Training Day

*Training ground 11*Morning*Six days later*

The fallout of the prank had been, unexpected, to say the least. When he had arrived back to jiji's office the Old man had told him that he would have to live of what he had saved for a whole week, he had banned him from taking all D-ranks but the catching Tora.

So now here he was, watching the brats try his advanced henge while trying to complete the third step of the rasengan and the kitsune-bi flame thrower (a clone and the original respectively) but, it was slow going.

The third step of the rasengan was mixing the two previous ones and try to make a normal balloon not to explode and remain perfectly spherical with them, if he managed to pop it, he could start his training with the technique without them, but as previously said, "KAMI DAMN IT, I'M GOING TO DISPELL IF THE DAMN THING REFUSES TO EXPLODE" it was slow going.

The original had had an idea on how to advance the fox-fire the night before; if he could manage to use the chakra control exercise he learned back in Wave at the same time the flame appeared, it would give the effect of expelling the youki towards his target, and it was true: his current range with it was ten feet, good, but unsatisfactory for Kurama, who said that that distance was the minimum range the technique could achive.

Megumi, Konohamaru and Moegi were panting on the ground: after five tries at the Honmono no henkan, Megumi and Moiegi had collapsed in exhaustion, and Konohamuru followed three tries later. He couldn't really blame them though; he had created the jutsu at their age, when he had at least twice their chakra reserves.

There was a second clone watching the kids, and advancing the 'clan' training of Megumi, since she was, at least officially, an Uzumaki. Even if she wasn't related by blood, she was as much family as the Ichiraku and Sarutobi-jiji.

The shadow-clone looked up to the sky. His team training would start soon, the boss had to get going, and he had orders, "Oi, Kono, Moegi, you have to leave now, the boss is going to leave and go with Kurenai-sensei." The two kids groaned in response, "Don't give me that, you have your own clan training to do, and Megumi-chan needs to be as strong her Onii-chan, Don't you, Megumi-chan?" a pained, yet affirmative groan was his answer.

He waited until the grumbling kids were out of sight before picking the girl up, "you do know why I make you train so hard, right?" The original came up to them "I know you don't like straining yourself," Naruto held Megumi and dispelled the clone "You are family, Megumi-chan, and family is always priority" he started moving to the training ground his team usually trained in, "The world is dangerous, and I don't want you to die because I wasn't there, that's why you have to be strong."

He remembered the times when he lived alone, when all he wanted was to have someone to hold him at night, before he met Iruka. "I know, onii-chan" Megumi grumbled, "doesn't make it any less painful" he couldn't help it, he smiled.

"Hey, it helps any, you could be the next coming of Tsunade" He had taken Megumi to the library some times, the girl had gone to the history section and picked a random book, which happened to have the story of the Sannin. Needless to say, when she read of how strong Tsunade was, she made it her personal goal to be stronger than her. "Without the drinking and gambling, of course"

Megumi sniggered before snuggling close to the red-head; she could sleep until they got to his team's training ground. Behind them the clone working on the rasengan gave yet another frustrated yell.

*Training ground 8*noon*

When they arrived to the training ground Naruto put Megumi down and had a blood clone (as he had taken to always having one sealed and drugged on his seals) watch her, after she awoke the clone would start her taijutsu training. Hopefully she would find a style that came natural to her, but he didn't want to get his hopes up.

The red-headed teen stepped up to Kurenai-sensei, who was waiting for him to come. She had seen how close he and the girl he had picked four months ago had grown, and knowing Naruto, the boy would put her through a toned-down, yet still extreme for most, version of his own solo-training regime.

"Now that the three of you are here," she spoke to the gennin that had formed a line in front of her, "I'm am going to teach how to better recognize and dispel a genjutsu if you ever get caught in one.

"As you already know, a genjutsu affects the main senses a ninja uses; hearing, eyesight and smell. Shino has an advantage on spotting illusions because of his condition; you should know when someone trapped you because you suddenly started seeing. Hinata has the advantage of being able to see the chakra that is planted into her, allowing you to detect illusions as fast as they are casted. Naruto has a disadvantage, as his reserves are massive and his control sub-par; however Kyuubi is as much an advantage as he is a nuisance in this case, because of his close relationship to you. Should he feel anything strange, he would tell you and you dispel it."

The three gennin nodded, knowing that what she said was true. Naruto though was asking both Kurama AND Kushina to do tell him whenever he fell into an illusion; he didn't trust Kurama fully, since he might believe what he saw through him.

Kurenai started speaking again, "There are three ways to dispel a genjutsu, one of them, the one the academy teaches, is to restrain all your chakra and then flare it, thus cleaning your chakra pathways of foreign chakra.

"The second is the one most gennin use for higher tier genjutsu: any kind of pain or sensation that overloads the nerves will make you come back to reality, so to speak, but it is only good for a few times during battle before you start losing to much blood.

"The third, which is the one you'll probably be using Naruto, is by creating a zone of compressed chakra anywhere, and then release it in a blast that covers the surrounding area. This is the hardest and less useful in group battles because it will dispel EVERY genjutsu in the area, making it a double edged sword.

"I'm going to put the three of you on one of my better illusions, and you have to find which works best, and fastest, of either the first or third methods, since I don't want you to get injured when training." The three of them nodded when she stopped speaking, knowing that it would help them.

Three seconds later, the three were looking at Suna from the sky.

*With Megumi and the blood clone*

When the little girl came to herself, she found her Onii-chan reading from a little book with a focused expression on his face. Knowing that surprising him would be bad, she went to tap him on the side.

Naruto blinked a few times before smiling down at the girl, the distraction was most welcome. He had been trying to find fighting styles that would fit the girl, but from the dozens on the diary, only four seemed to fit her.

They relied in a strange mix between explosive strength, fast speed and snake-like flexibility on different degrees, all of them possessed by the girl, as prove by the many time she had barreled into him and knocked them to the floor, and how she had managed to change position, many times already, from his arms to his back and from the former to his neck without making them fall over.

The problem was that while Megumi would make use of them, she seemed better suited for support techniques rather than close combat, but he wanted her to be like him: a jack of all trades, with specialization to a slight degree, only enough to be noticeable but not enough to be glaring. The only way would be… "Alright imoto, there are four styles I think can suit you, but, I think you would be better as mid-to-long range ninja, so I will be teaching you some longer ranged techniques in a few months, then I can sick you on Kurenai-sensei or on any Iryo-nin of the hospital so you can learn from them."

The girl nodded eagerly; anything that would help her become as strong as Tsunade would make her happy, well, that and spending time with her Onii-chan and her friends, they were just that fun to be around.

And so BCN and Megumi spent time getting her across the basics of the Tondeken, Inshōkobushi, Sutoraikā no hebi and the Rōringusandā, the fastest fighting styles the Uzumaki possessed.

When the real Naruto came back, the poor girl was sitting by a tree with several empty water bottles at her side.

*With team eight*

Naruto was still falling towards Suna. The first release method had failed him spectacularly, so he was trying the third one out.

He blocked all possible chakra form leaving his core for as long as prudent before letting it go.

Shino, Hinata and Kurenai staggered back as a wall of chakra slammed into them before moving on. When they looked at the spot Naruto was standing on, all they saw was a pile of weapons, scrolls, cups of instant ramen, books, notebooks, spilled ink, brushes, needles, clothe, mesh and something that smelt as if a dog had eaten shit, then puked and then peed on the result.

On the bottom of everything was a very disgruntled Naruto, who had unintentionally unsealed everything he had on his arms and wrists. The three of them helped the red-headed teen out of the pile of junk, which he got into sealing back as soon as he could move again.

Five minutes later, a full squad of ANBU, accompanied by the Hokage in full gear, "What happened here?" asked Sarutobi as he saw the ink and pills on the ground, "Forget that, what was that chakra surge we felt?"

Naruto slowly raised his hand, covered in ink of different colors, with a sheepish expression, "well," he said, "Kurenai-sensei was having us try different ways to dispel genjutsu" he gave a chuckle, "since the standard kai failed with me, I tried the other method she showed us, and I…heh…I over did it a bit"

One could FEEL the incredulous expression on the faces of the ANBU, one of which was Yuugao, as they stared at the ink-covered red-head, "You mean to tell us," spoke the one with a tiger mask, "that you used a kai technique that reached the ANBU headquarters, from here to the other end of the village, because of a training exercise?" somehow he casted a light under his face, making him seem like a demonic human-tiger, it was quite a scary sight.

Naruto nodded hesitantly, scared witless because of the man, "good, it would be the perfect alert," said 'Ryu' "I mean, if he sees anything out of the ordinary he could do that and we could reach him in minutes" the others, even 'Tora' nodded in appreciation of the idea.

"It is decided then" said Hiruzen, "tone it down if you are ever caught in a genjutsu, but use it as you just did if there is an emergency Naruto, it will be very helpful to the village."

With that said the Hokage and ANBU went back to the village.

"What just happened?" it would be Naruto that broke the silence that ensued.

"It would appear that Hokage-sama has made you part of the early alarm team" Said Shino adjusting his sunglasses.

"Right, back to practice," The three gennin looked at Kurenai-sensei, "Naruto, this time make it less compresses or hold it for less time, we don't need another ANBU squad onto us"

The rest of the day until lunch was spent practicing genjutsu releases.

*Open training grounds*

Naruto and Megumi spent some time wandering the forests around Konoha, with Megumi talking about some of the things that had happened to her daily and Naruto telling her stories of his missions.

Eventually they came to a rather odd sight: in the middle of a clearing were two overgrown caterpillars running towards each other screaming "Lee" and "Gai-sensei"

Standing some meters from them was a girly boy with a cream-white jacket and black shorts and a girl with a panda hair-do, a Chinese-style dress and baggy pants. Both of them were looking horrified, so the two of them walked into the clearing.

Naruto touched the shoulder of the panda-girl, making her look at them. She looked oddly familiar to him, "what are the giat caterpillars doing?" he asked the girl, much to her amusement.

"They are Lee and Gai-sensei showing their 'flames of youth' as they call them" she actually welcomed the distraction from the two, what followed was simply horrifying. "Name's Ten-Ten, by the way"

The dots clicked into place, "YO, Panda-chan" A twitch showed that she had remembered who she was talking to.

"It's good to see you, Naruto" she said annoyed.

"So that's what happened to Lee," he grew increasingly concerned as the two spandex-clad men got nearer to each other.

"Yeah, he got corrupted by Sensei soon after we were assigned to him" she noticed the girl standing by Naruto's side, "And who is her? I don't remember seeing her with you before"

Megumi looked at the older girl, she looked nice, "I'm Megumi, Onii-chan's imoto"

At her inquisitive look Naruto decided to elaborate, "My team got called on a clearing mission, she was a prisoner at the camp, I brought her with me and I adopted her."

"I didn't take you to be mature enough to take care of someone, let alone yourself"

Naruto grew an annoyed expression, "I'll have you know that I've been leaving on my own since I was five"

"Yeah, how did you manage that, anyway?" she was curious, how did he manage to get his own house when she had been trying that until she was adopted?

"I managed to blackmail the Hokage into buying me an apartment" her jaw hitting the ground made him chuckle before elaborating, "Since I snuck into his office when he was reading smut and told him to get me a real house or the rumors would start spreading"

"The Hokage reads PORN?!" She shouted scandalized, unknowingly getting the attention of the other men

"How un-youthful of Hokage-sama, to read such un-youthful material" spoke the larger caterpillar-look-alike.

"Yeah, good to see you're getting stronger Lee-sempai" Said the red-head, "though you'll never beat my awesomeness, DATTEBAYO!"

The younger one of the green-clad duo blinked in confusion before striking a pose and grinning and Naruto, "YOSH, NARUTO-KUN, how youthful to see well"

"You…too?" honestly, how do you reply to that? "So, how are the weights I made you faring?" He had given both ten-Ten and Lee a graduation present on his first go at the academy, when he was on their class instead of his own age-group. Lee's was a set of seal-covered weight-bands that got heavier by the month, while Ten-Ten got a scroll with storage-expelling seals so she could practice with her weapons.

"Yosh, they have made more youthful that I was at the academy" he frowned, "Did you manage to get an instructor that wasn't un-youthful to you?"

Making a mostly correct assumption at what the question meant, the red-head said "Yeah, got landed with Iruka-nii, graduated five months ago" he tapped his neck and left shoulder, where his Konoha and Uzu headbands were tied.

A poke at his side made his attention turn to Megumi, who pointed at her stomach. He nodded. "I'll be going now, Later Lee-sempai, Panda-chan" he picked Megumi and ran away to angry shouts. The Ramen was calling for a sacrifice.

YOSH, LET YOUTH TAKE OVER YOU.

Not really, no. I'll kill you myself if you let that happen, really I will.

Right, new chapter. I originally planned to have more taijutsu training with Megumi, but my brain decided not, I both hate and love that guy.
The same happened with the chakra wave, it just decided to make it happen.

Now, onto pressing matters, at least for some of you. Fuu has passed Karin on the pairing poll and is now ahead by a vote and Shizuka is still in third place.

I want to buy Halo4 and Assassasin's creed 3 and Black ops 2 and Medal of Honor warfighter, and so many other videogames.