Great Teacher Iruka Chapter 1

AN: This took a while, I know. But, I decided that if I'm already writing a conceptual first chapter for the story y'all voted on in the end, I might as well experiment a bit. It's why it took that long.

-/-

One week after the chunin exams finale and the invasion

Two men wearing black cloaks marred with red clouds walked a simple dirt path towards Konoha.

One was taller than the other, and carried what appeared to be a gigantic sword wrapped in bandages on his back. The shorter one had red eyes with three dots surrounding his pupil. Both of them had painted nails.

“So, Itachi, tell me about your home. Looking forward to being back? Hahaha, maybe they missed you!” the taller one asked.

The now named Itachi hummed thoughtfully.

“It has been a while,” he remarked.

“Killing your whole clan doesn't give you a reason to visit a lot, does it?” Kisame joked.

“No, I guess it doesn't.”

“Well, ain't you just a bright ray of sunshine today. Shouldn't seeing the village in shambles after that invasion Orochimaru planned be a cheerful thought? Why is it that your steps are slower today than they usually are?”

Itachi paused in his thinking and considered his partner's words. He closed his eyes. That was the issue with having an intelligent teammate, who was also incredibly observant, like all good ninja were. They noticed the smallest details and often came to the right conclusions. This made being a spy difficult. It was one of the reasons why pushing to come to Konoha had been a very long and arduous task. He needed to drop in and check on Sasuke, but in the context of looking for the jinchuriki this wasn’t necessarily the best decision.

“Despite the fact that their best forces are probably quite busy at the moment, this is not a task that is entirely non-dangerous,” he eventually deflected.

“Eeeeh?!” Kisame exclaimed thoughtfully. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you afraid before.  what's gotten into you?”

“Not afraid,” Itachi corrected. “Wary.”

“I don't think the third Hokage is in any state to be a problem, he’s hospitalised, and according to our Intel Jiraya already left.”

“Those two figures only make up two thirds of the danger.”

“You telling me Konoha is hiding a third Kage tier ninja in their sleeve?” Kisame scoffed. “What are they feeding their ninja? If Kiri had access to so many talents…”

“Maybe you did. You just killed them in your  graduation exam,” Itachi said dully.

Kisame laughed, his gills flaring as he did so. “Cracking jokes now? You're more destabilised than I thought. It's making me worried,” he said with narrowed eyes, a hand instinctively went up to the handle of his sword, Samehada. “Who is this mysterious third? You should know, your defection isn’t that long ago. Any reason why you didn't tell me about it yet? We're almost there.”

“I don't remember him being an S-rank ninja by sheer combat potential,”Itachi hedged. “Although, it has been a few years and last I heard he was teaching at the Academy so he should have had enough time to train.”

“An academy teacher?” Kisame asked, clearly surprised. “Is he a strategist or something? Those are annoying to deal with, organising all those little shits into a coherent offensive. What was that clan again? Nara?”

“He’s an orphan, clanless,” Itachi replied.

“You're not really selling his threat level, explain,” Kisame demanded. “You know information is everything.”

“How do you classify someone’s threat level based on their intelligence?” Itachi asked.

“How dangerous is someone who can deduce from the way the wind is blowing, and a side-ways glance, that the Kumo ambassador is actually an instigator who will try to kidnap the Hyuuga heir? How do you classify the threat level of someone who can simply, by walking down the street and glancing into one's eyes, determine that one is planning on killing one's own clan?”

“Are you implying that this person knew what you were going to do that night? And they didn't try to stop you, or warn anyone?” Kisama asked, surprised with an open mouth. “I thought you tree huggers were all rainbows and hugs. This sounds like treason.”

“He’s always had his own plans. For the village. For the future. Just sitting there with all knowing eyes, tauntingly,” Itachi whispered, remembering.

“What's his name? Bingo book?”

“He’s not in it. Not because he's never done anything to merit it, but because I imagine that it simply wasn't part of his plans. Plans... I just hope that our visit will be too unexpected. How could he know? But on the other hand, he's always known.”

“Damn itachi, never heard you speak that way about someone. One could always say that you admire this person,” Kisame asked with a lilt in his voice. Then he laughed. “I never thought I'd see the day.”

“Admiration is too strong a word,” Itachi said. Or too weak a word, he thought to himself. “He is a potential problem. That is all.”

“Anyone capable of being a potential problem for people like us, has to be a real menace. Come on, tell me more,” Kisame whined.

“His name is Umino Iruka, and from the brief time that I knew him and of him, I always got the impression that I should keep a distance lest I be used as a pawn in whatever game he was playing,” Itachi began.

-/-

Six years before the chunin exams and the invasion

Iruka lashed out with a kick directed at the head of his silver-haired opponent, which the man blocked with one arm only to retaliate with a kunai in his other one.

The brown-haired man deflected the stab at his eye and spun in a circle perpendicular to the ground lashing out with his other leg.

The jonin he was sparring against, rather than continuing the exchange, jumped backwards, threw the kunai at Iruka and started initiating hand seals at a blistering pace.

One of the things that the reincarnated individual had noted after he'd been reborn into this war torn world was the fact that ninja did not actually scream out the names of the attacks. However, the cone of black lightning that escaped Kakashi's mouth, covered as it was with his stupid face mask didn't need to be named.

It was false Darkness, and used by a jonin of Kakashi’s calibre the attack travelled faster than maybe a real bolt of lightning would have. It swallowed up the entirety of Iruka’s vision.

The newly promoted jonin wasn't particularly afraid and held up a palm to face the incoming attack. A flex of his internal energies, a memory of a fire burning higher than a skyscraper. A shield of pure heat, completely invisible, encased the incoming lightning and reduced it to nothing but a weak fizzle which dispersed in the air. Naturally when the attack dissipated against the defence and Iruka once again regained visuals of the now scorched area in front of him, Kakashi was gone.

As expected of an ANBU member it was impossible to locate the man through the use of one’s normal senses. Neither did his chakra-sensing give him an indication of the man’s location.

It was here that his knowledge of the series and the characters within it helped him make a split second decision. He gathered chakra in his right fist and in a very unninja-like-manner smashed it into the ground beneath him, releasing everything with pin-point precision and explosive power to magnify his strength.

The ground beneath his feet did not as much crumble as it exploded in a shower of rocks and gravel.

What was revealed amongst the wreckage was slightly a surprised, one-eyed ninja looking at the Iruka with some appreciation. However, that wasn't anything to get distracted by. While the punch had disrupted the incoming attack from below it also did something much more important. It disrupted Kakashi's control of the ground.

Iruka ran through three hand seals of his own and stomped his feet on the ground as Kakashi extradited himself from his unfortunate position and sprung assisted by a violent handstand out of the way just in time to avoid an earthquake that further wrecked the training ground.

Rocks crushed against stones and the ground shook, making both ninja slightly lose their footing. However as the initiator of the attack, Iruka was obviously more familiar with its effects. While Kakashi was momentarily off balance, the dark-skinned man put his hands together in another seal before swinging his arm outwards to create a gale of wind which shot in Kakashi's direction.

In what was supposed to be a strategic checkmate at this point, Iruka injected chakra into the ground again, just to prevent the other jonin from bringing up an earth wall to defend himself, while the wind gale was too widespread to truly be dodged. Kakashi's primary element was lightning which was weak against wind and likely inhibited the man from casting his own wind based defence. Similarly there was no water anywhere near and fire would only make the problem worse.

Which was of course the point where Kakashi pulled up the forehead protector covering his sharingan and put his hands together in the tiger seal.

Wind wasn't Iruka's foremost expertise, but it was still sad to see his sparring partner simply dissipate his entire attack back into the chakra threads which had formed it.

“Hey,” Kakashi said, holding up his hands, calling for a break. “You know, that was really dangerous. Are you sure you should be trying to permanently knock out a valuable sparring partner like me?”

“Please, you can take it,” Iruka said. It seemed that his combat power was around equal to that of Kakashi not using his sharingan. Above average for a jonin then. “If nothing else I got to practise my response against someone trying to come at me from the ground,” he said with a sigh letting his arms untense and fall to the sides where he shook them to get the jitters of the fight out of his body.

“Well, I guess a true Iwa-nin, could have still managed to use the earth to protect themselves,” Kakashi said as he covered up his sharingan again.

Iruka hummed thoughtfully, his earth time-out jutsu consisted of several intersecting rings of earth chakra which hit violently against each other. It wasn't his main element either, but someone would still need to be several magnitudes better than him in the area to make anything happen with those shitty building blocks he was giving them.

Their experience was obviously slightly mismatched. Kakashi had fought in a war against Iwa. Iruka hadn’t. The silder-haired jonin likely knew better.

He wondered why exactly Kakashi had accepted his sparring request. That Itachi had just recently slaughtered his clan was probably one of the reasons. The higher-ups were probably interested in checking up on the other very young and quickly promoted jonin. His offer to Kakashi for them to have a sparring match, a common thing between Leaf shinobi who wanted to exchange pointers with someone who they didn't often interact with, to secure a diversity of opponents, had likely been accepted for more than just helpful reasons. Who better to judge the mental stability of a fast-track ninja like Iruka, other than another mentally unstable fast-track ninja.

Anyway, Kakashi was here now, and it was time to ask some questions.

A black clad shinobi with an elaborate cat mask and a scabbard on their back suddenly materialised on the side of the clearing. Both jonin looked towards the new arrival, Kakashi crinkled his eye into a smile, and Iruka sighed.

It almost seemed like the arrival had been perfectly timed for Kakashi to get one match off and to then be excused so that he wouldn't have to waste more of his time.

One day, he would surpass the silver-haired jonin even with the man using the sharingan.

But that day wasn't today.

“Jonin Iruka,” the ANBU said politely.

Iruka’s new rank had changed a lot in his social interactions with other ninja and villagers.

“The Hokage is ready for your meeting.” The implication was that Iruka was to drop anything and run there.

Which, of course, made sense. After all, the Hokage was the most busy person in the Village so other people had to conform their schedules to him, not the other way around.

Iruka nodded, “Let's go.” Iruka said more to himself than anyone else as he formed a hand-seal. He glanced at Kakashi who had already taken out a book and was reading it while slouching non-threateningly. “Thanks for the match senpai, I'll consider it a win that I forced you to take off the headband,” he said, exchanging a nod with the man and then disappeared.

He felt the cat ANBU struggle to keep up with his initial burst, and catch up once he started jumping across roof-tops, the shunshin having brought him from the training grounds, to the city.

The feeling of wind against his hair and face was exhilarating as always, and the only reason he restrained himself from doing the usual flips and turns that he liked to do when travelling at such high speeds was to maintain a certain level of professionalism.

After all, he didn't doubt that Cat would be informing their glorious leader about their impression of him through hand signs while Iruka talked to the man.

It wasn't often that a newly minted jonin, especially one without a clan, went to the Hokage for a strategic proposal that sought to restructure the way that the village was being handled.

They arrived at the tower quickly, the large building jotting into the skyline of the village next to the Hokage Mountain. The tallest building, made so as to offer the Hokage an unparalleled oversight over their domain. Also, well, since the building functioned as a mission centre it was important that all visitors, civilians, etc. knew exactly where to find it. Which was easiest to accomplish by simply making it the biggest fucking thing around.

Iruka wasn't yet at the level where he could enter the Hokage’s office through the window so he instead opted for the front door, from where he walked all the stairs to the top getting respectful nods from the chunin and other administrative workers present. It also gave the hidden ANBU enough time to screen him.

The door leading into the Hokage office was a massive thing made of heavy wood and most likely more than just one invisible seal. It was hard  for Iruka to feel the seals however, since the whole building was so absolutely full of them.

An, “Enter!” resounded from within the office just as Iruka was about to raise his hand to knock, the ANBU having not given him any indication that he should enter without doing so.

The jonin entered his boss's office.

-/-

The Hokage was sitting behind the desk dressed in his ceremonial robes and a large white-red hat with the kanji for fire on it. He was puffing on a pipe and lightly holding up a piece of paperwork which he seems to be glancing through, not at all focusing on the door.

The man looked, for all intents and purposes, like a grandfather working way past the age of retirement.

However, naturally the man was somewhat the most dangerous person in the village, Iruka felt ANBU surrounding him, one in each corner of the room. Quite frankly, if anyone was to attack it would more likely be the Hokage defending his bodyguards than the other way around. The gesture was slightly redundant.

“Hokage-sama,” Iruka said with a respectful bow before standing to attention with his hands behind his back.

He wasn’t necessarily a fan of being a part of what was essentially a military dictatorship, but if nothing else the Sarutobi was someone he could respect for the most part. He was probably the only one with the knowledge that the man had left his former student go when he'd been caught with his hands deep in some orphan’s guts and experimenting on Konoha citizens, but everyone made mistakes. It’s not like the man could have known that Orochimaru’s escape would inadvertently cause the fourth great shinobi war.

“Iruka,” the old man said lightly and put down the paper.

With his chakra enhanced eye-sight the jonin could just make out that the paper had something to do with the academy. Maybe the old man was about to seriously consider his proposal?

“How are you doing, I've seen in your files that you've been going on a lot of A rank and B rang solo missions recently. You usually work with a team, how come?”

“I think I've already proven throughout my career that I have an unparalleled ability to work with any random assortment of Konoha ninja, I thought however in regards to the proposal that I’m making today, that I should prove other areas of competency as well,”Iruka said calmly.

“Well, you did a good job. Not a single failure. All the clients were satisfied with your professionalism. It seems a bit contrary to me however that you would showcase the value you bring to the village by being an active operator right before asking to be taken off the roster.” A small cloud of  smoke escaped into the air, blurring out the Hokage which were hewn into the mountain behind the window of the leader’s office.

“It is because I am so effective, that I would have so much to teach,”Iruka retorted.

“It is  not the first time that a newly promoted jonin has decided to become a teacher, however they usually try to go for a genin team instead of trying to take control of the entire academy. Can you please explain your reasoning to me again? Are you unsatisfied in some way?” the Hokage asked.

Iruka could honestly say that he wasn't too dissatisfied. it was just that he was under an immense amount of pressure, and while the solo missions were helping him grow his own skill, the future disasters would need a team effort to defend against.

“I am a competent ninja, I feel,” Iruka said. “I would dare even say that I am a good ninja. However, I am only one ninja. I want to contribute to Konoha. It is my home. That's why I've rushed through the ranks, become strong and brought in a lot of revenue, however it has been in the last months and years that I have started realising that no matter how strong I become, my contributions will always be minimal to those of a group of my comrades. I remember my time in the academy fondly. We were occasionally taught by crippled war veterans and chunin unfit for combat in some way or the other. However, despite how much it pains me to speak this, I love my comrades,” he said, beginning to tread on dangerous ground. “However, if one is too crippled to continue active duty, it does beg the question of how competent one actually is to teach the future generation. What are they going to teach them, how to become crippled veterans themselves? The truth of the matter that I have identified is that no shinobi truly dreams of teaching at the academy. They all dream of going out solo S rank missions, saving princesses and destroying rival nations. The issue is this doesn't make teaching the next generation a prestigious job, which then means that the people who do it or perhaps not the ones who would be best qualified to do so. I recently sparred with Kakashi, the student of the fourth Hokage, the student of Jiraiya, the student of you, the student of Tobirama.  The man is an amazing ninja, an elite jonin, son of his father. However, he is completely unfit for teaching. I would say that while I'm not as good a ninja as Kakashi, I'm still decent enough that me teaching the next generation would be enriching.”

“I see, but wouldn't taking over an entire class be too much of a jump at first? Perhaps a short stint as a jonin sensei would be smarter. See if this is something that you truly want to do?” the Hokage prompted.

“After long consideration, I have decided that this is in fact the best way I could serve the village,” Iruka said. "As I mentioned, serving solo missions and team missions has a certain amount of value, however as we are currently in a time of mostly peace. If I transfer my time to teaching the next generation of ninja something valuable, I will have contributed more. I seem to be the only jonin in fact interested in teaching at the Academy from what I know.”

“The issue also is, as you must know, that we don’t want to teach academy students too well,” the Hokage explained, leaning back in his chair and looking around the room, as if looking for an answer in the pictures of his predecessor's. “we don't want to equip people who might still fail the exams and go on to become civilians with training that is too good.”

“That is naturally a trade-off,” Iruka said. “After all, for every elective we offer in the academy, for example teaching students fit for the role some simple medical chakra conversion and jutsu, which will catapult them in the career much earlier, gaining us better healers, there will be one civilian who will take what little knowledge they got from the academy to undercut our market of medical professionals.”

“Exactly, I saw in your proposal that you would offer electives such as elemental transformation, genjutsu, sealing arts, medical jutsu. These are all things that we don't necessarily want to become too common. That is why we usually wait until after graduation.”

“But what if we did a loyalty screening before, what if we only took the ones who are likely to pass anyway? While just increasing the quality of instruction for the others, but not teaching them better skills. There is a year currently in the academy composed of 12, no 11 clan members. There hasn't been a single Inuzuka, Nara, Yamanaka, I could go on, who went to the academy and didn't manage to graduate. Would it really hurt so much if we simply took these clan members and gave them some more help along the way?”

“It is already hard to balance the civilian and the clan shinobi population and who feels they're being disadvantaged with what,” the old man said. “You're not asking me for something easy here.”

“We could also identify some civilian students with talent, someone who we can expect to be loyal, especially if they're being guided along by a jonin who knows how to instil certain values in his pupils. There's at least one civilian with a bright future in every batch of academy students. I'm sure that with the proper testing we could identify that person and if there's  real worry about the loyalty, then we could get Yamanaka to test them even further.

"In terms of publicity, we would have to push that civilian forward quite a lot so we do not bring attention to how the clan members outweigh them by so much," the Hokage mused.

“If I dare be bold, Hokage-sama. It almost sounds like you agree, and are now simply looking for strategies on how to make this as successful as possible.”

“Your idea of offering more personalised teaching in the academy and taking special students under the wing does please me in a sense especially in light of the recent events. It seems like we cannot rely on simply graduating people early to improve and to speed up their progress after all.”

The two men took a moment of silence for the recent fall of the Uchiha.

“You are a competent ninja, and the first jonin that has ever suggested they teach at the academy without having first been disgraced or wounded in some way.” The village leader blew a lot of smoke into the air. “The suggestion has merit, however teaching is more difficult than you probably imagine. I'm unsure how ready you are for the position.”

“There is no way to know how ready one is, without doing what one is not ready for. Similarly there is no way to become ready, than to do the thing that you were trying to become ready for,” Iruka said.

“I urge you to make this decision calmly, this suggestion is something that if I see providing a lot of merit to our future generations of ninja, will become a job that I will not let you simply escape. You will still be a ninja under my command, it's just that your job will be different.”

“I'm ready to serve the village, Hokage-sama.”

“All right then, I'm excited for what results you'll show me,” the man eventually said.

“Four years, that's all I ask for, four years is enough for me to bring one batch from the academy to the graduation and then we will see the validity of my ideas.”

Sarutobi looked at him  with calm eyes before eventually nodding. “You've never given me a reason to doubt you, so I won't start now,” he said. “Permission granted. Your contact point will be Marako, the current head of the academy. You will take over one class at first.”

Iruka nodded. “I already know which one.”

-/-

15 years before the chunin exams and the invasion; 3 years before the Kyuubi attack

Training ground 6 was the training ground directly adjacent to the Ninja Academy of Konoha. One wouldn't necessarily expect anyone to be there at this time of year, using the training dummies and the red painted targets for throwing practice. However, the sounds of fists hitting wood nevertheless resounded through the clearing despite the holiday.

Unlike most other training fields, the field still had some green grass growing on the brown ground. Ninja, especially those from Konoha generally burned down whatever grass they found.

Academy students didn't have that capacity yet.

Thunk, thunk, thunk.

A young boy, about seven years of age was punching at a post, slowly methodically going through punches, kicks and dodges against imaginary opponents. Light dark skin, longish hair wrapped into an upwards pointing ponytail and the calm expression on his face.

Umino Iruka. The would-be saviour of the world.

Perhaps if he'd been reincarnated into another world not in imminent danger of planetary destruction by an angry rabbit goddess, he wouldn’t have had to become a combatant.

He could have lived a relaxing life as a tea merchant, travelling the lands and sampling different kinds of tea.

However, he was unfortunate enough to have been born in the world of Naruto. A magical place, which had in the end only been saved by a stupid bullshittery and the perfect set of coincidences that had led its titular main character to save the world, get the job and get the wife.

The issue was that the real Iruka, the one whose body he was now in had been integral into making sure that Naruto grew up to be someone well-adjusted and willing to save this world which meant that and someone who didn't want to die or we put into a permanent genjutsu or whatever the fuck, Iruka now had the responsibility of heightening the chances of certain events occurring and certain people being strong enough.

In the future this would mean that he would perhaps try to take over the academy instructor position for Naruto's year, reach jonin and guide other promising youths  towards a promising future, thus increasing their contribution in the fourth Shinobi war.

For the moment however, he himself was just an academy brat, which meant that the only thing he could do to affect his survival chances, and the survival chances of the world in the future, right now, was to train his ass off.

Iruka wanted to scream at the unfairness of it all, but decided that instead his anger would be better spent in helping him continue to punch the wooden post.

Life was unfair, and sometimes, one had the grind all of the way to fix someone else's mess. That was just how it is.

He wasn’t nearly enough of a shit to simply become a ninja and live hedonistically until the end of the world, which left him with only one recourse.

He had to save it.

-/-

AN: It's the first time I really made a first chapter with three different time periods and perspectives. Going from future to past to start the story. Not quite sure how I like it, but I learned somethings writing it. Next poll is going to be on which perspective interlude we are going to get for the pokemon story. Then I will poll a conceptual first chapter first. If enough people like this story I might also include an option to vote for a second chapter of this. Peace out.