A New Path

Ch. 4 The Nine-Tailed Fox

It had been one week since Naruto's training with Jiraiya had started. The blond had improved by leaps and bounds and didn't appear to be slowing down. Jiraiya was proud of his student, even though he wouldn't be telling him anytime soon, and knew that he would be the only one capable of surpassing the Fourth. If it weren't for the boy's fear of using the Kyuubi's chakra then he would easily be high chuunin level. Jiraiya had hinted that he wanted Naruto to use the fox's chakra but Naruto would refuse.

Naruto had improved on, what he had said, were his weaknesses. The boy had easily grasped the toad style taijutsu. It had been difficult at first, since Naruto would always rush into the attacks, but Jiraiya had drilled that out of him. The blond was on his way to mastering the taijutsu but, again, would have been a lot better mixed with the Kyuubi's chakra. It was a shame for Naruto to ignore something that would give him a great advantage over any other ninja.

The blond had mastered the two wind chakra control exercises already. Naruto had already attempted to use the jutsu Kakashi had given him but had some difficulty performing them. Sometimes the jutsu wouldn't have enough power behind them while other times Naruto would put too much chakra behind the jutsu, making the attack too hard to control. The boy was making some progress but would need help on his wind jutsu.

Naruto had also improved on his sealing. It had been hard to make the boy pay attention when they started but when he got the basics down, he began to soak everything up like a sponge. The blond could now use his own seals for basic stuff like packing things into scrolls, making paper bombs and making restriction seals. It would take a while for Naruto to learn advanced sealing and Jiraiya had a feeling that this would be difficult for Naruto to learn.

The only thing that the boy still struggled in was summoning. He had continued to summon weak toads and had even summoned a tadpole once. Jiraiya knew that in order to get his student to master summoning, he would need to get the boy to use the fox's chakra. It would be hard to get Naruto to use it since he didn't plan on using that chakra anytime soon. The sannin would have to trick Naruto into using it but knew that Minato wouldn't approve if he still liver.

Jiraiya sighed as he thought about what the boy still needed to learn. It would take time to train the boy and from what he heard, the Akutski had begun to move. They hadn't captured any jinchuuriki but they had begun to prepare to do so. Jiraiya would need to train the boy in order to make him strong enough to protect himself. This would require his full attention but he couldn't stay in the same place for too long, this meant that he had to take the boy on a long training trip. The sound of giggling was heard and Jiraiya smile. He would push his thoughts aside for now. Right now there was potential research material waiting for him.

Naruto walked through town with a smile. Jiraiya had treated him to ramen since his training was going great. The sannin had asked if he liked any girl and, though skeptical at first, Naruto admitted to having a crush on Sakura. Jiraiya had then asked him to find her and give her a hug or kiss and that they would meet for training the following day. Naruto had been flagger stabbed but agreed to give her a hug when Jiraiya said that it was part of his training. So Naruto was currently looking for his teammate with his usual fake smile.

He spotted the pink-haired girl on the distance and gulped. He knew what would happen if he just outright asked her so that left catching her by surprise. The girl would probably hit him when he hugged her. Naruto thought that maybe Jiraiya had asked him to do this in order to test his resistance. The blond walked up to his teammate and waved.

"Hey Sakura!" Naruto greeted with his usual cheerfulness.

Sakura frowned. "Naruto, shouldn't you be training or something? You're up against Neji after all." She said, "He is a genius like Sasuke so he'll be hard to beat."