Iruka was met with little resistance as his feet stepped into the same classroom he had frequented many times a day for the last several. A nostalgic feeling entered and left him faster than he could enjoy it. He was holding stuff in his hands so the view in front of him was mostly inaccessible to his eyes, to fight that he slightly lowered his arms.

 

‘To think it’s already been 6 years. I was only 17 when I started teaching this class of troublemakers.’

 

His eyes wandered around and with his experienced eyes, he noticed the childish scene of Naruto and Kiba having a verbal argument rather loudly. A sigh escaped his mouth as he got ready to interrupt the two.

 

‘I can’t be given a break at all can I?’

 

Unexpectedly to him, the moment they noticed his presence, they immediately sat down on their respective seats – Naruto next to Hinata and Ren, and Kiba next to Shino – and pretended nothing of importance had happened.

 

Iruka just shook his head at the development of the situation

’Ah, I guess I can give them a break today. It’s time for them to have their final exam before graduation, I shouldn’t be adding useless stress to them.’

 

He walked towards his desk and placed what appeared to be lots of blank scrolls and thick books onto it. He put his hands on the desk and noticing he had the attention of everyone in the classroom began to speak.

 

“Before I begin, is everyone present?”

 

One by one, he began to call out every student…

 

“Ren Uzumaki-Senju.”

 

He arrived at the last name he had not called out; no one responded back.

 

That was odd. While Ren sometimes was one of the last students to come to class, in the last six years Iruka had been his homeroom teacher the boy had never been actually late.

 

“Does anyone know if he is ill or the reason why he is not present?”

 

Iruka looked at Ren’s circle of friends; Sasuke did not seem to even care and held a blank expression the Uchiha’s were famous for, Naruto was squinting his eyes as if trying to remember if Ren had told him anything and the rest just were clueless.

 

“Naruto do you have any idea where Ren is? If I am not wrong, you two live together.” The two shared an equally confused stare.

 

“No idea Iruka-sensei, last time I checked he wasn’t even home when I left.”

 

“Well I guess- “

 

Iruka was interrupted as the doors to the classroom opened and a figure which was familiar to many made its entrance.

 

Ren felt his heart hammer his chest at as he looked at his classmates and teacher. “Iruka-sensei, I apologize for being late. I was up very late at night trying to master a jutsu and before I could even realize it was morning.”

 

Naruto squinted his eyes with a countenance which showed bewilderment. He, for one knew Ren was not at home all night; otherwise he’d just have gone and woke him up. Ren normally trained in the courtyard of the house which was actually quite large. But he had not found him there either so he had not lied to Iruka.

 

The only chunin in the classroom nodded.

 

“Ren, you should not overwork yourself like this. You’re still just an academy student, while effort and hardwork are appreciated, you need to put a limit at how much you push your body. But yes, you can go to your seat.”

 

Ren nodded and tilted his body a bit in respect before going to his seat next to Naruto who had already removed his attention from him and was ‘admiring’ Sakura the pink-haired fangirl who was obsessed with Sasuke.

 

He elbowed the boy with a look of disdain who responded with a roll of eyes and no longer paid attention to him. Questions could be asked and answered later after all.

 

It had been several years since Ren had noticed the ‘attraction’ Naruto felt towards Sakura. To be completely fair he didn’t see what Naruto saw in her; she was rude towards Naruto, only had eyes for Sasuke, did not take being a kunoichi seriously and most likely would fail at being one.

 

And he way Naruto was very pushy was not doing him any favors in earning him her full attention and would only make her treat him more spiteful than before. But alas, this was young love.

 

Like seriously, which kunoichi dieted when they were already at a healthy weight? Nonsense!

 

Ren shook his head and decided to focus on Iruka’s lessons. The young man liked to talk about the “Will of Fire” a lot, something which did not pique his interest in the slightest, but since he had been late a bit, the least he could do is just be silent and listen.

 

XxX

 

“Since we already held the written exam beforehand, we will be continuing with the other exam you all are required to pass so you can graduate.”

 

Iruka stood up from his seat. Next to him there was another person present, someone who all of them were quite familiar with already, his name being Mizuki.

 

He was also chunin just like Iruka and was even nicer than the later. Ren had never thought such a think was possible, so he had done some deeper investigation through some ‘shady’ sources and found out that he had almost had his shinobi rank removed due to supposedly being the reason a mission failed.

 

Something about killing a fellow Konoha Shinobi, but Mizuki always vehemently denied any involvement in the comrade’s death to this day. His temperament was anything but that of a cold murderer as well; like the difference between fire and water.

 

Ren was definitely sure he did not want to be associated with such a shady and possibly comrade-killer.

 

He had brought a box filled with head protectors of various size and style with him. Naruto was barely able to contain his excitement making the other Uzumaki chuckle; he couldn’t say that he really was affected by this.

 

Mizuki had then emptied the box on top of a table placed on the room next to the classroom. Ren had his eyes on a dark-colored one which he could put around his head instead of his bandana and it would suit his appearance just as fine.

 

“Well, it is about time we start. Unlike previous years, the academy has decided to spice up the graduation test. Unlike before, you are required to use all three basic techniques and also test your taijutsu abilities in a spar with Mizuki-san here.”

 

A chain of groans and mutters broke around the classroom. This was to be expected since before this year, the only requirement to graduate was the ability to use the Bunshin. Ren supposed this had to do with Konoha’s quality of genins falling behind when compared to other hidden villages by an apparent gap.

 

Naruto’s face broke into an excited grin. This had been what he was waiting for. For the last several months he had been training just for this day, from morning to night.

 

Technically, there was a flaw in the academy’s final exam. While most could use the Bunshin effortlessly – since it was a basic jutsu after all – people with enormous chakra reservoirs had it very tough.

 

The flaw in the exam was that you could also use other types of clone techniques which also counted as the basic one, and Naruto was going to abuse the heck out of this one little flaw which few did.

 

Naruto as a jinchuuriki suffered from colossal reserves as a result. Both the Third and Ren knew that, so they had opted to help him learn an alternative clone technique which he could pretty much use effortlessly.

 

Noticing the gaze Mizuki was throwing at all of them, Ren shivered slightly. It looked so realistic that if not for the fact he had hired people to look into the man’s background, he would’ve never even questioned it.

 

Not to mention that while he looked at most of the students with a similar gaze of gentleness that could not be pushed to Naruto. Just for that, Ren already knew what sort of person he was and that disgusted him even more.

 

“Do we have any volunteer or do you want me to call each of you one by one?”

 

…

 

Ren did not pay attention that much in the beginning, a big chunk of his classmates had average or barely above average chakra reserves – them being the clan heirs and heiresses, if they couldn’t perform the basic techniques then they had no place in the ranks of Konoha’s shinobi forces.

 

“Ren, it’s your turn.” Naruto finally took his revenge on Ren’s earlier actions by elbowing the boy with even more power than him.

 

The redhead rubbed the invaded area and moved towards a room where they were examining everyone else. He saw Kiba Inuzuka, a loudmouthed classmate who he couldn’t exactly call even an acquaintance leave holding one of the head protectors while maintaining a stupid grin. On top of his head was a dog who was also transmitting his partner’s happiness by barking loudly.

 

Ren entered through the already opened door of the room and noticed that there were no seats or anything of that sort. Instead there was a desk in the middle of it and lots of unused space, perfect for the usage of simple jutsus

 

‘Guess they must’ve been expecting the worst.’

 

Like it was stated before, while most students could easily use the basic techniques  – those being the Substitution Technique, Clone Technique and the Transformation Technique – some occasionally overdid it and could cause various side effects. Those side effects varied from as tiny as a blast of smoke to even the room being blow apart.

 

But of course, that almost never happened. The cause was normally a chakra disease which fooled the senses and made the user think that they were using less chakra than what it appeared to.

 

“So how do we do this? The spar first or me using all the three basic techniques comes before?” Ren did some light exercise while he spoke out. Judging by the spacious room, you never knew what they might want to do first even though he was pretty sure it was the latter.

 

Iruka looked at him and responded in an almost automatic way, as if already used to this question from previous occurrences.

 

“Due to the fact that your chakra might be disrupted during the spar, you’ll spar with Mizuki-san after we see your prowess of the techniques.”

 

Iruka pulled out a register and moved aside to give Ren some space to operate. Mizuki also stood up and went on the opposite direction to Iruka; this was to make sure that no type of cheating happened.

 

It was not like they believed Ren would cheat, it was just that this was mandatory and if they didn’t do it, they could get in trouble.

 

“Please start with whichever of the basic techniques you feel the most comfortable with.”

 

Iruka breathed out while adjusting his head protector and staring intensely at Ren.

 

Ram -> Snake -> Tiger

 

Ren’s hands went through three hand seals swiftly before a cloud of dust covered his figure.

 

‘He used the version which requires less hand seals, impressive.’

 

Mizuki hated to admit it, but this version of the Clone Technique wasn’t even the one encouraged to be learned by the academy. It was harder to master since it required more chakra control.

 

Soon the dust dispersed and revealed in full glory several people of different appearances.

 

The two chunin looked stupefied beyond recognizing, this sort of prowess was far above any other graduate.

 

Two looked like Ren identically, another looked like the Third Hokage, the one in front looked like an older version of himself and the last one looked like Iruka himself. Ren had utilized not just the clone technique but also the transformation one.

 

And that was just what he could see from his point of view, Iruka was sure Mizuki saw a few more. After communicating with each other, the tanned man started to write down on his register.