19 Delay

(Normal POV)

Unlike what usually happened I was not assigned to a squad within three days of graduating yet everyone else that graduated was. It was strange and confusing but when I tried to get an answer about the matter nobody could or would tell me about it. I got rather impatient as a result and directly climbed the Hokage building to ask the old man personally what the hell was going on.

"You do understand that what you are doing is against the rules right?" the old man said with a raised eyebrow as I walked up the side of the building openly. 

"The rules also state that I should have been assigned a squad within three days of graduating and yet here I am without a squad and would like to know why that is." I said retorted bluntly.

"Ha~ I suppose that's fair. Your situation is rather unprecedented to be perfectly honest. Normally when a student graduates they are not truly much stronger than the others of their class. This is because most students tend to skip grades if they are able to so their squad mates are roughly on par with them. You however are far beyond any other graduate the academy has ever produced." The old man said with a serious expression.

"I have no idea what you mean." I said with a frown.

The old bastard smirked at that "Oh I think you know exactly what I am talking about. You thought that by sneaking away nobody would discover your true strength but you are confusingly terrible at sneaking around, led me straight to your secret training spot. It was almost like tracking a bear to be honest. Left plenty of tracks and you weren't gentle at all about disturbing your surroundings. It's odd considering you also manage to regularly evade the senses of Jonins as you try to break into the archives." The old man said smirking.

I stiffened and paled at his words though because I am VERY aware of what my training area looks like after using it to train at my full power. I also felt like cursing at my own naivety as I had always assumed that due to my nature energy cloaking i was the best at sneaking about but obviously I failed to realize until now that even if I can slip past a Jonins perception with it I still left a clear trail to follow after the fact.

"That was left by my beasts?" I tried to play it off but the look he gave me told me that the gig was up.

"Okay fine, yes that was mostly my doing but to be fair I thought you all might try and force me to graduate before I wanted to and then do all kinds of annoying missions way harder than I'd like." I said with an annoyed look.

"If it was during a war or if there was one looming on the horizon that would be a valid concern. Unlike you are probably thinking I am the only person in the village that should be aware of your true strength or rather that had an idea of what it is until now anyways." the old man said with a teasing smile.

'Crafty geezer! He tricked me into revealing that it was me that left the place like that!' I thought angrily but quickly calmed myself down.

"So whats the deal with me not having a squad then?" I asked focusing back on what was important.

"Oh? I had expected you to be more upset at getting exposed like this?" the old man said feigning confusion.

"Nice try gramps but I am not going to fall for that trick twice." I said with a smirk of my own.

He shrugged "Worth a shot. As for the matter of your squad I have decided that you simply won't have one in the traditional manner. You will still have a sensei of course but no teammates as it would be wasteful and wrong to put a little monster like you on a team with two normal graduates. If all goes well then you will meet your sensei in at most a few more days. In the mean time perhaps relax as you wait, maybe work on your stealth?" the old man said with a chuckle at the last part.

I huffed before leaping off the building and onto the rooftop of the one across the street in one fluid motion. A few body flickers later and I was back home and in a worse mood than when I left it previously. The beasts who were at the house at the moment and not out hunting or making a nuisance of themselves snatching food(looking at you cat) picked up on this and gathered around concerned.

"I'm fine everyone, just a bit peeved is all." I said reassuring them as I flopped on Rens back to take a nap.

It was bothersome that my strength had been uncovered to a degree but there was no way that my being a sage was possible to be spotted by finding my training spot. So long as that stayed hidden I wasn't too bothered by the little bit that had been uncovered coming to light. It likely would have happened eventually anyway since I was bound to run into a enemy shinobi who I needed to get a little serious against.-

Still with me now understanding that I actually needed to wait for news I took the next week to work on my stealth like the old man suggested. Surprisingly it was a lot harder than you'd think as stealth had many different facets that one had to keep in mind. Sight, sound, scent, vibrations, chakra suppression, environmental manipulation and understanding. It was a thoroughly challenging thing to grasp perfectly and a week was not enough time to do so despite me trying very hard at it.-

Unfortunately I didn't have longer than that as at the end of that period I got ambushed by a blonde haired woman with huge boobs. See I was working on moving without disturbing my surroundings at the time in the forest when out of nowhere my instincts warning me of danger and I flickered away immediately. 

"CRASH! RUMBLE!" 

The ground exploded when something hit it extremely hard right where I was standing previously. The sound alone was nearly deafening like the sound of a grenade going off at close proximity. My eyes were narrowed as I took the cat form of my style with my hands on the ground with my legs bent and every muscle tensed for rapid movement. The dust that obscured my vision of the attacker moved and five shuriken flew out towards me. In an act of mind boggling contortion I twisted my body out of the weapons direction until I felt some chakra move towards them and flickered away as they redirected themselves mid flight. It was obviously a skilled use of the [projectile control jutsu] that was part of the wind release D rank jutsus.