"Your turn Isan," Kurenai Yuuhi said, leaving the Hokage's office. She was one of the many who continued to disbelieve in the loyalty of Orochimaru's students, no matter how many tests he had gone through. Hokori sometimes thought it had to do with the way jonin sensei were considered so important. In other countries jonin sensei were of less importance, if genin had them at all.
"Thank you Kurenai," Hokori said, smiling softly at the flash of distrust on his fellow jonin's face. She was a new jonin. She would learn to better hide her expressions with time. (Truly she wasn't ready to be a jonin yet, but with the Uchiha gone, Konoha was desperately in need of more genjutsu focused jonin. She was one of the few who had bothered to learn the details of genjutsu without possessing a sharingan.)
Hokori bowed deeply upon seeing the Hokage, one of the many symbols of respect that Orochimaru had ingrained within him.
"It's good to see you Hokori," Hiruzen said, smiling in much the same way he had when Hokori had first become a chunin. There relationship had never quite recovered from Orochimaru's betrayal and survival. (Some called Hokori cold but they just didn't understand. Hokori would have mourned his teacher's death. It still would be been better for everyone involved. He would rather Orochimaru had died, so Hokori could have remembered his sensei kindly.)
"And you, Hokage-sama," Hokori returned, taking a seat when his Hokage bid him to.
"You are reviewing Asano Sakurai as part of Team 13," the Hokage says flipping open a manila folder to see the short form summary of Team 13 members. "Did she pass your jonin test?"
"Yes."
After a moment the Hokage looked up at Hokori,
"Does this have anything to do with her visit to the hospital yesterday?"
"She didn't run away. She passed."
"Let me be more clear," the Hokage said, looking stern. "Asano was the only genin who needed to go the hospital yesterday. Why was that?"
"I dropped her out of a tree." Hokori said, mildly surprised. Team Orochimaru regularly went to the hospital after training sessions. Their first hadn't been any different. The Hokage still looked rather unhappy though.
"Why did you drop her out of a tree?"
"...Because that was the test?" Hokori paused for a moment. The Hokage had never worked in Torture and Interrogation. The Hokage could be ruthless and dangerous… but he'd never been in the same situation as Team 13. "Team 13 is a very dangerous team, by nature of our work the members of our team are always in danger, more so than most genin teams. If Asano couldn't deal with the threat and damage done yesterday then she wouldn't work on Team 13 for any period of time."
Team 13 was the genin team with the highest likelihood of capture and torture.
"I see." The Hokage didn't look like he could see. He just looked tired. "And you are aware that Asano has a relatively unknown medical condition?"
"Yes, of course, it was part of her file." Hokori nodded, "that's actually what I wanted to mention next." Hokori looked around the office, trying to find the right words for it. Teams were carefully chosen and approved by the Hokage directly. And yet. Asano was a terrible fit for Team 13. "I don't think Asano should be a member of Team 13 for any longer than it takes for her to reach chunin level.
"Why is that?"
"A number of reasons," Hokori started, not allowing himself to show his hesitance. "Going through the chunin exams every six months in very hard on the genin's body, and I'm worried about Asano's ability to deal with it. If Asano's health does start to fail, it could be very dangerous if she's in another nation." Hokori paused, his fears around Asano health bubbling to the surface. As Asano's jonin sensei it would always be his job to worry about her now. What a massive duty the Hokage had bestowed upon him.
"So far Asano's health concerns have been managed safely. If they are problematic then of course she'll be transferred but her health has been improving steadily for years," the Hokage said, pulling out a larger file and looking one of the early pages. "There have been some concerns about foreign diseases but as a shinobi those are unavoidable. I'm make a note of your concern, and I'll expect another visit from you if it becomes problematic." The Hokage made a few notes before closing the file and looking up again.
"Mostly though, Asano doesn't trust Kabuto. In fact she has actively disliked him from the moment she saw him. Is it possible they've met before?" Hokori paused before adding, "Kabuto didn't seem to recognise her."
"I don't know," the Hokage said, "I'm not sure how they would."
Hokori resisted the urge to rub the bridge of his nose under his glasses. ROOT. He was suggesting that Asano knew ROOT, had been part of ROOT, or knew that Kabuto had been part of ROOT. Just like most higher level shinobi knew (at least somewhat) about the "disbanded" organisation. The problem was that Asano was a genin, and had a Missing brother. A Missing shinobi might know about ROOT enough to recognise one of their ranks.
(Hokori wasn't a greenie. He knew a ROOT member when he saw the signs. Kabuto had never attended the academy. He showed stunted empathy. His placement on the team stunk of Councillor Danzo's interference.)
The Hokage didn't seem to see the same things that Hokori did though. Instead he just flipped through Team 13's summaries and nodded.
"Understandable. Many teams don't work well at the start. I know Team 13 was already formed when you joined but it's quite common for trust to only come after a couple of stressful missions." The Hokage glanced at Hokori's neutral expression and sighed. "If it's still a problem when she reaches chunin then she can be transferred."
"Yes Hokage-sama."
"Anything else Hokori?"
"Not that this point."
"Then you're dismissed. Please welcome Asuma in next."
Hokori stood and bowed, as he had when entering despite his displeasure.
The next morning, well past when dawn peaked the edges of the trees Hokori reluctantly pulled himself out of his warm bed. No matter how many years he did this, Hokori still hated mornings. He didn't need to meet with his team until nine, but before then he needed to eat, exercise, and meditate. Also if he didn't find Anko to tell her about his new student before she found him… well she'd probably make him regret it somehow.
Hokori pulled a ration bar out of his kitchen and stepped out of his apartment, waving at Usami who was sitting outside of his boyfriend's door. The autumn air in Konoha was already starting to stir with morning, shinobi and busy civilians starting to scurry through the streets.
His exercise routine had been a long sprawling thing before he was a jonin sensei since he was either on a mission, and therefore out of Konoha and didn't do it, or off mission and had as time to waste. Once he had been assigned to Team 13 he'd been forced to cut it down to its simplest, most intense version. Jonin-sensei were expected to meet with their genin at least five times a week for training and to complete a mix of D and C-rank missions (though Team 13 also did a number of B-rank mission with special permission.)
His new routine started by doing jumping jacks on water for five minutes to get warmed up and the chakra flowing. Then he ran through his top kata forms to keep them fresh in his mind, and did fifty handstand-push ups. In all it took around an hour, and if he had time he would do a bit more.
'Anko probably won't even be awake yet. I could wait until this evening to see her,' Hokori thought, 'I could go to bed for another few minutes…' That wasn't really true though. Now that he had accepted Asano onto his team the files would be sent down to T&I for storage and reference and Anko would no doubt see it. Anko was a natural early riser too.
Hokori sighed, absent mindedly running through hand signs in a mixture of patterns at high speeds. (Training hand signs is one of the easiest, and most effect methods of training for ninjutsu and genjutsu - to a lesser extent - types. Anyone who fails to do so is simply lazy in Hokori's opinion.)
T&I was a multi-layered building. On the front it was just another shop (the back entrance was one most Konoha residence would never see and no one ever wanted to). Once you got passed the guard disguised a secretary the building had a room with far too many doors, and not enough labels.
On the important floors, the ones where the loyal Konoha shinobi worked and spent their time, there were large (seal-made, illusionary) windows and Yamanaka donated plants and pin boards with the latest bets on them. One the other floors everything was made of concrete and the lights were barely close enough to avoid shadows. The doors were steels and the moans were not of pleasure. To put things politely.
Hokori paused and felt for Anko chakra. He wasn't a natural sensor but all good (alive) shinobi developed some level of sensitivity, especially to those they spent a lot of time with. And Hokori had spent a lot of time with Anko. (There was a lingering fear around Orochimaru's students and now that Hibiki was dead it was just the two of them for the most part.)
Hokori looked among the desks, looking for Anko and any obviously left out information (a good way to spread gossip without actually being seen talking about it). There were a few notes about the usual stuff, recent jonin applications, Etsu's recent dating adventures, and Lady Torii Kiyonobu's latest release. Anko was at her desk, her forehead slightly red, probably from hitting her head against the desk.
"Yo! 'Kori-chan! What are you doing up this morning?" Anko shouted, far too loud for the time and day and distance between them. She didn't smile per say, but she did look significantly less likely to randomly commit murder.
"Just letting you know that I've gotten a new genin." Hokori said, gently collapsing on a random chair. There were a few shinobi already in, but most would be arriving in the next two hours or so, depending on how late they were up the night before.
"Is that so?" Anko leered, or at least, attempted to. Her eyes were still smudged with yesterday's makeup and she yawned part way through which rather ruined the effect. Hokori just watched for her a moment before she caved and stared rubbing her eyes. "It's this fucking chunin exam, ya' know! Some new upstart shinobi village wants to take part and now Inoichi is freaking out 'cause he doesn't wanna insult anyone! And they want my test to cut 'em down for the tournament at the end, but coming into my exam there could be anywhere from 3 to 30 teams!"
Hokori hummed softly. There was not use trying to talk to her until she had said what she needed to. Anko has been the most ostracised of their team, and it had taken a toll on her.
"... and they said that I can't have them use deadly poison because if I kill too many of them then Konoha'll get accused of sabotage! Which is complete nonsense, just as many Konoha genin would die too..."
Team 13 was in a bit of a dangerous place right now, Kabuto was a genjutsu/taijutsu type but he'd focused on genjutsu so he could be out of the line of attack - a requirement of being a field medic. Yoroi was a ninjutsu/taijutsu type but had focused on ninjutsu which was largely fuelled by his chakra absorbing abilities, though he had decent taijutsu skill so that he could actually get physical contact on his opponents.
"... and the fucker just pretended he hadn't been asleep! He's a fucking Nara, everyone knows they sleep on the job! But no, I'm the one that gets in trouble for throwing paint bombs..."
Team 13's taijutsu type had been Misumi which had worked well enough, at least from what Hibiki has said. Asano was a genjutsu/ninjutsu type though.
Now that he thought about it, Yoroi might be best served by moving onto chunin and joining a different team. He hadn't really recovered from Misumi's death and his somewhat sadistic attitude could be well used in T&I since Ibiki was thinking about retiring soon and adopting a kid, if rumours were accurate. Kabuto would probably be on Team 13 until he was ready to be the next generation's sensei, which worked well for everyone. Kabuto needed info to give Danzo, and he seemed to enjoy infiltration, or was at least very good at it.
"... one of the women's toilets on the floor's been closed for almost a month now..."
Kabuto was Hokori's preference for joining sensei since Yoroi didn't have the empathy or intelligence and Asano wasn't expected to reach jonin.
Yoroi will need more taijutsu focused training. Asano can start by focusing on the basics and ninjutsu. Kabuto can take a leadership class and do some more time at the hospital so he can start learning about healing shattered bones.
"...I mean yeah, I guess she was pretty hot. But anyway, you've got a new team member?"
"Yep," Hokori said, turning his thoughts back to Anko. "Her name's Asano Sakurai. I think she's the family broodmare since her older brother is Missing, her other brother's file is classified and he's marked down for ANBU. Her only other siblings is a civie."
"Sucks to be her," Anko said, entirely unsympathetically. Anko was the last of her family and no one was willing to try and push her towards having kids for fear of reprisal. Hokori also suspected that not everyone wanted mini Ankos running around Konoha.
"I'm gonna need Kabuto to train her in genjutsu, but I need to get her up to speed 'cause I'm pretty sure he'll kill her, accidentally or otherwise if I don't." Hokori said, his thoughts leaving his mouth in dismay. As a jonin Hokori obviously knew a decent amount of genjutsu, but he was a taijutsu/ninjutsu type and had never really excelled at genjutsu theory, which was very important to beginners. He could find a different teacher, but genjutsu had been the Uchiha speciality, and Uchiha were thin on the ground these days. Those who did excel at genjutsu were very overbooked.
"He's your uh-" Anko coughed, "muddy one?" It took Hokori to understand what she meant. They'd both met Team 13 when Hibiki had been leading it and they had agreed that even mentioning ROOT out loud was too dangerous when they were inside of Konoha.
"Yeah. He's pretty good usually, but having lost half his team and getting a greenie has got to be playing a toll on him."
"Sage bless! I'm so glad I'm never gonna have to deal with that!" Anko laughed at Hokori's concern, the cruel, cruel woman she was. "No one would ever give me a team!"
"I don't know, they gave Kakashi a team. Team 7 even."
"Damn!" Anko said, "the Hokage want some kids dead or something? No wait, don't tell me, it's the Uchiha kid?"
"Why would I know?" Hokori waved her off, "I just saw him on the new jonin register."
"You know that," Anko paused for a second, "I heard some rumours from the council yesterday that pressure had been put down to pass this group of genin. I'd thought it was 'cause they want to fill the roster for the chunin exams, but this is the year with the clan heirs wasn't it? Inoichi has been bragging about his 'little Ino-chan~' more than usual. It's always creepy as fuck."
They sat quietly while an Akimichi stormed past. Say what you will about the Akimichi attitude most of the time, but they were not a clan of morning people. (And to the misfortune of everyone, the Yamanaka very much were.)
"What time are you meeting your kids?" Anko asked, the faux innocence tone making Hokori cautious.
"Nine..."
"Right. Well the clock on the wall behind you says 8:57."
"Shit!" Hokori stood up and walked quickly out of the building. (Carefully not running because if he ran on the T&I office floor Yano would ensure that he never ran anything other than D and S ranks missions ever again).
Hokori landed in front of his team, having run the entire way there. There was an extra one. One of Asano's friends, based on their positions. Sakura Haruno based on her hair colour.
"Ah! Sorry I'm late!" He said with a self deprecating smile. "Oh this one of your friends Asano?" As if he didn't know everything about her.
Asano responded and Hokori allowed them to enjoy a few minutes of small talk before he encouraged Sakura to leave (with threats of D ranks of course). She left quickly.
"Alright Team!" Hokori said, smiling to his team, "it's time to do a D-rank!" They didn't respond, but Asano seemed to deflate slightly. Ah the joys of being a genin. They would need to start of C-ranks pretty soon, maybe in a month? That should be enough time to get Asano to a safe level of skill. Maybe she wouldn't be able to help, but at least she wouldn't get them killed.
It would do them all good to be doing C-rank missions sooner than than later. Until then he would enjoy watching them suffer.
"Now hook the fourth line of the Wuu to make Wuu-Ya which has connotations of speed, not fast or slow but rather the existence of time. Wuu-Ya works with other seals to set any function of time, in the future, quickly, slowly, and so on."
"Right…" Asano said, making a notation in her notebook.
"And with that, we finish the Wuu series." Hokori finished, looking over her shoulder at her notes. They weren't great. Her handwriting was sloppy. He had wanted her to improve her brush work so she was using a sealing brush. As an effect there was ink smudged up and down the page and on her hand. It got the important details down though.
There were two ways to teach sealing. Teach full seals so the student could slowly learn which symbols showed up when. Or, the way Hokori was doing it, teaching the symbols and letting the student try to put them together. She had full seals in her mysterious sealing book, and he was teaching her the symbols. She was also under strict instruction to ask for help if she needed it. Between all that she had everything she needed to excel.
"Can we start the Wai series?" Asano said, sounding almost pleading. Hokori let out a short laugh.
"No. It's time to work on chakra channeling." They really didn't have time to spend more on sealing, but it had been one of the main reasons she'd been placed on his team and he didn't expect to have all that long to teach her. Asano sighed and put her notebook to the side before standing up.
"Can I at least start learning actual jutsu?"
"No. Not until you can perform basic academy kata on water. If you keep asking then you'll be doing some D-rank missions on your own, without pay." Normally he would do something rather more lasting, making her spar against Yoroi, for example. All genin were required to do a certain number of low rank missions before taking part in the chunin exams though and boosting her mission numbers couldn't hurt.
Watching Asano fall into a pond on repeat was not particularly stimulating, even when he also had to correct her barely adequate movements. She had more strength, agility, stamina, and speed than originally expected (Asano explained that she ran in the mornings which explained it) but that really wasn't saying that much. He had expected her to be of civilian strength, the fact that she was actually at the expected strength of a greenie wasn't a huge improvement.
Despite her base abilities, she didn't know how to utilise them. She forgot the movements and had to slowly work through it, often with help, each morning. She understood concepts faster than he had expected, her ability to memorise words was also pretty decent. She was terrible at physical learning though. For whatever reason, she was building up muscle memory at a glacial pace and her own embarrassment at her failures was making it worse.
Hokori resisted the urge to sigh deeply, instead he watched, correcting her automatically and thinking ahead. He'd started to understand why Kakashi always carried around a book to read.
"Now make the transformation again, but this time make sure that your posture remains the same while you walk."
Asano released the transformation and ran through the seals again. (Hokori noted that she might be ready to drop a hand sign soon.) This time she looked like Kabuto, his signature shy smile on his face. The kind he never wore while they were on their own but everyone on Team 13 had seen during D-rank missions.
"Come on, walk towards me." Hokori said, watching the way "Kabuto" moved. It wasn't quite right, but it was close. "Curl your shoulders a little more, and take longer steps." After a moment, Hokori nodded. Asano was quite good at playing different characters, but impersonation didn't come nearly as easily.
"Is there a jutsu to mimic voices?"
"Yes. There are a few actually, but we won't cover those until we know your chakra type. One of the best methods is a wind jutsu so if you have wind proficiency it would be best to start with that one. Now let's start with slow sparring, your job is to hide your identity, you don't need to be Kabuto."
"Yes sensei." Asano ran through the hand signs and shifted into the appearance of a Yamanaka, the clan heir most likely.
They exchanged a few kicks, Asano mostly dodging. Hokori watched her movements with a careful eye. Asano would never be a taijutsu master, but she'd gotten to the point where she could beat most of the bandits that were found on the easiest of C-rank missions.
Hokori's foot connected with Asano's chest and she flew back, skidding to a stop.
"Where did you go wrong?" Hokori said, not allowing himself to sigh. If she went up against any shinobi of worth she would lose. Badly.
"I forgot that Ino is slightly taller than me so my arm was in the wrong place," Asano groaned, sitting up slowly and wincing.
"That's right." Hokori looked at her face, "is there anything broken?" Asano paused. Kabuto was working independently, as per usual, so if there was anything wrong she would need to go to the hospital. Asano needed to be excellent at identifying what was hurt and how badly, even if she wasn't a medic. Any shinobi benefitted from such an ability but Asano in particular would need to be able to quickly and precisely describe if her chakra channels started collapsing or any other disastrous effect of her weakness.
"I don't think so."
"Bruising?"
"Yeah, I think that's it."
"Great, get back up and let's try again. This time use a male form. You need to be able to balance even when your height and weight is off." Hokori said, thinking about the way Asano's footwork had suffered from the transformation. This time when she changed she was a Nara, most likely the heir again.
"This time I want you to be the offensive," Hokori said as she moved towards him.
"Cylindrical seals are more advanced than most of what you should be working on right now, but we need to cover it anyway. To be clear: do not use this seal type yet. It is incredibly dangerous for beginners."
"Yes sensei."
"For cylindrical seals you put the root in the centre here, and then put the details around the edges in a circle. In more complex matrices the root will be in three dimension-"
"How?"
"You write down the first layer, run chakra through the layer causing it to disappear. Then layer over it until you reach the top. The top layer will disappear with chakra and then you put the Muu symbol on top which will make the top layer reappear..."
Hokori watched as Asano ran through the academy kata as a warm up. She had finally gotten to the point where she ran through the whole thing correctly. Her movements were stronger and more fluid than they'd been three weeks ago. Her chakra control would never be the best - not without a lot more work - but it wouldn't hold her back. She had a rather large amount of chakra (for someone outside of a clan) presumably that was part of why she was a ninjutsu type. As it was she would probably be able to do two or three A-rank jutsu in a row if she needed, but that would increase through puberty.
That said. She'd lost weight. Her skin had an unpleasant pallor despite the hours spent outside and her collar bone was worryingly sharp. Hokori couldn't figure out why. She was eating enough - he'd checked. She spent most of her free time with her genin friend Sakura Haruno. Asano cooked for the both of them and neither of them seemed to be holding back when they ate. She wasn't sleeping as much as she should perhaps, but she got enough that it shouldn't be having this much of an effect.
"How was that sensei?" Asano grinned, clearly proud of the near perfect performance.
"Very close," Hokori said, "you need to keep your shoulders even, your right one sits slightly higher which is going to move your flips out of balance."
"Flips?"
"You're small enough and quick enough that aerobatics will be more helpful to you than standing firm. You can't take as much damage as Yoroi for example."
"Oh right," Asano said, inspecting her hands as if looking for signs of her future calluses.
"Asano, how often do you see a doctor?"
"Every six months."
"When is your next appointment?"
"In four months or so, why?"
"Genin need to get a number of immunisations before their first C-rank. Also make sure you get a full check up - I don't want you dying on your first C-rank."
"Yes sensei."
"Team 13, it's time for a C-rank!" Hokori said, smiling brightly. His poor little genin looked rather happy about that. As he would expect after a month of nothing but D-ranks and training. Asano had already known what as coming, but that didn't stop her from looking mildly excited. She kept a tight rein on her emotions and actions around the team, particularly around Kabuto. She'd mostly thawed to him from the hours and hours they'd spent together though, and she didn't seem to have anything against Yoroi personally.
"What kind of mission are we doing sensei?" Kabuto asked, looking blandly curious.
"We're gonna do a classic starter C-rank, caravan guarding. After that we'll do infiltration like usual, Asano has to get up B-rank infiltration skill for the Konoha chunin exams so we'll be taking them pretty close together."
Asano's taijutsu was acceptable for now, and she knew the academy three jutsu down quite well. He had thought about teaching her an elemental jutsu before taking a C-rank but decided that the risk of her getting over confident was too dangerous. Once they'd actually been a fight with a shinobi where she could see how outclassed she was, then he could teach dangerous ninjutsu without her getting cocky. In the meantime Team 13 would keep her alive, if not safe.
