At the end of that hellish week, an unexpected guest arrived next to Shisui. „Don't you think that you are pushing them a bit too hard?", Minato inquired, lifting his right brow upon seeing a smirk forming on Shisui's face: „No. Can't you see the smiles on a few of my pupils? I picked them, hoping for this result and while there may be 1 or 2 outliers, nearly all of them will start to enjoy hard training soon. For the remaining ones, the others will be enough of a motivational force".
Minato's features did not change, though he did think it through, before finding the one person who did not fit into that schema: „But what about Ayaka Chishiki? He does not seem to have any of the qualities you selected by", Minato followed up on his previous questions due to his fear for Shisui's mental health. It was his first year as a teacher and Minato was afraid that Shisui would reach for the heavens.
It was the wrong thing to ask as Shisui just started laughing lightly, answering with a bit of cheek: „Ayaka Chishiki is, well, paranoid and cautious and he does have a lot of discipline. While I told his classmates that they were on the same level knowledge wise after the first week, that is not the complete truth. They are on the same page regarding the schools and my curriculum, but due to Ayaka's hobby, he is far beyond his peers. His current style of gathering knowledge, while crude, is still nearly on par with some anbu squads I know of and he does that as a singular person. With the current knowledge he has gathered about his classmates, he could effectively cripple the effectiveness our new generations if he sold it to another village or power. Additionally, all of his tests were below average, no question. But if you had looked a bit closer you would have realized that he has exactly 60% of the possible points on every single assignment or test. While nothing spectacular, this second fact is the reason for my interest in him with the former being just a slight motivating factor. I can also keep and eye on him and I am pretty sure that he knows it too", Shisui explained, before talking in a more somber tone: „I also think to know why he falsified his own test scores. Ayaka does not want to become a child soldier to soon. Many geniuses, prodigies and also monsters like me died in the last war as we were noticed by the enemies way to soon. They nipped our strongest future fighting force in the bud due to the simple reason of them excelling too soon. Most of those people wanted to get on the battlefield as fast as possible to both help the village and learn more things faster, but he does not want to do that. He wants to quietly practice in his free time until it is time for the graduation exam so that he gets sorted with the best possible sensei and teammates as those have the highest percentage of survival due to their instructor and the fact that none of them are a part of the previous group. They excelled in the academy, but most of that does not translate to their effectiveness in the field until a lot of remedial training."
„Anyway, with the current peacetime curriculum, the academy is nothing more than a primary school focused on physical education. A few exercises might be questionable in that comparison, but it largely boils down to that", Shisui ranted a bit, before realizing who he was speaking to. „While I appreciate your honesty, do keep those opinions to yourself please. I am acutely aware of the mistakes in our school system but I lack the power to make any substantial changes. Even your project stretches my leash to its limit, not to speak of the repercussions if the wrong people get wind of your methods. Do continue and please do try to not debilitate some of them. I also approve of your students seeking out the master of arms if they do not find a weapon to their liking in the more standard selection. Here is also a list for instructors for most of the available weapons in Konoha. While I will not help you with persuading them to teach your class, I am sure that you will find a way. I cannot make your live too easy now, can I?"
And, Minato disappeared. Shisui noted, that it was in fact a shadowclone though it had popped without its signature sound and smokescreen, which was quite a feet. Maybe Minato is the first hokage who uses his clones to do the paperwork, which would also explain his proficiency in that jutsu, though it could also be just a part time project he is working on.
At the end of that last day of a week of non stop training, all of Shisui's students had awakened their chakra. Still, most of them fainted after the effect of the repurposed chakra soldier pills ended. Shisui then proceeded to deposit all of them into their own beds with a clearly written node stuck on their face to not practice anything associated with chakra until he allowed them to.
Shisui, who was also out of energy, went to sleep shortly after.
The next day started pretty slowly, as most of the people still had aftereffects of the previous torture. There was a collective sigh of relieve as Shisui stated: „We will go over theory for this week and I expressly forbid anyone from using their chakra until we do it together. This is does have a reason, as the semi forceful awakening left your chakra in a slightly unstable state, which means that the chance you hurt yourself will be a lot higher. Most experienced practitioners would not be troubled by something like that but you all are not even proficient enough to be called that. The topic for this week will focus on weapon maintenance, weapon types, a bit of blacksmithing and more common matchups. I will tell you this one time but there is a huge amount of different weapons and due to that an infinite amount of possible matchups. In the future you will have fights against opponents with a weapon you will never have heard of before and will never see again. I cannot possibly prepare you for everything there is in the world, but I will try to teach you in a way so that you can adapt rapidly to the abnormal circumstances you might encounter.
Now, for today we will start with kunai, shuriken and senbon as the most commonly used ranged weapon variants. While shuriken and senbon are a purely ranged weapon, kunai are also commonly used as a close combat weapons. This means that a kunai", Shisui said, holding one in each of his hands: „Can be used to stab, slice and deflect. Stabbing and slicing does not need much of a specialized tactic to start with, but deflecting and/or blocking with any type of weapon has a higher requirement. In ranged combat kunai are mostly used for frontal assaults and as a type of delivery mechanism for explosive tags. There are naturally a huge variety of different tags, but we will talk about them at another time. Senbon and shuriken do not or scarcely posses the ability to be used in conjunction with tags. Senbon are usually used to strike acupunctures or deliver poisons or other similar substances, while a high mastery of shuriken allows for a huge variety in your attacks, different patterns and even the use of metallic wires to guide them remotely."
Shisui's introduction ended there and he started a lecture on prober handling, maintenance, storing, common mistakes, injury possibilities due to neglect and wrong handling and more less important things like different types of metals, their positive and negative impacts on all three of those weapons, chakra compatibility, a few techniques and jutsus to use in conjunction and synergy with teammates. At the end of the day Shisui had told them anything they might need to know about these three weapons on the level they are supposed to know until they get more specialized training in their application.
He ended the day with two sentences: „For the rest of the week we will talk about metals and other materials and possible weapons that can be forged of them while also inspecting the advantages and disadvantages of the weapons, both in a fight and inherent to the metal they are forged from. While school is over I do expect you to train in your free time and while you might not need to go to the lengths of last week I do expect at least 30% of it and hope to see it rising further in the future. Dismissed".
That were 6 very exhausting 45 minute lectures for the students, so Shisui choose to stop it prematurely, as close to no one was listening anymore, their exhaustion rearing its head after a short cease of fire. Shisui used this freed up time to continue his own training. He focused particularly on his senses, trying to improve them as much as possible as he wanted to teach about it in the future.
The ability to heighten your different senses was the very first exercise for any proper sensor, but most only used for a short time so that they could learn how to handle a higher amount of information transmitted from them. It was in fact the goal of this exercise to do this, but heightened and even chakra enhanced senses could help in tracking, as sentry, for medics and many more. It could be used by most, even not chakra related, professions.
Shisui himself excelled at a few of those applications. He had a very good read on hot temperatures which helped his fire mastery extremely, while also being very proficient in enhancing his eyes due to the foundation his sharingan offered. The last thing he was proficient in was filtering or even blocking senses, which could be a lifesaver on a battlefield due to the chaos around you. This was a double edged sword though, as it could as easily cost you your life. This was one of the reasons Shisui wanted to teach his students how to handle such scenarios. Sometimes they would still need to resort to the techniques either way, as it was one of the easiest ways to block sound based genjutsu or at the very least stifle their effects on you.
Another examples would be the Inuzuka, a clan of Konoha, excelled in utilizing their sense of smell due to their partnerships with their ninken. It was one of their multiple qualities which made them one of the best trackers. Another clan, the Aburame, also used such a technique to handle their families technique. Though most did not know this, they were masters in manipulating both their own and others sensitivity to pain. The could stop the reception of pain in their complete body, though it was more commonly used on very specific places. They would use the more extreme approaches only in emergencies as, similar to sound, it could be fatal to limit your understanding of your own body, as you could be stabbed into an important organ without ever realizing that it happened, before you drop dead to the floor, right next to your whole team who had originally depended on you.
But one of the most important things was the ability to control your sleep. While it did not directly count as a sense, it was an auxiliary ability that anyone, even if they were not shinobi, should know, as sleep was very important. This was seen in todays lectures which were also the reason that Shisui decided on that path. Controlling sleep was all about falling asleep quickly, falling into the right states of sleep depending on the current situation and still having at least a bit of awareness through which one was able to wake up at any single point in time if so desired.
You could naturally also abuse this, which could backfire horribly and cost you, like always, your precious little life.