Team 8 had fallen into a comfortable routine in the weeks following their genin test. Every morning started with a couple of D-rank missions.
The tasks were simple and boring: weeding gardens, chasing escaped cats through the village, delivering packages across town, or helping old ladies carry groceries up steep stairs.
Nothing dangerous, nothing exciting, just the kind of work that paid a few ryo and kept fresh genin busy.
After the missions, Choza always insisted on barbecue. The large jonin would lead them straight to one of the Akimichi clan restaurants, order massive platters of grilled meat, rice, vegetables, and some dessert, then sit back with a satisfied grin while his students ate.
Choza claimed it was because growing genin needed proper nutrition to build strength. In reality, he just loved watching them devour food almost as much as he loved eating it himself.
Choza would laugh every time one of them tried to refuse another helping. "You are all too skinny! Eat more! How do you expect to fight if your stomachs are empty?" he would boom, piling more ribs onto their plates.
The restaurant staff knew the Akimichi jonin by name. They kept extra charcoal ready just for Team 8's daily visits. The whole thing had become a village joke: if you saw three sweaty genin and a giant man covered in barbecue sauce walking down the street at noon, you knew exactly who they were.
Then came the afternoon training. Chakra augmentation practice took up most of their time. Shunsui by now could flow chakra through his swords without thinking. But he was still far off from achieving true mastery in chakra augmentation.
Genma and Guy were mostly done with their chakra control training and had moved to learning chakra augmentation.
And currently, they were on another D-rank mission.
The mission was cleaning cow dung from dozens of cows in a large farm just outside Konoha's gates.
The smell hit them the moment they stepped through the wooden fence of the farm. Flies buzzed everywhere. The cows stood in rows inside a massive pen, chewing grass calmly while their tails swished.
Piles of dung dotted the ground. The farmer had handed them shovels, buckets, and a wheelbarrow, then gone back to his house with a wave and a "good luck."
Shunsui and Genma sat on a low wooden bench just outside the pen. A pack of playing cards lay spread between them on an overturned crate.
Shunsui leaned back against the fence post. Genma sat beside him, senbon in his mouth, staring at his cards with a faint frown.
In the pen, Guy worked alone. He moved with incredible speed and enthusiasm. Shovel in hand, he scooped dung into the wheelbarrow, emptied it into the compost pile, and dashed back for more.
Sweat poured down his face. His green jumpsuit was already streaked with dirt. Yet he smiled the whole time, shouting something about Youth to himself between scoops.
Genma looked awkwardly at Guy, then at Shunsui. He had just witnessed the entire manipulation play in front of him.
It had started innocently enough. Shunsui had walked up to Guy while the boy stared at the first pile of dung with wide eyes.
In a calm, almost gentle voice, Shunsui had said, "Guy, you would be able to train your nose to withstand bad smells. And you would be able to train your body by picking up and clearing all these dung piles. Would you want to do it alone, or do you need us to help too?"
Guy's eyes had filled with tears almost instantly. "You are going to pass down this opportunity to train just for me?" he asked, voice trembling with emotion.
Shunsui had placed a hand on Guy's shoulder. "Yes. Anything for my youthful friend."
Guy had bowed deeply, tears streaming down his cheeks. "Thank you, Shunsui! I am off to train! But for giving me this opportunity, you will have to get my share of the ryo for the mission!"
Shunsui had agreed easily. "Of course. Go train hard."
And just like that, Guy had charged into the pen with renewed vigor. Shunsui had returned to the bench, pulled out his deck of cards, and invited Genma to play.
Now, half an hour later, Guy was still going strong while the other two sat comfortably in the shade.
Genma set his cards down. "Are you sure that we should let him do the entire mission? Should we not help him?"
Shunsui glanced up from his hand. "You are free to do so. But I am not going to clean cow dung. This is my favorite kimono. I am not putting it in cow dung."
Genma looked at the pen. The smell wafted over again, thick and sour. He wrinkled his nose. "I think we should let him just train."
Shunsui chuckled softly. "Wise choice."
Their sensei Choza was not with them today. If he had been, he surely would have made Shunsui and Genma work too. This was supposed to be a team-building exercise, after all.
But Choza had been given the role of jonin sensei partly because one of his main jobs could be performed while staying in the village.
Most other jonin had been sent to the front lines of the war. Choza, however, belonged to the barrier corps. He helped maintain the massive protective seals that surrounded Konoha.
His father, Akimichi Torifu, was the current head of the Akimichi clan and the head of the barrier corps. Torifu had been one of Tobirama Senju's students, a teammate to Danzo Shimura and Kagami Uchiha.
Shunsui watched Guy shovel another pile and thought quietly. 'Once I master chakra augmentation, I should get some basic information on fuinjutsu and try to learn barrier ninjutsu.'
He had figured out long ago that he did not have the ability to use bakudo from Bleach. No kido spells flowed through him. But this world had its own version. And even if he could do them, there was no one to teach him how to do them.
Barrier ninjutsu could replicate many of those binding techniques. Defensive walls, sealing traps, containment fields. As for hado, he could always learn elemental ninjutsu or other offensive jutsu, but they would never match the raw, destructive power of high-level hado from the nineties.
Still, he needed fuinjutsu for bigger threats. Immortal opponents like Orochimaru or Kabuto or tailed beasts. Barriers and seals would give him tools to handle those.
More than that, he wanted to create a personal barrier for his shikai and eventual bankai. Something that limited the range of his games so they would not accidentally affect his allies.
Besides all of that, Shunsui was confident he did not need much more in terms of raw combat power. His shikai was enough to deal with most threats.
In the future, he would have bankai. But more than strength or victory, he loved using his shikai for another reason.
He loved playing his childhood games once again.
Back on Earth, in his previous life, he had played those games as a kid. Tag in the backyard until sunset. Hide and seek through the house on rainy days.
Red light green light in the park with cousins laughing until their sides hurt.
He had been a child then, free and careless, chasing simple joy without a single worry about tomorrow. Life had taken those moments away slowly. Work, responsibilities, time. They slipped through his fingers like sand. He had always wanted to get that time back. To feel that pure, unthinking happiness again. To play without shame, without purpose beyond the game itself.
Maybe that was why he had been given Katen Kyokotsu in this new life.
Not just for battle. Not just for survival. But so he could enjoy his childhood games for the rest of his existence.
Every time he released shikai, every time he turned a battlefield into a playground, he felt a small piece of that lost innocence return. He could feel young again, even if only for a few minutes in the middle of chaos.
Shunsui looked up at the clear blue sky as he chuckled at Guy's enthusiastic shouts from the pen.
'Maybe reincarnation had not been such a drag after all.' He thought.
-------Author Notes---------
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