Jiraiya suddenly spoke:
"Naruto, come here a second."
Naruto couldn't help feeling a little impatient when he heard that.
He was soaked through, water dripping steadily from his trouser cuffs. As he walked toward the rock, he grumbled:
"What is it, Pervy Sage? I've still got training to do."
"I'll prove it to you, for sure."
Jiraiya ignored his grumbling.
Once Naruto reached him, he sat up a little and reached toward Naruto's stomach, over his clothes.
His palm hovered half an inch away without touching Naruto's body, and he carefully examined him for a while.
Naruto looked down at the hovering hand, then back up at Jiraiya. Puzzled, he couldn't help asking:
"What's wrong, Pervy Sage? Is something wrong with me?"
Jiraiya didn't answer.
He was sensing the seal on Naruto's stomach.
The seal was the same as ever.
Two layers of jutsu meshed together like a pair of locked gears, fitting perfectly and imprisoning an enormous creature in the deepest recesses.
From everything he had always known about Minato-
That man would never leave a flaw in a seal.
And indeed, there wasn't one.
But now, there was movement between those two gears.
A force was stirring, pushing to break through the seal from within.
The Nine-Tails' chakra was seeping out, as though something had spurred it on.
Could this brat already draw on nine-tails chakra?
That shouldn't be possible.
What could he possibly have encountered that would make him need to draw on the Nine-Tails...?
As Jiraiya pondered this, his gaze shifted to Hayashi, who stood nearby.
The little red-haired child seemed to shimmer with light, standing there fresh and bright, with a pair of utterly clear eyes.
Even though Jiraiya already knew that this child's fighting ability and cunning made him far more difficult to handle