I do not own anything from Naruto, that is all Masashi Kishimoto.

This is my first fanfic and because it is my first, criticisms are welcome, feedback is appreciated, and flames (well, noone usually likes you anyway :P), no I'm kidding, please still feel free to post reviews.

Also this will not be a harem unless one of the readers can really change my mind away from that or unless they want to see a different pairing. I do not like to write to canon because it limits creativity in my mind, but at the same time, I will keep some parts of the story as canon because it had a good plot/storyline. Hypocritical? Sure. However, thats how I choose to write. I will also be doing my best to keep to the characters personality. That being said, lets get into the story :) Hope you enjoy!

"Normal conversations"
"Thoughts"
"Kyuubi talking"
"Kyuubi thoughts"
"Jutsu"
(Jutsu name)

Chapter 3: Training Day

Naruto woke up the next morning at 8 AM and grabbed a bowl of cereal to eat before heading out towards the training grounds. He grabbed his mask and put it on and looked up at the pictures, smiling before opening the door and leaving. He started walking towards the grounds that he was told to meet them at, taking in the quiet time of the early morning. "Not too many people are out right now. Its rather nice and quiet, I like it. Its better than the alternative, thats for sure." Naruto kept walking, his hands in his pockets, stopping by a small lake to gaze into the water beneath, slowly losing himself to the calmness of the water. He finally tore himself out of his stupor when he started hearing the village become a little active, so he started walking again. By the time he arrived at the grounds, it was about 9 AM and he saw Yugao was already there. "Must be off duty since she's not wearing her mask right now." He watched on as she pulled her sword from its sheath on her back and started performing different katas that he had no idea of. He decides to step out of the forest area and into the clearing, taking a seat to watch her.

"Good morning Naruto-kun. I hope you're in for a rough day of training." Yugao spoke as she moved onto the next kata, never breaking form. She had been practicing her kenjutsu for years every day in the morning just to be sure she never lost touch of it. Sure, there hadn't been any real major wars in awhile, short of the small battles she had been apart of on the borders, but that didn't give her an excuse to not practice. She stopped her final kata and closed her eyes, reaching out with her chakra, sensing Itachi and Shisui were almost there. She smiled and sheathed her sword and turned around to Naruto at the same time that Itachi and Shisui landed beside her.

"Good morning Naruto." Itachi stated, showing a slightly invisible smile. "We're going to start your training today as I'm guessing you have finally gotten used to the gravity seals by now. So, I want you to create roughly 140 shadow clones if you can, if you can make more, thats fine too."

Naruto looked curiously at Itachi, "Why do I need to make so many clones and how exactly is that going to help with training?" he asked.

Itachi sighed and closed his eyes for a second before opening them and looking at Naruto. "We went over this yesterday, but I'll explain again. The shadow clones are capable of storing memories, so what one clone learns is transferred to you upon them dispersing. In a training sense, each clone is going to do what they think is going to work. So with one clone, what would take 3 days to learn, would take a day and a half. What would take years to learn, could be brought down to mere months of training with the use of shadow clones. As for why you need to make 140 clones is because we're not going to be able to teach you forever and I would like you to learn as much as we can teach you. We're only on guard duty for you for a month, then a new team will be assigned to watch you. Understand?"

Naruto nodded and put his hands together in the Tiger seal and focused his chakra. "Taju Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!" He releases the seal and grins as the large cloud of smoke behind him disappears, revealing 350 clones of Naruto. "Not bad, you know?" he grins behind his mask, each of his clones also wearing masks.

Shisui stared in shock at the sheer numbers of clones Naruto was able to make, looking over at Itachi and Yugao, neither showing shock. "Imagine what this kid can accomplish if he has that high of chakra levels already at such a young age."

"Alright, since he's created 350 clones, each of us will take 30." he stated as he made two clones himself, knowing that only two were his limit. He looked over to Yugao and Shisui, "Shisui, you need to make one clone and Yugao, you need to make 2 clones." They both nodded creating the clones as requested. "Alright, each of us will disperse into our own groups with 30 of your clones, however, the original Naruto will stay with the original me."

Naruto gave a thumbs up as his clones started going with their each own respective teacher to learn respective items from his senseis. "Why do I stay with you, Itachi-sensei? I figured it would be best if I went with Shisui-sensei for taijutsu training or Yugao-sensei for sensory training." he spoke as he stayed where he was while looking at Itachi.

"Because we're going to do some physical training. I want you to do 500 pushups, 500 sit ups, 750 squats, and I want you to run around the training ground 20 times." he stated coldly, knowing that the gravity seals were only going to make it harder, but he had the entire day to work on it. He sat down and pulled out a scroll from his pouch and opened it and began writing in it and reading it.

The first clone of Itachi walked to one side of the field, staying in the middle to leave room for the other clones of Yugao and Shisui, even though the training ground still had plenty of room to maneuver in. "Alright, so, genjutsu is used to alter someone's mind into thinking something is happening when its not. The easiest way to get out of it is to focus a large amount of chakra inside yourself, then release it as a burst through your entire body."

"Itachi-sensei, how would we know we're in a genjutsu?" one of the clones asked, scratching his head.

"Good question. Most cases, a genjutsu user is quite skilled at what they are doing, so it will be hard to notice. However, most times, there will be something that happens that would tell you that you're in a genjutsu, either by a change in time, wind, weather, events around you happening, and so on. You just have to be on the lookout for these subtle twists. Now that you know that, lets see how well you get out of a genjutsu." His eyes change over to his three tomoe sharingan and put the clones into a genjutsu without saying anything and began sparring with him and each of the clones.

The second clone of Itachi walked to the other side of the middle field turning to his group of clones and looked around to each of the groups, noting the amazing progress Naruto is making with each of his teachers. "Alright. Fuinjutsu is the art of seals. The Uzumaki clan that you come from was well known for their knowledge in fuinjutsu, so this should come well to you. There are many seals of different kinds, it just depends on how you write them. Inside your pouches are pieces of empty paper, take them out and the ink bottles and we'll go over the basics of storage sealings and more."

One of Yugao's walked over to the river that went through the training ground and looked over to the clones of Naruto, even though she was a clone herself. "Alright, water style ninjutsu is a flowing element, when you make the seals, think of a flowing chakra and then let it out quickly." She made a few hand seals, then raised her hands beside her. "Suiton: Mizu Shuriken" (Water style: Water shuriken) she stated calmly as water came up to her fingertips and she began throwing them at one of the wooden posts, leaving deep marks and a wet log. "Now its your turn, Tiger, Rat, and Snake seals. This is a C-rank jutsu so it takes little chakra. After that, we'll go over more water jutsu until Itachi-kun calls it a day."

The second of Yugao's clones walked over beside the tree line before stopping and looking at her group of 30 clones. "Alright, sensory skills are crucial but takes very little chakra unless you're wanting to focus over large ranges. On top of that, you can sense the chakra levels of other ninja and how many there are if you become skilled enough. There are many ways to sense other's chakra, but I only know of my own way, that being I send my chakra out like a web network through the ground." Yugao sat down and waved her hand as an order to make the other clones sit down as well.

"How do we send out our chakra like that? Seems difficult really." one of the clones stated casually.

"It is at first, but once you learn how to do it, its rather quite simple." she stated. "For me, I close my eyes and just focus on just letting my chakra flow through me, into the ground, and then out. Just try it and I'm sure you'll get the hang of it in no time flat."

The original Yugao walked to the other side of where her clone was teaching Naruto how to use sensory skills. She turned around to look at her clones and rubbed the bridge of her nose, before putting her hands on her hips and looking at the sky. "How am I going to teach you kenjutsu unless you have a sword or something usable as a sword..." she through to herself. "Remind me to buy you a sword that way your clones will have one as well." "Alright, well, I'm supposed to teach you kenjutsu, or the art of sword fighting, however, since you don't have swords, use a kunai instead but hold it as you would a sword." she watched as all the clones pulled out a kunai and held it the way they saw her hold hers when she was doing her katas. "Alright, we're going to start out with the simplest of katas, being the Snake kata." She moved fluidly from one slow slash to the next, each one after that being just as fluid. "Alright, now that you have seen how to do it, lets work on it all together."

Shisui walked to the opposite side of the field that Yugao was at, "Alright, I'm going to teach you fire ninjustu. We'll start with basic ninjutsu and go up to more advanced ninjutsu." He did a few seals, while stating calmly "Katon: Gokakyu no Jutsu" (Fire style: Great Fireball Jutsu). "When doing fire jutsu, think of the chakra burning in your chest and then just spitting out an inferno of chakra. This fireball jutsu is a C-rank jutsu, so it takes considerable chakra to control. The seals are Snake, Ram, Monkey, Boar, Horse, Tiger. Once you learn this, we'll go over more fire jutsu." he stated, watching on as the Naruto clones began attempting to perform the jutsu he just showed.

The clone of Shisui looked at the clones of Naruto and grinned. "This should be interesting. Clones against clones." "Alright, taijutsu is usually close combat and person to person. So you need to be fast and strong. Now lets get started." he stated as he started charging at the clones, watching them duck and dodge and trying to land hits on him, he wasn't going to hit any of them as he didn't want any of them to disappear, however, he didn't want to go easy on him or himself either, so he began using kunai and shuriken to add into the taijutsu training.

Hiruzen gazed out the windows, leaning back in his chair, enjoying seeing the people start to blunder about the village. He was trying to figure out which team or even who were going to watch over Naruto in three weeks when Itachi and his team are given new assignments. "Hrm, maybe Anko could watch over him, or maybe just Yugao. She's always been a soft hearted girl." He looked over to the calendar, "The 11th of October, no wonder there was a lot of commotion yesterday. I should stop by to see Naruto and see how he's doing. Maybe give him some extra money this month for Ichiraku." Hiruzen stood up and walked over and picked up the box that was always filled with Naruto's monthly allotments, which was set up at the time of Minato's and Kushina's deaths, who were vastly wealthy considering their skills and how often they went on missions before Minato became the Fourth Hokage. He left the Hokage tower and began walking towards Naruto's apartment, nodding and smiling at the villagers as they greeted him in turn. He arrived at Naruto's apartment a few minutes later and knocked but received no answer. Hiruzen frowned, "Naruto always answers his door. Maybe he's at Ichiraku or pulling a prank on someone." He knocked once more before pulling out the spare apartment key and opening the door. Walking in, he didn't see anything different. The room looked the same as it always did, bare, unlively, and unhospitable. There was nothing there, short of the clothes on the floor that would signify someone living there. He put the box of money on the table and took out a piece of paper from his pocket and wrote: "Here's this months allotment, I hope you have a great day. Hope you had a good birthday, come by sometime to get your present. - The Third." After leaving the note and money on the table, Hiruzen left the apartment and headed back to the Tower, the place he dreaded returning to because of all the paperwork.

Naruto lay on the ground, panting, every muscle in his body aching and sweating profusely, so much so that he had to take off his mask and shirt to get cooler faster. He looked over to his left, to see all his clones were still working hard at mastering Kenjutsu, Water ninjutsu and sensory skills; looking over to the right, more clones were working hard at Fire ninjutsu and taijutsu, though there were a few that had been dispersed due to some sort of contact, which had caused their gains and thoughts to be transferred to him; while in front of him, he saw his final groups of clones still combating with Itachi's clone and dispelling new genjutsus put on them as they left them and putting together different kinds of seals. He closed his eyes and relaxed, trying to catch his breath and get a rhythm going with his breathing. He was going to be hurting for awhile, but he knew that the Kyuubi was probably going to help heal his muscles faster and make them stronger.

Itachi looked up at the sky, noting where the sun was at, indicating it was time to call it a day. Whistling loudly to gain everyone's attention, he waved everyone over to join him, which took a few minutes. "Alright, everyone can disperse their clones, including you, Naruto." he made the tiger seal and dispersed his clones as everyone else did the same. Naruto sat up and grinned as he dispersed his clones as all their knowledge, memories, skill learning, and thoughts came flooding into his own mind, while he quickly put it all together.

"Wow, you guys really covered a lot today!" he grinned, talking to his senseis. "If I keep learning like this, I'll be stronger than the Fourth Hokage in no time!" he gave a thumbs up and his patented fox-like grin. He grabbed his shirt and put it back on, no longer too hot and put his mask back on too, which looking at his mask, reminded him that it would be another day before the shopkeep had his fox mask ready. "So, what time do I show up tomorrow?" he asked enthusiastically.

Yugao looked at Naruto before looking at Itachi, "Show up at the same time you did today, and please, start eating healthy foods, whole wheats and grains. Ramen is nice, but don't let it be your meals every day." she stated, smiling at him before putting her cat mask on.

Itachi looked at Yugao and nodded in agreeance with her. "Neko has a point, eating ramen all the way will actually stunt your growth as a shinobi and Konohagakure does not need weak shinobi." he stated putting on his dog mask, watching Shisui put on his bird mask. "Tori-san, we need to speak to the Hokage privately about some clan matters, get his opinion and directions." Shisui nodded and left with Itachi in a wisp of smoke.

"Do they always talk like that to each other?" Naruto asked of Yugao.

"Yeah, usually, but they are also each others best friends. So maybe that makes it ok." she shrugged and smiled. "I'll see you tomorrow Menma-kun."

"Wait, before you go, can you teach me how do disappear like that?" he asked politely, wanting to learn abit more before turning in for the night.

"Sure. It's called Shunshin no Jutsu (Body Flicker Jutsu). Its a D-rank skill that utilises a burst of chakra through the body to move really fast, though you need a distraction if you're using it in battle, such as smoke, leaves, or something along those lines. And you use the Ram seal. Try it sometime, it definitely helps when you're needing to travel somewhere and are running late. Oh, and the amount of chakra you use is dependent on how far you need to travel, so its not always practical to use." she grins at him and shunshins off, a group of leaves left in her wake.

"Hrm, a burst of chakra through the body to move quickly." He puts his hands together to form the Tiger seal and creates 20 clones, each of them with the intention to learn the Shunshin no Jutsu, each of them trying to get to the log across the clearing. After about an hour of training, one of his clones finally succeeded in it, which made Naruto grin. He dispersed his clones and sorted through the newfound knowledge. "Hehe, now I can prank even more people and get away easily." He shunshin-ed back to his apartment and opened the door, seeing a box and a note on the table. He opened the box and smiled, seeing the monthly allotment that he always got and put the money into his frog pouch; which was soon to become a storage seal. He picked up the note and smiled at the Hokage's writing. Sure he wasn't all that fond of his birthday, but he was glad that someone had remembered it and that they were giving him a gift. He decided he would take a shower before showing up at the Hokage tower.

The ANBU team assigned to Naruto showed up in front of him. "Report." he spoke to the team captain.

"Naruto is doing fine and well. Noone tried to beat him today." the smooth black-haired dog ANBU spoke.

"Excellent, you may leave." he spoke as he waved his hands off.

"Hokage-sama, there is something that Tori-san and myself wish to speak to you about... its about the Uchiha clan." Itachi spoke, looking over at the masked Yugao as she took her leave.

Hiruzen put up a few privacy seals that the Hokage room was usually filled with before looking at his team. "Proceed."

Naruto put on a new pair of clothes, tossing the dirty pair into the small washer of his apartment, waiting until he had a few more pairs of clothes to start it. He picked up his mask and put it on before leaving his apartment. After locking his door, he shunshin-ed to the Hokage tower and knocked on the door, putting his mask into his pouch. He waited for a verbal command to enter. "Hey Oji-san. Your note said you wanted to see me?" he smiled as he walked in the door, closing it behind him.

"Naruto-kun! My boy!" he smiled as he got out of his desk, giving the small four foot blonde a hug. "I see you've changed your outfit. You're beginning to look like a shinobi. So tell me, how was your birthday?"

Naruto shrugged, "It was okay. I got beat up in an alleyway after eating some ramen that Ayame-chan had made special for me. Other than that, it was fairly quiet and lonely..." he spoke, his voice soft and sad as he looked to the ground.

"Well, I'm sorry about that, please don't hate the villagers. They don't mean it. I'm sure most of them are just misguided."

"I know why they do it... why they treat me so different..." he said solemnly.

"You do?" he asked, hoping Naruto didn't really know.

Naruto nodded. "I am the jinchurikii of the Kyuubi. I found out when the villagers beat me in the alleyway on my birthday. The Kyuubi helped heal my wounds." he kicked at a small splinter that was on the floor. "Its ok though, I still forgive the villagers. They are still my comrades, even if they beat me every other week."

"Why do you forgive them if they always treat you so badly?" he asked, confused at Naruto's answers and thought patterns.

"Well, if I can't forgive them, how will they ever acknowledge me when I become Hokage? How would they ever accept me as Hokage?" he spoke, looking up and giving a small smile.

"He's wise beyond his years and has a huge heart." "Thats very noble of you Naruto-kun. Very noble, indeed." He walked over to his desk and opened one of the drawers taking it out. "I wanted to give you this. Its a scroll, left by the late Fourth Hokage. He asked me to hand it to you on your eighth birthday. I'm not entirely sure whats in it, but it need your blood to open it. I'd suggest reading it when you're alone," he opened up a second drawer and picked up a paper envelope and handing it to Naruto, "I also wanted to give you this. Go on, open it."

Naruto opened the envelope to find a small card in there, on it written, "Acceptance to Konoha Academy" He got wide eyes and smiled big. "Thank you Oji-san! I'm gonna be a real shinobi! I can't believe it!" he hugged Hiruzen and let him go, staring at the acceptance card.

"That took some twisting to get Naruto-kun, but I got it for you. You can enroll when you're 10, give you some time to learn about some basic stuff about the shinobi world. Don't let me down, Naruto-kun. If you keep the path you're on now and the attitude you have now, your comrades and village will always be behind you." he spoke wisely, giving Naruto even more hope of becoming Hokage. "You'll make a fine Hokage."

Naruto smiled and hugged the Hokage one last time before heading to the door, "Thank you so much Oji-san! I'll never forget this!" he left the Hokage tower, putting his mask on before exiting into the streets of Konohagakure, still excited at what Oji-san was able to do. He shunshin-ed off to his apartment, not caring who saw him as he walked in the door and locking it. He put the card and the scroll onto the table and made himself some ramen dinner, noting to buy some groceries later to cook full healthy meals as his senseis instructed him to do. He looked over to the scroll left by the Fourth Hokage and wondered what it was. "I'll read it later. I need to get some rest for my training tomorrow, then once Itachi-sensei is no longer able to teach me, then I'll read it." he threw away the ramen cup and headed to bed, pushing just abit more chakra into the gravity seals to make himself stronger.

I hope you all enjoyed the chapter, as always, feel free to leave your reviews as they are appreciated. Also, if you have any ideas or thoughts on what you would like to see, just PM me or something. See you guys next chapter, which will be out in a few days.

Til then. I'm out.