[1st POV]
First thing in the morning.
What the fuck does that mean? When was that? Before sunrise? Right after sunrise? You mean the usual time when we began the academy?
Sadly, I only discovered that I had no clue when that was after I reached home.
So first thing in the morning, I head to the Hokage Mountain. It was way before sunrise when I woke up; it was still dark outside.
Beyond the Hokage Mountain was a neat clearing and a jungle. I waited under one of the trees there. It was very chilly in the morning and I did not bring any sweaters with me. So I had to train while waiting to keep my body warm.
But I did not want to exhaust myself before training with the Hokage, so I had to come up with a different alternative. Luckily, I discovered you could keep yourself warm by releasing a layer of chakra just outside your skin.
It demanded heavy chakra control to maintain that layer, so it became a very unexpected method of training chakra control. I waited like that until sunrise, and when the sun finally shone on me, I did not need to maintain that layer.
I waited a bit more afterwards, but the Hokage was still nowhere to be seen. At one point, I slept under the shade and took a nap.
I woke up when I heard grass crunching under my weight and a light breeze blew on my face. When I opened my eyes, the Hokage was standing on the open ground; he had a light smile on his face.
I sprang up immediately.
The Hokage was not wearing his usual uniform or hat. He had his white hair out, including his bald spot. He wore a dark attire, an easy outfit above the standard chainmail armour. It was a comfortable cloth with no restriction to movement.
"Good morning, Hiruzen-sensei," I greeted him.
"Good morning, Suyou. Did I keep you waiting?" he asked with a light chuckle.
"Only four hours," I answered.
He laughed, "Patience is one of the key features of a shinobi. Be it stalking or stealth missions, a shinobi must be patient."
I shuddered, "Cool."
He was an old man; everything he said could be interpreted as wisdom at this point. He gave the perfect wise old man vibe.
"So, what are we doing today?" I asked while rubbing my hands. I was itching to train and learn something new.
"Before I can teach you anything, I need to know the limit of your capacity," he said, "And we are going to find that out through a test."
"A test?"
"That's right, a test," he said and took out a small bell from his pocket and showed it to me, "The bell test to be exact. Your goal will be to steal this bell from me in under an hour. You can use anything, you can try to kill me and take the bell off my corpse if you must. Just steal it away from me before the time limit is over."
"Okay," I said.
Of course, it would be the same test. If I remembered correctly, Tobirama did the same thing when Hiruzen was his student. Then Hiruzen did that with his pupils, the three Sannins. Jiraiya did it to Minato. Minato did the same test with his pupils Kakashi, Obito and Rin. And lastly, Kakashi did the same test with Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura.
It was a generational thing.
"Come on now, your time is already starting. Are you sure you want to waste time thinking?" he asked, still giving that slight smirk.
"No," I answered and got into a stance.
I knew Hiruzen was a good guy and he was going to be my teacher. He was someone I could trust, so I was not going to hold anything back and show everything to him.
I crossed my fingers, "Shadow clone jutsu."
A shadow clone appeared beside me with a puff of smoke.
"That's a B-rank jutsu, not something the usual genin should have," he said while pulling his small patch of beard, "I suppose you learned that from your friend Naruto."
I gave no answer. I ran straight towards the Hokage with my clone. We both ran at a very fast speed and ran with everything I had. I did not do anything else, making him get used to my current speed so that I could surprise him next.
"Fast," he commented.
But then I became faster. I used the body flicker jutsu to blur into motion. It was so fast that it looked like teleportation. I approached the Hokage from the front while my clone blurred from the side and got behind him.
I raised both legs and delivered a double kick at the Hokage. He blocked it with one forearm, but the force created was enough to bring forth a shockwave.
It was a kick I learned from Sasuke, but with my superior strength and the speed of the body flicker jutsu, it was devastating.
"Oh, so not only do you know the body flicker jutsu but you can use it to attack," he said, surprised. The body flicker jutsu was so fast it was only used as a form of transportation even by chunin.
But by that point, my clone had blurred behind him and swiped his arm to snatch the bell hanging on his belt.
But a hand suddenly emerged from the ground and grabbed my clone by the wrist. My eyes widened.
"You're not the only one with shadow clone," Hiruzen from the ground said before pulling the clone beneath the ground, burying him headfirst into the ground with only the feet visible.
But the clone dispersed itself shortly after.
"Oh, so that was the clone," the Hokage said, surprised because normally you would use the clone as a decoy, not yourself.
I quickly pushed myself off his forearm and landed a few distances away. Then I jumped towards him again like a loaded spring.
I threw a punch, but at a glance you could tell that I underestimated my range.
Or did I?
I opened my hand halfway and inside was a shuriken which I pushed forward to make up for the short distance. It was a shuriken thrown at point blank.
But the Hokage's hand blurred and he caught the shuriken between two fingers.
I expected that. Catching my shuriken was a mistake because that left one of his hands preoccupied.
When my feet touched the ground, his shadow clone which was underground popped out and tried to catch my feet. But I immediately pushed myself off the ground again so he grabbed air. I also thre a shuriken at the clone to disperse it.
Mid-air, I could not move properly so with a flick of his finger, he threw the shuriken. I twisted my body sideways to dodge and landed a headbutt on his abdomen that did... nothing.
He looked like a frail old man but he was firm like a mountain. I suppose he made himself stick to the ground by applying chakra on his soles.
I reached out to grab the bell, a hand stopped me. I tried with my other hand and his other hand stopped me. He caught both of my wrists with his hands.
But that's what I wanted.
I used my hands to grab him too and twisted my body. With no feet planted on the ground, I pulled him back with a tug and applying all my weight. I kicked him with my feet, using his own abdomen as a foothold to throw his body over me.
He allowed me the throw. His body flipping in the air but his posture and his face were as if he was still standing carefree on the ground.
And then he moved. He did not crash on his back like I expected but he landed with his feet. Then he reversed that throw by pulling me up over his head.
I tried to stick my feet on the ground but I was plucked out easily. There were blocks of earth still stuck to my soles. It was like he uprooted me like a tree.
"Nice chakra control," he said and slammed me on the ground. I crashed on my back, eyes white and my mouth opening in a silent scream.
But then poof. My body exploded with smoke and left a rock behind. It was the use of the substitution jutsu.
By this point, I exchanged places with my previously marked rock and I was a good distance away from the Hokage. I took out all the shuriken I had including four kunais and I threw them at the Hokage.
He simply caught the first shuriken like plucking a fruit from the air and he threw it in a way that it bounced off all the other things I threw afterwards.
"What the!" I was completely baffled at that level of shuriken jutsu. I knew he mastered all things related to a shinibi, but what he just did was Itachi-level shit right there.
I ran up to him again and I made hand signs. It started with the tiger sign, standard for a fire jutsu. I have seen my father using ninjutsu so I knew the hand signs.
"A ninjutsu?" Hiruzen asked, his eyes a little wide as he tried to figure out what jutsu I was going to use.
But jokes on him, I did not know any ninjutsu. I was just making shit up to confuse him.
But still, I fully committed and brought my hand near my mouth as if to breathe out a fireball. He moved back a bit, getting ready to deal with the jutsu.
Only spit came out.
"Huh?"
But then my clone appeared behind him suddenly and tried to grab the bell. He dodged away in time. But after my clone failed to grab the bell, he simply hugged the Hokage's leg for dear life to immobilize him.
"You never dispersed your clone. Instead, the clone made another clone on top of him right before dispersing and that clone hid underground in the pit my jutsu made," he quickly deduced what I had done.
"Too late, smartass!!" I said and used the body flicker jutsu to quickly close the distance.
I threw a kick at his abdomen. With my clone immobilizing his legs, he could not dodge or use his legs to block. He grabbed my feet to block my kick.
But that meant only one hand remained. I reached for the bell with both hands.
"No, you don't," Hiruzen pulled me away with the hand that held my feet.
I nearly had the bell, it was only an inch away. But that was when I activated my Susanoo and released a Susanoo hand right on my hand. The chakra hand was able to cover the distance and hold the bell tightly.
"What?!" Hiruzen was surprised.
He threw me far away from him and he dispersed the clone with the slightest twitch of his legs. That showed how much he was holding back. He was letting himself get caught most of the time.
I flipped in the air and landed on my feet.
My Susanoo hand came out from my forearm and handed me the bell.
"I win," I said with a smirk while holding the bell.
But then puff, with a burst of smoke, the bell changed appearance and became a rock that fell on the ground.
I looked at that with a stupefied face. Right, you can use the transformation jutsu on objects too.
"I guess not," he said and pulled out the real bell.
But his too exploded in a smoke and became a leaf.
Now it was his turn to look at that with a stupefied face.
Another Susanoo arm came out from my back and handed me another bell. I had a shit-eating grin on my face as I showed the real bell to him.
"I guess I am."
Hiruzen looked at that for a long time before he exploded into laughter. It was a hilarious laugh, like it was the first time in years that genuinely made him laugh out loud. He wiped away a tear from his eye.
"I guess you are," he said finally, no more tricks at hand.
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