The Academy.

Kriyu sighed as he strolled through the partially awake streets of Konoha. Sighing was an action that he found himself doing a lot ever since receiving the new memories and experiences. The reason for his dejectedness was the subject of getting stronger. It's clear what his goal was, and if was definitely to get stronger, however what really put him on edge was how? There were obvious starts such as physical strengthening training but that would only do so much and get him so far. The academy taught the bare minimum when it came to actual useful things such as Taijutsu and Ninjutsu and Kiryu was a civilian orphan, so he had no powerul clan like the Akimichi or something to teach him jutsu and training.

Ridding himself of gloomy thoughts though, he reached into his pocket for a leaf and placed it in his palm as he began to conduct chakra into it, trying his best not to destroy it. One of the few things the academy taught, a training method for chakra control, even if a very basic one. The objective was to conduct chakra into it without damaging it and then getting it to stick onto your forehead, Kiryu had grown proficient in the exercise however there were still occasional moments where he failed to do it if he wasn't paying enough attention. His aim was to be able to do it as a background activity, similar to breathing.

Kiryu's stroll soon came to an end as he reached his destination, one of the biggest buildings in the village, the ninja academy. He walked through the front gates and straight into the building to his class. Upon entering the classroom he saw that everyone was already gathered there, save for the teacher, Iruka, and the knucklehead in the class, Naruto.

Kiryu had always kept to himself in the academy, he wasn't disliked by anyone but he wasn't relatively close to anyone at the same time, so he took his seat at the back of the class without gathering much attention from anyone at all and continued with the leaf exercise as he prepared his pencil and paper.

It was about 5 minutes later when Iruka walked in and the class quieted down. Still no sight of Naruto however, a common occurrence. 'Now that I think about it, the fact that Naruto passes the academy is complete bullshit as well', Kiryu mused to himself. Iruka had called out the names for registration before he finally began teaching. The academic side of things had always come easy to Kiryu, and when taking pop quizes or tests he was only beaten in score by a a few clan heirs, and occasionally Sakura. Compared to that, his practical skills couldn't be called anything else but mediocre.

The lesson proceeded without any disturbances, until the door was suddenly busted open and the famous, or rather infamous, Naruto Uzumaki came through, clad in his blinding orange clothes. "Sorry I'm late!", the boy all but shouted. Kiryu saw Iruka's face contort in a way he didn't think possible as he bellowed at the boy to take his seat. Naruto hadn't said anything else and simply walked up and took the only spare seat in the room which was at the corner in the back of the room next to Kiryu. Kiryu's jaw dropped slightly in disbelief as before he even had the chance to say anything to him, the blond simply fell asleep on his desk.

The majority of the day proceeded as any school day would, slow and boring. After the late entrance of Naruto, that lesson proceeded without much being said apart from Iruka drilling in the subjects that were going to appear on the graduation exam.

After that was lunch, where the students had free time to do what they wanted. Apart from eating, Kiryu spent that time doing the leaf exercise. By now he was sure that he had a perfect success rate in it, even if he was doing it in the background.

After lunch ended, it was time for sparring. Kiryu had mixed feelings about sparring sessions, they mainly ended in his losses but the few times he did win against other civilians were satisfying times. Iruka ran through names and Kiryu watched the spars anxiously. He would definitely get stronger one day no doubt but he knew as he was now he would most likely lose.

"Kiryu and Choji", Iruka called out. Kiryu's heart beat against his chest walking up to the middle with Choji, he already wasn't confident, and Choji, although kind and merciful, was no doubt one of the stronger ones in the academy. He took a deep breath as he looked towards Choji. "Form the seal of confrontation and start", Iruka instructed.

Both boys formed the seal and then got into their stances. Knowing that he would not be able to take a hit from Choji, Kiryu rushed at him, cocking his fist back before swinging with all his might towards Choji's face. Choji raised his arms and blocked the punch with relative ease, however this didn't seem to dishearten Kiryu. Leaning closer into his opponent, Kiryu punched Choji's exposed stomach, landing the first clean hit of the spar.

Kiryu felt a new wave of confidence at landing the first hit, and it seemed that even the crowd seemed a bit surprised. At the sudden sense of pain in his stomach, Choji lowered his guard and Kiryu saw an opening. He tried something daring as he planted his left foot firmly into ground and span on it, aiming to kick Choji in his head. However, he felt his kicking foot get stuck, and looking to see what happened he saw that Choji had a firm grasp on his foot. "Ah shit", Kiryu cursed to himself. No longer feeling the effects of gravity, Kiryu's vision blurred as Choji picked him up through the air and dropped him onto the ground, trying to make sure not to hurt him to badly.

"Choji wins", Iruka announced, as Choji and Kiryu returned to the sidelines. Iruka placed a hand on Kiryu's shoulder grabbing his attention, "Although you lost, I saw some major improvements y'know". "Thanks, Iruka sensei", Kiryu smiled before heading off.

Nothing significant had happened for the rest of the day. There was another Academic lesson before the end of the day, just much shorter and before letting the class go Iruka told them, "Remember, your exam is evaluated over a number of things, first is the written exam, then the Bukijutsu test and finally you have to preform the 3 E-rank jutsu: Clone, Transformation, and Substitution to an acceptable standard".

Kiryu kept that in mind. He was pretty much sure that he would pass the written exam with pretty much flying colours, what was more important was the Bukijutsu test and the preforming of the three E-rank jutsu. 'Alright I've decided, the academy has a training ground that's open for 2 hours after school, everyday before going home I'm going to practice throwing Shuriken and Kunai there'. Kiryu had planned course of action for the next two weeks before making his way to the said training ground.

At the training ground were training dummies set up with targets on them, these were the ones that were going to be used for the exam and to the side there were boxes of practice Kunai and Shuriken. Taking five of each, Kiryu got into position to throw them. Taking a Shuriken, he tried his best to aim at the target before throwing it. The Shuriken curved in the air, just barely landing into the wooden dummy itself rather than even getting close to the target.

'Damn, this'll be a long 2 weeks'.