Naruto Tsunade the Younger

balthanon

Well-Known Member
#1
Another random story idea that I've had sitting around for awhile.  I got a kind of out of the blue comment on my Kyuubi no Fuzzy-nii-sama story (on another forum) about henge and it brought to mind this idea, which I had partially completed a long while ago.  The story actually did play off of a non-solid henge vs a solid Sexy no Jutsu because of its age (and the fact that for a long time henge was listed as genjutsu in the Naruto wiki).  Because of that comment though, I kind of wanted to see if I could get the concept to work anyway.  This was what came out of my revisions:


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Tsunade the Younger
Chapter 1
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Looking up from where she was striding along behind Jiraiya, Tsunade groaned to herself as she thought again about the stupid promise that she had made to her team mate.  She wasn't sure what she had been thinking, honestly.

Yes, the boy had impressed her and reminded her of Dan and Nawraki and she didn't regret turning down Orochimaru.  Naruto deserved her necklace too.  She wasn't quite sure how the high of success and feeling like a ninja again for the first time in a couple decades had translated into "I will sacrifice the remainder of my life to the hassles and headaches of being Hokage" though.

Second thoughts didn't begin to describe it.

Honestly, if Jiraiya could turn down the position, she didn't see why she automatically had to take it.  At a minimum, they should have to have a contest to see who got strapped to the chair until Minato's kid was ready to take the hat.  She carefully emphasized the word "contest" in her head, staying well away from "bet", "wager", or anything related to gambling.  That was what had gotten her into this position in the first place.

Unfortunately, while she had been drinking her way through Fire country for the past decade, her teammate had been an active duty ninja.  And even at her best, Jiraiya tended to beat her nine times out of ten, just as she had Orochimaru.

As she noticed a commotion ahead, she started paying attention to her surroundings again, leaving the thoughts to stew in the back of her mind.  Noting the road had begun passing through a small village, the buildings on either side not particularly well-kept, but clean enough, she paused since her traveling companions had as well.

Jiraiya and Naruto were standing outside of what appeared to be the local tavern, the Toad Sannin arguing that they had traveled long enough and deserved a break for the day.  She was sure it had nothing to do with the woman leaning out a window on the second floor to entice men.  Still, any delay in her impending doom was welcome...

Smiling, she walked up to the pair and added her piece.  "Why don't we vote on it?" she asked, standing near the boy so he would think that she was planning to take his side.

Apparently she didn't quite look as innocent and trustworthy as she hoped though, because Naruto gave her a suspicious glance.  This in turn became a crafty grin of his own though, and she wondered what the boy was up to.

"Alright," he said, "I get to pick the order though."

Raising an eyebrow, she gestured for the boy to go ahead, and Jiraiya seemed to have no issues with that either.

"I'll go first, then Ero-sennin, then Tsunade-baa-chan, then Shizune-nee-chan, and Ton Ton can be the deciding vote."

Though she still chuckled at Jiraiya's new title, her own epithet got the boy a smack on the head.  Still, she had no real problems with that so she indicated her agreement and waited on the boy to vote.

Moment's later, a puff of smoke obscured Naruto for a moment, and then he was a she with a rather amazing example of Henge even she couldn't see through.  As the now bouncy, beautiful young woman crowded up to her teammate and purred, "I vote we move on, don't you agree, Jiraiya-chan?" she nearly gaped at the abrupt change from innocent little boy to blonde seductress.

Her reaction was nothing compared to Jiraiya though as he gave a thumbs up, then keeled over backwards, his nostrils spurting blood.

"Hurray!" Naruto exclaimed, bouncing once with positively disturbing results-- particularly as the strategically placed bits of smoke were dissipating as she watched.  Growling, Tsunade raised a hand and pounded the genin on general principle and the boy "poofed" back into his normal self before giving her a raspberry.

"I vote we stay," she said, but she didn't really expect to carry the day now and as she expected, Shizune gave her an apologetic smile then voted to move on.  Ton Ton at least knew where her loyalties lay though, and voted with her.

As they moved away from the tavern, however, she thought for a moment, then turned to Naruto, who was panting under the load of Jiraiya.  Further punishment for his little trick.  "Naruto... that was a very impressive henge.  I don't think I've ever seen better from a genin."  In truth, she wasn't sure she had ever seen better from a jounin-- the closest she had ever seen was during a trip to the Land of Demons, when she was nearly caught by a ninja who used the Shadow Mirror Body Changing Method and that one was actually a permanent modification of the body.  

"That wasn't a henge, that was my super-duper Kage-killer move-- Sexy no Jutsu!"  The boy grinned up at her.  "It was the very first jutsu I ever made for myself.  Guaranteed effective on perverts, though I guess it won't work on you when you're Hokage, huh?"

"Don't count on it, brat," she replied absently, thinking to herself.  It was typically possible to sense the chakra emissions from a henge, particularly when you interacted with it via touch.  Yet she hadn't felt a whisper of chakra when she dispelled the foolish display.  "...so how is it different than a normal henge?"

Naruto paused at this, apparently stuck, then said, "Well, it's way easier, for one!  It's not nearly as fiddly as most ninjutsu, especially after you're done with the first bits."

Tsunade raised an eyebrow at this, trying to process the explanation and turn it into something approaching actual chakra theory.  The boy was a jinchuriki, she knew that much despite having left before his birth.  And if he had inherited the Uzumaki chakra, he likely had more chakra than most.  So fiddly might simply mean larger chakra requirements, so it didn't require quite the finesse or control of the typical henge.  There was obviously still some element of concentration involved as well.

A thought was beginning to percolate through her mind based on the little demonstration as Naruto expanded on his explanation with such exacting terms as "realer", "not as leaky", and "maybe, uhh, kinda you, but not".  It was when he finally ended up comparing it to aspects of the kage bunshin, however, that her eyes widened and things started to really click.  It was at that point that she started really probing with some additional questions of her own.

While her own transformation technique maintaining her age was nearly impenetrable, it was still at its core the basic technique every ninja was taught before they even graduated-- someone at Jiraiya's level would at least be subconsciously aware of the chakra emissions even at a distance.  Even with the refinements that she had introduced to supply the power and concentration for the technique through her Strength of a Hundred Seal, they were still there.

Naruto, however, had somehow managed to put together a technique that essentially captured or contained all of the chakra that was being used.  It would take some time to fully understand, but if she had to guess, he had essentially created a shell around himself that was recycling all of the chakra that he used in powering the technique.  At least she assumed that it was recycling, otherwise you would probably explode based on her estimates of the power being cycled through the technique.

If some of the comparisons he was making to the kage bunshin were correct... it was no wonder he picked that technique up so easily.  He had already developed half of the associated chakra manipulations used in making it work for a perverted jutsu intended to be used on Sensei of all people.  She wondered absently if her teacher or Jiraiya really understood exactly why the technique was so effective on them.  She glanced ahead to her team mate, who was chatting amiably with Shizune in that friendly way he had, and the thought that had been percolating since the beginning of the conversation suddenly surfaced.

She was almost certain that Jiraiya didn't quite appreciate the effect that this was having subconsciously.  Her team mate was smart, but he wasn't book smart.  Not really.  There was a certain gut feeling to his approach to being a ninja that was in some ways more effective.  And in others, left him vulnerable to his own preconceptions.

Without those tell tale chakra emissions, Jiraiya's senses were telling him that what he was seeing was real.  At the same time, however, his mind was telling him that it wasn't-- this was safe, nothing but a henge.  It played directly upon the man's basest perversions.  And if she could learn it and steel herself to actually use it during a battle with Jiraiya... she might well win.
It was worth a shot-- while he was a goofball, Jiraiya really would be the better Hokage.  She might have the lineage, but he had stayed truer to Konoha than she ever had-- handing over his intelligence network would be difficult, but she was sure it could be done.  She would even stick around Konoha, take up some of the slack.  This was certainly better for the village as a whole though.

Truthfully, it was possible that just stripping in the middle of battle alone would do the job-- but she wasn't about to take the chance of embarrassing herself like that without it being a sure thing.  That conflict between his gut and his head were key.  She would learn the Sexy no Jutsu, use it on her teammate, and free hers-- err, ensure that the right person became Hokage.

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It was a nearly two week trip back to Konoha, so she had perhaps a week to convince Naruto to teach her his technique, learn it, convince Jiraiya to accept her "contest", and then win and force him into the role he had pidgeon-holed her into.  Though it needn't be in that order.  She might as well start with the truly critical piece, which was convincing her teammate to make a w--take her up on her "contest".

They had marched for most of the day and had luckily reached another town, this one slightly more affluent with more stone buildings and a hot spring-- it was called Hot Water Village, in fact.  That should make her task a bit easier as Naruto's "Ero-sennin" could certainly be enticed with a bit of his "research".

Planning out her strategy as they approached the turn-off, she made her pitch to the group first.

"Let's take some time to rest, there's a village with a nice hot spring just off the road."

As expected, Naruto protested immediately under henge, this time with Jiraiya's support... until she acted before the brat could pull out his big guns.

"And I've even heard they have mixed bathing."

Turning away from Naruto, Jiraiya grinned, well, leered, at Tsunade and immediately changed his vote.  Combined with her own and Ton-Ton's, the hot spring carried the day and the group immediately headed up the path.

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Her plan called for Jiraiya to stew for awhile, so she passed a little time in the casino, her luck just poor enough to reassure her.

Upon returning to the hotel, she pawed through her clothing with no little disgust.  She had never really gone the "seductress" route in her training and had little or nothing to make Jiraiya let down his guard.  Perhaps she should just beat him into it after all...

This was perhaps the only thing she expected her perverted team mate to really fight her on though.  That and anything which really threatened Konoha.  Which this didn't, of course.

Reaching the bottom of her chest, she blinked.  Pulling out the outfits she had found, she absently wondered why she even had examples of her genin and chunin uniforms.  The genin uniform... it reminded her of better times, before all the loss, the deaths.  Before she knew what being a ninja was really about.  Placing it on the bed, she smoothed the summer green fabric with the rose trim and smiled nostalgically.  Holding up the mesh shirt, she placed it against her chest and grimaced.  There was no way she was getting this on without a henge and she didn't think that would help much.

Her eyes moved over to the larger outfit she had worn as a chunin though.  That, she thought, had potential.

Eyeing herself in the mirror after she had finally squeezed into the outfit, Tsunade decided that the faint flush of red in her cheeks was probably from the alcohol she had earlier.  Nothing at all to do with the nearly painted on mesh undershirt and white top that could barely contain her breasts or the miniskirt that revealed those weren't the only thing that had grown since she was a teenager.

Barely avoiding ripping the clothes, she tore them off and tossed them back in her chest.  Who was she kidding, she'd drink Jiraiya into the ground and then get him to give her the fight she was looking for tonight.  No need for anything special.

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"You... Yours sure that you didn't already agree?"  Jiraiya squinted at her suspiciously, slurring his question to the point that she barely understood it in her own inebriated state.  "To the... the thing... that... with Sensei, Naruto."

Tsunade sneered carefully, then said, "Does that--"  She hiccuped and peered down at her glass reproachfully.  "--that sound, like me?"

"Nooo..."  The white haired man sounded sad suddenly.  "Not anymore.  All...  alright, you've got a deal, Princess.  We fight for it, tom--"

"A week from today," Tsunade interupted, only barely keeping the crafty smile off of her face.  The additional reminders of the past and better times helped.  Jiraiya just nodded, but the motion was enough to capsize him and he plunged forward into the hot spring they were sitting beside with a veritable hill of sake carafes around them.

Lifting the Toad Sage's head out of the water, Tsunade moved a single finger back and forth in front of the man's eyes and watched as they tracked it.  Kind of.  Her own eyes actually crossed slightly following her finger and she swayed dizzily.  Good enough though, still counted.  She pulled back and let go of Jiraiya, blinking in some surprise as he rocketed over the wall of the bathhouse.  Oh well, he'd survive.

She pulled herself further away from the edge of the spring and then closed her eyes gratefully, passing out moments later.

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Convincing Naruto to train her proved more problematic.  The boy was convinced she was trying to develop a counter to the ability to stop him from using it in the future.  He had her most valuable posession, her promise to heal his friends and sensei, and wouldn't accept her vouchers despite her insistence that she was good for it, so she didn't have much to bargain with.  Between being in that incredibly annoying position and having to avoid a scowling and disgusted Jiraiya so he couldn't back out of their b-- deal, it was not shaping up to be a particularly relaxing hot spring vacation.

Eventually, it ended up requiring an intervention by Shizune and Ton-Ton.  Without being willing to say what exactly was at stake, mainly because Tsunade had threatened to display exactly how inventive a medic-nin could really be if he told anyone she was trying to learn his Sexy Technique, he was forced to finally stop being a stubborn little brat and make some concessions.

Tsunade on the other hand, had made some promises that could definitely come back to bite her on the ass if this didn't work out and she actually had the leverage of the Hokage's hat to follow through on them.

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Only a few days away from Konoha, Tsunade and Jiraiya faced off with serious expressions.  After she had gotten the agreement out of her old team mate, he had been pressing to make the village as quickly as possible.  The delays introduced by the hot spring trip had been sufficient though and she now had the tools that she needed to win.

Naruto's technique was surprisingly elegant, but not something most genin or even chunin would be able to handle.  It required a tremendous amount of chakra to get going.  The power requirements to kick it off were, in fact, beyond even her without the Strength of a Hundred and she had been forced to re-engineer her own technique to utilize the ability.  

Once it was in place, however, the revised henge was more or less self-sustaining and you recieved most of the chakra you had spent upon it back-- which meant she could just shunt that power right back into her chakra pool.  She was fairly certain that the improvements that Naruto had made would significantly enhance her own efficiency long term, particularly as she examined it for other uses or reduced the initial chakra expenditure.  

Healing jutsu that could be applied to the wounded and left to sustain themselves were the holy grail for medic nin that weren't Tsunade herself-- this could well allow those without the Strength of a Hundred or Katsuya to heal multiple ninja at one time.  She was actually excited about her calling again for the first time in... she didn't even know how long.  It just gave her one more reason to succeed in this battle though.  There would be no way she would have the time she required to develop these new techniques if she had to deal with the paperwork, headaches, and the old fossils on the Council.

At the moment though... well, she had kind of been running out of time and had only tested the technique once.  She was sure she had it, but... well, it would play out one way or another soon enough.

"Tsunade."  Her teammate's call brought her back to the fight at hand.  They were standing on top of an abandoned temple they had identified as a good place to rest for the night and Jiraiya looked unusually sober.  "I won't let you run away again."

"Who are you to talk about that, Jiraiya?"  Tsunade's eyes flashed and her hands clenched.  The Toad Sage may have been working on behalf of Konoha, but there was a reason he had taken up a position well outside the village.  She glanced over at the boy who was standing on the edge of the roof and then looked back at Jiriya.  She raised an eyebrow mockingly.

Glaring, he didn't respond this time, but orange bled into the skin around his eyes and Tsunade cursed at herself.  Damnit.  She had to provoke him.  She now had no chance of winning this fight unless her trick worked-- he hadn't summoned the little old toad couple, but he would have enough sage energy to end this fight almost immediately.

She had been planning on her current age, that is the age she normally looked for this, but perhaps a little younger might be better.  It wasn't quite what she had prepped, but that shouldn't matter.  It was a minor modification, easily done on the fly.  Looking over at Shizune, she nodded and prepared herself.

The young lady stepped forward and said, "Ready?  Begin!"  Chopping her hand down to mark the second word at the same time she said it.

Tsunade was moving as soon as the '-in' sounded and almost crowed in triumph as she dropped the basic henge she was holding and activated her Strength of a Hundred fueled version before Jiraiya had a chance to rocket forward with his Toad Kata.  As the smoke cleared, Tsunade posed, her cheeks heating to a cherry red but still readying herself to take advantage of the opening this would create.

And to be fair, Jiraiya did stop before he even moved, his eyes bugging out.  She was slightly concerned when he started snickering though and she dropped her "sexy" pose completely when he started laughing out loud.  When Naruto clapped his hands to his nose, blood leaking out between his fingers, however, she took the time to look down.

She groaned.  She had gone too far.  She wasn't 19 like she had planned, the same age she had been when she put the man before her in the hospital.  She was 13.  A naked 13.  But a naked 13 who was flat enough to use as an ironing board.

Glaring at the man before her, Tsunade stalked forward as he wiped his watering eyes and then started cracking up again when he saw her expression.  Raising a fist, she punched the toad sage hard enough to drive him into the ground and then stomped on him several times for good measure.  Spinning around to stalk off, she saw Naruto's eyes widen again and promptly turned right back around and stripped her apparently not perverted enough team mate of his vest and jacket.

Wrapping them around herself, she gave Naruto a death glare and shared some of it with Shizune for the twitching lips, then stalked off in a snit.  She could fix the henge later.

She needed a damned drink.

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Blinking, Tsunade frowned and glanced around the room as she woke up.  She didn't remember going on a mission, but this definitely wasn't the Senju compound...  Squinting against the harsh light she clutched her head and wondered if blunt trauma was responsible for both her spotty memory and splitting headache.  Plus the nausea.  And the dry mou...  

"Oh, gods!  I have a hangover!"  Tsunade clutched her head as her own shout rang in her ears and she quickly swallowed in a vain attempt to stop her roiling stomach from bringing up whatever was left in it.  How the hell had someone gotten her drunk!  If Grandfather had slipped something in her water again, she was going pound him.  She didn't care if he was the Shodaime.

Again though, she came back to the fact that the room she was in definitely wasn't her own or even Ayako's.  Not that she had stayed over there since she became a genin, but...  if this was something that pervert team mate of hers had pulled off she was going to pound him into paste.  

Just as she was planning to leave and find out exactly what was going on, however, the door burst open and a barechested old man burst in pointing a finger at her.  "Tsunade-hime!  Yesterday didn't count, we battle again-- 2 out of 3!"

Screaming, Tsunade grabbed the first thing at hand and slung it at the pervert.  "Pervert!  Help!  I'm being att--"  Blinking, the young Senju stopped yelling and rubbed her eyes.  She paused and looked back, noted the missing bed, then turned and looked at the gaping hole in the wall and the splintered remains of what looked like a solid oak frame.

When she saw the old man pinned under the wreckage in the hall though, her eyes widened.  She hadn't meant to kill him-- she was strong, but not that strong.  Sprinting over, she dropped to her knees and bit her lip, she had just started learning medical jutsu, but there was no way she was murdering some random civilian or even ninja just because he walked in on her almost naked.  For one thing, that wasn't nearly enough suffering for someone like that.

Closing her eyes, she placed her hands over the old man's chest and... found herself delving for wounds that were apparently only superficial.  Blinking in surprise, she realized she had already started to heal even those, the knowledge just kind of there.  
The man stirred moments later and she scurried back, grabbing a stout wooden bed leg just to be safe.

Raising an eyebrow, the man looked over at her and asked, "3 out of 5?"

Tsunade just gaped.

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This is another story seed that I'm probably not going to work on for awhile, so notes for it are below.

Author's Notes
So the original concept was basically what is shown here-- what would happen if Tsunade decided that she had kind of been railroaded into the Hokage position and Jiraiya should take his lumps too?  In the Deadlock, Jiraiya almost always beats Tsunade, so she would need a trick to actually win the fight and get out of the job.  Enter Naruto and his "kage killer" Sexy no Jutsu.  Originally, as I mentioned, it was actually just a solid vs illusion issue and that was why Jiraiya was so enthusiastic about Naruto's sexy no jutsu.  Given the solid (no pun intended) proof that henge is always physical though, I decided it needed to introduce something else that explained why it is so effective on incredibly powerful ninja.

I ended up going with the explanation used here-- basically, henge typically releases a small amount of chakra that really powerful ninja can sense.  Naruto's ability actually uses some of the same concepts that are embedded into the shadow clone and essentially creates a shell around the person that completely contains the chakra for the henge by feeding it back on yourself.

Short term, it's a very powerful disguise technique.  Long term though I decided it had some... consequences.  Basically, the "shadow shell" that you're creating around yourself feeds your chakra back on itself and that brings with it memories (again, hearkening back to the shadow clone) you've "created".  Those cycle through and reinforce, again and again and eventually you believe you are whoever you transformed into, which is almost always a version of yourself due to the restrictions on the technique.   In other words, when Tsunade tied a permanent version of this technique into her Strength of a Hundred seal, she basically created a feedback loop that trapped her at age 13 and she has essentially lost all of her memories after that point.  (Though not necessarily all of her skills, since those are somewhat ingrained at this point.  That is pretty arbitrary admittedly though and was mainly put in place so that healing Lee/Sasuke could still occur.  Probably not really necessary though, since Sasuke would eventually wake up on his own I imagine.)

And that brought me to the story that I actually wanted to tell, which was a young genin Tsunade that ends up taking Sasuke's place on Team 7 after he abandons Konoha.

I don't have a lot planned for the fic at this point, but I liked the concept because Tsunade really is an interesting character and she kind of deserves a do over after the losses she's had.  I had a few things scoped out though, like a potential relationship between a young Tsunade and Naruto, with the eventual realization that she was never going to age unless she released the seal (and potentially lost herself to the original Tsunade) while he kept growing older.  Some potential conflict with Hinata over the whole thing as her healer's instincts try and get her to foster a rivalry with her to try and bolster the Hyuuga's confidence.

I also kind of wanted to have Tsunade's hemaphobia be present, except that she has no idea what causes it, which makes it all the worse.  Given that is cured during the fight with Orochimaru though, I'm not sure whether that would work here.  It has potential if I insert it into another story line at some point though and Tsunade was convinced without that fight occurring.
 

rukia8492

Well-Known Member
#2
hmmm, very interesting.
 

alucard964

Well-Known Member
#3
well that was awesome. sucks that you wont be working on it for awhile cause its one of the more interesting premises that i have seen in a month or two.
 

balthanon

Well-Known Member
#4
Thanks. I was actually considering fitting it into my Fuzzy-nii-sama storyline, but due to some of the long term plans I have for that it probably wouldn't work out. So it will probably end up being its own story unless something else moves ahead of it that might be a better fit.
 

Stormfury

Well-Known Member
#5
I like it, though this seriously screws up with the time skip. If Jiraiya takes over Kageship then he doesn't get the trip. If Jiraiya doesn't take over Kageship, who does? Danzo? Homura? Kakashi? Is there even a good reasonable choice available at this time other then Tsunade or Jiraiya?
 

balthanon

Well-Known Member
#6
It probably boils down to either Jiraiya or Danzo, at least in my mind. You might be able to make a case for Kakashi, but Danzo managed to pull ahead of him for 6th Hokage in canon. I don't think he would lose in this case.

What I would probably end up doing in the fic is having Jiraiya and Danzo fight it out, with Jiraiya having the edge. Assuming Jiraiya wins (probable, just because I haven't seen it happen much other than in spamfics about how horrible an idea that would be) then Kakashi ends up getting slotted in to take his place as spymaster. I'm not sure whether another trainer is found for Naruto so he can be pushed out of sight on a training mission or if they end up keeping him around the village similar to how Sakura was trained originally.

Any way around it, probably some definite changes to how the time skip plays out.

Team 7 as a whole being put on "spymaster" duty might be interesting too. I could see a team of Kakashi, Naruto, Tsunade, and Sakura either doing awesome because they play to the right strengths (Naruto being the face, Kakashi for infiltration, Sakura for research, Tsunade for gossip [while gambling]), or managing to destroy Konoha's information network in under a year because they go against missions mismatched or as an entire team on things that demand one on one attention.
 

Antimatter

Well-Known Member
#7
Danzo got it based on Sarringan trickery though, didn't he? I mean, it only seemed to work because no one in the room could detect it, something I don't see passing by Kage level ninja like Tsunade or Jiraya, who were clearly the first two choices for the job. And even then, Danzo noted he would have something of a hard time convincing the rest of the village to support his bed unless he played his cared perfectly.

And cool story. Did Tsunade regress due to the effects of the jutsu I take it?

And holy crap is henge an odd jutsu. People shapeshift into rocks/animals/other people, and it's a genin level academy jutsu? Hell, naruto turns into throw able objects and a freaking jutsu with it, and was able to fool jounin or near kage level ninja with it.
 

balthanon

Well-Known Member
#8
Hmm... that could be, I don't recall now. And even if he didn't take the Kage position Jiraiya would definitely be present. That said, I could also see Kakashi throwing Jiraiya under the bus when he gets the story from Naruto. Since he was Tsunade's "chosen" successor.

For Tsunade, yeah, the revised henge that Naruto developed was what regressed her. She miscalculated when she was putting it into her Strength of a Hundred and didn't take into account the side effects.
 

Antimatter

Well-Known Member
#9
Even in Kanaon, Kakashi seemed to know that he was next for the hat, if he wanted it, before Naruto. Naruto was just a green kid, after all. He also offered no protest when Jiraya took his student.

Jiraya is, iirc, one of the highest ranked of all the ninja rank rise. I'd wager he could have taken dang near anyone in the series face to face, only dying to pain because he didn't know what to expect in that fight. Had he known what the rinnegan was doing, he probably could have won.

Kakashi had rather slacked off around this time abilities wise, and would. He'd not protest Jiraya without a few more years to get himself back into shape. Much like Tsunade, he'd have been a transitional Kage, till their successor was fully up to speed.

What's amazing is he didn't take the hat 15 years ago when Minato died. Image a world where he had, and NAruto had been properly groomed from birth for his future role in the village.
 

balthanon

Well-Known Member
#10
If it was up to a fight, Kakashi and Jiraiya would be battling it out over who doesn't get to be Hokage I think, not who does. Much like Tsunade in this fic, I don't think either one of them actually want to be Kage.

Though that said, a friend and I were talking about early Kakashi and decided that the best explanation for how incredibly weak he is given his reputation is that he's actually sending a shadow clone on all of his missions with his students including Wave and is off running S rank missions at the same time. :) The week long recovery time was his shadow clone conserving chakra so it didn't pop before he could send another one or come himself.

I could see Jiraiya being Hokage after Minato being an interesting divergence point, though it's tough to do a "Naruto is well trained" fic that is more interesting than canon. You need to have another twist than character training and growth in that case I think.
 

Antimatter

Well-Known Member
#11
Nah, it's good old power creep. It would actually be more interesting to rewrite the series with end series power levels and lore at the start.

As for the divergence...I have an idea there, several in fact.
 

Stormfury

Well-Known Member
#12
Antimatter said:
Nah, it's good old power creep.  It would actually be more interesting to rewrite the series with end series power levels and lore at the start.  

As for the divergence...I have an idea there, several in fact.
Isnt that the entirety of the time travel genre?
 

Antimatter

Well-Known Member
#13
I'm thinking more along the lines of the 'limits' you see early on just aren't there. I mean, in the early series Kakashi and Z's fight, which was hella low key by end series standards, laid them out for several days.

Ditto for the 'kage level fighting' with the third and the zombies. I mean, just three years later with no 'jutsu' Orochimaru is doing giant ass snake monster stuff versus 4 tails. Imagine that level of Orochimaru versus utter badass Sarutobi.

The fights with the adults would probably be a lot more badass, while the genin, who are still quite green, would probably play out very much the same, save for perhaps an extra jutsu or so. I'm not thinking of 'Naruto is a 9tail sage mode' at series start.
 

balthanon

Well-Known Member
#14
I could see that being amusing. The kids were in shock and awe at the fighting between Kakashi and Zabusa as it was-- having that being equal to something near the end game fights in the Ninja War would be something else altogether. I could see that being something that actually causes Sakura to retire from being a ninja. Just an outright. "Well, that's not happening. I'm getting out while the getting is good."

Only to find out that once you're a ninja, you're in. So you get Sakura bitching and moaning throughout half the series about how she's going to die because they're forcing her to be a ninja even as she's desperately training to get better and surpassing the original because her life is (more visibly) on the line. I could actually see that being written from the Sakura PoV actually.
 

Altered Nova

Well-Known Member
#15
Honestly, I don't see Kakashi really being that weak at the beginning of the manga. Did you see the size of those water dragons he and Zabuza fired at each other? As big as semi trucks, easily comparable to the ones used by Mei Terumi in the Fourth War or just about any other end-game ninjutsu aside from the god-tier ones used by the various people with Rinnegans and Six Paths Chakra. And the Great Waterfall jutsu they used a few pages later was even bigger. Those guys were literally throwing entire lakes at each other. Yes there was power creep after the timeskip, but it's not nearly as bad as some people make it out to be. The gigantic battlefield-reshaping ninjutsu were there from the very beginning.

Also the canonical reason for why Kakashi was laid out for days after his fight with Zabuza is because he was really out of shape. My headcanon reason for this is because he'd been on semi-retirement for almost a decade. Konoha had been at peace for nine years, ever since the Hyuuga incident. That treaty was signed only a few years after Kakashi's entire team had died and he'd started working in ANBU. His mind was probably in a pretty dark place back then (which is also my headcanon for why he didn't take care of the orphaned Naruto). I like to believe that Hiruzen was worried about him, so he removed him from the ANBU, forbade him from taking any more S-rank missions and ordered him to train some genin, in the hopes that the downtime and dealing with kids would do some good for his mental health. Zabuza was probably the first opponent remotely close to his own level that he'd faced in a long time.

In other words, he got soft, Orochimaru's invasion made him realize that, and he spent the timeskip training like hell to get back up to his prime.
 

balthanon

Well-Known Member
#16
I think the Kakashi Gaiden story basically had him running Anbu missions right up until he was ready to train the kids. Plus, if you give him a full decade or so off it means he was a ninja for like... 10 years total maybe, retiring at 14 or 15? He's pretty young. He also wouldn't really have time to get his nickname as his defining trait.

One of the main things that gets me with power levels is some of the chidori stuff too-- where he talks about only ever being able to use like three of those and then they're using them like all day long later. I think that kind of thing is what gives the impression of a larger power differential.
 

Altered Nova

Well-Known Member
#17
A fair point... he couldn't have earned that reputation as an ANBU though, they keep their identities hidden. He must have earned it during the four or five years that the war continued between Obito's death and the signing of the peace treaty. Perhaps after the war ended he spent a few years in ANBU and then semi-retired for the last five or six years. That's enough time for him to get soft.

Sasuke does throw around chidori like he's handing out candy in Part 2, true, but the manga has actually been pretty consistent about Kakashi's extremely limited chakra reserves. He's been bedridden from chakra exhaustion twice (once in Part 1 and again in Part 2), he actually died from chakra exhaustion using kamui to protect Chouji, and he explained that the only reason he didn't use Kamui against Hidan and Kakuzu was because the chakra drain would have put him in the hospital again due to having already used raikiri three times (his Part 1 raikiri limit was 4, and he used the fourth one to finish off the defeated Kakuzu). The only time Kakashi has ever been able to spam chidori or kamui was during the final war arc, and that was only because Kurama gave him a large transfer of chakra (which Kakashi claimed somehow also increased the power of his kamui threefold.)
 

nixofcyzerra

Well-Known Member
#18
If Kakashi was running assassination missions in ANBU for years, it kind of makes sense his stamina would suffer. You don't get much exercise if you kill your opponent with the first strike, after all.

It's possible that even his training was geared towards stealth and indirect methods like poisoning, or using Genjutsu that requires more control than stamina.
 

balthanon

Well-Known Member
#19
I was actually thinking of that as a potential explanation too, forgot to include it. Assuming he's performing civilian assassinations, that can't put a lot of stress on your body-- it would be mostly mental instead. That said, he still never struck me as nearly as powerful as all the other Kage level ninja and he has to be at least in that range given that he was up for the position a couple times. (Then again, Tsunade never really fully came off as Kage level either until we saw her in the war and she actually glued herself back together after being cut in half.)
 

Antimatter

Well-Known Member
#20
balthanon said:
I could see that being amusing.  The kids were in shock and awe at the fighting between Kakashi and Zabusa as it was-- having that being equal to something near the end game fights in the Ninja War would be something else altogether.  I could see that being something that actually causes Sakura to retire from being a ninja.  Just an outright.  "Well, that's not happening.  I'm getting out while the getting is good."

Only to find out that once you're a ninja, you're in.  So you get Sakura bitching and moaning throughout half the series about how she's going to die because they're forcing her to be a ninja even as she's desperately training to get better and surpassing the original because her life is (more visibly) on the line.  I could actually see that being written from the Sakura PoV actually.
Presumably, they would be familiar with what sorts of powers ninjas can weld during their academy training, which had to involve a few demonstrations for the kids about what higher level combat means.  Not to mention seeing family/clan members train and such.  What's amazing is that there isn't more a process to identify strengths and assign additional training.  Instead, it seems like they are grouped into rough rolls and their jounin teachers are suppose to complete their training.  One would figure Sakura, with her amazing control, would have been assigned medic duties much earlier.  I mean heck, actual militaries do this pretty easily, and they don't get years of training. 

My thought is that the school is not designed to do anything but provide the basics, leaving the clans themselves to round out training, until the jounin teachers give them more practical mission based training.  Boruto seems much more rounded in his training them Naruto was at his age, for example.  The clan kids also seem to have a few extra jutsu here and there. 

Makes me wonder what exactly, if anything, Sakura's family taught her.  Outside inner sakura, she didn't seem to have anything but the absolute basics. 

I'd have structured the school more like two parts book education, two parts basic training /physical training, and one part specialized training.  Weekends reserved for clan training/leisure.
 

Altered Nova

Well-Known Member
#21
balthanon said:
That said, he still never struck me as nearly as powerful as all the other Kage level ninja and he has to be at least in that range given that he was up for the position a couple times.
I think Kakashi would be in the Kage power tier if it weren't for his cripplingly low chakra reserves. He knows plenty of end-game level ninjutsu, he's got the shadow clones, he's better with his sharingan than most Uchiha, he even knows the rasengan... the problem is that he can only use like five good jutsu before he runs out of chakra (and less if his sharingan is active.) Hell, if his chakra levels were merely doubled he could probably copy Naruto and use a shadow clone to complete his lightning element rasengan and further develop it into the lightning equivalent of the rasenshuriken.

Really, the main reason Kakashi ever loses his fights is because he's always holding back due to having to pace himself. If he had chakra reserves equal to Kakuzu or Deva Path I think he could have beaten them both.

balthanon said:
(Then again, Tsunade never really fully came off as Kage level either until we saw her in the war and she actually glued herself back together after being cut in half.)
To be fair to her, she was living as a missing-nin in all but name for over a decade, spending all her free time gambling, drinking, and wallowing in self-pity. She was also mentally unable to handle the sight of blood at the time, so she probably wasn't even working as a civilian medic during her time away from the village. "Rusty" would be a extremely generous description of her combat ability during her fight with Kabuto and Orochimaru in Part 1. She must have had one hell of a training regime during the timeskip to whip herself back into shape.
 

Knyght

The Collector
#22
Altered Nova said:
She was also mentally unable to handle the sight of blood at the time, so she probably wasn't even working as a civilian medic during her time away from the village.
Yup.
 

balthanon

Well-Known Member
#23
knight504 said:
Altered Nova said:
She was also mentally unable to handle the sight of blood at the time, so she probably wasn't even working as a civilian medic during her time away from the village.
Yup.
I always thought it was a bit odd that Orochimaru's arms even had a chance at being healed or worked after getting a new body.  The wound wasn't exactly physical.  I would have thought he'd need to slice open the Death God's stomach to fix it.  Did they ever explain that better in the manga?
 

Knyght

The Collector
#24
I expect that he believed Tsunade would be able to restore the physical damage and prevent any further decay from occuring, just like when Orochimaru eventually changed bodies. After body-swapping, his arms worked okay but he needed to unseal the missing parts of his soul specifically to use hand-seals again. So the Dead Demon Consuming Seal harmed him on a physical and spiritual; the former could be healed but the latter required undoing the seal.

I can't recall if he ever gives the impression that Tsunade would be able to completely heal him, damaged soul and all. We didn't really learn that Orochimaru still couldn't use hand-seal until Suigetsu mentioned it many years after the fact.
 

nixofcyzerra

Well-Known Member
#25
She can heal mental trauma. Even if she couldn't restore the arms completely, her opinion as a medic would probably have been vital for a starting point for Oro's research into doing so.
 
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