Author's Note: So this started out as a one-shot, and it felt complete at the time, but then I just... kept on writing. Naruto and Jiraiya make a really great team, and I guess I wanted to revisit that.
The house sounds empty; the halls resound with an absence of footsteps and the streets of the compound whine their desolation. Naruto shrugs off the atmosphere and heads straight for the main building.
"Naruto!" Jiraiya calls in the distance. Naruto doesn't bother to answer. He is too close now, finally, to his goal. He walks softly but not sneakily, so as to avoid attention from any living or dead. The door slips open easily under his hand, and he goes inside, wiping a streak of dust off his face with the back of his hand. Naruto only succeeds in smearing it further, a dull gray spot, his cheek hectic pink in the shadows.
Naruto walks through the dirt to the dust, prying open the top drawer and pawing through it. A bunch of scrolls, dust, pens with no ink, and... Ah. There. Red trim faded, hard to make out in this light anyway; Naruto pockets the scroll and leaves, a last curious glance around. If there are any other secrets tucked away, they would have to wait for someone else. Naruto had the only thing that mattered now.
"Jiraiya? Perv, where are you?" Naruto follows the sound of a crash to a small hut off the main complex. Jiraiya stumbles out the door, face flushed. Behind him, Naruto can see the gray shapes of mats and overhangs and... of course. The maids' quarters. "They're dead, you know. That's gross." Jiraiya grins and fails to look guilty.
Together, Naruto and Jiraiya walk out of the deserted compound, heavier by one scroll and one pair of ladies underwear. They close the gate carefully behind them.
Jiraiya and eventually Naruto have reached the point where they can identify desolation around them as it develops. There is a rhythm to loss, one that radiates outward and echoes off the surrounding countrysides. It starts with people: first a trickle of men, crippled with age but still moving; next come wagons, one or two at a time, children peeking out from behind mother and father, not quite afraid; then come the women alone, sometimes with children, sometimes not; then come the boys alone, some Naruto's age, traveling nervously in packs of two or three; last come the walking wounded. The dead should count too, Naruto supposes, but they're hardest to spot, lying where they fell, trampled and rotting.
The two move against the current of people, towards and through the hot spots, the scroll secreted in Naruto's (otherwise empty) coin purse, the frog face fat and distended. It's an obvious bulge under his shirt, and Naruto is careless enough that pickpockets might have been a problem – but there aren't any here in Water Country, not right now anyway; come winter there will be starvation and homelessness will be a real problem. Summer is the time for war.
They stop at a tavern later. A good fifty miles away from the nearest city and removed from the fighting, it is bustling with traffic. Jiraiya sits down and grabs a drink and attention, the entire place tuning in as he starts the story of the two milk maids, the goat, and the particularly rainy day.
Most of the place, anyway. There's an older waitress who's obviously heard this one before, taking the moment to clean up a bit. Naruto thinks, looking absently at her ass as she bends down to pick up deserted glasses, that she has probably heard a lot before. She straightens up then, lifting a hand to pull a strand of hair up out of her face. So close to the fire she is flushed and a little sweaty, and when her hair gleams red in the firelight Naruto thinks that he has never seen anything he liked to look at more. Later, after Jiraiya has "passed out" – or has he really? Naruto can never tell with that old man – he goes into the stables and she shows him how much she appreciated the attention. He thinks, looking up at the stars that night, that nothing could feel better than the softness and bounce of her under his hands.
That morning when they leave, Jiraiya notices her tired smile at him and cackles gleefully. Naruto shrugs and is just glad that it wasn't a dream.
The war in Water, Jiraiya explains, is between two equally powerful, equally foolish factions. "It doesn't matter what they're called," Jiraiya insists. "It doesn't matter what they're fighting for. It really is all the same in the end." Naruto has seen the leavings of both groups as they hit villages and taverns throughout the region, and he has to agree.
Though their names don't really matter, Naruto can't help but hear the names and the colors and the fealties and who supposedly did what to who. The Lady Sho is the rightful heir to the land, according to one old woman. She polishes a semi-ripe apple on her sleeve before handing it to Jiraiya, who nods politely to everything she says. Sho's flag is a blue wave on a blue ocean, all bound in a single blue raindrop; she's beautiful and regal and so kind. She's certainly beautiful and regal, but quite cold from a distance, which is as close as Naruto has come. The Izuka (Kiba, Naruto thinks) party parades her cousin's claim. They say – and here the woman scoffs, and hands Naruto an apple too, which he gulps down in three bites – that a gleaming dragon came down from a mountain near Izuka's childhood home, where he had gone as a refuge from Lady Sho's assassins. The dragon wrapped itself around Izuka and boomed out a mandate from heaven to take Water Country and hone out of her peoples a weapon to conquer the world. The dragon is a sinuous red flash over each battlefield, a herald of blood; for this and other reasons, the Izukas are called the Bloods.
The pair travels on foot for many days, going slow to avoid detection. Spring is officially over now, and the forests are thick and lush around them. It makes good hiding for two ninjas from a village hidden in the leaves, and they are left in peace, though occasionally they can hear the sounds of fighting break out around them. Mostly quick and dirty skirmishes that end as soon as they begin, and Naruto isn't even phased by them anymore.
When the land starts to narrow and bogs start to creep in around them, Jiraiya decides a calculated risk is in order, and they approach the Blood's main camp warily, examining the hasty fortifications. The walls block off the only fragile strip of land connecting Sho in her stolid island fortress to the mainland. When they approach the guards Jiraiya draws himself up to his full height and throws back his shoulders. He doesn't disguise himself except by turning his Leaf headband inside out, clearly a ninja but an unidentified one now. Though nothing changes but his bearing, he's suddenly a different man: solemn, wise, and above all, powerful. Naruto draws himself up too and does his best Sasuke impression, all silence and scorn.
It works, and the guards gesture them to the main tent in a (comical, if Naruto hadn't seen what they could do to innocent civilians) procession of nervousness, handed off from trembling man to trembling man. Behind him, Naruto could hear the soldiers relax in the wake of their passage, hear the conversations start up again around each fire pit: "We're winning, all thanks to my Lord's great weapon, and soon we'll have the Sho bitch right where we want her!" He swallows and stops listening.
They're at the Blood's main tent anyway, and it's here that he needs to pay attention, needs to watch how the pervert does this. Izuka is sitting on plush red pillows, chuckling into his red wine. He gulps it down with relish and motions for a servant with big gestures, patting the servant (and of course she's wearing red) on the ass with a proprietary hand while she refills his cup before shooing her off.
When he sees them, he rises, arms out and a smile breaking out over his jocular features. "My two favorite nin! Master Oru and his little Sasu! Have any more great finds for me?" he chortles, gesturing at the surrounding pillows with little "sit, sit" hand motions. He and "Oru" both take tea, and Naruto follows suit after a jerky hesitation. Izuka takes out his sword, which gleams a dull silver in the light of the red lanterns overhead. He starts to polish it, looking at Jiraiya significantly out of the corner of his eye as his mouth says unimportant things. "Remember," Jiraiya insists in his memory, "it doesn't matter. They're all the same in the end."
A prisoner is brought out and dances for their entertainment, hobbling around in his shackles while Naruto's teeth grind and his stomach turns but everything on the surface is still and calm. When the man collapses, Izuka takes his sword out and plays with it some more, turning from the man back to Jiraiya. Is he trying to scare us? Naruto wonders fuzzily, blinking rapidly and trying to focus. His last thought before he passes out is, ironically What a dope.
His first thought when he wakes up and sees bright morning sunlight is The tea. Jiraiya hadn't actually drunk any of it. Dammit. Jiraiya's face pops into his vision, a stern mask over a twinkle in his eye. When they leave the camp of enemies the mask falls away and he won't stop teasing. Naruto crawls along behind him the rest of the day, head pounding.
Lady Sho's castle looms in the distance, large and dank and still several hours away. There is a haze on the horizon makes it seem so close, but Naruto is familiar enough with this hell of a swampland that he's not fooled. They trudge wearily through the swamp, neither of them good at dealing with water or at avoiding treacherous taps sucking them down into the murk. So why are we here at all, wonders Naruto, not for the first time. Naruto doesn't like being at a disadvantage, and here in Water Country there are so many to be had. He misses solid ground.
Once they arrive, reaching Sho is less complicated; they're expected, if only by one person, and they only have to hide out in the stables until nightfall. Naruto gets some straw up his nose – which he didn't stick up there deliberately, thanks Jiraiya but he's not that dumb, promise – and almost gives the game away by sneezing in front of the grooms. He's a man now though, fourteen, and has a will of iron, so he just snorts funny instead, which sounded enough like a horse that nobody looked twice.
Night falls slowly, and after midnight they enter Sho's bedroom window, pushing aside the blue curtains cautiously. She looks up unsurprised, and sits there waiting. Her robe is slipping off one smooth shoulder, Naruto can't help but notice. It's obviously not meant to be enticing though; Sho just is. She's all business, and says preemptively, Jiraiya's mouth open awkwardly, "Was my source correct?"
Jiraiya approaches with a nod, taking out the scroll out of a hidden pocket in his sleeve. She grasps it carefully, examining the red dragon twining around the top of the scroll.
"The compound was completely empty; there weren't even any bodies," Jiraiya says, continuing after she looks up sharply from her inspection, eyes gleaming. "The spell is bloodless, and undetectable."
"And doesn't need a battle to work," she murmurs. "Finally something to counteract that damned sword." She looks at them again, and her eyes are cold enough that Naruto feels exposed an young. "You have done well." With that she hands them a bag and looks back down at the scroll. Clearly, they are dismissed, and Naruto and Jiraiya leave the way they came.
They travel in silence a long time, dragging across bogs and patches of murky water and mud that swallows their legs up to the knee, until they give up on subtlety and race along, water flying up in giant tails behind them. Soaked, but finally free of the swamps and islands and islets and Water country itself, they cross over to the relative safety of Fire, forests and mountains all familiar and solid. Cheered and confident and himself again, Naruto struts. So does Jiraiya, but Jiraiya's always strutting. Unless he's plodding, which happens when he's lazy or hasn't seen any beautiful women in a while.
That night, sitting around their usual campfire, Jiraiya cooking up some of their usual tasteless yet strangely unappetizing stew, Naruto finally works up to asking. "Old perv, explain something to me. Why the hell did we just do that?"
Jiraiya smiles, or maybe grimaces, fingers rubbing together the money in a pouch around his neck. "Naruto, there are some things that just have to be done."
"...Like?" Like taking half of the money out of that pouch and putting it into Naruto's own frog purse, perhaps? Like learning to cook so he doesn't have to eat the old man's food anymore? Or like fleeing because Akatsuki wanted to kill him?
"Naruto. Ah. Hm. Well... Water has always been hostile to those with bloodlines, those with powers beyond the ordinary. And Leaf – well, Leaf is just full of special little snowflakes." At Naruto's uncomprehending look, Jiraiya says with a touch of exasperation, "The more they kill each other, the less there will be to go after us. Happy? Good. Now eat your stew."