COTE x Naruto: New Beginnings

Chapter 6: Class Politics

The rest of the afternoon passed in a blur for Kakashi. After sharing his findings with Arisu - because if he couldn't get the satisfaction of figuring out the workings of the school then neither would she - he was humbly asked by Arisu to do a few more things for her.

Knowing he had nothing better to do for the time being, Kakashi agreed. He'd contemplated letting his class drop down the class rankings just for the fun of it, but he figured that'd be impossible.

He wasn't entirely sure how the school system worked yet anyway - he still didn't know how the classes were evaluated and just what would make those evaluations low enough to reach the level of class D, where the second-year class 2-D was clearly struggling to even afford the cheap yet tastier foods at the cafeteria and most had to settle for the terrible-smelling vegetable set that was offered for free.

Yes, paired with the knowledge he'd received from the rude upperclassmen he'd met earlier, taking note of the lunches the rest of the school population was eating and what year they were hadn't felt like such a strange thing.

He didn't have to feel paranoid for doing such a seemingly pointless thing, because now he knew that something was going on after all.

And just by analyzing school lunches, he'd verified the claim the upperclassmen had made; classes A and B were on top, while the rest were fodder.

Kakashi only wondered if a class's ranking could change, because if this school's moto really was evaluating the students, then logically, if all Class A students started cheating during tests, talking in class, and being on their phones while all Class D students did the opposite, it would be logical to switch the classes.

Another curiosity was whether the current class placements were random after all.

Sure, Kakashi's father had said he'd fit right in Class A, but he could've been implying that whatever class he got into would be worthy of being the future Class A.

Then again, that would also imply that the class rankings could change after all.

He didn't think theorizing was going to get him the answer, so he instead focused on the task at hand.

After carefully analyzing Kakashi's information, Arisu had concluded the same as he had, and thus both of their theories about the private points being a farce were confirmed.

In response to this knowledge, Arisu had devised a plan to keep Class A on top as quickly as possible.

Not only would they have to make the Class A students believe that if they didn't stop being on their phones during class and misbehaving in other ways then they would receive much fewer private points next month, but they'd also have to get a feel of their enemies before they too realized that Class A wasn't their friend but their enemy.

Arisu had told him to start with Class B, and she'd told him to do whatever he wanted as long as he got the info they needed. In other words, she was trusting him to think of a good plan himself.

Oh, Kakashi had no doubt Arisu knew exactly how she could get that information herself, she was merely testing him again and trying to see just how good he was, which was truthfully a little annoying.

After leaving Arisu to her scheming, Kakashi immediately headed to the Keyaki mall to see what kind of people his enemies were. For example, who they hung out with, what clothes they liked the most, what hobbies they had...

Yeah, it certainly sounded like a waste of time, because how would knowing whether his enemy liked goth or preppy clothes help him?

It was mostly to see how much the other students spent and how. It would also allow him to easily befriend the student in question who he spied on should he ever need to.