Kenji and Fu made their way to the training ground to meet up with their sensei for their first day of training. Kenji smiled to himself as he realized it was also his first day officially as a genin of the leaf village. It almost made up for the previous day where he and his friends got his ass kicked by Anko Sensei.
He wondered just what kind of crazy training exercises they would be going through that would make them all stronger. He was taken out of his thoughts when they reach the clearing they were at yesterday. Kenji scanned the clearing and instantly spotted both Karin and Sarada waiting near a tree.
Kenji ran to meet his friends "You guys are here early" He remarked excitedly
Sarada sighed before commenting, "Sasuke had to wake up early to meet his sensei as well so I decided to leave at the same time"
"Same with Naruto, he seemed excited that he was going to be training under the same man who trained under the Fourth" Karin replied
"Meanwhile we get a crazy bitch for a sensei" Kenji muttered slightly under his breath
"At least she's really strong," Fu said trying to provide optimism for the group
"Since we're talking about yesterday, when did you get the Sharingan" Karin questioned curiously. She had been curious at how her teammate managed to obtain it
"I can't say for sure, but I think I got them when I thought Kenji got hurt by Mizuki," Sarada said sadly remembering her fight with Mizuki
"Sharingan?" Fu asked puzzled at what they were talking about
"The Sharingan is a kekkei genkai that's exclusive to the Uchiha clan. It provides two main abilities: The Eye of Insight which allows you to see chakra, copy Jutsu, increase perception, mimic actions and movements, and the Eye of Hypnotism which allows genjutsu from the eyes among a whole lot of other perks" Anko explained suddenly appearing behind her students.
Kenji shook off the immediate fright of his teacher appearing to comment "So pretty much, life on easy mode"
Sarada glared at Kenji but Anko continued to speak.
"Not quite, you've got to train the Sharingan to reach its full potential. She wasn't able to do a thing against me with it because she's still getting used to her eyes"
"And you're one to talk, what the hell was that chakra spike thing and why'd you wait until the end to use it!" Sarada shot back
Kenji shrugged off the hostility that Sarada was giving him noting that he did come off a bit rude.
"Honestly I don't know, it's never happened before"
"We'll get to that. Before we start training, I want to know everything about your techniques and what you can do starting with you Red" Anko said pointing to Karin
"Don't call me red" Karin stated irritated
"Or what?" Anko challenged with a smirk
Karin growled before backing down knowing that she had to be the more reasonable of the two since her sensei had the maturity of a 7-year-old Naruto.
"Anyway, I am a sensory/medic type. I've been training to do basic healing jutsu and I can use fire and earth jutsu but I only know one jutsu from each nature"
"Don't sell yourself short, not many genin start out knowing their nature element. Explain the sensory thing to me"
"Basically I can feel and sense the chakra around me if I focus. I can see the chakra signatures of everyone too and when I focus on them, I can see something about it"
Anko gave a nervous look before continuing.
"I'm curious, have you looked at the chakra of your teammates and me?" Anko asked
Karin hesitated a bit before answering "Yes everyone gives off a kind of a unique signature and I can distinguish them from others if I am used to their signatures"
"I figured so you can see if foreign chakra is a part of someone's system?"
"Yes"
"So are you aware that.."
"Yes I'm aware and I don't really want to get into it," Karin remarked immediately cutting Anko off
Anko glared at Karin before softening understanding the position she was coming from. She could relate to the struggles that Karin had been through in her childhood so she would drop it for the time being. Instead, she brought her attention to Fu who had been paying attention intensely.
"Alright then, your next miss cheerful"
"Well I'm decent at Taijutsu but otherwise my nature element is primarily water and I know a few water jutsu, I also have a unique jutsu where I can blind people" Fu explained
"You're definitely going to have to show that jutsu one of these days," Anko said interested
Next, Anko walked to Sarada who had her arms crossed and was waiting for her turn.
"What can you do missy," Anko said
"Well, I have an affinity for Fire release. I can do shuriken jutsu, use the Sharingan and I can enhance my strength a little bit with chakra" Sarada boasted
"Quite the resume" Anko stated before moving on to the final member of her team
"Now it's your turn cutie, tell me what you can do"
Kenji's face turned slightly red which seemed to amuse Fu and irritate Karin. Sarada just stared deadpanned before shaking her head
Kenji cleared his throat before speaking "My affinity is wind release, and I can do basic taijutsu but I'm learning some other techniques too"
"Can you manipulate your chakra again like how you did before?"
Kenji extended his hand and appeared to struggle for a bit. His chakra appeared to circle around him to a smaller degree.
"So far only that I guess"
Anko sighed and remained silent for a few moments which made Kenji and the rest of the team feel anxious. Finally, she spoke
"We've got a lot of work to do but I think I can whip you all into shape before our first mission. Before we start, I think that it's best for the development of our team to lay out all of our baggage on the table"
"Baggage?" Sarada questioned
"Baggage as in 3 Jinchūriki and one of the last surviving Uchiha from the massacre who has a Sharingan being on the same team" Anko stated nonchalantly
"What the hell, you just broke the Third Hokage Law!" Karin screamed. She had been able to tell with her sensory abilities that something was different about Kenji and Fu, but she knew that they had not known about her being the Jinchūriki of the Nine-Tailed Fox. She had wanted to tell her friends, but she was afraid of how they would take it as she knew too well how the village treated her.
The villagers of the Leaf Village never actively shown their hate for her being the container of the Nine-Tails but they showed their disdain in much more passive ways, they would typically ignore unless necessary, stores would charge her extra and sometimes give her spoiled products, there would be minor vandalism near her house, and a ton of other acts of passive-aggressiveness. She wanted to avoid that situation with her friends and more importantly Kenji.
She looked to her teammates who all appeared silent and shocked at the revelation
"What Law?" Sarada said still surprised by what was being said?
"It is an S-Rank Decree that is punishable by serious fines/jail time not to talk about it but I feel in order for you to progress as shinobi, you need to know every tool you have at your disposal and you have to get misconceptions out of the way right now" Anko explained in a tone of seriousness which was rare for her
Karin was about to speak before being cut off by Kenji
"So what? Nothing's changed. I and Fu already knew about our status, but it doesn't change a thing. Karin is still the same" Kenji said
Kenji could read the reaction of Karin hearing the news and he couldn't blame her for being touchy about it. His and Fu's experiences as being openly known as a Jinchūriki weren't too bad due to being protected by Hisen Sensei, but he knew how cruel some people could be when finding out that information. He smiled after seeing Karin's body posture become more relaxed.
"Kenji's right, I would never judge any of you differently knowing about it now" Sarada added
"It's not like I can judge anyway since I'm one too," Fu said with the intention of making Karin laugh. She was only partially successful in making her smile
Anko also gave a warm smile at how easy it was for the kids to calm their comrade. She thought that the discussion would have gone a completely different direction which is why she was pleased with how mature her genin could be.
"Alright now that the mushy stuff is out of the way. We can officially start our training" Anko stated with a crazed look on her face.
"You want us to stand in the water?" Kenji asked dumbfounded at the request that was being made.
"No you idiot, I want you to stand on the water. The concept is simple, we as ninja can utilize our chakra in a way that allows us to traverse our environment better during travel and combat" Anko clarified
"Normally we'd begin at tree climbing training, but I feel like it would be better to just dive in headfirst in difficulty"
Fu snickered at the pun before focusing after getting a stare from Anko. She cleared her throat before speaking
"So how exactly does walking on water work," Fu asked
"Glad you asked that. Like tree walking, you have to emit the chakra from your feet in a constant stream to be able to stick to the surface of what you want to walk. Too much chakra and you will push yourself from the object. Too little chakra and you won't be able to stick to the surface"
Anko paused to make sure her students understood what she was saying. After seeing their expressions, she continued.
"The difference however is that water, you constantly have to change the amount of chakra that you are releasing due to it not being a solid surface"
Anko walked towards the river taking a slight pause before walking on the river. She turned around expecting looks of wonder but was disappointed when everyone except Fu appeared serious.
"Ugh, you guys are no fun," Anko said disappointedly
Kenji was the first to walk up to the river however he hadn't found his resolve to attempt it, it was just water however he did not want to deal with being wet for the duration of the day and he didn't bring a change of clothes. He turned to see if anyone else wanted to try first and when he turned back to the river, he was shocked at what he saw.
Halfway into the river was Karin standing perfectly on top of the river with no difficulty at all.
"That wasn't so hard, what's taking you guys so long?" Karin said with a smirk
"Showoff" Sarada muttered under her breath before taking a few steps on the river
Sarada managed to take a few steps before falling into the river which resulted in a hearty laugh from Anko and Kenji. Fu's attempt resulted in a similar result although she was able to take a few more steps.
It was Kenji's turn to try, and he wasn't going to fail. He knew that a decent amount of chakra would be needed so he sent a good amount of chakra to his feet and began to run. To his surprise, the water seemed to be repelled by the force of his chakra and he found himself standing on the ground at the edge of the river
Anko facepalmed before pulling Kenji aside
"Try to dial it back, you're a special cause in the sense that you have a lot of chakra at your disposal and you can physically manifest it"
"Now get to work, the faster you guys complete this, the faster we can get to the real exciting stuff," Anko said while beginning to lean on a tree.
"Just how long are you going to make us do this!" Kenji yelled before side flipping away from a flurry of shuriken and landing perfectly on the top of the river
It had been two hours since they began water surface chakra training. They had all changed into bathing suits and begun their training for walking on surfaces with chakra. It had taken around 30 minutes for Fu and Sarada to be able to walk on the surface of the river and an extra 15 minutes for Kenji to get the hang of it. They thought that would be the end of it, but Anko insisted on making sure that they demonstrated mastery of walking on water. Her solution was to summon multiple clones out of snakes on both sides of the river and ambush her genin with repeated kunai and shurikens. At first, it was a fun exercise for the first 10 minutes, but it lost its luster by the 1-hour point
Kenji turned to look at his teammates who looked just as thrilled as he was that they were still doing this training. He watched as Sarada dodged a fast-speed kunai aimed at her feet. She successfully sidestepped the kunai but had to leap away as a paper bomb attached to the kunai detonated causing a huge splash of water that she and Fu could barely avoid.
"Behind you Kenji" Karin screamed while ducking two kunai
Kenji took himself out of his thoughts to focus on the two Fūma Shuriken buzzing across the river towards him. They both were angled at a degree that would make dodging them without a scratch difficult, so he did the simplest idea which was to stop funneling chakra to his feet which sunk him deep into the river.
He swam back up to the shore where it looked like Anko had concluded training
"Good work you all, you'll have great chakra control in no time," Anko said pleased that she got to toy around with her genin with minimal effort involved.
"Dry off and we'll move on to the next portion of training," she said handing towels to each of her students except for Karin
Karin didn't need a towel because she hadn't fallen in the river nor got splashed by explosive tags at all. Anko noted it as her being a natural with chakra control due to her clan's disposition towards it. She had almost fallen into the river once starting out but no one could pinpoint the reason why. Unbeknownst to everyone else, she got distracted staring at Kenji removing his shirt. She had made it a point not to gush over him as much during the current training because of her slight mistake.
After watching her students drying off and changing back into their respective outfits, Anko summoned 4 clones.
"Now we'll work on your taijutsu. From what I can gauge, you guys have decent taijutsu skills however you haven't stuck with a specific style to expand on. The basic academy style of Taijutsu will only get you so far" Anko explained
"Why do they teach it to you if it's not good to use in combat?" Kenji asked
"It's only mean to be a starting point where you can either choose to advance with specific clan techniques or you come up/learn a different taijutsu form but its main purpose was never intended to be a long-term skill to us"
"So kind of like the clone Jutsu?" Sarada chimed in
"Exactly. The clone Jutsu on its own is just a simple illusion however with practice and mastery of the fundamentals, you can learn or create your own version of the original clone technique which is much more improved like my snake clones here"
"I see, so are we going to be choosing our own taijutsu styles to work on?" Fu questioned
"Sort of. From my deductions, Karin would be best suited for my snake based taijutsu which primarily works on using flexibility and quick strikes to vital spots disorient and knock enemies off balance"
"Meanwhile Sarada isn't really suited to a specific taijutsu style because of her Sharingan's capability. Her time is best spent on conditioning and improving her physical qualities like strength, speed, and stamina because she can just predict and mimic most styles after seeing it with her eyes. From there she can make her own style of taijutsu"
Anko let Karin and Sarada sit on her explanation before turning to focus on Fu
"Your strikes are heavy, and you throw your brute strength around a lot, so I'd say you'd be more suited to a brawler's style similar to Arhat Fist"
"What if we already have an idea of what we want to learn?" Kenji asked
"What is it exactly you have in mind," Anko asked curious at the style the boy would pick.
"I wanted to train in a blended mix of Strong Fist and Gentle Fist that I've seen Hinata do" Kenji responded confidently
"I could see why you would want to utilize the Strong Fist but how would you be able to use the Gentle Fist without a Byakugan?"
"Well, I figured that it would be too difficult to target chakra points but not vital organs if I memorized an anatomy scroll" Kenji explained
"Interesting, we'll work on that. I've made four clones and brought some scrolls that practice stances and show a few taijutsu techniques to help you get started" Anko said with a smile that gave each of her students a premonition of how the rest of the day would go.
The next four weeks of training for Team Anko was a struggle for her genin students. The training initially started with training their chakra control with surface walking training along and leaf concentration exercises, taijutsu training/physique conditioning, and training their chakra nature elements. The taijutsu training began with practicing their stances and sparring with Anko or each other for the first couple of days. Shortly after, Anko had begun conditioning training which included the use of weighted clothes along with ridiculous exercises like swimming an upstream river, multiple kilometer length endurance runs, cliff climbing, and projectile evasion.
Their ninjutsu and nature element training was slightly less hands-on compared to the other two. Anko usually monitored and gave advice when it came to performing techniques read off the technique scrolls that she had given her students, but she allowed the freedom for her students to learn and perform them in her free time.
She did however try to maximize their unique traits and explore new techniques that they could develop. With Sarada, she began training her Sharingan and aiding her with as much information on it that she could derive from the old archives of the Third Hokage along with deciphering the little that was left from the Uchiha after their massacre. She could only do so much and later, she opted to enlist the help of one Kakashi Hatake to help her with her chakra nature element along with her Sharingan training.
Sarada had no clue because her brother's sensei would be able to help but to her surprise, he did well in training her with only one eye. It was strange because he knew exactly what she was feeling in terms of her increased perception and capabilities of her Sharingan but also knew all the limits at her current stage
With Fu, she had been training some of her inane talent of interacting with insects which creeped Anko out a bit along with her water jutsu capabilities. The child seems to be gifted when it came to chakra reserves and, she was very durable which made training her interesting to say the least. Anko had not been kind in terms of how much she held back but the girl didn't mind and encouraged her to push the limits she had. With the training that Anko had subjected her, Fu adopted an unorthodox taijutsu style which just focused on brute strength and grapples
For Karin, Anko wanted to expand her sensory capabilities and train her with fire and earth-style capabilities. Karin was more of a quick learner compared to her other students, but her faults were more towards her conditioning and strength, so she spent more of their time together training her with the snake style of taijutsu along with conditioning and on her time to herself, Karin would train in her nature element.
Kenji was one whose training was the most potential despite being the most convoluted. She had introduced him to Might Guy who had agreed to help with some tips on how to improve his conditioning and scrolls with the Strong Fist stances and techniques. On his off days, he would train the stances and movements of the Gentle Fist with Hinata along with studying human anatomy. The initial results didn't really mess well as Kenji originally tried to incorporate both styles simultaneously but as time went on, he became adapted to quickly switching between the two whenever the situation needed. Kenji also brought up wanting to utilize the Body Flicker technique to speed his taijutsu and overall travel speed which he wanted to improve. Because of this, he had to utilize heavier weighted clothes compared to the other three and train on using his chakra to burst his speed in amounts to make his speed seem instantaneous.
In terms of his nature elements, he also had some help in observing some of Sarada's lightning training with Kakashi but for his wind release, he was out of luck since the village only had a handful of wind style users and they all were either busy or someone that Kenji should never meet in his life hopefully. Anko got by however with the use of some scrolls containing wind style techniques. He also requested scrolls and books on fuinjutsu and sealing calligraphy which surprised Anko greatly. He had told her he found some interest in the subject after stealing the scroll of sealing and she abided by giving him the introduction to sealing matrixes and calligraphy book.
In addition to this, he worked on his strange chakra control which Anko dubbed a Kekkei Genkai ability as she hadn't ever encountered someone who could manipulate their chakra in that sense. He had improved a bit in controlling it however he had not shown her that he knew any techniques with this ability, but she knew he wouldn't show her until he knew it was necessary.
Lastly, she wanted to explore trying to connect her students with their subsequent Jinchūriki to tap into the destructive power as she had heard The Village Hidden in the Clouds had however that been something she could not risk doing due to the potential consequences, so she left it alone for the time being until a more formal expert in sealing came to town.
Before her students knew it, they had gone through a month of hell which had every day end off worse than the last, but they didn't mind because they felt the improvement. Today was slightly different in the fact that she offered to treat them after training to give an announcement of sorts.
That of course was before she decided to take her students in a four on one assault to test their growth. The three-hour cat and mouse struggle ended with Anko becoming victorious again without breaking much of a sweat or using any serious ninjutsu techniques.
"Ugh, I'm so tired" Fu whined while rubbing her shoulders.
"That went as well as we thought it would" Karin responded while caressing her cheek which was still red from the backhand slap that Anko repeatedly gave her for messing up her stances.
"You thought you had it bad? She pretty much spent the better part of the entire kicking my ass to get me to move faster" Sarada complained
Anko gave a smirk, "I only did that because you keep refusing my advice to keep your hands up when you rush me"
"I had a good time," Kenji said trying to give optimism to his teammates
"I bet you did. Didn't think you were the type to like your cute sensei beat on you" Fu teased
Anko raised an eye before joining in teasing "Aww you think I'm cute? I could show you a few pointers in the after-hours training sessions"
"Just where are we going," Kenji asked trying to change the subject and hoping that no one noticed the creeping blush on his face
Anko went behind Kenji and grabbed him from behind in a deep embrace before whispered in his ear, "We're going to heaven on earth"
"Sensei, you're making people give us weird looks," Karin said in an annoying tone.
"If you want, you can hold him next," Anko said while sticking her tongue out which made Karin even more annoyed
"Well, howdy strangers!"
All their attention was brought to Kakashi sensei along with Naruto, Sasuke, Hinata, and Ino standing behind him. Anko seem to lose her joyful mood once Kakashi had appeared and immediately let go of Kenji to walk up to him
"So I see that you are getting along with your students. I hope that means you're teaching them well" Kakashi said in a cheerful tone which didn't sound too authentic to Team Anko
"Yeah, I actually am and one of the most important things I teach is punctuality," Anko said irritated by his comments
A brief snicker left the lips of Naruto and was silenced when Kakashi coughed.
"That's a great quality to have. It's something I probably have to teach my students about" Kakashi responded
"what are you guys doing anyway?" Ino asked surprised that the team was still together so late. Around this time for her squad, everyone would separate and go their own ways which was a buzzkill to her.
"I am treating my students for the hard work they've done with Dango which we should really get…." Anko began to say before she was interrupted
"Oh I was planning on treating my students too so I guess we can go to the Dango shop together" Kakashi suggested
'This is not going to end well' Kenji thought as the bickering slowly resulted in the two groups making their way towards the Dango shop.
A/N: This chapter was a bit delayed due to some outside circumstances but here it is. As always, thank you for following the story and reading the chapter. Next one will drop soon and after our little genin will maybe go out on a mission of their own.