Out of the Ashes

Chapter 11

Ugh, I Have a Team

I got lucky. I'll tell you that much. My Genin team consisted of myself, Bu and Kyuketsu. Of course Bu and Kyuketsu would have to learn to get along (Bu had nearly shrieked when Kyuketsu came to sit beside us) but that would hopefully come with time. I myself enjoyed Kyuketsu's company and Bu would have to suck it up.

Then our sensei. It was Uzumaki Kinoe, otherwise known as the Samsara Matt. Kinoe wasn't who I expected for a sensei, I had honestly assumed Kakashi would be our sensei and I would have fucked over the time line. But no, I managed to luck out. Of course the timeline is already twisted around like a bendy straw but I had hope that we would still get to the same end, just like said bendy straw. I know, clearly I'm the best at analogies.

"Hi kids!" chirped Kinoe as we settled down at Ichiraku's. Bu's eyes were shining in admiration at the sight of our new sensei and Kyuketsu looked like he was half dead and not with us mentally.

I nodded to him and Kinoe reached forward and pinched my cheek before stretching it upwards and nearly making me stand up, "Aw, wittle Fushicho is so qwuiet."

I attempted to clock him in the side of the head with a left hook but his arms were too long for my preteen sized limbs. I settled for trying to scowl at him. His "baby talk" at me was probably there to purposely rile me up and many people knew that making fun of my lisp was the best way to get me angry. Well, it was actually easy to get me angry but enough about that.

"Careful, she bites." Kyuketsu quipped as he pointed out his order to Teuchi and Bu snickered, muttering that he wasn't exactly wrong. Then, when he realized he was sitting between Kyuketsu and I, suddenly paled. For some reason Bu's fear of Kyuketsu hadn't gone away despite the fact he was a perfectly normal young boy.

"Alright kiddies, we're gonna introduce ourselves now. I'll start. My name is Uzumaki Kinoe and I like ramen, engineering and fighting. I dislike some people, and I work in the hospital as a medic. I specialize in Fuinjutsu and Uzumaki stuff." Kinoe clapped his hands together and pointed out his order before pointing to me.

I sighed and murmured, "Uchiha Fushicho. I dislike cooking, people in general, and a lot of things really. I like, uh, my brother I guess. I have my sharingan."

Kinoe tsked at me.

I glared and he added, "She talks with a lisp and her intelligence was rated as a 5 on her data card. That's typically where geniuses, Naras and veterans lie in regards to intelligence."

I scowled at him and Bu, after ordering, gaped at me. Kinoe produced four familiar cards from his vest pocket and held them up with the backs facing us. The cards weren't too important. They only gave numbers. Our actual files were much more detailed and contained a lot about us including detailed analysis of our abilities and mental health.

"So after we eat I've got a test for you guys. If you guys pass I'll keep you as my team. If you fail you have two options. Genin Corps or back to the academy." Kinoe very cheerfully informed us, elaborating when he saw Bu's confused expression, "Very few Genin teams actually get Jounin senseis. Most are failed and are sent to the Genin Corps or back to the academy. The difference between having a sensei and the corps is that those with senseis have a higher survival rate, as well as they typically reach Chunin and Jounin years before the corps. Not to mention all those famous names you hear definitely didn't come from the corps. Having a sensei is your first step to specializing, growing and networking."

Kyuketsu spoke up when Kinoe stopped to inhale his ramen, "It does make sense. The Sannin trained under Hokage-sama, Hokage-sama under Nidaime-sama, Yondaime-sama under Jiraiya-sama, The Copy Ninja under Yondaime-sama."

Kinoe clapped for him and Kyuketsu ignored him to turn to his own ramen. I slowly ate my own over the top flavored ramen (I quietly told Teuchi to double the flavor) and nearly sighed when the taste of burnt noodles and vegetables peaked through the flavorful taste that I was glad to finally try. Ichiraku ramen was like a symbol for Naruto. Being able to try the ramen that Naruto loved was something so surreal... it hit me hard and reminded me exactly where I had been reborn again.

My sudden quietness caught Kinoe's attention and he elbowed me with a knowing look. I rolled my eyes at him and slurped down my ramen.

"So, Pinky, introduce yourself." Kinoe ordered through a mouthful of ramen.

Bu looked up at the nickname "Pinky" and looked between me and Kyuketsu as if he wouldn't be the only one that would be called Pinky. Then, upon realizing he in fact was called "Pinky" he bristled at Kinoe, "Excuse me!?"

"You heard me, Pinky." Kinoe droned while reading over me to poke Bu between the eyes with his chopsticks, "Introduce yourself, Pinky."

Bu's tan face heated up a bit, whether in embarrassment or anger I couldn't tell, and he muttered crossly, "My name is Bakuhatsu Obu. I like spicy food and stuff. I don't like dogs that much and I work primarily with fire Ninjutsu and family jutsu. Not Kekkei-Genkai, just closely guarded secrets."

"Hm, interesting. And you?" This was directed to Kyuketsu.

Kyuketsu looked up and his goggles flashed in the light, "Aburame Kyuketsu. I like insects. I dislike people. I fight long distance."

Kinoe clapped for Kyuketsu, "Short and sweet, very nice very nice." Excuse me? Mine was short and sweet too!

"I actually hate you." I sighed and Kinoe grinned quite pleasantly and ruffled my hair. He grabbed half of it and shook it while half dragging me off my seat.

"Such thick hair, Fushicho-chan. You should cut half of it off and give me some for some extensions." Kinoe told me and while Bu looked horribly confused Kyuketsu looked like he was pretending Kinoe didn't exist. That sounded like a pretty good plan actually and after wrestling my hair back from Kinoe I went back to my ramen. I ignored Kinoe for the rest of my ramen and even after I finished.

Some time later Kinoe lead us to our new team training grounds. They were pretty generic and located pretty far out considering the fact we were only genin. Usually the further and larger training grounds were reserved for higher ranks considering they could pull off much more impressive stuff.

Kinoe clapped his hands for our attention and bounced on his heels when we gave it to him, "Alright kiddies, this is Training Ground Thirty-Seven. The higher the number the larger it is and once you hit the thirties they start to become specialized grounds."

"These are typically reserved for chunin and jounin." Kyuketsu pointed out blandly.

Kinoe tried to ruffle Kyuketsu's curls and the brunette dodged and perched behind me. I glared at him and he didn't grace me with a response. Kinoe pouted but replied to Kyuketsu's comment, "Very true, Kyu-Kyu," I felt sadistic pleasure in witnessing Kyuketsu flinch at the name and his eyes flash beneath his goggles, "You see I reserved these grounds because you three are going to be powerhouses. Our team is put together to be the powerhouse squad of the year."

"So you're confident we'll pass your test." I surmised.

Kinoe grinned, "Well, to be honest, I don't even have a test ready for you guys."

I nearly fell over and Bu had been playing with the thin braid that trailed down from his temple in front of his ear. His side burn was part of the braid so it was stuck pretty stiffly to his face and yanking harshly on it was how I tortured him when he didn't pay attention. Bu, probably forgetting he had a habit of playing with his hair, pulled on his braid as he went to throw his arms down in frustration at Kinoe's personality. Bu had to hold back tears and I nearly laughed. Even Kyuketsu broke a smile at Bu's suffering.

Both Kyuketsu and Bu had their respective genin clothing already. Kyuketsu had some barely seen ensemble (Except for a brown and red high collared shirt that nearly reached his jaw) hidden underneath a tan cloak that was clasped just at the base of his neck and fell to his knees. It had a hood but he kept it off and he wore his hitai-ate as intended-around his forehead. Similarly, Bu wore his hitai-ate around his forehead and so as to not be different I did the same thing. Bu had his hair in its usually bushy ponytail while my hair hadn't changed from my childhood. Bu was pretty simple with his attire, a brown jacket over a green camo print high collared shirt. He had a thick strap that looked like it belonged to a sword but his back was bare so whatever he typically would wear there wasn't currently present.

Then, I saw what Kyuketsu had on his back.

"I'm sorry," I snickered, "Is that a bow? Can you even use it?" As in a bow for arrows, not a hair bow. Bows weren't a common weapon for ninjas, you'd typically see mikos and other religious figures wield a bow but that was about it.

Kyuketsu had the range of emotions to look vaguely offended by my tone. Bu joined me in my snickering when suddenly, something wrapped around all of us. Faster than any of us could have reacted we were being hung upside down and my hair was dragging along the dirt. From Kinoe's back eight chakra chains had sprouted and there were two wrapped around each of us. The last pair of chains waved ominously around Kinoe and he smiled.

The chakra chains burned. It felt like I was being held by burning hot iron, but I just grit my teeth and endured. Chakra was both my enemy and my friend in this world, so I had to just suck it up.

"Since I don't have a test, how about I hold you guys like this until the blood rushes to your heads and you pass out? First one to pass out loses." Kinoe was very obviously joking but Bu struggled against his restraints and growled some very unkind things that portrayed his thoughts on Kinoe's testing method.

"I'm not creative enough to test you on something ambiguous like the rest of the jounin do, so what I'm going to do is test out your potential as powerhouses. You three are going to be the team that clears out battlefields. I was already given a preview of your abilities and you will have a short, medium and long range fighter." Kinoe tilted his head, "But why don't you three figure it out? I'm going to give you some time to figure out a strategy and then I'm going to come after you. You have to stay away from me while tossing out all your fancy jutsu. 'Kay?"

He dropped us on the floor and while Kyuketsu and I rolled, Bu landed square on his head. Swearing, Bu fell onto his side and grabbed at his wound while Kinoe disappeared in a cloud of smoke.

"He's most likely listening in." Kyuketsu was the first to speak.

I agreed, "Alright, so who fights at what distance?"

"I can really be any of them." Bu said, "My explosives are dangerous but my mom made me work them into short range combat as well as long and medium range."

Kyuketsu nodded to what Bu said and then spoke up for himself, "Long or medium range. Contrary to what you seemed to believe, Hime, I can use the bow."

Bu burst out into laughter as soon as Kyuketsu's name for myself left his lips. It took a few seconds before my anger boiled over and I brought a fist down right on the bump that was starting to grow out of Bu's head from where he landed. Yelping, Bu's laughter cut off after I retracted my arm. He whined something about why I hit him and not Kyuketsu, who called me the dreaded nickname, but I ignored him to focus on our task.

"Well then," I cleared my throat, "I'm probably close range. My fire ninjutsu is pretty rudimentary and only works as intended on occasion. Can we all tree and or water walk?"

The answer to that was yes. Off to a good start then.

Rather than bore you with our entire five minute talk on our abilities, I'll summarize what I learned. First of all, we decided I was close, Bu was medium and Kyuketsu was long, in regards to our range. Of course Bu and Kyuketsu could switch if they needed to. I on the other hand couldn't be long range at all but I could try and cover with shuriken and kunai if I needed to from medium.

Bu could do a lot with his chakra capacity. He wasn't too devastating yet because his chakra pool was still so small compared to a Chunin or Jounin, or even an older Genin. But if he packed as much as he could into a single explosion then he could probably destroy the training grounds. Kyuketsu, on the other hand, was probably the most skilled on our team. He, very blandly might I add, explained that while he did have a bug colony inside him like the rest of the Aburame, his was too dangerous to use in a spar as his control wasn't the best. He didn't want to accidentally kill Kinoe, or even me or Bu, so he was going to mainly cover us with his bow.

Then there was me. Really, I was going to try and light Kinoe on fire. That could go one of three ways, either it worked, nothing happened, or I light myself on fire. Well, so far I've only lit clothes on fire. Not very fun because my body unconsciously freezes up on me if I can actually feel fire licking at my body but if I can use my Natural Fire Jutsu (I named it myself and I think it fits perfectly) then I'll be pretty unstoppable (For genin anyway). I was kind of planning on Kinoe adjusting his strengths to match us but with his personality he was going to probably just screw us over for the fun of it. And I certainly wasn't letting that happen!

"We got this!" announced Bu, raising a fist and looking at me expectantly. I shared a look with Kyuketsu and the Aburame sighed before he also lifted a fist. We brought our fists into a three-way fist bump and Bu exploded his while Kyuketsu left his fist hanging there and I retracted mine like they had cooties.

That's about when chakra chains exploded out of the floor.

Bu yelped but I have no idea what he did as moments after Kyuketsu and I got out of the way there was a sudden explosion and dust was suddenly everywhere. I turned on my sharingan to try and see through it and that's how I found Kinoe charging me like a chakra demon. I met him head on and jumped up. Kinoe punched me in the stomach and I wrapped my arms and legs around his arm, confusing the shit out of him. I reached at the chakra I could find and attempted to spark it. Kinoe, questioning what the fuck I was trying to do out loud, shook his arm in attempts to get me off.

"Fushicho get off, you're fat!" whined Kinoe.

That actually hit a nerve. In my past life I was not a small girl. The reason I died actually was because I wasn't small enough to fit out a window. Now that I was a skinny and in shape young girl, calling me fat was an insult to people who were actually built larger.

"Sensei, you asshole!" I huffed, and smoke billowed out of my nostrils (As it normally did when I was mad) and nearly choked me as my anger gripped at the nearby air. Kinoe realized something was happening and two chakra chains wrapped around me, one at my head and the other my feet. The chains pried me off as the air started to spark and when I was a few feet away suddenly, Kinoe's sleeve was on fire.

He yelped and smothered it with a chakra chain, "So mean!"

That's when my teammates finally decided to be helpful. An arrow pierced the slowly disappearing smokescreen and Kinoe moved to the side gracefully and let it pass him. When he heard the sizzle of the paper bomb attached to it, he used chakra chains to give his jump an extra booth. The tag ended up being a fizzling dud, but Bu throwing little black spheres that resembled cartoon bombs (Like something you'd see in Legend of Zelda) was certainly not a dud. They exploded with a powerful stench and both myself and Kinoe were almost knocked over by the immense smell that came from the bombs.

"BU!" I screeched while my voice became incredibly nasally in my attempts to not breathe in the smelly spray that was in the air, "What the fuck are those!?"

"Stink bombs!" he cried back gleefully, tossing another one towards Kinoe.

Kinoe, with another chakra chain, hit it like a baseball and it returned to Bu. Bu yelped and we could hear him get the wind knocked out of him as it nailed him right in the stomach. Then it went off and Kinoe, out loud, wondered if he should make sure Bu didn't kill himself with the stench. Bu twitched so we assumed he was fine and the fight continued. Bu was out of it for a few seconds which was a long time in a fight.

I tried to distance myself from Kinoe but he seemed to want to attempt hand to hand combat. We all know who would win that and I dashed into the trees to try and keep Kinoe from getting too close. I sprinted and wove through the trees while hoping that I would lose Kinoe due to his larger size. While he kept up perfectly fine he wasn't using his chakra chains and I assumed it would take too much chakra or was too much effort to break through the trees. It was only a fight against hardly trained children, after all.

I heard Kinoe stop abruptly and I used this as my chance to sprint up a tree and crouch in the bushes to watch. An impressive amount of arrows were flying through the air and not even skimming trees while almost hitting their target. None actually hit Kinoe due to his actual incredible speed but they kept his attention long enough for Bu to come back to the world of the living and start tossing actual explosives. They weren't anything too impressive as anything bigger than your average singular explosive tag would tax him pretty badly.

Then, Kinoe tripped up.

I later decided this was probably on purpose and Kyuketsu had agreed with me when we analyzed it. But Kinoe allowed a hit to his legs from one of Bu's little explosives and that cost him his mobility. Immediately, I chose to dive on him while he was distracted by his injury and Kyuketsu moved in closer. Bu hid in the trees while I descended down upon the Uzumaki.

It was a mistake on my part, as you probably were guessing. I was rash in leaving my spot of safety because as it turns out, Kinoe didn't need legs. Rather all he needed were four chakra chains to hoist himself up and suddenly, it was like I was staring at Doctor Octopus from Spiderman 2. A fifth chakra chain sprouted from his back and wrapped around my upper body before I could try and change trajectory.

"Fuck." I spat as I kicked my legs towards the chains. Kinoe tsked at me and two more chakra chains exploded out of his back and, with more ease than I expected, he collected my teammates. Bu reacted much like an angry cat would, spitting and hissing, while Kyuketsu looked very displeased with a touch of his usual aloofness.

Kyuketsu also wrinkled his nose as we was brought into the stink zone. Bu's stink bombs were absolutely putrid and shocking at first but the smell actually stayed around for awhile and stuck to your clothes. The cloud of rotten air also spread out into the general area and no doubt if someone with a good nose came here within the next day or two then they'd know something went on. I'd say you eventually get used to Bu's stink bombs but honestly, you don't.

"I win!" Kinoe told us cheerfully while Bu brooded like the sore loser he was, "But you guys did better than I expected."

We were dropped again and Kinoe healed his legs while lightly setting himself on his feet, "My chakra chains are my most versatile weapon. As you can see they're thick and strong and can reach medium ranged opponents. Your faults were that Fushicho rushed in and Kyuketsu dropped towards mid range. You should have remembered that I'm a medic with a lot of chakra and really, really good chakra control."

Kinoe pat both Kyuketsu and I's heads, "But don't give me those faces, you cute little preteens. I'll pass you anyway. I did have to use a decent bit of chakra, and while it was nothing compared to what I'd do in a fight against another jounin it was pretty good for little noobs like yourselves."

Bu opened his mouth and began to question what a noob was, but Kyuketsu clearly recognized our new sensei was a bit off his rocker and trampled over Bu's attempts to speak.

"Why?" Kyuketsu asked simply. And it was a good question. I of course had a single thought on the matter. He passed us because of me.

"Why not?" was Kinoe's response. Kyuketsu sighed and accepted Kinoe's answer. Meanwhile, I eyed Kinoe suspiciously. When Kinoe caught my gaze his grin widened.

Kinoe grabbed Bu into a headlock and started to give him a noogie. Kyuketsu and I both attempted to step behind the other and nearly collided. We took several steps away while Bu cried for us to get him out of Kinoe's torture. Rather than risking it, Kyuketsu and I watched as Bu screamed about what Kinoe was doing to his hair.

This was my life now, I reminded myself as Fushicho's dark whispers tried to take my mind. My adrenaline was starting to settle and once I was calm her presence would leave. But until then her voice stayed in my mind as I watched Kinoe laugh and go after Kyuketsu next.

Yes, I almost nodded to myself, this was my life now.

AN:

I was googling in attempts to find Doctor Octopus for like half an hour. I remembered seeing a great cosplay for him at Comic Con two years ago and I was ready to use the Incredibles ball monster thing until I finally found him. The name Doctor Octopus makes me angry though.

Sorry this took so long! I really prefer third person writing but this is a story that would sound better from first person. Fushicho is also a lot meaner than I usually write and definitely more selfish. But eh, its her personality.

Fun Fact- My view on the Uzumaki clan is that only women can use chakra chains while men just have larger chakra pools. Both men and women can have the vitality and healing factor. Of course Kinoe, as a Samsara, is an exception to that.

Thanks to the following for reviewing:

grifman275
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CrystallineX
Thomas Drovin
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