章 4: Chapter 4
Officially, nominating a child for early academy enrollment was not, in truth, that big of a deal.
The child had been discovered to possess a high degree of proficiency or raw talent in one or various Shinobi arts and, as a military state, the village policy was to hone these abilities early so as not to let them go to waste or be lost due to a normal civilian life being unable to nurse these prodigious talents adecuately.
Unofficially, Naruto was discovering, it was like paining a neon sign over the kids head.
He should have guessed really. The two people he knew about from his time period that had gotten an early nomination were Kakashi-sensei and Itachi, and both were comparable monsters when measured against the run of the mill Shinobi.
It wasn't done often, not only was it difficult to find a child with actual talent beyond mere hopes and dreams but the person that nominated them risked a lot of his own reputation/prestige. If the nominee turned out to be average or worse yet, sub par, or even injured in the tests of the academy then that person was branded, at the bare minimum, reckless.
Both Itachi and Kakashi had been nominated by members of their own families.
But he, the resident Jinchuuriki being nominated by the 'recluse' that was the snake sannin had come, as far as most could tell, completely out of left field and made a lot of civilians and quite a few Shinobi curious and rumors were already starting to float around.
None of which were true. Naruto wouldn't trust that serpent as far as he could throw him, which in his present state wasn't very far at all.
The only reason he'd chosen him over the others was because...well...he was there.
And now he was in a rush.
He had to start climbing the shinobi ladder early. The higher his rank the more techniques he'd have access to, the more doors he'd be able to open, the more clearance he'd have. More clearance meant more information and he needed information.
That was the key to finding Tobi.
He only knew the vaguest of Tobi's acts before the war had broken out. It hadn't mattered to him where the hell the Uchiha had come from, only what he could do to stop him. And by the time their little plan of going back in time saw itself pushed from the aspect of pipe dream to necessity anyone that could have possibly answered such questions were long since dead or enemies...or both.
And more than that he needed to get to Tobi before he managed to achieve the insane level of strength he'd gotten during the war. He needed to warn the Jinchuuriki about him. Him and maybe Akatsuki too if they still existed.
He finished off his breakfast, tossing the dish in the sink, promising to clean it out later before he made for the door, ready to leave when he heard a knock.
He paused, blinking, wondering who it would be as he reached for the kunai and Shuriken pouches to strap them on. They'd been given to him, courtesy of Sarutobi. "Be right there old man!"
The door opened, no doubt picked with chakra. "I'm not that old kiddo."
The voice was unfamiliar, and Naruto quickly looked up, finding a smiling silver haired man.
"Uhhh...who're you?"
The man's face fell. "Woah, Tsu-chan warned me but that's a real kick to the gut kiddo. Its me! Dan.
Naruto blinked.
So this the one Tsunade had been so hung up on...
"I thought you'd be taller..." The blond found himself saying before thinking.
"Me too!" He shot back with an easy grin. "But alas humans don't grow on hopes and dreams. Which reminds me. Have you been eating fruits and vegetables like Tsu-chan told you last time we were here?"
"Uhh...I guess?"
"...You have that refrigerator stuffed with ramen don't you."
"There's cereal in there!" He defended.
-0-
Dan walked him to the academy.
It was...a novel experience.
And no that wasn't a euphemism.
It was actually a novel experience. He'd never had someone walk him to the academy grounds. The Hokage occasionally saw him before he left his apartment when he could spare the time but those times were few and far between and even then he had to head to the tower, not to the academy which was a bit out of the way from his destination, so having someone walk him the whole way there was a real change of pace.
And the company was actually nice to boot.
It didn't take him long to realize Dan was a joker, he always had a ready comeback or witty comment. It kinda reminded him of Jiraiya. Though Ero-sennin tended to be more dry sarcasm than witty quips.
"Ahh my two princesses." The silver haired man said, drawing Naruto's attention enough for him to find Tsunade and a much younger Shizune.
"But I really am sick!"
"Oh bull-to-the-shit." The slug princess shot back! "You just don't wanna go on the first day!"
"We never do anything on the first day!"
"You get to say Hi to all those wonderful people you'll be spending the rest of the year with."
"I say Hi to them all the time anyway! Its not like we can lose each-other inside this village."
"You get to say Hi to the teachers then."
"I don't want to say Hi to the teachers. That's half the objective here!"
"Tough luck then."
Huh...he didn't remember Shizune-neechan talking back to Tsunade...ever...even when she deserved it...
"Now now Shi-chan. You wouldn't want to leave Naruto here alone on his first day would you? What about all those voracious little aspiring kunoichi he'll have to contend with?"
Dan's voice announced their arrival to Shizune who turned around with a smirk for both of them. "Hey uncle Dan. Hi Naru-chan."
Her smile fell a bit when she noticed his sad face. "Huh? What's wrong?"
Naruto blinked for a moment, staring at her face, and struggled in those seconds struggled to push away the memory of her eyes open in death, of red blood staining her pale skin.
At those same eyes staring back at him from the opposite side of a battlefield...
He smiled as brightly as he could, greeting this expression like...an old friend...one he hadn't seen or needed in a long time. "Hey Shizune-neechan!" He stepped forward and hugged her, barely reaching her waist as she patted his hair. A lump formed in his throat at the familiar gesture.
"Those Kunoichi will have to deal with me before Shizune gets a crack at them." He heard Tsunade vow, and heard the swat of her hand against Dan's arm. "And don't you go sticking ideas in his head either."
The man chuckled.
Naruto let go of Shizune before the hug became awkward, looking up at the building.
Was Iruka a sensei here yet? Or...was that not going to happen at all?
It'd been so long since he'd come around here...
It'd been so long since this place was around to come to.
He felt a hand on his shoulder, turning to see Tsunade standing beside him, a serious frown on her face. "You okay kiddo?"
Once more...he smiled. "Yeah...just nervous..."
Tsunade's frown grew a little deeper. "You can wait you know. I'll talk things over with Oro-kun and-"
"No!" He interrupted, his voice pitching with the high notes of a four year old. "No. I can do it."
"We know you can."
This voice was familiar, and as far as he was concerned, still unwelcome.
The whole group turned to find Orochimaru standing not five feet away, seemingly conjuring himself from thin air, smiling with that serpentine upturn of his lips. "Have a little faith Tsu-chan." He drawled. "I wouldn't have nominated little Naru-chan if I didn't know he could handle it."
"He might be able to handle it but that doesn't mean he needs to! He's four!"
And Naruto could tell as the sannin shrugged that this was simply retracing the steps of an argument the two had held previously.
They were sannin...so neither of them would budge, one way or the other.
Orochimaru looked to him, his smirk becoming a little wider. "True. But it is his choice and... you and I can both see that he'll choose to go. Every time...
-0-
Shizune wasn't in his class.
He wasn't surprised. It was a four year program. Children entered when they were six or eight, took on the program for four years, graduated and became gennin. Shizune was on her last semester. He'd gotten in when he was six, being an orphan with no income outside of village funded programs and a trustfund left to the Hokage, he'd been eligible for the early enrollment.
It was a village hash tag to give orphaned children the "head start" of becoming Shinobi and getting paid as early as possible, a surefire way to keep themselves from starving.
In reality, it was the easiest source of new recruits considering how many orphans a military village had.
He'd failed the graduation exam twice and managed to get in on his third which is why his classmates and gennin team had been with people his own age.
This time though, this time he was starting absurdly early. The only person that had managed to get in this early was Hatake Kakashi and he was so good he'd managed to graduate in a single year. Getting on a team at age five! From what he could recall, the only one that could match that was Itachi and even he had gotten in at age six and graduated at age seven.
Hopefully, he'd be able to match Kakashi's little feat.
The way he saw it, if he could graduate by five, become a gennin, he could be a chuunin as early as six years old, and start training for the jounin trials to take them at eight or nine. With that rank it would be enough to wiggle himself into some of the village vaults to get access to techniques, techniques that would let him join the hunter nin squad by the time he hit twelve, which is when things should start kicking into the proverbial high gear.
The hunter nins, were the elite of the elite. The best any village had to offer they were the ninja, meant to kill other ninja on a daily basis. Konoha, at the height of its power held somewhere around one hundred Gennin, three hundred and fifty to five hundred chuunin, about a hundred and fifty to two hundred jounin and seventy to one hundred Anbu, but they only ever had twenty hunter ninja.
The reason for this was twofold. Firstly because they were just that strong and secondly because a hunter ninja's loyalty must be absolutely beyond question.
Given that they had to go on the most high risk missions, tracking down and killing other ninja, some of these A or even S class targets to bring in that money to the village coffers when they killed ninja from other villages that had posted the bounty, these ninja could be, and were in-fact authorized to be gone for months at a time.
Which would suit him perfectly.
With this plan...he wouldn't meet his friends...
Not until much later at any rate.
As it was he was staying as far away from Sasuke and Sakura as possible. Avoiding anything that might change them! He wanted them...as close to what they were as he could get...
So he wouldn't meet them, any of them. But...he had to do this.
The kind of freedom the Hunter Nin enjoyedwas exactly what he needed to contact all the other Jinchuuriki, get a bead on Akatsuki and kill Tobi!
This was the plan...now he just had to make it happ-
"Alright kids settle down." The teacher marched in, an older man with a salt and pepper hair and beard that kinda reminded him of Asuma-sensei's, only it went around his mouth too. "Some of you may notice we've gotten a new student, I'd like you all to give a warm welcome to Naruto-san here. He'll be with us for the next few years we hope."
'Just one buddy.'
The blond smiled, waving at a bunch of faces he didn't recognize. "Nice ta meet 'cha."
"Alright class I'll be passing you your class schedules, and programs. Each of you, for the next class must have read and at least be able to discuss the general theory behind the basic arts of Shinobi combat-"
As Naruto took his paper, droning out the teacher he read over the subjects, reassigning his own time period for mastering and learning these assignments.
-0-
"The Sharingan you say?" Sarutobi mused, not even looking up from his file, the stench of tobaco wafting up from his pipe to permeate the room.
"Or the Mokudon." The kunoichi replied. "He looked into the book last week, and since then his interest in both bloodlines has only increased. There aren't many public works on it, given how few ever faced either abilities and survived but he's digging them up, like he's looking for something specific."
"I wonder what that boy's getting himself up to...why would a four year old be so interested in the abilities of our late founders..."
"I don't know. Though for now, his interest seems to be little more than a passing fancy. I just thought you should know Hokage-sama."
Sarutobi nodded. "Good. Keep me appraised of anything more you find odd. The more information we have, the easier it may be for Inoichi to treat him should it ever be necessary.
"Understood sir."
The young woman turned, leaving Sarutobi to his files for the time being.
-0-
By the time the academy was over, Naruto was anxious to get back to his apartment in order to start the long road of getting his body back into some kind of shape. He'd gotten tired from running up and down stairs.
Stairs!
True, for his four year old self these stairs were about the equivalent to some tall sets of bleachers or something that he really had to lift his leg to get up over it but still...
Freaking stairs.
He needed to get back into shape and quick!
He moved to step out the door when he felt something tugging at his collar, holding him back from leaving, surprised he paused, turning to look over his shoulder to see young Shizune holding onto him.
"Where do you think You're going Naru-chan?"
Uhhh...home?" Why was she glaring at him?
"Nooooo...its your first day, that means you have to go get the school ID's. I knew you'd forget. That's why I came down here!"
"Yeah can I do that tomorrow? I'm kinda tired Shizune-nee."
"You should really get it today." She begrudged. "That thing's important and tells everyone you're a member of the academy to be allowed on school grounds. Without it some of the guards might not let you in if they think you're trying to spy on Konoha teaching methods."
He struggled not to snicker. Is that what they all thought when they were kids?
Yeah...heh...it kinda had been...
Spying on the academy.
Any spy that came back with the "important" Konoha academy teaching curriculum would probably get stabbed for incompetence. It was a tab on all prospective Shinobi so that strategists and mathematicians like Shika could properly determine Konoha's potential military growth based on statistical analysis.
Along with the academy passing average. If numbers weren't up to snuff, or if the gennin were coming out below standards those ID's and school records would be the first piece of evidence to be gathered really.
"I promise I'll get it tomorrow Nee-chan."
"Alright" she sighed before she reached around and coiled her arm over his shoulder to ruffle his hair. Come on, lets get something to eat then I'll walk you home.
He didn't want to waste time. He wanted to get the ball rolling and the faster he did that the better.
But...You never really know when the last "Next time" or "Rain-check" really will be the last one...
He'd learned that one the hard way.
He smiled, the warm display as pleasant as ever as he looked at this younger little stranger.
"Sounds great."
週次パワーステータス
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