Disclaimer: I don't own anything in Naruto.
AN: So far, I doubt there will be any pairings in this story...but well, we'll see how it goes. I aim to explore a very different Naruto - one who has been tempered by countless years. Essentially, a cool, calm and collected all-round BAMF. Enjoy and please leave feedback.
AN 2: This chapter should be the last filler/preparatory chapter. In the next chapter, we should be getting into the thick of things. I'll probably use a time skip and just mention key events in passing. Thank you for taking the time to read my story, I hope it lives up to your expectations and more.
Naruto paused with the key in the lock, allowing his chakra to flutter in surprise, not because of the Anbu agent who had just sneezed – the agent whose presence he had detected as soon as he had stepped out of the hospital – but because of the fresh and clean walls surrounding his door, unblemished by…creative and often times, repetitive graffiti. Shrugging he stepped into his transformed apartment absently noticing the reinforced ninja grade locks on his door, and now that he was paying attention, the likewise reinforced and heavier door. He let out an amused huff, got the apartment fixed up indeed.
Standing in the doorway, he let his gaze pan across his obviously refurbished apartment appreciating its new décor – from the new and modern appliances to the far more comfortable furniture. He stepped fully into his living room, ignoring the Anbu guard trailing him who just relocated to the tree beside his apartment building.
On the topic of new things, he had to compliment whoever purchased the clothes he was wearing. His outfit, composed of a form fitting dark blue long sleeved shirt and black cargo shorts with steel-toed combat boots, was a definite upgrade from the orange monstrosity of yesteryears. They were very comfortable although he didn't quite agree with their colour scheme – he hadn't gotten too used to donning red and black and would have to see about acquiring some clothes similar to those he had worn in past lives. Perhaps he would even get back to wearing that facemask like Kakashi does.
He sat on his couch and decided to finally tackle the main obstacle to his complete integration in this reality, and that was researching the history of the world. A seemingly inane thing to worry about but he remembered once, many lives ago, publically idolizing the Yondaime hokage only for a mob made up of ninja and civilians to attempt to kill him. Much later, after he had reduced Konoha to a smoking and barren wasteland, he found out that the major change in this world was that Namikaze Minato was the godaime hokage, and Orochimaru's successor.
Moving on, he easily hatched a plan of action. He was aware that the tree outside his apartment afforded any skilled individual the ability to see into his living room but not his bedroom. So, under the guise of checking out the changes made to his bedroom, he casually walked inside it and seamlessly produced a kage bunshin without any evidence to give it away, making sure that the spike in chakra was the same as the one he let out in front of his apartment when he feigned surprise at the new décor. The Anbu outside never suspected a thing. While his clone hid in the bedroom, he wondered back out and eventually left his apartment with a book, which going by the annotation in it, was left to him by Jiraiya as a birthday present – not that the old Naruto would have been able to deduce what the scribbled signature of "Oil" stood for. He made his way to the top of the Yondaime's head and sat down to read, easily sensing the Anbu guard settle down to read what was no doubt an orange book.
Meanwhile back at Naruto's apartment
The moment the kage bunshin felt his creator leave and the Anbu follow him he set out to fulfil the task for which he was created. With no warning his body smoothly shifted into that of an average looking ten year old with perfectly ordinary features, brown eyes and hair. He left the apartment and made his way to the Konoha public library. He nonchalantly walked inside, politely greeting the librarian at the front desk who smiled back at the polite young man. He asked her if she could point him in the direction of the history section, saying he needed reference books for his project on the timeline of the elemental nations. When the librarian expressed surprise at such a seemingly involved project for one so young, he admitted to her, with a sheepish smile, that his father had been trying to get him to pay attention in history lessons, and finally just decided to ransom a promised trip to the festival. He hoped that by doing the project he could convince his dad that he had turned a new leaf, so to speak. Chuckling at the impatience of today's youth for things like history, she pointed out the necessary section for him.
The clone followed her directions and easily located various books written from different perspectives of ninjas and civilians alike – all told, a total of six relatively thick books. He set the books down at a desk and began reading.
Fifteen minutes later he was done.
He set the books back in their place and wandered over to the section set aside for the ninja academy. He speed read the various textbooks, easily deducing the syllabus for all the years of the academy as well as brushing up on the material taught. He had plans to skip a lot of days in the academy and was gratified to note that the final graduation exam accounted for 70% of a student's grade, for all their years in the academy. A dead last student could easily end up in the upper 25% of his year at the end of the day. Finally, the clone went to attend to his last task, the history of various wars and battles fought, as well as, notable deeds of various ninjas. The purpose of reading about such was two-fold: First and obvious was the fact that it would not do to be ignorant of so and so famous person who "everybody knows" and whatever famous deeds they performed. Second, and more subtle, was the fact that reading about various famous deeds would give Naruto an idea of what people were capable of. For example, in some realities, space-time manipulation was never discovered and so using jutsu like the Hiiraishin caused far more trouble that it was worth.
By the time the clone had finished, having taking some extra time to peruse books on foraging, forging, and geography, he had been in the library for two hours. He left, pausing at the front desk to thank the librarian and left with a mischievous smile and a promise to bring her a souvenir from the festival. She laughed at his adorable cheek and waved him off.
The clone walked out of the library and using a technique Naruto had created a long time ago when he got frustrated by the Kage Bunshin's limitations in terms of memory transfer, the clone sent a clump of its memories from the past two hours along the link that all shadow clones shared with their creator. The technique negated the need for a clone to disperse every time it wanted to share its experiences, thus adding significantly to the overall effectiveness of a clone during its lifetime. With that done, the clone walked down a deserted alley and vanished with no smoke, sound or trace – gone, between one moment and the next.
The clone appeared in one of the deserted training grounds closer to the outskirts of the village – indeed, as you might have guessed, he was in search of a suitable place where the original could train, somewhere well away from people and with the smallest possible risk of discovery. The training ground was not his final stop however; he walked with a determined gait towards the trees that surrounded the forest, walking in a direction that would put him eventually at the wall surrounding the village.
Before he could get that far he emerged into a clearing. It bore the marks of area effect ninjutsu, evident by the various scorch marks, damaged equipment, felled trees, and in some places rust brown stains denoting where blood was spilt. These clearings arose as a result of ninjas who wanted to test out some ninjutsu of the army-killing persuasion. Out of courtesy, said ninja rarely ever experimented in official training grounds, not wanting to damage them and prevent others from making full use of them. The clone carefully memorised the location of the clearing and left to another part of the village to repeat the process.
After three hours of searching the clone had found and memorised the locations of a total of eleven such accidental training grounds, three of which had signs of use in the past year and were thus cut out of consideration. One of the potential training grounds had a waterfall, nothing too outrageously big, but more than sufficient for wind natured chakra training among other things.
Having accomplished all that he had set out to do, the clone disappeared without a trace, and this time for good.
On top of the Yondaime's head Naruto gave no indication whatsoever that he had received the memories of his clone. He smoothly stood up and dusted off non-existent dirt from his shorts. He sensed the attention of the Anbu on him as he stood and surveyed the village, perhaps he is worried I might jump. He inhaled the clean and fresh air, held it in for a beat, and then exhaled. With one last glance at Konohagakure he turned to return to his apartment.
Arriving at his apartment once more, Naruto went about preparing a simple dinner. He made a mental note to read a cooking book in plain sight of one of his watchers before he began to prepare gourmet dishes. On that thought, he should probably start taking the chance to convince anyone watching him that he had taken up reading as a hobby – it was never fun when people started getting suspicious and watching him so close that it became a bother for him to cut loose and have fun. After all, he has found that people have the tendency to start giving him narrow eyed looks when they discover he is a master blacksmith, hunter, tanner, tailor, chef, builder, artist,…well, you get the idea. The thing with living for ever is that you have the time to do anything, and so eventually, you do.
"…After eating and cleaning up he went through the motions of getting ready for bed and after securing his apartment he turned off all the lights, climbed into bed and went to sleep. A few minutes later, Neko arrived to relieve me" said Kakashi as he finished his report of his day guarding Naruto.
The Sandaime exhaled a stream of tobacco smoke and closed his eyes. Turning to one of his most prodigious jounin he said,
"Thank you Kakashi." Noticing that his ninja seemed to have more to add, he inquired, "Is there something else?"
Visibly hesitating, Kakashi finally sighed and said, "No hokage-sama."
Giving him an assessing gaze, the hokage decided to let it rest.
"Very well, you may leave. Thank you for your good work."
With a bow, Kakashi vanished from the hokage's office in a cloud of smoke and the old man turned back to his work, hoping to finish soon and go home.
Moments earlier
The moment Naruto sensed the incoming chakra of Neko he carefully molded his chakra in preparation, and when Neko arrived, causing a slight spike in her chakra, he burst into motion. He seallessly and smokelessly created a kage bunshin beside his bed and in the same motion switched out with clone and without losing a beat vanished from his apartment – all in the time it took the chakra spike of Neko's shunshin to die down thus effectively masking his actions from detection by the two Anbu outside.
Naruto materialised at the first of the eight clearings he was going to convert into his personal training grounds. He created ten highly charged shadow clones and departed for the next clearing.
As Naruto left, his clones spread out and by the time they had stopped moving, each clone stood in front of a tree. From above, the formation of the clones would have looked like a circle with ten points placed at regular intervals. Moving in sync, each clone held up a finger and forged a small vivid blue chakra blade. Together, they began to carve seals into the trunks of the trees they stood in front of.
Having already moved through all eight clearings, Naruto arrived back at the first clearing and assumed a meditative pose to prepare himself for step two. In all the eight clearings his clones were hard at work inscribing seals in increasingly complex patterns on ten trees. Meanwhile Naruto had begun his own portion of the task. Very carefully he gathered and molded a huge amount of chakra and kept a firm hold on it. Reaching out with his senses he examined the chakra of the trees, plants and animals around him – essentially getting a read on the exact frequency, if you will, of the background chakra of the clearing. Then with absolute focus he began to mutate the nature of the chakra he had molded. Step by step, the chakra began to change from one that was unique to Naruto until finally it was indistinguishable from the chakra that saturated the surroundings – and right in time too for he sensed through the link he shared with all his clones that they had just finished inscribing the seals. Now came step three.
Reaching out again, he grasped all eighty chakra links to his shadow clones and gave the shadow clones the go ahead to do their parts. With the active chakra link between themselves, the clones were able to act in sync – simultaneously, they molded all their remaining chakra into neutral natured chakra, placed their hands on the seals they had just carved and activated the seals they had just carved, making sure to halt the activation process just before its conclusion, essentially leaving the seals in a state of suspended animation – much like drawing a circle and stopping just before closing it off. Now for the most delicate part of the entire procedure…with his clones' minds right there with him, Naruto portioned the carefully prepared chakra into eighty equal parts and after making sure that all his clones were ready, sent them out along the chakra links – with each chakra packet traveling at a speed that ensured that all the clones received them at the same time.
As the clones felt the chakra packets arrive, without interrupting the flow, they fed the chakra into the suspended seals and just as the last of the incoming chakra was sucked into the seal they closed the loop, completing the charging and activation of the seals. Owing to the neutral nature of the chakra used, no ninja sensed the chakra spike and the hidden nature of the clearings ensured that the resulting light show went unseen. After the chakra eruption had died down, Naruto dismissed all his clones.
Getting up out of his meditative post, Naruto probed the newly made barrier around the clearing he was in – checking to make sure that all the features he had intended were present in the barrier and that nothing went wrong. He was satisfied with what he found. Now, no one but him would be able to find any of the eight clearings and even those who might have known about their existence in the past would just conclude that the trees must have regrown after they realise that they can't find any clearings outside the training grounds – after all, who knows what the trees grown by the Shodaime are capable of.
With all that done, Naruto could then get around to training up his body to flow smoothly with all the moves and reflexes he had acquired over his very long existence. It was always ultimately easier to have a body that didn't fight against ingrained reflexes and motions. Moving to the edge of the clearing, he flexed his chakra and suddenly five hundred shadow clones existed in the previously empty place. Checking to ensure that they would have enough chakra to see them through the night, he left them as they began grouping themselves into different squads, each of which would run through the katas of a different taijutsu style.
He moved to the other shielded training grounds and repeated the same procedure, leaving clones that would acquire proper training in the use of the five elements, their various combinations as well as kenjutsu katas. With that done he prepared to return to his apartment to get some rest. Now that he had taken care of all the necessary preparations, he could start having his fun. Just before he vanished from the clearing he was in, he watched a batch of clones juggle rasengans amongst themselves and mused absently that he should build a blacksmith's forge in one of those clearings to make custom weapons, and then with not as much as a whisper, he was gone.
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