Because oh yes, there is a plot with the Okami crossover stuff. There was a single line about Jiraya talking to Sasuke re. Gaara's custody - this is how he got involved. Needs more tweaking, but I'm too burnt out to care. Persona 2 Eternal Punishment is awesome, but freaking demon rumor system... At least all that happened is I missed out on some goodies, it's not anywhere near as bad as the social links.
Konoha held a lot of memories for Jiraya. He'd lost a lot of people here, and the memories of the good times were actually the most painful, since he'd never get to experience them again. He didn't have to come back to Konoha to report, Sarutobi would understand, but despite everything, there was something that always made Jiraya return to Konoha.
A strip club.
The strip club.
The other hidden villages had tried their hardest, but never been able to come close to Underneath the Underneath. Screw teamwork: this was the real reason Konoha had the lowest defection rate of all the hidden villages. This was the real reason Tsunade hadn't cut ties and turned in her hitai-ate.
They took away your membership card when you did that.
These were not just strippers. These were ninja strippers. Was she actually taking anything off, or was it just an illusion? Or the thrill of realizing that she'd actually been entirely naked the whole time. There was the Whirlpool clan with that octopus summon contract and the rest of the Classical Art show. And so, so many more.
Jiraya had come to town before the chunin exams started in order to catch the last showings of Orochimaru's student's snake charming act before she joined the exam proctors and was replaced by those Yamanaka twins. The club waved the normal rules about audience participation for those two, and Shadow Mistress Nara, since it didn't really count if it wasn't the audience member themselves doing the touching, but the kuniochi who had taken control of their body.
Sadly, Jiraya was too powerful a ninja to be controlled like that.
The backstage pass almost made up for it. They'd been putting on productions of his Icha Icha novels for years, with their genjutsu mistresses creating the images of the characters exactly the way he'd imagined them. Jiraya hadn't been able to agree to any movie deals after directing those: they just couldn't come close.
Despite the temptation, no one with any sense used kai at Underneath the Underneath. You missed half the show that way.
Jiraya was led to his reserved booth and made comfortable with some nice sake and a couple of trainees to lean against his sides and keep him warm. Their flattery was pretty clumsy, but there was something endearing about that. They were trying so hard to be appealing, with carefully put-on makeup and clothing cut to hang on their figures in a way that looked ill-fitting, as though if a guy stared long enough, it'd slip down, not realizing that all they had to do to be seductive was bare their innermost selves.
Of course, that was the last thing any ninja would ever do, so it wasn't that easy to learn kuniochi skills. Fortunately, this was a place they could practice without having to worry about anything they weren't comfortable with, or getting killed if their act slipped before their dress did, while the mark was still paying attention to what they were saying.
In order to keep secrets, the less said the better.
Jiraya was making fast, motion-study sketches of all the women in the room, to keep his hand in and to see the surprise and flattery in their eyes if he gave them to them (he sketched these two first, of course), when she walked in.
No one got her name or ID, and Jiraya wished he was surprised by this. "Who is she?" he asked one of his two girls, only letting admiration show in his voice.
They didn't have any idea and didn't see anything odd about that. They were just looking at the white-haired woman in the red silk slip that matched her facial markings with admiration that bordered on envy.
She was given a seat right at the edge of the stage and immediately about five people who should have realized something was up (such a powerful unknown?) started ordering drinks for her.
She put her feet up on another chair, slitted skirt falling away from well-toned legs, and sucked a cherry off its stem in a wonderfully obscene way that made Jiraya want to clap. She was good.
The only question was how good.
The Toad Sage, along with the rest of the room, was barely paying any attention to the act on stage until the drumbeats started and it clicked. This wasn't just any show that was going on tonight. This was their signature production of Ame no Uzume's dance, the dance that had lured the sun goddess Amaterasu herself out of her cave to watch, restoring light to the world.
Despite the use of demon containers, despite the power of boss summons, despite so many Konoha ninja seeing the Ninetails itself, ninja didn't really think about the fact that there were powers other than their own in this world. Jiraya's training as a sage had given him access to some of that power, and with it knowledge.
Even Jiraya, who should have known better, hadn't really figured the gods into things. Oh, he'd studied their power, as a sage. The prophecy about him should have given him a hint that things were on the move. But years had rolled by, the prophecy had seemed fulfilled without really amounting to anything, and he'd settled into a comfortable rut of spreading the less-well-known teachings of the Tengu Sage, bringing a little pleasure and joy to this corrupt world.
"Of all the strip joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine," he thought to himself, watching the entire room revolve around this woman, none of the ninja realizing that there was anything unnatural about this.
Because there wasn't. The entire world did revolve around the sun, and its goddess.
Most of the room couldn't even look away: she was the only one watching the act, licking her lips.
Jiraya had studied about her, but he hadn't realized she was this hot.