Team-two and Koichi gathered at their training grounds, Koichi said, “All of you are Chunin now, what do you decide to do next?”

“We will stay on the team for now” Itachi replied.

“Good. And who will be the new team-two captain then?” Koichi asked seems content with their decision.

“Our team leader will be Itachi” Yuta stated.

“Good.” Koichi replied, “You will be going on missions on your own now, I expect you to do your shinobi duties well. Every now and then I will be checking on your progress, so don’t slack at training.”

After that Koichi left his students, and Hikari said excitedly, “Well then, we are going on a mission straight away or what? Let’s take a mission where there will be high chances of fighting other shinobi!”

Yuta sighed hearing that but inside he thought, ‘Well, while she is too hasty I kind of agree to that in general…’

“I have something to do in these few days” Itachi said, “Let’s gather here after three days in the morning, then we go and check what missions is available, but I will be the one to decide which mission we will be going on.”

“Huh, fine” Hikari replied dejected, “But you better pick one that isn’t boring, I don’t want to waste days or even weeks by guarding some merchant or noble, I prefer missions filled with action and fights!”

“I will keep that in mind” Itachi replied, “What about you Yuta, what is your preferences?”

“My preferences huh, you know, I kind of agree on this one with Hikari, I prefer to go on elimination-sort of missions rather than guarding or escorting ones. Our team is versatile and have high combat capabilities and even have a tracker and a sensor in it, as well as fuinjutsu, genjutsu and ninjutsu specialists, so technically we can perform well on any kind of missions.” Yuta said after analyzing the matter.

“I see” Itachi said analyzing the team capabilities himself, “But with your skills with fuinjutsu we can create deadly traps and with that the stationary guarding kind of missions will be easy for us, are you sure you are against that?”

“Well, if you put it this way it kind of make sense.” Yuta said deep in thought, “If it will be short-term missions with high chances of a strong enemy attack then it will be fine, I guess. What about your own preferences, Itachi?”

“Hmm, I’m fine with whatever.” Itachi said.

“What is this attitude?” Hikari exclaimed annoyed, “Are you really don’t care at all if we go on an escort mission that will lasts two weeks of pure boredom or we go on an active mission of eliminating some rouge shinobi for example? I can’t believe it!”

“As sensei said, all missions are important” Itachi simply stated to Hikari’s great annoyance.

“I strongly disagree with that!” Hikari stated, “There are thousands of shinobi in the village going on missions all the time. We three, as the most talented ones, should accept the hard and important missions where we will be able to get the most experience and grow stronger! All the boring and easy missions we should leave for other shinobi to complete, isn’t that right Yuta?!” Hikari glared at Yuta at the end of her speech demanding to support her statement.

“Well, you are too impatient, but I agree with that, we all should focus on getting stronger.” Yuta replied calmly.

“I see.” Itachi said deep in thought, “See you two in three days.”

After that everyone went on their own business and Yuta stayed at the training grounds for his physical training session.

After five hours of intensive training that Yuta usually does every day while he is in the village, he was exhausted laying on the ground and breathing heavily, unable to even stand up right now, his whole body is aching.

‘Damned, my progress in physical training is slowing down no matter what I do, with this rate it will take years to get to the same level of physical strength that Itachi and Hikari already had right now, and they both will be way ahead by that time once again…’

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Yuta thought slightly dejected, looking at the sky, it was afternoon. Suddenly a shadow was cast on his face and Yuta looked up and saw Itachi standing above him, looking at him with a curious look.

“You are training even harder than me it seems…” Itachi said slightly surprised.

“I train less these days, I used to have two sessions like this every day.” Yuta replied while trying his best to stand up and not to look too exhausted.

“Why are you working so hard on physical training when your specialty lays in different ways though?” Itachi asked curiously while observing Yuta’s sorry state.

“It’s simple really, it’s just if I fall too far behind then my enemies in terms of physical strength and speed then it doesn’t matter how good I am in ninjutsu and other stuff, I wouldn’t be able to land a hit most of the time, so I have to do my best to lower the gap in physical strength as much as possible or it will become my greatest weakness.”

“I see, that make sense” Itachi said with a nod, “How about a genjutsu duel?”

‘Itachi wants to have a genjutsu fight with me? For what reason I wonder. Well, I don’t see why not, without a Sharingan and with me going through multiple years of training in the time-loop I should have an upper hand against him for time being.’

“Sure, let’s do that.” Yuta said calmly, trying to abstract his senses of his body being exhausted and focus on the chakra control, to be able to fight against Itachi’s chakra that already started to invade his system.

‘His chakra control increased a lot from the last time we did that, it won’t be long until he become stronger that me in genjutsu once again, especially with Sharingan…’ Yuta thinks while fighting against Itachi’s chakra invading his system with his own chakra, it becomes a some sort of a tag of war where the chakra is a weapon and the chakra control skills and genjutsu skills is the key for winning.

Normally shinobi just have to disrupt their chakra hard enough to break the foreign chakra control over their chakra system, and this method is working fine most of the time. But when the two genjutsu specialists are fighting against each other the fight can become something like this, the battle of skills with precise chakra movements, instead of blunt chakra disruption to expel foreign chakra one time.

And at the same time while Yuta was fighting for the control over his own chakra system against Itachi’s chakra invading it, he also fights to take control over Itachi’s chakra system, as he attacked him the moment he said the last words, targeting the spots in his system to alter his vision first, and also preparing to invade the spots needed to alter his hearing as a secondary objective.

Both Itachi and Yuta were standing in front of each other for a few minutes like that, looking in each other’s eyes. Yuta was winning the contest of chakra control, but it was hard for him to achieve a full victory yet. But suddenly Itachi changed his tactic drastically, and Yuta was failed to react in time, and he saw Itachi smile and said, “Your chakra control is greater, but you still lack practical skills of fighting genjutsu.”

Yuta disrupted his chakra to reset the already lost battle, expelling the foreign chakra from his system. Itachi continued, “It seems you trained with your shadow clones in genjutsu a lot, but there is a problem with that, your shadow clones are just you, and without practicing the genjutsu with other people your skills will have flaws, you can’t gain a good mastery over it just by training with yourself.”

Yuta felt that he succeeded in invading Itachi’s system, and he instantly altered Itachi’s vision and hearing to cast a genjutsu where he was still standing in place and talking to Itachi, while he in the reality went to the side of him invisible to Itachi, to indicate his win after the genjutsu will be over.

“You are right I guess” Yuta said inside genjutsu placed on Itachi, “How about we practice genjutsu together more often then?”

“I also wanted to suggest this, this is why I’m here, well, it was one of the reasons.” Itachi replied looking at the empty place, clearly not seeing Yuta stands on his right side.

“What is the other reason?” Yuta manipulated his genjutsu on Itachi to make his illusion do the talking for him.

“I was approached by a village’s council member, and he invited me into the ANBU, I wanted to discuss this with you.” Itachi said with a serious expression.

‘Damned, it was Danzo, wasn’t it? I absolutely can’t afford to lose Itachi to Danzo at this point. And in the original story isn’t Itachi was supposed to join a regular ANBU instead of root?’ Yuta thought slightly distressed.

“And what’s your decision?” Yuta asked through the genjutsu.

“I said that I wasn’t ready to leave my team yet.” Itachi said calmly with understanding to Yuta’s concern.

“That is good to hear, I don’t want our team to be disbanded so soon.” Yuta said relieved through a genjutsu, “Well then, this genjutsu duel is on me it seems.” Yuta added through a genjutsu with a smile, while canceling his genjutsu on Itachi.

But in the next moment he saw with a shocked expression that Itachi, that was in front of him this whole time had disappeared, he turned around quickly and saw Itachi standing behind him.

“This genjutsu duel is on me it seems” Itachi said with a slight smile.

“How are you managed to do that?” Yuta exclaimed in shock by the revelation that he was the one who was inside a genjutsu this whole time, and not Itachi, “I disrupted my chakra and then successfully cast a genjutsu on you, there was no foreign chakra invasions on my system after that… Wait, that means you did something the moment your attack succeeded, right? But how is that possible?”

“I casted a genjutsu on your chakra senses and blocked the chakra disruption, after that you was in my complete control not even realizing that, and you never actually disrupted your chakra.” Itachi replied with a slight smile.

‘He affected my chakra senses and prevented my chakra disruption, which is some scary genjutsu sh*t, with that he was able to cast any additional genjutsu and I would be unable to even detect it… Itachi is scary…’