Below The Beneath

Chapter 3: Trouble Brewing

It had been one month. One hellacious month from the formation of the new generation of team 7, to where we find ourselves now. In the last 4 weeks, quite a bit had happened, and only a fraction of it good for our favorite blonde. But in the mind of one Naruto Uzumaki, the good far outweighed the bad.

During training, Naruto had constantly shown up Sasuke, leaving an ever more pissed off Uchiha and an ever more bitchy (if that's even possible) Sakura. On several occasion,' Sasuke had challenged Naruto to a fight outside of their usual spars, which Naruto would always decline, then Sasuke would try to force him to fight, only to be humiliated just before becoming even more of a broody brat that usual.

During missions, if you could call them that, Naruto had picked up most of the workload, though he was fine with this. Naruto knows that skill is earned through blood, sweat and hard work. So every time a mission called for something physical, he jumped at the chance to work one of his nine metaphorical tails off. And even he had to admit, the constant work of the hated D-Rank along with his borderline psychotic training program that Kakashi, the Hokage and Jiraiya had planned out for him was slowly turning his already impressive physical stats to new and very noteworthy levels. He could now stop a full powered kick from any jonin by catching it in his hand, and even stop a kick from Gai, something not many chunin or even jonin for that matter could do.

Though Sasuke and Sakura were spiteful to Naruto, he didn't care much at all about either of them, which only served to piss the Uchiha of more. Sasuke would demand to watch him train so that he could learn how he was continuing to leave the Uchiha in the dust, but whenever Naruto trained outside of the team it was at a private training ground reserved for former and current ANBU. About 3 weeks after the team formed, Sasuke had demanded to be trained by ANBU the way Naruto had, which made Kakashi, Naruto and even the Hokage laugh at the young Uchiha. Not just for the fact that the Uchiha thought he would get what he demanded, but just thinking about him attempting Naruto's hellacious training program. After his attempt to get the same training as as his blonde "teammate" had failed, he went to his legal guardians, aka, the elder advisers. That is where we find ourselves now.

-Council chambers-

"Sarutobi, you must give Uchiha-sama the training he requests! We need to give our strongest genin every chance to become more powerful! He is too great an asset to let fall by the wayside." stated Homura, one of the elder advisers

"Absolutely not! Even if Sasuke Uchiha was the strongest genin, he could not be trained the way he requests! There are only a handful of ninja in this village that have the stamina and reserves to even think about that training!" stated Sarutobi forcefully

"And why is that? He is the last Uchiha! Nothing is out of reach for him! If anyone can do it it is him! The sharingan is too important!" stated Homura

"Lord Hokage, you said "Even if he was the strongest genin". Are you saying there is someone stronger than the Uchiha in our ranks as a genin?" asked Inoichi, rather confused that the Uchiha wasn't considered the strongest.

"Yes, several in fact. Off the top of my head I would say, Neji Hyuga, Rock lee, Kabuto Yakushi, and the one said training was designed and developed for, Naruto Uzumaki-" Sarutobi was cut off

"The demon container cannot be stronger than the Uchiha! There is no way it could be possible! He is an orphan! He has no clan! How can he be more powerful?" yelled a nameless civilian. With everyone else in the room that didn't know of Naruto's personal training in ANBU and by both Sarutobi and Kakashi agreeing with the councilmen.