"From today, team 10 will be taking three D-ranks every week, in the mornings, there will be a break for lunch in the village proper, then I'll be waiting you here, where I'll train you. You'll go home for dinner and come back here at 09:00 pm, don't worry, only on the D-rank day.
The following night you'll sleep in your homes and we'll meet at the Hokage Tower at 07:00 am the following morning. I'll leave you one... free day a week. During which you'll learn whatever your family deems you ready to master."
...
I watched them waiting for questions, but luckily, they had picked up quickly how to retain information suddenly relied.
Well, since I warned them of the holes in their defenses only once before hitting it's not surprising.
After they had nodded I kept going: "And I want each of you to find a hobby, something that you can do with little or no equipment, you could do between a battle and the next."
Everyone was still surprised by the generous amount of human rights in their schedule, so the news of a hobby hit them even harder. The first to ask was Choji: "...just... a hobby? Why sensei?"
I sighed and sat down gesturing for them to do the same: "What do you know about the sannin?"
They looked even more confused by the non sequitur, but after a brief moment Ino took the lead.
"They were Hokage-sama's team, Jiraya-sama can summon toads and taught to the yondaime, Tsunade-sama is the best med nin to ever walk the Elemental Nations as well as the strongest woman in the world and..."
"Orochimaru has signed the snake contract and betrayed Konoha." Shikamaru closed the answer, clearly having picked up by his parents how much the topic was disliked.
I rolled my eyes: "Vague but correct, remind me to get you a bingo book from Kumo or Iwa, they tend to be the more finicky about the details."
I lit a cigarette and started playing with the smoke, trying to find a way to explain what I had in mind.
"Jiraya is the best seller author of the Icha Icha series." I said.
Noticing their confused expressions, I chose my favorite tactic when dealing with a delicate conversation: barreling through.
"It's smut. You know about sex don't you? Please tell me I don't have to explain to three pre-teens how penises and vaginas work..." I enjoyed immensely their turning redder than the Hokage's Hat and stammering out a plead 'to not explain'.
"Ok," I resumed "Smut, or erotica, is a text that describes in detail a sexual intercourse..."
Seeing them keeping up with the red, I nodded, they got the idea.
"And Jiraya's hobby is to spy on women. From what I heard he favors onsens."
"What!" Ino was conflicted between being scandalized and being incensed. I could understand her, I truly did, but I couldn't be bothered to deal with her indignation, so I snapped my fingers twice to get their attention once more before Ino could go on a rampage.
"Tsunade instead is an alcoholic and a gambler, she is so bad at the latter that she is also known as the Legendary Sucker." I continued, seeing them widen their eyes.
"Now they may very well be vices, but I promise you, they started as hobbies." I continued before their minds imploded under the weight of the new information.
"Do you know who never had a hobby?" I asked, and I saw Shikamaru coming to the conclusion I was leading them to.
"Orochimaru." And that froze them "Food for thought."
...
( 07 December- 12 years AK )
TEAM 10
The sizzling was their only warning.
'boom'
The hillside went up in flames, forcing the three genins to run away.
"C'mon motherfuckers!" they could hear their sensei maniacal shouts.
"When did he have the time to litter paper bombs everywhere?" Ino shouted over the chaos.
Neither of her teammates answered since it was a pointless question.
boom The treeline they were dashing towards went up in a wall of a white-hot fire, they could feel the air tugging them toward the flames that created a vacuum since they had burned so suddenly.
"If I see one of you blush again or falter because he or she hears cursing during a fight, I'll shove his or her head so far up the arse of a horse that you'll slam your head against his fucking teeth!" Their sensei voice could be heard thundering over the training ground 32.
"If you maggots survive today's training ... you will no longer blush or embarrass me or Konoha because a curse offends your delicate pampered ears!" he continued, fireballs and lightning herding his genins towards the next trap.
"You said that he had turned a new leaf!" Ino accused Choji.
Shikamaru was acutely aware that crossing a booby-trapped training ground while being chased by a vastly superior shinobi was, while not exactly safe, and effective kind of training. He even recognized that it forced them to somehow keep their heads level in the middle of the chaos.
It didn't matter though, because Ino would always whine, and never to their sensei. The contrast was too much, and Shikamaru snorted. Poor Choji, it's your turn today.
Somehow, Daiki-sensei heard his snort: "What's the fucking matter, do you find funny, while you were trying to discern whether I was being serious or not your teammate got a spike through his ass!"
Shikamaru eyes glanced at the shrapnel embedded into Choji's tight, just before having the back of his head smacked. He kept running, knowing that looking for their sensei would be pointless, and only distracting him from spotting tripwire. There! He saw it almost too late, but he quickly molded his chakra: "Ninpō: Kagemane no Jutsu!"
His shadow reached the ones of his teammates and made them copy his jump over the tripwire. Both Ino and Choji had learned to smother their natural reaction of shrugging off their teammate's control.
"Maybe one day you'll find it in yourself to not be a complete disgrace and cross this training ground without triggering traps any five years old could spot!" Their sensei's voice was a battering ram over their heads, and as one, the three genins disrupted their chakra flow breaking the genjutsu he tried to place on them.
"But until that day you are pukes! You're the lowest form of life on Earth. You are not even human fucking beings! You are nothing but unorganized parasitic pieces of amphibian shit! And you'll better learn how to trash-talk after today! Because I'm fucking tired of coming up with new clever insults to you and your families!"
Then they saw it, a white cloth signaling the end of their course. They passed it squeezing every ounce of energy they had left and didn't stop running.
"I'll see you tomorrow at the Hokage Tower!" Their sensei's voice had lost all of its bites and turned back into his usual cheerful one.
Still, they kept running, since the time that they had stopped their sensei had kept them training until four am because they had shown such a 'youthful spirit' by choosing to remain on the training grounds.
...
( 15 January - year 13 AK )
( DAIKI POV )
I flickered over a wooden post, looking critically at Sasuke's performing his clan kata. I couldn't know how it would work with an active Sharingan, but it didn't seem like much.
"You're angry." I accused him.
He turned towards me with a kunai in his hand, I had startled him.
Decent reaction speed for a chunin. I evaluated.
"It's you." he accused me with a more relaxed voice, lowering his guard.
I raised an eyebrow at his obvious statement. He just shrugged.
Wow, non-verbal communication at his finest. I sarcastically thought.
"What's eating you?" I offered.
The angsty pre-teen threw his kunai, with a precise flick of his wrist, I noted, against a target, bullseye.
"What's eating me! What's eating me? What'sating me is that instead of training, I waste my time chasing around cats, walking dogs and painting fences! What's eating me is having to be on time when my sensei arrives two hours late! ..."
I tuned out his ranting and let him shout himself hoarse, at least he wasn't bottling everything inside, and I didn't have to force him to talk about his feelings. Those were two good things. Even if I was less than at ease with what his opening up to me implied.
"Do you know why teams are made with three genins?" I asked him when he was done.
He looked at me tiredly while he went to recover the kunais embedded in the targets around him. I'll take that as a no.
"No genin is competent in each field. Usually, a genin specializes in close combat, one in support, and the third plays the middle role. In this way, they can cover each other weaknesses. In your team, for example, the Haruno would end up as support, the Uzumaki as ninjutsu specialist, so a long-range fighter, and you with close combat." I explained.
"But our sensei doesn't teach us anything!" He shouted.
"I can hear you just fine, Sasuke, do not yell. Calm yourself, breath. I won't talk with who is unwilling to listen." I chided him.
Surprisingly, or maybe not, he followed my request and calmed down, even if the frown on his forehead was not going anywhere anytime soon.
"A sensei teaches to a team. Why should Hatake-san teach any of you a thing? You're not a team, from what I heard, you rarely manage to complete a mission without almost killing each other." I drawled, making sue that my tone expressed how obvious the whole thing was.
At least I hope it's like this and not because Kakashi is simply all kinds of bat-shit crazy. I thought.
"But..." He started to object only to be cut off.
"You're more capable than your teammates," I said for him, hopping down from my perch.
"And I am more capable than you. Should I ignore you in the same way you ignore your teammates?" Seeing that I wasn't getting to him, I tried another way.
"Do you know why I set up camp here?" I asked, gesturing with my head in the direction where my yurt was.
"I was broke, and camping on training grounds is dangerous while it is against the law doing so in parks." I simply said "And you helped me by not whining too much.
"Then when I saw you doing... that abhorrent attempt of taijutsu..." And I enjoyed seeing him scrunching his nose in distaste at the reminder, "I helped you with it."
I stretched and walked again towards my yurt, Sasuke following me: "When I went away, you helped me by taking care of the greenhouse."
I took out a cigarette without lighting it up. I turned this shape manipulation exercise into a vice.
I realized. Then shrugged, it wasn't like I smoked more than one or two each day, and I was protecting myself from the nocive effects. So, what was the harm? I wonder if I can learn how to breathe underwater. How hard can it be extracting air from water?
"So, since I helped you, do you think you could help your teammates?" I asked.
Sasuke frowned heavily: "I won't waste my time with them, and I never asked you to... help... me"
"Did our spars feel like wasted time to you? That's not the point." I sighed.
"You don't have to help others, Sasuke, but wouldn't it be better if everyone helped someone else because they wanted to?"
...
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