Summary:

What could happen to a genin on the two days between becoming a genin and team assignment? For others, nothing significant. But for Naruto, it was time to tick all the checkboxes on the schedule he planned for the last six years. He set out reassess his skills before he became an official genin. Who knew Naruto was a chakra control freak?

Author's note:

I have been rewriting chapters. Please wait until I catch up to the existing chapters before I upload new ones.

CHAPTER 3

After Naruto left the hokage tower after the unpleasant night, the hokage saw him going to bed dejectedly through crystal ball. He ended the jutsu and thought about assigning an ANBU to watch him but decided against that. If Naruto could find Mizuki, he might find the ANBU and it would not bode well with the blonde who just found out about the Kyubi. And Naruto just decided to sleep so there was no immediate adverse reaction for the unpleasant proceedings of that night. He could later ask Iruka to talk to him and gauge his mental state.

Naruto had already made seal-less shadow clone with most of his chakra and sent it out to do what he usually did every night. To create more clones to study and practice chakra control. He would not practise jutsus at nighttime because even if he practised in henge, it would leave chakra residue raising doubts as to 'who and why at night'. If he was not in his hideout, which was a little away from the Konoha border near the Uzumaki temple, ninjutsu and taijutsu was a no go. The hideout had a clearing with waterfall. He would not practise anything more than common C-rank jutsus inside Konoha even in henge. It did not matter whether daytime or nighttime, he was careful not to get caught.

At age seven, Naruto started with five clones per day to read and increased day by day through practice. Naruto started with basic meditation and slowly trained in an intensive method to increase the number of clones to learn and comprehend many things. Naruto knew learning few things and comprehending them was better than half-ass reading of many things. But it would not be wise to neglect a particular topic entirely. He was determined to know at least basics on all twenty-one ninja techniques (eighteen basic techniques plus ninjutsu, genjutsu and Uzumaki fuinjutsu). He did not expect to learn all of them, but not knowing even the basic things about any of the ninja techniques did not sit well with the blonde.

Naruto was a frequent visitor to hokage's vault and some clan compounds. He did not go to steal jutsus, but he was reading the basics on their basic library open to all clan children. He obtained various useful information and combined them with the jutsus he was already given by Crow and the ones from Konoha chunin and jonin library sections, archives and hokage vault, he had a wealth of information.

AGES 7, 8 and 9:

Naruto remembered where it all started. Naruto planned a schedule after Itachi left. He had a scroll from Itachi on chakra control, shadow clones, academy jutsus and basic academic theories. But what Crow gave him was more comprehensive and tailor-made for him. Crow was an ANBU alongside Weasel aka Itachi Uchiha. In all honesty, it was Crow who introduced Itachi to Naruto.

Naruto suspected that Crow expected his untimely end and planned for his absence in Naruto's life. Crow gave all of his academy books to clan books, some blunted weapons, his used weights and a map of Konoha to Naruto. There were scrolls containing chakra basics with detailed notes and basic to advanced chakra control exercises. There were corresponding chakra control exercises for elemental manipulation too.

Crow mentioned Naruto should master chakra control first. He wanted Naruto should at least be able to complete tree climbing, leaf sticking and water walking before he graduated academy if he wanted to do at least academic jutsus easily.

The scroll also contained Crow's famous D-rank jutsu. There were many E-rank, D-rank jutsus and some C-rank jutsus on all five affinities of wind, fire, water, lightning and earth. Naruto had equally strong wind, water and lightning as primary affinities.

The scroll had more low rank wind, lightning and water jutsus than fire and earth jutsus. There were few B-rank jutsus too, signifying that Crow had checked Naruto's chakra affinity at some point. Wind jutsus were not easy to come by. Naruto knew he had time to learn more ninjutsu once he became a genin, so he need not concentrate much on it before that.

The calligraphy set and introduction to kanji and sealing books were in the scroll too. There were no sealing books, but it was mentioned that sealing required neat calligraphy, high mathematical skills, jutsu-shiki and fuin-shiki in the book given. All these showed how much effort Crow had put into preparing those things. He should have been preparing for months with his copying magic eyes to collect these jutsus.

If Naruto was any less responsible and naive or little more spoiled and arrogant, he would have gone for flashy jutsus first. He was not either of those things and he wanted to make his Crow proud. He wanted to declare loudly to the world one day, that he was the little brother of Crow, and he was an awesome shinobi as much as his big brother.

So, the blonde followed the instructions and started with chakra control and physical exercises. After he learned basic writing, he started on chakra theory and planned for future and made a timetable.

Naruto decided to focus on learning basic ninja theory, calligraphy, two academic jutsus, shadow clones, chakra control, experiment on shadow clones, stealth, trapping, life skills such as financing, cooking, find way to make more money, getting more information about ninja lifestyle, learning about clans and political situation in Konoha, scouting hidden places in Konoha and hunting for food.

Because despite all the training materials, he needed a place to train, stealth enough to get away from the watching ANBU (thanks to emotional and chakra sensing and a little help from Kyubi), money enough to buy good quality groceries, training equipment and mostly create a loser façade so no one would doubt his developing skills. Crow warned him not to show off until he was at jonin level. But Crow did not say he had to be a jonin to be at jonin level.

Pranks were his way of emotional outlet on the village and the chase from the ninjas were his practice in evasion. He just wanted to prank a shopkeeper who threw him out of the store first but later it escalated, and he added that particular style into his fake persona when he knew his mother and father both liked pranks.

Pranks became his thing and so did orange. At first the neon orange jumpsuit was sturdy, cheap and was the only thing he could buy that was not ragged. Later he decided it was a perfect combination of red and yellow, not to mention Kyubi's fur. Some evil people did not want others to forget he was Kyubi by slapping Kyubi's colour on him and so Naruto decided to make his weakness as the armour and proudly displayed the orange and proclaimed it was his favourite colour to the world.

Starting on physical training was easy as it did not need many preparations when you were young. Running, jogging, push ups, pull ups and other basic exercises were a good start. Naruto used Crow's weights first for physical training to build his strength slowly. Food and nutritional supplies were problems though. Except Ichiraku ramen and instant ramen, he could not find anything to eat. The hokage was not thoughtful enough to leave a cookbook for a seven-year-old child living alone in an apartment, who was not tall enough to reach the cupboards and stove.

At first he thought going on a henged shopping would grant him favours but he was easily found out. He could not understand how the civilians could saw through his henge until Kyubi mentioned the blank masked ANBU like shinobi tipping them off as he was following Naruto better than the actual ANBU. Naruto decided to master shadow clones as soon as possible. ANBU was watching him from a building nearby and the creepy blank mask was watching him from the tree near the living room window.

Once he started pranking people on a large scale, the regular pursuit from ANBU and other ninjas made the creepy mask people unable to shadow him everywhere. Not to mention on one good day, he led the blank mask on a goose chase while his shadow clones took down the said tree with the well-placed explosive tags. All he had to do was to let a branch fall on the nearby shop at a right time to minimize the loss but maximize the exposure. With Naruto clone acting as a customer, goading and criticizing the shop, the shopkeeper cut down the tree. This was the red-light district. There was no sympathy for people let alone a tree.

After that, if the masks had to watch him they had to hide in a building nearby, but it was already occupied ANBU. The hokage was about to take down the ANBU watch few weeks after he settled down in his apartment, but the break-ins into his apartment led the ANBU to watch him a little longer. Naruto went as far as to get hospitalised from the break-in and attract hokage's attention to extend ANBU watch, so he could find out a hideout for training during that period to evade the blank masks.

Konoha's map provided by Crow helped him to avoid the occupied areas. As he was practising his calligraphy, he asked the Kyubi why there were no other Uzumaki in Konoha. It led to a short history lesson and many curses from the grumpy fox about Mito Uzumaki, Shodaime hokage Hashira Senju's wife, first jinchuriki of Konoha. He asked if there was a Uzumaki compound in Konoha. The Kyubi replied to him that the Senju compound and Uzumaki compound were the same but there was an Uzumaki temple at the outskirts of Konoha. It was because of his desire to visit the Uzumaki temple, he found a clearing with a waterfall behind it. Of course, an Uzumaki temple would be near a water source. It seemed that Naruto found out his hideout. He spent a whole day there unknowing the hokage and the squad of ANBU was searching for him.

When he finally came back, the hokage questioned his whereabouts. Before he could lie and got caught, Kyubi stopped him. On Kyubi's advice, Naruto said that he was playing near the river and fell into it. Later he almost got lost in the flow but was saved by a protruding tree branch. Then he found his way to the village. The hokage wanted to check what he told was real and found that Naruto was coming from the direction of waterfall by tracing his footsteps, but his scent disappeared after that. Since the hokage did not think Naruto would lie to him he decided that Naruto falling into the river must have erased his scent and the remaining story was true too. He reprimanded Naruto and warned him not to go near the river. Naruto gave a sheepish smile and nodded.

Later, Kyubi explained to Naruto. "The old monkey has a crystal ball that uses jutsu to see throughout Konoha. It is useless after certain distance. Uzumaki temple was the most warded place in Konoha that could evade that magic ball jutsu. That was why he could not find you. You must be careful brat, if you want to train there without him knowing".

"What should I do?", Naruto asked.

"You are my jailor, but your brain is just for show. Why don't you ever use it? I am ashamed that you are my host. It was you who he will be searching for, but it was good that there is more than one of you. Isn't it? But it was not enough. That's all I could say. If you can't handle this problem by yourself you deserve to be a loser. Get lost".

Naruto processed what the Kyubi said and was in deep thought. Naruto curbed his desire to go to the hideout and concentrated on pranks to eliminate hokage's doubts for now. It got a little out of hand and he found himself in a pinch with some ninjas. Naruto did not want to expose his speed and did not find any exits to escape them. So, he put on brave façade and told them he was already late to see the hokage. If the hokage did not see him, he would search through his crystal ball and find out what was happening. Those ninjas laughed at him and informed him that the hokage was at the council meeting and by the time he checked, they would have been long gone. Well, Naruto used orange smoke bomb to signal his location to the ANBU but got smacked down a little before their arrival.

Naruto understood it was stupid of him to get caught without any exits and his speed was not invincible. He decided to learn about battle strategies. Flash forward two years, Konoha got a hidden shogi master. But Naruto finally found a way to evade the crystal ball. So, he confidently started his training in his hideout.

He set out to master Kawarimi, Henge and Shadow clone jutsu first. He wanted to know why he could not create normal clones and read through chakra theory. Once he understood, why chakra control was necessary for him more than others, he decided that he would practice chakra control to the point he could perform normal bunshin.

Shortly after that, the hokage removed ANBU watch on Naruto as his increasing prank always had someone looking out for him and other times he was in the academy. The hokage only asked the patrol to frequent his apartment at night to keep him safe.

Meanwhile Naruto mastered tree climbing in a week with hundreds of clones, enough to have considerable chakra control to evade stones from his clones for at least an hour hopping on trees.

He started with tree climbing rather than leaf sticking because he had large chakra reserves.

Consider chakra as sticks. Let's say a normal genin had 100 sticks. They could divide it into 10 stacks of 10 sticks with a little effort and concentration. If Naruto, who had three times the jonin reserves, let's say about 30,000 sticks without Kyubi's chakra, was asked to do the same it would be impossible at first. So, it was better to start by dividing it into 30 strands of 1000 sticks first and then divide it little by little. Even that would require a more effort and concentration.

He could create hundreds of clones but could only maintain fifty to sixty clones throughout the day. So, shadow clones were used to find part time jobs lasting only hours. Naruto did not want the clone to dispel accidentally and expose himself, hence only hourly jobs. His main source of income was hunting and selling things to monthly merchants. Storage scrolls were helpful in keeping the hunted meat, animal bones and skins intact for a month. Books on skinning the animals from the library helped handling the prey and the experience taught him more on bargaining, negotiation and opened his eyes to new products from different nations.

He did not look for random jobs but jobs that could increase his life skills and ninja skills. He learned things from books before looking for job on that particular field. Through part time jobs on restaurants, weaponsmiths and pharmacies, he developed his skills which were not available on books and gained experience. For these jobs, he appeared in person with a henge instead of clones as these things involved meticulous work and physical drain. Mastering Henge with increased chakra control were proved to be useful for these endeavours.

He increased the number and duration of shadow clones little by little. With the help of shadow clones, he started reading books. He started with five clones a day, dispelled them before going to bed and consolidated the knowledge by meditating. He created another five clones before sleeping and sent them to read more and got the information when he woke up and started the day with meditating.

After tree climbing, he created at least hundred clones for water walking and leaf sticking exercises. He also concentrated in practising hand seals and chakra moulding to increase the speed for hand seal formation and chakra moulding. That practise proved useful on the field when he started using ninjutsu.

From the start, after experimenting, Naruto used hundreds of clones for those training instead, unlike the five clones for reading, because chakra control training did not need comprehension. Since all these clones will be doing the same thing, no comprehension was needed, and it would just create fatigue and negligible mental strain.

After a year, Naruto could create sustain thousand clones a day. He mastered leaf sticking, tree climbing, water walking, kunai spinning and waterfall walking with the help of clones. Naruto could easily perform water walking and waterfall walking while practising hand seals to increase the speed of hand seal formation. Sometimes, kunai spinning carrying a log, taijutsu spars with clones on the water surface could be seen. Naruto even slept on the lake's surface some days.

He took it one step further. After kunai spinning he used senbons to spin at top of each of his fingers at different directions. It served as an extreme chakra control and concentration exercises.

He took many steps further after that success. It was a twenty-four-hour chakra control regime he came up with, after understanding chakra theory. No, not just ten clones training on chakra control at any given time, the original Naruto too, came up with various ways to practice control. Had to read something? Stick to a wall, hang upside down from ceiling and read with book on hand and a kunai spinning on other hand. Oh, from there Naruto found out another two useful techniques. If he could do tree climbing on vertical surface, why stop there?

First one was simple, but it was his main source of chakra control and concentration exercise. Every step he took on horizontal surface was laced with chakra too. He was not simply walking. Never. He was always solid surface walking with chakra. But no one knew he was training. He was hiding his skills in plain sight.

Second one was extremely hard but after mastering it, his understanding and moulding of chakra developed leaps and bounds. He also used that technique to spring traps from a distance without any physical contact. The second technique would go down in history as milestone in ninja's history, but the technique's greater use shocked the world when Naruto combined Wind chakra with it after few years.

The second technique originated from an inspiration by Naruto unexpectedly. If he could make a kunai and senbon to spin at desired reaction at desired speed above a certain height from his hand, why could not he use the same thing on his pen and use it for writing. Would a normal human with limited time could do this? No. But Naruto and his shadow clones could do it. Repetitive process, a little mental strain, multitasking capability, increase in chakra control and concentration, cue one highly skilled Naruto.

At age nine, after three years (twelve years with clones) of extensive training on chakra control, he could make normal bunshin, which was nearly impossible for a ninja of his chakra reserves.

His taijutsu did not improve much but he was practising katas and sparring with his clones. The academy style did not suit him. He foraged the libraries and decided to research on many styles and find a suitable one. He found many scrolls and started practising all the katas and could even have taijutsu spars on all surfaces.

His genjutsu skill was almost non-existent but he was very good in dispelling even high-level ones. Thanks to Itachi and Crow, who made it their mission to teach Naruto that and train his speed. Speed enough to evade sharinghan. He continued his speed training by having his clones throw, senbons, kunais, shurikens, leaves and even stones. His hunting in Forest of Death helped a lot too.

His weapon throwing was perfect to the point he could throw kunai and shuriken with his eyes closed and hit a stationary target from any angle at a reasonable distance. He started practising with moving targets and excelled at that too.

His kenjutsu training was going very well. He was good at wielding ninjato, but he was only going through basic motions of sword drawing, blocking, stabbing, slashing, sweeping, lunging, doing a riposte and parrying, with a wooden sword.

Once he started practising with ninja wire capable of channelling chakra, he opened a new field and was researching it using clones. It led to more reading on chakra conduction, manipulation and channelling.

Kyubi did not understand how it could be possible for the boy with so much energy could sit still. Ah, he was not sitting still. His energy was divided between his clones, physical training and chakra control training. Chakra control training was unexpected by Kyubi. Kyubi thought Naruto would have chakra control problem with his chakra leaking into Naruto's system, but Naruto managed it well with his efforts.

Every Sunday, Naruto would halt every training and went to his hideout to perform all the techniques he had learnt and mastered during the week and recorded the scores on a whiteboard he had set up in the hideout. Remaining time was for resting, napping or other mundane activities such as music, movies and comic books.

Naruto did not plan to break into clan compounds first. But he had a doubt and needed access to the library and was not confident with his skills to enter into Konoha library undetected at that time. So, after much deliberation, he decided to use Uchiha library since no one would be there anyway. He sneaked in and learned basics in the library open to all the clan children who did not have sharinghan too. He suspected the real high-level library was hidden and could only be accessed by the clan doujutsu.

Later that week, a Hyuga dissed him for being a commoner and not a monster like everybody. Naruto took it upon him as a personal task to teach that clan, their Byakyugan could not detect that particular commoner. Let's say that Hyuga unleashed a trickster fox upon Konoha who would be known as Konoha's Orange Hellion.

Naruto sneaked into many clan compounds and read things from basic libraries. He was content with that and did not need any flashy jutsus. It led him to formulate theories to practise later.

Hyuga clan library gave him information on association between chakra moulding and hand seals. His understanding of tenketsu points led him to a new way of practising with chakra pathways which would later become a revolutionary method make him God of Chakra like Rikudo Sennin, not just God of shinobi like Hashirama Senju.

His research on Nara clan's shadow control led to his knowledge on chakra channelling techniques and puppet techniques.

Yamanaka clan's mind control techniques threw him into obsessed research which led him to Spirit Transformation Technique by Dan Kato.

Akimichi clan's theories on converting food to chakra lead him to better understand the physical and spiritual energy interactions forming chakra and gave him ideas for taijutsu. He found some recipes for ninja food too.

Evading Inuzaka and Aburame clan when he sneaked in was harder. It needed much research to mask his smell with many herbs and had to henge into a reptile to scare the bugs since he could not avoid them because of chakra and had to time it when most of the clan was away.

Inuzaka clan's animal transformation helped him henge into animals better but their basics on tracking techniques was the real gain.

Aburame clan's mishu (bug/insect) clone basics gave him idea on blood clones but the real gain was the information on herbs.

Naruto raided the hokage vault by sending a shadow clone henged as a bug and learned how to form blood clones. From that point, he was a regular visitor to hokage vault, considering, the hokage was keeping his parent's jutsus from him in there as well.

Naruto found out there was a council in Konoha made up of shinobis, civilians and elders. The hokage could not make many decisions easily without the council's approval. He decided to find the members of council. He needed to know who was deciding his fate and how to handle them.

By nine, he knew all the council members. It led him to form a fake crush on one Sakura Haruno.

Naruto was satisfied with his development for the first three-year plan and proceeded to the next three-year plan.

AGES 10, 11 and 12:

From age ten, Naruto upped his training. He mastered leaf sticking, tree climbing, water walking, kunai spinning and waterfall walking already. He could channel chakra through his legs so why not other body parts. So, Naruto could be seen sticking to a tree with an elbow, his back, his calves and sometimes even his head. That was not as worse as spinning a kunai with your leg or a senbon with your fingers and toes.

Naruto decided to take the next logical step. Elemental chakra control. His elemental chakra training of leaf cutting, stone breaking, igniting a candle, lighting a special electric bulb and drawing water from a lake was practised easily in three months and he moved onto waterfall cutting, crushing a boulder to dust, producing fire at fingertips and sustaining it over a long period of time, using lightning to charge a battery and shape manipulation of water was done when he was eleven. Practising basic chakra control helped Naruto in mastering all the advanced things as easy as breathing by age eleven.

He moved onto elemental manipulation afterwards. He wanted to master all elements not just his affinities.

He could control wind chakra enough to manipulate kunai and shuriken at a reasonable distance with and without chakra conducive ninja wire. He could manipulate earth after decimating training area with simple move. He could use fire chakra well to the point he uses chakra to make tea, instant ramen and even an omelette occasionally. He could channel lightning through ninjato and made it lethal. He could draw water from atmosphere without any water source and use for drinking if he needed. Manipulation did not mean jutsu. For example, Naruto doing earth manipulation after training was just rearranging the land and not a jutsu.

Naruto's continuous practise led to acquire secondary affinity of earth element. Kyubi had fire affinity, but he warned Naruto not to use fire unless he wanted to be suspected of using his chakra.

Three months before his graduation, Naruto mastered the manipulation of Wind (Futon) chakra, Lightning (Ration) chakra, water (Suiton) chakra, Earth (Doton) chakra and Fire (Katon) chakrato elite jonins level.

He was now working on combination of elemental manipulation with clones. Lightning charged water bullet for electrocuting, water with earth manipulation to form a swamp for trapping, water with lightning to create a mini storm, of course wind and fire, the obvious amplifier. He did not want to concentrate on other combinations until he became a genin. These basic combinations could be useful for him at present while the advanced things could wait.

He was confident about combination chakra manipulation because he had met all the requirements. He mastered control of chakra to the point where he could mould the elements to any shape and form. He could transform his chakra into three primary affinities of wind, water and lightning chakra under thirty seconds for chunin level, but the time increased or decreased depending on the amount of elemental chakra. He mastered the use of chakra to the point he required less than half of the required basic chakra to mould his primary affinities.

At first, he was using a clone to mould the other half of his basic chakra to form the second element for combinational element manipulation. He started with one clone for each element to mould chakra and used them in pairs to achieve the result. It worked well and hence he was reducing the number of clones required by manipulating each element in one hand.

'Just you wait, you stupid element manipulation. I would create one element with one hand and other element with a leg while practising tree climbing with one leg attached to a tree and spinning a kunai in a free hand. Mark my words!,' vowed Naruto clone mentally. The world would be a chaotic place just because of that promise.

It must be thanks to Gai and Lee influence. Just as how those two became physical training freak, Naruto became a chakra control freak, making everything into a chakra control challenge. His growing reserves by constant use of shadow clones, his physical growth and leaking Kyubi's chakra into his own chakra system did not diminish his enthusiasm even a little bit. He personally made it a challenge and made a competition out of it with Lee.

'Who was the best at scaling the hokage mountain with their hands faster, Lee or Naruto? was a weekly competition headed by Gai. Lee would use his physical strength and Naruto would use chakra through hands (basically tree climbing or in this case, hokage mountain climbing with hands). The winner got to issue the next week challenge. From there, it was one steady stream of crazy competitions and taijutsu spars. The lazy Nara clan heir was not much of a taijutsu fan so Naruto's taijutsu was very good thanks to Lee and Gai.

Meeting, Rock Lee and his sensei, Might Gai, was a different experience. Days after Naruto's eleventh birthday, he met the taijutsu freaks and by that time he was acquainted with Ibiki and Shikaku well. He was already hanging out with Nara Shikamaru, Akimichi Choji and Aburame Shino in the academy. At that point, he was reading all the tactical planning and strategic analysis books he could get and writing assignments for Ibiki.

On his return one very early morning after an extended gruelling night at his part-time job, Naruto caught the sight of those green spandex wearing, louder than his own fake persona, people on his way home. After a good nap, Naruto investigated those two peculiar characters. Understanding Might Gai was a taijutsu specialist who wrote a paper on Goken taijutsu style, Naruto decided to take a chance. He already investigated their characters and knew the sensei and student were good people and valued hard work very much. Another intriguing feature was that Gai was Inu's self-proclaimed rival who challenged him from silly games to spars.

Doing exercise early morning could help him avoid any run-ins with his attackers. So, Naruto decided to join them by 'coincidence'. He found their training to be unique and joined them in henge. They seemed to be surprised that someone wanted to join them at first but embraced Naruto's youth with a thumbs up and face breaking, eye blinding smile, or as they deemed 'nice guy pose'.

After a week Naruto could only do half of what they could do but they were already impressed. They wanted to deepen their friendship with Naruto by inviting him to a spar. Naruto knew, Gai already found out he was in a henge but since he was not harmful to his student Gai wanted to wait and see. But Naruto did not want to form a fake friendship. If they decided not to train with him because of his identity, he would not force them. Naruto did not reveal himself first and told them he was in a henge due to certain circumstances.

Lee understood his sincerity and Gai was glad he did not want to dupe his naïve pupil, so they agreed that he could come out on his own time, and it was unnecessary to undo the henge. He told them he just wanted a sparring partner and that he was already coming up with his own taijutsu style. He became good friends with them after a month. When they were running the next day, he invited them to a secluded place on the hokage mountain and removed his henge. He introduced himself as Naruto Uzumaki.

Gai was surprised and inquired why he was wearing a henge. Naruto told them he was attacked by villagers and some ninjas, and the teachers hated him in the academy and sabotaged his taijutsu katas. They did not want him to become powerful and stand up against them. If the villagers knew he was training, the attacks would become vicious and told them to check whether it was true or not.

Gai knew the village hated Naruto but never knew there were attempts on his life. Naruto asked if they could keep it a secret and he would reveal his strength at a later time. Gai and Lee, inspired by Naruto's resolve to not give up, readily accepted and praised Naruto's youthful spirit. Then, both of them started 500 laps around Konoha in celebration. Naruto smiled and let them do it. Naruto was glad he got some taijutsu partners.

Naruto developed a taijutsu style with Gai's help, suited to his small stature. The style relied on chakra for speed and strength. He was fast as wind and his strike was like a lightning, shocking his opponent. His movements were fluid like water.

By twelve, he mastered both his father's and mother's taijutsu style. But it would be easily identified by certain shinobis. So, he wanted to come up with different styles to mask his identity if he had to fight before he was comfortable to reveal his skills. He combined Uzumaki style and his father style and created a basic one. Another one combined Uchiha's (Itachi's) interceptor style with Uzumaki style to form a different style. He even mimicked the predators of forest of death to come with a pure taijutsu style with input from Kyubi which was very wild and unpredictable. In total, his taijutsu was at high jonin level.

Once he befriended Lee and Gai, they helped him to buy weapons and equipment for physical training and Naruto gave them money. In return, Naruto gave the storage scrolls he made that could be operated by blood for all their help. Naruto also went to buy weapons in henge occasionally, but it was wise not to go regularly. So Lee, Gai and Shikamaru helped.

By their friendship, Naruto picked up some information about Inu as well and found out Inu was a lone wolf.

Naruto's ninjutsu was at low jonin level as he was only practising it for eighteen months. He had mastered all the E-rank, D-rank and C-rank jutsus written on the Crow's scroll. Mastering Shunshin no jutsu (Body flicker), basic D-rank jutsu helped him a lot. Mastered, as in less hand seals to no hand seals.

At first, he collected E to C level jutsus from Konoha's library and archives and learned some more. Naruto did not learn every jutsu he collected but opted an elimination and prioritisation method to learn useful techniques first. Naruto knew that learning many jutsus was waste of time as he did not know how to apply them in his battles. So, the rank of jutsus did not matter, only their application and advantages of combination with weapons, taijutsu and other ninjutsus.

Later, Naruto sneaked into Konoha chunin and jonin library and collected as many jutsus as possible before graduation. He did not start to learn them immediately, but he knew once he became a full-fledged ninja, he would be closely watched by a jonin sensei. His training would not suffer much but his visit to unauthorised places would be restricted as he would be often out of the village on missions. So, before that he collected them as much as he could. It was a good thing as Mizuki's betrayal would tighten the security at those places.

Recently, Naruto learned some B-rank jutsu for each affinity and few A-rank wind, lightning and water jutsus. He had only learned them and not mastered them. He had been dead set on mastering those jutsus since he completely mastered the elemental chakra manipulation three months before became a genin. If asked, Naruto would refuse that he was paranoid, but he was afraid of sharinghan and its abilities to copy his ninjutsu and using it against him. His acquaintance with Crow and Itachi's magic copy eyes, unknowingly set him on a path of perfectionist and led him to master his jutsus with minimum to no hand seals.

But Naruto vowed to start learning all the ninjutsus he had after becoming a genin. He was pretty sure D-rank missions would take at least two weeks before they get a C-rank. Naruto decided to upgrade from low jonin level to mid jonin level on ninjutsu before he left the village walls on missions.

Naruto had many materials for ninjutsu from his parents, but he did not concentrate on it much until he was ten as ninjutsu could be learned easily as long as he had time. Moreover, the ninjutsu depended on chakra reserves and chakra control which he had plenty unlike taijutsu and kenjutsu.

Taijutsu and Kenjutsu depended on his physical growth and needed years of practice. They could not be mastered by shadow clones as they required intense physical workout, but Naruto used shadow clones as well to practise katas, ninjato and sword techniques just to gain muscle memory.

He had scrolls to learn kenjutsu from his mother, but Kyubi also corrected Naruto based on his memory of his former jinchuriki, Kushina Uzumaki. Kyubi usually made him train in his mindscape and then let Naruto trained with real sword and ninjato in his hideout. Naruto could also wield some other weapons like bo-staff and spear but his proficiency on those was nothing compared to the sword. By twelve, his kenjutsu was at high jonin level as he had some partners for practising kenjutsu with his workplace contacts.

After incredulous amount of effort, Naruto came with one genjutsu by the time of graduation, but it was a hybrid of genjutsu and ninjutsu.

By ten, Naruto found that chakra made everything better. With his healing ability, Naruto decided to send chakra to muscles and bones to improve their strength at a reasonable quantity to enhance them since he was still growing. He used chakra to enhance his eyesight, hearing, smell and disguise his voice whenever needed.

Naruto read upon chakra sensing and found that everyone could do it to a certain level. Jonins would send a stream of chakra outward from their body to detect nearby chakra signatures. If one sent it inward and gather all the chakra in their body and compress it, it was chakra suppression. Some people could disguise their chakra by mimicking other chakra natures. All of the above needed high-level chakra control and hence jonins and above only could do them properly, if you were not a born chakra sensor. Once Naruto attained a considerable chakra control, with his natural sensing ability, he was unstoppable. He sent chakra pulses every five minutes and mapped Konoha and by twelve he could map the entire fire nation. It has become his second nature just like chakra control. It was like second coming of Nidaime (Second) hokage, Tobirama Senju.

Naruto's chakra sensing led to chakra suppression. His massive chakra reserve was a huge pain, but Naruto did not give up and mastered it too. These things did not take a dedicated time once you completed basic training. Naruto's clone could do chakra control training, chakra sensing and chakra suppression training together.

He was good at chakra disguise, but he wanted to master it to the point it became a second nature.

Chakra sensing, masking and disguise required intense focusing and so Naruto took upon meditation.

Meditation technique found in the research paper of chakra theory wrote by Dan Kato, lover of one Tsunade Senju, one of the sannin, was immensely helpful. Dan was an elite jonin of Konoha, known for his Spirit Transformation Technique. His meditation technique was Kami's gift to Naruto as he often called it much to the ire of Kyubi.

Since the spirit transformation technique needed the user's soul to leave the body, perform actions and return back safely and merge with the body, was eerily similar to the process of a ninja's chakra (as shadow clone was extension of one's own chakra), leaving the body, living outside performing actions, and returning the memories or remaining chakra to the owner's mind and body, once it dispelled. So, the meditation technique preferred by Dan was the perfect technique for Naruto. It was a severe meditation technique that required one's utmost concentration and tracing chakra pathways inside the body to memorise everything and make a mental map as any discrepancies when the soul merged back, would lead to a disaster.

One of the benefits of that technique was chakra transfer. Naruto learnt how to transfer chakra to and fro from clones without dispelling it. The best benefit of that meditation was that Naruto found out how to bypass the limitations imposed upon him by external forces. Once he started mapping his body entirely, he swept through his body inch by inch hoping to get answer for some of his questions regarding his growth. It led him to find a way to open the left hemisphere of his brain and the right hemisphere of his brain permanently.

Of course, he started experimenting with the clones first and opened the left and right hemispheres of his brain, also known as First Gate: Gate of Opening (Kaimon) and Second Gate: Gate of Healing (Kyūmon).

Unlike his friends Gai and Lee, who could only open them temporarily, Naruto slowly sent chakra for months and opened the two gates last year and gained mastery over it. He trained chakra control and chakra pathway tracing to the point that he could open and close the gates at will under two seconds.

He was on his way to open the third gate located on his spinal cord. After the graduation and Mizuki debacle, Naruto was set out to open the third gate the next day.

At the point of graduation, Naruto's tracking skills was excellent, trap making was top notch, pharmaceutical skill was outstanding as he liked plants and trees more, basic weapon making and most weapon repairing was very good, cooking was high level, and his medical knowledge was acceptable as he only knew theory and no way of practising it.

The idea of chakra channelling led Naruto to chakra conducing weapon and he found out Asuma Sarutobi, the hokage's son, fellow wind user, use trench knives to channel wind chakra through them. Naruto got some chakra conducive weapons through his contacts from workplace and already mastered his skills with kunai and ninjato.

He read in a Hyuga library, chakra could be channelled through all tenketsu points, but ninja only used hands and feet to channel chakra. Naruto realised chakra must be channelled to eyes for a doujutsu to activate and Uchiha clan cast genjutsu and copy things the same way. So basically, they channel chakra through their eyes over a person and disrupt their chakra to make them see what the Uchihas project. They also used the same technique to copy the necessary hand seals and chakra moulding necessary for jutsus.

Well, Naruto could sense chakra, so sensing chakra moulding was not a great issue and Naruto could enhance his eyesight to clearly see through the hand seals. Not to mention after he permanently opened his first gate and second, his memory capacity increased and comprehension time decreased. He could store a mental image and slowly revisit it later if he wanted. It basically granted him photographic memory.

Even then, he would not be able copy jutsu and read future moves like a sharinghan, but he could dissect, analyse and recreate the hand seals after few times. Reading future moves was not a problem because his mind worked faster, he was good at thinking on feet, excellent in tactical planning, and his speed rivalled the ANBUs.

His chakra reserves were huge, but he was practising closing and opening tenketsu points at will. His chakra pathways became broader, and Naruto was constructing his world breaking theory on chakra pathways on human body and testing it on his clones. He needed three more months to complete it.

If someone asked Naruto, what was the one field he would call him an expert in, it was fuinjutsu (Sealing art). He retrieved (stole) all his mother's and father's notes on sealing from the hokage vault when he was ten. He replaced them with another scroll made of his blood seal. So, even if hokage was to check, he would not find any difference as the scroll could not opened by anyone other than Minato, Kushina or Naruto. He found that there were some low level jutsus and notes of his father were missing or had signs of being opened. He knew only two people who could do that. Naruto was angry but since it already happened, he did not react much. But he did not want others to use them anymore, so he replaced the original with the copy he made. If others checked again and even found them messed up, they would not suspect him. Even if they suspect, there was no proof. If there was any proof, it would make them acknowledge his heritage and he would not be punished but needed to be given his other inheritance too.

After the forbidden scroll issue, Naruto knew the hokage would check the vault, but he did not think he would find the difference between his forged copy and father's original. Only one person could, and he was not in Konoha.

He was already a level 9 seal master. It was said there were 12 levels for a seal master commonly, but it was false. There were twenty levels according to Uzumaki standards and Naruto was at Uzumaki level 9 because had no reference as to what common people standards for seal mastery were. He would be level 10 seal master soon, once he finished the on-going seal he was drawing.

At ten when he started practising fuinjutsu, he made storage scrolls, drew gravity seals, chakra masking seals that hid his Kage level chakra reserves, chakra resistance seals and security seals for the hideout. That was another reason he could sneak in and out of confidential places easily. Those were his basic seals. By graduation though, he could form barrier seals without any problem. Naruto planned and sold his seals outside Konoha for the past year, and he was coming up next set of plans for his career development.

Fooling the council was easy once you understood what ticked them. Naruto already had his blood clones in every council member's house except the elders, working for them often. Naruto sneaked into elder's houses during mandatory council meetings and found out lot of secrets. He before he was surprised by their knowledge on seals by their heavily warded residence. It also made him furious and he made a comprehensive plan of attack on the elders in the upcoming week.