On the Road
The late afternoon's sun shone quietly over the forest, its thick canopy barely allowing its light to reach the sparse underbrush as I stalked the target, Sharingan spinning quietly in my eyes as I tracked even the most minute sign of its passage.
If my eyes weren't the kind of outrageous bullshit they were, I could have still relied on my sense of smell or hearing once I was this close. True, the smell simply told me that I was close, but my ears could pick up the exact direction in which I should go.
It is surprising, in hindsight, how much the eyes are meaningless when you move among the trees. I thought to myself: no matter if you jumped from branch to branch or if you weaved on the ground among the trunks, your sight was impaired by natural obstacles far too often to spot an ambush.
Luckily, nobody has managed to throw projectiles faster than sound. I grinned as I pivoted on my left foot, quietly snatching the kunai aimed at my ribs out of its trajectory, only to weave among the other three projectiles that my pursuer would have expected me to deflect. Instead, I let them pass me by with casual ease, bringing my arm upwards in a sharp movement only to stall the last shuriken, which instead cut the air with a whistling sound that was proof of its speed.
A simple twist of the kunai in my hand was enough to have the shuriken bleed off its kinetic energy, and I grabbed it while it spun as a coin in front of me: with a precise snap of my wrists, the kunai flew in the underbrush, and the shuriken was thrown back towards the offender that just tried to make me skip dinner by interrupting my hunt.
A bout of laughter echoed from between a couple of birch trees, and with that, I knew that the risk of being skewered while I recovered my successfully killed target went back to being 0.
I moved through the rare patch of underbrush, maneuvering carefully in order to not leave tracks: after five meters or so, I spotted it. The kunai I had thrown had embedded itself into the eye of my target, killing it instantly.
"Must annoy me every time I seek our dinner?" I whined as I quickly gutted the wild boar I had just taken the life of, burying its entrails so that they wouldn't attract the wrong kind of attention, "One day I'll miss the target, and what will you eat then? Not my stocks, that's for sure."
"Oh, brat," the white-haired shinobi grinned openly as we crossed a stretch of forest in the blink of an eye, "the day in which you can procure dinner for us while we're on the move is the day you go hungry because I'll have eaten all your stuff already!"
I grimaced as I nailed the carcass of the boar against a tree so that what blood it had left would drop to the ground while I prepared the campsite: "Why can't we go on with the ration pills, anyway? I thought they were purposely made to not have shinobi waste time while on the field." Not that I particularly wanted to live on rations, for all that they gave the body all the energy it needed, they left a lingering feeling of hunger, and I was used to warm, tasty meals.
I mean, I could do without. I amended to myself, knowing that necessity was the only sauce I needed to eat whatever happened in my hands, but for all of my vaunted skills in the shinobi world, living on the road meant shitting in a bush and cleaning yourself only when you found a suitable stretch of water with a hard, scentless soap, which didn't happen for days at a time, having the side effect of dirt and grime accumulating both on my clothes and my person.
The Sannin deigned to help by dropping a random amount of wood on the side of the firepit I had prepared, but I would have preferred him to let me work on my own instead of his 'hovering' approach: "Because of reasons, of course!"
And so the Great Jiraya explains himself. I sighed heavily as I lit the flames with a small spark of Katon chakra, the change in nature was by now something that I could accomplish with the same ease I blinked, and with the same ease, I ignored the temptation of trying to set the white-haired shinobi at my side on fire.
"You have a good enough grasp of your surroundings." Jiraya's voice expressed how fun he thought throwing stuff at me was, even so, his eyes watched my movements with something akin to respect when I unsealed my cooking supplies from a scroll and I expertly started to quarter my prey and dispose for the different kind preparations it would need.
"Don't think I haven't noticed how you keep playing with change in nature chakra while we are on the move." Jiraya needled me, earning himself a roll of my eyes as an answer.
"I have to train somehow, don't I?" I was unimpressed by his somewhat blatant attempts at fishing for information. Among all the people of the Elemental Nations that I was familiar with thanks to my metaknowledge, he was one with whom I could actually talk... if I was Naruto. There was no bond of any kind yet between me and the Toad Summoner, and his casual attempts at testing me made during the mandatory hunting sessions weren't something that made me regard him with anything different from irritation.
"Well," Jiraya seemed stumped, "we've been traveling for a couple of weeks, and aside from your whining when we stopped in that village you don't ever attempt to begin a conversation."
"I figured I would do my own thing and ask you stuff that I can work with on my own once I'm through with my list." I shrugged, eyeing the frown that appeared on Jiraya's face with some lingering suspicion, "And learning new stuff is difficult when you're more concerned with feeling lonely than actually teaching me shit."
"List?" he asked, for the first time dropping his buffoon act and regarding me as if I was more than another random piece of the surroundings.
"I'm working through my Raiton for now." I shrugged again, turning my attention back to the flames of the campfire.
"Only the change in chakra nature, I noticed. And?" Jiraya insisted, and something in his tone made me turn serious for a moment.
It's not like I wouldn't have told him once I needed his help. I sighed: "I know that once you have the hand seals necessary, you can seek for an Animal Summon, and you're contracted with the Toads, so I was thinking about finding a contract for myself."
The white-haired shinobi rose an eyebrow challengingly as if knowing that I had some more stuff to ask: "Why didn't you simply ask me to sign the Toads' Contract?"
I shrugged carelessly as an answer, burying a large cooking pot into the fire, in which I started to drop random, wild vegetables and some edible roots I had picked up as we crossed the wilderness, only to drop in the less palatable cuts of boar. Once I was done with that procedure, I closed the cooking pot with his cover, only to bury it under some embers.
"From some diaries and whatnot left by my clan, I know that a summoning contract is somewhat a... personal thing." I breathed slowly over the firepit, flames running lightly over the cast iron cooking pot before I stacked other pieces of wood over it. It would need a couple of hours, but the stew should be tasty enough to fight off the annoyance of living on the road for at least a while.
"Besides, if I get a personal Summon, we'll be more in tune one with another, no?" I asked honestly as I placed flat, fluvial stones on the sides of the quickly growing flames: those I would treat as if they were cooking plates.
The white-haired shinobi studied me carefully for a few seconds, his eyes briefly widening when he saw me cover some cuts of meat with random herbs, his stomach immediately starting to sing as the sizzle of the meat over the heated stones reached his senses.
"You're not wrong..." Jiraya fished out a small scroll from a hidden pocket and unsealed its contents: after a puff of smoke, a small jar of sake was suddenly something available to me.
With no hesitation, I took it and poured it over the cooking boar steak, tilting my head backward to avoid the rush of flame, only for my eyes to land on the calm expression of the white-haired shinobi. I expected an outburst of some kind, instead, he simply regarded me with a grin: "You are an actual princess, aren't you?"
"What." I deadpanned.
"Long, luscious hair, pretty features, and a passion for cooking..." the Toad Summoner cast his eyes into the forest as if he was suddenly realizing a deep truth about the world.
"It's not a passion." I snapped back, instinctively ignoring the mockery about my 'pretty features'.
"Glad to hear that's the only part you bothered to disagree with," the white-haired shinobi hunched forward, his grin widening horribly over the flickering light of the flames, "because if you tried to deny that you look like a princess, then I'd need to adjust your training accordingly!"
I ignored the thundering laughter of the S-rank shinobi and tied the thighs of the boar to sticks of greenwood, so that they wouldn't catch on fire, making them lean on the side of the flames, unrepentantly finishing all the Sannin's sake to flavor the steaks cooking on the flat stones.
This boar weighed around 70 kilograms, I need to smoke some of the meat. It took me maybe ten minutes to prepare a teepee of sorts with green wood and some of the unreasonably large leaves present in the outrageously big forest that characterized Hi no Kuni, a time during which Jiraya's laugher subsided, and during which I spotted him casually turning the boar steaks on their other side.
Uh, I guess you can't spend your whole life roaming without picking up some standard cooking skills. I grimaced a bit at how I had naturally taken the sake that Jiraya took out of a storage scroll. Was it a ruse? Something to see if I actually enjoyed cooking? I shouldn't have fallen for it.
Then the smell of the cooking meat washed under my nose, and I mellowed out a bit. It was unavoidable: Jiraya was S-rank, he would have picked up on some stuff about me in any case, if he focused on my strange hobby instead of my less than ideal faith in the 'Will of Fire', all for the better.
"You chose the more difficult tracks to follow." Jiraya casually needled me, pointing out the moment during the brief hunt in which I had pursued the prey taht we were about to eat.
"There were signs of tusks against the bark of a tree." I shrugged, not seeing any need to lie about that, "If I'm free to choose, I'd rather hunt a male, there will always be another capable of impregnating a female, but if you target females... if everyone did that we'd end up reducing the number of boars around, or whatever else I'm hunting, for that matter."
"What?" it was Jiraya's turn to deadpan, and I turned towards him once I was done arranging the meat in the green tepee in which I had set up a small fire over greenwood, it would produce enough smoke to prepare the meat for long conservation by the time dawn came around.
"You're a weird brat..." I could feel the confusion in the white-haired shinobi wondered what the fuck my thought process was like, and I simply smirked as an answer.
"Returning to the topic of your..." the Toad Summoner waved his hands wildly as if to physically ushing aside his thoughts, "What was it? Ah, yes! your 'List'. Besides working in nature change, and asking from me hand seals that you know will drop you into another plane of existence, did you have another spectacularly bad idea?"
"I was going to start copying storage seals with the Sharingan, to see if I managed to make my own, and maybe tweak it..." the necessity of knowing at least enough to get by about the most elusive art ever mentioned in the Elemental Nations was something that I could dedicate some time to, now that I didn't need to keep my training 'regular' as to not raise suspicions from Hokage Tower.
"Oh, no." Jiraya crossed his arms in an exaggerated manner as he rose to his feet as if to make a point: "No way, no how. You're not practicing that shit on your own, and most certainly I won't simply throw the basics at you to see in which creative way you manage to kill yourself."
I rose to my feet too and eyed him with an expression that I hoped conveyed my disinterest in his opinion: it wasn't like he had been training me, he really had no say in how I wanted to bring forth my skills. Trailing after him from that half-forgotten village to this piece of wilderness was something I could do, if only to enjoy his protection outside of Konoha until I figured out how to move freely on my own.
We started at each other for several seconds, until he apparently saw in my eyes something that made him desist from his apparent purpose of crippling my growth. What is it with this world and the total lack of a structured teaching method?
"Okay brat, you want training?" Jiraya narrowed his eyes, "We'll do it my way: you'll never be an awesome shinobi like me, so instead of a power build we'll focus on a more... delicate... one."
I knowingly ignored his tentative to rile me up by defining me as 'delicate': "Duh." I deadpanned, receiving a geta sandal on my forehead with no warning whatsoever.
"Gah!" the exclamation left my mouth without permission as the wooden object left a red sign on my forehead, making me stagger backward: "Hey! What the fuck!" I started to gingerly poke around the welt that I knew was already taking place over my left eyebrow.
I ducked the second geta sandal: "Language, you ungrateful brat!"
This escalated unreasonably quickly. "Don't throw stuff on my face to make a point!" I clenched my fists, Sharingan spinning into existence once more as I looked for a way to break the fucker's nose, only to inwardly grimace as I realized that I had no hope.
"Why?" Jiraya frowned, as if genuinely confused, "It isn't a great face, some scars would at least make it interesting!"
"As if you'd know anything about a great face..." I muttered, my fists relaxing as I pointedly looked at the wart on the Sannin's nose. I am not going to remind him that he called my face pretty for a princess less than an hour ago.
"Ha!" Jiraya took a step forward, his chest puffed out as if he was parading for an invisible crowd: "The things this face has seen and..."
"Spying on unwilling women really doesn't count as a worthy, heroic quest." I flatly cut him off while I seated on my side of the fire, finally pulling the cooked meat on a plate that I viciously attacked, the hunger finally taking over, and if Jiraya got a piece of meat that was slightly overcooked, well, it was worse for him.
"As if you'd know anything about what counts as a heroic deed, you shitty brat!" the white-haired shinobi managed to retort angrily even while he attacked his own portion of food, his eyes widening briefly at how good it was before he consciously narrowed them again, staring me suspiciously.
"I'm not even 10 years old yet!" I threw my hands over my head as I finished gulping: "What the hell would you expect?"
Jiraya didn't hide his grimace as he conceded the point, quickly throwing another: "And that's why I am the teacher here!"
"Great teacher you're being." I scoffed, "I'm training on my own and asking for pointers that you ignore, remember? It's been two weeks, and the only thing you've done is telling me to wait while you tried to complete your collection of STDs with your whores."
"Admirers!" he hastily corrected me, earning himself a flat gaze that expressed my disbelief, "And I'm far too awesome to get diseases, thank you very much!"
"Well, if you don't know very well the person with whom you're having sex, how can you be sure you don't get a rare STD for which you don't have the necessary antibodies ready?" I asked curiously as I pulled free one of the thighs that had been cooked in the meantime, "For that matter, how can you be so sure it's not a shinobi in disguise?"
"What...?" Jiraya's face had turned green as if he had never considered the possibility.
"I mean, clones take our shapes only because those are the most useful, how hard can it be to make a female clone of yourself?" I speculated theatrically, my hands casually rubbing at my chin while I looked upwards., "And it is likely that there is a bloodline somewhere that turns men into women."
The white-haired Sannin worked through the disgust that my image had put in his head and glared at me: "Nobody could fool the great Jiraya-sama's sense for women!"
"Except for those that already did it." I nodded dutifully, mocking him openly now that I started to feel like this banter didn't have a purpose besides the one of passing the time.
The Sannin's hands twitched dangerously, as if looking for another of his sandals to throw. A pity that you threw them both, and that one sailed into the forest, isn't it?
Jiraya's eyes narrowed dangerously now that he realized that he's need to look after his sandals, and he rose a single, threatening finger towards me, as if to dare me to say anything: "We'll start with some sparring in the morning, before we hit the road, once I'm done beating some sense into your disrespectful head, we'll chat about how to make you suck less ass as we move."
And with those somewhat ominous words, he disappeared into the underbrush, his angry mutters soothing my wounded ego: "...shitty brat... didn't cook that well I'd have already..."
I don't know if I just made this travel more difficult or more interesting. I thought to myself, only to chuckle when I heard an annoyed grunt accompanied by the lumbering shape of Jiraya sitting on a log next to the campfire, his large hands taking the remaining boar thigh and tearing a big chunk of it free with his teeth.
At least I can keep making him think that he fucked men in the past, see how he likes throwing sandals at my head. With that soothing thought, I put away the supplies and used a sturdy branch to lift the cooking pot out of the embers.
For the whole day, I had shaped my chakra as we walked across the wilderness, pocketing any herb or root that appeared interesting. Change in Nature Chakra, and a bit of shape manipulation: my control was really good, but that didn't mean that a whole day of training wasn't exhausting, mentally if not physically.
I uncovered the pot and tasted the stew, adding a few herbs of choice when I found it a bit bland, only to bury it once more, before eyeing Jiraya: "That's breakfast, don't eat it."
With that last warning, I unrolled my sleeping bag and turned my back to the older man: "Since I've both hunted and cooked, you get to keep vigil."
"Brat I've been traveling..."
I tuned out the neverending rambles of the white-haired shinobi, falling asleep as I started planning how I would attack him at dawn.
When the dawn started to clear the sky, enough for the brat to distinguish some shapes besides the faint glow that the embers of the campfire still gave off, he sneaked out of his sleeping bag, trailing into the dying night as he inhaled deeply, the cold air of the lingering night enough to wake him up properly, even if he casually changed his chakra into fire natured for a couple of seconds, holding his breath while he lightly built it up, enough to warm him from head to toe.
Impressive. Jiraya thought, his eyes closed and his breathing regular while he pretended to still be asleep. The evening before was the first real progress he had made since the first meeting he had with the Uchiha brat: it had taken that long in the exclusive company of each other for the Toad Summoner to be able to engineer a situation in which he could witness some genuine reactions out of the kid.
The white-haired shinobi listened as the brat under his care walked lightly through the trees, not wandering too far from the camp even as he undoubtedly kept his senses peeled to pick up on the faintest sign of peril.
I never met a kid so distrustful. The white-haired shinobi frowned as he pretended to still be asleep: but there was something to be said by how obsessive the kid was about most of the stuff he did. Who hunts only males to eat because he's worried about the long-term effects of hunting on the population of boars? That's not fucking normal.
Jiraya breathed deeply as his ears remained peeled to ear even the faintest sound, if what little he had been able to catch about the brat's personality was true, then he would take the words of the previous evening as permission to ambush him while he still slept, only because he could consider the faint light rising in the east, foretelling the coming of the dawn, as the beginning of the new day.
The Toad Summoner grumbled distastefully as he kept feigning sleep: there had been a minute ripple in the chakra nearby. He's a nasty little brat, alright.
Sasuke, who had walked back into the camp after he was done with the morning business, blurred forward, as silent as it could be, only to jump back when the place he was about to reach was crushed under Jiraya's powerful punch: a split second later, the clone that the white-haired shinobi had left in his sleeping bag dispelled, leaving only the two shinobi staring off each other in the dim half-light of a dawn that had yet to properly begin.
"When I agreed to beat some sense in your head in the morning," the Toad Summoner spoke slowly as he rightened himself from his hunched position, a clear impression of his knuckles left on the ground and his eyes hidden under the white mane that he insisted were only regular hairs, "I didn't mean that you should try to ambush me at dawn! Disrespectful brat!"
With over-the-top outrage plastered on his features, he threw forward one of his wooden sandals, almost too fast for the Uchiha to react: but react he did, jumping back immediately after his first dodge.
Three shuriken were thrown with the Uchiha's offhand, a single half Tiger seal enough for him to spew three fireballs the size of a human head in a pattern that would force Jiraya to dodge to the left.
And to the left he went: only to be immediately chased by the shuriken that had been thrown only to be redirected by a pull on the wire that linked them to the Uchiha.
Suddenly, the black-haired prodigy charged straight for Jiraya, leading with a spinning kick that had enough momentum to tear down a brick wall, only to be popped when the Sannin drove a kunai into the base of its foot.
The clone simply laughed: "Constant Vigilance!" and exploded in a rush of flame that the white-haired shinobi nimbly avoided by jumping to his right, where the original Sasuke's right fist impacted on his left forearm without even causing the Sannin to wince.
The Uchiha grimaced when Jiraya grabbed the front of his shirt with his free hand and threw him on the ground, his red eyes meeting the Toad Summoner's ones and trying to trap him into a minor illusion, only for the prodigy's chakra to simply slid off the older shinobi.
Sasuke ducked under a kick that came with enough strength to rip his head clean off his shoulders, exhaling heavily when his palms met the ground, chakra surging through his muscles as he pushed himself to his left, neatly avoiding the stomp that had the purpose of punting the disrespectful brat in the ground.
Still lovered just above the ground, Sasuke's left hand clamped on the ankle of the offending limb that had landed just next to his head, and as the prodigy pushed with his feet to slide backward, he pulled Jiraya's foot with him.
Unfazed, the man pushed off with his right foot, basically jumping ahead of the maneuver and forcing the black-haired shinobi to adapt.
Sharingan spinning, the newly minted chunin tilted his head, anticipating a casual punch that would have knocked his lights out only jumped upwards, his knee impacting solidly against the vambrace of the Sannin, who was grinning mockingly at the annoying pre-teen.
The Sannin's arm stretched out then, and made to grab again the front of the chunin's shirt: it was more instinct than the reason that led the younger shinobi to grab Jiraya's wrist with both hands, his core muscles burning as he pulled up his legs in order to force a grapple over the bulky man's left arm.
"Don't try to win in a contest of strength!" Jiraya's warning came with a bout of joyous laughter and a grunt of pain that escaped the chunin when the older shinobi simply flexed his arm, his sheer power overwhelming the leverage that the younger ninja had tried to exercise with a classical elbow joint. At the same time, the Toad Summoner burrowed his elbow in the Uchiha's diaphragm.
With the breath leaving his lungs without his permission, the chakra surging through the Uchiha body, reinforcing him and allowing him to keep up with the light beatdown that Jiraya was so freely administrating... it was gone.
For a split second, Sasuke Uchiha lost control, and it was then that the Sannin kicked him, causing the chunin to fold like a mop under the blow, flying through the small clearing and landing with a small surge of chakra that allowed him to turn the fall that would have broken bones into a shoulder roll.
"You'll get yourself killed if you lose control that badly with any random love tap." the white-haired shinobi frowned as he walked towards the Uchiha, expecting him to be witty about his mockery, as if he wasn't trying to not puke his very soul.
"I..." the young shinobi coughed, trying to bring his breathing under control again, while the pain faded, "If I can use breathing to regulate chakra flow in my body..." I stopped, since the simple task of forcing my words out too much for me. Fucking hell he's built like a bull.
For all of his constant joking and messing around with any two-bit whore that was met on the road, not to mention the brothels he stepped in any time a village was crossed, Jiraya was a fantastic ninja. The sparring that the Uchiha had forced out of him did nothing but point out the fact that if he got distracted and used a tiny bit of chakra more than necessary, Sasuke couldn't even parry a 'love tap'.
"Yes, I've heard about that before we left Konoha..." Jiraya immediately linked the vague words of the chunin together with the answers he got after he managed to talk with the... flamboyant... green-clad shinobi who answered to the name of Maito Gai. "But only because your friend will be able to become a ninja thanks to the breathing thing you reinvented, it doesn't mean you have to do the same." the white-haired shinobi was a good half-meter taller than the young Uchiha, and had roughly trice his weight in sheer packed muscle, hoping to fight hand to hand without chakra reinforcement was blatantly stupid, "There is a reason why those unable to mold chakra don't have this kind of life, you know."
"Why don't we actually admit that I had no chance whatsoever instead of dissing my methods?" that Uchiha sighed, finally having recovered a semblance of control: "Every part of me that doesn't need to focus on trivial things, I can put to use for tactics and whatever the hell else is needed."
"That won't help you if you die because you sneeze at the wrong moment, will it?" Jiraya scratched idly at the small wart on his nose, nodding appreciatively at Sasuke's backhanded regard for the white-haired shinobi's skill.
The Toad Summoner's eyes studied the chunin's still sprawled body as if he was hoping to see some secret gleaming through the young prodigy's broken ego. "You don't fight like an Uchiha." he accused the black-haired prodigy.
"What?" Sasuke was frankly too tired to divine a conspiracy behind the older shinobi's words, so, for once, he simply went with the flow.
"You're tactical enough," the white-haired Sannin scratched his head, "clones to distract, genjutsu to distract, taijutsu to debilitate... you'll probably transition to large jutsu and subtle maneuvers once you grow into your chakra capacity. Not gonna lie, had you been faster, you could have dislocated my elbow with that move, but you'd have received a broken neck for the trouble... that's not very tactical at all."
"Sure, it is because I'm slow that I didn't defeat the shinobi who has been S-rank for the better part of 25 years." Sasuke rolled my eyes, grimacing a bit as he gingerly touched where purple bruises would inevitably come through, "Not because you simply flexed through the joint lock."
"You're a nasty little shit, aren't you?" the Sannin observed with a critical eye while Sasuke fished out the cooking pot he prepared the night before from the still-warm ashes and prepared two generous bowls, which unleashed a delicious aroma and warmth in the still grey dawn.
The two shinobi shifted into an easy silence while they had breakfast and broke camp, packing all the smoked meat from the small tepee that sasuke had set up with casual expertise the evening before.
No kid should have this many layers. Jiraya frowned as he finished gathering his belongings and throw his large backpack over his shoulders, his long legs already carrying him across the tree trunks while the Uchiha quickly mimicked him: "I know you have some Raiton under your belt, you used it at the Chunin Exams."
"Yeah, Kakashi showed me his jutsu and helped me adapt to the change in speed." Sasuke grimaced openly at the memory, but didn't comment further.
"So you have been taught the Chidori." Jiraya nodded appreciatively, "I had wondered... why not use it?"
"I won't build my style around a single jutsu." the flat and clearly inadequate answer earned the Uchiha a light slap on the back of his head, too fast for the chunin to react.
"Answer properly to your teacher, brat!" the white-haired shinobi distractedly remarked while he found again the direction in which he needed to move.
The Uchiha shot an annoyed glare at the white-haired Sannin, but he relented and answered properly: "If I got used to always use that jutsu... that would mean that I would be left eating shit the first time I met someone capable of ignoring the lightning natured assassination technique, and I simply don't want to rely on shit I haven't mastered: for all of the Sharingan copying abilities, I couldn't use properly a jutsu for which I can't prepare the opportune change in chakra nature for."
Sasuke shook his head, his mind briefly washing over the months of actual training under Kakashi's eyes, his body shivering as it remembered the beatdowns from Maito Gai, who simply picked apart whatever taijutsu the black-haired prodigy had tried to make up from scratch. Grappling, points of pressure, Gentle Fist... Sasuke had tried to throw everything that he could at Gai, who barely blinked when the now chunin pulled off something new, only to praise the young shinobi for his youthful inventive when he bit the dust.
"I can maybe pull off four Chidori in the arc of a day." Sasuke rolled his eyes at Jiraya, "But I haven't mastered the change in lightning-natured chakra in the way I want it, it's not at the level in which I don't have to think about it, so I'm not at ease using it."
"A perfectionist, uh?" Jiraya snorted, "Kid, I hate to break it to you, but if you want to use only jutsu with a half-hand seal, you'll set yourself up for a short career of disappointment."
"Short... oh, because I'll die." Sasuke turned his head towards his self-proclaimed 'teacher': "That's morbid."
"That's shinobi life." Jiraya nodded deeply, his tone becoming serious for a moment before the chunin chose to change the topic.
"You're not the first to simply shrug off my Genjutsu, how..." Sasuke started to question, only to be interrupted.
"Kid, I've been around taking names and kicking ass since before your father was a gimlet in your grandfather's eye." Jiraya puffed out his chest as he often did to present himself to some of the admirers who were naturally inclined to compliment him.
"Your attitude that is fucking annoying..." Sasuke sighed as he walked to the left of Jiraya, placing his feet carefully as to not leave tracks on the ground.
"Bah," Jiraya snorted, eyeing carefully his charge even as he explained himself: "everyone spends so much time being proper and respectful, that they forget there is something besides the mask they wear. "
"So, no suggestions at all?" the Uchiha asked innocently, remaining on topic even if it was clear in his eyes that he had immediately understood what Jiraya was trying to convey.
What kind of kid are you? Jiraya was flabbergasted by the casual understanding of Sasuke, who didn't even blink when the white-haired Sannin revealed one of the reasons why he was so open with his reactions.
After a couple of minutes of silence, during which the S-rank shinobi had gotten lost in thought, Sasuke resumed his verbal attack: "I should have known that genjutsu was an art way too refined for you, it must be because your head is completely empty that my chakra doesn't manage to grip it..."
"Oi..." Jiraya grumbled threateningly at his side, his head tilting for a brief moment as if to remind the chunin that he was only was a brat that the Toad Summoner could kill by farting too loudly.
"I mean," Sasuke kept going, a satisfied smile appearing on his face as he finally found a way to make use of his wit, "if you had blue eyes, I could say that your head is full of water, but since you've got brown eyes..."
"Oi brat!" Sasuke was snagged up by the scruff of his shirt and brought in front of the white-haired Sannin, who closed in as if to make sure that the Uchiha could make out the dark color of Jiraya's eyes, which most certainly wasn't something as boring as 'brown', thank you very much, "Listen here..."
"You're not my type." Sasuke deadpanned, looking away and using a hand to push himself aside ineffectually, "Besides, think of the difference in age, and I prefer females, so..."
"Cocky little shit!" Jiraya casually flung Sasuke ahead on the path, where he landed nimbly as if he completely expected this result.
And he could even have planned for it, the weird brat. The white-haired Sannin narrowed his eyes at the thought, spotting an immediately quickly concealed grin of his charge.
By the time Jiraya had reached the kid, he had already brought his hands together in a ram seal, which changed into a bird one. After a few steps, Jiraya felt over his skin the telltale buzz of lightning-natured chakra. Remaining quiet as he kept moving, the white-haired shinobi brought his full attention to his young charge: this close, one didn't need to be a sensor to be able to feel the chakra of another person, not with the sheer amount of experience that accompanied the title of Sannin.
Chakra was truly a marvelous thing, it was the result of physical and spiritual, something that could interact with both even while being something completely different, and for all of his experience, Jiraya was far from being able to tell how the chakra of someone matched their personality. Oh, sure, as a Sage, he could almost pick up the intentions of his opponents, but it wasn't quite the same.
When you tried to feel someone's chakra, your mind naturally produced synesthesia of what you felt, because even if you could direct your own chakra through sheer will, they were still two different, if interconnected, things. With Sarutobi sensei, Jiraya could feel the placid calm that came with an exact control and discipline, painted over a single ember that promised it could explode at a moment's notice, raining fire and brimstone on an unimaginable scale.
Now that Jiraya focused on the Uchiha, who had apparently lowered his guard enough to not hide completely his more immediate reactions, he felt... like he was standing next to a very sharp blade, but one that was undeniably brittle, if that made any sense.
For all of his skill and casually determined decision-making, it appeared that Sasuke Uchiha was a bit directionless when it came to choosing a personal path. And that wasn't exactly rare, given his youth, but even children tended to have a preferred method to tackle life with, even if they weren't aware of it.
There was respect to be had for the way in which the Uchiha pursued perfection with his skills, but there was something undeniably... missing, about the boy.
Bah, what do I know about it? Jiraya shook himself out of his small trance, his senses casually scanning the surroundings before he glanced once more at the kid walking next to him: apparently, he was trying to switch to lightning natured chakra faster and faster, only to let it build up and gather as potential along his chakra pathways, only to let it rush forth and let it loose its electrical properties.
Half an hour later, the white-haired Sannin loudly yawned, and he addressed the kid: "do you do anything but train?"
"I can't exactly have sex in one of your brothels now, can I?" the answer of Sasuke came thoughtlessly while he kept performing his self-imposed exercises, his eyes half-lidded as he focused inwards, even if his feet kept landing lightly on the ground in order to not leave tracks, and his breathing was conscious and even.
"Well, of course! Princesses should remain maidens until they marry after all!"
Sasuke sighed, realizing that remaining quiet wasn't an option: "I'm not even ten yet."
"Excuses, excuses..." Jiraya waved his hands, "Don't worry brat, the great Jiraya-sama will figure something out to help you with your inadequacies!"
As the Uchiha had refused to take the bait, returning to his exercises as soon as he could, Jiraya toned down a bit his boisterous act: "You know, I expected some accusations, or given your weird thought process, at least questions about what exactly is it that I do for Konoha, knowing that you'll probably be dragged into it at some point."
Sasuke shrugged, his chakra twitching as Raiton jumped across his pathways: "I imagine I don't have the necessary clearance to know that." he casually commented, only to receive a light slap on the back of his head, which completely broke his focus, and earned Jiraya an annoyed glare.
Jiraya simply looked at his young charge, his flat gaze enough to point out how obvious it was that the Uchiha didn't care at all about clearance of any kind if that lent him the tiniest advantage. That much about him was obvious.
"I guessed you ran foreign intelligence, and you're keeping up the chain of command in Hi no Kuni before dropping me somewhere while you disappear in Kumo, or fuck-knows where, setting up other brothels and whatnot." Sasuke blandly replied, his attention turning fully to the white-haired shinobi for the first time since the almost-spar of that morning, "But why do we walk slowly on this more or less traveled roads? I mean, you could likely shunshin from one side of Hi no Kuni to the other in... what two days? Three? This leisurely pace isn't something I can quite understand."
What kind of thought process does this kid have? Jiraya opened his mouth, but no sound left it, and after a couple of seconds, he closed it strongly enough to make his teeth clack loudly over the white noise of the forest they were walking in.
Even so, that was perhaps the first question that Sasuke had made that wasn't about an obvious shinobi skill, and so the white-haired Sannin answered, a sly smile appearing on his face: "Ah, but if I moved quickly, my pattern would be that much easier to discern by my enemies, and by going slow I get to relax enough to smell the roses, as well as to randomly happen upon a piece of information that I would have missed otherwise, the net of civilian spies that may or may not exist, " Sasuke earned himself a penetrating glance at that, "does most of its upkeep on its own, that's just how brilliantly I built it, and if there is something that I need to fix personally, I'll be told eventually, but it would take time nevertheless to reach a determined position, so I might as well take it easy. And that goes double since I have to babysit you."
"So..." the black-haired prodigy thought deeply about what he had just been told, "You're just lazy." he summed up.
Another light slap landed on the back of Sasuke's head faster than he could react: "Keep your cheek in check, shitty brat."
The black-haired prodigy scoffed, adjusting his backpack while he shook his head, his mane of hair moving wildly over his shoulders: "So, since you're not lazy, you'll teach me something as we walk?"
He got me there, doesn't he? Jiraya snorted despite himself, noticing how the Uchiha brat didn't seem to be happy unless he was training at least two or three skills at the same time: "Fine! What do you know of Fuinjutsu? I guess that I can start with the broad theory before listing all the reasons why you shouldn't mess with it on your own until I say so."
Sasuke's attention was immediately directed fully towards the white-haired Sannin, who grinned at the naked interest he had sparked into his charge's mind: "Squiggly lines make chakra run in strange shapes, and those strange shapes make shit happen when the right kind of chakra activates them."
Jiraya was so ecstatic at the kid's explanation that he didn't even bother correcting his coarse language, which could be offputting for some clients: "And you don't find strange that some... as you call them 'squiggly lines' written in ink are capable of doing the shit they do?"
Should I praise him for having guessed that the ink is only a means for the chakra to flow? The Sannin wondered briefly while the Uchiha frowned.
"I do," he started, only to begin anew: "Or rather, I did, briefly before I focused on more immediate stuff. It did look nonsensical, but then again, I can walk on water, and mosquitos can do the same without chakra, only relying on the tensile strength of the surface, so my answer was something like 'chakra bullshttery', and I closed that chapter."
The Toad Summoner laughed loudly as they kept walking across the forest, his dark eyes coming alive as he started talking about the most fascinating discipline in the world after pleasing a woman: "There are legends about its origins, of course, but they're not mutually exclusive, and they're exactly that legends, so nobody really knows... In short, you're correct, chakra flowing in certain shapes makes things happen."
Jiraya grinned enthusiastically as he hunched a bit towards his young charge: "Said with a simplification so raw that it's almost wrong in its entirety, with the hand seals you make the chakra move in a very specific manner and are thusly able to spit fireballs." the white-haired shinobi gestured wildly as he spoke, enthralled by the topic, "If someone managed to let his chakra flow with enough potency and steadiness while using the 44 hand seals necessary for the Water Dragon, even without knowing what it would do, he could perform it, and that is true in Konoha like it is in Iwa."
"But the chakra cost of performing such a technique without changing your chakra into water natured in the first place would kill anyone." Sasuke objected, his eyebrows raised as he expected a justification.
"Yes, yes," the S-rank shinobi waved away the objection, "that's obvious, and not the point, even if it is more likely that the technique would simply make this hypothetical guy fall unconscious before burning through enough chakra to kill him."
"Now," the seal-master clapped, focusing once more on the topic he so dearly loved: "Seals, when written down, and they can be charged as you write them or charged before their use and then simply activated, like your standard paper bomb, make stuff happen when they are correctly drawn." Jiraya quickly resumed, before adding, with his face opening in a far too wide smile, "However, and that's the kick, in anything more complex than a storage scroll or a paper bomb, which can be prepared somewhat following certain standards that I really don't have the time to explain right now, need also a certain type of chakra, and by extension intent, behind their activation."
"What?" Sasuke squinted as if he was trying to figure out if the S-rank shinobi was having a to at the expense of the Uchiha's ignorance, and the chunin casually activated his bloodline, looking over the white-haired ninja with unnerving focus.
Jiraya laughed: "If I drew perfectly the seals of the Hiraishin, either those of the Nidaime or of the... Yondaime," his eyes darkened momentarily at the mention of his old student, "I still wouldn't be able to use their technique. Because, besides the fact that those particular seals are heavily customized and personal to those two, I have no idea whatsoever about what the fuck they do, besides the fact that you stop being in one place, and are suddenly in another."
"If what I've read among my clan's stuff is true," the Uchiha spoke with a peal of laughter barely contained, as if privy to a joke he didn't wish to share, "the Hiraishin is closely related to Summoning."
The Seal-master stopped briefly in his explanation before shooting an annoyed glare at the kid walking at his side: "That's like saying that you know how to make an Earth Dragon because you have played in the sandbox as a child."
"I didn't." Sasuke seemed strangely weirded out by that topic, a slight twitch of disgust appeared on his face: "Have you an idea of the kind of sanitary hazard a public sandbox is?"
The Uchiha relented at the exasperated expression of his teacher, and he shrugged unapologetically: "Sorry." the chunin lied.
"The same reasoning is true in the reverse:" Jiraya resumed his explanation after having shot another warning glare at his annoying charge: "the kind of stuff that I could do with a seal that I wrote, for example, one that instead of being a paper bomb unleashed a flash of light, is very different from the kind of stuff that you could do with it, if only because your chakra, and the will-intent-whatever that's partly behind it, would be different from mine."
"You just said that if two different persons use the same hand seals they obtain the same result." Sasuke frowned, annoyed by the contradiction between the working of Seals and Handseals, which shared part of their name, and not much else.
"And that's why any idiot can learn a jutsu, and why they're called the Sealing Arts instead of the Sealing Sciences."
"So I could just prepare a Seal that acts like a fireball, and use it instead of my justu while in battle?" the chunin latched on the immediate application of what he knew.
"Sure..." nodded, "It can be done, but it is not a very flexible tactic. In any case, writing a new seal is very time-consuming, and the way in which you need to store chakra to make the seal retain energy on its own, only to be activated later, is a tiring process. That's why shinobi still have the monopoly on the battlefield instead of a horse strapped with paper bombs. And seals are rare because true Seal-masters are rare themselves, and each is unique in his own way, remember what I've just told you? It is an Art."
"But one can learn how to be an artist:" Sasuke frowned heavily, displeased at the idea that any skill couldn't become his with either hard work or the bullshit powers of his eyes: "to draw or color or pain, you only need technique, something that you can learn after you spend an outrageous amount of hours of hard work on it, or something that I specifically can learn with a glance. I did pay a man to watch him work on his calligraphy: I never had an actual use for it, but I have the necessary skills to be an artist."
"You're not listening, brat." Jiraya sighed, but it was clear that he was enjoying the chat: "Art, true Art, comes from within, it is a vessel of the deepest part of you, and those are seals that allow shit like the Hiraishin, or whatever is going on with the Legendary Swords of Kiri... there aren't really many examples of high-level Fuinjutsu..." the white-haired Sannin trailed off, his mind wandering across the countless ideas he had for a seal that turned a wall transparent only on one side... and the wonderful applications it could have in an onsen...
"It sounds... interesting." Sasuke's voice cut the Toad Summoner off from his musings and brought a less lecherous kind of smile on his face.
"Ha! Nightmarish, that's the word you're looking for!" the S-rank shinobi laughed again: "And each specialization is an art on its own, with rules that may look similar, but which are actually based on completely different principles, and an error at the wrong time working on a high-level Seal can be lethal."
The duo walked in relative silence for a few minutes, until the black-haired chunin made another question: "Is it true that the Uzumaki were the best at it?"
"It was, why do you ask?" the white-haired Sannin rose an eyebrow at the strange question.
"Because there was an Uzumaki in my first class at the Academy... I don't remember him much, it was years ago... but he was an idiot. If Seals are an Art as you've explained it, then I can imagine that any idiot could have the right kind of... spiritual artistry... necessary for it." Sasuke frowned, not finding the correct words for what he was trying to say.
"Yeah, well, the Uzumaki tended to be the best, most of them had enough natural inclination to become capable, but a Master of Seals... oh, people like those are unique, because that creativity and primal push translate across all of their skills."
"Why do I have the feeling that you're praising yourself?" the black-haired prodigy rolled his eyes.
"Shut up brat!" Jiraya was quick to reestablish the rightful hierarchy by landing a quick and light slap on the back of his student's head: "I'll have you know that any praise I receive is very well earned! In fact, I'm very good at understanding people, and that's why I'm so good at breaking apart other people's seals."
"Is that a convoluted way of admitting that you didn't do anything original and cool as a vaunted Seal-master?" Sasuke asked oozing sincerity, so much that there was no mistaking his mockery.
"Creations like the Hiraishin shape your whole person brat." Jiraya spoke slowly, sighing briefly before he went ahead: "My old student... your Yondaime..." he paused for an instant, but seeing the total lack of surprise on the Uchiha's face, he decided to soldier on, "he was always a fast one, but his mind... oh, he grasped concepts faster than I could express them, and he could translate almost them all into Seals, that's something that you either have, or don't. Frankly, the Rasengan was something he didn't need, the Hiraishin, as he had perfected it... that's the single most wonderful piece of Art that I've ever seen."
"You understood it?" Sasuke's jaw dropped low, leaving his mouth open to catch flies.
Jiraya simply shook his head, his mood too serious to poke fun at the kid: "Minato tried to explain... but that's the problem with Art, I know enough to understand the magnitude of his work, even without having the confirmation of its effectiveness in battle, but it slips through my fingers. It is simply too... him, for me to be me while I understand it."
The S-rank shinobi walked quietly with the chunin at his side until the latter broke the silence: "Is that your way of saying that there is always a bigger fish?" the Uchiha's eyes gleamed suddenly as he decided to force the older man to abandon his downtrodden attitude.
"Well, that's a good politic to keep in mind, it helps to prevent stupid mistakes." Jiraya tentatively nodded, spotting Sasuke's smirk too late to change topic.
"So you freely admit that there are people better than you not only at Seals, but also at camouflage? Or at passing themselves off as someone else?" Sasuke smirk was mutating in a full grin now, and it was too late to stop him.
"That's a good rule of the thumb to remain alive brat, but you'd better not be insinuating..."
"So you agree that a particularly old shinobi, specialized in... let's say... infiltration, could have passed himself off as one of the whores you so readily jump the bones of in one of your brothels?" Sasuke's laughter trailed after him as he ducked the Sannin's swipe and ran ahead, chakra flooding his limbs in order to avoid the white-haired shinobi's retaliation.
"Goddammit, brat!"
AN
Okay, this chapter is mostly to set the tone of the 'traveling trip', to explore a bit more the interaction between the MC and Jiraya, as well as to finally push ahead a bit of the worldbuilding that I have passed under silence 'til now.
And I know that maybe I'm falling into the habit of having character-fleshing conversation happen only during a meal of some sort, but there is some truth to the general ramblings of conviviality, and I'm trying to have the MC casually develop a genuine interest for cooking, which is the hobby I chose by throwing a die back when I was planning this story.
In any case, I find that the preparation of food is very conducive to a somewhat genuine chat, which was a long time coming.
And in the second half of the chapter, we have Jiraya's 3rd personal POV on the whole situation, as well as the beginning of an actual talk instead of the prodding of the previous evening.
And finally, I get to build some fucking Lore about Fuinjutsu! Yahoo! (I'm going with the premise that before Kaguya, the world was a normal place with no magic fuckery).
Writing the Lore along with the banter of Jiraya and the MC was exhausting people, it was kind of fast, also because I've discovered that it's much easier just to write what each person says, and then going back to add commas, he said, he asked, and whatnot.
That's the greatest fucking discovery I've made thus far. If anyone of you writes: start with the words of each character, and only later go back and paint a scene around them.
Okay, mostly I'm looking for opinions about the Fuinjutsu Lore, which is the infamous Runes of Harry Potter, only with some appearances in canon.
In any case, how did this chapter feel? The main aim was to bridge the distance between Sasuke and Jiraya, while not making it a completely stale moment in the story, I hope I managed that.