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 25: Homecoming

by Chronodt

The pervert, as soon as he arrived with Shizune, took a look at the battlefield.

"Now explain it to me, brat." said Jiraya, slightly irritated. "Why did you feel the need to charge a jonin alone? You could have just sent a clone and Ixion to delay him, you knew we were coming!"

Naruto was a little shamed of his behavior. He often tried to control this impulsive side of him, as his mom called it, but he had trouble correcting a habit of a lifetime in just a few months...

"I... have no excuse, Jiraya-sama. I was angry, I was hurt and I suddenly received memories of Tsunade-sama's body being carried away like baggage. I wanted to save her!"

Jiraya palmed his face. He managed to beat away this bad habit from his father, and now it looked like he had to repeat the feat on the son...damn all Namikaze and their hero complexes!

"Ok, brat, I can understand that, but tell me why you thought you could even survive to delay him. Even if you met him in the chunin exams, seeing him with a different headband should have told you that every skill he demonstrated there would be just the tip of the iceberg!"

Naruto was about to answer, when his mother told him something: -No, don't say anything, Naruto-chan. You will only dig your own grave further...-

Jiraya looked at Naruto as he was about to say something, then stopped and became pensive. Good, maybe he got through that diamond-hard head. Time for a last little push, to drill a little more caution in his head while he's receptive.

"After that guy almost killed you back where I found you, I thought you had more sense than to go and hunt him down. But what would have happened if you didn't have the Rasengan mastered? What if you weren't able to stop his movements to hit him? You were lucky that Kabuto underestimated you so much, because he was no less than Orochimaru's right-hand man!"

Naruto looked shocked, that Kabuto was so close to the Snake? And his second in command no less?

-Jiraya is right, Naruto-chan, you were more than a little reckless. You even forgot that Kirin drained a lot of chakra from your Summoning Gates to heal you and you found yourself here with no energy to spare to power Ixion's attacks. And you even forgot to remove your weights!-

Naruto reddened, as he realized he truly forgot about them. He was ready to upgrade them further, then, since he no longer even felt their presence.

Finished his business with Naruto, Jiraya looked at Tsunade, who was being fussed upon by her apprentice, and asked her: "Are you all right, Tsunade?"

Tsunade nodded. "Yes, Jiraya, and I must say that despite everything I like him. You chose well, even if he doesn't look like that much at first sight. And you were mistaken about one thing, the boy still hasn't mastered the Rasengan... he... cheated, sort of." she said with a smirk.

"Cheated?" asked Jiraya, wondering how one could cheat the completion of that jutsu.

"I used a clone to stabilize and contain the chakra." started Naruto, "I knew I was close enough to succeed if I had some help, but I refused to use that shortcut while I was still training, since you forbid me from practicing that jutsu with more than.. one body, I guess."

"Oh, right, I forgot about that 'rule'" said Jiraya, who honestly had forgotten about it. He simply didn't want to have to explain a new jutsu to the brat every week.

"However this little stunt of yours means you will endure my super-extensive bone-breaking training as punishment until we get back to Konoha!"

Naruto groaned, while Tsunade and Shizune giggled.

At least Tsunade was now more than convinced to go back to Konoha and they started their way back the next day...

Akiko sat in the middle of her dining room, surrounded by opened scrolls with her notes on the 'Akiko seal'. Since the Boss was kept occupied by the pervert from dawn until he got to bed, he no longer had the time to work on it, so it fell back to her to continue his work. She was actually glad for the pervert's attention, because, even if brutal, his training was highly effective, especially because his White Chakra allowed him to recover faster than an ordinary ninja. She was also thinking about her experience fighting on Ixion. She should really begin training with it, it would be a devastating combo when she managed to get a somewhat decent skill with the Glaive, but she would need a saddle of some kind. Luckily, she could use her item creation skill to conjure it out of Farplane's pyreflyes as she summoned Ixion, but she needed to study a few saddles herself. Maybe she could get a d-rank with the old man about polishing saddles, crafting them or tending to a stable. While ninja almost never used horses, merchants and nobles did and so there were plenty of stables around the village. Some of them, sooner or later, would require a genin team for help. And it would help her cover to get a few d-rank on the field and not only on paper!

Kabuto entered his laboratory, examining the small blood sample he gathered. The traces of chakra were very small, but he hoped even this very small amount of the fabled White Chakra of Whirlpool could help stabilize Kimimaro.

Orochimaru silently entered the lab as he injected the blood in Kimimaro's heart directly.

"So you failed. What was the problem?" asked the Legendary Snake Ninja.

"Tsunade-sama had... an unwelcome guardian named Jiraya, but unfortunately he just complicated the retrieval. The true problem was a rookie chunin with him, the nine tails' container, Uzumaki Naruto."

Orochimaru looked with avid interest. He, too, recognized his bloodline from the match against the Hyuga, but he didn't realize the boy had grown so strong to stop Kabuto from completing his mission.

"Even if I underestimated the power of his bloodline and was forced to flee by the arrival of Jiraya, I managed to get a bit of his blood. It held a surprisingly poor amount of the famous White Chakra, evidently his bloodline is either still developing or he used all of it to heal himself from a mortal wound I inflicted him earlier. I still hope to get Kimimaro a few more weeks to live, and maybe in that time, if I work exclusively on him, I could at least find the source of that disease."

Orochimaru nodded. If Kabuto could find the source of his degenerative disease, he could use his seed to impregnate a few women and have a healthy body with his delicious bloodline to inhabit in a few years. And with his immortality technique he had all the time in the world, he could easily wait a decade or two to get the Dead Bone Pulse bloodline under his control. "Do so, Kabuto, and keep me informed." he said, before leaving the medic-nin alone with Kimimaro.

Shikamaru had had enough. Dark mutterings he could ignore. Coldness was much better than troublesome loud blonds every day. Paranoid teammates were good for your survival as long as they didn't suspect you to be an enemy. But having someone speak in his sleep about 'making that snake bitch pay' and something about killing his brother constantly was cutting in his precious sleep-time, and it was maddening, really, since he had duties and could not nap during the rest of the day!

"Ok, Sasuke. Spill it! I'm tired to hear your muttering while you should be sleeping, and it's much less troublesome to hear you now rather than tonight! What has Mitarashi Anko done to you?"

Sasuke glared at Shikamaru, but then he remembered the fellow chunin's evaluations, especially his tactical and strategic brilliance, without considering his IQ. He could give him a hint of what that witch wanted from him...

"I'm trying to impress her so that she would take me as her apprentice." said Sasuke, curt and concise, not bothering to tell him any more than he had to. It would not do for his image to be seen asking for help from someone as weak as him.

Shikamaru nodded. He could guess the result. Considering his nighttime mutterings and their respective characters, he could guess that he demanded and she refused. Not only that, she probably humiliated him in some way. It was a very troublesome thing, why did he want even more training? He already trained every free moment even during this mission, he even made his work harder so to get more benefit from this boring assignment. He really could not understand hard workers.

Speaking of understanding Sasuke...

"Have you tried asking her politely?" mused Shikamaru, and the flabbergasted and shocked expression of his face told him that he never even contemplated that possibility, just like he thought. Funny that, it would be the first thing he would have tried. It must be that bothersome Uchiha pride...

The Third Hokage relaxed, in a rare moment of quiet and peace. For once, the council was happy, due to the promotion of the Uchiha, and Konohamaru was playing with his friends from the Academy. His son was lazying somewhere and he finished his paperwork a little while ago. He pulled out his 'special' literature, when his eyes caught the book Naruto left him after leaving Konoha, by means of a clone. It was a strange gift, coming from the newly promoted chunin, especially because it was a general medical encyclopedia. Was he hinting at something?

Opening the book, he saw a bookmarked page, with a message written in the bookmark itself: 'The true reason of Kakashi's lateness!' and then he saw the page. It was clearly a fake, since the style wasn't identical to the rest of the entries, but when he read about Kakashi's Syndrome, with the elite jonin's face printed in it, he began laughing really hard...

Anko looked at the first girl of the reformed fan club. She wanted to teach these little airheads a little lesson, unfortunately without resorting to physical violence. She had finally had to ask a suggestion from Ibiki, because every idea she put together finished in some kind of injury for the untrained victim. Not that much of a pity, but she would get in trouble.

Ibiki suggested turning the members against each other, creating mistrust, using just the most minor of genjutsu that genin barely out of the academy could detect, so that she wouldn't get into trouble from the academy teachers, either. Not that it would trouble her, but she would have to fill mountains of paperwork because of it and she had much better ways to pass her time. Damn civilians... just maim one as an accident once and they slap all those silly regulations on you...

Reaching undetected her first victim, she started layering over her senses what she wished for her to see: two of her co-members who were nearby simply chatting about clothes, were now in her hearing plotting to catch Sasuke for themselves, to the exclusion of everyone else, and speculating that Sakura and Ino rebuilt the fan club just to get cheap spies to do the dirty work for them.

It was a bit cruel, and that was good, because those two genin wanted to bypass orders they received by using patsies, and the rumor she was starting in the fan club itself wasn't that mush false: Anko knew that deep down neither Sakura nor Ino really wanted for any of those girls to truly have a chance with the dark brooder, and probably they would drop them like rats on a sinking ship as soon as he demonstrated any true annoyance to those fangirls, distancing themselves and probably trying to negate any involvement.

Truly pathetic, really. She was glad neither even reached the finals, either of them would surely end up dead in the first b-rank mission.

Passing on a new rooftop, she saw another target, to disseminate a little more discord, havoc and mayhem. Oh, how she wished to be able to see the faces of those two genin when their fan club deserted or, even better, revolted against them!

Akiko put down her notes and wrote down the last seal. Her first attempt to create a fake-dimensional seal, if that was a true word, was complete. She still didn't dare to power it because if it backfired it could destroy her apartment or leave her too depleted to exist. Putting the scroll away, she started to meditate. Today's rumor mongering was rather tame, without the Boss here no new gossip related to him appeared, but she almost feared it was the calm before the storm.

Putting away those troubling thoughts, she continued to follow an idea the Boss had a few hours after Tsunade's kidnapping, a logical consequence from the enhanced communications idea sprung up after their brief contact while summoning Kirin: the possibility of creating a new White Jutsu, in particular a true pyrefly bunshin. The ideas behind Item crafting, the basic family summoning method and Shadow Clones would mesh together very well, in theory. Crafting a clone from Naruto's pyreflyes should be possible, even if probably very hard, but its potential was staggering. His pyreflyes were a part of him, just like his shadow and if the unique advantage of the Kage Bunshin translated as well to a Pyrefly Bunshin, he could have an incredible variant of that forbidden jutsu, usable only by his family (hence a new White Jutsu) to create a more solid and as such a more powerful version of an already incredible jutsu. Its chakra requirement would probably be staggering, to the point that even Naruto would have to summon less than 10 of them at once or suffer chakra exhaustion, a true forbidden jutsu!

Her thoughts returned to the necessary manipulation of her chakra, but even if she knew what to do, in a generic sense, she still lacked the background knowledge necessary. She lacked the jutsu creation theories, that his mom told him a few weeks ago were reserved for jonin or higher level ninja.

Remembering the old 'quest' to also get the Celestial Gates book, she decided it was time to start planning a break-in of a restricted area library. She would be unable to perform it until Naruto came back, but she could plan, scout and investigate until then.

It was just a pity she could not simply go and ask the Hokage directly...

Hinata gathered Akamaru in her arms, gently, petting him, while Kiba got up after he had been beaten up. It was actually the very first time Hinata ever beat the Inuzuka, even if Akamaru remained outside the fight. She felt extremely proud of herself, a sensation that was still very new and felt very strange as well.

"Hinata, that was incredible!" said Kiba. He had been surprised by her last action, but she won nonetheless and lucky shots were also part of a ninja's life. The Hinata of just three weeks ago would have hesitated to strike after he stumbled on a concealed hole in the ground, but the new Hinata hit him in the side and arm, hurting his hip muscles and the right arm to the point where he was unable to move them. And after that it was short work to end Kiba's struggles, concluding with her first victory.

"I concur, Hinata. " said Shino. "You efficiency has risen considerably as well as your drive. I'm sure the next chunin exam will be very different for you, if this change persists."

Shino, as a chunin, was put in charge of their training by Kurenai, while she did a few bureaucratic duties at the Tower. Kurenai also told them that in a few weeks the new mission routine would be to go as a full team on c-rank missions, while d-rank would be performed by Kiba, Hinata and Sakura from team 7, leaving Shino to his new chunin duties, including guard rotations and such. He had already completed half of the traditional post-promotion missions and was waiting for the assignment of the next one, probably related to the 'bureaucratic duty' of their sensei.

"Oi, Shino.. what about me?" asked Kiba.

"You still lack a bit of self-control, you are brash and you purposefully seek out unnecessary challenges. If you overcome these minor problems, I don't think you'll do a bad impression at the next exam. Your combat strength is already more than adequate for a rookie chunin. In fact, if you didn't have to fight Uzumaki at the preliminaries you may have been promoted as well."

Kiba nodded, glad that his teammate was thinking this highly of his abilities. Akamaru also barked in support, and the dog boy resolved to pass the next exam with flying colors!

Tsunade healed Naruto again, shaking her head seeing the extent of his injuries. They were all very light, Jiraya was a rather good teacher, she had to admit. Knowing perfectly how much he could push the boy thanks to his regeneration, his muscles and reflexes were slowly building up to where a chunin should have, not that he was lacking strength, not at all! Jiraya told her that he just... lacked the finesse to bring that strength to his enemy. In other words a true taijutsu style until he started to teach the brat his father's still unfinished unarmed style.

Studying the boy while she was healing him was also a nice little bonus, but she had to dash her hopes of getting him as an apprentice. His chakra reserves were enormous, his capacity being trained since birth by the Fourth's seal, but his control was average at best. He could not hope to ever be able to use any of her medical ninjutsu unless he practiced for at least 2 to 3 years exclusively on it, and it wasn't worth it. He still needed theoretical knowledge of medicine, and a bit of 'civilian practices' as she used to call ordinary non-chakra powered medical work, and he could be one of the best field medics in Konoha. His mother, instead, was a true gem, her control made her able to learn both her family jutsu and her own creations. Truly a pity she died, she could have been a medical legend even greater than herself!

Well, maybe she could hope in the next generation. Without a demon to imprison, his children would be able to 'take the place' of his mother, their control not hampered by a constantly fluctuating seal. In the meantime she had a Medical Corp to rebuild to her standards and she had to convince sensei she would be a horrible mistake as a Hokage. Despite Naruto's encouragements and pleas, she returned mostly to be a medic again, but she also understood Sarutobi-sensei's problem. The lack of a successor could make his life difficult at council sessions and if something ever happened to him they could appoint someone who was not at all suited to the job, like Jiraya. She shivered at the thought of that pervert as the new leader, using the Hokage's crystal ball to peek in public baths. No way she would ever bath again in Konoha if that came to pass!

Konoha's gates were now in sight, and she prepared herself for her first meeting with her sensei in many years.

Sasuke was still torn, even if Shikamaru's incredible suggestion had been the solution he had been looking for all this time. Looking back at all his approach tactics, he realized that Anko responded to his rightful pride with scorn and derision. Everything he held dear and let him be above the common ninja she mocked, and responded to aggression with even greater violence. And now he realized why the snake bitch was always at that table every day! She was waiting for him to crack and actually beg her to become her student! It was so obvious, how could he have missed it?

However, he could not simply cave like that, it would be like admitting defeat. He had to dig up at least a little dirt on her or it would feel like surrendering.

Seeing the rendez-vous point with the relief patrol, they exchanged their relative mission scrolls and left to return to Konoha. Now that he had a plan to deal with that snake bitch, he was free to plot against his reformed fan club...