Man this is Hard

Ha that's what she said. I mean what?

Oh yeah, after help out the Kunai to me neck he let me start moving and smiled before turning to the crowd and giving a big thumbs up. The Hokage then turns and looks at me, "By the way, they have no clue what this fight was about at all, they figured it was solely for their entertainment. " He gives me a deep grin. What a cheeky bastard.

I look at him and give him a grin, "So does this mean I have the ability to be Hokage then?" since he wanted to go easy on me why should I not be hard on him. "I really felt as if the Hokage would be much stronger. Twas a pity the fight ended so soon." He would've kicked my ass several times over if he was being serious, he barely used any Jutsu, and when he used them it was something that he knew I could escape. I wanted to be cheeky though.

I think he just wanted to entertain the people and reassure them that their Hokage is strong enough to fight against someone as terrifying as me(even though they have no clue who I am) and come out on top with the only thing making him lose is the time. I mean teleportation is pretty terrifying honestly, and being able to fight against it is impressive. I wonder how scared they'd be if they know how much I could slow time.

I can't know for sure though but, I am willing to bet that there are even more reasons he let me win this way. Or he's just a chuunibyou (A/N: 8th grade syndrome for those that don't know) and wanted to be in a badass tournament fight only to barely win or barely lose.

I swear to God if Sarutobi is a closet chuuni I'm done.

I start following the Hokage out of the door that leads to the waiting room I was in previously. Once we get in there we see several Anbu, Tsunade, Jiraiya, and Orochimaru. After I enter the Hokage smiles and speaks to everyone, "The plan worked everyone, after seeing how carefree we were and then thinking that I could only do that much they are assaulting the leaf with its force being led by Hanzo. Also Joseph, sorry for not keying you in on the plan but honestly, I needed you to go all out on me to make it more believable. Good last move though, you just need to work on making your reactions faster and disrupting the opponent more."

...heh? This was all a ploy? I mean I figured he was acting for the sake of the citizens, but wait he was doing it to throw the enemies off and make them attack us? I look at him in shock before asking, "Wait what? I mean I figured it was all a show for the people to help them relax but you were using it to get an enemy to attack? Also you're going and teaching me while talking about war?"

He chuckles at me, "Not just one Joe. All of them. Every single village has allied against us, that's why I was busy for so long. Now we are going to take this chance to defeat them all at the same time, and if we are unable to then we shall just defeat some of the strongest powers. Also of course I am teaching you, we are all eternal students." This man... what else does he have planned ?

He then turns around and looks at Jiraiya, Tsunade, and Orochimaru before speaking to them, "Alright, we have a week of preparation, and you three and Joe are going to fight Hanzo when he gets here since I know he'll be leading. Normally I'd help defend the village but I need to pretend like I'm not Just exhausted and injured, but weak. So I will be leading the troops in secrecy until the best time. Joseph, mind taking me to my office?" He looked at me for the last part so I nodded and flashed him over to his office.

"You have a week to prepare, you shouldn't have even had that month but it was by luck and your ridiculousness that you have this time. Use this period to get stronger as I don't feel we can fend off attacks from everyone, even if I went all out. We are all simply too weak against everyone" I nod to Sarutobi's worry and start walking away, before I get far though he talks to me once more, "Also I wasn't kidding about approving you with that fight to be Hokage, with that strength you can't do it so make your Mark in this war."

I turn towards him and nod, I know exactly what I have to do to get stronger, I will start getting my sage mode! This boost in power should be exactly what I need to get the edge on my opponents!

I flash away from the Hokage and go to the Dragons mountain, soon after arriving the dragon who seems to be the leader appeared before me and speaks, "Is your work done now?"

I nod and respond to the massive dragon, "Yes it is, however I have yet another time limit of a week to get stronger so I will be devoting myself wholly(A/N: I googled this to sure this was right. It is.) to the training." The dragon looks at me and raises an eyebrow, or well what I will assume is the dragon version of an eyebrow. Eyescale?

He then thinks after pondering for a bit, "Well I know of a method to train you in nature chakra quickly however based on your clones it is clear you have been automatically taking in nature chakra, you just need to further enhance it. So this method may be perfect for you actually. It can be dangerous, but you may be able to attain sage mode in less than an hour if you use all your clones, what do you think?" He looks at me and smirks, agh I am getting anime character syndrome where I want to get stronger fast.

"Are there any side effects to it?" This sounds too good to be true and based on life, it probably is.

He looks at me and seems to smile at my question, "Hm, I am surprised, most would take this opportunity at the drop of a hat, especially given the speed. Very well, the side effect is that you will slowly turn into a dragon every time you use your sage mode." Well I am glad he was honest with me, actually this dragon reminds me of myself, or maybe I'm like the dragon?

We both are open with anything, but if someone doesn't ask then we won't tell. Or rather we won't its more so we don't think it matters too much until it's mentioned. I nod at the dragon and give him my answer, "Well I quite like my body as it is so I will naturally learn sage mode then."

He looks at me and reveals his teeth in a quite terrifying smile that then evolves into laughter, "My my, you surprise me more and more, first you summon 2 legendary beasts out of the 10 of us in just one summon, then you get an easier method but still choose the method that is difficult? I like you more and more. Come and get on my back, if you are to do it this way then we need that tiger as well." I look up and raise an eyebrow and ponder for a bit.

After thinking I talk to the dragon, "I could teleport the both of us there if you want?" He thinks for a moment before nodding at me, so I grab a part of his wing and flash him over with me to the tigers area.

Once we arrive the dragon calls out, "Tiger! He has chosen the hard method instead of the easy one! He is worthy!" Wait worthy of what? I look to the dragon and try asking him what he meant but before I can there is a voice off to my side.

When I look to my left I can see a pair of eyes approaching while speaking, "Hmpf, so he is worthy of receiving both of our styles for sage mode? The Dragon's mystery and the Tiger's dominance. Ha! I pity you honestly, these are some of the hardest ones to comprehend among the 10 of us, are you still willing boy?" I look into the eyes and nod my head, I have firmed my resolution and will do this.

The eyes squint slightly then glance to the Dragon before speaking to it, "It seems you are correct, he is worthy to learn them at the least. Let's see if the boy survives though. You go and take him to learn how to absorb nature chakra first as I hate that step." After speaking to the dragon the eyes disappear and silence fills the air.

I look back to the dragon and it seems to have a wry smile on it, or at least as wry a smile as a dragon can muster, "Well we may as well get started. The best place to train nature chakra is at a spot on our mountain, if you get on my back and teleport us there I will take you to it." I nod and climb up his wing that has been set down before I flash us both over to the mountain. Granted my teleporting is cheap but man, it does take a decent chunk of my chakra to teleport a dragon so far.

After he sees we are at the mountain he starts rising into the air by fully extending his wings then moving them up and down, causing us to gain more and more height until he then shifts his wings slightly (I assume) and propel us forward at intense speeds. I actually almost fell off at one point but thank god I left a mark on him.

After clinging to dear life for a few minutes he stopped and started slowly descending. I started feeling my hair and noticed it was all over the place without seeing it, I just sighed and accepted it. Once we touched down on the ground I looked around and noticed that it appeared to be a hot springs type area, but a natural one. Neat.

The dragon looks at me, "This is where you will train due to it possessing all natures of chakra here, in fact this is the densest point of nature chakra which is why this is where we hatch our young at. Now the method to collect nature chakra into yourself is..." He starts going into a monologue for a few minutes and I don't really care to state every thing he said(A/N: Definitely not author being lazy...), but basically what I have to do it draw in just the right amount on nature chakra so that it forms a third of my chakra. Once I get it to the perfect point of it then my body will remember it faster and faster to the point that I would be able to enter sage mode in a second of preparation so long as I have some of my own chakra.

I moved and sat down on the ground in the middle of a large amount of the springs and summon as many shadow clones as I can, I am going to brute force this basically. All my clones, well into the thousands now, start drawing in nature energy. Some slowly, some quickly.

Actually there were a few that drew in too much so they unsummoned themselves so I could get my chakra and their memories back, then I summoned more to replace them with their memories.

This kept cycling around for several hours, clones popping and me replacing them, however I could feel myself getting close and closer to the sweet spot. I was personally taking the slow and steady approach to this and was slowly gaining the natural energy.

Eventually a day passed and I was exhausted, I wanted to stop and take a break but honestly I knew I was close. Some of the first clones I spawned, the ones going a little faster than me got the sweet spot down almost to a T, and I went even slower after getting their memories. Then I unsummoned all the clones I had left, getting their collective memories and exhaustion. I fight back barely though and summon over a hundred clones before I finally pass out.