Naruto- Secret Sage

Bad habits and progress

Sasuke was the worst off out of everyone in squad seven as this near death event had caused him to turn cold and distance himself from everyone. I didn't even need to guess why he did this as he bluntly stated that he almost removed any chance of Itachi being brought to justice by him to save Naruto. According to him he was "enlightened" to the fact that he was only going to be dragged down by friendship or comradery and that all he needed was power. I shouldn't need to explain how this was a VERY dangerous mindset for a shinobi to have.-

Allies , friends and family were something that every shinobi needed or they run the risk of losing themselves to the darkness of this world. Orochimaru was one such person as he cast aside these connections in search of power and became a monster for it. Sasuke was treading dangerously close to this line and I made sure Kakashi and the Hokage knew it. While I hold no love for the brat as he is more an annoyance than anything for me that didn't mean I was just going to sit back and let another Orochimaru type individual pop up if I could do something about it.-

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That said I was not responsible for him and told those that were so they could deal with it. I had my own things going on and was unwilling to simply waste my time babysitting Sasuke. Moving on from that I discovered that the "limitation" I had felt on Naruto after the third did something about the nine tails that was acting up within him had vanished. Oddly however the creature was not misbehaving despite this as Naruto could perform jutsu as per usual.-

As a result I decided to leave the matter alone as it was not my business so long as Naruto was unaffected. I had taken to training him recently however as the report I got of the event told me how foolishly he had acted and I was going to beat that out of him before it became a bad habit. For starters he had tried to fight Zabuza Momochi of all people without any sort of plan in mind. I was pretty sure that it was only thanks to him not being taken seriously that he had even managed to get one over on the guy.-

Zabuza was easily just as strong if not stronger than most jonin in the village and you mean to tell me a mere genin out skilled such a person, yeah right! He was merely lucky enough that Zabuza didn't see him as worth paying close attention to that he pulled off what he did. The second big mistake Naruto made was that he fell for his enemies provocation and ran straight into a trap without hesitation. I was of course referring to the incident where he ran straight into Haku's domain of ice mirrors AFTER he got Haku out of it.-

Naruto himself even told me that he knew that attacking the construct of ice from both the inside and outside simultaneously was the best option. Despite that he ran right into it like an idiot which cost Sasuke and him a whole lot of unnecessary injuries as a result. These bad moves worked out in the end but were extremely bad habits to have and I was damned if I was just going to leave them unaddressed. I told Kakashi to screw off when he showed up to grab Naruto for a D rank mission.-

I wasn't going to let Naruto go back to that stuff until I felt confident that I had knocked some common sense into his head. The way I accomplished this was easy, I forced him to live in the forest of death for an entire two weeks with nothing on him but the clothes on his back. During that entire time I stationed a solid clone in the only way back to the village so he had no choice but to adapt. He wasn't really in danger since I had my beasts sneakily take out anything to strong for him out of that area but he still had to fight the beasts of the forest for resources.-

As he quickly learned trading injuries and taking stupid risks was not in fact a viable method to fight. Obviously I stepped in whenever he was at risk of dying but otherwise he was left to fend for himself. You want to talk about a full transformation, the Naruto that walked out of the forest was a whole different one than the version that walked in two weeks prior. Against the much more experienced in battle beasts of the forest he had honed himself into a combatant that didn't fight like a fool just hoping for the best anymore.-

Understandably he was also quite angry at me for putting him through that and nagged my ear off about all the times he was sure that he was done for. I was unapologetic however because it was for his own good. I had also during this time gotten a breakthrough in my chakra projection creation. I had figured out how to create a very small chakra projection that was barely more than a thin covering on my pointer finger. Despite this super sizing it was unfeasible at the moment as just this small projection depleted my chakra reserves at an alarming rate.-

In addition it took laser focus to maintain just a small projection like that so I could only imagine the horrible mental strain covering my whole body would cause. All that said it was clear to me however that the potential was there as using that small projection I could create a realistic claw at the tip of my finger that slid through chakra metal like it was butter. I know this because I tested it against some after pestering the Hokage about it.-

The look on his face when I told him about what I was trying to do was rather amusing as he looked like he had seen a ghost. Apparently he had thought that nobody remembered the Mangekyou sharingan and Susanoo. I flat out told him when he asked that the stuff was recorded in some of the history books albeit vaguely in the public library and that it only took a little digging to find it. The old man made me swear to never tell anyone where I got the inspiration for what I was doing from but I didn't see the issue considering the Uchiha clan was all but extinct at this point.-

When I asked him about his reasons for this secrecy all he said was that sometimes history was better forgotten. That was stupid in my opinion since without history to teach us what not to do we as humans tend to repeat our mistakes. Still I did as he wanted and swore not to spread my inspiration if it ever came up. I can't say that I didn't get anything out of it though as I got to test the projection on some chakra metal as well as get some pointers from someone who had actually seen a Susanoo before.