"Aha! You just fell into my cunning trap!" Naruto proclaimed, lifting a captured shogi piece with a dramatic flourish. "Bid your knight farewell. He serves a darker power now."
"Um... actually, Naruto, I was rather hoping you'd do that..."
Naruto and Hinata were so engrossed in their latest game that they barely registered the door opening, or the doctor walking in, looking up only when the man gave a polite cough.
To Naruto's horror, it was the black-bearded man from before. To Naruto's even greater horror, Hinata looked up, exclaimed "Uncle Saburō!", and proceeded to run over and hug him with no regard for the very fundamental principles of public decency, or the fact that Naruto had been about to reveal his devastating counter-counter-trap which would shatter Hinata's offensive strategy to smithereens and usher in a thousand years of darkness.
"It's good to see you too, Lady Hinata," the man smiled. "I trust you are well?"
"Yes, thank you. And you?"
"I'm managing. Now if you don't mind, I need to speak to the young man in private."
Hinata nodded and abandoned Naruto to his fate.
"I see my first impression of you was correct," the doctor told Naruto as soon as Hinata closed the door. "Already peeping on girls in the public baths at your age? You truly are a criminal through and through."
"It was all a misunderstanding!" Naruto once again insisted. Well, it was. He'd been there on an intelligence-gathering mission, not because the sight of naked girls was somehow inherently worth the risk of grievous bodily harm.
"I see. And the fact that Lady Hinata happened to be there at the time was surely a complete coincidence."
"Absolutely," Naruto said in the most even voice he could muster. Despite his best efforts, he was unable to read the man, and had a horrible feeling he'd been drawn into a game for which he did not know the rules.
"I have been terribly remiss in my manners," the doctor said apropos of nothing. "My name is Kurogane Saburō. I am a senior physician here at the hospital. Normally, I invest some effort into getting to know people I expect to be frequent patients, but things have been very busy lately."
Frequent patients? Naruto felt he couldn't let a comment like that go by unquestioned, but Dr Kurogane moved on before he had a chance.
"Yes, very busy. Tell me, are you familiar with Spontaneous Chakra Combustion Disease?"
Naruto shook his head.
"Pray that you never have to be, young man. We're going to have to remodel an entire ward."
Naruto nodded mutely. He was trying hard not to imagine what Spontaneous Chakra Combustion Disease might be like, and failing miserably.
"But that's by the by. While we are building rapport, allow me to share some entirely unrelated items of trivia with you." Kurogane smiled at him in a fashion that should have been friendly but came off more like an alligator watching to see if its prey would shake off its fear paralysis and try to flee. "Did you know that, statistically speaking, a given shinobi will end up in our hospital at least three times a year? Of course, the rate is much higher for genin and other high-risk categories."
"No, I didn't," Naruto responded uneasily. The man seemed like an ordinary doctor, his manner calm and almost casual. Why did he feel like an invisible trap was slowly closing around him?
"Nothing more than an interesting statistic," Kurogane said. "Another curious fact of medicine is that doctors have notoriously bad handwriting—ironic given how essential precision is in our profession, wouldn't you say? Perhaps you have heard the urban legend of the doctor who, presumably while highly stressed, incorrectly recorded a shinobi's status with regard to anaesthesia and painkillers. He wrote proscribed rather than prescribed, a single letter's difference, but as a result the patient in question was forced to endure every single injury, disease and operation with full consciousness and sensation."
He paused to allow this idea to sink in.
"Some versions of the story say the patient went insane and took his own life, while others merely claim he retired from the ninja profession and lived out a more-or-less fulfilling life as a waste disposal technician."
"I—I see," Naruto said, endeavouring to keep his voice steady. He'd never before had cause to so intensely regret the power of his imagination. If he'd had to endure the past week without any painkillers…
"But as I say, that's nothing but a myth. After all, no records remain of any such incident.
"Now, for a third piece of trivia, allow me to tell you a random fact about myself."
Dr Kurogane gave a pleasant smile.
"Some years ago, I served as an assistant to the Hyūga Clan's private physician, a role which caused me to spend a great deal of time at the Hyūga compound, and to get to know its inhabitants. You could say I've watched Lady Hinata grow up ever since she was a little girl. And embarrassing though it is to admit, the thought of her coming to any sort of harm, or being mistreated in any way, causes me to feel very stressed indeed, to the point where my hands start to tremble in the middle of my work."
Dr Kurogane looked down at Naruto. "I hope you feel a stronger bond between us after this little talk. I understand my bedside manner may be considered a little... unconventional, but I've never had any complaints."
Naruto could do nothing but nod.
There was a shift in the doctor's body language, subtle enough that even a ninja might have missed it, but it instantly transformed the man from a dangerous enigma into a trustworthy authority figure (insofar as that wasn't an oxymoron).
"On an entirely unrelated note," Dr Kurogane said lightly, "I am pleased—and, I will be honest, somewhat shocked—to inform you that you have been cleared to leave the hospital as early as tomorrow. Congratulations on having the most powerful regenerative ability I've ever seen outside of a Bloodline Limit. Since you are in a fit state to resume ninja missions, your captain has, of course, already been informed."
Dr Kurogane inclined his head in farewell and walked out of the room before Naruto could recover his power of speech.
-o-
"Naruto, are you OK?" Hinata eyed him with concern.
"Yeah, I'm fine," Naruto said with his best casual smile. Apparently, he was now officially one slip-up away from being erased by the ever-growing Hinata Protection Squad, but he suspected that telling her this would be a bad move.
"Uncle Saburō didn't have bad news, did he?"
"No, no, not at all. Actually, he said I was free to go tomorrow."
Hinata beamed. "Really? That's wonderful!"
Then she frowned. "But... didn't Sakura and Ino break most of the bones in your body? I saw one of the charts the nurses were carrying, with a list of fractures, and they had three extra sheets attached with a paperclip. I thought you'd be here for months."
Naruto gave exactly the kind of shrug somebody would give when a topic of conversation was trivial and unworthy of further attention (AKA the "No, there's no reason I'm carrying a bucket of fluorescent pink paint" shrug).
"I heal fast. It's a thing that happens sometimes with rare types of chakra."
This was technically true. After noticing how incredibly fast he healed, Naruto had done some research, sneaking into public libraries and on one memorable occasion an unexpectedly well-guarded hospital. For a while, he even thought he'd found his father—some guy named Yakushi who was on record as having incredible regenerative powers since childhood—but Naruto doubted he'd been fathered by a seven-year old.
In any case, none of the descriptions of chakra-based regeneration quite matched up with the way his body healed. Since the only unique thing about his physiology was the Demon Fox, he concluded that it was probably in some way responsible, using its inhuman powers of chakra control to keep its home in good repair. This was not a theory he intended to share with Hinata or anyone else.
But Hinata didn't look convinced, so Naruto cast about for an excuse to change the subject.
"Hey, I know! Since I'm getting out of here tomorrow, how about I take you out for a meal tomorrow night to say thanks for coming to visit me every day?"
Hinata froze. "Me? For a meal?"
"Yeah. I know this great ramen place, and they even give me a discount for being a regular. You'll love it."
"You mean... just the two of us? Going for dinner?" Hinata asked as if making sure she hadn't misheard.
"Well, yeah. I mean, we can invite some of the others along if you like, but I was thinking—"
"No!" Hinata interrupted with the urgency of a tranquiliser dart striking a tiger in mid-pounce. "I mean... that's OK. I'd like to... go for dinner with just you."
"Great. Now I believe we had a game of shogi to finish."
"Y-Yes, we did, didn't we? I, um, suddenly remembered a thing I need to do. Excuse me!"
"But we still haven't—"
There was the dull thud of a closing door.
"—decided where and when to meet!"
-o-
It was a beautiful morning. The sun was shining, birds were singing, somewhere in the distance an irate old man was yelling at some kids for using his garden fence for shuriken practice, and even being intercepted by the rest of Team Seven before he could go home and finally have a meal that wasn't hospital food couldn't dispel Naruto's good mood.
"Hey, guys. What are you all doing here?"
"We have good news for you, Naruto," Kakashi-sensei said. "After Sasuke heard you were cleared to resume doing missions today, he managed to wrangle a C-rank mission out of the Hokage to celebrate."
"That's not what happened!" Sasuke immediately interjected. "I was just getting bored of D-rank missions, and I figured since Mummy Man here was getting his bandages removed, we'd finally have the numbers to do something more interesting."
"A C-rank?" Naruto's eyes shone. "You mean something with real challenge? And real pay?"
"That's right," Kakashi-sensei nodded. "Drop by your house to pick up your gear, then meet us and the client at the main gate. We set off in an hour."
"An hour?! What, don't I get any time to recover?"
"I'm afraid not. This mission is time-sensitive. We do it now, or we hand it over to another team and go back to D-rank work for a while. But don't worry—your doctor said that, in his professional opinion, your odds of mission survival are as good as the next man's."
Naruto fervently hoped that said next man hadn't been one of the victims of Spontaneous Chakra Combustion Disease. Still, he did feel pretty good, especially for someone who'd apparently done months' worth of healing in little over a week. He ran home at top speed, revelling in his regained mobility.
He'd have to ask Hinata to reschedule, of course. But he didn't want to have a shadow clone running around Leaf with half his chakra for however long it took to find her—not when there was an extra-challenging new mission about to begin—so he settled for writing her a sealed note to be handed over to the first Team Eight member the clone found. It was the most straightforward solution and, after all, what could possibly go wrong?
-o-
"So what's the mission?" Naruto asked Kakashi-sensei, looking around the gate area but seeing nothing except a pair of luckless chūnin stuck on guard duty, a farmer wrestling with an apathetic donkey hitched to a cart, and a drunken homeless man with a ridiculous hat sitting in the shade of the gate—in other words, nothing that resembled a client.
"Escort and protection," Kakashi-sensei replied. "We're to escort the engineer Tazuna back to the Country of the Wave, and then stand guard against bandits and the like while his team finishes building a bridge. It seems they've been having a lot of trouble with banditry—I don't even know when I last heard of any traders coming out of Wave.
"This will be your first time leaving the Fire Country," he added, "but don't worry. You shouldn't expect to face anything beyond your abilities. A well-trained genin is easily worth a dozen bandits."
"So Naruto here must be worth at least two, then," Sasuke commented.
"Might not matter," Naruto struck back. "If it comes to a fight, I might face off with you instead. Bandits are all supposed to be butt-ugly and fight like they're blind drunk, so how am I supposed to tell the difference?"
His Wrath-of-Sakura sense suddenly tingling, he quickly looked for a way to divert her attention. "So, Kakashi-sensei, where is this Tazuna, anyway?"
The stratagem worked. "Oh, yeah," Sakura asked, "where is he? Don't tell me he comes from the Hatake School of Punctuality."
Kakashi-sensei pointed to the drunken homeless-looking man. "That would be him. Remember, he's paying our fees, so treat him with respect."
Tazuna staggered into an upright position, a gourd of saké in one hand. "What? You're finally here? Great. So where's your ninja team?"
Kakashi-sensei bowed his head respectfully. "This is it." He pointed to each member in turn. "Meet Sakura, Sasuke and Naruto. They are extremely capable ninja with the finest combat training."
Tazuna choked on his drink.
"Excuse me? This little bunch of runts is going to be all that stands between me and certain death? How about I cancel this mission right now and go take my business to Hidden Mist?"
In a flash, Sasuke was behind him, a kunai at his throat. "You would be wise not to underestimate us, old man."
Kakashi-sensei's hand twitched in what looked like a suppressed facepalm. "Sasuke, don't antagonise the client. Master Tazuna, please don't make assumptions based on their age."
Sasuke reluctantly withdrew the kunai and returned to the rest of the team.
"Our genin are as strong as those of any other village, and more than sufficient for your needs. I assure you that you won't get any higher ranks of ninja for the fees you're willing to pay."
Tazuna seemed mollified. "All right. Guess I'll just have to make the best of it. Let's go, runts."
-o-
A good start, Naruto decided, would be to pump the client for information—and get all the mission info he'd missed out on straight from the horse's mouth.
"Hey, old man. What's up with this bridge you're building? Why would bandits care about some piddly little bridge?"
"You bite your tongue, runt!" Tazuna glared at him. "My bridge is going to be a miracle of engineering that revitalises the Wave economy in ways you can't imagine! It'll be the end of Ga—of the bandits' domination of our country's trade routes. It'll single-handedly put the Country of the Wave back on the map!"
"What's so awesome about Wave, then?" Naruto innocently asked.
"Hah!" Tazuna barked. "What's so awesome about Wave, he says. In the old days, our fish went to the table of every nobleman on the continent. Your Fire Country nobles would pay a mint for top-quality saltwater fish—I guess living in the middle of a forest all your life will do that to you. And the rest! Pearls the size of your fist! And in your case, probably your brain, too!"
Naruto gave Tazuna his best death stare, but did not interrupt.
"Rare wood the likes of which you can't get anywhere on the mainland! And the landscapes! We could've bought your little village ten times over with the annual income from the tourist industry alone!"
"So what happened?"
Tazuna deflated all at once. "Bandits happened. They cut off all our shipping routes to the mainland, demanded tribute, and drained the country dry. We had to work miracles to let me make my escape."
He took a big swig from his gourd. "But once the bridge is complete, none of that will matter anymore. We'll make that bas—those bastards pay."
Sakura and Sasuke—also assigned to stay close to the client while Kakashi-sensei scouted ahead—were now listening as well. Sasuke had drawn a kunai, and was playing with it idly as they walked.
"Why won't it matter?" Sasuke asked. "What's to stop the bandits from just seizing the bridge once we leave?"
"Me," Tazuna thrust his chest out proudly. "I haven't just been hiring the world's most overpriced bodyguards. I've been securing preliminary deals with merchants and mercenaries left, right and centre. The second that bridge is up, the cargo starts moving—everything the bandits haven't managed to steal has been saved up for that day. And once the first payment gets in, we'll be able to hire enough mercenaries to tide us over until Wave can afford to train and equip its own standing army. Once that's done, no scumbag's ever going to take over my home again!"
"Rebuilding and revenge. I like it." Sasuke, at the front of the party, flipped the kunai in mid-air a few times, then spun it high over his head and turned towards the others, his back to the road, to catch it. As it fell, he put his hands out in front of his chest, and quickly made the hand signals for Don't react, Ambush ahead and Water before grabbing it out of the air. He turned back around as if nothing had happened.
"Show-off," Naruto said. "Anyone can juggle kunai like that. Check this out." He got out his own kunai and started to imitate Sasuke, trying to look like a carefree genin out on his first mission and oblivious to the possibility of danger. At the same time, he scoped out the area. Kakashi-sensei was nowhere to be seen, having gone on ahead to scout. That limited the possibilities to three: either he'd missed the ambush, or he'd left it for them deliberately, as combat practice or as a test, or it had been set up after he passed. And if he hadn't left it deliberately, that would mean they were dealing with an enemy smart enough to ignore the jōnin and wait for the more vulnerable targets—or worse, an enemy sneaky enough to bypass him altogether and then prepare an ambush.
So where were they? "Water"? There were two puddles in the middle of the road up ahead, which was a little odd since the rest of the area so far had been completely dry. Thanks to the lack of windows in his hospital room, he had no idea about recent weather, but he certainly couldn't remember anyone wearing raincoats or carrying umbrellas when visiting him. Besides, he couldn't see anything else out of place, and he didn't think Sasuke could be that much more observant than him.
By this point, Sakura had also taken out her kunai, and was attempting to spin it in her hand nonchalantly. The team was now armed and ready. While Tazuna unsurprisingly had no clue what was going on, he seemed to have got the general idea of behaving naturally while gradually moving behind Sakura (who was in turn behind Naruto and Sasuke).
"I bet you can't keep up with this, Naruto!" Sasuke shouted, throwing two kunai up in the air while drawing a third. The kunai traced a high arc before each came down in the middle of a puddle.
Clang!
A clawed gauntlet shot up from each puddle, knocking the kunai away.
Two ninja in sinister, ragged black outfits, with headbands bearing a crossed-out Mist symbol, rose from the rippling surface of the water. Their stance was low, leaning forward, ready to spring at the target while exposing a minimal surface area to attack, and stretched between them, connecting one's right-arm gauntlet to the other's left, was a rapidly vibrating chain covered with razor-sharp blades.
Naruto went cold. It wasn't just that the attackers were ninja rather than mere bandits, or that the scratch marks across their headbands marked them as missing-nin who had abandoned their villages out of treachery or to escape punishment for some terrible crime. It wasn't even that their body language suggested extensive combat experience—more like chūnin than genin. It was the fact that the peculiar weapon they wielded spoke volumes about their ability. Whip- and chain-type ninja tools, never mind vibrating, bladed ones, were rare because they made it so easy to hurt oneself far more than the enemy. Only the most skilled fighters could wield them safely—and conversely, their rarity meant that there was hardly any training on how to combat them.
Naruto had very little time to think. The flexible, extendable chain would double for both attack and defence. It would be most effective against a flanked enemy, and conversely let them perfectly protect each other's flanks. They would have to be skilled taijutsu users, in which case the kunai in their off-hands could comfortably protect the outer sides of the formation. They'd aim for the neck, severing the head quickly and moving on to the next target while maintaining momentum—getting the chain stuck in the torso would leave them too vulnerable, and they'd want to stay on the offensive because the chain made a cumbersome blocking tool if their enemies got a chance to counter.
His team was nowhere near equipped to fight these guys toe-to-toe. That meant he only had one chance to get things right, and it would take flawless tactics calculated to within a tiny fraction of a second.
Naruto charged the enemy ninja, waving his kunai wildly and screaming an incoherent battle cry.
They sprang into motion. They were as good as he'd expected—they must have been using some kind of chakra ability, because they were literally flying forwards, their feet staying in the air as if they'd pushed off the ground harder than physically possible. With the chain stretched out, they left Naruto and Sasuke with an impossible choice: take the attack head-on, instantly sealing their fates, or dive to the side, leaving a clear path to Sakura and Tazuna.
Naruto took a third option: he slipped in mid-charge.
Sliding forwards, screaming helplessly, his body nearly horizontal and his arms stretched out behind him, he watched the chain pass above him—and grabbed onto the left ninja's boot as it sailed over his head.
The enemy was no fool, and as soon as he felt himself losing balance, he made a subtle movement with his armoured hand. The chain disconnected from his arm, making sure he didn't pass on the shift in momentum to his partner. The other ninja immediately copied him and the now-useless chain fell away.
However, Sasuke had started moving as soon as Naruto began to fall. He ran past the ninja on the right, taking advantage of the man's suddenly unprotected left flank, with a kunai in a reverse grip in his right hand. With all the speed from both sides, a single slash was enough to open up the man's abdomen.
Sasuke spun around as he passed his target, and smoothly thrust the bloody kunai at the neck of the other ninja as the man was about to spring up from his fall. He stopped it just short of piercing the skin, and the enemy held still in an acknowledgement of surrender.
But as the right-hand ninja fell, he had the presence of mind for one last kunai throw, going straight for Tazuna—
Only to be deflected by a kunai in Tazuna's hand. There was a popping noise, and Tazuna vanished. Kakashi-sensei stood in his place, (probably) smiling.
"Good job, Team Seven. Secure the prisoner while I go get Tazuna from the bushes I Substituted him into. I think we need to have some serious words with our client."
The whole battle had taken perhaps five seconds.
-o-
It was evening, and Takeda's Wayside Inn was host to the most quarrelsome party it had ever seen. A pink-haired girl was accusing a blond boy of "victory by epic pratfall" and calling him the worst excuse for a ninja that had ever lived. A black-haired boy was accusing a white-haired man of putting lives in danger with absurd tests. The white-haired man was ignoring him and accusing a drunken old man of withholding vital information and attempting to cheat the Village Hidden in the Leaves. And no one was sure what the tied and gagged black-haired man was accusing them all of, but his muffled imprecations were certainly very passionate.
Eventually, things simmered down.
"I'm sorry, Tazuna," Kakashi-sensei said, "but if this Gatō is wealthy enough to hire the Demon Brothers to assassinate you, and you think he has the budget for jōnin as well, then that pushes this into a high B-rank mission, maybe even an A. If you can't pay, we can't work."
"You're sending me to my death. You do know that?" Tazuna scowled.
"I am well aware," Kakashi-sensei replied coolly. "I take no pleasure in it. But if we allow our village to be cheated even once, we're threatening the very lifeblood on which its survival depends. You should consider yourself fortunate that we're not seeking retribution for the danger in which you put my team with your lies."
Naruto knew everything Kakashi-sensei was saying was true. At the same time, he didn't want his long-awaited first C-rank mission to end so soon, and while there was nothing about the cantankerous old man that made Naruto desperate to risk his life for him, the idea of walking away and letting him die, just like that, left a bitter taste in his mouth.
There was a solution, he realised, one which it had been strange for Tazuna to overlook. "Kakashi-sensei's right. If you'd cheat us, I bet you'd cheat all those people you promised trading discounts or whatever instead of money too."
"Hey, you keep your damn mouth—wait a second!" Tazuna's face lit up. "That's it! I know I can't pay you for this mission rank, but I am permitted to offer preferential trading terms. Once the bridge is up, Wave is going to rock the international markets. You could make this mission's costs back a thousandfold!"
Kakashi-sensei gave this due consideration. "I'm not authorised to make that call. But I can send a messenger back to the Hokage and get an official judgment. Write out your initial offer, and I suggest you make it generous since you started out by dealing in bad faith."
"Kakashi-sensei," Sasuke said, "how do we know we can trust them? They can easily promise us the moon now, and then betray us once they've got their bridge and their wealth."
"Actually, they can't," Kakashi-sensei explained. "They're effectively going to be a new player on the international market. No one will know them, at least in their new incarnation. They'll need to build their reputation from zero as a trustworthy partner in order to succeed. One word from an established player like Leaf accusing them of reneging on a deal, and they'll find themselves a pariah. No one will want to risk dealing with them, and their economy will crumble as surely as if Gatō was still in control."
-o-
After Tazuna finished writing out a scroll of incomprehensible business-legalese, and Kakashi-sensei dispatched a small dog (which he claimed was a highly-trained ninja summon beast) to carry it back to Leaf along with a request for pickup of the missing-nin prisoner, Naruto took the opportunity to go to Kakashi-sensei's room and ask a question that had been bugging him. A question he'd been ridiculously, unspeakably stupid not to ask straight away.
"Say, Kakashi-sensei, how come the Shadow Clone Technique is a forbidden technique, anyway?"
Kakashi put away his book and turned to face him. "It isn't. Only the Multiple Shadow Clone Technique is forbidden. As for why... hmm, this will take a bit of explaining."
"Please."
"All right. Do you know how shadow clones are different to normal clones?"
Naruto scrunched up his face as if in intense thought.
"Normal clones pop when you touch them, while shadow clones pop only when they take a solid hit. Normal clones only do what you... uhh... pro-gram them to do when you make them, while shadow clones think for themselves. And normal clones only take the chakra you put in them when you use the technique, while shadow clones take an equal share of all your chakra. Is that right?"
Kakashi-sensei (probably) smiled. "Very good. But there's one more vital difference. When a shadow clone pops, what happens to its chakra?"
"I get it back." Which was weird when you thought about it, for all sorts of reasons. "Or if I have more shadow clones, it gets shared out between all of us."
"Exactly. I see you've really been paying attention."
Naruto mentally kicked himself. He urgently needed to dumb down before Kakashi-sensei got suspicious, but at the same time he needed to get his answers.
"So," Kakashi-sensei continued, "the thing about shadow clones is that it's not just chakra that gets sent back. It's experience too. When one pops, you get some of its pain—as you've learned all too well—but also everything it experienced during its existence. Its memories become your memories."
Naruto tried to keep a neutral expression on his face. That fit with his observations, but also left him unable to answer the two obvious questions it would imply: why didn't everyone learn the Shadow Clone Technique as soon as they could? And why didn't ninja rule the entire known world?
The hard part would be to ask Kakashi-sensei without further inflaming his suspicions.
"You get its memories? You mean I could've had a clone sit in class at the Academy and do all my learning for me while I went outside and had fun?"
"The Shadow Clone Technique is supposed to be far above genin level, so an Academy trainee wouldn't know it, but in theory, yes."
"So then I could've had a bunch of clones taking all the different classes at once, and graduate before everyone else? Without ever having to go to the Academy at all?"
Kakashi-sensei looked at him closely. "That is where things get tricky. You know how subjects you're familiar with are much easier to study than new ones? Say, how you'd find it much easier to read a book about shuriken than a book about the history of the Warring Clans period?"
"Yeah, I think so. Except books are boring, so I wouldn't read them in the first place." That was it. A few more openings like that, and Naruto would soon make up for lost ground.
Kakashi-sensei didn't dignify this with a comment. "The reason is that when you learn new things, your brain needs time and energy to process them. And the more unfamiliar the new information, the more time and energy you need."
Naruto nodded. This made sense.
"Now... what happens when you send one of your shadow clones to read a book about taijutsu, and another to read a book about medicine, and a dozen others to read other books, and then dispel them?"
"Your brain will have to work really, really hard to deal with all that knowledge at once?"
"Yes. This is less of an issue in combat, because all your clones will be having similar experiences, both to each other and to what you already know. It can also be safe in training, if every clone is doing the same sort of thing. But unless you're very careful, there are plenty of circumstances where the information overload from dispelling a lot of clones at once can knock you out, or even put you in a coma. That's why ninja don't just send their shadow clones to the library and become instant experts in everything."
"Oh. So the Multiple Shadow Clone Technique is forbidden because... um..."
Kakashi-sensei sat there and waited patiently. It was surprising how good his explanations were, Naruto reflected. Typically, the more talented the teacher, the more they expected you to grasp things instantly the way they did—which was fine for Naruto, who reckoned himself more gifted than any ninja who would settle for a teaching job, but a source of agony for his idiot persona.
But Kakashi-sensei had given him the information, clearly and concisely, and now he was giving him the time to work through it. The man had failed every potential team he'd ever tested, and had doubtless expected to keep failing them until the end of time. Why would he have made the effort to learn how to teach?
That was probably enough thinking time. There was an art to coming across as slow, but no so slow as to be unfit for duty.
"...because the more clones you have, the easier it is to push your brain too far?"
"Exactly. Never forget this. If I'd known this warning wasn't in the original scroll, I would have told you much sooner," Kakashi-sensei stated seriously.
Naruto shivered. He'd come so close to destroying himself with his own gift for optimisation.
"Does this mean I should never teach it to anyone?"
"The short answer is 'yes'," Kakashi-sensei replied. "The long answer is that we have plenty of time on this trip, so I can go through what you know and figure out the differences between it and my own—normal—Shadow Clone Technique. Once I do that, I can tell you which parts you can teach and which parts you should keep to yourself. I can also tell you the common sense rules for teaching it. For example, you never teach a true clone technique to people with certain psychological problems."
"What do you mean?" Naruto had a sudden sense that he was treading on forbidden territory and should back away while it was still safe. But he needed to know.
"Unlike normal clones, which are mindless constructs run by basic artificial intelligence—what we call clone AI for short—shadow clones have minds which are copies of your own mind. They want what you want. What happens if you want to hurt yourself?"
Naruto thought about this. "That's... horrible."
It belatedly occurred to him that the more believable response for a perpetually cheerful boy like him was probably "Why would someone want to hurt themselves?", but Kakashi-sensei didn't seem to notice.
"It's happened," Kakashi-sensei went on. "Normally, by the time you learn the Shadow Clone Technique, you are a jōnin, with the experience to know who can and can't be taught. You, Naruto, will have to show just as much discretion."
Naruto felt a chill run through him. He'd wanted to teach it to Hinata to help her training, but now...
"That's enough of that for the time being," Kakashi-sensei (probably) smiled. "You need to know how to mute the pain from damage to your shadow clones. The training has two steps."
"What are those?"
"Step One: Learn a basic mental technique and practise it until you can do it reflexively."
"That doesn't sound so bad. I have amazing reflexes!" Naruto made an exaggerated fake taijutsu move. Messing with Kakashi-sensei aside, his mental reflexes were worthy of Uzumaki Naruto himself—you didn't spend a lifetime deceiving every single person around you without learning to give the right responses instantly and without thinking.
"Now, for Step Two..." Kakashi-sensei paused. There was a worrying glint in his eye.
He raised his voice. "Sakura, can you come in here?"
Sakura's room was next door (with Naruto and Sasuke sharing the next one down, despite vocal complaints), so they didn't have long to wait.
"What is it, Kakashi-sensei?"
"Sakura, I need you to help Naruto with his training."
Sakura shuddered. "I'm not going to have to try to tutor him, am I?"
Kakashi-sensei was unfazed. "Naruto is going to make perfect copies of himself, and I need you to destroy them as painfully as possible."
"Kakashi-sensei, you're the best teacher ever!" Sakura was suddenly giddy with excitement.
"Uh, are you absolutely sure this is the only way?" Naruto quickly asked, turning from her to Kakashi-sensei, his voice about an octave above normal.
Naruto felt Sakura put her hand on his shoulder. He turned back around to see that sweet, innocent look on her face which he'd come to dread above all others.
"Don't worry, Naruto... I'll be gentle."
-o-
Kakashi considered Naruto's night-time training an unmitigated success. After only a single night, the boy had become able to endure a clone being destroyed with One Thousand Years of Death, the most terrifying taijutsu technique of its kind, with nothing more than a disturbed shudder. He also flinched whenever Sakura brought out her bottle of nail polish remover (which she periodically did, with a smile, even though she wasn't wearing any nail polish). Now Kakashi thought about it, Ibiki was always looking for new apprentices.
The downside was that Naruto's coping mechanisms were making this a very long morning. Given that he was staying well away from both Kakashi and Sakura, and Tazuna was distracted by complex financial calculations in his head, that left Sasuke as Naruto's only viable target. Sasuke, who apparently had his own bone to pick with Naruto, was giving as good as he got, leaving Kakashi to suffer through a stereo squabble that had over the past few hours gone from secretly amusing to tiresome to making him wonder whether the Hokage would accept gags as improvised training tools.
"I swear, Naruto, if you keep going on about your manga, I'm going to take this kunai and shove it right up—"
"Enough chatter, you two," Kakashi snapped. "Stay alert. I don't like this mist."
It was an understatement. The team were walking through a clearing next to a small lake, and while one minute the air was perfectly clear, in the next a heavy mist had settled over every last inch of the area. Not long after Kakashi's rebuke, it became so thick the group could barely see each other.
It was easy to be paranoid in this sort of environment, and everyone had kunai out within seconds.
"Get in formation," Kakashi ordered. "These conditions are perfect for an am—"
Suddenly, there was an odd sort of choked gurgling noise from Tazuna's direction. Kakashi couldn't see him, but the sound told him everything he needed to know.
It was the sound of a thrown kunai piercing a throat.