Chapter 15: A Relentless March Onward
When compared to other hidden villages, there are plenty of characteristics that set Konoha apart from its counterparts. The most obvious of which is Konoha's position as the 'least hidden village', certainly the least hidden of the big five.
The next least hidden would either be Iwagakure or Sunagakure. While both were relatively straightforward to get to and their locations exactly known, they were 'hidden' deep within dangerous and/or inhospitable environments. Like a desert, or barren mountain range.
Another rather large difference would be the amount of empty space located within Konoha. The only other village to even come close was surprisingly Sunagakure, with their village size limited only by the large underlying bedrock upon which they built their foundations.
But Konoha had them all beat by a mile. The leaf village nearly doubled the size of Suna, with more empty forest area within the village's great walls than any other village had set aside for non-military buildings. In fact, you might even say Konoha's comparatively vast civilian population was one of its secret strengths, but that was an idea for another time.
Some of these forests are interspersed with odd clan properties and other such things, but a good many of them were reserved and sectioned off as training grounds, and some of them were just large unkempt forests of old growth trees that had been far longer than the village or its great walls. These were just large training grounds that the village either didn't want to keep up with, or purposefully left in such a state.
Within the particularly remote depths of Konoha's largest unkempt forest was one Uzumaki Naruto, poised for combat almost exactly twenty meters from Konoha's legendary White Snake. One
The young Chunin looked nearly unrecognizable. His skin and hair covered in what appeared to be a semi-fluid metallic skin. It seemed to even mirror his facial expressions rather well, but it was difficult to tell how thick it was as an observer. All of this clung to his skin beneath his loose fitting clothing. Naruto's second skin technique flowed gently in unrecognizable patterns, odd ripples of displacement like ripples or waves in water.
His months of tireless work had paid off in spades, Orochimaru noted keenly, though the boy's work ethic wasn't without issue. He had probably lost over ten pounds in his recent training fervor. The Chunin stayed up late and worked through meals, often for days on end. It had certainly taken a toll on his fat reserves, not that it could be noted through his current technique. The technique actually appeared to make him a few inches larger, but looks could be deceiving.
She admired that fierce tenacity, it's part of what made her earmark him early on in her intelligence reports, while she still worked amongst the Akatsuki. Even under some of the worst possible conditions, he refused to do anything but grow, he was a weed with roots far too deep to die.
A new loose fitting dark shirt was tucked into his orange ninja pants. His Chunin vest hung open, the already plentiful pockets on the outside were visibly complemented by the numerous pockets Naruto had sewn on the inside of the jacket. His old length of orange cloth normally baggy and knotted diagonally across his torso like a sash, now functioned as a thinly pulled impromptu sword belt around his waist.
The Uzumaki's form seemed to mirror his white-faced sensei's, with a few key differences. Opposite him, her form seemed to be oddly balanced on the back of her feet. A signature part of the Hebi taijutsu style, draw your opponent in and strike. Knees bent slightly with both hands raised and flat, ready for lightning-fast strikes and jabs. A style built around flexibility, odd counters, and the use of her snake-summoning techniques.
While Naruto's stance was much lower, his center of gravity seemed to shift constantly from an outside perspective, even without his body noticeably moving. Something his snake sensei had been gently encouraging him to work on with his second skin, as every small advantage was something that should be capitalized upon.
The similarities end there. With his hands in a raised flat position near his chest level, similar to his Sensei's. Only much more rigid in their form, palms flat and the armor around them hardened deceptively as edges grew sharper, reminiscent of the Hyuuga's style of chakra enhanced jabs as opposed to the Hebi style's more fluid variety of palm strikes amongst other things.
The only warning the younger ninja received that the fight had begun was the ground beneath Orochimaru ripping away in chunks and dust as she disappeared in a blur of pure speed and force.
Before the clumps of dirt could even reach their apex the woman reappeared in front of Naruto. Her fist already touched his forehead where a Konoha Hitai-ate would normally reside.
The force and power behind the blow was practically visible to the naked eye. Naruto's armor was working overtime to absorb as much inertia from the strike as possible, moving out to both encapsulate her hand and dissipate energy.
His head tilted back nearly half a foot from the blow before a hand shot up to grab Orochimaru's own. A knee followed close behind the hand, it drove upwards to punish his sensei's open midsection.
Orochimaru freed her striking hand from the metallic grasp on Naruto's forehead, something that took her more and more effort every time. His knee came up and her free hand flashed downwards to hook Naruto's within her own.
With her grip secured, she brought Naruto's knee up higher between the two of them. A move that should have thrown his weight too far behind himself to stay balanced. And definitely would have only a short time ago.
He was improving incredibly fast, a rate at which she often struggled to believe. It felt like only yesterday she had been teaching him chakra control exercises on the windy dunes of Kaze no Kuni, even if it had been three months since Tsunade took the hat. Now he could extend his own control meters from his body at the drop of a hat.
Much to her surprise, Orochimaru could feel her students' caught leg grow heavier and heavier. She quickly ascertained that he was shifting weight using his armor differently than they had originally theorized and worked on together, allowing him to control his balance in positions she had not expected.
Another improvement in technique that she hadn't seen, she thought as a wicked smile weaseled its way onto her face. Maybe something to do with his improvement in density control? He had been playing with an idea that might let him overcome the phase limits of his materials, possibly even controlling their current state despite their current temperatures.
Before she could drop her grasp and remove herself from within Naruto's guard, her student was able to stab her hand with spikes from his armor. Seemingly at the same moment that her hands retreated back closer to her own body and within her own guard, Naruto was able to lash out with a quick flurry of snap kicks from his already raised leg.
The Snake Sannin blocked and redirected her apprentice's attacks with relative ease, bringing the back of her forearm up to block the last two kicks aimed for her head.
His final snap kick bounced off her arm but gave the boy enough room to bring his leg back down to the ground and shore up the gaps in his defense. No sooner than his foot hit the ground was Orochimaru back on top of him, judging the risk worth sating her curiosity, raining down a hellfire of blows meant to concuss and stun.
Each punch seemed to pack enough force to snap the spine of a normal ninja. Naruto doubted even Kakashi-sensei could stand up to such furious strikes head-on. But he did not allow himself to pause in admiration of the expert maneuver and subsequent attacks
Naruto's arms came up to block and subsequently deflect each new blow coming from his sparring partner. Rolling up to his feet with his new defense, armor rippling as solid slanted plates formed and shifted atop the liquid to deflect more force.
The ripples as she made contact with his armor were visible throughout the entire technique. If one looked very closely, one would be able to see the rippling of the liquid metal come to an end near the heels of his feet, where the metal had encapsulated his sandals.
The snake had been putting so much power into her blows that Naruto needed to use every square centimeter of his technique to dissipate the force and he still needed to physically deflect the last dredges of the attacks, lest she continue forward and spear him through.
They would break apart only for short exchanges of ninjutsu or other maneuverings, their returns to close combat was always swift and brutal. Meeting with weapons short and long, hands, close-quarters ninjutsu, and anything else they could throw at one another. They might call it a culmination of their recent successes and breakthroughs in training and research, while any sane onlooker would call it bloody and violent.
"You will no longer be underestimated by your opponents." She spoke in between bouts of intense hand-to-hand combat. Naruto not having gotten an attack of his own since his first counter in their original clash. She was simply too fast for him to keep up, much less get ahead of her strikes.
She would disappear in a burst of pure speed, the ground beneath her suffering for it each time. Only to reappear at a different angle of attack, driving home each and every punch and jab near the peak of her strength. Five, ten, fifteen, twenty-two blows all rained down around Naruto's face and joints. "They know you now. After your little bout with the rogue Uchiha and his partner."
He reached out to stop a strike aimed for his shoulder, obviously meant to drive through his thinning armor and incapacitate the joint, his reserves were lower than he had thought. An ocean had been reduced to a large puddle at best.
His pre-emptive strike only met a small column of snakes, appearing from within his opponent's sleeve, pausing his block in its tracks. A wicked smile graced her beautiful features, the two clashing images combined to make it all the more terrifying.
"They are coming for you. And they will do everything in their considerable power to take you, or kill you if need be." Her right hand continued forward straight through his armor, even as the metal flowed to reinforce her target. Chakra enhanced fingers met uncovered cloth, then his metal skin, and finally they felt true skin.
As soon as Naruto felt her skin against his now unprotected shoulder, he saw her grin widen. Immediately after he felt the horrific pop and grinding of bone against bone as his shoulder was pushed clean out of its socket.
"Argh!" Was his poorly controlled reply to the perfect attack. Classy.
His chakra flared fiercely, signaling Orochimaru to once again disappear, only this time in a poof of smoke. As the smoke cleared the collection of hardened metal spikes coming from Naruto's arms and chest were soon revealed. Once again demonstrates Orochimaru's keen sense of everything around her.
"Every weakness in your techniques will be explored. Any possible advantage will be taken, or created if they have to." Her melodic taunts echoed throughout the clearing and the surrounding forest. Earth walls appeared to his back, limiting his possible escape routes, as bolts of lightning seemed to streak by him.
"You'll be given no respite, no reprieve to sit on your laurels. Victory is the status quo, and defeat is unacceptable. Innovation, your only means of survival." Her calm cadence was that of a philosopher or an orating professor. Not the ragged breathing of someone in a pitched fight. More lightning erupted from around her form in freely controlled odd streaks, her personal spin on Naruto's current research into more pure forms of chakra manipulation.
The first bolt was wide, he ducked under and left, allowing it to pass nearby. If his hair had been visible, the static charge he felt probably would have had it standing on end.
He had no time to contemplate the electric charge though, as three more streaking bolts of death came towards him. The first two nearly pinned him to the earth wall behind himself, one glanced around him and the other scraped his midsection, while the third was able to strike true.
"Nothing is off limits to shinobi. They will harbor no reservations about any action they must take to kill you. So you need to be better."
What had once been minuscule holes over his face to allow him to see and breathe, have now opened up to the air, allowing his screams to be heard more clearly. His arms were curled up from the electrical current running through him, unable to properly ground himself against such strong lightning, but his armor was still swirling and moving.
Naruto had long since learned to control his armor without directly needing to move any part of his body, he only needed his mind and enough chakra to not burn himself to death. After the Chunin exams neither of his sensei would accept anything less, and after Kisame nearly ripped his head off Naruto wouldn't argue with them.
"FUCK!" He shouted as the Sannin's lightning technique kept coming, the shock not letting up in the least. Spikes of higher conductive materials began to shoot from key points on his body, stabbing into the earth beneath him and piercing through Orochimaru's chakra coating the ground. Allowing him to finally ground himself and stop the convulsing lightning technique from causing further harm.
But his armor was beginning to droop and almost melt in some areas, and solidify in odd forms in others. His limited control was becoming erratic, the heat wasn't being properly mitigated.
"Rest is a luxury for those without monsters on their tail. Kisame Hoshigaki, Itachi Uchiha, Sasori of the Red Sands, these are the level of people you need to surpass. To you, they must become insects, unfortunate enough to catch the eye of an apex predator."
Naruto rose a mound of earth between himself and Orochimaru, desperation painting his every belabored movement, dodging away before it burst under the weight of another lightning technique. It mattered little, his hands already quickly shifting through hand seals.
Anything to put in-between the two of them. A dozen or more earthen walls haphazardly dotted his surroundings as he finished the seals, giving him momentary cover as he moved between them. He had mostly gotten his armor under control, yet couldn't keep up his routine of density shifting, making the armor and his overall image appear more static and less mysterious.
He would need to pull out something big, anything to wipe that stupid smirk off her face. Once again, under slightly less immediate pressure, he began a chain of oddly mixed hand seals.
He felt the little taps as the knocking began again, calling him with the warmth of an old friend. His energy reached out and molded into the proverbial key as he began to take in more and more of the mysterious natural energy to enhance his already potent reserves. It was a difficult connection to maintain with his limited energy and chakra reserves, but Naruto didn't need to achieve chakra balance like Jiraiya, he just needed to keep his connection and stay conscious.
He swung a hand wide as he finished his long chain of hand seals. Shuriken almost dripped out of his arm and hand as they solidified and were sent flying near instantaneously, enhanced with the natural energy and buffeted by a great gust of wind as they raced towards his stationary opponent.
Orochimaru, finally on the defensive, slipped simply under and between the razor sharp spinning stars, the wall of wind barely tussling her loose garb. Before the tears and cuts made themselves known, more than a few of them had even broken her skin, thin lines of her own blood already beginning to form and clot over.
Her smile was mixed between wicked and full of pride. He had hidden the wind blades within the great breakthrough, doing so without hand signs. He had always been one for pure manipulation, rather than direct techniques or signs.
She began the hand signs for a large scale fire technique, but her blonde student had seemingly different plans. Closing the distance in conjunction with more wind blades, these ones being slung from the dual wakizashi he seemed to draw it from his armor, forging it on the spot with ease.
He released a flurry of slashes and stabs that would embarrass kenjutsu masters with decades more experience than himself, but Naruto held no pride, only an intense drive.
Slash slash - stab - duck - slash - spin, he kept an impossible tempo for minutes on end. Doing his utmost to prevent Orochimaru from getting another technique off or escaping.
He slashed high in response to one of her bare handed parries, her eyes tracked him but were noticeably surprised when he seemed to drop the blade while above her head. Shorter than her he was, he dropped even further, lower to the earth than he was even against Neji in the exams.
Another short blade appeared from his stomach, currently, the densest section of his armor that could spare the materials, bursting forward as his free right hand grabbed it and drove it forward into her open stomach.
The briefest of resistances met Naruto, the tip of the blade against her outer clothing before a snake appeared from the folds of her purple and white outfit and literally swallowed the weapon before it could reach its summoner.
Orochimaru would have grinned in victory if she hadn't realized Naruto's ploy at that exact moment. The blade Naruto had 'dropped' earlier was still hanging in the air where he left it, his chakra and magnetics holding it still in space rather than allowing it to fall with gravity.
With a roar Naruto used his chakra to both plunge the blade forward into her skull, as well as releasing the pressure building in his armor. Exploding outward in a ball of spikes, the blonde resembled an odd sort of puffer fish.
Orochimaru disappeared in haphazard smoke and leaves and reappeared a dozen or so meters away from the limited range of Naruto's defensive technique.
A haughty laugh served to display just how easy it was for her to slip away from his attack. "Kukuku, good Naruto-kun, you've improved significantly in only a few months. Sadly it must still end."
The blonde knew what this meant. She was going to cook him again.
A grand inhale marked the beginning of the White Snake's technique as chakra boiled over within her own network. Naruto piled more onto his armor as he raised large walls of earth as a barrier between himself and the flames. The sound of more liquid metal pouring forth from various seals along his body was almost audible in his panicked speed.
The fire technique that she breathed to life made a fire dragon look like a salamander. Enormous spheres of superheated flames engulfed the blonde, his earth barriers crumbling like shattered pottery. Leaving the blonde to cycle his armor until even his own temperature control efforts failed him and he began to succumb to the heat and pressure.
He had yet to develop a counter to her just cooking him alive in his own armor, and she remained merciless in its use.
The heat kept boiling over as his energy waned further and further. A wind technique sputtered and died, his control far too wonky to manipulate anything far beyond his body. Eventually, the knocking also grew quieter as the otherworldly natural energy severed the connection and finally dissipated.
She had a thousand and one ways to defeat him, defeat his chakra smithing and his armor, but very few of them weren't from her outright superiority over himself. Aspects that if he had more chakra or practice he could certainly overcome, like speed or pure taijutsu prowess. At the moment, this was one of the few ways that Naruto had absolutely no direct counter to, let alone any clue as to how he should even begin.
It was simply too hot, the flames beating against his armor too long, he couldn't cycle material fast enough to cool it.
Finally, her flames let up as his body gave out. Kami, she was going to lecture him even more now. Armor pooling around his collapsed body as a liquid with no master or consciousness, only the memory of chakra that had once given it form through pure will.
"At least you stayed conscious this time…" She began idly, before cutting herself off as his head lulled back and hit the earth with a thud.
Boy did he prove her wrong.
His hair blonde and matted with sweat and some odd off-white medical jelly he used to keep it tidy during prolonged training use. Liquid metal and hair didn't mix well apparently.
Orochimaru shrugged her shoulders, he was never out for very long, and she had more than a few notes for the boy.
A lone man in black and red sifted through the wreckage of what had once been a rather large casino, his work illuminated only by the waning slice of moon above him in the sky. Not that it seemed to slow him at all, he worked as easily as if it was currently daylight, tossing rubble around like scraps of paper.
"Hello?!" A voice interrupted his work, although the large man never paused. A samurai, the glint of moonlight against his heavy armor made it easy to see that he was one of the Daimyo's retinue sent after the attack to ward against opportunistic bandits and other forms of brigands.
Not liking being ignored he began again. "Hey! You can't be in this area." Audibly freeing the hilt of his blade as a warning for any would-be looter. "You need to leave or I'll remove you by force. In the name of my lord the Daimyo-"
"Shhhhh!"
He was cut off by the silencing sound, only it hadn't come from the orange haired man in the rubble, it had come from within one of the shadows nearby.
As fast as any shinobi, the Samurai captain drew his blade and struck at the noise's source. Only for the blade to be stopped mid-stroke, before shattering under some mysterious force.
As he turned his head to see another orange haired man clad in the same black and red robes his eyes widened, now recognizing the robe and its meaning. These were the assailants, or at least-
The battle hardened samurai was unable to finish his thoughts, finding himself under an enormous amount of pressure closing in on him from every side.
A whisper he hadn't heard. Couldn't hear.
Eyes widened with silent terror and pain, but he could do little as he stared into the hypnotic ringed eyes of the man who appeared before him.
"You should be silent in the presence of God." The lone samurai stood no chance, succumbing to the pressure his body collapsed in on itself in an awful display of blood, bone, and guts. The crackle and pop of bones turning to dust and then squelching into a condensed ball of paste was unsettlingly short. But the human sphere left over was far more gruesome, about the size of a fist, it clattered to the rubble with the clink of a stone.
The original man who had been digging through rubble finally stopped, only standing still and straight now as his more murderous compatriot came to him. Suddenly, as if they had popped into existence at that very moment, more of the orange haired people came forward from surrounding shadows and crevices to surround the first.
Six of them in total worked to quickly and easily clear a small area spattered with old and dried blood. Their apparent target.
"Finally." Almost a whisper came from the only one to speak so far. Before a chakra like no one had ever experienced before, not even the survivors of the previous attack, filled the city and surrounding area. Omnipresent, like a hand grasping your throat with an iron grip, only to vanish as quickly as it appeared. So fast most who felt it would think it wasn't real, perhaps a dream from deep in the night.
A great gate arose between the gathered shinobi, a shadow of death seemed to surround them like a comfortable cloak as it rose from the earth. Before eventually another man wearing the same cloak, although lacking the orange hair of the others, stepped out of the gate as it vanished.
A tall gruff man with the appearance of being partially sewn together, from what was visible under the damage to his clothing.
"Who?" He asked with a moment of pause, looking down at himself almost in disbelief.
"You have not finished God's work. Remember that well."
The gruff man would have trembled in reverence and fear if he didn't think it would get him slaughtered by the terrifying man before him. Instead, he went to a knee, a display of deference to the man who had ripped his soul back from the Pure World.
"Of course, Leader-Sama." He held no grand belief in the man's true plans or machinations, but the avaricious underling knew now that he would much rather be behind the man, and currently safe, than defy him and die in his way.
"Good, I have need of your talent with capital for our new plans. Iwagakure must be properly incensed."
A grin lit up the dark man's face, although his kneeling position made it impossible to see. Perhaps, the man thought to himself, following won't be so bad after all?
"I am doing it right! You decrepit old-" Naruto shouted back at his sensei, only to receive a slap to the face. This caused his concentration to slip, slowing the whirlpool on which he was currently water walking atop. Which in turn caused him to slip, misjudge his application of chakra, and begin slipping below the surface of the water. All of this culminated in the swirling sphere of energy he held in one hand dissipating along with the last dregs of his energy and concentration.
"You shit-" he tried to slip in one final insult before plunging below the surface of the steaming hot waters they were training within. Only to plunge below the surface with a few gurgles and a plop before he could finish speaking.
Jiraiya, standing fine atop the still calming waters, only laughed at his apprentice's misfortune. He laughed for a good while, before he realized how long the blonde had been at the bottom of the spring.
With a groan and an exaggerated dive the half naked Sannin went into the water to nab his exhausted pupil.
It only took him a moment to drag the blonde ashore, much bigger as he was, and also still full of energy. He chuckled to himself as the blonde splayed out exhausted and sopping wet on the hard pebbly ground around the spring.
"I told you to stop using natural energy." Jiraiya said, nearly dropping the veneer of jovial master, having to correct the blonde this often was getting annoying. Especially if he was too tired to swim properly.
"I know. But it's almost like it's a part of me. It's always there, all I have to do is answer the door." It was Jiraiya's turn to roll his eyes. Like he cared about how easy it was, it wasn't supposed to be easy, that's the whole point.
"Still got you wet, asshole." Naruto said with the most wry smile he could muster at his level of exhaustion.
The gaki could have swum at any time? Jiraiya thought to himself furiously.
"Yeah? Well, you still suck at the Rasengan. You can only do it naturally in your dominant hand. And your core" he said, tutting his tongue and teeth with mock disapproval. "Is imbalanced, too fluid and dynamic."
Naruto took the criticism rather well. "Isn't that the fucking point?"
"While right in a way. You can only have all that motion with a strong base. Like you are the base for your 'Second Skin' technique." Jiraiya said, partially in jest with air quotes. But his point was still valid.
"That's not what it's called." The younger man said with an eye roll.
"Can you just name it then already?" Jiraiya sounded a little exasperated.
"Would you name your arm? Or a finger? Does your nose have a name?" Naruto joked as well, but he was completely serious in his meaning. That's just not how he thought about most of his creations, especially his chakra forging and his armor.
"Yes," Jiraiya began with mock haught. "I've named it Tsunade, so that she might always be sitting on my face." Naruto just groaned at the older man. It was nearly impossible to tell when he was being serious or not, and the Uzumaki had the sneaking suspicion the Toad Sage did it on purpose.
The armor was like his true masterwork, manuscript, and life's history, all rolled up into one neat and convenient self defense. It was constantly changing and evolving to adapt to the situation, the same way Naruto trained his body. The alloy mixtures and locations, composition, density, thickness, all of it and more could shift thousands of times in the span of a minute. It was as much, or more, a part of him as a hand or a foot.
Even in the nearly five months since they had brought Tsunade back he had continued to improve upon his Chakra Forged armor constantly. It rarely stayed the same day to day with the rate at which he was improving his chakra forging. So to him, naming it felt a bit like saying it was finished, when it wasn't and never would be.
While just about all of his techniques sort of fall into the same category. Because they were never 'formal techniques' like most Jutsu, Naruto had almost always molded them to fit the situation as he saw fit. Until he got a Jonin sensei and began to learn some real Jutsu to pepper into his combat. But he still kept with his metal and his other techniques because he wouldn't let them go.
Even if both Jiraiya and Orochimaru saw his lack of true ninjutsu reservoir as a weakness to correct, Naruto never did. Not that he would say no to shoring up his darth of true ninjutsu.
Jiraiya could nearly tell all of this just from looking at him, let alone from the somewhat short time knowing Naruto personally.
The blonde just shrugged at his sensei's stare. "I don't like naming 'em. Ok?"
The white haired man dried himself with chakra and laid back with a grumble of, acceptance perhaps? It was hard to tell with him sometimes. Even if Naruto spent more of his time each week with the man, he would swear up and down Main Street that Orochimaru was easier to figure out.
With Jiraiya almost everything was wishy-washy and had its own moral codes. 'It is your duty as the powerful to strike down those who would do harm, yet striking them down is also the epitome of perpetuating the system of suffering', it was all mumbo jumbo with no clear answer and Naruto had never done well with things like that.
Then of course, none of that applies if the white haired old man is outright joking or being a pervert, and good luck learning the difference. It was like trying to tell the difference between two Aburame of the same height and weight from a single picture.
But Orochimaru was easy, straightforward even. Could she be sneaky? Sure, one hundred percent. She would stab you right in the back if she had the proper motivation or was just curious as to the outcome and it had little downsides.
But the woman knew what she wanted and exactly how she was going to get it, often as efficiently as possible. Which more often than not, made her much easier to read. At least to Naruto, she was a woman who was surprisingly straightforward in her complexities.
Or maybe they were both a similar type of fucked up. Naruto could only shrug.
"Fine, fine. No need to get so defensive." The older man said relenting. "I guess no name is better than a terrible name. Your parents were awful at naming things."
The two of them shared a laugh at the man who came up with a name like 'spiraling sphere'. And while Jiraiya pointed out he meant naming Naruto fishcake, they both still shared a laugh.
It wasn't long after they had settled back into their more casual rapport that Jiraiya decided to once again shift the subject.
"If you're gonna finish your physical training early then we may as well get to the next part."
Naruto rolled his eyes at the ribbing, the man never seemed to let up. But Jiraiya held up his hands to stop the assuredly witty retort. "If you're gonna keep messing with Senjutsu like you do, it will be better to do this now rather than later. Besides, you'll learn more about the Uzumaki."
Naruto shut his mouth so fast you could hear his teeth clack together. He was always curious about his mother's clan, and wouldn't give the old man a reason to stop their lessons now.
"In preparation for our upcoming trip, Sensei and Tsunade have decided that I should bring you to the temple. Possibly acclimatize you with some of their work. Even if it's nothing compared to Uzushiogakure." Jiraiya stood and began leading the wobbly and exhausted blonde from their training grounds to a much more secluded area of the village.
Eventually, the duo came upon a large arched entrance to a temple Naruto had never seen before. As they crossed the threshold of the property, a slight rumbling sensation overcame both of them before briefly passing.
Some form of fuuinjutsu detection system, the blonde thought to himself. Perhaps it was even a security system?
Jiraiya paid no mind to the sensation as he continued forward to the half-ruined temple itself. A large wooden structure emblazoned with the fading crest of the Uzumaki on the front.
"This" Jiraiya began as his student. "This is the Uzumaki clan's mask storage temple. I never fully understood the cultural significance this thing has had with your clan. But your mother had made sure the village understood its importance, at least in keeping it secure."
Naruto seemed a tad confused by the words, but obviously his sensei planned on explaining further. He was just waiting for something.
The taller shinobi turned to him in a moment of pause before asking, "Should we enter?" Then making a point of ushering Naruto in before himself. The blonde was once again briefly overcome with the odd rumbling of chakra passing over him, only this time he could physically feel it.
As he thought that he noticed the briefly visible sphere of chakra that seemed to encapsulate the temple. His motion through the invisible barrier paused as if he had run into a brick wall, before it disappeared entirely and the blonde continued forward as if nothing had happened.
With a jovial grin Jiraiya followed his apprentice through the now opened barrier and into the temple. "You're the first person to pass through that barrier since your mother died. I still have no idea how she was able to keep some of her barriers powered, let alone for over a decade and a half." He said before letting out a whistle.
A large hand came to rest upon his shoulder, almost in a fatherly gesture.
"This is where so much will begin for you my boy." Once again Naruto rolled his eyes as he shrugged the man's hand off his shoulder, even as a smile wormed its way onto his face.
At the very least, even if he couldn't learn anything specific from this temple, it was still a connection to his mother and the rest of her side of the family. Maybe being apprenticed to a lackluster pervert wasn't so bad after all?
"No!" Naruto said quite adamantly, "I have never and will never use my technique to feed myself."
"Oh come on, you honestly mean to tell me that you've never used it to eat?" It was Choji's deep booming Akimichi voice on the defensive. But Naruto only kept shaking his head.
"Do you know how much blood those metals have seen?" Shikamaru paused and stared at his spit of cooked meat. Naruto's question briefly killed his appetite. He was lazy, not a slob, he just wanted to eat without moving. But Choji seemed entirely unfazed by the gross connection Naruto had made.
"But you're constantly purifying it with heat. Germs can't survive in that." The large boy just couldn't understand how Naruto had never, not once, even used his chakra forging to just skewer a piece of meat and eat with it.
Naruto had to admit that the Akimichi knew his culinary arts quite well, but was far from a smith or a doctor.
"Well other than just the thought of where it's been. Half the materials I use are incredibly poisonous to humans. Hell, I use a lot of mercury due to its density, that stuff can poison you just from contact, let alone ingesting it."
Suddenly the Akimichi dropped the black steel Chakra Forged kunai the blonde had let him look at earlier, allowing it to clatter quietly to the floor of the barbecue restaurant they currently inhabited.
"Valid hypothesis. But you seemed to have forgotten my ability to neutralize most poisons, including heavy metals." Shino buzzed in, always with the pointless logic.
"I promise, your kikaichu would die before they neutralize half of it. Besides, I'm not a human beehive, I don't have 'poison defying bugs'." Naruto bit back at his bug using teammate playfully.
Shino just began audibly buzzing, muttering under his breath about bees not even being the right genus or something, the blonde had apparently struck a sore spot. But the two had often enjoyed a healthy level of ribbing each other, so this wasn't unusual.
Shikamaru and Shino had originally done so out of fear of their new veteran blonde teammate, Naruto had returned their verbal jabs with, mostly, verbal knives because he had been a socially stunted ass at the time. Somewhat understandably from the loss of his previous team. But their team's dynamic had soon shifted from the defense mechanisms of children and more into the revelry and rapport of incredibly close comrades.
Choji momentarily grew uncomfortable with the sudden tension, their verbal barbs had seemed rather blunt to him. Eventually, though, he realized the three of them were mostly messing with one another. Verbal sparring, rather than combat.
Spontaneous debate seemingly settled, not that Choji had paid it any attention, the quartet resettled back into a more normal conversational rhythm. As they worked their way through their individual lunches Choji couldn't help but feel a little jealous of the three others. Not of their meals, but of them.
He adored his teammates, Kiba, Ino, and Asuma-sensei were like a second family to him. But as he sat there and compared himself and his team to them and theirs, he just came up so short.
Their entire graduating class knew that Shikamaru and Shino had both been tapped for Anbu. While no one expected Shikamaru to accept, Shino had already said yes and began the introductory training before the official 'entrance exam'. And Naruto…
Well he was Naruto. He had helped one of the Sannin defeat a rival Kage in the invasion and then somehow got two of the Sannin to train him.
Whereas Choji and his team had taken cover and hidden with the civilians in their shelters. True, it was the assignment of all Genin in an invasion, but it still felt wrong to the large boy.
Naruto was going places Choji couldn't dream of in a million years, because the boy hadn't even known it was possible. While the Akamichi felt like he was just going through the motions like the others in his graduating class, perhaps barring Sasuke, who had so often been called a once-in-a-generation prodigy. Yet, even the last loyal Uchiha couldn't hold a candle to Naruto.
Choji still had a recurring nightmare from his time fleeing with civilians from the arena. He would often wake up in a cold sweat expecting a kunai to the throat or a wind jutsu from behind. Searching frantically for the broken and bloodied corpses of his teammates among the dozens of dead civilians. Before he would realize where he was and could differentiate nightmare from reality.
Sand ninja had ambushed them on the way to the shelters and Choji knew for certain that he, his team, and all the civilians with them would have died if a squad of Anbu hadn't intervened early and violently. But even without asking the Uzumaki, Choji somehow knew that Naruto would have handled the situation, or at the very least had plans on how to survive the encounter. He could have at least saved his team.
"Earth to Choji?" The large boy hadn't even noticed but he had stopped talking entirely while in his thoughts, and apparently, he had been asked a question.
"How?"
It was Naruto's turn to look startled. He had just asked the Genin a question about his family and now this?
"How what?" He asked
"How… How can you be so strong? While we cowered with the children you fought a Kage and won."
"I was more like a kunai for Jiraiya in that fight. I wouldn't call it my win." Naruto tried and failed to deflect.
"So modest too." Shikamaru piped in sarcastically. But was silenced with a glare
"Well they do." Choji said subtly, gesturing to the restaurant full of civilians. Where once the blonde would have been the sole focus of the patrons and staff's full ire, they now seemed content to ignore him. But he got Choji's message, people had been talking and rumors naturally spread like wildfire in a shinobi village.
Naruto liked to ignore that, preferring to not focus on their blatant hypocrisy. Ignoring his existence one moment to hailing him a hero of the invasion the next, all still somehow managing to do so without including him. It could be hard to face a mistake, especially one with such a literal face.
"I guess I just never had a choice. I was forced into this with little to no support and made the best out of what I could." It was an earnest reply, if not directly helpful.
Choji nodded politely, but they both knew that wasn't what he meant. And he told Naruto as much, but his protests seemed to matter very little to the blonde.
"I… I really don't know then. I've just always been someone who needs to move forward, staying in the present has often been… painful. And I guess when you grow up constantly thinking 'Survival is forward', you never really stop."
Choji nodded more, they had been talking for awhile, but oddly neither participant seemed to know what the goal of the conversation was
"You taught yourself something most people can't even dream of from a few old legends, you negated a prodigious Hyuuga like my father would a gnat. All with no support structure, no family techniques, you just did it."
"When I was young I didn't have anyone to do any of that, so I just started doing what I could and went from there. I learned blacksmithing because it became an honest interest and I had few other choices. So when I did have one, you better believe I fucking grabbed onto it." He almost chuckled at himself, at his younger selves vibrant tenacity. "
Later I met a kind man who could at least give me some real access to that world, but when it came to ninjutsu and other things I still only had myself. So just like how I started working with metal, I began working with chakra" Naruto had to think back to those times, seeing himself at that young age in his mind's eye.
Hands bleeding, covered in sweat, training until his body collapsed. Always in the hopes that someone might come and notice, or at least carry him into bed after his body gave out. But it never happened, no one ever looked for him to his knowledge. Those silent dreams slowly happened less and less before soon stopping together, only to be a memory of a memory.
"So I started doing things with just pure manipulation, began breaking rules most others didn't even know they could think about breaking. I was just throwing everything and anything at a wall to see what stuck. Because something had to stick eventually, right?" Naruto hadn't realized how much his pace had picked up as he finished speaking, he hadn't meant to say these things like this.
"But I don't know whatever answer you're looking for Choji, I'm sorry, truly." Naruto patted the Akimichi on the shoulder.
Choji just nodded his understanding to Naruto, not wanting to push the blonde any further lest he seem uncouth. The waitress soon came for the bill as Naruto excused himself from the other three shinobi.
"I need to get going before I'm late. Jiraiya has become a real hard ass since we've been utilizing the temple for training." He said smiling.
Shino muttered something about being a kiss ass in his goodbye, but Naruto ignored him with a friendly wave and a pat as he walked away. It was a quarter to one and the last time he was late Jiraiya hadn't let him use his natural energy for their initial spar. Which often made the rest of the six hour session rather… unpleasant.
As he walked he thought back to the odd conversation with Choji and the whole thing felt off, he just had no idea why.
Naruto knew that what he had told Choji wasn't the whole truth. Or at least some subconscious part of him understood that wasn't entirely the truth. Even if consciously the blonde might think it was.
As he wasn't purposefully obfuscating things from Choji. It was just that a person's inner-workings, their innate sense of sense and psychology, aren't always known and clear, even to themselves.
All he remembered, one of his deepest core memories even if he has consciously forgotten it. A memory of a Kami among men who had come to him in his heavenly white robes and told him that he had to be a shinobi, that there was no other choice. He had sat Naruto down and talked to him in his powerful, yet soft spoken manner.
Naruto could even remember, however subconsciously, what were possibly the first and last good and true words he ever heard leave the robed man's mouth.
"For those we love. Success must be inevitable."
Now those were words to live by.
"I'm not going to hogtie him to the village just because the Akutsuki might be everywhere. But that doesn't mean I'll just let you take him into their open arms." Tsunade was once again thankful for her much more comfortable position in these meetings.
As the Hokage she always got the head seat, which most often resulted in a nice chair and little to no straining. Like right now, in an intelligence room surrounded by her old team, peering over a table with one large map of the continent and many paper reports and summarized border patrols.
Her sensei tried to seem like the voice of reason, as always. "They could be active within our borders. We have no idea the risk he could face." His tone as grandfatherly as his overprotective opinion.
Orochimaru tutted her teeth in disapproval, but that was all she said. Content to play it all from a backseat perspective most likely. She had been for the last two hours of their five-hour meeting, probably already decided the outcome for herself.
But not Jiraiya, this little trip was his baby, the self-proclaimed crown jewel of Naruto's development and training. It was their trip to Uzushiogakure.
"Obviously I won't go seeking them out, Hime. It's not like I want a rumble with two S-Rank runaway ninja while protecting the gaki. But I'm sure we'll be fine once we get out of Fire country and make the crossing." Tsunade rolled her eyes.
She still thought his plan to cross the whirlpools was foolhardy, but she'd seen him do dumber things and live. Besides, the toads wouldn't let them both die, probably.
She shook her head and put her hands down on the table. "No, no. This is the last thing I need right now." Her fingers came up to rest on her temples and massage the area.
"But I've already said I can't keep him cooped up here all the time. Besides, you are all assets to the village right now, Naruto included. And with circumstances as they are, we need you to be active while we have the luxury. So if Naruto can't go on missions with you two your little deal is meaningless." She gave a huff of annoyance.
She knew what she had to do, but she really didn't want to let Jiraiya have this one, the man didn't know how to shut up. "And there is no way we are having that shitstorm a second time. So just take this and get the hell out of here." She said, handing Jiraiya the sealed mission scroll and pushing him on his way out of the secure room.
Jiraiya had known this was coming for hours as the four of them deliberated over the information and courses of action, it had just taken him a while to wear the woman down. However, contrary to popular belief, he did have some common sense. Enough to know to shut up when you beat Tsunade and leave quickly.
He left with something he thought more than qualified as a good consolation prize, and Uzushiogakure would only be postponed while they completed the mission.
Beating a teenager to a pulp wasn't exactly how Jiraiya had imagined he would spend the last month. Especially not this often, as Orochimaru was currently away as well.
Actually, he had originally thought he would be in Uzushiogakure by now.
Yet here the white-haired pervert was. His fists buried themselves so forcefully into his young apprentice's body that the liquid metal that normally protected him from such strikes was falling away in sloughs.
The blonde had seemingly stopped using it to cover his head, perhaps it took too much energy, or maybe he was tired of breathing through his technique. Jiraiya didn't really know or care as he lodged an uppercut into Naruto's gut.
The blow picked the blonde up and off his feet, a violent gasp for breath seemingly the only reaction, but his left leg struck out and knocked the blonde back down to the ground with just as much force.
With a grunt, Naruto tucked and rolled under the next series of blows that followed up. Springing to his feet a brace of kunai flung themselves from his chest towards the attacker. They were deflected by a wall of quickly receding white hair.
Another blow to the chest, meant to finally knock the blonde on his ass permanently, only this time the fist stopped once it made contact with Naruto's chest.
With a groan, Jiraiya realized his mistake. Assuming the blonde was tired, he had overextended his reach to land a powerful blow. Naruto only grinned like a shark smelling blood in the water.
The Toad Sage could only manage to mutter his regrets. Heat erupted from Naruto continually, as if he had just walked straight into one of the blonde's furnaces. Jiraiya began to mold chakra for a defense he hoped would be enough.
"Needle-" alas his own saving defense would be too slow. The metal seemed to double and then triple in total mass as it rocketed forward to encapsulate the toad Sannin.
"Payback is a bitch old man!" The blonde gave a guttural yell, the black and blue bruises covering most of his face only making it more terrifying.
Still stuck to his student Jiraiya was unable to backpedal, metal slipped over more of his body as he tried to land punches and elbow blows anywhere he could reach on his student.
Naruto would have none of it. He tilted himself up and over, putting Jiraiya off balance backward so that he didn't have enough leverage for a proper strike. While Naruto set to work dismantling his sensei's defenses and causing pain.
With two hands free it was child's play for the blonde to block his sensei's powerful yet short blows, while delivering far worse in return. Haymaker after haymaker made contact with Jiraiya, the face, the chest, arms, anything within reach was pummeled black and blue.
Realizing his further fuck ups, Jiraiya switched his focus to extricating himself from the student's 'warm embrace'. To say that he failed spectacularly would be an understatement. Even his formidable strength and knowledge of Naruto's technique didn't seem to offer any solace. Densities changed instantaneously and resistance shifted in odd ways that didn't make sense, the harder he pulled the stronger it became. Slowly moving as if it lived and breathed, Naruto's armor gripped on to more and more of him.
Well over six months had passed since Orochimaru had begun talking about density shifting with Naruto, and Jiraiya had never seen his pupil do anything remotely this large scale and controlled.
Doing everything he could Jiraiya attempted to strike away at the ever growing and expanding connection of Chakra Forged metal. Yet, it was as if he couldn't even impart force into it anymore. Was it sapping his energy? Or perhaps he was tiring and it only played into that?
As his remaining free hand was fully captured and trapped he finally realized that he had been played. Even taking his current situation into account, Jiraiya had never struggled so much against Naruto's armor technique.
The little fucker has been playing me, probably for the past few weeks too.
After they finished, or at least after Naruto got bored of taunting his trapped sensei, Jiraiya got straight down to business.
"You've been holding out on me gaki." Jiraiya said.
"And it was so worth it. I've been waiting to break out my carbon based alloy for weeks." Naruto said excitedly.
"Weeks? Why'd you wait so long?" Naruto just shrugged at the question.
"Well I've still been practicing with the stuff, refined carbon that thin can get dangerously sharp if I'm not careful. And also because it's funny to fuck with you." Jiraiya guffawed at his student's sense of humor, an odd mix of the Toad Sage's own and Orochimaru's, with a healthy heaping of Naruto's patented disrespect for authority.
"So what does that make the score now?" Jiraiya asked as if he wasn't the one who cared the most.
"Four to sixteen." Naruto said proud of his four victories over his master. Jiraiya laughed again, prompting Naruto to speak up. "It would be closer if you let me use my natural chakra, or at least my armor in every fight."
Jiraiya just waved away his not very subtle request to use Natural Chakra. "Yeah but then I would use Toad Senjutsu and we would be back at square one."
Naruto wanted to argue further, that his natural connection was different, but the point was probably moot. Also, he didn't want to tempt the man into using Senjutsu more than necessary. The final stages of Jiraiya's own Senjutsu training weren't going very well, the man couldn't seem to quite grasp complete balance, and summoning Ma and Pa while training Naruto only aggravated him.
Thinking back to the only time Jiraiya had managed to enter and properly maintain his Sage mode. His feats at the Uzumaki temple had been awe inspiring. If not incredibly painful for the blonde and his skeleton. That mask had made Jiraiya like something out of a story book. Rending the earth in two with but a breath, disappearing in the blink of an eye only to bash his pupil into the dirt with a love tap.
"Besides, you need to keep yourself improving outside of those techniques. Lest you handicap yourself with them."
Naruto nodded at his master's words, they were in fact wise, even if he would never openly tell him that. "Fine…" he relented quietly, before a smile wormed its way back onto his face. "Ready for round three?"
"A year since I first kicked your ass before the Chunin exams, and you are still this excited?" Jiraiya mocked as he stood up and stretched out.
"More like I'm excited to flip the script on your haggard ass." Naruto spat with fire and brimstone as he cycled his chakra to warm it.
"I guess we have enough time before we leave on our mission." Jiraiya said, to Naruto's utter confusion.
"Enough time to put you back in the hospital." With those words the two were back at it again, trading blows that would make many average Jonin tremble.
This was not the fast and brutal fighting of their last bout, prolonged close combat was not Jiraiya's current wish, mostly due to the severe beating he just received from the blonde.
But over the better part of two hours they proceeded to once again destroy their training grounds, increasing the area of the already very large clearing two or three times. The remains of large scale wind and fire ninjutsu were apparent, but only on the furthest reaches of the damage. The inner circle had been so destroyed and rearranged that there was almost no sign there had once been forest there.
Eventually the younger companion once again won out, for the second time that day no less, almost entirely due to his insane stamina and chakra capacity. Their duel ended with a very over the top clash of Jiraiya's own fire dragon with a technique Naruto liked to call a 'wind bomb' and what Jiraiya had dubbed 'an absolutely awful idea'.
It was the culmination of Naruto's own fascination with the Rasengan, and what he had heard about Danzo's vaunted vacuum release. Only instead of forming a Rasengan and combining it, the kid took inspiration from his surviving Genin sensei and formed it only using wind chakra.
It was basically a giant ball of swirling wind knives surrounding an almost perfect vacuum. That, depending upon its wielder's whims, could either implode or destabilize and explode.
The little fucker had re-discovered Danzo's vacuum release after only hearing two stories about it, in three Kami damned weeks. And then improved upon it and created the short range equivalent of instant death if he so chose.
The resulting implosion when it met his fire dragon was rather cool though, Jiraiya just wished his eyebrows had survived.
Thirty minutes to 'repair' the damage they had done to the training ground later, and they were off to the winner's choice of dinner. Which for once, meant Ichiraku ramen, and not the awful teahouse with soggy bread and cute waitresses.
They sat and ordered wordlessly, thanks to Naruto's near familial connection with the staff. They both finished a bowl before either spoke, but the Uzumaki did first. Something he would not have done over a year ago, Jiraiya noted.
"You said we had a mission, but I thought-" Jiraiya said nothing to stop the blond, only placing a scroll from his pouch onto the counter between them with a clunk. Tsunade's new seal was deftly broken, Jiraiya had already read it. Or the more likely answer, Jiraiya had already discussed it in detail with Tsunade without Naruto there.
Something that once could have infuriated the blonde, perhaps even sent him into a momentary reversion of self-control, but now was taken easily and with implicit trust.
Naruto took it but did not open it currently, he didn't need to, and it was rarely a good idea to do so in public. "So we are not going to Uzushiogakure then?" He did his best to not look disappointed, but the trip had really meant a lot to him.
"Oh no, we still are. It's just an abnormally long monsoon season." Jiraiya said between bites.
Naruto looked around for a moment, judging his surroundings. "Is… is that code? Or do you mean that literally?" A loud guffaw from the large man startled Ayame, returning with their dishes, nearly causing them to fall if strands of metal hadn't shot from under Naruto's clothes to steady her and the precious food.
"No, Naruto, it is not code." He said it so disarmingly the blonde almost accepted it at face value, because that wasn't how Jiraiya would normally say something like that. For once he didn't make a joke.
"Not everything is a code. But that doesn't mean it's the only reason for our delay." Jiraiya said, pausing naturally to eat and allow Ayame to move further out of earshot before he continued.
"Patrols have also spotted men in dark cloaks with red clouds, but have never managed to engage them. We've known for a while, but waited a while to tell you why we were holding up." Naruto had nodded and already accepted the explanation, that wasn't what piqued his curiosity.
Naruto cocked his head, that was very odd. Once you were spotted by Konoha's border patrol it was normally very difficult to escape without some sort of contact.
These patrols weren't small teams of Chunin wandering around, they were large and intricate dragnets of many squads composed of various shinobi Chunin rank and higher, organized under the purview of the Anbu.
While most Anbu squads weren't heavy hitters, at best they each normally have one combat focused operative. These border operations often included at least one full combat squad, and normally had two or three. That was a minimum of six heavy hitters, and a maximum of thirty. Odd's that would start to even wear down some S-ranked ninja.
So multiple sightings with no contact for confirmation was highly unusual. "Genjutsu?" He asked a little quieter.
"I won't bore you with the specifics currently. But it's safe to rule it out." Naruto nodded, most solid Genjutsu specialists could do that to a couple shinobi, maybe even up to a dozen or so, but two hundred? More? Naruto doubted that was possible, even for a man who breathes genjutsu better than air like Itachi Uchiha.
"Odd." Naruto said. Jiraiya only nodded again, this time sharing in the proper moment of odd and mysterious silence.
Before he broke it like he had so many of his student's bones. Quickly and with little thought. "So we are off to Iron country to rescue a princess."
Ayame, who had been once again doing an awful job of eavesdropping, literally jumped out from the back room and squealed with an odd girlish excitement that made Jiraiya's grin widen and Naruto confused as to why she would care so much.
It mattered little to Naruto though, he rolled his eyes at his sensei's poorly restrained antics before he answered Ayame's delighted noise. "We aren't going to rescue a princess. He just likes to say shit like that."
Ayame's own joyous expression died a bit at this, but Jiraiya's had only picked up.
"Well-"
So oops I guess? Sorry for the wait, and terrible update rate.
I promise this isn't over or anything, I'm still continuing and absolutely plan on finishing the story. I just got sidetracked again adding way too much and writing even more stuff that I had actually planned on leaving out entirely, or at best mentioning in passing. So now I've got a sort of weird game of connect the dots, as I make some of these incredibly sporadic chapters fit together.
Definitely doesn't help that I once again wildly changed the entire ending and how everything worked. So if you already don't enjoy how incredibly far I've come from canon, then how in the actual fuck did you get this far? But also you might not like where it goes. Because originally my whole plan for how to wrap this stuff all up as far as the moons eye and that shit goes was still pretty canon adjacent, at least in modeling events and some war stuff. But now it won't really resemble canon much.
Also even though I kept telling myself not too I sort of started another story.