Teacher, I Want to Drop Out of School
Let's set aside what happened with Hinata for now.
Naruto had just returned home, only to remember that he hadn't put out the bonfire. He rushed back to extinguish it—years of fire-safety PSAs about arson and prison sentences had left their mark on him.
Now that he had chakra, his next goal was the Shadow Clone Technique. In the anime and manga, Naruto heavily relied on two core skills: the Shadow Clone Jutsu and the Rasengan—the backbone of his fighting style. Even though he eventually developed dozens of Rasengan variants, it all started with those two.
The Rasengan was versatile—pure chakra, no hand signs—and could be enhanced with elemental natures like wind, fire, or lightning. It could even be fused with exotic chakra types like that of a priestess or Sage energy. It was like a universal socket: anything could be plugged into it, and something new would come out. A normal shinobi needed scrolls, training, and experimentation to develop one technique. But with Rasengan, once the foundation was laid, the possibilities were endless.
Honestly, Jiraiya teaching Naruto this for free? Konoha definitely took a financial loss.
And the Shadow Clone Technique wasn't much different. Unlike the standard Clone Jutsu, which produced illusions, the Shadow Clone created real, chakra-dividing duplicates—physical copies that could interact with the world and even return their memories upon dispelling. Naruto didn't just learn the basic technique—he mastered the Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu, using it to full strategic and comedic effect.
After reviewing the theory, Naruto formed the hand signs and released the jutsu.
Nothing happened.
Well, it was the first try. He continued.
"Thirty times already…" Naruto groaned, veins bulging on his forehead. "Shadow Clone Technique!"
Poof! Poof!
Two clones appeared.
"Hahahahaha! What kind of monstrosities are those?" In the seal space, the Nine-Tails was pounding the ground with laughter, struggling to breathe. "This old man hasn't laughed this hard in centuries!"
Naruto glared at the grotesque results. The clones had his head, sure—but they were neckless, stick-limbed, and even had their sandals on backward.
"Can you not laugh!?" Naruto's face turned bright red.
The Nine-Tails only laughed harder, like it had just chugged a bottle of carbonated soda.
If Naruto could beat him, he'd have tried to strangle the fox right then and there. But for now, he could only dispel the clones—no memory feedback, as they were incomplete failures.
Still, life was about perseverance. Naruto kept practicing.
After 80 attempts, a proper clone appeared—flawless, speaking, moving, and identical to Naruto.
Naruto circled it, amazed.
"Can you not stare so much? It's awkward!" the clone said. "Especially since you're me."
"Fair enough," Naruto chuckled. He suppressed the urge to tease it. After all, once it dispelled, all the embarrassment would return to him. Why torture himself?
Time for testing.
"Bring out a piece of roasted meat!" Naruto ordered.
The clone raised its hand, and—poof!—a chunk of perfectly grilled meat appeared.
Naruto was stunned. So the clone could access his inventory?
"Open a portal," he instructed next.
The clone tried, but shook its head. "I can't."
"Huh... so it can't cast a portal, but it can use what's stored?"
Naruto opened a portal himself, motioning for the clone to walk through. It vanished and appeared from the linked door. It could use existing portals!
He scratched his head. "Wait, so what counts as me? Chakra? Soul? Or some weird game flag logic?"
After mulling it over, he gave up. If he kept thinking about it, he'd go bald.
He opened a second portal, linking it to a forest he'd seen but never explored. The clone was tasked with exploring, then sitting tight until it ran out of chakra.
As it left, Naruto felt something shift—like his perception radius had expanded. An internal skill, part of his strange game-like interface.
Two hours later, the clone popped, and its memories came flooding back.
Naruto, mid-way through sculpting a clay figure, suddenly paused with a weird look on his face.
It was like one hand was chopping vegetables, the other stir-frying, while a third was seasoning. It was multitasking on a whole new level.
The clone had walked around, then stopped to rest. When it got cold, it built a fire, pulled out a Dragon Bed from the inventory, and threw a blanket over it. Before disappearing, it even packed up the blanket and safely extinguished the fire.
Fire safety: always a priority—even for clones.
The best part of mastering Shadow Clones? Naruto could finally feed the Nine-Tails faster.
Every day, Naruto had to chuck roasted meat into that massive mouth. And no matter how much he fed it, the fox would still say it was only half-full.
Honestly, this fox was stuck in a "half-full" state more consistently than Schrödinger's cat.
With a few clones, Naruto could reduce feeding time to ten minutes. It wasn't the mass-cloning from the Forbidden Scroll, but even two clones summoned five times would do the trick.
Now, Naruto could train and craft at the same time. The main body trained, while clones worked on his figure-making.
Previously, Naruto would have always picked "wife" over "training." But now? He didn't have to choose.
The Shadow Clone Technique truly was a cheat code.
---
Day Two: The Harsh Reality of Training
After feeding the Nine-Tails, Naruto left a clone at home and teleported to the small forest from yesterday.
His training began.
He found a sturdy tree, cleared snow around it, wrapped it in a blanket (because punching raw bark hurt), and started hammering.
With chakra-enhanced strength, he felt powerful—at first.
Thirty minutes in, his enthusiasm waned. After an hour, he was mentally clocking out.
He collapsed mentally into the seal space, lying flat on the sofa.
"Brat. Get up," came the gruff voice of the Nine-Tails.
"I'm tired…"
"Continue."
The Nine-Tails stared at him until he got up, like a disappointed coach refusing to let him slack off.
"…801…802…803… 1000."
Naruto sighed. Nice round number. Time to stop.
"Continue."
Naruto didn't answer. He just kept going, dead-eyed.
---
That evening, he stumbled home with hands swollen like pig trotters. Training and clone management had sounded fun. The reality? Pure pain.
Every cell in his body screamed in rebellion.
In the seal space, Naruto lay on the sofa, hugging a cola bottle, groaning.
The Nine-Tails sipped from its own bottle beside him.
"You're weak, brat."
"I'm six!"
"You'll be six in a few days. Same thing."
"This old man was already stronger than you at six."
Naruto spat out his drink. "You're a TAILED BEAST! You came out the womb like, what, Level 100?!"
The Nine-Tails grunted but said nothing.
Naruto smiled. "Thanks, Big Fox."
In the past, the Nine-Tails might've wanted him dead. But now, after a few years together, they'd grown strangely close.
Once terrified of large dogs, Naruto now napped beside the King of Beasts.
A miracle, really.
"This old man just doesn't want a weakling like you getting beaten to death and ruining my reputation. If they find out you're my Jinchūriki, I'll be embarrassed."
Tsundere fox, Naruto thought with a grin.
"…Wait. Jinchūriki? You mean I'm the Nine-Tails' host?" This was the first time Naruto had heard the term out loud.
"You've lived inside me all this time and you didn't know?!"
The Nine-Tails' voice boomed through the seal space, nine tails lashing wildly.
Naruto, exhausted from the day and overwhelmed by the shout, passed out on the spot—cola bottle slipping from his hand, two drops still dribbling from the corner of his mouth.