77 Return to Konoha

The next two days Team Ten spent in the capital passed slowly. What was meant to be a vacation quickly became dull, because really, what else was there to sightsee in a city? Given that chakra usage was restricted, the genin could not even train less they were fined by the city guard.

Asuma spent day two away from the team visiting and catching up with his old colleagues, leaving us to our own devices. Though the man had claimed this to be a vacation, I figured he thought of it more as a chance to catch up with his old friends.

I spent the day with my teammates, exploring the city, looking to find some way to stave off my boredom with limited success. Hinata had bashfully called it a date, which I was thought was a weird way to label an outing with all three members of our genin team.

I had heard whispers of an underground colosseum, sponsored by the Kizoku, where warriors fought for the entertainment of the audience who were mainly nobility. Or of a black market auction operated by the Yakuza that occurred once a year which received the patronage of the Kizoku.

However, these were only rumors and hearsay, which even if they were true, I was not qualified to be invited to them. It struck me as odd that the supposedly all-knowing and omniscient God's Eye Kurono failed to prevent these illicit activities, but thinking about it more, it was probably because the nobility willed it to be so that the city guard left them alone.

Our stay in Yoshiro's residence also went by smoothly and without any unexpected incidences. The subsequent assassination attempts the merchant had been so worried about failed to come to pass, so our protective services were not needed.

After my last encounter with Shin, or rather, Shinnosuke, the third prince of the Land of Fire, I never saw him again. I had assumed that the prince might have had an unhealthy amount of interest in me, which on hindsight could have been a mistaken presumption I supposed but seeing that the man did not come looking for me, I was proven wrong.

I couldn't tell if I was disappointed or not. On one hand, being friendly with someone as influential and as distinguished as a prince was a tempting proposition. But on the other hand, it was far too early for me to be rubbing shoulders with such people of such powerful personage.

If it were the me back in my previous life, I would have dived right in without a concern for being involved in something I couldn't handle. Plots and traps were rebuffed with ease with the power of the almighty dollar. A billion of them to be precise.

Now, however, caution dictated my every move. The Gamer system I received from the Random Omnipotent Being was, to say the least, overpowered yes. But I was still far too lacking to be risking premature discovery of this gift. Until I was able to hold my own against the myriad of life-threatening villains, I was not willing to endanger myself by put myself in the crosshairs of the dangerous characters in this world. Characters like Shinnosuke, for instance, who could presumably wield the power and authority of an entire nation.

It was now our last day in the Capital and we exited the city gates without any fanfare, making our back to Konoha. Though unlike our slow, civilian pace we moved at previously, we would be progressing at the speed of how shinobi usually travelled, i.e. running through treetops.

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Sasuke leaned back, avoiding a chop from Kakashi that was seen through with his Sharingan, and swung his fist back as a counter. The copy eye jounin parried the blow half heartedly before his leg flew to the side, landing swiftly on to a Naruto clone, dispersing it.

However, the blonde truly embodied the saying, 'cut off one head and two grows back', as a couple more clones took the place of the one that was destroyed, continuing their assault on the man.

The Uchiha hung back, content to catch his breath while watching his teammates' clones bombard their sensei with sheer numbers.

As difficult as it was for Sasuke to admit it, but ever since Shinji had taught Naruto about the kage bunshin training method, the blonde had grown leaps and bounds in terms of fighting ability.

His greatest weakness which had been a lacking foundation of the basics in all forms of the shinobi arts, was shored up within a month of training. Sasuke could hardly believe his eyes watching what amounted to years of training condensed into a single month, the result of Naruto's generous exploitation of the kage bunshin's memory transference feature.

Sasuke could often times see the improvement happening in front of his very own eyes. Chakra control, taijutsu forms, shurikenjutsu and more. All of them were drastically improving day after day.

Naruto might have been a mess of a shinobi when he graduated, but just a month later, he was quickly resembling what someone that could be comfortably recognized as an average genin capabilities wise. A far cry from Sasuke's previous assessment of him a month ago.

The Uchiha similarly trained with a kage bunshin to maximize his training speed as well. However, unlike the monstrous blonde who could easily summon a hundred clones with chakra to spare, Sasuke could barely function after just forming three clones. Which was why he was limited to just creating one or at most two for training purposes.

It was abnormal, Sasuke concluded. The difference between Naruto's chakra reserve and his own was massive to say the least. He knew that some people were naturally gifted when it came to chakra capacity, like Shinji for example. But even his prodigious cousin could not compare to the deadlast when it came to just how much chakra Naruto had in him. Definitely abnormal.

That was not the only abnormality Sasuke had observed. It wasn't obvious when they were in the Shinobi Academy, but after spending some time training together as a team, Sasuke quickly realized that Naruto recovered extremely quickly. Abnormally quickly. Small cuts and bruises would disappear by themselves after just a few minutes of rest, and the deadlast didn't even seem surprised by such a phenomena.

A vast chakra capacity, fast regeneration rate and seemingly endless stamina. These were the peculiarities Sasuke had observed after a month of training with the blonde. And he wasn't the only one.

His other teammate, the Nara, was the first to have remarked upon the strangeness of Naruto's physique, secretly and between themselves. He had commented that it was something he had noticed before in the academy, but only after training together with the blonde for a prolonged period of time did he likewise realize it was abnormal to such a large extent.

Shikamaru had enigmatically mentioned that he might have a theory to the reasons behind the Naruto's weird constitution but refused to explain himself even upon Sasuke pressing for answers. Useless.

At least his Sharingan training was going well. Sure, at first when he found out Kakashi had a surgically implanted Sharingan eye under his forehead protector, his first reaction was one of shock, disgust, anger and sadness. But, after the initial disturbance, Sasuke calmed down when Kakashi explained parts of how he got the eye in the first place.

After reluctantly and unwillingly accepting the explanation, Sasuke received training on how to use his Sharingan eye on a deeper level than he had once achieved.

Although Shinji was a good teacher, the Rookie of the Year never went through proper Uchiha training himself, so there was no way he could grasp all the nuances and subtleties of pushing their bloodline ability to the max. Kakashi on the other hand had a decade to figure it out.

Sasuke might not be willing to accept Kakashi as a legitimate user of the Sharingan eye, but he wasn't foolish enough to deny an opportunity when he saw one. He accepted the offer, an order really, to be taught by Kakashi, and transferred that knowledge to Shinji whenever they were alone together.

Speaking of whom, while Team Ten was out on their very first C-ranked mission, Sasuke could only look towards the horizon in the direction of the Capital in envy. Yet at the same time he understood that of all the newly graduated genin, Shinji was definitely the one most deserving of such prestige.

Furthermore when they compared teams, the Hyuuga and Aburame was relatively competent in their own rights whereas his own teammates were… a deadlast who was improving but still lacking and a lazy idler who would rather sleep than train.

The inter-team training sessions Shinji had organized revealed to Sasuke that his team could at times shine brighter than what their usually dull glow would expose, but the problem was that those moments were few and far between. What held them back was, as Kakashi had put it, a lack of teamwork and cohesion which would only come with practice. Or at least that was what the jounin claimed it to be. Which was why their regular team trainings would involve teamwork exercises that was essentially a 1v3 battle mixed in with individual 1 on 1 tutoring.

Sasuke had burned Shinji's words spoken that day into his mind. Step 1, prepare, which he interpreted as developing personal strength. That was a mission in progress and would likely be awhile before he would achieve a satisfactory level of strength. Step 2, gather comrades. His first choice was of course, Shinji, perhaps the only other person in the world who could relate to Sasuke's circumstances. Now, he was looking at Naruto and Shikamaru as possible allies in his hunt for Itachi.

Naruto growing stronger was good news in Sasuke's eyes. The Uchiha wasn't insecure enough to admit that he would need help to kill his brother, and at the rate Naruto was improving, he would very likely be of assistance when it came down to it. Shikamaru had been showing a real flair for strategy, undoubtedly useful for step 3 and 4 – conduct reconnaissance and prepare an ambush respectively.

Most of their team's tactics was decided by Shikamaru, who Sasuke had to admit was simply better at such matters. Once again, he was reminded that it was unlikely he would be able to do everything himself, as much as he wanted to. Specializations existed for a reason; he was big enough to admit that he wasn't perfect at everything – precisely the reason why step 2 was so crucial in his plans.

"You're distracted."

A voice broke him out of his thoughts, and he paid for his negligence as a foot slammed into the side of his face and launched him a distance away.

Kakashi withdrew his leg and turned to fend off the rest of the Naruto clones he had left behind to strike at the unfocused Uchiha.

"Tsk, seriously, just follow the plan." Shikamaru muttered to himself, berating the inattentive Uchiha who was supposed to jump in after Naruto had distracted Kakashi for awhile to land a solid hit on the jounin, which was their assigned goal for today's training.

Their jounin squad leader had set a rule when they first started training as a team. So long as the team could achieve the goal Kakashi had set for them that day, they would be dismissed early to do whatever they wanted. It was a clever way to motivate the lazy Nara, and it worked. Shikamaru just needed to make sure the goal was achieved as quickly as possible so that he could skive the rest of the day. And he succeeded, sometimes.

Said goal usually changed every few days, from having to land a solid blow on Kakashi like today or even something as weird as being sent to take pictures within the women's side of the hot springs from ten different angles – 'stealth training' Kakashi had called it. There were many things Shikamaru would do for the chance to shirk tedious things like training or missions, but he was not willing to be sent to the hospital by irate kunoichi just to be lazy.

"Oi, what are you guys doing!?" Naruto yelled out, watching his clones get decimated by Kakashi before forming his trademark hand seal and creating more to replace the fallen kage bunshin. The newly created clones rushed forward in a coordinated manner, each one throwing out punches or kicks targeting different weak spots.

Someone who had seen the way Naruto used his clones previously would be surprised at how organized they were now as compared to a month ago.

With better chakra control as a result of multiplying the efficiency of the leaf concentration exercise by a hundred times using clones, Naruto was able to create 1.5 times the number of clones as before using the same amount of chakra.

Going through proper taijutsu katas and searing them into his memories using, once again, a hundred clones, allowed Naruto to use his clones more efficiently, allowing each blow to land with more accuracy and greater impact than before.

Increasing his proficiency with the regular illusionary bunshin technique subsequently added greater unpredictability to his fighting style when fighting en masse. Turns out, the secret to 'fixing' his problem with the regular bunshin technique was to not limit himself with creating just one clone like he was always trying to do. Instead, he used the same amount of chakra to create as many as he could.

And when his shadow clones themselves performed the bunshin technique to create illusionary clones, it created a battlefield where a sea of orange and yellow would swarm an enemy, who would find it extremely difficult to distinguish between what was real and what wasn't.

It was a strategy Shikamaru had crafted for him. Though he didn't really understand what he meant until Naruto saw how effective it was with his own eyes. Imagine a thousand Naruto clones barraging an enemy, but only a hundred of which were solid shadow clones while the rest of were illusionary intangible clone.

Send a few regular bunshin to attack an enemy first, and when they let their guard down thinking they were all normal, intangible clones, attack with a solid kage bunshin. They would then be tricked into thinking that shadow clone was the original, only to be ambushed by more solid shadow clones who they had mistakenly assumed to be incorporeal clones. It was an attack on both the body and the mind, Shikamaru had claimed.

It had proven to be ineffective against Kakashi, but only because the man was an elite jounin and ex-ANBU captain who could see through such a cheap trick at a glance. Against others less experience, however, it had the potential to frustrate them to death trying to see through the authenticity of a thousand clones at once.