Chapter 10: The second exam

[A/N: Before everything starts, I just generally want to know what kind of animal you'd like to see as the mc's summon. Do you have any suggestions or don't want to see mc using a summon at all? Maybe, you also have suggestions on the abilities of the summon, which natures it has, if it has Kekkei Genkai or something similar]

The next morning Team 9 assembled at trainings ground 9. As Yatora arrived, everyone was already present, so Genma decided to start the exam.

"The exam can be individually designed by every Team Leader and its only reason is to prove, that you are ready for the life of a shinobi. Our test will be split apart in two parts, but don't you worry. There won't be a written test." Genma explained to his students. "During the first part you have to show me and your teammates a selection of three moves. Those can be destructive or supportive Ninjutsu, a physical attack, that included Taijutsu, Kenjutsu and many others, Bukijutsu, a special ability or any other move you can think of. It just has to give us a gist about what you can do. We'll start with you, Nero."

"Aight, I'm starting with the E-Rank Wind style: Little Gale." Nero said as he stepped forward and made himself ready to throw them handsigns, as he would most likely say. At least that's what Yatora thought.

He performed the full handsigns necessary for beginners to cast his E-Rank Jutsu. "Wind Release: lil Gale!" And what he said was the most accurate description of what happened. A little hurricane with Soma's mouth at it's center was created, that sucked in a few of the leafs lying around.

It was a rather unimpressive Jutsu, in Yatora's opinion and also Genma didn't looked impressed. That was when the two of them noticed that the corners of Nero's mouth turned up. If he wouldn't have to hold his mouth open to continue the little hurricane, he surely would have smiled now.

Nero pulled a lighter from his pocket and turned it on. The measly flame that was created didn't lead to any changes, but Nero used a technique, that Yatora identified as one of two ways to train his fire affinity. Nero focused a little bit of his chakra into the flame, leading it to rapidly grow in size.

The flame was hit by the horizontal hurricane and changed the plain wind into a vortex of fire, burning the leafs, that were silently flying in the gale before.

Although it still was a rather weak Jutsu, Genma was now a little impressed. 'Well, it's not like it would be effective and able to hurt anyone above the rank of Genin. But still. His combination created a less chakra consuming version of Fire Release: Flame Vortex, a D-Rank ninjutsu. Lack in power, but Innovate, I'm going to give it a solid seven.'

"What's your next move?" Genma asked.

"I'm showing you, what I can do with this here." Nero answered and pulled circle with a single blade attached to it from his backpack. As he swung the circle, the blades started to split into multiple and Yatora finally realized that it was a Fuma Shuriken.

Nero threw the Fuma Shuriken and it made a left turn. Simultaneously, Nero took out a small kunai and threw it. It went right through the hole in the middle of Fuma Shuriken and drilled into the tree behind it, while the Fuma Shuriken hit a tree in the direction it was flying.

"That was amazing, Nero!" Ieri screamed and ran to the Hatake to hug him. "I didn't know you could aim like that!"

"It's nothing, really." Nero said in a humble voice.

'Well, he's right.' Genma thought. 'The middle of a Fuma Shuriken has enough size to be counted as an easy target. The only difficulty you had to face was to find the right time, which was either a task for your own personal reaction-time or a task of long training to adapt oneself to the right timing. I'll give this a 5, hardly passed.'

"Before you get all lovey-dovey over there, let me remind you, that you still have to present me another thing. And you, Ieri, haven't even started." Genma said, leading the girl to get angry at the word lovey. "What the hell, I'll-", but she was disrupted by her not-boyfriend, Nero. "Please, don't say something like that. Our sensei is right, this is still an exam and you don't know what will be rated." That lead Ieri to step back, but Nero didn't do anything.

What is he supposed to do now, he asked himself. 'Maybe I should show him my flame shuriken. He hasn't seen me using any Fire Style other than my interlude with the lighter. Yeah, that should work.'

Nero took two shuriken out of his pocket and threw them. As soon as they left his arm, they caught fire, as he concentrated his chakra in them before hand and is now giving it the properties of the fire element. As they hit a tree, they penetrated its bark and got stuck even deeper than the kunai from the move earlier.

"So there's a fire variant as well. Makes sense, I guess" Yatora said, but more to himself.

As Ieri was praising her friend, Genma thought 'Ah, another E-Rank Jutsu. Well, I suppose I should be glad, that he even knows any Jutsus besides the three from the academy. Although I wonder if he also knows a little bit of the Hatake clan's Kenjutsu. Whatever, Flame Shuriken is a very helpful Jutsu. While Earth Shuriken only increase the damage and Wind Shuriken the speed, Flame Shuriken increases the damage dealt and the pain felt by your opponent massively. The only better Shuriken Jutsu would be Lightning Shuriken, but only for skilled Lightning Release users, who can add a paralyzing or numbing effect. It's not difficult to learn, but one of the best Jutsus to learn for a Bukijutsu specialist with a fire affinity. I myself used it quite a while in my early days, but now I rarely get the chance to use it. I wonder if he can also use it on his Fuma Shuriken, I heard that's his strong point and it also looked like he thrown it with few struggles earlier. If not I could show him how to without wasting a tremendous amount of Chakra. All in all, I would give this Jutsu a eight, but I don't know if that's just me being sentimental.'

Genma then stopped the conversation between Ieri and Nero, as he said "Ieri suit yourself, you're up next."

"Understood."

 "Don't worry, you got this!" Nero said, cheering Ieri up, as he slowly moved away from her, giving her enough space to perform whatever move she wants.

But it takes time, until she actually starts performing, as she was in thought about what to show and what would impress their sensei the most. 'I definitely have to show off my skills with the kunai and I have to show sensei my Fire Release', she thought as she thankfully looked towards Nero. 'I only know two 1-D Rank and 1 E-Rank Fire Jutsu, that Nero knew too and was able to perform way better than me. He decided to not display them on purpose, so I can show them to Sensei. I am pretty confident in our Fire Release. However, ours still wasn't nearly as strong as Sasuke's Fire Release, who already knew a C-Rank Jutsu, but I heard, that all of his family members were great fire users, so can that really be considered a fair comparison?'

Ieri started performing her handsigns. She still wasn't confident in her handsigns and it took her way longer to finish them, than Nero would've taken. As she finished her handsigns, she screamed "Fire Release: Fireball!" and casted her Jutsu. A small flame came out of her mouth, changing it's shape into a ball with half a meter radius. 

As the flame extinguished, she clenched her fist, as she was happy that her Jutsu succeeded.

Genma sighed and thought 'Alright, there are many points to work on that, first of all she should learn a better Jutsu. She has more than enough Chakra to be able to cast a higher ranked fire Jutsu. But we still have to work on the control over the Fire Element. I'd give this a four, as it is better than not even having a proper elemental Jutsu.'

Before Genma could even ask her about her next move, she started working on it. Ieri dug a little hole into the ground and started to perform handsigns. As she finished them and held her hand with palms at the front in the direction of the hole, as if she would warm up her finger at a bonfire, which wasn't that far off from the truth. In the next moment a bonfire arose in the hole, spending heat and light to its surroundings.

Genma nodded. 'That's great, even though it's only a E-Rank. In a situation, where your future is on the line and you're supposed to show skills, you should always think first and do the best you can do in you respective situation. If your task is to display skills without limitation, you should also show something that helps you outside of combat. Very mature of her age to think of that, I'm giving it a solid seven.' Although Genma praised her, he estimated Ieri completely wrong. She didn't think that this was the skill most fitting to the task, but rather didn't have a huge selection of moves she could even demonstrate. 

"Ahm Genma-sensei, I'd like you to throw a Kunai at the tree over there." Ieri said, as she pointed on the tree next to the tree with the shuriken melted into its bark. 

"No problem" Genma put his hand into the pocket of his trousers and drew a kunai out of it, that shouldn't even be possible to fit in there. "Just say me, when you're ready."

"I'm ready" said Ieri, as she took a kunai out of her backpack. 

Genma threw a kunai at the tree, but kept an eye to not use too much of his power, as he already expected the upcoming trick. As Ieri saw and analyzed the kunai's trajectory, she threw her own kunai and managed to fetch the other out of the air. 

As she saw, that she succeeded, she rapidly ran towards Nero and they gave each other a high five. "You were good." "I know right!"

'That was rather unimpressive.' Genma thought. 'I heard she wanted to become a Kunai Specialist, just like me, only that I wanted to become a master of all weapons rather than just the kunai." Genma sighed, the senbon in his move moved from the one side to the other. 'As I was her age, I was already able to deflect multiple opposing projectiles coming my way with ease and sometimes if their angle was advantageous, I was already able to send the projectiles back to the attackers. I really am disappointed, but I guess it's fine, since it's their first real day as Genin. 5 points.'

'And now the student I'm most exited for. I heard he was ranked second and already able to perform C-Rank Kenjutsu and D-Rank Ninjutsu on a high level.' Genma thought, as he called Yatora to show his three moves. 

"I'm going to show you my most chakra efficient and my most versatile Jutsu, as well as my most destructive attack. Is that alright?" Yatora asked.

"Sure." 'I see, he decided for this approach.' Genma's first impression of Yatora was that he was an introverted and rational, but also determined and intelligent person. In his mind, Genma compared Yatora with the young version of Kakashi, always on his own, but very talented. 'Let's see if he's remotely as talented.'

Yatora asked himself, if he should hold back. On the one side it would be suspicious to suddenly have increased his strength, but then again, he would rather live as a strong individual instead of dying, while trying to appear weak on a difficult mission. 'Alright, I decided. I'm not going to hide my true powers anymore. In that case, I'm starting with shock as my most chakra efficient.'

Without performing handsigns whatsoever, Yatora said "Lightning Release: Shock" in a cold voice and an aura of lightning was created at his left hand, his right hand on the handle of the sword. With one rapid movement of his arm, the lightning was dispelled and a sea serpent made out of pure electricity shot towards the still warm shuriken in the tree, hitting it, sounding like a thunderstorm, blowing a whole through the tree.

'That kid he's on a completely different level.' Genma thought, as he saw his new student in a new light. 'No handsigns and such a powerful application of a D-Rank Jutsu."

"So cool, never would have guessed ur shock could be this powerful!" Nero exclaimed, who had already seen shock during combat-class, just a much weaker version of it.

"Don't praise him, we still have your Fuma Shuriken skills. You were restricted to use them during the academy, right? There's no way he could beat you, if you use them!" Ieri angrily screamed.

Nero smiled nervously. After seeing the attack just now, he wasn't so sure about that anymore.

"I need to go over there for my next move." Yatora pointed at the river.

'What's he planning to do now? Ending the whole fish civilization with his lightning?' Genma jokingly thought.

As they reached the water, Yatora immediately set foot on it, surprising his Team yet again. 

'He knows about water walking? It unfortunately isn't included in the academy's curriculum anymore. But that he's able to walk on water effortlessly at that age, his Chakra control must really be top notch.' Genma started to really think of Yatora as a genius, although he just never ever slacked off during this life.

This time Yatora had to perform no handsigns again, but instead needed to lay his hand on the water. The boy started by casting Water Release: Sea spikes, creating small caltrop-like spikes on the surface of the river.

'He also knows how to use Water Release? The reports I got never mentioned anything in that direction.' Genma thought.

And as soon as Ieri wanted to start laughing about her teammate, the spikes grew drastically in size and looked more like the heads of spears made for giants than caltrops now. 'Shaping sure is useful' Yatora thought, as he started to rotate the giant spikes around him and accelerated them very fast to an extent were Yatora couldn't even be seen by his team.

'Now that I use it like this, I think it could be a good chance to escape under the water', Yatora thought. He just got the idea to do that and it sounded very useful in his head. 

As the spikes stopped, they already merged, having created a wall, which was able to protect Yatora from most damage sources and was even more effective against fiery attacks.

When Yatora first looked through the low rank Water Jutsus, he was surprised not to see a Ninjutsu like 'Water Wall' or something similar, which he definitely expected, as he wanted to have a defensive option too. But he soon came to realize, that there was no Jutsu needed to specifically create a wall of water, as it was such a easy construct to build via Shaping. Every more complicated shapes, needed either a own Jutsu or a person that mastered the Water element.

Yatora ended his performance and returned to land where he was greeted by Nero with the question "Since when do you know Water style?" 

"For quite a while, it's my natural affinity after all." Yatora replied.

"Really, I always thought it was Lightning." Nero explained.

"No wonder, I always used Lightning during class." I said, stating the obvious. 'Seems like I surprisingly get a long with Nero. He seems pretty chill.'

"Can I ask you why you never used Water, but only Lightning during class?" That was Genma asking.

But fortunately I already prepared an answer. "The answer is simple, really. My Water Release is highly focused around shaping the water around me and whenever we were fighting during the academy, there was no water near. There's no deep meaning behind it."

"Alright and now please show us your last move. You said it would be your most destructive move, right?"

"It is, but I never used it with a proper weapon, so it's going to be my first time."

'Oh, weapon? So I'm finally able to see his Kenjutsu with my own eyes.' Genma though, as Yatora drew his sword, Pacific, and coated it with chakra through Chakra flow. 'He even knows Chakra Flow?' 

Yatora made half a handsign with his left hand, while holding his sword in the right. "Lightning Release: Lightning blade." The Chakra Flow inside Pacific changed to the Lightning Nature, which made the blade spark in a dark blue. 

"Huh!" Genma exclaimed. 'Lightning Blade? That's a B-Rank Kenjutsu! I know only one person who would ever teach a technique like that to a child. What the hell have you been doing old man Tomioka? But despite having him as a teacher, it's still impressive to have an active Lightning Blade at that age.'

"That's most definitely a very destructive technique." Genma said. 'It should easily be able to cut through a wall of stones.'

"But I'm not even finished?"

'Not finished, what could he still do now?' Genma asked himself.

Yatora swung his sword and a crescent of Lightning was unbound from his sword, cutting through three trees and damaging the trees behind them. 

As the trees fell on the ground, Yatora said "I'm finished."

'Man, that child's crazy. He even has hopes to be promoted to Jonin before he's 20 or even younger. That kid's a monster.'

Genma grinned. "All of you passed the first part exam, which means it's now part for the second part of the exam. Fight me."