Chapter 15: The next morning
Team Seven. Training Ground Seven. Naruto spend a long moment looking at the ceiling of his apartment. He had two things to do this morning. This was the first one.
He arrived at Training Ground Seven before anyone else. The morning was pale and cool, dew on the grass, the village still mostly quiet. He stood with his hands in his coat pockets and looked at the three posts.
Sakura arrived second. She looked at him briefly, looked away. Whatever she was carrying from their last meeting at this ground she was still figuring out how to carry it. He didn't push it.
Sasuke arrived third. He moved through the tree line without sound, hands in his pockets, eyes already sharp with the particular mood he'd been carrying since the invasion — tightly wound, like something compressed and waiting for a reason to release.
He looked at Naruto once. Looked away.
They stood in silence until Kakashi dropped from the trees exactly on time, hands in his pockets, eye curved in his usual expression.
"Good," Kakashi said, scanning all three. "Everyone's here."
"Sensei." Naruto didn't wait for whatever Kakashi had planned. "I need to tell you something before we start."
Kakashi's eye moved to him. Waiting.
"I won't be available for missions for a while," Naruto said. "I've been asked to accompany someone on a mission outside the village. I've decided to go."
Silence.
Sakura frowned. "What mission? Kakashi-sensei didn't say anything about—"
"It's not a Team Seven mission," Naruto said.
More silence.
"Who asked you?" Kakashi said. His voice was careful and measured in the way that meant he already had a theory.
"Someone named Jiraiya," Naruto said.
The reaction was immediate and distinct from each of them.
Kakashi went very still for exactly one second. Then something shifted in his single visible eye — not surprise. More like pieces arranging themselves into a shape he'd half expected but hadn't known when to expect.
Sakura's frown deepened. The name meant nothing to her but the fact that it clearly meant something to Kakashi made her uneasy.
Sasuke's eyes snapped to Naruto with a focus that hadn't been there a moment before.
"Jiraiya," Kakashi said slowly. "Where did you meet him?"
"He found me," Naruto said simply. "We fought. He wants me to come with him to find someone — someone the village needs."
Kakashi was quiet for a moment. "You know who Jiraiya is."
"Apparently not as well as you do," Naruto said.
Kakashi looked at him steadily. "Jiraiya is one of the Legendary Sannin," he said. "Three shinobi trained personally by the Third Hokage. They're considered the most powerful ninja Konoha has ever produced." He paused. "The other two are Tsunade of the Slug — and Orochimaru."
The name of the third hit the training ground like a stone hitting water.
Naruto absorbed it. Rolled it over carefully. Jiraiya and Orochimaru — connected. Both trained by the Third Hokage. Both legends. Both at completely opposite ends of everything that had happened in the last months.
He kept his face still.
"Orochimaru," Naruto said quietly.
"They were teammates once," Kakashi said. He was watching Naruto carefully. "A long time ago."
Naruto nodded slowly. Filed it. Didn't close the file.
Sasuke had said nothing since Kakashi spoke. But his jaw was tight and his eyes hadn't left Naruto. Something was moving behind them — not the usual cold rivalry. Something sharper and less controlled.
"A Sannin," Sasuke said. His voice was flat. "You're going on a personal mission with a Sannin."
"Yes," Naruto said.
"What mission?" The words came out with an edge now. "Where are you going? What are you actually doing?"
Naruto looked at him. "It's confidential."
Sasuke's eyes narrowed. "Tell me the mission."
"No."
"Naruto." The name came out like a command. "Tell me what the mission is."
Naruto looked at him steadily. "It's confidential," he repeated. "Mind your own business, Sasuke."
Something snapped.
Not loudly — there was no shout, no dramatic declaration. Sasuke's Sharingan activated in an instant, red bleeding into black, and then he was moving — fast, genuinely fast, the Body Flicker carrying him across the training ground in a burst of speed.
His fist came for Naruto's face with the full force of someone who had stopped pretending this was a conversation.
Kakashi was between them in a heartbeat, one hand catching Sasuke's wrist, the other flat against Naruto's shoulder.
"Enough," Kakashi said.
Sasuke's jaw was clenched so tight the muscle in his cheek jumped. His Sharingan burned. "He knows something and he's keeping it from us deliberately—"
"It's a confidential mission," Kakashi said. "He doesn't have to tell you anything."
"He's going with a Sannin and we don't know why—"
"Kakashi-sensei."
Naruto's voice was quiet. Kakashi turned slightly.
"Let him go," Naruto said.
Kakashi looked at him.
"Let him go," Naruto said again. "I want to settle this."
Sakura made a sharp sound. "Naruto, don't—"
"Let them," Kakashi said.
Sakura stared at him.
"One condition," Kakashi said, looking between them both. "No killing. No permanent damage. No Chidori, no First Gate equivalent. This ends when one of you can't continue or yields." He looked at Naruto then Sasuke. "Understood."
"Understood," Naruto said.
Sasuke rolled his wrist free of Kakashi's grip. "Fine."
Kakashi stepped back.
Sakura pressed herself against the nearest post, arms wrapped around herself, watching with an expression that couldn't decide between anger and fear.
Naruto looked at Sasuke across the training ground. The Sharingan was fully active — both eyes, two tomoe each, spinning slowly. Red and cold and calculating.
Naruto's hands came out of his pockets.
"Whenever you're ready," he said.
Sasuke moved first.
Body Flicker — crossing half the ground in an instant, appearing to Naruto's left with a spinning kick aimed at his ribs.
Naruto swayed back. The kick clipped air a centimeter from his coat.
He didn't counterattack. Just moved — stepping out of the follow-up, reading the pattern. Sasuke's taijutsu was sharp and clean, every combination carrying a logic. Lee's copied speed in the footwork, Kakashi's structure visible in the upper body.
Sasuke pressed forward. A four-hit combination — high, low, hook, knee — each transition fluid and fast.
Naruto deflected two, ducked the third, sidestepped the fourth. Reading the rhythm. And the Sharingan knew it — tracking everything, cataloguing every response, building a real-time map.
He's copying me, Naruto noted. Everything I show him becomes his. That's the Sharingan problem.
He changed rhythm deliberately. Where he'd been moving in straight lines he started cutting sideways — the low animal movement from the Forest of Death, weight low, no wasted vertical motion. Not kata. Not learned. Pure instinct with no pattern for the Sharingan to lock onto.
Sasuke adjusted — fast, the Sharingan compensating by reading micro-movements instead. He caught Naruto with a clean palm strike to the shoulder, sending him back two steps.
Naruto absorbed it. Rolled his shoulder. First real contact.
Sasuke's hands moved into seals.
Fire Style: Phoenix Flower Jutsu.
Six small fireballs in a spread pattern — and Naruto caught the glint of metal inside each one. Hidden shuriken wrapped inside the fire. The flames obscured the weapons until they were already inside your guard.
Naruto's hands moved. Six chakra constructs shot from his fingers — pure chakra shaped into thin razor lines, invisible against the morning light, each one threading through the air and catching a shuriken mid-flight, yanking it off trajectory. Four fireballs he sidestepped. Two caught his sleeve, scorching the fabric.
He snapped the captured shuriken back — using the chakra constructs to redirect them at angles Sasuke's Sharingan couldn't have predicted from their original flight paths. The weapons came from directions that made no physical sense.
Sasuke's Substitution Jutsu triggered instantly. Log. Repositioning.
Fire Style: Great Fireball Jutsu.
The full clan technique. A sphere of fire that consumed the center of the training ground and left scorched black earth in its wake.
Naruto was above it. He'd read the seal sequence from the first motion and launched upward, chakra-sticking to a high branch, looking down through the smoke.
Sasuke looked up. Sharingan locked on immediately.
Naruto dropped.
Fast — not First Fang, just his own speed sharpened with chakra — driving both feet toward Sasuke's guard.
Sasuke activated Shadow of the Dancing Leaf — rising to meet him, getting underneath, trying to set up the aerial sequence.
Naruto twisted mid-air. Not the response the Sharingan had mapped. He got a foot on Sasuke's shoulder and used him as a launching platform — pushing off sideways, flipping clear, landing in a low crouch.
Sasuke landed and turned in the same motion.
Lion's Barrage.
Already in it — the copied Lee sequence, multiple rapid strikes designed to elevate and then drive the opponent into the ground. Genuine Lee-level footwork driving it. Fast.
Naruto took the first hit — a glancing shot to the jaw that snapped his head sideways. He let it happen because stopping it cleanly would have cost him position. Went with it instead, rolling backward through the momentum, converting impact into distance.
He came up with blood on his lip.
Touched it.
His eyes moved back to Sasuke. Something shifted in them — not anger. The thing underneath anger. The thing that had been in the forest for three weeks hunting alone in the dark.
The predator noting that the prey had drawn blood.
Sasuke saw it. His Sharingan locked onto Naruto's eyes and for the first time since the fight started something that wasn't calculation moved across his face.
Something uncertain.
Naruto smiled. Thin. Not warm.
He made ten shadow clones.
No hand signs. Just — ten, erupting across the training ground in the hunting formation, each moving with the non-telegraphed animal rhythm that had no pattern for the Sharingan to map.
Sasuke tracked them all. Rotated his stance, reading approach vectors, calculating.
The clones didn't rush. They spread and began connecting chakra constructs between themselves — anchor lines, crossing threads of pure energy, a web building while they moved. Not static. Dynamic. The web shifted and breathed with the clones' movement.
Sasuke read it. Launched a Phoenix Flower volley at the anchor points — breaking three lines, bursting two clones.
Eight clones. The remaining web reconfigured instantly. The geometry adapted — three weeks of work with Anko meant the system wasn't dependent on fixed points.
Sasuke's jaw tightened. He wove seals faster — the whole system needed to be overwhelmed at once, not dismantled piece by piece.
Fire Style: Great Fireball Jutsu.
The fireball filled a third of the training ground. Six clones burst in the wave of heat and fire. The web dissolved.
Two clones. Plus the real one.
In the smoke and heat Naruto was already moving — using the visual cover to close distance, moving through the smoke with eyes shut, instincts guiding him. The Sharingan needed line of sight. Smoke was the equalizer.
He came out of the smoke directly behind Sasuke.
Chakra constructs erupted from both hands — eight lines of pure energy, four per hand — aimed at wrists and ankles simultaneously.
Sasuke's Sharingan snapped around. Half a step too slow.
The constructs caught. Both wrists. One ankle. Locked.
Naruto pulled.
Sasuke hit the ground on his back hard, held spread. He immediately flooded chakra into his body — the Curse Mark flared at his neck, black spreading like cracked earth across his skin, power surging against the restraints—
"I wouldn't," Naruto said quietly.
He was crouching beside Sasuke, constructs held, expression completely calm. His eyes were their normal blue — no First Fang, nothing activated. He hadn't needed any of it.
"Kakashi said no First Gate equivalent," Naruto continued. "Curse Mark level one qualifies. Use it and this stops being a spar."
Sasuke's Sharingan burned up at him. The black marks held at the edges — power fighting to release.
The training ground was silent.
Then slowly, reluctantly, the Curse Mark receded. The black faded. Sasuke didn't look away.
Naruto released the constructs and stood.
He looked down at Sasuke for a moment — not with triumph, not with contempt. Something more honest than either.
"I know what this is really about," Naruto said quietly. Just to Sasuke. "It's not the mission."
Sasuke sat up slowly. Said nothing.
"You're scared," Naruto said. "Not of me. Of the gap. Of what it means that it's real and growing and you can't close it by training harder alone." He paused. "I understand that. I was on the other side of it for years." He let that sit. "But I'm not your enemy. I never was."
Sasuke's jaw was tight. His eyes still red.
"When I come back," Naruto said, "we fight properly. Both of us. Full capacity. A real fight." He met Sasuke's eyes. "That's a promise."
He picked up his coat, shrugged it on, and turned to Kakashi.
"I'll check in when I can," he said.
Kakashi studied him for a long moment. Something old and careful in his eye.
"Be careful," Kakashi said.
Naruto nodded.
He glanced at Sakura. Still against the post, arms around herself, the performance completely gone. Just her face, unguarded.
He gave her a small nod. She returned it.
He walked into the trees.
He found Anko exactly where he expected — in the mission office, feet up on the desk, working through a stack of B-rank reports with the aggressive efficiency of someone who genuinely enjoyed paperwork and would never admit it.
She looked up when he came through the door. Her eyes moved across him — the scorch on his sleeve, the split lip, the easy way he was carrying himself anyway.
"Training Ground Seven?" she said.
"Sasuke."
"Mm." She went back to her report. "Did you win?"
"Yes."
"Good." She turned a page. "You look terrible."
"It's a split lip."
"It's a split lip and a scorched coat." She set the report down and looked at him properly. Eyes doing the assessment thing — cataloguing, calculating — but underneath it something more personal. "Sit down. You're blocking my light."
Naruto sat in the chair across the desk. "I'm leaving today."
"I know." She pulled a new report from the stack. "Jiraiya. Going to find someone for the village." She said it the way she said most things — direct, without drama. She was a shinobi. Shinobi went on missions. This was a mission.
"You're not going to tell me to be careful?" Naruto said.
"You're going with one of the three strongest shinobi Konoha has ever produced," Anko said. "If you need me to tell you to be careful on that mission you're a lost cause."
Naruto watched her work through the report for a moment. "You're not worried."
"I didn't say that." She turned another page without looking up. "I said you're going with a Sannin. Those are different statements."
She set the report down and leaned back in her chair, looking at him with the particular expression she used when she was deciding how much of something to let out.
"You're ready for this," she said. Flat and factual — not comfort, just assessment. "Three weeks ago maybe not. Now you are." She paused. "Jiraiya will push you in ways I can't. There are things he knows that I don't." Something moved across her face briefly. "I hate that. But it's true."
"You're the reason I'm ready," Naruto said.
"Obviously," Anko said without missing a beat. "Keep up."
Naruto almost smiled.
She reached into her desk drawer and pulled something out — set it on the desk between them without ceremony. A small sealed scroll, compact and worn at the edges. The kind that had been used before and mattered because of it.
"Trap designs," she said. "The ones I never finished teaching you. Geometry based — they work with your chakra constructs, not against them." She tapped the scroll once. "Study them on the road. The principles are in there. You'll figure out the applications yourself." A pause. "You're better at that part than I am anyway."
Naruto picked it up. The scroll had weight to it — not physical weight but the kind that came from knowing something had been carried for a while before being given away.
"Thanks," he said.
"Also." She leaned forward, elbows on the desk, chin resting on her folded hands. The smirk that appeared was the particular one — the dangerous one, the one she deployed when she was about to enjoy herself at his expense. "Try not to get too attached to whatever women you meet on the road. You're not charming enough yet to handle the consequences."
Naruto stared at her. "I'm thirteen."
"In two months," she said. "Which explains the tactical naivety." She tilted her head. "Though I will say—" Her eyes moved over him once, slow and deliberate, the kind of look designed to make the recipient acutely aware of being looked at. "The coat does things for you. I'll give it that."
"You picked the coat," Naruto said flatly.
"I know." Her smirk deepened. "Excellent taste."
He pointed at her. "You're the worst."
"And yet here you are, visiting me before you leave." She spread her hands. "What does that tell you?"
He looked at her for a moment. The smirk was there — always there — but underneath it the same thing that was always underneath it. The thing she expressed through showing up with bread and brutal sparring sessions and a permission slip signed without reading and a worn scroll left in a desk drawer.
"Stay out of trouble," he said.
"Absolutely not," she said.
He stood. Tucked the scroll inside his coat next to the Animal Instinct scroll — both of them sitting there together, which felt right in a way he didn't examine too closely.
He was at the door when she spoke again.
"Hey."
He stopped. Looked back.
She was still leaning on her elbows, still wearing the smirk, but her eyes were direct in a way that cut through the performance entirely.
"Guy's framework," she said. "Every day. Even on the road. Even when something else comes up." She held his gaze. "Don't skip it."
"I know," he said.
"And the Second Fang—"
"Only when I'm fully recovered," he said. "I know that too."
She studied him for a moment. Then nodded once — the small tight nod that was her version of something much larger.
"See you when I get back," he said.
"You'd better," she said.
He walked out.
Behind him, through the door he'd left slightly open, she looked at the stack of reports for a long moment without reading any of them.
Then she picked up the next one and got back to work.
Jiraiya was at the gate.
Of course he was — leaning against the post with Icha Icha open in one hand, looking for all the world like someone with nowhere to be and entirely pleased about it. He looked up when Naruto arrived, clocked the split lip and scorched sleeve in one sweep, and raised an eyebrow.
"Productive morning?" he said.
"Team meeting," Naruto said.
Jiraiya looked at him for a moment with the expression that appeared briefly and was then filed away. Then he closed the book, tucked it into his coat, and straightened off the post.
"Ready?" he said.
Naruto looked back through the gate. Konoha in the morning light — the rooftops, the Monument, the mission office three streets in. All of it exactly as it was. All of it slightly different than it had been.
He turned away from it.
"Yeah," he said. "Let's go."
They walked through the gate together — the Sannin and the predator — and the road opened up ahead of them into whatever came next.