Ninja Academy
In the classroom, Shikamaru listlessly propped his chin up with one hand. As he halfheartedly listened to Iruka ramble on at the front, he asked Choji, who was sitting beside him and munching on chips with focus, "Hey, Choji, I haven't seen Naruto much these past few days... Do you know what happened?"
"Yeah." Strangely enough, Choji's hand never paused as he kept stuffing chips into his mouth. Squinting his little chubby eyes in thought, he shook his head. "He hasn't come to school for several days... Weird. Sasuke hasn't come to school for a month either."
Shikamaru was speechless. He continued staring at Iruka in front of the class with his dead-fish eyes, his mind quietly wandering elsewhere.
Sasuke had been absent from school for a month, yet Iruka hadn't said a word. And now Naruto too... Had something happened to those two?
At the front, Iruka lectured endlessly on ninja knowledge, but during the pauses, he worried about Naruto's situation. The person who had requested Naruto's leave had actually been an ANBU directly under the Third Hokage... Iruka couldn't help feeling uneasy. What had happened to Naruto that it involved the ANBU?
Knock, knock. Someone knocked on the classroom door.
Everyone looked toward the entrance.
"Wow, it's Sasuke!"
"Sasuke is finally back!"
"We missed you so much, Sasuke!"
The young ninja girls whispered excitedly among themselves.
Sasuke Uchiha looked much thinner, and his complexion was dreadful. More than that, his entire body seemed to radiate an icy aura that warned strangers to stay away... Unlike his former coolness, when he had been like a proud young lion, he now resembled a wounded wild wolf.
"Ah, Sasuke. Come in," Iruka said after a brief pause. He had heard the news that the Uchiha clan had been wiped out overnight.
Sasuke did not acknowledge Iruka at all. With his bag slung over his back and a dark expression on his face, he walked slowly to the rear of the classroom and chose a seat with no one around him.
"Sasuke..." Sakura Haruno looked at him from afar. She had an odd feeling that something unimaginably serious had happened to him.
Yet at that moment, Sasuke's eyes held no trace of her, or anyone else. Or rather... the only person in his eyes right now was not here.
He rested his chin on both hands and stared coldly ahead. The dim light in his eyes was like two ghostly flames burning. He would never forget that man's Sharingan, nor those hateful eyes...
Just wait, Itachi Uchiha. I will kill you with my own hands...
Iruka was just about to continue.
Knock, knock. The classroom door was knocked on again.
Everyone looked over once more.
"Uh..." Naruto scratched his head awkwardly. He wasn't as cool as the Uchiha clan's second young master. Having everyone's eyes fixed on him put him under quite a bit of pressure. "Looks like I should've sneaked in through the back door..."
The classroom erupted in laughter.
"After not seeing him for a few days, Naruto is still the same," Kiba Inuzuka said with a grin, a little dog perched on his head.
"What a strange guy." Ino Yamanaka rested her chin on one hand. Sasuke sitting so far away had left her disappointed.
"Naruto..." Hinata Hyuga murmured softly, her Byakugan eyes fixed on him.
Iruka felt the headache he had escaped for several days return at once... He waved his hand. "Get in here and sit down already!"
Naruto shrugged and jogged toward the back of the classroom. After looking around, he actually ran over to Sasuke and sat down two seats away from him.
Everyone who noticed this was secretly startled. Sasuke was radiating such a chilling aura today, yet Naruto had casually gone over there without a care in the world. His nerves were truly thick to an unbelievable degree.
They had misunderstood Naruto, though. Naruto had always been somewhat thickheaded, but he had never liked getting close to Sasuke. There was no way he would normally approach someone so smug and popular with girls.
Naruto had sat there mainly out of curiosity.
He knew why Sasuke had turned into a gloomy wreck.
His entire clan had been killed by the brother he admired most. Naruto could hardly imagine that kind of pain, though he could try.
What he was mainly curious about was how he himself had become best friends with someone like this.
Perhaps because of the memories of the next eleven years in his head, Naruto felt like his whole self had changed... It wasn't exactly that he had suddenly grown eleven years older. He didn't feel much different from before, aside from possessing eleven extra years of experience.
Perhaps people matured because of the accumulation of so-called life experience.
With this experience that had unexpectedly piled up in his heart across time, Naruto found that he couldn't feel from the current Sasuke that sort of... resonance he remembered...
Maybe after gaining the memories of his seventeen-year-old self, his life had headed down a completely different path.
So he no longer felt lonely?
So he was no longer afraid of the future?
Naruto sat in his seat, letting his thoughts run wild. He didn't hear a single word of what Iruka was teaching at the front...
A fine rain filled the sky.
"This place... feels like it's crying..."
Jiraiya stood in the rain. Behind him, the summoned toad in the pool sank beneath the water and disappeared. He looked up at the sky, where dark clouds never dispersed. The vapor and dampness in the air were so heavy that one could mistake this place for the deep ocean. The cold, clammy sensation made one's mood sink uncontrollably.
"Let's begin... If it's the Six Paths of Pain, I need to go all out from the start." Jiraiya found a secluded spot and rapidly formed hand seals—
Summoning Technique!
Poof! Poof! Two clouds of white smoke rose from Jiraiya's shoulders, and two small old toads appeared there.
"Little Jiraiya, why did you suddenly think to summon us two old folks?" Shima asked in confusion. She didn't even know how many years it had been since she had last been summoned, and she hadn't even had time to make dinner.
"Is there a powerful enemy that requires you to go all out like this?" Fukasaku asked directly.
"Yeah... It's someone who killed me once," Jiraiya said slowly, suddenly clasping his hands together.
Croak... A long, slender toad crawled out of his mouth.
"Jiraiya, why did you call me out?" Gama Tora crossed his arms, looking deeply displeased. He had been sleeping so comfortably.
Jiraiya explained, "For Naruto's key's safety, I want you to return to Mount Myōboku first."
"Is it that dangerous?" Fukasaku asked in alarm from Jiraiya's shoulder. Knowing Jiraiya's true strength well, he understood that there were probably very few opponents in the current ninja world who could make Jiraiya take things so seriously.
"Who knows? Better safe than sorry." After Gama Tora turned into white smoke and vanished, Jiraiya bit his finger and drew two right-angled lines of blood beneath his eyes. "You two sages, I'm going to enter Sage Mode."
"Kid, it's about time you learned to enter Sage Mode on your own!" Shima said disdainfully. Still, she joined old man Fukasaku in gathering natural Chakra around Jiraiya, helping him enter Sage Mode more easily.
A perfect sage... Jiraiya thought of what he had seen in Naruto's memories and smiled silently. Just how far would Minato's child grow from here?
To find Nagato and Konan, who were hiding in Amegakure, Jiraiya chose to enter Sage Mode directly.
However...
Jiraiya lowered the hands that had been forming seals to gather natural Chakra. His face, hands, and feet now showed obvious toad-like features. He had already entered Sage Mode.
"So I was discovered long ago... Looking at it now, these raindrops contain traces of Chakra. Is this Nagato's technique, Konan?"
Jiraiya stood where he was and spoke softly.
From a tree behind him came the cool voice of a blue-haired woman clad in a black cloak patterned with red clouds. "It's been a long time, Jiraiya-sensei."
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