"Well go on, Naruto-boy! Dig in before it gets cold!" said Fukasaku joyfully. "Ma made enough fer the three of us, so don't be afraid ter ask fer seconds!"
With his mind in its technobroken state, Naruto could do little but passively allow Fukasaku to steer him into a chair at the dinner table, where a steaming plate piled high with assorted boiled bugs and larvae awaited him. There was not a single coherent thought bouncing around between his ears as a long rivulet of drool slipped from the corner of his half-open mouth.
:D
"Aww, I didnae know ya loved my cookin' so much, Naruto-chan," Shima cooed. "Look, Pa, he's even salivatin' at the very thought of havin' a bite!"
"Seems like he's hesitatin' on where ter start," Fukasaku replied cheerfully. "Here, lemme get ya started!"
Fukasaku leapt from his high chair and landed on the dinner table beside Naruto's bowl. Grabbing the long wooden spoon, he selected a particularly juicy rolled-up beetle larva, a multitude of tiny legs protruding from its sides, and shovelled it into Naruto's mouth.
Reflexively, Naruto mechanically began chowing down on the bug, but the instant its bitter haemolymph gushed across his tongue, the genjutsu Chino had placed him under shattered around his ears like a broken pane of glass.
"@#%#$&@#%!?"
Naruto's face turned green, his cheeks ballooning as the critter refused to budge another centimetre down his throat…
"Blargh…"
…and then he vomited out a rainbow.
"Naruto-boy!?" Fukasaku cried out in alarm.
It was only a few minutes later before Naruto began recovering from his waking nightmare.
"Geezer Sage? Granny Sage?" Naruto said weakly, looking up from the potted plant he'd spent the last five minutes dry-heaving into. "Where am I...? Is this Mt Myōboku? What am I doing here again, ya know…?"
"The Great Lord Elder Toad's gonna divine yer future, Naruto-boy," Fukasaku explained. "That's why I reverse-summoned ya."
It was all coming back to Naruto, now… the crash landing, that strange Sakura that had placed him under a genjutsu, her meeting with some bloke called Nowaki, the revelation that the real Sakura-chan was going to be ambushed by the Akatsuki while she went to deal with Iwagakure's forces in the north…
"You hafta send me back!" Naruto shouted. "Sakura-chan and the others are in danger, ya know!"
"Slow down there, Naruto-boy," Fukasaku said peaceably. "Surely all that can stand ter wait a few minutes while ya go speak ter the Great Lord Elder? Who knows, maybe he'll divine something about yer future that'll come in handy?"
"Argh, fine!" Naruto said impatiently. "But this had better not take too long, ya know!"
Fukasaku quickly guided Naruto to the toads' sanctum sanctorum, where the enormous Great Lord Elder Toad was enjoying his usual early afternoon nap upon his gigantic throne. He was soon roused from his slumber, and the aged, wrinkled toad peered down at Naruto, who was tapping his foot impatiently.
"…who're you again?"
Fukasaku facepalmed.
"All right, that does it, ya know!" Naruto snapped. "Send me back, already! I'm in the middle of a veeery, veeeeery important mission, I'll have ya know!"
"Aah, aah, that's right!" said the Great Lord Elder in recognition. "Naruto, from that something-or-other prophecy... Jiraiya dropped by a few days ago and told me about the training the Sixth Hokage was having you do." He nodded to himself wisely. "Seeing your face reminds me of a dream I had about you a few weeks... no, or was it months ago...?"
Naruto rolled his eyes. As usual, the Giant Gramps Sage was rambling.
"It's strange, ever since a few weeks ago, my dreams have been populated by nothing but darkness," the giant toad went on, sounding rather troubled. "It's almost as if the thread of prophecy has been severed, or my future sight has been obscured..."
Naruto's eyebrows twitched. If Giant Gramps Sage couldn't see the future any more, then why bring him here!?
"I'll try to remember my last dream," the Great Lord Elder said wearily. "Let me just rest my eyes a little…"
Soon, the chamber was filled with the giant toad's quiet snores. Naruto gave Fukasaku a pointed sideways glance, but the small toad simply shrugged.
"Huge naturals… so many octopus legs… bouncing boobs and tentacles… oh my… surely those can't all fit inside that hole…" the Great Lord Elder mumbled in his sleep. "Mmh… hot single toadettes in your area…"
Their expressions unreadable, Fukasaku and Naruto wordlessly turned on their heels and exited the audience chamber, leaving the Giant Gramps Sage to enjoy his erotic daydreams in peace. They really did not need to know more about the elderly toad's tentacle play fetish.
"Wait for me!" called Gerotora the toad scroll, leaping from the dais beneath the Great Lord Elder's throne and bouncing after them like a slinky.
"The boy whose power lies within, the lad whose power lies in his eyes, the lass whose power lies in her chest," the Great Lord Elder murmured long after they had left. "They shall soon be meeting an octopus and a rabbit and save the world… but their children..."
…
"Well, that was a waste of time!" Naruto fumed as they stepped outside under the psychedelic skies of Mt Myōboku. "My friends are in danger, and—"
"Calm down, Naruto-boy!" Fukasaku said peaceably. "I didn't just summon ya ter speak ter the Great Lord Elder! Aren't ya trainin' ter master Nine-Tails' power? Then ya'll need Gerotora's power!"
Naruto recognised this accordion-looking toad fellow. He was a scroll toad, his midsection a living scroll that held Mt Myōboku's most important secrets. He was the keeper of Naruto's contract, amongst many others', like his dad's or Pervy Sage's.
"Yo!" said Gerotora. "So, I hear yer tryin' ter unlock ol' Nine-Tails' seal ter get all his chakra out? Then ya'll need this key!"
The scroll toad unfurled himself, revealing line after line of squiggles in the shape of a key. Naruto recognised this jutsu formula; the last time he had seen it, it had been in Pervy Sage's hands... and everything after that was a blank. The next thing he knew, he had woken up in a hospital bed, and Pervy Sage was lying in a bed next to his...
"Fer now, just press yer hand down on that square yonder," Gerotora went on. "If yeh've truly befriended Nine-Tails, then havin' his will come out with his chakra shouldn't be a problem, yeah!"
For the longest time, Naruto had feared the Demon Fox and its awesome might. It would come out at the worst possible times and make him go wild, resulting in his friends getting hurt… but as Sakura and Sasuke grew in strength, his fear of hurting them slowly dwindled away to nothing.
As long as they were around, he thought to himself, then he wouldn't have to fear hurting anyone else. Whether by Sharingan or Wood Style, they had the power to suppress the Nine-Tails, and as Naruto's fear and hatred towards the fox faded, so too did the fox's attitude towards Naruto soften in turn…
"Okay," Naruto said, taking a deep breath. "Here goes nothing, ya know!"
Chakra gathering at his fingertips, he pressed his hand against the square box painted on the paper, and…
"That's odd, I didn't feel anythin'," Gerotora said, puzzled. "In theory, the rights ter the Fourth Hokage's Tetragram Seal should've passed on ter ya..."
"Ah," Naruto blurted out.
"Didja realise somethin', Naruto-boy?" Fukasaku asked.
Naruto rubbed the back of his head sheepishly.
"Actually, Dad's seal broke a few days ago when Pain attacked the village," Naruto explained. "I dunno how it happened exactly, but Sakura-chan went inside my head, and Granny Tsunade's ghost made me a new seal to replace the old one. I think she mentioned something about two Four Something Seals, ya know?"
Gerotora facepalmed.
"Aiyah," he groaned. "This is very bad!"
"Whatsa matter?" Naruto asked, puzzled. "Can't I just go and ask Sakura-chan to loosen up the seal for me, dontcha know?"
"NO!" Gerotora shouted. "More likely than not, neither of those two Shikkotsu Forest contractors condensed a key for your new Eight Trigrams Seal at the moment of its creation! And now that Nine-Tails is all sealed up again, it's too late to make it!"
Seeing the Demon Fox as the unstoppable engine of destruction that it was, Lady Tsunade's breast imprint had locked the Nine-Tails away and thrown away the key, and to make matters worse, she had passed on to the afterlife; which effectively meant that Naruto's Nine-Tails Chakra Mode was permanently stuck at less than 10% power!
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"No way!" Naruto cried in dismay, clapping his hands to his cheeks. "You mean all that training was for nothing, ya know!?"