It's the next day and once again I am heading to the same training ground, by the time I get there, my Genins are all already there, sitting around.
All of them look awful, but Ibiki seems to be adapting the fastest, meanwhile Hayate has deep bags under his eyes and looks like he didn't get any sleep last night.
Wonder why that is.
"Heya brats! Sleep well?"
They jolt at my cheerful words and turn to glare at me as one, but none of them speak up.
Good.
You don't have to like me, all you have to do is improve enough in the next six months that you can all get promoted to Chunin, then we won't have to see each other again.
I don't say that out loud, for I worry that they would fail on purpose just to spite me, I mean, it's probably what I'd do.
"Good, good. Well, I had a wonderful nights rest, slept like the dead, as they say."
They all wince at my words, my turn of phrase reminding them of yesterday in a way that is entirely intentional.
"Normally, fresh Genin do D-rack missions with their Jonin-sensei, but the whole point in that is to teach you discipline and to build a closer relationship between you three, so you can work together better."
Through the general depressive mood, they actually look excited at the idea of doing actual missions, especially since they don't know what D-rank missions entail, though, since we are at wartime, rather than painting fences or whatever, they are more about carrying supplies and missives and stuff.
It almost makes me feel bad for crushing those hopes.
Won't make me hesitate though.
"However, we will be doing things a little differently. I we will first be spending a month training, because you would all die far too easily to leave the village, then after that month we will start doing some missions."
There we go, now those silly little hopeful looks are gone and replaced again with fear and anger.
Both are great motivators, so I hope they don't let me down.
As for what I'm going to be doing, well, I don't need to make them good at everything, so I will be focusing on their strengths.
In Hayate's case that means Kenjutsu, which reminds me that I forgot to get a katana again. For Ibiki it will focus on tactics as he will be team leader, I will also teach him some psychological tricks he can use.
Then there's Tokara, he isn't very good at much, but he is decent with water Jutsu, the only problem there is that he isn't Tobirama to draw water out of the air and he doesn't have enough chakra to substitute it for water.
Which means he needs to carry a source of water with him, which is why I brought this.
In the blink of an eye, a pubescent child sized gourd of water with straps on appears in front of me.
"First things first, Tokara! Come here and put this on. This is a gourd of water, so that you always have a source nearby for your Jutsu, you need to get used to it's weight."
Glumly, he does as told and walks over and squats to put his arms through the straps, tightens them and then tries to lift the gourd of the ground, only to fall backwards onto his ass leaving him sitting against the gourd.
While he works on that, I move around him to face the other two.
First I make a shadow clone before I forget again and it leaves to go buy me a few good katana, meanwhile I speak to Ibiki, so I have time for the clone to get back with a katana for Hayate's training.
"Ibiki, you and I will run through various situations and your job will be to plan out solutions to not die."
Ibiki nods and my clone isn't back yet but I turn to Tokara again, seeing as he is just struggling to lift the gourd over and over again.
"Tokara! If you can't lift it, empty some of the water out until it is only difficult to carry, then just, run around I guess, do laps."
Then I make another clone and turn to Hayate.
"Hayate, you and I will duel to get your Kenjutsu up to snuff."
But my clone doesn't arrive just then like I had hoped, so I just stare of into space for a moment until it does arrive, handing three swords over to me, since my clones can't put things into my storage, but they can take things out at least.
I dispel that clone and then give two swords to the Kenjutsu clone, who has taken the time to put on my 'Wandering Samurai' straw hat, helpfully proving how they can access my storage.
Then they separate and I turn to Ibiki, who has no idea what he is about to experience.
"Alright then Ibiki, I am going to put you in a Genjutsu, do not dispel it."
Once he nods his assent, I do not put him in a Genjutsu, instead, I layer the False Surroundings Jutsu, one of my favourite Jutsu, on the area surrounding Ibiki and I, we both watch as our surroundings change from the forest to an endless white void.
"Here's how this is going to work," My 'Genjutsu' self explains, "I am basically going to make you experience my memories, not in the Yamanaka sense, I will put you in a situation that I have been in while I was around your age, then I will explain what I knew at that point in time, then hit 'play', so to speak, and you have to either complete the objective or simply survive, depending on the scenario."
Ibiki absently nods as he marvels at my educational capabilities no doubt. I do wonder why more people don't use Genjutsu as for training, there's probably a reason, but I don't really care that much.
You might be wondering why I am using an area Genjutsu instead of simply affecting him, well, that has a simple answer.
See, this training has two benefits, the first is that he will actually get some physical exercise, running around outside of his mind, the second and perhaps more important, is that at some point he might try to dispel the Genjutsu, only for nothing to happen.
It will be interesting to see how he reacts then, will he break or will he grow?
"Now, this is the scenario, you are inside the village of Tamagahara, your mission is to kill the man known as Jiei, he is only a civilian merchant with delusions of grandeur, he has no Shinobi guards but does have one Samurai on his payroll and he lives in the largest mansion, you have one hour to kill him and escape the village."
After saying that, my 'Genjutsu' self falls apart and the surroundings shift until Ibiki is standing alone inside of an alleyway in the dead of night, then I make a bunch of shadow clones around him and normal clones further away.
Naturally, I can't actually hold a village sized Genjutsu, at least not without Sage mode, so I am just moving the illusion with him and only making what is around him real, everything a certain distance away is more like a painting.
It's kind of like a video game now that I think about it.
I watch as Ibiki skulks his way through the quiet streets of the night time village and towards the giant mansion on a hill.
It really is hard to miss.
He barely manages to sneak inside, luckily for him he at least already knows how to use the tree walking technique, because the.. normals? Mortals? What am I supposed to call people who do not know how to manipulate their chakra?
Because they can't all just be called civilians.
I will go with mortals, since it makes me feel all warm and tingly inside to refer to the mortals as such.
Anyway, mortals tend not to look up, and Ibiki was able to make use of that to sneak inside, all the way to the targets room.
Green as he is, he opens the door incredibly slowly, hoping to make it more stealthy, not realising how it's just giving people more time to react.
The right thing to do is open the door quickly and slip in and close it before anyone can notice.
Anyway, he opens the door and walks in, closing the door behind him, then he immediately starts blushing at the sight of the two naked women draped over Jiei, their 'assets' fully on display.
That's another mark down for hesitation.
Shaking his head to clear away the pubescent thoughts, he walks up to the bed and draws a kunai, only hesitating briefly on taking the other mans life.
Unfortunately for him, that brief hesitation was enough time for the Shinobi in hiding to drop down and kick him across the room.
Ibiki impacts the far wall with a bang and I stand there invisible and I watch the Shinobi stalk towards Ibiki as he coughs repeatedly, holding a hand to his probably broken rib.
I did hit him quite hard after all, I mean, the Shinobi, hit him quite hard.
The Shinobi doesn't show any mercy and kicks him while he's down, even as Jiei wakes up and starts shouting about what's going on.
The Shinobi's cool voice rings out over Ibiki's pained gasps.
"This little Ninja was here to assassinate you Jiei-san, don't worry, I will deal with the problem now."
At his ominous words, Ibiki starts trying to crawl away, not having the strength to stand.
The Shinobi simply walks up to him and flips him over onto his back with a single foot, exposing the wide, terrified eyes of Ibiki to the world.
"This is the world you accepted by becoming a Shinobi, don't cower from the fate you intended to inflict upon others."
I can see the moment that Ibiki remembers that this is supposed to be a Genjutsu, and even more than that, I can see the moment he tries to dispel it, only for nothing to happen.
The Shinobi brings up a kunai, poised to strike down and end Ibiki's life, but defiance flashes in his eyes and he lunges forward with a surge of strength, drawing his own kunai on the way and stabbing the Shinobi straight in the eye.
Unfortunately, due to positioning, he still got a kunai in his gut for his effort.
Realising that he has been impaled, Ibiki staggers backwards, falling back down he puts a hand to his gut and pulls it back, staring at the blood on his hand as he starts to hyperventilate.
It's only then that I decide to pull him out, so to speak.
The world around him starts crumbling to dust and fading away from view under his uncomprehending eyes, until once again, it is only me and him in an empty white void, only this time I am the only one standing, as he lies there, bleeding.
I get a weird sense of Déjà vu at how much this is like in assassins creed when you kill someone important to the plot.
Only difference being that I don't want him to die just yet. Hiruzen would probably be really mad if I killed any of my Genin, maybe I'd even be made into a missing-nin, which, while sure to be fun, also seems like it would be a lot more effort than my current life.
Eh, maybe if I get bored enough I will go missing-nin, who knows.
Ignoring such useless thoughts, I walk up to Ibiki and channel my Medical Cloak Technique, I should come up with a better name for it, and start the process of healing him.
I say that, but the wound is gone pretty much instantly thanks to my own proficiency with medical chakra, something that has only grown with my relationship with Tsunade.
I'm probably the second best medic in the village, not that anybody but Tsunade knows that fact.
After Ibiki is all healed up, I stand up, him shakily following my lead, and I turn to him.
Time for a little lecture.
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A/N: He~llo! Dear readers!
Is this a cliff hanger? I don't think it's intense enough a situation to count. But you should join the dicord!
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