Reaching immortality (Reborn as Orochimaru)

2. Children are horrifying creatures

If I could skip the academy and go on to being a shinobi I would do it in a heart beat.

Normally my patience is quite strong. I'd been training it for a lifetime after all, but I could not suffer another minute of the sensei's enthusiastic approach to teaching things I'd long since learned. 

Reading, writing, math, geography, and history. Turns out, most children don't know how to read and write at the age of five. Most children were also orphans due to the ongoing war and the depression of the children, along with the enthusiasm of the idiotic teacher made for an extremely tense classroom experience. 

It's barely been a month.

Oddly enough, Jiraiya's been avoiding me since the first day of class when everyone had to introduce each other. For the life of me I could not understand why but I had no interest in discovering the inner workings of a five year old's mind. 

The sharp pain of rejection had only lasted a moment before I'd ruthlessly crushed it and kept myself calm and collected. 

I finished all the work, answered all the questions, and disciplined myself by staring unblinkingly at the teacher as he lectured the class on things I knew. Patience was my strongest trait and I would not allow this tedious academy to break it!

The monotony was finally broken a month later when the teacher introduced the physical training portion of shinobi training. The children had cheered, while I allowed for a smile of gratefulness to appear on my face.

It left as quickly as it came when I noticed Jiraiya gaping at me from across the room. I frowned and turned away from him to follow the teacher out into the school yard. I scolded myself for even looking in the direction I knew he'd be in my brief moment of happiness. 

Moronic.

I followed along with the short twenty minute work out the teacher demonstrated blandly without breaking a sweat, then followed along with the demonstration of the leaf style katas. There weren't very many compared to the clan styles in the village, but I imagined it was a general type of taijutsu for beginners. I'd need to eventually develop my own style using the leaf as a basis. 

I contemplated copying animals like they did in my previous world with martial arts. I followed along with the others easily and let my mind wander to more important things, such as which animal I'd want to copy.

If anything I'd like to choose a reptile, for no other reason than my plain admiration of them. Most reptiles were scary beautiful, like the lizard, the salamander, skinks, chameleon, crocodiles..snakes. 

I vaguely remember there had been a style in my previous world dedicated to snakes...perhaps I could replicate it. I'd need to find some snakes to study and learn from first before I could begin however, and I imagine it would require far more flexibility than I currently possessed.

The taijutsu practice ended after an hour and I found myself unsatisfied by the pitiful warm up. I looked at the other students and felt disgust fill me. All of them were sweaty and panting like filthy dogs. The ugly scent of sweaty children filled my nose and mouth and nearly made me squirm in abhorrence. 

It did not look like any of them took their training seriously enough. Even Jiraiya looked less worn out than the others and he was a complete idiot. I felt my mood plummet further when most of the students looked towards me in awe. 

I breathed carefully and looked towards the teacher for more instruction. 

He called for a break.

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