naruto studied become a seal master

chapter 3-the first steps

2 years later

The blonde ten-year-old sat in the middle of the clearing, moving with as much precision he could muster. Slowly and painfully, he weaved and flicked his brush across the parchment, leaving smooth, clean strokes in its wake. He brought his arm down for the final stroke and slowly began to draw the final kanji, all the while pumping as steady a stream of chakra as he could manage.

Finally, he finished and gazed upon his work, letting out a sigh of relief. A smile erupted on his face. He opened his mouth to shout, "Yatta!" only for the seal to explode in his face, sending him skidding back several yards.

"...oww, " was all the boy could groan, as he tried to sit up.

The entire front of his body stung and his goggles were clouded with soot. He tried to clean them with the back of his hands, as he mentally reprimanded himself.

He had left the tip of his brush on the page. When he had grown excited, a surge of chakra had ran through his body and, by extension, through the brush and into the seal, setting it off.

He muttered a curse as he dragged his aching body out of the clearing towards the cool shade of the tree line. He leaned back against the tree and winced as he inspected the damage. His hands were bright red, and several blisters were already forming.

Could have been worse.

He cringed as he remembered the first time he had attempted to make an exploding tag. Of course, he had set it way higher than he should have for a first attempt. The front of his shirt had been burned away, and the flesh on his hands and chest had been completely seared off.

That had been a very unpleasant day at the hospital due to his aching body and the scolding he received from the Hokage. Kitsune had dropped by and gave him his signature silent scolding, which was even worse. His aura and stare had made him feel even guiltier than when Iruka had come by.Seeing now as a good a time as any, he decided to call a break, at least until his hands stopped feeling like he had grasped a piece of hot metal.He closed his eyes and relished the feeling of the wind racing across his face. He sure was growing more and more busy lately. He barely had any time to appreciate the tiny moments like this. There was just so much he had to do. He had to keep up his pace with his fuinjutsu studies. By now, he was about half way through the medium class books. He also had to keep on top of the lessons that Kitsune and Nee-chan had taught him. Then, he had his own secret projects, which took up most of his time and were extremely difficult.

He had one project set aside to help Nee-chan with her own special problem, and another working out the secret of his mystery kunai that he had found in the woods.

He absentmindedly took said kunai out of his pocket and gazed at the handle for what seemed like the millionth time. He had made a lot of progress deciphering it. Well, a lot of progress for a beginner anyways. He had known the thing was complicated when he had first found it, but now that he was halfway through the middle class, he was starting to truly grasp the complexity of the seal formula.

When he had first started, it was all just a complicated mess that made his head spin. So, he did what Kitsune had taught him to do when faced with a problem: break it down and solve it by parts.

After using a copy seal and expanding the formula onto a larger sheet, he was dumbfounded by the complexity of it. He had barely made his way through one fourth of the seal and it still barely made any sense. All he had been able to decipher so far was that it had something to do with an equal exchange of matter and energy.

He would have mistaken it for a storage seal if it weren't for the lack of the clear indicators found in all storage seals no matter what their size. That plus how dense and complicated the formula was lead him to believe that it had to be something more.