If Akira can be groomed into the Sixth Hokage, then that would count as putting the right person forward for the village, wouldn't it? After all, both his strength and his head are where they need to be.
Tsunade turned the thought over in her mind. From here on, she needed to make sure Akira showed his face more often when major matters came up. Let people see him. Let his name carry weight. Once a few years passed and the timing was right, pushing him upward would become the natural next step.
And I need to find a chance to have him sign a contract with Katsuyu too. If he's going to stand with me, he can't spend all his time with the cold-blooded lot from Ryūchi Cave.
She genuinely wanted Akira to inherit Shikkotsu Forest's legacy as well.
It wasn't as if the ninja world had a rule saying someone could only sign with one summon. Sasuke later ended up with both snakes and hawks, didn't he?
Even without all the personal complications, Tsunade had already seen Akira as the best possible successor, the same way the Third had once looked at Minato.
Now, with things having grown more complicated, that urge to see him rise had only become stronger.
If she wanted the village to accept Akira, there was only one real path.
He needed a mountain of S-rank missions to his name.
How had the title of the Legendary Sannin been earned in the first place?
By crawling back out of mountains of corpses again and again, and by surviving enough S-rank missions to build a reputation no one could deny.
Tsunade herself had cleared ninety-five S-rank missions.
To this day, no one had broken that record.
So if she wanted to build Akira's standing, he needed bigger achievements and more presence in major affairs. More participation in high-level discussions.
As Hokage's guard, he'd have the perfect opportunity.
After returning to the inn, the two of them didn't stick close. By silent agreement, they each went back to their own rooms.
Tsunade didn't go looking for Akira, and Akira didn't do anything impulsive just because of the charged atmosphere from the hot spring.
Some things were better with a little distance left intact. The space itself made them linger more clearly in memory.
Back in his room, Akira didn't waste time. He pulled out another scroll on medical ninjutsu, opened it beneath the lamplight, and buried himself in study.
Only when the night had deepened and the moon was high in the branches did Jiraiya finally shove his way inside. As expected, the old man carried a strong cloud of cheap perfume and powder with him.
Akira looked over at him from the corner of his eye and sighed. "Jiraiya-sama, you keep diving into those places every day and calling it intelligence work, but I doubt anyone would buy that excuse."
Jiraiya wasn't completely drunk. He dropped into the seat opposite Akira, poured himself a cup of cold tea, and grinned shamelessly. "What would a brat like you know? I'm risking my life for the village's intelligence network. You think I want to go deep into enemy territory like that?"
Akira snapped the book shut with a crisp smack and looked at Jiraiya's face in silence for a second. Then he said flatly, "From where I'm sitting, you seem to enjoy it quite a bit. Still, your hobbies are your business. I'm not here to judge. More importantly, how's Naruto's training coming along?"
These past few days, Naruto had been practicing until the dead of night before dragging himself back.
Jiraiya blinked, scratched his head, and said, "I haven't actually been watching him that closely lately. He's basically done. The last few days have mostly just been about polishing it and getting used to it."
Seeing the complete lack of responsibility on Jiraiya's face, Akira felt another wave of helplessness and sighed. "Fine. Then I'll go check on him myself before I can relax."
He really didn't trust Jiraiya's free-range teaching style, but everyone had their own methods, and Akira didn't feel like arguing about it.
The moment the words left his mouth, his figure blurred and vanished from the room like a ghost.
He had already placed a Flying Raijin marker on Naruto earlier.
The instant Akira reappeared, Naruto just happened to be charging forward with a bright blue Rasengan in his hand, and it was on a direct path to smash straight into him.
At the final possible moment, violent lightning exploded around Akira's body.
The electricity moved as if it had a will of its own, weaving itself into a completely sealed lightning barrier that wrapped him from head to toe.
Boom!
With an ear-splitting blast, Naruto's spinning Rasengan slammed hard into the lightning shield.
The two masses of chakra collided instantly, creating a violent storm of unstable energy.
The ground beneath them couldn't handle the impact at all. It shattered on the spot, dirt and rock spraying everywhere.
A massive crater several yards wide was left in the ground, while the small patch beneath Akira's feet remained perfectly intact.
Naruto, on the other hand, was thrown backward by the rebounding force and skidded over a dozen yards away.
When the dust finally began to settle, Akira lowered his head and looked over the huge crater around him, a faint smile tugging at his mouth.
"Looks like the energy output really was pretty decent."
Then he raised his eyes and looked toward where Naruto had landed.
Fortunately, Naruto's absurd durability had done its job. He wasn't injured. He'd just been knocked flat on his rear.
Akira walked over and looked down at him. "Well? You didn't break anything, did you?"
Naruto looked up, recognized him, and instantly started complaining. "Akira?! Why didn't you say something before popping up like that? That was dangerous!"
Akira offered him a hand and pulled him up with a grin. "I just wanted to test it in person and see whether your current Rasengan could break through my Lightning Style defense."
Akira's defensive lightning jutsu was a genuine A-rank jutsu with frightening stopping power.
Normally, he used it casually, like any other standard ninjutsu.
Naruto stared at him with naked envy. "My Rasengan gave it everything it had and still couldn't get through your Lightning Style. Is that one of Kakashi-sensei's jutsus too?"
Akira shook his head calmly. "No. I developed that one myself."
The instant Naruto heard that, he jumped up in excitement, his eyes shining. "Then can you teach it to me too?"
Akira answered immediately. "No."
The light in Naruto's eyes died at once, but before he could complain, Akira continued, "It's not that I don't want to. You don't have Lightning-nature chakra, so you can't learn it."
Naruto looked completely lost. He had no idea what Akira meant by "nature."
Akira didn't bother trying to explain it in detail. He just pulled out a strip of chakra paper and handed it over. "Here. Put your chakra into this and see what happens."
Naruto still didn't understand what Akira was getting at, but he did as he was told.
The moment his chakra entered the paper, it split cleanly in two, as if sliced by an invisible blade.
Naruto stared at the two halves in shock. "W-what just happened?"
Akira glanced at it and said evenly, "That means your natural chakra affinity is Wind."
"And if you want to use Lightning Style, the first requirement is having Lightning-nature chakra. You can train yourself into a second affinity later if you really want to, but it's difficult."
Following the original course of events, Naruto would one day gain every chakra nature except Yin.
But that was later.
Right now, he truly only had Wind.
Naruto's eyes lit up all over again. "So I can train this Wind thing?"
Akira gave him a serious look. "My advice is to finish mastering Rasengan first. At the same time, get a proper grasp on the nature transformation of Wind chakra."
"Rasengan itself is already an extreme form of shape transformation. If you can fuse Wind nature transformation into it on top of that, the power will multiply enormously. It'll become terrifying."
Naruto froze, incredulous. "Rasengan can actually get even stronger?"
Akira smiled. "Of course. Right now Rasengan has pushed shape transformation as far as it can go, but it's still only half-complete. Once you add nature transformation, it becomes something completely different."
After hearing that, Naruto stared at him intently. "Then Akira... have you completed that nature transformation thing?"
Akira paused. He was weighing whether or not to show Naruto.
Seeing that hunger in Naruto's eyes, he finally said, "Yeah. I already finished nature transformation for my chakra a while ago."
Naruto's mind moved quickly enough to grasp the next step. "So that means you've already got a Wind Style jutsu even stronger than Rasengan?"
Akira nodded. "Something like that."
"Though I haven't used this one in an actual fight yet. Really, it's more something you could aim toward later."
What Akira planned to show him was exactly what Naruto would one day create himself:
Wind Style: Rasenshuriken.
In truth, Akira had fully developed it within a couple of weeks after learning Rasengan. And not just the Wind version. He'd already experimented with Fire, Earth, Water, and even Lightning versions as well.
But he almost never needed a technique like this in ordinary combat.
And it wasn't even close to the strongest card he had in reserve.
He'd created it mostly out of curiosity. He'd simply wanted to see for himself how terrifying the famous Wind Style: Rasenshuriken really was.
Naruto's eyes shone so brightly they were practically glowing. "What kind of jutsu is it exactly?"
Akira looked around.
The back hills had a broad open stretch of grassland nearby. There should be plenty of space.
So he said, "I'll show you once. Later on, you can try moving in this direction. But this jutsu is incredibly dangerous. Most people can't train it at all. If it's you, though, I think there's a way."
Under Naruto's eager stare, Akira slowly lifted his right hand and began drawing chakra together.
In an instant, a huge amount of chakra gathered in his palm, spinning, compressing, and reshaping itself until it formed the outline of a rapidly rotating shuriken.
Hummmm—
The moment the Rasenshuriken fully formed, the air around it began vibrating violently, releasing a piercing buzz.
The Wind chakra spilling off it whipped the surrounding air into a gale, blasting Naruto's hair straight upward.
But Naruto's eyes never left the terrifying light in Akira's hand for even a second.
"This... this is what Rasengan looks like with Wind nature transformation added? The pressure is insane..."
"It feels more than twice as strong as a normal Rasengan!"
At that exact moment, Jiraiya, who had been wandering lazily toward the back hills, happened to see Akira standing there with the Rasenshuriken raised overhead.
Akira held it high in one hand, and all at once the air for dozens of yards around him began churning wildly.
Even from over a hundred yards away, Jiraiya stopped dead in his tracks, staring in shock with his mouth slightly open.
"What in the world is that? Did Akira make that?"
"Just from the aura alone, it's far beyond an ordinary Rasengan."
"So he really did add Wind nature transformation into it."
Under Naruto's worshipful stare, Akira hurled the shrieking Rasenshuriken toward the empty field in the distance.
"Go."
At the instant he threw it, Jiraiya froze all over again. "You can throw that thing like a weapon? You've got to be kidding me."
The Rasenshuriken flew with horrifying speed, crossing hundreds of yards in the blink of an eye before slamming into the ground.
Then the world exploded.
BOOOOM!!
The earth over a huge radius shook violently.
The shockwave from the detonation swept outward instantly, reaching Akira and Naruto only a moment later.
The violent gale whipped both of their hair in every direction.
Akira was fine, since he kept his hair short, but Naruto's was long enough that even his forehead protector nearly got torn off by the wind.
The apocalyptic blast left both Naruto and Jiraiya staring in stunned silence.
Especially Jiraiya.
With all his experience, he immediately recognized the horrifying principle behind the attack.
"Those are countless microscopic high-frequency wind blades. The density is high enough to attack at the cellular level. This is a jutsu formed by compressing endless miniature wind blades together... wait."
Then something clicked in his mind.
Without hesitation, Jiraiya vanished with Body Flicker and reappeared right beside Akira.
He grabbed Akira's arm and asked urgently, "Akira, what about your hand?"
Akira looked at the worry on Jiraiya's face and immediately understood what he meant. So he simply held out his right hand without resistance.
Jiraiya checked it carefully.
The hand was completely unharmed.
Not a mark on it.
That only made him frown harder. "That doesn't make sense. At point-blank range, those high-frequency wind blades should've torn apart the user too. At that level of damage, your hand should be destroyed."
Naruto, still dazed, looked from one to the other. "This jutsu is dangerous to the user too?"
Akira nodded and explained, "Very dangerous. The training difficulty is S-rank. And for an ordinary person, the hand that uses it would definitely be ruined by the backlash."
Jiraiya looked at him thoughtfully. "So you already solved the self-harm drawback of the jutsu?"
Akira nodded without hesitation.
Jiraiya was completely stunned now. "If that's really true, then for you, this jutsu is basically a killing move with no weakness."
It was one of the most terrifying, and one of the cruelest, jutsus Jiraiya had ever seen.
Because once someone was hit by it, the cells and chakra pathways in their body would be shredded instantly, leaving their whole system unable to function. Even ninjas with powerful regeneration would have trouble repairing that sort of microscopic destruction.
Only freaks like the Third Raikage, whose body was so absurdly durable that even space-time techniques struggled to tear him apart, might possibly be able to endure it head-on.
Akira smiled and said, "Come on. Let's go take a look and see how much damage it really caused. To be honest, this was my first time using it at full power too."