Hamako's jaw dropped, "You're not even level three yet! You're fourteen and you aren't even at level five?"
Naruto shrunk under her yelling, "Yeah, I guess so. Is that a bad thing Hamako?"
Hamako grabbed him by his collar and pulled him close to her face, "Everyone in your clan can at least say that they were level seven before they were fifteen! And you mixed overlapping seals without knowing all that went into one of them? What kind of Uzumaki isn't good at fuuinjutsu?"
Naruto sweatdropped, "An Uzumaki that wasn't even introduced to the art until a few months ago. Give me a break Hamako. I'm better than pale and listless over there." He said while pointing at Sai.
Hamako palmed her forehead, "Kami… There's an Uzumaki out there, a real true Uzumaki… And he can't even do fuuinjutsu."
Naruto took offense to this, "Hey! I can do stuff! I can make tons of stuff! I make sealing scrolls, customized explosive tags, and check it out!" He pulled out the seal he used to control the statue, "I even made this temporary control seal that helped us beat your statue when we first ran into it."
"Those things are beginner stuff." Hamako took the seal note away and inspected it, frowning more and more the longer she looked at it before balling it up and tossing it aside, "It's completely shoddy. How can you be proud of that?"
Naruto's jaw dropped, "What? Do you know how hard that was to come up with?"
Hamako pointed at the statue on her necklace, "Compared to what I did to animate Komainu-kun you might as well have scribbled your name in crayon and handed it over to me. Your seal has so many deficiencies I'm surprised it didn't kill you. First of all, simply using it puts you in an internal struggle against your target, the only guaranteed way that you could ever use it was if you tried it on something with no will whatsoever, and even then you could still lose. Although it would be utterly hilarious to see someone lose a battle of wills to an end table."
She laughed slightly at the thought before reassuming lecture mode, "Second of all, it's so temporary that even if you won the initial struggle there isn't much you could do with the control you just fought for. And finally and most important, it's a mimic array, did you know that? Instead of having the target's movements be an extension of your thoughts you had it so that the only way they could do anything was if you did it first. That's so stupid!"
Naruto visibly deflated, "Well you don't have to put it like that. I've been basically teaching myself after Ero-sennin pounded the basics into my head. I thought I was doing rather well until now…"
Hamako sighed before walking up to Naruto and winking at him, "Well at least I know what I'm doing now." Upon seeing Naruto's questioning look she elaborated, "There's no way that I can in good conscience leave an Uzumaki to their own devices with such shoddy seal work. So until you actually become passable at fuuinjutsu I will be your teacher Uzumaki-sama!"
Naruto stared at her for a few seconds, "You're going to train me?"
Hamako nodded, "Yes because basically… you're not very good at fuuinjutsu at all. If anyone told you that you were they were either lying to make you feel better, or they never saw an Uzumaki from Uzushiogakure at work."
Naruto looked at his hands, "Well when you put it that way-."
Hamaki clasped her hands together, "So it's my responsibility to teach you the right way of going about with your sealing techniques. I owe the Uzumaki clan a debt that I can't repay them now that… well you know. So I'll have to pay it off through you!" "That makes me feel so special…" Naruto said sarcastically as his eye twitched, "But Hamako, I don't want you to do anything that you don't have to."
Naruto could see the benefits of having Hamako with him. Yes, he had the scrolls from Uzu that pretty much would make him jump up in skill, but simply looking through the stuff that was listed the other day had him a little hesitant to try them out. Some of them were ridiculously absurd sounding. Other than the chakra draining seal that would have been a boon in battle there was a seal that could store chakra. STORE CHAKRA! Store chakra and transfer it between people to recharge their reserves, like an adrenaline shot of chakra, and he didn't even want to know what could happen if he screwed that one up.
Hamako frowned and walked closer to him, "Uzumaki-sama, there is nowhere else for me to go." She said as her natural bangs from her white hair somewhat shadowed her amber eyes from his full view, "What would I do? I'm completely out of place here, I know nothing of this current world I now find myself in, and you are the closest thing to my masters that have been so kind to me for my entire life since they found me and taught me everything I know." She bowed to him, "I would be honored if I could go with you."
Naruto looked at Sai who didn't have any helpful facial expressions to help him out… or any facial expressions at all. Thus Naruto was forced to go with his gut on this one, that and Hamako seemed like a good girl, although the sooner he could break her of that Uzumaki-sama crap the better. Naruto picked her up by her shoulders to get her to stand again, "Hamako, no bowing. I'm not noble, I'm just some guy with the last name Uzumaki. But I have a question; why were you stuck inside that vault?"
Sai came forward, finally speaking, "I would like to know that as well Hamako-san. Naruto-senpai and myself were very surprised to find you in there."
Hamako took up a thoughtful look, "I don't know. Sensei said that he was going to leave the future of our village up to me. I thought he was going to let me head up with him to fight, but then I ended up unconscious, and when I woke up I saw you two."
Naruto shifted his new sword on his back and turned to head down the corridor, "We can figure this stuff out later. We still need to get to the surface. Hamako, can you get us out of here?"
Hamako smiled and nodded, "Yes, I remember my way through here like it was just yesterday."
Naruto sweatdropped, "Technically for you, it was just yesterday." Hamako growled at him lowly as he backed off, "Okay, bad attempt at situational humor. Let's just go."
XxX
As the platform in the first tower rose back to the ground floor once more, Naruto and Sai felt déjà vu as this had been the place they had fought Hamako's statue Komainu. Naruto looked around and saw that the door was still sealed off, "How are we going to get out of here Hamako?"
Hamako walked towards the door and started writing a seal on the door before biting her finger and adding her blood, "Fuuin kai!"
The walls all shimmered before the wall in front of the entrance dropped. She looked back at Naruto and Sai before sighing heavily, "I guess it's time for me to see what's left of Uzu." She frowned as she looked around the destroyed tower, "If this is any indicator I'd better prepare for the worst, huh?"
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