There is going to be a trial (or is it a tribunal?). Of course there is, actions have consequences, even if justified, and there needs to be a formal inquiry, particularly since it involved a well respected, if not particularly well liked, personage and the literal physical office of the Hokage, there has to be a trial.

There is a worrying moment of surprise when the genetic testing reveals all the eyes in Danzo's arm are identical. Had I forgotten? I could have sworn… but, maybe they came from something else? Didn't Orochimaru have that clone with the stupid name? At any rate, it is a non-trivial hit to my credibility.

And then the evidence starts piling up and suddenly, no; no there really doesn't have to be a trial, in fact there has to be absolutely no scrutiny at all because if any of this became public it would be anarchy. There is a pretty decent chance that the Hyuga would defect to Kumo if they found out that someone like Danzo even existed, let alone held the ear of the sitting military dictator for years while casually ambling about with even one stolen eye stuck in his mutant flesh.

Hiruzen is… not well. Every fresh report from his ANBU ages him a year. Danzo was a fool but he was not a spiteful one, and in the wake of his demise the Hokage suddenly finds that he has acquired nearly three dozen new ANBU and several filing cabinets filled with horrors. When he finds the records detailing how Orochimaru was initially led to believe that all of his research was sanctioned but above top secret he makes a little noise of pain that is… terrifying. There are no words to describe how very much he needs to retire.

He seems to agree. Sarutobi's plan to fix the situation is quite elegant, as expected from the God of Shinobi, no matter how aged. I will go to Jiraiya to get a little training and keep me out of the public eye, allowing rumors to die down and ostensibly punishing me with scut work for the egregious breach of protocol, even if justified. Jiraiya will try to persuade Tsunade to come back and take up the duties of Head of Medicine at Konoha General; an attempt to ease her into administrative roles and prep her for the Hat.

It is the first test of my theory that death is progress and it seems… I don't know. I never know anymore. I wish that I was just an ordinary Shinobi, that I could just work hard, get strong, go on missions and not involve myself in all this… messiness. I don't like this, this… guessing, this wondering, this confusion. Everything good is bad and everything bad is good and I can almost predict the future but everything seems to twist just a little bit so that what I imagine comes true in ways I do not expect and-

It's a massive pain in the brain.

More so because Jiraiya is kind of a jerk. Oh he's brilliant alright, he shows off a little when we first meet; amazing Seal work. But he doesn't teach me anything. Too busy with 'research' and his duties as spymaster for Konoha, more important than ever now that ROOT is no more.

It probably doesn't help that I still can't get emotions quite right, too mercurial in my moods, too quick to transition between apathetic silence and manic intensity. Hmm. Oh well.

I'm sort of his… great-grandson? Student's student's student, and your Genin team is sort of like your children so… But apparently he was never on the very best of terms with Kakashi-sensei to begin with; too many painful memories of Hatake Sakumo. Not that they were on the outs, but my Sensei and Jiraiya never quite clicked. Distant relatives. And he's never seen me before, or heard much about me from Hiruzen before all of this or… He doesn't care about me, is what it is, and he's a self absorbed and more than slightly bitter old man to boot, so nothing new happens.

I sigh while following behind him, heavy pack carrying both our gear while we plod along a dusty road to the next little town in the ass end of Stone Country (not to be confused with Earth Country, totally different). Maybe that's my function in this universe, to just sort of… pave the way for Naruto. Make his life a bit easier by getting the messy and unpleasant 'firsts' out of the way, iron out the kinks. Kakashi will have a bit of experience working with kids and teaching, Jiraiya will have a feel for what having a little tagalong is like, Tsunade will have the seed of the idea of being Hokage already planted, just waiting for the bright sunshine of that ridiculous blond's derpy smile to coax it into full blossom…

I heave out another sigh as a perverted giggle floats through the air back towards me. Honestly, have a little shame.

A farm boy without a shirt, lithely muscled and well tanned chest glittering with tiny beads of sweat, stands up in the field next to the road heating my face with a tiny bit of blush though the tell is thankfully hidden by the layer of disguise jutsu allowing me to appear blandly ordinary and uninteresting.

What? I'm human too! Just because I prefer a bit more muscle than is generally found on the impracticly voluptuous protagonists of Jiraiya's smut doesn't mean I'm not a pubescent boy. It makes me think wistfully of Anko, who's always up for a little bit of slap and tickle. Sigh.

On the upshot, even if Jiraiya doesn't bother actually talking to me about… anything, he lets me glance at his notes for a few minutes at night, and with the Sharingan a few minutes is more than enough. He's given me a few pointers too, though they're really just a few cryptic notes scrawled in the margins on my theoretical arrays that it takes me days to decipher and have turned out to be only moderately helpful besides.

Seals are sort of like analog computer code. Sort of. Kinda. Okay, not really, but the general idea is applicable. Maybe more like circuit board construction blended with coding? Some sections are more or less instructions written in the weird almost-kanji of the art, but then some of it is just… doodles? Almost, anyway; large pictograms that do specific things that are modified and augmented by the surrounding lines of text, and then the individual segments of 'code' and implementation doodle mesh together into bigger effects, with the conductive ink of the writing serving as something like logic gates, the chakra flowing along the patterns to generate contortions analogous to hand-seals only done in parallel and massively interwoven…

Perhaps not that much like coding, actually, though it is easier for me to conceptualize it that way rather than the sort of geometric haiku chorus that Jiraiya seems to favor. Although I do seem to lose some of the elegance and efficiency with my sprawling, looping, and self-referential Seal-work, the downsides are more than made up (I think) by making it pretty easy to write.

It is also, as always, extremely chakra intensive. My reserves resolutely refuse to grow as quickly as I would like even if they are growing a little. Despite the rigorous exercise I devote to the task, it seems, like my father, I will always have slightly smaller than average chakra capacity. I regenerate relatively quickly at least, which gives me an idea… Well, we'll need to find Tsunade first, I suppose.

Easier said than done, unfortunately. Naruto and his psychic luck… I'm wasting valuable training time here (I give the rather toned girl walking along in the opposite direction an appreciative glance out of the side of my eye) even if the view isn't always entirely objectionable...

Wait, she looks familiar… Shizune?

The name falls out by accident and she glances in my direction. I glance around for Jiraiya but can't see the old perv anywhere nearby. Damn it, the one time I could really use him…

"Ahh, sorry. Um, It is Kato Shizune, yes? I… do you have a moment? We were actually sort of looking for you. Well, your um, master but… Uh, me and Jiraiya-sama, that is. Um… I'm not sure where he went, actually… sorry."

She gives me a pitying look.

"Yeah, I'm not sure where Tsunade-shishou got off to either."

Shizune heaved a heavy sigh and glanced at the food stand off the side of the lane, just on the outskirts of a little village. I spotted wooden sandals poking out from beneath the curtain and sighed heavily as well.

"Well, I know where we can get started."

. . .

Jiraiya was just being lazy, but with his help Shizune and I were eventually able to track Tsunade to a bar in the town. She already had quite a pile of empty sake bottles going by the time Shizune and I slumped tiredly on opposite sides of the table, sending a jostle through the tea-shaded porcelain strong enough for a few of them to tumble as the heap settled.

"Tsunade-shishou, please don't leave me behind like that. Though, I suppose it worked out okay, since it helped Jiraiya-sama and Hiroki-kun find us. They had something they wanted to ask you."

I waited for Jiraiya to open his mouth before speaking hurriedly over him.

"Yeah, Hiruzen-ojisama is like, one foot in the grave and they wanted to try and trick you into becoming Hokage by having you come back and be Head of Medicine at Konoha General. I don't think you'll go for it, though, honestly. I mean, the medic program is total shit so I don't think you'd have much to work with. Just, setting you up to fail, you know?"

Jiraiya frowned initially, but as I kept going it melted into a merely assessing look as he glanced at Tsunade out of the corner of his eye. For her part she seemed irritated by the initial admission and even more irritated by the slight against the medic corps.

"What? I set them up proper before I bailed on that garbage fire. What are they teaching you kids these days?"

I held up a hand, glowing with the Mystic Palm.

"That. And… yeah that's about it. I was kind of hoping to get something good out of the program, but basically it was just a really rigorous chakra training regimen and the basic technique with some anatomy slapped on. Kind of lackluster, you know? But, whatever. Fuck Konoha, right? Oh, hey, you might like this though; remember that asshole Danzo? I cut off his head! Ding dong the douche is dead!"

I tapped my chin thoughtfully as Tsunade and Jiraiya both gave me raised eyebrows.

"Although then they punished me for it by sending me to be his," I jerked a thumb at the toad-sage, "errand boy, and you know how bad he sucks at teaching. And not being a reprehensible human being."

Tsunade burst out laughing while Shizune looked somewhat scandalized. Jiraiya scowled heavily at me.

"I'm the Great Toad Sage! You can't talk that way to me!"

I gave him a vicious smile in return.

"Oh yeah, how is Naruto doing? Oh, thats right, you don't know because you never return to Konoha! Even Kakashi-sensei can barely bring himself to check in on the tyke every month; the only one who keeps a good eye on him is me and the Hokage, and I think we all know just how much Hiruzen-ojisama's oversight is worth, don't we?"

Now both of the Sannin were giving me sour looks, though Jiraiya looked suitably stung. I turned away from them to Shizune, who look a little bit nervous and embarrassed.

"So, Shizune-chan, how you been? Got any tips for an aspiring medic?"

The young healer looked startled by the direction the conversation had suddenly taken but since neither Tsunade nor Jiraiya seemed inclined to say anything while they brooded she hesitantly began to ask me a few questions about what I knew.

Not as much as I thought, it turned out.

I thought I had an okay understanding of healing, for a beginner, but it seemed I had woefully overestimated my skills. Memorizing facts about anatomy and so on with the Sharingan helped a fair bit, but it couldn't fix every ill, and my actual technique was pretty bog standard, only small improvements on the Mystic Palm like the ability to affect internal targets, none of the really fancy stuff that a real medic could do like knit severed blood vessels together across a gaping wound or generate non-collagenized scar tissue which wouldn't impede normal range of motion.

Eventually Tsunade found it worthwhile to butt in and offer some more pointers, in her own grumpy way.

"You need perfect control, not just good, but perfect, understand? Once you have that you can start getting a little more creative. Medical chakra gets you past the body's defences, and once you're in the basic principle of the Mystic Palm technique can be used to induce the natural repair mechanisms. But you need the control first, or you won't be able to regenerate only the things you want to regenerate, and then you start creating scars or tumors, and that's a whole nother problem."

I nodded reflexively, gaze slightly distant.

"Thank you for the advice Tsunade-hime. I don't suppose you have any exercises you have found particularly efficacious in building such control? I have tried rather a lot…"

A small ball of stone rolled from the small of my back down my shoulder and arm till it reached my hand. From there it began circling my fingers at a pretty good clip before sliding back up my sleeve to its former position, still rolling in little circles as it spun on every axis. Tsunade raised an eyebrow, assessing.

"Not a bad idea that. Earth Nature Transformation too?"

I nodded.

"Yes. Fire is my primary affinity, but tends to be rather… excessively draining. Earth is my secondary, and it seemed like a reasonable sort of exercise to improve my control and affinity at the same time. It also helps with card tricks."

I waggled my fingers at her in a poor attempt at lightening the general mood. She snorted derisively, but waved at the bartender to order a round of drinks. At three in the afternoon. Her student seemed to have 'resignedly scandalized' set as her default expression.

"What'll you have kid?"

Shizune apparently felt that was a bit too much.

"Shishou, you shouldn't be buying children alcohol!"

Tsunade waved her off.

"Old enough to kill, old enough to get wasted afterwards. Need to work on your chakra sensing, can't spot a Jounin sitting right in front of you."

I blinked, slightly surprised, and ducked my head to hide a trace of heat in my cheeks at the implied praise.

"Oh, um. Well, I love cherries. If we were in Konoha I would have a rum and cherry coke, but I'm not sure if it would be a very good-"

"Shush, I'm buying, I can afford it," Shizune shook her head frantically, "So I'll get you your fruity thing. Guess you're still too young to enjoy the finer things in life eh?"

I eyed the small pile of Sake bottles dourly. Finer things indeed. The waiter was prompt, dropping off the sweet amber nectar of the gods in front of me and another platter of bottles before Tsunade. Shizune still seemed a little discomfited though. I gave her a wry smile.

"Don't worry, I'll only have the one."

. . .

Tsunade must be some sort of magic, because somehow the one turned into two, and then three, and then seven, and I was well on the way to being a little bit too drunk for comfort. Other people's at least.

"Hey, you w'n 'ow -hic- You wanna know, how you die?"

Tsunade blinked back at me slightly unfocused and Jiraiya sighed, a trifle bored, as he had been all evening. Shizune was just looking at the stack of glasses mournfully.

"What'd you know about that? Just a kid! Don't be morbid!"

I waved at her unsteadily.

"Nah, nah, for realsies! I, I can, um… see the future! Yeah, that. It sucks. Ever'thin' sucks, honestly, but you know… 'Sides, you're one of like…" -I tried to tick off on my fingers but got lost about halfway and forgot if I was counting in Binary or not- "...a few? People who ever mattered. Like, well, technically only four people ev'r mattered, but you, you know… some of them. So that makes you kind of important like."

Shizune seemed to be fortifying herself for a drunken rant when Jiraiya butted his stupid toad face in.

"More people than just the Hokage matter, brat."

I flipped him off absently before having some more of my awesome- ew, sake. ...whatever.

"Fuck the Hokage, they didn' matter either! 'Cept the Shodi- Shodan-...first one. All the rest 're only important by assoca- assassi-... proximity. Technically Hashirama didn' even matter either, stupid tree fucker."

Tsunade smacked the back of my head hard enough to bounce my face off the table and bellowed at me across the wooden expanse.

"Don' talk that way about my gramps! Great guy, stupid guy, bu' great guy!"

I stuck my tongue out at her and blew a raspberry.

"He shoulda killed all the Uchiha! Fukin, Ma-glech! For fuck's sake! You know, the, the, asshole. With the eyes. That guy. Stabbed me once! Guilty by association. But yeah, the Shamona was… really fuckin hot. Like, god damn, what did they feed everyone in those days? 'Nyways, he mattered a little, but! Mostly cause of what he was! See, like I said, only four people have ever mattered. And they were all named Otsutsuki."

Jiraiya was giving me a curious look, but Tsunade seemed to have forgotten the earlier slight against her grandfather, for she squinted at me blearily.

"Who're the Otsugi?"

"Otsutsuki. Kaguya, Hagoromo, Asura, Indra. Kaguya was the first. Gave people chakra, by assident, then tried to eat 'em all, but got beaten by her kid. Hagoromo. And another one who… moved to the moon? But, don' tell anyone, but she's not all the way dead. Shh! Secret. Anyway, Hagomomomo was the Sage of… Some Paths. An he was important 'cause he taught people about jutsu 'n shit. Dumbass. Super dumbass. Like, so fucking dumb, his ass doesn't just need remedial schoolin' but like, it's a fugging protist. So dumb. 'N then! Somehow, he got some chick to take his shakujo, wikink wonk, even though he was like, half alien and had horns 'n junk, 'cause Kaguya was from another planet or some bull fuckery, don't ask me how that works, and so he had two kids. Asura." -I pointed in the general direction of Tsunade- "And Indra." -I pointed at myself- "And, of course, Baachan couldn' leave well enough alone, so she cursed Indra with the eyes of crazy pants murder times, and he became a total dick too, while Asura got to be happy and self righteous and all that stuff."

Jiraiya is looking extremely intently at me now, though Shizune seems to be operating under the assumption that this is just normal drunken rambling, hands gently massaging her temples setting her simple bronze bangles to jangling gently while artfully swaying out of the way of my exasperated gesticulating.

"And then, they were so important, that the kami were like, 'fuck, can't let them just rot in peace, better reincarnate those douches like, a ballilion times', and so they did. Which is why the Shodaime was important. Reincarnation of Asura. And that asshole who fuckin stabbed me in the throat! In the throat! Like, why you gotta, why you, wyogta… dick. That guy. He was the reincarnation of Indra. 'N so, of course, they had to fight and just, fug up a perfectly good village. But could that asshole just die? No! Why- why would we do anything that makes sense?"

I let my head drop to the table, the best place in this or any universe.

"So, you know, he came back, right? And the Uchiha were all still pants on head retards from the stupid-eyeballs in their head-skulls so they listened to his- his- his- potty mouth. And then they all died, 'cept Sasuke, who, you guessed it! Is the most recent incarnation of Indra! So let's all take a gamble on how that'll turn out. Heh, hehe, hey, hey, Tsunade, why don', why don't you bet that Sas'ke will be an ashole? Then it'll never happen."

I closed my eyes and let the goo oozing from my face start to cement me to the wood.

"And thats why, only four people ever really mattered. And, you know, their families and stuff, I guess, like you. But I'm nobody really, so I'll prolly just… die in a corner somewhere when no one's looking. That's life, I guess. Just, wait'll you meet Naruto; the new Asura. Heh, hi grampa! He's, he's so fuggin, just so fuggin, happy all the time. Like, why you even- your life sucks almost as hard as mine, why you, you, gotta be so happy? And he'll punch you in the face and you'll want to be Hokage, and no one cares about Hiroki the weirdo…"

. . .

No Kakashi to take me to bed, just a put upon Shizune to drag me back to the hotel room Jiraiya picked out for us.

The horrible old man was waiting for me with a tight frown of interest on his stupid, goat, face.

Shit I said that out loud didn't I? Oh well, who cares, Orochimaru was better. Sexy, sexy snake molester. Mmm, kinky. Even if he is like, a little genderfluid? And hella old. But he always looks like he's only twenty or something. Nice.

"Fugg off Toad man! You don't wanna teach me anything, I'm not gonna say nothin. Gonna, gonna, make up a time travel jutsu and go back in time and erase 'your memory so you don', you don't 'member anything I said. Serve you right. Mmm."

Oh sweet bed, how do I love thee…

"Where did you learn all that? Madara is alive? Does Sensei know?"

I rolled my eyes and waved at him sleepily.

"Not sayin' shit. Can't make me either, pht! You'll find out. Or not. Who knows? I don't, not really. Saw a future, not all of 'em. Not this one. Dreams 'n stories 'n badly written fanfiction…"

. . .

A/N: Return of Drunk!Hiroki (he will never be seen or heard from again). Meet Tsunade (she's a grumpy lady). Meet Jiraya (he's kind of a dick).