Ni
CHAPTER 2
The girl was glancing around when he noticed her, she seemed to be rather young for the academy, but she might’ve just been small. Iruka wasn’t one to judge, she also didn’t have any parents with her on what was seemingly her first day. And he realized she must’ve also lost her own during the attack.
Now, he may have been a bit upset over his parent’s death and taking it out on unsuspecting victims. But his parents had raised him to look after those younger than him and she seemed a little lost. So he went up to her, and observed a bit absent mindedly that she had perceived him rather quickly for someone without any training.
Despite his own sadness, he worked a smile onto his face. Surprised to realize it was more genuine than any of the others he had managed recently, his smile quirked a bit more.
When Miho felt eyes on her, she relaxed her body a bit. She may not be able to stay still yet, but at least she wouldn't tense and gain bad habits in allowing her body language to be read.
When the person whose eyes had been watching her approached her, she groaned a bit.
Human interaction had never been her strong suit. That certainly wasn’t going to change anytime soon. Especially not when she wanted to be a sneaky sneak and thus was planning to not talk often if at all.
Of course when Miho realized who the person drawing nearer to her was, she had to fight to keep her eyes from widening. She luckily succeeded and thus didn’t tip Naruto’s sensei off to anything being amiss.
“Hello, did you need any help?”
Gosh, what was his name? Fish? Whale? Something aquatic. She knew that much.
Wait, he asked a question.
FUUUUUDGe okay, human interaction. She very deliberately blinked her eyes at him and held up her paper. Watching as his very real grin grew just that bit more genuine and almost internally squealed in glee.
She just human interacted.
Wait name.
He is explaining to her where she needs to go for orientation, where the Hokage will give a welcoming speech to all new academy students and they will be told which class they are in. And she listens attentively.
Her previous life had been American, even in a private school it had been a civilian school. She also hadn’t read the manga or watched the anime past the first few episodes. She simply hadn’t the time to watch Naruto subbed and that poor voice actor who was Naruto in dubbed made her want to claw her own ears out and she just couldn’t do it.
She had fandom knowledge, a vague timeline because Kishimoto is a horrible person to consult for consistency, and all sorts of wiki knowledge. And all of it is either inaccurate or dated 10 years into the future and thus also useless.
Before he leaves she makes sure to introduce herself. She may not care if he remembers her name. But proper human interaction most often means a person stating their name(not giving, she read too much about Faes for her to do that and who knows what's in this world) usually learns that person's name in return.
Dolphin! That’s what it was.
With her curiosity sated, she moves on to where he had directed her and settles into an unoccupied seat.
She listened during the orientation, and even took notes. Which got her quite a few odd looks and an even fewer amount of approving looks. She doesn’t care much about other people but acknowledges that these people will one day work with her and promises herself to not offend anyone.
The first day of class is introductions. Miho would prefer to keep most things about herself that aren't easily found through her file to herself. To be a sneaky sneak she must be careful about what people learn about her, and she remembers a traitor in the academy, she isn’t sure how old he was and if he is currently working at the academy, or even if he’s a traitor yet. But she would prefer not to find out either.
Thus her introduction is short and simple. “My name is Noguchi Miho, written Wilderness Mouth and Beautiful Protect. My birthday is January 29, my parents are dead. I like paper. I dislike papercuts. Please take care of me.”
Her face is neutral as she says all this even when she wants to laugh at the panic on her sensei's face when she mentions dead parents. She doesn’t, it would be rude to her parents to use them as a joke. Not when they’ve been dead for only a year.
Maybe later though.
She sits back down in the slightly stunned silence and blinks at the person sitting next to her who should’ve introduced themself by now.
The person, a boy with brown hair lighter than hers but nowhere near a blonde color and dark brown eyes stutters when he starts, but continues with a confidence found in the civilians who haven’t been punched in the nose yet.
If they’re both still in the same class by the time Taijutsu starts, she’ll make sure to punch him in the face.
She doesn’t remember any of her classmates' names. They are also cannon fodder after all. It wouldn’t do to be so attached at a young age, or even allow them to get attached to her. Maybe when she’s older, and not in the library everyday.
She learns a lot in the library her first few months. Not so much in the classroom. But she's in the civilian class, with enough orphans reading and writing is a must have, and all young enough that another major topic is history.
She learns a great number of these things from reading and is mostly bored in class. So she takes notes on sealing books she found in the library.
Why they were there, she had no clue. Not when she can only access the academy section and thus shouldn’t have been able to read them, much less borrow them.
Her only theory is that due to two sealing masters deaths on the same day, they are scouting for any potentials they can.
In fact, it's probably how Umino Iruka got his own sealing knowledge. Was his knowledge canon? She can’t remember.
But it means most of her classes are spent on her calligraphy. And the teacher clearly doesn’t care enough to call her out.
It was only a month after she met him that Iruka’s class had graduated from the academy.
And less than a year after that The Uchiha Prodigy graduates with only a year of the academy, at seven just like the previous Uchiha prodigy. Which she hadn’t known, but information gathering is a ninja skill and thus listening to old biddies and children gossip is something she does in her free time while practicing calligraphy.
Sometime between both graduations is her birthday.
Which is what makes the academy such an interesting thing. Schools normally graduate during May in America and March to April in Japan. With school years starting around August for America and July for Japan. America has June and July as a break and Japan has May and June.
With Japanese school starting in July and ending in April, a person reading a manga in school settings can assume that the school would work similarly. And it is similar, but not.
See, the academy works in years but also monthly intervals, but depending on when you apply is when you’ll graduate. Most Clans sign their children up during early December and thus their kids will graduate early April. While people who assume shinobi school and civilian school work the same apply their children during early July and thus their children graduate early December.
Which means December, January, February, March, April, with May and June as transitional months during the heat of Fire Country. And picking back up to July, August, September, October and November.
That is why the classes are technically separated, it’s when you apply, and because the civilians don’t grasp this concept, their kids graduate during December after 5 or so years of training depending on the kid. And more often than not most kids in this class will end up in Genin Corps for the rest of their lives.
Another difference is that the war just ended, which means they are technically still doing wartime curriculum. So signing up at 6 is more common than the 7 of peace. And the curriculum itself has already relaxed a bit from the 5 of actual wartime.
Of course this led to Miho assuming that due to being in classes with clan kids, Sakura must’ve simply signed up with Ino, did they meet before or after the academy, maybe she had shinobi parents?
And Naruto himself had probably been signed up by Sandaime-Sama.
Of course these musings were purely theoretical. And Miho had fun coming up with theories.
And so Miho spent her first year in the Academy utterly bored out of her mind.
Her second year at the academy was spent learning kata and constantly moving through them during her free time in her orphan funded academy student apartment.
Apartments. Now that a new topic to explain!
So Orphan funded, means that she normally would be expected to pay it back once she gets a job. But her job will be being a shinobi. Which is why the Academy Student portion of that statement is important. The village funds her until she becomes one of Konoha’s shinobi. In which she is constantly risking her life for the village.
It’s similar enough for the clan shinobi too. Their clan compounds have been paid for since the village started, any clan orphans don’t need to pay, their clan does that.
Simply put, investing into promising orphans for the payback of cannon fodder that won’t be missed.
Of course, the clan shinobi are more likely to be missed and having a clan head to take complaints too means they are unlikely to be mistreated. Unless ‘everyone knows’ the clan head doesn’t like that clan member. Even then, the clan head might take it as an insult to their clan, and clans are largely left alone.
That means civilian borns, specifically civilian born orphans are very easily put into positions they cannot refuse and must do what they’re told even when they have questions on the orders.
Miho doesn’t care much about that, but it starts making a scary amount of sense why Danzo was so successful. And it might’ve even been mostly him implementing these sorts of rules that let him grab so many orphans and non-orphans, clan shinobi and civilian children to forge his roots.
But that also helps her make her decision. She decided early on when waking up that she wants to be a sneaky sneak. But now she has an even better reason.
The reason is, if she’s going to be forced into something similar anyways, why not get training for it.
Thus Miho spends her second year, always practicing. Even simple things for fun are training.
She attempts to find Gai but doesn’t manage, which makes sense. He must’ve just become a jonin this year, and was thus in high demand.
So she continues training and stops actively looking for him.
Of course it's when she stops looking for him that she finds him.
And while she may not feel fear about being in this world. She is still afraid to find out if Gai is anything like his canon counterpart. So she doesn’t ask him for help, but watches him train nonetheless.
And well, that might’ve worked.
Except Gai is a very scary creature, even when not at the same level as his canon counterpart yet. He is still a jonin, and thus very perceptive. And while most jonins don’t care about a 6 year old watching them, Gai is the type to find that youthful. And invite said 6 year old into training their youthful beauty into something something for Konoha.
As much as she would like too, tuning him out would be not only rude to him, but could easily detriment her own chances of learning from him. So she listens to what he says very seriously. And looks underneath the underneath while she’s at it.
It is why she learns so much from him in a few sentences. If you take youth and the flowery words around it and just leave the ones that make sense then piece them together, he has already made a training plan for her and her youthful determination to be a beautiful and strong flower of Konoha.
Her third year continues with a Gai approved, signature smile, handsome manly features of youthfulness training plan.
She jumps leaps and bound ahead her classmates in Taijutsu and with all her library knowledge adding up, she has graduated by the end of the year.
And with her own first year of the academy only had November in her first semester. That orientation ceremony had been because they had a bunch of new students after the kyuubi attack. But it still meant she graduated with just over 2 years of work. She was 7, it was year 67 of Konoha and she is now a genin.