Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto—if I did, I wouldn't be writing this—I'd be living somewhere in a consistently warm climate in a moderately higher quality lifestyle…

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Little Steps

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Naruto had just had his world rocked. Not even a legitimate bottom rung genin and here the Hokage was just chillin at his dinner table, offering him a Red Guard position. The pecking order from genin to Hokage was a convoluted one because of the experience levels and reasons to take the respective titles but the authority of the Red Guard was one thing that was never disputed.

Naruto, despite being the pariah of society, still managed to hear faint whispers and traded rumors of the Red Guard—the infamous Hokage entourage that constantly reminded the continent of the extent of the Will of Fire.

Their reputation and exclusivity were known across the entire continent but not as Konoha's war heroes like the White Fang or the Yellow Flash. Instead, they were at the tip of every untold horror story in Konoha—carrying the same weight as ROOT still did. They were the Hokage's personal extermination crew.

The Guard itself had a history dating back before the time of the Hidden Villages when the Senju were a prominent clan. For at least three generations before the founding of the hidden villages, each Senju clan head had a personally appointed guard detail normally made up of close friends and family.

Hashirama had Tobirama, Mito, and later Sarutobi; Tobirama had Sarutobi and Danzou; and finally Sarutobi had his own consisting of Danzou, Jiraiya, Orochimaru, Tsunade, and later Minato.

His mind aching from the magnitude of this offer, Naruto grumbled to himself and tried to roll himself up in his comforter, hoping that somehow getting lost in his bed would help clear his mind.

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The alarm clock began to ring—and was promptly smashed. Unfortunately, it just kept ringing. After another two increasingly violent smashes that succeeded in quieting the little alarm that thought it could, Naruto groggily hunted his head out of his sheets, blearily looking at the clock and then to the rest of his little studio apartment.

His eyes fell to his kitchen table at the empty ramen container from the night before.

"Right… from civilian to ANBU. Old man's got to be senile by now right? Nothing wrong with taking advantage of that… Nothing wrong with taking advantage of old people," Naruto grumbled to himself as he slumped his way to his bathroom.

"Stupid life changing… high risk… awesome… ANBU… ninja… life and death… training… things…" His grumbling continued into his shower, his voice unintelligible through the water and shower curtain.

Making his way down to the Hokage tower, the entire village seemed to have doubled its attempts to ignore him despite his violent actions towards some of their children yesterday. Although it might've had something to do with the heinous growling, muttering, and twitching coming from him as he walked.

Naruto finally made his way into the tower and promptly ignored the secretary as he stomped up to the Hokage's office.

"Alright old man, you win. ANBU and all that, yay, just had to give me a headache all night…" Naruto grunted, lightly kicking the slightly ajar door open.

Sarutobi looked up from his stack of paperwork. The look that passed through his features gave away his startled feeling of déjà vu but Naruto was too bleary eyed and grumpy to care.

"Hm."

Naruto stopped as an awkward silence settled over them. The clock had barely ticked half a minute before—

"Alright, seriously? You said anytime! I'm here aren't I? Time's a'wastin old man, let's get in gear! Chop chop, get me ANBU awesome and all that!"

Sarutobi let out a snort of laughter as he took a sip from a teacup from his desk.

"Youth these days, so impatient—Horse!" A hulking figure in a red cloak and a horse ANBU mask materialized in a wisp of displaced air. The mask looked intimidating in an awkward way because the horse's teeth were revealed on the mask.

"Get Naruto fitted with something his size and then take him to Sparrow. Sparrow will take him from there."

Horse nodded and gripped Naruto's shoulder tightly, making the boy flinch, leading him out of the office.

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"So why is your ANBU name Horse?" Naruto quipped as they walked into a more shinobi populated portion of the village.

"Well there was this one time—… You'll find out when you're older," Horse replied, caught off guard. Naruto's brow twitched furiously in response. Adults.

They finally turned into an old grey building with a faded white interior that had a couple of racks of clothing in the front, fabric swatches on the sides, and a set of large craft tables in the back.

A number of ongoing clothing projects seemed to be splayed out over each of the tables and beyond that, there seemed to be an erratic creaking noise of racks being moved around behind a door that led to the storage room.

"Oi, Patch! Hokage's orders, standard ninja wear—seven sets, and the standard weather layers," Horse yelled, pounding the doorframe.

A bulky, heavily muscled old man with his hair in cornrows and an eyepatch that looked to double as a pincushion from the eye socket walked out of the storage room wheeling out a hanger rack.

"… Guh. Alright alright, let's see what kind of measurements we've got."

"Hey, hey Patch. Do you know why he's called Horse?" Naruto asked as he was led to a platform in front of three mirrors.

"Well, as the story goes—there was a group of women—."

"Another time Patch," Horse interjected, hastily waved off the question hastily. Patch snorted as he finished taking Naruto's measurements.

"Alright, I've still got a couple pairs of your size in the storage room but you'll have to come back for the other half later this week." Patch ducked in and out of the storage room beyond the craft tables.

Naruto was led out of the small store wearing his new outfit, a fitted black long-sleeved zipup turtleneck shirt with grey piping and a pair of dark blue pants folded above his sandals, with a pair of grey stripes down the sides and cargo pockets built onto each stripe.

"You're shitting me, is this really standard?" Naruto tugged at the constrictive collar.

"Yeah, all genin and chunin and above get required to have safety certified clothing unless if they have valid necessities." Horse guided him down further into a narrower shinobi street.

"You're shitting me. I've seen some of the shit kunoichi wear—there's no way that stuff is certified," Naruto scoffed. His eyes then bulged as he tapped Horse's arm furiously.

"Like that! Who the fuck certified that? The shinobi AV club? " Naruto jerked his thumb at a kumoichi passing by, wearing a skimpy gauze outfit. Horse coughed weakly, but just kept pushing Naruto forward. They began to approach the training ground border.

"We're here. Sparrow should be here in a moment," Horse said calmly, stopping in front of the entrance to the nin training grounds. Naruto glanced around, looking for whoever 'Sparrow' might be. Unfortunately, between the back of the buildings facing into the village and the tree line leading into the training grounds, there was no one else there—just the two of them.

"You know, I really didn't expect you ANBU to be this talkative. Are you all like this? I always thought you guys were just—."

"Horse. You're dismissed—you can drop Naruto's stuff off at his apartment." Sparrow's voice rang out in an obviously disguised gravelly voice as the ANBU commander swirled into existence, it's pointed beak mask giving Naruto nothing but a blank stare.

Horse merely nodded his head before shooting away in a flash of red. Sparrow was completely still and continued to give Naruto the blank stare. Naruto began to stare back evenly in challenge.

"You are here because the Hokage believes you have the combination of talent, skill, and the Will of Fire—enough so to become one of the Red Guard. I however, remain apprehensive.

"I will use this first month of training to test your spirit, strength, intelligence, and your skill. If you have enough to satisfy me—then just maybe will I train your talent."

'I bow to you, wise old man', Naruto thought sarcastically as he nodded slowly, unsure if there was even going to be training that day.

"Now, follow me." Sparrow led Naruto into the section of land made up of training grounds, only passing a few younger shinobi training.

Most training at the designated grounds occurred as a genin or a chuunin for three main reasons but primarily because by the time one became a jounin, there either wasn't a whole lot left to train or there really wasn't a whole lot of time to train. On the other hand, when they did have the time, they would normally leave on a training trip to develop their new techniques in secret.

Jounin had developed a tendency to train on the fly while they were on the road during extended missions—mainly because they were experienced enough to handle any problems experimenting might cause and because once they got the hang of their new technique, it could immediately be field tested. After all—they had the Will of Fire to represent and what better way to forge it than through fire of combat itself? And yes, many jounin did have death wishes.

The two finally arrived in a large clearing surrounded by thick trunked trees, creating a sort of fence of trees. Occasional stumps were strewn around the clearing, some looking like they had been mauled and others looking like they had been sliced clean through.

Once in the center of the clearing, Sparrow stopped, causing Naruto to look back up at the unidentifiable masked ANBU. With a gloved hand that had only the bottoms of the fingertips open, Sparrow drew out a small blank card that was gestured to Naruto.

"Take it and channel chakra into it."

Naruto obliged, still slightly underwhelmed by the lack of 'extreme ANBU training' that he had imagined occurring. The paper split in quarters. Again, underwhelming. Those pieces of paper then split into halves. Surprising, but still underwhelming. Naruto turned back to Sparrow.

"Um… Sorry I broke your paper?" Sparrow gave away no reaction, not even a move.

"It seems that you have a very highly developed wind affinity," Sparrow spoke each word heavily, betraying the surprise the ANBU felt.

"Affinity?"

"The natural alignment of your chakra—every chakra sensitive human being has one. Most shinobi capitalize on it for the purpose of advancing their ninjutsu abilities—by using their primary natural chakra sensitivity as a jumping off point in their personal development of more combat oriented elemental ninjutsu."

Naruto gave Sparrow a blank look.

"Natural chakra affinity. Each shinobi has an element. Maybe two. Makes certain elemental jutsu easier to learn and customize. Get it?" It appeared that Naruto's inability to compute Sparrow's affinity explanation had forced a brief note of discontent and impatience.

Naruto nodded slowly, still wondering if he was going to actually do something awesome today.

"So… what now? Since I'm a wind affinity and all."

Sparrow paused for a moment. A breeze blew through the trees, rustling a few leaves around them. Jerkily turning his head in the direction of the wind, Sparrow walked back towards the ring of trees. Walking to five specific trees, Sparrow jammed a kunai into the trunk of each tree.

"This is your first test. You have two weeks to cut down these trees with these kunai. You are specifically to use these kunai for the duration of this assignment."

Naruto's eyes bulged. He breathed in slowly, the shock nearly getting the better of him. Kunai to cut down a tree.

"I don't know if you realize this Sparrow, but these things are three feet thick, at least."

"Yes."

"Oh. Alright, just thought you should know." The surprise on Naruto's face betrayed his misgivings about taking down a tree that thick, let alone five.

Somewhere in his thought process was a seed of determination that slowly wiped the surprise off Naruto's face and replaced it with a steely gaze upon his first challenge to become worthy of the ANBU. Some hardcore lumber chopping. Right on.

"Since you have no more questions, if you somehow finish before the end of next week, you will report back to the Hokage's office for further details. You begin now." With that, Sparrow was gone in a flash of red.

Naruto placed his foot on the trunk of the tree and grasped the outward jutting kunai handle. Pulling as hard as he could, Naruto walked his foot up the tree further in a greater effort to pull the kunai out. With a mighty tug, Naruto yanked it out and tumbled backwards, rolling over his shoulders.

"Fuck," Naruto grumbled. Walking up to the tree, he took a deep breath and made his first cut on the tree. Some bark flew off the tree from Naruto's attempt at an aggressive stripping session. Growling, Naruto began to hack and slash, cut harder and faster with each blow.

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The spring sunset of the third day found Naruto drenched in sweat and a single tree that was not yet a quarter way cut through.

'Fuck. If I go at this rate, this tree by itself is gonna take the entire week,' Naruto calculated, glaring at the tree. He began shifting his posture and his weight distribution differently as he began to experiment and find which position would make the most of each slash he took.

By nightfall, Naruto had improved his stroke and somehow managed to cut through what felt like a eighth of the tree. His hands were on fire from switching back and forth and quickly developing blisters on each hand—his back and inner stomach were raging over having been kept taut for almost the entire day—and even tighter in the last hours of the day.

Panting, Naruto collapsed on the training ground floor, not bothering to walk back to his apartment.

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The afternoon of the fifth day made way for a booming crash of success as Naruto finally felled a tree. He wasn't satisfied though. There were four more to go and only nine days to finish. And on top of that, the traditional 'spring heat wave of Konoha' had just blasted the village.

Desperation had begun to haunt Naruto. He was already missing two weeks at the academy for this shit. What if it didn't fly? What if Naruto was let go, back to the cackling little vultures that were his classmates? What if their parents succeeded in barring him from becoming a shinobi? This desperation quickly turned in a hellish resolve as Naruto continued to fight for his future.

Girls had stripped down to tank tops and skirts and boys had tank tops and shorts and some had just foregone shirts completely. Naruto had adopted the same approach, his shirt zipped open, leaving his chest bare and his messy crop of hair matted with sweat. He stopped back in the village for a days worth of ramen takeout and left Teuchi and Ayami with questioning gazes as they took note of his hands crusted with blood.

Naruto slurped his ramen from his newly formed log perch while staring at his second tree, which was only barely past the bark. A small prick of pain in his hand jerked Naruto out of his ramen-state nirvana. He mindlessly plucked the splinter on his hand that must have come from the cheap wooden chopsticks that come with all takeout.

'Splinter'. The word rang in Naruto's unsteady mind as he was already quite dulled from the heat wave.

'I wish I could turn these fucking trees into chopsticks—I'd take every pair of chopsticks and snap them in half just to show these stupid trees who's boss', Naruto thought viciously, stuffing more ramen into his mouth.

Finishing his late breakfast, Naruto continued his assault on his second victim. Merely an hour later found Naruto losing his patience as this particular tree seemed twice as dense as the previous one.

A hot, frustrated anger began to surge through Naruto as his mind began to form an unintentional mantra.

'Nine. Days. Left. Nine. Days. Left. Nine. DAYS. LEFT. NINE. DAYS. LEFT. NINE. DAYS. LEFT!' Naruto's anger manifested into a sheen of chakra around his hand and kunai by extension as he took a longer backswing, unconsciously letting more chakra coalesce into a cloud around his hand. With a guttural roar, Naruto slashed at the tree once more.

"SCRAAAAGGCKK!"

Naruto shielded his face with his free hand immediately after the kunai made contact with the tree. Bark and splinters were sprayed everywhere as Naruto's chakra charge violently combusted upon making contact with the tree. A shallow crater had been forced into the tree, tripling the size of Naruto's original efforts.

Nearly hyperventilating, he tried to understand what he had just done. Longer backswing? No. Wider stance? No. Yelling? Fuck no. Anger? No—

'Splinter!' Naruto realized rapidly. Looking back down at his kunai wielding hand, Naruto began to calmly concentrate chakra back around the kunai. However, instead of an almost fist shaped cloud, Naruto attempted to give this new chakra form a needlepoint.

He felt his chakra gather as close together as possible before he reared back and rushed at the tree to give it another swipe. This time, Naruto's chakra whipped from the kunai around the tree, creating a crushing, slapping effect that merely whipped around and stripped the bark off the side of the tree in a jagged line.

A satisfied grimace swept over Naruto's face as he continued to experiment with the potential key to his success. After all, Sparrow didn't say 'just kunai'.

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The next evening was a frightening sight. Naruto, in his new experimentation, had blown tree number two apart. Chunks of lumber the size of Naruto lay strewn around the area. Tree number three had a more refined touch to it as large gouges littered the trunk, which became thinner and deeper as they narrowed down to a single valley along the side of the trunk.

Slurping up yet another takeout cup of ramen, Naruto held it between his propped up knees while holding his chopsticks with his right hand and his kunai with his left. Rather than attempting to assault the tree with more savagery, it appeared that Naruto had calmed down and was busy concentrating on his kunai while attempting to blindly feed himself ramen.

A thin blue sheen of chakra was slowly enveloping the kunai, elongating and become less and less perceptible until it was simply invisible. Putting the ramen container aside, Naruto stood up slowly and tiptoed to the tree as if balancing something on his kunai and slowly pointed the tip at the tree. The tip timidly began to sink in without any force from Naruto, who trembled as he breathed, feeling how easily the kunai was settling itself into the tree.

Steeling himself for the unexpected, Naruto took a deep breath and gave the kunai a swipe through the tree in as if trying to push the tree over. A hiss was heard as light plumes of sawdust puffed out of the sides of the tree trunk. Not a second later, the tree toppled over, the rest of its trunk cleanly sliced through by Naruto's newfound wind enhancement.

Of course, then the remaining chakra channeled into the kunai violently exploded in an expanding swirling ball of wind that sent Naruto tumbling away from his trees and into the side of a stump. Don't lose concentration.

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The eigth afternoon had Naruto taking even more time to refine his cutting edge. Rather than finishing the assignment and felling the fourth and fifth trees, he attempted to refine his stroke by cutting the first three trees into slices, like salami. The large disks of tree that he hoped to create were far and few between as his attempts constantly ended in a number of explosive results.

But by the end of the day, Naruto had found himself victory as he was able to quickly summon up wind chakra to chop out not quite precise, but quick and neat near five inch slices.

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On the afternoon of the ninth day, he found himself back in front of the Hokage tower. He had done it. Five trees, five kunai, and now from what Naruto could estimate, either a shitload of firewood or a destined fire hazard. And from what Sparrow could tell while watching Naruto, he had managed to master intermediate wind manipulation in a little over a week.

Yes, it appeared Naruto would be destined for great things.

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So while I'm not keen on leaving this chapter like this, I'm reconsidering my timeline and having Naruto train a little longer.

I know some people might argue that a week without shadow clones to learn wind manipulation is also beyond far-fetched but I decided to make a judgment call based on his self-education over chakra control at such a young age, as well as the idea that he simply learns faster under pressure.

Well… see you in a bit