The machines were now stored in the second part of the room on the left side. He stored all the things he didn't really need there, but didn't want to throw away. Who knew when something could be useful, even if he didn't know if he would ever go into T&I. The night after the Uchiha massacre he had sneaked into the empty compound and had looked for any left over scrolls or weapons he could add to his possessions in the secret room. He had found quite a lot of them, even if it could be nowhere near the whole amount of jutsus that the Uchiha had possessed. He had a big sack with him and put them all inside. There was no way he would leave that kind of knowledge behind for the bastard village to profit from when the Uchihas in his opinion had to make up a lot to him. Thankfully no guards were placed around the compound so it was easy to sneak in there. They were all busy with hunting the culprit. In that night he had got twenty seven scrolls with jutsus of all kinds. Most were fire jutsus. He didn't want to risk getting caught by accident and returned to his hideout.
Over the coming weeks he had gone to the Uchiha compound twice more, but the cleaning crews had obviously already collected the remaining good things. Well, he had got a good haul himself and now had a lot of jutsus he could learn.
With the scrolls of the hideout, his stolen scrolls and books from the academy and the Uchiha scrolls he learned a lot about taijutsu, the medical scrolls came in very handy as they explained where a body was most vulnerable, genjutsu, he sucked in that area in the beginning, and ninjutsu. He soon realized that his main problem was chakra control. He had so much chakra and so little control that it messed with his jutsus at the academy. Thankfully there was a scroll that described all known chakra control exercises with the medical scrolls. He was really grateful to have found this place. While the previous owner had to be a creep, he obviously had also been a good shinobi.
Since then Naruto had trained in the secret room, learned how to prevent the villagers overcharging him, mainly by hunting in the woods for meat and fish, collecting edible plants and growing some vegetables on a small field he had started four miles away from the village in a part of the woods no normal ninja came usually along. The civilians didn't leave the main roads if they travelled outside of Konoha so his hidden field was safe. He worked out in peace, he knew the exercises by spying on genin teams which were trained by their jonin senseis, trained his weapon techniques as well as it was possible without a training partner, worked through the chakra control exercises and started on low level ninjutsu.
It was morning and Naruto got ready for the next day of torture. He hated having to pretend being an idiot. He should be praised as a genius; he knew he could beat all the chunin in the village by now and most of the jonin. The only ones he was not so sure about were the elite jonin, the ANBU and of course the Hokage. He was just twelve after all and while he was strong and had more physical power than all other kids his age, including the boy that imitated Gai Maito, the best taijutsu master of the village, he was limited in what his body could take. He had the advantage that the Kyubi healed his injuries over night, which included his muscles that tore from training. Over the last year he had prepared massively for his chances to get out of the village on missions. It was the last year he would be a civilian. He had played with the idea to graduate early, but his chances were better with his age group. Being the son of the Yondaime Hokage he would have to be able to defend himself against enemies of his father that could recognize him.
After some time he had come to the conclusion that that probably was the reason for the lies of the Hokage. The old man always tried to protect him, but didn't have that much success. The civilian council had too much political power for the old man to control all parts of the village life. And before he wasn't a ninja, he wouldn't be under the Hokage's power. While the Hokage as his official guardian was always included in his punishments for the pranks, mostly the civilian council tried to screw him over there again. And with the ninja part of the council being mostly neglecting him, there was no chance for him to get back at the civilian council right now. Thankfully the graduation exams were in two days. Then he would finally get out of the academy, get a jonin sensei and could start to show his abilities. Well, depending on the jonin, but he normally could trust the old man to not set him up with another demon hater. There were some jonin that would at least treat him neutrally.
He left the room and turned off the lights. He took the lit lantern and walked up to the entrance. There was a spy hole in the wall to let him check if there were any people outside, but nomally the narrow alley was empty. There were after all no house entrances in the alley and it was too narrow to really store things. A few trash cans were at one end, but that was it. He opened the wall and stepped out. He was wearing the orange abomination that the only shop owner that had even sold him clothes had thought appropriate clothes for him. Of course he had been overcharged, but the next night he had taken the things he had paid for with the money that had been demanded from him illegally. He always did this. If one shop owner overcharged him or kicked him out, he took what the shop owner owed him or pranked the shop that kicked him out.
Of course nobody knew about his compensation. The council would have a field day. But as nobody could prove anything and they never found any of the stolen things in his possession, they had no case and the Hokage had refused to let them punish him without proof. Since the day he had learned shadow clones, he had sent a shadow clone to pretend to train on a training ground everyday. His clone pretended to really suck but to never give up. The only true thing about his personality he showed the village was the never-give-up attitude. Everything else was faked.
Naruto reached the academy and sat down in the back of the room, laying his head on the table and trying to get a bit more sleep. Nobody would really mind it. The only teacher that tried to get him to pay attention was Iruka Umino. Naruto knew that Iruka also disliked him for the fox, but the chunin was at least professional enough to not let it influence his work. For that attitude alone Naruto respected Iruka. He didn't like him, but he respected him.
Naruto woke up again when the class's top Uchiha fangirls, Sakura Haruno and Ino Yamanaka had their daily loud entry. Really, all that effort for an emo whose only ambition in life was to kill Itachi. And the bastard wasn't even that strong. Sure, for an academy student he was strong, but with all the help he had been offered by several ninja in the village he should already be chunin by now. He could have graduated two years ago if he had chosen so, but he didn't. Naruto knew that Sasuke wasn't as good a ninja as his older brother had been and would never be. Itachi was a rare genius. Smart and powerful. It didn't happen often that those two traits came together in somebody as young as Itachi had been when he graduated. Genin with seven, Chunin with ten, Jonin with twelve and ANBU captain with thirteen. That was an impressive record.
Sasuke was too obsessed with revenge to reach his full potential; his hatred of Itachi was holding him back. While he trained a lot, he focused on the things his clan had taught him before they were all killed. Which meant, he had a solid understanding of the Uchiha taijutsu style, which depended on the sharingan, which Sasuke didn't have activated yet. He also knew a C-rank fire jutsu, the great fireball jutsu which Naruto knew the Uchihas had really liked using, when they could get away with it also on him, Sasuke was top in his academics, the basic three ninjutsu taught at the academy and with his thrown weapons. But the whole talking about beating Itachi one day lacked his skills in anything outside that knowledge and skill.
He didn't know genjutsu, which even Naruto after thousands of collective hours of chakra control training (that had become so much easier with shadow clones) had been able to learn, didn't have a weapon besides the standard kunai and shuriken he had learned to use in combat, Naruto had chosen to follow the Sandaime's example and learn to use a bo staff and also knew how to use a tanto as a back-up weapon, he knew nothing about seals, a skill Naruto in the ambition to follow in his parents' footsteps had mastered by now, and his usage of other tools was lacking massively.