Hi my readers…
For those who wonder why Rasa has " low chakra" despite the time he spent and his hard training, well let me tell you that not everyone in the world of Naruto are lucky enough to be born with immense amounts of chakra as Naruto or even Sasuke.
Rasa has a good amount of Chakra for his age, he is at a much higher level than others of his age, but it is still not enough to reach those like the Uzumaki or the Uchiha..., and to all that add that his jutsus need a lot of Chakra so his situation is even more complex.
In short, it is not that he does not have a good amount of Chakra, it is just that it is not enough for his jutsus that consume too much.
Chapter 10: ANBU
"No, these scrolls have the steps to follow to complete and finalize the training for each of you, until you accomplish what is asked of each of you in these scrolls none of you will be able to start performing missions."
All except Canteen looked with some confusion at Skull.
Skull's voice had become more rather than cold:
"You have agreed to become and be part of this ANBU team. If a shinobi is a working hand for his people, then you are now his weapons"
"We Anbu are a cell. We have to know each other's fighting styles and habits inside and out so that we can compensate for our weaknesses and be more than the sum of our parts."
"But when it comes to the line, duty will be more important than teamwork. The mission takes priority over your teammates. Each of you has to learn to fight alone and refrain from the consequences if your teammate fails to do so."
The four nodded understanding that.
Skull's voice still sounded distant:
"This is the way we operate in ANBU. The mission cannot fail. If one goes down, the others keep going. We use our teammates to strengthen us, but we don't depend on them, and we won't come back for them if they fall. Just make sure the body disappears"
"I suggest you think about this during training. Once the missions start, you'll have to live and die by it"
The silence was all there was after that, all four understood those words perfectly, but it was still hard for them to process.
Most Shinobi once they graduated and became Genin were told a few words of inspiration about the village, teamwork, and recognizing the need of others as a necessity for the betterment of the Village.
But now, Skull's words were the exact opposite of what they had once been told.
And even though Rasa still didn't have that mentality and had his own beliefs.
He would listen and accept it for now as long as he kept those he cared about protected and for now, he didn't have a bond with his team and didn't really expect to, so he didn't care.
The others didn't think like Rasa.
This was why they had joined ANBU and they would comply regardless of not quite being in complete agreement, even if they had formed a bond with the others they would prioritize the mission.
Canteen despite being the new Captain of the team, also seemed to have his own thoughts and disagreements with those words, but still seemed to have accepted them as did Rasa.
" Alright!" Skull clapped his hands, causing the three ANBU rookies and the new captain to look at him.
"You will begin training tomorrow earlier in the morning, for now, you are dismissed," Skull said laying down the four scrolls on the ground.
It was obvious which scroll belonged to each of the members, there was an orange one, a blue one, a golden one, and a green one.
After doing this, Skull retired while Canteen as team captain took the scrolls and handed them out to each one without looking at their contents.
Then he said some words to the team to get organized for tomorrow's training and achieve the objectives.
He also pointed out certain important rules to follow as Suna Anbu, apparently, Canteen had already been a special Anbu who used to do missions alone, and now he had become a captain for the first time.
This was a kind of examination not only for the rookies like Rasa but also for the new captain.
After conversing with each other for a few moments they each retired on their own.
None of the four opened their scrolls at the time, all deciding to see what was asked of them in private.
Rasa returned home only to find Pakura and Karura already inside waiting for him.
He could only sigh and smile at their concern, so far they were the only ones Rasa had managed to feel comfortable with.
" Hey there, did you miss me?" asked Rasa with an amused smile.
"Finally about time, I was starving" Pakura grumbled, but despite her grumbling, you could tell she was worried about him.
"Don't listen to her, she was all the time you left nervous to know how you were" said Karura with a smile, making Pakura blush and reproach her.
While Rasa just looked at them amused as they fought.
"So..., everything okay?" finally asked Karura after calming Pakura down.
"Yes, perfect in fact, you would never guess what..." started saying Rasa, but before he could finish what he was saying, Pakura spoke.
"The Kazekage asked you to be his apprentice?" asked Pakura suddenly with his eyes wide open.
And Karura seemed to be just as intrigued as she was.
"This..., wait, how the hell do you know?" asked Rasa.
Even he didn't expect that not now at least, he knew it would happen at some point, but he believed that when he was already a Chunin and he had become more well known in the village.
"Well, Pakura was so nervous when you left that she demanded answers from her family and they told her that there was a rumor that the third Kazekage was planning to teach you himself at some point," Kakura said again betraying Pakura.
But this time, Pakura didn't argue with her but just stared at Rasa.
"So, that means it's true, you're the Kazekage's apprentice!" said Pakura highly exalted.
"Yeah, well... wow, I didn't expect there were rumors about it already, but yeah, I'm indeed the Kazekage's new apprentice!" replied Rasa calmly to them.
"Congratulations Rasa!, that's amazing, now you're just a few steps away from being a great Jonin of Suna," Karura said happily as he gave Rasa a warm hug.
"You, you...!, it doesn't matter, even if you are the Kazekage's apprentice I will surpass you and win, just wait Rasa and you'll see," said a proudly red Pakura not sure if from embarrassment or anger.
Karura and Rasa already expected her to react like that, it was nothing new.
After saying that, Pakura approached the door to leave before turning around when she was right in front of the door.
"By the way, I'm happy for you" Pakura ended up saying in a low voice full of embarrassment before opening the door and quickly leaving Rasa's house.
Rasa could only shake her head in amusement at Pakura's actions, while still hugging Karura who was extremely happy about his new achievement.
The two chatted for a while longer and had dinner together, Karura cooked all kinds of food in celebration of Rasa becoming the Kazekage's apprentice.
Later Karura's brother arrived at Rasa's house as well and when he heard the news he made quite a fuss, causing Karura to die of embarrassment again and reprimand him as she used to do at the academy.
It was one of the reasons why she didn't want her brother around when she was with Rasa.
Finally, when it had become quite late, Rasa accompanied Karura and her brother to their home.
Then he thanked them for everything and said goodbye to both of them and went back home to rest, tomorrow would be a very tiring day with his Anbu training plus his research and personal training.
Chapter 11: Body Flicker Technique
The next day, Rasa went to the meeting point Skull had said to train together with her new Anbu team.
"Okay, starting today, each of you will be trained individually, and then you will train as a team to see your performance and adaptation. From now on, you will have to train for 14 hours a day. After training, you must also make sure to sleep and rest, is that understood? "said Skull.
"Yes!" replied Rasa's team.
Three Anbu suddenly appeared behind Skull.
"Then... You will begin training!"
Rasa and the other three looked at each other and came to a mutual understanding, each separated, preparing for their individual training.
At that point, Skull didn't stop them and said:
"Okay, for the three rookies there will be three places, follow each one to one of the Anbu behind me and head off to do your training. Canteen, with me. Remember, from now on, during your individual training you are no longer teammates, but competitors who must accomplish at all costs what was asked of you!"
The 4 nodded and then the three Anbu behind Skull rushed off into the great wilderness they were in.
Rasa, Custus, and Nomad each quickly followed one of the Anbu.
Only Canteen remained for his personal training with Skull.
'A competitor and we were also given a mission, yes, they are testing how far we are willing to go to complete the training we were asked to do' Rasa thought, smiling out of the corners of her mouth, as he followed his new Anbu trainer who immersed himself in the great desert.
'That's just what I want!, but it shouldn't be that simple, in my scroll I was only asked to do a few things but nothing that would affect the rest of the team in their training, there must be one or maybe two in the team that in their scroll are asked to interfere in our training or something like that' Rasa analyzed.
'Yeah maybe in team training I'll find out. Well, it doesn't matter. For now, I'll just do my part' Rasa decided not knowing what they might have planned.
Rasa followed the Suna Anbu to an open area where nothing but sand could be seen in the surrounding area.
After landing, Rasa quickly looked around to familiarize herself with the place in case he needed it, but there wasn't much to see as it was all sand.
"Gold, your Chakra attributes should be wind, water, and earth attributes," the Anbu suddenly said.
Rasa just nodded calmly, he already knew they had that basic information.
In the scroll he was given he was informed of everything he needed to know, among one of these things was that the other Anbu would only know his basic attributes but would have no knowledge of his Kekkei Genkai and one of the things Rasa was required to do to successfully complete this training was that he was not to use under any circumstances his Kekkei Genkai, he was to keep it secret at all times, if discovered his personal training would have failed.
Because of this Rasa could only use the ninjutsu he knew with his other elements, it was fortunate that he had not practiced only his magnet element and had also focused on improving with his wind and earth element.
Rasa had already achieved both in the wind and earth element Nature Transformation but still lacked mastery in Form Manipulation, while in the water element he had not yet been able to make much progress due to the lack of ninjutsu in the village with this element.
"Three attributes and an acceptable repertoire of ninjutsu for two of them, quite acceptable," praised the Anbu without hesitation.
Hearing the Anbu's praise, Rasa did not speak but looked at him calmly.
"It just happened that I also have wind and earth attributes. Starting today, I will train your ninjutsu, and we will do physical training, from what I see your taijutsu skills are average, well, it was to be expected, in Anbu, you will not be asked for a much higher level of Taijutsu than what you already have, but you will have to greatly improve your Body Flicker Technique", said the Anbu seriously.
Rasa nodded, the Anbu was right. His Taijutsu skills were horrible but compared to the rest of Suna's ninjas, they were average.
This was because, among the five big villages, Sunagakure was the worst in Taijutsu due to all the ninjas in the village focusing on research, ninjutsu, and puppets.
The only way the Suna ninja had to physically match the rest of the villages was with the Body Flicker Technique which allowed them to get away from their enemy to hold a distant confrontation with ninjutsu or in the case of the puppeteers, only escape if they lost their puppets.
From Rasa's point of view, Taijutsu was not only his greatest weakness but the greatest weakness of all Suna ninjas, and the puppeteers of Sunagakure are known to be extremely weak without their puppets.
There are only a few ninjas who focus on ninjutsu that have an acceptable taijutsu in Sunagakure but compared to other villages, they all leave much to be desired.
From a young age all ninjas in Suna are taught the basics of taijutsu, Rasa learned it from his own parents at the age of only 5 years old, and then in the academy, they only reinforce what they already learned, that's how low the level of taijutsu was already taught.
Rasa was ashamed of his level of Taijutsu and although he tried to improve, the truth is that he sucked in this branch, he had no talent, and also not having in Sunagakure an acceptable Taijutsu master only complicated things more.
For this reason, Rasa decided not to waste so much time on Taijutsu knowing that his improvements were minimal and decided to leave it for later when he gets a more acceptable method of training.
"I know," Rasa said seriously.
The Anbu nodded and said:
"Then, I will tell you the content of the training you will have with me. In the morning, I will train your wind escape technique, and then you will use it against my ground escape. In the afternoon, you will use the ground escape technique to block my wind escape. I can only help you with your attribute training in this way, I am not your teacher, I am your trainer, if you wish to learn ninjutsu you will have to learn them on your own."
As the Anbu spoke, Rasa only sighed slightly amused with the situation as he wondered to himself what kind of Ninjutsu this Anbu could get to teach him that the Kazekage didn't already have, if he wanted ninjutsus he would just have to ask his new Master, who no doubt had the largest collection of ninjutsu in Sunagakure.
Being able to practice changing the chakra nature of his earth and wind attribute with someone with experience was all he needed, in case he needed new ninjutsus he would go to his Master.
An Anbu's escape technique is no doubt very powerful, and to train his own escape from the ground and wind, having the Anbu use these was going to be very good training for Rasa to learn the Form Manipulation of his ground and wind attribute.
"So, let's start with your training then."
"Yes."
No unnecessary nonsense, the Anbu began training him first in the use and implementation of his wind and earth techniques in combat, then they moved on to learning how to manipulate the chakra form of these elements, and lastly, they moved on to training his physique.
Chapter 12: Anbu corps
After finishing the individual training, Rasa had to return on his own to the meeting point.
When he arrived he found that all the other members of the team, except for Custus, were already at the meeting point.
Only a few minutes passed and Custus arrived at the meeting point.
And at that very moment, Skull began to speak:
"Okay, now team lessons begin, first of all, all of you rookies should know that Anbu is directly under the Shadow, and all orders are issued by the Shadow" started saying Skull seriously.
Everyone nodded knowing that the Kazekage was always the ultimate authority, never to be disobeyed no matter the situation.
"There are multiple teams of four or five people under the Anbu corps, you should become one of them and finally, always remember that team captains uniformly relay orders and lead the execution of tasks" Skull continued his speech.
'So the Shadow who is the Kazekage issues the orders and the team captain is in charge of transmitting the Shadow's order as well as executing the task, but what if the captain asks the team to do something that is not in the Shadow's orders?' wondered Rasa.
"All Anbu members are excellent ninjas selected from the village. Our main responsibility is to protect the shadows and prevent foreign enemies from invading the ninja village" continued Skull explaining without stopping for Rasa's thoughts.
"But we are also responsible for tasks such as enemy reconnaissance and assassination among other things. The nature of the tasks is usually extremely secret. And they can also be common and boring missions, such as protecting or guarding important suspects, and so on. Now, can any of you tell me why in Anbu we cover our faces?" asked Skull, and apparently Canteen who surely already knew the answer because he was already a special Anbu, didn't raise his hand on Skull's orders, or so Rasa thought.
Custus stepped forward and addressed Skull.
"That is due to the specificity of the tasks that Anbu have and the need to keep Anbu's identity secret. This is why Suna Anbu members wear gauze and turbans that cover their heads at all times and only in the Sunagakure Assassination Squad do they wear masks that mimic devilish shapes when performing, and the nature of the mission and any other information is always kept confidential" Custus explained and then stepped back and rejoined the group.
"Correct, the nature of Anbu's tasks is different from the missions that the other Suna shinobi do, Anbu will come into contact with the core secrets of the village, therefore, loyalty is also one of the necessary conditions for Anbu" nodded Skull and continued explaining.
"For this reason, joining Anbu is not a simple matter, members joining Anbu basically need to be recommended or evaluated to join Anbu and lastly the Shadow must agree to join, all of you meet those conditions for now, however, it remains to be seen if you can go through this training to start executing missions."
"Alright rookies, let's start with the team training" finished Skull.
Rasa spent the next few days training individually with an Anbu and then as a team with Skull, a total of 14 hours a day, he had almost no time to do anything else.
The team training was at first simple, but after a few days, things started to change.
Rasa's team was asked to fulfill a specific mission where some Anbu were in charge of evaluating them.
In these missions, the biggest problem was that each one of the team had to decide whether or not to follow the orders of their captain Canteen.
You may wonder why if you know that you always have to follow the captain's orders.
Well, that was because in some cases it seemed that Captain Canteen's orders conflicted with the orders that each of the team had in their personal scrolls.
That's right, the scrolls that each one of them got on the first day where were told what they had to do to complete their training successfully.
For this reason, the evaluation missions that they did in team training used to be even more difficult since none could reveal the contents of the personal scroll, so it was only left to Canteen to interpret what could be the restrictions that each one had and the rest of the team could only try to execute in some way Canteen's orders without disobeying the ones they already had in their own scrolls.
So they spent 3 weeks training and always with various problems when training as a team.
But finally, it seemed that Canteen had managed to issue orders that did not contradict the personal scrolls of each of the team members, or at least they managed to finally manage to execute the orders without disobeying the scrolls.
Obviously, what Rasa's team was doing was to find the gaps in the scroll in order to be able to act and complete the team training.
Today the training was finally finished.
"Rookies, it took time, but you all did what was asked of you and from now on you are officially an Anbu team. Canteen as your captain will be in charge of conveying to you the missions you will perform. Oh, another thing, from now on it is your decision whether or not to keep your identity secret from your team members, each of you is free to decide that. Very well, you are dismissed" with that Skull disappeared leaving Rasa's group behind.
"Looks like we finally made it Gold, I thought we'd be training for the rest of our lives," Custus said jokingly to Rasa, the two of them had started to get along quite well on one of the many missions they did in training.
"So it seems, turns out Nomad finally managed to follow the captain's orders" Rasa teased her other partner who had been the biggest problem in the team missions.
"It's not my fault that the captain always asked me to do things I couldn't do without breaking the orders on the scroll" replied Nomad offended and embarrassed, but he knew it was true what he was saying, if it wasn't for him, in two weeks they could have finished the team training.
"Nomad is right, it was my duty to understand everyone's situation and issue orders that they could carry out, and if we delayed it was because of my inappropriate leadership" Canteen supported Nomad.
"Come on captain, we all know you managed to lead the team perfectly, if it wasn't for Nomad's stone brain that didn't know how to find the gaps in his own scroll, it probably wouldn't have been so difficult for you to give orders that we can all execute" affirmed Custus.
"As your captain, it is my duty to adapt to such things" Canteen replied again.
"Well, I guess there always has to be a black sheep on the team," said Rasa causing Custus to chuckle slightly.
"Very funny, but if I remember correctly in strength I'm the best on the team, only below the captain, so I don't know what all the laughing is about," said Nomad proudly.
"Say what you want, strength without intelligence is useless," said Custus defensively, who was the one who felt most annoyed by Nomad's statement since she was the weakest in terms of strength in the team.
Rasa on the other hand just smiled amused, if he could have used his gold dust he would have been at the same level of strength as Nomad and if he also used his control over the metal he would be at the same level as a special Jonin.