The White Flash

Bell Test

De ja vu overtook her entire morning. From Kakashi waking her up, to eating only a few apples on the walk-through town, even walking through the academy doors half an hour after school had started. It's been four days since her lockdown has commenced. While the others were sent on missions, she has been reliving days long passed. "You're late, Hatake."

            "Well, you see, there was this old lady that was struggling to carry her groceries, I stopped to help out." Unlike her other excuses, this one was actually true. On her way to class, she noticed a little old lady struggling to carry a box of vegetables.

            "Ayumi-nesan!" Konohamaru called to her, his hand wild above his head.

            Flashing him a smile, Ayumi waved to him and his two partners in crime before venturing to the front of the class. "Today is a day that I'll pass the torch to you." Iruka extended the days lesson plan, a stack of papers on a clipboard, to her. Ayumi skimmed through the stack, excitement sparking through her blood. Decoding. It wouldn't be as in depth as she's delved, but general decoding that would help them break low level ciphers. She took Iruka's spot at the podium whilst the Chunin made himself comfortable at the corner of the room.

            Picking up a piece of chalk, she tapped it on the board. "Alright, Maggots get your pencils ready! Today I'm going to be teaching you how to decode C-ranked ciphers. Be sure to take notes because at the end of the day I'll write a special cipher for all of you to decipher." A wicked grin crossed her lips and she held the clipboard to cover the lower half of her face. "Anyone who's not able to decipher the code has to run one hundred laps around the academy before they go home."

            "EH?!" A string of complaints flew from their lips.

            "Now, now, no complaining!" Pointing the chalk towards the students, she swept it over the class. "If you don't want to run then pay attention!"

            "Do I have to do it too, Ayumi-nesan?"

            "Konohamaru..." The clipboard bounced in a loose hold, "you're right. The kind of respectable shinobi that you want to be, should be able to do two hundred laps."

            "HUH?!"

            "There is no favoritism in the world of shinobi!" The chalk zeroed in on the Sarutobi, "if you don't want to run then pay attention! First things first, in order to decode anything, you must decide what kind of cipher has been used. For that, you must take into account which village sent the message. Each hidden village has its ciphers that they use, not only that there were ciphers that are specifically used by the different branches of the military, and each ANBU organization use their own unique cipher on top of that. I'll show you how to decode low level ciphers of each village. As shinobi, these are things that you absolutely must know." While talking, Ayumi wrote the names of each hidden village across the board. "Most messages sent between the villages are encrypted, this is so mercenary bands or others who may happen to intercept these messages are unable to read the contents. There are also times that you will be ordered to intercept messages out in the field. So, knowing how to decode messages from every major village is essential. We'll start with Iwagakure..."

            Time passed while Ayumi went over the topic, going off on a multitude of tangents when describing how to complete a cipher. She wrote many silly sentences on the board and picked on random students to decipher them; things like "Yakiniku is the best", "One Fish, Two fish, Red fish, Blue fish", and "Iruka wears a wig". Come the last forty minutes of the day, Ayumi tapped a finger to her chin. What's a good saying? Their final test of the day. I got it!