A/N:

A new big chapter, with a slightly different focus for most of it, with some more noticeable development and getting ready to move on. Next few chapters will take a bit longer though, if nothing else because I would prefer not to make them too long or too many before starting to reach the main part of the story, yet still include the parts I want there.

Oh and just to remind anyone that might have forgotten it:

This is fanfiction.
Anyone that believes the material this story is based upon in any way belongs to me is clearly very delusional and should seek medical help as soon as possible rather than waste time or money in taking legal action against me as they are obviously having serious mental issues.


-*o*-

Insights

'Who would have known that getting Shikamaru interested enough was only a matter of making him fear that he couldn´t remain just ahead of Naruto in the rankings if he didn´t know enough of what Naruto was learning elsewhere?'

And while Naruto may not have known or understood why that worried the otherwise laidback boy, Kurenai had soon realised that Shikamaru´s mom was the reason, no ill will against Naruto, just a very strong determination about her son at the very least not getting bypassed by the one who had finished last the two first years. And Shikamaru´s mom could be scary when she was disappointed!

Just the second week and she had already managed to get all she hoped for except Sasuke to sign up, even she had expected it to take longer. She had even tried a bit more to get recruits from the other half of the class, but based on their reactions, she had to wonder why they were even in the academy. Getting better? They didn´t care enough for that it seemed.


-*o*-

"Yes! YES! I did it, I did it! Ahahahahaahahah" Naruto was doing quite the victory dance, looking crazy, or perhaps that should be, looking crazier than usual. "Woooheee, I beat Sasuke bastard! ... it really worked!"

On the ground, a slightly ruffled Sasuke was smoldering with annoyance. Nowadays, taijutsu sparring at the academy meant he had to go up against Kiba, Ryu, Hinata, Shino and lately also Naruto to get any real challenge, but excepting Hinata (and damned if that wasn´t annoying) he was really not used to being completely taken down like this by anyone outside of the teachers, and even they rarely won ever since his Sharingan had activated during a friendly threeway match with Gai and Lee that got a lot more intense than was probably meant...

Probably at least, with Gai and Lee you never really could say for certain. It certainly took Sasuke a few times with the duo to get used to their extremeness.

But now Naruto had managed to trick him completely, followed by one of his worst losses ever! Ok, maybe not one of the worst ever but it felt a bit too close to that right now at least.

Sure, Naruto had gotten far better, at first when he changed away from the academy style, he was rather messed up for a few months, with force of habit making him do far too many mistakes, especially once a spar got heated, but when past that, when he started applying his new style (styles?) more completely and got away from the mistakes, he had improved enough that now he was one of those who could give even Sasuke a halfdecent workout. That however was not something making Sasuke any happier at the moment.

"You got lucky!" his angry reply to Naruto´s showing off finally came.

Calming down enough to happily reply "Well duh! Of course I got lucky, even the teachers have trouble beating you since you got those spooky eyes working! But what I´m happy about is that it wasn´t just luck! I figured that no matter how good those eyes make you at predicting moves, some part of you still have to actually do the predicting stuff and it just cant be no limit at all to how much it can handle all at once so I kinda figured that if tried using as many fast moves all together as I could I should be able to overload the eye thing and knock you out by finalising with a move coming out of nowhere while you were still busy reacting to all the other attacks that were mostly feints, and... and it worked! Yosha!" ending with throwing his hand up in the air again.

Not even halfway through Naruto´s little speech, Sasuke blinked with surprise, suddenly his anger was just gone from hearing Naruto explaining, how he had actually done it. Naruto wasn´t more skilled or faster and he certainly didn´t have anything like the Sharingan, but he had actually thought about it, sure it was half guessing, but it was still a surprisingly good piece of analysis, and this from the brat who had the worst grades in the class not at all that long ago.

Sasuke realised that he had been foolish to dismiss him because of that, like he had once dismissed Kiba for being stupid. Big mistake that had been. Stupid and not intelligent being two very different things was a lesson he would not forget.

And he also got a few very nasty thoughts about how if Naruto could come up with a way to fool the Sharingan, well, there was that certain other user of those eyes, and Sasuke himself at his best could be almost as inventive as Naruto if he tried hard, ok really hard maybe as Naruto was just too unpredictable to match like that...

It also made him wonder about the style Naruto had switched to... how long ago was it... it had made quite a splash when the orphan had suddenly given Iruka-sensei a note that he would no longer be training the academy-style... about two years maybe, at least not a full three years, thinking back, Sasuke realised just how big the difference was, and the fact that he didn´t even know what style Naruto had switched to... and how he could do it before getting taken up as an apprentice...?

"Hey Uzumaki-moron, what´s the style you´re using?"

"Hehee, wanna find out what took you down?" in a more normal and serious tone he went on "Well, my primary style is now the Raiken, it´s totally built on speed and it´s really great, makes it so much easier to fight effectively! Kurenai-sensei thought it would suit me and she sure was right about that!"

"Primary? More than one? And wait, didn´t you switch before you became her apprentice?"

"Ehm, well you know how she was training Hinata, well Hinata dragged me with her and Kurenai said it was ok if I tagged along so since then I did at least a quarter of the time they trained... And yeah, Kurenai said the academy style was hurting my taijutsu so I had to drop it completely, but she taught me some other neat stuff instead, ehm, the Juunan Taiso and Ten no mori..."

"But... Juunan taiso..."

"Yeah it´s a fighting style built on the excercises with the same name, it´s very flowing, with more power than the Raiken and no jerky parts or needing any resets between moves... although that still makes it a bit weaker than it could be but better to hit lots of times with some strength than rarely with lots ey? ... Ehm, and well the Ten no mori is a bit odd, I really thought I would suck with it since it uses chakra so completely integrated with it, but it actually helped me get a little better with chakra control instead..." he trailed off when he saw Sasuke had become thoughtfully distant.

"What?"

Sasuke almost startled at the question, again Naruto explaining had made him realise something he should have thought of years ago, he and Itachi both used the Uchiha taijutsu and while it was very good and fully integrated weapons, mobility and the advantages the Sharingan provided, being a very complete style, but Itachi would know exactly what he was doing, he wouldn´t even need Sharingan to anticipate his every move...

He had already learned a bit of Gai-sensei´s Gouken, but it didn´t integrate very well with the Uchihastyle, so he essentially had to choose style long before actually starting an attack on a target. Gai had even gone far enough to say that he shouldn´t try to combine them and rather just learn a few useful moves to complement the Uchihastyle.

Because of that and hearing similar from others, he had thought that the same problems would appear in combining any styles, and here Naruto had seemed to fight almost seamlessly despite using at least three different styles...

"Kurenai helped you combine those styles?"

"Oh yeah, she´s great at that, she´s using at least a dozen styles herself and moves between them so fast it´s hard to see what styles each move comes from or even that they are different styles."

'A dozen?.! ...At least?.! And yet the skill the woman was known for her expertise in was genjutsu?.?' This was mostly the reason he had not signed up for the extra classes she was giving at the academy for a while now... He had assumed that getting direct fulltime access to Gai-sensei from around the same time would be more useful and that Kurenai´s classes would only distract from his time with Gai...

Not to mention how his interest in genjutsu, the -weakest- shinobi skill was less than minimal, at least beyond the parts his sharingan would eventually be able to do. Gai and Lee had both told him he was wrong not to sign up for it, but had not pressed him on it, instead simply been nice about it and accepted his choice.

Now he was pretty sure that had been a bad choice. And he had thought the Ten no mori style was just for fighters good at chakraboosting, something requiring very highend chakra control, not even he himself was good enough for that to be truly realistic as he could just barely do very little of it, and here Naruto was obviously using the style without being remotely close to being able to use that sort of boosting, not with his lousy control. Damnit, he was getting totally upstaged by Naruto for goodness sake!

Having learned the Juunan taiso exercises so long ago he couldn´t even remember how small he was at the time, it was as if he had known it forever, and yet he had never even heard about an actual fighting style based on it! 'Shit, I really need to get my act together!' He was definitely getting enrolled in Kurenais extra classes, and before the end of the day!

"So, how about you show it to me again ey?" he then said with a wide, evil grin.

"Oh yeah gladly! You better believe it! Because you´re going down again!" Naruto answered with a grin of his own.

Minutes later, both were sitting on the ground, looking more than a little ruffled, both panting and both with big smiles, comparatively to what was normal for them at least. Naruto was happy because he had managed to repeat his success, Sasuke was happy because he had almost managed to counter Naruto, and was fairly sure he had figured out how to do it even if he wasn´t quite good enough yet to be sure that he could do it reliably, at worst he now at least knew what to look for when someone was trying to overload the Sharingan prediction ability. And that, he knew that might be very important one day.


-*o*-

In a way Sasuke dreaded this, but he had made the decision and now he was going through with it. He followed what seemed to be almost half the usual class of his year into the classroom, he also recognised Tenten from the class one year older and two younger boys and two younger girls he thought was in the class one year below his own. 'The Senjuu siblings... No, not siblings, cousins I think? They certainly looked more like siblings though.' easily recognisable due to being the first generation in quite a while from that clan to once more become shinobi, 'and...' He couldn´t quite place the second girl, but he vaguely recalled hearing the second boy called Shion sometime.

Seeing Kurenai standing next to the teachers desk he walked up "I would like to join your classes sensei."

She smiled slightly, turned over to pick up a paper from the desk "Here, I need you to fill in this form to make it offical, but you can do that at home later, just jump in anyway for now ok."

She had heard of Sasuke´s loss yesterday from Naruto and from the way he had told it, she had almost expected Sasuke to show up. Not quite this soon though.

"Thank you." he had to push himself a bit to remember to be polite, Gai had berated him on how he turned to singlesyllable responses too easily with everyone, and he didnt want to make a bad impression on a new teacher. Especially one he now hoped might just be able to give him the key to defeating Itachi, or at least part of the key. And he most certainly did not want to risk getting lectured about it by Gai-sensei again, ever.

Once everyone had settled down Kurenai started things for the day "So, we´re going to look a bit deeper into how we use hand seals now, someone who can explain the basics, mmm, how about you Sasuke?"

He startled slightly at getting thrown into the center of attention so quickly "Ehm, sure... The seals are like an alphabet for molding chakra, where you link the seals with a specific shaping and together with mental visualisation, tweaking of a sequence you can make them -spell out- a technique, making it far easier to perform, especially if it is a technique that was created by someone else. Mmm, in theory you can ignore the actual hand signs but it tends to mess up visualisation and make shaping much harder so very few actually can manage it unless it´s something they have trained very hard with. Adapting it to onehanded signs, using them with a weapon or other variations are not entirely uncommon though."

He took a longer breath while thinking for a moment, slightly surprised that noone interrupted him "And the most problematic part of them are usually to figure out the most effective seals to use for a technique since most have dozens potentially correct sequences all with more or less differences in the details of the end result and the complexity of the seal sequence... That´s what you wanted?"

"Thank you, yes it was a good summary of nearly all of it. The academy teaches them more mechanically, by rote and I wanted to add both a little background and theory as well as some practical training and additional knowledge and flexibility."

40 minutes later, Sasuke was impressed by how much had been crammed into the lesson, despite seemingly being relaxed and unhurried, even slightly meandering across subjects when the topic edged close to something else.

Kurenai had shown how to add slight variations to the shaping of the standard signs to allow additional control and flexibility for techniques, had shown a way to make for easier practise and gone over the minimal basics for trying to figure out the seal sequence for a newly created technique, with a promise of repeats and expanding on it later.

He was actually being attentive and interested, and now it was truly apparent that the academy norm was based on if not perhaps slow learners then at least certainly not on fast learners. And since there was no need for the basics in this class, the pace could be set quite high. And he had noted that even Naruto, Kiba and Shikamaru kept busy and fully part of the class, far from the trio´s usual laziness. And Chouji didn´t even open a single package of snacks in the whole time... And that was surely amazing if anything.

After the 10 minute pause it was time for the next part.

Kurenai stepped up "Second part today will be on a subject that we will be coming back a lot for to one degree or another, it´s about chakraboosting yourself. Nearly all shinobi do it to some degree through training but most of that is indirect and unconscious, this is also the basic part of a lot of the academy training, as it is the very core of the difference between shinobi and non-shinobi. You can do it much better if you also practise how to do it consciously. And some of you, like Sakura and Akiko, have enough control to take it to a much higher level where it can become a very valuable tool. And some taijutsu styles makes heavy use of it, and with the extra practise those styles can become far more effective."

"So, what is it for then? The answer is, almost anything you can do with your body. You can use it to jump higher, be stronger, move faster, hardening your body against damage, make your body heal faster... And in some ways, also using chakra externally for some things like charging a strike with chakra or expending it to shield against a strike or impact are quite similar even if they are commonly considered to be separate techniques rather than boosting."

Again, Sasuke found himself to listen with rapt attention as Kurenai went on with the theoretics and basics and then turn over to the practical side, he knew his knowledge on the matter was already well above what they would normally finish the academy with and this class was already going far ahead of this, not so much perhaps in absolute knowledge, but rather in how to apply it. Enough so that he was certain it was going well beyond what was the common level of teaching for genin in his own clan before its almost destruction.

It also made him wonder if he would able to use some of the more advanced parts, his control was well above average though still far beneath Akiko, much less Sakura, still though, he should have enough for some of the simpler and middling uses...

After another 10 minute break, it was time for a more -hands on- lesson. The part that was the original reason he had come, though he would return to the next class for all of the parts, that he knew for sure now.

Kurenai quickly went around and grouped together students mostly by 2s and 3s, setting each group to practise one thing or another that they had started on during previous sessions then walking over to Sasuke, placing herself so that she could keep an eye on the others while talking to him.

"Well then Sasuke, since I don´t really know neither what you want nor what you need or what you already have, I suggest we spar for a bit and then we can go from there?" Kurenai said with a smile which reminded Sasuke a bit too much of Naruto´s cheerful visage after his win against Sasuke.

He nodded and stepped aside in a ready stance, instantly getting a thoughtful not quite frown from Kurenai "Straighten your back, left foot forward a few cm, you have let the academy style infect the Uchiha-style center of balance, I´m surprised Gai didnt correct you on it?"

"Uhm, he mentioned it but I thought I had taken care of it..." he said while trying to find the stance he should use for optimal readiness.

"Ah, I see. He didn´t notice because he is so used to the Goken, which prefers things a bit different, mmm, ok try moving around a bit as if you were moving along the lines of a square without changing the way you´re looking in my direction."

"Like this?"

"Yes... You´re a bit too stifflegged to make full use of the mobility of your style and you need to learn how to better keep your opponent within your view while moving. Right then, stick with taijutsu only and come at me."

"Right..." Sasuke took a moment to try to shift more towards including her suggestions, getting a look of approval for it, then started several combinations of punches and kicks in rapid succession.

With not even a single attack actually hitting anything Kurenai didn´t want it to hit. And then after about half a minute she started attacking back, managing to get through Sasukes Sharingan-assisted defense almost right away, despite only using just enough force to merely mark a hit clearly and a few seconds later another one, quickly starting to force him to dodge sideways and backwards.

After another half minute she went more defensive again, then after a while switching between strong offense and defense apparently at random, then changing style and using less mobility but mixing moves more flexibly. Which caused the fight to become more off-on as Sasuke had to step away from attacks and then step back closer to do something himself.

And he was getting quite annoyed at still not having been able to get a real hit in, not even one, he had managed better than that even against Gai-sensei! And Gai was supposed to be better at taijutsu... But every time he started to get an understanding of her moves, she changed style completely, throwing him off again. Without the Sharingan predictive ability he would have been completely outclassed.

After a while longer Kurenai stepped back an extra pace and held up her hand "Ok for now... So lets see then, you´re definitely having issues with letting the academy style creep into the Uchiha style, that really messes up both your offense and defense but is also not surprising since you dont have a real master in your own style to practise with, I can certainly help you straighten that out even if it´s not a style I really use nor fully know... Also you seem to be a bit sloppy, especially with defense?" she lifted an eyebrow at him in question.

Sasuke scowled slightly "I´ve tried to use Goken moves for some things, it´s possible I´ve let that affect me where it shouldn´t, having the Sharingan activate may have contributed as well since I´m not quite used to it´s predictive ability even now."

"Hmm, it´s probably more than that, but it´s a good place to start fixing things. So the next big question, what kind of style do you want to have and what were you trying to get from the Goken?"

"...I´m not sure, but one thing I need is something that... Itachi cant predict easily even without Sharingan... And the Goken moves I wanted are special attacks that the Uchiha style doesn´t really have anything like."

Kurenai nodded, she had been expecting that to come up, she was still pleased that Sasuke didn´t seem completely obsessed about it, clearly an improvement despite not being even two months since Gai had taken him in. She was however rather unsure about how to handle Sasuke, he certainly didnt seem to benefit from many styles like Hinata, and a pure speedstyle like the Raiken Naruto was focusing on didn´t seem a good enough choice either, and he certainly couldn´t focus on the Ten no Mori like she was planning for Sakura since he couldn´t use the moves to full effect, considering the kind of perfectionist he was, had he been able to use it then the Jyuuken would probably have been perfect, but he couldn´t use it.

Though he could probably benefit from the parts of Raiken used to improve speed, but there was a clear risk that it could mess up his use of the Uchiha style even more... 'Or perhaps...'

"Right, I think a good start for you would be simply going back to Ju Tai jutsu, to make sure you get rid of those pesky little bad habits, and Gai can also help you with that so it shouldn´t take too long, after that I can probably help you improve your family style quite decently, but you also need to get your speed up, the Raiken is good for that but it doesn´t really suit your overall style, however if you´re willing to work for it I think I may be able to suggest an alternative that should be very good for you."

"What do you mean?"

"None of the styles I´m good enough to teach really suits you enough to be a good complement to your current style, but I know one that does, it´s just a matter of us convincing the only one in Konoha good enough with it to teach you. I was already thinking of dragging her into my teaching a bit but your practise would most likely have to be more like what I did for Hinata earlier."

"Who and what style?"

"Anko Mitarashi´s Hebi-style has the speed and unpredictability you need and should be possible to combine quite well with the Uchiha style with a bit of work."

'Snakestyle?' Sasuke had heard about both the style and the woman using it, he was uncertain about the former and had an ingrained prejudice against the latter, but by now he also had heard many people agreeing that Kurenai was good at picking styles for people and he had heard that the snakestyle was supposed to be one of the more impressive ones.

"Ok I´ll try it, but what about when she aint around then?"

"Once you´ve started on it, I know enough to help you with it, and I´m sure you will be quite busy taking care of your flaws as well as improving your family style."


-*o*-

Finding the adress he had been told the previous day, Sasuke startled a bit at the size, not seeing anyone he walked up and spoke up "Pardon me?"

A moment later Naruto´s head peeked out through a window "Hiya Sasuke, go on through out the back, the girls are there and Kurenai went to pick up Crazy Snake Lady, I´ll be there in a moment."

Before Sasuke even had a chance to reply to the unflattering statement about his prospective teacher, Naruto was gone again so he walked in and made his way out to the backyard, seeing Hinata and Sakura talking he decided to wait away from them, Hinata was ok and Sakura was no longer intolerable at least but he still dreaded how she had been fawning on him not so long ago, certainly not wanting to risk giving her new ideas.

After barely a minute he heard a not quite argument approaching, or perhaps more like whining from one person met by overly reasonable determination. Almost like a patient parent telling a child that they really had to get going now.

"Ow... Hey I only had two more to eat, you could have waited for me to finish Nai-chan..." the tone was very whiny.

"You were already going to be late and I know you, those two would have become another twenty, so are you coming or do I have to carry you?" Kurenais answer was excessively reasonable.

"Yes please!" came the cheerful exclamation.

"Conscious or unconscious?" the reply was spoken in an utterly flat voice.

"Eehhehehe, maybe I´ll just walk by myself then?"

"Good choice." that seemed to finally end the argument.

Shortly after Kurenai appeared together with a woman Sasuke had seen before but until now not known who she was. When she saw him she turned and seemed like she was about to shake his hand, until suddenly snakes burst out from the arm of the trenchcoat.

Sasuke practically flew backwards and yet his arm was still caught by several snakes encircling it.

"Hiya kid, Nai-chan told me you might wanna learn some from little old me." she said merrily while the snakes withdrew and disappeared from a rather stunned Sasuke.

Kurenai facepalmed wearily "You said you were going to stop doing that..."

"I did? Nah I dont think so, too much fun. I probably said I wouldn´t do it to Naruto or Hinata again."

Kurenai froze for a moment "Damn, I think that really was what you said, I hate it when you´re right like that. Now be nice!" she said before going over to Sakura and Hinata, a moment later Naruto arrived in a dash, just barely avoiding trampling Sasuke down even more before he had even had a chance to get up.

"Hey stupid! Watch it!"

"Sorry bitchy Sasuke bastard, couldn´t see you down in the dirt like that!" Naruto shouted in cheerful reply as he bypassed Kurenai and screeched to a halt next to the girls a few seconds later.

Anko laughed and then leaned over and easily pulled him up and then with her over to a grassy area away from the house "Well kid, lets move over here and you get to show me your great skills."

The still slightly dazzled Sasuke got himself together "Those snakes?"

"Yeah? Some of them are part of the style, basic chakra constructs, the others are summons but you wont be getting that anytime soon no matter how good you may be, come on now kid, line up and get cracking! Make me bleed and I´ll get ya a bonus!" Anko grinned as she said it.

"Right..." with a good deal of trepidation Sasuke did -get cracking-.

A minute later he was quite certain he would not be getting any bonuses, no matter what that would have meant. Anko was a whirlwind, Sasuke was good enough to estimate that she probably wasn´t as good as Kurenai, but she was equally fast and she used it in a much more erratic style that included more movement, wether it was needed or not, and it played merry hell with his eyes attempts of prediction.

And those snakes lashing out at seemingly random times only made it far worse. His eyes were still just at the most basic level of activation, but he doubted any improvements would make enough of a difference by itself, which of course made it a very interesting style for him to learn.

After five minutes Anko broke off from a very thankful and tired Sasuke that had taken lots of hits, and unlike Kurenai´s marking hits which where painful enough, Anko had been much more forceful, Kurenai was good enough to afford using reduced force strikes in training, Anko probably wouldn´t even consider the idea regardless. He smiled grimly 'Perfect.'

"Aaw what a pity, you didn´t get to earn your bonus..." she leaned over and placed a slurping kiss on his cheek where he had taken a small cut from her fingernails and was bleeding very slightly "That will do for now."

Sasuke froze 'Ok her style is just perfect but she is also a complete nut... No, I´ll handle her one way or another.' he thought with increasing determination and looked up at his new sensei.

"Ooh good boy!" Anko said softly.

"That... That was a test?" he almost stuttered. And got a wide smile in return. 'APPEARS far more crazy than she is.' he amended his previous thoughts.

"So, how´re we going to set this up then? I wont be around all the time so the best way is probably to do it like Nai-chan did with Hinata, when I´ve got time I make sure you find out and then you get there on time or have a damn good explanation for why not."

"Right..."

"And that brings me to the next thing, where´s best to train for you, here, the academy, with Nai-chan´s classes or something else?"

Sasuke cringed slightly at the thought of getting trashed like this in front of the other academy students, then he had an idea while thinking about where would be best to train "Is money an issue for how often you can train me?"

"Huh? Mmm well, Nai-chan´s gonna make sure I get basic instructor pay or something for the time spent but a girl can never have too much money, not that I´m about to sit down and wait in the village just to teach you no matter what the pay is, a girl needs her adventures you know..."

"Ok... How about we use the Uchiha training grounds and I pay you for a C-rank mission whenever you spend extra time with me?"

Anko blinked in a short moment of surprise "Aaw already smitten by my wonderful charm and want to spend all the time with me, how cute!"

Sasuke almost choked for a moment getting Anko to laugh.

She went on, seriously this time "Sure boy that sounds decent."


-*o*-

They arrived at the training area chatting amiably enough, just the fourth time since Sakura had been shanghaied into the training, or possibly playing the willing sucker, though she was rather pleased, correction she was extremely pleased at getting extra training, especially from someone who was good at her own best skill, even if it probably did mean she was going to get stuck with Naruto for a teammate, and totally not Sasuke, still though, after the last three sessions she had got to know Hinata better, finding her to be nice but shy, more surprisingly though she had found Naruto to be at least acceptable as well, no matter how annoying he could be at times.

Kurenai´s offer to those with good chakra control to get them some basic teaching by a medic had also been much appreciated. She had not even considered the option before, but now she was dead set on becoming as good with it as she could, after the medic that had taught them the first time had told her she might be able to become one of the best ever, that she actually had a real solid talent for it. She had never had even the slightest chance at becoming best ever at anything before.

While those with just the intelligence and control needed would learn the basics by rote, she and probably a couple others would then go on and start learning the full skillset of a medic-nin.

Kurenai greeted them and then went on with "Today you are going to train how to defend against my specialty, genjutsu, has the academy covered anything about this yet?" from the headshakes she got in return she sighed inwardly and cursed the academy for being so damned uneven at times, they should have been given at least the minimal basics by now!

"Very well then, genjutsu is the art of affecting the minds of surrounding people and to create illusions, there are good and bad points about both variants."

"Affecting minds directly is very efficient and allows great control, while illusions are harder to notice, so they are effective even against people you dont know about and can be used for other things like reducing how much sound is heard from you or make you more or less invisible, highend illusions can be very straining and require very good control while small and simple illusions almost any chakrauser can learn, meanwhile affecting minds has a more gradual difficulty level and rarely uses much chakra, but to even get started with mind affecting techniques has a much higher threshhold to it."

"First of all, I´ll show you a simple flower illusion that is good for practise, and Naruto, while you will probably have the same problem with this as with the bunshin technique, I still want you to know it and practise it because eventually your chakra control and genjutsu skill will improve enough that you can use it, if you have already practised with it then you will have a much easier time to get a useful level of skill with others as well."

After getting nods, Naruto´s with a bit of a frown added, she showed them the series of handseals and told them how to use them in molding the chakra release for this technique.

"Sakura, you already know a little genjutsu don´t you?" she got a tentative nod "Oh don´t worry there´s no problem in getting ahead a bit, just make sure not to try anything new without supervision ok? I´m also going to give you the first practise scroll for genjutsu later today, so you can get started for real."

"Ok!" came the answer from a now much more cheerful Sakura. She had still not got used to how reasonable Kurenai was as a teacher, the only other teacher that would be so generally accepting was Iruka, showing off in front of or heaven forbid upstaging one of the really unreasonable teachers would usually be just more or less not good.

Trying just a few times, Sakura quickly learned how to vary the illusion and had soon made several of wildly different looks, from the original tiny flower via a bouquet of different flowers to a small bush.

Hinata had to try several times but eventually managed to make a steady little flower. Naruto also tried, with not so much success, but after a number of tries managed a small and halftransparent looking thing that almost seemed to shine. On closer inspection, it was noticeable that it DID indeed shine.

"Excellent work Sakura, but I didnt expect any less of someone with such a talent in genjutsu, well done Hinata that was quick. And Naruto, you might be able to learn genjutsu faster than I thought, it´s weak but on so little practise it´s much better than what could be expected. Although I can assure you that learning control will give better results than bruteforcing it with that much chakra." Kurenai said, ending with a smile at a proudly smiling but also somewhat embarassed Naruto.

"Although an illusion with that much power in it, if you can change it enough to have the power converted better to light, you can use it to create chakra flares, a quite useful technique even if it´s not for most situations. Remind me to show it to you later."

"Now, any of you know the basic ways to break away from genjutsu?"

"Pain to distract you." Naruto blurted out quickly.

Just slightly ahead of Sakura adding "Internal chakra control and external dispelling."

"Correct, both of you. However, pain and momentarily halting your chakra flow to dislodge someone else´s control of it doesn´t work on illusions, and using pain to get rid of mind effects should not be done lightly, worst case you can´t see what you are really doing and might hurt yourself badly."

"Also, using external dispelling allows you to do it on others as well, so that is what we will focus on for now."

"Hold your hands in front of you, together if you attempt a dispel that you then apply to yourself, someone or something else by touch, or hands apart if you attempt an area dispel, now starting with the touch variant, generate chakra centered on your fingertips, not too much, just enough for a small burst, stabilise it, then maintain it while bringing your hand or fingers touching the target, where you release the control and push it into, through the target."

"For an area burst, you draw much more chakra, gather it into a ball between your hands, then release it equally in all directions, some can learn to release it with more focus and direction."

"I´ll be creating a few small illusions for you to practise on." while seemingly doing nothing, suddenly a number of pretty flowers seemed to grow up a few yards apart.

"Ano, sensei, d-doesn´t genjutsu require hand seals?" Hinata asked as so far all genjutsu she had seen had used them.

"Not for such minor illusions like these, and the better the one creating them, the less actual need there is for seals, but it´s generally better to use seals than not as it´s much too easy to burn through a lot of chakra for no good reason otherwise. At least until you get very good at it. Me, I´m a genjutsu specialist with a lot of chakra so for me it doesn´t really make a difference any longer. Sakura will also probably be able to drop the hand seals for most of the simpler ones within a not too distant future."

"Now, try the touch dispel on one illusion each to begin with." Kurenai said and gave a short explanation on the specifics.

Sakura succeeded on her first try, 'well' Kurenai thought, 'That wasn´t really odd considering the girls excellent control and great talent for genjutsu overall.' But also added a thoughtful wondering if it might also indicate that she was good at chakra manipulation overall, prompting herself to remember to test her on that later. What the teacher medic had said certainly also pointed in that direction.

Hinata managed after three tries although her second made the flower waver a bit as if seeing it through hot air.

Naruto´s attempts however seemed completely useless. After not even getting any reaction on the 20th try, Kurenai asked Hinata to see if she could see what happened with her Byakuugan while he tried again a couple of times.

"Mmm, sensei it looks like he forms it correctly but then as soon as he tries to move the charge, it looses cohesion instantly when any of that red chakra of his appears and then it just bursts apart before he can make it part of his touch. He might be able to manage if he does it very quickly between forming and touching but I-I d-doubt it." she said while unhappy about saying anything bad about Naruto, even though she knew by now that he much rather found out what was a problem so he could improve on it or work around it.

'Red chakra?' Sakura wondered what that was about. From what she had read, chakra was generally seen or detected as mainly and mostly blueish, was it something about the Byakuugan seeing it differently? 'No wait, she said it appears as something additional, Naruto has more than one type of chakra?.?.?'

"I see, well then lets move on to the area dispel, I expect Naruto will do better on that then as it´s more dependent on the amount of chakra instead of controlling it."

While explaining the details, she proceeded to set up rows with neatly spaced illusionary flowers and directing each of them to try while standing at the end of one row.

Hinata managed it after a few tries, making the illusions up to a few paces away disappear, though clearly tiring her a bit in the process.

Sakura again succeeded on her first attempt, but wasn´t satisified and did it again, now with a fiercely determined face, this time dispelling the illusions almost 10 paces away. She breathed a bit heavy after it but with a content expression on her face.

When Naruto tried, at first it looked almost too good, she was actually seeing the sphere of energy forming between his hands, but when he released it, it sort of just fizzled out, just barely affecting the two closest illusions.

"Naruto, you did well forming the chakra, but you have to build it up while holding what you already have drawn out contained and then release it all in a clear and distinct burst, ok? Now then try again, with that much power I expect you will able to dispel very large areas, probably all over this field." that got a happy nod from Naruto along with greater concentration, a few moments of thought and starting another attempt.

At first it looked like last time, a strong buildup of slightly blue energy in a sphere, then she saw that there also seemed to appear more and more swirls and it almost seemed to sparkle...

'Oh damn!'

"Naruto, focus on pushing that away from you as strongly as you can NOW!" she nearly shouted.

The startled boy was used to following her orders by now and quickly thrust his hands forwards forcefully, making the sphere follow and fortunately then continue flying ahead while still retaining coherence until its underneath touched the ground, then it violently burst, almost like some ball lightning could.

Leaving a tiny crater in the ground and sending a small shockwave outwards, causing three of them to twitch at the feeling and eliciting a surprised yelp from Hinata who instantly put her hands over her eyes.

A few nearby illusions wavered and a single one dispelled.

Naruto was next to Hinata almost instantly with a hand on her shoulder "Hinata, you ok? I´m so sorry! What happened?"

Shakenly she replied "Ok... I´m ok Naruto..." then more steadily "I was... watching with the Byakuugan active, and when that thing went off it was almost like looking into the sun or someone throwing a flash grenade right in front of you, I´ll be fine in a moment." she opened her eyes just a tiny bit, squinting at him.

"But I think you will have more than a little work ahead of you." she added with an amused tone getting a small groan from Naruto.

"Yeah I guess I should be used to that by now. Well, nothing to do but train harder!" he ended with a determined frown causing the others some further amusement.

"Naruto, what exactly did you do?" Kurenai asked, wondering if she had seen correctly.

"Eh, well you said I had to contain it while building it up so I sort of figured that maybe if I give the chakra a little bit of twist it should be easier to keep in place until I wanted it released?"

'Goodness, the boy was actually using shape manipulation on intuition, just like that!' It had taken her weeks of training to manage it despite her teacher telling her she had a decent degree of talent for it.

"Naruto, I want you to remember how you did that, but I also want you not to do it again with any chakra you keep near yourself or expel against anyone not an enemy, ok?" quickly getting a nod in reply she went on "For the dispel to work, the chakra has to be a clean burst, without any shape manipulation added, because that makes it interact too directly physically." that got a completely lost look from Naruto and an interested one from Sakura.

Kurenai went on to try and explain better. "If you give the chakra shape or distinct motion it will affect it´s surroundings more as an object and less as energy. It´s extremely useful for creating advanced techniques dealing physical damage but few learn how to do it before they are at least chuunin, indeed many never learn it at all, relying completely on techniques created by others."

"Now, you will have to practise later how to work the area dispel, but I´m pretty sure we can take what you accidentally just made and turn it into a fairly powerful attack technique."

That got a loud and happy "Yatta!" from a grinning Naruto "Hey, does that mean I just created my first selfmade technique?"

"Nowhere near it, but it means you have the idea and concept for it. Now you just have to work hard to make it work. I´m sure it wont take more than a few years to complete." she smiled back with a hint of mischief showing as Naruto´s face fell from that information.

Getting back to being serious she added "Just make sure you never EVER mistake a dispel with the attack, you could kill yourself easily if you build up enough of those chaotic swirls in the burst."

"Also, for the attack, you will want to make all the chakra twist like that to greatly improve efficiency, and you probably want to make it a good bit smaller for general use to make it faster to form and easier to throw. I think it probably needs better cohesion, a better shell to contain it so you dont have it exploded in your face by someone´s kunai or even senbon, and if you can improve your control you might be able to make the shell variable to allow you to time how far away from you it bursts. Oh and smaller size will probably let you use it more times per day as well."

She certainly had Naruto´s undivided attention, so time to move on and have him try again until he managed the area dispel at least once and would know how to practise it by himself.

Going through how he should do it in more detail a couple of times, she then had him try again, this time with Hinata a long bit further away and very much not using Byakuugan, practising with Sakura in using the tiny flower illusion and then dispelling them. Being able to do either wasn´t nearly as hard as being good enough at them, and while the former had only taken them minutes, at least for Hinata the latter would likely take many hours of further practise.

Naruto´s first attempt fizzled again but still managed to dispel almost half the row.

"Not bad Naruto, you almost got that one right, and even as it was, it caused a useful effect, clearly you will be able to have a huge area of effect with this."

"Try again, holding it together until you release it, it´s your energy so you dont have to impose your will on it forcefully, you just have to keep your connection with it undamaged until the moment you let it burst free."

Naruto tried again and this time barely even managed to form energy at all.

"Guide the chakra, draw it out and focus on it, like you did when you added those twists before, but without actually adding any shape to it."

Naruto nodded slowly then grimaced in concentration, forming a now clearly shining sphere between his hands, much quicker than any previous try, then managed to release the energy almost cleanly. Despite how perfectly undisturbed the chakra was, Kurenai still felt it wash through her with amazing strength. The girls, even being halfway across the field startled as well. And ALL illusions on the field were gone in an instant.

'Oh dear goodness! That was strong enough that it would likely dispel things at least across the village! And it would probably even have some limited effect against all skills based on chakramolding...' That thought produced a crooked smile, considering how many things some people used such skills for on a daily basis.

"Well, that was certainly successful Naruto. I´ll have to ask you not to practise it with so much power anywhere near the village though, I can only guess at how much annoyance just that single burst probably caused. On the other hand, that dispel was magnitudes stronger than any other I´ve ever even heard about, so while you simply must learn to make a smaller version, we will have to make sure to give you the chance to practise the supersized one sometimes as well. Now, why don´t you try the flower illusion a few more times to try and get better control over the amount of power you use, while we wait for ANBU to arrive."

"Huh?"

"Naruto-kun, that chakrawave was almost surely felt through much of the village, they will certainly want to know what happened."

"Oh... ehhehehe, sorry." he said sheepishly.


-*o*-

A/N:

A pm comment I think I should adress here is a question about making Kurenai "that good"?

And the basic answer to that is that here, she´s spent the last decade or so training maybe twice as much as in canon, she´s not going to go out and take down S-rank opposition with ease, but she´s a far more serious threat in this version simply because she IS "that good".

More importantly however, if you think she´s TOO perfect, think about what´s happened so far, she´s already proven far from perfect, it´s just that she tries so hard for that perfection that most of her mistakes are lost in the overall success. Example, she wanted to capture the Kumo-attackers, but because she was totally intent on not risking Naruto or Hinata even the slightest, she overdid it and killed them instead of knocking them out. Even if their apparent power level not being for real also contributed, it was still a clear mistake.

And in the next chapter you will be told just what made her go that far.

Pokermind pointed out my little oopsy with i vs I, that should be fixed by now. Terribly silly mistake of me to make, but I so totally blame the internet for it, where writing fast tends to be much more important than correct details.

SeanHicks, fond or not about OCs, well the simple fact is that this story would become totally broken for internal consistency without them. If you add chances of improvement to a class, but end up with the exact same nine characters being the only ones successful, that breaks my suspension of disbelief at least.

There´s also the Narutoverse issue of seemingly having an average of around 10 new genins from the academy per year(except that the year before Naruto´s the only team we ever see is Gai´s), and yet the village later on suddenly coughs up at minimum 16000 shinobi?

I try to adress it as best as I can later on but I simply can´t stay exactly with canon and still feel plausible.

Also, I very much needed a few specific types of characters for what I have planned, and none of the canon ones would fit, so I simply meshed the results of Kurenai adding teaching and my need for characters into the same which will mean two extra genin teams, this also allowed me to keep them from becoming too powerful and taking over as main characters too much.

Also, if I were to try to give too much of a background for all characters I would simply slow things down too much to be enjoyable any more, so instead I do as I have found best in other fics and build up OCs a little here and a little there.

In Ranma 1/2, Ryu Kumon is the son of a dojo owner who Genma gave scrolls detailing his Yamasenken as an attempt to help him out of financial problems, Ryu´s father however when practising them accidentally destroys his own dojo, mortally wounding himself in the process. Ryu then goes hunting for Genma to get ahold of the Umisenken as well. Just look up the name in a Ranma wiki and you will find it.

Oh, and sorry if anyone got confused by how I slightly changed formatting from the previous chapter and onwards. Before that I used only italics for thought, now it should be 'italics', and instead of italics inside a quote to show emphasis or quote in a quote, I changed that to use -text-, as that´s how I originally type it and it seemed to be more obvious like that.

And finally, yes I´m letting Sasuke have a chance as well, exactly what will come out of this later is quite a different matter but for now he´s getting a much better deal than in canon.

If you think he´s being too thoughtful or too easily swayed in this chapter, remember that he has just spent several weeks getting what might be called "shock treatment", from taking up residence and some training with Gai and Lee, and that should be enough to force anyone to look at things from a new viewpoint.

20120923 Edit: Fixing some broken formatting that I´m almost certain was not here when I last looked...