Jiraiya found the cure to Orochimaru's bastardized immortality. Years spent buried alive within literary mausoleums finally paid off. Sure
there's a catch, there's always a catch but it doesn't matter. He has the seals and the will and knowing Orochi, he'd end up helping
inadvertently, the cheater. Two souls besides his and there are four people in the room - him, Tsuande, Orochimaru, and some
over-powered giant. More then enough souls for this jutsu to take-out the damn snake if he can just finish these fucking seals in time,
Tsuande badly outnumbered and faltering. Her blonde hair is flying before her face eyes like mead as the purple seal unfurls across her
face.
Sweat slipping into his eyes and down his spine, already he knows it isn't working - isn't working right the last seal barely off his fingers.
The moment between the last seal and now are the space of a scream and one he'll never try to remember. It's also one that will hunt his
dreams. Eyes unseeing he looks around - he's still here if here means being ensnared in silence surrounded by three bloody meat piles
where people should be. Of course, Orochi wasn't really a person anymore - right? "That's why you made the jutsu Raiya." The Sound
is just outside the door - Konoha's final force lost as expected and for what? Desperation chokes him as the world bleeds red and soon -
-Soon, he's waking up in a fucking crater with the damning realization that Naruto did it again. Naruto totally fucked him over.
Scrambling for a mirror, a puddle, a friggin' shiny rock - anything he strives to keep the hysteria down. So old he is and too old for such
things, but tears are blurring his vision as he rips his finger apart looking for something reflective. Rips them open only to see them close
nearly as soon. Something like a cough forces its well out of his throat. It isn't funny, it really isn't. The cool surface is slippery blood
smearing it. Its there! A tiny, almost unnoticeable seal just above his heart where Naruto touched him as he laid dying.
Naruto Uzumaki, Konoha's battering ram. Standing before the Leaf's force half of which were old hard-asses that would sooner pin
their kunai in his back then the enemies'. Still all are silent as they unleash him on the Great gate and he devastates it. Beams fly like
toothpicks just missing the standing lines despite the aid of Naruto's wind. The components of men fly as readily as his energy flutters
between red and blue and purple and black. With a great shout the younger ninja speed after to join in. Like the lambs they mimic they
are slaughtered. As more and more Leaf-nin die the boy's power grows until he is literally afire with chakra a beacon of hope to the
troops even as all there in the know realize he dooms himself to death. Finally he gives out, a thin scarecrow of a boy Jiraiya pulls into
his lap never mind the blood-weeping skin shaded an unhealthy pink.
Sitting now in this crater entirely alone and increasingly manic the last sannin can clearly see the skeletal claw-hand touching his chest;
can remember the slight burn, the quick sting he too easily dismissed. "You fucker. You ball-mouth'd, pussyass, cock beating, son of a
bitch fucker!" A seal over the heart and a demon within all curtsy of a blond-headed twit who wanted to share the wealth. Jiraiya the
Jinnuchuriki. "Shit. So what, I'm an old man it'll be over soon enough right?" Except Jiraiya's seen the way Jinnchuriki age years like the
sum of days, worse he's seen what can become of those who live beyond the allotted time of men - dim men mad as the designs
composing a spider's web. He's seen the slow unraveling and he doesn't want to endure it, but he knows this time he's been punked,
and badly.
Eventually he'll leave the crater and walk away toward where Konoha used to stand. Along the way he'll meet a man almost his height -
he'll kill him and steal his clothes. Walking further he'll soon stand gazing upon a wasteland where forest used to be. Smiling he'll
remember youki blighted fields as far as the eye could see. He won't be able to recall which student this remembrance is of. It'll be ten
years after the events of the last Oto-Konoha battle. It'll be five years after he burned Kumo to the ground. It'll be seven years since he
razed Suna to the ground, three years since he sunk the Mist beneath the waves. He spent a solid week in that crater and then a month,
a year, a decade later he'll finally realize he'd gone cleanly round the bend during that week of staring at dust covered in dust breathing
in dust.
"What happened?" That atonal voice - Gaara of Suna, the Kazekage. Looking up at the boy the old man sits emancipated colored a
light dun by the loose dust. Gaara is disturbed to see the man's eyes are redder then his hair, redder then his one scar. "You weren't
there so we went alone and now they're all dead, they're all dead." Jiraiya's voice is more barren then the moon's far side. The younger
man's face is unreadable short hair ruffled by the fitful breeze. "Yes, but only because you killed them all." As tall as the kazekage has
become he is still able to fit neatly in a Jiraiya's lap. "You're not much bigger then Naruto." He strokes the sand-filled hair, the
blood-splattered skin, hugging the still-warm corpse ever so close to himself. He'll need to move soon planes of glass heat up fast and
burn badly. "You weren't there, you don't know."
He brought them the body back and they damned him, attacked him - so he slaughtered them. Slaughtered dozens of men and made a
pyre of them with the Kazekage on top. The pyre is taller then the great bonfire Konoha use to make every October. Sitting beside it he
can pretend to be warm at last sitting alone within a deserted village. The howling of the wind, the singing of the sands that night
somehow makes things seem better so he stays there for a while - a year then two then three. Three years of peace until the dreams
start, the daydream hallucinations amidst the silence of a dead village. People milling through the quiet town that he knows are dead has
seen burn, has seen gutted by overpowered monsters - like himself. Confused he finally becomes frustrated and then angry until he at
last he hates the place. Hates it so much it is no real surprise that he razes it to the ground, this damnable village that betrayed him -
giving him to the madness - the delirium.
Less then ten miles away two hours later he will vomit into the bright white sand while the sun watches him with a jaundiced eye. What
has he become? Desperate he'll blame the demon he carries/knows he carries despite never having heard it's voice. It's there thus it has
to be it's fault. Yes, demons are always ruining things that's where the bloodlines came from, why his students are dead, and Akatsuki
on the loose. At that point he decides to "save" the others like him. For a while he makes a point of hunting them down from the
strongest to the very weakest and soon he's breaking the damnable idol the Akatsuki bow to. As the released energy tears past his
body like a raging river round a firmly planted stone the bodies at his feet are peeled like grapes the soft under flesh turned to ash. Soon
he's back at Kumo tearing down their village and burning down their forests. They have made another jinnchuriki - a boy this time. A
boy he guts like a trout spilling it's steaming inners unto the frozen ground.
That's two villages he's destroyed careful to take the long way (two years of wandering) around Konoha before heading to Mist. He
looks like a traveling clown the ragged ribbons of innumerable shirts and pants barely covering him, his face is that of a ghost because
Jiraiya Noninuzuka has long been presumed dead. On this man's back is the copy of the forbidden scroll he made before he
booby-trapped the real one. He was in Earth country seated on a bluff above the smoldering settlement where the last jinnchuriki
besides himself resided when the tower went up in a blaze of light. Even through the smoke cover the pillar of light sheared it's image
into his eyes. Grave robbers should never prosper.
He smiles now shrugging to resettle the large, ungainly thing. In the copy on his back is a jutsu for a legendary creature of water. Mist
will regret their defiance especially as he has never liked them to begin with.. The seals are complicated but nothing too serious. He is
thus surprised by just how large a creature it is. It's heads are crowned by clouds necks far too long to have been hidden by the sea no
matter how deep it may be. As lightening leaps from it's cobalt eyes jutsu bounce harmlessly off it's aquamarine scales. The sky is a
solid cover of grey clouds as the waters surrounding the creature churn into forty foot explosions of spray.
Feeling the misty wind of it's roar roll over him even from this distance he will not be surprised to see it drown Mist beneath a single
colossal wave the furthest tip less then ten feet from him. The scroll lies beneath the rocks behind him as the sky rips it's self asunder in
something like grief for the fallen village. Days later he will dangle his feet into the "shallow" sea where the village stood as he smokes
stale cigarettes shoddily rolled and considers burning the scroll. Sea gulls pick at the unmoving mounds further out. Eventually the ashes
of forbidden jutsu will settle upon the waves as phantoms shout inside his head.
He can't or won't remember the next few years, but somehow he's half-naked and filthy as he paces back toward Konoha. It's been
ten years of wandering. Ten years of hurting himself and others. He meets a man nearly his height and kills him taking his clothes. They
are red which seems somehow significant. There is a lake around here he knows and when he finds it he closes his eyes not wanting to
see his haggard face, his white on white eyes. Dripping in his borrowed clothes the old man stumble-stalks toward 'home'. Even before
he reaches the still standing gates he can hear the shurrush of many people speaking. Dazed he stands among the milling crowds totally
ignored. A boy with hair like gold runs past him with laughter as biting as a blade of ice.
They laugh, chat, live as though nothing he has done ever occurred. As though the uncaring sea, the silent desert, the ravaged mountain
tops, and the empty caves were still blessed with the tangled lives of shinobi and those they would protect. Enraged he dismantles the
still-standing konoha in a holocaust of fire only to discover he desecrates a tomb all life observed in his head. Someone speaks to him -
a man he knows full well is dead. The wind howls through the ruins, ruffles his hair as something like remorse drips from his empty eyes.
Scrambling over the debris he runs away rapidly spinning off the signs for an amnesiac jutsu. Touching his temples he falls to the ground.
Two years later he wakes in an unfamiliar bed from a nightmare he forgets to a nightmare he'll have to endure. Burning down the hotel
he moves on.
And on.
And on.
Until one day he finds a cure.