Ch. 3 Life as Konoha's Reserve
(Administration Building: Missions Office)
Ding.
I rang the small bell atop the counter, trying to grab the attention of the chunin clerk sitting behind the desk. It was around mid-afternoon, and the Missions Office was rather empty for this time of day. Just having finished my early training routine, I set out to complete another D-rank mission.
My life had become rather mundane in that sense.
Any excitement I expected to find as a newly graduated genin was non-existent. Even if I was part of the Reserve Force, I thought that it'd be more interesting than the academy at least.
Oh how wrong I had been.
Sure, there was much more free time now that I didn't spend half my day in class — most of that I can now devote to reading advanced Fuinjutsu scrolls and learning basic elemental ninjutsu. But whatever perks I gained as an official Konoha shinobi were not worth the bane of every genin's existence — the D-rank missions.
The one good thing to come out of this was the fact that I was beginning to earn a steady source of income; and with the added benefit of not having to split the pay between a genin team, I was able to move out of the orphanage and into my own apartment.
My body was also undergoing significant changes as I began to overlook my own nutritional intake. It was an expensive endeavor for a lone genin like me, but beyond weaponry, gear, and food, I had nothing much else to worry about. Purchasing shinobi gear can wait until it was necessary for a serious mission or a patrol detail outside the village.
For now, enhancing my physical ability was a priority.
My strength and endurance had already started to improve, even if no visible changes had yet to appear on my body. And it seems that physical attributes also have some type of effect on your chakra networks, seeing as my reserves had grown in recent weeks.
Perhaps, a healthier body played a role in chakra regeneration. Anyhow, I wasn't complaining, and it only gave me more reason to continue with my current process.
My fighting ability, though, was a concern to be sure.
Not that I had any illusions of becoming a taijutsu master like Gai or even Rock Lee, but if the test with Ibiki showed me anything, it was that my taijutsu was severely lacking. He was able to fend off all my attacks, pretty much without batting an eye; and I was unable to create even a small advantage with him having barely used any chakra at all.
The little tricks that I had used in my fights thus far — in the first spar with Sasuke, and in Ibiki's test — were not going to get me anywhere in the real world. Those worked maybe once or twice, and never on the same opponent.
If I wanted to hold my own in a fight, I had to rely less on tricks and more so on prowess. Even if I chose to specialize in ninjutsu or fuinjutsu, hand-to-hand combat was still an essential skill I needed to learn — not just to be able to advance in my career, but also as a foundational ability to fall back on in a real fight.
But without a proper jounin instructor, I was unlikely to advance much further than the basics.
Should I find a way to train with one of the genin teams? Gai didn't seem to be the unwelcome type, though I wasn't sure if my mind would be prepared for his antics. Ninja or not, the training him and Lee got up to didn't seem remotely human.
Filing that idea away for the future, I tapped my foot impatiently as the chunin seemed unaware of my presence.
"Ahem."
I cleared my throat, finally alerting the Missions clerk, who had his nose buried in a suspiciously familiar orange book. The middle-aged chunin put the smut novel aside without even a hint of embarrassment as he looked up from his desk.
"Mission?" The man asked, already opening the drawer beneath his desk.
"Yes, sir." I responded. "Reserve Force genin Yuji Mori, here to request a solo D-rank mission."
He gave a small nod before thumbing through the stack of documents.
The man was in his mid-twenties, and I guess somehow he managed to pull the lottery of having the easiest occupation in a ninja world. It was the literal definition of a desk job. Judging from what I've seen, only genin squads, reserve forces, and low-ranked chunins received their missions from this office. Meaning that, any high level missions must be personally assigned by the Hokage or jounin officers.
Which made sense considering the logistical nightmare of mixing highly-classified assignments with D-rank chores. I knew there was no way the Hokage actually had time to delegate D-rank missions to a bunch of genin squads. The man had a fucking village to run after all; the size of Konoha could rival some small cities back in my old world.
The Missions Office was only responsible for simple D-rank missions that didn't need any clearance from the higher-ups and even Reserve Genin can take.
The chunin clerk handed over a file along with a heavy storage scroll. "Same deal as last time." The man drawled on with a bored tone. "Return the document once you've confirmed and disposed of the contents. I'll need your signature once it's complete, and you'll receive your pay."
Ehhhhhh? Another one of these?
"Do you have any other missions?" I asked without much hope in swaying the chunin. "I've been doing this mission all month, isn't there anyone else that can do it?"
"Listen, kid." The man turned to me with a hint of annoyance. "There's five more of those that need to be done today. If you want to take a mission, then that's the one you're going to get. You don't get to choose what D-rank you're assigned."
No, but you do…
"... I'll take it, sir." I relented with a resigned sigh as I took the scroll along with its documents.
I swear, somehow these D-ranks were even worse than how the original story made it out to be; maybe it was because they reserved the more tame missions for the genin squads.
I wasn't sure if the Reserve Force got the leftover unwanted missions because they were considered a lower rank, or if none of the jounin senseis were thrilled about this type of work.
It was no wonder genins dropped out of the Reserve Force like flies. The tedious work simply wasn't worth the effort for that tiny chance of being instated as a true shinobi.
Especially when you could find civilian jobs that were far more… savory… than this. I gave a small grimace as I stared down at the mission scroll in hand.
"Bounty Confirmation
Target: Iwafumi Nao
"Confirm and identify the corpse stored within the seal. If any discrepancies are found, please notify the Missions Office immediately. If not, sign and date this document as Proof of Confirmation once complete, and continue with disposing of the body at the incineration site.'
The back of the document had a list of easily identifiable physical features that should mark the body as the corpse of this deceased bandit.
I swear this had to be like the seventh one this month.
At this point, I wouldn't even mind deweeding someone's garden, or painting some walls, hell, I'd even take chasing down that devil's cat around town over what I was working with.
Instead, most of the missions I'd been given were all the dirty chores that the no genin squad wanted to take — like this one.
Now, I know that moral standards in this world were questionable to say the least, but even here, having a 12 year old handle dead bodies had to be frowned upon, right?
The chunin at the mission desk couldn't seem to care less though. I was a registered shinobi, and in the eyes of this world, that meant that I was an official adult.
And these bounties barely amounted to pocket change anyways. I'm sure any worthwhile bounties on shinobi or wanted criminals were handled by people way above my paygrade.
But for these bounties on low rank civilian bandits, they flooded in by the dozen every week.
And judging by the fact that they were letting genin like me handle identifying and confirming the kills, the village didn't really give two shits about these low level bounties beyond getting the hunters paid and disposing the bodies.
Which left all the dirty work to the likes of me.
Well… this definitely wasn't what I imagined myself doing after graduating from the academy… at least it couldn't get worse than this, right?
(Two months after Graduation)
Life as a Reserve Genin was slowly driving me nuts. I'd done nothing else since graduation but training and completing these damned D-rank missions.
They weren't all for naught, however.
Despite nearly throwing up the first time I unsealed a dead body, I realized something important about the storage seals it used.
In this world, basic storage seals were separated into two types — Conversion and Compression. Perhaps it was the same in the original story, and Kishimoto just didn't bother to explain it; but the two types of storage seals, while they serve similar purposes, had completely different mechanisms in how they functioned.
The Conversion Storage Seal that I learned from the basic scrolls on fuinjutsu, used chakra to convert matter into stored data, and then reconstructed the object from the data.
The storage seal used for dead bodies, on the other hand, was a completely different seal than the one I'd learned. This type of seal — the Compression Storage Seal — allows the user to seal far more complex items; hence why it was used for dead bodies.
It took me a while to figure out at first, but my guess was that even dead bodies contained living cells that were just impossible to replicate into transferable data. For this reason, dead bodies had to be sealed using a different method altogether.
From what I could decipher of the Compression Storage Seal, the overall function of the array was to physically compress the target object to nearly 1% of its original size. Unlike how the show had made it seem, this type of storage seal did not create a pocket dimension in which to store items — as a video game Inventory would.
Instead, it uses quantum mechanics to shrink the distance between atoms, and therefore significantly compresses the object by more than a hundred fold.
This level of physics was well beyond my grasp, but I assume that chakra was an important component in stabilizing the electromagnetic fluctuations such a compression would create.
However, the main drawback to this Compression Storage was that the mass of the sealed object remained the same. Compressing the target object didn't make it disappear, it just reduces the size, and makes it significantly more dense.
Only to a certain point though; reducing the size proportion beyond a threshold would run into the risk of the item straight up sinking through the earth, or worse, creating a black hole.
I could only hope that the creator of this specific seal knew what he was dealing with. Whichever Uzumaki had come up with these basic seals could have probably won a Nobel prize back in my world.
People who used the seals nowadays probably had no idea how the physics of it actually functioned. As long as it worked, all they had to do was copy the array, and there was nothing else to worry about.
Because it doesn't actually reduce the weight of objects, the practical uses for this Compression Storage was more limited… though I suppose carrying a scroll was much preferred over having to lug around a bloody corpse.
I imagine that's why most shinobi only bothered sealing the head — it was enough to identify the kill, and much easier to transport.
My mind had immediately wandered to other practical uses for this seal. It wasn't as broken as a space-time jutsu like a pocket-dimension, but it could have some function beyond storing compressed items. Perhaps, in some way it works like how the physics in Marvel's Antman was explained. If that was the case, then a weaponized seal of this nature could be extremely powerful.
But a quick experiment on a rabbit had revealed why that clearly wasn't possible.
This type of seal required the object to be completely motionless — at least in spatial relation to the seal. Against a moving target, or a shinobi fighting back no less, this seal was next to useless.
I had spent countless hours delving into the Conversion Storage Seal as well. Theoretically speaking, having the ability to convert between chakra and matter sounds like an absolutely broken power — that was almost like the ninja world equivalent of a 3D-printer.
While the possibilities are indeed endless in what this type of seal can "print" out, the reality is that the range of plausible objects is extremely limited.
Obviously creating matter from chakra wasn't a novel idea. Chakra constructs were actually quite commonplace: the shadow clone, for an example, is an extremely unique chakra creation; certain shuriken duplication jutsus utilizes chakra constructs, etc…
But the issue is that it costs an exorbitant amount of chakra to produce anything beyond the complexity of a single type of material.
The chakra cost for creating matter from scratch grows exponentially as a function of the object's complexity. Something like the Susanoo required massive pools of chakra to pull off – and that's just to form a pure chakra construct without any matter transformation.
Creating a permanent matrix to spit out endless explosives was cool and all, but from a practical standpoint, it simply wasn't possible, even for jounins with the deepest chakra reserves.
The only real use for this type of "storage" seal was as an emergency cache of projectiles. Kind of like how an older version of Sasuke had scrolls tied around his wrists, which contained shurikens and ninja wire.
No matter how deep I looked into these seals, it seems it would be near impossible to find any untapped potential that wasn't already discovered by previous generations of shinobi.
Which honestly made much more sense than what the fanfiction stories had led me to believe. If there really was a cheat code in a cutthroat world such as this one, wouldn't every shinobi be exploiting it already?
Especially for low-level techniques such as the Substitution Jutsu or basic storage seals. Nearly every genin in the world had access to those techniques, and it'd be hard to imagine anyone recreating the wheel there.
But that didn't mean that Fuinjutsu was necessarily a dead end.
Even a novice like me could understand the incredible potential advanced seals could bring, and not to mention all the uncharted territory in this shinobi field.
Most self-proclaimed "fuinjutsu experts" at this time probably had no clue what they were talking about. Outside of the handful of true experts, all fuinjutsu practitioners were just calligraphers who were only good at replicating basic seals — like the paper bombs, storage seals, and barriers — which have been passed down for hundreds of years and, for the most part, remained unchanged.
With the Uzumaki clan having pretty much died out, I wasn't sure if there were really any fuinjutsu masters left in this world capable of writing their own sealing functions.
From what I could remember, Minato had really been the only one to invent his own sealing techniques… Was he just a natural prodigy? Or perhaps Kushina had some hand in helping him with her knowledge passed down from Uzushio…
In any case, it seemed there was a mountain of knowledge I needed to learn before I could even begin to experiment with writing my own seals.
But that also meant that fuinjutsu was not an option for me to use in combat at the moment.
If I wanted to keep up with the Rookie 9 and not fall to an early demise at the hands of some second-rate rogue ninja, there was still a lot of work left for me to do — mainly in terms of taijutsu and ninjutsu.
When I first thought about what fields of shinobi arts I was going to specialize in, I really had no idea what I was doing. It was difficult to judge whether my relatively precise chakra control would have made me excel in genjutsu or medical jutsus, but ultimately, I decided that without a proper instructor, there wasn't a foreseeable future in those fields.
Especially when I know that most of the future problems in Shippuden either contained a Sharingan or a tailed-beast, making them naturally immune to genjutsu.
No… I wasn't going to waste all my time perfecting an art only to be bitch-slapped by the Uchihas or the Jinchuurikis…
Then, ninjutsu and taijutsu it is.
It couldn't hurt to focus on literally the most common shinobi arts in this world. Even if I don't become a Kage-level shinobi in either field, they were great foundational pieces to have in my repertoire.
Plus, I'd already semi-decided that Fuinjutsu was to be my calling-card. It would be stupid to throw away such a tremendous headstart I'd gotten in that field, and I realized pretty quickly that specializing in a rare subject could make me extremely valuable in the village's eyes. If I garnered enough recognition in the coming years, it is highly likely that I will eventually come in contact with Jiraiya. And if the gods truly smiled down upon me — maybe also some of Minato's work too.
But that was a long pipe-dream for now. Focusing on fuinjutsu alone was not going to get me anywhere in the short term.
That was another main reason why I needed to focus my efforts towards ninjutsu and taijutsu. They provide a great balance of ranged and hand-to-hand capabilities, while also allowing me to keep fuinjutsu as a future wildcard.
The first thing that I'd done when I graduated was to purchase a piece of chakra paper in order to test my natural affinity.
I had pretty much gotten a hold of the Fireball Jutsu by then, but I still wanted to confirm my true element, which would allow me to direct my studies towards that part of ninjutsu.
To my surprise, the results of that test came in the form of a damp piece of chakra paper within my palm.
My chakra affinity was Water.
It was in line for the most part with what I thought of myself — calm, and calculated. If what many people said was true, chakra nature tends to be a reflection of a person's character.
The reason that it did shock me at first was that if I remembered correctly, Water Release wasn't too common in the Land of Fire. The only people I remembered to have mastered it were the Second Hokage Tobirama Senju, and of course, Shinobi of the Hidden Mist.
I also kind of expected fire to be my affinity since I didn't seem to have any trouble picking it up as an academy kid. But if I thought that Fire Release was easy to pick up, Water Jutsus came as almost second nature to me. Whereas I needed to concentrate on transforming my chakra to a specific nature for Fire jutsus, Water Release required no such effort. Any chakra I molded seemed to be already close to the elemental nature of Water — that calm, soothing aura I felt when I first awakened my chakra was probably an indication of my affinity.
And I was in no shortage of training material either. Now that I'd graduated, the shinobi sections of the library had more than enough scrolls on basic elemental jutsus to last me the next few months.
Since Fire Release wasn't too difficult of a technique for me to grasp, I decided to test out all the other Nature Transformations as well. If I was able to be proficient in all five elements, it would open the door to what I could include in my arsenal.
Sadly though, Lightning and Wind Releases seemed to elude me no matter how hard I tried to mold my chakra to that nature. The element was simply too wild and unpredictable for me to harness consistently, and any basic jutsus that I tried either failed or unstabilized.
Earth Release, on the other hand, was coming along quite well. While it wasn't really comparable to the affinity I held with Water, it had the potential to be my second strongest element. I was picking it up faster than I had back when I was learning Fire Release, and with a few more months of practice, my ability with Earth Jutsus may soon surpass that.
Overall, I was quite happy with what I was given. My primary ninjutsu option had great offensive capabilities, as most water jutsus focused on attacking. However, providing a source of water could be an issue; I was able to create some amount of water from pure chakra — enough for a few jutsus — but anything beyond that drained my chakra faster than a Preta path.
Perhaps it was a good idea to look into using the Conversion Storage Seal as a source for water, since I'm unlikely to ever get to the level of mastery the Second Hokage had shown with Water Ninjutsu. The man could summon entire lakes if the rumors were true.
Earth Release was also a perfect complement to my Water and Fire jutsus, as it provides an arsenal of defensive techniques against opponents.
And until I can get my taijutsu up to speed, I'm going to have to lean on my ninjutsu abilities for the time being.
Especially for assignments that I'm going to have to take beyond the typical D-rank missions.
It has been a bit over two months since we'd graduated from the academy, and if I remember correctly, it was around this time that Team 7 had gone on that fateful mission to the Land of Waves.
I was seeing them less frequently now than ever — even Naruto was hard to find at his favorite Ramen stand — so I had no real idea of whether the C-rank mission had begun or not. There wasn't much deviation I was expecting in this version of events; though the improved skills of Naruto would probably lead to interesting results.
All in all, the Mission in Wave didn't create that much of a stir in the overall story so I didn't bother too much trying to fix anything. Team 7 seemed more than capable of taking care of their own business, and more importantly, I had my own things to worry about.
I was assigned to be part of the patrol squad to the Northeast region of the Fire Country. From what I understood, it was a five-day mission with the purpose of running surveillance along the border with the Land of Hot Water.
I guess they gave us about a month's time to acclimate before officially including us into the rotation for assigned patrols.
The mission was still days away, and yet, I could already feel a small bud of anxiety growing in my stomach. It was my first time outside the village, and while chances for hostile encounters were extremely low, you just never know in this world.
Obviously, it wasn't like I was alone on the mission. The patrol squad was to be made up of ten members. Excursions to the borders such as this one were typically led by larger teams. I had yet to meet my squad for an official briefing, but from what I heard, the patrol mission was to be led by an advanced chunin, a second-in-command, four other regular chunins, and four Reserve Force shinobi.
Sometimes if the missions were felt to be higher risk or with a more probable danger, Reserve Force shinobi were swapped out for other chunin, and the team may even be led by a jounin.
Anything more serious beyond that, the ANBU typically took care of those missions.
There really wasn't anything to worry about for me, but nothing I did could calm down the nervousness.
I wasn't necessarily worried about encountering dangerous enemies on the mission; of course, there was always a small chance of that happening, but I was more concerned about displaying my competence to the chunins in command.
I had no plans of making a career out of being a Reserve Shinobi, and the faster I could leave those D-ranks behind, the better off I'd be.
I could only pray that my first mission outside the village goes better than Team 7's nearly disastrous trip.
(Three Days before the Patrol Mission)
I had shown up nice and early to the Chunin Headquarters, hoping to make a good impression with whoever was to be my Squadron leader.
Even though this was a relatively simple and straightforward mission, there was still to be an official briefing three days prior to the departure, and I was curious to see whether I'd recognize any of the chunins this time around. I knew there were probably more than hundreds of shinobi of chunin rank within the village, but the original story did have a rather large cast, even if a considerable amount of them were unnamed characters.
Walking through the entrance of the building, I noted the handful of chunins milling about the reception area, none that I recognized so far.
I wonder if some of the Reserve Force members on my patrol team would be former classmates of mine. It would make sense if we're a part of the same rotation, but just please don't put me on the same mission with Todoki. A lengthy trip with him would be…
I didn't even want to think about the headache.
I approached a middle-aged chunin who was organizing paperwork on top of a desk near the entrance.
"Um… excuse me sir?" I asked as he looked up from his work. "I'm here to report for the patrol mission briefing, do you happen to know where my team is meeting?"
"Oh yes…" The man gave a kind smile as he pointed up the stairs. "The meeting room is on the second floor. There aren't too many people here at the moment, so anyone you find up there should be part of your squad."
"Thank you sir." I gave a quick bow before heading up the second floor.
The room was empty for the most part except for a lone kunoichi who was lounging by a couch in the corner.
She looked up as I entered the room, and I couldn't put a name to that familiar kunoichi's face, but the red markings on her cheeks instantly gave her away as Kiba's sister. The three ninja hounds laying by her feet only confirmed my suspicions.
"Can I help you?" She asked with a curious look, her ninkens looking up lazily.
"I've been assigned to the Northeast Patrol, ma'am. I'm told that there was a mission briefing today?" I asked as I stood stiffly.
"Ahh… you're one of the newbies on the mission huh?" She asked, smirking as she approached from her seat. "What's your name?"
"Yuji Mori, ma'am. 1st year Reserve Force genin."
"No need to be so formal, you know… I'm not gonna bite your head off like those ANBU captains." She teased with a smile.
I gave an awkward grin as I rubbed the back of my neck sheepishly. "Sorry, I just wasn't sure what to expect, Inuzuka-san."
"Do you know me from somewhere?" She asked with a raise of the brow.
"I graduated from the academy this past year, and I believe I was classmates with your brother."
"Ohhh… with Kiba?" She bent down to my height as she whispered conspiratorially. "Now tell me, how much of a pain in the ass was he really?
"Uh… I didn't interact with him too much, so I can't really say. But I'm sure he was liked…amongst his friends."
The kunoichi let out a small snort at that. "Doesn't sound like the brother I know. I barely spent any time with him, and I could barely stand his face." She said with a small eye roll. "Siblings, you know. You love them, but they can piss the hell out of you."
"Anyways, you can call me Hana." She reached out for a handshake. "I'm the second-in-command for our mission, if you have any questions, feel free to ask me."
"Thank you Hana-san." I reached out to meet her. "I hope I won't be a burden."
"Is this your first assignment?" Hana asked.
"Yes, it's the first mission where I will be leaving the village."
"Don't be too worried." Hana reassured me as she sat back on the couch, motioning me to another seat to her right. "Everyone has to start somewhere, I'm sure I was as nervous as you on my first mission, but to be honest, I can't even remember what it was at this point. Once you get the initial nerves out of the way, it'll just seem like regular training."
I gave a forced smile as it did nothing to calm my nerves, her ninken giving me a small sniff before laying back at her feet.
I paused as the door opened and a man walked in, sporting a strong build and serious face. He had a militaristic look — short cropped hair, a neat set of chunin uniform and headband.
"I'm getting a group of brats this time huh?" A deep voice accompanied his stoic appearance.
I'm guessing he was the squad leader.
"Just ignore him, Yuji." Hana leaned over and whispered not so quietly. "He's just grumpy in the mornings."
"Nice to meet you, sir." I bowed respectfully. "It's a pleasure to work with you."
The man gave me an unimpressed once over.
"Meeting is in fifteen minutes, kid. You may be a rookie academy grad, but I expect all shinobi under my command to carry themselves with professionalism. Understood?" He shot a sideways glance towards Hana, who was doing a poor job of hiding a smirk.
"Yes sir." I called out.
'Hn.' With a grunt, the man turned before he stalked off dismissively.
Our squad commander's name was Nanami Koro, it turns out. Not a name that I'd recognized at all, but from what Hana told me, is an experienced chunin with countless patrol missions under his belt.
And of course, it was just my luck that I'd be stuck with none other, but Todoki on my first important mission. I guess it wasn't too much of a surprise we're in the same rotation; I only pray that this doesn't mean I'm lumped with him on every assignment here on out.
The other two Reserve genin were Noemi and another failed graduate my year. And outside of Hana, I didn't recognize a single face among the remaining chunin now gathered in this meeting room.
"We'll keep it brief gentlemen." Nanami began as he unfurled a map on top of the table.
It marked the Northern section of the Land of Fire as well as the bordering countries to the Northeast. A route had been highlighted with several notes annotated along the path.
"The patrol is to be a five-day mission — a round trip along the Northern border heading Eastbound, before we rotate clockwise back to the village." The commander began.
"We will camp overnight along these four points near the border, you Rookies should know we're not here to babysit you, you're responsible for all your own preparations."
"Departure is at 6am sharp in three days time. We will make our way North, a beeline towards the border with the Land of Iron where our official patrol route will begin. The first day we'll traverse along the border of the Land of Iron, the second day will be the Land of Rice, and finally, the last two days will span the border with the Land of Hot Waters."
I gulped as I listened to the mission details. Land of Rice, huh? Would he risk anything so close to the Chunin exams? Who knew what Orochimaru was up to at this point…
"Hostile encounters are not expected, but all members are required to be prepared at all times. It goes without saying the sensitive nature of border patrols in terms of diplomatic relations with our neighboring countries. Under no circumstances are you to cross any border or engage in any conflict without my permission. Is that understood?"
A chorus of 'Yes sirs' rang out before he continued.
"The Land of Iron is a samurai country, who has established an isolation from the shinobi nations. It is imperative that we maintain that rule and stay out of their business lest they threaten their neutrality. Temperatures are expected to be frigid, so prepare accordingly."
"The Land of Rice has recently established a Hidden Village; they're calling themselves the Sound. Not much is known regarding the shinobi village, but we will proceed with extreme caution."
"Finally, the Land of Hot Water had recently begun to shift away from the military economy into trade and commerce. Active forces are expected to be dramatically reduced in that country, so we may have to be on the lookout for additional bandit activity bleeding into home territory."
"The patrol route will end once we reach the Eastern coast along the Kaizoku Sea. From there, we will return home and conclude our mission. Does anyone have any questions?"
Seeing no objections, the squadron leader began wrapping up the mission briefing.
"Good. Familiarize yourselves with the map and the mission route. You genin especially." He turned an expectant eye at the group of us sitting by the end of the table. "You'll be treated as any other shinobi under my command, and that means you'll also be held to the same standards and responsibilities. We're not here to pick up your slack. Do I make myself clear?"
"Yes sir." I responded crisply before the other three genin followed suit.
Satisfied with what he saw, Nanami stood and gathered his files from the table.
"6am sharp." He reminded before turning to leave.
And with that, my first real mission was set to begin.
Authors Note:
Happy Holidays.
Hope you enjoyed the third chapter.
Please remember to leave a review and let me know what you think.
Thanks.