Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ Weapons of Old and New ❯ Two ( Chapter 2 )

 

Weapons of Old and New

Or, Not Another Super Naruto Story

(Really. It's Not.)

By Andrew J. Talon

Disclaimer: Oh, yeah. I SO own Naruto. That's why I have to bust my ass working at minimum wage to pay for college. Psh. Sure.

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Three years, training this boy. Three years!

Jiraiya tried to wrap his brain around the concept. Naruto Uzamaki, walking calmly aside, matching his pace while looking around with a curiously keen eye. The wide open fields and meadows surrounding them on either side were broken up by groves of trees, which were steadily becoming more numerous as they approached Konoha. Naruto was supposed to be whining about ramen now, asking how far it was to their destination.

The boy was silent. The Sannin's frown grew.

“So, Naruto… You never did tell me where you got those new clothes,” Jiraiya began. Simple, open, and liable to make the boy start talking.

“Nope,” Naruto replied. Jiraiya waited. The boy's attention had not wavered. The toad sage felt himself becoming frustrated.

“Well, why don't you tell me?” Jiraiya asked again, a bit of I am your sensei, quit playing games tone in the request. Naruto usually would be perturbed by that change of modulation to his voice.

“Don't really feel like it,” Naruto replied in a calm tone. Jiraiya felt a vein begin to bulge from the side of his forehead, but when he spoke he kept a calm voice.

“Naruto, I leave you to study in that village for two months. When I come back, I see that you haven't learned anything I wanted you to,” Jiraiya stated. Naruto cocked his head slightly, and blinked at his sensei.

“No… I didn't.”

“Well then… What did you learn?” Jiraiya asked, letting a bit of his anger seep into his voice. Naruto shrugged.

“This and that,” Naruto explained, turning his attention back to the road. Jiraiya stopped, noting that the blond had stopped with him.

“Well then… Why don't you show me what you learned?” Jiraiya asked with an encouraging smile on his face. Naruto turned to face Jiraiya, also wearing a smile. The Toad Sage couldn't help but notice that it wasn't the boy's usual “Devil May Care” grin. No, this smile made Jiraiya think of a cat, which had just been offered a tasty mouse to play with.

“Certainly, Ero-Sennin,” Naruto replied cheerfully. The Toad Sage nodded and led the way to a nearby clearing, dropping his pack in the shade of a tree. Naruto did the same, and followed Jiraiya to the center of the meadow, both ankle-deep in long, yellowing grass. Jiraiya smiled unpleasantly at his student, who still had his own eerie expression up and running.

“Let's see what you've accomplished, Naruto,” Jiraiya challenged, before leaping forward at incredible speed, his fist moving while his upper body leaned forward to hit Naruto in the stomach with a guarded kick. Jiraiya expected Naruto to fall for the fist feint, as per his usual-

“AUGH!”

The Toad Sage was not quite sure how he'd ended up on his back. Or why the back of his head hurt so badly.

Naruto blocked the sun overhead, a worried yet exhilarated look on his face.

“Ero-sennin? Ero-sennin? You okay?” Jiraiya blinked, and ran the last few seconds back in his head as the pain receded slightly.

He saw the feint… Grabbed my ankle just as I kicked…

Jiraiya blinked, still deep in thought as Naruto checked him for injuries.

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Naruto hadn't wanted to show off. Really.

Okay, maybe a little he admitted to himself, breathing a sigh of relief that Jiraiya's ankle was not broken. Tusume had had him repeat such maneuvers over and over again on his clones, until he could throw them onto the ground without breaking any limbs.

“Won't do to always be shattering your sparring partner's legs, arms or neck,” the old man had said with a grim smile. “Save it for your enemies.”

Even after the weeks put into such training against his clones and Tusume, Naruto was still nervous. As if his control and techniques would vanish once he was back in the so-called real world.

Heart rate is steady… No creaking, so nothing broken…Chakra is fine. Naruto breathed a sigh of relief, and grinned. Heh, wonder if Sakura can do this kind of stuff yet…

“Ero-sennin? Do you need help getting up?” The Toad Sage shook his shaggy white haired-head, slowly getting up with a thoughtful look on his face. The legendary pervert scrutinized the blond, to which Naruto fidgeted.

He doesn't seem angry…

“Naruto… Where did you learn that?” Jiraiya asked, his voice patient. Naruto blinked.

“… Classified,” Naruto responded at last, to which Jiraiya face-faulted.

“Classified? Who did you learn from, an ANBU member?” Jiraiya demanded. Naruto knew he'd schooled his features into a neutral expression, but he doubled checked anyway.

“Sorry Ero… Sensei,” Naruto replied honestly. “If I could tell you, I would… But I can't, so I won't,” the blond finished. Jiraiya frowned… Before throwing a punch. Naruto easily deflected the blow, his eyes not even widening.

“Impressive,” Jiraiya complimented. He got up, brushed himself off, and looked hard at Naruto.

“Show me your Rasengan.” The blond stood up, quickly summoned a shadow clone, and made a spinning, brightly glowing ball of destructive chakra in a few seconds. Jiraiya raised an eyebrow, noting that the Rasengan quietly buzzing away in the original Naruto's hand appeared more concentrated than last time, yet more energetic.

“It's much quieter than before,” Jiraiya observed. Indeed, he could almost mistake the buzzing sound for a passing insect. Naruto nodded, dismissing his shadow clone as he brought it up for Jiraiya's further inspection.

“I've found a way to push all the air out of my palm, leaving it a vacuum,” the blond explained. “It makes it a lot easier to compress the chakra without the air taking up space.” Jiraiya nodded thoughtfully, now seeing the faint traces of blue light drawing a sphere around the Rasengan. Clever…

“Allright…” Jiraiya spied another tree nearby. “Hit that tree with it.” Naruto nodded, before flashing towards the tree in a blur.

BOOM! Jiraiya held up an arm and gritted his teeth against the sudden blast of wind and debris flying at him. A few seconds later, the wind died down and the Toad Sage was left staring at a small crater, as large across as a good-sized house's foundation.

“Naruto? Naruto!” Jiraiya called out in alarm, leaping and easily covering the distance to the deep hole in the ground. He coughed at the smoke still rising, frantically looking around the clouded crater.

“Naruto!” A cough that was not his own answered him, as a dirty but unharmed Naruto climbed his way out of the crater. The Sannin mentally sighed in relief, before glaring at the blond.

“Naruto! Haven't you used this technique before?” Naruto shrugged and smiled slightly, before coughing through his answer.

“Hack… Uh…. Heh… Hack hack… Yeah… I tripped at the last moment.” Jiraiya blinked in disbelief.

“You tripped?” Naruto grimaced. Damn, damn, damn! Old Man must be laughing at me… How could I miss that root? How? He'd intended to direct the force of the blast forward, but he'd focused too much with his chakra senses and not enough with his eyes.

Live, learn, get back up again. My way of the ninja…

“Uh… Yeah…” Jiraiya rolled his eyes and pulled Naruto out of the crater. He shook his head with a sigh.

“C'mon… We're only a few hours out from Konoha…” Naruto nodded and smiled.

“I'm fine… Just, uh… Well…”

“Drove it into the ground, huh?” Jiraiya asked flatly. Naruto nodded. The Sannin smirked.

“Think you could try it again? Without tripping this time?” The blond slowly nodded.

“Then do so.”

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The second attempt was even more impressive than the first, Jiraiya observed, as Naruto proceeded to completely obliterate another tree in the field. The truly impressive part was that Naruto had focused the Rasengan's power so carefully this time that only the tree had been destroyed. The grass surrounding it had been moved by the burst of air, but remained intact.

The bubble of chakra maintaining the vacuum… He must have learned how to use it to direct the power of the Rasengan, the Toad Sage realized. He'd had Naruto do it again, and again, varying which parts of the target were to be destroyed and which were to be left untouched.

“Ero-Sennin… I'm getting a little tired here,” Naruto stated in annoyance, after using his Rasengan to blast a boulder apart but leave the tree it was leaning against intact. Naruto had been forced to extend the bubble of chakra around the boulder as the Rasengan shredded it, concentrating the destructive power of the jutsu considerably but burning a rather significant amount of chakra in doing so. The Rasengan as Naruto had modified it used the violent decompression of the chakra bubble to not only magnify the blast of the move, but direct where the energy went by “popping” a certain side of the sphere.

“Truthfully Naruto, this is probably more ingenious than you using a shadow clone to help mold the chakra,” Jiraiya complimented, already thinking of training himself to modify his Rasengan in the same way.

“So, is it an entirely new form of Rasengan?” Naruto asked, before drinking deeply from his canteen. Jiraiya shook his head with a smile.

“No… More like an evolution of the technique. One that I will most certainly start using from now on,” the Toad Sage grinned. Naruto paused, and blinked at the Sannin over his canteen.

“Eh? It's that good?” Naruto exclaimed. Jiraiya frowned.

“So modest now, Naruto… Surely you're proud of your accomplishment?” Naruto paused, thinking carefully. In truth, his `breakthrough' had occurred when Tusume was training Naruto in greater chakra control by trying to vary the brightness of a light bulb in his hand.

The filament, that thing that lights up, is in a vacuum. No air at all. It lets the light burn a lot more brightly than it could if there was air inside because there's no risk of it cooking the inside through convection… The idea of creating a vacuum around the Rasengan had sprung from that conversation. Naruto had discovered the other benefits besides more concentrated power later, and Tusume had praised him for his ingenuity.

Old Man… Naruto shrugged and smiled brightly.

“Of course I'm proud! It's brilliant, isn't it?” The blond boasted, though with less vigor than Jiraiya expected. The old Sannin frowned mentally, hoping that the training Naruto had gone through hadn't completely changed him.

Outside…

“It is! But don't let it go to your head!” Jiraiya warned, though the smile on his face lessened the impact. Naruto smiled and nodded back, but he could tell that something was troubling the Toad Sage.

Well, not like I can just say, “Sensei, your facial expressions and blood pressure don't work together. Mind telling me what's up?” Yes, that would go over well…

Jiraiya looked up, frowning a bit at the setting sun. Lost track of time, damnit…

“We can make it to Konoha in a few hours, but by then it will be dark.”

“No problem,” Naruto said with a smile, pulling his backpack onto his shoulders. “I can make it if you can, Ero-Sennin.” Jiraiya smirked.

“Well, we'll certainly be able to get to the hotsprings more easily,” the old pervert said eagerly, before taking off into the night. Naruto rolled his eyes.

“Same old Ero-Sennin…” Not like he'd change much in two months…

Completely missing the irony of his thoughts, the blond followed the Sannin through the forest, the faint lights of the Hidden Leaf Village growing brighter with every leap through the darkening foliage.

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Next time we get into some perverted humor, homecomings, and slapstick. Stick around!