The two blonds looked at each other and like all small boys they decided the girls could take care of themselves and went to find other small boys to play with. Minato smiled as they neared the two Hyuuga twins. He had subtly steered Inoichi towards them, because he was curious. They certainly didn't act like the noblest clan in Konoha at the moment, and to see Hiashi try to figure out how the net was supposed to work was entertaining. They might give him some hints and get to know Hizashi as well. It was strange, but the people he knew as parents were now his potential friends.
4.
The sun filtered in the windows in a small apartment to the east of Konoha. The building was ordinary, to the point where people would pass it by without a second glance. It held four apartments; two upstairs and two downstairs and had small gardens at the front of the building towards the street. Behind it was another street, this one less used and the home of no less than eight homeless cats.
Across that street was a smaller row of houses occupied solely of civilians. That wasn't really important, however. What was important was the lake behind those houses. There was a small path around it, and an area of greenery between the lake and the buildings surrounding it. For most of the populace in Konoha, it didn't mean much. It was a lake and a small park, and the usually visitors were couples in love, or elderly people trying to get away from the hustle and bustle in the village. The lakeside even had a small platform with benches and tables if someone wanted to have a picnic there. It wasn't often, but it happened that someone was there, and if they came by during the afternoon or the evening, chances were they would happen upon a small blond boy training to be a ninja.
To Minato it was the perfect place. It had water and trees, and area to train. He would set up blinks in the shrubbery and between the trees to throw shurikens and kunais, and practice his chakra control. After having lived his former life with terrible chakra control, it was an odd feeling to suddenly have excellent control. It wasn't perfect, and he didn't need it to be perfect since he wasn't opting to be a medic, but it was still way above the regular. It baffled him again and again how easily the chakra flowed in his body, and he wondered if it was something to do with the body, or if everyone had their chakra flowing like this without a seal to constantly feed more chakra into their system.
When he first started he had nearly cried when he discovered how little chakra he actually had, but it had increased slowly as he kept training. He could hold the transformation technique for over two hours without significant drain on his reserves, which he wouldn't have considered an achievement in his former life, but now considered a significant step up. True, it was an E – ranked, low chakra consuming technique, but his body was small and there was only so much chakra it could produce. It had taken him a while to accept that, but he had accepted he would do with what he had already the day they were released from the hospital. That had led him to review all he knew of genjutsu, which was abysmal little.
To be praised as a genius had helped him overcome that easily. The first years at the Academy were all theory and physical training. They didn't do chakra until the children were eight, but he had unlocked his and the teachers quickly came to the conclusion that he was bored. He could answer any question they asked (the books were made for seven year olds after all), do any task they sat him and for someone so young, complained surprisingly little. The only time he had uttered words of discouragement was during a field excursion to the forest, where they were to learn the basics of eatable plants. He had looked at the plants, and told them rather bluntly that he had lived off of these plants after the death of his mother and refused to eat them again unless he was about to starve to death.
They were right, he was bored, but for completely different reasons. The first years, consisting mostly of children six or seven years old, depending on when their parents felt it prudent to start their ninja education, weren't all that great at reading. It was slow going, and he wanted to bang his head in the wall more than once when another brat stuttered through the text. It might have to do with having an entirely different brain then in his last body (again, the thought of having something in common with the Orochimaru he remembered made him shiver), but he had a better memory. Not photographic by any means, but it was better. He didn't have to read the same part again and again to remember, and he even understood what it said. He couldn't be sure if it was because he physically had another brain, or because his mind was mature and was able to concentrate on something for more than five minutes. Either way he didn't complain.
Admitting that yes, Minato was fully capable of reading, writing, doing math and even knew the entire curriculum of basic ninja theory, the teachers had let him skip a year and put him with their second years.
Kushina had not been happy with him for that. She had sulked for a week before she forgave him, and he had to tell her how to unlock her chakra to earn that forgiveness. Not that she was capable of sitting still long enough to do it yet, but she was getting there. She would probably unlock it at the same time as the children from clans, considering how they had relatives showing them how to do it and motivating them.
Minato, while happy he didn't have listen to the stuttering anymore, was less than pleased with being placed with the second years. The second years was the first actual ninja class, which in peacetime lasted for four years and in war time for two or, in most cases, three years. Most children were eight years, or nine, if they didn't make it through the first year the first time they tried, and would be about ten or eleven when they graduated in a war time. Twelve in peacetime. One could say they were arguably annoyed with the 'genius' showing them up, and they didn't hesitate to let their feelings known.
While annoying, it wasn't the reason Minato didn't like it. He had wanted to be placed in the graduating class straight away. Instead he found himself reciting the founding of Konoha and the correct way of handling kunais. The last part had proven to be somewhat useful. In his new body, his aim was off. While it was still impressive for someone who, apparently, didn't have any previous ninja training and was five years old, soon to be six, it wasn't what he would like it to be. He would like to live to be older than eighteen this time around, and to do that he had to survive his childhood first.
Going through the basic Academy taijutsu simply proved his previous grievances with a small body. He could do the katas perfectly, but if the opponent was someone larger than an eight year old, he wouldn't be able to do much. As frustrating as that was, he had time and people willing to help him with his genjutsu. It was incredible what the teachers were willing to teach him if he asked nice enough and reminded them that he was a prodigy.
Not that they needed reminding most of the time. They were talking about him in the corridors, and at their lunchroom. He had heard them, when he went to ask his sensei about a genjutsu he had found. When one of them had had a practical lesson, they were praising him as if he was the best thing to happen since electricity. He wondered if this was what Itachi and Kakashi had to go through, because if it was, he felt sorry for them already.
To begin with it was good to have the expectations directed at him. It felt exhilarating to know that they really thought he could do all the tasks they gave him, and believed in him. It was a new feeling, since he hadn't had it the first time he went through the Academy. Okay, it wasn't a fair to compare the two. This time around he had all the memories from a life as a ninja and a war, a mind which was matured and experienced, even if it was only in his head. No matter what it was, the expectations soon got old, and the constantly raising of those expectations made them equally harder to live up to. It was as if they never got satisfied. As soon as he proved he could do something, they found something more advanced for him to do. And so it went….
If he had been a child for real, he knew he would have been terrified of letting them down. Now he simply did what they asked, even if it sometimes took him the entire afternoon and evening to do it. He didn't know why he did it though. That was something he, as introspective as he could be, hadn't figure out, or didn't want to figure out. Some of it was actual fear. He wanted them to believe he was a genius after all, and he wanted them to remember the name Namikaze Minato as one of the brightest students they had ever had. He didn't want to think what might happen if he didn't live up to that, so in a way, he was caught in the same trap an actual child would fall for. It was a never-ending circle of fear and exhilaration.
His interest in genjutsu had been noted by the teachers, though, and that was the reason why he was currently by the lake at seven in the morning. Yesterday he had been unable to complete a genjutsu technique, which had rendered him unable to sleep most of the night. At five he gave up on sleeping and went out to stubbornly get the stupid technique done. It was the highest ranking one he had tried, a C – ranked one, and it was a hell of a lot more trouble than the D – ranked genjutsu techniques he had tried. He had of course mastered the clone technique. He wasn't even sure of that was something he should even mention, but the teachers seemed to be beyond themselves when he created two perfect clones at his first try. His first try in front of them, that was. It hadn't taken him long, but he had been practicing them on his own beforehand. It was another occasion when he marveled over the differences in his chakra control.
The other two techniques had taken him longer. Mostly because he had no previous experience with them to fall back on. He had to learn them by trial and error, and with genjutsu that was difficult. It was hard to tell whether or not the technique was done right when he used it on animals, and he didn't want to try them out on a passing civilian. He had toyed with the idea of asking one of his friends for help, but didn't want to use genjutsu on them outside of a spar. He wasn't sure if he wanted to use it on them during a spar either, for that matter. In the end, he had ended up asking his teachers for help, and they had let him try his genjutsu out on them.
They were both D - ranked; Demonic Illusions: Hell Viewing Technique and Mist Servant Technique. The first one was a basic for a whole series of Demonic Illusions. Most of them were currently out of his skill set, but he had hopes of starting on them within a year or at the most two. The simplest one, the one he had learnt, showed the target a horrifying vision which would appear real to the target. It was exactly what Minato hated the most with genjutsu, but when he had mastered it he had been proud all the same. He put it down to knowing that he could, with this one mastered, master all the other Demonic Illusions if he put his mind to it.
The technique he had worked on for two hours straight while the sun rose was actually a set of two. They were named Demonic Illusion: False Surrounding Technique and Demonic Illusions: Double False Surrounding Technique. The first basically changed the appearance of an object or an area, while the second one would weave a secondary illusion on top of the first. While getting the first one to work was easy enough, blending the secondary layer on top of the first proved to be close to impossible without disrupting the first layer. At least he had felt like that.
The chakra of the first illusion would waver in contact with the second layer, and thus be disrupted. It was the general idea of disrupting or ending a genjutsu after all, to disturb the flow of chakra screwing with your senses. He had been unable to come up with an idea of what to do to make them meld together like they should without actually melding, and that had kept him awake. After turning over in his bed more times than he chose to keep count of, he had realized how his blanket had twisted around him and trapped him in a cocoon of cloth. From that he had realized he could do the same with the chakra of the illusion. If the first layer was a steady layer with chakra, like a flat blanket, the second layer could twist around the first without touching the first. Instead of two flat blankets on top of each other, he needed one flat blanket, and one twisted blanket around it. It was easy enough in theory. Practice always proved harder.
With the theory down, at least he had something to work from. He had been working steadily for two hours, and finally thought he had managed to get it right. It was a major achievement; he had been trying to do it for nearly a month now. He smirked and allowed himself to lie down in the soft grass and just listen to all the sounds of the awakening village.
The vendors were opening their stands, the shops were opening one by one and people started to move around. He never got tired of listening to and observing Konoha like this. It reminded him of how it had been before Pain leveled it, and what he had fought for in the civil war. Maybe it was a defensive reaction on his part, to justify some of what they had done, but he chose to believe they had done the right thing. It was also calming, to know that the people around him was part of Konoha, just like him. They were all part of the same village, shared the same home, and that created a bond between them, even if they didn't know everyone else in the village.
He stretched out and lazily watched the sun sparkle in the water as it rose high enough for the sunrays to hit it. If it wasn't for his stomach grumbling for food and the Academy, he could easily have fallen asleep there seeing as he had finally finished the damned jutsu. A sense of accomplishment washed over him as he made his way past the civilian houses and cordially greeted some of his new neighbors.
He had made sure to get to know them enough to greet them by name when he saw them, and to appear as the perfect little genius child he was pretending to be. Actually, he had picked apart everything he knew of the geniuses from his future life and come to a conclusion. They were all, without fail, well liked. That is, unless they did something to discourage that feeling, like killing off most of your clan or being rather homicidal like Gaara used to be. It didn't matter how antisocial they acted, people still loved them to bits. He didn't want to go down that road, even if had noticed that he spent little time doing what most six years old do. It wasn't really his fault; once upon a time he would have found it fun to play tag, but he was too old for that now.
Besides that, he did spend time with Kusihna and Inoichi. They were often joined by Tsume, who was talking about getting her dog once they had graduated to the next class. He was also their primary source of homework help, as he had dubbed it. Kushina lived next door to him, and while she had an older cousin, he was most of the time out on missions, or taking care of the youngest Uzumaki. Five year old Kaero was nothing like Minato was, and acted more like a three year old in desperate need of attention.
The other two had their clans, of course, but they claimed it was funnier to do their homework together, at his place. He didn't mind, he actually liked to be the center of a group of friends, but sometimes their expectation levels were even higher than the once directed at him from the teachers. They seemed to think he had the answers to every question they could think of, and while to them he could act omnipotent, he was sure there would come a day when he would have to say 'I don't know'. He wondered what would happen that day, and if they would still look at him whit the same amazement and awe.
His apartment wasn't large; it had a bathroom, a bedroom and a combined living room and kitchen. He liked it, though, and it was a home. It wasn't just a tree in the middle of a forest, where weather and enemies could surprise him at any moment. He smiled slightly as he made his way past the kitchen table, where Kushina had forgotten her homework the previous day. Seriously, she could be so forgetful it made him cringe. If she didn't prolong her attention span that forgetfulness was going to get her killed one day.
He glanced at the clock and hurried to take a shower, change clothes and boil water for tea while toasting bred. He could predict Kushina and her little cousin pretty well after almost a year of living next door to them. They would get up at half past seven in the morning, and if Kinuto was home, that wasn't a problem. If he wasn't home, Kushina would try her hand on breakfast, before giving it up as a lost cause and head over to him. He would be ready with tea and toasts, and not comment on her lack of domestically skills. She was only seven years old, and he didn't expect her to be a master chef by any means. He only hoped she got better in time.
Today, on the other hand, he was less than pleased with the notion of having the two exuberant cousins over for breakfast. He was tired, damn it, and keeping up with them was a trial in and of itself. He busied himself with reading her paper on the proper use of Body Replacement Technique, Clone Technique and Transformation Technique. It was the standard three Academy techniques, together with the Rope Escape Technique and Cloak of Invisibility Technique. He absentmindedly corrected her fourth hand sign for the Body Replacement from Tiger to Dog, and pointed out the errors she made in her spelling.
As he had foreseen, at eight there was a rapt knock on his door before it flew open and Kaero waved at him brightly. He hadn't said much since their arrival in Konoha, and didn't generally speak unless he had to. He was slightly more open around people he knew well, but he was bound to be the odd one out when he started the Academy in a year. Minato put it down to the whole ordeal he'd been through. Kushina said he was shy. Speaking of which….
"Kushina, you didn't get the hand seals right," he said, and lifter her paper so she could see. For a moment she looked confused as to what he was talking about, before he saw that tell tale coloring of her cheeks and the following huff. She didn't like being reprimanded, especially not by someone her own age. Undaunted by her irritation he continued. If it was one thing he had learnt, it was the importance of getting the hand seals down. Iruka sensei had practically drilled it into them. Back then he hadn't understood the importance, but as he learned more techniques and started to see the subtle differences between some techniques due to the hand seals, he understood.
"If you use Tiger in the Replacement technique your chakra will come out too volatile and it'll destroy any control you have over it," he said and handed Kaero a slice of toast without looking from the paper. He corrected the last paragraph in time to see Kushina primly picking it from him and stuff it in her bag. He sighed and reached for the jam.
"The Dog is reliable and persistent; the Tiger is energetic and volatile. It is understandable that you can't exchange one for the other," he said in way of explanation. He didn't look at her, but loaded his toast with jam before handing the jar over to the annoyed wannabe kunoichi. She eyed him carefully before she found her papers again and frowned. She would have to rewrite the entire assignment, since it had corrections all over it. The teacher wouldn't be happy with such a mess.
"You…. You have destroyed my homework!!" she shrieked and glared at him. Minato, having finished correcting her paper, was rereading his own. The teacher had asked them to research a brand of ninja techniques of their choice, and he had chosen genjutsu. His work on the Demonic Illusions was part of his research. No one was going to accuse him for not being thorough. Hearing her outburst made him focus on her and grimaced.
"No, I didn't. I pointed out where you are wrong, just like the sensei will do, and now you have an opportunity to rewrite it and get a better grade than if you had handed it in as it was."
"It wasn't that bad. I don't need youto help me out, I would have seen it myself," she muttered half heartedly. They both knew that wasn't true, she wouldn't have seen it. Or, if she did reread it, she might have, but she wouldn't reread it. That was her problem most of the time. Kaero looked form one to the other, not sure who he should side with. He knew, quite well, that Minato was right most of the time, but Kushina was his cousin who he lived with and would have to endure her tantrum if he pissed her off. Not an experience he valued, so he changed the topic all together.
"Minato are going to get bad teeth," he piped up, and the two older children turned from their staring contest to give him weird looks.
"What makes you say that?" Minato asked nonplussed. That was not the everyday comment from the usually reasonable boy. The red head sagely pointed at the jam on his toast.
"You eat too many sweets. Big brother says the teeth will rot if we eat too much sweet food," he said, with childish honesty and wisdom. Minato raised both eyebrows while Kushina wore the most amused expression.
"Maybe his teeth will fall out, so no one will understand what he says when he acts like a stuck up know it all," she suggested with a gleeful gleam in her eyes. In that moment Minato seriously thought she actually hoped that would happen. Kaero snickered while imagine his second 'big brother' without teeth.
"That's superstition. We have dentists for a reason, you know," he mumbled and went back to is paper. He didn't really want to destroy their fun, but he wasn't in the mood to be the butt of their jokes today. Kushina rolled her eyes at him.
"What crawled up your ass and died?" she asked mollifying, and Minato was once again astonished by her choice of language. She sure didn't talk like any girl he knew, or seven years old for that matter. He guessed she picked it up from Kinuto when he wasn't careful of his wording.
"Nothing. I was trying to help you, you know. You have the end of year test in a few days after all. If you don't pass it, you won't be able to graduate," he reminded her. It had the desired effect on her. She picked up the papers he had corrected and read them over, before she asked for new ones to rewrite it. She knew where she could find it, but every time she had been successfully chastised she would be all polite until she forgot about it.
Minato finished his paper and sipped the rest of his milk and like every morning, filled a glass of milk for Kaero and gave him a long, steady look before he boy drank it. Honestly, that kid was not one who should give others advises on their diets. He was about to clear the table when Kushina spoke up again, having copied down most of the jotted corrections on her assignment.
"Hey, Minato, why is it you are so fixated on the hand seals anyway?" she asked curiously. Minato stopped and blinked. That was new. She didn't usually ask why he corrected her on something, just accepted it.
"They channel the way you concentrate your chakra…. If you mess up you might blow up, it is a simple as that."
Kushina sat in silence while thinking over what he had said, and nodded grudgingly.
"I guess…. But why?"
Minato wondered whether she read her text book or just came to him each time she was confused.
"Some of them don't work together, some of them aren't evenly mixed between spiritual and physical energy, and some of them represent elements that won't work together…. Lots of reasons…. Like, Ram won't work with Ox, and Snake won't work with Boar. Rat is water element and Horse is fire element…. If you are going to make a technique from scratch you need to think of which of them represents what you need for the chakra to do and which of them that'll work together to do that."
He thought for a moment before he came up with a good example.
"One of the genjutsu techniques I know, the Demonic Illusion: Hell Viewing Technique uses the hand seals Snake and Rat. The Snake is subtle, discreet and manipulative, and is more yang than yin. The Rat is affable, secretive and exploitive, and is more yin than yang. Together, they make for a good genjutsu and balance each other pretty well. What makes the technique weaker than many other genjutsu is the Rat's water element against the Snake's Fire element. It weakens the abilities of the Snake, making it less manipulative than it could have been. On the plus side, the exploitive side of the Rat is stronger, so the caster of the genjutsu doesn't have to come up with an illusion for the victim to see. The jutsu exploits the fears of the victim all on its own."
Kushina and Kaero stared at him while blinking. He sighed. One day they would get it, but not today.
Their walk to the Academy took them through most of Konoha, which was why they had to leave half an hour before it started. Kaero was left with a nice old lady living in the apartment under them. Old Lady Chinatsu, as Kaero affectionately called her when she was out of earshot. The walk took Minato and Kushina past the Yamanaka flower shop, where they'd pick up Inoichi. Usually it wouldn't be a problem, but today seemed to be the day the Gods had deemed to play dirty.
Inoichi had overslept, causing them to run the remaining distance to the Academy. It wouldn't have been so bad if the two first years didn't have a test of their knowledge of the First Great Ninja War, while Minato was late for the taijutsu warm ups and was punished with more rounds around the training ground. He was really not in the mood for that, having slept next to nothing that night and trained for hours. When lunch came around, his energy level was dropping dangerously low, and at that moment, he started a habit he would take with him for years to come. He refilled his depleting energy with sugar.
Where to begin? I am sorry the chapter is posted later than I said it would be, but I discovered I had abysmal understanding of techniques, hand seals, clans and a lot of other stuff, so I have done some research, in a (most likely futile) attempt to make the mysterious abilities of hand seals and such clearer. I have based my understanding of them on the characteristics of the Chinese zodiac animals, which makes out the twelve hand seals used in the series. I also had a look at Japanese food, and names, swords and other equipment, fighting styles and a little more. As you have discovered from reading this chapter, I am using the English translations of the techniques names. I do that because I like to know what I am writing, and I have to admit I have a better understanding of English than Japanese. I have wondered what the techniques means when reading other fanfictions, and while a translation on the top or bottom of the page is nice and all, I don't feel like scrolling up and down each time I read a name. And if you all wonder, yes Minato will be a sucker for sweets, but I have a reason to make him such. I probably won't reveal the reason until he is in his teens, meaning I am quite a few chapter from that yet. I can imagine some of you asking why I would read up on these things just for a fiction? Well, I don't like to do things half hearted, and I like details. That, and I don't have much to do. Though, on the upside I am allowed to wobble around on crutches now!! Yay!!