Blind To It Before

Title: Blind To It Before
Rating: R (for now)
Warnings: None yet

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Chapter 5 – Just a Little Kindling

It wasn't until the second week of Naruto's rehabilitation that Jiraiya had decided to pay a visit to his most recent pupil. He grinned lecherously at the apron-clad Sakura who was washing a collection of ramen bowls but was distracted by a well-aimed teacup to the temple. Rubbing the sore spot and retreating from the kitchen, the ero-sennin made his way into the living room where Naruto was laying on the floor pulling himself up for what was apparently his three hundred and second sit up, a Gai-esque training session if he had ever seen one.

"Three-oh-three, three-oh-four...hey, ero-sennin...three-oh-five, three-oh-six..." Naruto trailed on and on, not bothering to pause in his set.

Jiraiya took a seat on the nearby chair to lazily watch his student nearly killing himself with mundane exercises. "You can start calling me Jiraiya any day now. And how'd you know it was me, anyway?"

Naruto paused and looked blankly in his direction, "You smell like sake, women's perfume, and that tobacco Gamabunta smokes. Besides, your sandals are noisy, and Sakura doesn't throw teacups at just anyone...mostly me."

The Sennin grinned and laughed a bit, "Well, it seems that you're recovering quite well despite the vision loss. Well done my boy, didn't think you had the intelligence to refine your other senses this quickly." His tone lowered as he leaned in closer to whisper to Naruto, "But how'd you like a little technique to help speed things along, or at least provide some temporary help while Tsunade works on fixing your problem, eh?" With that, he pulled out the scroll that he originally presented to the Hokage before she deemed it his duty to handle the contents.

Naruto grinned and jumped up from his place on the floor, "A new jutsu? All right! Sakura-chan, we're going training! Ero-sennin has a new jut-"

He was cut off abruptly by Jiraiya's hand clamping over his mouth, "Idiot! Don't tell her what we're doing. Just, let me handle this." He released the squirming boy and walked back into the kitchen, thankful that Sakura had become increasingly less attentive to Naruto's outbursts. "Oh Sakura-chan," he purred, turning on his infamous charm, "I'll be taking Naruto for the rest of the afternoon. Tsunade's orders. We should hopefully be back this evening, don't hold dinner up for us."

Sakura nodded, smiling at the lack of obvious perversion in their current encounter. Still, that set off a new warning light in her head...why was Jiraiya being so polite and honest all of a sudden? However, little nagging issues like that had no place in her head at the moment, as she was already contemplating how nice an evening at home without Naruto to keep an eye on would be. This must be how parents feel when they get a babysitter for the night, she thought, remembering her previous jobs taking care of the offspring of her neighbors as they went out for some private time. "Of course, Jiraiya-sama," she smiled, placing the last dish back into the cabinet.

Jiraiya placed a hand on Naruto's shoulder and steered him out of the apartment, making sure he had tucked the scroll back into his vest, lest Sakura notice what they were up to. Minutes later, the pair was standing in one of the forbidden training grounds of Konoha village, access having been immediately granted to one of the Legendary Three. It was in this secluded area that Jiraiya unfolded the scroll and began to detail the contents to his eager student.

"Now Naruto, this is a powerful form of ninjutsu that requires a lot of concentration and...are you paying attention?" Jiraiya questioned, noticing Naruto's wandering head and he picked up various scents and sounds from the area.

"Yeah yeah, I heard you...ninjutsu, concentration...can we just get started already?" Naruto whined, grabbing for the scroll he had heard being placed on the ground before him.

"Idiot," Jiraiya mumbled as he smacked Naruto lightly across the top of the head, "how do you expect to learn the seals when you can't even see the scroll? You don't even know what you're learning yet. Now sit still, pay attention, and you'll be doing this in no time."

The two sat well into the fading twilight, going over the hand seals required to begin the technique. Jiraiya started by listing off the forms, Tiger, Crane, Monkey, but noticed that Naruto had obviously been a visual learner when it came to seals and therefore had to retrain him by moving his hands into each position while naming them aloud until he finally caught on. After covering the seals, Naruto had to breathe deeply and focus his chakra into a light field surrounding his body. Anything within the radius of the field would immediately be covered with a thin layer of chakra and therefore take a physical shape. It was as if he was covering the world around him with a sheet to outline the objects around him. With enough concentration, he could relay the objects his chakra covered back into his brain and paint a rough outline of the area around him. Hours later, when the moon was full in the air and Jiraiya was nearly falling asleep from boredom, Naruto had successfully been able to prove his competency with the technique through various counting exercises involving sets of kunai and shuriken placed before him. As a final test, Jiraiya tossed a few at him, which he was successfully able to dodge even with his ears having been plugged with cotton a few tests prior.

Naruto flopped back on the grass panting slightly, "I think I've got it pretty well, ero-sennin." he mumbled, scratching his dinner-lacking stomach.

Jiraiya nodded his approval and gathered the scroll back into his vest. "Well done, Naruto. I think this should help keep you in higher spirits while Tsunade works on getting your real sight back. In the meantime, you may want to think about the more...interesting nuances of having lost your sight. Don't rely on this technique all the time now, there may be some times when not knowing what's coming is more exciting. You might not want to tell Sakura about your newfound skill just yet." He winked, even though the boy would never see it, and gave his famous lecherous grin. Naruto was of course, oblivious to the entire exchange, words and gestures, and bluntly questioned his teacher.

"What do you mean? Not being able to see is one of the biggest handicaps a ninja can have! Without my sight, it's going to be a million times harder to become Hokage! Of course, I'll still do it, but it's gonna be way harder now! How can being blind ever be exciting? Why can't Sakura know?"

Jiraiya shook his head and pushed the fidgeting blonde ahead of him back to the apartment. He needed to learn that unlike some of his former students, Naruto wasn't so quick to come to perverse conclusions as he was to anything Hokage-related. Still, he had confidence that eventually, whether it be a restless night where he found himself just feet away from his pink-haired teammate or during a relaxing trip to the bathhouse after a day of training with his private nurse, Naruto would eventually get the perverted Sennin's real reason of teaching him that particular ninjutsu. Hopefully he'd also get his more subtle reference of excitement in the dark; he chuckled, remembering the many nights he had found himself in the more sleazy parts of town with silk bandannas tied across his eyes. Naruto may be dense and short-sighted, but he figured no man could resist the allure of a beautiful woman and the promise that the only thing you were certain of in regards to the upcoming events was uncertainty.

As Naruto entered the apartment he shared with Sakura, he tried out his newfound skill and found it ten times easier to navigate the apartment than it had been hours prior. He listened for sounds of his teammate and was greeted by low humming in the bedroom. Following his chakra-outlined path, he made his way into the bedroom only to find himself visualizing the outline of a very curvy and almost certainly naked Sakura. She was seated on the bed brushing out her hair which was freshly damp from a trip to the bath when he had walked in. He flailed a bit, turning away and nearly running into the doorframe, apologizing quickly. She looked up, quite puzzled that he would've reacted in such an embarrassed manner, as it was common for her to be found in that position after a bath. She had stopped being cautious about nudity around him since it was quite obvious it made no difference to his sightless eyes. "Naruto, what's wrong?" she questioned, pulling her robe on just for security.

"I-I didn't know you weren't dressed, and I just walked in, and..." he trailed off, fearing another blow to the head.

"How did you know?" Sakura muttered, a skeptical tone in her voice.

"T-the...umm...shampoo, yeah. I could smell that you just got back from the bath, and I just assumed that you'd be naked after that, and so...umm..." he stammered, trying to excuse his strange behavior.

A moment of silence passed before she stood to get her pajamas. "Okay, I guess that makes sense," she said, walking into the bathroom to change just in case there really was something going on. Naruto sighed and changed into his own sleepwear, crawling into his bed silently and waiting for the click of the light to signal that they were done discussing things for the night. He heard the rustle of her sheets and the slow, steady breathing coming from the bed next to him and knew that she was asleep. He sat up and silently activated the chakra technique, outlining her sleeping form on the bed. As he studied the delicate features of her face, and eventually her pajama-clad body, he began to understand just a little of what the ero-sennin was saying about the more interesting uses of the technique. The more pressing realization he came to that evening was how much prettier Sakura had grown up to be. Maybe it was just the age they were at, or maybe it was because that was the first time they had been separated for more than a few days since becoming a team, or maybe it was just that without seeing anything for nearly three weeks at that point, she was all the more a welcome sight to sightless eyes.

Naruto laid back down, breaking the ninjutsu and letting his body and chakra rest for the night. Tomorrow was another day to work on his newly acquired means of perception.