Naruto: Snow Cold

I ended up getting carried away, and forgot completely that I didn't have to get involved with Naruto, but you know what? Screw the ANBU, and screw ROOT. Screw any form of authority and anyone who's against him.

Maybe it's his energy that's so infectious, or the way he just refuses to back down, regardless of what he goes through.

In the end, I paid for our meals, Naruto's included, and left a hefty 50% tip. I even got the three of us dessert, which, yeah, isn't really my invention, but come on—ice cream rocks!

He was rather ecstatic, and... shocked? I'm pretty sure no one had done that for him before.

Curse you, Hiruzen! Why'd you leave a child like him to his own in a lone apartment?!

Perhaps I really should teach Naruto a few techniques, so that when he starts pulling his pranks—he makes the old fart's life a living hell.

Sounds fun.

Think of the possibilities. His affinity is the same as mine—Wind Release. Which means… Hehehe. It sounds so evil, but when you take this man's lack of responsibility over the kid, I'd say it's very justified.

I wouldn't even have to teach him that much, because of his creativity alone. Most of the crazy stuff he pulled in the series was done with limited techniques—imagine what he'd do with a full repertoire.

Zehahahaha!!

***

Somewhere else, in a certain office, an old man clad in a Hokage cloak sat at his desk, diligently reviewing documents, consent forms, agreements, etc. Suddenly, he shivered for no apparent reason!

"Why do I feel like something bad is going to happen to me?"

A small bead of sweat traveled down the back of his neck.

"I'll just try to finish this damned paperwork. Who would've known that my worst enemy as the leader of this village wouldn't be war or criminals, but..."

He glanced at the mountain of reports before him and grimaced.

"...Paperwork."

***

Either way, it felt like time was just flying past. Days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months. Around six months had passed since then, and I rarely encountered Naruto, maybe once a month, but no more than that.

I was on guard every day, half-expecting someone to come interrogate me—turns out they don't care, which makes sense.

What ulterior motives could a child like me or Sora possibly have? ROOT wouldn't bother with us.

As far as one could see, it's just kids being kids, and just chance encounters. I couldn't really search for him directly, because that would raise suspicions by a heapload for obvious reasons.

I didn't try using my chakra field, because I didn't want to risk them thinking that I'm trying to sense them on purpose. You could feel when one was all over you, after all. Like some kind of gut feeling. However, my passive field did pick up on Naruto's chakra.

It was pleasant and warm, to say the least. But... the other one wasn't nice. Not at all.

Kurama's chakra is terrible. Malevolent. Evil. Full of hate. Unlike anything I've ever sensed, and it genuinely made you want to step away.

It sent shivers down your spine like nothing else, like some kind of overwhelming pressure that seemed to twist every single bone in your body.

This was good, though. If I somehow get used to this kind of pressure by being in Naruto's presence, other Jinchuurikis or similar threats wouldn't make me freeze in fear. I'd be able to face them with confidence.

I just hope that I never encounter any of these monsters until I'm at least as strong as a Kage. God knows in how many different ways they could fuck me up, as I am right now.

...

These past months have been very productive, though. With the addition of soldier pills, having to wait for my chakra to regenerate wasn't as tedious, and I could practice my jutsus for longer. The side effects weren't as bad as they said, but I still couldn't abuse them too much.

As long as you ate a proper amount of food, you'd just feel exhausted the next day, but that was nothing compared to the gains. My reserves had skyrocketed and increased by a whopping 60%, both due to natural growth (I had grown 3 extra centimeters, heh) and constant depletion, putting me in the mid Chuunin range.

Impressive, right? All product of my hard work during this time.

Speaking of techniques, I've fully optimized the Great Breakthrough, and brought down the required hand signs to one singular seal. Chakra Threads were learnt, too.

They weren't too hard to form and practice with. You could just expel chakra through any of your fingers' tenketsus and try to control it so it didn't disperse, forming some sort of string.

I assumed it could be done from any of the tenketsu in your body, so maybe stuff like temporary splints would be possible. They could grow to almost 3 meters before I really started losing control of them, which was frankly not bad.

Their strength wasn't quite enough to swing around like some kind of budget Spider-Man, but one could dream. One day, I'll become the Spider-Man of the ninja world!

Throughout the year, I've also focused on my Water Release and raising my affinity towards Ice Release.

I could easily fill up a gallon's worth of water in a bottle using chakra alone, and I couldn't feel like I hit a wall when it came to holding water. Twenty liters was manageable for a solid minute, but very inefficient in combat, as it was still somewhat slow to move around and kept me still for as long as I held it.

Shadow Clones were very helpful, too. I usually just sent one to the Academy, and surprisingly, Sora sent one as well, along with Hatake Kiyoshi.

The Hatake are real monsters when it comes to talent, aren't they?

Normally, I'd be very careful about this sort of thing and being discovered, but I'm pretty sure that due to our talents and my Kekkei Genkai, we have the Hokage's protection, and he's probably trying to groom us into powerful soldiers to serve the village in the future.

Fuck, any good sensor could tell a Shadow Clone apart from the real thing. Unless it's the Multi Shadow Clone Jutsu.

By the way, the bare minimum for these to stay active was just 15% of my chakra, which meant I could use around... three or four, if I wanted efficiency. Six if I created clones just for the sake of creating them.

There was no need to worry about them misbehaving at the Academy, either. They weren't stupid enough to draw attention to themselves by acting... like they usually did.

My clones were me, after all.

Now, back to Water Release. I chose to start learning three C-Ranked techniques from the library about three months ago, which were: the Water Clone, Water Prison, and the Starch Syrup Binding Rope.

My reasoning for this? I needed a low cost alternative for physical clones, albeit they only had one tenth of my strength, as stated in the scroll.

They still took about 3% of my reserves to fully form, and some form of water. I only needed one hand sign to execute it. It was nice.

Water Prison? I needed an option to restrain enemies safely because I absolutely do not want to kill if possible. This would allow me to buy my future squad mates time and extract information from the victim of this technique. With the help of shadow clones, I managed to bring this down to zero seals, especially since I had some experience holding water with my chakra.

And finally, the Starch Syrup jutsu. The name of it is way too damn long, so I'm calling it that.

This was mainly to start training how to manipulate the viscosity of water, and to have a ranged binding option, in case I can't get up close to use Water Prison.

The Starch Syrup Jutsu wasn't too hard to grasp, but it definitely took some time to figure out how to control the viscosity just right. You have no idea how many times it just turned out to be some sticky mess, like honey, but worse.

I figured it out, though. Shadow clones were truly a blessing when it came to training, even with the temporary headaches. I only need two seals for this technique, so that's good.

Onto Wind Release!

Finally, I had managed to cut a 2 inch thick beam of metal in half—it was copper, but still tougher than a branch. The next step would be to cut through brass, or bronze. Those two are tougher than copper, that's for sure.

But as much as I wanted to keep the grind going, I still had to deal with the Academy, which was a pain in the ass.

I didn't want to believe it, but they actually had the gall to start teaching us about seduction techniques, and... Well, y'know. I don't wanna actually talk about it, even though I perfectly know what it is.

What I'm gonna make sure of, though, is to never use them or accept any mission even remotely related to kunoichi stuff. Hell no.

I dispelled the clone after Academy hours were over, and soon, my brain began processing the information, bringing a migraine along with it.

Ugh.

Even after all this time, the headaches were still annoying. At least they weren't as bad as before.

So, a lesson about the economy, motherfucking linear equations and inequalities for math—which is absolutely insane for eight-year-old children.

More history, some chakra theory, and...

Oh.

Wait, wait, wait!

That definitely has caught my attention! Why didn't I personally come today?!

Kenjiro-sensei...

...was talking about early graduation opportunities!