Chapter 37
After three months in recovery and training, Iruka was able to feel that a portion of his strength had returned. Those pills sure did a number on his body; they completely wrecked it. And only now did he feel like it was getting better.
And yet he was completely exhausted, his body hurt like hell, and there wasn't a second he didn't think of giving up. It was already a miracle that he was able to last three months training like this. He never understood how Might Guy could do it.
Speaking of that lunatic, since his body has recovered, he probably should resume his spars with him. But just the thought of it made him want to drink himself to death. Well, maybe he could try to last it for a month and then see how he felt about it.
"You sure you are ready?" the Third Hokage asked.
"As ready as I can be," Iruka replied. "The last year's students will enter teams or join the genin corps soon. There is no time to waste preparing them, and from what I remember, they have a long way to go."
"Very well, then. Hayate has been working hard, but I think it is about time he returned to his usual duties. And Anko has to return to the intelligence division, so your return couldn't be timed better."
Iruka didn't even think they would last that long. As much as they gloated about the work, it was clear from the get-go that they were just doing it for him. Even without asking, they knew that Iruka would be worried about the kids he was teaching.
Damn, he didn't like it when people had him all figured out like that, even if they were his friends. Even so, Iruka was now getting a bit worried about the last year's students. There was little time to prepare them for what they would soon enter. He couldn't wait any longer.
"How are those kids?" the Hokage changed the subject.
"Maniacs," Iruka replied. "They are total maniacs. But otherwise, they are doing fine, though I wouldn't hold too much hope for them integrating into society."
"As long as they're doing fine. And who knows, they might surprise us."
"Yes, though it is a pity that they are stuck with me. They are way too talented to be taught by me."
"I beg to differ," the Hokage smiled as he replied. "I think you are the best teacher for them, and under you, they will become great shinobi. And they will be the best they can be, only because you are watching over them."
"Hmm, as always, it is hard to tell when you are lying, Hokage-sama," Iruka said. "I should be going. I need to prepare to educate some kids, for I fear they were too relaxed of late."
He was too busy training to come look over the information about the kids. Before he even started to plan out how he was going to educate them, he needed to know how much they were able to accomplish without him around.
…
Something was wrong. Shikamaru could feel it in his bones. The creeping coldness of the silence that soon would be interrupted. And he feared that his brittle bones would not be able to handle it and would shatter.
"I should read less from father's collection."
"What was that, Shikamaru?" Choji asked as he looked at Shikamaru worriedly.
"Leave him alone, he's probably speaking in his sleep again." Ino once again wasn't in a good mood; it seemed she had failed again to get any attention from Sasuke.
Shikamaru returned to his sleep, ignoring them. But he really should consider reading less from his father's library. It was just curiosity that pushed him to read a few real experiences during the war, before it became Shikamaru's obsession.
The lull before a battle, the tenseness of a shinobi's mind and body as they prepared to face their enemy. The fear of any sound around them, as they were wary of ambushes. Now he was starting to imagine it all in the Academy.
He blamed it all on Anko-sensei. Her description of how to use certain ninjutsu left little to the imagination, but it piqued his curiosity. Though with her, the more that was left to the imagination, the scarier it was. He could only feel sorry for Naruto, as his imagination would run wild at all times.
The times Shikamaru saw Naruto lose all the blood in his face were too many to count. Though when Anko didn't leave anything to the imagination, Naruto didn't seem bothered at all. So, Shikamaru suspected that Anko-sensei especially liked to play around with Naruto the most.
Just as Shikamaru was wondering why Hayate-sensei was getting so late to the classroom, he heard footsteps approaching. Unnecessarily loud, as if to announce their arrival. And with each step taken, Shikamaru felt chills running down his spine.
"This can't be good," he muttered as he realized it. "Ino, you should go to your seat."
"Don't worry, Hayate-sensei doesn't take the class in the morning seriously, and this is the best place to observe Sasuke, since that skank took the seat next to him."
What? How? He was still hearing the echo of the footstep that had been taken. So how was he right here before him? He had changed since the last time Shikamaru saw him. Thinner, but sharper. The air around him felt far more dangerous than he remembered.
"I see." His voice was low, but Shikamaru could bet all the nap time in the world that everyone heard him. "It seems my fears were true, and you kids were taking it easy while I was gone."
Shikamaru heard a little squeak come out of Ino's lips as she slowly turned to face Iruka-sensei. Droplets of sweat rolled along her forehead as she looked up at his cold, dark eyes. As he looked down at them, a shadow covered part of his face, making it even worse for them to face him.
"Take your seats. You have seven seconds until the class starts."
Only when he walked to his table was the oppressive atmosphere gone. But no one had time to even breathe out a sigh of relief as they quickly scurried to find their seats. Thankfully, Shikamaru was already trying to take a nap in his seat before Iruka-sensei arrived.
But he now didn't think he would be able to take a nap in the Academy anymore. He hoped that this assignment, when Iruka-sensei first came to the Academy, would be forgotten, as Shikamaru had lost interest in watching the Academy staff after Iruka-sensei was gone.
"Five, six, seven, eight." The moment the class started, Iruka just sat by his table and started counting the seconds, which made everyone nervous. "Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen…"
"Just in time!" Then the classroom doors opened, and Naruto barged in. "Oh, Iruka-sensei, what are you doing here?"
"Take your seat, Naruto." That easy smile and soft gaze directed at Naruto were even more terrifying.
No. Shikamaru wanted to scream at Naruto that it was a trap. That he shouldn't trust Iruka's smile so easily. But he couldn't open his mouth as he watched Naruto just smile while walking to his seat. And the second his butt touched his chair, it exploded into hundreds of tiny pieces.
"Ahh, Iruka-sensei, my chair exploded! And some pieces hit me!"
"Naruto, take your seat. I won't repeat myself for the third time."
"Eh?" Naruto could only stare as Iruka-sensei's smile disappeared, and his eyes no longer held any softness. "But I don't have a chair."
Fool! Shikamaru almost screamed. Never question your superiors' orders while on a battlefield. And there was no mistaking it anymore; this was a battlefield. Just his presence alone made it so. If they didn't listen to him, they would be dead.
Luckily, it seemed that Naruto got the idea of what had happened and lowered his damn useless butt, sitting on empty air. That seemed to have satisfied Iruka-sensei, as he got up from his seat and looked over all of the students.
When his eyes settled on Shikamaru, he held his breath without even realizing it. It was damn scary, even if it only lasted for a second. It was a second far too long. Shikamaru could tell that they all were fucked.
"Since Naruto was late for eighteen seconds, you all owe me eighteen hundred pushups. You have until the end of this week to do them."
Fuck. Shikamaru, on his best day, could do at most fifty at once. And they would all need to do three hundred pushups every day to reach that goal. Shikamaru didn't even want to imagine what would happen to them if they failed.
Shikamaru feared that it would never end. That cold gaze looked down on them, judging their worth. He was probably overthinking it, but he did wonder why Iruka-sensei had changed so much.
He didn't know what had happened while he was gone. They said Iruka-sensei was hurt in a training accident. But at the same time, something had changed within the village; even Shikamaru's father looked troubled at that time.
And there was no way that Iruka-sensei would get hurt while training. But it was too much to wonder about; Shikamaru would rather not think about it at all. Even if he did, there was nothing he could do, so he just needed to focus on surviving at the moment.
…
It wasn't as bad as he expected. Iruka was even surprised by the progress of last year's students. As his first combat class started, he awaited them, but the ones who came to the class were no longer little brats with no grit in them.
He had to give it to Hayate. He might have been lax with the younger kids, but he spared no mercy on the older ones. And those kids were training on their own. But most importantly, it was their eyes. The pressure of entering the shinobi world was getting to them.
Some of them would be the first in their families to become a shinobi. Every single one of them wanted not only to survive but to accomplish something. They all had dreams of their own; they didn't know how to achieve them until Iruka showed them.
Now, even if Iruka told them to give up, they wouldn't. This training was their hope, and they would never abandon it. So Iruka had to respect them and give his all too. No matter how little time they had or how pointless it might be, Iruka was ready to give his all in preparing them.
"I see you have learned the sword the hard way." From the scars on their wrists, Iruka could tell that Hayate wasn't lenient with them at all. "You will continue learning the sword and other weapons as you have before, but before that, you will learn the battlefield."
Putting his hands on the ground, Iruka completely changed the training grounds. First, he hollowed the ground, filling it with water and burying it all once again. At least that's what they saw. But a battlefield was a place of unpredictability, where one could easily lose one's footing.
What they see and what they know might not be what is true. Before they learned it with their lives at risk, it was better to experience it here first. They had to realize that their senses and their knowledge would always be limited and that they couldn't trust them all the time.
"This is a battlefield," Iruka said to them. "And all of you will fight here every day to survive."
"To survive?" Some of them were confused.
"There is no victory on the battlefield," Iruka continued. "We are not warriors; we are shinobi. We don't fight, we do missions. Our victory is succeeding in our missions. The battlefield is nothing but an obstacle that is meant to stop us. So, we need to survive it to accomplish our victory."
There was no time to slowly introduce them to the chaos that can be a battlefield. He could only throw them into something similar and hoped they would learn through experiencing it firsthand. In the next half year before they graduate, they would fight each other to survive.
A.N. As always, thanks for reading and supporting me, so I can continue writing without any concerns, and if you want more, up to seven more chapters, you can support me on pa treon. com \ ironwolf852.