Title: Raising Eggs: A Health Lesson
Rating: PG
Characters: Kakashi & Naruto
Disclaimer: No money is being made from me writing this.
Warnings: failed attempt at crack, middle school!teacher/student AU, Freud stuff, cross-dressing
Summary: Professor Hatake enjoys torturing his students. But when bright-eyed Naruto Uzumaki seems to fall off the deep end, Kakashi is forced to admit that maaaybe he’s gone too far.
Raising Eggs: A Health Lesson
Professor Hatake smiled at the young, eager minds before him that he had slowly been traumatizing throughout the school year. Rather than returning the smile, the students eyed him warily.
Good, good. They were finally learning.
Most people questioned why Kakashi decided out of the blue that his life calling was to be a middle school health teacher. Especially when he had no qualms about drinking and smoking. When asked, he simply told people it was because he was sick of seeing children grow up with poor eating habits. By the time his students moved on each year, they would all be harboring their own individual, life-changing stories of how they came to love vegetables.
Studies showed they would also cluck like a chicken when presented with a cigarette, cry over spilt milk, break into the National Anthem if offered alcohol, sign up to run a marathon after eating more than 3,000 calories in a day, and become devout Buddhists after a month of doing drugs if it ever came to that.
The results over what happened when presented with pre-marital sex had been labeled as confidential.
A carrot twirled in Kakashi’s fingers. His grin turned into a smirk at the way several pairs of eyes followed the carrot’s movements as if hypnotized.
“Today, class, we will be starting the child care portion of the syllabus,” he began, leaning lazily back against his desk. Putting the carrot down beside the large basket of eggs that was beside him, he grabbed one of the eggs and tossed it to his other hand to hold it up for everyone to see. “Now this is a chicken egg. All women have thousands of these inside their ovaries.”
Every last pair of eyes widened as one girl blurted out, “I’m going to give birth to a chicken someday??!”
“Only if the man you marry is a coward,” Kakashi answered before moving on. “For your assignment, I am going to give each and every one of you your very own chicken egg. If you take proper care of it, it’ll hatch and you’ll have your very own baby chick to love forever.”
The excited murmurs were to Kakashi’s satisfaction as he put the egg back with the others and straightened to pick up the basket. None of the eggs were actually fertilized, so nothing would actually come out of the assignment other than a future generation of parents who would either be too scared to have kids or have the drive to raise their children right. With lots of vegetables involved.
As he went around the classroom passing out the eggs, Kakashi could almost predict the outcome for several of the students. Chouji would eat his the second it started to smell to ensure good food didn’t go to waste and then present him with a new one when the assignment was over. Shikamaru would probably stick it in his fridge and leave it alone. Ino might buy a baby stroller…probably redecorate her room to be a nursery as well. Sakura would as well, just to outdo her. Sasuke might take his egg to a farm to actually get it fertilized. Naruto would-
“Ah-! Professor Hatake! I need a new egg!”
Naruto would break his.
“Please refrain from killing your unborn children until I have the chance to visit the store this weekend for replacements,” Kakashi requested as he handed Naruto another egg.
To Naruto’s credit, he made it to Friday.
“Naruto, you do understand the purpose of this assignment goes beyond not breaking the egg in the first place, right?” Kakashi asked as he handed over the last of his spare eggs for the week.
Pulling his attention away from the jar of pickles sitting on the edge of the desk, Naruto nodded as he took the egg. “I know, I know. Don’t worry, Professor Hatake! I can do this!”
Finding Naruto by his door on Monday before he even had a chance to put the three new egg cartons in the fridge left Kakashi feeling more than a little doubtful about this student’s abilities.
When the same thing happened Tuesday, Wednesday, and then Thursday as well, Kakashi decided it was time to ask.
“This assignment is hard!” Naruto whined. “Give me a tougher egg!”
“I don’t think it’s the egg’s fault-”
“It is!” Naruto insisted, slamming his hands down on Kakashi’s desk. “Every time I try sitting on it, it breaks!”
Kakashi blinked, his hands stilling from writing notes on the dry erase board. “You’ve been sitting on the egg?” he asked, turning his head.
“Duh!” Naruto snorted as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “And it doesn’t matter how careful I am! As soon as my mom notices all the towels I’ve ruined, she’s going to kill me!”
Putting the marker down, Kakashi fully turned and crossed his arms. “Naruto, why are you sitting on the egg?”
Naruto obviously hadn’t been expecting that question as the crease in his brow smoothed out. “Because that’s how you hatch an egg, isn’t it? By sitting on it until it hatches.”
Oh boy…
“Do you know why chickens sit on their eggs?”
“Well, yeah! To keep them…warm…oh.” It sounded like Naruto had just gotten a clue.
Smiling brightly, Kakashi plucked an egg from the basket and handed it over. “Break anymore eggs and I’ll be forced to flunk you,” he said lightly, his grin never wavering as a thin sheen of sweat broke out on his pupil.
“Th-thanks, Professor…”
Kakashi was proud to say he didn’t see Naruto outside of class for the next two weeks.
He was also proud to see his students looking more and more harried as the days went by.
Granted, the principal stopped by at one point to once again question his methods when word got out that one girl went into hysterics because her dog ate her egg “just as it was starting to hatch!” but once again, seeing as how no parents had filed a formal complaint, there was really nothing Kakashi could be in trouble for.
However, it wasn’t until today - February 17th, Kakashi took note - that he truly began to wonder just how far he could push the envelope.
For once there were no eyes on the banana he had been nursing for a snack. Instead, students were whispering amongst themselves, all attention focused on Naruto Uzumaki as he walked, no, scooted in the door, taking tiny steps so that the deadly high heels he was wearing wouldn’t cause him to lose balance.
The first question to run through Kakashi’s mind was where Naruto had managed to acquire one of the girl’s school uniforms. The second was “Is that a thong? Please tell me there’s a thong.” as Naruto turned to scoot down the rows to the back where his seat was located, revealing his hiked-up skirt to break the rules of even miniskirts with just how short it had been altered.
Arm cocked to hold the handbag dangling by his elbow, Naruto scooted in a half circle so that he was once again facing the front before slipping into his seat, his outfit now mostly hidden so that attention could be brought to his face, which more or less looked like a makeup bag had exploded on it.
Taking in the brightly colored headband and flower that decorated Naruto’s blond locks, Kakashi once again decided it was probably time to ask.
“Naruto, why are you dressed like something I would expect to see on MTV?” Kakashi kept his voice casual as he moved around his desk so that he could lean back against it.
Blowing an oversized bubble from the gum he was chewing, Naruto waited until it popped before answering in a falsetto voice, “I’m getting in touch with my feminine side.”
The girls in class seemed torn between being offended and amused.
Looking at the unfinished banana in his hand, Kakashi threw it away without preamble.
“Why?” one of the boys asked.
“Well, it’s to make my egg hatch!”
Kakashi froze. Once again he found he was unable to connect the dots of Naruto’s way of thinking.
“You see, I figured it’s not hatching ‘cause I’m a man! I mean, it’s always the girl chickens that make them hatch, right? So if I can trick it into believing I’m a girl, maybe the chick will accept me as its mother and come out!”
Not only did several heads nod at the sense that made to them, more than one of the boys seemed to be considering trying the idea out themselves.
For the first time in his teaching career, Kakashi Hatake wondered if there was such a thing as pushing a student too far…and if one could actually get fired on such grounds.
“Nice problem solving, but I’m afraid that won’t work,” Kakashi intervened.
Naruto’s penciled in eyebrows somehow managed to rise even higher in surprise. “Why not?”
“Because a female was the one who laid the egg,” Kakashi explained, crossing his arms with a shrug. “It takes a man and a woman to make a baby, so your chick needs you to be a strong father figure for it to feel safe.”
“But what about us?” one girl asked, speaking for the female population.
“You--”
“Weren’t you listening?” Ino interrupted snidely. “The answer’s so obvious! This means we need to pair up with a boy if we have any hopes of passing this assignment. I call Sasuke as my husband!”
Screeches went up as girls practically launched over their desks in an effort to claim the men they wanted. Kakashi noted the way Naruto ducked down and protectively clutched his handbag where his egg presumably rested.
Seeing as how he didn’t have an alternative solution figured out for the girls, Kakashi shrugged and allowed for chaos to reign as he grabbed another banana and sat down, propping his feet up on the desk, confident things would settle before he finished his snack.
True to his belief, he had everyone’s undivided attention before he was even halfway done.
After that near-disastrous day, things had gone back to what Kakashi considered to be normal for his class. When it finally came time for the egg assignment to end, Kakashi ordered all eggs and chicks be placed on the desk for inspection.
True to Kakashi’s predictions, Chouji’s egg was new. Shikamaru’s was cold. Ino’s and Sakura’s eggs were fitted with clothes and hand happy faces drawn on them. Sasuke was the only one with an actual chick. Naruto looked ashamed to present his egg, which had a band-aid placed over a crack along the side, but Kakashi gave him an A for effort anyways.
Once he was done grading everyone’s eggs, Kakashi took his rightful place in the front of the classroom and snapped his grade book closed, causing several children to flinch as his eyes sternly swept over everyone.
“Now,” he began, “tell me what you all have learned from this project.”
A tentative hand was raised. “That raising children is harder than it looks?”
“That it takes more love and care that anyone less than an adult has to give to take care of a child?”
“Not to have babies before you’re married!”
“That none of us were meant to have kids.”
Kakashi allowed for several more guesses to be shouted out before shaking his head.
“I’m sure you all have heard of the age old riddle ‘Which came first, the chicken or the egg?’” Heads bobbed in comprehension. “Well, after this, I’m sure you all now know from the lack of results that it is impossible for the egg to come first. So the moral of this lesson is chickens!”
The bell rang.
“Class dismissed!”
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Author's Note: Written for the Brain Breakage: Naruto Style club's Secret Santa Crack Exchange over on y-gallery. I did my best to include the prompts 'egg', 'miniskirt', and a bit of 'mindfuck'