"Aunt Reina said we are finally at your level, so from now on you can join in on the fun too," Yomi said, brimming with happiness and something very similar to the satisfaction of having your friend face the same suffering you are going through.
"Sorry brother, we have to change the timing of our spar a little," Kaida said, visibly excited to start the fuinjutsu training of probably the strongest clan in history.
"No problem, I was about to ask you for the same anyway. Lord Third wants me to train some new recruits of Anbu," Shisui said.
"Great then, these are the stuff you have to bring with you tomorrow. Aunt Reina said 'You are not allowed to be late for even a second, otherwise you would have to take the whole lesson doing a headstand,'" Yomi said.
"Really? What did I do to her?"
"OH no, it is a general rule for all of us. I have grown some impressive shoulders during the first month of the training," Yomi said, trying not to wince at the thought of that.
"I will make sure I am not late," Kaida said with a serious expression.
"Can I also join this fun training?" Naruto asked, with Kimimaro nodding behind.
"Oh Yomi was just joking, Naruto. Kimimaro, this was the hard training and will involve a lot of reading books and writing practice."
"The same thing big sis does every day?" Naruto asked, scared like a wet cat.
"Yeah, but if you really want, I can convince Aunt Reina to get you on board as well," Yomi said, a dark shadow looming on her face.
"Nooooooo..... Run brother!" Naruto took Kimimaro and ran for his life, straight to his room, leaving everyone chuckling.
...
Next morning, Kaida was present in the Uzumaki's house with Karin, Yomi, and Reina. It was interesting to see how Yomi and Karin straight went to their desks and started practicing some of the seals, which were both familiar and at the same time completely different for Kaida, like he knew what it was and what it would do.
But he didn't know why it looked so different and frankly how to disable it in the first place, which was concerning as he was reaching near the level of seal master in fuinjutsu. Disabling a simple seal should be as simple as breathing for him, and if he needed time for even something like that...
"Don't fret, we have a little different way to make seals harder to discern and disable. Otherwise, how could we have used them if everyone with the knowledge of fuinjutsu could have disabled our seals?" Reina said, looking toward the seal Karin and Yomi were making.
"Am I going to learn that as well?" Kaida asked.
"Sure, that will be your first task. Go and complete this book. I want you to modify all of your seals by the end of the day," Reina said, passing Kaida a book which could have totally worked as a weight for training of younger ninjas.
"Did I thank you for teaching me, Aunt?" Kaida asked, looking at the book and understanding why Yomi and Karin were giving him that smug look for quite some time.
Now the tables had been turned. Till then, they were on the other side where Kaida was ahead and they had to catch up to his level, but now they were ahead and Kaida had to do the whole catching up thing.
Since they knew what he was given, it would at least take him a week to complete. It was like relearning how to speak with every letter switched between how they sound—you already know the language, but the task was still going to be difficult... or at least they thought that.
"You can thank me after I teach you something important, boy. Till then, consider this a repayment for changing the life I had mistakenly chosen for me," Reina ruffled Kaida's hair with a motherly affection in her eyes, which got a shocked reaction from both Karin and Yomi.
"How come my mom is being nicer to another boy than even her own daughter?" Karin whispered.
"I want to find that out too," Yomi replied.
"Since you guys have time to chat, how about you make me ten copies of third level of inscription while binding two seals together," Reina said, leaving Kaida to learn things on his own while she went to check on the girls' progress.
"I will be taking this outside. I need some extra space to practice all this," Kaida said and went out straight towards the training area in the Uchiha compound. With how well the family was making, Kaida had booked a training area for a whole year at this point, and it didn't even put a tiny dent in their pocket.
Though that was not important. What was important was that when Kaida went to the training area, he quickly activated his three tomoe sharingan to go through all of the book as soon as he could, which didn't take him more than half an hour, which was also because he was trying to understand it as much as he could.
After that, the process of creating shadow clones and re-reading the book again and again started. While Kaida racked his brain in the book, his shadow clones practiced all of the methods in the book.
With around a hundred shadow clones working on that, the practice was not even a hard part at all. The only thing Kaida needed was understanding the concepts of the book laying in front of him, which was easier said than done. After re-reading the book countless times, and dispersing and making shadow clones non-stop, Kaida went back to the Uzumaki's house.
Even with using every weapon in his arsenal, he was not able to complete even the first task he was given. With a little shame in his voice, he said:
"Sorry Aunt, I tried my best, but I can't really understand the fourth inscription technique. No matter how many times I try to read that, I just can't understand it. Even imitating the seal does nothing."
"Of course it does nothing. You are working on beginner seals. The fourth encryption is for the advance... wait, you learned till the third encryption?"
"Yes, the third one was hard, but the idea of using a different array totally unrelated to be concealed on the surface and then the main layer of array to be used as a concealer was great. I mean, someone will waste their time going to the last layer, when the main one is hidden right in front of their eyes. But there were few things I would like to confirm, like when using sensing seal as a base, can we really use chakra gathering point for both of the arrays at the same time? Won't it be counterintuitive? I mean, we can just increase..."
"And I thought I was the one who was supposed to be the talented one in fuinjutsu," Karin said, trying to understand the conversation going between Kaida and her mother.
"Don't try to compare to him. He is... what should I say... genius? Or something like that. Compared to me, you are talented," Yomi said, trying to stop her friend from going down the same hole she did when she was trying to catch up with Kaida every second of her life.
"You are right, he is a genius. That's why mom likes him more. But just you wait, I will show him. I'm called Karin Uzumaki for a reason."
"What reason?"
"...Because I was born in the clan... you know what, let's leave it."
"Are you girls done with the task I provided?" Reina asked.
"Working on it!"