I don't own Naruto
Thanks for all the reviews. I'm glad you like the story. I just want to make something clear. Many people have commented on the fast pace of the story. It will be like this until Naruto has reached the tender age of twelve. From then on, it will settle down and be a lot more descriptive; also containing more battles and dialogues. Until then, please bare with it. I'm using so many chapters to set things up because I want to make it clear what his skills and background are like.
Anyway, on with the story…
Chapter 5
Six months passed quickly and the time for Naruto to leave had come. It was a difficult moment for all. He had become very close to his family. The family had accepted their new member and he managed to bring some happiness into their existence.
Surprisingly, Jiraiya didn't really want to leave either. Over the past period he and Amato's younger sister Yuriko got much closer to each other. At first her brother wasn't all too happy about his sister being with a pervert such as the toad sannin, but he didn't want to deny his sister the love she had to go without for so long. Also, he couldn't look beyond the fact that her lover was good to her and proved himself to be a very powerful shinobi, strong enough to protect her.
Once Naruto and Yuriko had whipped their abundant tears, the two Konoha shinobi waved a final goodbye as they set off. Even though the young boy was sad, the thought of his family visiting him in his own village comforted him. He had begged them for a long time until they agreed to come and see him there. They agreed to come once he was able to summon Emna. The Hitomi clan had heard a lot about the Ape king and really wanted to meet him.
While travelling towards the Hidden Grass village, Naruto thought back of the events of the past year. After completing his training he was officially sworn in as a member of the Hitomi clan henceforth being called Uzumaki Hitomi Naruto from that day onwards.
He underwent the traditional rites that came with his inauguration. As part of this he was given a tattoo on his right shoulder, a kanji representing the word 'honour'.
The ceremony took place two weeks prior to his departure. He could now call himself a rightful master of the Hitomi bloodline limit as he had proved his worth in a fight against Hiro during which he was only allowed to use his Hitomi bloodline limit and subsequent fighting style. Although he was beaten easily by his uncle, the skill he showed impressed everyone as his loss could be explained by his relative inexperience with the techniques and the fact that his body was still developing as the boy only turned seven years old shortly before the end of his training.
Jiraiya understood why his young student was quiet. It is of course not every day that you have to leave your family for a few years after having to grow up without them for most of your life. When he thought of Naruto's recent growth he could only be very proud of his blonde student. He knew that the child next to him wouldn't be able to defeat the former Hokage yet, though hurting him shouldn't be would not be an impossible feat anymore.
Besides mastering the Hitomi bloodline limit, his student also managed to learn another ten Hidden Air jutsus. Jiraiya, by exchanging his knowledge with the clan, learned another ten skills, which the two of them would now exchange.
Furthermore, the young Uzumaki Hitomi finished the jutsus Jiraiya had given him. All that was left now for the sannin were his strongest techniques and some high class sealing techniques. He was well aware that Naruto was not ready for those yet and he didn't want to teach him all his skills as he wanted his student to develop his own style rather than being a copy of him.
It was decided that until they would return to Konoha, Naruto would need to get as much real life experience as possible with his combined taijutsu style and his jutsus, though only when the sannin was around to protect him from any possible danger. There was always a risk that an enemy of the Hitomi clan would recognise the techniques and use the young boy to get to the rest of the family.
On rare occasions, Naruto would be allowed to train his Uzumaki bloodline limit as he still needed time to further it and merge it with his other skills into one unique fighting style.
They had been on heir way for three days now. It wouldn't be long until they would reach the Hidden Grass village. It was night already as the two had stopped and set up camp. They sat down around a small fire both eating a dear they managed to kill with the help of Naruto's summon. The sky was clear and bright, with thousands of stars watching over them. They had opted for a place at the foot of a small mountain, remote and covered giving them the desired protection.
Naruto still hadn't spoken much as his mind was obviously occupied with thought about his family. Naruto noticed his sensei looking at him and chose to break the silence. He asked his sensei about the upcoming time, what to expect from each village they would visit.
"Each shinobi village has it's own characteristics. Most of them are known for a particular style and the type of jutsus they often use," Jiraiya explained. "Take the Hidden Mist village for example. Their shinobi tend to specialise in stealth. They use a lot of water-based techniques as that is their signature element."
He continued. "On the other hand you have Stone shinobi, who are known for having the greatest amount of physical power out of all the villages. Their preferred element is earth."
He sighed briefly before speaking up again. "People from Hidden Grass, the village we're heading for now, are more into sneaky ways of attacking enemies. They specialise in poisons and traps and use a lot of living elements such as trees and grass into their arsenal of techniques."
Naruto turned to his sensei. "Ano, Ero-sennin", what are we Konoha shinobi known for?" Jiraiya smiled to the boy. "Well, first of all we use a lot of fire techniques. Unlike many of the other villages we don't really have a specialisation, but if you want me to single us out in a particular way, I'd say we are the most versatile and cunning out of all the villages."
Naruto looked up to Jiraiya. "So we're strong right?"
The toad master sat back and looked at the stars. "Yes my boy. Some say we're the strongest village of all. My say on that is that it's probably because of your kasaan, the Third and me. Other villages fear us. We just happened to have had an extremely talented generation but we're getting older now so the village needs new strong shinobi like you and your friend Itachi, although non one knows what will happen to him. We can't afford to lose another genius like Orochimaru."
"We won't Ero-sennin, Itachi ni-san will never betray Konoha, I'm sure!" Naruto replied with his traditional enthusiasm. Jiraiya ruffled through the boy's hair. "I hope so Naruto, I really hope so……."
Naruto recognised the look on his sensei's face. He'd seen it before when the aging man though about his former team mate. He quickly changes the subject.
"So, what's the plan for the coming period pervert?" he said with a giant grin on his face.
Jiraiya was pulled from his thoughts instantly and scowled his apprentice, although he knew why the boy said it. In fact he was happy he did that sometimes as it prevented him from being in a sour mood all the time.
"Well, I think I should stop teaching you my techniques for now. There aren't many left anyway and I don't want you to turn into a fighting copy of me. You're going to have to create your own style son."
This caused Naruto to have a sad look on his face. "Hey, don't worry." Jiraiya tried to cheer him up. "You'll still have the chance to pick up techniques along the way. That's the whole aim of the upcoming year, I want you to know about every village and that includes using their jutsus." Happy to see a smile returning on the boy's face, he continued. "You need to become as versatile as possible if you want to become Hokage, or are you not strong enough for that?" he teasingly spoke.
"DON'T CALL ME WEAK OLD MAN, I WILL BECOME HOKAGE SO SHUT YOUR PERVERTED MOUTH BEFORE I KICK YOUR OLD ASS!"
"You sure are predictable in your answers Naruto, hehe…" Jiraiya thought, proud at himself for influencing the boy so easily.
"Good, so will learn as much as you can from each village so in the future you cannot be surprised by the way your enemy attacks as you then know how to handle it."
When asked how long they would be travelling for, Jiraiya said that he intended to stay on the road for about another year and a half before coming back to Konoha, staying in each village for a couple of months, long enough for his student to pick up some of their skills.
Some time went by and the pair had been travelling for almost a year now. The two had visited the Hidden Villages of Grass, Rain, Stone and Waterfall. Now they were on their way to Sand, where the Kazekage himself had invited the two to come over and stay at his manor.
Over the years he and Jiraiya had become good friends. The Sand leader could be counted as one of the sannin's biggest fans. Word had reached him that the next issue in the perverted book series would be coming out soon. He was determined to be the first to receive it so he figured that if the author was in his house, he'd stand a good change of having this honour.
During his travels, Naruto managed to significantly improve his taijutsu skills. Jiraiya had called in some favours from a couple of old friends to enable his student to practice his combined taijutsu technique on them. Everything was now successfully integrated into one style. Fighting against his sensei's friends, who were all very strong, he became more and more effective with it.
In the Grass village, the boy learned to recognise some commonly used poisons and was now able to produce a quick antidote for them. On the other hand, for some unknown reason he found himself unable to pick up any of their jutsus, much to his own aggravation. After a while, he was forced to let it be and instead concentrate on the things he could learn instead.
Being infested with prankster blood, setting up traps had become a new hobby of his. He spent most of his days learning about different ways to utilise relatively simple traps to the best of his abilities.
His visits to the hidden villages of Rain and Waterfall were short and uneventful as there wasn't much to learn for him. He was already familiar with some of the lower ranked techniques and both villages weren't too fond of the idea of a stranger learning their most powerful skills. Instead, the perverted hermit opted to go into the open lands and stay with some of his friends for a while.
The village they had just left to head for Sand was Hidden Stone. This trip proved very useful as it was here where Naruto got the chance to train his physique. He picked up some new Doton jutsus as well, though soon the two of them were forced to leave. The presence of one of the legendary sannin didn't go unnoticed in the village. The people from Stone still felt a lot of hatred towards Konoha because of the last Shinobi War, when Yondaime slaughtered many of their people. The hatred shown soon became too much for Jiraiya and Naruto, causing them to abort their stay. Thankfully, no one knew who Naruto really was. If the fact that one of the two Konoha shinobi was actually Yondaime's son would be discovered, they would have had a much bigger problem.
Every now and then, Naruto summoned a wild lion to check up on his family and to inform them on his progress. He always reminded them of their promise to come and visit him in Konoha. Every time his summon returned, he carried the same message, telling the boy to get strong enough to defeat Sandaime first as they were very keen on meeting the legendary ape king Emna. This always motivated the blonde to train even harder so that he could see his relatives sooner.
Around that time, Kyuubi had decided that the time had come to start communicating with her vessel as this hadn't happened thus far. It took Naruto a while to get used to the voice in his head. The nine-tailed fox told him that he was almost ready to start learning some demonic skills. He would start to receive more chakra from her so that when training would start, he would be able to perform jutsus other than the most basic ones, since they required a ridiculous amount of chakra.
While staying in Hidden Sand, Naruto befriended the Kazekage's children. It was funny to see the way in which his relationship with them was different for each of them. With Gaara, he obviously shared the experience of having a demonic creature sealed inside. Kankuro was mainly subject to the young prodigy's pranks and spent a lot of time bickering with his new 'friend'. He and Temari seemed to be getting along well. She was amused that he was unfazed by her aggressive ways of dealing with men but kept trying nonetheless. Still they had become sort of close, in their own strange way.
Having just turned eight years old, it was nothing more than just a friendship, although Jiraiya was quite impressed with his young student for becoming close friends with an older girl. "You have to learn it on an old bike," he often said to the annoyance of Naruto, who called him a pervert in return.
He was given the opportunity to train regularly with the Kazekage himself. The Sand leader agreed to do this after Jiraiya had helped him by completing the faulty demon seal used on his youngest son, finally making it possible for him to sleep and grow up normally. That together with receiving the first copy of the sannin's latest novel, Icha Icha: Extreme Mud Rumble, made him offer his favourite author anything he wanted.
Jiraiya asked for three things. He wanted his devoted fan to train Naruto personally during their stay, a permanent friendship between Suna and Konoha and most important of all a brand new hot springs facility to be built in the village.
His new best friend immediately agreed on everything and soon word was sent to Konoha with the good news of their new alliance. Because of the excellent training opportunities and while waiting for the new hot springs to be completed, they decided to prolong their stay in Hidden Sand. Apart from his daily training with the strongest shinobi in Suna, Naruto was asked to tutor the Kazekage's children, who recently had started their shinobi training.
Kankuro, who was hesitant about Naruto training him at first, soon discovered the usefulness of Naruto's Kage Bunshins for his puppeteering training. Naruto had found a way to infuse them with more chakra, making to possible for them to sustain a bit of damage before disappearing.
With Gaara, he focused mostly on controlling the boy's demon and using its chakra to control sand. The tow of them developed a strong friendship as it was very easy for them to relate to each other. Gaara started to open up a bit and was becoming more social than he had been.
Even though he enjoyed training the two boys, he preferred to train with Temari as that gave him the chance to spend more time with her. He taught her some of the basic wind jutsus he knew and after he had noticed her outstanding chakra control, suggested that she should learn some medical techniques. At first she refused because the idea of becoming a medic-nin seemed too nerdish to her. It was after Naruto told her about Tsunade and the things she could do with the humongous amount of power she could obtain through learning medical taijutsu with that, she happily agreed to learning it.
The Kazekage had grown to like his new apprentice and enjoyed their training sessions. The pair focused mainly on wind jutsus, sand techniques and taijutsu training. As the older of the two wasn't exactly known for his taijutsu skills, he found it increasingly difficult to hold the boy off, especially when he was using his Kirameki or Shunshin no jutsu. Some of the village elders weren't too happy seeing their leader carrying cuts and bruises caused by a stranger but were kept quiet by his threat to send his youngest son to their house for a small 'visit'.
The last village Jiraiya and Naruto would visit was the Hidden Village of Mist. Saying goodbye to his new friends was difficult for the young boy, especially to Temari, but he knew they would meet again in the future. Jiraiya, once again was given the honour to open the finished bathing resort and was made honorary chairman. He took a further two weeks to 'fully explore' the area before heading off towards the Mist village.
During the four months they spent in the Water Country, Naruto continued to work on his fighting style, incorporating more and more jutsus into it. He and Jiraiya simulated various scenarios to improve his allround abilities. A friend of Jiraiya, one of the seven Swordsmen of the Mist, helped the young boy in improving his stealth. Using his own clones, the blonde trained this further and worked on his assassination skills by using some new Mist and Water techniques on them.
One day, Naruto ran into two Mist shinobi, a boy slightly older than him and his master, a skilled Chuunin who went by the name of Momochi Zabuza, who was severely beating up the kid for messing things up during their latest mission. Naruto, enraged by the sight of the crying boy, confronted Zabuza who attacked him.
The fight was very unevenly matched and didn't last long as Zabuza's jutsus had no effect on his opponent and Naruto's movements were simply too fast for the Demon of the Mist. The eyebrowless Chuunin found himself unable to dodge Naruto's attacks and was soon rendered unconscious.
The Uzumaki asked the boy, who introduced himself as Haku, to come with him. As the boy didn't have anyone else to go to anyway he decided to follow the stranger. He knew that staying with Zabuza wasn't the best option anyway so he would come along and see if staying with Naruto would be any better.
When Haku was introduced to the toad sannin, Jiraiya told him he was more than welcome to join them on their trip. When he found out about the boy's bloodline limit, he asked Haku if he would be interested in coming to Konoha with them. The young Mist shinobi was a bit hesitant at first as it is not every day that two relative strangers ask you to come to their village with them but when he saw that they were serious about it, he felt their sincerity and knew that they wouldn't harm him. Jiraiya told him he would receive proper training in an environment much friendlier than in the Mist so he could become a skilled shinobi and live the life he wanted.
Realising this sounded a lot better than staying here alone, he agreed. They would soon leave for Konoha as Naruto had almost finished his training here. In the meantime, the perverted hermit would make a start with helping the young boy in developing his bloodline limit.
During one of these training sessions with his new guardian, Haku injured himself. Naruto, who saw the accident, used one of his medical skills to heal his new friend. Haku had never heard of a thing such as medical jutsus and asked the others about it. After Naruto explained what he had done, Haku said he would be interested in becoming a medic-nin as well. The young Konoha Chuunin told him that his kaasan was probably the best medic-nin in the world and would be more than happy to teach him her ways.
Three weeks later, three figures were travelling through Konoha Forest, jumping from tree to tree. After a while they arrived at the massive gates of the village. It had been two and a half years since they left through those gates. Naruto, now nine and a half years old, looked up to the Chuunin guards and spoke. "Uzumaki Hitomi Naruto, Jiraiya of the sannin and companion Haku requesting access to the village."
He waited as three Chuunin on top of the gate looked at the travellers. When they recognised the toad sannin and saw the Konoha headband Naruto had put back on, they suddenly remembered the explicit instructions that were left by the Hokage.
"Welcome back to Konoha," one of them spoke. "Jiraiya-sama, Godaime-sama left instructions for us to summon you to the Hokage Tower as soon as you had returned."
The respondent smiled. "I see our fearless leader hasn't forgotten about us." He then turned to the two boys behind him. "We'd better go and see her straight away because I don't want to face her wrath. That monstrous strength of hers still scares me to death…" he said with a hint of fear in his voice.
When the trio arrived at the foot of the tower, Naruto opted for a less usual route and started to walk directly up the tower, using his chakra to keep his feet connected to the vertical wall.
When he reached the window of his adopted mother's office, he peeked inside only to see her doing her usual thing, sleeping over a large pile of papers. He leapt in and decided to give her a scare.
"Some things never change!" he said loudly, causing Tsunade to get up faster than he had ever seen anyone getting up before as she turned to impale her 'attacker' with her fist, only to hit air as she saw a yellow flash.
She quickly turned around to look at the intruder as she saw her young son with his arms wide open and his foxy grin on his face as he ran towards her.
"KAASAN!" He yelled, hurling himself into her shocked arms.
"Naruto, you're back," she stumbled, her eyes becoming increasingly wet.
The two hugged for a couple of minutes until Jiraiya and Haku finally arrived as well. Tsunade looked up at her former team mate and greeted him in old fashion. "Hello PERVERT, good to see you again."
Jiraiya replied in similar style. "Flatchest, long time no see," as his gaze moved slightly down, causing him to blush a little. Haku didn't understand that last comment as the woman's chest was obviously huge, but shrugged it off.
"And who is this boy, Jiraiya-kun?" Tsunade said, assuming her role as the Hokage again.
"We picked him up in the Hidden Mist village. He is an orphan with a very powerful bloodline limit who has expressed a desire to become a medic-nin." Jiraiya said as he introduced the two to each other. "Haku, meet our Godaime Hokage Tsunade, the best medic-nin the world has ever known."
"Nice to meet you Hokage-sama," the boy shyly whispered. The older man took over again, now assuming an official pose as his face turned serious. "We request for this boy to be accepted as a shinobi of Konoha."
"So be it," the Hokage answered as she smiled at the happy boy. "I know just the person to look after him. I will train you personally Haku-kun, starting in two weeks' time", she finished, earning a big hug from her adopted son.
Sarutobi, who was called in as soon as the news of Naruto's return had reached Tsunade, came in. After exchanging greetings with all, they sat down to discuss the past two and a half years. Naruto was told than within the village things had stayed the same. The biggest change was that Shizune had moved out of the Uzumaki manor to live together with fiancé Genma, which saddened him as he always liked having his big sister in the house.
Then the time had come for Naruto to tell them about his exploits. Besides the obvious visible changes, Tsunade and Sarutobi were surprised to notice that they couldn't detect any chakra coming from the young boy.
Naruto told them about the time he had spent with his biological family. His audience was shocked to find out that Jiraiya had fallen in love with a member of the Hitomi clan, but told him they were happy for him and that they hoped that this would put an end to his perverted ways. Naruto also told them about the new friends he had made, especially about Temari, which caused Tsunade to give him a warm, motherly smile. He carefully avoided revealing too much about his new skills.
When he was finally done explaining, Sarutobi stood up as he spoke. "Well Naruto-kun, as you have been avoiding most questions about your strength, I guess there's only one way to find out. I suggest you undergo the same exam as before you left. That way your kaasan, your other senseis and I can see if those two and a half years away have been a waste of time or not. Meet me at the Uzumaki training grounds in twp hours. I'll summon the others," he finished as he left the room.
Two hours later, everyone had arrived. After they had all greeted Naruto and heard some of his stories, it was time to start. Everyone close to Naruto was there; Tsunade, Shizune with Genma Jiraiya and Haku, his senseis Gai, Kakashi, Hizashi, Anko and Shikato, as well as his friends Shikamaru, Chouji, Hinata, Ino, Neji and Shino. Everyone was waiting curiously for the things to come.
The Third walked up to his student. "We'll do the exact same thing as the last time. I hope you're ready because we all expect a lot more from you. When we fight at the end, I expect some real competition this time."
Naruto just stood there and gave his examiner the biggest smirk he'd ever seen. "You'll be surprised oji-san. Don't expect to walk for a while when I'm done with you," he said as he prepared himself for the things to come.
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