自来也
A tall, well-built man in his late forties entered the establishment to a chorus of friendly greetings.
"Welcome!" "Please come in!" "Where would you like to be seated today, sir?"
"Why anywhere that can fit me of course." The man smiled his most winning smile and winked, eliciting several giggles.
"You pervert!" A voice accused lewdly. The man laughed bawdily in response.
"Right this way, sir." one of the women who had welcomed him began to lead him further into the building.
"Of course, of course." The man looked around unabashedly at the forms of the many employees, and decided he liked all of them. "I heard Arato Hisako worked in this establishment. I also heard that she is very charming."
"Ah." The matron, a middle-aged woman of about the man's age stopped in front of a comfortable-looking booth. "Please be seated sir, I will see if she's available."
"Thank you." The man nodded and produced a coin. "Would you also pass a message to her?"
"I can do that." The woman took the coin. It disappeared promptly into her sleeves. "What is it you would like me to tell her?"
"Just tell her that the one requesting her goes by the name Jiraiya."
"Ah." The woman narrowed her eyes in recognition of the name. "You."
"Me." The man agreed. The woman walked off, and was quickly replaced by two other women who had made their way to the table where the man sat.
"Would you like something to drink, sir?" One of the women, a pink-haired lady in a blue flowered kimono, asked in an ingratiating tone.
"Your finest wine would do. Why don't you sit with me while the pretty little miss next to you, what's your name?"
The other woman, practically a girl, blushed and stammered. "N-nakiri. Nakiri Erina."
"Oh? What a pretty name." The man examined the girl from head to toe causing her blush to deepen. "Why don't you go get us some wine?"
"Yes sir!" The girl bowed and hurried off to retrieve refreshments.
The man, Jiraiya, laughed and turned to the pink-haired woman who had stayed to accompany him. "A newbie isn't she?"
The woman smiled. "It's only her second day."
"Second day huh? I usually enjoy more experienced woman, such as yourself, but the new ones can be cute in their own way, wouldn't you say?"
For a minute fraction of a second, Jiraiya noticed the pink-haired woman's look transform into one of faint disapproval. The moment passed quickly and the woman covered her reaction professionally and quickly with a pasted smile. "Indeed. Many of our customers seem to like when they are serviced by newcomers. My aren't you rude. You haven't even asked me my name."
Jiraiya smiled as the woman took one of his arms and sidled close to him. "And why would I request information I already know, Arato Hisako-chan?"
"So you knew."
"What, you think I would forget the face of someone of such rare, unparalleled beauty? Looking at you is like looking at a field of roses untainted by the touch of humanity."
"Oh I am plenty tainted." The woman, Hisako, whispered into Jiraiya's ear. "In fact, I can show you just how tainted I can be, if you'd like."
"Not tonight, Hisako-chan. Tonight is for wine and other things."
Hisako sat back unhappily. "The fee will be the same."
"Of course." Jiraiya declared just as the girl who had gone to retrieve the wine came back alongside the first woman who had welcomed him and found him a seat.
"Why don't the two of you join us. Erina-chan and- what's you're name?"
"Yoshino Yuki." The older woman gave a brief bow and then joined the table. "I was going to tell you that I couldn't find Arato Hisako, but it seems you've found her yourself."
"Oh she found me. Come, Yuki-chan!" Jiraiya slapped a bill onto the table. "Let us drink! Nakiri-chan. Sit! I'll pour the wine."
The girl nodded demurely, set down the tray she had been holding, and sat next to the coworker she had approached the table with. The air was warm and the seats were wide and spaced, but Hisako scooted closer to Jiraiya nonetheless, giving the Nakiri girl enough room to lay down.
Jiraiya began to talk as he poured the wine with slow leisure. "Hisako-chan here tells me that she thinks herself to be tainted." He said as if the mere suggestion were a joke. He handed the first cup to the youngest at the table. Nakiri Erina took the cup hesitantly and blushed.
Hanging on Jiraiya's left arm, Hisako giggled and sitting to Jiraiya's other side, the older woman, Yoshino Yuki, grasped at his right arm. "Aren't we all?"
Jiraiya raised his head to the ceiling and laughed long and loud, the sake he'd been pouring temporarily forgotten. When his laughter calmed, the man shook his head and smiled knowingly. "If you're tainted, then what would that make me? A living infestation?"
"There are some who would say so." Hisako suggested.
Jiraiya shook his head again, and picked up the remaining three empty sake cups, one of each between his thumb, forefinger, middle finger and ring finger. He swirled the cups around in a circular motion, and, as if by magic, the cups slowly filled up with sake despite the sake jar remaining untouched on the table. "Then they have not truly lived." He said and handed the now full cups to each of his female companions. The Nakiri girl took her cup and looked it up down left and right with curiosity and wonder, trying to figure out how the man had done what he did.
"I pity them. Cheers!" Jiraiya held his cup of sake up into the air and then downed it in a single gulp. "Ah that's good! I'm in a talking mood tonight. Nakiri Erina!"
"Yes!"
"Tell me about your life. How did you come to work here?" he took her empty cup and handed it back to her full, a trick she was beginning to have doubts about seeing. Jiraiya laughed heartily at her almost childish disbelief. "Drink up!"
And so, several hours, four thousand ryo, and many jars of wine later, Jiraiya would finally exhaust his wallet. By that time, the older Yoshino Yuki had already passed out with her head resting on the table. The younger Nakiri Erina, a weak drinker by nature, had laid herself down on the wide space she'd been given at the table and had fallen asleep, gentle snores emitted unlady-like from her open mouth.
Jiraiya set down his last cup of sake. "Hisako-chan." He said pleasantly. "It's about time."
"So it is." The pinkette produced a small envelope and inserted it into the V-neck opening of Jiraiya's robe.
"The next time I come here, your name will be Shimizu Megumi." Jiraiya said under his breath.
"Understood." The woman whispered. "Good night, Jiraiya." She kissed his cheek and scooted away from the table to find people to help her carry her two unconscious coworkers into one of the safe rooms.
Jiraiya, for his part, stretched and stood. It was time to return to the hotel. Naruto had probably already fallen asleep.
"What a great night this has been!" Jiraiya said aloud as he exited the establishment premises. "Can't wait to come back." He giggled pervertedly. "That Erina was especially cute."
Naruto was indeed asleep when he returned to the hotel room. Lighting a small lamp, Jiraiya drew the envelope that had been placed in his robes, sat himself down at a desk and began to sift through the contents of the latest reports from this region of his spy network.
Orochimaru had hidden himself away, and it seemed there were none of the usual signs, at least in this quadrant of the country. He flipped to the next report. A letter from Chiriku, head monk of the Temple of Fire. The seal has broken. Was all it said.
Jiraiya scratched his head and set the letter aside. The next report worried him greatly. It seemed the Hidden Earth Village was starting talks about invading the Hidden Leaf, greatest of the Five Nations.
An inconvenience and very unfortunate. So soon after the assault that Orochimaru had coordinated with the Hidden Sand too. All this on top of the Akatsuki now openly collecting the nine tailed beasts from their various vessels. He'd barely been in time to stop Uchiha Itachi and Hoshigaki Kisame from kidnapping Naruto to gods knew where. It was just one bad thing after another.
Jiraiya stroked his chin. Of course, Orochimaru's assault on the Hidden Leaf and the subsequent weakening of the village's defenses was precisely the reason its political rivals were considering an invasion. Smash them while they were still weak and recuperating from both the attack and the death of their Hokage. It wasn't a completely unsound scheme. It was also likely the Hidden Earth still bore a grudge against the Leaf from the Third Shinobi War, a war that had finally ended when Namikaze Minato, not yet leader of the village at the time, had massacred a thousand Hidden Leaf Shinobi throughout various battlefields and fronts in a single day.
The student who he had raised and given everything he knew, the man who had been one of the few who he'd been willing to share the Toad contract with. His protege, a man whose soul now resided in the belly of one Dead Demon spirit.
Jiraiya set down his reports and turned to examine the boy that was sleeping on the futon mat behind him. He'd been thinking of his former student quite often in recent days, and it was most likely due to the fact that he now had the man's son under his wing. The boy bore a marked resemblance to his father. Their hair were similar as were the general structure of their faces. Naruto's eyes were also the the same sky blue color, and they shared the same physique.
Naruto looked strikingly similar to Minato when Minato had been a kid.
The differences, on the other hand, were minor. Naruto's eyes were large and wide like his mother's. Minato's eyes, on the other hand, had been sharper, more focused looking. There were also the whisker-like markings on the boy's cheeks, markings that served as a permanent reminder of the Nine-tailed Demon contained within.
Wait.
Jiraiya nearly stumbled backwards on his chair as he clambered to his feet.
Wait-wait-wait.
Wait.
Wait!
Now standing on his feet, he reached to the letter he had set aside, the one that had been sent to him from the Temple of Fire where the monks lived and where the Third had put the scroll containing Minato's body.
The seal has broken.
Jiraiya stared at the sentence for an entire minute as if in a spell. The seal. Broken? How?! As he thought, he began to feel a euphoria of hope and excitement. Had it happened? Had the Dead Demon's mask been found?
Jiraiya considered that possibility and his spirits fell. He'd already gone to the temple in Whirlpool where Kushina had immigrated from and where the Dead Demon's mask should've been located. It hadn't been there, and the temple had been destroyed. What had once been a temple had instead been turned to splinters of wood, dust and mud. Either the temple had been destroyed along with the rest of the Hidden Whirlpool during the incident thirty years before, mask and everything inside, OR someone had explicitly taken the mask and destroyed the temple.
That the temple had been destroyed in the incident was more likely. Even more likely was that the seal on the scroll containing Minato's preserved body had finally been broken either by decay or by someone who had worked out a way to crack the seal's complex coding.
Minato would finally be buried, he thought morbidly and sighed. So much for Kushina's last wish.
With old man Sarutobi dead, Jiraiya was the last living person who had been close to the deceased Namikaze Minato, practically the man's father in fact.
And now he would have to revisit the grief from nearly thirteen years before. Of course, he would visit the temple and collect Minato's body. His greatest protege, his student, would finally receive the proper burial that he should have gotten over a decade ago.
Finding Tsunade could wait. Minato's body, on the other hand, would fall further into decay the longer he waited. He would just have to take Naruto along. The kid deserved to be there for his father's funeral, even if he wouldn't be knowing that Namikaze Minato, Fourth Hokage of the Hidden Leaf and Jiraiya's former student, was his father.
Jiraiya looked back down at the letter. Of course, there was still the possibility, however slight it may be, that Minato had come back to life. Very unlikely, an impossible hope almost. But it was still a very real possibility.
The Sage of Toads held the letter up in irritation.
Why couldn't Chiriku have been more specific?!