(December, year 54 AK)
"That matter aside." Hiruzen continued in a more serious tone after praising the three Genins, "Your C-rank mission was a failure, since you didn't complete the mission objective and abandoned the mission altogether." Hiruzens said in a serious tone, but although his words were implying that he was judging them for abandoning the mission, there wasn't any real heat behind it.
After a brief pause, Hiruzen continued, "Still, abandoning this mission under such conditions was a right call, well done, Shisui." Hiruzen said with a softened tone.
"Thank you, Lord Hokage." Shisui replied respectfully.
"Now let's see what all the fuss is all about." Hiruzen said and opened the wooden container that Shisui brought along.
"Hm, some kind of an ancient text?" Hiruzen commented as he lifted a rock from the container about the size of a football with the rough and uneven shape resembling a pyramid and something being carved on its flat surfaces.
After a few more seconds of examining the rock, Hiruzen put it back into the box with an uninterested and dismissive expression, as he said, "It's a good thing that you have brough this thing along. Taking it right from under the Stone village's nose, it will serve as a lesson to anyone who tries to mislead us or to withhold important information when issuing missions."
Hiruzen glanced at the rock again and said, "Although on its own this rock doesn't have much value. I don't think we will be able to negotiate with The Earth Temple for much value for it, but at least it is worth something. If we could squeeze The Earth Temple for some monetary value for it, your squad will naturally receive a portion of it as well. Although the negotiation should wait for a while, until Iwagakure calms down a bit after losing a Jonin-led squad trying to retrieve this rock."
Then Hiruzen looked again at Itachi and other Genins with a thoughtful expression for a few seconds before looking back at Shisui, then he said, "You did well this time, and although your mission had escalated to A-rank, you still failed your original mission. We will do it like this, your original C-rank mission will be recorded as a failure. Also, the new A-rank mission will be recorded as completed by your squad, although there will be no monetary reward for it as a repercussion for failing the original mission. Are there any objections?"
"No objections, Lord Hokage." Shisui replied immediately.
'No payment? You sly old fox! Willing to put a worthless A-rank mission on our record easily, but unwilling to pay accordingly for the A-rank? And we only will get something out of it when the village would be able to sell this junk to The Earth Temple... What a convenient turn of events for him, huh...' Yuta thought with reluctance, after all he spent quite a lot of expensive ninja tools during the whole ordeal.
"Good. If that's all, you may leave now." Hiruzen said and Shisui led his team outside the Hokage Tower, it was already quite dark outside.
As they stopped outside, Shisui turned around and said in a cheerful tone, "Well, congratulations on completing your first A-rank mission. I would've treated you to a nice diner, but it seems that you would rather go rest, so I'll treat you some another time. Let's meet at our usual place in three days."
As he said that, he immediately left, Yuta also left right after that, already feeling how the exhaustion was catching up to him, and all he wanted is to fall into his bed and to sleep for 24 hours straight.
But, as he entered his small apartments, he suppressed the exhaustion with great effort and had a good long shower first, before finally collapsing into his bed and falling asleep even before his face touched the pillow.
He woke up quite late the next day, after 11am, and after washing his mission clothes and dressing in a casual set of clothes he went out and stooped by Ichiraku Ramen and eaten two big bowls of pork ramen in a record time. After going on food pills for days and with all the physical exhaustion he endured, his appetite was quite big.
Then he went and spent a sizable chunk of money on replenishing his ninja tools, and then he went to his favorite training grounds by the lake.
It was quite a while since Yuta stopped spending so much time on the water-walking exercise, since he wasn't improving by doing it anymore, so he didn't really need the lake that much anymore, but it become a habit to always occupy this remote small training grounds.
Here Yuta had most of his meetings with Shisui, and here Shisui once confronted him pressuring him with his Mangekyo Sharingan before finally deciding that he could fully trust Yuta. Remembering that incident, Yuta was genuinely unsure if he could reproduce that outcome again if he were to time-travel too far into the past again.
Another big plus for choosing this exact training grounds – it was very rarely occupied by someone else, so almost always Yuta has this place all for himself. And since Yuta started going on C-rank missions regularly, and some of them sometimes even escalated to B-rank, he wasn't so short on money as before, and he even considered to go to the Hokage Tower and to reserve this training grounds for his own private use.
Then Yuta saw the prices for the full-time reservations for the village's training grounds, even this small and remote, and he thought better of it and changed his mind. That was too much money for something he already has almost exclusively to himself anyway since there was very rarely anyone here but him.
As Yuta started his usual warming up and training routine, he felt his muscles was quite heavy and sore, but after a long night sleep he was already feeling much better, and soon enough his muscles were properly warmed up and didn't felt as heavy as before.
Going through the exercises, Yuta's mind naturally gravitated towards the events that transpired during the mission. He thought 'That Jonin, Keisuke was his name? He was quite tuff, huh... If not for Hikari's unexpected ability, there is no way we would've be able to defeat him back then...'
'Keisuke was an experienced veteran shinobi with a vast chakra reserves and a very good proficiency with Earth Style ninjutsu as well as taijutsu. A perfect all-rounder with solid defense and offense and no weaknesses. Even my genjutsu was not enough to create a decent opening for my teammates back then, only after he was severely wounded and the fight was already as good as over for him, only then I was able to breach his mental defenses with my genjutsu effectively enough to finish him off...'
'Are all Jonins this strong and resistant to genjutsu? It is a harsh reality-check for me if they are. I need to strengthen and further develop my genjutsu if I ever wish to surpass the Jonin level... But I only completed my last time-loop training recently and I don't think I can push my genjutsu much further with my current chakra strength. Both my genjutsu techniques, Shadow Cloak and Shadow Chains, are already on the very edge of my capabilities in terms of chakra control, its complexity and the mental strain I have to handle...'
'For my subtle type genjutsu, Shadow Cloak, I have to use extremely complex and subtle chakra control, the bottleneck here is the complexity of the jutsu and the mental calculations and mental strain it comes with. I guess I could push it further in a time-loop, but without further increasing my total chakra strength, the improvement rate is quite slow and the heights I could reach is also limited by my total chakra strength, since it also limits how much complexity of a jutsu I could possibly handle.'
'And on the other hand, for my forceful type genjutsu, Shadow Chains, I have to use and control a huge amount of chakra all at once. It is a completely different type of chakra control, and this one relies on the total chakra strength of a ninja. I can't develop this type of chakra control further than my total chakra strength allows. By analogy, no matter how good the person could fine-control all their muscles, if their muscles are not strong enough to begin with - the person won't be able to lift a heavy rock even if they control their muscles perfectly, it is the same with this forceful and chakra-heavy type of genjutsu.'
'Now that I think about it, I'm a complete opposite of Naruto. Naruto had monstrous amounts of chakra from the start, and for the most part of the original story he was learning how to master and use it all.'
'I'm, on the other hand, have unlimited time for training, developing and perfecting my jutsus, and since I spend a lot of time doing just that, my bottleneck is always being my total chakra strength, and my jutsus is always developed, honed and perfected to the absolute edge of what my chakra strength allows.'
'Of course, I could push my chakra development a lot further by just shutting myself inside yet another time-loop, but this would come with a debuff as well – energies imbalance... I need to let my body to grow a few more years first, so my physical energy will grow as well, strong enough to handle another significant increase of my spiritual energy.'
'With that, there is no sure and fast way in sight to become stronger right now, as my body is still too young and weak to handle another significant level-up of my chakra. Not that I'm in a hurry, though. It is still a year or two before the Uchiha clan's crisis events, assuming it all will develop as I think it would, and not that I could participate directly in those events anyway. And there are about nine years before the canon events start, I'll be seventeen at that time, but that, of course, if the canon events will even start properly with how many changes I'm introducing to the timeline...'
...
'Hm, it is possible that I already fucked the main storyline of this world beyond repair... Shisui won't die, Itachi won't slaughter his clan, and that means that Sasuke's storyline is completely broken now...' Yuta thought as he stopped in the middle of the exercise.
But then, after just a brief pause, Yuta resumed his exercise as he thought, 'Well, no matter, the whole storyline could go sideways for all I care. If it somehow becomes an unsolvable problem later on, then the future me will handle it, one way or another...'
--- AN ---
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