Can I get training in resisting other people's auras instead? If I can work my way up to someday resisting the aura of a Kage, that'll make me immune to normal jōnin auras, right?"
Jiraiya raised an eyebrow. "You think you could resist the aura of a Kage?"
"Eventually! Right now, I'm just suggesting seeing how far I can get, and then practising until I get better."
"You won't get anywhere, I can tell you that now. Apart from the fact that you're trying to face off against an incredible badass who makes ordinary jōnin quake in their boots, you just don't have the right kind of resolve. Mari told me about how she rescued you from Shikigami's camp. It was brave of you to run headfirst into the unknown, but when it comes down to it, you ran because there was no other choice. I think a lot of your missing-nin adventures were like that. Heck, I'm the one who forced you into half of them. You made choices based on what increased your odds of survival. Which was smart, sensible, and absolutely the right thing for a missing-nin to do, but the resolve you get from that? It's a survivor's resolve. You stare into the eyes of danger and go 'I've faced worse than you and survived.'
"You can't beat me with survivor's resolve. Somewhere in the back of your mind there'll be a voice going 'I'm stronger than Jiraiya and here is why', and another voice going 'I'm weaker than Jiraiya but I have to beat him anyway in order to survive.' Neither of those voices will give you what you need."
He didn't get Hazō at all. Or rather, he got how Hazō dealt with his enemies, but that didn't tell Jiraiya anything about where Hazō's resolve
came from.
"That's not it at all!" Hazō exclaimed in frustration.
"Sorry," he said in a more subdued voice after registering Jiraiya's expression. "That came out more rudely than I expected. But I don't get my resolve from being a survivor. I get it from living in the name of the things I believe in. I have a vision of a better world, a world I intend to create, and I'm going to do whatever it takes to turn that vision into reality. I know that it isn't going to be an easy path. I know that the world is a ravenous, unfeeling abyss, and that the darkness within it is going to devour all of us unless somebody stops it. I'm not going to pretend otherwise. But precisely
because the world needs saving, I am going to become strong enough to save it. It doesn't matter what I face—unsolvable problems, unbeatable enemies, even human nature itself—I will overcome them because I have to.
That's my resolve, and that's what I want to use to learn to stand up to a jōnin aura, step by step."
"Wrong answer."
It was like being hit with an uppercut out of nowhere.
"What?!"
"Better, I'll grant you," Jiraiya said with an approving nod. "That could get you a long way under the right circumstances, at least if you can walk the walk. But this time, one little voice is going 'I'm stronger than Jiraiya because I want to be' and another is going 'I'm weaker than Jiraiya but I have to beat him anyway for the greater good'. That's not good enough either."
Not enough? How could it be not enough? Setting aside the fact that Jiraiya
was unbeatable as things stood, that was Hazō's own self, the thing that would eventually become his core as a jōnin. It would be one thing if Jiraiya had said it wasn't strong enough, or even if he'd said that Hazō wasn't putting enough of himself into those words. Hazō knew that right now that resolve was more a statement of intent than anything else. But to imply that it was wrong on a fundamental level?
"It's not that belief can't work to give you strong enough resolve. But it takes purity of focus. It takes a kind of fanaticism that you don't have. Look at Zabuza. Zabuza dedicated every waking moment of his life to being a hunter-nin, whether he had to or not. On top of making him the ultimate master of his craft, it also gave him an identity that couldn't break under pressure. He had no voices in the back of his head, and I doubt I could have made him submit if I wanted to.
"There are others out there. I once knew a man who'd dedicated himself to the protection of Leaf to the point where nothing else existed for him. If you could be used to protect Leaf, he would use you. If you were a threat to Leaf, he would remove you. That was the sum total of his world. He wasn't even a Kage, but his aura could floor jōnin too.
"Assuming you aren't a paragon like those two, the resolve you need to beat a jōnin is the same resolve you need to become a jōnin. You have just one voice, and what it says is 'I'm stronger than Jiraiya.' No explanations. No justifications. No objectives. You're not even trying to win. You're not even focusing your resolve in response to my aura. You just are, and there happens to be a jōnin aura in your general vicinity."
"I just… am?"
"That's right. 'I'm stronger than Jiraiya.' Go a little deeper, a little further towards the core, and all you see is 'I'm stronger.' Get as close to the core as words will get you, and all you see is 'I am.' Nobody gets to argue with that.
"I'm not saying I won't give you a fair shot, once we're back in Leaf and I can do it without freaking out everybody in a one-mile area. Just don't expect miracles."
-o-
