Chapter 1: Welcome to the Academy!
On the first day of the academy, I woke up at 5:00, sharp, and proceeded to roll lethargically out of bed. Lazily applying a transformation jutsu to look like a grumpy Bruce Willis (as John McClane) in a chunin vest, I wandered sleepily outside to a yakitori stall I'd spied on the other side of the apartment. The prices weren't great, and neither was the food, but it would last me until I could find a cheaper, cleaner place in the more shinobi-dense areas of the village to regularly buy food at.
After completing my purchase, I ducked back into my apartment to polish off my breakfast. Most minor transformation jutsus can make you appear taller, but few will physically increase your height, so when you eat it looks like you're shoveling food directly through your illusory body. In all honesty, it's not something I would normally do in public.
Anyway, with my morning meal digesting, I headed out to the academy.
I quickly realized on the way, however, that the main downside to living in the Red Light district of Konoha was not actually the crime or the prostitution. No, the worst part was that it was as far away from the Academy as physically possible. Seriously – the Academy was pressed right up against the Hokage Monument, while my apartment was on the other side of the village from that.
Normally, traversing Konoha wouldn't have been too much of a bother with the use of chakra, except that I was six, and six-year-olds do not tend to have very much in the way of leg strength or stamina. By the time I arrived three and a half hours later, I was drenched in sweat and I had already missed half of the Hokage's welcoming speech. A few parents turned their noses up at me in disapproval, but I was too exhausted to care.
As an upside, I supposed that having to run twenty or so miles every day would at least improve my speed and stamina to acceptable levels.
Looking around, I scanned the crowd for familiar faces. God, there were a lot of brats here - only one class was ever shown in the anime, but there appeared to be enough kids for at least three. What was the collective noun for brats, anyway? Was it annoyance? I mean, 'an annoyance of brats' at least fits nicer than 'a murder of crows' or 'a litter of cats'.
Finding myself rapidly growing bored with my observations on bratdom, I shifted my gaze up to Sarutobi Hiruzen. As I examined him more closely, I found myself somewhat surprised by his appearance; I knew he was renowned as a God among shinobi, but he looked more like some kid's grandfather here, hunched over ever so slightly, with a warm, benevolent smile creasing his face like mistreated paperwork. If it weren't for the hat, I wouldn't have known who he was at all.
I supposed the apparent effects of old age (wrinkles and other actual effects notwithstanding) were in all likelihood intended to ingratiate him with the citizens and make potential assassins and enemies underestimate him. It certainly gave me some cognitive dissonance trying to reconcile the God of Shinobi with the slow, wizened man standing before me.
His speech, which finally seemed to be drawing to a close, was a generic formal welcome into the world of ninja. It was fairly good, too, although I suspected heavily that it was recycled.
After he finished and applause filled the yard, three instructors clambered onto the stage and started calling names for their classes. As their names were called, the students assembled into lines before their corresponding instructors. I recognized none of them.
After the first one had finished and led his charges inside, the second began to read off her list, and a horrifying thought occurred to me.
I hadn't really given any thought to it before, but I realized with a shock quite belatedly that I might not even make it into Lee's and Neji's class. If the class selection process wasn't based on, say, the alphabetical order of the applicants' names, I could have easily changed something miniscule and ended up in a different class. It was a terrifying thought: the butterfly effect dictated that my absence from the plot would send everything spiraling out of control, and all it took was a stray shuriken, or a slow reaction, or an ambitionless chunin somewhere shutting his eyes and jabbing a half-chewed pen at his unmarked class roster.
I had a sudden and powerful appreciation for just how out of my depth I was.
In this instance, it hadn't mattered how much I had trained myself, or how smart or dedicated I had become, or how much foreknowledge I had amassed in anticipation of the storyline. For all my preparation and planning, I could not look over all the contingencies without overlooking at least a few, as well. Something as simple and stupid as class rosters could have just ended the world – and worse, I hadn't even considered the possibility until it was too late.
Thankfully, as it so turned out, we did all end up together under the care of a half-retired chunin who looked like she felt way too old for this shit, but the realization of how narrowly I'd just dodged a bullet still made me grit my teeth. In this second life, I wouldn't just be out of my depth; I would be constantly on the verge of drowning and I wouldn't even fucking know how.
Calm. Down.
I clenched my fists and followed some Takaku brat into the academy, our grizzled war veteran instructor boredly lecturing on the locations of various classrooms and restrooms and whatnot as we crawled along. I barely bothered to pay attention - I'd have the layout down after I'd gotten lost in it once or twice, anyway.
The class apparently had the usual ratio of one girl per every two guys, so that was good. We'd likely be split into teams of the same ratio, which meant that (as long as Lee barely passed and Neji blew away the competition) canon Team Gai would still end up together as the yearly rookie-of-the-year/top kunoichi/dead last team. Then, I just had to make sure Lee caught Gai's eye so he would request us together, and canon consistency would be preserved. As long as nothing else popped out of the blue to surprise me.
We settled into a small classroom and our instructor introduced herself as Kato Momoe, before launching into a surprisingly standard first day procedure. We were each given a textbook on chakra control, which we had to write our names on, as well as a rule sheet and a bunch of name tags.
Thankfully, though, the basic, introductory stuff ended there and Kato-sensei got to the exciting stuff.
Namely, she handed out a pre-test for us to complete on ninja history and various skills we'd need to know before graduation. I wanted to facepalm. Thus far, the Ninja Academy was completely failing to live up to expectations.
I finished the pre-test fairly quickly and started looking around. There were a few questions I had to pause and consider, mostly dealing with stealth procedures and protocol during infiltration, but for the most part it was incredibly simple. I could see that many students shared the same opinion – Neji, for example, had finished the test ages ago and was sitting patiently in his chair. There was also a black-haired brat I identified as an Uchiha by the Uchiwa on his clothes looking supremely bored and unimpressed with his completed test, and a spiky-haired Nara who'd finished within five minutes and was now sleeping on his desk.
Well, either that or he'd skipped the test entirely and just gone straight to the sleeping part. Honestly, it was kind of a toss-up.
Other students, though, were either still working or had given up. Some chubby kid I'd initially pegged for an Akimichi (before I noticed the lack of markings on his cheeks) was just staring at the test stone-facedly, his pencil hand twitching slightly every few seconds or so. Contrastingly, Lee was having a minor mental breakdown in his seat, tearing at his ponytail and making these weird, tortured noises in the back of his throat, like a mix between a boiling teapot and a cat spitting out a hairball. If it weren't so pitiful, it'd almost be adorable.
Sighing, I slumped over on my desk and nestled my face into my arms. There was likely a physical pre-test after this, if they actually wanted to get a grasp on our abilities, so I figured I might as well use the remaining time to catch up on the sleep I'd missed waking up at 5:00 in the morning.
Ten minutes later, Kato-sensei collected all the exam papers, cleared her throat, and launched into yet another standard speech comforting all the people who'd failed: "This test is intended as a basic gauge of your prior experience with ninja rules, customs, and protocol. If you don't think you did well, don't feel too discouraged; your scores will not be placed in your permanent records and plenty of students before you have utterly failed this test and then gone on to become splendid ninja." She sounded more bored than comforting, like she'd given this speech a hundred times in the past, but somehow that was a bit better. After all, if she gave the impression that she'd actually seen other students fail the test, it lended credence to her claim about their future successes.
Continuing, she announced a physical pre-test which would gauge our general skills and give us an idea of how we compared with the rest of the class. Shocker. She ushered us out of the classroom in single-file and led us through the winding halls back outside to a fair-sized field behind the building. There, in alphabetically selected groups of five, we ran laps around the field until she told us to stop and switch off. From there, we moved on to pushups and various muscle exercises. As a seasoned fighter, she was likely able to quickly and efficiently determine our capabilities from just watching us.
It became apparent quickly to me that I was even more behind than I'd anticipated. In everything – stamina, speed, strength, flexibility – I was probably somewhere around thirtieth percentile, behind even Lee. Frankly, it was embarrassing; I'd clearly been letting my laziness hold me back if I wasn't even capable of outrunning the resident weakling of the class, or for that matter half the kids that literally wouldn't last a day on their genin squads.
I'd have to throw myself into training more seriously, I resolved. Fuinjutsu, ninjutsu, taijutsu, and physical conditioning would do me well for a few years until I could at least hold my own against the upper echelons of the class.
After we'd all finished, Kato-sensei told us that we'd head back to the class and begin a lesson on safety procedures as boring as they were basic. By the time we had finished and broken for lunch, our comprehensive course on how not to kill ourselves had taken up two hours of our time. Somewhere around the eightieth minute, I briefly considered disobeying instructions and actually killing myself, both to spite Kato-sensei for putting me through the lesson and also to escape my boredom. Thankfully, that urge didn't last long.
During lunch, we returned to the ground floor again, in an area set aside for six-year-olds, and ate the lunches we (should have) brought to class. I'd kind of forgotten to prepare mine, but I figured I could just grab a snack later in the day.
To occupy myself as I waited out the rest of lunch, though, I started exploring the school. We had nearly thirty minutes, anyway, and it wasn't like I'd be missed.
The Academy as a location was much larger than strictly necessary for the training of young ninja, partially because the Hokage's office and related bureaucratic sites were situated atop of it, and partially because the Academy training grounds were located all around it. In order to protect the building from stray shuriken and flailing limbs, the patch of land the Academy was on had been expanded, providing a buffer of trees and empty space between the building and the practicing students. Despite this, pockmarks lined the white-and-orange walls, souvenirs of badly timed throws and the occasional burst of frustration. Kunai were there, too – battered and rusty, hiding within the copses of trees or resting in branches too high for kids practicing alone to reach. It kind of reminded me of the filthy tennis balls I'd find in the bushes at my old school on the Earth That Was. Aching, shapeless memories enveloped me, forcing my lips into a fond smile.
Nostalgia seemed my only constant companion over the years. It wandered the way a crow walked – jerky and unpredictable, hopping from topic to topic like scraps of food or bits of glass. Sometimes, it afforded them only brief inspection, a cursory glance that served mainly as a reaffirmation to the existence of the past, before moving on. Other times, it swallowed them whole.
This time, I found myself thinking about my family. Tennis used to be a bonding activity for us, and while none of us were really all too serious about it I'd often find it permeating the house in strange ways. The welcome mat, for example, was tennis-themed, as were the decorations hanging from the rusty chandelier left behind by our home's previous inhabitants. Tennis bags and cans of balls cluttered the space in front of the shoe rack, which itself was lined with various sizes and colors of tennis shoes. It was a weekly thing for my mom and me, a ritual we performed to maintain our closeness, as well as a source of exercise and entertainment on the slow Saturday mornings when we both had a chance to relax. For my dad, it was a social event which he used to compete and connect with new, interesting people.
I probably would've continued reminiscing about old family events for the rest of lunch, but my introspection was cut short by the nearing sounds of shuffling and muffled yelps. Disgruntled, I shoved myself off the ground (and that was curious, for when exactly did I sit down?) and snuck over to around the nearest corner.
I suppose I expected to see Lee getting bullied or something similarly plot-relevant, but amusingly enough that wasn't the case. Instead, I managed to wander into the middle of a friendly spar between upperclassmen.
Specifically, I managed to wander into the path of a stray kunai tossed during a friendly spar. If I had any thoughts at all as I stood there with a knife flashing before my eyes, they were as follows: I know I said this could all end with a stray shuriken, but somehow I never actually expected it to happen.
As my good luck would have it, though, children are generally not entrusted with real shuriken when trying to fake-murder each other. This is largely due to the pressing danger of them actually murdering each other.
As my bad luck would have it, though, there was still a chunk of metal headed directly for my forehead. Additionally, I did not have a forehead protector.
When I came to, I was lying on the ground with a couple older children crowding around me and a teacher rushing over. Moaning slightly, I sat up and rubbed my head. "What happened?" I asked to nobody in particular.
Nobody in particular answered me.
"Hello?" asked the teacher, a slightly nervous-looking man with rumpled clothes and thick glasses. "Are you the girl who got hit in the forehead with a kunai?"
"Mmm. I think?" I said. "I'm not really sure…" My voice trailed off hesitantly as I considered.
"Oh, dear. Hold still," he instructed, before he placed one hand on my forehead and made a single hand seal with the other. "Contusion, concussion… Not too bad. Just give me a minute."
My vision suddenly went green and I blinked rapidly, trying to clear away whatever had gotten in my eyes, before I realized that the green light was coming from the teacher's hands. Slowly, the fuzziness on my thoughts lifted, and I realized that he was using a medical jutsu on me.
He finished and stepped away, exhaling, and I patted my forehead to examine the remaining damage. It didn't even hurt.
"Cool," I breathed.
He grinned. "That was a medical jutsu. Keep studying and you might learn some, too." I couldn't quite restrain the smirk that curled onto my face.
When we returned to class, nobody mentioned my absence during lunch, which was good. I didn't really want to stand out too much and get drawn into the drama of prepubescent killers-in-training.
Well, I think Kato-sensei did look at me a little funny, but that could've just been my imagination.
Anyway, the rest of the lesson was the basics of chakra control, which I had self-studied. Really, other than a couple minor technicalities, there wasn't anything too new in the lesson. Bored, I slipped into a daze and contemplated the future of my education: Are all my days at the Academy really going to be this dull?
Unfortunately, Kato-sensei did not provide an answer.
After class, I decided to make the most of my excursion to the other side of the village, and so I headed off to the genin library to look up jutsu for my own unique combat style.
While the genin library was, of course, open only to genin and above ranked ninja, the security on it was a joke because nothing important was stored there anyway. Anything enemy ninja might be after was stashed away in other, much more secretive libraries, and so the only reason security existed was to keep random people from learning ninjutsu and taking missions that would otherwise go to Konoha. The only other people who might sneak in were Academy students like me, but we were already affiliated with the Konoha military, so there was no real reason to go to great lengths keeping us out.
Because of this, the guards posted were generally genin or low-ranking chunin forced to take D-ranks as punishment, and one only needed a good disguise and a swiped ID card to fool them - the week it took me was honestly far too long.
Once inside, I started browsing for good jutsu books to help me develop my fighting style.
I had given my fighting style a lot of thought over the past couple years, and had decided upon something both unique and effective that likely only I could properly pull off, due to my head start. Since I wanted to play to my strengths, I would use either fuinjutsu or (squee) medical jutsu, both of which required high intelligence. Medical jutsu, though, much as I wanted to use it, required a teacher and lots of resources due to the sheer amount of live practice required and the drastic consequences in the event of failure, so that was out until I got old enough to ask for tutelage. Until then, fuinjutsu would be the best idea, as it seemed simpler to practice and better suited for combat.
Besides, it was far closer to the original Tenten's combat style.
However, unless I only used storage seals like the original Tenten did, fuinjutsu required that I be actually capable of applying my seals in the midst of combat. Even if I figured out how to draw seals without ink and brush the way the Fourth Hokage did, applying them with the tap of a finger and a twist of chakra, I would still likely be limited to traps. Dropping seals on my opponents' skin, weapons, and clothing required a certain taijutsu superiority I probably wouldn't have.
Thus, in my scenario, being able to use my seals long-range would be best. However, applying seals to tags, wrapping tags around kunai, and then throwing the kunai took far too long for it to be a staple of my fighting style. It also limited the extent of my long-range sealing to the number of kunai I carried. Shadow clones and shadow shuriken could improve that number, but with my average reserves, regular use of those techniques wouldn't be possible by any stretch of the imagination.
Thus, I had to be able to apply the seals directly to whatever I threw, cutting down the usage time, and I had to make them far more portable so that I could carry hundreds of them. It took me about a week before the flash of inspiration struck me.
Instead of applying tags to shuriken and then throwing the shuriken, why not just make the tags themselves throwable – like cards? If I got the right blacksmith to make them for me, I could carry multiple decks of fully lethal throwing cards, all of which I could seal things into by simply touching the faces.
Best of all, I'd look fucking awesome with a combat style like that. I mean, card wielder is practically synonymous with devious, roguish badass – just look at Gambit, or Hisoka, or Twisted Fate.
The only problem was that I, at the tender age of six, didn't have the money to custom order a hundred steel throwing cards with razor-sharp edges, so I had to be able to find my own way of making the cards. I toyed for another week with the idea of carving out wooden cards until I could buy metal ones, but that would take ages for each card – I tried it and found out firsthand. It made me wish desperately that I had been born with mokuton so that I could just grow my own cards. Unfortunately, wishing did not give me any such abilities, but it gave me another flash of inspiration.
I couldn't use Wood Release, sure, but that wasn't the only way of using ninjutsu to create physical objects. What if I used doton?
Doton, or Earth Release, would allow me to shape the earth itself into throwable cards that I could also apply seals to. Since the earth was essentially ubiquitous, the number of cards I could make would scale rather nicely with my chakra capacity, and my practice with doton would also allow me to reshape the battlefield itself. I could build walls, spikes, gates, and anything else I needed to force my opponents to move one way and not another – a valuable skill when using fuinjutsu traps.
Thus, I had to figure out what kind of jutsu I could use to create a card out of the earth, which was why I had come to the library. My skills at elemental manipulation weren't anywhere near developed enough to create my own jutsu, so I'd likely have to take another one and modulate the power and size until I ended up creating a card.
I pulled a booklet of Earth Ninjutsu off a shelf. Flipping through, I glanced over the techniques I could use. Earth Release: Earth Flow River was discarded, as was Earth Release: Hardening Jutsu and the Rock Golem Jutsu, although I resolved to consider the latter once I acquired enough chakra. It would be interesting to apply seals to my own personal golem bodyguard and send it lumbering after enemies, only to explode it or shock them on contact. On top of that, I could use it as a movable melee shield while I rained hellfire with my sealing cards from afar.
After around twenty minutes of searching, I found the perfect technique: the Earth Wall Jutsu.
Effectively, my idea was this: I would bastardize the Earth Wall Jutsu to push card-sized walls from the earth with enough force to send them into my hands, where they could then stored, sealed, or thrown with reckless abandon.
The hand seals were simple, as were the mechanics; it seemed that the ranking was more for the chakra cost than anything else. Considering how small a wall I wished to create, that would probably lower the ranking to around a D or a C.
Tiger started it off, which made sense, as it seemed from the jutsus in the scroll to be a common hand seal for beginning Earth Style techniques, likely because it helped with the shaping. After all, Fire Style jutsus, which built up the chakra inside the body first and then molded it into a specific form as it was expelled, tended to have the Tiger seal last. Earth Style jutsus, on the other hand, reversed the order, picking the area of earth you wished to affect and then infusing it with chakra so you could control it. Naturally, the order of seals would also be reversed. Snake, interestingly enough, wasn't used, despite being common with Earth Release jutsus. It seemed that Dog was substituted instead, with Hare and Boar providing motion and power, respectively.
Shutting the booklet and placing it back upon the shelf, I ran a hand through my short hair tiredly and glanced at the clock. I had around an hour and a half before I had to start walking home, so that gave me some time to head over to the wooded area of a nearby park, where I could work in solitude.
About ten minutes later when I arrived at a secluded area, I squatted near the ground and meditated briefly, feeling around within myself for the warmth of chakra. Grabbing hold of it, I set my hands in the first seal, Tiger, simultaneously injecting my chakra into the earth. In a normal Earth Style Wall, one would imbue a volume of earth the size and shape of the intended wall with chakra, but since I only wanted to raise a card out of the ground, I tried to mould the shape and size accordingly. Once I was reasonably satisfied, I moved on to the next seal, Hare. Screwing up my face with concentration, I readied my chakra to lift the earth up. Then, setting my hands in a Boar seal, I pumped in chakra until I felt I had hardened the correct patch of earth enough that it would separate cleanly from the surrounding dirt. After a slight moment of hesitation where I tried to remember how to form Dog, I curled my right hand into a fist with the back facing up and placed my open left palm on top of it.
"Earth Style: Earth Wall Jutsu!" I chanted, glancing down at the ground hopefully. There was a beat of disappointment where nothing seemed to happen - then the chakra resettled, the unfamiliar jutsu worked its magic, and a block of earth erupted out of the ground to smack me in the forehead.
Hissing quietly in pain, I hunched over and contemplated where I had failed. Well, my control had gone awry, clearly, because I'd created more of a brick than a card. It seemed that I had to moderate the amount of chakra I channeled through the second hand seal. Studying the failed card, I also noted that there were a number of bumps along its surface, like Braille marks on a page, that would have made drawing seals on it difficult.
My first three hand seals all needed more work, then. The size of the block indicated that I had flubbed the shaping during the Tiger seal, the force with which it had burst from the ground indicated that I had overpowered the Hare seal, and the bumpiness indicated that I had underpowered the Boar seal.
Sighing and rubbing my forehead, I ran through the seals once again, now spending more time and focus on the Tiger, Hare, and Boar hand seals. In a messy spray of dirt, another slab leapt up, although this time I managed to throw myself out of the way before it bloodied my nose. Examining it, I found that seemed slightly smoother, too, and wasn't nearly as thick. Progress.
Over the next forty-five minutes, I practiced the jutsu. My improvement wasn't prodigious, but it was good, and I found that I had made great strides towards the perfection of my very own Earth Release: Earth Style Card. The cards that emerged were slightly irregular in thickness, varying from paper-thin (which was close to ideal, as the cards had to be capable of inflicting slashes) to wafer-thin, but all my cards leapt to my hands easily and I had little trouble flinging them around.
Once, I managed to throw my card solidly into the trunk of a nearby tree. I cheered for a minute straight.
Additionally, although I couldn't quite get rid of all the bumps on the cards yet, I did manage to relegate them to the edges, shaving them off the faces so that the cards just looked slightly melted and misshapen, like flattened clay.
When I stood up to leave, though, I had to clamp a hand over my mouth and lean against a tree as nausea and weakness washed over me. Caught up in practicing as I was, I'd forgotten that my chakra reserves were far too small to accommodate prolonged usage of a jutsu, even a minor one. They'd definitely be too small right now to last me long fights, especially if I started sealing explosions into my weapons. Naturally, part of the appeal of seal-fighting was that one could reduce the need for chakra reserves by taking previously drawn seals into battle for quick use, but I knew that would never be enough if I wanted to make alterations on the fly. Hopefully, repeated practice sessions for the Earth Style Card would expand my meagre reserves, but I would also likely need to take up some kind of training during other parts of my day.
Given my high intelligence from many years of education in a past life but low strength from only a few years of growth in this one, I probably had a large amount of spiritual energy built up but not a lot of physical energy. If I wanted to increase the total of the chakra available to me, I'd have to train myself physically to match myself spiritually.
Basically, working out would give me more chakra.
On the plus side, since I didn't have to raise both halves independently, but rather bring one up to snuff, my growth in chakra capacity would proceed twice as fast as normal for a while.
On the other hand, I'd have to exercise. Oh god, save me now.
In any case, I needed to determine what I would focus on when I trained my body. If I didn't use taijutsu overmuch (perhaps because of an epic Rock Golem), upper body strength and arm strength would be less useful to me than to other shinobi. Instead, it would be smarter to work on my speed and leg strength. This would build up my physical energy (and therefore my chakra), improve my ability to avoid damage, and allow me to maneuver around the battlefield with greater ease.
Mind set, I nodded resolutely and set forth back to my apartment. Sweet, sweet progress.
Halfway through a step, my stomach rumbled and I paused. Ah… Perhaps some sweet, sweet food wouldn't be amiss, either.
A/N: Here be chapter two. I know that I promised meatier, more exciting chapters, and that this one had only marginally more words and action than the first one, but bear with me here – I'm still setting the scene. Right now, I just wanted to get the Academy's portrayal, a little bit of characterization, and some plotting out of the way. And get glasses-teacher into the picture.
Oh, glasses-teacher. Did somebody say Chekhov's Gunman?
The rest of the Academy years, which I recognize are boring as hell but also important for an understanding of the genin years, should pass fairly quickly from here on out. Expect around 2-4 more chapters of them. After that, you'll get to see the fruits of Tenten's labor. Hooray.
A reviewer asked me how overpowered Tenten was going to be, to which the quick response was: not very. Honestly, Tenten's slow canon growth and serious disposition always made me imagine her as the kind of ninja who worked really hard to compensate for her talent-wise mediocrity – kind of like Rock Lee, only less so. This version of Tenten will have a headstart and the advantage of a unique perspective, so she'll choose a fighting style which derives its power from innovation, preparation, and the clever use of limited resources instead of raw chakra or strength. This will help her remain entirely capable of holding her own as the plot progresses, kind of like Shikamaru, but don't expect her to casually stomp Akatsuki members into the ground or take on Madara single-handedly.
Last, but not least, I'd like to say that I do spend a lot of time thinking about each chapter, but I also know that they are all far from perfect. If you have any suggestions that you think could improve the next one (or the current one, for that matter) please make sure to review or PM me.
- YSPM