Naruto: Nine And Seven

Chapter 1

It had been two weeks since Naruto left Konoha with Jiraiya. They were traveling down a road in the land of fire and the next town was in sight, but then Jiraiya suddenly walked off the path and towards a nearby lake and Naruto followed.

Naruto was a bit on the short side for his age at 4'8" (and easily angered by this fact), with spiky blonde hair and blue eyes. He was wearing an orange tracksuit with blue shoulders, a white swirl with a tassel on the left side and a red swirl on the back, the symbol of the destroyed Uzushiogakure. He also wore a blue forehead protector of Konoha and blue standard shinobi sandals.

Jiraiya was a tall man of about 6'3" with extremely long spiky white hair tied in a ponytail with two shoulder length bangs and had two red lines that ran down from his eyes. He wore a green shirt kimono with matching pants over mesh armor and a red cloak with two yellow spots along with a black belt, hand guards, traditional geta sandals, a horned forehead protector with the kanji for oil and kept a large scroll on his back.

"So, why are we going to this place Pervy Sage, and when are you going to train me? All we've been doing is walking." Naruto asked as they continued to walk. Naruto had wondered when his real training was going to begin, he'd just been going over the basics and he was anxious to learn some cool, new technique from the Sannin.

"Damn it brat, how many times have I told you not to call me that?" The Sannin asked, exasperated. Though it was hard tell if he was annoyed at being called a pervert in public, or if the self proclaimed super-pervert was annoyed at being called a 'regular' pervert.

"I call them as I see them." the blonde replied while crossing his arms. "If you want me to stop calling you that stop spending all your time peeking on women." Said Naruto as he looked at the man.

"Huh, kids these days… we'll get started as soon as I'm done with my contact in this town, you need to learn to be patient. Your lack of it and hotheadedness could get you killed someday." Jiraiya said. "Anyway, for today, I want you to practice water walking and holding leaves to your body with your chakra, your chakra controls still not what it could be. You need to master your chakra in order to form the Rasengan perfectly."

"That's exactly what I'm talking about! You haven't taught me anything since we left and I already know the Rasengan!"

"Would you listen to your teacher, although it's true you can use Rasengan, you have far from mastered it. You still need a shadow clone to control the rotation and shape." Jiraiya said while holding out his hand. Naruto watched as a Rasengan formed in his palm. "A battle can go to hell in an instant and your method takes more time, time you might not have. On top of that you waste chakra in the shadow clones. While you have an overabundance of chakra, that doesn't mean you should waste it." Jiraiya explained with a frown. Naruto looked to the ground in thought before quickly turning his head.

"Tch, fine." Naruto scoffed.

"Stay here and practice, don't worry, I'll start teaching you soon enough." The Sannin said as the reached the lake. "Good luck kid." Jiraiya waved at Naruto as he walked towards the town.

"Hm, lazy perv, can't even stay and help me for a while, bet he'll go straight to a brothel when he's done, if he even does have a contact to meet." Naruto grumbled as he walked on to the lake and begun to practice his chakra control.

Three hours later, Naruto was standing at the on the lake making a hand sign to focus his chakra and holding 5 leaves to his body with chakra with a somewhat somber expression on his face. He had, for awhile, moved and practiced taijutsu while doing still keeping the leaves attached, but this was much more difficult and at the moment he was resting.

Since he began his training two weeks ago, his chakra control had improved a little, but he was still no where near having enough control to form a Rasengan without one of his clones to rotate the chakra and maintain its shape.