Chapter 8: The Fear
Like every seasoned shinobi, Naruto had his fair share of near death experiences. When he fought Haku on the bridge. When Orochimaru ambushed his team. When a giant snake swallowed him. When Gaara unleashed Shukaku. When Sasuke utilized his second stage curse seal. All of these and more were times the whiskered blonde was confronted with his mortality, and yet he had always managed to get out of it alive, though not always unscathed.
Here though, with two girls seeing him standing near another girl who was flashing her breasts, this was the time he was certain he wasn't going to make it out alive.
"What the hell are you two doing here?" Ino demanded, blushing a little at having been caught but grateful it was at least Sakura and Hinata rather than... well, anyone else.
"I was looking for you and Hinata here helped me." Sakura answered, briefly glancing to Naruto who was trying his hardest to look innocent and anywhere but towards Ino. "Your dad said you had Naruto-kun with you, guess he didn't know just what you two had in mind."
"I had nothing in mind!" Naruto shouted defensively.
Sakura looked to her teammate briefly, then back to the Yamanaka heiress and strangely smiled. "Well if you were going to strip for Naruto-kun, you could have at least invited us to join in."
"What?!" Ino, Naruto, and Hinata all asked her with varying volumes but identical expressions.
"Well I did say Naruto-kun needs to see just what his type of girl is." She explained, grabbing the bottom of her top. "Part of that is comparing bodies, not just personalities."
Before anyone could stop her, Sakura pulled up her shirt, exposing her bra-clad bosom to them all. All but Naruto since he still refused to look.
"C'mon Hinata, let him see what you have to offer." The pinkette encouraged.
Before the Hyuuga heiress could respond, be it for or against the request, Naruto rushed away from the area as quickly as he could. The girls were naturally shocked by this and briefly looked at each other, then pursued after him. But not before Sakura and Ino made sure to cover themselves again.
"How is it we can't find him?" Ino asked. They had been searching for two hours, well into the night, and still had not come across hide nor hair of the blonde Uzumaki. At the moment they were atop the Hokage Monument, figuring it would have given Hinata a vantage point to see from. It hadn't worked, but they had seen some dark clouds start to come overhead.
"This is bad. If even Hinata can't find him then he really doesn't want to be found." Sakura couldn't help but mutter.
"I just wish I knew what made him do this." Hinata said quietly.
"I know exactly what it was." Ino claimed, though she sounded rather ashamed instead of certain. "We scared him off. We triggered him too much."
"Triggered? What do you mean by that?" Sakura asked.
"I was actually talking to Naruto for quite some time before you two invited yourselves to butt in you know." Ino remarked, unable to avoid adding a little sting to her words in doing so. "Naruto was having a hard time relaxing, and while I talked to him, trying to get him to lighten up, well... I've had time to think it over and I think I know where we went wrong. I think Naruto is... for lack of a better term, afraid of women."
Both Sakura and Hinata did not like the sound of that. Speaking of unliked sounds, there was a low rumble in the clouds.
"Now I don't mean that literally, I just cannot think of another way to phrase it right now." Ino swiftly clarified, ignoring the brewing thunder. "We all know he doesn't go running or screaming away from any girl he sees. And he's not gay, he clearly likes women if my teasing showed me anything." She couldn't help but smile a bit when she saw the whiskered blonde attempting to hide a boner from her. "No, the problem is simply he's been conditioned to believe if he does anything even remotely perverted he will be punished brutally for it."
Sakura could tell Hinata was giving her a bit of an accusing look due to that theory, and frowned in return. "Hey, don't blame this on me. Sure, I admit I did some bad things I'm not proud of, but how could I have known it would have led to this?"
"You think that makes it okay? 'I didn't know any better'?" Hinata replied, some bitterness in her own voice. "Thanks to you and Ino and who knows who else, Naruto-kun may not be able to be near a girl without fearing he needs a helmet."
"Oh, like you ever did anything to make him less afraid?" Sakura couldn't help but quip back.
Hinata made a fist and came close to activating her byakugan. "And I suppose you think you have the moral high ground here?"
"Girls stop it, we're all at fault here. Every one of us." Ino jumped in, moving between the two. "But I think I have a solution."
Neither girl spoke, but they looked pretty skeptical. But to be fair that could be traced back to the frustration they felt towards each other and their situation in general.
"Now, like I was saying, Naruto isn't downright gynophobic. He can be around women on a regular basis and maintain normal behavior. However... that only seems to last as long as Naruto only interacts with a woman platonically. As soon as things even hint at taking a turn towards the sexual, that's where he gets afraid. Afraid that by merely being involved he will be treated as a scapegoat and suffer."
"Then why did you flash your chest at him?" Hinata asked.
"To prove a point. He's terrified of being seen as a pervert, that's what it all boils down to. He's convinced that if a women so much as thinks of him as a pervert then she will turn abusive towards him, hence why he can only feel comfortable in a platonic relationship right now. What I did was proof that even if a woman gives him permission to be just a little perverted, he still fears negative consequences from it."
"So you're saying that if we gave Naruto-kun engraved invitations to have wild consequence-free raunchy sex that would put a smile on his penis when it's all over, he'd refuse? Because he'd be unable to see it as anything other than a trap?" Sakura asked, trying to put this into perspective.
Ino nodded. "From what I've seen, heard, and experienced, yes, that is exactly the case."
"Well we can't have that. I mean, even if he never sleeps with me I don't want the poor guy to die a virgin. Terrified that if he uses his dick for anything other than pissing he'll be killed. So how do we change this kind of conditioning?"
"Well, Dad says there are only two ways to do something like that. Therapy, and conditioning for the opposite effect."
"So Naruto-kun either has to talk to a professional, or...?" Hinata started, unsure how to phrase the other part.
"Or we teach Naruto-kun how to be a pervert and enjoy it." Sakura said on behalf of the Hyuuga heiress.
Ino couldn't help but laugh. "Three women teaching a man how to be a pervert, I can honestly say I never thought I'd see that one coming."
"Girls, can you help me with this?" Sakura asked. "I already started trying to get Naruto-kun to improve his love life and goals, but if this is true than he needs more work than I was aware of. Naruto-kun needs to learn who his type is, but unless he gets past this fear then he's never going to have a type to begin with. I mean, Hinata if you do ever get him it looks like right now you'd have a sexless marriage, and you don't want that do you?"
Hinata shook her head quite firmly. At the same time a flash of lightning happened off in the distance, and the wind started to get louder.
"I'm in, I definitely owe it to him to ensure he gets some of the happiness this village seems determined to deprive him of." Ino spoke up, shivering a little. "But outside of dating and letting him get to second base, what can any of us actually do? I don't think it's good for him or us for any of us to just jump in the shack and shag him."
"Well right now we need to get out of the storm." Sakura stated, encouraging the girls to start moving. "For Naruto-kun, you can start by seeing if you can get him some of that therapy. I'm thinking I need to ask Tsunade-shishou to give him a checkup, make sure there isn't also a hormonal problem or something that's part of his reluctance too. Hmm... Hinata, I think the best thing for you to do is tell him what he should have heard a long time ago."
The white-eyed girl fidgeted a bit. "Uh... I agree that he does need to hear it, but is right now the best time for him? In his panic, wouldn't he perceive this as just another trap?"
"No, you're the only one of us he'd be comfortable with right now." Ino claimed. "You've never been rude to him like we have, and one of the things he admitted to me is that you're one of the few people that have given him support when he needed it. I believe he will listen to you. I don't know how he'll react, but he will listen to you."
Hinata felt herself smile just a small bit at that.
"Only problem is we still can't find him." Ino added.
"No, but we do know where he eventually will be." Sakura reminded them.
Naruto sat down on a rock by a pond casually tossing a few pebbles into it. Said pond happened to be in Myoboku, hence why the kunoichi couldn't find him. He had reverse-summoned himself to the toad realm, an ability he had for over two years now but Jiraiya was completely unaware.
The training trip with Jiraiya had not gone so smoothly. Sure Jiraiya would have you believe it went off without a hitch, but Naruto knew otherwise. He just never bothered correcting the old pervert because who would believe him? After all, no one believed he beat Gaara, Kabuto, or several other jounin level. In the beginning, Jiraiya insisted on working on Naruto's basics. The whiskered blonde had come to loath that concept. Iruka, Kakashi, Ebisu, and Jiraiya, it was always basics basics basics with them. It was like every one of them still thought every day of training was Naruto's first day. It had long gone past the part of being helpful and now just sounded downright insulting to Naruto.
Still, he tried to give Jiraiya the benefit of the doubt. And to a point that worked, since he did give Naruto tips on how to identify and break out of genjutsu. But beyond that, it was clear that when the toad sage meant basics, he meant the basics of using Kyuubi's chakra. Every day it was always about using Kyuubi, one way or another. Even the genjutsu thing was so he could hold out a little against someone like Itachi who'd want the Kyuubi, overlooking the fact that the Kyuubi was prone to being controlled by the sharingan in the first place. When it came to Naruto's personal skills, Jiraiya shrugged them off or flatout called them unimportant each and every time.
Upset that his mentor was like everyone else, seeing just Kyuubi and not Naruto, just in a different way this time, Naruto got ahold of Gamakichi and Gamatatsu one night to vent his frustrations. The two toads brought this to Gamabunta, who did not like what Jiraiya was doing. He agreed it was personally insulting, it was like he was saying Naruto didn't exist without Kyuubi. That if Naruto didn't have Kyuubi he might as well not have chakra period, and Lee, a man who actually lacked chakra, was getting more support than Naruto was. To change this, Gamabunta had Fukasaku go to Naruto and teach him how to come to Myoboku and return to the old pervert. If Jiraiya wasn't going to instruct the boy, the toads would, and he'd never even know.
From the toads Naruto learned skills he could actually put to use. Toad style taijutsu, improved kunai and shuriken accuracy, some skills with other weapons, some simple jutsu but nothing elemental, and especially fuinjutsu. He felt a lot more certain as a ninja now, but he kept these skills close to his chest. Mostly due to resentment towards people like Jiraiya and Kakashi, as well as Konoha as a whole. They expected him to go all out yet refused to train him seriously or reward him for a job well done? In that case he'd keep these secrets hidden just to enjoy the look on everyone's faces when they thought he was a goner.
"I'm guessing this time it wasn't Jiraiya, eh kid?" Fukasaku said, coming beside the boy.
"No, this time it was three girls that I thought were my friends."
"What'd they do? Sleep with your best friend or something?"
Naruto shook his head. "No, they started to get naked in front of me."
Fukasaku arched an eyebrow. "Did I miss something here? Start over kid."
Naruto shrugged and held his hands up in defeat. "I dunno what else to tell you. There I was just swimming with a girl, she takes off her top, then two other girls show up and one of the takes off her shirt. I run off and here I am."
'If Jiraiya were here, he'd be banging his head against the rocks until he dented his skull.' Fukasaku thought. While he didn't approve of the older toad summoners fascination with sexual matters, he knew Naruto's reverse approach was not any better. Part of him wondered if it was teenage rebellion, since almost every man Naruto was supposed to respect was a pervert so maybe he chose to be as unperverted as possible just to not be like them. But that didn't seem likely.
"Okay kid, I want to ask you this, what do you think would have happened if you hadn't run off?" Fukasaku tested.
Naruto gave the old toad a 'what are you stupid' kind of look. "What do you think would have happened?"
"Well I admit I'm no expert in human courting rituals, but I suspect that had you stayed you'd be surrounded by three mostly naked if not completely naked girls all wanting you to look at them and touch them, maybe even go all the way and give you an experience that Jiraiya would give up his writing hand to be a part of."
Naruto looked like he'd have an easier time believing the sun was made out of chocolate than that. "Wrong, I'd be beaten to a bloody pulp that even Kyuubi couldn't heal me from."
"Kid, if the girls were going to attack you, why didn't they just do it?" Fukasaku started, hoping he'd be able to reason with the boy.
"Because this gave them an excuse to."
"But if they were going to do that then why would they bother making an excuse in the first place? Wouldn't it make more sense for them to just attack you and lie if anyone questioned them?"
"Just because." Naruto shrugged, earning him a hard whack to the head from the toad's staff.
"Naruto, 'just because' is not going to work here. Are you seriously not even going to consider that the girls did not have malicious intentions in that moment?"
"What other intentions could they have?" Naruto asked back.
Fukasaku frowned. "Gee, let me think, could it be they like you?"
Naruto just looked away, stubbornly ignoring some details that would only make the old toad feel right. It wasn't that Naruto wanted the three girls to hate and abuse him, it was just that was behavior he expected. The idea of three girls, let alone one, sincerely wanting him to do something that in the past they've been all to quick to punish him for was so alien to him that it was just easier to ignore it. That didn't make it easy to argue however.
"Don't tell me you're afraid you're going to get cooties." Fukasaku remarked, somewhat teasingly but harsh just in case the boy really was being immature.
"Just drop it okay? There is no version of this where I don't end up beaten raw and needing a hospital!"
"Then why not just go to the gals and get it over with? You going to spend the rest of your life running from them like a coward?"
Naruto glared at the old toad. "I am not a coward!"
"Then why did you run from a fight before it even started? Would a hokage do that?"
Naruto huffed, but rose to his feet. "Fine, but I told you so." He then sent himself back to Konoha.
Fukasaku grinned, certain that the results would be more pleasant than the whiskered blonde assumed they were going to be.