The Senju Fortress was in a state of tense calm, which was a problem for Naruto, who was trying to build a house of cards with training kunai on the low table in the living room. The metal was too smooth and balancing them was almost impossible.
The metal tower collapsed with a dull metallic thud for the fifth time.
"Damn it!" Naruto whispered, frustrated. He punched the tatami mat with his fist. "This is impossible! It's the wind's fault!"
"There's no wind, Naruto," said Sakura, sitting on the dining room floor. She was methodically sharpening a kunai with a whetstone, and the rhythmic shing shing shing sound was the only thing breaking the silence. "It's you. You're trembling because you won't stop bouncing your leg and you're making the floor vibrate. You're going to wear a hole in the wood."
"I'm not trembling! I'm... vibrating with pent up energy!" he retorted, jumping to his feet and starting to pace in circles. "We're trapped in here! Grandma Tsunade said the Pervy Sage would come to train us today and he's already late! I want to train! He promised Anti Akatsuki training!"
Karin, who was meticulously cleaning her glasses in a corner, narrowed her eyes. Her glasses were her most prized tool after her own body, and she treated them with almost reverential care.
"I still don't understand why we have to trust that... man," she said, putting her glasses back on. "From what I know, and what I've heard around the village, he's a pervert. Lady Tsunade said he's strong, but she also said he's banned from the women's hot springs. That doesn't sound like a trustworthy tutor."
"He's a Legendary Sannin!" Naruto said defensively, stopping his pacing to point at Karin. "He's the Toad Sage!"
"And a legendary pervert," Sakura added, without looking up from her kunai. "He's the author of those awful books Kakashi sensei is always reading."
"Those books are research!"
"Right, 'research'!" Sakura scoffed. "I'm surprised Lady Tsunade is even letting him near us."
"Sakura san is right," Hinata said quietly, but with a firmness she had recently developed. She was sitting seiza near the window, seemingly meditating, but her eyes were open and following Naruto's nervous pacing. "But Lady Tsunade trusts him, so we must too."
Naruto smiled. "See! Hinata backs me up! We're going to learn amazing jutsu! He'll probably teach us to summon giant toads or something today!"
"Or we're going to learn how to escape him when he tries to spy on us in the bath," Karin muttered, putting her cleaning cloth away. "I'm prepping a pepper seal just in case. I just have to throw it and it'll blind anyone within five meters."
Sakura nodded, testing the kunai's edge with her thumb. "Good idea, Karin. I'll ready my fist. If he gets too close, I'll send him right back to Mount Myoboku."
"You guys are terrible! He's a war hero!" Naruto protested.
"You can be both," Karin replied.
"Shh!" Karin said suddenly, jumping to her feet. Her casual expression vanished, replaced by sharp concentration. "He's here. He's at the main gate. The ANBU guard at the door is giving him access. He's coming this way."
Naruto ran to the living room door, sliding it open just in time.
A second later, the living room's sliding door burst open, revealing Jiraiya in a full kabuki pose, one arm extended and the other on his hip.
"The main protagonist has arrived!" he shouted, throwing a handful of fake flower petals that seemed to come from his sleeve. "Ready to mold young minds and, hopefully, do a little research on the...!"
He stopped mid sentence and looked around the spotless living room. He blinked and then sniffed the air.
"Well, well. What's this?" he muttered, his theatrical expression changing to one of genuine confusion as he dropped the pose. "It smells like lavender. What did you do to this place? Where's the smell of stale ramen?"
He peeked down the hall toward Naruto's room, which he had already seen briefly when he visited with Tsunade, however, seeing it finished was completely different. It was clean, the bed was made, and there was no underwear thrown on the floor.
"Still impressive," Jiraiya said, more to himself, walking to the kitchen and opening the refrigerator. "And what's this? Vegetables? Milk that isn't sour? Real food?"
He turned to Naruto with an astonished look. "Tsunade described your old apartment to me, kid. She said it was a pigsty where expired milk was a decorative feature and instant ramen cups formed some kind of structural tower that defied physics."
He gestured to the clean and orderly fortress. "This... this is a Kage level improvement. Good job, girls," he said, winking at them. "You've managed to control him. Though I wonder if you haven't made him too soft."
"Hey! My apartment was great!" Naruto protested. "It had character! My room did too!"
"Naruto kun, your plant was fossilized," Hinata interjected quietly, trying not to smile. "I tried to water it the first time I saw it and the water just slid off the leaves. It was petrified."
"It was in suspended animation!" Naruto insisted. "It was going to come back to life!"
"Naruto, we found mold in your old fridge that had its own chakra signature," Sakura said, standing up and putting her whetstone away. "That's not 'character.' It's a biohazard."
"It was going to evolve and eat us in our sleep," Karin added, crossing her arms.
Jiraiya let out a laugh. "Haha, I like the redhead. Alright, enough nostalgia," he said, and his voice changed as the playful tone disappeared. "Tsunade is busy handling the lie we sold the Jonin, so she left me in charge. The Anti Akatsuki training starts now. Everyone to the backyard."
The back training yard of the Senju Fortress was huge, a vast field of packed earth surrounded by a high stone wall covered in silence and privacy seals. It was a place where one could unleash a large scale jutsu without alerting the entire village.
Jiraiya stood in the center, arms crossed.
"Alright. Tsunade gave me your files and Kakashi gave me his reports," Jiraiya said, his voice echoing slightly in the enclosed space. "The files say you're promising and Kakashi's reports say you're a coordinated disaster. The reports are trash. I need to see what you can do with my own eyes."
He looked at Naruto. "Naruto, enlighten me. What are your team's tactical abilities?"
Naruto smiled, puffing out his chest. "We're awesome! That's what we are! Sakura chan can punch anything so hard it explodes. Hinata is so fast no one can touch her! And Karin... well, Karin can heal people!"
Jiraiya blinked slowly, his face expressionless.
"...That's the worst tactical description I've ever heard," Jiraiya said, his voice flat. "And that includes Gai explaining the 'Fire of Youth' while balancing on one finger. Fine, plan B. New objective."
He pointed to the small bell hanging from his belt, a nostalgic memento he copied from his own student.
"The four of you. Attack me. You have one hour to take this bell from me. If you don't, I'll tie you to those training posts over there and eat your lunch. And believe me, my lunch is much bigger than Kakashi's."
Sakura and Naruto exchanged a look of instant panic.
"W wait?" Sakura said, taking a step back. "Lunch? The posts? That's... that's Kakashi sensei's test."
"Awesome!" Naruto yelled, taking a fighting stance. "We already passed that test once! We'll show you, Pervy Sage!"
"Almost, kid!" Jiraiya shouted. "Of course it's Kakashi's test! It's a Sannin tradition! But there's one key difference."
He paused, letting the tension build.
"Kakashi wanted you to work as a team because he wanted you to pass. He wanted you to understand the concept of camaraderie. I want to see you survive. Kakashi's test was to see if you could become genin. This test is to see if you deserve to stay alive."
Jiraiya lowered his chin slightly. "Begin!"
In an instant, the team scattered, activating the formation they had trained.
"Delta Formation! Like we practiced!" Sakura yelled.
"Got it!" Naruto replied. "Karin, find his blind spots! Tell me where to attack!"
"Hinata, take the left flank, I'll take the right!" Sakura ordered.
"I'm on it!" Karin answered, closing her eyes and extending her senses. She concentrated, searching for the fluctuation, the opening, the weakness in the Sannin's chakra network. Her face went pale.
"It's... it's huge!" she shouted, opening her eyes in a panic. "There are no openings! It's... it's everywhere!"
"Wrong, sensor!" Jiraiya's voice boomed from the center of the yard, though he hadn't moved. "A good sensor doesn't look for a 'blind spot,' they look for a 'fluctuation'! You look for intent! And right now, my intent is to be everywhere! Try again!"
"Naruto, to your left!" Karin yelled, detecting a surge of intent. "He's moving!"
Jiraiya appeared next to Naruto, who was already halfway there, a Rasengan forming in his palm. "Rasengan!"
"Slow," Jiraiya said.
The Sannin didn't even bother to block. With a single finger, he tapped Naruto's wrist. The force was minimal, but it was applied at the perfect angle, deflecting Naruto's arm and sending the boy crashing to the dirt ground, skidding several meters. The Rasengan dissipated harmlessly.
"Don't telegraph your only decent move!" Jiraiya yelled at him. "You shouted the jutsu's name before your arm was even halfway there! What's next, are you going to send the enemy a letter warning them? That only works in tournaments, kid!"
Naruto coughed up dust. "Now, Sakura!"
"SHANNARO!"
Sakura brought a chakra infused fist down exactly where Jiraiya had been a second before. The ground exploded upward in a fountain of pulverized rock and dirt, leaving a three meter crater.
"Impressive strength," Jiraiya's voice said from behind her.
Sakura spun around, but Jiraiya was already holding a calligraphy brush. With a quick flick, he drew a perfect circle on the back of Sakura's uniform with ink. "Worthy of Tsunade. But you missed."
"Grr!" Sakura lunged backward with an elbow, but she hit empty air.
"In a real fight, you'd be dead," Jiraiya continued, appearing ten meters away. "You depend too much on a single punch. You plant yourself, you charge, and you forget everything else. If the enemy is faster than you, and Akatsuki is, you're wide open. An Uchiha would have you in a genjutsu before your fist even hit the ground."
"I'm not done!" she yelled, preparing for another attack.
"Juken!"
Hinata appeared in a blue flash, her 'Lion's Heart' activated as she unleashed a flurry of thirty two strikes at sound speed, aiming for Jiraiya's chakra points.
Jiraiya didn't even seem to move. He simply swayed, dodging every strike by millimeters with absolute fluidity, his hands tucked into his sleeves.
"Top level evasion," he murmured, his eyes analyzing her every move. "Incredible speed. The Hyuga were always the best at pure taijutsu."
"I... can't... hit him!" Hinata panted, increasing her speed until her hands were just a blue blur. Her knuckles grazed his clothes, but never made contact.
Jiraiya stopped her final strike, the thirty second one, catching her hand between two fingers, halting all her momentum instantly.
"Exactly," Jiraiya said, his voice serious. "And you're not even trying."
"What?" Hinata said, her white eyes wide with surprise.
"You're striking to incapacitate, not to kill. You're too kind," Jiraiya said, releasing her hand. "Your strikes are fast, but they have no weight. You're hitting his chakra points, but you're not trying to destroy his organs. A real enemy, an Akatsuki, will ignore your pokes, take the hit on the arm, and break your neck. Counterattack, don't just dance!"
Seeing Hinata in trouble, Karin acted on instinct. "Don't touch her! Get away from her!"
Several golden chakra chains shot out, trying to trap Jiraiya.
The Sannin simply jumped back, raising an eyebrow. "Oh, the Uzumaki clan's Adamantine Chains? Interesting. I haven't seen these since Kushina. You have pure blood."
"I've got him!" Karin yelled, as the chains converged on the spot where he would land.
"No, you don't," Jiraiya said, landing softly.
He stomped the ground with one foot. "Doton: Yomi Numa!"
The packed earth ground under Karin instantly turned into thick, deep, sticky mud. The chakra chains lost their momentum and dissolved as Karin began to sink to her knees.
"No! My chakra... I can't control them! The mud is interfering!" she stammered, trying to free herself.
"And you!" Jiraiya said, walking calmly toward her, the mud not affecting him. "You have your clan's chains and a sensor's ability. You're an elite sensor with an absolute defense. Your weak point?"
He crouched in front of her, staring her down. "You're not a fighter. You're a target. You freeze the moment you're pressured."
"I'm not frozen!" Karin yelled, trying to pull her legs from the mud.
"Yes, you are," Jiraiya said calmly. "You used the chains to trap me. They were meant to hold me so someone else could attack. They're useless if you don't have the will to use them as whips in addition to shields. Kushina would have split this mountain in half with those things."
"That's enough!" Naruto yelled, recovered. "Don't mess with my team!"
He bit his thumb. "Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!"
A hundred Narutos flooded the yard, all of them running at Jiraiya from different directions.
Jiraiya sighed, a long, tired sound. "More of this. It's always the same tactic. Don't you have anything new, kid? Nothing at all? Fine."
He made a single hand seal, the Rat. "Katon: Gamayudan!"
A stream of thick, sticky oil shot from his mouth, covering half the clones in a wide arc. The oil covered clones dissolved in puffs of sticky black smoke. The rest of the clones slipped on the oil, crashing into each other and falling in a heap of limbs.
"Messy," Jiraiya said, walking through the disaster. "You waste too much chakra on a tactic that only works on idiots. What if the enemy is a Katon user? You just gave them fuel and fried yourself!"
In less than five minutes, the four genin were clustered in the center of the yard, panting, covered in ink, mud, or toad oil.
Jiraiya brushed the dust from his sleeve. The bell hadn't moved a single time.
"Not yet!" Naruto yelled desperately, wiping oil from his face. "Girls, all together! Now!"
Sakura charged, fist ready. Hinata ran to cover her right flank, trying to find an opening. Karin, still stuck in the mud, managed to form a single chain and launched it at Jiraiya's legs.
And Jiraiya disappeared.
The four of them stopped, looking around the empty yard.
"Game over," Jiraiya's voice said from above.
They looked up. He was sitting on top of the fortress wall, spinning the bell on his finger.
"Right," he said, his voice now devoid of all humor. He jumped down, landing softly in front of them. "Naruto was right about one thing. You are awesome. Awesomely bad."
"Hey!" Naruto protested, trying to get up. "We almost got you!"
"I'm not finished!" Jiraiya snapped, and Naruto shut up. "Sakura, you have Tsunade's strength, but you don't have her evasion skills or her combat medical ninjutsu. You're a front line healer, but on the battlefield, you're a single strike. If the enemy moves, or if there's more than one enemy, you're lost. You focus so much on the punch that you leave your back and flanks wide open."
He turned to Hinata. "Hinata, you have speed that rivals your father's, which means you could be the best taijutsu fighter of your generation. You have the Byakugan and the Juken. But you don't have his killing instinct. You're afraid to hurt people, I can see it in your eyes. Akatsuki doesn't have that fear. They will tear you apart while you hesitate over whether to rip out their eyes or just close their chakra points."
He turned to Karin. "Karin, you have the skills of a pure blood Uzumaki and the senses of an elite tracker. You're the perfect early warning system and your healing ability is invaluable. But you have the courage of a civilian. The moment I focused on you, the moment you felt trapped, you fell apart. You need to be the team's support, the one directing traffic, not the damsel in distress."
Finally, he turned to Naruto, and his gaze was the harshest of all.
"And you! You're the worst of them all! You're a complete disaster! You have the power of a Kage, the Kyubi's chakra, but you have the foundation of a genin. You only have two jutsu! Two! Shadow Clones, which you use as a mindless swarm attack, and the Rasengan!"
"The Rasengan is awesome!" Naruto shouted. "I took down a Root member with it!"
"That assassin underestimated you because you're a loud kid!" Jiraiya yelled, silencing everyone. "The Rasengan is an incomplete jutsu!"
The yard fell into a deathly silence.
"It's a straight line attack that leaves you wide open," Jiraiya continued, his voice dropping to an intense growl. "Itachi would dodge it and have you in a genjutsu before you even realized you missed! Kisame would cut your arm off with Samehada before you touched him! Deidara would blow you to bits from the air! Sasori would poison you before you got within ten meters!"
The weight of the Akatsuki threat settled over them, more real than ever.
"You think you're strong because you survived an invasion and an attack from Root," Jiraiya continued, his voice softer but harsher. "Akatsuki isn't Root. They are Kage level monsters, all of them. And right now, the four of you are kids playing ninja. My job is to fix that."
He crossed his arms. "Fine. I've seen your weaknesses. They're huge, but we can work on them. Now, we're going to work on the basics: coordinated teamwork. Because your current 'teamwork'... is just shouting each other's names while you do your own thing. That's not a team, it's a fan club."
At sunset, the team was collapsed against the fortress wall, completely exhausted. The mud had dried and the ink had run. Jiraiya had put them through a series of coordination drills that seemed impossible, forcing them to combine their disparate styles.
Sakura wiped the sweat from her forehead, leaving a streak of mud. "That guy... he didn't hold back. Everything hurts. I feel muscles I didn't know I had."
Karin, who had finally gotten out of the swamp, was cleaning mud from her red hair. "He's a monster. And a pervert. What a combination. But..." she sighed. "I guess that's why he's a Sannin."
"But... he was right, wasn't he?" Hinata said quietly, looking at her own hands. "About... about my hesitation. About not having... instinct."
Sakura put a hand on Hinata's shoulder. "He was right about all of us, Hinata. But he said we could fix it. Come on, let's make dinner. Tomorrow will be worse, I can feel it."
The girls limped off toward the house, leaving Naruto and Jiraiya alone in the yard, which was now filled with craters and oil.
Naruto stood there, looking at the Sannin, who was watching the sunset, the sky stained orange and purple.
"You said... my father's jutsu," Naruto said quietly, joining him.
Jiraiya didn't turn, but a small, sad smile touched his face. "I did."
"Grandma Tsunade told me everything," Naruto continued. "About him. About my mother. And I've been reading my mom's journal. The one you gave her."
"I know, kid. I'm the one who gave Tsunade that journal," Jiraiya said, finally turning to look at Naruto. "I thought it was time you knew. It's hard to protect you if you don't know from what."
"You knew my father. He was your student. Was... was he...?"
"A hyperactive idiot like you, who shouted his dreams at everyone?" Jiraiya completed, chuckling. "Yeah. Exactly. You have his same stupidity, his same stubbornness, and that same dumb grin. Though he was much smarter on the exams. A real genius."
"Hey!"
"And your mother... Kushina..." Jiraiya's smile softened. "Well, sometimes I like to pretend I've forgotten her name but, I can't deny she was something special. A redheaded whirlwind with a temper worse than Tsunade's and a habit of yelling 'Dattebane!' when she was excited or angry. You're the perfect mix of the two. You have her temper and his stubbornness."
There was a comfortable moment of silence as the last ray of sunlight disappeared.
"Naruto," Jiraiya said, and his voice was dead serious. "I'm going to train you. And it's not going to be fun. It's not going to be like with Kakashi. I'm going to break you and rebuild you, because Akatsuki is coming for you. They're coming for the Kyubi."
"I know," Naruto said, his voice firm.
"No, you don't. Not really," Jiraiya replied. "But you will. They're coming for you, and I made a promise to your father."
"What promise?"
"That I would make sure his legacy survived. And that his son would become the hero he always knew you'd be. He believed in you, Naruto. More than anyone. He saw you as the savior of the world."
Jiraiya put a heavy hand on Naruto's head, ruffling his blond hair. "Minato Namikaze was the greatest genius Konoha has ever produced. A talent you only see once in a generation. But that Rasengan... he never finished it."
Naruto's eyes went wide.
"It's an incomplete jutsu. It's missing the final step, one that not even he could figure out. He created the shape, the rotation, the power... but he couldn't add his chakra nature to it."
He turned to Naruto, and his usual mischievous smile returned, but this time it showed clear pride.
"And you, kid, are going to complete it. You're going to do what the Fourth Hokage couldn't. Now, let's get dinner. I'm starving! And then, I'll go do some research...!"
"Jiraiya sama!" Sakura's voice boomed from the house, sharp and furious. "Karin sensed you thinking about peeping on the Hyuga complex women's bath! Get back here right now!"
"Damn it!" Jiraiya whispered, his face twisting in panic. "That sensor is too good!"
He disappeared in a puff of smoke while Naruto was left alone in the yard, smiling for the first time that day.
******
[New LitRPG/Harem] My S-Class Summons Are All Too Cute!
Two years of humiliation. A territory made of toxic mud. A power level of... 10. Renn Blackwood was ready to quit the Endless World. But the System had other plans.
Class: Lord (Summoner) Status: Works for his cat (Technically).
When Renn unlocks his Troop Tower, he doesn't get a goblin or a skeleton. He summons Dimensional Royalty. Enter Lysandra (The Tsundere Princess) and Valeria (The Kuudere Assassin). They are S-Rank. They are Overpowered. And they demand headpats and tuna.
What to Expect (The Good Stuff)If you love LitRPG, Fantasy, and Harem novels, this is built for you.
📈 Zero-to-Hero Progression: Watch Renn grow from a Level 2 weakling to a powerhouse commander.
😻 S-Class Monster Girls: From cute cats to stunning humanoid forms. Featuring a Tsundere Princess and a Kuudere Assassin.
🏰 Kingdom Building: Turning a "Rotten Woods Swamp" into a thriving empire.
⚔️ Dungeons & Exploration: Venturing into neutral territories and facing the unknown.
❤️ Romance & Harem: Wholesome moments, belly rubs, and growing relationships.
🤣 Comedy: Because sometimes you just have to laugh at a guy who got beat up by a raccoon.