Konoha --- Team 7's Training Ground
Five in the morning.
One Naruto.
Then, with a puff of smoke, a hundred.
They looked at each other.
"Alright," the original said. "We're all working on the Rasengan's structure. Specifically the rotation inconsistency in the final compression stage. That's what Sasuke called out yesterday."
[Naruto Clone #47: He called it "structurally unsound."]
"He wasn't wrong."
[Naruto Clone #23: This feels like the kind of training where we dispel and the original gets a headache.]
"That's exactly what this is."
[Naruto Clone #23: Cool.]
They spread out.
Each one found a training post.
Each one started working.
The sound of a hundred Rasengan attempts was considerable.
Post after post taking damage.
The morning air full of chakra and the smell of scorched wood.
The original moved between them, watching the variations.
Each clone tried something slightly different.
Different chakra input on the compression stage.
Different hand position.
Different timing on the rotation.
Most of them failed in the same ways.
But not all.
By seven, the ground around the training posts was considerably dug up.
Clone #31 had found something.
It wasn't dramatic.
It was two centimeters of hand position on the final press --- moving the thumb slightly inward, changing the angle of chakra spiral entry.
It changed the compression outcome by a significant margin.
The clone dispelled immediately so the memory could transfer.
The original felt it land.
Tried it.
Better.
Noticeably better.
He passed it to the remaining clones.
They adjusted.
The sound in the training ground changed.
From scattered impacts to something more consistent.
More deliberate.
Group Chat:
[Second Hokage Tobirama Senju: How is it going.]
[Naruto Uzumaki: Clone 31 found something. Thumb position on the compression. It's working.]
[Second Hokage Tobirama Senju: The Rasengan's design flaw is in the center compression. Your father never fully solved it either. He relied on speed to compensate.]
[Naruto Uzumaki: What would actually solve it?]
[Second Hokage Tobirama Senju: A secondary rotation inside the primary. You need the chakra to spiral inward as it compresses, not just outward as it forms.]
[Naruto Uzumaki: ...How do I do that.]
[Second Hokage Tobirama Senju: That is what you're figuring out. I'm not going to tell you the exact mechanism. You need to discover it, or it won't work for you.]
[Naruto Uzumaki: That's frustrating.]
[Second Hokage Tobirama Senju: Yes. That's learning.]
[Naruto Uzumaki: ...Okay.]
He put down the chat and kept working.
Sakura arrived at eight.
She didn't announce herself.
She came through the training ground entrance, saw a hundred Narutos at varying stages of Rasengan attempts, observed this for approximately ten seconds, and then set her bag against the fence and started her own warm-up.
Clone #67, dispelling nearby, noticed her.
The original noticed too.
"Sakura-chan," he said.
"Don't stop," she said. "I'm not here to watch. I'm training."
"What are you training?"
"Strength. Medical chakra concentration. Precision work." She was already doing stretches with the focused quality of someone who had decided something and was executing it. "The scroll said I'll be trained by Tsunade. I'm going to be ready before she agrees to take me on."
The original blinked.
"...She hasn't agreed yet."
"She will." Said completely matter-of-factly. "So I'm preparing."
He looked at her.
At the particular quality of determination sitting on her face.
Not the anxious, reactive determination he'd seen from her before.
Something more settled than that.
The kind you get when you've decided the outcome and are now just doing the work.
"Okay," he said.
He went back to his Rasengan.
She went to the far side of the training ground and started.
He could hear the impacts from where he was.
Steady.
Consistent.
Not flashy.
Just present.
Sasuke arrived at nine.
He came in, looked at the training ground, looked at the hundred Narutos, looked at Sakura, said nothing, and walked to the opposite side of the ground from everyone.
He started with his Sharingan calibration exercises.
Then moved to Fire Style variations.
Then the Chidori, which he ran through three times at increasing speeds.
He did all of this without anyone asking him to be there.
Without anyone acknowledging he'd arrived beyond a brief nod from Sakura.
The original Naruto was aware of him the entire time.
He didn't say anything.
He just kept working.
They were three separate training sessions happening in the same space.
Not coordinated.
Not discussed.
Just --- present, together, in the specific way of people who had been through something large and had ended up in the same place without meaning to.
Midday.
The clones were down to forty.
Each dispelling had fed memory back.
The original was starting to feel the cumulative weight of it --- not exhausted, exactly, but full in a way that required processing.
He sat down against a training post for five minutes.
Drank water.
Let the memories settle.
Sakura came and sat nearby.
Not next to him.
A few meters away.
Also drinking water.
They sat in comfortable parallel silence.
"The secondary rotation," Naruto said.
Sakura looked at him.
"Tobirama said the Rasengan needs a secondary rotation inside the primary. Chakra spiraling inward as it compresses."
"That sounds complicated."
"I don't think it's complicated," Naruto said slowly. "I think it's--- the way it should always have been. Like the first design was incomplete and this is just finishing it."
Sakura thought about this.
"Like the technique knows what it's supposed to be," she said.
"Yeah." He looked at the post. "Yeah, that's it."
She was quiet for a moment.
"Can I watch when you try it?"
"Sure."
He stood.
Called back two of the remaining clones.
Had them position on either side of the post.
He gathered chakra.
Felt the primary rotation start.
The familiar outward spiral.
Then --- deliberately, carefully, like threading something through a needle --- he tried to add the secondary.
Inward.
Concurrent.
Not fighting the primary rotation.
Inside it.
It was harder than anything he'd done all day.
His first three attempts collapsed the whole thing.
The fourth held for two seconds before dissolving.
The fifth---
Crack.
The training post didn't just take damage.
It split cleanly from the impact site down.
A precise, deep fracture rather than the usual scorched surface impact.
The clones looked at it.
Sakura looked at it.
Naruto looked at his hand.
"...Huh," he said.
"Was that---"
"Yeah." He could feel the difference in his palm.
The quality of what had just moved through it.
More focused.
More complete.
Like a tool that had been slightly wrong its whole life and had just been corrected.
"That was it," he said.
From across the training ground, Sasuke had stopped.
He was looking at the split post.
He didn't say anything.
He came over.
He looked at the post.
At the fracture line.
At the angle of it.
"Show me again," he said.
Not that was impressive.
Not good job.
Just show me again.
Naruto grinned.
"You want to learn it?"
"I want to understand the mechanism."
"That's the same thing."
"It's not the---"
"Sasuke."
"What."
"Do you want to learn it."
A pause.
"...Yes."
Naruto gathered chakra.
He showed him again.
Three in the afternoon.
All the clones had dispelled.
The training ground looked like a small battle had passed through it.
Posts split.
Ground dug up.
Three separate patches of scorched earth from Sasuke's Fire Style work.
The three of them were sitting against the fence.
Tired in the good way.
The kind that meant something had been done.
Sakura had a notepad.
She'd been writing down observations about her own chakra concentration technique since noon.
A systematic approach.
Very Sakura.
Sasuke had his eyes closed.
Processing.
Naruto was lying flat on his back looking at the sky.
"Six hours," Naruto said.
"Almost," Sakura said.
"Good six hours."
"Yes."
"Sasuke."
"Mm."
"You stayed the whole time."
"I was training."
"At my training ground."
"The training ground belongs to Team 7. Not exclusively to you."
"I know. I'm just noting."
"Why."
"Because yesterday was big," Naruto said. "And today we trained for six hours and didn't talk about any of it. And that feels right somehow."
Sasuke was quiet.
"The Rasengan modification," he said eventually.
"Yeah."
"It's going to integrate with the Chidori differently than you think."
Naruto lifted his head slightly. "What do you mean?"
"The inward rotation. If you apply it to a lightning-nature technique instead of raw chakra, the spiral becomes conductive." He paused. "It would be extremely dangerous."
"...How dangerous?"
"The kind of dangerous that requires very careful testing."
Naruto stared at him.
"Sasuke. Are you telling me we can combine elements of the Rasengan and the Chidori."
"I'm telling you there's a theoretical basis for it and it would require years of development and it's probably not worth thinking about right now."
"THAT'S THE COOLEST THING YOU'VE SAID ALL DAY."
"Naruto---"
"YEARS. FINE. WE HAVE YEARS. PROBABLY. UNLESS THE MOON THING IS FASTER THAN EXPECTED."
"The moon thing---"
"I mean I don't know the details yet but Bai Yan has been doing the face all day and Kakashi went to see him this morning and something is happening---"
"What face."
"The 'I know something and I'm deciding when to tell you' face. He's had it since yesterday."
Sakura looked up from her notepad. "You've been watching Bai Yan-san?"
"He's been watching everyone for seven years. It's only fair."
She thought about this.
"...That's actually reasonable," she said.
Sasuke looked at the sky.
"If something is happening," he said, "we'll deal with it."
"Yeah," Naruto said.
"We're stronger than we were yesterday."
"Yeah."
"And we'll be stronger tomorrow than today."
Naruto smiled at the sky.
"Yeah," he said. "That's the plan."
Group Chat:
[Second Hokage Tobirama Senju: How did the training go.]
[Naruto Uzumaki: I found the secondary rotation.]
A pause that felt deliberate even in text.
[Second Hokage Tobirama Senju: Show me the post.]
Naruto held up the chat screen toward the split training post.
[Second Hokage Tobirama Senju: ...Your father never achieved that.]
[Naruto Uzumaki: You said.]
[Second Hokage Tobirama Senju: I'm saying it again. It's worth saying twice.]
[Naruto Uzumaki: ...Thanks, Tobirama-jii.]
[Second Hokage Tobirama Senju: Don't call me that.]
[Naruto Uzumaki: Tobirama-sensei?]
[Second Hokage Tobirama Senju: That's marginally more acceptable.]
[Naruto Uzumaki: Tobirama-sensei it is!]
[Second Hokage Tobirama Senju: I said marginally.]
[First Hokage Hashirama Senju: TOBIRAMA HAS A STUDENT!! HAHAHAHA!!]
[Second Hokage Tobirama Senju: I do not have a student.]
[Uchiha Madara: You've given him three pieces of technical advice today. That's a student.]
[Second Hokage Tobirama Senju: It's guidance. There's a---]
[Uchiha Madara: Tobirama.]
[Second Hokage Tobirama Senju: What.]
[Uchiha Madara: You have a student.]
[Second Hokage Tobirama Senju: ...]
[Second Hokage Tobirama Senju: If you say one more word about this, I will use the Ability Sealing Card on your Rinnegan.]
[Uchiha Madara: ...]
[Uchiha Madara: He's a decent student.]
[Second Hokage Tobirama Senju: I KNOW THAT.]
In the training ground, Naruto read this exchange.
He put down the chat.
He looked at the sky.
He was tired and his hands hurt and he'd been here for ten hours and something important was happening that nobody had fully explained to him yet.
He felt --- not ready exactly.
Something short of ready.
But moving toward it.
The moon was visible in the late afternoon sky.
Still shuddering.
Still there.
He looked at it.
"Hey," he said to it.
Not really expecting anything.
The moon shuddered.
Once.
Faint.
He looked at his hands.
At the place where the secondary Rasengan had moved through.
"Yeah," he said. "We'll see."
He stood up.
Stretched.
Offered a hand down to Sakura.
She took it.
They both offered hands to Sasuke.
He looked at them.
Took both.
They pulled him up.
They walked out of the training ground together in the late afternoon light.
Behind them, the split post stood in the dug-up earth.
Evidence of something beginning.
◇ BONUS & SUPPORT ◇
◇ 1 bonus chapter for every 10 reviews — drop a comment!
◇ 1 bonus chapter for every 100 Power Stones.
◇ Read 70 chapters ahead on P@treon → patreon.com/Sagamaster789