Title: Unattractive—And Deadly
Rating: PG
Pairing: None
Word Count: 405
Warning/s: Contains dangerous and inappropriate uses of bubblegum
Summary: Orochimaru may be the genius of the teenage Sannin team, and Tsunade the power-house, but Jiraiya's got a few ideas of his own.
Notes: This is another request fic; actually it's something of a trade. I bribed an amazing artist friend into drawing a picture of ANBU!Kurenai for me by promising her a fic of her choice; she asked for young punk!Jiraiya and "bubblegum." Fear the crack.

(My mother always told me that chewing gum was unattractive, but she neglected to mention that it can be deadly.)

"That's a really nasty habit," Tsunade says, glaring. "You look like a cow. Seriously. Do you have to chew with your mouth open?"

"It's bubblegum," Jiraiya explains with all the patience in the world. Okay, not all of it, as Orochimaru seems to be hoarding whatever he can over in the corner. At least, that's the only explanation Jiraiya can come up with for why Orochimaru hasn't yet snapped and flung a few dozen kunai in his general direction.

He pops his gum again, just to be obnoxious. Orochimaru twitches.

"You," Tsunade says slowly, "have the next two seconds to spit that out and remember that you're a jounin of Konoha and we're on a secret mission and you're supposed to be quiet before I come over there and--"

"Quiet," Orochimaru hisses. "They're coming."

Tsunade shuts up immediately and hunkers down in her corner of the tiny, abandoned shack, clenching her fists and mouthing something deadly at Jiraiya. He smirks back and turns his attention to the knot-hole through which he can just see the street outside. The squad of Iwa-nin is just coming into view, four men with faces creased from scowling (Tsunade'll get like that someday if she doesn't lighten up; he'll have to remind her of this when they're out of here) and hitai'ate glinting from forehead and belt and shoulder. Their footsteps drum the ground. Orochimaru can probably catch the cadence and predict exactly where the third one in line will be fourteen and a half steps from now, but Jiraiya just has to guess.

He spits his gum through the knot-hole.

It's a decent guess; it lands just short of the second ninja's sandal, and although the third ninja's first step forward doesn't catch it, his second does. He makes a disgusted noise and stops to inspect the sticky pink junk gluing his sandal to the dusty ground; his comrades mill around him with exclamations of boredom and irritation and surprise. "Still sticky!" the third one says angrily, pulling his fingers away from his sandal; pink strings stretch with them. He looks up furiously, straight at the shack.

Jiraiya grins through his knot-hole, and forms the final seal that will ignite the thoroughly-broken-down compounds in the bubblegum.

By the time the crater in the street stops smoking, he and Orochimaru and Tsunade are long gone.

And Tsunade is demanding where on earth he got that gum, and when can she get some?