Game of Shadow

chapter 23

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto nor The Gamer. I own nothing, really.

Chapter 23

"Bold of you to already be asking for a day off just to go on a date, brat!"

"It's not a date, and it's literally going to happen in a week at the earliest. I was just making sure you didn't have plans that need me for longer than expected, not gonna lie," I explained with a shrug.

"Other Genin would be terrified of talking back to their sensei," Anko raised an eyebrow at me and I shrugged again. "But it's ok, I'll forgive you," Her smirk didn't reassure me at all, being perfectly honest. "I can give you the day off. To tell you the truth, I was already thinking of ways to get you to stop training. Your profile suggested it quite earnestly."

I felt my eyebrow twitch at that. Why did everyone insist that I was a training maniac? I wasn't fucking Maito Gai! Was it wrong that I feared for my life enough to want to be as strong as possible? It wasn't even like I wasn't relaxing… Although, maybe most my hobbies being training related didn't help my image…

"So, this actually helps me," She continued, clearly unaware of my thoughts. "Regardless of your love life," I decided to ignored the romantically oriented comment with a deadpan expression. "I've got some nice little presents for you, my workaholic student."

My eyebrow twitched again, even as my eyes focused curiously on the three scrolls that she presented before me. Two of which were in shades of yellow and the third one a burnt orange.

"This ones," She said, shacking the former two. "Are Lightning Jutsu. You've already got a nice set of three, but all of them require tools from you. With that in mind, I picked these two specifically because they are in your level and don't need anything but your chakra and technique."

"First one," She started enthusiastically, vaguely reminding me of a commercial from TV. "is a D-rank offensive one. Electromagnetic Strike. You may have heard of its C-rank sibling, Electromagnetic Murder. It's essentially the same thing except that it can't reach the levels of damage that the latter can, but it sets a nice precedent to learn it afterwards."

"Secondly," She flicked up the remaining yellow one. "the D-rank, Electric Flicker. A cousin of the Body Flicker, if you will, much more battle oriented but less useful for simple traveling. It can be used both for movement and for kicking, although at most it'll be like being hit by a particularly powerful Stunning Thread. It also is far from silent even if it's not as loud as some other Lightning techniques."

I almost frowned at that. With options like this (since I considered that there must have been a few more elemental versions of this), why would Shisui focus so much on the Body Flicker? It seemed… unnecessary. But maybe the silent use was more important than the damage… yeah, that sounded about right. A Stunning Thread level of damage wasn't much, so maybe it could be ignored… something to look into, I guess.

"And lastly, a Fire Jutsu, to add start adding some variety to your repertoire as we discussed," She said throwing the orange scroll at me together with the other two. "It's an E-rank though, since we are just starting and you don't have an affinity. We'll see about getting you a D or C-rank latter if you master it. Simply called, Embers, and it has an equally simple description. It's the weaker version of Fireball, which is also the weaker version of, you guessed it, Great Fireball."

I kept my silence for a moment as I looked over the three scrolls. They sounded very good to me. Two D-ranks and an E-rank from a different element was great, actually. Especially the part where none of them would need me to have any weapons like my other jutsu so far.

"You'll be reading those for the rest of the week in your free time," She dictated, and I realized that she really wanted to get that part over with. She had spent the whole time speaking in this rehearsed tone that almost sounded genuine but didn't quite make it. "We'll start working on them next week or when you finish them. In a few weeks, you'll also start going to the Shinobi Hospital for your Iryou training three times a week aside from regular training. It's already been worked out. And once you get the techniques down, you'll be using your free time to study poisons."