Sealing Salientia - Chapter 22: Pranks - Author: PenSmoke

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, nor make any profit from writing this.

Previously on Sealing Salientia:
Jiraiya had made a new friend, at least as much as he could consider a member of another village to be a friend. Perhaps this would prove beneficial some day. For now, he had some toads and a blonde brat to see. And after that, a white eyed little girl to track down.

Kumogakure
December, Year 69

"Summoning Technique!"

The words rang out against cold mountain air, the moisture from the exhaled breath turning into tiny ice crystals before drifting to the ground. He had traveled quite the distance out from the ninja village. That way there wouldn't be any curious bystanders that were followers from the village. He now was in the middle of a mountain range to the south east of Lightning Country, well out in the middle of nowhere. He was certain that nobody else would be around in such a remote area.

The nearby area was instantly covered in ninja smoke, slowly being pushed down by the weight of the frigid air. The smoke gave way to a rocky hillside, with a single human and a single toad now occupying the area.

"Hey Pa." Jiraiya greeted the new arrival pleasantly through chattering teeth. By Log, he hated the cold. He wished that he was back in Fire Country now, with its mild winters that rarely saw snow. Thankfully, he was about to enter a shortcut to skipping the rest of the freezing winter. Mount Myoboku was in a different realm so the weather worked differently there. The foreign area was usually either overcast and rainy with mild temperatures or sunny and warm. Exactly the weather that the resident toads loved.

"Hello Jiraiya. I'm glad you summoned me, though we were actually about to go and summon you. There's been an incident." Pa explained hurriedly. "We should get back as quickly as possible."

Without giving Jiraiya a chance to say anything or grab his possessions, Pa jumped on his shoulder and reverse summoned him back to Myoboku. Letting the dizzying sensation pass from the reverse summon, Jiraiya inhaled deeply to catch his breath. The fresh warm air that drifted down from the large mountain in front of him was a welcome respite from the frigid air that had previously filled his lungs. It carried the scents of the amphibians, mixed with fresh pine and fresh water. After regaining control of his respiration, he inquired, "What do you mean there's been an incident? And what's the big idea, you made me leave everything behind!"

Pa didn't answer him directly, instead choosing to start hopping towards the waterfall that could be spied in the distance. Jiraiya knew the place well, he had sat under it for days on end during his training years ago. The freezing cold water had soaked him so thoroughly back then that he swore he would never be dry again. "Come on, this way."

Jiraiya begrudgingly followed the toad, though in the back of his mind, he was starting to become concerned. Had something happened to Naruto? There wouldn't be much of any reason other than his surrogate son that Ma or Pa would send for him, as Pa had just said they were about to fetch him. His slow, trudging walk morphed into nearly a sprint as the fear started to take hold.

"What's going on?" Jiraiya asked, this time letting the worry color his voice slightly.

Pa kept going, picking up the pace. They could both see the waterfall ahead and would likely reach it within a minute. "We were overseeing a new level of training for the boy. Since his Yin/Yang balance is starting to approach normal levels, we started testing his aptitude for nature chakra."

Jiraiya paused in his stride as the inhaled breath caught in his throat. Coughing forcefully, he cleared his throat. "What do you mean nature chakra? You weren't supposed to teach him how to work with nature chakra unless he was ready! What else happened?"

Without answering, Pa took one big hop that covered a good couple hundred feet, jumping up and over the last remaining greenery between himself and the waterfall. The elder male frog landed next to his wife, who was crying big blubbery tears. Ma sat in a clearing near the waterfall, strewn with pebbles and some larger rocks. A mist hung low in the air that was being spewed up from the clashing of falling water against still. Held loosely in her hand was a large wooden stick, one that was quite familiar to Jiraiya. The tip of the wooden piece was carved into a frog head, embellished with extra details. The base of the stick was simple bark, worn down over the years until smoothed out. The entire thing had been reinforced to withstand severe strain. The reason that it needed to be able to handle the extra stress was that it was the stick with which Ma had thwacked him on the head over and over again when he was training with nature chakra.

See, the thing about nature chakra was that it typically wasn't used by humans. The human body didn't produce or create it normally. But, it could be found in large abundance from the plants and dirt and rocks. The energy that shaped the world, coalesced into a single united source. Societies throughout history had called it different names, he had learned. Mother Earth, Gaia, Terra, Ceres, Houtu, the energy had taken many forms throughout history. But it always had done one thing unless done perfectly when it was used with humans. It turned them to stone. The toads weren't exactly sure why it was, but the row of statues outside their house left little denial of the evidence.

And if Ma had it out, that meant...

Jiraiya suddenly put all the pieces together as to Pa's cryptic messages and why Ma was crying. He peered at the rocks nearby, surveying to see if any of them appeared humanoid. Sure enough, a large boulder next to Ma and Pa was about a meter tall and was what looked to be arms poking out the side of it. The toad sage jumped through the leaves with a burst of speed, landing next to the grey slab. It certainly appeared like a bigger version of the Naruto he left behind to train. He gazed at the stone statue in front of him, it had preserved the likeness rather well. Small tufts of hair that felt like they were still moving in the breeze could be made out on top of the head turned rock. The eyes were wide open and the cheeks even preserved the whiskered marks on his cheeks. Running a finger along the stone for a second, he then whirled around on the frogs that were nearby.

"What happened here? You were supposed to keep him safe!" Jiraiya was turning red with rage, spittle flying out of his mouth.

The toads were both shedding tears now, though Jiraiya had a hard time telling what else was happening, as they kept their faces turned toward the ground and they were much lower than he was.

"The boy has been absorbing everything we throw at him. His yin chakra had grown so much that we felt he needed a different challenge. So, we started him on sage training, especially since you were coming back to master it too, we thought it would be good to have you both doing it together. You were just a kid when you started it too. But Ma got distracted for a moment and the kid lost control right then. The nature chakra overwhelmed him and he turned to stone." Pa explained, sadly.

Ma kept her face hidden while tears continued to fall. "I'm sorry, Jiraiya-chan! We never meant for this to happen!"

As he listened to the answer from the elders, he heard a noise behind him. As Ma finished her talking, he turned back to the stone statue. Jiraiya found it seemingly unchanged from a moment ago, but something had caused a noise. Inspecting it closer, he was amazed at the details. The clothing was perfectly precise, showing threads and buttons exactly as they should have been placed. The shoes and gloves were intact as well, just turned gray and rock-like. The face had even preserved the last expression that would have shown on his face. Mouth open in a smile, eyes still twinkling. It looked like he was laughing. The tiny indents of his cherub cheeks still had the dimple from the moment, frozen in time in the form of granite.

Wait... Laughing?

At that moment, the statue in front of him doubled over, letting his chuckles ring across the clearing. Gray colors bled from the structure as it turned back into a human color palette mixed with the orange and black of clothing. The two toads behind him started to laugh as well, Pa letting off a throaty chortle and Ma giggling.

"You should have seen your face, Pops! We got you good!" the child sounded out, his voice cutting through the fog that had entered Jiraiya's brain.

"But..." Jiraiya spluttered, his mind not yet connecting that he had been the victim of a prank by the boy.

"Oh Jiraiya-chan! You should know better than to think we would let this happen. We kept you safe, didn't we?" Ma spoke up, still giggling between words.

Pa gave his input too. "Naruto talked us into it, but we both agreed to the idea anyway. You seem so serious these days, barely even stopping to chat. Lighten up, kid."

"But..." The toad sage continued to fumble for words. "We were... And I was... But..."

The other three occupants of the clearing finished their laughing and waited expectantly for Jiraiya to gather his thoughts. They watched the different emotions play over his face, briefly flickering between confusion, embarrassment and anger before settling on a mix between resigned and happiness.

Finally, after quite the pause, Jiraiya completed his mental process. "Well, I suppose I should have seen this coming. After all, you are his son." He turned away from them for a moment, hands dropping down to his sides. "He was quite the prankster when he was a kid too." Then, without any warning, Jiraiya poofed out of existence.

From his new vantage point, he watched as Naruto quickly surveyed the clearing, but the white-haired man was no longer in his line of sight. He whispered quietly into the boys ear from directly behind him, where he had landed from his quick use of the shunshin. "The only problem is. I taught him how to prank people." Jiraiya watched the skin rise up into goosebumps on the boys neck, shivers running down the arms from the sudden realization of his proximity. He draped an arm over the shoulder of the boy, ensuring no escape plan would be easy. He continued, "You got me good, Naruto. I wasn't expecting it and you came up with a perfectly believable scenario. I respect it. But now, I'm on to you." And with that he collapsed the pocket around him arm, pinning the boy to his chest. "You've left me no choice. Now it is time for my revenge." He raised his free arm and made a quick show of single handed seals before lowering his hand to the child. "This technique could defeat the mighty Yellow Flash, even into adulthood. It worked without fail. And now I'll use it on you." He quickly ran his fingers up into the boys armpits, wiggling them around. He yelled the name loudly for all to hear. "TICKLE TECHNIQUE!"

Squeals of laughter pealed out from the child as the technique took hold, locking him into place and begging for release. His screams for mercy were largely ignored by the older man, who tickled him until he could barely breathe. Guffaws could be heard from the two older toads nearby as they watched their two summoners goof and play around like family should. It was good to see them both together again.

Later, after an hour of having fun and being silly, Jiraiya, along with Pa, went back to the mortal realm to gather up his belongings that had been left behind from the hasty reverse summoning. The sudden chill from the area he returned sent shivers down his spine. By Log, he still hated the cold. Quickly gathering up his supplies so that he could go back, he began to shove all of his sealing materials into one bag and everything else was wrapped up in a separate bundle.

He summoned one of the storage and messenger toads that he used for delivery to Hiruzen Sarutobi, giving the amphibian all his unnecessary belongings, as well as a note for his old sensei to store them until he returned. The toad gulped everything down at once and disappeared in a poof, en route to his destination via sealing matrix implanted at the Sarutobi clan compound.

Jiraiya was about to reach down to grab his last bag that he was taking with him when he heard Pa whisper.

"Eyes on us, 4 o'clock, hundred yards out." Pa said quietly into his ear. Jiraiya continued the motion that he was doing, not wanting to give away that he knew someone was there before it was time to do so. He slung his arms through the loops of the traveling pack securing it to his back. Standing up straight, facing directly away from the other person, he brought one hand in front of him, tapping out a pattern on his other arm in preparation. Once the technique was ready to go with a twitch of his finger, he called out.

"I know you're there. What do you need?" His voice carried through the light mountain air, easily reaching the target.

A voice called back after a moment. "Picking up on me from that far away? You're just about as good as A!" The cadence of the sentence sounded strange, liked it was forced out of normal speaking patterns on purpose to fit an unheard rhythm. It continued into the next bit as well. "I felt the chakra you put out, so I did a threat check, no doubt. But I'll make this brief, since I see you're a Leaf. What are you doing out here? You trying to get info while you peer?"

Jiraiya cringed more and more as the talking went on. Not only was it hard to listen to without grimacing, but he knew exactly who it was from the speaking patterns. There was only one shinobi in the world who rhymed in every sentence that he spoke. And annoyingly, the guy was powerful enough to deck most anyone who disrespected his 'art'. This was the jinchuriki of the eight-tailed beast, the Raikage's self-appointed brother, B. Better known as Killer Bee of the Seven Swords, or simply Killer Bee.

Sure enough, he turned around to find the giant of a man strolling towards him without a care in the world. Jiraiya stretched out his senses to see who else might be there and picked up what seemed to be 4 other chakra signatures nearby, located well behind Bee. He had been hoping to not be found, but it appeared that fate had a different plan for him.

"Hello there, Killer Bee. I'm actually on my way out from Kumogakure after working to establish an embassy between Kumo and Konoha." Jiraiya replied to the man. It wouldn't do to be rude, as finding a Leaf-nin wandering in this area would be considered unusual even for allies.

"I'm not sure about what you say, Konoha is pretty much the other way." Killer Bee replied while pointing to the south-west, the direction where Konoha lay. It was quite true that he wasn't going towards his own village, which would probably make him look even more suspicious. "I hope you aren't making things too tense. I'll have to defend my students."

Jiraiya glanced behind him in the direction he sensed the other signatures and saw four heads just barely peeking up over the rise. He could only just see the hair top of the faces, which wasn't all that much. And they were so far away that he could make out almost no details. One had short blonde hair with dark skin, another had longer red hair with dark skin and the third had darker, but not quite black hair with pale skin. A fourth person, quite taller than the other three, though nowhere near as big as Bee, stood protectively in front of them. Tall and slender, the woman had pale skin and longer blonde hair.

"Ah, that explains much. I was wondering why I hadn't seen either of you two in Kumogakure during the past several months. You're out training a team together." He waved over to the kunoichi in the distance, who did not reciprocate. "Hello Miss Yugito!" He shrugged at the lack of response, it wasn't unexpected. He knew Bee from his interactions with the Raikage, as well as previous encounters and exchanges. But, he had never built any sort of rapport with the kunoichi jinchuriki. "I'm out this way because I'm heading to a special training spot not inside Fire Country. And I was trying to not have anyone else follow me to where it is." He kept the part that nobody else could possibly follow him even if they wanted, to himself.

"Well, if that's how it's gonna be, why did you come out by me?" came the response.

"To be honest, I didn't know you were out here. I was just going to where it was the most desolate." Jiraiya replied, wholly truthfully this time. This part of the country was practically uninhabitable between the constant cold and snow and the distance to any other town. While he hating taking this route, it was the most sensible to get him out of the way. Apparently, not out of the way enough though.

"Then you should probably go, you're ruining the way I flow." The words were clipped, not necessarily indicating anger, but probably impatience. He was likely intruding on the jinchuriki's training. But that gave him an idea. He knew that both the jinchuriki of the cloud were here and this might be a good place to return to for Naruto's training, if he could get them to agree. While he could teach the kid lots of things, he didn't know much about how to handle a demon inside of someone. Why not get advice from someone who did? But that wasn't something to be done right now, especially as he seemed to be aggravating the impatient man.

"I understand. I'll get out of here right away. Give me just a second." He reached down to grab the last bag of his on the ground. While doing so, he quickly created the array for a return seal on a rock situated next to his belongings. He'd come back here later and see what options were available to him then.

As he stood up, he turned back to the gathered Kumo shinobi and waved goodbye to them. Still waving, Pa activated the reverse summon at his command, blinking them out of existence from the mortal plane.

He landed back in the summoning world, a moment later, the warmer air tingling at his skin. Breathing in the scent of pines, he thought back on what had just happened. He was pretty sure he knew why the jinchuriki were out in the middle of nowhere. Sending both of the village's greatest weapons outside of the village at the same time for an extended period, especially when foreign shinobi were present only made sense in one scenario to him.

They had to be protecting something that couldn't be kept safe in the village. It wouldn't make sense for the reasoning being that there wasn't enough manpower in the village to protect it. If that was the case, sending it out of the village meant even less manpower to protect. If kept in the village, the Kage would be available to step in.

That meant that it had to do with something else that was in the village that endangered it. The only thing in the village would be spies or foreign ninja, so that meant that whatever they were protecting had to be kept a secret. Either the normal spies would pick up on it, or it was because Konoha shinobi were now there. Judging from the information he had already obtained that Killer Bee was much less seen during his stay than normal, he decided it was likely due to Konoha's recent arrival more than just general spy information gathering. Their attitude towards his appearance there would be explained by this thought process as well. Killer Bee knew full well that Jiraiya had been in Kumo to help facilitate peace. Him being protective and irritated made little sense unless he didn't want Jiraiya nearby for a specific reason.

Sending both jinchuriki meant that whatever it was had been deemed incredibly important to safeguard, as they were two of the most powerful shinobi for the village. Their strength alone would equal or exceed Kage level shinobi. That much power couldn't afford to be wasted on low priority targets. Either it was a person incapable of fighting back themselves or some inanimate object that was so full of potential that it demanded such safeguards. He would likely know of such an object and he couldn't think of anything that could have been made that wouldn't go into the hands of an active shinobi if it was that valuable. This meant the more likely option of a person.

Two jinchuriki defending a person from being discovered by Konoha, being kept secret and hiding out in the mountains. Given the information, anyone could have put it together. He now realized that the hair that he spotted in the distance wasn't black at all. It was dark blue.

AN: Uh-oh. What will Jiraiya do with this information?

Good news, I'm already working ahead and have the next chapter already mostly written. Just need to do some basic proofing and a read-through on it before it is ready to go.

Earlier chapters are edited by now. I've also added timestamps to the top of each chapter to help with clarity and flow. Also to help me remember where I actually am and to not jump around so much.