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In the reading hall, everyone was waiting for the smoke to clear on the next page.
Everyone — except one man who was reading slower than the rest.
For the readers of the hall, the Summoning Jutsu was a technique like any other: seals, blood, a palm striking the ground, and a creature appears to fight alongside you.
But Jiraiya knew it was not so.
Summoning is not a technique. Summoning is a contract.
A long scroll one signs in one's own blood — binding him not to a power, but to an entire family living somewhere else, with its own laws, its own elders, and its own foul temper, deciding for itself who it respects and who it merely tolerates.
And Jiraiya knew that family from painfully up close.
Mount Myōboku.
A place one does not reach on foot. Damp that clings to the skin, moss on every stone, and the smell of oil that had seeped into his clothes in the first week and never left them since. There, as a boy, he had lived for months among creatures that surpassed him in size, in age, and in patience — and learned from them a lesson no one in Konoha had taught him: that when you sign in your blood, you are not buying a servant.
You are asking an old thing a thousand times your size to accept you.
Jiraiya ran his thumb across the volume's cover without thinking, and across the kanji on his metal forehead protector — the one whose meaning almost no one in the hall understood: Oil.
'This boy signed three weeks ago.'
'Three weeks, and all he's summoned are tadpoles.'
'Let's see what came for him today.'
And he turned the page.
[— Manga Scene —]
Naruto was still plummeting, the rocky floor rushing up toward him.
"This feeling!!"
He bit his thumb, his fingers flew through the seals, and he struck the air with his palm.
"Summoning Jutsu!!"
The smoke exploded, filling the ravine from wall to wall…
And the ground shook.
When it cleared, there was no tadpole at the bottom of the valley.
There was something blocking the valley with its body: a broad back draped in an enormous cloak, black tattoos coiling around two colossal eyes, a pipe hanging at its mouth…
And atop the crown of its head, a single blond boy.
And on the edge of the cliff far above, the white-haired sage stood looking down.
"Well done…"
[— End Scene —]
The hall did not understand what it was looking at, at first.
The shot was so wide that half the readers assumed at first they were seeing some rock formation — until their eyes fell on the eye.
"That's…"
"Is that a toad?!"
"Look at the boy! Look at the size of the boy on top of its head!"
The hall erupted all at once. Seats leapt up, volumes rose into the air, and a child in the second row shrieked at the top of his lungs that the mountain on the page was a toad — and his mother shrieked back at him to sit down.
Jiraiya did not leap.
The man sat where he was, the volume in his hands, his eyes on the black tattoos coiling around the enormous eye.
He knew those tattoos.
'…You.'
'Of all the toads on the mountain, it's you who came for him.'
Then Jiraiya felt the sounds of the hall drift away.
Not as if someone had lowered them, but as if he himself were being drawn away from them — as if the store's floor beneath him had grown less solid, and then the sounds vanished completely…
And in their place came cold air, dust in the throat, and the smell of wet stone.
When he opened his eyes, he was not in the Art Store.
He was standing at the bottom of the valley.
'…The deep immersion.'
He had heard of it often. The store's customers spoke of it with wonder, and the Hokage had mentioned it to him once with unusual gravity. But no one had told him it would be this vivid: the gravel beneath his sandals, the cold on his face, the handful of dust still drifting down from the walls after the tremor.
Jiraiya lifted his head.
And above him, at the height of an entire house, stretched a massive lower jaw he knew personally.
Gamabunta.
The very thing that had refused to move from its spot the first time he ever summoned it, years ago, then told him it would not fight under the command of "a boy who smells like ink." The thing that had cost him three straight nights of begging and two flasks of Konoha's finest sake before it agreed to walk three steps with him.
Jiraiya stood in the dust, staring at the living mountain above him, and reached out a hand — a hand that did not exist in that place at all — toward the black tattoo on the skin.
His hand passed straight through it.
'Right.'
'I'm not here.'
He lowered his hand slowly.
Then he raised his eyes to the crown of the enormous head, where a blond boy — exhausted — was slowly pushing himself up on his elbows, his hair streaming in the air rising from the valley.
A thirteen-year-old boy, drained by something he did not yet understand, clinging on with a steadiness that barely held, atop the head of a creature that accepts no one.
'Three weeks, boy.'
'It took me three months… and two flasks of sake.'
And Jiraiya heard himself laugh in a place where he did not exist, and no sound came out.
Then the page turned, and the hall's sounds came back to him like a wave.
…
The man found himself in his seat, his fingers still on the same page, the hall roaring around him.
Jiraiya wiped his face with his palm, once, and said nothing to anyone.
…
"Impossible."
The voice came from the head of the hall.
Hiruzen Sarutobi had lowered his pipe from his mouth and leaned forward in his seat — a posture the hall had not seen from him since the alliance chapter.
"That is no ordinary summoning toad."
"You know it, Hokage-sama?"
asked one of the jonin seated near him.
"I've seen it once."
The old man did not explain further, but his memory was clearer than to need any explanation: an old training valley, his white-haired student sprawled on his back, exhausted, and a huge toad roaring in his face that it would not return until he'd grown up — then vanishing into the smoke.
His student had been twenty that day.
'And that boy in the pages…'
Hiruzen looked at the shot, at the small exhausted boy atop the enormous head.
'…is thirteen.'
The old man put the pipe back to his mouth without lighting it.
…
"Nothing here is impossible."
Orochimaru said it from his corner, in a voice he did not raise — but those seated near him heard it.
"The size of a summoning is proportional to the amount of chakra paid. That is a rule, not a miracle."
The man turned his page.
'And the boy paid from a reservoir that isn't his.'
'Had he paid from his own chakra, another tadpole would have come. But he opened the cage door, and out came what befitted what he paid.'
'Which means what we saw is not the boy's skill…'
Orochimaru paused at that thought for a moment, and his eyes narrowed slightly.
'…but the first true measure of the size of what is inside him.'
'Interesting.'
…
As for Tsunade, she did not comment on the size at all.
She was looking at the whole picture: the exhausted boy atop the enormous head, the cliff he'd been pushed off, and the red power that had coiled around him moments before.
"So this is your method of teaching."
Jiraiya did not raise his eyes, but his shoulders stiffened slightly.
"You push him off a cliff to force out what's inside him. You let him drain himself to the very bottom to reach a power that isn't his. And when he succeeds…"
She pointed at the boy sprawled atop the head.
"…you leave him like that. Empty. On top of something that shows no mercy."
"It worked, Tsunade."
"You always say that. It worked."
Tsunade said, her voice quieter than anyone expected.
"You're building a shinobi who knows how to summon a mountain while he's half-dead. But you're not teaching him when to stop, before he reaches half-dead."
"…"
"Power torn out at the edge of death, Jiraiya, comes back one day to collect its price."
This time, Jiraiya's fingers stopped turning the page.
"I know."
He said it quietly, without a trace of humor in his tone.
"That's why I'll be down there at the bottom when the time comes to pay."
…
And in the quiet corner, Minato had read the pages twice, then returned to a single line the sage had written on the previous page.
It seems he was able to draw on the Kyūbi's chakra himself this time… although it's still unstable.
'Unstable.'
The boy looked at the drawing: the red chakra coiling around Naruto's body as he formed the seals.
'He drew from the reservoir, and spent everything he drew on a single technique, and kept nothing for himself.'
'Not even enough to stand.'
Minato turned the page, and found the blond boy laid out atop the toad's head.
And he felt something deeply uncomfortable, having nothing to do with the size of the summoning or the technique.
'When you use a power you don't own…'
'…the matter doesn't end when the technique succeeds.'
'That's when it begins.'
…
[— Manga Scene —]
Atop the enormous head, the blond boy finally stirred, and pushed himself up on his elbows.
"H… hehehe!"
He looked around, at the distance between his feet and the valley floor, then at the huge body stretched out beneath him.
"Heeeey!"
Naruto crawled slowly toward the edge of the head, looked behind him, and shuddered.
"…There's no tail!!"
And at that moment, the living mountain beneath him shifted.
An enormous eye opened.
"HEY, YOU LITTLE PEST!!!"
"Whose head do you think you're jumping on?! You idiot!!!"
"Wh… what…?"
"I haven't breathed the air of the outside world in ages… and there's something strange — an annoying kid on my head?!!"
Naruto scrambled back on his rear, sweat pouring down his face, then spun around to shout up the valley:
"Hey! Jiraiya!! Where are you, Jiraiya?!"
"Scary… where did this thing even come from?"
"Air?"
And below, the giant toad grumbled to itself, its pipe wobbling between its jaws:
"Why did Jiraiya summon me to a place like this… and even put a strange kid on my head?"
[— End Scene —]
…
In the hall, voices rose from every side.
"He's angry!"
"The boy has no chakra and this thing is furious!"
"Jiraiya-sama! Where's Jiraiya-sama on the page?! Why doesn't he come down?!"
As for Jiraiya himself, he heard none of it.
He was staring at the last line — at his own name, coming out of the old toad's mouth twenty years from now, in the same tone, with the same grumbling.
'Still calling me by my name, plain and simple.'
'Even twenty years from now.'
Then the man noticed something else in that sentence — something no one in the hall had caught.
Why did Jiraiya summon me to a place like this.
'…He doesn't know.'
'He doesn't know that the one who summoned him isn't me.'
Jiraiya lifted his eyes from the page, and looked at the roaring hall around him — at the faces shouting and betting and laughing.
Then he returned to the volume, and turned the page.
'And when he finds out…'
'…I don't envy you, boy.'
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Upcoming chapter titles (spoilers):
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Chapter 215: I Was a Monster Since Birth!
Chapter 216: The Resemblance Between Naruto and Gaara!
Chapter 217: This Is My Ninja Way!
Chapter 218: The Main Event Begins!
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