Sealing Salientia - Chapter 15: Genius - Author: PenSmoke

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, nor make any profit from writing this.

Previously on Sealing Salientia:
Hizashi was so caught up in witnessing the incomprehensible scene playing out underground that he never saw the two men landing next to him until the sword dove towards his head. The last thing that Hizashi saw was the head of his brother being scooped up by what looked like tree branches growing out of the ground and an ANBU blade penetrating his cranium.

Iron Country
September, Year 68

The blade sliced towards its' target, followed by a whoosh as currents of air parted around the edge. A young child ducked away from the slash and quickly darted into the nearby bushes. Using the leaves as temporary cover, he panted to catch his breath quickly. Hope to find a way to escape the inevitable flourished in him as the man stomped around the bushes, seemingly unable to locate him.

The boy knew that more action was coming his way as the twigs and leaves above him would only be temporary cover, so he needed to come up with a plan now. Before he could start to think of any ideas though, the predator chasing him yanked the protective shrubbery aside with a feral swipe of his arms. The polished blade again flickered towards the boys skull, knocking aside a few bright yellow hairs as it narrowly missed the top of his head. Scurrying backwards on hands and feet and keeping low in the underbrush, the boy frantically thought of ways to extricate himself from the situation. His position was once again discovered by the larger man behind him using his superior viewpoint from above. He watched as the white-haired attacker flipped the sword into a reverse grip and came at him with an overhanded stabbing motion. The assailant attempted to jam the weapon into the intended target with a motion to impale, rather than the slicing attacks that had predated it.

The blonde, face adorned with whisker marks on each cheek, again jumped just to the side of the descending ninja tool to narrowly avoid the strike. The sword jammed into unyielding earth next to the child and a smile burst out on the boys' face as another second of time was bought to try and work his way out of the mess. But, fate was not so kind as to smile on him that day. The identical weapon in his attacker's other hand come around in a perfectly timed strike into the child's head, instantly ending the combat sequence.

*Bonk*

"OW!"

Jiraiya laughed heartily as Naruto gazed up at him with faked crocodile tears in his eyes, as he sat on the ground rubbing the small bump on his head. He had gotten in yet another blow with the bokken he carried in each hand, the wooden swords being used as replacement weapons for training with the boy. He might have believed the teary-eyed boy, if only the child hadn't tried that same tactic a dozen times already today. Besides, he was making sure to pull his blows so that they did little more than contact. Naruto was barely 3, he didn't want to injure the kid yet.

"Alright! That's enough weapons work for now. Let's eat!" Jiraiya chuckled again when, just as expected, Naruto dropped the tears act to scramble up for food.

"What'cha makin' for lunch, Pops?" came the hurried speech of the child. While the boy was almost completely unpredictable in every other area of his life, one constant was that he loved mealtimes, still carrying on the tradition of eating enough food for multiple people from when he was a baby. He would always perk up for food, no matter how hard they had worked up until that point. Even if he was laying on the ground, unable to move at all, just mentioning the special words would have him on his feet in no time.

"Well, I don't know if you've quite worked hard enough today for ramen." Jiraiya said teasingly, knowing that it would get a rise out of his young companion. And just as thought, Naruto turned into the very definition of a pouting child.

"BUT! You've had me training since I woke up! I didn't even get to read anything yet!" Naruto yelled out petulantly.

Jiraiya had started training the boy early. Given whom his parents was and what was contained inside of him, the boy had no choice to not be a ninja. And the earlier to start, the better. At first, all the elder sage did was have his newest pupil do some stretches and play with his chakra, showing how to do the most basic of things with it, such as pushing a leaf or making a puff of air. Naruto had shown to learn incredibly quickly, or so Jiraiya felt, immediately latching on to new things. Much like himself, the boy would learn everything that was taught to him quickly and move on to newer bigger things.

About a year ago, he had started teaching the boy how to read, showing him the characters of the language and how they interacted with each other to make various sounds. Like Naruto's voracious appetite for food, Jiraiya soon found himself with a boy who devoured every book that he came across. Even if he didn't understand it all, the child would simply keep reading it until he did. Which meant pestering his caretaker with hundreds of questions. The toad summoner had just about had enough when Naruto had asked him 15 times in one minute what a word meant, but like a good father figure, he suffered through, knowing it was to help the boy out.

Then the boy had discovered Jiraiya's book of sealing one day while they were training near a river. While Jiraiya had been a few feet away conducting 'research' through some bushes, Naruto had busied himself with digging through the older man's belongings, eventually ending up with a notebook filled to the brim with ninja sealing techniques. Jiraiya had been mortified to turn around and seeing the boy nonchalantly flipping the pages in one hand while using a brush to make the drawing he saw in the book in the other hand. Thankfully, Naruto hadn't been taught hand seals yet and hadn't known how to activate the seal matrixes he was drawing.

And now, Naruto wanted to read every single day. He was already about halfway through the personal sealing notebook and while he might not comprehend a large chunk of it, he was still chewing through the information and digesting it. He often asked for training sessions on just reading the seal book.

"We can do some reading later tonight. I was thinking of teaching you something really useful today, something you haven't learned yet." As per usual, the thought of learning something new got the boys attention and was one of the only things that could separate him from thoughts of ramen, his newest favorite food. While Jiraiya quickly whipped up a ninja version of lunch from nearby berries, nuts and fruit, he continued on. "You remember those tricks that I showed you with chakra right? About how you can push it through your hands to blow around leaves?" Receiving a nod of affirmation, he continued to deliver the information, "Well, ninja can use chakra in a lot of ways, but the more advanced techniques need the chakra to be molded in more and more complex ways. Since it is often too hard to train your body to do it all on its' own, ninja developed a method of channeling their chakra in various methods. They expressed those different ways of pushing chakra around as handseals. By doing handseals, you force your chakra to do specific things in ways that you wouldn't have the time or concentration for in a ninja battle."

The boys eyes burned with rapt attention, even as the small wooden bowl overflowing with the bounty of the forest was presented in front of him. While Naruto did shove an apple in his mouth to take a large bite, the focus clearly remained on his teacher.

"There are twelve basic hand signs, each associated with a particular way that your chakra flows in and around your body. It circulates through your hands while making the signs to mix in a precise manner. They are all named after animals and are: Bird, Boar, Dog, Dragon, Hare, Horse, Monkey, Ox, Ram, Rat, Serpent and Tiger. I'll go through them one by one and you'll copy the signs until you have them memorized."

Together, they spent the next half hour going through the positions for the fingers, with the older correcting the discrepancies in the younger until he had everything positioned correctly. After that, another half-hour was occupied with Jiraiya calling out sign name after sign name. Naruto clumsily twisted his fingers into positions, often confusing the signs and grumbling under his breath. But to his credit, the young boy did not give up, the streak of determination in him every bit as strong as his parents' had been.

After finishing that, they plopped down next to the river to break for a bit. Naruto was still occupying his hands with contorting his fingers into the various shapes while pushing chakra through his system and into his hands.

"Hey, Pops?" Naruto piped up, in the tone that he had readied yet another question in his endless list.

"Yeah, Naruto?" Jiraiya laid back in the sand of the riverbank, enjoying the cool water running beneath his toes while the sun warmed his face. The afternoon was beautiful and perfect and he was certain that there were some beauties to be spotted splashing in the nearby waterfall, even in the late autumn cool. While he'd love to be conducting his research, he had found that he enjoyed being a teacher and a father figure just as much. He still DID conduct his research from time to time, nothing was going to stop him from that, but just not at the cost of having bonding time with his young charge.

"What can you do with hand seals?" The blonde boy asked.

"All sorts of things. Cause fireballs to rain from the sky, make lightning strike a target, create a river of mud, flood an area, or even cause a tornado. Plus create illusions, enhance your speed, activate seals, summon creatures to fight for you and so many more things than I could ever mention. Things beyond your wildest imagination. Seals in particular can do a million different things if only you have the imagination and creativity to write them." As the white-haired man talked, he watched the blond boys' eyes get wider and wider, practically shining like the sun as he finished.

Naruto shouted back at him when he completed his sentence, "Show me! Show me! I wanna see them!" He was bouncing up and down, hand seals lost in the excitement of potentially seeing cool ninja techniques.

Jiraiya's eyes dimmed a bit at his pupil's reaction, knowing that he wouldn't be able to show off the cool things that Naruto wanted to see. "I'm sorry Naruto, I can't do that. Many of them I don't know at all and most of the rest that I do know, I can't show you right now."

"But! Whyyyyyy?!" Naruto cried out in the tone specifically reserved for children who aren't getting their way.

The middle aged man patiently explained, "I can't use chakra through my left hand, Naruto. I lost the ability to use it about the time you were born. Since then I can't do anything involving handseals to mold chakra." He didn't go into the details with exactly how he lost the ability to use chakra as he didn't want the young lad to feel guilty for being partially the cause. He also didn't want to go into how he had been trying to three years to figure out a way to get the chakra flowing through his hand again, to no avail. His arm past the elbow simply wouldn't channel the energy. The tenketsu and the pathways that it followed were simply absent. It was like forcing blood into an area with no capillaries, it just didn't work.

"But, you told me that the handseals were just a shortcut, right? That they just helped to mold the chakra through the body into the right shape. Can't you just mold the chakra in that way without the handseals?"

It was a good idea. The boy was definitely like his father, coming up with odd thoughts and solutions, even at a young age. Jiraiya had said basically those exact same words earlier in the day and the idea was one he had considered before. "The problem with that is that it takes a lot of concentration and time to push the chakra around in the correct manner without the handseals. While I could take the minutes it would require for even basic manipulation, it isn't something that would be usable in combat."

"Well, can't you practice it? Do it over and over until it gets faster? Just like you made me do with pushing the leaves around." Naruto was still whining, apparently he really wanted to see the cool techniques that could be performed with chakra.

"Yes, Naruto, I could. Even with years of practice though, I'd still be slower than someone with handseals." Jiraiya had actually been trying to practice the chakra manipulation from time to time, but hadn't received a ton of free time while trying to maintain his spy network, write new Icha Icha novels and raise a child simultaneously. "I even tried something my last student was able to master, one handed seals. I can do a few of them, but I haven't been able to really find a way to use them yet. They mold the chakra differently and are hard to fit in with other techniques." He held his right hand up and made a half-Tiger seal. "I can hold the seal up and it starts the process, but it doesn't quite complete it the same way."

Naruto pouted for a few seconds more. "But, what about..."

Jiraiya interrupted him, verging on getting angry at the boy. It was still a sore subject for a powerful ninja to be left with so little. He'd do it again in a heartbeat to save the boy, but it was something that annoyed him everyday. "I'm sorry Naruto, but I can't really use chakra in the way that most can. I can't do my summons, I can't do ninjutsu, I can't do genjutsu and I can only do some sealing work."

Naruto whined some more, "But, I was gonna..."

Jiraiya yelled this time, losing his patience. "Enough! Drop it already."

Naruto cowered back, knowing he had pushed too far. Even though, he had always been a sassy kid and he muttered out with his head down, "You SAID seals could do anything. I figured you could use them to mold the chakra too." He was sulking now and the tone of his voice would have carried a quick swat on the butt in the form of an attitude check any other time.

But as Jiraiya's hand was rising to perform the aforementioned swat, he paused. Naruto's words had just processed and made something click.

'Seals could do anything'. Huh. That's a thought.

With his hand still raised up high and Naruto still cowering in front of him, Jiraiya's eyes lost focus as his mind raced with possibilities. According to the legend, they had been created by the son of the Sage of Six Paths and passed on from generation to generation, all through the Feudal Clan Wars and down into the villages today. Even with that, all the handseals were was just a way to mold the chakra into the correct shape. But, that's exactly what seals did. They took a complex way of moving around chakra and used the characters and the ink as a medium to change how the energy flowed throughout. And seals actually were more versatile than hand signs, being able to do everything a handseal did and more in terms of chakra manipulation.

He had been going at the problem wrong in his head for almost three years. He had been stuck in the rut of thinking that there was only one way to solve his problem, forcing chakra back into his hand, so that everything would be the same as it had been. But, he was Jiraiya, for Log's sake. He never took the easy route to a solution. He had always struggled with every issue that came up and found ingenious workarounds to it. That's why he loved seals in the first place.

That boy in front of him had caused him headaches and trials and tribulations over and over, but he was always worth it. And the little savant had just stumbled right through Jiraiya's greatest problem in a way that his older brain, stuck in his ways, never went after.

Frozen in place, Jiraiya started to raise the corners of his mouth, slowly blooming into a full-blown smile. Naruto looked up at him, having flinched when the hand was raised, but curious at the pause that had occurred between the start of the motion and the completion. When the toad summoner broke free from the static position, he instantly brought both hands down so quickly that Naruto didn't have time to flinch. There was never any hard impact though, as he lifted the blonde haired little genius up into the air and spun around.

"Naruto, that's exactly it! Seals! Genius! They CAN do anything! Oh, why didn't I think of this before! It's so simple! And Genius! And Perfect! And Genius!" Ok, so his vocabulary was a little stuck, but it was truly genius. Make a seal inscribed on his body to replicate how each handseal molded the chakra. He could just push the chakra to that seal and it would do everything for him, once he got it right.

It felt like he had a new lease on ninja life. He immediately pulled out his sealing notebook, sat down and started going through it, Naruto peeking around his arms to read as well. All Jiraiya had to do was just figure out how to write out the matrix that would put him back to normal.

AN: Before anyone asks why Naruto seems so smart at such a young age, my answer is: I have a 3-year-old at home, in addition to other older kids that I dealt with at 3. When they get obsessed with something, they learn EVERYTHING they can about it. My little girl reads books all the time. While she doesn't know most of the words and pesters me constantly when doesn't know, which is 3-4 times a page, she will read that same book over and over until it is memorized. But it's only the couple of books that relate to the one topic, everything else is ignored. So, Naruto, in my mind, is just like my own child. Absolutely obsessed over one topic in particular (being a ninja) and will learn anything that he can about it.

And yes, in this case, Jiraiya is me. I have had it multiple times when I'm working on a problem and a kid comes up to me, completely innocently and asks why I'm not trying it 'that' way. And my reaction is always... That wouldn't work... Wait. *facepalm* Of course that'd be way easier. Why didn't I think of it?