Sealing Salientia - Chapter 17: Balance - Author: PenSmoke

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

Previously on Sealing Salientia:
Jiraiya was just about to reach out to stop the boy, when Naruto finished the final seal and slammed his hands down on the ground, yelling "Summoning Technique!" A gigantic cloud of smoke instantaneously enveloped both humans and Gamabunta, stretching hundreds of feet in circumference across the trees of the forest, obscuring everything within.

Iron Country
December, Year 68

The Kyuubi had been actively listening to the recent conversation once the giant toad had appeared. He immediately had recognized the summoned creature. It had actually given him pause during his attack on Konoha. If not for Gamabunta, the demon fox doubted that the annoying blond twerp would have had time to get his procedure ready to seal him away. He respected the summon for its strength and even though it seemed to assist the detestable humans, it never seemed to serve them, which was also commendable.

He had paid attention to the chakra usage and had particularly enjoyed that the man that smelled of oil was teaching this container chakra-based techniques. That would only make the container stronger which would only further its ability to help him pursue his own goals.

The enjoyment doubled when he watched that the little blonde brat was about to try and channel the energy for the first time in usage of a technique. This was going to be his moment to test something.

Every minute of every day since he had been trapped inside this place he had been feeding his chakra into the leylines of energy surrounding him. Some of it was forced from the way the seal was written, but most of it was him giving away the energy as best he could to strengthen and build the vessel from the inside. He had made sure that the human never got sick, that it had plenty of development of the brain and muscles, that it was able to do everything that a ninja would need to do effectively.

What had once been barely noticeable and faint now were turbulent rivers of blue energy coursing through him. In many areas, the paths overlapped and created oceans of energy, electric blue, pulsing like tidal forces. The vibrant waves clashing and breaking through the body, causing ripples throughout the chakra pathways. The Kyuubi's own sea of dark red energy coursed just beneath, causing a hazy purple area where the two conflicting auras merged in between.

When the great kitsune had first started pushing energy into the void above him, he could barely feel what was being absorbed into the network. The amount lost being a pittance in comparison to his vast total. Over time, the amount lost into the system had steadily grown. As the tubes that sucked in his chakra expanded, they had more surface area with which to take in even more. And the amount contained within increased at an even faster rate, as happens with physics being the way it is. Since the body could handle more and more, the amount siphoned away from the trapped entity had grown at an exponential rate.

Currently, the boy was drawing upon his chakra at a rate that was actually noticeable to the great fox. While it was still nowhere near his resting recharging ability, it was an appreciable amount. He had stopped pushing nearly as much chakra to his host, letting the seal take what it was designed to most of the time and just adding a small trickle more, to contribute and make sure his energy was always present.

Just like when he had first started adding energy, the extra boosts had increased his hosts' sensory abilities exponentially as well, which in return had been passed down to him below. Sight was good, but not what he had tried to improve the most. Scent was the prime target there. Everything gave off some trace particle and it was near impossible to completely hide scent. Tracking prey was always best accomplished that way and the Kyuubi could now identify passing scents in the wind of animals nearby or the smell of a freshly fallen tree. Hearing was also a sense that he had prioritized, as almost everything that moved created some level of sound. Even a leaf slowly falling through the air created a tiny wave of sound as the wind passed around it differently than the rest. While he wasn't yet able to detect that level of detail, he could hear the footfalls of nearby people or fur rustling of an animal a few yards away.

As the boy started channeling the energy, the eddies in the current above became raging whirlpools, flowing chaotically around the tenketsu points that were visible. The energy flowed down in spiral motions from the torrents, down the rapidly churning chakra funnel and flowing outside the body in waves. The Kyuubi flared his chakra from within the system, coating the network in his own energy, which quickly mixed in with the blue churning waters, tinting them purple as they whirled.

The energy continued to grow more and more until the technique reached its conclusion, where the massive spike that had surrounded the boy was suddenly released into the activation. The Kyuubi was satisfied with the resulting explosion of chakra smoke, though he couldn't yet tell what had happened. The scents coming in informed him of something new that was also toad-like, but completely different from the toad scents that already existed. That information told him that the technique had worked, as he knew what it did from listening to the toad oil man's explanation.

The sounds were confusing to him though. There was his vessel coughing, the white-haired human was yelling and the giant toad was belly laughing. All three were drowning out other noises, but he swore that in the undercurrents of all of the sounds, he heard splashing. He wasn't sure what that meant either, as toads were typically land based, not water based.

As the chakra smoke started to dissipate and the senses revealed a clearer picture, he understood why the giant toad was chuckling so heartily. Indeed, if it hadn't been his own container, he might have laughed at the situation himself.

After all that build-up. The massive energy roiling in waves off of the child's body. The display of chakra that would put most humans to shame. The end result was the tiniest tadpole he had ever seen, wiggling around on the ground. It was so pitiful that it seemed to be dying already, confirmed moments later by it suffering enough that it dispelled itself back to its own plane of existence in a new puff of smoke that was hardly discernable amongst what still was dissipating through the air.

In a way, he was thoroughly amused at the folly of humanity trying to exert their will on the world, bending realities to their wishes. By trying to create links to other dimensional planes and realities, they showcased their own superiority complex and the Kyuubi laughed whenever it backfired in their faces. In a different way, he was thoroughly annoyed that even with years of help, this kit was still practically useless. He had been putting energy in for so many cycles that he had lost count. It was currently the fourth winter that he had experienced in this body and it was horrifyingly pathetic. No kitsune that had lived that long was still defenseless or so unskilled. His own brothers and sisters had been ready to survive in the world from moments after birth. It was yet another sign to him that his kind was right to look down on the mere mortals that also walked this earth, so far removed from the path of his father.

Mentally shaking his head again at the inept capabilities of the humans, since his physical one was still locked in place, he decided to zone out of the laughable results of the failed experiment. Perhaps one day the humans would prove to be more than worthless gnats.

"Naruto!" Jiraiya was waving the smoke away while trying to find his pupil through the chakra-laced irritant that surrounded them. Gamabunta was laughing above him, so the sage wasn't worried too much about danger, but he was still concerned. That had been a massive expenditure of energy, close to his total level of chakra. He couldn't believe that the brat actually had that in him.

He had known for some time now that between inheriting the Uzumaki trait of incredibly high chakra reserves, that the demon fox had been having some effect as well. The kid's chakra capacity at 2 years old had already exceeded anything Kushina or Mito had ever reached and he suspected it was due to something within the sealing technique that Minato had used. He had gone through it with a fine-toothed comb and while there was still one symbol that he didn't understand, he was pretty sure he had a good comprehension on the rest. The seal was designed to pull the Kyuubi's chakra into Naruto slowly but surely and this had apparently had the effect of pumping Naruto's chakra reserves constantly. Normal people only recharged when asleep or resting. Naruto recharged constantly. And the charge was seemingly almost never limited, it just kept going up.

That release had been the equivalent of what seemed to be a 3-year buildup of chakra stored in the boys' system, as the boy's chakra signature was vastly smaller than his base had been just the day before. It seemed about equivalent to that of a normal genin now, which was still advanced for his age, but not nearly close to what had been pushed out moments' ago.

And since he could feel the energy, he knew that the boy wasn't dead or chakra depleted, which was comforting. And he really should have been as well, because there was no way that any ninja alive would be able to push that much energy into a single technique and be conscious after it. Let alone standing there with a disappointed look on his face, as he discovered Naruto a split second later.

The boy had puffed out pouting cheeks, accentuating his whisker marks to make them look curved. Mouth locked in a frown and chin stuck out, he was the very picture of a sullen child. His hair that had just been flying around in the chakra maelstrom, now lay mussed and tangled in a mess on his head. His orange shirt (which he insisted on having, the boy was infatuated with the color), was ripped and shredded to pieces, hanging in tattered cloth chunks above the remains of his black pants.

His eyes were locked on a spot on the ground, where Jiraiya glanced to and noticed the tiniest tadpole he had ever witnessed. It couldn't have been wider than his pinky fingernail and it seemed to poof out of existence the moment he examined it.

'Was that… what he summoned?' the thought flickered in his mind before he heard Gamabunta double down in his laughter, great big rumbling shockwaves being ushered from his lungs.

"Oh man, that brat had me worried for a second! I thought he was gonna bring the Great Honourable Geezer out on top of us. I did NOT need that senile old toad crashing down on me. Instead, the little brat brings forth that puny thing so tiny I can barely even see it. What a letdown after that display!" Gamabunta chuckled some more. "I think I'm gonna head home then, if I'm not needed here anymore, unless you got some more sake stashed around here somewhere. Do ya?"

As Jiraiya mutely shook his head in the negative, Gamabunta poofed in another cloud of smoke, adding to the haze that had developed upon the top of the cliff. As it slowly seeped off the edge, creating a mistfall around the waterfall that had finally resumed, the two humans left up at the top slowly collected their thoughts.

Naruto broke the silence first. "Was that bad?"

Jiraiya took a moment to gather his thoughts, seeing that his surrogate son was yet again on the verge of tears. "No, Naruto. It was actually very good. 'Bunta there just was expecting something else. A member of the summon realm doesn't age like we do, so they don't understand that you're too young to do it all yet." Which was technically true. The Toad Sage, Gamamaru, had been alive for thousands of years and had constantly forgotten how Jiraiya aged and always assumed that he was a kid, even up through adulthood. And then Ma and Pa always scolded him like he was a kid, no matter how old he got.

Jiraiya continued, "You had a ton of chakra pouring into the technique and it seemed like there was plenty there," he purposefully didn't say that there should have been enough there to summon practically every toad from the dimension, "so it's probably just practice that you need." Even as he finished, he says the boys' eyes brighten a bit.

"I think we should head out for now though, I used a good chunk of my own chakra to summon 'Bunta and you expended a bunch too. Plus, people will have seen that fireball for miles, as well as the smoke. We may be well out in the middle of nowhere, there will undoubtedly be someone coming to check out that much activity. We'll talk on the way." Jiraiya started Naruto on picking up the tents and food, while he used a couple quick skills to bury the campfire under mud and flatten out that patch of dirt to be similar to the rest of the nearby area. There were plenty of signs already of their stay, they didn't need to leave any more.

A couple minutes later, Jiraiya picked Naruto up and placed the boy up on his wide shoulders, letting him ride in style while they got some good distance. He had trained Naruto a tiny amount in how to enhance his muscles with chakra, but not nearly enough to balance on tree branches or to move at the speeds that he was capable of himself. The blonde giggled gleefully as the wind rushed past his face. Jiraiya enjoyed these moments, where it was just the two of them, carefree and silly in nature. He hoped for many more moments like this.

They traveled in that manner for an hour or so, making good time. That was until Naruto's form started to go limp, indicating that he was falling asleep. Jiraiya stopped at another small forest clearing and shivered in the winter air. They were actually pretty far north now, getting to the edge of Iron Country and losing the warmer weather native to Fire Country. He set up the tents and set a new small campfire, then strung up a basic defense perimeter. He placed Naruto to bed, as the boy had quickly succumbed to sleep.

Jiraiya's mind raced with too many thoughts to ease into the depths of slumber though. The amount of chakra that Naruto had put forth had been absolutely enormous. The kid was a chakra battery with immense charge capacity. If that much chakra had been put into a summoning that was actually balanced and working, it likely could have ripped part of the summons world here. He feared what the boy might become in the future if he already was capable of doing such a feat now.

Looking back at the tent that held the peacefully sleeping child in question, he turned a more critical eye on the situation. With that much usage of chakra, there should have been no way for such a puny tadpole to be the only thing pulled over. If he hadn't personally watched the handseals and felt the overwhelming force used, he would say that the technique failed due to either incorrect formation of chakra, or not enough chakra used. But those weren't possible.

The only other thing that made any sense was an imbalance in the chakra itself. And the instant he found himself thinking of this, he realized the obvious answer. Naruto had always had an overabundance of the yang half of the chakra, another thing he had discovered within Minato's seal. The toad sage would bet the profits of his next book that the vast majority of energy used when the child was powering it up was yang chakra. And since handseals only took a balanced amount, all that extra yang energy had been completely wasted. The only yang chakra actually put in the technique was an exact amount matching the minute quantities of yin energy that Naruto had been able to make on his own. The rest had just been overkill, not able to mix properly and therefore not used in the summoning. Instead, it had burst out everywhere like a chakra shockwave, creating the theater but none of the desired effects.

The sage sat still for a moment, feeling the energy around him. He started to feel the nature energy flowing through the atmosphere but was careful not to draw it in right now. He probed at Naruto's chakra, trying to get a feel for it as it was now. Typically, the boy literally exuded yang energy, which shone through in his physical growth and his boisterous attitude. Jiraiya had also noticed that Naruto's chakra reserves had been growing more and more over time, approaching high chunin levels. Right now, though, the boy was calm and at peace, just like his chakra. The chakra felt more like a normal person's as well. Naruto's chakra had always felt energetic and rambunctious, like the chakra was striving to be poured forth from the boy and run wild in the world. Currently, the energy flowed through his system in a calm stream evenly mixed, like an ordinary ninja. And his reserves were well down from were he normally was, down to what he'd consider to be low genin levels. Nothing like what he had been the day before. It would be interesting to see how the energy regenerated, as he could already sense yang energy being dumped from the seal into the body.

Thinking on that, he meditated like he had learned for Sage training. It had helped him clear his mind before and he did want to sleep. He was going to investigate tomorrow morning and they were heading into enemy territory soon to meet with a contact in the Land of Lightning. He didn't want to be sleep-deprived or drowsy. He had been neglecting his contacts in foreign territory while he didn't have use of his normal abilities. With that problem resolved, now his only issues were getting back into top form and memorizing the positions of his new seals. With his mind adrift in the sea of eternal darkness, he passed the rest of the night without incident.

Daylight slowly broke upon the forest clearing, the inky black of night slowly giving way to a hazy, foggy morning. The trees and grass took on a muted gray tone, making everything feel dull and dreary. As the ambient light increased around him, Jiraiya stirred from his meditative state. He stood up and stretched his limbs out. Peering back into the tent, he saw the bundle of blonde hair still rolled up into his sleeping bag. There were light breathing sounds emanating from the entrance of the tent and the slow rising of the chest confirmed that everything was fine.

The toad summoner spent the first twenty minutes of the day practicing his new sealwork, tapping the fingers in various patterns to mold his chakra in a multitude of different ways. He knew that the handseals most ninja used were practiced to the point of muscle memory and he was going to have to get to that point with the new setup that he had. He wouldn't be satisfied with the methods until he could tap each point with precision even during heated battle, as if he couldn't do that, they might as well be worthless.

He didn't expect to get into a fight with anyone in Lightning Country, his reputation alone would scare away most that attempted to attack him. If he happened to run into someone who was strong enough to challenge him, he could always run. Unless the Raikage or the Raikage's brother personally pursued him, he was fairly certain he'd be able to get out of any danger. But, he did need to get into the country, as he had several contacts that it had been a very long time since there was any contact and they might stray if they felt abandoned.

There was another problem though, the additional complication that had been around for a while now. Naruto. The boy was a dead ringer for his dad, even at 3. And if any Kumo ninja that fought in the last war saw the boy, they would certainly make the connection. If word got back to the Raikage that the Yellow Flash had a child or had been reincarnated, there would be squads sent out to assassinate the boy quietly. Doubly so if the boy was spotted within their own territory.

And the blonde brat was nowhere near defending himself, even from a genin at this point. Sure, he had huge chakra reserves, but all he knew to do with it was basic manipulation. Naruto couldn't even do a replacement or transformation yet. Even the lowest of trained ninja would be capable of taking the kid out.

Which left Jiraiya hamstrung on what to do. He could decide not to go into Lightning country to avoid the situation, which would be a good idea. The only issue was that Kumo was Konoha's biggest threat, where they needed intelligence from the most and the place where he most needed to keep his contacts strong. Add in that there were literally just a few dozen miles from the border and it made no sense to go anywhere else. There were multiple countries and five hundred miles between them and the Land of Earth, about the same distance to Water Country and more than a thousand miles all the way back across Fire Country to get to the Land of Wind. It made zero logistical sense to go anywhere else.

And he couldn't leave Naruto behind, the boy had nobody else that could watch or train him, at least nobody that Jiraiya trusted. Perhaps if Sarutobi sensei was here, there'd be at least one human with his respect to watch the boy.

Hmm… Human. That gave Jiraiya a different idea. While there were very few humans that he would trust with Naruto, there was another species that he knew could train the boy and he had just got back into contact with them. He had trained in their world themselves. And the boy had just signed the contract too. Plus, they were amazing at training the Yin side of things, where Naruto lacked.

The more he thought about it, the more he realized it was a near perfect solution. He quickly went out into the woods to gather up some specific insects and larvae, the perfect offering to what he was planning to do. Returning to the site, he noted Naruto stirring inside the tent. Calling the boy out and starting a small campfire to cook up a quick breakfast, he also prepared a side dish that went untouched, some onigiri made from the insects and larvae he had just gathered. Naruto looked a bit disgusted by the presence of the unusual food, but seemed content to ignore it so long as he wasn't being forced to eat it.

After the simple meal was consumed by the two humans, Jiraiya spoke up. "Naruto, how are feeling this morning? You used quite a bit of energy last night and slept pretty hard."

The boy looked up at him, wiping away blonde hair from his vision before responding. "I'm okay, Pops." That Naruto was still calling him that informal nickname gave Jiraiya great hope that nothing too much was damaged from the revelations of the previous night. "Kinda tired though."

"That's to be expected. You used up a lot of chakra yesterday and it takes time for it to recharge. Ninja have to worry about not using too much chakra, or else the get something called 'chakra exhaustion'." Seeing his charge's look at the word, he explained, "Exhaustion is when you have used up so much energy that you haven't let enough for your body to do what it normally does and so you get extra tired." The boys' eyes lit up in understanding and the white-haired sensei carried on. "We will have to work on you understanding how much chakra you have available and how much is okay to use, but that'll be a lesson for a different day. What I'd like to see you do now, is just channel what chakra you have right now. I'd like to try and see about how much you have left."

Naruto put his hands up into the Ram symbol that he had learned previously, which was the best one for just circulating energy through the system. As the blue aura within him started to move, Jiraiya noted that, as he had felt earlier during his charge's sleep, there was nowhere near as much as had been present yesterday. Standing still with his eyes closed to concentrate on the feel of it, the sage again felt how the Yang portion of the energy was already overwhelming the Yin portion.

"Alright, thank you Naruto, that's enough. I'll have you do it again in a minute, but for the moment there's some friends of mine that I'd like you to meet." Jiraiya ran through the finger touch combination for the summoning technique and two small poofs of chakra smoke were expelled from near his head. A second later, when it dispersed, there was a toad sitting on each of the man's shoulders.

"Ma. Pa. Good morning. I have someone I'd like you to meet. I also made some larvae onigiri for you guys to both enjoy, as I'd like to discuss a proposition."

The toad on the right shoulder reacted first. The toad appeared to be a male, if the white tuft of hair, bushy eyebrows and goatee on his head were any indication. He had similar yellow amphibious horizontally slitted eyes and was wearing a brown cloak wrapped around his shoulders. "Did you say you had larvae onigiri?" The toad immediately hopped down to the indicated pan where the rice balls sat, small parts of bug sticking out. He popped one into his mouth and appeared to savor the taste.

"Really, Pa, do you only listen to your stomach?" The voice was old and rough, carrying tones of annoyance. It calmed a moment later with the next sentence falling into a more matronly tone. "Hello Jiraiya-chan. Nice to see you again." The other toad stayed up on his left shoulder, raised a webbed hand and patted Jiraiya's face in a matronly manner as she spoke. The toad had what looked purple hair pushed into what humans would call a perm and much paler skin then her husband. Her lips were the same color as her hair and her eyes were much bigger and rounder, though they shared the same horizontal slit across a yellow sclera. She was wearing a black cloak with a smaller off-white cape fluttering behind her. Hopping off after greeting their summoner, she landed next to the other toad and started berating him. "Jiraiya-chan said that he wanted to talk and you just dive right down here and stuff your face. At least listen to the boy first."

"Oh, hush Ma, you know that he's going to talk for hours anyway. Let me enjoy them while they are fresh."

*Smack* A webbed hand whacked the male toad in the back of his head, the sound resounding off the tents and trees, bouncing around for a few moments before it died.

"Alright, Alright woman. Fine." The male rubbed the impact site and turned around to face the humans, bits of rice still stuck to the side of his face.

Jiraiya started to speak, noting that Naruto was giggling beside him at the display of the two elder toads. It was amusing and he was glad to see that they hadn't changed at all in the passing years since he had trained with them. "First off, introductions." He put his hand on the boys head, ruffling the blonde locks. "This is Naruto. Minato's boy. He signed the contract yesterday."

"Oh yes, Bunta came by last night chuckling about some upstart already showing you up. He wouldn't stop talking about it for hours. I'm sure every toad on Mount Myoboku knows about it by now." Ma replied, watching to make sure Pa wasn't trying to sneak another rice ball.

Jiraiya wasn't surprised. For being a big grump, Gamabunta was very talkative when he found something amusing. There was little doubt that the large toad had shared the story of the chakra flare with everyone he met since then. The toad sage shrugged and continued on, "Naruto did try to summon last night and that's part of what I want to talk to you about. I'd like a second opinion on it. Naruto, can you try the summoning technique again right now. Don't put absolutely everything you have into it, but just what feels comfortable."

Naruto nodded and ran through the seals under Jiraiya's watchful eye, getting stopped once when his fingers weren't right for the Bird seal. The chakra moved around in the boy's system, but didn't spill over like it had last night, with no aura bursting out of his skin again. Naruto put his hands on the ground and uttered the name of the skill and a poof of chakra smoke about the size of an adult human popped forth.

"Heya!" A tiny croak piped up, its small voice reaching into the air. "I'm Gamakichi! Nice to meet you!" As the smoke drifted away, a toad just barely at the end of tadpole state became visible. The toadlet still had a visible tail and was only the size of a finger, but didn't seem to be completely non-viable. This one could at least talk.

Ma and Pa looked at each other and then at Jiraiya. "The boy has far too much Yang energy. I assume it is because of that seal on his stomach, correct?" Pa spoke first, with Ma following up, "His balance is completely off. Is that what you wanted us to check?"

Jiraiya nodded, "That's exactly what I sensed as well and confirms my suspicions. The boy has the Kyuubi sealed within him, a parting gift from his father. But the energy from the Kyuubi is only the Yang half and it is constantly leaking into his system. His chakra use for jutsu is completely out of balance and he needs more Yin to balance it."

Naruto's head was focused on the toadlet that he summoned, which he was grateful was bigger than his last attempt. But it whipped up to follow the conversation when his name was mentioned. "What are you guys talking about? I did the summon just fine, see?" He gestured to the toad in front of him, who waved back at them with tiny arms.

"Thank you for coming Gamakichi, you can go home now. Tell your dad that Fukusaku wants to speak with him."

"Alrighty, gramps! Bye!" the little toadlet disappeared in a poof.

Jiraiya took the moment to speak out again. "So, the proposition that I wanted to discuss. I'd like you to take Naruto for a while and train him in meditation and Yin chakra gathering. Nature chakra if you feel he is ready for it after a while, as that'd bypass the problem too." He saw them looking back and forth between each other. "There's only one other human I'd trust to look after the boy. And Sarutobi-sensei isn't' here, nor can Naruto go to him right now. I'm needing to go into enemy territory to get information. Mount Myoboku is the safest place for him to be. Plus, there's nobody better than you two to get him to meditate and build his Yin energy to offset the massive Yang his body is filled with."

He sighed as Pa didn't look like he was going to want to talk about it. "Yes, Pa, you can have the onigiri now." The elder toad visibly delighted and grabbed another rice ball.

"Jiraiya-chan, are you sure? The Mountain can be harsh, you know that. You struggled with being there when you were older than this tadpole is now." Ma inquired while Pa was stuffing his face.

"It's not perfectly ideal, but the boy is tough. Remarkably so. I believe in him." Jiraiya said with a straight face.

"Well, if you say so." Ma responded in that tone of a mother who is pretty sure their kid isn't quite telling the truth.

Pa piped up, speaking around a mouthful of bugs and rice, earning a slight glare from Ma. "You want us to train him, he'll get trained. We'll put him through the same stuff we put you through. Speaking of, when are you gonna come back and finish your Sage training?"

Jiraiya looked offended. "I already did my Sage training. I'm the greatest sage in the world!" Spoken with a haughty tone, he struck his show-off pose. But, the comment was met with a derisive look from both elder tods.

"You know your sage mode is incomplete, Jiraiya-chan." Ma said. "You need us to gather nature chakra while you move, remember? Or you have to sit still to gather it and can only use it until it runs out."

Pa retorted, "You know the difference between no sage mode and incomplete is about the same as incomplete to complete sage mode. You're handicapping yourself by not finishing. Why not come to Myoboku with Naruto?"

Jiraiya dropped the pose and deflated a little bit. "Fine, fine. I will. One day. Just not now. I need to follow up on my informants before they mutiny against me. It's been years for some of them and if I don't make contact soon, I'll lose the leads. A few months, maybe a year, I promise. I'll come back, but I need to wrap some things up here first."

Ma looked at him with a look of concern. "Don't push yourself too hard Jiraiya-chan, we understand. We just want you to be ready for anything. We can look after Naruto and train him for a while. Just give us a couple of days to prepare, okay?"

Jiraiya nodded, but Naruto spoke up before he could reply. "Hey, wait! Don't I get any say in this? Pops, I don't wanna go with them. I wanna stay with you! I don't even know them and they're eating bugs!"

Jiraiya chuckled lightly at the display of disgust. "Don't worry, they won't make you eat bugs. At least not all the time. And I spent a couple of years living with them, you'll be perfectly fine. I'll get back soon and once I'm done I can come and join you there for a while too. We can both train together!"

Naruto looked up at him with tears in the corner of his eyes. "But… I'll miss you!"

Feeling the heart strings get tugged, the incomplete sage forced the emotional response down. "And I'll miss you too. But, we still have a couple of days left while they get everything ready, so we aren't saying goodbye this instant. It'll be okay."

Naruto remained silent after this, apparently not having anything further to say.

Ma spoke up after a moment of silence had passed. "It's settled then, in a couple of days, Naruto-chan will come and stay with us until Jiraiya-chan gets done with his work. Then they'll both stay and train together until Jiraiya-chan finishes his sage mode."

Reaching an agreement, the elder toads left the mortal plane of existence. The two humans left behind, one crying and one standing resolute, would spend their next couple of days working and enjoying their time together, until they were separated for the longest they had ever been up to that point. One off to train at a mystical mountain, the other to gather information from the lands of enemy shinobi.

AN: As someone pointed out, I'm trying more to vary the speech styles of different characters, rather than make them all sound like how I'd speak. That involves trying to make Naruto use only short and common words and not always have the right choice of word, just like a kid would. Trying to make Gamabunta sound informal and somewhat belligerent. Trying to make the Kyuubi seem disdainful and spiteful. Let me know what else I can do better on that front, I'm not used to writing out thoughts and speech in a way that I wouldn't think them.

Another thing, if someone has a way of referencing a person other than by name, that'd be great. I feel that I use names too much and while I try to switch it up (white-haired man, sage, pervert, toad-oil man instead of Jiraiya) I can't do it all the time. I'd love a better way of doing it, if anyone has one.

Also, I know I use commas too much! Sorry! I'm trying to cut back on them.

Finally, the massive amount of chakra was only because the Kyuubi had pushed chakra into his system for three years and Naruto never really used any significant amount of it. This is not something that he will just be able to do all the time as a kid. Now that he is going to be using chakra regularly as part of his training, he won't be able to store 3 years' worth again.

As always constructive criticism is welcome!