The Secret of Kage Bunshin

Naruto was frozen in place, shell-shocked as the possibilities of his new discovery rushed about in his mind. He had gained the actual memories of his clone! The first idea that came to his head was naturally, training. He quickly wondered if he not only gained the memories, but the experience of the clones created by the Kage Bunshin. Would it work to improve his chakra control? Could he use it to help with the physical side of training.

Or was it simply memories, that he could use to study, without actually needing to personally study? Would it work with more than one clone at a time? He grinned widely as he placed his hands in the ram seal to experiment.

"Kage Bunshin no-" The jutsu was interrupted as Naruto felt a hand grab him by the ear and begin to drag him away from the Hokage Monument, literally kicking and screaming. "Gaah! What the hell?" He cried as he fought to gain a look at his assailant.

"'What the hell' is right!" What the hell were you doing sending a Bunshin to our appointment Naruto? I had your word that you wouldn't let me down!"

Naruto had no reply. Iruka-sensei was right. He had promised to take the lessons seriously, and he had broken that promise. It went against everything Naruto stood for. Not only had he broken a promise, it had been to one of the few people that truly cared about him, and Naruto had repaid that by betraying his trust.

The Chunin looked down at the blonde in front of him, staring at the ground dejectedly. He could quite plainly see that Naruto felt mortified about what he had done, Iruka had worded his accusation specifically to produce that result. Naruto needed to take this seriously, in order to be even slightly equal with the rest of the graduates. Even so, he couldn't help but feel guilty looking at the child he had come to see as something of a younger brother. He sighed out loud. He must be losing his ruthless streak as a shinobi from spending so much time at the academy.

"Listen, don't worry about it. We'll just go back now and cover the stuff again. And if you finish it all, I may just take you to Ichiraku's afterwards." Iruka watched the boy visibly perk up, before grinning as if he knew something that the Chunin didn't.

"Well, about that Iruka-sensei. I just found out something cool about the Kage Bunshin...

The Konoha Shinobi Library was completely abuzz with activity. Inside, in the Novice and Academy Student Section. A dozen orange blurs bounced from shelf to shelf, gathering up books that appeared useful. One solitary figure, was directing the veritable army of orange.

"You heard the boss! Look for the books that Iruka-sensei recommended. Three of you take stuff about chakra, three of you take history, three of you take the basic shinobi skills and the last group take basic strategy and tactics."

Even though he was answered with a chorus of grumbles and complaints, the clone that the original Naruto had left in charge was impressed with how impressive the clones were. If this worked as well as he thought it would, Iruka-sensei told him he could probably cover the entire academy curriculum in only a week! Originally, he was going to use more clones, but Iruka-sensei was really insistent that using loads of bunshin must have some negative side-effects, and he should ask the Hokage before using any more than the dozen he currently was.

Despite this, the clone was certain that the amount being used at the moment was enough to get the job done. He watched as the clones conquered the study tables in the room, and got to work, each taking a book from the enormous pile they had collected. Once satisfied the clones were working as they should, he turned to his attention to his own small pile of reading.

Whilst Naruto had pushed ninjutsu down on his list of priorities, it was still eternally fascinating to him. The things that could be accomplished were beyond belief, and even though Naruto knew he needed to improve heavily in other areas before he could begin to learn justu, he was still curious.

So, as soon as he thought Iruka-sensei wasn't paying attention one clone was henged into a perfect copy of the Chunin and given orders to look in the area reserved for Chunin for basic ninjutsu scrolls. As a result this clone now held a selection of C-rank ninjutsu scrolls, and the task of committing as many as possible to memory so they could be learnt when he was ready.

The clone took a look at the pile before him, and picked a scroll at random.

'C-Rank: Fuuton Techniques'

The clone frowned slightly. It wasn't exactly as cool as fireball and lightning bolts, but there had to be something cool in there somewhere right?

Iruka couldn't help but be impressed at the possibilities of the Kage Bunshin that Naruto had uncovered. It was a pity more Konoha shinobi didn't have the chakra capacity that Naruto had so that the Kage Bunshin could be utilised correctly. After visiting the Hokage with Naruto about his discovery, they had decided to keep with a maximum of a dozen clones, much to Naruto's frustration.

But in turn Iruka had conceded to allow him to use the clones to study, whilst Naruto focused on something else. The clones would work independently, but were under orders to dispel themselves if they encountered something that they didn't understand, or had a question. That way the original would be able to ask Iruka for help. They were also to periodically dispel at different intervals, both to ensure that they wouldn't run out of chakra, and also to prevent an information overload from dispelling them all at the end of the day, a danger the Sandaime had warned them of.

Iruka and the original Naruto had decided that since the clones were studying in his place the two could work on something else. The pair had decided that since Naruto was going to be working with a new Sensei the following day, they wouldn't work on anything that would impose on any plans they would have for taijutsu or ninjutsu. As a result, the two were standing in the academy training grounds, having decided to work on chakra control.

"Naruto, I presume you're able to do the leaf exercise?" Iruka chuckled as Naruto nodded indignantly, outraged at what Iruka was implying. Iruka just smiled before he continued. "Well then, what we are going to do is a simplified version of a ANBU training exercise." Naruto watched curiously as Iruka produced a bag of ping-pong balls.

"Now, what I'm going do is throw several of these balls to you, and all you have to do is use chakra to catch them, and 'stick' them to you. The exercise gets harder and harder, the more balls I throw. We can treat it like a game, keep count of the amount of balls you can stick to you at once. Once you can stick five balls to you at once, I'll buy you one bowl of Ichiraku's. Once you can do ten, I'll buy you a second and so on. If you can make thirty by the end of the week I'll teach you a jutsu. Understand what you have to do?"

Naruto nodded eagerly. He could almost taste that Ramen, not to mention the fact he had the chance to learn a new jutsu. How hard could it be?

The blonde looked at Iruka, signalling that he was ready, and focused on the incoming ball and focused his chakra to his hand as the ball made contact. He grinned widely as the ball didn't fall to the ground. See! Easy right? He held up his other hand and began to focus his chakra in preparation for the second ball...

Only for him to lose control of the amount of chakra he was channelling to keep hold of the first, and the ball to propel away from his hand. In his dismay, he completely forgot the second ball, which bounced off of his forehead and dropped in front of his feet.

Yep. Definitely easy...

The Next Day

Naruto couldn't keep the smile off of his face as he headed towards Training Ground 56. Naruto had spent a long time exploring the village as a child, and as such knew that the training grounds were numbered for their purpose. Training grounds one through ten were strictly for Genin teams to use, eleven through twenty were generally used for ninjutsu and taijutsu, as well as sparring and twenty-one through thirty are for weapons practise. After that, the training grounds up to fifty were all reserved for environmental training, the most notorious being Training Ground 44. Otherwise known as The Forest of Death.

However, the remaining eight Training Grounds were all indoors and guarded by Chunin level shinobi. Because of this, Naruto had never actually seen inside of them, and therefore had no idea what to expect from his new sensei. The fact that what was done inside the grounds was kept secret and guarded was sure to mean that he was going to be doing something completely awesome, at least in his opinion. Which had him terribly excited to find out what he would be learning.

Suddenly, he felt a slight twinge in the back of his mind as clone's memories entered his mind. Naruto's grin spread slightly wider. His clone had finally fully memorised one of the jutsu from the Fuuton scroll. Fuuton: Goukuuhou. It looked completely kick-ass on paper, the only disadvantage being a slightly longer than usual seal sequence. The last three seals were used to keep what the dangerous wind chakra from damaging the user's mouth. This however, was something that Naruto could work around with practise.

What wasn't so easily workable was the fact his chakra control was still too poor for him to learn any C-rank jutsu. He had asked Iruka the previous day, what level should his chakra control be at for him to be able to learn a C-rank jutsu properly. Iruka-sensei had said that he should be able to 'stick' thirty balls consistently before he could use a C-rank jutsu to it's maximum potential; which was why he had offered to teach Naruto a jutsu should he manage to get that far before the end of the week. It was only Monday, and as the blonde managed to get the hang of the excersise, he had steadily begun to progress. He had managed seven by the time they had decided to call it a day, and Iruka-sensei had promised him another control exercise to practice alongside the first, once he had finished his training with Yuugao.

The blonde picked up his pace as the indoor training grounds came into view. They were enormous buildings, tucked away on the eastern side of Konoha, out of the way of the rest of the village. They were semi-circular in shape, and the roof appeared to be corrugated iron. All in all, they were as formidable as he remembered them being, even though he was years older.

He slowed to a walk as he approached number 56. He showed the Chunin guarding the building's only entrance the vivid red permission slip, and continued on through the door. Once inside, the soon-to-be Genin, couldn't prevent a gasp from escaping his lips at what he saw. The floor was lined with lush looking synthetic grass that looked and felt entirely real. The only give away being how entirely perfectly kept it was, considering that this was a training ground. Over to his left was a small lake, with a small waterfall running down a rockface which was gradually collecting algae. On his right, the grass abruptly came to an end about twenty metres away, and in it's place was a barren looking landscape decorated by several rock formations. The blonde child couldn't help but whistle at the scale of his surroundings.

"It's impressive isn't it?" Naruto whirled around to confront the voice, that seemed to have come from behind him; only to be confronted with the purple haired woman he had seen leave the Hokage's office a few days before-hand.

"Uzuki Yuugao. A pleasure to meet you."