Starting from the End

21. Crash course...

It had been a week, Naruto came to understand the depths of the hell aka chakra training, Umino style. And oh boy, it had been a terrific week for Naruto. A shiver ran through the blonde's body, just thinking about the last week. If someone asked him to bet on the worst teacher, he would toss all of his money on Iruka. Sometimes he wished that Iruka's bills don't pass the council at all. It would be civilian slaughter in the last two years of the academy and none of the civilian children would dream about shinobi life ever. Period. Iruka could be a brutal slave-driver if he wanted to be. Only the council's eagle eyes were stopping Iruka from actually implementing some of his ideas. Not having the back-up from the Shinobi council, was not helping at all. God bless those sacred poor souls. Naruto could only pray for those children who want to be a ninja if those bills ever passed.

And when it came to the blonde's training, Iruka Umino was a legit slave-driver. Naruto truly prayed for his dad's future students.

***

At first, it was a simple tree-walking to understand the current level of the blond. Iruka asked him about the duration to hold his position. Naruto was quite proud to announce his achievement. Well, that was a bad thing to be proud of. Because the next thing he saw was a set of shurikens were racing towards him. As a sensible person, he dodged it by landing on the land. And soon he was cuffed on his head.

"Either defend yourself or dodge to other trees sideways or upside down. No landing." was all Iruka said.

And for the first five minutes, it seemed very easy. But, oh boy, he couldn't be any more wrong. When the attack started to come from different directions in the forms of shurikens, kunais, and bombs at the same time, Naruto knew he would be sore the next day. He could easily sense the attacks, but his body was not able to move the same way his brain wants it to be. And after one hour he lost his control and slipped the tree, landed on his butt. Naruto didn't even try to stand up. He heaved and lied on the floor to calm his nerves. He wanted to stand on his feet, but his body declined the plead mercilessly.

"Your control is better than the others in your group. But you need more practice. Concentrate more. We can move to water walking training by next week." Iruka opened a storage seal and pulled out water bottles. "Drink it slowly. Take ten minutes, we will resume the training." He pulled another scroll. "You'll be hanging upside down. And I'll throw this... ", he pointed to the dull kunais, shurikens, and dodge balls, "...you'll have to only dodge them while staying upside down. We'll continue this until you don't need to consciously think about your footing. This will also help you to access your chakra more precisely. So, let's start."

***

Naruto shivered thinking about the last week. The first day of their training made his body sore beyond his thinking. He felt chakra exhausted. They met two more days after that,  although it was difficult for Iruka to squeeze the extra time for their sessions. But the time they spent together had provided mental peace to both of them, especially Naruto. In the case of Naruto's improvement, one can say it helped him some, the influx of his chakra had reduced to some extent. He still couldn't make clones of a particular amount. He still used more chakra than required. But he could admit that his control was much better than he had in his previous time.

And in case of activities by Team 7, Naruto decided to keep himself a little isolated. He was far more concerned about money. He needed more money than he was earning. He needed to buy good quality chakra papers, ink, writing brushes which were all too expansive. A few days ago, he had exhausted his dad's supply and he now had some standard and custom seals. Moreover, he needed to study some advanced fuinjutsu material. He didn't even have started on his promise. And he was tensed as hell. Mainly he needed to sell his seals, it could help him earn more money. He was stuck and don't know whom to ask for help. It had to be either Hokage or Kakashi.