better left unsaid

Chapter 2: Too Many Questions, Not Enough Answers

It had only been one day since Naruto had learned Chakura Hankyouteii no Jutsu (Chakra Echolocation Jutsu) and he had barely stopped using it for the entire day before. Once he ate and bragged about his graduation to Teuchi and Ayame at Ichiraku Ramen he went straight home and pretty much sat on his roof for hours just sending out pulse after pulse, scouting for anything he could sense. It was unarguably the stillest Naruto had ever sat for the longest period of time. Why didn't more people take the time to learn this jutsu from Iruka-sensei? As a matter of fact why not teach it in the academy? It was so cool.

Anyway, after doing that for a few hours of mindless entertainment, funny though, Iruka said it was wasteful on chakra, he didn't feel like he had been doing anything but that was a whole different matter, after he was done playing with his new jutsu he headed inside. He still had a week to wait out before he was to be at orientation and he had nothing to do. He promised he wouldn't pull anymore pranks and he wasn't going to be able to top painting the Hokage Monument anyway.

He had absolutely nothing to do that night. There was no need to go to bed early or anything, he didn't have to be anywhere the next morning for an entire week, but he still didn't have a thing to do for that period of time.

"You need to get all of the Academy katas down and finish learning the taijutsu."

Iruka told him he needed to finish learning the taijutsu. Naruto always assumed he was passable in taijutsu because he was. It was the only thing he decisively passed no matter what in the academy because it didn't require him to learn anything or pay too much attention. All the attention he paid was in the beginning when they went over the most simple basics provided, how to punch and kick. That was it. He knew nothing else formal about it. Not how to dodge and parry, not even how to properly block. He never even really got reprimanded in taijutsu class because more often than not when they would spar he would win. He couldn't beat kids like Kiba or that asshole Sasuke, but pretty much everyone else he was able to at the very least hang tough against, because he launched an assault right when the fight would start, even when he got hit he would just work on through it, counting on the fact that he could take more punches than his opponents. His style was no style, he was a hard-nosed brawler and it had suited him fine to this point.

But he promised that he would try… that and he didn't have anything to do and it was too late to go out and run amok. What he forgot however, was that he had never bothered to even keep his stuff together from the Academy. When he got homework or some other handout that he didn't do right there on the spot it usually got forgotten among some clutter, and he hadn't touched anything on taijutsu in forever. Hence the rest of his night awake was spent with him digging all over the apartment for his stuff on Academy taijutsu.

When he had woken up the next morning two hours were spent with him retrieving the rest of his scrolls on taijutsu, and by the time he had finished that and had some breakfast he was too bored to just sit in his apartment a read them. Deciding to kill two birds with one stone he left the house in search of somewhere interesting that could help him hold his attention long enough to get to the practical application of the academy taijutsu because after learning basic stance and punches and kicks Iruka went into lecture mode for about a month after that, killing Naruto's buzz so to speak and letting his attention on the matter drop.

'At least this time I can skip all of the boring stuff and just learn the cool moves in the scroll.' Naruto thought to himself as he walked through the village. He held the scroll in his hand, looking at it as he navigated the village streets on auto-pilot.

He didn't really need to keep his eyes ahead of him, people usually always gave him a wide berth when he was going anywhere, something he didn't really understand, but that was the way it had been for as long as he could remember. That was okay, all he had to do was show them how awesome he was and then everything would change, which was going to happen any day now that he was finally a ninja. Kids would be asking him for autographs, he'd hear people reference his greatness even in conversations where his name wasn't even in the topic, appraising eyes would be on him every time he went into public. Yep, he couldn't wait.