Naruto was pleased to find that his intense training was paying off. Even though it had only been two weeks since he had started, he could feel that he was improving at a rapid rate.
Naruto noticed that as time went pass, the frequency of Sakura being on his mind became less and less. And the tendency to fall back to doting over her was beginning to fade.
And although he knew he had potential to become a good ninja, he never knew that he was capable of improving so much just by being focused on training. But the result speaks for itself. His progress had been more than he had hoped.
Each day, he would wake up extra early to run laps around Konoha to build up his speed, after a light breakfast. He had started on body weights at 10kg on each limb, which he concealed underneath his clothing and it was steadily increasing.
He would continue the running until it was time for team meeting.
Afterwards, the team would complete a day of D rank missions or team training. They would then be dismissed at around 3 in the afternoon if there were no team training. Naruto would then find some food for lunch before moving to the forests on the outskirts of Konoha to train. He would then spend four hours purely on ninjutsu which he trained in while using as many Kage bunshin as he could summon to help him learn jutsu.
He would stop for dinner and allow for a short break in order for the food to settle. After which, he would return to the forest to do physical training. Each night, he would push himself to the limit by doing countless push ups, sit ups, squats and other exercises to the point of exhaustion.
In a mere two weeks, he had learned the Shunshin no jutsu and both Katon jutsus he had picked out.
He had also figured out the Shuriken Kage Bunshin no jutsu quickly.
The Bunshin Daibakuha however, gave Naruto the most trouble. Many hours were taken just to experiment ways that could make clones explode. He believed that he was starting to find clues as to how to detonate his Kage Bunshin.
Still, he was not entirely satisfied with his progress, as he wanted to be able to master the techniques he learnt. This meant that he would not be satisfied until he could not only perform jutsu instantaneously, but also without hand seals. While it is nearly impossible to do higher level jutsu without hand seals, most of the jutsu he knew were fairly simple and require few hand seals. So far, he had learnt to do the Kawarimi and Henge without hand signs.
Once he had gotten to that point, Naruto knew he was ready to proceed to the next level of training. With some more time, he had no doubt that he would be able to master everything he had learnt. And his physical conditioning depended on how fast his body adapts to the weights he wore.
Having no idea how to move onto the level, Naruto decided that more research was in order. And he returned to the archive again for inspiration.
Naruto sighed disappointedly as he rolled up the scroll he had just read. He had thought that researching the strongest ninja of Konoha, namely the Hokage would give him much inspiration for his training.
But disappointingly, the information he found didn't help him as much as he had hoped. Each Hokage had mostly used skills and jutsu unknown to anyone else or used jutsu that was not genin level.
Naruto had then stumbled across the mention of the legendary Sannin due to their association with the third and fourth Hokage. The information on Orochimaru and Jiraiya had not been useful as they too, predominantly used high-level ninjutsu.
Now that he had finished up on reading two of the three Sannin, Naruto hoped that the scrolls on Tsunade would help further his training.
He was pleasantly surprised to find the scroll on the last Sannin to be a gold mine of useful information.
While he could not make sense of the jutsu Tsunade used such as the Ranshinsho and the high level Sozo Saisei, which were heavily based on high-level medical knowledge, he did find her superhuman strength particularly interesting.
Naruto knew that his fighting style had never been about grace. Rather, he relied on brute strength and unpredictability. It was a bad way to fight and he knew it, as he was nothing more than a common brawler that had better strength, speed and reflex.
But a technique such as this could easily offset his weakness in his taijutsu. The notion of ending fights quickly and decisively with one super powered punch made him incredibly excited.
The description on the technique in the scrolls had been surprisingly detailed. Though Naruto supposed that it was because it was not expected that the technique could be replicated, as perfect charkra control was needed.
Naruto pieced together some of the clues for him to recreate the technique. He knew after reading on the basics of charkra that he had charkra reserves well above the average ninja. Naturally, it had the drawback of causing his charkra control to be poor. And he knew that even with years of training, perfect control would be beyond him.
He did not feel discouraged however. He would simply have to do what he did best. Adaptation. He was known for sudden unexpected ingenious thinking and extreme adaptability. Modifying techniques on a whim is something that came easy for him.
The Oiroke no jutsu had been a product of this. After all it was merely an application of the henge no jutsu, yet the effectiveness of the jutsu itself against perverts could not be denied.
And in this case, Naruto had a vague idea on how to replicate the technique. He believed that he could compensate charkra control with overwhelming amounts of charkra, which he had an abundance of.
The original technique involved releasing a significant amount of charkra focused onto a single point released from multiple tenketsu points with perfect timing.
Theoretically, he could recreate a similar effect by using excessive amounts of charkra. It wouldn't completely mimic the original technique of course, as it would definitely be weaker than the original. But if it worked liked he believed, then it would still be devastating in a fight.
He moved out to the training grounds to test his theory.
But when he tested it by gathering large amounts of charkra into his fists for a punch, most of it simply bled off, wasting most of the power. His timing by releasing charkra from several tenketsu was also not simultaneous, and neither could he perfectly focus into a single point.
Successive attempts ended the same and with no visible improvement every time. The result was just like any other charkra-enhanced punch.
Naruto came to the conclusion that his control simply wasn't good enough even when the technique had been modified.
Naruto lifted his leg slightly from the water below him, and placed it back onto the surface. When his sandal touched the water, he noticed that he no longer created ripples in the water where he made contact. He took this as a sign that he had finally mastered the water walking.
He decided to test his mastery by walking, then eventually running across the surface of the water.
Again, no ripples.
Naruto smiled proudly to himself. He had surprised himself with how quickly he had mastered the water walking.
It had taken him several days to finally master tree walking before he moved on to the water walking. During that time, he had postponed most of his other training so he could complete the control exercise.
And while it had taken a few days to learn tree walking, water walking had only taken him several hours.
But now that he had gotten his control to a satisfactory level, it was time to get back to his normal schedule. He had no time to waste, as he had to make up for the last few days.
He walked out of the small lake he had been training atop and moved towards a back pack that lay on the ground not too far from edge of the lake.
Naruto set himself onto the ground before unzipping the bag. He pulled out a several small pieces of metal from the bag and set them on the ground.
He then slid the sleeve of his white coat to his elbows revealing a small pouch that was tied to his forearm over his blue long sleeve top. He opened the pouch, which was sown with separate compartments. He inserted the pieces of metal into the pouches on both arms before strapping them back onto his arm.
He did the same for the weights he hid under his pant legs. He made sure the added weight on each limb was the same.
Naruto slowly stood up, straining slightly from the weight. He now wore 20kg per limb. While that was not a lot of weight when he used charkra to enhance his muscles, he could barely move when he didn't. And the purpose of the weights was to build up his muscles.
According to the scrolls he had read, he was progressing with body weights much more quickly than the average person.
He had also noticed his incredible recovery rate after he found that he wasn't as tired as he should be after an especially intense night of training. And interestingly, the more severe the damage was to his body, the faster he healed. As he had noticed that the harsher his training was, the less muscle pains he felt the next day. It was undoubtedly the influence of Kyubi, although he wouldn't be complaining any time soon as it allowed him to get accustomed to his weights that much quicker.
Breaking temporarily from his thoughts, Naruto moved to a large wooden post and began to throw punch after punch at the post from each arm alternately.
His stomach rumbled slightly, which distracted him slightly, but he forcefully suppressed his hunger. It was not yet time to think about food. He would hunt for some food later.
He remembered that he had recently begun hunting for food, so he could hone his survival and tracking skills. Naruto also noticed his increasing appetite, which was also a reason he decided to hunt. His budget simply didn't allow him to eat the amount he was currently eating. At least not without sacrificing other things.
He thought jokingly that he could probably out eat an Akimichi.
Sakura snuck another glance at her blonde teammate as the team walked towards the Hokage tower to report the success of their latest mission.
It had been a month after team 7 officially began and 3 weeks after Naruto's sudden change.
While she didn't speak a word of it, she was somewhat perturbed. This Naruto just didn't seem like the Naruto that she knew. Although in the back of her mind, she wondered whether she really knew him at all.
Feel eyes on him, Naruto turned to them finding Sakura glancing intently at him.
"What is it Sakura?"
Sakura's frown furrowed. This was one of the many changes the blonde had undergone. He hadn't once called her Sakura-chan since he arrived at their meeting place that day 3 weeks ago. She didn't understand why, but she was sad that he was no longer doting on her, and she even missed hearing his affectionate call of "Sakura-chan".
Though she knew she was selfish. Having Naruto fight to gain her attention was a great boost to her ego, especially considering she did not have good self-esteem when she was younger.
She quickly battered the thought aside. Why should she be sad whether he called her Sakura-chan or not? It was Sasuke that she loved. Right?
"Nothing" Sakura quickly answered.
Naruto raised his eyes curiously at her nervousness, but just shrugged it off.
This was another thing that troubled Sakura. Before his change, Naruto would most likely continue to pester her until either she revealed what it was that bothered her, or until she started to beat him up for annoying her. But these last few weeks, while he remained friendly towards her, Naruto no longer seemed to go out of his way to gain her attention.
At times, he was even quiet. Sure, he still joked around and participated in conversations and was generally talkative, but for a lack of better word, she could say he no longer seemed like he was hyperactive.
She didn't really know what to think about his changes. The more she looked at him, the more she found the previously unattractive boy to be better looking, with the way his hair now fell over his forehead, his slight gain in height and especially that aura of determination that surrounded him.
Where previously if Naruto had boasted that he would become Hokage, people would laugh at him. But with that new aura of confidence and determination now, if he said that, she would almost be inclined to believe him.
And now that he no longer acted like he was a child on sugar high, Sakura noticed that he was much more likeable.
And that alone worried her.
Sakura quickly put these thoughts aside for the moment, and decided that convincing Sasuke to go on a date with her was much more important.
Meanwhile Kakashi was contemplating the mystery that was Naruto. Even though he had his face in his book as they walked, he thoughts were elsewhere.
It had been three weeks since the boy had suddenly changed. He had become much quieter and much more contemplative. While the boy was still somewhat talkative and cheery, one could see that there was something much deeper to the boy beneath the surface.
That wasn't a problem in itself. In fact, he was happy to see the boy starting to mature and began to take his job as a ninja much more seriously.
However, there seemed to be a growing tension between the team, or rather between Sakura and Naruto. It was subtle and barely noticeable, but his observation skills were top notch.
The masked jounin stole a quick glance out of his single exposed eye at Sakura, who was walking ahead of him. On the surface, the girl seemed to be talking to Sasuke animatedly who ignored her.
But looking underneath the underneath, he perceived that the girl's mind seemed to wander from time to time. Even her actions seemed to be running on autopilot. The things she said seemed to be things she often said on habit.
After studying the girl for some time, Kakashi suspected that the cause had been the Kyubi vessel.
Kakashi looked out of the corner of his eye at said blonde who walked next to him with his hands in his pockets. Kakashi sweat dropped a little as the boy seemed to be completely oblivious to the going ons of the team. And he was not sure what the vacant look on the blonde's face meant. It looked like he was daydreaming or deep in thought.
But as he reviewed the team's performance in his mind, he did not discover anything that hindered their teamwork. In fact, the productivity and efficiency of the team had increased ever since Naruto had stopped constantly whinging about their missions.
And while the team wasn't quite bonding as well as he had hoped, they worked fairly well as a team and their teamwork was steadily improving with every training session and completion of a mission.
So it was for this reason that the copy nin decided that Naruto's change was not a cause for concern. At least not yet. The most he could do now was continue to observe his team.
So, Kakashi merely returned to reading his favourite book.
Beside Kakashi, Naruto was contemplating the results of his training in the last several weeks. In less than a month he had possibly made more progress than all the years he spent in the academy. It was all because he was now much more focused and hardworking.
He knew that he wasn't a genius. Skills did not come to him as naturally as it did for others. On the other hand, he recognized that he also had a lot of latent potential. Potential that had been going to waste, and was now only recently being uncovered.
He knew that, as learning a high-level jutsu like the Kage bunshin in a span of several hours would be considered close to impossible.
His natural speed had increased significantly. He suspected that he was nearing his teammate Sasuke's level, although he didn't know how much his of his teammate had kept hidden. And he also now had several useful ninjutsu in his arsenal.
But there was still a large flaw in his abilities. While his ninjutsu was improving steadily, his taijutsu skills were still unrefined and would be considered below average at best. While he was likely to win against Sakura in a taijutsu match whom although was much more graceful than he, she would still lose if only because of his higher level of strength and speed and more importantly, his ability to absorb large amounts of damage.
He knew all the basics of taijutsu, like how to properly throw a punch, as well as an assortment of different types of strikes using different body parts. But he knew if he were to become a better fighter he would need to refine his style. He summed up that his weakness was the lack of grace and precision.
The scrolls on Tsunade had given him some ideas. Although he was not interested in the occupation of a medic nin, he did find some of their abilities to be useful and applicable in his case. If he learned where to strike to cause maximum damage, he would improve drastically.
Considering medic nins rarely engage in straight out combat, they rarely used ninjutsu, opting for taijutsu to conserve charkra for when medical ninjutsu was needed to heal. Their taijutsu style was interesting as it revolved around avoiding attacks until the perfect opportunity arises, with which they would counter attack using precise strikes to high damage areas of the anatomy or pressure points to quickly end the fight with the least amount of effort.
Without medic training, he would not be able to use the Shosen jutsu to cut a person's muscle fibres. But the use of pressure points seemed to be a good idea.
He had researched all taijutsu styles in Konoha that revolved around precision strikes. The Juuken had come up several times.
Unlike the Hyuga clan, he could not see tenketsu without the Byakugan. And since the tenketsu location varies from person to person, he would never be able to use the Juuken.
But unlike tenketsu points, which are related to the charkra circulatory system, pressure points are related to the nervous system of the body, and thus are in roughly the same position in different people depending on their size. He could theoretically be able to locate the same pressure point on different people if he had the knowledge and skill to do so.
And if he could do so, he could cause similar results as the Juuken using pressure points.
It was a good direction to improve his taijutsu, and he planned to use all of his ideas to create a new style that suited him. It would have to be devastatingly fast, takes advantage of the body's mechanics but most importantly, completely unpredictable.
But he had filed the thoughts away as he noticed that his team had arrived at the tower.
They arrived outside the Hokage's office. Naruto stood aside slightly to allow the rest of his team to enter the room first. He then entered behind them.
He cursed under his breath when he accidentally banged his elbow on the doorframe.
The rest of his team and the Hokage stared at him in amusement, Kakashi in particular.
He glared slightly at his sensei, who was looking at him with an amused look. Bastards! Laughing at his misfortune. And it hadn't been the first time today either. He had stubbed his foot several times and banged elbows against random objects that he tried to avoid but still somehow seemed to collide with.
Kakashi on the other hand was amused with his student. He was sure the boy had yet to realise that his sudden clumsiness was due to a small growth spurt. The blonde was oblivious to it, but he had grown almost an inch in the last several weeks.
Kakashi shook his head slightly and turned to face the Hokage.
"Hokage-sama. Hatake Kakashi and team 7, here to report: Mission completed…."
The masked jounin dismissed the team for the day after the report. Naruto took that as a cue to return to his training. After bidding his teammates goodbye, he revisited the archives to read up on anything that could help him create his new fighting style.
He would have to memorise and find a large number of pressure points. But that would not be much of a problem if he used Kage bunshins to learn. Not only could he use them to help memorise the locations, he could practice locating the points on his clones and experiment with the effects of the points without adverse effects to himself.
The problem was increasing his accuracy and more importantly, learning how to channel charkra into a finger and into the enemy.
Naruto spent the next two hours reading and learning as much as he could about pressure points before packing up his reading material and moving to a training area.
Once he arrived at his training ground, he created a mass of 50 clones. He then sent half of those to practice in finding and hitting pressure points.
He then commanded the rest of the clones to continue recreating Tsunade's super strength technique.
After all the clones had spread out to different areas of the training ground to train, Naruto focused his thoughts on creating the technique.
He lifted his hand and clenched his fist tightly. He closed his eyes in concentration and moulded some charkra and directed it to his fist, feeling the warmth of the energy moving through his arm and accumulating at the fist. After he felt that he had collected a suitable amount of charkra, he opened his eyes abruptly and thrust his fist into the ground.
A loud thud made way to his ears, but what he saw did not please him. Even though he had improved his charkra control by leaps and bounds, this was all he had been capable of. There was a fairly deep imprint of his fist where it made contact. The ground around the print was cracked slightly.
There was no doubt his punching strength had improved from before significantly due to an improved ability to channel charkra to enhance his punch. But the result of the punch was far from impressive.
He tried it again with more charkra. The result was still the same with only a slightly deeper imprint.
The boy huffed in annoyance. No matter how much he tried, the technique seemed to be out of his reach.
With his control much better than before, significantly less power bled away. But his timing and focus was still nowhere close to good enough. If only he could release his charkra from a single tenketsu than multiple like tapping pressure points with his finger….
Naruto froze, and then blinked. A smirk slowly developed on his face.
If what he was thinking worked like he wanted, then his next attempt will be significantly more powerful than the last.
Naruto lifted his right hand in front of him once again and curled the fingers like a fist except leaving his index finger extended. He once more closed his eyes so he could concentrate charkra through his arms and into his hand. But this time he focused all of it into the tip of his index finger. When he decided he had collected enough charkra, he thrust the finger into the ground beside the small imprint he had created earlier.
The results were just like he had anticipated. The ground trembled slightly and a small crater ten feet across formed around him with his finger at the center. Cracks emanated past the crater and extended for another several feet.
Naruto smiled slightly at his achievement. The charkra this time was much more focused, and since it came from a single tenketsu, his timing was perfect.
But it had it's own drawbacks as he had channelled charkra into one tenketsu, rather than multiple tenketsu, it takes more time to charge up the required amount of charkra than the original technique. And added to that, a finger thrust naturally had less power than a punch.
Yet, with more practice, he would be able to generate large amounts of charkra quickly into his finger to further offset the drawbacks.
He also figured that if he improved the power in his fingers, the power of his technique would also increase much proportionately.
And the good thing about it was that he was essentially doing the prerequisite training for striking pressure points.
After another month of training, Naruto had more than doubled his weights. His progress in developing a new taijutsu style was also going well. He found that using clones as training dummies was a great advantage.
He had become fairly proficient with striking pressure points during combat after he spent some time sparring with kage bunshin as practice. It had become a habit now for him to participate in a mass free for all taijutsu sparring match with a big group of clones. As a result, his striking aim was much better, and he would be able to hit pressure points occasionally.
His finger strength had also improved much although it was not without mishaps. He had jarred his fingers several times earlier on when he practiced without charkra enhancement. He had healed quickly enough and corrected his earlier mistakes. He found the trick was to keep his fingers slightly bent rather than perfectly straight like he first thought.
He had also begun to incorporate locks and grappling into his style after he read as much as he could about the human anatomy and skeletal structure and joints. He still needed to work the kinks out of the style, which would take months more of work even with Kage bunshin, but despite that, his skill had improved significantly.
Naruto then reviewed the profiles of all the strong ninja of Konoha, and came to the conclusion that the strongest ninja often had their own special attack ninjutsu or style of fighting. The Shodai had Mokuton jutsu, Nidaime specialised in water jutsu and the Yondaime had the Hiraishin no jutsu and Rasengan.
This led him to believe that if he were to become an exceptional ninja that was better than the rest, he would also need to create his own special ultimate attack. He had a vague idea as to what he wanted to create, but he put it as a side project so it would not hamper his training.
After reviewing the training he had undergone, he realised that he had focused primarily on ninjutsu and taijutsu. He quickly realised that genjutsu posed a great problem to him as he could neither cast nor fight against them.
He spent some time reading on the basics of genjutsu and quickly realised the endless possibilities and potential of the discipline. He even had some ideas of his own that he wanted to try. But unlike ninjutsu, he could not put the knowledge he had gathered from scrolls to practice.
As genjutsu had never been an area that he was good at, he needed someone to teach him rather than learning from a scroll. His first thought was to approach Kakashi sensei, but decided after some thinking, not to do so.
The masked jounin was a lazy man. Not only did his sensei not train his team as intensely as he had liked, almost all of the training revolved around teamwork, ninja etiquette, and field combat simulations. While these are all lessons that are important, physical training are few and far in between. And jutsu training was practically nonexistent as Kakashi mostly helped them refined their existing abilities.
Plus, the man was not the genjutsu type. Kakashi was unlikely to be able to teach him what he needed to know for him to create his own genjutsu. He was better off finding a genjutsu specialist to teach him what he wanted to know.
The only genjutsu expert he was aware of was Yuuhi Kurenai.
He had remembered her from when he was still in the academy.
Unlike most other academy teachers, she had been nice to him. Too bad she had only taught subjects for kunoichi until she left the academy to become a jounin. Last he'd seen her was when she came to pick up her genin team from his class of graduates.
Naruto wasn't sure where to find her nor did he know how to approach her. He barely knew her name as it was. So he decided to just keep an eye out for her while he continued with other aspects of his training.
Author's Notes:
This chapter was all about his training. The next chapter will be focusing on Naruto/Kurenai interaction. As for those that ask, I'll be taking the romance fairly slowly, so don't expect them to get together anytime soon. They'll be getting to know each other first, build up some attraction etc.
Anyways, the story might seem to move a bit quick, but I intended for it to be this way, since the story is about the effects of Naruto's change, and there won't be any major effect until perhaps the chunin exams.
Also, Naruto might seem to be a bit strong in this fic. While it is intentional, I didn't want him to feel impossibly strong. The stuff he thought of is mostly ideas I have that I wanted to write. And he might seem a bit smart when he was analysing the Juuken. Though it's mainly because I wanted to show that he is putting the stuff he learnt from the first chapter to use.
Anyways, thanks for reviewing. I never thought I would get that many reviews just for the first chapter.
To HolyKnight5:
Both charkra and chakra works I think. I searched it on the net, both came up with the same thing. Although I'm not sure the official spelling for Naruto. And thanks for the analysis on Sakura. This gave me some ideas how to write Sakura. I've mostly been thinking about Naruto and Kurenai interaction at the moment. Though I won't go so far to have her become suicidal or start cutting or anything like that.
To Zeeman:
He will get strong quickly, but not 'impossibly' quickly. (at least it my opinion) Though he'll likely to be stronger than he should be, since I have some scenes in mind that I wanted to do later on that needed him to be strong.
To zagen:
I've done some fanart of how I wanted Naruto to look, and I think Naruto looks a lot better. You might think the colour scheme is ridiculous, but I fully coloured my drawings and it looked fine. Same thing with Kakashi's reaction. Naruto looks like Yondaime in my drawings.
To rasengan86:
To be honest, I'm not sure I can do a much better job at doing the Naruto/Kurenai pairing realistically.
To crazyfoxdemon:
Sorry, but I've already decided it will be Naruto/Kurenai. And 15 year age gap ain't that bad. Plus, I like the challenge of doing a fairly rare pairing that is difficult to write. They will go to the wave mission, though there will be a lot of changes. As for Zabuza's sword and Sasuke bashing, it's unlikely.
To Kingkakashi:
Writing a lemon is unlikely since I'm not too good at it. I already have an idea as to where I'm heading, but not sure how to do it since I have the bigger picture, but not the details. As for changes, that's why I'm having him change this early, so the differences will be more obvious. Some things will remain the same though. Most of the major events will still happen. A lot of the major changes are in the way the characters interact not the events. Though the way characters interact will change some events.
To kerrde06:
I'm aware of how young Naruto looks. He will grow taller, though it won't be Kyubi's influence. I've done some research, and the average height for 12-13 year olds in real life is around 5 foot 3. I assume Sasuke is about this height, and Naruto is a few inches shorter. Naruto will be around that height by the time chunin exams come. So growing about 3 inches in half a year is more believable that using Kyubi, although realistically it'll take about a year to grow that much. As for losing baby fat etc, I've already planned on it. Although I disagree with Kyubi changing him to keep them alive since I don't think Kyubi has that kind of influence due to the seal. The only times it will likely happens is when he is in a rage or actively choose to use kyubi's charkra. And even then, none of the changes are permanent.
To KitsuneKami686:
There were a lot of times where Naruto shows he's smart, but the way he acts made them think he's dumb.
To dadude:
Yeah, Naruto/Kurenai will be the pairing. I haven't exactly figured out what to do with Hinata, but there will be some drama with Kurenai and Hinata.
To sparkygate:
As you can see from chapter 2, Kurenai will be introduced before the chunin exams. And Anko won't be fighting Kurenai over Naruto.
To Narutomaniac:
Sorry, but I won't be changing Naruto's age. And I won't be changing Naruto with the Kyubi. As for relationship with Kurenai, I don't plan on that until after PTS, although he might not be going on that training trip depends on what I come up with. As for the wind affinity, he'll get to that eventually, but at least not until after chunin exam time. As for haku and one-handed seal… Not sure about haku, but the one handed seals gave me an idea.
To Himuradono:
Thanks. From what I'm seen in the anime during the invasion, most of the ninja from Konoha used Katon jutsu. I think that's because it's the most common type of jutsu in Konoha, so Naruto learning the jutsu is reasonable. Plus, the ones I Naruto learned in my fic are low-level fire jutsu.
To swiftrabbit:
I don't think you need to have the elemental affinity to use the jutsu, they're only easier to learn and use if you have the affinity. As for shunshin, I have an idea for it already but you probably won't see it until the chunin exam stage at least.
To Mr. Lee:
I know what you mean about the story feeling mechanical and report like. That's the main reason I think my writing skills aren't that good. Things just don't seem natural like I wanted. As for thinking in the intellectual sense, I agree too, since I'm better at thinking logically, and can't seem to write as well regarding emotions.
To aboulhosncc:
I'm sorry if that's how you feel, but this is fanfiction. The point of fanfiction is to write the characters the way you want to and change things the way you want. If you want to see a story that's has Naruto not OOC, then you should stick to reading the manga or watching the anime. As for the thing about the mask, that's the way I interpreted Naruto's character in canon, so it's all a matter of opinion.
To TheDon1023:
Not sure about making jutsu more devastating using pure spiritual or body energy. But definitely more efficient, since I think for example, using spiritual energy by using charkra for taijutsu is a waste since the body energy is more useful. This way, charkra exhaustion is less of a problem.
