Reborn!

38: Kidnapping the Slug

"Ne, ne, Ero-Sennin. How are we going to be looking for that lady?"

"Her name is Tsunade, and she's a gambler quite famous for losing her bets -- her fame is to the extent that she's gained a nickname," said Jiraiya wistfully. "The Legendary Sucker."

"If she's that Senju Tsunade, she will have Uzumaki lineage. So she'll look pretty young or, at least, younger than you," Naruto reasonably guessed.

Jiraiya laughed awkwardly, "Not quite... She looks my age, but she isn't the type to grow old gracefully. She does appear young, but that's due to some jutsu she has used to hide her true appearance."

Naruto feigned shock.

"The aftereffects of war?" said he, in "realisation".

Jiraiya's smile was one of melancholy. "Something like that."

"Well, rather than waiting for you to find her through your network, it'll be faster if we went someplace based on my guess. My luck has always been good, dattebayo!" Naruto quickly changed the topic.

It would be best if this was concluded before Orochimaru came for Tsunade.

Jiraiya propped his chin up with his hand.

"So where are you suggesting, brat?" he asked.

Cooperating with Naruto and going to a place he suggested would not hinder his search. He thought it was just as well that he humoured the son of his late student. The kid was supposed to be his apprentice anyway.

"Tanzaku-gai!" said Naruto, sticking out his right thumb in the good guy pose he picked up from Gai and Lee. "Trust me. She will definitely be there -ttebayo!"

"Fine," conceded Jiraiya, adjusting the ropes that strapped his luggage to his back. "Off we go, then."

ʕ•ﻌ•ʔ

"Now that I think of it, I've decided to be your master... but I haven't taught you a thing yet. How about I teach a couple of tricks to you?" Jiraiya spoke up as they stopped at a town for lunch.

"Such as?" Naruto asked, looking up from the strange fūinjutsu matrix he engraved on his hitai-ate.

"An A-rank ninjutsu..."

"You mean this?" Naruto held out his hand, palm facing up.

Five pearls of chakra coalesced in his hand, one over each finger, and swirled like moving tiny balls of yarn. The sunshine yellow chakra above each finger immediately took the form of multiple miniature Rasengans. Each one spun vigorously without interfering with each other -- a magnificent display of chakra control that most shinobi would never attain in their entire lifetimes.

"You already mastered the Rasengan?" questioned Jiraiya, incredulous.

"I had Kaka-nii teach me during our month off. I guess that would be soon before we met?" Naruto answered and, twisting his wrist, made the five spheres of spinning condensed chakra orbit around his hand.

He maintained the same perfect control over the five small Rasengans that each had the explosiveness of an ordinary one at full strength, rolling them around like toys in his hand.

It was a far cry from his former self, who initially needed both hands to control a Rasengan properly. As for the shortcut of using shadow clones to simplify the work, he only thought of that after a lot of trial-and-error. In other words, it only came to mind that such a thing would work after succeeding in recreating the Rasengan with the fruit of his gruelling training under Jiraiya's tutelage. He had shown off his creativity to Jiraiya, well aware that decreasing the difficulty of execution would make his early success more believable.