An old idea of mine I've brushed off and upgraded:
As it turns out, a significant portion of children who fail to graduate from the Ninja Academy did so deliberately. They got enough skills and jutsus to help their family businesses or go into business themselves. Chakra manipulation helps in many jobs and careers and helps you get a leg up on the competition. Konohagakure allows for this for two reasons:
-One, it boosts the local economy, and,
-Two, it provides Konoha with a large corps of "reservist ninjas".
Konoha would also encourage this in other ways: Offering semi-public seminars and training sessions to improve one's chakra control and to learn non-secret and non-clan specific jutsus. It's a kind of unofficial ninja reserve that can be called up in case of war or natural disaster. They also tend to have children who are stronger in chakra, and thus lead to more and more powerful chakra users in the future. It's an effort that has worked out exceptionally well for the Leaf, both giving them a stronger economy and stronger ninja.
During the Sand/Sound Invasion during the Chuunin Exams, the Ninja Reserves get called up! During the invasion, they helped turn the tide by handling the rank and file ninja. This allowed the more powerful Konoha ninjas to deal with the elite ninjas without being worn down by enemy cannon fodder. They were sneaky, clever, and ruthless, as for the most part the reservists couldn't stand toe to toe in combat with the enemy.
After the invasion, with the manpower shortage, many Reservists are called up onto active duty. Most of them are support personnel and emergency medics, but a fair number of them get chosen (if they have enough potential) for front line duty. Again, mainly in support roles.
A few of them get assigned to the genin teams, and have to go through a crash course in chakra manipulation, control, taijutsu and other skills in order to keep up. For Team Seven, it's someone they're actually very familiar with:
Ayame Ichiraku! She's actually quite good at level one fire and wind jutsus (for use in the kitchen mainly), she can wall walk and roof hop (in order to make deliveries on time-Ninja try to sabotage these deliveries to get the food for free), and she's quite clever (she took out several Sound Ninjas with grease from the fryers with a fire jutsu). She knows the Clone Jutsu and a partial Henge, but she never got the Replacement Jutsu down. She's also got first aid training.
She can at least keep up and handle herself on D-Rank missions, and knows enough to stay out of the way during C-Rank missions. But due to how things are with Konoha, they need to try and train her up to the point she can help improve the skillsets and power levels of other reservist ninja. It should be rather simple.
After all, how many C-Rank missions can Team 7 go on that turn into S-Rank missions?
(Answer: Many).
This idea could have multiple original characters, which naturally would be a challenge. But it would allow the writer to explore things from the civilian side of things: All of these people are from the private sector and could have insights into the non-ninja side of things. It might have many possibilities.
