Naruto woke up, finding he had fallen off the bed. He glanced at the clock and saw it was six o'clock. He felt like leaping up and down with excitement when he remembered that today was to be his first day at the academy. He quickly got ready and left his apartment, with a rucksack slung over one shoulder.

He walked over to his family training ground and dropped his bag to the floor. He had decided that he would do a brief warm up before heading off to the academy. He slunk into a taijutsu form and he rapidly moved from posture to posture, and practiced his form, moving on to the Dance of the Rising and Setting Sun. It was almost half past seven when he had finally finished. He left the grounds and walked off to the academy, feeling excitement and anticipation bubbling within himself.

Naruto found himself leaning against a tree in front of the academy. There were a few minutes to go before the school day would begin. He looked around and carefully studied the other children. There were two boys sitting on a bench. One had his head rested on his arms and his only noticeable feature was his spiky black hair. The other was a plump boy, with face paint on; he was munching on some potato chips. Off to the side there were a gaggle of girls, laughing and talking together. He saw some other lone figures, but did not have time to study them as the bell rang just then.

Naruto found himself sitting next to the boy with the black hair he had seen outside. When Naruto sat down the boy looked up and introduced himself.

"Hey. I'm Nara Shikamura, and this is my friend, Chouji," he told Naruto, flashing him a smile, while Chouji waved at him, also smiling.

"Hey, it's nice to meet you Shikamaru, and you Chouji," he said grinning at the two of them.

Just then a young man with a chunnin vest came into the room. He had tanned skin, and his most noticeable feature was a scar across the bridge of his nose.

"Quiet!" He called to the class, moving up to the front of the room, when everybody had hushed he began to speak, "I'm Iruka, and I'll be your sensei while you are here at the academy. Before we learn anything
I want to make a few things clear," he said. He looked around the class before continuing.

"I won't lie to you. Being a shinobi is hard work, and not many people can handle our profession. A shinobi is one who perseveres, one who endures, and above all, a shinobi is one who protects! By the end of our four year course I expect maybe a quarter of you to become genins. This is a competitive field, and to make it in this profession you must prove yourself, you must be good, and aspire to be the best!"

Naruto looked at the teacher with new found respect; he had to admit that the speech was good, very good. The entire class look at Iruka, some surprised that it would be so hard to make it as a ninja.

"Anyway, today I just want to see where all your skills lie, and see if any of you have already got a head start on the rest of the class. Anyway let's see who's here first," Iruka said. He pulled out a clipboard and began calling the names of the students, and every replied.

"Haruno Sakura"

"Hyuuga Hinata"

"Kazama Naruto"

A collective gasp came from the class as they heard his name.

"Yo, Iruka-sensei," Naruto replied, smiling a bit.

All the heads in the class turned to him, and he saw the shock on Shikamaru's face from the corner of his eye. He grinned a bit and waved to all the people. Iruka looked at him with interest before carrying on with the register. After that he told everyone to lead out of the classroom to the training field.

"Hey," Shikamaru said to Naruto. "How come you didn't tell us you were Kazama Naruto, the Yondaime's son?"

"Well, I didn't think it was important. I didn't want you to treat me any different because of it," Shikamaru nodded, and carried on walking next to him, Chouji on his other side. Naruto could see all the other students stealing glances at him, and he smiled to himself.

Another boy sauntered over tot hem, his hair raven black and long. "So you're Kazama Naruto, huh?" Naruto nodded to him, and he smirked back. "Well that's good, it seems like I might actually have some competition in this place then," he said smirking.

Naruto grinned at him and replied, "That's if you can keep up!"

"I think it's you who won't be able to keep up. I'm Uchiha Sauke by the way he said," he stated, now grinning back.

The class arrived at the training grounds, and Iruka put them into pairs. Iruka said they were to spar. Naruto found himself against a boy called Inuzuka Kiba.

"So you're Kazama Naruto huh? Well I hope you live up to your family name, that could make our spar interesting," Kiba said, grinning at him.

"Hey if you're an Inuzuka, shouldn't you have a dog as a battle aid?" Naruto asked.

"Yeah," Kiba said, scratching the back of his head, "but, we only get given our dogs when we reach the age of 8," he said, a sigh of regret escaping through his lips.

Iruka told the first pair to go up and begin sparring. He told them that the winners would go of to one side and the losers to the other. The winners would continue to spar, until there was only one person left, and that person would be ranked number one in the taijutsu field. He also said that position and ranking could change over time.

Naruto saw Sasuke spar with another boy, and saw that it ended quickly, with Sasuke dealing some fast blows to his opponent. However he saw that Sasuke's posture was sloppy, and that his defence was flawed, any experienced shinobi would have easily used this weakness against him. He also saw a boy called Aburame Shino use a chakra draining technique with some bugs, which were his battle aids. Naruto knew this technique would do little against him, as he knew he had vast reserves of chakra, and it would be difficult to make a dent in his reserves. Shikamaru forfeited as soon as soon as the bout began, and chouji was beaten by a girl called Hinata.

Finally it came to him and Kiba, and the two walked over to the area and grinned at each other before slouching into their taijutsu forms. Kiba went into the normal taijutsu position, but Naruto went into a taijutsu form that no-one could recognise, not even Iruka. In fact his style was called called the Bloody Wind Style. It was a powerful style, that relied on fact attacks, and disallowed the opponent the time to retaliate. It required speed, stamina and power to be executed. The class looked on in interest, as Iruka called for the spar to begin.

Naruto stood still, the wind blowing his hair, and his cloak billowing in the wind as he waited for Kiba's attack. Kiba ran forward and moved towards Naruto's left side, his fist cocked. He swung at Naruto, and as he did so he brought his knee up. Naruto responded by ducking below Kiba's punch and pushing his left hand into Kiba's knee, and at the same time he puched all his body weight into a blow to Kiba's middle. Kiba fell back from the force, feeling winded and feeling a bruise forming.

The class looked on in awe at what they had just seen. Naruto had just taken out Kiba with a single blow! Iruka called the match to Naruto. Naruto moved over to Kiba's side to make sure he was not hurt, and the rest of the class crowded round.

Kiba looked up at them and shot them a small grin, "Nice move Naruto, you gotta teach it to me sometime!"

"Yeah sure," Naruto grinned, giving Kiba a hand to help him get up. Iruka said that was enough sparring for the day, much to the distress of Naruto.

A few moments later the class was yet again lined up. They had just begun to wonder what they were going to do next, when Iruka explained.

"I know most of you will not know any, but I want everyone who knows any jutsu or genjutsu to come forward. A few people came forward, and they were Naruto, Sasuke, Shina and Shikamaru.

"Shino why don't you show us your move?" Iruka said, smiling encouragement.

"Shino put his hands together in a seal, and suddenly two other Shinos appeared beside him. "This is my bug clone jutsu. The clones cannot fight, but it may confuse an opponent," Shino stated, and moved back in with the line.

Next Shikamaru came forward. "As troublesome as this is, I do know a jutsu. It's called Shadow Manipulation, and it's a Nara family secret technique." With that, he made a seal. The class thought the jutsu had failed when they saw nothing happened, but then Shikamar lifted his right arm and to their astonishment Iruka-sensei did too. A few of the class clapped in appreciation, as he explained he had done it through lengthening his shadow with his won chakra.

After this Sasuke did his jutsu. His hands moved through some seals, and he cocked back his head and a huge fireball was produced. The class clapped at this, and a few of the girls cheered. He explained that it was a family jutsu, and was called Great/Grand Fireball jutsu. Sasuke grinned and flashed Naruto a look, obviously saying 'beat that', and Naruto smirked back in acceptance to the silent challenge.

"So Naruto, want to show us yours?"

"Yeah, sure, I'll show you one of mine."

With that Naruto's hands flashed through some seals with practiced accuracy. Finally he raised it so that it was aligned to a training pole. He gathered his chakra and sent a burst to his hand. Suddenly a flash of lightning came out of his hand and smacked the wooden pole. The class gasped, as they saw that the now decimated pole was nothing but ashes.

"That was my Lightning Flash, I got that down a couple of months ago, I think it's pretty cool, don't you," he said smirking at the class. Suddenly everyone started to clap and cheer. There were people shouting 'wicked' and 'awesome' and Naruto took a mock bow, turning to Sasuke and flashing him a grin.

"Hey Naruto. You said you would show us 'one of your' jutsus. So how many do you actually know?" Iruka asked. The whole class listened, very curious.

"I know about 10, including the two I got down yesterday," Naruto said.

"You know 16 jutsus and you're only 10? Was that one your best?"

"No,2 Naruto said, "the best is yet to come."