"I don't remember much," Naruto said, his voice still a little hoarse from days of sleep that had been closer to coma than rest. He sat cross-legged on the damp stone near the pond where they'd gathered for this debriefing, hair messy and sticking up in directions that defied gravity, face still streaked with drying mud from the toad transport gone spectacularly wrong. His hands rested on his knees as he frowned in concentration, trying to pull coherent memories from what felt like a nightmare that had already started fading.
Naruto washed up in the nearby pond, then made his way over and sat down on a stone beside where Fukasaku and Jiraiya were standing. Naruto started explaining—
"I did what Fukasaku-sama told me to do. I went in there and faced them—those two fox demons behind the gates. Orange one on the left, black one on the right, both of them massive and angry and looking at me like I was a roach." He paused, his expression troubled. "I told 'em to stop messing with my chakra. Told 'em I needed to control it, not the other way around. That I was the one in charge of my own body, not them."
He paused, eyes narrowing as if the memories were just out of reach, like trying to remember a dream that dissolved the moment you tried to focus on details. "But after that... I don't know what happened exactly. I felt all this anger—like, really bad anger. The kind that makes you want to destroy everything. Then this sadness that came outta nowhere, so heavy I could barely stand. It didn't even feel like it was mine. "
He gave a small, humorless laugh that carried an edge of remembered terror. "Next thing I know, boom—darkness. And then I wake up to Gamakichi and Gamatatsu trying to 'wake me up' with threats of giant toad kisses and then dragging me through half the mountain. Not cool. Definitely not the kind of wake-up call I'd recommend."
Fukasaku let out a long breath, his voice carrying weight that made even simple words feel significant. "Boy, you don't realize how lucky you are. You're breathing and talking—that's already something for your first attempt."
"Though," Jiraiya added, scratching his head with an expression that mixed relief with concern, "getting kicked out of your own head hard enough to sleep for four days straight? Not exactly the kind of progress I was hoping for when we started this. That's not normal unconsciousness—that's your mind and body completely shutting down."
He gave a crooked smile that didn't quite hide the worry underneath, the lines around his eyes more pronounced than usual. "Still, you did make contact. You went in there, you faced them directly, and you came back alive. That's a start, even if it's not the start we wanted. Most people never get that far."
Fukasaku nodded, his expression thoughtful. "Let's go see the Great Sage. Gamamaru-sama's seen more of these things than any of us combined—he's been alive longer than some villages have existed. If anyone can make sense of what happened to you, if anyone can provide guidance on how to approach this differently, it's him."
The Great Sage's Words
The trip to Gamamaru's chamber was quiet in a way that felt heavy rather than peaceful. Naruto's sandals made soft slapping sounds on the stone path, each step echoing slightly in the cavernous passages. Fukasaku hopped ahead with his usual steady rhythm, his staff clicking against stone. Jiraiya followed with his hands stuffed in his pockets, deep in thought, his expression troubled in ways he was trying to hide but not quite succeeding.
The chamber itself felt ancient when they entered—not just old but primordial, as if it had existed since the beginning of Mount Myōboku itself. Gamamaru sat on his throne exactly as he had during their first meeting, looking like he might be sleeping or might be dead or might simply be existing in some state that transcended normal consciousness. With someone that ancient, it was genuinely hard to tell.
When they approached, one eye creaked open with visible effort, cloudy with age but somehow still sharp, like it could see through everything—through their bodies to their souls, through the present moment to all possible futures.
Fukasaku bowed slightly, his normally casual demeanor shifting to genuine respect. "Gamamaru-sama, this here's Naruto —though you met him briefly before. He tried to face the foxes sealed inside him, both parts of it at once, and got thrown out violently enough to be unconscious for four days. We were hoping you might have some insight into what happened and how we should proceed."
The Great Sage was silent for a long moment that stretched uncomfortably, his single open eye fixed on Naruto with an intensity that made the boy want to squirm but he forced himself to remain still. Then, in a voice that seemed to echo from somewhere far away, from depths of time that normal minds couldn't comprehend, he said:
"The child of prophecy stands between salvation and destruction, between light and darkness, between the world's end and its salvation. The power within him will either save everything... or end it."
Jiraiya frowned, his patience with cryptic pronouncements clearly wearing thin. "We've heard that before, old man. Multiple times now. We need more than riddles and vague warnings. How do we help him control what's inside him? What specific steps should we take? What training methods will work when he can barely maintain his own chakra?"
Gamamaru's eyes drifted toward Naruto, and for just a moment something that might have been pity. "You can't. The external help stops here. The boy must walk that path alone. No one can guide him where he has to go—not even you, Jiraiya. Not even the wisest sages or strongest shinobi. The two beasts within him... they are part of his trial. His heart will decide which one wins. His choices will determine which path he walks. And no amount of training or wisdom from others can change that fundamental truth."
Naruto's fists clenched, knuckles white with tension, but instead of the fear or despair that Jiraiya half-expected, his voice was steady when he spoke. "So it's up to me, huh? No one else can fix it. No technique or seal work or sage wisdom is gonna solve this problem. Fine. Then I'll do it myself. I'll figure it out. No matter how long it takes, no matter how many times I get knocked down, I'll keep getting back up until I find the answer."
Jiraiya's lips twitched in a small smile, pride mixing with worry in his expression. "That's the spirit, kid. But don't go forgetting—sometimes figuring it out means learning when not to charge in headfirst. Sometimes the smart move is patience, is preparation, is waiting for the right moment instead of just attacking every problem with brute force."
Naruto shot him a quick grin that carried echoes of his old self beneath the weight he'd been carrying. "Heh, can't make promises about that, Pervy Sage. Charging in headfirst is kind of my style."
Six Months of Stubborn Training
What followed was nothing short of madness—or brilliance, depending on who you asked and what their definition of sanity looked like.
The revelation of Naruto's chakra limitations had become painfully clear within the first week after he'd recovered from his unconsciousness. Where before he could create hundreds of shadow clones—a technique that should have been impossible for Academy students but that he'd somehow managed through sheer determination and massive chakra reserves—now he could barely manage one. Just one single, stubborn clone that mirrored his determination and frustration perfectly.
The first time he'd tried his usual mass shadow clone technique and only a single copy had appeared, Naruto had stared at it in complete disbelief. Then he'd tried again. And again. And again, each attempt producing the same result—one clone, looking just as confused and disappointed as the original.
"This is all I can do?" he'd asked Fukasaku, his voice small in a way it rarely was. "One clone? That's it?"
"Your body is rejecting new chakra, remember?" Fukasaku had explained patiently. "You can only work with what's naturally generated. And one shadow clone takes about half your available reserves. You could probably make two if you pushed it, but then you'd have barely any chakra left for actual training. One clone is actually smart—it lets you and the clone both work at reasonable capacity."
So Naruto adapted. Because that's what he did—he adapted, he persevered, he refused to quit even when circumstances seemed designed to make quitting the only logical choice.
The old tree near the pond became his battleground, his opponent, his teacher all rolled into one. Its trunk was wide and tall, bark rough enough to provide some natural grip but smooth enough that chakra control was essential.
Each morning he'd focus his chakra into his feet, sprint up the trunk with determination burning in every step, and fall flat on his back before even getting halfway up. Again and again, over and over—ten times, then a hundred, then a thousand. His back was constantly bruised from the falls. His chakra pathways ached from the constant precise control required. But he kept going.
By the third week, the tree was scarred with marks where he'd tracked his progress—kunai scratches indicating how far he'd gotten before falling. By the first month, he and his lone clone were taking turns in a system they'd developed—one resting and recovering chakra while the other trained, then switching off, sharing exhaustion and failure and tiny bursts of progress that felt monumental given the circumstances.
From a distance, hidden in bushes or perched on rocks, Gamakichi and Gamatatsu watched with increasing fascination. They'd started as mockers, making jokes about the weak human who couldn't even make proper clones anymore. But as days turned to weeks turned to months, the jokes had faded into something closer to respect.
"He's still at it," Gamakichi muttered one evening as the sun turned Mount Myōboku's impossible sky brilliant shades of gold and orange. "Every single day. Same tree. Same training. Never takes a day off."
"Think he's ever gonna get it?" Gamatatsu asked, munching on some insect he'd caught.
Gamakichi shrugged, his expression thoughtful. "He's Naruto. He doesn't know when to quit. I think that's... kinda his thing. Like, his defining characteristic or whatever. Some people are naturally talented. He's naturally stubborn."
Time passed strangely in Mount Myōboku—six months there, barely weeks in the outside world. The temporal distortion meant Naruto lived through half a year of training while his former classmates in Konoha had only experienced a fraction of that time.
And one day, without fanfare or announcement, Naruto ran up the tree and didn't fall. His feet stuck perfectly, chakra flowing with precision that had taken months of constant failure to achieve. He reached the top branch and stopped, hanging upside down from the underside of a limb, eyes wide with shock at his own success.
He blinked once, twice, as if waiting for gravity to reassert itself and send him tumbling. When it didn't, when he remained stuck to the tree through nothing but chakra control, the grin came—big and genuine and carrying six months of frustration finally finding release.
"Oi! Gamakichi! Gamatatsu! Look! I did it! I actually did it!"
The toads hopped out from their observation spot, actually cheering with genuine enthusiasm.
"About time!" Gamakichi laughed, but there was pride in his voice. "What's next? Water walking? That's even harder, you know!"
Naruto's grin only grew wider, confidence returning after months of feeling like he was failing at everything. "Yup. Water walking's next! And I'll master that too, no matter how long it takes!"
Water walking made tree walking look easy by comparison. The surface was always moving, always shifting with currents and wind. Too much chakra and you'd blow a hole through the water, sink like a stone. Too little and—splash—same result, just without the explosive force.
Naruto failed. A lot. He fell in so many times that he started to wonder if he'd ever be dry again. He got soaked, sputtered, nearly drowned when he hit his head on a rock after one particularly spectacular failure, and kept getting up again with the kind of stubbornness that had defined his entire training journey.
Jiraiya watched for weeks, silent at first, letting the training progress naturally. But as the weeks stretched on and Naruto's failures continued with minimal visible improvement, as the boy's exhaustion became more pronounced and his recovery times grew longer, Jiraiya finally snapped one evening.
"Naruto! That's enough! You're gonna kill yourself if you keep this up!"
He strode to the pond's edge where Naruto had just pulled himself out of the water for perhaps the hundredth time that day, pointing at the boy with genuine anger born from fear. "With your chakra this low, barely able to sustain yourself and one clone, you're pushing your body way past safe limits! You could damage your chakra pathways permanently! You could—"
Naruto coughed, water running down his face and dripping from his hair, but his eyes were clear and determined despite the exhaustion visible in every line of his body. "I know. But I can't stop now. If I stop, I fall behind. If I fall behind... I can't keep my promises."
"Promises?" Jiraiya asked quietly, his anger deflating into concern.
Naruto nodded, his voice carrying conviction that went beyond mere stubbornness into something approaching sacred vow. "To the old man. To everyone back home who's probably thinking I'm a failure. To myself. I swore I'd get stronger, no matter what it takes. No matter how long. No matter how many times I fail. I have to keep that promise."
Jiraiya sighed, his shoulders relaxing slightly as understanding replaced frustration. "You sound just like your dad sometimes, you know that? That same stubborn refusal to quit even when quitting would be the smart move."
Naruto blinked, water dripping into his eyes. "Huh? You never talk about my dad. What was he like?"
"Nothing," Jiraiya said quickly, hiding the fond smile behind his hand. "Just... take breaks once in a while, alright? Don't make me tell your grandpa's ghost you worked yourself to death trying to keep a promise to him. That would be the worst kind of irony."
Naruto grinned faintly, exhaustion making it smaller than his usual expressions but no less genuine. "Yeah, yeah. I'll try. But I'm not stopping until I get this. That's my promise too."
And so the training continued—day after day, failure after failure, each one a step forward even when it felt like falling backward. Naruto's progress came in inches, not leaps. In millimeters rather than miles. But he never stopped. Never surrendered. Never let the limitations define what was possible.
And from the sidelines, two young toads and one old sage watched a boy with almost no chakra forge strength out of sheer willpower—proof that sometimes, the greatest power isn't in what you have, but in what you refuse to give up.
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