( TEAM 10 )
The genin hastily rose from their positions and immediately started walking through the origin of the dense, black column of smoke.
There was something strange in the air everyone could tell. Ino started babbling two miles for second, while Choji kept munching handfuls of his chips. The crunching sound was almost soothing, it reminded me of not stressful moments we had shared before.
There! Shikamaru thought. I almost had it. It was... around sound! Sound? Lack of it!
"There is too much silence." the Nara immediately said.
Choji scrunched his face and kept munching as fast as he could, while Ino's step faltered, her lips twitching downward in worry.
The group quickened their steps, soon running toward the origin of the smoke. They left the training ground behind and darted as fast as they could through Konoha. It was empty.
Absolutely and utterly empty.
The three genins were high on alert, slowing down, scared at the prospect of what they were about to find. Their feet on the ground and their breathing were the only sounds.
But the tense situation suddenly took a turn for the worse. Crossing the market district there were upturned stalls, fruit and vegetables smeared across the streets. Broken windows, chipped stone, cracked ground, but worst of all, splatters of blood.
"What..." Ino whispered.
"Not now!" Shikamaru hissed. "Ino, follow us staying hidden, Choji takes point, I got your back." The no-nonsense tone shut up Ino for good, while Choji was simply reassured to have his friend with him.
They turned a corner and reached the academy. Whichever plan Shikamaru had cooked up shattered and fell into nothing.
The smell hit them first. Violent, nauseating, almost toxic.
Choji remembered when he messed up at the barbeque and burnt the pork, but when his mind gave a sense to what he sight had provided, he bent over and violently puked. Shikamaru's face became pale, before assuming an unhealthy green shade.
The academy was burning, yes, but it wasn't the academy anymore. It was a pyre.
Countless bodies were into the fire, the skin melting, the eyes exploding for the heat, the bodies turning black. Shikamaru recognized a face, and he bent over to puke too.
A shriek froze the boys in their positions, they exchanged a meaningful look, their chins still dirty with vomit, and they shared a single thought: 'INO'.
Choji moved, almost running over his friend in his haste. There was no time to think, and Shikamaru's mind drew a blank, following the Amikichi without hesitating.
They went back on the way they had come from and turned the corner, Shikamaru froze again.
Ino was pinned by an enemy shinobi against a wall, a hand slowly squeezing the life out of her.
The stranger was almost two meters tall, with broad shoulders and a manic grin on his otherwise forgettable features. His black hair was spiky and long, almost like a mane, while his forehead protector held the kanji for 'failure' on it.
Ino kept trying to punch the elbow of the man, who didn't budge.
Choji had stopped thinking a while ago he punched the man with all of his considerable enhanced strength. The hit did not land since the target had sidestepped it with ease.
The manic grin of the stranger turned into a mocking, patronizing smile while he kicked Choji in the gut hard, sending him barreling through already broken stalls.
The man left a wheezing Ino on the ground, and out of nowhere, he was in front of Shikamaru.
The Nara fell on his knees, no amount of planning, no sudden stroke of luck, scratch that, no miracle was able to save them.
He fell on his knees, already defeated, staring dumbly the face of the shinobi with the Kanji for failure on his hitai-ate. With an almost detached spark of curiosity, noticing the purple, rippled eyes of the man who was suddenly striking him down with a gleaming sword.
That's when everything went still. The smoke in the sky, the sword, the enemy, his own breath.
"Enough, I think." A voice sounded out of everywhere. Then the air itself craked, and with a sound of shattering glass, the genjutsu unraveled.
...
( DAIKI POV )
I quietly watched the genins, my genins, I corrected myself, while they slowly came to their senses. They were my genins, not yet my soldiers.
Half an hour. Half an hour on three different minds, even if untrained, of a genjutsu that perfectly manipulated their senses, letting their minds fill in the unavoidable blanks. It took all of my focus, but only a little amount of chakra, especially on such a little scale.
Ino started coughing desperately while grabbing at her throat, Choji was rolling over, his hands clenched over his stomach, and Shikamaru was just sitting there staring ahead aimlessly.
I quietly sat cross-legged on top of one of the wooden posts, giving them time to gather their bearings.
Fifteen minutes later I offered Ino a jug of water, which she took and drank greedily.
The first question was unexpected, as much as the one who asked it.
"Why does it still hurt?" the Akimichi had asked me.
I wonder, does he ask it because his first priority is not feeling pain, or because he has realized it was already a genjutsu.
"The mind controls the body," I answered, trying to put kindness into my voice.
"Why?" Shikamaru asked, leaving his torpor.
I removed the jug from Ino's hands. "Slow down Ino. You don't need to drink, you're fine." I said, trying to info and steadiness into the hand that was holding her shoulder.
I turned my head towards the Nara: "For several reasons."
Ino managed to control her wheezing sobs and Choji had stopped clutching at his stomach. Ready to listen, then.
"You've been assigned to team 10, with me as your sensei. My first task was to determine if you can be trained to become soldiers of Konohagakure no Sato, or needed to be sent back to the academy.
The choices you made while in the genjutsu allowed me to assess you."
I didn't let a dramatic silence to settle or any of that bullshit. I disliked wasting time. "You passed, congratulations, now you're part of team 10." I droned on.
They didn't smile."That was a genjutsu!" Ino shouted. "How dare you!"
I arched an eyebrow, letting her understand that I was unimpressed.
Then I unleashed not killing intent, but a more refined expression of it. I bore my chakra to the edge of my coils, letting it rest heavily under the brim of my tenketsus. To their eyes, nothing changed, to their senses, now I resulted heavier.
"I am now your sensei." I reminded her coldly, and when she hastily nodded muttering an apology for lashing out I went on.
"First lesson. Your life belongs to you. Period. Not to your parents, not to your clan, not to your village, most certainly not to me." I was as serious as I could, and I saw them gulp and widen their eyes. I had their full attention.
"That means that the choices you make belong only to you. Your first choice, is to weather be a ninja or not."
They were all suddenly confused. Didn't expect it did you?
I sighed, they grew up in a family of ninjas, the possibility of not being one never existed before in their minds.
"Every action has consequences. If you choose to be a civilian, you get to do whatever you like, and will never be allowed to leave the village because Konoha won't risk its bloodlines. You get to live a happy and likely longer life in which all the important choices are made for you by ninja. Either from your clan or from the village council."
Shikamaru was staring at me with narrowed eyes probably trying to understand if it was some kind of test or not. The other two were... bewildered.
"If you choose to be a ninja, you pay in blood. You'll eventually steal stuff, information, lives, and even dignity from the corpses. You'll probably die young in protecting the village, and nobody will remember why or how you died after a couple of generations tops.
But if you manage to stay alive and become strong enough, at some point your voice will carry weight. If you become strong enough, you'll be listened to.
And maybe you'll reach the level at which nothing could enforce other people's decisions upon you. If you want to be a civilian, you're free to go, no hard feelings."
I waited with my eyes closed for five minutes. I heard them shifting uncomfortably where they were sitting. And the rustling of their clothes informed me that they often looked at each other to reassure themselves. When I deemed enough time was passed I opened my eyes and saw that they were still sitting there. Staring at me with nothing but determination in their eyes.
I didn't let my expression betray anything. We're still roughly on track. I was even relieved.
"So be it." I rose from my seat and stared at them.
"We can go on in two different ways. One, the road of minimal effort. I'll have you do team-building exercises and light conditioning, waiting for you to pick up your parents' techniques and become another Ino-Shika-Cho trio." I let my tone explain for me what kind of waste I thought it would be.
"You will probably further their researches. Each of you has talent to spare, there's no denying it, you will eventually surpass your parents, of that, I am mostly sure."
It was some kind of backhanded praise, I knew that at least Shikamaru and Ino managed to tell that there was something fishy going on.
I raised a hand, anticipating their questions. "Or you can give me your best, and I'll do the same."
At their questioning glances, I elaborated: "I am a scary strong shinobi."
"If you choose to do your best, I'll train you. And for a while you will hate me. At some point, you'll feel like your bones are melting, your brains collapsing, your chakra coils burning, and your very souls will consider the idea of leaving your bodies. But I will hammer you in the direction that will ultimately lead you to be the best you can be."
I looked at them, clearly seeing that Shikamaru had already chosen the first option.
"Before you choose, a last warning. At some point, someone dear to your hearts will die." My words slammed on them like a tidal wave, effortlessly bringing them to the burning corpses I made them see with my genjutsu.
"Maybe it will be your teammate during a mission. Likely, it will be because someone did not do enough. A split-second faster and you could have saved your teammate. A single jutsu could have tweaked things just enough to make you survive, letting your friends being captured to undergo months of torture."
They were sweating fear, I could almost taste it in the air. "And I can promise you, that you'll believe the fault is yours."
Shikamaru didn't like it. "And with the second option we will be strong enough to protect everyone, sensei?"
It was hard to miss the sarcasm in his last word. "No." I simply answered "But you will be able to think that it was impossible to do anything more, for anyone. But I can't deny that being the strongest you can be, usually does make a difference. Life will never be fair, I fear."
I rose from my position. "Think about it, tomorrow morning we'll meet here at 7:00 am, sharp. And you'll tell me your team's choice."
...
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