I would love to read about the first time naruto shifted forms. Like, was it a slow gradual process he didnt notice st the time, it was it sudden. I keep imagining his features slowly changing and him not noticing at the time. Eyelashes grow, hair lengthens, features soften out etc.
Oh, it wasn’t slow.
Perhaps it is a slower, gradual process for natural born kitsune; he wouldn’t know.
Naruto came upon it as he was learning the Henge technique in the academy. An overzealous little kid with too much chakra, little control, no patience, and, most importantly, practically ZERO supervision, Naruto was the type of kid to ignore written work and studying and spend his out-of-school time practicing any practical jutsu activity introduced to them. On the very day they introduced that they were going to be learning the Henge technique Naruto’s brain went completely: YES. JUTSU. FINALLY.
They had only been introduced to Kawarimi so far. Now little Naruto was going to have TWO jutsu under his belt. Such a badass.
So, yeah, he went home and ignored the reading he was assigned, only skimming certain words to get a grasp on how to do the technique. No matter that it was reading only they were to do. He saw Mizuki-sensei turn into Iruka-sensei. There were two identical Iruka-senseis standing next to each other. It was SO COOL.
So Naruto is in his run down little apartment, mimicking the stance in the book and what he saw his teachers do, gathering all the energy he can, feeling it swirl and heat in his belly...
He could feel something happening. That had to be it. He was changing, changing, if he just pushed a little more---
That’s when he felt the shift. It kinda... hurt more than he expected it to (it didn’t hurt afterwards, the many other times he did it---though there was definitely a physical discomfort to the process---but the first time...).
Naruto looked down at his body, and gasped.
At first, he was excited. And confused. He changed back. Then he changed forward. He ran to the mirror. He stumbled into the wall---taller, his weight all wrong---
It... wasn’t what he was going for... He was going for Iruka sensei...
Maybe he should read more in the book?
He continued through the night, reading the text more thoroughly each time (accidentally doing his homework), focusing on that feeling in his belly, the shift... and inadvertently stretching his clothes each time.
He couldn’t seem to deviate from the girl--the young woman--that stared back at him in the mirror.
The next day in school Naruto was torn between showing off his technique (because it was flawless) and embarrassment that he was stuck at one form.
As they continued to break down the E-ranked jutsu in class and the instructors had them going through small illusions Naruto continued to suspect something was wrong. They were turning into large rocks first--just images of a similar size. Then chairs. Then books... blending the rest of their mass with their surroundings. They were all illusions.
What the instructors described was not what Naruto had felt that night. The physical sensations didn’t align. Nor did the the process of how direct the energy (catchra? he could never remember the name). Slowly Naruto learned how to blend himself as they other children did... and when they started learning how to disguise themselves as each other, Naruto found what he had done was entirely different. His wasn’t an illusion, that much he knew.
It left him scared, and confused, and wondering if what he did was something everyone could do? Why was it a young woman? And only a young woman? Was it a family technique?
He did accidentally release that form when practicing human transformations in class. The class laughed and Iruka-sensei yelled with a dark blush across his cheeks and Naruto laughed it off himself as an intentional prank... but feeling embarrassed and protective of it at the same time.
Naruto would later weaponize that weird, female form of his--inspired by Iruka-sensei’s blush--blending his school-taught understanding of illusions with making Her appear scandalously in nothing but wisps of smoke. Later he added the pig-tails, and a shine across his lips, as an experiment against other shinobi to great distraction. Thus was born the “Sexy Technique”. An illusion cast over his own natural form.
