Naruto... was bored.
It had been almost a year since the Sannin-student duo began this three year training trip and all he had learned so far was to finally form the Rasengan one-handed and make it a bit bigger. Impressive, yes, but just a spinning ball of doom was not going to be enough to beat Sasuke down enough to drag him back to Konoha.
Naruto had an epiphany as the Chidori pierced his lung: Sasuke didn't care. Not about him, not about Konoha, and not about Sakura-chan. If it hadn't been for the Rasengan's rotation knocking Sasuke off target, it wouldn't have been his lung that was shredded-it would have been it heart.
So, while he would honor his promise to bring Sasuke back, next time he wouldn't be so worried about any injuries Sasuke might end up with and focus more on not getting another matching scar.
Unfortunately, he was starting to think he would never be able to get to that level of power that Sasuke had demonstrated so easily, not without the Kyuubi's power.
And that is where the current problem lay.
Jiraiya had only planned on teaching him how to harness the Kyuubi's power. For the whole three years. Despite not having a clue on how to teach Naruto the proper way to harness his personal bijuu battery.
Oh, sure he spent the first six months or so forcing the entire academy curriculum into Naruto's head as a refresher and made sure he knew the basics. This being Jiraiya, knowing the basics consisted of being able to do both the Henge and the Kawarimi no Jutsu without any hand seals. The Bunshin would have had similar requirements, but luckily Jiraiya agreed that Naruto's chakra control sucked. Instead Naruto was forced to be able to perform the Kage Bunshin sans hand seals as well and choose exactly how many clones to make rather than just spamming them everywhere.
That was when the current problem showed up. Naruto didn't want to use Kyuubi's chakra. In his eyes it was a crutch, a shortcut. If he was going to take Sasuke down and bring him back it would be with his power damn it! Not some fuzz ball living in his belly button.
Jiraiya hadn't planned for that. He had no scrolls, no training equipment, no weights. Sure he could create gravity and weight seals, but to do so he needed a sterile room. Most civilian hospitals don't let strange men use their operating room for a doodle session. Messing up a gravity seal would, at best, just crush whatever or whoever it was attached to. Worst case scenario was the creation of a black hole. Yeah.
Currently Naruto was sitting in the hotel room they had rented for the day in a small town just inside the borders of Whirlpool. After all, everyone knows Uzushio had been razed to the ground and picked clean, so there really wasn't any reason for ninja to be there. Jiraiya had just left to send a message to Tsunade about getting some scrolls and equipment to use, or peeping at the local hot springs. S-ranked ninja, toddler ranked attention span.
"Screw this, I'm not sitting on my butt feeling sorry for myself. If I did that I'll end up like Sasuke!"
Naruto jumped off the bed and leaped off the balcony, roof-jumping his way out of the small village.
He kept a steady pace and soon arrived at the outskirts of town, where man made structures stopped and the forest began.
The villagers had some pretty strange stories about the forest that surrounded him. They said nature was more awake, or something. Jiraiya had dismissed it out of hand, claiming every little village and town had the same stories, a way to attract tourists. But walking among these silent sentinels, Naruto was starting to think the villagers were on to something.
Naruto shook off those thoughts as he came to a wide clearing deep in the woods.
"Alright! Let's get to work!"
With a clap of his hands, the clearing erupted in a puff of smoke that faded to reveal the clearing swarming with shadow clones. When Jiraiya had been putting him through the remedial academy curriculum, something caught his attention when they went over math; anything multiplied by zero equaled zero. This got him to thinking. He had always been the Dobe, the Dead Last, a literal zero. The Kage Bunshin was a multiplying technique. Now he wasn't a Zero, but he still wanted to get the most out of his signature Jutsu.
Before he had just spammed clones and had them rush headlong into the fray, wasting chakra left and right. Because he had done this, any one clone rarely lasted for more than a minute. This resulted in him never noticing the memory transfer aspect of the Kage Bunshin, especially in battle. That changed when Jiraiya made him practice the Kage Bunshin by making him create a random amount of clones, anywhere from a solitary clone to a couple hundred. During this training Naruto kept getting flashes of seeing himself from different angles. When Jiraiya finally explained just what was happening, Naruto ended up kicking his ass into the women's side of the hot springs they had been relaxing at.
Now that he knew the secret of the Kage Bunshin, Naruto would frequently use them to practice war games and group tactics by placing them in groups of three with a leader and having them spar, just like a true shinobi team. Meanwhile others were practicing chakra control with everything from leaf spinning, tree climbing and water walking to creating stilts out of the water, walking around with rocks stuck to their bodies by chakra, and balancing on the tip of a kunai that had been stuck ring first in the ground by creating a pad of chakra between their finger and the kunai. Those had to be replaced a lot. The final group of clones were the ones that needed their numbers replenished the least; they were practicing calligraphy. Naruto's handwriting was quite simply, atrocious. Considering that before Iruka-sensei no one bothered to correct him, his handwriting was barely on par with an eight year old's. Not only was learning to write an important part of being a ninja, but good calligraphy was vital for learning fuinjutsu. One smudged line could be the difference between a seal to keep your ramen warm and a seal that would blow your arm off.
Amid this scene of controlled chaos was the original blonde, doing what his clones couldn't. Physical training.
During a stay at a town near Wave, Naruto had found something interesting. While only ninja villages like Konoha and Suna had true shinobi stores that sold ninja grade weapons and equipment, most curio shops in civilian cities had items scavenged from old battlefields or sold by rogue ninja. In that particular town Naruto had found that many Iwa ninja, after sacking Uzushio, had sold their spoils in the immediate area because the supply lines couldn't get the troops their pay fast enough. Over time the various pieces of art, equipment, and artifacts congregated to one place, that particular town. Jiraiya managed to get permission from Tsunade to purchase all of it and sent it to Konoha to form an Uzushio Museum as a way of reminding the current generation of Konoha's old allies. Included in the shipment were quite a few scrolls with information on Jutsu that had been exclusively used by Uzushio shinobi. Obviously Naruto couldn't keep them and there was no way he was carrying around that many copies either. In the end he only copied a single scroll, with the understanding that he could have copies of the others when his training was over.
Naruto had decided to copy a Taijutsu scroll as his own Taijutsu was... nonexistent. Yelling and swinging your fists might work in a bar room brawl, but despite what some thought, the legal drinking age was still sixteen. The Taijutsu style he had chosen was known as Natural Harmony. It had four separate paths that according to the scroll could be combined once mastered. The Air kata was based on dodging enemy attacks before then counter attacking. The Earth kata focused on letting your enemies break themselves on your immovable defense. The Water kata was deflecting enemy attacks and controlling the flow of battle. The Fire kata was full of powerful strikes, meant to break through any defense and aimed to cripple an enemy. The fire kata also included a sub category for Lightning which was involved pinpoint precision attacks at the eight vital areas. The very last section referenced special attacks that each kata used, but that section was too badly damaged on the original scroll for Naruto to read.
That had been a month after leaving Konoha. With almost a full year of practice, Naruto felt confident that he was at least proficient, even if he wasn't anywhere close to merging any of the katas together.
"Huh? Is it really that late?" Naruto glanced at the sun's position, hanging low in the sky.
"Guess I should head back to the hotel before Ero-Sennin comes after me. He'd never let me live it down. This is a pretty good training ground, maybe I can head back here tomorrow."
As Naruto was preparing to leave, he had the sudden feeling he was being watched. Catching sight of something in the corner of his eye, he spun around and quickly scanned the edge of the clearing.
"Nothing. I must be getting paranoid," Naruto muttered.
"Where have you been?" Jiraiya asked with a raised brow. He'd been lounging on the couch when Naruto had walked into their hotel room.
"Just training. Found a clearing in those woods. It was creepy though, I kept feeling like someone was watching me."
"Don't tell me you believe those silly little superstitions the villagers keep talking about. Anyways, what are your plans for tomorrow?"
"Huh, oh just training some more. They may be creepy but those woods are the best place for me to really let loose. Why?" Naruto asked, curious.
"After you finish your training tomorrow I want you to find somewhere quiet and practice meditation."
"You want me to meditate? What for?"
"Meditation helps clear the mind and also assists in absorbing the memories you get from your clones more easily. In addition, a calm clear headed ninja will always prevail over one whose mind is clouded with rage,"Jiraiya instructed, almost looking like the sage he is supposed to be.
"Wow Ero-Sennin, that sounded really wise, who'd you steal it from?"
"I told you not to call me that brat! And I came up with it all on my own."
"I'll stop calling you Ero-Sennin when you stop being a pervert, Ero-Sennin."
"I am no pervert!" Jiraiya began to pose.
"I am a -'
"Super Pervert, yeah I know, you've told me a dozen times already."
"Stupid punk, respect your elders!"
Naruto , being the model of maturity that he is, responded appropriately.
"Thpbpbpbt!" By blowing a raspberry.
"Cheeky brat. Anyway, remember: tomorrow, meditate, understood?"
"Yeah, yeah, I got it."
Naruto and Jiraiya were enjoying a quick breakfast in the hotel's small lobby restaurant when Naruto finally voiced the question that had been bothering him all night.
"What should I meditate on?"
"Well, traditionally you should meditate on your navel, but I don't think your belly button holds any world shattering secrets."
"Really?" Naruto deadpanned. "Absolutely nothing world shattering in my belly button at all."
"Oh hush, you know what I mean," Jiraiya retorted. "Hmmm...Try meditating on the wind. If you listen closely you will find that it changes enough to satisfy even your short attention span. Nature has many things to tell us if we just listen; where water is, if it will rain soon, what different animals are nearby, these things are vital for a Shinobi to know. Most use some technique or another that requires chakra and can give them away to enemies. By instead listening to nature you can be a true Shinobi, a warrior in the shadows," he said, looking at Naruto's Kill-Me Orange clothes pointedly.
As Jiraiya observed his apprentice, he realized that the last year, while beneficial to Naruto himself, had been hard on his actual clothes. The neon orange jumpsuit had dulled ever so slightly and had several visible patches. In addition it was not nearly as bulky as when they had left, instead stretched taught over Naruto's frame. Naruto had gone through a growth spurt upon leaving the village, adding nearly five inches to his previously short frame of about four foot nine inches.
"Change of plans, we're getting you a new outfit."
"What, but I like my clothes! Orange is awesome, and it's unmatchable stealth training."
"Really, stealth training?" Jiraiya said skeptically.
"Really. I managed to paint most of the Hokage Monument in broad daylight before getting caught before leading the ninja that tried to apprehend me on a wild goose chase. The only reason Iruka-sensei kept managing to catch me was because he apparently used to be a prankster too, so he knew all the tricks." Naruto explained proudly.
"Iruka Umino? I thought he always caught you because he was a Sensor type.'
"Nope. Iruka-sensei does have a chakra sensing Jutsu, but when I was a kid my control was so bad that the entire village was permeated with it, kinda like that Kirigakure no Jutsu Zabuza used. Oji-san told me that as a result the ninja training to be Sensors while I was a kid were especially sensitive because they had to feel through the chakra I was throwing around. I always thought it was kinda cool, ya know? Me, the academy's Dead Last, helping to improve the village in a way no one else could, not even the Teme."
"While that is a pretty interesting tidbit, it doesn't change that your clothes are currently close to becoming rags, and while orange might have been useful for training, you're a hunted man now, so let's tone it down a little."
"True, so let's hurry. I want to get something productive done today."
An hour later found the duo leaving the clothing shop, naruto's wallet much lighter, something he planned to change that night by replenishing it from Jiraiya's wallet. He considered it more than fair with all the time Jiraiya had made him pay for things or "borrowed " money from his own wallet.
Naruto was now clad in a simple pair of dark brown cargo pants that provided plenty of room for practically anything he needed to carry. A crimson red t-shirt was visible under an unzipped forest green jacket that had a hood to cover his bright, eye catching sun kissed hair. The shirt also had the advantage of soaking up blood without appearing wet, creating the illusion of being final touch was trading out the light blue fabric of his Hitai-ate for a darker tone and applying a special stain to the metal so it wouldn't glint in the sunlight.
"So now that you've cleaned out my funds, again, can I get to actually training?"
"Fine, you can go you impatient brat. Just remember-"
"Meditate, you told me already. Sheesh! I'm ignorant, not stupid!" And with that Naruto leaped up the side of the nearest building and began hopping in the direction of the forest clearing he had stumbled across yesterday.
"Hopefully making him meditate daily now will knock some patience into him, and maybe even prepare him for learning Sage mode, Kami knows he'll need it with Akatsuki after him," Jiraiya said with a sigh. His serious expression took on a decidedly more lecherous appearance as he noticed his surrounding and, more importantly, the hot springs a pair of buxom young women were entering.
"Well, nose to the grindstone, that's me! I can't disappoint my loyal readers!"
Welcome to my first foray into the wonderful world of fan written fiction, Custos in Elementis! The funny thing is I never actually intended to write an actual fan fiction story until a night or two ago when I had this dream and it would not. Stop. Bugging. Me. What was this dream? That would ruin the story! Anyway, I'm hoping this first chapter is acceptable to everyone, so please leave a review telling how I did. If any experienced writers decide to grace me with their presence, some tips on writing fight scenes would be much appreciated.
~Noxlux013