In the end, Naruto becomes a genin at twelve, like most of his class.
Well, reserve genin. Which mostly meant getting the chance to do lower-ranked missions and possibly being sent to the frontline if a war ever broke again.
Today, he got a job as a laborer on a construction site. It could have been decent, if not for the token crazy guy who wouldn't calm down about the dangers of a worksite, yada, yada.
Honestly, shuriken practice around the academy second years had been way more dangerous.
But this guy, who had, according to his endless bluster, been working in the field for more than thirty years, kept telling him how dangerous and corrosive cement was.
It probably had to do his poker face, too, he figured, but the man decided to do a demonstration.
Konoha was very hot in the summer.
The man stuck his sweaty arm up to the shoulder in dry cement. And then spent the whole day working with his arm covered in lime to show him just how much damage it could do to your skin.
After a few hours, Naruto could tell he was getting very itchy.
When Naruto came back the next day to wrap up his contract, the older man came to work with rubber gloves on, his hands duct taped.
"I swear, Sakura-san! I was giggling like Ami anytime I heard his hands squish!"
He was meeting Sakura for lunch. She laughed while slurping her noodles, in the careless way she did when she didn't feel the need to pretend to be polite.
Ino was put on a team with Shikamaru and Chōji, with Asuma as her teacher, to no one's surprise.
Sakura was put on a team with Sasuke and Toru, both from the Uchiha clan.
"Wait, so Sasuke and Toru are definitely not the same person, then, right?" He asked her.
She threw him a weird look. "Of course not, why would they be?"
"Uh. Nah, never mind, I just thought… They kinda look the same you know?" He said sheepishly.
Sakura huffed. "That's kinda offensive, not all Uchiha look alike."
"That's not what I said though, just them."
"They're cousins, Toru has a half-brother who's a very strong Jōnin, actually." She explained. "But Shisui-san is very busy, so Toru was a bit disappointed. Kurenai-sensei is great though, she's almost as good at Genjutsu as Shisui-san is." She added quickly, never wanting to be caught talking down her own teacher.
Naruto's mind tended to glaze over when he heard anything about Genjutsu, so he just nodded.
Fūinjutsu practice was hard enough, so he had managed to convince Sarutobi-sama that even as a generalist, studying Genjutsu on top of everything else was going to be too much.
The old man had agreed, on the condition that he made sure to clean the dojo floorboards twice a week, which was a pain in the ass.
Oh, and that he'd still learn how to dispel them, which he'd test by trapping him in a few illusions, "from time to time."
Still beat having to practice Genjutsu.
For some reason, despite having decent chakra control, especially considering he apparently had reserves much larger than anybody else his age, the illusory arts had never agreed with him too much.
Fūinjutsu was pretty hard too, but he at least enjoyed working on it, and had a few projects he was currently working on.
If only he didn't keep getting distracted by the reserve corps thing. Speaking of…
"And how's the remedial training going, Naruto?"
"It's not remedial training."
"Whatever you want to call it, then." She held her tongue out, laughing. Everybody in their class knew that for whatever reason, he had thrown the last exam.
It had seemed like a brilliant idea at the time, too.
He sighed. "It's not great, but still better than the academy. I've got short lessons starting early in the morning for two hours and-"
"What sort?" Ever the academic.
"It's more practical, in general, I feel. I don't think Konoha wants to spend too much resources on us." He laughed, and she shook her head in consternation. For some reason, he seemed to find humor in the whole situation.
He continued. "Then they let us go for the rest of the morning and we're free to pick a mission or two for the day. Like the construction job today." He mimed bloody, duct taped hands, and she laughed, playfully swatting his shoulder. "Nothing more than D-rank, obviously."
"Eh? So you're always on your own?"
"Sure. I mean we can also team up if we want to, but the pay is split in three, then. It's rarely worth it for us, as contractors. We get paid a little less than regular Genin, too."
"D-ranks go from… 5,000 ryō to 50,000 for us, I think it was? I mean it's split between us and our sensei, of course, but it's not too bad overall."
"Yeah, it's about half that for us if we complete them alone, which takes a bit more time. So something like 2,500 ryō minimum."
"That's not bad at all! I mean, you can't do the job as fast as three people, but still…" She smiled.
He grunted in vague approval.
Not that he really enjoyed babysitting all that much, or all the odd jobs that took a few days at a time, but money was money. And he needed supplies for his projects.
They lapsed into comfortable silence, and he bid her goodbye as she left for her own mission, something about finding a lost cat.
He had some groceries to deliver, so he commiserated.
Something about what Sakura had said was stuck in his mind.
Morishige Daichi's punch in his face pulled him out of his reverie and set a teeth loose.
Damn, but he really couldn't focus in here. He absentmindedly parried the incoming elbow, dodged under his vertical kick and delivered three fast jabs in his chest.
Daichi folded and their chūnin overseer called the match.
If he was being honest with himself, this was a real waste of time, as he was ahead of them, when it came to fighting.
He had only made small improvements when it came to Lightning manipulation, but even without it, he was faster, and more enduring.
He lifted Daichi up, gave him a polite smile and half-listened as they moved on to meditation.
It was a practiced routine by now.
Then he left for an upscale inn he signed a mission for.
He thought it was going to be a decent job, at least; maybe he'd learn how to handle employee problems, the workings of the business and well… useful things.
They dressed him up in a pressed white shirt, jacked, and formal shoes.
And sent him to the backroom instead. Turned out the inn hadn't filed anything for the last year and they would hire a genin for cheap to do the filing for them.
Sweating over the files in the Konoha swelter sucked. Better than killing people, he mumbled to himself.
He got a month's worth of paper cuts in the week it took him to alphabetise all files.
It took him three more days to read over the sexual harassment complaints, the drunken idiocies and everything in between.
They must have loved the work he did, because they offered to take him on a permanent basis.
"-but we'd have to renegotiate the contract as we definitely can't afford to pay as much as your genin cut, but you'd get many other benefits and-"
Nah.
The only thing he got from this was a new found respect for housekeepers.
He politely refused and left.
He had three kids to babysit and a few dogs to get out before the sun set.
Damn it.
After a month and a half of this, he had saved up enough money to start living in a small but private apartment within the Sarutobi compound.
He was mostly alone anyways since the time he had been eight, Biwako being busy at the running the clan medical center most days, and he felt he was taking advantage of her kindness, so he moved out.
Well, five minutes away walking, less than a minute jumping on the rooftops.
Still, it was his own place.
The floor was covered in sealing supplies, books on chakra theory and ninjutsu.
Well, fantasy, romance novels as well, and a fair amount of comics, but the old man had always been preaching about balance in all things, so…
At six in the morning, bleary-eyed, as he was still not a morning person, he set out for the daily "training".
The chūnin yawned at them, asked them to start sparring, "or something." Then he pulled a tattered book out and started reading.
"Anything more specific?" Naruto grumbled back.
"Just do whatever you were supposed to learn at the academy, kid." He went back to his book.
Something snapped inside him.
He left without saying his goodbyes.
The chūnin lifted one eyebrow, and then continued reading.
"Old man! I can't bear this anymore!"
He had gone back to the compound, forsaking the mission office for the day.
"Oh?" Hiruzen looked at him upside down, as he was currently laying in his garden, lazing under the sun. "Bear what, exactly?"
Next to him, a monkey gave him the same unimpressed expression. The old man had taken to summoning them for more and more frivolous reasons, these days.
"Everything!"
"Don't get depressed on me, now." The Third reached for his pipe, which the monkey had tried to grab while he was distracted.
"You know exactly what I mean. The useless training, the endless stream of D-ranks."
"Well…" He tried to avoid smirking. "You kind of brought it upon yourself, what with the whole failing the exam thing…?"
Naruto harrumphed.
"Look, I got it. Now how do I get out of this?"
"Pass the test, become a genin."
"No way."
"Enjoy your D-ranks, then." He went back to eating the grapes one monkey was feeding him, uninterested.
Naruto hesitated.
Sarutobi opened an eye, sensing weakness.
"Teach me the Kage Bunshin. Please."
Huh. This was more interesting.
"Now… Why would I do this?" Hiruzen asked.
"I'll use it to complete missions more efficiently." He answered, hoping Sarutobi-sama wouldn't probe him. "And I'll also clean your office every week." He threw in the mix.
"Wouldn't this be encouraging some of your worst habits?" The old man was just provoking him. Naruto knew he had him.
"You do exactly the same to get out of work."
"Lies, and slander too. That's not really the way to convince a poor old man."
"Oh yeah, then why did I see you in the office when I came here?"
"I'm still faster than you, probably." Truth be told, there was a clone of his doing his work for him.
Well, there was no question Naruto had the reserves for it. Maybe he'd teach him a trick or two about the technique, too.
The boy was progressing fast, by any standards. And he had trained Orochimaru, so he knew a thing or two about outliers.
But was it fast enough for the kind of trouble that was likely to come his way, as his parents' son… and a Jinchūriki?
He wasn't about to force him to do more than this… yet. There would come a time he would need to be trained, but Naruto was already doing as much as he could without burning himself out, when it came to training.
And if the boy ever noticed that a few of the chakra theory, physical training scrolls he found on the floor of his room were written by Hiruzen's own hand…
Naruto never said anything.
He mulled the idea over, then stood up.
"What's my name?"
"Sarutobi-sensei."
"That will do."
"The best part of this… is that there really isn't much to teach."
"So it's just this one hand-seal…?"
"Yup. Well, a Tiger or Horse seal will do too, actually."
"What's the point of them, then?" Naruto asked, a bit dumbfounded.
Hiruzen shrugged. "It helps you focus, mostly. I don't always bother, but I know some people might need them."
Now this was a pretty open lie, as it was much, much easier to use at least some hand seals for jutsu.
But Naruto seemed to run a bit further when he gave him the adequate incentive. Mostly pride, really. It was kind of cute, watching him try to do the impossible just because he had said it was pretty easy to him.
It reminded him of Konohamaru, really.
Naruto grunted and put his hands in the shape of the Clone seal.
Hiruzen yawned, sat down in front of him. A perfect replica of the old man appeared seamlessly next to him, standing.
One moment he was one. The next he was two.
Naruto's nostrils flared.
The clone threw a book at his head. He didn't manage to dodge.
"...Aren't you supposed to be a ninja?"
He managed to learn the Kage Bunshin in a few hours, with the old man sporadically trying to distract him.
He had gotten the basics of the technique from him.
It was way better than what he had expected, too.
For most ninjas, the minimum amount a clone would take to form was a lot of chakra, which is why they would almost never bother making more than two. Three would likely drain too much chakra to be of any use, and four would probably mean a trip to the hospital.
For some reason, this didn't seem to apply to him.
You could put more or less chakra in a clone, and their durability would be directly correlated to the amount.
They likely wouldn't be very durable when it came to being hit, since this was affected more by the quality of the chakra you used to form the technique, according to Sarutobi-sensei.
Quality seemed to be a fancy word for something that derived from control, and it took experience.
For now, Naruto would settle for four clones for daily use.
Any more and the accumulated exhaustion they would feed back to him when they dispelled themselves would likely be too much to be sustainable long term.
And Hiruzen wasn't sure what prolonged use of the technique would do on a developing mind anyway, so he preferred to take it slow.
This also had the advantage of leaving Naruto with more than enough chakra to go through his day…
And for his clones to take care of menial work.
Like D-ranks.
Now, he needed to plan how to put this to good use.
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