Chapter Fourteen

Naruto didn't have tons to do while slowly rebuilding his chakra control. All things seemed to wait on it, so he was at his wit's end the first couple of weeks trying to have something that could occupy his mind other than the interminable chakra training drills.

He'd shown next to no progress during that time, and it was a matter of mental survival to find some way to distract himself from his frustrations.

And no, the Kyubi hadn't shown any clear improvement in all that period. It might as well have been dead, except it wasn't. Naruto wasn't that lucky.

So he began churning through books at the library at an increased pace, sneaking in and smuggling them out because they wouldn't let him inside, and one of those books was on metallurgy.

That gave Naruto pause.

Here he was bored practically out of his mind. The Uchiha lands had a couple of smithies on it, and shinobi DID use weapons and armor. So, if he wanted to, this was something he could pursue while working to get his chakra control back.

So he did it.

Konoha did have several blacksmiths who repaired or created weapons and armor. At first, after finding out where those were, he did some spying on them to watch what they did, but that grew boring very quickly as what they did never changed on his unending day.

So he gathered up what money he had and sent Hinata to special order things. The darling girl never objected to those requests, and felt privileged and honored to do so for him, no matter how weird it was what he wanted her to order, and whenever possible she'd kick in her own money to help.

He loved that girl. No one else was like her. An entire town hating his guts and she was the sweetest thing to him, in spite of having so little confidence herself.

Anyway, with her help and some practice concealing himself so he could spy and observe, he got a smithing education. Most of the shops had apprentices, so often enough he could secretly listen as the master taught the younger smith (often a relative) how to do this or that, and parabolic ears were really useful to overhear what they were saying as they did so.

Since the various shops that had apprentices had them at different levels, he could have Hinata order the same thing at different places each day to pick up more than he'd known before, starting with the basics.

So, having picked up what he could by secretly observing and reading what he could from books, he figured out how to get Sarutobi to grant him the Uchiha properties in spite of his new appearance, picked up a hammer and went to work giving it a try.

Only to immediately go back to hit the books and overhear some more, as he had obviously missed some important stuff. Then he had to struggle to figure out the pieces he couldn't arrange to overhear, but after that things got better.

With lots of spare time to experiment in, he even got pretty good. It took him a while, but just about any ordinary person could be trained by a smith to be a smith in about six months (more if you wanted the specialized, detail oriented stuff), and Naruto was anything but ordinary.

He'd learned harder techniques faster, and with less help than he had here.

Okay, granted, the frequent resets were actually a detriment for him here as he had very little ability to see the progress of his own work, as what he couldn't make in a day and a half didn't happen, as he'd either reset or be off in the Forest of Death by then.

So, still having ability to produce Shadow Clones, albeit much reduced, he put them to work helping him, he himself learning to make small pieces or bits of larger ones that he then put them to work crafting other days while he went on to learning other parts of those same projects.

It was not long before he had a decent skill level, but he did not stop there. He had no reason to. There was more to learn and he was bored, so he began to go from the ordinary village smith level of pot hammerer and nail maker on to crafting weapons and armor as had originally interested him.

It took him no time at all to find out that his tools sold to him by the villagers had to have been special made to be as bad as they were. Cheap metal, dull blades nothing could effectively sharpen, and balance so bad it could not have been an accident, Naruto was crafting better on his first, clumsy attempts.

Then, as he grew competent on basic ninja tools he branched outwards, and outwards, finding himself working on swords and samurai armor, giant blades similar to Zabuza's gigantic cleaver, even branching out yet further making clocks and other intricate mechanisms.

He even started crafting intricate little toys for himself.

Why? Because there was more to learn and he was bored. Besides, he got to play with them, after. He got into a clock making thing because many of the armor pieces had joints and fasteners more intricate than he could arrange to overhear instructions for, and the only books in the library he could find that dealt with small, precision things were about clockmaking. So he did so. And then later lockmaking, learning how to make all sorts of intricate things, from sturdy bolts to complicated puzzle locks granting far greater security than he'd ever enjoyed. Then, when he took that back to the armor pieces he found he was actually quite good at it, really amazingly good at it.

And, by necessity, he was fast. If he wasn't fast the project couldn't get done and he wouldn't learn if it was any good or not.

Soon, his clones all working together and occupying two shops to do it, he could have himself wearing a full suit of armor in half a day. But, as he did so, he found the stuff clunky and uncomfortable, restricting his movements and heavy so it slowed him down.

And, well, as he was already the one making it he just fiddled with the designs a little, adding a little detail here, or adjusting a joint there, adapting a trick he'd learned from making joints on toy soldiers to make something less awkward and more comfortable to wear, and so on.

There are several details restricting the nature of armor in general. One of those was the materials used, and he hadn't any unusual abilities there, but another was the skills of the craftsman involved, which in his case were shooting up remarkably fast as he wanted desperately for something to occupy his mind and so fiddled with everything, playing with details and doing the work over and over until he was becoming almost frightfully good. And a further limiter on armor and weapon quality was the amount of time a smith was willing to put into not only creating it, but fine tuning it to get it all right, personalizing the fittings for optimal use and flexibility by one individual.

And, well, time was something he had too much of! By the time he'd devised, and redevised, reworked and reengineered every conceivable, and more than a couple of ridiculous, complete sets of ninja outfitting for himself he began to do the same for Hinata, then Tenten, Ino, Temari, then Gaara and Kankuro until Kurenai chased him away when he approached her with a tape measure.

He didn't WANT to outfit his teammates! They could go without as far as he was concerned. But anyone else was fair game, and he'd gotten a fair bit into creating a set for Shikamaru until he decided that didn't interest him anymore. It wasn't new any longer.

Still, there was plenty to do with refining the sets he'd already started. He'd find pretexts to get those people to try on his work until he could confidently say he'd gotten them right. Only, by then, his standards of 'right' were pretty awesome, including a precisely calibrated fit and amazing balance.

He got that good by having a great ability to learn, near infinite time available, plenty of willing help in the form of Shadow Clones who knew as much as he did, an inexhaustible supply of materials to work with as whatever he used one day was still available to him the next, and... Most people, when faced with a project, are willing to say 'good enough' because they don't want to undo, then redo, all of the work they'd done before.

And, well, since Naruto HAD to redo all of that work anyway, there was never a 'good enough' point to stop him.

He'd also check for protective value, at first by hanging those suits of armor on dummies, then pounding them to scrap metal with swords, knives and other weapons, some he devised, but others he found lying around the Uchiha estate. And he wasn't satisfied if he could slip in a senbon needle before he'd warped the metal under his attacks. Then he went to work to devise armor that didn't warp so easily when he pounded on it.

Why? Well, it seemed all he had was time, and it might matter some day.

Also, he got to try and adapt what he knew of martial arts to his new body, thinking through each step and trying to compensate for his changes, while he pounded those armor sets to scrap as targets. It didn't have the ease or satisfaction of getting taught, but it was doing some good. If nothing else it made him not feel so trapped and helpless.

It was hard to describe his disappointment over losing the use of his chakra techniques, but this smithing (and, to a lesser degree, martial arts) was a skill he could keep so long as he still had all of his limbs and a sound body - none of which he was likely to lose so long as he could regenerate.

He'd learned that when Kakashi had blown a hole through his chest.

During this time he was also practicing stealth and information gathering. Before it had almost been too easy for him to shapeshift and then learn whatever secrets he wanted by being in the form of a student someone who had that knowledge wanted to teach.

Now... it was more difficult.

Not only was he the Demon Brat, he had those stinking fox ears marking him even more distinctly, rendering him easy to notice even when he'd changed out of his orange jumpsuits and adopted less loud and obvious mannerisms.

Still, being harder only made it so he had more to learn, and an admittedly more difficult time getting there. But he had a good start, from breaking in to steal the Uchiha's scrolls and manuals on that subject, so he at least knew what he had to do in order to get started.

Thing like his waving tail gave him away at first, but even that he learned how to control and compensate for eventually.

So he began hunting secrets. Not any particular secrets, just secrets in general. He began by breaking into the houses of Sasuke's fangirls to read their diaries, just on the odd chance that he could get something to help him understand why they all drooled over him so much.

It didn't help much. Girl-speak might as well have been a code.

But, codebreaking was also a part of the ninja profession, so he went about breaking it, or trying to anyway.

Soon he discovered that he was lacking the key, and, in the principle of all code breaking, he needed to either find or divine the answers. So, out of that desire he began to hang around bathhouses, a safe distance away, not peeking, just listening in to their conversations with his parabolic ears to see what they talked about when they were all alone.

It was an entirely different language. The words were the same, but the meanings?

Still, it had some use to him. There were often nuggets of insights in there, just buried under loads and loads of fluff. So he began doing the same tricks with ladies at restaurants, shopping, or hanging out with each other in all the places they'd go.

Interesting, but even listening in on a whole village proved to be too small a sample over one day. He either had to find a way to observe over a longer space of time, impossible as he'd never yet gotten though the whole forest AND the preliminary rounds, which always reset him, or find some ways to mix it up a little so that he could observe more conversations that weren't just repeats of what he'd overheard before.

A little while ago he would've joined them using his Sexy technique, just to be on hand to steer those conversations more interesting ways. But that route was presently closed to him.

So he had to give up on the Great Girl Decode for now, leaving that until he had more options.

What he did begin to find, as he broke into more houses searching for a wider variety of things (and, getting caught on occasion, but those only stirred him up to learn more) he found recipes, which he enjoyed as they generally improved his cooking skill as well as his diet (Ino had only known so much to teach him) bank account numbers, wedding photos and all sorts of stuff, all of which he devoured.

Then he happened upon song.

He'd always refused voice lessons during his time at the music store, as for the Uchiha it would have been too far outside the role he'd been playing for it to be believed. But it was music and, here was the best part, it was NOT limited by what he could get his fingers to do!

That's right, no muscle memory restrictions there. Oh, he couldn't properly condition his voice, but that was all right, as he couldn't condition his arms to throw kunai, either.

Just like he couldn't go anywhere with those weight training books, or the flexibility training that all sounded so useful. He could lift all of the weights in the world and it couldn't do him any good, form splits until he bled and the next day there'd be no benefit.

He could do all of the exercising he wanted, but in the end no matter the pain there would be no gain. It was that simple.

But that was alright, he didn't have to worry about that, because there was still so much singing he could do without training to reach the real high end vocal tricks and stuff.

The villager's eyes about popped out of their heads when they woke up some mornings to a two-hundred voice choir that was all Naruto. Okay, he didn't have the different vocal sections, having only one voice, but it wasn't bad either. They could sing a shopping list if they had to, and make it sound good.

And that mattered to him, as it began to feel like there was a crack in the glacier, that the wall that held him back now wasn't perfect, that it could be gotten through.

He'd just have to find those teeny tiny cracks and widen them to do it.

I I I

Naruto had learned, through frequent experience, as he'd actually had to play up the whole "I am a fox" angle in order for the older generation who knew about his condition to take the thing as a joke, that Temari didn't know how to kiss any better than Hinata-chan.

Must be lack of experience in both cases. After all, Hinata didn't have enough bravery to, and only liked him in any case, while the other was Gaara's sister and so almost as much of an outcast and pariah as he was.

The odd thing was, when he was NOT acting over the top and weird about it, the jonin and chunin of Konoha would all arrest and interrogate him for the day. So it was just easier to kiss Temari than think up new things to do each day that were sufficiently over the top to allay those suspicions!

Oh well, the fox boy not only learned how to find and push her buttons until he could get her to squealing during the middle of an exam (having figured out what place in line he'd have to stand in in order to sit next to her), but also how to do so before the test started, and in such a way that he could slip her the test answers so she didn't have to rely on Kankuro.

Although leaving her hickies on her inner arm in the shape of the answers proved to be too awkward, so he learned to find other methods, so when she adjusted her slightly disordered clothes and hair mussed up by cuddling (not anything particularly naughty, she just had a fragile hairstyle not having been previously tested against hugs) she'd find little slips of paper concealed on her with the answers already written on them.

After she did so she'd always give him an impressed look or two after the testing was over.

Then he learned how to rig the seating arrangements so that Temari was sitting on the other side of him from Hinata, and that was best. For some strange reason Hinata's lack of self confidence would not let her believe that she was good enough for Naruto - thus why she'd never approached him before. And perversely she felt much better about the whole girlfriend issue if there was another double-X chromosome ally on her side, someone to take up any and all girlfriend duties Hinata herself might flub on.

She felt so sure of her own failure in most every department that she felt better about anything, particularly anything important like being a good girlfriend to her precious Naruto, if she could tag-team it. That way her fears could be allayed, thinking that if she failed there would be another to take over, and thus between them make sure of getting it done properly.

Yes, that's crazy. She'd never been anything less than everything Naruto had ever wanted, had ever IMAGINED wanting. But she was not the first girl to want something that didn't make sense or go crazy over insecurities.

The author himself has never ceased to be amazed over the amazing leaps of illogic that particularly insecure girls are prone to, nor the outrageous and farcical plans they would come up with to pursue them.

Still, while Hinata was whispering all this off in a corner in a desperate yet hushed conversation with Temari, Naruto was, perhaps unfairly, listening in with those amazingly useful fox ears, while she first confessed her fears and hopes for another girl to help her shoulder her girlfriend duties solidly.

Then Temari confessed in turn that, although she thought Hinata was crazy, she was at least glad for it, as Gaara had told her that she must suitably cater to his fellow demon container's romantic needs or he would kill her.

Who would have thought Gaara of being that crazy? Okay, he knew he was a demented lunatic but that had always been on a mass-murdering strain. This new twist came out of left field.

But... coming from a guy who'd carved the kanji for 'love' into his forehead...

Well, the answer to that, in Naruto's mind, was pretty simple. He could set his romantic needs very low, that way Hinata could outgrow her fears of not being up to meeting them, and Temari would not have to do anything she found terribly distasteful.

Yup! He was a kissing man from now on! With perhaps a hug or two, and that answer seemed to work best for them in what was an already bizarre arrangement.

Even better when he got Sasuke to sit ahead of him so they could throw spitballs in his hair during the final crunch minutes while Ibiki was really cranking down the pressure and the trio had already been kissing for forty minutes straight, with Naruto trading between the two dizzy females, made so by his increasingly expert ministrations.

Yes, he was getting to be that good of a kisser. Probably no man alive had had half so much practice, and he was a great learner.

And best of all, Sakura was so busy being upset during these antics that she never even thought to volunteer dropping out! And learning how to throw the spitballs without any of the examiners catching them was good ninja practice!

But even after all of this, his chakra control was only barely crawling along.

In the end, Naruto went to go ask the Hokage.

I I I

"Hey! Old man, I've uh... got a problem."

"Oh?" Sarutobi took his pipe out of his mouth. "What problem is it, Naruto?"

"I..." the boy sat down heavily, shaking his head and grabbing his own hair. "I've got no idea how to explain this!"

The Hokage leaned back, appraising him. Apparently it was serious. "Why don't you start at the beginning, Naruto?"

"That would be really hard to do," the boy admitted with a sigh.

Sarutobi was nodding. 'Serious AND complicated. Fun.' "Why don't you just try. You'd be surprised what you can describe if only you get started."

The boy sagged, listless, in his chair. "Well, I don't expect you'll believe me. What do I do if you don't?"

The Hokage leaned forward, lacing his hands together on his desk. "Why don't you try, and I'll do my best?"

The boy sighed before nodding. Given how sad and serious the blond was the Hokage was already certain that whatever it was, it was bad, however a large part of him had that parental hope that it was some childish nonsense that seems grave to a young mind, while being utterly inane to an adult one.

Still, he didn't hold out too much hope for that, as those were very rarely the case with Naruto, who had problems no one seemed to have resolutions for.

Still, it would be nice to have it be one of those for once.

However, Naruto's first words confirmed it wasn't. "Okay, first thing you've got to understand is that a time-space jutsu has gone massively wrong. I've been trapped in an endless time loop. Every day is the morning of the first test of the chunin exam. That was the same yesterday, and it will be the case tomorrow, too. You won't recall any of this, because you never do. No one ever does. But I have lived through this one day for years now."

Sarutobi's face grew grave. "That... is a very interesting problem, Naruto. Can you offer me any proof?"

The boy sighed, shaking his head, then looked guilty. "Maybe, but not yet. I've got to finish my explanation first."

The Hokage nodded patiently. "Then proceed."

Gulping, Naruto continued. "It's not always only one day. When I pass a phase of the chunin exam I am allowed to go on until the next one, but the moment I fail any part I get sent right back to the beginning."

Sarutobi stopped himself from smirking. 'So, that was the game, was it?' It had been a while since Naruto had tried to pull a prank on him, and he had to grant him points for originality, but really, the premise was transparent. He was angling for an easy promotion and an excuse to skip the exams.

Not a bad idea for a genin.

Well, best to see how this played out.

Sighing once more, the boy groaned on, face down, heavy with sorrow. The Hokage really had to give him points for the act, it was most convincing.

I I I

Author's Notes:

To those who are upset about the foxification, if it bothers you so much, please DON'T read my story anymore! I'd be happier, and you'd be happier, if you didn't.

If you think that's a power up you weren't reading what I was writing.

Just like putting tank armor on a car - it weighs so much that it breaks the suspension and blows out the tires and suddenly the one thing a car is good for, mobility, it doesn't HAVE anymore! Or better yet, pour a concrete bunker onto the outside of an airplane so it can't fly anymore.

He got more chakra, yes, but now he CAN'T USE IT!

How you'd like a few tons of cash in a currency no one takes anymore? If you can't spend it, it's meaningless. All it does is take up space you'd probably rather be using for other things.

Naruto lost all of his ninja skills, all of his abilities. Now how is that a power up?

Sheesh, if you can't figure out something so simple, I'd rather you didn't read this. So do us both a favor and don't!

To those who can't deal with the fox ears, recall you're talking to a guy who uses the daughter of Sailor Moon as his World of Warcraft character, in all of her uber-cute, pink-haired, bunny-eared glory!

If there is anything sweet, saccharine, disgustingly cute or tooth-rottingly adorable, I actively seek out those things and enjoy every minute of them!

But I'm being nice. I am restrained. I have NOT made the Sound Four into a sentai team with color coded costumes. Aka-whoever are NOT on a crusade to gather Heart Crystals, or transformed into a bad Voltron remake (well, except perhaps by Kishimoto). No one has shouted anything about the Power of Love or thrown roses anywhere (although that last might just change, as having thought of it, it almost becomes too much to resist).

Think, for a moment, about how bad it COULD be before you complain about what it is now. And the same goes for all of you who are opposed to every matchup under the sun - yes, there are those among you who actively hate each one possible, so whomever I choose some are going to be offended, so you can count on me not to care whatever match you champion.

And that all goes DOUBLE for those who love the broody bastard or his wanker of a teacher!