Academy Tests

The next day, Rayzen asked Derei and Tasu to wait before doing anything and he shared his doubts to them. He suggested Tasu to invite him and Derei to his house, so that he could talk to his mother without alerting her.

This day signified the last day before weekend and the first test day for Rayzen and his classmates. Students had not yet started sparring amongst themselves. For the first week, they were only learning academic stuffs and practicing their battle techniques, specifically, learning and practicing basic taijutsu.

And from this day onwards, spars will be frequent. Such that spars will be evaluated on a weekly, monthly and yearly basis. During other times, it will be just practice spars.

Same went for all academic tests in general. There were weekly, monthly, bi-annual and annual tests.

Rayzen felt that the purpose of such frequent tests were to determine the growth and potential of the students and the effects of what they learnt at the academy, to refurbish the syllabus accordingly.

The tests were on throwing skills and spars, apart from the usual written tests. And Rayzen aced both. It was nothing of a surprise, as even the present Minato was defeated without much effort. The only reason he had to put in a bit of effort was to hide his actual prowess and to not hurt Minato by accident.

The test results came and without much surprise, Rayzen was first. Following him was Minato and Shiroka at second and third respectively. And Sora came fourth.

Sora was a few points below Shiroka and Minato. Nonetheless, she was in the top tier among those of her age. Takeshi had trained her well and when she unlocks her Sharingan, her power will experience a massive rise and the results of Takeshi's training will show itself more.

The only spars that caught his eyes were of Shiroka's, as she used her opponents strength against them. It was obvious to him that she fought like that to accomodate her weak physique.

' I wonder how powerful, she would be if her physique was much better.' thought Rayzen when he saw her spar.

After the tests were over, Rayzen got his friends Derei, Tasu and Dōto along with Sora and Shiroka to go out for ramen.

...

Minato was feeling unsatisfied with his battle with Rayzen. He understood from the start that Rayzen was more powerful than him and Rayzen was holding back in their spar. He felt the need to grow stronger quickly and to have an influence over his classmates, if he ever wanted to achieve his dream. Feeling motivated, he looked at Rayzen thinking about the only thing he could do.

Minato approached Rayzen and his fast growing circle of friends who were leaving and asked:

" Hey! Are you going somewhere? "

Rayzen smiled through his mask as he replied coldly:

" Yeah! Home! Any problems? "

Minato and the rest didn't expect him to speak coldly and they had weird expressions on their faces, especially Minato who was embarassed.

Nonetheless, it didn't last as Rayzen started laughing out loud and said:

" Look at the expression on all your faces! Hahaha... I was just kidding! I'll never forget your embarassed face Minato, it's too funny."

Everyone thought: ' No that was not funny at all. Just awkward. Plain awkward!'

" We were going out for ramen. Want to join? "

Minato felt his actions were for naught. He gave a smile as he said: " Sure!"

The party left for ramen, but Rayzen felt someone observing him. Looking to the direction he felt the observer was, he found Shiroka staring at him with a sly smile. He smiled back and thought:

' Is she onto me? '

...

At the ramen stand, while everyone was enjoying their ramen to different levels, a not-so-old Teuchi suddenly asked Minato:

" Hey blonde kid! Don't you like my ramen?"

Rayzen was just finished with his and he placed the bowl back on the table and looked at Minato's bowl to see that Minato has barely eaten his ramen. None of the others felt anything weird. But in Rayzen's mind, ear deafening alarms and intense red light were going off.

' What the HELL!? '

He asked Minato after trying his best to calm down.

" Are you planning to eat it? "

Minato smiled at Rayzen and said to him:

" You can have it! Here! "

Rayzen didn't waver as he took the ramen with intend to not waste tasty food. All the while, he kept an eye on Minato.

While Minato looked at Teuchi and said with a cheery smile while scratching the back of his head:

" I am sorry. But I don't like ramen in general that much. "

" Tough crowd. I need to improve my cooking more." Teuchi sighed to himself.

It was a small incident often ignored in the daily life of a person. But for Rayzen, he was unable to sleep peacefully on that night.

' He doesn't like Ramen!!! Is it that this world has not that much connection with canon? Was it even mentioned that Minato liked ramen in the canon? What the hell is going on? I think I am going paranoid over something so small. I'll just shove this aside until I find something solid to judge the people and situation of this world...'

And like always, sleep forced him to rapidly arrive at a solution and get knocked out.

...

Pretty soon, the first month of the academy ended with the monthly tests. And like always Rayzen came on top again and gained the position of class leader.

While the homeroom teacher Yoshida was under pressure from different sides. He was called onto the Hokage's office.

" Enter!" came an aged voice that oozed wisdom from inside the well designed and well protected room that stood at core of the Hidden Leaf, the Hokage's office.

Yoshida entered to see a middle aged man wearing the Hokage robes and hat looking through some documents and scrolls while a smoking pipe hung loosely from his mouth.

He placed the documents aside and took a puff and slowly smoked out , hiding his figure in the generated smoke.

The Hokage took the smoking pipe into his hands and leaned back on the chair and said in a persuasive tone:

" Yoshida! I see that you have faced some troubles from the civilian council... "