Chapter 18:Promising career moves

I'm going with Gaara being about a year older than Naruto. It's been a bit under a year since Yashamaru stole him. They've gone through a lot of hotel room cleaning bills since then.

Things just hadn't been the same since Ino left. Sakura knew it wasn't entirely Ino's fault. If a jounin decided to do a Hatake with you there wasn't much to be done about it except to sit back and enjoy the ride. But still Sakura missed her. It just wasn't fair, Ino was off exploring the continent having adventures, while Sakura was stuck in the village with no-one to play with, and nothing to do except watch telly.

On the other hand if Ino hadn't left Sakura would never have discovered her life's true purpose so she supposed there was always a silver lining. Because in the many hours she'd spent watching the tv since her friend abandoned the village she'd discoveredspy had taken approximately a ten minutes for her to be hooked. The gadgets, the evil plots, the glamorous costumes, the daring escapes, it was allso cool. By the time the first show had ended sheknewshe wanted to be a secret agent when she grew up.

And now she had a way to make it happen.

At first she'd thought the man spying on the hot springs was just a pervert. But then she spotted his headband, and the fact that he was carefully taking notes and she realized. He wasn't just some random pervert. He was was theperfectopportunity. Sherefusedto let it slip through her fingers. She wouldmakehim steal her away to be his apprentice in the secret spymaster arts.

Her first approach was, well ok she could see why he might have turned her down. She hadn't exactly been subtle, and what spy would want to teach someone who couldn't be subtle. She'd just barged in to his super-secret surveillance and demanded that he teach her to be a master spy like himself. Then the Kunoichi in the bath he'd been observing overheard her and they'd both had to run for it. After that the old man had just said "No", and walked off.

It was… embarrassing but she refused to be deterred. So she'd made a bad first impression. That was fine. She could fix it. She just had to find some way to prove herself. Maybe if she showed she could tail the old man himself wherever he went that would demonstrate her talent and dedication. Yes, she liked that plan. Now, to find out her future teacher's name.

…

It was the third body this week, and Yashamaru was getting more than a little tired of trying to scrub blood and other, physical remnants, out from between the floorboards. Gaara really was trying, but it was proving harder than expected to rein in his sand's natural defense system, and the assassins justkept showing Rasa seriously have nothing better for his jounin to do than try and hunt down a seven year old kid. Especially since they keptlosingto said seven year old. Maybe it was a pride thing. It certainly couldn't be cost effective. The cost in equipment alone must be staggering.

Anyway whatever Rasa's reasons were, the upshot was he and Gaara had a problem. At this rate they'd be permanently banned from every inn this side of moon country thanks to the unfortunate mess they kept leaving behind them. Because Gaara kept turning assassins into jam and no matter how hard Yashamaru scrubbed, he could never quite get all the blood out of the cracks of the floorboards. Innkeepers got a bit funny about that. Something had to change or they'd be camping for the foreseeable future. Yashamaruhatedcamping.

He thought about the rumor he'd heard in the last shady bar he'd checked for work. Someone was trying to put together a pirate crew. He'd dismissed it at the time as not worth trying for. He had no sailing experience, and Gaara in close quarters with a whole group of strangers just sounded like a recipe for disaster. But lately Gaarahadbeen getting better about not lashing out at random bystanders. It had beenweekssince he'd killed anyone that wasn't an assassin, and maybe, just maybe, training in close proximity with a large quantity of water would make it easier to get Gaara's talents under control.

At any rate, it might at least allow them to shake off the assassins for a while, and shipboard accommodations might not be roomy but they were better than sleeping in a tent, which was the other option until the collective memories of the innkeepers in the area had faded a bit. Besides he'd heard there were other kids on the ship, otherninjakids. It might be good for Gaara to have some friends his own age, as long as he managed to refrain from crushing them.

The first mate, it turned out was Momochi Zabuza. Which on the one hand was a good thing, the man was a master of water jutsus, if he couldn't run damage control on Gaara's powers then who could, and being from Kiri he was presumably at least a competent sailor. But on the other hand. If the demon of the bloody mist was the first mate, who the hell was the Captain, and why did he have the sinking feeling he'd signed up for more insanity than he was prepared to deal with?

Of course. It turned out the Captain was Hatake bloody Kakashi. The same insane leaf idiot that started this whole thing by just up and running off with what was rumored to be his village's jinchuuriki without a hint of a warning. Then again if Hatake was an idiot what did that say about the fools that followed his example? Like for example Yashamaru who was currently holding the hand of his adorable little homicidal jinchuuriki nephew and praying he didn't kill any bystanders while everyone was watching.

Yeah he was probably just as insane as Hatake, Yashamaru looked over at Gaara, remembered assassins, and scrubbing the blood out of the floor of far too many inns. But he also remembered his nephew's smile as they walked through a crowded city and nobody flinched away from Gaara because none of them knew his name. Maybe he was a fool, but that didn't mean he'd made the wrong choice.

Maybe Hatake was insane to start what he did, but that didn't make him wrong. He'd done pretty much the same thing as Yashamaru, and he saw how Hatake looked at little Naruto, it was not so different from the way Yashamaru looked at Gaara. He saw the love there, and he thought that there was something in the man that it might be worth trying to follow.

He signed the contract. It wasn't like a standard share of any loot acquired was abaddeal, and Gaara was so excited to make friends with kids his own age. He could deal with insanity. It wasn't like any ninja worth the name were actuallysane,even if Suna was the only village sensible enough to recognize that fact and channel it all into cathartic communal rituals designed to lend a level ofconsistencyto the madness by discreet application of controlled chakra infused mind altering substances. The first Kazekage had famously said, "if everyone's going to go cuckoo under the influence of whatever chakra infused crap builds up in the area, we might as well make a proper mystical ceremony out of it and pass the insanity off as spiritual awareness." The first Kazekage had been a little unconventional.

He could deal with insanity he told himself. Although the look of exhausted resignation that passed across Momochi's face when Gaara was dragged away by the kyuubi jinchuriki and his little pack of friends to do… something it wasn't clear what, was fairly ominous. When he asked where they were going Momochi had just passed him a bottle of rum accompanied by dark mutterings about things man was not meant to know. He wondered if he'd be better off not asking.

…

Genma was about seventy per cent sure he wasn't getting paid enough for this shit. He was about fifty per cent sure there wasn't enough money in the world to pay for this shit. Fucking crocodile pits, fucking scientists, fucking secret hidden agendas. He was a ninja, an assassin, he was a fucking expert at underhanded dealings and stabbing people in the backs. Clearly the hidden villages had nothing on professional academia.

It had started when Professor Shiba had pulled a gun out of nowhere, made a call on the radio to bring in a small squad of heavily armed non-ninja mercenaries wearing a great deal of leather clothing. He was, he explained, suffering from some cash flow issues, and so he was going to kill them all, leave their bodies to rot in the jungle, and sell off the loot on the black market in order to pay off his debts. Genma disapproved of that plan. Especially the bit where he and his team became collateral damage.

It was fine though. He and Raidou were Anbu level, they could deal with a bunch of jumped up mercenaries. They were about to do so. Then one of them tried to take Professor Kirihara's bag and he went completely ape shit. It was disturbing to watch. Genma had been a ninja for a long time and he'd seen some fucked up shit, but that, that was up there. Kirihara's eyes had gone totally black with white pupils, his face had contorted into something barely human, and then he'd done his level best to bite through the mercenary's throat. He got about a third of the way through before the others managed to drag him off, mouth foaming pink, spitting something vicious in a language that burned all their ears. He didn't calm down until they gave his bag back.

Everyone had been too busy staring in horrified fascination to take advantage of the mercenary's distraction, but that was ok, because clearly the weird shit wasn't going to stop with Kirihara. Nope, because that was when high strung Hinamori turned out to have an explosive chakra seal tattooed onto her chest in order to destroy the temple and everyone in it for the sake of the world.

Then things had got very confused very quickly. Kirihara had flipped out again and made a solid attempt at trying to attack her, while Katsura babbled something panicked about ancient seal matrixes, and poor interactions and elder gods, and that the bomb would only make things worse. As far as Genma could work out Hinamori didn't trust a word he said, and believed he was working for… well whoever it was that had made her angry enough to turn herself into a human bomb.

Genma paused to look around at the rest of the archaeologists. It was utter chaos. Kirihara was still ranting and frothing at the mouth, Shiba was looking increasingly nervous and on the verge of wetting himself, obviously realizing too late that he was in over his head. About half of the grad students looked confused and or hungover. A couple were trying to help Katsura talk Hinamori down, a couple more were trying to take advantage of the chaos to make their escape. There was one which he was pretty sure was about to try and help Kirihara get loose.

And then there was Sato and the grad student that had been using the explosives. They weren't panickedat all,in fact they were giving the rest of the researchers the same assessing looks Genma was. He was starting to suspect those two might be ninja.

Then they hit some kind of preset time limit on how long they could stay still in one place, and all of them fell in the crocodile pit.

Genma definitely wasn't getting paid enough for this.

...

The prisoner whimpered in helpless panic as Orochimaru reactivated the device.

"No, please, no more. Just kill me, please." Orochimaru just smiled benignly.

"No no I insist. It's really no trouble. There's plenty of time to kill you later. I'm not a cruel man, I can take the time to give you one last good memory. " The prisoner just sobbed in despair, and Orochimaru pulled up yet another holiday photo on the slide projector.

"And this is me and Kabuto on our field trip to snow country. We dissected an entire polar bear under field conditions. It's a shame we couldn't bring the entire corpse back for study, but we were travelling light. At least we managed to take some samples, and it was good practice for Kabuto in conducting experiments under non-optimal conditions. See here's a picture of the liver, note it's unusual properties. Kabuto spotted that all by himself. He's got such a bright future ahead of him."

The prisoners screams echoed through the base. Kabuto sighed. It looked like Dad was getting carried away again. It was a little distracting when he was trying to write up research notes, but he didn't mind. It showed that he cared. Kabuto had never realized how good it would feel, to have a parent that loved him, and supported his interests, and wasproudof his achievements. So proud that he'd even put off dissecting his prisoners in order to show them pictures of the two of them having family bonding experiences. It left a warm fuzzy feeling in his chest to know that he was so loved.

A/n:And yep, Jiraiya ends up with Sakura. Although who's doing the stealing and who's along for the rise is up for debate. Sakura believes in being proactive. Also this is what happens if you let your bored and lonely kids watch too much telly.

I've decided Yashamaru is one of my favourites. With his adorable murder child in tow. He's definately not the sane man, but he's insane in a more stable and consistent way than a lot of the others.
For Orochimaru's picture viewing room picture the stereotypical brainwashing set up with the bright lights, the chair with restraints, the eyeballs taped open, and a continuous stream of Orochimaru, and Kabuto's family holiday snaps on a massive overhead projector.
Genma and Raidou's redshirt scientists have started to show their true colors, all will be revealed next chapter.