The cliff face threw a strip of shade over the training ground, and Team Eleven had claimed every inch of it.
Raizen lay flat on his back with his arms spread, staring up at a sky painted in oranges and violet streaks, clouds drifting like lazy ships over the village. Beside him, Reina sat slumped with her knees drawn up, and Samui leaned against the rock, eyes half-lidded, sipping from a canteen like an old woman tired of everybody's nonsense.
They'd just survived another "light" afternoon session with Raitaro.
"This training is killing me," Reina groaned.
She let herself fall back beside Raizen, blond hair fanning out over the stone.
"I wake up sore, go to sleep sore, and in between we get punched, kicked, thrown, and told to 'run it again.'" She flicked a pebble away with her thumb. "Since when did my life become so monotonous?"
Raizen understood. Every muscle in his body buzzed with that exhausted ache that sat right on the edge between pain and… progress.
He flexed his hand, watching the faint tremor in his fingers.
His body had changed. He could feel it. Strikes landing heavier. Footwork less sloppy. Gaps in his style—places where he used to panic or overthink—were slowly being patched over with repetition and bruises. His stamina had jumped so much that "end of the day Raizen" now felt like "midday Raizen" from a month ago.
This should've been expected, he thought, eyes tracing the ring of mountains around Kumo. In the original Naruto, the Cloud always looked like the most physically built village. All this conditioning… it's just what Kumo looks like when you're living in it instead of watching it.
He glanced at his teammates.
"Yeah," he admitted, pushing himself up onto his elbows, "this training is brutal. But it's worth it. By the time we're done, we're going to be so far ahead of other genin physically that nobody's going to want to test us up close. And if our chakra control keeps up with our bodies… everything we stack on top later is going to be easier. Stronger foundation, stronger skills."
Reina leaned back on her hands and tilted her head toward the sun.
For a moment, the light caught her perfectly—green eyes glinting, blonde hair lit up like a halo. She looked less like an angry academy tyrant and more like one of those Kumo recruitment posters.
"I guess you're right, nerd," she muttered.
He accepted the title without protest.
"But," she added, "I still wish we could change it up. You know—one day without feeling like I'm going to die?"
Samui cracked an eye open.
"Do you remember what happened," she said dryly, "the last time you demanded things change?"
Reina and Raizen both shuddered.
Reina's outburst at the mission desk. Raitaro's mask dropping. The month of D-ranks ending and hell camp beginning.
"Yeah, okay," Reina muttered. "Good point. Maybe this isn't that bad."
A breeze rolled over the cliff, cool against their sweat-sticky skin.
Voosh.
Raitaro flickered into existence right in front of them, hands in his pockets like he'd just wandered over instead of body-flickering across half the mountain.
"On your feet," he said. "Break's over. Time for some good old chakra training."
The grin he gave them should've been illegal.
All three genin instinctively took a step back.
Raitaro's eyes sparkled. "And since it's been a while…"
Raizen's stomach dropped.
"…let's up the weight on your seals."
He pointed casually, like he was assigning chores.
"Raizen, boost to two-point-nine. Samui, two-point-two. Reina, two-point-four."
For a heartbeat, nobody breathed.
Almost triple my body weight, Raizen thought, doing the math.
All three of them stared at Raitaro like he'd just announced public executions.
"What's with the long faces?" he asked innocently. "Did I say something wrong?"
Reina exploded first.
"SENSEI, THIS IS CHILD ABUSE!"
Raitaro tilted his head, lips twitching. "Child… abuse? Huh. Never heard of it."
The look he gave her said he absolutely had—and absolutely did not care.
Raizen dropped to his knees, clutching his chest in exaggerated horror as he let the anime tears flow.
"S-sensei," he wheezed, crawling forward to grab at Raitaro's pant leg, "you can't do this to us. Think about our bodies. We're still growing!"
Samui sighed and pressed her palms together, eyes closing.
"Lightning God of Kumogakure," she murmured, "whatever crime I committed in a past life to deserve this… I apologize. Please consider a lighter sentence."
Raitaro looked down at the boy clinging to his ankle and the girl quietly praying for divine intervention.
"Quit your crying," he said mildly. "Unless you want me to boost it even higher."
The three of them froze.
Slowly, very slowly, they let go, dropped their hands, and got to their feet.
In perfect, miserable sync, they formed the hand seals and pushed chakra into their Stormload marks, dialing up the multipliers.
Raizen felt it hit like a slow, heavy wave—his entire frame pulling just a little harder toward the earth. Reina's shoulders sagged as the invisible load along her spine increased. Samui's legs took on that familiar weighted stiffness.
But… it wasn't like the first time.
It hurt. It sucked. But their bodies didn't panic the way they had before. Muscles adjusted. Breaths shortened, then stabilized.
We're adapting, Raizen realized, straightening under the pressure. Our bodies are getting used to always having something pushing down on them.
He must've muttered it out loud, because Raitaro's mouth quirked.
"The joys of chakra," the jōnin said. "It breaks you down faster and puts you back together tougher. If it didn't, you'd all be paste by now."
He jerked his chin toward the cliff wall and the stream below.
"Come on," he added, grin returning in full. "Let's see if you can keep your chakra steady when it actually matters."
The sky above was all burning orange and deepening purple. Under their skin, inked seals hummed. As Team Eleven followed their sensei out from under the safe shade, every step reminded them: the storm on their backs was only getting heavier.
⸻
Raitaro stood with his back to the cliff, hands in his pockets, Stormload seals humming faintly under the genin's skin.
"Alright," he said. "Today's exercises will be a course on the face of the mountain."
He jerked his chin toward the opposite ridge.
Raizen followed his gaze.
The mountain across from Training Ground Eleven wasn't the tallest in Kumo, but it was nasty—its face carved by time into jagged shelves and vertical slabs, streaked with dark mineral veins and narrow ledges barely wide enough for a single foot. Thin waterfalls traced down in places, turning patches of rock slick and mossy.
It looked… unforgiving.
"From here," Raitaro went on, "it probably just looks like another rock."
He smiled. That was never a good sign.
"But once you're on it, you'll find out it's special. You'll be switching constantly between running horizontally and vertically. Ledges, walls, angled surfaces. If you can't keep your chakra steady, you fall. If you panic, you fall faster."
Reina blew out a slow breath through her nose. Samui's eyes narrowed, already tracing an invisible route up the stone.
"There are also some surprises along the trail," Raitaro added. "Little… incentives. But for those who are diligent—" his gaze flicked to Samui and Raizen, "—you might spot them before they ruin your day."
None of them looked surprised.
Of course there'd be traps. Of course the "course" wouldn't just be a straight run. This was Raitaro—the man who made a missing receipt D-rank into a psychological test.
Raitaro's smile faded as he rolled his shoulders back.
"Remember the restrictions your seals put on you," he said.
His eyes locked directly onto Reina.
"Reina," he said, tone deceptively mild, "do not leave your team behind."
Her jaw clenched, but she didn't argue.
His attention slid to Samui. "Hesitate, and your legs will feel it. The seal will punish you for waiting between safe options. Decide. Move. Commit."
Then to Raizen.
"You," his mouth quirked, "don't fry your own seal trying to brute-force your way through with lightning or chakra spikes. You overcharge, Stormload pushes back. Don't forget that."
Raizen shifted under the lattice, feeling the extra drag over his ribs and shoulders. "Yes, sensei."
Raitaro stepped aside and pointed toward a narrow stone ledge that led from their training ground to a carved starting point on the opposite cliff. A set of old, weathered markers were etched into the rock there—Kumo standard script mixed with Tsukihana glyphs, forming a path of small circles and arrows up and across the mountain face.
"You're doing the course twice," he said. "Once just to survive it. Once to actually run it like shinobi."
He paused.
"If I were you," he added, "I'd start now if you want to get home before midnight."
Reina groaned under her breath. Samui exhaled once, centering herself. Raizen felt his heart rate tick up in anticipation.
Raitaro clapped his hands once.
"Team Eleven," he said. "Move out."
⸻
The approach ledge was barely a meter wide.
They crossed single file—Reina in front, Raizen in the middle, Samui bringing up the rear. The drop beside them wasn't a sheer plummet, but it was more than enough to break bones if someone lost their footing and bounced the wrong way down.
Reina's sandals hit the starting circle first. She tested it with her chakra, sending a thin, controlled pulse into the stone.
"It's responsive," she said. "Feels… guided."
Raizen stepped onto the marked spot beside her and felt it too: a faint, humming awareness in the rock under his feet, like a half-awake seal woven into the mountain itself.
"Tsukihana work?" Samui asked quietly, eyes on the etched script running up the wall.
Raizen scanned the nearest characters. "Mostly Kumo military," he said. "But yeah—my clan did the matrix. Training route anchoring. Chakra flow markers."
"Great," Reina muttered. "So it's probably tailor-made to hurt us."
"Accurate," Raitaro called from across the gap, hands cupped around his mouth like a cheerful executioner. "You'll be fine."
He waved.
"Activate tree-walking!" he shouted. "Seal weight on. Course starts on my mark."
Raizen pulled chakra into the soles of his feet, feeling it cling to the stone. The Stormload lattice pressed down across his body like invisible armor, denser now at ×2.9. His legs felt heavy, but the grip was there—solid, familiar.
Beside him, Reina's spine straightened under her load. Samui's stance dropped lower, distributing the weight across her legs.
"Ready…" Raitaro called.
Thunder rumbled somewhere far off, like the village itself was clearing its throat.
"Go!"
Reina didn't sprint.
She clearly wanted to—Raizen could feel the coil of energy in the way her muscles tensed—but the memory of her seal's punishment, and Raitaro's warning, held her in check. She launched into a controlled run instead, sandals slapping stone as she flowed from the flat ledge to the first angled surface.
The rock sloped up at a forty-five-degree angle. Chakra adjusted. Raizen followed, feeling the pull downward increase as gravity tried to drag him off, seal weight doubling the effort.
"Vertical in three," Samui called quietly from behind, having already read the etched markers.
They hit the wall together.
The next stretch was a straight vertical face, marked by a faint glowing script line. Reina transitioned first, feet leaving the sloped surface and planting against the sheer rock. Her chakra clung; gravity turned sideways, tugging her "down" along the wall.
Raizen swallowed and followed.
For a heartbeat, his stomach flipped. The world rotated ninety degrees—the sky at his right shoulder, the ground at his left, the drop now directly "under" him along the cliff.
His Stormload lattice groaned in protest, every muscle from calves to shoulders renegotiating what "standing" meant.
Don't spike it, he reminded himself, keeping his chakra output stable instead of panicking and flooding more into his feet. The lattice would slam down harder if he did.
Reina climbed first, pace steady. Twice she started to pull ahead automatically—old captain instincts kicking in—and twice her seal answered with a heavier drag along her spine, forcing her to slow and let Raizen and Samui catch up.
"Stay in formation," Raizen panted.
"I know," she snapped back, but she didn't speed up.
Samui moved half a step behind him, every placement deliberate. Once, she hesitated at a narrow jut of rock where they had to cross from one vertical segment to another.
Her seal punished her instantly.
Her legs went heavy as if someone had wrapped chains around them. She sucked in a sharp breath, then forced herself to step—commit—before the weight could drag her down.
They reached a horizontal ledge, boots landing with a jolt as the world righted itself again. All three paused for half a heartbeat, adjusting.
"Don't stop," Raitaro's voice carried faintly from across the gap. "That's only the first tier."
Raizen gritted his teeth and pushed forward.
⸻
They hit the first "surprise" ten minutes in.
It looked like a break—a long, flat horizontal shelf with plenty of space and fewer carved markers.
Too easy.
Raizen's web-sense prickled faintly through the soles of his feet—chakra currents in the stone humming wrong, like a string tuned just off-key.
"Trap," he hissed. "Under the rock. Forty meters ahead."
Reina's eyes narrowed. "Jump pattern?"
"Three steps normal, step four is bad," Samui said, already noting the faintly uneven spacing of etched circles ahead. "Skip every fourth."
They adjusted their strides.
On the shelf, the etched circles were subtle—just slight depressions in the stone. For a moment, Raizen wondered if he'd misread the signals.
Then, as they moved in rhythm—one-two-three, hop—he saw it: tiny discolorations around every fourth circle, a hint of burned residue from old activations.
They cleared the stretch.
Behind them, a cluster of seals flared to life on the "bad" markers, spitting out bursts of wind and chakra static that would have knocked their feet out from under them.
Reina huffed a small, satisfied breath. "Nice catch."
Raizen didn't answer, too busy not thinking about how far down a misstep might send them.
⸻
By the time they finished the first lap, Raizen's legs felt like they'd been replaced with sandbags. His calves burned, his shoulders ached from keeping balance with the extra weight, and his chakra reserves throbbed with a steady, dull ache from constant usage.
They hit the starting circle again, sandals skidding.
Reina bent over, hands on her knees, sucking in air.
"That…" she panted, "was one."
Samui wiped sweat from her brow, face flushed but eyes alert. "We adjusted quickly by the end," she said. "Second run will be smoother."
The Stormload lattice pulsed against Raizen's skin, heavy but… not unbearable.
"We're doing it again," he said, half to himself.
"Of course you are," Raitaro called, cupping his hands. "That was the tourist lap. Next one, I want you moving like shinobi, not terrified academy kids."
He jerked a thumb toward the mountain.
"This time," he added, "I expect you to push. Faster transitions. Cleaner chakra shifts. And if any of you eat rock, at least do it on an interesting section."
Reina straightened, green eyes igniting with stubborn fire.
"Fine," she said. "Let's show him what Captain and Co. can do."
"We're not calling ourselves that," Raizen muttered.
Samui just shook her head, a tiny smile tugging at her lips.
They reset their stances.
Stormload seals pressed down. The mountain waited, indifferent.
"Ready?" Raizen asked.
Reina rolled her shoulders. "Always."
Samui nodded once. "On your mark, captain."
Reina exhaled, the complaints from earlier gone, replaced by something sharper and more focused.
"Team Eleven," she said quietly. "Second run. Don't fall behind."
They launched together—three weighted figures sprinting toward a vertical wall, chakra gripping stone as the sky tilted and training that was trying to break them down slowly, brutally, made them stronger instead.
⸻
The second run was different.
Reina didn't hesitate at the first transition. She hit the incline, then the vertical face in one smooth movement, sandals slapping stone, chakra flaring in sharp, controlled pulses. Her seal tugged at her spine whenever she tried to edge too far ahead, but instead of fighting it, she adjusted—letting Raizen and Samui slot in beside and behind her in a tight triangle.
"Trap markers in twenty," Samui called, voice steady despite the burn in her legs. "Same pattern as before."
Raizen's web-sense brushed through the rock beneath them. "Confirmed. Skip every fourth. Watch the discoloration."
They barely had to slow.
One-two-three—hop. One-two-three—hop.
Kunai-scarred ledges blurred past. They cleared the wind trap zone cleanly, never triggering a single seal. The course shifted from vertical to horizontal to a slanted face half-covered in moss; they adjusted together—Reina angling her path, Raizen mirroring, Samui hugging the inside line where her seal weight bothered her least.
By the time they hit the final ledge and dropped back onto the starting circle, Raizen's lungs were on fire and his thighs felt like molten lead.
But they were still upright.
He bent over, hands on his knees, fighting to drag air past the burn. Reina was pale and flushed, green eyes bright with adrenaline, sweat soaking her hairline. Samui's braid clung to her neck, chest rising and falling fast, but her gaze was clear, already replaying the route.
On the far training ground, Raitaro watched them. For once, his grin was small and sharp instead of wide and mocking.
"Better," he said. "Much better."
Raizen straightened slowly, blinking sweat out of his good eye.
"Are we finished with the walls?" he managed.
Raitaro pointed past them toward the waterfall pool and the stream that cut across the lower terrace.
"Vertical chakra mastered is useless," he said, "if you lose your footing on a puddle."
His eyes glinted.
"Onto the water."
⸻
The pool near Training Ground Eleven wasn't deep—a wide, shallow basin where a thin waterfall spilled down, sending ripples across the surface. Under Stormload, though, it might as well have been a swamp of liquid steel.
Raizen stepped onto the water first, chakra spreading under his soles like a second skin. The surface dimpled, then held.
Reina followed, jaw set, weight seal dragging at her spine. Samui stepped last, expression calm, chakra flowing down through her legs in a slow, disciplined stream.
Raitaro hopped onto a nearby rock outcropping, arms folded, a pouch of kunai and shuriken at his hip.
"Welcome to evening chakra control," he said pleasantly. "Your job is simple: stay standing."
He drew a kunai, rolled it once across his knuckles, and flicked it.
The blade hit the water beside Reina's foot with a plunk, spraying cold droplets up her leg and sending a sharp shock through the surface tension. Her chakra jolted, but she held steady.
"Micro-adjustments," Raitaro called. "You're not statues. Feel the disruption, correct, don't overreact."
The next kunai came low toward Raizen's ankle.
He shifted instinctively, chakra thickening under one foot and thinning under the other, redistributing his weight. The water dipped but didn't break. The kunai sank out of sight.
Then Raitaro stopped playing nice.
He started throwing in pairs—kunai and shuriken skipping across the surface like flat stones, landing near their toes and heels. Each impact sent small shockwaves across the water, distorting their footing. Sometimes he followed with a handful of pebbles, or a casual palm strike that sent a puff of compressed air rolling across the pool.
Reina gritted her teeth, focus written in the subtle flares and dips of chakra as she adjusted. Samui's approach was smoother—her chakra spread a bit wider, more diffuse, absorbing the ripples like a cushion.
Raizen tried to copy that, adjusting his flow—but Stormload reminded him of its presence, weight digging into his shoulders whenever he tried to brute-force extra chakra for security.
"Don't flood it, Raizen," Raitaro said. "You're not laying concrete. Think woven thread, not stone slab."
Raizen eased back, feeling the water's surface through his soles instead of just forcing power downward.
It worked—for a while.
Then Raitaro changed the pattern again.
He flicked three shuriken in a fan—one for each of them, all aimed just off-center enough to be a problem. Raizen shifted, Samui turned her ankle just so, riding the wave—
Reina hesitated for half a heartbeat.
A shuriken clipped the surface at her heel.
Her chakra stuttered.
For a split second, the water under her right foot softened. Her leg sank to the ankle, then the knee. The seal on her spine made the water grab at her like hands; the extra weight dragged her faster than she could recover.
"Reina!" Raizen snapped.
She tried to pull her chakra back together, but she was already going under, the weight seal turning every motion into a fight in a lead blanket.
Raizen flared chakra into his hand and snapped out a bundle of threads—a fast, tight spread of chakra lines that latched onto her sleeve and shoulder.
He yanked hard.
The lattice groaned against his muscles, protesting the sudden load change, but he dug his feet into the water, reinforcing his footing in a desperate surge.
A kunai whistled toward his exposed side.
Before he could even worry about it, water splashed as Samui stepped in, pivoting smoothly. Her sword flashed, knocking the kunai out of the air with a clean clang that sent sparks dancing over the surface.
She didn't stop there—she redirected a second shuriken on the backhand, sending it spinning harmlessly into the stream.
Raizen gritted his teeth and hauled.
Reina's head and shoulders broke the surface again with a rough gasp, water streaming from her hair, eyes wide. His threads tightened, then retracted, drawing her back toward them until she could re-solidify her chakra and stand. Her knees shook, but she held.
For a moment, the three of them stood close—Reina coughing, Raizen's heart pounding, Samui's blade still lifted.
Raitaro's barrage stopped.
On the rock, he watched them in silence, kunai held loosely in his grip.
That was all instinct, Raizen realized, chest heaving. No time to plan. Just move, react, trust.
Reina wiped water from her face, breathing hard.
"…Thanks," she muttered, barely audible.
Raizen shrugged, trying to play it off despite the burn in his arms. "Don't test drowning with a weight seal on. Bad habit."
Samui huffed quietly, like she was hiding a laugh.
"Hold formation," she said. "He's not finished."
She was right.
Raitaro's smirk was small but unmistakable.
"Not bad," he said casually. "You're allowed to save each other, by the way. I encourage it."
He twirled a kunai, then tucked it away.
"Round two," he went on. "New rule: maintain water-walking while performing fine control exercises."
He pointed at each of them in turn.
"Raizen—lightning. I want a single continuous thread from your fingertip to the surface. No stray arcs. If you shock the water, you shock yourselves."
Raizen grimaced. "Great."
"Reina," Raitaro continued, "low-level chakra flow along your blade. Keep it to a hum, not a flare. If I see a single spark jump off it, you're doing push-ups on the shore until your arms fall off."
Reina rolled her shoulders, face set. "Got it."
"Samui." His gaze softened just a fraction. "Mist control. Thin veil only. Enough to obscure details, not enough to blind yourselves. Spread your chakra carefully; if you overdo it, you'll destabilize your footing."
Samui nodded, expression already turning inward.
"Begin."
Raizen let a small, focused line of lightning trickle from his fingertip, connecting to the water like a glowing thread. He gritted his teeth, keeping the voltage low, just enough to maintain the visible link without turning it into a shock.
His chakra split—most to his soles, anchoring him; a narrow stream to his hand, feeding the lightning; and a little extra to keep Stormload from knocking his rhythm out of alignment.
Reina drew her blade and let chakra crawl along it in a thin, controlled sheath, more whisper than roar. It buzzed faintly, crackling against metal. Her seal liked to punish her for charging ahead; now it punished her every time she tried to overcharge chakra to make the blade feel "stronger."
Samui inhaled slowly and exhaled a cooling breath, letting a thin mist bloom over the water's surface. It rolled out in a light sheet, softening edges, blurring reflections without swallowing them.
Kunai resumed flying.
Not as many this time, and not as wild—but enough to disrupt rhythm. Each impact sent ripples through the mist, warping the lightning thread at Raizen's hand, making Reina's blade twitch, tugging at the fragile balance under their feet.
Twice, Raizen felt his lightning thread flicker dangerously; twice, he forced himself to recalibrate instead of dumping more chakra into it. Reina's blade sparked once, a harsh crackle at the edge—she hissed through her teeth and dialed it back, refusing to let the glow die completely.
Samui's mist wavered with each correction, but she got better at compensating—shifting chakra along her legs and into the fog almost in the same breath.
Minutes stretched.
Thunder rumbled lazily overhead, as if the village's storms were watching them work.
Finally, Raitaro let his hand drop to his side.
"Enough."
The kunai stopped.
"Dispel."
Raizen let the lightning thread dissolve, feeling the relief in his fingertips. Reina let the chakra flow off her sword, the buzz fading. Samui thinned her mist until it was nothing more than the natural spray from the waterfall.
They were still standing.
Barely, but standing.
Raitaro hopped down from the rock, sandals landing lightly on the water as if he weighed nothing at all. He walked across to them, hands in his pockets, studying their posture, their breathing, the way their seals still tugged but no longer controlled them.
"Look at your feet," he said quietly.
They did.
The dimples in the water under their sandals were smaller now, more uniform. Less overcorrection, more stability. Their stances were lower, better grounded—not from conscious thought, but from repetition and pain.
Raitaro's lips curved—not into a smirk, not into a mocking grin, but into something rarer.
Approval.
"This," he said, "is closer to what a genin team from Kumogakure should look like."
Reina straightened a little despite the weight on her spine. Samui's shoulders eased, just barely. Raizen tried—and failed—to stop the small flicker of pride in his chest.
Raitaro let the moment hang, then ruined it in the way only he could.
"Don't get cocky," he added. "You're still one bad day away from face-planting into a river and crying about it."
Reina scowled. "You literally tried to drown me."
"I gave you an opportunity for growth," he corrected. "And your team passed."
His eyes flicked between them, sharp and thoughtful.
"You stabilized mid-crisis," he said. "You reacted to each other's weaknesses without tripping over them. That's the beginning of something usable."
He stepped back onto the rock and nodded toward the shore.
"Training's done for today," he said. "Get off the water before you fall off it. Go home. Eat something with actual nutrients. Sleep."
They started toward the bank, seals humming, legs shaking.
"Oh," Raitaro added casually, as if it were nothing.
The three of them looked back.
"If you keep this up," he said, "we might be able to talk about your first C-rank sooner rather than later."
Raizen felt his heart give one hard, solid thump.
Reina blinked.
Samui's eyes widened the tiniest bit.
Raitaro stretched lazily.
"Big if," he said. "Don't make me regret the thought."
He turned away, already half-dismissing them as he checked the sky's color for time.
On shaky legs, Team Eleven stepped off the water and onto solid ground, Stormload seals heavy on their backs—but under all that weight, Raizen felt something else now.
Something light.
Hope.
We're getting there, he thought, glancing at Reina and Samui.
For once, instead of dreading tomorrow's training, he almost looked forward to seeing how much further they could be pushed before they broke—
—and how much stronger they'd be when they didn't.