Chapter 06
Naruto found Jiraiya standing just outside the East Gate, and with an expression of pure determination marched up to him.
"Just because we're on a mission doesn't mean I forgot your promise from before the Finals," the boy warned the man as they were about to leave. "You owe me the Yondaime's most prized jutsu, and you will teach it to me."
Jiraiya looked like he wanted to object, then shrugged and started walking away from Konohagakure.
"Oy! Wait for me!" Naruto called and had to run a short distance to catch up, a feat not made simpler with the large backpack he carried, and the ninja equipment he had not dared leave behind. The weights on his limbs certainly didn't help.
"We won't have much time for training," Jiraiya stated as Naruto slowed to match his pace once caught up. "Most of the day between towns, we'll be busy travelling. And in towns we need to ask around for anyone who may have seen her."
"Wait, her?" Naruto realised. "The new Hokage is gonna be a girl?"
"She's my age, so woman would be more accurate," Jiraiya chuckled before his eyes glazed over in lecherous fantasy.
"Snap out of it!" Naruto barked and gave the old pervert a kick in the shins.
"What did you do that for?" demanded Jiraiya. "You should show some respect for your sensei!"
"I'll show you respect when you stop acting like a pervert!" countered Naruto hotly. "And I'll show you! I'll prove that I can learn a technique while on the road by mastering the Yondaime's prized jutsu!"
'Just remember that I'm not going to help with it,' reminded Ranma.
'I'll do it alone!' Naruto insisted. 'I managed to learn the Kage Bunshin no Jutsu in one night on my own, and I'll manage this one as well!'
"We'll see about that," Jiraiya mused. Pulling a balloon from his pocket, he inflated it with a weak water jutsu, which Ranma took pleasure in reporting he had seen and would look into it later.
Holding the balloon out towards Naruto, Jiraiya proceeded to make it burst apart as though a bomb had been placed inside. It had started small, like there were small poles poking the rubber from the inside, but then they had stretched the surface too far and it exploded.
"This is the first step to learning the jutsu," declared Jiraiya in a sage manner. He then made another water balloon, which he dropped in Naruto's hands. "You are to burst this balloon like I did. When you can do that without poking holes, we will move on to the next step."
Naruto weighed the balloon in his hands for a moment, hearing the water inside sloshing around and wondering how to proceed.
'Okay, I'll give one hint to start you off,' sighed Ranma. 'He rotated chakra inside the balloon, setting the water in motion enough to make it burst the rubber surface.'
'I don't need your help,' Naruto sniffed in exaggerated offence.
Regardless of his mental statement, Naruto followed the line of thought provoked by Ranma's clue, and slowly started feeding chakra into the water, soon feeling the water inside swirling against the balloon in his hand.
The only thing that happened was that the balloon flattened itself with the rotations inside.
This was certainly harder than following instructions written on an ancient scroll …
It was nearly a week later after an epiphany given by a cat playing with a ball that Naruto figured out how to make the water balloon explode like Jiraiya had shown.
All that was needed was to spin the chakra inside in multiple directions until the centrifugal forces tore the balloon apart in a watery splash. Moments after the container was gone, the visible chakra ball dissipated as well.
"Okay, so you got part one," Jiraiya admitted after Naruto showed what he had managed to do. "But the second part will no doubt have you stumped for a while. Observe."
Jiraiya bought a sack-full of what Ranma called "hairless tennis balls", and gave all but one to Naruto. To the naked eye, the ball just sat in Jiraiya's outstretched hand before spontaneously blowing apart in a storm of rubber.
"This is all you have to do – but I'll warn you right now, it will be about a hundred times harder than step one," the old pervert announced.
Quite contrary to what Jiraiya expected, Naruto managed to complete this step in less than an hour, by applying what he had already done with the water balloon to it, and increasing the power of the chakra inside until it made the ball explode.
"Don't get too cocky," the Toad Sannin warned as Naruto smirked at his own achievement – that, and he now had some playthings to experiment different techniques on, as he hadn't used more than three of the balls. "This is the hardest step."
Taking out a balloon, Jiraiya inflated it with air until it was about the same size as the water balloon, and tied it shut.
Then he simply held the balloon in his hand, indicating that he wanted Naruto to pay attention to it.
Naruto couldn't see what was going on, but assumed it had something to do with what he'd learned so far.
"Let's see what it looks like inside," announced Jiraiya after almost a minute of silence.
In his other hand, a swirling ball of chakra appeared, glowing strongly of blue chakra and sucking in air around it, creating a new breeze in that area.
"Unlike the last two steps, the object of this lesson is to use both of them without breaking the rubber casing," Jiraiya pointed out. Possibly to inspire him, Jiraiya gently touched the Rasengan to the trunk of a tree, where a spiral pattern carved itself into it effortlessly – wood chips and strips raining to the ground.
Jiraiya pulled the ball of chakra away, and aimed lower before thrusting it in, making the back of the tree explode outwards, taking down a path of trees behind it, while leaving the front of the original tree still intact with only two spiral carvings in it.
Naruto was handed his own balloon, and his normal enthusiasm overwhelmed his recently acquired cautiousness.
-POP!-
"Keep trying," Jiraiya chuckled and handed the boy a bag of deflated balloons.
Regaining his composure, Naruto ignored the laughing in his head as he went about trying to find a way to have the same power as his previous two steps, while maintaining a perfectly smooth and undisturbed balloon surface.
Naruto lost track of how many towns the two of them visited, or even how many days passed. He was completely lost in the world of training with Ranma, and trying to figure out the Rasengan on his own – even their mission was not in his thoughts as he stared intently at the cheery, inflated rubber bladder in his hand.
He could make the chakra spin inside in the pattern it was supposed to move in – but the only reason the balloon didn't burst was that the swirling was at such a weak strength that it couldn't harm it.
'I'm sure the old coot skipped a step,' the blonde demon container grumbled darkly in his mind, sitting in the room he and Jiraiya had gotten at some in – they all looked and sounded the same, so he had given up trying to tell them apart. Jiraiya was probably out "gathering information" or something useful.
'Or you could be a complete idiot, but too stubborn to realise it,' Ranma usefully supplied.
'I got the Kachuu Tenchin Amaguriken right a few days ago, didn't I?' Naruto protested. 'That proves I'm not dumb!'
'Even a monkey can copy someone if they watch long enough,' added Ranma sagely.
"Shut up," Naruto growled.
-Pop!-
"Damn it, I'm down to my last three!"
-Knock-knock-knock-
"Huh? Who could that be?"
'Maybe the neighbours coming to complain about the loud bursts and muttering,' suggested Ranma. 'Be careful, though, whoever is on the other side, they are strong.'
'Hostile?'
'Without a doubt.'
'Then why answer the door?'
'Because they wouldn't let a door stop them if they were determined enough,' reminded Ranma. 'The best defence is a strong and surprising offence … catches them off guard.'
Nodding to himself, Naruto opened the door, keeping on a curious and innocent expression to make those on the other side underestimate him.
Standing in the hallway was a large man, with blue skin, spiky blue hair, gills on his cheek bones and jagged teeth … all in all he resembled a shark. On his back was a handle attached to something thick, long and covered in sharp spikes or fish-like scales wrapped in ragged bandages.
Slightly in front of this intimidating creature, was-
"Sasuke?" Naruto puzzled. "What happened to you? You look so old! And what's with the stupid-looking cloak?"
"You have me confused with my younger brother," stated the man emotionlessly, shifting so the lower half of his face was hidden by the collar of the cloak. "I am Uchiha Itachi, and I am here to retrieve you."
'Saotome Final Attack!'
"Sorry, I'm on a mission, nice meeting you, though … you should stop by Konoha and see your brother some time, he seems very lonely. Good day," Naruto blurted faster than he had wanted, and slammed the door shut before jumping out the window.
He didn't need to have a good sense of hearing to know that the door was reduced to splinters not a moment after it struck the frame, and even a civilian would have felt the wild killing intent directed at him, no doubt from the shark-man as Itachi didn't give the appearance of having a single emotion with which to rub away his apathy.
"I knew I shouldn't have tried my hand at gambling!" the boy lamented as he leapt across the rooftops in random patterns to avoid potential projectiles. "Bad guys always find gamblers!"
'Playing a single token in a Biju-themed slot machine is hardly gambling,' Ranma pointed out as they used a telephone wire to swing to higher grounds. 'But it was pretty impressive winning enough tokens to fill a sack large enough to fit the two of us.'
'And that was a nice idea, having it all converted to paper money that take up less space, but we have a bigger problem here!'
Using Shushin no Jutsu to get behind the two pursuers, Naruto doubled back to the Inn they stayed at, in the hopes that Jiraiya-
-Bamph!-
-was there.
"You guys should know better than to attack my protégé while I'm still alive," the confident and taunting voice of Jiraiya announced from atop a large horned toad with thick wrist guards and large swords on its back.
The shark-like man growled and tore the weapon from his back, intent on attacking even as Naruto stopped running to watch as the scene played out.
Itachi stopped the violent man.
Using some unheard words to argue his case, no doubt without a trace of emotion, Itachi and the shark-man retreated.
"That should keep them from trying again for a while," Jiraiya muttered. "But we need to move along quickly so as not to tempt fate … And remember, you've still got to get the third step right – it's a very useful technique, and will usually frighten off most experienced ninja. The Yondaime got quite a reputation during the last war, because of this technique and another."
"What was the other one?" asked Naruto, now regretting not having paid better attention in class, as he was sure they had covered this at some time – probably when he was asleep or out pranking.
"Hiraishin no Jutsu," Jiraiya answered, looking solemnly into the distance, as though reliving days of old. "A teleportation technique that uses no special seals, so it was almost impossible to predict when he would do it …"
"I want to learn it!" Naruto could not help but exclaim. "With a technique like that, people are sure to respect me!"
"We'll see," Jiraiya chuckled sadly and ruffled the prepubescent ninja's hair. "… One Jutsu at a time …"
Perhaps to annoy Jiraiya, or perhaps to prove he was worthy of learning more Jutsu, Naruto managed to discover what he had done wrong with the third step that very day, as they were moving on to another town.
What was needed was the creation of a "shell" of chakra around the swirling madness to keep it all in check and shape. This shell would discharge its violent insides upon contact with a foreign object, creating a funnel blast or tube blast, laying waste to anything caught in the vortex that could extend as far as a hundred metres.
Ranma's only complaint about the technique was that it required close contact before it could be used – something that they had to work out quickly, because not many ninja would allow them to stay within their guard for long enough to plant this monster of a blast in their torso. This indicated that the technique was not a completed one, as surely the inventor would have seen this problem and tried to correct it.
'Maybe combining the Moko Takabisha with it …' Ranma mused.
"Not bad," Jiraiya agreed, rubbing his chin in thought. "Might need to speed it up a little, and maybe add some more power … other than that, perfect! As a reward, how about I take you to do your first research? You could start your own book series, and I could help!"
"No thanks, old man," Naruto retorted. "I want to be accepted, not exiled."
Despite the obviously insulting comment, Jiraiya didn't comment, but rather carried on with what they were supposed to do – seeking out the next Hokage.
It was as Ranma was teaching Naruto how to sense power around him that Jiraiya wished to show him some local history in the form of a Daimyo castle, no longer in use for its original purpose, but remaining as a memory to the past.
There remained one problem, however - where once the proud structure had stood, a fresh pile of rubble was all that was left.
"Why do I have the feeling we've found her?" Jiraiya muttered as he took in the sight of the former glorious castle.
Author's Notes: I apologise for the delay, but for some reason, this chapter was immensely difficult to force through … no matter how much I forced myself, it didn't sound right, or came out wrong. It also came out shorter than expected, barely passing 2000 words in length (Author's Notes not included), I'm really sorry about that, as I've previously promised no less than 3000 words per chapter – but I couldn't figure out how to extend it any more.
Now, to those of you who complain that Jiraiya isn't really teaching Naruto the Rasengan, as opposed to the more detailed explanation given in canon, I say that we've deviated enough from canon now that reactions would be different for those in direct contact with Naruto – Ranma's uncanny ability to copy a technique at only a glance is what Jiraiya is counting on and what Naruto is slowly and subconsciously starting to learn.