Chapter 45

It was near the end of the first year at the Academy. Iruka snagged my hood with his finger as I was leaving for lunch. "Haru, do you still want to learn fuinjutsu?"

"Yes, Iruka-sensei!" I said enthusiastically. I had been so busy with training that I had completely forgotten about learning fuinjutsu.

"I'm sorry it's taken so long. Everyone I asked until now was either too busy or uninterested in taking on a student. But I found someone who really knows his stuff. He should be back in Konoha in a couple weeks. You don't mind learning from someone who already has a student, do you?"

"That is perfectly acceptable, Iruka-sensei. Thank you!" I was truly ecstatic. Beaming from excitement, I asked, "Iruka-sensei, do you think you can find me a kenjutsu teacher also?"

Iruka gave me an uncomfortable look. "Why are you interested in kenjutsu? Normally swordplay is only taught at the chunin and jounin level. I can tell that you've worked on your taijutsu for a long time. Why not continue to improve that instead? There's a reason why we emphasize choosing a specialty after becoming a genin. If you spread yourself too thin, you won't excel at anything."

"I just thought it would be nice to have a sword in case I ever meet the Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist," I thought to myself. But instead of saying that aloud, I told him a more innocuous reason, "The way I see it, kenjutsu is simply an extension of taijutsu. I'm at the point where I can get better at taijutsu simply by working at it but I have no idea how to start training to fight with a sword." Ebisu had chewed me out for having such ridiculous taijutsu way back, and I didn't have time to waste pretending I knew what to do with a sword.

Iruka seemed to see the logic in what I had said. But seeing only a child in front of him, he told me, "Just wait until you're older, Haru. You still have plenty of time before anyone is going to ask you to carry around a sword." He smiled and patted me on the head.

I couldn't bring myself to respond to that. Fortunately, Naruto happened to call my name so that we could eat lunch together.

"At least I get to learn fuinjutsu."

"You!"

"You..."

Naruto looked at both me and Jiraiya. "Do you guys know each other?"

"Are you really supposed to teach me fuinjutsu?" I asked.

"No way, kid. When little Iruka asked me to take on an extra pupil, I never thought you would be the idiot that drew this seal." Jiraiya pulled out a sheet of paper that was a copy of the one I had once casually doodled upon during class. "What the hell is this thing supposed to do anyways?" he growled dismissively at me, poking at the pentagram.

I shrugged. "I didn't think it would do anything at all. I just wanted to see if I could get a seal to hold onto my chakra for longer than a few seconds."

"There's no expanded form to this at all. You completely ignored all the groundwork necessary for a seal to function properly! I'm surprised that you didn't blow yourself up when you tried to activate it. What are these weird symbols anyways?"

"Will someone please tell me what's going on?!" Naruto yelled at the top of his lungs. "Haru? Old Man?"

The two of us glared at the loud boy and for a second the training ground was silent.

"If you don't want to teach me fuinjutsu, I'll just learn elsewhere. Just tell me one thing, Mister Toad Sage of Mount Myoboku. What happens when a Shadow Clone absorbs too much natural energy and turns to stone?"

Suddenly, I felt killing intent from the large man. I tried to jump back but Jiraiya was faster and I was pinned to the ground, his large hand forcing my face into the grass by his grip on the back of my neck. "Kid, I'm only going to ask you once. Where did you learn about natural energy?" I could already tell he could snap my neck just by squeezing two fingers.

Spitting the grass away from my mouth, I answered, "I was stuck in a cave for a week. Had nothing better to do than figure it out. I know better than to try to learn sage mode on my own, so I used Shimura Danzo as my guinea pig. I guess he didn't like being turned to stone cause he put me in the hospital for two months and decided to keep my eye for himself. It's a long story."

The sage seemed to pause in thought for a moment before growling quietly into my ear, "Didn't answer my question, Kid..." Jiraiya started to squeeze my neck painfully. "Don't play games with me. Just tell me who taught you about senjutsu."

Half-choking, I coughed out, "Didn't the Hokage tell you? If not even Ibiki and Inoichi could figure out where my memories came from, how the hell am I supposed to know?"

"Old Man! Get off my friend!" Naruto screamed, tumbling into Jiraiya.

I cleared my throat and hopped to my feet. "Naruto, it's okay." I coughed again and went over to help Jiraiya pull the blond boy off of him. "Naruto!"

Naruto was still gripping Jiraiya. With his arms around the man's torso, he yelled, "Why are you guys fighting?"

Jiraiya wasn't moving. He stood still and simply glared at me as I pulled on Naruto's arm. I returned the look but didn't say anything. Eventually, Naruto acquiesced when he saw Jiraiya was no longer threatening my life.

I spoke to the sage, "If you don't want to teach me, that's fine. I'll just learn on my own. Just promise me that you'll teach Naruto." The boy turned to look at me but I was focused in Jiraiya's impassive face. "His destiny is more important than mine. But you know that already, don't you?"

If Jiraiya was surprised, he didn't show it. His scowl only broke when he asked me, "Kid, are your parents really Seishirou and Nodoka?"

"That's what my file said. For all the knowledge I was born with, I don't remember my parents at all." Not my parents here, not my parents from the old world. I had no past whatsoever. Just fragments of memories that convinced me that I had been someone else at one point, someone from another world.

"Kid, have you ever met a man named Orochimaru?" the white-haired man asked me, his eyes thin and intense.

"Not yet. But when I do, I plan on killing him." I only had five more years until I would get my chance to fight him.

Finally, he held up the seal I had drawn for Iruka. "What do these characters represent? Where did you learn this language?" The man's face was still inscrutable.

"Cast in the name of God, ye not guilty. It's just nonsense that I thought sounded cool. Like all my other memories, I was just born knowing it."

"Haru, you won't be able to learn sage mode by using the Shadow Clone Technique. If it gets to the point where your clone turns to stone, you will lose that chakra forever. That means you won't learn anything from it and you'll have wasted half your chakra. If you dismiss your clone before it properly makes senjutsu chakra, the natural energy will build up in your body like a poison, meaning the second failure could be fatal," he said, trying to dissuade me from trying.

"So I just need to make more than one Shadow Clone before I try."

Like an angry parent, Jiraiya admonished me, "No way, Kid! If you don't die from the natural energy, you'll die from chakra exhaustion. I won't allow it!"

"Why do you care? It's not like you're my teacher or anything," I said, throwing the man's warning back at him. Jiraiya's sudden concern seemed out of place to me. Even more confusing was his next statement.

He sighed and said, "This is my punishment for taking on Minato as an apprentice." Pulling out a scroll and a brushpen, Jiraiya said, "Let me see that Rasengan of yours."

Not knowing what the white haired man was planning, I hesitated for a moment until I remembered Naruto was still gawking at us. Jiraiya wouldn't try anything in front of his godson. Nothing permanent, anyways.

I cupped my hands together in front of me. I closed my eyes and concentrated. My breathing and heart rate slowed as I focused on the pond with the lotus in my mind. As my right hand slowly created a Rasengan, my left hand entwined natural energy into the chakra that began to storm in the sphere in front of me, like a spinning wheel making yarn. As more chakra filled the sphere, it grew hotter and hotter, reminding me of a tiny star. Eventually it received enough fuel to become self-sustaining with only a single chakra thread to maintain it.

I opened my eyes. Naruto gave me a grin as he said, "Haven't seen that in a while."

"It's not the same thing, Naruto. Do you remember when you showed me your Rasenshuriken and I told you how dangerous it was? If you want to use the Rasenshuriken without hurting yourself, you will have to get Jiraiya to teach you how to do this with your chakra."

Jiraiya stared at it. "Kid, is that what I think it is?"

I turned back to Jiraiya. "If I wanted to use it in a fight, I'd have to make the senjutsu chakra beforehand. No one is going to let me stand there long enough to gather natural energy into my Rasen-fireball. But you seemed like you wanted to be impressed. That's why I don't care if it takes me years. Even if I can only try once a day, I will learn how to use senjutsu properly."

"But Minato couldn't...Rasenshuriken? Rasen-fireball? Is it true? Did you really combine the Rasengan with an elemental manipulation?" For the first time in the whole conversation, Jiraiya seemed genuinely surprised.

"Naruto has wind and I have fire."

"And the senjutsu...Kid, I changed my mind about you. At first, I just thought you reminded me of Orochimaru. But now I see...you're your own goddamn monster." As Jiraiya was speaking, he was writing something on the scroll, using the back of a summoned toad as a table.

"Should I take that as a compliment?" I quipped.

"Heh. Kid, your file doesn't do you justice. You're even more unbelievable in person." Jiraiya slapped his hand down on the scroll, causing ink to flare out like a web of characters before contracting to the space under his palm. The toad underneath croaked and glared at him before disappearing in a puff of smoke. He rolled up the scroll and tossed it to me. "I'm not going to teach you, Haru. Too many bad memories for this old man to deal with. If you're lucky, that scroll will take you where you want to go. Just don't grow up to be someone you will regret. And if you and Orochimaru do ever meet, I hope the two of you eat each other alive, you creepy bastards." Jiraiya tried his best to look tough and unaffected. However, he didn't sound like he genuinely hated me.

"Thanks, 'Old Man'," I said happily. "And thanks you to you too, Naruto, for getting this guy off my back."

"Will someone please explain to me what's going on?!"