Chapter 22

'This isn't what I was expecting when she said testing my skills,' I thought to myself as my back hit a tree almost as thick as a small house.

You see, my new sensei had decided to see what she had to work with, which was fine. However, I had been expecting her to let me fight against one of the known and varied 'animals' (read, monsters) that populated the Forest of Death. I didn't expect her to say 'Hi' and immediately throw a kunai at my face.

Fast forward a few minutes and there was I, dodging punches and kicks that would probably smack me against the forest floor or send me flying.

It had started as a distance battle really, with both of us throwing kunai and shuriken at each other. She had given me a backhanded compliment when I added some spice to it by attaching tags to them, some exploded, some didn't, some weren't even real tags. I had even tried to throw the shuriken at her feet so that they acted like improvised caltrops…

That idea was a lot better before I realized that she could literally jump over me to end in the opposite direction. I would have to rain shuriken on the place to actually hinder her. And in the end I would probably make more trouble for myself than for her.

'I need to do something… different,' I concluded.

Fighting normally wouldn't do. My teacher apparently didn't bother holding back more than it was necessary to not have me killed. This was easily proved by the numerous bruises that I could already feel forming all over my body even as I tilted my head to have a punch graze my cheek. Less than a second later I had to block a kick to my side that, while not sending me against the nearest tree, did push me almost a meter.

I narrowed my eyes a plan started forming. My eyes darted around every time I had a split second to think, which meant every time I was sent flying, regrettably. However, it ended up being productive, if painful.

'Ok, this idea sucks, but it's something,' I thought before I jumped back to avoid another kick. Normally I would jump over it instead of backwards. But Anko could and would hit me while airborne, so that was a no.

With a semblance of a plan in mind, I waited for my opportunity, dodging what I could, blocking what I couldn't and more often than not I was still hit once or twice in between.

"If you never attack this will never end, brat," She half-demanded and half-mocked. I ignored her while crouching under a jab and rolling away from a punch downwards.

As I went to stand up, my opportunity came. 'Perfect timing,' I thought hiding a smirk. A kick was coming down towards my head and I enacted my plan.

Preparing myself for what followed, I jumped towards the kick, which means up and head first into the kick. Her heel hit the back of my head and, being mid jump, had me doing a front flip. That exactly what I wanted though, and according to plan I extended my leg and…

My foot connected with her face.

Either because of the surprise or because of the actual feet, she stumbled back. Before I could even land on the floor, I was already running through hand seals. And thus, immediately after my feet touched the dirt, I sent two handfuls of lightning-infused shuriken her way.

Unsurprisingly, she jumped over them easily enough.

"That's more like it, but you'll have to try-" Her little speech after landing was interrupted as I pulled my hands to the sides and with the ninja wires attached to the previously thrown projectiles. Before the threads could wrap her up though, she once more simply jumped over it. "I can see the ninja wire, brat. I'm not blind," She mocked.

I clicked my tongue as I jumped with all my strength to the side to avoid her, since she had thrown herself towards me as she dodged. I had also decided to use activate all my Energy based skills to take advantage of Poised's effect. Which had Intermediate Taijutsu and Free Running boosting my jumping distance.

That would have had me covering a good deal of distance, but the wires still wrapped around my fingers got stuck on a tree and thus I flew in a circle around it before I cut the threads. That didn't matter, that was part of the plan too. 'Kami does it feel weird thinking that phrase so much in such a short time,' I mused idly. Still, it had been part of it, since the shuriken's had had the wire wrap around another pair of trees, thus creating a net of sorts between those and the one I had just flew around. Said net was now right between me and my sensei, giving me some room for thought.

'Ok, first of all,' My hands smacked together and I casted Genjutsu Dissipation, just in case. Not surprisingly, a few of the trees around me disappeared together with a few rocks. Good thing the ones I needed were real, if not I would have been in trouble.

'Second of all,' I thought with a grimace as Anko shook her head exasperatedly and jumped over the 'net' leaving me almost trapped inside a trap of my own making.

"Really, you must be desperate to do all that just to get away for a second," She pointed out amusedly as she landed right in front of me. "So, ready for another beating?"

"Not really," I said. "Have you looked down?" I asked raising an eyebrow at her. When she did so, her eyes widened. There, right between us, I had dropped a piece of paper attached to a kunai. One of the ones that hadn't exploded from before. I had put a small genjutsu on her while I had been flying around the tree like a Spider-Man rip off, apparently, it had worked.

And with a touch of my foot, I sent enough chakra to activate it instantly instead of with a delay. The both of us were sent flying and the both of us smacked right into the ninja wires I had set up.

My hands, which had already been mid motion when I made her look at the explosive tag, finished the set of signs and my fingers wrapped around the wire behind me. It was a good thing that Intermediate Taijutsu increased all physical skills, which included Constitution, which in turn meant that I could withstand just that bit more.

I heard a yelp through the cloud of dust left behind by the explosion as an electric current traveled through the wires due to Stunning Thread.

'That's two hits,' I thought to myself. I was very proud of that, to be honest. She was holding back, a lot, but she was still a Tokubetsu Jounin, which in my mind gave me reason to be smug. 'Now, what else can I do-'

"The end," I heard behind me and then felt the cold touch of steel against my throat. "Very good job, Eiji," I blinked at her using my actual name. It had been the first time she hadn't called me 'brat'. "I see all that praise you get isn't for nothing."

"Thanks," I replied simply as she pulled away the kunai and I turned to look at her.

"Now then, we can work on lots of things with you. We'll have a spar like this every day no matter what though. From there, we can work on adding some more jutsu to your list, Lightning obviously, but we'll also add one or two from another element too. I recommend Fire, since that's my affinity and thus the one I know the most, but you can choose. We can improve your chakra control some more after we add some diversity to your repertoire."

"I'm fine with that," I shrugged.

"I'm also very good with poisons, and I know you are good with senbon even if you didn't use any just now. They work very well together, I would know. That's another option. We may even get far enough to work on some poison jutsus that I know."

"I wanted to work on that, to be honest," I replied with a small smile. "I have a garden at home with some poisonous plants. Was actually thinking about looking into making some more complex poisons with them, to be honest," At that, my teacher gained a glint in her eyes that should have unnerved me.

"I like how you think, kid," She nodded with a predatory grin. "Third option is taking advantage of your medical training and seeing about adding a healing jutsu to your repertoire. Forth is Genjutsu."

"So," She tilted her head at me as she continued. "Which one do you think?"

"…" I narrowed my eyes and took a moment to think about it. "Do you favor any of those options?" She smirked at me.

"I'm partial to the first two options, if I'm perfectly honest with you. But all of them are valid and equally good choices," She unhelpfully answered and I sighed.

"Ninjutsu and Iryojutsu, I think," I decided in the end.

"You think?" She raised an eyebrow at me and I nodded.

"I haven't had much time to think about it, but those were my choices when presented with the electives at the Academy, so the reasoning stands. Third place would be poisons and forth would be genjutsu," I could already grind Dissipation which was what I wanted, after all.

"Hmmm, I guess I see it," She nodded. "Good then, for today though, we'll work on taijutsu and physical conditioning."

"Would it be ok if I studied poisons when I'm not training with you?" That would be nice, since I would get to take advantage of the title I got from being her student to the fullest. She raised an eyebrow at me with a somewhat amused expression.

"I really like how you think, even if you sound a bit like a training maniac," My eye twitched at the 'training maniac' part. "Yeah, I'll get you some scrolls for you to read in your free time. Before you do any mixes run them by me though, and I mean that," The last part was added with serious glare to which I quickly nodded. "Good, now, let's get to work."

[}-o-{]

"Wow, this are pretty good," I muttered with my mouth still full.

"I know right?" My sensei said with a smug smirk and I had a sort of flashback to that first time Naruto taken me to Ichiraku's. The situation wasn't much different, considering that Anko had all but dragged me all the way from the Forest of Death to the dango shop that she apparently loved.

"I gotta say though," She continued, picking what must have been her twentieth stick. "You did a lot better than I thought," I would sure hope so, considering that I had put up with a physical training that was almost as bad as Guy's. "Props to you, little guy."

"Thanks," I said simply while eating another dumpling. "You didn't mention anything about missions before," I pointed out after swallowing.

"Yeah, we won't be doing much of those," She replied dismissively. "One a day or something like that, since I'm told you don't need much money to spend really. Also, you are a team of one, so don't expect to do any C-ranks for a while. It'd be more annoying than it needs to be."

I blinked at that. I made some sense, but at the same time…

"No," She continued with a wave of her hand. "I'm here to get you to Chuunin level as fast as possible, which is what I'm going to do. Missions are usually for experience purposes, but the higher ups think that dealing with me gives enough experience," Neither her words nor her grin did anything to reassure me. "Not to mention the Forest of Death," She added as an afterthought before taking another dumpling whole in her mouth.

My eye twitched.

"Questions?"

"None," I grumbled as I continued eating.

[}-o-{]

Third Person PoV (Anko)

They had told Anko that she would be training a prodigy. She hadn't believed it though. After all, no prodigy ever graduated at the standard age. All of them graduated early, some by a few years, some much earlier.

Many would argue that Jiraiya of the Sannin's case was like that. They would be wrong. The old pervert wasn't a prodigy. He was just a beast of hard work, just like Might Guy. They broke through common folk's limits to join the prodigy's in their ranks.

But she was getting sidetracked.

Eiji Satou wasn't a prodigy.

Eiji Satou wasn't even a hard worker.

No, he was something else.

Her first expression had told her that he was either too lazy and that was why he had graduated when he did, or he was a spoiled brat that had everyone worshipping the ground he walked on.

Neither could be more wrong though.

Without even a proper order, just a semblance of a task, the boy had followed her through the village like his life depended on it. He had even reached speeds that would put recently promoted Chuunin to shame. That had been her first clue.

Then he had seen her trap, another mini-test she had set up. This time it didn't surprise her as much, considering who he lived with. Still, that he had noticed after all that running was impressive. And he didn't even look all that tired to boot.

After that he had proceeded to attack her as soon as the words left her mouth. No genin should react so quickly to a request like that. It spoke volumes of his obedience, trust or apathy. All things considered, it had to be the first one though or he disguised the third one very well. Especially after the way he responded to her asking what he knew of her.

Also, knowing that much about her without ever meeting and without good reason almost raised a red flag in her mind. But she had read his profile. He had so many background checks and the like that, if he was a spy, he might be the best in the world.

Then had come the second day, the first proper one. And Anko Mitarashi came to a few realizations.

The first one, was that the Academy had failed to properly measure the boy's skills. Not that she could fault them. They focused a lot in individual skills and worked on them in an isolated fashion. This meant that they couldn't have known what Eiji truly was.

They would never had known the way the boy's mind worked and chained every action that he did. None of his attacks were without a second purpose. Even when he was dodging and blocking he tried to do something else other than just that. Punches were used to add momentum to the next attack, same for kicks. All projectiles either had a ninja wire on them or a tag, real or not, activated or not.

And then came his mind, frightening thing that it seemed to be. That first kick after using her own attack to power his was a good idea, she had seen it coming, true, but a Chuunin might have fallen for it. So, she had taken it, because the kid deserved to connect that hit after the beating she had given him. It was what followed that was the true surprise.

First of all, his Sparkling Shuriken, weak jutsu that it was, was done in a way that scared her out of her mind. It wasn't that he had mastered it, no, it was the fact that all eight shuriken were powered equally. She knew Jounin that couldn't execute the jutsu with the exact same level of power in each shuriken.

Second of all, she had almost let him get her with the wires, that was the second time he would have gotten a Chuunin. But this time, she didn't take it. Anko wanted to see what he would do once that failed. And boy was she intrigued by what followed.

The pseudo-nets of ninja wire were an interesting tactic. Although, she couldn't see what Eiji wanted to do with them. Had he come up with a plan to use them as a terrain advantage?

She had been right. Too right, actually.

He had genuinely gotten her with that genjutsu over the kunai, surprisingly enough. And that would make more than one person go wide eyed. What most didn't know was that she was Tokubetsu Jounin in name only. There were some people that would throw a fit over her getting to be a proper Jounin. So, the Hokage had decided to give her all the benefits of a Jounin while keeping her actual rank at Tokubetsu Jounin.

By that point everyone knew how things were, even those that were dead set against her. But nobody cared or had enough power to take it to the Hokage. The man had been indulgent enough of their ridiculous demands, he had once told Anko.

And she quite liked things like that. She could slack off duties that she wouldn't have been able to as a Jounin, which suited her just fine.

Back to the point though, this brat had gotten her with a genjutsu. Never mind the absolute bat shit crazy plan of hitting both of them with the explosion so that they were thrown against the net before hitting her with the Stunning Tread jutsu. To say that she was impressed with what she was seeing would be an understatement.

Anko took note of the way his eyes shone at the mention of all the training options. And after seeing how he could withstand the Chuunin physical training that she put him through in the guise of Genin training, she realized that he knew how to work hard.

And now, the Mitarashi looked at her student from the corner of her eye at the dango shop, she added to the growing mental list how he just accepted that he wouldn't go on many missions let alone actual missions.

Going over the list now that she had a moment to think, she came to her second realization.

Her student wasn't a prodigy.

Her student wasn't a hard worker.

Eiji Satou was a monster.

For a second, in her mind, the boy's red eyes turned yellow and his pupils turned slitted. A cold chill ran down her spine.

[}-o-{]

"So… you blew yourself up," Hana deadpanned.

"Yup," I nodded, smiling down at the puppy that was licking my face demanding attention. "I can still feel the burns."

"You are crazy," The vet shook her head in disbelief. "You absolute madman."

"Thanks."

"It wasn't a compliment," She rolled her eyes at me when I smirked at her.

"Anyway, how have things been going over here?" I asked curiously.

"Not too much work, honestly, which is good," She said with a smile. Yeah, I got it, not much work meant that the dogs out there weren't being injured. "And I have to thank you again, since you've started coming these guys have been getting calmer and calmer."

"Happy to help," I grinned as I petted another puppies head, the little guy apparently had gotten a little jealous of the one sitting on my lap. "I love these little troublemakers," The dogs surrounding us and even the ones far away barked at me.

"And they love you too," Hana informed me unnecessarily. "So, I was thinking about renting one of the smaller training grounds to take all of them for a day, wanna come with?"

"What kind of question is that?" I asked feigning an offended tone.

"An honest one, you idiot," She rolled her eyes at me. "You already occupy most of your time training, and now that you are a genin I can't see you having much free time."

"I always have free time for these guys," I scratched one of the dog's belly as I spoke. "Just let me know the day and I'll arrange for a free day with my sensei. I'm sure she'll agree."

Hana beamed at me before we went back to talk about the ninken's adorableness, as usual.

[}-o-{]

"So, there was I," Naruto narrated dramatically. "Face to face with the lazy ass Jounin-"

"Naruto, be more respectful towards Kakashi-sensei," Sakura chastised half-heartedly. I blinked at that, she was as big as I was about respecting those of higher standing. Was Kakashi that annoying?

"-the traps were set," My blond brother continued without a pause. "everyone was in position and then, out of nowhere, he threw this big ass fireball at me."

"That's not what happened, Naruto," Sakura sighed while Sasuke looked like he wasn't even paying attention.

"And I dodged it, naturally," The jinchuuriki was undeterred though. "That's when Sasuke threw his own fireball back and Sakura's clones charged in. And when the bastard-"

"Naruto," Sakura groaned.

"-used Substitution with a tree branch, he triggered the first layer of traps, getting shuriken rained upon everywhere within Substitution range!"

The pink-haired girl apparently gave up as she facepalmed.

"But he dodged and parried all of them," He frowned in apparent frustration. "It didn't matter though, since I activated the second layer of traps, making the area around him explode. From there, he was sent flying into the third layer, which covered him in ninja wire and Sakura and Sasuke were able to get the bells!" He pumped his fist in victory.

Everyone deadpanned at him.

"So," I stared, turning towards the girl of Team 7. "What actually happened?"

"Eiji!" Naruto whined childishly.

"Well, once everything was set and we were about to start," Sakura paused for dramatic purposes that had Ino, Shika and I rolling our eyes at the hypocrisy. "He said we passed."

"… Just like that?" I asked with a blink of my eyes.

"Yep," She nodded, with a 'believe it or not' kind of expression. "Said the whole point of the test was to see if we could work together, and we clearly could, so there was no need to actually go through it. He also praised Naruto's schemes," Said blond preened at the last part and I gave him a thumbs up.

"Well… good to see that everyone but me had it easy," I grumbled to myself.

"As if you would ever take the easy way," Shika rolled his eyes at me and I went to argue before I realized that he was right. It didn't stop me from grumbling some more though.

"But, where those layers true?" Chouji asked curiously.

"They were," Sasuke answered, almost shocking the rest of us. We all expected him not to talk if not directly talked to. He did comment sometimes, but it was exception than rule.

"Wow, a three layered trap, that's impressive without knowing the terrain beforehand," The Akimichi complimented getting Naruto to throw a smug grin his way.

"There were six layers, actually," The blonde said getting a shiver to travel down my back. His pranks and usual traps went up to four layers most of the time. Knowing that he had been taking it easy on the rest of the poor Konoha population was scary, to say the least.

"Have I ever told you that I'm really glad I'm your friend?" Ino asked Naruto.

"Just for that, I'm cancelling your monthly prank," Her fellow blonde said excitedly. The Yamanaka heiress visibly deflated, relieved beyond belief, while everyone else groaned, most probably for not thinking about saying something along those lines to save their hide.

The rest of the night was spent in relative calm, as everyone knew they would be really busy training and on missions from the next day onwards. As such, Shika and I played some shogi. The girls, for their part, had sat together on one end of the table and started chatting. On the other end, meanwhile, sat most of the rest, discussing food of all things. It seemed that my comment on a proper diet had awoken an interest of sorts in Sasuke. Shino, for his part, was somewhat on their group and mine at the same time, sitting in between and commenting here and there on both sides.

Eventually though, everyone had to go for the night. Nobody wanted to stay up late when they had to wake up early for harder training than that of the academy. Even I, that used to go to bed much later than the rest, had plans to sleep early.

However, someone had other plans, as just as I was standing up and setting aside my things to clean up the table, a piece of paper appeared on top of it. It made my eyes narrow, since it wasn't the usual folder but just a single square note. Picking it up after taking a deep breath in, I read the content and sighed.

It was a task. It seemed that together with graduating the Academy, I had also graduated from 'written assignments'. On the paper was a specific list of things. Missions, to be exact. D-rank missions by the looks of it. Each of them detailed just enough for me to know the difference between them.

Under every single one of them, was a task for me to do while on the mission. Some had me watching (read, stalking) someone. For what, I didn't know, but I knew enough to piece together that they wanted me to pick up on any strange behavior. Others, like the one that asked me to take Inuzuka dogs for a walk, had me looking for anything out of place through an area. And a number of other things.

I noticed that most of them were simple observation. Which was good, since that would mean that I didn't have to be directly involved in anything and I probably wouldn't get in trouble for doing so. It was borderline espionage though, and that worried me to no end.

As I bit my lower lip, trying to decide what to do, a scroll appeared on the table, together with another note. Picking up the latter first, I read: 'A little incentive from an ally'. Now intrigued, I picked the scroll and read the title 'Jutsu Creation: Introduction. Part 1.'

I sat there, in the middle of the night and alone, for a long hour. My eyes darting from the scroll in my left hand to the list on right one. In the end, I closed my eyes and sighed wearily, flashes of a certain Uchiha ghost and rabbit goddess appearing in my mind. Opening my eyes, I took both things and made my way to my bedroom. Once there, I put both in my inventory, my decision taken.

'Have it your way, whoever you are,' I thought to myself. 'I have to be the strongest, to live however I want to. No matter what.'