Academy test! His grumpy parents took him to the academy, clearly unhappy, expressing their displeasure through tantrums.
'Just like kids,' Askuna thought in exasperation.
Anyway, he found himself among a crowd of children in one of the examination classrooms. The written test started easy, mostly checking his thought processes and loyalty. Then it progressively got harder, which was still relatively simple for dozen of his clones working on them in tandem.
He suspected that they were checking for any abnormalities and since he wanted to become the grandest of them all he decided to beat all records.
In the philosophical questions, which were assessing the already established indoctrination brainwashing for the love of the village, he wrote some nonsense they wanted, making it sound believable, presenting a utilitarian point of view on why the good of the village was better than all else, even sacrifice of others, etc.
Is he stirring the hornet nest with Danzo? Possibly. Does he care? Nope.
But on a more serious note, he hoped he wouldn't be taken for the Root after this. Having made significant progress in half a year, he was reassured that in the event of being confronted by boogymen or his lackeys, he would be able to race through the city using a never-before-seen variation of shunshin, maintained by ten of his clones.
He didn't know for sure, but he suspected that genjutsu also wouldn't work well on him. His motherlobe and clones would try to disrupt his chakra or perform ragdoll movements without using any muscles. It worked almost as well and looked like some older type games when a character glitches tens of meters per second from wall to wall.
Some of his clones maintained and upgraded the motherlobe, which improved the designs even further and added the previously mentioned smooth transmissions, like visuals moving without delay.
Others focused on mastering all Tenketsu, often sending chakra through individual ones and trying to expand them through use, practice, etc. The so-called chakra control group division.
Ten thousand hours was a magical bullshit number conned by one man, which is supposed to reflect the amount of time needed to become an expert. It was debunked later on, but it brings attention to this day.
It also reflects well the magnitude when we are talking about the comparative sum of training hours he had experienced in previous months.
Imagine a life of a chakra control clone. He is doing chakra exercises he devised in a team with other clones like himself, under the watchful eyes of some supervisors, and training designers.
He is to make a certain pattern, accomplish certain tasks, etc., and he does that not remembering what he was doing fifteen minutes prior, his thoughts on the process, various life questions, etc, almost all get forgotten in an update. There is nothing but short-term memory present.
When you remove the hippocampus from people, they still can learn skills through repetition and challenging themselves. In other words, all the useless trivia that repeats in the clones that are not used for training is stripped away by the processing unit, the only thing that stays are skills at manipulating chakra, and occasional thoughts of how to approach certain problems.
It is comparable to just having input and producing output based on the existing knowledge, and then using backpropagation. Keeping all the memories would be useless, therefore the supervisor is responsible for judging which memories contribute, which are just variations, and which potential hypotheses, then it is consulted with a designer and other units before being updated to the base.
So Askuna is not only as capable as someone training non-stop 24/7 for several months, but he has also triple the number of hours of chakra control spent on teamwork with other instances of himself. It applies to all areas, scouting, learning, jutsu, chakra control, moving, and propelling with his ragdoll jutsu.
In fact, the most sizable portion of his clones worked on developing and maintaining constant vigilance for threat detection and scanning techniques. Some were learning chakra sensing with little progress, while others implemented designs of running small invisible strings through the environment to detect all things through contact. Some considered using mundane senses to their extreme potential.
The threat-sensing clones were fully prepared to activate the ragdoll propelling procedure at any time. Concurrently, that would make the other team responsible for propelling through the air by any means possible, like explosions, creating massive strings to take in huge amounts of terrain for deceleration or acceleration, or attaching strings to nearby objects and pulling.
By creating his hivemind technique, he has already saved about 5 years of non-stop training in several months. Soon, he wouldn't care much about the ROOT kidnapping him. He was almost untouchable, even in his sleep.
Coming back to the tests at hand. After showing his brilliance in writing came the time for the physical portion of the testing. First, running.
The chunin holding the flag at the start looked at the boisterous group of ten children, the third batch of them, who would be asked to run 10 laps around the smaller field, totaling three kilometers.
Not noticing anything different with this group, he dropped the flag, and the children started running. However, what scared him was that one of the smallest boys in the group exploded forward, covering the first 10 meters in a second, and started accelerating even faster, each step taking him farther and farther away, while the other children looked stupefied at the display with open mouths.
"Disaster," the chunin mumbled holding his head with both hands while looking at the trial. The children had already lost ten seconds standing there, overall making the test unreliable. So, he decided to stop them from trying and restart the test for them after the first boy finished his run.
"Children!" he called out, capturing their attention. "We will restart the test in a moment; please clear the track for now." He began ushering them, hoping that they would clear the path before the boy returned, but no such luck - most remained standing there, overwhelmed.
The boy neared completion of his first 300-meter loop, but there was no space to pass through the crowd of children, so the chunin worried that the boy would hurt them. To his amazement, the little boy didn't break his run. On the contrary, he accelerated, which made the chunin's eye twitch, wanting to go there and stop him.
But Askuna instead put his right foot on the ground and leaped above the students and everyone, soaring 30 meters high above them all and continuing around the next circle as if nothing had happened.
Other chunin on the field also became interested and came to the race-overseeing chunin to see what the commotion was about. But seeing a small runt running through the test at speeds faster than a genin made their eyes pop out of their sockets.
During the 2nd loop and another leap, the chunin checked the time on the mechanical timer, which read 21 seconds.
After the 5th completed circle, Askuna started slowing down, feeling the strain in his core and legs. He was not used to running.
'My endurance could do some work...' - complained Askuna, now feeling the burn.
The final loops were certainly below a genin's speed, and he barely completed the tenth circle before collapsing on the ground, exhausted.
'Okay, my stamina sucks,' Askuna rectified his previous, clearly too favorable opinion of himself, as he hadn't even reached a fifth of his top speed and could only maintain it for a short time. Moreover, he and his clones had used half of his chakra during the run.
'Utterly pathetic,' he thought, frowning and not even trying to shrug it off. While laying on the hard ground, panting, the chunin approached him, so Askuna asked him, "Time?"
"Two minutes, thirty-six seconds," the chunin replied with a twitching eye. However, before he could berate the boy, there was a question from behind.
"Beto, what is happening there?" came the voice from behind the chunin, and when Askuna looked at the source, it was the more important-looking proctor.
"Sir, this child, Askuna Megumi, completed the three-kilometer run in just over two and a half minutes," the chunin reported.
"Did he now?" The head proctor's eyes narrowed. "Continue the test; let me speak to the boy."
'I don't like where this is going,' thought Askuna.
"Get up," the proctor ordered. Askuna complied, and the man asked him to follow. They walked closer to the school, and the proctor requested one of the teachers to bring Askuna's written test.
While waiting for the test, the proctor demanded, "Explain to me what you did during the run."
Askuna shrugged and said, "I just wanted to run as fast as I could, so I used chakra on my legs to do so."
The proctor scrutinized him for a few seconds and asked the boy, "I don't recognize the family name Megumi. Are they shinobi? Did they teach you chakra?"
Askuna leisurely replied, "No, they are not shinobi, and no one taught me. I just heard that shinobi use chakra, so I discovered it myself, and it let me run faster and be stronger pretty easily if I wanted."
The proctor snorted and said, "You just heard and figured everything out, huh? Sounds like a pre-made excuse, kid."
Then he contemplated for some seconds and asked Askuna, "Show me how you run."
Askuna closed his eyes for a second, faking that he needed to concentrate, and exploded several meters ahead, running three steps and more than thirty meters with them, without disturbing the surroundings. Next, he made an abrupt one-hundred-eighty-degree turn and returned in the same fashion, stopping immediately in place, while grinning.
"Pretty cool, huh?" Askuna asked with a smug grin.
The proctor just looked at him, lost for words for a few seconds, not really knowing what had just happened.
Well, he knew what happened, but comprehending that it was done by a young boy from a civilian family, who claimed he learned it by himself, was just ridiculous. 'And the boy says it's pretty cool!? Bullshit!' the proctor screamed internally while looking at the staff building window.
"Where are those papers?" he frowned, but not seeing anyone returning with them, he asked another question to Askuna, "Can you do Academy three?"
Askuna started blinking his eyes, seemingly not understanding the question, then answered cheekily, "I don't know what those are, but if you show them to me, then I can try."
The proctor's eye twitched, and he abandoned all further conversation with the insufferable brat.
Finally, the chunin with the papers arrived, handing them to the head proctor, who immediately began to look through them, judging the content of Askuna's answers.
The questions were specifically designed so that the further problems were for someone at later levels of the academy curriculum, and the final question on each subject was straight up beyond the Academy's scope.
First, was math; the last question was solved without specific formulas and methods. Every formula used was derived from basic observations, and everything was explained in detail, including why it was chosen and how it all made coherent sense. That meant either the kid knew several levels of mathematics and was able to write proofs of everything from basic concepts to the problem while maintaining a correct proof structure, which is utterly ridiculous if someone didn't study mathematics, or he rediscovered known mathematical formulas and theorems and the underlying proof structure of hundreds of years, on the fly... in several minutes, or previously alone at home.
He looked at the cheeky brat, who was scratching his head and looking at his shoes, not believing in the slightest that the boy in front of him was capable of writing something at the level of a chunin who had spent years studying mathematics.
On the other hand, Askuna was feigning ignorance; he knew perfectly well what he had done. He was very advanced in math in his previous life, and although he wouldn't have been able to complete everything in time for this test by proving from scratch, he and his ten clones could do it easily within the allotted timeframe.
The proctor went through the history test, noting that most answers were provided in complex detail, except for two or three questions which were only mentioned generally.
This was because, when his clones were training, he and three other clones had read four or five thick books in this new lifetime. One of them was called General History, a seven-hundred-page account of events. Reading one of these books was probably more than most shinobi ever learned in their lifetime.
And he sometimes had two clones reserved for sorting through his memories and helping to organize them for the motherlobe.
The same went for geography and Kanji books. The proctor's eyes widened ever so slightly while going through the tests, finally showing the full white sclera when he reached the parts that included philosophy.
He looked at Askuna as if he were a monster, in awe but also terrified, to which Askuna winked with his eye, showing full well that he knew what the proctor was thinking about him. The smug sh*t-eating grin was still present.
And it was this smug grin that made the proctor forget his reverence for the little boy and think, 'But he's an annoying little brat, first and foremost.' So he grinned, saying, "So, a genius, huh? Let's see how you figured out combat by yourself. Let's do a little spar for some extra points on the entrance exam."
It was now the proctor with the smug grin on full display, taking delight in seeing Askuna gulp in uncertainty at the towering figure above him.
'Meh, I'll manage... probably,' reassured himself Askuna. He felt a mental pat on the back from one of his mental clones.
They moved to the sparring ring, which caught the interest of some proctors and students who were now waiting for their next tests.
When the spectacle was ready, the head proctor showed the crowd and Askuna the seal with which they started and ended every spar: the seal of reconciliation. He extended it to Askuna, who mimicked the gesture.
"Ready?" asked another proctor temporarily responsible for supervising their match. Both nodded. All clones readied themselves for combat mode.
"Start!" Askuna exploded with twice the speed used previously, aiming a kick at his opponent's torso.
Although such a surprise attack would be hard to counter for a normal, unguarded chunin, the head proctor was on guard. He moved to dodge at the last second and intended to grab Askuna's kicking leg with his right hand and grab Askuna's face with his other hand.
But to his surprise, the moment one of his hands gripped Askuna's kicking right leg, one of the clones of Askuna used the grip as a hold for structural lines that induced a rotation and contortion of Askuna's body.
What followed was Askuna's momentum transferred to Proctor's wrist and the boy contracting his reinforced muscles to perform a kick with his left leg aimed at the proctor's head while avoiding the head grab.
Sadly, he couldn't immobilize the proctor's hand or shatter his wrist, and while performing the kick, the proctor twisted his leg just a little, making the kick impossible. Then, the proctor changed the motion of grabbing Askuna into a punch directed at Askuna's stomach.
When receiving the punch, two clones of Askuna coordinated, making Askuna's body go limp and contort in such a way that the force of the punch was almost completely diminished. It also released a ragdoll effect from the position where he was held on the leg, making the proctor lose his grip in surprise.
As a result, Askuna was sent flying a meter to the ground, looking as if he had taken a gut hit and was about to impact the ground with his shoulder, but in reality, he hadn't. Just before hitting the ground, the force dissipation was activated, and Askuna stopped glued to the ground in an unnatural way, contorting himself into a standing position. The whole process looked bizarre.
They both stood, looking at each other, and then the proctor attacked with a jab at Askuna's face, who dodged it, readying for the follow-ups. Thanks to his training for moving at higher speeds, Askuna's own reaction speed and ability to move his body had also increased exponentially. Combine this with artificial contortions by clones, and he was somehow avoiding ever so faster blows. However, he was at his limit when dodging punches from the proctor, quickly falling for a feint due to not being used to combat.
However, the moment the proctor attempted to break Askuna's handguard, Askuna's clones redirected most of the blow's power into the ground. The proctor was taken aback when his strike connected fully but did not move the boy in the slightest.
Askuna then capitalized on this by grabbing the arm of the proctor and pulling him closer. When he closed the distance, the proctor had one more nasty surprise up his sleeve. He prepared a swift knee strike aimed at Askuna's head, but clones of Askuna took chakra propelling to Askuna's other hand and attached it to the knee base of a proctor's attacking leg, rotating the palm 180 degrees.
Utilizing chakra roots and the ragdoll effect, Askuna enhanced his throwing ability. He employed the grip on the proctor's arm, knee, and his own friction with the ground combined with using the proctor's kick momentum to hurl the proctor out of bounds using a crude combination of a judo throw and a javelin toss.
Askuna's hands still stung a little; the proctor was a formidable opponent. Even after dispersing most of the force through his entire body and the roots, Askuna had to halt the punch directly on his arms in a very brief period. He straightened up and glanced at the crowd, which was struggling to process the result.
The most stunned of them all was the head proctor, who was coming to terms with the abrupt turn of events. He had nearly dismantled the kid's defense, only to suddenly strike hands that felt like a steel wall and be sent soaring three meters by someone four times lighter than himself.
He wasn't injured in the slightest, but he was out of bounds, so he had technically lost, which caused his lips to form a sour expression.
The supervisor of the match asked one of his colleagues for the name of the boy, and after receiving an answer, he said, "Askuna Megumi wins..." trailing off and looking at the head proctor.
Askuna initiated the seal of reconciliation, which the head proctor, looking dejected, accepted while grumbling something about geniuses and their stinky asses before leaving.
Askuna approached the proctor who was responsible for the race and had been standing with the spectators. He asked, "So... what is the next test?"
"Uh..." he received an unintelligent response.
'Well, I broke them,' shrugged Askuna, uncertain of where he stood in this situation. He wasn't sure what his chances would be in another spar with the Head Proctor, as he saw how his Taijutsu relied on a one-trick pony and was almost dismantled. 'Well, it could potentially work many times, but let's not be too confident.'
Technically, in wrestling, he could probably force most opponents into a deadlock or disable them due to the forces with which he could contort his body using his chakra steel strings. However, he wasn't confident that he was stronger than anyone yet. He also didn't know what the limit was. Perhaps most Jonin did it subconsciously to a certain extent, and some, like Tsunade, did it more consciously and in a better way, by involving their physiology of muscles, tendons, and bones more effectively with those supports.
He also didn't know if his method of enhancement was the most optimal representation of the solution to the problem.
Returning to the present, he was eventually taken by another proctor to go through a short obstacle course, which he also aced, although he was now somewhat tired. Then he went through push-ups, pull-ups, and sit-ups, during which he generously aided himself with chakra helpers, till he ran almost dry.
As a result, he was grateful that those exercises were all he had to do. On second thought, he should probably exercise more, as it showed him that his physical shape wasn't as great as he had thought. Most of the weakness stemmed from the fact that he didn't have enough chakra to compensate for his lackluster body, and he didn't train it too much on its own. Just a small digression.
After completing everything and resting a little, he went to the waiting room with other children who were whispering about him in awe. He sat there, recovering his strength while waiting for his parents.
His chakra recovery took quite a while, as more than half of the upkeep was spent on the operation of his clones all the time. But it was obviously worth it.
As it turned out, the older children didn't have classes that day, so there were no upper-year students observing the admissions. It was a shame; he wanted to see Minato and Kushina.
Later that day, his parents arrived to pick him up. They approached Askuna and saw him running up to them with a smile. However, the smile vanished when he heard a voice coming from the side.
"Just a moment, please. You're the Megumi family, right?" A chunin asked as he approached them.
"Yes, what is the matter?" Askuna's father inquired, placing his hands on his son's shoulders.
The proctor smiled and nodded, saying, "I wanted to congratulate you for raising your son so well." He continued, "His performance today was exceptional, and he will be accepted, possibly even skipping to more advanced classes."
As he said this, he noticed the bewildered gazes of Askuna's parents and the worry etched in his mother's eyes. Askuna observed his parents' reactions as well, and rubbing his chin, declared enthusiastically, "Yeah, I'm awesome!"
This relaxed his father a bit, making him laugh awkwardly, but his mother pinched his stomach to make him stop and leveled him with a glare. His father averted her gaze and looked seriously at the proctor, while her brows remained furrowed.
"Please explain," she demanded, folding her arms.
Sensing the tension, the proctor raised his hands placatingly and said, "Please don't be too concerned. It's quite normal for parents to be surprised by their children's abilities. We believe Askuna has great potential, and with your support and encouragement, he can truly excel in his path as a ninja."
"Yeah, Mom, it will be fine." Askuna grabbed one of her hands, which resulted in a complicated look in her eyes. She took a deep breath and managed a small smile, acknowledging the proctor's words. "Thank you. We will do our best to support him in his journey."
With a final nod, the proctor took his leave, leaving the Megumi family to process the unexpected turn of events. Askuna wanted to return home, but the grip on his shoulder tightened a little, and his father smiled under the glare of his wife and looked devilishly at him saying "So, tell me how were the exams."
"Huh?" was Askuna's intelligent reply, and he thought, 'Will I have to talk more with my parents from now on? Seems like a pain in the ass.'
Don't get him wrong; he was a grown-up man, older than his parents are now, so it was kind of weird for them to be any form of parental figure in his eyes.
"Don't 'huh' me," chided his mother, patting him on the back to keep going. "Now, tell us everything in detail."
"Ugh... so, I beat down a Chunin?" Askuna said as they walked together, he in the middle, before looking at them and adding, "And I'm pretty sure I aced all the exams for the future years too."
They didn't believe him. His father said, "Son... take it seriously. We're worried you'll risk your life and end up in trouble somewhere."
His mom sent his father a grateful look. 'Wait, is he really concerned about me or just scoring points with mom?' Askuna wondered.
"Well, I technically told the truth. I won due to luck," Askuna clarified.
"Oh yeah? And how did you manage that?" his father mocked, clearly no longer amused at entertaining his son's exaggerations.
"Oh yeah, I used my incredible chakra control to make the examiner feel the wrath of my power!" Askuna boasted with a grin, flexing his arm muscles playfully.
His father sighed, and his mother shook her head. She patted her husband's shoulder, stopped their walk, and kneeled in front of Askuna, clasping his head in her arms and looking at him in the eyes from close. "Askuna, be serious for once. How did you really perform?"
'Hmm, looking close, she looks kinda cute. Nice job, Dad!' Askuna thought. He looked into her eyes and smiled, saying, "Really good. They were saying I was the best." Then he grinned, adding, "I completed the obstacle course like a boss. You should've seen the looks on everyone's faces!"
His mother lightly tapped her forehead to his and closed her eyes, saying, "Askuna, we're really worried about you. We want you to understand that." Then, clearly exasperated, she added, "You need to grow up if you want to be a ninja. No one will wait for you to do so."
"Relax, Mom," Askuna replied, rolling his eyes. "I've got this ninja thing all figured out. I'm practically a prodigy!"
His father couldn't help but chuckle at his son's enthusiasm, though he tried to regain a stern demeanor at his mother's glare. "Well, prodigy or not, you still need to train hard and take your studies seriously. There's a long road ahead, and you can't rely on just natural talent."
Askuna sighed dramatically, throwing his hands up in the air. "Fine, fine! I promise I'll train hard and become the best ninja ever. Happy?"
His parents exchanged a glance, and his mother finally relented, patting Askuna on the shoulder. "As long as you do your best and stay focused, we'll be proud of you."
"And remember," his father chimed in, trying to sound wise, "there's always room for improvement, no matter how talented you are."
Askuna nodded, trying to appear as if he finally understood the weight of his parents' concerns. But out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a famous food stall. "Alright, I got it. Let's go and celebrate my awesomeness with some ramen!"
His parents shared a weary smile as they continued walking. His mother whispered to his father, "I told you, we should have consulted a doctor about those strange drawings of his."
His father wiggled his eyebrows, considering, and gave her a kiss, saying, "It's fine, we can always try again.". She gave him a mock angry glare, and he smiled by gising her again.
She smiled and pecked him back.
'Huh, I might have a sibling in the near future,' Askuna mused.