Staying with a friendly family from another great village was an entirely new experience and I won't say I didn't enjoy it. My last visit to Suna I remembered the heat and a lot of unfriendly looks from the local ninjas, so the contrast was huge.
Pakura had relaxed a lot at home and wasn't playing the stone statue, communicating quite vividly and not reacting to her family's teasing and teasing, albeit from a different angle than she was used to.
Shayuri reminded me of Mito's character, that she too is outwardly calm, but can break something off completely unexpected for you, but there it was the influence of experience and age on Uzumaki's temperament, and here it was just a character trait.
Fortunately, despite her rather warm attitude towards me, she focused most of her wit on her daughter. Pakura's grandfather was more in touch with me, quite grateful for saving his only granddaughter.
Ichiro, a retired shinobi who'd been out of action before World War II and had lived most of his life under clan rule, was a treasure trove of valuable experience gained in thousands of fights. Judging by the look on the kunoichi's face, he had tried long and hard to cram all that experience into his granddaughter's head, and not to say he hadn't succeeded.
Conversations with him gave me real pleasure, allowing me to learn what was going on before the formation of villages, what clans or tribes lived in the desert, their relations with neighbors, how the elemental countries were formed under the influence of ninja and the struggle of people who aimed at a tidbit of power in the nascent formation of the hidden settlement.
Perhaps only my grandfather or the elder Uzumaki could have told such a story if he had been interested in it at the time, but somehow there was no time for history lessons in the pursuit of personal power.
Pakura's grandfather had a gift for storytelling, and even the kunoichi, who had probably heard his many stories from beginning to end more than once, listened with visible interest, to say nothing of me.
But I didn't just eat, talk, and relax as a guest - as soon as the girl was properly rested, we arranged a training session on taijutsu, allowing me to evaluate her strength personally, not just from the outside, through shadow clones.
And I liked the result - despite the fact that the kunoichi was only a little older than me - a year or so - if you took purely technique, Pakura was better, and only excellent physical data with more powerful chakra, and therefore endurance, allowed to overcome this gap, keeping on the same level. It was very... refreshing!
Back home, all my training partners were either monsters like Mito-chan, or so far beyond my experience and skills like Sakumo that I had to not only give my best, but also throw in something new and unexpected every time in the hopes of catching and snatching victory.
Of course, in terms of development it is very useful, but only their own growth is simply not felt when in front of you a massive wall and the end point is not yet visible and will not be seen for a long time.
I've got more interesting stuff on patreon (+ 200 chapter)
patreon.com/Chill76