"Stupid ero-sennin," Naruto grumbled as he wiped sweat out of his eyes. His on again, off again teacher had disappeared after giving Naruto a complicated regimen of chakra control techniques to practice on. Over the years Naruto's control had slowly developed to the point where he now felt like he could control his power as well as the aging Sannin master himself, though Jiraiya would never admit it. Indeed, from what Naruto could tell these new exercises mainly burned through chakra rather than refining his ability to channel it.

Not that he had run out of chakra in a long time. Even without the aid of his demonic prisoner Naruto's natural reserves had increased under the influence of heavy training and years of desperate combat. It had been a matter of getting strong or dying and Naruto was still very much alive. Naruto's intuition, honed by his ninja talents, flickered for a second as someone approached in a manner they probably considered stealthy.

"Oi! Ero-sennin! Are you done peeping yet? When are we going back to Konoha?" Naruto asked without turning his head or interrupting his concentration on the training technique he was currently engaged in. He appreciated the need to train away from the village from time to time, especially as such journeys dovetailed nicely with the need to conduct espionage against their myriad of enemies, but he was really starting to miss the many individuals he considered precious.

Two man sized frogs wielding long weapons that resembled swords with sickles on the end leaped out of the underbrush from opposite sides and attacked Naruto at the same time. Naruto deflected the blades with the metal strips that covered his forearms. He had taken to wearing the vertical strips of sharpened steel for just such an occasion. Having little talent in advanced weapons beyond standard issue kunai and shuriken, which could handle a sword in a pinch, but were decidedly inferior toward the purpose than simply using his arms. He had also made sure that he could channel chakra into the narrow blades since any weapon that allowed the user to do the same would still cut through metal that wasn't chakra reinforced. Naruto was in no mood to lose an arm even if he suspected his prisoner might be able to regenerate it.

"Hey, Ero-sennin, if you wanted to spar you could've just asked," Naruto said cheerfully as he continued to dodge and parry blows. Jiraiya burst out of the thick forest growth only a few dozen paces away from him atop on of his characteristic frogs.

"This isn't a spar Naruto," Jiraiya said coolly. His frog opened its mouth and unleashed a torrent of bullet like attacks with its long tongue. The heavy metal balls embedded in the tongue ensured that a hit would be like getting punched with a superhumanly strong metal fist. "You've learned everything you can from me. Now my stupid apprentice, you will either pass my final test by defeating me or die trying."

"You'd really kill me?" Naruto asked as he formed a seal and slammed an open palm under the defense of one of the melee frogs. He rolled through the puff of smoke that the defeated creature left behind and inhaled deeply, molding chakra all the while.

"Of course," Jiraiya roared as he too formed seals and inhaled, "Now die!"

Naruto pushed in on his chest and spat out a rapid series of sticky mud balls as he ran to the side toward the other melee frog. Jiraiya had expected them to come at him, but instead they plastered the hapless frog to the ground. Jiraiya, who had been tracking Naruto, wasn't quick enough to stop his attack of searing flame. The other frog disappeared in a burst of smoke just like the other one. The smoke hadn't even begun to disperse before more balls of muck rained down around Jiraiya and incapacitated his mount.

Jiraiya bit his thumb to get some needed blood for a new summon. "Kuchiyose no Jutsu," he yelled, his palm slamming down onto the ground. There was a massive burst of white smoke that parted to reveal Jiraiya atop the legendary Gamabunta, Lord of all Frogs.

"No fair Ero-sennin," Naruto whined from his perch atop one of the surrounding forest's many trees. No matter how hard he tried he was still having trouble coming at his long time friend seriously. "You know I can't summon a frog to help me now because none of them will fight against the Frog Boss."

"Yeah, and you're several decades younger then me, life isn't fair," Jiraiya muttered, slightly angry with himself for not coming at Naruto as hard as he could. The kid had even started to exaggerate his old personality and now Jiraiya couldn't help but start to feel nostalgic.

"Besides," Jiraiya yelled, "I gave you a chance to summon him in the beginning didn't I?"

"Jiraiya!" Gamabunta rumbled irritably as he puffed on his pipe. "Why did you bring me here just to spar with that loud kid?"

"This isn't a spar Bunta-sama," Jiraiya explained. "Naruto is our target for elimination."

"Oh?" Gamabunta replied curiously. "Is it already time for that? He's just as interesting as he was all those years ago…"

"Crap," Naruto thought to himself as he surveyed the scene in front of him. Even Jiraiya would be hard pressed to fight against Gamabunta were the situation reversed. He formed a series of hand seals.

"No time to reminisce right now," Jiraiya said urgently.

"Don't tell me my business," Gamabunta grumbled as he leaped into the air. The trees around him whipped violently in the sudden windstorm the giant frog's movements caused. The spot that he had just vacated was already swirling under the influence of an earth technique. A moment longer and Jiraiya's big friend might have been in serious trouble.

"I need water and oil," Jiraiya said as they reached the apex of their jump. Below them Jiraiya could feel Naruto preparing his next move.

Naruto knew he was in trouble when Gamabunta swelled up sharply and began spraying a fluid that he assumed was oil. However, as soon as the concoction was ignited Naruto realized his mistake. A giant cloud of super heated steam billowed down on the forest boiling alive everything in its path. Naruto's eyes widened slightly as his hands flew through a series of seals before the oncoming cloud rushed over him and obscured everything from view.

"He's still alive," Gamabunta said. The ground shook from the force of his return to the earth.

"Of course he is," Jiraiya said, scandalized at the notion that any student of his could die so easily. "Are you underestimating me?"

"I'm not sure that's possible," Gamabunta replied sarcastically.

"There, tongue," Jiraiya commanded, pointing at a suspicious shape he could distinguish against the rest of the ruined landscape. There was a crash of rock being ground down to gravel by the power of Gamabunta's attack. Chakra seemed to erupt from everywhere around them.

"Bunta-sama," Jiraiya yelled. He kicked the Frog Boss's head in the direction he wanted to go.

"You must have a death wish Jiraiya!" Gamabunta said dangerously, but his ire vanished when he saw the sharp earthen spikes that had erupted from the ground all around the position he had vacated. If Jiraiya hadn't spurred him to motion when he did Gamabunta would have been skewered from all sides by the technique.

Gamabunta let out a painful sounding 'oomph' as a fist of chakra enhanced air slammed into his side unexpectedly. He leapt away, but another tendril of air, molded heavily with chakra, snagged one webbed hind leg and sent him sprawling. Jiraiya glanced around, but the air was still heavy with fog from his earlier attack.

"Enough," he declared. Jiraiya slammed his hands together and used his chakra to manifest a mighty gust of wind that blew the battlefield clear.

"You know why I didn't even try to summon Gamabunta?" Naruto asked as his position was uncovered by Jiraiya's technique. "In a situation like this…he's just a big target!"

"Hey, take that back-" Gamabunta was cut off in mid-complaint as the earth erupted around him in scaly stone colored coils. Naruto's long snake-like earth dragon nearly wrapped itself around Gamabunta before he leapt away again. However, the danger posed by Naruto's technique didn't end there. The dragon opened its mouth and spat out large dagger like shards of stone. Gamabunta tried to leap high into the air, but there were too many projectiles preventing him. He realized that if he were to jump his movements would become too predictable and Naruto's attacks would be able to strike him.

Unfortunately, staying close to the ground proved to have its own set of perils. The coils of earth dragon seemed to sprout out of the ground limitlessly as the chakra created monster tried to wrap itself around the Frog Boss.

"Gotcha," Naruto said, his hands moving rapidly again. As the coils of the dragon settled down on the Frog Boss he unleashed his earlier technique again. Jiraiya tried to save his summon and even managed to shatter the earth dragon, but it was already too late. Gamabunta grunted as several earthen spikes penetrated his thick hide.

"Jiraiya," Gamabunta said thickly, "You'd better prepare yourself for the next time we meet even if this was for a good cause."

Jiraiya knew that Gamabunta would be angry with him while now and sighed as the injured frog disappeared in cloud of smoke. Still, he had accomplished his purpose of forcing Naruto to use up a great deal of chakra with three big ticket ninjutsu moves.

Still, he too had suffered from chakra loss, not only from the initial summoning of Gamabunta, but also from the substantial chakra it had taken to destroy Naruto's earth dragon during Jiraiya's failed attempt to keep his summon in the battle. Jiraiya's hair lengthened and hardened into a cocoon around his body as his ninja intuition saved him from a surprise attack from behind. Explosive tags attached to the kunai still sent Jiraiya flying though, even as his technique saved him from injury. He couldn't help it now. If he wanted this to work he was absolutely going to have to get serious.

Naruto glanced around, surprised that his tags hadn't managed to do more than they had against Jiraiya's defense. He knew how to use his hair in such a manner too, but he wasn't confident of his ability to repel a dozen of the most powerful explosive tags with just that technique alone. Now the perverted Sannin was no where in sight and Naruto was beginning to get apprehensive that some kind of innovative attack was being prepared for him.

The earth shattered beneath his feet and Jiraiya sprung out of the ground in a mess of swirling white hair. The strands were razor sharp and even as quickly as Naruto responded he could still feel some warm wet liquid dripping down his face from a scalp injury. Jiraiya thrust forward with two chakra charged fingers that would have plunged through Naruto's heart had he not twisted away at the last moment and thrown up a hasty defensive screen of taijutsu moves.

"No finesse," Jiraiya breathed as he redoubled his onslaught. "No reprieve, but you'd better not make me regret teaching you, idiot apprentice."

Naruto was shocked by the haunted look on Jiraiya's face as his mentor lashed out furiously at him. It was like he wasn't even talking to Naruto at all. It was almost as if he were repeating a conversation between two other people that he merely witnessed.

"What are you babbling about Ero-sennin?" Naruto asked. He put on his most innocent pout as he delivered a bone cracking chakra enhanced blow to his aged opponent's ribs. He thought about all the people back in Konoha who were counting on him. All the important people he had sworn to protect. All the injustices that only someone greater than the Hokages would even attempt to correct. "I can't stop here. I don't understand your test, but I will surpass it!"

Naruto delivered another set of jabs to Jiraiya's midriff when suddenly a ripple in his perceptions caught him up short. Leaving himself vulnerable to attack he spun to the right and thrust his fist into midair where it ran up against something solid. Before he could correct his stance though the visible Jiraiya delivered a stout blow to Naruto's side and then melted into dark ooze.

"Genjutsu," Naruto wheezed as he leapt backwards to get clear of the immediate danger. He formed a seal and poured chakra into breaking the effects of the ongoing assault on his mind.

Jiraiya watched Naruto warily as he circled him looking for a weakness. He wasn't the best genjutsu user of all time. His specialty was in resisting them, twisting them against their user, and recognizing when they were being used. Finally he decided that it was now or never. Even Naruto would quickly tear down any illusion that he might employ.

Jiraiya's hands flew through a series of seals that ended with rock hard earthen projectiles carving themselves out of the soil all around Naruto's location. With a final burst of energy the chakra molded into the impromptu kunai propelled them into Naruto. In a flash he was impaled all over his body so that he resembled a strange blonde hedgehog.

Jiraiya staggered and the ground beneath him cracked from the force of Naruto's retaliation. There was a puff of smoke and Jiraiya realized that he had been fooled. The Naruto that he had attacked had only been a shadow clone. Jiraiya's hair spread out to shield him from the attack and he molded chakra into a spin to create a counter wind to repel the dense air Naruto was trying to crush him with.

Freed from the grip of Naruto's technique Jiraiya reacquired the brat's location and inhaled deeply, molding chakra into his breath for a series of air attacks of his own. Naruto flickered and reappeared back on the ground, also swelling up for an elemental attack. Jiraiya barely had time to spit fire to vaporize the incoming shots of water that Naruto was expelling toward him.

"Idiot apprentice," Jiraiya muttered to himself. "At this rate I'll wear you down and you know it."

Naruto struggled to catch his breath as he swallowed his last soldier pill. Like any medicine the soldier pill had limits and Naruto had just reached them. Sure, they could replenish a portion of one's chakra, but if a person were to consume too many too rapidly then they would burn out their chakra coils. From this point on Naruto was restricted to how much he could generate on his own and thanks to Jiraiya's training exercises from earlier he hadn't been anywhere near his full levels for the entire battle.

Naruto saw Jiraiya flash through another series of seals and faltered at what to do. Rushing in could be incredibly dangerous at this point, but if he didn't do something to end the match in his favor he was seriously going to die. Jiraiya had made it clear, for some reason known only to him, that the end of training with a Sannin appeared to be a life or death test. Naruto took a couple of hesitant steps forward and felt the ground slick over beneath his feet. Even enhanced traction provided by chakra couldn't prevail against the impossibly friction free surface of ice that Jiraiya had produced. Immediately, a hail of deadly shards rained down on Naruto from all sides to take advantage of his temporary unsteadiness.

Naruto concentrated his chakra and two seals hidden beneath his clothes, one on each upper arm, flared up. Seemingly out of no where a dense white colored membranous shield of chakra materialized to form two elongated halves that, when combined, could form a protective cocoon around his body. The ice shattered against his shield and before Jiraiya could react Naruto was on the attack again. The shields now served as weapons with each half of the curved lens shaped objects gouging out great chunks of ground wherever they missed Jiraiya.

"Rasengan!" Jiraiya shouted as he delivered two swirling maelstroms of chakra into Naruto's crossed shields. While calling out the attack wasn't necessary Jiraiya knew that sometimes an auditory cue helped focus the mind and as such made a difficult technique easier to pull off. Two rasengan crunched through Naruto's chakra shields with only moderate difficulty, but the time it took was all he needed to escape being caught up in the devastating attack.

"Kuchiyose no Jutsu," Naruto yelled unexpectedly. Jiraiya cursed and leapt back expecting to see a huge frog appear before him. Instead what he saw could only be described as…bizarre. Two frogs had attached itself to Naruto's back, one of the frog's head was sitting atop his like a grotesque hat and the other was situated in the opposite direction with its head dangling off his backside like a flabby cape. Both frogs opened their mouths and unleashed their tongues, which wrapped tightly around Naruto's legs.

Jiraiya didn't have time to wonder what Naruto was trying to do when the purpose of the strange technique was demonstrated. Using the powerful muscles of the frog's tongues Naruto was able to propel himself to even greater speeds than normal. Jiraiya was suddenly on the receiving end of extremely powerful kicks from a Naruto moving so fast that he seemed to be in several places at once.

"Got you!" Naruto crowed as he appeared directly behind Jiraiya. He raised his leg high in the air to deliver a decisive blow to the old Sannin's exposed back when two large ghastly looking hands reached out of nowhere and punched him. The force of the blow sent Naruto rolling end over end until he crashed into an exposed slab of rock that was left over from an earlier earth technique.

"Its been a long time since someone forced me to use demon hands," Jiraiya said, exhaustion beginning to creep into his voice.

"Kuchiyose no Jutsu," Naruto yelled again as he regained his feet. Two more frogs appeared in a similar configuration to the first two except that these were attached to the front of his body. Their tongues lashed out and wrapped themselves around Naruto's arms with the same effect as the first two.

"Idiot apprentice," Jiraiya laughed as he flickered into position behind Naruto. With those things clinging to you how do you even expect to see your opponent?

"Its easy," Naruto replied. Jiraiya flinched as he looked into the eyes of the frog clinging to Naruto's back. Instead of a normal frog's eyes these eyes were a deep color of blue. Quicker than he could react both frogs loosed their hind legs from around Naruto's torso and kicked Jiraiya squarely in the chest. "You're not the only one who can ask the frogs for new techniques you know. Unlike you I asked some of the smaller ones too. You're too obsessed with the big frog bosses Jiraiya."

Jiraiya grinned and wiped off a trickle of blood that was coming from his mouth. "Well done boy, but don't get cocky," he said he moved his hands in a series of seals again. However, before he could get the technique off Naruto let loose with an attack using one of his frog's tongues. With them wrapped around his arms Jiraiya never expected for them to be able to elongate out enough to hit him, but hit him they did, and with a blow far beyond that of what he would expect from such a young frog.

"Those frogs," he wheezed as he fell to one knee, "You're feeding them your chakra aren't you?"

"Exactly," Naruto said as he flicked away and appeared next to Jiraiya. Now the battle was trending in the opposite direction with Naruto's frog enhanced taijutsu dominating Jiraiya's waning technique. Naruto saw an opening and slipped a blow in to his old master's side, but as soon as it hit Jiraiya slipped in under his defenses and bashed one of his frogs to smoke. With symmetry destroyed Naruto's body was sent spiraling away from the Toad Sannin and caused the rest of his frogs to be dispelled.

Jiraiya smiled at having broken his student's offensive enhancements, but that smugness of was short lived when he saw a tag affixed to his side. He was barely able to channel enough chakra to survive the blast when his body was bowled over by the explosive seal Naruto had slipped onto him. He used the momentum of the explosion to dodge Naruto's flurry of kunai, but there wasn't much left he could do with the injuries he had endured.

Jiraiya pushed himself into an upright position out of sheer willpower and channeled his remaining chakra into a swirling sphere just in time to counter Naruto's own finishing Rasengan. Naruto's technique overpowered Jiraiya's in the end, the force of it cracking the ground beneath him, but stopping short of killing him.

"Its over Ero-sennin," Naruto said. He threw two shuriken and used his chakra to guide them so that they wrapped Jiraiya securely in strong metal wire that had been attached beforehand. "Now can you explain what this is all about."

Jiraiya groaned, but he was smiling. "Sure, but can you release me first, this is terribly uncomfortable you know."

"I don't know," Naruto said cheekily, "It might be a trick after that whole 'win or die' speech you gave me earlier."

"Sorry, that's the traditional speech," Jiraiya said. "I promise, no more tests from me, you pass."

"All right!" Naruto yelled happily.

"Now please, hurry," Jiraiya said. "Its embarrassing, what if someone saw me, the Legendary Toad Hermit, sitting here trussed up like this?"

A moment later Jiraiya was standing back up thanks to what limited medical treatment Naruto was capable of and his own endurance. He pulled out a scroll and tossed it to Naruto.

"What's this for?" Naruto asked suspiciously. Last time he had seen something like this it had ended up in him getting tossed off a cliff.

"It's a contract scroll of course," Jiraiya said. "But this scroll is something that only a couple of people get to see in the course of several generations usually."

"I thought I could only have one contract?" Naruto said.

"It isn't a contract for summoning," Jiraiya explained. "This is a contract with Konoha that was created by the First Hokage. Now that you've beaten me you can safely sign it and accept your new title."

"A title?" Naruto repeated, now quite confused.

"Right, this contract is very dangerous Naruto, since it measures if one is qualified to sign it. If you weren't then it would kill you," Jiraiya said. "That's what the test was for, to see if you had enough power to be worthy of the title."

"And if I had of failed?" Naruto asked.

"Then I would have had to kill you," Jiraiya admitted. Then upon seeing Naruto's face he hastily grinned and waved his hands frantically. "Not that there was ever a chance of that. I knew you could do it, and its done now so don't worry about it."

"It had better be worth it," Naruto grumbled.

"Of course it is," Jiraiya said indignantly. "Unroll it and sign your name just like you did with the frog contract."

Naruto did as he was instructed as Jiraiya explained what benefits would be bestowed upon him now. "You'll be able to leave the village as you see fit without being declared a missing-nin, even the Council and the Hokage can't command you directly, just ask for your cooperation. I really like that one."

"Jiraiya," Naruto said softly as soon as he had finished affixing his signature. The aging Sannin was shocked to hear his former apprentice use his name for a chance. "Your signature is here too, so is Tsnuade-baa-chan's, and even Orochimaru's."

"That's right Naruto-kun," Jiraiya said smugly. "Let me be the first to congratulate you, the fourth living holder of the title of Legendary Sannin of Konoha."