Chapter 10: New Skills

Next day, again Fujin was the last one to arrive. He came in merely a couple of minutes before 8 am. Looking at everyone he chuckled, 'Look at these kids, coming early to sit on the first bench.'

He went and sat alone on the last bench and removed a stone and placed it in the desk.

Genki arrived at 8, and started the class. The first hour apparently was a lecture. He was talking about the history of the village, the pride that one should have in being a Konoha shinobi and all such stuff. Fujin classified this lecture as a 'brainwashing session'.

Fujin observed the classroom. The 2 Naras were half asleep. The Akimichis were probably thinking about food. The 3 Inuzukas were too distracted with their dogs. One of the two Uchihas was very smug for some reason while the two Kurama girls were gossiping about something. Others were paying attention.

The Smug looking guy was Uchiha Yori. It seems like he wanted to walk in the footsteps of Itachi as he was bragging a lot about how the previous year's best student was an Uchiha who was only 7 years old on the previous day. Apparently both the Uchihas could already perform the fireball jutsu. Fujin finally stopped looking around.

When Genki was writing something on the board, Fujin grabbed the stone with his left hand, and started to train earth nature while keeping his hand under the desk.

When he channeled his chakra, his whole attention was on Genki. To see whether he would notice and react. However, there wasn't any visible change in Genki's expression.

Fujin thought, 'Lucky. He ain't a natural sensor. Or he is ignoring me for some reason, though chances of that are pretty low. Whatever, both scenarios are good for me.'

The lecture went on for an hour. Though Fujin paid some attention, the majority of his attention was on training his earth nature.

After the brainwashing session was over, Genki started explaining to everyone about Chakra. And then finally moved on to molding chakra with hand signs. Fujin stopped his earth nature training and paid full attention in the class.

The kids from clans however were distracted. They had already been taught hand signs before they joined the academy.

That class, Genki taught everyone about 3 hand signs and made everyone practice it. He monitored everyone closely. After the lecture was over, he said that in the next 3 days, he'll be teaching them the remaining hand signs.

After that they broke off for lunch followed by a lecture on History. Senju Teru and Hyuga Hana were answering a lot of questions asked by Genki in this lecture. Fujin on the other hand stuck to his training while pretending to pay attention in the class.

The week went by in a similar manner. Genki taught all 12 basic hand signs as well as the clone hand sign. He stressed on the importance of learning hand signs properly, which Fujin noted was similar to the notes he read from the scroll yesterday, and asked everyone to practice them at home.

Other than this, Genki had also introduced everyone to the leaf concentration exercise.

In normal lectures, Fujin kept practicing on his earth nature training, but if he got bored with it, he used to try to use his wind nature to cut the stone instead of crumbling it with earth nature.

In week 2, Genki held a class to throw shurikens. He first started with a competition between the students to understand where everyone stands. He also had called a few other teachers to help him with this session.

Most of the clan kids performed well. The best was tied between Uchiha Yori and Senju Teru. The other Uchiha, Aburame and Shimura rounded up the top 5.

Fujin was a bit startled by the serious attitude of Shimura Nobu. He thought, 'I guess Danzo got a root-like training program for the kids from his clan as well.'

Though Fujin had practiced earlier with self made wooden shurikens, it was barely at acceptable level. For starters, the difference in weights itself reduced the impact of earlier training. Out of six shots, he only managed to hit one on the board. And even that was closer to the edge rather than the center.

He was ranked 21st in the competition. Afterwards Genki met up with each and every student giving them advice.

When he reached Fujin, he said, "Alright, you have a lot of work to do on this. First we'll start from your throwing form. Once we get that correct, you will improve quickly."

Fujin nodded and allowed Genki to correct his posture. And then he tried to replicate the way in which Genki displayed throwing a shuriken. After Genki corrected him a few more times. After being satisfied with his throwing form, Genki moved on to the remaining students.

Fujin took this training seriously and practiced it a lot. After that day, his time after the academy was divided into his shuriken throwing practice, which he did in the academy practice grounds itself, right after the academy ended. And after reaching home, he practiced the hand signs, moulded the clay and meditated. He tried sensing his environment in the previous week, but didn't have any success at it. So that was left for later.

The new thing that he started doing was that Fujin started to practice walking on the wall instead of leaf concentration. This was done as a substitute to tree climbing. Fujin noted that since the walls are uniform, wall walking should be easier than tree climbing. However for now this should be enough. He arranged the cushions properly on the floor so that he won't get injured when he fell on the floor hundreds of times!

Walking on walls took a few days to learn. By the end of week 2, he pulled that off without falling down. He could walk on the wall as well as stand on the ceiling. The major issue he faced here was the shortage of chakra. However, every day he practiced, he discovered that his stamina was improving.

But he wasn't sure how much of that was due to better chakra control and how much was due to increase in chakra reserves. After trying to analyze a bit, he dropped the matter. Assuring himself that it didn't matter as he was making progress anyways.

During all those falls, he also learnt how to flip himself in the air to properly land on his feet.

After the first month in academy, Genki taught everyone the academy's basic Taijutsu style. It included a lot of forms and moves to make it a comprehensive Taijutsu style covering all areas. But that also meant that it wasn't specialized in anything.

However for now, Fujin didn't concern himself with that. This Taijutsu style was obviously way superior to everything he could do in Taijutsu. He was quite surprised and thought, 'I didn't think the basic style itself would be so complicated and cover all aspects. It makes me wonder how much better Senju and Uchiha Taijutsu styles are. And Hyuga Taijutsu is obviously superior to even them. Well let's first master the academy style. Then I can think about learning a more advanced form of Taijutsu. This will take a lot of time, but luckily I do have a lot of time.'

After that day, the Taijutsu forms got added to his morning workout as well. The Taijutsu training in the academy went on for over a month just to teach the students everything about that Taijutsu style. Fujin noted that the ones from Senju, Uchiha, Hyuga and Inuzuka clan didn't learn the academy style of Taijutsu.

After the Taijutsu lessons were over, the academy students were made to fight among themselves every week. And depending upon their performance and technique, Genki gave them tips or asked them to practice a certain form.

Even these Taijutsu matches were arranged as tournaments. Here Fujin did much better and was ranked 8th in the first tournament. Though his Taijutsu style wasn't very good yet, he did benefit from having a stronger body. He wasn't very surprised by it. Though these students are very talented, maybe some even more than him, no six year old kid would put as many hours in training as he did. The ones who do would be rare exceptions, like Guy for instance. Even Rock Lee only started to work that hard after he became a genin.

Hyuga Hoka ranked first in the first Taijutsu tournament. He was followed by Senju Teru, Hyuga Hana and Uchiha Yori and the 3rd Hyuga. Shimura Nobu was 6th followed by one of the remaining two Senju at 7th.

Fujin thought, 'Well this is promising. Unlike them, I haven't had any proper training yet. As I train further, I should grow stronger a lot faster than these guys. I suppose I am moving in the right direction then, I should just stick to it.'

Genki started to conduct Taijutsu tournaments and Shuriken throwing tournaments every week for his class.

Fujin noted that no such tournaments were arranged for the other 4 divisions. In fact, in one of his encounters with Daisuke, he learnt that they hadn't even had a Taijutsu class yet and are still being taught shuriken throwing and making hand signs properly.

He thought, 'I guess they really are serious in developing this class properly. From what I heard, this was done last year as well. Though they were incredibly lucky to have Itachi in last year's class. If they have similar expectations from this year, then they will be very disappointed. Then again, I suppose they won't expect a talent of Itachi's calibre so regularly.'

Ending the train of thought, Fujin looked forward towards the future, a bit excited to keep improving himself.