Strength From Within (A Naruto Neglect Book)

29

After everyone had finished congratulating Daidai on his promotion, Minato told everyone to wait outside apart from Kakashi, Gai and Katsuko. Minato was seated in his chair, while the other four of them were standing in front of him. The blond man pulled out some folders from his drawer and looked up towards Daidai. "So, as I'm sure you know, only four members of your class became tokobetsu chūnin, with seven of you passing. The Ino-Shika-Cho trio will be formed once again, as to be frank, Ino and Choji still need a lot of work before they can become chūnin, and Shikamaru will be able to compensate for them for the time being. As much as I would like to promote him as well, he hasn't had much experience in an actual battle and his performance wasn't as high as required even if he was holding back. Otherwise I wouldn't hesitate to put you two in a team, seeing how well you've worked together. They will be learning under Asuma Sarutobi."

Daidai nodded in understanding, he had hoped to be with Shikamaru but the only logical thing in this situation was to put them in seperate teams. The other members of the room also stayed silent, as the conversations was still predominantly directed at Daidai. "As a chūnin in full," Minato continued, "Your situation is quite special. See, there are two teams that have two chūnin on them that you could join. One of those teams is Kakashi and Katsuko's team. As Katsuko is a jounin it would be preferable for her to be able to be going out on missions with other jounin or chūnin when needed and to not have to be stuck with Neji and Motoshi who haven't made much of an improvement on their ego and are still not ready to be promoted to jounin even if they are strong enough for the rank.

The other option is a team consisting of Hyuuga Hinata, Uchiha Sasuke and Gai here. Their third member, Rock Lee, was seriously injured during a mission not too long ago. While he will make a full recovery in time and be able to return to ninja work, it is uncertain when exactly that will be. As Lee will be returning at some point, I was hoping you could join as the third member for Kakashi's team which would be a more permanent role until you become a jounin. Despite this, you three haven't really shown signs of getting along and I wouldn't want to cause any unnecessary fighting, so I wanted to give you the choice of Gai's team as well. Additionally, since you haven't really gotten to interact positively with many of the other ninja in your generation aside from Katsuko, Shikamaru and Choji, I also thought having connections with Hinata and Sasuke would be beneficial to you."

Daidai contemplated what he said, even though he already knew what he was going to say. Kakashi would be a good option because he and Katsuko would understand his struggles after being in the Anbu, but now Daidai was getting older there was a need for him to work on his physical body as well, since he could handle more physical training without having an effect on his growth. Gai would push him and help him gain better speed and reflexes and overall it would be more worthwhile to have him as a teacher.

He had gotten quite used to the anbu style of things as well, so having someone different there and learning to work in more direct confrontation would be something he needed. While being in anbu was all well and good, there were restrictions on what he could use because of the nature of the missions but also because of his identity. Aside from commonly known Konoha moves, if he used a special move in missions and in anbu it would be easy to figure out who he was. That was why he wasn't as strong as he could be, because he faced those limitations.

Minato also made a good point about needing to get to know more ninja in his age group, as until he and Katsuko made their own village he would be working with them more frequently. He'd seen Sasuke when he was spending time with Itachi outside of missions and the boy had been nice enough. He was strong, but with less pressure on him he was able to thrive and learn at his own pace, which was still rather quickly. Hinata, who he'd also seen around, was extremely shy, but since becoming a chūnin she'd seemed to have stepped up a bit more. Chūnin would sometimes help at the academy or with genin groups, and Daidai supposed that helped. He'd also heard rumours that she'd developed her own fighting style with the help of Gai and some studying, which might have also played a role in her confidence going up.