-Jiraiya-

.

Jiraiya crept silently, using all of his skill as an infiltrator to sneak his way around the various vines and traps guarding the apartment. Today, Naruto was holding some sort of ceremony with his cult to confirm some new purification doctrine that Shisui had announced, and he never bothered with leaving clones to guard his apartment anyway, so Jiraiya decided it was the perfect time to shamelessly snoop in the nine-year-old psychopath's apartment. Never hurts to have blackmail, after all.

He swings gracefully through the window, avoiding the tripwire to disturb the exploding plants, and carefully starts checking any spot that looks like a child might hide something there. The couch cushions, under every pillow, behind the end table, even in the dirty laundry, but there was nothing. But of course, Jiraiya wouldn't be a spymaster if he was just a run-of-the-mill snooper. He scolded himself vigorously for making the rookie mistake of not checking under the bed, and was delighted to find quite a few small journals hiding under it. With no hesitation or shame (the brat knows that privacy's overrated anyway. He really should've hidden his stuff better in the first place), Jiraiya delves into Naruto's journals.

If nothing else, Jiraiya can commend the brat on his surprising consistency in his journal entries. It seems he started when he was five-ish to practice his reading and writing skills, and has kept it up nearly daily since. There's quite a bit of insight for Jiraiya to glean about Naruto's relationship with the Kyuubi and both of their thought processes in general. Jiraiya pages past some glorious examples of their sheer pettiness (suggesting the Kyuubi for Hokage? Terrifying Hiashi into a coma the literal day his daughter was born? The Kyuubi wants to piss on Jiraiya's grave after he dies?!), and mourns his chance to traumatize the brat with The Talk (although it totally explained Naruto's extreme reaction the first few times they met), only to come up short on one of the most recent entries.

There's absolutely no way. Sure, Naruto knows about Minato, but for him to actually communicate with his long-dead father?

Although, Naruto kind of makes it a point to spit in logic's face on a daily basis. Is this really the weirdest thing he's ever done? Jiraiya considers it. Yeah, it probably is. But relatively speaking, it might be possible. And if there's a chance for Jiraiya to talk to Minato again, he's sure as hell taking it.

He's about to turn around to leave and find Naruto, when there's a light impact on the back of his head. Jiraiya jumps and whips around to see Naruto, looking vaguely unimpressed and holding a leaf.

"You suck at snooping, pervert."

"Hey! That's super pervert, to you! And for your information, I'm awesome at snooping! You just can't understand my genius! And what's with the leaf? Are you cleaning up right now or something?"

Naruto shook his head disdainfully.

"You're here without permission, so you're an intruder. I just did what I would normally do with an intruder and smacked you with a poisonous leaf."

Needless to say, Jiraiya immediately hightailed it out of there to find the hospital. Tsunade would murder him, but at least she could get the poison out of his system!

.

-Naruto-

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Naruto was kinda annoyed at Pervy Sage, but he also totally saw it coming. Seriously, he hid his journals in a stupid obvious spot. He's surprised the idiot didn't find them earlier. He really does suck as a spymaster. But his dad totally thought it was funny (even if he was pretending to be stern), so Naruto forgot to be annoyed.

"I know Jiraiya-sensei can be really creepy and annoying sometimes, and definitely deserves it, but don't you think poisoning him is a little extreme?"

Fuzzy scoffed lightheartedly.

"As if. The brat is too soft to poison a pervert who definitely deserves it. That leaf was from the poison ivy vines he planted all over his outside walls to keep idiots outside."

Naruto huffed.

"I'm not soft! I've totally killed a guy before!"

Minato was a little alarmed at first, but Fuzzy was quick to correct Naruto.

"You mean I killed a guy. If memory serves, you were passing out from his genjutsu while I burned the idiot out of existence."

"Same difference! You used my body to do it, so it counts as mine!"

"Like hell it does!"

Maybe Minato should let the argument go on, but he doesn't particularly like the insinuation that his kid maybe-killed a guy before even graduating from the Academy (even though it sounds like the Kyuubi did all the work, and the guy deserved it). Plus, he hasn't gotten a chance to be petty at Jiraiya for ditching Naruto for the first few years of his life. And Naruto's home-defense system had inspired him.

"Hey Naruto, your whole apartment is covered in poison ivy?"

"Tastefully, of course."

Fuzzy was unimpressed.

"You mean most of it. There's only enough space on the walls for a ninja to barely avoid the vines."

"Hey! It looks cool!"

Minato butts in to nip the blooming argument in the bud.

"Does it spread?"

"No! I take cuttings and gather as many seeds as I can so they don't spread!"

"Then why don't we do something with those cuttings?"

Minato definitely has both of their attention now. He puts on his best innocent grin.

"Did you know Jiraiya-sensei actually has a house here? He hardly ever visits it, but he comes home once in every long while for a rest when he needs it. Which means he mostly relies on D-ranks and genin for its upkeep. We plant a ton of your cuttings and seeds all over his house, and mess with the mission scrolls so genin don't come to clean them up, and then next time Jiraiya-sensei comes home it'll be to a house covered in poison ivy!"

Naruto didn't need any more encouragement. He was more than eager to give Jiraiya his own home-defense system, and even had a ton of cuttings left over. Fuzzy suggested leaving them all over the Hokage Tower, so the ninja will be forced to use doors like plebeians. Minato even gave Naruto some advice on how to make seals to protect them, so that they'd need Jiraiya to remove the seals before they could take off the vines. And since Jiraiya hardly spends any time in the village, that means they could easily be waiting for months, at minimum, before he could take care of them. Plus, he was recovering right now. Apparently Tsunade beat him for wasting her time and being an idiot coming in thinking a poison ivy rash was gonna kill him or something.