Chapter 10: Jiraiya Tells The Rest Of The Story
Shikaku surveyed the apartment – although certainly not clean by any stretch of the imagination, it was at least a helluva lot better than it had been the last few days. At least you could walk through the place without tripping now – he'd spent the last couple of hours trying to stuff shit back into its appropriate shelf or drawer.
He'd actually even done laundry this afternoon – rounding up everything of Inoichi's and throwing it in a pile on the guy's bed and doing the same for Chouza's crap. Then he'd stuffed all his own clothes into a duffle bag and hauled them downstairs to the laundry room in the apartment building's basement.
He had to give Tsunade credit – once things were up and running she kept to a much more manageable schedule. Today they'd collected some gas chromatograph information and set up some extractions to run over night. They'd actually gotten out of there at 4pm today – unbelievable. He'd swung by the mission room and checked – Chouza and Inoichi were inbound as of today. Yoshino was on a day mission – she wouldn't be back until later in the evening.
Well, he hadn't made plans with her until Saturday because he hadn't known what his schedule would be like. So that left him the whole evening to hang out with his two teammates and catch up once they got home. Which wasn't a bad thing. Not at all. Especially if they were able to bring a little something back.
He frowned. He wasn't sure what the status of things were now. Chouza and Inoichi had certainly had their hands slapped last go around. Maybe they wouldn't try to buy this trip. He frowned again – if their seller was even still doing business.
The door to the apartment opened and true to his nature Inoichi bounded in yelling "Hand check!" and wrestled him to the floor. Freakin' golden retriever puppy. A slightly (only slightly) more subdued Chouza was right behind him, heading for the fridge and looking for a beer.
Inoichi seemed disappointed that Shikaku didn't have his "little girl friend" up here with him, as he referred to her, emphasizing the words in a way that implied something that was not the case. Shikaku just rolled his eyes. He also scowled when he saw where the two had dropped their bags and made a mental note to tell them to pick it up later and put their shit in their own rooms.
The three friends messed around in the kitchen and finally pulled together a meal, grilling outside since the weather was warm.
After dinner, as the twilight lengthened they sat around inside, shooting the breeze and catching up on the last week's events. Shikaku gathered that since neither of them had lit up yet, they hadn't resupplied on their latest mission. But the beer was cold and the evening was warm and the three of them were planning what to do for the rest of the night other than just sitting around shooting the breeze.
The question of what to do with the rest of their evening was answered when they heard a *poof* and a hearty greeting, "Good evening boys, how's it going?"
"The hell-?" Inoichi jumped out of his seat, the sound had come from just behind him. Shikaku just stared open-mouthed unable to believe what he was seeing.
Jiraiya-sama and Orochimaru-sama stood in his living room.
"Jiraiya, you could just use a door like a normal person," Orochimaru said in a bored tone.
"Fuck me…," Shikaku spluttered.
"Hadn't planned on it, kid," Jiraiya quipped, "Say, aren't you going to introduce us?"
Shikaku stood speechless. Finally he found his voice and motioned weakly around the room, "Um, guys, this is Jiraiya-sama and Orochimaru-sama. Um, sirs, these are my roommates, Chouza Akamichi and Inoichi Yamanaka." There, was that proper enough because his head was spinning and he sure as hell couldn't remember what protocol called for in this situation.
He thought about muttering some inane pleasantries like 'please have a seat' or 'can I get you something to drink' but that problem was solved when Jiraiya plopped down into a chair, drew out his pipe and said, "Smoke 'em if you got 'em boys."
The quietness that descended over the room was profound. Even if they did have any weed on them, they sure as hell weren't going to light up with the sannin present.
"My, my, Jiraiya, it appears you were right again. ANBU is raining on everyone's parade. I wonder why?" The voice was soft but it sent chills down Shikaku's spine. He shuddered.
Jiraiya packed his pipe away and drew out something else. "Guess I'll have to chase the clouds away, huh, Orochimaru?" He opened the pouch he'd taken from his pocket and rolled a joint. After lighting it and taking a deep draw off it he held it out to Shikaku.
"Shit…," Shikaku muttered, "Would you mind telling me why you're here in my living room lighting up with me and my friends?"
"It's a strategy session," Jiraiya responded, laughing, "and I need you in a strategic state of mind. Besides, great ice-breaker don't you think?"
"Honestly…," Orochimaru snapped, snatching the joint out of Jiraiya's hand as Shikaku hesitated. "you'd think it was going to bite you."
Jiraiya looked up at his teammate in glee. "Orochimaru – I didn't know you were smoking tonight."
"Only because I'll need to be as strategic as they are in order to get through your explanation again," he muttered, drawing deeply then passing the joint to Shikaku.
Warily accepting it, closing his eyes and taking his first hit off of it, Shikaku was overcome with the sense of surrealism. He must be dreaming. That was it, sleep deprivation over the last few days. He exhaled, opened his eyes and looked around the room, handing the joint to Inoichi. No. They were all still there. Two of the sannin. In his living room. Getting high. With him.
Jiraiya waited until the joint had been passed back to him. "So, tell us what you're working on Shikaku."
Shikaku shifted uneasily on the couch. "You, um, you know I can't do that."
"Good boy," Jiraiya smiled, "So, how about if I tell them, and you can fill in any gaps if I leave anything out?"
Shikaku hesitated, technically the project hadn't gone black until the day the door with the funky double-keyed lock was activated. And technically nobody had told him that it was classified before that day. So technically if Jiraiya already knew all that stuff the night he and Orochimaru had dropped the samples off then what they knew wasn't black and could be told, right?
Shikaku nodded and Jiraiya promptly filled in the background for Chouza and Inoichi. Shikaku didn't have a problem with the lab description or anything that first night. But when he started to go into the pill's effects which Shikaku had learned the second day, he shifted uncomfortably and started to say something. This seemed to be hovering dangerously close to the "classified" part.
"Think I shouldn't go any further, Shikaku?" Jiraiya asked softly.
Shikaku cleared his throat. "Well, um, I think you are getting into what I was told was the classified portion of the project."
Jiriaya's eyes twinkled. "Well, nobody told me it was classified, and since I've gotten my information independently, I'll just keep going, okay?" And even though the inflection made it sound like a question, Shikaku knew that it was an order.
And Jiraiya filled Chouza and Inoichi in on the effects and side effects of the drug. Chouza had about the same level of concern that Shikaku recalled feeling when he first heard about it. But Inoichi sat very still, the word still on his lips, Tsukyomi.
"What is it, Inoichi?" Shikaku remembered that that was the thing he was going to ask Inoichi when he got back. He waited for his friend's reply.
"It's a … an alternate dimension, generated, you can … twist space and time, to the wielder's wishes. But that's only something Sharingan users can do."
Jiraiya just smiled. "Until now, that was true. But with this handy little pill, a high-level genjutsu user, a true adept, would be able to invoke Tsukyomi, too. There's just one tiny little hitch…"
Shikaku spoke up quickly, interrupting Jiraiya, not liking the look on Inoichi's face, "Addiction. Complete dependence. True. Phsyiological. You have to keep taking it or you die."
"But who would do such a thing? Why create it?" Chouza asked.
"Why indeed? Ask Inoichi. Would there be a market for it?" Jiraiya replied.
Inoichi shook his head, "Fuck, yeah, if it works as advertised."
Shikaku sat on the couch, something still not making sense no matter how 'strategic' he was at the moment. So what? So why the fuck was Jiraiya here, telling Chouza and Inoichi exactly the same thing Tsunade had told him in the lab yesterday?
Maybe it was the grass or maybe he was just a little bit pissed off to be put in this absurd situation, but regardless, he said so. Out loud.
"So, fuckit, man, you're just, you're just saying the exact same shit Tsunade said yesterday. Just to my roommates okay, no big, but fuck, what's the big deal?"
Orochimaru, now sitting beside Jiraiya, cocked an eyebrow and gave him a faint smile. He turned to look at his own teammate. "I think he wants to know what you're going to add to Tsunade's version of events, Jiraiya. I think he's demanding it."
"This drug didn't just show up, overnight, okay?" The boys nodded in unison, eyes wide. "It's been designed. Targeted to work a certain way. Targeted to provide a specific benefit at an outrageous cost. It took a lot of effort and a lot of resources and a lot of money to go into producing something like this."
Shikaku thought of Tsunade's lab and nodded vigorously in agreement, no doubt about that.
"So, who has those types of resources?"
Shikaku's head wasn't working all that well, being a tad bit "strategic" by now, plus a little bit high. He could come up with the names of a couple of industrial candidates, maybe one of the larger drug cartels. He threw those names out.
Jiraiya smiled, good try he told him, but still, think outside the box.
Shikaku racked his brain – it must be right in front of him, Jiraiya was smirking at him like he should have come up with it by now. He reached to take the joint from Inoichi again and took another hit. He almost laughed, shit, if the other guesses were wrong, then the only other thing he could think of with enough resources able to pull off something like this would be a government. Laughingly he said so as he passed the cigarette back to Chouza.
"Bingo." Jiraiya said simply.
Shikaku laughed. Seriously – it was absurd. He said so.
"Absurd, really?" Jiraiya asked. "Who else has the resources?"
"But…why?"
"You can be sure that when defense becomes an industry, the underlying motive becomes profit. I can tell you right now, in every council hall of the five great nations, wherever there's a hidden village their greatest concern is 'Oh my God, peace might break out.'"
Shikaku started to protest but Jiraiya held up his hand to silence them. "Governments have the resources to pull it off. They have intelligence gathering organizations, like ANBU," he nodded his chin toward Chouza and Inoichi, "to learn the trafficking network between villages and nations, and they have enforcement, the police force to handle information and distribution internally to a nation, a village."
"Control something like this and you have an enormous amount of power. You can introduce it to an area and then withdraw it, leaving victims to their own painful death by withdrawal or else blackmail them for a regular supply. You can sow fear between opposing nations that one side's genjutsu users have powered up and they need to get in the game to compete. Produce and control something like this and you have sway over our entire way of life."
"But Tsunade…" Shikaku started.
"Tsunade doesn't want to face the facts that it is very likely shinobi behind this. Shinobi stand to benefit the most from maintaining the status quo. This drug and others like it make that possible. Tsunade doesn't want to admit that …"
"Tsunade doesn't want to admit that a fish rots from the head down!" Orochimaru snapped. "And I wonder if you do?"
Jiraiya looked away. Orochimaru was glaring at his friend's back, almost daring him, begging him to turn around and face him. Shikaku was quite sure that this ranked right up there with the look Jiraiya gave Tsunade the other day as one of the saddest things he'd ever seen.
"So what do you need me, us, to do?" Shikaku asked.
It took Jiraiya a moment to respond. "Just do what you normally do. Go to work at the lab. Go on missions. Bring back 'souvenirs'. Just let me know if there's anything you see unusual from your routine. That's all I ask. For now."