Naruto: tales of a splendid ninja

Hello and welcome to my newest naruto fanfiction. This is my second attempt at writing a naruto fanfiction, my goal is to upload at least one chapter a week.

So in this story naruto graduates earlier than in canon, putting him in the same graduating year as tenten and rock lee. In this fanfiction there will be a couple of changes made.

Naruto is not the container of the kyuubi, in this timeline kushina survives, managing to seal Kurama back into herself with the assistance of minato, though he still kicks the bucket.

Naruto will potentially have access to the chakra chains, and will not have his usual elemental affinity of wind.

Ch 1: enter, naruto uzumaki

"Naruto, naruto! Wake up, you will be late for class!" A voice yells out.

Naruto groans as he sits up, rubbing his eyes. "Yeah yeah, I'm awake." He grumbles out as he gets dressed and heads downstairs.

"Morning mom." He says as he sits down at the table. His mother, kushina uzumaki puts a plate of food infront of him. "You should eat and head out, after all todays your graduation exam. Once you get your headband if you want I'll begin teaching you kenjutsu and we can begin stepping up your fuinjutsu training." She tells him.

Naruto nods and begins to scarf down his food. "Alright I'm off, next time you see me I'll be a ninja!" Naruto says as he runs off towards the academy.

Kushina smiles and waves, thinking back to when she became a genin. She began to think back to the night naruto was born, when everything for them had changed. She gave birth and a masked man had broken the seal, releasing the kyuubi. Minato, who was fatally wounded by the fox, had managed to seal it back into her at the cost of his life.

Life without minato had been hard, but raising naruto brought much joy to her life. Life without minato to help raise naruto meant her shinobi career took a backseat, but it was worth it to be able to see him grow. Now to prepare the tortu-training she'd put him through.

Back with naruto:

After running he finally arrives at the academy and heads inside picking a seat.

"Alright listen up class!" The chunin instructor yells. "Today is your graduation exam, I expect you all to do your best. First will be the written test. I'll pass it out and on my word you will begin. Good luck."

The instructor passes out the tests on by one, and signals the class to start.

Across the room in various seats the students begin. One student in white, named rock lee hits his head on the desk, clearly not prepared. Across the room a kunoichi with her hair in buns smirks and begins, ready to ace the test. Naruto himself begins, grateful his mom beat the information into his head.

"Ok pencils down!" The instructor calls out an hour later. The rest of the exams go by quickly enough, with naruto doing pretty well overall, barely edging out the hyuga prodigy neji. Finally it was time for the ninjutsu test.

After a while it finally comes time for naruto to take his turn. He walks into the room the test is in.

"Ok naruto, for this test we need you to perform the clone jutsu. You need at least three clones to pass." The chunin explains.

Naruto smirks and puts his hands into a cross. "Shadow clone jutsu!" Naruto calls out , creating three solid clones. The chunin instructor looks surprised, left nearly speechless.

After the chunin collects himself he finally speaks. "Congratulations, you passed." Naruto simply nods and grabs a forehead proctor and ties it to his head and confidently exits.

After taking his seat the testing finally ends. After a few minutes the chunin speaks up. "Congratulations to those that passed, come back next week to learn what teams you'll be on. You'll have the week off until then, good luck out their."

Naruto heads home to share his news with kushina. The weeks seems to go by in a blur, with every morning beginning with kenjutsu training, and nights working on fuinjutsu as a way to unwind a bit. Before naruto knows it , it's time to learn his team placement.

"Ok class listen up, it's time to learn what genin team you'll be on." The chunin starts listing teams 1-8 and finally gets to team 9. "Team 9 will consist of naruto uzumaki, tenten and rock lee. Your jonin sensei will be might gai. Good luck" the chunin mumbles the last bit under his breath.

And this will be where we end things for this chapter. This mainly serves to set up my main idea for the story. Naruto has his mom to raise him, and graduates in the same class as tenten and rock lee.

I always picture naruto to being within their age since in canon he failed the exam 3 times, so he should technically be older then stated if that's the case. Technically this logic puts him a year older then team gai, but eh it'll do as a middle ground I suppose.

Anyways the goals here is a naruto/tenten pairing (since it's not super common), tenten being more used in the story, plus a stronger naruto from having just more experience and not having the kyuubi to hold him back at the start.

Please leave a review , and any and all feedback is welcome. Thanks for reading!