Yusei

It's Thursday afternoon, so I wait for the knock on my door that heralds a break from the tedium of academy life. After his initial visit a year ago, Shikaku and I settled into a routine in which he drops by once a week, barring missions. Generally, he answers my questions about the shinobi world- the stuff the books he lends me don't cover- as he schools me at shogi.

Rarely, I scrape a win. (The current score stands at three wins and fifty-one losses for me, with one draw.)

Our arrangement seems to benefit me disproportionately, with all that I get out of it. Without Shikaku's recognition, I'd still be wasting away in the orphanage, pretending to be a normal five-year-old. I certainly wouldn't be able to afford the academy's tuition. Nor would I have access to the books he lends me, things from the shinobi library, the Nara clan library, and even the notes of some student of fuuinjutsu. I wonder, sometimes, what exactly he gets from this.

There has to be a return on any investment.

My theory is that he's been instructed to train me, just as he was ordered to recruit me back at the orphanage. I know that Shikaku works for the tactical division- an office that analyzes the information brought in by the intelligence division and advises the village's top brass- and I suppose I wouldn't mind being recruited for that. It'd be something of a cushy desk job, meaning I'd never have to be a combatant in the field, killing, being killed.

Come to think of it, I should probably try harder to get recruited for this right out of school.

There are other jobs I could be satisfied with...maybe a hospital job, or perhaps the infamous Orochimaru's scientific division (known for it's lack of ethics and morality, even by shinobi standards) would be tolerable positions that would let me study the things I want to study.

My musics are interrupted by the arrival of my mentor, almost an hour later than usual.

I let him in, then hustle to my kitchenette to make a new pot of tea. (I drank the first pot before it got too cold.)

"Hey, slow down Yusei," he says, "I've got an answer to your last question. Don't let me forget to give it to you."

That gets my attention. "The translation matrix question?" The last of the orange-covered fuuinjutsu notebooks had introduced a rather strange notion: seals could interact directly with the human will. Until this, I'd found fuuinjutsu theory to be little more than the math-based logic (hints of linear algebra, but they weren't quite there with the math yet) that I'd mastered in a previous life. Basic storage and summoning seals (the bread and butter of my mystery notetaker) tended to take in a physical input- typically chakra- and based on the amount of chakra produce a specific result, storing or releasing an object, or summoning a specific creature. The translation matrix turned all of that on its head, somehow providing a framework for the seal to interface with the mind of the user, allowing for more dynamic seals.

"Yup." Shikaku lays a few sheets down on my newly purchased table as he kneels beside it. "Minato-senpai was adamant that you destroy this when you're done with it."

Destroy it? Then it's not really a common-knowledge bit of theory. Once again, I feel impressed and grateful to the mysterious genius providing my fuuinjutsu correspondence course.

Also, 'Minato.' I know that name, but why. The knowledge flits about at the edges of my mind.

"Um...Minato?" I question. What I mean is something along the lines of 'who is Minato and why do I dislike him already?' but the words don't come out because it's just on the tip of my tongue and I know that this is a thing that I know and I just hate it when I forget something because I just don't forget anything and…

And I've spaced out. I tune in to Shikaku, who's telling me about his buddy the ace jounin Namikaze Minato. "Surely you didn't think I was researching and answering your fuuinjutsu questions," he chuckles, "Minato-senpai's a whiz at that stuff, so I just ask him. There's an old Nara clan saying, 'Never do a job someone else can do,' you know?"

Namikaze Minato. Oh.

Kakashi's new sensei. The jackass that went and made the bastard even more intolerable by taking him as an apprentice, increasing the gloating I had to endure by sixty percent. (While I encountered Kakashi less frequently now that he'd left the academy, his ego swole well past bursting point and now overflows freely, causing flash floods of narcissism in the boy's immediate vicinity)

My first instinct is to ball up the paper and burn it right away, but such childish behavior should be beneath me and my pragmatism wins out. Even as I stammer out my thanks, my eyes pour over the page, commiting the equations and sealing diagrams to memory. Tell me your secrets.

More linear algebra than I thought this world had developed, but I guess that might have been implied by the word 'matrix' concept's name.

Shikaku

It's always fun to watch the gears turn behind the kid's eyes. He's a very visual thinker; as his eyes tick back and forth across the page, Yusei's brow creases and relaxes. He jots notes in the margins of the page, weird little symbols that aren't part of any math or fuuinjutsu I've seen. Finally, he looks up, folding and pocketing the papers.

"Thank you, Nara-san. This really helped. Please convey my gratitude to Namikaze-san as well."

One thing he definitely learned during his first year at the academy is manners.

That reminds me, "You've started second year with a new sensei, right? How's that?"

"Awful," Yusei grumbles, "Now that Hatake is gone, I have to spar with eight-year-olds, who are a lot more physically developed than me. I've been on the high protein diet all year, and I'm at peak musculature for my size. It's just that I'm three years younger, and then I've just naturally got a small frame. Damned genetics. It's not even just my age, you know? I ran into Hatake at the training fields the other day, and even he's half a foot taller than me these days."

"But the rest of it?" I ask. "There's more to being a shinobi than taijutsu. Hell, I haven't punched someone for a couple years."

The last year's taught him some maturity as well, with the way he didn't devolve into profanity at the mention of his little rival's name.

"Well, they haven't really taught me anything that wasn't in the book, which I read in the first week. And I'm getting pretty good at projectiles now that I've finally got the movement for senbon down."

They don't teach senbon in the academy, if I recall correctly, which means he's doing that on his own too. I've always suspected the academy is a waste of time, even when I was a student there; the sharper kids pick up pretty much everything they need to know on their own anyways, and the dullards eventually fail out. They won't even touch ninjutsu until the final year (after they've weeded out most of the failures), but there's no point in wasting three more years waiting for that.

I need a way to get Yusei out of the academy. This isn't a new line of thought for me, but unfortunately, I'm not an elite jounin like Minato-senpai. I simply don't have the clout to march into the Hokage's office and tell him that I'm taking an apprentice. And sharp as he is, Yusei's not well rounded enough to graduate properly yet.

In the attached kitchenette, the kettle whistles.

"I'll fetch the tea, get the board?"

"Sure, sure." With a practiced hand, I unseal my board and line up the shogi pieces. Yusei brings the tea, in same two chipped white cups as always. The stipend accompanying his scholarship is just small enough that his priorities peek through. He skimps on his furnishings for additional book money, so even his crockery (sparse as it is) comes well used. On the other hand, he has proper bookshelves now, and a fairly nice encyclopedia set.

We start the game, and from his first moves I know this is my game. Yusei's playing particularly sloppily today, abandoning his pawns to set up a Mino castle. It's a strategy he favors, and I've been trying to break him of the habit. He'll shore up against an early attack, but if I build my modified Yagura castle instead, he'll be left with a weak defense and a crippled offense that won't break my base.

It proceeds as I expect, and I break his line with ease. He responds with a few good drops, but my defences make short work of them. I'm prioritizing positioning over captures now, so he rarely has the opportunity to make a drop at all.

"So," he begins, "You were late today. What happened there? Typically you're pretty nine-to-five."

I wonder how much to tell him. Tactical's not the most glamorous job, but today was one of the more exciting days. Besides, he's hardly got the security clearance. But… if I want to recruit him into the division, I should start building the case for tactical now.

I take another pawn, followed in short order by a bishop. With my pieces coming around the left flank, I'm already looking for an endgame. Yusei's not reacting appropriately to this- he's failing to cover a lot of appetizing targets- but my strategy shouldn't come as a surprise. As he flails about incoherently, I take his queen.

This is it.

But suddenly, he closes ranks and pivots. With half my forces trapped behind his lines, I'm left raw as his generals and rooks come in on my right, backing them with a clever drop of his freshly captured queen.

"Count it." He says triumphantly. The whole thing was a trick. Yusei knew I wouldn't be able to resist punishing his sloppiness, so he baited me.

"Seven to mate." I concede.

This sort of sneaky, underhanded tactic...He's ready to be a ninja. And I may have just found the chance I'd been looking for.

I've made my decision.

"We misplaced an army," I tell him. I'm formulating my own final exam for Yusei, one that'll assure me that he's truly ready for the kind of work I'm imagining for him. And there's no better test than the real thing.

His eyebrows go up. "What? Misplaced? You lost your own army?"

"Hehe, no. We've been tracking the Earth daimyo's troop movements for a few weeks. He's been moving very quietly, calling on his nobles for soldiers. We suspected he'd start moving around now, but the army isn't where intelligence said it ought to be.

"We have a few prospective paths for the army to take, based on our assessment of the strategic targets we suspect Earth knows about. Unfortunately, it's too costly and risky to send shinobi to surveil all of these locations. We're seeing four likely targets, but we can really only reinforce one position.

"It's particularly troublesome; we're totally stumped." Here's where the fib starts: while this was one of the most exciting problems tactical had been faced with recently, it's right up our alley. Konoha would hardly be standing if her tactical and intelligence divisions couldn't keep track of marauding armies.

A small crease forms on Yusei's forehead, and I wonder if perhaps it really is too early for this after all. "Is this a ninja army?" he asks, "Because I can't imagine hiding the movements of any significant group of regular soldiers."

I shake my head, "Iwa's adopted a wait-and-see approach. It doesn't look like they plan to support their daimyo in this."

"Oh. I can't see why you're having any trouble with this, then. It's straightforward enough." Turns out he's only confused about how stupid we must be, and not the problem itself. Smug little bastard. He and his hated rival really are peas in a pod- the freaky genius children that they are.

He hops up to retrieve a thin red paperback from one of his numerous bookshelves. A farmers almanac, I realize, what does he have that for?

"We'll just follow the money."

AN: FAQ

Dear thesecretsix, why the long wait? I moved. It took a while.

Dear thesecretsix, math? I try to make this not read like a math paper. A lot of my other writing is supposed to look like a math paper, so I sometimes struggle including only a fun amount of math jargon.

Dear thesecretsix, that's not how shogi works? Yeah, I dunno. I've only tried to play it once and I wasn't very good. I'm also shit at chess. We've already established in ch 1 that I'm not into board games- but Yusei is. Hopefully the story I'm trying to tell is enough to overcome the shock of lackluster shogi research.