[FFML] [Naruto]Shinigan, chapter 15

[Tom Dickson-Hunt]

First post of this story. Context is available at
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7115615/1/Shinigan or
http://www.cs.colostate.edu/~tomdhunt/shinigan.html, the former
probably nicer-looking. Chapter may look a little strange without the
context, but given that there's about 160k words of it I don't feel
like posting it all here. The conceit of the story is that Naruto has
the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception from Tsukihime.

----------------

# Shinigan

## Chapter 15

Naruto stood nervously outside the hospital room, seeing blurred shapes moving
through the frosted glass of the door. He had made to visit Hinata in the
tower's infirmary as soon as the selection of matches was done, only to find
that in the interim she had been moved to the main Konoha hospital. He had poor
memories of that place, but his worry about Hinata had suppressed them
decisively, and he had split off from his team as soon as they were back in
Konoha proper to find her, only to be told that she was still in
treatment. Having nothing else to do, he paced, and fretted furiously. The
silhouettes of two people were visible through the inset window, but he could
not recognize them, nor make any sense of what they were doing, nor get any idea
of Hinata's condition.

It was almost an hour before the tenor of the motions behind the glass changed,
and several minutes after that before the door opened. A nurse came out, quickly
darting off down the hallway, followed by a man in glasses, looking fatigued,
wearing the headband and uniform of a medic-nin. Naruto wondered for a moment
why he looked familiar, but put the issue aside.

"Ah—medic-san? Um...how is she?"

The doctor, who had been rubbing his forehead wearily, glanced down at him in
surprise. One eyebrow raised.

"Ah? Uzumaki-san? Is she a friend of yours?"

Naruto nodded mutely, too anxious to engage in more than rudimentary
conversation.

The doctor nodded in return, slowly, and sighed.

"Well, she isn't in danger for her life, and she'll make a full recovery. Right
now, though, she...isn't great. The broken leg wouldn't be such a big problem,
except that it can't recover properly while her chakra system is so out of
order. That's the strangest damage I've ever seen...it's kind of reminiscent of
what happens when someone is working on a big, old seal and catches backlash,
but I can't fathom how that would happen in a fight." He looked very tired.

Naruto seemed to shrink, looking down miserably. "The tags..." he whispered,
almost inaudibly. The doctor looked at him.

"What was that, Uzumaki-san?"

Naruto glanced up quickly. "Oh—it's a chakra-boosting method I...came up
with...a few weeks ago. It's supposed to just refill your capacity really
quickly...but...."

The medic frowned, giving him a measuring look. "You came up with it?  And she
used it to this end? Are they letting the genin do research and development
now?"

Naruto sighed. "I just gave a few to her, and my teammates. It was supposed to
be perfectly fine—I tested them! But she used three at once...you're only
supposed to use one, that should be fine for a normal person...." He looked back
at the doctor rather desperately.  "How bad is it? What...what happened?"

The doctor stared for a moment. "Already doing original research into combat
boosts? You're very strange, Uzumaki-san." He shook his head. "Never mind. Her
chakra system is...scarred. The damage will all heal, but for the moment we've
got her heavily sealed to keep her chakra flow down low enough that it wouldn't
make the problem worse. But, of course, holding down the chakra flow retards the
healing process.  Even with our best healers...the soonest she'll be able to
channel enough chakra to stand is in two weeks or so. We can wake her up in
perhaps a week."

Naruto nodded shakily. "Wow..." He fell silent, cursing himself mentally.

The doctor looked at him. "Frightening, isn't it. Luckily she's young—her chakra
system is more malleable than most. The same damage done to an adult might well
have put them out of action permanently."  He gave Naruto a stern look over his
glasses. "You had best be careful with your combat boosts, Uzumaki-san."

Naruto gave several frantic nods. "Yeah! Of course...they work fine when you use
them like you should, but...damn it! I should have warned her, but I didn't
know...." He trailed off, and was silent for a moment before speaking
again. "When...when will she recover? And when can I see her?"

"We can wake her up in perhaps a week. She can have visitors then. After that,
depending on how things go, it will take perhaps a week for her to be strong
enough to stand, then another few before she can practice again. I should say a
full six weeks before she can fight without fear of a relapse. Luckily, we can
heal the leg and the damage to her lungs and heart slowly while her chakra
system repairs itself."  The doctor shook his head slowly. "That damage to her
organs...whenever I see the wounds of jyuuken, I cannot decide whether to curse
the Hyuuga or be grateful that they're loyal to this village."

"Don't tar her with the same brush as her whole bastard clan." That came out
bitter.

The doctor gave him a startled look. "A family issue?"

Naruto clenched his teeth. "Her cousin did that to her."

There were shadows on the medic's eyes as he shook his head, sadly. "A pity. It
seems, sometimes, that all the most powerful shinobi are the ones who are least
happy, most angry, most...tormented." He turned his gaze on Naruto. "You bear a
little of that mark, I think. Perhaps the young Hyuuga does so as well." He
shook his head again. "Ah, well...Unfortunately, I now must go, Uzumaki-san. I
hope that your endeavor in the examinations meets with success." He turned,
fatigue and sadness still plain in his posture, and made as if to leave.

"Wait!" said Naruto hurriedly. As the doctor turned back, he quickly collected
himself. "Ah...can I go in to see her? I know she's asleep, but...."

The doctor raised one eyebrow, then slowly shook his head. "Not so soon after
she's been treated. If you were to come back tomorrow morning, I could allow you
in. But you know she won't be awake until quite some while later."

Naruto nodded. "I know, but...I just...I don't know," he muttered, trailing
off. "It just...it wouldn't feel right, not going in to see her as soon as I
can."

The doctor smiled briefly. "Is that so? Well, I can oblige you tomorrow morning,
Uzumaki-san. Until then...try to sleep properly tonight. You might find it
difficult." He turned and left, this time not prevented.

Naruto sighed, and taking a last look back through the blurred glass, walked
back to the stairs down and out.

XxXxX

The next morning found him in the hospital again, pacing the halls.  Though he
had gotten in the front door all right, Hinata's room was locked, and the doctor
he had spoken to was nowhere to be found. He chose to spare himself the
humiliation of attempting to get the door opened by any of the generally
unfriendly hospital staff, and simply walked around, compulsively walking by the
front doors every five minutes looking for him.

It took half an hour after Naruto's arrival before the doctor showed up. Naruto
missed his entry at the door, but rather ran into him in the same third-floor
corridor as Hinata's room; he recognized Naruto immediately, and without
prompting led him to the room and opened it.

Hinata lay on the bed inside. She was covered by a standard-issue hospital gown,
but from what he could see of her, even without the gown she would have been
basically invisible under the wrappings of bandages. They covered her left arm
completely, with dark spots of blood visible underneath. Around half her face
was also covered, including her eyes, and her leg was wrapped in a hard
cast. Her chest rose and fell slowly with her breath, but there was no other
motion, and her face was calm, relaxed, unnaturally so. It was immediately clear
that her state was deeper than mere sleep.

Strips of white cloth, brighter than the bandages, ran in spirals down her arms
and legs and around her chest. Written on them in small spidery lines were
seals, inscrutable in their tiny size; every few inches, there was a small,
intricate circle, all joined by the thin lines of writing. Driven by long habit,
Naruto peered at the seals in attempt to decipher them, but he could not get
more than a vague impression of their purpose—to regulate the flow of chakra
within Hinata's battered coils.

Naruto winced at seeing her. There was something fundamentally wrong with
Hinata, ordinarily so quick to move, lying still and silent. With the bandages
on her eyes and face and the position of her arms she might as well have been
laid out for embalming. Only the slow movement of her chest testified that she
was still alive.

He felt momentarily guilty for not having brought anything to liven up the
uniformly dull-white hospital room, then ridiculous for wanting to bring gifts
to a coma patient. There was a chair sitting to one side in the room; he sat
down heavily. The room was identical to all the other rooms in the hospital,
including the one where he had discovered the fox's eyes three years ago. The
short bedside table was indistinguishable from the one he had cut up in his
frustration. Sitting there brought back strange memories.

The room was silent but for the subtle noise of Hinata's breath. Naruto sighed
aloud, the sudden sound loud in the room, and shook his head.

"Man...." he muttered, looking at Hinata with a sigh. "Man, he really did a
number on you, didn't he, Hinata-chan? That and the tags...." He sighed. "Those
tags can be kind of nasty, I guess. Got to be careful with them. I don't
know...." He trailed off. "I keep thinking I should have warned you, but I
didn't know what would happen with three tags at once...it worked, though, I
guess. It could have been worse." He shook his head again and fell silent.

It was a few minutes of peaceful quiet after that when there was a tapping at
the door. Naruto glanced up, and, seeing a shape at the frosted window, rose and
walked toward it. That was different, he recalled with a frown. The room he had
slept in had had a solid wooden door, without the glass. Why had it changed?

He opened the door as quietly as he could, though the care was probably
unnecessary, and saw the doctor standing there. He was beckoned out, and
followed along without question, down the hall a short way to a small alcove of
an office set in the wall.

Only there did the doctor speak. "Uzumaki-san, a question."

Naruto nodded.

The doctor inclined his head. "You said that the damage to her chakra system
originates from overuse of some tags that you made. Do you have any of these
with you?"

Naruto nodded again, digging into the pocket on his leg. "Yeah, they're
something I kind of carry these days. Not too helpful for me, since I just kind
of...don't get tired, but if I needed to help someone else...." He extracted a
tag, with circle and knot and the faint barely-felt hum of a chakra-active seal,
and handed it to the doctor.

He took it with a slight frown and examined the seal. "Hmm. It's simple
enough. How did you...ah, I see. It simply drops the chakra into the affected
area, and lets the body's own circuits deal with it." The doctor looked back up
at Naruto. "I imagine you find them to be rather inefficient?"

Naruto nodded. "Yeah, I just get around it by charging them up with some insane
amount of chakra. Kind of figured that that's why no one else has ever done it,
since as far as I can tell even Kakashi wouldn't be able to charge one without
giving himself chakra exhaustion."

The doctor nodded. "That's true. From what I can tell...if it does truly work by
simply dumping the chakra into the body, then not quite a tenth of what you
charged it with should get through, when all the inefficiencies are compounded."

Naruto looked up, surprised. "A tenth? Really? I know about half goes with the
long-term storage thing, but I figured it would be about that good."

The doctor shook his head. "No, not really. As noted, about half of it is wasted
in the operation of the long-term storage methods which eliminate irregularities
over time, but I wouldn't guess that you can get more than sixty percent
efficiency when you charge it, with this simple an input. But the real issue is
when it's used. Do you know, Uzumaki-san, that there's a well-known method of
recharging someone's chakra capacity using fuinjutsu, and this isn't it?"

Naruto nodded, then shook his head, looking uncertain. "Well...I've read some
books that kind of mention it in passing, which is how I got started thinking
about these. But I don't know anything about it."

The doctor nodded. "It's rather obscure, and not nearly so convenient. It's
rather a lengthy ritual actually, and it involves a donor and a recipient
directly; there's no storage. The method involves creating a notional link
directly between their chakra systems using seals, so that chakra flows out of
one person's coils and straight into the other's. And this is a complicated and
a difficult thing, and it requires quite some degree of customization to the
specific donor and recipient. All in all, it's more useful for research than for
combat, either that or the occasional emergency medical treatment." He indicated
the tag in his hand. "Yours, on the other hand, is simply dropping the chakra
directly into the body of the user. No connection to the coils is made. The
coils pick it up, of course, but that's simply though saturation. The end result
is that maybe only a quarter to a third of the chakra that is successfully
released enters the chakra system."

"Huh." Naruto frowned. "That's worse than I would have figured. Oh, well. Not a
huge problem, if it works. Unless—would there be any bad consequences from using
them, if it dumps a lot of energy that doesn't get used?"

The doctor shook his head. "I shouldn't think so. The excess chakra should just
dissipate. Perhaps the user might notice a bit of increased temperature, but
that should be all." He made as if to hand the tag back to Naruto, then
hesitated. "Ah—Uzumaki-san? Do you mind if I keep this? I should like to run a
few tests."

Naruto waved dismissively. "Go ahead. They're no more difficult for me than
exploding tags, so I just make a whole lot." He glanced down, as if suddenly
remembering something. "Um, medic-san? You said that she would be able to wake
up in a week or so—do you think that you could tell me when that is? I'd...like
to talk to her."

"Of course. We'll be slowly adjusting the seals over the course of this week,
and when she wakes up will depend on her reaction, but I should imagine five
days from now would be the most likely date. If you come in the day before that,
I can give you an update on her status."

Naruto swallowed. "A-all right. Thanks. And...thanks for taking care of her."

The doctor touched the insignia of the medics' corps on his sleeve. "That is
what I do, Uzumaki-san. No thanks are required."

XxXxX

He walked down the stairs determined to find Kakashi and extract promises of
training. This took rather a shorter time than anticipated; Kakashi was, in
fact, leaning against the wall next to the stairwell door, on the ground floor
of the hospital.

Naruto made a double take at seeing him unexpectedly, then rounded on him. He
was, predictably enough, reading a small book with an orange cover, which
disappeared behind his back as soon as Naruto began speaking.

"Hey, sensei! Can you train me for the finals this month? I need to get
stronger! I can probably even beat Neji right now, but some of those other guys
are scary and then later I have to fight Sasuke and heaven knows he'll have come
up with something insane."

Kakashi regarded him. "Unfortunately, Naruto, I will be occupied pretty much
entirely between now and the tournament date. I have made some arrangements for
your training, however, which I imagine you will not be averse to."

Naruto frowned. "What are you going to be busy with, sensei? I didn't think you
had any duties other than teaching us, until we stopped being rookies anyway."

"I don't. In fact, I'll be training Sasuke."

"Hey!" said Naruto indignantly. He gave Kakashi a wounded look. "Why don't you
have time to train me, then? How come you're spending all your time on Sasuke?"

Kakashi gave him a weary look. "Naruto, think for a moment. For one thing,
Sasuke has awakened the second level of his Sharingan. This alone puts him above
what was the average among the shinobi of the Uchiha clan. I am the only person
alive who can properly instruct him in how to use it, unless he feels like
seeking instruction from his brother." Naruto snorted involuntarily, and Kakashi
grinned slightly. "Quite. If he is left to simply figure it out for himself, he
may make a mistake that costs him heavily in battle. You saw some of that in his
fight with Lee—I'm sure you noticed the state of his legs."

Naruto nodded unwillingly at that, and Kakashi continued mercilessly. "Even
leaving aside that consideration, Sasuke is scheduled to fight Gaara of the
Sand. Your own fight will be difficult and possibly dangerous, but Hyuuga Neji
is likely at least to accept your surrender should you give it. The only thing
you really have to lose is your pride. Gaara, on the other hand...you saw him
fight in the preliminaries, and I'm sure you've heard about Hinata's experience
in the forest by now. If Sasuke is unable to win his fight, he is quite likely
to die."

"Yeah, I guess," Naruto grumbled. "But then what am I going to do? I can just
work on stuff, but that won't be nearly as good. I need to get stronger too."

Kakashi grinned under his mask. "Naruto, have some faith in me. Did I not say
that I had made arrangements? I've gotten you the opportunity for training that
any other genin in Konoha would kill for. Of course, it's up to you to impress
him enough that he'll keep teaching you, but the opportunity alone is
priceless."

"Okay," said Naruto, looking dubious. "So where's this oh-so-great trainer of
yours?"

"Right here, kid," said a low, gruff voice very near him to the side. Naruto
spun about, alarmed, and recoiled from the man standing there, who he would have
_sworn_ had been nowhere about just five seconds ago. This required that he take
several frantic steps backward to regain his balance, which led into his
slamming his head into the wall. He shook his head woozily as he tried to keep
his eye on the man, who was laughing lazily.

"Not doing such a good job with the impressing me, kid," he said. Naruto
overrode the pain in his head and his own alarm at being taken aback to step
forward and point at him belligerently.

"Hey! You weren't anywhere around here and then you were there! Where the heck
were you?"

The man's clothes were nothing like any shinobi outfit that Naruto had ever
seen. He wore a bright red vest over a generic brown kimono, like some sort of
particularly flamboyant stage performer. But there was a mesh-armor undershirt
underneath, and he stood with a sort of unconscious readiness that lent him a
dangerous air. He wore a hitai-ite, as well, though it was not immediately
recognizable as such; it had strange horns, and the symbol on it was not any
village's mark, but rather the word _oil_. Strange red lines ran down his face,
like the tracks of tears, and that face was old, older than any other shinobi
Naruto had seen except the Hokage. A long mane of white hair down his back lent
point to the revelation of his age.

Naruto did not make any sort of connection between his age and the probable
skill required to survive to so old and remain a force to be considered. He was
too busy being annoyed at the newcomer's superior grin.

He was laughing softly, and as he stopped he looked at Naruto as if he was a
particularly interesting species of squirrel. "Looks like you need to work on
your situational awareness, kid."

Naruto crossed his arms and sulked. "No I don't," he muttered. "You're just,
like, the god of sneakiness. Came out of _nowhere_."

The man stopped laughing. "Now that's dead wrong, kid, and I don't mean it as a
figure of speech. It's true that I outclass you enough that you can't be
expected to see me if I don't want to be seen, but that doesn't mean you can
stop working on it. While there's still someone else in the world who is capable
of sneaking up on you, even if you're fast asleep, you don't stop working on
it. And if there isn't, you keep working on it anyway, just in case someone new
can." He turned his attention to Kakashi. "This is the kid you wanted me to
train? Doesn't exactly reek of genius. If he wasn't...him...then I wouldn't be
giving him a second look."

Kakashi's insouciant air was still there, but there was a subtle deference
behind it. That, more than anything else, made Naruto sit up and take notice of
the man; the only other person he had ever seen Kakashi defer to, ever, was the
Hokage. "He's more than he appears, Jiraiya-sama. And you were never one to
credit genius much, were you?"

The man laughed, a very large sort of sound. "That's true. Well, I guess I'll
give the kid a chance. See if he can keep up with me." He turned back to Naruto,
making an obvious conscious effort to loom. "Feel lucky, kid! For the one who
has consented to train you is none other than...." He glanced around, then
deflated. "Drat, this corridor's too small. I can't do the proper
introduction. Oh, well. Here goes." With no discernible motion or effort by the
man, smoke billowed behind him; meanwhile, he did a ridiculous pirouette, his
wooden sandals clattering on the floor, and continued. "I stand before you! The
immortal toad sage of Mount Myoboku, strongest of the Three Shinobi of Legend,
best-selling admirer of the female form, the legendary...Jiraiya!" He stood in a
very strange pose, his hand outstretched toward Naruto, while fireworks with no
visible source exploded behind him, grinning broadly.

Naruto's mouth dropped open as his mind threw all available resources behind
attempting to discern what, precisely, had just happened. It took a moment for
him to be able to reply.

"W-wait...Jiraiya, as in Sannin Jiraiya, the author of all those books Jiraiya?
That's you?"

There was a further clatter of sandals as Jiraiya returned to a normal standing
position. "Indeed, it is I! But," he was suddenly and entirely noiselessly
several steps closer, leaning in toward Naruto, a lecherous grin on his face,
"don't tell me that even such a young one has discovered the joy of my books?
Truly, I am happy, to have introduced such an innocent to the wonders of the
female form!"

Naruto backed away several steps, incidentally running into the wall again. His
hands were raised to fend Jiraiya off, and he wore a mildly repelled
expression. "What are you talking about? They're sealing manuals!"

In another eerily silent motion, Jiraiya backed up a few steps, and made an
exaggerated sigh. "Ah, it appears I spoke too soon. But never mind! Such a state
will not last forever! I will soon prevail!"

Naruto gaped at him.

				     XxXxX

After Kakashi had waved them both off, the strange old man—who Naruto was having
a hard time believing to be the legendary Jiraiya, even taking his flashes of
uncanny stealth into account—led Naruto out of the hospital and through the
streets of Konoha to a destination which at first he refused to name. Naruto was
confused, at first, when they arrived at a small pool fed by a man-high
waterfall, pathed around and bridged; it was when he noticed the pool steaming
gently that he connected it with the fences a short distance away, and realized
that they were behind the expansive public baths.

Jiraiya turned to him with a broad grin. "All right, kid! So Kakashi tells me
that you know something about fuinjutsu."

Naruto nodded. "Yeah, I—"

He was cut off before he could continue. "Great! So you may have worked with
explosive tags, storage scrolls, and I would guess that the fox gives you some
impressive chakra capacity, right?"

Naruto nodded cautiously.

"Good. But you know, kid, that later on if you keep studying fuinjutsu you're
eventually going to have to do some fancy things that require more chakra
control than just dumping chakra into a seal. So I want you to take off your
clothes."

Naruto gaped at him. "What? What on Earth—how is that going to help my chakra
control?"

Jiraiya grinned, rather wickedly. "Well, if you really want to leave them on,
that's fine. It's just that I think you might prefer not to. Your first lesson
is going to be refining your chakra control until you can stand on the surface
of that pool without falling in."

Naruto's eyes widened for a moment, then he scowled. Without any fanfare or
preparation, he stepped down onto the surface of the water, regulating his
chakra flow instinctively. It was childishly easy; the surface of the water was
entirely quiescent, except for the small ripples that danced across it from the
waterfall on its other edge. He stared at Jiraiya challengingly from the center
of the pool, hands on his hips.

"Was this supposed to be a challenge?"

Jiraiya looked at him, and one eyebrow might have lifted by a millimeter or
so. "Huh. So Kakashi taught you that?"

Naruto nodded impatiently, crossing his arms.

Jiraiya frowned. "Then you can't know _that_ much about fuinjutsu yet. There
just wouldn't be time. How much do you know?"

Naruto glowered at him. "Some six different varieties of exploding tag, three or
four of sealing, the basic sorts of communications, a lot of theory—I was
halfway through the level four sealing manuals when this Exam started. Oh, and a
few random things I've come up with. And this." Without moving, he created a
clone off to one side of the pool and swapped himself with it. A moment later,
the clone glowed briefly and exploded—a small explosion, but enough to spatter
water everywhere and send up a wave that drenched the ground around the pool.

Jiraiya was not fazed; nor, apparently, was he _wet_—Naruto didn't have the
slightest idea how he had managed that, since the ground around him was
spattered liberally with drops. He raised an eyebrow at Naruto, turning to him
as if nothing had happened.

"Since you apparently considered it relevant when I asked you about fuinjutsu,
I'm going to assume that wasn't just an underpowered _bunshin daibakuha_."

Naruto felt suddenly foolish. "Uh, yeah...I never learned _daibakuha_, but I
figured out how to make a clone kind of imitate an exploding tag. I can do it
with any clone, and depending on how much chakra I put into it the explosion can
get a whole lot bigger than that. I've...never really tried to get the biggest I
can, because...well, it was...kind of scary. If I overpower the clone just a bit
I can get one to blow big enough to take down one of those really humongous
trees in the Forest of Death."

Jiraiya nodded slowly. "Interesting. That's not a rookie genin's knowledge of
fuinjutsu."

Naruto fidgeted. "Yeah...I started working on it when I was about nine or
so. Right around after I started the Academy. Ojiisan—uh, Hokage-sama gave me
the clearance, he said it would be helpful with...the fox."

"That's a good thing," said Jiraiya, beckoning Naruto forward and taking a
scroll from some obscure pocket in his kimono. Naruto peered at it as he walked
over, and saw the older man activating some sort of tag on it before he opened
it. "Now, don't get the wrong idea—the _shikifuujin_, Minato's seal on the
Kyuubi, it's far beyond anything you can feel safe messing with right now. Even
if the stakes weren't so high, you'd never get anywhere. But having a
jinchuuriki know something about the seal on him can only be to the good. This
scroll has quite a bit of stuff about sealing on it. You'll be studying from
this on your own time. For the moment, though...." He paused, drumming his
fingers on his thigh. "You seem to have a decent knowledge of the basic sorts of
seals. Which is fine, if you want to make a living sitting in a workroom writing
them out. Something tells me that's not you."

Naruto shook his head emphatically, and Jiraiya nodded. "Thought not. To use
fuinjutsu in combat is an entirely different thing, and at the moment you don't
have the first idea about it. It requires speed, precision and the ability to
think on your feet. You are probably going to hate me after this training is
over, but you will be at least not completely stupid about how to use fuinjutsu
in combat. That alone should be enough to win you the Exam tournament, if the
competition is at its usual level this year. Sound good?"

Naruto grinned broadly. "Yeah!"

Jiraiya grinned back at him. "Good! Now, as the first step, I want you to give
me everything you're carrying on you with any seals on it."

Naruto's face went from anticipation to dismay quickly enough to give him muscle
strain. "What? No! That's all my stuff, just about!"

Jiraiya seemed to be holding back laughter. "And that's a very promising sign!
But remember what I just said? Speed, precision and the ability to think on your
feet! Any idiot can use seals that are already written in combat. They're
useful, but that's not what I'm teaching you. Until further notice, when I'm
training you you can't use anything prepared ahead of time. Now hand them over."

Naruto grumbled as he began turning out his pockets and pouches. First there
were the three storage scrolls he carried around when he wasn't specifically on
a mission; then there was a multitude of tags of various types in the large
pockets of his pants. Jiraiya took them without comment, until Naruto handed
over his short stack of chakra tags.

He frowned, glancing at them and turning them over in one hand. "Kid, what are
these things supposed to be?"

Naruto looked over to see what he held. "Um, those are some random things I came
up with. Quick chakra refill. Some guy at the hospital told me that they were
really inefficient, but I figure I'll stick with them, since I can afford it."

Jiraiya looked rather surprised and peered at the seals; then, suddenly, he
started laughing. "Really? That's...that's truly...wow. You've tested these?"

Naruto scowled. "Yeah, I've tested them. They work fine, they just take a whole
lot of chakra to charge up."

Jiraiya chuckled again as he put the tags down with the rest of Naruto's
fuinjutsu-enhanced miscellanea. "You realize we're probably the only two people
in the village who could charge one of these? Along with Sarutobi-sensei,
perhaps, though I even doubt that nowadays."

Naruto raised an eyebrow. "You can? I'm pretty sure Kakashi couldn't, but I
guess..."

Jiraiya nodded as he gestured at Naruto to continue unloading. "Oh, yeah. I have
a high natural chakra capacity, and I've been training it up hard since I was
younger, so I could...never mind. Anyway, I've got a higher capacity than anyone
who's not a jinchuuriki. Or Hoshigaki Kisame, I suppose...anyway, by the time
anyone normal gets a chakra capacity high enough to charge up one of these,
they're no longer stupid enough to do chakra recharging that
way. Congratulations, kid, you're unique."

Naruto ignored the last, having latched onto something else. "Hoshigaki Kisame?
Who's that?"

Jiraiya glanced at him as he unloaded the last of his pockets, leaving them
strangely empty. "He's very tall, has blue skin, looks like a shark, and carries
a really large sword which is usually wrapped in white cloth. If you ever see
him, get away as fast as you are physically capable of doing so. He has a chakra
capacity nigh akin to yours, but unlike you, he is trained to utilize it to its
maximum effectiveness."

Naruto frowned. "Chakra capacity like mine? Is he a...jinchuuriki...as well?"

Jiraiya shook his head. "No, that's one thing which I can guarantee he's not. No
one knows where his capacity comes from. He's one of those guys who has carved
his legend on the world, kid. People like the Five Kage, or Uchiha Itachi, or,
well, my team. You know some of their names already, probably. But Hoshigaki
Kisame is a nukenin of Kirigakure. If you ever see him, he's not going to have
your best interests at heart."

Naruto nodded slowly. "Yeah..."

Jiraiya broke his brief reverie by clapping loudly. "All right! Confirm,
everything with any seals on it off your person?"

Naruto nodded sourly.

"Good! Then here's your first lesson. Do you know _fuuka houin_?"

"Um, yeah, I guess," said Naruto slowly. "I mean, I've read the symbols and
tried it out once on just a campfire. But I don't know it that well."

"Good enough! Take this." Jiraiya threw something at him. He caught it by
reflex. On examination, it proved to be a scroll, wrapped around a sealing brush
and a small vial of ink.

His next question turned into an indignant squawk as the old man, without so
much as a handseal, shot a blast of fire at him.

He jumped frantically aside, and the fireball hit the ground where he had stood
and burst in a wave of scorching-hot air. Naruto landed on his butt and
scrambled backward, turning to glare at Jiraiya as he got his feet under him.

"Hey! What the hell was that for?"

Jiraiya only grinned at him and shot another fireball. Naruto jumped aside
again—easily enough; these were slow attacks, not even in the same realm as the
flamethrower that Orochimaru had kept hosing at him in the forest. They were
still _fireballs_, though, and Naruto had not even the slightest bit of desire
to be hit by one.

"Speed and precision!" said Jiraiya, in between fireballs. Naruto was busy
dodging, and so almost missed the words. "You pass the lesson when you manage to
seal up one of the fireballs with _fuuka houin_! Best get started!"

Naruto's jaw dropped, and he stared at Jiraiya as if he had...well, as if he had
suggested that Naruto learn the _fuuka houin_ by attempting to block a fireball
with it. "_What?_"

Jiraiya favored him with a particularly cheerful grin, right before fireballing
him again. "This is the kind of thing a fuinjutsu master can do!"

Naruto muttered a curse and dodged again, then turned his attention to the
scroll and supplies, which had remained forgotten in his left hand throughout
the conversation. He clamped the brush in his teeth before trying to unroll the
scroll and failing miserably, mostly due to the intermittent need to jump ten
feet in order to dodge a katon jutsu. Finally, he succeeded in unrolling a foot
or so of scroll, only to drop it as he made a clumsy dodge. The scroll fell,
unrolling haphazardly with his grip on the end, and Jiraiya took gleeful
advantage of his distraction to put fireballs close around all sides of him. He
was finally forced to drop the end of the scroll in order to dodge properly, and
it was several more iterations of dodge and dodge again before he could get to
the body of the scroll and start gathering up the paper that had untidily
uncoiled itself. All the while, Jiraiya kept sniping at him, looking
insufferably cheerful.

Naruto made several more attempts at writing out the seal while dodging
fireballs, but it was just fifteen different kinds of not happening. The only
time he got as far as setting brush to paper, he fell over after a particularly
close miss and ruined two feet of scroll. Finally, with a glare at the entirely
unruffled legend who was still periodically fireballing him, he concentrated and
formed a quartet of clones around him.

The clones scattered, Naruto with them. Jiraiya gave a theatrical sigh and shake
of the head, and began shooting fireballs at five times the previous rate,
targeting all of the doppelgangers. He showed no more visible exertion than he
had when he was standing still and lecturing. The clones dodged around just as
Naruto had, but still within fifteen seconds Naruto stumbled slightly as he was
abruptly subjected to the sensation of mildly painful burns over the whole of
his chest. He dodged the next fireball, jinking through the cloud of chakra
smoke his popped clone had left behind, and decided to try a new approach. While
Jiraiya aimed fireballs at the remaining clones, popping one, Naruto slapped the
scroll down on the ground and spread it to a clean swath. The next fireball came
at him not three seconds later, but instead of dodging it, Naruto summoned
clones again, letting them take the impact of the technique.

Jiraiya immediately focused intently on the original Naruto, completely ignoring
the few clones still moving around. One of them took one fireball, and Naruto
summoned several more, but he was still forced to jump away several seconds
later, leaving the scroll behind on the ground. His face was triumphant,
though—he had successfully marked down the first four strokes, establishing the
skeleton of the seal.

Jiraiya continued to focus his fire on Naruto himself, and one fireball hit home
before he was able to dodge it. Naruto immediately dropped and rolled to put out
the small fires that had taken root in his shirt, gritting his teeth through the
pain of freshly-burned skin on stone paths. He jumped up and continued his
dodging routine, only to suddenly receive a burst of memory that made his eyes
widen. A clone had taken the opportunity to snatch up the brush that lay beside
the scroll and continue the seal, and Jiraiya had noticed.

Only a moment later, the scroll and brush came flying at him, the former
slightly charred along the bottom where the clone had not quite managed to
shield it in time. Naruto caught them rather awkwardly and jumped away from
another fireball, then made another swarm of clones, hoping to sneak in a bit of
progress while Jiraiya cut them down. No such luck. The old man sent his fire
straight at Naruto with a sort of bloody-minded obstinacy. Naruto passed the
scroll off to a clone and jumped away. He was two jumps further on before he
realized that there was no more fire targeting him; it was just a moment
afterward when he assimilated the memories of three different clones who had
died to provide momentary shelter to the one holding the scroll, followed
quickly by those of the would-be scribe itself and the scroll flying back at his
head.

This time, Naruto kept hold of the scroll and dodged back into the midst of his
small remaining mob of clones, making another wave of them as he did
so. Memories bombarded him of the clones on the periphery of the crowd
dispersing in flames, but he was able to get another several strokes written,
almost half completing the seal, before the fire threatened him again and he was
forced to give his attention to evasion.

Jiraiya was outright grinning at him, and Naruto gritted his teeth as he
continued to dodge frantically. A few clones still remained of the original mob
that had shielded him, and he threw the scroll to one before jumping in front of
it and spawning another swarm. The predictable fireballs began cutting through
the mass of clones; Naruto growled and made more before the clone who was
working on the seal was hit. He was starting to feel the edge of chakra fatigue
now, and he pushed back against it with a snarl.

Suddenly, the fireballs were coming from another direction. Jiraiya had moved,
somehow, without his noticing, and his fire now vectored in on the writing clone
without interference. That clone yelped in alarm before tossing the scroll away;
that was all it could do before it was dispersed. Its memories hit Naruto in
jarring contrast to the constant wave of fiery death; this time, it was fiery
death preceded by a lot of finicky seal work. Another clone leaped to the scroll
where it had landed and retrieved it, and Naruto interposed himself again,
creating another mob of clones. This time, instead of simply burning through the
crowd, Jiraiya disappeared again, and the fireballs came from behind. The clone
who was writing was dispersed, but managed to throw the scroll to one of the
mob, which took up the task again, surrounded on all sides by its
fellows. Fireballs came at it, but the clones started milling about, keeping as
many as possible between Jiraiya and the scroll.

Finally it seemed that Jiraiya became impatient. A flurry of fireballs struck
the clones at once, apparently from some three different locations, decimating
them. A stray burst of memories alerted Naruto to where the scroll had landed,
and his eyes widened in sudden anticipation—the clone that had dropped the
scroll had been nearly finished with the seal. Only a few strokes remained.

A clone that was closer to it than Naruto himself had grabbed the scroll and
started on the last few strokes. Naruto jumped forward and spawned another mob
of clones around it, interdicting the predictable swarm of fireballs. It wasn't
quite enough. Naruto cursed inwardly as the clones were all cut down. He must
have been getting more tired than he had thought—he had underpowered that last
usage, making a group of clones that was too small to give sufficient cover.

The seal was almost finished, and a barrage of fire was incoming on the clone
and the scroll it held.

There was no time to create more clones to interfere. Naruto gritted his teeth
and powered a sealless kawarimi.

A familiar lurch and jerk, and suddenly the fire was surrounding _him_. He just
had time to anticipate it before it struck him. There was a moment of not
inconsiderable pain; then he had dived forward, out of the dwindling combined
fireball, and did a rolling tumble along the ground, which incidentally
extinguished the remaining fires in his clothes. Only a moment later, a burst of
memory—for a change of pace, this time not triggered by a painful fiery
death—alerted him to something behind him. He just had time to spin about and
catch the scroll, verifying as he jumped aside from yet another volley that the
seal was completed and waiting on the paper.

Jiraiya was giving him a good-natured grin as he kept shooting, and Naruto
scowled at him as he picked his moment. The next shot came straight at his
chest, and instead of dodging it, Naruto held the scroll open in front of him
and dumped chakra into it.

The fireball struck the seal, blazed brightly for a moment, then disappeared. No
more followed it. Jiraiya was standing in the same place where he had begun the
exercise, clapping slowly.

"Hey, you finally did it! Now just be warned that that was completely pathetic
and you're going to have to start doing better if you want to do anything other
than die a painful death using fuinjutsu in combat. You should have been able to
do that without clones, in thirty seconds or less, without taking any hits. As
it is...." He gestured at the boy.

Naruto glowered at the old man, his momentary exhilaration disappearing without
trace. There was not much left of his shirt, and his pants had lost most of
their pockets and still smoked sluggishly. The skin visible under the burned
shirt was bright red, and hurt even under the light breeze; he could feel the
fox's chakra working in him to heal the injuries.

"I hate you, sensei."

XxXxX

Sakura wouldn't have stopped at the small roadside ramen stand if she hadn't
seen Naruto there. She probably wouldn't have anyway, if said Naruto hadn't
looked rather seriously injured. His pants were charred gray and looked
fire-damaged, and his shirt was suspiciously unsullied, leading her to believe
that he had replaced it. His normally blond hair was also matted and ashy, and
after he sat down and ordered he dropped his head to the counter with a loud
sigh.

She slipped in beside him, concern overriding her usual slight detachment from
her admittedly occasionally rather scary teammate. "Naruto? What happened to
you?"

He did not raise his head from the counter, his reply a grumble. "I don't know
whether to thank Kakashi-sensei or set some sort of particularly nasty trap for
him."

She caught her breath, startled. "Kakashi-sensei did this to you?"

Naruto shook his head. "No, but he got me training with the guy who did...got
this Jiraiya guy to teach me seals and how to use them in combat. He's
_sadistic_."

There was the noise of a clearing throat across the counter, and the proprietor,
a cheerful-looking old man, poked Naruto with a ladle. "Hey, Naruto, aren't you
going to introduce your friend?"

Naruto sat himself up with a groan. "Right, sorry. Sakura, this is Ichiraku
Teuchi and somewhere in the back is Ichiraku Ayame, they run this place and they
make the best ramen anywhere in the five nations. Teuchi-jiisan, my teammate,
Haruno Sakura."

Sakura nodded to the man, who gave her a friendly grin. "Hey, friend of Naruto's
is a friend of ours. You want to order something?"

Sakura nodded slowly, glancing over the menu above. "Uh...one miso, please."

The old man—Teuchi, she supposed—nodded and turned around, doing something
enigmatic with the large pots of gently steaming broth behind the counter. A
moment later, he had passed a bowl of ramen over the counter to Naruto, and was
in the process of filling another. He winked at her.

"Yours'll come in just a moment, but Naruto tends to eat rather a lot at a
time."

Sakura nodded, suppressing a grin, and turned back to Naruto, who was eating
with remarkable speed. "So what sort of training are you doing?"

Naruto laid aside his chopsticks, having already finished his first
bowl. "Seals," he said, with a groan. "Specifically, how to draw them while
_under fire_ and not get burned. You can probably see I'm not doing so well."

Sakura nodded, suppressing the urge to grin. A moment later, Teuchi set a bowl
of ramen in front of her; Sakura split the pair of chopsticks at her place and
began eating. It was good enough, but her enthusiasm did not compare to
Naruto's.

In the time it took for her to finish her one bowl, Naruto had polished off some
eight, apparently the whole of his order, and was looking rather more energetic.

"Wonderful stuff!" he said, his usual grin reoccupying his features. "Thanks a
lot, Teuchi-jii!"

The elderly chef gave a good-natured wave in response, and Naruto slid out of
his seat and made as if to go off. Then, suddenly, he froze, tensing.

Sakura spun about on her stool to see what Naruto had reacted to, and had to
prevent herself from shrinking back in fear. The psychotic sand-wielding Suna
redhead from the exams was standing there, arms crossed, staring at Naruto with
a dead look in his eyes.

There was a tension in the air, layered within the silent belligerence of the
two contestants, tangible in its pressure. Sakura shivered to feel it. Once
again, it was made horrifyingly clear to her that compared to the great powers,
she was _nothing_, she was an insect that might only inconvenience them by her
blood spattering their clothing. And—she saw—Naruto was facing down the
terrifying Suna-nin, unfazed by the pressure. His face was set in a half-snarl,
his teeth seeming to grow into fangs.

The other broke the silence first. "Where is Uchiha Sasuke?"

Sakura bit back a gasp, and Naruto shifted slightly. "Why do you want to know?"
he asked, his voice flat and challenging.

"I'm going to kill him." The words were spoken without the slightest break in
the other's tone, as if it was of no more significance than declaring an intent
to eat lunch.

Naruto clenched his teeth. "You'll get your chance. Wait a month. But," and he
grinned, or at least bared his teeth, "you can't beat Sasuke."

"I'm going to kill him." He calmly repeated the same words. "Just like the
others."

Naruto shook his head. "You can't beat Sasuke. And," suddenly his eyes flashed
red, and Sakura shivered as the power of his inner demon spread out over the
world, touching a primal fear, "if you could, if you killed him, I would find
you, no matter how far you ran, and defeat you, no matter how hard you fought,
and kill you, no matter how much you begged." His snarl turned into a truly
disturbing grin. "Try me."

There was a moment of silence after that, and the mask of the Suna-nin's face
might have shifted a little. At length he spoke.

"I'm going to kill him. Then I guess I'll kill you." He paused, and there was a
flare in the pressure around the two boys; despite her best efforts, Sakura
shrank back into herself, instincts crying out to hide. It was almost like the
power that burned inside Naruto when he fought to kill, but different; less
infinitely powerful, contemptuous malice, and more an implacable, eternal
antipathy, the force that would wait forever for the slightest chance to scour
its enemies from the world.

Naruto was unfazed, and his bloody power flared to match it. The two
genin—_forces of nature,_ her mind insisted,
_invulnerable/invincible/indomitable gods/demons/lords_—stared at each other,
the one in a snarling rage, the other flatly and calmly murderous.

Then, without ceremony, the red-haired boy turned and walked away. The
intolerable tension was broken, and only the familiar trace of terror leaked
from Naruto's aura. Then, as he blew out a convulsive breath and sagged in
relaxation, even that was gone.

Sakura wavered for a moment before approaching him. Impressions clashed for a
moment, the cheerful, hyperactive genin and the impossibly powerful force of
nature; then it was resolved, as he shook his head with near-disgust and
straightened. She took several hesitant steps forward.

"Ah...Naruto?"

Naruto did not immediately respond. She was about to try again when he spoke.

"He's like me."

She found herself nodding, a certainty beyond words driving her. They were
alike. Of that there was no doubt. _Alike, both so far above humans as to call
them gods_—she shook her head to clear it.

"Alike...does that mean...?"

Naruto nodded. "He has one too. I don't know how, but...."

Sakura was silent, not knowing what to say.

Naruto sighed again, and sagged a bit; this time his stance was more weary of
body, than of soul. "Damn it, I have to meet that guy again tomorrow morning,
and he gave me this thing to read...." He contemplated a scroll of some sort,
which he had pulled from his side. "I should get going. See you, Sakura."

Just like that, the last traces of the demonhost were gone, and he was back to
being the harried student who had eaten a ridiculous amount of ramen.

Sakura sighed, and walked slowly back to her house.

XxXxX

"Don't worry, Sasuke, we're nearly there."

"Hn."

"Just another kilometer or so to go."

"Hn."

"Just up ahead now...."

"Hn."

"Right! Here we are! How are you feeling?"

"...Hn."

"What, you aren't excited to start training?"

"Now that we're here, why don't you tell me just what you're going to be
teaching me that needs us to be so ridiculously far away?"

"Oh, nothing really. I just wanted to ensure that you wouldn't be distracted."

"We're disappearing off the face of the Earth for a month, not telling anyone
anything about where we are, out in the middle of fucking _nowhere_, because you
wanted to keep me from getting distracted?"

"Yup! So, to training!"

"...Right. What's the plan?"

"Well, I was rather conflicted at first as to what to teach you. There are
several things that would fit your style—I'll probably show you most of them
eventually. For the moment, though...I was impressed by your fight with Lee."

"...okay?"

"Indeed. And that suggested to me some possible options. It's even better with
your Sharingan—we can spend less time on teaching you the techniques and more on
training how to use them. Activate your eyes and watch this."

"Hn. Beats what Naruto had to do."

"It does. Can you do it?"

"Yeah, yeah."

"Good. I'm sure you can think of some applications."

"Well, it's useful, but I can't imagine that it'd be that great in
combat. Escaping, maybe?"

"Ah, how little you know. Try to hit me.

"Oops, not quite. Again?

"Really, Sasuke-kun, you could be doing better right now.

"I trust I've made my point."

"...You _bastard_."

"And with sufficient training, you can do it too!"

"Point taken. Let's get started."

XxXxX

Naruto met Jiraiya at the same place, behind the back walls of the public
baths. The old man was somewhat more serious than he had been the day before,
and after exchanging minimal pleasantries, he bade Naruto sit down and pulled a
sheet of paper from one sleeve, a large seal drawn on it.

"All right. What is this seal?"

"Uh, let's see...looks like a storage type."

Jiraiya rolled his eyes. "What _kind_ of storage type?"

Naruto leaned forward, looking more closely at the paper. "Looks like...a bomb
trap? Except it's different...it's missing a bit around here." He waved at the
sheet. "In the, uh, primary dimensional receiving secondary trigger zone."

"Correct. So what would this seal do?"

Naruto scratched his head. "Uh, it would...launch what you put in it out at
speed? But it's different in some other places too...the secondary functional
trigger is more like the one you'd see on a normal seal. Wait. It's just like a
normal storage seal, except it shoots whatever you put in it straight at your
face as soon as you get it out. Does this thing even have a point?"

Jiraiya grinned. "Not really. It's an exercise that I use to try to get students
into the proper mentality about seal work. Last question. The piece that's
missing in the primary dimensional receiving secondary trigger zone, what does
it do?"

"Secondary trigger zone...what does a bomb trap do there? Uh, it'd have to be
the communication bit, right? The detonator?"

"Also correct. Good job. Do you know why I asked you these questions?"

"No idea, sensei."

"Most students of fuinjutsu are basically training to be scribes. Which is a
reasonably well-paying job, if you have access to a ninja village, and you can
oftentimes partner with an off-duty or retired shinobi, someone with chakra to
spare, and sell them. The problem is they aren't thinking in terms of what the
seals do. They know what a storage seal does, and what a bomb trap does, but if
you showed them something halfway between them like this, they'd be completely
stumped."

Naruto frowned. "It's not that hard. You just need to figure out what the
differences do."

"And many people are unable or unwilling to do that. There's a reason fuinjutsu
is a relatively rare ability, and people like me or Orochimaru who can use it in
combat are a rarity. It doesn't just take chakra, it takes a certain frame of
mind. I know Kakashi can do some things with it, but there are other jounin
around the village who could benefit from it quite a bit—if only just as a
source of secondary income—and yet don't pursue it at all. You have that frame
of mind, it appears. That means I can actually teach you."

Naruto grinned. "Fun! So what are we going to do today?"

Jiraiya put a hand to his chin, as if in thought. "Well, normally for the first
hour or so I'd quiz you on your theory and provide direction for your
independent study, but I'm guessing that after yesterday you didn't get much
reading done."

Naruto looked sheepish. "I read a little...."

"Yup. So, consider yourself quizzed, and your direction on independent study is
'start doing it'. Now we move on to the next part of the lesson."

"What's that?"

Jiraiya grinned. "More combat fuinjutsu!"

Naruto groaned loudly, and Jiraiya raised a hand. "Don't worry, we'll only do a
test exercise like yesterday maybe once every three or four days. The other
times, you get to practice. Like I said, kid, yesterday you were kind of
pathetic. You should be able to do a _fuuka houin_ without clones in thirty
seconds or less. I plan to get you to that level before the Exam."

Naruto sighed. "Okay, but what's the point? I could just carry tags around with
a _fuuka houin_ on them, and whatever else I need. Hell, it's not like if I'm
ever in battle I'm going to be blocking fireballs with _fuuka houin_, I'll just
dodge them."

Jiraiya shook his head. "True, the _fuuka houin_ specifically is not that
useful. The point, though, is not that you'd use _fuuka houin_ specifically,
it's to train you to be able to write seals quickly at all. In combat you might
not ever find a need to seal up a fireball, but there's certainly a use to, for
instance, sealing up a persistent shield of flame with a thrown seal." Naruto
nodded at that, thoughtful. Jiraiya grinned and continued. "So what we do for
this lesson is practice. Draw out the _fuuka houin_ perfectly, as fast as you
can, then do it again. Mix in some other seals on occasion, so you're not just
learning that and nothing else. When you can do it in...one minute, sitting
still, you'll be done for the day."

Naruto nodded, grumbling mildly, and pulled paper and brush from a scroll at his
hip. Jiraiya watched him closely as he wrote out the first seal, which was more
than a two-minute endeavor even sitting still and concentrating, then took
several steps back, only glancing at him once in a while. Naruto continued
repeating the _fuuka houin_, occasionally mixing in some random other seal he
knew, mostly explosive tags or ordinary storage seals.

It was almost half an hour later when he looked up and realized Jiraiya was
gone. Curious, and not at all averse to letting his sore hand settle a bit,
Naruto put aside the scroll and stood, looking around.

The old man seemed to be nowhere around, and Naruto frowned. He spawned two
clones, and walked off in one direction, leaving them to cover the others.

It did not take him long to find the old man. He was sitting close along the
fence that backed the outdoor baths, and seemed to be examining it for some
reason. Naruto, confused, drew closer, and saw Jiraiya leaning toward the fence,
writing furiously on a notepad he held in one hand, giving an occasional muffled
giggle.

Naruto was developing a definite suspicion, at this point, as to what his
strange teacher was doing. He took another few steps forward, and his suspicions
were confirmed, as he saw that Jiraiya was peering through a hole in the fence,
behind which were the sounds of bodies moving in water and feminine
laughter. Jiraiya had a goofy grin on his face, and the pad seemed to have only
the merest tithe of his attention.

Naruto's jaw dropped, and a righteous rage began to bubble up in his chest. He
pointed dramatically at the old man. "Pervert!"

XxXxX

It was a few days later that Naruto received a message from the doctor at the
hospital with the date of Hinata's unsealing. Naruto brought it up with Jiraiya
before they parted on the day beforehand. The old man was at first unresponsive
to the idea of Naruto missing a day of training, but when he was told the reason
he became immediately gleeful.

"Oh, of course! How could I deny you the opportunity? Being the first one there
when she opens her eyes...bringing gifts...if you play your cards right, it
could be very romantic!" This was with a wink and a broad leer.

Naruto could feel his face turning bright red. "What?! No, it's not like that!"

Jiraiya leaned close to him, a perverted grin on his face. "Ah, but it _could_
be!"

Naruto shook his head frantically. "No—that's not—shut up! She's just a friend!"

"You sure about that?"

"Yes, I'm sure!"

Jiraiya grinned. "All right, all right. Go see your...friend. I expect you here
as soon as you're done with that."

Naruto nodded in relief, slowly deflating. "Thank you, sensei."

XxXxX

Hinata was due to be woken the next day. Naruto arrived at the hospital at the
same early hour that he ordinarily trained with Jiraiya, despite the fact that
the procedure was two hours later; he had nothing better to do. He discovered
the problem with this strategy immediately: nothing was happening, the doctor
who had invited him was nowhere nearby, and Hinata's room was locked. With a
sigh, he sat against the wall across from her door and fished Jiraiya's
instruction scroll from where it had displaced one of his storage scrolls at his
hip. Naruto was quite impressed with the thing; it did not so much have sealing
instructions written on it as it was itself the carrier of a large and
surpassingly intricate sealing network that would display such information on
demand. He could look for more information on a topic simply by indicating it in
the text, and he was becoming growingly certain that it contained more
information than it was allowing him to read at the moment.

He studied for nearly the entire two hours before a nurse walked up with a key
and unlocked Hinata's door. Naruto put the scroll away and scrambled up, but she
blocked his way into the room.

"Sorry, kid. Going to be a procedure in here in a few minutes, can't have
visitors mucking things up. You can see her afterward."

Though strangely enough she did not seem particularly hostile to him, Naruto did
not attempt to argue; over the years he had stopped making the effort. Instead,
he stood against the wall and waited, while the nurse entered the room and did
several generically medical things to Hinata that he did not have the
understanding to pinpoint. Only a few minutes later, the doctor appeared from
down the hall and opened the door.

Seeing Naruto at the door, he nodded wordlessly and beckoned him in. The nurse
looked at Naruto, then at the doctor, puzzlement on her face.

"Himura-san? The rule is no visitors present—"

The doctor shook his head. "He is a shinobi, and one skilled in fuinjutsu
besides, and should by both qualifications understand the ability to remain
still and silent and not distract. Isn't that so, Uzumaki-san?" Naruto nodded
hastily. "In addition, he is a close friend of the young Hyuuga. This is not a
sterile procedure, merely an unsealing. There will be no difficulty."

The nurse nodded after only a heartbeat's hesitation. "Very well. Her breathing
is normal, but—"

What followed was a torrent of medic-speak that rapidly became incomprehensible
to Naruto. More informative was the general calm of both the participants; it
was clear that this was a routine thing. He watched, slightly on edge, but still
and quiet.

After several moments, the nurse finished her summation, and the doctor signaled
her to begin. She flipped the gown off Hinata, leaving her covered in bandages
and thin underwear—Naruto looked away in embarrassment, then, curious about the
procedure, looked back, keeping his eyes determinedly on the seals. The doctor
was going closely over the seals, checking them for something; finishing this
endeavor, he took sealed tags from a tray clipped to the bed and wrapped them
around Hinata's arms and legs, overlapping the strands with the chakra
seals. The doctor laid a hand on the seals on each of her arms; the nurse
touched the ones on her legs, and at his seal they powered them all
simultaneously, with a mutual exclamation of "Fuin!"

The tags glowed slightly, and the sealed ink on them came alive and slithered,
snakelike, onto the white paper strips that ran along Hinata's limbs, augmenting
and altering the extant seals. The doctor watched them like a hawk, his eyes
darting from seal to seal; when the seals settled down after several seconds, he
let out a breath.

"Looks to have worked. What's her chakra flow like?"

The nurse ran hands along Hinata's arms, her fingers just in contact with the
seals. "Chakra flow through the extremities...seems to be fine. It's up at ten
percent from three, and no abnormalities I can feel."

"What about her coils?"

"The flow is like a normal person would have, under throttling down to ten
percent. Maybe a little greater." She frowned. "I...can't tell. I don't _feel_
anything, which is strange. I'd expect there to be some turbulence, with all
that scarring."

"Odd...but probably good. Well, we can save that diagnostic for a little
later. Safe to wake her up?"

"Give me one minute." The nurse closed her eyes and laid one hand on Hinata's
shoulder, the other on her thigh. Her face relaxed into a vacant expression, and
her eyes seemed to be twitching under her eyelids.

Nearly a minute later, her eyes opened again, a look of surprise on her
face. "Safe. Her chakra flow is just fine—in fact, it's better than it should be
with the limiters on. Relaxing the core limits should be fine."

The doctor nodded. "Good." He took another seal from the tray; this one went on
her stomach. The nurse took up another position, one hand on Hinata's temple,
one between her breasts, and took a deep breath.

"Start it."

The doctor powered the new seal, but this time his hand remained in place, and
the nurse provided a running commentary. "Five percent, fine...seven,
fine...what? Is this at ten percent?"

The doctor frowned and nodded. "Ten percent. Keep going?"

"Take it up to thirteen. Right now it's looking more like fifteen even though it
should be ten, so actually going up to twenty percent might put too much through
it."

"Understood." The doctor did something else, and the chakra flow through the
seal on Hinata's stomach changed. "Thirteen percent."

"And flow is...fine, but it looks for all the world like it's at
twenty. Strange. She should be able to wake up." The nurse withdrew her hands,
and the doctor grabbed a vial of some liquid from a rack nearby and uncapped
it. He grimaced momentarily, and waved the mouth of the vial around for a moment
in the general vicinity of Hinata's face.

The quality of her breathing changed, and she shifted slightly. Naruto was
suddenly and very acutely aware that she was lying on the bed mostly naked,
something that had been easier to ignore when she lay deathly still. He focused
himself determinedly on her face.

Her eyes were still covered by bandages, but her face gained an indefinable
quality a moment later that made him sure that she was awake. A second after
that, her arm moved weakly, as if trying to reach up to her face.

The doctor stood near her head and cleared his throat. "Hyuuga-san? Can you hear
me?"

Her head moved in a weak nod, and a moment later she spoke, her voice a
whisper. "I hear you. W-where am I?"

"This is the Konoha Hospital. You have some damage to your chakra coils, which
is why your eyes were sealed up. Are you in pain?"

She paused for a moment. "N-no...but I can't _move_." There was distaste in the
word. "I can't see...that's very strange."

"Don't try to activate your eyes. They're sealed, and it might cause you
pain. You should be able to move somewhat, but the chakra flow in your body is
currently being restricted to only twenty percent of normal, so you'll be
weak. Don't try to sit up."

Hinata nodded again, weakly. "Ah...how long will my eyes remain sealed?"

"We're just going to do some tests on your chakra flow, and then we should be
able to unseal your eyes. Only a few minutes."

"All right. T-thank you...."

The doctor nodded slowly, though Hinata could not see him, and looked at the
nurse. She nodded back at him and placed one hand on Hinata's head and one on
her stomach. "Hyuuga-san, I'm going to try to feel your chakra flow for a
moment. Don't move." She closed her eyes and fell back into that strange
meditative state, eyes twitching under their lids. After a moment, she spoke
again, abstractedly. "Chakra flow normal...Hyuuga-san, could you please move
your right arm?"

Hinata complied, and the nurse was quiet for several moments, then directed
similar movements of Hinata's other limbs. It was a minute or so of this before
she nodded and opened her eyes. "Chakra flow entirely normal, except that again
it's just a bit too great for what the seals should be allowing. And there's a
bit of turbulence now, but not half what I'd expected. How much damage is
there?"

Hinata froze in her slightly restless movement. "D-damage?"

The doctor tensed up, giving the nurse a mildly reproving look. "Hyuuga-san,
what is the last thing you remember?"

Hinata was still for a moment, then tensed up. "Neji-nii-san...I failed."

The doctor was quiet for a moment before he continued, his lips tight. "Do you
remember using some tags to boost your chakra?"

At Hinata's nod, he went on. "There was too much chakra for your body. It tore
up your coils. When we brought you in, we had to throttle your chakra flow down
to three percent to keep it from doing more damage. You've been unconscious for
a week."

Hinata gasped, but muffled it immediately. "All right...but what is this
damage?"

"That's the strange thing. With the amount of scarring there was when we brought
you in, there should be significant turbulence in your chakra system even at
twenty percent, but Nakano-san isn't detecting it. As far as we can tell, quite
a lot of the damage simply disappeared."

Hinata relaxed. "All right...Medic-san, I think I understand what is
happening. Thank you."

The doctor frowned, but continued. "Very well. At any rate, it appears your
chakra flow is healthy, so we are going to remove the seals on your eyes. You
will be able to see, but I would still not recommend trying to use your kekkei
genkai."

Hinata nodded, and the doctor untied a bandage at the side of her head, then
carefully unwound the wraps around her eyes. Her hair fell to the side, messy
and unbound. Her eyes were covered by white circles, engraved with more careful
seals. They were taped to her face by more sealed lines; the doctor pulled the
tape off, then carefully lifted the seals away.

Hinata gasped. Her eyes were closed, but she did not seem to notice or care. "My
eyes...Naruto-kun!"

The doctor frowned. "Your eyes? What is wrong with them?"

"They...I should not say. Thank you." She opened her eyes, slowly, and looked
over at Naruto. "N-Naruto-kun?"

The doctor gave a tolerant grin. "Just one moment, Hyuuga-san, and we'll be
finished. Nakano-san?"

The nurse nodded and stood over Hinata, placing one palm on either side of her
head. She paused for a moment, slipping back into her strange trance; then her
eyes opened, and she shrugged.

"It feels normal enough. Not as if I know what a Hyuuga's chakra flows are
supposed to feel like around their eyes, but there's nothing obviously wrong."

The doctor nodded. "Very well. Hyuuga-san, are you experiencing any
discomfort?"

Hinata shook her head. "I...I think I am fine. I can't move," and her face was
frustrated, "but...I am not in pain."

"Good. Then I believe we are finished here, for the moment. Hyuuga-san, you will
need to remain in bed for quite some time. I believe tomorrow we will begin some
tests over the chakra seals, but we do not anticipate your being able to walk
for another week at least...though that prediction may be in error, if the
predictions of your coil damage were. In any event, we will leave you to your
visit, Uzumaki-san, Hyuuga-san. Good day to you."

The doctor gathered up a few sealed tags still remaining on various flat
surfaces around the room and removed them. The nurse followed him out, and the
noise of the door closing seemed louder than it should have been in the silence.

Naruto felt suddenly awkward. He stood up hurriedly, not looking at Hinata, and
moved his chair from the far corner of the room to beside the
bed. "...Hinata-chan? Are you all right?"

Hinata nodded, slowly. "I will recover. You...you got into the finals?"

Naruto nodded. "Yeah..." He fell silent again, fighting with himself for a
moment, then took the plunge. "Hinata-chan...I'm sorry, I should have warned you
about using too many tags at once...I didn't ever think about people using them
like that, but now it looks like you'll have to stay in the hospital for like a
month or so because of them, and I should have warned you, or thought about it,
or—"

He cut himself off as Hinata shook her head emphatically, or as emphatically as
one lying in a hospital bed could manage. "No! No, I knew...I could have guessed
what would have happened. The Hyuuga...we know. It...is not so bad as the
doctors think."

Naruto frowned. "Not so bad? What do you mean?"

Hinata shook her head. "The Hyuuga...for our jyuuken, we practice...very
specific chakra control. Not like a medic's control, but more in the matter of
forcing chakra out as densely as possible. Our channels are...stronger, wider
than other people's." She turned her eyes downward, as if hiding. "It's why I
have chakra capacity like Sasuke-san's, even though I don't work nearly so
hard...but the tags did not hurt me as much as they would a different person."

Naruto nodded, relieved, but his face was still downcast. "That's good,
but...you're still...I'm sorry, Hinata, but it...doesn't feel right, at all, if
you're in here all hurt. I'm sorry. I feel like it's still my fault, or...I
should have done _something_ about it!"

Hinata's face seemed to waver between what might have been happiness and
dismay. "No...you shouldn't blame yourself, Naruto-kun. You gave me the tags,
and they let me keep fighting when Neji-nii-san blocked my chakra. I chose to
use them. Please...don't feel guilty because of me...."

Naruto sighed. "I guess...but it's still...I don't know. I'm sorry."

Hinata shook her head again. "It wasn't your fault. You...." Her face darkened
for a moment, but it passed, and she looked back up with more cheerfulness. "In
the finals, do you know who you are fighting?"

Naruto's face went hard, and his stare was distant, looking more past Hinata
than at her. "Hyuuga Neji."

Hinata gasped slightly, and she glanced down for a moment, but when she spoke
her voice was composed. "I see. Naruto-kun...please, don't kill him."

Naruto looked at her with sudden surprise. "You...? I wasn't going to say, not
today. Didn't want to..."

Hinata shook her head. "I can guess...you want to protect. That Oto-nin...." She
trailed off. "But please. Don't kill him. Not...not on my behalf...."

Naruto nodded, fists clenched. "All right. If you want...but, I'm sorry, I just
can't...he did that to you, tried to kill you..." His hands opened and closed
helplessly. "I don't know. I won't kill him...but I don't think I could go up
against him in the arena without trying to hurt him pretty badly."

"Do not blame Neji-nii-san," said Hinata, sadly, her voice weak. "He
is...hurting, in pain. His father died when he was young, and he blames the main
family. Hizashi-oji...he was otou-sama's twin. When otou-sama killed a Kumo-nin
who tried to kidnap me...they demanded otou-sama's life and his body, and
Hizashi-oji was given in his place. I do not know why, I know otou-sama would
have been willing to die to preserve the Leaf...but Hizashi-oji died
instead. Neji-nii-san thinks that he was forced into it by the main branch."

Naruto sighed, closed his eyes, shook his head sharply. "And because of this he
found it necessary to try to kill you? What did he think you had to do with it?"

Hinata shrugged helplessly. "I...I don't think he was really thinking
that. But...I am of the main branch. And yet I am so much weaker than he...I
would not even have been able to injure him if I had not surprised him with your
chakra tags. He resents it, that even with all his power, he is marked from
birth to be...beneath me. Beneath the main branch. And with the seals...." She
broke off, shuddering slightly.

"The seals?" Naruto frowned. "Ah—the Hyuuga juinjutsu...but don't they simply
seal the Byakugan once the bearer dies? Why does he have a problem with that?"

Hinata shook her head, almost angrily this time. "No. The seal—when it is
activated, on the death of the bearer, it destroys the eyes, the head, the
entire brain. Hyuuga—our brains are...not normal, they have a greater capacity
to—to deal with all the information our eyes give us. So it all must be
destroyed to avoid letting an enemy analyze it."

Naruto nodded, slightly puzzled at her sudden vehemence, and she went on. "The
functions of the seal that attack the brain...can also be activated at will by
main branch Hyuuga. It is to ensure that the main branch retain
control. And...it is not always lethal, it can simply be very painful. So some
of my...honorable elders...they use the seal casually. If they think that a
branch member has...disrespected them...for instance, by bumping into them at
the doorway, or walking past them in the garden without bowing their head...they
will punish them with great pain. And they cannot fight, no matter their
strength, lest they simply be killed." Hinata's face had hardened over the
course of this little oration, and her voice was as angry as Naruto had ever
heard it, cold as winter iron.

Naruto himself was hard pressed to stem the anger that rose up in him at
Hinata's words. "They...that seal...and everyone except the main branch is
marked with this?" He noticed, almost abstractly, that his fists had clenched in
his lap, and his fingernails were digging into his palms.

Hinata nodded. "Everyone except me, my sister, my father and the...honorable
elders. And either me or my sister must be marked eventually...the main branch
is only a single line, for the past three generations. The...honorable elders
are the last generation to have more than one member in the main branch."

Naruto spoke through clenched teeth. "That...that...I don't understand. That's
wrong. I just...I don't know. And Neji's been living like that, huh?" He was
silent for a moment, then gave a rough laugh.

"All right. I won't kill him. Won't even hurt him too bad. I guess...I can see
how that might make someone...yeah. Like that mark...." He shook his head. "All
right. I'll beat him, but...wow."

Hinata nodded shakily, the cold steel that had gone into her face when she
described the Hyuuga seal seeming to drain away. "Th-thank you,
Naruto-kun....I'm worried about Neji-nii-san. He has himself all bound up in his
thinking about fate...it's not good for him. He needs to start thinking more
clearly, and...I think it could help if someone beats him. He is so strong, he
has started thinking that it is his fate to win always, as if as...compensation
for being born branch. I tried, but...." Her shoulders moved minutely in a
shrug. "I failed."

Naruto grinned, a bit of genuine humor in the expression. "Hey, if I can
literally beat the stupid out of the guy, why not?" He shook his head. "All
right. Uh, Hinata-chan...I'm sorry, but I have to meet the guy who's training me
for the finals. I'll try to come back and visit you in a few days, but
Jiraiya-sensei's kind of strict about it, so it might be a bit. Is...is there
anything I could get for you when I come back? It's got to be kind of boring
just lying around in here."

Hinata looked down, and her face turned a delicate shade of pink. "N-no, I can't
think of anything right now, Naruto-kun. Thank you...."

Naruto nodded, a little sheepishly, and slowly stood. "All right. Uh, goodbye,
Hinata. I'll see you as soon as I can."

He left the room, closing the door quietly behind him.

XxXxX

"Ne, ero-sensei, why are we all the way out here?"

Jiraiya's eyebrow twitched as it always did when Naruto used that particular
title. Naruto was less than sympathetic; as far as he was concerned, the old man
could object once he stopped using Naruto's training as an excuse to sneak away
and peek at women.

"I invite you to cease your yammering, gaki, and pay some attention, so that I
can make it clear to you why we're all the way out here." Jiraiya stopped on a
branch, and Naruto landed beside him. They were outside the village wall, which
would ordinarily have required the Hokage's stamp on a mission assignment or
special permission; however, it appeared that chuunin entry guards tended to
find better things to do when the letter of their jobs required them to attempt
to prevent Jiraiya from going anywhere. Now he jumped down to the ground, and
Naruto followed.

"Okay, gaki, really fast, what are the parts of a basic assisted summoning
seal?"

Naruto gave Jiraiya a confused look, but continued at his gesture. "Functional
triggers and such. Primary dimensional receiving. Dimensional translocation
initiator. Temporospatial objective analysis, and, uh, a bunch of primary
dimensional stuff to tie it all together, because the dimensional and the
temporospatial stuff don't always like each other."

Jiraiya rolled his eyes. "Close enough, if rough. All right, today we have a
special lesson." He was holding a pair of really enormous scrolls, which he had
apparently just picked up off the ground, and without further elaboration he
threw them both at Naruto. Naruto had to quickly create a clone to successfully
catch both of them, and he gave the old man a dirty look.

"What do I do with these?"

"Well, first off, tell me what they are."

Naruto looked at him dubiously, glancing at the scrolls. Each one was at least
the size of the Scroll of Sealing he had stolen in his ill-fated venture to pass
the Academy; he was having a hard time imagining the complexity of seal that
could be fit onto such a space. Two weeks of constant, random drills and quizzes
interspersed with independent reading had greatly increased his knowledge of
seals, but its most noticeable effect—to Naruto anyway—was to make it
inescapably clear just how many things people had thought to do with seals over
the course of history, and how few such applications Naruto actually knew
anything about.

Gamely enough, he laid the scroll he carried out on the ground. There was enough
paper on it to stretch from Konoha to Kumo, seemingly, but only the first twenty
feet or so were marked, and there was enough space in the small clearing where
they had stopped to lay it out fully. Beside him, his clone did the same with
the other scroll, then dispersed.

Naruto frowned at the scrolls. "Huh? These don't...what are these? Those are no
sort of sealing elements I've ever seen."

Jiraiya grinned. "Really? Well, I'll give you a quick hint. This is actually
kind of a simple bootstrap seal."

Naruto frowned in sudden concentration and peered at the scrolls. "Oh? Oh, I
see...yeah, that looks kind of like...huh? But that doesn't...it doesn't _make_
anything!" Each scroll was covered in elements that, once Naruto saw them that
way, would tend to create new, different elements as chakra constructs around
them when they were powered. The problem being that none of the created elements
were at all familiar or, apparently, functional either. "And those circles in
the middle just make no sense at all!"

Jiraiya grinned. "Look again. Then do it some more." Naruto gave him a grumpy
look and turned back to the seal, muttering about unhelpful teachers.

Then he saw it. Naruto groaned loudly and formed two more clones, who gravitated
to both ends of one scroll and lifted it off the ground. Both scrolls were
covered in a long seal at whose center was a strange, apparently functionless
open circle, taking up the whole width of the scroll. But the circles were
broken in just slightly different ways on each scroll, and if you let them lay
so that they complemented each other...

The one scroll now lay crosswise over the other, perpendicular, their circles
coinciding. Naruto's eyes flicked over the bootstrap seals, and saw that the
strange half-elements that each one made on its own, when combined properly,
formed a seal that actually made sense.

Jiraiya was clapping slowly, off to one side. "Good job, gaki! You got it
quicker than I figured you would."

Naruto growled at him. "Yeah, yeah. What the heck is this? Who came up with this
annoying thing? And people call my seals carelessly put together...hmph." He
turned his attention back to the crossed scrolls, glowering at them as if they
had done him personal insult.

It was a moment later that he spoke. "They're a kind of strange half-bootstrap,
and they make...an assisted summoning seal. You couldn't have just told me
that?" He gave his teacher a wounded look. Jiraiya ignored it.

"You wouldn't have gotten any good out of it that way, gaki. All right, so tell
me. What's the summon?"

Naruto peered at the seal some more. "Objective analysis...it's another of those
annoying objective-specific things. Um...I don't know the specific ones too
well, but that's...snakes, isn't it?" He indicated the piece of the seal that he
had been scrutinizing.

Jiraiya nodded. "Good job. And where's the chakra sourcing on this coming from?"

More peering at seals ensued. Naruto frowned. "It's very strange, it's like some
sort of combiner...yeah, that's what it is, a power combiner. So...a lot of
different people can all power it? Huh. I know you can do that with some
ninjutsu, but I've never seen a seal that does it."

"Correct again. So, quickly, what happens when this seal is used?"

Naruto snorted. "Some person starts it up, then a whole huge load of people all
stand around and feed power to it, then it does an assisted summoning. A damned
huge assisted summoning, as far as I can guess, to use that much chakra and need
such a big seal. So a bunch of people power this, and a giant snake pops out."

Jiraiya smiled, a bit thinly. "Good job. Now, gaki—if you wanted to modify this
seal so that when you power it, instead of doing a summoning, it completely
messes up the surrounding, say, hundred yards, but leaves everything outside
that intact, how would you do it?"

Naruto gave the old man a startled look, but turned back to the
seal. "Hmm...good question. There's no easy way to make it into an explosive,
you'd have to basically just rewrite it. Some of the dimensional
bits...hmm. Yeah, there's a couple of different ways, but...what I'd do is just
swap out the whole primary dimensional receiving for a transmitting
element. Then, if you poke the chakra source right...yeah." He glanced back up
at Jiraiya. "You'd have a bunch of really pissed off snakes back wherever they
live, but I don't summon snakes, so I have a hard time caring."

Jiraiya had one eyebrow raised, looking at Naruto with something new in his
face. He spoke in a measured voice. "You don't mess around, do you, Naruto?"

Naruto shrugged. "You're the one asking. That's the best way."

Jiraiya looked very slightly amused, and nodded. He threw something else at
Naruto—a brush and sealed pot of ink, this time. "All right. Do it."

Naruto froze suddenly and looked at the man. "You want me to..."

Jiraiya nodded. "Do it."

Naruto stared back at him for several seconds, and Jiraiya returned the look
unblinkingly. Then, slowly, he nodded.

It took several changes, all up and down both scrolls. Jiraiya peered closely
over his shoulder as he worked, but did not interfere; finally, Naruto finished
the last stroke, blew on it to dry it, and handed the brush and ink back to his
teacher.

Jiraiya grinned and beckoned Naruto up. He stood, slowly, and the old man rolled
the scrolls back up and left them where they had been, in a hollow between roots
of one of the enormous trees.

"Congratulations, gaki," he said, jumping back up into the trees. Naruto
followed. "First impromptu practical sealing examination, passed."

Naruto gave him a troubled look as they turned back toward Konoha. "So,
sensei...is there a reason why we're leaving what is now a fairly nasty trap
just lying around in the woods?"

Jiraiya chuckled, but his demeanor was dead serious underneath. "Well, Naruto, I
didn't put those scrolls there. Only person who could have properly written an
assisted summon for snakes is a snake summoner. I only know of two snake
summoners in this area at the moment, and only one of them might have any sort
of reason for wanting a whole lot of minions to be able to summon a
near-boss-level snake right outside Konoha."

Naruto frowned as he worked over this; then his eyes widened. "A snake
summoner...Orochimaru."

Jiraiya nodded, no longer affecting cheerfulness. "That's right. He's planning
something, kid, and I don't think it's going to involve sweetness and light for
everyone. You may have messed up his plans with regard to Uchiha, but he's never
only working on one level. Be wary, Naruto. Being near the Uchiha, and being
jinchuuriki, you're more interesting to him than any random genin. And you might
be a shoo-in for chuunin at this point, but you still do _not_ want to be
interesting to Orochimaru. Keep an eye out."

Naruto nodded, suppressing a shudder, recalling the unstoppable, impossible
advance of the thing in the forest whose name he had only learned later. Jiraiya
looked back over his shoulder with a wry grin.

"Hey, keep an eye out, but don't let it get to you. Orochimaru is the kind of
threat that people like me and Sarutobi-sensei deal with. You've got your own
problems."

Naruto nodded, but as they ran through the trees he still could not force down
his apprehension.

XxXxX

"All right, Sasuke, I think we're done with this bit."

"What, you think I've had enough things thrown at me over the past two _weeks_?
Why not more? I think I could see my way clear to dodging fireballs, maybe...."

"You probably could, but I think your competence with that particular style has
grown to the point where another two weeks of practice won't help you all that
dramatically. I'd like to teach you something else."

"Hmm. What kind of thing?"

"Well, there was another thing I might have taught you, during this break, that
I chose to postpone in favor of that style. We don't have enough time left to go
through the whole technique, unfortunately, or rather I could let you copy it
but you'd kill yourself the first time you tried to use it in combat. But we can
start on some groundwork."

"...Wonderful. So what's this new thing?"

"Oh, you'll see. Ah, by the way, Sasuke, did you know that you're not actually a
fire element?"

"...What? Of course I am. All the Uchiha are—were."

"No, actually, merely most of them, and the ones who weren't were just about
universally dual elements with a strong secondary fire affinity. Which also
describes you, Sasuke, hence your remarkable ability with fire. But just for
fun, try this out."

"Chakra paper? All right...I suppose."

Crumple.

"Surprised?"

"...Yes. Secondary fire element, you say?"

"Correct. But that's not what we'll be working on. The lightning element can do
many remarkable things, a few of which I'll be starting you to work
on. The...intermediate stage I'll try to get you to before the tournament has
its own uses, fairly powerful ones. Just keep in mind that you're working toward
a goal, which I'm not going to show you right now, that's actually quite a bit
more powerful than this."

"Well, I'm hardly going to say no."

"I thought not. Shall we begin?"

XxXxX

A week into their lessons, Jiraiya had made it clear to Naruto's tentative
inquiry that he would not be involved in preparing Naruto specifically for the
Exam. Naruto, while impressed by the sorts of fuinjutsu wizardry that the old
man had been teaching him, was still less than convinced about its usefulness in
open combat; he might be able to easily block minor fire jutsu with _fuuka
houin_ by now, but all things considered he had better ways of doing that. So
when he first found himself with free time, he threw himself into working out
some surprises for the Hyuuga genius that did not involve fuinjutsu.

It had been three and a half weeks since he had started his training. Two since
he had begun to work on his extracurricular activity. Two weeks of snatching
every spare hour not spent with Jiraiya, asleep or visiting Hinata, working out
new tricks. With the benefit of some strategic advice from that same Byakugan
wielder as to the precise parameters of her family's eyes....

Naruto stood amid a field of craters and splintered wood, panting and sweaty,
but his eyes were elated.

"Got it."

_There is no POSSIBLE way that Neji can beat this._

XxXxX

It was sundown, and the light struck the red rocks at a low angle, making long
shadows across the broken land. Sasuke had no idea where this place was, other
than 'generally north of Konoha', or why it alone of the surrounding hundred
miles was bare earth and high stone rather than all-encompassing forest, but it
certainly made a convenient place to train.

He was not sweating, nor tired, not really. But he breathed more deeply than he
might have, prodigious chakra use having taken its momentary toll. More than
that, his coils ached slightly with the effort of channeling unfamiliar
energy—unfamiliar, but _right_ in a way he had never felt before.

Kakashi stood beside him, and the slight click of steel into scabbard signaled
the end of their practice. The jounin was silent for a moment, staring into the
sun, then slowly, deliberately, pulled his hitai-ite down over his one Sharingan
eye.

"Only a few days left, Sasuke-kun. We'll take tomorrow to rest, then head back
the day after. I must say, you've done quite well."

Sasuke was silent, pensive. His hand sought the base of his neck, rubbing over
it, feeling the utter lack of pain or flaring power.

His voice, when he spoke, was conversational. "You know, it's a good thing
Naruto got rid of that seal."

Kakashi raised his visible eyebrow. "True. What brought this to mind?"

Sasuke was silent for a moment later before he replied. "Because with these
things...if I took it into my head to kill him, I think I actually could."

Kakashi chuckled slightly. "Been having doubts about your strength?"

Sasuke grinned, and there was savage joy and anticipation in it. "Not anymore."

-------------

-- 
Tom Dickson-Hunt