NOVEL NEXT 43. Four years later pt1
Many things have happened through the last four years. That's right, four years have gone by since Tomoka’s little prank. For starters, six days after her little prank she met Naruto back at the park. The little twerp had made his mind and decided to trust Tomoka, albeit with some reservations.
With some time and getting to know Naruto a little better Tomoka finally understood why his anime version was so brain dead. The first thing she noticed was that Naruto’s intelect at the time was normal. He wasn’t smart by any accounts but he wasn’t dumb either. As a matter of fact Tomoka thought his intellect to be at around the exact same level as his grown anime counterpart.
It took time and a lot of thinking. Theories were made one after another until she got to one she deemed the most probable. Naruto wasn’t dumb by birth, he simply never got to develope his brain and therefore his mind properly. As a shunned kid he didn’t receive proper education until he was eight. Not to mention that by then it was a well known “fact” that he was dumb. In reality many factors led to Naruto’s stunted mental growth.
As a matter of fact Tomoka was quite surprised with the kid. Even though his personality was still close to that of his anime counterpart, his intellect wasn’t so bad. It is precisely because of the latter that Tomoka was surprised. If her previous theory of excess yang stunting mental growth while yin physical growth then Naruto would be a genius if not for yang Kurama.
Thinking more in depth about this, Tomoka realized that there is no reason why Naruto should not be a genius. Both his parents were extremely smart, one a master of fuinjutsu while the other developed a set of extremely powerful jutsus.
Taking all of this in consideration Tomoka decided to help the poor brat. If he became smarter she would have gotten rid of one of her biggest headaches: dealing with dumb Naruto and his dumbassery.
Like this she began spending some time every week teaching him about different subjects. Of course, as any other kid Naruto disliked studying. Because of this Tomoka resorted to the tried and tested method to make all kids listen: Bribery. This legendary technique worked like a charm. It was even more effective on Naruto thanks to his poor living conditions.
Aside from dealing with Naruto, Tomoka also met with another member of the main cast. One she liked quite a bit as a matter of fact. The legendary bushy eye browed, green jumpsuit wearing, bowl cut fashionista Lee and Guy!
As she expected she met them one day while they ran through konoha in all their green glory! After the encounter everything else went according to plan. She competed with Lee and became good friends with him. She would even go as far as shout YOUTH! with the two while training. Afterall, you know the old saying: when in Rome, do as Romans do.
These events had taken place a year ago. Nowadays Lee would come by once or twice a week to challenge his “Rival” and Tomoka would happily oblige. She even went as far as introducing Lee to her saitama training. Fun fact, Lee lost his shiny bowl cut for a week after a month of training. Thankfully for Tomoka’s sanity and eyes, his hair grew back later.
Due to these events Tomoka suspected that Saitama's training side effect of hair loss was only applicable to male practitioners. However, with only a sample size of two one of each gender Tomoka couldn’t be sure.
Aside from meeting Lee and becoming friends with Naruto, Tomoka also spent her time learning Genjutsu from none other than the genjutsu specialist Kurenai. Since her parents were also jounin they had asked her for a few paid lessons for Tomoka at the kid’s request. Of Course Kurenai had been skeptical of teaching a five year old Tomoka. However, those doubts didn’t last for long.
As Tomoka already knew the theory behind genjutsu she had been practicing with herself as a target. She had, to put it simply, made herself hallucinate. Of Course, using genjutsu on yourself was far easier than using it on others but her practice hadn’t been in vain.
It only took her half a year to learn all of the basics kurenai could teach her. Now, half a year for just the basics might sound like a lot of time. However, these “basics” were extremely important since they came from kurenai herself. Tomoka wasn’t learning to just cast genjutsu. She was learning to make them on the fly!
By the time Tomoka became seven Kurenai was having trouble in thinking what to teach the girl. Tomoka had grown her genjutsus by leaps and bounds.Though she was still very far from the mastery Kurenai has. At this point Kurenai decided that Tomoka had learned all she could. From then on the girl would need to find her own path forward.
