This was a little brain fart that occurred when studying for my Final Exams. I took a break and read a little bit and found myself thinking back to my Psych book I had previously been reading and wondered something. Why is the shadow clone such a jutsu that can be pulled off so easily without any real depth to the technique itself? So here is the result of such a brain fart.
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'Safe to land… adjust angle… veer right…'
Naruto leapt through the forest as he adjusted the cord strap of the huge scroll he carried. The Forbidden Scroll of Secrets was surprisingly not that hard to get into. One would think that after the Raijin Incident a few years ago that the village would have kept a closer eye on its treasures, but this lapse in security (which Naruto took advantage of vigorously and often) allowed him to pass this final test set up by his now favorite teacher Mizuki.
He made his last leap with a flourish, and expected to land as gracefully. Sadly he didn't compensate for the added weight of reinforced animal leather bound upon itself a multitude of times and held together by a cedar pole core. Long story short, his feet slipped out beneath him and his face got reacquainted with the loam soil around this abandoned shack.
Spitting out some ill-tasting dirt, which to his revulsion contained half a worm, and rinsing his face and mouth out with a canteen he kept on him, he proceeded to roll out the scroll to see which jutsu he would learn to graduate.
'Hm, Konoha Security Seals, Safe Houses, Agent aliases, High profile dossier. Dang, this scroll has some real high clearance crap on it. Makes one wonder how I even got to see this thing without being ganked on the spot.' He unrolled it further until he passed the first thing that said something he was familiar with. 'Ha! Here we are! Jutsu come to daddy! Alright, Taijutsu secret techniques… Nah! Genjutsu, Hell no! Elemental jutsu… aint got time to learn. Non-Elemental jutsu… sure.'
He scrolled through the entries and a few sparked his interest. 'Ok, so I'm down to Clones since this is what I suck at the most. Solid Clone, A-rank, high chakra input with basic control, sneaking and espionage and training, yadda yadda. Writing it down for later. Blood clone? Strange name. S-rank, already a big plus, medium chakra input with basic control, creates living breathing copy of oneself from small sample of blood. Ew, but it said it's good for people to fake a death then strike later. Writing that too. Now this last on, Shadow Clone. What's this, a warning label? Caution, causes splintering of personality, generally used for clinical psychological practices in repression. Developed by Kage Nara when making adjustments to solid clone. Splinters body and mind into id, ego, superego trifecta. Combat effectiveness has not been tested nor advised for those of weak willed. Ha! Just because you called me weak, I'm gonna write that down too! But back to the solid one, that will let me pass!'
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And so it did, but not for the reasons he believed. After a brief skirmish with his now least favorite sensei, he had been awarded a headband by his already favorite sensei.
After that, he had a visit with his favorite Jiji to explain the sitch. The boss-man was a little miffed about how a child and gotten away with breaking in, stealing, and escaping with one Konoha's coveted possession's from the vault in the Hokage Monument, AGAIN! He was contemplating adjusting the basis of information his underlings had just so that this wouldn't be habit. But, he did have to admit that this was mostly him allowing the security to lax in such peaceful times. He let the little punk go on a warning that he was a ninja now and should be acting like a mature teenager at the very least.
Naruto had nodded and acted very professional, at least in his book, and made off to his apartment for some needed shut eye. Sadly, once he actually got off the adrenaline rush that had been pumping all night, he found sleep to be impossible, his mind much too busy breaking down the entire night and the implications of the truth in which he was now enlightened to.
"If there is something I learned from Mizuki today, it was the truth is sometimes stranger than fiction," He mused out loud to himself as he sat in his bed staring at the ceiling, hoping the answers would just materialize like in some movie or really bad manga. He couldn't really make sense of anything in his head, thoughts jumbling together and experiences rushing forth to the front of his mind, reminding him of his less than stellar upbringing.
"Can't sleep," he stated, "might as well train."
He hopped off his bed, and walked out into the early morning sunshine. He meandered to his favorite training spot by the academy and brushed up on his skills. Sadly, they were still sub-par to what he would need to be now that he had an actual job. He could throw mind you, just not with multiple projectiles and he needed half a second to aim just right. His practicing with the leaf floating exercise still just plain sucked, and could still be beaten in a fist fight. But he was going to have a sensei so that would mean that he would be taught personally, right? Right?
He ignored his depressing mental flow and drowned himself in training once more. He may suck, but he felt good while training himself; he was working towards a goal and was determined to achieve it. It gave him the resolve to keep training.
It was while he was doing suspended crunches, utilizing a nearby pole, something dropped from his butt pouch. He looked down and noticed the notes he wrote about the clones he learned. He finished his set, and righted himself before dropping down. He looked it over and decided to review what he had chosen, forgetting everything he had read in the ensuing chaos. He reread the solid clone one and actually read the entire entry. When he noticed the sentence that said how it was a training aide, he immediately jumped up and made a crap-load of clones, shunting quite a bit of chakra into it. When countless clones popped into existence, they all ran to work on chakra control.
Pleased with his new work ethic, he checked on the next one. The blood clone was pretty complex and if the user didn't quite understand how to do it, he would need to be or get help from one who experienced with seals. Naruto grumbled at this, finding out that he entirely lacked in that department, and he would need to have friends before he would have allies to help in his training. In the end, he put that one on hold as he checked out the final entry, and the supposedly volatile contents inscribed. He hadn't written the warning label, just the info and the hand signs on how to mold the chakra.
Now a funny fact about Naruto is that he is honestly quite misinformed on how chakra works. He knows how it feels and how it can be molded, but he can't really follow how it was explained, and with no one to really reference with, he kind of makes loopholes around jutsu. His transformation is just that, a transformation in which where others create the illusion that that they look like their intended target by bending the light around them in a smokescreen to conceal the action, Naruto thought that he needed to make a shell around himself to actually make a new body. This even applies with the clouds of his… inventive jutsu. Strangely enough, this concept was beneficial for Naruto in learning the solid clone jutsu since it was just that just for another body. He accidently found a way to get around the whole "chakra getting split evenly" thing, but while getting the accumulated information he doesn't receive the wasted chakra back.
So when he was told that his mind was split, into three parts, he had no idea what the term id, ego, or superego meant, so he summarized it as like splitting his emotions up like in that teen titans manga with that Raven chick. So he conjured up the image of a basic emotion, in this case he chose his inner Casanova and pooled chakra into it.
What came out wasn't exactly what he had planned.
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Well here's to another brain fart of a story when I should be doing more socially important things.
Cheers Lads!