Naruto's Advice Chapter 3, a naruto fanfic

Naruto was back in his favorite training spot. He had decided to call it a day after the summoning incident even though it was early and after a decent meal at the ramen stand and an early night to bed he was ready to go the next morning. This brought him back to his favorite training ground deep within the bamboo grove, furiously scribbling in a notepad usually found in civilian school supplies trying desperately to come up with a solution to his chakra overabundance. It was probably just passed 6am but Naruto knew that he didn't even need to show up to his team's meeting place until just before 10am so he figured that he had some time to try a couple things. He'd already replaced his custom seal with a standard percentage based one and had it set to suppress 85% of his total chakra, which he'd found to still put him amongst the majority of jonin.

He had already asked old man Hokage for some really advanced chakra control exercises that were specifically for people who had enormous chakra reserves. Upon finding out they were originally developed by Tsunade to keep her control nearly perfect despite her own sizable reserves, Naruto was now seriously considering shucking aside chakra from his seal to directly link to his wound regeneration if he could figure out how. Armed with these new techniques which he'd already tried with his mid-chunin level chakra he was confident that he would only ever lose control like the other day if he wanted to. With that in mind he'd changed the amount let though his custom seal to be that of a higher level chunin. He hoped that the expanded allowable capacity would mean that there would be less chakra being forced back into his coils causing expansion.

He'd just finished tying his custom seal to a supply seal for his resistance seal (which he had rechecked for possible downsides before applying) when he heard footsteps approaching him.

The owner of the footsteps was revealed to be Sakura. It seemed that waiting for their sensei with nothing to do in the mean time could only be partially solved by bringing reading material.

"You know you should really work on your stealth Sakura-chan I could hear you a full fifteen minutes before you actually showed up." They both chuckled slightly at that. Early on in experimenting with chakra augmentation they'd found that Naruto could actually hear heartbeats a good thirty yards away, so in theory Naruto could actually hear her when she was sleeping in her bed from here if he were capable of separating out the sound of her specifically.

"Right, the day I am capable of sneaking up on you while you're alert is the day I retire because I obviously cannot possibly get any better and I should quit while I'm ahead."

"Now, now, Sakura-chan that's not the kind of attitude to have. I am in no way incapable of being surprised or snuck up on, so that goal is a very poor one if it's all you want to achieve. And speaking of goals have you found or developed anything new on modifying muscle structure with those special self healing techniques?"

"Actually I think I'm pretty close on getting more dense muscles but the chakra requirements to make it permanent are insane. I think this might actually be the answer we were looking for because it would take a Sannin to do this just based on chakra requirements. If I had an unlimited source of chakra I'd be done already and moving on to more useful ijutsu, like the stuff you can use on other people instead of just yourself."

"What do you know about chakra transfer, Sakura-chan? I ask because I just found that through a fairly serious oversight on my limiter seal I've just increased my reserves substantially. If you know an easy way for me to transfer it in a slow enough flow, you could go ahead and do the procedure. Obviously I'd want something in return but I bet it wouldn't be too much of a price to pay."

"Why don't you tell me the price and then I'll tell you if I know enough? If the price is reasonable enough it might be worth it to research transfer methods just so I can shortcut the chakra requirements."

"I would ask that you leave me a scroll where you write down how you did what you did. You offer the knowledge of how to do the enhancements in exchange for the ability to do them on yourself."

"That sounds like a fair trade as it would without a doubt take me years of nearly constant work to gather the reserves necessary and even then the procedure would probably leave me recovering from chakra exhaustion for weeks after. Do you want lots and lots of details or just a general overview or something in between?"

"I'm more concerned with the whys than the hows. Obviously I need to know how you did it but I'd rather know why you had to do one thing instead of another, or why it has to work the way you did it. You know me, never satisfied with just knowing how, I've gotta improve on it."

"That's agreeable to me as long as you note what you changed and why before you give me back the scroll, and you will be giving me back the scroll without making any copies." The last bit was actually accompanied by a small bit of ki, a rather pathetic amount when compared with what Naruto was used to dealing with but it conveyed the seriousness of the request quite well. Actually Naruto would have been offended at any lesser signs of possessiveness over an original technique. Sure it was based on an existing one, but anything you put together from scratch is something to be proud of and if it's something powerful, like this was shaping up to be, then pride was justifiably converted to rabid paranoid possessiveness.

"Of course, that goes without saying. I may be using your technique but I would never dream of stealing all your work, I'm not a fucking Uchiha after all." This comment earned Naruto a look that held a healthy mixture of relief and a glare that told him to suck a spiked cock and bleed to death over the insult to her crush. Naruto shrugged as if to say 'it's true everything the Uchiha has is stolen, even techniques willingly shown to him were stolen as opposed to practiced and then mastered', Naruto was getting good at saying a lot to Sakura with just a look. He assumed it was a hallmark of a good team, which would explain why he couldn't do it with either the teme or his lazy sensei.

"Okay, we've only got forty-five minutes till we're supposed to meet Kakashi-sensei and Sasuke-kun so we don't have time to start it now but I think I know how to do it. If we could meet up someplace quiet and sheltered we could do it tonight. I'll warn you though this is going to take hours and we'll both probably want to just fall asleep wherever we are, especially me. So I'd rather not do this outside at one of your training grounds." Sakura said with a look that overflowed with hope that he knew such a place.

"How important is this to you? Because if I skip team training and the mission today I can set up my apartment with chakra blocking seals during that time and we can do it there tonight. I could even send a Kage Bunshin in my place but you would have to make sure it wasn't dispelled. If you could verify that I'm sick or something I could sit out most of training and just help with the actual mission." Sakura nodded vigorously agreeing with that plan as she wanted to get these improvements done as soon as possible so she could begin getting used to them and learning more things to increase her value as a ninja.

"Right that's what we'll do then. Just let me finish up here and we can go." Sakura watched as Naruto finished using ninja wire techniques to embroider a series of seals into a strip of white silk before taking off his facemask and sewing the silk into the back of it.

Sakura noticed that with the way the seals were embroidered on the silk and into his facemask that Naruto could remove the seals in a succession, meaning he could choose which handicaps to use. She noted that the main chakra limiter was the last in line and thus the least likely to be removed. What Sakura didn't know was that Naruto had rearranged all the seal designs themselves so that a small burst of chakra to the correct seal could turn it off or on and that Naruto only had to take them off to adjust the magnitude by which they handicapped him.

Finished with his shinobi version of sewing, which Sakura reminded herself once again to come up with something she could trade for that skill, Naruto screwed his eyes up in concentration and there was a heat-like shimmer before two clones popped into existence. One of the clones quickly henged into a kunai and was stored in the other clone's kunai pouch on the chance that if the first clone was dispelled the second could take its place with the excuse of having used a quick kawarimi to get out of danger.

Naruto then cheekily saluted Sakura and bounded, well more like trudged quickly, away towards his apartment.

-- break --

Naruto was almost disappointed that he wasn't present in person for the D-ranked mission that his team had been assigned.

The reason for this what that they had been, once again, assigned to capture the Daimyo's wife's cat. This itself was a horrible mission but what happened during it was hilarious and while it was nice watching it second-hand through his clone's experience, Naruto felt there might have been something more to it had he been there.

The day had started out fine; there was the usual team training, which meant that they all sparred against each other. More specifically Sasuke would spar against Kakashi in hopes of awakening his Sharingan while Naruto and Sakura would stand around occasionally pretending to spar while knowing that until their current projects were completed that the sparing would do no good. This continued for about an hour before they headed to the Hokage tower, usually picking up something for lunch on the way.

Once assigned the cat retrieval mission that Kakashi felt special pleasure in making them accept time and time again, they kitted up with radios and non-lethal capture methods. Again this was all very regular.

What was not routine, was what happened to conclude the mission.

Kakashi proved that no matter how advanced a shinobi you are you are still capable of making mistakes.

Team 7 had caught up to the feline and was in the process of chasing it towards one of the more open clearings where they would have a better chance to catch it. Sasuke and Kakashi were chasing it throwing the occasional blunted kunai and shuriken to keep it on track towards the field. Unfortunately the cat had caught on to their game early and while it still wanted to avoid the flying objects of pain, it had begun to veer off course earlier and more often than usual and as such they had run out of blunted weapons being too busy keeping the cat on course to retrieve any of the previously thrown weapons.

The cat had apparently sensed this and made a break to the left, which was understandably Kakashi's side, given he only had his right eye functional it made sense to keep him on the side of the cat that he could see the most of. Kakashi had already anticipated this move based on a minor hesitation in the forward direction along with a slight twitch to the left telegraphing where the cat was going to go. Letting loose with a sharp kunai to where he expected the cat to be along with generous leeway in regards to the cat's speed, Kakashi expected that the cat would, at worst, run headlong into the ring on the handle.

What actually happened was the sharpened kunai effectively decapitating the bell bedecked calico. And as such Team 7 would go down as both famous and infamous. They would be worshiped by the older teams of genin who had had their fill of that mission. Conversely they would also get the never ending infamy of being the only team in living memory to fail a D-rank mission on account of their jonin-sensei.

Naruto was of the opinion that it was worth the black mark on his record just to be able to rub it into Kakashi's face that Kakashi had failed the mission for them all whenever he got too cocky or arrogant in regards to his rank or ninja skills.

But for the present Naruto was finished with the seals that he'd placed on the doors, windows, walls, ceilings, and floors of his apartment. He figured they would be doing this in the bedroom sitting on the bed, but it never hurt to make sure that you didn't miss anything. The last thing he needed was to be interrupted halfway through what he was sure was an insanely dangerous medical procedure by curious ANBU ready to grab him for questioning without regard as to who might be depending on his help at the time.

Naruto had even gone so far as to clean his apartment so that it didn't look like a mixture of trash heap and study area. He could also honestly say that cleaning his room was the best workout he'd had to date.

With the completion of his resistance seal, everything was a workout, even breathing. The principle behind the seal was that it used chakra siphoned off his limiter seal to create a local aura that would resist his every movement; much like walking around underwater without all the buoyancy issues. In fact because that was the very idea that had inspired him to make the seal that was how it was adjusted. Setting null was nothing, just the resistance of air, setting one was the resistance found under two meters of water, setting two was twice that resistance, setting three was three time the resistance and so on and so forth. So it's easy to see that cleaning one's room if you were to be continuously resisted by a viscous fluid five times the density of water could be a rather strenuous workout.

Naruto took a seat on his couch and pondered how he was going to get enough control over his released chakra to suppress the natural aura before Sakura passed out due to the pressure. While doing this he absently started doing his new chakra exercises for practice.

The particular exercise he chose consisted of allowing his chakra to suffuse a very long length of bandage or wrapping and manipulating it using only the chakra you'd infused it with into shapes of increasing complexity. They suggested you start with shapes, just outlining them, before moving on to three dimensional objects. Things with sharp corners were the hardest as the wrappings didn't naturally form sharp edges. Naruto was currently working out a ball made of interlocking pentagons as practice for both visualizing the final form it would take, you couldn't make the pentagons separate from each other and put them together, and as good control practice for all the straight edges.

He had to admit that this type of exercise seemed like cheating to him because it wasn't all that different than his extensive practice with ninja wire. He'd been doing wirework since they brought up the uses and dangers of wire and puppetry in the academy. This guilt was squashed quickly with the memory that he was incapable of getting any of the others, even the reputed easier ones, to work at all without spiraling totally out of control.

Sakura knocked on the door when he was about half finished with it, which disturbed his concentration and thus lost him the shape. He got up to answer the door and let her in.

"Ne, Sakura? I've got some stuff to explain before we do this."

"What kind of stuff Naruto?" Sakura was beginning to get slightly nervous. Statements like that were generally followed by something important. With Naruto as the originator of such a statement, important might be an understatement. And as every kunoichi knows, the unexpected is generally unpleasant.

"The reason that I needed to set up chakra masking seals around my apartment is so nobody would notice the surge. Before you say anything to commend me, or otherwise, on making sure that no uninvited shinobi show up wondering what the surge was caused by, I need to tell you about how much the surge is going to be. You remember my chakra limiter of course, that's how we got started helping each other, what you didn't know was that the limiter was flawed and had a very unintentional side effect. Two weeks of having the seal force my chakra back on itself and back through my coils was apparently a very good way to increase my total chakra by several times what it was before the seal. I told you that I had high-jonin level chakra reserves before; I have Kage-level reserves now."

This statement absolutely floored Sakura. She was so shocked that she didn't hear Naruto continuing his explanation of what to expect. It wasn't that she didn't believe him, she did, it was that a seal was capable of multiplying someone's chakra reserves like that.

"Wait… what?"

"Sakura you can't use the seal to increase your chakra reservoir if that's what you zoned out thinking about."

"Why not?"

"Because you would end up tearing your chakra pathways to shreds by overloading them and in the event you didn't die from that you would most certainly never be able to control your chakra again."

"Then how come you're still alive and can control it?"

"Because I have a special condition where my wounds regenerate instead of normal healing, my coils just continually reformed. If it weren't for that I would be dead. The reason I'm alive is because of a fluke, if I were anyone else the seal would have killed me. In that light, it's probably for the best that I was the one who figured out the screw up."

"Oh, well in that case what did you need to tell me that referred to having that much chakra?"

"Okay, but listen this time. I know it sounds like I'm rambling but it does come to a point. When a ninja reaches Kage-level chakra reserves they are already used to concealing their subconscious presence, so without trying they suppress their chakra signature. Most ninja describe ki as an anger and hate so heavy that they can't move. This is actually literal. When a ninja releases their ki what they do is force themselves to stop hiding their chakra signature and add all their anger to it. When a ninja stops suppressing their chakra they begin to naturally release a haze or aura of chakra; that's how you find them, by following the aura to its center, but the strength of the aura determines the density and that in turn determines the force it exerts on its surroundings. When a Kage-level ninja stops suppressing their chakra the aura is so dense that it can actually break things but more important are the effects on nearby people. Those people who don't have a very high chakra level begin to feel like they are suffocating, which in a manner I suppose they are. I mention ki because you can use whatever emotion you are feeling most at the time and I needed to warn you that you will probably be overwhelmed by feelings that aren't yours for awhile.

"That said; what I need you to do is to flare your chakra as strong as possible right before I pull off my seal and keep doing so until I manage to drag my chakra aura back to myself. If that still isn't enough, it might help to go down on a knee or lay down.

"That was all I needed to warn you about. Now how is your part going to work? Just give me the basics so I know what to look for and what I should be doing."

"Okay. The way this works isn't to actually change the structure of anything on a really small level like trying to rewrite DNA or something. What I'm going to be doing is putting myself in a meditative state where I'm hyperaware of my body. Then I'm going to use healing-type chakra to encourage muscle growth in all the major muscle groups associated with fighting. I'm also going to be doing some reworking of my bones and ligaments too but you don't really need to know much about it. You will know it's working if you see light green chakra building around my muscles. Because I don't have a taijutsu style, I'm going to be increasing all the muscles I think I might need and fine-tuning them when I start using a specific style.

"Like you mentioned when we first started talking about this, I don't want huge bulging muscles so I can't just encourage growth and pour in chakra to make it happen. I am going to have to help structure them to be denser, which is why this is going to take hours. I'll have no muscle memory when I'm done so I'm going to have to relearn everything, including how to walk and use chopsticks. I'm going to need lots of help when I'm done because I won't be at all used to my new strength to I'll probably end up destroying a bunch of stuff and hurting myself quite a bit while I figure it out.

"Your part in all this, well in getting to the part where you help me relearn to eat and move, is to concentrate your chakra to your hands and place them on the hara (navel, stomach) and the herutsu (heart) chakra points. I can then draw from your chakra as if it were my own as long as you keep molding it to your hands. It works best when it's skin to skin contact but I don't want any perverted thoughts going through your head! I will still have my shorts and my bra on so don't get any ideas!"

Naruto's innocent look at this said: 'who me? No! Butter wouldn't melt in my mouth. I'm not a pervert' and other such declarations of innocence too good to be real. As such he got a look back that clearly said: 'bullshit' and Naruto knew his innocent face would need more work. Actually it was probably because he was wearing a similar looking mask as their sensei's and that man read porn in public; not exactly the best connection to make when you're convincing someone you're not going to try anything perverted. Knowing he was beat and anything he said would dig him a deeper hole, he backed off.

"So, do you want anything to eat before you loose the ability to use chopsticks? It would probably be good to have some materials for your body to use constructing those muscles instead of just forming them out of chakra."

"Actually that sounds good. And for your information, I've been stuffing myself with lots of protein and other things that I'll need to make the muscles. After all you can't make something purely out of chakra and expect it to stay there. Increasing something you already have though, that's possible."

"Well I don't really have anything high protein, but I do have some omusubi in the fridge."

"That sounds wonderful. Where do you want me to put my stuff?"

"Anywhere you want as long as you remember where it is. I don't wanna be yelled at if you can't find it."

Sakura decided that the sort of decrepit looking couch would be the best place to put her satchel and equipment, which she quickly stripped it off and dumped in a heap off on one side. She then joined Naruto in his little half kitchen for two omusubi. When they were finished Naruto led the way into his bedroom, which Sakura noted was just as worn looking as the rest of his apartment. In fact Naruto didn't seem to have any new or even remotely new things in here at all.

The bedroom itself was about as basic as you could get. There was a bed pushed up against one wall with a window over it. Next to the bed was a small dresser that had a couple pictures on the top sharing space with a scroll, two kunai, and an alarm clock so damaged that looked to be built from scratch out of trash. In the wall parallel to the foot of the bed was a small closet with pitiful few outfits hanging in it. Sakura thought she saw two of those orange jumpsuits that he'd worn in the academy, two changes of the outfit he was currently wearing, and a couple civilian styled shirts. Naruto yanked the covers off the low-sitting bed and gestured for Sakura to sit or lie down or stand or whatever position she needed to be in. Sakura decided that it would be best to sit cross-legged on the center of the bed her back to the pillows.

"Alright Naruto, this is how I'm going to sit. I want you to sit behind me and reach around to cover the hara and the herutsu. Just let me get this shirt off and you can take your seal off."

Naruto barely held the smirk off his face at exactly how that sounded.

Naruto was a pervert. Contrary to what everyone thought, Naruto didn't invent the Orioke no jutsu to combat perverts but rather as a belated excuse to keep looking at the fairer sex while they were nude. After all, how better to hide than to publicly profess the opposite?

However, Naruto wasn't without some standards. And by his standards Sakura was too young to really derive any enjoyment from peeping on. She was barely an A-cup; excusable as she'd only just started to hit puberty, a ninja's lifestyle, while limiting how much the girls developed overall, tended to jumpstart the actual process, something to do with heavy use of chakra Naruto assumed. She was only eleven and that fact really put a damper on any enjoyment Naruto could have gotten out of the, totally out of context, thought that Sakura was undressing on his bed. And because he couldn't derive much enjoyment out of the experience he decided to lay some groundwork for later by being a gentleman and turning around while she pulled off her dress/shirt thing and adjusted whatever needed adjusting.

"Okay, you can turn back around now."

"As soon as you flare your chakra we can begin."

Sakura responded by forming the ram handseal and closing her eyes to concentrate. When Naruto felt the faint, barely noticeable to him, chakra signature and realized that the faint pink tinge he could see effervescing off her skin was as high as it was going to go, he sent a spike of chakra right through the limiter seal turning it off.

Sakura's eyes shot wide open as the pressure of Naruto's chakra hit her.

She could barely breathe! Her eyes were watering and every muscle in her body was trembling. Her mind was screaming for her to run from this enormous presence that was far too close to her. She could dimly hear inner-Sakura screaming something at her. As beads of sweat instantly formed on her brow, she was thanking Kami-sama that this presence held no menace, perhaps even some kindness. She thought that if the presence were angry there would be no way to survive and she would rather take her own life than face it in combat.

And then suddenly…

It was gone. Nothing left of the godlike presence she could have sworn was bearing down on her. She slowly realized that she was lying down on Naruto's bed, hair damp with sweat and she had no idea how she'd gotten there. A quick mental inventory told her that she had thankfully not wet her pants during the experience, though if she were honest with herself just a fraction longer and she probably would have.

She sat up and noticed Naruto standing beside the bed looking at her with concern. He looked like he was having a lot of trouble with something, or maybe he was frustrated by something. She saw that all the clothes that had been hung in the closet were now scattered about the room. She even detachedly noted that one of the kunai that had been setting on the dresser was now sticking in headboard up to its handle.

Then her mind jumped back into gear. Holy SHIT! That's what he meant about chakra aura? I put everything I had into creating one of my own without totally exhausting myself and I bet he barely felt it. Damn straight! We couldn't do anything! We've got a long way to go if that's the type of power a ninja can wield. Sakura nodded to herself and then realized that the expression on Naruto's face was probably him having trouble holding back his chakra. Well we better help him with that by taking an ungodly amount of it away with our technique she chuckled to herself.

"I'm alright Naruto; I just wasn't prepared for something like that. Come on sit behind me and gather some of that chakra to your hands."

Naruto jumped into the bed as Sakura rearranged herself back into a meditative position. He got behind her and scooted forward until her back was against his chest. He reached around her and moved his hands to where he thought they should be before gathering chakra to them. Sakura was already falling into her trance when she noticed that two points of chakra that she would be using were out of place. It took her longer than it normally would have to work out that those two points were Naruto's hands and that all she had to do was move them. After some minor adjustments she resumed falling into the hyperaware state that most of the scrolls on self-administered ijutsu described.

To her great surprise she became very aware of her teammate's hands on her skin. She startled herself with the errant wish that she'd told him that he needed to be shirtless too, so she could've felt his bare chest pressing into her back. She quickly shook those thoughts aside though without so much as a speck of attention to the implications of that wish.

Upon going deep enough into the trance that she was able to feel her muscle structure, she began drawing her chakra and carefully converting it to the pale green healing chakra before sending it through her stomach and intestines to gather nutrients and then out to her limbs to begin the process of restructuring her muscles.

Naruto noticed the momentary pause Sakura made when she startled herself but he didn't know the cause and when she resumed meditating he thought there was nothing wrong. As far as ninja-related duties went this was not bad. He had originally thought that this wouldn't be very enjoyable due to Sakura's total professionalism and underdeveloped 'assets', but he was finding that this was very enjoyable.

Indeed if he weren't so sure that it would mess up the process and earn him a half-super-strength beating he might just move his right hand down a little to cup Sakura's surprisingly generous A-cup left breast. This thought quickly led to a very lecherous smirk and the thought of what he might find if his left hand were to migrate south from her hara.

Naruto quickly abandoned these thoughts as his blood began its inevitable journey south and the last thing he felt he needed was a full-super-strength beating.

He idly noticed that her right arm, starting at the fingertips, was beginning to glow the pale green he was told to expect. He also noted that whatever Sakura was using to measure "a lot" of chakra needed to be updated. If he hadn't been expecting to feel a drain, he wouldn't have even noticed. He was now actually eagerly awaiting the point that she would get to the more significant muscle groups and begin draining some real amount of his chakra. He was however resigned to the wait; after all it was probably going to be a very time-consuming project.

Sakura wanted to be meticulous in her upgrades. It just wouldn't do for her to have this wonderful super-strength and every time she tried to use it ripping a ligament, tearing a tendon, or causing minor stress fractures in her bones. To counter these eventualities, she was starting at the fingertips on her right hand and started compressing the hard outer layer of bone while simultaneously raising the calcium content and encouraging bone growth to replace missing diameter from the compression. She started moving back up her arm continuing the process having decided before she started that she would complete the process like a scanner rather than in stages; i.e. updating all her bones and then going back for the ligaments and then the muscles.

Once she started encountering ligaments and tendons she strengthened their connection to the bone and where feasible widened the contact surface. She moved up the tendons and ligaments strengthening the intercellular bonds. She began drawing ever-increasing amounts of chakra from Naruto as she began to get into areas of higher anatomical complexity and greater amounts of muscle, bone, tendon, and cartilage. When she reached her joints, she began multiplying the amount of cartilage between bones and increasing the amount of the low-friction fluid that allowed movement. The unfortunate, for her, Naruto would always think it looked fine; side effect was the slight but noticeable lengthening of her fingers, arms, legs, and toes.

About halfway up her forearm she ran out of usable sustenance from her stomach. With only a minor stab of disappointment she switched over to the small fat reserves in various places along her body and continued the process of healing and manipulating her muscles.

Naruto was beginning to regret agreeing to this. The novelty of holding his teammate in a pseudo intimate embrace had worn off around the thirty minute mark. She seemed to be nearly done with her right arm now and since he'd just checked the clock he knew that it had been roughly one hour and forty-five minutes since they had begun. The progress was obvious and drastic though not in a way that would be immediately apparent. Her muscles were becoming incredibly defined and it seemed to Naruto that if he had the inclination that he could trace out exactly how the muscles would look if there were no skin to hide them. It was obvious by now that she was constructing the muscles out of her body's natural reserves of fat because he could actually watch as smoothness given by healthy amounts of fat was burned away leaving hard lines outlining muscles.

Naruto began to worry that he might have to get her something to eat to continue this. Actually now that he thought about it that was probably a very good idea. With a moment of thought, he created a Kage Bunshin without handseals and ordered it to go to the store under henge and buy food and some of that mix to make those protein shakes that were supposedly great for muscle building.

This minor help done, Naruto settled back to watch the process anew. It was really quite something to see. Naruto had no trouble admitting that; indeed, he was very impressed. The actual healing and modification he assumed was concentrated in a five centimeter wide band of intense pale green that glowed fiercely as it crawled almost unnoticeably up her arm. He could tell that this was an unusually powerful ijutsu by the aftereffects. Beyond the obvious bodily modifications, the area affected actually continued to release wisps of pale green chakra like the small wisps of smoke rising from charred logs after a bonfire.

Quite unexpectedly his clone nudged his shoulder indicating his return and its forethought to bring an already mixed glass of the shake mix. Damn, spaced out staring at those wisps of chakra again. Naruto looked at his clone as it held out the glass to him.

"What the hell are you thinking? You know I can't take my hands off her to take that from you. You feed it to her you dumbass!"

Looking properly chastised the clone mounted the bed directly in front of Sakura and began puzzling out the problem of how to get her to drink. Deciding that odds were good on her doing it without needing to think about it the clone put the glass to her lips and tilted it a little bit to see if she would drink.

Sakura was nearly done with her upper right arm and focused almost entirely on the tendons and ligaments connecting the muscles of her shoulder to her humerus when she realized that there was something sliding down her throat. A quick pause in her healing and a shift of focus she noticed that it was a protein shake and she began to contemplate thanking Kami for Naruto.

She quickly tossed this disturbing thought out of her head and began concentrating on her arm again.

It wasn't long until she was up past her shoulder and had followed the correct muscles and tendons to their anchors in her chest. She decided to skip her torso for now in favor of her left arm. Starting again at the fingertips she wondered how much time had passed since she began this. She was shifting from her metacarpals to her carpals when she noticed that she was going much faster this time. This of course prompted momentary panic as she assumed that she was doing something wrong, she countered this by pausing and double checking her progress. When she had assured herself that she was doing everything right, she resumed her progress making sure to gather sustenance from the protein shake that Naruto had somehow poured down her throat.

Sakura made amazing progress right back to where she had stopped in mirror on her right arm. She decided that it might be time for a break to relax her concentration before she attempted her legs. She released the medical chakra she was molding and slowly started to come out of her meditative, hyperaware state.

Naruto watched in amazement as Sakura's left arm was done in forty-five minutes as compared to the two and a half hours that her right had taken. He took note that the pale green chakra had totally died off leaving only the wisps left and that Sakura had stopped drawing chakra. He assumed that she must want a break because although her upper arms and shoulders had taken what even Naruto had deemed a significant amount of chakra she still had a long way to go before she even came close to drawing as much as she'd implied while explaining the technique. Once she began stirring from her stationary position Naruto stopped channeling chakra to his hands and removed them so he could lean back on them in a more relaxed position. It was probably this action that contributed to Sakura's first reaction upon fully exiting her meditative state.

Sakura blinked several times in reaction to seeing from her eyes as opposed to visualizing the part of her she was concentrating on as had been the case for several hours now. There was this odd green tinge to the lower part of her vision that wouldn't go away and Sakura wondered if it were possible to use so much healing chakra for so extended a period that you would actually burn its affects into you. This theory went out the window upon looking down.

Sakura screamed.

The original idea was to see how her arms looked after the treatment.

She forgot about that idea when she saw the light green chakra still rising off her arms, more intense on her left arm and her upper right arm and shoulder.

She followed her first instinctual reaction to seeing such a thing and tried to lurch away from it. She ended up with her back to Naruto's chest once again, but this time she was hyperventilating and her eyes were darting from one arm to the other. She suddenly thought that maybe her arms would now be useless and promptly broke down crying turning her head to partially burry her face in Naruto's shirt.

Naruto was totally bewildered. He had no idea what to do. He had seen Sakura blink several times before looking down at her arms, but after that he had no idea what was going on. Apparently the sight of her arms had done something to her because she screamed. That he could handle, he had been downright freaked out with he'd first seen that too but he had already been so far out of his depth that he'd just assumed that it was okay. But now she was crying uncontrollably into his shirt, gasping in huge breaths and was basically working herself up into a fine fit but he had never been very good with tears. So, he did the only thing that made sense to him.

SMACK!

The tears stopped instantly. The gasping turned to a held breath. Her face, forcibly turned the other way, now turned to look right back at him.

"Are you calm now?"

She nodded.

"Can you tell me what's wrong?"

She opened her mouth several times and nothing came out.

"Your arms have been doing that smoking green chakra thing since you started. I figured it would be okay; given how much healing chakra you were using, it was bound to leave quite a large amount of residual chakra behind. It has been tapering off slowly and soon I imagine it will stop. Is that what you're worried about?"

She nodded again before looking thoughtful.

"Well if you stopped for a break from concentrating for well over three hours then I suggest you take your mind off it. Do you want another protein shake?"

She nodded.

Naruto reached over to his bedside dresser and picked up another full glass and held it in front of her.

"This is a plastic cup so you won't be damaging anything that I really need if you grab too hard, but I thought it might be good if you would try to do this yourself."

Sakura looked at the cup then looked at her arms before her right arm jerked up with almost blurring speed. She barely got it stopped before she hit Naruto in the face.

"Um, how about you do this one. I don't think I could handle anything that can spill just yet." She blushed at her own helplessness before letting gravity drop her arm back to where her upper body had dragged it when she'd lurched away. Naruto just nodded in consent to helping her drink. He held the cup to her lips before tipping it so that she could drink. She drank greedily until it was gone before grimacing at the offensively fake chocolate taste.

"Do you think that you're going to be able to finish tonight?" Sakura looked thoughtful for a minute.

"I should be able to finish the modifying portion but there's no way I'll be able to do a mission tomorrow. If I'm having this much trouble grabbing a cup, imagine what I could do with a paintbrush."

Naruto burst out laughing at the mental image of Sakura accidentally throwing a whitewash-covered paintbrush over her shoulder to sail across the village and hit one of the carved Hokages in the eye. He even completed the image with a blushing Sakura looking sheepish.

"I can make an excuse for you or take you home once we're done so you can make the excuse yourself when we come to find you. With all of your medic training I imagine that you can fake an illness convincingly."

Sakura nodded. She seemed thoughtful for a bit; then tried to sit up. Naruto helped her up into a mockery of the same position she was in before. He found it surprisingly difficult to move her arms before he told her to just relax.

"Your precious Sasuke-kun is going to need to get a lot stronger if he is ever going to give you a massage. Unlikely as the event is, if it ever does happen he'll never be able to push hard enough to make a difference. I sincerely hope you aren't a normally tense person, the knots are going to be murder." Naruto chuckled as Sakura's face cycled through several different shades of blush that he interpreted as: anger for insulting her crush, a mixture of embarrassment and lust, and indignation at the implication of being a stressful person.

"Do you think you could hurry this up? I'm getting cramps from just sitting around awkwardly hugging you. If we were actually doing something I wouldn't complain but this is about as intimate as a handshake."

"Naaaruuuuutoooooo!!"

"Geez, don't get your panties in a twist. I was just trying to lighten the mood." Naruto grumbled a little as Sakura calmed slightly. "But seriously, if you could hurry up that'd be great."

Sakura realized that screaming at the person you were depending on to feed, transport, and lie for you was probably not a good idea and with a monumental act of self control managed to keep her complaints internalized. If by internalized you meant mumbling violently in a low whisper… which is exactly what Sakura did.

Pushing aside her anger she soon was back in her meditative state and again momentarily hyperaware of Naruto's hands on the bare parts of her chest and stomach. Again she found the two inexhaustible sources of chakra that denoted the placement of Naruto's hands and she began her ijutsu again starting at the tips of her toes on her right foot.

Naruto sighed as he saw the pale green light start again at the tips of Sakura's toes. He looked out the window and noticed that the sun was setting over the Hokage monument and he settled in to watch that while it was there.

Long before he was ready the sun had set and Sakura was barely up to her ankle.

As everyone who knows Naruto knows: a bored Naruto is a dangerous Naruto. In this case though, his mind wasn't bent towards pranks or destruction of any kind but rather a way to make the hours he would surely be enduring bearable. His chakra covered hands just happened to catch his attention. He began to think of his horrible chakra control, which inevitably led to him thinking of ways he could possibly improve it. He was running though the half a dozen ways he knew to improve control and wondered which he could possibly accomplish while maintaining a semblance of a constant amount of chakra in his hands.

Naruto tilted his head to the side to better ponder the problem; much like a puppy would when you tell it you have no more treats and it contemplates how to get more anyway. This action caused the bells in his hair to jingle, which he might have ignored as was typical now but in his boredom he was so desperate for something to do that they provided inspiration.

If one could float a leaf over their forehead it stood to reason that one could perform other chakra exercises on their head. This of course applied to the rest of the body too Naruto realized but he was only concerned with his head at the moment. Still he filled that tidbit of chakra control theory away for later. Now though he was going to try to mix a whole bunch of exercises together.

He was going to attempt to manipulate his hair using chakra like he would while using his wires but this time using tenketsu in his head to release the chakra like in he would leaf floating, if he were capable of leaf floating that is. The eventual goal of this exercise would be to play a song using the bells in his hair.

After nearly fifteen minutes practice with his clone holding a small mirror to help him locate the spikes with bells, he could now ring the tallest one in the middle of his head on command. The smile at this accomplishment nearly split his face. His joy at his success caused a spike in chakra to his hands which earned him an involuntary twitch from Sakura which brought him back to the task at hand.

Had Sakura been able, she would have chosen now to let out a forceful sigh. She was now done with her right leg and if things kept going this slowly it would be time for Naruto to go meet their team before she was done. She was grateful for the two further protein shakes Naruto's clone had administered. She'd noticed another surge of chakra through his hands just a little bit ago and she wondered if he'd created more.

She hoped he had created another clone or so. He needed something to keep him occupied and with both of his hands immobile there weren't a lot of options.

She shook off these thoughts and started on her left leg. As she expected, this leg was going much faster than her right one, she might finish this one within an hour.

Naruto was lamenting his total lack of knowledge in regards to lullabies.

All the songs he knew were decidedly beyond his skill level to play with the eighteen bells in his hair. It wasn't that he didn't think that he had the range of notes to do so, he did; it was just that he couldn't for the life of him get two bells ringing at once.

After he'd figured out how to wiggle an entire spike of hair it was just a matter of finding the other bell toting spikes on his head. Now he could ring any of the bells on his head by either sight in a mirror, if it were pointed out to him, or more recently by the tone it made when rung, the note needed to, theoretically, play a song.

He decided that until he could ring multiple bells at a time, there was really no reason to lament his lack of easy songs to play. If he couldn't ring two or more bells at a time, then it wasn't worth it to ring them at all. It's neither threatening nor impressive to play 'twinkle, twinkle little star' with the bells in his hair. Now if he could get a recognizable version of Evanescence going, that would be downright eerie with a voice projection jutsu on it when you were sneaking up on someone.

Grinning at his new way to mentally scar some more of the people who were always glaring at, insulting, and generally expressing their hate of the Kyuubi towards him, he redoubled his efforts to get two bells ringing at a time. He created another clone to go find his Evanescence CDs and start playing them on shuffle with his Hush Sound and 30 Seconds to Mars CDs for variety.

Sakura had finished her left leg.

This meant that she was done with all her extremities. This also meant that she needed to start on her torso. As she thought about her ribs, vertebrae, shoulder blades, and pelvis, she realized that she was going to need some milk. Just as she was about to come out of the trance to ask for some, she noted something else being poured down her throat. Lo and behold it was the exact white liquid she needed.

This time she really did thank Kami-sama for Naruto.

This action was immediately followed by an intense uneasiness, like the one that you get for doing something so distinctly against the norm that you feel totally ostracized, even when nobody has seen you or condemned you. She then examined her actions again and amended her thanks to include the thought that if her Sasuke-kun were helping her he would have done the exact same thing, but probably sooner in anticipation of her needing the calcium it provided. That made the strange feeling mostly disappear.

Naruto would have loved to jump up in down in a wild victory dance screaming at the top of his lungs. He couldn't do that due to his duty to the female in his arms. He settled for a slightly more restrained victory dance preformed vicariously through the clone that had put on the music at a soft volume. His need for a victory dance sated, he decided that Sakura shouldn't be the only one privileged to eat and subsequently sent one of his two clones to the kitchen to make him some food.

Having figured out the trick to ringing multiple bells at a time, he and the other clone quickly pulled the CD player over to the bedside dresser and queued up 'Weight of the World' on repeat to see if they could figure out the bell parts.

When his second clone returned, Naruto and his first clone were rewinding and playing the same five seconds of song over and over again with Naruto trying different bell combinations as the clone marked the parts of those combinations that sounded very close to the actual bells.

The mutual decision to take a break to eat the sandwich the second clone had brought was easy to make once the first combination had been figured out to as close as they could come.

They would have to look into some properly tuned bells in the future. It wouldn't do to be threatening someone using the voice projection technique and be casually informed that they were out of tune and the actual song didn't really sound like that. Naruto didn't know how many other shinobi listened to Evanescence but he liked the band, so it stood to reason that there was at least one other shinobi who did. By Murphy's law if there were one person that liked Evanescence enough to know if Naruto had been off-key, then Naruto would be guaranteed meet him in a battle where Naruto would be using the technique in an attempt to scare his opponent into making a mistake.

Naruto checked on Sakura again and was shocked to find that she had nearly completed her left leg. He remembered that she had said something about messing with her bone structure and he figured that with all the extremities done she was probably hurting for calcium. He ordered the former sandwich-maker back to the kitchen to get a glass of milk. On its return it jumped onto the bed and proceeded to pour the milk between Sakura's partially opened lips.

Naruto was genuinely glad that Sakura didn't seem to need any prompting to drink. He could only imagine how long this would be taking if she needed to stop to consume food.

As it was the green chakra could be barely seen shining through the skintight shorts she was wearing and Naruto noticed that it was beginning the final traverse up her torso. Thank Kami-sama! She's almost done. Naruto noticed that her torso seemed to be going much faster than her extremities. That doesn't seem right; I hope she's not neglecting anything just because she doesn't think she'll use it. Although, it is mostly organs in there so that's probably part of it. I know I wouldn't wanna mess with my organs.

The green chakra had nearly reached the hara when it paused for a bit. Naruto thought this was odd, but paid it no mind. At least he paid it no mind until it reached his hand and something happened that he really didn't know how to deal with.

Sakura was quickly moving up her torso. While her torso was much bigger than either her arms or legs, she was finding that it was mostly filled with things she didn't want to mess with. For instance, having already done the muscles in her butt when she was finishing up her legs there really wasn't a lot to do besides strengthen her pelvis and minimally adjust the few other muscles in her pelvis that she really didn't think she was going to need to be super strong.

She quickly filed those muscles away under the 'Do not open until puberty' folder. Though on reflection, that folder was quickly approaching its 'open by:' date.

She supposed that this trance was a very good thing because while she was in it Naruto wouldn't see her blush furiously at having those types of thoughts running rampant through her mind.

With a mental slap to the forehead she moved on toward her abdominal cavity to start work on her abs and the other muscles that ultimately allowed her to bend her torso around. While she was moving up she realized that she was going to be passing Naruto's hand where it rested above her hara.

She paused for awhile to get the exact feel of his chakra so she could try to limit his interference in the process. She eventually decided that the only way to make sure his chakra didn't inadvertently screw up the process was to drag all the necessary chakra from the hand resting on her herutsu and expel enough healing chakra to negate the chakra of his left hand.

She moved on again and as soon as she reached the hand above her hara she implemented her plan. That was exactly where things went horribly wrong.

The healing chakra she expelled into his hand to prevent interference was siphoned straight into his hand.

A person's chakra was supposed to reject other chakras not accept them without resistance, though it was a possible explanation as to why Naruto was so very abysmal at genjutsu detection and use. There was no reason that his body should be so readily accepting her healing chakra. A little worried about this new development and slightly frightened by the suddenly wildly fluctuating chakra levels in his hands she pushed past the affected area as quickly as she could and redoubled her speed to get this whole thing done.

When the wide green chakra band intersected with his hand the green chakra flared. This wasn't bad, what was bad was how it suddenly shot up his arm, multiplying in magnitude and running unbridled and unchecked over his entire body.

Understandably Naruto was a little freaked out.

He grew much more afraid when the green reached his own hara and red chakra bubbled up and began mixing with the healing chakra to create a dark slate grey. The newly colored chakra moved out from Naruto's hara and washed over his entire body before dying out at his fingertips, the tips of his toes, and the tips of his hair.

Naruto waited with bated breath to see if there had been any obvious effects to the chakra surge. When it became apparent that even though he was sure something had happened, there were no blatant changes he relaxed some.

He noticed that he had almost lost control of the chakra he had been feeding to Sakura. He was very thankful that she had been at least partially correct in that she'd used about half of his chakra and he didn't have to worry too much about harming her if he lost control of suppressing his chakra. He stabilized his chakra output to his hands and took note of where Sakura was.

The green chakra was about to disappear into her sports bra and he confirmed that he wasn't horribly damaged by seriously wondering if there was any way for her to increase the size of her bust while she was altering the muscles there.

A very lecherous grin stuck itself over his face as he pondered mentioning it to his teammate. With any luck she would mess it up and forget to stop herself developing naturally and she would end up with a rack like the main woman in the first Icha Icha book. He snickered to himself and sent his kitchen clone to go get more protein shake and another glass of milk. Maybe she would do the size expansion on her own, after all weren't women supposed to be sensitive about that?

When the clone had returned with the drinks and had administered them to the girl between Naruto's legs, all three Naruto's stared with high hopes at Sakura's bra clad breasts.

Sakura had reached her chest before Naruto's chakra stabilized. She hoped that he was okay. She resolved to make the rest of the process as quick as possible so she could make sure that he was okay.

She had reached about where the bottom of her bra was when she felt more liquid coming down her throat. She was thankful that he had given her some more materials to work with as it would make the process go faster. She redoubled her efforts and continued on before she realized that there was yet another hand in her way.

Sakura reasoned that since Naruto had recovered from whatever had happened the last time she had done this she could probably get away with doing the same thing she had done with the hand on her hara. She set up for the same thing and tried to get though it as fast as possible.

The three Narutos sitting around Sakura staring at her boobs were sorely disappointed when nothing significant happened to them after the glowing green band passed above the bra.

This acute disappointment stemming from having their collective hopes dashed, blinded them to the danger of a repeat of what had happened at Sakura's hara.

Thus the real Naruto was taken totally by surprise when it happened again. The green chakra raced across his right arm until it suffused his entire body. This time was different from the last time though. Instead of the seal holding back the Kyuubi converting the chakra and going back through his body, this time all the chakra gathered at Naruto's herutsu before changing color.

The now deep aqua chakra flowed across his body to all his extremities and rushed back to create and incredibly intense ball directly over his herutsu before exploding back across his whole body once more and finally fading.

Like the dark grey chakra before it, the aqua chakra flowed through him and dissipated leaving only the intermittent wisps to effervesce off his body.

By the time Naruto had regained control; Sakura had moved up her neck and was speeding across her head. Apparently she didn't want to do much to her head either. Naruto guessed that she was only strengthening her skull somewhat but decided that it was possible for her to be improving her senses while she was there and his thoughts were confirmed when he saw the green chakra lingering and intensifying around her eyes, nose, and ears.

Sakura was done.

She relaxed almost totally before she realized there would be enough time to do that once she was out of this blasted trance.

Thanks to the stupid trance she knew more about her body than she ever wanted to. In fact, by doing this she had almost taken all the surprise out of puberty. Because she knew exactly how much time until her growth encouraging cartilages stopped dividing and unfortunately that meant that she knew basically how tall she would end up being. She also knew lots of other seemingly minor little details that she really could have done without. Like about when she could expect to have her periods stabilize into a regular cycle and other such unspeakable things.

Thoroughly disgusted from her ordeal she surfaced from her trance to see two clones of Naruto staring directly at her.

It took all her willpower to stop herself from jerking back. Her exhausted mental state probably helped with the shock.

"Did it work Sakura-chan?"

"Yeah, I think it did. I need to sleep. What time is it? Are you okay? I noticed that something happened when I passed your hands."

"I'm fine, it was just something that surprised me is all. It's nearly 4:00 in the morning; I'm going to just stay awake because there's no point to going to sleep when I'll have to get up in an hour or two anyway and I might sleep through my alarm which would be really bad cause they would come looking for us and find us both here. I'm going to take you home around 7:00 if that's okay with you and you think that I won't get caught."

"That sounds great Naruto. My tousan leaves to work at his shop at 6:30 so he will be gone and my kaasan usually sleeps till 7:30 before she gets up to help my ojiisan with his seat on the council." Naruto nodded and moved from behind her back allowing her to lie down.

"Sleep well, do you want me to wake you up before I take you to your house or just let you sleep if I can?"

"It might be better if you woke me up. I wouldn't want to wake up halfway there, overreact and hurt you." Naruto nodded again and left Sakura in the bedroom to fall asleep.

-- break --

When he was younger Naruto had often played pranks on the Haruno seat of the council. He'd stopped this not long after he started for several reasons, one of the most prominent was that it was no challenge.

With all the shinobi clans on the council who made his life difficult, Naruto had gotten very good at using stealth he wasn't expected to have to leave token retribution for all the slights against him. When he turned his skills on the civilian portion of the council it had been a monumental bore. The Haruno especially because they slept like the dead and he could waltz or even tap-dance into their clan complex to tattoo 'Naruto's bitch' to their foreheads and they would all sleep though it.

Naruto found that Sakura was thankfully the exception to the rule when she woke as soon as he'd touched her. But getting her back into the compound was ridiculously easy. He left her on her futon with a nightgown slipped over her shorts and bra as she didn't trust him to not do something perverted when she couldn't reliably deck him.

He thought that was the least of her problems. Movements that used to come without thought could only be preformed with plenty of warning and long deliberation.

They had stopped outside of Naruto's apartment to try to get her to walk a little way. Fifteen minutes, a dozen falls, and twenty steps further Naruto had given up and raced to her house holding her bridal style. After sneaking her in and wringing a promise out of her to start practicing to walk and dress herself as soon as her kaasan verified that she was sick and left for her job, Naruto took off to a deserted training ground to practice his new taijutsu style.