Friendship Contract

by Demeristraz


Cloud Watching


Naruto's second year of school went by quickly, with the only major change being Kiba's new companion Akamaru. The dog was friendly enough, and added another dimension to their sparring matches, but silently Naruto thought Angel Bunny could beat it in a fight at the moment. His grumbling about Kiba's new dog lead to a 'Find Naruto a Pet' day with the Cutie Mark Crusaders. It was, as with most endeavors with the three fillies, an epic failure. Although in hindsight Naruto didn't think a baby manticore would make a good pet anyways.

As the months rolled past Naruto was continuously hard at work with his nature manipulation. After getting a feel for what his wind chakra felt like, a feat that took months to get consistent on its own, he began attempting to convert chakra as it flowed from his hands. It was a process that was beyond troublesome, but inspiration came when he attempted to explain his problem. "It's like, trying to make sticks thin and pointy, when all you have is other sticks to work with!" He said, falling back out of his sitting position and looking up at the clouds.

"You've got other pointy sticks to start with right? Just use those to sharpen the others." Came a voice in response. "You know I liked it more when you risked getting soaked when you screwed up." Rainbow Dash flew down to sit next to him.

"That won't work, I can't hold the wind chakra in one place long enough for it to do the work, just like you can't hold the wind." Naruto grumbled, ignoring the cyan pegasus' ribbing.

"I can hold the wind." Dash replied smugly, "I mean, you aren't as awesome as me, but I thought you'd have figured this out at least." With that she leapt into the air and began to fly in tight circles until a small twister formed a few feet from him. "See? All that wind in one spot!"

Naruto sat upright with a massive grin. "That could work! I can spin the wind chakra, and then run the normal chakra over it, and grind it into more wind!" Rainbow Dash gave him a blank look at his explanation.

Ignoring the look Naruto settled down to focus once more on his latest task.

O~O~O~O~O

More months passed and the academy students finished their second year. Naruto and Sasuke headed out to the lake to throw stones, an act that had become a monthly tradition. "My dad taught me how to breath fire here." Sasuke said as he tossed a rock, getting it to skip 6 times.

"That's a weird bonding moment to share, but then again, ninja families right?" Naruto shrugged, throwing a stone of his own, it skipped three times, still an accomplishment for the orange child. "Wait, you can breathe fire already? I can barely shoot off gusts of wind, and it takes me up to a minute to get a decent amount together!"

Sasuke chuckled at his friend's dismay. "It's a technique idiot, with hand signs. I doubt I could just start belching flames over lunch one day."

"Yeah, and send your lunch to Celestia." Naruto joked, more to himself than anyoe.

Sasuke passed it off as more pony weirdness. "Someday you're going to explain where you go all the time, and who these friends of yours are."

"Someday you'll get to meet them, I have no doubt about that. Speaking of, your clan doesn't have a summoning contract does it?" Naruto ventured, seeing his friend shrug.

"Ah, I don't know, nothing in my main family, that's for sure. I feel kind of bad, rooting through the things of people I never really got to know. I think, if they left a will their stuff should go to children, or brothers or sisters, but then I realize that they're all gone as well. It sucks to know that I get this stuff, not because I deserve it, or because I'll make good use of it, but because I'm all that's left." Sasuke idly tossed another stone. "It's a lot of pressure, like all the dreams of my clan that never got fulfilled are on my shoulders now."

"I think, those that truly considered you family, their only dream for you is to lead a long and satisfying life, and maybe give them some adorable grandchildren. Those are the only family worth listening to anyways." Naruto joked to lighten the mood.

"Whenever I do this though, whenever I relax or have fun, a part of me thinks 'I should be training hard, to kill the man that did this to my family.' " He tossed another stone, this one too forcefully, and it sank right away.

"You are training hard Sasuke, and if you do decide it is your duty to kill him, do it for the right reasons. Killing him won't bring any of your family back." Naruto said, trying to push his friend off this line of thinking.

"But killing him will prevent him from taking my family away again." Sasuke said, almost too quietly to hear.

"Just remember, as great a ninja as you will be, we are still human first. We are not tools, we are Konoha ninja." Naruto said, as the sun finally dipped below the horizon.

"The best kind of ninja to be." Sasuke grinned.

O~O~O~O~O

The summer was once more spent in Ponyville, keeping up with his physical routine while working away at nature manipulation again. It was helping the CMC with their 'flying boat' idea that gave him his next inspiration.

"Gah, I just can't get it to work right!" He cried out, not for the first time, as he sat near the construction site. "I spin the wind chakra, and use it to grind a bit of neutral chakra off into thin sharp piece, making it wind as well. But it's too slow, I either get a tiny trickle, or I save it up slowly for a burst, but in a fight both of those are useless." He moaned, flopping down on his belly in the grass.

"Yer idea jus' ain't efficient enough then," Came Applebloom's voice from the construction zone. She had on goggles and a hard hat, and was hard at work cutting boards. "See here? Ah've gotta cut boards into thin strips, jus' like you do, and I've got a table saw tah do it. The way you're doin' it, is kinda like this." She said, pushing the wood towards a single spinning saw, and having it slice a thin strip off the end. "If Ah wanted ta be more efficient, ah'd do this!" she said, pulling a few levers and setting up more saw blades an equal distance apart from each other. This time, the wood was pushed forward, and was immediately sliced into four equal strips.

Naruto pondered for a moment, a grin slowly creeping onto his face. "Thanks Applebloom, this might work, you're the best!" He shouted, already running off to try once more.

"Wasn't he supposed to be helping?" Called Scootaloo from the top of the nearby scaffolding.

O~O~O~O~O

Soon enough summer turned to fall, and school began again. This time, being third year, it brought with it two new
techniques, each of them causing a major problem in the sanity of two different individuals.

"What the hay! I can't get this stupid clone technique to work! This has to be the most useless technique ever invented anyways. I mean really, any idiot can tell by looking at one that it isn't real." He muttered, waving the excess smoke out a nearby window once more.

"Especially yours darling, they appear to be in... less than perfect health." Commenter Rarity idly as she eyed the pale imitations that flopped about on the floor.

Twilight came over and poked them with a hoof, noting the jelly-like consistency. "They aren't supposed to be solid, are they?"

"They were like rocks before, believe me this is an improvement. Maybe I should switch to practicing the replacement technique for a bit." He said, dispelling the failed clones once more. As he did so Twilight began to twitch.

"That ability makes no logical sense at all. I mean you do the hand signs, and visualize a direction, which I can understand as that's kind of how teleportation works... But where the hay does the log come from, and why does it look like you for a bit?" She asked, already working herself up into a rant, Naruto merely shrugged and popped over to the other side of the room. Leaving a log behind him.

"Beats me, but some stories say you can get the logs to have exploding tags on them, or smiley faces painted on them. Then again there are stories of ninjas transforming into throwing weapons and being flung at enemies." Naruto said, walking up to the log and tossing it outside, Twilight had already confirmed through experimentation that it wasn't the same log used each time, the good news was the CMC had ample wood for their construction project now. 'Just how big is that boat going to get?'

"Neither of those examples seems feasibly possible." Twilight stated, trying to calm down and not go 'lesson zero'.

"I'm sure that's what went through their opponent's minds as well." Rarity commented idly, still working away at one of her projects. "Have you attempted to make the clones like balloons? It occurs to me that you are filling them up with chakra, when all you need is to create a shell."

Naruto contemplated that for a bit, before getting back to work at it, Twilight busied herself with pushing the smoke out of the open windows.

O~O~O~O~O

The months continued with Naruto working away at each of his projects, making decent headway on all but the cloud-walking fiasco. On a whim he learned to use the transformation technique on others, and got a very large kick out of giving Sasuke a very impressive handlebar mustache via pat on the back. His classmates had a mixed response, between laughter at the Uchiha's expense, and murderous rage at the 'orange menace'.

His wind manipulation got to the point where he could jump higher than anyone else in his class by forcing wind chakra downwards with each leap, as well as being able to maintain a rather forceful gust from most parts of his body.

Sealing lessons with Pinkie were like trying to learn the slang of a language he did not understand, but through sheer force of will he at least learned how to use tags she provided him.

It wasn't until spring arrived that he made a leap towards his goal of walking on clouds. He had taken the day off school, with permission from the Third, to participate in his fifth Winter Wrap Up, which fell on a school day this year. Convincing the Old Man that his summons actually did control the weather, and thus the seasons in their world took quite a bit of effort.

He was assigned to snow shoveling duty with the Cutie Mark Crusaders, Scootaloo, while getting better at flying every day, was still not capable of flying for long enough to help in the air. As they worked Naruto happened to look up to see a grey pegasus with blond hair bounce off of a cloud and tumble into a snowbank. "How does that work? I thought pegasi can pass right through clouds if they want to?"

"They have to punch through a cloud to go through it, clouds are too solid to just sort of float through." Scootaloo said through the shovel clutched in her mouth.

"That's not how clouds work, how can water vapor impede a full speed pegasus, magic or not?" Naruto said, tossing another shovel full of snow into the cart.

"Maybe that's why your clouds suck?" She snickered, and flew up to grab a smaller cloud. Bringing it down she showed him in detail. "See, it's not just water vapor floating in air, we can actually grab hold of it, you move it around like a unicorn would."

"It keeps its shape." Naruto noted as the filly jumped up and down on the cloud. When Sweetie Belle moved to poke it, rather than phase through it, as Naruto expected, the cloud actually repelled from around her hoof, leaving a hole in the cloud, but not dispersing. "It's not like a balloon either, there's no real shell to it... It's kind of like... Cotton?"

Scootaloo nodded, "That's what we're told to visualize, lots of fibers of magic bundled together. That's what makes it strong enough to stand on, or hold gallons of water if we want a raincloud."

"Couldn't Dash have told me earlier?" Naruto muttered, to Scootaloo's amusement.

"Dash isn't the best at describing this sort of thing, she just does what she does on instinct. Besides, didn't Twilight offer to let you use the cloud-walking spell?"

Naruto blushed, not wanting to admit that he turned the offer down because of a tantrum. Instead he tried reaching out to create a new cloud, properly this time.

"Oh no yah don't, you ain't ditching us with tha work this time, tha cart is full, get pullin'!" Shouted Applebloom, breaking his concentration.

Naruto shrugged, and made note to start practicing once again later on.

O~O~O~O~O

The rest of the year passed quickly, with Naruto's clone technique becoming a joke between his friends. By the last day of class his clones had become 'passable', they still rippled instead of dispersing if they were touched, and if he got them to move they would 'slosh' with every step, but considering they were generally used as a "Can the student use chakra" test, the instructors were willing to let it slide.

Naruto's pranks, with the help of Pinkie's mad genius, became more and more outlandish as the months wore on. At one point, seals written in invisible ink were placed all over the classroom, with remote triggers attached all over Naruto's body. On the chalk board was written in big letters "THE WORD OF THE DAY IS 'CHAKRA'!" For the entire day, whenever anyone would say 'Chakra', a nearby seal would eject confetti and streamers with the sound of party favors playing.

Naruto's work at making 'Proper' clouds was progressing slowly, given the poor quality of Dash's advice, and Scootaloo's lack of experience making them. But he firmly believed he'd have it done by the time he graduated.

The 'Twilight Bubble' had reached the point where he could turn it on at a moment's notice, and he had learned to walk with it on, much like a hamster in a ball. His 'Shining Armor' was as good as he was likely to get it at the moment, even Hinata admitted it was beyond her ability to close any of his chakra points when he had it on full blast. That and it apparently hurt the girl's eyes to look at when it was even half strength. Instead of letting it get her down, she showed him how she had begun working on a separate clan style in secret, which involved coating her hands in chakra, much like Naruto's 'Armor'.

Sasuke had taken Naruto's previous challenge of "Make me use my technique to its fullest, and it'll be obvious how it works" with enthusiasm, and in their private spars had begun throwing fireballs at inconvenient times. Naruto noticed how tired the boy was after only a few techniques, which got the two discussing whether 'fire' was Sasuke's primary element.

"I was never tested, it just seemed to run in the family, so my dad decided I should learn this technique. He was actually disappointed it took me so long to learn it." Sasuke shrugged. The two were headed for Saskue's apartment, understandably the boy had moved out of his empty house right after the incident. "I guess it makes sense though, if my primary element is something else. I guess I'll look through my Massive library of techniques and see what elements come easily to me." He grinned, getting a kick out of how Naruto would grumble at the mention of his library.

"You seem bored lately, ran out of books to read?" Sasuke noted, usually Naruto's mind was on a million things at once, but today he seemed subdued.

"Eh, I've got a lead on getting this really cool technique working, but that's all I'm really working on at the moment." Naruto admitted, while he'd never shown the techniques to his friends, they all knew he had aces up his sleeve, and knew better than to call him out on it, seeing what he could do with basic tricks like the transformation technique.

Sasuke mulled it over a bit, before reaching into his backpack. "I found this the other day, it's nothing special, just some crappy C-rank wind technique..." He tossed the scroll at Naruto, acting like it was no big deal.

"You're a good friend Sasuke." Naruto nodded, and pocketed the scroll for later.

"Hn." Sasuke grunted in reply.

O~O~O~O~O

If year three was a blur, year four was what Rainbow Dash looked like after pulling a sonic rainboom. The scroll he got from Sasuke was great, a simple technique called 'Drilling Air Bullet', where he would shoot a lung full of air in a ball towards his target. He quickly realized that the Hokage had been right about nature manipulation, his work with the wind element allowed him to convert chakra directly into more air, letting him pressurize the ball further, giving him more range and force. Accuracy was his biggest problem, and it quickly became a test to see if he could hit targets without obliterating the area around them.

His work with cloud shaping was still slow going, but he received regular advice on how to improve. His original attempts using 'fibers' of chakra fell apart immediately under their own weight. "You want fibers Naruto, tiny little fibers, not ropes." Was Dash's brilliant advice.

Working downwards he got smaller and smaller until he started working on a cloud the size of an apple. It took six months, but he finally presented his results to Rainbow Dash, and was met with approval. "Grab it" She said, and he did, holding a cloud firmly in a chakra coated hand. "Now squeeze it." He hesitated, then applied pressure, feeling the cloud give slightly, before springing back into shape. "Pull it apart." She ordered, and he did so, dividing the mass into two equal parts, and seeing them remain stable. "Now put them back together." With a certain amount of pride he reformed his original apple sized cloud. "Great! Now, make a hundred of those, and you'll have a real cloud." She joked, leaving Naruto to ponder the long road ahead.

His accomplishment was still celebrated, of course, and within a month he was able to form a sizeable cloud within 10 minutes. Cloud walking had now become about as difficult as water walking had been when he first started training on it, attacks from Rainbow Dash included. When everyone else in his class were preparing for their final graduation exams, Naruto put the finishing touches on his latest technique, including using wind manipulation to guide the cloud where he wanted while he rode on top.

O~O~O~O~O

The sun was bright over Konoha on the day before the genin exam. Sarutobi sat in his office, working away at paperwork, his eternal enemy, when a voice from the window called out to him. "Hey, old man!" The Third sat up, glancing about his office for the expected orange-clad academy student. "Out here!" Came the voice from behind him, and so the Hokage turned around, and gazed out over Konoha, and upon the sign of Naruto, standing outside his office. On a cloud.

"Think the Monkeys will want to learn this technique?" He said with a grin.