Naruto : Monsters

If Naruto still hasn't gotten it down after all these years, then there was no way she would manage it in time for the exam. Instead, we focused on her other weak points, clones and general knowledge.

And I already knew the perfect solution to both those issues.

Shadow Clones.

...

Or at least I thought I did. Turned out I was only half right.

Getting my hands on the Shadow Clone technique was easy. Turned out that there was a copy of it in the Hyuuga Clan Library. Dear god did I love that library; it had a scroll on practically every jutsu and fighting style in existence. 

If it didn't teach you how to learn the jutsu then it taught you how to counter it, detailing all the strengths, limits and possible weaknesses it may have.

The Uchiha were not the only Clan that stole other people's techniques, they were just the only ones who were keen on advertising it. I wouldn't be surprised if every major Clan in Konoha held their own version of the library - filled with research on enemy techniques and weaknesses.

When I was younger, I only had access to a small section of the library but after I reached a certain age and skill level, I was granted access to all but the most dangerous scrolls there. And as luck should have it, the scroll that contained the Shadow Clone jutsu wasn't one of the forbidden few.

Though it wasn't as easy as I hoped it would be.

You know how Naruto happened to learn the Shadow Clone technique in just a few hours? Yeah, I'm officially calling BS on that. Jutsu were hard to learn. They weren't the kind of thing you learnt over the course of an afternoon or during your weekend off. They were stupidly complex things that could easily end up killing you if you made so much as a single mistake.

There was a reason why the Academy refused to teach us elemental jutsu until after we officially became Genin. Could you imagine how easy it would be for children to electrocute themselves if they tried using a lightning technique, or drown by flooding their own lungs with water when casting a water jutsu incorrectly?

The only Clan who regularly taught their children elemental jutsu were the Uchiha, and that's only because every one of their kids was born with an unusually strong fire affinity. Even then they made sure to train their kids near large bodies of water like lakes just in case something went wrong. 

Yet even with those precautions accidents still happened. It wasn't unusual to hear of some poor Uchiha kid burning themselves to death every decade or so.

And learning how to cast a jutsu was only the first step, you still had a lot more work to do after you learned it if you ever wanted the jutsu to become viable in battle.

After learning how to cast the jutsu you then had to practice it. Not just once or twice but literally thousands of times, over and over again till it became a reflex. 

You didn't have the time to stop and think in a fight, even a split second wasted could see you killed, so what use was a jutsu in a fight if you needed to stop and think about how to cast it? You had to act without thinking so any jutsu that you cast needed to be called upon instantly, it was only then that you could claim to have 'mastered' it.

One of the reasons why I was considered a genius by my clan was due to the sheer speed I could learn and master new jutsu. With my mastery over the Byakugan, I could see the correct way my chakra had to flow to make a jutsu work. And I also understood why it had to flow that way. 

I've spent years studying chakra theory so I could grasp all the intricacies involved with casting a jutsu. That knowledge in combination with my precise chakra control allowed me to learn new chakra techniques in a fraction of the time it took anyone else my age.

Yet even with all my advantages, I needed two whole weeks to learn the Shadow Clone Technique. Two weeks. I had done nothing but work on that technique the entire time, even going as far as to skip the academy, and it still took me a fortnight to learn. 

Then I needed to spend an additional week where I did nothing but create Shadow Clones over and over until I could finally make them without thinking, all so that I could use them in a fight if needed.

By the end of it I could make two or three clones in a blink – any more and my chakra levels would drop too low for me to be of any real use in combat.

Poor Naruto needed almost an entire month of non-stop work until she figured it out, and that was with me helping her. Still, by the end of it, we found ourselves standing in a courtyard filled to the brim with clones of the blonde…then my mum happened to walk in on us.

I swear I have never seen my mother happier than when she stepped into the courtyard and saw an entire sea of Narutos gazing back at her. Faster than I could blink, she snatched up half a dozen clones and dragged them to her room, where she started dressing them up like dolls, muttering all the while about 'all the Narutos she could ever want'.

Anyway, even though it turned out to be far harder than either of us expected it to be, we finally learned a clone technique that would allow us to pass that particular exam with flying colours.

Then we ran into our second hurdle.

My purpose for learning the Shadow Clone technique was twofold; get Naruto to pass the clone test, and use the Shadow Clones to help Naruto study. 

With their ability to transfer their memories, Shadow Clones would allow Naruto to squeeze in a month's worth of studying in a single day. It would have worked too, if not for just one tiny little problem. You know that whole memory thing that the Shadow Clones are famed for?

Yeah, that was bullshit too.

Have you ever wondered why Naruto was the only person to use Shadow Clones on a regular basis, despite its apparent usefulness? Why didn't everyone else use it to train like she did when she mastered her wind affinity? I mean sure, no one but Naruto could create a hundred clones a pop but surely a Jonin could make a couple of clones to help them train. That alone would triple their training speed.

Or why wouldn't anyone use Shadow Clones to help them at work? Can you imagine how fast you can get all your paperwork done if you had three versions of yourself to help? Dear lord, the sheer possibilities were endless, yet no one seemed to want to use the Shadow Clones at all.

Do you want to know why?

That's because Shadow Clones didn't work that way!

If I could, I would reach out through time and space and strangle Kishimoto for screwing with me. I spent a whole month looking forward to all the wonders I could do with my clones, only to find out that no, shadow clones were not the hax that I thought it to be.

The Shadow Clones worked nothing like they did in the Anime. The original purpose of the Shadow Clone was to help the user spy on enemies. A ninja would send his clone into enemy territory, where the clone would gather as much intel as possible before popping and transferring his knowledge back to the user, all without risking the life of the Ninja.

So while yes, a clone's memory does in fact transfer to the host, his skills did not. You remembered everything they saw and did, but only in the same way you remembered what a character in a movie did. It was like watching television or reading a book rather than re-experiencing the memories yourself.

The issue stemmed from the fact that the human brain was simply not designed to download and store an entirely new set of memories in an instant as if it were some kind of computer. 

Think about it, how would the brain process potentially hours of news memories in a single second when it could normally only process a single second worth of new memories per second? It couldn't, it would be overloaded and shut down just trying to process half a minute's worth.

Worse, the memories received from the Shadow Clones had the tendency to quickly fade over time, almost like the memories of a dream. Since our brains are already functioning in full capacity, the sudden influx of foreign memories was like adding water to an already full bucket. In the end, our minds could not cope with it.

Really, the entire Shadow Clone thing didn't seem to be worth it in the end when you took into account the amount of time and effort I poured into it. The only real upside was that to Naruto, with her near-endless supply of Chakra, it really was an invaluable tool.

Ah well, live and learn I guess. Still, note to self, when I finally got my hands on the Rinnegan and achieved godhood, I had to find a way back to my original dimension, locate Kishimoto, then kick him in the nuts over this. Twice.

In the end, we had no choice. We both wanted to end up in the same team together and we knew that the best way to make it happen was if Naruto got the top score among the girls so we decided to buckle down, pull up our sleeves and do it the old fashion way. Cramming

...

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