A/N: It's 18/10/18, and the Lighting Up the Dark rewrite is now live! Writing style has been improved, new content has been added, and plot holes and awkward errors have been concea—completely fixed. This chapter is all-new, but I suggest you go back and read the whole thing starting with the prologue, or what did you spend all these years waiting for?
This rewritten version has benefited from extensive beta reading, commenting and general writerly helpfulness from bayesclef, EagleJarl, Nezumi, ThrawnCA and Vecht, as well as the support of Cariyaga, Connor Cone, Jello_Raptor, KaGoGoGadgetMe, MMKII, OliWhail, Oneiros, Saint, Spector29 and Vecht again. You people are great. To anyone else, if you feel you belong on this list and I've forgotten you, then you probably do and I probably have, so please get in touch so I can thank you properly.
This fic is now also available on Sufficient Velocity ( threads/lighting-up-the-dark.51004/) and AO3 ( / works/16334321), with Sufficient Velocity as its new primary home since it has better text editing and discussion tools and doesn't eat my formatting (or links).
-o-
Trees so great that their overlapping crowns cast patches of the forest into eternal night. Boulders of every size, each one calling out as a test of strength. The sparkling Yamagawa River with its agile fish. And in the hillside, a network of caves said to be ideal for deep meditation. Naruto was normally inclined to take tourist brochures with a barrel of salt, but maybe Shugenja Forest really was the place the first acolytes of the Sage of Six Paths had chosen as their training ground as they learned to attune to the Five Elements for the first time in history. (Jiraiya had also noted, with a wink, that the area was home to luxurious hot springs even then, and many of the Sage's early followers were formerly ascetic holy men.)
Unaware of Naruto's grudge against all moving bodies of water (whether natural or ninjutsu-created), Jiraiya had brought him to the Yamagawa River's banks for reasons of sealing safety. When experimenting with an unfamiliar seal in field conditions, he explained, there was nothing better than having a river on hand, since they could offer protection from fire, blunt the impact of missiles, and rapidly carry you away from airborne toxins. Naruto had asked what he should do if his seal reacted badly to Jiraiya's prodding, only to be told, "Try not to explode".
So Naruto stood there holding up his undershirt, trying very hard not to explode while experiencing some of the weirdest sensations known to man, as if his body was a crucible within which impossible substances were competing over which could most radically violate the laws of chemistry.
"Not too shabby," Jiraiya finally concluded. "Even after the stunt you pulled, the damage is confined to a single layer, and it's using modular regeneration. Never seen a seal do that before. As the guy who taught Minato how to make his first explosive tag, I'm feeling pretty good about myself right now."
"Not too shabby," Naruto repeated sceptically. "Isn't it supposed to be the Perfect Seal?"
Jiraiya rolled his eyes. "Oh, and who told them it was perfect? Because it sure wasn't Minato, on account of him being dead at the time. Kid, there's no such thing as a perfect seal any more than there's such a thing as a perfect woman, and as the world expert on both, I can tell you that nobody really understands why they work the way they do. You can read a thousand theories, but in the end it all comes down to trial and error, and there's only so much error you can take before you give up on the trial."
"Uh…"
"Point is, Minato's seal is great. Best demon seal I've seen in my life. Probably the best I've read about, though Sage knows we've lost more lore over the centuries than I've sold novels. But that doesn't matter. You get complacent about the Demon Fox for one single second, and snap!"
Jiraiya abruptly slapped his hands together in front of Naruto's face like a predator's jaws.
"And I reckon you know what that would mean for you better than I ever could."
Naruto gulped. "No complacency. Got it."
"There's more," Jiraiya said. "Sure, the Fox wants to sink its fangs into your soul, tear you to pieces from the inside out and use the hollowed-out husk of your body to crush, kill and destroy everything you've ever loved. And Minato's seal is going to keep doing a sterling job of keeping it muzzled as long as you're not so pants-on-head crazy as to let it loose with your own hands. Again."
"No pants on head. Got it."
"But that doesn't mean you're in the clear. Did Sarutobi-sensei tell you about your mother, and how Kushina got to be the firebrand she was?"
"Yeah. He said her seal didn't give her full protection, so she made herself as passionate and as direct as she could so the Fox didn't have a chance to influence her thinking."
"Right. But why did that work? Shouldn't people be easier to manipulate when they're all emotional?"
"Huh." That made sense. A lot of sense, actually. Naruto had reflected on the Hokage's story—over and over—and it had occurred to him that this kind of manipulation may well have been the trigger for the villagers' hatred. In the immediate aftermath of the Night of Tragedy, everyone would have been hurting from the loss of their loved ones and their homes, and it must have made them very easy to influence. If Naruto's Leaf nemeses had deliberately steered that distress in the worst possible direction, it would go some way towards answering the questions that Naruto had been wrestling with ever since he learned the truth about himself—questions like "How can anyone blame me for something that happened within an hour of my birth?" and "Why does everyone treat me as a monster when the other Demon Fox hosts are still heroes?"
But if that was the kind of devastating error that being dominated by your emotions could lead to...
"...then why did she do it?" Naruto asked out loud.
"I'm going to take the long way round to answering that," Jiraiya said. "We're about to head into the realm of metaphysical theory, so treat everything I'm about to say as a highly educated guess. There have always been scholars who studied the Demon Beasts, but for obvious reasons most of them did it from a very safe distance, ideally right across the continent. Hard to be an empiricist when your data sample brings madness and death to anybody who so much as looks at it.
"But despite their sense of self-preservation, they've been able to make a few observations over the centuries. When you've got nine Beasts and dozens of hosts to compare, you can begin to see trends."
"Like what?"
"Like the fact that each Beast seems to have its own unique behaviour pattern, and so do its hosts."
Naruto instinctively knew he mustn't ask the question. It would be like deliberately sticking his mind into a fire. But he had to know.
"What's the Demon Fox's pattern?"
"Cold arrogance."
Naruto flinched. Even though there was no way he could have already known, the rightness of it chilled him to the bone.
"If demon hosts' reports are to be believed, which is its own can of worms, then the Fox is the only Beast that has never communicated with its host. Not because it can't—or at least, the others sure can—but because we are that far beneath it. To the Fox, we aren't intelligent beings that it needs to trick into carrying out its will. We're kunai. Position, mass, velocity, done.
"And every Demon Beast imparts some of its nature to its host. More if the host is young or weak, less if the host has willpower and a strong sense of identity. That might sound less scary than having your Beast flat-out break the seal and consume you, but in some ways it's even more dangerous.
"There's a treatise by Nara Shikabane, written in that brief time after he left the clan to pursue his research but before the Hyūga started finding the empty villages. It's a bit flowery for my tastes, but it gets the message across pretty well."
Jiraiya's voice took on an eerie, distant cadence.
"To be borne willingly into the abyss of heresy by the Eroding Flow, to be parted from fate and free will both by the Brilliant Wings, and to be transfixed and flensed of humanity by the Rainbow Gaze... next to these endings, is death not the lesser foe?"
Naruto didn't have to ask which one referred to the Fox.
"Flensed of humanity?" he asked instead. "Is that like flaying? What does it mean?"
"Flensing doesn't stop at the skin," Jiraiya said. Naruto unthinkingly began to imagine what that might mean, then forcibly shut down that part of his brain.
"What happens is that the Demon Fox takes the host's original self, the person they are and the person they could become, and carves it away, slice by slice, until all that is left is the stark skeleton of cold arrogance.
"Bit by bit, the Fox grants its host insight, subtly enough that they don't realise it's not their own until they're too far gone to care. Naturally, they embrace it at first, for the power, or for the sense of superiority, or simply for its own sake. As the world they see gradually diverges from everyone else's, it gets harder and harder to reach across the gap and reconnect with the people they're leaving behind. But intelligence is addictive, and the alternative—trying to go back to being the oblivious idiot they were before—feels like dying.
"As their bonds with others weaken and fade away, they find themselves more and more alone. They have no one they can ask for help in times of emotional need, and they struggle to motivate themselves to protect a community that has stopped trying to understand them. Their sense of values shifts to prize their intellect, which is now their defining feature, over the things that once gave their life meaning. They start to forget why they cared about anything other than themselves in the first place, and there is nobody there who can remind them. Their world continues to diverge until they're the only real person in it. Eventually, at the end of that road, all that is left is sociopathic calculation wearing a human skin. They become the Demon Fox in microcosm, drawing on the power of insight to manipulate and consume all around them, not caring about the malevolent will behind that insight as long as it keeps giving them what they want. The Fox doesn't even need to take them over anymore, because it is already here."
Cold arrogance. An intellect isolated from others, taking pleasure only in its own superiority and bound to others only by relationships of contempt. If Naruto hadn't had Raijin, the only ninja compassionate enough to be trusted with the world's most hated infant... If, after Raijin died on a mission or "died on a mission", Naruto hadn't had Sasuke... If he hadn't had Old Man Hokage as a distant but unchanging presence in the background... If he hadn't had Sakura, Kiba, Chōji, Teuchi, Ayame, Iruka-sensei... would the Perfect Seal have been perfect enough?
"Wait," Naruto said slowly as the obvious implication hit him. "The Hokage admitted that somebody out there wanted me to grow up alone. I already knew that whole plan was insanely stupid, but now you're telling me they also chose to increase the risk of me getting corrupted by the Fox?"
"It's more complicated than that," Jiraiya said. "You can have the symptoms without having the disease, and alienation is a very common symptom where demon hosts are concerned. Still… you were monitored at first. You had a shinobi guardian for the first few years of your life, and they reported that you were growing up like an ordinary bright kid, no more and no less than what you'd expect from Minato and Kushina's son. Then, of course, you entered the Academy, and instantly blew away any concerns that the Demon Fox might be raising your intelligence."
Naruto had a sense that something was missing from that story, but right now his mind was occupied by a more important realisation. His idiot persona at the Academy… that was exactly how you'd want someone to act if your objective was to slowly feed them insight without anyone catching on.
But that had to be a coincidence, didn't it? He'd had perfectly logical and legitimate reasons for acting that way, ones grounded in other people's behaviour rather than anything the Fox could control. Besides, his pariah status had been the product of other people's prejudice, not his personal inability to connect with people.
Though maybe if he'd been better at making friends…
"You said before that my mother found a way to keep free of the Demon Fox's influence?" Naruto asked with a trace of urgency. "So how did that work, exactly? And what about the host before her?"
"How did they resist cold arrogance?" Jiraiya asked rhetorically. "By living lives that were the complete opposite of the Fox's nature.
"Kushina refused to be cold," he went on. "She once told me she'd rather die than let someone else dictate who she was. With that resolve, she invested all of her feelings into everything she did and every bond she had, even though it meant getting hurt over and over again. It gave her an emotional life so rich and intense that anything her power could give her became just a drop in the ocean of who she was.
"Lady Mito refused to be arrogant. She wove herself a web of loving relationships so strong that she couldn't take a breath without being reminded who she was fighting for and why. If she ever felt vulnerable or weak, she could knock on any door and find people ready to support her."
A nostalgic smile found its way onto Jiraiya's face as he gazed somewhere into the distance.
After a few seconds, he looked at Naruto again, the smile dissolving into his usual jovial expression like a rainbow into a clear but ordinary sky.
"I won't deny that Minato's seal is the bee's knees. Sealing a Demon Beast into a newborn with no ego to speak of should have been a desperation move, and he turned it into a hands-down victory. The fact that in all this time the Fox never once broke through until you gave it the keys to the kingdom is nothing short of incredible. Your dad must have had one hell of a teacher."
Jiraiya voice turned serious again.
"That's the end of the good news. I've seen your personality profile—the updated version—and I've seen you, and I think we can both agree that you're not out of the woods yet."
Naruto wasn't about to argue. How many times in the past week alone had he got in trouble by trying to show off his intelligence, or underestimating that of others? How many times had he been reminded of the cost of overlooking other people's feelings? He didn't think he was in danger of becoming a monster just from that, but what if cold arrogance was like alcoholism, and it took only a little backsliding to find yourself back in the trap it had taken you years to get out of? It might feel like a lifetime now, but it was only a few years ago that Naruto had been a handful of people away from giving up on human relationships altogether.
Part of him wanted to ask Jiraiya for advice, but the rest was finally waking up and realising the dangers of baring his soul to some adult he'd only met yesterday. Jiraiya had vast depths of knowledge that Naruto needed, and he had the kind of roguish mentor vibe that made him easy to relax around, as well as making Naruto suspect that an invitation to peep on girls in the hot springs was only a matter of time. He was also the man who'd chosen to be elsewhere when his beloved apprentice's first child was being born, even knowing in advance that the village would be vulnerable that night.
Unless he had been there, of course. Somebody had known in advance that Uzumaki Kushina was due to give birth. Somebody had known enough about demon hosts to know she would be vulnerable, and enough about sealing to take advantage of the opportunity. Somebody had known how to penetrate the village's defences. Somebody had been confident of their ability to face Namikaze Minato and get away unharmed.
And a powerful ninja who ticked all the boxes hadn't taken any interest in his apprentice's orphaned child until that child manifested the Demon Fox's power.
It wasn't proof. In and of itself, it was barely evidence. But Naruto knew his classics, and he knew that by the time you had proof that your friendly, mischievous senior was actually the cold-blooded murderer whose identity you'd been seeking all along, it was usually too late.
At the same time, the Hokage and Kakashi-sensei had access to all the same information Naruto did and more, and they'd chosen to trust Jiraiya. If he was going to work on not underestimating other people's intelligence, this was as good a place to start as any.
To make things more complicated, Naruto wanted to trust Jiraiya. No, on some level he'd already trusted him from the moment they met, which was as Naruto-like as you could get (and yes, Naruto had checked for genjutsu behind Jiraiya's back). It was like his mind was saying no but his heart was saying yes—oh, cold hell, that sounded exactly like a line from one of Kakashi-sensei's perverted novels. Apparently, even short-term exposure to Jiraiya could lead to contamination.
Let's just pretend that never happened and move on.
What it came down to, appalling romance clichés aside, was that something about Jiraiya was apparently capable of bypassing Naruto's finely-honed anti-authority-figure defensive mechanisms, and that made him doubly dangerous. If the self-styled sage wanted to actually earn Naruto's trust, it would take more than a charming grin and a few thrilling but unverifiable tales about Naruto's parents.
"I think I can figure this one out myself," Naruto said guardedly. "I have to develop stronger bonds with people like Lady Mito did, and I have to stop thinking I'm cleverer than everyone else."
No, that didn't sound quite right.
"Even supposing I am cleverer than everyone else, that doesn't make me better than them."
No, that still wasn't it.
"Even supposing I am cleverer than everyone else, intelligence isn't the only virtue worth respecting people for."
Perfect.
For some reason, Jiraiya was giving him an "oh, really" look.
"Ah, whatever," he said after a second. "It'll do for now. Sage knows I was twice as dumb when I was your age, and I grew up all right."
It was the perfect opening for a snarky comment, but Naruto didn't feel up to it right now.
"Listen, kid," Jiraiya said. "I've got one more thing to say to you, and then the subject's closed. If you feel like you're losing the fight, don't try to handle it all on your own. Classic rookie mistake, and you don't have room for rookie mistakes. You need help dealing with the Fox, you go straight to the Hokage. He's not a badass sealing expert like I am, but he's good enough, and he's a brilliant man with access to some of the world's best resources. If he's not available, you come find me. I may not be Sarutobi-sensei, but one of the perks of not being Hokage is that you have a lot more time to indulge your interests, which in my case happen to include sealing lore. Also, I know Minato's work like the back of my hand. And if I'm not available…"
For a brief moment, Jiraiya's mouth tightened in a small, probably unconscious grimace.
"If I'm not available, and the Hokage's not available, and you think you're in real, urgent danger, you go to a man named Orochimaru. He's not based in the Fire Country, but if you make it known that you're looking for him, he'll come find you. But he's the absolute last resort. If you make that journey, know that you won't be coming back, at least not as Uzumaki Naruto. The only reason I'm giving you his name anyway is that when the shit hits the fan, he's the one person I trust not to be tempted by a Demon Beast's power.
"All right, conversation over. How about we have some fun instead of dwelling on you being eaten by monsters?"
"Yes, please," Naruto said emphatically.
"It's time for you to learn some of that ninjutsu Kakashi promised you. I know you think you're hot stuff with all your shadow clones, but you'll never be popular with the ladies if you can't show them a little variety when push comes to shove."
Jiraiya leaned in towards Naruto with his hand over his mouth as if confiding a great secret. "Though let me tell you, they go wild when they find out what the Shadow Clone Technique can really do."
"I did not need to know that," Naruto said, though in his head he was already trying to figure out what Jiraiya meant, and whether he could find a way to apply it to the Uzumaki Style. "And besides, I have a girlfriend."
Somehow, the mix of Jiraiya's suddenly playful tone and the reminder of Hinata waiting for him at home were just what he needed to start shrugging off the gloom.
"Oh, yeah," Jiraiya said, "the Hyūga heir. I know you've got issues, kid, but I didn't figure you for the suicidal type."
"Actually," Naruto said smugly, "Hyūga Hiashi and I have an understanding."
"Uh-huh. And by 'understanding', do you mean 'I shall deign to show you mercy, lowly peasant, until the moment you inevitably disappoint me'?"
"Let's not get sidetracked," Naruto said quickly. "You promised me ninjutsu?"
"I sure did." Jiraiya grinned.
"You will observe," he said, presenting the palm of his right hand with a flourish, "that there is nothing up my sleeve."
Instead of transitioning into hand seals, he began to make rapid thrusting gestures over it with his other hand. Over a couple of seconds, a small storm of chakra tore itself into existence over his palm. It was a perfect sphere of intense, visible chakra, bright lines and streams intertwining in an endlessly shifting pattern. But what really got Naruto's attention was the space between those streams, distorted as if the air inside was being reflected in shattered glass inside a kaleidoscope. It made Naruto's head hurt trying to follow the countless permutations.
"This," Jiraiya said dramatically, "is the Rasengan, your father's legacy."
"My father's legacy?"
"Minato invented this technique, the ultimate melee ninjutsu. Even as an incomplete technique, it blows Kakashi's Lightning Cutter out of the water for firepower and chakra efficiency, and Maito Gai would have to put himself in hospital to beat it with taijutsu."
Naruto didn't know what any of that meant, but he instantly homed in on one of his least favourite words. He scowled.
"Why would you want to teach me an incomplete technique?"
"Because it works," Jiraiya said simply. "The only reason it's incomplete is that Minato had an even greater vision for it, some kind of S-rank ninjutsu that would have been written into legend alongside the Flying Thunder God Technique if he'd only had a chance to complete it. Hell, maybe you'll be the one to figure it out and finish his work someday."
Naruto watched the sphere as the air within—or perhaps space itself—twisted and warped in the iron grip of Jiraiya's will. His father's legacy, a unique ultimate technique with a special secret only he could discover…
"What else have you got?"
Jiraiya froze. The Rasengan vanished as if shocked out of existence.
"What did you just say?"
"Don't get me wrong," Naruto said, "obviously I want to learn my dad's special technique and everything, but maybe we can save that for another time, like after the exam? I don't have much use for a technique that's only good for one thing."
Jiraiya sighed as if, despite his expression of surprise, part of him had seen this coming all along.
"Follow me, kid. I think it's time for an object lesson."
-o-
"One hundred and sixteen," Sakura grunted, her knuckles digging into the ground as she completed another press-up. "Ebisu-sensei, could you explain to me again how—one hundred and seventeen—primitive physical exercise is going to catch me up— one hundred and eighteen—to genin who can throw fireballs— one hundred and nineteen—and block shuriken with their mind? One hundred and twenty. Ideally before I collapse? One hundred and twenty one."
She could hear the special jōnin turn another couple of pages of Telescope Buyers' Monthly before he replied.
"Sakura, tell me about the three types of chakra."
"One hundred and twenty nine. Chakra has two components: physical chakra— one hundred and thirty—which comes from bodily vitality— one hundred and thirty one—and spiritual chakra— one hundred and thirty two—which comes from inner strength gained from experience. One hundred and thirty three. Melding the two types of chakra— one hundred and thirty four—creates human chakra which allows the spiritual to affect the physical. One hundred and thirty five."
"Quite," Ebisu-sensei said. "Now, stressing your body to its exact limits strengthens a variety of important muscles and builds vitality, which improves physical chakra. Refusing to give up in the face of pain and following even the most demanding orders to the letter builds willpower and improves spiritual chakra. Finally, the fact that you are an unfit twelve-year-old girl who can't even muster the concentration to take advantage of your chakra control, the only thing you have going for you, forces you to draw deeper on your unconscious resources, refining your natural chakra flow and teaching your body to bypass the many limitations of your underdeveloped mind."
Sakura suppressed a growl. There was only one thing keeping her going at this moment: Ebisu-sensei's promise that if she was still conscious at the end of the morning exercises, the afternoon would feature sparring training. The thought filled her with a fierce, murderous joy as Ebisu-sensei shifted his sitting position in mid-press-up and the altered weight distribution nearly ploughed her nose into the ground.
-o-
"This will do," Jiraiya said as he studied a wide clearing with a critical eye.
Then, with no warning whatsoever, he bit his thumb hard enough to draw blood and slammed it down onto the grass.
"Summoning Technique!"
A spider web of complex black symbols, resembling nothing so much as the Perfect Seal, spread outwards from the point of contact. It was all very striking and impressive, but also, a little voice in the back of Naruto's mind noted, extremely unhygienic.
There was a familiar puff of smoke.
The next thing he knew, he was facing a toad the size of a house, wearing a yakuza-style haori and dagger belt, and with a pipe in its mouth.
"Whaah?!"
"Thanks for coming, 'Bunta," Jiraiya told the toad as casually as if he was having a friend over for lunch rather than facing an amphibian titan that could squash him flat on a whim.
"Well, Jiraiya," the toad asked in a gravelly but perfectly comprehensible voice, "who're we fighting today? If those Hidden Rock weasels are up to their old tricks, I've half a mind to bring their little burrow down on them once and for all."
"Time out!" Naruto interrupted. "I know I've seen Kakashi-sensei summon ninja dogs before, but there are ninja dogs and then there's this. Why do we bother with explosive tags and shadow clones when people can summon talking yakuza toads capable of wiping out an entire village?"
Jiraiya chuckled at his reaction. "I'm not going to go into summoning theory today, kid, but the long and the short of it is that contracts are rare, the technique has some harsh limitations, the chakra costs are a killer, and the summons don't charge cheap for their services either. Also, Gamabunta here isn't really a giant toad who happens to speak our language and share our cultural background. That would be ridiculous."
"What is he, then?"
"Ahem," the toad said in what was probably intended to be a subtle interjection but came out sounding like a small localised earthquake.
"Sorry," Jiraiya said. "That was rude of me. Naruto, this is Gamabunta, Boss of the Toad Clan."
"Hrrrrmm," Gamabunta rumbled meaningfully.
"Yes, he also has a bunch of other very impressive titles, but he's going to let me omit those for today because they take a while to list and he's not so petty as to make an effort to impress a human twelve-year-old."
Naruto had no idea how to read the facial expressions of a giant toad, but he was pretty sure the creature was giving Jiraiya a disparaging stare.
"Gamabunta, this is Uzumaki Naruto. Minato's kid, if you'll believe it."
"Hrrrm," Gamabunta rumbled with more interest. "How the mighty have fallen."
"Now don't write him off just yet, 'Bunta," Jiraiya grinned. "He may be scrawny and disrespectful, but he's got the great sage Jiraiya teaching him, and Sage knows I've pulled off bigger miracles."
The toad gave a noise like a distant avalanche, which may have been its equivalent of an amused snort. "That's as may be. Why have you summoned me today?"
Jiraiya gave an ominous grin. "Kid here needs the same lesson you gave Minato back in the day."
Gamabunta looked down at Naruto. "Oh, is that how it is? Well, listen close, tadpole. If you can banish me, here and now, without help, then Jiraiya's going to pay for all the…" it gave Jiraiya a questioning look.
"Ramen," Jiraiya said helpfully.
"That was it. All the rau-men you can eat for the rest of your training. You can't kill a summon for good outside its home path, so don't hold back if you want to have a chance. But if you can't beat me, then you're going to pipe down and learn whatever Jiraiya's got to teach, and be grateful for the privilege. Agreed?"
"Fine with me," Naruto said.
Jiraiya found himself a comfortable position on top of a nearby boulder. "Summons are like shadow clones, kid. They've got all the power of the original, but one strong enough hit will pop them. That's one of those limitations I was talking about earlier. Now off you go."
"One strong enough hit. Got it.
"Multiple Shadow Clone Technique!"
This shouldn't be too hard. The toad's skin looked warty and tough, but Naruto had plenty of experience making a suitable weapon now, and he could hardly miss a target that big. At a signal from him, the First (ever) Phalanx of the Worldwide Uzumaki Naruto Coalition sprang into action, half the clones turning into spears for the rest to wield even as they ran.
"Hrrmmm."
A foreleg swept across the toad's flank like a moving wall, wiping out all of the clones in a single motion.
"D minus," Jiraiya commented cheerfully from atop the boulder. "Must try harder."
Naruto ignored him. His memories showed that a few of the clones had had the presence of mind to turn their spears on the leg as it approached, and it had done them no good. Spears weren't going to do the job, at least not with Naruto's strength behind them.
"Multiple Shadow Clone Technique!"
Naruto really didn't want to use up his explosive tags, but when it came down to it, they had the most stopping power of anything in his arsenal.
"Go for the soft underbelly!" he shouted.
The clones, following the plan he'd devised before creating them, promptly cast a hail of explosive-tag-carrying kunai at Gamabunta's eyes. Unfortunately, since clone explosives couldn't detonate, Naruto had to physically take part in the attack this time, mixing his own real tags among the rest.
"Water Element: Water Bullet Technique!"
A humongous globe of water, far bigger than any of the water bullets Naruto had seen before, obliterated the barrage of explosive tags before smashing into the ground with a blast that wiped out every clone not fast enough to get out of the way.
What.
It could use ninjutsu. This toad the size of a house which could wipe out a platoon of clones single-footed could use ninjutsu. That just wasn't fair.
Naruto was starting to hate the Water Bullet Technique almost as much as genjutsu. Worse, reflecting on this one's horrifying size, it occurred to him that the toad must have deliberately aimed it away from the real Naruto—otherwise, based on that crater, he wouldn't have been able to make it far enough to get out of the blast radius. It made him grit his teeth in anger.
He should not have to rely on his opponent's mercy to win. Was Gamabunta now going to quote some work of great toadly wisdom at him, then hand him the victory because it was expedient?
Naruto wouldn't allow it.
"Multiple Shadow Clone Technique!"
The clones assembled in a huddle. With their backs blocking Gamabunta's view, Naruto handed out the last of his precious explosive tags.
Kunai wouldn't be enough. Every clone clutched his tag, timer already active, and charged.
But this time Naruto was playing it smart. Different tags had different timers. Some clones went straight. Others took the long way round. A few bounced off trees to gain height and come in from above. Gamabunta wouldn't be able to block them all with its legs, and even if it did, at least one of those timers would run down at the right time to blast the blocking limb. This kind of complex multi-angled assault was how the Shadow Clone Technique was meant to be used.
One second.
Two seconds.
Three seconds.
The first clone reached out to plant his smouldering tag on Gamabunta's side.
Gamabunta leapt.
"Oh, crap," went a dozen clones as they watched the giant toad disappear into the depths of the sky.
Then, in an unbroken consecutive chain like the climax of a firework display, every last one of them exploded as the timers ran out.
Before Naruto could recover from the shock of his own stupidity (the giant toad was a giant toad!) and formulate a Plan D, a bigger and much more physical impact knocked him off his feet. Gamabunta had landed.
With Naruto's mind whirling into outraged and humiliated overdrive, Plan D was finalised by the time he picked himself up.
"Multiple Shadow Clone—"
A tongue like a red carpet whipped out and wrapped around Naruto, crushing his arms to his sides. Before he could react, he found himself somewhere very dark… and very wet.
"Mmmmf!"
After a few seconds of making its point, Gamabunta spat Naruto out on the ground, still covered in giant toad saliva.
"I nearly had you!" Naruto exclaimed after wiping the worst of it off his face (and onto his sleeves). "Just one more try!"
Jiraiya hopped down off the boulder. "Kid, you already got two more tries than you would in a real fight."
And he had. The anger drained out of Naruto as he realised he'd done it again. He'd focused so hard on winning that he'd overlooked the obvious—not the jumping thing, but the fact that he'd been baited into fighting a clan boss, implicitly the strongest summon of its kind, and a warrior powerful enough to fight alongside Jiraiya of the Three. Also, you know, a toad the size of a house.
Was this another thing to add to the cold arrogance prevention list?
"You win," Naruto muttered. "That was stupid of me."
"The point of this isn't to beat yourself up," Jiraiya said. "That's Gamabunta's job."
Naruto glared.
"Sorry, couldn't resist. Seriously, though, if Gamabunta were to go all out, I wouldn't want to be the jōnin trying to keep up with him. For a genin, you did just fine. But you get how differently that fight could have gone if you'd had a technique designed specifically for doing damage?"
Naruto nodded.
"What you need to take away from this is that brute force is not bad. It's not boring. It's not a sign that you lack imagination. Using brute force to win a battle is like telling a woman straight-out that you want to jump her bones. A lot of the time it's the wrong tool for the job, and if you make it your default approach you're in for a world of hurt, but every now and again, it'll score you a victory where nothing else can."
Naruto gave him a look. "Did I mention the part where I don't need advice on picking up girls?"
"Trust me, kid, it won't be too long before your teenage hormones kick in, and then you'll be begging at my feet for these pearls of wisdom. Now thank Gamabunta for his time so we can go chuck you in the river. You'll need to be clean before we can get started on your punishment for failing the test."
"What punishment?" Naruto asked anxiously.
Jiraiya gave an evil grin and held it until Naruto began to squirm.
"You're going to have to learn one of the most powerful ninjutsu in the world."