Daisuke...
It all boiled down to that boy, didn't it.
Well. No, that wasn't fair. He was a genin now, that made him a man for all intents and purposes.
Just like it made him a man.
Uchiha Sasuke was most certainly not brooding, no matter what his classmates would say. Some of them dismissively and some of them longingly, but the point stood. He was not brooding. He was just sitting alone in his clan district, away from everyone else, in deep thought.
That was all.
A man needed time alone with his thoughts.
Despite his laziness, Shikamaru had the right idea when it came to certain things. Would he have been more like that if he had the comfort of his clan to fall back on?
He shook his head. None of that. Getting off track.
Daisuke. Daisuke had beaten him in a fair fight. No tricks...well, any more so than was to be expected in a shibobi fight at any rate. He hadn't like, slipped laxatives into his breakfast or anything super underhanded like that.
Hm. A possible tactic for that man? ...No, that was silly. That was old academy him thinking. He was newly minted Sasuke the man, the genin, he didn't have time for such silly nonsense.
He hadn't thought that it was possible. There were people better than him at some things in class. He wasn't at the top with all three of the academy basics, and Dai had him beat when it came to pure physical confrontation. Not that there was any surprise there, given who he had been getting personal training from for years.
He swallowed back a bit of bitterness.
He wasn't too proud to admit that he had done some digging into his rival. After he'd started rapidly climbing the academy ranks, he found himself curious. What was he doing differently to close the gap so fast?
Well. He had been intending to do some digging himself, anyways. Turned out he hadn't needed to. He'd off offhandedly mentioned something about his curiosity to Kairi and she'd begun to lyrically wax the things that Daisuke was doing to catch up so that he could woo him and they'd be together.
He had to dismiss a lot of it as...artistic license, but there was no doubt that he was pushing himself. Hard. He'd staked out a few areas of the village at various parts of the night and day just to confirm (he was just switching up his training routine timing! He wasn't stalking or anything!) and it did seem like the rumors of Dai barely sleeping were accurate.
Coupled with the amount of time he was spending with Ino (Though he was a bit baffled there. Were they not aware there was no way the village would allow that match to happen? Forget just the absurdity of a romance being permitted, the village wasn't going to break the Ino-Shika-Cho tradition for teams) and he had a willing partner to help drive him. He would have dismissed working with someone to better yourself as foolishness but... in private, to himself, he couldn't guarantee that if he and Ino fought that he'd win every time. That couldn't be coincidence.
He reached his hand out and clenched it into a fist. Was this his limit? Was this as far as he could reach on his own? He'd slaved away, but Daisuke slaved harder. He'd looked at every book and resource, watched more experienced Ninja train to figure out ways to improve, and Daisuke had Ino working directly with him.
It was possible.
No...
But it was possible...that his methods were flawed.
That man was a prodigy in a way that no one, not him, not Daisuke, not anyone that had ever graduated the academy before or after, was. Just being naturally better than him wasn't going to happen.
Daisuke pushed himself even harder than Sasuke did. He'd need to double down on that, sleep less, train more, but at best he'd match the other genin there.
He'd seen that Sakura girl show a solid shape manipulation construct. Apparently she'd worked it out with that big lumbering friend of hers. He had no delusions he'd have worked out something similar in the same span of time.
He wasn't the most naturally talented. He could, maybe, push himself to catch up on the handwork side of things, and he didn't have allies to play off of and learn from.
And that man had all of them, at least at some point in his life, and a huge head start between the two of them.
He.
He swallowed.
Without Daisuke beating him there, he had his doubts he would have ever confronted this particular reality.
It wasn't a gap that he could close. Not by himself.
He...
He would make allies. People to spar with, people to train jutsu and physical skills. And...people he could call on, when he decided to go after that man.
Yeah. Yeah. He had to avenge his clan, regardless of what it took. Even if what it took was swallowing his own pride.
