(late March, year 54 AK)
"All three of you here, good." Shisui said as he suddenly appeared beside Yuta, Itachi and Hikari, "Now follow me, we are going to receive our first mission as a team."
"Shisui-sensei, what kind of mission it will be?" Itachi asked curiously on the way to the Hokage Tower.
"You just wait and see." Shisui replied with an amused smile.
'I already can see where it's going... It would be one of those D-ranks inside the village, where they treat fresh Genins as odd job laborers, huh...' Yuta thought as they reached the Hokage Tower at the center of the village.
The tower was a huge building, multiple stories high, there was a huge flow of people that were going constantly in and out, the team led by Shisui walked in and Yuta saw a huge hall that looked quite lively.
Shisui proceed to walk through the hall, bypassing many reception desks where all sorts of people who are currently submitting their requests to the village, as well as many ninjas who came here looking to accept the mission.
'There is a lot of ninjas in the village huh...' Yuta thought as he observed how busy the main administrative facility in the village is this early in the morning, 'I always knew there was about fifteen thousand of active shinobi in the village from the Fourth Great Ninja War arc from the anime, but those was just empty numbers, but seeing so many shinobi in one place hits differently...'
'And this is just the regular ranks who came here looking for missions. There are also many departments in the village that operate differently and their members don't come here for missions, like Torture and Interrogation division, or T&I for short, Sealing Core, Medical Core at the Hospital, Anbu Black Ops, Military Police Force, Genin Core, Border Patrol duty where a lot of ninjas are stationed on long-term assignments guarding the borders and patrolling the Fire Nation's territory. And there are also some smaller divisions like Danzo's Root, Academy staff, Tracking Division and such.'
'With all that, it should be only half or even less of the total amount of active ninjas that are in the regular ranks who are coming here to take missions.' Yuta analyzed as Shisui led the group to the stairs to the higher floors, all the way up to the top floor, and then through the corridor to the big and sturdy-looking double-door.
Shisui knocked on the door.
"Come in" Yuta heard a voice of an old man that he instantly recognized as the same voice that he had listen to for so many hours at the central square during the academy entrance ceremony, that he attended at least four times in total with all of his time-travels. The voice naturally belongs to the Third Hokage, Hiruzen Sarutobi.
Shisui opened the door and the group walked into the spacious office, and Yuta saw Hiruzen, sitting behind a desk with lots of papers and scrolls all over it. As Shisui stepped forward, he respectfully bowed to Hiruzen, and the three Genins bowed as well.
"Lord Hokage, me and my team are awaiting your orders." Shisui formally stated.
"Ah, Shisui, I see you've assembled your new team, good, no need for formalities." Hiruzen said in a friendly manner and Shisui's team straighten up, "Quite impressive, to graduate only after two years of the academy, keep it up and work hard."
"Yes, Lord Hokage!" Yuta and others replied in unison.
"Anyway, ready for your first mission, Team-Shisui?" Hiruzen said while picking up the scroll from his desk and handing it toward Shisui, who stepped forward and received it over the desk, "All relevant information is in that scroll." Hiruzen said with an amused smile.
Shortly after that, Team-Shisui left the office and the Hokage Tower, as they did, Shisui opened up the scroll briefly, taken one look at it and put it away.
"Follow me." Shisui said simply and led the team somewhere away from the village's central area.
...
Shortly after the team arrived at a huge field on the outskirts of the village, overgrown by weeds and grass.
"This is the place." Shisui simply said as they get there, the three Genins looked at the field with different expressions, Itachi was mostly calm as always, only a slight confusion could be read on his face, Hikari looked at the field with furrowed brows, while Yuta seemed already tired just by looking at the field, since he already deduced what their 'mission' would be here.
"Em... Shisui-sensei? What are we supposed to do here exactly?" Itachi carefully asked after a few moments.
"Our mission is to uproot all the weeds on this field, of course." Shisui said with a straight face.
"Isn't it a bit... not a shinobi-like?" Itachi mumbled quietly.
"It's a mission that was entrusted to you by the Lord Hokage himself." Shisui stated calmly with a straight face, "Anyway, I'm your Jonin-instructor and I won't be helping you with your missions when you can handle it on your own, so good luck with that." As Shisui said that, he flickered away and disappeared in an instant.
"I've heard that fresh Genin teams are assigned D-rank missions like that, but how do I put it..." Itachi said quietly as they observed the vast field.
"Well, we won't be stuck on these kinds of missions forever..." Yuta said as he sighed tiredly.
"No point talking, let's just get this over with..." Hikari said with tangible irritation in her voice.
And so, they moved to the field and started to pull out the weeds...
...
"So, you've successfully completed your mission? Well done!" Hiruzen said with a satisfied smile. As Yuta saw that smile, he instantly could tell, that although outward Hiruzen was overly friendly and patronizing, behind all that he was having fun watching three Genins being exhausted and covered in dirt.
It was late evening, that Yuta and others was finally finished uprooting the weeds through the entire field, after that Shisui showed up and led them back straight to the Hokage's office.
Yuta was observing Hokage's grandfatherly smile with a tired look, his hands was aching all over with a bunch of new fresh callouses over his palms and fingers, his spine and legs were aching as well, and it required some effort for Yuta to even walk or stand straight.
Itachi and Hikari looked tired too, but Yuta could tell that they were much less exhausted than him, despite the fact that they were working harder than he was.
Shortly after that the Team-Shisui left the Hokage Tower, and Shisui handed each one of them something.
"Here is your payment for the today's mission." Shisui said.
Yuta looked at what he was holding, it was some bills, he counted it, it was 500 Ryo.
'Well, at least I have some income now... But damn... 500 for a whole day of hard labor work?' Yuta thought with exasperation, 'This is barely enough to eat three meals at a cheap restaurant at best! Or to buy half a kunai! This is child abuse, I have rights! Oh wait, I forgot about what kind of world I'm in now, there is no such thing as rights in here...' Yuta thought half-jokingly as he put away the money.
"The payment for this mission was five thousand Ryo, according to rules, village takes a cut of one third of this sum, and I as a squad leader also take one-third as well, the rest is divided between you, this is how it goes." Shisui explained, as he noticed some resignation on Yuta's face.
"Shisui-sensei." Hikari said a bit impatiently, "I get it that we will be doing a bunch of this kind of missions before we will be assigned to something more serious, but can I ask how long it will take to get to that point?"
As Hikari asked her question, Itachi and Yuta immediately looked up at Shisui with great attention.
"Well... Fine, no point to keep it a secret I guess." Shisui replied casually, "There are no strict rules about this, but you will be doing D-rank missions like that until me and the Lord Hokage both decide that you are ready to handle a higher rank mission. And before you ask, I don't mind taking you on a higher rank mission after a month or two, that would be a bare minimum of what is expected from a fresh Genin team before they would be allowed to handle C-rank missions, or D-ranks that are outside the village."
"So, it will be a month or two, right?" Hikari pressed further.
As Shisui didn't immediately reply, Yuta said thoughtfully "So, after a month or two, it would be up to the Lord Hokage to decide when we are ready for C-ranks then. But I thought there is a large number of fresh Genin teams each year, is the Lord Hokage personally handle all of those teams by himself like that?"
"No, not exactly." Shisui replied, "You see, although there is around up to five hundred of fresh Genins each year, the amount of teams with a Jonin-instructor that are formed each year is quite low, as there is not that many Jonins in the village, and each Jonin's time is too valuable to waste it on all of the fresh Genins, so only the select few of fresh Genins are actually end up on a team led by a Jonin-instructor."
"But back at the team assignments class, all the graduate Genins were assigned a Jonin-instructor, isn't that right?" Itachi said thoughtfully.
'Team assignments class? Too bad I missed it while being in the Hospital...' Yuta thought.
"Yes, but it was expected of each assigned Jonin to test their assigned team and if a Jonin determines, that the team isn't promising enough, it is expected of a Jonin to reject such a team, since a Jonin's time would be better spent elsewhere."
"This is harsh." Itachi commented with a thoughtful look.
"Well, this way everyone will feel that they had a chance, at the very least. But what happens to those Genins that end up rejected?" Yuta said.
"There are many shinobi departments in the village, usually those Genins will end up joining one of them. If not, they will be automatically assigned to the Genin Core, where they will be arranged into teams and assigned missions directly by superiors. But if they can find a regular team led by a Chunin that are willing to take them in, they could sign out of the Genin Core and join the regular ranks this way, or they could be promoted to Chunin themselves and be allowed to form a team of their own." Shisui explained.
'Genin Core, huh... I've overheard that the majority of the fresh Genins end up on the Genin Core...' Yuta thought, 'I was mentally prepared to be forced to use time-travel multiple times to re-roll my team assignment and the Jonin-test just to not end up there... The Genin Core, I've never heard anything good about it, all of those Genins who are deemed unworthy by their assigned Jonin-instructors and also by all other departments of the village are end up in there and their career as a ninja is usually much harder...'
'Considering how small the actual percentage of Genins that do end up on a Jonin-instructor's led team, it could be considered an elite route I guess, this must be why Hiruzen are paying attention to such teams...'
--- AN ---
It becomes difficult for me to write chapters recently, and I don't know why this is the case exactly, it's not like I don't have ideas how to progress the story, I already have an outline for short term plot progression, as well as some end-game plot in mind, but for the past ten chapters or so it becomes somewhat difficult to write each chapter. Maybe I had set too high expectations for myself and need to ease up a little, I think writing with a little less quality would be much better than not being able to write at all...
Don't worry though, I'll find a way to fix this issue, I just wanted to share some thoughts with you guys.
Thanks to Krishna_Razz, Eyes_Of_The_Void, Loalola, passatempo and GokageSensumo for the power stones.