As it turned out Kurenai hadn't been lying when she said D-ranks would be like chores. In fact they weren't just like chores they were chores. Oddly enough Haruka-chan didn't seem to bothered by that. She actually seemed kind of happy. Maybe she had figured out the secret training in it. Hinata and Sasuke certainly hadn't. All they were doing was pulling weeds.
"How can you enjoy this Haruka?"
"Well it's a lot like what I have to do when I'm gardening, so it's not much different from what I do for fun." Well that explained it at least. Hinata couldn't bring herself to enjoy this. She had helped Haruka-chan garden before but normally there was no old woman glaring at the redhead for the sin of being alive. Maybe that's the secret training, learning how to deal with clients who don't like them and who they, in turn, don't like.
They finished about an hour later, their hands dirty and their knees sore from squatting for so long. Kurenai-sensei hadn't helped them at all, instead just watching over them while relaxing. Maybe that is supposed to represent the fact that their Jonin-sensei won't always be there to help them. Hinata had to tell herself that there's really a meaning to this or she might have gone insane.
"Good job team, now we'll go report back to the Mission Desk. Then we'll get back to training." They only had to report directly to the Hokage for C-rank missions that end up involving combat or any higher ranked mission. Otherwise the Mission Desk would take care of things for them.
It was a simple affair, all they had to do was grab a form that was made specifically for D-ranks. Fill it out and then turn it in to the report box. The Mission Desk would do the rest.
They returned to training ground 14 and Kurenai spoke. "Alright as promised it's time for the free for all. Anything goes today, but know that in the future I will sometimes limit you to only two ninja arts of my choosing. Go at each other with the intent to kill, I will stop any killing blows so do not worry. If I have to stop a blow for you then you're out and have lost. Begin."
Haruka flies through a series of hand signs casting a genjutsu on her two teammates. "Magen: Narakumi no Jutsu." She doesn't wait to see if the Genjutsu worked or not, launching straight towards Hinata. She performs a spin kick only for her foot to meet chakra metal as Hinata raises her arm, Byakugan blazing.
"Haruka-chan I've fought you enough times to know you always start with a genjutsu. It's why I always activate my Byakugan as soon as a fight starts." Haruka knew this fact well, her specialty is completed countered by Hina-chan and it would be by Sasuke as well once he unlocks his Sharingan. She'd have to ask Kurenai-sensei if she knew of a way around that. Haruka feels a heat quickly approaching from behind and dodges to the side. The fireball was now on a collision course with Hina-chan. The white eyed girl dodges out of the way only a second slower than her girlfriend.
She's met by the ocular prowess of the Uchiha. "When did you unlock your Sharingan?"
"Yesterday right before Kurenai-sensei stabbed me. Even with me being able to see everything in slow motion I couldn't react fast enough." He says lashing out with a punch that she deflects.
Kurenai smiles, that was part of the reason she had hurt him as badly as she had. He had a tool and the sooner he learns to use it the better. She can't wait to force him to learn how to use Genjutsu. He's fortunate enough to be able to cast Genjutsu through eye contact and she's not letting that go to waste. Really she's going to make all of them learn. Just as how Kushina-sensei made her learn to use Kenjutsu.
"Then do you realize you're in my range of divination?" She lashes forward with the Hakke Rokujūyon Shō. But she knows it's failing as she can feel none of her hits connecting. She couldn't manage to complete it, as she feels her girlfriends foot launching her to the side. She flips and slides back, tossing a volley of kunai at the other two. She manages to nick them both, they had become distracted by each other. Good all her kunai were laced in her poison, nothing lethal, simply a paralytic. She never brought the lethally poisoned kunai to spars. She sees Sasuke lock up just on time to get ax kicked by Haruka. His head goes crashing into the ground. And then he is gone, replaced by a log. She whirls as she spots him behind her, her Jyuken strike connects with his shoulder.
He felt his arm go limp and cursed. He can't cast Jutsu like this. And his Taijutsu is severely limited as well. He sluggishly attempts to retreat only to be met by foot to his temple. Or he would have had Kurenai-sensei not blocked it. "Sasuke you're out, you get to hang back with me while the other two finish." With that she grabs him and a feeling of nausea washes over him. "That's the Shunshin no Jutsu taking effect, it's a little had to stomach at first. By the way congratulations on activating your blood line. It's a powerful tool but try not to end up becoming overly reliant on it. Also it's okay to copy your allies techniques but you should ask for permission before using them, unless it's life or death. It may not seem like much but it shows them you respect them and their hard work. Additionally anything you copy you should train with because while you'll learn the jutsu, mastery still takes effort."
It's why Hatake Kakashi was the premier Ninjutsu specialist in Konoha. The man had learned hundreds of jutsu, it was mere hyperbole when people said he knew over a thousand, and more importantly he had mastered each and every one of them. It's why he is currently one of three active duty S-rank nin in the service of Konoha. The other two were Gai and Jiraiya. Kurenai was almost at that point herself, She just had to push her Kenjutsu a little farther and she'd be there. She'd likely make it within the next year. Of course that's just how it is with elite jonin, they were all either S-rank or borderline S-rank.
She turned her attention back to the two girls who had been fighting for the past minute. Neither were showing signs of fatigue, that's good. Fights made a bit of wave in terms of length and strength of the fighters. Genin and jonin tended to have short fights, while chunin and S-rank and above tended to have longer fights. For genin it's because they are so sloppy that their opponents are able to capitalize on their mistakes because they make so many of them. As for jonin it's the opposite, their opponents tend to be so skilled that as soon as they slip up they're dead. For chunin fights are longer because they are good enough to not make as many mistakes but they aren't good enough to capitalize on the slightest thing. S-rank nin almost never made mistakes and neither did their opponents. Well all this is assuming they are fighting people of roughly equal skill. She had gotten derailed from the fight but it's a good thing these girls have the stamina to fight longer fights. It will help them in the long run.
Haruka-chan leaps backwards out of the way of her Jyuken strike. Hinata couldn't give Haruka-chan time to sit still, if she used her nature transformation then Hinata might just lose. It's not like she has problems losing to the redhead but she's been waiting for hours to talk to Kurenai-sensei and losing will only put it off more. She dashes forward and imitating her girlfriends favorite move she performs a spin kick. Haruka-chan blocks with her hand. Hinata smirks in victory. The kick is blocked but Haruka-chan's hand falls limp.
"Hina-chan when did you learn to use the Jyuken with something other than your fingers?"
"I've been practicing it for a while now, I've always thought it silly that we don't use our legs in combat at all."
The favor of the fight quickly goes to Hinata as now that Haruka can't use her hand she was having a harder time of deflecting the strikes she couldn't dodge. She lunges forward with a strike aimed at Haruka's chest only to feel a foot connecting with her chin. She falls over unconscious. When she awakens next it's to the sight of her concerned girlfriend. "Sorry Hina-chan didn't mean to kick you that hard."
"It's okay Haruka-chan. But last I checked you weren't that fast." It's true, Haruka hadn't been moving that fast during the entirety of the fight.
"Ah well I figured if I intentionally moved slower after you saw me using the nature transformation so much in the past two days you might have forgotten my true speed. Guess it worked." Hinata hadn't been expecting that but the redhead was absolutely right. She'd have to work on keeping track of these things better.
Kurenai finally speaks, having walked up when she was knocked out. "So Haruka will get to go first. Hinata you have an hour break, Sasuke you have two. As stated earlier I recommend you two practice working together while I'm with Haruka." Haruka-chan smiles at the white eyed girl.
"I'll talk to you later Hina-chan. Just you wait before you know it I'll be winning all our spars." Haruka was excited, it was the first spar she had won against Hina-chan in a month.
"Talk to you soon." Hinata gives her girlfriend a quick peck and walks off with Sasuke in tow. Before she can leave Kurenai calls out.
"If you two want to practice together I'd recommend heading to training ground 23 it's typically empty at this time of day." The two nod and walk off. She turns to Haruka and says. "Alright, you're in luck, because you have the same specialty as me you actually get to practice it 4 times a week instead of three. But we aren't going to work on your genjutsu today. I'm going to be focusing on your ninjutsu instead. Do you know your affinity?"
"No I couldn't find any chakra paper." Well she couldn't find anywhere that would sell it to her.
"That's okay, I have some with me today." She gets out a small square sheet of paper. "Just channel some chakra into it. If the paper crinkles then you have raiton, if it's wet you have suiton, if it burns you have katon, if it crumbles you have doton, and finally if it splits you have futon."
Haruka takes hold of the paper and channels chakra into it. It splits into five pieces. One was burned, one was wet, one crinkled, one crumbled. The last one seemed normal. Kurenai had never heard of someone with all five elements. Maybe she should have just let Kakashi have the redhead. Well it's not like he'll say no if she asks him to help, he cares about her almost as much as she does. She looks at the result again, for her to have all five elements is insane. Wait, shouldn't there be four pieces and not five? "Haruka can I see that normal piece?" Haruka shrugs and hands it to her.
Kurenai gasps as the paper grows wet and then crumbles. She hadn't been channeling chakra. It's like the piece just sucked it out of her! She gets out another sheet. "Do it again for me." Haruka looks at her in confusion but does so again. The same result as last time. "Alright hand me the plain one again." Kurenai was careful with her chakra this time, making sure absolutely none was leaking out. She carefully grabs it again and once more it gets wet and crumbles. She felt it for sure that time, it's really sucking out her chakra.
"Sensei why are you putting your chakra in that small piece?"
"I'm not. Haruka, I think you have some kind of kekkei genkai." She had never heard of a kekkei genkai that lets someone suck chakra out of other people, or maybe even jutsu, before. But that's exactly what the paper was doing. She'd have to figure out a way to teach the girl to use this.
"Really, that's so cool, what do you think it does?"
"If I had to guess I'd say it sucks chakra out from others."
"Why do you think that?"
"Because the blank piece took my chakra without me channeling any, it even did so when I was holding it back."
"Oh, that's cool."
"So in light of our new discoveries we'll have you spend the first thirty minutes of today's one on one doing suiton training. Just grab a leaf off a tree." The girl runs to the nearest tree and snatches a leaf. "Your goal is two fold, first is to suck water out of the leave then to make it into a perfect sphere balanced on your finger. If you want to advance quickly in this you should probably do it outside of our regular training as well. Then for the latter half of the one on one we'll be trying to figure out ways for you to use your kekkei genkai, don't feel bad if you can't get it today or even in a few weeks."
Thirty minutes later Haruka had made practically no progress on drawing water out of the leaf, she was prepared to continue but Kurenai-sensei had alerted her it was time to switch focus. "Alright, I don't think either of us know how to activate your kekkei genkai, so for now I want you to try meditating. Maybe if you try to find your chakra like you did when you were in the academy it will work. Unfortunately Konoha only has doujutsu so we're unfamiliar with how to activate elemental or enhancement kekkei genkai. We can assume for now yours is elemental since the chakra paper was able to find it."
Haruka can somewhat feel her heart racing. The last time she did this she saw the demon and it had terrified her. Still she wants to know so despite her fears, she sits down in the lotus position and focuses on finding her chakra. It doesn't take long this time since she's grown so used to it. She opens her eyes and finds herself once more in the black space illuminated only by the two chakra sources. She sees her own blue one. It's grown bigger, and seems to have solidified, was that because she has better chakra control?
She looks at it for several moments, there doesn't seem to be anything special about it. She walks up to it and touches it. No she's certain, her chakra is normal. She turns around and looks towards the other source. It was still three different colors. Interestingly it seems like the red has receded a bit and it's more white and yellow now. With a great amount of hesitation she walks towards it. It doesn't seem to react this time. Against her better judgment she places her hand on the yellow part. It's familiar, this is made of the same thing as that nature energy. But it's not what she's looking for. She places her hand on the white part and with a yelp she finds herself being drawn in. She blacks out.