Chapter 44

He was once again in the Uchiha compound. This time he had come without the Hokage. After his usual morning work outs with Fukasaku had sneaked into the tea house and made his way through the secret passage. He could be working on the Hiraishin, or working on taijustsu with a couple hundred cloned sparring one another or he could be doing a dozen other things that would make him a stronger ninja. Instead he was doing this.

"You know I'm going to complain to the Hokage about this." Naruto said.

Itachi looked unconcerned. "You are free to do so, though I would remind you that you are only here because the Hokage requested I train you as a personal favor." Itachi lifted one his eyebrows a fraction of an inch. "In any case did you not say you would do anything if it made you a better ninja?"

"I was expecting some super tough training like I got from the perv or Ebisu or Fukasaku. What the heck is this supposed to teach me?"

At the moment they were both standing in the middle of five foot wide circles facing one another. They were standing right in front of Itachi's home out in the hot afternoon sun.

"This is meant to teach you patience and self discipline," Itachi replied.

"What are you talking about?" Naruto demanded. "I have those things. When it comes to training or studying jutsu I have all the patience in the world and I don't need help to work hard. Just ask ero-sennin if you don't believe me."

"I am sure that you do have a great deal of self motivation and a good work ethic. Otherwise you would not be wearing that vest. However, those are not the things that you need to develop."

Naruto sent him a confused look. "But you just said…"

"Patience is not the same as a work ethic; self discipline is different from self motivation." Itachi began to explain patiently. "It is only natural for one to be willing to exert great efforts on a task one enjoys. I once knew an artist who would go out and spend the entire day, dawn to dusk, painting. He thought nothing of putting forth such an effort each day for weeks or even months on end."

"So?" Naruto asked. "What has that got to do with this?"

"That same fellow, who thought nothing of spending hours in the hot sun or bitter cold to paint, would always complain bitterly when he was forced to teach others in order to make a living. It did not matter that the conditions in his classroom were milder or that the two activities were not of themselves any more or less strenuous. One activity he did without complaint while the other he saw as simple labor. Why do you suppose that was?"

Naruto shrugged, he honestly didn't see the point. "I don't know."

Itachi frowned at him. "The point is that the man was interested in painting but not in teaching. One gladly puts in unbelievable amounts of time and effort into activities one enjoys, but resents doing the same when the activity is seen as labor. The reason you are able to put in so much time and effort into your training is that you enjoy it. Even activities that seem dull and repetitive to others hold your interest because you see them as making you a stronger ninja. However not everything you do will always hold your interest. There is no avoiding long hours of dull activities such as guard duty or performing surveillance on a target. Also…"

Itachi's hand moved like a blur and a kunai was sent flying straight at his chest.

"Hey!" On pure instinct Naruto dived to his right and only just avoided being hit as the kunai went sailing just above him. Sprawled out in the dirt he looked up furiously at Itachi. "What the hell was that? Are you trying to kill me?"

"If a Chunin cannot avoid one kunai then I would have to consider this village a lost cause," Itachi said easily. "As I was saying, along with having to take on tasks you may consider boring you will also need to maintain focus while performing them. That is where self discipline comes into play. A ninja who cannot keep his mind focused even while performing dull duty will find himself and his comrades dead."

"You never said anything about throwing kunai at me," he said as she stood up and dusted himself off.

"Surprises are a useful training tool," Itachi said.

"That's not fair," Naruto grumbled.

Itachi looked at him with surprise. "Surely by now you must know that there is nothing fair about either a ninja's existence or about life in general."

Naruto let out a sour grunt. He certainly knew how true that was. "How would you like it if I were to throw kunai at you?"

"Please do," Itachi encouraged. "The whole reason I am here in a circle as swell is not only to observe you but to give you an example of what should be done. Only after I am satisfied that you have the necessary mental state will we move onto other training."

"I see well that's really…" Without any warning Naruto pulled out a shuriken and sent it straight for Itachi's chest.

Rather than duck or move out of the shuriken's path Itachi's right hand swept out in front of him. There was tiny, 'clink' and the shuriken was deflected into the ground just a few feet away. In Itachi hand was a kunai Naruto hadn't seen him grab. Itachi nodded his head in approval. "Very good, I see you have some potential for the training I have planned for you." With a flick of his wrist he sent the kunai flying at him again.

Naruto's eyes bulged when he saw where the kunai was aimed. He jumped straight in the air and performed a leg splits as the blade went sailing just below him. "What the hell were you aiming for?!" Naruto shouted half in anger and half in terror.

Itachi gave him a very slight grin. "I am just making sure to keep your attention."

XXXXXXXXXX

The training continued for six hours before Itachi finally called an end to it. At that point Naruto just collapsed to the ground, more from nerves than actual exhaustion. The training session had been more nerve racking and mentally draining than anything outside of real combat. He'd been forced to spend hours doing nothing but keeping his eye on his sensei. And whenever his mind would begin to wander Itachi seemed to notice and sent a kunai or shuriken his way. He'd actually gotten hit a couple times in the arm. Fortunately he'd healed up quickly and nothing vital had been struck.

He'd thrown his fair share of kunai as well but never came close to hitting Itachi. He couldn't even force him to dodge; the older ninja always just deflected his attack away. He never came close to surprising Itachi. When Itachi finally called a halt he informed Naruto they would be doing the same thing tomorrow then walked into his home.

With a groan Naruto took out a kunai and began drawing in the dirt as he tried to let his mind wander. This was reminding him a little of his training with Ebisu. At the very start the closet pervert had refused to teach him any jutsu until he'd improved his basics. At the time that had annoyed the hell out of him. But looking back now he had to admit that Ebisu-sensei had known what he was doing. You had to have the foundation in place before you could build something. Of course at his absolute worst Ebisu hadn't been even a hundredth as scary as Itachi was.

"Are you all right Naruto-kun?" a friendly voice called. Naruto looked up to see Mina smiling at him while holding a tray with a large bowl and glass. "You didn't come in so I thought I should bring your food out to you."

The smell of the hot food made his stomach growl. Naruto looked a little embarrassed, but Mina pretended not to have heard and set the tray down in front of him. "Thank you Mina! You are a life saver!" He sat up and got ready to dig in. "Itadakimasu!"

As he ate ravenously Mina laughed. "I can see you like my cooking."

Being hungry and having just finished a nerve racking training session he'd forgotten all about the manners that Hinata and Iruka had drilled into him. "Oh I'm sorry; I usually don't eat like this."

She just shook her head a bit and continued to stare down at him. "It's all right, I was raised in a little farm house with six brothers and sisters. I am not big on formalities, I'm just glad you like my cooking."

"Except for Hinata-chan's it's the best I've ever had."

"Well I'll take that as a high compliment. You know I think I would like to meet her sometime. From how you describe her she sounds like a very nice girl. You also make her sound like a complete contradiction from how Itachi-kun describes of the Hyuuga."

Naruto nodded enthusiastically. "Yeah, Hinata-chan is sweet and nice and never thinks she'd better than anyone else. She'd nothing at all like the rest of her clan."

"She definitely sounds like someone worth meeting then." Mina let out a wistful sigh. "Unfortunately except for the Hokage and now you I haven't been allowed to meet anyone else in this village."

Naruto hadn't considered that. Out in the village there were wild rumors that Itachi was living a decadent lifestyle within the hidden Uchiha compound. People told stories about wild orgies with an entire harem of young girls. Obviously people had been inventing things and passing those tales as fact. Naruto could sympathize, there'd been plenty of stories about him that had passed through the village and been accepted as fact. No one in the village had any idea what the truth was.

"Do you get lonely?" Naruto asked.

"Oh no," Mina said with a smile. "I have Itachi-kun to keep me company and that's all I need. But it would be good to have a few friends to talk to."

"Well maybe I can bring Hinata-chan with me sometime."

"That would be lovely," Mina said. "But you would have to get the Hokage's permission first." She glanced at the ground around Naruto and noticed what he'd been drawing. "You seem to like drawing circles."

"They're not circles," he said as he took another bite of the tasty food. "They're symbols."

"Really?" Mina sounded a bit interested. "What are they symbols of?"

He gave her a sour smile. "I have no idea."

Mina laughed a bit. "I don't understand, they're symbols of something but you don't know what of?"

He nodded. "They appear on a ninja scroll over and over again. I know they're supposed to mean something, but I don't know what." Naruto knew he wasn't allowed to tell anyone about his studying the Hiraishin. But telling a civilian about a symbol on some random ninja scroll was safe enough.

Mina glanced at the circles drawn there in the dirt. "Maybe it's a symbol for the sun."

"Nope, can't be the sun." Naruto said immediately.

"Why not?" She asked curiously.

"Because whatever it represents is a component in a jutsu, so it can't be the sun."

"Well maybe it means sunlight," she took a stick and idly drew some rays around the biggest circle. "Could it be sunlight?"

Naruto opened his mouth to say no. Wait a minute, could it be? Sunlight didn't seem to have much substance, but then neither did the air that was the main component of a shunshin. The lighter the component used the farther the substitution or teleportation jutsu could be cast and the faster. "Does light have any actual weight?"

"What?" Mina looked perplexed.

"Light, does it have any substance? Even just a little?"

Mina shrugged and seemed a bit embarrassed. "I'm sorry Naruto, I didn't get much schooling."

"The answer to your question Naruto is yes," Itachi came out of the house. "Light is made up of elemental particles called photons, their weight in infinitesimal, but theoretically it would have substance." Itachi frowned at him. "Do they not teach basic physics at the academy anymore? The principles are vital for certain kinds of jutsus."

Naruto grinned and rubbed the back of his head. Physics? That sounded vaguely familiar, Iruka might have mentioned something during a few of the lectures he slept through. "I wasn't really a very good student back then." Naruto admitted.

Itachi nodded. "No doubt you were lacking patience and self discipline."

Naruto sighed. "Yeah maybe I was Itachi-sensei." Maybe these exercises would be useful after all. And maybe, just maybe he had stumbled onto something really useful to him.

Light huh?