Disclaimer: First Chapter
Story Start!

Jiraiya was alive.

Naruto sat by the futon that Jiraiya was sleeping in, because by some miracle, even with a blizzard, and even with the extreme cold. The old man was on his back, his skin deathly pale from a combination of the extreme blood loss and the even more extreme cold that they had escaped from. He had passed out halfway through the blizzard, and Naruto had ended up carrying him to the village.

Screaming his lungs off for help, it didn't take long at all for people to come out of their homes and help him get Jiraiya to the hospital in the area.

"You're lucky, just a few more minutes, and he would have been beyond saving." A black haired woman with dark blue eyes, no real pupils, spoke as she sat next to Jiraiya. She had a sucker in her mouth for some reason, and wore a white yukata instead of a doctor's uniform. She had skin as pale as the snow outside, and the air around her was cooler. Even though there was a fireplace in the room to warm up Jiraiya.

Naruto sighed in relief.

There was a silence.

"So... how did you two get here?" The doctor asked.

"Well... there was this portal thing, and we walked through it, and the portal closed on his arm, and then... we were here." Naruto didn't know how to best explain it. He was frustrated thinking about it, but he crossed his arms as he tried to remember going through the blizzard. He had seen the faint lights of the town through the snow, so it had been easy to follow, but his mind had somewhat gone blank while trying to save Jiraiya.

"... and are you doing okay young man?" The doctor asked as she placed her cold hand on his forehead.

He was just wearing orange pants, and a white T shirt that had blood stains on it from Jiraiya's blood, and his jacket was so soaked in blood that whatever it looked like beforehand was now just a red mess. Also, the fact that he wore sandles with open toes in the snow would be concerning for anyone.

"I'm fine."

"Not bothered by the cold?" She asked him.

"It's super cold, I'm tough, I can handle the cold... but I am still feeling a bit cold." Naruto moved closer to the fire. It wasn't his first time in the snow, and he had always been pretty good with both the heat and the cold. Not perfect, it still had an effect on him, and the blizzard certainly messed with him on some level. He had used the trick that most ninja learned, and that was to channel chakra through their entire bodies to warm themselves up a little from the inside.

Still, it didn't negate the cold, it just prevented the cold from having as much of an effect, so while you felt cold, it wouldn't kill you unless it got down to the really low extremes.

"Okay then, well, to be safe, we should run a few tests on you, just to make sure that you're not suffering from hypothermia." The doctor wanted to make sure that not only would the old man survive, but also the young man as well. "We don't want you dropping dead because we didn't do the right thing, now do we?"

"No way... I'm gonna die?"

"That remains to be seen."

-Days Later-

"Rather amazing... this is rather amazing. For a boy no older than 12, he's quite something, even more so from a human. His blood is absolutely filled with vitality, and I've never seen just healthy semen, and with such a high sperm count. Whatever wife he gets will have an easy time getting pregnant with his children." The doctor spoke to herself. She was looking over all of the different results. Jiraiya had yet to wake up, mostly because she was keeping him sedated until his body had recovered enough.

The boy with him was a medical wonder.

Young men were very fertile usually, but this boy was leagues ahead of others, with an extremely high sperm count, his blood was very condensed with life force, and he was healthy despite being in a land of snow that should be messing with his constitution. He had great DNA, and even his teacher Jiraiya was no slouch in that area. He survived a blizzard while bleeding out from a missing arm, that was a testament to just how sturdy the man truly was.

-With Naruto-

'Lots of ladies here... I don't really have anything to do now that I'm done with my doctor's exam stuffs.' Naruto was walking around the village, and he was amazed at what he was seeing. Most of the buildings, for starters, were covered in ice. There were normal buildings, but even those buildings had such dense and pure ice over the top of them that reflected the light beautifully.

The sky too.

There was a permanent aurora in the sky that was visible at all times, and while the blizzard outside of the village was constantly going, the inside of the village was blizzard-free and only lightly snowing. Also, it was much less cold in the village than outside of it.

The women were beautiful.

"Pervy Sage would love it here." Naruto walked with his hands in his pockets, because while it wasn't as cold in the village, that wasn't to say it wasn't still pretty chilly. He didn't have his jacket anymore after all. The women in the village kept a safe distance from him, and many of them would blush when he made eye contact with them.

Blue hair, black hair, white hair, and purple hair were common hair colors he was seeing, with black and shades of blue being the most common colors. All of the girls he had seen so far had blue eyes though, with some of them having black eyes instead of blue. No woman in the village had skin that was darker than a soft pale color, and ALL of them were wearing kimonos or yukatas.

Yet none of them seemed bothered by the cold.

Poke*

"Eeeep!"

"Eh?" Naruto covered his cheek when a 16 year old girl rushed over to him, poked him on the cheek, and then ran away from him with a blush. She rejoined her giggling friends, who seemed to be mocking her shyness. He tilted his head in confusion, but continued walking until he came to a shop. He had no money to buy anything, but it wasn't a shop he would spend money at anyway.

All they were selling was clothes, and the clothes on display were just varying shades of white and light blue, not a vibrant color in sight for him to wear. He wondered if the kimonos sold here were extra thick or something to keep the girls around warm. No, wait, they were wearing wooden sandles, so they seemed to just not be bothered by the cold in general.

"A boy..."
"He's kind of a runt, but give him a few years..."
"I like his toes."

Naruto jumped, faster than the eye could follow, and higher than those around him could jump, and he landed on top of an ice building. The girls instantly lost track of him, most of them did anyway, a few of the girls had actually quickly spotted him when they looked around to find him. Still, he sat down on top of the building and looked around. It was a very large village, but it seemed so lonely as well. There was no real hustle and bustle for people going around, and as far as the eye could see, he really did not see any men around.

'I should train... while Pervy Sage is recovering, I need to keep up my training.' Naruto didn't really know this village that well at all. He didn't know where anything was, but there was a forest nearby, so he could train by hunting something that was out there. He could try and practice doing one handed Rasengans, but when he did a Rasengan with one hand, it always came out unstable and weak. '... I really should master the Rasengan for real, but my chakra control still isn't good enough to do it with one hand.' Naruto jumped from building to building.

"Young man!"

Naruto jumped over three buildings, stopped and slid on the ice, before he fell to the street below when somebody called out to him. He was still skidding across the icy street when he saw a woman with super light blue hair calling out to him. He scrambled back to his feet, grinned a happy grin, and waved at her. The woman started to approach him, but he met her halfway and saw that she was carrying something.

"Here, it isn't much, but a strong young man needs a good appetite."

"Oh! Thank you!" Naruto rubfuton his stomach when the woman offered him a basket of fruit. He didn't know the woman, and the fruit basket should be super suspicious, but it wasn't. She just seemed like a good natured older woman. She was in her early 30s he would guess, and was a very beautiful woman. He accepted her gift without questioning her, and that was when a woman in her 40s or so walked across the street.

"Young man, those clothes are in such poor shape, why don't you come and let grandma here fix them up for you."

"Oh, uh, thank you?" Naruto was a little surprised at the offer. He had been training a lot, and his clothes were scuffed and frayed in places. He guessed it wouldn't hurt to have his clothes fixed up. "I don't have any money though." Naruto didn't want to just accept a service like that without money.

"Now, now... I think he has some work he has to do, he was in a bit of a hurry. So he should just take my fruit basket to him and run along."

"Now, now, now... I think a young man like this would want to wear fine clothes. While he's getting his clothes fixed up, I'm sure my granddaughter and him would make lovely friends."

"My daughter-"

"Okay~! I'm just..." Naruto started to walk off when the women literally started to fight with each other over something. They weren't physically fighting, but Naruto got the strange feeling that if he didn't get out of there, a fist fight might actually erupt between the women. Naruto heard some shy giggles, and saw a few teenage girls were hiding behind a building and peeking out at him. He waved to them, and they hid their faces once more. "... weird..." Naruto jumped up to the top of the buildings again and started to go.

-Later-

'Huh... I still haven't seen any guys around.' Naruto licked the fruit juices off of his fingers as he sat on the top of a taller building. He had been wondering all around the town to kill time, and a lot of the older women were really nice to him. It was a wonderful kind of warm and fuzzy feeling, he couldn't stop his smile.

He had never felt so wanted and appreciated in his life.

He didn't know these people, and yet there was a warmth in their cold hands. They were just so happy and pleased to see him, and even more willing to try and get on his good side. So many mothers wanted him to meet their daughters, and even more grandmothers wanted him to see their granddaughters. The girls in the town would blush when he made eye contact with them, and they just seemed excited for him to be around.

He would return the basket, and then really get to training.

-Much Later-

BOOM*

"GAH!" Naruto was blasted away by his failed Rasengan. His hand was bleeding, but that would end soon enough. There was a spiral shaped crater in the ground where he had been standing, where the failed Rasengan exploded on him.

"Ooooooh."

'I could do without the audience for my failures though.' Naruto was blushing as a small audience of girls had formed to watch him train. It wasn't hard to find him, follow the sound of explosions and there he was. It didn't help that the field he was training in was large and blank, so when he exploded the snow went flying everywhere. Naruto slapped his cheeks, before he stood back up.

He placed his hands together.

Before he could do a one handed Rasengan, he wanted to be able to do it with 2 hands instead of using a clone, so he held his hands close together. A yellow sphere of chakra, many spirals of chakra in the shape of a sphere, started to form between the palms of his hand. With his left hand he expelled the chakra spirals, and with his right hand he started to mold the sphere of chakra to keep it contained.

"You can do it!"

BOOOM*

"Gurk!" Naruto was blasted 30 feet into the air, but he flipped and corrected himself, before landing feet first in the snow. The second his focus got ruined, the Rasengan failed and exploded, meaning that it just wasn't up to snuff as a Rasengan yet. His failure got hisses of sympathy from the crowd that had formed, and just like that 3 more women joined to watch him train, and these were adult women this time, not just teenage girls. 'I could really do without the audience... but training is training, people watching or not.'

Blood dripped onto the snow.

His hands were shredded open from the high intensity chakra, and they were shaking, a hard to control shaking. He had blown up countless Rasengans in his hands, and they had started to heal slower the more he failed. Naruto took some deep breaths, and he gripped his hands tightly to stop the shaking. He wanted to surprise the pervert by mastering the Rasengan by the time he was awake.

"We came here to train, and I'm not going to let him lose an arm, just for nothing. I have to show some real results." Naruto grit his teeth, and punched the ground. Jiraiya had lost an arm and nearly died, all so that he could get more time to train before going home. His master had suffered, and if he didn't get stronger, than that sacrifice would be for nothing.

His frustration only made his hands heal faster than before, he picked up snow from the ground and slapped his face with it. He cooled his head down, before he piled snow in his hair to cool himself down even more. His breath was visible.

Naruto grinned.

Moments later, he exploded again from another failure.

The moon rose up in the sky.

More explosions.

The sun was soon visible again, and an extremely exhausted Naruto was panting. His audience had long since gone home during the night, but one of the older women had left him a basket of food. Naruto finished eating the last of the apples left for him, before he stood back up and got back to training.

'Maybe I can't do it... maybe I'll never be able to use the Rasengan without using Shadow clones...' Naruto thought to himself as he looked down at the droplets of red snow that were scattered around. After failing all night long, and without making any progress, it was hard to keep a grin on his face like at the beginning.

...

Naruto punched himself in the cheek for doubting himself.

"Hell no, I'm Uzumaki Naruto, and I'm not about to start doubting myself just because I failed all night... still... I should take a break and check to see if Pervy Sage is awake." Naruto wiped the blood from his lip, his own punch split his lip open. He had trained all night and a good portion of the day before, so he needed to take a break. Give his hands time to recover before he got back to training.

Naruto started to jog towards the hospital.

Behind a boulder, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a girl his age with purple hair was sleeping on the ground. He stopped jogging just long enough to turn his head to look at her. She was a little taller than him, he would guess. He didn't recognize her as part of the group who were watching him, but she was fast asleep. Walking over to her, Naruto moved her so that she was sleeping on his back, her head over his shoulder.

He would take her back to the village, since it was dangerous to sleep outside alone.

He was sure Jiraiya would scold him if he left a young girl out alone at night.

-Later-

"That you for bringing my daughter home... it's early, and a strong young man should never skip breakfast. Why don't you come in and relax, let me make you something? I'm sure my daughter would want to thank you for bringing her home."

"It's cool, thanks though, I really need to check up on my teacher." Naruto was a little surprised to see that the young girl's mother hadn't even hit her 20s. She had to have had her daughter when she was about 15 or 17, not a day older than that though. A lot of the mothers in the ice village seemed to be very young, and even the grandmothers were only in their 40s.

"Here though, as a thank you." The kind faced woman leaned down and kissed him on the forehead.

"O-oh... no problem... your daughter was asleep in the snow, so you should make sure she is okay. Well... bye." Naruto jumped up to the top of the nearest building. His cheeks were bright red, and he didn't want the woman to see that her forehead kiss had caused such a reaction out of him. His red cheeks, his goofy smile, and the beaming joy in his eyes.

This village was amazing.

He had never felt so welcome anywhere in his life, like he belonged, and was wanted. There had yet to be a single person he had come across who had looked at him with cold, scorn filled eyes. These women, all of them with hands like ice, had nothing but the warmest of smiles to greet him with, and voices that brimmed with affection for him, a stranger to their world.

A tiny voice in his heart spoke up.

Was this his home?

Naruto stopped on a building, and covered his face.

"What the hell... Konoha is my home... this isn't my home." Naruto reminded himself.

The villagers all hate you there, you aren't welcome.

It was the tiniest of voices inside of his chest, the seed of doubt that made him hesitate to continue jumping across buildings. He had only known this place for a few days, but for the first time in his life, the people of the village actually wanted him around. They appreciated him and supported him, smiling at him. They didn't look disgusted to see him, or ignore his existence like he was some horrible demon who could curse them for looking his way.

Naruto sat down and hung his legs over the top of the building.

"This isn't my home... this isn't Konoha, and I shouldn't feel this way. The reason the villagers don't look at me this way, is because I'm not the Hokage yet, and they don't respect me. Once I earn their respect, they will all look at me the same way these ladies do." Naruto talked to himself. He silenced the voice in his chest with his argument.

He wanted to become Hokage.
He needed to save Sasuke.

These were his goals, and yeah, sure, for the first time in his life he didn't need to fight tooth and nail to get people to smile his way, but he hadn't earned these people's respect. He had goals he had to achieve. He had a promise to Sakura, and a dream to strive for.

"Young man, would you like to come and enjoy breakfast with my daughter and granddaughter?"

Naruto smiled.

"No thanks, I need to visit my teacher in the hospital, see if he is awake, thank you though!" Naruto called down to the woman below. He got back up and started to make his way to the hospital. The smile on his face stayed for awhile, before slowly fading away. He entered the hospital room Jiraiya was staying in through the window.

He was still asleep.

The doctor was next to him checking his vitals.

"Ah, Naruto-kun, nice of you to show up. You were out all night, why don't you take a rest on one of futons. Oh dear, your hands are so hurt... why don't we get some ointment on those burns." The doctor pulled him away from Jiraiya by the hands gently. The second she noticed that his hands were burned by his chakra. Her touch was soothing and gentle, so Naruto didn't fight back as she went to her medicine cabinet and got some ointment.

He was silent as she started to apply it.

"I just wanted to tell you, all your test results came back, and you're a very healthy young man. You should be very proud of yourself." The doctor rubbed the top of his head.

That warm fuzzy feeling was back in his chest with her touch.

"Uh... yeah... thanks."

"No problem, I won't add the ointment to the medical bill, lets just keep it between us." The doctor whispered with a sly look.

Naruto blinked.

Medical bill?

Chapter End!
Please Leave Me Lots of Nice Long Reviews, But No Flames Please!