The sealed kunai

Chapter 43: The Man Who Would Be King

(Naruto – Age 7)

In the rather dark underground bunker of the Konoha-based Root hideout, the training of a young operative could be seen taking place. Though it was a very subtle practice it was still clear from the sweat dripping down the boy's face that he was hard at work.

'Come on.' Naruto thought to himself as he stared intensely at the leaf in his hand, 'Just split the leaf. It can't be as hard as Danzo-jiji made it sound. He isn't going to teach you anymore wind jutsu until you can do this.' Naruto kept focusing on the leaf as hard as he possibly could, 'Thinner, sharper... separate your chakra into two and grind them together.' He then felt eyes on his from across the room and noticed that his masked partner Maki had stopped training with hand-seal speed to stare at him working on his elemental training.

"Focus kit." Kyuubi rumbled in his mind. It had been around a year since Naruto had first met with the Kyuubi, and while the fox was rather ornery and ill-tempered more often than not, he surmised that things could have been worse. Danzo wanted him to establish a rapport of sorts with the demon before he could actively begin trying to train with the chakra, and in order to establish a relationship of sorts Naruto went ahead and came to a series of compromises with the massive being. One was that it would be aware of Naruto's surroundings and could actively communicate with him, which it did from time to time, "So your partner wants to watch you train, who cares? You are working on a rather high-level task at the moment. It must seem rather impressive."

'Yeah right...' Naruto said mentally as he tried to get back to cutting the leaf in his hand with his chakra, 'I would agree with you if Maki ever said more than one sentence to me a day. Does the guy really hate me that much?'

"I hate you that much." Kyuubi said to him in a helpful tone.

'You hate everyone that much.' Naruto replied dryly, 'If I have to hear how you would eat Minato Namikaze and shove those Hiraishin kunai of his up his ass again I swear I'm going to mute you. I'm busy.'

"I suppose you have a point." Kyuubi replied with a heavy sigh, "After all, I don't want my container to be so weak that taking over his body would be child's play... no pun intended." The Kyuubi whipped its tails around inside of its destroyed Konoha mindscape, "I expect a challenge out of you when the time comes."

'Whatever.' Naruto thought to the beast inside of him, 'Danzo-jiji gave me this exercise to complete. It's been three months since he told me to do it. I will finish it even if I blackout trying.' He then returned his focus to his work at hand, 'Come on, grind the chakra together, sharper, thinner...'

"*gasp*"

Naruto turned around when he heard Maki gasp, looking back at his leaf he saw what had prompted that uncharacteristic outburst. He had actually cut it the way he had been trying to for months prior to this. A smile came to the boy's face that he quickly rid himself of as he picked up another leaf and proved that it wasn't a fluke by cutting that one as well, and again, and again, each time faster than the last.

After repeating the process twelve times he finally turned to Maki who turned away from him and continued working on hand-seals, "Maki." Naruto said, not getting a response at first, "Maki." He said louder this time, finally getting the plain masked shinobi to turn around, "I'm going to go tell Danzo-jiji that I finished the exercise he gave me. Do you want to spar with swords when we get back? You need to get more melee training anyway."