Naruto and the other orphans from the Shinobi Orphan's Care Complex were led by the complex's commander in a straight line down the streets of Konoha to the Ninja Academy as was customary for the start of the Ninja Academy's school year. Since this was Naruto's first year at the Academy, he and his age bracket were at the front of the line behind the commander so that the older students could keep an eye on the newbies. Everyone in the line had the same style backpack loaded with their textbooks for the year and a supply of kunai and shuriken. These packs had been checked the night before by the kids under the watchful eye of the commander to insure everything was in order. Farther down the line with the older students the backpacks had a bit of variety in them based on which elective course the student was taking.
As the group turned a corner it was joined by a larger and less discipline group of orphans. These children were from the civilian orphanage that had elected to go into the ninja program instead of one of the trade schools. Naruto knew thanks to Aima Sophia that roughly a sixth of the civilian orphans would drop out of the program in a few months to go to various trade schools. It was a sad thought, but statistically much better than the children from living civilian families of whom half were expected to drop out in the same time frame. Conventional wisdom held that anyone who could last the first two years in the Academy would be in the military for their career. Those who weren't able to make it as shinobi generally joined the regular military forces of the Land of Fire as ashigaru. Given their earlier training in chakra usage and military tactics, the dropouts who became ashigaru were well positions to easily advance in rank among the ashigaru and had a higher chance of being elevated to the ranks of the Samurai.
The composite orphan group soon reached the Ninja Academy where it seemed like a third of the village was trying to gather at once. Parents and older siblings were leading ninja hopefuls to their first day of school. Older students were gathering and sharing stories about what they had been up to on the short summer vacation. Off to the side were parents who had already dropped off their children and had found an old classmate that they needed to catch up with. Sprinkled throughout the crowd were the academy instructors almost futility trying to bring some sort of order to the chaos. This almost carnival like atmosphere always happened on the first day of the Ninja Academy and Naruto could testify to that thanks to his kekkei genkai.
Navigating that crowd might as well have been a preliminary screening test for ninja hopefuls given how difficult it was to do. Somehow, Naruto and the others were able to make their way to the Ninja Academy doors and entered the building. The commander led both groups of orphans to message board where they were able to see which rooms were posted as their home rooms. He then left Naruto and his fellow orphans alone knowing that they could get themselves to their classrooms.
It took Naruto a second to find his name and then he headed off towards classroom. Unlike the other new students, Naruto didn't look around trying to make sure he was following the signs to the various classrooms correctly. A quick glance every now and then confirmed that the Academy hadn't undergone any major renovations since Minato and Kushina had picked up their genin squads. Naruto was thus able to effortlessly navigate the Academy and be the first student to reach his classroom. He quickly confirmed this by double-checking the list of students posted on the classroom door. The young student then entered the classroom and took a seat towards the back that would let him easily pay attention to the lesson without being the center of the teacher's attention.
The young student sat in his chair at his selected desk and closed his eyes to fully activate his Aima Sophia. Naruto instantly felt himself enter his mindscape effortlessly floating in the eye of the memory storm. Thanks to Inoichi's training, Naruto knew he had a 60:1 time ratio when using his Aima Sophia to access memories. That is, for every minute in here only a second would pass in the real world. Naruto then spent the next two 'hours' in his mindscape trying to access his own memories. His kekkei genkai was recording his memories for future generations so it made logical sense to Naruto that he should be able to access those memories as well. It would be a very good training tool for him to be able to review any mistakes he made to correct them in the future.
Naruto wasn't able to call up the memories, but he felt a small tug as he tried to summon the memory bubble containing last night's dinner. That tug reassured Naruto that it would be possible for him to recall his own personal memories along with ancestors' memories. Why his own memory was harder to access didn't make any sense to the young student. Maybe it had something to do with his bloodline recording his memories? After all, his ancestors' memories were already recorded and they were much easier for Naruto access no matter the generations. It could be due to something else entirely. As the first known person to actively use the Aima Sophia Naruto was figuring his bloodline out as he went.
For a brief moment, Naruto left his mindscape to double check the time in the real world. Once Naruto had confirmed the remaining time he returned to his mindscape. Naruto then sent out his mental hooks to call up his parents' memories of school. Part of Naruto was surprised that he snagged several memories as quickly as he expected that his hooks would have to travel deeper in his parents' memories to reach their academy days. Curiosity got the better of the young boy and he pulled those memories up so that they could be played.
As soon as the first memory started to play Naruto wished he could forget or better yet erase certain memories. Inoichi and Naruto had tested the possibility of erasing ancestral memories using special Yamanaka jutsus to erase a few memories of what Minato and other ancestors had for dinner on a certain night for each ancestor. The erased memories restored themselves seconds after they were removed thanks to them being stored in Naruto's DNA. Aima Sophia was also a double edged weapon since it was extremely easy for Naruto to recall memories once he viewed them in his mindscape. In most cases this was a good thing for Naruto, but not now.
Floating in front of Naruto were two memory bubbles in a series of memories. Memory bubbles could show like this when it involved events that two or more ancestors had been involved. Once again, this could be an advantage by providing more points of view on an event. For Naruto it just provided twice the trauma. The memory bubbles were showing his mother dressed in a cosplay slutty student outfit and his father dressed up as a teacher. It was horrifying for Naruto to learn that his parents had actually snuck into the Ninja Academy for some naughty roleplaying sessions on multiple occasions.
Naruto was able to stop recalling those memories before his parents memories go to the real X rated stuff. That would have completely traumatized him. Naruto quickly banished those memories he had gathered back to their resting locations and vowed to never ever get himself into detention as he left his mindscape. The boy didn't care how many years had passed or how many times that room had been scrubbed. Unless someone used an A rank katon jutsu on the detention room it would never be clean in his opinion.
Much of the classwork hadn't changed since Naruto's parents and grandparents went to school. History got updated obviously and geography had a few changes on the map due to wars shifting some boarders. However, most of the core classes remained unchanged. Math, Writing, and the basic sciences always the same. Poisons 101 remained the same as did the training courses in physical training. Tactics 101 was functionally the same, but the simulation games that were played from time to time were different. Shogi had been the game of choice for tactics in his parent's day. About two decades ago a new game had become popular in the academy for training even if it failed to become popular with the general population. This training game used different markers to represent different levels of ninjas with stat lines for each type and dice to determine outcomes.
Most of the kids in school hated the training game. The rulebook for the game was a third the size of their textbooks. Each phase of the game was timed by the instructors with any possible actions not performed in the allotted time being lost. In each match the kids would have to take into consideration various variable conditions like weather, time of day, and terrain that dramatically changed the game map. There was also the fact that they never got a 'standard' set of game pieces. Sometimes the instructors would give the students resource points to pick their forces with different pieces having different value and on other times they would assign certain armies act out a scenario. Added onto this was the dice rolls which added a great deal of unpredictability in how things could go. Generally, higher ranked pieces had better results on dice rolls but that wasn't always the case. A noted example of that was when one of Naruto's genin squads wiped out four of Shikamaru's Jonin squads in a mission because of some lucky dice rolls.
Unlike most students, Naruto loved the game in Tactics 101. It had been a bit difficult for him to learn all of the rules, but it was far better than shogi ever was for teaching applicable tactics for combat. Thanks to Aima Sophia, Naruto knew that war was not something clean with plenty of time to think things over or filled with any certainties what so ever. If you can't think fast or react to unexpected actions you and your team were dead. Leaders often had to pick to their teammates from a limited pool of available ninjas. If they picked their teams poorly then the mission would fail and they would likely die. A team could be returning from one mission and circumstances could force them to deal with something completely unexpected. If the ninjas couldn't adapt to being out of their comfort zone then they could die. Before the first semester was halfway done, Naruto had become the undisputed king of the practical portion of Tactics and one of the top leaders in the theoretical portion.
Tactics 101 wasn't the only course Naruto shined in. The young student did very well in all of the practical courses involving physical activity. He was a naturally energetic and active kid with a great deal of determination. The physical fitness trainers couldn't ask for a better student at his age group. Often, Naruto was number one student in those classes and if not, then he was at least in the top five. In the more academic courses Naruto had to put more effort into keeping up his grades since they didn't interest him as much. However, Naruto's determination, terror at the thought of ending up in detention, and Aima Sophia helped him to mostly stay in the top ten for those classes.
In addition to his classes, Naruto was also enjoying the opportunity to socialize with his fellow students. The shinobi orphans reaccepted Naruto as one of them again once the generally accepted story of Naruto's background became known to them. It made sense that Naruto wasn't told who his parents were since as ninjas close to and trusted by the Yondaime they had probably made a lot of enemies. The fact that Naruto had been trusted by his parents to pass vital information back to the current Hokage also won the boy massive amounts of points from his fellow orphans since that meant he had basically done a ninja mission before even becoming a ninja. The orphans from the civilian orphanage who were at the academy seemed to have a natural difference to the shinobi orphans who, due to school districts, they had never interacted with before. One or two of the shinobi orphans tried to lord it up over the civilian orphans, but Naruto and the others quickly put those kids back in their place. Naruto's friendly and helpful personality quickly won him more friends among the civilian orphans.
The young boy didn't have any real friends outside of the orphans, but he did have a lot of friendly acquaintances. Most of the civilian students had stopped considering Naruto to be bad news since their parents stopped calling him that. The few who didn't had been part of the group that had quit the Academy early on given the rigors of the classwork. Most of the civilian kids didn't really think about their parents' earlier attitudes towards Naruto and those that did simply assumed that their parents had considered Naruto to be unlucky since he had been born on the Kyuubi attack. Most the shinobi children didn't have a big preconceived idea about Naruto before they met him. The ones that did meet Naruto in between classes though he was a friendly enough guy. However, the shinobi children already had their circles of friends from play dates and generally were focused on passing the Academy.
There was one group in the Academy that absolutely hated Naruto and that was the remains of the Uchiha Clan. Currently, there were only three Uchihas attending the Academy and only Sasuke Uchiha was in Naruto's year. All of the Uchihas in the Academy hated Naruto with a passion blaming him for their clan's fall from grace. The actions of Obito the Betrayer, their clan leadership, or their parents didn't register to the kids. What mattered to the older students was the fact that they used to be the most respected students in the school and now they were considered lower than dog shit with all of their former friends and hangers on despising them. Sasuke hated Naruto because in the Uchiha Purge he had lost his parents, his house, almost all his things, most of the remaining clan wouldn't talk to him, and he was now forced to live in cramp apartment with Itachi in a bad neighborhood.
Naruto had tried once to work past his own dislike for the clan and befriend the Uchihas at lunch on the first week of school. He had walked over to the table that the three Uchihas had been exiled to by the other students and asked if he could sit down. One of the older Uchihas had pulled out a kunai to threaten Naruto. Several of the other students sitting nearby saw the kunai being drawn and everything went downhill from there. The general ninja brawl that occurred as a result frightened away 10 students from the program because of the kunais and shurikens that had been thrown everywhere. Naruto was grateful that he didn't have any punishments as the academy instructors quickly decided that the brawl wasn't his fault. It did cause the boy to stop any further attempts to make peace with the Uchihas. On the plus side, it did show Naruto that his future comrades would have his back.
The second year at the Ninja Academy continued much like the first year for Naruto. This was the year that the Academy introduced chakra exercises into the coursework. Chakra wasn't taught outside of academic studies in the first year for safety concerns. Chakra did use one's own life force after all and the Academy instructors wanted to insure that all of the students had an adequate surplus of chakra so that the students could safely manipulate their chakra. In this class the shinobi children had an edge over the children with a civilian background.
The reason for this difference was twofold. First, before being born a child's chakra network is shaped and nurtured by the mother's chakra. Even a weak kunoichi's chakra reserves were far stronger than a civilian's reserves meaning more chakra could go into developing and strengthening of an unborn child's chakra network. The average kunoichi's newborn would have the chakra network and chakra reserves comparable to a two year old civilian's child while stronger kunoichi's children would be born even stronger. Secondly, shinobi families and the Shinobi Orphan's Care Complex encouraged kids to be far more active physically so that their chakra reserves would grow better. Several shinobi families even introduced basic chakra exercises a year before their children even started at the Ninja Academy. These differences weren't insurmountable for the civilian kids, but they had to play catch up none the less.
Naruto was struggling in his practical Chakra Usage classes for the exact opposite reason as everyone else who was having trouble in the class. He had way too much chakra to control with the exercises taught in the course work. Kushina had been an exceptionally powerful kunoichi in her own right and she also had been the jinchuuriki for the Kyuubi. That meant that Naruto's chakra network had gotten far more exercise and development before he was born thanks to all that extra chakra and the additional month in the womb than any child born in recorded medical history. It was noted in Naruto's medical files that recovered data from Kushina's birthing chamber put his birth chakra network as roughly equivalent to a ten year olds. Some of the doctors were skeptical of this reading given that some of the Kyuubi's chakra had been released during birth and Obito's assault. Still didn't change the fact that Naruto had an utterly massive amount of chakra naturally and constantly holding back the Kyuubi's chakra was absolutely wonderful from the perspective of building chakra reserves.
Aima Sophia really came through for Naruto by giving him knowledge of chakra control exercises that were usually reserved for genin or chunin to learn. These reservations weren't due to any legal restrictions so Naruto wouldn't be in trouble if others found out he was learning those exercises. It's just that typically shinobi didn't have the reserves where exercises like tree walking and water walking would both help in control and be useful in a fight until they were genins or chunins. Thanks to constant practice with high level exercises, Naruto was able to claw his way up into the upper third in Chakra Usage class.
Chakra Usage was still Naruto's worse subject for the year and he utterly flunked the regular bunshin jutsu. It was only towards the end of year that Naruto got the bunshin jutsu and even then he really didn't get it. He used Aima Sophia to learn the Kage bunshin jutsu that his great grandfather invented and disguised the jutsu use in class. Fudging the hand seal to hide the kage bunshins as regular bunshins wasted a lot of chakra. This chakra loss from incorrect hand seal was why correct hand seals were drilled into all students at the Academy. Because of his massive chakra reserves, Naruto was able to create four kage bunshin with the massive chakra penalties from incorrect hand seals without being negatively affected in class.
The introduction of practical chakra usage caused a fair number of students to drop out of the Academy. Mostly the students who dropped out at that point were the ones who had been struggling to complete the physical training courses since they had the smallest reserves. However, the big drop out for second year students didn't happen until near the midterms. That was when the hidden desensitization course happened. This course was to help the students get more used to the future possibility of killing by taking them in small groups to the various ranches that existed outside the village proper, but still within Konoha's Han. The students had been told it was a two week long workshop to teach them the basics about fitting in for long term infiltration missions and that was part of the workshop's goals.
For two weeks the students became ranchers learning how to take care of the animals as well as how to observe things without seeming to be observant. Then on the last day the desensitization training hit the kids when they were handed a knife and told to either kill one of the young animals on the ranch with just the knife or they would flunk the Academy. This came as a shock to the students as they had become attached to the animals on the ranch. It also was extremely difficult for a ten year old to hold down even the young animals by themselves so those students who did choose to kill a youngling almost always had sloppy kills.
A third of the students were thrown out of the Ninja Academy immediately when they refused to kill the animals. Konoha and the Land of Fire did not need warriors who couldn't follow orders or couldn't take a life. The kids who had killed the animals were given counseling sessions when they returned to the village. About a fourth of the kids would drop out of the program unable to accept that they'd likely have to commit future killings if they became shinobi or joined the regular military. Still, Naruto knew that the current system was an improvement over the desensitization training his parents had. They had been given baby rabbits at the beginning on the semester to take care of. Then on midterms when the bunnies had been brought in to rate how well the kids had taken care of their rabbits the kids were ordered to snap the animals' necks.
The chance of a student quitting the Academy or being kicked out plummeted to near non-existent after the second year butcher workshop dropout spree ended. The second year students going into the second semester were about a fourth as numerous as they had been on the first day of their first year of the Academy. Such rates were about average for the Ninja Academy where it was expected that only 20 to 30 percent of the starting student body would graduate from the institution. By this point the instructors had weeded away those with only a casual interest in being a ninja, those who couldn't handle the basic training, and those who were completely unsuited for the shinobi lifestyle. What they had left was a student body suited for the military. The question of whether the students would go on to become shinobi or have to settle as being ashigaru still needed to be answered.
Third year introduced some specialization for the future ninjas. The Academy hours were increased at this year level to open up time for more classes. Everyone was required to take at least one class and allowed to take two different classes. Those students who had consistently maintained a high grade point average were allowed to take a third class if they could keep up their grades. For those students with average and low grades or the better students who decided against a third class, the time blocked off for the second or third class became a study hall period.
Naruto was doing well enough academically that he got the option to have three extra classes. After looking at the optional classes, he decided to go with taking the Fuuinjutsu, Kenjutsu, and Advance Stealth. Naruto chose the first two classes because they were challenging courses, especially the fuuinjutsu class, with usually the fewest applications. Taking those classes would also let Naruto practice some skills he could learn with the Aima Sophia without having to reveal that aspect of his kekkei genkai. Advance Stealth was chosen because it was always a good thing to be able to get the drop on one's enemies.
Advance Tracking had been a close choice in place of Advance Stealth. Being able to find ones enemies was just as important as avoiding them finding you. Naruto had thought long and hard, but in the end the stealth course offer more advantage for Naruto. It was difficult to get more than an average grade in the Advance Tracking class if one didn't have a kekkei genkai or access to jutsus suited for recon. Naruto could make better use of the Advance Stealth courses. Besides, with his built in jutsu library, inherited battle experience, and the Kyuubi Naruto would be better suited in the future for elite guard and/or heavy assault duties than recon duties.
Naruto did very well in his new classes like he did in the regular classes. His Aima Sophia was a massive help as always since it allowed Naruto to learn most of the information taught in class far faster. He therefore had more time to focus on parts of the lesson that might cause him difficulty and on practicing the lessons. This year was when Naruto had a massive breakthrough with his Aima Sophia by figuring out how to access his own memories. Naruto was thus able to fully review a lesson with only a minute or two of meditation. Furthermore, Naruto found that his kekkei genkai preserved parts of events he didn't previously consciously remember. Details he didn't think about like what his fellow students were wearing in a lecture were preserved because his eyes saw it. Every speech his senseis gave could be heard without any fluctuation in the memories even though Naruto's mind had wandered at the time because his ears had heard the speech.
All of Naruto's efforts in mastering the Aima Sophia didn't just result in him being able to access his own memories. His inherited memories became richer and Naruto could access more information from each memory. Naruto found that he didn't just watch the memories, but he could also hear the ancestor's thoughts in each memory and feel the emotions they experienced at that particular moment. With the ninja ancestors Naruto could also sense how their chakra felt when they were training or using jutsus. This gave Naruto an even greater edge in his ninja training making his training more like a wounded ninja going through reconditioning after temporary medical leave than a student learning for the first time.
Not that it was easy for Naruto to get to that point with the Aima Sophia. He had to experience literally years of his various ancestors lives to get that kind of control with his kekkei genkai. It had been difficult, but Naruto had slowly figured out a way to submerge himself in a memory without getting lost in the memory. Part of the difficulty in getting more out of a memory is that Naruto had to fully accept that all of his ancestors' lives were open to him and that in turn his life would be completely open to his descendants. He couldn't just cherry pick form their memories if he wanted to completely understand the wisdom and experience they had passed on to him.
Living extra years thanks to his memories was not something Naruto could completely hide. Naruto's eyes showed experience far beyond his years for those who gave the blue within blue orbs a close look. He carried himself without the childish worries and concerns that children had. Naruto gain a reputation for helping other students out if they had an issue and asked him for help. Naruto didn't mind helping the other students and he didn't try to make himself seem better than others because he could help out. He knew that he might one day have to depend on one of his classmates to save his life or someone else's life on a mission.
The second half of year 3 was usually when the students really started to pick rivals and Naruto's year was no exception. By this point the students started to become confident in their abilities and were fairly certain that their friends wouldn't quit the Academy for one reason or another. It would be very embarrassing to mark someone as a rival only for them to quit a week later. The academy instructors were happy to direct these emerging rivalries to get their students to do better in class. At the same time, they also tried to make sure that any emerging rivalries didn't become disruptive in class or worse toxic to the future shinobi's interactions.
Controlling student rivalries in Naruto's year group was successful for the instructors with one glaring exception. The Uchiha/Uzumaki rivalry that sprung up early in the school year was perhaps the worse school rivalry that the Ninja Academy had ever seen. Naruto had maintained a frosty indifference to the three Uchihas in the Academy after his attempt at peace epically failed. Sasuke had kept a lid on his simmering hatred after the Head of the Academy verbally ripped him and the other two students a new one and then Itachi ripped him another new one when he got home. But that only bought two years of peace for the Academy.
Naruto used his time in the Academy to forge friendships as well as learning the skills he'd need to defend himself and his future comrades. On the other hand, Sasuke used his time gain the skills and strength he'd need correct the perceived injustices delivered on his clan by Naruto's actions. Sasuke quickly learned how to mask his hate from showing on his face, but it was growing within him. The boy quickly developed a reputation in the Academy as a lone wolf genius forcing his classmates to respect him by crushing them in any match he could. Several instructors made notes of their concerns with Sasuke's attitude and actions. However, the boy had learned from the brawl and always made sure to stay on the proper side of the line even if his actions usually had him standing on the edge of it.
Itachi tried to help his brother out, but it was tough for the now newly made jonin, then chunin when Sasuke entered the Academy, to make enough money to support both him and Sasuke. The Uchiha Purge had whipped out all of the assets that had been in Mikoto's or Fugaku's name leaving the boys with basically the clothes on their backs and Itachi's rather meager personal bank account. None of the usual social programs set up to help young orphaned shinobi were accessible to the boys as the children of known traitors and none of the few remaining members of the clan were about to help the children of the worst clan head in the Uchiha's history. No one could fault Itachi as a provider or a teacher to his younger brother. Itachi had insured Sasuke had food, clothing, a roof over his head, and trained his brother in how to be ninja when he could in between missions. It's just that he had been a twelve year old newly made chunin who had his world turned upside down with almost all usual avenues of support cut away from him by his parents' actions. Additionally, he had to raise his seven year old brother who also going through the same situation as him.
In the third year, Sasuke started to call out Naruto determined to put Naruto in his place. Naruto was not about to put up with Sasuke's attitude or pass up an opportunity to vent his own unsolved issues with the Uchiha Clan. Spars between the two were quickly and unofficially banned by the teachers who had courses that occasionally pit the students against each other because of how intense the boys' matches became. As the first semester continued on it started to get to the point that the just having the two boys close together in class made things uncomfortable for nearby students. To try and ease things in the classroom, the Head of the Academy quietly had Sasuke transferred to a different home room at the start of the second semester. He chose to transfer Sasuke because he was the one who tended to start most of the duo's squabbles.
Transferring Sasuke to a class that had a different schedule than Naruto's class eased the tension in the school caused by the duo. Both boys would barely have the opportunity to pass each other in the halls during school time and they both knew better than to start something at a time like that. However, the duo's rivalry did not end since third year was when the Academy started publicly publishing the students' grades. This was to encourage those doing poorly to work better and know who they should go to for study help. For the better students, this was to give them a goal to become the number one student for the year. Naruto's and Sasuke's were always next to each other near the top of the list and the duo were constantly swapping who was doing better than the other each time the list was updated.
Author's Note: Well that's most of the Academy years for Naruto and company. We'll have a touch of 'scenes of life' for year 4 before Naruto and gang actually graduate. I lowered Itachi's rank to try to make things a bit more believable. One of the few retcons that occurred in Naruto that I whole heartedly supported was Kakashi becoming older when he became a genin and a chunin than his original ages of 5 and 6 for those ranks. Even with Chakra his body wouldn't be developed enough to survive in a fight. A teen or an adult would be stronger, faster, have longer range, and better durability then a six year old. Besides, why on earth would any of the Hokages allow such a young child soldier in their forces who is almost certainly going to die?
When Itachi was first mentioned back in the early part of Naruto his age at the time Uchiha Massacre was somewhat vague. With how he was drawn it was easy to think he had been in his late teens or maybe early twenties. That age with his stated prodigy status made the massacre seem possible. But as more details became clear I was left scratching my head. How can a thirteen year old be powerful enough to become an ANBU captain which is supposed to be the head of a team of elite black ops soldiers? It's not like he had a seal giving him access to a bastardized version of Sage Mode or a biju sealed within him. There's a reason why there are youth and adult leagues in sports because the adults will almost always beat the kids and teens due to their bodies being more developed.
This doesn't mean I think that young shinobi can't ever beat older ninjas. After all, there is always things like getting the drop on an enemy, someone underestimating an opponent, teamwork, a powerful kekkei genkai that one doesn't know how to deal with, and sometimes just plan luck that can result in a younger ninja defeating an older ninja. What I am saying is that it is far more likely that an older ninja will beat a younger ninja simply because they would be physically stronger and has more experience.