6 6 Tenten

Getting music lessons was easier than Naruto thought.

He'd show up disguised as the Uchiha, and they'd fall all over themselves to show him around, let him 'test' various instruments, and even give him a complimentary lesson or two, usually lasting for a couple of hours of decent quality instruction.

It was sickening, absolutely revolting, favoritism of the worst sort, and still for all of that a very useful loophole for the poor boy to exploit. And he did not need more than a free lesson or two, given that he was in an endless loop of recycling days, one free lesson became an infinite number of them.

The music teachers didn't even question as his skill began to rise, assuming it was the rightful privilege of the Last Uchiha to know everything.

Well, that was a useful weakness he could exploit in other ways, too.

Naruto would be the first to admit that he had no martial arts at all. He had no style, no finesse, and absolutely no understanding beyond the two-year old "charge the guy and hit him" mindset.

Heck, in one of the recent visits to the Inuzuka family clinic, helping out after having 'lost' a bet, he'd gotten into an argument with Kiba about being weak, where the dog-user had frankly told him that it didn't matter that Naruto knew the Shadow Clone, "Because a thousand times nothing is still nothing!"

And, well, in all honesty the blond couldn't deny the truth of his friend's statement.

What could you expect after years of teachers who would always arrange to send him to the principal, out on bucket duty, scrubbing erasers or otherwise getting him out of the way while the rest of the class practiced their martial arts and weapon techniques?

Iruka had put a stop to that, but by then the damage had already been done, and Naruto, having none of the basics, had tried to compensate by sheer enthusiasm and bloody minded determination, as he had in so many other areas of his life.

Well, now Naruto knew better than anyone that guts and determination didn't make up for having no real skill. And really, he'd already sent thousands of untrained clones up against trained fighters only to have them evaporate like soap bubbles before the skilled guy.

No, all he could really do was waste a skilled fighter's time. Even with all of his basic ninja techniques fully mastered, thanks to Ebisu, all he could really do was waste more of the guy's time. He wasn't presenting any danger to the enemy ninja he fought, even when he fought for real.

It was depressing, but another thing Naruto had learned was that you could not correct a situation until you accepted what it really was, no matter how much you might not want to face it.

And being nothing more than a punching bag on a battlefield was something he felt had to be corrected, and soon!

Taking a hit wasn't so serious a weakness for most people using the Shadow Clone, because taking a hit in combat was usually a Very Bad Thing. Getting a kunai stuck in your chest was a big deal, whether or not you were a clone. So most fighters could go a long time before taking a hit at all. They'd learned to avoid it. It was an integral part of knowing how to fight well.

But Naruto didn't know how to fight at all, not with any style, anyway. He'd always plowed forward, shrugging off hits and damage to go smack his enemy. No wonder his clones didn't last long!

So he began a plan of attending sets of drills where he practiced with some Academy students while under a Transformation disguise as they got taught basic combat techniques at classes Naruto had somehow never been invited to. All he had to know was who was out sick that day and hadn't bothered to tell anyone - even if he had to arrange the sick day by tying up the students in question himself.

First off he did this with the poorest students in the lowest grades, that way his own ignorance did not stand out at all. Then, as he gained some degree of competence he replaced better and better, and older and older pupils.

After he'd done that enough to have a decent grasp of the basics, he would use disguises to impersonate top students and approach teachers for special one-on-one training.

It embarrassed him that one of those top students was Konohamaru. But the kid had been having personal instruction under Ebisu for years. Actually, on that note he deliberately sought out Ebisu disguised as Konohamaru a few times to help get a handle on the basics, because if there was one thing he had learned it was that Ebisu taught basics relentlessly and well. Although he got a little ashamed at how surprised and pleased the special jonin got that his prize pupil Konohamaru was listening intently for once.

That embarrassment behind him, he sought out Iruka as himself for similar treatment. It shocked the chunin how much his former pupil had improved, so Naruto told him he'd been seeking private lessons, which, in a way, was true.

But even so, there was only so much those two would teach him while still believing he was the person he was passing himself off as (even himself).

Still, even after months wherein he'd exhausted all of what the ninja academy could do to teach about armed and unarmed fighting, that still only brought him up to where a genin should be. Hey, it was miles above where he'd been before, and it was a top-notch rookie genin he'd ended up impersonating at the end, the best in the academy, so that's where his skill level topped out as that was where he'd exhausted this opportunity for instruction.

But that skill level still wasn't going to make much of a difference against the sort of things he'd been having to fight against.

In fact, just to see, he tried his new skills out on Orochimaru, and the Snake Sannin didn't even notice the change. Even the charge of a thousand skilled genin did not phase him any more than the previous charges of a thousand unskilled berserkers. Either way he'd cut them down like grass.

But that wasn't the point.

No, the point of this whole exercise was still on exploiting what the generous townspeople would give to the Uchiha, usually without question, and glad for the opportunity to do so.

And, well, no one who was capable of teaching fighting arts would believe that Sasuke wasn't already a skilled genin. So, now HAVING the fighting skills a proper genin should, and that Sasuke had been using months ago, Naruto was in a position to approach instructors and ask for training.

It was sickening how easily he got it, too.

However, just as he was on the cusp of great success he hit a wall and his hopes came crashing down on him. Because the really good instructors noticed something that the ones at the academy never did - Naruto had never internalized those lessons in the way a good fighter had to.

Fighting was a very physical art. In order to be good at it, the body itself had to know what it was doing. But due to the endless repeats, nothing physical stayed with him. He couldn't condition his body, nor could he train reflexes.

And that was a problem, because the body needed know what it was going to do. Naruto had trained his mind until it did, until it knew it very well, but that wasn't good enough. At that level he was still thinking about what he had to do to get it right. No, to be good at a physical skill like martial arts required the body itself to have conditioned reflexes so the mind didn't have to think about every step and motion along the way.

You'd never get any real speed or free up the mind to think tactically until the complex motions of the actual forms, the stances, punches, blocks and so on, were automatic.

The really good instructors wouldn't touch him until he had that, no matter who's face and form he wore, or how perfect the disguise was. They could tell the moment they started teaching him that he was missing that basic and essential element. And even the good ones who stuck with him after that discovery would think only of how to teach it to him.

That meant practice, practice, practice, endlessly repeating the proper forms. Only, in Naruto's case, after a reset his muscles wouldn't recall a bit of it. He wasn't sore or tired, but his muscles wouldn't retain the benefit either. And sadly, without that, he was as good as he was going to get, at least as far as the fighting arts were concerned. He wasn't even half as good as he could have been at the same level of knowledge, if only he'd been able to practice in ways that could effectively train his body.

In fact one of those teachers told him straight out that he'd be twice as good as he was now, using only what he already knew, if only his body knew it all as well as his mind did. The teacher had been trying to encourage him, as twice as good as the top academy student (whom he'd been impersonating to get his instruction of late) was almost as good as a rookie chunin ought to be, which would put him in the ballpark of where he wanted to be, because he was still taking that test.

But instead of encourage him, it ended up having the opposite effect.

Naruto had been basing so many hopes on his infinite ability to achieve, using repeats to improve and get better, overcoming all of his former problems and become a better ninja, that to run into a barrier he couldn't cross, on something so basic and fundamental to all of his goals, was difficult not to be shattered by. It was made especially bad by the fact that he'd always fancied himself a close combat ninja, one who'd go right in there and mix it up with an enemy, and his main strategy and primary technique all reflected this.

Then to be faced with this, having hit an uncrossable ceiling on his martial arts talents just when he was beginning to feel he could be good at it, and the sure knowledge that if he wanted to improve further he'd have to abandon further progress on that one path and reinvent himself as a ninja.

It was a crushing blow to his self esteem, and merited a Hinata day or two back to back just to recover from the hurt of it. Even so, he'd had to cry a bit before he could get over it and accept his new handicap.

By the time he'd hit the same limit on his musical studies he was almost resigned to it, having somewhat expected it. But it still hurt. So he still took a week off of any serious training to have a prank vacation to make up for it.

Luckily, he could still learn chakra techniques and ninja powers, as those didn't seem to be hurt by a lack of body memory.

I I I

Naruto had real trouble reinventing himself. It was not that he couldn't think of other types of ninja, but that he'd always been aiming to be Hokage, and a Kage level ninja couldn't afford any major weaknesses.

Weaknesses like, oh, having genin-level martial arts.

Still, he didn't give up hope that he could improve them eventually. It just wasn't going to happen during this time loop thingy. After that, he could go forward with his original plans to impersonate Sasuke to get people to teach him. He'd just have to be more careful not to get caught doing it, as he didn't want to be a Kage-level MISSING ninja!

No, okay, that was sounding too risky. Maybe he could somehow arrange to find a person who was willing to teach him despite being a demon container. That would prove better in the long run.

But that was getting distracted from his immediate goals. A Hokage had to be strong in many areas, and martial arts was only one. He could and would deal with that later. For right now, there were plenty of other weaknesses he could be working on improving with the opportunities at hand.

For example, there were ninja medics, ninja who focused on special moves or secret powers, elemental wielders and even illusion specialists.

Getting people to teach him cool special moves had been a goal all along, and it hadn't been turning up much. So it seemed best to look to other areas, at least until something opened up.

Other than the basic Clone technique, Naruto knew next to nothing about illusions, except what Ebisu had said about his Transformation not having those same vulnerabilities.

He knew that they required power (something he had a lot of), imagination (another area in which he was gifted) and skill. Well, of the lot, the only area he wasn't already well supplied in was skill, and that could be remedied. The only thing now was some instructions to follow, and he could get started.

And, it just so happened that one of those people the Hokage was regularly sending him off to learn under was Kurenai, who was an illusion specialist.

Feeling buoyed up by this new hope, Naruto bounced up out of bed and set off to go see Kurenai.

I I I

Holding a letter from the Hokage in her hands, the illusion mistress was speaking in a somewhat resigned tone of voice. "The problem, Uzumaki, is that not everyone can learn to use illusions, certainly not the higher ranking ones. You need a good imagination, which I'm sure you have, but also good chakra control, which I'm just as sure you don't."

The boy took a deep breath and responded reasonably, "Are you sure you can't give me some test? I've got the basic Clone fully mastered, and without the use of seals. I'm willing to work hard," he pled.

The jonin sighed. She hated giving kids bad news, but this one practically pled for it. "Okay, show me your Clone."

He did, and she was impressed. It appeared before she'd even finished asking and the kid HADN'T used any handseals to do it! The tiniest wisp of smoke was the only sign of its appearance, and without that she would've suspected the kid of having already hid a Clone around a corner just waiting for her to ask before bringing it out.

"I'm... impressed." She nodded her head. "That's as good a clone as I've ever found. The problem is all of the other illusions are at least a full rank higher. How good is your chakra control, really?"

"Above average!" he told her earnestly, leaving out the 'barely' part of that Ebisu had tacked on when he'd told him his grade, because when he did tack it on she'd turn him down based on that.

Of course, he'd been about as low on control as you could get before the whole time loop thing, and since she didn't know about the loops, but HAD heard about his abysmal control through the jonin grapevine, she didn't believe what he'd said, thinking he was just trying to butter her up.

"Show me," she told him straight out.

"How?" he pled, and when she began to look at him askance he blurted, "The leaf floating exercise? Sure! No problem. I can do wall and water walking too, if you want me to!"

Plainly doubtful, she motioned for him to continue, and so he took a fresh leaf out of his pouch before causing it to hover above his forehead, where he held it with only minor spins or wobbles.

It was good, but not good enough.

Kurenai was a little surprised. "You were right. You do have above average chakra control, if only barely." She didn't see him hide his wince as she stood up. "But when I said good control I meant it. Sorry, Uzumaki, but I really do need a student to have good control, or I'd just be wasting my time."

"Waste one hour? Just one hour?" He pled with her again, this time clasping his hands together and dropping to his knees, making the jonin feel terrible about it as she shook her head and departed, leaving Naruto alone.

The boy sighed, dropping his pose and feeling depressed.

This conversation had been the product of numerous repeats where he'd been trying to convince her and learning how to play her reactions to gain the best of all possible chances. Not even showing her his unique Transformation helped, as she was able to pick it out as 'not an illusion' right off the bat, and she was only going to qualify him based on illusions, or better chakra control than he had. He'd asked for less time before but the illusion mistress had said she couldn't give a complete lesson in less than an hour.

So, maybe illusions would have to wait a while?

There were also, he reflected, seals. And one of the greatest known masters of that specialty was in Konoha right now, peeping on bath houses. But since Jiraiya would not teach him anything else, he doubted he'd teach him that.

Sigh.

Back to Ebisu for more chakra control, he figured. Since it was still early in the day, and he'd passed the written test (the only times he got a note to see Hinata's teacher from the Hokage were when he'd passed the written test), it would be another two-day wait before he could see the special jonin again if he went by the ordinary schedule.

Not wanting to delay that long, Naruto forged a note to Ebisu from the Hokage. He'd seen it often enough to be able to copy it with his eyes closed. It would get caught later, not having any of the proper security seals, but it could have nonfunctional copies written on, and by the time they caught it he'd have already reset anyway.

I I I

Naruto had been meeting with Ebisu far less often of late. It wasn't that he didn't want to know what the special jonin had to teach him, but that most of the things he taught were ones he'd learned already. The same pointers and exercises to perfect one technique were often the same ones he'd taught him to perfect another.

So, really, he didn't have to visit him as often to get the same value.

What Naruto would do was practice on his own during normal hours of his daily schedule while busy doing other things, checking in periodically with the teaching specialist to make sure he was on the right path. But really, he'd gotten good enough at teaching himself that only rarely did the special jonin have something to say that contradicted what he'd already been doing.

So, it saved time and was less frustrating to go through the exercises and drills and stuff for perfecting his techniques on his own.

Still, it was an old and tired routine even so, showing up and going through the motions of the tests Ebisu gave him, turning this way, then that, lifting one leg, and assuming martial arts stances (which were now substantially improved over what he'd originally done, but that only served to remind him of that barrier he couldn't cross, and irritate him further).

"Very well, tell me what techniques you already know."

Naruto sighed, beginning again the litany. "My basic three are fully mastered, seal-less and almost traceless. Body Flicker likewise. I also know the Shadow Clone, and two unique distraction techniques of my own devising, but you already know about those," the boy finished with a knowing grin.

Ebisu coughed and adjusted his glasses, attempting to master a slight blush. "Yes, well..."

Naruto smiled, that jibe was intentional, and had often saved him from an hour of tests as his teacher made him prove those claims. It also saved him from having to reveal his Transformation was an S-rank solid variant rather than the usual illusionary one.

Apparently deciding something, the teacher casually pulled a scroll out of his pouch and tossed it to him. "Here, that is a treatise on basic elemental tips and chakra control exercises. Why don't you practice that for a while?"

As the special jonin walked off, leaving him, Naruto's face was screwed up in agony and his fists were clenched tightly over the scroll.

'You mean this guy had that with him THE ENTIRE TIME!' It was all he could do not to follow after Ebisu and hit the guy!

Mastering his ire, the boy sat down to memorize that scroll, not just read it, but completely commit the contents to memory so he didn't have to do the whole routine with Ebisu to see it again.

His memory had been substantially improved by his time stuck in all of these repeating days, and it had gotten better faster once he'd unlocked some of his mental power after he'd begun to really read. But, bless the library, there had been a few books in there on enhancing memory.

It was a shinobi village, after all, and they often had need to remember things without writing them down.

So he put himself to work memorizing that scroll, and would call himself done only once he could copy it out by hand from memory.

After that, he'd start to work on those things it described.

He fell asleep in the forest while still studying that scroll.

I I I

For the second time in his life, Naruto opened his eyes to a person bending over him, after having slept all night in a forest, exhausted from too much training.

"Hi, you know it isn't safe to be out here all night. There are bears and things in these forests."

Groaning, Naruto sat up, looking at who'd addressed him. "Tenten, right? On the same team as Neji and Rock Lee?"

The girl was surprised. "Yeah! How'd you know?"

"I make a point of learning about those around me, particularly those who might be stronger than me. It's a good ninja strategy." He waved airily.

The girl laughed, tilting her head to say, "Sorry, but you don't look like a very good ninja, with that grass and leaves in your hair." Tactfully, she didn't state that his reputation as a dead-last was well known around the village, spread by people crowing in delight over how weak he was.

That's okay, he knew it too.

"I thought the point of being a ninja was deception?" the boy shot back with a wide, friendly grin, running fingers through his hair to get the leaves out.

The girl thought about it and conceded, "Okay, what do you know about me?"

The boy shrugged, and sat there, thinking. "Well, obviously I know about your team and jonin instructor, but that's not so much about you, is it? You hang out with Neji a lot and train alongside him because neither of you want to train at the pace that Lee or your instructor set. You specialize in weaponry, and your teacher says that you can hit a bullseye a hundred out of a hundred times. Most of your weapons you summon from scrolls you carry with you, and your most powerful technique is your Rising Twin Dragons, where you jump up high summoning dozens of weapons out of two scrolls which you throw in a really fast barrage at your target."

By now the female genin was surprised. That kid really did know some stuff about her! But Naruto wasn't finished.

He was scratching his head. "Some girls around town say you have a crush on Neji, but don't think he returns it. You want to prove that female ninja can be as strong as males ones, and you admire Tsunade, the Slug Sannin."

"Wow! You really DO know a lot about me!" The girl was impressed, and trying hard to hide both her blush at the crush thing, and her disappointment that her peers felt she wasn't getting through to the Hyuga boy.

Reading her face expertly, Naruto felt a little ashamed and tried to soften the blow. "Don't worry too much about the Neji thing. The guy can be a bit of a pain, but he's really unhappy himself. The Hyuga family have this big thing where the main house are rulers over the branch house, who they treat like slaves. They even put a brand on their forehead, a seal that can kill them if they disobey. Neji's father was the twin of the clan head, but because he was born a few seconds later he got stuck in the branch house. He resents Hinata because he doesn't think she is strong enough to be in the main house. And then his dad got sacrificed to save the life of his twin, who is her father. So, yeah, he's got issues."

He tried to finish off with a merry chuckle, but it came out sounding nervous.

Tenten's eyes were wide. How did he know all this? She'd been a teammate of Neji's for over a year now and never heard any of this!

"I'm... kinda dating Hinata right now," Naruto concluded lamely to cover the question he could see in her eyes. "The whole thing upsets her."

Concluding that he had to be right, girls WERE more talkative than boys, the girl relaxed, then changed the subject. "So what are you doing out here all alone?"

Happy to be back on a safe topic, and deciding he could even tell the truth, Naruto held up the scroll he'd been studying. "Oh, training to be a better ninja! I don't have many techniques, and this was supposed to help me! I guess I got so tired reading it that I fell asleep! Hehehe."

She smiled at him.