Chapter 5

Iruka Umino looked over the class he had got. All the kids were just eight years old and had been selected to undergo the more advanced shinobi training the academy offered. There were a lot of clan heirs in this class.

Most notably the Hyuga heiress and the last Uchiha. There also were a lot of civilian children next to the clan heirs. He wondered how many of them would persevere through the hard training.

On top of all those promising children he had the jinchuriki of Konoha in his class. Naruto Uzumaki. He didn't like that at all, but he wouldn't let the boy be the reason to lose his professional attitude. He would treat him like any other student.

After taking roll call and trying to memorize the faces of his students for the next years he gave them a lecture on how hard the job of a shinobi would be and that he expected them to take their education serious.

He noticed that some, like the Nara heir, were disinterested in his lecture. Well, he would see about that. Nothing worked better to get a Nara to work than forcing more physical training on them. And he could be as scary as an angry Nara female without problem.

"Alright. the teaching plan for your year requires you to learn certain theoretical skills, I don't believe that good ninjas are made by studying in a class room.

You are here to become skilled fighters for our village. That means you need to be in good physical condition. Therefore we will start each morning with two hours of workout. A ninja needs a strong body, so this is what we will be working on first. As soon as your bodies are ready for it, we will incorporate taijutsu spars. You will be tested on what type of body you have and we will determine which kind of style would fit you. Before we get there, you will learn the basic academy style." Iruka stated.

He noticed that now most children listened to him.

"For your information, my name is Iruka Umino, I'm a chunin and you will call me Iruka sensei. After the two hours of working out, we will work on your chakra control and you will learn your first easy jutsus once you have a certain level of control. So the speed you get to learn jutsus depends on your effort which you put into the control exercises you will learn." He said sternly. "Next will be lunch and then an hour of theory as you need to take a break from physical activity after eating. In the afternoon we will cover weapons and medical skills. This will be your training plan for the next year. Don't expect this to be easy. If you have problems, tell me so that we can work on a solution."

Most children nodded.

"Now get outside, we will do a little evaluation and see where you stand right now." Iruka said and led the group outside.

The academy had a track where he would test the speed and endurance of the kids. He would start with a classic.

"First task is running for fifteen minutes. I will set up a timer which will ring when the time is up. You will run as many rounds as you can in that time. In this bag are bands that will count the distance you have covered in the allotted time. Come here and get one, put it on your arm and then get to the start line." Iruka instructed them.

Once all the children had a band around their arm, Iruka directed them to the starting line and let them run. He soon saw that the Uchiha boy, the Inuzuka boy and the Uzumaki boy were the fastest three. He was a bit surprised seeing the demon container doing this well, even though he seemed injured.

Iruka quickly noticed that many kids weren't physically fit enough to really do well in this task.

Mostly girls and civilian boys. He wondered why that was the case. He had intentionally only set the time at fifteen minutes. A real shinobi had to be able to last for hours.

It seemed as if his decision to put more focus on the practical skills and less on theory, even if the civilian council had tried to force the opposite to be done, was correct. If these kids didn't shape up they wouldn't last in this profession and be killed on their first missions outside of the village. He had become a teacher to prevent exactly that.

Once all children had finished the fifteen minutes some were already exhausted. Well, he would train them up.

"Good. Now come here one by one so that I can write down your covered distance." He told them and once he wrote down the results he took back the bands.

Then he set them to stretching their muscles. He didn't want them to get cramps.

"The next exercise is similar. You get a minute each to perform push-ups, sit-ups, pull-ups, jumping jacks, punches and kicks against a training dummy. I will again note your performance." He told them and had them tested in groups.

He was not impressed with the results of the class as a whole. Even the clan children didn't perform spectacularly. He had his work cut out for him. he had been better at this age concerning stamina and body strength.

...

During the lunch break Iruka put the results of his first evaluation on a ranking sheet. And he was very confused that Naruto Uzumaki ranked third, just behind Kiba Inuzuka and Sasuke Uchiha. He had got his file which said that the boy had no talent at all and that he should be dropped from the program.

somehow he suspected that the hatred of the Kyubi was the reason. But even he, who didn't know much about sealing, understood the concept that Naruto was the prison and not the prisoner.

He would have to see just how much the boy didn't know. From his first impression he had talent and more importantly the drive to work for his skills, something that many children lacked. While he wasn't comfortable in the boy's presence, he wouldn't deprive Konoha of a talented young shinobi.

The following weeks Iruka build an opinion of all of his students based on the behaviour they showed in his classes.

...