The sun hung low over Konoha like a lazy eye, casting long golden shadows across Training Ground Seven. Naruto Uzumaki stood in the middle of a clearing, legs spread wide, arms crossed, grinning like he'd already won the Chunin Exam finals. He hadn't. He was, in point of fact, one month away from fighting a genius who could shut down every tenketsu in his body with a finger poke, and his entire training plan so far consisted of "believe really hard and hope something works out."
Which, to be fair, had been his strategy for literally everything in his life.
Jiraiya of the Sannin — legendary ninja, sage, author of smut so poorly written it made Icha Icha Paradise read like it was composed by a particularly hormonal fourteen-year-old (because spiritually, it was) — stood across from him, holding a scroll the size of a small child.
"Alright, kid," Jiraiya said, dropping the scroll on the ground with a theatrical thud. "This is the Toad Summoning Contract. Sign it in blood, and you'll be able to summon the toads of Mount Myōboku to fight alongside you."
Naruto's eyes went wide. Not because he understood the significance of what was being offered to him — he didn't; he understood almost nothing about almost everything — but because the scroll was big and that was exciting.
"AWESOME!" he screamed, at a volume that sent three birds fleeing from a nearby tree and made Jiraiya visibly wince. "I'M GONNA SUMMON THE BIGGEST TOAD EVER AND RIDE HIM INTO THE ARENA AND NEJI'S GONNA—"
"Yeah, yeah, sure," Jiraiya said, waving a hand. He was already thinking about the hot springs. He was always thinking about the hot springs. The man had been entrusted with the child of prophecy, the son of his own beloved student, a jinchūriki containing the most powerful bijū in existence, and his primary contribution to the boy's development would ultimately amount to: one jutsu (Rasengan), one summoning contract, and absolutely zero life skills, tactical training, elemental ninjutsu instruction, chakra control exercises, taijutsu correction, or basic mentorship of any kind.
But we're getting ahead of ourselves.
Naruto bit his thumb, smeared blood across the contract with all the grace of a toddler finger-painting, and slammed his hands together.
"SUMMONING JUTSU!"
He pushed chakra — a lot of it, because Naruto had never done anything with a controlled amount of chakra in his entire life, because nobody had ever taught him chakra control beyond "walk up a tree that one time" — into the technique.
What was supposed to happen: a small toad would appear. Maybe a tadpole. Something embarrassing but ultimately harmless, a starting point from which a competent teacher would help him build.
What Jiraiya expected to happen: exactly that, after which he would vaguely gesture at the concept of "use more chakra" and then wander off to peep at women, because his pedagogical philosophy could be summarized as "figure it out yourself, kid, I've got novels to not write."
What actually happened: reality hiccupped.
The summoning circle beneath Naruto's hands blazed white — not the usual puff-of-smoke white, but a searing, retina-burning, the-fabric-of-space-is-being-rearranged white. The seal array spiraled outward, then inward, then twisted in on itself like a snake eating its own tail. Naruto felt his stomach drop, his vision blur, and every molecule in his body stretch like taffy.
"Wha—" Jiraiya started, reaching forward.
But Naruto was already gone.
Not summoned-a-toad gone.
Reverse-summoned-to-another-dimension gone.
Jiraiya stood in the empty clearing, hand still outstretched, blinking.
"...Huh," he said.
He stared at the spot where Naruto had been for approximately four seconds. Then he shrugged, pulled out a notebook, and wandered toward the hot springs.
He would not check on Naruto for three weeks.
Because he was Jiraiya.
Because he was a terrible teacher.
MOUNT MYŌBOKU
Naruto hit the ground face-first.
This was not unusual. Naruto hit things face-first with remarkable frequency. What was unusual was that the ground was soft, mossy, and smelled like rain and old earth and something faintly herbal, and the air was thick and warm and humming with an energy that made his teeth vibrate.
He pushed himself up, spitting out a mouthful of moss, and looked around.
Mount Myōboku spread out before him in all its ancient, impossible glory. Massive stone pillars rose from pools of crystalline water. Vines the thickness of tree trunks draped between enormous mushroom-capped formations that pulsed with faint bioluminescence. The sky was a color that didn't exist in the normal world — somewhere between lavender and amber, shot through with streaks of green light that moved like slow lightning. Waterfalls cascaded upward in places, defying gravity with the casual indifference of a realm that had been old when the Sage of Six Paths was in diapers.
And there were toads. Everywhere.
Toads the size of dogs sat on lily pads the size of houses. Toads the size of houses sat on stone platforms the size of city blocks. Toads wearing armor. Toads reading scrolls. Toads playing something that looked suspiciously like shōgi but with pieces shaped like insects.
A toad the size of a horse turned one massive golden eye toward Naruto and said, in a voice like a boulder clearing its throat: "Oh. It's the new one."
"WHERE THE HELL AM I?!" Naruto screamed.
Every toad within a hundred meters turned to look at him.
The silence that followed was deafening.
Then, from somewhere high above, a voice — ancient, female, and carrying the particular tone of a grandmother who has seen everything and is tired of all of it — called down:
"Bring him up."
The two toads who met him at the top of the Great Sage's temple were small, old, and radiated the kind of authority that made Naruto's survival instincts — what few he had — sit up and pay attention.
Fukasaku — Pa — was a small green toad with white hair, bushy eyebrows, and a cloak that somehow managed to look both humble and ancient. He carried a staff that was taller than he was, and his eyes held the kind of calm, measured intelligence that came from centuries of watching humans do stupid things and surviving the experience.
Shima — Ma — was slightly smaller, slightly rounder, and wearing an expression that could best be described as "preemptively disappointed." She had a ladle in one hand, because she had been in the middle of cooking, and she held it like a weapon. Which, given that she was a sage-tier combat veteran, it functionally was.
They looked at Naruto.
Naruto looked at them.
"Hi!" he said, grinning. "I'm Naruto Uzumaki, and I'm gonna be Hokage! Believe it!"
Pa and Ma exchanged a look. It was the kind of look that married couples develop over centuries — a look that contained entire conversations, arguments, compromises, and mutual sighs of resignation, all compressed into a single glance.
Pa spoke first. "So. You're Jiraiya-boy's new student."
"Yeah!"
"And he sent you here for training?"
"Well, actually, I was trying to summon a toad and I ended up here by accident—"
"Of course you did," Ma said flatly.
"—but that's okay because I need to get really strong in one month to beat Neji Hyūga in the Chunin Exam finals! He's this stuck-up jerk who thinks fate decides everything and I'm gonna prove him wrong by beating him up! Believe it!"
Pa took a slow breath. Then another. He turned to Ma.
"How much do you know about this one?" he asked quietly.
"Enough," Ma said. "Kosuke's been watching the human world. He filed a report."
"And?"
Ma's expression somehow became even more disappointed. "Pa. It's bad."
Pa nodded slowly, then turned back to Naruto, studying him with the careful, clinical eye of a surgeon examining a patient who has arrived at the hospital with a fork stuck in their head and a cheerful attitude about it.
"Naruto-boy," Pa said. "Before we discuss training, I need to understand what we're working with. Tell me about your skills. What jutsu do you know?"
Naruto puffed up his chest. "I know the Shadow Clone Jutsu! I can make like a thousand clones! And the Sexy Jutsu! And, uh... the regular Clone Jutsu — well, actually, no, I can't do that one. And the Substitution Jutsu! And the Transformation Jutsu! And..."
He trailed off.
Pa waited.
The silence stretched.
"...That's it," Naruto admitted, still grinning, because he did not understand that this was a problem.
Pa's left eye twitched.
"That's... it," Pa repeated.
"Yep!"
"You are a graduate of a ninja academy."
"Yeah!"
"You have been an active-duty shinobi for... how long?"
"A few months! I went on a C-rank mission that turned into an A-rank and I fought Zabuza Momochi and Haku and then I was in the Chunin Exams and—"
"You fought an A-rank missing-nin," Pa said, "with Shadow Clones."
"And the Nine-Tails' chakra!" Naruto added helpfully.
Pa closed his eyes.
Ma put a hand on his shoulder.
"What about taijutsu?" Pa asked, eyes still closed.
"I punch people!"
"...What style?"
"Style?"
"What fighting style do you use? The Leaf Academy teaches a standardized form as a base. Which variations have you studied? What are your preferred stances? How do you structure your combinations? What's your footwork pattern?"
Naruto stared at him blankly.
"I... punch people," he repeated, slower this time, as though Pa might have hearing problems.
Pa opened his eyes. He looked at Ma. The look this time was different. This was not the "we both expected this" look. This was the "I am going to find Jiraiya and I am going to drown him in oil" look.
"Chakra control?" Ma asked, taking over.
"I can walk up trees!"
"Water walking?"
"What's that?"
"Elemental affinity?"
"Huh?"
"Genjutsu detection?"
"Gen-what-su?"
"Trap-setting? Poison knowledge? Stealth techniques? Information gathering? Code-breaking? Any of the forty-seven standard skills listed in the Konoha Academy graduation requirements?"
Naruto's grin was starting to falter. "I, uh... I'm really good at pranks?"
Ma set her ladle down. This was significant. Ma never set her ladle down.
"Pa," she said, in a voice that was terrifyingly calm. "Get Bunta."
Gamabunta was enormous.
This was obvious — he was a toad the size of a large building — but it bore stating because Naruto had to crane his neck so far back to look at him that he nearly fell over. The boss toad sat on a massive stone platform at the summit of Mount Myōboku, his pipe clenched between his teeth, one huge eye regarding Naruto with the expression of a man who has just found something unpleasant on the bottom of his shoe.
Surrounding them, arranged on stone seats carved into the mountainside like an amphitheater, were dozens of toads of various sizes. Some Naruto recognized from his brief, disorienting arrival. Others were new. All of them were watching him with expressions ranging from curiosity to skepticism to outright pity.
The Great Toad Sage — Gamamaru — sat at the highest point, ancient and enormous and mostly asleep, occasionally mumbling prophecies that may or may not have been relevant to anything.
Pa stood beside Naruto, staff in hand. Ma stood on Pa's head, arms crossed. They had spent the last thirty minutes reviewing Kosuke's report on Naruto Uzumaki, and the atmosphere had the energy of a parole hearing.
"Let me make sure I understand the situation," Gamabunta said, his voice a bass rumble that Naruto felt in his ribcage. "You are the jinchūriki of the Nine-Tailed Fox."
"Yeah!"
"The son of Minato Namikaze, the Fourth Hokage, our greatest summoner."
Naruto blinked. "Wait, wha—"
"You are currently a genin of Konohagakure, in the middle of a one-month training period before the finals of the Chunin Selection Exams, and you were assigned to Jiraiya for training."
"That's right! Ero-Sennin is—"
"And in your career so far," Gamabunta continued, ignoring him completely, "your combat record consists of: one fight against Zabuza's apprentice in which you won because the Nine-Tails activated, one fight in the Forest of Death against Orochimaru in which you accomplished nothing, one fight against Kiba Inuzuka in which you won by accident and flatulence—"
"Hey! That was strategy—"
"—and you have been assigned to fight Neji Hyūga, a prodigy of the Hyūga clan who has mastered the Gentle Fist, can see your chakra network, can shut down your tenketsu with a touch, and has been training seriously since he could walk." Gamabunta removed his pipe and pointed it at Naruto. "And your plan to defeat him is...?"
"I'M GONNA BEAT HIM WITH MY GUTS AND NEVER-GIVE-UP ATTITUDE! BELIEVE IT!"
The silence that followed was so profound that Naruto could hear his own heartbeat.
Gamabunta looked at Pa.
Pa looked at Ma.
Ma looked at the sky, as though praying for patience.
A small toad in the audience leaned over to his neighbor and whispered: "He's going to die, isn't he?"
"Oh, absolutely," the neighbor whispered back.
Gamabunta sighed — a massive exhalation that created a small wind — and looked back down at Naruto.
"Kid," he said. "We need to talk."
THE INTERVENTION
What followed was, in Naruto's later estimation, the single most painful experience of his life. And he had been stabbed, punched through walls, had a cursed seal slapped on him by a snake pedophile, and eaten Ma's cooking.
It started with the outfit.
"Take it off," Ma said.
Naruto looked down at himself. He was wearing his standard outfit: the orange jumpsuit. Bright, screaming, visible-from-space orange. With blue accents. And goggles pushed up on his forehead. He looked like a traffic cone had achieved sentience and decided to pursue a career in espionage.
"What? No way!" Naruto clutched the front of his jacket protectively. "This is my outfit! This is me! Orange is my favorite color and—"
"Boy," Pa said gently, "you are a ninja."
"Yeah!"
"The word 'ninja' comes from 'shinobi,' which means 'to steal away.' It refers to stealth. Concealment. The art of being unseen."
"So?"
"You are wearing an outfit that is literally the most visible color in the human visual spectrum," Pa said. "In a profession that requires you to not be seen. In forests. Which are green."
"Orange is a great color—"
"You are a neon sign in a profession that requires darkness," Gamabunta rumbled. "Your father wore a standard jōnin uniform. Your mother wore practical combat attire. Every successful shinobi in the history of your village wears colors that allow them to blend with their environment. You wear an outfit that screams 'PLEASE LOOK AT ME' in a career where being looked at means being killed."
"But I want people to acknowledge me—"
"And you think the way to earn acknowledgment," Ma said, her voice sharp as a senbon, "is to dress like a clown? Boy, acknowledgment comes from competence. From skill. From results. Not from being loud and bright. Every serious ninja who has ever looked at you has dismissed you on sight, and your outfit is part of the reason why."
Naruto opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
"...Sakura-chan said it looked good on me," he tried weakly.
"Sakura-chan," Ma said, "is a twelve-year-old girl who has never been in a real fight and is obsessed with a boy who tried to kill her during the Chunin Exams. Her fashion opinions are not a reliable metric."
Naruto had no response to this.
Ma held out a bundle of fabric. Naruto took it numbly and unfolded it.
It was a cloak. Deep red, almost crimson, with a high collar and black trim along the edges. Beneath it were a pair of dark grey pants, practical and reinforced at the knees, a black mesh undershirt, and a pair of proper shinobi sandals that actually fit correctly. There was also a dark green vest with scroll pouches and a weapons harness.
"This," Ma said, "is what a toad summoner wears. Put it on."
"But—"
"Put. It. On."
Naruto put it on.
He caught his reflection in a pool of water nearby and stopped.
He looked... different. Not just the clothes — although they fit properly, moved with him instead of against him, and made him look less like a lost child and more like someone who might actually survive a fight. It was something about how he held himself in them. The red cloak sat on his shoulders like it belonged there. The dark colors made his blond hair stand out without making the rest of him a target. He looked like a young shinobi.
He looked like he could be someone.
"...Huh," he said softly.
"You can like orange," Pa said, not unkindly. "But save it for when you're off duty. When you are working, you dress for the job. And your job is staying alive."
Naruto nodded, still staring at his reflection. Something had shifted behind his eyes — small, fragile, but real.
Ma noticed. She said nothing. But she picked her ladle back up, which was her version of approval.
Then the hard part started.
THE ACCOUNTING
They sat him down in a stone chamber deep in the mountain. Pa, Ma, Gamabunta (who had to stick his head through an enormous opening in the wall, like the world's largest and most judgmental window), and several senior toads who served as combat instructors.
Pa placed a scroll on the table in front of Naruto. On it was written, in meticulous script, a list.
"These," Pa said, "are the fights you have been in since graduating from the Academy. We are going to go through each one, and you are going to tell us how you won. And then we are going to tell you what actually happened."
Naruto squinted at the list. "Uh... okay?"
"Fight one. Mizuki, the traitor chūnin. How did you win?"
Naruto grinned. "I used the Shadow Clone Jutsu! I made a thousand clones and beat the crap out of him!"
"Correct. And why did that work?"
"Because I'm awesome?"
"Because Mizuki was a chūnin," Pa said flatly. "A mid-level chūnin at that. Not particularly skilled, not particularly fast, and he was already injured from his fight with Iruka. You overwhelmed him with numbers. A jōnin — or anyone with area-of-effect jutsu — would have wiped out every clone in seconds and then killed you. You won because your opponent was weak, not because your strategy was strong."
Naruto's grin faded slightly.
"Fight two. The Demon Brothers. How did you win?"
"Well... Sasuke mostly handled that one..."
"Correct. You froze. You were so scared you couldn't move, and you had to be saved by your teammate. Next. Haku."
"I... the Nine-Tails—"
"Yes. You were losing. Badly. Haku had you trapped in his ice mirrors and was systematically destroying you. You had no counter, no strategy, no technique that could touch him. You believed Sasuke was dead, you lost emotional control, and the Nine-Tailed Fox's chakra activated involuntarily. The fox won that fight. Not you."
Naruto's hands clenched on his knees.
"Forest of Death. Orochimaru."
"He..." Naruto's voice was quieter now. "He was too strong."
"He was. And you responded by charging straight at an S-rank ninja with no plan, no backup strategy, and no understanding of his abilities. He swatted you like a fly and sealed off your access to the fox's chakra. If he had wanted you dead, you would be dead. You survived because he chose not to kill you. That is not a victory. That is mercy from a predator who didn't consider you worth the effort."
The chamber was very quiet.
"Kiba Inuzuka."
"I beat him! I—"
"You farted in his dog's face."
"It was a TACTICAL—"
"It was gas." Gamabunta's voice was like an earthquake. "And before that moment, Kiba was winning. He was faster than you, his taijutsu was better than yours, and his coordination with Akamaru gave him a two-on-one advantage that you had no answer for. You won because of a biological accident and because Kiba, like many of your opponents, underestimated you. Underestimation is an advantage exactly once. Once people know you can win, they stop underestimating you. And then what do you have?"
Naruto didn't answer.
"Shadow Clones," Pa said. "That's what you have. That is your answer to everything. Make more clones. Throw more bodies at the problem. And when the clones don't work — when you fight someone who can deal with clones, which is anyone above chūnin level — you have nothing. No taijutsu. No ninjutsu beyond the Academy basics. No genjutsu at all. No strategy. No fallback. You are a one-trick ninja, Naruto-boy, and your one trick is quantity over quality."
"And the Nine-Tails," Ma added. "Let's not forget that. Every fight where things get truly desperate, you rely on the fox. A power that isn't yours, that you can't control, that damages your body when you use it, and that could potentially kill everyone around you if you lose control entirely. You are leaning on a crutch made of dynamite."
Naruto's shoulders had dropped. His gaze was fixed on the table. The grin was completely gone.
Good.
"But... I still won," he said quietly. "I still beat them."
"You survived them," Pa corrected gently. "There is a difference between winning and surviving. A leaf that gets carried through a storm to the other side hasn't conquered the wind — it just got lucky. And luck, Naruto-boy, runs out."
THE HYPOCRISY
This was the part that hurt the most.
It was Ma who brought it up, because Ma did not believe in avoiding painful subjects. Ma believed in cutting them open, cleaning them out, and stitching them up properly, even if the patient screamed the whole time.
"Naruto," she said — no "boy," no diminutive, just his name, which made him look up — "tell us about Neji Hyūga."
"He's a jerk," Naruto said immediately, some of his fire returning. "He hurt Hinata in the preliminaries even after the match was over. He keeps talking about fate and destiny and how people can't change. He thinks because he's a genius and I'm a dead-last that I can never beat him. But I'm going to prove him wrong! I'm going to show him that hard work can beat genius!"
He said this with absolute conviction. Complete sincerity. Total belief.
Ma let the words hang in the air for a moment.
Then she said: "Hard work."
"Yeah!"
"Your hard work."
"Yeah!"
"Naruto. What have you worked hard at?"
"Everything! I—"
"Name one technique you have mastered through dedicated, disciplined practice."
"The Shadow Clone—"
"Which you learned in one night by reading a scroll you stole. Not through training. Through a shortcut." Ma's voice was precise as a scalpel. "What else?"
"Tree climbing—"
"Which you learned in a few days, and then never practiced again, and never advanced to water walking or any other chakra control exercise."
"I—"
"Naruto." Ma leaned forward. "Neji Hyūga is an orphan. His father was killed — sacrificed — because of the Hyūga clan's branch family system. He bears a curse seal on his forehead that can be used to cause him excruciating pain or kill him at any time, at the whim of the main branch. Despite this, he trained every single day. He mastered the Gentle Fist — a style that takes most Hyūga years to become proficient in — largely on his own, because as a branch member, he was denied access to the main family's advanced techniques. He developed the ability to use Rotation — a main branch technique — by himself, through observation and practice. He is the top graduate of his year. He earned everything he has through sweat and repetition and thousands of hours of work."
She paused.
"And you — a boy who learned his only useful technique in one night, who skipped classes, who never studied, who has not once in his life sat down and drilled a skill until it was perfect — you are going to stand in front of him and lecture him about hard work?"
The words hit Naruto like a physical blow. He actually flinched.
"You talk about your pain," Ma continued. "About being alone. About being hated by the village. And that pain is real, Naruto. We are not dismissing it. But you use it as a weapon — not against your enemies, but against the people you claim to want to save. You stand in front of people who have suffered — who have worked, who have bled, who have earned their strength through discipline you have never once demonstrated — and you tell them that you understand their pain. That your pain is the same as theirs."
"Is Neji wrong to be angry?" Pa asked quietly. "His father was murdered by his own family. He lives every day with a seal that could kill him. He watched you — a boy who barely graduated, who has no discipline, no training, no technique — stumble through fights on luck and borrowed power, and you're going to tell him that determination is what matters?"
"You are not a hard worker, Naruto," Ma said. "You are a survivor. There is a difference. You endured loneliness, and that took strength, and we respect that. But endurance is not the same as effort. You have never put in the work. You have never studied. You have never drilled. You have never sat with a technique for weeks until your hands bled and your chakra was empty and you still kept going. You have never done what Neji does every single day."
"So when you stand in front of him," Gamabunta rumbled, "and lecture him about hard work and fate and never giving up... what exactly are you basing that on? Your feelings?"
Naruto's eyes were burning. Not with anger — or not just anger. Something deeper. Something that had been buried under the grin and the shouting and the "believe it" for years.
"You tell people that you understand them," Ma said, softer now. "And maybe you do, in some ways. But understanding someone's pain doesn't give you the right to dismiss their response to it. Neji responded to his pain by becoming one of the strongest genin in your village. You responded to yours by being loud and hoping someone would notice. Those are not the same thing."
Naruto's fists were shaking.
"If you want to stand in front of Neji Hyūga and tell him that fate doesn't decide everything," Pa said, "then you need to prove it. Not with words. Not with speeches. With skill. With technique. With the kind of competence that can only come from actually doing the work. Because right now, Naruto-boy, if you fight Neji as you are... he will destroy you. Not because of fate. Because he is better than you. And he is better than you because he worked harder than you. And if you lose to him and then give a speech about never giving up, you won't be inspiring. You'll be pathetic."
The word hung in the air like a kunai.
Naruto's jaw was clenched so tight his teeth ached.
"...You're wrong," he whispered.
"Then prove it," Ma said simply.
"I WILL!"
"Not by shouting," Pa said firmly. "Sit down."
Naruto, who had jumped to his feet, blinked. "What?"
"Sit. Down." Pa's voice carried a weight that had nothing to do with volume. It was the voice of someone who had trained sages, who had fought in wars, who had lived for centuries and would not — would not — be yelled over by a twelve-year-old having an emotional moment.
Naruto sat down.
"Good," Pa said. "First lesson. A ninja does not shout. A ninja does not announce himself. A ninja does not tell his opponent his name, his dream, his plan, or his feelings before a fight. Do you know why?"
"..."
"Because a ninja's greatest weapon is information. Every word you say is a weapon you hand to your enemy. Every time you scream your attack name, you tell your opponent what's coming. Every time you announce that you'll never give up, you tell them that all they have to do is outlast you — that your strategy is to take punishment until something lucky happens. You are giving away everything and getting nothing in return."
"But—"
"Minato Namikaze," Gamabunta said, "never once announced an attack in my hearing. He appeared. His enemies died. He disappeared. That was it. No speeches. No declarations. No bright orange jumpsuit. He was a ninja, and he acted like one, and he was the most feared man on the continent because of it."
Naruto went very still.
"Your mother," Ma said, and her voice was gentler here, "was a loud woman, too. We heard stories. She was fiery. She yelled. She hit people. But when she fought — when it was real — she was silent. Focused. Terrifying. She knew the difference between who she was with her friends and who she was on the battlefield. You need to learn that difference."
"I... I have a mom?" Naruto's voice cracked.
Pa and Ma exchanged another look. This one was softer. Sadder.
"...We will tell you about your parents," Pa said. "Later. After you've earned it. Not as a reward — as a foundation. Right now, you are not ready to hear it. You would take the wrong lessons from it. First, we build you into someone who can carry that knowledge properly."
Naruto swallowed hard. Nodded.
"Now," Pa said, straightening. "Let us talk about the Academy Three."
THE ACADEMY THREE
"The Clone Jutsu, the Substitution Jutsu, and the Transformation Jutsu," Pa said, ticking them off on his small fingers. "You learned these at the Academy. You consider them basic. Useless. Beneath you."
"Well... yeah," Naruto said. "They're just Academy techniques. Everybody knows them."
"Everybody knows them," Pa repeated. "And almost nobody uses them to their full potential. Do you know why?"
"Because they're weak?"
"Because shinobi are lazy and arrogant," Pa said bluntly. "They learn these techniques as children, dismiss them as training tools, and move on to flashier jutsu. They never explore what these techniques can actually do when used by someone who truly understands them."
He held up one finger.
"The Transformation Jutsu. You use it to look like other people. Correct?"
"Yeah. And to do Sexy Jutsu—"
"We will address the Sexy Jutsu later and I promise you it will not be a conversation you enjoy. For now: the Transformation. You use it to change your appearance. But have you ever considered that you can transform into anything?"
"Like what?"
"A rock. A kunai. A shuriken. A wall. A section of floor. A puddle of water. The Transformation doesn't just change how you look — it changes your physical dimensions. You can become smaller. You can become flat. You can become a piece of the environment. In the hands of a creative shinobi, the Transformation Jutsu is the single most versatile infiltration and combat tool in existence."
Naruto's eyes widened.
"Your father," Pa continued, "once ended a battle by transforming a Shadow Clone into a fūma shuriken and having an ally throw it at the enemy. The clone transformed back mid-flight and attacked from an angle the enemy couldn't predict. He was twelve when he did this."
"That's... that's awesome..."
"That's basic," Pa said. "That's a genin-level technique applied with creativity and intelligence. And it's something you should have figured out years ago if anyone had bothered to teach you. Or if you had bothered to think."
Pa held up a second finger.
"The Substitution Jutsu. You use it to swap places with a log when you're about to be hit."
"Yeah?"
"Why a log?"
"Uh... because that's what you substitute with?"
"You can substitute with anything. A log. A rock. An enemy. A Shadow Clone. An explosive tag. Imagine: someone throws a kunai at you. You substitute yourself with one of your shadow clones — the clone takes the hit and disperses, you appear behind the attacker. Or: you substitute with a rock that you've pre-attached an explosive tag to. The rock appears where you were, the enemy attacks it, the tag detonates. Or: you substitute with the enemy themselves, so that their own ally's attack hits them instead of you."
Naruto's mouth was hanging open.
"The Substitution Jutsu, used properly, makes you nearly untouchable in combat," Pa said. "It is, functionally, a short-range teleportation technique. Your father's Flying Thunder God was, in many ways, simply a perfected version of the same principle."
Third finger.
"And the Shadow Clone Jutsu. Which you already know, and which you use by making a thousand copies of yourself and having them all charge at the enemy in a straight line."
"...Yeah."
"The Shadow Clone Jutsu has one property that makes it arguably the most powerful technique in existence. Do you know what it is?"
"I can make a lot of them?"
"No, you thundering child. Memory transfer. When a Shadow Clone is destroyed, everything it learned — every experience, every piece of information, every skill it practiced — transfers back to the original."
Naruto blinked.
"Do you understand what this means?" Pa asked, and for the first time, there was a note of something almost like excitement in his voice. "If you create a hundred clones and have each one practice a technique for one hour, you gain one hundred hours of practice in one hour. You can compress years of training into weeks. You can learn in a month what takes others a decade."
"WHAT?!" Naruto exploded out of his seat. "WHY DIDN'T ANYONE TELL ME THIS?!"
"SIT DOWN AND LOWER YOUR VOICE."
Naruto sat. But his eyes were burning — and this time, it was with something entirely different. Hunger. The look of someone who has just realized that the chains they thought were holding them down were never locked.
"This," Pa said, "is why we are angry. Not at you — although we are also angry at you, and we will get to that. We are angry at your village. At your teachers. At Jiraiya. You were given the most powerful training tool in shinobi history as your first technique, and not one person — not your Academy instructors, not your jōnin sensei, not the Hokage, not Jiraiya — bothered to explain to you how it works. They handed you a legendary sword and watched you use it as a club."
"Kakashi-sensei—"
"Kakashi Hatake taught you tree-climbing and nothing else," Ma said. "He then spent the majority of his time training Sasuke Uchiha for the Chunin Exam finals. He did not teach you water walking. He did not teach you a single jutsu. He did not correct your taijutsu. He did not explain chakra nature transformation. He is, on paper, one of the most skilled and knowledgeable jōnin in your village, and he used precisely none of that knowledge on your behalf."
"He was busy with Sasuke because—"
"Because Sasuke has a Sharingan and is fighting Gaara and is an Uchiha and there are always reasons," Ma said dismissively. "There are always reasons. Reasons are what lazy people hide behind instead of doing their jobs. He was your teacher. He failed you. End of discussion."
"Jiraiya is... complicated," Pa said, choosing his words carefully. "He is powerful. He is knowledgeable. He is also irresponsible, easily distracted, and has a fundamental inability to follow through on anything that requires sustained, consistent effort. He was your father's teacher, and your father became great in spite of Jiraiya, not because of him. Jiraiya taught your father the Rasengan. He did not, however, teach your father discipline — that came from your mother. He did not teach your father strategy — that was Minato's own genius. Jiraiya provided a starting point and then wandered off to write smut, and people called him a great teacher because his student happened to be a once-in-a-generation prodigy who would have been great no matter who taught him."
"You do not have that luxury," Gamabunta said. "You are not a prodigy. You are not a genius. You are a boy with enormous chakra reserves, a powerful demon inside you, and absolutely no idea how to use either one. Without proper training, you will not become Hokage. You will become a cautionary tale. The jinchūriki who got killed because he never learned to be a ninja."
The words were harsh. They were meant to be.
But something was happening to Naruto's face. The grin was gone — it had been gone for a while — but what replaced it wasn't despair. It wasn't defeat. It was something harder. Something with edges.
"...Teach me," he said.
His voice was quiet. Steady. No exclamation point. No "believe it."
Pa studied him for a long moment. Then he smiled — the first real smile he'd shown.
"We intend to."
THE REAL LESSON
"But first," Pa said, and his smile faded, "one more thing. And this is the most important thing we will say to you."
Naruto waited.
"You are a ninja," Pa said. "Say it."
"I'm a ninja."
"What does that mean?"
"It means I fight bad guys and protect people and—"
"No. A ninja lies. A ninja cheats. A ninja steals. A ninja fights dirty. A ninja uses every advantage, every trick, every deception available to them. A ninja does not fight fair, because fair fights are for dead people. A ninja's goal is to complete the mission and survive. Period."
"But—"
"You told us that the Academy instructors sabotaged your education," Pa said. "That they hated you because of the fox and deliberately held you back."
"They did! They—"
"Maybe they did. Probably they did. And what did you do about it?"
"What could I do? They were my teachers—"
"You could have stolen the information," Pa said, and his voice was hard now. Hard and sharp and not gentle at all. "You are a ninja. You attend an academy that trains ninjas. The entire building is full of textbooks, scrolls, training manuals, and tactical guides. The village has a library. The Hokage has an office full of jutsu scrolls that you — by your own admission — have broken into before."
Naruto's eyes went wide.
"You broke into the Hokage's office to steal a forbidden scroll on the night you graduated," Pa continued. "You successfully infiltrated the most secure building in your village, bypassed the defenses, and stole one of the most dangerous documents in existence. You did this while you were still an Academy student. You proved, on that night, that you were capable of stealth, infiltration, and theft at a level that most genin couldn't match."
"And then," Ma said, "you used that skill exactly never again."
"You could have snuck into the Academy after hours and read every textbook they wouldn't let you see," Pa said. "You could have gone to the library and studied taijutsu forms. You could have broken into the Hokage's office — which you already knew how to do — and copied jutsu scrolls. You could have watched other students train and learned from observation. You are a ninja. Ninjas acquire information through deception. It is literally the first thing they teach you. And you never once applied it to your own education."
"Because I didn't think of it—"
"Because you were too busy feeling sorry for yourself," Ma said, and the words were a slap. "Because it was easier to be angry and loud and play the victim than it was to do the hard, quiet, thankless work of fixing your own problems. The village was cruel to you. Yes. That is true. But you had options, Naruto. You always had options. You chose not to use them because using them would have required you to stop performing your pain and start working."
Naruto looked like he'd been punched in the gut. His breathing was ragged. His eyes were bright and wet and furious.
"That's not fair," he whispered.
"No," Pa agreed. "None of it is fair. The village was not fair to you. Your teachers were not fair to you. Jiraiya is not fair to you. Life is not fair. But 'unfair' is not the same as 'impossible.' You had the tools. You had the ability. You had the intelligence — yes, you are intelligent, Naruto, beneath all the noise. You figured out the Shadow Clone Jutsu in one night. You improvised tactics against Haku under extreme pressure. You tricked Zabuza during the bridge fight with a plan that was genuinely clever. You are not stupid. You are lazy. You are undisciplined. And you have been enabled by everyone around you — by the Hokage's kindness, by Iruka's protectiveness, by Jiraiya's neglect, by Kakashi's indifference — to remain that way."
Pa stood up. He was small — barely two feet tall — but in that moment, he seemed to fill the room.
"That ends now," he said. "You are a toad summoner. You are the inheritor of Minato Namikaze's contract. And we will not — will not — have another summoner who half-asses his training. Jiraiya was the last. He learned Sage Mode and never mastered it. Never mastered it. The most powerful technique we can teach, and he got it to sixty percent and said 'good enough.' We told him to keep training. He went to write books about breasts."
"He could have been the greatest sage in history," Ma said, and there was genuine bitterness in her voice. "He had the talent. He had the chakra. He had everything he needed. And he settled for good enough because he was undisciplined and easily distracted, and no one ever forced him to finish what he started."
"We will not make that mistake with you," Pa said. "You will master Sage Mode — fully. Not Jiraiya's half-formed mess. The real thing. But first, you will learn to be a ninja. A real ninja. Starting from the ground up."
"Starting now," Ma said.
"You will not shout unless we tell you to shout."
"You will not charge head-first into anything without a plan."
"You will not rely on the Nine-Tails' chakra."
"You will not use Shadow Clones as a substitute for actual skill."
"You will study. You will drill. You will practice until your body breaks and then you will practice more."
"You will learn to lie, to cheat, to steal, to fight dirty, and to end your enemies permanently when the situation demands it."
"You are not a student. You are not a child. You wear a forehead protector. You are a soldier."
"Act like one."
The chamber was silent.
Naruto looked at them — at Pa, at Ma, at Gamabunta's massive eye watching him through the window, at the assembled toads who would become his teachers, his drill instructors, his reluctant family.
Something was building behind his eyes. Not tears — or not just tears. It was the look of a foundation being laid. Of a structure beginning to rise from rubble.
He stood up. He was wearing the red cloak. His hands weren't shaking anymore.
"Okay," he said.
Not "believe it." Not "I'm gonna be Hokage." Not a shout, not a declaration, not a performance.
Just: "Okay."
Pa nodded.
"Good. Training begins in one hour. Ma is going to feed you first."
"My cooking will make you strong," Ma said, picking up her ladle with an ominous gleam in her eye.
"And if it doesn't," Gamabunta rumbled, taking a puff of his pipe, "it will at least make you tough."
Naruto looked at the ladle. Some deep instinct — the one that had kept him alive through twelve years of loneliness, assassination attempts, and Kakashi's bell test — told him to be afraid.
He was right.
But he sat down anyway.
Because he was done running.
END OF CHAPTER ONE
Next Chapter: "The Body Breaks Before the Will Does (But Ma's Cooking Breaks Everything)" — In which Naruto begins actual training, discovers that the Academy Three are terrifying when used correctly, creates three hundred Shadow Clones and makes all of them study, is introduced to the concept of "chakra nature transformation" and nearly sets Mount Myōboku on fire, and has a very uncomfortable conversation about the Sexy Jutsu.
Author's Note: Before anyone comes at me in the reviews about how Jiraiya was actually a good teacher — no, he wasn't. He taught Naruto the Rasengan (which Naruto never got to complete and had to modify), summoning (which Naruto figured out himself under duress), and that's it. In two and a half years. Goku learned the Kamehameha, flight, afterimage, combat strategy, and the foundations for everything he'd ever do under Master Roshi in eight months. Luffy trained under Rayleigh for two years and came out with Haki mastery, improved combat fundamentals, and a completely evolved fighting style. Ichigo got different teachers but each one actually taught him something specific and useful. Naruto trained under Jiraiya for two and a half years and came back with... a bigger Rasengan. That's it. That's the list. Jiraiya stans, the hot springs are that way, please leave your complaints in the suggestion box (which is a trash can, because that's where they belong).