The next day went about the same as the first; I slept through most of the academic stuff that I already knew. This time we didn’t have to spend so much time on chakra control. We still spent an hour though, but because we all knew how to do it, we could spend more time on other things. We ended up spending most of the time learning Taijutsu today. While I excelled at anything chakra related, I absolutely sucked at Taijutsu. This time, Naruto was the one to stand out, with his absurd amount of stamina.

“Alright class, now that you have gotten a handle on the leaf exercise, we are going to move on to Taijutsu.” Iruka Sensei started when we got outside after the previous classes of academia.

“First off, does anyone have any experience with fighting yet?” he asked the class.

A couple kids raised their hands, and I poked Hinata who was standing beside me to raise her hand. She looked at me uncertainly, but did eventually raise her hand.

“Good, except for you Hinata, everyone forget what you know about fighting. For everyone who doesn’t understand, Hinata is from the Hyuga clan, and they have a special fighting technique that I won't pretend to understand.” he said.

“So instead i’m going to have Hinata try to help some of you with your own fighting, since it’s just the basics, she’ll have much more experience than the rest of you” he went on.

He did some demonstrations that we had to follow, and had us line up in rows so he could observe. First he had Hinata go down the line and look at how people were performing. She was very nervous at first, but with a thumbs up from me and Naruto, she came out of her shell a bit and was able to give some corrections. Thankfully Iruka seemed to sense her unease and didn’t push her to do more than she felt comfortable. 

When it came to me, my form was awful and Hinata spent most of her time helping me and Shikamaru. Because of how I usually fight, I was just as new at all of this as the other kids were. Thanks to all the physical training I'd been doing these last few years though, it wasn’t too bad. It was mainly learning the forms and keeping up with them when actually using them that was throwing me off. After I'd learned the forms, my body kept wanting to avoid using them. I'd do the forms well during practice, but when I went up to full speed my body decided it wasn’t going to listen to what I had to say and just do what felt natural.

With Hinata’s help though, I was able to get the hang of most of it. Naruto seemed to be picking everything up pretty easily, but again because of his endless stamina it was easier for him to get back up and continue on. I could have replenished my stamina with chakra if I wanted to, however I would gain nothing if I did that. No pain, no gain right? 

After a couple hours of Taijutsu practice, we moved on to throwing things. Blunted kunai and shuriken was what we started on. Thank fuck I was better at throwing than i was at hand to hand combat. I had a feeling that would always be my weak point. Back in Azeroth, if I wasn’t fighting things that were at the same power level as me, their attacks just bounced off me. I had a continual barrier around me that would regenerate passively, and if something couldn’t do enough damage to break through it, I would remain unharmed. I never needed to fight hand to hand, it would seem I'd need to work on it in this world.

“Next up, aiming practice.” sensei said.

He continued with the demonstrations of the correct way to throw the Kunai and shuriken. Since I had to aim all my spells in Azeroth, this seemed to be a piece of cake for me. This time, it was I who was going around giving students suggestions. Except for Duck Butt, all of the kids had terrible aim, even Hinata. After helping a few kids, and giving them some tips on how to hit better, I made my way to Naruto. His aim was slightly better but still pretty bad.

“Need some help?” I asked.

“Thanks Kari, but this time I want to try and get it myself. Chakra is kind of lost on me most of this time, but this seems simple enough. I just need practice” he told me, and I was mildly impressed that he wanted to try on his own.

“Alright, but if you get stuck, don’t hesitate to ask. Remember, I want to graduate with you as the top students in the academy. We need a good Jounin instructor” I told him.

“Yeah yeah, I know” he said, continuing his practice.

I walked off to help some more kids for the rest of practice. After class I decided I wanted to practice some more with my Taijutsu. If this was going to be my major weakness, I was going to have to practice it more than anyone else if I was going to make up for it. 

After waving goodbye to Shikamaru, and telling my parents where I was going, I moved to the same clearing I'd first discovered when I was trying to figure out chakra. I started by warming up with some stretches and a few laps around the clearing. Then I started practicing the forms I'd memorized. I was still terrible, but hopefully with practice I'd get better. About an hour after I started practicing, I heard a rustle in the bushes.

“Who’s there?” I shouted

“It’s just me, Kari” Naruto said as he came out of the bushes.

“Oh hey, what are you doing here?” I asked him.

“Same as you, I wanted to train. If it’s a bother, I can go somewhere else” he said, getting ready to leave.

“No it’s fine, actually i could use your help” i told him

“Oh? With what?” he sounded excited at the idea of someone needing something from him.

“I’m reaching the limits of what i can do on my own, and i needed a sparring partner” i said, somewhat sheepishly.

“Oh, okay, but could you help me with my chakra control?” he asked. Also sounding kind of embarrassed.

“Absolutely. I scratch your back, you scratch mine.” I said with a smile. I was glad he was taking his training seriously. Shikamaru was certainly not. It seemed I was rubbing off on the kid.

So we helped each other train for quite a while, until we realized it was almost night and we should get back home.

“See ya tomorrow Kari” Naruto said, waving goodbye.

On my way home I reflected on how my training went. I was pretty decent in all areas except for Taijutsu. While I had to focus on my weak point, I couldn't neglect the other aspects of my training either. It was almost dark by the time I got home; I was glad I had told my parents where I was going, or they would have been so mad.

Walking in the front door, I heard from somewhere in the house:

“Kari dear, is that you?”

“Yeah mom, it’s me.” i replied

“Dinner is ready if you’re hungry” she hollered.

Finding my parents and Shikamaru in the dining room, I sat down.

“Hey kiddo, how did your training go?” my dad asked.

“Good actually, I ended up meeting Naruto and we helped each other train.” I told them.

I was expecting more worried looks, but it seemed Naruto had earned their trust. They didn’t even look at eachother, simply nodded and moved on.

“How was that?” he continued.

“Great, it turns out Naruto is pretty good at Taijutsu, where I am crap. Turns out I'm pretty good at chakra control and where he is crap.” I explained.

“Crap is an understatement, you looked like a chicken flailing around with its head cut off” Shikamaru piped up with a grin.

“You shut your face, you weren’t much better you know. Your balance was so terrible a stiff wind could have pushed you over!” I said back.

“That’s good Kari, it’s nice of you to help your friends out. You said you were good at chakra control, have you thought about medical ninjutsu?” my father asked.

“Kind of, but honestly I like the idea of blowing stuff up more. Medical ninjutsu sounds pretty complicated, and I’m not sure if I could keep up.” I told him honestly.

“Well you should give it some thought. Blowing stuff up is nice and all, but in times of peace, it’s much more beneficial to the village to have more healers.” Dad explained.

I knew what he meant. Even though Azeroth was almost always at war with some world ending creature or another, healers always had value. That and they made a crap ton of money. A skilled healer was worth their weight in gold.

“You have a point, I will consider it.” I said honestly. Battlemages were good, but like dad said, if you weren’t at war, they didn’t have a lot of use. After we finished dinner, I smacked Shikamaru for his comment and went to bed.

The weeks and months passed by pretty quickly, Naruto and Hinata helped me train my Taijutsu, I helped Naruto with his Chakra control, and Hinata with her throwing skills. Shikamaru occasionally joined in with training, but not as often as I would have liked. He would always say it was such a drag, but end up doing it anyway. Everything was going pretty well until tragedy struck; someone had killed the entire Uchiha clan, except for one boy. Sasuke Uchiha.

After that his surly expression got worse, he was meaner to the fanclub around him, but that of course just made them love him more for some reason. He barely talked to anyone, although Naruto tried. Even though they weren’t the best of friends, Naruto still couldn’t bear to see him suffer. We found out later that it was Sasuke’s older brother Itachi who had killed his clan, and had abandoned the village. Sorry Naruto, but none of your attempts at cheering him up are going to work right now. I didn’t like Duck Butt much, he was always kind of a jerk, but I wasn't going to tell Naruto he was wasting his time. For all we knew, Naruto’s attempts at helping were doing just that. Helping. It could be that was the only thing keeping Sasuke going, even if he would never dare to show it.

The Third year went pretty much the same as the second year. Well minus the annihilation of a clan. My friends and I helped each other train, and we still remained top of our class. Even Naruto surprisingly was going very well. We learned more about the different aspects of being a Ninja which in which I actually learned something. Things like Undercover work, politics, our Taijutsu classes went from just learning how to punch and kick properly to learning an actual style, that of Konoha. We learned more about history, literature, and geography; all of which I slept through. One of the most important things I learned was the theory behind Ninjutsu/Genjutsu.

Turns out Ninjutsu is pretty simple at first glance. You picture what Jutsu you want to use, perform the hand seals, and use the actions required so the jutsu worked. For example, for the fireball jutsu, nothing would happen if you used the seals, but didn’t take a deep breath and open your mouth for the fire to escape. Really skilled shinobi didn’t even need hand seals. The hand seals basically just told your chakra what to do in order to get the desired effect.

Genjutsu was a different beast entirely. It required supreme chakra control, needing to control the chakra in another body to function. From what I could tell, Genjutsu was basically playing mind games with the victim. You could tell someone was under a genjutsu by either their erratic behavior or their chakra flow. It was relatively easy to get out of if you had another person there to dispel it for you. Dispelling it took almost no effort at all. However if you didn’t have anyone, you’d need to be a genjutsu master yourself to get out. I had no interest in learning genjutsu, it sounded very tiresome to learn. 

As soon as I learned how to summon my demons again, I would be immune to genjutsu anyway. My demons were connected to my soul, and therefore would be able to detect any changes in my chakra flow. They wouldn’t even need to touch me to dispel the Genjutsu, and with them being demons and all, no one from this world would be able to put them under a genjutsu except for me.

Our fourth year at the Academy was when things really opened up for me. This was the year we were going to be actually able to cast ninjutsu. This was also the year my parents had told me they would teach me the clan's techniques. I still had no idea why they wouldn’t teach me sooner. After all, Sasuke could already use his clan’s fireball Jutsu they were famous for. We would also learn the theory behind medical ninjutsu, and since I had told my dad I would at least consider learning the art, I decided I would at least give it a try. 

“Alright, today we are going to learn how to use Ninjutsu. There are three Jutsu that every single ninja must know, and in order to graduate, you must have mastered these three. They are “clone jutsu”, “substitution jutsu”, and the “transformation Jutsu”.” Iruka Sensei told us.

By now, he had warmed up considerably to Naruto. He wasn’t nice to him, but he had lost all his scowls and glares. He treated him as a person now instead of a pest to be ignored.

“We’ll start with the substitution jutsu, since this jutsu could very well save your life one day. This Jutsu isn’t anything complicated, but it could be vital. You use your chakra to boost your speed, and after you put whatever you wanted in front of you for your target to hit, you get the hell out of there.” he explained. 

So.. basically we ran away really fast and put a log or something in our place. That jutsu sounds like it wouldn’t work if the person you are fighting is way stronger than you. Despite how useless it sounded, I would give it my all to learn. 

Turns out, like sensei said, it wasn’t all that complicated. I had already mastered half of it, kind of. A ninja was supposed to use the seals to perform it early, so they could do it almost by reflex. As for me, the hand seals didn’t do anything I couldn't just do in the way I was already reinforcing my body. So for this jutsu at least, I could use it without hand seals, and it would remain to be seen if I could ignore the hand seals of other jutsu. 

Sensei spent the rest of the day getting us to practice our substitution jutsu. I had already mastered it, so I decided to work on my Taijutsu. I was many times better at Taijutsu than I had been when I started. I still sucked, but at least now I could beat about half the class. Some of the more physically gifted students were still out of my league. If I used my chakra reinforcement, I could beat them all easily, but again I would gain nothing if I did that. If my basics were garbage, then any temporary improvements I made would also be garbage. 

I think the ones who made the most progress were Naruto and Hinata, just in different ways. Naruto could now decently control his chakra, and maintain the leaf for about an hour before he got mentally exhausted. With his crazy stamina though, he’d be back to practicing after only 10 minutes or so of rest. As for Hinata, she no longer looked like a kicked puppy all the time. She had some confidence now and was getting better with her aim. She’d never really had any issue with her chakra control. From what I could tell it was probably because of how her family fought in hand to hand.

It was another week before sensei taught us another Jutsu.

“Now that you all have a good understanding on how to use the Substitution Jutsu, we’ll move on to the Transformation Jutsu.” he told us, making a few of us happy. We were sick of doing the same boring jutsu for a week straight.

“The Transformation Jutsu is the most useful thing in a shinobi’s toolkit. You can transform into basically anything that you have a great understanding of. Be it a person, a Kunai, a tree, an animal, it doesn’t matter as long as you know everything about it. The downside is that oftentimes you’ll need a period of time for adjustment to your new form before you can do anything with it. Such as if the assumed form has a different height than the user or if the assumed form wears clothes that the user isn't accustomed to, especially if you transform into an animal, and have to learn to walk on all four limbs” the teacher explained at length.

This jutsu was incredible in my eyes. I’ve had so many encounters that would have been so much easier if I could have transformed into something else temporarily. More than once i had to wipe out an enemy stronghold just to get to the guy in the middle and kill him, if I’d had this Jutsu then, I could have strolled up to the camp, walked up to the guy and blown his head off before anyone had a chance to stop me. These kids might not understand the importance, but I certainly did. I decided that I would master this spell.. Erm.. Jutsu perfectly. I would be unmatched in its use.

“To that end, you all see that big rock over there? I want you to study it. Understand everything about it. I’ll teach you the hand signs, and by the end of the week I want all of you to be able to transform into that rock.” Iruka Sensei challenged us.

“Challenge accepted old man!” someone said. Shit… that someone was me.

I spent the rest of the day practicing the hand seals for the jutsu. Thankfully these classes were always after all the academic book stuff, so we had as long as we wanted to practice. It turned out Naruto had a lot of enthusiasm for this jutsu as well for some reason. Was that a pervy grin on his face I saw for a second?

It took me about half of the assigned week to understand everything I could about the big rock. Then it took another day or so to put the hand seals into practice. From what I could tell the hand seals were essentially a crutch for ninjas. They told your chakra what to do, and by studying the effect the instructions from the seal had on my chakra, I inferred that I could replicate it after some practice. Compared to the intricacies of casting a spell with mana, this was a cake walk. I was reminded that it seemed like chakra had a mind of its own, it would do all the technical and mathematical physics stuff for you, unlike with mana. In this case, I didn’t need to manually have my mana change my body for the spell, like readjusting the atoms and molecular structure of my skin to match that of the rock. Chakra did all that for me.

Overall I felt that while mana was more plentiful than chakra, it was only superior to chakra by a single order of magnitude. However it was much more tedious to use, and I think I honestly preferred chakra, even though it had less punch to it than mana. So after mastering the seals, I was finally able to transform myself into that big rock. It was weird being a rock, and I now understood what Iruka Sensei meant when he said there was some adjustment required for this spell. Thankfully I was just a rock; no one expects a rock to move of its own accord. 

It took me about another week or so to learn to cast the jutsu without the hand signs. I had no idea at the time how shocked everyone would have been to learn that I'd done that, so it was a good idea that I was planning to hide the fact that I could do it in the first place. It was another trump card I had to survive in this world. I would save the fact that I could do Sealless Jutsu until I absolutely had to reveal it, like if I was about to die, or a friend was desperately in need.

After everyone had been able to reliably use the Transformation Jutsu, we learned the last of the three essential jutsus.

“Well last, but certainly not least, we have the clone jutsu. This one is pretty simple. You use the hand seals to make an illusionary clone of yourself. They have no substance however so they can’t make attacks. The clones created from this jutsu also don’t move grass for example, and their main purpose is to confuse and distract.” he said, while also promptly showing us all the hand signs.

I had practiced the other jutsus we’d learned enough by now that I picked up the hand seals pretty quick. After Sensei demonstrated the jutsu, I could see what he meant when he was describing their limitations. It seemed like a Mages Mirror Image spell, but way, way worse. After all, it couldn’t attack. By the end of the day, most of the class could use the Jutsu to some extent. Naruto however, for some reason was having a lot of trouble with it. No matter what he did, it would always come out malformed and depressed looking.

Even after about a week, Naruto still couldn’t perform the jutsu to any degree of usefulness. I had tried my best to give him advice on how to do the jutsu, but he just couldn’t get his head around the usage. He couldn’t quite explain what he was having trouble with. If I was honest, I think it may have been the second source of chakra he had within himself. I have no evidence of that, but it was just my gut feeling. 

And with all the previous years, since I was barely learning anything new, this year flew by just as quick.

(A/N: I wanted to go more in depth on how the various Jutsu's worked, however I couldn't find anywhere that went into detail. For the clone jutsu for example, everything I could find on it just said something like "You make a clone of yourself". Or for the substitution jutsu, it just said “you swap places with an object you can see”, but didn’t explain how that was achieved. I didn't want to make things up on how it worked; you all can use your imagination on how you think your chakra can accomplish creating a clone)