Naruto walked towards the overgrown forest clearing with a confident smile on his face.

In the past month, more and more of the area he and Sasuke used for training had become overgrown. As it turned out, Mokuton was a very convenient kekkei genkai for cleaning up after the mess that Katon and Raiton jutsu could cause; his Suiton could douse the fires, his Doton could fill in holes in the ground from lightning, and the Mokuton itself could breathe new life into the destroyed plants. It was good practice too, though he couldn't shake the habit of using too much chakra to heal the plants and making them overgrow.

Not that Sasuke was the only one making a mess, of course. Naruto caused plenty of his own, despite his Suiton and Doton jutsu being less blatantly destructive than Katon and Raiton. The first time he tried the Water Bullet Jutsu he'd accidentally used way too much chakra and knocked over a tree.

The tree he'd knocked over was still laying there as he entered the clearing, though the grass had grown nearly long enough for the trunk to be hidden. He'd yet to figure out how to actually control his Mokuton, much to Sasuke's amusement, and he wasn't sure how to actually bring the tree back to life or how to grow one to replace it. So far, the most he could really do with his supposedly-legendary kekkei genkai was channel his chakra to already-existing plants and force them to grow.

In the middle of the clearing sat Sasuke, his back turned to Naruto as he studied a scroll in his hands. Naruto grinned mischievously, quieting his ste-

Sasuke's head turned to look over his shoulder. "I know you're there, Naruto."

Naruto pouted. "You keep saying you're not a sensor but you always notice me!"

"Yeah, because I have ears," Sasuke said drily. "You're going to have to get better at stealth if you want to be a shinobi."

Naruto groaned. "Stealth, stealth, stealth," he grumbled, hands in his hoodie pocket as he walked over to Sasuke. "So what're you working on, bastard?"

Sasuke didn't react to the insult, too used to it after a month of them spending practically every day in the clearing together. "Raiton: Lightning Ball." He looked back down at the scroll, and Naruto looked at it over his shoulder. "I mastered the Thunderclap Arrow, so I moved onto this."

"Cool!" Naruto looked around, spotting Sasuke's backpack sitting against a tree. "Did you bring any more for me? I finally have Water Bullet down, and I'm nearly done with Dust Storm."

At the start of the month, Sasuke got two scrolls for each of them, one for both of their elements. He got himself the Raiton: Thunderclap Arrow and Katon: Flame Whirlwind, and then Doton: Dust Storm and Suiton: Water Bullet for Naruto. Compared to all the difficulty Naruto always had with the Clone Jutsu taught in the academy, the two elemental jutsus had been pretty easy for him. He spent most of the month just making sure he didn't pack them full of too much chakra, and he was pretty sure he was ready to move onto new jutsu if Sasuke was.

"You need to start figuring out your Mokuton," Sasuke said without looking up from his scroll. "There's no point in having a kekkei genkai if you can't use a single jutsu for it."

Says the Uchiha who hasn't unlocked his Sharingan, Naruto almost quipped, but he managed to hold himself back. He'd figured out pretty quickly that it was a touchy subject for Sasuke, and he didn't wanna piss Sasuke off and make him decide to stop helping Naruto out; there was no way Naruto would ever be able to get his hands on the jutsu scrolls Sasuke could, at least not without stealing. Plus, not that he'd admit it to the bastard out loud, he was actually starting to think of Sasuke as a friend.

"How am I supposed to use Mokuton when there isn't a single scroll telling me what to do?" Naruto asked instead.

Sasuke shrugged, rolling up his scroll and standing. "You're the Senju, you figure it out." He walked over to his backpack and put the scroll away. "It's not like the Shodai would've had scrolls to learn from when he developed it either."

That… was a good point. "Alright, I guess," Naruto conceded. "But I still don't understand how."

Sasuke ignored him in favor of running through four hand seals: bird, snake, monkey, and ram. Stretching out his senses a little, Naruto felt Sasuke's chakra start to gather; the staticky feeling of it increased, a sure sign of what element he was about to use. "Raiton: Lightning Ball Jutsu!"

Four balls of lightning formed in front of Sasuke, then shot off towards a tree on the other side of the clearing. Two of them hit the edges of the tree, blowing away chunks of the trunk, but the other two veered off and made holes in the ground.

"Hey, not bad for a first try!" Naruto praised.

"Hn." Sasuke didn't seem to agree with him, if the look on his face was any indication. "It's harder to aim than I thought."

"At least you hit the tree." Naruto frowned, a thought belatedly striking him. "Hey, wait, you aren't supposed to aim for the trees!" he exclaimed. "I thought we agreed not to after I knocked down the first one because I can't fix them yet!"

Sasuke raised an unimpressed eyebrow. "Then trying to fix the tree would be good practice for you."

Naruto narrowed his eyes. "You did that on purpose, didn't you?" Sasuke just stared at him until he sighed. "Okay, fine, but let me make you more targets first so I don't have to fix even more trees."

"Go ahead."

Naruto's eye twitched at Sasuke's attitude, but he knew it'd take a miracle bigger than having Mokuton to fix that. He turned around and walked to the middle of the clearing, preparing his Doton chakra. He'd gotten pretty used to the feeling over the past month, and Doton had a benefit the others didn't: it was solid and found nearly everywhere. It was easy to mold with a little practice, though using it in that way for combat was still out of his reach.

He formed the snake seal with his hands, the one most commonly used for Doton, and then slammed his hands on the ground and channeled his chakra through the earth.

The ground in front of him shook for a moment as his chakra spread through it and he imagined how he wanted to shape it. It took a few seconds, something that would leave him wide open if he was fighting someone, and soon enough shapes started to form. They weren't very intricate, but there were around a dozen of them and all were shaped vaguely like an adult.

When he was done, he turned to Sasuke and gestured at the targets with a, "Ta-da!"

As always, Sasuke was completely unimpressed. "You know you'll have to reform those soon, right? Doton is weak to Raiton."

Sometimes Naruto really wanted to pummel him. "Would it kill you to be grateful? Or impressed?"

"Maybe," Sasuke said with a smirk. "My brain might explode if an idiot like you managed to impress me."

"You-"

"Why haven't you tried using Mokuton the way you just used Doton?" Sasuke interrupted.

Naruto blinked. "Huh?"

"You used the seal, but you didn't really use a jutsu," Sasuke explained. "You just channeled your Doton chakra to morph the ground. Couldn't you do that for Mokuton?"

"Well, that only works with Doton because it's-" Realization dawned on him. "Oh! Good idea, Sasuke!"

"Every time you do something almost-impressive with your jutsu I forget how much of an idiot you are," Sasuke remarked. "Then you open your mouth."

A month ago, Naruto's response to that would've been punching Sasuke in his smug face. But he'd grown since then. Instead, he raced through the tiger, ox, tiger, and rat seals and gathered Suiton chakra in his stomach. Sasuke's eyes widened, but he was too slow to do anything when Naruto called out, "Suiton: Water Bullet Jutsu!"

Water shot out of Naruto's mouth and hit Sasuke, drenching him and knocking him off his feet. Luckily for the bastard, Naruto had enough control with the Water Bullet Jutsu that drenching and knocking Sasuke over was all it did, instead of sending him flying back twenty feet with enough force to break his bones and knock over a tree. Growth!

Pushing his now-soaked hair out of his eyes, Sasuke looked up at him with a scathing glare. "Naruto," he practically growled. Naruto barely had time to consider whether or not he regretted his actions before Sasuke ran through the ram, dragon, and hare seals. "Raiton: Thunderclap Arrow!"

A bolt of lightning shot out of Sasuke's extended hand, hitting Naruto in the chest. It knocked him over and sent a jolt through his system, like a really intense static shock; not enough to actually hurt him, but it still stung.

"Bastard!"

"Idiot!"

They jumped to their feet at the same time, both of them running through hand seals. Naruto used the monkey, ram, and snake seals before slamming his hands against the ground, and Sasuke the snake, ram, monkey, boar, horse, and tiger seals before forming his fingers in a circle in front of his mouth.

"Doton: Dust Storm Jutsu!"

"Katon: Great Fireball Jutsu!"

A massive fireball blew out of Sasuke's mouth, meeting a cloud of dust and earth that rose from where Naruto slammed his hands down. Naruto had just enough time to think oh, shit before the two jutsus collided with each other with enough force to send both him and Sasuke flying in different directions.

Naruto skidded to a stop on his butt a few meters back, and he stared with wide eyes at all the disturbed and charred earth on the ground where the Dust Storm and Fireball collided. He met Sasuke's equally-surprised gaze across the clearing and couldn't hold back a wild grin. "That was awesome!"

Sasuke quickly schooled his surprised expression into his typical Uchiha smirk. "Not bad for the dead last!" he shouted across the clearing. "But now you have to fix that damage too!"

Naruto's grin fell.

Naruto Uzumaki and Sasuke Uchiha.

It didn't surprise Hiruzen as much as it would most others to see them getting along so well… if you ignored the jutsu they threw at each other, at least.

In their age group, they were likely the only two who could understand the other. It wasn't just that they didn't have parents; there were other kids in the academy who'd lost their parents, some to the very same monster that took Naruto's. A shared sense of loneliness played into it, certainly, but it alone wouldn't have been enough to form the bond that'd quickly grown between them.

No, they got along because they shared something most would never know: an intense desire to be the best, a drive that let them work themselves to the bone, far past the point where most would give up. They were beyond determined to achieve their goals, and they wouldn't let anything on the face of the Earth stop them from doing so. It was something all the greatest shinobi felt, and Hiruzen had no doubt those two would one day rise to be some of the very best.

Maybe even the best, alongside the famed prior users of their respective bloodlines.

And hadn't that been a surprise: Naruto Uzumaki, owner of the famed Mokuton. The container of the Kyuubi, with the very jutsu the Shodai used to control it. Hiruzen hadn't been able to believe it when the ANBU he assigned to guarding the Kyuubi Jinchuriki and the one he assigned to guarding the Uchiha heir reported it to him that Naruto developed the legendary kekkei genkai. He still couldn't believe it, really, even a month later. The elders would be ecstatic over it, if Hiruzen planned on letting them know any time soon.

But he didn't, which was why he made sure the trusted ANBU assigned to watching Naruto and Sasuke kept others away from the forest clearing while the boys were using it.

He knew it was only a matter of time before the world knew that a Mokuton user walked among them once more, but he would do what he could to ensure that only happened when Naruto was ready.

Sasuke couldn't help but sneak glances at the idiot, even as he practiced the Lightning Ball Jutsu.

For all the complaining he'd done about having to clean up the result of their jutsu clash, it hadn't taken Naruto longer than a few minutes to fill in the exploded ground and spread new grass over it. As much as Sasuke still thought he was an idiot, he couldn't deny Naruto had impressive skill in learning to use his chakra; Doton and Suiton had come as easily to him as Katon and Raiton had come to Sasuke, despite the fact that Naruto still couldn't perform a simple Clone Jutsu.

He'd been having trouble using Mokuton over the past month, but it seemed Sasuke's simple advice had helped him a lot. Where before he could only speed up growth of plant life with his chakra, now he was actually controlling a tree.

It was a… distracting sight. Naruto would form one of the twelve hand seals and then touch the tree, and the tree moved. Sasuke had started to question if Naruto had some other, unheard of nature-related kekkei genkai and not Mokuton, but now he was certain it was Mokuton.

Sometimes the tree only rippled, for lack of a better term, when Naruto touched it, but other times it would take on a more defined change, though small. It seemed he'd chosen to just try every hand seal to see which one felt best, but none seemed to satisfy him yet. It wasn't a bad idea, really; Sasuke couldn't think of any better ones.

Eventually, Naruto landed on the snake seal. It was the most common for Doton and Raiton, and Sasuke paused his own training to watch. He could feel Naruto's chakra gather, even without being a sensor; a distinct feeling always appeared when he did, almost like nature itself. A feeling that was especially noticeable when he tried to use Mokuton.

This time, when Naruto put his hand on the tree, his hand ended up getting pushed away by an identical one coming out of the tree. "I did it!" Naruto exclaimed. "I actually did it!"

Sasuke stared. Actual, irrefutable proof that the idiot had Mokuton. The most infamous kekkei genkai in the eyes of the Uchiha, so rare only one man had ever had it, and it was Naruto Uzumaki who inherited it. Which also most likely made him somehow a Senju, the long-time enemy of the Uchiha. And Sasuke was helping him train, even using the Uchiha archives to do it.

He wondered what his clan would have thought.

Would they see the necessity of it? Sasuke needed to grow strong enough to avenge them, and who better to use as a stepping stool for an Uchiha to reach that power than a Senju? And Naruto would be a powerful ally to be on a team with, if he kept up his current rate of improvement. Konoha was formed by the Uchiha and Senju cooperating; surely they'd understand.

"Hey, bastard!" Naruto shouted, looking over at him with his hand still pressed against the wooden hand. "Watch this!" He started moving his hand, and the wooden hand extending from the tree followed it. "I figured it out! It was the snake seal!"

"Took you long enough!" Sasuke shouted back on instinct.

Naruto scowled. Sasuke blinked when the wooden hand sticking out of the tree stuck out its middle finger, obviously directed at Sasuke. "Ha!" Naruto cheered. "Did your brain break? 'Cause this is pretty damn awesome!"

Sasuke rolled his eyes. "That's only the first step, idiot! Now you have to actually create jutsu!"

He smirked when Naruto's grin fell. Returning to his own training, Sasuke imagined the jutsu taking form in his head. Then he ran through the four seals. "Raiton: Lightning Ball Jutsu."

Six balls of lightning formed, two more than his first attempt. He could feel the Raiton chakra trying to fight him, even more unwieldy than Katon chakra, but he kept it firmly under his control. When he was confident the jutsu wouldn't fall apart the second he tried to use it, he sent the lightning balls shooting towards one of the targets Naruto made.

Four of the balls hit the target he was aiming at, blowing it to pieces, but once again two of them veered off to the side and hit the ground. His brow furrowed as he tried to figure out what he was doing wrong. It seemed that, no matter how many he created, two would always miss, unless he kept the number down to two. He'd already destroyed half the targets Naruto created but he wasn't any closer to figuring out why the jutsu wasn't working.

He glanced back at Naruto to see that the wooden arm had disappeared from the tree, and now Naruto was standing off to the side with his hands in the snake seal. Curiosity peaked despite himself, Sasuke paused again to see what Naruto had in mind.

"Mokuton: Tree Growth!" Naruto shouted, pulling his hands out of the snake seal and slamming one against the ground.

Nothing happened for a few seconds. Just as Sasuke prepared to make fun of the idiot, something erupted from the ground. He felt his eyes widen when wood sprung up with enough force to knock Naruto back, branches and leaves forming as it climbed higher and higher until it was level with the trees all around the clearing.

The end result was a tree identical to the ones all around them, one Sasuke wouldn't have looked at twice if he hadn't just seen it appear from nowhere.

Naruto excitedly pushed himself to his feet and walked over to the tree, placing his hands on it like he couldn't believe it was real. Sasuke didn't blame him; he was having a little trouble believing his eyes, too. The idiot actually did it. He didn't just make a tree sprout a hand or breathe new life into dead plants; he created a tree. Sasuke never expected to see that when he chose to act on a whim and see if the dead last of the class had any actual potential.

Naruto spun around with a grin on his face to look at Sasuke, and Sasuke didn't remember to feign disinterest fast enough. "Ha! You're surprised!" Naruto cheered.

"Yeah!" Sasuke shouted back, recovering quickly. "I'm surprised that's all you could do! The Shodai could make entire forests!"

Naruto glared at him. "Whatever, bastard! I don't see you creating any jutsu without a scroll to work from!"

Sasuke shrugged the comment off and turned back to the targets. If Naruto could do that, Sasuke could certainly aim a few balls of lightning. He easily made the bird, snake, ram, and monkey seals again, then called out, "Raiton: Lightning Ball Jutsu!"

Another six lightning balls formed around him, and he didn't give him any time to second guess himself before he shot them forward. Pride surged in his chest when all six hit the target; one to the head, one to each arm and leg, and one right through the chest. Solid earth exploded in a cloud of dust, and when the cloud finally faded all that was left of the target were two piles of dirt where the 'feet' had been.

"Hey, you got it!" Naruto exclaimed, running over to him. "Cool! Do you need more targets?"

Sasuke glanced at the earthen targets. Five were left, which gave him an idea. "Not yet," he said confidently, once again running through the four necessary seals. "Raiton: Lightning Ball Jutsu!"

He summoned five lightning balls and sent them shooting towards the remaining targets. He could feel the drain on his chakra after summoning so many one after another, but it wasn't bad; even if he didn't have the same blatantly monstrous reserves as the idiot, he was still sure he had more than anyone else in their age range. The lightning balls flew towards each of the five targets without issue, and Sasuke didn't let his concentration slip until all of the targets were destroyed.

Turning back to Naruto, he slipped on a confident smirk. "Now I need new targets. I told you they wouldn't last long; your Doton just can't handle my Raiton."

A tick mark appeared on Naruto's forehead. "Oh yeah?" He pushed past Sasuke, forming the snake seal with a look of intense concentration. The distinctive feeling of his chakra gathering permeated the air, and he slammed his hands down on the ground. "Mokuton: Wooden Bastard Targets!"

Like before, nothing happened for a few seconds. Then the ground rumbled and wood erupted from where each of the earthen targets had previously been. Sasuke didn't know whether to be impressed or pissed when they all morphed into copies of him, each with a stupid grin on their face that Sasuke was sure he'd never made in his entire life.

Naruto turned back to him and smirked. "How's that for targets?"

"It'd be better if they resembled you," Sasuke retorted. "I'd love to shoot lightning at something with your face."

"Like I'd ever make a target with a face as beautiful as mine." Naruto crossed his arms, still smirking smugly. "Plus, it's hard to capture this level of perfection! Your duckbutt hair is much easier."

"I think the girls in our class would disagree with you there." As much as Sasuke hated to deal with the fangirls, he couldn't resist the urge to use their existence against Naruto.

Surprisingly, Naruto only smirked wider at that. "I bet they would love to see the Wooden Bastard Targets!"

A sense of dread found its way into Sasuke's mind. "No," he snapped immediately. "You wouldn't."

Naruto's smirk turned into a full on evil grin. "That mean you're happy with these targets?"

"…Yes."

"Good!" The evil grin turned back into the usual uncomfortably-sunny grin and he clapped Sasuke on the shoulder. "Let me know when you need new ones! I'll be working on my Mokuton."

Sasuke watched as Naruto made his way back to where he'd been before before turning back to the targets. It was… mildly uncomfortable to stare at a dozen wooden versions of himself, all grinning weirdly. Not that he'd mention it to Naruto, since that was definitely his intention when he made them.

Still, mildly uncomfortable or not, Sasuke couldn't deny that they would make good targets. They were smaller than the earthen ones from before, because the earthen ones had been around the size of adults and the wooden ones were the same size as Sasuke, but he'd bet they were more durable, assuming the idiot hadn't messed that up somehow. They wouldn't crumble just from Raiton chakra like Doton did.

Bird, snake, ram, monkey. The seals were already permanently ingrained into his mind and he barely had to think about them as he made them. When he was done, he called out, "Raiton: Lightning Ball Jutsu!"

He formed eight this time, just to see if he could, and shot them at the first wooden target. Three of them hit dead center, blasting a large hole into the chest of the wooden-Sasuke's chest, but the other five only hit the edges and blew away half-circles. One hit the crotch area and Sasuke couldn't help but wince. But where the earth targets would have crumbled apart just because of the Raiton chakra running through it, the wooden target stayed standing, even with all the damage done.

It pained him to admit it, but Naruto actually did a good job.

Not that he'd actually let Naruto know he thought so. Naruto didn't need a head bigger than the one he already had.

Author's Note:

thank you for all the follows, favorites, and reviews!

i've seen a few people specifically comment on how they like how i'm writing Sasuke, which makes me especially happy. i really like both Naruto and Sasuke so i wanted to make sure i was being fair to both of them, and i really love when they're being friends. Sasuke's of course deluding himself by insisting he's just using Naruto as a stepping stone to power, since he's got a ton to work through (thanks, Itachi), and they're both a bit clueless on the concept of what a friend actually is, so it's been fun writing them becoming friends

for the foreseeable future, i'm probably going to stick to weekly updates, probably on Fridays (possibly Saturdays, not sure how busy my weekdays will be; i know my schedule but i don't have any syllabuses yet). like i mentioned, i posted the first two in quick succession bc i didn't want to wait too long before adding in the Mokuton since the description includes Mokuton!Naruto. but weekly updates gives me a lot more leeway when writing and posting because i already have the next handful of chapters finished, and that way it'll be a lot more difficult for me to fall behind.