Chapter Text
Jiraiya
Being a jonin sensei sometimes means awkwardly holding a little girl’s hair out of her face while she throws up. Jiraiya hadn’t expected that to be a part of the job, just like he hadn’t expected to live past twenty or for his students to be uncommunicative little brats.
Kushina gags, letting out a whimpering, pitiful little sob. Jiraiya awkwardly pats her on the back, trying to hold her red hair gently. She’s gotten blood in it. It’s sticking some of the strands together and going hard as it dries. He may need to tell her to put it up before getting into fights.
The whole experience reminds Jiraiya of holding Tsunade’s hair out of her face when she drinks too much. Except he’s used to that, he can tease Tsunade about that sort of thing in the morning.
Jiraiya looks up from Kushina, watching Seiko methodically cut the last bandit’s throat. That puts her at eight. Perfectly respectable number of kills for a mission like this. Look at him, bloodying his students properly before he carts them off to die in the rain. What a good teacher he is.
Jiraiya can barely remember his first kill. He doesn’t remember throwing up, though Tsunade had looked a little queasy. Ah, but Jiraiya had put off meat for a month. Only for a month.
Orochimaru took it in stride, of course. He’s always been better about shrugging off things like that. A proper shinobi.
“You did a good job, Kushina-chan. Nothing wrong with being a little upset about it,” Jiraiya says with another awkward pat. If you asked Danzo and the rest, they’d be calling him soft for the comfort and Kushina a weakling. Fucking warhawks. It’s their fault he had to take this mission at all instead of some cushy merchant escort.
But no, they had to be ready within the month.
“It’s so gross, dattebane!” Kushina says haltingly, sitting up and wiping her mouth with her sleeve. Jiraiya wonders if she means throwing up or corpses.
The bodies don’t even have gut wounds! They’re fresh, too.
Kushina looks up at him with watery violet eyes and Jiraiya blanches. Right. She doesn’t know how lucky she is.
“We should wash off the blood in the stream while you have a clone pack the bodies, sensei,” Seiko says suddenly, tone blunt. It’s more like an order than a suggestion. More than usual.
Her attitude has been a little grating lately. Maybe it’d be less so if she didn’t keep looking at him like she expects him to fuck up.
Seiko doesn’t look too worse for wear all things considered. No shaking, no nausea, no uncertainty. A bit grimmer than she was this morning, a frown pulling at her full cheeks and her green eyes looking darker than they should in the moonlight. Blood streaks those cheeks. Like Orochimaru, she has the makings of the perfect shinobi.
His mind's eye goes back to his book on her bookshelf. He wonders what she thought of it. The kid offers information deliberately only when she thinks it will have to be relevant, uses politeness like a bludgeon, and doesn’t respect him. He has no clue what she’s thinking.
Jiraiya drops Kushina’s hair carefully, disoriented by the fragility of these genin he just watched slaughter a camp of lowlifes. So small.
Girls. How could Hiruzen-sensei give him girls?
Jiraiya makes a shadow clone in a quick handsign. He barely spares it a thought before he’s tossing two body scrolls up to it. One for Konoha’s wayward corpses, one for all the civilians. Lucky for Konoha, no one knew the missing nin in this camp belonged to them. Professional courtesy requires Jiraiya to imply they belonged to one of the Land of Fire’s enemies. Kumo could be a good choice.
The clone sets to work as Jiraiya stands, eyeing Kushina as she gets to her feet. Minato is off to the side, watching the proceedings distantly. That one is going to have problems later, hopefully when Jiraiya is out of the room. Better to give him a little privacy, like a man.
Seiko walks over to Kushina and takes her bloodied hand, somehow the Uzumaki got absolutely splattered and Jiraiya is certain none of it is hers, and starts towards Minato. Every step is louder than a shinobi’s should be. Her sandals avoid any of the blood on the ground.
Seiko reaches out to Minato slowly and takes his hand into her free one. Minato blinks, dazed. Seiko draws him along with her and sniffling Kushina without a word. Presumably to the exit of the camp and to the creek. Minato doesn’t seem to react much to the closeness.
Jiraiya sighs, following the trio at a sedate pace. He doesn’t bother avoiding the blood splatter. He thinks if a girl held his hand at Minato’s age he’d be a lot more excited. Minato’s an awkward duck, though. Maybe he’s more interested in boys. Or he’s reeling from all the death.
Jiraiya glances to the side, watching his clone dutifully seal the missing nin on top of each other. They’re a few years younger than him. Should have been chunin by now, but their files said they left prior to any possible promotion three years ago. Unremarkable genin corps members that weren’t worth the hunter nin. Perfect for his new genin.
The whole thing is wasteful. Ugly, even. A mission constructed specifically to bloody his kids up and prove they’re more better than other, older genin. As if that will matter in Rain country, or wherever the fuck they’re sending him. He hears the Kiri front is getting better thanks to infighting with Kumo. Bad luck they chose to ally themselves with Iwa, they’re too far away to save them from being sandwiched between Fire and Stone.
There’s always Suna. Sakumo and his cell have been practically stuck there for three years now, though. He’s plenty strong enough to hold that front together.
They pass through the gate of the camp. Jiraiya steps over a bandit corpse and grabs the unlit torch Seiko left on the ground. All it takes is a one handed tiger seal and a little fire chakra for him to blow flames back onto it.
The torch is bright, and Kushina yelps ahead of him at the sudden light. Three little heads turn back to look at him.
“I don’t want you brats stepping on any snakes or drowning,” Jiraiya says, walking and waving them along.
In the light the three of them look much bloodier. He mentally is thankful for Seiko mentioning the creek. If she hadn’t told him, finding an inn tonight would have been a bit annoying. He is not sleeping on the ground again this week if he can help it.
“So much blood,” Kushina says disparagingly, clinging to Seiko’s side.
“We’ll get it off, Kushina. You have a change of clothes in your sealing scroll, remember?” Seiko says. She’s not quite like Orochimaru. Oro would have insulted Kushina for getting him bloody and threw her into the creek.
Kushina grumbles indistinctly.
“Rookie, take this torch so you and Kushina-chan can clean yourselves first. I’ll stand around the bend with Minato-kun,” Jiraiya orders.
Seiko doesn’t argue, doing as he says and giving Minato a pat on the shoulder after she lets go of his hand. Minato blinks confusedly as they walk away, taking the light with her.
Minato shuffles back to stand beside where Jiraiya has stopped, before turning to stare vacantly out into the forest, a small frown on his face.
Fucking warhawks. Fucking war. Fucking sensei. Jiraiya shouldn’t have been given a team if this is how they were going to have him teach them. Jiraiya knows the elders organized this on purpose to spite him. They thought his book was a little too controversial considering the war. They thought he was a little too insubordinate for staying in Rain past when he was ordered to return.
“You alright?” Jiraiya asks Minato awkwardly. His other students hadn’t been like this. Nagato had gotten into moods sometimes after seeing something gruesome enough to make even Jiraiya’s stomach roll, but they were all war orphans from an active warzone. They were taught death before anyone taught them how to live.
Minato nods after a moment, as if just hearing what Jiraiya said. He doesn’t speak. Jiraiya doesn’t press him to.
“It gets easier, kid. You’ll sleep a few nights and it’ll mostly leave your mind.”
Minato nods again, this time a little more quickly. Jiraiya listens to the girls talking quietly, and the sounds of water. If bears or something come and attack while they’re cleaning up he’s going to have to fight with his eyes closed. He is not looking forward to it.
By the time all the genin are less bloody and in clean clothes, Jiraiya’s clone reappears with the body scrolls in hand.
“Are we reporting back to the village now, sensei?” Seiko asks, damp and a little tired looking. She’s faring better than his other two students. He’s just hoping they can tree-jump at night without falling on their faces.
“No, I’ll have the clone deliver the scroll to the old man. A rider from the lord is going to pick it up from him by the end of the month.” Jiraiya takes the scroll with the missing-nin’s bodies from his clone before it shunshins away with the other one. He tucks the scroll into his flak vest, noting how Seiko watched the whole byplay with sharp eyes. “You all did a good job, and you look like you’re going to fall on your asses. We’re headed for an inn. Are you all good to tree-jump?”
There’s more grumbling from the trio, but they agree. He can probably just carry them all if need be, but he’s hoping this can just be more endurance training. They’ll have to run from most battles once they’re deployed and doing missions.
They leave the bandit outpost bloodstained under the cover of moonlight. There’s the matter of the dead merchant, but Jiraiya had already spoken with the old man before they left to handle the bandits. They were hired to clear pests, not investigate a murder.
“Rookie, take the flank.”
“Yes, sensei.”
She’ll catch her teammates if she sees them stumble, just in case he doesn’t see from point. She’s mouthy, but undeniably going to be leadership material. Jiraiya is already dreading how soon her chunin promotion will come if she survives the next year.
He’ll need to teach her some self preservation, first. He’s almost certain she’ll get herself put in some nasty situation saving Konoha’s jinchuriki and kill herself before then. A hero, the council will say. They won’t have to carry her body back.
—
Seiko
Inns in the Land of Fire are better than sleeping in a tent, I admit.
Konoha sits at the apex of some technological advancement that the rest of the country doesn’t seem to have hit yet. I haven’t seen anything electric since we left Konoha, and the styles of clothes seem pretty firmly traditional. The same goes for furniture, and sometimes for plumbing. Lucky for our team, Jiraiya seems to favor places that do have toilets.
I still haven’t figured out where we get plastic from. I know we have plastic bags. That implies factories, doesn’t it? A mystery for the ages.
I lay on a futon in a small room, listening to Kushina and Minato breathe at my sides. It’s dark, moonlight only just barely slipping through the gaps in the paper window.
I can only barely see the ceiling. I blink. There’s no more noise in the inn’s main room below us. It’s more early than late.
I can’t sleep.
My hand runs along my blanket, feeling the soft fibers of it as the deep shadows blur and bend above me, indistinct. Fuzzy in the way all dark places at night can be.
It’s not because I’m guilt stricken, or because I’m haunted by nightmares. Intellectually I have known what this path would be from the start of this life, physically I have been reminded of that every spar. I have more qualms still, a distaste for killing teenagers or people who I think were right to have left Konoha. Who am I to decide if someone is wrong to leave a village that will spend their life easily and without regret?
No. It’s not guilt. That sort of feeling always makes me a little nauseous. This is something else. Restlessness, I guess. A wait for when it’ll happen again.
Minato shifts on his futon beside me, breathing a little louder.
Minato sits up sharply, taking a harsh breath. His blonde hair looks grey without the light. Like a ghost. He takes another gulping breath, before stifling the next, turning to look over at Kushina and I.
He looks surprised to see one of us staring back, flinching.
“Nightmare?” I whisper.
Minato opens his mouth, then shuts it again. I can smell him sweating. Salt and iron. Is he afraid?
“Seiko,” Minato murmurs in a small voice. He stops, pauses for a long moment. Gathers his thoughts in a sleep muddled brain, I’d bet. “Are we going to die?”
Namikaze Minato is ten-years-old. He was the youngest in our year, a January baby. I remember the first time I saw him I thought he looked cherubic, and then I wondered how such a cute little boy could grow up and slaughter hundreds. Thousands, even.
Minato stares at me, fingers gripping his blanket. I can just barely make out his face enough to see those brows furrowed.
I sit up, ramen pajamas and blanket shifting and making soft noise at the movement.
Namikaze Minato dies when he is something like twenty-four.
The little boy in front of me seems incongruent with many of the realities of what he will be and do. Quiet and soft in ways he won’t be able to stay. A child. A skilled one, a deeply intelligent one, but still a child.
“What do you mean?” I whisper back. The heavy silence of the room almost eats the words.
Minato swallows. Hands tighten, then loosen, then tighten again.
“Those genin were so weak. Are we weak? Are they going to do that to us?”
“They” seems to be general. They, the village’s enemies. They, the people our team will be facing soon.
I run my hands through my hair, working through a few tangles as I think. Seeing us kill so many people so easily must have done the opposite of give Minato a confidence boost. If we’re genin and it’s so easy for us to kill, what can a chunin do? A jonin? Not even a monster like Jiraiya, but a regular jonin.
“We’re good for genin with low field experience, Minato. If we get more and have more jutsu to use, I think we could beat most genin. But chunin—” I cut myself off, shaking my head.
“I don’t know. I think you and Kushina have the potential to be the most powerful shinobi in Konoha. We just have to survive long enough for our bodies to grow.”
“Stop ignoring yourself,” a sleepy voice says at my other side. Kushina turns to face us, head still a little wrapped in her blanket. “You keep talking like you aren’t strong.”
I hadn’t realized she’d woken up. Maybe we were whispering louder than I thought.
“I may be as strong as Minato,” I say with a grimace. I hope they don’t try to make me Hokage. That’s Minato’s job. I want to fight good opponents and then retire around Ryuu-sensei’s age. A respectable goal. And if anyone tries to make me get married I’ll go the way of Tsunade and bank on Minato’s goodwill. Privileges of being on the Hokage’s team.
“I don’t want you to die,” Minato says. “I don’t want either of you to die.”
Kushina sits up, taking her pillow with her and going to smack Minato in the face with it from behind me. I block it with my hand, bemused.
“You’re so girly, Minato-kun,” Kushina hisses.
I open my mouth, probably to say something about us being girls, but Kushina keeps going.
“If you don’t want us to die, then you’ll be strong like Seiko said! You think we aren’t afraid too? We just have to try even harder to live, dattebane!”
She rips the pillow from where I blocked it, throwing it back down onto her futon with a thump.
“I’m going to be the strongest kunoichi in Konoha and save my clan. I won’t die. Those bandits were stupid, and weak, and we aren’t either of those things. So stop worrying about being them, and start worrying about being us!”
Kushina pants after that last statement, having risen to a speaking voice rather than the whispers we’d been favoring. I’d be worried about attracting Jiraiya to investigate from the room over, but he’s been gone since earlier. I’d sensed him headed towards the town brothel. There’s a clone in his room right now, probably pretending to sleep.
Whether he’s being a pervert or doing spywork, I don’t care. At least he hasn’t tried telling us about where he wandered off to.
“They were weak, and a little stupid. We’re not very much like them at all. I’d bet they’d defected after being stuck in the genin corps too long,” I say quietly. “We’re going to be something different. The village has invested a lot in us being something.” For good or ill.
Leaving Konoha won’t be a very clean break, anymore. I haven’t seriously considered it for years now. We’d be hunted to the ends of the earth if Kushina left and I can’t leave her. Ayako, Mikoto, and all my other friends have family who will take care of them. Kushina has me. And the same goes for Minato, though I’d bet Jiariya would be happy to have him as a solo apprentice.
“But it’s not wrong for Minato to be afraid, Kushina,” I finish, giving her a look she probably can’t even see in the dark.
“Fear is wrong, dattebane. Mito-oba-chan told me it’s the worst thing you can have, besides anger,” Kushina rebuffs. She goes to say more, then stops, looking over at Minato.
There’s a moment of silence. We breathe, and it gets louder the longer the seconds tick by, even if we haven’t changed how we’re doing it.
“I can’t say it, ‘Shina. You have to tell him,” I whisper finally.
“I know,” Minato whispers back.
Kushina makes a wounded noise. “How could you know? What do you know?”
“The kyuubi. They put it in you, like they did Mito-sama. I figured it out after we did information gathering on Ryuu-sensei.”
I shut my eyes. Well. At least I’m not the only one who knows. Now Jiraiya can’t be on my ass about it again. Though if I see him pinning Minato down and threatening him…
I don’t care if he’s a monster. I’ll still try to hurt him. I’ll remember when he’s older, and I will only get stronger. I’ll remember.
Grudges are bad for the spirit. Revenge destroys you as surely as the first things that made you choose it. I hope Jiraiya doesn’t give me any reason to fall into those kinds of things. I don’t like the idea of what they would make me be like.
“You knew and you still—?”
“You’re my friend, Kushina-chan. You’re not scary to me.”
Things are getting far too philosophical for us ten to eleven-year-olds. Speaking of, Kushina’s birthday is in two days. Jiraiya is totally going to have us stuck celebrating it in some inn. I’d better make sure he finds a ramen stand in one of these towns and takes her to it or else she’ll break something. Maybe Jiraiya’s shin.
We keep talking for a few more minutes, but eventually things slow down, and we settle back into our futons. We have training tomorrow, after all. No reason to waste our sleeping time talking about things we can talk about later.
“I’ll be strong,” Minato promises before we go back to sleep. It’s heartfelt, more than I’ve seen from him before.
“I’ll be stronger,” Kushina grumbles. There’s some heart to that too.
I laugh. “I’ll be strongest, then.”
—
Jiraiya drags us to a clearing in the late morning smelling like he’s bathed somewhere with perfume, and sits us down in the middle of it. He sits himself, crosslegged and looking vaguely annoyed at the cheerful birdsong around us. The air has just started to grow warm, though tucked in the shade of the trees I feel a little cold.
Jiraiya pulls out his notebook, and sets it on his lap. “Alright. I think it’s time you kids learned some new jutsu.”
“Yes!” I whoop, punching the air above me. This is the best thing to happen to me since we graduated.
“Don’t get excited yet, this won’t be easy,” Jiraiya chides. He looks much more pleased now though.
“What jutsu are we learning?” Minato asks intently.
“Oh! Is it that one you keep doing to make more of you? The special clones?” Kushina asks.
“No, that jutsu is off limits for you. Well, Kushina-chan can probably handle the chakra cost, but you other two will put yourselves in the hospital if you use it.” Jiraiya opens his notebook, flipping to whatever notes he’s been taking.
Had he been writing notes about how to train us this whole time? Huh.
“What do you kids know about elemental release?” Jiraiya asks, glancing up at us.
“You change your chakra to be elemental chakra?” Kushina says.
“Hm. Sort of. What do you think, Minato-kun?” Jiraiya turns to Minato.
“Using chakra control, a shinobi can tap into their existing chakra nature to shape into elemental jutsu,” Minato recites, as if directly from one of our lectures.
“Not just your existing chakra nature. Any shinobi can use conflicting natures, it just has a higher cost and requires far more control. The hokage can use all of the conventional elemental releases, can’t he?” I pipe up, looking over at Jiraiya for confirmation. Sarutobi Hiruzen isn’t called “The Professor” for no reason. Though he may be one of the more boring hokage, he’s one of the most accomplished jutsu users barring Tobirama. He’s advanced more than a few techniques for various elemental jutsu.
“That’s right! Though you’re right too, Minato-kun. Most shinobi never get past learning their primary nature.”
Jiraiya lifts his notebook and shakes it. “In this book, I have three jutsu I’m going to teach you, one each. Some sensei like to try and get genin to do pure elemental release first, but I’ve always thought that a jutsu is much better for this kind of thing. And less liable to set you on fire.”
“None of us have fire chakra nature, sensei,” I say helpfully.
“That can be worse,” Jiraiya replies cryptically.
“Wait, so if most shinobi only know one elemental release, how many can you do, sensei?” Kushina jumps in before I can ask a follow up question. Oh well. I’ll settle for visions of invisible wind chakra accidents.
Jiraiya grins wide, setting his hands on his crossed knees and squinting at her. “Guess.”
Kushina eyes him for a moment, crossing her arms and squinting right back at him.
“One,” Kushina says bluntly. Jiraiya scoffs.
“Four! Earth, fire, wind, and water. Lucky for you brats too, I know enough jutsu for each of your elements to keep you occupied.”
“Wait, you know our chakra natures?” Minato asks, curious. “Don’t you need special paper for that?”
“I told him. I can sense people’s primary natures,” I tell Minato.
“Can you smell them?” Minato asks.
“I can. You’re wind, Kushina is water and I’m earth.”
Jiraiya claps, regaining our attention. “Alright. First things first, I’ll show you all each jutsu. Don’t worry about the others, I don’t expect you to learn them. Not right now, at least. Focus on my hand signs. Then, I’ll have you each start practicing on your own.”
I’m so learning all three jutsu. What does he think I am? Only a bad shinobi ignores free techniques. How hard can elemental release be anyways? All you have to do is copy the way chakra shifts in someone else in yourself. At least, that’s what I did for that one fire starting technique I bummed off of my neighbor, Higashi.
I grab my sealing scroll from my pocket and pop out my jutsu notebook, barely a whiff of chakra smoke to accompany it. Minato makes a surprised noise, then goes for his own, pulling it from his kunai pouch instead of his sealing scroll. Much easier to reach, but I like to keep just weapons in there. I even moved my house key into my scroll for room.
“Nerds,” Kushina says as she sidles up closer to Minato to peer at whatever he’ll write. Minato is between us today, and Kushina surprisingly hasn’t tried to hit him yet. Maybe she’ll hold it until we have time to spar!
I scoot closer to Minato as well, just in case he wants to compare notes. Jiraiya stands from his seat with a grunt, rolling his broad shoulders. I hear something crack. He should stretch more.
“Alright, this first one is for you, Minato-kun. Pay attention to my handsigns, I don’t want to show them to you more than twice, alright?”
Jiraiya takes a step back, then widens his stance as he turns to the side just so. Whatever he’s going to do, he doesn’t want it to accidentally hit us. Grass crunches beneath his sandals.
“Wind release: Air bullets!” Jiraiya calls, then puts his hands to a bird seal. He draws a great big breath into his mouth, holds it with bulging cheeks, then—
Air bursts forth from his mouth, sharpening and smacking into the trees behind us with the sound of cracking wood. Shocked sounds come from the three of us, and I jerk my head around to stare at the huge dent in three of the trees. Birds fly away as I stare at the splintered craters.
What could that do to a person, I wonder? Was that all the power he could have put into them?
“Holy crap,” Kushina hisses, eyes wide.
I turn to my notes and quickly jot down the hand sign, jutsu name, and my thoughts on it. The graphite of my pencil smudges on my fingers.
Jiraiya has earth chakra. Clay baking in the sun, the slow churn of dirt. But for a moment when he made that handsign, it changed. A cliff buffeting a breeze, greenery in the wind. Did it shift on the way up his throat? I can’t tell where people move their chakra when they do jutsu, I would need a byakugan for that. But I know how it feels when I make a bird sign, and I know if I’d been touching him I would be able to smell the shifts more accurately as chakra moves through his body.
When I cast the little cigarette lighting technique Higashi taught me, I make a tiger handsign and imagine my chakra getting molten on its way up my fingers. The flame is a sputtering thing when it pops out, but it’s a flame. Maybe when I make a bird sign, I need to think of earth becoming air?
I may need to meditate about this. Or make Jiraiya do the jutsu with my hand on his arm.
I should focus, though. He has an earth jutsu for me. It’d be bad form to start working on Minato’s before he’s even finished.
While I was writing, Jiraiya has been speaking. “—the air bullets are generally offensive. I picked it up from a Suna nin, so you can assume they’ll usually be able to do it. That’s the luck of most of them being wind types. I don’t suggest trying to go air for air with them, especially the ones with fans.”
“It’s just a bird seal?” Minato asks, looking up from his own furious notes.
Jiraiya nods, smiling. “Just the bird seal. What you’re doing is gathering air chakra up into your mouth and adding more pressure. No need for extra handsigns.”
“That’ll make it harder to learn. Most jutsu require hand signs so your chakra can change into the correct positions and shape, right? You’re having to do all those steps in one motion. Like flipping and throwing a kunai at the same time. So that means when you’re pulling the chakra into your mouth and shaping it, your chakra will just have to know what to do,” I say contemplatively. Then I pause, looking at Jiraiya. “Is that right? That’s how it’s always felt to me.”
I could just be assuming wrong. Whenever I cast a jutsu, I can feel how each sign changes the flow of my chakra. Surely that’s happening to everyone else?
Jiraiya watches me for a long moment, then huffs a laugh.
“You’re right. I was hoping Minato-kun would figure that out on his own, though, Rookie.”
Oh. Oops.
“Sorry Minato,” I say, turning to him.
Minato is giving me that odd, gear turning look he hasn’t used since we graduated the academy. Like he wants to untangle me with his fingers and examine the threads. Blank eyed and sharp all at the same time.
“It’s okay, Seiko-kun,” is what he says. Which somehow feels ominous. I squint at him, but Jiraiya is already moving on.
“Since you’re so excited, we can do yours next, Rookie,” Jiraiya says. I barely have time to look over before he starts on the handsigns.
Snake. His chakra is churning, it smells like fresh dirt spilling out of him all on the ground. He grins, then sinks into the earth with a jolt. The grass ripping beneath his feet and being shoved out of the way.
“Earth Release: Hiding Like a Mole!” Jiraiya calls, just before his head goes under. The dirt closes up behind him, grass looking lopsided and choppy. I can feel his chakra moving beneath our feet, before he pops out right in front of us. I yelp, and try to kick him in the face.
He catches my ankle and tosses me to the side. I land awkwardly, only able to hit the earth with one foot as I keep an iron grip on my notebook and pencil. I almost fall over, which is embarrassing considering how much training I do.
“Sorry, reflexes,” I apologize, not feeling very sorry at all as I check to make sure my notebook is fine.
“Hiruzen-sensei grabbed me and put me in the ground for an hour when he first showed me that jutsu! You’re very lucky!” Jiraiya informs me cheerfully. Hiruzen-sensei should have left him in for longer.
“Are all of these jutsu going to be one handsign?” Kushina asks suspiciously.
“I don’t know, Kushina-chan. Do you want to see what jutsu I picked for you?” Jiraiya asks with a wide, toothy smile.
There has to be variations of these jutsu with more handsigns. He’s doing this on purpose.
Well. I guess we are a prodigal frontliner team with noted ninjutsu potential. This is the sort of hard test a teacher would give to make you think elemental release is harder than it is. And then you try learning jutsu the easy way, and it feels like a breath of relief.
“That jutsu I just showed you, Rookie, is a staple from Iwa. They love hiding under ground and pulling you under so they can crush you. Your advantage will be that you can sense them there, and dig your way out before they kill you. Very exciting!”
So exciting.
Jiraiya takes a few steps back from Kushina and Minato. He brushes some dirt off his vest and shakes his white hair. His nose stud catches in the sunlight.
“Alright, Kushina-chan. Yours last. Water Release: Water Bullet!”
Jiraiya makes a dog seal, taking another deep breath with his mouth. His chakra changes, smelling more like a swamp. Then he spits a torrent of water into one of the trees he’d smacked with air earlier. The tree groans, snapping under the pressure and tilting back. Kushina and Minato jump away as it falls to the ground, thankfully not in our direction.
CRASH!
I wonder if that tree had any bird nests in it.
“Where did the water come from?” Kushina asks, practically jumping with excitement. I wonder how much damage she could do with a jutsu like that, knowing her chakra levels.
“It’s pulled from the air. If you do this jutsu by a watersource it costs less chakra, but that won’t be a problem for you, kid,” Jiraiya huffs. He puts his hands on his hips, turning to look at the three of us with a sly look. “Well. It looks like you three have all you need to get started. What are you waiting for?”
We start on our jutsu in the balmy sun, birds slowly coming back to sing.