First ‘Mission’
On the next day, early at the morning, Yuta was leaving his home.
'It's a shame that I wasted most of my seals, and I don't even have any money to buy more materials for restoring my stash of seals… Well, today will be my first mission, even if it just some manual labor D-rank crap, but at least it should pay something, right?'
As Yuta arrives on the team-two reserved training grounds 10 minutes prior the 5am, he meets with Itachi and Hikari that already there.
After greetings Yuta stands and waits for Koichi to show up.
'Well, I might as well do some warm-up while waiting…'
Yuta started to do his usual warm-up being in a good mood and slightly excited, as everything goes well for him, and he is genuinely happy that academy days are finally over.
On the other hand, Itachi appears in a neutral and serious demeanor, and Hikari just looks like she usually does – cold and slightly annoyed.
But when Itachi and Hikari saw what Yuta was doing, they looked at each other and started to do some warm-up too.
Shortly after that Koichi appeared.
"Doing warm-up? Good, let's continue our training on formations" Koichi said in his normal cold and serious tone.
"Sensei, are you real one or the shadow clone again?" Hikari asked, annoyed by the thought of being taught by a mere shadow clone instead of a real deal.
"Of course I'm real, let's not waste any more time!" Koichi declared being slightly annoyed.
And with that the team-two training continues till its 9am, and Koichi stopped the training and said, "We will stop on it, it's almost time for your first mission appointment. There is a tradition that the first mission of the fresh Genin team is directly assigned by the Hokage, we will go to the Hokage for your mission right now."
After that team-two went to the Hokage Tower immediately. Itachi seems a little excited to meet Hokage, while Hikari didn't show any new emotions about it.
The team-two enters the first administrative floor of the Hokage Tower and proceeded directly to the staircase to the third floor, led by Koichi.
'Well, that gives me some memories, the bad ones… I still have some fear and grudge with Hiruzen deep in my conscious from that time when he pressured and interrogated me, but I shouldn't show any of that right now. If he sees me showing some fear it will be suspicious…'
'I have to differentiate that Hiruzen from my memories and this one in the reality. That Hiruzen that interrogated me previously does not exist anymore, and this one is done nothing wrong to me! Yea, that should work, I need to believe in that right now.'
While Yuta mentally adjusts himself the team comes in front of the Hokage's office. As soon as they did, Hiruzen's voice sounded from inside of the office, "Come in".
With that the group opened the door and went inside. Hiruzen was seating at the table and doing his paperwork. As the group led by Koichi comes in and stands in the middle of the office, Koichi said, "Lord Hokage, team-two is here for the mission"
Hiruzen looks up at Koichi, then at the Genins. "Good. I have just the right mission for you, team two. Here is the scroll with the mission details. You will be going to the Toru Ono's farm to weed the weeds on his field." Hiruzen said with a slight smile in a tone as if he given the team-two a very important job.
'Well, that was expected. And my mental trick seems working, I don't feel any negative emotions towards "this" Hiruzen at all.'
While Hiruzen expected it but all three Genins didn't show that they upset by this kind of mission, as if they already knew what kind of mission they would be receiving. Hiruzen seeing that sighed, looks like he likes to watch in amusement how fresh Genins receiving their first mission full of expectance to only be brought down by the manual labor mission, but he is not getting that this time.
Koichi takes the mission scroll, "If that is all, Lord Hokage, we will be going."
Hiruzen still keeping his smile, sighed again and said, "Yes team-two, you should go and complete the mission well." After saying that he returned to his paperwork as team-two leaves his office for the mission.
After they went outside the Hokage Tower Koichi unrolled the scroll, glanced on the content he said, "That is the farm in Konoha's outskirts, let's go there and you should complete the job fast so we will have more time for your training. But you should do the job by yourself, using shadow clones is not allowed."
With that team-two went to their destination on high speed using roofs.
As they arrived on a desolate place in front of the farmhouse and fields, Koichi went inside to meet with the customer, soon after that he comes out and brings the team to the specific field.
"This field is your mission for today, weed all the weeds and bring it here outside in one big pile. You should be done in 4 hours, start right now!" Koichi commanded in cold and authoritative tone.
'Weed such big field in 4 hours? That will be challenging, well, there is no way around it, let's just do this…'
Three Genins glanced at each other and went to do the job. They moved at the high speed weeding the weeds and throwing them in piles then moved the piles outside the field.
After 2 hours of work, it becomes clear that Hikari and Itachi do the job faster than Yuta. They initially split the field on three equal parts, but it seems that Itachi and Hikari will be done in another one and a half hours, but for Yuta it's different, for him it will require another 3 hours to complete his part.
'Huh, that damn talented shinobi, just you wait, I will beat all of you eventually with my hard work and time cheats!' Yuta thought while trying to pick up his pace.
When it was 3 and a half hours in, Itachi and Hikari were done with their parts of the field, and when they looked how Yuta was doing, they glanced at each other and just silently went to help Yuta with his part.
In another half an hour, exactly 4 hours in, the job was completed and Genins went to the front of the farm house and met with Koichi.
"Well done guys, now let's go and report the completion of the mission. I already received the confirmation from the mister Toru Ono, our customer."
With that team went back to the Hokage Tower, entered Hokage's office where Koichi said, "Team two successfully completed the mission, Lord Hokage, here is confirmation from the customer." Koichi gives some papers to the Hiruzen.
"Well done team two" Hiruzen said with a slight smile, "I'm expecting that you will continue to work hard for the village."
"Yes, Lord Hokage" said all three genins at the same time.
'Wow, he said that with such seriousness and solemnity, as if we returned not from weeding of some farm field but from a dangerous mission after fighting some enemy shinobi. I even felt a little proud about myself right there. Well, probably Hiruzen is not doing this stuff for nothing I guess…'
After the group left the Hokage Tower Koichi said, "This D-rank mission was worth 10000 ryo. The village takes the third of it, I also will take third of it, so you three will get the remaining third to split among you three." With that Koichi pulls out an envelope, takes three 1000 ryo bills from the envelope, then pulls out some smaller bills from his pocket and extends it to his Genins to take.
Itachi takes the bills and says, "While it's true that I and Hikari done more work I think we should split the pay equally among us, what do you think, Hikari?"
Hikari shrugs and says, "Yea, whatever."
With that Itachi split the bills between the three of them and they followed Koichi to continue their training.
On arrival to the training grounds, it was already past the lunch time, so team was given some time for lunch. Yuta and Hikari grabbed ration bars and chewed on them, while Itachi pulled out his bento with some rice, fish and salad.
Koichi looking at that said to the Yuta and Hikari, "You two should eat properly too. While it's fine to sustain yourself on ration bars, they meant to be used on the field when preparing normal food is not convenient."
"Yes sensei" Yuta and Hikari replied in unison and then glanced at each other.
'Well Koichi is right, now that the academy has no longer supplied me with ration bars, buying them myself would cost probably the same amount as preparing normal food.'
After the lunch break the squad formations training continued, Koichi continued to drill his knowledge and wisdom into his three Genins, demanding from them to pick things up fast and remember it well.
With that the day was coming to an end and at 8pm Koichi stopped the training and gathered his team together and said, "Good job today, we will meet here every day at 5am for training and occasional missions, there also will be days off that I will give you from time to time for your personal training or clan training in Itachi's case. I expect you to train well on those days and not just slack off, I hope this part is clear, you are supposed to work hard every day for your first two months, I will not tolerate anything else."
After saying that Koichi pulls out a scroll and gives it to Yuta, "Here is the scroll on Fuinjutsu chakra concealment seal as we discussed before. Dismissed." Saying that Koichi puffs in a small cloud of smoke once again.
"No way that was another shadow clone" Yuta blurted out, "He was carrying the money and the scroll, how he can be a shadow clone?"
"He must have being replaced himself with a shadow clone at some point" Itachi said, and then flickered away after that.
Yuta glanced at Hikari, she looked like she wanted to say something, but Yuta flickered away not waiting to hear it, as he thought that Hikari will ask for the shadow clone jutsu or something like that and went to buy some groceries and Fuinjutsu supplies such as empty paper tags for seals and special ink.
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[AN: There is some slice-of-life here in last two chapters, but I will not do a lot of it, it's just a first days and first mission, so I wanted to go a little bit more in-details here, but the pace will speed up again after that.
5 extra chapters in advance on my patreon /SycoreNovels
Any support will be appreciated!]