Naruto lay on the ground panting, looking up at the light that filtered through the treetops. The apples that hung in the branches taunted him, reminding him of his continued difficulty with the supposedly 'easy' chakra control exercise. Easy for genin though it may be, Naruto had been working on it for months now. He could boost his leaps with chakra now, allowing him to better keep up in his spar's against the flying Rainbow Dash. He could run or walk up any vertical surface, and even stand on one for hours without tiring. What he attempted to do now was do it subconsciously, a skill that usually took years to master. To be able to act and fight on a vertical surface as well as if it was the ground. That was the goal, and he never went back on his challenges.
As he attempted to catch his breath he thought back on the last few months. There had been good parts, his human friends grew closer every day, his training was progressing ahead of Twilight's schedule, to nobody's surprise but her. Pinkie Pie had gotten hold of the sealing book, and some of her creations so far had been... questionable. His work with the Apple family stepped up, and he now hauled apple carts with Big Mac, as well as picking Apples without a ladder as practice. Rainbow Dash had tried explaining weather manipulation to him, but he was stumped at the whole 'Let your chakra flow into the water vapor, then pull it into a ball.' phase of cloud making, she made it look so easy.
His 'Shining Armor' technique now actually shone when he put enough chakra into it, becoming a visible shroud of blue over his outfit. At full power he could now take bucked apples without flinching. The 'Twilight Bubble' technique was more difficult, so far he could form the armor on the soles of his feet, and extend it outwards, but at the moment that could only serve as foot mounted shields.
He had gotten bored at the academy and snuck off to watch some of the older classes try out the academy ninjutsu. The clone eluded him, he had no idea where he'd even start with that sort of technique, the substitution technique likewise was mind boggling. To this day he still didn't know if he had to set up a log in advance, or if Konoha ninja had a natural summoning contract with a dimension of firewood. He had tried describing the technique to Twilight, but got as far as 'You teleport, like you do, except you leave an object of similar mass behind, that temporarily looks like you.' before her eyes crossed and glazed over.
The transformation technique he had down in a matter of hours. It seemed rather straight forward to him, he simply turned on the armor, grabbed hold of the chakra and yanked it into position. The longest part of learning it was figuring out how to change the color and texture of the chakra. When he was done he could finally say he could become a pony. It was uncomfortable, and it hurt his back a lot to do it, but it was fun to see the reactions of his friends. That Applebloom attempted to seduce him was a memory he was going to keep locked away for quite some time.
But for all the sunshine in Konoha, when it rains, it really pours.,,,
O~O~O~O~O
"Hey, Naruto." Sasuke called after the bell rang. "You've been working ahead on chakra right? Have you gotten to tree walking?"
"Yeah, I started a few weeks ago, I can run and walk, my concentration isn't enough for standing still longer than an hour yet." He said, walking with the black haired boy out to the academy yard.
"You're insane you know that, most genin would call that good enough and move on."
"Most genin aren't cut out to become Hokage." Naruto gave his usual reply, every time someone noticed something weird about him. Sasuke once caught him by surprise with a direct axe kick to the head in a sparring match. He succeeded in dazing the blonde and injuring his foot. When Iruka mentioned most chuunin would be K.O.ed from such a hit, Naruto shrugged and gave his standard answer. It was becoming so common most people in his class began thinking it may be possible.
"So I'm supposed to just run at the tree, and try and stick myself to it?" Sasuke said, sizing up a medium sized tree in the yard.
"I've got a better way." Naruto said, approaching the tree, to a mumbled 'I figured' from his friend. "Lay down, lift your legs and put your feet against the tree. Channel chakra until you feel it pushing against you, then slowly lower the amount until the pressure stops." The boy did as instructed, and after a few minutes he nodded.
"Now, try and pull yourself up so that you're standing." Naruto instructed, and with a grunt Sasuke wobbled up off the ground.
"It's hell on the abs huh? But it's the easiest way I've come up with, and the fan girls will love your six pack." Naruto chuckled as Sasuke wobbled. "If you think you've got it, now comes the hard part. Memorize the feeling, remember exactly how much chakra you need, then cut the flow to one foot and take a step."
Naruto watched in amusement as Sasuke fell a few dozen times. At least he wasn't having Naruto's problem, blowing up a few apple trees did not go over well with the Apple family. Soon enough he was halfway up the tree, and getting higher with each attempt.
"You'll have to start from scratch tomorrow, but it'll get easier each time you try it." He called, noticing it was getting late. "Let's call it a day, we can see if any of the others want to practice this tomorrow."
Sasuke flipped off the tree with a grunt and fell into step beside him, cradling his abs as he did so. "I told you man, they don't mention in the book just how hard it is to 'stand' horizontally. If you want a real workout try touching your toes a few dozen times while tree walking." Naruto reached behind him and pulled out his first-aid kit. "You know you use this more than I do right? I should have Fluttershy make one for you. It works as a deterrent, before I do anything stupid I think, 'Will I have to use the kit?' "
Sasuke accepted the muscle cream that was handed to him, shaking his head at the orange boy as he found himself doing more and more often lately. "You just don't use the kit because somehow you can take a hit from Chouji without rolling on the floor for a while groaning." Naruto laughed recalling when Kiba did exactly that. "I still don't know how you do that, but I'm definitely going to figure it out."
"If you see me using it at full strength it'll be obvious, so you'll just have to try even harder to hurt me." Naruto joked, putting the muscle cream back into his pack. He noticed they had entered the Uchiha complex, and it was eerily silent. "What the hay Sasuke, does your family not believe in 'night life?' they should put a night-club in here, I know some sick beats that could help with the attitude."
Sasuke ignored the now commonplace jab at his family's attitude. "It's usually not this quiet, I hope I didn't miss a meeting or something."
Glancing around Naruto spotted a few Kunai lodged in a nearby fence and paused in step. "This your families idea of decorating?" he said gesturing to them.
"Those shouldn't be there." Sasuke whispered, moving forward in a panic.
Naruto grabbed him by the arm. "Nope. Nope nope nope, we are Not going in there."
"But my family!" Sasuke urged, trying to pull away.
"We need to get help Sasuke, there is something seriously wrong here, and no matter how talent we are, we are just academy students." Naruto urged, pulling him towards the entrance of the compound.
"You can go get help then, I need to make sure my family is okay. Go get the police." Sasuke yelled, now frantic with worry.
"Your family is the police, I'm going to get every damn ANBU I can find, and you are coming with me, if you don't you'll just be one more person to rescue." Naruto grunted, sticking his feet to the ground and pulling Sasuke along.
"I'm afraid the two of you won't be leaving." Came a calm voice from ahead, a young boy in ANBU gear stood before then, sword out dripping blood.
"Itachi!" Sasuke cried, now trying to run towards him, Naruto kept his grip firm, sensing something off about the situation he reached into his pouch of 'party supplies' that Pinky prepared. He mentally went over the labels on each compartment, 'Cupcakes', 'Welcome wagon', he hesitated on 'Party Cannon', before stopping on 'Fireworks: NEVER USE'. Out came a single kunai with a custom explosive tag on the end. "Where's Mom and Dad? What happened to the family?"
"They needed to die, Sasuke." Itachi replied calmly, and Sasuke stopped struggling in shock. Itachi's eyes turned red and began to change. "You need to join them now."
"Yeah Right!" Naruto yelled, diving in front of Sasuke and throwing the Kunai. "You need to taste the Rainbow Bitch!"
Caught off guard by the sudden movement Itachi's sharingan followed the trajectory of the Kunai as the tag on the end ejected one metric litre of liquid rainbow right in front of him. He had a moment to ponder how a liquid could retain individual bands of color as it travelled through the air, before it became far too bright to ponder at all.
Not staying still to watch the show, Naruto grabbed Sasuke once again and ran for safety. Out of the compound with dust from a rainbow colored mushroom cloud behind them they bolted into the merchant district. The first to find them was the strange one eyed man he remembered from years ago, the two of them collapsed upon him, exhausted and traumatized as he whisked them away into the night.
O~O~O~O~O
The next few weeks were hard on both of them. Sasuke had lost his entire family that night, including his beloved brother who had fled into the night, now a wanted criminal in his home village. For all that he tried to withdraw into an emotional shell, Naruto was there to drag him out. He would try and push the blonde away, but any attempts at fighting quickly turned good natured, and even when Sasuke won, he still lost.
"Aren't you going to say I told you so?" Sasuke asked, as the two sat skipping stones.
"If I was going to, I'd save it for special occasions. I say it enough around you that it'd lose meaning." Naruto joked, another stone failed to skip and sank with a 'sploosh'.
A joke about Naruto's continued inability to throw a good shuriken died on Sasuke's lips. "The first time we met, I mocked you for being an orphan. You told me I shouldn't joke about losing family."
Naruto paused at that. It did seem foreboding, when he stopped to think about it. "Truth is, I never really liked my family all that much, my dad was never satisfied, I was never enough like Itachi for him." Sasuke continued.
"I'm glad you aren't like Itachi, as much of an asshole as you can be, at least you're loyal. I'd take a loyal friend over a traitorous super-ninja any day." Naruto said, laying back to look at the setting sun.
"It still hurts though. No matter how much I wanted my dad to be off my back... now that he's gone... " Sasuke said, chucking another stone.
"They were still family, it's always going to hurt to lose them, same way it'd hurt me to lose any of my friends." Naruto sat up, grabbing another stone and once again failing to skip it. "I never had family to lose, but I wanna believe my friends come damn close."
"It won't hurt to lose Itachi." Sasuke muttered darkly.
"He's no longer family, in your mind anyways." Naruto shrugged. "But hey, if you dislike your family so much, there's
always more room in mine."
"I'm not sure I can handle having a brother again." Sasuke said, getting up to leave.
"Yeah, besides I'm nothing like your last one." Naruto said, following his friend.
"That's a damn good thing."
O~O~O~O~O
Naruto groaned and stretched his muscles, slowly trudging to the Apple family farm for dinner. It had been a rough few weeks, getting back into the swing of things, but he took it upon himself to walk Sasuke home each day, keeping up with the inane chatter, never letting the boy freeze over. Besides it was good training to dodge his fan-girls every day.
Most day's they'd stay after, with a lot of his friends working on chakra usage. Hinata confided in him early on that she knew the secret of his 'Shining Armor' technique, although the nearly swooned at hearing his name for it. She expressed some frustration that pushing chakra out of his chakra points at the same time she tried pushing it cancelled her gentle fist style, but resolved to find a way around a newly discovered weakness. It seemed she had taken his earlier advice to heart.
Kiba continually prattled on about how he'd have his companion dog by the start of their next year, due to how well he was progressing. His mother was apparently impressed with his scores, at least the non-academic ones.
Shikamaru watched more than he participated, he would inevitably do quite well on each of his attempts. It was quite obvious the boy was more talented than he let on.
Chouji could be motivated into working harder than anyone present when bribed with cupcakes from Naruto's party supply pouch. The existence of such a pouch brought great amusement to his friends, and he had to bust out the welcome wagon to show everyone. When Kiba was doused in cake batter, Naruto merely shrugged and said "Tradition".
Inquiries regarding the 'Fireworks' label had Sasuke blanche and attempt to hide, until Naruto put his foot down and informed them it was for 'S Ranked Missing Nin Only'.
Some of Sasuke's fan-girls attempted to join in their training sessions, much to the dismay of many of the boys present. It seemed Naruto's pariah status was effectively nullified by the last Uchiha's royalty. Naruto welcomed them with open arms, and sent them home that day with aches in muscles they didn't know they had. After that first day none of the fan-club returned, having been instructed that they would participate, or be asked to leave.
O~O~O~O~O
Eventually their first year of the academy drew to a close, everyone involved was satisfied with their marks, a third of their class (all civilian children) dropped out to pursue civilian careers, and four months of summer loomed ahead of the group.
Naruto began to spend most days in Ponyville, sticking to a summer curriculum put together, not surprisingly, by Twilight Sparkle. Within days of work he finally perfected the 'Twilight bubble', although Pinkie Pie still called it the 'Sparkle Sphere'. The first time he demonstrated it Applejack laughed and bucked him down the main street of Ponyville. Naruto emerged unharmed, but now knew how it felt to be a hamster.
It took a few more days of work but he eventually managed to make a bubble big enough for several people or ponies, although he was nowhere near the level of covering entire buildings like Twilight could, or all of Canterlot like Shining Armor could supposedly do, though he resolved to keep working at it, being able to shield all of Konoha would be awesome, if only to see the looks on an invading army's faces.Speaking of, things in Canterlot had calmed down, but with barrels of liquid rainbow still missing, the nobility there was walking on eggshells.
Upon demonstrating the ability to have a full fight with Rainbow Dash while sticking to a wall, Twilight checked tree walking off of 'The List' and they moved on to water walking. What followed was a very wet series of months.
Lessons with Pinkie Pie now included tutorials on sealing, the pink pony seemed to have an unusual grasp on the nature of time and space. Between the two of them, they still didn't know how to summon something across dimensions without Naruto carrying it himself, and attempts to summon Pinky by summoning himself while she rode on his back failed miserably.
Time with Rarity quickly became a game of "Would a Ninja be caught dead wearing this?", while she was quite talented, her understanding of human culture was lacking, and 8 times out of 10 the answer was 'Absolutely not'. Understandably, considering Naruto's sense of fashion, this did not deter her from insisting he try them all on. Naruto was often sent on errands, trading the plentiful amounts of Equestrian gems for money through the clever use of the transformation technique, and then purchasing all sorts of items from around town.
No stone was left unturned as Rarity investigated the items procured by Naruto. Clothing was analyzed and deconstructed, the fabric was inspected to microscopic detail and compared to that available in Equestria.
Rainbow Dash stepped his training up, which usually involved dive-bombing him while he tried water walking. Once he became competent enough to stay buoyant and still dodge, she merely laughed and called up a fog bank, then continued harassing him. Upon washing up on shore when Twilight came to check on him, he let out a gasp for air "Swooping... Swooping is... bad."
It was through doing this he first learned to predict her attacks by sensing the change in air currents, the impressiveness of this skill was lost on him in the frantic attempts to stay dry and unbruised. These evasion lessons were quickly taken over by Pinkie, who decided such a fun game should not be limited to Naruto's time training. So Naruto soon found himself dodging random cupcakes and apples as he walked through the streets.
It was standing in the fog on that water, waiting for Rainbow Dash's next assault, when the idea occurred to him. He slowly activated his 'Shining Armor', letting chakra leak out uncontrolled, and feeling as it mixed into the fog. As he did so he found he could 'feel' where Dash was coming from, it wasn't perfect, the mare was faster than he found reasonable, but combined with his practice predicting attacks he found dodging that much easier. By the end of the session the entire fogbank was saturated in his chakra, and, remembering Dash's words of advice he reached out to it.
In one single motion the fog bank was pulled into a big white fluffy ball that he held over his head. Naruto had made his first cloud.