Naruto felt a little chilly in his hospital bedroom. He looked up to see what it was and found the window open. "Is it?"Naruto thought with a little excitement. Sure enough it was. Outside the window was a giant toad with an old, but well built 50 year old pervert that Naruto was waiting so eagerly to see. "Pervy Sage!!"Naruto said, sitting straight up with bandages covering every inch of his body except his eyes, nose and mouth.
"I prefer the term Toad Sage: The Great Master Jiraiya!!!"he said. He had white hair and two thin red lines starting from his eyes to his cheek. He wore a scroll on his back and weird clothes. "Dang, you got beat up pretty badly Naruto."
"Yeah, I'll be okay in a day or so, then we can continue my training,"Naruto replied. Even if it pained him to admit it, Pervy Sage was actually a very powerful ninja even though all he does all day is peeping at women. If he trained under him, he would be sure to bring back Sasuke. "Yeah thats it,"Naruto thought,"I couldn't bring back Sasuke because I was too weak."
Jiraiya gave out a tired sigh, sitting on the edge of the hospital window. If he looked down below, his legs were dangling about a 3 stories high from the hospital ground. His giant toad that could almost touch the sky suddenly disappeared on Jiraiya's account. "That's what I meant idiot!"
"What? That we can continue training as soon as possible,"Naruto asked a little hopeful.
Jiraiya nodded. "For you its essential." He spoke with a flat tone which meant he was dead serious.
Naruto grinned in his immature way,"Great! Now we can actually start looking for Sasuke! Hey Pervy Sage, you're old time best friends with the hokage-Granny Tsunade, right? Then that means that you cou-"
"Naruto,"he said again with that deadly serious tone. "We're going to stop looking for Sasuke."
Naruto's eyes just stood there, not sure how to react. He's been told to stop looking for Sasuke, his rival and teammate who he had a shaky friendship with, by so many people. And now his own master? "Wha?" He shook his head,"No we have to! What do you mean we can't look for Sasuke! Then whats the point of training anyway! He's been lured to the dark side by Orochimaru and your telling me that I can't save him!"
"Stop being so immature,"Jiraiya said. "Orochimaru was also my rival and former teammate. He was also Tsunade's friend and teammate, we were put together in a team like you were with Sasuke and Sakura.We didn't have the best friendship, but I didn't want to lose him."
"Then whats the problem!"Naruto was about to say, but Jiraiya kept talking.
"Until I became a jounin ranked ninja, I kept looking for him and I always fought with him to make him surrender and return to the village. Then I stopped. Nothing could make Orochimaru change his mind. Then I stopped looking at him as a lost friend, but as an enemy and a threat to the village I swore to protect my life with. So has Tsunade, up til now he never changed his mind. He's still working on his experiments and just a few months ago he tried destroying this village."
"What are you trying to say?"Naruto asked.
"Sasuke is a rogue ninja,"Jiraiya said. "The village was almost completely destroyed. Our previous hokage, my master, had died because of Orochimaru. And things are a little shaky politically in our village. Like Tsunade said earlier, she can't risk losing anymore ninjas due to the state Orochimaru's attack left out village in-"
"If we bring Sasuke back, that can change!"Naruto said.
"Idiot you need to listen more carefully to what I'm saying. This whole thing happened because of Sasuke. And thats not the only reason, Im sure you understand."
"You mean-"
"Yeah, I mean the Akatsuki. The group Sasuke's older brother Itachi is in. That guy's pretty powerful, he even rivals my power."
Naruto looked kind of shocked. "Even rivaling Pervy Sage's power?"Naruto thought.
"You know their after you, or more specifically whats inside you-the nine-tailed fox, the demon sealed inside you since you were a baby. You need to train to protect yourself, we can't have them getting the tailed beasts. We still don't know why their after them. So stop being a baby and get your head inside reality, stop with Sasuke once and for all. You can either drop him and I'll train you to survive and catch up with Sasuke, or you can keep chasing him and remain a fool for your entire life."
Naruto replied with a simple answer,"If thats what it takes to bring back Sasuke, then I guess I'll remain a fool my entire life!"
Jiraiya laughed, driven by Naruto's determination and enthusiasm,"You really are a knucklehead ninja. Two weeks, you have two weeks until we leave the village-to come train with me. Now get your lazy but up and start recovering."
"Geez, your harsh Pervy Sage,"Naruto said.
"Stop calling me that!"And with that, the Perverted Hermit left leaving Naruto with some enthusiasm.
"I better go say bye to Sakura chan,"Naruto said. "I bet she'll be happy to know im going back to save Sasuke." But the old man already left.
*****
Meanwhile Tsunade was supervising Sakura's training and was surprised with the results. "To master this much in so little time? Is she even a greater medic than Shizune?"
*****
Neji left the house outside to go train with Hinata's father. Hinata's father looked down on Hinata even uptil now for being weak, and usually praised her little sister, Hanabi over her. But his favorite was his nephew Neji, who was supposed to be the most talented Hyuuga yet, even without being in the main royal branch of the family. Hinata watched from the pillars in her house as Neji and her father, Hiashi trained relentlessly.
"Would you like to take a break Neji?"Hiashi said panting.
Neji shook his head,"No sir. I'm not tired yet, maybe after another round."
Hiashi smirked,"He's good. Too good."
Hiashi took about 10 kunai knives in each hand and threw them straight at Neji. "Rotation!"Neji said forming a sphere around himself dodging all the kunai at once.
"40!"Hiashi said taking 20 kunai in each hand.
"Rotation!"All the kunai fell at Neji's feet, with not one inch of his body harmed.
"60!"
"Rotation!"
"80!"
"Rotation"
"200!"
"Rotation!"
"300!"
"Rotation!"
"5-"Hiashi stopped throwing the kunai when Neji raised his hand. "Yes? Would you like to take a break now?" Neji shook his head.
"Sir, sorry if I'm asking too much, but... Can you raise it to a 1000 at once?"Neji said.
Hiashi stood up from his knife throwing stance and tilted his head. He nodded and threw the kunai at once.
"8 trigrams 64 palms!"Neji shouted getting into the hyuuga trigram stance. All 1000 kunai were sliced into tiny pieces. His arms were too fast to follow as he continued slicing the kunai. He panted and a tiny drop of blood fell to the ground. He missed the last kunai and it cut his arm from the elbow to the palm.
"You missed the last one,"Hiashi said harshly, but inside he was too impressed with it to believe it. "So he really is the most gifted, huh?"he thought.
"It was barely a scratch,"Neji said with his usual prideful and arrogant tone that was on par with Hiashi's.