Naruto's first thought was that the sky was really, really blue today.
His second thought was that there was way too much of it.
He flailed through the air above the ravine, arms and legs pinwheeling, the wind punching his cheeks flat.
"AGAIN?!" he screamed on the way down. "YOU MANIAC OLD—"
The rest dissolved into a strangled yelp as the river shot up at him.
"Don't forget the seals!" Jiraiya's voice drifted down from the top of the cliff. "And try not to die, brat, it's bad for training continuity!"
Naruto jammed his fingers together mid-fall, flying through the sequence of hand seals so fast his knuckles cracked.
"Summoning Jutsu!"
The world snapped, chakra ripping out of him in a lung-tearing rush.
A violent puff of smoke exploded under him.
For one beautiful, hopeful instant he thought he'd done it.
Then he hit something squishy, bounced off, and plunged the rest of the way into the water.
The river slapped him so hard his teeth clicked. He tumbled end over end, bubbles stinging his eyes, then broke the surface with an undignified gargle.
He grabbed onto the nearest rock and clung there, coughing and spitting out river.
A tiny, pale-orange toad with stubby legs blinked up at him from the rock. It wore what looked like an extremely small vest.
"Ribbit," the toad said, offended. "Again?"
Naruto's eye twitched.
"I know, okay?!"
He dragged himself onto the stone like a dying seal, flopped on his back, and wheezed at the sky.
Stupid gravity. Stupid river. Stupid pervy old man up there throwing him off cliffs because apparently that was "a perfectly acceptable training methodology."
Water dripped off his bangs into his eyes. The battered old scroll with the toad contract lay safe and dry back at camp, but he could still feel the phantom weight of it in his memory, the little blood smear from his thumb binding him to a whole world of amphibian backup.
If he could actually summon any of them that weren't… this.
The little toad hopped once, then twice, then plopped itself down on his chest. It crossed its tiny arms.
"You're not pulling enough of the big guy's chakra," it scolded in a reedy voice. "You're just doing… pfft." It wobbled its arms in what Naruto guessed was supposed to be an impression of his jutsu. "Little puffs. Tadpoles."
Naruto glared at it. "I am pulling it! I can feel it!"
"Not enough," the toad insisted. "Quit being scared."
Naruto opened his mouth to argue, then shut it.
It wasn't that he was scared, exactly.
It was just that every time he reached down there—past his own chakra, past the warm, tired orange glow that was him—he hit that other thing. The red one. The huge one.
The thing that growled if he got too close. That felt like a barred gate and a cage and teeth behind it.
The Nine-Tails.
The first time Jiraiya had meddled with his seal and dropped him into that other place inside his own head, Naruto had thought he was going to throw up from fear. Huge bars. Eyes like burning coals. A voice like ripping meat.
He'd come back from that meeting with his skin cold and his heart racing and way too much power crammed into his veins.
Now Jiraiya wanted him to do it on purpose.
"Quit your whining!" Jiraiya yelled from above. "Climb back up! I'm not hauling you, my back hurts!"
Naruto bared his teeth at the empty air, then rolled over and started the long, slippery climb back up the ravine wall.
—
By the time he dragged himself over the edge, every muscle in his arms felt like soggy noodles. Dirt stuck to his soaked clothes; his sandals squelched.
Jiraiya sat on a rock nearby, perfectly dry, legs crossed, flipping through a notebook. There were little hearts doodled around the words "research notes" on the cover.
"There you are," the old man said, like Naruto had just strolled out from behind a tree. "That one lasted longer before you splatted. Call it progress."
"You," Naruto panted, pointing at him, "are the worst sensei."
Jiraiya beamed. "And yet, here you are."
Naruto grumbled, but the faint throb of pride underneath the irritation was real. Each fall, each almost-summon, each little tadpole-abomination was a step up.
He'd gone from nothing to tiny toads. From tiny toads to ones that could talk and yell at him. Somewhere up the chain was Gamabunta—the massive, cigar-smoking toad boss Jiraiya kept dropping hints about.
All he had to do was reach deeper. Grab harder. Ignore the claws scraping at the inside of the seal.
"Again?" he asked, straightening, rolling his shoulders back.
Jiraiya shut the notebook with a snap. "Again," he agreed. "More chakra this time. Less screaming on the way down. It throws off your focus."
Naruto scowled. "Hard not to scream when some people keep throwing me off cliffs."
Jiraiya waved a hand. "Gravity's been bullying people longer than I have, brat. I'm just introducing you."
Naruto drew himself up. "Fine."
They reset. Back to the ledge. Back to the wind. Back to that moment where his stomach tried to crawl out through his throat as he looked down at the drop.
"Remember," Jiraiya said, suddenly serious. "The point isn't to die. The point is that you might die, and that makes you reach for what you need."
Something about the way he said "you might die" made the hairs on Naruto's neck prickle.
He swallowed.
"Yeah," he muttered. "Yeah, yeah. I know."
He didn't. Not really. But he knew the feel of that red chakra when it surged up—hot enough to burn away fear for a second.
Jiraiya shoved him off the cliff again.
Naruto screamed again anyway.
—
The day blurred into a montage of falling, cursing, seals, and amphibians.
By late afternoon, the ravine looked like a toad convention had exploded across it. Tiny toads clung to rocks. Mid-sized ones paddled annoyed circles in the river. At one point he'd managed to summon something that was just a giant toad foot, which had kicked him squarely in the back before vanishing.
Jiraiya watched it all with maddening calm.
"More," he kept saying, every time Naruto hauled himself up. "More."
"I gave more," Naruto snapped after the twentieth try, hands skinned, nails torn. "I'm empty. There's nothing left."
Jiraiya's gaze sharpened. "Then stop scraping your own barrel and tap the big one."
Naruto looked away.
The seal in his stomach felt heavy, like a coin sunk in cold water.
"You told me not to rely on it," he said. "Everyone does. 'Don't use the fox's power, Naruto, you'll lose control, Naruto, you'll break the village, Naruto'…" He mimicked in a mocking singsong, then deflated. "And now I'm…what, supposed to just dunk my hands in it and stir?"
Jiraiya's expression flickered, just for a second.
"Difference," he said. "Using something blindly and learning to handle it. You're the cage. Not the other way around. But you can't be a cage if you've never touched what you're holding."
Naruto frowned. "That doesn't make any sense."
"Good," Jiraiya said. "Then your brain is working. One more time."
Naruto wanted to argue. Instead, he staggered back to the ledge.
He let his eyes close for a heartbeat.
He thought of the Chunin Exam arena. Of Kiba's shocked face when he'd turned the battle around. Of Hinata coughing blood and still standing up. Of Lee's broken body, limp on the floor. Of Gaara's sand curling like a hand around his leg, that wrong, choking chakra.
Of Sylvie yelling herself hoarse at the railing, eyes wild, like just watching had flayed her open.
He thought of all the times people had looked down at him in the village. At the way they'd stared through him like he wasn't there.
He thought of how good it had felt when he'd knocked Kiba on his ass anyway.
"I'm not losing," he muttered. "Not to some sand freak. Not to Neji. Not to anyone."
The anger warmed something low in his belly.
He reached down past it.
For a moment, there was nothing.
Then the world inside him changed.
Bars. Dark water. Breath like a hurricane.
The Nine-Tails laughed, low and amused, as Naruto tugged at the seal.
There you are, the voice rumbled. Back so soon.
Naruto's jaw clenched. "Shut up," he snapped, even though his body was still standing on that ledge, falling, falling—
He grabbed.
Red roared up through him, burning over the old fear, over the confusion and the hurt and the stupid, obstinate determination. For a second, it felt like his skin wouldn't hold.
He slammed the hand seals together.
"SUMMONING JUTSU!"
The world detonated.
Smoke hit his face, thick and hot. The feeling of falling cut off with a lurch that made his stomach flip. Something massive shifted under him, scales sliding, leather creaking, the faint smell of tobacco.
When the smoke cleared, Naruto realized three things in rapid sequence:
One, he was very high up.
Two, he was standing on something huge and orange and verrry not a tadpole.
Three, if he didn't move, he was going to fall off again.
"WAAAH—"
He windmilled his arms and flopped forward, hugging the thing under him for dear life. It was like clinging to a moving boulder.
A boulder that grunted.
"What the hell…?" a deep voice rumbled under his cheek. "Who woke me up?"
Naruto risked a glance.
He was sprawled across the back of a toad the size of a house. A giant pipe jutted from its mouth. Its eyes were narrowed and yellow, glaring sideways up at him.
Gamabunta.
He'd done it. Sort of. Maybe.
He tightened his grip as the boss toad shifted, nearly dislodging him.
"You?" Gamabunta growled. "You're the brat who signed the contract? You're tiny."
Naruto wheezed. "Y-you're huge," he croaked. "Can we call it even?"
Gamabunta snorted, smoke puffing from his nostrils. "Hah! If you think I'll listen to some snot-nosed brat just because he grabbed a little fox chakra—"
His words cut off as his weight tilted.
They were not on flat ground.
Gamabunta had materialized halfway up the ravine, one massive webbed foot on a ledge, the other braced against the cliff. Rock crumbled under him.
Naruto's world seesawed.
"CRAP—"
Gamabunta swore something much worse and pushed off. For a few heart-stopping seconds, they were both falling again—Naruto clinging to boss toad slime, Gamabunta flailing for purchase—then the toad slammed down into the river with a titanic splash.
Water geysered. Naruto's face got intimately reacquainted with amphibian skin.
He dimly heard Jiraiya's laughter echoing off the canyon walls.
"Looking good, kid!" the old man hollered. "Hold on!"
Naruto did not dignify that with an answer, too busy making sure he did not die via slipping off a giant smoking toad and drowning under his own big accomplishment.
—
Later, after Gamabunta had grumbled something about "insufficient respect" and "call me back when you're less puny" and vanished in another cloud of smoke, Naruto lay on the riverbank staring at the sky.
His whole body buzzed.
Not just from the red chakra, which had receded back into the cage like a very smug tide, but from the fact that it had worked. Not all the way. He hadn't landed on Gamabunta properly or ridden him into battle or anything cool like that.
But he'd summoned him. For a minute.
Jiraiya loomed over him, blocking the sun.
"Well," the old man said. "That was… something."
Naruto cracked one eye open. "Did you see? Did you see?"
"I saw you almost fall off my old friend and crack your skull open on a rock," Jiraiya said. "And then I saw you not do that. Progress."
Naruto scowled, but the corners of his mouth kept trying to twitch up.
"So?" he demanded. "Did I pass?"
Jiraiya scratched his chin. "Half-sized summon. Barely maintained contract. Nearly died twice. Very stylish screaming."
He let it hang for a second, then grinned.
"Good enough for now," he said. "We can refine control later. You've opened the door. That's the hard part."
Naruto's chest swelled. He flopped an arm over his face and whooped into his sleeve.
He'd done it. Kind of. Enough.
"Don't get cocky," Jiraiya added. "You still need better chakra control if you don't want to burn out by the time you hit the arena."
Naruto made a dismissive noise. "Yeah, yeah."
He was still smiling when a shadow fell across both of them.
"Please tell me," Sylvie's voice said, tight and dangerous, "that the weird red flare and the earthquake were from a training accident and not because you actually died."
Naruto jerked his arm off his face.
Sylvie stood at the edge of the bank, one hand on her hip, the other clutching a cloth-wrapped bundle. Her hair was pulled back in a messy little tail; there was an ink smudge on her cheek. Hospital smell clung to her—antiseptic and paper and tired chakra.
Her glasses had slipped a little down her nose. Her eyes were wide in that way that meant she was pretending not to be freaked out.
"Sylvie!" Naruto scrambled to his feet so fast he almost fell over again. "You should've seen it! I summoned this huge toad boss guy—"
He stretched his arms as wide as they would go, then wider.
"—like, bigger than the academy. With a sword. And a pipe. And he was all, 'you're too tiny,' but I held on and then we—"
"Almost drowned?" Sylvie suggested sharply.
Naruto opened his mouth, paused, then tried, "Uh. Adds drama?"
Jiraiya snorted behind him.
Sylvie looked past Naruto at the ravine, then at Jiraiya, then back at Naruto. Her expression could have curdled milk.
"And you're the amazing legendary teacher who thought 'drop the concussion-prone child off a cliff until the demon in his stomach wakes up' was a good idea," she said to Jiraiya.
Jiraiya puffed out his chest. "Ero-sennin, actually. Legendary pervy teacher. Get it right."
Sylvie's face did something complicated and offended.
"I'm not calling you that."
"Everyone calls me that eventually."
"Then everyone's wrong."
Naruto flapped his hands between them. "H-hey, hey, he's not that bad—"
"He was peeping on the women's bath when I first saw him," Sylvie said, rounding on Naruto. "With you standing right there!"
Naruto winced. "Okay, yeah, that part was bad, but he's also—"
"A perv with 'gross orange chakra' leaking out his eyes," Sylvie snapped. "Do you realize how close people were to kicking you both into the street? Tsunami would've brained you with a ladle."
Jiraiya looked personally wounded. "My chakra is a warm, mature shade of sage white, I'll have you know."
"No, it's disgusting," Sylvie said. "It's like if old ramen broth grew legs."
Naruto made a choking noise.
Jiraiya blinked, then started laughing. Really laughing, hunched over, hand on his stomach.
"Old ramen broth," he wheezed. "That's a new one."
Naruto shot Sylvie a look. "Don't encourage him."
"You're the one training with him," she shot back. Her voice dropped, almost too low to hear over Jiraiya's laughter. "And nearly dying with him."
Naruto's smile faltered.
He shoved his hands into his pockets, suddenly aware of how wrecked he must look—mud streaks, torn knees, seal still tingling under his shirt.
"It's fine," he said. "This is… y'know. What I need to do."
Sylvie stared at him for a second. "You 'need' to fall off cliffs?"
"If it means I get strong enough, yeah!" Naruto snapped, louder than he meant to. "If I can use the fox's power and win, who cares how many times I—"
He cut himself off.
The sentence had been trying to end with die. It sat there in his throat like a stone.
Sylvie's eyes changed. The anger didn't disappear, but something worse slid underneath it—thin and sharp and scared.
"You should care," she said. "You think Lee doesn't care now that he might never walk right again? You think Hinata wouldn't care if she… if she hadn't gotten back up?"
Naruto's tongue felt thick.
"I'm not them," he said stubbornly. "If it's me or everyone else, I don't—" He gestured helplessly. "I don't care what happens to me if it means I can protect people. That's the point."
He'd thought that would make her nod. Or at least back off.
Instead, she went very still.
"Don't ever say that like it's normal," she whispered.
Jiraiya's laughter had faded. He was watching them now with one eye slightly narrowed, expression unreadable.
Sylvie stepped closer until she was in Naruto's space, close enough that he could see the thin red cracked line on her lower lip where she'd been biting it.
"What happens," she asked quietly, "if you throw yourself away and it still isn't enough? What then? Everyone's just supposed to be okay with that?"
"That's not—"
"What if I'm not okay with that?"
The words hung there, heavy.
Naruto's brain skipped. He stared at her.
Somewhere deep inside, the fox's chakra gave a small, irritated flick, like it didn't appreciate the way his heart was suddenly beating weirdly hard for a non-fight reason.
"I…" he started, then floundered. "I'm not gonna lose."
"That's not an answer," she said. "You're not a paper tag, Naruto. You don't get to burn up and call it 'mission success' in advance."
He hated how that made something twist in his chest. Hated the way it sounded like those rare days Iruka had looked at him like a person and not a student. Hated the weird, hot, prickly feeling crawling up his neck.
He looked away, toward the ravine.
"I can't just… not try," he muttered. "If the only way to do this is using that chakra, then I'm gonna use it. That's it."
Sylvie exhaled, sharp.
"Then at least promise you won't use it like you don't matter," she said. "Promise you're not just—" she gestured at the ravine, words failing her. "Throwing yourself off because it's easier than… staying."
Naruto opened his mouth.
Nothing came out.
He hadn't thought of it like that. Not really. It had always just been: climb, jump, try, scream, maybe summon, repeat.
Sometimes, it was hard to remember that there was anything else he was allowed to be besides useful or annoying.
He scratched his cheek, embarrassed. "You're being weird," he muttered.
She glared.
"I'll—" he started again, stumbled, and then forced it out. "I'll try not to die, okay? Happy?"
It wasn't the grand, heroic promise he probably should've made. It was small and clumsy and too honest.
Sylvie's shoulders dropped a fraction. "That's… a start," she said. "Idiot."
She held out the cloth bundle like she'd meant to do it the whole time and the argument was just a detour.
"I brought food," she said gruffly. "Before you evaporate completely."
Naruto's stomach, traitor that it was, growled audibly. "You're the best," he blurted.
Color climbed up her neck, faint under the dirt. "Shut up and eat before I make Jiraiya-sensei take it instead."
Jiraiya perked up at his name. "Food?"
Sylvie shot him a death glare.
"Not for you," she said.
"I am a starving, hardworking mentor," Jiraiya protested. "Surely I deserve—"
"You have legendary pervert chakra," Sylvie said. "I don't reward that."
Naruto snorted a laugh he didn't quite mean to. Jiraiya spluttered in mock offense.
They ended up sitting in a rough triangle on the grass, the bento box balanced on a flat rock between them. Rice balls, pickled vegetables, a little rolled egg that had gotten slightly squished in transit.
Naruto ate like a vacuum, only slowing down when Sylvie physically moved the box out of his range so she could get something herself.
"Hey!"
"Chew," she said. "You'll choke. Again."
Jiraiya stole one rice ball anyway when she wasn't looking, then made a show of savoring it, just to annoy her. She whacked him with her chopsticks. He yelped, overdramatic.
For a few minutes, they felt like a weird, lopsided team.
A pervy old weirdo, a pink-haired medic with ink on her face, and a boy with a monster in his belly and river water still in his shoes.
Naruto looked up at the sky between bites.
It was still very blue.
It felt a little less like it was trying to throw him away.
—
After Sylvie left—back to the hospital, back to her night shifts and maps and half-whispered worries—Jiraiya stretched, hands behind his head.
"She's sharp," he remarked.
Naruto glared at him. "If you try to make her your research assistant, I'll punch you."
Jiraiya laughed. "Relax. I meant there's more going on under that ribbon than your average genin's ego."
He looked out over the ravine, then down at Naruto.
"You know," he said lightly, "most kids your age don't get friends who yell at them for treating their own lives like discount kunai."
Naruto scowled, feeling his ears go hot. "Shut up."
Jiraiya grinned, then clapped him on the shoulder hard enough to jolt him.
"Alright," he said. "Summoning's at 'barely not embarrassing.' That's good enough for now. Tomorrow we start working on not face-planting when you land."
Naruto brightened despite himself.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah," Jiraiya said. "I've got a few more tricks that don't involve you losing fights with gravity."
He smirked.
"Can't have my future student dying before he shows everyone in this village how wrong they were about him, can I?"
Naruto swallowed.
The fire that flared up in his chest at that wasn't fox red. It was all his.
He grinned, fierce and a little terrified and completely certain.
"Hell no," he said.
The river roared below them, relentless. The cliff loomed. The seal pulsed.
Naruto clenched his fists and got ready to jump again anyway.