"Teju, did you catch anything?"
Sora couldn't keep the grin off his face.
"Pretty obvious, actually. When you two forced Akimichi-sensei to turn around, his legs moved first, then his hips, then his whole torso followed. That's not how a healthy person turns."
Kurenai stared blankly at both of them.
Teju pressed on. "Sensei's got a bad back. A bad back at his age... that's rough."
Sora hadn't expected it. Teju, with those earnest eyebrows and that guileless face, cracking jokes about their teacher's spine. He glanced at Kurenai, hoping for a reaction. Nothing. The joke had sailed clean over her head.
"Here's the plan," Sora said. "I'll hit sensei head-on with my strongest Gale Palm. Teju, you set your traps."
Kurenai hesitated. "Sora, is your Gale Palm powerful enough? I, um... I have Explosive Tags. Would it be too much to use them on our own sensei?"
"Not even close. You're underestimating a Tokubetsu Jonin." Sora eyed her with undisguised envy. Explosive Tags. High-end ordnance that a little heiress like Kurenai could just pull out of her pocket. Some people had all the luck.
Yoshimaru had been waiting in the clearing for a while when Sora and Kurenai finally stepped out of the treeline.
Kurenai whipped a kunai at him first, buying time, then fell in behind Sora as they both charged.
Yoshimaru caught the kunai out of the air. Just snatched it, casual as picking fruit, and tossed it aside.
Sora's dignity took another hit. That easy? Are all Tokubetsu Jonin this absurd?
He drew the long sword strapped across his back. He didn't know any real kenjutsu. The blade was just a bigger kunai with more reach, something to hack and slash with. But pulling it served a purpose: it told Akimichi-sensei, loud and clear, I'm coming at you for real now. Pay attention.
Sora came at him for real. Yoshimaru did not need to pay attention.
Another round of futile taijutsu later, Sora fired off his Gale Palm. No Wind Blades this time. Instead, he aimed the burst straight at the ground beneath Yoshimaru's feet.
It didn't faze the older man in the slightest, but it kicked up a thick cloud of dust.
Kurenai plunged into the haze. Steel rang against steel as she clashed with Yoshimaru once, then sprang backward, landing well clear of the cloud. She turned to watch, worry plain on her face.
When the dust settled, a single kunai stood embedded in the earth. Tied to its handle, an Explosive Tag was already burning.
Yoshimaru's face went green. These little brats. Today is not going well at all.
The blast tore through the clearing. Through the smoke, he leapt onto a thick horizontal branch behind him. Not a scratch on him, but his heart was hammering. He was mid-thought, griping internally about these two runts having zero sense of proportion, when something felt wrong.
He'd gotten careless.
Standing on the horizontal branch, his back injury had betrayed him. When he'd dodged the tag, instinct had carried him to the spot closest to the main trunk, where his left hand could brace against it while his right held the iron staff.
Which meant the staff was roughly a meter from the trunk.
Right inside Tejuno's trap.
Yoshimaru tested it. The staff wouldn't come free. Not quickly.
Down from the canopy dropped Teju, gravity and every kilogram of his stocky frame behind him. He came screaming earthward, kunai raised high, aimed straight at Yoshimaru with the unstoppable conviction of a boulder rolling downhill.
Sora watched, breathless with hope, willing his friend to land the final blow. People loved calling the dead-last graduates of the Academy just that: dead last. But a dead last with real momentum could barrel right through the front of the pack.
Tejuno had spent six years as the class dead last. On the surface, he wore it lightly. Big grin, easy laugh, nothing bothered him. But comedy is just tragedy with better timing, and the kid who's always joking is sometimes the loneliest one in the room. Teju knew the truth. He was the person everyone was friendly with and nobody actually needed.
He could greet anyone in class and get a wave back. They all seemed to like him fine. Meanwhile Sora, the transfer student who barely talked and never sought anyone out, should have been the isolated one. And yet Teju understood the difference between being social and being close. Sora was his only real friend. Nobody else trained with Teju on weekends. Nobody else wandered the village with him on holidays.
Every boy dreams of being a hero when he's small. Not just any hero. The hero. The one and only.
And now, right here, in front of the prettiest girl in the whole class, Tejuno was finally going to be one.
A puff of white smoke cleared.
Teju's kunai hit nothing. Sora saw the blade fly from his friend's grip entirely.
All three genin stood frozen.
"Not bad, kids." Yoshimaru strolled out of the treeline, beaming at the three of them. "You actually forced me to use a Substitution Technique."
"Sensei, I was watching you the whole time," Sora said, baffled. "I never saw you prepare a log for the substitution. When did you do it?"
"You three huddled up in those woods, whispering away, then came charging out like your pants were on fire. I knew you had something cooked up." He laughed, deep and warm.
Yoshimaru looked over his students with open satisfaction. "I caught Kurenai's kunai and turned it into my substitution medium, then tossed it out of sight. Your observation skills need work, Sora. What Teju stabbed wasn't a log. It was Kurenai's kunai." Another laugh. "My old teammate was Namikaze Minato. He's a jonin now, which makes him my squad captain. He can teleport instantly using special kunai. So I picked up a thing or two about repurposing kunai for the Substitution Technique."
Sora looked at the kunai still in Teju's hand. The pieces clicked into place.
"Come on, kids. Dinner's on me." Yoshimaru stretched, already turning toward the village's commercial district. "Stick with me, Akimichi Yoshimaru, and I can't promise you much, but I guarantee you'll never go hungry."
He'd taken two steps before Sora and Teju bolted in the opposite direction, back into the forest. Yoshimaru blinked, confused, then saw what they were doing: scouring the ground for every piece of scattered ninja gear, collecting spent kunai one by one.
Kurenai didn't know what to say. They really are best friends.
The two boys jogged back and fell in behind Yoshimaru as if nothing had happened.
The things some people take for granted, as common as water and air, are the very things others dream of and never receive. Live in different worlds, and your view of the world can never be the same.
Teju had gathered Kurenai's scattered kunai too. He handed them back, and she thanked him quietly as she tucked them away.
The four of them settled into a booth at a yakiniku restaurant. One look at how Yoshimaru navigated the place told Sora exactly whose clan owned it. Yoshimaru even produced three ten-percent-off loyalty cards, one for each of them. Even at a discount, Sora knew the place turned a tidy profit.
Not that the discount cards would see much use from him and Teju anytime soon.
"Nothing beats being back in the village." Yoshimaru leaned back, thoroughly stuffed, and sighed. "I've got a week or two of rest before they send me out again." He paused, letting the contentment drain from his voice. "I'll be training you three for two weeks. After that, I ship out with Captain Minato back to the front."
Kurenai's face fell. "That's all the time we have?"
"The border's not quiet. Part of why I came back was to process survivor benefits for comrades who didn't make it." He set down his chopsticks. "Believe me, the last thing I want is to put you three on a frontline. Train hard. In about a month, I'll come back for you, and by then... it'll probably be the real start of the war."
He looked at each of them in turn.
"Tomorrow morning. Mission Hall entrance. Don't be late. We're going to cram as many fundamentals into you as two weeks will hold."