A.N: I'm actually enjoying correcting my mistakes and I won't rush the chapters anymore. For those who don't know yet, the first chapter has been renovated and the rest will undergo their own make-over. BTW, Naruto's training will be featured in as many as five more chapters where there will be little side stories to spice things up a bit. More musing at the end of this chapter.

Disclaimer: I don't own any Naruto works, you know, with the forms an' the rights an' the storyline an' …Aww! Y'all know what I'm talkin' 'bout!

Chapter Two: The Springtime of Taijutsu

Naruto discovered a new unknown when he woke up just before dawn the next day.
He was NOT a morning person.

The conclusion was reached as he had to literally, by his own collar, drag himself out of bed hours before first light to begin his morning rituals and head out for the intense workout he'd planned the previous night immediately they got back to Konoha. Kakashi had given them the day off and he planned to make full use of it.

Naruto cursed his too-accurate clock for failing to inexplicably break down during the night and let him sleep in some more, and for a good fifteen minutes he found himself developing a jutsu to spontaneously combust objects through intense glaring. Pity it didn't work, that could actually have been extremely useful sometime.

He looked a very comical sight as he stumbled into his shower, what with his gummy eyes trying to betray their owner and close in on themselves, dried up drool that had trickled down the corner of his eyes as he slept and VERY disheveled t-shirt and boxers that belied the unrest he had experienced in his sleep. The night cap drawn over his hair added to the effect really well.

It only took about half an hour for Naruto to finish up showering and brushing his teeth and the sun looked to be peeking up over the distant Hokage Monument which could be seen from his window. Coincidentally, it was highlighting the Fourth's head really well and he couldn't help but wonder if the Yondaime was a natural blond. The color suited him well. The gennin soon found himself debating whether he wanted to wear the ridiculous orange jacket and pants that signified his alter-ego and ultimately decided to forgo them whenever he was going training.

'I can't let everyone know just yet...' he thought as he rummaged around in his small closet for something else he could wear. 'What the hell! Don't I have anything else? Alright, soon as I'm ready to come out, I'm going shopping!'

It was mostly an excuse to spend all the money he'd been saving since he was a kid, but hey, he needed a treat once in a while. It didn't matter if he was the one treating himself.
And speaking of treats, he was going to have to find a way to pay back Iruka for all times he'd taken him to Ichiraku's. Meh, refunding all that ramen would really suck!

It didn't take long to peruse through his VERY limited wardrobe before he found the only non-orange set of clothes that would still fit him. A few black shirts and one white one, as well as a pair of dark blue pants. Not really much to work with, he only ever wore them to the rare festival he was welcome to. He thought about it for a moment, then donned one of the black shirts and the pants. Once he was dressed, he tore up one of the remaining more worn-out black shirts and used the fabric as a bandanna to hide his bright, sunshine-yellow hair.

Now, he doubted anyone could recognize him. He had no intention whatsoever of letting people find out he was getting stronger, despite the temptation to just come out and proclaim himself no longer an idiot.
No. What he needed was to come out in a place and time where there were influential people to witness him, so they could see his true self all at once and spread the word that he was not the fool they all thought he was. The plan was admittedly flawed but he was Uzu-fuckin'-maki Naruto, and giving surprises WAS his business. Hopefully, they wouldn't think that the fox was gaining influence on him. He didn't really need any more of that on his plate.

Nevertheless, he shook himself free of his back and forth thoughts. Those were things which would only serve to distract him from the present. He was to go out and train to his best today, and nothing, absolutely nothing would ruin his day.

l00l

"YOSH, GAI-SENSEI! I'VE FOUND ANOTHER MANLY SPIRIT BURNING WITH ENERGY AND DRIVE JUST LIKE WE ARE THIS FINE MORNING!"

"OH, LEE! DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS?"

"NO, GAI-SENSEI! PLEASE TELL ME!"

"IT MEANS YOU GET TO TEST YOUR FIRES OF YOUTH AND HARD WORK AGAINST ONE OF YOUR PEERS!"

"OF COURSE, GAI-SENSEI! I'LL DO IT RIGHT NOW!"

"GO, LEE! SHOW HIM YOUR DETERMINATION!"

Whatever it was Naruto had been expecting when he set out for a few laps around the village before everyone woke up, this was not it.

'It just has to be against the law or something to scream that loud this early in the morning!'

Whatever other opinions he was cooking up in his mind were lost as a tall boy who looked to be close to his age suddenly appeared next to him while he was jogging full speed around the village following the great wall that had stood sentry around Konoha since the reign of the Shodaime Hokage.

The first thing he noticed about the new arrival was his choice of clothing. He was dressed in spandex from neck to feet, where the green attire ended in a pair of orange, black-striped leg-warmers. The only thing breaking the monotony of green on the full body-suit was the red clothed hitai-ate tied as a belt. If he were anyone else, Naruto would have immediately commented harshly on the boy's lack of fashion sense, but as it was, he himself normally paraded around in bright orange clothes while claiming to be a ninja. He would not judge the boy's interesting style of clothing… or the funny bowl-cut hairstyle… or his ridiculously thick and fuzzy eyebrows. Yes, he would not judge.

Naruto shivered a bit involuntarily as he willed himself to grin back at the new ninja in front of him who had a wide sparkle-toothed smile on his face as well, and was easily keeping pace with him while running backwards.

'Wait, what!'

Indeed, he was comfortably backpedaling while signaling Naruto with a thumbs-up.

"Hello, my name is Rock Lee and I'm going to be Konoha's next taijutsu specialist! Who might you be, friend?" Lee kicked off the introductions.

Naruto was about to answer, then remembered that he was supposed to be keeping his training secret, "I'm just a friend."

"It's nice to meet you, Friend-san. May I run alongside you?"

"Yea…"

The words were hardly out of his mouth when Lee turned around and seemed to vanish into the air. 'Fast!' he thought as he stepped up his pace in a vain effort to catch up to the green blur on the edge of his vision who he had to strain just to see.

lool

Several brutal hours of running later, Naruto flopped onto the ground as he tried to catch the breath that had escaped him.

'What… are… they?' he wondered while shocked to hear himself wheezing in his mind.

Lee and his sensei, Maito Gai, were now doing push-ups and had reached the count of thirty and forty one respectively. Naruto was in awe of their stamina. He had barely just made the last of the laps around Konoha and here they were acting like they had just finished a small warm-up.

'It probably was a warm-up, they had to slow down to wait up for me!'

That thought warmed his heart. Granted, they most likely didn't recognize him from his change of clothes, but still, knowing that they considered him gave him a fuzzy feeling inside that he rarely got when he was on team seven. Sakura almost always never gave him any positive attention and Sasuke preferred brooding in silence to most forms of human contact. Kakashi… well, let's not even get started on that.

"Alright, Youthful Friend of Lee's!"

'That's it, I don't care who knows I'm training. I will not let myself be called that on daily basis!' "Please, just Naruto is fine."

If Gai heard then he didn't react much to it. He he'd finished his push-ups and looked about ready to break off into a run to the end of Fire Country and back.
"You have kept up with us on our morning run, and that is commendable, for no one brims with energy like Lee and I!"

'Somehow, that's not all that hard to believe.'

"But you still have a lot of potential, and had you trained with us earlier, you would have realized just what your fires of determination were capable of sooner."
Here he paused to strike a thumbs-up and give an exceedingly bright smile.

"That is why Lee and I have decided that you should train with us today and any other day you will be available!"

This caught him off guard. Naruto had expected they would leave him in the dust and go off to do their own stuff, forgetting about him after a while. No one had ever offered to help him train since before the academy. Come to think of it, no one had offered to help him train, period. This was entirely unexpected.

"Why would you want to help me?"

It was Lee who answered, "Naruto-kun, you have the determination, and that's more than enough for me to want to train with you. Plus, I need a new sparring partner other than Gai-sensei since I plan to fight Neji when I'm ready to defeat him in our rivalry, and my other teammate, Tenten, has yet to bloom into the incredible springtime of taijutsu, as she prefers to work on her weapons."

Gai went on, "Lee's right. Your resilience is a key part to any one shinobi's training and unless it is stoked, as it has obviously failed to be before you met us, we cannot let you sink into poor performance."

Somehow, the jounin's teeth let off a "Ping!" while shining a bright white.

Once his tongue had loosened up enough to speak, Naruto was only able to bring himself to utter one word to the two eccentric ninja who had offered, no, insisted that he be a part of their group so long as he keeps his drive. This was definitely a first for him. "Arigato."

The workout session that followed was easily the hardest that Naruto had ever attempted. It had strained him to his limits even further than the rough one he had compiled the previous night could, and then some. It was exactly what he needed, and it wasn't even noon yet!
The blond huffed over to a nearby tree and leaned back on its trunk to rest for a moment. It was nothing short of amazing that the bandanna had yet to come off during the many upside down pull-ups he had done. Close beside him was Gai-sensei. He was doing vertical push-ups while watching Lee pound away on a custom shaped, upright training log.

Naruto had been trying to figure out the relationship between master and student that Gai and Lee shared. They were not related as far as he knew, no matter how much they looked alike it did not carry to their faces or their physique. They both had similar personalities, though Naruto recognized, after a while, that Gai's was more forced than Lee.

It made sense to him, when he thought about it, that Maito Gai's personality was as much a mask as his was. The man was old enough to have been through the Third Great Shinobi War, and he must've seen a lot of carnage while serving as a jounin. He was willing to bet that Lee had adopted Gai's personality without realizing it for what it really was. Gai encouraged him, which meant that he was allowing him to take a piece of his master as his own legacy.

The fond look Gai had on his face while watching his face spoke volumes to Naruto about how much he cared for his student.

"You must be really proud of him, Gai-sensei."

He stopped his push-ups immediately and chuckled to himself when he saw the knowing expression on Naruto's face. Not many saw past their outward appearances. Then again, if anyone could spot their true natures, it would be the gennin sitting next to him.

"Yes, Naruto-kun! Lee is my adorable student, and it is my great honor to believe in him and his teammates and share in the joy of their growth."

'Yes, I see that clearly.' "So... when do you guys train with ninjutsu?"

Gai's expression uncharacteristically dropped "I'm afraid that Lee and I don't train with chakra much, if at all."

He was puzzled. Why would they limit themselves like that? Gai answered the unasked question for him. "You see, Lee was born with a condition that left him unable to utilize chakra for anything beyond enhancing his body and muscles, and to a poor extent of that itself."

Now THAT was news. He'd wondered what set Lee toward the goal of becoming a taijutsu specialist.

"He was allowed to graduate based on above average taijutsu at the academy, and afterwards put on my squad. It was his dream to become a taijutsu specialist even before he met me. Of all the people I've seen, he has a drive that exceeds the best of them. That is why I took it upon myself to train him to the best of my ability, so that he may realize his dream."

That touched a chord in Naruto's heart. Lee would forever be disadvantaged in every ninja fight he would take part in, yet he refused to give in to fate without a fight. That kind of spirit was admirable any way you looked at it. And Gai was the perfect teacher for Lee. He took care of his, in a way, crippled student where others would have dumped him immediately, pegging him as a hopeless cause.

Gai himself was wondering what in the seven fires of hell Kakashi was doing with his students. His rival had received his gennin team a couple of weeks back and given what he'd heard about Naruto's impressive stamina and conditioning, he would have expected Kakashi to bring it out in the most effective of ways. The boy who sat next to him was still a far cry from what he should be and it befuddled him to see.

Naruto was clearly partly malnourished. It must have been all the ramen he heard he ate. Hadn't Kakashi taught him proper dieting, or at least stressed its importance? Maybe he had, but there was no denying that Naruto was also under-exercised. Being a demon container, he had far more potential than anyone else in Konoha, even the famous Uchiha prodigy, and from his judgment, all this potential had yet to be exploited, even just barely. He nearly considered going to his long-time friend about this but remembered that he was not to question his colleagues over how they handled their teams.

Gai was hoping that Kakashi's sense of obligation to the Uchiha clan due to his fallen teammate wasn't going to interfere with his duty when it came to his team. The sharingan wielder was known to be one who held on to the past more adamantly than most. It was for this reason that, after the Kyuubi attack and death of the Yondaime, he began to challenge him whenever they met, even against the man's will, just to keep him from falling into loneliness and eventually snapping to descend into madness.

Most thought from a glance that Kakashi was stronger than his green wearing fellow jounin. In truth, Gai knew he was superior to the other in terms of character. Kakashi, a reputed genius from age six, had never had a real friend. If he needed to force the other man to acknowledge him in order to keep him from spiraling into darkness, then by gum, he would use every trick he knew even if it drove them both crazy.

Gai sighed wearily in remembrance. If only Kakashi would find himself a nice girl to take care of him, then he too could finally settle down before the perils of shinobi life overcame him. Any more musings were cut off when the rest of his team showed up.

"Gai-sensei, I didn't realize we would be including someone else in our mission today." Came the stern and harsh voice of one Hyuuga Neji. Just like the rest of his family, barring Hinata and a few others, Neji carried himself with stoic pride and expressed cold indifference to everyone around him. Something about him just seemed to rub Naruto the wrong way. Maybe it was the familiar feeling of someone who looked down on everyone else as being worthless, being in your presence. He DID have that I'm-better-than-you-and-you-can't-do-anything-about-it look that Sasuke always had during team meetings... and missions... and general day to day life.

"No, Neji. Naruto-kun was joining us shortly for our morning session, he won't be coming with us."

The girl with the Chinese style buns on her hair(he must be the Tenten who Lee was talking about) who had arrived with Neji started poking Naruto in the side until he pushed her hand away in annoyance. "Wow, and he actually lived through it?" She seemed like a friendly person to him.

" You know, you're one lucky kid, but just wait until tomorrow. If you can crawl far enough to find me, I'll give you 5 ryo just for the effort." was her contribution while she laughed at his tired state.

She confirmed herself to be Tenten, right before Lee noticed his teammates and came bounding over shouting his morning greetings. Gai had to tell him to punch him to get him to shut up long enough to inform them all that they were to meet in four minutes at the Hokage Tower for their new mission. He gave them a ten second headstart before turning back to Naruto.

"Naruto-kun, your body is built towards more erratic attacks, moving in and out of one's guard while keeping a solid position. Keep training like you did this morning to condition your body. Remember that you can spar with Lee when you're both free. It's the best way to improve and at the same time gauge yourself in your growth." He turned in readiness to leap away. "Say hello to your sensei for me."

Naruto took the advice for the gold it was and he let this be known to his newfound teacher, along with his appreciation for not revealing just who he was. He put on his most heartfelt smile and shouted to the man before he could vanish. "Thanks, Gai-sensei! For everything." the warm smile on his face conveyed the message as much as his words did.

He got one big "Ping!" smile in return and Gai was gone, maybe already beating his team to the Tower. Naruto found himself alone once more with more hours to spare than he had planned for.

"Heh, I'll be there for that five ryo, Tenten." As he had predicted, the Kyuubi's chakra was working its magic through him and with some light stretching he was ready to head to his next stop, albeit with some soreness.

'I'd better not train my body anymore, otherwise the muscles will tear again.'

He decided to just walk the distance to his next planned destination, the Konoha Library.

lool

Naruto was left spellbound at the sight of so many books and scrolls that fit his needs so perfectly, it was as if they were put there for him by some divine hand. Theory on chakra, its mechanics and properties was abundant, as well as, a number of tested approved exercises to learn control. With the kind of information available, he would not be surprised if at the end of three months he was already making his own ninjutsu.

The treasure trove that was Konoha's Public Ninja Library was started by the Sandaime in an effort to better prepare gennin during wartime and give them a chance to survive the perilous times. It contained records that held descriptions on almost every known basic technique from any of the ninja arts, as well as a fair number of texts on strategy and psychology. While the archives did not hold instructions for performing these techniques, they gave a good enough description of them that anyone who put their mind to it could figure out counters to them, or in the rare case, recreate them.

It certainly served its purpose since a great number of veterans could tell at least one near-death situation they were involved in and had been saved due to the knowledge gained from the Library. High level techniques were sometimes documented, but to keep them out of the hands of their enemies, it was decided that there would be a separate Library to store such dangerous tools, of which only a select few would have access, namely jounin and high level ANBU.

Sadly, as the wars came to an end and peace was restored, the next generation of gennin began to disregard the Library in favor of clan knowledge which was the up and coming, popular 'thing' that everyone wanted to do, along with desire to master kekkei genkai(bloodline limits).

This was exactly what Naruto needed and he would consider himself the biggest idiot he knew if he failed to utilize the opportunities he saw before him. Normally, he would not be allowed inside the building due to his status and as such, he didn't even know of the metaphoric gems that were to be found inside. Since he was denied access unlike the rest of the population, even after becoming a gennin, he'd labeled the place as really boring and not worth his time. Now, he wondered why the hell he hadn't used a disguise sooner to get at the brain-food in front of him.

Sarutobi Hiruzen smiled as he watched Naruto make use of the facility he had established through his crystal spying ball. He'd just felt like checking up on his surrogate grandson to make sure he was doing well following the late-arrived report of his mission to Wave Country that was brought in by Kakashi that morning, and was pleased to find the boy having finally dropped his foolish act and gotten serious with his career. As it was, Hiruzen couldn't wait to see what this Naruto was capable of, and if he would succeed his parents.

On more pressing matters, the Sandaime Hokage reread the letter on his desk that was a formal statement of which was to be sent to the other hidden villages, confirming Konoha's acceptance to host the next Chuunin Selection Exams, as per the votes taken by the Village Heads at the previous exam in Takigakure(Hidden Waterfall) one month ago. There was to be expected a greater number of turn-outs and village security would need to be beefed up some.

A.N:Whoo! The grammar corrections have been made. This chapter is officially rewritten and for those who haven't yet, reread the first chapter to make sure you got all the details.

Yes, Naruto now has five months to get his act together before the exams. I appreciate all your comments and let it be known that Gai and Lee needed to be included so that character developments can kick-off. I will not have you bitching because so and so don't fit into their characters. This is my story, and I want you all to see it from my perspective. Oh, I think 'yujin' means friend(or something like that). This part of the story was a bit boring, I admit, but that's cos I'm saving the really juicy stuff for later.

Like I mentioned earlier, the first five or so chapters will feature Naruto's training which will be done a little differently than usual. That's all I'll reveal for now, aside the fact that it will involve experiences when he is learning new stuff. Catch you all next time, and don't hold your breath;-)