17 Academy Arc 8

"Hey Shinji! You're late!" Kiba yelled out as I ran into the training grounds. For the past year I had been doing body conditioning training with him as I had promised. It wasn't every day, not for him at least, but we would meet up twice a week to train together. He claimed something about competing with someone else and mutual encouragement improving our training efficiency.

For me, however, it was all about gathering influence. I couldn't help it. It was the way I was raised. I had been handed the book How To Win Friends and Influence People when I was only six years old and told to memorize the core lessons it espoused before I started elementary school. My parents might not have drove me academically, but they were definitely zealous about me making the 'right sort of friends' and learning how to derive the most amount of benefit from those valuable to me.

That was why in my previous life I was a socialite who was invited to all the most exclusive parties and functions and had the numbers of the biggest celebrities in my phone. Not to mention being invited to for events hosted by the most powerful people in the world. My early education was positively Machiavellian, and it had a lasting impact on me.

I had to constantly remind myself I no longer needed to maintain such an elitist lifestyle and habit but call me cynical or jaded, there were definitely benefits to such an arrangement.

Currently I maintained healthy friendships with all of the clan heirs and heiresses, portraying myself as the talented but still friendly and amicable student who was always willing to help anyone who needed it. As a result, despite the obvious edge in my abilities schoolwork, and the few fangirls vying for my attention, I received no jealous glares or any comments that I was snobby, arrogant or other such sentiments.

It wasn't as if I actually enjoyed the company of children all the damn time – they were insufferably loud, rowdy and utterly uninteresting. But since I was in the body of a child, I had to keep up the expectations of spending time with them. Plus I needed to maintain the façade of an affable and sociable persona.

I rubbed the back of my head sheepishly and stopped in front of him, "My bad, I was held up by something troublesome."

"Yeah you're late! And what troublesome thing?" Naruto who was standing next to the Inuzuka asked. The Jinchuriki was someone I had invited to train with us early in the school year. Knowing my personality, it should be obvious what for. He was going to one day, without doubt, become the strongest shinobi in the world and also the literal saviour of the world, barring any pesky butterfly effects my presence in this world held. And I was going to help him get there.

Right now, Naruto was a lonely kid who, because of his special status, was not allowed to live with the other orphans at the academy dormitory. Instead, he stayed in the shinobi district alone, where he was guaranteed to be under the watchful gaze of the thousands of shinobi living in the district who would keep him safe. As much as his status brought him the ire of the general populace, it also brought him an unprecedented amount of safety and protection not afforded to anyone else in the village.

And it was because of this isolation that made him a loud mouthed, socially awkward kid who was barely aware of certain social conventions and rules of etiquette when dealing with other people. Thus, Naruto usually had a hard time making friends with other children and add on the fact that parents would also warn their children to stay away from the Jinchuriki, meant that Naruto was pretty much always alone and had to deal with that loneliness by himself.

So what if I took the first step to approach him and befriend the poor kid? Even if it wasn't for the most altruistic reasons, I was certainly doing him a favour at the very least. He needed a friend, I went above and beyond to not only befriend the fellow orphan, but also helped bridge the gaps between Naruto and the other children to help him make other friends too.

"Ehh nothing to worry about, just something unexpected had come up and I had to deal with it."

"Well that's fine then, but if you need help just let us know! We always need the chance to return the favour for all you've helped us with!" Naruto exclaimed, smiling brightly.

"Tsk, don't mention things like favours if we're friends. So to you I'm just someone who only helps others if I can benefit huh?" I refuted, looking mildly disappointed.

Naruto waved his hands frantically, "Of course not! That's not what I meant! Don't be angry Shinji! Like you said before, sometimes I just speak without thinking!"

"Baka, Shinji is just messing with you. He won't get angry over something like that, right, Shinji? Kiba interjected with some pride that he spotted my obvious trick.

"Eh he is?" Naruto turned back to me only to spot my cheeky grin, "Ah you're mean! Now I'm the one upset! Hmph!"

His pouting was so obviously fake, but I could only shake my head in amusement, "Hai, hai, sorry for that Naruto."

The blonde's grin instantly returned as his pouting vanished, "Hah! Got you! I wasn't upset at all! Shinji fell for it too!"

"You got me, haha." I laughed placatingly, "Alright let's stop messing around. You guys warmed up already?" At their affirmation I continued, "Then let's get to it."

We jogged over to the edge of the training ground and began our physical conditioning session. With only a few more days to go until the start of the next academic year, I wanted to train as much as I could before the first day of school.

________________

"…so that's the situation, nii-san. That kid took us by surprise and he even threatened to kill me!"

Unlike Shinji's predictions, the five of them had left the scene not with thoughts of avoiding him but plans of retaliation instead. Naoki had brought his little gang to find his older brother, in an attempt to ask for his help in getting revenge on the cocky first year who had beat them up, and of course embellishing some details to garner more sympathy.

"The five of you couldn't even deal with one dumb kid? What the hell have the academy been teaching you?" Naoki's older brother snorted out, inwardly he couldn't be bothered to deal with such a troublesome issue.

"He- he took us by surprise! He just suddenly attacked us when we didn't even do anything to provoke him! That jerk kicked poor Tetsuo over here right in the balls and before we could react he was already all over us punching and kicking! Isn't there anything you could do? Maybe teach that brat a lesson?" Naoki desperately defended before asking.

"What that kid said wasn't wrong. The rule of non-interference. I myself can't head out to kick the brat's ass if that's what you're asking of me."

Naoki looked crestfallen, Shinji had been right, his brother wouldn't help him, and he had just humiliated himself by telling the story of how he and his friends were beat up by a first year academy student.

His brother saw the downtrodden boy and sighed, massaging his temples, his kid brother was really troublesome at times. He knew there was some parts of the story Naoki had left out, it didn't make sense for a first year academy student to go on a rampage for no good reason and attack five older kids. But at the end of the day, Naoki was still his brother, so he had to do something at least. "So you guys can't take him right?"

Naoki made to interject but his brother held up a finger to stop him, "Then is there someone he is close to that you could take down instead?"

"Someone else he is close to…? What do you mean?"

Naoki's older brother leaned forward and smirked, "Once you officially become a shinobi like me, you will learn that some problems you can't just face head on. If there is an insurmountable wall in front of you, you don't just keep trying to climb the damn thing. You go around it instead. So if you can't take the kid even in a 5 on 1, then do the next best thing and hit him where it hurts but where he won't be able to retaliate."

He continued, "Find out who he is close to, and then beat up that kid in return. Don't let him find out it was you guys who did it. But even if he does, then he would consider it a message, that even if he can beat you guys up, you will just take it out on his other friend instead. Got it?"

Naoki looked deep in thought for a moment before looking back up at his brother, "Yeah, I think I get it." He turned back to his friends who were all looking at each other in agreement.

"Someone he's close to… oh isn't he friends with that girl? You know, that other orphan girl?" One of the bullies perked up as he remembered.

"Right, I know who you're referring to! Yeah that would definitely work!" Naoki nodded his head in concurrence.

"And we could just threaten her not to tell Shinji, if not we would beat him up too. We know he managed to fend off the five of us, but she won't. She would be too scared that her friend would get hurt to tell him anything!" Another boy added in, rubbing his chin insidiously.

Tetsuo hesitantly spoke, "But… a girl? Isn't that kind of… I don't know, beating up a girl just to get back at the guy seems kind of bad."

Naoki frowned, "We're training to be shinobi right? We can't avoid doing unpleasant things like that once in a while, right, nii-san?"

Naoki's brother who had already tuned out the conversation and was back to reading his scroll from before his brother had bothered him just looked up blankly, "Huh? Uh, yeah sure."

Taking the response as his brother's encouragement, Naoki's resolve was strengthened, "See? And besides, the girl is an orphan too right? That means, she also has the… y'know," He flashed the money sign while grinning, "Wasn't that why we went after that kid in the first place, cause Tetsuo you said your family needed help with money."

Tetsuo perked up at that, and considered it briefly, "Hmm… alright, fine. We will go after the girl then."

Naoki smiled at the consensus, a plan already forming in his head. "Alright, it's settled then. We will make that guy pay for what he did to us. What was that girl's name again?"

"…Kaori."