The most important kind of lesson

We were about three weeks into our second year, and finally, I had reached a level Iruka called "barely passable" largely because I had gotten rid of all my wisdom-related debuffs. Which meant it was only a matter of time before the others went out the window as well.

I was sitting in class, the whole group had agreed to meet up early as Naruto said he had some, as he put it "awesome ninja news from my jiji!", I had arrived even before the others because, let's be honest, I was so excited. I mean, what if the Hokage gave Naruto some jutsu or something! It doesn't even have to be a D-rank jutsu, E-rank would be fine! Or just the leaf-sticking exercise I saw some older kids do! I... I just want to do magic... is that so much to ask for?

"Hey Anno! What's up? Why are you staring off into space with a weird longing look?" Naruto and the others suddenly came in, and I immediately sprang up, jumped a couple of desks, and tackled Naruto to the ground.

"What is it?" I asked my face an inch from his.

"Uhm, what was that for?" Naruto asked, looking as if he had just seen Shino laugh loudly.

I quickly stand up and smooth out my clothes, quickly trying to salvage the image of the wise mentor the others clearly see me as "nothing, that never happened. Why are you lying on the floor anyways, Naruto? That is completely unsanitary" I say with my best casual smile, while the others look at me incredulously.

"W-wasn't it you who j-just tack-?" Hinata started but was quickly interrupted by Shino

"Don't, why? Because he will never admit to it, why? Because he is more stubborn than an Inuzuka" Shino warned, While Hinata just nodded with a defeated expression.

"HEY! what's that supposed to mean?" Kiba yelled in annoyance.

I clap my hands together to get everyone's attention "ok! No matter how completely and utterly false some of Shino's statements may have been, like the one about me being stubborn, Naruto, and Naruto alone, is so excited, so let's hear what he has to say" I say to everyone, Shino's eyebrow twitching when I called him out on lying.

"oh yeah! My jiji told me we were going to start learning a type of jutsu-" Naruto says, and hope blossoms in my chest, joy filling me from head to toe, a sweet, warm, blissful feeling filling me to my core "-shuriken-jutsu!" and I instantly deflate, as the others start happily chatting.

"Naruto?" I speak.

"Yeah!" he grins at me.

"My disappointment is immeasurable, and my day is ruined." I say, filled with bitterness.

"Wha-! Why!" he yells, annoyed at my reaction.

"Because I was hoping for a real jutsu" I explain.

"Shuriken jutsu is a real jutsu" Shino cuts in.

"Really? Is there chakra involved?" I ask, a seed of hope tentatively blooming inside of me

"No, but it is still a jutsu, why? Because jutsu means technique, not specifically chakra technique" Shino says, quickly stomping my whisp of hope into the ground

I can feel the light in my eyes go out and die, leaving me as nothing but an empty vessel, no joy to be found. Without saying a word, I turn my back to my so-called friends and walk to my seat.

"Uh, what was that?" I hear a confused sounding Kiba ask, yet no answer is given.

After around half an hour of me sitting completely still and ignoring my friends trying to annoy a reaction out of me, Iruka and the rest of the class finally arrive.

"Ok class!" Iruka said while clapping his hands together to get our attention "I have some exciting news, today we're going to start learning one of the skills essential to any ninja, shuriken Jutsu! Up until now, we've mostly focused on making sure your bodies were ready to learn, and some basic acrobatics to not waste too much time when you were ready to really learn. But from now on, you'll start learning real ninja skills, for the first half of this year you'll be learning shuriken-Jutsu, then Taijutsu for the other half. Next year will be largely focused on chakra and the basics of manipulating it, and mastering the academy three with the last year being for revision of everything, with other subjects like stealth, traps, and survival in the wild being spread out during that time, understood?"

Then Iruka took us out into the practice area and gave us a long lecture on shuriken Jutsu, with one half being focused on the way to throw them properly, and the other half being about some crucial things to understand, like "don't throw them at each other" or "don't stab yourself to see how sharp they are" or even "no matter how hungry you are. don't. Eat. The. Sharp. Objects" I would say that most of these are self-evident but based on the fact that Naruto did, in fact, stab himself on his first real mission, I would say that there is some basis for his warnings.

"Ah! There you are!" Iruka suddenly interrupted himself as he saw something behind us.

"Sorry I'm late, I got caught up in something," an unknown voice said as a blue-haired man with a Konoha bandana came up to Iruka.

"don't worry about it Mizuki, we were just starting. By the way class, this is Mizuki, he will be helping me out with all practical parts of your training, just to make sure no one gets hurt or overlooked" Iruka quickly explained.

I felt a chill run down my spine because while Mizuki isn't exactly dangerous when compared to people like Kakashi or Gai, he could still kill me faster than Naruto can consume a bowl of ramen. Now, I'm not exactly worried he is going to kill me, he simply has no motive to do so, I do however worry about the fact that he really wants Naruto dead, which is a bit of a conflict of interests as I don't want Naruto to die.

And then we started, there first was a quick test in groups of three to see how good everyone was this was largely to justify separating the clan kids from the non-clan kids. and while on the outside it may seem unfair, but really, it would just be cruel to force them into learning something they already know. And, unsurprisingly, the clan kids were the best, especially Sasuke to the roaring admiration of his fangirls.

"Next up, Naruto Uzumaki, Ino Yamanaka, and Anno" Iruka called out, grimacing a bit when I had no last name to call out.

we stepped up to our individual targets, which were really just scarecrows with legs and arms, and got ready to throw.

"Begin!"

We started throwing and even though I already knew I would be the absolute worst I tried as hard as I could anyway. and then something magical happened. I didn't suck! Okay, well, I still sucked, shuriken-Jutsu is hard after all, but I only sucked as much as a couple of slightly below-average civilian kids! And by God was It beautiful, seeing those shuriken sailing past the dummies or hitting them without sticking may be the highlight of my life.

the rookie nine went to the clan team except Naruto and me who went over to the civilian group together. While we walked a lot of the other children whispered to each other, their incredible surprise over the fact that I am almost decent clear for all to see.

"Wow... I've never seen you fail that little at, well, anything! Are you ok? Did you get replaced by someone?" Naruto told me looking more stupefied than I have ever seen him.

"I see you have finally realized my greatness, eh? Yes! It is true, when I put my mind to it, I can almost be mediocre" I said confidently, now that they see my true potential they have to be impressed.

After that, we started practicing, with the clan kids using some harder targets than us civilians, and us civilians getting more help.

For example, "Anno, you're using your elbow too much, while it may be easier to throw semi-accurately now, if you ever want to master the weapon you need to use your wrist, ok?" Iruka explained.

We largely continued to practice for the rest of the day and while we were practicing, I happened to overhear Mizuki telling Naruto to use his elbow more, the exact opposite of what Iruka said. So, in order to distract him, I constantly asked him for advice, which, while it probably didn't help my reputation of being horrible at everything, did distract Mizuki until Iruka finally freed us and I assembled the group.

"Okay people, we have a very important subject for discussion today, so-" I began to explain the situation we found ourselves in, but I was interrupted by Kiba.

"No, you're not ready to face Teuchi in a ramen battle yet"

"That wasn't what I was going to ask, Kiba! But now that you've brought it up, are you sure I'm not ready?" I asked, only because he brought it up, of course, but since he did I might as well.

"m-maybe y-you c-could? I'm s-sure he wouldn't m-mind d-dueling with you, e-even if it w-was only to t-teach you" Hinata tried to diplomatically solve the issue, however, she failed as I caught on to one of her... misunderstandings.

"What do you mean by, only to teach you, I could totally take him on!" I am met with very skeptical looks from all around. Well, I have to assume Shino is skeptical, you never really know with that guy. "In any case! That isn't what I wanted to talk about either way so let's all just forget about that. What I really wanted to say is this, we need a place to train and hang out" I finally finished.

"Why? I mean, we haven't trained until now, sooooo... why?" Naruto asked, looking a little confused but not opposed to the idea.

"Because until now, we have had nothing to train, why? Because while some of us have been learning family Jutsu, we cannot train them with outsiders as they are secret, but now that we are learning shuriken jutsu, we can train together" Shino explained succinctly, preemptively answering any questions Naruto had.

"Exactly! So, any suggestions?" I spoke

"don't you have that training place you made?" Kiba asked

"Well, yes, but actually, no," I said with a chuckle "it's funny, really, you see, as it turns out, that place was nowhere near structurally stable enough to support five people, it wasn't even stable enough to support one person. I now know that. You know, after it collapsed while I was using it, so, anything else?"

Minutes went by, yet awkward silence was the only thing my question was met with, as everyone tried to come up with something.

Since no one else was saying anything I tried thinking out loud to come up with something, so, I spoke with excitement and hope "Ok, let's narrow it down, it can't be any of your clan compounds as we could observe the hosting family's jutsu and they could observe ours, and while that may not be a problem as long as it's only you clan kids It would definitely be a problem for me to see that, it can't be any of Konoha's training grounds as they are reserved for ninja, and it can't be the academy as we aren't allowed to use it without supervision... I can't really think of anything else..." though the course of my sentence, all the hope I had started out with was slowly choked to death by the cold hands of reality, which had suddenly decided to make me aware that I was a no-name orphan.

However, as a true expert at denying bad circumstances I pushed all those annoying facts aside and as soon as I did an idea struck me. It was perfect!

"don't worry guys, I've got this," I said as a roguish grin crept across my face.

"I don't like it when he makes that face" Naruto voiced his, completely unjustified, opinion.

"Me neither, why? It was the face he made just before he talked us into that prank" Shino said, giving a voice to the completely emotionless robot inside him which apparently doesn't value friendship!

"I-I don't like j-judging without a g-good reason, but I d-don't like I-it" Hinata agreed, committing a betrayal of the highest order.

"Yeah, I'm gonna have to agree with the others on this one" Kiba said, planting the last knife in my back.

"Fine! If you're all against me, then that is how it will be, but I don't listen to those who are against me, so I'm going to do it either way!" I said my voice laced with hurt after their treason.

"Hey Sasuke, wha-" I came up to him setting my plan in motion, however, he immediately interrupted me with his normal.

"no"

Like he always does when I ask him to join us. This time, though, as opposed to all the other times over the last year, I had a plan.

"oh don't be like that, besides, I have a question for you..." I trailed off, and he let out a grunt to show he was listening "aren't you curious about how I suddenly went from horrible to barely passable?" hook.

He looked up sharply, clearly curious about any way to train faster, likely to avenge his family after Itachi killed them all, after all, even though I hadn't seen to that point before I got here, it would be pretty hard not to hear about the Uchiha massacre.

"How did you do it?" Sasuke said, with so much intensity that it was a little scary at first until I realized the reason behind his intensity, then it was just a little sad.

"how about we make a deal, I will teach you a valuable lesson, and then you will train with us for the rest of the year as long as we can use the Uchiha training ground, how about it?" I proposed my deal.

Sasuke glared at me for a while until finally, he said "fine"

"Great! Lead us to the training grounds and I'll teach you there" I smiled, inwardly snickering at the fact that my plan had succeeded.

I quickly grabbed the others and we started walking towards the Uchiha compound. They all repeatedly asked me how I managed to get Sasuke of all people to join us while I ignored them. Well, everyone except Naruto, I ignored him too, the only difference was that he kept asking why I had "gotten the stupid teme involved when he would just ruin everything" but otherwise it was pretty normal.

"Ok, now tell me your secret training method"

"Secret training method? What secret training method?"

"You promised to tell me how you suddenly got so much better," Sasuke said, clearly starting to get angry.

"I did no such thing, I believe my exact words were "I will teach you a valuable lesson" I never said anything about a training method," I said with obviously fake confusion.

"What kind of valuable lesson then," Sasuke said through gritted teeth, while the others were clearly worried, he would attack me at any moment. Except for Kiba, he clearly thought I had this coming.

"Only the most valuable kind, a life lesson, two lessons, actually" I explained proudly.

"What. Lesson." Sasuke growled out while grinding his teeth together.

"That you shouldn't make large decisions without knowing everything first and always make sure to thoroughly analyze any form of binding agreement. By the way, you have to join the group for the next year, sorry, I really am, but it was part of the deal." I said with what I could only assume to be the smuggest of smug smirks on my face.

And that was the last thing I saw before Sasuke jumped me and everything went dark.

"I really need to stop getting knocked out In front of everyone, this is getting embarrassing" was the last thing I thought before darkness took me.