Training to be a genin

Baenlin passed the gates of the academy for his first day of classes with an excitement he would never show. Other students walked with him, those that wanted to arrive early, like he did. Those beside him and behind threw slanted looks at his attire, but he did not care. He was here for he academy, and, though they did not know it, for the other students futures. He made his way to his classroom, neither in a hurry nor lagging behind. Even if the other students had not been here he would have known his way. He had done odd jobs for the academy before and some of the instructors here as well. He had even cleaned the hall he passed through on the way to class for the janitor, Juro Kimoto, when he had broke broke his leg a few months ago.


Baenlin sat in the back of the class, both to habitually avoid attention and to distance himself from his classmates so that he was not distracted from his purpose here. The class waited for some time for their instructor to make his appearance. It was already 7:58, two minutes until classes began. Still, the more careless students were still trickling in.

"Annoying," thought Baenlin, referring to both the student’s and the teacher’s lateness. 8:00 showed on the clock, still a few students trickled in, as loud as only unsupervised students could be on their first day, but more annoying still was the continued lack of a teacher. Still, Baenlin did not show it. He simply closed his eyes and waited. One did not live on the streets of Kumogakure, scrounging for every little breath you took, without learning to repress impatience. 8:05 around. Still no sign of the teacher. Still Baenlin waited with his eyes closed, only having changed his posture to assume his preferred waiting posture by leaning forward, planting his elbows on the long desk in front of him, twinning his fingers between each other, sticking his thumbs out and plant his chin on them. The students below and in front of him continued to be loud and impatient. Some had even started to ask questions about the absence of their teacher. 8:10 came around, still no instructor. Baenlin hadn’t moved, but the other students in the room had stopped asking questions by now and simply roamed around the room as if it was the park, socializing and horse-playing. By 8:15 the students had lost much of their original excited energy. It had been replaced by the beginnings of boredom and comfort around the new people they had met.

At exactly this time though, Baenlin heard the slightest of sounds next to him, where he knew no one had been sitting. For the first time today Baenlin showed emotion as surprise leapt across when he opened his as and turned to his right to find a woman seated next to him. Baenlin knew her as well. He had trimmed a tree outside of her house two months earlier. It stood out in his mind all too well because she made him do the entire job with a long handled axe, no ladder, while taking the blooms off of every other limb and the tree was over twenty feet tall. He had somehow not know that she was an instructor here, however, nor even a ninja. Now that he took a moment to consider her further, he still found it rather hard to believe. She was a handsome woman, tall for her sex, with hair so dark a brown to appear almost black and curves that made even Baenlin’s eyes want to travel to inappropriate places. In Baenlin’s eyes she simply seemed too...soft to fight his idea of a ninja. She was looking right at Baenlin as he opened his eyes. Their color seemed to dance somewhere between blue and green, he involuntarily noted.

She studied Baenlin for a few moments with a smile as his surprise faded away, then cast her eyes towards the rest of the class room and said to him, "They do seem rather impatient, don’t they?"

Her husky, mature voice was sounded quietly, but she may have well screamed for as much as it stood out in the room. Every student in the room immediately started looking towards her and Baenlin. She seemed to feed off of that attention, while Baenlin did his very best to remain impassive under the unaccustomed scrutiny.

She turned her gaze back to Baenlin, her smile now crooked, slightly mocking the entire class. "What can you all hope to achieve without patience?" she began. She stood up and started past Baenlin, planting her hand in the middle of his chest for balance as she stepped over and past him, while she continued her speech. "You come here to master the ways of the ninja. The ways of controlling the energies around you. The ways of controlling the minds of you enemies. The ways of WAR!" she punctuated with a yell. "Do you think this mastery comes easy? That it is given to you? NO! Strength does not come easy. And make no mistake, it is strength you come for, even if you do not yet know it. You will work in here until I am satisfied that you would not be wasted the time of a more capable instructor if I pass you. After that, you will undergo training that, right now, you would never endure. Training so strenuous that the tortures of whatever enemies you might face would seem as a tickling compared to the pain endured in training. And that pain will persist for years...indeed, the rest of your lives. All of your lives from here on out will be pain and learning...", she let her voice drop as well as her face, and still her smile never faded. "This is what you have chosen. But only with patience will the strength to face all of this come. Patience will allow you to become more than you are. Patience will allow you to be of true aid to Kumogakure. Today, all but one of you failed Kumogakure..." she said as she raised her face again, that crooked smile still on her face, and locked eyes with Baenlin as he struggled not to wriggle under that stare.

"Now, for those that wish to continue to serve Kumogakure...my name is Takamura Mino." she continued in a lighter, almost girlish, tone that sounded odd coming from the woman after such a speech. She went on to detail the various simple jutsu needed to pass the genin exam, and Baenlin drank in every word, but he never let his gaze fall from her eyes.

"There is unexpected steel in this woman," Baenlin thought as he watched her the entire class through. He took not one note, but by the time the class let out he felt he understood Miss Takamura more than he ever had anyone else, and this led to a decision. When the class let out, he made sure he was the last in line to leave. As he passed in front of Miss Takamura’s desk, he stopped and started to talk, but he saw her with one finger up signaling him to wait with a winking eye partially hidden behind that finger. Baenlin snapped his mouth closed as he realized he still had it open from when he had started to talk. As the last student, Miss Takamura asked her to close the door as she left. Only then did she begin to talk to Baenlin.

"I had hoped you had wanted to stay and chat," she said as she reclined back in her chair, propped both shapely legs upon her desk, both of which where covered in thigh high, high heel boots, and crossed her arms behind her head which forced her already protruding chest out more. Baenlin understandably found this to be disconcerting, and he know it showed no matter how he fought it, but he continued anyway.

"Miss Takamura, did arrange for all of this?"

"Whatever do, Baenlin?" she said as she stretch her form without changing her position.

"I mean...." he stopped, looked down, and said "Please stop that, sensei." She burst out laughing at this, her stretched form recoiling like a taught spring now released as she hugged her shapely belly in mirth. Eventually, she sat up, wiped a tear from her smiling eyes, and rested herself in the same pose that Baenlin himself had held when she had first showed herself to the class.

"Do I make you uncomfortable, Baenlin?"

"Your manner does, but that is the point is it not?" At this the corners of her mouth could be seen past her hands as she smiled even wider.

"Good. You are not so blinded by the raging chemicals so common to a teenager so as not to see that at least." She took a moment to look him up and down, adding to his discomfort. "Though I see even you are not completely beyond them." She spent some time more eyeing Baenlin, but he had already proven he was more than up to a game of patience.

"Very well," Miss Takamura blurted at a few moments, "I feel that you have earned an answer. Yes, I arranged for you to come here. At least that is what I assume you meant." Baenlin nodded his head and started to talk, but Miss Takamura interrupted. "And I assume that you wish to know why as well?" Baenlin closed his mouth and nodded.

"Well, they work you have done gets around the village. I have also seen you around, doing everything you could to survive and asking for nothing that you did not earn. Your work all showed a great attention to detail, especially in your assistance in organizing the bookstore during their resets. The owner told me more about you while I watched you work there one day and I found you choice or reading materials quite interesting. Such extensive self-education is uncommon in children you age," again she paused and studied Baenlin, searching for something, but continued again after a few seconds. "These are all traits I admire, and are traits that I find lacking in the majority of the pupils I see come through here. After I had you trim that tree in such a ridiculous and troublesome fashion, and you did not complain even once, I knew you were meant for more than you had been doing. I already knew that you had been interest in becoming a ninja, as you have been sighted a great deal around the training field, so I had a friend of mine give you the final push under the ruse of the academy having had enough of you."

Baenlin nodded at the end of her story. It all made sense, in retrospect. "It is well that you are no enemy, because you have me squarely in your trap." Allowing himself the same crooked smile that the instructor herself wore. This only made her giggle quietly to herself and say, "You begin to understand. So why confront me on this?"

"To satisfy a suspicion and as a prelude to my true intent." This caused Miss Takamura to raise an eyebrow at Baenlin.

"Say on," she said.

"I wish to ask your assistance in training, Miss Takamura."

"That is what this class is for, Baenlin."

"I am aware of that, but I find the atmosphere of the class room only hinders potential, especially when the other students are so disruptive."

"They will calm quickly. I have not begun to instill discipline into them. Besides, I am strictly meant to teach you only the basics, and your team leader later will teach you more from there."

"I...Miss Takamura, you wanted me here because you saw potential in me, potential that you do not see in the rest of your students. I am asking you to help me expand that potential. I understand that you can not do this in an official way...but maybe if I hired you as a tutor?"

She leveled a flat stare at Baenlin. "This sounds like a conflict of interest to me."

"How so? I would be paying you to tutor me, and if it is an issue in the academy, you could simply claim that I require further assist or instruction."

"Wait, paying me? How do you plan to do that, working for me like you do everyone else?"

"Of course. No offense, Miss Takamura, but I saw your gutters while in that tree and in your windows as well. You are not the most strict housekeeper by any stretch" At this Miss Takamura’s smile flickered for a moment, long enough to check for an insult within Baenlin’s words, but she knew what he said was true.

"And what exactly do you expect to learn from me, little boy," she replied, as she leaned back in the chair, looked down and began to pick at her purple painted nails.

"I expect nothing. I do not know enough yet to understand what a ninja should expect." He knew he had answered right as another grin spread across her face.

"It would seem I have chosen well. Very well, here is what we will do..."

After that, every day that Baenlin had lessons, he would go straight from the academy to Miss Takamura’s home for his training. On days that he had no lessons, he went straight to her home. He always left exhausted, beaten, and drained, but he began to feel for the first time how it felt to accomplish something. Each day, Baenlin always began with some chore that Miss Takamura had for him, anything from breaking up rocks that were further down the mountain so that he could bring them back to her home to build a short wall around her home, to things as mundane as doing laundry (which brought on his first bought of blushing ever when he first did this). Afterwards he would sit and meditate for three hours. Sometimes she would sit next to him and join him, other times she would continue to instruct him like she would normally in the class room. He found it rather difficult at first to split his attention between paying to her and to maintain his breathing rhythm, but it became natural with time.

Baenlin’s first real surprise came when she introduced him to his element. They had already spent a week on a full explanation of taijutsu, genjutsu and ninjutsu and how they worked in principal. They then spent a weekend day on training is basic taijutsu, and another weekend day dedicated to genjutsu, which Baenlin grasped quite quickly.

When Monday came around and he finished his chore for the day and his meditation, he opened his eyes to find Miss Takamura holding a small square of paper in front of his eyes. He took it as she started her introduction into the five basic elements of ninjutsu. Upon completion of her speech, she took out another square of paper and after a moment it fell over, completely soaked.

"Remember, you are simply a sponge, and the chakra is as water. You determine how the water flows out of you by how much pressure you put upon yourself and in what way. Now breath in, Baenlin. Center yourself. Now, focus on the scrap and direct the flow of the chakra to you fingers..." It took some time for Baenlin to accomplish this, as his chakra did not seem to flow as his instructors did. In time, he found that, if he started at his core, he could feel energy jump from point to point inside of himself. It took hours, but he continued with diligence as he first figured out how to maintain the flow of energy from his core to another point, then how to get his chakra to jump from point to point while maintaining it at the same time.

Miss Takamura had just sat down under the very tree Baenlin had trimmed with a sandwich she had ran inside to make (since it seemed supper would be rather late this night) as she heard a zap and crumple sound in quick succession. She stopped in mid sit, not even needing to look up to know that Baenlin’s usually impassive face was smiling.

"So, lightning is it? No wonder it took you so long. It is a common element in the village, but I am one of the few not proficient in its use. The methods of water would in no way work for you...You look troubled now Baenlin, what is wrong?"

"Lightning seems to be such a...hasty element. I am not sure it suits me." At this Baenlin heard her giggle again, but he did not take his eyes off of the crumpled piece of paper.

"Maybe you indeed are," she replied, "but you keep it in check, like you do so much else. Or, which I think it is more likely, maybe it compensate for your extended thinking by allowing you to take decisive action when you finally get around to it. Either way, this is what we have to work with."

Baenlin’s training for some days after that focused on familiarizing him with his raiton nature and the twelve basic hand seals used to perform ninjutsu.

"Raiton is the most difficult of elements to manipulate. This is due to it’s comparatively rare and fleeting existence in the environment around us. Normally, raiton users manipulate their chakra by manipulating the electrical impulses supplied by their own body. While this is not the only source of this element that you may tap into, it is the one we shall work at for now."

With this, Miss Takamura decided the best way to start with teaching Baenlin about raiton was for him to create a minor jutsu, one that would simply "squeeze" his chakra out of him with no particular focus. For three weeks Baenlin struggled with this. He would stand for hours, searching within himself, trying to force his chakra first this way, then back the way he wanted when it jumped in another direction. Sometimes he felt as though he might as well try to control a river on the rapids. It wasn’t until after four days of this training, both with Miss Takamura and in his own time, that he got his first results to show. He had not expected much more from this attempt than his previous, and the thought itself frustrated him. As he felt his chakra tried to buck wildly again just beneath the surface, he gave the chakra what he imagined as a dynamic punch to it’s non-existent lightning face. The result was only a slight spark that jumped between Baenlin’s upheld pointer finger an his nose, which startled Baenlin and made both his finger and nose tingle. This result excited his teacher, and she went on to explain hand signs in more detail.

"While they do not directly influence the flow and form of chakra, they do help focus the users mind in such a way as necessary to get the correct response from the chakra. Essentially, hand seals shape you thoughts, which shape the chakra. You simply have to understand the relationship between the seal and the result."

The abstract nature of hand seals rather appealed to Baenlin’s mind, and he grasped his lessons in this are rather easily. As he continued to further his master over his element, it became apparent to him that the proper seals for the desired result would be ox, ram, horse. The ox symbolizing how raiton charged forth, the ram it’s stubbornness and the horse it’s speed. Through this symbolism, Baenlin made great new bounds in developing his jutsu. He became able to maintain arcs of electricity bounding in random, various places across his body for seconds at a time. Baenlin knew that the resulting shock was not strong enough to do anything more than give a slight jolt anyone who touched him while he did this, similar to static shock, but that was not the point. He was working to maintain it, and to that end it was doing great. However, once Miss Takamura begin to be truly pleased with his progress, she changed the exercise.

He new addition was to start training Baenlin in the art of water walking. It took only a few hours, and a few splashes, to master the art since it was not infused with his element and maintaining control was much easier. The difficult part came when she forced him to meditate while sitting on the water and try to continue work on his jutsu. This resulted in many more soakings. Attempting to tame lightning chakra while keep the slow, steady stream of chakra needed to stay atop the water was like trying to look left and right at the same time. He still had not mastered this as Miss Takamura wished him goodnight, so Baenlin moved his training to the local park’s pond. He took a dip several more times, each time resulting in a shock from the raiton chakra wrapped around him, but he was ready and eager to show Miss Takamura that he had mastered the skill the next day after class.

By now he could maintain the current coursing over his body for several minutes at a time, but Miss Takamura still managed to find ways to make it’s use difficult. She had him start out by making him run while doing the hand seals and maintaining the current. Then she made him master running up a tree (which he found easy between his element and water walking training) and in fact did not fall at all until he tried doing that and the jutsu at the same time. Baenlin adjusted to this obstacle by gathering his chakra in burst, namely every time his foot contacted the tree. Then she made Baenlin maintain the jutsu while continuing to build a wall he had started earlier in the week. Finally Baenlin felt completely comfortable performing the ‘Full Body Current’, as he had come to call it, at whim.

"Well, you have done rather well. From here on out you are on your own kid." Then she turned and started to walk back inside of her house. This rather shocked Baenlin.

"Miss Takamura, there is so much left that I know you could teach me...why are we stopping? What did I do?" She stopped, the persistant smile still upon her face.

"Why, you have mastered everything required to become a genin, and then some. I am not willing to teach you more simply because it would be greatly unusual if you completely left you classmates behind and you soon to be sensei had nothing left to teach you." At this she stuck her tongue out at Baenlin and wished him goodnight and that she would see him in class. He stood, contemplating for a moment, then walked his way back to the training arena to sleep for the night. It was odd not to have to plan for Miss Takamura’s training session tomorrow, but he supposed he could do his own...

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