35 Training

Waking up, it takes me a moment of just lying there to realise that, no, I didn't dream all that stuff yesterday up.

I'm a Jonin now, at eight years of age, and I have my own squad, who I need to devise some team training for today.

I probably should have planned the training before doing it but whatever, I'm sure I'll come up with something.

Rolling off of my bed and straight onto the floor, I land with a 𝘵𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘱.

Well, time to get ready for the day, which means breakfast!

With my active lifestyle I eat a lot, especially since I'm still growing too, so breakfast is important.

Not bothering to change out of my pyjama bottoms, I head downstars, greeted by the smell of, hmmm bacon.

𝘺𝘶𝘮𝘮𝘮.

"Onii-sama!!!"

My thoughts on the wonders of bacon are unfortunately interrupted by a small missile launching into my legs.

Oh yeah, I have a lil' bro.

Meet Kizashi Haruno, my younger brother by seven years, making him one.

Though he's already waddling around and can say a few words, his most popular being 'Onii-sama'.

Honestly the little guy is a massive strain on my energy reserves.

Not only do I have to pretend to not want him to shut up and let me eat my bacon, but I have to stop him from doing stupid kid stuff, like drinking bleach. Well, we don't have bleach here but there is some solution without a name that's literally the same, we just call it cleaning liquid.

Even worse, is that I have to save him from my parents' stupidity, remember all those years ago when my parents let me play with knives? Yeah, I had to tell them off for letting Kizashi play with knives, and I have to baby proof things 𝘢𝘯𝘥 I have to put all of my equipment that isn't in a sealing scroll somewhere high up, so he doesn't reach it.

I never really wanted kids before, now however, even if I do have a kid, I'm just gonna go buy milk, this shit is so much effort, and now I'm going to be late to my own training session that I set up because I had to explain to my parents that, 𝘯𝘰, you cannot feed a one year old crackling because not only will he be unable to chew it and choke, but it could have an edge sharp enough to cut his tender throat.

Grow up fast lil' bro.

I'm convinced that Hanabira was a character canonically, but without my conciseness they just died to my parents' stupidity and Kizashi only survived after they learnt not to be so careless.

*Sigh*

Excusing myself I return to my room, having ignored everything that my family said through breakfast, and grab my stuff before heading to the washroom for a morning shower.

While there, I obviously see my body, cuz I'm showering, and I can't help but finger the tattoo on my shoulder.

I'm not sure how I feel about the ANBU tattoo, on one hand I do like tattoos, and it does look kinda cool, but on the other hand, I'm only allowed to show it when I'm working, when I'm not I have to activate its inbuilt seals, don't ask me how that works because that's still way beyond me, and make it fade away as if it were never there.

I was honestly a little worried about activating it accidentally or something, but the activation sequence is really long, it's like our ninja ID, only instead of a long string of numbers, it's a long string of specific and small chakra pulses.

Finishing my shower and admiring my hair as I dry it, ok my parents vanity may have had a small effect on me, like using conditioner and other such products when I wash my hair, and I definitely don't apply a small barely noticeable amount of eye shadow, just because it makes my sky blue eyes pop a little more.

That would be lame.

...

Shut up.

Dressing in my ANBU garb and putting my equipment where it belongs, fun fact, there exists a thing called a 'bo shuriken', which are basically just a mix between senbon and kunai, but the point is, I stumbled upon them whilst browsing a weapon shop, looking for more tanto's, of which I have a lot.

Okay I might have a lot of weapons in general, but I am a ninja and bladed weaponry looks cool, sue me.

Anyway, with bo shuriken I now can make up for the fact that normal shuriken seem to be allergic to going where I want them to.

Honestly, I'd just been using kunai as projectiles, but apparently, they're harder to make so it's more economical if I use bo shuriken, I'm just going to call them senbon, the difference is basically non-existent, which means I have to special order them, because apparently everyone is just fine throwing death frisbee's, so they hardly stock up on them.

They do stock up on senbon, but they aren't meant to do any damage really, just to transfer poison or hit precise spots, I want something I can throw into someone's chest and know they will probably bleed out.

Anyway, the trip to ANBU HQ is as short as always, well really, it's shorter as always, since I'm constantly improving.

Also, side note, I can't wait 'till I can make my own storage seals, which shouldn't be long now, with the Uzumaki to help, oh yeah, I should go ask them for a lesson, anyway I'm going to horde so much shit.

I'm the kinda guy that would be exploring dwemer dungeons in Skyrim and have to leave a circle of guard armour and pots and pans on the floor because I picked up those ingots and my inventory became over encumbered.

Good times.

Anyway, again, ANBU.

Being last to arrive to your own training session is a little embarrassing but nothing I can't deal with, as I am a mature person.

"ah, taichou-sama you finally arrive, we were starting to wonder if you'd forgotten us."

"alright for our first training, we will all be doing some normal sparring, the combat specialists against the rest."

"w-wait a minute butterfly-taichou, i am the only combat specialist here."

"oh no, anyway-"

Before I can continue, Hound jumps before me and kowtows,

"I am terribly sorry for my sass butterfly-taichou, please forgive me."

Well since I am so magnanimous, I decide to let it go.

"alright, enough messing around, gather 'round. since we all know each other and how we fight well enough other than fox, you will be the main subject of today's training."

Hound jumps in the air pumping his fist,

"hell yeah! bully the fox not me! wooo!"

Celebrations and exclamations of emotion will never stop being creepy when transmitted through an ANBU mask.

Ignoring the idiot, I continue.

"since you are our sensor, you will spar with hound while me and mantis will hide from you, every ten seconds i want you to shout out are locations, twelve if we are in front of you, six for behind and so on, you get extra points if you give the minutes as well for a more accurate read, unless you're wrong of course. me and mantis will keep track of how often you are right and how often you are wrong also how often your guess is on the ten second mark."

Fox nods seriously before I shoo him away to the middle of the room so I can talk to Hound briefly, I wonder how long it will take before Fox gives up trying to be serious around me.

"try to distract him on the ten second mark a bit every now and then. but let him build up some confidence first."

Hound nods and I can just picture the smile on his face, in the last two years Hound has grown to be quite the CQC monster after all.

I turn to Mantis for some final directions before we begin.

"I want you to alter the levels of your stealth, try to find what his limit is and hover around that."

"sure thing, boss."

As me and Mantis stand on opposite sides of the fighters from each other I call for the fight to begin, making sure to remind fox to start counting, and go into hiding with Mantis, but I don't move.

Hound is setting a fairly sedate pace for the fight for now, and ten seconds soon pass without issue.

"nine and nine-ten!"

Turning to my side I give Mantis a nod and smile a little to myself.

Time to see what the new kids got.

...

Thirty guesses later and Fox is struggling to keep up with the fight, by now every ten seconds, Hound unleashes a barrage of fast but low impact attacks, to keep Fox's attention, sometimes even upping the intensity a few seconds early to make Fox call out too early which was a good addition.

"s-seve-n thir-ty!"

Another thing, if he isn't sure about our location, he won't call it out, which is great, because false information can be more damaging than no information, I had thought I'd have to tell him that, but to be fair it's not like he's new to being a ninja, just new to ANBU, so I can't expect him to be inexperienced.

Deciding that enough is enough, it's only been a little over five minutes, but ninja fights are usually over really quickly.

Calling an end to the spar, Hound is breathing pretty heavily, while Fox just collapses on the ground, exhausted.

Mantis approaches me, as I stand and watch Hound talk quietly with Fox, probably pointing out flaws and stuff, despite being a dick he can be pretty nice.

"how many?"

"out of thirty two he found me twenty two times, only guessed wrong once, though after the first five guesses he didn't make any guesses on the ten second mark."

"hounds doing, no doubt, he found me eighteen times and guessed wrong thrice, but at least he tried to avoid calling out false information, that's a good sign."

Mantis grunts in response, and I lead us over to the other two.

"well, with that out of the way, let's sit down and talk engagement strategy and fighting styles, then we will do some hypothetical scenarios that I will want each of you to go through, though you will have a time limit to come up with your answers."

Hound flops onto his back as I speak.

"awww c'mon, with how lazy you are, i figured signing up with you would let me get away from cruel training."

"suck it up assweed, bedside's I'm only lazy in body, I spend a lot of time thinking about shit like this and if you're going to be in my squad then you're going to think about it too. The more you think about plans and shit the better you are at coming up with them, I cannot express enough how many times being able to come up with plans on the fly has saved my life."

Following my rarely serious words, we spend the next hour talking about our fighting styles, and how we could mix and match, to fight together effectively.

Then I remember something that's been bugging me.

"hey mantis, how come you ended up on my squad? I get the other two but i don't have an actual reason yet for you and it's been bugging me."

"oh, well, when we first met, in those tents you saved my life, and integrated your own fighting style with my own so smoothly that I ended up incorporating it in my report, that i was impressed, i suppose lion saw that and decided I'd be a good fit."

Huh, that's interesting, with that out of the way, back to what we were doing, it's time to see the planning capabilities of my squad.

"alright, the situation is thus..."

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A/N: He~llo! Dear readers!

I hate slay the spire, its a stupid game anyway, why is RNGesus so cruel?

https://ko-fi.com/bored_works