Naruto woke up, groggy and shaking his head, he looked around and remembered the events that'd transpired and shrugged, accepting he could do nothing about it, with his happy go lucky, foolish, and chip behaviour being attributed to the mask he wore, which he didn't have to hide now, showing an apathetic, pessimistic, and retrospective views.
Naruto clutched the grass and breathed the air, taking in his freedom and looking at the sun, of which he lay lone in the middle of nowhere in a clearing, in front of the cave.
Naruto absently looked to his left and was startled as a floating white face with glowing orbs of the sun as eyes and the light as their mouth was in front of their face.
Naruto exclaimed, "Gee face man, give me some space."
The face morphed to Naruto's but white and grey and smiled, saying in a warped voice of deep and high pitch simultaneously, "Do you remember that we have to teach you Ninshu and our way?"
Naruto was unsettled but nodded, and two other faces joined the first one, which the first removed its facial features, only showing the structure of a blank face, with one of the two smiling and the other frowning.
Smiling face glowed and said, "I will teach you positive chakra, Frowning face will teach you negative chakra, and Faceless will teach you Ninshu and nature energy, we will all teach you generally anything related to your profession and a shinobi of this century and general education."
Naruto nodded, still attempting to absorb he would now be taught by floating faces.
"First you will eat, you as a human must be parched or ravenous, you look like you are not fed well, eat and we will proceed with your training."
All faces said simultaneously, with only the ethereal glow of all three faces being the only indication.
Naruto nodded and above his head was Faceless, with Frowning on his left and Smiling on his right, with him being covered in light they teleported to a shoddy shack in the middle of a gigantic densely forested island, with the shack itself on top of a mountain plateau that had a good view of the horizon, which didn't seem to end.
Naruto's eyes widened marginally and exclaimed, "Where is this?!"
All three floating faces developed outlines of shoulders and shrugged seemingly to Naruto's ire, the blonde merely sighed and looked down.
He didn't like what he saw. There were steep and long steps of stairs leading down to the mountain of which on the bottom resided tables full of food, and he could smell and make out a bowl of freshly made ramen.
Naruto's first test unknown to him began.
He jumped down not bothering to take the stairs, free falling head down looking like he was diving at water creating hundreds of clones that huddled together in front of him.
Shortly after he was caught in a human net of Naruto.
He grinned and the three faces were in front of the tables.
Naruto walked towards them, with the clones being dispelled by Naruto as to not get competition against the food.
"Congratulations, we'd prefer you take the stairs but what's done is done," They said with a hollow voice of cacophony.
Naruto now behind them devoured the food at an incredible pace, not wasting any of it on the rocky ground.
The faces looked on in mild disgust at his table manners and some intrigue as to how Naruto isn't murdering the food without it going all over the place.
The hivemind wonder soon ended when Naruto devoured the contents of all three tables.
"We shall begin our training now," the collective said in finality, not liking distractions.
Naruto nodded and asked while wiping his mouth with a napkin, "What's the training about?"
"Chakra control, which you lack due to little Kyuubi in you, tell me your name and your heritage to see your advantages and disadvantages," Smiling said with Frowning, sounding like a child the Smiling was and a grumpy old man the Frowning.
Naruto explained, "I am… an orphan, Naruto Uzumaki, I don't know my parents, b-b-but how do you know about the Kyuubi?"
"Simple, we help create the Kyuubi and Bijuu with the Sage of Six Paths, giving blank souls to the sage, he could create life, but not sentience nor wipe souls like clean slates but he thought he could because of his mind wiping," The Smiling well… smiled and the Faceless continued, "funnily enough wanting life he could only destroy souls with Human Path. You are Uzumaki, but you do not have red hair, oddly enough…" Faceless said and continued with Frowning, "Your parent one possesses the Uzumaki genes, your parent two oddly enough was able to tower over the vicious dominance of the red hair trait, blondes with domineering genetics are… considering extinct clans I would say one of your parents is obviously Uzumaki and the other a Namikaze, an ancient clan the Namikaze were, speed demons."
Naruto widened his eyes severely and said, "I only know one Namikaze and that's… THE FOURTH HOKAGE?!"
The spirits nodded with the Kyuubi reaffirming this stating, "Your father is Minato Namikaze and your mother is my previous jinchuriki, Kushina Uzumaki, I wanted to tell you but it wasn't my place, but now that nobody could tell you I suppose I will tell you… Also all knew of your father including toad man, senju brat, and your beloved Third Hokage, think about why that old man was helping only ONE orphan out of the hundreds of other out there…"
Naruto's world crashed down in that instant, pissed off he wanted to ram a Rasengan down someone, especially Jiraiya and Tsunade, hating them for not telling him who his father was, now he wondered if others knew, but "it doesn't matter," Naruto calmed himself.
Begrudged he dispelled his Rasengan and the faces said, "Our first training will be definitely improving your chakra control, we will do this until you have PERFECT chakra control, not needing hand seals for any jutsu, except those that don't follow the standard hand seals like the shadow clone of yours."
Naruto nodded but stated, "I thought all jutsu needed hand seals,"
Frowning said, "No, this is not the case if you have mastered a certain jutsu or using medical jutsu, with the latter requiring ninety-five percent perfect chakra control, the other five percent means perfecting the five elements perfectly."
Naruto nodded, making an ah understanding sound.
"First you'll do the hardest to the easiest, shadow clones and we will help you so no need to be simple. First exercise is walking backwards sideways on a speeding waterfall but first you have to spar with fifteen of your shadow clones, with each shadow clone doing some unique style of taijutsu," They collectively said.
Naruto nodded in fear and he looked at the waterfall he saw in the distance and proceeded to create the shadow clones.
Naruto was tired- no, he was in the edge of unconsciousness as he had finished the first exercise, for two days Naruto was not allowed sleep, and was forced from the bottom of the waterfall, to run backwards vertically to the top whilst avoiding kunai and such thrown by the Facelessness.
On the first day he couldn't do it, he just couldn't. He lacked the chakra control nor coordination and discipline to water walk backwards vertically on a speeding waterfall, whilst also dodging kunai, real kunai.
Naruto, upon his success, cheered, fell from a height equivalent to ten floors upon his collapse of slumber, not getting sustenance nor slumber for two days.
Naruto upon opening his eyes woke up in the bed of the shoddy shack.
In front of his face was his own but white and grey, the Faceless of the bunch.
He yelped and said, "What the hell?!"
Naruto fell from his bed and immediately Naruto sensed something wrong along with them and Faceless teleported the two of them to the entrance of the cave and saw a bruised Konohamaru surrounded by bandits.
Konohamaru, exhausted by following Naruto was fighting the dozen bandits and Naruto was about to power a Rasengan when the Frowning and Smiling said, "Negative: Spatial Abrasion."
The bandits developed giant black slashes on them and soon collapsed, Konohamaru widened his eyes at the floating face but ignored it when he saw Naruto, leaping up with the last of his energy to hug him with tears striking his eyes.
-A Years Later-
Naruto sighed, the Faceless, Smiling, and Frowning all merged into one being, which was actually what they really were just to Naruto's knowledge now.
"This is my true form, My true name is Kanjokozui, like Kurama being called the Kyuubi no Kitsune they call me the Facelessness, only the Sage of Six Paths knows but you two know now" They revealed, with a reverberation of voice that resonated through the cave entrance Naruto was in front of.
Kanjokozui was ten foot tall, with their face just like Faceless, but the bodiless nature of Kanjokozui they wanted to hide, with a long high-collar white cloak and above it was a trench coat that floated in the wind, with both the cloak and the trench coat were extremely long and dragged across the ground, above the hood he wore a conical hat heavy golden, but weight isn't a consequence.
Whilst Naruto's hair resembled Minato's, he wore a forehead protector without a symbol for any village, with a difference of having Iruka's ponytail along with it, Naruto wore black and orange cargo pants combined with an orange sweater, wearing a black and red trench coat over it with a golden Uzumaki crest on the back. Naruto possessed two giant scrolls on his back containing a scroll full of their stuff, and the other being the toad summoning contract, secretly given to him by Jiraiya along with Tsunade behind everybody's backs.
Konohamaru wore the same forehead protector as Naruto, not bothering to change anything about him.
"Kanjokozui, that will take some time to get used to," Naruto remarked dryly and continued, "Since my training is done, what do I do?"
Naruto said while he formed a mini Rasenshuriken on the tip of his pointing finger, with black shuriken blades orbiting it horizontally and white shuriken blades vertically orbiting it.
Naruto haphazardly launched it up directly in the air, it penetrated the atmosphere instantly and went outside the solar system, creating an earthquake and hypersonic boom that shook kilometres on Earth until it exploded, creating a black spot from Naruto's view.
The "black spot" was ten thousand light years away from them, was the mini Rasenshuriken that exploded the size of a nebula, with Kanjokozui naming it, "Positive Negative: Spatial Ultraspeed Condensed Rasenshuriken," With Naruto agreeing with the name.
Kanjokozui chided Naruto and said, "No, what did I tell you?"
Naruto responded by saying in a mock sad tone with a smile, "Don't willy-nilly use one of our quintuple S-Class jutsu, I get it."
Kanjokozui nodded approvingly but sighed and said, "I haven't been outside this area in aeons, I want to go outside so I will join you in whatever your journey entails."
Naruto nodded and they began their journey but were interrupted when Team Ino-Shika-Cho was in front of them.
"What is it that you want Konoha shinobi?" Kanjokozui asked in a reverberating and deep voice that immediately asserted his authority over the Konoha shinobi.
The three were very intimidated, with Konohamaru thinking this was a ploy he screamed, "YOU WON'T TAKE NARUTO BRO BACK TO KONOHA!"
The three flinched and Shikamaru said, "Konoha is in grave trouble, Pain, the leader of Akatsuki is attacking, Lord Jiraiya died trying to stop them…"
Naruto widened his eyes severely and teared up, wiping his tears he said in anger, "Let's go!"
The three of them were about to go when Kanjokozui said, "Let's teleport, this is urgent!"
Naruto and Konohamaru nodded, with Ino-Shika-Cho widening their eyes but complying.
In an instant they were not in front of Konoha, Pain sensed Naruto and all Six Paths of Pain surrounded him.
"My plan has worked…" Pain said behind the other Paths, with the rest of the shinobi with Naruto who narrowed their eyes at him.
Tsunade said, "You won't win this Pain!"
"Oh I will… Almighty Push-"
Pain was interrupted when Kanjokuzui ran at him with an outline of arms Kanjokozui slammed Pain to the ground and the back of his cloak developed outlines of spikes that attempted to impale the other Paths, with Preta Path trying to absorb the attack but failing to and imploding.
The four other Paths fought the Konoha shinobi, Naruto, and Konohamaru.
Kanjokozui intercepted a black rod and cracked it under one of his aetherial hands.
Nagato widened his eyes severely from afar and Kanjokozui sensed it, Nagato was suddenly in front of Kanjokozui along with Konan, with the latter saving the Rinnegan wielder by paper blocking shards of the broken black rods.
Nagato exclaimed, "H-how did you-?"
"Simple, I have experience fighting men with Rinnegan." Kanjokozui stated.
The implications of Kanjokozui wasn't to be absorbed since the Facelessness exploded in chains that wrapped around all the paths and Konan.