Naruto trudged about his apartment, exhausted from his time in the forest and match with kiba, musing about the upcoming finals.
'I can't get into hand to hand combat with Neji- that would be just pointless and probably suicidal. I'm definitely going to have to work on my nin-jutsu and ken-jutsu, otherwise I won't stand a chance.' Naruto sighed to himself as he realized how hard his upcoming month would be. As he got dressed for the day, another thought struck him.
'I should definitely increase my speed and flexibility in case I get stuck fighting Neji with tai-jutsu.' Naruto concluded.
As he opened the door of his apartment on his way out to a weapons shop, Naruto murmured a quite shit to himself.
A note of frustration seeping into his voice, Naruto quietly voiced his problem.
"Damn it. Kakashi will probably be a lot better for the type of training that I want than Kurenai sensei."
Shrugging off his annoyance at having to ask his lazy worthless sensei for help, Naruto resolved to ask him for help anyway. After all- he had a vow to fulfill.
Naruto hurriedly walked to the nearest weapons shop willing to sell to him, only to be shocked to see who was behind the counter of the store. In stead of the scarred old man he was used to, there was Tenten, that weapons girl from the exam.
"Hey Tenten, you work here?" Naruto asked in surprise.
Looking up from her work, Tenten responded to him, "Oh hey Naruto. Yea my family owns this place. Anyways, what can I do for you?"
"Right, well I was looking to get a pair of chakra weights because there's no more room for the metal tablets I used to use. Also, I was wondering if you have anything for increasing flexibility."
Tenten quickly leapt from her seat at the counter and grabbed a pair of chakra weights from a nearby shelf. After quickly explaining how they worked to Naruto, she walked over to another shelf and pulled out something she called resistors. She handed these huge thick rubber bands to Naruto and explained that he had to wear them at his knees, elbows, wrists, and waist. Seeing the doubtful look in Naruto's eyes at the product, Tenten explained further.
"Look they're going to make it much harder for you to bend each of those areas. So, when you take them off your reactions should be much better."
Though less than persuaded that the giant rubber bands could help him, Naruto quickly purchased both the new weights and set of bands all of which he quickly put on.
' I should have realized he wouldn't be training anyone but Sasuke for the finals.' Naruto reflected as he walked dejectedly towards Ichiraku's to get some ramen.
As Naruto made his way through his sixth bowl of ramen, he realized there was someone else he could ask for help, so quickly paying for his meal. Naruto ran off to the Hokage tower, having some difficulty moving because of the resistors and the increased weight on his body.
" Hey Hokage jiji, are there any jounin who are really good at ken and nin jutsu? I need to get better at those for the finals." Naruto asked after barging into the Hokage's office.
Looking up from his huge stack of paper work, the Hokage smiled to see Naruto there, but his smile slowly disappeared as he realized what Naruto had asked.
"Naruto, Kakashi is excellent in both fields. Why aren't you training with him?" Sarutobi inquired of the genin.
"heh well you see…" Naruto rubbed the back of his head nervously. " I did ask him, but he said he'd be away training Sasuke for the month."
Sarutobi frowned upset that Kakashi was abandoning his other Genin in favor of the Uchiha once again.
"Naruto, as much as I want to help you, you know I can't assign anyone to help you. I can't show favoritism."
The blond genin quickly interrupted. " No no no no. I just want to know who to ask. I didn't mean you should make someone train me. Besides, if they don't want to help I don't think that they're someone whose help I would want anyways."
'when did he grow up so much?' Sarutobi quietly contemplated to himself.
"Well, normally I would recommend asking Gekkou Hayate. However, he's an exam proctor so he wouldn't be allowed to help you. However, I do have someone else in mind. Her name is Uzuki Yugao and she's excellent in both fields you requested" the hokage suggested.
"Yatta!" Naruto shouted and quickly raced out of the office before Sarutobi could explain to him how to find her.
'oh well, I guess he hasn't matured as much as I thought'
"eh, Kurenai Sensei, do you know someone named Uzuki Yugao?"
"Yes I do, but why do you want to know?" Kurenai inquired out of curiosity as Naruto stood at her door.
"Well Hokage Jiji said I should ask her to help train me since Kakashi is busy with Sasuke."
Kurenai winced upon hearing this. 'I can't believe that stupid Cyclops abandoned him for the chunin exams.'
"Well I know where she normally eats dinner, we can go there and ask her if you want."
"Ok lets go." Naruto responded with a nervous look in his eyes.
'oh shit I forgot that the stores don't want him entering.' Kurenai franticly tried to think of a way to relax Naruto.
"Hey Naruto, no henge ok? If they refuse you service, I want to try out my newest genjutsu on them."
Naruto gave Kurenai a small grin and said "I'll only do that if it's a good one, whats the illusion of?"
Kurenai smirked, her eyes flickering with mirth, " It involved two spandex clad people with huge eyebrows and a sunset."
Naruto shivered as he remembered the tai-jutsu duo from the parts of the preliminaries that had already past. "You're evil Kurenai Sensei, and you most definitely got yourself a deal. Lets go."
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"Alright Naruto, before we start training I need to know about how many clones you are good for making."
Naruto thought for a moment and then responded " Well my chakra control is a lot better than it used to be so I can probably make at least 600 now while I used to only be able to make 300." Quietly impressed and stunned at the huge chakra reserves Naruto had, after all-she at her best with full reserves could only form 13, Yugao began to think for a bit on how best to divide the clones finally coming up with the following schedule:
5-6= warm up laps
6-11=chakra control and nin-jutsu for clones while real Naruto does strength, flexibility and speed training.
11-12= lunch
12-5= chakra control and tactics for clones while real Naruto studies ken-jutsu
5-5:45= cool down laps
5:45- 6:30= dinner
7-10= control and gen-jutsu with Kurenai
Naruto stared at the schedule Yugao had drawn up, shocked by both the intense schedule and the amount of effort someone who barely knew him was willing to put into helping him. After reviewing his schedule once more, Naruto looked up at Yugao with confusion evident in his eyes.
"How come I can't use clones for kenjutsu? I did that before for that and taijutsu."
"Just because your brain knows how to do the moves doesn't mean your body will. You have to physically learn the stuff for it to really stick and be usable as instinct." Yugao explained.
Naruto gaped at his teacher. " Does this mean all my work on those things was useless?"
"Not completely, just not the best. When you yourself train those things, its more effective, but its still good to know exactly how to do the katas. Now it's 7 o'clock so form 600 clones please."
As Naruto formed his 600 clones, Yugao formed her own 10 and the ten began calling out for certain numbers to follow them. Six of the clones called for 50 clones each while the other four called for 75 clones each. The real Naruto and Yugao meanwhile, stayed with each other.
"Alright Naruto, while I work on your strength, flexibility, and speed, my clones will be teaching your clones offensive and defensive jutsus from each element, some non-elemental jutsus, and chakra control."
"Why are more clones working on each control exercise then on jutsus?" Naruto inquired.
"Well, the better control you have the easier it will be for you to do all the ninjutsu I'm teaching you. Also, with the size your reserves are, you have potential to be a ninjutsu powerhouse if you can fully control your chakra. By the time I'm done with you, the only people with better control will be medics and genjutsu experts."
Naruto nodded in understanding and Yugao began him on his exercises.
For the four hours he had until lunch, Naruto trained his body hard. Yugao had him doing extensive sets of jumping jacks, pushups, and sit ups, she had him roll a boulder up a hill, she threw senbon and kunai at him forcing him to dodge, and she took him through a series of acrobatic maneuvers designed to make him more flexible. Just two hours in, Naruto was practically begging for mercy from the harsh workout.
"I thought you wanted to beat the Hyuuga." Yugao said in attempt to get her student to finish his workout.
The fire returning to his eyes, Naruto leapt to his feet once more to drag himself through the exhaustive regimen. As it got closer to 11, clones began to disperse themselves. While Naruto pushed the boulder up the hill one last time, he received memories of his clones. He found that the ones doing control were working on tree climbing and water walking with leaves attached to their bodies while others where working on kunai spinning, floating the kunai above the hand and making it rotate with chakra. Some other clones were working by a nearby waterfall trying to walk up it. However, these were nothing compared to the control exercise that had caused Naruto sporadic winces of pain throughout the day. Yugao had had the last group of control clones working on kunai balancing, which Naruto was very thankful he didn't have to do himself.
"I'll see you in an hour Naruto." Yugao dismissed him.
Naruto began slowly walking to Ichirakus as he was quite exhausted, and reviewed the memories of jutsus his clones were learning. He was especially excited to see some of the fuuton, suiton, and doton jutsus he had started learning. Katon and Raiton seemed to be a lot harder for his clones to do though. While sorting through his memories, he saw that Yugao had told his clones that they had to spend at least three days on each jutsu. She wanted to make sure he had absolute perfect mastery over each of them. Almost through shuffling through his memories, a huge grin suddenly appeared on his face. 'I know shunsin now, I can just transport to Ichirakus! Yatta!'
Naruto shunsined, but only made it 3/4ths of the way to the ramen stand. 'I can see why Sensei wants me to spend more than one day on everything now.'
After eating his usual fifteen ramen bowls, Naruto trudged back to his training field.
He was a little early and Yugao wasn't there yet, so he formed 300 clones who divided into groups of 75 each and went off to do their exercises whilst he took out his katana and started flowing through a few basic stances.
"Not bad Naruto." Yugao commented, causing him to stumble as he was unaware that she was there.
"To start off, we're going to have a quick spar so I can see how much you know"
The two quickly slid into ready stances, each waiting for the other to make a move. Finally, Naruto sliced at Yugao, but she easily dodged. The two continued slashing and stabbing at each other for a half hour, all the while Yugao testing Naruto's strength, speed, and technique. At the end of the spar, Yugao told Naruto what she had come up with " You seem very slow and inflexible, although that's probably because you just started with those resistors and you have on weights. Also, having clones study the katas definitely didn't work out because you hesitated many times during the fight because you'd never actually used the moves yourself. So for now I just want you to drill through the katas you know. At the end of the day, we'll spar again- this time you can take off your weights and resistors so that I can get an accurate gage on your capabilities. I also have three books for clones to read on tactics and I myself am going to make three clones to play against three of yours in strategy games."
"Hai Yugao Sensei" Naruto responded before quickly forming his hands into the cross seal for his most used jutsu. After a short fight between the clones about which ones had to read and which ones got to play games, three of them went of to read while the other three went off to play go, shogi, and Chinese checkers.
As his clones went off, Naruto began running through stances with Yugao correcting him each time he made a mistake. After the session passed training thus, Naruto removed his constraints and stood opposite Yugao, much lighter on his feet, and holding his katana more confidently. Naruto quickly sped at Yugao twirling his sword and attacking.
'How much weight must he have been wearing, he's way faster than before.' Yugao quickly defended herself and the two continues sparring for a while. Although Naruto was much better, he was still no match for Yugao. The spar ended with Yugao's katana at Naruto's throat as he crouched panting on the ground.
"Nice job." Yugao commented as she helped Naruto up. "Just how much weight were you wearing?"
"A hundred on each limb" Naruto panted.
"Impressive."
Naruto beamed at the compliment. He and Yugao began dispelling their clones, though it took him rather longer than her because he didn't dare dispel more than 10 at once.
The two said goodbye to each other, and Naruto once again trudged off, body aching, but mind elated at how much he was learning with his new Sensei.
After a quick shower, Naruto ran to Kurenai's apartment to have dinner with her and learn some new illusions.
As the two ate dinner, they discussed what Naruto was learning and laughed over the memory of the restaurant manager yesterday after Kurenai had used her twin beast sunset illusion on him. Finally, the two got to work on his skills.
"Please form just one clone Naruto."
As soon as he did, Kurenai began speaking again. "I want you to work on meditating, and while you meditate focus on your chakra and how it runs through your body while I work with your clone on an illusion."
And so each of Naruto's days went…until two weeks in that is.
As Naruto ran laps around the training ground, he saw a very haggard looking Yugao stumble into the field. Concerned, Naruto quickly ran over to her.
"Are you ok Sensei?" Naruto asked, the worry in his eyes clearly evident.
"I'm fine Naruto, lets just spar ok?" Yugao hoarsely replied.
Naruto quickly pulled out his katana and began sparring with his Sensei, but something was clearly wrong: Yugao was much slower than usual and her attacks were sloppy. Naruto quickly stopped the fight. "Yugao Sensei, are you sure you're ok."
As her student looked at her with worry, Yugao swayed unsteadily and her grief exploded as she broke out in fresh sobs. Naruto hurriedly formed a shadow clone and sent it to get Kurenai while he himself knelt down and wrapped his sensei up in a hug to try and comfort her.
"Kurenai Sensei! Come quick to training ground 28, it's an emergency!" Naruto's clone shouted and with that disappeared. Worried, Kurenai quickly shunsined to the training ground only to be greeted with the site of a distraught Yugao sobbing into Naruto's shoulder. Noticing her arrival, the genin formed a shadow clone to go over and tell Kurenai of Yugao's sudden breakdown. Kurenai knelt by her friend and softly asked her what was wrong.
"Ha…ha..hayate…" Yugao sobbed.
Kurenai quickly enveloped her friend in a hug and decided to take Yugao to her apartment to calm her down and talk to her.
Throughout the day, Naruto slowly shuffled throughout Konoha, his mind glumly pondering what was wrong with Yugao.
'Sensei…you were willing to help me unlike Kakashi'
His thoughts flashed from Yugao's willingness to help him unlike his actual assigned Sensei, to Sasuke: the person Kakashi deserted him for. 'Everyone in this village loves Sasuke, but he throws away all they're admiration, affection, and help. I finally have people that offer those things to me. I don't want any of them to be hurt… whats wrong with Yugao Sensei…'
Naruto continued sulking around the city reflecting on his time training with her: the time he had failed miserably when trying to prank her and she somehow managed to get him with his own paint trap, the times he had eaten dinner with her and Kurenai, the spar when he had finally managed to give her a small cut, the strategy games she had taught him that he now loved, and finally the effort she put in to help him and the friendship she offered him. As night began to fall, Naruto decided to go to Kurenei's apartment and find out what was wrong with Yugao. As Naruto walked up the stairs to the apartment, a woman with purple hair brushed past him on the way down.
'Freaky exam lady? What's she doing here?'
Shaking off his confusion, Naruto tensely knocked at the door. When Kurenai answered, and saw the subdued genin, she immediately knew what he wanted.
"Come on in Naruto. I guess you want to know how Yugao is and why she's so upset."
Naruto grimly nodded his head in response and Kurenai sadly told him that Hayate, the sickly proctor, had died and that he and Yugao had been going out.
'Yugao Sensei must be crushed…' Naruto glumly thought to himself upon hearing the awful news.
"Can I see her?" Naruto softly asked with a pained look on his face. Kurenai nodded and led him to her bedroom where the distraught Yugao lay on her bed, violet hair strewn all across the pillow, sobbing. Naruto gulped as he tried to think of what to say to the depressed woman.
"I, well I've never lost anyone who was important to me before, so I can't really say I know what you feel." Naruto sighed.
"But that's because I never had anyone like that until recently. Now I have you and Kurenai sensei and Iruka sensei and it would drive me crazy to lose any of you. I just want you to know that if you need anything I'll be there for you." Naruto slowly turned to leave, unsure of what to say anymore to the depressed woman, but was stopped at the sound of Yuugao's pained voice as she called out to him.
"Naruto-kun, please don't leave…" Naruto hesitated, twisted around and looked down at the forlorn and stricken expression on his sensei's face. The distraught woman pleadingly stared at him through half opened eyes.
"Please stay with me. " Yuugao called out again. Her words touched a cord and destroyed whatever reason Naruto had to leave.
"Alright Yugao chan, I'll stay." Naruto softly said.
Naruto sat, holding his distressed teacher and friends hand until she finally fell asleep.
The genin got up and left the room, a pained look clearly etched into his features.
"Naruto?"
He didn't say a word as he brushed past Kurenai. As he continued to walk towards the door, Kurenai reached forward and grabbed onto his shoulder effectively holding him in place. He still said nothing and she saw tears forming at the corner of his eyes. Kurenai sighed and enveloped the boy in a tight hug.
"Come on Naruto kun, let it out." Kurenai prompted
Naruto began sobbing, and bawling, and wailing, but Kurenai just held him tight. She waited until Naruto's sobs quieted down and he settled into small sniffles and hiccups. He finally began to shift out of her grip but she kept her arm around his shoulder.
"So…ready to talk?" Kurenai gently asked him.
"I, I've been alone for so long because of the stupid fox. No one liked me." Naruto haltingly began, shoulders shaking from the fury that went along with the memory. Kurenai hated the damn fox for committing such terrible acts in the past, and no one could blame her for thinking so…but she loathed it for being the cause of grief to the youth sitting alongside her.
"But now, I have you and Yugao and Iruka and I just don't want any of you being hurt. If you have something or someone special to you, than you should be able to do everything you can to stop it from ever being hurt. But there's nothing I can do for Yugao-chan now." Naruto sadly vocalized.
"Naruto-kun, you already did do something for Yugao-chan: you showed her how much you care and how important she is to you. And Naruto, we both care for you to." Kurenai reassured him.
Slowly, Naruto stopped shaking and finally looked up at Kurenai, his eyes filled with emotion. "Kurenai chan…. Thanks."
"No problem Naruto kun. You might want to go to sleep now, the funeral is tomorrow and I know it will mean a lot to Yugao if you're there."
"I promised I wouldn't leave though." Naruto answered.
"You can sleep here."
The next day was the funeral. It was a cloudy day, rain falling unrelentingly on the small group gathered in front of the grave- soaking everyone there. Many men and women were crying to themselves or comforting others. Naruto himself was barely holding himself back from crying. He didn't know the man at all, but Hayate had been important to Yugao. So he was important to him. Naruto couldn't even begin to comprehend the amount of grief Yugao must've been feeling. As the last person went up to pay his respects, Naruto walked over to the sobbing Yugao and wrapped her in a huge hug and attempted to comfort her. After some of Yugao's other friends came over and took over with the comforting. Naruto slowly clenched his fists, determination in his eyes, and promised himself to continue to train hard for Yugao, and for the memory of Hayate.
The next three days, Naruto spent his days surrounded by clones strengthening his body and improving his Ken-jutsu skills as his clones worked on his control, nin-jutsu and strategy abilities. He continued his lessons with Kurenai at night. On the fourth day however, well, lets just say Naruto had an intresting run-in while on a run.