kakashi panted lightly, the mental strain far exceeding the physical. He could feel sweat trickling down his temple. This wasn't a test anymore; it was a one-sided beatdown where he was the punching bag, and the punches were aimed squarely at his sanity.
"At this rate..." he muttered, more to himself than anyone, his visible eye scanning the disoriented forms of Sasuke and Sakura, and the infuriatingly composed Naruto. "...you're all going back to the Academy."
The words hung in the air, a threat that usually held immense weight. But for the first time, they felt hollow.
At the mention of failure, Naruto's playful, taunting smirk vanished. His expression hardened into one of cool, focused appraisal. Sakanade continued its lazy, hypnotic spin by the ring pommel, a constant, silent reminder of who was truly in control of this situation.
"Sasuke. Sakura," Naruto said, his voice dropping its flippant tone, replaced by one of quiet authority. "With me. Now."
Sasuke, finally pushing himself to his knees, shot Naruto a venomous glare. "I'm not taking orders from you, dobe-"
Naruto's head snapped towards him. His blue eyes, usually bright and mischievous, were now cold and sharp as chips of ice. It wasn't the glare of a rival; it was the glare of a captain who had just been questioned by a subordinate. It held a weight of age and experience that a twelve-year-old had no right to possess. Sasuke's retort died in his throat, the sheer intensity of the look silencing him completely. He scowled, but he didn't argue further.
Sakura, still dizzy, looked from Naruto's unnervingly serious face to Sasuke's grudging silence and wisely chose to just nod.
The two of them staggered to their feet. Kakashi saw his chance. A team meeting in the middle of his test? Not on his watch. He pushed off the ground, aiming to intercept Naruto. "You're not going anywhere-"
"Am I not?" Naruto said without looking back. He gave Sakanade a single, sharp flick of his wrist.
The already disorienting pink mist around Kakashi instantly intensified, swirling into a thick, opaque fog that smelled cloyingly sweet. His vision, already unreliable, was reduced to absolute zero. Even his Sharingan could penetrate nothing but a swirling pink void. It was like having his head stuffed into a bale of cotton candy. He was completely blind.
He stumbled to a halt, wary of a trick attack. He waited, senses on high alert, for a full ten seconds. Then, slowly, he forced the mist away with a small gust of wind.
When his vision cleared, the clearing was empty. The three of them were gone.
A few hundred yards away, in a dense thicket of trees, Naruto stopped. He let Sakanade revert to its simple wakizashi form with a soft shimmer and slid it back into his sleeve. The lingering vertigo in Sasuke and Sakura's minds finally began to fade, replaced by a throbbing headache.
"Alright," Naruto said, turning to face them, his hands stuffed back in his pockets. "Let's talk strategy."
The two of them just stared at him, their expressions a mixture of confusion, resentment, and a dawning, unwelcome sense of bewilderment.
"Strategy?" Sasuke finally spat, his pride stinging more than any physical blow. "I don't need a strategy with you. I'm getting a bell on my own. I just need to figure out that stupid jutsu of yours."
Naruto let out a short, humourless laugh. "Your own? Really? Let's recap your performance so far, shall we? Ya charged in like an idiot, fell on your face, got mad about an eye, and then fell on your face again. You're not gettin' a bell. Kakashi's a jounin. Alone, you're just an arrogant kid who can't even stand up straight in a little mist. Your precious selfishness is gonna get us all failed."
"He's right, Naruto!" Sakura interjected, rushing to Sasuke's defense. "We have to get the bells! That's the only way to pass the test! If Sasuke-kun thinks he can do it, we should let him try!"
Naruto turned his gaze to her, his expression flat. "Baka," he said, the word simple and cutting. "For someone with so much book smarts, you really don't think at all, do ya?"
Sakura flinched. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Think about it," Naruto said, his tone shifting to that of a weary teacher explaining a simple concept to a difficult class. "Three of us. Two bells. What happens to the person who doesn't get one?"
"They... get tied to the post," Sakura answered uncertainly.
"And they fail," Naruto continued. "So the test is designed from the start to make one of us fail, and pit us against each other. On top of that, he told us to come at him with the intent to kill. Do we look like we can kill him? You two can barely walk. The whole premise is a sham." He gestured vaguely between the three of them. "So, what's the point? Why set up a test where failure is guaranteed if you play by the obvious rules?"
A silence fell over the thicket. Sasuke's scowl deepened, but he was listening. Sakura's brow furrowed in concentration, the pieces clicking together in her mind like a puzzle.
"A test... with impossible rules..." she murmured. "Unless... unless the rules aren't what we think they are. It's not about the bells... is it?" She looked up at Naruto, her eyes wide with realization. "It's about seeing if we can work together. To overcome an impossible task... as a team."
Naruto gave a slight nod, a flicker of approval in his eyes. "Took ya long enough."
Hidden in the branches of a tree a short distance away, Kakashi watched the scene unfold, his single eye wide. The dead-last. The loudmouthed prankster. He had not only seen through the entire test from the very beginning, but he had also single-handedly disabled the entire squad, forced them to retreat, and was now explaining the fundamental lesson to the Uchiha prodigy and the top academic. He was leading them.
"So," Naruto said, his gaze shifting between his two stunned teammates. "Are we gonna keep tryin' to play his game and fail? Or are we gonna start playin' our own?"
____
The bell on the training ground timer rang, signaling noon.
Kakashi stood before the three memorial stones, then turned to face his students. Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura were standing before him. Not a single bell had been taken.
"Well, well," Kakashi said, his voice neutral. "Time's up. And not a single bell to show for it. I guess that means you all-"
"Actually, sensei," Naruto interrupted, holding up a bento box. "We figured you'd be hungry after all that runnin' around. And since we're a team, we thought we should all eat together."
Sasuke and Sakura stood beside him, not eating, but not tied to a post either. They had spent the last hour working on a coordinated plan that, while ultimately failing to get a bell, had forced Kakashi to take them seriously as a single unit.
Kakashi looked at the three of them, then at the two bento boxes he had set out. He looked back at their unified front. A slow smile spread beneath his mask.
"You pass."
Sasuke looked surprised, Sakura looked relieved, and Naruto just looked unsurprised.
Later, as they all sat eating (even Sasuke grudgingly accepted a rice ball from Naruto), Kakashi looked at the strange blonde kid who had turned his world upside down for three hours straight.
"Naruto," he said, his voice genuinely curious. "When did you figure it out? The true meaning of the test."
Naruto paused, a piece of tempura halfway to his mouth. He popped it in, chewed thoughtfully for a moment, and then swallowed. He looked at Kakashi with that same, unnervingly calm and perceptive gaze.
"When?" he asked, as if the question was mildly interesting but ultimately trivial. "Oh, that." He shrugged. "When you were still in your mother's womb."
Kakashi Hatake, jounin, former ANBU captain, wielder of the Sharingan, simply stared, his mind completely blank. He had more questions about Naruto Uzumaki now than he had before the test had ever begun.