Disclaimer: I don't even own my underwear, let alone Naruto.

The following weeks continued in similar fashion to that first day: Naruto and Ami would meet Genma at dawn, they would be tortured till dark, and then they would drag themselves to whatever restaurant they came upon first, eat, and go home. Training wasn't just physical conditioning - they had to successfully attack, defend, trap, and capture Genma. He never employed the same tactic, and Naruto was sure that other jounin joined in, henged to look like their sensei. It was the only way to describe the utter chaos of everything. He was training them to think, act, move, and feellike ninja, and the process was beyond tiring - easily the hardest thing Naruto had ever done.

He couldn't fault Genma, though. In two weeks he'd gotten much faster; fast enough now to actually connect with a kick or a punch now and again. Ami's accuracy had grown immensely, and though neither of them learned any new jutsu, they worked on recognizing enemy seals and increasing their own sealing speed. It was all grueling work, but Naruto wouldn't have it any other way; he enjoyed the challenge.

This day found Naruto as excited as he had ever been. Today, Genma was going to discover their chakra nature. Naruto was more than ready to learn ninjutsu, especially after two weeks of chakra control and physical and mental torture.

Naruto met Ami on her way to the training grounds. She had small bags under her eyes, and hadn't bothered to comb her hair, just pulling it up into a ponytail.

He didn't say anything as he came upon her, just falling instep next to her, marveling at how beat-up she looked compared to him.

The silence lasted till they reached the training grounds - Genma was there waiting for them, as he was every morning, with two small slips of paper in his hand. He handed one to Naruto, then to Ami.

"Those will determine your chakra nature. I want you to channel some chakra into it. If it crumples, you've got lightning. If it burns, fire. If it splits in two, wind. If it gets wet, water, and if it falls apart, Earth."

The two genin nodded, both channeling chakra into the paper. Naruto's split in two cleanly down the middle; Ami's burnt to a crisp. Genma smiled.

"Well, well well. A wind-type and a fire-type. You two were just made for each other, weren't you." The jounin joked.

Naruto didn't know how to answer, so he kept his silence. Ami, on the other hand, as the most bloodthirsty of the two, whipped a kunai at their jounin-sensei. In a testament to her increased throwing speed, Genma had to dodge the kunai instead of just deflecting it with one of his own.

"Tsk, tsk, tsk. Trying to kill your sensei! For that, you'll start with my favorite exercise; Dodge or Die!"

Ami groaned loudly, and Naruto had to stop her from throwing another kunai at Genma, lest he be given the same training. Dodge or Die was not a fun game, as the name implied.

"Go on, hop to it. Sprint to the lake." Genma never had to raise his voice or state a request more than once; his training of the genin reflected on the training he received from the ANBU. It gave off the impression of a light, jovial atmosphere, but the truth was that if they didn't do what he said, they'd be hard-pressed to walk, let alone continue their ninja career.

Ami sprinted off, grumbling the whole while. She might couldn't disobey, but she could complain all she wanted.

Genma looked towards Naruto, who was staring into space. He was no doubt imagining all he could do with a wind affinity. When he noticed Genma was staring at him, he snapped out of his daze.

"So what jutsu are you going to teach me?"

Genma pretended to be confused. "Who said anything about jutsu?"

"You said today we would find out our chakra nature; for what other reason would that be unless we were going to learn jutsu?" Naruto questioned.

Genma waved him off. "There'll be time for that later. You have more important things to worry about right now."

Noticeably cautious, Naruto prepared to be attacked. "And what's that?"

Genma grinned, and Naruto knew that today he would up the intensity once again.

"Me." And with that the jounin shot at Naruto, whipping his left foot towards the genins' face. Naruto ducked under the blow, hand flashing forward to catch Genma in the balls. The jounin twisted out of the way, kicking at Naruto's exposed back. Naruto blinked away, dropping a smoke bomb at his feet. A foot came flying out of the smoke, but Genma was ready, grabbing the foot and flinging Naruto into a nearby tree.

Naruto flipped so that he landed feet first, sticking to the tree with chakra. He took off into the branches, disappearing in the foliage.

"You won't be able to hide forever!" Genma called, joining his charge in the trees.

(((((())))))

Dodge or Diewas a very simple exercise. You could either dodge, or you could die. The exercise centered around dodging a number of kunai, shuriken, and senbon. You could deflect them, but that wasted time, and in that time more of the aforementioned objects could be flying at you with enough speed to maim, if not outright kill. Thus creating Dodge or Die, because if you deflected a projectile you would definitely die.

Ami hated and loved the game. She loved that she was learning to be not only quick, but efficient with her movements, because sometimes the weapons were thrown so close that if she were half an inch off, she would die. She loved that because of the training she could match up with Naruto much better- as opposed to as she was at the Academy, getting pummeled by even Kiba.

However, she hated the constant fear. If she didn't judge the trajectory right, didn't dodge at the right time, she could very well die. She didn't think her sensei would really kill her; but she also thought, at one point in time, that Sasuke was a girl. She'd been wrong before, and she could be wrong now.

She had to forget all of that though, and that was point of Dodge or Die, really. Forgetting all outside distractions except the one that could kill you. Those were important, the life or death matters. Everything else could wait.

Her musings were cut short as Genma's clones started the exercise. There was no announced "start"; the kunai just started flying.

Ami ducked under one- twisted around on her hands and kicked her legs up to dodge three more, simultaneously tilting her head back to dodge another. She pulled her hands from the ground and fell to her back, avoiding a line of shuriken. She rolled and jumped, tucking her legs and arms tight, just barely saving herself from no less than six kunai.

With a one handed cartwheel, she avoided three more kunai. She followed with a split, then twirled out of it in a maneuver even a gymnast would be jealous of. She danced on her hands, dodging kunai after shuriken, then found her feet again, jumping and spinning and falling out of the way of the hazardous projectiles.

Some would argue that her movements were superfluous, but the truth was that she was dodging as if her opponent would do more than just stand and throw kunai, just as Genma had intended for her to do. A duck and a spin would put her in a better position to kill a closing opponent than just a duck.

"You're getting better." One of the clones called out. "That danger-sense of yours is progressing along nicely." Another added. The clones stopped throwing kunai, and Ami stopped dancing.

"That was a good warm-up." The girl announced, her previous bags gone. "On to the water?" she asked.

"Yep. On to the water."

This was the second level of Dodge or Die, and considerably more difficult. Dodge or Die on Water.

(((((())))))

It was the Hokage who'd devised Naruto's training schedule. Sarutobi had noticed several things about Naruto in his observations and set about testing them. With the results of his tests he put together a training regime that would increase Naruto's abilities in a much quicker fashion than basic training.

Basic training was very generalized; there was body-work, things such as pushups and running, and then there was the sparring aspect. The Hokage surmised that Naruto didn't need to run laps or do push-ups; he'd noticed that Naruto improved quicker and with greater increments when possible death was involved. Thus, he told Genma to just fight Naruto, slowly but steadily increasing the speed and power of his movements and attacks until Naruto could match him. Genma had been skeptical in the beginning, but over the past few weeks Naruto had grown enough to solidify the Hokage's claims.

"He'll be the best damned ninja Konohagakure has ever seen, mark my words."

Still, the boy had a lot to learn, at least that's what Genma thought, as he ducked under Naruto's fist. He made to knee the boy in the stomach, but Naruto braced a hand against Genma's knee and flipped himself into the air, lashing out at the jounin's face.

Genma took the blow, shaking off the pain and grabbing Naruto's wrist. He twisted it, viciously, latching onto Naruto's vest with his other hand and swinging the boy face first into the tree's trunk.

Just as he expected, the body in his hands burst into smoke. Anticipating an attack through the obstruction, Genma dropped down to the forest floor.

He landed with nigh a sound, and thus was more than a little surprised when he was swarmed by dozens of Naruto's just as the sole's of his feet touched the ground. Genma whipped out a kunai, holding it tightly in his fist as he danced around the clones, stabbing and slashing when and where he could. To his dismay, for every clone he destroyed, three more took its place, until the original number of clones had tripled.

He pulled out a handful of shuriken and let them fly, striking down the clones surrounding him. Before the shuriken had even fully left his grasp, he was flying into hand seals, a jutsu on his lips.

"Doton: Retsudo Tenshou!" He called, slamming his hands into the ground.

The earth cracked as if it were glass, and the stone beneath the grass rose out of the ground in twisting tree-sized cones of crushing rock. The mass of rocks fell over the clones, flattening the lot of them in one fell swoop.

Genma let out a breath of relief, glad that he'd taken the time to learn that technique. It was a simple manuever, but it required precise control, and-

WHAM!

His head rocked to the left and his body followed. The jounin crashed into the rock he'd called from the ground, head spinning and temper flaring. He'd taken a brief moment of respite and was rewarded with an utterly crushing blow to his temple.

He didn't have time to cradle his head either; one moment he'd been climbing up from the ground and the next he was dodging a flying kick from Naruto, right into the path of two more Naruto's. The clones latched onto Genma's torso and legs, slowing him down long enough for the real Naruto to slip up behind him and send an instant-kill kunai strike to the base of his head. The kunai sunk into Genma's flesh hilt-deep; blood squirted onto Naruto's face, and the clone died.

"Shit!" Naruto screamed, trying to scramble away. He wasn't fast enough.

"Katon: Goukakyuu no Jutsu!" A great stream of fire emerged out of nothing from directly in front of Naruto.

He couldn't panic, didn't have time to think; one moment he staring at certain death, and the next he was behind the attack, rushing at Genma with speed akin to a bullet. He felt like he was running through a vacuum, his steps covering more ground than possible. He noticed Genma's eyes widening with comical sluggishness, saw the trail of fire left by the fire jutsu, saw as tried to flee; he saw all of this all in the second it took for his knee to flatten Genma's stomach into paper.

Everything slowed then, when his knee made contact. The vacuum feeling was gone, and in its placed he felt an inhuman amount of weight pressing down on his body from all sides, as if he were being pressed through a tube not big enough for and insect, let alone a human. Blood rushed from his nose and his eyes and his ears, and he collapsed to the ground, dead to the world.

Genma, hacking and coughing, climbed to his feet, holding a hand to his bruised stomach. He'd never seen anyone move that fast ever, not even when he'd tested his mettle against Kakashi… of course, Kakashi had been holding back - they had to, at that level, but still. For a genin to accomplish such speed… the Hokage would have to be notified. Hell, he'd probably even planned on it.

"…Naruto? Hey Naruto, you alright?"

Genma stepped towards Naruto's prone form only to shriek in fright as red chakra erupted from the boy's pores, coating his body in an unearthly sheen. Genma could tell it was the fox's chakra, if not from the color then from the feel. He pulled out a kunai, wary of the chakra but it promptly disappeared, and Naruto pulled himself off the ground with no more than a slight headache and severe fatigue. Genma visibly relaxed. I'm glad he didn't hear that scream.

"… what the fuck just happened?" Naruto asked. "One minute I was about to die and then… it was almost like I teleported, and then I kneed you in the stomach… how'd you recover so fast?."

"I'm a jounin … and I don't know what happened to you, or how it happened." Genma answered honestly. Not teleportation. Extremely high-speed movement."Hopefully the Hokage was watching this session."

"… He can watch us? How?"

"By using his crystal ball. It has special properties that allow it to act as a camera."

"Why would he be watching me? I know we're close and I'm his mega-important ninja, but… doesn't he have better things to do?"

"Yes, he does." But you are his unpredictable experiment. Unpredictable and integral to the future of this village.

"Yes he does? Is that all? No other expl-"

Genma punched Naruto in the head with all the strength he could muster, sending the boy into blissful silence.

"I need a vacation." Genma muttered. "A long vacation to the Southern Islands… where the women don't complain… and there are no twelve-year old super genin!" Genma finished with a yell. If they had told him he'd have to deal with ninja like Uzumaki Naruto, who could move like lightning and punch like thunder, he'd have calmly told them to fuck off. "Oh Genma, we'll train you up to Jounin, all you have to do is agree to be the sensei of Uzumaki Naruto. Please, train him?" He said mockingly.

I should've agreed to nothing less than a sloppy blowjob, from both of them… at the very least.

(((((())))))

Since Kage Bunshin were independent from their original, the clones of Genma continued to train Ami even as the real Genma lead Naruto (now awoken from his impromptu nap) to the Hokage's offices.

The clones, four in number, circled Ami, throwing kunai and shuriken at random intervals. Now that they were on water, the difficulty of the training was able to shine through. Ami liked to use all of her body - hands, hips, back, thighs - and at her current level both dodging deadly projectiles and water-walking was a very, very tall order. Completely doable, but difficult nonetheless.

She didn't complain though, and so far hadn't been hit, still dancing through wave after wave of kunai and shuriken. Twirling and spinning across the water-top, Ami avoided all of Genma's weapons while maintaining a calm, serene façade. Her eyes were almost closed as she danced, as if she were in a trance. This would be dangerous if she were in battle, but as it were, she managed just fine, relying on the intagible sense that screamed "danger!" to keep her from harms way.

This continued for upwards of half and hour before Genma's clones had to dispel themselves, having run out of chakra. Usually Genma and Naruto would come crashing into the lake and then Ami would join the fight, but as she waited, neither nin showed up.

Huffing in annoyance, Ami took off towards the clearing. Maybe Genma was stopping to explain something to Naruto? The blonde had been reading a lot lately, but he had yet to say anything to her, and she didn't feel like prying. Yet.

She arrived at the clearing to find it abandoned, save for the horse-sized gecko that appeared to be waiting for her.

It turned to her as she entered the clearing, blinking it's great big eyes twice. "Ah, Ami, you are here."

This was one of Genma's summons. It was a spider gecko, with inflated bulbous eyes, green camo skin, and an utterly insufferable disposition. She didn't know how many different gecko's Genma could summon, but this one seemed to be the scholar of the bunch… or rather, he sounded like the scholar of the bunch. She really didn't know, having only met two of them.

"Ikaseki… what's going on? What happened to Naruto?"

"How did you reach that conclusion, eh? Maybe something happened to Genma-sama?"

Ami frowned at the lizard, crossing her arms over her chest. "Just tell me what's going on." She demanded, trying not to throw a kunai at the overgrown reptile. "Fucking piece of shit!" she added under her breath.

Ikaseki just chuckled. "Genma-sama has taken young Naruto to meet with the Hokage, as some… complications have arisen that need to be addressed."

"Complications?" Ami questioned.

"Oh, don't fret. Nothing untoward has happened to the young man. Despite his rather sour expression, Genma was quite excited by whatever it was."

"Oh… so what, am I supposed to go to the Hokage's offices?"

"No my dear! We shall complete today's training! Genma shan't be teaching you any ninjutsu yet, but I don't know any you could use anyway, and you've done your stamina training today, have you not?"

"Yes." she answered, sighing. Fucking period always makes me grumpy.

"Well… Genma has complimented you on your intelligence, your ambition, your aim, and your… viciousness… have you learned anything about the human anatomy?"

Ami's eyes brightened. "Not beyond what they teach at the academy."

"And that is?"

"… Nothing. It's assumed that we know a kunai to the heart or head will result in death."

"I figured as much." Ikaseki mumbled. "Well come, have a seat." He said, patting the ground in front of him with a claw big enough to crush her ribs. Ami hurried over, always willing to learn.

Especially if it would make her a better ninja.

(((((())))))

Genma and Naruto didn't find the Hokage at his offices; they instead found him at the Ninja Academy; he'd needed to speak with Iruka about the graduating class. They came in as he was leaving, Genma with his bruised face and Naruto with dried blood on his face and neck.

"Hokage-sama." Genma greeted, bowing at the neck. Naruto followed suit.

"Ah, Genma, Naruto, I was expecting you."

"So you were watching?" Genma asked quietly.

"Yes. I will be brief, as I have a meeting within a few minutes. In times of intense stress, Naruto's bodily functions speed to astronomical figures, increasing his reaction time, his regeneration, his speed, and his strength. I would label it a kekkai genkai, if I had time to actual study him, but I don't , and I won't for several weeks." He paused for a moment, but before Genma could get a comment in, he continued. "Visit me again about it after your first C-Rank mission… the month is almost over, isn't it?"

"Hai. I'll have them ready in a week and a half."

"Will they truly be chuunin level?" The Hokage questioned, glancing at Naruto. The boy looked half-dazed, content to listen, for once.

Genma glanced back at Naruto; in their spar today, he hadn't been going even fifty percent, but fifty percent was more than enough for the average chuunin. Naruto had essentially been winning the fight, withoutthe use of jutsu. It was a testament to the child's speed and power. And his inhuman resilience.

"Yeah," Genma acknowledged, turning back to face the Sandaime. "They'll definitely be ready."

"Good, good." The Hokage mumbled, nodding to himself.

Genma and Naruto excused themselves. Naruto was uncharacteristically silent; Genma attributed it to lag from the previous strenuous activities.

As they walked back to the training grounds, Genma couldn't help but notice the increased action in ANBU. They were difficult to spot, but ANBU and Root nin were littered across the city, and some were converging on the War Office. He'd known things with Kumo and Iwa had been deteriorating, but both those villages were still recovering from previous wars and skirmishes. He didn't think things would heat up so soon...

He glanced over at Naruto, who was walking with his eyes half closed as if the sun were too bright.

He would have you become Bishamon, our very own God of War of Justice… it is my job to ensure you live up to the task.

I shall not fail.

This chapter is short, I know, but the next one will be out soon to make up for it. It's already halfway done. It'll be the first C-Rank with Team Genma, and maybe something with the ANBU and regards to the Chuunin Exam.

As always:

Read. Enjoy. Review.