Tristan Mabey - I will be balancing Naruto's abilities in a few ways, which will be expanded on as the story goes on and Naruto starts running into some limitations. Taming Kaguya is something very far off in the future, and to be completely honest I don't plan on it happening.

Naruto stuck a piece of bread in his mouth, threw on his orange jumpsuit, and leapt out the window of his apartment. Normally he wouldn't have been this ballsy, but he was starting to feel confident about his chakra control and he was really late to practice.

Sakura was going to kill him.

Rushing to the bridge where they were supposed to meet up, Naruto saw - to his abject horror - that Kakashi was already there waiting for him.

The moment Naruto landed on the bridge, Sakura was immediately on him, slapping him in the face. "Why the hell are you so late idiot? You even managed to get here later than sensei!" She screamed, panting from her outburst.

"I'm sorry guys, I overslept…" Naruto said, looking down at his shoes.

"Well, it's the first time you've been late to a meeting." Kakashi, said, putting a hand on his shoulder and giving him an eye smile. "Just make sure it doesn't happen again, alright?"

"You got it!"

"Hey Sasuke, ever get bored after doing all these D-ranks?"

"Hey Sasuke, do you think we'll ever get a C-rank after the land of waves?"

"Hey Sasuke, do you -"

"Naruto, cut it out." Sakura said, lacking the usual enthusiasm she usually displayed. Hours of pulling weeds could do that to a person.

"I mean, what's the point of all these D-ranks? They don't even pay that well, and we have to go on these boring missions where we do nothing all day, when we could be training and getting stronger!" Naruto said, dropping his weeding tool and standing up. "We aren't even allowed to used chakra to speed up the process! What's the point?"

After a few moments every one was silent, until Kakashi cleared his throat. With all his students' eyes on him, he closed his book and looked up for a moment, before beginning to talk.

"Mah, Naruto. Last time we had some disagreements about the missions we took, I caved and got us a C-rank mission instead of explaining the reasoning behind D-ranks. I'll rectify that right now. D-ranks are designed to provide a steady stream of income to genin, to allow them to outfit themselves in equipment and funnel money from the money from wealthier people back into the local economy.

Aside from economical reasons, they also provide an environment for genin to interact with clients, a skill that is crucial later on in a ninjas career. They also help teach patience and humility to arrogant genin."

Kakashi looked around for a moment at his students in an effort to gauge their reactions. Sakura was nodding along to every word he said, completely convinced by his words. Sasuke and Naruto on the other hand, were more obviously skeptical of what he'd said. Naruto was very visibly upset with his explanation, while Sasuke had grudgingly returned to weeding, but the stiffness of his actions suggested he was unhappy.

"But, I guess the number of D-ranks has been a little excessive. Tell you what, we'll meet up again tomorrow, and I'll have some training set up for you guys. Get a good night's sleep and eat a proper breakfast. I won't even be that late this time around."

"At the end of the day, chakra control is beneficial to… pretty much everyone, with no exceptions. Aside from the obvious gains to be had from the ability to be more efficient with chakra usage, it also allows one to practice opening and constricting their chakra networks subconsciously, and thus allows some wacky stuff with justu…"

Kakashi looked off into the distance for a few moments, before opening his book again and gesturing towards the river running through their training field.

"I'm not going to delve too deep into the chakra theory today, but just know that excellent chakra control is useful for pretty much everything you can do. So, yeah. Figure it out for yourselves. Go out there, on the water, and try not to get soaked."

Naruto walked towards the river and took a moment to look at it. It was fairly wide, spanning a pretty consistent 10 meters along the section near him. The water looked fairly deep, but he didn't think he'd be completely submerged if he stuck his feet on the bottom.

Not that he was particularly worried about drowning - the water was slow moving and calm. Stepping onto the water, Naruto took a moment to balance himself before settling down. His improved chakra control was aiding him in his ability to stand on the water for sure, but he was so used to compensating for poor chakra control that he ended up wildly overcompensating for small imbalances.

Naruto had always been adaptable, but this would take a while to get used to.

Things weren't helped when Kakashi started to throw wooden kunai at them. Not only did this force the genin to move on their feet on top of water, they also had to account for the disturbances on top of the water caused by their movements and the kunai landing in the water, on top of the natural flow of the river.

"Keep on doing what you're doing kids! You're never going to be standing stationary on the water anyways! Get used to compensating for shifting water, and thinking quick on your feet!"

It was a simple exercise, but Naruto could feel the improvements he was making - the bright colours flashing across his field of view and the text reinforcing his beliefs in his progress were all small hits of adrenaline, pushing him towards doing more, taking larger risks with his steps and trying to optimize his chakra usage.

Naruto didn't last very long before he overestimated the amount of chakra he needed to send to his right foot, causing a splash in the water that ruined the balance his other foot had temporarily achieved and ultimately causing him to fall in the water.

Grinning, Naruto jumped back on top of the water, eager to go again.

Yawning, Naruto looked away from Anko fighting her ditto clone and towards the setting sun. After training for a few hours on the river, Sakura had been absolutely exhausted and had gone home early. Kakashi officially ended the day's practice, and Naruto was inclined to agree.

Even given his seemingly limitless chakra supply, Naruto still wasn't used to staying absolutely focused for hours on end, and he was experiencing serious mental fatigue. Thus, he sought out Anko and had her fight a mirror matchup against herself in the ditto. He found that Anko gained small amounts of exp spread across her stats, except for the initiative and intelligence stats, which gained noticeably more XP than the others.

Naruto was interrupted from his analysis of Anko's gains as she finally landed a killing blow on her clone using blades of pure chakra, returning it to its standard form.

"Huh? Anko? I didn't know you could make blades out of chakra?" Naruto said, throwing a water bottle to his friend. They had completely left Anko's body, and yet they maintained their shape and their speed, killing the ditto clone.

"To be honest, I didn't know I could do that either. I just felt like I needed to try something different, and chakra blades were my answer to that need." Anko said, before downing the water in large gulps. "Come to think of it Naruto, what's your chakra nature anyways?"

Lying down on the grass, Naruto closed his eyes and thought for a moment before answering. "Well, I don't think I really have a chakra nature."

"That's ridiculous Naruto, everyone has a chakra nature," Anko said, sitting beside him.

"Well, you see theres this…" Naruto paused for a moment, looking for the best way to tell Anko. "There's this guide book. It's been very accurate for me so far, and in it it said that I don't have a chakra nature." Naruto left out the part where it said that it was made such to playtest all the different chakra interactions and combinations techniques, which Naruto didn't really understand either,

"I… see" Anko said, clearly not convinced. "In any case, I saw how excited you were when you saw those blades. Wanna learn how to create them tomorrow?"

"You think you can teach me how to create them after using them only once?"

"I'm confident. I've felt like I've grown more as a kunoichi within the last few days then I have the last half year. I don't know what it is, but I go into training with a feeling that I'm on top of the world, and that everything is within my grasp. It's just a feeling, y'know?"

Naruto silently nodded his head, slowly drifting off to sleep.

Naruto woke up on his bed, as he thought back on what happened last night, he figured that Anko must've taken him home after he passed out on the training field. Getting up and throwing on his headband, Naruto smelled grilled fish. Looking over at the status bar for Anko, he saw that it said 'cooking', along with a new thing that read '4m'.

Naruto found Anko in his kitchen, rummaging through his cabinets while grilling a fish.

"Ah! Naruto, perfect timing! Where the hell do you keep the salt? I've looked up and down your kitchen, and I can't find the stuff." Anko said, checking the fish before continuing to look.

"I don't probably don't have any salt in here, Anko." Naruto said taking a look at the rice and miso soup on the table he had to the side of his kitchen. He was a little taken aback by what Anko was doing for him, and he had defaulted to just taking it slow.

A few minutes later, Anko sat across of him and placed the now plated fish in between them.

"Well, it's not the best-tasting thing in the world, especially given the lack of salt or any condiments whatsoever, but I think it works. Don't you think so?" At the lack of response, Anko looked up from the fish at Naruto, who had a small smile on his face and a tear in his eye.

"Thanks Anko." Naruto said, before beginning to eat.

"Yeah, no problem," Anko smiled to herself, digging in herself.

A/N and that's this chapter. It took a bit longer than expected, but you know what it, it is what it is. A bit of a slow chapter, but we can't have excitement 24/7. I felt like taking it a bit slower was the correct move. There are a few more things that I want to set up before we speed up, and those can all be handled within the next chapter.

Please favourite/follow if you've been liking the story so far. Any feedback for my writing is always appreciated, but above all else, thanks for reading everyone!