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Over the past few months Naruto's life had turned around significantly. He'd gone from living in the orphanage where he was treated as trash to living in his own apartment, from being shunned or excluded from lessons to having personal tutors catching him up to beyond where he should have been, and he'd perfected splitting his focus so that he could also spend all day learning from the ghosts of his parents. Well, they claimed they weren't ghosts, but that was the best way he could describe them. But they weren't creepy-ghosts either.

Most of his lessons were in reading, writing, penmanship, and math. Using chakra would come later. His parents wanted him to only start using chakra once his living tutors thought he was ready, in case something went wrong. But he was also learning about money and cooking, as well as how to interpret what he could feel about people with Kurama's help. It was confusing for Naruto to figure out when someone felt bad in general compared to bad targeting him, but he'd been told that it would be very useful to know when someone might want to hurt him so he was working on it.

A week ago he'd even spent a day out in the village as 'Yoko' to see how differently he was treated when he looked nothing like himself. That had only worked because there was a secret exit from the apartment that those watching him from outside didn't know about, but his mother had told him how to use. It led to a small tunnel that came out in the nearby shrine, which Yoko might be cleaning up eventually, and it was weird how differently the villagers treated him. When he was out by himself he'd feel occasional spikes of negative emotions that...faded into something else? But while moving around as Yoko he was mostly ignored.

But today was the day he was starting the academy!

It had snowed a couple of days prior, and Naruto had almost forgotten to shapeshift his fox bits away before leaving the apartment. His mother reminded him in time though, as well as that he should put on his goggles that were a stand-in for when he'd eventually get a forehead protector, and he followed her directions to the academy because she knew a useful shortcut. At least until he got close, but then he felt a group of people with negative emotions nearby. He decided to investigate, and found a group of older boys picking on a younger girl with odd-looking eyes.

He'd intervened, but didn't really remember what happened because they'd knocked him out.

"I'm sorry," the girl apologized when he woke up a couple minutes later, fidgeting as he stood up.

"Why are you sorry?" Naruto asked, honestly confused. "They were picking on you."

"But you got hurt."

Naruto wasn't sure how it was her fault that he got hurt. "Where are they?"

"Er, they ran off when you stopped moving."

"Oh."

"How are you awake?"

Naruto scratched his head. "Should I be asleep?"

The girl tapped her fingers together nervously. "Father said that people don't wake up when hurt like that."

"Oh. Really?" Blinking, Naruto looked around. "What time is it?"

That startled the girl, and they both got up and hurried to the academy.

To Naruto's surprise, he ended up being in the same class as the girl he'd run into that morning, Hinata. She was the only 'clan kid' in their class, though his father said that he would count if people knew who his parents were as well. Their classmates were jerks that didn't like either of them though, and Naruto had no clue why. Well, beyond that most of them seemed to already know each other with him and Hinata as the only new ones.

The first week was spent going over basics, expectations, and what they should be doing as a minimal exercise routine. On the latter front, Hinata proved to be second only to Naruto in stamina when tested on the running track. During the week they were basically told that their first year at the academy was likely to be entirely book work and ensuring that they were physically fit enough to continue into next year where they'd start on using chakra, though they were going to get some throwing practice to prepare them for kunai and shuriken. Or to determine that they were hopeless.

Hinata and her older cousin Neji were both picked up by a 'branch member' every day, though which one varied. The branch members were friendly enough, but Neji was rude and dismissive of Hinata and indifferent to Naruto.

Over the months that followed Naruto learned a lot, but at the insistence of his parents never did perfectly on a test. Or even homework, and they even had him intentionally give the wrong answer in class at times. The only thing he was encouraged to never slack off on was his penmanship. That was 'too important to play games with' and he spent more time with them working on it than anything else.

His physical training was more limited. Stretches, strength exercises, running, climbing. He couldn't do a whole lot more, though they were hoping he could 'officially' learn to swim soon. There weren't many places to learn that right now that he could access on his own and none of his now-less-frequent tutors would bring him somewhere to learn, but he was doing well with it in the Tome world. Kurama also taught him how to move like a fox, though that was something else that couldn't be done in the real world right now.

At the end of the school year they dismissed over half of his class from the program entirely just before summer break and shuffled the rest, moving him and Hinata into different classes for the next session. They were disappointed, but planned to meet up to train with each other when they could. Which turned out to be sooner than expected, because a branch member of the Hyuga was tasked with working with him to help him 'unlock his chakra' and walk him through initial exercises with it.

"You have a decidedly odd chakra network," the woman, Reina Hyuga, said as she looked over Naruto. She then used a marker to draw spots on his hands and arms before she gave him a couple of leaves. "Despite the oddities, you don't look like you should have any problems with your chakra, but how you feel it will be a personal discovery. To get used to using it you should place a leaf on one of the spots that I marked, or on the center of your forehead. Then see if you can call up the energy flowing within you to hold it in place. Too little and it falls off, too much and it will be blown away. But first, hold out your left hand."

He did so, and the woman tapped his hand and arm on several of the points she'd marked, plus a couple of other spots. Naruto found that his arm suddenly felt incredibly weak, and something that he hadn't consciously known was there before wasn't flowing anymore. He didn't like how not having it flowing felt either.

"There," Reina said with a nod. "We Hyuga find that having your chakra cut off from your less dominant hand helps with learning what it feels like. That will wear off in a few hours if I don't undo it before then."

Knowing what chakra felt like and figuring out how to control it were two very different things, and even with his parents coaching him as well it took three days to figure out how to actually get some to leave one of the points he was told to work with. Hinata had tried to help him for the first two days, having been put through something similar years ago, but how she felt her chakra was too different to compare properly and she had to go back to training with her father. His first success had been like a small bomb going off, the initial burst of chakra damaging the ceiling in his apartment. It was a lot easier after that point, and he couldn't get it to come out like it had that first time. Hinata had figured it out after only two days, and was able to get the leaf to stick for a few seconds after four, but Naruto kept having the leaf go flying away.

The more important part of this was that the first step, even not accomplishing sticking the leaf, was enough for his parents to decide that he was ready for their own lessons in chakra. Or as they sometimes called it, magic, which was apparently a different way to use chakra. They actually taught him water-walking and had him practice in the bathtub to start with, his mother claiming that any true Uzumaki would start with water first and work their way down to leaves if they were dedicated enough.

Naruto was mostly bummed that practicing in the Tome's false world didn't quite work for this. He could stick a leaf perfectly there already!

On the 'magic' side, they started him with what they called 'Knight Armor', though they didn't know why it was called that. Just that it was, and it would replace his clothing with a magic set that could protect his entire body at once. He could practice that in the Tome world, and spent two weeks getting it down properly. Only to find out that he could actually use the Tome to help him cast it!

"Why did you tell me to cast it without the Tome's help?" Naruto asked after finding that out.

"Because the Tome is a tool," his father had answered. "One that could stop working, or be taken away from you. Anything you can do without it is something that an enemy will have that much more trouble taking away from you."

"While we can only hope that you're never parted from the Tome," his mother had continued. "We want to ensure that you aren't dependent on it, and the Knight Armor spell is too important to your safety to rely on having access to the Tome to cast it."

"But we don't want you using it when you're at the academy. Suddenly being incredibly difficult to hurt would be suspicious, and you'll learn more without it."

Naruto thought he understood. While an enemy could cut his fists and feet off, they were far more likely to catch him without weapons on him. Attacking him in the bath or something like that.

"You should give the spell a try for real now," his father continued. "Nobody is due to check up on you for a couple of hours, so now's a perfect time."

Nodding, Naruto shifted his focus to his real body. He'd been doing stretches, but switching to casting the spell only took a moment. It failed to cast properly four times before he got it correct, his clothing being replaced with a very generic shinobi outfit. He'd eventually figure out something better, but it was good enough for now.

"Very good," his mother said from inside of the Tome. "I'm curious though, would you try water-walking now?"

Not sure where that was going, he shrugged and filled the bathtub. Strangely, he found that it was easier to accomplish, and more so when the spell was removed.

"What happened?" he finally asked.

"Chakra and magic use the same energy," his father explained. "Learning to control it one way makes you more familiar with it in general, though I doubt that all lessons will help in both directions."

"I don't understand."

His mother sighed. "It's like using a muscle in different ways. You improve the muscle, but the different ways of using it affect it differently."

Oh. That was why he needed to do stretches and run and lift heavy things, so his chakra needed to be used in different ways too.

"We're going to start teaching you hand seals now," his father added. "One- and two-handed versions, but with any luck you'll be able to learn to not need them either."

"It's always fun to annoy an Uchiha by not needing hand seals to perform a jutsu," his mother agreed. "Not using the hand seals means they can't copy it."

Making it so that others couldn't copy his jutsu did sound like a good idea, though he hadn't understood the explanation of how they could copy them the last time they'd tried to explain that to him.

Danzo scowled as he read yet another report that failed to provide any hint of where the weapon actually was. Probably outside the village entirely, regularly visited by Jiraiya, but getting access to those reports was impossible as they were either delivered in person or via summons. He resisted the urge to set the report on fire and put it aside to be filed properly, though made a note to have duplicate reports delivered to him so that he could give into such stress-relieving urges in the future.

Moving on, he checked on other things. Young Uzumaki was a middling student by all accounts and might have made a good recruit, but Hiruzen had a soft spot for the boy and without the fox it wasn't worth the trouble. The civilians were...mostly sheepish that they'd so readily believed the ruse about the boy, especially those that had never interacted with him and believed the rumors without confirming them in any way.

Following that was another failure to gain access to the orphanage. Hiruzen didn't know that the tunnels that had flooded near it had been 'unofficial' Root tunnels, repurposed from their original purposes, and the staff that had been removed had been replaced with those that actually cared for the children more than anything else. Evaluating orphans for recruitment had become all but impossible for the time being.

Scowling, he moved on to copied reports on the Uchiha. Itachi and Shisui both believed that the coup was now further out than it would have been without the reveal of the decoy seal, but that the chances of negotiation were still slim. They'd met with Jiraiya about a couple of other options to attempt recently, outside of the village on a joint Anbu mission, but the details were in Jiraiya's reports for security reasons. Damn.

As part of his birthday gifts that October, Naruto received a book on basic jutsu and hand signs from Jiraiya. He'd already been working on the latter, and his parents had intended to start him on the replacement jutsu anyway. But having the book would easily explain how he knew any of them if caught practicing them, which was good. It covered the 'academy three', a collection of utility jutsu, and four chakra control exercises. His godfather had also given him a book on penmanship techniques that was apparently a precursor to sealing, but it didn't actually cover anything new to work on there.

By November the academy started covering hand seals and jutsu, starting with disguising themselves. Naruto could trivially fake it with shapeshifting, but let himself completely fail to put only the tiny amount of chakra needed into the jutsu. Mostly because he honestly couldn't put so little chakra in. Most of his class made fun of him for it until Miss Shimada brought a 'chakra meter' in.

"Normally jounin use this to see where they need to improve themselves or if their existing training is working," Miss Shimada said. "I had to ask the Anbu to borrow it, even, and they only agreed because they want to see what it says about Uzumaki as well. Normally the few we have are much more protected because we don't know how to make more. But this is going to show just why Uzumaki is having trouble with this jutsu, and you should thank him for being in class with you as it will give you insight into your own natural skills. He'll go last, but first let me show you how this works."

Naruto wasn't sure what to think of his mother commenting that the five she'd built to replace the one that she'd destroyed should last the village a century, nor the promise that there were a couple more in the Uzumaki compound when he could safely visit it for more than an hour or so. He instead focused on Miss Shimada demonstrating and explaining the twelve meters on the device. Seven of the meters covered chakra natures. Fire, wind, lightning, earth, and water sounded simple enough from his previous lessons, but Naruto didn't fully understand the yin and yang part. The remaining five covered 'capacity', with each bar being on a different scale.

"Here in Konoha the majority of our forces never get past the second scale," Miss Shimada explained. "But our elites eventually reach the third. Most of you will be solidly in the first scale, commonly thought of as the genin to chunin level. As you can see, I fall into the upper area of the second scale, high chunin but not quite to jounin levels. The third scale is treated as jounin to kage by most, though the Third actually touches upon the fourth scale slightly. To the Uzumaki, the third scale is their genin to chunin scale."

Naruto was mildly amused by his mother commenting that she'd never seen a true Uzumaki over the age of five not hit the fourth scale at a minimum and that they'd had to add the lower three for others.

"That follows that the fourth scale would be their chunin to jounin scale and the fifth scale would be their jounin to kage one," Miss Shimada continued. "As for my chakra natures, I have a strong affinity for fire, have been working on my earth, and have minor ability in the others right now. Most of you either won't have enough chakra for the scale to register natures or won't have a strong one, but we may get a surprise or two."

She then had the class go up one at a time and use the scale, a few of them taking time to figure out how to get it to read their chakra at all. Most had very low levels, but a few were surprised and a couple even registered chakra natures. Sasuke was easily the first 'decent' chakra level, well over halfway up the first meter, but seemed to be surprised that he had a strong lightning nature with a middling fire nature and looked thoughtful as he sat back down.

Eventually Naruto was the only one left, and his mother had already explained that there was a 'privacy limiter' for Uzumaki that would keep it from showing his full power. Something that existed because otherwise Uzumaki, even as kids, tended to scare allies with how much chakra they had. Two Anbu had materialized in the back corners of the room to watch as he placed his hand on the place marked for it on the chakra meter and triggered the process with a little bit of his chakra. The seals his mother said were there pulled more in, and meters started filling, starting with the capacity ones. Three full meters and three quarters of the fourth, causing a lot of gasps.

More curious were the chakra nature meters, all seven of which filled to around halfway full.

"Huh," Miss Shimada said. "That's...more impressive than I was expecting. From this you can see that Uzumaki has a lot of chakra, so for him trying to perform the jutsu is probably like trying to fill a cup with water by dropping an entire lake on it." She then turned to Naruto. "I don't suppose that you're aware of the surface-sticking or water-walking exercises?"

Naruto nodded. "I have a book with those in it."

"Wonderful! This also explains why you can't perform the leaf-sticking exercise, so we'll have to have you work your way down to it."

He half-nodded, then turned to look at the rest of the class. They were...very much shocked, and all staring at the chakra meter as though they couldn't believe what it showed.

"How is he so strong?" Sasuke asked. "Isn't he an orphan?"

Miss Shimada sighed. "I suspect that he was given the Uzumaki family name not as tribute to them, but because an old seal from before the fall of Uzu identified him as a clan member. All Uzumaki have larger than average reserves, but for most that means that learning to control their chakra is a constant battle."

Naruto wasn't sure why, but after that everyone in class, and a number of people in shops and such, suddenly started treating him better and didn't understand his father's answer of 'suck ups' when asking his parents.

Naruto had been curious why his chakra natures were so different from everyone else's, and his parents hadn't known either but had promised that they were just as curious as he was. His mother had then started teaching him how to play pranks and not get caught, since he was being watched less often now and Hinata could only spend so much time with him after classes. When she could spend time with him at all, anyway, and the group of others that suddenly seemed to want to be his friend creeped him out given that they were jerks before the chakra meter.

The first lesson on playing pranks and not getting caught had been learning the village. This started as him going out into it as himself, with the Anbu watching him knowing he was moving around, to find out where things were. He couldn't go everywhere at his age, and apparently some of the village had changed since his parents had been alive, but most of the important things were the same. Including the ramen stand.

He didn't know what his mother's 'food of the gods' description meant exactly, but it sounded perfect and he had added 'ramen' to his budget sheets. Though she seemed slightly offended that he preferred Ichiraku's ramen to her favorite brand of instant...once they'd found instant ramen at all. She'd actually despaired that it had stopped existing when none of the stores near the apartment carried any.

His father claimed that the bigger health risk remained having learned how to prepare pork and bacon in the apartment, both of which frequently got added to ramen when not eaten as a snack.

Naruto found that learning the village to his parents' satisfaction took months. First he wandered as himself, then he added in Yoko, and then they had him using different forms each outing. He'd asked about using Knight Armor for the outfits when going out, but they'd told him not to as it would probably stand out to some people and make it more obvious that the different bodies were actually the same person. They were also...loud when he suggested going out as a fox and he didn't like going out looking like a cat or a dog.

He did anyway, because he knew from his parents that doing things you don't like is frequently the best way to get to do the things you do like.

They also wanted him to be able to move around without obviously paying attention while still avoiding hitting anyone and spotting anyone following him. Including the very sneaky Anbu guards. Looking like you were paying attention was apparently a bad thing, especially just after you'd played a prank. Being distracted and obviously not paying attention to your surroundings, especially if you made it look like you'd not noticed being lightly splattered by something in your own prank, was apparently one of the best ways to have others decide that you were merely a bystander.

During those months he'd had tutors help him with water-walking and swimming, the latter as a side effect and making Naruto glad that hot springs existed, followed by surface-sticking. Well, most called it tree-climbing, and they had been using trees, but the official name was surface-sticking and could be used for a lot more than climbing trees. Like climbing buildings, or keeping yourself stuck to the ground. He'd also started working on the replacement jutsu, but it took far too long to do successfully right now and he still had to do the hand seals. This still put him ahead of his classmates in a way, as they were still working on getting believable disguises down.

Or in his case, getting one working at all. That thing took so little chakra it was insane. He'd accidentally created three different 'solid' versions that his parents had him write down the details of, one of which even let you feel people interacting with the shell of chakra. He wanted to teach Hinata that one to see if he had it written down correctly, but hadn't had enough time to do so in private. As for the one the academy wanted, that one felt like he might never get it down.

Spring had come, and Naruto had accomplished three different milestones in the same week. He'd managed to spend an hour on the wall of his apartment, could replace himself in under two seconds, and had sufficient knowledge of the village and awareness of his surroundings to wander while reading things duplicated in the Tome. Usually academy textbooks, but occasionally a cookbook or the The Tale of the Utterly Gutsy Shinobi. And he usually had to ignore the book itself and just fake reading it.

He wasn't sure why his father had insisted on wandering with the Tome being done while the Tome had a plain orange cover though. Orange was awesome, admittedly, but it felt like that was a joke or prank of its own. Especially given the looks that people kept giving him, but nobody approached him to ask what he was reading so he was able to largely ignore that detail and his father had declined to explain his reasoning.

His mother had walked him through getting through the shrine into the Uzumaki compound as a reward, though it turned out that she'd not shared it before then because it required being able to safely use the surface-sticking exercise. Other entrances didn't, but the shrine entrance did unless someone opened it for you from the inside. The compound itself had two small houses and a training hall, plus a lot of overgrown plants.

"Okay Naruto," his mother said inside of the Tome. "We'll cover the other ways to get in later, but the shrine is the only one that was a complete secret. While you were wandering we noticed that the other entrances were being watched, so you have to be careful about using them. But there is one more reward for your progress, one which will help you explore and clean up here."

"This one is a new jutsu," his father said, and the Tome expanded into book form. "We don't know if you'll ever get the normal disguise jutsu down, or the clone when they get to that. But there's a much more useful version for those with enough chakra. You should have enough control to use it safely now, or we'd have shared it already."

"It's even perfect for pranking and boring paperwork! Or homework, in your case."

There was a pause, and Naruto got the feeling that his father was blinking in the Tome world.

"GODDAMMIT," his father yelled a moment later. "HOW DID I NEVER FIGURE THAT OUT?"

"...you didn't know?" his mother asked, sounding confused. "Its name in Uzu was the paperwork jutsu."

Naruto left the two to that, and Kurama to laughing his tails off at their antics, while he opened up the Tome and read the instructions for the jutsu. There were several sets of instructions of different complexities, and he ended up getting a headache trying to understand the 'full' version before skipping to the 'for dummies and children' version.

He had no problem with being considered either after seeing the 'full' instructions.

The basic version looked simple enough, and there were several paragraphs on how to use them for various things like training, but there were minor 'variations' in how they functioned that you could apply as well. One was putting less than an even split of chakra in, if you had enough to do so, that would allow you to make the clones stronger or weaker than they would normally be. Another was adjusting the strength of the connection between clones, making it stronger to allow communication without them dispelling but also putting more strain on the user trying to split their focus in real time. Lastly was a tweak to allow clones to remain active or not while the user was sleeping, but was incompatible with making the connection stronger.

Nodding to himself, Naruto re-read the instructions for the basic version three more times, then put the Tome under his arm and put his hands together into the single hand seal described.

Five hours later there were finally clones around Naruto, and he was exhausted. So were his clones, having inherited his exhaustion even before his chakra had been split.

"Very good," his father said from the Tome.

"It took me hours," Naruto complained.

"It took me two months, but I'm not an Uzumaki."

"Most Uzumaki get it in a couple of weeks," his mother added. "But the scrolls always had the easy instructions hidden in the margins as though it was a decorative border. We were still expecting it to be a few days before you got it down."

Naruto actually ended up going back to the apartment, eating in time to be checked on to ensure that he was eating, and then returning to the compound to explore afterwards. That gave him enough time to recover his energy, and a dozen clones spread out throughout the compound to both explore and start cleaning things up. It was probably a good thing that he had a clone try to figure out the push mower thing though, because it probably would have hurt a lot more getting his foot stuck in it otherwise.

A few days later Naruto pulled his first prank. His target was a store owner that treated him badly but was perfectly happy to let Yoko shop in his store. A shapeshifted shadow clone had done all the work, to make it extra-hard to tie back to Naruto. He had been in class at the time, needing to be there in person since his shadow clones were too fragile, and a clone that was in his Yoko form had been seen cleaning the shrine.

It was obvious that nobody had a clue who had pulled the prank, and Naruto found it to be glorious. He came up with a list of targets and would carefully plan out hitting one every couple of weeks, but his parents also added some other goals to that list. Specifically, while his original list of targets were all civilians, they wanted him to also pull harmless pranks on shinobi. Older academy students to start with, then genin, chunin, jounin, eventually even attempt to get things over on Anbu.

The other major thing he used shadow clones for was training everything that wasn't physical. Every day he sent several into the Uzumaki compound to do chakra-based training, though there was only so much they could do there right now as there wasn't even a pond to water-walk on. The two bathtubs in the two houses weren't really all that useful once you had the absolute basics down. But they could repeatedly work on the disguise and replacement jutsu, to try to get the proper one working in the former case and to get it down without hand seals in the latter.

His parents promised a new chakra control exercise at summer break though, wanting to ensure that he had plenty of time to do the initial work on it, and they thought that Hinata was trustworthy enough to share more with. Assuming he could get enough time with her to share things with her, anyway. That was hard with all the training she did with her father and they really needed at least a couple of hours without Ko or one of the others that watched over her present. Well, Ko might be trustworthy enough on his own, since his parents remembered him, but they weren't really sure because they didn't know how he might have changed.