And Desert You

Jiraiya, stemming the blood pouring from his nose, handed Naruto a seal inked onto a piece of paper.

“Try to work out what this does, Naruto. Take as long as you want.”

Naruto frowned. “But I don’t know anything about seals.”

“The Uzumaki family tends to have a knack for them. I’m just checking whether you’ve inherited that. Have a look at it while I brief these two.” He waved his hand at Temari and Sakura, who were staring at the pile of scrolls the Toad Sage had dumped in front of them once he had been briefed on the time loop.

“Okay…” Naruto held the paper at arm’s length, squinting in an attempt to discern what secrets the scribbles contained.

Jiraiya clapped his hands together, turning to the two women. “So!” He said. “You need my boundless knowledge and intelligence to seal a botched jinchuriki. The real question is whether you want to know anything else.”

“Ugh, no.”

“Absolutely!”

Sakura and Temari looked at each other, confused at the other’s statement.

“We don’t have time to learn the basics, Pinkie, we’ve gotta get through this fast!”

“We’ve got enough time to learn both, Temari! Where’s your passion for knowledge?”

“The only knowledge I need is how to put my fist through someone’s face. And I’m plenty passionate about that.”

“Okay, how about this.” Jiraiya stepped into the middle of the argument. “We start with the rundown on how to fix a seal. Once that’s done, I’ll use it to teach you,” he pointed at Sakura, “the basics. You can just keep practising what you need.” The two girls nodded grudgingly. “How’re you going, Naruto?”

Naruto, who had barely moved since he’d started examining the seal, blinked out of his focus. “Oh- I- uh…” He stepped closer to Jiraiya, gesturing at specific parts of the paper. “I think it’s a teleporter. This bit here is like an arrow pointing away from here, which is like a hole, but not in the paper.” He scratched his head with his free hand. “More like a hole in space? Or something? So you find the arrow, follow it through the hole, and end up wherever the seal is. I don’t really know how to find the arrow from somewhere else, though.”

Sakura stared at the seal, confused. There were five other lines that looked practically identical to the one Naruto had pointed out. “I don’t know, Naruto.” She tried to be as gentle as she could. “It looks more like a storage seal to me…”

Jiraiya laughed heartily. “You’re an Uzumaki, all right. You’re completely correct, though Sakura here isn’t too far off the mark herself. That’s the signature technique of the fourth Hokage, though this seal is the one the second used. It’s a space-time technique where you create a dimensional void, with completed seals being the exit points.” A wistful look entered his eye. “Kushina explained it the same way you did, Naruto.”

“Kushina?”

Jiraiya shook off his nostalgia. “The fourth’s wife. She was an Uzumaki as well. Helped Minato really evolve the technique. Here.” He handed Naruto a three-pronged kunai. “This has Minato’s version on it. Tinker around until you think you’ve got something that works. Ask me if you get stuck. And Naruto, this is very important.” Jiraiya held fierce eye contact with his pupil. “Do not test it on anything except shadow clones. Normally, you’d die. In your case, it’ll just be incredibly painful and reset the loop. Which will probably earn you one hell of a chewing out from Temari.”

“Got it!” Cheerful grin on his face, Naruto scampered off, conjured a shadow clone, and watched it disappear into smoke the moment it tried to use the seal. He scratched the back of his head in confusion.

“Is it really that hard to learn?” Sakura asked.

“Every seal of the technique is personal, which means you need to be either an Uzumaki or a seal master to work it out. You also need to be overconfident, gung ho, or just not care whether you live or die to trial the seals. Shadow clones are still you, so they’re only willing to die as much as you are.” He crossed his arms, considering Naruto’s attempts. “If you aren’t aware of the danger, you die screaming. If you’re aware of the danger and still willing to try it, then you’re overconfident, gung ho, or suicidal enough not to use a shadow clone to check. So, you die screaming.”

Sakura shivered. “Is Naruto going to be okay?”

Jiraiya threw his head back and laughed. “He has the greatest teacher in the world! Of course he’ll be fine. And if he does atomise himself, I’m sure I’ll be willing to help out next time around.”

“That’s not how you do that, Temari.” Sakura was filling up a scroll with postal-stamp sized copies of the stabilising seal Jiraiya had shown them. He’d opted against the five-elements seal that Orochimaru had used, providing a far more versatile alternative.

Temari was filling hers faster, drawing her seals larger so that she wouldn’t have to draw as many, and had started adding a small loop to the final stroke of the seal. “Shut it, Pinkie. It looks better this way.”

“If it were meant to be that way, then the Pervert would have taught it to us like that! Just follow instructions.” A vessel bulged in Jiraiya’s forehead.

Temari waved dismissively. “It’s just a circle, lighten up. The rest of the seal is the same.”

Jiraiya sighed. “Sakura, the prescribed method is not the only way to do things. Sticking too closely to tradition will stunt your growth, and leaning into intuition is the best way to make sure you don’t screw up under pressure.” Temari stuck her tongue out, and Jiraiya turned to her. “Temari, letting that become habit will unlock the seal, killing your brother and unleashing the tailed beast sealed within him. Tradition may be stale, but it’s tried and tested. Understand the basics before you branch out.”

He turned to head over to Naruto, and the two girls shared a glance.

“Stupid old geezer.” Temari grumbled. “What does he know, anyway?”

“Yeah.” Sakura commiserated. “I bet he wouldn’t say that if the Hokage were standing behind him.”

They looked at each other, eyes narrowed, but only held eye contact for a few seconds before returning to their work. Temari’s seals, however, suddenly seemed to be lacking the extra flair they had been showing. Sakura, on the other hand, began letting every tenth seal deviate from the printer-like consistency she’d been showing up to that point.

Jiraiya began wading through the thick smoke that surrounded Naruto’s training. Clones were disappearing at such a prodigious rate that a perpetual haze had begun surrounding him, an ephemeral mausoleum to the perished Narutos.

The original Naruto was sitting in front of a large scroll, doodling a complex array of swirls and lines with an ink-soaked brush. Periodically, he would summon another couple of clones to add to the smog.

Jiraiya stared long and hard at the scroll, but couldn’t even begin to discern what his pupil’s angle of attack was. He squatted down next to the intently focused man, staring a moment longer at the scroll before speaking.

“So what’s the plan, then?”

Naruto looked up at him absent-mindedly. “Keep going ‘til it works, I guess. I’m trying to work out better ways, but it’s…” He looked down helplessly. Jiraiya realised there may be less of a method to the madness scribbled on the scroll than he’d thought. Only about half of the scrawlings remotely resembled known seals. That hardly meant it was useless, many a new seal had been discovered in the idle doodling of a Uzumaki. But in the interests of learning the hiraishin as quickly as possible, it was probably better that Jiraiya actually gave some guidance.

He squatted next to Naruto, waving away a little of the pervasive haze. “Very well, I shall bestow some of my limitless sealing knowledge onto you.” Naruto looked up with far more focus. “Most places, they’ll tell you that sealing comes down to a set of rules. Basic seals that direct chakra in different directions, which if you understand well enough you can chain together into nice, predictable outcomes, once you use a little trial and error. The Uzumakis taught it differently. In fact, when I mentioned that way of thinking to Kushina, she outright laughed at me. The way that makes sense to Uzumakis, and the greatest of seal masters, is that these are a language. One that lets you talk directly to the universe. The better you are at talking, the better you’ll be at seals. Normal seals are basically a legal contract, a long string of directions that leave no room for interpretation. Uzumaki seals are more like a letter from a friend. Shorter, easier, and just generally better at communicating what needs to happen. Are you following?”

“So like the difference between reading a textbook and Sakura explaining the textbook to me?”

“Sure. That, I guess. The point is, you don’t really need all the rote memorisation I’m using with Sakura and Temari. Instead, you’re going to be learning the language from the best place I can think of.” Jiraiya grabbed a storage scroll and let a large array of books fall to the floor. “These are Kushina’s books. Uzumaki ones, and full of her notes. If you have any questions, just come ask me.”

“Oh, uh, thanks, Pervy Sage.” Jiraiya was struck with an intense nostalgia at the expression on Naruto’s face. Kushina always wore the same one whenever someone gave her a book. Mild disgust, mixed with a stubborn unwillingness to return a gift given.

As the Sage strolled back to his other two students, Naruto looked down at his new texts. “Ugh,” he muttered, “I can’t believe Jiraiya gave me textbooks. If I’ve got to learn a language, can’t I just speak it instead of reading a glorified dictionary?” He flipped open the closest book to the first page and saw, in rather messy handwriting, a note from the previous owner.

Ugh. It said. I can’t believe Mum gave me textbooks. If I’ve got to learn a language, can’t I just speak it instead of reading a glorified dictionary?

Okay, so maybe this wouldn’t be the worst thing he’d ever read.