“K-Kana sensei is your mother?”

“Yes?” You answered but it came out more like a question because you didn’t know why Kurenai looked too amazed.

“You know sensei, I’ve never seen you with that glint in your eyes. Not even when you’re with Asuma sensei,” Kiba .

She flushed red at the comment as her group laughed at her. She cleared and composed herself, “Well I suppose they didn’t teach you about her in the Academy,” then she faced you, “and she didn’t tell you about her life as a shinobi of the Leaf.”

All of you nodded at her.

“Let me tell you what I know about her,” she said as she raises her right hand and forefinger, as if she was going to tell a tale.

“This is so out of character for sensei,” you heard Kiba whisper to which Shino and Hinata silently agreed.

“It was said that Kana sensei was the best kunoichi in their generation. But as shinobi, she was always second to the Fourth Hokage when they were in the Academy.

“She would always hang around the Legendary Sannins when they were training. Lady Tsunade adored her and so the rest of the Sannins became close to her as well. It got to a point where they would take turns in teaching her different techniques. Because of that, she was promoted to Chunin just a few months after she became a Genin. Then the Second Shinobi War came...

“The ninjas of her generation weren't allowed to participate because they were still too young back then. She was an exception though, because she knew medical ninjutsu. Back then there weren’t really much medical nins so they were very important.

“Naturally, she wasn’t allowed in the frontlines, but that doesn’t mean she had it easy. In fact, the medics had it the hardest. People after people kept coming to get treated, they were easily outnumbered. Even their chakra reserves became too low too fast. Some say they only survived through eating food pills.” Her voice was laced in sadness as she told the story. You could only imagine how hard it was to be in such a position.

“At one point, some of the enemies had infiltrated their camp. Medics were already exhausted and the ninjas in that camp were those who were injured. Some of the survivors thought that it was going to be their end that day because it was obvious that they were in no shape to put up a fight but Kana sensei stepped up. She trapped the assailants in a genjutsu to render them immobile then she attacked using senbons aimed at their vital spots. She was only… probably around twelve that time. She saved nearly a hundred people that night.

“When the Second Shinobi War ended, Konoha had suffered great losses. She then was promoted to Jonin for her contribution during the war, the first in their batch at that. From then she was assigned more missions because 1) a lot of shinobis had died in battle and 2) because Konoha had to accept more missions to recover from the losses. Rumor says that she successfully completed most of her missions, only once or twice did she fail. I heard that everyone wanted to team up with her because no one ever went back from a mission severely injured when she was part of a team, no matter the rank of the mission.

“Later on she would leave the village with her father to further her training. By the time they were done with her training and had come back to Konoha, she was assigned as a leader to a genin team — Yuuta, Mamoru, and Shi were her students. I graduated from the Academy with them. The three were pretty average when we graduated. But somehow when they trained under Kana sensei they drastically improved, and in only a short matter of time. No one really knows how she did it but they said her training methods were, uh, unique.”

You hum in confirmation. You’ve travelled to a lot of villages already and have seen how ninjas train but none of them do it like your mother does.

“When you say unique, what does that mean?” Shino asked no one in particular but everyone suddenly looked at your direction considering you were the only one there who could answer it.

You were surprised by their sudden shift of attention to you that you choked on air. When you were done with your coughing fit, amused smiles were playing on their lips. You could only guess how red your ears were from the way you could feel it burning up. “I, uh, I… Where do I even start?” You cleared your throat. “Uhm… Unique is a way to describe her training methods, but I kinda prefer the word creative.” You awkwardly said. “Uhm, say for example training for sensory skills… When my mother trained my sensory skills, it started to be pretty normal. She explained the concept first and then told me how to do it. Next was a demonstration. Then trials on my part. When I got to know how it should feel, she put a blindfold on me to test me. It was initially pretty basic, just her standing somewhere and me pointing to her location. When that was done, she would move around, slowly at first then gradually increasing her speed, each time instructing me to sense her whereabouts. The last step was for me to counter and defend myself while blindfolded as she attacked. And if that wasn’t hard enough, she scolds me when I try to use my sense of hearing.”

Hinata’s eyes widened at that while Shino had his brows furrowed. Kiba looked at you incredulously, “What? Is that even possible?”

You shrugged. “I’m assuming it is but right now I’m not really that good at it yet… I mean, I could sense her, sure, but my problem was shifting from sensory mode to fighting mode,” you frowned. “My mother teaches me things I need to know in extreme situations. When I asked her about why I had to train that way, she told me there were ninjas who are well versed in Silent Killing so it was important to be able to master sensing them by using chakra instead of my sight and hearing, and to defend myself at times like those.”

Kurenai placed her forefinger and thumb on her chin, pondering. Then she hummed at your explanation thinking it was a brilliant method of learning. Kana didn’t set a standard too high in the beginning and when you finally got the hang of the basics, she slowly increased the level of difficulty and then provided a situation where you could apply the technique. Brilliant, considering some of the younger generations easily gave up on doing things they don’t think they need.

“Can you tell us more?”

You pause, thinking of other instances that your mother had you doing. “She taught me Shurikenjutsu pretty much the regular way as well, starting with kunai and shurikens. But since she was a medical nin, she always had senbons with her to perform acupuncture and to use as weapons. So she focused on teaching me how to efficiently use this for immobilization or for, uh, killing.

“The metal needles actually have little killing power but with proper knowledge about the human body, you can aim for vital spots to kill your target. You can also aim for chakra points so you can disrupt their chakra flow, although it’s very difficult to master since the chakra points are very small.”

“Yeah, chakra points are just the size of the tip of a needle and only the Byakugan is able to see it,” Hinata said.

“Not even the Sharingan can see it,” Shino shared.

“Right, but if you know about acupuncture, you’d know how to locate the chakra points,” you explained. “Since the chakra points are very small, it’s important that you can accurately hit them which is especially hard if your target is moving. If your aim is a little bit off, even for just a millimeter, it won’t do much damage, unlike when you use a kunai or shuriken. Conversely, there are also some chakra points located extremely near vital spots s