DISCLAIMER:...you know what I don't own. I know what I don't own... the world knows what I don't own. But I do own a shirt, pants, and some other clothes... although still not Naruto... Stupid kishimoto, should definitely let me have it.
Questions, comments, and concerns are always welcome.
-Cheeks out.
"...-that's right, demon. The very being that killed Iruka's parents, friends, and families of everyone in this village; you have the nine tailed demon fox sealed inside you, HAHAHA! You see, you demon spawn! Nobody loves you! That's why I, am going to kill you, so not only will I avenge all those lost souls, I will get into lord Orochimaru's good will by taking that scroll too!"
Mizuki lunged at Naruto, Iruka laying down unable to move fast enough because of the numerous wounds gouged into his body could only yell a warning.
"Narutooo!!!"
*POOF*
Instead of seeing a, dead, blonde boy when the smoke cleared, Iruka saw hundreds, if not a thousand Naruto's, facing the traitorous bastard down.
"I'm not some demon. I'm a Shinobi of the village hidden in the leaves... I won't give any of you the satisfaction of watching me crumble under the pain you've put me through. I'll show you all what, Naruto Uzumaki, will achieve."
With his monologue finish all the hundreds of clones and original charged Mizuki. No battle cry's were issued, just quiet running and fierce determination.
What followed was a massacre for the clones, but quickly Naruto started to learn, to anticipate the traitor-nin's next move. The memories from the clone were allowing him to learn the man's fighting style quicker than many would ever think possible.
Eyes from the outside saw feints remembering what it looked like leading up to it, then they'd get in close engaging in close quarters before dispelling giving memories of their experiences to the original.
More punches started landing, more kicks, more head butts, slaps, scratches, bruises; damage was piling up quickly sapping Mizuki's strength.
Naruto thankful for his monstrous stamina-
'Pfft, get it? Because the Kyuubi is a monster, PFHAHAH- UGHK!'
Making one's self, laugh, during a fight is quiet stupid, as he realized almost instantly when the experienced Chuunin charged him and landed a massive blow to his liver sending the jinchuriki flying a few meters back blinding him with pain almost guaranteed it was ruptured.
The clones quickly charged the battered Shinobi and started beating him into the ground. Not stopping, soon the quiet pleas and moans of Mizuki came to a deafening halt.
Within the minute or two of lying on the ground in pain Naruto was thankful it didn't last much longer. He stood up, glad he healed quickly now realizing it's probably the Fox, and started to saunter back towards the now smaller group of clones albeit still ridiculous amounts to everyone else.
Naruto stared at the now very clearly dead man. He felt horrible but at the same time, he felt resolve build.
'If I need to, my enemy will not be left alive. I will protect my precious people, even if it means taking life in droves.'
With that the rest of the clones dispelled, leaving Naruto standing alone in his thoughts and emotions.
"C'mere Naruto, and close your eyes."
Still shaken from the whole ordeal, he cautiously edged closer until he was standing within arms reach and closed his eyes.
He felt his hardy goggles get replaced with something smooth, and silky, causing his heart to ram into the back of his rib cage.
"Go ahead and open them Naruto."
He did as he was told before lifting his hands up to his hitaiate and started to brush his fingers along its shining metal.
"I'm so proud of you Naruto. I couldn't be prouder, actually." Iruka looked at him with a watery eyed smile.
"You have come along way, and I have a feeling you'll achieve your goal of Hokage one day and be the best there ever was. Congratulations, Naruto, for graduating the academy and becoming an official genin."
That being said, the blonde, now genin, Shinobi felt hot, and prickly tears escape his eyes. He felt a very signature, wide, and blinding smile grow in place.
"Believe it."
His knees buckled and his eyes rolled up into the back of his head. The blinding smile turned into a well earned grin. Iruka caught him thankfully before he could fall to the ground.
The Chuunin sensei realized the young boy was only emotionally strained and exhausted and not physically spent. Of course that was a part of it but, many are affected harshly taking their first life, never mind it being a brutal beating that led to it.
"I believe in you Naruto, no matter what. I just know, you'll be the greatest of us all."
Naruto woke with a start, remembering the lifeless eyes of Mizuki's battered ,and broken face staring into his own. He slowly brought his hands to his eyes, and rubbed the sleep away.
"I've made peace with what I've done. I will do it again when the need rises."
Having said that aloud to... himself he quickly got up and went through the morning hogwash. Brush teeth, shower since he didn't get one last night, eat a bowl of cereal saving that sweet, sweet, ramen for later and headed off.
His first stop, the library. Having realized what the Kage bunshin no jutsu(Shadow clone jutsu), could do, he was going to abuse it as much as he could during the next week.
He strolled through the street for more acutely aware, and conscious about the glares directed at him. A balled fist was all they got in return, although hidden in his pocket.
'I'll show all of you. Just you watch, believe it!'
He quickly arrived at the library and walked towards the genin section. He was met with a glare and contemptuous air pointed at him.
"What are you doing here you little conniving fox?"
"What does it look like dumbass? It's a library, you read here... kinda put two and two together, not hard to realize that is it?" A satisfied feeling coursed through his body at his heated remark.
The women that was the current receptionist looked at him like somebody kicked her in between the legs.
"Now listen here you little demon-"
"Hmm, I wonder what the Hokage would think about some one calling me a demon. I don't have horns, nor bat wings, my eyes aren't red like blood, I don't have an insatiable hunger for human flesh... what could possibly lead you to call one of Konoha's genin a demon I wonder...?"
At that she froze seemingly regaining her magically lost brain cells and looked at his head band along with the fact she just broke a law punishable by death.
"I-, well I was just-"
Naruto put a hand up.
"Don't care actually, I'm going to go read, so the next time you choose to bar a Shinobi passage to the library, you should probably realize you're completely stupid."
The blonde walked away towards the shelves that contained information for genin clearance. Once deep enough, he brought his hands together in a cross shape formed by his first and second finger of both hands, and quietly chanted,
"Kage Bunshin No Jutsu(shadow clone jutsu)."
Dozens of Naruto's appeared; he counted thirty-eight in total. He still didn't have a complete handle on how much chakra makes how many since he learned it last night, well this morning technically but whatever.
"Okay, ten of you look for ninjutsu, ten of you look for Taijutsu, ten of you look for shurikenjutsu, and the last eight look for history about strong Shinobi, not just our villages either. If we wanna be the best, we'll have to learn from the best. Ready? Go."
They all dispersed spreading out quickly pulling book after book out finding a place to read, some of them even sitting down right under where they found the books, and started devouring knowledge.
The original set about looking for anatomy type books. Obviously the academy taught things about weak and lethal point of the human body but, well, Naruto doesn't quite trust the knowledge he'd learned so far after last night.
'Anatomy for blockheads 101, huh? That'll work.'
He quickly sat down and started reading, what could possibly go wrong with learning as fast as he possibly could?
Everything.
The answer is, everything.
More specifically, trying to learn what effectively was a hundred and fourteen hours of studying in an instant doesn't feel very nice.
He had spent three hours there, deciding that was enough he started to head for the exist so he could begin training.
Once outside he dispelled the clones and immediately regretted it. He didn't gain a splitting headache, but his breakfast was threatening, borderline abusing his stomach, to release itself.
He slumped to the floor on his knees and clutched his spinning head. Gradually it stopped and he no longer felt like panting the sidewalk with his gastric fluids.
"From now on, all the clones are dispelling every ten minutes. That, was terrible."
He stood up slowly just to be safe, and made his way to the academy training grounds. There were only a few kids there spread out widely, so he opted to head the one behind the academy.
Once he realized no one was there, he used as much chakra as he could muster and caused the field to be littered with sun-kissed heads of blonde everywhere.
"Okay, guys, I seriously don't want to go through that again, so once you feel like you've learned anything, dispel yourself."
"You got it boss."
"Hell yeah, let's do this!"
"We're gonna kick our asses!"
Everything steam rolled from there. A raining session that would have killed Chuunin, even some Tokubetsu Jonin would more than likely have severe repercussions, kicked off. And like that, the rest of his day was spent training gruelingly.
Eleven hours later
Naruto was sweating profusely while getting another burst of information from his clones at the library. Earlier he had found out that some jutsu needed a certain amount of control or it would fail, sometimes not even work.
This morning he decided to reward himself with a cup of ramen instead of cereal and it was sublime. Ramen seriously could not be topped by anything else.
Of course that means he was filled with horror and dread once he realized he'd have to give ramen up... it would have to be pushed back from multiple times a day to just two time a week if he wanted to grow healthily.
A strong body and mind were required for a strong Shinobi... of course chakra, which he didn't have to worry about, would definitely help.
The being said, ways to improve your control was provided in a few of the ninjutsu scrolls and books he read through, namely the tree walking exercise, and the water walking exercise.
Once he had found that out he quickly went to the first inside one of the ninja training grounds. There was a section blocked off with warnings to training ground forty-four. He made sure to steer clear of it although he was highly curious.
Having realized the shadow clones couldn't help with physical training, specifically muscle growth and the things alike, though the arguably best feature of the Kage Bunshin No Jutsu(shadow clone jutsu), was the fact it could train muscle memory.
He was completely befuddled on how that worked so he thought to apply that to his chakra training exercises too and well, that's why he's currently doing physical training while he has a hundred clones working on the tree walking, a hundred working on kata's/taijutsu, forty at the library, and lastly a hundred working on shurikenjutsu.
He found that his chakra reserves were massive, and seemed to realize that was the reason he couldn't do the regular Bunshin no jutsu(Clone jutsu). Having been at it for hours with all of his clones regularly dispelling right after making another clone to take its place, he decided on the spur of the moment to try it.
He'd already learn to walk up a tree but now he was learning to fight while doing it. Sending a silent prayer to nobody, he made the ram sign and molded his chakra in the proper way.
*POOF*
Opening his eyes he looked across and started beaming. He was looking at, although not a perfect clone, something he could have never hoped to achieve literally less than seventy-two hours ago, staring back at him with an equally big smile.
"Yatta!"
He jumped up and down, did a little jig, romped around and then struck a victory pose. His 'V' shaped fingers pointing out in front of him with his left arm curled like he was going to flex his bicep.
"Heheee!"
Quickly he calmed down and was going to start some more practicing when suddenly out of nowhere a women sporting purple locks and wearing a cat mask appeared.
"OOOOOO! That was so cool! Hey, will you teach me how to do that?! Pretty please?!?!"
'Hmmm, obviously she's strong. The mask makes her, uh, what was it called again, ahn, aun, OH- yeah, ANBU.'
"Lord Hokage requests your presence."
"Ah mannn, okay, well I'll be right there then." Naruto made a single clone and then had it dispel so all the other clones knew to slowly start dispelling themselves.
He turned around, went to grab his hitaiate and went back toward the cat mask wearing ANBU.
"I'm ready to go."
The only response was a nod and then she placed her hand on his shoulder and disappeared before reappearing on the outside of the Hokage's door about thirty seconds later.
Naruto felt a little dizzy and disoriented but compared to the incident the other with his clones, it was almost nothing.
*Knock Knock*
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