Reaching For A Dream by Noodlehammer

Chapter 13

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Two very big men made their way into Konoha after a 3 year absence, both drawing a great deal of attention due to the fact that both were quite well known.

One stood at nearly 6 feet 3 inches, with a long mane of white hair, wearing green clothes covered by a red haori and wooden geta sandals on his feet. This man was clearly known to most as Jiraiya of the Sannin.

The man next to him was even bigger, standing at a towering 6 feet 7 inches. Long blond hair flowed down to his waist in a ponytail, with a few strands of hair hanging over his face, reaching just below his chin. The extremely distinctive, open black leather coat, with no shirt to hide his chest, leather pants and steel toed boots made him very easy to recognise. It wasn't the same set of clothes that he had left in, as he had outgrown them, but the custom ordered new set was even better. His strong jaw had whisker marks on his cheeks, giving his face a predatory cast, which would was made all the more prominent when he bared his fanged teeth at one of the villagers that was gawking at him stupidly.

"You could at least try not to scare everyone you meet on your first day back." Jiraiya commented to Naruto dryly as the villager in question suddenly remembered that he had somewhere else he needed to be.

"Whatever, I've got somewhere to be, so I'll leave reporting to Tsunade to you." The blond in question grunted and left without another glance at his sensei.

Jiraiya made to protest, but his student had already gone out of hearing range. Grumbling to himself about students that had no respect for their sensei, Jiraiya went towards the Hokage tower, hoping to get the debrief out of the way as soon as possible.

As was his custom he completely ignored the normal way in, also known as a door or as he liked to call it, the chump entrance. Instead he jumped right through the window of the Hokage's office.

"Jiraiya, would it kill you to use the door?" A slightly irritated Tsunade asked as the toad sage perched on the window.

"I don't know Tsunade-hime, it might." He replied cheekily.

"So where's Naruto?" The female Sannin asked, getting right to the point.

"That's so mean Tsunade, we haven't seen each other for 3 years and the first thing you do is ask about another man." Jiraiya pouted, adopting a depressed air and drawing patterns on the wall with his finger in a dejected fashion.

"Can it you old perv." Tsunade dismissed without concern for her teammate's drama. "Now where is he?"

"He said he had something to do and ditched me as soon as we got through the gate." Jiraiya grumbled, still a bit miffed by that.

"I see." Tsunade said with her eyebrow twitching slightly. She would very much like to know what was more important than reporting to her as soon as he got back after a 3 year training trip. "Well, since you're here you might as well tell me how the training trip went."

Jiraiya paused as he thought about how to say it.

"Well?" Tsunade prodded.

"He frightens me." The toad sage admitted.

"Oh?" She leaned forward in interest.

"As far as his skills go, he's done mostly nothing else but train his body and practice controlling his chakra chains. The only thing that he's really made significant progress in is Fuinjutsu and chakra capacity."

"That doesn't seem like a lot of progress for 3 years of training..." Tsunade trailed off and narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "You two haven't been wasting time whoring around the Elemental Nations have you?" There was a distinct note of threat in her voice.