RiaN Chapter 12 (Patreon)

I sat down, just taking in the class at first. About a quarter of the class was Uzumaki; there were some Uchiha and Hyuga, but they might have made up another quarter, another quarter of clans I could recognize, then the rest were random people I couldn’t tell which clan they were from at a glance. I doubted there were many civilians in this class right now, more were certain to join after the first year as civilians would get sponsored by other clans.

Most of the civilians with any real skill would be selected by a clan and raised as an elite, and they’d then marry into their clan. It was a practice that began about fifteen years ago, shortly after Kushina and Minato graduated. The male-to-female ratio was heavily scaled towards females. Out of the fifty plus students, there were only eight men, including myself.

As someone from a major family, that’s how one of my brothers received his first betrothed. It might be how I get my first girlfriend, but I doubted it. I was from a big family, but I was far down the list of children. It might make sense if I was the second or third son, but as the seventh, I was only the first child between my father and mother, and that was the only thing that made me stand out.

I wouldn’t get more than a small inheritance once I graduated. It might be enough for me to live off for a few months before I need to start working. That’s why before I graduated, I planned to create a few inventions and possibly write a few books. I couldn’t thrive in the Uzumaki if I was only known for being the child of the current clan head. I needed to make a name for myself.

I activated my seventh sense for a few seconds to see if anyone was a psychopath. No one was truly evil; there were a lot of negative emotions coming from the girls, but the strongest was from the teacher. He thought it beneath him to teach instead of going out on missions, his injury on the battlefield putting an end to the dream of building a large harem and starting his clan.

He wasn’t Ebisu or Iruka. I didn’t recognize him but I didn’t know all of the teachers in the show. Does anyone remember the traitor's name who tricked Naruto off the top of their head? Nope, he wasn’t that guy either. His emotions weren’t to a level where he would betray the village, he was just angry at his situation. Weeks passed and I got to know some of the more outgoing classmates.

Talia was in this class, she was the little dog girl I met when I was still a baby. I didn’t see her much after that, the few meetings I went to were different mixes of children, and I hadn’t made any friends from them, so my mother and maid stopped taking me to them. Hinata was also in this class. She wasn’t the Hinata from the show, though. She didn’t have the weight of an entire clan to crush her feelings, she was never captured, and her father didn’t push her relentlessly.

The happy girl surrounded by other Hyuga girls was a dramatic difference from the Hinata I knew; she might have even had a different mother. Realistically, you’d think that would happen more often than not, but somehow, most people were very similar to their anime counterparts. A large portion of the elites in this class were from the Ryuchi clan.

Not only was Talia, but she had a few sisters and a brother as well taking part in the elite class. Three little Tsunade look-alike triplets named Tsu-Tsu, Nae-Nae, and Dae-Dae. The little boy was another one with ears. Raph was shy and always read, while his sister was the wild one. 

My guess was that Orochi had lost the ability to have children right around when I was born, so he made the most of his time and got as many of his wives and concubines pregnant before he no longer could. Two Might girls along with Lee; I didn’t see Neji. A girl I wasn’t expecting to be here was as well. Karen Uzumaki was in my class.

Lessons so far didn’t have anything to do with being a ninja. Besides the weekly taijutsu spar, weapon practice, and jutsu usage, it was a normal school that taught children how to read and write. A few weeks later, the first civilian was brought into our class. The little blonde-haired girl was the first, and she had scored off the charts on intelligence, similar to that of someone from the Nara clan.

The only reason she didn’t beat Sakura was that she was never taught how to read because she was an orphan. So, she had only learned how to from signs, and her overall knowledge pool was smaller. If they were both given the same chances, she would have beat everyone because she had already learned how to read and write the few weeks of actual schooling she had.

I didn’t recognize her from the show, but I could have just forgotten about her. I was a huge fan of the show, but that didn’t mean I knew every single person from the anime or manga. More kept joining over the next few months while I was bored out of my mind as children were being taught basic things, and very rarely did we get to actually practice ninja-related subjects.

There was no getting along with them, they were six years old. Imagine trying to befriend a bunch of six-year-olds as an adult. We just had nothing in common. The end of the first year was coming up, and that meant the end of the year test was coming up. To stay in the elite class, everyone would need to know the three basic jutsu. That was what the ninja students needed to do to graduate in Naruto; that was how much higher skilled we were compared to the average shinobi.

In the anime, Hiruzen must not have separated out the better students, making it so that anyone more talented would get crushed by how boring the classes were… Wait! That would make them want to graduate early and become his child soldiers sooner! I get it now; that was his plan the entire time. After I passed this test, I knew I was going to beg my father for shadow clone jutsu so I could skip these classes next year.

Sending a shadow clone to learn was something that became popular after Orochi’s oldest children did it. The best way to show the difference between this world and the Naruto world would be monsters. There were dozens of ninjas as capable as Itachi and hundreds at the same level as Kakashi in this village. Every clan had monsters at the Kage level, and there were even some super Kage people in the village.

One was my father. I didn’t know until I came to class, but my father was viewed as someone the village would make decisions around. The same went for all of his students, if Orochi taught anyone, they’d grow up to be a monster in the future. He had done so well, the four-man ninja squad that was traditional was done away with, leading to some squads all the way up to ten men, not including the two shinobi teachers.

Sometimes, certain missions just needed the extra manpower. What could be done by fifty men could be done by ten ninjas who could use shadow clones. Not only were larger squads safer, but it also lowered requirements for those large-scale missions. There might only be five people in the entire village who could make fifty clones, but most people who graduated could use two or three. Half of the genin doing missions can summon five, and most jonin can do ten. Working together always makes things easier.