dopliss: And here we introduce the funniest character in the Naruto series! …And I, sadly, forgot my joke.
Disclaimer: Naruto is not mine. Man, it´s so boring here without Mizuki…
Naruto walked up to the unconscious body of the man that was supposed to train him during the month before the finals. "Hey… perv, are you awake?" he asked. He then got behind him, formed his hands so that his index and middle fingers lined up, and crouched down behind him. "Only one way to find out… Secret Finger Jutsu: One Thousand Years of Death!" And with that, he poked Ebisu in the rectum with his fingers – but unlike how Torabu did it on him, he did not add any chakra in the so-called technique.
Naruto stood up and sighed, "Man, he´s totally out of it. Some trainer… he´s pathetic." He then looked at the old man on the frog and shouted, "Okay, frogman, what the hell was that all about? Who do you think you are, anyway?"
As the frog reeled its tongue back in, the man said in an overdramatic tone, "I´m glad you asked! I´m the Hermit of Mount Myoboku! The wise and immortal spirit! That´s right! It is I, the Toad Mountain SAAAAAAGE!"
Naruto was obviously confused. "What? 'Toad Sage'?" he asked.
"Exactly!" the perverted man said as his toad disappeared and he landed on his feet.
"Well… listen here, Pervy Sage, what´re you gonna do about this?" the boy asked, pointing at Ebisu. "This guy´s supposed to be training me, and you laid him out flatter than a bathmat!"
"Well, he shouldn´t have interfered with my research," the Toad Sage coolly replied.
"Your 'research'?" Naruto asked, disgusted by the man´s lie.
The man reached into his cloak with a smirk on his lips. "You see, I´m a novelist," he explained. "I am a writer of great books. Like this!" And then he pulled out a novel titled… "Make-Out Paradise", the same book that Kakashi has often seen been reading!
"WHAT? You wrote that?" Naruto asked in shock, easily remembering having seen his sensei reading it.
"Yes! I see you know it!" the man smiled widely. I´m famous and it´s not even out on paperback yet!
"You call that pervy trash a novel?" Naruto shouted in disgust. "'Research'? Yeah, right! Just an excuse for you to peek at the girls in the bath house!"
The boy shouted so loud that the women inside of the bath house heard him, and each screamed in shock and fled towards the dressing rooms while covering themselves with their towels, embarrassed and frightened. Upon hearing this, the old man screamed out in panic. "Look at what you´ve done!" he melancholy screamed. "You´ve ruined my peeking! I mean my research!"
"Dirty old man…" the boy muttered.
"You little…!" the Toad Sage growled as he walked up to Naruto. "There´s nothing dirty about it! I happen to be a serious artist who´s inspired by youth and beauty, that´s all! And-!"
"Yeah, whatever… Like anyone believes that," Naruto interrupted stoically. "Who cares, anyway? What about my training?"
The old man calmed down and looked at the boy questioningly. "Your training?" he asked. "You mean the walking-on-water technique you were having so much trouble with?"
Naruto looked at the old man with curious eyes. "You can do it?" he asked. He then pointed at the man and declared, "Okay, then it´s up to you to teach it to me – you at least owe me that!"
The man harrumphed as he walked past the boy. "Stop bothering me, kid, I´m busy," he scoffed.
Dissatisfied with the perverted man´s refusal, Naruto shouted after him, "Hey, wait! Come back here, you pervy sage! Where´s your sense of responsibility? You´ve gotta train me!"
Turning around to face the boy, the Toad Sage shouted, "Not on your life! I can´t work with someone who doesn´t respect the work of a true artist!" He then said in a much calmer voice, "Besides, I don´t like kids."
Naruto knew that he had screwed up when he had insulted the man´s work. He then tried to put up an act by saying, "Uh, actually, I thought your book Make-Out Paradise was, uh… really well written, and interesting, and informative."
"Liar," the man scowled, easily seeing through the boy´s lie. "The purchase and reading of that book is prohibited for anyone under the age of eighteen."
"Oh? Yeah… but the reviews I read were great!"
"You really think that´s going to work on me?" the man asked, losing patience. "What do you take me for, an idiot? I happen to be a SAGE! Save your breath, kid, you can´t butter me up!" He then made a hand-seal and a powerful gust of wind surrounded him.
"Okay, you´re right!" Naruto pleaded, using it as a last resort. "Sorry! But wait, you can´t-!" The wind then grew more powerful and caused the boy to stop talking, using his strength to shield himself from the wind instead.
"SO LONG AND GOOD LUUUUCK!" the Toad Sage cackled as he leaped off across the rooftops.
As the wind died down, Naruto looked at the direction that the old man left in with a wide smile of awe on his face. "That was cool!" he marveled. "I don´t care if he is a dirty old man, that guy´s the real deal!" He then ran off to chase the perverted man, leaving the unconscious Ebisu behind.
Meanwhile, in her basement, Sairento sat in the darkness, meditating in a circle of lit candles. In front of her and outside of the circle were twenty wooden training dolls, each standing at a different angle and location. The light from the candles was not the only source of light in the room, however. Peeking through the door that lead to the basement were an orange-haired man in his forties, dressed in black kimono, and a silver-haired woman, also in her forties and in a white kimono.
"I am starting to worry for our daughter, dear," the woman said to the man. "She´s been down there for six hours now."
"I agree, Kanashii my wife," the man replied. "But she insisted that she´d train alone down there."
"She must take breaks at some point," Kanashii stated, clinging on to her husband´s left arm. "Can you please talk with her, Hadona?"
Hadona looked his wife in the eyes. "Do you still think she´s upset at you?" he asked.
"She´s been like that to me ever since she became a ninja." Her eyes softened. "Would you please talk with her?"
He smiled and kissed her on the forehead. "Of course I will, Darling." He then walked down the stairs and towards the mute girl.
When he was mere steps away from her, she said, "I could hear you both clearly."
He stopped and looked down at her. "Sairento dear, why don´t you stop the training for a moment and come up from this darkness?" he asked.
"I have a lot of training to do, Father, so I can´t waste any time for dawdling around." She did not even turn around to look at him.
"How far have you gotten in that, by the way?" he asked, curious about her progress.
"Watch," Sairento ordered.
The man then saw a ghostly image appear in front of his daughter. "So, you´re using that Jutsu…" he whispered.
The image then ran towards each of the training dolls, and with a single strike, it cleaved one of them in two! The image then ran at the other dolls and cleaved them in half one at the time. When there were no dolls left, the image disappeared.
"Impressive," Hadona whistled. "You managed to learn that technique in merely six hours."
"Yes, learned… but not mastered," the mute girl said in a dissatisfied tone. "It was incomplete in form, it moved slowly, and it took a lot of time to gather the chakra necessary to produce it. I must train more."
The man looked at his daughter in pity. "Do you really think that´s a wise decision?" he asked.
Once again, she did not turn around to look at her father. "I suggest you leave me be."
He stood up and turned around. "Will you at least come up for dinner?"
"I will."
The man walked over to the stairs, and then turned around to ask, "Are you still upset at your mother?"
The mute girl said nothing.
"Can you at least tell me why you aren´t on friendly terms with her?"
Her answer was blunt and simple: "She never made it past genin rank… but instead married a jonin."
The man turned away from her. "You wouldn´t be here if she didn´t."
"I could possibly have been conceived later."
He then walked up the stairs, leaving with the words, "No matter what, you look just like her."
After he had closed the door, Sairento asked aloud to herself, "Why do you think I´m wearing a mask?"
"Hey! Pervy Sage! Where are you?" Naruto shouted, having run around town in search for the old man. He then stopped at a crossroad in the village and asked himself, "Where´d he disappear to?"
He then heard the scream from a woman and an audible slap coming from a nearby restaurant. "What do you think you´re doing, you disgusting old man?" a woman asked in anger.
Naruto then saw a woman exit the restaurant, the Toad Sage following her while rubbing his sore cheek. "I´m sorry, but you have such a beautiful pair of soft and lovely… hands!" the latter apologized. "You really do have beautiful hands! How do you keep them so soft?"
The woman was not amused or flattered in the slightest. Naruto visibly winced when he saw her slap the old man across the other cheek. "Filthy beast!" she screamed and walked away.
"So much for soft hands… geez…" the Toad Sage muttered.
"What was I thinking?" Naruto groaned to himself. "This guy´s really pathetic… He´s even pervier than my last trainer… but it´s not like I have much choice." He then began slowly walking over to the perverted man.
"Hmm… looks like the women in this town are no friendlier than before…" the Toad Sage mused. "Still, I like ´em feisty."
"So, you´ve been here before, huh?" Naruto asked, causing the man to turn around. He then shouted, "I´m surprised they don´t make you wear a leash, you old pervert!"
The man shushed the boy and said, "You know, I really wish you didn´t use the word 'pervert'."
"Oh yeah? Well, tell me how you like the word 'joke', ´cause that´s what you are, mister: a joke!" The boy was screaming even louder now. "First I get stuck with a closet pervert, and now… AUGH! Why can´t I get a trainer that-!"
"Oh, put a lid on it, willya?" the old man complained as he picked the boy up, threw him into a nearby big pot, put a lid on it, and blocked it with a relatively big rock. "There you go, kid, you can train in there for a while." He then turned around and walked away, laughing loudly as he heard Naruto´s muffled complains emit from the pot.
Sometime later, the old man was in the forest, smoking a pipe. "What I´d give for just a… few minutes with a young, pretty girl…" he lamentably sighed as he exhaled smoke. He then gazed at the skies and fantasized that the clouds had the shape of pretty women, all giggling and wooing at him.
He giggled perversely at his imagination, and then looked to his right, where he saw five shuriken flying towards him. In a state of panic, he rushed behind a fallen tree in order to cover. Naruto then appeared where the man once sat and said, "You can´t get rid of me that easy!" He then walked over the fallen tree and was greeted by the sight of a big brown clay doll. "Well, whaddaya know; a Replacement Jutsu. Not bad, old man."
As Naruto walked off, he was unaware that he had assumed wrongly. The clay doll was surrounded in a puff of smoke, and the old man was in its place once it cleared. "Man, that was close," he groaned. "Little squirt… You´ll have to be a lot smarter than that to outfox the Toad Mountain Sage."
Naruto was not that naïve, however, as his head popped over the tree, a bored expression on his face. "Oh yeah? How am I doing now?" he bluntly asked, scaring the daylights out of the Toad Sage.
After having calmed down, the man finally gave in to the boy´s will. "Okay, I´ll admit, you´re not totally without talent," he admitted.
"So does that mean you´re gonna help me with my training?" Naruto asked hopefully.
"Not so fast, squirt. It´s a question of quid pro quo," the man said. "I´ll give you what you want, but in return you have to try and get me what I want." He stood up.
"So, what do you want?" Naruto asked.
"You must know by now," the man chuckled. "I like them ripe and luscious with an hourglass figure, you see? And big but not too big, you know what I mean?" He felt the need to outline the object of his desire with his hands. "If you bring me something like that, I will train you till the cows come home!"
"You will? No lie?" the boy asked excitedly as he stood up.
"The Toad Mountain Sage never lies!"
"You got it! Wait here!" Naruto ordered as he ran off in search for the object.
Unfortunately, the perverted man could not keep his promise, as he minutes after saw two young women walking together and decided to follow them. Too bad, kid, it´s not like we had a contract!
A little later, in a café in Konoha, the Toad Sage was having a lot of fun with the women. "…And then I said, 'Not with my rice ball, you don´t!'" he said, finishing a story and then laughing loudly afterwards, the girls laughing less loudly along with him.
"That´s a pretty funny story," one of the women said.
"It´s funny, yes, but it´s not a story," the man said. "Every word of it is true."
"Really?" the other woman asked. "What happened next?"
Before the Toad Sage could continue, all three of them heard Naruto shouting, "Hey! Pervy Sage! I´m back!"
"What? Did he call you pervy?" one of the women asked while the other was giggling.
As the orange-clad boy ran up to him, the man scolded, "You little runt! I told you not to call me that!"
"Look! I got you one, just the way you like ´em: a ripe and luscious one with curves!" Naruto said, presenting… a watermelon with an hourglass figure.
"THAT´S NOT WHAT I MEANT, YOU FOOLISH BOY!" the man screamed as he quickly sliced the watermelon into edible pieces, much to the boy´s joy.
"Talk about ripe and juicy!" Naruto said, almost drooling.
"Dig in; we might as well not let it all go to waste," the man said calmly as he and the boy each took a slice. At that moment, rather than noticing Ebisu spying on them, the Toad Sage noticed that the two women were gone. "THE LADIES! WHAT HAPPENED TO THE LADIES?" he screamed in lament.
After having eaten the vegetable, Naruto rubbed his stuffed belly in satisfactory. "Man, that was the best!" he sighed in joy.
The man, however, was less than pleased. "Struck out again…" he moaned as he stood up and began to walk away from the café. "Now I must be off. I´ve wasted too much time already."
"Hey!" Naruto complained as he got up and stopped the man in his tracks. "What´re you talking about? Where´re you going? What about my training? We had a deal!"
"I don´t give a flying fist for your training!" the Toad Sage shouted, waving his arms up and down like a crazy person. "I have my research to conduct!"
"'Research' my butt!" the boy grumbled, pointing an accusing finger at the man. "It´s not like I have anything better to do than to hang around with a pervy old poop like you! I´ve gotta train till I´m stronger than anyone, ´cause I´m gonna pass the Chunin Exams! And then someday, I´m gonna be Hokage!"
"Ha! That´s a good one!" the man scoffed. "Tell me, did you fall on your head when you were a baby? Is that what makes you this way? Now I know you´re wasting my time." He then glared seriously at Naruto. "That´s enough! I need to get on with my research! And for that, I´m gonna need a lovely lady! No fruits, no vegetables, but a LADY!"
The boy looked dumbfounded at the man. "A lady?" he repeated. "Oh, if that´s what you wanted, why didn´t you say so? No problem!" He then smirked, cracked his knuckles, and then used the Sexy-Jutsu to transform into the naked teenage girl.
Unfortunately for Ebisu, he was so shocked that he fell backwards and into a well. The Toad Sage, however, was ecstatic. His eyes nearly bulged out of his head and his voice rose several octaves in rapid gasps. Naruto looked at him and said, "If you keep staring like that, I´m gonna blush," putting on an act for the old man.
"So… so lovelyyyy…" the old man muttered. He then gave two 'thumbs-up' and shouted, "WE GOT A WINNER! A PERFECT TEN!"
Pathetic… Naruto thought, struggling to keep up the façade.
"She´s just… my type! I really, really… like her!" the Toad Sage said, viewing Naruto´s body from each angle available. "How did you do it? Where on Earth did she come from?"
"Um… no biggie. I call it my Sexy-Jutsu," Naruto replied.
"Yeah! I love it!" The man was drooling like crazy. "You´re a genious, kid! This is one amazing technique!"
Yeah, it seems to have that effect on a lot of older guys, Naruto thought in a deadpan voice. Looking as cute as possible, she asked, "So, you´ll help me with my training now, right?"
"YOU BET!" the man excitedly yelled. "…Erm, on one condition."
Surprised, Naruto put her index finger at her lower lip in a cute fashion and asked, "A condition? What is it?"
He laughed perversely and turned around, hiding his embarrassment and bleeding nose. "I´ll do it if you promise… to stay like that the whole time."
Annoyed, Naruto turned back to normal, pointed an accusing finger at the Toad Sage, and shouted, "I knew it! You ARE pathetic! You´re nothing but a lousy little pervert!"
"I am not a little pervert!" the man defended angrily.
"Oh yeah? Then tell me; what are you?"
The man let out a loud cackle, wiggled his fingers in a creepy fashion, and said, "I´m a BIG one!"
"Oh… great, that makes all the difference…" Naruto muttered in disgust.
Later still, the two were now at a riverside, sitting in a meditative stance. "Okay, we´ll just pretend none of that happened," the man said. "Now, let´s begin your training."
Naruto glared at him. "And you really mean it this time?" he asked skeptically.
The Toad Sage glared back at him. "A sage always means what he says. Now, go ahead and show me that technique you were working on before."
Naruto nodded and walked over to the water´s edge. He channeled chakra to his soles and began walking on the liquid surface, though rather wobbly. He lasted for twenty seconds before he fell into the river. The man could not help but laugh as Naruto dragged himself back to shore.
"You really DO need help, don´t you?" the man laughed, causing the boy to groan.
"I should know by now to take my clothes off first!" Naruto growled as he stripped down to only being in his boxers.
The man then noticed something and said, "Hey, go on and build your chakra one more time."
"Can´t I dry off a little first?"
"Now. Do it."
As Naruto did what he was told, he closed his eyes to focus more effectively. The man then locked his eyes on the boy´s stomach and saw the seal on it. "Amazing!" he gasped, causing the boy to look at him. he then covered up his outburst with a lie. "Wow… you have no excess body fat. How do you do it?"
"Do you mind, old man? I´m trying to train here!" Naruto complained as he closed his eyes and focused his chakra again.
The Toad Sage looked intently at the seal on the boy´s stomach. So this is the formula used to imprison the nine-tailed fox, he thought as he sat in front of the boy. A double tetragram seal with an eight-signed seal. That way, if any of the demon´s chakra escapes the tetragram seal, it would be safely channeled into and suppressed by the boy´s chakra. The Fourth Hokage… he did this for the boy´s protection. He smiled, but it faded when he saw five circles appear around the seal. But since then, a Five-Pronged Seal has been added. He touched the seal with his left palm. An odd-numbered seal on top of an even-numbered? That explains it. That´s why the boy´s chakra and the demon´s are merging in an unstable way. It´s no wonder he can´t control his chakra very well.
At that moment, Naruto began laughing from the touches on his stomach. "Cut it out! What´re you doing? That tickles!" he laughed.
"Oh, sorry about that," the man apologized as he removed his palm from the boy and stood up. This is the work of someone else. If I have to guess, I´d say it was Orochimaru… He hid his right hand behind his back as the fingertips caught a blue mystical fire with the same kanji in them as when Orochimaru put the seal on the orange-clad boy. "Okay, raise your arms high above your head."
"Why?" Naruto asked, looking at the man.
"It´s a trust exercise," the Toad Sage lied. "C´mon, raise ´em high!"
Well, this is a weird way to get started… Naruto thought as he did what he was told.
"Five-Pronged Seal Release!" the man roared as he thrust his right hand into the boy´s stomach, his fingertips hitting each of the circles around the seal, erasing them!
The seal disappeared as Naruto recovered from the blow. "What the hell was that for?" he coughed.
"Just pushing a pressure point to loosen you up," the Toad Sage lied. "Now, go on. Try walking on the water again."
Reluctantly, Naruto did as he was told – and this time, he could stand on the water´s surface with perfect balance! "Whoa! That´s weird!" he gasped upon seeing this. He then began jumping from one foot to the other, laughing cockily as he did so. "Look at that, I´m doing it! Just don´t ask me how!"
Hmm… I think it´s about time to teach him how to control the Kyubi´s chakra, the old man thought with a smile. "Okay, outta the pool!" he ordered. "C´mon, I´m gonna teach you a killer technique."
"You are? Really?" Naruto asked as he ran towards the surface. "You mean like something really powerful and destructive?"
A little later, the old man said to Naruto, "Now then, there´s something you need to understand, kid, before we go any further. I don´t think you´re even aware of it, but you posses two chakras within you."
"Two chakras?" Naruto repeated.
"Haven´t you ever felt the presence of a different chakra?"
Naruto crossed his arms in thought. "Well, I´m not sure." He then realized something. "Oh, wait! I do kind of remember… there´s this one time… it was, like, all of a sudden I had this weird surge of power, and I didn´t know where it came from. I don´t remember when it was exactly, I almost thought it was a dream."
"So I see…" the Toad Sage nodded.
"But I do remember feeling that this was something different than my usual chakra. My normal chakra… well, if it was a color, it´d be blue, but this was red."
"I see…" the perverted man nodded as the boy got dressed. "Okay, that´s enough training for today," he said and began walking off.
"What, already?" Naruto asked as he caught up with the man. "What about that killer technique? Come on, I´m just getting started! Let´s go!"
"In training as in cooking: a washed pot never boils," the man said in a proverb. "Now, let´s go back to the village and have a real bath, not one where you just fall in, okay?"
Later that night, on the rooftops, Ebisu confronted the Toad Sage. "Sorry, Ebisu, it wasn´t my plan to steal your student from you," the latter apologized.
"Oh, that´s of little importance," Ebisu said. "Lord Hokage has had his ninjas searching for you everywhere. We were just beginning to think that you would never be found. And then you turn up here of all places, right in front of me. He will be pleased."
"Have you told the Hokage you found me yet?"
"No, not yet," Ebisu shook his head.
"Very good. It´s better that way," the old man stated.
"You´re after Orochimaru, aren´t you?" Ebisu assumed.
"No, unfortunately, I can´t say that I am. Sorry." The old man looked at the starry sky. "The only thing that brought me here was the chance of doing some research for a book. I have no desire to get involved in that other business."
"What do you mean? You can´t be serious!" Ebisu exclaimed. "You know him better than anyone! There´s only one way to deal with Orochimaru! He´s one of the sannin, the legendary three ninjas, and he can only be stopped by the power from another sannin! YOUR power, Master Jiraiya!"
Is it really true that Jiraiya refuses to fight Orochimaru? What kind of powerful technique will he teach Naruto? And will he learn it in time for the final round of the Chunin Exam?
dopliss: An excellent chapter, if I have to say! "Yes, you have to!" Shut up, Mizuki! (disheartened) Man, it´s not the same without him here…
On a lighter note: until next chapter, I´m gonna play the hell out of Xenoblade Chronicles!