Chapter Five

April 118-120 (768-770 AV)

At the end of his first year, Tsunade had taken Naruto aside before his daily training to expand his training. Privately, Tsunade was astounded at Naruto's ability to keep up.

Oh, she had managed to climb a mountain with just one hand or foot and done the cliff exercises, but by the time she'd thought up other ways to improve a war was going on. She just didn't have the time to devote to such training. As the years passed, Tsunade's mostly idle mind had thought up tons of crazy training options that would let a person increase their ability in taijutsu. It had culminated in Naruto's current training schedule, although she had managed to find the energy to do it herself a few times. He had progressed pretty well, so it was time to move forward.

"Alright Naruto, I've had you working on any and every chakra control exercise I could think up. You'll keep working on it every day for the rest of your life, but you'll have to come up with new exercises on your own. I'm sure you can probably come up with a few ideas. That giant hairball in your gut might even have a few."

"From here, we'll go ahead and move on to the elemental exercises. Because of your huge reserves, I'll get you started in getting a feel for each element by having you perform a wide scale jutsu for each one. They'll be serious chakra sinks at first, but you'll be better able to move into the actual exercises once you get a feel for each element."

"Because of how much chakra you have, we'll be starting with power and working towards precision and intensity. I have little doubt that you'll actually find this easier than doing it in reverse like most people."

Naruto's training in the other four was never quite as extreme as it was during his first elemental chakra training, but the efforts still left Naruto worn out every day. Using twenty-five shadow clones every day to work on the exercises for each element, Naruto was able to make good progress. He wasn't in a hurry, so it was okay to take things easy. Just like his physical training, elemental training was a simple matter of progression of precision, intensity and magnitude.

Wind chakra, being his 'first love', progressed the most. He expanded from the cutting exercises into controlling other aspects of the Wind element like speed, chakra flow, pressure and wind resistance.

Having heard rumors about Danzo's 'vacuum' jutsu, Tsunade encouraged Naruto to create true vacuums with his wind affinity. The ability to remove air could become the perfect counter for fire techniques. Inversely, she also wanted him to work on increasing air's density. Tsunade was curious if Naruto could stand on air like other shinobi could stand on water.

Naruto's ability with cutting exercises hadn't stagnated, though. He had gone from slicing a waterfall in half to carving holes into the mountain, increasing the distance to carve as each level was mastered. The result was a series of small tunnels, the first passing through the mountain top. Naruto figured he still had a long way to go to true mastery. The day he could cut the mountain in half with just one slice of wind chakra, he'd call it good.

Naruto's other four elements had made more gradual progress. Tsunade had him focus on exercises that involved precision and intensity once he got a feel for each element. Fire became hotter and then focused down to a blade's width. Water was drawn out into long tendrils that held up increasing weight or pressurized to the point it would push through steel. Earth became hard enough that Tsunade had to augment her strength to break it, and walls became as smooth as glass. Lightning was focused without a channel towards various targets, and the speed it traveled increased weekly. She reasoned that Naruto's large reserves would be naturally suited to exercises involving power, so she wanted him to learn to control it instead.

Tsunade also helped Naruto increase his jutsu library, starting about six months into his second year of training. Every day she would add a jutsu from each of the five base elements. Naruto would work on each technique until he managed one successful use, then assign it to a clone. Sometimes they would add in a non-elemental technique as well.

True to his word, Naruto learned every technique his family had provided. By the time he was done, he had over a thousand clones a day working on jutsu. Given that each clone would use the jutsu until they ran out of chakra for anything they could think of, Naruto became well acquainted each jutsu's capabilities. By the time his third year of training had ended, Naruto had well over two hundred jutsu for each element, as well as hundreds of non-elemental techniques.

Once that point had been reached, Naruto started attempting to use pure shape and element manipulation to perform each jutsu. It was very slow going, but the results spoke for themselves. Naruto's control over the five basic elements was positively masterful at this point, but he wouldn't consider it mastery until he could perform anything he wanted to with the elements without a handsign.

Each element had their own special qualities and abilities, and Naruto even discovered a few simply playing around.

Wind could cut and push things, but Naruto also discovered how to manipulate air pressure and all of the things it affected, such as sound and wind resistance. Lightning was good for piercing, and legend had it that the Raikage's Lightning Armor increased his reaction times to incredible levels. Naruto figured out how to use lightning to project and deflect metal by creating magnetic fields.

Earth chakra could empower anything it was channeled through and somehow increase or decrease the weight of rock and stone. Naruto figured out how to use it as an alternate form of sight in caves, allowing him to know his way through any cave system. Water chakra simply moved with such ease that it granted near silence to weapons. It also was capable of washing away chakra residue. Naruto had figured out that channeling water chakra in just the right manner would let him breathe underwater.

Fire chakra could burn. That was almost all anyone had used it for. Naruto had gone beyond that. He could cause fire that would give off intense light without generating a lot of heat, or channel it into a beam capable of piercing metal and stone with utter ease. Even sea stone had fallen before it.

Tsunade herself had taken up some training while on Amazon Lily after discovering a startling fact. She no longer needed her Henge to look the way she did. Her body, by means completely foreign to both Naruto and Tsunade, had reverted to its thirty year old self.

Deciding to make the most of this, Tsunade had decided to join Naruto in some of the outlandish exercises she had created for him. Although she had more experience and was well ahead of him in these exercises, the lack of a bijuu meant that her progress wasn't as rapid as his. She had noticed an improvement over her previous strength, though, and Naruto had renewed his vow to never needlessly bother her more than she could handle.

About three months into her renewed training, Tsunade decided to find a challenge for her monstrous strength. She had found it in the nearby ocean, among the various Sea Kings that lived in the Calm Belt. Every week or so, Tsunade would go out there to, as she put it, 'teach these overgrown fish fry some respect'.

The first time the Kuja tribe saw an eel Sea King spun about by its tail and flung into the distance, they had screamed and bolted themselves into their houses, unwilling to face the wrath of whatever had manhandled the monster. Tsunade had water-walked back, hoping to chat with Kimiko and her friends after a long day of battling the Sea King, only to find no one around much to her frustration.

From that day forward, the Sea Kings learned to tread lightly in her presence... just like every other sane creature on earth. A few would always come around from other areas of the ocean to attempt to face down the legendary woman, and all were sent off bruised and bloodied, heads sailing above the waves as they were thrown into the distance. Although the Sea Kings didn't seem to speak, they were certainly intelligent. Tsunade was adopted as an unofficial 'Queen of the Seas'. All Sea Kings would acknowledge her as their ruler... or else.

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120 (770 AV)

At the end of their third year on the island, Tsunade declared her oversight of Naruto's combat training to be officially over.

Tsunade knew without a doubt that in a jutsu for jutsu battle, there wasn't a ninja alive that could match Naruto. Even among those she had only heard of, it would be a tough call. Not only had Naruto acquired a jutsu library to rival Kakashi and the Sandaime and Jiraiya, he had also developed a near-mastery of every single one. He had a year and a half of experience for every jutsu he knew, plus twenty-five years of exclusive training in each of his elements.

Naruto had more prowess and power in ninjutsu than any other ninja, including the Sandaime, a man hailed as the God of Shinobi. Every jutsu he knew had been shortened to seven hand seals or less. Henge, Kawarimi, Kage Bunshin and the Rasengan were perfect - no smoke, no hand seals, and no build-up time.

Truthfully, Naruto could probably go the rest of his life without using any of his other jutsu in one-on-one fights, or even fifty-on-one fights, so long as the opponent was ten feet tall or less. Larger opponents would take some more time – maybe even a whole thirty seconds – because Naruto hadn't yet reached the point where he could make larger or elemental Rasengan variants on the fly. He was working on it, though… and wasn't that an absolutely terrifying thought. The ability to release a Rasenshuriken on a hair-trigger would be something that even Tsunade wouldn't dare to face, for even an instant kill couldn't guarantee survival against such a jutsu.

Near the end of the three year physical training period, Naruto had actually begun to experiment with some of the secondary elements and hidden jutsu he had witnessed or heard about over the years. He was currently trying to achieve Haku's Ice release. Naruto and Tsunade believed that after he combined two elements the first time, it would be easier to do so for the rest because the only hard part was actually learning to combine them internally. For hiden justu, Naruto worked on recreating the Akimichi techniques. They were simply too valuable to dismiss in a world that had ships, cannons and giant sea monsters of unknown intent.

The various awkward exercises Tsunade had forced him to perform had given Naruto a keen spatial awareness that almost surpassed his Sage mode in close quarters. Naruto's body control was so sublime that even if his feet were swept out from under him, he would recover with one of his hands fast enough to counter most sword strikes with his feet.

He had learned how to wield both hands and feet with an expert precision that rivaled taijutsu specialists like Lee and Gai. It was an inhuman level of progress. This was building on Naruto's aptitude for physical combat. After all, he had been capable of facing against Sasuke's Sharingan without the Kyuubi for a time at the Valley of the End. That was no small feat considering he lacked any form to his movements.

The Kyuubi's chakra had certainly accelerated Naruto's physical growth, as Tsunade was adamant that there was no other way he could have progressed so quickly. Naruto argued that he was training day in and day out with absolutely nothing else to do, but she still knew the human body better than he did. It was simply impossible, even for an Uzumake's physique, to take that sort of strain day after day for three years without an outside influence.

"Alright Naruto, I've taken your body as far as I'm going to do so. From here on out, all you can do is continue to push past your limits. The day you can do every exercise I ever gave you in a single day without feeling tired... is the day you need to increase your resistance, be it by boulder or seal!"

"Your jutsu have nearly reached a similar peak. You have enough jutsu to handle nearly any situation you may come across. About the only thing you really have left to work on in that department are your mastery of the Hirashin and Rasengan. You can at least use the Hirashin to teleport to a single kunai, but it isn't feasible in combat yet, and according to your father's notes even he hadn't mastered it yet."

"From here on out, we're going to be working on your four biggest weaknesses: book smarts, genjutsu, fighting style and medical jutsu." The woman smirked as her charge began to dread the coming days.

"I know you hate book work - given your energy levels, you're probably not out of line in doing so - but it's something you will need someday. Genjutsu are another headache for you, given your chakra levels, but if you want your mind to stay yours, you have to be able to protect it from outside influence." Tsunade could tell she'd need a different track to impress the importance of these things.

"These things will let you go places that raw power won't. Not everyone can just be bullied into doing what you want them to do; even I ran into that a few times. You've got to learn how to deal with both people that can and those that can't match your power. Otherwise, you'll only ever make people fear you. I think you know just how much good that does."

Naruto stayed silent, as he knew exactly what she meant. In his younger years, most of the civilian villagers had been wary of him, fearful even, regardless of what he did. They knew he had incredible power within him, and it drove them to shun him. Naruto wanted to be powerful, but not at the cost of living through that for the rest of his life.

"You have yet to acquire a consistent fighting style for hand to hand. You also have virtually no experience with any weapon that isn't a kunai or shuriken. These things will become major weaknesses when you begin facing higher level shinobi that have experience in weapons. Even with all your skill in ninjutsu and taijutsu, Kisame could take you apart if his showing against Gai is anything to go by. Itachi didn't even need genjutsu to kill you if he had ever gotten serious."

"You'll need to acquire some sort of weapons skill, but I'll leave the choice up to you. You have the strength and dexterity to wield any weapon you choose. Truthfully, you have the strength and speed to be capable of wearing full-body armor dense enough to stop a spear without slowing significantly, but that would only be useful when battle is anticipated and stealth is useless."

"Most importantly, though, you will never be truly strong in my book until you can beat someone to the brink of death and then save them. That, in my opinion, is the true peak of a shinobi."

As she began talking about this, Tsunade started pacing. This was a subject she had been incredibly passionate about in her younger days. Even decades later, bringing up that subject was a sure way to get her talking.

"We are given chakra for a reason. There are plenty of civilian methods to destroy things, but chakra lets a ninja bend the elements to their will, stop the forces of nature and heal people in ways that science can't match. If I had my way every shinobi in Konoha would devote time to learning at least basic first aid, and the Mystical Palm would be a requirement for jonin status. So, if you want to be a jonin in my book, you're going to learn at least that much. Now make a few hundred clones." Tsunade cracked her neck to either side. "We have work to do."

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120-123 (770-773 AV)

It had been three years since Naruto began his new training, six since he arrived on this island.

He worked tirelessly to perfect the finer uses of chakra. It was exceedingly slow work the first four months, until Naruto came upon the solution. As usual, it involved the Kage Bunshin no Jutsu.

In hindsight the problem, and thus the solution, had been staring them in the face. Naruto usually had too much chakra to control it to such a fine degree, making even attempting the finer elements of chakra control almost beyond him. The Kage Bunshin allowed him to neatly bypass this problem.

By splitting his chakra into obscenely high numbers – we're talking a few thousand clones – Naruto was able to get experience working with smaller portions of chakra. As time went on, he would reduce the number of clones until he could do it himself. Getting down to a twenty-five clone split for each exercise seemed to be a threshold for Naruto. Once he reached that level, Naruto could start doing it without splitting his chakra off to any clones.

They started back where the problem began – the Bunshin no Jutsu. How Naruto hated that jutsu. Coming so far on his own, only to find himself still incapable of it, ate at Naruto in a way few other things could have done. The clone jutsu could effortlessly push him into the irritated ranting that had been a hallmark of his younger days.

But Naruto persevered under Tsunade's guidance, and by the end of the fourth month he managed to perform the jutsu to the standards of the Academy… in Tsunade's time.

The sheer elation he felt at conquering that jutsu had left Naruto on a high for the rest of the week. He would frequently rile up Tsunade just to watch her fist go right through a bunshin. Then he would run for his life as she sought to inflict true retribution.

From there, Naruto moved on to simpler genjutsu. Both of the ninja knew high level illusions would probably never be his forte, but each of them was surprised when Naruto showed a knack for using the simpler illusions in incredibly flexible ways. His hands-down favorite was the False Surroundings genjutsu. He became adept at using it to simply hide his presence. Combined with the various stealth jutsu his adoptive family had learned or invented, Naruto was a nightmare at stealth.

Throughout this time training in finer uses of chakra, Naruto had also been trained extensively in anatomy. It never really went beyond the human body for any intensive studies, as Naruto still wasn't much for book knowledge. He preferred hands-on learning, and there was no way Tsunade was going to subject innocent animals to his attempts without him learning the basics of their anatomy.

Naruto would never be a genius of anatomy, and diseases would probably be a learn-as-he-went process, but he proved to be amazingly adept at using the Mystical Palm jutsu to heal injuries and remove poisons. Tsunade suspected his unnatural healing factor might have had an effect on his chakra that gave it a leaning towards this specific jutsu, but she also put it down to the fact that he had a remarkably intuitive grasp of his chakra even if fine control had been difficult to attain.

The sixth year was spent solely on working out how to use Tsunade's strength technique. That was, by far, the most trying experience of his life. He would repeatedly break the bones in whatever limb his was using by mistiming the strike, or tear a muscle by failing to balance out where his chakra needed to go. It was agony. As time went by he would tear something with less frequency, but it didn't really go away. He decided that until he had greater mastery the technique would be relegated to a supplementary technique for outside of battle.

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123-126 (773-776 AV)

The final three years were dedicated to perfecting his various techniques and working on his fighting style. In the end, the latter had proven futile. Naruto was, and would always be, Konoha's Number One Unpredictable Knucklehead. Trying to invent a fighting style for him was like trying to create a formula to perfectly forecast the weather. Every time they got close to thinking they had something pinned for him, Naruto would change things up. He simply didn't like losing, and that's pretty much what predictability guaranteed.

Much of his time among the Kuja tribe had been put towards training in his various weapons. Training was still one of his favorite hobbies, after all. He had become much more adept with his throwing weapons, especially considering his abilities with chakra flow. He took up the bō staff because it worked very well in large crowds with mixed groups of enemies and allies. The tiger claws were an excellent intimidation tactic, but he mostly used the stances to develop a more natural taijutsu to use with the Kyuubi's chakra. Sword techniques were essential in this world, given that pirates and navy officers alike seemed to make extensive use of them. Swords were also cool, and Sasuke could use one.

The one thing that had stymied Naruto during his weapon training was the gun. It was a complete game changer for a shinobi.

High level shinobi all knew the basic tenet of battle – speed kills. They might be able to dodge or deflect bullets, but that meant little if they were taken by surprise. So Naruto decided to figure out how to deal with guns.

His first line of defense was mastering the Earthen Spear technique, the jutsu that Kakuzu had used to tank so much of the damage they had tried to deal him. It turned out to be an excellent defense, but it took a couple seconds to take full effect, so it wasn't perfect.

Naruto had also looked into body armor. Some of the materials in this world were incredibly strong, able to take cannon balls at point blank range. Unfortunately, this material was also very expensive, so it would be a while before he could afford it. He'd probably only do a set of armor for his torso and legs anyway. Naruto valued his mobility too much.

The third thing Naruto looked into was how people in this world managed to not get killed by guns any time they were used without warning. That was how he had found out about Haki, and also how he had met Silvers Rayleigh, the second man to set foot on the Island.

Rayleigh was a very powerful man. He had been on the ship of Gol D. Roger as his first mate, and his control of Haki was incredibe. Haki, as Naruto found out, was the way people accessed natural energy.

It had been understandably frustrating to find out that quite a few people in this world could access natural energy to perform the basic feats that made Sage Mode so dangerous – slight battle precognition and physical enhancement – without any of the dangers that shinobi attempting to reach Sage Mode had. Of course Sage Mode was stronger than Haki, but even so Naruto found it unfair. The things Rayleigh had said about Conqueror's Haki had prompted Naruto to test if his Killing Intent was capable of something similar, and he was indeed capable of it even outside of Sage Mode.

All of this had prompted Naruto to work heavily on his Sage Mode until it only took a few seconds. His training in body control had turned out to be invaluable in allowing Naruto to gather natural energy faster. Because he was so aware of his body, Naruto could attain perfect stillness in any stance at all. This allowed him to maintain Sage Mode almost indefinitely if he was given a moment in battle.

Sage Mode wasn't the only thing he worked on to beat guns. The Shunshin had been worked to death. With Sage Mode active, the Shunshin made Naruto ridiculously fast. He was even capable of using it with taijutsu to speed up all of his body's movements. Tsunade had been flabbergasted when he showed her that. She had then been even more frustrated when perfecting this technique had finally allowed him to perfect her strength technique as well.

Naruto's final two projects of those last six years had also finally seen fruit – the elemental Rasengan and the Hirashin.

The five elemental variations had been completed at both the Rasengan and Rasenshuriken level. The Rasengan had proved to be as deadly as he had imagined, although the Water variant certainly surprised him. The results for the Rasenshuriken techniques were absolutely devastating, and had resulted in Tsunade banning their use except as certain-kill measures due to the potential for collateral damage.

The Hirashin, on the other hand, had been frustrating Naruto. Oh, he had managed to get to the point where he could teleport to a kunai. He could even teleport to a moving kunai. It was when he tried to teleport to multiple kunai that it became a problem. Naruto had trouble sensing the individual kunai. Sage Mode fixed this, but Naruto didn't want to become dependent on one technique to use another. He had already experienced that with the Rasengan.

Finding out that the jutsu was eventually meant to be used without any kunai had been an absolute shock, and an incredible inspiration. That was Naruto's goal for the jutsu. He wanted it to be a seal-less, fuin-free teleportation jutsu that could put him on par with that jerk Tobi.

For now, though, it would be relegated to transportation or emergency escapes outside of one on one battles.