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Please enjoy the Following Story.
Learning Curve
Naruto was severely annoyed with his placement on Team seven. The sandiame must have been off his rocker to approve the team selection. Naruto was tired of the way his sensei ignored him during team training cessions, opting instead to only work with Sasuke. Sakura had grown increasingly abusive once they had been placed on the same team; But naruto had soon buried the feelings he once held for her, and instead of taking the abuse he took a cold shoulder approach when dealing with her. Sasuke had become even more arrogant as time went on causing Naruto to develop an extreme dislike for the Uchiha. Using his clones Naruto had mostly improved his taijustsu as for the first time he had live training partners. By having some clones hang back and take notes on the fights he soon learned of the painful deficiencies in his style. The reckless brawling he employed only worked on his clones as they used the same style. Naruto himself was easily able to counter and evade the sloppy attacks made by his clones, making it evident that he would need to drastically improve before the justsu was of any real use in a fight.
Deciding to work with what he had, Naruto set out to improve the kage bunshin no jutsu, increasing their durability and the coordination between their attacks. In order to do this Naruto speculated that he would need far more control over the jutsu and a way to instantly communicate with the clones. Naruto knew that his improvements would be impossible without a far greater understanding of the inner workings of the original jutsu, in other words he would need to visit the konoha ninja archives. Naruto came across several starling discoveries on his first trip, the first and the foremost being that the clones memories could be returned to the user if they had the necessary control to draw back the charkra from the clones before they were destroyed. Naruto immediately set out to improve his charkra control.
Contrary to popular opinion Naruto was by no means stupid. And after getting the summary of his skills from his clones he was even more aware of his deficiencies. Naruto had never put much stock into improving his charkra control, in the academy a few simple activities had been suggested to help the children improve their control to a level that they would not pass out after using the E-D rank jutsus taught during the four years that they spent at the academy. For someone like Naruto that had massive charkra reserves the exercises had seemed trifle and Naruto had more important things to do, namely surviving in a city full of people who wanted him dead. Naruto was often accused of being a delinquent, and a majority of the mishaps in the village were attributed to him. The truth of the matter was far different, Naruto had in his early years performed a few pranks hoping to get attention; however after the prank victims retaliated with violence he quickly abandoned the pursuit, yet the stigma had stuck. Naruto had broken into the archive to find a solution to his inability to preform the illusionary clone that was taught at the academy. Naruto had never attributed his lack of success with this technique to his poor control, instead he thought that he had be taught the wrong hand seals for the justsu as he had been for all the other academy jutsus. Naruto had managed to puzzle them out for the most part but he decided to research them as well to see if he could put a personal touch on them.
Naruto had learned the kage bunshin jutsu after overhearing Mizuki, a chunnin instructor, talking to a gray haired teen about retrieving some jutsu scroll and leaving it for pickup in an abandoned shack in the woods. Naruto had jumped at the opportunity to learn new jutsu from an actual scroll and had waited patiently for Mizuki to drop the scroll of and leave. Knowing that he only had a short amount of time between Mizuki's departure and the other man picking up the scroll he had grabbed the scroll and spent the night in the forest, returning to his apartment after attending the academy the next day. Naruto had learned that deception was an important skill for all ninja to have and had played off the Kage bunshin no jutsu as the standard illusionary clone technique, allowing him to pass the academy graduation exam.
With the accelerated learning Naruto was undergoing, he recognized the need for an organization system that would help him sort through the information that was useful. Based on the success of his clones taking notes on his fighting style from different vantage points and thought patterns, Naruto decided to apply the same strategy to his studies. The multiplicity of ideas generated on each new piece of information would hopefully ensure that he did not glance over anything beneficial, as well as optimize his productivity. Naruto knew that it would take time to develop his improvements on the standard jutsus, yet he knew that it would be worth it in the end. Naruto decided to wait for results before letting anyone know what he was attempting, secrecy was after all paramount to the ninja life style.
In his studies Naruto learned of the many clans in Konoha. Due to his status as the village pariah he decided that he should be prepared to deal with any threats to him coming from any of the clans. Thus Naruto began to write his own Bingo Book, listing clan characteristics and special abilities as well as his thoughts on how to counter some of their more common abilities (the only ones published), over time naruto knew that the book would be expanded to include foreign clans and any enemies he might make so he sent out some clones to gather information on other famous shinobi and shinobi clans.
Naruto soon discovered the cause of his relatively small hight. Surviving on ramen and the occasional fruits he would eat was not conducive to proper growing. Naruto knew that it would be difficult to change his diet but for the sake of his physical development, he would add more protein and vegetables to his meals. Naruto found that his physical deficiencies extended beyond poor nutrition, yes he had amazing stamina and resilience, but they were in essence wasted by his inability to properly coordinate his movements to inflict meaningful damage, and his lack of flexibility to avoid taking damage. Naruto realized that he would need to divide his time between his studies and his physical training.
The next morning when Naruto sparred with his clones he could see the fruits of his labor. The past two months of training whenever his team was not doing D-rank missions had definitely paid off. His research was coming along nicely and he had succeeded in improving his charkra control to the point that he could balance senbon needles over each of his fingers and get them to do a variety of tricks. Naruto had learned the wall walking exercise as it was considered common knowledge and thus published in shinobi archives. With his improved control and greater knowledge of how the basic jutsus worked as well as the drawbacks Naruto was able to vastly improve their combat usefulness.
First Naruto had begun work on the academy taught clone jutsu. He had realized that even though the clones had little to no chance of fooling an experienced ninja, the fact that they were intangible and generally dismissed by others as a pathetic attempt at a distraction, could be turned to his advantage if he equipped them with the ability to disperse on contact, leaving behind a thin mist of charkra that could be used to cast a genjutsu. The newly dubbed genbunshin were devastating if applied correctly. Because they were not considered a threat enemies would not waste energy attempting to dodge them, allowing them to contact and directly inject their charkra into the enemy initiating a genjutsu. Naruto had found it easier to mold the charkra for the few low level genjutsus that he knew into the construct for the clone. The possibilities were endless as the clones were not limited to carbon copies of Naruto, they could be anything, an insect, a bird, a leaf, a scroll, a rock, a puddle, anything. Naruto had not yet finished the jutsu but he expected that it would be done within the next month.
Next Naruto had begun work on the henge jutsu. The normal henge simply covered the caster in a film of charkra that bended the perception of anyone looking at them. This worked well against civilians and less than observant ninja but against everyone else it was painfully obvious due to the external charkra use. Naruto had decided to have his kage bunshin attempt the henge in a variety of ways: internalizing the charkra shroud in an attempt to force an actual transformation. This was only partially successful so Naruto decided to wait till he had more information and test results to work with before attempting to preform an actual transformation. Another option explored by his clones was the use of additional hand seals to stabilize the original jutsu and eliminate its' charkra presence this was looking promising so Naruto had his last batch of clones incorporate these theories into making artificial limbs and other things with a sturdier charkra construct. If mastered this would allow greater versatility in a fight as well as complete unpredictability.
Improving the kawimari was proving to be the most difficult. The technique seemed rather efficient in its present state but after intense research Naruto had found that the drawbacks far out weighed the benefit outside of potentially fatal wounds. The kawamiri jutsu required an object to be prepared before hand, and the charkra expenditure was a direct function of the difference in masses and the distance between the two objects. Any ninja with enough charkra control could easily pick up on the telltale signs of the kawamiri being used and react accordingly, in fact the kawamiri could be voided by a strong enough burst of charkra to disrupt the connection between the caster and the intended replacement item. In addition, using the kawamiri placed intense stress on the bodies internal systems, in cases of extended use the internal damage was either fatal in and of itself or lead to the user being incapacitated on the battle field.
Naruto was determined not to let these setbacks deter him from his goal of mastering these techniques and taking them to levels that were previously thought impossible. For the first time Naruto was thankful for his lack of a social life. He had all the free time in the world and now that he had occupied that time with training the he could see the results.