Disclaimer: Don't own Naruto
I woke up in the morning with every freaking muscle protesting my every move. How the hell could I hurt this much. Stupid weights. Wait... 'self-imposed rule', ok calm down, Naruto. Weights help me get stronger, so... sorry weights... your not stupid.
I looked over to the clock. "Oh crap. I am late!" I shouted. Gai-sensei even said that he would teach me the goken too. Though I really didn't know what the goken was, it sounded really cool. I took a quick shower and started getting dressed. I ate something real quick. Really didn't know what it was but that is beside the point. When I saw the clock right before I left my apartment, it read 5:05.
"Well, maybe he won't care?" I wondered. Then I remembered the 'self-imposed rule'. "Crap! I am going to kill myself with this thing." I despaired. After my moment of self-despair, I realized that I was just getting later, so I started running to training ground 11. Well, maybe not running exactly because of the weights, but I was doing my best. Now that I think about it, how the hell did I survive that 'warm-up' last night?
I finally arrived at training ground 11 ready to begin a new day of training. The problem was that I didn't see my sensei anywhere. I looked high and low too! Finally after a long time of looking, like one minute, Gai-sensei finally showed up.
"Naruto-kun... I am very disappointed. You are late!" Sensei said as he got closer to me. "I am sorry, Gai-sensei. I will increase my weights and then run extra today." I said. He seemed to be in thought for a second. Then he said, "Ok that will be sufficient, but for your lateness you will have to be punished." He then hit him! I am not talking about a small punch or light tap. He freaking nailed me! I can already feel a huge bruise forming.
"Ok, now let me add some more weight to you." He then proceeded to place even more weight on me. This is just like yesterday. I can barely move. "Ok, Naruto, did you find any better clothes to wear with those weights?" I was confused before I remembered what he was talking about.
"No, Gai-sensei. When I left from training, the only thing I was able to do was go and collapse on my bed." I shuddered at remembering the pain I was yesterday. Of course if I get stronger than the pain was ok. Not the smartest reasoning, but it would suffice for now.
"Yosh! That means that you can wear this, my youthful student." He then proceeded to pull out an exact replica of the spandex... thing that he was wearing.
'Ok, Naruto, this is a changing moment in your life. You can wear this thing and make sensei happy, or you can decline and get some real clothes and have people not laugh at you. Which will it be?' As these thoughts were going through my head, I was carefully examining the... thing. After a couple of minutes of deliberation, I finally had my answer. "Gai- sensei, in all honesty, I can't wear that thing."
After making my choice, I somehow got the feeling that the whole world was thanking me, but that was probably just my imagination. The problem with my decision was that my sensei started crying. A sweat-drop started forming on my head from seeing this grown man crying and shouting about youth. After he got over his fit, he decided that it would be best if we sprinted to a ninja store he knew that would be open at this time in the morning.
"Just think of it as training, Naruto-kun. The faster we get there, the stronger you become." Gai declared in his pose. After he said that, we both took off running, though it would be more accurate to say that I just took off.
We arrived at the ninja store to get me some new clothes. We both walked in and greeted the cashier. After some cordial chatting between sensei and the man, I got bored and went to look around. That was when I saw the outfit that was calling me. It was beautiful! It was even better than the piece of perfect that I already had on. The outfit consisted of a sleek pair of black pants, a red and black long-sleeve shirt, and an undershirt of chainmail. It was perfect.
I signaled Gai-sensei and told him my choice. He looked it over and said it would do, but then he tried one more time to convince me to wear his green... spandex. I took another hard look at the spandex and after thinking my options over, I regretfully told him that I would take the other outfit. With tears running down his face, Gai-sensei gave me his ok. Then he gave me the nice guy pose.
I changed outfits and placed the clothes were the weights couldn't be seen. Then I tied my headband on and went out from the changing room. "Naruto-kun, you truly look like you are ready to show the world your youth, but I do have one suggestion to make. I would suggest that instead of using your protector on your forehead, you put it on your arm or make it into a belt." He then showed me his.
"Ok, Gai-sensei. I will wear mine as a belt just like yours." I then gave him the nice-guy pose. The smile on sensei's face was of such brightness that I thought he was about to hug me, but that didn't happen. We then ran back to the training ground. The problem was that I was already getting tired. These new weights were already tiring me out! I would persevere. No weights can stop, Naruto Uzumaki, future Hokage of Konoha! Believe it!
"Ok, Naruto-kun, let us get down to training after our slight detour. We now have one hour and a half before your teammates get here. One hour of that time will be spent on warm-ups and running. The last thirty minutes will be spent with me teaching the basics of the goken. Now let's get to it!" With that we started doing push-ups, sit-ups, and some running.
After the hour of hell, I mean training, was over, Gai-sensei finally told me what the goken was. Apparently goken means strong fist. It's also a taijutsu style that sensei himself uses. "Wow, that means that I will be able to kick your butt with your own style, sensei? Because with the training you're giving me, you said I would be able to defeat you, right?"
"Ha ha ha, right you are my youthful student! Of course I expect you to master this style and face me with it one day, but I also expect you to better it. Every single second you are training under me, every single team practice, and every time you train alone, the whole point is to be better. It does not matter if it is just a little bit better or a lot better. The point of every training session is to be better. That is one thing that I will teach the whole team later."
After he said that, the wind blew threw the clearing like Kami himself was acknowledging sensei's words. I was rapt at sensei's words. This was a principle I could live for. To better myself every single time and to take the goken to new heights, both would be things I would accomplish on my way to being Hokage.
Gai-sensei then started showing me some of the basic katas of the goken style. He only showed me a couple, and then told me to just practice them for the rest of our time together. After thirty minutes, I saw Sasuke and Sakura-chan walking up. I stopped practicing and ran to meet them. I really didn't want anyone to know that I was training just yet. I would beat the teme and Sakura-chan would praise my name.
"Ok, my youthful genin, this is our first practice together as a team. I will be doing various exercises with you for the next week, and then we will be starting our missions. My first lesson is something any genin should know. How to mould chakra is my first lesson to you my students." After he said that, he demonstrated by walking up a tree with his feet!
"Thats so cool, Gai-sensei! How do I do it? How do I do it?" I shouted. Being able to walk up anything would have allowed my pranks to reach new heights, so I knew this exercise would be very helpful later on. "You have to concentrate the right amount of chakra to your feet. Too much and you fly off but too little and you won't stick to the tree, the point of the exercise is to find the right amount of chakra to place in a jutsu. When you are able to do this exercise, your jutsu will become easier to do because you won't mess up the jutsu by using too much chakra or too little."
After that explanation, we all started to do the exercise. "Dammit! I keep falling!" I then looked over to see how the esteemed Sasuke was doing. To my joy he wasn't doing much better than me. He would keep falling after only getting a little higher than me. Then I look to Sakura and said, "That a way, Sakura-chan. You're doing great!" She was already high up in the tree. I knew she was the girl for me!
"Shut-up, baka!" Sakura then looked at Sasuke with a red look in her face. Maybe she had a fever? I then threw myself into mastering this exercise. It would be the one of my first steps into bettering myself. I could do this. I would do this. Bettering myself, improving the goken, beating Sasuke, and becoming Hokage all started here. Gai-sensei had us practice the exercise all day. By the end of it, Sasuke and I had almost completed it. Gai-sensei dismissed us after six hours of tree-climbing. Even Sakura-chan had started doing the exercise as long as she could at the prompting of sensei.
When everyone left, I went up to sensei and asked if we could continue training. "Yosh! Naruto-kun you truly are a youthful student! I would be proud to continue training with you." We then started running again. For some reason when Gai-sensei said training, he really meant running. Maybe it was just something all jounin did? Anyway we ended up running around 30 miles. To say I was tired would be a huge understatement. I thought I was about to die!
We finally came back to what I now considered to be our team's personal training ground. Gai-sensei then got me up and we did katas again. After two full hours of katas, Gai-sensei finally said training was over for the day. I collapsed. There was no moving, there was nothing but pain all over my body. It really wasn't fun to hurt everywhere. Gai-sensei left after we were done but not before reminding me of our training tomorrow morning at 5:00 A.M.
I lay there for a hour after sensei left just recuperating. Then I thought about what I learned for the day. I really wanted to get down the tree-climbing before tomorrow's practice where I could rub it in Sasuke's face. Thats what I did. I trained for another hour until I got the whole tree-climbing thing down. It was now 8:00 at night. I really needed food, so I knew the place to go: Ichiraku Ramen!
"Ho, who do we have here? Haven't seen you in a couple of days, Naruto. I thought you had finally decided to leave this humble establishment." Teuchi, amazing ramen guy, said. I looked at him in horror. He couldn't possible be serious! "Are you out of your mind! There is no way I would ever give up ramen. Its a gift from God you know."
He just chuckled before getting my order. We chatted and I ate, and ate, and ate some more. Before I was done, the old man's eyebrow had literally disappeared into his air. This was easily the most he had ever eaten at one time. "Don't worry, old man. Its just my new training. I will probably be eating this much from now on, so please keep it coming whenever I come in." At my words, I saw something interesting. It was like his eyes... changed. I could have sworn I saw his eyes turn green with money symbols in them. It was like a weird eye technique thing! Maybe the old man should have been a ninja?
I asked him about it, but he said he had no clue what I was talking about. The thing was that he said it with a smirk, so it just confused me even more. I eventually paid my bill... I think I finally understood why his eyes turned green. That bill was expensive! Well I left my favorite restaurant a few ounces lighter from all the money spent.
I got home and the first I did was take a nice, long shower. I felt I deserved it. Of course even then I didn't take my weights off. Gai-sensei had told me to keep them on at all times. After my nice shower, I went straight to be and set my alarm for 5:00 A.M. No matter how many times I looked at it, I still couldn't believe there was something as evil as a 5:00 A.M. It just wasn't fair.
I woke up bright and shiny with a smile on my face and pieces of machinery stuck to my fist. Wait... that didn't sound good. I looked over and, yep, my alarm clock was now destroyed. There went another valuable instrument in every young ninja's life. I sighed. This meant I would have to get another one before my next training session.
"Ah, Naruto-kun. Welcome my fine young student. Are you ready to express your YOUTH today? Let us start our training with a nice energetic jog. Also I was wondering if you would like to increase your weights? From what I have seen of you, you are becoming strong enough to increase your weights almost every day because of the fox within you. Most people would take longer for the muscles to tear down and grow back stronger, but you, my pupil, have the fortune to have your muscles growing back at a very fast pace."
I looked at him in a panic. My strength was just because of the fox? I asked Gai-sensei about this, but he hurriedly assured me that the fox wouldn't be helping me at all if I wasn't getting stronger by myself. This made me feel a little better, but there would come a reckoning between the fox and myself one day. I would just add it to my to-do list. Maybe I should put this one after becoming Hokage, for Sakura-chan's sake if nothing else because she wouldn't want to see me get hurt when I beat that fox's butt. Yea, lets go with that.
After increasing me weight, I went to work with a will. An hour of warm-ups passed by quickly. The warm-ups included running, push-ups and sit-ups. After the warm-ups, I learned and practiced katas for an hour. Then team training kicked in. Gai-sensei first had us demonstrate the tree-climbing. To my surprise, Sasuke actually did it! Damn, now I couldn't rub it in his face when I did it too. After we all showed Gai-sensei that we were able to do it, he had us spar against him and then we sparred against each other.
My first match was against my precious Sakura-chan. I couldn't hit her! For some reason though, she kept trying to hit me real hard! This presented a problem for me. I really didn't want to get hit by her, but I also couldn't hit her. What was I supposed to do? Then I remembered Gai-sensei's words of wisdom: become stronger through each training. Thats when I started focusing on just dodging her attacks. This way I could become stronger by training my dodging abilities. It was the perfect solution. I was so happy that when I smiled, my teeth shined like the sun. This turned out to be a bad thing because when my teeth started shining, Sakura got blinded and ended up running into a tree after I dodged an attack.
This led to another bad thing because when I immediately went to help her, she hit me! That was outrageous, but then I realized that she probably still blinded and thought I was Sasuke. This made perfect sense in my mind, and I was sticking to that story. After my matchup, Gai-sensei had us swap up opponents. We cycled through each other a couple of times with Gai-sensei correcting our movements when we did wrong. Whenever I went up against Sasuke though, I was unable to really hit him. My speed was so down from all the weight I had on me that he was running circles around me. It was really unfair, but I vowed that I would get so fast that even with my weights on, I would run circles around him.
Team practice ended and Sakura and Sasuke wondered off, while I stayed to train. Training consisted of hours of running and finishing up by using my katas on wooden dummies. Gai-sensei told me to hit the dummy 1000 times with each hand and foot. After even more long hours, I was finally able to finish. This became basically my training schedule for the next few weeks stretching into months.
After we started missions, training didn't really change much except some days we would extend team practice for an hour. I will admit that Sakura-chan and I got even closer. I mean just the other day we were practically kissing. Of course we were carrying that one thing, but that is beside the point. She also didn't call me a baka anymore, but that could also be because Gai-sensei worked our team into the ground and we didn't have time for much idle chatter. Even Sasuke seemed to have lightened up. I mean he doesn't really brood any more. Now he just frowns... and trains. He actually tries to train a lot. Of course this just motivated me to train even more than him.
A month passed this way. Learning katas, running many many miles daily, and increasing my weights each day truly started paying off by the end of the month. I felt like Hokage was just a step away! I was ready for my first real challenge, and nothing was going to stand in my way of getting stronger. Believe it! The only downer of the month was that I couldn't figure out how to make the goken stronger. I had even, shudders at the memory, convinced myself to go to the library and looked up taijutsu styles to see if anything looked good to add. Nothing seemed to work though. I would have to look at it from a different angle if I was going to make the goken style stronger.
Gai-sensei also taught us water-walking after three weeks under him as our sensei. That was cool! Being able to walk on water, what will ninja come up with next? That truly was an exciting thought. Maybe even I could make something that no ninja could make before. Of course to do this, I would actually need to learn some more jutsu. That was the one thing that Gai-sensei really hadn't taught us yet. Gai-sensei said that ninjutsu and genjutsu were a personal thing for any shinobi to learn. He also said that he would teach us one jutsu each after he got everything ready. I guess ready means something, but I am not sure exactly what he would need to get ready for us to learn some kick-ass jutsu.
"Ok, my youthful students, are you ready to show the world your Youth!" At this Sasuke and Sakura kind of did an eye-roll, while I was nodding my head eagerly. "Yes, Gai-sense, the world shall witness my Youth!" Gai-sensei had a tear come out at my honest and truly great answer. "Thats my student, making your youthful sensei so proud," he sobbed to the world. After the tears dried up, Gai-sensei finally told us what we were doing today.
"YOSH! Ready to learn a jutsu?" He yelled/asked as he pumped his fist into the air. "I finally believe that your taijutsu skills are at a level that we can branch off into different things." Gai-sensei then went into his sensei mode. That meant that whatever he was about to say was really important. "Ninjutsu is a vast category. There are so many applications to ninjutsu and likewise genjutsu that truly it is better to know certain things about yourself before you even begin to learn anything. This is why I have brought these!" He then pulled out three plain-looking pieces of paper.
At this we all face-faulted. "Come on, Gai-sensei! Hows paper going to help us?" Sakura asked. "That is a good question, my pink student." At this Sakura's eye started twitching. "These pieces of paper help determine which branch of ninjutsu will be better suited for you to learn. Wether it be fire, wind, earth, water, or lightning, one branch will be easier to learn for each individual person. Now, take one piece of paper each and focus your chakra into it!"
We each did as Gai-sensei instructed. I saw that Sasuke's paper caught on fire. Sakura's paper seemed to become really wet. My paper... well my paper seemed to... crumple. Gai-sensei then started explaining what each change meant. "If the paper burns then you are a fire-natured person, if it gets wet then you are water-natured, if it crumples then you are lightning-natured. Also when it turns to dust then you are earth and if it had split then you would have been wind. Now I will give each of you one jutsu apiece. I want you to master this jutsu before I teach you another." He then split us all up and taught us each individually.
I could also hear Gai-sensei telling Sakura-chan that there were other paths in the shinobi life if the water jutsus really didn't agree with her. I tried to see what Gai-sensei was teaching the others but that really didn't work out for me.
Finally it was my turn! "Gai-sensei, Gai-sensei, what are you going to teach me? Huh! Huh!" Sensei started laughing. Probably in joy because he was so happy for me learning a new jutsu. "Naruto-kun, I will be teaching you an interesting jutsu. Lightning jutsu are an interesting field to learn. Lightning has many abilities. There is the shock ability, the magnetism ability, and the speed factor of lightning jutsu. Of course there could be even more that I am either forgetting or don't know about. Lightning jutsu aren't the most common in the leaf, you see. Truefully, my Eternal rival-Kakashi is the only lightning-natured person that comes right to my head. Maybe you can even get some tips from him later." I was nodding along with everything he was saying. I am just that awesome.
"The jutsu I am going to teach you is called the Palms of the thunder god. Well not really, but that is a really cool name!" I face-faulted at that. Sometimes Gai-sensei just couldn't take things seriously. Shaking my head at his crazy antics, I manfully stated, "Come on, Gai-sensei. Give me the jutsu, please. I need it. Please teach me. Teach me! Come on!" Gai-sensei seem to form a sweat-drop, but I think that was my imagination.
"Naruto-kun, the jutsu is really called the Paralyzing touch because you channel lightning to your hands and then you touch your opponent. This causes a paralyzing effect in which you can then use your taijutsu to finish the enemy off. Now these are the hand-signs, so get to work and show me your Youthfulness!" We spent the rest of the day working on our jutsu. The next day shined brightly as we went to get a new mission. A mission to test us like never before.