'Naruto,' Kakashi sighed. 'You need to focus on the basics. And your chakra control is still lacking. I can't teach you anything until you improve on those.'
Naruto looked from the usual bored expression of his sensei, his book still in front of him. Once again, he had asked Kakashi-sensei to train him and once again, the man had declined it.
It really should be no surprise to him by this point. But something about Kakashi told him that he was indeed impatient to go somewhere? Naruto didn't know how he knew but he did.
A look to the right and Naruto saw Sasuke walking away, with Sakura trailing behind him, no doubt asking for a date or train with him. He didn't know why she bothered.
On that note, he didn't know why he bothered with her anymore. Or with any of his teammates in fact. Including the sensei.
Still, he thought he might give one more try. If that didn't work, then Naruto would have no choice to but sneak into the library, or ask JiJi. Or better yet, go look for that old man who had given him Tobirama-sama's book. Maybe he could persuade him to give some pointers.
Kakashi was just about to turn around and leave when Naruto's next question stopped him short.
'How do I do that?' Naruto asked, looking at him with those big blue eyes that reminded him so much of him and yet… there was also something that didn't. It was beyond confusing to the Copy Ninja. Naruto had never, ever showed an eagerness to practice the basics. Something was going on here.
Shocked, he looked back, but of course it didn't show on his face other than the raising of his eyebrow.
Truthfully, Naruto wasn't that bad a student. Yes, he got on Kakashi's nerves sometimes. Okay, almost all the time. And his basics were beyond pathetic, his taijutsu was horrendous and his chakra control was shoddy at best.
But he liked the kid, most of the time. And it had nothing to do with his heritage. Okay, maybe that was a part of it. Inwardly, he shook his head. All of this could have been avoided if he had just been allowed to take care of Naruto from an earlier age.
The boy was beyond competitive. Almost to an obsessive degree. It was perhaps the only thing that Naruto had in common with the Uchiha prodigy. And from the look Naruto had thrown towards Sasuke when the boy had walked away, Kakashi knew that this question and the intent behind it, stemmed from a need to beat the Uchiha, as seemingly impossible as it was.
He shook his head, 'If you're doing it to beat Sasuke, Naruto then I –'
'NO!' Naruto shook his vehemently. He saw the Kakashi's lone eye look at him as if knowing he was lying. But he really wasn't. For the most part. 'Okay, maybe I do want to beat the teme but I also want to grow stronger and –'
Kakashi shook his head at the blonde genin again, 'No. Naruto. Until you realise what you're training for, I will not teach you anything new. Besides, you need to improve upon the basics.' No. Team 7 already had one avenger and they didn't need two Sasukes running around. One was more than enough.
He really needed to put an end to this in-team competitiveness. It was amusing at first, but now it was obvious, that Sasuke's superior skill and Naruto's lack of it, was sending their already shoddy teamwork down the drain. The loudmouth blonde needed to realise that he would need to get stronger for a reason other than a need to defeat Sasuke.
Naruto bristled at the blunt put-down and rejection. But that was what he was asking. How to improve on his basics.
'That's what I'm asking, baka-sensei!' Naruto spat angrily, momentarily surprising Kakashi with his outburst. 'Tell me exercises that I can use to improve my chakra control…'
Kakashi lowered his book and looked at his genin's rapidly rising and falling chest and his heated eyes. Perhaps he could just tell him something. After all, it would take a long time to even catch up to Sasuke and he would need to start soon.
But he couldn't fight the feeling that this might set the team back even further, rather than improve their teamwork, which is what Kakashi wanted. He could hardly refuse to teach his own student, even the basics.
Kakashi sighed, 'You can climb trees now but honestly, I wouldn't have had you do the exercise. It was necessary but you need something more basic than that.'
Naruto glared at his lazy sensei and his blatant disrespect of his skills but decided to hold his tongue. For now, he would listen to what he had to say.
'Take a leaf,' Kakashi picked up a leaf from the ground and put it on his forehead. 'The goal is to first stick the leaf to your forehead using chakra, much like tree walking, and then float it on your forehead and not letting it fall.'
As Naruto looked down on the leaf, 'But how do I –'
He sighed, looking at the empty space in front of him. There was no use. His useless sensei was already gone. Oh, how he wanted to get so good that he could rub it in Kakashi-baka's face. How he wanted to see the look of disbelief of Sasuke-teme's face when he realises that Naruto had surpassed him.
'Ugh. Why do I even bother!' Naruto yelled to the empty air, but then took a deep breath. He needed a calm head if he was to figure out how in the hell he was going to go about getting stronger.
Reading books was well and all, but it was not going to help him increase his skills. That much was certain. As he walked towards an empty training ground, Naruto skipped the usual street and took to the roofs. He needed a cool head and he was not going to get it by having to ignore the villager's disdainful looks.
Okay, so Kakashi said that he needed to stick it to his forehead using chakra. When he had accomplished that, he needed to float it.
'Shadow Clone Jutsu,' Naruto called out, raising his fingers in the now very familiar cross shaped seal.
Two clones popped up out of the smoke and Naruto narrowed his eyes, sighing. He had only wanted one. This was nothing but a waste of chakra.
'Okay, one of you go to the flat and grab any scroll you can find on chakra theory and chakra control,' he pointed to the one on the right and it took with a salute.
Naruto turned towards the other one and instantly got a mischievous idea.
'Ugh! How am I so stupid!' Naruto hit himself on the head.
'What is it, boss?' the clone asked, not looking at all concerned with the boss' self-reprimand.
'Nothing,' Naruto grumbled. He really needed to start thinking things through like the old had told him. 'Henge into someone else,' he ordered.
Puzzled, the clone complied and soon he had gotten the shape of some nondescript ninja Naruto might have seen in the village.
'You will take a pen and paper and sneak into teme's house and spy on him training. And make notes,' Naruto ordered.
He had always wondered where Sasuke got all those fancy moves that he used in his spars against him and Kakashi. He had never seen Kakashi teach Sasuke those. So, he must be getting them from somewhere.
'Cool boss!' the clone saluted and was about to take off when Naruto stopped it.
'Don't get caught!'
Fortunately, the clone had more than enough experience sneaking and hiding that this mission would be a piece of cake.
Little did Naruto know, this action of his was observed by someone who had less than stellar intentions. Although, at this moment, the move had been enough to impress him.
With that done, Naruto made his way towards his training ground and proceeded with the exercise that Kakashi had told him about.
As soon as he supplied his chakra, the leaf went shooting up towards the sky in an instant. Sighing, he picked it up again, and lessened the amount of chakra he was feeding it.
It was nowhere near easy, but after more than an hour, Naruto had started getting the hang of it. It took a lot of curses and threats to the inanimate leaf, but finally Naruto had gotten the leaf to stick to his head.
This was going to take to long. If one bloody leaf took an hour, then he would have no time left for other training. Why couldn't he just get his clones to do it with him?
He stopped short in shock! UGH! His new habit of trying to analyse things was finally coming in handy when he hit himself over the head again. So, fucking stupid! He had been using Shadow clones to do everything for him. Everything from using them in fights, to making them to the dishes, clean the house or to go and get ramen from Ichiraku. There was no reason that he couldn't use them to train.
Why had he never thought about this again. With this thought, another horde of clones was summoned. He had no idea how many there were, but suspected that there were around fifty.
'All of you, grab a leaf and get to it,' he ordered them.
'YES BOSS!' a chorus of their yells rang through the training as none of them needed an explanation of what needed to be done.
That merited more thought. But not right now.
After half an hour of trying to master the lead exercise, Naruto's head snapped up in shock, yet again. What in the hell was that?
Why were there scrolls on his bed? Whose were they?
He couldn't recognise the writing. But they were definitely on the topics that he had needed. Basic chakra theory and elementary chakra control, were their titles. Now he was beyond curious? How the hell had he known it?
The clone seemed to have popped out of existence out of nowhere. It should have enough chakra then why did it pop? Did someone destroy it?
No use thinking about it now. He sent one of the clones to go to the apartment, investigate and bring back the scrolls, carefully.
This meant that whatever memories the clones experienced were sent back to the original. Why the fuck had he never noticed this in the first place? Was he really that dense as others claimed him to be? He must be if he hadn't noticed such a crucial fact about his primary jutsu.
Primary! Che! Naruto laughed. He really didn't have any other jutsu! He would if Kakashi would just be less stubborn and teach him something too like he did with his precious Sasuke-teme.
Naruto was under no illusions. Last night, he had sat down and reflected seriously on his own skills. And to say that he was disappointed was as obvious as saying the old man Jiji was a pervert.
'Here you go boss!' the clone returned with the two scrolls that were on his bed, seemingly out of nowhere. Did Kakashi-baka leave these there? No. There was no way he would do something like that.
Besides, he had once seen Kakashi's handwriting on a mission report. And it was nothing like this. This almost seemed…. What was the word for it… clinical… surgical. This is what he imagined an assassin's handwriting would look like it. And the thought was more than a little disturbing.
But he had no reason to complain. As the other forty-nine clones trained to stick the leaf on their head, and then floating it, Naruto opened the first scroll and read through it.
It detailed what chakra really was, its distribution of spiritual, physical and natural chakra, which was everywhere in the surroundings. Created and sustained by living beings, and not accessible except through extremely hard and dangerous training.
It then went on to explain how the spiritual chakra was moulded and manifested, and used in genjutsus or illusions. It was called Yin chakra. Physical chakra could be channelled into specific body parts or the whole body as a whole to strengthen the muscles, bones, cartilage and to perform various functions.
Channelling into the ears heightened ones hearing sensitivity and the same with the nose for smelling. The extremes of chakra control were shown in the second scroll, ranging from the basic exercises as the ones he and his clones were attempting to the most difficult of all, controlling chakra for medical ninjutsu.
That didn't interest him that much to be honest. Granted, it would be cool to be able to heal himself or others in battle but right now he need to focus on the exercises more than jutsus. The scrolls didn't have jutsus anyway.
All in all, he learned more about chakra theory and controlling chakra from the two admittedly quite lengthy scrolls than he had in four years in the academy. Granted, he had slept through most of the boring lectures that weren't going to help him get stronger and weren't flashy jutsu.
If he could go back in time, he would use it to thoroughly kick his younger self in the ass to get his head on straight. How could he have been this stupid. But at least, he was on the right track now. Done with the scrolls for now, Naruto carefully put them away under a tree's root and got up to do the training along with his clones.
He had heard them grumbling about the unfairness of it all, and he agreed. He couldn't just sit and do nothing. Meanwhile, Naruto relegated one of his clones who had brought a pencil and some empty scrolls to jot down a draft of his possible training routines and what he needed to work on, staring from the very basics.
More than two hours later, an incredibly tired but very self-satisfied Naruto lay down on the ground. True, he had expended a lot of chakra, was out of breath and he could collapse any time soon but it had been worth it.
'Ughhh,' Naruto grumbled, standing up with some effort and grabbing his aching head. 'Never dismiss so many clones so quickly.' He reminded himself. His head was killing him, with the headache that had resulted from his thoughtless action.
But Naruto knew that his control had improved. Even if by a little bit. Halfway through the training, he had gotten bored and taken to running up and down trees, at the same time as sticking the leaf to his forehead.
That particular exercise was his own invention and wasn't in the scrolls but it was more fun that way than just standing around, sticking a leaf to his head.
True, it had taken him a lot of falls, bumps on the head, and aching limbs but in the end, he had gotten the hang of it. He was nowhere near mastering it, but it was progress.
As Naruto stumbled into his house and collapsed on his bed, exhausted, little did he know that his training session hadn't gone unobserved. Neither was the observer left unimpressed.