Final Preparations Part 1

Realizing he had his work cut out for him Shiki quickly decided to attribute one soul clone to each task with the exception of the physical conditioning that he had to do himself.

Before that though, the original Shiki went to check his Tailed Beast Scroll. While an amazing tool, it had very serious limitations. No matter how much chakra was fed to it, the power and chakra reserves of the images would never exceed the originals.

If he tried to create more images to compensate, the power would be divided between them like when one created a shadow clone.

One of the reasons that tailed beasts were so powerful and feared was that they not only possessed enormous chakra reserves but that they could also very quickly recover expended chakra, even during battle. Meanwhile, the images could only spend a long time accumulating chakra once their reserves were spent.

The images had no autonomy nor intelligence, if he did not carefully control them they would just rampage. And currently Shiki wasn't capable of controlling even one of them. A way to prevent this was to channel the image's power through him but he found out he could only keep perfect control over one tail's worth of chakra and only in version one. Alternatively he could change one of his body parts into that of the Shukaku's but any more than that and he risked losing control.

The silver lining was that he didn't have to worry about spending all of the stored chakra in one go.

He had figured out a method to help him get through these restrictions but it would take at least a couple more years until it bore fruit.

The Reaper also acquired a black doberman looking baby ninja hound and begun training it. A few ideas to strengthen it beyond a mortal beast were in the works as well.

Next, Shiki went and talked to the Hokage. After telling the old man his thoughts on the matter of Naruto, his reaction was . . . less than pleasing.

"Absolutely not! Naruto is not ready for that yet!"

Hearing, plain stupidity being spat at him, Shiki thought.

'Senile old bastard! If you attitude doesn't improve, I'm going to let Pedomaru kill you so that I can work with Tsuna-nee instead!'

While insulting the Hokage in his head Shiki responded politely.

"Shut it old man! You going senile!? Thanks to your boyfriend Danzo, everybody but Naruto knows he is a jinchuriki! It's only a matter of time 'till someone tells him! Might as well be me! At least I'll approach the matter in a good way."

Maybe not politely after all. The effect was good though and Hiruzen finally relented. So the very next day, Shiki stood face to face with Naruto in their usual training ground.

"Hey Shiki! Where's the emo?" Naruto started. Shiki was actually training them together most of the time in the name of efficiency. Although they vehemently opposed at first, now they were always hatching plans and formations to beat Shiki in their spars, not that they ever came close.

"It's just you today!"

"Oh, okay datebayo!"

With the greeting being done Shiki decided to carefully brooch the subject.

"So Naruto, you know about the Nine Tails that nearly destroyed the village like ten years ago, right? It's inside you!"

". . ." Naruto was briefly stunned and then shouted. "WHAAAT!?"

"Yeah! That's why everyone gives you the stink eye you know!"

Carefully broaching the subject indeed!

After a couple of more verbal exchanges Naruto finally accepted the truth and started to feel down.

"Come on now! There are actually a lot of benefits!"

"Like what datebayo!?" Violently retorted Naruto.

"You have one of the world's most powerful beings sealed in you! You heal faster, You have colossal chakra reserves and you can even borrows his power to temporarily become super strong! Once you master that power, you can even transform into the Nine Tails!"

"That's so cool datebayo!" Naruto instantly got over his depressing feeling after being told of the very tangible benefits of his situation. He always felt fully recovered after a good night's sleep even if he was dead tired and slightly injured, now he knew he had the Nine Tails to thank for that.

"Alright so, I'm gonna try and teach you how to gain access to that power . . ." Continued Shiki, making a dramatic pause just for suspense.

"How, tebayo?" Asked Naruto while gulping.

"You need to focus and enter your mind . . ."

"Enter my mind. And then?"

"And then . . ." Shiki made a final suspenseful pause. "You ask the Nine Tails for chakra!"

"I see, I see . . . Wait! What!? I just have to find the Nine Tails in my mindscape and ask?"

"That's pretty much it. Of course he is not guaranteed to give chakra to you just 'cause you asked."

"What!? He just hangs around in my body causing trouble for me but still won't give me anything in return!?" Questioned Naruto in a loud voice, thinking only about his own problems.

"Well, it's not like he is sealed in you by choice, the Fourth Hokage did that. Just imagine if people were always trying to chain you up for their own selfish reasons and still demand you to help them as if you had an obligation to do so. How would you feel?"

Righteously advised Shiki, despite being guilty of desecrating the corpses of the innocent, refining their very souls for is own gain, enslaving the soul of the other half of the Nine Tails and using it to steal chakra from the other tailed beasts.

"I-I guess you have a point . . ." Said Naruto in a lower voice."

"So all you have to do first is establish contact and try to work out something that works for both of you. Be persistent but remember, whatever you have suffered, he suffered more and for longer since he as been around for at least centuries."

Having said this Shiki left Naruto to his own devices, one of his clones would still make time to train him and Sasuke while receiving progress reports about the Nine Tails mean while, Shiki's true self would dedicate himself to pure physical training.

As Shiki and his clones threw themselves fully into their assigned tasks, two years passed and the rookie nine were about to graduate. Shiki's gains this last two years were not small either and his investments in Naruto and Sasuke were not in vain.

Not only had Shiki succeeded in helping Sasuke awaken his second tomoe, his advice had also led Naruto to be more understanding towards the Nine Tails and now he could consistently borrow the tailed beast's chakra. Both of these thing caused both boys to develop great admiration and respect for Shiki.

The missions undertaken by a soul clone in his name were composed of boring D-ranks executed by shadow clones, Shiki would just collect a bunch of them from Hiruzen and did them all at once. There were also a couple of C-ranks he did with a squad that for the most part had no action, except for the occasional bandits.

Finally there was a B-rank but he only got to bully some genin while the jounin squad leader took care of the single chunin enemy. He managed to get some money for himself especially since he could do a lot of D-rank missions by himself keeping the entire reward minus the village's fee.

While he had an enormous amount of funds due to his merchant soul clone selling a lot of seal related goods with superior craftsmanship, he didn't want that to be traced to him so only the reaper could use those funds directly. So the missions actually got him a nifty sum for his saving as Shiki.

His missions with the Anbu as the Reaper on the other hand were far more interesting. Spying, assassinations, framing, you name it. Due to his outstanding sensory ability, he was actually a hot commodity for any Anbu squad and he was called for another mission almost as soon as he completed the previous one.

These mission obviously provided greater monetary reward but the Reaper was already good on fund. The most precious thing he had gotten out of these mission was experience. Stealth, reconnaissance, combat, the high pace of missions helped him gain valuable experience that helped close that gap that might have allowed others of similar power to have an edge over him.

These events also helped him strengthen his spiritual energy while the training of his true self increased his physical energy. Add to that the benefits of his pure uzumaki lineage that became more and more pronounced as he aged and the results were staggering.

Chakra reserves now solidly at Kage level, chakra control almost as good as Tsunade, greater physical strength than most adult shinobi even without using his Chakra enhanced strength or Chakra Burst and advanced healing powers that allowed Shiki to nearly instantly heal from small wounds in and recover in several minutes even when seriously injured.

During his physical training, Shiki also managed to adapt the Akimichi clan's Calorie Control, using it as a base to develop a jutsu to manipulate his mody at will by combining it with He the necessary body modifications for the Soft Physique technique, which was actually not an Orochimaru original and other shinobi had made use of it before much to Shiki's surprise since all those who used this jutsu in the series were associated with him in some way.

By applying some of Orochimaru's research, he developed the jutsu allowing him to use chakra to manipulate his physique bulking up and increasing size for power or compacting the muscles and increasing flexibility for speed and agility. To do this he utilized the stored energy gained from eating and chakra.

This energy was no longer stored in the form of regular calories which led to an increase in body weight. Shiki did this not only to keep his fit appearance though, there is a limit to how much bodyweight one can put on, limiting the jutsu on how much energy there is to burn this was the flaw Shiki set out to fix, the lack of fat was merely an added bonus.

On his ninjutsu related tasks, the progress was not so great however. He learned the rasengan just fine but hit snags everywhere else and while he managed to solve some of them, others he could not.

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Hey everyone, Lusoba here!

I was thinking of making a p.a.t.r.e.o.n once I stock up a bit more on chapters. I'm trying to make a living out of writing after all.

Sooooo . . . Any thoughts?