ã€ŠThe Will of Fireã€‹


 1.Bear Necessities

    A boy was crouching next to a river trying to sharpen a stick on of the more pointy rocks of the river shore.

    In the distance a small pack of bears could be seen, 5 or 6 of them, yet the boy reamined as calm as the water he was facing.

    As time went by the bears would sometimes look at the small curiosity labouring not 300 feet away from them,but they quickly got bored and for a while the situation didn¡ät change.

    He looked very young exceptionally young for someone living in the wild 4 or 5 years old at the most, if you gazed at him a bit you would see that he was a bit malnourished, but also quite strong for his age.

    No strong wasn¡ät the right word fit made more sense, fit to survive, fit to run away, fit to labour for hours for a few scraps not strong at all if you looked at it that way.

    Then finally something changed with him seemingly finally being satisfied with the sharpness of his improvised tool.

    He got up and gave the bears a quick glanze reasurring himself that he was far enough downstream from them to not be an eyesore, but he was not afraid of them afterall he didn¡ät do this for the first time nor the last, if they would let him.

    A fish that survived the bears finally came downstream * chop * 1 miss * chop * 2 misses..3 misses

    finally the fish got away escaping the last predetor of this river.

    The boy didn¡ät get frustrated that wouldn¡ät make the hunger go away instead firmly placing his gaze back upstream.

    Even after an hour the boy could still be seen there unhurriedly catching whatever came downstream making no destinction between the fish.

    When night finally dawned the boy left with a moderate harvest,enough for his efforts at least in his mind, after walking for about half an hour he finally arrived at the rocks to his east.

    The small hill wasn¡ät actually any saver than the space around it even the boy knew that, but it was devoid of life and it had a small cavity that kept some of the wind and rain at bay so it was the closest thing the boy had to a home.

    Of course he didn¡ät sleep as he sat down at some dried grass placed over the smoother part of the stone, the night was for hunting, or in his case for not getting hunted if he could prevent it at all.

    He plucked 3 small and 2 bigger fish from his stick on a piece next to him that seemed unaturally clean compared to the rest of the cave, then he used his hands and later the stick to slowly disassemble all five of the fish leaving most of there mass disposed on the ground.

    The fish were hard to ¡°prepare¡° afterall he had no fire instead he only eat the best and most delicius pieces,liver,eyes and a few bits of meat all of wich he ripped into tiny pieces.

    This was not done out of any sense for luxury instead it was the only way they could be eaten without the boy getting sick and throwing up whatever he had in his stomach alongside the fish.Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

    Everytime he took a bite he paused for a long while then got back to eat, in the meantime he thought all about how to better the situation for himself, could he make a stone spear with something in the forest or plains were he went fishing?

    Would a net tied to the stick be better or worse for catching fish?

    He thought all of this as he did infact know language,his language skills were passable for someone his age wich seemed surprising concidering that he had not had a conversation for 2 years.

    Years that was another thing he knew about, a year was the time needed for summer to turn to winter and then back to summer.

    From that he knew that he had been living in the forest, or rather the space around for 2 years wich seemed surprising, concidering that this was not even half his age.

    He lived and laboured trough the forest there he fruit,berrys and there he had gotten his stick.

    Because of this daily routine this life seemed so much longer than anithing before it, he concidered how long he would have guessed he had been living in the forest if it were not for the seasons telling him.

    10?...12 years, yes this seemed sufficient.

    Then again he had forgetten most of the time he had forgetten most of his life outside the forest,it was no life he finally concluded it was a whir of random emotions pictures and only rarely complete moments.

    It was not that he had forgetten things completely instead it seemed like someone had stolen the detail from most of these days and he had never refound anithing to rekindle these moments.

    This current life on the other hand seemed almost unaturally clear, survival afterall was just one word easy to remember even for him.

    As the black sky slowly went turned blue he huried to the forest making a detour to dispose of all bones or unfinished meat that remained of the fish that had fallen into his hands.

    He had a small leather bag with him it was unusually well made compared to the rest of his attire altough it was stained with old juices of fruit.

    The leather bag was the final thing he had left, all of his clothes had gotten to small for him replaced over time with the hides of dead things torn of from their respected bodies over many hours.

    He continiued on his way carefull to never make more sound than he needed while he himself avoided any sound he may heard.

    It was not a very long trip much less time then he needed to even eat his fish much less catch them.

    Ultimately he eat what he couldn¡ät carry discarded some of the less edible food with a heavy hard and checked for any bugs he may eat with a moderate amounts of sucess.

    Then there was nothing left to do anymore he had exhausted all places he could safely get food at.

    The sun would soon be at it¡äs highest point so since he didn¡ät want to stay up late he decided to walk back out of the forest.

    He went back a similar but shorter path forcing some more fruit and ants he crushed the heads of down his throat afterall summer was time of feasting and winter didn¡ät wait for anyone.

    Reconnaissance was something important when leaving the forest afterall the stealth of the forest was for both him and the wolves to enjoy and the same could be said about the wide viewdistance outside of it.

    He crouched his small body down and stealthily peaked outside, he saw a few rabbits a squirrel and nothing else.

    Relieved he then went closer to the outside but then abrubtly stopped.

    His vision went over to the location of the sound but it seemed obstructed by a bunch of bushes.

    The closer he went the more he could identify the strange sound, now he realised why he overheard it at first it was a constant sound giving off a ¡ä¡äSHHHHHHH¡ä¡ä leaving him somewhat confused.

    At first he wanted to retreat afterall it could be a predetor, but soon he realised that the ¡ä¡äSHHHHHH¡ä¡ä just wouldn¡ät stop so he decided to venture into the great(or in this case hopefully small and peacefull) unknown.

    Inching closer to the sound proved easy, tough he took his time as to not make any unecessary sounds while finding his way around the bushes.

    Then he finally caught the first glimpse of the thing....an iron pod.

    He was stumped then he panicked...

    ¡°IRON iron means people!¡°

    He huriedly looked around everywhere even going so far as to release some sound just to get his peace of mind just a little sooner.

    After everithing was checked he calmed himself down a little,¡°Even if there are people around they dont know about me.¡°

    Looking at the pot giving off endless amounts of steam he suddenly had a mischivous thoughts.

    ¡°Well they dont know im here could have been anithing.¡°

    He opened the pot and almost threw up blood from excitement RICE actual rice.

    ¡°Hey kid i wouldn¡ät eat that if i was you¡°

    ¡°Yeah that¡äs our food and were not sharing it with some savage wearing hides, by the way those are some cool hides¡°

    The boy got so scared he droped the rice, only barely catching it¡äs bag before it hit the ground.

    ¡°By the way who the hell are you¡° shouted the one with the spiky hair.

 2.Unwelcome Answers

    The boy was silent for a bit he was shocked in three different ways, he had not seen them at all in the trees, he was actually watched during the whole process of him trying to steal there food and also absolutely horrificly shocked by the headands they were wearing.

    ¡°Ninja¡°

    To call it shock was rather inaccurate it was more like a heavy weight pushed onto his chest slowly pulvarising his bones and leaving him motionless.

    ¡°Yes we are. What of it this is neutral territory for now so any nation can interfere here if they want to¡° the more reserved with the combed down hair said.

    The boy slowly digested the information he was given, he knew that there was not just one kind of ninja and the people infront of him might not be hostile, no they definetely were not hostile afterall he was still alive and they almost seemed...friendly?

    Giving them a closer look he noticed the headbands they had been wearing all along.

    ¡°Your from Konohhhh..¡°He grumbled as he used his rosted vocal cords for the first time in ages.¡°I meant your from Konoha¡°

    ¡°Yes were from Konohagakure and the Country of Fire should that be a problem?¡°

    ¡°NO i just meant, i meant...your not gonna kill me?¡°

    The men looked at each other with a serious expression.

    The man with a beany and combed down hair spoke again.

    ¡°We wont kill you just because were ninjas my name is Izumo what¡äs yours?¡°

    The boy noticed that the man was trying to force information out of him, but he doubted he could resist the man if he really wanted to know so he answered honestly

    ¡°My name is Shiro Tsukamoto¡°

    Izumo looked at his partner with a worried look.

    ¡°Listen here furr man im not trying to pry too much but could you tell us about were you come from?¡°

    ¡°I..i live outside the forest...¡°

    The boy mumbled accidentally giving away some information.You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

    The man glanzed at Izumo as if finally sure of something.

    ¡°Hey listen Shiro do you live here all alone or is there anyone looking after you?¡°

    ¡°No¡°..... an awkward silence followed with the men exchanging glanzes that Shiro didn¡ät understand the meaning off.

    ¡°You can have that rice¡°. The man with spiky hair said.

    ¡°....Thank you.¡° Shiro said looking at the rice as if it had magicly turned inedible after there conversation.

    The men got some tableware out and let him eat the rice he slodged down his throat while they swolled some pills.

    ¡°So im Kotetsu by the way nice to meet you.¡°

    Shiro looked at the man with a wary gaze then back at the rice¡°Yeah nice to meet you.¡°

    A little bit went by till Kotetsu apearently couldn¡ät stand it anymore

    ¡°You know if you would tell us a bit about yourself i could give you some syrup with that rice!¡°

    Shiro looked shocked¡°Who would want that?¡°

    ¡°A wise man once said dont knock it tilll you try it¡°

    Shiro chuckled a bit¡°And who was that, you?¡°

    ¡°Well me just now obviusly¡° Kotetsu said completely ignoring that his joke had already been said to him.

    Izumo¡°Kid we wont force you but if you tell us about yourself but that¡äll make all our lives a lot easier¡°

    Shiro looked at him then at the rice as he eat another bit and finally at Izumos Ninja headband.

    ¡°Fine then but i don¡ät think there is much to tell¡°

    ¡°Any small bit would help out¡°

    Shiro gazed at him curius why he mattered to someone of another country.

    ¡°Fine then im a Tsukamoto that means my village was atacked about 2 years ago I barely noticed anithing when my mother send me and my brother away two different directions from each other after we were atacked by the Earth Nation then i settled down here in the forest.¡°

    Izumo looked at Kotetsu as if struggeling with a heavy burden.

    ¡°Listen kid your village didn¡ät just get atacked it was looted and annihilated by the country of earth im sorry to say but your the last survivor.¡°

    Shiro¡äs eyes redenned to an extreme even more so then if he actually had cried then he pulled himself together saying¡°No my brother got sent away with me so..¡°

    Izumo then asked something that hurt more then all the pain Shiro had received since he had made his new home in the forest

    ¡°Nishihara Tsukamoto right? About 9 years old so 8 when the village was atacked.¡°

    Shiro only cried as a resonse silence following for a long while till he finally spoke again.

    ¡°It was just a year?¡°

    Izumo asked¡°What do you mean?¡°

    ¡°My brother has his birthday at around the same time as me you said he was 9¡°

    Izumo¡°....Yes it will be two years in 1 month from now..since the attack¡°

    ¡°I see¡°

    Kotetsu and Izumo again looked at each other as tough communicating with there eyes better than with there mouths...then finnaly speaking.

    ¡°Well...the mission¡° Izumo finnaly said.

    Kotetsu¡°We can¡ät just leave him here¡°

    Izumo looked at him for a second then saying¡°Your right¡° as tough it was a fact.

    Shiro seemed quite passive while Izumo and Kotetsu were hurriedly using varios means to contact Konohagakure but at least he didn¡ät cry anymore almost as if just lost in thoughts.

    Kotetsu finnaly reached out to him

    ¡°Listen Kid it¡äs gonna take some time for others to come.¡°

    ¡°In the meantime all 3 of us can stay it¡äs not far from here there will be more good food¡°he said gesturing at the plate in Shiros hands.

    ¡°I...dont care....but ok i don¡ät mind¡° Shiro said.

    The men gave each other a satisfied expression¡°Well then Shiro if you don¡ät mind could you change in these clothes while one of us gets your belongings.¡°

    ¡°I have none¡°

    ¡°Pardon?¡° Katetsu spoke.

    ¡°I have no belongings, just what is on me¡° he said as he threw the wooden spear still on him on the ground like it was a something that had eternally lost all value.

    The men went quiet as Shiro slowly changed in some clothes that were adjustable to different sizes, yet still didn¡ät fit him at all.

    They had somewhat shocked looks on there faces, as they saw his small body that both malnourished and had a few bruises mainly on his legs.

    As he seemed ready to move they tugged him along in a direction he had never went before, while taking small brakes inbetween in wich they both men practicly shoved food inside of him.

    After 2 days the finally reached there destination.

 3.Civilisation

    After 2 days of travel they arrived at a tiny community..no community wasn¡ät the right word it looked more like a self sufficient farm with even less people than Shino¡äs old village.

    Shino had finnaly gathered himself seemingly back to his old self asking

    ¡°What are we doing here?¡°

    ¡°Isn¡ät it obvius? We promised you some food right?¡° Kotetsu said.

    ¡°You already gave me food and since you are on some mission i doubt you are doing this out of leisure¡°Shino said.

    ¡°So the brat can use big words now¡° Kotetsu whispered under his breath.

    ¡°You will stay here until someone from Konoha arrives to take you to the leafvillage...your fine with that right?¡°

    Shiro didn¡ät give an anwer and just shrugged his shoulders..then he said

    ¡°Why did you know about the exact time my village got destroyed....you even knew my brothers name.¡°

    Izumo got more serius¡°Your village is known to all the world now, it was a crisis that almost started the fourth shinobi war right after the third was just over.¡°

    Shino didn¡ät know what he was saying so he simply asked ¡°What?¡°

    Kotetsu felt the need to intervene¡°Sometimes adults fight and when these adults are...¡°

    ¡°My mother explained what wars are.¡°

    ¡­...¡°Damn brat knows everithing huh?¡°Kotetsu apearently felt no need to hide his words.

    Izumo got back to talking¡°Well aniways your village isn¡ät in the country of fire but it¡äs firmly in it¡äs sphere of influence so it came as quite a shock to everyone that it got destroyed just after the truce between the country of Earth and Fire was signed.The third hokage even resigned over the crisis.¡°

    ¡°So that¡äs why¡° Shiro pondered.

    Going inside one of the buildings everyone ordered something for each other.

    Shiro got a a bowl of meat and soup wich he looked distrustfully at but soon demolished after having his first taste of actually prepared meat in almost 2 years.

    Kotetsu said¡°Hey easy there kid that can¡ät be healthy for you¡°

    Shiro was shocked¡°You let me order something poisonous?¡°Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

    ¡°No no i didn¡ät meant that, im just saying maybe decrease the tempo a bit.¡°

    Yet shiro wasn¡ät listening he was already back to eating slurping up the soup after finishing all the meat.

    ¡°Well i be damned guess we don¡ät need to worry anymore about him being all bones right Izumo?¡°

    Izumo cracked a smile at his companions comment.

    ¡°Anyways we should get back to the mission sooner or later.¡°

    ¡°What...Izumo we play the babysitter every time we don¡ät want to, but now where it¡äs actually alright we need to go?¡°

    ¡°Speak for yourself i apreciate being the babysitter of our loved ones¡°

    After arguing for a while Izumo got convinced to stay the night as it was already evening aniway.

    Izumo took the rare oppertunity to take a shower and not a bath in some cold river and enjoyed all the comforts civilisation had to offer after drying himself off he finally returned to Kotetsu and the Kid.

    ¡°Kotetsu what the hell you are ACTUALLY teaching A 4 Year old how to gamble!?¡°

    ¡°Hey man relax relax it¡äs just some cards and besides he¡äs basicly 5 aniways¡°Kotetsu said as if slowly being pushed in a corner.

    Afterwards Izumo didn¡ät take his eyes of them and even played some chess with the boy beating him each time by just a bit to keep him interested at the end intentionally losing and pretending to be angry about it wich got Shiro and Kotetsu laughing quite a bit.

    At the next morning the boy got woken up early and Izumo and Kotetsu had to say there goodbyes to him, reasurring him that they were looking forward to him becoming a part of the leave wich left Shiro flusterred and unsure his feelings.

    From then on he helped out a maid of the farm in her late 40¡äs he mainly peeled potatoes helped with the cleaning and kept himself occupied, while getting fed well in exchange for his services.

    The maids name was Okita and she seemed nice enough, but he didn¡ät enjoy talking to her as much as Kotetsu or even Izumo.

    For Shiro the days went by until he was called away from his occupation by the person that took Izumos and Kotetsus order for food from them when they first arrived.

    The younger man guided him to the bathroom telling him that Shiro would soon depart and this was his last chance at taking a shower.

    Shiro went into the shower turning the shower only up a bit, after getting a flustered at the cold water flowing over him, but he soon adabted to the temperature and cleaned himself as much as he could and after about 30 minutes ermerging looking cleaner than the river ever made him look in the past.

    He was just getting finished switching into a new pair of clothes

    the maid.. Made? Bought?...Got him when a new voice called him over.

    ¡°Nice to finally see you, im Kurenai Yuhi and were departing for the leaf if you don¡ät mind?¡°

    Shiro looked at the woman silently thinking that she looked about 20 maybe 5 years older than the others?

    After thinking for a bit he replied

    ¡°Yes it¡äs nice to meet you how long will it take to arrive at the leaf and where will i stay and what will be my responsibilitys?¡°

    Kurenai¡°Eh...You don¡ät waste any time do you? Let¡äs see about 2 days to the village then you¡äll stay at the orphenage for a bit till you can be trusted to live alone in a few years and as for reponsibilities....Growing up i guess?¡°

    ¡°I don¡ät need to do anithing while i stay there?¡° Shiro exclaimed in shock.

    ¡°I guess not but how about you be nice to the other orphans staying there?¡°

    ¡°I¡äll guess i¡äll be nice then.¡°Shiro said in confusion why he would not be put to work, afterall he would be eating out of there pockets...or would he have to catch his own food again?

    Just like that 2 days passed with him and Kurenai travelling rapidly trough the nation.

    Finally he arrived at the village.

    When he arrived at the village he first got sent to the office of the Hokage, arriving there he witnessed an extremely old man looking at him, wich was surprising because he knew the previus hokage resigned a few years ago after Shiro¡äs village got atacked.

    So he didn¡ät see much use in him being replaced with someone so old.

    ¡°Greetings fourth Hokage¡°

    At the that the old man frowned¡°Why do you think that im the fourth Hokage?¡°

    That truly shocked Shiro just 2 years and already there was a fifth Hokage ¡°Apologies fifth Hokage¡°

    At that the old man frowned a bit maybe finally connecting the dots trying to come up with an explaination why he was back on this chair, that he so naturally sat on for all these years being questioned of all things by a child less then a tenth of his age.

 4.Growing Up

    ¡°Alright kid im the third Hokage, I thought about resigning after the war a few years ago and then your dorf got atacked calling me and my decisions even more into question, after that the fourth sadly died protecting the village and i got put back into office¡°

    Shiro assimilated the information quitly he dindn¡ät really know what to think about the man being back in office, that was on watch during the destruction of everithing he loved, but he was aware that this village had other responsibilitys than protecting a village not even technicly part of there nation.

    After the silence lasted a bit to long the Third moved on

    ¡°Also i would like to formally apoligize for not being able to protect your village we didn¡ät know they would be atacking and other ninjas were away protecting other things¡°

    Shiro then finally replied¡°It¡äs fINE¡° wtih a tone that suggested the opposite but the Third was still pleased with the answer.

    ¡°Then let me welcome you to the village we will let you stay here for a few decades if you want, free of charge, but after that you will have to work in some way or another¡°

    Shiro shrugged at this simple solution, but he still was genuinely gratefull, afterall he of all people knew how precius a safe place is and in his mind anyone that could win a war against the country

    of earth was just one step down from invincible.

    ¡°So what can i do to work once this free of charge policy runs out in...how many years exactly?¡°

    ¡°We can get you going to school supplied with some pocket money and personal lodging till your eightenth birthday, it¡äs the least we can do, after that it¡äs your choice if you want to leave, or work as a... well there are many possibilities actually, you can just do a normal job like working in some sort of farm with wich you now should have some experience with, or maybe you would like do the same thing your parents did?¡°

    Shiro absolutely ignored his question and asked¡°And what if i don¡ät want to do a normal job what else is there?¡°

    At that the Third stiffened his expression finally answering¡°The hidden leafvillage is especially made for all the shinobi...Ninjas...to gather and train, that of course includes the next generation of Ninjas.¡°

    ¡°I...dont know yet...when does this training start?¡°Shiro asked earnestly.

    ¡°The training starts at the age of 3 you are almost 2 years older than that and even the oldest among them would stillbe almost a year younger than you...it¡äs your choice.¡°

    The Third was probably trying to make it less atractive, but since Shiro wasn¡ät around anyone till now, since he was exactly 3 he really didn¡ät mind picking back up were he left previusly, but he still wasn¡ät sure.

    The Third told him that he should tell him before the year and summer brake was over so in about 2 months.

    The next 2 months coincidentally also were the time he would need to stay at the orphenage before he could be allowed to partially life alone, so it could be said that the next 2 months were entirely about his future at the hidden leaf.

    While staying at the orphenage he asked most of them what they would like to do with there future lifes and why?Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators!

    Most gave relatively normal answers one even answering wood cutter, because then he would get big arms and ¡°all the ladies¡° whatever that meant.

    In the same way all the others gave relatively shallow answers with one even claiming to want to be a ninja so he could become hokage wich amused Shiro greatly, how he wanted to change his entire life just to get others to call him a different word.

    The boy then looked very upset after he chuckled at him wich left him feeling a bit guilty and he promised to himself that he would try to be a bit more self aware from now on.

    To attempt to make his decision he even tried to go along with the training the others went trough to hopefully have an advantage to become a ninja ultimately he was not lagging behind, but later he realised the ¡°training¡° was essentially just playing wich left him a bit emberassed and he got even more flusterred when one day he was literally just playing catch with the boy that claimed to one day become hokage.

    After the two months were almost up he decided to make a list to compare shinobis with other craftsman and then he would make a pro and contra list..off course he couldn¡ät read or write but he intead drew symbols that he associated with whatever he was trying to express, he realised that this helped him remember things better.

    This was in no way some improvised language this was just a 5 year old drawing certain circles to remind himself of what he had thought about not 5 minutes earlier.

    Translated trough his perspective the entire thing would look somewhat like this:

    <u>Shinobi:</u>

    sometimes kill

    <u>Go to War(kill a lot)</u>

    strong

    can become Hokage(awsome Source:Naruto)

    Need to do lots of work

    Third doesn¡ät want me to do this

    Other jobs:

    never kill(not all jobs)

    get killed in war

    weak

    no hokage

    Sometimes respected often loved(family)

    Do some work(after 18)

    Third doesn¡ät care

    Ultimately he only considered two things, that he would need to kill and that he could become strong...he didn¡ät want to kill, but being strong meant the kind of power to stand upright in the face of even a shinobi and perhaps even the power to net get torn away by the storms unleashed by a war of nations, the power to not loose all on a whim...

    In the end he still made a pro and contra list,again translated for all those that understand the alphabet:

    <u>Pro Contra</u>

    Strong:

    Your desires have some impact even against a shinobi

    Survival is easier

    Power to protect

    Killing:

    Not nice(unless he kills more than 1?)

    Completely destroys(lost forever)

    He once again considered for a long time, ignoring the future woodcutter(if that was even a job),as he tried to make up his mind.

    Then he tried to neutralise points, completely destroying something left a bad taste in his mouth, but then he remembered that he had already killed more than enough to survive, so he neutralised this point with the increased power to survive, wich seemed right after some considering.

    Ultimately he just had the power to protect against the potenitall orders to kill......Unless they......UNLESS THEY WERE THE SAME THING.

    All power would ultimately used to destroy and protect!

    Even he afterall killed fish and ants, while ignoring bears and running from wolves.All previus choices were a lie, his choice was actually if he wanted to be an ant or a bear.........

 5.Road to Tommorow

    Shiro gave the hokage his word to enroll in the acadamy 2 days before the deadline was up.

    He decided to be a shinobi.

    A day later a later was adressed to him, in the letter it stated all the cruelties a shinobi would have to go trough, alongside with the trauma of losing your comrades in some random event you may not even be able to prevent.

    Finally there were the instructions of what he needed to do to disengage himself before tommorow.

    The next day it was Shiro¡äs first day in the ninja acadamy.

    Well this wasn¡ät entirely true it was only an institution used to mentor orphans and others without ninjafamilies to teach them.

    The actual subjects were actually mainly common subjects, geography, biology the list went on and only a little bit was even about fighting.

    Of course even geography needed to be delayed for a while since none of the students, including Shiro knew how to read or write yet.

    Chakra, wich seemed to be behind all the unexplainable things shinobi were able to do, was only

    partially done in the early years and even at the end they would only need to know a little to pass on to the true acadamy.

    All of this was slowly discussed on the first day with Shiro quitly comming to terms with all this.

    ¡°EH? What the hell I knew that we wouldn¡ät be doing any cool jutsus, but how come were not even gonna learn the most basic of them!?¡°was blurted out by the blond kid he knew from the orphenage.

    The teacher of the class, a man seemingly in his early thirtys, calmly responded¡°All right..Naruto right? The basics of any Jutsu is getting your chakra flowing stabily so how about you do that right now and i¡äll teach you the mightiest jutsu i know.¡°

    At that response Naruto seemed to stiffen up, but after a little bit of silence he tried his best to focus on himself making some hand signs while doing so, after a few minutes he even started sweating.

    Everyone in the class was now abosolutely silent, completely focused on the boy doing his best to skip the next few years of teaching¡äs on the first day of class.

    After almost 10 minutes had passed the teacher finally spoke up¡°Wow Naruto you actually....

    have no idea how to manipulate chakra in the slightest do you?¡°

    At those words the entire class went up in a roar of laughter, with Naruto sitting back down with a redenned face looking absolutely defeated.

    ¡°That class, is the reason why we won¡ät start teaching you Jutsus till the end and learning one Jutsu before going into the acadamy is already very impressive, now open your books on page 5.¡°

    After that a lesson in geography followed, all subjects had one hour usable in the first to week to give the kids an idea of what they would be learning once they were done with there basic studys.This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

    ¡°So kids what do all of you know about the 4 great nations?¡°

    ¡°There¡äs the nation of wind¡°one of the kids shouted out.

    ¡°Yes your right Matsui, but raise your hand next time, don¡ät just shout in class¡°

    At that Shiro raised his hand

    ¡°Yes Shiro.¡°

    ¡°There¡äs the nation of Earth¡°

    The teacher looked at him for a bit then said¡°Yes the nation we fought against a few years ago, aniways the country of wind has the village hidden in the sand.It is generally seen as one of the weaker villages, usually alligning itself with one with one of the stronger nations, for example our Konaha......¡°

    The lesson went by without anithing that interested Shiro much, yet he still tried to devour all knowledge given to him about the world that he lived in and seemed to be ahead of the other students when asked to repeat the given information.

    After that the day was already over and all the student¡äs rushed out as soon as the bells rang,

    on the way outside, slowly there were small groups being formed, he noticed that the orphans

    were mostly together with each other, but some overlap was already beginning to take shape.

    Looking around he realised that only he and naruto were still standing alone, they quickly exchanged a glanze and Naruto rushed over to Shiro¡äs position seemingly taking it as some sort of invite.

    ¡°Ah Shiro, great job today in class i didn¡ät really remember anithing..hahahaha¡°

    ¡°If you want i can repeat a bit of what i remembered¡°Shiro responded.

    ¡°No man afterall it¡äs just the first day and this won¡ät come up again until a while from now¡°

    Shiro nodded at him¡°Yes your right, you have plenty of time to learn it on your own¡°

    After that they went back to the orphenage, walking slightly behind the other orphans

    ¡°So Shiro want to train again? We have plenty of time and no homework either way¡°

    Shiro went a bit read when he remembered what Naruto considered as ¡°training¡°, but looking at the kid over a year younger than him with that honest look in his face he agreed.

    ¡°Well alright this will be my last day at the orphenage afterall, I don¡ät think we will get much time to do this from now on.¡°

    ¡°What were are you going?¡°Naruto asked with a sad expression on his face.

    ¡°You know im older than you all,Naruto I might not look like it, but I have already reached the minimum age to move out.¡°

    The boy was obviusly a little sad at this, afterall the people at school had somewhat avoided him, only the other orphans treated him normally, even when he was a bit annoying at times.

    Losing one of his companions didn¡ät seem to sit right with him, but he quickly accepted the situation and just tried to have extra fun today with Shiro.

    After that the day proceeded normally, lunch went by, dinner and then it was finally time to move his belongings.

    The amount of propertys now in his posession had increased conciderably, 14 pairs of socks, 7 shorts, along with 7 pairs of underwear,sweaters,shirts,trousers and everithing else he needed to stay warm.

    He also held on to the clothes given to him by Kotetsu and Izumo he hadn¡ät really noticed it before, but the clothes given to him were quite heavy, Kotetsu and Izumo were on a mission afterall it only made sense that they had military style clothes and altough these seemed a bit more formal than what he had seen other ninjas wear, dark blue with long sleeves and trousers, they were probably no less sturdy.

    Finally he placed his little and now clean leather bag ontop of his schoolmaterials in the suitcase and made his way over to his new living quarters alongside one of the overseers of the orphenage.

    ¡°You know Shiro, the village always tries to push everione away as fast as possible to alleviate pressure from the orphenage, but if you don¡ät feel ready I can still get a word in with the headmaster.¡°

    ¡°Thank¡äs for the oppertunity, but this is fine with me. Im used to living alone.¡°

    ¡°Yeah Shiro, but that¡äs what kinda worries me.....whatever it¡äs your decision.¡°

    They continued walking in silence for a few minutes until they arrived at the place Shiro would be staying in for the next few years.

    Halting at the door he was given a key¡°This is the only key, there will be no spares...this could also be seen as a responsibility, so don¡ät lose it okay?¡°

    ¡°Yes i will keep it with me then¡°Shiro answered taking the key away.

    Afterwards they walked inside and Shiro was told everything, from when the trash was brought away and when assistants would arrive that would bring over some food and then teachi him how to cook.

    Shiro was somewhat surprised how much his responsibilitys widened, compared to when he was just staying at the orphenage, but he knew that the orphenage was overloaded since the battle in wich the fourth hokage died, so he quitly accepted the changes brought to his daily routine.

    The next few months went over faster than he liked, with it being a mix of memorisation, physical training, learning how to read and write at a tempo even he frowned at, doing chores at home and trying not to get to isolated inside of classes.

    From thereone it wasn¡ät long till winter began.

 6.Settling for More

    It was another day at the acadamy, another day of repetition, of drawing all the different symbols, another day of memorising all the different gramatical rules that had been drilled in there heads over the last few months and another day of...math.

    Math was a subject that gave everione terrible headaches at first, even shiro struggled to make sense of some things, afterall who would need a zero in...anithing really.

    It was made even harder by the fact that there never were any practical examples given alongside the different tasks, some students even dropped out because of that and instead went on to different jobs were they would only have to learn math at a later time.

    Like that the numbers slowly were dwindled down, but the more dropped out the easier the classes became, because the teacher had more time for each individual student and no more stupid questions were asked as the class slowly got to a certain standard.

    The only exception to that rule was..naruto, it got so bad that every time he asked about another thing the rest had understood ages ago, he got angry glares and Shiro noticed that even the other orphans slowly became hostile to him.

    He instead had the opposite problem, everithing was hard at first, but with him going over the learned subjects every day in his free time, he slowly catched up with the reasoning the teachers used and as his body grew bit by bit, seemingly using up all the growth he had missed out on in the past he excelled in all, even phisical training.

    A few of the other students were obviusly more talented than him, but as he was bigger he won most fights that didn¡ät have some obscure victory condition.

    Because of these devolopments he was slowly being seen as a...Nerd.

    The worst thing was that when he was together with someone, it usually was Naruto.

    Seing him, the best student, together with the worst student it didn¡ät take the kids long to connect the threads needed for there conspiracy.

    Of course they weren¡ät that wrong, Shiro didn¡ät doubt that Naruto genuenly liked him, but as there learning curves drifted apart from eachother, there conversations often revolved around studying.

    Naruto wasn¡ät really interested in studying, but he still had not given up on it and that coupled with the hostility he experienced day by day motivated him.

    Shiro didn¡ät mind it much and just went along with Narutos wishes, so instead of repeating everithing by himself he instead tried to teach it to Naruto, wich seemed to work alright for both of them.

    That day he too escortorted Naruto over to the orphenage.

    "Shiro what do you need a zero for in math?"

    At that Shiro smiled"I also got curios about that so I asked the teacher, probably when you werent listening again."

    Naruto got flustered"Shut up, not my fault when all of you are so boring".

    "Basicly it¡äs used to finish calculations, for example if you have 1 brain cell, but it gets damaged because someone wipes the floor with you again, you could summarise that as 1-1=0.

    From then on you could just add however many i have ontop of that and neatly get one number."

    Naruto"But couldn¡ät you just discard the zero completely?Then you don¡ät need to write it down."

    Shiro instinctively tried to answer"No that wouln¡ät work because....", upon wich he realised that he didn¡ät have an answer.

    "Oh shut up just do as i say and you might actually get some more points on the next test".

    Naruto went silent for a bit"You know i apreciate it".

    Shiro asked confused"What do you mean?"

    "Everyone else avoids me especially when the other orphans made friends with the others in class, this might seem selfish, but im glad that you have some problems with them and don¡ät spend more time with them then me."This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.

    Shiro looked at the boy for a bit"That is indeed selfish, but Naruto being selfish is no crime, just be sure to not speak so openly to your future friends alright?"

    At that the boy smiled with his eyes still flashing with a bit of guilt"Alright".

    Then they inevitably reached the orphenage"Well goodbye Shiro".

    But Shiro stopped"Naruto actually would you mind practicing some taijutsu with me?"

    "What, but your better than me with all those stupid techniques".Naruto exclaimed in a confused tone.

    "Yeah maybe, but im not the best and with you not knowing those techniques it¡äs a good oppertunity to test it out on someone that doesn¡ät fight like a shinobi"Shiro quickly explained.

    Naruto looked at him for a bit, as if deciding where to move a particularly important chess piece, then quickly agreing.

    After that they trained for many hours, with Shiro practicing his forms and correcting those of Naruto, future shinobi had a lot more freedoms than others, but as Narutos stamina seemed endless and he trained till he even overwhelmed Shiro often times, eventually his time came and he needed to go back inside.

    At first he wanted to ignore his beditime, but then he concidered Shiro and made the decision to instead try and study, afterall he couldn¡ät let Shiro carry him forever.

    Because of these reasons Shiro was left alone with no one left to accompany him.

    As he looked deep in the night around him he felt some guilt, he had not trained with Naruto merely to get them both in shape, it was more of a goodbye gift.

    These last few months he noticed that he was very good at pumping pure knowledge down his mind, he wasn¡ät very talented in...well anithing to put it it bluntly, but his learning speed seemed to be alright.

    He wasn¡ät sure if this would translate over to Ninjutsu, because it didn¡ät in taijutsu, he could only excell in that because he was older than the others.

    But he was sure of one thing, right now it was the best time to skip classes, shinobi had to fit a normal education alongside solider training, this was the reason why they started there lessons so much earlier than the rest.

    Even now he was unsure if his taijutsu skills would be enough, this would only get worse in the future as normal lessons would decrease towards the end, with taijutsu and chakra training being prioretised to all those that actually seemed able to become shinobi.

    In the future he would need to catch up on a lot of schoolwork and work even harder on his taijutsu to keep up in his studies.

    In short there wouldn¡ät have much time for Naruto and certainly no time to help him with his studys.

    Finished with his contemplations the guilt in Shiros eyes finally vanished and he focused on getting home marching trough the snow.

    He took his time slowly going back, the orphenage was quite far from the village, but since it allowed him some time with naruto he normally just ignored it and now he admired the night that now had firmly fallen on the world, reminding him of his life in the forest when he stayed up in the night in fear of predetors.

    As he advanced trough the streets he heard a muffled sound, he was curiuos and enjoyed his time inspite of the cold, so he choose to investigate.

    Getting closer to the sound he saw a small girl in the snow crying her eyes out while dressed in a Kimono way to thin for the current weather.

    "Hey are you alright over there?"

    The girl flinched turning her eyes towards him.

    "You know with those kinds of clothes you shouldn¡ät be out in the snow"Shiro said.

    "I..I kn-know"the girl finally responded still crying.

    Shiro looked at her,she had white pupils and black hair and seemed to be about 3 maybe even younger than Naruto.

    "Could you tell me why your out here?"Shiro asked.

    The girl looked at him trying to calm herself down,

    then resonding

    "I went away from home".

    Shiro looked at her seriously, if a young girl was crying alone in the snow you usually assumed she would just be lost and nothing serious was going on, but her response implied that whatever waited for her at home was worse than the cold she must have been in right now.

    "Do you mind telling me why you ran away from home?"

    The girl looked at him then deciding to tell him truth"My Nee-samas Father died".

    "EH your brothers father? So your dad died?"Shiro asked in a confused tone of voice.

    "No"she said smiling at his confused expression then getting more serious again

    "He isn¡ät my brother i just call him that, but yes he¡äs related..that means my uncle is dead"

    she voiced out seemingly about to cry again.

    Shiro"Im so sorry to hear that, that must be terrible for you, but you still should get out of this cold" Then he undressed from his outermost layer of clothes, giving it to her instead.

    "Your right"the girl replied in a timidly tone of voice glanzing over at him.

    Shiro then followed her home trying to comfort her while walking.

    "He will never be replaced, but you need to focus on yourself, afterall im sure your uncle wouldn¡ät want you to be sad!"

    She tried to force a smile at those words, but soon it disapeared from her lips and her eyes redenned again.

    They slowly got to her place, were Shiro said goodbye to her, but when he got his jacket back they heard a voice.

    "Hinata!"

    "Father"hinata weakly responded.

    "Hinata you are an important part of the family. For your sake many people made the ultimate sacrifice, what are you doing running around in the snow? It¡äs about time for you to hold up your dutys."

    "Please exuse her, Sir. She just was sadenned by the death of her uncle."

    The man looked at Shiro after he spoke up, then answering"And what will her uncles life have been worth if she dies now of some preventable fever?"seemingly talking more to Hinata than Shiro.

    "You are dismissed young man and Hinata, you should hurry inside now."

    Hinata once again glanzed at him then quickly following her father inside.

    Shiro was looking at them as they left, then he shuderred from the cold, so he quickly changed in his jacket amd then huried home.

    As he went inside his room he put the key to it¡äs usual place and quickly made himself some rice and eggs.

 7.Years flow like Water

    Shiro woke up. Still feeling tired he quickly gulped down some juice and washed up some lettuce with vegetables, using it alongside some cheese for a sandwich.

    He wasn¡ät hungry after just waking up and since he usually saved up his food till after taijutsu practice, he decided to stick to the habit even if there wasn¡ät any practice for today.

    Cleaning up after himself he hurried to school, thankfull that he lived closer to it than the younger kids of the orphenage.

    He arrived a little bit ahead of time as usuall, seing his teacher already in the room reading some sort of book he imeadiately felt glad.

    "Im sorry Date-sensei, sir."

    The teacher looked up from his book"What is it Shiro, im not on time yet so if you have difficultys with something you can ask me when the bell rings."

    "Actually teacher I would like to ask who I would need to talk to, in order to skip to the next class"Shiro responded.

    The teacher didn¡ät look that surprised, but he imeadiately shook his head"Just try to internalise everithing and you¡äll be on a good track to become a shinobi, you can¡ät skip classes because the year for the other classes has already begun."

    Shiro shrugged at this"Yes i know, but I still want to skip classes, I haven¡ät quite grasped everithing and im sure my grades will drop."He told the teacher to show him he completely understood the situation

    "However Im ahead of the other kids here and by moving on to the next classes I will be able to learn what I don¡ät know yet faster then if i would continue to study in the library".

    At that Date finnaly dropped his book, taking complete notice of the boy infront of him

    "Fine if that¡äs what you want, but remember what we are teaching here is the basics to the acadamy and what they are teaching at the acadamy will be what you need to survive your first few years as a shinobi.

    I know this might seem far off now kid, but there are no tests that stop you from advancing to the acadamy and i have seen many of the worse students here not being able to adabt to the acadamy.

    Then they failed to graduate, or worse when they finally did they were being picked of one by one on missions."

    Shiro nodded"Yes i do understand that, but any shinobi risks there lives on missions and im not planing to fall behind for long."

    The teacher, after making sure his duties were fulfilled, started filling out a forum and told Shiro to take his usual place.

    This week then seemingly went along as usual, but if one looked closely one of the students now went back home alone, while another staid at the library till long after school was officialy over.

    On friday Shiro finally got pulled aside by the headmaster, with the other students giggling at him, thinking that he had finally gotten in trouble.

    "Shiro."the headmaster asked as tough it was a question.

    "Yes headmaster"came as an reply.

    "Well then, you know of all the troubles that can come from skipping classes right?"

    Shiro nodded.

    The headmaster sized him up, then he gave him a piece of paper.

    "Come to school this weekend at these times, we will test basic knowledge and taijutsu form."

    Shiro was a bit shocked at this early date, but he wasn¡ät worried about the subjects of this year, he finally learned how to read and write, while the rest was mostly memorisation, even his taijutsu had improved.

    No the true challenge would be not to get kicked in the dust by the other kids, who had one more year of experience then him, didn¡ät need to catch up on there studys and might be close to his age.Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

    Regardless he would rather be average in the second year, then number 1 and one more year late for the acadamy and chakra controle at his current position.

    As he left the room he finally looked at the paper within his hands, 9-15 a¡äclock on saturday and 8-14 on sunday...12 hours in total, just how much were they going to ask him?

    The next 2 days were long and tedius, but Shiro barely kept himself from going to sleep by his hope of seing the acadamy 1 year earlier.

    Tests weren¡ät composed of the usual questions given to them by the teachers, they had to be answered in written form, this alone made the process take much longer then it needet to.

    But still Shiro did his very best and corrected all spelling mistakes he could find, while trying to write as orderly as he possibly could.

    Math, biology, grammar, geography all was tested, this was made all the worse by the fact that they only had math for very long.

    The other subjects were only gradually introduced as there reading and writing studys came to an end and even then they usually were still used to practice both.

    As such it mostly was Shiros own knowledge that he had to fall back on, but time waits for no one so eventually even these hours came to an end.

    The final 3 hours were used to practice his taijutsu on one of the teachers, the teachers weren¡ät shinobi, but still Shiro could barely hit them, this made it all the harder for shiro to guess how well he did.

    On monday he once again arrived in his usuall class, but the teacher stopped him from entering.

    "Shiro, congratulations your new class is in room B8, or did you need anithing else?"

    "No, but thank you for telling"Shiro said with a smile on his lips, then going upstairs looking for his new room.

    The building had two floors, the first one was mainly used by the first and third graders, meanwhile the second one was housing all other classes.

    This contrast was created by all the young students that wanted to be shinobis and nagged there parents until they finally could attend the ninja school designed for those outside of powerfull shinobi clans, but the difficulty was very steep for everyone enrolling and since the parents of the students decided if they could attend or not most flunked out in the first year.

    The only exception to this rule were those that could adebt to the phisical training and the schoolwork that they usually were to young for, the only exception to this rule were the orphans like Naruto and Shiro.

    They usually would quit by themselves if they weren¡ät good enough, but only they could decide that and since there was nothing stopping them on the way to the acadamy even the worst student could technicly continue on.

    In the acadamy they usually soon realised that they weren¡ät fit for it and finally resigned, but sometimes it would take till graduation for them to finally be thrown out, wich would leave them far behind others of there age and often times with great trouble to get a job later in life.

    Shiro finally found his class B8 he entered the class with others, who were looking much closer to his age.

    He quickly introduced himself"Hello im Shiro Tsukamoto and i skipped a class so from now on i will be studying alongside you all."

    The others took note of him and then focused on there studys again, the teacher, a woman who was maybe 30, told him were to sit while gave him a book.

    After that Shiro just tried to make sense of this lesson he only understood by about half.

    Shiro quickly caught on to the fact that these people were a lot more focused on there studys, it made sense afterall, they had seen most of there friends leave, being dragged away by worried parents, or they quit voluntarily after realising they couldn¡ät keep up with some subject that they concidered important to becoming a shinobi.

    As such he seemed to fit in a lot more here than in the previous class that already started to be thinned out and would likely soon be overlapt with another class to maintain a good size.

    Of course at first he was behind most of the students, but as the weeks passed and his pieced together knowledge was slowly expanding, he slowly went back to become one of the better students.

    However he would never become one of the best again, instead he used all time he could spare to catch up in taijutsu and in the shuriken and kunai techniques that were slowly being introduced.

    As such he managed to keep up with most things, only dropping his studys to hang out with some random class gatherings and very rarely to catch up to naruto, but this was becoming rarer and rarer.

    This way he was not a very special student, the only excption being his maticulous need to keep up in all subjects at an even degree, even tough he was never clearly exceeding the rest of the group like he had hoped at first.

    As it was he was quite bland, being neither very popular nor treated as an outsider, afterall groups were slowly being expanded as others within them quit over the years, tough it never was as bad as in the first year.

    The only thing he was a little frustrated with is that whenever he had worked out a good balance for his lives it got disrupted, kunai fighting, targetting certain organs and basic chakra controle coupled with the first jutsu, the clone technique, it always seemed a little wrong how he devided his time.

    This way over 3 years passed and he finally was nine years old.

    The age gap between him and his classmates now had shrunken conciderebly, to a 3 year old a 5 year old might seem ancient, but in his class some were almost as old as he was, only a few months away from 9.

    At the beginning his frame was smaller than some of his classmates, but now he was amongst the talles and was towering almost a (childs-) head over the smallest of them, it seemed as tough his body was determined to catch up to whatever growth it had lost in the wintermonths in that forest.

    This way he was ready for the acadamy, he had the phisical and mental skills to attempt the lessons of the academy, even his chakra controle didn¡ät need anymore work.

    The only thing that he pitied was how he had underestimated the time needed to learn the clone technique, he knew that the first jutsu usually was the hardest to learn and he would only get better from here, but as he looked at his gelatinous reflection he wondered if it would be comparable to the shinobi descendants that will be attending the acadamy.

    Regardless the next day would be the official start of his training to become a genin of the leaf.

 8.Academy Life

    The acadamy was not just one building, it had numerous classes and buildings as a part of itself.

    Shiro needed to go towards the curriculum for his first day, but he also knew that the office of the third hokage was contained deeper within the acadamy.

    He went closer to the building he was destined to and to his surprise it seemed as tough most students had already arrived, with a few teachers trying to dim down the excitement.

    After that the students quickly calmed down and the teachers began sorting them by calling out there names.

    Teachers avoided shouting over each other by cicling between eachother when calling out there students names, Shiro heard names from his old school, even seing one of them sitting on a swing atached to a tree near the front of the group.

    Shiro also heard many names he was barely familiar with, only clearly recognizing the hyuga name amongst the students.

    Finally his name was called out by an by a young man with black thicc hair"Shiro Tsukamoto."

    He quickly gathered around the mans back with the rest of the group, looking around he saw some people he recognized, tough they mostly were from the class parallel to his own, the only ones he didn¡ät know at all were 5 kids in total.

    2 of those he didn¡ät know had somewhat matching shirts, the first being blue while the other repectively wore a read shirt with a white cap.

    Maybe they were relatives?

    Then there was a boy that stuck out to him because he had a ponytail and a haircut that revealed his forehead in a rather unfavourable way, with his looks being made no better by his thicc eyebrows.

    There also was a girl her hair was kept short being made into two buns, one at her left side and another at her right.

    Finally there also was the hyuga boy, he hadn¡ät remembered his name amongst the others, but he had seen the byakugan once before so he recognized him imediately.

    The teacher gave a quick introduction"Hello class, my name is Isobe Yuudai, I will be your teacher for the next 4 years and the people around you will be your one and only classmates for the next few years so be sure to remember there names and please be friendly to each other."The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

    The teacher then guided them to there class, they all followed him orderly, everyone except for one of them that is.

    One of them was shifting inbetween the group seemingly going randomly inbetween"My name is Rock Lee im studying to learn ninjutsu as i can¡ät do them yet, what¡äs your name and who are you?"

    Shiro was watching the boy with the ponytail, as he sometimes was greeted back or in one case just flat out ignored.

    Rock Lee got to him last"My name is Rock Lee im studying to learn ninjutsu as i can¡ät do them yet, what¡äs your name and who are you?"

    Shiro nodded at him"Yes so I¡äve heard, aniways im Shiro Tsukamoto and the reason why Im at the academy is that I....I guess i want to be a strong ninja and since I also can¡ät quite use any Jutsu, we seem to have the same goal."

    Lee seemed contend with his answer and as he already had crossed of every other student he decided to stay with him and talk.

    "So Shiro how far have you gotten in your jutsus? I heard that the change jitsu was the easiest to learn."

    Shiro nodded at that"Yeah, thats also a popular first jutsu, but since the clone technique requires more chakra controle it is a better basis for learning future jutsu, even the change form jutsu and we have plenty of time to learn it in the academy aniways."

    Lee seemed shocked at this new revelation"Wow you sure know your stuff, huh?"

    Shiro looked over at him"Not really everibody learned it when they had to pick there first jutsu to learn, didn¡ät your parents teach you that whe...."

    "Alright class listen up!"the teacher interrupted.

    Lee imediately went serious and Shiro sealed his lips.

    "The first day of your future careers has officially begun, now let¡äs get down to the basics,

    the requirements needed to enter the academy."

    At that Shiro frowned, he didn¡ät know about any requirements to enter the academy, was this some sort of secret test the students weren¡ät supposed to prepare for?

    "The 3 requirements are of course to love the village and to hope help preserve peace and prosperity, to have a mind that will not yield, able to endure hard work and training and finally to be healthy in mind and body."

    Shiros gaze eased up after hearing these words, he wasn¡ät sure if he loved the village, but it was the place he currently wanted to be at and he would like to have eternal peace and prosperity if it was possible.

    The rest also seemed to apply to him so he just shrugged at it and when the teacher asked if anyone wasnt fit for these requirements no one raised there hands.

    Mister Yuudai waited for anyone to speak up, but nobody did, so he simply moved on

    "Now then, classes can be destinguished into shinobi classes and normal classes, there are also kunoichi classes, but only girls need to attend those.

    For those of you not from shinobi, or noble familys some of the normal classes might seem repetetive, but you will still have to attend.Try to use all the extra time you don¡ät need to study to catch up to the others in taijutsu and other techniques."

    Yuudai went on for some time, but barely anithing important was said, then there was an introduction time given to all the students to introduce themselves.

    Shiro already knew most of them, even Lee after he had prematurely introduced himself, the hyuga boy introduced himself as Neiji, while the boys with the blue and redshirt were called Goda Toshio and Fujikawa Akio apearently not related afterall.

    Finally the girl with the short hair hair and buns introduced herself as Tenten and after that Shiro knew everibody in class.

 9. Classes

    Taijutsu practice was usually done outside the academy, there were training fields of varying type and even terrain, but true shinobi were prioretised when handing in applications for there use.

    That way Shiro had seen them only twice, both times just regular fields with some grass and not much else.

    Currently tough his mind was occupied with the fight infront of him, Neiji Hyuga against Tenten, they had been at it for a while, but the fight wasn¡ät balanced at all.

    Tenten often was knocked down by Neiji who could have obviously ended the fight a long time ago, Neiji logicly used whatever strike was best, sometimes knocking her down to his left, sometimes throwing her over his shoulder.

    The only reason tough why Shiro was so invested in the fight was that wherever Tenten landed, Neiji didn¡ät even turn around to face her, instead looking straight at wherever she was previously.

    Indeed even when she circled around him he barely moved, but the advantage that Tenten should have gotten from that seemed completely nonexistand.

    While she moved around to get a good strike at him, Neiji seemed already aware of what she was attempting and countered every hit, even now she was still getting knocked around.

    "Alright Neiji you win again, now make the reconciliation sign"was said by there teacher mister Yuudai, finally finishing the fight.

    "Dangit I lost again"Tenten cursed at no one in perticular.

    "You can¡ät get a cheapshot on me, stop trying"Neiji told her seemingly anoyed by her.

    "Well I loose if I come at you directly, your too good so what am I supposed to do?"Tenten rebutted, but Neiji had already turned his back on her, just staring at the teacher.

    Mister Yuudai spoke again when he saw that he had gathered the attention of the class onto himself

    "Sometimes there can be an enemy like Neiji, someone that you seemingly can¡ät beat, if you get someone like him don¡ät loose hope.

    Oftentimes enemys will pretend to be strong while actually only running on there last breaths, try to look out for any openings for escape or surrender the enemy is leaving you, because if they do that it oftentimes means they are weaker then they seem and you might not want to run away."

    He looked at them, then choosing the next contestands" Goda and Shiro your up next".

    Shiro and a boy in blue clothes got forward quickly making the seal of confrontation and getting a few meters apart.

    Shiro opened the fight up quickly throwing a punch wich the boy dodged and then sending a kick at the boy, wich was swiftly caught by Goda.

    He noticed the danger of getting unbalanced and he threw a punch with the hand wich was opposite to the caught up leg, forcing the boy to let his leg go and defend against the blow with his upper arm, wich was only barely quick enough.

    From that the boy threw a punch of his own, wich Shiro was almost unable to dogde, but then Shiro went down and held his nose as if it had been hurt.

    Goda was confused at this at first, but when he saw the liquid dropping from Shiros nose onto the ground he had a satisfied smile on his face.

    Next however Shiro drasticly threw a lower kick onto the boys legs wich knocked him onto the ground and he went after him trying to hold him down.

    Goda was surprised and tried to struggle against Shiro, but he had acted to late and when it came to the purely strenght based hold Shiro had him in, he could only delay his own defeat.

    The teacher interrupted again"Very good, Shiro wins. Goda you need to keep better watch on the details, if you had you would have noticed that the blood was pink and why would Shiro hold his nose with two hands in an actual fight? Jutsus will only get more common from now on and if you give a true enemy even a second to prepare an actually dangerous jutsu it won¡ät end so well."

    Goda who was obviously still angered got over to Shiro and they made the reconcilation sign.

    After that there still was one match left, Rock Lee lost against Fujikawa the boy in the red shirt, but after that physical training was over for the day.

    On the way back Lee went over to Shiro

    "Hey Shiro you already know a jutsu? I didn¡ät know that, when did you learn it?"

    Shiro smiled at the boy staring at him as if he was some grandmaster of some secret arts"Yeah it¡äs the transformation technique, I wouldn¡ät say i mastered it yet, but it¡äs enough for a few drops of ofcouloured blood I guess."The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

    Lee seemed confused"I thought you were learning the clone technique first?"

    "Yes I am, but Im not really advancing so I thought branching out wouldn¡ät hurt, by the way how far have you gotten with your jutsu¡äs? Still nothing?"

    He seemed a little flusterred"Im not getting aniwhere, maybe I should just focus on taijutsu."

    Lee had not even gotten basic chakra controle down, almost everyone could do something with his chakra, a wrinkled clone there, some pink blood here, but for Lee his chakra tried to act like it

    didn¡ät even exist.

    Over the last few years he had tried his very to get trough his botleneck, but even as he abandoned his taijutsu and many hours of his free time it never made a difference, he seemed almost as if cursed.

    "Hey Lee could you tutor me again?"Shiro asked.

    "What again, didn¡ät you already have that stuff years ago?"Lee exclaimed in shock.

    Shiro laughed at this"Exactly I had it years ago, so it¡äs understandable that I forgot most of it right?"

    In truth Shiro had forgotten almost nothing, but the subjects in the academy were not identical to the ones he had learned about previously and with the hard working Lee he could save a lot of time.

    Lee looked at him, but he soon devoloped a smile on his face"Well then I¡äll teach you and you¡äll teach me ok?"

    "EH? What am I supposed to teach you?"Shiro asked.

    "Isn¡ät obvoius? Ninjutsu!"

    Shiro was unsure what he would be teaching Lee, afterall he was barely in any position to instruct anyone and Lee was a lot worse than anyone, but he had to admit that he owed Lee for all the time he could safe when studying with him.

    "Alright I will help you study ninjutsu, but when your parents and the teacher werent of any help don¡ät expect miracles from me alright?"

    Lee turned serious, shaking his ponytail as an answer"I don¡ät think your a better teacher, but they couldn¡ät help me so it¡äs time to learn it somewhere else!"

    After he made sure Lee didn¡ät think of him as some mastermind that could truly help him, Shiro agreed to his proposal and then they headed back to there class.

    It was true that classes in the academy and there little "ninja-preschool" had many overlapping subjects, but it was still not that easy to keep up.

    The applications were now completely out of the theoretical, movement over different terrains had to be calculated, so that they would know wich route gave the best probability to arrive on time.

    For that they also had to overlap it with there knowledge of geography, while also keeping the diplomatic weight of there actions in mind, afterall it would look terrible if they for example travelled trough neutral territory on the border of a rival nation.

    Shiro wasn¡ät that sure if they needed to know this, but after a talk with there teacher it became apearent that even genin might be involved in the geopolitics of the world.

    He was surprised at that, he had assumed that they would just be the special-(cleanup)-forces of the country, mostly dealing with bandits and other low level problems.

    After some concideration it made a little bit more sense, bandits and the likes costed the nation good manpower, but it was not a matter of survival.

    Shinobi had proven over time that even 1 or 2 of them could destroy a village, as such using genin, such potentiall future weapons of mass destruction on bandits seemed like a big waste, while at the same time they needed to be trained.

    That way the low level geopolitical missions were handled by genin and there sensei¡äs and the country was garrisoned by regular soliders.

    This of course wasn¡ät always so simple, oftentimes the missions would be certain death for genin and it was concidered more important for them to continue there training then die for some hopeless cause and other times the missions simply werent available, because more high level ninjas were available, or they were simply not of use for the country.

    As such most teams would at some point escort some low ranked nobility, or whatever there equivelent was in that perticular culture, but the majority of missions were still protection jobs for civilians of whatever nation gave the mission.

    Long story short, there was more then enough oppertunity for genin to cause a crisis and they

    weren¡ät learning anithing for laughs.

    Shiro internalised all of this new information growing more aware of the fact that he would indeed be a solider of the leaf if he stayed on his current path, tough he still felt the conviction of growing stronger.

    The final part of the day was genjutsu, tough they were not the ones doing any genjutsu, instead it was there teacher that put all of them in a genjutsu.

    Shiro didn¡ät like this, he didn¡ät like this at all, the teacher told them that genjutsu were as much a product of there own minds as of the enemy, or atleast that was the kind of jutsu he used on them.

    Sadly Shiro had to discover that his mind seemed determined to only create visions of extreme violence, he hadn¡ät witnessed the death of his parents or that of his brother, but that didn¡ät stop his mind from creating the most detailed dreams of there deaths.

    His parents always died the same way, being sliced open by a kunai, while his brother died in many ways, tough he mainly was hit in the throat by a shuriken, or beaten to death by a man that looked different every time he was put under the genjutsu.

    The first time he had a terrible expression on his face and was sweating under his armpits, with some of the students gazing over at him out of curiosity, but the more it hapenned the more he grew used to it.

    He wasn¡ät sure if it was good that he became increasingly less caring at scenes of violence and death, perticularly when it came to his family, but since enemy genjutsu users would likely give him similar experiences he just tried to get over it as soon as possible.

    Genjutsu classes could be split into two sections, practical studys, were they would experience a genjutsu first hand and the main part of the class, the theoretical.

    The theoretical was generall knowledge on genjutsu and of course how to break out.

    Breaking out can be achieved by adminestering real pain to the user, wich was defined as pain not caused by the false reality within the genjutsu.

    Since they can be broken in such an easy way, genjutsu initially seemed a little useless to Shiro, but apearently not all genjutsu can be discovered as easily as when you see your dead family again, so he saw the use.

    A girl in class was also very happy when she heard that the Uchiha can break genjutsu more easily, as she was one of the orphans of there clan, but sadly for her she would need to a sharingan first so this wouldn¡ät help her in class, atleast not anytime soon.

    Finally they always tried to break whoever was stuck in the genjutsu out, to do this they would need to disrupt there chakra flow, wich was only doable for them, because there partner wasn¡ät fighting back.

    If a very capable user got them into a genjutsu they could manipulate there chakraflow in there brain in such a way, that they would not realise they were stuck in a genjutsu and even fight there former comrades that would be trying to break them out.

    Shiro noted that genjutsu were quite usefull, especially if he could manipulate multiple people and let them kill eachother, but seing how even there teacher couldn¡ät even make anithing that would seem real 100% of the time, he didn¡ät think that he would specialise in this in the future.

 10. Tutoring

    After classes he wen¡ät with Lee over to his house, because Lee¡äs parents apearently didn¡ät like him practicing ninjutsu, or atleast not in the extreme quantity Lee wanted too.

    Konaha¡äs roads are arching off in every direction, it was a big city afterall, the 80thousand inhabitants were all densily clustered around eachother.

    Altough the roads were mostly straight, to find anithing in perticular will either take a lot of time, or some asking around.

    Regardless Shiro had walked the path from the academy to his house for a while now and they quickly arrived.

    Grasping the key he always held with him, he opened the door for Lee and invited him inside.

    "Wow you really live alone"Lee said as if he made some profound discovery.

    "Just me and the kitchen"Shiro said while getting them some juice to drink.

    Lee then got straight back to buisiness"Aniways Shiro what can I help you with?"

    "Ah yes, it¡äs just a few things really."Shiro answered, then listing every single topic that was new to him.

    "Jesus guess your really bad at studying, huh?"

    Shiro shrugged"Something like that."

    Lee was rather hopeless in most things shinobi related, but even tough he wasn¡ät perticularly talented he truly put his all into the things he could do, because of this he was like an interactive book, were only the important parts were written in.

    He was sometimes mocked for his poor taijutsu and ninjutsu skills, but afterwards the kids all put on a friendly smile when it came to regular classes.

    Shiro also often asked him for assistance, usually only getting quick, but helpfull replies, today however it was absolutely different.

    Lee seemed absolutely focused on teaching him as much, as quickly as possible, there were no jokes no friendly banter, only Lee and a rusty piece of iron he needed to get into shape with his hammer of knowledge.

    Shiro was happy about this at first, but after a few hours it became too much for him and to prevent his brain from overloading he changed subjects.

    "Lee that¡äs enough, enough for today, I was supposed to teach you something about ninjutsu right?

    What am I even supossed to help you with?"

    Lee hesitated"I...I guess the basics"

    Shiro felt helpless"Alright then let¡äs start with basic chakra controle...Okay Lee focus all your chakra on your finger and try to get this to stick to them."This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

    He quickly tore off the paper of a bottle and handed it to him.

    What followed was Lee continously picking up a piece of paper with his index finger and that paper falling back onto the ground.

    "Ok Lee this isn¡ät working, try focusing on your chakra first and try to direct it at a perticular point in your body."

    Lee then sat there for about fifteen minutes until Shiro finally got impatient"So do you feel anithing?"

    Lee opened his eyes"I feel...I feel nothing at all."

    They tried going forward in there training, Lee tried jutsus and he tried to lift even smaller paper, wich even worked, but sadly the paper was just a little sticky from some juice and it turned out to be a false positive.

    Shiro already saw were the signs were pointing and altough he was getting a little annoyed, he attempted not make it to apearent, instead indulging Lee the same way he indulged him previously.

    That way the hours passed, with Shiro doing his own physical training at the sides, while Lee was still giving it his all.

    At the end of the day he escorted a tired Lee to his door.

    "Hey Lee?"

    "Yeah?"came the beaten down answer.

    "Focus on taijutsu" with that Shiro slammed the door.

    He looked at the watch hanging over his bed and after a quick bite and brushing his teeth he decided it was time to sleep.

    The next day he finished his mourning routine and prepared for classes, he had started eating in the morning too, a lot of the other kids skipped meals to get a little bit more sleep, but he knew how important sufficient calories were for exercising and decided to spent a little longer in the kitchen as there phisical work picked up.

    Going outside his living quarters he went his usuall way, speeding along a little, today was more ninjutsu training it always left him tired, but not as hungry as....

    Bump

    He accidentally knocked into another kid, when he was trying to pass a corner.

    "Jesus can¡ät you watch were your going!?"

    Shiro looked a little flusterred, losing focus like that was a little emberassing to him"Im sorry, I¡äll watch out from now on."

    The kid looked at him, then nodded"Yeah alright."

    Shiro tried to walk away, but was stopped"Just one thing now, leave your wallet."

    Shiro looked at them, now he noticed that the kid wasn¡ät alone, there were three of them in total.

    "Excuse me?"he asked.

    They laughed at him"Well kid, if you wanna do the crime, they pointed at the kid he knocked into, then you gotta do the time. Common im sure you have a little on you."

    Shiro finally got the situation he was in, he decided to leave again, but the one he ran into earlier grabbed him.

    Shiro got a little impatient"Let go of me, you idiot."

    The kid didn¡ät seem provoked at all"Well sorry to bother you sir, but if you want me to let you go, you first let go of your wallet like we told you."

    Shiro threw the first punch smashing at the kid holding him, while his dominant hand got wrist controle, he swept him of his feet and pushed with his offhand that still was on the bullys face.

    The two boys looked surprised at the boy acting up against all three of them, but apearently there friendship was close enough to stick together.

    "Dammit you¡äll pay for that!" one of them shouted sprinting at him, trying to punch him.

    Shiro only ducked under the atack, then used his entire bodyweight to counter with a jab in the liver, stomping on the boy as he lost balance and fell.

    One of the boys was still remaining, but it seemed like he had lost all fighting spirits and was only remaining in case Shiro tried to escalate the violence any further.

    Shiro huried over to the first boy, throwing him back on the ground as he was trying to get back up.

    He turned him over and searched his pockets for a wallet, he was succesfull at the third one, he quickly huried away, then he searched it.

    Shiro took the money while throwing the rest on the ground, he gave the boys one last look and went away, all in all he made 1270 Ryo.

    The rest of his way to school went normally, he still arrived ahead of time, but it was a little to close for comfort.

    He went to his usual place, talking with Lee a little before class started, who seemed to have come to terms with how he should stop working on ninjutsu, but he still hadn¡ät given up, only reshifted his efforts.

    Shiro looked around in class, everione was talking amongst themselves, the only exception was Neiji with Tenten.

    Tenten had oftentimes tried to engage Neiji, but he barely replied, with a simple yes and no being most of the words he choose to speak.

    Tenten instead was talking with one of the kids that Shiro knew a little, Seki if he remembered correctly.

    "Hey Shiro"a boy asked from behind"do you have an eraser?"

    Shiro quickly handed him an eraser"Just give it back before class starts, alright?"

    "Sure thing."the boy said, erasing some scribbles he had made before Shiro arrived.

    Then the teacher arrived.

 11. Contemporary Events

    The hirarchy in class in regards to there strenghts looked almost the same as when classes started, the kids of shinobi families were the elite with them only rarely being beaten, after that some of the first generation shinobi were slowly beginning to catch up, Shiro felt like he was one of the best of them, with him often leaving Tenten and the others lying on the ground, tough he still lost most of the time.

    The only position that seemed untouchable was the first place, Neiji Hyuga outclassed them all, oftentimes being called a genius, he was seen as arrogant, atleast by the boys, but Shiro didn¡ät see him like that.

    No to Shiro every statement Neiji said seemed very cynical, "You are weak and the weak will never rise over there predestined position" was the gist of what he said, but if you thought about it Neiji wasn¡ät the strongest in the village so didn¡ät this philosophy of his also apply to himself?

    Regardless he didn¡ät bother much with Neiji only trying his best when fighting with him, not taunting him like some of the other more rekless and now bruised boys.

    Aniways all the boys were training there taijutsu to catch up to Neiji and even Lee was starting to make some progress, tough he still was far behind all the others with shinobi families.

    Shiro himself was also making good progress over these months, his jutsu for changing form was beginning to get more advanced and his clone was beginning to get more lifelike, but it still was gelatinous and unable to move or talk.

    One day however this peacefull live was disrupted, Seki, the Uchiha orphen he knew for years

    didn¡ät show up to school.

    Neither he nor anyone else thought much of this, to tell the truth Shiro didn¡ät even notice that she was missing at first, but after a while class was interrupted.

    "Hello class, my name is Iruka"

    A man with a long scar under his eyes and over his nose interrupted there class."Maybe you already noticed that Seki isn¡ät here today."

    The man paused for a bit looking around in the class"She along with almost the entire Uchiha clan has been wiped out yesterday."

    Everione went into an uproar, even Neiji looked shocked"The criminal responsible is Itachi Uchiha, this has been confirmed by his younger brother Sasuke Uchiha.

    Stay away from this man at all cost and should you ever see him, report it to the officials in Konoha, do NOT ingage him."

    Shiro was as shocked as the rest in the class, he knew that the village wasn¡ät entirely safe, but he thought that only trough war could that safety be threatened, he never thought that an entire clan would be purged by one of there own.

    Iruka looked at them all again, then after making sure no one was braking down, he left them alone with there usuall teacher.

    "Horrible news, even if you only knew one of them, class is closed for today, but should any of you want to talk to me, I will remain here for a while."The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

    Most of the students went home, the usuall groups being broken apart as everione just rushed home as fast as possible, only Shiro remained behind.

    "Teacher I have a question."

    The teacher looked at him"That¡äs only natural after one of your schoolmates was killed, ask away."

    "How was she killed?"Shiro asked.

    "She returned to her aunt and uncle on that day and didn¡ät get back to the orphenage, it seems that after that she was...she was cut down with a blade like the others."

    Shiro nodded at this"Why did Itachi murder his clansman?"

    The teacher hesitated".....I don¡ät know, but his brother said he just wanted to test his strenght against his clan, tough that could be achieved in other ways if you ask me."

    Shiro asked his final question"If his brother was the witness, how did he survive?"

    Mister Yuudai looked at him"According to the boy himself, Itachi want¡äs to create an enemy worthy of fighting against, so he spared his brother in hopes of him looking for revenge later in life."

    Shiro finally heard everithing he wanted to know, excusing himself as he took his things and left.

    The information given to him shocked him, not that someone might kill there clan, but that Itachi did all of this....all to test his strenght?

    As his teacher said, there are other methods he could have used...was this the most convenient one?

    Was becoming a criminal hunted by the entire nation truly so...so negligible?

    This man put himself against an entire country and seemingly didn¡ät even flinch at it, was this true power or madness?

    He went his route to his house, jumping from treetop to treetop and over houses, as he had for the last while to save on travelling time.

    Coming to his house he wanted to eat and train, but he was interrupted at the door.

    "Shiro I have come to make sure that your feeling good despite the tragic events that hapenned!"

    Shiro was perplexed at the boy greeting him at the entrance to his home"Hello Lee, Im not feeling very good, but I could be worse so you don¡ät need to worry."

    Lee shook his head at this"I know you knew her for a lot longer then me, so I refuse to leave before your feeling better you undestand me?"

    Shiro forced his way past him opening the door for the both of them"You wanna come in then?"

    Lee went inside"Shiro you know you can cry right?"

    Shiro looked at him"What?"

    Lee started to explain"This person that you lost has been important to you for many years, it is only natural for you to cry."He gripped his shoulder"I promise I won¡ät make fun of you!"

    Shiro was perplexed, even for Lee this was a little to direct, but he smiled at his kind words nonetheless"Lee im sure you have only the bedt intentions, but I promise you I am mostly fine, I didn¡ät know this girl as much as you think I did."

    Lee slowly came to terms with the fact that his friend was indeed not going to cry, so they changed the topic to something less horrible.

    "So how much progress have you made aniway Lee, in taijutsu that is."

    Lee looked a little proud"Im very bad at memorising the techniques and even worse at executing them, but I can get it done almost perfectly after a few hundred times."

    Shiro looked at him in confusion"You just repeat this until you get it?"

    Lee smiled at his face"Unless you got a better idea?"

    Sometimes Lee made Shiro perplexed, repeating a technique hundreds of times will either take a long time, or your muscles will ache for days and he wasn¡ät even sure how Lee practiced alone.

    "Lee we have a lot of time right? Let¡äs train, since school is over already."

    Lee agreed without hesitation, but they soon realised that they couldn¡ät do any serious fighting in his room.

    "Hey Shiro you¡äve never been at my place right? We¡äve got the space to train there."

    Shiro agreed and they wandered over to Lee¡äs place.

    "Alright let¡äs climb over the fence, that way my parents won¡ät see us."Lee said.

    Shiro asked"Why shouldn¡ät your parents see us?

    "Initially they really wanted me to take up the family profession and train, but as time passed and my talentless nature was exposed they wanted me to stop, they were woried about me."Lee said, then with a more devoted expression"I know there just trying to do it for me, but I know I can catch up to Neiji if I just try hard enough."

    Shiro frowned at him"Neiji?"

    "To whoever is the next "genius" then, maybe im not talented, but talentless like some people think?No im not just a burden!"Lee exclaimed.

    They trained behind the house of the Lee¡äs parents and altough Lee wasn¡ät as strong as Shiro, he actually was the one that corrected the forms of him.

    Lee had gotten only a part of the techniques down, but he executed them to perfection, oftentimes getting Shiro on the ground.

    This went on for quite some time.

 12. The Leeéˆ¥çž«

    Rock Lee didn¡ät have the greatest endurance, after just a couple rounds he was already breathing heavily, Shiro thought he would soon stop the training, or atleast ask for a break, but Lee never did.

    Most people can only use a fraction of there stregth, in the same way most people only used a fraction of there endurance.

    The difference between the two was that endurance was controlled more by willpower than anithing else, this meant that if Shiro was to ask for a break before Rock Lee his willpower would be smaller than his.

    Because of this reasoning Shiro forced himself to train without end, time went by, but neither off them asked for a break.

    Shiro wondered if he would throw up soon as he was slowly getting sick, out of respect for Lee he would soon quit, afterall he didn¡ät want to throw up on the property of Lee¡äs parents.

    Luckily for him they were interrupted before he needed to resign.

    "Lee what are you doing here? Aren¡ät you supposed to be in school?"A woman in her thirtys asked.

    Shiro and Lee both flinched as they hadn¡ät even noticed her."Oh mom, yeah your right, but we were send home a while ago, because one of our classmates died."

    The woman looked shocked"One of your classmates died? And your only telling me this now?"then she looked over to Shiro"And who¡äs your friend here?"

    Lee worked off her questions one after the other, seemingly a ltittle emberassed"Yeah she was one of the Uchiha, we only found out she was dead today. And this.." he dragged Shiro over "is Shiro, a good friend and my classmate."

    The mother nodded at this, still mainly focused on the dead classmate"Really a terrible thing, the Uchiha weren¡ät always easy to deal with, but they didn¡ät deserve this." Then her gaze went back to reality."Well Shiro, I would love to have met you on a more happy day, but welcome."

    Shiro also greated her."Yes welcome....I mean hello."

    Lee¡äs mom tried to guide them inside, at first Lee didn¡ät want to, but when Shiro took the invetation he followed along.

    "So Shiro how did you meet my son?"the mom asked.

    "Well he came towards me, said he was Rock Lee and that he wanted to learn ninjutsu. After that he sat down next to me and we became friends trough time."

    Lee¡äs mother looked at Lee a little weirdly when he gave that description, but she genuienly smiled when Shiro said Lee was a friend.

    "And do you think he can do it, become a ninja and learn ninjutsu?"

    Shiro looked at Lee apologeticly then saying"No never, atleast to your ninjutsu question, but I know that Lee can work hard and ever since he has given up on ninjutsu he has some real potentiall."This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

    Lee frowned at this, muttering"I haven¡ät given up on it."

    His mom looked at him like a small weight had been lived of her shoulders"By the way im Iwasaki Lee, but you can just call me Iwa."

    "Yes miss Iwa."came Shiros reply.

    Iwa showed them inside and to Shiro¡äs surprise it didn¡ät look that different from his own lodging, he always thought that the housing of the others, especially shinobi would be more luxorius, but since it was still a lot bigger it didn¡ät seem like the Lee¡äs were struggeling to make ends meet.

    Iwa prepared some food and told them both"Lee¡äs father will be here soon he¡äs just picking up some groceries, you just go upstairs and have fun."

    Shiro and Lee then both instinctively obeyed, but when they got into Lee¡äs room they realised they didn¡ät really have anithing to do in these small walls.

    Shiro was the first to break the silence"Want to study a bit together?"

    Lee laughed at him"Always work with you, huh?", but in reality he was gratefull to do this together with his friend.

    They tried to get as much done as possible before Lee¡äs mom would call them down, tough sadly less than an hour was barely enough to get into the thematic.

    "Lee lunch¡äs ready."the voice finally echoed from downstairs after about 40 minutes.

    The two boys huried down only now realising how hungry they both were, but when they got down they saw one more person then before.

    Shiro quickly made the guess that this was probably Lee¡äs father, to his surprise however he looked very....normal, Lee¡äs mom had the same look so he guessed that Lee¡äs features all came from his dad, but he neither saw a ponytail nor the thicc eybrows Lee had.

    He quickly introduced himself"Hello sir, my name¡äs Shiro, im a friend of your son."

    The man laughed at him"Such good manners, maybe some of your etiquette will rub off on Lee! Im called Toyama, nice to meet you."

    Shiro was glad about Lee¡äs parents, Lee sometimes got emberassed when they spoke, but to Shiro they seemed very ideal and he didn¡ät even understand what made him flusterred.

    Initially he thought that they maybe would be unwelcoming of an orphan, since that was the way some of the other kids in his class saw noble and shinobi families, but this wasn¡ät the case at all with them seeming just as open as all the other adults he knew by name.

    The food was salad with rice and lots of vegetables mixed in, Shiro would have preferred it if there was a little meat mixed in, but he was also very gratefull for a meal he would neither have to prepare, or pay for.

    Toyama and Iwa kept pressing Shiro for Lee¡äs performance in school and altough Shiro didn¡ät lie he portrayed the truth in the best possible way.

    As an example Lee wasn¡ät continiously getting beaten, but instead he keeps fighting on no matter how tough the enemy while getting better all the time!

    This seemed to apease the parents and Lee, so Shiro guessed this must have been the right decision.

    After a while the conversation slowed down so Shiro felt like it was finally time for him to ask the questions.

    "So both of you have been shinobi for a while right, how is the job?"he asked.

    The parents got a little bit more serious, deciding to tell him the good news before the bad news

    "It is really wonderfull the sorts of connections you can make with your comrades, even people that I only battled a few times with, are truly some of my best friends"Toyama said.

    "Yes and since the pay isn¡ät bad at all you don¡ät really need to worry about finances, atleast when you¡äve been at it for while."Iwa said.

    Shiro accepted this, he knew that most shinobi had shinobi friends and shinobi romances and altough he had never really thought about finances, it certainly was important, aferall there were a few people starving to this day in all the nations.

    Lee¡äs parents went on with there discripton"The only real problems are the wars."

    Iwa nodded at this"Yes I tried to retired because of the last war, tough that didn¡ät keep me from being forced to battle."

    Toyama nodded"The wars are the very reason why shinobi are being suplied by there countries, but still I dread it when the Daimyo calls for war. Still tough it¡äs a great honor to protect the country, it is only natural to put yourself infront of the common people, who knows what would happen if even a few dozen shimobi would break trough the village and into the nation."

    "So to be a shinobi, doesn¡ät mean to be just a sword, but also a vital shield for the nation?"Shiro asked.

    The adults looked at him then agreeing"Yes your absolutlely right, but I think we¡äve talked enough now of these things, the Uchiha aren¡ät even in the grave and we¡äre already talking future troubles."

    After that they talked more of the academy and certain resteraunt¡äs, that the parents recommended to Shiro since they had by now figured out that he was an orphan, preparing his own food.

 13.What Matters

    Shiro is back by himself, back again. Lee¡äs parents were quite nice and he enjoyed his time with them, but he was happy now, happy for the oppertunity to sort out his thoughts.

    His reality was again threatened.

    He knew that the forest wasn¡ät a place to live, he merely used it to get by.

    Had he stayed in that forest for a few years longer he surely would have starved, been eaten up by predetors and most inevitable of all gotten some disease his young body couldn¡ät handle.

    Indeed death there was a certainty, even as a young boy he knew that, the only reason that he stayed there for all this time was that he was caged in the forest by his fear.

    Looking back it seemed strange how afraid he was, but he had acted as tough not just his village was being atacked and instead as if the entire world might have been lost.

    Now he felt the same feeling of being caged again, this time by his desire to be strong.

    To be anithing more than a distraction and a quick kill to a shinobi he needed to get strong and to do that he needed to stay in the village.

    Previously that didn¡ät seem like that much of a problem, the days when he might get dragged into wars seemed far away and the village was a safe place to stay.

    Only it wasn¡ät safe...Itachi Uchiha had killed countless shinobi and civilians on a whim and nobody had been able to catch him since.

    Itachi Uchiha had become a little bit of a obsession of Shiro and to his own shock a rolemodel.

    Obviously he disagreed with everithing Itachi had done, but the possibility still fascinated him,

    a boy only four years older than him had torn trough countless people that to Shiro had still seemed untouchable.

    The next few days he was distracted from his studys, or to be more general he was also studying the life of Itachi.

    What he found was a little dissapointing to say the least, Itachi was a genius who got enrolled early in the acadamy because of the war and he awakened the sharingan, a genetic power only the Uchiha possesed with eight.

    In short nothing that could really help Shiro, unless his ancestry was more complicated than he thought.

    With little hope of becoming a genius, or an Uchiha anytime soon he redoubled his efforts on all that he could affect.

    Ninjutsu and chakra controle wasn¡ät the hardest thing to learn, there was little to explain, or maybe the teachers were just unable to explain, regardless since they got to the acadamy most progress anyone made was done by practical experience.

    The only obstacles to training, were the timeconstraints and the way their bodys would be tired afterwards.

    This way it was rather easy to train, do the hand signs and try not to collapse was the mantra that fueled Shiro¡äs improvement.

    This way there was no real barier that might stop him from advancing and he slowly improved, getting on the same level as the rest of his class, tough of course he didn¡ät have any special clan technique like he assumed Neiji might have.

    When he felt like he had both his time schedule and mental attitude regarding hard work down, he had asked Neiji if he would like to hang out anytime, with the hope of getting tutored in taijutsu by the best in class, but to his sorrow he was just ignored.

    With the best in class having refused him Shiro decided it was best to make the rounds, he supposed that when the best wasn¡ät interested he should start with who he concidered to be the second best.

    "Yo Fujikawa I was wondering if you would like to hang sometimes and do some training?"

    A boy in red clothes turned around with a dazed look"Oh hello Shiro, you really wanna hang out?"

    This wasn¡ät quite the response Shiro exected"Yeah why wouldn¡ät I ?"

    "Well I guess you have always been a little quit and your not really bad at taijutsu are you?"

    Shiro wasn¡ät sure if he had already been rejected, but as he hadn¡ät yet gotten what he wanted he decided to persue the matter"Well that¡äs why I talked to you, Im sure the others would be good sparing partners too, but going up against one of the best in class should be even better training."

    Fujikawa nodded"Well I guess you wouldn¡ät be a bother since you can keep up. Tell you what you got time today?"

    Shiro was almost sure he would be denied, so in a genuenly happy voice he said"Alright im game."

    Fujikawa nodded"Cool."

    Later on it was once again taijutsu practice, Shiro wasn¡ät sure if he had grown more aware of Fujikawa, or if he really was getting called upon more than usually today.

    Regardless Fujikawa was once again fighting and his sparring partner was Lee wich made the entire match very uninteresting.

    Shiro knew that Lee was very commited to improving his taijutsu and that he also had the willpower to keep up with his own training, but against Fujikawa he simply wasn¡ät a match.

    Usually fights didn¡ät involve any jutsu, mainly because they didn¡ät have any damaging jutsu (unless you counted the weak clones some of the more talented students could already make), but also because the time needed to focus and make a jutsu.

    Regardless the possibility of them getting used and the ways the others might use them usually made most of the kids pay attention to the different fights, sadly this wasn¡ät a problem with Lee.

    The fight went over rather quickly, Lee used the techniques he had gotten down, but he neither was varied nor fast enough to keep up with Fujikawa.

    "Fujikawa wins."there sensei interrupted when Lee got knocked down one too many times, this was the third fight Fujikawa had won today.

    Shiro of course also got called up twice, winning one fight against one of the weaker students, but loosing against Tenten.

    The rest of the day went relatively normal, he used the given time to practice ninjutsu and took on all the knowledge he could gain from his teacher, doing his best not to drift off in class so he wouldn¡ät make Lee too much work.

    After school was over he noticed that Fujikawa hadn¡ät told him when or where he should go today, so he went over and asked him.

    "Oh right you haven¡ät ever been over at my place."the red clothed boy answered.

    Shiro nodded"Yeah sorry for the troubles."

    The other boy scoffed"Don¡ät apoligise, just follow me, it doesn¡ät start till later, but it¡äs not that much longer."Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

    Shiro wasn¡ät quite sure what the boy meant, but since he had already told him he wanted to train he simply nodded.

    They walked together south of the acadamy, with Shiro trying to memorise the way as best as he possibly could.

    "So Shiro why you wan¡ät to train with me all of a sudden?"Fujikawa finally asked.

    Shiro nodded, he had already formulated a justification incase this would be asked

    "Well I already spent almost all my time training in some way or another, but since im not the

    best in class and im not gonna drop my ninjutsu and kunai, or shuriken training I thought there might be some merit in training with some of the pros and when I asked Neiji he..."

    Fujikawa instantly interrupted him"I think we both know what Neiji would answer."

    Shiro agreed"Yes I also asked him today, but he was as arrogant as usuall."

    Fujikawa looked a little dispirited then mumbling"I swear if he would ever smile I would wipe it off his face faster than even that stupid Byakugan could see...."

    Shiro chuckled at him"Well im cheering for you, tough I guess he hasn¡ät done anithing bad...atleast to me."

    They continued on trough the maze of apartmant blocks, tough they luckily only needed to take a few turns, after about half an hour at walking speed they finally arrived at a building very similar to that of Lee¡äs parents.

    Shiro also noticed that it seemed a bit bigger and more luxurius, but regardless it was still build in the same style.

    "Hey Fujikawa are all shinobi homes build to code or something?"

    The other boy looked at him"No why would they be and by the way you can call me Fuji now."

    Shiro nodded at the shortform of his name, tough somehow Fuji didn¡ät quite sit right with him.

    Fujikawa....Fuji spoke to him"Wanna head inside?"

    "Yeah sure let¡äs go Fuji"Shiro responded trying to familiarise himself with the name.

    Going inside it once again looked like a carbon copy of the Lee¡äs house, tough even the backyard was a little bigger and he was fairly certain that the Lee¡äs didn¡ät have any stuffed dearheads over their fireplace.

    Fujikawa got them some water wich Shiro garciously accepted and he also offered him some of the food wich he apearently didn¡ät touch even after taijutsu, but since Shiro still had some leftovers he declined.

    It got a little silent so Shiro finally decided to ask"Aniways you said we were waiting for something to do the training, for what and why?"

    Fuji smiled at the oppertunity to sound wise"Not somone my future genin, somebody 2 of them to be exact"he said giving his best impression of sensei Yuudai, even if their sensei never sounded that pretentious to begin with.

    He went on"We¡äre waiting for Tenten and Goda, be honored your the first addition to the founding trio."

    Shiro nodded while mentally giving note to how allmost all the kids with shinobi parents had banded together"Yes honored indeed!"he responded while smiling.

    Fuji then went on a bit of a sidetrack"By the way Shiro don¡ät you dare feel bad for having lost to a girl, even yours truly has lost to her so it¡äs fine."

    Shiro had of course already seen him get beaten by her, but regardless he went along with his point

    "Yeah I know she really got it down, but still can you blame me for not being satisfied with a loss?"

    Fuji nodded"Yeah I guess that¡äs the spirit, but all im saying is that it shouldn¡ät get you down so

    don¡ät sweat it."

    Then the hunger crept up on Fujikawa and he finally had to break his bad eating habits when he looked at the sandwich, wich he so carelessly offered Shiro only minutes ago.

    Shiro took a few bites with the boy, but he had already eaten so he mostly just looked at the boy in red as he was gulping down his sandwich.

    After that they heard voices"Why do you just bring a new member without telling anyone, thanks for not giving notice to Fuji and me ahead of time!"

    Then a female voice"Come on he¡äs obviously more skilled than us, maybe he can help us all."

    Shiro and Fuji looked at eachother as the sound of the voices was quickly aproaching, then the door seperating both rooms finally opened.

    Goda¡äs shoulders instantly wen¡ät down when he saw Shiro"Even you Fuji?"

    Tenten gave a triumphant laugh"Looks like it¡äs 2 against one, doesn¡ät it?"

    Shiro looked at them and was surprised to see Neiji behind Tenten and Goda, then quickly giving a greeting"Yo Neiji looks like we¡äre training afterall, huh?"

    Neiji calmly looked at him then giving a neutral response, tough his face obviously looked a little annoyed"Im only here so this one stops bugging me for a while."while placing his palm on Tentens shoulder.

    Tenten now with a slightly redenned face went off on him"Dammit Neiji can¡ät you say that a little nicer, you sound like you don¡ät even want to be here."

    Neiji laughed at this"Maybe because im not? Aniways let¡äs get this over with."

    Tenten¡äs face got even more red from the embaressment"Fine, if you really hate being with us so much then fine."

    Afterwards she finally took notice of Shiro"By the way...Hi, crazy to think a majority of us decided to bring in new members right?"while giving Goda a very smug smile.

    Shiro didn¡ät really feel spoken to so he gave a simple reply"Yeah crazy..and nice to meet you."

    Neiji very obviously annoyed"Let¡äs GO!"

    Reluctantly the group went along with Neiji in the garden, from then on the rules essentially were the same as in the acadamy:Fight till the judge decides one obviously has the upper hand and they could also fight with ninjutsu.

    The first fight was Shiro against Tenten, after he had asked her for a second round since he had lost in the acadamy.

    Tenten started the fight the same way she started all the fights against a somewhat comparable oppenent"Ram,Snake,Tiger"to summon a clone that could potentially secure victory, at least if the fight was really close.

    Both versions of tenten sprinted at shiro, while Shiro took out a shuriken.

    Throwing a shuriken was risky buisiness, if the enemy was to far away they could easily dodge the projectile weapon, but if they were to close he would become passive to an enemy with initiative, because of this he only hits clones about half the time.

    Regardless he threw the shuriken fast enough that dodging was impossible for Tenten and he still had enough time to get back into a fighting position.

    Then he countered the flying kick she lunched by blocking the leg with his elbow and trying to push the flying kunoichi so that she might loose her balance.

    Tenten quickly tried to counter the hand to the best of her ability, but Shiro moved fast enough that she couldn¡ät grab onto his arm.

    She got angled in a way that most other 9 year olds would have fallen and most likely cried, but the child solider in training masterfully used her momentum to roll backwards and she avoided Shiro as he was chasing behind his fallen enemy.

    Catching up to her he tried to knock her of her feet with a punch to the head, to counter Tenten swayed to the right and he missed by a hairs breath.

    When dodging she had however once again lost her balance, in order to not hit the ground she placed all of her weight on her right arm while coiling her leg backwards for a kick.

    Before Shiro could react she sweept his legs with hers and he had fallen backwards, then she had him.

    Shiro was about to resign when he realised what kind of grip Tenten had used, a strenght based grip.

    With a confused look he countered and his arms bulged as much as could possibly be expected of a 9 year old.

    She struggled with him, but ultimately she just wasn¡ät as strong as him and seemingly he had a lot more experience in wrestling then she did so his victory from then onwards was almost predestined.

    "Shiro wins."Fujikawa excitedly shouted out.

    Tenten almost looked heartbroken"Dammit I lost again."

    Shiro got even more confused at her statement"What do you mean, you already won this morning."

    Tenten looked at him"Yeah, but not the right way."

    Fuji looked at her understandingly"Tenten loosing the "right" way won¡ät make you any stronger either, your already amazingly powerfull, you don¡ät need to be literally strong."

    Tenten shrugged.

    Neiji finally spoke up"Now then, Fujijkawa let¡äs fight so I can finally get out of here."

    Fujikawa looked more than a little insulted"So people like you can¡ät even play nice, huh?"

    Neiji looked at him"And what exactly does people like me mean?"

    Fujikawa looked very satisfied with himself"Nothing, now let¡äs fight."

    Shiro was assigned as the judge since he won his last fight.

    Tough Fuji seemed to be in high spirits the fight didn¡ät go any differently than all the previous fights of the classes number 1 and number 2.

    There were some close calls, a hit that almost happened there, a kick only barely caught here,

    but ultimately Neiji didn¡ät get hit a single time and Fuji got lots.

    "NOW stop bugging me to join your stupid little club!"Neiji shouted as he looked over at Tenten, who flinched a little.

    Shiro looked over to Fuji"You gave it your all that¡äs all anibody can expect the winner is..."

    Then he was interrupted by a shuriken thrown at the back of Neiji¡äs head, Neiji had plenty of time to react, but for some reason he didn¡ät only being saved by Tenten who pushed him aside.

    "What the hell Fuji what if that had hit?"Goda shouted on the boy still lying on the ground.

    "Oh come on we both know that he could see that, he probably only wanted to show us how fast he is by dodging at the last second."Fuji confidently said, wich was promptly greeted by a fist to the head.

    "What the hell is wrong with you?"Neiji screamed at Fuji.

    Shiro quickly called the match off"Neiji wins, now get away from one another."

    Neiji however had absolutely no regard for Shiro¡äs words"So as soon as there is no one around that can block a weapon like this you try and kill me with it?"

    Shiro had to agree with Neiji on this one, if Fuji thought that Neiji would dodge why would he throw a shuriken much less one aimed at the back of his head.

    Neiji¡äs first strike was justifiable to anyone around them, the second and third were understandable, but as the beating went on, Goda and Tenten flinched.

    Finally even Shiro disagreed with the amount of punishment Fuji was taking"Ok Neiji, we will all make sure he doesn¡ät forget this lesson, please get off him now."

    Neiji looked at him as he continued his pinpoint beating"Make me."

    Shiro was a little undecided, but as he glanzed over to the boy now bleating from at least 7 orifices, he decided that quick action was needed.

    He thought about throwing another shuriken at Neiji since that seemed to work, but since that got them in this mess in the first place he simply charged.

    Of course he knew that he couldn¡ät beat Neiji, but that wasn¡ät the goal, with maximum speed and power he delivered a right hook to Neiji, while ignoring pain breaking out from his liver and kidney

    from at least 2 of Neiji¡äs punches.

    The hit didn¡ät really land, but regardless it had ended the beating, or to be more specific it had ended Fuji¡äs beating.

    "You...BASTARD."Neiji screamed as he experienced pain for the first time that day, Neiji had now completely shifted his attention to Shiro.

    Shiro wasn¡ät sure how much Neiji would have beaten on Fuji, but he was sure he wouldn¡ät have beaten him to death, as such maybe 2 teeth was a price too high for his tastes, at least to just to stop anothers beating.

    Of course he wasn¡ät able to think any of that till later, Neiji had already acted.

    Tenten screamed horrificly"Neiji get off of him!"

    To Shiro¡äs surprise Neiji actually did get off his body.

    Neiji quickly got apart from them as he said

    "Of course if any of you try to get me in trouble I will be more than happy to break the news of who tried to kill me and as for you"he said while looking at Shiro"those were only baby teeth so don¡ät look so shocked."

    With that Neiji walked away and to everibody¡äs shame right out of the front door.

    After that Neiji did not get reinvited.

 14.Aftermath

    Shiro, like anibody else hated getting any wounds, but teeth held special significance too him, afterall they didn¡ät grow back.

    Loosing them made him angry, but there was nobody to lash out at, Neiji left already and he didn¡ät have the will to fight with him aniway, at least for the love of all the teeth he still had left.

    He had already picked himself off the ground, using the handkerchief Goda had brought him to clean of all the blood dripping out of his mouth.

    Tenten seemed shellshocked, maybe only because she was the one to bring Neiji over, but regardless she had helped Fuji on his feet and gathered Shiro¡äs teeth.

    "Why the hell did that dummy have to lash out and why did the other dummy throw a weapon at him?"she mumbled while trying to get something to place Shiro¡äs teeth on.

    Shiro stood there for while speaking only when he felt that the blood dripping out was to little to worry about any longer"How did he know that those were baby teeth?"

    Everybody hesitated, with Tenten in perticular trying to get her brain to answer the question

    "I guess.."she said "he might have checked with his Byakugan?"

    Shiro was confused speaking after swallowing the leftover blood in his mouth

    "How would he know that with only his Byakugan?"

    "Oh the Byakugan can look trough barriers, maybe he looked at your teeth and only hit those that didn¡ät have any roots...maybe?"

    Shiro nodded at her explaination then turning his attention to the problemchild of the group

    "Fujikawa, you could have killed him."he said trying not to sound to blamefull.

    Fuji nodded"That was stupid your right."then trying to justify himself

    "But how could I know he wouldn¡ät dodge?"

    Shiro gave him a light slap on the least injured part on the head

    "He shouldn¡ät have to dodge a knife to his upper spine."

    "Well you seem to be taking this well."Goda said trying to ease them up a little.

    "I should go to the hospitable, just in case."Shiro agreed with him.

    "I¡äll come along with you!"Tenten and Fuji spoke simultaneously, both with a hint of guilt in there voices.

    "Yeah Tenten come along, tough I highly doubt that I¡äll need to be carried. Fuji he won¡ät have left any internal bleeding if he really can see trough things, at least not without saying anithing. You just stay home and rest."

    Fuji nodded along with Shiro¡äs rationalisation, so he just went upstairs to his bed as stabily as he could still manage.

    Tenten then went outside with her trying to get him to lean on her, but he just shrugged her off as she was only there so he didn¡ät need to worry about him collapsing and even that now seemed to be an unfounded worry.

    "You know..."he said while giving a very wide smile "I never really was noticed by any of the girls previously, but now im sure I¡äll get plenty of looks."at wich Tenten nervously chuckled confirming his worst suspicions.

    "If it makes you feel any better Neiji¡äs never been like that before, I really didn¡ät think any of this would happen."Tenten said.

    Shiro shook his head"Well I would have probably done the same if I was Neiji, but excuse me if we wont become friends anytime soon after this."wich she seemed to get.

    "You know this doesn¡ät mean I want to stop sparring with you, or it won¡ät if you keep the shurikens in check."

    Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

    Tenten smiled at his vigour"We¡äll make a special rule against it."

    The people around them didn¡ät really seem to notice that any of them was hurt, wich just gave to show how much he had already changed from the avarage 9 year old.

    They arrived at the hospital in less than an hour and quickly greeted the receptionist

    "Hello I have 2 missing teeth and possible internal bleeding."

    Tenten looked a little suprised"Internal bleeding? I thought you said we didn¡ät have to worry about that."

    "Yes probably not, but just in case and we¡äre already at the hospitable aniways so why not?"Shiro justified.

    The receptionist, a young woman with short hair listened to there conversation and quickly called a nurse.

    The nurse listened to the report that the receptionist repeated and looked with worry over to Shiro

    "My my, internal bleeding, huh?"

    "That¡äs unlikely, but it¡äs possible yes."he affirmed.

    The nurse then guided him down a certain hallway with Tenten coming along before Shiro spoke

    "Tenten leave now, but thanks for coming along in the first place."

    She actually wanted to stay, but when hearing Shiro she just nodded and went away, giving the boy one last look before he vanished from her vision.

    This day had been one major mess for her, she had tried to warm Neiji up for weeks now, maybe she really did seem annoying, but she just wanted to be friends with him.

    When he finally said yes to coming over she was very happy with herself, only later did she realise that he would use this oppertunity to make himself as unwelcome as possible and even if she saw trough his plan, with the latter half of the get together he had undoubtedly succeded.

    The first part she could forgive, anibody would get mad after being placed in a deadly situation,

    but the way he beat on Shiro when he was only trying to break him up from Fuji didn¡ät sit right with her.

    When she went back out the hospital she hesitated not knowing were to go, but then she remembered who got the most of a beating from Neiji, so she went straight back to Fujikawa¡äs house.

    The next day was very normal, Lee did his morning training, doing 100 pushups in 4 sets taking 15 minutes of break between each of them before it even was 6am and then he used the rest of his time before school to eat and finish up on some assignements for tommorow.

    After that he could have hurried to school, but he didn¡ät afterall it wasn¡ät time yet.

    He waited for exactly 6 minutes and then sprinted away, this might also be seen as his morning training, he tried to travel as fast as possible to the school.

    Initially he had worried that he might arrive late, since he didn¡ät have a watch, but he had found a way around that.

    Lee used a checkpoint to measure his time, if he was quick enough to catch up to Shiro it would be a sucess and if he didn¡ät see him on his way he would need to hurry along.

    That day he needed to hurry.

    He speed up as fast as his little legs would allow and tried to arrive before Shiro, but to his suprise he for some reason couldn¡ät that day.

    Lee arrived out of breath and a little sweaty, but he did arrive on time.

    To his suprise however he arrived way ahead of time and Shiro wasn¡ät there at all, so he needed to sit down alone.

    As time went by he needed to face the facts, Shiro had actually overslept!

    This was very shocking to Lee since he relied on him to arrive on time, if this could happen once it could happen again and he might need to make his way to school earlier than previously.

    Normally he arrived with Shiro and passed the time by chatting with him, but since that wasnt a possibity he just scribled a drawing of himself on his notepad.

    He started by drawing his face fairly realisticly, but as he went down his body he decided to take more and more libertys.

    When he was done the face looked completely unfitting to the muscular body and the contrast made him chuckle a bit.

    One of the kids noticed him laughing and looked over at him"What you drawing over there Lee?"

    Lee quickly flipped to another page blushing from thinking someone might see his drawing

    "Nothing!"

    The boy looked a little curious, but ultimately decided to let it go and he turned back around, making Lee sigh with relief.

    Soon the teacher entered the classroom, the class was realatively small, but only after placing all his things down and opening them did he call out"Where¡äs Shiro?"while looking at Lee.

    Lee quickly responded"I don¡ät know probably he just overslept."

    Fujikawa, who was still visibly beat up, interjected"No probably not."

    The teacher didn¡ät know what to make of there conflicting reports and decided to probe further

    "Why do you say that?"

    This time Tenten responded"Shiro....He got into an accident yesterday and I escorted him to the hospital, because of that it¡äs unlikely that he just overslept."

    This was then noted down in the teachers book.

    Lee was despirited by all this, neither of them had ever explicitly said so, but they both were each others best friends, spending a lot of time together and as such he really didn¡ät like it that he seemed to be the last to hear of this.

    Regardless of his mood currently there was class going on and as the break would inevitably arrive aniways, he just decided to bite his time.

    Time marched onward bit by bit and as the teacher wrapped up Lee cruised over to Tenten and Neiji

    "So what happened to Shiro?"

    Tenten gave him a little smile"I don¡ät know the details, but even tough HE IS A GREAT GUY THAT DOESN¡äT DESERVE THIS, he seemed to be more injured than he was letting on yesterday"

    Lee didn¡ät know why Tenten was shouting at nobody in perticular, or why she suddenly spoke so well of somebody she barely knew, but he didn¡ät need to know and instead asked about the important bit

    "Is Shiro is at the hospitall right now?"

    "Probably, but it¡äs not like I know for sure."Tenten answered.

    Lee was satisfied, with that so he turned around to leave, but Tenten tugged on his clothes to get him to stop"Lee, your a good friend of him, why don¡ät we visit him together?"

    "Yeah, let¡äs all go together!"Fujikaw voiced in and even Goda seemed eager.

    Now Lee was really getting suspicions, all these people neither he nor Shiro ever talked to suddenly were so interested in one of them missing just one day of class.

    "Why do you guys care all of a sudden?"Lee decided to probe.

    Tenten imeadietly answered"Oh we train with him now."

    Lee didn¡ät speak as his brain was working in overdrive till he had finally collected all the dots.

    "You said he had an accident just as you started training? Did you guys just beat him up?"

    "No he didn¡ät.......We didn¡ät beat him up."

    Lee looked entirely unconvinced at Tentens rushed answer.

    This time Goda spoke"Listen we truly only want to visit him to make sure he is ok and it¡äs not like you can¡ät ask him what happened to him when you get there."

    Lee hesitated, but soon he nodded seemingly convinced.

    "Then meet you outside after school?"Tenten asked Lee.

    Lee nodded his head again and went back to his seat, wondering if he and Shiro could beat the other 3 students, or if he should just call help if they tried anything....probably he couldn¡ät do either.

 15.No Bureaucrat

    Goda didn¡ät know much about Shiro all he really knew him from were the fights they had,

    14 Wins and 31 Losses, so he was one of the better students.

    Altogether 14 reasons to hate him, but regardless he liked him even if he had only given him 3 reasons to do so, 2 teeth and whatever he was missing school for today.

    Goda was homeschooled for most of his life and altough he definetely didn¡ät want to be friends with everyone, he apreciated the people he was friends with all the more, so Shiro helping Fuji

    was definetely a big plus in his book.

    As such he went with Tenten, Fuji and Lee to the hospital to make sure Shiro is okay.

    The walk was relatively awkward with Lee clearly treating himself as an outsider to the others.

    Tenten tried to shake up the heavy atmosphere a few times, but clearly was the wrong person for the job.

    From the acadamy they needed to go around the aviary (the place were messages were dispatched) then turn at the library and go across from the Yamanaka¡äs quarters.

    In the hospital there were two types of doctors, the normal kind who usually were called nurses, even if they were way more educated than any actual nurse ever needed to be and the medical-nin.

    "Nurses" would usually handle small things like cuts and bruises while medical-nin were called for anithing of high importance like the healing of a stabilised patient after a heart-atack.

    Once upon a time medical-nin were shunned as they were associated with death and tragedy, but as natural selection would have it everyone that actively antagonised the best doctors available soon dissapeared and they long since had all the respect they could want, even amongst the non-ninja population.

    Goda followed the crew inside glad to have finally have arrived.

    Tenten talked with the receptionist of the hospital who seemed to recognize her

    "Yes your friend is still here, go to room B211 please."

    Neither of them knew were that was, but since all the rooms to there right had a B1 on them, they quickly guessed that he would be on the second floor to the right.

    While going up the stairs Lee asked"So how did Shiro hurt himself and remember Im about to talk to him in person."

    "I...He hurt himself w-when falling over a kunai when we were training."Tenten stuttered together.

    Lee nodded at this, not bothering to ask any questions that would soon be resolved aniways.

    B211: They entered.

    Shiro sat upright in his bed reading up on some books the nurses had in stock, when the door opened he expected a medical-nin to finally treat him, or send him home, but Lee entered instead, pushing himself infront of Tenten, Fuji and Goda.

    He greeted them, but Lee didn¡ät even let him finish talking"Shiro how did you get hurt?"Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

    Tenten interjected"He fell onto some kunai...but not the sharp part!"just as quickly.

    Shiro took a little while to think of what was going on with them, so silence raged in the room for a good ten seconds.

    "Neiji beat me up."Shiro finally said. Wich made Tenten physicly cringe.

    Lee looked very annoyed"Well that¡äs not what you guys told me."

    The group evaded his gaze until Shiro cleared the air"It¡äs not there fault Lee and Neiji isn¡ät part of their group aniways, they shouldn¡ät answer for his crimes don¡ät you think?"

    Lee calmed down, tough he was even more confused now"So what happened between you all?"

    "What happened isn¡ät important, all that matters it what was lost and gained."Shiro answered cripticly.

    That didn¡ät seem to help Lee much so he continued to look at Shiro questioningly.

    Shiro tried again"In short I got in a bad fight with Neiji, they are not to blame and we can¡ät tell anyone about it."

    "Why not look what he did to you!"Lee said while pointing at the hospital bed he was sitting in.

    Shiro tried to calm him"First of all it¡äs not as bad as it looks, I was just ordered to stay in bed for a day and I should be able to walk right out of here today. The ONLY reason why Neiji was fine is probably that he just has a doctor in house."

    Lee was surprised"So you actually managed to hurt Neiji!?"

    Shiro just smiled with a closed mouth"I did say it was a bad fight, didn¡ät I ?"

    Everyone behind Lee looked similarly shocked as Shiro just told his lies like second nature,

    but since they tried to lie to Lee just minutes earlier they didn¡ät object.

    Shiro went on"In short it was either everibody¡äs fault, or nobodys fault and that includes Neiji."

    Fuji was confused at first why Shiro told Lee most of the truth within the first minute, but withheld the rest of it until....."Oh he¡äs lying to him so he won¡ät know about what I almost did to Neiji."

    the boy with spiky hair finally realised adding even more guilt to the previous incident.

    Lee seemingly finally settled with reality, accepting Shiros words as the truth

    "Well why did you have to get in a fight with the strongest in class?"

    "I will tell you if you get my jacket."Shiro answered.

    Lee looked at him, then did as he was told curious what the boy meant, with the others also inching forward.

    Shiro put his hand into one of the pockets, then dramaticly slowing his reach until a pack of cards was revealed.

    "Let¡äs play some cards, why don¡ät we?"

    The others were unsure"I never played that kind."Lee said.

    Goda seemed to recognize it"I think my dad played these when drinking buddys were over."

    Shiro nodded"Sounds reasonable usually people gamble with them, but we don¡ät have to, at least not till you know the rules."

    The game was relatively simple you just had to have the best hand, or make others pull out because they think you do, but in the specific version Shiro had learned there were many many rules that decided how much a hand was worth.

    That way cheating was being encouraged because if you interrupted the game, whenever you didn¡ät know about the obscure rule for a specific hand, only two thirds(rounded down) of the worth of your hand would be counted for that round.

    Of course if you ever were caught truly cheating you would loose by default, but since there were no universal rules, only those that applied to a specific table and or group of friends, there often were fights that would break out if strangers played over to much money.

    So when Shiro had showcased the rules and they actually began to play he often tried to cheat them so they would become more aware of the rules.

    This worked in parts, but when he had won the fourth game in a row he realised that they would not be his match for a long while and that he might need to let them win a few times so he wouldn¡ät loose the teeth he had left.

    Time passeed and they got better, but they were not at the level of Shiro, with Lee not even noticing when the others in his own skill group cheated.

    Shiro also noticed that the way to keep them playing was to loose one in five games, but 2 in 5 was better for their temper, so he stuck with that.

    They just were getting warmed up when they were interrupted by the noise of the door as it swung open.

    "Sorry for keeping you waiting all this time"an older woman dressed in white said.

    Shiro quickly gathered the cards back together and handed them to Goda.

    "Can they stay?"he asked the nurse about his visitors.

    The nurse looked at them"I don¡ät see why not, just stay out of sight and mind."

    She went over to Shiro placing her hands under his chest and releasing enough chakra to actually make it visible with the naked eye.

    Shiro waited for something to actually happen, but he felt much the same and didn¡ät see any effect.

    "What have you done?"he curiously asked.

    The nurse already stood upright again"Just a little kidney damage, should be all punchable again, not that I recommend it tough."and with that she went outside.

    Shiro was perplexed"An entire day wasted..for this?"he asked outloud.

    "Just be glad it¡äs nothing serious."Tenten said wich she immedieatly regretted when she thought about the teeth still at Fujikawa¡äs home.

    Shiro went out of the bed with a sigh"I guess your right, but you ought to manage your doctors time a little better."

    Fuji looked happy about his friends resolved situation"Well if your so concerned about time management, you might want to concider a career as bureaucrat instead."

    Shiro chuckled"True."