Naruto Sempai: Chapter 3 – The Training Begins!
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Training, the single word that consumed and corrupted Hinata's every thought. This evening would be the first night Naruto would be training her one on one. As expected the evening held for her both great anticipation and great worry. Both for multitudes of reasons of various levels of likelihood, from very probably, to the not even remotely imaginable. As do most minds under similar circumstances. Hinata checked the clock again. 7 minutes had passed. She wasn't entirely sure if that made her feel better or worse.
"Iruka-sensei" someone called out.
"Yes? What is it?" he said turning to said student
"I'm having trouble with problem F"
Hinata looked back to her own questions. They were mostly all correct or so she felt sure. Theory wasn't her problem, it was the practical. Her brain knew what the do, but her body wouldn't follow, either out of hesitation, nerves or just lack of force. She sighed to herself, and looked out the window. She wondered what Naruto was doing now. Actually she wondered allot about him. His family, his history, his techniques, his strengths, weaknesses, habits, hobbies, hates… Perhaps in time he would share it with her, though she couldn't help but notice the fact he had been seemingly deliberately vague on the rare and brief occasions he ever spoke of himself. Who wouldn't but wonder why?
"Sensei" Sasuke called out, grasping most peoples attention. Surely Sasuke didn't need help! Even Iruka was quite taken aback
"What is it, Sasuke?" he asked, almost suspiciously.
"Who exactly is Uzumaki Naruto?" he asked bluntly. Now Hinata was paying attention, as also most of the class it seemed. Iruka looked around slowly before sighing. He might've known to expect a few questions about the young ninja but he had been hoping they might draw their own conclusions. He rather disliked speaking of former students to others on anything less than a need-to-know basis.
"Naruto is…" Iruka began seemingly trying to find the words that gave both true and vagueness. Deciding it wasn't his place to reveal another persons life story, especially a student of his unless he was certain Naruto wouldn't mind, something he couldn't be sure of. "A visionary" he finished. Sasuke frowned, obviously disappointed with the response.
"What kinda jutsu does he use" a girl asked from one of the front rows. Iruka though taken aback by the directness of the question brushed it off with a smile
"Maybe you should ask him yourself when next you see him" was all he gave back in response.
"Will you at least tell us his speciality?" Sasuke shot a slight hint of irritation in his voice.
"Nah, tell you what, you can tell me yours" Naruto said from the doorway. Iruka, as well as the rest of the class turned to him, with looks of question. "Finished early, figured you'd need my help over here" he said happily, as he plopped himself on Iruka's desk, who looked at him, clearly unimpressed.
"Naruto, you've taught for a day, I've been teaching for a number of years" Iruka pointed out, folding his arms. Naruto looked at him in a manner which clearly spoke 'and your point?'
"And yet, you feel insecure enough to point that out" he grinned. Iruka's expression dropped slightly
"You don't know what you're talking about-" he began, but was cut off
"YOU don't know I'm talking about, that's different to MY not knowing" he said cheekily, earning a few smirks from the class.
"Naruto…" Iruka said threateningly. Naruto just smiled
"You know I'm kidding" he said with a shrug. Hinata couldn't help but smile at their interaction. It was so personal, it was more like watching two friends, or perhaps siblings than the relationship between a teacher and a former student. She happened to glance at Sasuke, to notice him looking at Naruto quite carefully seemingly capturing every detail. At the same time Naruto seemed to notice too, and waved at the Uchiha who looked away as though it was nothing.
"Anything you want to say?" Naruto asked lazily. Sasuke with elbows on the desk, fingers slotted between each other casually looked back
"Not really, I just find it strange that's all" he commented passively. Naruto opened his eyes to a normal none-lazy size, looking at the Uchiha with one of interest, He knew full well what the Uchiha meant by that, but wasn't about to call him out directly on it. Instead he was thinking of a way to spend more of his spare time in the classroom, having decided it to the more interesting than elsewhere. He'd get away with it today because it's a one off, and the kids liked him on the day he taught them. But that wouldn't work twice. So he decided to use what Sasuke said for his own advantage,
"See what I mean?" he said suddenly looking at Iruka "You need my help, lots of troublesome kids here that require a second hand and such" he smirked. Sasuke scowled. Iruka shook his head disapprovingly.
"Well, I'm just saying you could sometimes do with a hand, someone who knows the kids" Naruto went on, but before he could continue Sasuke spoke up.
"I bet you don't even remember my name" he said, in an attempt to call Naruto out.
"It's Sasuko" Naruto replied lazily
"It's Sasuke!" Sasuke corrected rather annoyed at the seemingly obvious mistake
"No, it's Sasuko" was all Naruto replied with no real interest
"I think I know my own name!" Sasuke shot back, clearly getting irked by this point.
"You THINK you know your own name? How stupid are you?" Naruto laughed, a few of the classmates joined in. Sasuke turned to look out of the window, at the same time Iruka stepped in to cut it out.
Hinata was among those to attempt to stifle a giggle. Well, she was learning about Naruto, one piece at a time. Today she could say she learnt he quite enjoyed playing on words to tease others. Not maliciously, but enough to get a laugh at the targets expense.
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After Naruto had arrived the rest of the day seemed to fly by. Perhaps it was the energy he gave off in waves, or maybe it was just how interesting he made the normal uninteresting. All Hinata knew was that seemingly all-of-a-sudden she and he were travelling to the training field he took her the other day. To distract her from her own nerves she was focusing on his attire; which consisted of an orange and black shirt under a standard chuunin vest, with orange pants. His head band worn around his forehead on a black cloth, slightly too long for its purpose, resulting in two 'tails' of black cloth fall down past his neck.
He turned around. Hinata halted, looking around and realising they were already here.
"Alright!" he said with a smile. "Taijutsu!" he called out. Hinata stood there blankly, unsure of what to do
"Alright then, show me your stance" he instructed. Hesitantly, Hinata obeyed. Naruto circled her slowly. Suddenly, she felt him pull her chest back, straightening up her back. Then he pulled her hind leg further out. After a further few encirclements he stood back in front of her, and gave her thumbs up. She would've smiled were she not so nervous. After her standing there for a few minutes she had to ask.
"A-Ano… Naruto-sempai?" She asked unsurely
"Just keep the pose" he instructed. She couldn't help but feel quite self conscious. She was just standing there with him watching her completely, how could she NOT feel self conscious.
"Alright, relax" he said. She did so gladly. Another minute passed without him saying a word, Hinata had an odd feeling she knew what was coming.
"Take stance" he said. She had suspected as much, but she obeyed. Again Naruto corrected her stance.
He had her do this repeatedly for what felt like a considerable amount of time until eventually she decided to try more than a two word question
"N-Naruto-sempai… why are we doing this?" she asked doubtfully, but he didn't respond, he just smiled at her. She didn't know what to think. He was experienced, and she had no reason to believe he would lead her astray, but she didn't understand the purpose. This kept up for the rest of the night; just her holding pose, then relaxing, and repeating over and over.
By the time she was going home she was aching slightly, and disappointed. Granted she wasn't expecting to see massive progress in a single evening, but what she DID do had no point whatsoever. As she made her way into the Hyuuga residence she couldn't help but stop at the training posts they kept on the grounds. Looking around she decided to give herself some sort of work out before retiring for the night.
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The next day Hinata woke up feeling quite disappointed and confused by her experience the previous night. She repeated the evening over and over in he head as she did her morning rituals and made her way to the academy. In the end she decided to label it down to something she wouldn't understand at this point, perhaps some sort of higher ninja sync of some kind. But she wouldn't lie if asked; she was rather disappointed by the experience, it wasn't half of what she was hoping for.
As fate would have it, it turned out most of the day they were going to be doing taijutsu practice. Hinata groaned to herself as she sank her head into her arms on the desk. But it got better.
Iruka swiftly explained they would be practising basic strikes and blocks. They would be broken down into pairs with whom they would practise responsibly. Hinata knew how this was going to end, given that this was an area in which she was starting to fall behind the rest of the class. She turned to face her partner for the day; Sasuke.
It was almost enough to make her want to cry. Last night she spend several hours 'practicing' taijutsu, which was in fact a complete dud of a lesson. She also happen to mention a private little dream would be to beat Sasuke at something before graduation, that is assuming she did graduate, something which was looking decreasingly likely.
So today, just because some deity somewhere must sincerely hate her, Sasuke would spend today beating on her.
Unsteadily she raised her stance against Sasuke who was already in his. Sasuke didn't bother to ask if he should strike first, nor checked if she was ready. The strikes came hard and fast, so much so even blocking correctly was barely enough. By the third strike she was off balance, by the forth she had fallen down. She winced as she picked herself up, embarrassed she glanced at the Uchiha, who was giving her a look with a raised brow. He was clearly thinking as highly of her as she was herself. She got into stance again. The blows came again.
This time she was down in 3, as Sasuke was guiding his strikes like heat-seeking missiles right into the weak points of her blocks. Sasuke sighed audibly. Hinata clenched her teeth in frustration with herself. She didn't expect to be able to beat Sasuke, nor close to it, but she knew she was better than being knocked to the floor in so few strikes.
"Why don't you try attacking me" Sasuke offered, though seemingly already tired of her, his tone of voice was neutral, she was thankful of at least that. She nodded in agreement, having raised herself again she took stance.
She struck speedily, but did not try to overdo it and risk loosing control or balance. Sasuke blocked her attacks a bit too simply. Several times she was able to continually strike up to a dozen times consecutively, however it was obvious Sasuke didn't even need to try. He didn't seem to struggle to keep up with her speed, and when she struck it felt as though she was striking a wall, he was clearly much stronger than her.
The day dragged on. It only got better after they swapped partners. No one could make Hinata feel less of herself than Uchiha Sasuke. He was everything she wasn't. Strong, skilful, intelligent, confident, popular… the list, if it was written would be extensive.
She later practiced with Ino, then Kiba and finally Tobio. Ino was a significant improvement to Sasuke however, she was the top performing kunoichi in their class. Hinata admired Ino to an extent, which didn't do anything for her confidence for Ino to show exactly how much stronger and faster she was than Hinata.
Kiba was, like both of her previous partners both stronger and faster, however unlike the previous too he was rough, and uncontrolled. Maybe it was a weakness of his, or maybe he didn't really realise how much he could hurt her. Either way Hinata was left felt quite bruised afterward.
After Tobio, who was stronger and had a better hold of the techniques, Hinata was left feeling both weak and humiliated. Even in these practice training sessions the difference in their levels was very easily notable.
By the end of the day she was feeling a little worse for wear. Her body hurt. Her arms hurt. Her legs hurt. Her self confidence had been knocked down a peg, and all she could think about counting on, was that her next lessons with Naruto held more promise. It seemed like a long shot at this.
All she was asking for at this point was that her father didn't ask her about her progress. She just couldn't deal with that right now.
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Over the course of the following two weeks that is all Hinata would do during the hours she spent with Naruto was raise and lower her stance, much to her growing frustration, each day, each hour, each minute seeming more pointless than the last. She had spend a grant total of 8 days over the past two week with Naruto, 5 hours per day, making a total of 40 hours spend raising and dropping stance. She was seeing no improvement or purpose at the academy or anywhere else. So far as she could tell she was spending hour upon hours just repeating a pointless exercise over and over and over again.
By now even the timid none-confrontational Hinata was getting close to her limit of how long she could be polite about it for. As she rose her stance again for what seemed to be the millionth time she finally had enough
"Naruto-sempai! Why are we doing this over and over again! I'm struggling! I'm really struggling at the academy! And all we're doing are these stupid exercises over and over! I came to you because I need help Naruto!" she yelled at first, her resolve starting to soften toward the end. As she spoke her situation aloud it really hit home, she could feel that pain in her throat telling her if she was going to cry shortly, she tried in vain to swallow it, but it did nothing to ease the feeling.
Naruto who had been looking at her rather surprised by the outburst, smiled at her once more, not saying a word.
She was about to re-summon her courage and shout at him when all of a sudden Naruto smile vanished instantly, he bolted toward her. In the instant she just had time to block him as he came bounding into her, they both crashed into the floor, rolling around before Naruto push away skidding to his feet. Hinata quickly rose too, raising her stance.
She didn't have time to ask questions as he pulling out a kunai, she eyed it cautiously. He threw it! She threw herself to the side, not trusting her speed to dodge Naruto's throw, as she turned she found Naruto already upon her. He threw her a punch, which is was able to deflect finding her stance automatically raised. Several consecutive strikes later Naruto leapt back. Hinata was breathing heavily, the shock of what was happening taking a strong effect on her. He dropped his stance and relaxed, his smile returning, uneasily she lowered her own.
"You asked me what the point of it is" Naruto began "Do you see it now?" he asked with a grin. Hinata was breathing hard, and was well out of her comfort zone, but she couldn't deny him his point. It was well made indeed.
"The first lesson in taijutsu; before you even need to learn how to make a punch, or even to block, is how to be ready." Naruto explained with a level of satisfaction "Now you have proven you can be ready at all times, your stance is strong and you can raise it without thinking." He said smiling proudly at her. "Phase one of our training is complete!"
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Auther Notes: Another Chapter completed!
I understand some of you might be asking the question:
Why could Hinata stand up against Naruto when in the practice sessions she had been defeated easily?
As shortly and simply as possible, first of all, with the exception of Sasuke the academy students wouldn't really be able to hold back and keep a good form of their taijutsu at this point. Naruto on the other hand can hold back since he is more proficient.
Hinata did NOT get a taijutsu boost yet my friends, baby steps
She was also attacked (well in a manner), the adrenaline boost she would have received I expect would have given her a bit of an extra boost for the short duration.