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The jounin lounge was crowded, mostly with jounin sensei lamenting their hangovers from the previous night's meeting to discuss their new genin. Anko had appeared mainly to seek gossip and poke fun at who she perceived to be light-weights, it seemed.
Conversation was rather repetitive in that it almost solely consisted of complaints about having drunk too much, or attempted brainstorming on ways to put off meeting with their genin until they felt less dead.
Eventually though a third conversation topic emerged.
“So, are we just not going to talk about the only jounin sensei to completely ignore the meetup?”
Asuma stared flatly at Kurenei for the suggestion, and shook his head.
“Urgh, come on,” she complained, “I need some sort of distraction from this awful headache. What was with that Team Feral shit? We're meant to be stuck with numbers for the first year, minimum, and even if we weren't – feral?”
“Maybe he's just trying to avoid the supposed Team Seven curse. Can't be a Team Seven curse if there's no Team Seven.” Asuma pointed out, sounding very tired. He had a point, but he may also have just been trying to shut down the conversation so he could go back to regretting all his life choices.
Anko apparently overheard and disapproved of his suggestion, because she immediately abandoned her previous conversation to butt in on Asuma and Kurenei's.
“Maybe if you want to be boring, but there's got to be a reason for that specific name over anything else! Otherwise he could just make it Team Kakashi, like Gai did when his team got past the numbers limitation.”
Gai nodded enthusiastic agreement to Anko's wide gestures.
“Besides, I don't know about the other two brats, but the Hatake's a Hatake and unless you're all a lot more out of the loop than I thought you were, the little Uzamaki apparently bit several fingers off a chuunin. I'd say that's perfectly feral, ha!”
Kurenei winced slightly, but nodded, as did Asuma. “Didn't realise that was anywhere near true...”
“My Rival mentioned it as being in his genin's files,” Gai cut in, “it is very true!”
Nobody quite knew what to say next, but thankfully the silence lasted barely a minute before it was interrupted by Anko shouting a greeting in response to someone's entrance.
“HEY! Hatake, get over here!”
Kakashi gave a lazy wave of one hand, but otherwise completely ignored the group of jounin wincing at Anko's shout, instead walking over to the corkboard against one wall.
There was a brief argument at their table. Anko continued trying to call Kakashi over, whilst the other jounin bitched about her being so loud when her and Kakashi were likely the only ones not hungover in the building, which Anko ignored as thoroughly as Kakashi ignored her in turn.
Anko gave up on Kakashi when he walked straight back out, instead quickly waving the others off as she bounded over to the corkboard to see what Kakashi had left.
Pinned to the corkboard was a large piece of white card, with a photograph glued to the middle and a generous border around the edges. The border had short annotations, with arrows pointing back to the picture.
The photograph showed three creatures. In the middle was an unfamiliar creature, with features somewhat reminiscent to a weasel or a ferret. Its fur was a very pale, faded pink that blended smoothly into a sleek grey. None of the jounin now crowding around had ever seen it before, but it had very distinct hints at being a feline that were similar to two other creatures they knew... Sure enough, there were two recognisable creatures flanking the pink one.
On one side, a fox with strange markings, a long cat-like tail, and no visible claws. Its fur was black and orange.
On the other side, a sleek black and blue cat with slightly ruffled feathers – judging by the body language of it and the foxcat, probably an after-effect of some playfight between the two.
Behind these three feline creatures was an enormous wolf, settled down in such a way it clearly had no intentions of moving, unlike the felines who all stood with rather playful postures. Nevertheless it still loomed over them by a fair height, protective and smug.
The label by the pink creature read ”Fekune – FerreCat” followed on a separate line by ”also known as” and on a final line, “Sakura Haruno”.
The label by the creature that most jounin present recognised as Nekito read ”Nekito – FoxCat, also known as, Naruto Uzamaki”.
The label by Kaneke read ”Kaneke – CrowCat, also known as, Sasuke Uchiha”.
A fourth label with an arrow pointing to the wolf read only ”Kakashi Hatake”.
Slowly, eyes trailed up to read the title; two words with the pin pressed perfectly between the two to secure it to the corkboard.
Bold, black writing stood out starkly against the white card where emblazoned caption announced the creatures to be ”TEAM FERAL”
What.
What?
Pandemonium erupted as everyone started yelling at once.