You know the rules and so do I

"I thought your control was meant to be terrible. This is well beyond what a genin should be able to do."

Naruto shrugged. "I realised my bad control could get my friends killed so I worked out a way to speed up training. I've been doing control exercises ever since."

Jiraiya eyed him warily. "Careful you don't hurt yourself with that. I've seen a lot of students with a lot of potential lose the chance to get any better by destroying their bodies or chakra coils."

"Nah, I'll be fine." Naruto waved his hand dismissively. "It's just using a bunch of shadow clones. Since memories carry over, I can brute **** technique really quickly."

"Just how many shadow clones can you make?"

Naruto scratched his head, thinking. "I don't know, a couple hundred? Definitely over a thousand if I use Kurama's chakra."

Jiraiya raised an eyebrow. "You can use the fox's chakra? And make hundreds of clones without it?"

"Uh, yeah?"

"And you said you had two girlfriends? Who know about each other?"

"I mean, we all sleep together, I don't know why they wouldn't know about each other."

A drop of blood trickled out of Jiraiya's nose. Grabbing a suspiciously handy tissue to staunch the bleeding, he unfurled the summoning scroll. "Cut your finger for me real quick. I don't think I can imagine a better successor."

Naruto grabbed a kunai to do so, but was stopped when Jiraiya grabbed his hand, staring oddly at the scroll. "Huh." he said. "That's odd."

---

"No."

"What?"

"I said no, miss Haruno. Youthful though you may be, I shall not teach you the technique of the heavenly gates." Gai did not smile. He did not twinkle. It was the most serious Sakura had ever seen him.

"But why?"

"Your body is not ready. Your mind is not ready. And your need is not great enough. Lee trained for years before opening even the first gate. Though you and him are similar in mind, you are not the same." Gai sat, heaving out a sigh. "Need is perhaps your greatest difference. Without taijutsu, Lee would be nowhere. You, however, have your chakra blades. Or the genjutsu that would doubtless come easily to you, considering your level of control. I do not see a reason, miss Haruno, to impart such an endangering and sentimental technique to you."

Sakura stared at him. She couldn't think of a line of reasoning that could convince him, short of letting him in on the secret. Sakura opened her mouth, then stopped. She wasn't the only one in this loop. Telling Gai could interfere with Naruto and Hinata's training. She liked to think that she would've always thought of that, but she had the terrible feeling that she may not have cared before Naruto brought her into the loop. "Are you at least willing to train my general taijutsu?"

Gai leapt to his feet, all energy again. "Of course! I would never dare to quench such fierce fires of youth! We'll begin with your basic forms."

---

Hinata had always felt a certain solace in the Hyuga library. Trainers and audiences always had expectations, the pressure to perform perfectly becoming an all-pervasive part of regular training. It was suffocating, the knowledge that any noticeable fault in her technique would find its way back to her father. Her team was one of the few sanctuaries she had. Kurenai was fiercely protective of her students, and had slapped the Hyuga emissary in a many layered genjutsu before they'd even blinked their all-seeing eye. Hiashi had actually gained a grudging respect for the jounin after that incident, saying that "anyone capable enough to trap a Hyuga in an illusion is a better ally than enemy."

Hinata's teammates were similarly supportive, but it was the library that had been the first place she could escape to. By studying the techniques there, she could always mentally prepare herself for the lessons that were to come. Now though, she was free. Well, not fully, eye contact with her father still filled her with a burning sense of shame, but now she knew that even in the worst of worst case scenarios, she would only have to deal with any consequences for a month or less.

Her hand alighted on a scroll. There was a powerful nostalgia to opening it, a list of the exercises every child had to run through to learn to effectively use their Byakugan. As the heiress, Hinata was expected to have a mastery in her eyes when she was born, so she had been rushed through these exercises. Naruto had used the loop to learn control from scratch, Sakura was learning taijutsu from scratch, and had begun to outstrip even those who'd had far more time than them to learn. Hinata had realised that the path to being truly exceptional was not the genius in understanding the most difficult aspects of a skill, but in mastering even the most dull of the basics so that those skills became easy to learn.

Niche techniques could wait, first Hinata would fix the foundations of her skill. And to begin, she would practice turning the eye on and off.

This was going to be very boring.

---

"We need to tell people about the loop." Naruto and Sakura spoke at the same time.

"What, why?" They continued in sync.

"Um, guys?" Hinata interrupted them. "Could you try speaking one at a time? I feel it's about to get very confusing if you don't."

The two grinned sheepishly. "You go first, 'Kura." Naruto said.

"Thanks, Naruto." Sakura sat on the bed. "Gai told me I don't have a great enough need to learn the technique." She slumped back, letting out a deep sigh. "For the life of me, I cannot work out how to convince him. So it's either shattering my chakra coils and hoping they repair themselves in between loops, telling him about the loop, or giving up."

Hinata squeaked. "What? Why would you do that?"

Sakura rolled her head round to glare at her white-eyed paramour. "I would never do that, Hinata. Giving up isn't my thing."

The Hyuga girl's eyes went wide. "No! The chakra coil thing!"

Sakura waved dismissively. "Well, it won't come to that if we tell Gai, right?"

"Sakura, I need you to tell me you won't do this."

The pink-haired ninja stuck her tongue out, relaxing back into a shit-eating grin. "No promises. What was your reason, Naruto?"

Hinata seemed stuck with a pleading expression on her face. Naruto chuckled. "Pervy sage wants to know why I'm still signed to the toad contract. I'm not sure how long I can keep distracting him."

"Isn't he one of the greatest ninja of all time? How are you hiding it from him?"

"Sexy technique"

Sakura groaned. "Yeah, that checks." She turned to face Hinata. "Any complaints?"

"MANY!"

"About telling people."

"No..."

---

"So, by mixing the demon fox's chakra with a technique to dilate time, Naruto was launched into a temporal loop. He managed to pull in Hinata and myself. Our bodies reset at the start of every loop, and the heavenly gates technique is the best way I can think of to overcome that barrier." Sakura really wished she had a chalkboard to explain this. There was all sorts of theory she hadn't been able to get into.

Gai was still for a time. "I'm going to be honest, miss Haruno, I do not believe you."

"But-"

Gai interrupted her by raising his hand. "Exhaustively comprehensive theory lesson aside, you have spun a story that is utterly unbelievable. If this is true, however, then I appear to have misjudged you." He stood, sadly shaking his head. "I shall not be continuing your training until after this month has expired. If you have lied, we shall deal with it then. If you have not, then perhaps during the next loop you should consider whether leaving one of my precious students hospitalised by a psychopathic insomniac may sour my opinion of you."

Sakura's stomach dropped. Lee. Every loop, he got pulverised by Gaara. And saving him was much harder than Hinata, because it involved keeping Gaara from reaching the exam centre. Sakura had seen Gaara go all out, or whatever you called it when he went to sleep. It was terrifying.

She'd call it a herculean task, but she was fairly sure the twelve labours of Hercules would've been far easier with ninjutsu.

"Wait!" She called out. Gai turned back to face her. "You said you don't believe me, so even when I help Lee, would you really teach me how? Is there any way for me to convince you next time?"

Gai considered her for a moment. "Gather your chakra in the soles of your feet." Sakura frowned, but did as he asked. "Now jump, while overloading the effect." Sakura did so. Instead of going straight up, though, she ended up on a weird side angle, legs thrown into the splits, ending up in a heap.

"What was that?" She asked, glaring at him from between her knees.

"I call it the Blue Beast Boost. It was a technique I devised during my time in the academy, before I was taught the body flicker. It's entirely useless and I've never bothered to tell anyone the name, let alone teach them how to do it. It should be enough for me to play along, at least."

"I... see. Thank you, Gai."

"You're very welcome, miss Haruno. For what it's worth, I hope I do teach you the technique. It's never easy to see your protege in the hospital."

---

"So here's the thing, Pervy Sage, I'm in a time loop."

"Yeah, that makes sense. And stop calling me that." Jiraiya was looking through a bag for his water balloons.

Naruto blinked in shock. "Wait, really? No more explanation?"

Jiraiya looked up at him. "The toads don't know you, but your signature smells of the fox's chakra. There was an old scholar on the topic of the tailed beasts who wrote some comprehensive studies on each of them. The fox, despite being the strongest, is a trickster. Loved pranks in his younger days. Weirdly, he also seems to have some amount of power over time. Nothing crazy, but enough that if he were involved in a chaotic mess of unstructured chakra that the result could end up throwing someone back in time."

"Oh. well."

"Oh, well indeed. Anything coming up I should know about?"

"Uuuuh, the **** Sage is gonna attack the village with a **** of sound and sand ninja. He's impersonating the Kazekage, or will start at some point during the month."

Jiraiya nodded. "I'll talk to Sarutobi about it. We should be able to prepare for the attack a little more than you've seen previously. Just checking, **** Sage is Orochimaru, right?"

"Yep!"

Jiraiya snorted. "Tsunade's going to kill you within an hour of meeting you, kid. She is not fond of nicknames. Have you thought about what I told you yesterday? About how to focus with the water balloon?" Naruto nodded. "Then here, kiddo."

Naruto grabbed the water balloon Jiraiya threw at him from the air, and holding it in one hand began to slowly move the water. He'd been thinking of it like a thousand individual currents that needed to be controlled, but Jiraiya had told him not to bother with that sort of thinking until he was working on mastering the technique. Instead, it was about making sure that the **** of the chakra didn't meet the edges of the balloon. By keeping a general awareness around the edge of the sphere, it was much easier to control.

The water swirled faster and faster, a tumultuous vortex. The balloon itself began shifting, taking on a spherical shape. The surface of it barely rippled, and the balloon lifted off Naruto's palm. Naruto reached twenty seconds. Then thirty. Then a minute. Finally, when he'd kept it going for five minutes, Jiraiya slapped him on the back, breaking his concentration.

"I think we can call that a success! Now try it without the balloon."

Naruto had already dropped the balloon when Jiraiya had hit him, so merely had to hold out his hand, forming his chakra into the chaotic ball. A blue glow began to appear, growing stronger and stronger until finally a fully formed rasengan floated above Naruto's palm.

"Alright. Now, slam it into that rock." Jiraiya gestured to a large boulder the size of a small boulder on the other side of the clearing.

Naruto leapt forward, thrusting his arm forward until the orb slammed into the rock, which flew through the surrounding trees, gouging a hole into the centre of its stony surface. When the rock hit a tree the rasengan exploded, showering the surroundings with gravel and splinters.

"That was INSANE!" Naruto cheered.

"Not bad, kid. Keep working at it. Once you get to the level of mastery you were aiming at before it'll be even more destructive. The next step is to try and combine it with your nature release but, fair warning." Jiraiya formed a rasengan above his own hand. It began slowly changing colour, but soon destabilised to the point of explosion. "Not myself, the fourth Hokage, nor Kakashi Hatake have ever managed that. You, however, seem like you're going to have a while to work it out. Instead of working on that, I'll help you practice your nature releases."

"Thanks Pervy Sage!"

Jiraiya's eye twitched.

---

Exercise three was learning to only look at a single thing. For children, it helped overcome the sensory overload that came along with the Byakugan. For adults, it was a potent range extender. Hinata was splitting her awareness in multiple directions. Finding something to focus on at the edge of her awareness, she would probe out in another as far as she could, lock onto an object, then repeat the process until her awareness came crumbling down around her.

Eventually, she'd be able to take a far deeper look at anything she needed to analyse. She'd never have the copying ability of the Sharingan, but she'd actually understand why techniques worked, not just be able to mimic them. As it was, focusing on a bird taking flight, the sun reflecting off a waterfall, and the location of Hiashi Hyuga was enough for her focus to collapse entirely.

She sighed, and started to reach out her focus again.

---

"Kurama! When were you gonna tell me you were a prankster?"

"Where did you hear that and who do I have to kill to stop the knowledge spreading?"

"That's not important right now! We found something to bond over!"

"I thought I made it clear I wasn't interested in bonding with mortals."

"Wanna prank Sasuke?"

"... The Uchiha brat?"

"Yeah, him! Pervy Sage said he's learning the easy version of the technique I just finished up. Imagine the look on his face when I show it off!"

"I-I don't see why that would be funny." The Fox was refusing to make eye contact.

"Well, keep an eye out and you'll see exactly why!"

That conversation was happening as Naruto leapt through the trees in the vague direction he knew Kakashi and Sasuke were meant to be training. He wasn't sure exactly where, but he knew enough about the kind of places Kakshi liked to train in to make an educated guess.

As luck would have it, one of the first places he came across held the duo he was looking for.

"It's not enough to simply mimic the technique, Sasuke. You'll always be worse at the technique than those that learn it normally. The Sharingan is powerful, but it's only a leg up, not an instant win. Just look at my battle with Zabuza." Kakashi sounded tired, as if he'd already had this conversation today.

"I know that! But surely we'd be better off if you taught me as many techniques as you could, then let me perfect them on my own!"

"Better a single sharp knife than a thousand rusty ones. It may sound ironic coming from me, but I assure you I have plenty of sharp blades that I use far more than all my rusted ones combined. Again."

Naruto alighted on a tree in time to see lightning crackle to life around Sasuke's arm. Kakashi looked up to make eye contact, and Naruto placed his finger on his lips, winking. Kakashi cocked his head, pushed up his headband to examine Naruto with his Sharingan, then crinkled his eyes in a smile and nodded.

Sasuke charged forward, striking a rock and taking a large chip off the side. He turned back to look at Kakashi. "See? I can do it fine."

Kakashi shook his head. "If it were fine you'd be shoulder deep in that boulder, Sasuke."

Naruto took his opportunity. "Yeah!" He yelled. "Like this!" He formed a rasengan above his hand and leapt down from the tree, launching himself forward once he hit the ground. When he hit the rock, the carnage was equal to the scene with Jiraiya. He turned, triumphant.

Sasuke's mouth was agape. "What was that?"

Kakashi, somewhat shocked for once, answered. "That was the rasengan. It's the more difficult, more dangerous, and non-elemental version of the Chidori."

Naruto grinned, and Sasuke whirled round to face his teacher. "If it's more dangerous, why am I learning the Chidori instead?"

"Pure shape transformation. No hand signs, and it cannot be copied by the Sharingan. You wouldn't have learnt it in time, and I'm baffled as to how Naruto learnt of it, let alone managed to perform it." Kakashi seemed torn between confusion and pride in Naruto's progress.

"Pervy Sage was really helpful! He got me to sign the toad summoning scroll and taught me how to use the rasengan." Naruto had the most shit eating grin he could possibly manage on his face.

"You signed a summoning scroll?" Naruto was surprised Sasuke hadn't started frothing at the mouth.

Kakashi blinked. "Jiraiya's in town?" He opened up the bag at his side. "Never know when he might leave again. Naruto! I have a very important mission." He took out an orange covered book and handed it to the boy. "Get Jiraiya to autograph this, making it out to me."

Naruto brought the book up in a lazy salute. "Can do, teach."

Apparently sick of the conversation, lightning crackled to life around Sasuke once again and he screamed as he ran at a tree. "I will NOT be outdone by the dunce of all people!" He took a substantial chunk out of the trunk.

"I'm not sure why else you came here, but you've at least motivated Sasuke to try harder. Thanks, Naruto."

"No worries, teach. I'm going to head off, I mostly just wanted to see the look on his face when I pulled it off."

Kakashi smiled again. "I guess I can understand that. Gai has certainly pulled some similar stunts on me."

With that, Naruto flipped off into the trees.

"Did you see his dumb, Sharingan-having face?" The Fox guffawed. "All 'I will not be outdone!'"

"What happened to 'I don't see why that would be funny'?"

"Shut it brat, I was expecting this to be on the level of your previous pranks. Asinine, attention seeking affairs, not anything as deliciously targeted as this."

"Well, I'm glad you're having fun. If you have any prank ideas, pipe up."

"The odd thing is, you might genuinely listen to them." Kurama stared at Naruto. All the prisons he'd ever had, every one telling him to be quiet, or to lend them his power or face the consequences. And then there was this one. He sighed. "You're using my chakra wrong."

"What?"

"When you access it by yourself. You're using it like you do your own chakra. It's a transformation for you, approach it like one."

"Huh. I'll try it out. Thanks, Kurama."

"You're very welcome. Kit."

---

Gaara was terrifying. And lethal. And about a thousand other things which meant Sakura was seriously considering feeding him sleeping pills and running in the opposite direction. She'd sent a shadow clone after the container who, had she not been able to dispel herself, would've died screaming. Sakura slumped against the wall. Naruto's apartment was empty. She couldn't even talk any of this through with her partners. She sighed, got up, and walked over to the bathroom, deciding that she may as well have a shower to jog her thought process.

The hot water was delicious over her aches. A life of constant action meant that Sakura, and indeed all ninja, always had some amount of aches. It was part of the reason that bath houses were so popular among the hidden villages. She was so focused on the water running over her curves that she didn't notice the pair of hands that joined them.

Naruto heard the water running as he entered his apartment. Opening the door to the bathroom, he saw Sakura standing under the shower jet. The water streamed through her hair, trickling down her toned body and dripping onto the shower floor below.

Naruto focused on Kurama's chakra. The Fox had told him to focus on it as a transformation. Instead of focusing it on a technique or action, he simply let the chakra fill his body. A malevolent, bubbling cloak of red chakra flowed out of Naruto's pores. He stripped out of his clothes as he strode across the bathroom, coming up behind Sakura and resting his hands on her hips.

He rested his chin in the crook of her neck. "Hey there 'Kura."

She started. "Naruto! I didn't realise you were here."

"I just got in." He murmured. "Saw you in the shower and just couldn't resist."

"That's... smoother than usual." She opened her eyes and saw the red cloak, red slitted eyes, and pronounced whiskers. "You're channeling more of Kurama!"

"Mmmm." Naruto hummed in acknowledgement. "He gave me some tips earlier. Figured I should try it out." His hands tightened around her hips. "We can talk more about it later. For now..."

He spun Sakura around, bringing his mouth to hers in a passionate kiss. One hand moved to grope her ass, while one trailed up her back until it found her shoulder blade. Sakura melted into him, fox's chakra dancing arouss her skin and eliciting the occasional moan of pleasure.

They came up for air. "I don't even care about foreplay right now, Naruto. Just fuck me." She panted.

Naruto grinned, moving his hand from her ass to her thigh and lifting up a leg. The hand that was on her back came down to his cock, and after a couple of pumps he brought the head up to meet her cunt. He thrust into her, the inside of her pussy as warm and wet as the outside shower, but the tight, vice-like grip conveying so much more ecstacy.

Sakura whimpered. "Oh fuck, that's good." The fox's chakra was still in effect, a thousand tiny hands caressing her, stroking and prodding and sending a thousand shivers down her spine.

As Naruto pounded her velvety depths, he used the hand on her thigh to lift her leg up onto his shoulder. Hands now free, he began to grope Sakura's bountiful breasts. The stimulation proved too much and Sakura came, screaming, around Naruto's girth.

Naruto, however, wasn't done, and he flipped Sakura around so that her arms rested on the side of the shower, with her back facing Naruto. Using the new angle, Naruto slapped and kneaded her ass as he fucked her cunt with fast, powerful strokes.

After a few more of Sakura's screaming orgasms, Naruto felt a tightness in his balls. He leant over. "I'm about to cum, Sakura. Where does it go?"

Sakura, half delirious, glared over her shoulder. "Fuck you. You know exactly where it goes."

Naruto smirked. "I like to hear you say it. Actually, I like to hear you scream it."

Sakura, about to respond, was interrupted by a moan escaping her lips. "Fiiiine." She keened out. "It goes right in to my hungry fucking pussy like every other load I don't gobble down like the slut I am." She looked over her shoulders again, considering Naruto through her lashes. "Sir."

Naruto moaned loud and long as the floodgates opened and he painted Sakura's pussy white. Sakura screamed as he did, rivulets of euphoria lighting her nerves on fire. Finally, they came to rest, panting, and looked at one another.

"Well," Sakura said, "at least we don't have to clean up."

Naruto laughed. "True enough" he said as he let the fox transformation go.

"I was wanting to talk to you and Hinata, by the way."

"What about?" Naruto grabbed the bar of soap.

"I think we're going to need to beat Gaara."