Youkou Shukuen: Crimson Destiny

Disclaimer: Naruto is a product of Masashi Kishimoto, so I don't own him. Legend: "": quote, "italic": thought, italic: Japanese word, (): translation/explication, underline: techniques (check the end for invented techniques).

Chapter 2: Knowledge

The sun was already up when Naruto woke up. Kyuubi's jutsu had given him the best night of sleep he had in the week. However, he still did not appreciate being put to sleep so easily, although he had to admit the damn fox had nice arsenal of jutsus. A set of arsenals that he could have one day if he worked hard, this was his first realization of the benefit of having such a powerful ally. Ever since he learned who he was he took the beast more then a curse then a salvation. After all the deal was fair enough, the fox had nothing to gain compared to him. Besides, Kyuubi was probably the only one who could help him against his own rage emotions. He admitted Kyuubi Naruto was a great help but sometimes the loss of control he had to give up for that assistance was dangerous, especially that second form against Sasuke. He barely managed to stop himself from killing the Uchiha. Decided about his future resolution he began to prepare himself for the meeting.

His day however did not start as quietly as he wished. He first had to get trough the morning shift nurse, Kaori, who was shocked to see the boy fully recovered. It was something she had not expected till she remembered who he was. It took a lot of convincing from his part to be allowed to leave. She had told him that she was not allowed to grant his request unless it came from the higher ups to which he showed her Jiraiya's permission letter. She was finally defeated, but even then she asked him to leave an accurate description of the location he was headed so she could present it in case either of the Sannin was looking for him. Naruto knew about this and had already prepared the letter, which he handed to her. Satisfied Kaori finally allowed him to exit, which he did as quietly as possible.

He still had to go trough another checkpoint before allowed to the waterfalls, the eastern village gates. The guards gave him their usual suspicious and distasteful look and took notice of the items he was carrying in his bag. After the brief checkup he was allowed to proceed while being strongly reminded the consequences that awaited him if he dared to cross the main village gates located after the great forest that surrounded the village. It was one of the restrictions imposed by both Tsunade and Jiraiya. Arriving at the hill, he only found the fox's nest and decided to wait for him there. The area around was a natural training field, secluded and near the waterfalls, which was close to the village. The best part, it was not an official training ground so he was certain he would not be disturbed.

While he was too busy contemplating about his training a shadowy figure landed near him. Taken by surprise his instinct acted on his behalf forcing him to distance himself from the treat while taking a defensive stance, only to find Kyuubi in his hidden form mocking him.

"You seriously have the worst sensing skills in the whole village, even with your added sixth sense. You need a lot of work to use it to your advantage though, your body is not supposed to react faster then your mind. I guess that will be amongst our first missions: improving your senses", mocked the fox.

The boy gave him the confused look. Trying to understand what the fox meant.

"You really are dense you know that? It's an added sense that alerts you in case of sudden danger. Most fox and even some other animals have it. You got it from me, when you master it you will be able to avoid in coming dangers at a faster rate then normal humans", explained the fox.

"Oh like a early warning system? Cool, although why did it pull me away when you are not a danger?" asked the boy.

"Because you suck at sensing, you could not tell your body who I was, so it took the best precaution possible given the information your other five senses gave it. It is up to you to find the danger. They all work together as a unit. You were never trained on your senses were you? Did no one ever teach you that power or jutsu means nothing if you cannot sense your opponent or the danger that await you?" asked the fox shaking his head.

"Well yeah I was told that but we really did not receive many training on that, well I was mostly in detention during those exercises. I do not mind training in it if you have an exercise for it, but just to let you know my main goal from this cooperation is to learn more jutsus and not to lose myself to my alter-ego", said the boy quietly.

"You don't have an alter-ego, the Kyuubi Naruto is your true form. You lose control because you are weak and you put yourself into insecure situations thus forcing your instinct to takeover you. Once you have improved your senses, agility and abilities that will no longer happen. Like most humans you rely too much on your eyes and unlike some bloodline families of your village that have special eyes that allows them to be better without having all five sense working efficiently, you don't even have that. You will need to improve all five of them to their peek efficiency only then will be a better shinobi", replied the fox.

"So wait those feral looks is the real me? Okay I can accept the first version but there is no way that for legged version that looks like you is I. I refuse to accept such fate", yelled the boy.

"That was me, accommodating your body into my preference to help you. You don't have to worry about that one. You shouldn't look that much feral either you can change your appearance to accommodate a suitable look. We have bigger problems to workout then your make-ups. You are physically weak, we need to improve your agility, improve your chakra control and get you used to basic jutsus and mastering the ones you already know. After that we can work on your facial, by that time you would even be able to those sharp claws of yours. The only thing unchangeable is your eye that is a trait that will remain. I guess if you want you can consider it like a bloodline", said the fox.

"Ah why is that? I don't see how those would help much anyway, it's not like I have enhanced visions or something", asked the boy.

"You need them for genjutsus. It is true that it is not your field but you will still have some and the best way to cast genjutsu is to make your victim concentrate on a specific location so you can catch them easily. The red eyes will force them to concentrate there because it is human nature to look at what they consider abnormal", replied the fox with a smirk.

"Ah, now I understand how you put that genjutsu on me yesterday now. Speaking of which, you better teach me that jutsu. I believe it will very effective for stealth missions", replied the boy.

"All in due time young one, at the moment you would cause more trouble then simply putting someone to sleep. It is a very hard one, especially considering that if you mess up the process you can put someone to eternal slumber without realizing. I am sure however that you will now be a good student, you have a pretty good mind, just that you start slowly, oh well I rather have a slow starter then a slow learner. Hope you are ready for my lessons I am a hard trainer and I don't accept failure lightly. Let's get our training started", replied the fox with an evil grin.

"Wait, I wish to know how will we be improving my ninjutsu and taijutsu. Genjutsu is cool and all but it's not my field. Also why are you hiding in this form, I thought you would have transformed by now", asked the boy.

"Because, I cannot transform into my full form in this world unless summoned. The best I can do is to show my nine tails, but that does not mean I am any weak, simply not so intimidating. At a later time I will let you sign the contract of the foxes, which will allow you to summon my disciples. You will be able to summon me also but I do not think I will be needed unless it's a real big treat, they should be good enough, plus you got those toads under you too so I am not really needed to be summoned. I will also teach you some of my jutsus too, which are mostly fire, wind and light elemental, well those that you can handle. However, that being said I expect Jiraiya to teach you more about ninjutsus while I handle your taijutsus and physical training", added the fox.

"I wonder how much he will teach me though. That pervert is more interested in peeping then helping on teaching me jutsus or assisting when I need help. I cannot believe I accepted to spend the next two and half years", said Naruto in an annoying voice.

"You do not have to worry about the assistance, I will be there for that. Besides the less attention he pays to your training the more I can invest to teach you some of mine too, without arising much suspicion. Speaking of jutsus how many D rank jutsus do you really know?" asked Kyuubi.

"Why are we talking about D rank jutsu? I am used to B rank and A rank jutsus, you know the powerful ones", said the boy proudly only to get a smack on the head from the fox.

"Dumb boy, didn't anyone teach you jutsus are not ranked by power but rather the degree of difficulty to perform it. Didn't your teachers taught you that all jutsus are powerful depending the users stamina and how much chakra they input into the jutsu?" asked the fox.

"Nope, well maybe at the academy, but I never paid enough attention to my courses. I did not learn much from my first two teachers. With Iruka-sensei it was always shinobi history basic ninjutsu and taijutsu training. His stories used to be so boring that I used to make me sleepy. All I learned there were bunshin (clone), henge (transformation) and kawarimi (body switching) and out of the three only kawarimi was interesting. The rest of the kids had the advantages of learning their family specialties while me… you know my story. When I became genin I got access to D rank jutsus. I was neither rich nor would anyone borrow me some, so I only managed to buy myself one jutsu, shunshin (body flicker). I did learn the jutsu but I still could not find a good use for it during battles. Oh yeah, Sasuke had also passed me his kage shuriken (shadow shuriken) scroll which I also learned, but still it's not that great of a jutsu. Learning tajuu kage bunshin (multiple shadow clone) was the best thing that happened to me at that time and became the basis of my attacks. As for Kakashi-sensei, the only thing he taught me was how to ass poke an opponent and yeah how to climb trees. He was mostly busy with Sasuke anyway. Eros-sennin was the only one that taught me two strong jutsus to grow my jutsu arsenal, with the addition of kuchiyose (summoning) and rasengan (spiral sphere). Why are you giving me that annoying face?" asked Naruto seeing that Kyuubi wasn't paying attention to him words.

"You know you could have only said that you forgot about it, instead of giving me a lecture of your whole life, it's not like I did not witnessed it. Anyway, now you know, next time, do not consider any jutsu weak or you might pay it with your own blood. Man looks like I will have to go from the basics with you. So I guess that means we will start with advanced sense improvement workouts, then concentration training, followed by taijutsu training and then you ninjutsu training", said the fox.

"Cool, so what kind of techniques will I learn?" asked the excited boy.

"First, you will master the ones you currently possess before learning anything else. That means your rasengan needs to be perfected followed by your kuchiyose. Then will be looking in the shunshin deeply for practical in battle use and then kage shuriken. Tomorrow you will go and buy two more D-rank jutsus, which I think will suit you fine: doton shinjuu zanshuu (earth element inner decapitation) and kanashibari (body paralysis). You will also buy advanced kempo and aikido scrolls that will give you a better base for taijutsu", added the fox.

"How will those two jutsus help me? I am not rich you know, so my expenditure is limited. Man I have to learn kempo and aikido, how will I ever learn all this? On top of this that damn Eros-sennin is going to teach me even more things. Talk about all the pressures of the world at the same time", said the worried boy.

"They will help you better use your kage bunshin. These jutsus are mainly used to trap or hold down the opponent. With their combinations and tactics you can successfully freeze your opponent and the put the battle in your favor. They should be thought to all genins upon their graduation. These two styles will upgrade your taijutsu style and refine it. You already use a basic kempo style, so we will go with kempo first. It should take us about a year at minimum to master these two fighting styles. If you manage to we can add in some additional ones. As for what Jiraiya, he is the best thing that happened to you when in comes to trainer. He actually treats you as a normal person and guess what, when we go outside of this village, you will finally see how it feels to be treated like a human being", replied the fox.

"That is true, I never thought about that. Plus I might learn even more stuff from the people I might encounter during the voyage", said Naruto with a smile.

"Besides, you can be sure that you will learn more with Jiraiya then you could ever learn from your last one. No offense, but being a genius and all, I was expecting much more from the great Kakashi. I guess now I know that there is one place he is not good at: teaching. He is possibly the worst kind of a teacher a student could have, the type that are into favoritism. He preaches teamwork, yet he was the one disrupting it by favoring a student over another", replied the fox with a grunt.

"Hey, give him a break, we were not the greatest students either you know. I know I should resent somewhat for being totally ignored for Sasuke during the Chuunin Finals, but it was also true that he needed more attention then me. After all, he was facing an unstable Gaara and he also has that gay snake's curse seal on him. Besides, you should know by now that if people do not wish to help, I am fine with. I survived the harsh world once without much assistance, so I am used to being ignored and one more person will not make a bigger difference. Anyway it is because of his decision that I got to meet Eros-sennin, so have to give him credit for that", rebuffed the boy.

"That still does not change the fact that he is a bad teacher. What kind of teacher ignores 2/3 of his students, he did not even congratulate you on your victory against that Hyuuga kid, even after missing it. If he was so interested on that Uchiha fool, why not simply become his personal trainer, oh wait he did. If he had not fueled that much hype in that fool, especially one that has a major superiority complex, look where it lead him. That guy's ego was so high that he did not even bother to hesitate to impale you and now he is hogging that snake", grunted back the fox.

"Can we move on? I am trying to forget about the past and only concentrate on the future. Team 7 is history for me, I have bigger concern thanks to you so now stop reminding me of the past; it gets me depressed. So forget about the past, we do not have time to waste on things that cannot be changed", replied the boy, as he got up and stretched his muscles.

"Yeah, I guess you are right. Unlike me, you always like to see the positive part in people, which is what I like about you, even though sometimes I think you risk too much of your own health in the process. Your naivety reminds me of my own childhood. Back then, I used to be that much naïve and used to take all the guilt upon myself. I worked my ass off for my tribe; I felt that it was up to me to protect everyone. I caught Inari's eyes and later decided to become one of his messengers for this purpose but my carelessness and naivety cost me all I had. The powers made me unimaginably strong and with it comes responsibility. My own tribe feared me and forced me to leave, which I did. I helped them from afar when I could but Inari's demand started to poor in and well I barely had time even visit them. It's also then that I realized the curse of immortality, I had to watch all those I cared for die due to aging. After that experience, I decided to forget about love, care and protection, since it pains too much to watch them wither away. Instead, I consoled my sadness by playing tricks with the humans, they are a gullible bunch of creatures", laughed the fox.

"Man and I thought you were created as a demon. I guess even you fell for the power trip and it looks like I am falling in the same path. The only difference between the two of us is that I was born an outcast, but I guess I am no more different then any other of these power seekers after all. I just hope I do not have an eternal life like you, I do not want those same experiences", said the boy after listening to Kyuubi's story.

"You are wrong, what I did was not wrong, in my case I received too much power without seeing the consequences awaited me ahead. You on the other hand, already know the consequences that await you so you are better prepared. Also, you are not like Orochimaru or Sasuke; they are looking for power for the wrong reason. Wishing for power is not wrong, the purpose of that power is. In your case, it is to protect this village, in their case it's for a personal gain. Finally, you are not immortal but you sure are unlucky, I intend to follow you wherever you end up. I am sick of being alone, so I intend to stick with you like the curse I am" said the fox with an evil laugh.

"You forget, I am no saint, even I can become corrupted", replied the boy with a sad face.

"That is what you will have to fight against yourself. You tend to be very negative about yourself. This is an effect of the current unfolding effects, that is your dark side, which you will have to fight from pulling you back to the abyss. Do get so worried, I am here to give you measures to prevent from falling in and these training will be that measure so get ready, because from now till you die. I will train you like a mad dog, you would wish you were never born that's how harsh I will be", said the fox with a grin.

"Yeah sure damn fox, bring on the pain, I rather have you near me then live a lonely life like you had. I mean there is no real guarantee that I will ever accomplish my goal. I may end up in your situation, if things does turn for the worst, it's great to know that I will always have someone", replied Naruto.

"Damn, it's already noon. We better start the drills before we waste the whole day chatting around", joked the fox.

"Speaking of which, what drill are we going to do anyway? I mean I do not recall any exercises made for improving senses. The old geezer wont be back for at least five more days", added the boy.

"Well, they are mainly survival exercises that have the consequence of improving your physical abilities trough repetition and intensity. Here is the schedule; the morning starts with a tag game, where you try to catch me. Next it will be a hunt for food exercise, where you try to catch your food without the use of your eyes. Then it will be accuracy training, target practice if you wish to simply. During the afternoon it is be jutsu training for today it will be mastering kage shuriken and shunshin and make them more efficient for battle use. Then later at night, it will be another tag game, but an extreme one that will act as a combination of the aspects of all the ones we did before hand. This means in the beginning it will be just another tag game with darkness as the inconvenience, but as we improve the others will be added as you master them. For today given the time lost so we will be skipping target practice. So let's start, you try catching me, you can use any method you wish, let's start", stated the fox.

"Okay am I allowed to use any ninjutsus? I mean you did say it was to improve my agility right, so I am guessing I am not", asked the boy.

"You may if you wish, but I would not recommend it, since it will not help you catch me. I am much faster then you, so you will most likely wont be able to catch me the first few days, so do not give up, just try your best. It is better that you base you strategies upon the field rather then kage bunshin since they wont catch me if you cannot. So let's start", yelled the fox as he began to run towards the forest.

Thus for the next two hours Naruto and Kyuubi roamed around the great forest. After the exercise, Naruto was physically battered. The fox was not lying when he said the boy wouldn't be able to catch him. He also knew the forest better then him and was punishing the boy for his lack of knowledge. Kyuubi was teaching him with "tough love" and Naruto was learning from it at an exceptional rate, his sensual awareness was raising and his timing too. This is mainly because he did not wish to get physical assaulted, which involved lots of painful scratches, if he slowed down the pursuit or made stupid decisions. Naruto was simply glad he still had his self- healing abilities. Of course, the same could not be said about his outfit and by the end of the exercise, the jacket was scrapped. The fox apparently was also very much into fashion and to him that type outfit was an insult to him, so he decided to rectify the matter along with the teaching.

The next exercise was one that made Naruto learn another big lesson in life. One that said, "never take an exercise given by Kyuubi as an easy one by the look" because they are not. The location was at the waterfalls; the mission was to catch fishes for food; the problem was that he had to catch them near the edge of the falls where the waves velocity was the highest, not to mention being blindfolded. He was to use his other senses, mainly hearing, smell and touch, which Naruto did. If the exercise was only that he would be a happy man, but he realized soon enough that his new buddy had added a few more unexpected difficulties. The added troubles, the fishes were the slipperiest one in the river and they were very sensitive. So now he had a serious problem, he could already walk on water and by now he was so good at it that the hard current did not pose any problems, however, he certainly was not ready to add in chakra covered hand along with it, especially not with this level of water velocity. The chakra was to make his hands sticky enough to grab the fishes. The harder part was to control them a level that would make the flow barely visible to not scare the fishes away.

"You know you are one hell of a devious fox. You really expect me to do all this at the same time in a single day to catch a single fish? Don't you know you are putting standard a bit too high?" asked the boy.

"I did not set it up to be conquered today. This is a long-term deal. I am pretty sure you will be at least able to catch one if you put all your effort into it. Let us start step by step. First, try by gathering the right amount of chakra for your hands to be sticky enough for the fish. Once you figured it out, then simply puts your hands in the water and see how much time it takes for the fishes to approach your hands. That will tell you how much time you will have to be immobile. After that you can pretty much draw the chakra at the instant and catch the first one you can find, so hop in the water and try it for real", said the fox.

"Wait, if I do that I wont be following your requirements. That's cheating so how will that help me in anyway?" asked the boy.

"Naruto, if there is one thing you will learn out of all these trainings it will be that you cannot always do what is demanded by the rule, sometimes you just got to deviate a bit to reach your goal. Now this does not mean that you should deviate every day, but given that today is your first trial and you are required to do sometime that will take at least the next three days to achieve, you should keep it as your last resort. So today try this first, catch your first fish and then go for the real exercise and train yourself to improve your chakra control at the level required for this exercise. In a way think of it this way, hey you are at least you are not skipping the first and more important part of the training, improving your senses by not using your eyes to do the exercise", replied the fox with a smile.

The boy finally convinced himself that the fox was right. He had pride, but even he knew he would never be able to pull all this in a single session, it was never meant to be that way in the first place. It was a learning process step by step and he had to follow it up and that was what he was going to do. So he followed what the fox had told him earlier, and by the hour he managed to catch his first fish, it was the weakest one of the group but that was expected since after all this small deviation was based on the fact that there is a weaker one and it would be the one most likely the victim of the sudden strike. He still had two more hours left and he devoted it entirely of trying to master those two additional and harder steps.

Elsewhere Naruto's room was receiving unexpected visitors, they were all surprised to learn that the boy they saw dressed as "the mummy" a day ago had not only recovered but was in self-training. The only one unfazed by this info was Sabaku to Gaara and for this he had to give them the explication. Having met Tsunade upon their arrival a few days ago Tsunade had informed them that the special details about his fellow Jinchuuriki (demon carrier), so he knew what not divulge which was everything so he was plagued with how to explain this miracle. Temari seeing her poor brother struggling face, finally butt in with her own explication. She told that Gaara had brought with him a special burn cream for his ally and since Naruto was the only one who suffered from burns they gave it to him. They just did not expect it would heal him that quickly. Everyone pretty much accepted her lies after all it's not like one of them could explain it any better.

By the end of the first night, Naruto was simply glad he could sleep, because he could not an inch more thanks to the harsh treatment he had received from all the trainings he had received.

End of chapter 2

Hiya, sorry for the long delay, University kept me off from storytelling. Now that I am in vacation though you should expect the next few chapters at a much faster rate (atleast the next chapter, it's already half done). Anyway, hope you enjoyed this part, it envolves alot more Naruto and Kyuubi interactions. Sorry for making it another "too much" dialogue chapters again, there shouldn't be many more of these left. Since I am attempting to squeeze in the 2.5 years departure by the end of next chapter, after which the hardcore action begins. Oh yeah, isthisparadise don't worry about the sideeffects part I intend to put plenty as the story progresses. So wish me luck. Shingen