Disclaimer: First Chapter
Story Start!
"Are you ready for your first lesson?" Erza asked as she stood in the middle of the field they had fought in. Naruto sitting in a desk in front of her, while she herself stood in front of an oversized dry erase board. Wendy was actually sitting close by, sitting on the ground watching them with a small smile. It had been about a week since their first fight, and Naruto was actually looking forward to his first lesson. Who wouldn't be happy to have a teacher than would actually teach you what you needed to know, and not some bullshit?
"Ready and willing to learn under you Erza-sensei!" Naruto said with a respectiful salute, and an eager nod. Erza'e eyes widened at her new title, before she practically glowed in happiness. Nobody had called her that before, and she found that she really liked being respected in this way instead of her guildmates fear way. Coughing into her hand, she took out a marker and started to draw pictures on the board.
"Okay! Now, as my apprentice I expect you to be a hard worker to learn everything I teach you. Not only will you be learning Requip and Sword magic from me, but I will also be teaching you how to maintain a a cool head in battle. This will come with lessons on breaking down your opponents weaknesses, and playing against them. You can't always let your opponent attack you, and then nake a counter after AFTER they hit you." Erza said as she wrote everything down on the board, and next to it she drew a chibi picture of herself wearing teachers clothes and glasses. Naruto squinted and looked away when he saw that she had was going to make him try and read. Erza turned around and saw him looking anywhere but the board, so with a sigh she summoned a whip and smacked it against his desk. "Naruto-kun! Please pay attention, and if you have questions you should let me know." Erza told him, before her eyes narrowed when something seemed like it was... wrong with him.
"Understood Erza-sensei, but do we have to use the board?" Naruto asked with a glance towards Wendy, not wanting her to think any less of him for being able to read. Erza blinked, before her eyes widened in understanding.
"You aren't able to read or write, are you?" Erza asked, and Wendy gasped where she was sitting. Now that she thought about it, it sort of made a little sense why he never really cared about looking at the missions he picks. His eyes didn't really move when he was 'reading' so he had always ben faking.
"... I can't." Naruto came clean after a few moments, and Erza sighed and looked at Wendy.
"There is a blue haired girl at Fairy Tail named Levy Mcgarden, can you go and bring her here? She can help with this better than I can." Erza requested of her, and Wendy nodded excitedly at the chance to help. Standing up she ran towards the guild hall, even though it was back in the town. Wendy wanted to help this problem that Naruto had, while Erza looked at Narutow ith curiousity.
"Did your parents never teach you how to read or write?" Erza asked rather bluntly, and Naruto chuckled awkwardly.
"I never had parents, and don't even know who they are. I have been an orphan for my whole life, and I wasn't born in Fiore. It isn't that I can't read or write, just not in this countries language. I was born in another country." Naruto said with a slight dark tone to his voice when he mentioned that he never knew his parents. The old man had always refused to tell him when he had asked. All he knew that he got his last name from his mother, and that his parents were famous. No names, or even hints about them though.
*Gong!*
Erza hugged Naruto to her chest armor, and Naruto winced in pain from her smashing his head against metal. Naruto looked up at her gazing at him with a sad, and understanding expression on her face. She was always a person that would sympathize with a good sob story, and Naruto had a pretty damn good sob story behind him. Sadly though, Naruto wasn't one to focus on the past so he didn't view it as something for people to pity him for.
"I am so sorry to bring up bad memories for you." Erza said with a kind, understanding voice as she spoke to her apprentice. She heard Naruto chuckling, before she let go of him when it turned into full blown laughter. She raised an eyebrow, before she saw him wipe away a stray tear when he calmed down.
"S-sorry about that, but thanks for your concern. The thing is though, that where I come from people normally die before they reach thirty. Most of us lived very dangerous lives, so I never expected to have had much time with my parents anyway. It might have been a good thing they died before I got to know them, because this way I wouldn't have to mourn their deaths... or they mourn mine." Naruto said with a sad smile of his own. Very few ninja lived to be passed thirty, and those that did were normally always Jonin. Even then they rarely lived to be passed 40, with only a handful of ninja living passed that without retiring because of a life changing injury.
"What did your people do?" Erza asked, and Naruto was about to respond with they were ninja before he realized the difference between being a mage and being a ninja was. As a ninja they were promised to kill many people in their lifes, while most mages lived without a care in the world. The more he thought about it, the deeper his frown got.
"We were killers, people that stole and killed others to bring out village money. We also protected clients, and killed ninja from other villages. We were ninja... I was a ninja as well, before I came to Fiore and became a mage." Naruto said truthfully, because when he was with Erza he just felt... safe? Erza's eyes hardened for a brief moment when she heard how he decribed what his people were like, and she couldn't help but he happy for Naruto that he was no longer a ninja.
"Have you ever...?" Erza trailed off, and Naruto looked at her and shook his head.
"I never had to kill anyone, and I hadn't been a ninja long before I came here... could you keep this between us? I haven't even told Wendy about this yet. I don't want to worry her about my past." Naruto asked of her, and Erza nodded. She wasn't going to tell anybody about this anyway, since they might not be as understanding as she was. She could tell that Naruto hadn't been lying about what he said, and she was happy that he had never had to kill anybody before now.
"I wouldn't dream of telling others your secrets. I am happy you would confide in me though." Erza said, before she became serious again and stood up. Now that their little bonding moment was over, she was going to try to teach Naruto about the different kinds of magic she was able to teach him. She already knew that she would be teaching him Requip, that much was for sure, but she wanted to know if he woulf hold a talent for Sword Magic. "As you may or may not know, most magic types can be classified under two main categories. Caster, using spells to battle or for other purposes. Then their is Holder, which means you are using items to control your magic for you. This one is much easier than Caster, but can also be powerful." Erza explained as she drew a picture a herself summoning a sword as the first picture. Then under what he thought was Holder he saw a picture of Lucy holding out her Key, with a maid girl next to her.
"Like throwing a rock at somebody, or using a slingshot to hit them with it!" Naruto said as his brain simplified it into terms he could understand better. Erza stumbled a bit at how much easier his explaination was to understand than hers, before she caught herself.
"Yes, and before I teach you Requip Magic I think that it would be best to start you off on some basic techniques to create your own Pocket Dimension to store your stuff in." Erza said as she drew a picture of Naruto on the board, before drawing a circle around him. Then inside this circle she drew another circle that was like a pocket to the first circle.
"How do I create one?" Naruto asked in confusion, and Erza thought about a way to explain it for a second. She fisted her palm when she got an idea on a simple way to make Naruto understand, without being offensive.
"Try imagining your magic becoming a hollow space, and move that hollow space in front of you. Then pierce your magic into the hollow space to connect it to you by pulling the hollow space back into your body." Erza explained simply, so with a nod Naruto closed his eyes and tried to picture a pure white space with a black hole in it. When Naruto opened his eyes his eyes widened when he felt his magic try and bubble outwards in front of him. Erza placed her hands on his shoulders to relax him before he messed it up by freaking out.
"What is happening?" Naruto asked, and Erza moved her right hand from his shoulder and she grabbed his wrist.
"Creating your Pocket Dimension is the easy part, but I need you to focus. Will your magic power in piercing the hollow space, and pull it back into you. The larger your Pocket Dimension is, the harder this will be. You are starting out with a pretty big Pocket Dimension, so you need to concetrate." Erza said as she summoned a dagger in her hand, and showed it to Naruto. Naruto was slightly amazed at how well she was trying to teach him. Because of her brash personality you would think that she would teach in a brash way, or course that was close to the truth.
She would be brash after she figured out the best way to increase his rate of growth. If he was the person that needed to have constant help while doing something then she would help him like that, or if he needed a person that would give him small hints and let him go from there. He could also be the type of person that learned best through battle, or when the tension was high. That was why she was holding something hard in front of him, to make it easier to picture and make his magic act sharp to better pierce the hollow space.
"Shape your magic into something sharp and pierce through the outer shell of the hollow space. DO IT!" Erza yelled, and out of surprise Naruto's hand shot forward with his magic covering it. It went into the hollow space, and Naruto felt his magic get drained into the hollow space in front of him.
'Pull it in.' Naruto thought to himself as he pulled his magic back into his body, but he was mith some extremely hard resistance. He had made the hollow space to large, so pulling it back into his body. He started to sweat as the conflicting forces stressed his body out, and his magic started to flucuate.
"Try harder!" Erza said quickly when she felt the hollow space of magic start to go back into his body, and Naruto grit his teeth and sweat started to drop from his chin from the pure effort this was taking. The hollow space was draining his magic just as fast as he was pulling it into him. When he finally got the entire thing inside him, he felt the hollow space vanish entirely.
"Was it suppose to disappear Erza-sensei?" Naruto asked in confusion, and Erza let go of him and walked back to the board and picked up the marker and tossed it to him. He easily caught it, before he saw her using another marker to draw on the board.
"Okay, now this part is a bit harder. To store things in your Pocket Dimension you need to cover an objest with your magic completely... try it with that marker." Erza demanded of him, and Naruto summoed up his magic and a thick white aura appeared around the marker. Erza frowned at how much magic he was using, when he should be using much less. He was wasting more magic than he needed to, which would be bad in the middle of a fight.
"Like this?" Naruto asked as the white energy made the marker look like it was shining, and Erza nodded. She would beat into his later that he needed to not waste any of his magic.
"You are using to much magic, but that can be talked about later. Try using your magic and placing the marker inside your Pocket Dimension... to do that you should summon up a small part of the hollow space, and guide the marker into it using your magic." Erza said, and Naruto looked at the marker and tried to make it go into a smaller version of the hollow space he had made earlier... he still wondered where that went. The magic around the marker went towards the hollow space slowly, and tried to force both itself and the marker in. The marker glowed for a moment, before it slowly disappeared inside the hollow space. Naruto blinked though when both the hollow space vanished along with the marker.
"Hey Erza-sensei! I did it!" Naruto said with a smile on his face, and she nodded neutrally to it. She was still thinking about how to train him to use much less magic when doing this. It would be awhile before it was battle ready, with how slow the process was he was going to have to practice a lot before he got to the intermediate level.
"Good, now bring it back out. This time though figure out how to do that on your own." Erza told him with a serious tone of voice, and he nodded while she watched him with a critical eye. If he needed to summon an opening to the Pocket Dimension to put stuff in, then maybe he needed it out to pull it back out. Making the opening to his Pocket Dimension, he tried to force his magic inside it and search for the marker. He closed his eyes to help himself visualize finding the marker, and while he did so the Pocket Dimension drained him of more magic. Because the item was only a marker though, the magic drain was barely worth mentioning to him.
'He has the wrong idea.' Erza thought with a sigh to herself when she saw him trying to summon the marker the way he put it in. She was so absorbed in Naruto, that she barely noticed Wendy coming back with another blue haired girl that went by Levy. Naruto was to busy trying, and failing, to summon the marker than he didn't notice them.
"Hey Erza, what are you doing?" Levy asked, and Erza blinked and looked at her for a moment before remembering why she wanted to see her.
"I am teaching my apprentice how to use Requip Magic, but I might need your help to teach him how to read. He reads and writes in another language if that will help speed things along." Erza said with a controlled voice, and Levy nodded hile Wendy sat on the ground and panted lightly. The field was a bit farther away from the guild than she had thought it would be.
"How is he doing?" Levy asked when she looked at Naruto sitting down and taking up a thinking position. Naruto had found the marker inside the Pocket Dimension, but he wasn;t able to pull it out. Naruto looked up at the board with the circle inside the circle, before an idea came to him. Holding out his hand, he reached into the Pocket Dimension but this time he molded his magic into the shape of the marker. Picturing the marker in his head, he opening the Pocket Dimension INSIDE his molded magic. Using his molded magic, he reached into Pocket Dimension and he was surprised when the marker started to appear in his hand slowly. The white magic glow stopped, and his his hand was the marker. He grinned and held it up in the air like a victory trophy.
The larger bubble on the board was his magic, while the smaller one was his Pocket Dimension! He needed mold his magic first, and then use that molded back while thinking of the object. Then, the magic would react and yank the object out of the Pocket Dimension. It was JUST like using a Storage Seal the old man had showed him back in the village!
'He actually did it!?' Erza thought with a pretty good amount of surpise. When he had started molding his magic the second time around, she had noticed he was getting the right idea. She had noticed him using much more magic than it should take, and not to bring up the fact that it took him a bit of time to do it. She could pull up most of her stuff in seconds, while it took hima few minutes in total to yank the marker out.
"I can see why you want to train him. His potential is pretty high if he could do something like this so quickly... didn't it take you like four hours to learn how to pull things out?" Levy asked in a teasing voice, before she was met with a dark aura around Erza. Levy eep'd and jumped away from Erza in fright, before they heard Naruto.
"It is because Erza-sensei that I learned this so quickly. Her drawings gave me the idea how to do it, so she is a great sensei!" Naruto said with a grin, before he looked at the marker with an intense expression and in a white glow it went back into his Pocket Dimension after a few minutes of glowing. Once it was gone, he picture it in his head and molded his magic again. In a white glow the marker started to appear again, but it still took a few minutes to do so. Erza smiled in pride for a moment, before growing serious.
"Naruto-kun, this is Levy Mcgarden, and she is going to teach you how to read and write. You WILL give her your full attention whenever she teaches you. We will work on increasing the amount of time it takes for you to summon that marker another time. I also suggest that in the meantime you learn to use less magic when summoning things." Erza said as she put her hand on the board, and in less than a second the entire thing glowed and vanished. Naruto's eyes widened slightly when he mentally compared how fast she was able to do that, with how long it took him to summon a marker.
"Hey, I'm Levy, but you can call me Levy-chan or Levy-sensei!" Levy said with a smile, and Naruto blinked at how cheerful she was. Were all people at Fairy Tail this willing to help strangers, or was he just a magnet for the weird ones?
"Hello, my names Naruto Uzumaki. You can call me whatever you want." Naruto said, and Wendy stepped forward and looked at Naruto.
"Naruto, we really need to get back to the guild soon or Master Roubaul will wonder why we are out this late without being on a mission." Wendy reminded him, and he looked at her with a deadpan expression. This was why he suggested she not come, because he didn't want to force her to stay with him while he trained until the end of the day. Naruto looked at Erza with a pleading look, and she nodded. She could let him go early today, since today would be the easiest day of training for a long time.
It took her years to develop and master her Ex-quip style known as 'The Knight', so teaching that to him would take time. She needed to make sure that he would also get some basic training with as many different kinds of weapons as possible, and then see what his best type of weapon would be. Then she would work with him to develop his own Ex-quip style using Requip.
"You can take off early today, but out next lesson will be longer than this. I expect you to train hard even outside of these sessions. Right now the most important thing is for you to decrease the amount of time and magic it takes to put stuff in, and take stuff out. Then we can work on the size of the things, and the difficulty." Erza said, as she picked up Levy and dragged her along with her back towards the guild. Levy pouted at not being able to start teaching, before she sighed and let Erza carry her back to the guild. There was no agruing with her anyway, and those that did normally didn't come out of it unhurt.
"You ready to go Wendy?" Naruto asked, and she nodded with a smile. Naruto summoned his wings, and she hopped onto him. He flew off without a second thought, while Wendy looked at his happy face with a smile. She was happy that he was happy. That was why she would stay at Cait Shelter from now on when he was training, unless he invited her, because she knew that he was happy when he was training hard.
No wait, maybe she could train herself while he was out training. That way she could impress him with her growing power, and then she would be a better partner to him! If he was growing stronger, she didn't want to be left in the dust.
"Naruto... when you aren't training, do you think that we can go on another mission together?" Wendy asked with a small smile, and she saw Naruto grin at her.
"If that is what you want, then sure. Anything for a friend." Naruto said, and he missed the automatic twitch she gave when he said friend. She wondered for a moment why that word was bothering her, and why she grew irritated over it. Naruto looked in front of them, before he gazed at the marker he was holding with a grin. Yeahm right now it wasn't a skill ready for battle, but one day he would be able to us it to bring out fun surprises for people during a fight.
First fighter he may be, but he also liked the element of surprise.
Chapter End.
It is easier to learn something when you ahve somebody truly teaching you, than it is to learn it on your own. Naruto's requip will not be truly battle ready for awhile yet, so don't expect him to just start whipping out armor and weapons. He is still primarily a hand to hand fighter, but he realizes that weapons can be useful. Erza wasn't beating his head in during the lesson, because he was paying attention. Naruto won't just 'master' requip right away. Right now he is at the very beginning level. It is also similar to storage scrolls, so his mind was able to connect it and work on that. I also picture Erza as being a teacher that will make sure to learn the best way to teach a person, before truly getting into the teaching.
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