Chapter 20: Orochimaru Fills In The Gaps

True to his word, at midnight, Jiraiya crashed the party, greeting the daiymo enthusiastically and annoying Mugato by informing him that his team was going to be down a man due to Tsunade's need to reassign Yoshino to her own project starting now. Yoshino had found it somewhat amusing to watch how Mugato spluttered around Jiraiya, not because she was deluding herself into thinking that Uchiha-san had ever considered her skills of any use whatsoever, but just because he was bothered to have his authority superceded in this way.

She and Jiraiya stopped by the encampment to collect and repack her gear then they headed for the inn where the rest of the guys were waiting. There was an awkward moment when they all realized that they only had two rooms and the inn was full. Originally the four boys had slept two to a bed in one room and Jiraiya had the second room to himself. He solved the sleeping arrangements for them by assigning Chouza, Inoichi and Kakashi to one room; Shikaku and Yoshino to the second bed in his room. Just before he turned off the light he'd smiled at her and said, "Don't worry, I'll chaperone."

Yoshino lay awake for the longest time in the darkness, Shikaku spooned up behind her, one arm draped across her waist breathing softly. With Shikaku warm against her back, studying Jiraiya's silhouette in the moonlight, idly she wondered if he'd staged it that way on purpose, if somehow he were trying to let her know she was safe without actually saying anything about. And it did feel…safe.

But thoughts of 'safe' dredged up memories of earlier in the evening. Memories of how, even though she'd actually beaten Tsuyoshi, turned his own jutsu against him and by all rights should be proud of that feat if nothing else, still she'd cried like a child when it was over. She thought about that long and hard in the moonlight. What kind of a ninja was she? Then she remembered that the only person who'd seen her cry was Shikaku. And somehow that was …okay.

Sighing, having figured it out at least a little bit, she turned toward him, feeling his arm slide along her waist as she turned. Tucking her head under his chin, resting against his chest, she draped her own arm across his and slowly fell asleep.

The next day, Yoshino learned that they had not actually buried the body. Instead Jiraiya had it sealed in a hidden location in the forest outside the city. Collecting the sealing container, they carried it back to Konoha in teams.

Upon their return, to their surprise, Jiraiya took them straight to visit Orochimaru.

The snake sannin's compound turned out to be a research lab not unlike Tsunade's, Shikaku observed – except for the bodies. The place was like a morgue, several draped bodies on gurnies and one undraped cadaver that was obviously part way through an autopsy. Orochimaru looked up at the group and frowned.

"Jiraiya? What's the meaning of this?" he asked softly, motioning at the group standing with the white-haired man.

"Just wanted to see how things went in Amegakure," Jiraiya answered as he and Chouza lifted the container onto an empty gurney. "And besides, I brought you a souvenir from the beach."

Orochimaru scowled. "Dare I open it here? In front of these young people?"

"It's a dead body," Kakashi volunteered proudly. Inoichi groaned, thinking maybe they should have stopped at the Academy first so that he could confess to being unable to be senpai-for-a-week.

"And you are?" Orochimaru asked haughtily, looking down at the little boy.

"Kakashi Hatake," he answered.

"Yes, well, hold your tongue," Orochimaru said, picking up a pair of hemostats and returning his attention to the cadaver in front of him, "Or I'll hold it for you."

Kakashi felt a grip that seemed like the talons of a baza hawk biting into his shoulder. He looked up and saw Yoshino glaring down at him. Pale, he stepped back between her and Inoichi.

Jiraiya released the seal, displaying the body that had been its contents. "It is a body."

Orochimaru looked over at the second table and paused, taking in the man's attire and hitae-ate. "Jiraiya, this man…this man is a leaf shinobi?"

Jiraiya reached over and made a scratch through the leaf symbol with chakra. Nonplussed he corrected his friend, "Missing-nin." He smiled slyly and added, "Check his eyes."

Leaving the hemostats embedded in the first body, Orochimaru dried his hands on a towel and walked over to the newly arrived one. Flicking his gaze up once at Jiraiya in hesitation, he then looked down and opened one eyelid. "Jiraiya?" he whispered. Checking the second eye, he added, "Jiraiya, this man is Uchiha. What the hell is this about?"

Smiling over his pipe which he had taken out while Orochimaru was occupied with the latest addition to his morgue, Jiraiya just sat there, smoke wafting skyward. "Like I said, a souvenir from the beach. The guy's a missing-nin – I sent the paperwork by a summons to Koharu last night."

"What am I supposed to do with it?" Orochimaru glared at him.

"Our tracker-nins return the bodies of any non-Konoha leaf shinobi they discover to you, don't they? And your current assignment is to autopsy them to discover what you can about any jutsu or kekkei genkai that may be unique to them, correct? So, here's a missing nin for you."

"Yes, but, they destroy the bodies of Konoha's missing ninjas," Orochimaru insisted. "They don't bring those to me."

"Oooops," Jiraiya just grinned. "But then again, it is your mission to autopsy the bodies of any missing nin brought to you, correct? Paperkwork doesn't say that they have to be brought in by tracker nin, now, does it?"

"Yes-sss," Orochimaru hissed out a response, then looked up at Jiraiay, eyes glittering, lopsided smile, "I always did know you loved me best. Somebody is going to be supremely pissed about this, aren't they?"

"Konoha's Military Police Force can kiss my ass", Jiraiya said, "Come on gang, let's go, we've got some reassigning to do." And with that he shooed all his little chickens out the door.

"Oh, and Jiraiya," Orochimaru's voice stopped him at the door, "Things in Amegakure went as you expected."

Jiraiya just nodded.

Orochimaru's compound was a good distance from the village center, in a wooded glen just outside of town. On the way back into town, Jiraiya had them all stop. He sat on a large flat stone overlooking the group seated in front of him. "So," he asked, "everybody still in?"

"In? Yes, you knew that when we left for the weekend, but what happens now?" Chouza asked."How can you just say he's a missing nin and get away with it? And what does that have to do with anything?"

Jiraiya, pipe relit and smoking, thinking carefully before responding finally answered, "I have a lady friend in Wave who will testify to the attempted rape last night. She's already filed a police report for me."

He looked at their shocked faces. "Don't worry – we aren't alleging anything that did not happen, we're just keeping Yoshino's name out of it. Although, Mugato probably does have an idea of what really happened, with my friend's police report he won't really be able to argue too strongly. And she's got just enough details in there alluding to use of shinranshin that he won't want to argue to strongly. So he'll cut his losses on that one. "

"Now, we are going to step on some toes, that is if you are with me?"

The four teens nodded. Kakashi would have nodded but he was nodding off instead. They'd made double time back from Wave this morning and the kid was utterly exhausted. Yoshino sighed and pulled him over to her, laying his head in her lap so that he didn't hit the ground face first as he fell asleep.

Jiraiya chuckled, "Okay, first thing is Inoichi – you have got to keep little Hatake with you at all times. I know you've got him through the week. Watch him like a hawk, I know the kid means well, but we can't take a chance that he'll blab to his playmates or his family. You are off the mission board for the rest of the week, fulfilling your community service. Hang around the village, be reachable in case I need to get a hold of you."

"Shikaku, you stay staffed to Tsunade. Yoshino, you're with Koharu – she knows everything that went on last night, knows where we are right now, she'll be expecting you. You take your assignments from her, we'll get you staffed properly and the paperwork filled out when we get back down to see Morino. Chouza you're with Morino. He'll take you on for staffing allotment planning."

Inoichi hoisted Kakashi onto his shoulder grumbling about babysitting as he left back down to put the kid down for a nap in their apartment.

Yoshino and Shikaku said a hasty goodbye and Shikaku watched as she and the rest of the group went back down to the missions room. Shaking his head, feeling that he still wasn't getting everything he turned and headed back down to the lab, expecting to find Tsunade in the anteroom tapping her foot impatiently at his inordinate lateness, angry that she couldn't get in without his key. Since Orochimaru was back, he thought she would be too. To his surprise, she was nowhere near the lab area. He searched around the village but to no avail. She appeared not to have come back from Amegekure yet.

Which left Shikaku with some time on his hands. He mulled it over then decided to go ask a few questions of the one person who might be able to fill in the pieces he was missing.

Knocking at the front door, Shikaku stood outside wondering if the snake sannin would even open his own front door. After a few moments, he did. Orochimaru stood looking at him and whispered, "Well, well, well, if it isn't Tsunade's little boy." He paused then smirked his lopsided grin and added, "Or should I say Jiraiya's?"

Shikaku cleared his throat. "Um….I was hoping you could help me with the answer to that question myself. You see, I don't understand why there is a difference. Why do they seem to be working on the same problem and yet at cross-purposes. Aren't you all a…"

Orochimaru finished the question for him. "A team? Aren't we all a team? A very good question."

Standing there in Orochimaru's doorway, Shikaku felt he could wither under that gaze. Whatever it was about the man that seemed almost but not quite normal when he was together with Jiraiya was gone now. The air itself seemed chilled.

Orochimaru opened the door a little wider, motioning him in. "A question worth answering."

He motioned him on back to the morgue. "Do you mind if I continue working while I answer your questions, young man?"

"What's going on?" Shikaku blurted out.

"Well, that's a little vague, don't you think? Going on where? Going on between whom? Can't you be a little more specific?"

"Here…this…," Shikaku floundered, motioning around the lab, pointing at Tsuyoshi's body which now had several layers of skin peeled back along the abdomen.

"This is my job. This is the mission I've been assigned by our village, to investigate all missing-nin for whatever we can learn about their bodies, their jutsus, their kekkei genkai. Now, is there anything else?"

Shikaku looked around in exasperation. "Do you mind if I smoke?" He didn't smoke cigarettes often, but sometimes he found that the act could help him focus his thoughts.

Bent back over the corpose in front of him, Orochimaru muttered, "If you insist on shortening your life like that baka teammate of mine then by all means indulge. Any other questions?"

Shikaku took a long drag from the cigarette and blew the smoke skyward. What had the man said upon granting him entry? Oh yes.

"Let's start with the one you said was a question worth answering. Aren't you all a team?"

Placing his tools on the metal tray beside him with a soft 'clink' Orochimaru leaned back against the wall, crossing his arms over his shoulders "Since before you were born."

"And yet you're arguing over this?"

"Disagreements about how best to carry out an assignment, good natured ribbing among teammates. Surely you do the same with your own team?"

Shikaku thought. Maybe the banter the first night was good natured ribbing. But what had happened between Jiraiya and Tsunade the night he had followed them had been on an entirely different scale. He had honestly thought they would come to blows, that Tsunade was going to hit him. He said so.

Orochimaru's eyes narrowed to slits, his smile broadening. "Well, little Nara-chan. You followed the two of them and neither one of them knew about it? I am impressed. Maybe Tsunade does see something worthwhile in you after all."

Shit! He hadn't meant to let that slip. Well, the cat was out of the bag now. Shikaku tried to be as specific as possible in his latest question but before he could formulate it, Orochimaru started speaking.

"Tell me, it's been ten years now, what do you know about Heat Devil village?"

Shikaku shrugged, "The Battle of Heat Devil village, of course I know about it. I was a genin then, most of us were left here for internal defense. But I know about it. Why?"

"It should more properly be called a the Heat Devil Massacre. We laid waste to the village. Every man, woman, child, shinobi or civilian. We had orders to take them all out and we did. That …changed Jiraiya and Tsunade somehow, and Minato, too. He was a chunin, then, he was in that battle. I don't know if it was the battle itself, or watching Minato be so efficient in it. Absolutely angelic and efficient. Whatever the reason, after that battle, Jiraiya left, he went back to Myoukobu Mountain and remained there for a year or so."

"Tsunade was affected greatly, too. Everything was happening so fast, she seemed to be called everywhere at once. At some point it just finally dawned on her that she was patching up shinobi as fast as she could just so that they could get back in the battle before the other side's did. Of course that had been her forte for a long time now, but watching them return to battle after it had long since stopped being a battle and turned into an extermination, well, again, it affected her profoundly."

Shikaku took another long draw on his cigarette and asked, "And you?"

"Me? I was just following orders," Orochimaru replied in a whisper as chilly as the room.

Orochimaru continued, "After Heat Devil, in Jiraiya's absence, Hanzou came to power, and everyone knew that a major battle was inevitable. Sarutobi sent word to Myoukobu pleading with Jiraiya to return for the sake of the village. Reluctantly he agreed. And we all knew how reluctant he was, but Sarutobi, instead of leaving Tsunade with the medic-nin, very shrewdly put the three of us back together as a fighting unit, Tsunade was relieved of her medical responsibilities and we three were finally able to fight side by side once again. It was… I don't have a word for it. Joyous? Glorious? To see Tsunade fighting again. To see what she is capable of on the battlefield. It's really quite awe-inspiring. Were you there?"

Shikaku shook his head and Orochimaru asked him a question, "But you do know that's where we received our title, don't you? The Legendary Sannin?"

Nodding, Shikaku heard Orochimaru's laugh followed by his next question, "And what do you know of Hanzou?"

"A butcher. A warlord bent on destroying our way of life And the three of you defeated him."

"Interesting," Orochimaru mulled this over in his mind. "Thus earning our title of the 'Legendary' Sannin?"

Shikaku nodded.

"Well, again, interesting how they spin it. You know that it took all three of us to hold him off. I don't think we could have defeated him. Nonetheless, he saw that even if he won against us, his side was losing the war. And so, he called for a truce. Of course a condition of that was our accepting the title 'Legendary' as a parting shot that we were no such thing. The three of us could just barely stand against him, much less defeat him. Whereas he could have defintely overcome us. And the key to that was he realized we were each other's weakness. He could have defeated the three of us if he had just managed to kill any one of us."

Orochimaru continued, "Jiraiya was overcome by the man's honor. As you know he stayed in a Rain village for some time, tending to three orphans. Tsunade chose to atone for her perceived past transgressions by devoting herself entirely to medicine."

"And you?"

"Me?" Elegant eyebrow arched skyward. "I saw nothing to atone for. I was just …following orders."

Shikaku shifted uneasily. He hadn't really come for a history lesson, just wanted to know what the hell was going on in Amegekure. He asked.

"Patience, little Nara-chan, you have to understand our background to appreciate the situation we find ourselves in. You see, there's a power struggle going on within the very city gates of Konoha. Sarutobi nears fifty. Who will the council select as his replacement as Hokage?"

"I find myself in an untenable situation. I have been so good at following orders, so very good you see, I just wasn't very adept at being sure to be assigned orders that could openly be acknowledged." He motioned to his lab. "The council would never support me. Sometimes, I wonder if my old sensei even supports me in private at those meetings," he added with a touch of bitterness.

"Tsunade would be an ideal candidate, the only jounin who could possibly match her in battle are Jiraiya and myself. And her work has an undeniable public appeal. Unfortunately, she is a woman and there are simply not enough votes on the council to support that."

Shikaku grew impatient. What the fuck did any of this have to do with a bunch of pills?

Orochimaru cut off his complaint with a raised hand. "And Jiraiya would have nothing to do with it. Heat Devils was bad enough. But coming back to Konoha after several years in Rain and hearing how Hanzou, a man he respected and admired and who quite frankly spared our lives, was vilified, was just too much. He flaunts his hitae-ate from Mount Myoukobo and takes every opportunity to tarnish the reputation of "legendary" sannin that PR and spinmeisters in Konoho have tried so hard to polish, women, drinking, gambling, you name it. So, who to succeed Sarutobi? The old man already has his eye on a new choice, Minato. He's about your age, isn't he?"

Shikaku nodded. Sure, Minato was hot shit, but Hokage? He'd have to mull that one over some, later. The Hokage ought to be someone you looked up to, not someone you'd gotten shit-faced drunk with.

"This infuriates Jiraiya. He's tried to talk to Minato to dissuade him. Sarutobi has sent him on an extended trade mission to prevent Jiraiya from interfering. Jiraiya refers to this as "blowing so much smoke up his ass he thinks he can breathe fire." Of course he can breathe fire, as can Jiraiya, but I'm sure you appreciate the metaphor."

"I have no heir-apparent, but Tsunade proffers he own choice. A fellow medic-nin, her lover Dan."

"And so the two of them, they're fighting over the succession to Hokage?" Shikaku asked. "If Jiraiya doesn't want Minato installed, why does he care if Dan is chosen or not?"

Orochimaru gave a small cold laugh. "Well, for one thing, Dan is a jounin but just barely. If you were to ask me his title ought to be Tokubetsuu Jounin of Paperwork and Bureaucracy. Dan is supremely unqualified in terms of mastery of jutsu to be Hokage. But Tsunade doesn't see that, she sees a new era of peace if we have a less warlike Hokage in place."

"Jiraiya doesn't particularly care about the Hokage-ship but what he does care about is Tsunade. Even though he's been in love with her since we were children, he's made a point to not interfere between her and Dan. Until recently."

"What happened recently?"

"What you have to understand is that Tsunade is a warrior. She doesn't want to admit it, doesn't want to acknowledge that part of herself any longer, but the fact remains she is a fighter, perhaps the strongest one of all three of us. Jiraiya brings that out in her. They…enhance each other in a way that is undeniable. She says she loves Dan but in fact she's chosen the one person in Konoha who is the most opposite of Jiraiya that it is possible to imagine. It's almost as if she's trying to escape the inevitable."

Shikaku wanted to rush the older man to make his point, but there seemed to be something so…poignant in what he was saying.

"Haven't you noticed how haggard she is? Don't you wonder how it must make her feel to be assigned not to work on a cure for those already addicted to this drug but rather on removing the addictive properties from it – so that we can utilize its 'good' effects safely? Weaponize it? Tsunade thought she'd gotten away from the battlefield but all she's doing is working on more creative ways to kill people."

Shikaku dared to ask, "Are you…are you in love with her, too?"

"How can you not be? Oh, not in the way Jiraiya is, of course, but if I had a sister, I imagine this is how it would feel."

Orochimaru continued, "Tsunade was working quite satisfied in pure medicine. Then this came up. And miraculously the grants came through, the lab was co-opted for her use and she's effectively working on a battle field again despite her best efforts to leave it alone for good. Jiraiya became curious and his research turned up something very unpleasant. So much so that he asked me to go with him to approach her about it."

"What did it turn up?"

"Tell me, have you ever heard of Medics-Without-Borders?"

"Sure, it's a humanitarian aid group, Tsunade was instrumental in founding it a few years ago."

"Hmmm, yes, as was Dan. Do you know where the pills originate?"

"Rain? Amegekure?"

"Right again. And tell me little Nara-chan, I've read your records so I know you're a smart boy, do you know who the current liason between Konoha and Amegekure is?"

Shikaku blinked. It couldn't be. "Dan?"

Orochimaru nodded. "Tsunade is being used."

Shikaku stood there silently, trying to take it all in. It was overwhelming, actually, to acknowledge that your heroes had feet of fucking clay.

A/N: RE: Timeline – I think I'm on safe ground with Kakashi's age here – Ino-Shika-Cho Sr. seems to be listed consistently as about 14 years older than Kakashi. So this would make him about 5. If he graduated the Academy at 5 then I wanted him still in school, not yet on a genin team.

Re: Hanzou / Heat Devils / Dan – I think Heat Devils was about 30 years before start of series so it would be about 10 years prior to my fic (but it's a filler anime episode anyway, so I figure I can be liberal with respect to it in the timeline.) One thing is for sure, young Jiraiya (swoon!) is shown leading a charge in that battle.

Hanzou and Dan are a little trickier. I think Hanzou is about 25 years before start of series, so it would have been 5 years previous to my story. Jiraiya would have been with the orphans for a while then back to Konoha. I don't know when Dan died, but clearly by implication throughout this whole story, since Tsunade is still IN Konoha, Dan hasn't died.