On his tenth birthday, he complained to his mom, "My taijutsu's hit a plateau. I'm not getting any better."
"Do you know why?" his mom asked.
"Nobody to spar with except you and that's here," he said. "Fighting in the real world is different. I know all your low-level tricks and if you go all out, I can't even touch you. Sparring against only one person not at my level doesn't really do it for me."
"What about at school?" she asked.
"I'm better than anyone in my class except the Uchiha and I only get put against him about once a month. The teacher and his aide both ignore me. I'm not really learning any taijutsu at school."
"Hmmm," she said. "It is your birthday. Hold a ram seal for me and put as much chakra into it as you can."
He did so and could see the chakra glowing from his skin.
"Low-jounin-level chakra reserves," his mom said. "Looks like I can teach this to you safely." She showed him a hand seal that had the middle and index fingers crossed. "This is the clone hand seal. It's used for this technique and a couple of derived techniques."
"A clone technique? Is this going to be as awful as the other one to do?" he grumbled.
She smirked at him. "Just wait and see."
She had him practice making the seal for half an hour.
"You'll need to practice the hand seal in the real world for a bit to make sure you can do it consistently," she said.
She stood across from him. "Let me demonstrate it to you, then I'll tell you how to do it. This is the Shadow Clone Technique." She made the hand seal and then a second redhead formed beside her. "It makes solid, independent clones. They're somewhat fragile. A good hit will disperse them, but they're pretty useful. They know everything you do and can perform techniques. You also get all their memories when they disperse, so you can use them for scouting and studying. I would just be careful in that if you disperse too many at once, you can get a headache or worse."
"That does sound useful, but how will they help me with taijutsu if they're fragile?" he asked.
"You can use them in low impact spars. Seeing how you fight from a different angle can be pretty useful. If you make a few of them, you can have them fight each other."
"I see," he said. "It'll be better than what I have right now, at least."
She smirked. "This is actually my favorite technique after my Adamantine Sealing Chains. Uzumaki can typically get a lot more use out of this since we have more chakra. Ours are typically a little sturdier too, since we have denser chakra.
"Making them is pretty simple, actually. Flow chakra through the hand seal and then pinch off the chakra and pull it apart."
He did so, but nothing happned. After practicing for another half an hour with some tips from his mom, he did it.
"You need to be careful with this, Naruto-chan. If you don't have enough chakra to make a clone, it will send you into chakra exhaustion."
"Can I make more than one at once?" he asked.
"Yes, you just pinch the chakra off into thirds or fourths. It works the best if you make them equal. There's a shortcut for making lots at once, but I'm not going to teach you that yet, since it's actually pretty dangerous. You can die if you try and make too many. I don't want you to make more than five Shadow Clones at once for now, okay?"
"Okay, Mom," he said.
An idea struck him. "If they remember what I do and can use chakra, can they be used to learn ninjutsu?"
She smiled. "They can, sort of. You only learn from them when they dispel, so if you have a bunch of them doing things exactly the same, you won't learn much because they'll make the same mistakes. If you have them working on different parts of a technique though, it could help. Where they really shine for training is in chakra control exercises. If you have them dispel regularly, the ones still training learn what the dispelled one did. Unless you're training with identical leaves and trees, which is impossible, the differences between what your different clones do add up. Other than that, it's like training in your mindscape. They don't help with physical things other than helping build reflexes and patterns, but they do help with chakra training."
"Awesome!" he said. Practicing taijutsu in his mindscape helped him to learn the moves, but he had to also put in real-world practice so that his muscles learned the moves as well as his mind. That meant that Shadow Clones would be useful with taijutsu, even if they were not a complete solution.
"You'll have to be careful though, Son," she said. "I don't want anyone to know you can do this, so don't do it where you can be seen."
He used his new technique in a small clearing with a creek running through it. The chakra control exercise he was currently doing was water walking. The creek was deep enough he could do it, but not too deep that he would get his clothes wet if he wore shorts unless he was stupid. Even with just the five clones his mom restricted him to, he could notice a change in his chakra control progress. His taijutsu was also improving again. It was frustrating to have to keep replacing a clone if he sparred too hard, but it was worth it.
Near the end of the year, he hit another plateau in his taijutsu skills. In all honesty, it did not feel like anything had changed. He knew he was better, but he still could not beat the Uchiha. He had lost to him earlier in the day, in fact. He was still much better than the other students, but that had been true before his mom had taught him Shadow Clones.
That night, he again asked his mom to teach him her taijutsu.
"I told you it wouldn't help you much," she said. "What you really need is for a male taijutsu expert to find you a suitable style. I don't want you to pick up bad habits now that you'll have to unlearn."
In frustration he used the Disguise Technique to change himself into a girl.
"What about now?" he asked cheekily.
His mom arched an eyebrow at him. "You know that for most people the Disguise is just an illusion. They aren't physically different and it wouldn't help with their taijutsu."
"Most people?" he asked.
"My Disguise Technique was always more physical," she said. "If the cause for that is what I suspect, it would be true for you too." She rubbed his cheek and then nodded. "Come inside the house."
She led him to her bedroom and they stood in front of the room's full length mirror. He looked at himself. He was a little more slender, especially in the chest area. His hair was red—the same color as his mom's—and his whisker birthmarks were missing. "Take off your clothes. Let's see how real this is."
He felt embarrassed about disrobing in front of his mom, but did it anyway. His eyes were drawn to his private area which was completely different.
"How did you know to make it like that?" his mother asked. "Have you been peeping?"
He frantically shook his head. "No, this just felt natural," he explained. "It sort of 'clicked' into place."
"Okay," she said, "I believe you. You can get dressed."
While he got dressed his mother asked, "Why did you make your hair red?"
"For you, Mom," he said. "You've been my only real friend. I thought that if you had a daughter, you would like it if she had hair like yours."
His mom hugged him. "Ah, Sweetie, I wouldn't give you up for any daughter."
Naruto struggled to get loose. "Let me finish getting dressed, Mom!"
She giggled and let him go. "It's true that Minato and I wanted more than one kid, but I'm happy with just you."
"Thanks, Mom."
"Why did you get rid of your whisker birthmarks?" his mom asked.
Naruto scowled. "I hate them. They mark me as different. I suspect they're part of the reason everyone hates me."
His mother sighed. "I was going to wait for another two years to tell you, but I think you're ready and it will explain part of why you can do this and no one other than the two of us can."
He brightened.
"It starts when Konoha was young. There were two candidates for Hokage: Senju Hashirama and Uchiha Madara. Almost the entire village voted for Hashirama, including most of Madara's clan. Madara felt betrayed and left. He eventually returned and attacked the village with the Kyuubi no Youko doing his bidding."
"The Kyuubi," Naruto whispered. He had heard tales of what the great demon had done to the village ten years ago.
"Hashirama defeated Madara and the Kyuubi with the help of his wife Uzumaki Mito, who was my great-great-aunt. Aunt Mito sealed the Kyuubi inside herself in order to defeat it. When she neared the end of her life, Aunt Mito sent to Uzushio to get someone to replace her as the jailer of the Kyuubi. I was selected because of my special chakra which suppresses other people's chakra. I came to Konoha and eventually Aunt Mito transferred the Kyuubi into me using a special seal."
Naruto listened in awe.
"When I was older, I married your father and became pregnant with you. We knew that giving birth weakens the seal on a demon container and that there was a danger of it getting loose. Minato made preparations and stood by to make sure it didn't get out. Unfortunately, a man attacked us and, by holding you hostage, drew Minato away and then came back and freed the Kyuubi and set it against Konoha."
Naruto clenched his fists. It was because of that man that he had grown up without parents.
"I was dying due to the Kyuubi being extracted from me and, because of that, the only candidate to seal the Kyuubi into was you. Only an Uzumaki is strong enough to hold the Kyuubi and most of our family died not long after I came to Konoha. You and I were certainly the only ones in Konoha at the time." She shed a few tears. "The seal that Minato used cost him his life. He used it in order to make sure that you would be safe from the Kyuubi. I had heard about the way that jinchuuriki, that's what they call people like us, were treated in places where their identity was known, so I insisted that I be sealed into you as well. We wanted to include Minato too, but there was no time for us to figure out a way to put us both in the seal."
Naruto felt his anger rise.
"Do you hate us, Naruto?" his mom asked quietly.
His anger left him. "Huh? No way, mom! I'm angry at the jerk who set the Kyuubi free and the idiots who can't tell the difference between a seal and what's sealed inside it!"
He looked her in the face. "Did they treat you badly too?"
She laughed ruefully. "No, hardly anybody knew. It was a secret."
"Why did they tell everyone about me then?" he asked.
"I suspect that they had to say something to the shinobi, at least, of what happened to the Kyuubi. After that, I suppose it was a leak among the shinobi."
"I bet it was my whisker marks that gave me away," he said sullenly.
"Ironically," his mom said, "you were born with those marks. They're because I was the Kyuubi's container, not you. You would have had them even if it hadn't been broken free."
He snorted.
"I suspect the reason you can make true transformations is because of the Kyuubi. Kitsune in legends are supposed to be shapeshifters. As for why you can change into a girl without knowing anything about them, maybe the Kyuubi is female or maybe it's because its previous two containers were women."
"So, will you teach me your taijutsu now?" he asked.
"I don't think this is a healthy idea, Naruto-chan." She sighed. "I guess if you see how your body moves correctly as a girl, you might be able to adapt it to your own body. Very well. Tomorrow, make sure your Disguise transformation is real in the real world. If it is, and I suspect it will be, I'll start teaching you my taijutsu forms."
"Thanks, Mom!" he exclaimed.
The transformation worked in the real world, so the next night his mom started him on katas for the Whirling Tides taijutsu style. His mom also started him on flexibility exercises in order to get the most out of it. Out of curiosity, he tried the kata without the Disguise transformation on. It was a little uncomfortable, but manageable.
When he mentioned it to his mom, she said, "I never said a man couldn't use this style, it's just that it works best for women. As you get older, this will be easier transformed than not. I still say that you should get someone else to teach you a better style for you, but I've decided not to fight you on this anymore. Ultimately, this can be good for infiltration missions, if nothing else."
After they were done and they were relaxing, he asked her, "Where did my name come from, Mom?"
"Your dad's sensei wrote a book called The Tale of the Utterly Gutsy Shinobi. The main character's name was Naruto. Minato and I loved that book. I think we have a copy in the library here. Don't go looking for anything else by Jiraiya though. After his first book didn't sell well, he switched to writing smut."
"Cool," he said. "I'll give it a read."
"I think the name is a reference to one of his students named Nagato, who was also an Uzumaki, but I'm not sure how closely related we are to him. Unfortunately, Jiraiya said he was dead."
"So I'm probably the only Naruto? Cool."
"The kids in class were teasing me about being named after a ramen topping," he said.
She giggled. "Mikoto totally said that too when I told her. I like ramen as much as you do."
"Ramen's the best."
"No, your name uses the kanji for the storm, not the ramen topping."
"Would you have used that name for me if I were born a girl?" he asked.
"Already looking for an alias?" she teased.
"Maybe," he said with an embarrassed shrug.
"We were thinking about it, but I was leaning toward Tsunami."
"Huh. Namikaze Tsunami is kind of symmetrical."
His mom laughed. "So it is. I wouldn't use that alias at least until your Jounin level. Iwa targeted Minato's cousins and they weren't even shinobi. Most of them ended up changing their names and moving far away."
Naruto took to training his taijutsu at least half the time in his "Tsunami" Disguise. He had tried out wearing an orange outfit, since it was his favorite color. His mom told him it clashed horribly with Tsunami's red hair. After pouting for a few minutes, he settled on a green jacket that flared at the hips and dark blue pants.
His mom had made him promise not to use the Whirling Tides style at the Academy. Even though it defeated his original reason for learning it—beating Sasuke in a spar, more than anything, he enjoyed doing something that he could share with his mom.
Even though he still lived at the orphanage, nowadays he mainly only slept there. He often ate dinner at his clearing. He took to shopping for dinner—mostly instant ramen cups—while in his girl Disguise. He was treated better, as Tsunami, which gave him mixed feelings.