This is more of a filler chapter than anything else. It finishes of the training. Don't worry, people! It'll start picking up soon. But then I'll have to go through the dreaded...WAVE COUNTRY ARC!

Holy crap! At 1874 words and five pages without ANs, this is definitely my longest chapter yet! Who knows, maybe they'll get longer. But don't expect much, people. They might regress as well.

Title - A Couple Millimetres
Chapter - Four; Return
Word Count w/o AN - 1874(!)
Word count with AN - 2108
Summary - Naruto returns from his training with three new jutsus under his belt and much better chakra control.

"OW!"

A loud resounding yelp of pain echoed through the forest for the twentieth time. Zooming in, you can see a short blonde child of twelve years sitting on the ground and rubbing his behind, while grumbling and cursing.

"God damn son of a bitch! What the hell kind of training is this?"

"The chakra control kind."

'Shut up! That was a question that you don't answer, smartass!'

"You mean a rhetorical question?"

'Screw you.'

"No thanks."

'Fag.'

Flashback no Jutsu!

"Run up a tree."

'The hell?'

"I said, run up that tree over there. No hands."

'How the crap am I supposed to do that?'

"Apply chakra to your feet, and use it to attach them to the tree's trunk. Then walk or run up the tree."

Naruto snorted. "That's not so hard."

Kyuubi laughed. "Then get to it, runt."

'This should be interesting.'

Kai!

Ten minutes later and twenty-one painful falls later, Naruto grew quite frustrated. He failed to even get pass two steps. He couldn't understand it. When he went slowly, he could stand still on the tree trunk with his feet sticking, but when he tried to move, he'd fall.

In the back of his mind, he heard Kyuubi laughing his ass off. 'Alright, fox, what the fuck am I doing wrong?'

"Isn't it obvious what I left out?"

'If it was, I wouldn't be asking. Now answer the damn question!'

"You apply chakra to your feet to attach to the tree. You can stay attached, but you fall when you try to move. Use what brains you possess and think, you moron. The second you lift your feet, you fall. Don't you feel a little off when you try to lift your feet?"

Naruto didn't respond, and instead lifted his foot to the tree and stuck it on. When he tried to remove it, he met a little resistance. 'It's hard for me to pull it off. That's what was putting me off balance. But why is it doing that?'

"You're applying a constant stream of chakra into the tree."

'What? OH! Of course – my chakra makes it a bit harder to pull my foot off, pulling me off balance and making me fall! So what do I do about it?'

"You let go of the chakra when you pull off your foot, and you have to re-apply it when the foot lands on the wood again. Plus, if you apply too much, the weak bark will break. Too little, and you'll fall on your sorry ass again. That's why it's such a good exercise. It improves your control as well as your timing."

'Doesn't mean I have to like this gayass training.'

He tried it again, and this time made it up a third of the tree's height before falling back down. Sighing, he once again ran up the tree.

"Ha!"

One day and seventy-five runs up and down the tree later, Kyuubi deemed Naruto ready to move on.

"Okay. You're done with this. You've got two hours to recuperate and eat. Go."

When the designated time ran out, a slightly fresher Naruto stood in front of the water, instructed to stand and walk on it.

"There are two ways to go about this. One is to make "stilts" out of your chakra, which takes up more chakra and requires a constant stream. This method is harder than tree climbing, because even though you only need a constant stream of chakra, you'll have to learn to balance yourself on your stilts."

The demon stopped to let Naruto absorb the knowledge, before continuing.

"The second way is easier, but has a major disadvantage. The idea of this one is to use your chakra and spread it along the surface of the water, creating platforms, or making the entire body of water like land. The bad thing about this is that it takes up a bit more chakra and that your opponent can stand on your platforms."

'If you're done yakking, I'm going to start now.'

"Ungrateful little brat."

But Naruto was already at the bottom of the pond after his first failed attempt at water-walking.

"You've got one exercise left."

Naruto nodded, ignorant of the fact that Kyuubi couldn't see him.

"You're going to combine water-walking with tree climbing. You're going to be running up a waterfall. First, create the stilts and place a foot on the waterfall. Then you're going to further spread chakra on the bottom of your stilts and attach yourself to the wall behind. Finally, you walk up."

'Am I only going to combine one way of water walking?'

"After you finish that, spread your chakra over the falls and attach your soles to the wall of chakra. That's it. Well, what are you waiting for? Go, you dumbass!"

Since it was just a mixture of two previous exercises that he'd already mastered, it didn't take him too long to get the hang of it. The only problem was the waterfall pushing him back down. And even despite that, he completed it in only half a day.

Kyuubi gave him three hours of free time before he had to return to his cave. Naruto spent some of his time wondering why exactly he listened to everything Kyuubi said. He had agreed to receive training for the demon fox, but why did he listen to his orders, stay within his time limit?

It wasn't like the Kyuubi could do anything about it. He was safely tucked back in a cage, unable to harm him. Naruto supposed it was because sometime in the first two days during physical training, he had learned that while a bitchy demon who had tried to destroy his village, he still never did anything to hurt Naruto, and that his training worked really well.

Which brought up another point.

'Hey, Kyuubi.'

"Yeah?"

Naruto hesitated, suddenly apprehensive.

'Why did you attack Konoha?'

Kyuubi snorted. "If you're looking for some deep emotional answer, you're not going to get it. Why do you think I did it? I'm a evil, overbearing, all-powerful demon. I destroy stuff. It's my nature. Though admittedly, I don't usually attack things as big as Konoha. I usually get rid of small stuff. Maybe a poor village that was going to die out anyway, or some rich bastards who think they're all that."

Naruto was taken about, not expecting that. But Kyuubi wasn't finished.

"It was that snake-freak's fault, if you want someone to blame. What'd he say his name was? Orochimaru or something. Anyways, that retard tried to defeat me and take my powers. I kicked his ass, of course, but then he used a weird jutsu to try to take over my physical body. To escape, I left the body and went into a healing sleep to regenerate. And I'm always cranky after waking up from a long nap. Oh, and he was from Konoha too, so I went and killed people. Simple as that."

'Only you would call that 'simple.''

"In your immortal words, 'Meh.'"

'Ass.'

Three hours came and passed, and now we find our hero back at his cave.

"Now, I need you to come here."

''Here?''

"Into your mind."

'How do I do that?'

"It's usually impossibly difficult to get into one's own mind, but since I'm here, it's relatively simple. Can you feel the massive chakra I'm emitting?"

'Yeah.'

"Now just do what you did with the old man, except on a larger scale. Instead of forming a line connecting to my chakra, I want you to concentrate all of it onto mine. Pull it in."

Naruto scrunched up his face in concentration, and found himself engulfed in darkness. Suddenly, he opened his eyes and stared into the huge eyes of the nine-tails.

"So you made it."

"So I made it."

"You realize you're inside my cage, right?"

"Yeah, and?"

"Hm. You're braver than I thought. I need you in here anyways for your jutsu training."

"Jutsus! Awesome! Now I'll be able to kick everyone's asses!"

"Slow down, you fool. I'll only teach you the basic fundamentals shinobi require, and if we have time we'll move on. Then later on, we'll improve your repertoire extensively over your shinobi career."

"Che. That's boring."

"Whatever. Moving on. Teaching you the Bunshin no Jutsu is pointless, since you have the Kage version. And you already have the Henge down in the form of the Oiroke no Jutsu. So we'll work on the most useful common technique there is – Shunshin no Jutsu. I'd work on Kawarimi, the most useful Academy jutsu, but Kawarimi builds on the Shunshin."

"Okay..so teach."

"Shunshin no Jutsu is a technique that allows you to move at quick speeds, faster than the normal human eye can perceive. The principal is to use chakra to project yourself forward, or into the direction you want to go. To make landing smoother, you can't project some chakra ahead of time to cushion yourself."

"Alrighty – let's practice!"

"Shit! This is taking way too long!"

"Don't rush, idiot. Take your time."

"We only have two days!"

"Oh, did I forget to mention it?" Kyuubi asked innocently.

Naruto's eyes narrowed. "Mention what?"

"Since we're in your mind and my cage, I can use my youki to bend time here. So you have a week in here, at max."

"Why didn't you do this for the rest of my training?"

"Because exercising in here is pointless, as your form is pure chakra and your physical body is unconscious, so you won't get any stronger. I can teach you jutsus in here, because you just need to find out how to manipulate your chakra."

"That's great and all. I'm going back to my training now."

It had taken Naruto a total of three days to master Shunshin, and another one to get the hang of Kawarimi. Kawarimi was much simpler, as it was just a Shunshin with you projecting an object back to where you were previously.

Naruto was as happy as hell now, because Kyuubi had announced that they were going to finally learn an offensive jutsu, as he wouldn't be able to damage an opponent at all with a few simple, albeit useful, supplementary jutsus.

"Alright, brat, today we're going to be learning the Katon: Gokakyuu no Jutsu. It's a C-Rank technique, so it'll be the hardest one you'll have learned so far. What it does is shoot a large fireball out of your mouth, hence the name."

"Big fireball. Got it."

"So what you do is.."

"It's time. Wake up and get back to the village. Hurry."

"Gee, thanks for the advance notice," was the sarcastic reply.

"Just go before you're late."

Back in the real world, Naruto proudly tied his hitai-ate to his forehead in place of his goggles, and headed out. It was a good thing Kyuubi had him running so much the first two days, so that his speed had increased a smidge and his endurance had greatly improved.

He ran passed the hut where he had learned the Kage Bunshin no Jutsu that fateful night, seven days ago. He noted that both Mizuki's and Iruka's bodies were gone. 'Konoha probably collected them.'

The first thing Naruto did was visit the Third.

"Yo, old man. I'm back."

To say that the Sandaime Hokage was pleasantly surprised would be a major understatement.

My longest chapter, though even I find it pretty boring. But I put it out pretty quick, too! Two days.

To The Three Stoogies, I really like that idea! I might do it if I don't have them both die, and Harem doesn't get in the way of Haku dying. And was this soon enough for you? ;-)