Konoha fox

Chapter 12

Kakashi sighed. He didn't know what to make of his charges' attempt at tree climbing. He was, however, really happy when Naruto and Hinata decided to stay and help their comrades for a while before Kurenai took them to teach the girl water walking, and trying to find something for the boy as well.

From what Rin had told him and what Naruto himself reported, it seemed that Tsunade had worked on his control like a possessed woman.

It was good in a way, but Kakashi couldn't understand why the sannin had been so obsessed on him learning that so soon and so well. Must be a medic kunoichi thing.

Despite that, however, the young Senju worried him.

The way he acted always so relaxed made him think that maybe he didn't realize how dangerous this mission was.

It was strange; he could tell that Naruto wasn't arrogant, and the young genin had never said anything about being different or stronger then the others (unlike one of his students... he'll have to beat that attitude out of Sasuke one of these days), but the way he walked, spoke, seated, hell, even the way he simply breathed screamed to the whole word that he didn't felt threatened in the slightest.

The curious thing was that despite that Kakashi often caught that eyesore of an orange mass behaving in the most childish way he had ever seen. And then there was his fixation with sponges. He overheard him mumbling during lunch about how much of a big one he'd need to absorb the whole ocean, or how many little ones.

It was starting to creep him out.

As for the ten other rookies, they proved to be a handful. Sasuke in particular seemed unreasonably pissed at both Hinata and Naruto for knowing something he didn't, and at Kiba who was learning faster than him. Granted, even Sakura was doing better than him, but that was because of her little chakra reserves, and she wasn't rubbing it in his face.

Instead the young Inuzuka, whose more animalistic nature Kakashi suspected helped him in the exercise, snorted every time Sasuke fell from his tree. This infuriated the young Uchiha, sending his control out of the window and worsening his bad mood. And was starting to give him an headache.

"What's the problem, pretty boy? The rookie of the year can't keep up now?" Kiba mocked. He was a foot or two above Sasuke, who glared at him murderously.

"Shut up dog-breath! Sasuke-kun is way better than you!" Sakura yelled from the top of her tree.

"Then why can't he go higher than me? Let's face it, he could have been great at school, but in the real word I'm the alpha."

"Technically, Kiba-san, Sakura-san has done better than all of us. And both Hinata-san and Naruto-san had already mastered this exercise."

Kiba pointedly ignored Shino's words, content to simply have bested Sasuke. Ino, however, decided to question Shikamaru about it.

"Hey Shika, why didn't Naruto tell us he could do this?"

"So troublesome. Maybe you never asked him?"

Ino's eyes narrowed suspiciously, "Wait, you knew it?"

Chouji joined their conversation answering in his place, "He told us that Tsunade-sama trained him in chakra control and medical theory, but he never went into details."

Before Ino could reply Kakashi's voice interrupted them, "Less talk, more practice. We don't have time for that.'' While the genins went back to their exercise, the copy-nin noticed the contempt in Sasuke's eyes. 'Could he really be so selfish to despise whoever knows something he doesn't?'

Kakashi sighed again; he had really hoped they could learn this in a day or two, especially after Hinata and Naruto gave them some pointers, but so far only Sakura seemed likely to do it in that time while, from the look of it, the others will took a little more.