Don't Be a Picky Eater
Don’t be a picky eater…eat lots so you can grow big and strong…
Naruto wasn’t feeling that great. Jiraiya had summoned some kind of scroll toad and twisted the seal on his stomach. The kyuubi’s chakra flooded out, and the next thing he knew he was floating in front of the cage with his hand on the giant seal keeping it shut. Then someone grabbed him and threw him back.
He pushed himself out of the tepid water and squinted his eyes, trying to make out what the man’s cloak said. Luckily for Naruto, the kanji were really big.
“Yon…dai…me…Ho…ka…ge? Yondaime Hokage?”
The man, Yondaime Hokage, turned around.
“You…” the kyuubi growled.
“The seal was triggered by eight tails being released,” Yondaime said, “that’s why I’m here in your subconscious.” Yondaime sighed. “I was hoping it wouldn’t have to come to this. I definitely didn’t want to see you again, kyuubi. But,” he said, smiling at Naruto, “I’m glad I got a chance to see my son. I guess we can call it even.”
Naruto gaped at him. “Huh?”
“Yondaime Hokage,” the kyuubi growled. “Get over here so I can tear you apart!”
Yondaime looked exasperated. “Why would I do that? Anyway, Naruto—”
“What?” Naruto said, thoroughly confused by the situation. “How do you know my name?”
Yondaime tilted his head. “Well, I was the one who named you. You’re my son, after all.”
“Your son?” Naruto asked incredulously.
“That’s right,” Yondaime—his dad—said.
Naruto started laughing. And crying. It was impossible. How could Yondaime be his dad? But Yondaime himself was saying he was, so it had to be true. Right?
“Yondaime!” the kyuubi howled.
“It’s getting kind of loud in here,” Yondaime said. “How about a change of scenery?”
Before Naruto could respond, his dad snapped his fingers, and they were in a bright, empty space. Naruto was more confused than ever.
“I know Sandaime didn’t tell you anything,” his dad said, looking seriously at him. “He didn’t want information about the kyuubi getting around. That didn’t work out, did it?”
“Kyuubi…” Naruto said. “Ero-sennin! Is he—”
“Jiraiya-sensei is fine,” his dad said. “He can take care of himself. This is his fault, he can deal with the consequences. He never should have forced the seal open like that. That key was meant for you, when you are ready to control the kyuubi’s chakra.”
“Control?” Naruto said. “He only gives me his chakra when I ask!”
His dad had a thoughtful look on his face. “I have noticed that. It was different for your mother, but she was maintaining the seal on her own…”
“Kaa-chan?”
His dad smiled at him. “Uzumaki Kushina. She was the jinchuuriki before you.”
Naruto furrowed his brow. “Is that why—”
His dad put his hands on Naruto’s shoulders. “I know you have a lot of questions, Naruto,” he said. “But I don’t have that much time here. There are things we need to talk about.”
“Like what?” Naruto asked.
His dad sighed. “I don’t trust Jiraiya to make good decisions about your training. First he throws you off a cliff, and now this? Not to mention what Kakashi was doing, rather, not doing.” He shook his head. “I’m only a chakra impression, but I’ve been watching you your whole life. You want to get your best friend back, right?”
Naruto nodded emphatically. Advice from Yondaime, from his dad! He never even imagined something like this happening. He’d take all he could get.
“Well,” his dad said, “I think I have a good plan for that.”
“Really?” Naruto asked excitedly, bouncing a little and wiping away his tears. “What? What!”’
His dad chuckled, ruffling his hair. “I’ll tell you, don’t worry. I call it The Ten-Step Guide to Ensuring the Victory of Our Son, Uzumaki Naruto, Over His Enemies and Rivals, and to Guide Him on His Path to Becoming Hokage, by the Yellow Flash, Yondaime Hokage, Namikaze Minato, and The Red-Hot Habanero, Uzumaki Kushina. By the way, where are your glasses?”
When the kyuubi popped away and it was just Naruto, he pushed past the lingering pain and ran over to where Jiraiya had been thrown. There was a huge, bleeding wound in his chest, but Naruto did what his dad had told him and summoned one of the medic toads to assist. He hadn’t quite realized he could choose which toads showed up. He had only met three of them. He didn’t even know toads had medics!
Well, a toad version. The pale green toad, Gamakusuri, was on the big side and, upon seeing Jiraiya’s state, swallowed him whole. Inside Gamakusuri’s stomach was a lot of toad oil, which had healing properties. Jiraiya would be good as new.
Naruto was really tired, so he sat down and leaned against Gamakusuri.
“What happened, kid?” the toad asked.
Naruto sighed and looked at the smoldering crater where part of a forest had once been. It had taken his dad telling him that not being able to see things far away wasn’t normal for him to understand that was why he had never been able to read the board at the Academy, or hit the targets very well, and why he had to rely on other senses—chakra sensing, an Uzumaki thing!—when fighting other people. He just needed glasses. Naruto even learned his mom had the same issue, and hated her glasses so much she never wore them. Not being able to see very well made her look confused all the time, so people thought she was stupid and underestimated her. Naruto admitted that it would be nice to be able to see things clearly, especially when his rival had special eyes and could see super well.
It was good Jiraiya had the foresight to force his seal open far, far away from other people. Though, as his dad had explained, the idea was stupid from the beginning. The kyuubi had willingly given Naruto chakra plenty of times, it didn’t need to be forced out. Naruto wasn’t sure how he could work with someone who had killed his parents and so many others in Konoha, but his dad had told him a few important facts about that night that had changed a lot of things.
The kyuubi had been controlled. Some asshole with a mask and a Sharingan who had broken open his mom’s seal to set the kyuubi free, and had the ability to summon the kyuubi. Some guy who had gotten through their barriers. He could make parts of his body disappear, could teleport using his Sharingan, and used chains. He couldn’t do any of that and attack at the same time. Naruto had to remember that part, it was really important. His dad thought the man would come after him too.
Naruto made an irritated noise. There was a lot he had to remember. He got up to look for Jiraiya’s things. He needed to make a list.
It would take a few days for Jiraiya to heal up in Gamakusuri’s stomach, so the toad took him back to Mount Myoboku and Naruto struck out on his own.
Naruto’s first stop was getting something to eat. With Jiraiya (temporarily) out of the way, Naruto was in charge of the money. His dad and mom's first rule was to not be a picky eater. Naruto had argued it hadn’t really been a choice to eat ramen all the time, even if he did love it more than life itself, but Jiraiya was rich and could afford for Naruto to eat something healthier. And, unlike in Konoha, he could eat at other restaurants without worrying about getting kicked out.
He found a place selling bentos, pressing his face against the menu so he could read the options. And yeah, it was really obvious now that it had been pointed out that no one else seemed to have such a hard time seeing things, weren’t constantly tripping over obstacles they couldn’t see, that people weren’t supposed to be blurry blobs he identified by how they felt—how their chakra felt. How was he supposed to know other people couldn’t tell what color someone’s chakra was? It wasn’t like anyone talked to him about things…
With some difficulty, Naruto found a place to sit and ate his lunch. His next step was actually getting glasses, which were expensive but, again, Jiraiya could afford it. Naruto was pretty pissed off at the pervert. He didn’t understand why no one told him who his dad was. Yeah, sure, when he was really little he probably wouldn’t have shut up about it, but he was a genin now. And if someone had explained it to him, he would have understood! Same with Kakashi, who probably knew his mom had needed glasses, that bad vision was as Uzumaki as fuinjutsu and chakra chains and chakra sensing and super strong life forces where people could literally suck chakra out of you to heal. What the hell!
Naruto huffed and shoved a piece of broccoli into his mouth. His dad was right. Naruto had a ton of questions, but also a ton of work to do. A lot of that work involved studying and reading, so when he was finished with his meal, he found a friendly looking blob to point him to an eye doctor.
Naruto pushed his new glasses up and looked at the big red spiral that marked the entrance to the Uzumaki Clan’s Mask Storage Temple. His glasses had big orange frames because, logically, the larger the lenses the more he could see. There had been words with the optician about that, and the color. The lenses themselves were really thick. The doctor told him she had never seen vision as bad as his. When Naruto put them on for the first time, he immediately agreed. Everything was much more detailed than he realized. It was a real…eye opener.
So was the fact there used to be an entire clan of Uzumaki. Thinking about what happened to them made Naruto very sad, made him understand what it had been like for Sasuke just a little more, so he didn’t dwell on it. The temple he had arrived at, hidden deep in the heart of Fire, among the most ancient of Shodai’s trees, was one of the few Uzumaki caches which still existed. Only Naruto could access it. The key was in his blood.
He idly touched his stomach. The kyuubi seal wasn’t the only seal his dad had left on him. He had incorporated his Flying Thunder God technique, hiraishin, somehow. Naruto didn’t get it, which was the main reason his dad had told him how to find the temple. Hidden underneath it were scrolls, weapons, armor, and all sorts of things for an Uzumaki in need.
Naruto frowned at the dilapidated state of the temple. It was obvious no one had been there in a very, very long time. He went inside, trusting the roof wouldn’t fall on him, and was immediately confronted by a wall of creepy masks. One of the masks was the key to the other half of the kyuubi's chakra, sealed along with his dad in a shinigami's belly. It was a horrifying thought. The price for summoning one of the death gods was death, unless the summoner was an Uzumaki.
It was pure insanity for the clan to have contracted with death, but Naruto took it in stride and found the right mask. It was cold and heavy in his hand, and he was briefly tempted to try it on. However, Naruto was far from being ready to rejoin the kyuubi's chakra and let his dad's spirit catch a break. He had to learn fuinjutsu first!
Naruto put the mask in his pack, then began searching the floor for the trap door.
Jiraiya was Not Happy when he returned from Mount Myoboku.
"What happened to your face?" he asked as soon as the toad dropping him off had left.
Naruto had taken more than a few days to reverse summon Jiraiya. He had to figure out how to hide all the stuff from the temple first, which meant he had to learn how to make storage scrolls. Even with using the shadow clone training trick his dad had told him about, it had taken some time to draw all the symbols right. Then he had to go back to the town they had been staying at, all the way on the other side of the country.
Naruto had to be sneaky about it too. People knew what he looked like after the Chuunin Exams. He had even used the kyuubi's chakra, which in retrospect was pretty dumb to do in front of an audience. There were other people besides Akatsuki who might try to attack or kidnap him now.
"What are you talking about?" Naruto asked, patting his face worriedly.
"Those!" Jiraiya exclaimed, pointing dramatically at him.
"Huh?" Naruto's eyes widened. "My glasses?"
Jiraiya made a disgusted face. "You won't get any ladies looking like a nerd."
Naruto blushed furiously. "I don't care about that!"
Jiraiya snorted. "Whatever. I thought the kyuubi would fix that for you."
Naruto frowned. "How would you even know I needed glasses?"
Jiriaya coughed, then looked to the side. "Come on, kid. I know a good onsen around here, and I need some real food after a few weeks on Mount Myoboku. I should stick you there, see how you like it!"
Naruto grumbled, but was a little excited about the prospect. The toads he had practiced summoning had said good things about their home. One had even mentioned something called sage training, which sounded way better than trying to use the kyuubi. Using large amounts of the kyuubi's chakra hurt him, and he could feel how much the kyuubi hated everything, and it made him hate a lot of things too, brought up all the anger he tried to ignore. Naruto had no idea what it actually did to him, but he didn't think using such corrosive chakra was a good idea. What he did know for certain was that when the kyuubi cooperated with him using his chakra it didn't hurt at all.
That was a problem to solve for later. For now, Naruto had a promise to his dad to keep.