"Make me a ninja? Are you insane?"

"Yes, but that's not the point."

Reks just stared at his companion. "Okay okay." Reks held his hands up. "Even if I do believe that you are the Yellow Flash, how exactly could you make me a ninja?"

"Simple," Naruto answered. "Training."

"You're telling me that all it takes to do the things you do is just some training?"

"No. All it takes to do the things I do is years and years of rigorous practice and life-threatening situations that reveal the potential that lies within you." Naruto smiled at his younger friend. "I can say with almost absolute certainty that you will never be as good as me. You might become stronger than me, you might be faster, you might even be smarter; perhaps, by some miracle, even all three." Naruto stood and bent over to stare Reks right in his face. "But you will never be as good as me, Reks."

Reks remained unconvinced. "So what makes you so good then?"

A kunai rested itself against Reks' neck from behind. Startled, the young boy barely managed to turn his head to see another Naruto standing there holding the small knife. "I'm unpredictable," the clone answered.

Reks jumped away as the clone exploded in smoke. "H-h-how? T-two! Two of you!"

"I can do much more than that," Naruto explained and stood up straight. "When I was twelve, I could create over 1000 clones without breaking a sweat." Reks paled at this revelation. "I bet if I really wanted to, I could create tens, maybe hundreds of thousand of clones now."

"Then why not create all those clones and use them to win the war for Rabanastre?" Reks pleaded. "Those numbers would turn the favor to us easily."

"The first reason is that the clones disappear in one hit from just about anything." Naruto saw Reks calm down at that. "A punch, kick, even a small cut from a dagger would make them disappear." Reks slouched over in acceptance.

"The second reason is that it's not my place to fight someone else's war." Reks' head shot up. "Even if I could win the war for Rabanastre, I wouldn't do it."

"Why not?" Reks shouted. "You bastard! Didn't you say you used to live in Rabanastre? How could you turn your back on your home that easily?"

Naruto bit back a snappy reply. 'The Leaf Village hasn't existed for a long time. It's not his fault he doesn't know.' "Maybe someday I'll explain it to you, Reks," he finally said.

"What is there to explain, Naruto?" Reks glared at him, waiting for an answer.

Naruto struggled to find a proper answer. "It's… complicated."

Reks didn't back down. "Try me."

"It's very complicated."

"I swear if I knew how to get to Rabanastre from here, I would leave you," Reks grumbled.

"Tell you what, if you end up surviving shinobi training, I'll tell you everything. Every secret I have."

Reks was suddenly apprehensive. "What do you mean… 'survive?'"

"You didn't think it would be a walk in the park, did you?" Naruto smiled at his companion. "I have some fantastic ideas that could whip you into shape if you're good enough to not die from them."

Naruto looked at Reks with a determined eye. "I know you're decent with a sword, but I don't know much about what you can do," he mused.

"I was the fastest sprinter out of our group in Lowtown," Reks answered as the two sat back down in their camp. "And I can use some magic, only really low level stuff, though."

"That's actually pretty impressive," Naruto admitted. "I was never able to get a hold on using magic, you know. It's just too different from what I do. I've been doing it my way for so long that I just can't change it."

"How is it 'different' from what you do?" Reks questioned. "I thought you just used magic for everything."

"Nope, I use ninjutsu." Reks looked confused. "I suppose I'd better explain this to you." He reached into a pocket and pulled out a small notebook. After flipping to a certain page with some drawings, Naruto handed the notebook to Reks.

"The energy that allows me to use ninjutsu is called chakra," he began. "Chakra is a combination of spiritual energy and physical energy." Naruto pointed to a diagram on the page showing the sources of the energies in the human body. "Each energy needs to be balanced perfectly or the jutsu can backfire horribly.

"You may not know this, but what you call magic uses pure spiritual energy. That's why it's so easy for you and others to control; there's no balance. On the other hand, I learned from a very young age to combine spiritual and physical energies together, and it's pure habit for me now. Using only spiritual energy is damn near impossible for me.

"Ninjutsu is a general term for just about any technique that can be used with chakra. Almost all ninjutsu can be divided into two categories: shape manipulation and elemental manipulation." Naruto held out his hand and formed a small ball of spinning blue energy and used his other hand to point to the notebook which showed . "This is called a Rasengan. This jutsu was created by my father. It's been called the pinnacle of shape manipulation. It's pure chakra, forced into a physical shape; it's constantly spinning so it can tear through anything, even steel." He let the Rasengan dissipate.

"Elemental manipulation is exactly what it sounds like: using ninjutsu to attack or defend with one of the five basic ninjutsu elements. The ninjutsu elements are fire, wind, lightning, earth, and water. Each element has the advantage over the next and is weak to the previous one, so fire beats wind, wind beats lightning, lightning beats earth, and so on. Of course, a high level lightning ninjutsu can defeat a lower level wind jutsu.

"Any questions so far?" Naruto asked.

"I think I've got it for now," Reks said, impressed by how seriously Naruto was speaking. "Those clones you can make, those are ninjutsu, right?"

"It's called the Shadow Clone Jutsu. It creates physical copies of me using chakra. There are variants, usually involving some kind of element as a medium to make the jutsu easier. It splits the chakra evenly across the number of clones I create, so the more clones I make the less power they have."

"So that's why creating thousand and rushing them into an army wouldn't do anything," Reks said.

"That's right. Although to be perfectly honest each of my clones could probably take down three or four armored soldiers, but that's neither here nor there."

Naruto lifted his hand and turned the page in the small notebook so he could continue the lesson. "Besides ninjutsu, shinobi techniques are also separated into taijutsu and genjutsu. Taijutsu is the general term for physical combat. Genjutsu is the use of illusions, and I'm not talking about that smoke and mirrors bullshit; I mean mind-bending creations that affect all five senses and any sixth sense a warrior might have." He pointed to several sketches on the pages, showing fighting stances and complex calculations.

"Taijutsu will be easy enough to teach you," Naruto continued. "I've mastered dozens of styles, and you've got a good build to learn quite a number of them if you train long enough." Reks looked hopeful. "Genjutsu, on the other hand, I have absolutely no talent with." The younger boy's face fell, just as Naruto had expected it to. "I have no way of teaching you how to create genjutsu, and I doubt anyone else in Ivalice has the capability so there's no point in teaching you what little I know about dispelling them."

Reks lowered his head, dejected. "You'll have plenty to learn regardless, Reks." Naruto placed a comforting hand on the boy's shoulder. "We need to get your physical conditioning up to snuff, though. And the sooner we start working on combining your spiritual and physical energies into chakra, the better."

As Naruto had expected, Reks was unable to draw upon his chakra right away. Considering it usually took children in the Ninja Academy several years to control their chakra, it was no surprise. After a week of trying, Reks had improved his magic casting, but had made no progress otherwise. The physical training wasn't going very well either. Reks was skinny, fit for a speedy build with little stamina.

'A lot like Kakashi-sensei,' Naruto mused as he watched the boy train. 'I have some chakra paper left, but we won't be able to tell Reks' affinity until he learns to control his chakra.'

Currently, Reks was sparring with a dozen of Naruto's shadow clones just outside of their camp area. Reks was becoming rather adept at fighting the clones since he knew they dispelled after a single hit. On the other hand, Reks never escaped from the sparring sessions unscathed. He sported a number of scars and bruises over his entire body, evidence of his rigorous training.

For the past week, their schedule had been mostly physical training. Naruto knew that exhaustion would help Reks in drawing out any latent energy, and he fully expected Reks to be able to feel his chakra within the month. They only spent a few hours every night on the task; Naruto could only handle so much meditation in one sitting, even after 1000 years of life.

Naruto heard a chorus of popping noises and noticed Reks walking back to the camp; all of the clones had been dispelled. The boy sat down, breathing heavily. "The clones are starting to go easy on me, Naruto," he gasped between breaths.

"Looks like they're still giving you a good run to me, Reks." Naruto smiled at the boy. "I'm glad you're pushing yourself, but you just started your conditioning a week ago. You went from fighting one clone to fighting a dozen in a really short time. Take the rest of the day off."

Reks snapped his head up to look at Naruto. "You were the one that said the faster I learn all this, the better!"

"And that's true! But pushing yourself to the brink of passing out every day is going to hurt more than it'll help. You're not giving your muscles time to rest." Reks looked doubtful. "Resting is part of training, too." Naruto examined his new student. "From now on, I'd like you to rest half a day every week. Normally I'd say a full day, but you're not tearing your muscles apart every day."

"You say that like you knew someone who did," Reks observed.

"I did. As a matter of fact, the guy I knew ruptured most of the muscles in his body once and had his arm and leg basically crushed when he was twelve years old." Reks looked amazed. "The greatest healer in the world fixed him up and he was good as new within a month." Amazement evolved into full blown disbelief. "Yeah, Granny Tsunade was the best."

Reks was about to question more but he quickly noticed the pained expression on Naruto's face. "You said all your friends and family died," he muttered.

There was a long silence. Reks could hear wolves scavenging out of the desert wastes nearby. "My parents died shortly after I was born," Naruto finally explained. He ignored the deep rumble of the Nine-Tailed Fox in his subconscious. "I grew up in an orphanage. I was hated by nearly everyone that knew me for something that I didn't even know about and had no control over." Naruto had lowered his head, preventing Reks from seeing his face.

The blond suddenly stood up. "Meditate for the rest of the day," he ordered. "Don't travel far from camp, and don't do any more physical training." He began walking away.

Reks called after his teacher, "Where are you going?"

"To let off some steam."

Punch. Kick. Dodge. Kunai. Block. Rasengan. Punch. Dodge. Punch. Ki-

"Ow!"

"Sorry boss."

"You little bastards and your tricks," Naruto muttered.

He was standing in the middle of a group of several thousand clones. Many of the clones held a Rasengan in one or both of their hands; others held kunai or shuriken. This had been going on for several hours since his half-explanation to Reks. Thinking about his friends… was painful. It was more painful than anything else for Naruto.

Immortality had proved more painful than dying. Watching every person that you ever knew die while you stayed alive at the ripe age of 17 for eternity could do that. Naruto had told himself it wasn't so bad when they were still alive.

Sakura had lived for over 100 years, her lifespan boosted by the Strength of a Hundred seal given to her by Tsunade. Gaara had lived to the age of 98, helped by the chakra from the One-Tailed Tanuki Shukaku, despite the beast being removed from his body at a young age. Killer Bee lived longer than ever Sakura because of the Eight-Tailed Ox.

Hinata… The love of his life, Hinata Hyuuga, had died at the age of 85. They had been married for 65 years when she died. They had 3 children, Hiruzen, Minato, and Kushina. Kushina had become Hokage after Naruto stepped down. An immortal Hokage sounded promising to the village, but Naruto didn't want to preside over the Leaf forever.

Not long after Kushina's death, Naruto left the village to travel the lands. He believed there was nothing left in the Leaf Village for him, as all of his friends and family had now passed on. Naruto knew not when the Elemental Nations had transformed into the land of Ivalice. He reappeared in what had been the Leaf Village many years later to find the royal city of Rabanastre. The Land of Lightning had become the Archadian Empire. And the Land of Wind had become the nation of Rozarria.

The Dynast King Raithwall had ruled the land for many years but after his death the continent split into the three kingdoms that now existed. Naruto held little love for any of the kingdoms; he only fought for Dalmasca because the nation had previously been the Land of Fire.

"Naruto."

Naruto and all of his clones stopped instantly. A loud noise rose from the desert as the remaining clones dispelled. "What's up, Kurama?"

"I've been examining the chakra- or magic or whatever you stupid humans use now- in the air."

"Did you figure out why I can't use Sage Mode?"

"Something in the chakra all over this region is messing with the Natural Energy required for Sage Mode. Like there's something else there; I don't know what it is, but it's everywhere."

"Everywhere?" Naruto echoed.

"Everywhere." The fox grumbled under its breath. "For the past few centuries I haven't been able to sense anything but whatever this is in the air. Until now I thought it was just a change in the natural chakra. But now I know for a fact that it's something else."

"How do you know it's different?"

"I know what chakra feels like, brat. Just remember, I'm older than you."

Chapter 3 End

Heylo everyone. This update is going up a bit late for the simple reason that I forgot over the weekend. I've been working on chapter 5 for the past few nights, and my sleeping schedule is way out of whack right now. Thanks for being patient.