A/N: I am currently obsessed with the Sannin. XD
Winds of change
It was a sunny summer's day in Konohagakure, the Village Hidden by the Leaves. Though it was a time of war, that day things were relatively peaceful, and everybody was out and about, making the most of the truce with the Land of Earth. The only noise, perhaps, came from the Ninja Academy, where it sounded as if a riot was taking place.
"Jiraiya, sit down. I said, sit down!" the instructor shouted to make himself heard above his charges' giggles and yells.
"All right, all right!" a white-haired boy called, a wide grin threatning to split his face in two. He approached a pretty blond girl; the seat on her right was empty. She looked disgusted, and egded away as far as she could from him. When the boy greeted her, she sent him a scowl.
The harassed-looking instructor held up a sheet of paper and announced "Today is a very important day for you. From this moment on, you are ninjas our village can count on...I hope," he added, glancing quickly at Jiraiya, who was trying to close the wide space between him and the blond girl. "You will be assigned missions, which you'll complete with the guidance of your Jonin sensei. Now, I'm going to divide you into teams of three; to keep some sort of balance, you were divided based on your weaknesses and strengths."
A few genins groaned, disappointed they weren't allowed to form teams with their friends. The young instructor shrugged, then turned and started writing the teams on the blackboard behind him.
"As long as I don't end up with him," the blond whispered to her friend, pointing at Jiraiya. "I'm happy."
The brunette sighed and pointed to the blackboard.
"I'm with the Choji boy," she said gloomily. "Good luck with your team-mates, Tsunade-chan."
Tsunade swept her blond hair back from her eyes and patted her friend's back consolingly.
"Tsunade-chan!" Jiraiya cried.
"What do you want?" Tsunade snapped. "And don't call me 'chan'. You're not a friend!"
"We're on the same team, Tsunade-chan!" said an excited Jiraiya, ignoring the girl's last words.
Tsunade turned slowly to face the blackboard, and sure enough, there was her name alongside Jiraiya's, under the heading 'Team 5'.
"Nooo!" she howled, slamming a hand down on her desk, which creaked in protest. She didn't bother finding out who their third companion was.
As a team, anyone would have admitted Tsunade, Jiraiya and Orochimaru were ill-assorted. They disagreed on everything: plan details, which role each played during a mission, techniques. Real trouble started when it came to tactics: Tsunade preferred head-on attacks, Orochimaru liked the element of surprise, and Jiraiya was clueless but nevertheless criticized Tsunade claiming her method was too simple, and Orochimaru because his was sneaky and dishonorable.
Arguments were very frequent, both during training and missions, and more than once the three agreed to separate and work alone. Their sensei, Konoha's Hokage, had to admit that Jiraiya played a large part in sparking fights. Tsunade couldn't stand his whining, and Orochimaru couldn't stomach their bickering. As for Jiraiya, he found Orochimaru's snobbishness annoying, and strived to do better than him, failing, of course. Orochimaru was without doubt Sarutobi's best student.
One day, watching Tsunade aiming shurikens at Jiraiya, it occurred to the Hokage that if she were an element, it would be fire. It takes no more than a spark to set the forest on fire during the dry, hot seasons, and the same applied to Tsunade, whose temper was infamous and feared. When the fire goes out, it leaves nothing but blackness and desolation, and when Tsunade's rage finally subsided, behind her it was not uncommon to find ruins and rubble: her excellent control of chakra and consequent prodigious strength were well known.
Jiraiya, on the other hand, was air. Not light as air, far from it, he was loud and clumsy on occasion, but he glided through life at his own pace, and followed nobody else's. Like the wind, he went where he wanted to when he wanted to, and bent to nobody's will but his own. When he put his mind to it, Jiraiya was an opponent to be reckoned with just as much as his team mates; the wind gives hardly any warning before turning into a full-blown hurricane, and Jiraiya's change could be just as sudden. Even in moments like those, his grin never faltered, and neither did his determination.
Perhaps among the three, the one Sarutobi admired the most was Jiraiya. He was generally considered inferior to Orochimaru and Tsunade in strength, ability and intelligence, but the Hokage knew he had a lot of potential, though he lacked concentration and dedication; the way Jiraiya brushed off criticism and continuously proclaimed himself the best was interesting, and while others laughed, Sarutobi smiled, convinced his rowdy pupil really would one day be one of the best.
Orochimaru was the most complicated of the lot. Water, he would be, the water he so liked to observe tumbling over the shiny, slippery rocks of the river. During winter the river froze in some points, and the water that escaped the ice was colder than anyone could imagine; it matched the detached, icy demenour that Orochimaru was perfectly capable of displaying, and the cold-bloodedness he used dealing with Konoha's enemies. So cold he was, sometimes Sarutobi worried. But what could he say? Orochimaru was a rare genius, and got on well with everybody. His cruelty was perhaps his only flaw, but one that could be corrected.
It didn't occur to Sarutobi that once oil has polluted the river, the black stain spreads and spreads, and there is no getting rid of it. Sarutobi didn't realize it. Not yet.
The first few months were tricky, but Team 5 settled down at last. The bickering between Tsunade and Jiraiya didn't cease, and neither did the rivalry between Jiraiya and Orochimaru, but they stopped separating to conclude missions, and aimed for compromise when working together. They'd started out as promising students, graduates of the Academy at the age of five, or in Jiraiya's case six, and now, only twenty-four weeks later, they were recognized as Konoha's best genins and were already being assigned B class missions; an outstanding feat, considering every other genin was twice their age and still on D and C class missions. The head of the team was Orochimaru, and perhaps Jiraiya resented that, but if he did he gave no sign.
During one mission to retrieve a hostage from Kusagakure, in the Land of Grass, the three genins found themselves spending the night in the forest. The fire had to be put out soon enough, for the smoke might have attracted enemy ninjas, and Tsunade, because she'd lost a bet to Jiraiya, was the first to keep watch while her team-mates rested.
When Orochimaru's turn came, it was so dark Tsunade could barely locate him. She tripped over a root and almost landed on him: of course, he was awake before she even touched him. Orochimaru was the lightest sleeper Tsunade knew.
"Tsunade? What are you doing?" he asked, sounding sincerely puzzled.
She went red even though he couldn't see her, and replied haughtily "Trying to find you, of course. It's your turn to keep watch."
Orochimaru didn't say anything; he stepped past her as silent as a ghost, his unnaturally white skin visible even in the dark of the forest, and the creak of a branch told Tsunade he's settled on the tree she'd been sitting in only a few minutes before.
Uttering a brief "G'night" Tsunade slipped into her sleeping bag and was asleep in a matter of seconds. Nothing stirred her, not even the sudden hoot of an owl, which made Orochimaru jump slightly and reach instinctively for a kunai.
In the early hours of the morning, Jiraiya was shaken awake. He opened his black eyes blearily and grunted, pushing Orochimaru's hand away from his shoulder.
"I'm awake...five more minutes..." he muttered, turning over and curling up. He squealed and sat up when Orochimaru kicked him in the back of his head.
"What was that for?" he asked with a wounded expression, rubbing the sore spot.
"Keep your voice down," Orochimaru instructed. "Wake us when the sun's up."
"Yeah, yeah," Jiraiya grumbled, but more quietly than before. He scrambled ungracefully out of his sleeping bag and as he got up his foot accidentally connected with Tsunade's cheek.
"Ouch!"
"Shhh!"
"You're an ass, Jiraiya!" moaned Tsunade, a hand on her cheek. "I'd only just fallen asleep!"
"Actually Orochimaru's just finished his watch, so you've been sleeping for what, four hours at least-"
"I didn't wake you when I switched with him!"
"It was an accident!"
"You're a jerk, and that's all there is to it!"
"Just go back to sleep."
"Like that's easy, now you've used me as a football!"
"It was one small kick!"
Orochimaru grabbed the back of Jiraiya's tunic and swung him round to face the tree that was to be his post.
"Jiraiya. Keep watch."
The white-haired boy muttered threats under his breath as he climbed up to a wide branch, almost slipping because he wasn't using his chakra. Tsunade watched him crossly, while Orochimaru couldn't care less. His back was to Jiraiya as he crawled once again inside his sleeping bag.
At last Tsunade lay back down, and Jiraiya settled comfortably on the branch. Silence fell, and for a few minutes no sound could be heard except for the gentle rustling of the treetops overhead. The sky was beginning to grow lighter, from what Jiraiya could see through the canopy of leaves; he stared upward and thought of the day's work that awaited him and his companions. Freeing a hostage wasn't simple; they'd be lucky if they escaped with no injury. Already Tsunade had suffered damage the previous day, when they encountered a patrol of Grass nins and had to fight their way out. An enemy shuriken had opened a gash in her arm that she had not been able to fully heal because of some venom or other that had infected the wound. It had been Orochimaru who'd gotten them out of there, the selfless leader, diverting the Grass ninjas' attention and giving Jiraiya time to pick Tsunade up and vanish into the forest. Now he stopped to think about it, Orochimaru hadn't told them what end the ninjas had come to. Jiraiya hoped it hadn't been painful and messy, considering two of them had been genins not much older than he was himself; knowing Orochimaru, they hadn't been spared, and now lay dead and cold where his team-mate had hidden them, rotting away in the undergrowth of this damn forest.
"You awake, Tsunade?"
When there was no reply from the blond, Jiraiya thought she was asleep. Then she spoke, still sounding peeved.
"What?"
Jiraiya paused, suppressing a grin. He wasn't sure what he meant to say exactly: all he knew was that the silence was driving him mad.
"Do you...do you think we'll stay like this forever?"
"What?" Tsunade repeated, only this time she sounded disbelieving. "Of course not, stupid. We're gonna grow up and make our own way into the world, just like everybody else."
"I know that! I meant, will we stay...us three...like this?" Jiraiya gestured helplessly. "We're friends, aren't we?"
Tsunade thought Jiraiya was acting extremely weird; she frowned, then shrugged and conceded "Yeah, we are." A moment later she added "So?"
"So we're going to stay this way," firmly remarked Jiraiya.
Orochimaru had been feigning deep slumber, but now he intervened, and his voice was like the rustle of dead leaves in the cold wind of December.
"Things can't stay the same forever."
Tsunade laughed shortly. "The herald of doom hath spoken!" she said humorlessly.
"Killjoy," muttered Jiraiya. More loudly he said "Looking forwards to the day you'll be shot of us, huh, Orochimaru?"
"Things can't stay the same," said Orochimaru slowly, and he sounded reflective, as though he were thinking things over at that very , and voicing the conclusions he came to. "That would be asking for time to stand still...when things aren't moving...they're not worth looking at. If things stayed the same, without change, without improvement, life wouldn't be worth living. It would be boring."
Jiraiya wasn't sure he understood, but he nodded anyway.
Tsunade did understand, but not as much as she thought.
"I'm going to sleep," she announced, drawing her knees up to her chest.
"No point, we're going to have to get up in an hour," said Jiraiya smugly.
"Damn you. I don't care," Tsunade snorted, and she pointedly closed her eyes. A second later she jumped up, and with a disgusted cry of "These midgets are raping me!" stomped away to wash her face in the nearby stream.
The mission went well in the end, and against all expectations Team 5 returned to Konoha with the Chuunin who'd been held hostage, and with no relevant injury, though admittedly Tsunade's arm was a rather nasty shade of green.
Orochimaru was showered with praise, but Jiraiya got his fair share of glory as well, and looked happier than he'd ever been as he sat at the front of the Academy classroom and told the excited students about the best offensive tactics to use in a forest territory like the Land of Grass.
Tsunade was kept under observation in hospital for a week. It turned out the poison in her arm was actually a potentially lethal one, and if she had fought as much as Jiraiya and Orochimaru to free the hostage she would probably have contracted a high fever and not lasted very long after that.
"So you saved my life, Orochimaru," she stated matter-of-factly, grinning at the pale boy who was sitting on the end of her bed. "If you hadn't kept me to the side-lines, I'd be six feet underground by now."
"I don't know that I'd have dug so deep to bury you, flat-chest," commented Jiraiya. A moment later a fruit bowl hit him in the face.
From the doorway, Sarutobi observed his pupils. A mismatched trio they'd been- to quote Jiraiya "I'm not moving one inch to save your pair of sorry asses, jerks!"- but things had changed. What curled the corners of Orochimaru's lips wasn't a grimace, but the ghost of a smile, as he watched Jiraiya hop about in pain, clutching his nose and cursing.
It was for the best that things never stayed the same. There was room for improvement.
Jiraiya stumbled backwards and toppled the bedside cabinet over.
Yes, Sarutobi thought. There was definitely room for improvement.
----
Fin