Chapter 4: Treats & Techniques

Before I knew it a whole week flew by since I found myself living as the famous Naruto Uzumaki. I've been training every day since my arrival with a focus on chakra control so I could eventually attempt to use the three academy level jutsu at the finals. My progress was going fairly slow, which wasn't all that surprising given my first go at it. I thought that it would've been a challenge, certainly, but not to this degree.

So far all of the leaf exercises were a bust. There wasn't a chance in hell that I could use such a small amount of chakra at this point in time. I gave up on it the same day as my meltdown and haven't tried it again since then. Instead I've devoted my time towards practicing with different sized rocks. Steve was still safe and sound back home, but any other rock was fair game for me.

I was glad that I practiced at an open training ground for two reasons. One was that the first rock I chose to use was way too small. It actually exploded outwards and pelted everything around me in a rain of stone. Luckily my hand's position angled the blast away from me so I didn't get hurt. Though, if I was inside my apartment then something else would have most likely broken besides the rock.

The second reason was that after I learned from my mistake the end result wasn't much better. Every time I tested a large rock after that it flew straight into the air like a catapult instead of sticking to my hand. Which was the exact opposite of what I wanted to accomplish, and also another valid reason for staying outdoors. Less things to destroy and all that. At the very least none of the rocks were completely obliterated from existence yet, so I'm still counting that as a win.

XxXxX

Knowledge was power in my world, and even more so in this world full of ninjas. For this reason I've been exploring the village to try and familiarize myself with my surroundings. Seeing some places in a dream is one thing, but actually experiencing the sights for myself has been just as helpful. I simply used my hidden transformation jutsu, picked a certain area to explore each time, and moved onto a different path the next day. An added bonus from my jogging was that it would help keep me in shape for when I need to run. Which'll be a lot of the time in my near future.

After I finished my section for the day I decided to eat at a different restaurant rather than Ichiraku Ramen. I spotted a building that was generically called 'The Dango Shop' early on in my search and headed inside. The place looked quite busy with most of the tables occupied, but there was still room for me to sit at an almost empty table after I ordered. The only occupant happened to be a purple haired lady who looked to be enjoying her dumplings immensely.

I excused my presence at her table to which she only waved me off with a "Yeah, yeah. It's fine kid." She continued to dig into her large amount of food without paying me much attention. Which I was completely fine with.

Small talk wasn't my forte, and around a stranger even less so. This led to me awkwardly staring at nothing in particular as I awaited my order. Each second felt like it was crawling by at a snail's pace as I took in the polite silence of the shop. In reality only a couple minutes passed before three sticks of hanami dango were placed in front of me.

I tentatively picked up the stick that pierced the pink, white, and green dessert and held it up to my nose. Then I briefly sniffed them before taking a small bite out of the dango on top. A sweet taste filled my mouth from the pink colored treat. I let out a happy hum before I quickly took another much larger bite and proceeded to finish off the small snack. The next two pieces of dango were practically inhaled at the speed I was eating them which resulted in an amused laugh coming from the woman across from me.

I looked over at the now laughing woman to see that she put a huge dent in the meal that she bought. And I did mean meal. There must have been at least three orders of dessert on her plate when I first sat down.

The lady spoke with a grin once she saw me look up at her. "Slow down kid. The food's not gonna run away from you." I made an effort to chew slower on the next three pieces, but probably not enough considering the muffled laughter of my neighbor.

"I take it this is your first time here then?" I nodded instead of answering vocally since I was still chewing some food. "Well, I'll probably be seeing you around often if you're enjoying them this much." She stood up and began walking away at a leisurely pace. "See ya kiddo."

I made sure to give a small wave as she left before turning back to my unfinished food. A thought surfaced soon after about how she was wasting the large amount of dango that was still on her plate. However, when I glanced towards it again the dish was completely empty save for a few small crumbs.

"And she told me to eat slower."

I smirked at that thought as I finished off the dumplings from my last stick. Then I took my plate over to a worker along with my neighbor's before leaving the restaurant. A fleeting moment came to me where the lady I sat with seemed somewhat familiar, but it passed just as quick since I wasn't paying much attention to her features at the time. What can I say? I was hungry, dammit.

"Oh, well. She did say that she eats there pretty often. I'll eventually run into her since I'm definitely going back there again."

I started mapping out the roads of Konoha for a short time again before heading back towards my apartment. Once I sat on the foot of my bed I canceled my transformation jutsu and wondered what else I could do for the day. My chakra control book was spotted soon after, and curiosity took hold. Would the book actually help me now that I mostly knew what to look for?

I stood up to grab it and flipped it open to the table of contents. Most of the chapters focused on leaves which didn't help me at all. That being said the lessons were pretty useless in my case until I reached one of the last ones. My right eye began to twitch at what I saw.

"Chapter 10: Beginner's Rock Techniques 1-4"

"Chapter 11: Mid-Level Rock Techniques 5-10"

The steps I happened to need were oh-so-conveniently placed at the end of the book. In fact, none of the other chapters would have helped me right now besides those last two. I forced out a deep breath to calm myself down before I skimmed through the relevant pages. Chapter ten was about working up to having multiple rocks stuck to one hand. The end result was placing one on your palm and one on each of your finger tips while using your chakra to spin all of them in place. Chapter eleven, however, focused on using both hands with the previous exercises as well as learning to slightly levitate the rocks...

"Wait, it stops at making them float a little? If this was Naruto's main book then it's no wonder he never got better. He probably thought the whole thing was garbage since he wouldn't have started with the last chapters, and even if he did, we're dealing with a bit more than levitation."

It was with a slightly irritated sigh that I placed the control book back in its rightful place. None of the other lessons pertained to what I could attempt yet, so that's where it'll stay for now. The rest of my evening consisted of practicing my meditation exercises, eating my supper, and reading a few chapters from a random history book. Then I took a shower, put on my pajamas, and passed out shortly after.

XxXxX

During the next week I tried to switch it up a bit to stave off my boredom. I thought that since I have a slightly better understanding of chakra now I could attempt to use a simple jutsu. An obvious choice would be to try an academy level one, so I chose to perform the Kawarimi no Jutsu.

"The body replacement technique should need more chakra than any leaf exercise. Hopefully that means I can master it right now."

I grabbed my notebook that 'I' used in school and flipped it open. It didn't take too much time to find the information on it since the original Naruto only wrote down notes pertaining to jutsu. Plenty of techniques were even written down with no information to describe what they did.

"His teachers might have talked about random techniques in passing. I'll try to look them up at a later time."

Eventually I found the three jutsu that I would need in order to pass the final exam. The writing was messy, but the wording looked to be from either a textbook or written during a lecture at the academy.

"The Kawarimi no Jutsu is an E-rank ninjutsu that all academy students need to learn before graduating. When you're in danger it essentially replaces your body with another object or clone of your choice. You can place explosive tags onto the replaced object to injure your opponent or even use it as a distraction to give a counterattack if you're fast enough. The hand seals are tiger, boar, ox, dog, and then snake.

If you don't use the correct amount of energy then you'll have slightly different results. If you use too little chakra nothing visible will occur. However, overloading the technique will get you nowhere as well. If you use too much chakra then you'll waste a lot of potential energy, you might emit a faint glow, and you'll still end up with an undesired result. Practice this technique repeatedly to get a feel for how much chakra you'll need to use it."

Under the description of the body replacement technique another jutsu was hastily scrawled. Naruto underlined, capitalized all of the letters, and circled it many times. "SHUNSHIN NO JUTSU" My eyes widened as I read the name of the technique.

"I didn't know that Naruto knew about this jutsu, let alone the name of it. Well at least he reminded me to specifically look this one up later. I always thought that it was a useful technique to learn."

I sat the notebook back on my bed and got up to grab my tissue box. It was placed about five feet away from me on the floor before I started practicing the hand seals. Once I thought that I got a feel for it I readied my stance and chakra.

"Tiger, boar, ox, dog, snake."

As I created the last hand sign I focused on switching with the box. I felt a burst of energy around me, but I was standing in the same place as before.

"Damn it. This is just like the first time I tried using chakra."

I looked down and saw a blue light glowing around my body.

"Yep. It's exactly like before."

I huffed in slight irritation, but continued on without pausing. I worked solely on that technique for a half hour before I realized something. Even if I was using the correct amount of chakra nothing would've happened. Because I wasn't in any danger.

The smallest rock I had was Steve, so I set him close by for my next attempt. Then I spent a few more minutes practicing the five seals in the hopes that I could avoid a few bruises in my near future. Eventually I picked up Steve, and hesitated for a moment before tossing him up above my head. I flew through the hand signs while looking up so I could activate it at the right time. When I saw my chance I took it, and followed through with my chakra right as it was about to hit me.

One second I was standing next to my bed, and the next thing I knew I was slammed into a wall. I fell backwards to the floor in pain and cradled my face in my hands. It felt like my nose took the brunt of the damage with my forehead coming in a close second. I carefully prodded both areas and sighed in relief. Nothing seemed broken at the very least.

I slowly got to my feet and took in where I wound up. I was a little over ten feet away from my supposed stopping point while my tissue box was sitting exactly where it should have landed. With my forced stop taken into account I was probably supposed to move even farther than I did. How much further, though, I couldn't say.

Undesired result. Those two damning words were going through my head on repeat. I frowned at the implications.

"They couldn't have been any more fucking clear in their explanation, huh? Jesus. If I knew that was gonna happen I would've practiced outside from the get-go."

I made a point of lightly kicking my tissue box before I put it away and headed to the bathroom. When I looked in the mirror I immediately noticed the two ugly bruises that dominated the top half of my face. Other than that there was a small amount of blood on the bridge of my nose which was easily cleaned off. There wasn't anything I could do for my bruises except apply ice for the swelling though, so I left the room to do just that.

Two ice packs were grabbed and placed over most of my face after I fell backwards onto my bed. I tensed at the slight pain that came with putting weight on the bruises until the cold seeped through my wash cloth to give me some relief. I closed my eyes to relax for the next few minutes and just thought about what went wrong.

I knew there was a strong possibility to fail today, but I didn't think my training could've gone badly enough that I would hurt myself. The reason why was simple really, and it all led back to me not having the control that it takes. Although it certainly didn't help that I wasn't practicing in a large enough area. I vowed to myself that I'd be more careful from now on.

After my second major disappointment of the month I wanted to get out of the house and cheer myself up. It didn't take too long to come up with a good idea. Ten minutes later found me walking down a street with my henge active while quietly singing 'For Reasons Unknown' under my breath. The words seemed oddly fitting for my situation.

Soon I found myself walking into the dango shop that I've quickly grown to like. I ordered five sticks this time now that I know just how delicious the sweets are. The dumplings were prepared almost immediately since the foot traffic was slower. After I picked up my order I looked for an empty table. Not much later I noticed a familiar looking woman sitting in the same spot as last time. Her purple hair and trench coat combo was pretty easy to spot.

I waved at her in greeting before sitting down across from her once more. "Hey, do you mind if I sit with you again?"

She looked up at me and shrugged. "No, kid. I don't mind." She finished chewing her food before setting her stick down on her plate and looking at me. "So what's your name kid? If we're gonna keep meeting like this I'm sure you don't want to be called Boyo or some other obviously shitty nickname."

"My name's Haru, but I don't care if you call me something else. As long as it's not insulting like Dumbfuck then we'll get along fine."

She let out a loud laugh at that. "I think I like you kiddo. The name's Anko, and don't forget it." She bit off a large chunk of dango before continuing. "So what's up? I just got done with a job and came here for a snack."

"I'm on my break from school so I haven't been doing much but trying to catch up before it starts again. I just finished trying to get the Kawarimi no Jutsu to work with a big emphasis on trying." I frowned at my current dilemma before taking a bite of my white dumpling.

She smirked at my admission before speaking again. "So you're an academy brat huh? That doesn't surprise me all that much."

I only raised my eyebrow and replied with, "And why is that?"

She let out a small laugh and said, "Well, it's kind of obvious. Most of the civilian brats go everywhere with their parents, and even if they don't, they act like the immature little hellions that they are. You behave like a mini adult and travel around alone from what I've seen so far."

I tilted my head in thought before nodding in affirmation. "That sounds about right." Anko smirked again and stood up from our table.

"Well I'm heading out for now. I practically live here, so you know where to find me." She gave a two-fingered salute as she walked away from me. A puff of smoke surrounded her once she stepped outside, and I saw that she left after the smoke cleared.

"I really need to learn that jutsu."

I tucked back into my food and finished my first three sticks. Then I took both of our plates to the counter and bagged up my last two so I could save them for later. As I left the restaurant it was with a small, but sincere smile. The day wasn't total shit after all.

XxXxX

AN: Fun fact: Hanami dango is usually prepared with a pink dumpling on the top, then white in the middle, and finally a green one on the bottom. I didn't notice that I wrote the order wrong the first time.

- I realize that for new readers it must have been frustrating to go from the remake of chapter 3 to the original chapter 4. Especially since the very first part of the OG chapter 4 contradicted what I've recently rewritten. Hopefully it looks better now that this is done.

- I'm laughing at the fact that there's an actual reason for Steve to exist in the story now. It just popped into my head really late at night, and it fit with the plot so I added it in.

- This chapter took quite a bit of time for me to rewrite since there was a lot more added content that stemmed from my edits on previous chapters. I hope you all like the finished product :)

- For Reasons Unknown is played by The Killers. Check it out if you haven't heard it yet :)

Edited: 10/1/19