Naruto: Training

After the final preliminary fight –in which Dosu the walking haystack from Oto defeated Chouji with relative ease– Kakashi-sensei rounded up Naruto and Sakura and chivvied them off to the hospital as soon as they had found out who they would be facing in the third exam. Naruto was vindictively delighted to learn his first opponent would be Neji and immediately started plotting the Hyuuga genius' abject humiliation. Sakura was rather less pleased; her first opponent was the homicidal jinchuuriki from Suna, Gaara. Sasuke on the other hand would be fighting Dosu; an easy win for the Uchiha as far as Naruto was concerned.

Sensei and students had just arrived at the hospital entrance when Kakashi suddenly shunshined away. Puzzled by this unexpected abandonment, Sakura went up to the front desk and asked the secretary on duty where Sasuke's room was. Since team seven regularly ended up needing medical treatment for combat-related injuries the civilian behind the desk instantly recognised the pinkette as someone who was allowed to visit the Last Uchiha and promptly told her where to find her team-mate. When the blond and pinkette reached the right room Naruto tensed, moving in front of Sakura. Someone had died in there. Recently.

"Sensei?" he called out, palming a kunai. Kakashi-sensei opened the door, giving both genin a look into room beyond. The window had a massive hole in, there was glass all over the floor and a corpse near Sasuke's bed that looked like...

"Is that Kabuto from earlier?" Sakura asked.

"Iie," Naruto told her before Kakashi-sensei could answer. "Doesn't smell quite right to be Kabuto, even dead. That's an ANBU; Flounder, I think."

The silver-haired jounin blinked. "It is indeed. Naruto, your chakra-sensing abilities are getting frighteningly accurate. Anything else you picked up on that you think I should know?"

"Orochimaru was the jounin-sensei of the Oto team," the blond said flatly, "and Kabuto is easily chunnin level, possibly jounin if his other skills match his chakra refinement. He also has some kind of pseudo-bloodline ability kind of like Sakura had her Inner."

"Frighteningly accurate indeed," said the ANBU who materialised out of the shadows to Naruto's left. "I know of few other sensors in Konoha as sensitive to the nuances of chakra as you, Uzumaki-san."

"Tiger-san could be as good as I am or better if he bothered to learn;" Naruto said, not wanting to be drafted into the Black Ops any time soon, "he has the right kind of chakra for it."

"I am taking Sasuke back to my clan compound since the hospital has proved to be so easily infiltrated, Cormorant," Kakashi-sensei said briskly to the ANBU operative. "I'm sure the Yuurei will be delighted to inconvenience anyone trying to come after him there. Ame has agreed to lend some of the more, ah, balanced of her soldiers to assist with village security and asked me to offer her own services to whoever is in charge of predicting possible tactical scenarios."

"I will pass on both offers to the proper parties, Kakashi-san," ANBU Cormorant said as the silver-haired jounin lifted the unconscious Sasuke up into his arms bridal-style.

"Arigatou. Sakura, Naruto, there is only one of me and three students in need of training. One of the Yuurei has generously offered to train you, Sakura, for the next month: Kasha is a field medic and assassin and has much to offer you. You are proficient enough in illusion theory not to need help in developing your own genjutsu, so I expect you to work on them independently. Naruto, Ame will be training you since she is wind natured like you are. She'll be pushing you through basic elemental training and teaching you a few useful jutsu. I will primarily be training Sasuke since his lightning affinity matches my own. Both of you bare in mind that the Yuurei consider themselves a collective rather than a group of individuals so you may end up working with more than just the ones I mentioned. Oh, and not one of them has even the social skills the kami gave rocks, so please be patient with the inevitable faux pas."

"Hai, sensei," Naruto and Sakura chorused, then team seven made tracks towards the Hatake compound where their temporary senseis were waiting for them.

It turned out that Ame-kaa-san was only going to tutor Naruto in basic elemental manipulation, which could mostly be delegated to shadow clones while the rest of his training was divided between his tou-san and a Yuurei who introduced himself as Ittan-momen, who turned out to be an illegitimate Hyuuga like Mogura-chan. Ittan-momen's training method involved attacking the blond using standard Hyuuga juuken forms so the jinchuuriki could get a feel for them, learn what they did and work out a counter. Since the Yuurei was also teaching gentle fist to Mogura-chan, Naruto sometimes ended up fighting her, too.

Naruto soon learnt that the best way to survive against a gentle fist user was not to get hit. He got very good at dodging and using multiple kawarimi after the first day. The blond also quickly worked out that by far the easiest way not to get hit was to resort to kenjutsu: no ninja was willing to risk losing fingers. Once Naruto began using his wakizashi the fights became much longer, with Naruto trying to cut Ittan-momen up while the Yuurei dodged constantly and tried to land hits of his own.

Most usefully, the half-Hyuuga taught him the pressure points in the temples that closed the tenkutsu that controlled the activation of the byakugan.

His tou-san's lessons were more diverse but no less exhausting. The clone-wearing ghost drilled Naruto in all the taijutsu styles the blond genin knew, taught him the basics of a new one -the former Yondaime's own heavily acrobatic style- and forced him to switch between them all constantly. The former Kage also taught his son four C-rank Fuuton jutsus and at least one technique of each of the other elemental types.

"It's important to be able to do a little bit of everything regardless of your specialisation," his tou-san had told him firmly when he complained how insanely difficult the Katon: Endan was.

By the end of the month Naruto had not only learnt the fireball technique, he could perform the B-rank Doton: Doryuu Heki, C-ranked Suiton: Mizurappa and Suiton: Mizuame Nabara, the latter of which had so many prank possibilities it made the blond genin giggle with glee. Lightning turned out not to have all that many official jutsus but Naruto managed nonetheless to perform Raiton: Kangekiha, which fired a bolt of electrical energy. It was very effective in conjunction with suiton jutsus or weapons, electrifying them. The wind jutsus he learnt were Daitoppa, which Orochimaru had used on him in the forest of death, Reppushou, Shinkuu Gyoku and Kazekiri, which despite being only C-rank could be turned into a B-rank if you added elemental manipulation and a bit more chakra. It had taken serious kage bunshin abuse and numerous headaches to get them all down in time but Naruto felt it was worth it. These jutsu, on top of the single-seal water-whip and fire-whip Kakashi-sensei had made him learn, would be more than enough to beat Neji without totally overdoing it. After all, the purpose of the third exam was not really to win the tournament but to show the necessary variety of skills a chunnin should have: strategic and tactical, intelligence, patience, power and self-awareness. The latter included knowing when you were outmatched, which meant forfeiting.

Despite spending almost no time at all with Ame-kaa-san personally that month, Naruto learnt an awful lot from her. The shadow clone brigade mastered basic wind manipulation in three weeks, so Ame spent the last week of his training month on something so obscure and advanced his tou-san was reduced to incoherent gibbering when he found out: Senjutsu.

Naruto actually had a cheat he could use with sage techniques: Yoko, being a bijuu, was half natural chakra anyway and found meditation both restful and pleasant. It was therefore possible for it to gather natural chakra to itself whilst remaining immobile behind its jinchuuriki's navel gate, natural chakra that Naruto could then access with ease despite being in motion.

Since Yoko was going to dissipate in less than a decade Ame-kaa-san didn't let Naruto use the short-cut as an excuse to slack off; instead she worked him harder. The blond was grateful he already knew both how to meditate and what sage chakra felt like; without those two abilities he'd have been sunk, forced to use a medium in order to reach out to the energies of the earth. He wasn't anywhere near mastering the technique yet but he had gotten much closer in his week of cramming, able to sense the world's energies and flows with ease. Naruto wasn't quite confident enough yet to actually gather the energy though.

Two days before the third and final exam Ame called off lessons. She'd only done that on one other day in the past month: the day she'd got married to Kakashi-sensei. Naruto wasn't sure yet whether the tournament could top the wedding in terms of sheer gossip quality. Some of the guests on the bride's side had been infamous and a few had snuck in illegally, since they were missing-nin and really shouldn't have been allowed into a hidden village at all.

The guest that had caused the greatest commotion and made Naruto seriously doubt the chunnin exams would even register to the village's shinobi had been Uchiha Itachi.

That had really been something to behold.

Notes

Katon: Endan = Fire: Fireball

Doton: Doryuu Heki = Earth: Earth-style wall

Suiton: Mizurappa = Water: Violent water wave

Suiton: Mizuame Nabara = Water: Syrup capture field

Raiton: Kangekiha = Lightning: Inspiration wave

Fuuton: Daitoppa = Wind: Great breakthrough

Fuuton: Reppushou = Wind: Gale wind palm

Fuuton: Shinkuu Gyoku = Wind: Vacuum sphere

Fuuton: Kazekiri = Wind: Wind cutter

Senjutsu = sage techniques

A/N: Yes, it's taking a while but I'm getting there. Naruto's training explored and a first hint at the wedding! I swear, those things are as hard to write as they are to organise...