True Mastery

TRAINING

It had been almost a year since Naruto had first met his father, and they had had many more meetings before his father actually started training him in earnest. No, the training had not been some cool new jutsu. It hadn't been any taijutsu kata. It hadn't been any chakra exercise. Hell, he hadn't even learnt to enter his mindscape at will, and most of his time was spent there!

No, Naruto was being taught the art of sealing jutsu, or fūinjutsu.

When it was first explained to Naruto, he had found it cool. When he had started learning it, it was horrible. Worse was the fact that his expectations had been built up for two months, while his father taught him mathematics and the physical sciences, which were apparently necessary for fūinjutsu.

People say that fūinjutsu requires impeccable handwriting. It does not. They just require the variables to be the same. A variable could be a squiggle, but that squiggle had to be reproduced perfectly.

Fūinjutsu required math, and it required logic. After being taught the basic rules, Minato had asked Naruto to create a seal to exchange two objects of his choosing. Trying really hard, Naruto had made one, but due to two fundamental errors, he had failed.

He had written, *CHAIR A*= *TABLE B*; <SEAL ACTIVATE> IF ELEMENT "CHAKRA" IS IN CONTACT.

He had forgotten to put CHAIR and TABLE in quotes, leaving A and B out of quotes. It was a childish mistake, because his seal would continue shifting between the two forms as long as chakra was applied. He had not understood that in this case, the two sides would remain CHAIR A and TABLE B, whereas, on adding the quotes, it would shift from CHAIR A to TABLE A, and from TABLE B to CHAIR B, and not shift anymore, since the formula did not deal with TABLE A and CHAIR B.

His second mistake was not specifying a variable after CHAKRA. Natural energy is present in the air, so Naruto had to deal with a constantly changing table and chair, until the seal deteriorated.

After several other mishaps, one where Naruto had accidentally written SEAL in quotes, and not inside triangular brackets, and had changed both the table and the chair into seals (the animal), Naruto could now say that he knew fūinjutsu. He had not mastered it by any means, but he was good at it. He knew how to apply seals without writing them down, though he had to write them down the first few times he used them. His father was even teaching him a new sealing language, called java. He had even become a, well, not friend, but close acquaintance of the guy apart from his dad in his head. His name was Kurama, though he had gotten mad at his dad for telling it to Naruto.

Naruto was seven years old, and would be going to the Academy from the next year. On his father's advice, he had begun chakra control and physical training, with techniques from the library. Very soon, he had begun putting his own twists on the techniques.

Upon finishing the leaf sticking exercise, Naruto had started trying to attract the leaves from an inch away. Then even farther. Upon reaching the distance of two feet, Naruto started trying to suspend it in midair, between his palm and the ground. He could make it wobble in the air for around half a minute now.

Another exercise was the pebble floating exercise, which involved pushing up and holding a pebble above your palm with only chakra. Naruto first mastered it by making a column of chakra on his palm. Then, he limited the column area to the exact same area as the pebble had. Condensing his chakra in that way, he could actually see his chakra! It was faint, but the more chakra he condensed into a single column, the denser it became. Naruto also managed to balance the pebble on a senbon shape of chakra. He could maintain the column of chakra indefinitely. It was a nice accomplishment.

He had refused to give up his orange jumpsuit, despite many attempts of coaxing, and even threats, from Kurama.

Naruto looked at the wall clock. It was almost six in the evening. Naruto sat down and closed his eyes.