[Age 8]

The second year has both been a delight and a fucking challenge. Apparently I was getting a bit too egoistical.. when sensei posted the request for me to be allowed to learn advanced taijutsu, I expected to give me the slot of another teacher for a month or two instead Sensei(our homeroom teacher) was made in charge of me. At first I was offended that I was being offered to be trained by him as according to me he was at most an average chunnin cause I don't see anyone higher than that be that patient with kids. I didn't let my inner feelings show but I know Sensei must have gained an estimation of my mindset because he absolutely thrashed me in the upcoming 'duel'. While he didn't break any bones, he definitely broke my growing overconfidence. Getting defeated by an average chunnin in Taijutsu without landing even a proper hit was embarrassing and eye opening. I can't let overconfidence get to my head or the next time I will be killed instead of just being beaten down..

The rest of the year was spent getting the basics of actual fights drilled in me. I have gone from not being able to even hit Sensei seriously to making Sensei actually work for a win.. I had been visibly improving over the year.. Sensei was dumbfounded by my progress. While I know that it isn't normal for an academy kid to be able to stand up against a Chunnin in Taijutsu, it isn't that unbelievable... Whatever.. Maybe it's my outside context view and the Naruto fanfics that corrupted me? Otherwise I don't see why towards the end of the year Sensei started seeing me as if he was a monster...

Anyways, so Taijutsu fot normal Shinobi or S-class shinobi even isn't a set style. This confused me a lot in the beginning as Uchiha have their interceptor fist, Hyuga have their juken, Might Dai has strong fist and even Inuzuka have a specific style... Sensei actually explained it easily... Each of them have a specific advantage geared towards their style.. Uchiha have their Sharingan, Hyuga their Byakugan, Might Dai and Gai had their insane training and Eight Gates to go with them while the Inuzuka have their ninken..

Normally Shinobi don't have a specific style as using a specific combat style is mostly counterproductive if you don't have the necessary edge to go with it. Uchiha Madara thrashed the Shinobi alliance cause he was a badass and cause he was fucking Unpredictable. Nobody expects a Uchiha to use Taijutsu like the fucker did. S-class shinobi follow their own method of combat and almost NEVER have a specific Taijutsu style.. Getting beaten the shit out of myself wasn't a fun way to learn how to dodge and counter most moves but it was surely a VERY effective way..

The other thing that we were taught this year was Hand sign system. Now I may have read the academy books but I hadn't ever tried using the Hand seals before the academy taught them. It's because they CAN'T be munchkined by having meta knowledge. Most Shinobi households teach their children Catscradle cause it's the most effective method to accustom your hands to move that fluidly.. I of course tried too hard in the game when I learned it was for this purpose and promptly fucked up my hand coordination.. It was the first thing in my life in which I was painfully average... Sensei almost seemed relieved that it was the case. I of course was fucking offended and tried to do shonen power up during that day's Taijutsu lesson... Spoilers: I got thrashed cause I was distracted and pissed..

Sensei asked me the reason for my anger that day and I told him that it was the first thing in my life I wasn't great at.. He looked at me stunned for a second looking as if he wanted to smack me but then probably remembered that I was a child... I was sad because I was behind Shikaku, Inoichi AND Hiashi in hand seal making... It was awkward not being the best... Sensei helped me with the seals personally. I don't whether it was because he pitied me seeing as he was clan less ninja himself or we had enough of a bond due to him specially teaching me Taijutsu for more than 4 months at that point. I am still not the best at hand seals but I finally regained my position of the best in my batch if not the academy...

Hand seals are required not because they are training wheels but because it is fucking difficult to do Jutsu without using them.. They are NOT training wheels whatever some smartasses like to say... If you can use a B-rank or above justu without hand seals then either you are a genius who will get into the SS rank category or you have a specific bloodlimit related to that jutsu or that justu was made with the intention of using no or very less hand seals...

Hand seals make you press pressure points(tenketsu) to release chakra in different ways... The pressure applied at your tenketsu makes them release neutral chakra which with your advancement in either nature training lets you mold the chakra either incredibly fast and thus not requiring many hand seals or if you have incredibly chakra control to skip some of the seals. See, seals have three functions, first they bring neural chakra in a Technique.

The first seal of a technique is often a indicator of which nature release is performed by them as the neutral chakra released by pressing specific pressure points is easier to mould. The point from which chakra is released matters because of the Imprinting chakra theory...

Nature release is a thing incredibly difficult in this age with so much research done on it and so many techniques available for elemental jutsus; how much difficult it would have been in the early days? Now the theory doesn't attribute every fucking thing ninjas do by saying that it was imprinted over the ages. There are reasons to things but there is no other viable explanation for why hand seals work. Yes you can make new Jutsu by altering the combination of seals but you have to have extensive knowledge of them. My only problems with hand seals was my hand coordination... Otherwise using the seals is like using a coding language... You have to enter a specific sequence for the chakra to move that way... Of course you can't just randomly do that as several combinations of seals would just kill you. Why do I know this?

Cause many brave and some dumb fuckers have tried using random combinations. How do you think this incredible variety of stupid Jutsu come forward in the Elemental Nations (remembers Naruto fillers).

After so many centuries of development, people mostly know the most possible combinations of seals.. The reason why there are so many seals required for big ass jutsus is easy... It's like CODE! The more specific you get, the better the result. Some seals in the middle can be skipped as they are essentially telling your chakra however much it is required which can be solved with good chakra control and which type of nature chakra and in what density it has to used which can be skipped with being good at nature transformation...

Fucking Shadow clones... Haven't even completed the last stages of rasengan... Can't get started on Nature release...Naruto had hax, hax I tell you...

Ahem* Anyways, the hand seals are like code.. it is a difficult concept to get in mind of a shinobi as Shinobi learn mostly from experience and there is no equivalent to coding here..well except sealing but then again why does the fuck would one go into that rabbit hole to just get better at hand seals... This means that I had my first opportunity to munchkin and I properly abused the shit out of it... Learning all the possible 2-12 *basic* hand seal combinations was not fun but after learning it, I drafted them as code and made the combinations easier to learn. I deciphered quite a bit about how my chakra flows with that shit... If only I had a debug console... I need a seal master as a teacher fast... A debug console can only be made using seals seeing that the technological advancement here has been tampered with by shinobi but more on that later...

So while I munchkined the hell out of the hand seal system and learned taiijustu by getting beat up; me, Shikaku, me and Choza got up to some shenanigans

Flashback no Jutsu*

"So...why am I involved in this stupidity?" Shikaku asks with a frown on his face.

"Because you are our group's strategic commander" I reply with a straight face.

"No.. what I wanted to ask why are we even executing this...stupid plan?" Shikaku asks this time with a confused face...

"Because I want stress relief after getting beat down by sensei and because Choza finds the idea of punishing these evil doers funny?" I reply with a straight face... I can tell from the constipated expression on Shikaku's face that he wants to be anywhere but here.

"Fuck it! Someone has to prevent you two from doing stupid shit. I am in.."

"Shikaku that's very heartwarming and all but did you just swear?" I ask, gazing straight at Shikaku with my deep blue eyes... Shikaku starts sweating a bit but meets my gaze resolutely and says," Oh don't try to intimidate me, I am seen you swear lots of time as well"

Huh, since when the fuck did I swear in front of him?

"You are doing it just now.. Your brain-to-mouth filter as you call it is non existent when you are surprised" Oh shit..

"*Ahem* So anyways.. the plan is to take the overpriced food by paying the market price..."

"You mean the plan is to *steal* food from the shops that have highly overpriced food and pay them discreetly?" Shikaku, we have to say it in a *civilized* manner.

"Yeah, same difference ya know." Choza had enquired about what I do in my free time other than training.. I told that I enjoy pranking and here we are... Choza will arrive in a minute or two.. You know the shops with overpriced food sell way above the market rate and still dominate the market.. Why? Because they have imported food. The vegetables and such are imported from within the Fire Nation but they are still better than the crops grown in Konoha and our surroundings... You see.. the import of food is done by shinobi and shinobi get an actual discount on the market price of the food along with their payment so they are happy but the Shopkeepers make up for the *small" loss with selling everything overpriced to the civilians. Ninjas and civilians are as different as Politicians and Civilians.. Both try to stay clear of each other. Therefore no shinobi has objected on the clearly overpriced goods. This doesn't even damage the economy much so yeah they are ignored..

My problem isn't really with the shopkeepers. They have human greed and it's not much of a sin Anyways.. My problem is with the shopkeepers selling fucking overpriced food to orphanages.. While this doesn't dent the fund of orphanages much, the fact they are doing so marks the act evil. I am not some hero shit trying to bring justice on anyone but the point is that I am frustrated and irritated and I have perfectly ready victims to release my frustrations on...

Oh...Choza has come..

"I am here guys! We will punish the bad guys who makes the food pricey! Food shouldn't be pricey! They are bad people" Never change.. Choza never change...

Flashback no jutsu end*

That evening there was a huge commotion in the market. All the food was delivered to Akamichi resturants who decided to organise a charity party for the orphanages of Konoha. I wonder why...hehe.. Uncle Choso was surprisingly cool with the idea. At first Shikaku and me were utterly scared when Choza informed us that he told Uncle Choso what we were going to do... No offence to Choza but he can be a little...dumb..

While Uncle Choso did scold us, it was for not involving an adult in the matter so that they could have vouched for us if we were caught. It once again shows that how much ninja mentality differs from civilian mentality. A civilian parent would have been offended by us while Uncle Choso congratulated us and decided to pay us all the money we spent on the food while organising that charity feast...

Akimichi are truly great.. Anyways, this year was spent improving my taiijustu, developing code for fucking hand seals and improving my reserves and chakra control. My reserves are now on par with that of a special jonin. The journey gets actually tough from here.. Kakashi at best possessed the reserves of someone from the upper end of A-class and I really don't want that shitty chakra exhaustion thing to happen to me especially after the effort I am putting in... My goal is to reach the upper end of a Jonin's reserve by 3 years at minimum..

[Special Jonin Harimusa- Academy Instructor]

That Namikaze kid is a fucking monster.. I am from the generation of the Third's students... I have seen geniuses like Orochimaru, brute force impact experts like Tsunade, Kenjustu genius like Hatake but the kid is in a different league of his own. Kid almost gave me a heart attack on his first day... I have never seen a Kid NOT pass out from having their chakra unlocked. When I researched into the matter, I came to know that this would only have been possible if the kid had fucking MASSIVE reserves for his age or incredible control and willpower... The last example of this was the Third.. and Even he only sustained consciousness for a minute or two before passing out. Still, that could have been a fluke. Flukes happen all the time.

Then the kid proceeded to consistently defeat any and every kid in his batch in every subject without breaking a sweat. I was estatic. I thought that I would be teaching a genius on maybe Orochimaru's level. A kid who has the potential to reach S-class if properly nurtured then the fucker gave me a genuine heart attack when he did an advanced chakra control exercise difficult to perform for even fucking chunnins and when I asked him where he learned all that, the kid told me that he learnt all that from the books.. from the bloody fucking books... I didn't believe that shit for even an Instant. I followed him to his home for 5 days and saw that brat really didn't have anyone to teach him. He had also invented a new chakra control exercise by trying revolving his chakra in multiple directions... AT ONCE inside a water balloon. The kid practiced 7 hours of taiijustu and 4-5 hours of chakra control. He slept for 5 hours only. I haven't seen some Special Jonin's practice that much...

The kid had a fucking fire of determination inside him but I thought that he would burn out..It was good to learn that you can burn out and rest during your childhood instead on the field... The Brat proved me wrong...again... He consistently put that shit up without burning out... without seeking help..or anything that suggested that he was under extreme pressure. I checked his background again and again... The only reason I could come up for his behaviour was the fact that his parents were murdered by Iwa ninja.. But kids aren't supposed to have that much determination inside of them. If his parents were murdered when he was at least 8, I could understand his drive but 6 year olds aren't supposed to be that vengeful or that determined.

For a time, I was sure that he was possessed and would have reported to my seniors as such(Possesions are quite possible. To be promoted to Special Jonin.. you have to had seen some weird shit) but then I heard of his daily matches with the Nara heir and went to watch one of them... It's like everything clicked from that day... Kid possessed a Nara's unnatural intelligence.. I don't how but he does... Other than that there was no way he would have been happy playing with a kid and be THAT good... May have been a recessive gene passed through generations... His father was incredibly intelligent too...Shame that he died to the Iwa fuckers... That much natural intelligence would definitely have let him process the fact that his parents died by Iwa shitters. That was a very possible reason for his almost adult like behaviour.

The match between him,the Uchiha heir and the Hyuga Heir was a treat to watch. There is something satisfying about watching an underdog win against two top dogs... The Hyuga heir and Namikaze had never fought as we teachers didn't want to deal with clan bullshit but Namikaze was apparently triggered by The Hyuga heir and The Uchiha heir making fun of his parents.. I thought that the brat would put up a good fight but eventually lose.. I didn't expect the brat to win a 2 v 1 when the heirs of both clans attacked him at once after losing to him individually... He beat the shit out of them... The Hyugas while angry blamed their own heir for that defeat and started to train him harder which he was responding positively to due to experiencing such a humiliating defeat. Uchiha clan(at least the high chunnins and below) on the other hand wanted to make Namikaze leave the Academy. Oh they blamed their heir too but their ego wouldn't let them realise that some clan less ninja beat up their heir. It was only after the order came from the fucking Council themselves that they shut up.. Apparently, our resident Nara Ettquette teacher leaked this news to his superior who is also the current Clan head of Nara clan and the father of the Nara heir...

I saw the reports of him pranking people and finally let felt my irrational fear die as possessed people can't possibly have that much fun pelting people...

During the end of the first year, the brat realised that he was way above the level of the academy and requested to be taught better taiijustu... I forwarded the request to my superiors and expected it to be rejected... To my surprise the request was personally cleared by Jonin Jiraiya as he was interested in the kid's potential.. So forgive me for resenting the brat a little... When you are newly formed Shinobi you expect yourself to be some special snowflake but by the time most get to the High Chunnin rank, they are fed up with life and are depressed as hell... I was the same... I was only promoted to Special Jonin because my taiijustu was nearly lower end Jonin level and I was ready to enter a lifelong service at the Academy to be an instructor...

So seeing an Academy brat get special attention from the Council and Jonins when I couldn't get it in my lifetime made me a little mad... As I am a Special Jonin at the Academy, I was requested to be the brat's taiijustu instructor...

I being an angry shit at that time beat the brat up(without any bone or deep seated damage..I was a angry shit not a stupid shit). I expected the brat to cry, be angry or even just give up. I didn't expect him to just shrug the beating off and come to me again the next day. I was pissed off by that attitude so I continued beating him up for the next month. I expected the brat to give up by the 10th day but by the end of the month, he started visible improving. I was just done with this shit by that point. If the brat didn't complain then who was I to refuse? The brat started moving just a little fast, reacting just a little better, by the end of the 4th month, the Namikaze brat moved at a high end genin's speed. It was insane progress for an academy student. The little shit then asked me for help in hand seals cause he was 'bad' at them... He wasn't even trying to taunt me. For him, being a little worse at hand seals than clan heirs who were practicing them for years was actually disappointing. For a moment, I was just looking at a Monster and then he told he felt that he wasn't good enough at hand seals and that he felt terrible because of that... And I remembered that he was just a kid... A kid with a monstrous potential... A prodigy but still a child...

Kami sama I was being a shitty bastard. I was taking out my insecurities on a child who didn't even call me out on it. It was because of that guilt that I helped him with the hand seals even if I shouldn't have been training him in them out of Academy hours... And then the brat rocked my world view again by improving so fucking much at doing hand seals in just a few months... I had reported it all to my the higher ups and apparently they were estatic and more than a little wary. They suspected some sketchy shit as Tobirama sama being a genius had warned that people could possess younger children due to them having underdeveloped chakra coils and some complex reasons. The second hokage was a genius wasn't he? And who the fuck even experiments on young children? That's so sick. We are ninjas. We do fucked up shit but it was fucked up even for us...

I was appointed to investigate the brat for that kind of thing...this time officially... So I did that and found the brat following his regular schedule for a few days. He was already doing chakra control exercises some young Special Jonin did so that they would not cap at this rank... The only suspicious thing was the diary he kept writing in.. Even though I knew that the brat was not possessed or anything of the sort, I still checked his diary.. Kami sama I am an insecure paranoid bastard aren't I?

Anyways, I checked his diary and discovered that he was trying to make learning and using hand seals easier. I didn't quite understand what he had done but I knew it was valuable so I sent a copy of the diary to the higher ups.. Unknown to me that diary was the reason of a massive uproar in the shinobi council and was the reason for cementing the apprenticeship of Namikaze 'The Butcher' Minato to Jiraiya of the Sannin.

By the end of the second year, the brat was able to make even me work out for a win. He was about High Chunnin level in Taijutsu. I had realised the fact that I didn't want to realise by now... I was going to go down in history as that weak teacher of a Legend. I was seeing the birth of a Legend and it hurt that it wasn't me... I had long since let my insecurities rule me... I was going to be a better teacher and a person from right now... I just hope that the kid doesn't remember me as that one asshole who used to beat him up when he becomes a Jonin... That would complicate my retirement...

A/n: This isn't the only chapter for this year... Next one will feature the Council's reaction to the previous two years and the one after that elaborates on Fugaku's situation... While I won't make him an easily hateable character... He will get his fair share of actual bad character traits cuz Canon!Fugaku was a complete shit and this is a teen!Fugaku so he would obviously be a bigger shit...

The speed of chapters is slowing down cause I have to see to the fact that Minato doesn't become a Academy kid who could solo a Jonin while still being a fucking monster in other people's eyes... His growth will slow down in the next two years because Kushina will be getting introduced 3-4 chapters afterwards i.e during the next year. Canon!Kushina joined the Academy at 9 years of age.. Minato will be 8 and a half by the time Kushina joins in so the age difference will be minimal...

I know I didn't really do a good job at explaining the hand seals system but I actually wanted to give Minato a edge instead of just his insane training regimen and because there are so many actually good explanations for hand seals that I couldn't really come with a good one myself. Sorry... Other theory parts won't be that shitty...

Next chapter will also show the things going on in the outside world through the perspective of Konoha's Council...

I made the teacher an insecure pleb cause I don't think a teacher of a fucking genius like Minato won't be insecure.. We also see that Minato has his world view very skewed because of this year(he thinks that his sensei is a chunin level guy when he's actually a Special Jonin).. It will be further skewed when he is trained by Jiraiya.. Oh.. the other people in war are so gonna be screwed...

Anyways, if you spot a typo or a plot hole,do ping me. I will remedy it as fast as possible... This is the link of my discord server.. their is no one there but you can be the first one there(which is not very lucrative when you realise that I am still a noob): https/discord.gg/72vandfbmG

Goodbye and stay tuned for the next chapter