Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

It's funny how one little thing can change your whole life. For me it was an offhand comment from Ebisu that made the difference.

I was finally getting the hang of water walking, after falling in that stupid ice-cold lake about a million times. Good thing Kakashi-sensei noticed the seal that snake freak put on me in the Forest of Death was still there, because I'd never have gotten anywhere with that thing screwing up my chakra. Anyway, Ebisu was making me go through kata on the lake, just to prove I could concentrate on something else and still stay on the water. Of course he also had to point out every stupid little mistake I made, which was pissing me off, but then he did something no one but old man Hokage had ever done.

"So tell me, Naruto, what do you hope to learn from this training? Do you know what kind of ninja you want to be, and what you need to learn to get there?"

"I need a cool technique that'll let me kick Neji's butt! Oh, and I guess I'll have to learn a lot of techniques to become Hokage."

Yeah, I was a real idiot back then. But I was surprised enough by the question that I actually listened to what he said next.

Ebisu chuckled. "Techniques are all well and good, Naruto, but they're only tools. Do you know what makes the difference between a really great ninja and an also-ran?"

"Duh, they're really strong."

"Yes, but how did they become so strong? It's not bloodlines or genius or special training, although those things can certainly make it easier. The key difference is that most ninja concentrate on building up their strongest ability, and that dependence makes them vulnerable to an opponent with the proper counter. An elite ninja, on the other hand, builds up every strength he possibly can and then takes constant advantage of all of them."

He went on into lecture mode after that, and I tuned most of it out. But that thought stuck with me. Be strong in as many ways as you can. Take full advantage of all your strengths. Yeah, that did make sense.

"Ok, Naruto, that's enough for today. Tonight I want you to think of three strengths you have compared to the rest of your age group, and at least one thing you can do to take advantage of each of them. Meet me back here at eight tomorrow, and we'll talk about your ideas."

"Sure, Ebisu-sensei." He might be a dorky-looking closet pervert, but I figured I'd be nice to him as long as he was actually teaching me good stuff.

But I bet the Hokages all had a lot more than three strengths.

I spent a long time that night trying to figure out what strengths I've got. I was determined to blow the closet pervert away with all the cool stuff I came up with, and maybe even get started on that 'take full advantage' part.

Everything seems to come back to the damned fox in the end, so it shouldn't be a surprise that I ended up back in front of its prison before the night was through.

"Hey, Kyuubi! You awake in there? Can we talk for a minute?"

Way back in the darkness of the prison, a pair of glowing red eyes the size of houses slowly opened. "What do you want, insect?"

"I want to live, and I bet you do to. So I'm trying to figure out if there's anything we could do to make sure that happens. Are you the reason I always heal so fast?"

The eyes narrowed. "You had what your kind calls a latent bloodline. My presence merely awakened it."

"Oh. Damn, I was hoping there was some way to make it even stronger. Hey, what about that weird thing with my Sexy Technique?"

"You mean the fact that it isn't an illusion? That's the nature of the beast, brat. And don't bother asking for more of my chakra. It's poison to your kind. If you use too much it will overwhelm your puny bloodline and devour you from the inside."

"Ick." I shivered. "Ok, so only use it if I'm about to die anyway." I thought for a minute, but couldn't come up with any other ideas. "Oh well, guess I'll have to try something else. Thanks for talking."

I turned to go.

"Wait." The Kyuubi slowly paced up to the bars of its prison. "There is one thing I can do. What you have now is only a degenerate remnant of the true Divine Health ability. If you're willing, I can awaken the full power of your bloodline."

"That sounds cool. So, is that like super-fast healing, and growing back arms and stuff?"

There was a sound like distant thunder, and after a second I realized the Kyuubi had actually chuckled.

"It's that and more, brat. Disease, poison, malnutrition, chakra damage – it works on anything. As long as your head stays attached and you have either food or chakra you'll recover from anything in a matter of hours."

"Damn, that's as strong as the Byakugan. Wait, this isn't going to turn me into some kind of weird half-fox demon thing or something, is it?"

"No, idiot. I have no intention of giving you any more of my power than that damned seal has already stolen. Now do you want to do this or not?"

Gain an incredible bloodline, or leave empty-handed. Gee, what a hard choice.

"What do I have to do?"

--oOoOo--

Having the fox mess around with my bloodline hurt like hell, and I pretty much just collapsed into bed when it was done. But the next morning I felt better than I could remember ever feeling.

Really, really hungry, but great.

A wall of smells hit me in the face as I walked out the door, followed by a wave of sounds I'd never heard. I stumbled down the street to Ichiraku's in a daze, staring at things I'd never noticed before. I could pick out conversations halfway down the block, and smell every breakfast in the neighborhood. There were colors I'd never seen before, and sounds too!

I stopped to look up at utility tower, and realized the strange high-pitched hum I heard was coming from it.

"Cool!" Damn, fox, you didn't say anything about super-senses!

You think the kami were as deaf and scent-blind as humans, brat? Not likely.

"Oh." I wondered for a minute why he was bothering to answer me now, but my grumbling stomach insisted on breakfast. By my second bowl I was thinking about my assignment again.

Let's see, I've got super-healing now, and great stamina, so I can fight just about forever. Hey, I bet I can train longer than anyone else too. What else?

I've got Shadow Clone, and I can make a lot more clones than anyone else. Hey, wait a minute. A normal jounin can make a couple of shadow clones at once, and do it maybe three or four times before they run low on chakra. I can make hundreds and barely feel it, or make a few dozen and replace them constantly for hours. Holy shit. That means I've got, what, a thousand times more chakra than a jounin? Why didn't anyone ever tell me that?

"Oh, duh. They don't want me to know."

"Don't want you to know what, Naruto?"

I looked up to find TenTen taking the seat next to mine.

"Oh, hey there. Don't see you here very often." Usually she had morning training with her team, but I guess with Lee in the hospital and her out of the tournament she was out of luck at the moment. I wasn't about to answer her question, of course, but as I was trying to think of something else to talk about an idea struck me.

"Hey, TenTen, do they teach you anything useful in those kunoichi-only classes back at the academy?"

She rolled her eyes. "Hardly. It was all tea ceremony, makeup, calligraphy and courtly manners. Useless crap unless you want to pretend to be a noble lady. Why?"

"Oh, I just figured out some stuff about my bloodline and I was wondering what I could do with it." So much for Kiba's wild stories about "secret kunoichi-babe knockout techniques".

TenTen stared. "You've got a bloodline? I never knew that. But what does that have to do with kunoichi training?"

"Well, I'm not sure if this is a full-blown bloodline, or just a weird quirk. See, I was playing around with some funny illusion techniques, but there's this one variation that doesn't act like it should." I concentrated, and managed to do a Sexy Technique without dispelling my clothes. "When I do this form, it isn't an illusion."

Sakura would have hit me and started yelling. I was pleased to discover that TenTen just looked puzzled.

"What do you mean, 'not an illusion'? What else would it be?" She looked me over carefully, and poked my side with one finger. "Wait." She poked again, and frowned.

I knew what the next step was. "Go ahead. Just don't make a scene."

She glanced around and blushed slightly, but she still poked my boob pretty hard. That's a dead giveaway with a normal illusion, because if they aren't supported by something real they collapse when you touch them. A serious genjutsu expert can get around that, but we both knew I wasn't one.

"My god." She murmured. "A real transformation? Naruto, that's incredible! But you shouldn't go around telling just anyone about that kind of thing."

"Of course not. But I can trust you."

She didn't seem to know what to say about that.

"Anyway, that's just a funny quirk I'm trying to find a use for." I said as I changed back. "Remind me next time I see you, and I'll show you my real bloodline."

She gave me a speculative look as I left for the training ground, but I wasn't worried. Any girl who can talk about my weird gender-swapping jutsu without blowing a gasket is way too nice to be worried about.

Besides, I had so many things to think about. So many ideas that had never occurred to me before. Had I actually gotten smarter somehow?

"Alright, Naruto, let's hear what you've come up with." Ebisu was right on time, unlike a certain other teacher I could mention. I was starting to think training with him for a month wouldn't be so bad after all.

"Ok, first off I've got stupidly huge amounts of chakra. That means my control sucks, but I can throw around lots of big jutsu if anyone will ever teach me one. So I should try to get my hands on some simple, blow-stuff-up type techniques so I'll actually have something besides clones to use in a fight."

"Second, I'm really good with Shadow Clones. Since I can afford to run lots of them all day I should start using them for training, and scouting, and work on making it so no one can tell which one is the real me. If the training part works right I could use that to learn a lot more different things than most people have time for."

"Third, I've got some kind of super-healing bloodline that lets me soak up tons of hits without going down. That's a great surprise for anyone who thinks using the clone decoys means I'm weak, and it also means I can train a lot harder than most people. More realistically, too."

"Well done, Naruto." Ebisu replied. "That's not a bad start. I was planning to work on your taijutsu today, but if you'd like we can try out your idea for clone training at the same time."

"All right!" I'd never had a sensei help me try out with my own ideas like that before. I usually avoid taijutsu practice because I suck so bad at it, but if the clones worked maybe I could actually change that.

Ebisu smiled. "Indeed. Now, tell me about this healing ability…"

The next few days were a blur of training, and at first I was pretty happy. Ebisu was totally paranoid about mass clones, and insisted I couldn't use more than three or four at a time or I'd get some kind of psychic shock thing. But even at that rate my taijutsu was improving pretty quick, and once we tested my elemental affinity he even explained the leaf splitting exercise.

But three days later we were still working on taijutsu, and when I complained that it was getting boring he just gave me the leaf-floating exercise. Then he figured out how slow my replacement technique is, and I got to spend the whole afternoon practicing that one stupid thing.

"Man, I can't believe how much time he wants me to spend on this stuff." I grumbled over my ramen. "I mean, I know I need to get better at it, but a fast replacement technique isn't going to let me beat Neji."

"You've got that right, Naruto." Commented TenTen as she claimed a seat next to me. "But hey, at least you're training. I haven't seen Gai-sensei anywhere but the hospital all week."

I opened my mouth to say something about how lucky she was to at least have a sensei that wanted to teach her, but suddenly realized that would be stupid. Opportunity was knocking here.

So instead, I said "I guess Neji's off doing secret Hyuuga training or something, huh? Hey, I've got an idea. Want to train together?"

She blinked. "Um, I thought you said Ebisu was training you?"

"Yeah, but it turns out I'm some kind of savant with shadow clones." I grinned. "He doesn't like to work with more than three or four at a time, but I can make hundreds and I remember everything they do. I'll just make some extras tomorrow, and he'll never know the difference."

"Oh. Hey, that's pretty impressive." She paused to order, and then turned back to me. "What the heck, I could use a good sparring partner."

So the next day I met up with TenTen and got in some good practice with missile weapons. First I got her to coach me on better throwing techniques, and made some clones to go practice what she showed me. Then I made another batch and we sparred, with me trying to get in close enough to hit her while she tried to kill all my clones from a distance. Most instructors won't let you do that kind of thing with real weapons, so it was kind of a new thing for both of us.

Of course, it was a shock for TenTen the first time she hit the real me.

"Ow!" I stopped to pull the kunai out of my eye. "Damn, that hurts!"

TenTen rushed over in a panic. "Oh my god, Naruto, I thought these were all clones! Shit, your eye! We've got to get you to the hospital!"

"Don't worry, TenTen, I'll be fine." I said. Shit, I wasn't expecting hits like that. I hope this super-healing thing really works, or I'm gonna feel really stupid going around with only one eye.

But the bleeding was already slowing, and I could feel my chakra rushing to the wound. In a few seconds the pain faded, replaced by a weird tingling.

TenTen tried some kind of first aid jutsu, and gasped. "Naruto? What's going on? The bleeding stopped, and…this doesn't make an sense."

"Remember when I said I had a real bloodline? This is it. I'm supposed to heal just about anything, but I've never lost an eye before. Man, I'd hate to have to fight you for real." Experimentally, I tried feeding more chakra to the wound. The tingling got stronger, and I could practically feel stuff putting itself back together in there.

"Seriously?" She looked at my eye again. "Damn, I can actually it regenerating! You're right, at this rate you'll be healed in a few minutes."

She thought about that for a minute, and lightly bopped me on the shoulder. "Idiot! What were you thinking, scaring me like that?"

"Uh, sorry. I'm used to just getting a few scratches from Sasuke, and Sakura usually can't even hit me. Guess I should have known Konoha's ace weapon mistress would go for the vital spots."

"Idiot." She repeated, but she was smiling now. "Warn me next time you want the real you in the mix, ok? That could have been a lethal hit."

"Nah, not on me. You'd have to cut my head off and burn the body or something. But yeah, I'll make sure you know where the real me is from now on."

I was ready to call up some more clones and get back to training, but TenTen was giving me an odd look.

"What?"

"Nothing." She said slowly. "Just…re-thinking a few things. You know, you'd probably have as big a fan-club as Sasuke if word got out about this."

I snorted. "Yeah, right."

"No, seriously. We love our bloodlines here in Konoha, and that's one of the strongest ones I've ever heard of. Do you have any idea how much time older kunoichi spend worrying that their man isn't coming home from his next mission? Or their children, for that matter? But as long as your enemies don't know what you can do, you can get out of just about any situation."

She smiled mischievously. "Not to mention that you're actually kind of cute, and you're a lot less moody than the Uchiha"

I stared at her, so surprised that my brain just about locked up. Was she saying she…liked me? Girls never like me.

"Um, thanks." I blinked, and realized both eyes had moved. "Hey, I can see again! Ok, let's give this another try."

So I gained a training partner, and maybe a friend. TenTen was fun to practice with, especially since she was a lot more serious about it than any other kunoichi I'd met. Sakura never trained for more than an hour or two unless Kakashi was making us do something, and always took her weekends off. But TenTen was happy to spend eight hours a day at the training grounds, and with me running a dozen clones at a time it didn't take long for our sessions to make a real difference.

A few days later Gai dropped by while we were training, and apologized to TenTen for neglecting her training. He gave us both some pointers on our techniques, but he was a little concerned about my clones.

"Naruto," he said, "it is good that your flames of youth burn so brightly that you're willing do weeks of training in every day. But has my hip rival explained to you the dangers of the Shadow Clone?"

"You mean the whole psychic shock thing? Yeah, don't worry. It turns out I've got some kind of weird jutsu talent with clones. We're not sure what my limit is, but I've used hundreds of them at once with no problem. I never use more than a dozen or so with TenTen, so I should be good."

Of course, that's on top of a half-dozen with Ebisu and another four or five working on the leaf-splitting thing, but I wasn't going to tell him that. Then I'd end up having to explain about my healing, and I was starting to think TenTen was right that I should keep it a secret.

"I see. Then perhaps while your clones pursue skill, you should train your true self in strength and speed."

"Hey, that's a good idea." I replied. "Can you show me the right way to do that?"

So I started wearing weights, and spending most of every day on physical training while my clones did everything else. Gai went back to training TenTen for a couple of hours a day, which cost me some practice time, but the pointers he gave me more than made up for it.

I guess he wasn't too happy with Neji either.

Meanwhile, it turned out that Ebisu wasn't going to bother training me on weekends. I was pretty pissed about that, since it was eight days I wouldn't be learning anything while Neji was getting even stronger. But arguing about it didn't do me any good.

"Naruto, I hope you remember that I'm only doing this as a favor to Kakashi. You should be thankful I agreed to give you as much time as I have. I am one of Konoha's most elite instructors, after all."

It was almost enough to get me brooding, but I've never been the kind of guy who gives up that easy. So Saturday morning I met with a group of clones on top the Hokage monument.

"Ok, guys, listen up. It's pretty obvious now that Ebisu isn't going to teach us anything big, and for sure none of the jounin senseis are going to spend a lot of time on someone that isn't their student. If we're going to kick Neji's ass and get promoted, we're going to have to make it happen ourselves. So let's get busy."

"You." I pointed out a clone. "You head for the training grounds and work on all the taijutsu and weapon stuff we've been learning. But I want you to do it our way. Every time you find something we need to practice make another clone to work on it, and have the clones pop themselves when they get it down. That'll keep at least thirty or forty clones busy."

"You." I picked another clone. "Chakra control and that element stuff. We've got water walking, tree climbing, leaf floating and leaf splitting to work on. Make a bunch of clones to work on all of them, plus doing different combinations at the same time. Oh, and try floating and splitting stuff besides leaves – twigs, paper, cloth, whatever you can find. Maybe it'll make a difference."

"You get to research making new jutsu." I told the next clone. "Send some clones to the library, talk to Iruka and Sakura, bug all the instructors for hints, whatever it takes. If no one's going to teach us any real techniques we're going to have to make our own, and I don't think everything's going to be as easy as Sexy Technique."

"Next guy, you get to rob Sasuke." The clone grinned back at me. "He's got to have scrolls for those fire techniques somewhere. Find them, steal them, and get a some guys working on learning them. I know it's not our element, but if Kakashi and old man Hokage can both use every element I bet we can too. If it takes longer to learn we'll just spend the time."

"What else? Oh, yeah. You spend the day doing recon. Henge into a bunch of different people and find out everything you can about every ninja we've met – the other genin, the instructors, the examiners, everyone. There's got to be some way we can convince someone to teach us a couple of techniques, and you're going to figure out how."

"Last guy, you get the fun part. I want you to figure out what else we can do with Shadow Clone. Can we make clones with less chakra, or more? Can they transfer memories without dispelling, or dispel without transferring anything? Can we make one that can take a hit? How about one that isn't solid? How about just cloning equipment, like shuriken? What happens if a clone tries to make clones? All that kind of stuff. By tonight I want to know more about Shadow Clone than anyone in the village."

"Ok, I think that's everything. While you guys are doing all that, I'm going to see what happens if I ignore all that stuff Gai said about over-training and just up my weights every couple of hours. Oh, and guys? Remember, any time you find out something important or master something new, make a clone and pop it so the rest of us can all find out too."

Yeah, I was wiped out by the end of the day. But it worked like a charm.

Sasuke had a whole set of cool scrolls just tying around, including a half-dozen fire techniques. I blew up about fifty clones before I figured out how to breath fire without burning myself, and it took forever to make all the seals, but it was really just a matter of practice.

By the end of the weekend I had the basic Fire Breath jutsu working pretty well, even if the flame I got was a lot smaller than Sasuke's. I'd also figured out how to clone shuriken, and my clones were lasting a lot longer with a lot less chakra. Sakura was still mad about not making it to the tournament, but Iruka was a big help. Oh, and the thing with the weights actually worked! Every time I upped my weights my body adjusted in a few hours, so I went from 10 lb weights to 50 lb in a couple of days.

Of course I still couldn't cut a leaf, but I was finally starting to feel the wind. I figured that was the real point anyway.

The next week I started visiting Hinata in the hospital, which got me in good with her sensei Kurenai and gave me two more people to answer questions and bounce ideas off of. I found out about Asuma being wind-natured, and started bugging him for hints about wind chakra every now and then. I tried talking to just about everyone I'd met at least a couple of times, and found out that Ino, Shikimaru, Kiba and Chouji were all willing do a little training together as long as I didn't get carried away.

But my big break was meeting Jiraiya.

I was out on the lake by the hot springs, trying out a crazy idea involving my transformation technique. I'd long since figured out how to change the age and appearance of my girl form, so why not other things? Could I be super-strong, like Sakura sometimes seemed? How about super-fast, or so sexy a guy couldn't stand to hurt me? Oh, and would stuff like that transfer to my clones?

I'd made a bunch of clones before I started, so I could have something to test myself against, and some of it seemed to be working. By late afternoon I was a seventeen year old girl with long legs, incredible muscle tone and a killer figure, and my clones were starting to get jealous. I was taking on three of them at once and holding my own when I heard clapping from the shore.

"Oh, what a beautiful sight! If only more kunoichi trained with their sisters like that!"

I frowned at the old guy across thirty feet of open water. He looked like a ninja, but that wasn't a Konoha forehead protector. Or was it? Hadn't I seen a picture like that in the library a few days ago?

"Are you…Jiraiya?" It looked like that Sannin symbol, and he sure wasn't Tsunade or Orochimaru.

"Indeed I am, little lady. Jiraiya the toad sage, at your service. But I don't remember your face from the chuunin records."

I grinned at him. "I'm Konoha's number-one most surprising ninja, Uzumaki Naruto!"

I dispelled the clones and tried to do the same with the transformation, but it didn't feel right. Looking down confirmed that I still had boobs – I'd dropped my age a couple of years, but everything else was still the same.

"And…um…sometimes I even surprise myself. Damn, so much for a good first impression. I don't suppose you know how to fix a screwed-up transformation technique?"

He laughed and strolled out onto the lake.

"Sure, kid. I should have known you were too perfect to be real. Here, a simple Kai should do the trick…"

"No, wait it isn't an illusion. Well, the clothes are but the body isn't."

His eyebrows rose. "Oh, I didn't realize henge streaking was back in fashion."

"It's not like that!" I insisted. "Do you know how expensive girl clothes are? I can't afford that, especially since I'm still trying to decide what to look like."

His eyebrows went even higher. "Maybe you'd better tell me exactly what you were doing, kid. Transformation techniques can be lethal if you screw them up, you know."

By the time I'd finished explaining I was starting to think his eyebrows were going to pop off and fly away. But he was still a sanin.

"Well, kid, if you're not burning chakra right now that means you've actually changed your natural form somehow. So you'd have to transform again to get back to normal."

"Oh. That makes sense." I concentrated, and sure enough I felt that distinctive tingle of a real transformation as I switched to my real appearance. "Whew, it worked. Thanks."

"No problem, kid." He sighed. "Although I miss the kunoichi look already."

I chuckled. "Yeah, sexy-chan's seriously hot. But it's hard to fight with boobs that big, and long hair is just impossible."

"Hmm. You know, kid, I could show you a couple of techniques to help with that…"

I was back in sexy form in a flash. "Teach me, sensei!"

Jiraiya was a pretty friendly old guy, even if it was a little creepy to catch him checking me out now and then. But he showed me a bunch of kunoichi balance exercises and the Hair Animation technique, which could actually be a decent weapon for me since I could transform my hair to any length I wanted. We went for ramen together after training that evening, and I explained a lot about my situation.

"I just wish I could have a sensei who'd actually teach me." I complained at one point. "I mean, I get that no one wants to hand out their best stuff to a genin, but I've got to have something to work with. I'm up against Neji in the tournament, and if Gaara beats Sasuke I could end up fighting him too. I'm not going to beat either of them without some good attack jutsu."

"True enough, kid. What's your sensei been teaching you, anyway?"

I snorted. "Kakashi did some teamwork exercises and showed us tree climbing. Ebisu gave me some cool advice about how to set up a training plan, but he won't actually teach me anything new. We just spend all day doing basic taijutsu drills and polishing those academy techniques."

Then I had an idea. "Hey, maybe you could show me a few things? You've got to have tons of cool techniques, right? I just need a way to actually hit Neji, and maybe something that can punch through Gaara's sand armor. That's not too much to ask, is it?"

"Well, I don't know kid. That could take a week or two, and I've got a lot of research to do…"

"Pleeeese?" I gave him my best puppy-dog look, but his eyes went straight to my cleavage.

He chuckled. "Maybe I should have you stay like that the whole time."

"Sure." I shrugged, and had to smile a little at the way his eyes followed the motion. It was really kind of funny. "I can do that. I need to get used to this body anyway, and it's a lot stronger than my real one."

"Really? That's a pretty impressive technique right there, you know. But alright kid, you've got yourself a deal."