49 Naruto : Domination: Chapter 49

I rose from my position without permitting my genin to stop their exercise and I walked towards the end of the pond. I love training ground 11.

"Do you remember the kawarimi week?" I asked.

...

Sarcastic snorts were the only answer I received, I shrugged. Chasing freshly minted genin with their legs tied for a week, forcing them to either run on their hands or performing kawarimis maybe had been a little too much.

But that jutsu was the most underrated I had ever witnessed. They needed to actually learn to use it.

"What about the genjutsu week?" I asked, referring to the ten days I spent casting an unrelenting barrage of genjutsus over them.

I affected all of their senses separately and together, only their depth perception, sometimes hitting like a battering ram, others being as light as a feather. They needed to learn to not be caught unaware.

Even if placing genjutsu on Choji to make him miss his own mouth during lunch had maybe been a bit over the line. Naah.

"Good job, you've earned a minute of respite, come behind me to rest." I ordered, and the kids immediately took their chance. They still were terrified that I would spot some youthful spirit and make them work even harder.

When they sat down behind me, I let go of the hold I had over the first five gates, feeling my enlarged pathways being filled to the brim with fast-flowing chakra.

I regulated my breathing, noticing with satisfaction that while the chakra was flowing faster, it wasn't in any way turbulent and wasn't straining my coils.

I started slowly going through hand seals, building up a good half of my reserves: "I've been thinking of a way to train you to fight in the open sea for a while now. Kawariming with stuff that is underwater can be tricky, even more if there are currents or If you don't keep the water out of your lungs."

Feeling the dread in my students, I smirked, but I kept collecting the water around us: "Don't you worry though, I've been reading up on lungs, so even if yours collapse I can probably heal them and we can keep going."

Being a mednin is awesome. I thought when I heard the genins whimpering.

I concluded the handseals and inhaled deeply, before completing the technique, shouting just for scaring the living shit out of the Anbu who was spying on my training of team 10: "Suiton: Dai Bakusui Shōha!" (Great Exploding Water Colliding Wave)

And just like Kisame did in the anime, I encased the whole training ground 11 in water. It came forth like a tidal wave, collecting and magnifying every speck of water it could find, churning on itself into a giant semisphere.

I turned toward my speechless genins with a smile: "Well what are you waiting for?"

Faster than they could see, I grabbed them for the scruffs of their necks and tossed them over the giant semisphere.

"Kunais and other shit are floating underwater, take a breath, kawarimi with it, then climb your way back up. Oh, and remember to reinforce your bodies with chakra, or the pressure may kill you." I explained the exercise I had just come up with with a smile, but seeing their pale expressions I rose an eyebrow.

They immediately got to it.

...

( 15 April- year 13 AK )

I went to see my team off at the waiting hall for the genins more to scout their competition than to actually wishing them good luck. I had hammered them through survival and fighting experience.

I drilled into them several lessons, like never giving up, since whenever one of them had faltered during training I hurt him or her even worse. Or like always be prepared.

I would always remember with fondness their faces when I kidnapped them on a free day and chased them still in their pajamas for two weeks straight in training ground 11.

I laid the foundations that would make them think about their place in the world. I had forced them to 'look underneath the underneath' basically asking for something while meaning something else entirely.

For example, I had them cross a whole booby-trapped training ground (I spent a lot of money in paper bombs) to reach a flag.

I told them that who would bring back the flag would win a whole day off. They clashed over it while it was a test meant for them to work together.

I poked their inflated big heads, tasking them with the retrieval of three flags I placed around Konoha.

The first two had been a walk in the park, the third had imploded over their heads an empty warehouse I had purchased exactly for that purpose and almost killed them when a storage seal unleashed an airborne inflammable poisonous gas. 

Maybe I went overboard with that one. I mused.

All in all, I thought I had done a good job with them. Surely they outclassed their manga-selves, and by a wide margin.

But, I thought, taking in the far too many teams in the waiting hall, I have no idea how it will turn up. There were at least three hundred genin hopefuls, the second stage was going to be a bloodbath.

There were far too many people around, and like I had predicted, Iwa and Kumo had appeared into the fray. I spotted Kabuto with his freaky round glasses and his weird teammates and sighed. 

I'll probably have to jump in between Orochimaru and Sasuke. I considered.

It would likely disqualify team 7, but considering the absolute clusterfuck the Elemental Nations would become if Sasuke got marked, I didn't particularly care.

I finally noticed my team entering the hall and flickered over to them, playfully ruffling Ino's hair, feeling the ninja wire she had hidden in it, ready to shred the idiot who would try to yank her ponytail around.

I nodded my approval, ignoring her attempts to stop me and her grumbling.

"Well, you finally made it." I commented.

"You sent us to the other side of Konoha." Ino hotly accused me, happy to have an excuse to tear me a new one.

I shrugged unapologetically: "If you can't find out on your own where you are supposed to be, then you don't deserve to be chunin. Having said that, have fun." I answered, disappearing in a flicker.

I had already given my suggestions days before and talked about my chunin exam, no doubt either Shikamaru or Ino had bargained something with their parents to read the records of my chunin exam, so at least it was something.

From the look on Shikamaru's face, I knew that he had caught up with the wrongness that such a vast number of genin was.

And I feared that he had reached my exact same conclusion as how to deal with it.

...

( Kakashi POV )

I carefully examined my fellow senseis from the elemental nations. Iwa, Kumo, and Suna were present, underlining the conspicuous absence of Kiri. It was really out of character for any if the great five to miss an opportunity to show off.

Ame, Kusa, Sound, Taki... all the minor hidden villages sent their genins without a sensei.

Either because their Oyabun deemed the risk of having one of their jonin stripped of every secret too high or because the village couldn't afford the few necessary days said sensei would spend without a mission, I didn't know.

Probably a bit of both. I reasoned. Still, it was a common enough recurrence that it didn't raise any suspicion.

I let my eye take in my surroundings, distractedly taking notice of the possible escape routes and more likely places that could hide traps.

But my attention was more directed on the other very competent shinobis and kunoichis in the room. It was a large room with a fake mirror that allowed us to check on our students during the first stage on one side, and the several senseis from the different villages had formed little groups, eager to see how their students would perform.

Well, most of them.

Daiki was... rap-battling Killer B. I quickly checked for a genjutsu, but I could find none. I knew Killer B was awful, but Daiki was even worse. I refused to acknowledge their words, I had some fucked up memories, I knew that. I didn't need more.

Wars have begun for less. I thought.

It was my first time attending the chunin exams as a sensei, well, like a sensei of a team under my name.

"Did Morino come up with this while he was still half asleep? It's a bullshit first stage." Daiki commented. He had left the losing rap battle when Ibiki had started his explanation. Well, that's something.

I eye-smiled, I knew for a fact that Ibiki did, in fact, organize the first stage only a few hours before, basically avoiding neatly any risk of any information leak.

I noticed Kurenai giving him an annoyed glare when he started smoking. Daiki noticed it too.

"What?" He huffed. "I feel like smoking today."

"Nervous for your rookies?" an Iwa sensei jibed. I turned an unimpressed eye on the jonin. Bantering? Really?

"I'm always sad when children are made to kill." was the chilly answer.

In that moment, in the perfectly quiet class, an Ame genin jumped from his seat with a kunai in his hand and rammed it into the skull of an unsuspecting Iwa kunoichi, killing her on the spot.

The assassin didn't stop, whirling on his next target and slashing his throat open before being slammed on the ground by a chunin plant, while Ibiki somehow, managed to gain control over the freaked out genins.

I noticed that Sakura hadn't managed to keep down her breakfast, while Naruto was shouting something at the downed Ame nin and Sasuke's Sharingan was scanning the environment.

The Ame nin curiously impaled himself on the kunai while being downed by the chunin plant. How... convenient. I thought.

After a glance at Daiki who turned up his impassible face like all the other senseis, my eye found the Yamanaka twirling her pencil with a steely expression, a heavy frown on the Akimichi and a bored expression on the Nara.

I could feel the chakra of the Iwa kunoichi's sensei rolling and thundering, looking for an explanation and likely an excuse to kill someone.

The first stage started less than five minutes before, and three teams were already out. Ibiki had a steely expression and reminded everyone that whichever folly had taken the Ame nin, killing in such a way would have disqualified his team nonetheless.

I looked at the cloud of smoke exhaled by Daiki, it formed the number 107, before slowly morphing into 104.

It didn't take a genius to notice that it matched the number of teams, it was unnecessary cruel towards the senseis that had just assisted to the death of their charges, it was underhanded, but he was still a fellow shinobi of the leaf, so I backed him up.

"So..." I drawled "How about a betting pool?"

To my surprise, Guy's 'unyouthful' gaze, and Kurenai's blank face (which was a badly crafted mask to hide her shell shocked expression), Daiki flipped out a notepad and a pencil, ready to mindfuck the senseis from the other villages.

He was a strange kid, and now is a strange man. I thought, going once again over his cryptic, or not so cryptic, suggestion back on the day of the teams' formation.

But it had been a long time since I last found someone up to fuck around with other people heads simply for the fun of it.

...

If you like the story so far, please throw some power stones.

======================

If you want to read ahead of the public release on p atreon.

p @treon Link :

 p atreon.com/sybife0

 |● sybife