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Chapter 22 - Team Selection! Part-1
🕑 Added 2023-07-13 09:19:51 +0000 UTC{Hokage's Office, Administrative building, Konohagakure}
{6:39 PM, 18th Jan 13 Yrs ANB}
{3rd Person POV}
Shikaku, Inoichi, and Chōza were standing in the Hokage's office there the room wasn't crowded right now so they settled in a corner and waited for the meeting to start. They usually wouldn't have cared for the newly graduating class's team selection meeting, but since all of their children passed the exam they came to see that at the very least their kids got a competent instructor.
"Our plan to let the kids form a team backfired a little now that Ino will probably become the kunoichi of the year she would surely be selected in the heavy assault traditional team 7," Choza spoke as he glanced at Inoichi.
Inoichi shrugged, "It's not my fault, we agreed to let the kids take it easy and enjoy their time at the academy and then hopefully get into the same team to watch each other back."
"Yeah and look how that worked out..." Shikaku grumbled but he still asked, "did you figure out why Ren wasn't invited to your daughter's birthday?" Shikaku asked.
"I told you I asked Ino-chan several times but she refuses to say anything. Did you guys get anything Choji and Shikamaru?" Inoichi asked.
"Shikamaru says they both still hang out and train regularly almost daily, but nothing else," Shikaku shrugged.
Their initial plan was to get in contact with Ren during Shikamaru and Ino's joint birthday party but Ino surprisingly didn't invite Ren. Inoichi has tried several times to get some information out of his daughter but it all ended in failure, for someone so open she could be surprisingly secretive about some stuff.
"At least he wasn't seduced to join the R&D department..." Chōza spoke and they both nodded heavily. Most of the fuinjutsu users in Konoha are civilians and the majority of them are simply inducted into the R&D department as soon as their aptitude is discovered.
"I'm surprised he refused, but then again he has surprisingly good combat standards for a civilian born," Shikaku noted and his two friends agreed, Asuma walked towards the three of them and greeted them.
"So am I still proposing to teach your brats?" He asked casually, Shikaku knew he was reluctant to do so but couldn't turn down the three clan head easily.
"But Ino-chan will probably be the Kunoichi of the year right? So she should be on a fixed team with Ren and Naruto?" Choja questioned, Shikaku could see Asuma's eyes light up so he sighed.
"Not so fast there is still a chance," Shikaku spoke drawing confused glances, "Ino can not be in a team with Naruto as she couldn't use her clan jutsu on him during emergencies due to the fox so the team dynamic won't work. We could use that to our advantage to put forward the motion of recreating the Ino-Shika-Cho combination."
As the four of them discussed one by one the room started to get filled, and most of the jonin and tokubetsu jonin started arriving at the meeting. There were a limited about of Jounin who wanted to teach brats so quite a lot of the teams were led by tokubetsu jonin.
After another 5 minutes, Hiruzen cleared his throat and gained everyone's attention, "It seems the interest in this batch of students is really great..." his eyes scanned everyone before he asked, "I don't like to delay stuff so we'll start from the Jonin's, please speak up if you have your team configurations ready."
There are many reasons for the large number of shinobi gathered here today, first, there were a lot of clan heirs in this class so everyone wanted to teach someone influential. Secondly, the fact that Ren could manage to snatch the title of Rookie of the Year from the clan class was impressive, and that attracted everyone's attention.
Most of the shinobi wanted to teach those clan heirs and establish ties, but some of them wanted to have an apprentice. See if their students are clan shinobi then their main focus would be on their clan jutsus so the job of the sensei would just be to guide and protect them. So whoever a talented civilian shinobi emerges from the academy a lot of tokubetsu jonin join in the pool to see if they could snatch an apprentice or two.
Hayate Gekkō stared at the folders spread over Hokage-sama's table, he was anxious and a little disappointed as he stared at everyone present. He remembered standing in the same position last year, he wanted to take Ren in his squad last year too but Kakashi simply selected him on a whim and then failed him in the final exam. But in the face of hierarchy, he was helpless.
'There are even more people here this time, and Ren-kun's performance is even more dazzling...'
Like every other time, Kakashi stepped forward once again, he held an orange book in his hands as he walked up to Hokage-sama's table. He rummage through the folders and took out three of them before he spoke, "Uchiha Sasuke, Uzumaki Naruto, and Ren forming a heavy assault team..."
Hayate almost choked on air as he stared at Kakashi in disbelief...
'Why doesn't he ask for a couple more top rankers from class 1...' Hayate thought as he looked at Kurenai who stepped forward and spoke, "I'm sorry for interrupting Hokage-sama but I have a plan ready for a search and destroy team with Hyuuga Hinata, Shino Aburame and Ren."
Asuma smoked his cigarette and sighed, "I'll take the Ino shika cho,"
Hayate watched as in a couple of seconds all the most promising candidates from class 1 were taken by the three jonin that participated in the assembly. He sighed once again and suppressed his thoughts as he thought about who he could get that would be feasible.
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AN- So a couple of things, there is a reason for this huge time skip. First, there are a limited number of things that Ren can learn while being in the academy. So after learning fuinjutsu everything else is just grinding which I can simply explain using flashbacks and other stuff.
Second, I was planning to write about the graduation exam first but then decided that writing about the team selection would be more interesting, this isn't the final team selection and everything will be clear in the next couple of chapters.
