Red Nara

Minato Namikaze was ready to change his mind about a personal apprenticeship with one of Konoha's three sannin, the Great Jiraiya, as he himself liked to introduce himself.

Oh no, at first the genin was overjoyed to be apprenticed to a shinobi of the S class, because it was a direct path to the top and a guarantee that you would reach the rank of jonin without any problems, not to mention access to knowledge that a mere academy graduate would hardly ever see, despite any merit.

New techniques, the joint study of fuinjutsu, intensive training and learning those nuances of the shinobi profession that are achieved only with sweat and blood, in most cases - his own. Minato was developing at an unprecedented pace, leaving his teammates far behind. All of this and more made the young man work hard to live up to expectations... until recently.

Recently, the mentor had been pulled away from training by a summons to the Hokage's tower, and he had returned very... motivated, if I may say so. Minato was feeling the effects of that motivation at the moment, as he was wrapped in a training suit that added a hundred pounds to his weight, and he had been running laps around the training ground for the past hour, dangerously close to the chakra-depletion line.

- Hurry up, hurry up! - The sannin, who was running beside him, ignored the student's wet clothes and the fact that he was running at a rapid pace, swaying from side to side. - How do you intend to make it to the finals of the chunin exams if you can't do such a simple exercise! We only have three months to train intensively, and we must squeeze every possible result out of that time! I won't let Hatake and Nara's charges beat my personal apprentice! Your minimum goal is to reach the third round!

- Yes, Sensei," Minato wheezed, making a titanic effort to speed up and truly hating those who had condemned him to such bullying.

It didn't last long, and after a moment, Namikaze's knees simply buckled and he fell into the saving darkness of oblivion.

- He didn't last as long as I'd hoped," Jiraiya sighed, picking up the downed genin with one hand and deactivating the seals on his training suit with the other, "I did twice as many laps with that kind of weight when I was his age.

Jiraiya had inherited the suit from his teacher, and it was still working properly even decades after its creation, an old design of the seal masters that had been given to the first Hokage by Mito Uzumaki. The white-haired shinobi nostalgically remembered his own tortures under Sarutobi-sensei's guidance, and now he had an opportunity to remember his youth, but from a different perspective.

The sannin did not pay attention to the other two genin of his team, who were huddled in a corner of the training ground, looking a little pale and fearful. All envy of their more talented and successful teammate had long since vanished, and they were only relieved that they had not been made personal apprentices and spared from participating in the lightly disguised torture.

Looking at the ragged body hanging on his arm, the jonin only sighed.

- Well, tough times call for tough decisions, so it was time to resort to the forbidden techniques.

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