The afternoon sun over Konoha's Third Training Ground was unforgiving. It baked the dust into a fine, choking powder and turned the cicada song into a rhythmic, headache-inducing wall of sound.
Jiraiya sat in the shade of a massive oak tree, his back against the bark, a notebook balanced precariously on his knee. He chewed the end of his brush, tasting cedar wood and frustration.
Pop.
A wet, slushy explosion sounded from the middle of the clearing.
Jiraiya didn't look up. He just sighed, dipping his brush into the inkwell sitting in the grass.
"Too much torque on the left axis," Jiraiya called out, staring at the blank page. "You're trying to spin the shell before you stabilize the core."
"Right. Yes. Sorry, Sensei."
Minato Namikaze stood ten yards away, holding the shattered, sticky remains of a double-stick ice pop. He wasn't frustrated—at least, not in the loud, throwing-things way a normal teenager would be. He was staring at the melting blue slush on his hands with the intensity of a man diffusing a bomb.
He looked too clean for this kind of work. Even sweating in the summer heat, with sugar water dripping down his wrist, Minato had an infuriatingly pristine aura.
"Again," Minato whispered to himself.
He unwrapped another popsicle. The plastic crinkled, a sharp sound cutting through the humidity.
Jiraiya went back to his writing. Or, his attempt at writing.
He was stuck. The Tale of the Utterly Gutsy Shinobi was currently sitting at a dead end in Chapter 4. His protagonist, Naruto, had the power. He had the guts. He had the cool techniques. But he felt… hollow. He was a force of nature moving through the plot, knocking down villains, but there was no gravity holding him to the earth.
The romance is mechanical, Jiraiya thought, scowling at a paragraph where the hero saves a princess. It reads like a mission report. 'I saved you because it is the right thing to do.' Boring. Who saves people because of logic?
He scratched out a line. The paper tore slightly under the aggressive stroke.
Whirrrrrrrrr.
The sound made Jiraiya look up.
Minato was holding the new ice pop. His eyes were closed. In his palm, chakra wasn't just glowing; it was churning.
Jiraiya squinted. It was beautiful, in a terrifying, mathematical way. Minato wasn't just rotating the chakra; he was creating two distinct currents. One layer spinning clockwise, dense and heavy. A second layer, just beneath the skin of the plastic, spinning counter-clockwise, light and sharp.
It looked like two galaxies trying to occupy the same space.
He's a genius, Jiraiya thought, a swell of pride warring with his annoyance at the heat. He's actually trying to replicate the Tailed Beast Bomb's ratio with human chakra.
The plastic wrapper began to distend. The blue ice inside groaned.
Minato's brow furrowed. The torque increased. The air around his hand began to distort, heat waves shimmering off the friction of the chakra.
"Stabilize..." Minato hissed. "Hold the phase..."
The two currents met. They didn't harmonize. They sheared.
BAM.
The ice pop didn't just break; it vaporized. A cloud of blue mist exploded outward, coating Minato's face, hair, and vest in sticky, sweet shrapnel.
Minato stood there, blinking, blue slush dripping from his nose.
"Damn," Minato said politely.
Jiraiya snorted. "You're overthinking the containment. You're trying to force the streams to ignore each other. They have to kiss, kid. They have to want to be there."
Minato wiped his face with a towel he had neatly folded on a stump nearby. "Kissing. Right. Is that... is that a technical term, Sensei?"
"It's a literary term," Jiraiya grumbled, looking back at his notebook. "Which I would know about if I could finish this damn scene."
A vein throbbed in Jiraiya's temple. He looked at the hero's dialogue. It was trash. It was absolute garbage.
"Minato," Jiraiya barked. "Get over here."
Minato jogged over, still smelling like artificial blueberry. "Yes, Sensei?"
"Read this." Jiraiya shoved the notebook at him. "The hero just saved the girl from the bandit king. She asks him why he keeps fighting when the world is just going to get worse anyway. His answer is..." Jiraiya gestured vaguely. "...lacking."
Minato took the book. He wiped his hands on his pants first—a detail Jiraiya appreciated—and read the page. He stood there for a long moment, the cicadas screaming in the silence.
Jiraiya watched him. He saw the boy's blue eyes scan the lines, analyzing the emotional structure the same way he analyzed ninjutsu.
"Well?" Jiraiya asked. "Too cheesy? Not cheesy enough?"
Minato handed the book back. He looked thoughtful.
"He's answering with philosophy," Minato said. "He's talking about peace and cycles. But... he's alone, isn't he? He doesn't have anyone waiting for him at home."
"He's a wandering sage," Jiraiya defended. "Solitude is part of the gig."
"Maybe," Minato said softly. He looked toward the village, his eyes drifting—unconsciously, Jiraiya noted—toward the direction of the Academy dorms. "But that makes him brittle. If he fights for the whole world, he breaks when the world doesn't change."
Minato looked back at Jiraiya, his expression earnest and frighteningly mature.
"What if the hero doesn't change the world?" Minato asked. "What if the world changes because someone refuses to let him break?"
Jiraiya stared at him.
The wind picked up, rustling the oak leaves.
Damn, Jiraiya thought, the realization hitting him like a physical blow. The kid gets it. It's not about the sword. It's about the sheath.
"Anchor," Jiraiya whispered. "He needs an anchor."
He snatched the book back. "You're right. Of course you're right. Go back to your ice."
Minato smiled, a small, gentle thing, and walked back to the center of the field.
Jiraiya dipped his brush, inspired. He looked at the page. Anchor.Connection.Refusal to break.
He grinned.
He wrote: The hero looked at the princess and said, 'I fight because if I die, who is going to appreciate the magnificent geometry of your...'
"Yeah," Jiraiya muttered, scribbling furiously. "That's the stuff. The readers love a rogue."
He completely ignored Minato's profound insight in favor of making the protagonist horny. It was easier to write. Less painful.
"Jiraiya-sensei!"
Jiraiya looked up, covering his smutty draft. "What? Did you get it?"
Minato was holding a new ice pop. It wasn't exploding yet. It was vibrating, a high-pitched hum radiating from his palm. The blue light was fierce, swirling in a tight, contained storm.
"I think I have the rotation," Minato shouted over the noise of the chakra. "I just need to name it! I've been thinking!"
"Oh no," Jiraiya muttered.
"When I figure this out," Minato yelled, his face lighting up with genuine excitement, "I'm gonna call it the Super Ice Pop Inspired Nimbus Jiraiya Twin Whorl Sphere!"
Jiraiya stared at him.
The silence stretched for three seconds.
Then Jiraiya threw his head back and laughed. It wasn't a chuckle; it was a snort-laugh, loud and ungraceful.
"The what?!" Jiraiya wheezed, wiping a tear from his eye. "Kid, you can't be serious! That's a mouthful even for me!"
Minato's smile faltered. He looked down at the swirling ball of energy, then back at his teacher, his cheeks flushing pink.
"It... it is?" Minato asked, sounding genuinely crushed. "I thought the 'Nimbus' part gave it gravitas."
"It gives it a headache!" Jiraiya laughed, slapping his knee. "Stick to the math, Minato. Leave the poetry to me."
Minato chuckled, a shy, embarrassed sound. He looked at the jutsu in his hand, his eyes softening.
"Right," he said. "Maybe something simpler."
He focused. The blue light intensified. The two galaxies inside the plastic shell spun faster, tighter, yearning to connect.
POP.
The plastic surrendered.
Minato sighed as another cloud of blueberry slush exploded in his face.
"Don't worry," Jiraiya called out, opening a fresh page. "We've got all summer. And I've got a budget for a lot more ice."