Foxhound Chapter 1: Part 1

Uzumaki Naruto collapsed on his back, totally exhausted from the day’s practice with his sensei, the Toad Sannin Jiraiya. He’d finally mastered a new explosive jutsu, though the exercises of the day had drained him of almost all his chakra. Now that he’d learned it, they could begin working on something new tomorrow. But for now he was content to just lay here in a weary stupor. Idly he watched his breath make faint vapor clouds in the chilly, spring air.

“Hey, Naruto! Start the fire would ya?” Jiraiya yelled from his spot on his bedroll.

“Yeah, yeah… Old pervert…” Naruto grumbled and dragged himself to his feet to fetch some firewood. A pinecone bounced of the back of his head.

“Ow! What the hell was that for!?” He snarled.

“I heard that, you ungrateful brat!” Jiraiya yelled.

“It’s the truth, ero-sennin!” The blond boy yelled back, sticking his tongue out.

“Stop calling me that!” The perverted hermit in question roared.

It was a good thing they weren’t in any city, otherwise they might’ve been arrested for public misconduct (at least until Jiraiya summoned a giant toad on top of any officers dumb enough to chase him.) As it was, their bickering echoed loudly in the cool night air of the ancient pine forest they’d made camp in, with their noise only reaching the ears of the occasional startled deer. Their camping in the middle of nowhere had to do with the long term trip they were on. For the past year and a half, Jiraiya had been training Naruto nonstop in preparation for his eventual fight with Akatsuki. Akatsuki was an organization that’s composed of nine S Class missing-nins and it held some of the most dangerous people on the planet within its ranks. For an unknown reason, they had become interested in Naruto some time back and had already tried once to abduct him. Well, not exactly Naruto. They were actually after the thing trapped inside of him.

Over fourteen years ago, on the day of Naruto’s birth, an enormous nine-tailed fox demon attacked the Hidden Village of the Leaf. The monster outclassed the entire shinobi armed forces and was far too powerful to defeat. Their leader at the time, the Yondaime Hokage, sacrificed his life using an extremely powerful jutsu to seal the demon into a newborn child. Naruto was the lucky winner who received the creature and he spent the next twelve years of his life as an outcast in his own village, hated and seen as the demon itself rather than its living prison. Even crueler, he had no idea why the villagers all hated him until the day he stole a forbidden scroll from the Hokage and a traitor ninja told him the true story. He wasn’t destined to be alone forever, though, and soon after he became a genin he found people he could call friends.

Over a year and a half ago one of his closest friends, Uchiha Sasuke, betrayed their Hidden Village in a blind pursuit of power. He and Naruto nearly killed each other during his escape, with Sasuke barely emerging the victor. He defected to Konoha’s strongest enemy, the Sound Nation, to be trained by the Snake Sannin, Orochimaru. Ever since, Naruto had dedicated himself to becoming stronger not only to defend himself against the Akatsuki, but to able to protect the people important to him from any threat. He didn’t want a repeat of what befell Sasuke to happen to any of his other friends. After all, Orochimaru certainly wouldn’t be satisfied with only Sasuke when he had the whole Leaf to conquer. And so here he was, on a training trip in the middle of nowhere, with only a perverted hermit with debatable sanity as his company.

Despite being exhausted, Naruto managed to gather up enough firewood to last the night. Grumbling about lazy perverts, he set up the fire pit and summoned what was left of his chakra to ignite the pile of wood he laid into it. In minutes he was relaxing on his back near a cheery campfire, looking at the moon through the massive and shadowy pine trees all around them. The trees seemed like giant sentinels, lording over everything in their domain. His mind began to wander (as it tended to when he was relaxed) and he thought on his friends back home. He was really curious if they’d changed much in the year or so he’d been away.

Naruto had grown, not only in power and skill, but physically as well. He was still short, but at least he was taller than the girls of his class now. His face was leaner and his ribs didn’t stick out anymore (though that was less from training and more from Jiraiya insisting he eat something other than ramen as his diet.) To his pleasure, his arms were also longer. Having a greater reach would definitely be an advantage in any fight. All in all, he had the beginnings of a large, lean frame that would be perfect for his wild combat methods. He still had a ways to go though and it seemed like it would be years before he was a respectable size. He hoped his body grew in sooner rather than later. After all, who’d respect a short Hokage? (Sandaime was short, but he’d heard the man was tall when he started as Hokage, so he didn’t really think the old guy counted.)

“Hey, are you writing another of those dumb perverted books again?” Naruto asked when he glanced over and saw his sensei sitting cross-legged amongst a pile of scrolls. Jiraiya glanced up at his student and glared at him.

“For your information, no. I’m designing another scenario for you to think about,” The white haired man said. Naruto mentally braced himself for the upcoming challenge.

A few weeks after they left Konoha, Jiraiya and Naruto had gotten into one hell of an argument over his training. Naruto was whining about never becoming Hokage when the Toad Hermit finally told him to shut up and listen. He gave him a situation, where Naruto was Hokage and he had a choice between allowing a couple dozen people he’d never met to die or sending one of his friends in to save them, even if it meant his friend’s death. Naruto had gotten blustery and demanded to know what the hell that had to do with anything. Jiraiya had coldly replied that’s what a Hokage is. A Hokage isn’t a prize to be waved around, he’d continued, but a title of trust. The leader of the village has the lives of everyone in his or her hand. Did he really think he deserved such trust, the hermit had asked Naruto.

The blond genin had shut up for days after that. The swing in personality was so extreme that Jiraiya was beginning to worry he’d gone too far and crushed the boy’s dream, even if he had spoken the truth. The hermit was even about to apologize when Naruto had demanded more information on the hypothetical situation. Surprised, Jiraiya had made up a bunch of stuff of the top of his head and watch his student screw his whisker-marked face up in thought. Then he grinned and said that he’d save the people in danger himself. Jiraiya had bonked him on the head and they’d continued on their trip, but from then on the Sannin made sure to include mental exercises as well physical in his training. It wasn’t that hard for someone as creative as him to come up with new scenarios to play out, but it did mean he had less time to write his dirty books at night.

Oh well, sacrifices must be made if they didn’t want Naruto to become a dumb Hokage ten or fifteen years down the line. He just hoped the blonde twerp understood how much he was giving up for him.

During their training, Jiraiya had analyzed Naruto’s strengths and weaknesses. At times, he found Naruto capable of extreme cunning to the point of near genius. The downside was these incidents were only in combat and the boy had almost no strategic thought beyond a minute into the future. He was creative though, and the Toad Hermit encouraged him to actively use that talent with the mental exercises he made up. Naruto would probably never be able to outthink somebody in the long term, but with Jiraiya’s help he wouldn’t need to. If they could get his cunning and tactical thinking up high enough, then he’d at least be able to understand when someone else came up with a better strategic plan and use that to his advantage. If that Nara genius kept exercising his own mind, they’d be a perfect compliment to each as Hokage and Advisor. Well, assuming he ever got Naruto past genin.

Though to be fair, the boy advanced fast. It actually kept surprising him how fast Naruto was growing. If the boy was absolutely unable to do something, like strategic thinking, then that part of him changed rather slowly. But if it was something he excelled at, like chakra capacity, then he advanced in leaps and bounds. It was actually kind of weird. The boy advanced in different areas at different rates, but they didn’t seem to be slowing down. If he could make his chakra capacity double in a month, then it would be tripled in two months, quadrupled in four and so on. He could pick up certain jutsu in days, when even a genius would take longer (and Naruto was a far cry from a genius.)

The kid just didn’t seem to have a limit to what he could learn or how far he could grow. Jiraiya wasn’t sure if his mind was playing tricks on him, but in his lifetime he’d only seen that from one other person before. Unfortunately, he still couldn’t be certain about the boy’s lineage or whether he’d inherited that Bloodline. It would be interesting if it was true, but he’d need to train the boy into at least adulthood to be absolutely sure.

“So what’s the game this time, ero-sennin?” Naruto curiously asked.

“Hmm, alright, I think I’ve got it…” Jiraiya muttered while scratching his chin. He took a blank scroll and spread a good seven feet of it on the ground. Grabbing his brush, the hermit carefully covered the entire surface in seal script. It took several minutes to write it all down, even for a grand master of seals like himself. The hermit looked his work over and nodded before putting the brush away.

“Come over here, I got your exercise set up,” Jiraiya said. Naruto staggered to his feet and wobbled around the fire to his sensei. The blonde collapsed in front of his sensei, gearing his weary mind up for the challenge.

The Toad Hermit moved the scroll between them and pressed his hands on it. The script began to glow before floating up from the paper. The chakra formed into a three-dimensional environment the same horizontal dimensions of the scroll it flowed from. As Naruto watched, the image formed into a bird’s-eye view of a hilly countryside. The area was the obvious sight of a battle, judging from the craters, bodies, and general debris lying all around. Tiny figures the size of insects began to form into varying types and rank of shinobi. Jiraiya grunted, satisfied with his work and looked up to his student.

“Alright, here’s the game plan. Your main force is made up of three squads of jounin, four squads of chuunin, and a couple genin here and there. You also have two medic-nins, three ANBU, and a special jounin with a powerful Bloodline Limit that can alter the density and flow of air. There’s also the Hokage, you. You’re cut off from supplies and reinforcements. None of the runners you’ve sent have returned. You don’t know the power of the enemy’s forces, but you know you’re outnumbered two to one at least. You’ve got a bad feeling they’re gonna attack soon. What do you do?” The perverted hermit said.

“What’s the mission?” Naruto asked automatically, while staring at the map. He forgot most of his exhaustion when Jiraiya started talking. He’d never admit it to the ero-sennin, but he actually enjoyed these little puzzles, even if they did give him headaches half the time.

“No mission… Well, not an official one, anyways. You need to get out of there alive. Preferably with most of your forces intact and as many of the enemy dead or disabled as possible. You want to limit pursuit or their assassin teams’ll pick your people apart before you can escape more than a mile or two,” Jiraiya elaborated.

Naruto frowned and puzzled over it. He leaned to and fro, taking in every possible angle of the simulation. Damn, the old pervert knew he sucked at strategy. He was much better at thinking on the fly than this planning crap. Then it hit him. He had the perfect idea and it wasn’t the special jounin’s Bloodline. Jiraiya obviously threw that in there to make him focus on the Limit and not the real answer for the simulation.

Neither student nor sensei noticed a straw hat falling from a tree fifty feet away.