Here we go, motherfuckers. Time for a new chapter!
Review response time!
1. Aaeru: Jiraiya definitely pulled his punches. Canonically, the only time Jiraiya got whooped by Naruto is when he loosened the Shiki Fuin and then had to create a seal specifically to fix his fuck-up. That having been said, I've also made Itachi stronger than he was in canon (or plan to, at any rate,) so you're right on both counts.
Naruto's got a bit of a lingering problem from his fight with Yagura, which will be explained a little later in this chapter. My basic explanation: Naruto's grown too strong, too fast, with the aid of Kage Bunshin on the training trip rather than specifically trying to master the Rasenshuriken. He's grown accustomed to gaining strength quickly, even though he previously worked as hard as anyone else to get where he had been beforehand. He's gotten spoiled, and the problem with people who're spoiled is that they don't like it when they stop getting that special treatment. It's not really a, "lust for power," thing, more just an, "I don't feel like I'm at my peak, why aren't I going at the rate I used to?"
Like you're walking up a hill, and suddenly there's a huge incline in the hill's steepness, except this way you can't see that incline. All you can do is feel the difficulty of the hike increase.
2. Clipsus: I addressed the issue of the quick escalation in this chapter; hopefully, it satisfies you. Thanks for the compliment on the scene itself, though!
Got two votes for an omake, so...next chapter gets one. Hope you're all ready for whatever I come up with!
Also, OneLunchMan, where did you go?
Let's get this trainwreck moving.
"I still don't know what you're trying to do here." Temari said. "This isn't going to do anything but embarrass me. Probably him, too. God only knows that's the last thing I need."
"Fuckin' shit, you worry too much. Relax, Goldilocks. If any of Naruto's luck rubbed off on either of us, everything's gonna go fine. Hell, even if that perverted birdshit-sensei showed up out of nowhere, he wouldn't manage to fuck this up for you."
"Oh, so no matter what, I'm responsible when it blows up in my face?"
"You smell the fire and figure out whether you want to kill me, or him, or yourself."
They were at the restaurant Temari had mentioned, the Shining Lotus. Low-lit, with high booths and tables, it was a ninja's comfort zone for eating; it was impossible to be attacked except through the establishment's infrequent windows, the high-backed chairs and booth seats able to break any technique or weapon used in an attempt to begin a fight.
"Can I take your order?" A girl came up to them. "My name is Mari. Saizo and I will be serving you today."
"Uh, yeah, hold on..." Tayuya said, skimming the menu.
"I'll have my usual." Temari said.
"I guess I'll have the...geez, what's 'flank of Shai-Hulud,' and why is it that expensive?"
"Tayuya, did nobody ever tell you about the Sabaku Kodo-Ryu?" Temari asked.
"No. I was definitely never taught about that. I'll go with the chicken kebabs, though."
Desert Tunnel Dragons? That sounded relatively menacing. The only time she'd heard of it was when Naruto had tried, and failed, to argue Temari to his side of an argument.
As their waitress walked off, Temari began to speak again.
"Shai-Hulud is an old, old name for them. Their teeth are razor-sharp, and our Kenjutsu masters use blades made from them. They're notoriously difficult to kill, though...no jutsu we've ever used has managed to hurt one, and the only thing we've found that can is water. Pure water is poisonous to them, and it takes far more to do the job than we're comfortable with using. They live far enough out in the desert that you'd have to hunt for days, maybe even weeks, to find one."
"That's bizarre."
"Says a woman whose corpse will spawn a demon."
"Not if I never die." Tayuya laughed at her own words. "Feels like I've gotten pretty good at managing that, too. No matter how fucked my body seems, I keep on just...not fuckin' dying."
"That's not a bad thing."
They were interrupted again a few minutes later, when their food was brought out. Their waitress, Mari, and a boy who Tayuya assumed to be Saizo, carried the plates.
Tayuya's kebabs were laid atop a bed of fried rice with mixed vegetables. Temari had ordered a two-plate meal of bacon-wrapped stuffed jalapeños, rice and beans, with a naked burrito bowl in the second plate. Tayuya thought it was a bit of a flimsy excuse to watch the waiter's muscular arms move, but she sympathized; Naruto, tired and worn from his training, was always a lovely sight to see.
Tayuya wasn't much of a romantic, but there was just something enticing about the masculinity of a working man...especially when you had feelings for him. Looking at how Temari was now, going beyond politeness and yet practically preying on his body with her eyes, Tayuya knew that her former enemy had developed a full-blown crush.
Not that it was her place to meddle, but she would. As her own boyfriend would say, "Pranks are the most fun when everyone walks away smiling."
This wouldn't be a prank, but hopefully she could leave Temari and Saizo with all three of them wearing smiles.
"Fukasaku-sama, have you seen...Naruto! There you are!"
It had been a week since they'd separated, and Jiraiya had finally found his wayward student. Naruto sat on the ground, with Fukasaku in front of him, and Jiraiya got the sense that he'd interrupted something comparable to a tutoring session.
"Hello, Jiraiya. It's been a little while."
The last time they'd met was during the Kyuubi attack.
"Hey, Ero-sennin. I, uh...well, shit. I'm sorry." Naruto said.
"I'd tell you it's alright, kid, but it's really not. Still, I'm willing to move past it. Now, since I've finally got you here, I'd like to ask you something: are you willing to just sit down and talk with me? No lies, no holds barred. I know I've kept some secrets from you, and I know that I shouldn't have, but...well, I guess it's because the world's just taken a wrong approach to you."
"No more lies?"
"I wouldn't call all of them lies...more like I just didn't always reveal the truth. I promise, though."
"Alright."
"Naruto, boy, call for me again when you two are done. We'll pick up where we left off." Fukasaku said before vanishing by way of a shunshin.
"So, what has that old geezer been teaching you?"
"History, mostly." Naruto said. "A few jutsu, but mainly history, and some tactics using my shadow clones as soldiers. Did you know that, even though four-man squads are the norm because a unit that small can generally avoid detection by non-sensors, a five-man squad allows for better team-building? If two of your teammates are a healer or a sensor, that only leaves two positions open for front-line fighters, which will probably just be one if you have a trap-master or support fighter...but a fifth teammate allows for a much more offensive presence on the battlefield."
Jiraiya had never thought about that, but it made sense. If you had a medic, they normally wouldn't fight, and sensors generally had very low stamina. So, if you had a secondary fighter like a Suna puppeteer or a Genjutsu specialist, that meant the bulk of the fighting would actually be done by one person. The idea that teamwork might overcome stronger, disorganized foes, was something of a Konoha staple. However, during war, it would be much more helpful to alleviate the burden of fighting alone.
That having been said, an additional secondary fighter or medic could be just as valuable. It would all be dependent on how the squad commander preferred going about their missions, and it didn't surprise Jiraiya at all that Naruto would choose combat.
"Your turn to ask a question." Jiraiya said.
"Why do you keep me in the dark on a lot of things? I mean...my parents, the Senjutsu training mortality rate, the lie about why you didn't step in against Yagura? I mean, if you don't have much left to teach me, that's one thing. Still, the deception bothers me."
"How far do you want me to go? There's a lot to say, and very little of it is good."
"Tell me everything."
"Well...alright. I did say, 'no holds barred,' after all." Jiraiya prepared himself. "As you know, your status as a Jinchuriki makes you an incredibly powerful shinobi, and essentially mandates that we do everything in our power to keep you loyal to us. If that meant holding a proverbial carrot in front of your face, then we'd do it. Do you really think it was an accident that you graduated, in the way you did? It wasn't. My sensei already knew that Mizuki was a traitor, and a minor Genjutsu was more than enough to put the idea in his head. Your other teacher, Iruka, was kept in the dark for obvious reasons. His interference might have caused his death, were it not for your loyalty to him."
That much was true. Naruto remembered the sheer size of the hole in Iruka's torso that night, a massive shuriken lodged inside.
"Even after you were found guilty of those murders, what happened to you? Nothing, because even a crazed Jinchuriki can be made compliant, and you were too important to be allowed to die. My sensei was a kind man, but he was also ruthless and political. Excluding the three years that Minato took over, Sarutobi Hiruzen served as the Hokage for almost sixty years. That takes a man who's willing to do whatever might be necessary for the good of the village. Tsunade can be that way, too, when she wants. Why do you think Tayuya is with us on this trip? Why do you think Tsunade chose you to be her guardian in Konoha?
"It's because she wanted one of Orochimaru's agents made loyal to Konoha, and if you developed a strong bond with her, then your own loyalty to the village would be reinforced. Your grandmother, and those children, complicated things...but Tsunade isn't heartless, she would never order their deaths to reaffirm that Konoha is the only family you need. If all goes well, then we'll be able to integrate them into our own forces, and having seen what those kids can do..." Jiraiya trailed off.
Naruto was mildly upset at the manipulation, but he understood the reasons; a loose cannon would have to be tied down, or eliminated. Konoha's higher-ups wouldn't do more work than they absolutely had to, hence the reason why nukenin like Orochimaru and Itachi were never gone after.
Naruto hated politics.
"Does Tsunade obaa-chan really think I might turn on her? Because when you say, 'loyal to Konoha,' it sounds like you really mean, 'loyal to Tsunade.'"
"Alright. Crash-course, Konohagakure political science one-oh-one...Tsunade-hime is relatively unpopular with the village. On the international stage, she's seen as commendable, a veteran of two wars and generally viewed as the most powerful kunoichi in the world, to say nothing of her doctoral skills or the advancements she made in medical science. However, she was only in the village once in the last...twenty-something years? We were thirty-seven when the Kyuubi attack happened, we're fifty-two now, she was-"
"Please get back on track." Naruto reminded him, something of a rarity for the blond.
"Oh, alright. Anyway, she took an extended leave of absence, and left again after the Kyuubi attack, and the next time she came back was when you practically dragged her here by her collar. While most of the civilians and merchants couldn't really give less of a rat's ass who's in charge as long as they keep getting dealt fair, there's a decent portion of the shinobi in Konoha who aren't too fond of her. Danzo is her most outspoken political opponent, though he'd never be so brazen as to openly challenge her. There were a lot of ninja who liked the way that my sensei, and Minato, ran things...and Tsunade doesn't do a very comparable job, drinking her life away while she signs paperwork and brash until the chips are down. Unless she absolutely can't afford to budge, it's relatively easy to make her accede to requests. You and I have it particularly easy, in that regard."
That explained why he'd always get off with little more than a slap on the wrist for his indescretions and impoliteness, even more than the fact that Tsunade was one-quarter Uzumaki in her blood.
"Who, in particular, is so set against her?"
"Well, for starters, there's the Sarutobi clan head, Azuma. He's the one who taught your generation's Yamanaka-Nara-Akimichi trio. His fiancee, Kurenai, is bound to be on his side. Your sensei is a bit more verbal about it than both of them, though."
His graduating generation, all taught by anti-Tsunade ninja.
"Well, in a way, isn't that a good thing?" Naruto asked. "Loyalty should go to the village, not the Hokage in particular. If I was told to make a choice between preventing Tsunade's death, and saving all of Konoha, she'd kill herself so that I wouldn't have to choose. That's what the Sandaime did for you, too, wasn't it?"
That was an old wound, at this point, but the perceptiveness Naruto had displayed with that barb was enough to make it painful.
"Yeah." Jiraiya nodded. "Anything else you want to ask?"
Naruto tilted his head back, thinking for a moment, before looking at Jiraiya again and shaking his head.
"No, I'm all good. Your turn again, I guess."
"This isn't really going to be questioning, this is going to be something of an amateur psychoanalysis. You," Jiraiya pointed at Naruto, "are power-hungry, and you feel entitled to that power now that you know your genetic pedigree as well as the fact that the Akatsuki are hunting you. Whenever you feel like you're not getting what you want, you get frustrated, and you vent by attacking the person who you think is shafting you...which has been me. You recover relatively quickly enough that we've been having a civil conversation, and you seem to respect me, even if you don't really like me. That, or you think I'm holding out on you for selfish reasons and you think the only rational answers are to force me to teach you or to beat me to death so that you don't have to deal with my supposed selfishness.
"There's also the matter of your hair-trigger anger, like you have a fetish for bloodshed when certain topics are brought up. A prime example is that whenever Tayuya's near-death gets brought up, you immediately get defensive because you think someone else is to blame, or you think they're blaming you."
Naruto frowned at that.
"I am to blame, though. It's my fault it happened." Naruto said. "If I'd been smarter, then she wouldn't have needed to step in against Yagura."
"Then why did you fly off the handle like that, and fight me?"
"Just because you know the truth doesn't mean you want to face it."
That sentence struck a chord with Jiraiya; for a boy who routinely made all kinds of bone-headed mistakes, the level of insight he sometimes displayed was frightening.
"And the real reason?"
Naruto huffed, but his unwillingness to speak wouldn't prevent him from doing so.
"I overdrew from the Kyuubi's chakra during that fight, after Tayuya got hit. You've noticed my ears and my nails and all, right? Hell, I grew a couple inches after it happened."
"I noticed. Still...you can't exactly 'over-draw,' from a Biju, as a Jinchuriki. What aren't you telling me? I'm not playing games with you, so you shouldn't try to with me."
"I might have, maybe, torn off the seal."
"You did WHAT?" Jiraiya practically screamed himself hoarse in one word.
"Hey, hey, calm down!" Naruto said, waving his hands non-threateningly. "The seal is back up. Don't ask me how it's back up, I don't know how it's back up. I'm not being possessed, though. The...outburst...is probably because of that too. I may have more in the future."
"Well, then I guess there's not much I can do about it." Jiraiya said. "Now, I've got one last thing to say before you can get back to your training with Fukasaku-sama: Once these Chunin Exams are over, I'm going to end the training trip. I know that I told you three years, but since you've apparently started learning Senjutsu without me, there's really nothing left I can teach you. I'll recommend a promotion to Jounin for you, and for Tayuya to be instated at that level as well. You'll have to work out how the twins, and your grandmother, play into this. If they want to, that is."
"Nothing left to teach me?"
"Nothing that needs to be taught." Jiraiya corrected his earlier wording. "People call me a Fuinjutsu master, the best in the world at it, but I'm really not much compared to the Uzumaki at their height. I mean, the last seal you used on me in that fight? I've never seen a seal do that. To most people, 'Fuinjutsu master,' is basically just a fancy term for, 'the person who makes things go boom.' The chakra limiter and Slog Seal are my own inventions, and they're pretty damn useful, but sealing is an art form. Even if you've learned from me, your seals won't be like mine, because our styles are different. If you really want to get better at it, you'll have to practice your hand writing...a lot."
"Aw, damn, I hate that. There's a reason grammar was my worst subject!"
"Not math? You seem like the kind of kid who'd be bad at...well, almost everything."
"Math is easy, it's all numbers. I don't need to know complicated stuff like calculus, I leave that to the guys who aren't gonna be fighting. But I know that four is more than two, so I'd usually want to be on the side with four. Science...I don't really care about jutsu theory, I care about using jutsu to kick ass. Isn't that called practical application? Besides, I know my elements. Fire and earth beat wind, wind beats lightning, lightning beats earth and water, earth and water beat fire. Lightning and water combine, fire and wind combine, earth and water combine. Once you know what beats what, and what pairs well together, it's easy. History...I didn't do well, but I'm trying to learn from the mistakes of the past. That way, I won't make those mistakes."
"But your handwriting..."
"Well, fuck, I don't have a defense for that. What is this, Nuremburg?"
"That was a trial made for crimes against humanity. They lost, by the way."
"I...what the fuck? Damn, I guess it's good that I'm a ninja, not a lawyer."
Jiraiya laughed.
"Alright, kid. We've got two days before we head back to Suna...work hard."
"Where're you going, then?"
"I've got a little reconnaissance to run. I'll see what news I can find about the Akatsuki."
"Sounds like a plan. Meet back in Suna, in two days?"
"Your support means more than you know."
The pair were clothed in the soft shadow thrown by a candle, hand in hand as they laid together.
"I could never, ever, abandon you. It's thanks to you that I became the man I am. It's thanks to me that you stand as you are now, prouder and stronger and more capable than you ever were before the day we met." He declared.
"I wish you would come more often." She said.
"I'll never be able to devote all of my time to you. You know that, don't you?"
"I know." She rolled over, kissing him and placing a hand on his bare chest. "Where did you get the scar?"
"Thought I had the son of a bitch cornered. Turns out, he knew his situation better than I did."
"Aw, poor little man. You know you've never been the smart one. That's always been the job of your teammates. You got saddled with being the stupid kid on a team of geniuses, and the dumb adult teaching brilliant kids."
"Hey, that's not nice, Ronbun Tenshi-chan...even if it's true."
"I don't care. Go back to loving me."
The man laughed.
"As you command, my little angel. I'll do whatever you want."
"Whatever I want?" She asked.
"Anything at all."
"Make me feel like I did all those years ago. Before all those years of death and pain, before the manipulation...make me believe in love, and peace, again. When I was just a student, and you were my master. When you owned me completely. My mind, my body, and," she lowered herself on to his chest, her head dipping low to whisper in his ear, "my soul as well."
He breathed heavily and turned his head, the wind from his lungs strong enough to blow out the single candle giving them light.
"Do you feel bad about it, sometimes, because I was so young? I never have. I was the one who came to you, after all, wasn't I?" She laughed.
"I regret giving in so early." He said. "Not all the love we've shared since then."
"That's true, I was such a wicked little girl...but I made sure you knew I loved you, didn't I? Here, let me show you again. Be as rough as you want...master."
In that moment, as he'd come across the revelation so many times before, Jiraiya knew that he was a man whose crimes would never be forgiven, except by the one woman on earth who genuinely loved him.