The morning sun had barely crested the Hokage Monument, casting long, golden streaks across Konohagakure, when Naruto stepped into the Hokage's office. He carried a single, heavily sealed supply scroll strapped across his back.
Behind the massive wooden desk, Tsunade sat surrounded by her usual mountain of paperwork. Naruto placed his official leave application directly onto her desk. Without a word, Tsunade picked up her seal, stamped the parchment with red ink, and signed her name with a sharp, practiced flourish.
Naruto didn't waste a second. Biting his thumb, he drew a line of blood across his palm, dropped into a low crouch, and slammed his hand onto the floorboards.
"Summoning Technique!"
Black fūinjutsu formula radiated across the wood, vanishing in a thick cloud of white smoke. As the smoke cleared, the diminutive figure of Lord Fukasaku emerged, resting atop his wooden staff.
"Ah, Naruto-boy! Why did you summon me?" Fukasaku greeted, adjusting his cloak before turning his large toad eyes toward the desk. "And Princess Tsunade... it has been quite a long time since I met you. Congratulations on your promotion to Hokage."
Tsunade waved her hand flusteredly in front of her face, a rare, soft smile breaking through her usual stern demeanor. "Ah, no need to say that to me, Lord Fukasaku. You're embarrassing me. It's not that big of a deal."
Her expression quickly shifted, hardening into the serious, protective look of a seasoned leader and a worried relative. "Naruto informed me that you have allowed him to pursue Sage training. But I would like to ask you directly—not as a Hokage requesting a report, but as his blood relative: Is he truly capable of obtaining Sage Mode? Even Jiraiya was not able to do that properly, and he required years of training. Can Naruto truly do that? Not that I doubt his capabilities, but I have learned what the risks are of failing Sage Mode training."
"A valid concern, Princess Tsunade," Fukasaku replied respectfully, nodding his small head. "And I am quite happy that you asked that question, as it shows your character and your deep bond with Naruto. While Sage Mode training truly is a risk to attain, I am able to say that Naruto-kun will be able to pursue it safely. He is already quite ahead; he can do the meditation and the staying-still part quite well now thanks to his shadow clone practice. The original just needs to get acquainted with the environment. At most, we will try this for a month. If it is a failure, then I will send Naruto-kun back myself."
Naruto crossed his arms, letting out a theatrical cough. "You two do know that I am here, right? And shouldn't it be my decision if I want to train it or not?"
Instinctively, Tsunade's hand shot across her desk, grabbed the first solid object her fingers touched—a wooden chalkboard duster—and hurled it at his head with terrifying speed.
WHAM!
Naruto ducked by a hair's breadth. The duster obliterated the reinforced stone wall behind him, blasting a clean, gaping hole straight through the exterior of the Hokage Building. Dust and smoke drifted lazily out toward the village streets below.
"Be quiet, brat!" Tsunade barked, a vein throbbing prominently on her temple, though her eyes were filled with undeniable maternal warmth and concern. "I am worried about you! Lord Fukasaku is right. If some problem arises, he will send you back immediately. And you will not make any ruckus about it or behave like a child whose toy was taken from him! That is an order from me as your Hokage... and as your clan head!"
Naruto blinked, popping back up from his defensive crouch and pointing an accusing finger at her. "Wait, wait, wait, one second. Isn't the clan head... me? I am the clan head, right? Because you are the Senju clan head, Granny. At most, you would just be an Uzumaki elder!"
"Unless and until you turn eighteen, you are not the clan head, I am," Tsunade countered flawlessly, resting her hands on her hips with an authoritative smirk. "You seem to be forgetting that Mito Uzumaki was my grandmother, and she was a princess of the clan, just the same as Kushina was. So in a direct line of heritage, I am also Uzumaki royalty. So, until your eighteenth birthday, you are not the clan head. At most, you are a clan heir. You can show that authority off to the other clans all you want, but not in front of me. Got that, brat?"
Naruto stared at her terrifying, unyielding aura for a beat before letting his shoulders slump into a deadpan, sarcastic posture. "Yes, clan head, Granny Hokage..."
THWACK!
A second duster hit him square in the face, leaving a red mark and raising a comic lump on his forehead.
Rubbing his head, Naruto turned frantically toward the elder toad. "Lord Fukasaku, I think we should go before I have to attend the hospital for a week."
Fukasaku let out a croaking laugh. "I will summon you right back, Naruto-kun!"
With a loud POOF, Fukasaku vanished. A few seconds later, after throwing one last fond goodbye to his surrogate grandmother, Naruto felt the reverse-summoning grab him, and he poofed away to the toad realm.
The thick, heavy air of the Toad Continent hit Naruto's lungs the moment the summoning smoke cleared. Surrounding him were giant, towering mushrooms, colossal stone statues of ancient toad Sages, and the faint, rushing sound of sacred oil waterfalls.
"Man... it really has been a while since I was back here," Naruto muttered, stretching his arms.
"Yes, it has been quite a while, Naruto-kun," Fukasaku agreed, standing beside his wife, Madam Shima.
Behind them stood a massive, imposing figure. It wasn't the clumsy Gamaken, but rather the stoic, heavily armed Gamahiro. The giant teal toad stood silently with his arms crossed, the handles of his two massive, signature twin swords rising over his shoulders. Ever since the Konoha Crush and his subsequent battles, Gamahiro had become Naruto's most reliable heavy-hitter among the giant summons.
"Hey there, Gamahiro! What's up?" Naruto grinned, waving up at the giant swordsman, who offered a brief, respectful nod in return.
"And Gamakichi, you have grown up once again!" Naruto noted, looking down at the two smaller toad brothers. Gamakichi and Gamatatsu were no longer the tiny creatures that could sit on his head; they were now almost at his height.
"Yeah, we know that," Gamakichi smirked, puffing on a piece of grass.
"You got any snacks with you, Naruto?!" Gamatatsu asked eagerly, his stomach rumbling.
Naruto scratched the back of his neck nervously. "Sorry, buddy, I didn't bring any with me this time."
Though he had brought his own food—copious amounts of sealed ramen and rations—he knew better than to share that in front of Lady Shima. He was absolutely not going to eat her bug stew on this trip.
"Alright, you can settle yourself now, Naruto-kun," Fukasaku instructed, pointing toward the stone training grounds. "Then we will start your training once again."
After unpacking his gear, Naruto stood near the edge of the sacred oil pool, stripped down to a pair of dark training shorts.
"So, you already know the basics, right?" Fukasaku instructed, holding his wooden staff. "The meditation, and standing perfectly still to draw the nature chakra into your core. Why don't we start with that?"
Naruto nodded. He took a small dollop of the sacred toad oil and applied it lightly to his skin to help jumpstart the sensory process. Almost immediately, he felt the heavy, vibrating rush of natural energy seeping into his system.
Slipping into his mindscape, Naruto stood before the massive, iron-forged cage in the glowing sewer chamber. The giant, fiery orange eyes of the Nine-Tails glared down through the bars.
'So,' Naruto addressed the beast mentally, crossing his arms. 'You going to help me with this or not?'
Kurama remained completely silent for a moment before letting out a low, rumbling huff. "First, attain a bit of reserves of that natural energy yourself. Then I will help you."
Naruto sighed, a small, knowing smirk on his face. 'I knew you were going to say that.'
Sinking back into his physical body, Naruto crossed his legs, sitting perfectly still in a flawless lotus position. He closed his eyes, his breathing slowing to a crawl. The training for Sage Mode had officially begun.
Time slowly began to blur. The sun tracked its way across the sky of Mount Myōboku, casting long, shifting shadows across the giant stone statues. On his pedestal, Naruto sat perfectly rigid, locked in deep meditation as he tried to pull the heavy, vibrating natural energy of the mountain into his core.
Inside his mindscape, the water of the sealed chamber rippled faintly with the influx of foreign energy.
Behind the massive iron bars, Kurama watched with narrowed, critical eyes as Naruto clumsily tried to weave the ambient energy into his system. Finally, the Great Fox let out an exasperated huff that ruffled Naruto's metaphorical hair.
"You're doing it wrong, brat," Kurama's deep, rumbling voice echoed through the chamber. "If you keep pulling it in like that, you're going to turn into a frog statue before sunset. Come here. Let me show you how it is done."
Naruto opened his eyes within the mindscape. To his surprise, Kurama slowly lifted one of his colossal, orange-furred paws and pushed it right to the edge of the seal, extending a massive fist through the gaps in the iron gate.
Smiling faintly, Naruto walked forward and raised his own hand, bumping his knuckles against the Kyūbi's giant fist.
The moment the physical connection was established, Naruto gasped. Kurama deliberately opened a direct, unfiltered pathway between their chakra networks. Suddenly, Naruto wasn't just feeling his own clumsy attempts; he was feeling exactly how Kurama perceived and manipulated energy.
"First, do as I do," Kurama instructed, his tone shifting into that of a strict but effective teacher.
Through the connection, Naruto felt Kurama actively shifting the massive ocean of his demonic chakra, deliberately carving out a hollow, stabilized 'space' within his coils. Naruto immediately started copying Kurama's internal movements, mimicking the way the fox molded the pressure and created a vacuum for the natural energy to pool into.
"Honestly, you don't even need that foul-smelling toad oil," Kurama scoffed lightly. "Your body is already resilient enough. But I suppose using it will make the mapping process faster. Just focus."
Hours bled away. Under Kurama's direct internal guidance, the chaotic, overwhelming rush of natural energy slowly began to make sense. By late evening, Naruto finally got a proper, stabilized feel of the Sage energy settling inside him. It wasn't just a heavy pressure anymore; he could distinctly feel its texture—cool, ancient, and infinitely vast.
"Good," Kurama praised gruffly. "Now we go to the hard part. Try keeping it completely separate from your own energy, Naruto. Hold it in that space you just carved out. Only then will we try to combine it with your chakra in thirds."
The process was grueling. Balancing physical energy, spiritual energy, and natural energy perfectly was like trying to juggle three different elements while blindfolded. He kept at it, adjusting, failing, and readjusting over and over again.
Before Naruto even realized it, the air around him had grown freezing cold. The sun was long gone, replaced by a brilliant, star-filled night sky over the Toad Realm.
"Naruto-boy."
The sudden, gentle voice broke Naruto's ironclad concentration. He blinked, his eyes snapping open. He looked down from his pedestal to see Lord Fukasaku standing near the oil fountain, leaning on his staff with a warm, grandfatherly smile on his face.
"You can come out of your meditation and eat now," the elder toad chuckled. "You have been sitting there all day."
Naruto blinked, looking up at the pitch-black sky in absolute bewilderment. "Huh? It's already midnight? I didn't even notice the sun go down..."
He hopped down from the stone pedestal, rolling his stiff shoulders. "I could finally feel the nature chakra, Lord Fukasaku. It's definitely there. But... I couldn't figure out how to direct it or accumulate a lot of it. I still can't seem to gather enough to actually use it for Sage Mode."
Fukasaku stroked his small white beard, his smile widening into a look of complete understanding. "Ah, so that is what I was sensing from your coils. Come, my boy, let us walk back to the house. Ma has actually prepared human food for dinner tonight. She knows you can't stomach the bugs, so she went out of her way to make something you'd like."
Naruto's eyes lit up, a wave of profound relief washing over him. "Huh? Really?! Oh, thank God... I mean, thank Lady Shima!"
As they began the slow walk back through the glowing, bioluminescent mushroom forests, Fukasaku returned to Naruto's dilemma.
"To answer your question, Naruto-boy... your struggle to accumulate enough nature energy isn't a failure of technique. It is a matter of scale."
Fukasaku paused, gesturing with his staff toward Naruto's stomach. "You possess an absolutely abundant amount of chakra. Your baseline reserves are already massive—you hold the chakra capacity of a Kage in his absolute prime, and you are only a sixteen-year-old boy. Add to that the fact that you house the most powerful Bijū in existence, which constantly passively thickens your coils."
"Okay..." Naruto nodded slowly, following the logic. "But shouldn't having a lot of chakra make it easier?"
"Not necessarily," Fukasaku corrected gently. "Because you already have so much chakra inside you, your body is entirely accustomed to operating with a massive, roaring ocean of power. The nature chakra that you spent all day painstakingly pulling into your body? In the grand scheme of your reserves, it was just a tiny drop in that ocean. It wasn't nearly enough quantity to balance against your massive physical and spiritual energies."
Naruto's eyes widened in realization. "Oh... so my own chakra is drowning out the nature energy?"
"Exactly," Fukasaku nodded. "First, you need to deliberately increase your capacity to hold nature chakra. I would say you need to practice pure accumulation for two or three more days. Just pulling it in and holding it, over and over again."
The elder toad pointed his staff back toward the sacred oil fountain they had just left.
"The toad oil we used today was not just a crutch to make you feel the nature chakra," Fukasaku explained. "It was a primer. It forced your cells, your tenketsu, and your chakra pathways to physically experience what it feels like to have Senjutsu inside you. Now that your body has memorized that feeling, we just need to practice a bit more. Treat it exactly like a normal chakra-building exercise—you need to stretch that specific 'muscle' to increase your reserves. Once your capacity for nature energy matches the vastness of your own chakra, Sage Mode will naturally click into place."
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