Oops... Is She Broken?

Naruto raised an eyebrow at the redhead who continued to stare at him expectantly.

"Are you sure you want me to summon as many clones as my reserves would allow?" Naruto asked dubiously.

Kushina paused, wondering how many the boy would be able to summon. She decided that sating her curiosity was of greater concern than avoiding dealing with explaining why Konoha was overrun by Naruto clones. Besides, it would not be to that sort of extent. How many clones can one child make anyway?

Naruto noticed Kushina's train of thought and sighed, deciding to make a few hundred to satisfy her curiosity. He could make more with little to no difficulty, but then he would have to deal with her asking more questions that he was unable to answer without revealing that he knew of his true heritage and telling her about his clan. It would have been far too troublesome, especially since the council was likely to force him into the Clan Restoration Act — also known as the CRA.

He made exactly one thousand clones without breaking a sweat. They were all over the rather large private training ground that had a diameter of about thirty metres and was a circular clearing in a forested part of the Uzumaki-Namikaze compound. Kushina frowned at the boy. She had instructed him to make as many as he could, but he only made an amount that did not seem to faze him. Although a thousand shadow clones was an impossible number for practically all shinobi to make at once, she knew that it was not Naruto's limit.

Kushina decided against pushing it. There were already more than enough clones for her to work with. She did not want to upset him too much. It might result in him accidentally drawing on the Kyūbi's power before he was ready which would cause him to find out about his status as jinchūriki, which she did not feel he was ready for until he had been enrolled in the academy.

Naruto heard her thoughts and almost snorted at the decision she made and the rationale behind it. They were purely selfish. She only wished to retain his innocence. Of course, it was not wrong for a parent to do that for their child. However, she did not notice that the child no longer possessed that innocence for her to protect.

'She only wants to baby me and keep me from the horrors of the world, since she does not know that I still remember being exposed to them on the day of my parents' deaths. She even thinks I didn't notice the other chakra present in my body. How foolish,' Naruto could not help but think snidely.

"Now, each group of one hundred clones is going to focus on one type of nature transformation. Since you have so many, it only makes sense to train all of them to a certain extent so that you will have no weaknesses. You may decide to specialise in one or two of your affinities later on. For now, let's just train in everything," Kushina explained, pulling the blond from his thoughts.

Naruto nodded.

"I'll teach you how to draw out each type of chakra first, the knowledge of which you will transfer to your clones. Unfortunately, I can only help you with wind and water as I only have those chakra natures. You will have to just try out the exercises with the others, though I can show you a bit of fire. Okay, now let's start with wind," Kushina decided on her own.

Kushina picked up a leaf from the ground and showed it to Naruto. It was a normal leaf, with no scratches on its surface and not unnaturally dry. Naruto discreetly activated his Byakugan and Sharingan at the same time, hid them with his kekkei-genkai and watched as the woman converted her chakra to wind as she released it from her fingers, causing the leaf to split into two perfect slices.

Naruto bent down and picked up his own leaf, slicing it perfectly into two with his chakra. Kushina whistled, impressed. To think that anyone — a mere four-year-old, no less — would manage to convert their chakra into their elemental affinity and complete the exercise on their first attempt was unthinkable. Much less with a chakra type as unstable and difficult to control as wind.

Kushina nodded, unsealing a large sack with a ton of scrolls from a seal on her wrist.

"This contains about a hundred jutsu scrolls of varying difficulty. Start with the C-ranks before moving up. There is only one S-rank but there are about six A-ranked ones. Some of them were created by me. Try to do as much as you can, but I do not expect you to finish them all," Kushina explained as a group of Naruto's clones paired up and each took a scroll, with the last two groups in line picking up two.

"You can train at..." Kushina trailed off, wondering where she could let the horde of clones train.

"Fine... I'll let you train in the hidden training ground that Minato and I made before you were born," Kushina sighed in defeat, creating a shadow clone that led the clones into the forested area where the entrance to the training ground had been hidden.

Kushina turned back to Naruto once the clones had filed off into the forest, leaving eight-hundred and one Narutos in the training ground.

"Next is water. I will teach you starting with a very simple exercise. You may or may not wish to try using a hand seal with this one to focus your chakra better," Kushina explained as she headed toward a stream within the forested area that was not that far from the clearing.

Kushina knelt beside the stream while Naruto just watched intently with his two copied kekkei-genkai never faltering. He saw Kushina imbue some chakra into the water and use it to lift a pillar of water that became taller as she stood. Naruto noted how Kushina used water chakra that mixed easily with the existing water source and how she manipulated it.

Before Kushina could instruct him on what to do, Naruto knelt beside the stream and placed his hand on the surface of the water like he had seen Kushina do. Naruto searched through his chakra until he found a cool, swirling chakra that felt much like the water that he was touching. He pulled on the chakra, summoning it to the surface as he allowed it to meld with the water in the stream. The boy noted with slight fascination that he could feel every molecule of water in the air around him, within the plants, in the animals of the forest and even within Kushina herself.

Instead of doing as Naruto had set out to do, Naruto decided to sate his curiosity and find out what it meant. He had a suspicion that he had an extremely high water affinity that was similar to that of the Nidaime Hokage, Senju Tobirama, but he wanted to check whether he was right. Naruto allowed his hands to leave the surface of the stream. He did not meld his chakra into the water around him, instead choosing to focus on the water particles themselves.

Naruto brought the water particles together around him, the water seeming to swirl into existence in a ring around him.

Kushina could only watch in bewilderment. When Naruto had kneeled beside her, she did not really think much of it. The child was a prodigy and would get the water manipulation down on his first try anyway. No surprise there. However, she was confused when the boy suddenly removed his hands from the water's surface barely a second after touching it. What baffled her more was that he straightened his back, his body no longer bent over the water. Whatever she had been expecting Naruto to attempt, what she saw definitely was not it. She thought that Naruto was going to pull up the pillar of chakra without using his hands or something, which would have been commendable as even she could only do it with a bit of difficulty with her status as an S-rank shinobi. Naruto did something that she had not, in a thousand years, have expected him to be able to.

Naruto displayed the ability of the Nidaime Hokage, which was to manipulate water particles in the air. It meant that Naruto could manipulate water that was in a state besides its usual liquid form. No one, since the beginnings of the shinobi era, had ever displayed the same high water affinity as the Nidaime. This was such that there had actually been speculations that it had been a kekkei-genkai, a non-inherited one like that of his brother Senju Hashirama's Mokuton that was not present in their father and Hashirama's descendants. Naruto proved that theory wrong, though, as there was no way that Tobirama would have had a child with an Iwa nin.

Naruto was in awe as he watched the water dance and swirl around him, looking both protective and lethal as they stayed close to him. Naruto wondered if he could use the water in the same way his sand worked. Naruto had taken to keeping a small parcel of sand with him wherever he went and had left the inner side of his outermost layer of clothing coated in a thin layer of defensive sand out of paranoia — which probably rubbed off on him from Gaara. He knew that it was no issue for him to make sand out of his own chakra as he had copied the kekkei-genkai and gotten a link to Gaara's abilities. Besides, he could always get some from the desert with the help of his mirrors. It was really just him being paranoid.

Kushina had given up on figuring out the child at that point. There was no point. It would only cause her more unneeded stress. She decided instead to watch Naruto as he played with the water that surrounded him, the tendrils looking as though they would spear her if she dared to so much as approach the young prodigy that she considered her own adopted son. She wisely chose to stay put and wait for Naruto to finally remember that she was there, guessing that scaring the blond would probably end her life as she was unarmed and any jutsu she used could probably be turned against her, considering that the shadow clones that have been sent off to train in wind jutsu while the original was supposed to learn water manipulation. Kushina briefly wondered whether the water in the air would defend the boy against threats, but decided that she would see it for herself if an enemy attacked the boy when his guard was down. Her clone had not dispelled yet, but she guessed that it had decided to watch over the blond clones.

Naruto was jolted back to the present when a couple of his clones dispelled, their respective jutsu mastered such that he no longer needed hand seals. He was relieved when he felt a clone help him arrange the information before dispelling with the rest, several more groups following suit until there was no longer any clones left in the underground training ground that was surprisingly big. Naruto allowed the water that surrounded him to either splash onto the ground or vaporise into its previous state.

Naruto laughed giddily as he heard the woman sigh in relief behind him. He was right! He did have the very same ability that had made the Nidaime famous. It was a powerful ability that would definitely aid him in combat.

Kushina walked toward the boy warily, carefully placing a hand on his shoulder and hoping not to be killed by a random jet of pressurised water. Thankfully, it did not happen. Naruto turned to face her, his eyes still sparkling with glee. It was the first time she had seen Naruto happy, she noticed. He had always seemed so detached and cold. She had to admit that Naruto was much cuter when he looked happy. She just knew that he would have many fangirls when he was older whether or not he chose to smile in front of others. She was going to make sure that none of them could get to her Naru-chan.

Naruto winced at the thought of fans. Yagura had a fan base of males and females alike, of which none had any idea of his true age. Utakata had been constantly teasing him about it and reminding him about the especially obsessed ones that actually stalked him whenever they could. Gaara also had a growing fan base, especially since Shukaku had so kindly stopped bothering him ever since he made the contract with the Kagami.

Naruto was not just worried about fangirls, he did not want fanboys either. Both were equally scary and he wanted none of it. Naruto hoped desperately that Kushina was wrong, but something in his gut told him that he would be disappointed.

"Of course you will have fans, kit. Why wouldn't you?" Kurama told Naruto as though for the sole purpose of annoying him.

"But Uchiha Itachi-san will be only just four years older than me. They can go chase him. He's eight now and I had heard that he had already unlocked his Sharingan. He's the prodigy of the century and the pride of the Uchiha clan! He shows more promise!" Naruto argued despite sounding more like he was trying to convince himself.

"You forget that the rest of the world know you as the first son of the Kiroi Senko and his wife, the Akai Chishio no Habanero. You also seem to be the smartest of their litter. Those two may end up being more advanced than most in their year due to additional training, but they are will still be very far from your level," Kurama said smugly, knowing that he had won the exchange.

Naruto sighed internally, resigning himself to his bitter fate.

Kushina, in the meantime, had led the slightly dazed Naruto back to the clearing and unsealed another sack of jutsu scrolls. Naruto snapped back into the present to see that Kushina was already explaining. He tuned in to her voice, still upset that he was going to have to face fangirls.

"...same thing. There are about a hundred water jutsu scrolls here. There are about four A-ranks and two S-ranks. It came to my attention that my clone had tested every jutsu once they were done and I would like for that to be repeated," Kushina explained while making two shadow clones to look after the Naruto clones that had paired up similarly to the previous group and walked in the direction of the hidden training ground.

"Now fire," Kushina said simply as she grabbed another leaf.

"The only fire jutsu that I can actually do is the one used to light campfires and burn dead bodies that is a compulsory jutsu for every shinobi to learn," Kushina admitted.

"I can do one fire manipulation exercise, though," Kushina continued, her fingers sparking and causing the leaf in her loose grip to burn into ash.

Naruto, who had deactivated his Sharingan and Byakugan, imitated her actions. He selected a random leaf off the ground and channelled fire chakra through it, remembering how to use fire chakra from the fire jutsu he had copied from random people around the village. There was a surprising number of people with fire affinity but since he was in Hi no Kuni, he supposed that it should have been anticipated.

Naruto was unable to find people with an affinity for wind or water, though. If there were any, they did not use any jutsu that were of the wind or water variety. Naruto was actually beginning to consider spying on the other elemental nations using his mirrors. It was not as though he would have been caught. Naruto wondered whether he could use the same method to search for his brother and he decided to try it out when he was supposed to be asleep.

Kushina was not surprised that he would get the exercise down immediately. She unsealed another sack of scrolls, copies of the originals that belonged to Minato. She repeated the procedure from before, the third group of clones joining the previous group in the hidden training ground. It was actually expanded through the use of seals which made it easy to fit in any amount of people.

"I don't know the lightning and earth exercises," Kushina admitted, not knowing that Naruto had already learnt how to manipulate earth and lightning chakra while trying to use his explosion release.

"It's alright, kaa-san," Naruto said, smiling at her, "I can do it myself."

Naruto easily found his lightning natured chakra and channelled it out of several of the tenketsu found in his hand and forearm, having learnt how to do it while he watched the training process of the main branch member he had copied the Byakugan from. He had also learnt the gentle fist using that method, along with several clan secrets. From what he gathered, the Byakugan had one blind spot and he had apparently been in it when he had been watching the Hyūga train. It was a stroke of sheer luck, but he was grateful for it. He had also found out the next day that the unsuspecting main branch Hyūga was actually the Hyūga clan head. Naruto had decided to be polite and went up to the man while he had been walking around the village.

Naruto smiled stiffly, politely, and bowed a little in respect for the man who was of much higher status than himself before speaking formally and monotonously, "Good afternoon, Hyūga-dono. I am Uzumaki-Namikaze Naruto. Long time no see."

A brief look of surprise flitted past the stoic man's features before he nodded back, "Greetings, Naruto-dono. It has been quite a while since we have last met. I am glad you appear to remember me. It seems that you are more polite and respectful than your parents ever were."

The man allowed a small smirk to grace his features as he said that, shocking the branch family member that accompanied him. Naruto only inclined his head in response, knowing what the stoic man had meant and agreeing wholeheartedly. His adoptive parents were not the most well-mannered of individuals and never seemed to care all that much for formalities.

"I would just like to apologise, Hyūga-dono," Naruto said without elaboration.

Hyūga Hiashi was baffled by the blond's words. 'What is there for the child to apologise for? Since I do not seem to recall him ever needing to apologise, I will just presume that it is just something unimportant...' Hiashi thought, Naruto almost laughing out loud at how far from the truth Hiashi's conclusion was.

"It is alright, you are forgiven. However, may I ask what you are apologising for?" Hiashi questioned curiously.

"It is not really that important, but I felt that it was right to apologise anyway. Sorry for taking up your time, Hyūga-dono," Naruto told Hiashi, dodging the question and escaping quickly.

Hiashi did not notice what Naruto had done until a minute after Naruto had made his leave.

"Smart kid..." Hiashi muttered, "He might very well be smarter than his parents combined... He would definitely be a prodigy. He does have promise: looks, heritage, smarts and strength — his parents are both S-rank shinobi. He has potential."

Hiashi continued on his walk, his step just a bit lighter and his expression just a bit brighter. Things were going to be interesting. Just what they all needed after the period of peace and complacency. Hiashi never knew how right he was.

Naruto let the lightning natured chakra surround his hand and wrist, similar to how Kakashi's Chidori looked like. Naruto kept it in place by vibrating the chakra at extremely high speeds, meaning that it was practically a ripoff version of Kakashi's Raikiri that Naruto did without hand seals and using much less chakra. Naruto kept the part nearer to the tip of his hand pointed. His version was actually more dangerous than Kakashi's, but he chose not to tell Kushina about it. He also chose not to draw on the static and electricity that he could feel crackling in the clouds, knowing that it would only bring unwanted questions if he suddenly caused a thunderstorm which struck lightning at him which somehow wielded like he did the water which already shocked Kushina enough with. Naruto felt as though the woman would have a heart attack if he kept surprising her like that.

Naruto looked up from the mesmerising bluish and yellowish sparks to see that the woman had gone into shock. Naruto then realised that the Raikiri, which his technique was based off, was a very difficult S-ranked jutsu. Moreover, he seemed to just pull it out of nowhere without using any hand seals although the nature of lightning chakra made it more difficult to control than wind and the obviously difficult vibration of the chakra that he had gotten down perfectly. Additionally, the yellow sparks that looked more dangerous than the blue ones obviously revealed that his version of the technique was more effective. Naruto had failed in not surprising her further.

Naruto sighed and waved a hand in front of her face. He snapped his fingers in an effort to break her from her trance. It did not work.

"I think you broke her, kit," Kurama stated the obvious in an unhelpful manner.

"I noticed..." Naruto grumbled.

Naruto pulled water from the air and dumped it on the woman's head, soaking her completely and shocking her from her stupor. The woman shook her head, Naruto quickly evaporating the water before she could register what had just happened. The woman looked around, dazed. She only remembered what had happened when her eyes landed on Naruto again.

"What was that? How do you know that jutsu?" Kushina asked the boy, completely confused.

Naruto had not started his elemental training yet and was, by right, unable to do any jutsu before that day.

"Jutsu?" Naruto echoed, acting confused.

"That looks exactly like an S-rank jutsu of the highest calibre. A personal jutsu created by the one and only Copy Ninja, Hatake Kakashi of the Sharingan. Not even the Sharingan can copy that jutsu! How do you know it?" Kushina's voice lacked accusation, sounding purely confused and lost.

Naruto decided to pull a Yashamaru.

Naruto looked at the woman innocently, still sounding confused but slightly excited as he asked, "Really? It is like an S-rank jutsu? I'm awesome!"

Kushina sighed, believing Naruto and feeling more shocked than she let on. 'The boy did not learn the jutsu. He had just somehow recreated it when he tried to call upon his lightning affinity for the first time,' Kushina thought to herself, unsure whether to feel relieved or dejected.

Naruto started up another Raikiri-ripoff and began explaining how he did it enthusiastically, "So I just summoned my lightning chakra and wrapped it around my hand, following my instincts when it said to vibrate the chakra to increase piercing power. That was all I did, vibrating the Raiton chakra as quickly as I knew I could without losing control of it and causing it to fly off my hand and hit an unintended target. Hey, maybe I can turn that into a jutsu too!"

Naruto was quite honest about it. That was how he did it right after seeing Kakashi use his Raikiri. Naruto had also found out the hard way that overpowering the Raikiri led to it blasting off. He had almost hit an unsuspecting ANBU with it. Thankfully, the shinobi had managed to dodge. The jutsu did skim off a significant amount of the fabric and armour that covered the ANBU's back and easily slice off a thin layer of superficial skin which vaporised immediately after it detached from the rest of his flesh. Naruto had to escape with his mirrors to avoid being caught, the ANBU deciding against reporting the matter as he did not wish to reveal his failure to apprehend his "attacker".

Naruto had adjusted the trajectory and such and added a bit of rotation to the vibration, better allowing the Raiton chakra to cut through the air and even drill through tougher targets. It was easily able to melt through a row of five rather large trees and drill halfway through the sixth. Naruto knew then that his version was more dangerous than Kakashi's. Naruto had not used rotation during his demonstration to Kushina, which would have caused the yellow sparks to form into a spiralling thread of chakra that constantly spun around the blueish lightning chakra that was wrapped around his hand. That would have been far too obvious and would have shown how much more advanced he was than she thought, which was not in his best interests.

Kushina could only shake her head in exasperation. It was good that Naruto still acted like the child he was at times, but it was infuriating when he did it when she wanted him to be more serious to understand the implications of his actions as it was always when he did something that he should not have been able to. Kushina unsealed another sack of jutsu copied from Minato's stash, not bothering to explain this time as the clones obediently took their respective clones. She made another pair of clones to accompany them, her previous clones having dispelled after testing the clones of the current Kyūbi jinchūriki.

"Now earth. Anything to tell me before we start?" Kushina asked the boy as she thought of the shocks he had already given her that day, swearing once again that she would not get caught off-guard again — not that she would be able to keep to that.

Naruto shrugged, "Not that I can think of, at least."

Kushina sighed, noticing that she had sighed a lot in that day alone, "I believe that you are supposed to push earth chakra into the ground and try to lift as much earth from the ground as possible. Usually, people start with smaller pieces and work on their control from there but you can start from however large of a piece as you would like."

Naruto nodded, accessing his earth release chakra and pushing it into the ground. Naruto felt a tug from his feet and allowed it to pull him into the ground, forgetting about Kushina who had freaked out and begun searching for the boy, worried that he would suffocate. Naruto did not feel a strain on his lungs that told him to rise for air. In fact, Naruto actually felt comfortable underground. The dirt particles seemed to make way for him when he got pulled in, his senses seeming to extend to everything that was in contact with the ground. Naruto could feel Kushina pulse chakra into the ground, trying to locate him to no avail as he was somehow able to completely suppress his chakra while underground and interfere with her chakra pulses to prevent her from finding him.

Naruto decided that he had worried the woman enough five minutes later, rising from the ground at the same spot he had melded into the ground from. That spooked Kushina, who quickly spun around to find out what the appearance of a chakra signature behind her meant. She visibly relaxed when he noticed it was him.

Kushina quickly crushed Naruto in a hug, whispering with tears streaming down her cheeks, "I was so worried, sochi. Tell me before you try things like that next time, okay? You scared the living hell out of me, dattebane."

Naruto was mildly surprised to hear her say that she actually worried about him, but pat her back reassuringly even though his next words were not completely truthful, "Of course, kaa-san."

Naruto would probably warn her if he tried it out in her presence but was unlikely to tell her if he wanted to test out his abilities. Naruto knew that he had the ability to adjust the brightness, colour and temperatures of his flames but wanted to experiment on it more. He also knew that he had the ability to manipulate natural electricity, but had yet to test out the limits of his ability. He now knew about his high water affinity and his ability to meld into the ground and detect anything in contact with it (he never did use earth chakra on the ground before and therefore never noticed this ability). Naruto also wanted to find out whether the fact that he could detect every change in wind pattern and all the minuscule movements of the air meant anything. He had tried to rustle the leaves of a tree with the wind earlier. It worked. He just wanted to find out what else he could do. Naruto also wanted to discover the other kekkei-tōta, already knowing about the existence of Jinton (Dust Release) as well as the necessary combination of chakra natures. He did not wish to attempt to recreate kekkei-genkai as he knew that his lack of any innate instinct that taught him the ratio of the chakra natures necessary for the techniques would cause the mixture to either explode or implode, neither of which would be pleasant for him whether immortal or not.

Kushina unsealed a bunch of jutsu scrolls, all higher-level ones from B-rank to S-rank. Neither she nor Minato had accumulated that many scrolls with earth jutsu as both did not possess the chakra nature. They only collected several high ranking ones in case they needed them.

"Ten B-ranks, twelve A-ranks and seven S-ranks. You can have sixty clones go practice these. I guess it would not hurt for me to teach you the Rasengan ahead of time. Do note that I only intend to teach your siblings this when they are ten. I doubt that they will turn out as prodigious as you. Sure, they're smart kids and absorb things faster than most their age. However, they're not you. Try to refrain from telling them too much," Kushina stated while making another clone to supervise the next batch of Naruto clones.

Sixty clones broke from the last two hundred clones in an orderly manner and marched off with their scrolls, already organised into groups of two or three. The Kushina clone followed behind, making sure that nothing went wrong. Naruto had given them the mental order, nothing would go wrong. However, Kushina thought that Naruto had only learnt the technique not too long ago and did not have full control over them.

Kushina sent another clone into the house to get a crate of balloons, Naruto quickly reactivating his Byakugan and Sharingan while his eyes slid shut briefly. His illusion was slipped on at the exact nanosecond his eyes reopened, preventing Kushina from even catching a glance of the mismatched eyes. Naruto had also realised that his Byakugan did not cause his veins to pop out around his eye. He did not understand why, though he did not care that much as it was convenient for him since it was rather easy to hide.

Kushina's clone reappeared in a shunshin, dropping a crate of water balloons unceremoniously on the ground and dispelling itself in a puff of smoke. Kushina picked up a water balloon from the crate and demonstrated, spinning her chakra in the balloon and causing it to explode after five seconds with a splashing sound. Naruto noted that it only required rotation of his chakra and was much easier in comparison to how he added rotation to his Raikiri as there was no need to contain the rotation. In his Raikiri, the chakra needed to be carefully maintained to prevent the entire jutsu from exploding in his face. That had been a good motivation to prevent him from letting it go out of control, though.

Naruto picked up a balloon and showed the woman how he rotated his chakra and caused it to pop. Kushina saw that Naruto's chakra rotated clockwise. However, Naruto appeared to prove her wrong — which was really what Naruto had been trying to do. Naruto picked up yet another balloon and rotated his chakra anticlockwise, also popping the balloon. Even though Naruto knew that his chakra's natural rotation was anticlockwise, he had found out that rotating it in the opposite direction was possible if he swirled his chakra within his chakra circulatory system the other direction altogether. Naruto had done this for the first balloon before letting his chakra continue flowing as per normal once the balloon popped.

Kushina was surprised. It was not supposed to be possible for someone to rotate their chakra in a direction apart from that of their chakra circulatory system. Naruto seemed to prove that fact wrong. Either that or he was an exception to the rule. Both were possible, considering that it was Naruto.

"Good..." Kushina praised, not that surprised that he got it on his first try and deciding not to bring up his chakra rotation.

Kushina lifted a layer off the stack-up crate, revealing another stash. This one had many air-filled rubber balls. She demonstrated again, the balls popping without difficulty.

Naruto copied her, using two balls so that he demonstrated each direction of chakra rotation.

Kushina had decided that explaining was unnecessary, considering how easily the boy did the previous exercises immediately after her demonstration and without waiting for her to explain.

Kushina removed the layer of the crate, moving it to the bottom to reveal a bunch of air-filled and colourless balloons. Kushina rotated her chakra quickly, her chakra kept tightly compressed with a thin shell of chakra surrounding the rotating chakra to keep it contained.

"This is the epitome of shape manipulation in chakra use. Called the Rasengan, it was based on the bijūdama of the bijū. Your father was the inventor of this technique. It was made to be added with a chakra nature, but Minato had yet to succeed in adding one," Kushina explained the history of the technique.

Naruto immediately thought about his rotating Raikiri. From what the woman said, he could safely conclude that he was the first one to complete the basic but difficult-to-master jutsu. It could be used in two ways, both of which was very dangerous. Naruto also knew that he could even cause even greater damage to large groups instead of focusing on piercing power if he changed the whole basis of the chakra manipulation such that it exploded on impact to release a large electric pulse. From what he saw, a two-metre radius was covered by the Raikiri when it dispelled. That was a technique that was supposed to be completely focused on piercing power. Naruto knew that changing the technique to have a larger range of effect would help him a lot. He also wanted to try out other chakra natures.

Naruto nodded, picking up a chakra balloon of his own and swirling his chakra in the same way he saw Kushina do it and quickly made a shell of chakra to prevent the balloon from changing shape. Naruto looked up to see that Kushina had nodded in approval. Naruto allowed the compressed ball of chakra to dissipate and changed his chakra direction, repeating the formation of the Rasengan using his natural chakra direction. Kushina nodded again.

"Now test out the power of your Rasengan on a tree," Kushina instructed.

Naruto went to a tree, charging up a Rasengan in his hand. Naruto slammed it into the bark, causing the wooden surface to splinter and cave. The wood was ground into, small plumes of dust flying from the surface where the spinning ball of chakra met its target. Naruto felt a force pushing at him from the direction of the Rasengan and quickly removed his hand and allowed himself to be pushed back by the wind generated by the spinning force of his attack as the ball expanded, the force that kept it compressed gone. The Rasengan formed a dome about a metre in diameter, the tree collapsing due to the sudden lack of support as the trunk was blown to bits.

"Whoa... that's quite a powerful Rasengan you've got there, gaki," an unknown voice said, sounding impressed.

Naruto frowned. He had felt the chakra signature of this unknown man enter the village not too long ago. He had presumed that it was just a random ANBU returning from some long-term mission, but he had dismissed that soon after when the man never went to the Hokage Office. Now that he saw the man in person, Naruto recognised him.

"Jiraiya!" Kushina shouted, sounding slightly happy but annoyed at the same time.

"Where these hell have you been?" Kushina questioned sweetly, her hair rising in nine tails and whipping around.

Jiraiya gulped.

Omake!

"I think you broke her, kit," Kurama stated the obvious in an unhelpful manner.

'No shit, Sherlock,' Naruto said sarcastically.

"Psst... the fourth wall, remember? You shouldn't even know about him," Kurama whispered quietly.

'The fourth wall had fallen at the very second you commented about it...' Naruto said back, face-palming.

"...Oops..." Kurama muttered sheepishly.

"Duck tape?" Yagura suggested.

"What is duck tape? I thought it was duct tape?" Naruto asked, confused.

"Duck tape? What?" Gaara questioned, more confused than Naruto.

"You know... Itachi-san's future emo brother, who is currently still adorable?" Yagura reminded, only serving to further damage the fourth wall.

"Oh... So you meant duck tape as in Sasuke tape," Naruto replied in understanding, "Now I get it..."

"Oh..." Gaara nodded, understanding.

"But what about the fourth wall?" Naruto asked.

"Who cares about the fourth wall?" the two jinchūriki said at the same time.

"Let author-sama handle it," the three said decisively in unison.

"Hey!" a booming, powerful voice yelled from the heavens.

The three gulped, the same thought going through their heads, 'Run!'