**Important Author's Note Below
Genjutsu were based on information. That was a core, non-negotiable principle. What you experience could only feature images, sounds and sensations provided by either yourself or the caster. Even the legendary Infinite Tsukuyomi worked on this principle. According to canon, the genjutsu constructed an unfathomably extensive and immersive illusory world, drawing on the target's imagination and understanding of their surroundings. In other words, it seemed limited by reality and believability.
That was one reason that the deadliest genjutsu masters always sampled the food they cooked, so to speak. They took agonizing poisons to know what they felt like. They stabbed themselves. They drowned themselves. Even amateurs always experienced the techniques they were learning multiple times before claiming any proficiency in them. No matter how unpleasant the process was.
I returned home to Kazuhiro, mind shattered, questioning everything around me. Seeing how out of it I was, my brother frantically apologized for his role in the exam. I ignored that. He wanted to take me out for a celebratory dinner. I refused.
"Tell me something I can't possibly imagine," I asked, voice close to breaking. "Prove to me that I'm not in a genjutsu."
"I…I don't know," Kazuhiro fumbled, and a part of me appreciated that, despite making jonin, he was still my clumsy, emotionally awkward brother. "Would…I could get Hirose-san? Perhaps he could help?"
"No," I shot back immediately. "I don't trust him. Please."
He sat next to me on our couch, and put his arm around me. I ducked into his side, feeling extremely small. I had grown a lot in the past half-decade, but I was still only ten. He thought about my request for a long while.
"Something you can't even imagine," he murmured, a frown twisted his lips. "Tell me, what do you think the point of this supposed genjutsu is?"
It was a good and important question. "It seems like my life is too good to be true right now. I graduated at the top of my class, when just last night I was fighting for my life." Like the terror I felt was only a figment. "They want my knowledge. I think. And if they're showing me all this, then they probably want me to let my guard down. If I'm not really in the village, I can't exactly walk to all these places, like the academy or our home. Every movement I make, every word I say—it must be all in my head. And unless the caster has an intimate familiarity of Iwagakure, which is highly unlikely, the genjutsu must draw information from my own memories and experiences. So to get the information they want, they're possibly using a Yamanaka."
"We have ways of determining the presence of the Yamanaka in our minds," he offered. "Genin don't normally worry about them, but I could teach you if you want."
"I do," I said immediately. "As soon as I can be sure you're actually trying to help me."
"Right, of course," he said softly. "Let your guard down, then. They want to make you comfortable, so when it's time for you to act on or utilize whatever knowledge they want, they can see your thoughts? If that's true, they'd want to surround you with positivity. Do you agree?"
I nodded hesitantly. The world I was in right now was incredibly complex. If it was an utter fabrication, a genjutsu that utilized my own brain's expectations to form a convincing illusion, then I doubted that bits and pieces of it could be edited by the user without considerable disturbance to my surroundings. So I kept my eyes peeled, searching the few pictures on the walls, the furniture worn from use, the flickering chandelier combined with the scorch marks on the ceiling—Kazuhiro couldn't be bothered to use the pulley system to bring it down to him, so he used low level Katon jutsu to light it.
"Then I'll tell you something bad," he decided. "Hopefully, something you can't even imagine."
Kazuhiro was silent for a moment. "You know I thought the world of your father. I loved him and respected him even more than I did my own. Can you ever imagine me saying anything bad about him?"
"It depends," I murmured. "Are you going to tell me he snored?"
His chuckle lacked emotion. "No. No, the truth is, he once did something truly atrocious. Something that I, ever since learning of it after his death, have had difficulty looking past."
That was sufficiently unbelievable. Kazuhiro worshiped the memory of Imai Hisashi. For him to say anything truly negative about the man was unfathomable. And even if he had committed some wrong, then I couldn't imagine him sharing it with me. I thought he'd rather stab his own foot, and that level of reluctance was present on his face now.
"Please," I whispered again, and he sighed.
"Once I received my promotion, I had the bright idea to use my higher level of clearance to search for more information on your father," he said. "I wanted to find more about him to share with you. But…well. You know how I told you your father retired as a shinobi after losing his arm? He told me he lost it while completing a mission. But that was a lie. According to official documentation, the Jonin Commander himself sentenced him to dismemberment. It wasn't done in the field either—there was a legal preceding, and a trial. He was found guilty of a great crime, and that was one of his punishments."
My eyes widened a fraction. My birth father was a jonin, and they were at war. What could he possibly have done for Iwagakure to do something like that?
"Why?" I asked simply, after the silence stretched on.
Kazuhiro was truly struggling to get the words out. "While on a mission, he murdered one of his teammates. Another jonin. The others on the squad caught him in the act."
"Maybe he had a reason?" I offered, though it was a feeble hope. Killing teammates was a cardinal sin.
Kazuhiro barked a humorless laugh. "He did. It just wasn't a good one. This wasn't overtly stated—it was but a minor detail listed in the report. The jonin he killed was married to another. One Omori Mana."
Holy Moses. "My mother."
Kazuhiro gave a ragged sigh. "Yeah. I have no idea if she ever knew that your father killed her first husband. Iwa wasn't aware that they later became…involved. Your mother had been moved to act as a vanguard in Fugatoro shortly before this occurred, due to her own disability. Your father, after his trial, was banished from Iwagakure itself and ended up there under his own choice. I would guess because he knew Mana was there. If there wasn't a war going on, with everyone's attention so split, he likely wouldn't have been allowed to settle in the village. But when he showed up, clearly an Iwa shinobi but missing an arm, they just assumed he was a disabled veteran and welcomed him as a hero."
That was incredibly scummy. If that were true, then Hisashi had probably used the fact that he was teammates with her late husband as an in. Clearly, not revealing that he had actually been the one to murder him.
I never knew the man, and as such never had strong opinions of him. Kazuhiro loved him, and I respected that, so I loved him by extension. But it wasn't difficult to swap that for disgust. My god-brother, on the other hand, clearly felt far worse about the whole clusterfuck than I did.
"I'm sorry, nii-san," I said, wrapping him in a big hug.
"What are you sorry about?"
"That I was the catalyst of what ruined your image of my father."
"Kasaiki, no," he rebuked. "This was the exact opposite of your fault. And I…I've been going back and forth about telling you this at all. I didn't want you to live in shame, or—"
"No," I disagreed immediately. "I'm very glad you told me. In fact, I would have been…" furious, "displeased if you didn't. Besides."
I squirmed my way out of his side, noticing that he was avoiding eye contact. To remedy this, I took his face in both my hands and forcibly turned his head to face mine.
"Imai Hisashi may have given me half of his genes. But he didn't raise me. You did. All my life, it's been you. If anything, you're my real father."
His eyes were misty as he brought me in for a hug. I squeezed him as hard as I could without chakra.
"I'm not in a genjutsu, by the way," I said, trying to inject some humor into the depressing atmosphere, though in reality I still had lingering doubt. "I could never have imagined you saying that."
"Good, good," he said. "Does that mean we can celebrate? Record breaker Kasaiki?"
"Ugh, you know about that already?" I asked, though a satisfied, if not pleased, smirk twitched across my face. It didn't last for long.
"Everyone knows about it, imouto," he said. "It was big news. Spread intentionally, no doubt—a huge morale booster."
I never thought about that. I suppose it was a pretty big deal—we were heading into a war, and it probably raised everyone's spirits to learn that Iwa had such a promising new generation.
"Have you gossip hounds figured out who my sensei's going to be already?" I asked.
"It seems as if there's only going to be one jonin sensei for your year," he said, and I winced. Only one? That sucked for my classmates. As top scorer, I know I would either be on their team, or I would have an apprenticeship. I wasn't sure which one I'd want more.
"It's Horie Suzume. Young, only a little older than me, but quite accomplished. You'll learn well under her."
Ah. A Kunoichi. I wasn't displeased by that at all. I might have preferred someone a little more infamous—I hadn't even heard of one Horie Suzume—but a jonin was a jonin. I wouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth.
"Well, that's good," I decided. But still, I didn't think I had it in me to celebrate.
"You're still troubled," Kazuhiro noted, "Is it about your father?"
"No," I murmured. What troubled me, beyond the more immediately urgent threat of the genjutsu, was that I had just gone through psychological torture for a goddamn test, and that I was just expected to move on like nothing happened. I struggled to articulate that to Kazuhiro. Brother he may be, but he was a loyal, Iwagakure jonin first and foremost. I tried to reign it in, like the shinobi I was supposed to be. But it soon came out anyway.
"This village makes me feel like I'm insane," I blurted out, the words spilling faster and faster. "Does no one else see how terrible this all is? Am I the only one? This exam sucked. Yeah, I can take it. But what about the others? They're just kids. This could really hurt them!"
"They were hard on you because you could take it," Kazuhiro replied, brow furrowed. "Not everyone had the same exam experience. That's why most phases, especially in the beginning, were individual. The graduation exam is always difficult, no matter how advanced you are, because they intentionally make it so that each student is pushed to their absolute limit. The trials they put you through were a testament to your own skill, your own strength, your own intelligence. And the fact that you, who must have taken one of the most difficult academy exams ever devised, broke the record for highest scorer…it's unbelievable. Everybody is so impressed with you, imouto."
"That doesn't make it okay!" I exploded. "Everybody thinks they know every fucking thing about me, but they don't. You don't even know what my limits are, you don't know how I think. So how the fuck are they supposed to, huh?"
I was straying into dangerous waters, but I frankly couldn't give a shit at the moment.
"They've been trying to instill trust in the system in me all through the academy, and then they pull some shit like this! How am I supposed to believe anything my superiors say to me now? How do they not expect me to be hesitant about sharing my discoveries with R&D, now that they've put the idea of a department leak in my head? Do they think the Merit system and my greed will just outweigh that? Like, come on!"
"The exam was an isolated incident," he said soothingly. "Those conditions were unique. Your jonin sensei, your superiors, they won't betray your trust like that again. Whoever picks up your instruction may deceive you to teach a lesson, but you'll never experience anything like that final. You can look beyond that."
"Like hell I can!" I shouted. "You don't get to tell me what I can or can't look past! I always kinda thought this was true, but now I'm sure. You, along with everyone in Iwagakure, have no idea what chakra is capable of! Genjutsu and fuinjutsu especially! But I know. You expect me to trust that this won't happen, that someone can't come along and put me in a genjutsu capable of overwriting my every thought, that my precious people can't be brainwashed or straight up replaced with me being none the wiser, but I can't. Because in this world, everything is possible! Chakra has unlimited potential. I get that, why can't you?"
My heart was beating faster, and I felt cold, clammy sweat soaking my clothes.
"You don't know every fucking thing about me, and no one in this village does! Because half of the things I know, you can't even fucking comprehend! You know how I can do all the things I'm capable of? Because I know chakra, and you don't. So already, everything you—Yoshiro-sensei, the fucking Red Ogres, everyone—knows about me is already skewed!"
They didn't know about the Mangekyō Sharingan. They didn't know about Madara or Zetsu pulling strings in the background. They didn't know about how people in this world could call down meteors capable of wiping out entire armies. They didn't know that the dead could be brought back to life with infinite chakra. Nothing was too far of a stretch.
"You think I could take this exam and come out unscathed? Well, I can't. I haven't!"
I stopped, panting, eyes darting in every direction, looking for an escape. I knew everything I shouted at my brother would likely find itself in a file somewhere. I just couldn't bring myself to care.
Kazuhiro took a step towards me, and I flinched away. He seemed distraught.
"I'm sorry, imouto," he said. "I'm sorry we didn't think things through."
"You overestimated me," I said, my voice cracking. "I'm not who you think I am."
"No," he immediately disagreed. "We underestimated you. You're right. We can't see the world like you can. I'm not sure if anyone in the village is capable of that. And it's not just regarding chakra, either. You've always had this way of seeing the value in things, and in people. Like Aimi-chan. Everyone had written her off, but you saw what she could be."
"Yeah, that's another thing that pisses me off," I spat. "Every fucking one of the kids in my class has potential in something. But we're writing most of them off, just shoving them in the genin corps to rot instead of developing it. Yeah, I get we don't have enough instructors, but come on! These are people's lives! It's not fair!"
"It's the way it has to be," Kazuhiro said.
"It isn't," I insisted. "It can be different. We can be better. I know we can!"
I have thought about the story of Naruto a lot these past few years. It was set in Konoha for a reason. Konoha was the first hidden village, created from the dream of two enemies turned friends who just so happened to be the strongest shinobi perhaps ever (there was also the reincarnation bullshit, but I still could barely comprehend that). Hashirama and Madara created Konoha so that the children of their clan didn't have to die in war.
Iwagakure was created because none of her founding clans could stand up to the newly formed hidden village on their own. While Konoha was built on the hope for a better tomorrow, Iwagakure, like most of the other villages, was built out of fear. And it showed, both in their political/military sectors and their culture itself.
If Iwagakure could change from an institution of fear into an institution of hope, then this could be a great place to live. I just knew it. There was so much potential here. It was the people, the backwards mindsets, that ruined it.
"I believe you," Kazuhiro finally said. "I trust in you, and what you can see. And I want to see it too. So, if you're dissatisfied with the status quo, change it."
He reached out to me, and this time I didn't jerk away as he cupped my cheek and wiped away a tear with his thumb. I didn't even notice it fall.
"You are amazing, imotou," he declared. "You will continue to rise. You will grow into prominence sooner rather than later. You will have power, influence, everything. It's inevitable. So use it. Change this village into what you can envision it becoming. I'd love to see it one day."
He made it sound so easy. I knew it wouldn't be. This wasn't the first time I considered the prospect, not nearly. Every shitty thing they made us do in the academy brought the idea to the forefront. But the power over everything mindset was so ingrained in the people here. It would take so much to stamp it out. I wouldn't even know where to begin.
And on the eve of war, too. When there was every incentive to risk welfare for strength.
Iwa couldn't change until the Third Shinobi War had ended. And I wouldn't be in a position to change it until then either. But legends were made on the battlefield. In canon, the Yellow Flash would rise in prominence to become the fourth hokage. He made his vision into reality. There was nothing saying that I couldn't do the same.
"Okay," I said, softly.
"Okay?" he repeated, and I nodded.
"I'll show you, nii-san. I'll show everyone."
All of a sudden, my stomach growled, reminding me that all it's had to digest recently were poisoned eggs and stress.
"Can we get yakiniku?" I asked, hesitantly. For some reason, celebration, or at least a distraction, didn't sound so bad anymore.
"Absolutely," he said, though his grin faded for a moment. "There is one more thing I should tell you. Regarding your father."
I nodded, urging him to continue so we could put all that shittiness behind us for the night.
"I told you I was going back and forth on sharing his crime with you. One of the big reasons I thought I should was that Mana's first husband, the one Hisashi…killed. He was part of a clan. And Clans tend to hold onto grudges, especially grudges like that. And…they also don't tend to care if it was a relative who committed the crime against them, rather than yourself."
Oof.
"What clan do I have to keep an eye out for?" I asked, knowing the answer already.
"The Bakuhatsu clan," he said, confirming my suspicions. "I would recommend that you go out of your way to avoid them and their allies. If I'd have known, I would have had you take my last name all those years ago. Now it's too late. I have no doubt you are at least on their watch list. Please, do not give them a reason to act against you."
"I'll do my best," I lied. That ship had already sailed. I did not accept responsibility for the actions of my father, even if the Bakuhatsu clan foisted it on me. Their actions against me were not justified. I wasn't just going to wipe my hands and call us good now.
I was out of Bakuhatsu Gari's grasp. And I would stay out of Bakuhatsu Gari's grasp. He could hate me for my father all he wanted but that would never change.
- - - { ワナビー } - - -
For the last time in what would likely be a long, long while, I found myself back in the academy. Poetically, my batch's very first home room, the one I crawled through the window into. Seriously, what the fuck was I thinking?
It was emptier than it had been way back then. I scanned the familiar, but far more worn faces, appreciating how many of my classmates made it to this point. To my knowledge, seven out of twenty four—around twenty-nine percent—was incredibly rare. It was strange seeing them with headbands. All of them—all of us—were officially shinobi.
There were the Konjiki twins, at the front of the class per usual. Daigo was there, and my eyes grew flinty as they landed on him. There was Iwao next to Takeo, and Hayato was there too. Higa Mari, who we all expected to see here, was conspicuously absent.
"Congratulations," Yoshiro-sensei greeted us, though his words were characteristically lacking emotion. However, they were sincere all the same.
"If you are here, that means you have passed the exam. I know all too well how hard each of you worked, and what you've sacrificed to make it to this point. You have proven beyond a doubt your commitment to this village, and to one another. Your comrades."
His eyes swept around the room.
"Seven of you have passed," he observed. "That number has only been reached three times since the academy's official conception. Including this instance, I have been sensei of two of those batches."
Oh, damn. I always considered Yoshiro-sensei a good teacher, if extremely strict and sometimes cruel. But he had only been the sensei to three batches, and one of those he only stepped in towards the end. That kind of record seemed incredibly impressive. No doubt his superiors thought so as well.
"Of that last batch, five are now jonin. The other two, chunin. I firmly believe that, when it is time for me to congratulate the next batch I teach on their success, I will be able to cite similar statistics about you."
Wow. This was far mushier than I ever expected the man to get. It was so strange how genuinely emotional this was making me.
I stood up from my desk, and all eyes turned to me. Yoshiro-sensei arched an eyebrow.
"Yes, Imai?"
I clasped my hands in front of me, and bowed deeply.
"Arigato, sensei," I said. "For everything."
I looked up to see a neutral expression on his face.
"You already passed," he deadpanned. "There's no need for flattery."
Then, in an unrehearsed moment of solidarity, the rest of my classmates stood up as one. There was a light chorus of slaps as they clasped their hands like I did and bowed.
"Arigato," six voices called in harmony, and since I was the only one upright, only I saw the look of…something in his eyes. It was almost an emotion. Almost.
"Thanks are not necessary," he said. "I was fulfilling my duty to Iwagakure, and to you."
He must have been uncomfortable with all the emotionally charged attention, because he quickly changed the subject.
"You have all been gathered here for two reasons," he said. "The first is to receive your reward for passing the exam. Your Merits."
All of us sat up straighter as he passed us from desk to desk, dropping a small sack onto each of them. I quickly scooped mine up and placed it in the miscellaneous section of my inventory. I'd put it somewhere else later, but for now I needed to be sure it was far out of reach of any wandering hands.
It wasn't that I didn't trust my classmates. Actually, those that were now present around me I trusted more than just about anybody in this world (Except Daigo at the moment). But, to me, Merits were just that important.
"The second, which you are no doubt anxiously waiting for, is team assignment."
Despite myself, and my standing, my heart began to beat harder. This was it. One of the key moments I'd been waiting for, ever since my rebirth into this world.
"Doi Hayato," he called first, and suddenly there was a tall, lanky man standing next to him. His hair was the color of charcoal and curly, and he wore a Kakashi-esque mask that covered his mouth and nose.
"You will be apprenticing under jonin Niwa Isao."
I thought Hayato was pleased by this. It was hard to tell, though that was likely intentional, and the reason he landed an apprenticeship under a stealth specialist in the first place. I was happy for him; he'd be able to learn a lot about his specialization from a Niwa clan member.
"Next. Ashikaga Takeo. Konjiki Katsuo. And Konjiki Katsumi. You will form team Horie, under jonin Horie Suzume."
My grin froze as the jonin I thought I was going to get was awarded to the fourth, fifth and sixth seated students in the exam. I had thought I would be fine, or even prefer the personal instruction offered by an apprenticeship, but it was in that moment that I realized I was kidding myself. The entire first half of Naruto was devoted to the adventures of Team Seven, and I wanted that traditional experience too. It was the principle of the matter.
Horie Suzume entered the room at this moment (through the door like a normal person) as her new team stood up. She didn't have any especially distinctive features, but she carried herself with the confidence and poise I'd expect from a jonin.
"Follow me," she said simply, and now there were only three students left.
The slight bitterness went away almost immediately. If I couldn't have either of the twins or Takeo, then it was probably better that I wasn't placed on a team. Though we were civil, I still didn't want to be teammates with Iwao. Especially after the latest incident. And Daigo…a couple days ago, I would have wanted him as a teammate the most. But now I was a little peeved at him, to say the least.
I turned back to Yoshiro-sensei, who had a look of mild annoyance on his face as he looked at us. We waited expectantly, but he didn't say a word.
"Sensei?" Iwao asked, eventually.
"I apologize," he said neutrally. "I am waiting. For your sensei."
Yeah, of fucking course. As soon as I decide I'm grateful not to be put on a team with Iwao and Daigo, the carpet gets ripped from under me. But I was more than a little confused. Kazuhiro said definitively that there would only be one jonin sensei assigned to this batch, and he and his coworkers would know. From what he told me, the jonin community was relatively close-knit.
So we will be a team, then. I made eye contact with Iwao and nodded in acknowledgement. It seemed his prediction was spot on. I didn't think it was poor myself, but Ishida Yuudai could try as hard as he pleased. If they couldn't make a team with the two of us that synergized, had a clear focus, and matched whatever sensei they could scrounge up, then there was nothing he could do to force us together.
Apparently, they were able to come up with something. And apparently, Daigo fit into their vision somehow. Now, I was just immensely curious as to how our sensei fit into it.
Yoshiro-sensei certainly wasn't giving any hints. He remained silent, eyes flicking towards the door every few seconds. Eventually, with a soft sigh, he sat down behind his desk.
"It seems he's running late."
My eye twitched. Seriously? Were we really being Kakashi'd right now?
An hour passed, and though a core tenet to being a ninja was patience, Yoshiro-sensei up and left, telling us to wait here.
We theoretically had privacy, but this could very well be a test, for all I knew. Maybe our sensei was already here, spying on us to observe our interactions when we thought we were alone.
"It seems you were right, Iwao," I said to spark conversation. "We were placed on a team together."
"Joy," he responded, voice dripping with sardonicism. I rolled my eyes.
"Don't you think it's time we buried the hatchet?" I asked. "You can't still be mad about what happened when we were kids."
I had never brought up what happened when we were kids. Not since we started the academy.
"I'm not," he replied. "You've given me plenty of reasons to dislike you since then." He didn't elaborate, but I had some idea of what he meant. I did come off a little…bitchy.
"Don't worry. My feelings towards you won't negatively impact our ability to work as a team." There was that at least. He turned to Daigo. "Hirose-san. You, it will be a pleasure to work with."
Daigo dipped his head. "Likewise."
I snorted. "Give him time, Iwao-kun. You won't be saying that soon enough."
Iwao arched an eyebrow. Last he knew, Daigo and I were friends.
"Look, Imai," Daigo said. "I'm sorry for the wrong I committed against you." I hadn't had time to properly yell at him, but he was smart. We entered the genjutsu exam on close terms, and I'd been pissy at him ever since. He could put two and two together.
"But you benefited from our arrangement. Possibly, even more than me and my father did. Surely that must count for something?"
Oh, this mother fucker.
"Or, you could have been transparent and asked for my help like a normal person," I spat. "I still would have said yes. Probably, we would have advanced more quickly and efficiently if you put as much effort into getting the educational references we needed instead of lying to me for years."
"We couldn't be sure you would agree to help us if we were open," he said.
"I think you mean: you couldn't be sure I would allow you to use me if you didn't trick me into it," I shot back.
"Look, I sincerely apologize," he said. "But we're teammates now. We can't let my mistake impact our cohesiveness."
"Don't worry. It won't." I said, turning away from him. "Consider my partnership with the Hirose family concluded. Additionally, know that I am going to submit our research to R&D. I can only imagine how many Merits I'll get for it."
"You can't," he protested. "Our contract—"
"What do you think Iwa will care about more?" I asked. "Enforcing a domestic legal contract? Or adding a valuable technique to her arsenal that might put us at an advantage against the likes of the Uchiha?"
He was silent for a moment. Then, "I will notify my father. And I will ask him not to fight it." After a moment, he added, "it's not like almost anyone is capable of learning the technique anyway. And you deserve the Merits for it."
I nodded jerkily. That was…actually the right thing to say. Who knew Daigo was capable of that?
Still didn't make up for what he and his father did to me. But it was a step in the right direction.
For a whole second hour, we continued to sit in silence, which was far more stilted and awkward than it had before.
What if I propped an eraser in the sliding door?
I shook away that intrusive thought. This wasn't Konoha, and the jonin here weren't to be trifled with.
Finally, the door opened to reveal Yoshiro-sensei in the doorway. Behind him, I could see a shadow.
"Team Kamizuru," he intoned, and my pulse quickened at our new address. "I have returned with your sensei."
"I apologize," came a pleasant voice, one that felt extremely familiar, though I can't place why. Where have I heard that voice before?
"I agreed to this arrangement over half a decade ago, and hadn't received a reminder since. I didn't realize that my casual word was to be made into such a spectacle."
"That was by Tsuchikage-dono's order," Yoshiro-sensei explained, stepping aside to allow a stocky, bearded man through. Immediately, Daigo and Iwao shot to their feet, shock clear on their faces. I was only a split second behind them.
"I'm sure," he deadpanned, turning his attention to us. "So, you will be my first genin team. Very well. We will not be referred to as team Kamizuru. There are already enough of those. Instead, you will be known as Team Tsuchibokori."
Arms clasped behind him he took to the center of the room. His mere presence was so intense, that we couldn't tear our eyes away from his own..
"Clearly, you already know who I am," the Tsuchikage's son said. "From now on, I suppose you will have to refer to me as Biwa-sensei."
His lips twisted in distaste. "Sounds just as terrible as I thought it would. Ah, well. Come with me. I wanna see what I'm working with."
- - - { ワナビー } - - -
AN: It's finally here. The much anticipated team selection. Plenty of you guessed the teammates. Not many (who reviewed at least) guessed the sensei. Although there was someone who guessed it soon after Biwa made his first appearance, which was impressive. He's the logical choice for Kasaiki's sensei—you'll see what I mean by that.
This is Biwa's first team ever. Basically, the Tsuchikage has been badgering him for over a decade to take on a team, and to get him off his back, Biwa gave an abstract "I'll take a team in five years," expecting his father to forget about it. He very much didn't.
In the very first chapter, when he discovers Kasaiki in the burning wreckage of Fugatoro, he has an emergency team drafted from the Genin Corps. That's why they called him taicho instead of sensei.
What do you think about the thing with Kasaiki's father?
Finally, I think we've settled on a new name. Float Like a Stone has gotten nothing but enthusiastic feedback on both platforms, so I will be going forward with that. A very heartfelt thanks to user hiro2protagonist for the suggestion, and for being such a faithful and supportive reader, essentially from day one. I plan to change the title with the next update, so those of you who follow this story will never again get a notification saying "Wannabe Gamer of Iwa has updated." Look for Float like a Stone instead.
Have a great week! I may have more exciting news to share with you soon.