This is my first fanfic!
Sorry for not updating in a while, school has been getting to me… the next update shouldn't be too far away! Hope for the best!
It also doesn't help that I had an epic writer's block for a while. This chapter was half forced, so I'm sorry if it has poor quality. I have the next couple chapters planned out, though, so expect better updating.
Once again, I'm sorry.
Keep the reviews coming , they are all appreciated.
'Release the chakra out of my feet carefully… maintain it… maintain it… careful now…'
Naruto's thoughts were brutally cut into by barely concealed, irritating perverted giggles. Losing concentration, he wobbled slightly, trying to regain his balance and focus, but failed and fell from the surface of the water, on which he was standing, into the hot, steaming pool.
Biting his lip sharply to stop himself from screaming like a child, he scrambled out of the pool, looking himself over, trying to see if he had been burned severely at all. He finished his self check up and glared at a hunched over old man with long, white hair who seemed to be looking through a hole in a wooden fence. He was giggling to himself, and periodically scribbling in a notebook.
This caused Naruto to be curious, as he did not know what the man was looking at. He walked up to the man in confusion, and tapped him repeatedly on the shoulder.
The man turned around, annoyed, and looked at him. "What do you want, gaki?"
Puffing his chest out indignantly, Naruto glared. "I am not a gaki!"
The man bent over, peering at Naruto from different angles, as if examining a lab experiment. Then he straightened up. "Yep. Definitely a gaki."
Naruto scowled, but then remembered why he was talking to the man.
"Hey, what were you looking at?"
The white haired man just gawked at him, and then pointed at the hole he was looking through. "See for yourself."
Naruto, curiosity at its peak, did just that. What he saw made him fly backwards, face red with embarrassment. As he lay on the ground, dazed, trails of blood leaking from his nose, only one thought was in his mind.
'T-t-that w-was K-Kurenai sen-sensei naked…'
He finally got up, shaking his head to rid himself of the perverted thoughts and in an attempt to forget what he had just saw. Raising an eyebrow at the man who had been intently staring through that hole earlier, he felt a small wave at anger.
This man was staring at his naked sensei? The nerve!
"You pervert!", he yelled threateningly, pointing an accusing finger at the man, who immediately tried to quiet Naruto down by clamping a hand down on said genin's mouth, muffling him from making any further noise.
There was an accompanying shriek, and the man sighed, knowing that the ladies in the bath house he had been spying on had heard Naruto and were running away from the threat.
He matched the glare that was on Naruto's face.
"Hey brat.", he said furiously. "Who do you think you are?"
They had a slight glaring contest, before Naruto folded his arms, and closed his eyes before confidently saying, "Uzumaki Naruto. I'm going to become Hokage some day. Believe it!"
The stranger's jaw dropped. 'Uzumaki?', he thought as he watched Naruto's antics. 'There's only one Uzumaki that had a fiery temper like that… Kushina… then that means that this Naruto is Minato's brat? That would explain the blond hair and the blue eyes… the kid looks like a spitting image of Minato! Well… apart from the whiskers… and the gaki-ness…'
"Ne… you haven't told me your name!", Naruto said.
"I am the great and famous sage of Myōbokuzan Mountain! The author of the best selling Icha Icha series and the Toad Sage, Jiraiya, one of the legendary sannin of Konoha!" Jiraiya said, before jumping into a funky stance. He stood on one leg, bending the other outwards while holding his open palms out and leaping forward and backwards.
Naruto's eyes bugged out, and then he blinked multiple times. "Are all the sannin as weird as you?"
A noticeable tick appeared suddenly on Jiraiya's forehead. "Respect your elders, gaki!", he shouted out angrily, before smashing a fist into Naruto's unprepared face. Naruto was sent reeling back, landing once again in the boiling waters that fed into the springs.
Yelping in pain, Naruto once again leapt out of the pool, once again drenched with water, and feeling like he had just been cooked in an oven. He charged at Jiraiya, seeing red.
"You're going to get it now, old man!", he shouted with anger, and then formed a familiar seal as multiple kage bunshin appeared, kunais drawn, approaching Jiraiya.
Jiraiya watched Naruto with interest. 'He knows Kage Bunshin already? This is an interesting twist.'
Forming seals of his own, Jiraiya placed an open palm on the ground, and smoke covered him up. As it cleared, it revealed Jiraiya sitting in a cross legged position on top of a medium sized orange frog.
The frog opened its mouth, and its tongue shot out, wrapping itself around one of Naruto's clones. It suddenly swung the clone around like a mace, smashing it into some of Naruto's other clones, making short work of Naruto's short lived army.
With a nod from Jiraiya, the frog dispelled itself and Jiraiya back flipped onto the ground with a loud clop.
In anger, Naruto charged forward with a kunai drawn. Jiraiya smirked at this.
'So easily angered, eh?' In order to tick off the already infuriated genin, he sidestepped the charge, allowing Naruto to miss a badly thrown punch, and lose his balance slightly, which Naruto barely recovered from.
Jiraiya followed up by planting the bottom of his foot in Naruto's turned back, forcing him off balance once again and making him fall flat on his face. Naruto got up, dusted himself off, and charged again. But before he could get close to Jiraiya, a cool, menacing voice was heard.
"You'd do best not attacking my student."
Turning sharply, they saw a mass of scantily clad kunoichi, each only wearing towels that didn't do very good at covering their entire bodies. Naruto gulped in nervousness when he realized that his sensei, Kurenai was the owner of the voice and in front.
Kurenai was holding a rather sharp blade, and was eyeing Jiraiya with a look on her face that promised infinite amounts of pain to the unlucky fellow that had become the target of her wrath. Paling, Jiraiya had a hunch who that unlucky fellow was.
If the kunoichi didn't look so evil and the situation wasn't so damn serious, it might've resembled some kind of perverted fantasy. But both conditions were met, and Jiraiya's life became a living hell as the kunoichi beat the life out of him.
After they were done, Kurenai turned around swiftly, glaring at Naruto, who himself paled, as he did not want to share the old pervert's fate.
"I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.", she said, lowering her weapon slightly while raising an eyebrow. Naruto gave a large gasp of relief. "Now scram, before I change my mind."
Naruto didn't need another invitation, and 'scrammed' off as fast as his legs could take him. The kunoichi, watching the fleeing genin, couldn't help but giggle slightly at the obvious effect they had on the poor boy.
The slight amusement was short lived, however, as one of the ninja noticed a beaten and bruised Jiraiya trying to crawl away.
Jiraiya froze as a kunai plunged into the stone ground in front of his face. He turned around, gulping as he saw the devilish expressions on the kunoichi's face one again.
"We're not done with you yet, pervert.", Anko said, licking the blade of a kunai rather provocatively.
Jiraiya quickly said his prayers as the beatings resumed.
The sun had begun to climb down from its apex in the sky. The normally blue cloudless skies were doused in hues and shades of red, orange and yellow. Tinges of darkness could be seen on the edges of the skies, foreshadowing the night time.
In the middle of training ground 8, was squad 8, all gathered.
Groaning, Naruto was the first to speak, as to be expected of a loudmouth. "Ne, sensei, why do we have to do all these lame D-rank missions?"
They had all come back from a hard laborious day of D-rank missions, each boring Naruto, as well as the rest of the crew, to their cores. Regardless of whether it was chasing the Fire Daimyo's wife's cat Tora, cleaning or washing houses and the interiors of stores, taking out the trash, etc, none of these could appease Naruto's wish for a challenge worthy of a true ninja.
Ino groaned in agreement. "I have to agree with the baka here." Naruto gave her a quick glare and a humph, and folded his arms. Kurenai stifled a giggle at the scene. Shikamaru gave a slight smirk and then turned away as his interest faded.
"All this work… it's such a drag…", Shikamaru mumbled, lying down on the ground and admiring the sunset above.
Kurenai's aching body wanted nothing else but to agree with them, but her shinobi side forced her to be the voice of reason in the situation. "Team 8, you are but genin. You need training exercises to help you guys get used to using teamwork. D-rank missions, albeit boring, are a sure way to train this without the penalty of death you might have in tougher missions."
Naruto scoffed. "If I have to do another D-rank mission, I'll explode!" He waved his arms to prove his point.
Kurenai smirked. "Lets put that theory to the test, shall we?" Naruto groaned again, dropping from a standing position onto the ground in a cross legged position next to Shikamaru.
Suddenly an all-too-familiar voice popped up. "Hey!"
A tick appeared in Naruto and Kurenai's foreheads appeared as they all turned to see the newcomer, Naruto and Kurenai recognizing the voice.
Jiraiya was standing there, waving to the team as he approached. He sweat dropped at the sight of Kurenai, who had just given him a sound pounding that morning. Kurenai, also reminiscing the event, cracked her knuckles threateningly, which made Jiraiya freeze for a moment.
Shikamaru raised an eyebrow at the strange greeting what he knew was one of the legendary sannin got, but passed it off before resuming his cloud watching with a softly said, "troublesome…"
Jiraiya raised his hands as if surrendering. "I'm here for Naruto."
That got everyone's attention, if the unexpected arrival of one of the sannin of Konoha had appeared hadn't.
"Naruto? What do you want him for?", Kurenai wondered out loud, curiously.
Jiraiya chuckled.
"Well the Hokage is getting up in years you know…", he began, but was cut off.
"SO I'M THE REPLACEMENT?!", Naruto leapt to his feet excitedly, pumping a fist in the air. The rest of the people there just stared at Naruto's sudden outburst.
"…no…", Jiraiya said, blinking, bursting Naruto's quickly inflated balloon of confidence.
Naruto pouted, and then sat back down, scratching the back of his head in slight disappointment. Ino slapped her forehead with an open palm, and Naruto retaliated by sticking his tongue out with a "nyeeeh".
"In any case", Jiraiya continued. "he is looking for a replacement, as Naruto brought up. He asked me, of course, since I'm just Jiraiya.", he said grinning, puffing his chest out and pointing at himself proudly. The squad raised eyebrows and gave him disbelieving looks, which made him pout like Naruto. "Hey… I'm not that bad…", he whined.
He resumed a more serious tone and straightened up. "But, I declined, as I have other duties to attend to." There were a couple of snorts of disbelief.
"Like spying at the bath houses?", Kurenai and Naruto piped up, getting a sweat drop from Jiraiya.
He coughed loudly. "Yes…", he said in a small voice under his breath so that no one could really hear him, but then went back to his normal volume. "I am also the master of a huge spy network. I gather information on Konoha's enemies. I can't just become Hokage and stop that important job. The network is so knowledgeable that I can basically get info on almost anyone I wanted."
They all nodded at the explanation, but Kurenai was a little skeptical. She voiced her thoughts. "So what does this have to do with Naruto?"
Jiraiya coughed again. "I was getting to that. You see, I recommended one of my team mates, Tsunade."
"The medical specialist?", Shikamaru asked, getting a surprised look from the sannin.
"Looks like you, kid, know your stuff.", Jiraiya noted, before bopping Naruto playfully on the head.
"Unlike this gaki…", he murmured audibly, getting an indignant "hey!" from Naruto and snickers from the team.
"Yes, Tsunade, the medical specialist.", he continued. "Unfortunately, she left the village a while back, and no one knows where she is."
"What about your spy network?", Ino asked curiously.
"She's gone missing, and she's pretty well hidden. My spy network is extremely extensive, but most of the time we can't track her at all.", Jiraiya said nodding, emphasizing the phrase 'most of the time'. "One of my spies has given me a lead, and we know hazily where she might be headed next."
Nodding, Kurenai said, "You still haven't asked why Naruto is tied up in this whole mess."
Jiraiya grinned before clapping a hand on Naruto's shoulder. "What can I say? I've taken an interest in the gaki. We're going on a short training trip. He has potential, but he needs some work."
Kurenai raised an eyebrow, her temper growing slightly short. "I've been helping him for a while now, and he has been improving. Are you implying that I'm not a good teacher?". Her eye twitched dangerously at the possible implication. She clenched her fist subconsciously, a move that Jiraiya noted fearfully.
"Yeah!", Naruto exclaimed, defending his sensei. "Kurenai-sensei has been really helpful in helping me improve!" Kurenai gave him an appreciative smile.
Sweat dropping again, Jiraiya raised his hands in defeat. "Well, I've been requested to tutor Naruto for a short time. I decided I'd get started early."
"By whom?", the entirety squad 8 said in unison. Naruto was extremely curious, and in his mind he was guessing who would take an interest in his training. No one really cared about him very much… could it be the Hokage? His thoughts were interrupted by Jiraiya's response.
"By Naruto's father, of course.", Jiraiya responded cheekily, enjoying watching the gaping expressions of everyone there. Naruto turned white and started shaking. Shikamaru seemed to be the least affected, just raising an eyebrow.
"N-Na-Naruto's dad?", Kurenai responded shakily. "I t-thought he was dead?"
Jiraiya nodded in acknowledgement. "He and I were close friends. This was kind of a last favor he asked of me."
Naruto had gotten over only slightly the shock of hearing that someone might've known his heritage. "M-my dad? W-who was he!?" The intent stares from the rest of the group told Jiraiya that they wanted to know as well.
Jiraiya poked Naruto on the forehead, eliciting a yelp of pain. "All in due time, Naruto."
The team had trouble stifling their disappointment that the opportunity to learn more about Naruto's shrouded past. Kurenai was the first to speak again. "I suppose to honor Naruto's father's wishes, you will become his temporary sensei on this trip."
Jiraiya smirked in victory. "Naruto, we're heading out tomorrow at 8. Be at the main gate." Naruto nodded, and then sat back down, as he had gotten up in excitement at the mention of his father.
As Jiraiya turned to leave, Kurenai tapped him sharply on the shoulder, making him turn around. He gulped when he saw Kurenai's threatening face about a foot away from his, a kunai held tightly in her clenched fist to his throat.
"…if I hear that you've made Naruto into a pervert…"
Jiraiya gulped as Kurenai pointed the kunai down in the direction of Jiraiya's crotch, before turning around and letting Jiraiya leave with the threat still hanging in the air.
Jiraiya looked around, but the genin hadn't seen the small exchange.
He stomped his foot on the ground, and walked away.
"Maybe if I make Naruto into a closet pervert she'll never know…", Jiraiya muttered thoughtfully, but then froze as a wave of killing intent washed over him.
He turned around nervously to see a glaring Kurenai with her kunai still in hand.
"I said that out loud, didn't I?", he said, gulping nervously.
His punishment is all up to your imagination.