{Timeskip ~ 8 years old}
'The third great Shinobi ninja war took place more than a decade ago, during a period of great attrition between 4 of the five great Shinobi countries in an all-out battle. Iwakagure had the greatest price to pay, after the hero and fourth Hokage, Minato Namikaze... ' This has been my life for the past months. I've joined the academy at the standard age of 8 years old, and finally got to learn more about the world I woke up into.
I' ve learned quite a lot thanks to the history books, even if the perspective was clearly biased. It was a world that has been dominated by wars in the recent times, even if there has been more than a decade of peace by now for the village except some incidents regarding an ambassador sent by The Village Hidden in the Clouds, but even with no war in sight, no more than a year ago the Uchiha massacre happened, in which now the S-rank criminal Itachi Uchiha slaughtered his clan. There are no more informations on it, but surprisingly enough, I found myself in the same class of the only survivor of the massacre, Sasuke Uchiha. He doesn't do much other than grunting in a peculiar manner and staring the window,but using my Chakra En, I've come to learn that his Chakra reserves are bigger than most of the class.. Well obviously with the exception of me, and "The Demon"... Or so he is called, by many. I've come to know the boy, whose name is Naruto Uzumaki, mainly because of my personal curiosity. The first thing I did was to obviously make sure what I was dealing with, and other than a big Chakra reserve, which I'm not sure it's natural or fruit of training, even if knowing the boy it must be a gift of nature, I found a sinister Chakra which I wasn't able to identify. It was as if it was sealed away, contained in the boy.
I'm sitting in the back of the class, generally paying attention to what teacher says and searching for any possible comparison between some slip he might have about Chakra and Nen, next to me there is a boy which might seem a little anonymous at first glance, other than his favorite thing being sleeping apparently, but he is actually a part of the Nara clan, a clan which gaves birth constantly to natural strategic and military geniuses.
I have to admit that I joined the academy only to receive training about Chakra, but to my great disappointment, Chakra theory lesson would only start by the second year of academy along with Tajiustsu and Shurikenjutsu lessons.
The Academy had a program for orphan students, that gave them a place to live by themselves near the academy, obviously there was no better soldier than a child with nothing to lose.
The place that I've grown accustomed to call my home looks like an abusive project. There is one big room that I use both as kitchen and as a bedroom, the other rooms are minuscule and there is even a ridiculous room with only a toilet and a window.
That's not to bad though. In my past life I've got to know both great humility during my training and great luxury during my run as the president of the Hunter association.
I've read a lot about clans, and their abilities, even if some clans information are secret and not accessible to me, but thanks to the informations in the book I started to figure out some Chakra theory by myself, I connected the dots about elemental affinities reading about the Sarutobi clan, ninjutsu experts. The current Hokage, the leader of the village, comes from this clan, and his nickname is "The Professor", combined with his heritage, gives clues about his great knowledge of ninjutsu.
In the past years, I've finally come to a physical form that pleases me enough, and I've started revising all the martial arts I've studied and loved in my past life.
Even if in my mind I have everything still clear, my execution of some advanced katas it's still not perfect, as I have to get my muscle memory used again to the arts.
My Chakra control training has gone well, I can perform the tree walking technique perfectly, even if to practice it without being seen it's been really annoying, but I don't want to skip years, and be regarded as a prodigy, as I need every year of the academy to dedicate myself to Chakra and only it, thanks to my prior knowledge of Nen, personally I'll be avoiding working as a soldier for this village for as much time as I can, and train single-mindedly to become stronger. The more strong I become, higher the chance to live again a fight like the one I had with the King of the ants, even if now it feels like a distant good memory.
{Timeskip ~ 9 years old}
"Isaac Netero and Noriko Osada, seal of confrontation... Begin!" said Iruka giving the start to the spar, there is three conditions to win these, the opponent gives up, is said to not be able to continue by the teacher, or steps with both feet out of the circle.
Noriko is a determined looking girl , with short black hair, black squinted eyes, dressed in a red kimono with short sleeves and a black Haramaki . She scores highly during shurikenjutsu class and always seem prepared in Chakra theory.
She doesn't charge me mindlessly, but as she finds no opening she tries to kick my legs and concentrate on making me lose my balance. She seems fairly skilled in tajiutsu, and she has a positive score in spars.
Too bad for her, fairly skilled is nothing that I should be troubled about for any of my next lives.
I evade her kick with ease, and close the distance between us wasting no movements.
It will be a shame to hit her, so I focus instead on making her step out of the circle. I leg sweep her and then get some distance.
"Is that all? I expected more!" I said with the smuggest expression I could muster, getting closer to the circle's line.
Her expression says it all, she falls for it and charges me with a battle-shout.
I swiftly evade her once again and, to be sure, give her a gente push with the palm on the back of her head, she steps with both feet out of the circle, stumbles one, two times, and then falls face first.
"The match is over, impressive as usual Isaac. now sign of reconciliation." says Iruka.
Noriko then performs the sign of reconciliation with me, but glares at me for the entire time.
"What's with that expression? It doesn't suit you, you know~" her glare hardens again! I might not be able to sleep tonight~
"Incredible, he never lost a spar, like Sasuke!"
Says a boyish voice.
"Yeah, but when he will have to face Sasuke, he'll lose for sure!" says a girlish voice.
"Hehe as if! Sasuke-teme doesn't stand a chance!" says the too much standoffish voice of Naruto Uzumaki.
"What did you say?!" a choir of girls screams.
I then feel the glare of the infamous last Uchiha on my back, turn to him and meet him with a smile.
Maybe he'll be able to beat me. In his dreams.
I suppress a smirk.
{in the following weeks}
"Isaac Netero and Sasuke Uchiha, seal of confrontation... Begin!" said as usual our teacher.
This match was none like the others. The tension in the air was palpable, everyone was watching with full attention the match. It could be that even Shikamaru is watching, though I'd not bet on it.
I get in the standard academy guard, and he gets in the particular guard of his, activating his sharingan.
I have observed the match of Sasuke and he was the only one that caught my attention. His style of fighting was a defensive one, and he focused on punishing the errors of the one he was facing, given the opponent was an actual challenge. I suppose that the sharingan he activated everytime played a crucial role in this style of fighting, as everytime I noticed through my experience the upcoming slip in the guard, he noticed too, and punished it. The sharingan gave him a superior eyesight probably. Unfortunately, if he was hoping to find an opening in me, he'd be pretty disappointed with the outcome.
I close the distance between us, and start with some opening blows. He dodges or blocks the blows but he doesn't try to fight back, as he sees no opening. He relies in his eyes too much.
I lure him with a punch to the left, and begin to prepare a palm strike aimed at his face, he notices it, as I see his eyes shift from left to right, he tries to switch guard, but... Gets hit by a palm strike to the nose. He jumps back and gains time to breathe.
His body couldn't keep with his eyes, it's useless to notice an attack if you can't do anything about it. He now holds his nose and see blood coming out, he looks at me pissed.
Hey hey now, no need to get so angry! I only put so much of force behind that strike you know?
He charges me and then a kick aimed at my head, I easily block his leg and pull him by it, hitting him with another palm strike, this time to the stomach, followed by a side kick to the same point.
Sasuke is pushed back greatly by this last hit, and gasps for air.
He then again looks at me as if I stole his seat where he usually looks at the window grunting with intensity.
I see him perform a horse seal followed by a serpent, ram, monkey, boar, horse and a final tiger sign. Interesting. I would've been fine with it, but...
"Fire style: Fire-"
"The winner is Isaac Netero!! Reconciliation sign!" says Iruka, putting an end to the match.
Sasuke looks surprised and looks at his feet, both out of the circle in his crouched position.
He reaches me for the reconciliation sign, I show him a face with no readable emotion, and he death-glares me.
I don't think I can use the "It doesn't suit you" tactic, can I?
The class then erupts in both boyish and girl screams, though for different reason...
"That was soooo cool? How did he do that?!"
Says the standoffish voice, that finds my attention admist the chaos.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------