Nawaki Senju!
{5 mins later}
"...also a batch of genins will be joining the battlefield soon. So every chunin will be responsible for one genin. I don't want you to wipe their asses during the war, just try your best to let them get killed in the first few months." Orochimaru spoke.
Everyone muttered and the responsibility of looking after someone quickly saddled the joy of promotion for Hikaru. With this declaration, the second shinobi world war would officially start, as the genin force would enter the battlefields.
Until now Konoha hadn't allowed most Genin to participate in the war simply because they trusted the chunin's and Jonin's to sort out the situation.
But as the scope of the war expands, if Konoha held back any longer the casualty rate would increase. The easiest plan that the higher-ups came up with was to regulate the number of genins that would enter the battlefield.
The meeting went on for a while but Hikaru's attention was now focused on Yuna and Koichi. Both of them were clearly still a little bit affected by the death of Daisuke. Hikaru wanted to talk to Koichi but he had to wait until the meeting finished.
"I have also heard reports that Hokage-sama would enter the battlefield tomorrow. Tsuchikage and Kazekage have both begun moving to the battlefield as well. While Hokage-sama would confront the Tsuchikage in the Land of Grass, our job is to minimize the damage that the Kazekage could do to our forces." Danzo spoke once again gathering everyone's attention.
...
...
"In addition, everyone needs to pay attention to the movements of Hanzo, he is the leader of Amegakure and is potentially an S-ranked threat. Though he had only fought against the Samurai from the Land of Iron, his threat is still set at S-rank on the battlefield."
...
These were the only two important points discussed in the meeting. After 20 minutes of discussions and orders, the meeting came to an end. Hikaru looked into Koichi's eyes, he had some questions that he wanted answers to but looking at the slightly dazed look that Koichi had, Hikaru realized that he was still digesting the death of their clan head.
'He shouldn't be that invested in Daisuke's wellbeing... fine I'll check back with him later.' Hikaru thought as he moved on and walked toward Orochimaru.
"So when are we going to be assigned a genin to look after?" Hikaru asked he wanted to know if he could go out to focus back on leveling up.
"Kukukuku, you are quite eager to impart your knowledge Hikaru-kun." Orochimaru chuckled, his yellow eyes glinted with excitement as he stared at Hikaru. It still amazed Orochimaru when he heard about the rumors floating around.
'The Sharingan is an amazing Kekei Genkai. According to some, his combat strength is at Jonin level. Achieving all that at the age of 8...' Orochimaru thought.
"Normally you would be assigned a genin from the Uchiha clan if we follow the protocol. But Tsunade asked me for a favor and I was thinking you could help me with that..." Orochimaru spoke as he waved at Hikaru to follow.
Hikaru followed as both of them walked over to the medic tent. Hikaru's gaze instantly found Tsunade who was working on healing a shinobi, but his senses pinged another familiar signature.
[Nawaki Senju Lv 34]
Nawaki was Tsunade's younger brother, he didn't have any inherent interest in him but it seems Nawaki was dead set upon disliking Hikaru. Maybe it started because he started hogging a lot of Tsunade's time and the sis-con didn't like that.
Their gaze collided as Nawaki instantly frowned. Tsunade noticed Orochimaru and Hikaru walk in so she gave both of them a tired smile and then focused back on the injured hand.
'Yikes, that hand won't be useable this soon.' Hikaru thought as he examined the butchered hand. Not only were the ligaments damaged the kunai, he was guessing, went through one of the tenketsu making weaving hand signs almost impossible.
"Tsunade, I have an idea. Hikaru-kun was promoted today to chunin based on his merits..." Orochimaru started, his words instantly drew the attention of two Senju. Both of them had the opposite reaction.
"Really? Congratulations Hikaru!" Tsunade exclaimed, the worry lines on her forehead receding a little as she smiled at Hikaru.
"Yeah, and since every chunin would be assigned a genin, I was thinking why not transfer Hikaru-kun to my platoon, and then Nawaki-kun would be assigned to Hikaru-kun," Orochimaru explained his master plan.
This way he could offload the responsibility of looking after Nawaki on Hikaru. And at the same time keep Hiakru close for observation. If the advantages he could see outweighed the difficulties, he could try creating a clone with Hiakru's DNA mixed with his own.
"That's brilliant!" Tsunade exclaimed both of her immediate worries were solved by this method. She wouldn't have to worry about Nawaki and Hikaru and focus on her duties.
Hikaru didn't mind looking after Nawaki. From the meme he could remember, he just had to make sure that Nawaki was not the vanguard and rush ahead into a death trap. Since he was important to Tsunade he had to make sure that he didn't die in this war.
The only one who was not happy with this decision was Nawaki. The simple reason would be that he didn't like Hikaru. The more important reason was that he wanted to be the Hokage like his grandfather. And to be assigned under a shinobi who was younger than him implied that he wasn't as talented as Hikaru.
But he saw the smiling Tsunade and shut up, he could deal with this on his own.
Hikaru saw Nawaki's frown so he nodded at Tsunade and spoke, "Come on Nawaki, we need to talk."
After giving Tsunade a reassuring nod Hikaru walked out of the medic tent.
"Keep up," he spoke before he rushed out to the edge of the training camp. He selected the corner that was closer to the Land of Fire to be safe and then he waited for Nawaki to catch up.
Nawaki arrived almost 5 seconds behind, he was huffing and puffing a little bit as he looked like he had exhausted himself during this run.
...
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{3 mins later}
"Slow..." Hikaru taunted. Nawaki didn't get a lot of air time in the show so he didn't know what his personality was like. To get a better feel for who he was dealing with the easiest method was to push his buttons.
Hikaru saw Nawaki twitch but it seemed like this wasn't enough to overcome his control.
"So it seems like I'm stuck with you until you can get a field promotion, which upon seeing your progress could be a long while." Hikaru continued. Upon getting no reactions he sighed and gave up on this approach.
'At least his mental fortitude is a lot higher than it was shown, maybe a little overzealousness was the reason for his death.' Hikaru concluded.
"Don't be afraid to speak your mind Senju, no one's listening right now," Hikaru spoke. Maybe using the decades-long rivalry would prompt a response and to some extent he was successful.
Nawaki growled audibly for a moment, Hikaru simply waited as he stared at the older kid in front of him.
"Tch-" Nawaki ticked a bit irritated before he finally spoke.
"You can not order me, according to Tsunade-nee-san I don't need to listen to your orders." Nawaki drew the line clear.
"Sure, It's not like I care about it. A battlefield is a dangerous place, but it is also a land of opportunity. Since you are so much slower than me, I could simply monopolize the battles. That would leave you safe and secure completing my mission and at the same time depriving you of merits..." Hikaru casually commented.
"The longer you take to get your first promotion the longer your next promotion would be... and so on..."
By the end of his statement, Nawaki looked ready to lunge at Hikaru. Because of Hikaru's foreknowledge, he knew what Nawaki wanted even if he hadn't spoken it out to anyone yet.
"What do you want?" Nawaki asked with gritted teeth, his face was turning red from suppressing his frustrations.
"That's simple, I need you to always be behind me... No no no. Listen to me first, you see the Uchiha clan has special eyes. I can see through an opponent's strength at a glance. So my deal is simple..." Hikaru spoke.
He lifted his index finger into the air and spoke, "While moving around and traveling I need you to always stay behind me, I'll check for traps and assess our opponents first."
Seeing Nawaki nod reluctantly he lifted his second finger, "And I want you to only fight the opponent that I allow you to fight, now switching opponents or anything like that." Hikaru explained.
"But I won't get any stronger if I fight just genin!" Nawaki protested.
"Yes you would, for the first few weeks, you need to get adjusted to fighting on a battlefield, where a jutsu could be headed at you from anywhere and kill you. And in time I'll allow you to fight against stronger opponents." Hikaru spoke.
Nawaki thought about it for a bit and then nodded in a resigned manner. Hikaru nodded and then spoke, "Our Platoon won't move for the next few days at least. Do whatever you want, I'll see you later..." Hiakru spoke as he used the Body Flicker to rush back to a nearby tree.
He watched over Nawaki as he walked back to the medic tent before he flickered back to his own tent. In there his clone was sitting on his futon. A sealing tag was open in front of his clone and he drew a complex seal onto the tag.
Hikaru looked at the Intermediate Explosive tag for a moment before he walked to the side and collected all the scrolls that his clone had made. There were almost 500 explosive tags in there which he quickly collected.
'Orochimaru was an expert in Fuinjutsu as well right, so if I show him some of the intermediate tags maybe it would catch his attention.' Hikaru thought as he picked up the 5 intermediate tags that his clone had made till now.
The leveling system was still pretty wonky and at the very least Hikaru needed to draw this intermediate exploding scroll 95 more times for it to level up. But once his muscle memory increases he should gain a bit more EXP per scroll generated and he could shorten the time.
'Quantity was better than quality in this case,' Hikaru thought as he walked back toward the command center to give Orochimaru some of these scrolls.
The command tent was obscured in fuinjutsu so Hikaru couldn't sense if Orochimaru was in there, only when he walked in he found that only Jiraiya and a couple of other members of the team were there.
"What have you got there, Hikaru-kun?" Jiraiya asked with interest.
"The exploding scroll I talked about," Hikaru replied as he put 5 storage scrolls on the table. "These scrolls haven't been charged with chakra though because my clone was making it. These need to be charged with fire-natured chakra like any other explosive scroll."
...
His wording was like that on purpose and both Jiraiya and Kiyoshi instantly caught the opening he provided. Jiraiya was the first one who took the bait as he asked, "And what about the other tags that you are holding in your hands?"
...
Hiroshi laid down each of the 5 tags on the table and Jiraiya instantly hunched over them in interest. His eyes instantly roamed across the seal pattern trying to decipher how it works.
"These are a little different, I barely was able to integrate the symbols for storing different elemental chakra and creating an elemental explosive scroll. This is based purely on theory but it should work, I haven't tried it yet though..." Hikaru explained as he shrugged.
By now Kiyoshi was also standing beside Jiraiya, he didn't understand high-level fuinjutsu and just the intermediate scrolls were out of his grasp. So he could only wait for Jiraiya to confirm.
The obnoxious man was surprisingly quiet as he stared at the seal tags in front of him with an enlightened expression. Jiraiya hadn't read or created explosive tags like this as the whole approach was quite different.
The excitement in his eyes didn't dim though as he picked up the tag that was clearly meant for Earth Nature chakra and started pouring Earth Natured chakra into the tag.
...
'He's quite impulsive isn't he...'
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AN - The Senju lives?
P.S - 10 Chapters ahead at p.atreon.com/DesMark