Game of Shadow

Chapter 26

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

Chapter 26

I will freely admit that I half expected what happened during my first C-rank mission to develop into some kind of plot. Reality though, proved to have different laws than anime and manga… for the time being, that is. Either way, it definitely didn't deter my sensei from going on more of those. Although, she did have me only do those once a week (usually ones that took a day, two at most), the rest of days were spend doing a single D-rank each.

My routine though, changed the smallest bit. First of all, and most noticeably, Anko started teaching me more than just fighting. Her answer when asked why now and not before was something along the lines of 'because you are already enough of a monster compared to other genin'. My response when trying to say that I wasn't that much ahead was a deadpan and a raised eyebrow.

I started to wonder if I was more than just very good for my age and rank.

Anyway, my new classes involved leadership, strategy and other more academically oriented topics. I was fine with that, and they were actually a nice breath of fresh air. My regular shogi matches seemed to have cultivated my mind into a fine tool for tactics though. Which turned out to be a bad thing, making my sensei grumble to no end about monstrous students.

She had also surprised me by managing to add teamwork training to it too. I hadn't expected that, considering that it was just Anko and me in the 'team' but she had easily done so by having me work with her summons against her. The madwoman had even gone as far as summoning some snakes that didn't particularly like her, which meant that they got really into the training exercise even if they didn't like me much. Apparently, they liked her less than they disliked me, which I managed to make work… decently well, I guessed.

Another change was that, in order to make up for the previously mentioned sessions, Anko upped the difficulty of my battle training again but participating herself. I had an ongoing theory that the actual reason for the academic classes was to give me time to recover from the… spars. But it was kind of a chicken and egg dilemma, really.

With that added to my already strenuous training regimen, I was very grateful that my other C-ranks were calmer. From guarding the gates to patrols, all missions turned out to be a breeze. I wasn't sure if that was good though, because those tended to bore my sensei, and a bored Anko Mitarashi was a very dangerous, inventive Anko Mitarashi. This was, for anyone that may doubt my words, evidenced by my new dodging training, which consisted of her throwing senbon, kunai, shuriken or, occasionally, a dango stick, at me at totally random moments, even in my sleep.

Sometimes I had the strangest feeling that I had annoyed her somehow.

Nothing much changed besides that though. Time passed in relative tranquility as my skills grew slowly but steadily, nothing new to add to my lists but I was ok with that. I preferred to have less skills at high levels than to have a massive list of skills between 1 and 5 levels high. The pains of a system that wasn't broken, I guessed, although I wasn't complaining anymore. I knew it would have been a lot worse had I not had it at all.

I was content throughout all that time too. Missions went just fine, training was progressing faster than it ever had in the Academy and while our group get-togethers had lessened in number and frequency, we still managed to make them happen. Granted, we were free at different times, which meant that there were usually one or two teams that couldn't make it, but it was something.

From that, I knew that Naruto's seals were scarily good. Especially since even Sasuke admitted that he couldn't win against the blonde if the latter had even a remotely decent amount of time to prepare for it. Sakura, for her part, seemed to still be undecided about what to do, which meant that she was learning a bit of both Genjutsu and Iryoujutsu. Maybe it was hypocritical of me, but I wasn't sure how good she would get trying to divide her attention between the two arts. At least I had the advantage of the system to back me up, but she was very smart, so maybe she could make it work.