(late-April, year 54 AK)
'Damn, I feel like I'm about to puke...' Yuta thought as he was laying on the ground, being extremely exhausted, 'Shisui is a monster...'
Itachi and Hikari were laying on the ground not far away from him, and both of them are not much better than Yuta, totally exhausted and battered. It all happened because of Shisui's training.
Exactly one month has passed since Yuta's first "mission", and since then, Yuta's life has followed a new routine.
One day Shisui was taking them to the Hokage Tower to accept some D-rank mission on the first floor at the reception hall, then they would be very busy for the whole day doing some or another hard labor odd job in the village, like plowing the field or moving some heavy goods from one place to another, or helping in construction, and by the time they would finish the job – they usually would be very exhausted and it would be already late evening.
Since the first day, they didn't come to the Hokage's office for a mission like the first time even once, and Shisui picked their missions himself at the reception hall on the first floor instead.
After a "mission" day, what usually follows is two days of Shisui's training, where Shisui drilled a proper squad tactics into Yuta, Itachi and Hikari, he taught them on practice what to do in each and every combat situation, how to face a stronger enemy by working together and how to act against multiple enemies at once when he was using shadow clones.
Or so Shisui said, but in practice, he just forced his three Genins to fight him at once, imposing some challenges and restrictions on them and himself, simulating one or another combat situation, like him fighting only using taijutsu or only ninjutsu, or using some specific tactics and such, and usually it would end up with him beating up Yuta and the others to a similar state of exhaustion like right now.
"Good job team." Shisui said irritatingly-cheerfully as he approached Yuta and the others, who are still laying on the ground, being beaten up and exhausted, "Itachi, your teamwork and consideration of your teammates during the fight have improved a lot. And Yuta, your genjutsu is getting better."
After that first fight against Shisui, that was supposedly a Jonin test before Shisui had accepted his new team, Shisui had allowed Yuta to affect him and his shadow clones with genjutsu during the training to some extent, simulating realistic behavior and genjutsu resistance of different kinds of enemy shinobi with different genjutsu resistance and dispel skills to emulate the real combat that would await them outside the village.
"Hikari, your improvement rate with taijutsu is impressive, keep it up and one day you will surpass me for sure." Shisui said with a satisfied smile.
Although Shisui said those things, his three Genins were too exhausted to even respond to him right now.
"Well, anyway, tomorrow's mission is postponed, I have some business to take care of, so the three of you will have three days to rest and prepare." Shisui said calmly, dropping his casual and carefree attitude.
"Prepare for what, Shisui-sensei." Itachi asked from the ground as he slowly switched to a seating position with some effort, Yuta and Hikari sat up as well after hearing something unexpected like that, as before this Shisui never gave them a free day during the whole month, and the three Genins were quite exhausted with all the training and hard work during the whole month by this point.
"After the three days of rest I will take you on a mission outside the village, you must be prepared for anything and be at your best condition." Shisui said and left after that.
"Finally, a real mission..." Yuta mumbled tiredly as Shisui left, but although he was tired, there was some excitement in his voice.
It was many years since Yuta arrived in this world, but he never left the village even once, and all he did here is train and study, all for the sake of becoming stronger, and now he was excited since for the first time he would be able to get outside of the village and maybe even fight enemy ninjas, although Yuta knew full well how low his chances are to actually encounter an enemy ninja on the C-rank mission they would be taking.
Normally, a sane person from a civilized world in his place won't be excited and unafraid of idea of going into danger like that, where he might have to fight to the death for the sake of some shitty mission, that was basically a mercenary job for some random Joe who had enough money to afford Konoha ninjas to do their bidding.
But after getting used to time-travel Yuta starts to disregard and underestimate the most dangers in this world, he wasn't afraid for his life and he basically treated the upcoming missions as he would treat a level in a video-game he has to beat, and if the situation would arise that he won't be able to beat the level in his first try, then the game would become only more interesting for him and nothing else.
Yuta was well aware of his mental transgression and the building up detachment from reality, but after thinking about it a little, he dismissed the issue and didn't care about it, he treated it as natural changes and adaptation of his mind to his new time-traveling power and didn't worry about it.
"I hope we will run into some enemies I could fight!" Hikari said excitedly.
"Yea, that would be fun." Yuta said absentmindedly as he and Hikari exchanged a glance with a little bit of understanding in their eyes for the first time.
"Why would you want that?" Itachi asked, being confused.
'Oh, right, I forgot that Itachi doesn't like fighting. What did he say during his introduction? "I like peace and dislike war" or something? I guess Fugaku did fucked up there, didn't he? He dragged four-year-old Itachi to the war battlefield to harden his spirit and to let him see the truth of the shinobi world or some bullshit like that, but in the end he did the opposite, he made Itachi into some weird kind of pacifist, who for the sake of peace wouldn't mind killing his own family members...' Yuta thought.
"Don't you want to fight some strong enemies that you could test your skills against, Itachi?" Hikari asked like if it was the most obvious thing to do.
'Maybe the brute even crazier than I am, huh...' Yuta thought absentmindedly, as he quietly listens to the conversation while recovering, since he was too exhausted to stand up and go home yet.
"No, I don't want that. Aren't you satisfied enough fighting against Shisui all the time?" Itachi said with some confusion.
"Oh come on, Shisui is too strong!" Hikari pouted, "Even when he uses shadow clones and lowers his strength, even when I manage to defeat one of his shadow clones, it isn't the same. I want to have a real fight against a real enemy ninja. Even our schemer agrees with me!"
"Don't drag me into this, you brute." Yuta retorted tiredly and half-heartedly.
Since Shisui started the team training for every two days out of three, during the training Yuta mostly relied upon his skills with strategizing multiple steps ahead in the fight and leading the opponent into a trap with those steps, allowing his teammates or himself to score an easy victory. For such tactics Hikari had given him a nickname "schemer" and called him that from time to time, and it was obvious that she was expressing her dislike to such tactics with this nickname.
To respond to that Yuta started to call Hikari a "brute", since in his view, she was like a wild beast during a fight, zero strategy and tactics, she rushes recklessly into close combat fight at the first opportunity and follows just pure instincts alone, no multiple-steps-ahead-thinking whatsoever. At first Yuta tried to call her a "beast" but he almost got himself beaten up for that nickname, then he switched to "brute", since it seems to irritate Hikari just the right amount, not enough to trigger her violent side so he would have to fight for his life, but enough to annoy her to some extent.
But to Yuta's annoyance, even without thinking ahead and working on a strategy in a fight, Hikari's combat instincts was quite something, she was always able to react in time and do the right thing in the middle of a fight to cooperate with Yuta and Itachi. Whenever Yuta forms a plan that includes Hikari's finishing move at the right moment, whenever such a plan was getting executed by him and time comes, Hikari didn't disappoint and swiftly capitalize on the opening Yuta creates to deliver a finishing blow.
Although it always works in the end, Yuta often complains to himself that it was quite annoying to have to rack his brains to calculate how this wild beast of a girl would act in each specific situation, to actually be able to form a plan that would require a proper teamwork between them.
As for Itachi, Yuta felt that it was exponentially easier to cooperate with him, Yuta had no issues whatsoever to predict his movements and form a strategy to work together. Itachi was like precise and calm computing machine in a fight, after some time Yuta learned how Itachi moves and operates in different situations, especially now, after Shisui's guidance, that Itachi finally started to properly pay attention to his teammates, it was easy for Yuta to cooperate with him.
In fact, it was so much easier to form proper teamwork with Itachi, that whenever he had to cooperate with Hikari during the fight, Yuta was annoyed and frustrated to no end, even if she doesn't let him down in the end each time.
"But if the fight breaks out, it is likely that someone will die." Itachi replied to Hikari with some displeasure.
"So what? As long as it isn't us who dies, it's fine, isn't it?" Hikari replied casually, as if she is discussing the weather and not the possible scenario of the fight to the death.
Itachi furrowed his brows a little, then sighed and stood up, "See you in three days." He said in an emotionless tone and left.
"He didn't like that..." Yuta commented as he stood up as well, about to leave.
"As if I care." Hikari replied.
As Yuta left the training grounds and walked home, it was already almost dark.
'I have three free days. I suppose I postponed it long enough, three days without any interference like academy classes, D-rank missions or team training... Oh boy, it would be the longest three days in my life I feel like...' Yuta thought on his way home as he thought of all the things he wants to do during these "three" days.
--- AN ---
Sometimes I receive complaints like 'too much "telling" and too little "doing"' when there are descriptions of the past events like in this chapter, instead of actual writings of those events in "real time".
To address that I want to say, that I don't really want to get too much into details with events like that where not much happened, for example, if I were to write that event in real time, where the nicknames come to life and Hikari called Yuta a schemer for the first time and how Yuta called Hikari a beast and then a brute, it would eat up a lot of text, time and effort, and would have zero value towards the story's progression.
So, my point is, I only use this descriptive style of recounting the past events that happened 'behind the scenes' when I want to add some progression to the story like in this chapter, but at the same time I don't want to get too much into detail and actually write those low-value events. I usually do it like this when I want just to move on and actually progress the story forward instead of stalling it.
On another note, there is the new negative 3-star review with the guy complaining about MC only having time-travel when his ability called Time Control. It is sad, really, with how many times I mentioned in text, author notes and comments that it is not Only time-travel, and it is implied in text that other applications of Time Control is possible and it's only the beginning of the story with how slow it goes, but well, this guy must be reading the fic with his eyes closed or something... But still, this compels me to mention it again - it's not only time-travel, there will be other things too, and come on guys, the literal title for the fic is "Time Traveler", if you leave a negative review, at least say some constructive criticism so I could improve my work based on it.
Sorry for ranting so much, I just felt the need to say something that's all, have a nice day, thanks for reading.
Thanks to Krishna_Razz, Eyes_Of_The_Void, waltersaaron16, Loalola, Daoistbm0BeO and passatempo for the power stones.