Chapter 4
The next year passed by rather quickly, I still didn't have many friends. The only person that I liked to hang out with was Minato, we liked the same things and he was quiet, which was a selling point for me because I found out that I can not stand the amount of noise that comes out of the mouths of other kids my age. We spent most of our time out on the patio reading after Minato found out that we both preferred that to playing with the other kids. We still played games with them sometimes, they seemed to really like the game ninja. It was a rather simple game where you have four kids on one team and they go out and try to find other teams of four until all of the teams have been found and tagged. After the first time Minato and I were on a team together we were never allowed to be on the same team again. It was too easy to find and tag other teams when I was teamed with Minato. On the bright side it allowed me to make a couple more friends.
One year from the day I arrived at the orphanage it was time to start at the academy. Neither Minato or I was nervous for our first day, and as it turns out we didn't have to be. The first day was so boring with no learning at all. The day started with a speech from the Hokage. It was ok but I kept getting the feeling that I had met him somewhere. After that we were led to our different classrooms where we were given an overview of what was going to happen during the next year. "Hello and welcome to your first year of the ninja academy. This year will be the easiest of all of your 10 years of school you are required to go through to pass through the academy, after which, if you pass, you will become genin. Your first year you will not be required to take an extra specialty course as this year we are going to teach you the basics of all of the different specialty courses that the school offers. We will also have math, language, history, physical fitness, and chakra courses."
I was immediately intrigued at the mention of the specialty courses and I could tell that Minato was as well. "The schedule will be: math then basics then physical fitness on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. On tuesdays and Thursdays there will be language then history then chakra. You will have an hour break between your first two and your last course. There is a two hour period to get help or practice whatever you want at the end of each day. After that you may go home, I have to warn you now though the ninja academy is much harder then its civilian counterpart if you fail two or more of your subjects you will need to repeat the year, and if you repeat a year twice you will be transferred to the civilian academy." The class was quiet for all of a minute before whispering broke out.
The teacher just let us talk for a while before walking out of the room. After he walked out six people appeared at the front of the room in a puff of smoke. "Hello my name is Makvir and I will be your Math teacher for all ten years of your education." "Hello my name is Hakvit and I will be your Basics teacher for the first year of your education" "Hello my name is Orachi and I will be your Physical Fitness teacher for all ten years of your education." "Hello my name is Sarave and I will be your Language teacher for all ten years of your education." "Hello my name is Dawari and I will be your History teacher for all ten years of your education." "Hello my name is Hishui and I will be your Chakra teacher for all ten years of your education."
I stared at my new teachers in shock for a moment. Makvir was a tall man with brown hair and thick glasses. Hakvit was an older man with white hair and a very slouched posture. Orachi was a slightly defined woman with long dark blue hair. Sarave had black hair and looked like she was about to fall asleep. Dawari was an older man who kind of looked like the Hokage. Hishui was the strangest looking one, he had long brown hair and white pupil-less eyes.
Hakvit stepped forward to speak to the class, "As I said before I will be teaching you the basics of ninja life. I am also the only teacher that will only teach you for a single year. However I will also be the one you will come to for any requests that you may have, whether it be to move a head in a course or to apply to another specialty course, you will be expected to take at least one specialization course. Now for your core classes there are ten years worth of materials that your teachers have to go through, however if at any point you feel as though you are far enough ahead that you want to test out you may come to me. However if you succeed in testing ahead a year that does not mean you will graduate early, none of you will do so, you will have to take on another specialty for the rest of your time here. Do not worry there are enough specialties for 20 extra years of schooling. The specialties each last a different amount of time with the longest one taking 12 segments of classes and the shortest taking two segments, at the end of each specialization you have a choice to participate in an internship with a special jounin of that field. If you wish to see all of the specialties there is a list outside the door of my office. One last thing before I let your teachers begin your education. The internships will not be available until your seventh year so do not even ask to participate early." With a glare he walked out of the room.
It was quiet for only a second before talking broke out. Everyone wanted to know what sort of things they could learn in the specialization courses. After a moment Makvir stepped forward and took a deep breath "QUIET!... Thank you, now as I said earlier I will be teaching you Math for the next ten years. We will go over many subjects and many of you will find them difficult. There are three specializations that you can take after you have finished all of your basic math courses. They are calculus, physics, and statistics." Everyone in the class had confused expressions never even hearing about those subjects before.
After he had said his piece he stepped back and Orachi stepped forward "I will be getting all of you up to the physical standard of ninja, this is one of the classes that you can not test out of, the other two being basics and chakra. That means you will be taking this class for all ten years you attend here. We will start easy and will get progressively harder, if you fail any of the benchmarks it will count as a class fail." Everyone in the class paled, especially a boy with a bored expression on his face and the boy eating chips next to him. "There are also specialization courses that you can take after you reach a certain level of fitness such as stealth, trap making, close combat, and weapons."
She then stepped back and Sarave stepped forward. "Language is the only course that you can take specialization courses before you complete all ten years. There are only two specialization courses that you can take with language, codes and nonverbal. Codes is a ten segment course by itself while nonverbal is only a four segment course."
She stepped back and Dawari stepped forward. "While history is a fascinating subject there are only two specialization courses that branches off from it, politics, it is a five year course that very few pass fully. Keep in mind that the average number of people that pass this course is two or three a year with only one civilian passing every couple of years. The other one is tactics, an eight segment course, most kids take at least one segment of this course and like politics very few pass the whole thing." He stepped back leaving a shocked class in his wake.
After waiting a few moments for the class to gather itself back together Hishui stepped forward "As you may have guessed I am a Hyuga, my name is Hishui and I am your Chakra teacher. My job will be to expand your coils and increase your control at the same time. There are many specializations that come with chakra, they vary from medical ninjutsu to fuinjutsu to sensing. There are too many to name right now so if you are curious I suggest you go to the list go see for yourself. For each specialization course there is a capacity and control requirement, once you tell Hakvit what you wish to specialize in he will direct you to me for a control and capacity test, if you pass I will let him know and he will draw up the necessary paperwork. There will be progress reports on your improvements throughout your time here and you will rank on your improvement, not the end result. Your rank will then determine your grade, not the other way around." After he stepped back they all turned and left the room.
After they left the man from before came back in "Now that you have all of that information you will allowed to talk among your peers for the rest of the day, by the way my name is Gorbu and I am somewhat of a homeroom teacher I will be the one watching over you during your break and in the mornings before school. Now try not to be too loud as you discuss your futures." He then sat down and pulled out a scroll. He opened it and then put his hand in the middle, there was a puff of smoke and then a pile of paper appeared. He signed and started going through the stack. By then all of the kids in the class started to talk to each other, Minato turned to me with a grin on his face. "What do you think you're going to do? I am definitely going to do close combat but I don't know what else I'm going to do besides that." I thought for a minute on what I wanted to do, I definitely wanted a closer look at the chakra specializations before I chose anything for sure. "I think I want to look at that list, but from what I've read fuinjutsu sounds cool, I also really want to do close combat as well." He smiled at me "Cool, maybe we can take the same combat class." I smiled back "Maybe."
We continued talking for the rest of the day sometimes including the other people in the class. I learned the lazy kid's name was Shikaku and he wanted to specialize in tactics like his dad. There was also the kid who was next to him named Choza who wanted to specialize in close combat and weapons. Then finally there was a girl who Minato was enamored with named Kushina, she wanted to be Hokage too and announced in front of the whole class. "Looks like you have competition, although it also looks like you wouldn't mind that." He blushed and wouldn't look up from his desk for the next couple minutes. After a couple of hours of talking a bell rang and Gorbu stood up. "Alright since this is the first day you may get lunch and then leave for the day." He then walked out of the room after putting all that paper away. I turned to Minato "You want to head back?" He nodded and we said goodbye to our new friends. The rest of the day was spent on the patio outside the library just thinking about our futures. That night I fell asleep dreaming of my future again.