Chapter 4 -> Part 4

The next day, I tried something different. I woke up a little more than an hour before sunrise and dragged Kushina out of bed. A half hour later, we were perched in the tree outside the Academy, waiting for the place to open. I was bored and struggling to read the hiragana from the huge textbook issued on the first day and enjoying the manipulation present in nearly every sentence. Kushina kept sending me odd looks when I started laughing at how insulting the textbook was to the intelligence of future shinobi. Besides the manipulation, there was no 'underneath the underneath' of the book. Either that or I was just an idiot, which I sincerely doubted.

An hour before the Academy was set to begin, Kushina met Minato at some extra lesson the two had apparently agreed to attend together. I sunk deep into the tree and watched as Minato carefully showed Kushina how to throw a kunai. I wasn't particularly surprised they hit it off so quickly.

When the Academy bell rang, I was feeling a bit smug at having thus far avoided Sakumo for the day. I knew he'd find me eventually, he was a Jōnin, but for now I was enjoying the small victory. Even if I was a bit disturbed by the game we were playing. Bored, I wondered how easy it would be to learn tree walking without moving from my perch in the tree. Mostly, it consisted of me putting my hand or foot against it and yanking until I figured out how to make it stay. About an hour before lunch, I was experimenting with sticking different parts of my body to the tree and mentally scolding myself for playing with power I didn't need.

"I see you've kept yourself busy," Sakumo said from directly above me. I nearly lost my balance in surprise. "Want to guess what today's lesson was?"

Shit.

"Lesson three: how to fight back." Sakumo crouched horizontally on the main part of the tree, beside me.

Shit. He won. We both knew it. I punched the tree in frustration.

"Mind telling me what we've learned these past few days?" Sakumo asked, smiling.

I scowled back. "Lesson one: always land on your feet. Lesson two: um, defying and fulfilling expectations. Lesson three: fight back. Translation: live or survive, think, and act. Taijutsu, Genjutsu, and Ninjutsu." I turned away from him.

"Now what was the message I wanted you to get out of it?"

"Hell if I know."

"Kichiro," Sakumo warned.

"Fine. You had to beat me up, terrify a little girl, and make me paranoid as hell to tell me that fighting doesn't equal murder."

"Very good."

"Brutalization, brainwashing, and conditioning."

"What do you mean?"

"In my world, it is a traditional military practice to turn civilians into soldiers. Brutalization is the process that causes them to function with an almost pack mentality, it's generally called basic training. Brainwashing is when they tell them what their job is and that they're going to do it and they're not going to fail. Conditioning is where they're taught to do their job."

"And you thought I was going to follow a tradition I've never heard of."

"Yes. There was a tiny flaw in my conclusion, laugh it up. In my defense, you are following it because it's still psychology."

"I'm not laughing because you're right. But you're too fact and reason oriented to stand by what you think when it doesn't have the most solid foundation."

I grunted an unintelligible response.

"I have something for you, kid."

"Stop calling me 'kid'."

Sakumo sat down on the branch beside me. "Not all shinobi are made to be assassins or to fight in the front lines. There's no shame in it. Some kids see through the brainwashing in the Academy. You did in a heartbeat if watching you read that textbook was any indication. Those that still want to become shinobi are offered apprenticeships. That's what I'm offering you now. Do you accept?"

I thought about it for a long time. "What's my other option?"

Sakumo's face turned impassive in answer. "One way or another, you will become a loyal shinobi and there are ways to ensure it."

I swallowed. "I'll take the apprenticeship, so long as you're the person I'm apprenticed to."

"Not very keen to expand your social circle?"

"Um, I wouldn't mind that, but I'm not going to deal with someone I can't give hell to."

"Fair enough, that's why I brought you these." Sakumo held two sturdy wooden sticks out in front of me. I took them warily, rolling them in my hands.

"What are they?"

"Sticks."

"I can see that."

Sakumo laughed. "You don't want to kill so I found a way that you don't have to. A few strong hits with a sturdy stick can be just as effective as a blade."

"And much less deadly."

"Exactly. You don't have to worry about coming home from missions smelling like blood every time." Sakumo placed a thick book in my lap. "Mentally, you're not built for hurting other people, kid. I'm sure you're perfectly capable, but just because I've convinced you now that learning to fight isn't inherently bad, it doesn't mean you'll remain convinced forever. I won't recommend you to work in the hospital every day, I don't think you have the patience for it. You'd make a great battlefield medic, kid, it's a role I know you'll like."

The ends of the sticks had straps tied to them, so I slipped them around my wrist and held up the book. It had basically everything I needed to begin learning the theory behind medical Ninjutsu, as well as how to learn it practically as well.

He tapped the book. "You'll be learning this on your own time, kid, but I'll let you practice occasionally when you're training with me. Now, will you meet me at the training ground for real tomorrow?" He asked.

"At sunrise," I confirmed. "But I'm going to be a few minutes late. It's the principle of the thing."

He swung down from the tree. "You'll go far, kid, once you learn to keep that tongue in your head where it belongs."

"Um, I'm not looking to go far."

"Yet that's what drives you forward."

(-_-)

That night, Kushina decided that it helped her learn and keep up with Minato in the Academy if she taught me everything she learned that day. Most of it never surpassed my high school level of knowledge, but I paid attention to her history and Ninjutsu lessons for obvious reasons. She also decided to recite to me everything she had learned from our personal Uzumaki Library that day.

Don't get me wrong, I found seals to be extremely interesting, but unlike Kushina, I didn't have any innate genius to help me learn. She began healing with only a week of study, but learning sealing was like learning to read music or write in another alphabet. I knew how to learn it; I had taken music lessons and Latin in high school and I took two semesters of Mandarin while in the military. It wouldn't take me too long to learn the language of sealing, but I knew I'd never be very good in comparison to Kushina. Medical Ninjutsu, however, would be almost entirely hands-on, which I could do. Sure, I had to memorize hundreds of bones, muscles, tendons, and ligaments, know exactly how the muscles and joints worked together, and know exactly how the heart worked as well as every other organ and system, but most of that I had already learned in high school anatomy and physiology, so it wasn't particularly bothered by the refresher. It helped that Kichiro was extremely interested in it as well and we could fill in where the other may have forgotten.

There was an entire section on how the brain worked, which Kichiro seemed especially interested in. I was as well, but in comparison to what I learned in high school, the current level of knowledge about the working of the brain was quite sparse, which frustrated us both.

In the morning, Kichiro woke me up a half hour before sunrise. I ate breakfast and, on Kichiro's behalf, woke Kushina to tell her she didn't have to avoid Sakumo and that she had to be up soon for the Academy.

I made it to the training ground five minutes after sunrise. Through the center of the training ground was a rope tied between two trees. I froze when I saw it.

"You're learning balance first."

"By practicing my, um, slacklining skills?"

"Slacklining?"

"It's an odd sport from my world. Um, basically you do tricks on a stretchy tightrope."

"And you can do this?"

"I could, but now I'm about half my size with a quarter of my strength."

Sakumo gestured towards the line.

"You first. I want to see your tricks, old man."

He snorted.

"Um, you're the one with white hair."

"You're going to regret that."

"Am I?"

"I'm the one with nearly two decades of shinobi experience."

"Right, can I take the old man comment back?"

"We'll see. Come here."

Sakumo tossed all his live weapons in a pile just out of falling distance of the rope and leapt on. The rope sunk about a foot under his weight.

"We're not starting katas just yet. It's much easier to get a lucky with a blade, major veins and arteries are never far beneath the surface of the skin. With sticks, you have to always assume you're at the disadvantage because they won't bleed your opponent dry before you. Right now, you're still a kid, that means you can't rely on your reach or strength to win you anything. You have to be faster, stronger, and more skilled than your opponent. All of that begins with your balance."

I nodded once and stepped up onto the rope. Sakumo grasped my forearm to steady me as he jumped down.

"The line is loose enough to allow you to move freely, but not so loose that losing your balance is dangerous, for now. Move around, jump a little, get a feel for where your center of gravity is."

I did just that. I started by walking a few steps in both directions. After a second of contemplation, I jumped down and stripped off my civilian shoes. I leapt back on and as I started to get a feel for the rope, I jumped to test my strength and balance. Carefully, Sakumo watched. From the way he jerked at my more sudden movements, he was probably worried I was going to hurt myself when Kichiro's body failed in way my old body wouldn't. He tensed as I jumped almost three feet in the air and landed with the rope diagonally across my back. I intended to let the tension in the rope drive me upright like a trampoline, but Kichiro didn't have my sense of balance and I tumbled off the rope and into the grass.

Sakumo crouched to help me up. "It's been a while since I've seen somebody fall like that on purpose. Can you refocus on the task at hand, please?"

"Just the one trick, then I'll focus," I promised.

He sighed, but gestured for me to try again. This time, I managed to land on my feet, even if I missed the rope.

Sakumo grasped my forearm as we both jumped back onto the rope. When we regained our balance, he released me. From nowhere, Sakumo produced an old, worn bokken. He held it perpendicular to the line we stood on.

"Your balance may not matter as much when you're attacked head on." He shoved me backwards for emphasis and I barely managed to avoid falling off. "But when I attack you from another direction your weight and size work against you." He swung the bokken at my shoulder and all but threw me off the line. I tumbled head over heels and stopped flat on my face. I felt one of my teeth loosen at the impact.

"You could have just said so! You didn't have to throw me off!" I protested, then spat blood.

"True, but this way you'll remember it and hopefully I'm discouraging stupid stunts before they're attempted."

"Or maybe just, um, encouraging them." I muttered under my breath.

"I heard that."

"Stupid shinobi with stupid crazy-good hearing." That comment earned me a slap on the back of my head. I wasn't sure exactly how Sakumo managed it from five feet away, but I decided not to question it as I stepped back onto the rope while he jumped off and made two shadow clones.

The rest of the day was spent catching and returning water balloons without breaking them, knocking aside rubber balls and dodging shotput. There seemed to be no telling the difference, until I realized that Sakumo threw them with different strengths and I had to watch him, not the evil little spheres of trickery. Suffice to say, I wasn't happy when I thought the nice, innocent rubber ball turned out to be a solid metal shotput that nearly broke my arm. For the first few hours, I felt like it was just luck of the draw, though I was forced into several fancy maneuvers to avoid the shotput. At around noon, Sakumo dispersed the clones and held out a bento for me.

I thought the after-lunch exercise was straightforward: climb a tree without your feet. With my old body, I could probably do it just fine, even without chakra. With Kichiro's, it was much more difficult. For extremely short periods at a time, I could use chakra to strengthen my muscles and attach myself to the tree, but it never lasted long. I spent more time falling than climbing over the next hour. About a quarter of the time I landed on my feet and before my chakra levels dropped to dangerous levels, Sakumo told me to buzz off and do my own thing that didn't use chakra. Kushina and I repeated our routine from the night before.

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