Taijutsu practice was usually done outside the academy, there were training fields of varying type and even terrain, but true shinobi were prioretised when handing in applications for there use.
That way Shiro had seen them only twice, both times just regular fields with some grass and not much else.
Currently tough his mind was occupied with the fight infront of him, Neiji Hyuga against Tenten, they had been at it for a while, but the fight wasn´t balanced at all.
Tenten often was knocked down by Neiji who could have obviously ended the fight a long time ago, Neiji logicly used whatever strike was best, sometimes knocking her down to his left, sometimes throwing her over his shoulder.
The only reason tough why Shiro was so invested in the fight was that wherever Tenten landed, Neiji didn´t even turn around to face her, instead looking straight at wherever she was previously.
Indeed even when she circled around him he barely moved, but the advantage that Tenten should have gotten from that seemed completely nonexistand.
While she moved around to get a good strike at him, Neiji seemed already aware of what she was attempting and countered every hit, even now she was still getting knocked around.
"Alright Neiji you win again, now make the reconciliation sign"was said by there teacher mister Yuudai, finally finishing the fight.
"Dangit I lost again"Tenten cursed at no one in perticular.
"You can´t get a cheapshot on me, stop trying"Neiji told her seemingly anoyed by her.
"Well I loose if I come at you directly, your too good so what am I supposed to do?"Tenten rebutted, but Neiji had already turned his back on her, just staring at the teacher.
Mister Yuudai spoke again when he saw that he had gathered the attention of the class onto himself
"Sometimes there can be an enemy like Neiji, someone that you seemingly can´t beat, if you get someone like him don´t loose hope.
Oftentimes enemys will pretend to be strong while actually only running on there last breaths, try to look out for any openings for escape or surrender the enemy is leaving you, because if they do that it oftentimes means they are weaker then they seem and you might not want to run away."
He looked at them, then choosing the next contestands" Goda and Shiro your up next".
Shiro and a boy in blue clothes got forward quickly making the seal of confrontation and getting a few meters apart.
Shiro opened the fight up quickly throwing a punch wich the boy dodged and then sending a kick at the boy, wich was swiftly caught by Goda.
He noticed the danger of getting unbalanced and he threw a punch with the hand wich was opposite to the caught up leg, forcing the boy to let his leg go and defend against the blow with his upper arm, wich was only barely quick enough.
From that the boy threw a punch of his own, wich Shiro was almost unable to dogde, but then Shiro went down and held his nose as if it had been hurt.
Goda was confused at this at first, but when he saw the liquid dropping from Shiros nose onto the ground he had a satisfied smile on his face.
Next however Shiro drasticly threw a lower kick onto the boys legs wich knocked him onto the ground and he went after him trying to hold him down.
Goda was surprised and tried to struggle against Shiro, but he had acted to late and when it came to the purely strenght based hold Shiro had him in, he could only delay his own defeat.
The teacher interrupted again"Very good, Shiro wins. Goda you need to keep better watch on the details, if you had you would have noticed that the blood was pink and why would Shiro hold his nose with two hands in an actual fight? Jutsus will only get more common from now on and if you give a true enemy even a second to prepare an actually dangerous jutsu it won´t end so well."
Goda who was obviously still angered got over to Shiro and they made the reconcilation sign.
After that there still was one match left, Rock Lee lost against Fujikawa the boy in the red shirt, but after that physical training was over for the day.
On the way back Lee went over to Shiro
"Hey Shiro you already know a jutsu? I didn´t know that, when did you learn it?"
Shiro smiled at the boy staring at him as if he was some grandmaster of some secret arts"Yeah it´s the transformation technique, I wouldn´t say i mastered it yet, but it´s enough for a few drops of ofcouloured blood I guess."
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Lee seemed confused"I thought you were learning the clone technique first?"
"Yes I am, but Im not really advancing so I thought branching out wouldn´t hurt, by the way how far have you gotten with your jutsu´s? Still nothing?"
He seemed a little flusterred"Im not getting aniwhere, maybe I should just focus on taijutsu."
Lee had not even gotten basic chakra controle down, almost everyone could do something with his chakra, a wrinkled clone there, some pink blood here, but for Lee his chakra tried to act like it
didn´t even exist.
Over the last few years he had tried his very to get trough his botleneck, but even as he abandoned his taijutsu and many hours of his free time it never made a difference, he seemed almost as if cursed.
"Hey Lee could you tutor me again?"Shiro asked.
"What again, didn´t you already have that stuff years ago?"Lee exclaimed in shock.
Shiro laughed at this"Exactly I had it years ago, so it´s understandable that I forgot most of it right?"
In truth Shiro had forgotten almost nothing, but the subjects in the academy were not identical to the ones he had learned about previously and with the hard working Lee he could save a lot of time.
Lee looked at him, but he soon devoloped a smile on his face"Well then I´ll teach you and you´ll teach me ok?"
"EH? What am I supposed to teach you?"Shiro asked.
"Isn´t obvoius? Ninjutsu!"
Shiro was unsure what he would be teaching Lee, afterall he was barely in any position to instruct anyone and Lee was a lot worse than anyone, but he had to admit that he owed Lee for all the time he could safe when studying with him.
"Alright I will help you study ninjutsu, but when your parents and the teacher werent of any help don´t expect miracles from me alright?"
Lee turned serious, shaking his ponytail as an answer"I don´t think your a better teacher, but they couldn´t help me so it´s time to learn it somewhere else!"
After he made sure Lee didn´t think of him as some mastermind that could truly help him, Shiro agreed to his proposal and then they headed back to there class.
It was true that classes in the academy and there little "ninja-preschool" had many overlapping subjects, but it was still not that easy to keep up.
The applications were now completely out of the theoretical, movement over different terrains had to be calculated, so that they would know wich route gave the best probability to arrive on time.
For that they also had to overlap it with there knowledge of geography, while also keeping the diplomatic weight of there actions in mind, afterall it would look terrible if they for example travelled trough neutral territory on the border of a rival nation.
Shiro wasn´t that sure if they needed to know this, but after a talk with there teacher it became apearent that even genin might be involved in the geopolitics of the world.
He was surprised at that, he had assumed that they would just be the special-(cleanup)-forces of the country, mostly dealing with bandits and other low level problems.
After some concideration it made a little bit more sense, bandits and the likes costed the nation good manpower, but it was not a matter of survival.
Shinobi had proven over time that even 1 or 2 of them could destroy a village, as such using genin, such potentiall future weapons of mass destruction on bandits seemed like a big waste, while at the same time they needed to be trained.
That way the low level geopolitical missions were handled by genin and there sensei´s and the country was garrisoned by regular soliders.
This of course wasn´t always so simple, oftentimes the missions would be certain death for genin and it was concidered more important for them to continue there training then die for some hopeless cause and other times the missions simply werent available, because more high level ninjas were available, or they were simply not of use for the country.
As such most teams would at some point escort some low ranked nobility, or whatever there equivelent was in that perticular culture, but the majority of missions were still protection jobs for civilians of whatever nation gave the mission.
Long story short, there was more then enough oppertunity for genin to cause a crisis and they
weren´t learning anithing for laughs.
Shiro internalised all of this new information growing more aware of the fact that he would indeed be a solider of the leaf if he stayed on his current path, tough he still felt the conviction of growing stronger.
The final part of the day was genjutsu, tough they were not the ones doing any genjutsu, instead it was there teacher that put all of them in a genjutsu.
Shiro didn´t like this, he didn´t like this at all, the teacher told them that genjutsu were as much a product of there own minds as of the enemy, or atleast that was the kind of jutsu he used on them.
Sadly Shiro had to discover that his mind seemed determined to only create visions of extreme violence, he hadn´t witnessed the death of his parents or that of his brother, but that didn´t stop his mind from creating the most detailed dreams of there deaths.
His parents always died the same way, being sliced open by a kunai, while his brother died in many ways, tough he mainly was hit in the throat by a shuriken, or beaten to death by a man that looked different every time he was put under the genjutsu.
The first time he had a terrible expression on his face and was sweating under his armpits, with some of the students gazing over at him out of curiosity, but the more it hapenned the more he grew used to it.
He wasn´t sure if it was good that he became increasingly less caring at scenes of violence and death, perticularly when it came to his family, but since enemy genjutsu users would likely give him similar experiences he just tried to get over it as soon as possible.
Genjutsu classes could be split into two sections, practical studys, were they would experience a genjutsu first hand and the main part of the class, the theoretical.
The theoretical was generall knowledge on genjutsu and of course how to break out.
Breaking out can be achieved by adminestering real pain to the user, wich was defined as pain not caused by the false reality within the genjutsu.
Since they can be broken in such an easy way, genjutsu initially seemed a little useless to Shiro, but apearently not all genjutsu can be discovered as easily as when you see your dead family again, so he saw the use.
A girl in class was also very happy when she heard that the Uchiha can break genjutsu more easily, as she was one of the orphans of there clan, but sadly for her she would need to a sharingan first so this wouldn´t help her in class, atleast not anytime soon.
Finally they always tried to break whoever was stuck in the genjutsu out, to do this they would need to disrupt there chakra flow, wich was only doable for them, because there partner wasn´t fighting back.
If a very capable user got them into a genjutsu they could manipulate there chakraflow in there brain in such a way, that they would not realise they were stuck in a genjutsu and even fight there former comrades that would be trying to break them out.
Shiro noted that genjutsu were quite usefull, especially if he could manipulate multiple people and let them kill eachother, but seing how even there teacher couldn´t even make anithing that would seem real 100% of the time, he didn´t think that he would specialise in this in the future.