Konoha --- Old-Growth Training Stand
Day fourteen.
Six in the morning.
Thirteen threads.
The natural energy moved through Naruto steadily now --- not like something being absorbed, more like something recognizing a place it belonged.
He was counting a crow.
Just one.
It had been on the same branch for forty minutes and he'd decided to see if it moved before he did.
The crow showed no signs of moving.
They were, Naruto had concluded, similarly stubborn.
The census had started as a technique for stillness.
It had become something more than that.
A way of being in a place instead of just occupying it.
Of noticing what was already there instead of reaching for what wasn't.
He counted the crow.
Twelve threads of natural energy moved through him the way they always did now.
The thirteenth was forming.
He let it come.
Then something else happened.
Not the thirteenth thread.
Something that happened with the threads.
Between them and his chakra.
A moment where the two things --- his internal chakra and the external natural energy --- were moving at the same rate in the same direction.
Not merged.
Not combined.
Just --- aligned.
Like two rivers that had been running parallel finding for one moment that they were the same river.
It lasted four seconds.
He felt it clearly.
The shift in how the air tasted.
The specific quality of the light through his closed eyelids.
The crow moving, somewhere in his awareness, with more definition than his eyes could have provided.
Four seconds.
Then his attention moved and the alignment broke.
He opened his eyes.
Jiraiya was very still across from him.
He'd been counting something too --- Naruto could tell from the particular quality of his focus.
Not counting birds.
Counting seconds.
"Four seconds," Jiraiya said.
"Yeah," Naruto said.
He looked at his hands.
He could still feel where the alignment had been.
Not the warmth of the natural energy exactly.
Something more like the memory of a door that had, for exactly four seconds, been open.
"That was the functional threshold," Jiraiya said.
"I know."
"The point where the two energies align instead of just coexisting."
"I know." Naruto looked at the crow, who had finally moved --- three branches to the left, in the four seconds his eyes had been opening. "What happens next?"
"You practice holding it longer," Jiraiya said. "Four seconds becomes ten. Ten becomes a minute. A minute becomes the foundation for the first Sage Mode form."
"How long did it take you to get from four seconds to a minute?"
Jiraiya was quiet.
"Two weeks," he said. "With Fukasaku's help."
"And without Fukasaku's help?"
"Longer." He paused. "But you have the Imprint. Which is a different kind of help." He looked at Naruto. "Your father got three seconds on his first functional attempt."
Naruto blinked.
"He couldn't sustain it past three?"
"No." Jiraiya's mouth did the thing it did when he was calibrating something carefully. "He went straight to two seconds the next attempt."
A beat.
"He was moving backward?"
"He was adjusting too fast," Jiraiya said. "He felt the four seconds and tried to engineer it on the next attempt instead of letting it happen again naturally. That's a common mistake. The mind gets in the way of the body finding it a second time."
Naruto thought about this.
"He wasn't competing," he said.
"No. He was overengineering." Jiraiya looked at him. "You won't do that."
"How do you know?"
"Because you've been doing the census for two weeks without trying to optimize it. You just let it become what it needed to be." He paused. "You know how to let things arrive."
Naruto was quiet.
He looked at the crow on its new branch.
He thought about the census method.
About his father standing at a street corner counting pedestrians.
About how it had worked because it gave the attention something small to hold so the big thing could happen at the edge.
He thought about the four seconds.
He hadn't engineered it.
He'd been counting a crow.
"Okay," he said.
He closed his eyes.
He found the crow.
Branch three positions to the left of where it started.
He counted it.
The second functional alignment happened eight minutes later.
Three seconds this time.
But steadier.
Like a flame in less wind.
The third was six seconds.
The fourth was nine.
Jiraiya watched all of it without speaking.
He was counting too.
Not seconds.
Just watching the rate of improvement.
He thought about two weeks.
About weeks, possibly less.
About the Kaguya window.
He thought about a twelve-year-old who had found the functional threshold on day fourteen and achieved four sequential functional alignments before noon.
He sent a message.
Ichiraku Ramen
Bai Yan read it while checking the lunch prep.
He set down the ladle.
He looked at the message for a moment.
He picked up the preparation list from his apron pocket.
Found the last item.
It said: Naruto's readiness.
He crossed out approaching and wrote one word.
Ready.
He folded the list.
Put it back in his pocket.
He picked up the ladle.
Went back to the broth.
Group Chat:
[Jiraiya: Functional threshold achieved. Day fourteen. Four attempts, nine-second maximum by the fourth.]
[Second Hokage Tobirama Senju: Nine seconds on the fourth functional attempt.]
[Jiraiya: Yes.]
[Second Hokage Tobirama Senju: ...]
[Second Hokage Tobirama Senju: At that rate, stable Sage Mode access within ten days.]
[Jiraiya: My estimate too.]
[Second Hokage Tobirama Senju: That's inside the Kaguya window.]
[Jiraiya: Yes.]
[Uchiha Madara: ...]
[Uchiha Madara: The anchor is ahead of schedule.]
[First Hokage Hashirama Senju: MADARA!! IS THAT---DOES THAT MEAN YOU'RE RELIEVED?!]
[Uchiha Madara: I said the anchor is ahead of schedule. That's an observation.]
[First Hokage Hashirama Senju: YOU'RE RELIEVED!! HAHAHA!!]
[Uchiha Madara: I'm going to use the Ability Sealing Card on your ability to be loud.]
[First Hokage Hashirama Senju: TOBIRAMA WOULDN'T LET YOU!!]
[Second Hokage Tobirama Senju: I'm considering allowing it, actually.]
[First Hokage Hashirama Senju: BROTHER!!]
Reaper's Belly
Kushina had read the message.
She was holding Minato's sleeve.
"Nine seconds," she said. "On the fourth try."
"Yes."
"You got three on your first."
"Yes."
"He beat your record."
Minato was quiet for a moment.
"Yes," he said.
"Does that---"
"No," he said. "It doesn't bother me." He looked at the training stand through the Pure Land's awareness. At Naruto on his fifth attempt, eyes closed, crow on a branch, natural energy moving with him like it had somewhere to be. "It's exactly right. He should surpass me."
Kushina looked at him.
"That's very---"
"I'm his father," Minato said simply. "That's what fathers want."
Kushina pressed her face against his shoulder.
She said something into it that was muffled.
"What?" he said.
She said it louder.
"I said you're perfect and I love you."
Minato put his arm around her.
"I know," he said.
She pinched him.
"Don't be smug about it."
"I'm just agreeing with you."
"Agree less smugly."
"...Yes, dear."
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