22 Hot Springs

The day of Danzo's Incident, when Chojusen returned to his house, he told Choza what happened. Choza was heartbroken that his son lost his innocence so early on in his life; he couldn't imagine how bad Chojusen must've felt. Sure he was no saint and had killed hundreds or even thousands of enemies in life, but his first time was very traumatic and only had to cross that line in his preteen years, after graduating from the academy.

Chojusen was just four years old, even though he explained to Choza that his mental capacity was similar to an adult's, his body and experiences up until now had been those of a four-year-old; excluding all the insanity about him being strong enough to fight Kages. Choza had watched Chojusen grow up, and even if he was told that Chojusen thought like an adult, he knew that Chojusen behaved like a child much more than he led on.

For a couple days, Choza thought about how he would help Chojusen get through this harsh moment in his life. So, he visited Minato in his office and the two began discussing what they could do.

Minato welcomed Choza into his office and said "Choza! What can I do for you today?"

"I know Chojusen talked to you about his encounter with Danzo. After he came home that day, he's hasn't been eating right and he comes home early everyday from his training. I'm getting worried about him and come to seek your advice."

Minato thought about Chojusen's situation for a while and said "Right now what he needs most are his friends."

"He's been going to the training grounds with three of his friends for the past couple days and behavior isn't changing back to normal."

"What if we arrange for them to have a little trip outside of training? Something like… the hot springs?"

"Yes of course! Why didn't I think of that?"

"Alright then, I'll see if I can arrange for all his friends to go to the hot springs free of charge this one time."

Later that day, Minato sent several shadow clones to the various main clans of the village and asked the Clan heads if they would allow their kids to go to the hot springs for free to cheer up Choza's kid. The Nara and Yamanaka Clans didn't didn't ask to many questions and just agreed to let their kids get a day off training to enjoy a free trip to the hot springs. The Inuzuka, Aburame, Hyuga, and Uchiha were a bit skeptical, but after hearing that it was a FREE trip, they acquiesced.

The day for the hot springs trip was on a Thursday so only the kids would be going to the trip; all their parents would be busy doing high ranking missions. Chojusen only agreed to go to the hot springs because all his other friends were going and he hadn't seen them in a while. It seems the excitement of seeing some of the friends he hadn't seen in months improved Chojusen's mood, as his training with Ino, Sakura, and Karin improved in atmosphere.

When the day for the trip arrived, Chojusen was so excited that he woke up his brother extra early and the two talked about their friends until they were escorted to the hot springs by their father.

Choji was still learning the Multisize technique so he didn't talk with Chojusen as much as when they were training Staff Arts, but now that they had an entire free day, they talked with each other for as long as they could. By the time they reached the hot springs Chojusen had given Choji some pointers and evaluated his skill with the Multisize technique; he judged that Choji would be able to use the partial version of the skill after a couple more weeks of training.

As Chojusen and Choji were brought to the entrance of the hot springs, Choza told them to have a good time and promptly left. In the lobby of the hot springs, Chojusen found that Hinata, Kiba, Shikamaru, and Naruto were already catching up with each other. Both he and his brother made their way over to them and they all started talking about their experiences training.

When the rest of their friends joined them in the lobby, the group of four-year-olds registered themselves in the check in, before splitting up into groups by their gender. All the boys went to the left side of the hot springs while all the girls went to the right side.

The trip to the hot springs was originally intended to be a way to get Chojusen calmed down and have him return to his normal attitude. However, the hot springs was now occupied by a bunch of kids; a bunch of kids that were being trained to be ninjas. Instead of calmly taking in the peaceful environment, most of the kids were running around the hot springs whipping each other with towers, or playing around with water.

This was the case for all the boys except for Shikamaru; the lazy potato felt it was too bothersome to play in such a peaceful environment. The girls, much like Shikamaru weren't about to destroy this wonderful environment and just soaked in the water while talking to each other to catch up.

In the male side of the hot spirings as the kids were playing around, Chojusen stopped and turned to a dividing wall of the hot springs. There he faintly detected a person hiding and was not comfortable with the situation. He walked right next to the place he detected the hidden person and said "What are you doing?"

All his friends to turned to him to see what he was talking about, but nothing changed. Chojusen didn't feel like waiting for the hidden person to come out so he used Space Locking to reveal a white haired middle aged man. The man had red tattoos on his face that were almost identical to Chojusen's and had a horned forehead protector on his head with the kanji for "oil."

When the middle aged man fell from being locked in space, a periscope fell from his hands. Chojusen thought about these context clues and said "Were you spying on the girls section of the hot springs?"

Chojusen undid the space lock and the man said "It's all for research purposes! How else would I finish my books?!"

Chojusen unintentionally leaked a bit of killing intent and said "You were spying on my friends?"

Jiraiya didn't take Chojusen's killing intent to heart and said "Obviously I'm not. Are you dumb? What would I gain from looking at little undeveloped flowers? Remember kid, the if the shape is not developed and the fruit is not mature, the price will not be valuable."

Chojusen was so confused he had to ask "What are you talking about?"

"Kid you are too young to understand just how important this is to me as a writer."

"What do you mean?"

"Like in any field of study, you need to closely observe the subject matter to..." Jiraiya kept talking about the how important this "research" was, that even Chojusen was interested to find out what he was talking about. The more he talked with Jiraiya the more interest he became in the opposite sex.

Chojusen had always been around girls, but he only found them to be as interesting as his male friends. Now that Jiraiya kept talking so much about the wonders of the female body, Chojusen wanted to take a look for himself.

He made a clone to stay as his cover in the male side of the hot springs and teleported himself over to the girls side of the hot springs. Under his Void Cloak, no one could feel his presence even if he stood a couple inches from them. Chojusen walked all around the girls side of the hot springs, but couldn't find these so called "wonders" Jiraiya talked about.

In the girls section, aside from Chojusen's friends there were several other females, which Chojusen determined had the qualities Jiraiya could call "ripe" and "mature," but they were just like his friends only a bit taller; the more mature females did have what Jiraiya called "curvy," but Chojusen didn't see much use in having that kind of body hape.

What was so interesting about girls, that Jiraiya had to see and study? He looked around everywhere and nothing special happened? Was that old man just insane? Little did Chojusen know that Jiraiya would worship him as a god if he knew of these epic spying powers.

Chojusen was just about to leave the girls side of the hot springs, when he remembered that Chokogo was also a girl and summoned her from his personal dimension so that she could relax with the rest his female friends.

Chojusen though he did this discreetly without anyone noticing, but Chokogo's appearance was immediately detected by Karin. Even before Karin met with Chojusen, she always had the ability to detect chakra signatures and the sudden appearance of Chokogo's signature was like a bright beam of chakra begging for her attention.

Karin ran up to Chokogo, but on the way there she bumped into the invisible Chojusen.