บท 31: Chapter 30
If anyone had told Naruto Uzumaki a few years ago when he was knee deep in ANBU that he would be living in a house with two young, very beautiful women from his original class, he would've laughed.
Granted he used to laugh more back then along with being loud, he hadn't yet reached the depths of cynicism he was in now. For a long time he'd been under the impression that if he became Hokage he'd earn the respect of people and be accepted as someone important, someone who'd be loved; watching the Old Man getting treated like God's righteous man by the people instilled that belief in him.
Along the way he lost an eye, grew older, lost comrades, became stronger, killed, maimed, kidnapped, tortured, and did so many more things that becoming Hokage seemed taxing to him. He was one shinobi, the Hokage oversaw all of them—the borders, the trade, the Feudal Lord, the village, all the civilians. The more he thought about it, the more he became intimidated at such responsibility. The hat was heavier than it seemed. Kakashi Hatake had made him see the benefit of the way of the ninja: finish your missions, get paid, relax until the next, repeat. Good times! He was going to die one day, he'd come close a few times too. This made him all the more cherish the comforts he enjoyed.
Then things changed. Again.
Now here he was engaged to a sweetheart of a girl who never treated him badly when they were younger (her becoming a bombshell helped), teaching a team of genin, living with two pretty girls and a massive headache as he prepared the plans for Kiri. It would have to wait until the Chūnin Exams were over. He hadn't told his team about the exams coming up in a few weeks, he'd let that be a surprise.
First he needed to evaluate them, assess their skills and see the fallout. Being the dutiful sensei he was, he did what any good teacher would do: beat the shit out of his team. And talk down on them.
Hinata was lying on the grass with several cuts on her arms and legs, nothing too fatal. Ino was draped in mud and dust as she could barely get up from the tree she rested against. Sakura was tired, gasping and trying to crawl away from him as he held her by the ankle, his foot on the side of her face. He wasn't trying to kill them, just motivating them through nefarious means. If it worked with a loudmouthed orange wearing brat like him, why wouldn't it work on them.
"This is usually the part where people get killed," he removed his foot and went to sit on one of the wooden posts. He stared at his apparently lifeless cell members. "Well come on now. Get up. We've got more training to do."
"This isn't training," Sakura mumbled. She tried to get up, but she fell. Naruto noticed how bubbly her ass looked in that moment. Well that wasn't the only thing he noticed. Sakura had been off ever since Wave. At first he assumed it was the usual 'Oh God! I killed someone!' trauma, but according to the clone he left outside—just in case something went south—Sakura's movements were clunky, ill-timed and half-assed. He knew she could move faster, react better and counter whatever that fool was doing with the mace. Yet she did not. The girl had potential, and he didn't want her to squander it.
Hell, all of them had potential.
"Of course it's training," Naruto drank a bottle of chilled water and sighed peacefully. He could feel their eyes focusing on it, craving for it. "I used to train this way. In fact, I lost one of my eyes during such a session. I mean I considered it a mission."
"What?" Ino got up, tired and clutching her left arm. She went over to Hinata whom she helped to get up, the two of them then helped Sakura up. At least their teamwork was on point. "What the hell sort of training is that?! I don't want to lose my precious eyes!"
"I still remember it like yesterday." Naruto closed his eyes in blissful nostalgia. "I was ten years old. It was just me against one man. He was throwing his shuriken in tandem. They deflected off of each other. Fire rose from the sides, burning the woods and making the trees fall down. He was cutting off my path and vantage points. Then came the explosive tags that slammed me from coast to coast, the razor wires that cut through my skin, the kunai which dug into my leg. And then came the hand to hand lesson. I was getting bitch-slapped. He was stronger than me, blocked every hit. Faster too. If I made a plan to get to him, by that time he'd already have a counter to it. It was bullshit."
"What did you do?" Hinata asked as all three of them were sitting against each other, supporting themselves. Naruto Uzumaki smiled in remembrance.
"He tried to slam me into the ground, I found my chance right then as I whipped my head back and skullbashed his nose." Naruto could still hear the bones cracking. "Sure I got a concussion, but so did he, and he wasn't expecting that. Then I rushed him. The most satisfying punches of my life. Then when I finally cornered him, it happened."
"What happened?" Ino asked and he could tell all three of them were invested into the story. Now he would tell them the tragic tale of how his eye was taken from him.
"I slipped on the last wire," Naruto raised a finger and proudly puffed his chest out, "and there was a shuriken on the ground that pierced my eye." The girls cringed, but their jaws hung wide open.
"WHAT?!" Sakura had a loud voice. A very loud one. "YOU SLIPPED ON A WIRE?! AFTER ALL THAT!"
"Yeah," Naruto laughed a bit as he scratched the back of his head. "There's another lesson, my ragtag bunch of genin. Be careful even when you're careful."
"Sensei," Hinata started. "You're very...weird."
"Understatement of the year," Ino backed her up.
"Absolutely nuts," Sakura added a cherry to the top.
Naruto felt his eyebrow twitch at that comment. Sure. He was odd. The heiress with a stutter who had absolutely zero confidence, a girl who used a clan jutsu for phantom sex, and a girl who squandered her potential to fangirl over a broken teen with an unhinged dream. Yes, he was the ODD one here. Ungrateful students.
"Hey, genin," Naruto smiled. "Guess what?"
"What?" Sakura asked. He looked at her with a vicious gleam in his eye. Sakura trembled. "What, sensei?"
"Time for round 2."
"No," Ino said, before she could run away she and her teammates were surrounded by smoke. Nine solid clones of Naruto appeared and the genin team felt cornered.
"Now we're going to learn what to do and what not to do when you're ambushed by larger numbers." Naruto sat back and brought out a cup of instant ramen. "Let me ask you this: Would you prefer if they used weapons or not?"
Being carried like a princess was every girl's dream.
Being carried in the same manner with bruises all over your body, blood clots settling in, mud so deep in your nose that all you could smell was mother earth herself and clothes being tattered in places was no girl's dream. In fact, Sakura could damn well say it was never anyone's dream. She and her teammates had been pounded into the ground by the clones. One of the clones employed hand to hand, one of them decided to play the long game by shooting shuriken at high speeds and the last one was trying to kill them with a kunai.
All the while their sensei was smoothly relaxing as he went about having ramen, a cup of green tea and reading a book.
"Asshole," Sakura groaned out as the clone carrying her to the hospital snickered a bit. Ino and Hinata were given the option as well, they chose to go to their clan compounds for treatment. Well, at least my license has this covered. Being a kunoichi had its perks. It wasn't long before she was getting attended to. The clone was still there and he was clarifying to the attendant what happened to her.
In detail.
...
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