Tachibana's eyes were trained on Maruboshi. He looked at him with the focus of a hawk.
In Maruboshi's hand was a single leaf.
With a simple flick of his fingers, the leaf tore through the air and landed on Tachibana's exposed upper body with a sharp *snap*.
And surprisingly instead of slipping off after touching his body, it stuck!
"I did it!" Tachibana exclaimed picking the different leaves from his chest where they were all stuck with the help of chakra.
Maruboshi smiled, "Yes. You finally have."
This training technique was a new method Maruboshi had made to teach Tachibana about instinctively controlling his chakra in an easier way.
Once he had mastered walking on still water, Tachibana could control his chakra to a small degree, but it still wasn't precise enough to perfectly perform the transformation jutsu.
So Maruboshi came up with a new technique, he threw leaves at Tachibana while he tried his best to stick those leaves to his body using chakra.
This required exquisite control over Chakra and fast reflexes since Tachibana needed to act as soon as the leaf came in contact with his skin otherwise it would just fall off.
"Give the transformation jutsu a try." Maruboshi encouraged and Tachibana nodded.
Tachibana quickly performed the dog, boar and ram seals and in the otherwise empty training ground, a *puff* of smoke shot out from Tachibana.
Once the smoke cleared, instead of Tachibana was an old man with grey hair with a wok and ladle on his back.
Tachibana looked at himself and jumped joyfully once he found that the transformation had been executed perfectly.
"I did it!!"
Maruboshi nodded, "Although there are still a few mistakes in the details this try of yours is much better. Good job."
Tachibana bowed to Maruboshi and spoke with reverence, "It was all thanks to you Sensei."
"Haha~ your knack for chakra control is what's most impressive here. I only guided you to the best of my abilities."
"But still! Thank you very much for helping me!"
"Say, let's celebrate this short milestone with ramen.", Maruboshi suggested and Tachibana nodded.
"I would love that."
"Then before we leave, here." Maruboshi tossed another two scrolls towards Tachibana who caught them flawlessly.
"What are these?"
"The Clone and Substitution jutsus. Learn them on your own. From tomorrow we'll begin with practicing taijutsu. Your body has been conditioned properly for it now."
Tachibana looked at the scrolls in his hand excitedly and stuffed them into his pockets to learn once he was home.
"I'll learn them as quickly as I can."
"Make sure to double your food intake from tomorrow. Your body will need it for what I've planned." Maruboshi said and Tachibana nodded. Soon they set off towards Ichiraku Ramen with Tachibana talking about various ways he could improve in the remaining five months.
As they reached the store, a loud voice resounded from inside, "I can have another bowl!!! Believe it!!!"
Following that was another soft shout, "One more for me!"
Tachibana looked at the voice he felt like he'd heard a million times before and felt a little surprised.
'Naruto and Sasuke!'
Tachibana stepped into the store with Maruboshi and sat down on a chair but his eyes stayed on the white-haired masked shinobi and his three students.
"They're a genin team.", Maruboshi explained noticing Tachibana's gaze.
"A genin team consists of one jonin and three genin?" Tachibana asked for confirmation.
"You are right." As Maruboshi said that, a brown-haired woman in her twenties came to their table to take their orders.
"What would you like Maruboshi-san?"
"I'll have a bowl of miso ramen." Maruboshi ordered and Tachibana joined, "Same for me too."
"I understand. We'll have your orders prepared shortly. Please wait."
"Are there so many Jonin that all the genin from the academy can be assigned to a team?"
"No. Most genin are sent to the Genin Corps. They usually form teams with chunin and other genin to complete D and C rank missions."
"I see." Tachibana nodded.
"Kakashi-sensei! Will we start taking missions from tomorrow!?" Sakura asked Kakashi after finishing her bowl of ramen, causing both Sasuke and Naruto to look at Kakashi.
Kakashi only smiled as he gave them all an ego-boosting response, "Now that I've deemed you all to be a team. We will be taking missions from the Hokage tower from tomorrow."
Naruto's eyes widened and he shouted, "YOOOOOSSSSHHAAAAAA!!! I'm going to become the Hokage!!!!!" and then went back to competing with Sasuke on the number of bowls he could finish.
Kakashi only smiled but Tachibana almost snorted the noodles in his mouth through his nose when he heard that.
"Ah~ How fast time flies. Wasn't it only a week ago when you were as excited as those kids?" Maruboshi said in a reminiscing tone.
"How was I to know I'd be given such boring missions? You said we'd take missions to improve my skills and give me some experience. Who'd have thought you meant de-weeding experience instead of actual combat." Tachibana complained and reasoned for himself.
Maruboshi smiled and said, "If you can master the basic taijutsu style in the next two weeks I'll ask the Hokage for a 'real' mission."
Tachibana's eyes widened and then narrowed, "Are you trying to make fun of me again? By getting my hopes up?"
Maruboshi laughed and shook his head, "No, don't worry. I'm being serious. I'll ask the Hokage for a bandit extermination mission if you learn the leaf taijutsu style in two weeks."
Maruboshi pulled another scroll from his pocket and placed it on the table between them.
Tachibana's eyes gained a fire as he heard that and he swallowed all his noodles quickly and picked up the scroll.
"I'll learn it in a single week." Tachibana challenged and stood up to leave for his home.
He had a lot to do and wasn't willing to waste time in a ramen store.
Once home, Tachibana pulled out the Taijutsu scroll and looked at it for the first time.
'A Hundred and thirty different stances…'
'That means I've got to learn about nineteen stances every day to learn it all in under a week.'
Tachibana nodded and got to stretching his muscles so that he wouldn't pull them while learning to cause cramps in the middle of the night.
The week passed by quickly, with Tachibana's routine being quite busy.
He woke up early in the morning to meet with Maruboshi and condition his body to take hits and dish them out without breaking his bones. This involved punching trees with his bare knuckles until they were numb enough to create dents in the bark.
Then he would take a short break for about two hours in which he dressed up as a clown and went around the village making people laugh to act and digest his potion.
He had lunch after he was done acting and then left to go to Maruboshi once again where he had eight short spars with Maruboshi each spanning about fifteen to twenty minutes.
After the spars, Tachibana listened to Maruboshi about the mistakes in earlier rounds and the improvements he could make.
This was a little difficult however since unlike most people, Tachibana had an incredible sense of balance due to his clown potion. So Maruboshi was often forced to predict attacks from unexpected angles.
This was an advantage because it meant Tachibana's attacks were often unexpected. But it was also a disadvantage because sometimes he instinctually ruined his posture in favour of attacking when he should actually have backed away.
It was an issue of instinct so Maruboshi did his best to make Tachibana learn not to do so by giving him a thorough beating each time he attempted to stray.
Coming home, Tachibana practised all the stances in the Konoha Leaf Taijutsu scroll for a while. After which he practised the three academy ninjutsu.
The last two hours before sleeping he practised sealing.
At this point in his journey to learn sealing though, Tachibana hadn't even made a single seal yet since the theory of getting started itself was quite complicated and made his head hurt a little.
On the final day of the week, Tachibana lay on his bed thinking back to Ichiraku Ramen.
'Sasuke's quite handsome.'
'Naruto is quite the looker too but his dress makes him look a little squished.'
'And Sakura…well throughout the entire time at Ichiraku Ramen she kept looking at Sasuke.'
Tachibana woke up the next morning and arrived at the training grounds before Maruboshi and warmed up quickly.
"Maruboshi-san! I'm ready to prove myself." Tachibana said as soon as he saw Maruboshi enter the training ground.
Maruboshi was happy that Tachibana was excited but he shook his head, "Our spars will remain in the afternoon-"
Tachibana opened his mouth to interrupt but Maruboshi continued without allowing him to speak.
"I have a long-awaited gift for you. The new Jutsu that I promised to bring for you once you mastered water walking."
Tachibana's mood instantly brightened.
"Oh!? Which jutsu is it?"
Maruboshi only threw him a small scroll.
Tachibana immediately unfurled it and looked at the name.
"Body flicker jutsu!!!"