Chapter 14

Two weeks later

AN/ A point has been raised!

Somebody (not naming names) basically said that Anko shouldn't have called Jiraiya a pedo because Fu is fourteen and in puberty. But I am going to say that while the direct translation of pedo is 'lover of children', fourteen is still firmly within the bounds of the term 'child'.

Another thing!

While it is a mixed bath that he was peeping on, it is still enormously rude to peep on women in a mixed bath and vice versa for women to peep on men. There's a difference between a communal place where people can relax, clean themselves, and socialize and a person who pervs on women for lecherous purposes.

Duck under slash. Parry away the first blow and dodge the second. Jump up in the air to avoid the snakes flowing from the ground.

Fu spat out a globule of blood from her mouth. Naruto had at one point during the battle smacked her right across the face with his bo staff. Must have cut the inside of her cheek or something.

Naruto was heavily leaning on his left leg. At some point, she had hit him really hard on his thigh. Now he barely had any feeling there and it wasn't reacting like it should.

They were staring at each other from across a field in the middle of the forest of death. There was barely any sunlight because of the overhanging canopy, although they had a clear view of each other because of the transient light poking through every now and again.

It was a slight breather during their normal spar. That being said, he didn't want to risk taking his hands away from his bo staff and begin healing his thigh. No, that'd leave him open for a little bit of divine retribution.

A huge toad wielding double short swords waded into the clearing, bisecting anything and everything in its way.

Naruto and Fu jumped away from the toad, but found themselves in trouble. The vines that fell from the trees had somehow replaced themselves with snakes. They snapped at everything within their grasp, very nearly getting Naruto while he was in mid-air, but he used a shadow clone to toss him away from harm at the last second.

The two Jinchuuriki were engaged in what Anko called a 'fun spar', which basically consisted of them duking it out in the forest while she and Jiraiya ran interference.

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Two weeks ago

Naruto stared at the man in the grips of pain on the ground below him. It was his own damn fault for being such a pervert, but still, a neurotoxin was a bit much to be treating perversion with.

The man stopped squirming all of the sudden and stood up straight just as if nothing had happened to him at all. Naruto took a step back in alarm. "Woah, are you okay?"

Jiraiya looked at the Jinchuuriki as if he was only just noticing his presence. "Yeah brat, I've got a resistance to most snake venoms in the world. Still hurt like a bitch though." He had a certain traitorous teammate of his to thank for that.

"Well you wouldn't be hurting so much if you weren't such a pervert."

Jiraiya huffed and looked at Naruto with a scrutinizing eye. "I'm not a pervert." He said resolutely.

Naruto quirked an eyebrow at the large man. "Well what are you then?"

Jiraiya traded his serious look for a goofy one. "I'm a SUPER pervert-" He stopped mid-declaration as he suddenly found a foot thoroughly burrowed into his crotch. The eccentric man fell to the floor in the grips of pain once more.

"Do you have a resistance to getting kicked in the crotch?" Naruto asked smartly.

Jiraiya got up faster than when he was out from the venom. "Actually yes." He had a certain irascible teammate of his to thank for that.

"Who are you anyway?" Naruto had only stayed behind at the baths to make sure the old guy was alright, but he found himself intrigued by the old pervert. Not every civilian pervert had a resistance to physical trauma and snake venom.

Smoke surrounded Jiraiya and Naruto found himself looking at a large toad with the sage standing on top of it. He began a long winded speech accompanied with a very choreographed dance. He looked silly, but he looked silly in a rehearsed way.

"I am the great, the gallant, Jiraiya." He said, ending the dance in a stance betraying someone very important.

Naruto deadpanned. "Who?"

Jiraiya's stance shattered and he looked at Naruto with a slightly hurt expression. "You honestly don't know who I am? Jiraiya of the Sannin, expert sealmaster, owner of the toad contract, lover of wo-"

"Expert sealmaster?" Naruto asked excitedly.

"Er, yeah. I'm the most intelligent person in all of Fire country when it comes to seals."

"Do you know about the uhhh… the five… the five something seal?"

"Five tetragram?"

"No, no. Something else. It's like the uhhh… the five… Arrg! I forgot what it was called. The fingers of the guy who put it on me were all purple and on fire. You're a seal master right? That should be specific enough."

"That's the… five elements seal. I only know of three people who can use that seal and one of them is dead. Who put that on you?"

"Orochimaru of the Sannin. Oh wait, you're a Sannin too. Does that mean he was your teammate?"

Jiraiya was at a loss for words. He had already been debriefed by Sarutobi that Orochimaru had gunked up the exams, but didn't know that Naruto, his student's son, was involved with it. "Y-Yeah… he was my teammate."

"Oh." Naruto said lightly, scratching the back of his neck slightly. This situation just got slightly awkward. "Anyway, you can remove it right?"

"It's easy. Where did he hit you with it?"

"My gut." Naruto lifted his shirt to show the man.

"Channel your chakra." Jiraiya ordered, getting down on one knee to get a better look at the blonde's stomach. As soon as he concentrated on channeling his chakra, seals written in a blank ink showed up in front of Jiraiya's face.

Jiraiya went through a few handseals and his fingers went up in a blue fire. He lightly touched the fire to the points in Naruto's seal where the five element's seal array was present. Naruto squirmed a bit from the sensation of the seal getting removed. "That feels so weird."

"Yeah, you'll get that." Jiraiya remarked offhandedly.

Naruto circulated his chakra around once more. It felt more… natural now. As if an unseen burden had been lifted without him having known he was under the burden in the first place. "Great! Now you can do Fu's seal. She's my teammate, she got hit by the seal too."

Jiraiya looked up at the night sky. The sun had vacated the upper reaches of the heavens, leaving only a moon gleaming in the sky full of little pinpricks of light. "Nah." Jiraiya said. "I don't think your friend is going to enjoy me coming over to her place at night in order to remove a seal. Plus it's dark out and I'm tired. I'll get rid of it in the morning. Where'll you be?" Now that he knew Orochimaru had messed up someone's chakra network with that bastardized seal of his, it kind of fell on him as a responsibility to help get rid of it.

"We'll be at training ground 44." Naruto said excitedly. Fu was going to be so happy when she heard the seal was going to be removed.

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As it turns out, Fu wasn't too hot on the idea of being anywhere near the man. In fact, Jiraiya very nearly got killed for real when Anko found him sneaking around the forest of death. Naruto had a dickens of a time trying to explain away why the pervert was there.

In the end, Jiraiya never really left and decided to train the two Jinchuuriki with Anko and Yugito. Naruto didn't exactly know his motivation, but decided not to question it.

He was also having a tough time trying to even enter the mindscape, the place where a Jinchuuriki could meet with their bijuu in the corporeal representation of their chakra system. Fu got there in no time flat and was able to speak easier with Chomei. She even convinced the large coagulation of chakra to let her train with some of it. So while Fu was off with Yugito in the afternoons to help her with the bijuu chakra, Naruto was stuck meditating in a forest.

It was boring, stupid, and not worth the effort as far as Naruto was concerned. He just didn't meditate well, he finally concluded.

Anyway, fighting with Fu, Anko, and Jiraiya got him so many more experience points than he thought he would get from it. In fact, he gained 3 levels within the first 3 days of sparring. The slope of how many experience points he got fell off though, not even in that he had to get more to gain more levels, but also in that he received less experience points from fighting them as well. He asked Anko about it using really vague terms and she brushed it off as the law of diminishing returns. Naruto didn't know what that was, but the way she explained it made sense.

Getting back to the fight, Naruto charged ahead at Fu with his bo staff close to his body. She was a fan of both supplementary fighting and close range fighting, although she leaned on the latter when it was one on one. So Naruto had learned very early on that when fighting a person who uses two handed swordsmanship, he had to keep his bo staff close to his person to make sure she couldn't take advantage of any openings that wide swings with a bo staff would create.

They clashed in a flurry of swift, precise blows that any civilian would have a tough time with keeping track of. Loud 'clacks' filled the clearing as the hardened water swords impact the tough wood of Naruto's bo staff. Fu's technique usually called for fast, battle determining strikes within seconds of the initial fight, and she was good at delivering for the most part. Only, bojutsu was a form of martial art that called for stalling the opponent by redirecting the strikes of the weapon that the opponent was using and attacking when she either got too tired to effectively fight, or got too frustrated to think straight. In this manner, they fought pretty evenly for the most part. Every so often, Fu would get a hit to one of Naruto's vital points, calling the match; or, just as often, Naruto would get her guard open and hit her with a flurry of quick, debilitating strikes across the torso and head.

Usually, after their round of sparring, Naruto and Fu would get taught by Anko in the basics of what she knew, different practically every day. Once it was identifying poisonous plants and how to extract their toxins, the next it was identifying medical herbs and using them for medical benefits, after that there was the lesson on moving stealthily either in the trees or on the ground, properly stretching the body to eventually get it more limber and capable of insane acrobatic feats (something Naruto wouldn't get any benefit from due to his acrobatic stat pertaining to his flexibility), she even taught them the basics of tracking using sight and evidence when there was no scent to pick up anymore.

After she was done grind- er, training them. Fu would go off with Yugito to learn how to control her power and Naruto would go off into a clearing to meditate. He always tries to as well, but is often too distracted to do it for more than five minutes. Afterwards, he heads off to find Jiraiya and tries to extract teaching from him. The damn pervert never responds unless Naruto's a naked chick, but he at least tries to teach Naruto some things. He even let Naruto sign the toad contract.

Once the training would conclude, Naruto and Fu would head off to the Inuzuka compounds to get some R&R. It was quite a funny thing, his new living arrangements. Once Hana talked to her mom about his living scenario, she professed that there weren't any open apartments available for the two of them. So Tsume opened the doors of her own house for Naruto and Fu. Although her house was larger than most, it wasn't on the scale of a mansion or anything. A total of four, fully stocked, fully applianced out bedrooms with extending bathrooms made up the sleeping areas. Tsume's own, Hana's, Kiba's, and a guest bedroom. Tsume assumed that Naruto would take Kiba's bedroom and Fu would take the guest one, but was informed by the green-haired girl that she preferred to share a bed with the blonde-haired Jinchuuriki. So they both took the guest room together.

She was shocked once again when his sensei practically invited herself in to stay with them for the remainder of his living there. You see, Anko got Fu and Naruto on getting their poison and venom resistances up by taking light doses right before bed. Only they always forgot to do so. It wasn't a lack of will to do the experiment, merely a case of forgetfulness. So until further notice, she was living with her apprentice to make sure they did so. She had a right to do so as well, described by the contract that the Third signed off on.

It didn't really matter to Tsume much, because Anko slept in the same room as Naruto and Fu and she also didn't really leave much a trace of her existence around the house during her extended stay.

Naruto found it slightly strange for them to share the same futon with each other (the house was traditional eastern style with western influence), but you know what they say.

People norm.

It's a known fact that people act like the other people around them when the average behavioral disposition changes. It's a survival technique still in effect back from when people were monkeys. Either way, when Naruto was exposed to the fact that it actually wasn't that big a deal for people to share a bed for the sole purpose of sleep, shown when Fu and Anko didn't mind and readily accepted to sleeping in the same bed without any fuss, he subconsciously got more okay with the concept as the days and nights dragged on.

Although, it was agreed by both Fu and Naruto that she couldn't sleep with them if she was in the buff, which she tried to do often.

People norm, but old habits die hard.

As far as romance goes, Naruto was content to just wait it out and see what happens. After all, this was a situation completely foreign to him. And it's not like Anko's comments helped very much when he asked her about it.

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Two weeks ago.

"Hey Anko?" Naruto asked suddenly. They were alone in his house eating breakfast. Fu said something about going out to go get some fresh air before she helped him pack for the Inuzuka compounds. It'd be tough, because Naruto was going to have to compress an apartment's worth of items and material goods into a single room's. Everything else would go to storage.

"Yeah kid?" She asked with a mouthful of eggs and bacon. It was a simple dish, but he really knew how to make it.

"I need some... help. Or advice, I guess."

"Okay, what do you need?"

"What do you do, when… a lot of people like you?"

Anko quirked a brow at him. "You're going to have to be a bit more specific in your problems than that."

Naruto took a deep breath and started again. "What do you do when there's a person who likes you, in a… lovey kind of way, but you don't feel the same way about them?"

"Oooohhhhhh. Little Naruto-kun has some admirers. Who are they? Spill the beans." Anko asked intrusively.

Naruto shifted from foot to foot uncomfortably. "It's Fu, and Tenten, and Hinata."

"Hinata? You mean the Hyuuga heiress? That's quite the catch young grasshopper. I'm so proud of you."

"But I don't like any of them." Naruto stated helplessly.

"Do you dislike them then?"

"No, I just don't like them."

"Then what's the problem?"

"They like me more than I like them. What if they confess to me? Am I just supposed to turn them down?" Naruto didn't want to do that, to cause someone pain and heartbreak.

"No, you're supposed to accept and go on some dates with them. Listen kid, if every single relationship in the world was born from mutual attraction, then there'd be a lot less of them in the world. If you don't know much about her, and she confesses to you, then you're supposed to accept because for all you know, you could be soul mates."

"But I like someone else."

"For god's sake kid, are you still on that pink haired girl? I scoped her out a bit, don't exactly see what's so great about her."

"You stalked her?" Naruto asked incredulously.

"Does that honestly surprise you at this point?"

"I guess not. Okay, but there are three of them that I like. I can't be with all three at once."

"What's stopping you?"

"The fact that… it's not right?"

"If they're okay with it and you're okay with it, then what's wrong?"

"But I'm not okay with it!"

"You aren't? Wouldn't all guys trip head over heels to be involved with multiple girlfriends?"

"Not me. It's not right. It's… devaluing the uhhh… rights and sexuality of women everywhere?"

"Where the fuck did you hear that crock bullshit."

It was one of his more… feminist academy teachers. The one who taught sex Ed.

"Okay, well here's this. If you deny dating more than one person for the sole fact you are not comfortable doing so, then you're devaluing the rights and sexuality of the girls that you're turning down."

"Eh, just. Okay." Naruto said, giving up. He really didn't want to talk about it right now, too confusing.

Keys jangled from outside the apartment, Fu was trying to get in from her walk about. Anko grinned mischievously at Naruto. "Be careful, looks like you're sharing your bed with your admirer."

"Don't you say one goddamn word." Naruto warned.

Anko's only response was to smile dangerously at him.

He never should have told her anything.

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Naruto decided to let whatever happen, happen. He was 13 and not at all knowledgeable in the concepts of advanced romanticism.

Is there a class for that? Romanticism 101. He'd have to check up on that at some point.

Getting back to the fight at hand, Fu and Naruto were stuck in a deadlock like they'd never seen before. The longest spars between weapon users never lasted longer than about 20 or so minutes, and that was the upper limit. They had been sparring with their weapons for a good two hours or so. Neither giving the other any advantages or openings.

Their fighting had a certain grace to it. Not in that there were jumps and twirls and euphonic movements all over the place. More in the fact that they didn't let a single movement go to waste. That every step or swing led into another and that they were all practiced strikes heading towards exactly where the user intended them to go. Beauty in pragmatism.

Anko and Jiraiya looked at the two duke it out from the upper branches of the trees. "They're getting really good at fighting." Anko remarked.

"No they aren't. It is true that their form is getting more precise, they're just learning how to fight each other, not other opponents. Sooner or later they're going to have to get different partners." Jiraiya said.

"I was talking to myself you fucking pervert." Anko said coldly.

Jiraiya sighed. "We've talked about this Anko, I didn't know it was you in the bath."

"And I don't give any fucks." Given her status as the student of Orochimaru, she knew Jiraiya in passing as a kind of estranged uncle figure. He kinda showed up every now and again, but they didn't really talk much. There wasn't much to talk about except for the snake Sannin and they had bad memories associated with him, so they didn't.

The conversation dropped off for a while as the two continued to look at the sparring Jinchuuriki. "What opponents were you thinking of?" Anko finally asked.

"A mission maybe. Bandits, missing nin, there are any number of missions every day asking about them. It might be some good experience for both of them."

"Are you kidding? There's no way the village would sign off on a mission taking on bandits and missing nin with Naruto and Fu on it. I've heard about the Zabuza incident. Naruto almost died on a C turned A, the Third won't let him on another until he's sure Naruto will be safe. Or what about Fu? She's the most powerful weapon that Taki has. If we lose her, we'd be in a political shit storm."

"Then we ask for talent within the village." Jiraiya said. "This chunin exam will be determined by how well the kids will be able to work with each other. Are Izumo and Kotetsu still around? If memory serves, they're the best example of synchronous fighting."

"I could call in a few favors." Anko said.

Jiraiya smirked at the Mitarashi. "You see what happens when we think together? We get things done."

"I'm still not going to forgive you." She said coldly.

"Oh come on Anko-chan, don't be like that."

A snake slithered down from the branch above Jiraiya and hissed in his ear. "Don't call me Anko-chan" She warned.

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"Summoning" Naruto shouted out and slammed his palm against the rocky ground. A tiny little toad popped up from the resounding smoke.

"Yo." It said, raising its hand in greeting. "Nice to see you again for what, the thirtieth time?" Naruto wasn't getting much success in way of summoning anything useful for battle. He was able to get a small toad every now again, the most common one being Gamakichi, a blue and orange toad that likes sweets.

"Yeah, yeah. You know the drill." The toad saluted and poofed away in some smoke.

Jiraiya looked away from his telescope to see the Jinchuuriki's struggles. The summoning jutsu was a very chakra intensive form of reverse spatial teleportation. To get even one summon the size of a large dog, one would have to have jonin level reserves. Naruto's reserves were at about that point, but he didn't know much in ways of chakra control. Chakra control dictated how well you use the chakra at your disposal, but even a person with the greatest chakra control in the world wouldn't be able to suddenly get a jutsu on the first try. Every jutsu has a specific way to control and manipulate the chakra that is only helped by things like chakra control.

Jutsu's are basically molds in which chakra is shaped into. Handseals make the general form and the person must mold the chakra into the shape of the mold. Chakra control gives the tools that the user needs in order to shape the chakra at a fine detail. It doesn't matter how well one knows a mold if they don't have the tools to get the chakra into its shape.

Naruto didn't have that option. What he did have was the chakra of one of the mightiest beings ever spawned sealed into his gut. If he could get a hold of that chakra, then he'd be able to complete the jutsu on a grand scale.

An analogy would be that the mold for the summoning jutsu is in the shape of a pot, or something. If one could manipulate the chakra correctly, they could make the chakra stretch into its shape with the center being hollow. Naruto had enough chakra to where he could fill up the entire thing with chakra, filling the mold, but didn't have the chakra to stretch it out.

Not every jutsu works that way, but most area-of-effect and spatial jutsu do.

Whatever the case was, Naruto had enough chakra to completely fill up a small pot, meaning he got a small toad. If he had the chakra control, he could probably shape that amount into a medium sized pot at least, but he didn't.

Jiraiya looked at Naruto as he whooped in joy. He got a slightly larger toad that time.

It wouldn't be enough if that was the amount of progress he had to show for two weeks of work.

"Hey, kid!" Jiraiya shouted at him.

Naruto looked up from the toad as it just despawned. "What?"

"You need help with that jutsu?"

Naruto gave him a hard stare. "I've been needing help with it for a while!"

"Well I've somewhere that's really good for learning how to do it."

"Really?!"

"Yeah kid."

Anko was probably going to kill him for trying this.

Naruto scrambled up to the rock where Jiraiya was sat at as a vantage point for peeking on the women in the pool below. "You mean it?" He asked.

Yeah, she was definitely going to try to kill him. Whelp, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

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12 days ago.

Ever since Shikamaru got a hold of the guidebook, Naruto hadn't seen hide nor hair from the lazy Nara. At first he was worried that Shikamaru told someone important about it, but by the time night fell on the second day of silence, he decided that even if Shikamaru did tell someone, they probably wouldn't have believed him. That didn't really explain his disappearance though. Whenever Naruto went to the compounds, his mom explained to Naruto that he was too busy to visit, which Naruto knew was complete bullshit. There was no way that Shikamaru was too busy with something other than the game he found himself in to chew over.

Naruto was in the guest room of Tsume's house. He finally got everything he needed all moved and unpacked and was in the process of nursing a headache with his medical ninjutsu. They usually were easier to handle if he took care of them on a case by case basis instead of falling asleep before most of them dispelled.

There was a knock on his door, starting Naruto away from his headache nursing. Kashikoi looked up from her little cushion on the floor in suspicion. "Hey Naruto." Came the tired sounding voice of Shikamaru.

Naruto got up from his bed and let Shikamaru in. He was kind of nervous. On further reflection on his introduction of the game to Shikamaru, he realized that he probably should have given Shikamaru a bit more information before forcibly recruiting him.

Shikamaru walked into the room with his usual lazy and aloof expression. In his hands was the beige handbook and one very large book about the size of a rather informative encyclopedia. "Took me a while to find you." Shikamaru remarked. "Didn't know you moved. Didn't know you became an honorary Inuzuka. Didn't know you're living in Kiba's house." These words were said with a lazy countenance, but they were also somehow sharp, biting even. "You see, the thing is, people say that us Nara are really smart. We're not smart. Or at least, we're not book smart. We just know how to take information that people usually overlook and formulate plans and actions based on that information to the best of our ability."

Even though Shikamaru paused, Naruto didn't comment into his monologue. It sounded more than a little rehearsed.

"So." Shikamaru finally said. "You are going to give me as much information on this game as you have. Then, I'm going to make a plan."

"A plan to do what?"

Shikamaru smirked. "A plan to break the game."

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As it turns out, Shikamaru only ever got one extra piece of 'game hardware'. A huge book that detailed the inner workings of the game. It was called the walkthrough hand guide. Whatever the case was, Shikamaru found some very interesting things out from the walkthrough.

Namely, although he was now officially 'a part of the game', he wasn't affected by stat changes. Or at least not to the extent that Naruto was. His stats were still listed and he could still level up, but the points were auto-assigned. He also couldn't do anything to get merit points, but for some reason, he could make changes to Naruto's own stats through Naruto's handbook.

It was a very strange and obtuse party system.

From the day that he dedicated to reading the walkthrough, Shikamaru figured out a short term training goal for Naruto to try and achieve. He told the Uzumaki to put all the points he had into his Intelligence. From the book, he learned that the more Intelligence one has, the more that their mental output could remain unburdened. Meaning that the more Intelligence he has, the more shadow clones he could safely make. No more debilitating headaches for Naruto.

He also told Naruto to not put any attribute points into anything revolving around fighting or fighting styles. The reason for this was that Naruto was able to get points on his own through training. If he put points into the sections where he could have advanced without the use of points, they would be wasted. If Naruto's bojutsu form was 175/200, he wouldn't be able to advance any farther through the conventional means because he would need a really good teacher and battle experience to bump it up, so that would be a good point to use the attribute points. If the form was 100/200 and he put attribute points in there when he could have still trained to get the points up, those points would be wasted.

Shikamaru also wasn't very willing to take advantage of the game for his own personal gain. He didn't want to be a super double SSSSS-ranked shinobi who could fire lasers out his eyes and control people at will and grow bone swords out his joints and make lava erupt from the ground. No, he was just an average shinobi who wanted to make an average living and live an average life. He was more than content to just learn about the game and instruct Naruto on how to beat it.

Nothing more, nothing less.

He also figured that going to the higher ups at the village would be a horrible idea. Finding out one of their shinobi had the potential to get every single kekai genkai in existence would mean horrible experimentations on Naruto. No, the safest thing to do was find out how to get the game to loose its hold them and get out of it as soon as possible. Becoming the shinobi who could turn into God sounded like a good idea, but Shikamaru came to the conclusion that there was no way the game was as good as it pretended to be. There had to be terrible consequences with going along with the game.

Whatever the case was, while Shikamaru was trying to figure out how to break the game, Naruto'd be trying his best to get ready for the exam. That revolved around getting his tailor skill up, his forging skill up, upping his intelligence, and working on teamwork with Fu. Oh, and he'd have to get into his mindscape somehow.

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With Jiraiya and Naruto

"AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!"

Naruto screamed as the slick points flew past him as he fell faster and faster down the chasm. The air pushed up against him crushing force. He was so going to kill that perverted sage. Even if he died, Naruto decided that he was going to haunt that fucker to death.

The air pushed against his torso and face at crushing forces. Naruto couldn't breathe. He couldn't hear. He couldn't see.

'I'm going to die, aren't I?' Naruto thought out before finally giving in to the G-forces and falling unconscious.

When he woke up next, he was covered in some sort of liquid. There was only ambient light giving him a small understanding of where he was. "What the fuck?" he whispered.

Naruto stood up with slight difficulty. "Where am I?" It was a one way corridor leading off into obscurity. Naruto lifted his legs through the water and began to walk forward. The only way to go.

Pipes filled the ceilings and leaked a strange colored water every now and again. The liquid that Naruto was walking through didn't feel like water. It parted around his legs effortlessly, leaving him almost unimpeded through the walkway.

An ominous sound reverberated through the hall, vibrating all of Naruto's surroundings. "Am I dead?" Naruto called out. "'Cuz this is really creepy."

Eventually, Naruto made it into a circular area filled up the knee with water. Against one side was a wall made of iron bars and held in place by a piece of paper that had the word 'seal' on it. "Hello?" Naruto called out again.

"Closer." An ominous sounding voice said from within the room.

Naruto took a few tentative steps forward before huge claws slammed against and through the iron bars. Naruto backpedaled wildly before falling on his ass in the lukewarm water. "K-Kyuubi?"

"So my jailor finally graces me with his presence. Don't I feel special?" The voice was cutting, sarcastic, and menacing. When Fu went on describing Chomei, she always used warm and friendly words, making Naruto all the more eager to meet his bijuu. This being in front of Naruto was not warm and friendly.

"No words? Of course you have no words. You fear me."

Naruto got up from his ass and confronted the menacing pair of eyes through the bars. "I-I don't fear you."

Barking laughter echoed through the chamber. "Don't fear me? HA, of course you fear me! I can feel hatred. I can feel fear and you are full of it."

"I don't fear you." Naruto said more boldly this time.

"Lies. So what do you need from me? What am I talking about? You need my power. Else you'll die."

Naruto rubbed the back of his head. "Yeah, I guess I do." Just as he said that, a reddish sludge leaked through the bars and lapped at Naruto's feet.

"I suppose I need you to live. After all, if you die, I die." The eyes blinked away, leaving Naruto in the semi-ambient light.

"Wait!" Naruto called out. This was so not how he expected meeting the Kyuubi would be like.

The voice came from the bars once more, but there was no sign of the eyes. "What do you want? Little human."

"I- eh, err…"

"WHAT do you want?!"

"What's your name?" Naruto finally said. "I mean… the Nanabi's name is Chomei. What's yours?"

"Hmph. I wouldn't tell a human my name even if my life depended on it. Now go. This conversation is over."

Naruto felt a pulling sensation on his gut. The red chakra began wrapping its ropy limbs around him, engulfing him with the power of a bijuu. "Wait." Naruto called out before getting forcefully ejected from his mindscape.

00000000

A few hours later.

"Hey Anko, I'm feeling fine. You can let me down now." Naruto said tiredly into Anko's ear from her back.

"Nope. Not going to happen." Anko said grumpily.

"Anko…"

"What?" She snapped.

"Aren't you being a little overprotective? You do chase me and Fu with venomous snakes. Jiraiya pushing me off a cliff isn't that bad in comparison." The reason for his taking the pervert's side in the matter stemmed from the fact that when Anko learned what Jiraiya had done when Naruto hopped out of the crevice on the back of Gambunta, she attacked him with true intent to kill. He managed to slip away, but Naruto still saw all of what she was capable of when completely pissed the fuck off.

"The snakes are just a little incentive to run faster. And there's a huge difference between what I'm allowed to do as your master and what he's allowed to do as a pervert. If you died from getting thrown off a cliff, the Third would have my head."

"Well at least I got to meet the Kyuubi."

"Fat lot good that did. He sounds like a prick."

"Yeah, I guess."

Anko stewed in silence for a little while after that remark, thinking of what she was going to say next. "Hey brat?"

"Yeah?"

"Don't die."

Naruto chuckled a little bit before repositioning himself on her back. "I'm not going to die until I become hokage. Believe it."

"Do you promise?"

"What?"

"Do you promise?"

Naruto looked at the back of her neck in confusion. Anko was acting strange. It wasn't hard for Naruto to accidentally piss her off, but that afternoon was the first time he had seen her genuinely angry. Angry without the sadistic smirk attached to it. Not only that, but at the moment she had a subdued demeanor. He didn't really know what to do. This Anko he didn't have much experience with.

Naruto settled for hugging her back tightly. "Yeah, I promise Anko."

She leaned her head forward so her bangs concealed her eyes. She was mostly unreadable at the moment, but if you were there and had a keen eyesight, you would see tiny little twinkling droplets fall from her face. "I'm going to hold you to that."

Naruto didn't say anything after that. Although he did have an idea that something big just happened.

Something important.

AN/ Hello. Gent here.

The training arc is going to be about 2 more chapters long. I'm going to go into more detail of Naruto's newfound stats in the next one.

Have a gentlemanly day.