The Clone Whose Style Was Gradually Going Off the Rails

"Body Flicker Technique. Shisui taught me, but I'm not proficient with it yet. I also need to get used to the Sharingan." Sasuke touched the corners of his eyes, unable to stop smiling. When he told his brother, he would definitely praise him, right?

Sakura stammered, unable to answer. She did not know what she wanted to train either; she had only come because she heard she could train with Sasuke.

Naruto did not find it strange. She was a twelve-year-old girl with little sense of crisis. Her family did not push her to grow stronger like the great clans did. Her greatest dream was to change her surname to Uchiha, and she had never seriously considered how she was supposed to grow stronger in the future.

Even if they left her alone, once the Chunin Exams came around and she Realized she was holding the team back, she would naturally know what to do. But Naruto planned to give her a hand. They were teammates, after all, and she might even become his sister-in-law someday.

"If you don't have any particular goal, start by practicing your Chakra control. Have you learned tree climbing and water walking?"

Sakura was a good student. If she did not understand something, she asked. "What does tree climbing have to do with Chakra control? And what is water walking?"

"Then how about this? I'll teach you tree climbing first. Once you learn it, Sasuke can teach you water walking."

"Okay!" Sakura was brimming with enthusiasm. She had to perform well and make Sasuke see her in a new light.

Sasuke had no objections. He and Naruto had learned tree climbing and water walking before graduation, so teaching a teammate would not be a problem.

"The tree climbing I mean isn't climbing in the usual sense. You gather Chakra beneath your feet and make your body adhere to the tree."

As Naruto spoke, he walked straight up the trunk vertically. At the end, he hung upside down from a branch as a demonstration, earning a shocked stare from Sakura.

Then Sakura began trying to climb the tree. Thirty seconds later, she walked ten meters up the massive tree as though she were on level ground, smiling as she said, "This feels easier than I imagined!"

Sasuke was stunned. This teammate he had always considered dead weight was actually this talented at Chakra control. It had taken him several days of practice to learn it.

"Amazing!" Naruto gave her a thumbs-up. As expected of you, Sakura Bro.

"I'll leave the rest to you, Sasuke!" Naruto waved and headed off.

"Sure." Sasuke answered casually. Once he agreed to something, he would not go back on his word.

Sakura was deeply moved. Naruto really was Konoha's best teammate. She would not hold the "bro" thing against him anymore. As long as he could create opportunities for her, he could call her whatever he wanted.

Naruto ignored the young couple's interaction and went off to practice the Rasengan. Naturally, he would use Shadow Clones to train. He could not make too many at once, so he would test the waters first—start with two. No one under eighteen—cough—first, make two clones.

Naruto took out a scroll and opened it. The character for "ball" was written on it, surrounded by densely packed formulae. Naruto formed a hand seal and slapped it.

"Release!"

More than a dozen rubber balls and water-filled balloons appeared out of thin air. These were props he had prepared in advance.

Naruto picked up a Water Balloon and gave it a gentle squeeze, then beckoned to his clones. "You both get it, right?"

"Got it!" ×2

The clones were thrilled. Practicing the Rasengan was much more fun than fighting Kakashi. Each picked up a Water Balloon, placed it in his palm, and began controlling the water inside to spin.

Naruto's original body took one as well. The start went smoothly. The spinning water caused the balloon to change shape, slowly flattening it. Next, he needed to make the Chakra rotate in different directions simultaneously...

Then he could not do it. Naruto discovered that he could make his Chakra spin horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, but how was he supposed to make it spin in different directions at the same time? Make his left and right hands fight each other?

The Original Work provided a shortcut: use the other hand to assist and burst the Water Balloon. But Naruto did not want to do that. A perfectly good instant-cast Rasengan skill would end up becoming some huge ultimate with an absurdly long windup that required Shadow Clones to assist. What kind of nonsense was that? If he was going to learn it, he would learn the one-handed version.

Naruto had already planned it out. Whenever he encountered an enemy in the future, he would first use Water Style to attack from range and kite them, pretending to be a squishy mage with poor taijutsu and no skill in close combat. Then, when the enemy finally managed to close the distance after endless effort, he would slap a Rasengan right into their face and ask whether they were surprised.

The difficulty was just a little too brutal. Naruto glanced at his clones and found that their progress seemed no better than his own. An hour later, Naruto dispelled them under their unwilling gazes.

Naruto felt a slight swell in his head as a pile of memories came flooding in, along with... all sorts of messy thoughts. Rubbing his temples, he thought, Could you clones be a little more reliable? You were supposed to be training. What were you even thinking about? One of you was thinking about flushing a toilet and a kitten playing with a ball of yarn. The other was even more ridiculous—what Rutherford planetary model, what Bohr atomic model. What does that have to do with the Rasengan?

But it actually did have something to do with it. A planetary model... Naruto imagined a Solar System. As the water spun, the balloon in his hand warped. Then he remembered that Halley's Comet had an angle between its orbital plane and those of the other planets in the Solar System. A ring-shaped bulge appeared on the Water Balloon. That was the feeling!

Naruto stopped, then made two more clones to continue training. Following that train of thought, he added one comet, then another comet, then another...

Half an hour later, with a pop, one clone happily jumped up and shouted, "I did it!"

The other clone looked at him resentfully. Then his eyes shifted, and he pulled out a Kunai and stabbed him to death. Coldly, he said, "You know too much!"

Naruto's eyelids twitched, but he said nothing.

Once the memories and experience returned, Naruto's original body and the remaining clone came to a sudden realization. One after the other, they burst their Water Balloons. But before Naruto could celebrate, the clone excitedly rammed his head into a tree and shouted, "Today, I swear with His Majesty to purge all evil demons from the world!"

The clone vanished. Naruto blanked out for a moment. What Zhong Kui are you even acting out?! Zhong Kui rammed himself to death because he was overcome with indignation, okay? What's with being so happy about it? And wasn't that line something he shouted only after becoming a ghost? His head hurt. Oh, the clone's memories all came from him. So this was his own fault? Now his head hurt even more.

After Sasuke taught Sakura water walking, they came over and witnessed Naruto's clone smashing itself to death. Sakura looked at Naruto, who was rubbing his temples, and quietly asked Sasuke, "What's wrong with him?"

"Maybe he's happy?" Sasuke said uncertainly.

Sakura: ???

Sasuke also found it bizarre. Based on his many years of knowing Naruto, Naruto's clone had indeed been expressing happiness just now. But why would you smash yourself to death when you were happy?

This guy's thought process was getting more and more abnormal. Sasuke shook his head. Only after seeing Naruto pick up a rubber ball and resume training, showing no inclination toward suicide, did he head to the clearing to practice the Body Flicker Technique.

Sakura stayed behind to observe Naruto for a while. Seeing nothing unusual, she happily went to reflect on today's training gains and, incidentally, watch Sasuke. Incidentally, probably.

Naruto held a rubber ball and tried the method from before for a while. It was too hard to burst. If the first stage, training with the Water Balloon, was to practice rotation and maintenance, then the second stage, training with the rubber ball, was to practice power.

After training all afternoon until the Meridians in his hands ached, he had made only a little progress. The three friends said goodbye to one another and went home.