Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto. Not even a little bit.

First off, thanks to those of you who reviewed! The favorites and follows were nice too, but reviews are downright energizing. They're making me so happy right now that I almost think I'd even like flames.

I had a ton of things that I wanted to say in the ANs, but by the time I finished the chapter I'd forgotten most of them. Rather than delay posting I'll just say what I remember and apologize later if I missed something important.

There were some concerns about pairings. This story isn't going to revolve around pairings. There will be a romantic aspect, but the details are far from set in stone. It really depends on how the character interaction turns out, so I don't want to make plans now and have to force the story to accommodate them later if it doesn't really feel like it'll fit. If I decided not to have any romance at all, that wouldn't gut the story, although it would affect the plot. I won't be ignoring it though, as I do want to explore it. What ideas I do have will have to wait until the story develops enough to see if they'll actually fit.

The only guarantees at this point is that there'll be no slash and no OC romance. Anything else is fair game. Although you can probably guess that a love triangle between Naruto, Chiyo, and Koharu is not something you need to worry about.

Anything related to romance is going to take a while to develop, and there may be situations and interactions that suggest things that won't actually happen, or events might conspire to destroy what seemed inevitable.

The romance isn't going to be neat and tidy. Naruto will be dense. If your enjoyment of the story depends on Naruto getting involved with a particular girl this probably won't work out for you. I have inherited certain things from canon, such as Sakura's crush on Sasuke, Naruto's crush on Sakura, Hinata's crush on Naruto that will be a part of the development. Naruto isn't going to magically realize that Sakura's mean to him and switch off his crush. That's the problem with crushes.

I thought about doing Yandere Hinata, but that'll have to wait for another story.

Changes will build up. Naruto being different is going to affect a lot, and this won't be a rehash of the same fights with different dialogues and outfits. Character interaction will determine everything. I get the feeling that no matter what happens with the romance, there will always be those who'll say it ruined the story. Even having no romance. So I'm going to let it develop more or less according to the flow of the story. Obviously my own plans and biases are going to affect it, but I'm aiming for whatever I do to fit framework of the story and be consistent with the characters.

I'm open to input and feedback about anything in the story, whether it be about romance, plot, or anything else.

~~~~~~~~~~~ Konoha's Maelstrom ~~~~~~~~~~~

~ Chapter 2: Like a Shuriken ~

It was an odd, warbling and utterly painful sounding moan that dragged Naruto out from the depths of his sleep.

"Shut up and go away," Naruto commanded, rolling over to try and get some more sleep. Well, that's what he intended to happen.

What came out of his mouth instead was "Shmmrghwa... uguhhhh," as several unpleasant facts suddenly made themselves known.

The distressing sound that had awoken him was something he had been making, which thankfully cut off as he attempted to speak. More importantly, there were thousands of evil ninja bees buzzing inside his head and stinging his brain repeatedly.

An even more disturbing moan wrenched itself painfully from his throat as he curled up into the fetal position, trying to figure out why everything hurt so much and his pillow tasted like dirt.

"Sensei! I think he's dying! I shall take him to the hospital!" someone shouted with far too much enthusiasm. And volume. The curled up blond groaned as the ninja bees in his head decided they'd been going too easy on him.

Naruto opened his eyes slightly, and when the light didn't burn them out or make his head feel any worse he grudgingly sat up, mentally berating himself for falling asleep in a training field before turning his attention to the boy next to him. His intention to reassure the kind (if loud) would be samaritan that he was not dying was blasted away by a kind of surreal shock.

Crouched down beside him was a boy with two mutant caterpillars posing as his eyebrows. Were it not for the earnest and concerned look on the face attached to the caterpillars (as they were clearly too significant to be considered attached to the face) Naruto might have freaked out. The abnormally round eyes, bowl cut, and green spandex had an oddly calming effect. Clearly, this caterpillar-human hybrid hadn't learned how to properly blend in with regular society yet, and it would not be able to hide its dastardly-

Naruto shook his head to halt that clearly out of control train of thought. Seeing those eyebrows first thing after waking up had obviously been detrimental to his thought processes. Unfortunately for his peace of mind, that brought his attention to a second caterpillar-human hybrid. He nearly choked on his tongue as scrambled backwards a few feet in alarm.

"Geh! They're multiplying!"

"What?" the younger one asked, cocking his head to one side in puzzlement.

It was now clear to him what must have happened the previous night to make him pass out here instead of in his relatively comfortable bed. He must have drunk a massive amount of alcohol and then ate a handful of those hallucinogenic mushrooms that Iruka-sensei had warned to stay well away from. The caterpillar twins could just be the last traces of that stuff in his system.

Naruto frowned and shook his head a little again as he stood, hoping to clear his mind a little. Something about these two was screwing with his sense of reality.

"Sorry about that," he said genuinely. "You two caught me off guard and I'm still a bit out of it." He rolled his shoulder a bit, trying to get the ache from sleeping awkwardly on it out.

"Think nothing of it!" The older one said, a beaming smile on his face. "Our youthful exuberance is surely stunning to witness for the first time!"

If by 'youthful exuberance' you mean giant eyebrows and 'stunning' is code for unnerving, then yeah, Naruto thought, that's it exactly.

At least they can't get any weirder.

Of course 'Sensei' chose that moment to give a vigorous thumbs up, a broad smile, and a wink. And then his teeth went 'ping', flashing as though the sun was glaring off them for a moment. Which didn't make sense, as the sun hadn't even properly risen yet.

"Sensei!" Lee shouted happily. Whether it was in response to the praise or the pose, Naruto didn't know, and he didn't want to know. He rolled his tight shoulder again, more to hide his discomfort with the pinging and the shouting than to relieve any pain.

"Ah how rude of me!" 'Sensei' said inexplicably. "Allow me to help you with that." Before Naruto could allow or disallow or even think about what the odd man meant he was right beside Naruto, a steely grip on the boy's shoulder.

"What are you do-EEHHYaaaa? Huh?" Naruto's panicked question was cut short as the older man made a quick twisting motion with the boy's arm. He gave the start of a scream as he felt and heard a crackling pop, but before he could build up any volume he realized that it didn't hurt. In fact, it felt a lot better.

It's rude to not suddenly manhandle somebody's arm? Naruto thought a bit incredulously, although without any anger. He moved his arm around, marveling the lack of pain. If he could learn how to do that Kage Bunshin would have another awesome use! His thoughts took an inevitable but slightly disturbing turn. Would it be weird if I got a massage from a Kage Bunshin? Would it be more creepy or less creepy if the clone was using Oiroke no Jutsu?

He shuddered and concluded that it would definitely be more creepy.

Stop thinking about it stop thinking about it stop thinking about it damnit!

"That was pretty cool," Naruto said, deciding to leave the philosophical debate on the creepiness of self-massages for another time. "Thanks, uh, shinobi-san."

"You are most welcome, and you may call me Gai!"

"And I am Rock Lee, Konoha's Beautiful Green Wild Beast!" Lee chimed in, copying the thumbs up winking pose his teacher had shown earlier. His teeth went ping too.

"Lee! What a beautiful introduction of YOUTH!" Gai bellowed the last word jubilantly, his eyes shining brightly. "I must introduce myself properly, following the wonderful example set forth by beloved student!"

There was a burst of smoke that obscured the man briefly. "I am Konoha's Sublime Green Beast of Prey, Maito Gai!" The smoke cleared to reveal Gai standing in the most ridiculous pose Naruto had ever seen.

One arm was held straight up, the palm positioned as though he were a waiter holding a tray. The other hand was in an upside down 'ok' sign, the circle over his eye and the fingers on his cheek.

Oh, and he was standing on a bored looking giant turtle. That almost didn't register.

Oddly enough, Naruto couldn't help but be more amused than freaked out this time. He supposed the part of his brain that dealt with crap like this by shouting THIS IS SO WEIRD! might have protested being abusively overworked by going on strike. His headache had been steadily disappearing since he woke up and was almost gone, and the resulting good mood might have contributed to how well he was taking this.

Gai and Lee were pretty weird, but they were also really friendly. The poses and the titles were over the top and kooky, but in a fun way. Weird, but fun. Something about their all out enthusiasm made him want to respond in kind.

Naruto stealth formed a Kage Bunshin about ten meters to his ten o'clock. He couldn't help but feel pride in how far he'd advanced from just yesterday. He'd half-assed the seal and only had in the right position for an instant in order to hide the fact that he was actually doing it, but he'd still managed to produce a clone at range and out of sight behind some bushes. That was way beyond what he could do before spending time exploring what he could do with the jutsu.

Naruto decided to make his title simple. He'd had experience with things sounding way cooler in his head than out loud and he wasn't going to get the chance to test it out verbally before hand.

Right as he opened his mouth he changed his mind. These two had been making complete fools of themselves pretty much the entire time he'd known them (which amounted to a less than impressive total of less than five minutes, but still). The funny thing was that he didn't really think the less of them for it. They weren't ashamed of their weirdness... no, their uniqueness in the slightest. They seemed to revel in it.

Once again Naruto felt an unvoiced, unintended challenge. If they could do it, then so could he!

Well, at least with these guys. Just following whatever whim that passed through his mind might make Sakura-chan think he was weird, and that would suck.

"I am Uzumaki Naruto," he stated imperiously, standing as tall and proud as he could. "Konoha's Majestic Orange Maelstrom, and its future Hokage." A breeze wafted through, swirling leaves around him and caressing his hair for a moment and flaring his jacket with what seemed like the most perfect timing ever.

That was because it was.

The clone he'd created had used one of the basic elemental jutsu that he'd learned from Hiruzen's book the night before, a wind jutsu so generally useless it didn't even have a name. All it did was create a gentle, controllable breeze.

One of the things that he was supposed to learn from using the breeze technique was indirect control, guiding things in the air with the breeze. If you were to just blow things around it was near impossible to have any sort of fine control over where they went and any control you did learn would just be applicable to wind techniques, but if they were saturated in your chakra you could use chakra resonation to guide them very precisely. You were supposed to start learning with tufts of cotton, but he didn't exactly carry that around so he'd just improvised and used leaves. It was probably easier with cotton, but he had chakra and clones to spare. Oddly enough the leaves actually absorbed chakra and responded significantly better to the technique than the torn up bits of paper he'd first tried it with.

When he'd started out the night before he'd barely been able to control one leaf so he was understandably proud of the few dozen that wafted through the air for his introduction.

Unfortunately for his coolness factor, he'd overestimated his abilities somewhat.

He hadn't had time to saturate the leaves before using the technique, so his clone had needed to imbue chakra into them through the breeze technique, a skill he wasn't quite good at yet. The more chakra in a leaf, the more easily controlled it was. While you could train yourself to need less and less chakra to have the same level of control, he was far from that point.

The effect that he'd intended didn't require much control at all. The leaves were just supposed to go by at the appropriate moment to give him a heroic mystique and gravitas.

Everything went as planned, except for the part where a few leaves made contact with his head and face. That wouldn't have been too bad, if that had been all.

It wasn't.

One of the leaves got stuck in his nose.

Naruto tried to keep his face straight, but he could feel the heat of an atomic blush on his cheeks and one of his eyes was twitching. He reached up and removed the offending leaf as calmly as he could and flicking it away.

Looking at the way Lee's mouth was twitching it was clear he was holding in laughter. With a sigh of resignation, Naruto decided that pretending it didn't happen wasn't going to help anything. "Go ahead, you can laugh. I know it was funny."

If it hadn't been the leaf, it probably would have been the title. He'd probably keep the Maelstrom part, if he ever had the guts to introduce himself like that ever again, but he needed a less over the top description than 'Majestic Orange'.

Suddenly, Lee wasn't holding back the urge to laugh anymore. Strangely enough, it wasn't because he was laughing. "Forgive my unyouthfulness Naruto-kun! Your introduction was splendid!"

"It's fine Lee-san." The sting of embarrassment was all but gone. Had something like that happened at the academy he would have been a laughingstock for a week, but Lee was just so genuinely friendly that something like a botched attempt at being cool just didn't seem like a big deal. It probably helped that the other boy was unashamedly weird.

"Wonderfully said Lee!" Gai boomed delightedly, smiling proudly at his student. "Naruto-kun's introduction was certainly splendid! I'm sure it would have been ever better if he were in top condition." His tone and demeanor abruptly changed in a way that reminded Naruto somewhat of Iruka-sensei during a lecture. "A good night's sleep in a bed rejuvenates your Flames of Youth ten times better than sleeping on the ground. I completely empathize with the desire to train from the instant you awake, but you must take better care of yourself Naruto-kun!"

Lee had taken out a notepad when Gai assumed his 'lecture mode', and was scribbling along as his teacher talked. "than... sleeping... on the... ground," the boy muttered while writing. He saw Naruto's curiosity. "Words of wisdom should be recorded and passed down!" he explained.

Naruto didn't have the heart to tell him that most people wouldn't consider the fact that beds were more comfortable to sleep on than the ground something profound enough to bother writing down.

On some level he understood Lee's feelings. If he actually knew Hiruzen, chances were he'd have the same kind hero worship that Lee had for Gai. Not to the extent that he'd be willing to dress in green spandex. Orange maybe, but not green. Nor would he be so inspired to hear that beds were nice.

"I didn't mean to fall asleep here," Naruto explained. He got the feeling that leaving Gai with the impression that he was so eager to train that he slept in training fields could turn out spectacularly bad. "I kinda went overboard practicing Kawarimi last night. And trying to throw myself around like a shuriken probably didn't help." The part about the shuriken was mostly just thinking aloud as a reaction to the memory. Given the way he'd managed to knock himself out his recollection was a bit jumbled, but it was all coming back to him as he thought about it.

"Like a shuriken?" Lee mimed the motion, clearly baffled as to how it could be used to throw oneself around. "Is that a riddle? I'm not very good with those."

"Actually–"

"Don't tell me!" Lee interrupted quickly. "I can figure this out!" He was shifting through positions that looked like preparation to jump and spin, frowning at each one when he decided it wasn't going to work. "This is like that 'pull yourself up by your bootstraps' thing I haven't figured out yet. Aha!"

"It's really not," Naruto tried to explain, but Lee wasn't listening. Referring to bootstraps had inspired him to try and throw himself by grabbing his own foot. It was a comically outlandish idea, but the truly amazing thing was that throughout his contortions he never lost his balance. Even as he tried odder and odder positions, adding hops and spins to try and fling himself around the clearing, he remained bizarrely graceful. He never stumbled or seemed even the tiniest bit out of control.

Except for mentally, of course.

It took a surprisingly short time for green-clad boy to actually appear to be throwing himself by yanking his feet (he switched which foot he was trying it with every couple of jumps) in odd directions. He was even trying out different kinds of spins, flips, spinny flips, and flippy spins (somehow two different things) that seemed to defy the laws of physics. And reality. The heights he jumped to, the number of rotations, and the sheer impossibility of someone throwing themselves around by their own leg was something Naruto could barely believe even when it was happening right in front of him.

"How wonderful!" Gai crowed delightedly as he joined his student in the air.

Lee's acrobatics were impressive beyond anything Naruto had ever seen before, but his teacher was even more physically adept. He hadn't needed any practice to copy Lee's movements, and from the first leap was already surpassing them physically, artistically, and in overall weirdness.

On the one hand, Gai and Lee were utterly and freakily weird. On the other, Naruto couldn't help being envious of their skills. Gai had started to bounce off trees like a demented green pinball, intermittently shouting "Yosh!".

That's completely different from what I meant. Naruto wasn't going to say anything at this point since it looked like they were having way too much fun to care. My way of throwing myself around is going to be much cooler! Naruto thought petulantly. Once I actually figure out a way to make it work. His training the night before had been mostly amazing, although not everything had gone perfectly.

He'd been far too excited to go to sleep after reading the 'Fundamentals of Ninjutsu" book, barely even daring to hope that it was as awesome as he thought it was. It was torture but he forced himself to start out with chakra control instead of going straight for the jutsu.

The leaf concentration exercise was as frustrating as he remembered. Between the Kage Bunshin and the book's instructions he hoped to actually get somewhere with it this time. When Iruka-sensei had taught the exercise to the class years ago it had been one of Naruto's most perplexing failures.

It had been incredibly difficult to get the leaf to stick to his forehead, and doing pretty much anything caused it to blow off. He had to be completely relaxed and not thinking about anything but just the feeling his chakra on his forehead. A stray thought, too much concentration, a loud noise, anything messed him up. His record had been six seconds. Nobody else in his class had that kind of problem. The leaf just fell off if they lost concentration, and for everyone else there was not such as thing as being too concentrated.

At first he thought it was cool. No one else could propel the leaf away from them, so that had to be cool. And then it became obvious that he wasn't getting any better at the part that apparently mattered, no matter how much he practiced. He'd thought it would be funny to try and launch leaves at Sasuke, which didn't quite work, but it did get him told off by Iruka-sensei for being 'intentionally disruptive'. The teacher didn't take him seriously when he complained about concentrating too much, and after reprimanding Naruto he decided that the boy was making a nuisance of himself on purpose rather than actually trying to concentrate properly.

They'd moved onto the basic academy jutsu not long after, and his relative success with Henge and Kawarimi meant that his continued lack of progress with the exercise didn't become a lasting issue, at least as far as his grades were concerned. He'd kept at it on his own for about another couple of months, but the fact that it seemed to get even harder with all the effort he was putting into it resulted in him spending less and less time trying until he wrote it off as a lost cause.

Kage Bunshin had given him hope of erasing that painful failure.

He didn't really think that having ten clones doing the same thing would help him learn ten times faster, but he was hoping that there was some benefit. If ten clones helped him learn even ten percent faster then it was something he was going to make full use of. Clones were cheap, after all.

Naruto's impatient nature had actually ended up being beneficial for once. He hadn't been expecting to get anywhere fast with the leaf concentration and the tree walking exercise just sounded too damn cool to wait for, so he'd had a significant number of clones trying that out at the same time rather than wait for progress with the supposedly easier leaf exercise.

Even with fifty clones doing the leaf exercise, none of them were getting anywhere. However, one of the fifteen clones he'd assigned to the tree walking exercise had managed to get far up enough a tree that a botched fall had done enough damage to force it to dispel about a half hour in. The memories of the clone had transferred the real Naruto, and every other 'living' clone. The clone that had 'died' had managed to get about three feet farther up a tree than any other clone, and suddenly every other tree climber experienced a small but noticeable improvement. That had been most apparent in the clones that were running up trees at the time of the first clone 'death'. They could actually feel the the improvement mid climb.

The tree climbing clones had realized the implications rather quickly and all dispelled themselves, which resulted in the leaf concentration clones dispelling as they too realized that it could help. There was a brief period of dizziness cause by the influx of information, but it only lasted a few seconds. It was something to take note of, but given that it was something like thirty of forty hours worth of experience it wasn't really surprising or concerning.

The next batch of clones had certainly proven the use of the Kage Bunshin. He'd been slightly but noticeably better at the leaf concentration exercise, but it was the tree climbing exercise that had been the most improved. The first clone that had dispelled had gotten around twenty feet up the tree when it had fallen and 'died'. All of the new clones had managed just above thirty feet on their first try, a full ten foot gain over the best individual accomplishment. That meant the combined experience of clones was actually worth a great deal.

It had taken some experimentation to find what felt like the most effective method and he was sure that if he kept at it he could refine it even more. He settled on having a clone dispel itself if it felt like it had learned something unique, sharing its experience with its brothers and creator. The more he practiced the technique the easier it was for a clone to figure out when it had learned something worth sharing. It also became clear that any clone that dispelled itself returned most of its remaining chakra to him, whereas those that were dispelled not of their own will only returned a portion. It was difficult to tell exactly how much, but Naruto would guess between half and three-quarters.

Between the chakra returned from the clones and his own natural recovery rate the only real cost was the strain from getting memories the memories of several clones per minute. It wasn't debilitating, but it did build up over the few hours that it took to become comfortable with tree walking.

About a half hour's break in which he read 'Fundamentals of Ninjutsu' had proven enough rest to return to training. By that point Naruto was more than convinced that the book was the real deal, and he was eager to start doing new stuff. Walking on trees was awesome but there was so much more that he wanted to get to. He'd left a few clones to keep practicing tree walking and the leaf concentration exercise, because 'mastery is a never ending road', and then created four more groups.

Two of the groups had worked on Kawarimi. The smaller one was just trying to memorize the twenty seven hand seals and get to the point where they could actually run through them. The other group was working on the expansion that just reduced disorientation. It only had seven seals, but four of them were weird new ones.

Another group worked on learning the gentle breeze technique, because that was what he was supposed to start learning alterations with. That group would go on to work on indirect control through chakra resonation once it learned the technique.

The last group had been given the task of getting creative with Henge. The book had advocated understanding everything you know because all techniques were more versatile than their common uses. He'd had to look up 'versatile' in the dictionary, but it sounded like good advice.

He was already using Kage Bunshin a lot, so getting to know that was going to happen naturally. The book had him learning about the ins and out of Kawarimi rather exhaustively, so that had been covered. That only left Henge.

Without the book telling him what he should be working at, he'd been left with a bit of a quandary, and it had taken quite a while to come up with anything that even seemed plausible.

Sure, turning into a tiger or growing a set of wings to try and fly sounded cool but didn't exactly work out in practice. He didn't magically gain a tiger's musculature, so even though he looked like a tiger walking around was more than a little awkward. The wings had a similar problems. The most he could get them to do was twitch.

It wasn't as though the practice was useless. He'd learned a lot about Henge's limits, getting better at it himself, and found even more interesting things about Kage Bunshin.

Clones could use Henge better than he could. It was a bit odd, but he figured the fact that they were just chakra constructs in the first place meant that changing their physical shape came a bit easier for them.

The closest he'd come to a practical new application for the Henge that night was Kage Bunshins turned into weapons. It certainly wasn't even close to usable, but it had potential. There were definite mass limits, and it could be that all the chakra control and practice in the world wouldn't allow him to make something even as small as a katana. And what use was a weapon that would dispel on contact if it lost its concentration? Despite all that, Naruto was sure that a sentient weapon was something worth pursuing. He'd just have to get better at Henge and Kage Bunshin and see if anything he learnt later might help out with that.

There was one aspect that seemed like it could work out, and not in a 'ten years down the line' sort of way. One of his brilliant clones (they were all him, therefore all brilliant in his mind) had gotten the idea to turn into a Fuuma Shuriken like the one Mizuki had used. It had taken some practice in order to manage one small enough to be thrown, but he'd been sure that he'd had a breakthrough on that.

It was not to be. The henged clone was aware enough of its surroundings that the intense spinning motion made it incredibly dizzy and it dropped the henge almost immediately and dispelled as it crashed into the ground.

Naruto had not been deterred. The clones worked on reducing their awareness and maintaining their concentration within the technique, and eventually (after a lot of second-hand dizziness) managed to hold the transformation indefinitely.

The problem was what to do after that. The point of the technique wasn't to avoid the costs of buying Fuuma Shuriken, it was the whole flying through the air bit that was interesting. Even having gotten the holding the Henge through intense spinning down he'd been left with the release. The clone came out of the transformation spinning as fast as it had been as the shuriken, leaving it utterly incapable of doing anything except crashing into something and dying. Naruto had no ideas at all on how to get around that, so he'd set it aside for the time being.

The way he'd trained with the clones was constantly changing throughout the night.

All the clones had Naruto's personality and memories, so they certainly weren't capable of working nonstop without distraction. The training had started out with each clone just doing its own thing, trying to complete its assigned task. Then the clones started interacting. They'd talked to one another, socialized, and even goofed around a bit. Naruto hadn't been terribly amused by two clones spending twenty minutes playing rock paper scissors, but there was nothing he could do about it after the fact, and any clone that wanted to do something could neatly avoid punishment by dispelling. Naruto had never been very good at doing what he was told, so how could he expect so many copies of him to be perfectly obedient drones?

He hadn't put a stop to it because there didn't seem to be a point, and also it was pretty nice. He got on really well with himself, and it was like he was hanging out and training with a bunch of friends. It hadn't taken him long to see that it was actually beneficial to his training as well. Clones that had fun and were relaxed transferred the memories and feelings to all the other clones when they dispelled, keeping those that were training from getting bored, and it even reduced the real Naruto's mental strain. From then on, he'd added a group of clones whose job was just to have fun, and let the training clones interact and bounce ideas off one another.

That wasn't to say there weren't any hiccups. Two clones had gotten into a heated argument over ramen of all things. Forcefully dispelling them had revealed they didn't have differing opinions (which would have been really freaky) but had misunderstood each other in exactly the same way. It had been rather embarrassing.

The clones had been getting rather good at using Kawarimi on each other, as the practicality of allowing a clone to take a hit in his place was rather obvious. It had been difficult at first but they'd certainly been motivated.

Experimentation with Kawarimi ended up with five clones deciding that it would be brilliant to find out what would happen if tried to swap themselves in a circle. A would use Kawarimi on B, B on C, C on D, D on E, and E on A, all at the same time.

Had they bounced this idea off other clones they might have gotten the idea to try having just two clones swap with each other first, but A through E had been best buddies their entire lives (all twenty minutes of them) and talking about it outside their own little clique didn't even occur to them. They'd make this incredible discovery together!

It was possible that things might have gone better had they used the long version of the Kawarimi, or at the very least the version that just reduced chakra backlash, but the original five seal version had been the easiest to coordinate. So they'd counted down and used the technique with no regard for the consequences. In their minds either something awesome would happen or nothing would happen at all.

The five simultaneous techniques had strained at cross purposes, building up energy as they tried to execute themselves. A visible aura of roiling chakra had flickered up around the surprised clones, none of whom had any idea how to stop it. Something snapped and they started swapping places randomly several times a second each. It had only taken a few seconds for the chakra backlash to completely overwhelm the clones chakra systems, tearing them apart in an explosion of energy.

The memories of the five clones botched technique had caused every other clone to be disrupted, and the memories of all the clones plus the traumatic death of the five had slammed Naruto into unconsciousness.

It had been a sobering experience. Naruto felt lucky to be alive, and made a mental promise to be much more careful experimenting, even with Kage Bunshin as a safety buffer.

Despite the frightening experience he couldn't help but feel a bit excited. Whatever had happened with the Kawarimi there had been something profound. He was going to stay well away from trying that again until he had a theory about why it had happened and had reduced the chakra backlash from the technique as far as he could.

This is just the start, Naruto thought to himself, his determination almost a palpable thing. One day I'll know everything about Jutsu.

Naruto was startled out of his thoughts as Lee came down out of spin to try and kick a training post near him.

The kick clipped the post rather than hitting it dead on, but still manage to gouge a chunk of the wood with such force that it splintered out as sawdust.

"Watch it!" Naruto complained as the wood nearly hit him, even as he marveled at the power of the kick. He wondered what would have happened to the post had it taken a direct hit.

"I'm sorry Naruto-kun," Lee said, swaying and stumbling a bit. "I appear to be unyouthfully dizzy." He brought out his notepad again and started writing and muttering. "Throwing... yourself... around... like a... shuriken... makes... you... dizzy."

Gai jumped down beside Lee, not looking dizzy in slightest despite his more extreme acrobatics.

"You must train yourself to overcome the dizziness Lee! Anything can be done with the Power of Youth!"

"Sensei! Yosh!" Lee exclaimed. "If in one week I have not trained myself not to get dizzy I shall backflip around Konoha ten times while blindfolded!"

"And if you can't do that, I shall fling myself like a shuriken all the way to Kumo and back without stopping!"

"Sensei!"

"Lee!"

"Sensei!"

"Lee!"

"Naruto-kun!"

Naruto hopped back a step in surprise, desperately hoping he wouldn't have to join in... whatever this was.

"Lee-san?"

"Naruto-kun!" Lee said happily. "Thank you for sharing your youthful training exercise with us!"

"It's way more your exercise than mine," Naruto explained, relieved that he hadn't been drawn too far into the back and forth of names. "There's no way I'd be able to pull that stuff off." Naruto thought he might have said something he shouldn't have as he saw the fire in Gai's eyes.

"Then you shall join us in our training to bring out your Flames of Youth!"

"Sensei!"

"Lee!"

"Naruto-kun!"

Shit.

Well, there we have it. I had more planned but that seemed liked a definitive end to the chapter.

There's a ton of foreshadowing and hints as to Naruto's development in here.

Gai and Lee pretty much came out of nowhere. I wanted to keep this chapter from just being a boring info dump on Naruto's training, and somehow they hijacked the plot in the process. I had very different plans for when Naruto would first meet Lee and what it would mean. This actually has quite a large effect on the plot.

They are a bit hard to write, and I had a hard time trying to figure out where to put all the 'Youth!'s and the 'Yosh!'s. I hope the characterization turned out ok.

Naruto meeting two of the friendliest and most genuine people in the entire series this early is going to affect how he connects with everyone else. Particularly Sasuke and Kakashi. Canon Naruto hungers for acknowledgment and friendship, and he becomes rather focused on Sasuke and to a lesser extent Kakashi for validation. When Sasuke starts acknowledging Naruto its at the expense of any friendship they might have, and that dynamic was something I planned to explore.

Having said that, I can't go that route any more. Gai and Lee just click way too well with Naruto's determination to disregard, and with Lee's obvious combat superiority over Sasuke plus the fact that he's actually willing to be friendly is going to change Naruto's interaction with Sasuke a lot.

Things should pick up after this. Next chapter should at least get through team selection.

Edit: These footnotes will seem odd, as I've removed the numberings from the story content because they were breaking immersion.

(When Naruto is wondering if it would be more or less creepy to massage himself with Oiroke no Jutsu) - The basis of this story is Naruto better utilizing Kage Bunshin so I had to go there. He's constantly thinking about how he can apply the technique to just about anything he comes across. While that was originally intended to be a throwaway line for the sake of humor, it will actually lead to some interesting revelations about the technique later. He's not going to be experimenting sexually with Kage Bunshin, in case anyone was worried. Just ewww.

(The pose on the turtle) - Gai does this pose when he introduces himself right after Lee kicks Sasuke's ass before the Chuunin exam.

(Iruka dismissing Naruto's issues with the leaf concentration exercise as tomfoolery) - Iruka wasn't being mean, he simply had no idea how to teach an Uzumaki Jinchuuriki.

(Using henge to turn into a shuriken) - In canon that seemed to be such a simple bit of cleverness, but the more I thought about it the less I could just leave it be. Thinking about how that henge must work in order for it to be that easy makes it pretty much like magic, and I don't want to just shove that under a rug and say 'tada! awesome technique!'