Disclaimer: Naruto is not mine, and neither is Final Fantasy. I just own my personal copies of the manga/games :)
Dance of the Pyreflyes, Chapter 9: A Super Pervert?
by Chronodt
Naruto, the true one, arrived at the hot springs a few minutes before Ebisu sensei, just a few minutes after his clone's memory told him of the appointment. He had just given Iruka sensei his surplus fishes and was planing to relax a bit by reading the second half of the first scroll, but true training from the closet pervert was too tempting to resist.
"Alright, Naruto." began Ebisu, as soon as he arrived. "The beginning stage of water walking is traditionally done in a similar environment." Naruto was a little disbelieving, but still listened with attention.
"Now, unlike Tree Walking, where you just have to place a fixed amount of chakra on your feet..." he walked near the hottest pool, "... to walk on water you must constantly emit it from your feet in such a way to create a surface that can hold your weight." he stepped on the VERY hot water and stood in it. "Hot water is both slightly easier to affect with this technique and an incredible incentive for success" said the teacher with a smirk.
Naruto nodded and started gathering his chakra on his feet. Wishing to avoid a boiling hot bath he carefully stepped on the water, where he promptly fell in it. "HOT!!" he yelled, jumping out.
Ebisu didn't help by laughing, even if only a little.
"As you can see, just like in Tree Walking, only the right amount of chakra will allow you to remain stable on the surface; the difference is that this time it has to be a constant flow instead of a constant amount. An increased difficulty of this exercise is that variation of mass, center of gravity or movement alter the distribution of weight on your feet and require intuitive readjustment of that same flow. You will have to practice until you are able to fight on water as well as you fight on the ground. Only then you'll have this skill mastered."
Naruto nodded. He had never had an exercise explained so well, even if he had a little trouble understanding things like center of gravity and such, but it was clear after he said that he had to fight while doing all this without having to think about it.
"After you manage to stay on top of the water, you can use clones to perfect the skill and we'll do taijutsu training. Iruka told me that your form is horrible but the academy stile doesn't suit you. I am, I'm afraid, not very knowledgeable about a taijutsu style that would suit your build and style. I will have to ask Maito Gai about it, but in the meantime I'll let Iruka correct your basic punches and kicks."
Naruto shivered, and hoped Gai's suggestions didn't include green spandex. However he was intrigued, because apparently Ebisu was allowed to ask others for training tips if not outright training for his benefit. That could be of enormous benefit to his training, and he almost hoped Kakashi could train Sasuke for more than a single month.
Naruto trained for an hour, falling dozen of times in the scalding water until he decided to remove his jumpsuit, when he heard a familiar giggle.
There, just like a couple weeks ago, there was the same pervert he sent to the hospital to "test" his blood seal, still peeping on the female half of the spring. Ebisu followed his gaze and was appalled by this man's behavior, in such a public place, too!
"W-what a shameful display, sir!" yelled Ebisu, hurriedly walking to confront the man. "You should be.... AAARGH!"
He didn't finish the phrase, because as soon as he started talking, the man made a few handseals and a giant toad appeared below him. The toad shot out with its tongue and knocked out his teacher.
"Keep quiet, you don't want me to get caught, do you?" said the old man.
Naruto was surprised Ebisu lost. Well, not really, considering how easily he lost to his Harem no Jutsu he wasn't THAT strong, but still he was a jonin.
"Hey, you, damn pervert!" asked Naruto, posing himself before the man."Who the hell are you? And what's with that frog?"
The damn pervert looked happy, actually HAPPY to be asked for his name. And he did a very weird pose, too!
"Thanks for asking, kid! I am THE Toad Hermit of Mt. Myobokugama, the Gama-Sennin! Remember it!"
"What the hell are you talking about, Ero-Sennin! You disabled my teacher!"
"He was in the way of my research!" said the man, with a smug face.
"Research?" he asked, confused. All he saw was the man peeping as a common pervert! Even twice!
"Yes, I am the writer of this literary masterpiece!" he extracted a very familiar orange book from his pocket. Naruto instantly recognized it.
"That is...", words could not come out to express the amount of indignation he felt right in that moment.
"Oh, you heard of it, then! They get younger every day!" said the old pervert, pleased.
"That is the worst trash book ever seen in Konoha, that's what I heard!" And it was true. Akiko heard plenty of such rumors from housewives, shopkeepers and kunoichi. Strangely, most men instead talked about it as a holy book. He himself leaned toward the girl's opinion, seeing all the faithful readers were perverts, including Kakashi sensei and the Hokage himself.
And most of them had fallen for his Oiroke no Jutsu at least once.
The man seemed to lose his good humor really fast at that. "You are evidently too young to understand the beauty of this kind of literature, kid!"
"What the hell do you intend with literature, old man! If your research comes from spying naked girls you are seriously committing wagonloads of crimes just to write that trash!"
"You fool! I'm really serious about my books and I want the highest quality in my works!"
"That is just an excuse to peep! And what about him?? He was supposed to teach me, you know!"
"Teach you? That water walking you were doing?"
"Yes. But since you knocked him out, you'll take his place!"
"Are you kidding, brat? Why should I do it?"
"Uhh... " Naruto was out of ideas. Normally he WOULD have used Oiroke no Jutsu to convince this pervert to help him, but after a few days as Akiko and being aware of boys' stares he wasn't sure he could bring himself to use it as a bribe, especially with this kind of pervert.
Then the man suddenly seemed to recognize the orange jumpsuit on the floor.
"YOU! It was you, you damn brat, wasn't it?" yelled the pervert.
Naruto was worried, he had a crazed expression on his face....
"Well, I must thank you, your jutsu inspired me in one of the greatest scenes my mind ever conceived!"
Naruto actually felt dirty after hearing that...
"As a thank you, I will actually oversee your training, for today only!"
"Oh, thank you!" and he mentally added: "Yes, thank you Ero-Sennin!"
As he resumed his training, he again fell a few times, but he didn't notice that the old pervert was looking with real interest his stomach. He would have been creeped out if he did...
"So that is truly Minato's son... he really looks like him, too."
As soon as Naruto fell again in the water, he was able to get a better look at the seal.
"Kid, come here a moment, and mold a little chakra, please." Naruto shrugged his shoulders a moment, and did as asked. He saw the man examine the seal attentively.
"Are you a Seal Master. Ero Sennin?" he asked, curious.
The old pervert answered: "I'm surprised kids today don't know about me, I thought you knew." he returned in his pose: "I'm the legendary ninja, Jiraya-sama! Seal Master, Toad Hermit and a Super Pervert, irresistible to women everywhere!"
Naruto sweatdropped at the self-declared Super Pervert.
"So can you remove Orochimaru's Five element Seal?"
"You know about it?" asked a very surprised Jiraya.
"I'm studying seals, but of that one I just know its name and that is restraining a defensive mechanism of the Dead Demon Consuming Seal."
Jiraya looked with a little more attention to the brat. He was feeling a strong sense of deja-vu as he looked at him. Change his clothing, his hairstyle and remove those whiskers and he had a Minato just out of the academy, including his never ending energy, his hyperactive ways and his interest in seals. Then he looked at the seal itself, and studied it with a critical eye. What he saw... was impossible. Naruto should be dead minutes after the sealing with this seal, Minato could not have been such an idiot to place a seal that forcibly mixed a human chakra with youki...
However minutes passed, and he could find nothing that would stop that mixing in that seal. Instead he found a control mechanism, inaccessible from the outside without the Key in his possession, to regulate the mixing rate.
"How can he be alive... with such a seal?" he asked, worriedly.
Naruto sweated, and not from the heat.
"Uh... I.. er..." started Naruto. He felt trapped. If this man started thinking the fox took over it was better to tell him about his bloodline... but...
"Kushina... there is no other explanation. He inherited her bloodline, but that means.."
Naruto realized he was so shocked he had simply thought aloud, not really asking questions. However that meant this Jiraya was one of those high-ranked ninja who knew of his mother's bloodline.
Jiraya exploded in a wide smile, then he seemed to remember where he was, and asked Naruto: "How far along?"
"It has just three tails left, Ero-Sennin, and recently I found instruction on how to keep the seal at the optimal performance. It has no more than six month left. Probably even less than that."
Jiraya was actually smiling, a serious, but relieved smile.
"So you know about her, too?" asked Jiraya.
"I have two of the family scrolls and I can probably find the rest." said Naruto, unwilling to disclose everything.
"Well, brat, I hope that you are ready, because since tomorrow, you are my disciple. Now let me get rid of that seal and continue with water walking. About that, you are doing good, you just need practice. After we are done here I'll have to see the Hokage. And... NEVER speak about the true purpose of the seal until it disappears, to ANYONE, am I clear?"
"Clear... uh.. Ero-sensei?"
"Damn brat!" his fingers lighted with chakra and he hit Naruto right in the seal. Naruto believed the unsealing could have been done a little more gently but he evidently didn't like that last Ero-Sensei comment. Unsealing done, the pervert left the premise, probably to the benefit of the female population in the hot springs.
"So the Third Hokage himself didn't know?" asked Naruto to himself, "Or just that pervert?"
"ARGH! I forgot to ask him if he knew my father!" cried Naruto, before returning to his work.
In the middle of all that, Ebisu continued to sleep undisturbed.
Akiko was quietly conversing with the young genin-archivist about the last Shinobi War, trying to keep away from personal information. She realized, by talking with this genin, that even the reserve corp did missions, once in a while. The lowest of D ranks, because of the lack of supervision, but missions nonetheless. She had to either abandon her cover before being discovered as some kind of spy, or actually improve it, making it real with the help of Ebisu, Iruka or the Hokage. However if the Hokage was informed of it, he would make inaccessible to her the one information she was actually looking for, so in a bout of awesome stubbornness, she decided she would present her identity to the Hokage with a successful infiltration and espionage mission in her belt: infiltrate his own tower: a self-assigned B rank mission to infiltrate the Clan Archives and find out the name of the husband of Kushina Uzumaki. It even sounded official.
Saying goodbye to the other genin, Akiko left to return home, her mission clear, and the first step done. She had a "date" tomorrow with the genin-Archivist Yasha Horiki, to discuss a little more about the history of the Clans of Konoha!
Naruto, (again, the original one) after drying himself off, fell into the bed, completely tired. He finally managed to stand in the water for 5 minutes, if the water was completely still and he kept his concentration. Ebisu, who regained consciousness a couple hours after the pervert left, said he was good enough that he could leave the mastering of the technique to the clones, now. Since he was too tired to continue, he guessed a clone would be, too, so he simply left to return home. Once he was back, he briefly nodded to the clones and took the first family scroll, reading that second half before contacting his mother and going to bed. What once was the 'Akiko clone' (now in his natural shape) just entered with the rice and began preparing his dinner. The true Naruto, instead did not even pay attention to the good smells coming from the kitchen, his eyes were glued to the scroll, completely shocked...
"The massive summoning of pyreflyes require the opening of the death gate??????"
He read again.
Yep.
The Death Gate is the door from the chakra circulatory system to the Farplane.
Upon the death of a living creature, the chakra leaked away from the coils slowly opens the Gates in sequence, ending with obviously the Death Gate. From there the soul can leave the body and reach the Farplane...
He looked in the document, some way to disprove what he read, but he found a single passage, instead: "The opening of the Death Gate is, for most human, a suicide endeavor. Impossible to even manage unless all the previous seven Gates are already open and drained, however our White Chakra, thanks to its incredible healing properties, allows us to do it without excessive dangers to our bodies or souls. The ordered opening of the Celestial gates, called the Warrior Path, causes the chakra stored in the gates themselves to be released in the inner coils, together with both the beneficial and harmful effects of the release of the limit imposed by the Gate itself. This normally allows the body to increase its combat power enormously, at great damage to the user's health. Unfortunately our bloodline precludes us from getting the true benefit of this path, because the innate healing properties of White Chakra subsides both advantages and disadvantages of the opening of the Gates. An ordinary person opening the Initial Gate would receive a tenfold increase in muscle strength and would tear them up very easily, causing great muscular pain for several minutes and possible heavy damage to many muscle groups. Our White Chakra would somehow replace the limiting effect of the gate itself, leaving us with just a modest increase in muscle strength (up to about double strength) for a very short time (less than a second), with little to no damage to muscles, easily repaired in a few seconds if needed. The only true advantage of opening the Initial Gate for our Clan is the freeing of a great amount of Chakra stored in reserve in the Gate. The way of the Lotus, as it is known in Konoha, is forever precluded to our Clan."
"Damn, so I cannot learn Freaky Eyebrow's technique even if I work really hard! My body simply cannot do it. Well, that is what he must feel about ninjutsu and genjutsu, so I guess it is a tiny bit fair."
"Inversely, the Way of the Summoner is where our bodies excel in the control of the Celestial Gates. By opening first the Death Gate instead of the Initial Gate, the influx of chakra trapped inside the Gate has no way of entering the inner coils, but our White Chakra can guide it to the Farplane instead, where it will form a bridge, allowing a swarm of Pyreflyes to be summoned to the real world. Be aware that allowing the open Death Gate to access the inner coils, by opening all of the Celestial Gates, will still eventually cause the death of the user."
"Well.. good to know." said Naruto.
"Without White Chakra, the chakra of the opened Death Gate, without a way to relieve pressure in the inner coils, would bust out the heart of the user, causing a quick but painful death. This known fact is often used by the Hyuga Clan's Gentle Fist, in their famous heart death strikes."
"Wow... awesome!" said an awed Naruto. Even if he could not use the Lotus, he could still get some use from those Gates. And he apparently could survive... wait a moment. A Hyuga Death blow in the heart? "HINATA!" he yelled, surprising the clones.
He calmed down, remembering that he injected White Chakra in her heart, just before medic-nins swarmed her, so she probably was safe now. But that meant that Neiji REALLY wanted to kill her! It was a deliberate mortal blow! His fury against Neiji reached an unknown level, to the point where he started feeling youki seep into his coils, before he was knocked out by his own clones.
After a 30-minutes rant in the seal's mixing chamber, an amused Kushina finally got to ask:
-What's wrong, Naruto-chan?-
"Neiji is what's wrong, mom!" snarled Naruto. "I've been reading the second half of the scroll, since Super Freaky Eyebrows and Kakashi sensei told us about the Gates. And I read that the Hyuga are known to hit tenketsu over the heart to force open the Death Gate of the victim, causing them a 'quick but painful death'."
-Yes, it's true.-
"That ass, Neiji, my first opponent in the finals, used THAT on HIS COUSIN HINATA! Probably the only decent Hyuga from what I've heard around! And just because she is considered a failure by her clan!"
-How... how is she?-
"I don't know, but I haven't heard of a funeral, so I hope she's alive. I managed to use a Cure on her as soon as I could right in her heart. I felt her breathing get better, and soon after that, medic-nins got to her."
-That's good, Naruto-chan. You probably saved her life, you know?-
"Yeah, I read about the pressure and the White Chakra..."
-However.. how come your jonin sensei decided to explain to you the Celestial Gates?-
"Ah, right. Let me finish my story, so we can arrive to that point."
-Oh, yes!-
Naruto spent the next hour repeating, with just a few minor embellishments, the events since his strange graduation up until his meeting with Jiraya.
-I guess there is no longer a true need of that book. You have already witnessed its self-destructive potential first hand. I still want you to read it, though, so get one as soon as you can.-
"I need to know also how can I fare against the Gentle Fist, and the other Konoha finalists if you know anything about their clans."
-The most problematic for you would probably be the Aburame kid.-
"Uh? Shino? Why?"
-Uh.. the kikai bugs LOVE our chakra... using a White Jutsu on an Aburame is like giving them a soldier pill. Draining it causes the same effect, too. Luckily the fox's seal will protect your chakra until you can learn how to seal it yourself, if needed.-
Naruto shivered at the idea of being swarmed by amorous over-energetic kikai bugs.
-On the other hand, if you are ever paired with one, you can increase his/her power by using a simple member of the Cure jutsu family on him/her.-
That was good to know.
-For the Hyuga you will need to learn the Esuna no Jutsu, to purify the tenketsu of your body if they get clogged, but organ damage can only be quickly repaired by the jonin level White jutsu, so be careful and don't get caught. About the Kaiten, if the kid knows it, I would suggest to master the first scroll completely.-
"Uh.. Why?"
-So you can gain access to the Farplane Guardians. In particular I would suggest you to contact and summon Carbuncle, the Shield Guardian. You won't find anyone who comes close to his abilities with barriers and shields. He can make and, if he gets enough power, BREAK them easily.-
Naruto was awed. With THOSE abilities at his disposal he could actually shame Neiji's pride, his Gentle Fist mastery! He would probably make an enemy of the whole Clan, but he didn't care. A Clan that treated his own as they treated Hinata didn't deserve his respect.
-About the other Konoha kids from clans you may face in the exam, our bloodline isn't particularly effective or ineffective. The sharingan can't copy them, so don't worry about holding back on the White Jutsu if you need them. However you'll have to warn him to not try to copy your summoning technique, because if he foolishly tried to open the Death Gate...-
Naruto shivered, thinking back to what he read in the scroll.
"So.. uh... how do I open the Gates?"
-Yes, Naruto-chan, I'll teach you, but first I must tell you a few things that I noticed in your life story. The first is about how you constantly use irritating nicknames for people you like, and the second... well, you need to know it since you are old enough. You may have heard about it, it is often referred to as 'the birds and the bees'...-
"Are you sure about it, Jiraya?" asked the Hokage. He had dismissed the ANBU a few moments after they begun talking, due to the secrecy of the topic.
"Yes, I'm sure about it. That damn brat didn't tell us anything about what the seal would do to the fox. We assumed it would simply keep it locked up."
"It is a great relief hearing about it, actually." said the aged Hokage, feeling years younger, as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders.
"It is not all a good news, however. There is a group of S-rank missing nin, called the Akatsuki. I don't know their final plan or many of their members, but I know they want the Biju and travel in groups of 2. If they were to discover this..."
"...yes, I understand."
"Naruto may be in danger even after the death of the fox. They are likely to not believe that the strongest of the Biju has been killed by a kid. Luckily they will need him alive. Unluckily, once they discover the truth, he will no longer be useful."
The Hokage lit his pipe, thinking. "Jiraya, are you willing to train Naruto after the exams? He will need to protect himself from them fast, since he will not be able to access the demon's youki for long."
"You are right, sensei. I will take him with me. Three years of intensive training should be enough to keep him alive long enough to escape if he meets one or two Akatsuki members."
The Hokage sighed, compiled and signed an Apprenticeship permission for Uzumaki Naruto to Jiraya of the Sannin.
"Here it is, Jiraya. I'm entrusting his safety to you."
Jiraya could only nod, before poofing away in a cloud of smoke.
