After the Hinata event everything went back to normal. Everything was back to the well known boring school schedule. Except one or two things. Actually Dix a bit overdid it with Hinata, and now she had a bit more feeling for him than the anime Hinata had for Naruto. Poor girl doesn't have many friends of her own, she had to cling to Dix for some companionship, and he too wanted to help her out with that. Sometimes he complimented her, sometimes he gave her advice, either regarding life or growing stronger, sometimes he walked her home when she felt lonely.
Once Hinata's father saw Dix escorting her little girl home, and got visibly angry. He looked like a vulcan that's about to erupt. But still, he managed to control it, and after hearing their explanation, he thanked Dix for his help and sent him on his way. The next time they met Hinata was escorted by someone from the Hyuga branch house. When their eyes connected she just shook her head with a small smile and went on her way. Dix didn't have to walk her home anymore.
The other thing that changed is that the bullies he had beaten came back a few times for revenge, but he knocked them out every time. This was somewhat familiar for Dix, so he kinda knew whats going to come. The bullies had to bring reinforcements, otherwise they risked their heads taking up the shape of Dix's shoes. One day one of the thugs showed up with his ninja relative. He was only a lowly genin, so Dix had nothing to fear. Actually even if he brought out a jonin, Dix would still have had nothing to fear. So he just swept the floor with the two idiots while barely showing a quarter of his basic strength, then went on his merry way.
Dix knew about this kind of thing because Kushina, Naruto's mother, when she was an Academy student she had the same problems. That was the time when Minato saved her from the genin that would've otherwise overpowered her. A truly heartwarming story. And a sad one at the same time. Seems like every generation commits itself to the same mistakes.
With a lot of free time and the sharingan slowly coming along on its own, Dix decided to start a new project, because he won't be able to acquire the Flying Thunder God Technique, even though he set it as the next main goal. He still wanted to wait a few years. Considering its strength that technique must be equally as hard to learn, so he had to show something to the Third to get it.
He decided he would go ahead and master Naruto's famous and signature move, the Rasengan. Also, on a side note, he wanted to learn elemental releases, which would boost the destructive power of most of what he has in his arsenal by a good margin.
Thus one afternoon, when he finished at school, he decided he would start learning the Rasengan on his own. He read a few articles about it in the Third's library, and also remembered the exact way Jiraiya taught this to Naruto in the anime, as he really liked that training, for some reason.
Before starting he had to buy a lot of stuff first. He needed a ton of water balloons, around a hundred. He also needed the same amount of rubber balls, then another load of the balloons, without water in them. He didn't need them all at once for starters, so he bought only water balloons, and later he will come back for the other stuff. After a bit of searching around, he couldn't find anyone selling this many of them at once, so he bought the entire stock of one shop, then moved on to the next, until he had the required amount.
He filled his bag and a few buckets full of these water balloons and made his way out of the village, back to his permanent camp. There he summoned as many clones as water balloons there were, and started the training. He had to circulate his chakra inside the balloon so fast that it pops. That was it for the first step. Also, he had to circulate it in a specific direction, some bullshit the Naruto Series came up with. Apparently you have to know which rotation type you are so as to not work against your natural rotation, and Naruto's rotation type is to the right.
*Training the Rasengan, even though its an A rank ninjutsu, it could be considered the easiest of those, as even some mentally challenged like Naruto could learn it in around two weeks in the series. Well he learned the shadow clone technique in an afternoon, so who knows. Lets just get this rolling.*
And the rolling really started. To make things efficient every clone would disperse every 10 minutes, then resummoned, as 100 times 10 minutes is... a lot of hours. In a few cycles Dix should be able to learn the basics.
It happened like he said it would, it took 4 cycles for every single balloon to burst. Now he could move on to the next exercise. He rushed back to Konoha and bought all the rubber balls he found. With around 100 balls he rushed back to the camp to continue the training. Now he had to properly burst the ball the same way he did with the water balloon, but now it was empty and the shell was harder, so he had to add sufficient power into it.
Using the same schedule this one took quite some time. Most of the time the balls, instead of bursting, somehow got pierced and the air left them trough the small hole, so soon they ran out of balls. Dix made a clone rush back to the village to buy more, while the original stayed there and tried to recover as much of the expended chakra as possible.
In around half an hour everything was set to continue. After 36 cycles of training the second part was successful and many balls burst, even though not all of them. He was beat. This actually made him have some respect for Naruto, who managed to pull trough these hardships and learn the jutsu so fast. He spent a lot of time with this training, so he went home to get some rest.
The next day, after school and before going out to train he bought all the hand-sized balloons he found, without water this time. The last phase of the training was to contain the first two steps inside the balloon without bursting it. This was the hardest one, right before getting to it he remembered that Naruto used a shortcut to learning Rasengan, in the form of using two Narutos for one single jutsu. This made him lose the same respect he built up for him the last day. Dix was simply annoyed. Realizing this he knew he will need a constant flow of balloons between the training camp and the village.
Dix stayed behind to regenerate energy as fast as possible, as this training was quite energy consuming. He sent his clone to keep bringing balloons from the village, while every other clone kept working on the third step.
Hours later he had to stop even before the sun went down because at one time his clone came back with the news that here are no more balloons left in Konoha. This was shocking for him. He still felt like there is quite some way to go. But there is nothing he could do. He just had to suck it up and wait a few weeks till the shops get restocked.
Three weeks later when Dix saw that all the shops have been restocked he rushed out to the camp and started training once again. It was... it was boring. He needed two days to run out of balloons this time, and when that happened he was extremely angry and annoyed. He felt like he was on the verge of breakthrough, but he couldn't accurately check it if there is no balloon to test it on. He felt like he was playing Skyrim again. But there was nothing he could do, he had to wait. Now he only waited till any of the shops restocked, which happened in a week. Finally he was able to finish the training. On the last day of training he spent around 20 cycles worth of time. That was the exact time when none of the balloons moved anymore. That meant he finally mastered it.
For the first time he tried using the technique without any tool. In a matter of seconds the energy started condensing in his palms and he could see the chakra twirling like a whirlpool in every possible direction. Usually chakra is not visible, but this jutsu was so potent it was able to make chakra take form. It looked the same as in the anime, so nothing too exciting.
While he didn't have balls to practice the Rasengan he started learning wind release.
In general, every person's chakra has an affinity towards one of the five basic nature transformations. Affinity can at times be genetic, or at least common to a particular family. Most members of the Uchiha clan have an affinity towards the Fire nature. One's affinity can be determined using pieces of paper made from a special type of tree that is grown and fed with chakra. When this so-called 'Chakra Induction Paper' is exposed to even the slightest hint of chakra, it reacts according to the chakra's latent element. When it meets fire the paper will ignite and turn to ash. In case of wind the paper will split in two. With lightning the paper will wrinkle. When it meets earth the paper will turn to dirt and crumble away. Water chakra makes the paper become wet/damp.
Shinobi have an easier time learning to create and control a chakra nature that matches their affinity, although even then it may take a number of years. Shinobi are not limited to the nature they have an affinity for, and it is in fact common for jonin to have mastered two natures. Although it is technically possible to master all five natures, it is very rare because of how much of training is involved. And that last point is what makes Dix excited. The one thing he was the best at is getting a really long lasting training done in the shortest amount of time. We could say he is a professional speedrunner.
He knew he had enough chakra and time to properly learn every single element before graduating from the Academy. He will need a few weeks for wind release, as Naruto had an affinity with that, which means he has that as well. Other then that he will be able to finish most elements in a month or two. This would be a huge power up for him, as nobody expects a 12 year old to have masterful control over every single damn element. Except of Yin and Yang. He doesn't know much about those, so he will need someone to teach him.