Two months later, the Hokage office
Hiruzen was buried in the documents waiting to be signed.
"Tak, Tak"
"Hokage-sama, Takashi-sensei is here for the briefing. Should I let him in?" his secretary inquired.
"Ah, he has arrived. Please, let him in," Hiruzen replied, standing near the window with his smoking pipe in hand.
Takashi entered the office, observing the Hokage amidst the scattered documents. He placed the briefings on the table and said, "Lord Hokage, these are the results for the second year and the specialization classes."
Hiruzen nodded and inquired, "How is your class performing, Takashi?"
Takashi replied, "The class is progressing well, as evidenced by the previous year's results. The students' competitive spirit has grown stronger compared to the last year. The current top three are Senju Akira in first place, followed by Uchiha Teru in second, and a surprising boy, Yuto Kazuya, securing the third spot. Yuto is not from any prominent clan, and he lost his parents during the Kyubi's rampage. Despite this, he's made significant progress since last year. Although these three possess remarkable talent, they still fall short when compared to Itachi Uchiha. Overall, this batch is an improvement over the last."
Hiruzen nodded thoughtfully and remarked, "Itachi's caliber is a rare exception. How are the students faring in their specialization classes?"
Takashi responded, "The specialization classes are also flourishing. Akira has chosen ninjutsu and taijutsu, Teru focuses on ninjutsu and genjutsu, and Yuto has decided on kenjutsu and sensory techniques. The majority of other students are inclined towards ninjutsu, genjutsu, and taijutsu, with only a few opting for different fields."
Hiruzen reflected, "Yuto stands out from the rest."
Takashi nodded and added, "Indeed, he's unique. I investigated further and discovered from Makoto-sensei that Yuto chose his specialization due to his late father's expertise in kenjutsu and sensory techniques."
Hiruzen acknowledged, "Ah, that explains his choices. You've done an excellent job. May the 'Will of Fire' guide them on their paths."
After Takashi left, Hiruzen mused, 'It appears we're nurturing another promising group of shinobi. I should keep an eye on Yuto; he might have potential for the ANBU given our current shortage of clan-affiliated shinobi.'
With a sigh, Hiruzen shifted his attention back to the daunting stack of documents. 'These accursed documents seem never-ending. If only I could just incinerate them. I need to find a suitable successor soon. If only Minato was still here I wonder how Naruto is progressing?'
Yuto house:
"Finally, now that my chakra capacity has improved, I can attempt the Shadow Clone Jutsu," Yuto muttered while searching for the scroll that contained the jutsu.
After a few minutes, he found the scroll and began reading its contents. "This jutsu enables the user to create one or more identical copies of themselves. The user's chakra is divided evenly among themselves and their clones. Creating one clone divides the user's chakra in half, two clones would each get a third of the user's chakra, and so forth. Depending on the user's chakra and the number of clones created, rapid depletion of chakra can be perilous…"
Having read the instructions, Yuto contemplated, 'Undoubtedly, this is one of the most intricate jutsu I've encountered. Molding chakra for this technique is intricate. I can't help but wonder how that young brat managed to learn it in less than a day.'
He could create them with equal chakra to hide or give them more or less chakra depending on the need. Another difference is that dispelling the clone won't return all its chakra to the original body. Instead, there is some chakra loss that happens during this process.
As the jutsu is mastered, this loss reduces, however, it won't ever go down to zero. So in the future, I need to be careful about the amount of clones I make. Otherwise, I could run out of chakra very quickly.'
On finishing his analysis, he began learning the Shadow Clone technique. Knowing the basic clone jutsu helped a bit. The training continued for a while. Yuto noted that this training drained his chakra very fast. He could only practice for an hour before he was out of chakra.
Yuto noted that while molding the chakra is more difficult, its execution was much easier than the body flicker jutsu. After another 6 days, he was finally able to create an acceptable clone. It was entirely identical and took half of his chakra.
However, on sensing, Yuto noted that some chakra was lost while creating the clone, resulting in the clone having slightly less chakra. This wasn't acceptable. However, he decided to test the clone first. He asked the clone to go into the bedroom and write any random number somewhere and then dispel it.
The clone went into the bedroom and wrote 1176 on a scroll there. On dispelling, Yuto got all the information and checked if it was true. He thought, 'alright it works.'
He made another shadow clone. This time, he stabbed the clone's arm with a Kunai, causing the clone to dispel. He waited for a few seconds and then concluded, 'Alright, I just got the memories of the clone. The pain wasn't transferred to me. So this jutsu should be safe to use in battle.'
He then formed the clone again and this time had the clone do the 3 basic jutsus. The clone could perform them as well as he could. He couldn't test body flicker at his home, so he decided to leave it for later. He then had the clone perform a shadow clone. The clone managed to do it, but within a second, they were both dispelled. Yuto sensed that their chakra was very unstable.
On thinking, he concluded, 'The clones were dispelled as they didn't have enough chakra. Even though a ninja could make a shadow clone with a small percentage of his chakra, the shadow clone still needs to have some minimum chakra level. And my single clone probably barely exceeds that limit. Wait, does that mean, after using a few jutsus, my clone will disappear even if it has some chakra just because the chakra isn't enough?'
After spending half a minute grumbling about his low chakra reserves, he decided, 'Well whatever. This was expected. Hopefully someday in the future, I'll be able to use clones to train! Let's just learn this jutsu properly and be done!'
In the next 5 days, he had learned the shadow clone, to an acceptable level. Now no loss of chakra happened while forming the clone. As for the chakra loss, while getting the chakra back from the clone, it was around 5%. Yuto noticed that it was reducing quickly.
With the work on shadow clone jutsu done, he decided that it was time to finally start practicing elemental jutsus.