Waterwalking, kawarimiing, and practicing jutsu while puking your toenails up is an extremely unpleasant experience. Naruto knew this, because he had spent the first two hours of practice doing it and nearly drowning as a result. Eventually his body had thrown off the toxin and he was all right again, but he was still left with psychosomatic nausea for the rest of the day.

The senbon that Anko had shot into Naruto during his berserk fit had carried a cocktail of two separate toxins, a sleeping drug and a convulsant. Kurama's chakra had held their effects at bay, but hadn't neutralized them; a few minutes after the Fox was sent back to his cell the effects had all kicked in at once. The sleeping poison hit first; Naruto staggered and went down within seconds. The convulsant hit only moments later; fortunately, Anko had diluted it enough that it only stiffened his muscles instead of inducing agonizing cramps and thrashing. It would have taken him out of the fight but not actually hurt him.

Anko had laid out a series of unlabeled vials and told Shino to identify the toxins used and administer the appropriate antidotes. The genin had studied his teammate and the available concotions carefully; three of the vials turned out to be poisons instead of cures, twelve of the others weren't relevant, and six more were just water. He identified the poisons—correctly, according to Anko—and administered both cures. Unfortunately, he'd given Naruto a bit too much of the anti-paralytic; in sufficient doses the cure was a powerful emetic. Naruto had begun vomiting almost immediately and hadn't stopped.

Of course, Anko was delighted; she felt that practicing while vomiting made for good training.

The assignment had been for each genin to waterwalk on the river while working on an assigned jutsu and dodging a nigh-constant barrage of kunai, senbon, shuriken, and venomous snakes. Hinata was to continue with the Katon: Grand Fireball, Naruto with the Doton: Multiple Earth-Style Wall, and Shino was to work on his bug clone.

Shino had immediately pointed out that he couldn't work on his bug clone, as his entire colony—barring a very minimal breeding group that were never allowed out of his body—had been fried by Kurama's chakra and he would need to regenerate them. Anko had glared at him, grumbled, and told him to get on with it. He'd sat down in a meditation pose and closed his eyes; tiny spider-like insects crawled out of his pores and began slowly weaving a cocoon around him. After an hour, the cocoon had completely sealed him in; an hour after that, the insects chewed their way out of the cocoon, splitting it down the middle vertically so that Shino could push his way out like a chick from the egg. Anko had promptly grabbed him by the collar and hurled him into the water.

While Shino had been regenerating, Naruto and Hinata had been busy. Hinata was still a long way from getting a working Grand Fireball, but she had progressed to the point where she would puff out some smoke when she executed the technique. Granted, her focus wasn't helped by periodically having to dodge the various lethal items that Anko hurled at her. She'd started off using kawarimi and shunshin to evade, but had rapidly run into issues with chakra exhaustion.

Whenever Hinata or Shino hit chakra exhaustion, Anko's solution was to assign them to purely physical training while their chakra recovered. She would either send them swimming in the river to recover all her thrown weapons, or to assign them a course of calisthenics that would have had Gai-sensei weeping for joy and shouting about the 'flames of youth.' Naruto, of course, never got to be part of the chakra recovery brigade, nor did he ever get physically tired; the other two tried hard not to grumble about this as they dove, again and again, to the bottom of the deep river in order to recover another batch of shuriken and kunai from the mud at the bottom.

While she was policing up the weapons the first time, Hinata had had a chance to think. The second time around, she took to dodging physically in order to conserve chakra. Her control was good enough that she could waterwalk from any part of her body, and soon she was rolling, sliding, and turning cartwheels on the surface of the river in order to stay ahead of the barrage. No matter how hard Anko pressed her, Hinata kept trying the Fireball even as she dodged.

Like Hinata, Naruto's efforts with his new jutsu were largely fruitless. The first hundred attempts accomplished absolutely nothing. The next hundred met with minimal success—a clump of mud jumped a few inches into the air, a low hummock rose up and then rapidly subsided—but nothing useful.

Unlike Hinata and Shino, Naruto didn't have the control to manage kawarimi or shunshin while waterwalking. He also didn't have enough skill or practice to manage the complex flows of waterwalking from anything other than his feet, so he couldn't dodge physically the way Hinata could. He did his best to parry Anko's barrage of weapons and killer snake constructs using a kunai or the back of his hand, but he was steadily taking damage as the day wore on.

Lacking the finesse to use Hinata's approach, he played to his strengths: massive amounts of chakra-powered brute force. He put all his weight on his left foot and let the right dip below the surface. Instead of pushing chakra from the sole of his right foot, he pushed it from the top...and he pushed hard. The resulting geyser of water was a vertical wall in front of him, continuously sustained by new water rushing in and being blasted upwards. At first he had trouble balancing—pushing down with one foot and up with the other tended to make him roll—but after going for a swim three or four times he got it under control. By moving his foot slightly back and forth he was able to keep a vertical wall of water suspended in front of himself, strong enough to deflect everything that Anko threw. He'd tried to get Hinata to shelter behind him, but she had refused, saying she needed to train. When he kept pushing after her third refusal, an exhausted Hinata had eventually snapped at him, after which he shut up.

"Okay, kids and kiddies," Anko said. "Everybody out of the pool."

The genin were no fools; they took care to come back to shore well away from their teacher. Anko's eyes twinkled in suppressed amusement, but her face remained stern.

"I'm feeling tired from all this heavy exercise I've been doing—" she began.

"Ex—!" Naruto started to say before clopping his mouth shut.

Anko looked down her nose at him. "Something to say, genin-for-now?" she asked.

Naruto looked sour. "No, sensei," he grunted.

"Very good. Now, as I was saying, I'm getting tired from all this heavy exercise I've been doing, throwing things at you three." She paused. "Also, I'm running low on throwable things again. Anyway, I'm going to take a break for a while; you three are going to police up all the things I've thrown at you and then you have some free time until I get back. Enjoy yourselves." The moment she finished speaking, she shunshined away.

The three genin stared at each other, nonplussed.

"Soooo...am I confused, or did sensei go crazy, try to kill us all multiple times, and then just run off and leave us alone and unsupervised in hostile territory?" Naruto asked in disbelief.

"Approximately," Shino said. "I suspect it was actually her not-so-subtle way of telling us that we need to talk amongst ourselves, and then giving us space in which to do so."

"She's not crazy, Naruto-kun," Hinata said. "She's just—"

Shino idly scratched his jaw with one thumb.

Hinata smoothly redirected her sentence. "—determined," she said. "Determined to help us improve as quickly as possible. Her methods are harsh, yes, but from what she's told us it's no more than Orochimaru-sama used on her and look how strong she is."

"Huh," said Naruto. Shino caught his eye and stroked one hand along his chin as though in consideration of Hinata's words, his head tipping very, very slightly towards Anko's last known position.

"It seems we should police up the weapons as quickly as possible," Shino said, just to break the silence that had fallen. "After that, I had some ideas I'd like to work on with both of you."

Naruto promptly spawned off several hundred clones and assigned the first fifty to diving for sharp things. With Hinata's Byakugan to spot for them it didn't take long to find all the lost items. She would 'look' into the river for a moment and point; a group of Narutos would dive where she indicated while she spotted for the next group. Within a few minutes, there were once again several multi-pound bags of pointy metal resting on the shore.

While some of his clones had been dredging the river for kunai, a handful of others had started collecting firewood and lighting a fire, and the rest had vanished into the woods. Just as the last of the diver-Narutos put away the final bit of pointy metal, a series of hunter- and gatherer-Narutos came traipsing out of the trees with their catch and started laying it on the grass in front of Shino and Hinata. It was quite a haul; in the end there were fourteen skinned-out squirrels, several pounds of blackberries, a bushel of wild mushrooms, six Gama-chans full of nuts, five small and not very ripe apples, a dozen small eggs, and quite a lot of wild celery, mint, and various other edible herbs.

Naruto had apparently learned from his experience back in the woods, because these clones weren't as smart as those had been. They simply lay their findings on the ground in front of Shino and Hinata, gave them a happy-yet-vacant smile, and jogged back into the woods to take up perimeter duty.

The three genin sat down together on the grass (Hinata somehow ended up close enough to Naruto that their knees touched; Shino noted this but made no comment) and proceeded to tear into the food like starving wolves; Naruto had had a breakfast of hospital food but the others had not eaten all day.

"Hinata-chan, would you please ensure that we are alone?" Shino asked, concealing his mouth behind the piece of blackened squirrel he was heartily enjoying.

She nodded, likewise being careful to keep her mouth covered as she spoke so that a highly theoretical observer could not lip-read her. "I confirm that there is no one within my range."

"What did you want to talk about, Shino-kun?" Naruto asked. "And why all the secrecy?"

"Sensei is not crazy, Naruto-kun," Hinata said. "I convinced her that she should make our training so harsh it would seem plausible for me and Shino-kun to defect. If he thinks we're on his side it will give us better access to information and should make it easier to escape back to Konoha."

Naruto stared at her in surprise. "Huh," he said. "Okay, I didn't see that one coming." He paused, thinking about it. "My reaction should play pretty well for that, then." He rubbed the back of his head in embarrassment. "Guys, I'm really, really sorry about that."

Hinata laid a hand on his knee and smiled at him. "It's all right, Naruto-kun," she said. "You weren't in control."

"Which begs the question," Shino asked calmly. "Why weren't you in control? Did the Fox take over your body against your will, or did you grant it control deliberately? In the former case we have an extremely serious situation, and in the latter...well, that scenario raises some issues."

"Oh, he was never in control," Naruto hurried to say. "He gave me his power, but it was always me running things."

"It stopped you from running into the woods," Shino reminded him. "Not 'convinced you not to', it stopped you. It froze your legs so that you fell over, remember?"

Naruto blinked. "Huh," he said. "Yeah, I guess he did." He frowned. "I...didn't remember that. I'll have a talk with him tonight."

"I would strongly suggest being careful in your contact with the Fox, Naruto-san," Shino said. "It is extremely old, powerful, and intelligent. Do not give it anything you don't have to."

Naruto grinned at him. "It's okay, Shino-kun! Kurama's not so bad. I think he's just lonely, really. Once I started treating him like a decent person, he started acting like one."

Shino looked unconvinced but didn't press the issue. "In that case, I would suggest redirecting this discussion to the issue of battle tactics," Shino said. "Do you remember on the way here, sensei gave us the assignment to figure out how each of us could take down the group? That made me think about the best ways to coordinate ourselves in a fight, which I think is something we clearly need to be prepared for.

"The battles we have engaged in thus far have made one thing very clear," Shino said. "At close range, Hinata-chan is the most dangerous member of this group. Therefore, it would behoove us to figure out how to put her at close range with enemies as quickly as possible. We also need to ensure that she encounters only one enemy at a time, meaning we need to control the battlefield."

Hinata blushed and looked at the ground. "Shino-kun, thank you, that's very sweet, but I think you're exaggerating."

"No he's not!" Naruto said. "Hinata-chan, you're awesome, you just need to recognize that!"

Shino flicked a glance at Naruto and then nodded to Hinata. "Our comrade is correct, Hinata-chan," he said formally. "You struck one of the chunin in sensei's genjutsu—"

Hinata shifted uncomfortably. "It was only a genjutsu," she mumbled.

"Have you forgotten what sensei said?" Shino asked. "She said that she had 'played fair' and that we had 'just as much chance' against the illusions as we would have against their real-world counterparts."

"But...I barely touched him, and then he crushed me," Hinata said.

"Hinata-chan!" Naruto began. "You can't—"

"You are unfairly judging your own performance," Shino said, riding right over Naruto. "There is a term for this: the imposter effect. People who are highly talented or skilled are, by definition, able to do difficult things easily. However, this leads them to an error in judgement: they reason that, because these things are easy for them, they must therefore be easy for anyone, and therefore the fact that they are good at these things is not impressive.

"This is a fallacy of thought, Hinata-chan, and you suffer very intensely from it. You have no confidence in your hand-to-hand abilities, yet the fact is that you are extremely good at taijutsu."

"...I am?" Hinata asked. "But...I mean, it's just the Byakugan and the Gentle Fist...they give me an advantage..."

Naruto snorted. "So what?" he said, laughing. "Life ain't fair, Hinata-chan. Take every advantage you've got and use it ruthlessly! If you have a cool bloodline that just makes it better!"

Shino glanced at Naruto and sighed. "Hinata-chan," he said calmly. "Naruto-san is correct, although poorly phrased. Yes, your Byakugan is an advantage, but you are not skilled just because you have the Byakugan. If some random civilian suddenly developed the Byakugan right now, would he instantly be an expert hand-to-hand fighter?"

"...no?" Hinata said.

Shino nodded. "Look at the class before ours, for a better example," he said. "Do you remember Rock Lee? He has no more ability to use chakra than most samurai, yet he was one of the most dangerous ninja in his year. Why? Because he was more determined. He trained harder than anyone else, refused to give up in any fight, and was willing to do whatever it took to win. I saw him fight with a broken arm at one point, because he refused to stop after being injured. He won that match.

"Your Byakugan gives you an advantage, yes. Do you think that is your only value to this team? If you had never gone to the Academy, if you were just a random civilian who had been assigned to this team because they had spontaneously developed the Byakugan, would the team be as strong as it is now?"

"...no?" Hinata said.

"And don't forget how totally badass you were in that fight on the roof," Naruto said. "That guy was a chunin; you just touched him and bam! he was down and you won."

Hinata winced at that, hunching in on herself and pressing her fingertips together. "I'm sorry about that, Naruto-kun," she said softly. "I shouldn't have been out there...if I hadn't gone, you wouldn't have gotten hurt."

"Bah!" Naruto said with a deliberately overdramatic wave of dismissal. "It was no big deal! These Sound guys, they needed a good kick in the butt to show them they shouldn't mess with us! Right, Shino?"

"Indeed," Shino said. "Which brings us back to the question of enhancing Hinata-chan's mobility. Hinata-chan, do you still have that chakra ribbon that I gave you?"

Hinata looked surprised, but took the rolled-up ribbon out of her pocket. "Yes? Why?" she asked.

"I was thinking about how Nariko-san used the ribbon; specifically, she grabbed you with it and swung you." His jaw tightened slightly at the memory. "Do you think you could learn to use it to the same extent that she did?"

Hinata looked at the ribbon doubtfully. "Maybe...?" she said. "I'm familiar with the basic concept—it has chakra channels in it that conduct my chakra and by molding the chakra I can move the ribbon. I don't know the practice, but I could probably figure it out. I'm sure that sensei could help, too."

Shino nodded. "Good. I think that would be a very good thing for you to work on—for one thing, it would give you a ranged attack that is both less expensive and more versatile than the Grand Fireball."

"A-all right," Hinata said.

"Related to that, there were several questions I wanted to ask you, Naruto-san. For example, that trick you used in the Academy stairwell, of jumping off clone after clone in order to gain height quickly. Can you do that again?"

Naruto waggled his hand in a 'maybe' gesture. "I haven't practiced it, if that's what you mean. I was improvising, and it was pretty unstable. I kept tipping over, but the railings were there to bounce off of and get back on track. Why?"

"Hmmm," Shino said with a frown. "If Hinata-chan can master the ribbon, she can use it to enhance her own mobility by grabbing on to objects and swinging on them. It therefore behooves us to ensure that there as many swingable objects as possible. Your clones would be good candidates, since they can be created anywhere."

"Shino-kun, are you sure that would work?" Hinata said softly. "I mean...it's one thing to swing on a tree—that's a fixed object. Naruto-kun is about the same mass as I am, and wouldn't be rooted..."

"If he is on a solid surface he can treewalk to remain static," Shino pointed out. "That means that he can turn a blank wall into something you can swing on. If he is in free space you can still swing on him, you will simply rotate around your mutual center of mass."

Naruto laughed. "That's an awesome idea, Shino-kun! Can you imagine how freaked out our poor opponents will be?"

Shino looked at Naruto consideringly. "If Hinata-chan uses you as a pivot point, ensure that you allow her to loop the ribbon around you and control it herself," he said cooly. "Do not attempt to grab on to it, or treewalk on it in order to give her a more stable connection; for one thing, it will ruin her ability to detach at the appropriate moment." He hesitated for a moment before continuing. "Also, it could kill you. As Hinata-chan said, the ribbon works by conducting her chakra through it; treewalking on the ribbon would be the same as treewalking on Hinata-chan."

Naruto's eyes went wide. "Oh. Yeah, that would be bad."

"On that subject," Shino said. "Could you explain what you did when you killed that ninja?"

"Ah...," Naruto rubbed the back of his neck in embarrassment. "Well...I don't really know. I wanted to grab the guy, yank him away from Hinata-chan, but he was too far away. I wasn't even thinking about treewalking, really. I just reached out for him by instinct and...pulled. I could feel my chakra latch onto him, make the connection the same way it does when we're treewalking, but my 'grip' kept slipping off, so I squeezed down really tight"—he clenched his fist in demonstration—"and then I just yanked on it with absolutely everything I had. I remember feeling my reserves go to zero and the guy hadn't even seemed to notice. I was desperate, so I scraped around for any last bit of chakra I could find and...there it was. This giant well, right inside me."

He fell silent for a moment, staring off into memory. When he spoke his voice came from very far away. "It was really weird...it wasn't my chakra, it wasn't even human. When I look inside myself I can feel my chakra surging along, contained and channeled by the walls of my coils. This chakra wasn't in any coils, there was nothing to contain it, yet it flowed. It didn't flow in straight lines, either. It was like...knots, in a piece of thread, that was one thread in a string and the string was knotted, and the string was part of a rope that was knotted and part of an immense cable, and every thread that made up the entire cable had knots in it that were duplicated by the strings...I'm not explaining this very well."

"I suspect the word you want is 'fractal'," Shino said. "There was a pattern and the pattern was replicated on many levels so that no matter what level you looked at you saw the same thing."

"Yes! Exactly!" Naruto said. "So, I found this chakra, and I grabbed hold of it and threw it across the connection that I'd made to that chunin and I pulled...and then his head exploded and I passed out. Next thing I knew, I was waking up in the hospital."

"Hm. Interesting," said Shino. "So, you were able to make the connection with your own chakra, you simply lacked the strength to use it until you tapped into the Fox. Correct?"

"I...guess so?" Naruto said.

Shino nodded and passed him a tiny pebble that he'd picked up from the riverbank. "Could you please attempt to pull the pebble to you from an inch away?"

"Shino-kun, is that a good idea?" Hinata asked. "Naruto nearly died last time."

"I believe it to be safe, Hinata-chan," Shino said. "Sensei said that treewalking on a person was the most incredible part. She also stated that she was able to treewalk on something that was a few inches away, it simply cost too much chakra to use for more than a few seconds. Since Naruto-san's primary characteristic is his immense chakra reserves, I doubt a bit of experimentation will hurt."

"Perhaps it would be wise for Naruto-kun to have a clone do the experiment?" Hinata suggested tentatively. "Naruto-kun, if one of your clones is damaged, does it harm you?"

"Nope," Naruto said, patting her hand reassuringly. "Once I make a clone it's pretty much independent of me. I can dispel it if I want to, just by pulling the chakra back out. I can't put more in, though, and I can't alter its solidity or intelligence after I make it. Oh, and I get the remaining chakra back when it pops, so I'm not even hurt that way."

"Can you create them wherever you want?" Shino asked. "For example, could you create one back in Konoha right now?"

Naruto shook his head. "I wish. No, it's got to be somewhere that I can see, and I can't create them too far away; I haven't experimented with how far, exactly, but at least a hundred feet."

"Hmmm," Shino said, lips pursed in thought. "And the clones can do techniques as well?"

Naruto nodded. "Yep. Well, if I give them chakra for it. When I create them I put a certain amount of chakra in them. I can split it up various ways—make them smarter, make them tougher, or give them a pool of chakra to draw on for techniques."

Shino frowned. "How is this different from a normal elemental clone or insect clone?" he asked. "Why is it a forbidden technique?"

"As to how it's different, I'll show you" Naruto said. "Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!" A trio of clones appeared around them.

"Hi, Hinata-chan!" they chorused, giving her a sunny smile and a thumbs-up that made her blush.

"Watch this!" Naruto-on-the-left said. He and the one on the right promptly threw themselves at the one in the center...and vanished.

The remaining clone struck a pose. "Ta-da!"

Hinata laughed and clapped her hands. "That was marvelous!" she said. "When they joined together, their chakra completely combined; there was no loss."

"They're still in here," the remaining clone said. "We're talking right now. If one of us knows something, he can tell the others about it once we combine."

"They can also adjust their parameters on the fly," the real Naruto said. "They can move chakra between their mind, their body, and their chakra pool to make themselves tougher or let them do more jutsu. The big difference between them and a regular elemental clone is that they're fully self-aware. It's not a pre-programmed gestalt like most clones, it's a full instance of me...maybe stepped-down, but still me."

"We don't regenerate chakra, though," the clone said. "So when it's gone, it's gone."

"Can you divide yourselves again?" Shino asked.

The clone nodded. "Yep. Only back into the ones that originally combined, though. I mean, I can use the Kage Bunshin myself, create clones just the way Prime does, but there's a really big startup cost on that, so it's usually not worth it for us."

Hinata was looking steadily more horrified. "You can't regenerate chakra?" she asked. "But...you're copies of Naruto-kun! If you can't regenerate chakra, doesn't that mean that you'll die?"

CloneNaruto shrugged and gave her an only slightly forced smile. "We all die, Hinata-chan," he said. "And I chose this—at the moment I came into being, I was an exact duplicate of Prime, including the choice to make a clone. Every time I-when-I-am-Prime make a clone, I-he knows that it means a copy of me-him will die." He laughed. "We really need some better pronouns for this."

"But...!" Hinata said.

CloneNaruto knelt down next to her and hugged her tight. "It's okay, Hinata-chan," he said. "Like I said, everyone dies eventually. I'm luckier than almost everyone, because I actually get to be here!"

Tears were starting to leak from her eyes. "But...what? Of course you're here."

He smiled and took her hand. "After I learned the technique I spent a lot of time talking to Hokage-jiji. He wanted me to promise to never use it; he said it was forbidden for a reason. It's too useful, though. It solves pretty much every problem, it lets me protect my precious people, and it makes me a more effective ninja." He leaned back a bit, rubbing his neck in embarrassment. "Let's face it," he said ruefully. "Without Kurama and the Kage Bunshin, I'm not much of a ninja. I wouldn't even have graduated."

"You are a great ninja, Naruto!" Hinata protested. "You inspired me! I would never have graduated either, without your example!"

RealNaruto cleared his throat. "Maybe so, Hinata-chan," he said. He smiled with half his mouth. "The fact is, though, that my taijutsu isn't any good, my weapon skills are only adequate, my academics were barely passable...the only areas where I was really good were trapmaking and security system analysis." He grinned proudly and high-fived his clone. "I blew the doors off that one, though! Iruka-sensei and the other instructors brought in guys from the Torture and Interrogation department to design systems for me to break, because I could beat everything the regular teachers could come up with." He buffed his nails on his jacket, looking smug. "Years of pranking," he said modestly.

Shino nodded. "That would explain why Anko-sensei made you our Escape Officer," he said.

"Yep," CloneNaruto said. "Anyway, going back to the original point: everyone dies, but almost no one gets born, and I was one of the lucky ones. Think about it, Hinata—when your mother conceived, how many different people could have been born? Millions! And you were the one. And Shino was the one. We are all..." He frowned, trying to remember something. "...unique points of light in the vast darkness of probability," he said. "After I talked with Jiji, he let me finish reading the Kage Bunshin entry on the Scroll. I was in a hurry after I stole it, so I just skipped to the end and learned the technique. Afterwards I went back and read all the discussion. Heh. Let me tell you, there's a reason that Scroll is as big as it is! Anyway, I really liked that quote."

"But, Naruto-kun, I don't want you to die!" Hinata wailed.

"Ssshhhh," CloneNaruto said. "It's okay, really. I'm human, so I'm going to die." He snorted. "Well, it's debatable whether I'm human, but you know what I mean. Anyway. All humans die. And I'm a ninja, so I'm almost certainly going to die young. I'm okay with that. I chose this life, just like I chose to be a clone."

"I had not realized that your clones were actually sapient, Naruto-san," Shino said, eyeing the clone speculatively. "I had assumed they were like elemental clones—matter animated by chakra and controlled by a predesigned gestalt. I should have realized when you said that your clones sometimes argued with you, but I assumed that the gestalt you had designed had simply been contaminated with some of your own...irreverence." He cocked his head. "Did you not send several hundred clones out into the woods to create the perimeter?"

"Yep," Naruto said. "They were all dumb ones, though. About as smart as a dog."

"So...the creation of that perimeter means that several hundred dogs will die?" Shino asked quietly.

RealNaruto frowned at him. "Yes, Shino, that is exactly what it means. They aren't as smart as people and they are me so I get to decide what happens to them. Even if I considered them to have...'moral weight', I think it was...aside from my own, I would happily create several hundred sub-human copies of myself and let them die if it adds even slightly to the safety of you and Hinata-chan. In a fight, I will create a thousand fully-intelligent copies of myself so that we can all throw ourselves between a weapon and either of you. You are my precious people, and I will keep you safe, no matter how many of me need to die to do it!"

Hinata threw herself onto the real Naruto, clinging tight and fighting back tears. "Thank you, Naruto," she said, her voice tight with suppressed sobs. "This, this is why I..." She trailed off, unable to finish.

CloneNaruto watched in bemusement and a faint bit of envy until Hinata reached out without looking, grabbed him by the collar of his jacket, and yanked him into the hug. CloneNaruto and RealNaruto gave each other uncomfortable looks and then rolled with it, hugging Hinata, stroking her back gently, and making comforting noises.

Shino sat stone-faced.

It took a few minutes for Hinata to recover but eventually she sat up, wiping her eyes with a tremulous smile. Both Narutos waited until they were sure she was okay before backing off completely.

"Thank you, Naruto-san," Shino said with a shallow bow. "I am grateful for your willingness to sacrifice yourself for us, although I must say that I find it a bit patronizing." He turned to the clone. "I admit to being slightly curious though...once you know that it is you who will be required to make the sacrifice, do any of you ever change your minds? Do you ever resent the fact that the real Naruto is not the one taking the risks? In short, if you'll pardon my bluntness: can we actually rely on you in the field?"

"Shino-kun!" Hinata said.

"It's a fair question, Hinata-chan," CloneNaruto said. "And yes, you can. We all get it; we don't have long in the world, and we'd rather that it counted for something. As to wishing that Prime would be the one taking the risks...well, first of all, he usually is, and honestly I wish he wouldn't. We may joke around and give him a hard time, but Prime can keep you two safe better than we can, because he can make more clones and do more jutsu. And not just keep you safe, but Jiji, Iruka-sensei, Anko-sensei—even if she is nuts—and all the other people who are precious to us. That's why I chose to create myself; if we're experimenting with dangerous techniques, it's better if I do it. If something blows up and I die, Prime can still look after you. If he dies, then there's no more of us, no more Naruto-like unique points of light, and you are all less safe that you were before." He shrugged. "And, going back to what I said before—eventually Prime will die, and then there will never be another shadow clone of him. I'm fortunate that I'm one of the ones who actually gets to see the world."

Shino raised an eyebrow. "I note your distinction between yourself and 'Prime'," he said. "Yet, you said that you clones are merely copies of Naruto-san. How is it that you have a conception of self separate from his?"

The clone paused and thought about it, then looked at NarutoPrime. "You want to take this one?" he said.

"When I make the clones, I can vary them a little," Naruto said. "If I need different kinds it's easier and faster to make them in batches—smart ones, then dumb ones, for example—but I could do it in one go if I tried. In addition, I can drop a seed in each clone as I make it. Usually what I do is give him a number so that we can all work together."

"I'm number four," CloneNaruto said. "The other two who joined me were three and five; we don't use the numbers one or two, because otherwise too many of us have to think of the bathroom jokes."

"Right," NarutoPrime said. "Anyway, I can make a plan like 'clones three through one hundred will throw shuriken at target X, clone one-oh-one through one-fifty will take targets of opportunity.' Then I make a hundred and fifty clones and, since different versions of me know their own number, we all do the right thing. So, there's...sort of a separate identity between us."

"Hm," said Shino.

"Naruto-kun...if your clones can combine and they share chakra once they do, could you not use that as a way to sustain them?" Hinata asked. "If you regenerate faster than they lose chakra, you could keep making new clones to fuse with them and sustain them."

CloneNaruto smiled sadly, "Doesn't work that way, beautiful," he said. "For one thing, we're all still in here. The more of us combine, the more voices we're listening to, the more confusing it gets. Even when everyone tries to be quiet...it's still like being in a room together, you know they're there. Plus, we all still lose chakra at the same rate, even when we're combined. We can't share it back and forth, either—right now, Three could do a technique using his chakra, and then Five and I could do a technique. It would look like it was just me doing the technique, but the energy is still coming from a distinct clone. We can pull chakra out of our brains or bodies to power a jutsu if we have to, but we're still finite."

"You can decrease your own intelligence?" Shino asked. "Can you increase it as well?"

The clone shook his head. "Nope. I didn't understand that section of the scroll and didn't have time to look it up before we left. It was a big biology discussion, talking about—" He screwed up his face in concentration. "Noodle...? No, neural architecture, top- topol- top-something complexity, and a few other things that I don't remember. Anyway, it's like there's an upper limit on how smart we can be, but we can pull energy out of that, drop the limit, in order to use it for other things. Once it's been dropped it's dropped though—the scroll said something about 'nonpreserved state' and 'information loss' when it was trying to explain that bit." He shrugged. "Doesn't really matter why it is, just that it is. We work with it, and it's not something we generally need to do."

He pushed himself to his feet, rubbing his hands in excitement. "Anyway, enough of that! There are experiments to do, new techniques to learn! Woohoo!" He took the pebble and trotted off to the other side of the field, fifty yards away.

A few minutes later he came back, a beatific smile on his face. "Check it out!" he said. He held a pebble—not the original one—out on the palm of his left hand, then placed his right hand perpendicular and a few inches away. The pebble flew from his open palm and stuck to his right hand. He did it again several more times, moving slightly farther each time until he was pulling it from the full length of his arm.

"I'm pretty sure Prime could do it from farther," CloneNaruto said. "We only had so much juice to start with, and the cost goes up pretty fast—faster if you're trying it on a blade of grass, too, or something else that has a bit of chakra in it." He coughed. "Three uh...kinda burned himself out trying that one. Anyway, here's the cool part." He tilted his hand at an angle; the pebble started to roll off, but before it could make much progress it blasted off into the sky faster than the fastest kunai throw.

"Can't figure out how to aim it," he said, rubbing the back of his neck. "I can only push or pull perpendicular to my hand, but I bet you two can do better. If you could fire it at an angle, it could be better than regular kunai throwing."

Hinata looked puzzled. "If it would be better, wouldn't they have taught us that method in the Academy?"

"Not necessarily," Shino said. "For two reasons. First, it is important to have a foundation—even if this technique would provide greater power, it is still important to know how to throw a kunai such that it strikes point first. Also, being able to function when low on chakra is important."

"And the second reason?" NarutoPrime asked.

Shino grimaced, looking as though he'd bitten a lemon. "This is something my clan makes plain to its members, but I think is not generally discussed outside the Aburame...Konoha is much freer with its techniques than most villages, but every technique still represents a significant increase in a ninja's abilities. Not a linear one either, as many combinations of techniques are stronger than the sum of their parts. Therefore, genin need to prove themselves trustworthy before they will be taught more than the basics. This is part of why clan ninja have an advantage over non-clan ninja—our clans teach us things as we grow up that are not available to those from non-clan backgrounds."

CloneNaruto frowned. "So, we're probably reinventing things that most jonin already know?"

"Even if that's true," Hinata said. "It's worth doing. It lets us get ahead of the curriculum that Anko-sensei is teaching us and, as Shino-kun said, techniques reinforce one another."

"I have also noticed a certain lack of research into jutsu," Shino said. "Field ninja don't generally have time or interest; they need to focus on being able to use a certain set of techniques very quickly and evolving effective attacks and counters for expected situations. Academy instructors are too busy for research, ANBU and T&I have their own duties, and so on."

"And, of course, developing jutsu is dangerous," Hinata said softly. "My second cousin Inari was crushed when she lost control of an earth jutsu she was working on."

NarutoPrime frowned. "Why don't people have their clones do the experiments?" he asked. He glanced at Shino and rolled his eyes. "And don't start, Shino-kun. Elemental clones don't have moral weight, and you know it."

"Not everyone can make elemental clones, Naruto-san," Shino said. "And you should remember the limits imposed by the gestalt: one cannot create a clone gestalt that can perform chakra manipulations the creator cannot perform, and modifying a gestalt is extremely time-consuming, which makes experimentation very slow." He shrugged. "There may also be mindset issues. The Aburame, for example, believe that beyond a certain point there is more advantage to be had from training one's rationality than learning new jutsu. Having a wide array of techniques is useless unless your thinking is clear enough to use them well."

Shino turned to Hinata. "Speaking of using them well...Hinata-chan, I noticed that when you were pointing out the locations of the kunai in the river, you paused between each group as though you were looking around. I had thought that the Byakugan simply showed you everything within your range?"

Hinata blushed. "It does," she said quietly. "But it's like normal vision—your eyes detect everything that's there, but you can only pay attention to so much of it at once. Certain things attract normal eyes—motion, for example—and the same is true of the Byakugan. Motion, out-of-place or changing chakra, things like that. As I become more skilled with the Byakugan I will be able to pay attention to more and larger areas, but right now I can only manage one point of focus about ten feet across. I'm fully aware of everything in my point of focus, even the insides of solid objects. Outside of that area, I see as well as you see what's just outside the main focal point of your eyes. I couldn't read something I wasn't looking at, for example."

She bowed her head. "My sister can already manage three points of focus," she said quietly.

"I do not see that as relevant to our operations, Hinata-chan," Shino said, touching her hand comfortingly. "You can warn us of any attack, you can track us through a complex melee, you demonstrated the ability to attack backwards against Orochimaru-sama...your use of the Byakugan is excellent, and will only improve as time goes on."

She looked up at him with a small smile, patting his hand gratefully. "Thank you, Shino-kun," she said. "I'm glad you think so." She didn't sound convinced.

"He's right, Hinata-chan," NarutoPrime said. "You're totally awesome." She smiled a little wider at him but didn't say anything.

"Given that, I had some thoughts..." Shino said.

The conversation went on for quite a while as the genin bounced progressively more lethal ideas off of one another.

o-o-o-o

Kurama was still a normal-sized fox, curled up on his pillow with his tails wrapped around him. When Naruto appeared, he sat up, yawned, and stretched.

"Welcome back, Naruto," Kurama said. "Before you say anything, I'd like to apologize for the bobble in the chakra flow earlier. I did my best; I'm sorry it wasn't good enough."

"What?" Naruto said in confusion.

Kurama hung his head. "When you fell over, that was my fault. One of the things my chakra does is enhance your physical abilities—it makes you stronger, faster, more coordinated, and so on. It's like the chakra sheathing technique you were taught in the academy, only more so. Like regular chakra sheathing, though, it requires a smooth chakra flow—any hiccups and it simply won't work properly, or you'll lose some or all of the sheathing."

"Okay...?" Naruto said.

"Right now, you aren't experienced enough with using my chakra to manage a smooth flow yourself," Kurama said. "I was helping; feeding it to you, ensuring that it stayed smooth, ensuring that there was always just the right amount for how you needed to move at that moment. That's a little hard, though, under the current circumstances. The flow needs to react as the sheathing shifts, and that needs to happen as fast as your body does or else it'll get in your way and slow you down. That requires a kinesthetic awareness of what your body's trying to do, and that's not one of the senses that I get through this window."

He shrugged ruefully. "I did my best," he said apologetically. "I was having to guess how you were going to move, and it required a lot of focus. When I suddenly realized what was happening—that we were most likely in a genjutsu—I was startled, and I lost concentration for a moment. The chakra flow from me to you stuttered and you lost the sheathing around your legs for a split second; your body wasn't expecting the changeover, so your legs didn't pick up the motion in time. Again, I apologize."

"Oh," said Naruto, blinking. "That...makes sense, I guess. Thank you for helping."

Kurama shrugged and curled up on his pillow again, rolling over and wriggling a bit as he apparently scratched an itch on his back. "It's no trouble," he said. "It's what I'm here for. Anyway, of course I'll keep dealing with the flows, but it might be better if you learn to manage them yourself."

"Yeah!" Naruto said in excitement. "How do I do that?"

"It's simple," Kurama said, rolling back up to a sitting posture. "You just need to pull on my chakra—gently, please! No more of that 'tearing chunks out of Kurama' thing, if you don't mind!" His jaw hung open in a foxish laugh. "You need to pull steadily so that the flow is completely even; the strand has to be of constant diameter and smooth. Once you can do that, it works just like regular chakra sheathing, except that it sheathes your entire body. Make sure that it's skin-tight too, or you'll end up slapping against it when you move."

Naruto seemed dubious, but nodded and sat down to do the exercise. He had a feeling that it wasn't going to be as easy as Kurama suggested.

He was right, it wasn't. For four apparent hours he practiced, but got nowhere. Every time he pulled on Kurama's chakra he got a lumpy thread instead of a smooth flow.

"This isn't working," he finally said, frustrated.

"Don't worry about it," Kurama said. "I'm sure you'll get it in time. Until then, I'll keep managing it for you. It would be a lot easier if I had access to your kinesthetic sense, though; without it I'm afraid I'm always going to be guessing at exactly what you need."

Naruto eyed him thoughtfully. "How would I do that?" he asked.

"Imagine a mannequin of yourself, here on my pillar," Kurama said. "Run strings from your real limbs to those of the mannequin so that as you move in the outer world, the mannequin moves in here."

"Why on your pillar?" Naruto asked.

Kurama shrugged. "You can put it on yours, if you want, but it won't work nearly as well. I have to be able to see what's happening in close detail in order to be able to predict." He paused, eyeing Naruto curiously. "If the idea makes you nervous, you don't have to," he said. "I can do a pretty good job just on guesswork, and hopefully you'll be able to manage the flows on your own soon."

"It...just feels a little strange," Naruto said.

Kurama shrugged. "Maybe next time, then. Do you want to practice some more, or do you want to head back?"

"I think I'll head back," Naruto said. "I'm sure sensei is going to wake us up pretty soon for training."

o-o-o-o

The next day, as Anko was taking them to training, Naruto dispatched a clone back into the city to acquire things that they would need: a large number of extra kunai, plenty of ration bars, and four collapsible-framed canvas canteens with webbing designed to hold them securely to a ninja's body. Oddly, the very first thing he did upon acquiring them was to remove the stoppers and tie them out of the way against the neck of the canteen.

o-o-o-o

Anko's brutal training continued. Out of pure self defense, the genin improved quickly. She would work them until well after dark, then take them to the hospital to have their injuries healed. She would not allow them to eat until they had bathed, so bathing became highly efficient. Dinner would be wolfed down in seconds; Hyuuga manners were recognized as a luxury and rapidly abandoned. Sleep was not permitted until they had written in their journals, so they evolved personal systems of shorthand. Sleeping was done fully dressed, and in shifts. Whomever was on watch would wake the others before Anko could arrive to kick them awake. After a few days, Shino became confident enough in his ability to give his bugs lasting commands that the kikai were able to handle the watch duties so all three genin were able to sleep. Every morning when the kikai woke them, the first thing they would do was wolf down two ration bars, knowing full well that Anko would not allow them breakfast.

Their taijutsu and weapons skills came along fast, as Anko was quick to punish any lapses; they all still had flaws, but she was steadily beating those flaws out of them. Their assigned jutsu began to show improvement—Naruto was able to reliably raise two earthen walls at a time, Hinata could reliably produce a Grand Fireball, and Shino's bug clone was improving. None of their jutsu were combat-useful yet. Naruto's walls rose too slowly, Hinata's fireball was too short-ranged and required too much concentration, and Shino's bug clone couldn't move believably. Still, their abilities were well in advance of where they would have been under any other teacher.

One particularly significant advantage they'd developed was in Shino's colony. The number of kikai that Shino had been able to sustain was previously limited by the amount of chakra he could generate to feed them. His steadily growing chakra reserves had allowed him to increase the size of his colony significantly. On the fourth day of their training, when Shino had mentioned that his chakra was a limiting factor, Naruto had offered to let them feed on him. Now, Shino's colony had grown so large there wasn't room in his body for more. The lifecycle of the kikai being as short as it was, it meant that Naruto had to allow millions of bugs to crawl on him every few hours, but he viewed that as a small price to pay.

Orochimaru had left them alone until now, but on the sixth day of their time in Sound he appeared at their training ground just as they were breaking for lunch.

Shino's bugs were the first to give the alarm; he had pushed out multiple perimeters of them at intervals that stretched out two hundred yards around the team. Orochimaru was walking—indeed, almost sauntering—through the woods towards them, making no effort at stealth, so the kikai had plenty of time to relay the message. By the time the legendary ninja arrived, all three genin were facing him in seiza, bowing politely. Anko was off to one side, carefully expressionless.

"Good afternoon, little bird," Orochimaru said pleasantly.

"Sensei," Anko said, giving him the briefest of nods.

"Good afternoon, Orochimaru-sama," the genin chorused.

"We're having a bit of a wasp problem in the village, and I was rather hoping to borrow Shino-san again," Orochimaru said. "I'm sure you won't mind, little bird."

Anko teeth were grinding so loudly they should have splintered. "Of course not, sensei," she said.

Shino rose and silently followed Orochimaru back into the village.

"You're still weak on your left, you know," Orochimaru said casually. "You need to keep your arm an inch farther from your center."

Shino nodded politely. "Thank you for the instruction, Orochimaru-sama," he said.

Orochimaru nodded and said nothing.

Once again, there really were wasps; several nests had formed under the eaves of one of the houses on the edge of town. Shino called the insects out, Orochimaru gently lifted down the nests, and they relocated the creatures into the woods on the edge of a giant meadow.

After they were finished, Orochimaru led Shino to one end of the meadow where a series of archery targets had been set up at the base of a high berm.

"Tell me, Shino-san, what is the greatest art of the Aburame clan?" Orochimaru asked. "The true source of their power?"

Shino eyed him carefully. "With the greatest respect, I will not divulge clan secrets, Orochimaru-sama," he said.

Orochimaru waved dismissively. "Don't be foolish, child," he said. "I know the answer already. It's not your kikai. What is it?"

Shino studied him for another moment, then nodded. "Our rationality," he said. "We are among the few who do focused study on how to think better."

Orochimaru nodded. "Indeed." He turned and picked thoughtfully at the archery target, burying his little finger in one of the holes and fiddling with the edges of the canvas. "You practice observation and clarity of thought. You consider how the human mind fails, and are not so foolish as to think that you can prevent those failings. Instead, you learn to recognize them, work around them, and even take advantage of them. It is the single art that Konoha has produced that I respect." He waved dismissively. "The Rasengan, the Second Hokage's teleportation technique—none of the jutsu the Leaf have produced can compare to the power of your clan's study."

He sank down on the grass, gesturing for Shino to sit as well. "Tell me, Shino-san, do the Aburame ever teach outsiders their techniques?"

Shino nodded cautiously. "Indeed, Orochimaru-sama," he said. "We have spoken to the Academy and several other ninja schools about conducting courses, and we will freely teach what we know to any Konoha citizen who asks."

"I see," said Orochimaru. "I shall have to speak to my intelligence network, then. The Academy curriculum they obtained for me did not show any listings for Bayesian probability or any other core element of the Aburame clan's teachings."

Shino said nothing.

"Some interesting facts for your consideration," Orochimaru said. "Sarutobi Hiruzen, the Third Hokage, my teacher. They call him 'The Professor', and 'The God of Shinobi', and the titles are well earned. In the past twelve months he has placed thirty-seven proposals before the Council. Twenty-two of them have passed. Aburame Shibi, your father, head of your clan, member of the Council. Of the eighteen proposals he has placed before the Council in the past twelve months, seventeen have passed. Interesting, is it not?"

"Hokage-sama faces a great deal more political opposition than my father does," Shino said. "Simply for being the leader of the village, he attracts more enemies."

"True," Orochimaru said. "Although I feel that that in itself says something. No matter. Tell me, Shino-san, do you consider yourself skilled with the arts of your clan? Do you feel that you think clearly and can accept reality no matter how unpleasant?"

Shino eyed him carefully. "Reasonably so, Orochimaru-sama," he said.

"Then I ask your advice, young rationalist," Orochimaru said. "Suppose you knew of a threat to Konoha that was some distance in the future...two decades, three, perhaps even as many as five. A threat that you were certain would happen, but that relied on too much contextual knowledge to be convincingly explained to the Hokage. A threat that you were certain would lead to, at best, a war bloodier and more destructive than the last Shinobi World War and might well represent complete destruction of your village. How would you proceed?"

Shino considered that. "I would speak to my father," he said. "He is the one that I would have the best chance of convincing, and the one best placed to instigate the necessary changes."

"Very well," Orochimaru said. "Now suppose the threat were larger. In fact, suppose it applied to the entire Elemental Nations. What then?"

"Is this going somewhere specific, Orochimaru-sama?" Shino asked.

Orochimaru smiled and lay back, hands folded behind his head as he studied the clouds. "Humor me, Shino-san. You've discovered a threat to the Elemental Nations. Explaining it is difficult. In fact, let's assume that it's not just difficult, it's almost impossible—perhaps the threat would challenge deeply held beliefs of the Nations' power elite, or the obvious solution would require them to give up some of their own power, or do something else they found personally distasteful. What would you do? Remember, if you fail, everyone you love will be exterminated or subjugated, so your answer matters."

"I would need to think about it," Shino said. "Given the time horizon you have indicated, it should not matter if I spent a week or even a month thinking."

Orochimaru sat up. "A fair answer." He rolled up onto his feet. "Well, I've kept you away from your training long enough, I suppose. Let's get you back." He offered Shino a hand and pulled him to his feet before turning and walking up the length of the meadow.

They had walked perhaps two hundred yards and were just crossing the first of two firing lines when Orochimaru spoke again. His voice was casual, almost disinterested. "You might find it useful to ask my little bird about her history with Morino-san. I think you might find it enlightening."

Shino's eyes narrowed. "Thank you, Orochimaru-sama," he said.

Orochimaru nodded and was silent all the way back to where the team were training.

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