Canon Side-Story: Kakashi and the 'Genin-Sensei Exam'

I've wanted to write this for a while. Thankfully it just kinda wrote itself, which was awesome. I've been having creativity issues lately and this was very nice and kind of exploded.

This was the $70 side-story reward for this week, voted on by my $10 patrons. Thank you $10 Patrons, you're the best. Your support is incredibly meaningful.

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“You have an hour to take the test, if you have any questions about the wording, please feel free to ask.” There’s a lot of cross-over for an Academy Teacher in Konoha, one of the big ones is that they have Academy Teachers proctor and grade the Genin-Sensei Exam. The logic is that they are in charge of the Genin before they’re actually Genin, so why shouldn’t their wisdom be incredibly valuable in caring for them once they’re out in the field. There’s a few flaws to the logic which Iruka has spent more than a few minutes pointing out, but here he is, year after year.

This year, his class has a few Jonin - all of note of course, they’re Jonin - but only one stand out problem. Silver hair, one eye, and a penchant for causing problems; Kakashi Hatake is absolutely not who Iruka wanted to see taking the exam. For a few reasons, really, the most prominent of which is that the idea of Kakashi Hatake teaching his students makes him want to claw his eyes out while screaming.

“I have a question.” The second is that Kakashi’s asking questions. The problem with Kakashi is that he’s such a dick that Iruka has no idea if this is going to be an authentic question, a fake question, or somewhere in the middle, and it’s not going to be obvious enough for him to just not answer. His entire day is ruined.

“Genin-Sensei exam taker, Kakashi Hatake, the pencils haven’t been given out yet.” Iruka sighs, already wanting to rub the bridge of his nose, but choosing to keep professionalism for now.

“I brought one from home.” Kakashi explains.

“Of course you did.” Iruka holds in a sigh, as Kakashi scribbles in his name with a neon pink pencil he brought from elsewhere, in fact - “is that Sakura Haruno’s pencil? It has her name on it!”

“She lent it to me.” Kakashi smiles behind his mask.

“Please tell me you’re not her sensei.” Iruka begs.

“I am not her sensei.” Kakashi manages to say it with such a dead tone, looking into his eyes with his own single focused gaze without even blinking.

“... You bastard,” Iruka can’t help it, he’s already broken, he rubs his nose, “what is your question?”

“It says here that a Genin needs to eat a nutrient rich diet, and asks us what we should do if we find out a student hasn’t been eating enough.” Kakashi explains question one of the document, and already Iruka can feel that maybe this isn’t going to be so bad. That’s a very good question to approach if he’s unsure, he might be taking this seriously.

“It’s very important.” Iruka nods, “especially for you.” Sakura needs help, she needs so much help, Iruka almost wants to fail her so that she has a chance with a reasonable sensei next year, it’d be the right thing to do. Unfortunately, that’s not his duty, and that’d be overstepping boundaries. Sakura is fully capable of being a ninja, just not so much a functional person… It’s weird that those aren’t the same thing.

“Would chewing it up for them and then force feed them like a bird be a bad answer?” Kakashi asks.

“... Yes.”

“How about taking out a three times daily D rank mission to any and all Genin to capture her and feed her?” Kakashi asks, “they could compete over who gets it this time.”

“That would be incredibly expensive, Kakashi,” Iruka is about to dismiss this as clearly messing with him, when another hand goes up from the room, “Yes, Hibani-” he’s already too annoyed to keep up the normal method of referring to them. It wasn’t expected anyway, he just wanted to seem official.

“That sounds like a great idea, actually, I’d like to sign my Genin up for that mission semi-permanently, it’d teach compassion, competition, and non-lethal coordination.” Hibani says.

“The mission doesn’t exist- you don’t have Genin!” Iruka groans.

“What if you have so much money that your main way of picking up chicks is to log into your banking app and flash the number?” Kakashi asks.

“You do not- you know what, hard veto, if your answer is to put out a hit on your Genin in any form, you’re disqualified.” Iruka has to shake his head. First question!

“Question two asks what to do if your student takes an interest in a field you also have a lot of interest in, and therefore have a lot of tools to speed them up, how much help should you give them?” Another student asks, “what if I have a demon weapon passed down through my family for generations? Can I give them that?”

“I’m not answering that,” Iruka growls, “you’re definitely messing with me.”

“I think it’s a good question.” Kakashi rumbles, “that could come up.”

“No it couldn’t, shut up and take your test or I’m failing you.” Iruka glares the cyclops down, watching as he wilts.

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Kakashi’s answers are terrifying.

They’re all scary, all of them, the Hokage really needs to instate a pretest before this test that excludes basic comprehension fails, but Kakashi’s are scary because unlike Hitomi who answered the ‘come up with a problem your Genin might realistically face, and how you’d help them’ question with ‘needs to get laid to advance their clan’ and solved it with ‘host an orgy’ and is therefore immediately disqualified…

Or that other guy, who did in fact say he’d give his student a pair of demon possessed gauntlets, what an idiot… Hard fail.

Kakashi’s answers are all seemingly manufactured to be just unhinged enough to give him problems sleeping, but not bad enough to be disqualified.

For example, his theoretical problem was ‘they need to accelerate their Earth Affinity training’, which is reasonable and an actual problem a Genin of his might face.

His answer was ‘design how to make a chainsaw with them using rich earth metals and school them on how to make it not explode.’ All of which is rather concerning. Why would it explode? What’s a chainsaw? Why is his solution to basic affinity training to teach them how to create new jutsu?

Who teaches a Genin how to create new jutsu?

That’s just the tip of the iceberg here. He answered ‘how to help them not be distracted by their teammate in the event of romantic interests evolving’ with ‘ensure they don’t have time to be distracted.’ Which is not disqualifying, but it’s something he needs to run by the Hokage to ensure the Head of State knows to tell Kakashi he needs to give them breaks!

Yep, Sakura’s screwed…