When they stopped to rest at the end of the next day, Jiraiya finally bought the supplies needed for the Rasengan training.
"Balloons!?" Naruto exclaimed.
Jiraiya nodded. "Water balloons." He picked one up and then water balloon stretched and popped.
Naruto activated her Byakugan and Sharingan. "Do that again!" she commanded.
He shrugged and did as she commanded. This time she could see the chakra in the balloon swirling on multiple axes.
She picked up a water balloon and swirled her chakra on six axes, which popped the balloon.
"First try!?" Jiraiya exclaimed. "It took me days to do this step and the Sharingan isn't supposed to be able to duplicate the Rasengan because its sealless!"
Naruto chuckled. "I have really good chakra control. Once I knew what to do it was easy. To be honest, my Byakugan was more useful for figuring it out, but having my Sharingan on helped to speed up my perception so that I could notice what was happening better, even though the Sharingan itself didn't penetrate the balloon."
"Huh, I wonder if the Hyuuga could figure it out if they weren't suck stuck-up asses about keeping their Gentle Fist 'pure,'" he muttered.
Naruto giggled.
"I've noticed that you do have good chakra control," Jiraiya said with a shake of his head. "The reports I got from Sensei said that it was horrible. What happened?"
"I abused Shadow Clones and chakra control exercises for months," she said. "I also think it has to do with my inheritance—my chakra just seems for 'willing' to do what I want since my eyes changed."
Jiraiya sighed as he picked up a scroll and tapped it on his wrist.
"What's that Ero-sensei?" she asked.
"Back to Ero-sensei, huh?" he said with a groan.
"You taught me something," she answered sweetly.
He shook his head. "This is a specialized sealing scroll. The seal on it allows you to seal a bunch of items at once and then withdraw them one at a time. It works best if they're all the same item because you can't predict the order in which they'll come out." He shook his head again. "These are all the water balloons we don't need anymore."
"Can I have them, Ero-sensei?" she asked with puppy dog eyes.
"What do you want them for?" he asked as he handed the scroll over.
"A prank, of course!" she said.
"Not me, I hope!" he said.
"Nah, probably Kono-chan and his friends," she said. "Or maybe Emo-chan? Who knows?
"What's the next step," she asked excitedly.
Jiraiya sighed and pulled out another scroll. A rubber ball popped out. He tossed it to her. "Do the same thing with the ball."
"Show me!" she commanded.
He shook his head. "Nuh uh. I want you to figure it out—not your eyes. I will give you a hint, though: power."
Simply adding more power wanted to make her spirals bigger. Since the ball was already smaller than the balloon, this was a minor challenge for her. Adding power to all six spirals and shrinking it down to fit within the ball was a good stretch of her chakra control. She popped the ball on her seventh try.
Jiraiya shook his head. "Unbelievable. Do it again and pop it in less than a second."
Within half an hour she had gotten it down from her original three seconds to less than a second.
"What's next?" she asked excitedly.
"Nuh uh," Jiraiya said. "I refuse to let you learn something it took me months to learn in one day!"
"Meanie," she said with a pout.
The next day, Jiraiya took out a package of unfilled balloons.
"At least having to blow up the balloons will slow you down," he said with a hint of a whine.
"What do I have to do, Ero-sensei?" she asked.
"You have to do what you did in the previous steps without breaking the balloon. To do this you have to form a shell of chakra around the technique. Again, I want you to figure it out without using your fancy eyes. You'll learn more that way."
He blew up a balloon and then held it in his hand. The balloon did not move, but Naruto could see the glow of the chakra within it.
"I think you're just embarrassed at how much I'm showing you up, Ero-sensei," she said with a saucy grin.
"Am not," he replied petulantly.
She giggled and took the package of balloons.
Adding power had been easy for her; power, she had lots of! Keeping her containment shell going for longer than a second while swirling chakra within it on multiple axes was very difficult, even with her exceptional chakra control. By bedtime she could get it to last for three seconds before it went unstable.
She had thought about leaving a bunch of Shadow Clones behind at their campsite to practice while they traveled, but decided against it. They were supposed to be keeping a low profile. Instead she practiced while she walked. Her contingency clones let her know when anyone was coming in plenty of time to stop.
She practiced without the balloon, since it was annoying to fill a balloon only to have it pop within seconds. She only checked her progress with the balloon every hour or so.
Much to Jiraiya's equal disgust and delight, she had the Rasengan down perfectly with two days of starting the third step.
Stories of her mother said that she could manifest seals with her chakra at the end of her Adamantine Sealing Chains. She wondered if she could do that with her hair—or form Rasengans at the ends of it. She smiled wickedly at the thought of assaulting the Snake Jerk with 10 Rasengans at distance all at once. The only problem was that when she manifested her chakra externally in order to control her hair, she was highly visible for kilometers to anyone that could detect chakra. Ero-sensei had told her to avoid that, if possible, while they were on the trip, so she could not practice it to see if it were possible.
A couple of days after Naruto finished learning the Rasengan, they arrived in Tanzaku-gai where Jiraiya's contacts told him that Tsunade was. The town had a large castle in it that was in ruins.
As he usually did, Jiraiya left Naruto to check on his contacts. Naruto wandered the town. There were many casinos. Out of boredom, she started playing the slot machines. About every third pull she won something. Most of her winnings were small, but one of them was a major jackpot. Amused she gathered her winnings. Maybe it was karma balancing her awful childhood?
She approached a card table, but was waved away with the words "No Hyuuga." She walked away with a smirk. If she could be bothered, she would have returned using a Disguise. Her unique Disguise Technique was good enough to fool the meager efforts to detect the technique that the casino used.
When she met the Toad Sage at the appointed time and place, he was a little put out when she asked him to seal her winnings.
"How'd you get that?" he asked. "I would have thought they wouldn't let you at the table with your white eyes."
"Slot machines," she answered.
"All that?" he asked.
"I won one big jackpot, several smaller ones, and a lot of little payouts," she said with a smirk. "I think they were about to ask me to leave."
He shook his head. "What's the total?"
"15 million ryo," she with a smirk.
"No more whining at me to pay for stuff, brat," he said.
"Hey, you're the 'world-famous author,'" she said. "It's not like you're poor."
"Anyway, I think I've found where she is," he said.
The Toad Sage led her to a pub. He pointed out two women in their twenties. "The blonde is Tsunade."
"What!?" she exclaimed. "She looks half the age I'd expect for your teammate."
Jiraiya chuckled. "She's fairly vain. She uses a genjutsu seal to disguise her age."
The two of them approached Tsunade and the other woman.
"Tsunade!" Jiraiya called.
"What are you doing here, Old Perv?" the woman grumped. "I'm having reunions left and right."
"Why? Who else?" Jiraiya asked. They had heard rumors of a giant snake at the castle, but he obviously wanted to confirm that Orochimaru had talked to her.
"Our other old teammate came to see me too," Tsunade said.
"What did Ol' Snake Eyes want?" Jiraiya asked.
"Wanted some injuries healed," she replied.
"You told him 'no,' of course," he said.
"Of course," she said.
Naruto noticed that Tsunade's companion looked guilty or nervous.
"Hi, I'm Naruto," she said to the dark-haired girl.
"Hello, I'm Shizune," the girl answered.
"She did say 'no,' didn't she, Shizune-san?" Naruto prodded.
"She didn't help him, no," Shizune said, but still looked guilty.
Jiraiya caught the byplay. "Tsunade! He killed Sensei!"
"So he said," Tsunade said.
"You're still considering helping him!?" Jiraiya exclaimed.
"He promised me something I want more than anything in the world," Tsunade admitted.
"Nawaki and Dan?" Jiraiya asked with a frown.
"Do you really think whoever they are would thank you for asking the Snake to enslave them for you?" Naruto sneered.
"Who's the funny-looking brat?" Tsunade asked Jiraiya.
Before Jiraiya could say anything, she said, "I'm Uzumaki Naruto and I'm starting to think it was a good idea you didn't stay to take care of me, Baachan!"
"What did you call me?" Tsunade asked dangerously.
"What else should I call a much older cousin, Baachan?" Naruto replied innocently.
"You don't look like you could be Kushina's daughter," the older woman said.
"If you cared about family at all, you would know what happened to me!" Naruto snapped.
Tsunade looked like she had been slapped.
"Come on, Ero-sennin," Naruto said derisively. "It's obvious the old hag isn't the right one to replace Old Man Hokage." That could be the only reason they were looking for her with this timing.
Naruto's words seemed to rally the older woman. "I wouldn't want that fool's job anyway," she said.
"How dare you!" Naruto said icily. "How dare you make light of their sacrifice!"
"That's all that job is, is sacrifice! Konoha has taken everything I ever cared about from me! And striving for that job has taken the most!"
"Better to have died protecting those you love than to waste your life wallowing in self-pity!" Naruto said.
"You have a problem with me, Bunny-chan?" Tsunade growled.
"You bet I do, Baachan!" Naruto said. "My whole life has been a sacrifice and you don't see me whining and complaining. I don't have to take some washed-up has-been denigrating the job I strive for!"
"I don't need some genin telling me I'm a has-been," Tsunade growled. "You want to throw down, Bunny-chan?"
"I'm not scared of you, Baachan!" she retorted.
"Um, Naruto. . ." Jiraiya tried to intervene.
"Don't worry about me, Ero-sennin. Worry about the old woman."
Shizune was trying to calm down the older woman unsuccessfully.
Naruto marched out the door. "Come on, Baachan! Let's take this outside!"
Tsunade followed her. The two faced off in the street outside the pub.
"I won't even need more than a single finger to defeat you, Bunny-chan!" Tsunade boasted holding up her index finger.
"Your loss, Baachan," Naruto sneered. "What are the stakes?"
"I heard about the albino Hyuuga that cleaned out the slots over at the Lucky Goldfish Casino. That you?"
"I'm not really albino, nor am I a Hyuuga, but yeah, that was me."
"If you lose you give me your money, go home, and forget about being Hokage."
"Okay," Naruto responded. "If I win, you stop wasting your life with drinking and gambling and make something of it. You also come to Konoha to heal my Sensei."
"Not going to insist I become Hokage?" Tsunade asked.
"I have yet to see any evidence you'd make a good one, Baachan," said Naruto. "Besides, I want to be the first female Hokage."
Tsunade laughed—for the first time without any mocking. "Your mother wanted the same thing."
Naruto whistled her Replacement signal and was Replaced by a contingency clone that was monitoring her. She knew she was in over her head. Even if she was out of shape and out of practice, Tsunade would still be very formidable. The only real chance she had was if the woman underestimated her. Because of this, she refrained from using her bloodline abilities. She did not really regret her words, but admitted to herself that they were not exactly wise.
Since Orochimaru was probably nearby, she also could not manifest her chakra externally without him knowing she was here. She made a Shadow Clone and then dispelled it so that her contingency clones, including the one now facing Tsunade, knew her plan. She created a bunch of other clones that stealthily moved to surround the fight at a distance.
Her plan had Tsunade making the first move. The older woman obliged by striking the ground with the single finger she had held out. The ground split and the crack sped toward Naruto's clone. The clone jumped and landed away from the crack. When she landed, the clone formed the two seals for the Swamp of the Underworld and called its name.
Tsunade started. As she started to sink, the blonde slammed the ground with her fist which splattered the chakra-infused mud all over the place and disrupted the technique at its source.
"How could you teach a genin an A-rank ninjutsu technique, Jiraiya?" she shouted.
"It fits her style so well that I couldn't resist," the Toad Sage replied. "Plus she was up against an insane jinchuuriki in the Chuunin Exams. She needed the edge."
"You faced a jinchuuriki in the Exams?" Tsunade shouted. "Are you insane? You should have forfeited!"
Naruto Replaced her clone so that she could talk to the woman herself.
"Did you forget that I'm a jinchuuriki too?" she said. She hated that word. "I was the only one who could face him. He ruthlessly killed someone in the preliminaries and I couldn't let that happen to one of my friends! I beat him too! With hardly breaking a sweat!"
"So you think you can beat me because you beat another genin jinchuuriki?" Tsunade laughed.
Naruto shook her head. "I'm under no delusions as to our relative skills, but I figure I only have to make you violate the terms of the wager—which I already have. You used your whole fist to disrupt my technique."
Jiraiya laughed. "She's got you there, Tsunade."
Tsunade frowned. "We never made my boast part of the stakes."
"Backing out, Baachan?" Naruto said sassily.
"How about we alter the wager?" Tsunade said.
"Why should I when I've already won, Baachan?" Naruto asked.
"You like high-level techniques, right?" Tsunade asked.
Naruto nodded. It was true.
"Double or nothing. You learn an A-level technique of my choosing within a week and I'll not only return to Konoha and become the Hokage. I'll give you my grandfather the First Hokage's necklace." She held up a necklace with a large bluish crystal on it that hung around her neck.
"Deal!" Naruto exclaimed.
Tsunade smirked. "The A-rank technique I want you to learn is the Mystic Palm Technique. It's the foundation technique for medical ninjutsu and requires exceptional chakra control. Shizune will show you how. In order to win, you have to heal a fish that has been out of the water for ten minutes."
"Alright!" Naruto exclaimed. "I've been wanting to learn that technique for months!"
Tsunade shook her head at Naruto's exuberance.
"Don't look so smug, Hime," Jiraiya said. "She already has exceptional chakra control. She learned the Rasengan in three days start to finish and probably could have done it in less if I had let her."
"Three days!" Tsunade yelled.
Naruto smirked held up a hand and formed a perfect Rasengan and held it. "I hope you're not too attached to that necklace, Baa-chan."