"Whether the nobles bow to me is of no concern. I ask only that they come like dogs at my command."
– A, Second Raikage of Kumogakure. She is best known for installing a puppet Daimyo in the Land of Lightning, and then squashing the resulting rebellion of the high lords.
-O-
"I kinda thought we'd be travelling a bit faster," Naruto said.
"Kid, we're in deep cover at the moment." Jiraiya gestured at the thick forest in all directions. "If a single woodcutter spots me and spreads a rumour, enemy ninja might know where I am, where I'm going and where I've been. It endangers Konohagakure's spies, and it endangers our information network. In the long run that threatens the village's safety."
A bird called, high above. Around them, leaves rustled. They hadn't seen another soul for the last two hours.
"Right this second we're as safe as we can get," Jiraiya admitted. "But it's important to get into good habits early."
Naruto folded his arms, frustrated. "How am I meant to learn anything if we're undercover all the time?"
"We're only undercover when we're travelling. I'll teach you in the evenings and whenever we settle in one place for a few days."
"How does that work when I'm still wearing my ninja headband and everything? You've taken yours off, but I'm obviously a ninja to anyone who looks."
Jiraiya sighed. "Here's the deal, since I'm sure you'll keep pestering me until I explain it all. I am a ninja that other villages consider an existential threat. Last time I checked, the bounty on my head was enough to outright buy a duchy. You are a wet-behind-the-ears chunin. If an old man with a single chunin as escort is wandering around and won't shut up about his novels, it's a writer with delusions of grandeur. If the Toad Sage Jiraiya shows up in a city, people notice. And if an old man and a young boy are travelling around, and aren't related, people sometimes notice that too. We don't want to draw attention, and we also don't want to look interesting."
"See, all you had to do was tell me the cover story, and we wouldn't be having this problem," Naruto said. He was surprised at how much backtalk Jiraiya was permitting, but he was going to take full advantage of it. Kakashi didn't usually indulge in Team Seven's curiosity to this extent.
"I've found dozens of spies through similar mistakes made by their handlers. Once I even caught and killed a pair of jounin who were planning to assassinate your–" Jiraiya cut himself off. "That's not important right now. Just remember that if you don't take this seriously, ninja of the Leaf could pay the price. We'll be close to the Sand-Leaf border for the next month, and that means enemy ninja will be around, even if we don't meet any."
Naruto nodded, doing his best to look earnest. "I understand."
"For now, you might as well practice playing the role of a bored ninja escort. Here, like so," and Jiraiya slouched a touch, his eyes remaining wary but his face slackening a little as he relaxed the muscles in his cheeks. "You want to look like you're competent, and this mission is beneath you."
It wasn't quite what Naruto had expected to learn. He also hadn't thought he'd be told, over and over, that he was relaxing all wrong. When they reached an inn and stopped for the evening, his face hurt, but at least Jiraiya had stopped adjusting Naruto's cheeks all the time.
"Well, you're definitely not the slowest student I've had," Jiraiya told him after dinner. "Shall we see how you do when it comes to ninjutsu?"
Naruto was all prepared to start learning some of the Fourth Hokage's signature techniques, but that wasn't quite on the cards. First, Jiraiya said, he wanted to know what he was working with. He put Naruto through his paces – taijutsu demonstrations against his own shadow clones, breaking free of some basic genjutsu, and hanging from a tree with one foot. Jiraiya seemed satisfied with the results.
"Alright, now walk on this pond," he said, pointing to a muddy watering hole that two cows were drinking from. There was a powerful odour coming from the liquid – Naruto hesitated to call it water – inside.
Naruto stared at him. "I don't know how to do that."
"Kakashi didn't teach you water walking?"
"Kakashi does lots of physical conditioning with us, and teaches us the skills we'll need on missions, plus he makes sure we're nice and paranoid so nobody can stick a knife in us. I learned tree climbing as well, but then the Chunin Exams happened and interrupted everything, and now, well." Naruto gestured at Jiraiya. "Whatever plans he had don't matter any more."
Jiraiya laughed. "Kid, I'm not trying to criticize your teacher, although I'm glad you like him enough to defend him. I just want to know whether you've learned anything about water walking in the past."
"No," Naruto admitted.
"Not to worry, it shouldn't take you more than an evening to figure out. The pond's nice and cold, so think of that as an extra incentive not to fall in." Jiraiya laughed. "That's one of the things that helped me back when I was learning this, ever so long ago."
"Any advice on how this is meant to work, or is this gonna be another Kakashi-style 'teaching' session?" Naruto asked, nettled.
"Push chakra out of your feet to hold yourself up," Jiraiya said. "Try not to fall in. I'm getting a drink; I need it after today."
Naruto scowled. Now that was just rude.
The less said about Naruto's first attempts at water walking, the better. The inn was small but clean, and Jiraiya had paid extra for a bathtub in Naruto's room. Naruto would have been grateful if his cold and dirty condition wasn't one hundred percent Jiraiya's fault in the first place.
It took three evenings for Naruto to get the hang of standing on the water, and another two days before he could take a step without sinking. Jiraiya made him practice one last time when they crossed a large river – "Running water is a whole different problem, kid!" – and then declared himself satisfied. By now they were near the border, and Naruto saw two merchant caravans from Wind that were buying Fire grain and cattle and selling salted fish and glasswares.
"Now I can get that cool technique from the Fourth Hokage, right?" Naruto asked that evening.
Jiraiya laughed. "We'll get there, don't worry. Take a day's rest first."
-O-
The next morning, they set off walking down a little-used trail that passed through a couple of tiny hamlets before hitting the next town. Naruto figured it was an attempt to get some privacy on the road.
"The most important thing, as a spy," Jiraiya started lecturing, "is to balance the risk you face and the rewards you can gain. Some ninja are in deep cover for months or years, letting lots of easy wins slip through their fingers, because they know the payoff if they wait will be so much more."
"You're the one planning our route, so I'm not going to be deciding what risks to take," Naruto reasonably pointed out.
"It's more metaphorical than that. Whenever you speak to anyone, you have a few options: act exactly as your cover would, which normally doesn't get you anything interesting; break cover and take the information available, with the consequence that you either cover your tracks or have to flee; or try to find a middle ground, which depends on the situation."
Naruto frowned. "That doesn't actually narrow my options down much. And I still don't know how it applies to me."
"Look, kid, you've gotta work with me here." Jiraiya took a second to think. "Let's do it this way. I'm gonna pretend to be a waiter, and you're ordering your food and trying to find out who some ninja called Maruto had dinner with. You suspect he's a foreign ninja and that his friends are also ninja, or at least that they're informants."
They walked in silence as Naruto planned out a strategy. He wasn't going to admit it out loud, because he didn't want to look dumb, but practical examples were always much easier for him to follow.
"Hi Mr. Waiter, what's today's special?" Naruto said at last, grinning. "Anything ramen-based?"
Jiraiya's face rippled and then settled into the stern mien of a posh waiter at a high-class establishment. "The gentleman likes to joke," he said, with an expression like he was disposing of a dead rat. "He knows we do not serve ramen."
"That's me, a real jokester," Naruto replied. He slackened his jaw, knowing it made him look slow. "But seriously, what have you got that's especially good?"
Jiraiya rattled off a list of dishes, half of which were completely new to Naruto. "What would sir like to order?"
"I've got a surprise meal planned for a friend soon," Naruto said. "He likes this restaurant so I wanted to try the food before committing to booking a table here. I don't suppose you remember what Maruto had last time he came?"
"The name does not ring a bell."
Naruto frowned. "That's a shame. In that case, I'll have the first thing you listed."
"Quail liver paté?"
"That's the one, yeah," Naruto said.
Jiraiya nodded and his face morphed back to normal. "That was less terrible than I expected. You had a plausible reason for your interest, you were personable enough that the waiter was a little amused, and if Maruto returns in the future for another meal, it's more likely that this waiter will remember him and his order. Those are all good things. Best of all, though, you didn't push too hard. That is the single most difficult thing to teach."
"Does that mean I'm a good spy?"
"I wouldn't go quite that far, but you'll get there soon if you keep showing so much aptitude. Alright, this time you're trying to avoid a nosy innkeeper from finding out who your contact is, without tipping him off that you're hiding something."
-O-
Hashido was a quiet sort of town. In the last two days, the most exciting thing to happen was two stray cats getting into a fight, and then a farmer throwing a bucket of water on them to break it up. The food was plain and apart from hard liquor, there was nothing interesting to drink either. No nice tearooms, no friendly bakeries with sugar-glazed buns, just a grotty run-down dingy little bar where the locals forgot their problems and replaced them with new ones.
But Naruto didn't mind, because Jiraiya had started teaching him a new jutsu.
"You put your chakra into the water balloon and swirl it, like so," he said, demonstrating with a red-and-blue-patterned balloon in his hand. Naruto held his own balloon, watching closely. "Then it bursts. Once you can do that every time you try, you'll be ready for the next step."
"What will the finished technique look like?" Naruto asked.
Jiraiya laughed. "It's a surprise, but I'm sure you'll be impressed. It's strong enough that if you land a hit with it, you won't need a second casting. A bit like that lightning technique that your teammate showed off during the tournament."
"Sakura's so cool, isn't she?" Naruto said enthusiastically.
"If you want to be as cool as her, you'd better get to work." Jiraiya tossed that last remark over his shoulder before he wandered off. Naruto expected the old man was going to get more booze. It was unkind, but then again Jiraiya spent his evenings sending Naruto outside to train, flirting with whatever traveller or waitress or cook caught his eye, and all the while putting away prodigious quantities of alcohol. He hadn't earned any charity, Naruto decided.
The new exercise was fiendishly hard. Naruto understood why water walking was such an important first step – without it, he wouldn't be able to move the contents of the balloon at all – but even so, the balloon resisted all his efforts. At one point, he got a strong current going, but it wasn't enough to break the thin rubber. The balloon stretched, distorted– but refused to break.
After two hours the chakra pathways in his hands ached something fierce. Jiraiya was nowhere to be found, and rather than risk permanent damage, Naruto decided to call it a night. With nothing else to do, he opened the book Sasuke had given him.
The Legend Of The Gutsy Ninja was, unsurprisingly, about a ninja. What did come as a shock, though, was the ninja's name. Naruto had never spoken to, met, or even heard of anyone else who shared his name, and all sorts of possibilities were surfacing. Had his parents read this same book and gotten the idea from there? Perhaps one of them had even written it? The author was an obvious pseudonym: Bufo Sapere. It didn't even sound like a name.
Those questions fell by the wayside fast enough, though, once Naruto started reading the thing.
-O-
They were halfway between two tiny villages in the middle of nowhere when Jiraiya tensed.
"Ninja," he hissed. "If they talk to us, stick to the cover story, or things will go to shit real quick. I can kill them if needed, but we don't want to fight. It would draw too much attention."
Naruto didn't have time for any questions. A three-man team from Sand was coming up the road, settled into the steady pace of a ninja with a long journey ahead. Jiraiya's face shifted a little, and suddenly he looked a whole lot dumber than usual.
"Hello there!" Naruto called when the Sand team was closer. They slowed and then came to a stop in front of him, cautious but not hostile. The likely leader stood in the middle of the formation, half a step further forward than the other two. To her left was a short man with an impish face. Her other teammate was yawning, and between his high-collared coat and sunglasses Naruto couldn't see much of his features.
Sunagakure and Konohagakure had an agreement to leave each other alone unless their respective missions forced them to fight. In theory it had been around since before the last great ninja war, but in practice there had been a few hiccoughs along the way. At the moment, the alliance seemed firm – but only fools let their guard down because of it. The Academy had hammered home that even 'friendly' ninja were not to be trusted. And there were always rumours about overeager Sand ninja deciding to collect Leaf bounties if they thought they could get away with it; most likely, Sand ninja told the same stories about Naruto's village.
Which meant Naruto would have to bring out the charm. "What a wonderful day for travelling. How's it going?" he asked with a winning smile.
"Not bad," the leader said, eyes wary.
Naruto nodded. "No issues back the way you came? Bandits, damaged bridges, that sort of thing?"
"No."
He racked his brains for another topic of conversation. "Did any of you get to see the last Chunin Tournament? The Sand ninja were really cool, I thought Temari was amazing although that girl who beat her was even better."
"Yeah!" the shortest ninja said. "I couldn't believe she lost, but then again Lightning Fist Sakura is a student of the legendary Sharingan Kakashi. I lost a fair bit wagering on that match, although I made it back when I backed that Uchiha kid to win the whole thing."
"Ignore Rosoke," the leader interrupted. "He's got an unhealthy fascination with the Sharingan."
That was surprising, Naruto thought, but not too interesting. He tried to fish for more information. "Everything's clear back the way we came, anyways. Although I don't know if that's the way you're going?"
"We're setting up a new courier station nearby for faster communications between Suna and Konoha," the leader said. "It's no great secret. I'm guessing you're not our liaison? We're meant to be meeting a trio of Leaf ninja somewhere round here."
"Nope, just passing through. I've got a very important author, here," Naruto said, nodding at Jiraiya. He rolled his eyes as he continued. "He needs a ninja escort to keep him safe from adoring fans."
Rosoke smiled, a twinkle in his eyes. "I've had missions like that before. Gotta really make sure to stay on top of all the different threats, right?"
"Yup. I never know where the next ambush might come from, given the VIP I'm guarding," Naruto said, winking. He tried to keep the smirk off his face as he pictured Jiraiya's reaction later.
"Well, keep your eyes open. The border is peaceful, most of the time, but my sister was on a mission here and her team never made it home," the leader said.
Naruto nodded, doing his best to look serious. "I'm being as careful as I can. At the end of the day there's always the risk of Stone or Cloud trying their luck."
The Sand ninja all nodded, and Rosoke spat on the ground at the mention of Cloud. Much like Stone and Leaf, Sand and Cloud had been enemies since the forming of the ninja village system. Naruto didn't know of a single war where they'd been on the same side.
"Anyway, we won't keep you any longer," the leader said, and Naruto nodded.
He turned to Jiraiya. "Let's get moving, sir. We don't want to get stuck camping outdoors again, not after last time."
The itch between his shoulder blades stayed until the Sand ninja had vanished over the horizon.
-O-
The shrine amongst the trees was a ruin. Nestled at the base of a cliff, three miles from the nearest settlement, it hadn't been visited for years. One of the walls had collapsed and going by the smell a bear had spent the winter hibernating inside. Two camouflaged tents had been set up in the undergrowth nearby, just far enough from the cliff edge that falling rocks weren't a danger. A very small fire, barely worth the name, kept Naruto's hands just short of warm.
"So how long are we hiding here for?" Naruto asked.
Jiraiya sighed. "For the last time, kid, we're not hiding. We're waiting."
"Waiting where no-one can find us," Naruto added mulishly.
"Fine. We're hiding."
Naruto kept the smile off his face. It was rare for him to score a point against Jiraiya, and he'd learned to savour them. "How long for, though?"
"Until the situation calms, however long that might be. There's a spy nearby I must debrief in person, without potentially leading any enemies to her. And while we're allied with Sand, they're still hostile for the purposes of information gathering. As long as that Sand team is nearby, there is a risk of exposure." Jiraiya gestured at the camp. "Hence the hiding."
"What about–" Naruto began, but Jiraiya interrupted him before he could get another question out.
"Look, you want to train, right? There's a set of stairs around the back of the shrine that will take you to the top of the cliff. Walk up there, without using chakra, and do your balloon exercises. And don't come back down until it gets dark. I have important work to be doing."
Naruto grumbled but, after a few minutes' boredom, went. He was sure that by the time he came back down, Jiraiya's bag would be missing another bottle of something distilled.
The walk up the cliffs was hard – without chakra, he had to rely on muscle strength alone, and it was a long way to the top. By the time he arrived on the grassy field Naruto's thighs burned and his breath came heavy, but he allowed himself only a minute's rest before he pulled out a pack of balloons and filled the first with water from a nearby stream.
He was going to figure out the technique if it killed him.
Once more, Naruto set to work. There must be a trick to it, he decided, and so he got creative. Replacing the circling motion of the water with a back-and-forth pulse that hit opposite walls was a dead end; there wasn't the space to build up enough power. Two opposing rings that sat beside each other were no better than a single stronger current, and much more complex besides. But three rings of spinning water, all perpendicular, pressed harder than ever before on the balloon's surface. It flexed, stretched – and the working fell apart.
Naruto's hand hurt already, but he'd been close to succeeding. If he'd held the flows of chakra a little longer… and with a clear goal in sight, nothing could hold him back. He would stay on this cliff until every star fell from the sky, if that was what it took.
In the end, that turned out to be overly melodramatic. By dusk, the ground was littered with dozens of broken balloons and Naruto could tear each new one apart with a flicker of his will.
He was in high spirits when he headed down the cliff for dinner. Jiraiya had already set a pot over the fire and was chopping onions with a deft hand, the knife blade moving faster than the eye could see. The onions went into the pot with a sizzling sound and were shortly followed by two cloves of garlic.
"Can you fill the second pot with water for the rice?" Jiraiya called. Naruto nodded and went down to the stream.
It wasn't something Naruto expected to get used to any time soon; splitting up domestic tasks like cooking with one of the legendary Sannin was odd by anyone's standards. Still, it was… nice. Nobody had ever taken the time to show Naruto how to cook, and Jiraiya's gradual handing-over of culinary duties, one task at a time, was just teaching by another name. It was touching, but fragile – if Naruto acknowledged the quiet sense of familiarity, it would pop like a soap bubble.
"After dinner, I want to have a look at your taijutsu again," Jiraiya said as he watched vegetables simmer in a thick broth. "I could use the entertainment, and you could use the practice."
Naruto pulled out his last water balloon and demonstrated the chakra control exercise in silence.
Rather than words of praise, he received a proud clap on the back. Jiraiya smiled and tossed him another pack of balloons. "One more day of this will help prepare you for the next stage. See how much damage you can inflict on each balloon before it pops."
It wasn't what he'd wanted to hear, but Naruto supposed it made a certain amount of sense.
-O-
Naruto swung a fist at the opening Jiraiya had left in his guard. At least the old man wasn't being obnoxious about it – he'd shifted his arm up a hands-width, rather than dropping all pretense of a defence. Naruto's punch wasn't fast enough, of course, and Jiraiya swayed away, but the point wasn't to hit his opponent. As he went to pull back his arm, Jiraiya reached out with a swift hand and pushed Naruto's elbow half an inch to the right.
"It gives you more options if your opponent grabs your arm," he explained. "Try it again."
When Jiraiya had mentioned taijutsu training, Naruto had expected something less humiliating. Being corrected over and over again, by hands that moved faster than he could see, was a thoroughly humbling experience. He struck again, and this time Jiraiya nudged his back foot into place.
And so they continued, until the moon was high overhead. Muscles that Naruto hadn't ever used before were aching, and sweat dripped down his chin, but at last he had earned some praise. 'That'll do' and 'Well done' and even once 'You're doing great' were like music in his ears. His head buzzed with all the nuggets of information that Jiraiya had tried to cram in.
"I think we can finish here," Jiriaya said. "Tomorrow I'm going to check that you remember everything."
Naruto collapsed to the ground, too tired to reply. He dragged himself into the tent and fell asleep near-instantly.
-O-
"I wonder," Jiraiya said slowly, as he watched Naruto tear apart another balloon. The scroll in his hands was still open and he glanced down occasionally, but if it weren't for the distraction Naruto knew the old man would be a great deal less honest. "Perhaps – but no matter. Well done, kid. I wasn't expecting you to be this fast, wasn't expecting this at all, truth be told."
It was the most forthright praise that Naruto had received since, well, he didn't know exactly but perhaps ever since his Academy graduation. Suddenly he missed Iruka. "I'm just going to make some tea," he said, and went to fill his camping pot with water so it could boil over the fire. Sakura's gift always put him in a melancholy mood, but the tea itself was delicious and sometimes a sad chipped travel mug that smelled of home was exactly what Naruto needed.
"Come back in half an hour and I'll show you the next step," Jiraiya yelled after him, already back to skimming the scroll.
Naruto savoured his half-hour of peace and quiet, and with his tea in one hand and his book in the other, he thought of his teammates. How were they doing? What kinds of new stories would they have when he returned? He missed quiet chats with Sakura about nothing in particular, long shouting matches with Sasuke where neither of them was trying to win, boisterous team meals where he baited Sasuke into eating a hot chilli, watching Sakura rant about the latest development in fashion, so many small details that made up the fabric of his life.
When the tea was gone and the night had gone crisp and cold, Naruto set his things aside and went back over to Jiraiya. In his own way, the gruff old man had made Naruto feel welcome, and he appreciated it. He didn't want to be rude and keep Jiraiya waiting.
The next step of Jiraiya's mystery technique turned out to involve rubber balls instead of balloons. Jiraiya tore one apart without moving a single muscle, then let the shreds of rubber fall down like confetti around them. "You don't have to be quite so thorough, but the idea is to break the ball apart in many places at once. The first step teaches you the foundations of the technique. The second step is about building its power. There's a third part to the finished jutsu, but I think with the first two parts in place you'll have something that's usable in combat, even if it's much weaker than the full thing."
Naruto nodded, bouncing the first of the balls in his hand. The rubber was thick, true, but then again chakra could pierce through stone. How hard could it be to rip apart what was, at the end of the day, a child's toy?
-O-
Three days later they were on the road again and Naruto clutched the same rubber ball, now discoloured and distorted. Every time he managed to get enough movement going to push out against the rubber walls, the chakra construct collapsed a few seconds later. The ball had taken a lot of abuse, but it still refused to break. Naruto formed a spike of chakra in his other hand and hammered it through the rubber, skewering it with no problem. The issue wasn't with the material, then.
"You're struggling because of the rotation," Jiraiya said, and Naruto jumped. "Breaking the material head-on is easy. Don't try to find a trick or short-cut for this exercise, because there isn't one. And don't let your frustration throw you off."
"Yeah, yeah," Naruto grumbled, but he pulled out a second ball and got right back to it. He split his attention between their surroundings and the chakra concentrating over his palm. The landscape was beautiful but the worn tracks they were following could have used some upkeep.
A narrow path – more fit for goats than travellers – that had taken them across a stretch of scrub-covered hills joined with a wider road again. Still not paved, but at least it was wide enough for them to walk side by side again. Naruto only put the ball away when he spotted tiled rooftops through the trees; there were a lot of tiny hamlets scattered about the woods here, hiding from bandits as well as tax collectors, and Jiraiya made a point of stopping for a drink whenever they reached the next one.
As they ambled down a grassy lane that turned into a plain dirt road and then the only street in the barely-a-village, Naruto wondered at the people who chose to live out here. It wasn't all that far from Konohagakure, in truth, and some of his classmates at the Academy had come from places like this. But apart from tall trees, small fields, and perhaps a dozen families there was nothing at all of interest in the area. Anyone with ambitions that weren't pastoral would either leave or become bitter and broken.
It explained the faces on some of the locals, weighed down by years of toil broken only by scant minutes of pleasure. And yet none of the children were thin, and the clothes on the men and women were rough but not threadbare. Naruto decided that the hamlet might be dull, but there were worse places to grow up and grow old.
Jiraiya called for a halt outside a low-ceilinged hut with the telltale stench of cheap beer wafting from the open door. A few elderly men had decided to drink their pints on a bench in the sunshine.
"Did you hear? The Hokage has taken on a new apprentice, and it's the Uchiha who won the tournament!" one of them shouted, drink slurring his words. The last dregs of cloudy beer were left in the glass in front of him.
Another of the old men grumbled and downed his own glass. "Wuso, will you shut your yapper about the tournament for five damned minutes?"
"The tournament?" Naruto asked, intrigued. "Do you mean the ninja tournament from two weeks ago?"
"That's the one," Wuso said, pride puffing out his chest. "I went all the way to Konohagakure to watch it, I did, and it was something else. I've seen three of 'em in my life and this was the best by far. I'm telling you, all ninja are scary bastards but ours are the strongest. Stone ain't gonna cross our borders again if they know what's good for 'em."
"An Uchiha apprenticed to the Hokage. Tobirama would have a fit," Jiraiya murmured. He turned to Naruto, winking. "I'm feeling a little thirsty, so let's take a break here. It's lunchtime anyway. I'll go get us some refreshments."
Naruto tuned out the argument that had erupted at the next table and pulled out his book. He'd finished it already, but something about the story had captured his imagination, and the second read-through was a joy rather than a slog. Besides, Naruto's illusions about the isolated nature of this village had just been shattered by a man so old he had a total of three teeth left in his mouth.
He didn't look up when Jiraiya slid a plate of bread and sheep's cheese in front of him, but he did raise an eyebrow at the full pitcher of beer that landed beside it. "That's a bit too much," he said, not expecting Jiraiya to listen but at least wanting to make the protest.
It came to nothing, as always. Jiraiya settled down and polished off the whole jug while Naruto swallowed his meal in half a dozen giant bites, then turned back to his book. There was something on Jiraiya's face when he saw the title, but whatever emotion had come to the surface vanished as fast as it had appeared, and Naruto was left unenlightened.
They continued on in the afternoon, and despite the alcohol Jiraiya was just as sharp as he'd been in the morning. Sometimes Naruto wondered what exotic things lurked under his skin – perhaps he'd sewn in an extra liver or two.
-O-
The palm of Naruto's hand ached all the time, now. He was tossing and catching rubber ball number seventeen, and keeping an eye out for trouble on the road. Hopefully, unlike its predecessors, this ball would end up with more than a single hole in it.
Konohagakure was three days' travel away and Jiraiya had promised him they wouldn't leave again for a week. Naruto was looking forward to seeing his friends, more than words could say, but there was a kernel of dread at the heart of that hope. How much would have changed in his absence?
Rumours about Sasuke's new teacher had spread like wildfire, much too far and much too fast to be organic. Naruto didn't need to be a genius spymaster to see that much. For whatever reason, someone wanted the information spread. But assuming it was true, that meant Team Seven was ending as a unit. Oh, they'd still spend time together, Naruto was sure of that much. Meetings and missions and evenings by the fire, tea and cake and lavish meals in restaurants. But in day-to-day life, each of them would be bound to a different teacher.
And despite Jiraiya's skills, and his willingness to pass them on, Naruto wasn't sure he could keep up with Sasuke and Sakura. A month and a bit of travelling, and apart from some disguise and information-gathering tips, what had he learned? How to pop a water balloon and puncture a toy.
He must be doing something wrong. The second stage of the training was supposed to increase the power of his technique. A few experiments with leftover water balloons had shown that he could easily burst them in multiple places at once, but for some reason the same technique on rubber balls didn't work.
"I don't suppose you have any more tips or tricks or mystical sage knowledge?" he asked Jiraiya. After so long travelling together, they'd settled into an easy camaraderie, where Naruto's pestering and Jiraiya's smug non-answers whiled away the long days spent on the road.
The old man shrugged. "Do the exact same thing as with the water balloon, only faster and stronger. You know you need to use several currents – the more places are ready to burst at the same time, the more damage the actual breaking will inflict."
Naruto scowled as he grabbed the ball and concentrated again. Soft rings of cycling power formed inside, and built and built as he forced more chakra through his palm. And then, at last, he felt it. A tiny wobble. One ring was pulling ahead of the others; no, that wasn't quite right. All the rings were pulling apart, each cycle a little stronger or weaker than the others. No wonder he was only breaking the rubber on a single spot. The other breaking points needed more time to wear through, and once there was a hole in the ball, all the gathered energy dispersed.
Three days until they reached the Leaf. Three days to pass the second stage of Jiraiya's training, and have something worth showing off.
-O-
Hi all! I'm currently taking part in NaNoWriMo (short version: I'm writing a 50k-words original story over the course of November, check out nanowrimo dot org for more info) and I'm not sure I'll have time to write, revise and post another chapter this month. Provisionally, the next update will be on the first Tuesday in December. Sorry about this - it's important to me to stick to my update schedule, but I don't want to sacrifice quality for speed.
Come join the /r/NarutoFanfiction discord server if you like, the join code is: b7WUvupyat. You'll need to read the rules channel and click the book emoji react to get access to the rest of the channels.