Chapter 1: The First Step

Naruto's training in the shinobi arts was initially rather haphazard despite his parents' best efforts. Despite Minato's agreement to teach him, he was constantly out on missions for the village as the war continued to escalate so he rarely had time to directly teach Naruto, though he'd left him some of his notes from the academy, detailing his observations on the various techniques and skills that were taught there. His jiji unfortunately rarely had time to visit now, most of the time stuck in his office planning the war effort with the village higher-ups and delegating missions. Naruto missed the old man, though he understood – to an extent – that as the hokage, he was just too busy right now and that there'd be time for him to visit when the war was over. Hopefully, Naruto thought, that would be sometime soon.

As a result, most of the time, the responsibility of educating Naruto fell to Kushina, not that either of them would ever complain about this arrangement. Despite her initially poor performance in two out of the three shinobi arts taught at the academy, Kushina had since developed into a truly fearsome kunoichi, rivalling some of the elite jounin in the village. And with her chakra chains out, there were few that could stop her, even after the nearly four years of inactivity spent raising Naruto.

With Naruto now old enough to begin training, she'd even taken the time to try and get herself back into shape. Sightings of the eight tails jinchuriki mobilising in the land of hotsprings was a cause for concern. Many of the older generation who now formed the elite rankings amongst the shinobi still remembered the day Madara summoned forth the kyuubi against the shodaime. Even from the valley of the end, the aura of terror that the bijuu induced was almost overwhelming. Then there was the gold and silver brothers of kumo, Kinkaku and Ginkaku. Even with only a sliver of the kyuubi's chakra, they were able to successfully bring the nidaime hokage to the point of death. The bijuu were dangerous, and their jinchuriki only slightly less so. Word had it that the eight tails jinchuriki was capable of fully transforming into the hachibi. In the event that kumo tried to unleash a bijuu in fire country, Kushina would likely be called upon to try and subdue the beast with her chakra chains.

As it was, as Konoha's foremost expert on fuinjutsu, her time was being split between Naruto, her own training, and reinforcing and improving the numerous barrier seals engraved into the towering village walls, designed to repel an invasion force. As a result, her lessons typically consisted of introducing Naruto to a concept, initially having him practice under her supervision so that she could correct any mistakes in form or technique, and then letting him practice by himself while she saw to other matters in the village.

Sometimes she'd leave him little challenges for him to puzzle out in her absence, tasks designed to test his skill and ingenuity, and perhaps more importantly to occupy his time while she was away. This suited Naruto just fine though, he enjoyed the challenge, enjoyed working through a problem, testing different methods, that feeling of ever growing closer to success, each failure only a slight set back on his inevitable path to victory. Not all of his failures were without use either. True, if the objective was to throw five shuriken at a target ten meters away and have all five land in the bullseye, two of the shuriken ricocheting over the target and into the tree behind may seem like a failure at first, but it introduced Naruto to a whole new area of shuriken-jutsu that he'd never considered before. He still wasn't able to reliably reproduce that effect, but it wouldn't stop him from trying. Best of all though was the way his kaa-san's face would light up with pride whenever he'd show her what he'd accomplished for the day, inevitably followed by, "Yosh! My little Naru-chan is a genius just like his mother dattebane!" much to his eternal embarrassment.

Naturally, the first part of Naruto's training was accessing his chakra. Many shinobi tended to mistakenly refer to the process as 'unlocking' one's chakra, a phrase originally coined by a small number of civilian-born chunin instructors at the academy who quite frankly didn't know any better. The implication being that all of a person's chakra is somehow locked away and that there is some external process required to 'open the gates' so to speak. This couldn't be further from the truth. Chakra is always in constant motion, moving throughout the body between regulating nodes called tenketsu, confined to a chakra circulatory system that runs directly alongside the cardiovascular system. To a shinobi, chakra is just as necessary to maintaining life as blood is. This is true even of children who unconsciously move chakra throughout their bodies without ever being aware of it. The first and most vital step towards becoming a shinobi then, is learning to access this system, to take conscious control of one's chakra so that it may be bent to their will.

The sensation of accessing one's chakra for the first time tends to be an experience that is both unique and personal to each individual. In spite of that, within both the civilian and shinobi libraries, several texts exist describing the process from the perspective of their respective authors:

'The sensation was as if noticing a limb attached to my body that I had not been able to see or feel, yet it had always been there as a part of me and I needed only to learn to move it."

– Senju Hiroko

'- was during a spar with one of the elders. It was as if an extra sense had been revealed to me, a shroud pulled back from its place hiding the world and I could truly see for the first time.'

– Yamanaka Kaito

For Naruto, the experience was so much more than he could have imagined, more than he could ever begin to put into words. As he sat opposite his mother in the training grounds, eyes closed in meditation, searching within himself as she had instructed him to, he noticed it first as a growing warmth in the centre of his chest, that quickly spread to infuse the rest of his body. And then, suddenly and without warning, everything within him just... shifted.

It was like a part of himself had been missing and now he was complete. Involuntarily he opened his eyes as all of his senses seemed to expand; colours were more vibrant, both sight and sound received with improved clarity. He could hear the murmuring of a river hidden behind the distant treeline and see individual tree leaves dancing in the wind. Closing his eyes once more and taking a deep breath, he let out a sigh of contentment, a gentle breeze from the east caressing his skin. Everything was just more. Was this what everyone experienced?

Beyond that he could finally feel what he could only assume was his chakra. It filled his awareness, an extra sense that had always been there but had yet to be used, like opening his eyes to see the world for the first time having previously only known darkness. There was a subtle realisation in the back of his mind, of the limitless potential that now inhabited his body. No. That had always been there just waiting to be unleashed. He could feel the way it moved throughout his body, dense and unfocused, but undeniably his. With this, he felt like he could do anything. Nothing was impossible anymore.

While he was marvelling at the new-found power that coursed through his body, Kushina watched on carefully observing the shroud of chakra that Naruto was unknowingly producing, whilst using her admittedly underdeveloped sensing abilities to try and spot any inconsistencies within Naruto's chakra. To her knowledge, there'd never been a child born to a jinchuriki before. Who knew what kind of an effect the presence of a bijuu may have on any offspring. Neither herself, Minato or Hiruzen had noticed any adverse effects on Naruto over the past four years but it didn't hurt to check again, better to be safe than sorry.

'It's dense' Kushina thought to herself, eyes widening slightly. 'Incredibly dense, even for an Uzumaki. He probably has more chakra than most chunin do already. Other than that, it feels normal I suppose. Maybe larger than normal chakra reserves is the only side effect of being in close proximity to the Kyuubi for nine months. Heh, I guess I know what we'll have to work on first!' Clearing her thoughts, she focused back on Naruto who still had his eyes closed, and lightly poking him on the forehead to get his attention, spoke up. "So sochi, how do you feel?"

Shaking his head to knock himself out of the trance he'd fallen in to, the blue aura fading from view, he focused back on his kaa-san, his awareness of his chakra fading into the background. Though now that he was conscious of its presence, he had no problems sensing the flow of chakra within himself and would be able to draw it outwards with no issues. Smiling with pride at his success, secure in the knowledge that he'd taken the first step towards his goal, a bright grin stretched across his face.

"I feel great! Like I can take on the whole world!" he responded enthusiastically, his arms thrown up in the air above him.

Seeing this, Kushina couldn't help but laugh, sharing in his joy. She enjoyed watching Naruto just let loose for a change. Sometimes he acted too mature for his age, always so quiet and reserved, 'much like a younger Minato' she mused to herself. Maybe it was partially her fault; he didn't exactly get to hang out with many kids his own age, especially with the war going on. Everyone she knew was too busy to be arranging playdates between their kids. 'Note to self: bring Naruto with me to the Uchiha compound after the war is over and introduce him to Mikoto's son. ummm... Itachi right? Yeah, that's it! Itachi-kun. I'm sure they'll get along perfectly.'

Having quickly decided that, she focused back on Naruto, entering her self-dubbed 'Uzumaki-sensei' mode. "Okay then! Let's begin the next step of your training. Like your kaa-san you have enormous chakra reserves for your age which means when you're older you'll probably find spamming high-ranked ninjutsu pretty easy. But, until then, you'll have to work twice as hard to control your chakra compared to everyone else, especially if you want to learn the less chakra-intensive ninjutsu and genjutsu that are taught at the academy. So, before anything else, we're going to have start you on chakra-control exercises beginning with…"

...here she paused, letting the tension build, Naruto leaning forwards in anticipation…

"Tree Climbing!"

...at which point Naruto immediately fell forwards, face faulting in disbelief, before recovering moments later as if nothing had happened.

"ehhhh? Tree climbing?" a look of polite confusion adorning Naruto's face in an attempt to hide his scepticism. "How's that gonna help kaa-san?"

-One Month Later-

As it turned out, the tree climbing his kaa-san had been referencing was very different to the kind he had been imagining. A quick demonstration and one gobsmacked ninja-in-training later, and Naruto began learning to walk up the sides of trees. Tree climbing was an exercise that every shinobi in Konoha was taught at some point or another, both as a chakra control exercise, but also as a means to enable travel along the branches of the trees surrounding the village, allowing Konoha shinobi moving to or from the village to remain unseen.

The technique was more generally referred to in the shinobi library as 'advanced chakra adhesion', an extension of the leaf sticking exercise taught at the academy. Both exercises however are based on the same basic principle: by focusing a fixed amount of chakra to a specific part of the body, any objects that come in to contact with that region will experience an attractive force that causes the two to 'stick' to one another. Too much chakra, and the force instead becomes repulsive, not enough and the adhesion doesn't hold. Tree climbing therefore works to train chakra control in two ways. First it requires one to be able to draw out a constant and exact amount of chakra, without any fluctuations, which would otherwise disturb the process, to stick to the tree in the first place; and in order to actually 'climb' the tree, you need to be able to quickly and reliably increase and decrease the chakra at the bottom of each foot in turn in order to take a step forwards.

A fresh genin will usually take anywhere up to a week to learn how to manipulate their chakra in the specific manner required to successfully complete the exercise, depending on the amount of chakra they possess. For someone of Naruto's reserves, it should have taken considerably longer. Determined to succeed, it took Naruto just a single day.

After that, Naruto's life began to revolve purely around training, day after day spent in the training grounds behind their house. Though he'd learnt tree climbing and could now cling to, and run up solid surfaces without issue, he had by no means mastered the exercise, as Kushina was all too happy to point out while he was celebrating, a small rubber ball bouncing off the back of his head mid-climb, disrupting his concentration and leaving him sprawled back on the ground. As a result, two hours out of every morning were dedicated to making the process second nature. If Kushina wasn't busy with her work as Konoha's resident sealmaster or her own training, then she'd help out by throwing random harmless objects at him or setting up obstacle courses in the trees to get him used to dodging and thinking on his feet.

The rest of the day, Kushina would work with him on the various physical subjects taught at the academy: shurikenjutsu, academy style taijutsu, physical conditioning, trap setting, and the so-called 'academy three' ninjutsu, the kawarimi, henge and bunshin no jutsu. It was hard work and from an outside perspective, it may have looked like he was trying to push himself too hard, but seeing the determination on Naruto's face, and the grin he'd wear at the end of each session, it was clear at least to Kushina that he had no intention of slowing down.

For Naruto's part, he couldn't be enjoying himself more! Every day he could feel himself grow stronger and stronger, more confident in both the skills he was being taught and the path he had perhaps somewhat ignorantly chosen to pursue. Though he was unaware of it, Naruto was blitzing through the academy material at an astonishing rate, the progress he'd managed to achieve in the past month nothing short of phenomenal. The shinobi arts seemed to come almost naturally to him, and with his kaa-san there to correct any potential mistakes, combined with small tips and tricks from her experiences as a jounin, he was able to fully realise his potential.

The real gem though was his father's notes from the academy. If there was ever any doubt that Minato was a genius, those notes proved otherwise. Whilst his kaa-san worked with him on the physical aspects of being a shinobi, Naruto learnt most of the theory from those notes. Generalised tactics and strategy, hand seals and their effect on internal chakra manipulation, genjutsu theory and identification, even Minato's explorations into fuinjutsu and his personal changes to the academy style taijutsu; all of this was covered and more, complete with small diagrams and annotations in Minato's meticulously neat handwriting.

Naruto hadn't yet read through half of these notes, but what he had read seemed to advance him by leaps and bounds. Minato's insights into the material taught at the academy were hardly revolutionary, but to Naruto they may as well have been. For every issue Naruto started to have in his training, a solution or explanation could almost instantly be found in those notes. Everything his father wrote just seemed to make sense. It almost felt like cheating to an extent, Naruto had thought to himself one night, though that didn't stop him from continuing to use them…

A month after Naruto first began his training, and Kushina had finally decided that Naruto had fully mastered tree climbing. His final test: to dodge the disturbingly accurate rubber balls his kaa-san would throw at him for one whole hour without letting any part of his body touch the ground. Even with Kushina restricting herself to roughly genin level speed and strength, it still took every ounce of his focus to succeed and left him completely exhausted afterwards, sweat dripping from his brow, lying on his back staring up at the clouds taking deep gulping breaths.

That being said, he'd now exhausted the exercise as a means to improve his chakra control. It was time to move on to the next exercise: water walking. If tree climbing is a method of utilising advanced chakra adhesion, then water walking is the opposite. Instead of channeling chakra to create a region of attraction, you instead use it to create a region of repulsion, similar to the effect produced when using too much chakra for the tree climbing exercise.

The difficulty of this method is thus twofold: Firstly, while experienced shinobi can use chakra adhesion almost indefinitely, chakra repulsion is significantly more chakra intensive in the sense that the user is essentially forcing chakra outwards to 'push' themselves in the opposite direction. Using chakra repulsion on land for instance, one would find themselves hovering a few inches off the ground, a process which is usually used to enable the high-speed movement of the shunshin. Secondly, as the surface used for water walking is a liquid, the amount of chakra being channeled to the bottom of the feet needs to be adjusted constantly to account for constant motion near the water's surface, especially when using the technique to stand upon the surface of flowing rivers or open sea.

That leads us to Naruto's current location: training ground 33. Though his family's personal training grounds did have a river running through it, it was much harder to learn water walking on a surface that is changing so rapidly, hence Kushina had led him instead to training ground 33 on the outskirts of the village. Notably, it featured a large but shallow lake, ideal for shinobi with a water affinity who were looking to test some ninjutsu, or in the case of someone like Naruto, the perfect location for learning water walking.

It had been hours since his arrival here, he'd guess from the sun's position in the clear blue skies that it was sometime around mid-afternoon. His kaa-san had to leave him some time ago, summoned away to see his jiji about something shinobi related by one of those super cool ninja with the white masks. 'ANBU', the name seemed to spring forwards into his mind, recalling his father's notes. Since then he'd been attempting to walk on the surface of the lake without success. He could stand in place on the lake without issue, could feel his chakra pushing against the water's surface providing a reasonably stable semi-solid platform to stand on. But as soon as he took a step forwards, the shift in angle between his back foot and the surface he was standing on would cause the water to destabilise and he'd lose his concentration, causing him to fall back into the lake, at which point he'd have to pull himself back up on to dry land, thoroughly drenched with water. This was the process that had been repeating itself since midday and Naruto was beginning to get annoyed with the sensation of wet clothes clinging to his skin.

'Maybe, I'm going about this the wrong way…' Naruto thought to himself after yet another unsuccessful attempt; trying to picture the point at which he was failing. 'When I start to lift my back foot, there's a moment when my chakra doesn't have anything to push off against, so I end up just falling through the water... Maybe if I channel chakra forwards to the balls of my feet as I'm lifting my heel? yeah, that should work right? I guess it's worth a try.'

Rising to his feet once more, Naruto walked back towards the edge of the lake. Placing one foot on the water's surface, Naruto took a hesitant step forwards, carefully moulding his chakra… and then another step, and another before stopping, wobbling in place for a second, arms waving around by his side before he righted himself. It was unsteady, every step requiring his full concentration, his chakra unused to the way he was manipulating it, but with more practice it would become second nature in no time.

"Yatta! I did it," he exclaimed in a rare fit of childishness. "Nothing can stand in the way of Uzumaki Naru-"

He saw it then out of the corner of his eye for just a split second, a glint of orange, before an invisible wave of pressure knocked him off balance and into the water below...