A Treatise into The Genin Purpose: Konoha's Secret Power

It was relatively common knowledge that; while some Jonin-Sensei did decide to go above and beyond in the training of their students, similar to how one Hiruzen Sarutobi had with his own Genin team, that was not the standard practice for most Jonin-Sensei; as they were only really expected to lay the foundation for their wards to become Chunin. Only once a Genin became a Chunin, were they truly into their shinobi career. Because in reality, the entire academy to Genin pipeline was just training for real service in Konoha's military.

The Genin rank exists almost entirely to weed out non-combat specialists and military personnel like medics, staff Genin and 'on-paper' Chunin for desk jobs, and anyone else who would be far more useful to Konoha in those more logistical roles. Separating from the Genin chaff, the Chunin wheat of Konoha's vast fertile fields. The 'economies of scale' if one wanted to put it in terms of business instead of agriculture. Because the bloody world of shinobi relied so heavily on illusions, and allusions, to hide their atrocities.

Chunin rank is where most shinobi begin to define and improve upon themselves. Like wheat being ground into flour, they go from fresh Chunin to experienced soldiers. They no longer have the same safety nets they had as Chunin, they were expected to operate and function in whatever role they were assigned or niche they could dig for themselves.

Chunin also make up the bulk of Konoha's (and every other major village's) active shinobi forces. They conduct things like the more large-scale policing and monitoring of fire country's borders and highways. As well as lots of the more common and profitable protection missions for caravans or various merchants. The individual missions themselves have solid margins of profit compared to their factor for risk but are only profitable enough to begin generating large streams of revenue to fund nearly half of a village like Konoha's economy when they are completed at a massive scale.

These bulk missions are also almost entirely handled in liquid payment methods, like cash or other commonly accepted valuables, almost never requiring lines of credit. Giving major villages like Konoha lots of money on hand for important things like managing supply chains during a war, or rendering cheap and effective policing to the entirety of Fire Country, whose improved level of safety in travel allows for trade to flourish, thereby increasing funding to Konoha.

Then from that wheat, some are baked into bread. This is the pool of Jonin. Still somewhat uniform and homogenous like the wheat before them, only better. These were not only the ones who would be leading and organizing Chunin, as well as those responsible for higher-level military operations, they also acted as an economic coat of armor for Konoha.

These people who complete missions, the real high-earning missions or the militarily important missions, were the ones who brought in the real money that kept the village going, letting them weather any storm. Konoha's much larger than the average pool of active Jonin was their true hidden strength. Nearly one thousand combat-capable Jonin at any given time, even after the most recent shinobi war and the Kyuubi's havoc, Konoha's Jonin pool only barely dipped below five hundred, only barely putting them behind what intelligence estimates Kumogakure to sit at.

This was Konoha's true hidden dagger during the Third Great War, not Namikaze Minato, no matter how important he had been during the conflict. Konoha had the ability to continue doing significantly more high-level missions while still committing similar amounts of resources to every engagement and theatre as their adversaries. Allowing Konoha to hit harder for much longer, even as the other villages' economies burned through capital and resources to push into Fire Country.

One looks at this concrete data, as numbers do not lie, and questions exactly how Konoha has been able to accomplish such a feat? Propaganda suggests the ever-present 'Will of Fire' to be the answer, but that wasn't very likely in reality. The truth circles back to exactly how Konoha trains their ninja.

The practice of giving Genin a Jonin-Sensei didn't exist until Tobirama Senju became Hokage and theorized that such a program would significantly lower Genin casualty rates. Even now, with larger military sizes across the board, Konoha's standard practice of four-man Genin cells is not easily afforded to some of the largest shinobi villages. Both Sunagakure and the Kirigakure only began adopting the policy for most of their Genin after the third war ended. And minor villages simply don't have the numbers to sideline high-level operatives, like Jonin, from their standard mission pool. So they only follow the formula for top-level graduates, and occasionally for promising Genin to form a team to attend the Chunin exams.

The beginning of this practice almost immediately proved Tobirama's theory correct. The direct intervention of Jonin-level ninja for Genin teams dropped casualty rates significantly. And this philosophy followed the formation and industrialization of Konoha within the ninja village system. Other practices followed, like Jonin leaders quickly becoming Jonin-Sensei, and more standardization in Genin team composition, both of which also allowed for the rate of civilian-born academy graduates to decline.

While other villages were mostly still coming out of the warring clans period as Clans that had previously been in competition were now allied out of necessity or fear of Konoha, Konoha had been, albeit somewhat accidentally, creating a system that allowed for recruitment outside the traditional ninja-system. This allowed them to wage war at an unparalleled level, and the other villages soon began following suit.

But this standard explanation of the Shinobi system of ranking and progression doesn't cover the non-traditional. The outliers that exist outside the normal system of operating and mission efficiency that confines most of the ninja world. These are your Senju Tsunade's, Namikaze Minato's, Sarutobi Hiruzen's, Sabaku No Rasa's, and your Hoshigaki Kisame's, in other words, these are the top operatives. People who fall so far out of the curve, that it isn't possible to plot them on a graph in comparison.

Some call them Outliers, but another word for them would be monsters. The true fruits of labor from a well oiled machine of war. Four-hundred and fifty-five, that was the death count that made Minato Namikaze truly infamous. The number is most likely low as well, as Iwagakure was also trying to downplay their own defeat at the time, and the battle was so one-sided and bloody that Konoha had a hard time counting the bodies. But it took one man two blinks of the human eye, maybe three, to kill half a thousand soldiers. Most of them were experienced and battle-hardened Chunin and Jonin who had survived the initial excursions into Konoha's territory, and were ready to launch the last major assault to decapitate the sleeping giant.

The existence of these shinobi, known as S-ranked ninja, is a direct contradiction to every other known rule of shinobi combat. For most of them; without a severe numbers advantage, preparation, and a few extra Jonin; the fight is already a foregone conclusion unless you have another to match, or a lot of luck and some very fancy tricks.

And unlike so many other common misconceptions other villages have of Konoha; that their ninja are soft for 'babying' their Genin, that they suffer from 'bloat', or that they are inefficient; the commonly whispered saying 'Konoha churns out monsters' is certainly not a misconception. For reasons that just as often defy the statistics and numbers, who apparently do in fact lie sometimes, Konoha has managed to produce more shinobi of this 'spectacular' S-Ranked status than nearly every other village combined over their histories.

The reasons for this seem to go beyond any other reasonable explanation that could be explained through our understanding of statistics or social sciences. Who knows, maybe Konoha is even right on this count. Perhaps 'The Will of Fire' could explain such an overwhelming statistical anomaly.

Training With Orochimaru Before Diplomatic Mission to Suna - Interlude

"How does one even train to improve their hearing?" He could hear Orochimaru's soft voice reach his ears, melodic like the rattling of one of her snake summons, but he could not see her. As she had blindfolded him after he had assumed a meditative position in the middle of a different clearing than they had trained in the last few times.

Naruto assumed she sat across from him in a clearing they had not been to in their first few training sessions because he had tracked her by her residual sound. By the minuscule rustling of grass displaced by her sandals, the gentle rustling of her clothes as she stopped and sat down, and the sound of her controlling her breathing mirroring as he had done only a minute beforehand. Eventually, an audible tut from his quasi-sensei let him know that she was expecting an answer, the question was apparently not rhetorical.

Naruto wasn't sure what she could be looking for. Could she be asking for the standard academy answers regarding the importance of hearing to a shinobi? That was unlikely, she seemed more interested in positing genuine thoughts on a topic, a teaching style that seemed to reward creativity of thought and experimentation. But why would she bring him to a new and unfamiliar location and have him meditate while blindfolded if she wasn't looking for a real or practical response?

"Practice?" The blonde immediately knew it to be the incorrect answer. Her verbal disapproval only cemented the fact for him. It seemed she was not looking for a practical solution to a deficit, like poor sound recognition. So maybe she is looking for a more theoretical answer. "Perhaps with chakra, I could enhance the sensitivity of my ear drum to vibrations? Or maybe I could somehow create a field of chakra allowing me to capture more sound?"

He waited a few moments for a sign of the Snake Sannin's disapproval. He didn't want to admit it to himself, but he was a little bit scared of being blindfolded like this with her. No part of him really thought that she would kill him, not that a blindfold would really stop her if she wanted to. But in the few days since she had begun 'testing' him, she had already displayed more than a slight tendency towards the use of a more corporal punishment-focused training style.

Naruto mused about how Kakashi-Sensei had been like that. Kakashi may have not had a lot of things to teach Naruto from a more standard Jonin-Sensei to Genin student, the blonde had learned and mastered far more than what was needed for him to be prepared for the jump to Chuunin.

It was relatively common knowledge that; while some Jonin-Sensei did decide to go above and beyond in the training of their students like Hiruzen Sarutobi had with his own Genin team, that was not the standard practice for most Jonin-Sensei; they were only really expected to lay the foundation for them to become Chunin. Once Chunin they were then truly into their shinobi career.

So the only thing Kakashi truly had to impart to the blonde wildcard was physical training. Drilling him in every aspect the Copy-nin possibly could. Taijutsu, Kenjutsu, kunai, grappling, chokeholds, rigorous exercising, and anything else where he could physically beat Naruto down for each and every mistake the blonde made.

Naruto would probably be a bit more resentful of his second sensei if he hadn't been asking for it. The blonde had not been very happy with having been reassigned to a whole new team, instead of just being put on one to take the upcoming Chuunin exams. He would have to wait six months for another exam and with a team he didn't want. His mood and team interactions matched his disgruntled feelings, and Kakashi took that to mean he wanted more in-depth physical training.

What's worse is that the silver-haired man had been completely right. Well at least mostly right. The constant beatings- I mean training. The constant training forced Naruto to come out of his funk enough to at least not brush his team off. And in doing so, allowed him to grow attached to them.

Probably because under everything else he put up to hide it, how he used to act so straight-laced with the Hokage and Kakashi-sensei, his outward nonchalance and or apathy towards those around him, and everything else he eventually started doing to push people away from him. Even under all of that, he was still desperate for companionship and attention. Although, the blonde personally liked to deflect those feelings in favor of telling himself that he got along and empathized with people so well because he was just cool like that. But who doesn't lie to themselves a little bit?

He realized he still hadn't heard a sound from Orochimaru, only to realize her hand was now reaching out to remove his blindfold. Revealing destruction on a level which the blonde had not been expecting. What had once been a serene slice of nature in the middle of a forest, now looked like a battlefield from the worst theatre of the previous war.

Craters big enough to fit four full-grown adults dotted the now much wider clearing, while trees had been felled and razed. It looked like some of them must have been completely mulched by powerful techniques because there was far too much open space that should be taken up by giant felled trees.

The legend watched him sit there, a small circle around him, maybe a width of two feet, was the only noticeably unaltered piece of land left in sight. He looked awed and obviously confused, trying to figure out the point. "The point is that I can do this," she said gesturing to the destruction around her. "And you had no idea while being in the midst of it. You were still trying to figure out how to hear, and I did this."

Naruto blinked owlishly, he couldn't help himself. That was insane. She did this just because she could? Or just to make the point that she could? Was he so far behind her that the gap could be compared to a baby and a full-grown Iron country samurai having a sword fight?

"And you can either figure out how I did it, figure out how to counter it, or learn to accept it. The first two are how every great ninja becomes great, while the average shinobi learns to accept what is out of their reach. Will you grab hold of greatness, or learn to accept your limits?" With her message firmly in his mind, she disappeared in a swirl of leaves. The pockmarked landscape she left behind mirrored her student's eclectic thoughts.

"What?" Naruto asked himself aloud.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Sorry about this 'Not-a-chapter' chapter. I've actually done a lot of writing recently, only I've done very little organizing of any of it in any way that wasn't in my head. Which is a terrible place to keep things organized. It's like putting your calendar in the city landfill, even if you perfectly fill out your calendar it is still in the middle of a goddamned trash dump.

Also, I officially have no idea where this story is actually going. I definitely used to have a solid grasp on how I wanted it to end and how everything would more or less fit together. But I've just been having so many extra ideas that I think are better or more interesting, or just fit characters and the world better. So I'm basically just playing it by ear now.

I've also decided that I'm going to be reframing exactly how I tell the stories. So now a lot of the things like lore and training will be occurring as sort of 'flashbacks', really as interludes from the past, during the stories. A lot of them will be to better show and explain techniques or training for Naruto, as well as relationships that wouldn't normally be as easy to incorporate naturally in the flow of the story.

Sorry for the wait. Thanks for reading. I know it's a clusterfuck. Feel free to tell your friends or something. Thanks.