Chapter 1-21

I kept my face carefully blank as I pointedly gazed over the shoulders of the two genin walking a few paces in front of me.

I wasn't quite pissed, but there was a healthy dose of annoyance lingering under the surface threatening to boil over in me and I was sure people around me could sense it.

…Which annoyed me.

It was unfair towards them, and I knew it, which somehow also added to my annoyance because quite frankly those two weren't even unpleasant. They were young, ordinary, and perfectly okay.

The crux of the matter was, that I was beginning to feel like I was stuck in this lazy laid-back rut, and to make things worse I was subconsciously starting to get used to this positively fantastic life I was enjoying, and others could only dream of.

When I wasn't basking under the sole attention of one of Konoha's finest kunoichi, I was filling in in various teams for frighteningly easy missions, that earned me enough to make a living.

I was making decent progress with my wind-release and enjoyed my free time spent with Hana and on the occasional training session with Kiba and Naruto. Even some quality tea time with Hifumi for good measure was firmly reserved.

Deep down, however, I was getting anxious, I had a terrible feeling, that I was stagnating and fine with it.

What I needed was some proper trepidation, some uncertainty to kick my ass back into gear, amazement at anything shinobi apparently wasn't going to cut it anymore. These genin mission, that felt like a relaxing walk in the park were in reality sweet poison for the drive, that got me so far in the first place.

Maybe I was overly dramatic, but I felt like I owed it to myself and the effort already spent, that I kept going and didn't plateau at only ten years of age.

Shoving my hands in pockets I finally gave up and let the corners of my mouth sink into an unmistakable frown.

It would be so much easier if I was just a regular talented kid, but more and more I felt restrictions boxing me in, social norms pressing down on me, the constant strain of behaving according to my age while time seemed to only pass at a snail's pace.

It was becoming especially excruciating whenever Hana would decide that my personal space just wasn't enough, and she felt the need to step into my intimate space and beyond.

I could put a stop to all this, reject her, but I didn't want to. It was still harmless, right? Right?!

Right!

This was another headache I could already feel lurking behind the next corner. Hana was very attractive, no point in denying it and that led to thoughts, bad thoughts, confusing thoughts.

10 to 14, hell no!

12 to 16, hmmm, tempting, but still no.

14 to 18, weird but fine.

16 to 20, less weird and also fine.

18 to 22, perfectly acceptable, but fucking 8 years away. Alternatively, I could straight up join some fucking monastery on some mountain top in the arse end of nowhere. At the moment I probably wouldn't feel the difference.

And that's all without factoring in death or simply growing apart in who knew how many years. I wasn't going to be an overbearing brat by giving her relationship advice or by telling her to look for someone her age because frankly, I didn't want to. Fuck that.

*cough*

Coughing?

Suddenly, my awareness snapped back into place and my eyes snapped to Kurenai, who apparently had fallen back and into step with me. A raised eyebrow met my slightly startled and embarrassed gaze.

"We should be home very soon." She said quietly, it seemed this was only for my ears. "How about we go to a nice place to eat and talk? It's been three months now and I feel we should do a review of our progress and maybe even talk about plans for the future."

"Sounds good to me." I answered good-naturedly but inwardly pursed my lips. I sincerely hoped my mood wasn't becoming an issue.

The seafood restaurant hadn't been a surprise. By now it was, I believe, the eighth time my sensei had decided on this particular establishment. Apparently, Kurenai somehow got word whenever they received a delivery of life octopus, because that meant takowasa, the raw octopus with wasabi, was on the menu and she always jumped at the chance to dive into what I now knew was her favorite dish.

Fine by me.

They had some really nice grilled dishes I liked, today I went with unagidon, grilled eel on rice.

As usual, we ate in a pleasant and companionable silence, which seemed to suit both of us just fine.

Seeing her down her cup of sake meant, that now the talking part would commence.

"Three months," She began in a difficult-to-read tone. "You know and understand all the basics of Gen-jutsu. And that is basically all I can teach you, everything else is creativity, drive, and experience." She finished and I now detected the barest hint of wistfulness. I didn't, however, fool myself into thinking, that I was that good at reading her, she simply meant for me to notice it.

I reckoned; in a roundabout way, this might be considered training for me. She started almost unreadable, and then barely revealed a hint of something. She wanted me to instinctively pick up on and focus on her mood, by putting on the slightest emphasis on it simply by barely revealing it, knowing that I would subconsciously react to it accordingly.

Just by knowing me and using that tone, she managed to plant the seeds of thoughts, feelings, and ideas in my mind, which a skilled Gen-jutsu user could exploit to devastating effect if you remained unaware.

In battle, this could be a faked injury, which would make the adversary potentially more confident. Suddenly the faked injury would become almost crippling to his eyes and he would become certain of victory…and less careful.

Mentally shaking myself free from that train of thought I refocused on my counterpart.

"Some friction is noticeable when dealing with certain team members," She let the sentence hang for a heartbeat.

'Haha, yeah, friction.' I kept my expression unchanged, I wasn't going to confess to anything when I didn't see any charges.

"Nothing that would endanger mission success, however. Mission conduct regarding clients and procedures is flawless." She finished eventually and ordered another cup of sake.

The formal posture left her a bit and her cheek settled on her hand.

"Shikaku Nara, the Jonin-commander, and the one who arranged our apprenticeship wanted you to experience a normal shinobi lifestyle, the opposite of your Root experiences. This meant avoiding 'excessive combat', because he felt, and I quote, that it would blunt you even further." She explained casually and I listened intently.

"Given what you told me about Root and what I noticed, however, I feel we went too far in the opposite direction. If we follow the blunt allegory, then this unchallenging environment is like a coat of rust slowly but surely spreading on a blade, leaving it coarse and rough." She thanked the waitress for her refilled sake and eyed me, looking for a reaction.

"Okay, yeah, I guess that's one way to put it." I somewhat agreed, barely surprised that she managed to pick out the root of my recent moods.

"I…," I wasn't satisfied with my answer and felt the need to elaborate. "It's just, when you think about it, the Third Hokage saw so many full-scale conflicts in his lifetime alone, and that's without all the stuff that had probably been brewing just beneath the surface, that thankfully hadn't escalated to that level. I mean, in my ten years it was the Ninetales, the Hyuuga incident with Kumo, Orochimaru defecting, and the Uchiha Massacre. Every single incident could have led to something really terrible." I took a sip of my own tea.

"You can't imagine how much I am enjoying learning from you, but I just hate being stuck as a genin doing these little missions. There's probably some pride also involved, but I need this pressure to keep going, to push myself." I finished making my case and had noticed the smile on her face midway.

"I'm glad you enjoy it." She said, the proud happy smile still firmly in place. "And I enjoy teaching you."

"There will always be a fresh genin squad for me to teach and I feel I can still teach you a lot outside of Genjutsu. That is why I have a proposition, one I will obviously have to run by the Jonin-commander, but I don't see a reason why he wouldn't agree after my report."

"What do you have in mind?" I asked, eager to hear about her plan, that would rip me out of my funk.

"It's simple really, I tell them my observations and that I fully support field-promoting you to chunin. We both have an acceptable level of experience in medical nin-jutsu and with you, as chunin we should be eligible to handle b-rank and the occasional a-rank missions on our own."

She said it seriously, implying that the Sunday stroll would definitely be over for me.

"I intend to have you promoted, either way, it's up to you if you want to go your own way in the forces or stick with me for the foreseeable future. Whatever you decide I want you to have this." She said and pulled out a scroll from her weapons pouch. I couldn't detect any markings hinting at rank or clearance, which left me clueless at first glance.

"This isn't a jutsu scroll, this is a transcript of our intel regarding the Second Tsuchkage's ability, which allowed him to become the 'Non-Person'." She gently pushed it over the table and motioned for me to open it, which I did.

The more I read, the more my eyes widened.

"Oh sh..," I quickly glanced over the scroll, glad to have caught myself. "Oh wow!"

"This is the culmination of our theories regarding its mechanics, a significant portion was added by the Third Hogake. As you can see it was agreed upon, that exceptional control and water-release were the base necessities, which made me think of you. I don't see a reason why you shouldn't try your hand at it." She finished warmly and made sure I detected her confidence in my abilities.

"I don't know what to say…, wait, I got it!" I sat bolt upright, a single shadow clone popped into existence directly behind me and immediately shunshin'd away, leaving Kurenai staring at me with eyebrows raised to her hairline.

"Of course, I want to stay with you." I made sure to say it out loud, preventing any and all misunderstandings right from the get-go. "As long as you will have me, even."

I felt my shadow clone walk into the restaurant again and became slightly nervous.

"I don't want you to get any wrong ideas, I fully trust your abilities, but I learned so much from you in such a short time, and now this." I held up the scroll. "But I don't want this to be so one-sided anymore." My clone put a second scroll in front of me and popped away.

"You can run this by the 'Green Beast'-guy if you want to, but these are all my trains of thought, mental leaps, and experiences, which allowed me to open the first two gates. It's a bit of a mess, but I want you to have it." I paused.

"I want you to have this edge in case of emergencies because you should be able to understand and use it." I finished and barely managed to keep the pleading out of my voice.

This might be the first time I saw my sensei truly speechless for a moment as she gingerly took the slightly worn scroll.

"Thank you, Daiki."

Then and there I decided that this wasn't just going to be empty words from me, I was going to be a lot more open with her and my abilities. If I thought something might tickle her fancy or suit her, I would show it to her and help her. My modified Kage Bushin, the Orochi-version, already coming to mind.

"Alright, boys," Hands clasped behind my back, I gave my best impression of a drill instructor. "Today we are going to step up our game."

I pinned my two young students, who stood at attention in front of me, with equally long stares.

"You understand and can do the water-walking exercise to a reasonable degree. Today we are working on making it as second nature as walking on the ground."

I held up my hand in a one-handed seal and two water clones quickly rose out of the pond behind the youngsters. Stepping on land they came to a stop next to each of my students, making them stare at the water constructs with barely disguised wariness.

"You will spar…on the pond." I revealed with a small smile and could see my two charges square their shoulders in anticipation. "As usual, you won't be able to beat them and they won't go all out on you, but they will pull their punches only so much, which means deflect or dodge. Understood?"

"Yeah."

"Yes."

"Great!" I clapped my hands twice. "Off you go!" And that was the signal for my clones to bodily toss the poor academy students into the middle of the pond and for Hana behind me to break her silence, lazily placing one arm over my shoulder and her head on my other.

"I love it when you go all authoritarian on them." She teasingly whispered into my ear, her humor plain to hear. Stuff like that was never going to be easy for me, so I focused on gathering my thoughts and ignored my body's reaction.

"You have been leafing through my books again, haven't you?" I eventually asked in return, smirk in my voice equally evident. Her sudden stillness told me all I needed to know, and I chuckled with true mirth.

We kept our eyes on the four figures sparring on the pond and I winced slightly internally when my clone landed at quick and direct punch with his knuckle directly on Naruto's upper arm. That had to sting.

"Motherf…" I couldn't help but smile when I heard him curse loudly and simultaneously retaliate with a spinning heel kick.

"I don't think I was that good at their age." Hana murmured into my ear; I gave a small shrug with the shoulder her arm was draped over.

"They just started earlier and have an absolutely incredible teacher." I told her with a straight face.

"I mean, just last week the Hokage-sama asked me about my thoughts regarding Orochimaru and where I think he went wrong with him." I smirked when I felt and heard Hana snort despite herself. She tried to play it down by groaning in despair at my attempt at humor, but I knew I got her.

"Plus, I'm fairly certain you had different interests in mind at the time than hitting things in increasingly spectacular fashion." I told her earnestly, having felt the need to give her confidence the tiniest nudge.

"This is getting boring, isn't it?" I asked no one in particular and decided to spice things up by forming a shadow clone. I just loved this technique.

Already knowing what to do he sped through a sequence of hand seals and held the last one.

"Constant vigilance!" I shouted with fake seriousness and watched as a glob of water the size of a basketball shot out of the mouth of my clone and hit Kiba squarely into the back of the head.

My control made sure, that it wouldn't hurt more than a lazily thrown water balloon, but it was enough to break his concentration and send him plunging beneath the surface. A laughing Naruto instantly received a face full of water, too.

Chuckling, Hana suddenly held a little box in front of me.

"I brought some dango, let's eat and watch." She tugged me towards the shadows of a nearby tree and we enjoyed the show.

Lying in bed, I eyed my hand in contemplation.

The Rasengan was so very tempting and within reach. So why was I hesitating, why wasn't I knee-deep in rubber balloons?

I simply couldn't shake the feeling, that it didn't belong to me. That I would be taking it without permission. I had this weird notion, that it belonged to Minato Namikaze and that particular line of student and teacher. Depending on fate, obviously, also to Naruto either as a student in this line or simply as his son.

Kakashi probably had the right idea with his Chidori. Take inspiration and do your own thing.

My wind chakra was coming along nicely I thought as my gaze drifted to the side of my hand, where a weak and barely visible blade of chakra shimmered.

Surely, I could make something reasonably fancy with wind the way Kakashi did with lightning.

Concentrating, I guided my chakra to my extended index finger, all the way up to the very tip. Encouraged by this sudden burst of inspiration I gave it a spin, then I made the spin a bit faster.

Using my other hand I carefully sat upright on my bed, my eyes fixated on my right index finger. Visualizing, picturing the next step in my mind, I extended the spinning chakra over my nail and over the friction ridges of my fingertip.

My eyes stared now unblinkingly at the almost cone-like shape covering my fingertip. I couldn't help it and made the spin even faster.

I swallowed slightly when my finger gave a very convincing impression of a drill bit, involuntarily my gaze drifted along my finger all the way down to my forearm.

"That…needs further testing."