AN: Disclaimed.
Chapter 4
After that somber note, Kakshi sent them back home, with an order to meet on the bridge at the same time the next day. With a cheerful "Don't be late!" that had Sirius trying to transfigure his hair into snakes, he disappeared.
"We should all get lunch together." Sirius decided. "As a team bonding exercise. And to get to know each other better."
"Oh?" Ino asked, fluttering her eyelashes at him. "You want to ask me out to lunch, Sasuke-kun?"
Sirius's lips twitched as he fought to keep them out of a smile. Normally he'd flirt back, but the fact that everyone involved was twelve just made things awkward, though no less amusing. "Well, I'm inviting Naruto as well." He said, acting as if he'd completely missed the innuendo.
"We should get Ramen!" Naruto cheered. Sirius shrugged, glancing at Ino.
"I'm on a diet." She said flatly.
"We're ninja. Our version of a diet is still more food than most non-ninja eat." Sirius pointed out.
"Yeah, but it's a properly balanced intake of nutrients." She argued, "And Ramen... isn't. At all."
"Eh?" Naruto frowned at the two of them in confusion. "What's wrong with Ramen? Ramen's awesome!"
"Ramen might taste good," Sirius said diplomatically, "But it's not healthy, per se."
"It's not balanced." Ino corrected with a superior sniff. "It has too much sodium for too little of anything else."
"Hey!" Naruto protested, despite probably having no idea what he was protesting. Sirius rolled his eyes.
"Naruto, it's the same reason I make you eat something that's not ramen for breakfast and dinner. Otherwise your growth is stunted and you make a bad ninja. Only Ino's taking it a bit further than either of us do. It's like training. You have to do it the right way, with the right katas, to develop the right muscles, otherwise you end up in trouble."
"Oh!" Naruto frowned at her. "Well, you can get Ramen with us just this once, right?"
"Oh, I suppose." Ino huffed. Sirius grinned at her.
"We appreciate your sacrifice," He teased, "It won't be forgotten."
"It better not be!" She threatened.
They made their way to Ichiraku, where the stall owner greeted them with a cheerful smile.
"So these are your teammates, Naruto? Good to see you, Sasuke! And this must be Ino then?"
The three nodded as they took their seats. "Can I have a couple bowls of Miso ramen?" Naruto asked, "That should be good to start with."
Ino stared at him. "Hold on. A couple bowls to start with?"
Sirius just shrugged. "He's got a lot of chakra." He explained. "He needs a lot more fuel than you do." It was, after all, the same reason that they ate so much food back in Hogwarts. Magic or chakra, using it burned a lot of energy. The more fundamental force of magic burned more energy though, so even someone who was only mid-powered like Sirius needed to eat almost as much as a chakra powerhouse like naruto. Speaking of which... "I'll have a couple bowls as well. The new, uh, bloodline that showed up in me." Sirius mentioned, "It lets me do some less normal things, but it kicks up my food requirements as well."
"Well. At least we'll know to prioritize rations." Ino said dryly. Sirius snickered. As the stall owner gave them their bowls, he dug in. Unlike Naruto, who somehow managed to talk about everything under the sun while eating, Sirius just let the conversation flow over him, enjoying the feeling of Naruto arguing with Ino over the most ridiculous things (Orange? Really? Who cared?). It was... comforting.
As Ino's meal finished, Sirius temporarily put his aside. "Hey, Ino? Can I ask you for help with something?"
"Sure, what is it?" She asked immediately. Sirius took a deep breath, trying to figure out how much to reveal. Eventually, he decided to just reveal the bare minimum. The rest of his explanation wouldn't make much sense, not until she learned the truth.
"You know my new bloodline, right? Well because of it, Itachi wasn't able to use a genjutsu on me. But I'm pretty sure that his genjutsu was a mind reading one, so I need help with strengthening my mental shields." He got out nervously. Letting people into his mind had never been something he was comfortable with. Heck, Letting people in at all had been bad. He'd only ever really had a few friends, the marauders, and then Naruto, and Itachi, though not as much. That was why it'd hurt so much when he'd been betrayed, not just once but twice. Why he'd gone nearly mad with grief when Prongs had died, and it had been Wormtail's fault.
She frowned at him, thinking for a second. "So... you want me to...?"
"Try to break into my mind." Sirius said firmly. "It'll help us both. You'll get better at breaking in, and I'll be able to strengthen my shields." She perked up.
"Of course I'll help, Sasuke-kun!"
"Oh, hey." Naruto glanced up at them. "Should I do this training as well? I don't want people in my head."
"There's something inside your head, dobe?" Sirius teased, but gave him a thoughtful look. Having his friend be able to de-
"No, you should be fine." Ino interrupted his thoughts with a dismissive wave. "My dad said you've got something that means that anyone who tries to enter your head's going to end up dead. He made me promise not to use the family techniques on you because of that."
Sirius blinked at her in confusion, then quickly glanced at Naruto, and more specifically, the seal. If the Kyuubi was defending his mind then how exactly did the seal work? His fingers twitched with the urge to pull out a kunai and toss diagnostic spells at him until he knew. The fact that seals in general seemed to blithely ignore his magic was just reality taunting him, he knew it was.
The rest of the day passed without any events of real note. Ino split off almost immediately after that conversation to get her clan training in, Naruto and Sirius ate a few more bowls then practiced taijutsu and ninjutsu together, and they had dinner at Sirius's house before Naruto went home to sleep. The next morning, they were annoyed to find that Kakashi again decided to be three hours late.
"You know, somehow I get the feeling that I shouldn't have expected him to change just because he got students." Sirius remarked from where he was lying in the grass, playing with a small ball of light that he'd conjured. But for some reason, he had. He wasn't really sure why, maybe because Prongs had become so much more responsible after they found out about Harry, or because Lupin had someone managed to get himself employed as the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, just so he could watch over their best friend's son. Because children changed people. Sirius knew they did, but since he'd never been responsible enough to want a child himself (he always claimed that he'd just borrow Harry if he felt like having a kid) he wasn't really sure exactly when it happened.
"He should!" Ino grumbled, staring around the grounds, as if expecting their teacher to magically materialize.
"Maybe he's busy?" Naruto offered, doing some katas by the side of the bridge.
"Don't forget to correct your left foot." Sirius called absently. Naruto kept messing it up, the atrocious academy style that he'd been drilled in messing with the more fluid core that Itachi had taught Sirius, and that Sirius had integrated into Naruto's training.
"Teme!" Naruto shouted back, sounding embarrassed. "I don't mess it up all the time!"
"Did you mess it up this time?" Sirius teased. His friend's silence was all the answer he needed, and he chuckled quietly.
"Maa." A voice suddenly chuckled from the trees above them. Sirius reflexively tried to toss himself into a ready position, then tripped over Ino who'd tossed herself the other way. "It's good to see that one of you at least are eager to train."
"We're very eager to train." Sirius said after spitting out some grass that had managed to get itself stuck in his mouth. "I'm practicing control for my new bloodline. Naruto's doing Katas. Ino was taking a break." She'd been doing katas and drills alongside Naruto for the last while, then somehow managed to decide that she was going to outlast him. She'd managed to keep going for a couple hours before she finally collapsed, exhausted by the relatively punishing pace that Naruto had set for himself. Apparently he'd been annoyed enough by Kakashi's kicking them around to get even more serious. "You on the other hand, were missing."
"A black cat crossed my path so I had to take the long way around to avoid the bad luck." Kakashi replied cheerfully.
"And that took three hours." Ino not-quite-asked, unimpressed.
"There were a lot of black cats." Kakashi agreed.
Sirius snorted. "Whatever. I'm assuming we're starting our training now?" He wasn't really sure how to react. Kakashi was so unlike Mad Eye, whose shouts of constant vigilance and ramblings about how to avoid an ambush (get there first, or don't get there at all) would make being late an anathema to him.
"Hm... I was thinking we'd go on a mission first, but if you'd rather train..." He said, for all the world sounding as if he was offering the trio something that was actually interesting.
"We're not good enough for missions yet." Ino lied smoothly. "We'd rather be properly trained first." Kakashi's one visible eye widened for a second, before narrowing at Sirius. He smirked back.
"You're just out to ruin my fun, aren't you." Kakashi accused. Sirius nodded. He'd already informed the other two about what exactly a D-rank entailed. Most of the adult civilians knew, they were the ones doing the hiring after all. And since the academy had told them the requirements, they knew that those were probably what they'd be getting. Well, Ino and Sirius had, they'd had to remind Naruto. "Maa. Fine, I suppose your teamwork is good enough anyways. I'll just make the training hard enough to make up for our lack of missions. Start doing laps around the training field!"
... Well. That was going to suck, Sirius decided. He glanced around. The training field was decently sized, the perimeter was probably a couple miles. And since he didn't give them any sort of time limit or anything... Ino and Sirius stood up with sighs. Naruto just fell out of his practice stance. He hadn't stopped even when Kakashi appeared, which was a rather laudable amount of determination.
The three of them began running. It took a few laps before they got too exhausted to continue, Ino collapsing first, four laps in, then Sirius after five laps, and Naruto not collapsing until his tenth. Of course, Kakashi had been chasing them, demanding they run faster, run harder, not take breaks, so they tired more quickly.
"Good!" He clapped, "Now for some pushups and situps! Let's do fifty reps of each!" They did them with a lot fewer groans. Fifty reps wasn't actually that bad. AS they finished, Kakashi stared at them for a moment before nodding. "Hm. Now again. This time do the pushups with one hand, then the other hand, and do, oh, two hundred situps instead." After they completely exhausted themselves with the exercises (he kept adding more until he was sure that they couldn't go further, though at least he gave them short breaks), Kakashi gave them one of his strange eye-smiles. "Now that we've done our warmups-" The three groaned, because they knew perfectly well that this was just to exhaust them, "We're going to do some sparring! Naruto-kun, Sasuke-kun, you two first." Sirius sat up, giving Naruto an annoyed look when he realized that his friend had already almost recovered.
The two quickly made their way to the battle ground, standing across from each other. "Ready? Begin!" Kakashi declared. Naruto immediately tried to charge in, only to have to toss himself sideways to avoid Sirius's great fireball technique. He bounced as he landed, pulsing enough chakra to below his feet to launch himself forwards and recover the momentum, a technique they'd found when Naruto had been learning tree climbing to increase his control. (If using too much chakra sent you flying, then why not use that to get a quick burst of speed? Sure, traction was hell, but with the right combination of the tree walking technique and the launch...)
Sirius traded a couple quick blows before disengaging and trying to hit Naruto with a banisher. Unfortunately Naruto knew what was coming and ducked under the attack, then launched himself forwards into a tackled. Sirius tossed himself to the side, then tossed a trio of stunners at his blond friend. Naruto simply kawarami'd out of the way, then summoned a pair of shadow clones that charged mindlessly forwards. Sirius levitated one into the other, then used his left hand to hit it with a stunner, detonating it. He winced at the explosion, then stumbled backwards as Naruto leaped out of it to slam his foot into the ebony-haired boy's chest.
"You're getting slow, teme!" Naruto taunted, unleashing a flurry of blows at Sirius.
"Your explosive clones are just annoying." Sirius replied cheerfully, using the kunai in his left hand to create a smaller, more condensed and portable shield, and the one in his right to strike back with a series of minor jinxes. Leg-lockers, jelly-knees, and tripping hexes were his method of trying to mess with Naruto's balance, and the blonde was, in fact, forced to disengage to dodge the otherwise point blank attacks interspersed with the occasional stab of the kunai that was spitting the spells.
"It's because I'm awesome, Teme!" Naruto countered, suddenly filling about half the field with regular shadow clones. Or at least, Sirius hoped they were regular shadow clones, because if they weren't, this was going to suck. He tossed a bone-breaker into center of the mass, and then groaned as the entire army just kawarami'd out of the way. He quickly spun to block one of them, then ducked under a second one's kick, caught a third on his shield, and countered a fourth's attack with a bombarda that tore through a decent number of them. Almost immediately though, he stumbled as one of them managed to get a punch through his defenses. Casting a quick flame-freezing charm on himself, he dropped a great fireball at point blank, clearing out most of the nearby clones with the ensuing burst of flames. And then Naruto sent the second swarm. Sirius groaned and surrendered immediately.
"That was a good fight!" Kakashi said brightly. "Ino-chan, you get to spar with Naruto-kun, since he won."
Sirius collapsed by the side of the battlefield, and decided to enjoy watching Naruto thoroughly beat up Ino. It was much more entertaining when he wasn't the one being swarmed with an army of clones. Ino, not having his breadth of wide area damage abilities, didn't last nearly as long. Although she managed to pop the occasional clone when she broke it's defenses, Naruto was capable of summoning somewhere around a hundred at once, and even if only four or six could attack at once, the numbers were tiring, and the constant string of attacks forced anyone caught in the middle to focus on defense. Beyond that, the ones outside the small combat circle that formed mainly just disrupted her attempts at Kawarami by using the technique themselves to clean the field.
"Maa, I think that's enough, my cute little students! Now Sasuke-kun and Ino-chan!" The various narutos popped out of existence, revealing the real one standing by the side of the field, grinning. Sirius rolled his eyes, then moved to switch spots with him. "Ready?" Kakashi asked, his voice still annoyingly cheerful, "Then begin!"
Ino immediately fell back, tossing a brace of shuriken at Sirius, who tossed up a shield. Deciding to stick to a ranged fight for now, he tossed up another pair of shields to give him cover, and then started firing stunners from over them. Ino managed to dodge most of the stunners, making liberal use of bunshin to draw Sirius's fire, and returned fire with as many shuriken as she could.
Sirius dropped a bunshin, and had it occasionally toss a stunner as he tossed the disillusionment, muffliato, and notice-me-not combo over himself. He then quickly began sneaking towards his opponent, relying on the spell combination's stealth boost to allow him to get around her. Finally, when he decided he was close and unlikely to be noticed, he tossed another stunning spell at her. She immediately collapsed.
"Looks like Sasuke-kun wins!" He said cheerfully. "You're not very good in a straight up fight, are you though, Sasuke-kun?" Sirius shook his head. "Well it's a good thing that as a ninja, that's not too much of a problem! How long will Ino-chan take to wake up from your technique?"
"It takes a few hours unless I use the counter-technique." Sirius replied, kneeling next to her and casting a reenevrate. "You awake?" He teased.
"How did you do that?" Ino whined, "I was sure you hadn't hit me!"
"I just left a bunshin then snuck around behind you." Sirius admitted.
Ino groaned. "I'm learning more clan techniques, ASAP." She vowed.
"Would that help?" Naruto asked, curious. "I mean, more jutsus is always awesome, but he's just being sneaky."
She shrugged. "Daddy said something about a jutsu that lets you detect nearby minds." She explained, "But it fell out of favor because we have so many other sensors in the village, and it's not really useful compared to how they do it or the other techniques we have."
"Well, that's for later!" Kakashi said cheerfully, "Right now, we're going to climb trees without our hands!"
"We already know how to do that." All three of them said immediately. Naruto needed it for his chakra control, since the leaf exercise was too fiddly for him. Sirius had learned in order to teach his friend. Ino had learned because control was more important than power for her clan techniques.
"Maa... how about water walking then?" He asked cheerfully.
"I know that too." Ino said, sounding unimpressed. Naruto and Sirius on the other hand, shook their heads.
"We didn't manage to learn that one yet." Sirius admitted.
"Hm... Ino, teach your teammates how to water walk!" Kakashi ordered. "And then all three of you work on that to increase your reserves. We'll work on that until you guys can spar while on the water for, let's say, three hours straight!" The three of them gave him an incredulous look, and he waved at the bridge that they'd been at. "There's a river right there! You can practice on it, my cute little students!" The genin grumbled, but made their way over to the bridge. "After you've done that for, oh, an hour, meet me at the hokage's tower! We do need to do at least ten D-Ranks. I, in the meantime, need to find Gai."
"Isn't he that youthful guy?" Sirius wondered absently. The civilians didn't know much about him, other than that he had a tendency to rant about the springtime of youth, and dressed in green spandex.
"So you've heard of him!" Kakashi said gleefully, "Well he'll be helping us with our training." The three genin felt a shiver of fear go down their spines, even if they weren't really sure why.
An hour later, teams nine and seven sans Kakashi were standing in front of the Hokage's tower, staring at each other.
"I see that Kakashi is being hip and late again today!" Gai shouted at the top of his lungs.
Sirius raised an eyebrow. "Hold on, are you implying that he's ever not late?"
"Well, no." Gai replied, looking slightly put out, "But I'm sure that someday he'll awaken his fires of youth and be on time!"
"His... fires of youth?" Ino asked hesitantly.
"Oh!" Naruto suddenly snapped his right hand. "You're that Gai! The Taijutsu master!" At Sirius's raised eyebrow he explained, "I broke into the records. He's really famous because he's got an insanely hard training regiment. Like, he runs a hundred laps around Konoha every morning as a warm-up level hard. He's an elite jounin, on the same level as Kakashi-sensei, and he only uses Taijutsu. He can use other stuff, but his teams tend to not worry as much about chakra reserves, because, simply put, they don't really need them due to how strong they get from his training programs. Speaking of which, are we going to do one of those?" Naruto stared up at him with fear in his eyes.
"Ah!" He grinned, giving them a thumbs up and apparently completely missing Naruto's terror, "I would love to help you awaken the fires of your youth, but perhaps we should ask your hip and cool teacher what he thinks?"
"Maa, I'd much appreciate if you'd take them under wing." Kakashi declared from behind them, prompting a panicked spin.
"You're NOT late!" Naruto cried out, pointing at him.
"What?" One of the other genin, a girl with a chinese style dress and her hair drawn up into buns asked, sounding confused. "Yes he is. We've been here for about an hour."
"He's usually three hours late." Sirius replied dryly. "It's sort of his thing."
"The little old lady I had to help home was already pretty close." Kakashi replied cheerfully. "Now, Gai here has agreed to help me with some joint training while we do our D-Rank. We have the capture Tora mission. Gai's team's job will be to free Tora!"
"Tora?" Naruto asked, scratching his head.
"Evil demon cat." Ino explained, shuddering.
"That's a very unyouthful way to refer to the feline." Gai replied, frowning at Ino.
"Accurate though." The blonde girl muttered under her breath. Sirius snickered, then gave Gai an innocent smile.
"Anyways, my cute little students, let's get started!" He clapped, and the two jounin disappeared.
"... So are you guys going to attack us already, or will you at least give us a chance to get a head start?" Sirius asked the three opposing genin. They glanced at each other.
"It would be most unyouthful to attack a younger team so quickly." One of the males said. He looked a lot like a miniature copy of Gai.
"Awesome! Thanks, fuzzy-eyebrows!" Naruto said cheerfully. Sirius facepalmed. Insulting the people who'd agreed to let them have a head start was not the best idea.
"Naruto!" Ino yelled, glaring at him, then gave the other team an apologetic glance. "I'm sorry, he didn't mean it."
"Neh?" Naruto gave her a confused look, but luckily didn't say anything else stupid as Sirius dragged his friend away. The kid had less tact than the Weasleys.
Team Seven quickly moved away from the tower.
"So how are we planning on finding the cat?" Sirius asked the others, "It could be anywhere."
"Follow the path of people screaming in pain." Ino muttered under her breath. Sirius chuckled until he realized she wasn't joking, and was, in fact, listening for screaming.
It only took them a few minutes to run into the evil cat savaging someone. "Wow." Sirius stared at it. "Makes me wish I was an animagus again."
"A what?" Ino asked, giving him an odd look. He blinked, thought back over his last statement, then swore mentally.
"Er, nothing." He waved it off, then pulled out a kunai. "Shall we try to catch the cat?"
"DYNAMIC ENTRY!" The Gai clone shouted from somewhere to the side. Sirius let out a yell of pain as someone's foot smashed into his rib, sending him flying sideways. "I cannot believe that I forgot this earlier! And for my mistake, I will run around Konoha fifty times on my hands!" The Gai clone said dramatically as Sirius groaned and tried to sit up. "I am Rock Lee, and I have heard that you are a genius! Is this true?"
"What?" Sirius stared at him. "Er, yeah I guess. I mean, people tend to call me one." He groaned, then tossed a quick diagnostic spell at his ribs, thanking the magical first aid course that all hit wizards went through. Hm. Just some bruising. So it hurt to breath, but nothing likely to kill him.
"Then I challenge you!" Gai-clone, er, Rock Lee said dramatically, sinking into a taijutsu stance that Sirius didn't recognize.
"... Why?" Sirius asked, still slightly dazed.
"Because I wish to prove that hard work can beat genius!" He said dramatically.
"... Was that not obvious?" Sirius asked, raising an eyebrow, "I mean, even people who are called geniuses have to do hard work in order to get anything done."
"So you agree with me?" Rock Lee said excitedly, "Yosh!"
"I'm... a bit confused." Sirius finally admitted. "What exactly, is going on?"
"Very well! I shall explain, so as to show you my flames of youth!" Rock Lee shouted, "Due to my chakra coils, I am incapable of using chakra. Even so, I wish to be a ninja! So even though I was the dead last, I wish to train myself until I have become an excellent ninja!"
"Okay." Sirius nodded. "That makes sense. And that's actually pretty admirable. But uh, why did you challenge me?"
"Because you are one of the genius Uchiha, and were the Rookie of the Year of your year!" He shouted again, "So I wish to prove myself by fighting you!"
"... I've also been an actual ninja for little more than a day." Sirius pointed out. "And you've been one for what, a year? What exactly are you hoping to prove?"
Rock Lee hesitated. "Uh... I must admit that I did not quite think this through." He finally admitted. "As punishment, I shall climb the Hokage monument without my hands, and carrying a boulder a hundred times!"
"Weren't you going to run around Konoha fifty times?" Sirius asked, still horribly confused.
"YOSH!" Rock Lee shouted cheerfully. "But before I can do my punishments, I must stop you from capturing the most unyouthful Tora!"
"Wait, if you're doing that anyways, then why did you need to challenge Sasuke-kun?" Ino asked, looking as if she was trying to bite back laughter. Sirius shot her a dirty look that she ignored.
"Because it would be unyouthful to force Sasuke to fight in such a limited way!" Lee replied. Sirius rolled his eyes, then nodded at the other two.
"Here, Lee wants to fight, so I'll stay and fight him. You two go find the cat." He said with a sigh. "Come on, Lee. Let's see what wins, bloodline or training. I promise I'll go all out." He knew he was going to lose. He was pretty sure that Lee knew that he knew he was going to lose. But he'd be damned if he went down without a fight, and it'd be insulting if he didn't throw everything he had into this.
Lee grinned, falling into his own combat stance. "I apologize that I cannot say the same, for my sensei has told me that I can only go all out if I am defending my friends." Lee said, "But nevertheless, I shall fight you as well as I can!"
Then Lee simply seemed to disappear. Sirius had a second to stare at the position he'd just been in before he felt something slam into his chest like the hogwarts express, and send him flying backwards. He gritted his teeth, rolling as he hit the ground, and came up with his kunai out. He quickly tossed up a trio of shields to lessen the number of directions Lee could come from, then quickly waited for Lee to reappear. After a second, he did. Sirius immediately tried to hit him with an Impediment Jinx, which Lee dodged. Sirius grumbled under his breath, then started flinging them practically at random, trying to catch Lee in at least one of them.
Unfortunately, the kid was amazingly fast, and managed to dodge every single attack, closing in on Sirius with no visible trouble. Sirius, on the other hand, was barely able to keep up even with repeated castings of a nonverbal Homenum Revelio. He'd just see a flash of light for a second, fling a brace of impediment jinxes at it, and swear as the next one was on the other side of him entirely. The only reason he hadn't completely lost was because even Lee had trouble with the magical shields, and took a few seconds to break one down. By the time he managed, Sirius would turn his own shirt into a portkey and find somewhere else to cower behind a new trio of shields. Just because he was a Gryffindor didn't mean that he couldn't recognize when getting kicked in the face was a terrible idea. Though admittedly, he'd only learned after dying.
Eventually, Lee suddenly stopped. "I see that you have also undergone the most youthful speed training!" Lee shouted (did he ever not?).
"No. My bloodline lets me teleport." Sirius shook his head. "It lets me do a lot of things, now that I think about it." And frankly, it did. But then again it was magic, and he'd spent most of his life mastering it. Beyond that, the Marauders had been geniuses, masters of spellcrafting, though admittedly, they went about doing things in a particularly stupid way. Even Wormtail was brilliant in his own way, for all that everyone thought him the least of the four. Remus had been a master of Runes and Defense, James Transfiguration and flying, Peter, well, Peter wasn't good at class, but he was stealthy, and more than capable of playing the crowds like a master artist. Even if Peter didn't have charisma, he knew how to best place the ones that did. And in the end, hadn't that been what had brought about their end? Because Peter was an actor, Peter always had a back door, Peter knew how to convince the crowd that he simply had nothing to do with it.
"I see!" Lee seemed even happier at this for some reason, and Sirius backed further into his shields nervously. "Then this is truly a fight between hard work and natural talent!"
"... Yup." Sirius lied. He had, after all, worked hard for his magical skills, and getting it brushed off as natural talent was simply annoying. But on the other hand, what else could he do? Because admitting it wasn't just natural talent would bring on questions, questions he didn't want to answer, couldn't answer.
Lee grinned, and leaped in the air. A second later, four massive weights came flying at the shields, each one smashing into them with a noise like the ringing of a gong. Of course, the second he saw the first one, Sirius had portkeyed himself to another completely random part of the street, but that was still bloody terrifying.
And then Lee was even faster. Sirius managed to survive one more shield collapse before Lee smashed his fist into Sirius's right arm, breaking it. Sirius dropped the kunai with a yelp of pain, but decided to take the opportunity to hit the insanely fast genin with a stunner from his other kunai. That... didn't work. Lee just dodged the stunner with the same blinding speed, and drove a fist into Sirius's gut.
Sirius dropped immediately, barely able to keep from puking, and thanking Merlin that Lee hadn't been using anywhere near full force for that hit. "Yeah." He finally managed to gasp out. "I lost that one. Good fight though."
"Indeed, it was most youthful!" Lee said, then suddenly froze, a look of horror on his face. "Oh no! I removed my weights!"
"No worries." Sirius wheezed. "Accio Lee's Weights!" He felt his magic tug at the weights, which felt insanely heavy for about a second before they smashed into his chest.
When he woke up, he was in the hospital, with Lee apologizing repeatedly. "It's fine." He waved off Lee's apologies. "I just didn't expect them to be that heavy. That's really impressive."
"Ah, thank you!" Lee said, immediately perking up. "It is most youthful of you to say that! Perhaps you should join Gai-sensei and myself for training sometime?"
Sirius was about to blurt out a hasty refusal before he stopped to consider the question. He was, frankly, bollocks at Taijutsu. And while his spells seemed to have an advantage (however slight) over most chakra based things, it didn't mean much if he couldn't actually hit, as Lee had so kindly demonstrated. A single impediment hex and stupify would likely have won him the match, but since he wasn't even able to aim his wand for long enough for the spell to have a chance of connecting... the Sharingan would probably help, but all it was likely to do was what had happened with his detection spell. Tell him where Lee was too late for him to actually do anything about it.
On the other hand, Lee's training had apparently brought him to such a level where Sirius had trouble even seeing him. And if Lee was to be believed, that was through pure physical ability, no chakra involved. Naruto and Sirius could both get temporary bursts of speed by launching themselves forwards, but Lee was capable of maintaining that speed, with absolutely no chakra expenditure. And even if he was a Gryffindor, that didn't mean that he didn't feel ambition, or hate losing.
"I'd love to." He finally said, mentally cringing because Kakshi's training had been punishing enough. "I'm probably nowhere near your level, and I doubt I'll ever be," He did, after all, have both magical projects and ninjutsu to work on as well, "but I'd appreciate the chance to grow stronger. Um, I realize this might be a bit presumptuous, but would you mind if I invited Naruto and Ino as well?"
"Not at all!" Lee beamed, "I hope that we may awaken the fires of their youth as well!"
"... Right." Sirius just smiled and nodded.
AN: First thing to note, if you don't review from an account, I can't reply to your review. And I'd prefer to get this stuff out in a reply to a review, not taking up space in the story. Sorry. ^.^" Second thing to note, tons of thanks to all my reviewers.
Here's some questions that were asked that I'm answering.
Ages: During peacetime, Academy starts at 8, ends at 12. During war, these are both kicked down 3 years to 5 and 9 respectively.
Mangekyo vs. Occlumency (again): Occlumency, being magic, reduces the tsukuyomi to the level of a standard genjutsu, then treats it as an attempted legilimency probe. Sirius wins because he's more experienced with Occlumency than Itachi is with the Mangekyo, specifically. Also, in any direct showdown, Magic, calling on the fundamental forces of reality, and being absolutely broken (Killing curse just flat out kills you, spells can make things out of nothing, flight is aristotelian, and magic generally rips physics even more of a new one than Chakra with stuff like actual shapeshifting and just flat out destroying energy), beats chakra, which is more power of self. Admittedly, it only wins enough to turn otherwise auto-win abilities into contests of will (fiendfyre vs amaterasu ends with whichever user has a stronger will winning, and killing curse takes effect fast enough to prevent Orochimaru's various immortality techniques). On the other hand, chakra users can use chakra to to avoid that direct showdown, and often do (dodging an incoming attack is easier with a kawarimi than, say, apparition, and clone techniques mean that the mage is fighting a copy, so their actions are a moot point). Sirius is personally better off because he can use both, and will later learn how to use one to compensate for the weaknesses of the other (clones shooting en masse makes it hard to dodge, a great fireball gives more fire than a mere incendio, wind techniques are usually both invisible and combat worthy, etc). On the other hand, he's not ever going to be as good at either as someone of the same (actual) age who's been training specifically at one (though in this case, he's dropped his physical training in favor of magical).
Ninja Mind Shields: I was reminded that these do, in fact, exist. Good thing Sirius only targeted civilians so far then!
Clarification on how an Uchiha managed to befriend other clan kids: As part of a major clan, no one was willing to kick him out of their stores or whatever without justification. As Sirius Black, who doesn't much like the Uchiha himself, isn't too much of an insensitive jerk, and in the Harry Potter timeline managed to befriend a Bastion of Light despite being from a family that practically defined the Dark, befriending a bunch of people who dislikes his family but had no particular reason to specifically dislike him wasn't exactly hard (walk into Yamanka flower shop, buy flowers, don't be evil). As for why he didn't befriend non-clan kids... he didn't know them. Simple as that. Even if the Uchiha are kind of shunned, they're still effective nobility among other effective nobles.
Why didn't Sirius ask about ANBU investigations when he woke up? He didn't know the ANBU investigated. Investigation is more of a Cop thing, and that was his family. The family that got wiped out. He probably asks later and gets deflected by the Hokage, who as an ancient and experienced ninja, is fully capable of deflecting a slytherin raised hit wizard who acts the quintessential Gryffindor. He's capable of looking underneath the underneath. He doesn't like doing so.
Naruto's background. He was disliked. Some people hated him. He was feared. He wasn't abused, he wasn't sabotaged (except by Mizuki, and Mizuki was pretty equal about that among non-clan kids, being a traitor and all), he was just ignored, avoided, and generally shunned as much as possible. He got bad prices and low quality goods, but people didn't, for example, hunt him down and beat him up. ANBU took care of the few idiots who tried, and the rest decided, "hey, let's not piss off the creature that's basically a natural disaster."
Why was Lee so fast even before he took the weights off? Because frankly, compared to canon!Sasuke, Sirius is crap in a fight, and Lee managed to thoroughly thrash canon!Sasuke
Edit: Got a review I want to answer to, but don't have the time to get another chapter done (and the next probably won't be done for like a week.)
I've always pictured the Mangekyo's illusion technique like a D&D spell, but where it'd normally say "Save vs. Will (that is, sufficient willpower lets you ignore it, yes I know that's not quite how Genjutsu works)" It just says, "No save." Occlumency just says, "Even if you'd normally not be able to save against a mind affecting spell, you may attempt a save." So normally unblocked abilities like Tsukyami and Legilimency can now both be blocked against by testing your will against the user. On the other hand, if Sirius goes up against someone who specializes in Genjutsu, he's going to lose, because he's worse at blocking than they are at attacking. Basically, being able to block stuff like the Tsukuyomi is a special side effect, not a statement of power level. It's a insanely useful one, but it's still useless if the user's better on the offense than he is on the defense. So if, say, Kurenai hits him with even a minor genjutsu and actually puts effort into making it stick, he'll probably lose. And once Itachi gets better, Itachi will probably win as well.
All spells used so far are pretty much as per the Harry Potter wiki. Magic does in fact conjure matter out of nothing (Augameni makes water, avis summons birds, engorgio and reducto change the size of an object without apparently affecting density, etc). Conservation of mass might officially be a rule (and I doubt it is), but it's definitely not enforced. Sirius's personally crafted spells tend to be pranks, you know, stuff that turns your hair pink. He might make more powerful spells later, but they'll mostly be modifications on common ones (a wide-area of effect impediment jinx, for example).