A/N: Chapter 5 updated with the addition of a butterfly effect, that was initially planned to be introduced later. Wish you all a good read.

CHAPTER 5: Training begins

Naruto woke up with a groan as sunlight fell on his face.

"Ohh! Come on morning already!" the blonde complained.

"Come on Naru-chan don't you have training to do?" Kushina said from inside his mindscape.

Naruto suddenly shouted, "MOM YOU'RE STILL HERE!"

"Shhhh! Not so loud, we can hear what you want to say if you just think about it and I guess it will be better for the time being if you keep your knowledge of us secret as well as releasing Kurama's seal. I am sure the Third will freak out if he sees that your seal is open and I would love to see Jiraiya-sensei's face when he sees the open seal too." Said Minato.

"That reminds me, Jiji never told me about you whenever I asked, Damned OLD MAN!"

"I kind of figured that you won't be told about us for a long time Naruto. The Third perhaps did this to protect you from our enemies. You see I am not exactly loved in Iwa and Kumo. Kumo had even tried to kidnap Kushina in her childhood. Apart from that, certain elements in the village hated me too. So that's why the Third perhaps has kept your heritage a secret from you. I am certain that very few people in the village even know about you being our son in the first place."

Naruto sighed. Kushina could only ruffle his hair to comfort him.

"Although I would like to know why Jiraiya-sensei or Kakashi didn't show up in your life earlier. For Kami's sake we made that old pervert your godfather." Minato said angrily.

At that time both Jiraiya and Kakashi felt chills down their spines.

"Let's get back to Naru-chan's training Minato-kun", said Kushina, uncharacteristically letting her frustration on the two perverts slide for the time being.

"Alright, so son who are you facing this time?"

"Neji Hyuuga", Naruto spat.

"Well, so you're facing Hizashi's son in the first round then. If he is anything like his father was then he will be a formidable opponent." (…How do you know about Neji being Hizashi's son? Kurama's memories?)

"That guy is an asshole!" Naruto spat again.

"Don't let your anger consume you son, if you want to keep your blood vow then you have to prepare a strategy since you are facing a stronger opponent. Now before you think of using Kurama's powers let me remind you that you mustn't use it unless absolutely necessary and definitely not before the whole village.

"I don't even know how much of my power this younger body of yours can handle Gaki. So instead we will be taking it step by step, a bit slowly." Kurama commented much to Naruto's increasing frustration.

"So, what do I do to kick that prick's ass?" Naruto asked

"Hmm, if you already know who your opponent is, you should start collecting as much information about him as possible." Minato suggested.

"Okay."

'I think if I ask Bushy Brows, Kiba or Shino, they might give me some insight about the stuck-up prick.'

Naruto summoned three shadow clones.

"You three are to meet up with Kiba, Shino and Bushy Brows and get any information about Neji and report back to me."

"Wait a minute son, you can get their memories back if they simply dispel and they don't have to physically return to you. It will be a waste of time." Minato explained.

"WHAT!"

"This is a special property of the Shadow Clone jutsu, the Nidaime Hokage created it as an infiltration technique."

"That's so awesome!" Naruto exclaimed.

"All right, you three dispel after collecting the information. Understood?"

"YES BOSS!" the shadow clones saluted and took off.

"Now Naruto, we need to work on your jutsu arsenal. Since you are facing a Hyuga and Hizashi's son no less, you must prepare for the worst."

"What do you mean Dad?"

"The Hyuuga have an almost impenetrable defense technique known as the 'Kaiten' or 'Eight Trigrams: Heavenly Rotation.' This jutsu can repel almost all ninjutsu attacks and you can't physically approach them either as the Kaiten will throw you back."

"So that means I can't get close to him?"

"Don't worry, I know a jutsu that will be a perfect counter to the Kaiten."

"What is it?" Naruto asked excited.

"The Rasengan, an A-rank jutsu I invented." Minato then held out his palm and soon a spiraling sphere of chakra was created on it.

Naruto was starry eyed when he saw the jutsu.

"THAT'S FREAKING AWESOME DATTEBAYO!"

"Thanks son."

In the real world, Naruto held out his palm and tried to focus chakra on it only for nothing to happen. The blonde groaned in frustration.

"Not so fast." Minato said from the mindscape, while Naruto could hear his mother giggling.

"There are three phases to train with for performing the Rasengan."

"Okay"

"For the first phase, go and get a lot of water balloons."

"Huh?" (gotta love those seemingly nonsensical training methods that get people thinking you're eccentric or insane)

**An hour later**

"WHY IS THIS SO DAMN DIFFICULT?" A certain blonde kid shouted holding a water balloon in his hand.

"Don't get so impatient son, it took three years for me to create this jutsu. When I showed it to Jiraiya-sensei, he took six months to master it. It's an A-rank jutsu after all."

"Oh come on Dad, you know I don't have that much time for the finals." Naruto complained.

"You can use your shadow clones for training as well."

"Huh!" Naruto asked momentarily confused then it hit him.

"I am such an idiot." The blonde exclaimed and created twenty shadow clones, each picked up a water balloon and tried to burst it by rotating chakra.

"In the meantime, Naru-chan, you can use some shadow clones to work on your chakra control. It will be helpful for you to master the Rasengan and any other jutsus you'll learn in the future." Kushina suggested.

"Good idea Kushi-chan, Naruto! Make twenty more shadow clones and have them practice some exercises while water-walking, twenty more to practice tree walking while keeping a leaf on their foreheads. As far as the Rasengan is concerned, try to rotate the chakra in multiple directions, you are rotating in one direction only. For today that will be enough training and don't forget to meet up with Jiraiya-sensei and behave like your usual self, we don't want anybody to suspect anything for now." Explained Minato.

"Okay Dad, I will have some breakfast and meet up with Ero-Sennin. You guys! Get this balloon busted by sunset."(…am I the only one who feels like that sentence doesn't sound right?)

Then Naruto summoned forty more shadow clones and as per Minato's suggestion sent twenty of them to do the water walking exercises and twenty more to perfect the tree walking exercise.

**At Sunset**

Naruto was on his way back from a training session with Jiraiya. The two spent most of their time in perfecting summons. Due his better chakra control, Naruto was able to summon any toads he wanted. He was cautious enough to avoid using Kurama's chakra so as not to make the toad sage suspicious. However, he was able to summon a number of toads from size of a few inches to almost five feet in height. His first summon of the day was a small toad called Gamakichi. The toad was funny. Due to an earlier instruction from Minato, Naruto had remembered to keep some food items with himself for the toads. After offering Gamakichi a candy, the two hit it off quite well. His next summon was another toad of similar size as Gamakichi called Gamatatsu. Of all the toads he summoned throughout the day, Gamakichi and Gamatatsu were the ones Naruto thought were the coolest. By the end of the day the three were buddies. However, the two small toads were not useful for a fight at that time. So, he had to summon larger toads. He found out that the toads mostly used fire and water style jutsus and some carried swords. However, he figured that his summons would not be of much use against Neji. Jiraiya also agreed with that. The toad sage stated that they would spar continuously from the next day onwards in order to improve Naruto's speed.

After seeing the toads use elemental jutsu, something had clicked inside Naruto's mind and he asked Jiraiya to teach him some jutsu like the ones the toads used. Also seeing Sasuke use different types of fire-style jutsus, Naruto was a little jealous that he couldn't pull off stuff like that. After pondering over it a little, Jiraiya had agreed unlike the previous timeline to figure out Naruto's natural affinity and work on some elemental jutsus.

On the way, suddenly memories of a dispelled clone came back to the blonde.

"HELL YEAH!" the blonde shouted on the road making some passers-by glance at him with disgust (as usual), Naruto noticed the disgust in their glares but paid no mind, he wasn't alone anymore after all. He ran home. By that time, the clones that were practicing balloon-bursting had dispelled. Just to be sure, Naruto picked up another water balloon, rotated his chakra through it and it burst in seconds.

"Did you see that?" Naruto said loudly as he jumped in excitement.

"Well done son, that was the fastest anyone mastered the first stage of the Rasengan." said Minato as Naruto found himself back in his mindscape. Minato then patted his shoulders.

"So tell me the next step, Dad! I can't wait to master the Rasengan."

"Alright, I will tell you but take rest for now and dispel the clones that were practicing chakra control. Don't make them dispel all at once, otherwise you'll suffer severe headache and nausea." Naruto, nodded and made a shadow clone to go to the other clones practicing chakra control have them dispelled according to Minato's instructions.

"What about the clones you sent to collect information on Neji, Naru-chan?", Kushina asked.

"Well Mom, Kiba didn't have that much information. He mentioned that Hinata-chan is faster than him in taijutsu and Neji should be even faster. It seems, Hinata-chan doesn't talk much about her family with her teammates. The one visiting Shino also got a similar response. However surprisingly the clone visiting Bushy-brows got a lot of info."

"So, what have you got?"

"Well, when my clone visited Lee at the hospital, Bushier-brows sensei was also there with Lee and their other teammate Tenten. Although they were Neji's sensei and teammates, they did not hesitate to talk about Neji's fighting style. According to Gai-sensei, although Neji is not expected to know a lot of Hyuuga main branch moves, he does happen to know moves like the 'Eight Trigrams: 64 Palms.' Tenten confirmed that Neji does know the Kaiten but he's just learned it and is still trying to master it, which she knew because she had been helping him. Lee mentioned something about 'Eight trigrams: 128 Palms', which is an improved version of the 64 Palm technique. Lee said that in order to escape the hits from those technique he has to use the 2nd or even the 3rd gate although he mentioned that was with his weights on. I don't know if I can pull that off, so I am basically toast if Neji hits me with that technique since all my tenketsus will be closed."

"Not quite Gaki, unlike that Lee kid, I can open your chakra points if the Hyuuga closes them so don't worry about that. Also, regarding escaping his hits, you can create a chakra cloak by drawing on my chakra. A one-tailed version one cloak will be enough for you to escape his hits. I will teach it to you in a week, it won't be that difficult for you. After thinking a bit, I realized that your body can manage up to three to four tails of my chakra in version-1 cloak. I will teach you about it next week when we start training on it." Kurama explained much to Naruto's joy and satisfaction.

"Do you know mom, Bushy-brows sensei and Bushy-brows explained all this to me knowing that I was going to fight their own team member. They said that I do have a right to learn about my opponent before my fight and its "unyouthful" to deny information to a comrade. They are really cool. Bushy-brows sensei even agreed to work with me every morning to improve my speed and taijutsu."

"That's really nice of Gai. Learn as much from him as you can son, he is the best taijutsu user in Konoha and quite possibly he might even be the greatest taijutsu master in all five great nations. However, promise me that you'll not go around screaming about youth every day." (Dear god, please no *Editor shivers in horror*, you got not only me scared but also Speedwagon as well. Even Speedwagdon is afraid.)

"AND DON'T WEAR THAT GREEN SPANDEX EVER DATTEBANE!", Kushina said aloud. (Please don't unleash that horror)

"Come on Mom, that jumpsuit looks cool, it won't be that bad to try it."

"ABSOLUTELY NOT!" Minato, Kushina and Kurama all shouted at the same time. Naruto sighed in defeat.

"Alright! Alright! I won't wear a green spandex suit, don't worry."

"Good", said Kushina. (Thank God)

Naruto had something he wanted to ask his mom about but his mind kept drifting back to what happened in the hospital mere moments before his clone dispelled.

The clone had its hands in the sign to dispel itself when a voice he had just finished speaking to called out. "Hey, Naruto."

Team Gai's markswoman, Tenten, approached as the source of the call.

Naruto acknowledged Tenten before she started speaking: "Look, I know you have that blood vow and all, but your chances of actually winning against Neji are practically nonexistent. I know asking you to just give up is probably not going to go over well. So how about this, I know people when they realize they are going to lose or can't possibly win in these exams against their opponents instead try to spite their opponents by rendering them unable to advance as well, either by crippling or hurting them too badly to go on. When, not if WHEN, you get into that spot against Neji, please don't screw him over out of spite, what do you say?"

Tenten's attempt at a smile became shaky as the air in the room became cold and Naruto's grin became so frigid and his eyes shut for a moment.

Naruto started: "Sure, I promise I won't screw Neji-teme over when I realize I can't beat him…"

Tenten let out a sigh of relief and she spoke: "Thanks for th-"

"… because he won't even get me to that point, dattebayo."

Tenten's breath caught as Naruto's eyes opened back up, the blue having become blood red and his pupils became slits.

"I will be making him pay. He could have just let Hinata-chan off easy and just finished that joke of a fight quickly and left her maybe a little down, but he wanted to break her. Any chance of getting off easy is already gone for Neji, I'm going to break him for it. He's going to be leaving that arena a bloodied pulp I beat him into before I go to the next round."

Tenten was terrified by the calm tone of voice he used throughout his spiel, this wasn't a threat but a promise and the words she heard him say once made it all the more chilling, 'I never go back on my word…'

Before anything else could be said, Gai burst in, "YOSH! Naruto-kun, if you wish, I would be proud to instruct you on taijutsu in preparation for the Third Exam."

Naruto smiled widely: "Thanks Gai-sensei, I'll be sure to take you up on it."

Tenten's fear became absolute horror as the likelihood of Neji's defeat became absolute.

Just before Naruto's clone could dispel, Tenten's horror drove her to say one final thing.

"Oh fuck."

"Mom, do you mind if I ask you something?" Naruto asked a tad nervously.

"No, I don't mind, what is it Naru-chan?"

"Well, you see, my clone that visited Lee at the hospital also snuck into Hinata-chan's room." said Naruto in a sad voice.

"You see, she's not allowed visitors yet. She was just sitting there on the bed, lying unconscious, with all sorts of tubes all over her body. Seeing her like that, I felt a pain in my chest. I really felt helpless. I have never felt this sad for someone and I don't know why I feel this way, so why?" Naruto said looking down.

Kushina hugged her son and rubbed his back a bit.

"Naru-chan, I think you are falling in love with her." Kushina said smiling, Minato smiled as well.

"From your memories we can say that she is a really kind and nice girl, she will be great for you." Kushina further explained, hoping to hook the two together as soon as possible. From Kurama's memories of the previous timeline, Minato and Kushina were very distressed over Naruto's painful death and his regrets about Hinata in his dying moments.

Naruto looked at his mother and gave a smile.

"But I must tell her about Kurama. I kinda want to tell her everything now. Do you think she will accept me after knowing that?"

"Son, I see a lot of myself in her, I am sure she will accept you and stand by you no matter what." said Minato.

Naruto smiled again.

"Alright, I will visit her as soon as she wakes up and I will tell her everything."

"Now son, let's get to the next step of the Rasengan. For that you need to repeat the first step but with a hard rubber ball instead of a water balloon. It is about strengthening your rotation."

"Got it Dad! I will get it down in no time Dattebayo!"

Saying that Naruto wished his parents good night, had diner and went to sleep. Starting the next day, his training was about to become a lot harder going forward.

Though unbeknownst to the Uzumaki family, a spy had been watching Naruto.

A woman dressed in an ANBU uniform with a crop top that had one full sleeve while the other arm was completely uncovered from shoulder to wrist with a plain white mask with the leaf crest of Konoha and the Kanji for ROOT on the mask. With some modifications to the overall ensemble.

Her mission had been watching Naruto to gather information for conscripting him into ROOT and the eventual conscription.

She had followed through and found her suppressed emotions began to bubble up as ancient memories from long gone days surfaced from the woman's observations.

His hair and eyes brought back some vague flashbacks, of a man whose presence she would describe as the closest to reassuring. And the boy's way of talking reminded her of a woman with waist long red hair with a very lively smile. The vague flashbacks made her feel uneasy, very uneasy. However, she was able to suppress the unease, she had been trained well after all.

The only thing that could necessitate a need to report to Danzo was the Jinchuriki's sudden change in behaviour starting yesterday. The change wasn't really noticeable to someone not trained in surveillance and espionage. However, to one of the best trained ROOT agents, such things were easier to notice. The boy was slowly starting to talk less and was not paying attention to others abhorring him. This was a change necessitating a report to her boss.

Her mission demanded she do it, but the masked ROOT found herself unwilling to do so, as if she was struggling against herself in this endeavour.

Even before this mission started, sometimes seeing the shinobi of her own age, made this woman feel uneasy and brought her some flashbacks. Flashbacks in which she found herself to be an entirely different person, lively, laughing and smiling with them…why and how she couldn't tell. And as a perfect shinobi in service of Konoha, she was required to get rid of all these emotions, all those flashbacks served no purpose except for obstructing her from carrying out her duty. But suppressing those vague memories was for some reason painful. And once the mission to observe Uzumaki Naruto had started, that subtle hidden pain started to resurface. The flashbacks became more frequent, starting to cause fission in her mind.

Time would tell where this would go.

But at that moment, the woman for some reason found herself instinctively state: "You do your parents proud, Uzumaki Naruto."

A/N: Umm….so with the update me and GBA have brought out a plot point (& another butterfly effect), we had initially decided on introducing later but decided to at least plant the seed here. Apart from that, yeah, Naruto is going to embrace the FLAMES OF YOUTH and the Rasengan training starts as well (no surprise there). Hope you all have a good read. See ya all in the next chapter, which would also be updated shortly.