A year and a half. Eighteen months of Mount Myōboku's strange time, though only a handful of weeks had passed in the world beyond. Eighteen months of falling into water, of bruised ribs and waterlogged clothes, of chakra control so precise it made Academy training look like child's play by comparison.
A messenger toad arrived during one of Naruto's water walking practice sessions, appearing in a puff of smoke on the shore with the kind of urgency that suggested important news rather than routine communication. It was smaller than most of Mount Myōboku's inhabitants, built for speed rather than combat, and it carried a scroll sealed with wax that bore markings Naruto didn't recognize from his distance.
"Jiraiya-sama," the messenger called out, its voice carrying across the pond. "Urgent correspondence from your intelligence network in the Fire Country. Requires immediate attention."
Jiraiya, who'd been observing Naruto's training with his usual combination of pride and constructive criticism, immediately shifted into a different mode—the spymaster rather than the teacher, the legendary shinobi rather than the perverted sage. He took the scroll with a nod of thanks, broke the seal, and unrolled it to scan the contents.
Naruto watched from his position on the water's surface as Jiraiya's expression changed. The casual amusement that usually characterized his features drained away, replaced by something harder, grimmer, weighted with implications that Naruto couldn't begin to guess at from this distance. Jiraiya's visible eye tracked across the scroll's contents once, then again, as if he couldn't quite believe what he was reading and needed confirmation.
Then something strange happened. Jiraiya went still—not the relaxed stillness of someone at rest, like someone whose mind had gone somewhere else entirely, leaving their body behind like an empty shell. His eye remained fixed on the scroll, he wasn't actually seeing it anymore, that his consciousness had retreated into some internal space where he was processing information or making calculations or confronting truths he'd rather not face.
The daze lasted perhaps thirty seconds—not long objectively, but long enough to be noticeable, long enough to make the messenger toad shift uncomfortably and Naruto stop his practice entirely to stare with growing concern.
Then, as abruptly as it had come, the moment passed. Jiraiya's expression smoothed out, the grim weight disappearing behind his usual mask of casual humor. He rolled the scroll back up with movements that suggested nothing more concerning than receiving routine updates, tucked it into his vest, and turned his attention back to Naruto as if nothing had happened.
"Keep practicing, kid!" he called out with his normal cheerful tone. "You're getting close to consistent water walking! Don't let my paperwork distract you from your training!"
But Naruto had seen that moment of grimness, that brief daze, and he knew instinctively that whatever that scroll had contained was anything but routine. Still, if Jiraiya wasn't sharing, there was probably a reason. So Naruto swallowed his questions and returned his focus to maintaining his position on the water's surface, filing away his concerns for later consideration.
The training that started like any other—Naruto standing at the pond's edge, his single clone beside him, both preparing for another day of attempts—something finally clicked.
He stepped onto the water's surface, and didn't fall through.
The sensation was different from tree walking—not the solid grip of bark under chakra-enhanced feet, but something more dynamic. The water shifted beneath him with every tiny movement, requiring constant micro-adjustments to his chakra flow that happened faster than conscious thought. It was like balancing on a surface that was actively trying to unbalance you, that required total awareness of every muscle, every breath, every fluctuation in your energy.
Naruto took another step. Then another. His clone mirrored his movements on the opposite side of the pond, both of them moving with cautious deliberation that gradually built into confidence.
"I'm doing it," Naruto whispered, afraid that speaking too loudly might break whatever fragile mastery he'd achieved. "I'm actually—"
His clone grinned wide. "We're doing it! Finally! After a year and a half of eating water, we're actually walking on it!"
From the shore, Gamakichi and Gamatatsu erupted in cheers that were genuinely enthusiastic rather than mocking. "About time!" Gamakichi called out. "We were starting to think you'd grow gills before you figured it out!"
"Can you do this?" Gamatatsu added, and proceeded to hop across the water's surface with the effortless ease of a creature who'd been doing it since birth, creating ripples that made Naruto wobble dangerously.
"Hey! Don't mess me up when I'm concentrating!" Naruto shouted, but he was grinning too widely for the complaint to carry any real heat.
Jiraiya emerged from the training area where he'd been working on his own techniques, his expression shifting from mild curiosity to genuine surprise and pride as he took in the scene—Naruto and his clone both standing steadily on the water's surface, maintaining their positions despite the ripples Gamatatsu's hopping had created.
"Well, well," Jiraiya said, unable to suppress his grin. "Looks like someone finally graduated from professional water-drinker to actual shinobi. Eighteen months, kid. Eighteen months for a technique most Academy graduates learn in a few weeks. But you did it with maybe a tenth of the chakra they had to work with. That's not just persistence—that's excellence born from limitation."
Naruto's grin widened further, and in his moment of distraction, his chakra flow wavered just slightly. The water's surface suddenly gave way beneath him and he plunged through with a spectacular splash that sent waves across the pond.
He surfaced sputtering and laughing. "Okay, so maybe I need a bit more practice before I'm perfect at it!"
"A bit more practice?" his clone called from where it still stood on the water, having maintained concentration. "I'm still doing it! Which means you can too, you just got distracted!"
"Show-off," Naruto muttered, but pulled himself back onto the surface with renewed determination. This time when he stood, he stayed standing. And this time, he knew he could do it again.
The Next Challenge
That evening, as Naruto sat drying off by one of Mount Myōboku's many campfires, Jiraiya settled beside him with an expression that suggested something significant was coming.
"You've mastered the basics now," Jiraiya said without preamble. "Tree walking and water walking—the foundation of advanced chakra control. With your limited reserves, you've had to develop precision that most jonin never achieve because they can afford to be wasteful with chakra. That precision is going to serve you well for what comes next."
Naruto looked up, interest sparking in his eyes. "What comes next? More walking exercises? Walking on clouds? Walking on air?"
"Close," Jiraiya said with a slight smile. "But no. What comes next is learning your father's technique. The Rasengan."
The word hung in the air between them. Naruto had seen the technique during the fight with Orochimaru—that spinning sphere of pure chakra that had vaporized a tree trunk, that had moved with power that seemed impossible for something that required no hand seals, no elemental nature, just perfectly controlled rotation.
"You think I'm ready?" Naruto asked, excitement and doubt warring in his voice. "I can barely make one clone. How am I supposed to learn a technique my dad created?"
"Your father created the Rasengan specifically because he understood that the most powerful techniques aren't always the most complex," Jiraiya explained, his voice carrying the weight of memory. "He wanted something that relied purely on chakra control and shape manipulation—no nature transformation, no lengthy seal sequences, just perfect execution of a single principle. In theory, it's the perfect technique for someone in your situation. You have the control now. The question is whether you have the creativity and determination to make it work."
He pulled out a small rubber ball from his pocket, tossing it to Naruto. "This is step one. The Rasengan is all about rotation—chakra spinning in multiple directions simultaneously, compressed into a sphere. This ball is filled with water. Your job is to make it burst using only chakra rotation. No physical force, no cheating. Just pure chakra control."
Naruto caught the ball, examining it with the intense focus he'd developed over eighteen months of training. "That's it? Just burst the ball?"
"Just burst the ball," Jiraiya confirmed. "Your father managed it in a week. Let's see how you do."
What followed was perhaps the most frustrating period of training Naruto had experienced since arriving at Mount Myōboku—and that was saying something given how much frustration the past eighteen months had contained.
The problem wasn't effort. It wasn't dedication. It wasn't even understanding the theory—Jiraiya had explained the principle clearly enough. Chakra needed to rotate in multiple directions simultaneously, creating friction and pressure that would burst the ball from the inside.
The problem was execution.
Every time Naruto tried to create the rotation, his limited chakra would flow into the ball and just... sit there. Like water poured into a container, present but not moving, not spinning, not doing anything useful. He'd focus harder, try to force the rotation, and his chakra would simply dissipate entirely, leaving him exhausted and no closer to success.
"It's like trying to stir water with my mind," Naruto complained after his hundredth failed attempt. "I can feel the chakra going into the ball, but I can't make it move the right way!"
His clone, working on its own ball nearby, was having the same problem. "Maybe if we both tried at the same time? Combine our chakra to make it stronger?"
They attempted that approach. Both of them focusing on a single ball, both pushing chakra into it simultaneously. The result was the ball inflating slightly from the pressure, then deflating as their chakra dissipated without achieving rotation. Not an explosion. Not even a crack in the rubber. Just... failure.
"Your father had massive chakra reserves," Jiraiya observed from where he was watching. "He could afford to brute force the rotation through sheer volume of energy. You can't do that. You need to be smarter about it. Think about how water moves naturally—it doesn't just sit still, it flows. Your chakra needs to flow, not just exist."
Naruto tried that. Tried to make his chakra flow like water, like the currents he'd learned to feel during water walking training. The ball warmed slightly in his hands, but still didn't burst.
Days became weeks. Weeks became a month. Naruto's frustration grew with each failure, each attempt that brought him no closer to success than his first try.
"Why can't I do this?" he finally shouted one afternoon, throwing the rubber ball against a tree with enough force that it bounced back and hit him in the face. "I mastered water walking! I can control my chakra precisely enough to stand on a moving surface! Why can't I make it spin in a ball?"
Gamakichi, watching from nearby, offered his perspective: "Maybe because you're trying too hard? Like, you're so focused on making it work that you're preventing it from working naturally?"
"That doesn't even make sense!"
"Doesn't it?" Gamakichi hopped closer. "When you finally got water walking, what happened? You stopped thinking about every single step and just... walked. Let your body handle the details. Maybe this is the same thing. You're trying to micromanage the rotation when you should just be... I don't know, suggesting it and letting your chakra figure out the details?"
Naruto stared at the young toad, then at the ball in his hands. "That's either brilliant or completely stupid. I can't tell which."
"Try it and find out," Gamatatsu suggested helpfully. "What's the worst that could happen? You fail again? You've been failing for a month already."
So Naruto tried it. Instead of forcing his chakra to rotate in specific patterns, he pushed it into the ball and just... thought about rotation. Imagined it spinning. Pictured the water inside churning and spiraling. Suggested to his chakra that spinning would be nice, without trying to control exactly how it spun.
The ball vibrated slightly in his hands. Then it made a sound like—
Pop.
Not an explosion. Not even a proper burst. But a tiny hole had appeared in the rubber, water leaking out in a thin stream.
Naruto stared at it in shock. "Did that... did I just...?"
"You made progress!" Jiraiya actually sounded surprised. "Not complete success, but actual measurable progress! That's more than you've achieved in the past month!"
"But it's just a tiny hole," Naruto said, deflating slightly. "It's supposed to burst completely."
"Progress is progress," Jiraiya replied firmly. "Your father burst the ball completely on his first successful attempt because he had enough chakra to simply overpower the problem. You don't have that luxury. You're learning this technique with a fraction of the resources he had available. So you'll learn it incrementally. Little hole today, bigger hole tomorrow, complete burst eventually. That's not failure—that's adaptation."
Naruto looked at the ball with its tiny leak, then at his clone who was trying the same "suggestion" approach with its own ball. "So I just keep doing this? Keep suggesting rotation until I can suggest it hard enough to burst the whole thing?"
"Essentially, yes. You're teaching your chakra how to move in ways it doesn't naturally want to move. That takes time and repetition." Jiraiya settled onto a nearby rock. "The Rasengan took your father three years to develop from concept to completed technique. You've been at this for a month. You're doing fine. Better than fine, actually. You're developing a version of the technique that works within your limitations. That's innovation, not failure."
"Three years?" Naruto's voice carried dismay. "I don't have three years!"
"You might," Jiraiya said quietly. "Time moves strangely here, remember? And more importantly—you don't need to perfect it immediately. You need to understand the principle, develop the foundation, and then practice until it becomes second nature. That's how all great techniques are learned. Not through sudden enlightenment, but through steady, persistent effort."
Naruto looked at the ball again, at the tiny hole he'd managed to create through one month of constant failure. It wasn't much. It wasn't what he'd hoped for. But it was progress. And progress, as Jiraiya kept saying, was better than nothing.
"Okay," he said, determination replacing frustration. "Okay. If it takes another month to make a bigger hole, I'll do it. If it takes six months to burst the whole ball, I'll do that too. I didn't quit water walking training, and I won't quit this either."
His clone nodded agreement. "We've got time. We've got determination. We've got—"
"—almost no chakra and a training method that might be completely wrong for our situation," Naruto finished honestly. "But we'll make it work anyway. That's what we do. We make impossible things work through sheer stubbornness."
"That's the spirit!" Gamakichi called out. "Stupid, stubborn, and refusing to acknowledge reality! The foundation of all great shinobi!"
"I'm pretty sure that's not inspirational," Naruto replied.
"It is for you!"
And so the training continued. The rubber ball with its tiny hole became Naruto's constant companion, carried everywhere, worked on during every spare moment. The hole gradually grew larger—millimeter by millimeter, week by week, progress so slow it was almost invisible but present nonetheless.
Jiraiya watched with a mixture of pride and concern. Pride because few students would have persisted this long with so little positive reinforcement. Concern because the Rasengan was supposed to be the easier technique, the foundation for everything else Minato had planned to teach. If Naruto was struggling this much with the basics, how would he ever progress to the advanced applications?
But those were worries for another day. For now, there was just a boy with limited chakra, a rubber ball that refused to burst properly, and the kind of stubborn determination that refused to acknowledge when something was supposed to be impossible.
The sun set on Mount Myōboku, and in the fading light, the sound of someone muttering "spin, damn it, spin" echoed across the training grounds. Progress measured in millimeters. Success defined not by achievement but by refusal to quit.
Sometimes, that was enough.
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