Let's start this from the beginning

Graduation

IV

Itachi let out a tired sigh as he stared at the stacks of paperwork in front of him.

He had helped his parents with the bureaucratic aspect of leading a clan for some years now, something that he had never truly had the chance to do in the last timeline due to his duties in the ANBU being valued by his father much more at the time, but the novelty of it had long since worn off. He never complained, of course, and he was glad that he could take some burden from his parents' shoulders, but after sitting on these papers for as many hours as he did already, letters began to blur and his eyes started to complain about the never-ending burden of paperwork.

It was a necessary evil, unfortunately. There were many things the Head family of a clan such as the Uchiha needed to handle to guarantee that every of its member was taken care of, after all, and neglecting these duties would result in countless problems.

The clan took care of the security of its members, and this included both their physical health as well as their financial welfare. Monetary aid for the less well-off families, partly cost coverage for medical care, and a regular pension were just some examples of that. Every such request needed to be checked individually and then answered regardless of whether they were accepted or not.

Such things obviously cost a lot of money, and the only reason they were able to afford it was that the special position of the Uchiha Clan in Konoha.

Every clan had certain advantages like some plot of land that was at their disposal or entire districts in the village for their own which was one of the reasons why there were so many civilian shinobi that grouped together to form clans of their own in the hopes of gaining enough members and consequently fame and influence to be granted such advantages as well. They were not related and officially weren't even registered as clans until they met certain conditions, but if they managed to become powerful enough to do so, the reward would be immense.

One of those families that had almost managed to rise to that point in the recent past was the Hatake family. With Sakumo Hatake as their figurehead, they gained an extensive amount of fame and influence, and given just a few more years, they would have surely been recognized as a clan by both Konoha and the rest of the continent.

Unfortunately, the man's fall from fame put an end to that dream, and everyone associated with him pulled away until all that remained today was Kakashi.

If Itachi remembered correctly, many of Sakumo's former comrades and allies had actually approached his son once it became clear that he was not only a rising star in his own right but also close with the Yondaime and tried to relive their old alliances. As one might expect, Kakashi had quite firmly turned them down.

Anyway, there was still a distinction between 'normal' clans and 'big' clans.

The latter ones were the most powerful and those that joined the village early on, and one of their advantages was that they didn't need to pay as many taxes. Furthermore, it was the Heads of Konoha's four noble clans -the Aburame, Akimichi, Hyūga, and Uchiha- that made up the majority of the Hokage's closest council, giving them even more influence.

The Uchiha in particular, however, were also one of the village's two founders and thus had even more of an advantage in that they were exempt from more taxes than even the other clans. This was something they once shared with the Senju before they went extinct. This allowed them to collect clan-internal taxes, and almost all that money was then used for the benefit of the community.

Unfortunately, organizing such a thing for almost one thousand members involved a lot of paperwork, leading to Itachi's current predicament.

At least Sasuke should take some of the work off my shoulders soon enough. Academy graduation was usually the time clan heirs began to actively help their parents, and while Sasuke was technically not the heir, most shinobi clans were smart enough to realize that their lifestyle was a dangerous one and that there was no guarantee that the firstborn would survive long enough to inherit the title. Second child or not, Sasuke would receive the education he would need in case he ever became Clan Head.

He did have much less pressure than Itachi had, though, especially this timeline around, and he was glad for that.

However, for now, he still needed to do the work by himself. That would usually be no big problem, but today, other things on his mind kept distracting him.

To be more precise, he was thinking about his new students.

His test earlier that day had been quite a surprise. After the initial introduction, Itachi's first impression had made him believe that they would pass the test without breaking a sweat. That even if they didn't see through its true meaning, they would successfully showcase their teamwork abilities. He realized now that he really should have known better than that, though, and that green youngsters barely ever acted like they were expected to.

Even if they were good kids at their cores, they were still inexperienced and immature. Of course they wouldn't act as he thought they would.

I have spent too much time with experienced Jōnin and not enough with Sasuke and Naruto, it seems. At first, Itachi wanted to include Haku in that second category too, but he ultimately decided not to. She was much calmer and had much more common sense than her age might imply.

That was quite different from his three new students, too.

Shino was a smart kid, both his files and his actions towards the end of the test had shown that, but all his intelligence was of no use if he couldn't keep a cool head. He would need to see how the boy acted when put under a lot of stress that didn't directly endanger his dream to make people respect the Aburame name- and as Itachi suspected, his own as well. Nevertheless, that was a problem that he would need to address sooner rather than later.

He would need to look after his mental health, too. While the untrained eye saw just a calm and controlled boy, Itachi was fairly sure he wasn't exactly dealing with and controlling his emotions but bottled them up inside of him instead. He couldn't be completely sure of that, of course, having not spent enough time with him yet to make a final assertion, but he was reasonably convinced that he was right.

After all, he had more than enough experience with that himself.

Kiba, on the other hand, had no problem expressing his emotions, though he had other shortcomings that would need to be addressed as well. In fact, his tendency to let his emotions run wild was a problem in and on itself. Inuzuka were generally more unrestrained than others and Itachi would need to take that into consideration, but at the very least, Kiba would need to learn to not let himself be controlled by them. Maybe Hana can help with that, he thought with a hum. She's uncharacteristically calm for a member of her clan, and if what Izumi said is true, she's also quite close to him as well.

He had also been willing to 'sacrifice' his teammate for his own gain, but Itachi didn't think he would need to do much if anything to avoid such a thing in the future. Inuzuka tended to be very loyal, so judging from the guilt that had been quite apparent on his face even when the joy of realizing that he had successfully become a Genin took over his face, he would never do such a thing again.

The only other thing that Itachi had to worry about with him was that he might develop some sort of inferiority complex. After all, he had looked quite down when the three of them introduced themselves and his teammates' dreams were objectively much more difficult and ambitious than his own. That was a silly thought in Itachi's mind because the only thing a dream could be measured by was how much it meant to the one dreaming it, but that was obviously not an easy concept to grasp for a twelve-year-old.

Hinata might prove to be the most difficult of his students. Funnily enough, she was also the only one who had acted as Itachi had expected by willingly putting her teammates before herself. He was reasonably sure she hadn't actually looked through his test and acted like this due to her personality alone, too, which theoretically meant that teamwork would come easily to her.

Unfortunately, in this case, her willingness to sacrifice herself was actually the problem. She hadn't even tried to look for a deeper meaning in his test, hadn't even tried to work together with her team and search for a different way out, but had instantly jumped to the conclusion that would leave her as the only looser.

Putting the team -and the mission- first wasn't a bad thing, but self-sacrifice should always be the absolute last choice rather than the first one.

Other than that, there was one more thing about her that he hadn't observed himself but read in her file from her Academy instructors. It was hard to say how much of a problem it would become, but apparently, Hinata tended to hesitate in finishing off her opponents in her spars. It never actually led to her own defeat as the difference in skills between her and her opponents tended to be too great for this behaviour to matter, but if she fought someone as strong or even stronger than herself, well…

From what he read, she was ranked third in her class when it came to Taijutsu, coming just behind Naruto and then Sasuke. However, according to her teachers, the difference between her and the former wasn't too big, meaning if she were allowed to actually use her Gentle Fist to target her opponents' tenketsu, she might be ranked even higher.

Itachi didn't think she could beat Sasuke, knowing full-well how advanced he was due to training him himself, and Naruto tended to surprise people with how resourceful he was all the time as well, but to be able to fight evenly with either of them was already an impressive feat for a freshly graduated Genin.

That only mattered if she actually used her skills without hesitation, though.

I will just have to wait and see, he ultimately decided before gently shaking his head to banish these thoughts. Thinking about any of this right now is useless. There will be more than enough time to do so later, preferably after I learned to know them a bit better.

For now, he would need to concentrate on the paperwork in front of him.

The sooner he could finish it, the better.

Anko watched the piece of flesh on the table in front of her with keen eyes, not even daring to blink no matter how dry they became as she slowly but surely brought the pipette with her good hand to hover above it. Everything else faded away, and even the countless symbols she had painstakingly drawn onto the table on which the flesh lay on blurred until they weren't recognizable anymore.

Then she allowed a drop of the liquid to drop out of the pipette.

At first, nothing happened, but that was to be expected. After all, if her experiments so far had demonstrated anything, then it was that immediate results usually meant that something had gone wrong.

Several moments went by without any reaction, and just when Anko began to hope that this might finally be the breakthrough she had been waiting for, the symbols began to glow.

She had less than a second to leap away and take cover behind a purposefully reinforced wall to her right before the table burst into flames.

Anko suppressed a sigh, not even having the energy to curse. "So this substance has been a failure as well, huh." She peered past the wall to look at the battered table. "I guess we should invest in some new equipment again soon."

That had been the twenty-eighth experiment so far, and as all of them ended in similar a fashion to this one, tables didn't tend to survive long. This one, for example, she had bought less than two months ago, and even though it was a specifically reinforced metal table for the single purpose of serving as the base for her experiments, it was already covered with dents and burn marks.

"But I really thought this might be it…"

Fūinjutsu was a complicated thing, so she hadn't expected to find a cure to Orochimaru's cursed seal in a short amount of time, but it had already been years and she felt barely any closer to a solution than she did when she first began her research. She was thankful for Jiraiya's help in teaching her the basics and for the Sandaime's willingness to share both his own knowledge as well as Konoha's records on that subject with her, but what use was all of that if she couldn't deliver any results?

The main problem with Fūinjutsu was that it was unbelievable complex. Even the most simple seals were difficult to create and couldn't be done by an amateur. Explosive tags, for example, were the easiest seals imaginable as all they really did was blow up after being overloaded with too much chakra. However, even so, Academy students spent months learning how to create them under the strict oversight of their teachers.

The only other somewhat commonly used seal was the storage seal, and that one was only taught to Genin under one-to-one supervision from their senseis.

What made Fūinjutsu so difficult was that there were very few rules to it that could be generally applied. Pretty much every seal was unique and thus needed to be learned separately. Furthermore, even if someone technically knew the symbols they needed to draw for a seal, they couldn't actually create it unless they knew how much chakra to inject into the ink while drawing them.

That was the crux of the problem: while the symbols themselves were still important -even a single wrong brush or a line an inch too long could result in unwanted explosions!- and needed to be drawn with the greatest care, everything was useless if the amount of chakra injected into it was wrong. Just a bit too much or a bit too little could easily lead to the practitioner's death.

And unfortunately, such information was impossible to put down in writing, making it all but impossible to learn Fūinjutsu from scrolls alone and requiring an actual teacher to pass the knowledge down.

It was this reason that made the downfall of Uzushiogakure so terrible. No matter how much knowledge was rescued from its ruins, without its inhabitants, most of its teachings were lost.

What Anko wanted to say with all of that was that finding something that could destroy Orochimaru's cursed seal without killing her was a goal many would consider impossible. In truth, even she herself had often thought that maybe she should just give up on it and try to live with it. Not that she would ever admit that out loud, mind you, but the doubt plagued her mind on a daily basis, and it was always particularly bad after a failed experiment.

She couldn't give up, however. Not as long as that seal made it impossible for her to use Sage Mode.

Just the memory of the one time she used it after having recovered from her injuries as much as she ever would made her shudder. The pain had been unbearable and fighting in such a state was completely out of question.

It was bad enough that her left arm was in the state it was, being almost but not quite as strong and deft as she wanted it to. Losing her trump card as well was out of the question.

"Anko! What do you think you're doing?!"

She flinched before turning around with a tight smile and a nervous chuckle while she raised her hand to scratch the back of her head. "Shizune," she said, unhappily noting that her voice was an octave too high. "What are you doing here? I thought you-"

The other woman shot her an unimpressed look and crossed her arms as she interrupted her. "Well, I thought we had planned to do this experiment together in" -she looked at the clock on the wall- "about ten minutes. What were you thinking doing it on your own? What if something went wrong and you got injured while nobody was here?"

Anko could deal with anger, that was easy. Disappointment and worry, on the other hand, was much more difficult. "I'm sorry," she said while casting her gaze down, genuinely feeling bad. Tsunade and Shizune had generously allowed her to use the faculties beneath the hospital for her experiments and the latter even spent much of her free time down here with her to help, so making her worry was the last thing Anko wanted. "I guess I didn't think about it?"

"Exactly," Shizune said. "You didn't think." Her voice then thankfully grew a bit softer. "I don't want to come down here one day and find your corpse, you know?"

"I know…"

"So you won't do any more experiments on your own?"

"I won't."

"Good."

Anko blinked. There's no way that's it, right?

However, apparently it actually was.

"Well then," Shizune continued, suddenly sounding much more upbeat, making for an odd contrast with her previous bad mood. "If we aren't doing any experiments today, let's get something to eat!"

"Wha-"

Anko had no time to react before Shizune grabbed her arm and began pulling her out of the room, not giving her a choice on that matter.

"I overheard Kurenai mention that she wanted to go for lunch just a few minutes before I came here, so let's go join her, shall we?"

Although she was half-heartedly complaining, Anko didn't put up much of a fight. She knew what Shizune was doing, after all, and after having made her worry, going along with her plan was the least Anko could do.

Her friend knew her long enough by now to understand how disappointed she was by each failed experiment, and she had long since got into the habit of trying to distract her in the aftermath of each and every single one of them. Sometimes, she even succeeded.

Anko wasn't really hungry, but she hadn't eaten since breakfast either, so it was probably better to get some substance anyway.

Just no flesh, she thought sardonically. I had enough of that for a while, I think.

Kiba had been a bit uncertain about what to think when it turned out that his sensei would be Itachi Uchiha, but at first, he had been optimistic. After all, he would surely learn a lot from such a renowned shinobi, right? He had heard not only the usual tales everyone in the village knew but some stuff from his sister whose friend was an Uchiha herself as well, so he was pretty sure he had a good idea of how impressive the man was. How could he not become a great shinobi under his tutelage?

Sure, he briefly changed his mind when he told them about the final test they would need to pass -how could they win a fight against him dammit?!- and how he could send them back to the Academy if they didn't meet his expectations, but in the end, his first impression seemed to have been the correct one.

Kiba hadn't quite understood the specifics of the test until after their sensei asked Shino to explain it to him and Hinata, but afterwards, he was sold. As if it wasn't already impressive enough that he had caught all three of them in a Genjutsu from the very beginning, devising such a well thought out plan was simply genius. Seriously, how awesome was that?!

Needless to say, he had looked forward to their first training session. They would probably not be taught any super cool techniques quite yet and if what some of the older kids of his clan said was right focus instead of teamwork for a while, but that was alright with him. They would just need to breeze through that and prove that they were ready for more. If he were to take a guess, he would give their sensei a week before he realized that they had teamwork in the bag already.

Kiba had been so excited for this training session that he actually forgot about all his worries for a bit; whether it was how childish his dream sounded to him now or how guilty he felt over almost throwing Hinata under the cart, it just didn't matter at that moment.

Unfortunately, he was quickly given a reality check.

Training started normally enough. Some warming up and some stretching while their sensei asked them questions about what kind of experiences they had and what they thought their strengths and weaknesses were, that's all. Nothing special. Sure, he was a bit miffed to admitting to his weakness against Genjutsu and his tendency to rush into things without thinking them through in front of the other two, but it was fine. After his shit poor show yesterday, this was the least he could do. And besides, Shino seemed much, much more annoyed about admitting his troubles with Taijutsu, so Kiba really couldn't complain.

It was afterwards that things started to go south, though.

"We're supposed to do what now?"

Alright, so what if he blurted that out without thinking about it when he had promised himself earlier to not do such a thing? That order was stupid! And while Shino looked as impassive as ever, even Hinata seemed to think so, although he was sure she wouldn't say it out loud like he had done.

"You will learn to fight even if one of your senses is impaired," Itachi-sensei patiently repeated himself, his expression not wavering one bit. "That means without your sense of smell or Akamaru's help for you in particular while Hinata will have her eyes bound during this part of today's training." He then turned towards Shino. "You will obviously not use your insects either. I will notice if you do, so I recommend not even trying to. Furthermore, you will plug your ears as well."

Much to Kiba's chagrin, Shino merely nodded as if that was no big deal. And Hinata, too, nodded after a moment of hesitation without complaining one bit. The only one who seemed to be as bothered by this as he was Akamaru, but even his companion stayed silent. Kiba knew Akamaru had already accepted Itachi-sensei as the leader and wouldn't dare go against him, but c'mon! Even he left him alone? Really?

He wanted to fight some more, wanted to scream how stupid this was, but he painfully kept his mouth shut. He had promised himself to get a grasp on himself, after all. Furthermore, while Itachi-sensei's face showed a pleasant smile, his instincts told him that it would be wise to stand down now. It was frustrating that he couldn't tell what he was thinking as he usually had a good idea about such things depending on how people were smelling- people would honestly be surprised if they knew how much one could learn from their smell alone. It was a bit harder when he couldn't see someone's face like in cases like Shino as he used facial clues to better understand what his nose was telling him, but he had at least an idea even then.

His sensei, on the other hand, was a blank slate. A void in the air entirely devoid of smell. It was maddening as it was intriguing, and Kiba had no idea how he was doing it.

In all honesty, it was probably this fact that made him respect the man the most.

"Alright," he finally said once he was sure he was in full control of his tongue, trying not to feel too proud of himself when he saw the approving glint in his sensei's eyes. "And why exactly are we doing that? I mean, my nose, Hinata's eyes, and Shino's insects are our strongest assets, right? Shouldn't we train them even more rather than training them less?"

"Very good question." He turned towards the other two. "Does either of you want to answer?"

Hinata was the first one to reply. "It's possible that we get hurt in a fight and lose one or more of our senses because of an injury, right?" She hesitated for a second. "Our opponent would expect to gain an advantage because of that, I think, so if we know how to fight without whatever sense got impaired, we might be able to catch them off-guard."

While her outwardly behaviour was only the slightest bit hesitant, Kiba could smell the anxiety that radiated from her. It wasn't terribly much, but still a lot more than what he thought would be appropriate. It was confusing, though, as he didn't think she had anything to worry about. Either she got it wrong and Sensei corrected her or she got it right -as she did- and that was it, right?

It also made him wonder how this was the same person that had spoken so passionately about changing the Hyūga- a clan whose members generally had a stick up their ass and were averse to change.

"Well done," Itachi-sensei said, and Hinata positively glowed at the warm praise as her anxiety was replaced by delight. "That's mostly it, yes. There is one more detail, though. Does anyone know what it is?"

There were a few moments of silence as the three of them thought about it before Shino finally spoke up. "It's to cover our weaknesses, is it not? As Kiba already said, the aforementioned senses are our greatest assets, so we depend on them. If they were taken from us unprepared, we would undoubtedly lose, so learning to fight without them is essential in being prepared for that eventuality."

Their sensei nodded, clearly satisfied with that answer. "That is correct. Everyone depends on their senses, of course, but we four share the peculiarity of being part of clans that bestowed upon us abilities that only reinforces that habit. More than any regular shinobi, we depend on those skills unique to our families, making us even more vulnerable to losing them than any of them ever would be."

"Even you, Sensei?"

Kiba was thankful that Hinata asked the question before he did, not wanting to stand out as the one who couldn't keep his mouth shut again, but he didn't seem to mind the interruption.

"Of course," he said. "I said 'we four', didn't I? Just as any Uchiha, I'm proud to bear my clan's Kekkei Genkai, and I couldn't imagine a life without it. However, I also always made sure to train without it -or even without my vision at all, sometimes- in case the unlikely happens and I lose my eyes. It doesn't hurt to be prepared for every eventuality, after all."

The three of them looked at each other. If he couldn't tell that they were thinking the same thing he did, Kiba would have been embarrassed by never thinking of it that way. Heck, it was so obvious now that it was spelt out in front of him!

"Alright, listen up," Itachi-sensei said, probably realizing that they were inwardly beating themselves up and wanting to distract him. "What I'm going to tell you now will be essential for not only your training but your career as a whole, so make sure you pay attention."

Kiba shared one last look with his teammates before swallowing hard and focusing all his attention on his sensei.

"Every technique has strengths and weaknesses, and so have the people performing them. Nobody is perfect. Nobody is unbeatable. You need to be able to see through them, analyse their attacks, find their flaws, and you need to do so before they can do the same with you. That is how you win a fight against someone as strong or sometimes even stronger than you. However, how can you do that if you don't even know your own weaknesses and strengths? How can you find weak spots in other people's attacks if you can't do the same with your own? How can you prepare for your own vulnerabilities if you're not even aware of them?

As a shinobi or kunoichi, you will inevitably end up facing f many opponents. If you can't size them up quickly and efficiently, can't correctly gauge their abilities, you will die. Be aware of them and yourself both, weigh your skills against theirs, decide which one of you is stronger, and make your decision based on the conclusion you arrive at.

If you come out on top, that's good. Don't underestimate them, play to your strengths and their weaknesses, and you will win.

If you're weaker, however, you will need to make a decision: Do you think you can overcome your opponent even though he's in an advantageous position? Is that fight worth risking your life to begin with or is the mission too important to give up on? Are you actually and truly prepared to die?

The first step to doing any of that is to learn about yourselves and to make up for your shortcomings as much as you can, for if you do that, your opponents won't be able to exploit them."

His mouth was dry and his eyes were wide. That was much more than anything he had expected. How did they get from 'fighting without one of your senses' to 'measure your skills against those of others to survive'?!

Shino and Hinata seemed just as flabbergasted as he was, but he couldn't even enjoy that fact as he was too preoccupied gaping at their sensei.

He, in turn, seemed to realize that he had caught them by surprise, so when he continued, he did so much gentler and without the serious air around him.

"You're still only Genin, of course, so no one expects you to do any of that quite yet," he said. "It's my job to teach you these skills, and I promise that I will do so. You were assigned to me to learn such things, after all. And although it is impossible in this world we live in to say anything with absolute certainty, I assure you that I will do everything in my power to ensure that you are never put in a position where you are forced to make the decision I spoke of as long as I am still breathing."

And somehow, that was actually reassuring.

Their sensei was one of the strongest shinobi alive, so if he said he would protect them with his life, well, what could possibly happen to them? And if he said he would teach them how to survive on their own, there was no doubt that he would actually do it.

They had really gotten lucky with their sensei.

Sure, what he said had been rather scary. Kiba could admit that, even if only in the privacy of his mind. However, even more than that, he was… excited.

This was what he would need to become stronger and he couldn't wait to master it.

"Alright!" he exclaimed while throwing his fist in the air and ignoring his teammates' startled looks. "Let's start with the training, Sensei! We're already all fired up! Isn't that right, Akamaru?"

His companion's excited bark was all the answer he needed.

Kiba promised himself that he would make up for his poor show during the test. He would soak up everything Itachi-sensei taught them, become stronger, and make everyone forget about his previous shortcomings. So what if he had no impressive dream like they did? He would show them that his resolve was just as great as theirs!

He would prove that he had learned from his poor demonstration during the test and that he deserved to be here just as much as they did.

Just you wait, he thought with a fierce, excited grin. I will show you all!