I am having a great deal of difficulty correcting formatting problems with this chapter. They do not exist in the edit mode or the live preview, but do on the actual archived copy. since I cannot wortk out how to remove these, I instead supply you with a link to a better formatted version on my homepage. Link in my account itself, since it also seems determined to thwart my efforts to put it here.
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Part four.
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Really it was all a little creepy. Everything was so soft and gentle and feminine. He'd lived his life surviving with whatever he could get his hands on, and now to have such lavish and comfortable furnishings around was difficult to get used to. Every day it was like waking up in some strange twilight world where he was actually allowed to own nice things. He did wish more of it was done in masculine colours, like orange and black, but given that the old letch had first insisted on it and then paid for and fixed up everything himself, Naruto wasn't about to complain. It was nice to have a bed and furniture that was actually comfortable, and he figured that once he was finished training with Jiraiya he could just re-colour it himself. In the mean time he just hoped that no one he knew too well happened to see it.
How many days, he wondered? How long till the exam now? Neither memory nor cognitive functions were up to working yet, so he abandoned his search for the specifics. He was coming to both welcome and dread the end of the training now. As irritating as some of the old man's training methods were, and as irritating and perverted as the man himself could be, Naruto had to admit that he was getting results. His chakra control had improved to the point where jutsu he had once struggled with were easy, and now with the kage bunshin training he was learning new ones too. He couldn't wait to show off his improvement during the exam as he ground Neji to the dirt.
On the other hand though, he wondered what would happen when the exam was done. Was ero-senin going to want to see him ever again? Maybe once he'd lived up to Naruto's request to train him for the exams he'd want nothing to do with him anymore. Naruto was quite worried about that, though he wasn't always happy to admit it to himself. If the old man did go then he'd end up missing him.
He'd never had such personal training before; in the academy two teachers had taught a whole class-room of students, and Kakashi had never had a particularly hands on approach to the matter. When he trained with the old letch he actually felt like the man genuinely cared how his training went. Probably a large part of it was just the way he looked in his Oiroke no Jutsu body, but it felt like Jiraiya actually appreciated him. Even when the perv had seen his apartment and started yelling all that annoying crap about it being no fit place for a beautiful babe to live, even then it had been sort of nice too, to have someone caring about what happened to her.
Well lying here worrying about it wouldn't make the exam come any sooner or later, and besides, his bladder was starting to make urgent demands upon his attention.
He slipped out of the too comfortable bed and hurried towards the bathroom, feeling the delicate, brushing touch of his satin skirt against his legs as he went. The floor boards were too cold this early in the morning, but not so bad as the bathroom tiles. Briefly he wondered if there was someway he could get Jiraiya to pay for better heating too before lifting the toilet seat and slipping one hand down beneath his skirt.
He couldn't find it
Groping blindly, scrabbling to manage to wrap his hand about it. Only he can't its not there. It's completely gone. How the hell is he going to pee without his penis?
He stopped himself, and started to breathe slowly. Penises didn't just disappear, that wasn't the way the world worked. Slowly he lifted his hand up to his head, grabbed a bunch of hair in his hands and brought it forwards to his eyes.
Long. Too long, and far too silky too.
Suddenly she was having to try and actively remember to breathe again as she realised that she had actually done it. She had maintained her oiroke no jutsu through the entire night.
Emotions boiled within her. She wasn't sure whether she felt triumphant at her success or worried at how easy this was all becoming. She wasn't sure even which of those it was she wanted to feel.
In the end she delayed feeling either in favour of sitting on the toilet and not wetting herself.
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"Why to I have to do all this dancing anyway?" Naruto grumbled, "I thought we were done with all the chakra control exercises."
These particular dances were ones for which she had no partner, and if the truth were to be told now that she was getting the hang of the movements and patterns she was actually starting to find the dance quite calming and relaxing. She wasn't sure how exactly this was supposed to help her against Neji though, and she had an uncomfortable suspicion that the perv was only having her do them so that he could watch. The dances were full of rolling, sensuous movements, which she had no doubt her sensei found very pleasing to the eye.
"Hmm what was that?" Jiraiya said from where he stood behind her, "Oh, sorry I was just distracted by something. You can't ever be finished with chakra control. There's always room for more improvement, and especially in your case, but that's not what this training is about."
"It's not?" Naruto wondered aloud, the steps of the dance turned her around and her back facing her sensei, whose gaze crept up from waist level.
"Of course not. If this was just for control I'd have you doing something more complicated too. We both know you are well and truly capable enough of dancing on water without difficulty. No, this training is for your taijutsu."
Naruto wasn't exactly sure how dancing was supposed to improve her taijutsu skills, and she tried to let him know that, but he just waved off her concerns.
"You commit to the attack far too soon and far too fully, Naruto. You leave yourself far too open to counter attacks. When you have to dodge you do it with your whole body and let it disrupt your own attacks. In this way, you let your opponents control the pace and movement of the combat. I need to teach you how to flow around attacks, and how to fluidly switch between attack and defence."
"And how is dancing supposed to do that?" Naruto asked doubtfully. Training with Jiraiya was a little bit like watching an action movie; suspension of disbelief was definitely required. Still, he managed to get results anyway. Somehow.
"Naru-chan, you need to start trusting your sensei's teaching methods," the letch said, his face twisting into a horrible rictus as he tried to affect a cute and offended look, "Your own style is sharp, percussive, and you telegraph your moves far too much. The dance style you are learning is far more fluid, each movement gracefully melting into the next one. It will help you, but the dance isn't the training, just the preparation. The real training is managing to keep dancing while I attack you!"
He lashed out at her, and Naruto barely managed to dart to the side.
"No. No No!" Jiraiya said, "You dodged. Don't dodge it. Dance around the blow instead. Start again, from the beginning."
She did. Again and again. Her sensei's attacks were few, but they came at different stages through the routine each time, and she never saw them coming in advance. And again and again he would hit her, or she would loose control of the dance.
"You messed up your foot work. Start again."
"You lost your timing. Start again."
"Your flow is broken. Again"
There were situations, she was discovering, in which her sensei could be deadly serious, and situations where dancing could be anything but calming.
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This night the bruises were all gone by the time Naruto reached the bathhouse. Today the old man hadn't been hitting particularly hard or fast, and her body hadn't been pressed too hard, but that didn't change her need for relaxation tonight. The ninjutsu training with the kage bunshin was mentally exhausting as usual, but worse than that was the pure frustration that had come from the dance.
Jiraiya's attacks had been slow. She could have dodged anyone of them normally, but when she did she dropped out of the dance. It was maddening, seeing the blows coming at her so slowly, and yet being able to do so little to avoid them.
Still it was to be expected, she supposed. This time she wasn't just learning a move or a technique, she was trying to learn an entirely new methodology, and that was proving to be a whole lot more difficult. At this rate she was going to be spending at least another few days working on it, and even then it wouldn't be done. Jiraiya had already told her that as soon as she could dodge she had to learn to mix in attacks with the dance too.
Well, she supposed, at least her control had improved enough by now to stop her falling down into the water every time she made a mistake.
She dropped some coin on the Kiosk's counter, smiled at the woman there, and tried to ignore the fairly frosty look she got in return from the woman working there as she was handed her towels. It seemed that the old lady still hadn't completely forgiven her for the crime of being Jiraiya's student, which was funny because the woman seemed to really quite like the old man himself.
She stepped into the women's changing area, dropped her towels on the bench and reached behind her neck to untie the bow that held her silk sundress up. She tugged it loose, used one hand to hold the front of the dress at her breasts, and used the other to find the small zip at the back that would let it slip down off her hips. As she did this, she turned to smile at the girl who happened to be undressing beside her and…
…froze.
"Sakura..." Naruto heard the words leaving her own mouth, though she hadn't intended to speak at all. She had the terrible feeling that her smile had become more of a grimace. Shit. Shit. Shit. She was going to be killed.
"Uh hello. Do I know..." Sakura stopped, her green eyes growing large, her pink hair seeming to lift a little from her head of its own accord, "...Naruto?"
Naruto flinched. Oh god… She rigidly kept her eyes from dropping from Sakura's face, but even so she could tell that Sakura wasn't wearing anything more than a bra on her upper half. Oh shit. This was going to end up hurting, she was sure of it.
She opened her lips to try and speak, but the attempts died in her throat, and she really didn't know what to say anyway.
"Naruto... What the hell are you doing in here!"
"I... I... I... uh... well..." there was a good explanation, she knew there was, but it wasn't coming to his mind, "uh, to bath?"
She winced, knowing that was far from good enough. That truth was reflected in Sakura's eyes, which blazed in fury. Sakura reached forward with her left hand to roughly seize Naruto's upper arm, lifted her right arm up, ready to strike.
"You pervert, Naruto!"
The dress slipped out from beneath Naruto's now numb fingers, dropping fast, pooling around her waist for a moment before slipping past her hips too. Sakura's eyes darted downwards, and held there. Her strike faltered, ground to a halt too few inches from Naruto's face.
"...Naruto, what are you wearing?" Naruto wasn't sure how to read her expression now. The rage was muted, twisted into something weird that she didn't quite understand.
She followed Sakura's gaze downwards, to where the girl was staring at her breasts, and the lacy blue bra that matched the colour of her eyes.
"Uhh... a bra?" Naruto hazarded as a guess. It was pretty obvious what she was wearing though, and she doubted that pointing it out would ease Sakura's desire for righteous anger, so maybe an attempt to expand upon that a little was in order, "Uhh... it's not my idea or anything. Ero-sensei makes me do it. I wouldn't have done it at all if he didn't make me!"
His voice was starting to sound quite panicked, and he wasn't even sure what he was saying wasn't his fault anymore. Probably didn't matter, it was likely the letch's fault anyway.
Sakura seemed to have forgotten how to move. Her arm was still stopped in mid strike, hanging in mid air and reminding Naruto that her execution might have been not stayed but only delayed.
"Ero-sensei?" Sakura asked, her voice distant, numbed somehow, "Who?"
"Err," said Naruto, wondering at how strangely the conversation was changing. Wasn't Sakura going to hit her? "Well, you know how Kakashi left town? Well I had to get a different sensei, and he's sort of a pervert and he wanted me to err… do it, err... well, like this... And the bathing too and the dresses and that other stuff…"
"Do it like this..?" she repeated looking even more shocked now, like a big explosive note had gone off too close to her. "Do that other stuff… Oh Naruto… Why… why would you do that?"
There was something wrong with Sakura's voice. It had gone all weird and trembly. Naruto looked downwards, suddenly feeling ashamed. Was Sakura disgusted with her?
"Well... I really want to get more powerful, and I've got to beat that Neji guy. You saw how much of a bastard he was to Hinata. I guess it seemed worth it to me you know? I mean it's sort of bad, but he is a really powerful teacher and… and… Hinata just didn't deserve that, you know? She didn't deserve it at all." She swallowed, waiting judgement.
"You did it... for Hinata?"
"Well sort of," Naruto shrugged, "I mean its good how powerful I'm getting, but I wouldn't have started except for her. Um so yeah, I guess I did do it for her."
Suddenly Sakura was lunging towards her again, and Naruto flinched, closed her eyes in anticipation of pain.
The impact hurt far less than Naruto had anticipated. Sakura pressed up against her; collarbones and the tops of small breasts pressing up against Naruto's much larger ones. Slender arms slipped around her, squeezing in on her.
"Oh Naruto," she said wretchedly, "I'm so sorry Naruto."
Naruto could swear she felt water droplets splashing down on the exposed parts of her breasts.
"Um, it's okay I guess..." she said, wondering what the matter was. Did Sakura really think it was that bad to be a woman? Personally she didn't find it too much different from being a guy, except the way people treated you and looked at you. Mostly that was better when she was a girl really...
"Don't worry Naruto," Sakurta was squeezing her even tighter now, "It will all be alright. I'll be here for you whenever you need me. Every thing will be okay."
Yep, Naruto decided, women definitely had some weird secret code language.
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It seemed to Sakura that Naruto was taking it all very calmly, considering what was going on in his... In her life at the moment. Still, now she thought of it all through the academy Naruto had never really shown his hurts on the outside. She'd also had more than a week to get used to the idea...
Just the thought of having to get used to it made Sakura want to cry, or throw up.
God, to be able to do something like that, just because you had decided that the reward was worth it... There was something sick about that, and something noble too. It reminded her of Sasuke a little too, in a way that she couldn't really pin down.
"Just don't you dare look at my breasts." She had demanded before they had gone into the bath, and Naruto had readily agreed to it. She'd actually sounded proud as she'd told Sakura that she'd become great at not noticing other girls.
It seemed to be the truth too, because there she was chatting easily with two other fairly attractive older women, seemingly unaware of their naked bodies. She definitely didn't want Naruto staring at her, but it seemed somehow terribly sad that the training had done that to Naruto. Somewhere inside her the voice of that deeper, second mind was screaming words of white hot rage up at her, as it had been since she first realised what Naruto's teacher was doing to her. One day, it told her, when Naruto no longer needed her teacher, then she would make him pay. Even an idiot like Naruto hadn't deserved to loose the ability to enjoy the sight of another's naked body.
...and speaking of naked bodies…
In this setting it was all but impossible to notice Naruto's own. The transformation from boy to girl had added a few years to Naruto's body, and to her figure as well. It left her with a figure that was toned and slender from tip to toes, and a pair of breasts larger and more perfectly formed than Sakura thought that she would ever have. Naruto did have the advantage of being able to decide what she looked like, but even so it made Sakura feel self-conscious and jealous. With a body like that, maybe Sasuke would have noticed her by now...
She let her attention drift back to the other nearby women, the oldest of which was now speaking to Naruto.
"...more dancing with your Sensei then?"
Naruto's face looked so calm now that she was learning back in the hot water, even as she started to talk about the things her sensei had made her do.
"Uhh, not dancing with him, it was a bit different today. Different type of dancing, I think, and he was just standing there watching me while I did the dancing. Well, he watched until he came at me at least. Then I'd try to dodge it you know, but mostly he kept getting me. Stupid old letch."
Came at me...
Sakura blushed as she tried to banish the mental image of a female Naruto, her face wearing a shocked expression as it dripped from her nose and chin down onto her breasts.
She wondered if it would be alright to something like that, even for Sasuke. Somehow she doubted that she'd alright with even that.
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