Naruto's Progress

Shinichi practiced the six hand seals of the Shadow Clone Technique for three whole days.

Not at the Ninja Academy training grounds—there were too many people watching there, and anyone who made even one extra clone would be surrounded by the entire class. He chose four thirty in the morning, beneath the old locust tree in the orphanage backyard. The sky had not yet brightened, the matron had not gotten up, the children were still fighting rhinoceros beetles in their dreams, and even Little Fatty's teeth-grinding was still in low-power standby mode. There was only him and a ground full of fallen leaves.

Ren, Monkey, Goat, Dragon, Ox, Tiger. He broke the six hand seals down and practiced them one at a time. The Ren seal was the simplest. When forming it, the inward curve of his middle fingers happened to align with the chakra node of his heart meridian. The Dragon seal was the hardest—the ring fingers had to press over the little fingers while keeping the chakra flow splitting from the central meridian into both halves of the body perfectly symmetrical. A slight deviation would result in a clone with one thick arm and one thin arm. When he first successfully created a Shadow Clone, its arms were indeed uneven, making it look like someone who only worked out one side of his body.

On his fourth success, he created two completely identical clones. On his fifth, he increased that to three. By his sixth, he could finish all six seals in an instant and create three Shadow Clones at once, each maintaining a stable physical form. He had the three clones climb trees, walk on water, and practice shuriken throwing respectively, while he stood where he was with his eyes closed, sensing. The chakra consumption, muscle fatigue, and information received by all three clones flooded back into his consciousness through the Shadow Clone Technique's built-in feedback mechanism. It felt like running three monitors and a keyboard-and-mouse setup at once—operating them was not a problem, but his brain needed to adapt to this parallel information-processing mode.

"Release." All the Shadow Clones dispersed. The returning information surged back, making his head buzz, like he had attended three consecutive requirement review meetings in his previous life and then been chased down by the developers for two hours of technical details. He braced himself against the locust tree for a while, waiting for the dizziness to pass.

Not bad. He could handle it. It might become more unpleasant once he had more clones, but for now, three was his comfort zone. With a finger, he roughly jotted down several insights he had gathered during this period in his notebook: the efficiency of a clone's experience feedback had nothing to do with distance; the mental impact of the memory stream upon dispersal could be reduced by presetting keywords to filter irrelevant information; and—chakra allocation for Shadow Clones was best weighted according to task difficulty. Give the tree-climbing clone less chakra, give the clone practicing ninjutsu more, and avoid equal distribution, which was actually inefficient.

At present, he was probably the only person in the ninja world capable of drawing these conclusions. Those who used Shadow Clones either created too few to need optimized allocation, or simply did not use them as training accelerators—Kakashi Hatake would not propose that method until Shippuden, and Naruto had not even graduated from the Ninja Academy yet.

"I'll teach Naruto after school today." He compared the task against the day's schedule in his mind and confirmed there were no conflicts. School ended at three in the afternoon. They would reach the riverbank at three thirty, when the light would be just right. Naruto had enough chakra to create hundreds of Shadow Clones, but if his control could not keep up, something might go wrong on his first attempt. Shinichi needed to watch over him.

At three in the afternoon, the Ninja Academy let out.

Naruto was sprawled across his desk, an open copy of Basic Theory of Ninjutsu covering his face. The page happened to be open to a chakra nature diagram. His drool had run onto the Earth Release section, blurring the character for "earth" into a dark smear. The seats beside him were already empty. Sasuke had left long ago—the Uchiha Clan's genius boy went home to train alone after school every day and never stayed with his classmates for even an extra minute. Sakura Haruno and Ino had gone shopping together, Shikamaru Nara and Choji Akimichi had been picked up by their parents, and Hinata had been taken home by Hyuga Clan guards to practice Gentle Fist. Only Naruto remained in the classroom, along with the fluorescent light above his head that someone had forgotten to turn off.

"Wake up."

Naruto did not react. Shinichi reached out and pulled the textbook off his face. Naruto's head hit the desk with a thunk, then bounced back up as he clutched his head and yelped. Drool still hung from the corner of his mouth, perfectly parallel to his whisker marks.

"Come on. I'm taking you to practice something."

Naruto's drowsiness vanished completely in a second. The moment he heard the words "practice something," he sprang out of his chair, grabbed his crumpled dark-blue backpack from the desk cubby, flung it onto his back, and ran for the door before he had even fully put on his shoes—his left shoelace was untied, trailing along the ground and swinging back and forth.

"What are we learning today? Is it that Wind Release: Shuriken? You said you'd teach me!"

"Something more suitable for you at this stage." Shinichi opened the classroom door for him, pushed him out, then pulled it shut behind them. "But you have to promise to practice exactly as I tell you. Otherwise, I'll only teach Rock Lee."

"Who's Rock Lee?"

"You don't know him."

"Then how do you know him?! You secretly made other friends without taking me along!" Naruto wore the expression of someone who had been cheated on. Shinichi ignored his dramatic performance and headed for the stairs at an unhurried pace. Naruto anxiously circled around him more than half a turn before making the decision himself. "Fine, fine, fine, I'll listen! I'll practice however you tell me to! I swear! I swear on my honor as the future Hokage!"

The corner of Shinichi's mouth twitched slightly. Swearing on the honor of the future Hokage—Naruto had said that line countless times in the original story. Every time he swore, he would charge in headfirst first, and his success rate was probably around one-third. But it did not matter. Naruto really could learn the Shadow Clone Technique. It was not a matter of belief. Shinichi knew.

The pebbled riverbank. Naruto sat cross-legged atop the large rock Shinichi used as a training bench, hands braced on his knees, back ramrod straight. No one needed to urge him to be this serious.

Shinichi stood opposite him and began forming seals. Ren, Monkey, Goat, Dragon, Ox, Tiger—the six seals were neither fast nor slow, ensuring Naruto could see clearly. At the instant each seal formed, Shinichi deliberately slowed the flow of chakra between his fingers so Naruto could sense the corresponding meridian nodes involved in each hand sign.

Poof. A Shadow Clone appeared beside Shinichi.

Naruto's jaw nearly hit the ground. "When did you learn that?!"

"Last weekend."

"Didn't you say you'd only learned the basic Transformation Technique last weekend?!"

"I learn fast."

Naruto glared at Shinichi with the look of someone who had suffered the greatest betrayal and deception of his life, but that emotion lasted less than three seconds before being replaced by pure eagerness to learn. He jumped down from the rock and leaned close to inspect the Shadow Clone. The clone raised its right hand and waved at him, then curled its fingers into an OK sign. Naruto watched with his own eyes as the clone's fingers gradually took on the color of a real person. Curious, he reached out and touched its arm. "Even the folds in the sleeve are the same!" Then he eagerly held his palms toward the rocky shore beneath his feet.

Shinichi took two steps back and let Naruto try for himself.

The first time, Naruto got stuck on the fourth seal—his middle and ring fingers would not bend down together. It was not a lack of chakra. His fingers simply were not flexible enough.

"Practice the basic hand seals taught at the Ninja Academy for at least ten minutes every day," Shinichi said.

The second time, Naruto finally completed all six seals and created something. After the white smoke cleared, a clone stood on the ground with one arm long and the other short, wearing Naruto's own bright smile that said, "Eh, I think I'm about to succeed."

"Your chakra distribution is uneven." Shinichi pointed at the long-and-short-armed clone. "Too little on the left, too much on the right. Both sides have to be equal for it to stabilize."

Naruto did not yell that it hurt or that it was difficult like he had before. He stared at his crippled clone for three seconds, then looked up. There was an expression in his blue eyes that Shinichi had never seen on his face before. It was neither anger nor grievance. It was focus—a focus that had appeared many times in the original story, yet seeing it with his own eyes still warmed his heart. When this child, who had been treated coldly by the entire village since birth, encountered something he truly wanted to learn, he made no excuses.

Third time, fourth time, fifth time—Naruto's Shadow Clones grew more stable with each attempt. On the sixth seal sequence, there was a poof, and a Shadow Clone completely identical to him stood on the pebbled shore.

"I did it! Shinichi, look! They're exactly the same!" Naruto and his Shadow Clone shouted at the same time. Then both Narutos froze. One pointed at the other's nose and asked, "Why are you copying me?" while the other pointed at his counterpart's head and yelled, "You're the one copying me!" This was Naruto's unique way of celebrating: arguing with himself.

Shinichi sat on the large rock and silently turned a page in the notebook in his hand about chakra shape transformation. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Naruto's Shadow Clone somehow start loudly competing with him in water-walking on the pebbled shore. The two figures ran farther and farther across the water. Shinichi had originally intended to remind Naruto that Shadow Clones consumed a great deal of chakra, but watching the child chase his own clone in circles beneath the setting sun, he decided to wait a few more minutes before calling them to stop.

Meanwhile, in the Hokage's office. The Third Hokage, Hiruzen Sarutobi, stood at the window with a pipe in his mouth, his gaze passing over Konoha at dusk and settling toward the small river to the south. The crystal ball of the Telescope Technique showed two children—one black-haired child sitting on a rock reading, and one blond child chasing his own Shadow Clone across the river's surface. He had been observing this scene for several days.

The Third knew Shinichi and remembered being told last year about the orphaned descendant of the Senju Clan's branch family. Shinichi himself had always remained on his watch list—the feat of instantly defeating Gatō while leading a team in the Land of Waves had been circulated among Konoha's upper ranks several times. But the first time he noticed the friendship between Shinichi and Naruto was a few days ago, when he saw the two children from afar eating ramen together near the village entrance. He had not disturbed them then. For a jinchuriki who had been treated coldly by the entire village since childhood, making a friend for the first time was a friendship worth taking seriously.

"The Shadow Clone Technique." The Third exhaled a puff of smoke and watched Naruto's second Shadow Clone wobble to its feet in the crystal ball. Creating one stable Shadow Clone at six years old already counted as exceptional talent. Yet this child named Senju Shinichi had only enrolled last week and had already created three on his own in the backyard after class. Now he was teaching Naruto one-on-one.

He lightly tapped his pipe against the windowsill. These two children were worth keeping an eye on.