Naruto let off a quiet growl of frustration as he dug his fingers into the jacket of his clone. The clone grimaced before exploding into smoke as claws of wind tore into his chest. He didn't even grunt as the memories poured into him of the sudden flash of pain entered his mind.
He hissed softly as he felt the sudden impact of one of his clones smashing his foot into his side, making his ribs groan slightly in protest. Immediately he moved to cut the leg away, only the clone was dancing out of the way, followed by another clone lashing out with claws of its own straight towards his arm. The air screamed as he caught the claws with his own, the blades of wind chakra grinding against each other as the air coiled and twisted in streams of distortion.
Then he could feel his body folding forward as a solid kick crashed into his stomach. As he was forced to release a sudden eruption of breath, his control faltered. He barely had time to twist out of the way of the first clone's claws as they left a trio of cuts on his cheek and sent a few blond hairs flying.
As he attempted to force himself to straighten and back away, another clone's foot slammed into his cheek, making his world spin. Then he could feel another kick to his side. And a punch to his jaw. More and more blows followed, some of which he managed to block and deflect, the majority of them making their way past his guard.
When one of the clones kicked him in the shin, he finally blurted out, "ENOUGH!"
Instantly the blows stopped and the clones backed off. One of the clones nervously scratched the back of his head and crouched down, looking at the panting and groaning Naruto. "You ok, boss?"
He got an unstable rasengan smashing into his face and exploding for his trouble. Naruto himself flew back onto his back from the technique and groaned softly as he closed his eyes as the clone's memories fed themselves to him. As they settled into place, he just let out a soft groan of satisfaction.
"So, totally worth it."
"Um, you know, we'd really prefer to not be dispelled that way, boss, so..." The clones looked at one another, before nodding in agreement as suddenly they all exploded in puffs of smoke in unison.
Naruto groaned softly as he was suddenly hit with a small headache worth of memories. "Damned bastards."
"What does that say about you then, Naruto-kun?" Shizune asked, a touch of amusement in her voice before she tsked softly and looked him over critically. "You know, you really should take better care of yourself."
"I'm fine," he said simply and rolled his shoulders back as he took a slow, deep breath. "Just give me a minute."
"Are you sure? Some of those cuts could get infected," she said politely as she gestured to his face.
"Nah... I don't get those things." Naruto waved his hand dismissively as he slowly sat up and looked back at Shizune. "Just... gimme a sec."
"But..." Shizune frowned slightly as she stared at Naruto, before her eyes widened as for a moment, a harsh, crimson chakra poured over his body.
Before her eyes, she could see the way his cuts closed themselves. His bruises faded, and his scrapes healed. Then, just as quickly as it was there, it vanished again.
Just as a startled oath screamed through the air.
"WHAT THE HELL!?"
Shizune was broken away from her staring as she immediately glanced back in the direction the yell had come from. "I… Naruto-kun, when you access that… do the girls…?"
"Um, yeah?" Naruto slowly nodded his head, confusion written on his face. "Why?"
"Oh, dear," Shizune said as she put her hand over her mouth. "That might be…"
"YOU!" Tsunade suddenly burst into the area, her eyes burning as she thrust her finger at Naruto.
Naruto blinked a moment, staring owlishly back at her. "Me?"
"Yes, YOU!" Tsunade growled as she glared at him. "What the hell were you thinking?! Accessing that… that…! While I was in the middle of examining them?!"
"What?" Naruto blinked again, looking at Shizune in confusion.
"The red stuff," Shizune explained quickly.
"Was that bad?" he asked curiously as he seemed to be ignoring Tsunade entirely.
"Well, it would throw off all her readings and make it so she probably has to start over from scratch," she agreed with a nod of her head. "And Tsunade-sama tends to not be very… happy about those kinds of interruptions."
"It's demonic chakra suddenly flooding through a non-jinchuuriki's system!" Tsunade glared at Shizune. "I'd like to see how you would have reacted!"
"Of course, Tsunade-sama," Shizune said quickly as she nodded her head before glancing back at Naruto. "Apparently she was a bit startled, Naruto-kun."
"Oh, could you tell her I'm sorry then?" Naruto asked vaguely as he scratched the back of his head.
"I'm standing right here!" Tsunade turned her attention back to Naruto as her glare spiked in intensity.
"And I think she would appreciate it more if you gave your apology to her." Shizune noted carefully as she saw the slightest twitch beginning to grow in Tsunade's eye.
"Whatever gave you that idea, Shizune?" Tsunade said with a hiss of anger, her eyes slits as they glared back at her.
"The eye twitch and the vein on your forehead, maybe?" Naruto offered after a moment, before shrugging a bit when Tsunade's glare turned back onto him. "You asked."
"What on earth possessed you to think it would be a good idea to start using that while I was in the middle of examining them!?" Tsunade immediately growled out. "Even the most basic of medical training would..."
"Um, do I look like a medic-nin?" Naruto cut in as he stared back at Tsunade.
"Obviously not," Tsunade stated simply with a grunt.
"Then why the HELL do you expect me to know this?" Naruto snapped back as he glared at Tsuande.
"Did the part about basic medical training fly over your head?" Tsunade responded with a glare.
"Excuse me, but they didn't even start to cover jinchuuriki or not using demonic chakra during medical exams during the Academy!" Naruto snapped back with a growing glare. "Why the hell would I know any of that!?"
"You're a jinchuuriki!" she said through gritted teeth.
"I didn't even know I was one until the night I graduated the Academy!"
Shizune looked from one glaring blond to the other glaring blonde and sighed softly as her shoulders slumped. "Tsunade-sama... I think it's safe to say Naruto-kun didn't mean to cause a problem, he honestly didn't know it would cause a problem."
"Yeah!" he agreed with an angry glare.
"Naruto-kun, Tsunade-sama is trying to make sure the girls are going to be fine with everything that's happening. You do want to make sure they're going to be fine, don't you?"
Naruto turned a glare onto Shizune before turning and just storming off again.
"... Don't you?" Shizune repeated the question as the boy walked away, a note of uncertainty in her voice.
Tsunade looked at the boy's retreating back and shook her head as she ruthlessly crushed the urge to chase after him. He wasn't her little brother. He wasn't Dan. He wasn't her grandmother. He was just a punk kid who she shared a clan with and who happened to have things in common with those important people in her life.
It was all just one twisted little coincidence. That was all. She affirmed that to herself as she couldn't help but look one more time.
She'd believe it soon enough, she was sure.
-o-o-o-
The pulsing whine of a rasengan tore into the tree once, then again. Two perfectly spherical holes appearing in the trees. They were matched by identical looking holes all along the trunk and in the numerous trees around him.
Naruto stared back at the tree before he moved again, striking again and again as his sweat slick skin caught the faint cloud of sawdust that filled the air. It itched all over his exposed skin and into crevices in his clothes. But he ignored it as he continued focusing on slamming the rasengans into the tree before him.
Around him, a chaotic melee identical forms moved with matching spheres in each of their hands. Every few moments, one of the figures would explode into a cloud of smoke from the impact of one of the spheres hitting them somewhere on their bodies. Occasionally, rasengan would meet rasengan, grinding together for a moment before each would destabilize and explode, taking both clones and sometimes a third with it.
He wasn't sure how long he'd been doing it. The slowly growing size of the clearing was a testament that it had been a while though. Everything, from the clones, to the grass to the leaves was covered in a fine layer of sawdust.
The rasengan had chewed through most of it, but there were impossibly clean cuts here and there, along with a sharply cracked tree limb or two.
It was this scene that Jiraiya walked into as he slowly glanced around the clearing, filled with dancing particles of sawdust.
"Well, feeling better?" He asked with an arched brow as he lightly shook the fine layer of dust his hair had already accumulated.
"What do you want?" Naruto didn't even turn to look at him as he continued to feed the rasengan in his hands and slam one then the other into the remnants of the tree trunk in front of him.
"... I think you've got it down, kid," he noted dryly as he glanced around the clearing once more then shook his head. "Though, I'm going to guess that it's good there's no lumber mill near here, or we'd have a mob after us."
"Fine," Naruto said sourly and suddenly the rasengan disappeared out of each hand, dispersing with a slight explosion, before his fingers curled back like claws and he began to tear into the waiting trunk with claws of wind instead.
"... That really wasn't what I meant," Jiraiya said after a moment when he saw Naruto had simply changed from one attack to another. "I was thinking you should..."
Jiraiya twisted then as a kunai suddenly cut through the air right where his shoulder had been a moment before. "What the hell?!"
Like their creator, the clones had dispersed their rasengan, some more successfully than others. Only, instead of moving on to the same attack Naruto had, each of them had pulled out kunai. One unrepentant clone was glaring at Jiraiya, hand still extended from his throw.
"Ok, you want to play it that way? Fine." Jiraiya cracked his head to the side, then flicked his hands through a series of signs then slammed his hand against the ground.
Most of the clones reacted quickly enough to put some distance away from the rapidly spreading wave of soft, swamp-like earth. Only those who had landed back on earth quickly fell victim to the spreading technique as it moved faster than they could escape. Perhaps a fourth of the clones, landing on still-upright trees were able to launch kunai back at Jiraiya, trying to disrupt the technique even as the ground began to consume the trees as well.
"Tsk, I don't think so, brat!" Immediately Jiraiya was enfolded in a covering of his long white hair, hardened like steel as the kunai bounced off the suddenly sharp, spiked surface. "I'm not some random jounin! I'm not some half crazed missing-nin! I. Am. Jiraiya!"
Suddenly the spikes exploded out, peppering the entire clearing, catching almost every one of the clones with a harder-than-steel white needle. As Naruto actually flinched under the sudden, mass influx of violent memories, he was hit by another, then another. Each clone that had managed to avoid the spikes found themselves hit by hard, staggering blows that forced them explode and disperse.
When the last of the clones exploded beneath Jiraiya's heavy sandals directly behind Naruto, the sannin continued as he slid into a classic kabuki pose, "I am the Gallant Toad Sage of Mt Myoboku! I'm not some little bit player, here to dispense a few lines and then vanish into the background!"
And Naruto demonstrated that he wasn't the same little genin he'd been only a few months ago. Immediately, he was twisting around, kunai flashing straight towards Jiraiya, as a sudden expulsion of wind chakra onto the remains of a log in front of him sent a stream of sawdust towards Jiraiya's face. Only Jiraiya wasn't there to catch it.
A simple replacement put Jiraiya directly in Naruto's side path. Before Naruto could fully react, Jiraiya's fist smashed into his cheek. As the tearing blades of wind instinctively formed on Jiraiya while Naruto was propelled backwards, another log replaced him.
Before the suddenly-segmented log could land in its fractured state, Jiraiya was again behind Naruto, grabbing him by his collar and moving to throw him into one of the still standing trees.
Naruto reacted, grabbing onto Jiraiya's arm with his hands, latching on with chakra just as Jiraiya released his throw. Angrily, he twisted his body, trying to pull Jiraiya's arm back, continuing the momentum as he released one hand and immediately formed a rasengan in it. Then suddenly it was like Jiraiya's arm was coated by oil and Naruto lost his grip.
As Naruto flew away from him, Jiraiya's hands flashed through a series of seals and suddenly a stream of fire followed him.
Naruto's eyes widened as he instinctively tried to bring his usual defense up. As the hard edge of wind chakra met the fire, the fire suddenly seemed to explode in strength. Feeding on the wind, the fire leaped around Naruto, surrounding him making his sweat-soaked skin burn as the heat poured onto him.
As the flames flowed around him, hotter and faster with each passing beat of his rapidly pounding heart, he gritted his teeth and glared back at the flames. Fire was Sasuke's favorite element. Fire was Konoha's favorite element.
He wouldn't lose
Naruto gritted his teeth and clenched his jaw as, suddenly, the air seemed to thicken around him. For a moment the heat spiked even hotter, driving the boy to sway, almost faltering to his knees, before he narrowed his eyes and pushed harder. As the heat beat on him, as it weighed on him, heavier and heavier, trying to drive him to fall, he suddenly, wordlessly screamed out in defiance.
And in response, suddenly, the thick, heavy air exploded with a ripping scream as it suddenly grabbed hold of the flames and, in an instant, feed them into that razor edge and a thin blade of super-heated air shot forward, leaving a trail of burning earth and wood in its wake.
"And who the hell do you think I am?!" Naruto suddenly burst out as he swayed on his feet, sweat burning his eyes as he focused his suddenly blurry eyes on Jiraiya. "I am Naruto Uzumaki! I'm not going to go run away, I'm not going to cower, and I'm not going to cry out in fear!
"I'm going to take on everything thrown at me! I won't stop! I won't give up!" Naruto planted his feet as deeply as he could and jabbed his finger at the man, "I'll take whatever you throw at me and I'll throw it right back!"
Then Jiraiya's fist met his face again and he was sent flying back again. His whole world exploded into a rolling wave of vertigo, his fingers digging into burnt earth. Shakily, he planted his foot on the ground as he forced his mind to accept just which direction down was.
Jiraiya hit him again, then again. He couldn't bring his hands up fast enough to catch the blows. He couldn't even see them coming, the air didn't even seem to move until Jiraiya's fist was just about to land, giving him just enough time to turn into the blow before it sent him flying again.
When he landed again, in charred, blackened earth, his limbs felt like hot, bubbling lead. They screamed out at him as he forced them to move. His stomach twisted and churned before suddenly he could feel a dry, hacking forcing the foul, acrid taste of bile into his mouth.
A moment later, Jiraiya's wooden sandal had knocked him onto his back as he struggled to push himself up and back to his feet. "I know who Naruto Uzumaki is. But you're confusing who you are with whom you want to be, maybe even who you will be. But either way, you aren't even close to there right now.
"Right now, you aren't Naruto Uzumaki, feared, loved and guardian shinobi of Konoha. Right now, you're just Naruto, with a few cool little tricks up your sleeve. Right now you're just a little minnow that's been thrown into a sea of sharks all looking to make a meal out of you."
Naruto couldn't quite form the words to respond back to him as he noisily continued to cough and heave, rolling onto his side as he struggled to calm his still churning, empty stomach.
"But, I will tell you the truth about what makes a shinobi truly great," Jiraiya said as he crouched down, hovering over Naruto. "It isn't amazing and powerful techniques. It isn't great fighting skills, or impossible aim. It isn't lineage or bloodline techniques."
He paused, letting Naruto slowly calm his still spasming body a bit more, before he continued. "What makes a shinobi truly great, is the ability to endure whatever is throw at them. It's to have life beat you down, again and again, then getting up and moving on a little wiser."
When Naruto finally stilled a few moments later, Jiraiya picked him up by the back of his jacket and carefully put him over his shoulder. "Figure that out and nothing will stop you in the end."
-o-o-o-
Kin opened her mouth to say something before shutting it and shaking her head. "You know what? Never mind. I know no matter what, you're going to say something about his attitude or training or who knows what."
"He started it, actually." Jiraiya stated simply before lightly settling Naruto down onto the soft grass. "You should see what he did to his little training ground. Somehow even came up with a way to turn a fireball eating away at that defense of his back into an attack."
Tsunade slowly looked up from where she had been hovering over an irritated Temari, who was continuously twisting her arm and wrist as the fan flowed around arm and wrist. Her brow furrowed as she twisted her wrist, catching the fan and slapping it shut. Then it fell to the ground and she cursed softly.
"Stop squirming so much," Tsunade chided lightly as she lightly pushed him back down. "You're not going to just magically pick it up. You don't have the control for that."
Temari's scowl immediately deepened. Nearby, Kin allowed a brief, triumphant smirk to crease her lips. Unfortunately, Tsunade saw it.
"Oh, don't look so smug, little miss high and mighty, your control is on a whole other level of bad compared to hers," Tsunade said with a smirk of her own.
Kin immediately scowled as she clutched at the leaf she still hadn't made much progress on disintegrating in the last few days. Then her eyes glanced over at the small group of clones working on doing the same. Her scowl only deepened from there.
"How come he makes it look so easy?" Kin demanded quietly as she sent a slight look at the still prone Naruto as Shizune was slowly running her glowing green hands over him.
"Because he's been like this his whole life," Tsunade said absently as she continued to scan Temari. "Of course he's going to be able to handle it better. Have you even bothered to try and relearn your chakra control exercises yet?"
"I..." Kin opened her mouth to answer, before she turned around and glared at Jiraiya. "Why didn't you tell me I needed to learn everything all over again?"
"Because I'm not a highly trained and legendary medic nin who knows and understands that stuff?" Jiraiya responded flatly with a shrug of his shoulders. "Why do you think I had her check you out?"
"But..." Kin groaned softly and hung her head with a scowl. "Fine."
As Kin stood up and walked over to her group of clones, Jiraiya shook his head and looked back over at Shizune. "How's he doing?"
"The heat exposure is subsiding faster than I'd imaged. The same with the bruises," Shizune frowned slightly. "Is this the power of the Kyuubi?"
Jiraiya shrugged simply. "Don't know. I don't think either Mito-sama nor Kushina-chan ever healed this fast, but neither of them had the sealing done when they were born."
"Neither of them had a mother like he did, either," Tsunade said simply as she continued to examine Temari for a moment longer before nodding her head. "There, now you can get back to trying to play with your fans."
Ignoring the growl Temari sent her way, Tsunade stood up, then walked over to the still unmoving Naruto. "So, what did you do to the brat, you old pervert?"
"I simply needed to insure he learned a valuable lesson," he said simply as Tsunade eyed him warily and brought her own hand down and began to examine the boy.
"... What the hell is this?" Tsunade stared a moment, before she ripped her eyes up towards Jiraiya. "Who the hell has this brat been training with? That idiot Gai?"
"Hm? No." Jiraiya shook his head, arching a brow at her lightly. "Why?"
"His bones are too dense for normal training at his age," She frowned slightly as she continued to run her hand over him. "But that doesn't make sense... they shouldn't... but they are."
"Mind speaking plainly for those of us not living in your head, princess?" he asked with a small touch of sarcasm in his voice.
"Like I'd ever let you near it," she responded flatly without even a moment's hesitation.
"Believe me, princess, I've had enough trouble trying to follow your line of thinking for years. I gave up trying to figure out why you do what you do decades ago," Jiraiya said flatly. "So what does it mean?"
"Even with his healing factor, he'd have to be training himself into the ground, repeatedly, in order to have this kind of bone density," she said, ignoring the barb in his voice. "What kind of teacher pushes their students that hard?"
Jiraiya glanced away for a moment, before rolling his shoulders into a shrug. "Not the brat's. If he's been training that much, it's because he did it on his own up until those chunin exams when he got some help from Anko and her friends."
"Anko?" Tsunade frowned slightly at the name, brow knit into a furrow. "What does dango have to do with…?"
"Anko, as in Orochi's Anko," he said in clarification. "You know, the apprentice he slapped that twisted little creation of his on and then abandoned?"
"… Ah." Tsunade's face twisted sourly and she shook his head as she resumed studying the boy. "His chakra coils are quite… interesting. There's a definite bleed off, but… there's no ruptures. And the chakra signature matches the ones I found in the girls."
"I am such a genius," Jiraiya chortled softly as he rubbed his hands together.
"Oh, shut up and stop being so smug about how lucky you got, I know you didn't mean to use the seals as a filter to bleed out the toxicity of its chakra," she stated simply and shook her head. "I see you decided to put the little brat in his place. Quite hard it looks."
She was smirking, smugly as she said, taking a visible satisfaction from the fact as she took over healing from Shizune.
"I'd say I'm surprised at your pettiness, but…" Jiraiya shook his head ignoring the slight glare Tsunade sent his way. "Feel up to do some actual training or do you want to go back to drowning in sake?"
"Please, you looking to end up in the hospital, again, old man?" Tsunade's lips held a light smirk as she arched a brow back at him.
"Like I have something to worry about from an old booze hound like you," Jiraiya said back without missing a beat.
"I'll show you what you have to worry about all right." The crack of Tsunade's knuckles was audible as she stood up and glared at Jiraiya.
-o-o-o-
Naruto awoke to a violent shaking, throwing him lightly into the air and then painfully onto his back. With a groan, he quickly sat up, his head immediately swimming. Glancing blearily around as his eyes refused to focused, he asked, "What's going on?"
"Ah, you're awake, Naruto-kun!" Shizune quickly put her hand on the back of his head and smiled as the green glow helped clear his head. "Better?"
"Yeah…" Naruto agreed with a light nod of his head before he looked around, trying to find the source of the sudden earthquake that had woken him.
He found broken, burning earth churning around the blurring motions of two figures. Jiraiya and Tsunade moved too fast for him to truly follow. Blows were thrown and parried in the blink of the eye, faster than Naruto had ever imagined before, neither of them attempting to block the other straight out.
Then the earth shook again as Tsunade landed another punch into the ground. Earth rose up in a stone wall before a wave of fire caught it and melted it into a rose-colored slag. Then, a few motions and a blast of water left Tsunade's mouth and covered the glowing stone.
Instantly the air cracked as a hiss of steam filled the air, obscuring the distance between the two combatants. Sounds of sharp impacts founded out, then Tsunade found herself leaping back, a flowing wave of spikes penetrating into the space she'd been in only a moment before. Then, suddenly, the makeshift walls she'd created with her blows melted down into mud and poured towards her.
Tsunade was airborne before it could reach her and took another sudden breath, filling her lungs up, as her hands ran through a series of seals. Then she spat out a series of bullets of ugly green fluid through the steam. The flowing earth stopped and turned solid again as Jiraiya's technique was broken.
When the mist cleared moments later, the earth was eaten by a series of blackened pits that released a soft stream of toxic vapors as the acid bullets slowly finished eating their way down. Beyond them, Jiraiya released a trio of kunai, tags flapping on their rings. Tsunade flicked small broken stones at each, deflecting the kunai and causing the tags to explode.
And suddenly it was raining oil down all over the field, covering every in in the slick, glistening fluid. Everything, including Tsunade… and her suddenly not-as-opaque as it normally was top. The woman stood there a moment before her brow twitched and her jaw clenched.
"Jiraiya... you dirty, perverted little-!" She broke off, in mid-rant as she saw a familiar set of signs flashing through Jiraiya's hands as he leaped past the edge of the oil and a blast of fire escaped his mouth.
Instantly the entire battlefield was transformed into a twisting, churning inferno. Jiraiya wasted no time as he landed, his fingers instantly moving through a new set of signs, and slamming down onto the earth, turning them into a churning swamp of fire. Then the liquid earth exploded outwards, arching up into a curving, solid dome, covering the flame entirely.
Moments later the dome collapsed in on itself, leaving a mess of charred earth and stone.
Then, suddenly, a massive geyser of water shot up, propelling an irate-looking Tsunade, her arms crossed about her chest upwards, standing at its peak. She looked down at Jiraiya for a moment, glaring angrily at him, then she made a series of signs of her own and flipped backwards.
As she descended, her hands came together, fingers pointed like a gun towards Jiraiya, and suddenly the geyser began to shoot out, breaking into a multitude of whirling scythe-like blades.
A wall of stone and earth rose up between Jiraiya and incoming onslaught before it was worn away into rubble in seconds. When it fell, he was nowhere to be seen. Still the blades fell, earth was carved up and turned to mud everywhere the blades could reach as Tsunade landed.
Then a hand rose up, grabbing hold of her ankle and pulling down.
Tsunade's fist crashed into the earth again, however, instead of shattering, it rippled like water and turned into mud. Glaring angrily, she suddenly kicked up with her leg, ripping the hand, and the Jiraiya attached to it, out of the ground. The man broke his grip when he was half way emerged from the ground, but it was too late for him to reverse the momentum.
Viciously bending backwards, Tsunade cartwheeled into a snapping kick that propelled Jiraiya up into the air. As he arched back, she spit an acid bullet as she finished completing her cartwheel straight towards the flying form, only he dispersed into a puff of smoke before it could impact.
Then Jiraiya erupted from the earth behind her, hands filled with swirling rasengan as he swung at her head. She ducked, just inching out of the way of the first sphere as a few errant strands of hair were tugged out of her head and turned to dust in the attack. Then she was twisting about, using her arm to catch his and force his follow up back hand to slide harmlessly up over her head.
Her cheeks puffed as he came full circle, before blasting out a stream of steaming acid. He met it with his own stream of oil. For a moment, they focused on battling, one against the other, struggling for dominance as acid and oil splattered around them.
Then suddenly they broke and they were moving back into tight, flowing blows.
Tsunade moved with a tight, minimum efficiency, using her strength and chakra control to deflect Jiraiya's blows with the least amount of force possible. Jiraiya moved with a dramatic, deceptive style that gave every indication of telegraphing itself one way, only to strike another. Still, neither seemed to gain over the other, until finally both froze in place.
When they looked, Jiraiya was holding a swirling rasengan at Tsunade's throat. She in turn had her finger, cocked back, held beneath her thumb at his. Either was a potential death blow.
For a moment, silence reigned as the pair stared, solemnly into each other's eyes. Then Naruto's voice broke enthusiastically in. "That was awesome!"
Then, Tsunade pulled her hand back and scowled, angrily at him. "You held back."
"You're out of practice," he responded simply with a shrug.
The entire match had only lasted a few precious minutes, the sannin's attacks flowing back and forth with the strength and skill that brought armies to their knees. As Naruto slowly felt the reality of their skills filter into his mind, his jaw started to hang. Then their words hit him like a falling mountain.
"That was holding back?! That was out of practice?!" Naruto demanded as he stared back at the pair.
Jiraiya turned and smirked softly at the boy as his eyes gleamed lightly. "That was just a taste of what it means to be a legend, brat." Then his lips tightened back down into a frown. "That was just a glimpse of what league Itachi Uchiha and Kisame Hoshigaki are in."
And with those words, Naruto simply stared back at Jiraiya for a moment, before his eyes hardened and he glared back defiantly. "Then I've got a lot of work ahead of me."