Welcomed Second Chance by Darashiko

Chapter 7: Tanabata Is Coming

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto. It belongs to Kishimoto-sensei.

OxoxO

'SPLAT'

My frustration reached a new height as for the 13th time, a water balloon popped against my face after it hit me. Luckily this time it contained water. The 12 ones before this didn't have only water. There were paints, glue and glitter.

"Dodge faster, moron!" Jiraiya howled as he retrieved another balloon from his pouch. He was enjoying this training too much because he wasn't at the receiving end.

"Well, I think I am getting better at it." I shot back as I ducked under the first balloon he shot at me and dived left to dodge the next one.

Today, Jiraiya has decided to teach me the value of dodging. As if I didn't know. Even though I never went to any martial art lesson, I knew that you should always know how to dodge because it saves your teeth more than you can count.

So to save my face being painted with various shades of various colors, glue and glitter, I have been dodging the balloons for last 20 minutes. My reaction time is decreasing with every balloon that grazed my face.

My training continued for another hour. I wasn't allowed to use any jutsu the whole time. But I wasn't unhappy with it.

"Kid, how is your replacement jutsu coming along?" Jiraiya asked as he offered me his water bottle.

"I can't say if it's a development or not. 5 of my shadow clones trained for 10 hours non-stop in that jutsu. I think the clone-in-charge could do the jutsu with 2 handseals towards the end. But my handseals speed isn't that fast. So I am practicing my handseals in my spare time." I answered in between taking gulps of water; though most of the water was spent cleaning my face off of glitter, glue and paint. I returned the bottle after my thirst was satisfied and my face clean enough for now.

"That's good." Jiraiya said as he took the bottle from my hand. "And how is your calligraphy coming along? Are your kanjis recognizable?"

"Yeah, the few kanjis that I can remember are recognizable now."

"That's good. Now you can write me letters that I can understand."

"I can always write in hiragana for that."

"That you can. But if you learn to write kanji flawlessly, then you can do so much more."

"Like what?"

"Like sealing jutsu."

"Sealing jutsu? Like keeping the Nine Tails inside me? Trapping a genie in a bottle?"

"Yeah, like that." I am pretty sure he didn't get the last part of my question. "Remember sealing is an art. To be the best in this art, you will have to learn to write kanjis perfectly and fast. When you can do that in, let's say 2 years, I will start teaching you this art."

"Why only 2 years?" I asked. Kanji wasn't easy to learn specially for someone like me who wasn't familiar with ways of writing in this system. To me, kanjis were still symbol akin to hieroglyphs. At least hieroglyph was easy to learn if you knew how to draw animals. But kanjis weren't pictures. They were slashes from ink brush and you have to know how many stroke you will need for a symbol and where each stroke will go. All in all, I thought it would take even longer to learn all the kanjis essential for sealing jutsu.

"Kid, you have shadow clone under your belt. I am sure you will manage." Jiraiya said as he stood up. "Now scram to your class. I have research to do."

And with a body flicker, he vanished to no doubt some bathhouse. I stood up moment later and made my way to Ichiraku's for breakfast. Jiraiya had hounded me at 5 in the morning while I was still sleeping after reading up on science books that I have managed to take home from the library. So didn't get the chance to make a clone to prepare breakfast. Sure I could go back to my apartment and prepare breakfast but stomach has already started grumbling. So Ichiraku it was.