Naruto: God of Shinobi

Chapter 8: Before the Test

The sky was still dark when Naruto Uzumaki arrived at the training ground. The sun had not yet begun its slow climb over the trees. The stars were still out, scattered across the black canvas above like salt thrown on a dark cloth. The air was cold and damp with the particular moisture that came before dawn, the kind that settled into your clothes and stayed there until the sun burned it away.

He had chosen his spot carefully. A tree near the edge of the clearing, its trunk wide enough to hide behind and its roots raised high enough to sit against. The position gave him a view of the entire training ground. The clearing. The three wooden stakes that someone had driven into the earth years ago and never removed. The path that led back toward the village. Everything was visible from here. Nothing could approach without him seeing it first.

He sat down with his back against the trunk and arranged the boxes of food beside him. Three boxes. Two for his teammates, one for himself. He had cooked the rice the night before, had seasoned the fish and wrapped it in leaves, had packed everything with the same careful attention he now brought to every task. The food was still warm. The warmth seeped through the cardboard and into his thigh.

He closed his eyes.

He did not sleep. Sleep was not the goal. He rested his body and kept his senses alert, breathing slowly, evenly, the way he had read about in the public archive's section on meditation techniques. The lotus position was uncomfortable at first. His legs had complained. But he had practiced for twelve days and now the position felt almost natural.

The sound came from the east. Soft footsteps. Deliberate. Someone who knew how to move through the dark and was not trying to hide.

Naruto opened his eyes.

Sasuke Uchiha emerged from the treeline with the particular grace of someone who had been moving through darkness his entire life. His dark hair blended into the shadows behind him. His dark clothes made him difficult to track. Only his pale face gave him away, floating above the ground like a mask with no body attached.

Naruto did not speak. He picked up one of the boxes of food and threw it underhand toward Sasuke. The box sailed through the dark in a low arc and landed at the Uchiha's feet.

"Eat up, dude. We will have a lot of fighting to do this afternoon."

Sasuke looked down at the box. Then up at Naruto. His expression was unreadable in the darkness.

"Kakashi sensei lied." Naruto's voice was quiet, matter of fact. "It was part of the test."

He picked up the second box and held it out. Sasuke did not move to take it.

"I know you do not trust me." Naruto set the box down between them. Then he picked up the third box, opened it, and began to eat. The rice was still warm. The fish was tender and salty. He ate with the focused efficiency of someone who had learned to fuel his body without distraction.

Sasuke watched him for a long moment. Then he crouched down, opened his own box, and began to eat. He did not thank Naruto. He did not acknowledge the gesture. He simply ate, methodically and without expression, the way you performed any necessary task.

They ate in silence. The dark around them was complete. The stars watched from above. The trees stood like sentinels at the edges of the clearing. Two boys who had been enemies in the classroom shared a meal before dawn because both of them understood something that their third teammate would not understand until it was too late.

Footsteps approached from the west. These were not soft. These were the footsteps of someone who had not been trained to move quietly, someone whose sandals slapped against the ground with each step, someone who was not thinking about the sound she was making because she had never needed to.

Sakura Haruno emerged from the trees with her pink hair bright even in the darkness. She saw them eating. Her face went through several expressions in rapid succession. Shock. Disbelief. Then anger.

"What are you doing? Sensei told us not to eat breakfast!"

Naruto finished chewing. He swallowed. He looked at her with the flat, patient expression he now turned toward most things.

"So here is the thing, Sakura Haruno."

He set down his empty box and wiped his hands on his pants.

"We have two choices for you here. Either you are here to be a ninja with us. Or you are here for Sasuke."

Sakura's mouth opened.

"If you are here to be a ninja with us, take the food I cooked and eat." He gestured to the space beside him where the second box still sat, untouched, waiting. "If you are not here for that, then you can just stay like that and wait for sensei to prove."

Sakura looked at the box. She looked at Sasuke, who was still eating and had not looked up once. She looked back at Naruto.

"I am not just here for Sasuke. I want to be a ninja. I have always wanted to be a ninja. But sensei told us not to eat breakfast. He gave an order. We are supposed to follow orders. That is what ninjas do."

Naruto said nothing. He simply watched her. The silence stretched between them like a wire pulled taut.

Sakura did not take the box.

Naruto looked at Sasuke. Sasuke shrugged. A small movement. A gesture that said *I tried nothing and I am already out of ideas*.

"Fine."

Naruto picked up the second box. He opened it. He began to eat.

"If you screw this over for me, I will make you pay."

His voice was quiet. There was no threat in it. There was no anger. There was simply a statement of fact delivered in the same tone he might use to describe the weather or the time of day. Sakura felt something cold move down her spine. She did not respond.

The three of them waited. Sasuke finished his food and set the empty box aside. Naruto finished his second box and stacked the empty containers neatly beside him. Sakura sat on the ground with her arms wrapped around her knees and her stomach growling audibly every few minutes. No one spoke.

The stars faded. The sky lightened from black to deep blue to grey. The sun rose somewhere behind the trees, invisible but impossible to ignore, and the light that filtered through the canopy was pale and golden and weak.

Naruto sat in the lotus position with his hands resting on his knees and his eyes closed. His breathing was slow and even. His face was blank. He looked like a statue, like one of the faces on the Hokage monument, carved from stone and left to weather.

Sasuke watched him for a while. Then he looked away.

Sakura watched both of them and tried to ignore the hunger in her stomach.

The air shifted. A whisper of displaced air. The smell of something that had not been there a moment before.

Kakashi Hatake materialized in the center of the clearing with his hand raised in a casual greeting and his visible eye curved in a smile that did not reach anywhere important.

"Good morning, everyone. Sorry I am late. A black cat crossed my path, so I had to take the long way."

Sakura's voice was flat. "The long way to a training ground in the middle of nowhere?"

Kakashi's eye smiled wider. "Exactly."

Naruto opened his eyes. He did not move from the lotus position. He simply looked at Kakashi with the same flat, assessing gaze he turned toward everything.

Kakashi looked at the three of them. His eye moved from Naruto to Sasuke to Sakura. He noted the positions. The empty food boxes stacked neatly beside Naruto. The way Sasuke's weight was distributed for quick movement. The way Sakura's stomach was growling audibly even now.

"Let me explain the test."

He held up two bells. They hung from a short rope, catching the pale morning light, metal and leather and the particular shine of objects that had been used many times before.

"There are two bells. Your task is to take one from me before the end of the day. Anyone who does not get a bell will be tied to one of those stakes." He gestured to the wooden posts behind him. "And that person will not get lunch. They will watch the others eat."

He paused. His eye moved across them again.

"Only nine of the thirty genin who graduated will pass. The rest will be sent back to the academy. This test is designed to weed out the weaklings. Two bells for three people means at least one of you fails. That is the rule."

Sakura raised her hand. "But you told us not to eat breakfast. You gave an order. We followed it." She looked at Naruto and Sasuke. "They did not."

Kakashi tilted his head. "I told you not to eat breakfast to make the test harder. The question was never about following orders. The question was about knowing when to follow orders and when to ignore them. A ninja who cannot think for themselves is not a ninja. A ninja who cannot survive without instructions is dead."

Sakura's face went pale.

She looked at Naruto. He was not looking at her. He was looking at Kakashi with the same flat expression he had worn all morning. He was not gloating. He was not smirking. He was not even acknowledging that he had been right.

He had been right. He had known he was right. And he did not care whether she admitted it or not.

"I did not even have dinner last night." Sakura's voice was smaller now. "I was on a diet."

Naruto's head turned toward her. For the first time all morning, his expression shifted. His eyes widened. His mouth opened. The shock on his face was genuine.

"You stupid bitch."

The words came out of him like a physical thing, propelled by the sheer force of his disbelief. He stared at her as if she had just announced that she did not believe the sun would rise.

Sasuke spoke. His voice was cold. Colder than Naruto had ever heard it.

"Much more interested in drama and romance than being a proper ninja."

Naruto looked at Sasuke. Sasuke was looking at Sakura. His expression was not angry. It was something worse than anger. It was disappointment. The particular disappointment of someone who had expected nothing and received exactly that.

"Dieting." Sasuke's voice was flat. "For what? For who?"

Sakura had no answer.

Naruto cursed. The word was quiet and sharp and directed at no one in particular. He looked at Sasuke. Sasuke looked at him. They did not need to speak. The understanding passed between them without words, the way understanding passed between two people who had both seen the same truth at the same moment.

The test was a team exercise.

It was obvious once you looked at the presentation. Two bells. Three genin. The math did not work. The goal was not to take the bells. The goal was to realize that the bells were a distraction, an intentional gambit designed to turn them against each other. The real test was cooperation. The real test was whether they could put aside their individual ambitions and work together.

Naruto had known this from the moment Kakashi had explained the rules. Sasuke had figured it out a moment later, watching Naruto's face, reading the recognition there. They had both arrived at the same conclusion without speaking a word to each other.

Sakura had not figured it out. Sakura was hungry and tired and more concerned with her diet and her appearance and the boy sitting three meters to her left than with the test that would determine her future as a ninja.

Now both boys were angry. Not at each other. Not at Kakashi. At the situation. At the reality that they were starting this test with a teammate who was not a teammate at all. She was a liability. A distraction. A third wheel on a bicycle that would have been perfectly fine with two.

Kakashi watched their expressions. He saw the recognition in Naruto's eyes. He saw the frustration in Sasuke's. He saw the confusion and hunger and dawning horror on Sakura's face. He filed all of this away in the particular cabinet of his mind where he kept information about people he might one day have to kill or save.

"Begin."

The word hung in the air for a single breath.

Then all three genin vanished into the trees.

Kakashi stood alone in the clearing with the bells in his hand and the morning light on his face and the particular satisfaction of a man who had just set a fire and was waiting to see which direction it would burn.

Naruto moved through the branches without sound. Sasuke moved through the branches on the opposite side of the clearing. Sakura was somewhere behind them, already struggling to keep up.

The test had begun.

The bells glinted in Kakashi's hand.

And somewhere in the trees, two boys who had never trusted each other were about to realize that trust was the only thing that would save them.

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Next Time: Sasuke and Naruto Team Up

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