Chapter 72: Training
Naruto had never been this tired in his life.
The chakra drain had hollowed him out — not painful exactly, just empty, like someone had wrung him out and hung him up to dry. He lay on the ground and stared at the sunset and felt no particular desire to do anything that involved moving.
He turned his head.
Sakura was a few meters away, breathing a little harder than usual, still on her feet. She was tired too — he could see it — just not tired enough to stop standing, which was the particular gap between them that the last few hours had made very concrete.
She'd run him into the ground and it had been work for her, but not the kind that put you on your back.
He thought about that.
He'd tried everything he had. Hundreds of clones, constant pressure, every angle at once. He hadn't touched her. Not once.
A shadow fell over him.
"You done lying there? Training starts now."
Naruto looked up at Jiraiya and felt a genuine flicker of disbelief.
"You're blocking my view," he said flatly, "of Sakura."
"Up."
"I'm tired—"
"Which is exactly when it counts."
Sakura walked over, looked down at him, and did not look sympathetic.
"Get up, Naruto. If you rest now we wasted the whole afternoon."
His recovery rate was absurd — she knew that better than anyone. If she let him lie here for twenty minutes his chakra reserves would start refilling. The whole point was to keep him at zero.
Naruto looked at her. Looked at the hand she was not quite extending but was clearly offering anyway.
He smiled, enormous and sudden, and bounced upright.
"Completely fine! I wasn't even tired!"
Jiraiya watched him stand on sheer willpower and tucked the observation away.
"Right. Summoning technique — watch the seals."
Jiraiya walked through the hand signs once, slow enough for Naruto to follow. Boar, dog, bird, monkey, ram.
"Now. Use everything you have left. Whatever's at the bottom of the tank — put it into this."
Naruto looked at him. Looked at Sakura. Bit his thumb without further comment and ran through the signs.
"Summoning Technique!"
A puff of smoke. Almost invisible. Naruto lifted his hand —
A tadpole.
A small, extremely alive tadpole, no bigger than Naruto's palm, blinking up at them from the grass.
"...Why is it a tadpole."
"Move your hand."
Naruto lifted his hand further. The tadpole vanished with a small pop, called back to Myōboku.
"Not bad," Jiraiya said, and meant it. "You ran Sakura's gauntlet all afternoon and still managed a summon. Most people wouldn't have anything left."
He had what he needed: the last reserves, fully spent. The tank was empty. Now for the next part.
"Naruto." He crouched slightly to be at eye level. "Have you ever felt a second chakra inside you? Something separate from your own?"
Naruto frowned. "A second...?"
Something crossed his face — a half-memory. Sakura, a long time ago, saying something about a fox.
"I told you about it," Sakura said. "The Nine-Tails. The Fourth Hokage sealed it inside you."
"Right! You told me that!"
"So here's what you're going to do." Jiraiya held up one finger. "You're going to reach for that chakra. Feel it. And then you're going to use it to summon something from Myōboku that's actually worth summoning."
Naruto stared at the raised finger, trying to figure out what reaching for his own chakra was supposed to feel like —
Jiraiya tapped him in the forehead.
The world flipped.
Naruto went backwards — through the air, through the treeline, through the full width of the riverside forest — and then there was nothing under him. The edge of the cliff. Dark water, very far below, rushing up to meet him.
Naruto's eyes went wide.
He opened his mouth.
He closed it again.
Nobody heard what Naruto thought in that moment. The gold shape fell into the black canyon and was gone.
Sakura stood very still with her hand half-raised, watching the place where Naruto had been.
She lowered it slowly.
Right. She remembered this. This is how Jiraiya does the first step. Drown the kid, let the Nine-Tails wake up to save its host. It worked in canon. It was also absolutely unhinged as a teaching method.
"The Heavenly Canopy Method," Jiraiya said, settling himself comfortably on the ground like a man waiting for a bus. "I don't have a scroll on me — I'll write one up tonight and bring it tomorrow."
"You thought about what happens if he can't access the Nine-Tails chakra in time."
"The Nine-Tails won't let him die." Confident, unhurried. "Doesn't matter if Naruto wants to. That fox has opinions about its own survival."
Sakura looked at the canyon.
Pressed her lips together.
Let it go.
The air came up first — a sound like a building being unmade — and then the shadow, enormous and fast, clearing the canyon rim in a single bound that shook the ground when it landed.
"YEAH!"
Naruto's voice from somewhere near the top of a very large head.
"SAKURA! SAKURA, AM I COOL RIGHT NOW?!"
Sakura looked up at the thing that had emerged from the canyon and let out a breath she hadn't consciously been holding.
A massive toad, easily the height of a three-story building, weapons at his hip, settling his bulk onto the riverbank with a calm that suggested he'd done this before and would do it again.
"That one's going to be trouble," Jiraiya said, with the tone of a man who is about to be someone else's problem.
Gamabunta. Chief of the Myōboku toads. Jiraiya and the Fourth Hokage's most frequent battlefield partner. The most senior combat summon on the mountain.
The toad's enormous eyes tracked down to Jiraiya with an expression best described as unimpressed familiarity.
"Jiraiya."
"Hey, Bunta. Been a while."
"You gave the contract to this kid."
The gaze traveled up to Naruto, who was currently balanced on the toad's head with the energy of someone who has just survived something and is very happy about it.
"Yeah, well." Jiraiya scratched the back of his neck. "He's inherited the will of someone. Couldn't really avoid it."
(End of Chapter 72)