Chapter 2: A mistake?

"…" – Speech

'…' – Thoughts

Italics – Written Word

Bold – Jutsu

"Bold" – Bijuu Speech

'Bold' – Bijuu Thought

Previous Chapter:

"Dead Reaper's Seal!"

But… there was a mistake.

With Hiruzen Sarutobi

As soon as Hiruzen finished, the Shinigami appeared behind him and extended it's astral arm through Hiruzen's heart towards the Kyubii and pulled the creature towards the seal on Naruto's stomach. When the Shinigami's hand caught Kyubii, it's eyes seemed to clear up from its rage and took in the scene before it. Then with a resigned sigh it let itself be pulled into the seal.

As Kyubii's whole chakra and soul was pulled into the seal, the seal lit up in a crimson light, Naruto let out a piercing wail as he went through a high amount of pain damaging his infantile pain receptors as well as going through trauma because the seal was made only to handle only a half of Kyubii's chakra. The trauma forced the activation of Naruto's Uzumaki blood in order to restrain Kyubii's chakra as well as activated a transcendent bloodline known as the Rinnegan.

Now, we all know that the Uzumakis had great vitality and as such lived a long life. What we don't know is that this happened due to their chakra being 'purer' and 'denser'. This also caused the side effect of them being able to use ninjutsu with less than the required amount of chakra with the ninjutsu being more effective. However, the Kyubii's chakra still present in Naruto's body reacted with the bloodline, warping it, making it so that it made the manipulation of raw chakra an instinctual ability such that Naruto would be able to shape his chakra in any shape easily.

The Kyubii's chakra also tried to warp the Rinnegan, which being a transcendent bloodline, was semi sentient, and in order to preserve itself, evolved itself further such that it became twice as strong, which was only supposed to be possible after years of practice, and then became dormant, waiting to be called up again by its wielder.

With the sealing finished, Hiruzen fell down, with all his muscles used up by the pills in order to make huge amounts of chakra. Hiruzen died with a smile on his face, happy that he was able to help protect Konoha one last time before his time came.

Two days later, October 13th, Konoha Town square

Minato Namikaze was standing on the balcony of Hokage tower, looking over the town square, thinking over what had happened over the past few days. The funeral of the sandaime was a sad one, with the whole of Konoha attending, mourning over the loss of their previous Hokage. But even more important was the fact that an unknown ninja had been able to kill off a squad of his ANBU without anyone knowing and had been able to breach into the room where Kushina was giving birth. It pointed to the fact that the ninja was dangerous and probably an organization or perhaps even a hidden village was after their jinchuriki. The fact that they had a jinchuriki was an S-class secret known only to the Hokage and no one else apart from the shinobi council indicated to the fact that there was a mole which was even more worrying.

He decided that he had to begin Naruto's training as soon as possible so that he would be able to protect himself. Shaking himself from his depressing thoughts, Minato looked over the gathered village and began his speech. "People of Konoha! Two days ago, the Kyubii attacked our village, and while it wasn't able to do a lot of damage, we still lost our venerable Sandaime along with 14 shinobi. Although their loss is grave, we should not mourn them and spit on their sacrifice to save us. Instead, we should rejoice and praise their deeds, and remember them. As long as we remember them, they are never truly gone, giving us strength to fight our battles and emerge victorious! We have once again shown the world that we are among the strongest of the Hidden Village as we were able to banish the Kyubii, the strongest of the bijuu, back to its realm without suffering from a major damage. I declare October 10th as an annual holiday celebrating the defeat of Kyubii at the hands of our Sandaime. Forever burns our Will of Fire!"

The crowd cheered chanting the slogan over and over as Minato retreated back to his office, making plans to contact his sensei to flush out the moles in Konoha as well as planning Naruto's training which he decided to start when he completed his 3rd birthday. Sitting at his desk, he summoned two toads and asked them to immediately call back Tsunade Senju and Jaraiya Igarashi. The toads nodded and disappeared in a puff of smoke as Minato sighed. He knew he had to up his training if he was to help his son in the future. At least he had his Kage Bunshin to deal with his paperwork. That was a relief.

Three years later, October 10th, early morning

Naruto was sleeping peacefully in his room. He was wearing a sleeping hat in the shape of a toad with red pajamas which had toads in different poses around it. A giggling Minato with his wife crept into the room with a small bucket full of cold water. Hey! They weren't cruel enough to drench their baby boy in ice-cold water. No sir, not at all. Anyways, when they reached Naruto's futon, they emptied the bucket over his head. Naruto shrieked like a little girl, jumped from his futon, got tangled in the sheets and fell on his back groaning.

When Naruto came to his senses, he saw his tou-san and kaa-chan laughing heartily at his expense. Naruto pouted in a cute way and exclaimed in a loud manner, pointing his finger at them, reminding them of Kushina's genin days, "Tou-san! Kaa-chan! What was that for?" This only made them laugh harder. After a few moments they calmed down and Kushina smiled at her son and said, "Don't you remember sochi? Today is your birthday!"

Immediately Naruto's expression changed and he grinned in excitement and said, "Then I get my presents today! Where are they? Did you hide it? Is it downstairs? I'm getting it now right?" Not waiting for a reply, Naruto rushed towards the door but Minato grabbed the back of his pajama shirt and pulled him up in air so that he was hanging in front of him at his eye level. Minato said with amusement in his eyes, "Now Naru-chan, let your mother bathe you and give you breakfast, then you can have the presents. Alright?"

Naruto quieted down immediately and grinned sheepishly at his dad, "Sure Tou-san, sorry." Minato chuckled and put him down and said, "Run along now. I will be waiting at the breakfast table for both of you." Naruto said, "Hai Tou-san." and started dragging Kushina towards the bathroom talking excitedly.

At the table

Minato was sitting at the table reading over a few S-ranked mission reports. Over the years he had changed little. There was no difference in fact to the untrained eye. Over the years, Minato had increased his training upping his gravity and resistance seal such that the gravity seal which, at the time of the attack, he could move normally up to 6 times the gravity and the resistance seal was at level 4. Now however, he could move normally at ten times the gravity and resistance seal at level 7.

As Minato continued to read the reports, Naruto ran down the stairs with his mother rushing after him yelling at him to stop running on the stairs. Naruto skidded to a stop in front of the table as his father chuckled at his antics. Soon his mother came behind him and slapped upside his head for running again which made Naruto grin sheepishly.

After they finished their breakfast, Minato looked at Naruto with a serious expression. "Sochi", he said, "I have decided to start on your training early but I want you to try your hardest at the training. Alright?" Naruto grinned in excitement and nodded his head saying, "Hai Tou-san." Minato smiled at him and said, "Good. Now let your mother clear the table and join us in the living room. Then we will discuss your training." With that Minato got up and went to the living room to wait for Kushina with Naruto following behind him.

In the Living room

Minato waited for Kushina to settle down before continuing in a serious tone, "Now Naruto, with Tsunade-sama's advice, we have decided on a nutritional course for you which will help maximize on your physical training. Now you can have your ramen when you want, only when you finish the food allotted to you to eat and that too only one bowl. Is that clear?" Naruto wanted to whine a bit but because he wanted to show his mom that he was a big boy now, he held his tongue.

Minato continued, "Now, for the first year of your training, we will solely be focusing on the physical aspect of your training. You will be given a set of exercises that will slowly be increased in difficulty as you progress such as push ups, pull ups, sit ups, crunches, handstand pushups, balancing on your single hand then performing push ups and then later performing pushups only with a single finger."

"Half way through the year, as your body has grown strong enough, a set of resistance and gravity seal will be applied to your body. Now starting tomorrow, you will wake up in the morning at 5:00 am and jog for 2 kilometers and then after taking a 15 minutes break you will sprint as long as you can. Finished with that you will be taught the basic katas of the Namikaze family style which you will practice non-stop till lunch. After finishing your lunch, you will get a half an hour break after which you will be taught math, history of konohagakure, history of the Namikaze clan, history of the Uzumaki clan as well as history of the shinobi world in general. You will also be taught about the various types of plants, how to differentiate between edible and inedible plants and how to create poisons and medicines as well as about the human body. In the evening, you will be performing the exercises I mentioned earlier, and then after a half an hour cool down period, you will take bath and retire for the evening."

"This will continue for two years, after which chakra control exercises will be mixed in. The first exercise that you will be performing is the leaf floating exercise. In this exercise, you will try to first stick the leaf to your forehead and then slowly try to push it away till it is an inch away from your forehead. After you have done this, you will increase the amount of leaf you can float till you can float at least 2 leaves on your forehead, one on your palm and another on the back of your palm for both of your hands, one for each of your elbows, one for each of your knees, one on top of both your feet, 4 on your stomach, 2 on each of your pectorals, 6 leaves on your back on the corresponding positions to the leaves on the front and a leaf on the back of your neck. You will have mastered this exercise when you can continuously float all of them at the same time for an hour while dodging all the balls I will be throwing at you continuously."

Naruto paled in thought of the difficulty of the exercise while Minato and Kushina grinned evilly in excitement. Minato continued, "Oh, and I forgot to mention, after you can dodge for an hour successfully, you will have to start dodging while blind-folded." Naruto paled further already regretting bugging his parents for ninja-training last month. Minato grinned in response and continued, "After you have mastered this exercise successfully, we will start the leaf spinning exercise which is basically the same thing except you have to spin all the leaves you are floating. You will go through all the steps for mastering this exercise like you did for the leaf floating. The main twist in this exercise is that you will have to change the direction in which you are spinning the leaves continuously every 2 minutes, and later you will have to spin every leaf in a different direction. For example, if you are spinning one leaf from left to right, you will have to spin the other leaf from right to left at the same time. Use your imagination. As you are floating the leaves, they can spin in a total of 16 different directions."

"After this, you will perform the tree walking exercise. After you can stick to the tree continuously for an hour, you will add the leaf spinning exercise to it. After you have successfully added it, you will have to dodge projectiles while blind folded. Same will be done for water walking. After this, there will be air jumping in which you will try and form a cushion of air beneath your feet with your chakra and jump higher. While you are being taught and practicing the chakra control exercises, you will also be taught the hand signs and you will continuously practice forming them in random order until you can do a minimum of 50 hand signs under a minute. Unless and until you have mastered at least 2 of these exercises, you will not be taught any jutsus. In case you have, then next year you will be taught various non-elemental as well as elemental e-rank ninjutsus as well as genjutsus. Now, these jutsus may seem useless, but they are the first steps towards higher ranked jutsus. As such, unless you completely master these jutsus, you will not be taught further, meaning, you have to be able to perform them instinctively without the use of hand signs."

Naruto was on the verge of screaming in horror but sighed in resignation as he knew that if he wanted to be as strong as his parents, he had to go through all this. He was unaware of the fact that most of the chuunins could not perform the feats he was expected to perform within the next few years.