Fandom Squad Shithead: A Naruto AU

[Gilzar]

As Tetsuo recovered, Katsuro continued to push the pace against his genin student. Now that he was starting to land his attacks, Katsuro could feel himself get into rhythm. He was starting to land on Tetsuo at will, and he looked to continue this. If this kept up Katsuro would have to switch things up to get a look at Tetsuo's offense. For now though he'd continue to push the pace just a little longer to see how Tetsuo could truly handle fighting while having to back up.

Just as Tetsuo recomposed himself Katsuro was once again swarming him with attacks. He threw another punch combination at his student, but this time there was no feint or fancy footwork to throw off Tetsuo: Just straight forward punches and pressure. He punched a right cross right toward Tetsuo's head to get close, then followed up with two hard hooks to Tetsuo's body.

------

The lack of enthusiasm coming off of Haruki was almost palpable. He didn't seem pleased in the slightest that water was his natural chakra nature. Haruki's childish reaction to disappointment caught her off guard. She couldn't help but giggle a bit at Haruki's visible dismay as the darkened paper sagged over.

"Don't sound so enthused." Matsuda teased sarcastically.

"Water style is just as formidable as any other element." Matsuda tried to reassure Haruki. "I've seen water users completely change landscapes. It's an extremely versatile element that can be used to cut through just a single enemy, or an entire squadron."

She couldn't help but think back to her time in the war. Some of her toughest battles were against water-style users. They'd completely flood the battlefield to their favor, before unleashing a barrage of precision and area of effect techniques from all angles. On one occasion, as an ANBU, she'd even witnessed an entire cliff-face tumble down on top of them from the precision cuts of a water technique.

"Luckily for you I happened to be trained to use water techniques. Thanks to my sharingan, I know plenty of water jutsu that even a genin could learn. Since you don't have much experience with ninjutsu you'll probably only be able to get one technique down over these next few weeks. What type of jutsu are you hoping to get out of this? Something you can use at a long range? Maybe a technique that's better up close? Or do you want something that works better at medium range?"

Haruki's answer would determine what water-based technique Matsuda taught him. There were a wide variety of techniques a genin could pick up, but Matsuda just needed to know what type of technique he was looking for. Then she could tailor an entire training regiment to teach him just that one technique. From what she had picked up on so far it wouldn't be easy, but everyone had to start somewhere.

------

Mizu and Ginji continued to follow the stone path through the woods until they had reached their destination: A large wooden shed, just at the end of the path. Although nothing stood out about the shed other than its size, it was in was in pretty good condition. The wood was a fresh color, and the concrete foundation didn't seem to have a single crack in it. This was the shed where all of the instructors stored their gear for training. So long as the instructor contributed what they could to keep the place in one piece, any of the gear stored in here was up for grabs.

Ginji brought a keyring out of his pocket, sifting through his collection of keys until he found just the right one he looked for. He unlocked the padlock for the unusually large door to the shed, then swung it open with ease.

"You can come in here. I doubt you're the type to mess things you're not supposed to." Ginji said to Mizu.

Mizu followed the older Hyuga into the wooden structure. She knew what this building was for, but she had always wanted to see the inside of it. To her surprise the interior was much less spacious than it looked on the outside. The entire space was occupied with as many rows of shelves as it could fit, all filled with as much gear as they could hold. From sparring pads to training dummies: This building seemed to have anything related to training. But what exactly they were looking for was still a mystery to Mizu.

"Just wait here one moment." He instructed to Mizu, "I'm pretty sure I know where to find what we need."

Ginji then vanished into one of the thin isles between one of the shelf rows, having to turn to his side to squeeze through the small gap between shelves. Meanwhile, Mizu patiently waited in the much more spacious entryway and just watched Ginji methodically sort through all of the equipment in the isle. It almost reminded her of how Matsuda was when they were clothes shopping last week. Maybe this is who she picked that habit up from?

"Now where did they put it? Why does everyone always have to move stuff around? Just put things back where you found them! It's not that hard, everyone who uses this place is a Jonin for goodness sake!" Ginji ranted as he continued to pour through all of the training equipment. After a few more minutes of digging, Ginji finally found what he was looking for. He squeezed himself out of the isle and tossed two unassuming khaki-colored leg-weights. At first Mizu didn't bat an eye at them until they thudded against the concrete floor in front of her. She leered at the weights before her, just what exactly were they going to do with all of these weights?

"Ever heard of Rock Lee or Might Guy?" Ginji asked as he squeezed himself back into the entryway.

"Yeah..." Mizu replied suspiciously to Ginji. Any aspiring taijutsu specialist knew both of those names. They were both legends, and their fighting styles/techniques still had influence to this day. Unfortunately that also meant Mizu had some idea of the grueling intention Ginji had with those weights.

"Their speed was legendary, and this is how they got it. They say that when Rock Lee was a genin, his leg-weights weighed 10,000 pounds a pop and he could still run around effortlessly. Once he took them off, the kid was faster than lightning!" Ginji explained enthusiastically. "These weights aren't anywhere near that heavy, but they'll still do the job. Put them on. Don't take them off unless you're sleeping."

Mizu froze, just glaring down at the leg weights. Training was normally something Mizu enjoyed, but she was not looking forward to this.

"Well, what are you waiting for? Put them on, we've got training to do!"

"Okay." Mizu replied uneasily. She sat down on the cold concrete floor, wrapping the weights around her ankles. Her pants didn't go down far enough to cover them up, so everyone would be able to see what was encumbering her. After she secured the last one to her leg, she looked up to Ginji.

"Ready?" he asked. Mizu nodded back to him.

"Good! Now I want you to sprint back to the training grounds as fast as you can."

 

[Pine]

When the first punch came, Tetsuo wasn't sure whether he should expect another feint or not. His hand came up to shield against the possible strike, and when Katsuro's fist connected, Tetsuo used it to help push himself back a short distance. He hopped back again when Katsuro followed the cross with a hook, and phantom tingles crawled up Tetsuo's side where the jonin's fist narrowly missed connecting. Then Katsuro aimed a second hook to the same place on his body.

Tetsuo crossed his left hand to catch Katsuro's fist. His non-dominant hand did not have the strength to fully stop the man's punch, nor was it intended to. Almost as quickly, Tetsuo clamped his right hand onto Katsuro's forearm. With his arms crossing each other, Tetsuo pushed down on the jonin's arm to heave his smaller body into the air. The genin twisted his torso mid-air to untangle his arms. As he did so, he swung a kick with his left foot meant to strike Katsuro's jaw, then pull him the rest of the way to land on his feet just outside of Katsuro's poised arms.

- - - - -

Haruki's face flushed at the sound of Matsuda's giggle. It sounded both sophisticated and petite all at once, and he knew in that moment it was one of his favorite sounds. He kept his eyes trained on the damp paper left in his hands. It wasn't until after she had moved on from her gentle teasing and onto a more instructional tone did he feel his face cool down, and he felt safe enough to look back at her with his full attention.

He hummed in response to Matsuda's reassurance that a water style did, in fact, have just as much destructive power as the other elements. He wasn't entirely sure how much he believed her. Matsuda was nice, after all, he was pretty sure, and lying to him to make him feel better seemed like the sort of thing that she might do.

The question she then presented stumped him. He hadn't thought that far ahead. In fact, he hadn't been sure at all that he would be given any choice of the type of ninjutsu he'd learn. He tried picturing himself blasting someone with water and what it would take to knock them far back. It looked seriously mediocre compared to all of the fire blasts or lightning strikes he'd imagined delivering before, but he saw some of the potential it had in his mind's eye. As to what range he imagined this devastating finisher move, he couldn't tell.

"I didn't really have anything in mind," he admitted to her. "Maybe long-range, I guess?" It was his best guess, because in his head, it seemed to add up that the longer the ranged, the greater the force.

Then, for the first time since seeing her that day, a small spark of excited, hopeful interest lit up his gaze. "Could you actually show me a few techniques?"

 

[Gilzar]

Tetsuo had pivoted himself at an angle Katsuro hadn't anticipated in the slightest. He had no idea that Tetsuo was capable of moving like that. The only one he thought could do that was Mizu, the taijutsu specialist. As Tetsuo spun himself through the air Katsuro knew a counter would be coming, but had little time to react to it. His arms were all tangled up with the genin's. All he could do in the moment was move his head and feet as Tetsuo's kick flew toward his jaw. Katsuro tucked his chin down and moved his head and body with the blow to lessen as much of the impact as he could. Tetsuo's kick landed, but the kick narrowly landed on his instructor's forehead, the hardest part of the skull.

Yanking his hands back to free them from his opponent, Katsuro stepped away from Tetsuo to reset and get a read on his opponent. The kick didn't do much damage to him, he still had all of his bearings. He had underestimated the kid's abilities, and he wouldn't do that again. He readied himself, anticipating what Tetsuo's next move would be.

--------

"Long-range, eh?" Matsuda replied, trying to feed the sparkle in Haruki's eyes. "I know a few techniques you could learn."

Matsuda turned away from Haruki and faced the tree line, just across the river. It was roughly 20 meters across the river and to the trees, making them the perfect target to demonstrate long-range techniques to.

"I'm going to demonstrate three techniques that I think you'd be able to learn right now. They're relatively simple, but still effective. You can pick which one I teach you afterwards."

Matsuda began to make a short chain of hand signs to demonstrate her first technique. The hand signs for this technique weren't too complicated, just a chain of three sings ending with her hands clasped together, thumbs and index fingers pressed together in the tiger sign. "Water Style: Volley!"

Three baseball sized water projectiles blasted out of Matsuda's mouth in rapid succession. Each one bulleted through the air at an astonishing speed (109 mph), hitting the targeted tree in just under a second. Upon impact, each water bullet splintered into the tree bark, emitting a loud thud on each impact and leaving behind a deep crater into the wood.

"That technique is called Volley. It's good at any range. I've hit targets with it up close, and as far back as 50 meters. It hits hard, but it's best used on just a single target."

Matsuda paused, letting her demonstration sink into Haruki. She then turned back to the river and started another chain of handsigns. This technique was also three hand signs but ended with the hare sign. "Water Style: Wild Water Wave!"

A continuous, pressurized blast of water shot out of Matsuda's mouth. As it traveled through the air, the stream expanded into a cone-like shape that grew larger with distance. By the time it hit the trees, it was large enough to pelt the bark off of three trees it impacted. Although not as deep of an impact as her water bullets, the damage was far more spread out. It traveled slower than her previous technique, it still had an impressive amount of speed.

"We call that Wild Water Wave. It's the most versatile of any of the techniques I'll show you today. You can control how far you want it to go, how wide the cone of water is, and how hard you want it to hit. But you'll probably not be able to get it as fast as the volley technique I just showed you. Still, it's nice to have a technique which you can control the lethality."

"Now, one more technique I think you can handle."

For this technique, Matsuda walked rish up to the stony shore of the river. Once again Matsuda began to methodically put together a chain of hand signs. This technique's required signs were twice as long as the other two, spanning out to six hand signs in total. She finished the series of required hand signs with the Ox sign, then slammed her hands down into the water. "Water Style: Crushing Wave!"

From out of the water directly in front of her, a large, tall wave emerged. It slowly began to move forward through the river, gaining speed as it traveled. The father the wave traveled, the wider it grew and the sharper its crest became. Just as it hit the other side of the river, the weight of the water curled the sharpened crest of the wave forward, and the wave rapidly accelerated in speed toward the targeted trees. For a moment, it looked like a tidal wave out of a painting, before the sharp white edge of the wave crashed down into the trees before it. Water flooded the entire area of impact, turning brown from all the mud it kicked up as it slowly trickled back from the tree line into the river. Once everything settled from the wave, its destruction was clear: One of the trees was slumped over, on the verge of falling over. All other trees in the area of impact were visibly missing large patches of bark from where the sharpest part of the wave had hit.

Matsuda slapped her hands together in triumph, wiping them together to remove anything her hands may have picked up from the river. As she turned to Haruki, still rubbing her hands together, the slumped over tree slowly collapsed over.

"That was crushing wave. It's the most powerful technique I could teach you, but it also has the biggest trade-off. Crushing wave only does damage at a long distance after the wave has had time to pick up speed. It won't do any damage at close or mid-range. But it will block most attacks, so long as they're not jutsu designed to penetrate armor. Moving that much water is also costly, especially if you don't have a water source to use."

Matsuda crossed her arms together, smiling confidently at Haruki. "So, what's it going to be?"

 

[Pine]

As Tetsuo cartwheeled back down to the ground, he kept ahold of Katsuro's arm to help stabilize the landing. Katsuro didn't give him the time for this luxury. Before he could let go naturally, Katsuro yanked his arm back, and this was nearly enough to knock the genin off balance on its own. Tetsuo jumped back just outside of the jonin's immediate range, anticipating that Katsuro had reclaimed his arm in order to throw another punch, but from with the man's full body in his sight once again, it seemed like he had done nothing more than take a few steps back on his own.

Tetsuo furrowed his brow, becoming more and more confused as crucial seconds dragged past with Katsuro doing nothing. What had even happened just now? From his angle and the heat of the moment, Tetsuo hadn't really been able to see what had happened with his kick. He had felt the resistance of his foot connecting with something, but it hadn't been the hard stop that would've come from striking his jaw, and as he looked over Katsuro's face, the the man's overall profile looked unperturbed. He may have been able to make physical contact in contact with a veteran shinobi, but could something like that even count as a hit?

Self-doubt needled its way into his head like a parasite. An unconscious goal he'd set for himself was to land one hit against Katsuro. Knowing a little of Katsuro's reputation and combat experience, this felt like the most realistic, measurable thing he could hope to achieve out of this. He doubted he could do more than that, because a shinobi of his level had malleability, and the same trick wouldn't work against him twice. But if that kick was the one shot he had against the jonin, then he may as well have failed altogether. There was no way a blow that weak was going to make any kind of impression on the man that was supposed to be his instructor. Katsuro would forever cast him as a loud-mouthed brat with nothing to back it up. Just another kid he didn't have to take seriously. A weakling. Katsuro was probably already thinking it. The thought nearly made him sick to his stomach.

It took him far too long to register that Katsuro was waiting for him to make a move.

Tetsuo clenched his hands into fists, trying to suppress the slight tremors of both his adrenaline and emotions. He leaned into his frustration in order to bite down on his melancholy, because he knew it would do him no good to spiral now.

He moved without planning because he just needed his body back in motion. He charged a couple of steps, then pumped chakra down into his feet for quick burst of speed and power. Tetsuo pushed off in a short hop off the ground to close some of the distance between them. As he did so, he kicked out his right leg in order to drop it onto Katsuro's left knee.

- - - - -

Haruki followed Matsuda's gaze to the treeline past the river. He awaited what was to come next with rapt attention. He had no doubt about the Uchiha woman's abilities, even without knowing or really understanding much of her sharingan that she mentioned, but he was curious to see just what kind of things she could show him just using water.

The first technique she demonstrated made his jaw drop. The water she launched moved at blitzing speed - one that he did not expect. Haruki couldn't even count how many projectiles she'd launched, he was taken so aback. It wasn't just the speed though. As he traced the volley technique's path, he saw how they had blasted holes in the tree trunks, visible even from how far back they were. He had no idea it was possible to cause that much damage using just water alone.

There was another thought he had, which preoccupied his mind all the more as he saw this repeat with the second technique Matsuda demonstrated. Haruki's hand came up to gently cup and rub his own throat as he frowned. So far, all of this power and destruction had come directly from her mouth. It at once disgusted and horrified Haruki to imagine his own mouth producing this powerful force of element. Even with the second technique being notably slower than the first, he imagined an immense discomfort from this water produced either in his throat or mouth or wherever it came from, then bursting from between his lips in order to attack. He'd been hit with the stream of a high-pressure hose once. He did not want to experience that coming out of his own body.

Before he had even seen the breadth of her final jutsu, the swath of land it was able to cover, and the impressive trauma it was able to inflict on the treeline in its wake, Haruki had already made up his mind the instant he saw Matsuda's hands slam into the water. His eyes widened a little as one of the trees impacted from the force of the jutsu collapsed completely on its side. At that point, it was only a bonus that this was the most impressive move in appearances, and the confirmation that followed after that this was, indeed, the most powerful of the three.

He did not hesitate for a second nor pay any heed to the jonin's cautions that this jutsu was the most inflexible in its utility.

He looked to her and quickly said, "I want to learn that last one."

 

[Gilzar]

After some hesitation, Tetsuo finally picked up on the hint that Katsuro wasn't going to make the first move. It was time to see what the kid was capable of on the offensive side. Tetsuo finally made his move on Katsuro. The boy leaped through the air at him with an impressive speed, kicking out his leg toward Katsuro.

Immediately Katsuro side-stepped to his right, putting just enough distance between him and Tetsuo to narrowly avoid his attack. Right before Tetsuo flew by him, Katsuro used the opportunity to throw his own counter attack on Tetsuo. He threw his arm up and close-lined Tetsuo, slamming the kid into the ground. He stared down at the kid with an irritated look in his eyes. By now he had a feeling of how fast Tetsuo was, there was no way he made the speed of that jump without using chakra.

"When I said no jutsu, that also includes using chakra to enhance speed. You're not going to improve you taijutsu if you have to use chakra to land your attacks. It's a bad habit that I'm not going to let you get into."

Katsuro then walked away from Tetsuo, once again standing exactly five meters away from him.

"Attack me again."

---------

Out of the three techniques Matsuda presented, Haurki picked crushing waves to learn. It was a good choice of a technique, one that would definitely set the kid apart from his peers. However, Haruki had just so happened to pick the most difficult technique for a rookie. This technique was classified by the intelligence corps as a B- rank technique with its destructive and defensive capabilities. With enough practice, the move could probably be refined to higher ranks. Matsuda would know, because she was the one who classified it. Crushing Waves was a technique she had seen exclusively used by Hidden Mist users. She had been able to perfectly copy the technique without ever having to practice it thanks to her Sharingan. If Haruki were to successfully learn this, he would be the only leaf shinobi other than Matsuda who knew this technique.

Matsuda was debating trying to talk him into learning one of other two techniques, until a realization hit her. A devious little grin grew across Matsuda's face as the outcomes of teaching Haruki this move crossed her mind. She was going to make this boy into a killer. Katsuro and even that uptight little brat Tetsuo wouldn't ever anticipate this kid having such a technique. The look on their faces as the incompetent Haruki leveled entire battlefields with this technique would be rewarding enough on its own, but Matsuda just hoped she could be there to see it. His teammates probably thought he wouldn't be capable of it, but they weren't an Uchiha. Matsuda would use her impeccable attention to detail to find something this boy was good at and then exploit it until he could pull off this ninjutsu. Three weeks was an immensely short amount of time to teach someone completely from scratch, but the challenge lit a fire under Matsuda, who was determined to do something Katsuro couldn't.

"Very well then." Matsuda replied to Haruki.

"We have a lot of work to do, so pay attention. The first thing I need to teach you is how to use your chakra to manipulate and create water. It's a lot easier to learn how to do this using a natural source of water. Come up to the shoreline and follow my instructions."

Matsuda slipped off her standard-issue shinobi sandals. She then walked into the river until the water was at her knees and turned her body so that it faced against the gentle current of the water.

"Come into the water with me. It'll be easier on your body if you just get into the river rather than leaning over it all day."

After Haruki was next to her, Matsuda continued with the lesson.

"With your chakra affiliation, you can manipulate any body of water. If you want to use water ninjutsu, you first have to master controlling water in its natural state. Then we'll worry about creating it from scratch. What I want you to do is make a wave that flows against the current of the river, using only your chakra. Watch what I do."

Matsuda made a half of a tiger hand sign with her left hand, focusing her chakra. Then she put her right hand into the river. Pushing her chakra into the water, a small wave form that gently moved upstream, against the current.

"It's as simple as that. Now you give it a try!" Matsuda said to Haruki. As she watched Haruki's attempt, Matsuda activated her sharingan. Her irises morphed from their dark color to the deep shade of red the clan was known for, and the almost wheel-like symbols dotted the red of her eyes from the black of her pupils. She keenly watched Haruki attempt the technique, using every bit of the sharingan's enhanced perception to see what he needed to improve.

---------

The encumbrance was like nothing Mizu ever felt before. The entire sprint back down the stone path had felt like something out of a painful fever-dream. She tried to move fast, but with each step she felt like someone was psychically holding her back, preventing her from going full speed. Having the leg-weights on was already exhausting her. Mizu hadn't even been sprinting for that long, and already her lungs were gasping for air. This was going to be a long three weeks.

It wasn't a long trip back to the training grounds, but it felt like a grueling eternity to Mizu. Eventually, after what felt like an hour, Mizu reached the end of the stone path. She tumbled back into the training grounds, hunched over with her hands on her knees as she desperately tried to catch her breath. For the moment she was alone, Ginji was somewhere behind her but she didn't know when he'd get here. Alone and exhausted, the negative thoughts began to pour into her mind as with anyone fighting against their own fatigue. As disciplined and as driven as she normally was, even she couldn't avoid human nature. How much of a difference can this really make? Is all of this pain really going to be worth it? Maybe if I said something he would lower the weights...

Just then Mizu looked up, only to see Tetsuo and Katsuro sparring. In her state of anguish, she had completely forgotten he was working to improve his taijutsu, just like she was. From the short period of time she watched, she witnessed how Tetsuo could move. From the counter-strike, to how he closed the distance against their Sensei with that kick at an impressive speed. Unlike Katsuro however, she had no idea his mighty leap at Katsuro was powered by chakra. In her exhausted state, she thought he was just naturally that fast and athletic. In spite of all the blood sweat and tears she'd put in with her uncle he was somehow faster than her. A hollow feeling stabbed into her gut as she realized that with Katsuro training him, he could surpass her taijutsu abilities. If that were the case, Tetsuo would have eclipsed her in both ninjutsu and taijutsu.

In spite of her exhaustion, Mizu forced herself to stand up straight and be strong. There was no way she would let it happen. She wasn't about to be surpassed in her own specialty, not by him. A fire lit inside of her, and its burning sensation melted away the hollowness and doubt she had. Mizu was going to gut this out, and not fall behind someone she so bitterly despised.

From behind her, Ginji finally emerged from out of the woods. He casually slipped on his coffee, looking at Mizu's exhausted state. Perhaps he had gone a little overboard to start? That was a lot of weight for someone who had never done this kind of training before...

"Want me to lower the weight a bit?" Ginji asked in a kind manner.

"No. I want more weight." She said between her heavy breaths, not taking her eyes off of Tetsuo or Katsuro's training.

"What?" Ginji's white eyes opened, not at all expecting that answer from someone who seemed so hesitant to even have the weights on to begin with. In all of his years he'd never had anyone ask for more weight after the first sprint. Most either gutted out whatever they were already carrying, or asked for the weight to be lowered. This girl had a fire inside of her, for whatever reason. He traced the gaze of her eyes over to Tetsuo and Katsuro, and formed a small grin. So that's what it was.

"If you say so." Ginji replied. He reached into his jacket pocket, and pulled out two large wrist bands. He tossed onto the ground next to her. "Put these on. Then meet me at the wooden dummy."

Mizu complied, slipping the heavy bands around her wrists. They weren't as heavy as what was on her legs, but it would still be encumbering. With the strength she had, she carried herself over to the wooden training dummies Ginji seemed so insistent on using today.

"I want you to kick this dummy with each leg 1,000 times. Then I want you to do the same with your hands. Focus on your form over speed or power."

Mizu nodded, and began digging her left shin into the wooden figure. Over, and over, and over again...

 

[Pine]

The jonin effortlessly caught Tetsuo mid-air with his arm and slammed him down into the ground. The sheer force the man exerted over him and the impact of his landing seemed to rattle his skull and nearly knocked the wind out of him. Instinctively, he started to kick his leg up to block any incoming attacks, but after a beat, he realized Katsuro was just standing there.

Tetsuo at first looked at him with some surprise, then returned an equally irritable look. As he put his palms to the earth to push himself up, he grumbled, "You should've said that."

But something about what Katsuro said gave him a weird feeling in his stomach. He wasn't sure if it was embarrassment or something else. Katsuro was right - he had not even made the decision to use chakra when he did that. It had been automatic, and now that the instructor had backed up and told him to attack again, he was at a loss on how to approach.

Tetsuo tried to loosen himself up, shaking his hand, bouncing on the balls of his feet and puffing out a breath of air. Then he charged. When he felt in range to the jonin, he kept his left arm close to his side readied to react and threw a right hook aimed at Katsuro's abdomen.

 

[Gilzar]

Tetsuo closed the distance to Katsuro at a much more manageable speed. By the time he had closed the distance on Katsuro, he was ready for whatever the kid would throw at him. Tetsuo's attack was nothing special, just a straightforward right hook to the body. No combination following the strike, no feints, not even an angle change to throw Katsuro off. Because of this, Katsuro was able to avoid the strike with relative ease just by shoving Tetsuo back with his much longer arms, while shifting his body back just enough to avoid the strike.

"We need to work on your offense." Katsuro said. "You're fighting like someone twice your size. That might work on genin your age, but it's not going to work on someone as big as me. In a situation like this you need to use fast strikes and attack from different angles so that I can't counter you so easy."

"I want you to attack me again, this time don't just charge straight at me. Cut angles and focus on combination strikes. Only throw a big punch or kick at me if you're confident I won't see it coming. For now, all I'm going to do is try avoiding whatever you throw at me. I'm ready whenever you are."

 

[Pine]

Haruki was compliant with Matsuda's instructions.

He followed her to the shoreline and copied after her movements. He crossed his legs one after the other across his knee to grab and slip each sandal off. Idly he found himself wishing it wouldn't have stopped there, and by some miracle of happenstance the both of them would have appropriate bathing suits they could spend the rest of the day training in. Maybe they could even just swim around during their breaks together. He wanted to see Matsuda in the different outfits she owned, because he felt certain she must have impeccable taste, and he had no doubt that she could make even the most uncoordinated of outfits look good.

She removed nothing more than her sandals, however, before she stepped into the river. Left to his own devices, Haruki would've at least liked to have removed his top, but he wasn't going to remove more clothing than she did.

The young genin stepped into the river. The moment he dipped his foot in, a shot of cold rushed through his body. The sun was up, but it hadn't had any time to warm the river up on the already chilly training grounds. Haruki did not rush to be at Matsuda's side, and instead made an, "Ah, ah," sound with every careful step he took. By the time he reached her, his arms were wrapped tightly across his torso, and he shivered and trilled his lips just to make a show of just how cold he was as he adjusted. Matsuda eclipsed him in height, so even with him standing on the higher ground of the river, where the water came up to her knees, it reached up his thigh nearly to his waist.

Haruki quieted down when she explained what he was to do. Even with her instruction, he still felt... confused. She had been vague on the 'how', but remembering his training with chakra control during their mission, he had a guess on what she might have meant.

He mimicked what she had done that he could see. Haruki made what he could of the tiger seal with his left hand. He stirred the chakra within him. He stared down with concentration as he moved his right hand to the surface of the water, he pooled chakra to his palm and trickled it into his fingertips. A small ripple spread out from all directions where his hand made contact with the water's surface and created tension. The chakra simply vibrated the water, doing nothing to manipulate the actual form of the water's body as Matsuda had.

"Like this?" he asked. He turned his head to give her a look that was equally as uncertain as his tone.

Immediately, he stopped what he was doing and flinched. "Whoa!" Haruki's eyes were wide open as he stared into her own, which had changed dramatically. They weren't bleeding, but they were red, with strange black flecks. In a panic, he fumbled over his words to say, "Miss Matsuda, your eyes—!"

- - - - -

There was barely anything required on Katsuro's part to completely shut down the boy's strike. Tetsuo fumbled back a few steps following the shove and gave his instructor an indignant look.

He pinched his lips together in a tight line as Katsuro broke down exactly how and why his approach was ineffective. The direct second-person language, telling him what he was doing, flared an instinct in Tetsuo that made him want to shout the old man down. Although the frustration was plain to see on his face, the boy reigned in his temper, because he knew what he was being given was sound advice, and this was exactly the kind of feedback he was seeking out to begin with.

He tried to reset. There was still some hesitation on his part. It was hard to think that any of his quick strikes would pose the kind of threat that would make anyone bother dodging or blocking, but he had to try to see how it worked.

Tetsuo stepped in close to Katsuro. He took a right step forward and threw a left jab to the stomach. Knowing Katsuro would be focusing on dodging, he followed quick by sweeping lower to his right before throwing a right jab to the side. Tetsuo then moved aggressively to close any distance left between them. He shuffled forward with a quick step to the left, but this time, instead of breaking to throw a jab, he immediately took a second consecutive step forward. His leg extended out to cut between Katsuro's own. He hooked his leg to wrap around or at least agitate Katsuro's ankle as Tetsuo stepped back, attempting to trip the jonin or move out of range of a potential counter.

 

[Gilzar]

With her sharingan activated, Matsuda noticed even the finest of details from Haruki's technique. From how tightly his hands held the tiger seal, to how far the surface tension of the water climbed up the sides of his hands. More importantly however, her special eyes let her see Haruki's chakra. While not as detailed as Ginji's byakugon, she was still able to see how the chakra was flowing into the water. As the genin exerted his chakra into the water, it had no particular direction. Haruki was just blindly pushing his chakra into the water hoping for the best. As a result, his chakra was moving randomly in multiple directions, hence the ripples.

Just as she was about to give Haruki his feedback, he gave a startled reaction to her sharingan. Matsuda stared back into his eyes with a puzzled look. Most shinobi were well aware of the sharingan, especially those from the hidden leaf. It was her clan's most valuable asset, one that made them the envy of the ninja world. Haruki must have been living under a rock his whole life, or just never paid attention in the academy.

"There's nothing to be worried about, Haruki." Matsuda assured with a warm smile. "This is the sharingan, it's the Uchiha clan's kekkei genkai. I can do a lot with this dojutsu, but it mainly lets me perceive the world better than most people can. My eyes can spot out the tiniest of details, even the flow of your chakra."

Hoping her explanation would suffice, Matsuda continued on with the lesson. "You're moving your chakra into the water, but you're not giving it enough direction. Right now it's just spreading in random directions."

Once again, Matsuda made the proper hand sign then put her hand into the water right next to Haruki's. "Focus your chakra forward. Imagine you're physically pushing the water forward, but just with your chakra."

Once again Matsuda created a wave without even the smallest movement of her hand.

-------

Tetsuo seemed to finally start listening to Katsuro. Rather than just charging straight in with a straightforward attack, Tetsuo came at an angle and threw multiple strikes. With each jab Tetsuo threw, he used movement to keep closing the distance on Katsuro. This method of attack was much more effective than Tetsuo's previous. Each strike was close to landing on the Jonin, but with his skill and experience Katsuro managed to evade all of them. He backed away from the first punch with a quickly timed step, then lunged to the opposite side of the second punch. The movement Tetsuo used was also proving to be effective at closing any distance between himself and Katsuro. His final attack at Katsuro would be the closest he came to disrupting the jonin. Katsuro reacted to the feint and side-step by backing right into Tetsuo's leg. However, the moment Katsuro's leg came into contact with Tetsuo's, he immediately snapped his leg up and pushed off of Tetsuo's torso to jump a safe distance away.

Tetsuo would need a lot more practice to consistently land on someone as experienced as Katsuro, but he was headed in the right direction.

"That was good. We'll keep doing this drill for the rest of the day."

 

[Pine]

"Oh," Haruki said, deflating from his panic just before.

He had heard of the sharingan before. Matsuda had mentioned it herself just a little bit ago, but he hadn't pieced everything together until that moment. The context he'd heard it in most was whenever he or some other kids had been playing ninja as kids. Typically, there was always that one kid who would just shout the word 'sharingan' over and over again to copy whatever everyone else was doing, so much so that the word itself had lost meaning to him. It was by and large considered a cheap cop out to get out of any situation in the game. People never really liked the 'sharingan' kid.

Even now, with Matsuda's encouraging smile and him knowing nothing was exactly 'wrong', he still found it a little unsettling. Eyes were not supposed to be that color, and in a weird way, he felt he could tell just how much more she was able to perceive now with her sharingan activated.

Haruki managed to tear his own eyes away from staring too long. It did not provide much relief. He knew her eyes were still on him. He tried his best to ignore it.

Again, he made the half-seal and touched his hand to the water. At first, the result was the same. He concentrated on making surface tension between his hand and the river, and thin ripples pulsed out. But gradually, he was able to take in Matsuda's guidance and apply it. He did not stop with the chakra he'd focused in his hand, but instead imagined a constant stream of energy pouring down his arm and down through his fingertips. As he adjusted to this new sensation, the water began to push in rolling lumps against the river's current, broken up by an occasional, sporadic ripple any time his concentration slipped.

 

[Gilzar]

Matsuda watched with satisfaction as Haruki applied her advice to his technique and immediately improved. With her sharingan she could see that a small amount of his chakra was now moving forward, pushing against the current. While it was a vast improvement from his last technique, there was still a lot of work to be done. Plenty of his chakra was still flowing in an uncontrolled manner. There was only so much advice Matsuda could give to fix this. Haruki would have to learn how to control his chakra through the repetition of practice.

"That's much better Haruki!" Matsuda said as she watched the lumps of water move against the river current. "Keep doing that but try to make the waves bigger. Quality over quantity."

The rest of the training day would be spent in the water doing the same drill. Although she wouldn't constantly have it active, Matsuda used her sharingan when needed to give Haruki advice to keep him moving forward with the training. Every few hours the two would take a short break before resuming the training once more. This continued on until the clock hit 5:00, and Matsuda ended the training session for today.

"I think that's enough for today. You've spent enough chakra, no need to keep this going." Matsuda explained. She left the water next to Haruki, sat down on the ground, and used her long sleeves to dry her feet the best she could. Once her feet were as dry as she could make them, she slipped on her sandals and stood up to address Haruki one last time.

"Tomorrow, I want you to meet me at the canal inside the village walls at 8 AM. Right next to the bridge that leads to the hot springs. There's no need for us to go all the way to the training grounds for what we're practicing right now."

She then waved to Haruki and walked back to the village. Although Haruki didn't know it, Matsuda hadn't been entirely honest with her intentions of moving their training location. It was true that the village canals were closer to both of them compared to the training grounds. However, Matsuda couldn't care less about how far they needed to go for training. What she really wanted was to hide their training from Katsuro. The jonin wanted none of Haruki's teammates to see what she was teaching Haruki. That way, when Haruki finally revealed his devastating technique to the world, it would be a surprise.

---------

Katsuro and Tetsuo continued their cat and mouse drill throughout the rest of the training day. Every two hours Katsuro would force them to take a break so he could smoke, likely to Tetsuo's dismay. Although Tetsuo had improved on his offensive technique since they first began training, by the end of the day it was clear that there was still a lot of work to do. There were only a few times throughout the day's session that Tetsuo managed to land a single hit on Katsuro. Even when he did connect with a strike on the jonin, it was just a small strike Katsuro brushed off. To make matters worse, Katsuro pushed a brutal pace on his student. Every second that Tetsuo wasn't moving his fastest at Katsuro was a second that Katsuro would use to get more distance on him.

Once the time hit 5:00, a timer on Katsuro's phone went off. The annoying ring signaled to the jonin that it was time to end training for the day. Katsuro visibly relaxed his shoulders and knelt down to slip his flak jacket back on.

"We're done training for today." Katsuro simply said as he slipped his sunglasses back over his eyes. Once his eyes were veiled from the rest of the world, he slipped his hands back into his vest and pulled out his flask. He took a quick swig of whiskey, and let the burning liquid sit at the back of his mouth as he placed the flask back in his vest. After he swallowed his drink of choice, he let out a relaxing sigh, then faced Tetsuo. Before he spoke to Tetsuo, he dug out yet another cigarette.

"Before you leave, we still need to talk about your punishment for what happened with Mizu last week." Katsuro instructed as he lit the end of his cigarette.

"I've thought long and hard about what your punishment should be. At first, I was gonna send your ass to the quarry and have you do some hard manual labor for two weeks. But you know what? That's too simple. You wouldn't learn anything but how to carry some stupid fucking rocks."

Katsuro lowered his dart of tobacco out of his mouth with two fingers and blew out a large cloud of smoke.

"You need to learn some fucking empathy. So I signed your dumb ass up to volunteer every night at Sakura Haruno hospital's ER and ICU for these next two weeks. Someone's there who might just change how you look few things. Report to the emergency room at 8:00 tonight."

Katsuro then began to walk away from Tetsuo back toward the village. Before he got to the path that led back, he suddenly stopped.

"Oh, forgot to mention. If you skip out on your punishment, then you're off my team and are done as a shinobi."

With that being said, Katsuro calmy walked back to the village gates while he enjoyed his cigarettes and paid no more attention to Tetsuo.


---------

Mizu breathed fiercely as he left hand pounded into the wooden dummy in front of her. By now her legs and arms felt lifeless. She had to will herself through every strike.

998...

She brought back her first, took a quick breath, then hammered her fist against rigid wood. Her eyes winced in pain as the splintered wood dug into the sores on her knuckles.

999...

One last time, Mizu breathed in and bashed her closed hand against the post.

1,000!

The rush of finally being finished elated her mind over her the pain of her fatigue, but only for a moment. Mizu collapsed down to the ground, resting her back against the wooden dummy. By now four noticeable dents had been chipped in on each side of the wooden figure. A small amount of blood trickled off of her knuckles and onto the ground. Exhausted and in pain, all Mizu could do was just let out a loud sigh of relief. She was finally done. Ginji's task had taken her all day and had completely drained her of any strength she had left.

As she rested against the post, bathing in her own sweat and barely able to stay awake, Ginji walked around the dummy and knelt down in front of her. He gently picked up her left hand and began to heal her knuckles with the familiar green shine of a medical ninjutsu.

"You did good today, girl." Ginji remarked with a smile. After about a minute of healing her hand, he switched to the other and repeated the same process. "I don't want you doing anything else today. Just rest. If you think you've torn something, you let me know tomorrow and I'll patch it up. Until then though, you don't take those weights off unless you're sleeping. Understood?"

"Sure." Mizu muttered with her eyes half closed.

"Come on, get up. I'll walk you back to the village."

Not wanting to pass out, Mizu forced herself back to her feet. As she stood, her legs trembled underneath her own weight. She stumbled back for a bit as she struggled to find her footing. Eventually she steadied herself and began to the long walk back to the village. Every step she had to force, as there was no power left in either of her legs. Yet Ginji walked with her the entire way back. They didn't speak the entire way back, Mizu was too tired to even think of something to say. But Ginji walked with her all the way back to her house, even though it took them well over half an hour to make it back.

"Rest up now. We'll meet back at the training grounds at the same time tomorrow. Sound good?"

"Yes." Mizu said as she lumbered into the entrance of her house. The rest of the evening she would spend laying in bed while listening to her CD player, only getting up to eat or use the restroom.

 

[Pine]

Over the course of training that day, Haruki had managed to make some notable progress. Although still far from the size of the first wave Matsuda had lifted in her initial demonstration, the force of Haruki's chakra had begun to move the water to where it began to crest into that shape. The erratic ripples had become much less frequent as well. Several times he had been able to zone out a little, as was inevitable with the repetitive nature of this drill, and he had managed to keep the force of his chakra pushing for some time during that. Only once did he ask with some impatience if this was all they were going to be doing for the rest of the day, but the jonin's response had been enough to assuage any major reluctance on his part, and he started to find a peace in the meditation of how the chakra stimulated his palm and the roll of water against his skin.

Perhaps more importantly to him, he had started to feel a little more comfortable with Matsuda again. Importantly, she had remained warm and nonjudgmental throughout the course of their training. He had even started to get used to looking at her when her sharingan was activated after the initial startle each time she did. Haruki was still a little wary of talking too much around her during their training, but he began to think at least tomorrow, he would try talking to her during their breaks.

By the end of their training, Haruki looked nowhere near as ragged as his teammates did, but mentally he was spent. He released the control he had on his chakra flow, indicated with a gentle splash in the river before he followed her out. Unlike Matsuda, Haruki did not bother with drying his feet before putting his sandals on. After a day like today, something like slipping around inside his own shoes on the way home would be a nice break from mundanity.

Haruki crouched to rub his legs vigorously to give them some warmth. At her instructions, he stood back to attention and acknowledged, "Yes, ma'am."

He felt a small thrum of excitement as the two parted ways. Matsuda had treated him once before, and now he started to wonder if they could take their breaks in the hot springs tomorrow. Whatever the case was, he was definitely bringing his swimming trunks tomorrow - a baby blue with cartoonish sushi rolls scattered about as its design.

He hesitated only for a second on his way out of the training grounds. Did his sensei expect him to give a report before he left? It didn't seem to be necessary on account of Matsuda's dismissal, and it took him one look across the distance to where his jonin-sensei was wrapping up with his teammate to decide he didn't want to give the chance to get caught between either of them yelling. If Katsuro griped at him about it later, Haruki would just play up the innocent card and pretend the thought hadn't even occurred to him.

Haruki made to hustle out of the training grounds before Katsuro could notice his absence. To take the most direct path as possible, he crossed the treeline and hopped the fence to exit. His parents had promised to take him out to eat tonight in celebration of what was more or less his first training session with his team, and surprisingly, the chakra drills had been hungry work. Haruki was eager to get home and rush them out the door to wherever it was they were going.

On the way, he pulled out his phone and texted who he knew was reliably on her phone every evening, Mai, whatever random topic he thought could get the biggest reaction from her.

- - - - -

When the alarm rang, it had startled Tetsuo into stopping.

It was the end of their training. Tetsuo folded in on himself, resting shaking hands on wobbling knees. He tried to suppress it, not draw too much attention from Katsuro with noise, but there was no stopping himself from breathing heavy. He had done it. Katsuro had promised to push him, and although Tetsuo would have preferred some more of the back and forth sparring they had done in the beginning, he had pushed him to mental and physical limits he had not felt in a long time. Every muscle in his body felt simultaneously weightless and unwilling to cooperate. There were several spots where he ached the most - a promise to form dark bruises on his skin in the morning.

As he caught his breath, Tetsuo looked up at Katsuro. The man's face was frustratingly unreadable to him. To his further vexation, it didn't even look like the jonin had come close to breaking a sweat. After everything today, Katsuro was going to walk away completely unimpressed. It was tempting to insist, just as he had many other times today, that he didn't need to stop, that he could keep going, but with Katsuro slipping his jacket and glasses back on, he knew there was no way to persuade the older man.

Tetsuo's brow was knit in a tight furrow, just as it had been the entire day. He had spent too much time looking at Katsuro's face. With his blind man glasses replaced, he realized just how much they drew attention away from the scar that nearly split his face in two. Without them, it was difficult to ignore.

He wrinkled his nose when the jonin-sensei brought out the flask that, of course, he had with him. It was a fledgling reminder of their altercation that morning: the entire reason they had ended up in this position together. It was strange, because after that incident, the two had been as cordial with each other as they'd ever been. Tetsuo had complained and fought him on several of Katsuro's mandated smoke breaks, but it never escalated to a shouting match between the two. Throughout their session, Katsuro had even come close to complimenting his work. There was, too, a lightening sensation in his stomach when he recalled the man's intent to break what he'd called a bad habit in him. In that moment, Tetsuo's feelings towards the jonin were complicated and impossible for him to parse out.

As Katsuro paused his dismissal to give further instructions, Tetsuo tried to keep his breathing to his nose and his nose alone. The crease of his frown deepened. It had been his understanding that the punishment had been for splitting up from the group during the mission, but there was no mention of this. Katsuro had not even tried to ask him again about wjy he'd done this. Disappointment did not seem to be the appropriate label for how he felt, because that would imply that he'd been hoping for something else. He wanted to try correcting him, telling him he'd never said anything about this relating directly to Mizu, but Tetsuo was tired, and he still had to focus on his breathing.

It took an enormous amount of effort to pull out his phone to check the time. They'd been going at it until five. He would have to start pushing up the time he usually made sure Soto brushed her teeth, but three hours gave him plenty of time to shower and take care of anything else that needed to get done before he left.

Ignoring the name-calling Katsuro seemed unable to resist slipping in, Tetsuo had no complaints about the choice the instructor made. Unlike moving a bunch of rocks around, volunteering at a hospital was actually something useful he could do. He had some apprehension about not knowing how long the shift would be that he would be expected to work, but he had already been determined to work himself to exhaustion during this training period. Tetsuo naively believed he could afford to lose a few hours of rest. The only thing left to give him cause for concern was who he was going to be stuck with. He didn't like Katsuro's hint that this person might change his perspective on things. Tetsuo had already preemptively burned the bridge with one of the jonin's connections once today.

Without ceremony, Katsuro made to leave. Just before, he stopped to give Tetsuo one last warning not to skip out on the work assigned to him. The fact he felt the need to do this, threaten his livelihood and position on the team, gave rise to agitation. It was this that finally stoked the fire within him, and drove him to finally act on what had been rattling in his head since the first break that day.

In spite of his aching joints, the weakness in his limbs, the fact he still was evening his breath, Tetsuo pushed himself to run several steps after the jonin, both to make sure he didn't get too far away and to get his attention. He stopped still spaced a few meters between them. "Katsuro," he said, "will you listen to me for once?"

He waited to see the instructor's reaction. He needed to conserve his breath, and he wasn't about to waste it talking to someone's back.

 

[Gilzar]

Katsuro halted and turned to face Tetsuo. A visible streak of irritation was plastered across Katsuro's face, even with his round sunglasses back on. What did Tetsuo want now? The two had been with each other all day. Tetsuo had plenty of opportunities to speak his mind during their breaks. Typically the kid never held his thoughts back, so what was he getting at that? He smoked continued smoking his cigarette as he looked over his student, trying to figure out just what Tetsuo was so eager to speak about.

"About what?" Katsuro impatiently asked.

 

[Pine]

Tetsuo puffed out an irritable breath through his flared nostrils. "I—" He cut himself off to give a short, exasperated sigh and turned his eyes away. Why did Katsuro have to look so damn angry just because he wanted to talk to him?

Even for the amount of time he'd thought about this, he still had trouble forming the words needed to express himself. It didn't help either that Katsuro looked like he was five seconds of feeling like his time was being wasted before he walked away. "I'm not like you or Haruki," he said. He recalled the conversation during dinner they'd had the first night on their mission. "I'm not here because anyone made me be here, and I didn't go to the academy because I wanted to play ninja either. I need to get stronger, and I can't do that if no one else is taking that seriously. I might as well just be training by myself at that point." His chest rose and fell from the deep breaths his lungs desperately needed but weren't given the chance as he spoke.

When he spoke again, he spoke in earnest. There was no derision, snark or condescension in his tone. "Do you understand?"

 

[Gilzar]

Part of the reason Katsuro was so irritated with Tetsuo was the he fully expected Tetsuo to either complain about the punishment, the training, or something involving his teammates. What Tetsuo said however was nothing even close this. He gave an honest confession about his desires as a shinobi: It wasn't just a desire to be strong, it was a need. Katsuro's shoulders dropped down as did his mental guard. The irritated look on his face slowly faded away, and his face reflected more of a look of concern.

What was it that made Tetsuo want to be so strong? He had never mentioned any goal or obstacle in his life that was driving him. People who desired strength always had a reason for it. What was Tetsuo's? The boy spoke to him for the first time in a voice that wasn't snarky or condescending. It was obvious this was something important to him.

"I am taking you seriously, kid. I'm not just busting your ass because you pissed me off. I'm training you to make you better." Katsuro said in a tone that matched Tetsuo's.

"Even the punishment I'm making you do is to make you better. Just keep doing what I say and you'll get stronger. But what's the big damn hurry? Why do you want to better than everyone so bad?"

 

[Pine]

A frustration began to set on Tetsuo's face. "It's not about being better than anyone," he said. "I didn't say that. It’s—"

Katsuro wasn't getting him at all. Maybe he wasn't explaining himself as well as another person could, but Katsuro was already putting words in his mouth. He’d seen the change in the jonin-sensei’s expression, but he started to suspect it was just to feign interest in what he had to say, while in reality, he only wanted to make Tetsuo lower his own guard and roll over in submission. The comment, in particular, about just ‘doing what he said’ in order to get stronger set him on edge. Maybe it would work on Mizu or Haruki, but he would not dull his senses and blindly follow someone else’s lead.

If this had not been so important for the jonin to understand, if Katsuro wasn’t literally his only lifeline to keep up the shinobi life as a genin, he would’ve given up already. But if he couldn’t get the jonin-sensei to understand, then this would affect the rest of his training for as long as they were stuck together. Tetsuo had already wasted a year of his life under his old instructor. He did not want to repeat that.

But Katsuro wanted to know what the urgency of the matter was about, and Tetsuo didn’t know how to explain this. What could he say? He had a country to serve and a family to protect. It was as simple as that, but they were grandiose, lofty goals that were too embarrassing to say out loud. Not to a guy like Katsuro, who had called him a dumbass not even a minute ago.

Tetsuo shut his eyes and shook his head, clearly frustrated. “I don’t know how to explain it,” he half-lied. “I just— need to, okay?”

The feelings that festered in him were split between antagonizing Katsuro and himself. He tried to steer the conversation back on topic, since the man before him had clearly missed his point. “I’m not talking about how training went today.” Within the work they’d done together, he’d gotten exactly what he wanted. He was beat, and all the restless energy he’d pent up over the week had gotten out of his system, and more. However, he saw another way his day could’ve gone if he hadn’t ended up working with Katsuro. “I’m talking about—”

Tetsuo fumbled to try to find the proper wording, until finally he’d had enough with beating around the bush and niceties. “Look, I don’t give a shit what you do on your own time. I don’t care. But when what you do with that time affects me, it becomes my business. And setting me up with a guy that’s showing up late and fucking hungover fucks with my training.”

 

[Gilzar]

As Tetsuo spoke, Katsuro did his best to try and understand what he was trying to communicate. At first it wasn't entirely clear. Tetsuo wouldn't tell him why he wanted to be strong, and he kept mixing up his words about something else he was trying to get at. Eventually though the kid gave up on trying to be tactful and bluntly said what he was thinking, like he normally would. Katsuro finally understood what the kid was saying, although he didn't care too much for it. Still, he tried to keep a cool head to explain the situation to Tetsuo.

"You tell me you want to be strong." Katsuro stated in a calm, albeit somewhat irritated tone. "But do you have any idea who you just blew off back there? Ginji is one of the best trainers in Konoha, and that's no bullshit. He's had students become members of the ANBU Black-ops. The head of Konoha's medical corps trained under him. Hell, even that dickhead Soruto Uzumaki was smart enough to have Ginji train his kids when there was time. I set you up with him because I thought he'd train you the best for what you needed, but he's not going to forget about how you treated him. Stop burning your bridges before you even know what the fuck they are!"

Katsuro paused, visibly trying not to lose his temper while defending one of his close friends. "Look. I get where you're coming from, kid. I've been there. But if you don't have any faith in me then you're not going to get far."

 

[Pine]

As Katsuro ran down the list of credentials that backed Ginji, Tetsuo's face slowly eased from his frustrations into surprise, then confusion. The answer to the question Katsuro presented him was, unsurprisingly, no. Assuming the jonin was telling the truth, and not just making up things to try to make him feel foolish, then that guy had been the real deal. It baffled Tetsuo to think that not only had a man with that background agreed to take the time to try to train him, but also that Katsuro had pulled whatever strings were necessary in order to make that happen.

What caught him off guard the most was the way Katsuro talked about the late Hokage. It had taken Tetsuo a second for it to even click who he'd been talking about, because the jonin-sensei had used his full name instead of his title or the number in line that he was. It was just one word, but Katsuro had described the late Hokage with an extremely vulgar name. This was following how barely a week ago, Katsuro had practically steamrolled his own pupil for his behavior at the Hokage's office. Tetsuo had no idea what a soldier like Katsuro would grudge against the very chief of command he'd served under to speak like that, especially after the man's recent passing.

The other part of this was the claim that Ginji had trained the Hokage's kids when there had been time. He said this, but when Tetsuo had looked at Mizu earlier just before she'd left for training, he didn't see any amount of recognition in her eyes. She had spoken to him without familiarity, as though she'd never met the man before. But as had been confirmed on the way to the quarry during their mission, she was one of the Hokage's kids. Had she just not been old enough whenever Ginji had been available? Tetsuo did not know how many kids Soruto had sired exactly, and from the looks of it, Ginji was pretty damn old.

It was a lot to take in. If Tetsuo was being honest with himself, he didn't doubt the truth of what Katsuro said, if for no reason other than the man had spoken so callously about a deceased man of the highest standing, contrary to the image of respect for hierarchy Katsuro tried to project.

Tetsuo was not sure what to feel regarding Ginji anymore. In the heat of the moment, he hadn't even realized he had treated the Hyuga man in any particular way. Tetsuo had directed his grievances to Katsuro, after all, instead of critiquing Ginji for his irresponsibility as a means of first introductions. He had thought he'd been sparing the man, in a way, by taking his frustrations off of him, but it only took a moment to recall the annoyed look Ginji had given him to know the elder man did not see it that way. It didn't matter, he supposed, because according to Katsuro, he had made his proverbial bed with that connection, and now he needed to lay in it.

The final thing that confused Tetsuo was Katsuro's final remarks. He'd spoken as if to relate to him, but he had no idea in what way specifically he was trying to do so. Was it about a general distrust in authority, or something more specific to this situation? He tried to read more into what Katsuro was trying to tell him, but his dark glasses blocked him from getting any further insight.

It was not a direction Tetsuo had expected the conversation to go. With all of these things come to light, both subtle and not, he had no idea what to say or feel anymore. It felt strange to end a conversation without feeling particularly upset at Katsuro, who had successfully diffused his anger even while barely being able to hold his own in, but everything following their initial spat that morning had been strange.

At a loss and feeling a little overwhelmed, Tetsuo knit his brow and shook his head. "Whatever. Forget it," he said, turning to retrieve his own jacket from where he'd left it on the ground. "I've got shit to do."

With that, Tetsuo slung his jacket over his shoulder and, in spite of every muscle in his body protesting the unwelcomed exertion, the boy took off, albeit at a much slower pace than he otherwise would have.

- - - - -

The simple tasks that he'd left for himself to do normally would've taken him no more than an hour, but with how hard he'd pushed himself during training that day, as well as a particularly hyper Soto that evening, it took him nearly the full stretch of his allotted three hours to finish everything.

Washing rice suddenly became an arduous task, and he could not bring himself to do it more than twice before tossing it in the rice cooker. The hardest part was once he was in the shower, he did not want to leave. He kept spacing out, and in a perfect world, he would've just sat there with the hard water drumming his back as he napped. He managed to escape the shower's grip it held over him before he used up all the hot water, but he had definitely pushed it with sporadic moments of the water turning cold towards the very end. Despite Soto's distractions, and the way his muscles seemed to have lost all substance, he managed to finish dinner by half past seven. It was simple but flavorful - teriyaki chicken in a rice bowl and sautéed broccoli on the side. He rushed to finish his serving, then managed to wrangle Soto into doing the same. The young girl had come to believe she had an aversion to vegetables that she didn't actually have, because after the initial theatrics and fighting her to take her first bite, she usually finished eating them on her own.

By the time he arrived at the emergency wing of the hospital, Tetsuo's hair had mostly dried.

He would've been a few minutes early had it not been for the fact he'd only been there once when he was reslly young, and he had no idea where exactly within the enormous building he was supposed to go. Instead, by the time he'd made the trek to the hospital's right wing and found the entrance there, it was three minutes past eight.

For what was supposed to be a place sequestered to emergencies, this section of the hospital was surprisingly peaceful at the moment, and with very little foot traffic. Tetsuo looked at the blaring red numbers of the digital clock that stuck out from the wall, stress buzzing in his skull. Had it been for anything else, he might not have cared so much about being late - especially something that had been volunteered for him without his consent - but showing up late to do volunteer work at a hospital was more than enough to embarrass him. He didn't want to talk to anyone and get verbally reprimanded for what they perceived as carelessness. He was tired, and he dreaded to learn the first impression he was going to leave on whoever or however many people he'd be stuck with for the next two weeks.

He didn't want to find out what exactly Katsuro's nor the hospital staff's threshold for tardiness was. Despite his nerves and aching body, Tetsuo hurried to the nearest person who seemed like they knew what they were doing.

 

[Gilzar]

As Tetsuo wandered through the emergency room, its serenity was short-lived. The automatic doors from the outdoor entrance to the ER gently slid open, and a horde of medical chunin carrying shinobi of various nationalities on stretchers came rushing in past Tetsuo. With each stretcher that dashed by Tetsuo, a grizzly scene was painted. Each shinobi was a bloody mess. Burn marks and shrapnel wounds littered their bodies. A few of them were even missing limbs.

From across the room, the receptionist visibly panicked behind her desk. She burst out of her chair and slammed her hand against a black button built into the front of the desk. A loud alarm began to ring through the hospital.

"We need all free personal to the ER right now!" She shouted into the intercom.

Various medical personal began to scramble through the maze of hallways surrounding emergency room's reception area. None of them paid any attention to Tetsuo, even though he looked completely out of place in the lobby. That would soon change, however. A set of double doors, just to the left of the reception desk, burst open without warning just in front of Tetsuo. From out of the doorway a white-haired woman sprinted to the receptionist desk. Her back was turned to Tetsuo, all he could see was that was that the woman's white uniform was covered in fresh blood. Even her hair, neatly tied into a short bun, was covered by the red of fresh blood.

"There's more victims?!" She shouted in disbelief at the receptionist. One of the medical chunin that originally passed by Tetsuo raced back out into the lobby to speak with the woman.

"Yuri, there's been another bombing in one of the nearby villages! This one also seemed to be targeting shinobi. More are being transported here!"

"Shit..." The bloodied woman seethed under her breath. "Go help out wherever you can!" She ordered to the medical ninja. Once again, he ran off into another hallway.

"Report to the Hokage's office right now that we need any ninja with medical experience! Foreign or not, we need everyone we can get!" She ordered to the receptionist. Immediately the receptionist sat back down and began to dial into the phone next to her.

In the midst of all the chaos, the blood-covered woman turned around to see the rest of the lobby. Once she was facing Tetsuo, the rest of her appearance may have surprised him. She wasn't that old. In fact, the white-haired girl looked only about a year older than Tetsuo was. Her eyes were also the unmistakable white of a Hyuga clan member. For a moment, the Hyuga girl visibly looked over Tetsuo from head to toe.

"You don't look injured, and you're clearly not staff here. Who are you and what are you doing here?! Are you here to help?"

 

[Pine]

Tetsuo did not make it to the receptionist's desk before pandemonium ensued.

The soft whir of the automatic doors sliding open was overlaid with the sound of someone screaming. Immediately, Tetsuo backed himself against the wall, wedging himself between two armchairs, all the make himself as small and out of the way as possible. What he saw next made his blood run cold.

It wasn't just one man screaming. There were several people crying out in an unholy chorus. He watched wide-eyed as flashes of gore swept by him like a current. A head injury so swollen the flesh of the brows sealed a man's eye shut. A glass pane the size of a plate pierced through a woman's cheek. A bloody stump waving in the air, as though trying to somehow grapple the man's forearm that was no longer there. An alarm rang that was loud enough to penetrate his very body. Every pulse of the alarm seemed to swell and tug his very mind.

There was so much blood. He had not seen this much since he'd been in the axe murderer's house, where the carnage had been so plentiful it coagulated into something that actually had height. Burns that cracked up and down a dozen torsos reminded him of the flesh he'd charred and peeled back with his own lightning style attack. The sound of aganozied cries, alarms ringing, and shouting personnel pounded against his skull. He only registered the conversation with the receptionist enough to know a bombing caused this. It triggered the final recount of what memory plagued him - the bear that had ran onto the landmine. The flash, and then the result of chunks of flesh blown apart from what had been a cohesive body seconds ago. The wet sounds of blood and guts sloshing to the ground in all directions.

It felt like wading through the bottom of the ocean to pull himself out of his head, out of the carnage ferried across on stained stretchers, to recognize someone was shouting at him. When he looked at her, there was no hiding in his wide eyes just how the scene had struck a chord with him: he was terrified.

She was soaked in blood.

"I'm... a Leaf Village genin," he said pathetically.

While Tetsuo had managed to partially answer one question, the pacing at which he was gathering his bearings was unsuitable for the situation, and likely unsatisfactory for the young girl who by all appearances was already in the thick of it.

 

[Gilzar]

"I can see that." She replied bluntly in a seemingly irritated tone to Tetsuo, seemingly indifferent to his current state of mind. As the two spoke the emergency room continued to descend into chaos. Yet another wave of casualties were being brought in by chunin with stretchers. This time normal civilians were also mixed into the mass of casualties flowing into the emergency room.

"Look, I don't have time for this, and I doubt you have medical traini- -" She suddenly stopped speaking, face lighting up as if she had come to an important realization. The bloodied Hyuga frantically hurried to the desk of the receptionist and began to write on the top corner of a piece of paper. Once she finished writing, she ripped what she had written off of the paper ran up to Tetsuo.

"If you want to help, go to this address and find a woman named Miya." The girl instructed to Tetsuo as she put the piece of paper in his hands. "I don't care what condition she's in. Get her here no matter what, lives are depending on it!"

The girl impatiently watched Tetsuo, waiting to see if the genin would be of any help or not.

 

[Pine]

Before Tetsuo could recover, or have the chance to be annoyed with the girl's tone, a second wave of injured came bursting in.

Tetsuo shut his eyes and gently pressed his thumb and forefinger into them. His face scrunched up in concentration. He needed to get it together. This was a mass number of victims, and right now he was clearly a burden when he should be giving his help.

His head throbbed with each pulse of the alarm, but the girl's voice cutting off suddenly was enough to jolt a fresh panic in him and make his head snap to attention. He relaxed only marginally to see no mortal harm had befell her out of the blue, but instead she had just stopped herself to write something down. Tetsuo furrowed his brow in confusion.

He looked down as the girl took his hand and folded the paper into it. She then gave him instructions to find a woman by an unfamiliar name. Tetsuo turned the paper over for him to read over. It took him a moment to process the most important things said to him, amidst the alarm, pouding footfall, and the faint smell of blood and other bodily fluids that was starting to hit him. The Hyuga girl did not have to wait too much longer before he nodded mutely to her.

Without a word, Tetsuo turned to slip out between the chuunin and stretchers out of the door he'd originally came. By some miracle, the urgency of the situation had completely numbed his body in a way that he no longer registered how exhausted his physical body was. Tetsuo had spent nearly his entire life in the Leaf Village, so he was confident he could find the address written on the paper without a hitch.

The young genin ran across the street and took off onto the nearest rooftop.

 

[Gilzar]

Following the address written on the scrap of paper took Tetsuo on a 10-minute journey to an unexpected part of the village. The place he had jumped from roof-top to roof-top to was none-other than Konoha's low-income area. Unlike the rest of Konoha, the streets here were cramped, narrow, and dirty. Most of the buildings here were run down or in disrepair. Chunin were a common sight in the area, as patrols were regularly done on the streets and rooftops in order to ensure the area remained free of crime. While the leaf's efforts to keep the area safe were successful, living in this part of the village carried a heavy stigma. Most residents here would hesitate to admit that they lived in such a place.

The paper guided Tetsuo to a large, run-down tenement located at the heart of the decrepit neighborhood. Its weathered drab-green exterior towered over the rest of the under-developed area. Consisting of 10 floors, all doors leading into the apartments were located outside on concrete catwalks rather than an interior hallway. According to the paper, the room he needed to go to was located in the middle of the 8th floor. On the way up to the 8th floor, the concrete staircase was covered in cracks and its safety rails were barely stable. This entire building was barely up to any code that Konoha may have had. Once Tetsuo ascended to the 8th floor, various noises could be heard from the thin doorways he passed. Even at normal volume, any music, television show, or even conversation could be heard on the pathway outside. However, the apartment Tetsuo had been assigned to was completely silent. Not a peep could be heard coming out of the run-down doorway Tetsuo was instructed to go to.

 

[Pine]

During the space of the ten minutes that passed between the hospital and his destination, Tetsuo had time to process things he hadn't before.

The first thing that struck him was the girl, Yuri, he had spoken to. Her height may have fooled him at first, but she was young. The structure of her face told on her the ways in which she was still developing. She could not have been much older than him, and yet she must have been chuunin-ranked at the least and already she played an intricate role within the hospital's system. People had turned to her for leadership, and he could hardly imagine what kind of operation or operations she must have been doing to have stained her hair with the blood that he'd seen. Yet in spite of the noise, the panic, the critical nature of the need to act, the teen had been level-headed and able to wield her authority effectively.

Tetsuo couldn't help but wonder if she was the person that Katsuro had alluded to earlier, claiming someone was there that would change his perspective. Yuri had definitely surprised him. He had heard tales of any number of prodigies, many from various clans of high prestige such as the Hyuga, but that had perhaps been the first time he had interacted with such a person. When Tetsuo had told Katsuro that his drive for self-improvement had nothing to do with surpassing others, he thought he had meant it. Now, however, an envy unlike any he'd felt before stirred something within his gut. It infuriated him that he had frozen just at the sight of the bombing's victims, and it both worried and frustrated him that he might be falling short on his trajectory of getting on the same or similar level as Yuri by the time he reached her age. Once again he thought about his previous instructor for his old genin squad, and once again he felt a bitter resentment towards the Yamanaka man.

The other thing that got Tetsuo's attention was something Yuri had said. She had said he was to fetch this woman, Miya, regardless of what condition she may be in. He had no idea what she could've meant by this, and as he closed in on Konoha's lower-class area, he became anxious to find out.

Tetsuo slowed his pace once he'd crossed the threshold of this district. While it was still a part of Konoha, it brought out an instinctive need to be vigilant of his surroundings. The foot traffic among the rooftops was heavier here, and the chuunin set to patrol the neighborhood were not spared of him eying them warily.

Much like the rest of the village, this was an area that Tetsuo tried to avoid. The layout felt claustrophobic and unpredictable, and if one lingered in the streets long enough, it was inevitable they would cross the stench of sulfur and sewage by some point.

Were it not for the death gratuity and monthly pensions paid out to his mother for the loss of his father, and the care for which Tetsuo has taken maintaining their finances since the initial payout, he and his family would've lost their home and likely ended up in a place like this a long time ago. It was a place of pity and painful reminders for him. He did not feel safe letting either Soto or his mother live here.

Tetsuo alighted before the enormous tenement the addressed paper had led him to. While it may have been easier in a sense for him to have just walked straight up the apartment's side, he did not want to give any more reason to draw attention to himself. Instead, he kept his posture straight and moved with purpose as he hurried up the stairway.

By the time he reached the eighth floor, he was fighting to hold his breath so as not to be gasping for air. Tetsuo was in well enough shape that eight flights of stairs was a manageable test of his endurance, but this was after nearly nine hours of training his physical body and only having had the chance to sit during sporadic breaks and the brief amount of time he was able to spend having dinner. By now, his legs were completely sapped of their strength, and they were no more than a numb vehicle of his own stubborn willpower to keep himself moving forward.

Tetsuo eyed a dark spot of grease on the apartment's wall as he knocked sharply on the door that Miya was supposed to be located. Despite his best efforts to keep it together, it was plainly evident he was breathing hard through his chest and nose.

 

[Gilzar]

Tetsuo's knocks rocked the entire door on its frame, amplifying Tetsuo's knocks throughout the interior of the apartment. On the other side of the door, a loud bang could be heard, followed the sound of a person shuffling around. This sound continued as whoever was on the other side of the door seemed to be slowly moving around their apartment.

After what seemed like minutes of random noises, the door wedged opened slightly. From the small gap, an exhausted looking woman with a warm, olive colored skin-tone creeped her head out of the doorway. Her hair, medium cool brown color in color, was long and unkept. The vivid lines of aging suggested the woman was in her mid 30's, though the unreliable lighting outside would make it hard to tell.

Her dark brown eyes looked down in an uneasy, confused manner at Tetsuo. Regardless of rank, a shinobi knocking on your door this late in the evening was usually never a good sign.

"W-What is it?" She asked Tetsuo in a somewhat nervous tone. As she spoke, the unmistakable scent of alcohol stained her breath. The door slowly vibrated on its hinge as her anxious hands tightly gripped against the cheap wood.