Chapter 5: Training for jobs 2
Naruto woke up at dawn, bleary-eyed.
He formed the clone seal, and his replica appeared in a puff of smoke next to him, with about a third of his chakra.
The clone grumbled a bit, just as tired as he was but didn't complain as he set out for the training fields.
The original Naruto considered going back to bed once the clone had left, but decided against it. That'd just be proving the old man right.
Instead, he created three other clones by using half his remaining chakra.
The clones would pop up with around a tenth of his full chakra reserves and would not be as durable as the first one he had created, but they didn't need to be.
There was a pretty basic Fūinjutsu project he had been waiting to complete, and four pairs of hands, when they were his, were better than one.
The thing with sealing was that once you knew exactly what you were going for, you could skip on many of the details. Four written seals could be compacted into one, as long as you had a very clear vision of what you were going for.
He'd read about the Fourth Hokage's ability to apply his Hiraishin tag by a simple touch.
If this kind of thing was possible, he would learn it.
But he wasn't there yet, so he painstakingly wrote down every single symbol anytime he needed something done. He knew what he was going for though, and in about two hours, he and his clones had completed the job.
They high-fived and he dispelled them. Their memories returned to him, as Sarutobi-sama had said they would, with as much clarity as if he had been the one writing their part.
He could definitely use this.
He was a bit tired, though, as if he had spent the whole day doing this, which in a way, he had. Two hours of focused work multiplied by four added up pretty quickly.
The other downside was that his chakra levels only started to recover once the clones were dispelled. The chakra he gave them at creation stayed with them, and they could only replenish it at a much slower rate for themselves.
Which meant he would have to dispel clones on a daily basis, at most, to be efficient.
He formed a few seals.
Bird, Dog, Rat.
He held Rat, and focused his chakra through the central seal. The other symbols retraced, fusing with them to form the seal's compact version.
He held up the white piece of fabric the seal was written on. He wrapped it around his arm, at the end of his short-sleeved navy tee-shirt.
It was a basic seal, one that would turn colors, going from light blue to dark the more chakra it picked up. This was the simplest way he had found out to be able to identify which clone was which if they met under a Transformation technique in town.
He had a few ideas in mind.
It also made it much easier for them to organize themselves without shouting over each other. He only made use of up to ten clones, but it never hurt to be prepared, anyways.
He ate lunch and meditated for a hour.
His last remaining clone had dispelled a while ago, and now he was almost back at full capacity.
He left through the window, like cool people always did.
At the mission/service office, he browsed through the options, and settled for a few. The clerk gave him a dubious look when he walked out with four in tow, but he wasn't breaking any rule, so he let him be.
He reviewed them again, and thought about the best way to go at it.
Uni student, need moving fast!
URGENT Help Needed for Painting Fence
Announcement: Looking for YOUTHFUL Training Partner for the day :D
BIRD AND FARM ANIMAL RESCUE
Definitely not the most interesting pick he had gotten, but hey, beggars couldn't be choosers.
Just to be sure nobody would give him trouble, he waited until he was out of the building. Then, he used about half his chakra to create a few clones, one with one eight of his chakra, who would spend the day painting fences, and two others with the rest of the spent chakra divided among them.
He was pleased to notice the armbands were working as intended, with the weaker clone's being a very pale shade of blue, and the two others' being a bit darker. His own was still dark blue, if lighter than before.
He handed each clone their scroll, which he hadn't bothered cloning. They split off, knowing they needed to make sure not to dispel themselves accidentally.
If they did… well, he'd have to figure it out.
In retrospect, maybe it had been risky to head out on a mission he knew next to nothing about.
He leaned to the side to avoid the punch Rock Lee had thrown at him, narrowly missed it, and tried to to send a kick back. He'd been practicing hand to hand combat for a while, and had never slacked off, but the older kid was definitely better than him, by a wide margin.
It was not just the fact that he had one more year of experience on him, but his movements were fluid, practiced. Fast and strong.
Lee grabbed his leg, and in a move Naruto thought shouldn't have been possible, threw him one-handedly.
His back hit a tree and he tasted blood.
Lee's teammates, a Hyūga named Neji, and a girl who said she was Tenten, both winced in sympathy.
Naruto conceded, and Lee brought him up on his feet with a dazzling smile.
"That was a great fight, Naruto-san!" He exclaimed.
"…Yeah. Sure, thanks for having me." Naruto was out of breath, which was pretty uncommon for him, unless Sarutobi-sama was feeling particularly dickish when he improvised his training schedule.
"Let's have another round!"
Cold sweat poured down his forehead. Neji saw his trouble and intervened.
"Lee, let Naruto-san have some rest. He's exhausted, I don't need my eyes to see that."
"Oh, sorry, my bad, Naruto-san!" Lee said sheepishly
Naruto threw Neji a look so full of gratitude that he had to chuckle.
Lee went to talk with his sensei, a man who looked exactly like him… or was it the opposite, technically?
Neji handed him a can of water, and both of them sat down with Tenten.
"Lee is a great guy, really -" Tenten started.
"But he can really get carried away." Neji finished, amused.
"Tell me about it." Naruto said, dryly.
"How did you even meet him?" Tenten queried.
"I saw a job posting for a D-rank and here I am." He gestured at himself self-deprecatingly.
"Ah. Yes, Lee is always looking for different sparring partners. He's a bit too used to fighting only with us, and we know each other's tricks." Neji shrugged.
"Do you guys specialize in anything?"
Neji pointed at his eyes with a wry look. Likely gentle fist, then.
"Erm, yes. What about you, Tenten?"
"Mostly weapons. Long-range, short-range… Anything, really." She shrugged. "I heard the Sarutobi clan tends to focus on Fire Style and short-range, is it true?"
"Eh. Yes, usually." He said, sheepishly. "But Sarutobi-sama is training me to be more of a generalist. And my affinity is Lightning anyways. I still train with weapons, though." He added, with a bit of distaste.
Neji picked up on it. "You don't like this." He stated more than he asked.
"Well, I enjoy the practice but I don't really want to hurt… kill people. If I'm being honest."
Tenten nodded. "I get that. Shinobi life can be… rough sometimes." She said with a distant look.
All three genin of Team Gai had already killed. It was inevitable in their line of work, and they knew it.
"There are some practices in this village that I abhor." Neji said with a dark look. "If it were up to me…" He shook his head. "But it's not. Some traditions…" He stopped himself, as if he realized he had said too much.
Naruto nodded.
There was not that much to add, really. He felt the same.
After bidding his goodbyes to Team Gai, promising to meet again, — for free this time, they joked — he crawled back home.
It was already four in the evening. The clones were done with their day, but he had instructed them — himself, maybe? — not to dispel before all of them were home.
So the four of them were a bit cramped, in his tiny apartment.
He had promised Ino and Sakura to meet them for dinner later.
He counted the money he had made today, which amounted to around 17,000 ryō. Not bad for one day's work he felt.
Looking at the clones, he saw their armbands were now getting pretty pale. They agreed to dispel themselves.
He passed out.
He woke up on the floor at around four in the morning.
He had a light headache, and remembered living four different days, too, which was a bit strange.
Ah, shit. He missed the dinner and knew Ino would be pissed about it.
"I might need to practice this one a bit." He mumbled.
He summoned a clone to attend practice, crawled to his bed and finished his night.
The clone woke him up at noon, and he decided on sending only two, each with a third of his chakra to the mission office for today.
He found Ino's team eating lunch at their usual joint with their sensei, after training.
Asuma winked at him, and mimed getting his head cut off.
Ino was definitely looking petulant and she made a point of ignoring him even after he apologized, so he shrugged and hung out with Shikamaru and Chōji instead.
This seemed to do the trick, as she didn't particularly enjoy being left alone herself.
Over the next week, he perfected his routine.
He'd stay in during the morning and send a clone to practice.
Then when this one came back, he'd create three clones, keeping a third of his chakra to himself to run odd jobs.
One of them would pick up three missions and meet the others to divide them among them. They focused on easy jobs that ran no real risk of dispelling them.
If the guy at the mission office noticed, he didn't say anything.
The clients were happy, and the missions got completed on time, he figured.
Hiruzen knew exactly what he was doing, if his knowing smile was any indication.
Still, he took a more active role in training him during the day, his own clone taking care of the busywork. Or the reverse, on some days.
Speed drills, katas, weapons training and Lightning manipulation made up most of his days.
He settled into his routine, and the accumulated mental exhaustion he got from his clones dispelling became less and less.
After three weeks, he felt confident enough to send a fourth clone to run missions, which was a nice productivity increase.
He saved most of his money up, and what he didn't, he used to buy supplies and books.
Another month passed, and he became able to leave two low-chakra clones at home, doing his reading for him, which freed even more time.
At some point he realized he had completed more than a hundred fifty D-ranks, when most of his classmates had done less than half that.
He was probably the wealthiest of them, clan funds not withstanding. It was kinda strange to him, as he was probably the least interested in actually being a ninja.
Property was still cheap in Konoha. Maybe it was the war, maybe it was the Nine-Tails. Maybe it was because it was still relatively new, as far as towns went.
In three, four more months of this, on top of the money from his orphan pension he had saved over the years, he would have had enough money saved up to outright buy the apartment he was renting, he hoped.
It took a a little bit longer, so six months and a half later, around the time he turned twelve, he tried to do exactly that.
His clones were running through the usual routine, and Sarutobi Kimiko, the clan's real estate manager, agreed to meet him. She was an older woman, with her brown hair in a tight knot whose stern demeanor reminded him of Biwako.
"I admit that I am very surprised, Naruto-san." She began. "You managed to save up quite a lot of money in a very short amount of time. As a reserve genin, on top of it. How did you manage…?"
"Uh. I have my ways." He waved off.
"Did Sarutobi-sama help you, maybe?" She asked, trying to keep judgment out of her voice. Everybody knew the Third had a soft spot for his grand nephew.
"No." He said, a bit more harshly than he intended. He amended himself. "Kimiko-san, Sarutobi-sama did not give me money. He taught me much, but he's never one for handouts."
She probably knew this, because she nodded after thinking for a few seconds.
"As for your request. The place you're looking to buy is valued at around 820,000 ryō."
He nodded as he knew as much.
"As you have the amount saved up, this is not the problem. However…" She continued.
"Uh oh." He wondered what this was about.
"This is clan property." She added.
He nodded. "Yes. I know." She looked at him blankly. "…So?"
"Well, you're not a civilian. As an enrolled shinobi, you're not allowed to buy clan property before you reach Jōnin rank." Kimiko said, as if this were the most obvious thing in the world.
"Wait, really?"
"Yes, really." She saw his disappointed face, and softened a bit. "You're not the first to face this problem. Most people who intend to buy property are older, but this has happened before."
"But… why?"
"Mostly for historical reasons, I'm afraid."
The truth was, giving individual ninjas their own land before they had strong ties to their clan and/or village now was a big risk.
It would have given them income independent from their duty.
This was the reason why they usually lived in clan compounds, where property was seldom sold out to individual families.
Houses tended to be rented out to them instead, and orphans would get stipends, depending on clan rules.
This would also have the benefit of creating bustling mini-cities inside clan domains.
"So there's no way for me to buy..?"
"Technically, you could ask somebody of Jōnin rank to buy in their name and hold it for you." She shrugged. There was nothing out of the ordinary here, and many people used this workaround.
It would likely mean paying somebody more than he intended, or fanning the flames of the rumors of favoritism he was already subject to.
She caught his expression and nodded. She had thought as much.
"The other solution would be to move out of the compound. You wouldn't be the first one, either."
He realized this was true. While he had lived here his whole life, there was nothing preventing him from moving out.
A long silence stretched out.
"You could also wait until you're a Jōnin, of course."
"I'll uh… Think about it." He answered.
In the end, moving out is what he ended up doing.
He had a few things he intended to do in the future that would involve privacy, so maybe this was just moving a bit faster than he intended.
He visited ten properties before settling on one.
There was a tiny house in one of Konoha's numerous civilian residential areas that was undervalued.
The reason was obvious, it was in dire need of repairs.
The windows were broken, the grass was overgrown, and there was a hole in the ceiling, through which a little water dripped periodically in a sealing bucket that someone had placed under.
The water ran brown, and there was no electricity to be seen.
The seller seemed to be surprised he actually wanted it, so they worked out a price that satisfied both of them.
He took the next week off from work — well, his clones did, technically — and started doing whatever he knew he could.
Naruto had learned a few things by now, working odd jobs, so cutting down the grass only took the better part of one day, with clones.
On Tuesday, they picked up the rotting leaves from both in and out the house, as well as the debris laying around.
He fixed the walls and the flooring over the next three days, and took care of the windows after that.
The more technical parts, he knew he'd have to get some help with.
Once that was done, he would seal his few possessions, mostly tools in a scroll and bring everything over. Then he could get started with the part that he needed the privacy for.
"Might hire a reserve genin to do the job." He snorted.
His domestic routine came to an end the day he was recruited by a pair of Chūnin to join them on a backup mission.
It was a C-rank technically, but his little track record had started being noticed and somebody must have spread the word.
So when Hagane Kotetsu and Kamizuki Izumo, usually on guard duty knocked at his door, along with two older genin, explaining that the person they were supposed to go with had gotten injured while training this very morning and was thus unable to join them.
For some reason, he let himself be convinced.
Once he got ready and they left the village, they briefed him about the specifics.
"Who are we backing up, exactly?" Naruto asked, as they leapt from one branch to the next.
"Team Five, I think?" One of the genin asked.
"No, it's Team Six." Kotetsu corrected.
"Isn't this… Team Kurenai?" Naruto asked, as something cold settled in his pit.
Sakura was on Team Kurenai. They usually met every week, and now that he thought of it, she had said she'd be leaving soon. That was more than a week ago.
"Yup, that's them." Izumo nodded. "Kurenai and her team were sent on a spying mission along the Rain borders and she requested backup. She's an amazing ninja, but she only got promoted to Jōnin recently, and I think she's a bit worried."
Seeing Naruto's expression, he added.
"…But don't worry, Sarutobi-san. It should just be a routine backup mission."
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