The next day, hokage sama invited me and Tenten to a meeting where he and his advisors will discuss team distribution. The academy is source of new blood for every department, so a lot of people will be there.
In the meeting, We mostly kept quiet as teams were formed. Tenten and I had just been approved for Anbu, so team Guy also has 2 vacancies.
Teams were formed as following.
Team 7 - Kakashi - Naruto , Shino, TENTEN
Team 8 - Kurenai - Sakura, Kiba, YAMI
Team 9 - Guy - Rock Lee, Sasuke, Hinata
Team 10- Asuma - INO-SHIKA-CHO.
Both Me and Tenten were surprised since we just passed our interviews for Anbu. The hokage said that he has decided to put me and tenten in teams to create more flexible teams.
When we are available, we will have teams to participate and train with. When we are busy with anbu, our remaining teams can either support other teams, or gather support from other free agents to fulfill our spot.
It's just like what would happen if their jonin Sensie had to go on a mission where they couldn't come.
Hokage sama further said that With our performance in chunin exam, we still get request from clients that specifically ask for Me or Tenten.
Now I get it. It's a marketing move, and later the team flexibly working together was planned around it to make it work.
With the introduction of Balmburn jutsu, these teams each can be considered to have atleast one medic. Team 7 has Shino (and Tenten), Team 9 has Hinata. In Both team 8 and team 10 , all young members are proficient with mystic palm jutsu.
Each team even had recon capabilities. Team 7 had Shino and his bugs, team 8 has Kiba and his dog, team 9 has Hinata , and team 10 has Ino (yamanaka sensor).
Team 7 and team 8 are flexible teams, since me and Tenten might take on anbu missions. Whenever Me or Tenten are absent, They will exchange members to make one full team to take on anything higher than D rank.
Kakashi is a veteran , while Kurenai is a new jonin. The gennin might benefit from the contrast of experience.
For the next week, I attended anbu orientation events. I also spend time at the vet to help qualifying candidates select their birds.
Shino, Choji, Shikamaru and Ino all got me to operate on their chosen bird to turn it into an egg factory. I basically surgically enhance a perticular organ to produce harmone in female birds that start their fertility cycle. My operation makes it so that the organ is always active and pumping the harmone, making it always produce egg.
The more you feed your bird, the faster eggs it will grow and more you can produce. Choji learnt the mystic palm just for this feature. The bird can do and hunt bugs, then play a fresh organic egg, right in his pocket.An egg every hour of heavy feeding.
Choji even forced Shikamaru and Ino to select their birds for this operation. He knew they will end up in the same team. He convinced them that his jutsu literally turn food into chakra.
The usually sweet Choji became very adamant and put his for down, threatening to eat their bird is they don't get one with egg producing surgery.
Shino also found a perticularly gluttonous bird named Biggy. His bird was the big and slow, but very intellegent and driven by food.
Shino is a hive of bugs. Many bugs die of natural death. Shino can feed that bird massively. Shino even offered to turn the bird itself also into a hive. The bugs under the birds command will feed it constantly if it wants to.
Shino's bird Biggy got tempted by the thought of controlling a hive of bugs, it's favourite food. It not only went through my operation to become an egg factory, it even went through an Aburame operation to become a flying mothership of aburame bugs.
The the worker bugs (like worker bees) scour the wild for food, eat it to become fat, and them fly themself into its mouth to become it's food.
The eggs it generate can be either used for food like usual, or it can be infected with bug that eat it from inside, turning it into a bug granade.
Sakura got a normal bird and named her Pinky, While Kiba and Hinata had already chosen theirs much earlier, having worked at the vet for almost An year now
After one week, Our team, team guy also attend the team assignments for new graduates as Iruka listed the teams. Guy Sensie called on Sasuke and Hinata and took them away for introductions.
Tenten sat on the bench and started taking a nap, being familiar with Kakashi's antics.
Next came Kurenai Sensie. Kiba, Sakura and I joined her. She took us to a restaurant to introduce each other. She told us a bit about her life and asked us about ourselves.
All three of us mentioned using medical Jutsus. Kuranai confesses that she too has recently started learning medical Jutsus. She was inspired by the introduction of Balmburn jutsu. With her Good chakra controll and keen mind, she is actually coming along great as a medic nin.
She has already joined as a entry level hospital staff, despite being jonin already. She will help us join as well, so that we can volenteer there whenever we are free. We call it volenteer, but it's all paid work. Each standard patient is basically a D rank mission. But the mission reward for each patient is divided amongst all types of hospital staff.
That night, me and tenten invited the new team Guy, as a good-will gesture from the old team Guy. I gave Hinata black ninja clothes and hodded mask ( like Hollywood ninja). It covers her face entirely.
I told her " For next 6 months, until the chunnin exam, you have to forget that you are hinata hyuga. You are the Decipile of Guy Sensie. Just focus on training your body and take Guy Sensie up on every challange."
We were having fun, but Sasuke seems to be feeling irritated by the cheerfulness around him.
I told Sasuke " Hey Sasuke.What do you want with your ninja life , what direction do you want to train in."
He growls and replies " I want to kill a certain someone." .
" Itachi Uchiha" I declare. " He killed your whole clan by himself, he's probably one of the most powerful ninja in the world. "
" Where do you think he stands in power, in this world. Who do you think can beat him, in this village." I ask. My tone is as if I'm calling him an ant.
Sasuke is quiet he doesn't reply. I say " The hokage can beat him. If it comes to protecting the village, he could beat Itachi Uchiha at the cost of his own life. "
" The strongest Ninja in this village will have to fight to death to kill Him. Do you still want to fight him. Knowing that no matter how strong you get, killing him will likely mean your own death too. Killing the Uchiha clan for good. "
Sasuke whispers angrily " I will have my revenge. It's better to die seeking it than live without it."
"Truly a catch 22. Fighting him will kill you, not fighting him won't let you live. But you know I did leave one thing out. That scenario told you about Hokage sama having to bet their life to best itachi only applies one vs one."
" There is another person in this village who can beat Itachi, but they would have to give their life to do it. But if hokage sama and this ninja team up, it is highly likely that they both or atleast one comes out with their life and with itachi dead. " I tell him seriously.
"That's the power you can have, that itachi doesn't, FRIENDS." I say with a smile. ( Que in guy Sensie sunset genjutsu)
" Who's the ninja you are taking about, the one from this village, other than Hokage who can beat Itachi." Asks Sasuke, ignoring my wisdom about "power of friendship" all together.
I smile wisely as I say " The Mighty Green Beast of Konoha". Sasuke looks at guy, questioningly.
" Village at stake, my death for his, yeah, sounds about right. Don't know about 1v2, don't know if I'll let hokage sama join the fight if i can kill him for my life before he gets anywhere near the Hokage." Guy Sensie answers seriously.
I tell Sasuke " if you want to be able to fight Itachi Uchiha, putting your trust in guys sensei's training is the simplest way to it. It's certainly not easy though, just straight forward. "
While our teammates are doing D rank missions, Tenten and I approach Anbu to take some missions there. For now, it was mostly standard newbie stuff- border patrol, guarding location, Guarding VIPs.
I'm hoping that Danzo hasn't forgotten that I'm his son, and will pull strings to get me in favorable positions in Anbu. Although he rules over Root, Root is just a subdivision of anbu. Atleast on paper.
After a couple of weeks of border patrol, we returned to village and our gennin teams confronted us about leaving them to deal with d-rank missions. Both me and Tenten tell our teammates that we will be happy to take a C rank mission with them if they are so confident.
Next day, Kurenai Sensie took a mission to go to the land of Whirlpools with our team. Some Imperial Archeologist had gone to Uzu for research, but on his way back, he was caught in a storm. They are shipwrecked on the island. My team will go there
He already had konoha ninja as body guards, but most of those guys are injured and siting ducks, stuck in an island. Team Kuranai is a medic team. We have all also had our lessons in some genjutsu and utility justus with Kurenai Sensie.
For genjutsu, She first had us practice our illusory transformation and illusory clone techniques from academy till we can do it without hand seals.
All this time at border patrol, I've been practicing academy jutsu. I thought the anbu would tease me for practicing academy jutsu, but they recognise the grind.
Even Sakura and Kiba have been practicing it between D rank missions. Kurenai only allowed us to take on the C rank mission after we all could perform academy jutsu without handseals.
As we keep pace with her leading us, she uses her genjutsu to telepathically explain to us the concepts of a C rank Genjutsu : Mirage.
She says it is a simplified version of a B rank Genjutsu: Invisibility. The mirage replaces the user with vapour like disturbance, while invisibility leaves no such disturbances.
Mirage is as good as invisibility at night or in mist or smoke based environment, which any ninja can easily create.
She even breaks it down further for us, She created a D rank version of this jutsu specially to be able to better reach us, called Genjutsu: translucence.
It makes it look like the user is a hologram of themselves, even removing the users shadow. It's main utility is to blend in better with your illusory clones.
She then explains to us that this D rank Genjutsu: Translucence is related to both transformation jutsu and clone jutsu. At its most basic, level 1, this jutsu is just using transformation jutsu to impose an illusion of a lower resolution version of yourself.
The genjutsu part of this jutsu come in next, at level 2. This is where you oveserve your illusory clone and try to convince yourselves that your are an illusory clone too.
It is gradual, first you stop smelling yourself, then you lose your shadow, then you stop hearing any sounds you make. As if you yourself were an illusory clone.
Once you are able to hide your presence from yourself, you use that same template to establish a presence diminishing genjutsu on whoever sees your transformation. That's level 3.
Kurenai explained it so well. On a food break I praised her lesson. She told me " I had learnt Balmburn jutsu from Eveie herself and was inspired by how she simplified a complex jutsu . Like Eveie deconstructed Mystic palm into Balmburn, I tried to deconstructed Mirage into Translucence."
We could all do transformation jutsu without handseals, so level one is taken care of.
Next, we need to convince ourselves that we are our own illusory clone. This takes some skill in delusion. Sakura is first among us to crack that part.
We reached the shores of fire country. We hired a boat ride to the land of Uzu. By this time, Sakura was the only one who got to level 2- Self Delusion. Kurenai decided to help Sakura reach next level with personal lessons, communicating throughout the journey with her telepathically(genjutsu).
Meanwhile, Kiba , Akamaru and I are to act as lookout. From time to time, I would suddenly feel Sakura's presence reduce. I break that genjutsu, silently disrupting my chakra. After that i would suddenly become aware of Sakura again.
Kiba and Akamaru also notice and break the genjutsu every time, because they can smell when she suddenly vanishes.