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"Fire nature, huh?" Shikako says, taking the Element Affinity Seal off her student and examining it. It doesn't look like Anko has any particular secondary affinities, just pure fire all the way down.
Doesn't that just fit her personality?
"Aww," Anko says. "I wanted to be Earth nature like you, sensei."
There weren't many people who would covet earth nature — it was solid and dependable but not really the sort people got ultra famous over. Even the Tsuchikage is more famous for his Dust Release than his earth techniques.
"Fire nature is good," Shikako assures her, instead of explaining any of that. "Especially in Konoha. It's the most common elemental nature in the Land of Fire."
"Do you know any fire techniques?" Anko asks, eagerly.
"Some," Shikako says, which is… hedging. She's never committed to learning fire techniques, because there's usually someone else around who is better at them, like Sasuke or literally any other Uchiha. But in that vein, she's seen people using fire jutsu more than enough to have a pretty solid idea of how they work. "But before we start you learning fire jutsu, we're going to start you learning fire resistant techniques."
Anko blinks up at her, thinks it through, then seems to acknowledge the logic in this progression — despite the desire to just jump into learning badass jutsu at the drop of a hat.
Shikako leads her through a basic How Not To Get Wrecked By Your Own Jutsu 101 lesson, very important, and Anko is doing pretty good with her practice when Shikako says, urgently — "Anko, jump."
Anko leaps into the air and forms her barrier ball, a reflex born of many hours of Shikako doing the exact same drill.
Shikako also leaps into the air, landing sideways on one of the trees circling their training field. The ground where they had been standing doesn't alter, but a wave of chakra races through it, expanding ever outwards like a ripple on a pond after a stone has been thrown in. Shikako tracks it, tracing it forward and back, and then sighs.
"Just some other ninja practicing jutsu," she says. "Nothing to worry about." The training fields are so close together that it's just polite to ignore whatever ninja are doing on the training field next to you — but the corollary to that is that it's polite to stick to your own training field.
Anko drops her safety bubble. "Cool! What type of jutsu?"
Shikako hums. "Not entirely sure," she says. "It's in the ground so it might be a type of earth jutsu? But I can't tell if it's had an actual effect."
She's about to get Anko to start practicing again when the chakra ripples out again. Shikako twitches.
She's not having it.
"Why don't we go ask?" she says. She can tell exactly who it is and she's not really impressed — though marching over and demanding an explanation might not be the brightest move. But if it's going to keep going, then they'll relocate. Shikako isn't standing here and feeling an S-rank ninja use a technique beneath her feet every few minutes.
They cross a handful of training grounds, and Shikako politely flares her chakra and lets her footsteps sound so that she's not surprising ninja who are training. She has Anko with her; she has to be responsible.
Minato Namikaze and Kakashi Hatake both look up from where they're seated on the ground. Minato has his fingers pressed to the dirt, clearly channelling chakra for whatever technique it is that Shikako has been sensing.
"Nara-san. Anko-chan," Minato says, politely. "Can I help you?"
"Apologies for disturbing you, Namikaze-sama," Shikako says, equally polite. "I was wondering who was using an area of effect jutsu in the training grounds. It covered quite some distance. Very impressive."
She can't exactly tell the next Hokage to quit it, but she can imply he's being a dick.
"Ah," Minato says, looking genuinely surprised. "I wasn't aware anyone would be able to tell."
"It isn't an issue," Shikako demurs, even though it is. Her point has been made. "If you're intending to continue, we'll just relocate to another training field."
"What kinda jutsu is it?" Anko asks, apparently not having the whole polite-adult-conversation thing. "Can you do an earth jutsu that far?"
Minato laughs, unoffended and Shikako pats her student on the head. In for a penny, in for a pound, as they say.
She hasn't missed the way that Kakashi's headband is angled down in a familiar way. It's been weeks since that mission to the Land of Grass. If it were going to heal, it would have healed, and this Kakashi doesn't have a newly implanted sharingan to make up for the loss of eyesight.
"Not an earth jutsu, it's an active sensor jutsu, right?" Shikako asks. "The chakra feedback tells you where the target is? Like a radar."
Nothing that Shikako would ever use, because her own brand of sensing is much more passive and this is a real, actual technique that only lasts as long as it's active but it's probably not bad for tracking or out-of-combat uses. The range is fairly decent.
"That's right," Minato agrees. He dusts his hands off. There's no guile or cunning in his expression, but Shikako already knows where this conversation is going to go. "Are you a sensor, Nara-san?"
"I know a little," Shikako says, pretty much playing perfectly into his hands. "Mostly the drills that the sensory squad teaches." These are not particularly secret and so it's perfectly plausible that Shikako could have learnt them anywhere in Konoha, from anyone.
"That's more than me," he says cheerfully. "This is my only technique. I'm not a particularly skilled sensor."
"That's terrifying," Shikako blurts out. He has that kind of battlefield domination and sheer speed with eyesight alone? Even if he's underselling it, even with the standard learnt-by-experience jounin awareness of nearby enemies… Horrifying.
Minato flashes her a devastating smile, as if he means to be sheepish about it but really thinks it's too funny. "My students don't think it's that impressive."
There's no hint in his voice, but there doesn't really need to be. She knows how this dance goes. Shikako sighs, letting it run through her whole body. Troublesome.
"I was about to start teaching my apprentice blind fighting," she says. "But it would be good for her to have someone to practice with. Does Namikaze-sama think he could spare his students for a few hours to assist?"
"That's an excellent idea," Minato says. "Would tomorrow work? I have a long meeting and my team is at loose ends for training."
Shikako agrees that the next day would be fine, and ushers Anko out of the training grounds. It's not just that she wants to help Kakashi (and she does, she owes every version of Kakashi more than just a few days of training) but in a way, this is helping Anko. Not just the training, or the making friends with people close to her own age, but also the faint hint of a personal connection to the next Hokage isn't really something that a clanless orphan like Anko could afford to pass up.
Konoha is a meritocracy except in all the ways in which it really isn't.
"Blind fighting?" Anko asks as they walk away. The jounin behind them can probably still hear but… eh. "Sensei, you haven't started me on that."
"I have," Shikako says. "It just wasn't only that. No man is an island, as they say, and no jutsu ever really stands alone. Everything you learn is interconnected — when you're doing your dodge training, are you working off just what you can see? When you're doing your evasion training, are you thinking about ways people could find you? When you're using your chakra for jutsu, aren't you learning how it feels?"
"And that lets you fight blind?" Anko asks, apparently not needing the reasons why one might have to fight without vision. Then again, she saw Kakashi too.
"It doesn't hurt," Shikako says, amused. "That's the ultimate goal — there are a lot of small parts that go into making it possible, just like there are a lot of small parts that go into making any kind of fighting possible. And that, my dear apprentice, is what practice and training are for."
"Okay! I'll train super hard!" Anko says. "Can we start now?"
Shikako laughs. "Tomorrow," she says. "Don't worry, I'll work you hard enough."
The next day Team Minato shows up on time — well, Kakashi and Rin show up on time and Obito straggles in half an hour late with an abject apology and a probably-real excuse. Shikako runs them through a bunch of basic sensory techniques and training drills and, as per her expectations, Kakashi picks most of them up frighteningly quickly. Rin has the benefit of having the precision chakra control required for medical jutsu and the experience with using it to assess things and Obito has… persistence.
Well, there are worse traits.
Anko is doing pretty well, even compared to the older students. Shikako hadn't been kidding about having already started her learning a lot of the basics — being able to find your opponents is a key part of not dying in a fight, so obviously it's a priority for Anko to learn.
Once they've all got a reasonable grasp of it, Shikako fills the clearing with the Hiding in the Mist Jutsu and lets them go at each other.
It is — to put it bluntly — a bit of a disaster.
"A learning experience," Shikako says, without even attempting to hide her amusement. "What did we learn?"
"Even if you can't find the people, you can find their jutsu," Anko says, having apparently realised that pretty early on and used it to sneak attack the others when they started fighting.
"That's right," Shikako agrees. "Jutsu use a lot of chakra, so it's a giant signpost to your enemies that you're there. They can also give off other signs like heat and light and movement. What else?"
Obito — dripping wet — says, "there's a river in this training field."
"Also correct," Shikako says, easily, even as his teammates scowl at him for his flippancy. Or possibly for his mistake in falling in. "And environmental hazards can be just as dangerous as people. They don't tend to move, so they're easier in that sense, but you might find them much harder to spot. What are some of the signs you could look for?"
She walks them through an analysis of how they did — then mercilessly raises the mist again and lets them go. They do better, somewhat, so she picks up a handful of rocks and lazily lobs them into the mist, some at the kids but some at the ground or the river or the trees to create extra sound and confusion. She keeps them on their toes, adding new complications when they start to adjust, but by the third repetition it's clear that Kakashi is starting to far surpass the other three in his grasp of the situation — maybe because he has experience tracking, maybe because he has sharp senses or maybe because he's learning just that quickly.
Shikako slips into the mist. She doesn't suppress her chakra or make any particular effort to be stealthy, but nor does she make any particular effort to not be stealthy. It's still more than enough to waltz up to Kakashi and tap him on the shoulder, making him spring away like he's been given an electric shock. He catches on quickly — doesn't bother protesting that it's unfair for her to join in when she'd never said she would — just fixes onto hunting her down.
By the time she calls an end to that round, her four temporary students look exhausted and just a little bit defeated. "It's just a matter of practice," she assures them. "Keep practicing those drills and you'll get better, bit by bit. If you can find someone willing to taijutsu spar with you, that would be the best — ninjutsu is easier to sense but taijutsu will give you more practice tracking the whole of someone's body and how they move."
She doesn't think that's the end of it — because of course it isn't. But Shikako and Anko are deployed again and inter-team cooperation takes a backseat to the mission at hand. She keeps training Anko as they go, obviously — sensing is something that can, and should, be practiced on the move.
"If I get good, can I learn the mist jutsu too?" Anko asks eagerly. "That's super cool."
Shikako laughs and ruffles her hair. "Sure. The mist jutsu can actually help you sense things a little too, since it has your chakra in it. So first, let me show you how to change your chakra nature—"