Two of Naoki's clones stood beside Shizune at the edge of the training ground, a row of wooden targets lined up ahead of them, worn and split from years of use. She held up a shuriken between two fingers, letting the morning light catch its edge.
"Watch first," she said, and threw.
The shuriken cut through the air with a low whistle and buried itself dead center in the farthest target, the wood shuddering with the impact.
"Now it's your turn."
The first clone's throw went wide, clattering off the target's edge and skittering into the grass. He frowned at his own hand like it had betrayed him.
"You're throwing with your whole arm," Shizune said, stepping closer to adjust his elbow. "Let the motion come from your shoulder through your wrist, not your bicep. Strength doesn't help you here — timing does."
The second clone tried next, throwing slower, more deliberate, and this one struck closer to the mark, though still off-center.
"Better," Shizune said. "Again."
They kept at it, throw after throw, the dull thud of wood meeting metal filling the clearing in an uneven rhythm — sometimes solid, sometimes glancing, sometimes missing the target boards entirely and vanishing into the grass beyond. It took the better part of an hour before both clones could land three throws in a row anywhere near the center.
Once shuriken had stopped feeling entirely foreign, Shizune knelt and produced something thinner from her pouch — a senbon, its needle-fine point glinting.
"These are trickier," she said. "Less weight to guide them, so your form has to be exact."
The first clone's throw sailed a full foot short of the target. The second one missed the wood entirely and struck the tree behind it, quivering there like an afterthought.
"Senbon-neesan, you mentioned these are for medical ninjutsu," one of the clones said, rubbing at his wrist. "Do you actually use them for that?"
Shizune's mouth curved, something a little mischievous in it. "As a matter of fact." She rolled up her sleeve, revealing a slim, concealed launcher strapped along her forearm. "Not quite the same way you're learning it, but yes."
That earned her both clones' full attention for a moment, before she nudged them back toward the targets. "Focus. You'll learn the interesting uses later. First you need to be able to hit something on purpose."
By the time the sun sat directly overhead, both clones could land a senbon somewhere on the target more often than not — not the effortless precision Shizune made it look like, but real, earned progress all the same.
Down at the river, the other two clones sat cross-legged in front of Tsunade, the water beside them moving in slow, unhurried ripples.
"Before we start on nature transformation," Tsunade said, "there's something you need to understand about Water Release that makes it different from Fire, Wind, and Lightning." She let that sit a moment. "You've got Water and Earth. Out of every nature out there, those two happen to be the easiest to learn — and also the hardest to ever truly master. The ceiling on both sits a lot higher than people expect."
One of the clones tilted his head, brow furrowed. "Why's that, Tsuna-neesan? If it's easy to learn, shouldn't it be easy to master too?"
"You'd think so." Tsunade allowed herself a small, humorless smile. "Earth and Water are easy to learn because at their most basic, all you're doing is manipulating what's already there. Water from a river. Earth already in the ground. It's puppetry, really — you're not making anything, just moving it with your chakra. Mastery is different. Mastery means creating the element from nothing but your own chakra. And that part..." She paused, letting the weight of it land. "Since the villages were founded, there've been fewer than ten shinobi who ever truly mastered Water Release that way."
Both clones went still.
"Fewer than ten?" one of them said, disbelief creeping into his voice. "But — Mizugakure. Isn't that their whole thing? Water Release?"
"It is. And most of them never got past manipulation either." Tsunade nodded slowly. "Mizugakure sits surrounded by ocean, buried in humidity most of the year. When their shinobi aren't near open water, they pull moisture straight out of the air instead — it's an intermediate step, better than pure manipulation, but still not true creation. It works well enough there. It falls apart the second you take one of their water users somewhere dry." She paused, glancing at the river beside them. "Same reason Sunagakure can't just conjure themselves an oasis and call it a day. No moisture in the air worth pulling from, nothing in the ground to manipulate either. That's part of why they've always struggled to feed themselves — Konoha sits on some of the richest soil in the Elemental Nations. It's a good part of why they came to us proposing an alliance in the first place. They were losing the last war, running low on food along with everything else, and we had exactly what they needed." She let that settle before circling back. "Point is, low humidity breaks water users. That's exactly why Mizugakure hasn't fought many wars outside their own coastline, or during specific seasons. When they have, it's always stayed close to the sea, or during humidity season. They built the Seven Swordsmen partly to cover for it — legendary blades, assassination-focused, meant to make up for what their Water Release can't reach on dry land."
The clone let that settle, turning the information over. "So... if even Mizugakure barely has true masters, who does?"
Tsunade's smile shifted into something warmer, almost proud. "Funny you should ask. Most of the strongest Water Release users in history actually came from our family." She reached out and flicked one clone lightly on the forehead. "Your grandfather. The Second Hokage, Tobirama. Most people consider him the greatest Water Release user there's ever been. Half the techniques Konoha still uses today, he invented himself. Some of them were so dangerous he had them sealed away — never taught, never used again, because letting them loose on the world wasn't worth the risk."
Naoki's clones exchanged a look, something like awe passing between them.
"There's actually one more," Tsunade added, almost offhand, though something in her voice had gone careful. "Another Water Release master, from our family. You'll find out who, eventually."
One of the clones opened his mouth immediately. "Who—"
"Later," Tsunade said, cutting him off before the question could fully form, and there was enough finality in it that neither clone pushed further, even though the curiosity clearly hadn't gone anywhere.
"Anyway." She pushed herself to her feet, brushing grass from her knees. "Most shinobi don't start this kind of training until Chunin. I'm starting you early because this isn't nearly as brutal as true nature transformation gets later, and because it'll sharpen your chakra control past anything the leaf exercise can manage — which, given how much chakra you're carrying, you need."
She crouched at the water's edge and dipped one hand in without hesitation. At first nothing seemed to happen — until the surface around her fingers began to move, slow and deliberate, curling upward into a thin, glassy spiral that rose a few inches above the river before settling back down at her command. It looked almost lazy, the way she did it, like the water simply preferred to obey her.
"This is what you're aiming for," she said. "Once you can do this, creating water from nothing will come easier. Get to it."
Both clones knelt at the bank and plunged their hands into the current. Nothing happened. The water sat there, cold and indifferent, rippling only with the natural pull of the river itself.
"Don't just push chakra at it," Tsunade said, watching. "Give it shape. Give it something to listen to."
One clone grit his teeth, straining, and the water in front of him rippled harder than it should have, splashing up over his wrist without actually obeying him at all. The other tried gentler, slower, and for a moment — barely a moment — the surface bent inward, curling around his fingers before collapsing back flat.
"Closer," Tsunade said. "Again."
They kept at it well into the afternoon, the sun crawling steadily across the sky, both clones failing in slightly different ways each time — too much force here, not enough intention there — until finally, on what felt like the fortieth attempt, one of them managed to coax the water into a small, stubborn whirlpool that spun weakly around his hand before finally losing shape.
"That's it!" Tsunade's voice carried real excitement now. "That's the feeling. Hold onto it."
By the time the light had turned gold over the water, both clones could summon a modest whirlpool on command, nothing powerful yet, but steady — controlled, rather than accidental.
When the two clones by the river finally dispersed that evening, and the pair training with Shizune not long after, all four sets of memory rushed back into Naoki at once — the ache of failed throws, the stubborn pull of water refusing to obey, and underneath all of it, a single question he couldn't quite shake.
Who else in the family mastered Water Release?
He didn't ask Tsunade again that night. Something told him the answer, whatever it was, wasn't hers to give yet.