#so maybe jiraiya was the one who was best at doing hair and absolutely the most gentle on account of it actually being something he NEEDS

[olivegardenhunter]

I think nobody talks enough about how each of the sannin all have such glorious hair. all three of them have such long and luscious hair. i bet they traded hair routines and created their own hair formulas. I mean a jutsu like jiraiya's surely requires special shampoo. and just look at how shiny oro's hair is, it wouldn't be out of place in a pantene commercial. and tsunade, as vain as she is, most definitely has a whole ass routine too. hell, looking at hashirama's hair, I bet there's a secret senju haircare routine, passed down through generations. that's their real kekkei genkai. the legendary sannin, more like the legendary luscious locks.

[actuallysaiyan]

Jiraiya N-S-F-W/Smutty Alphabet

A = Aftercare (what they’re like after sex)

Jiraiya is very sweet with aftercare. He’ll clean you up gently, but sometimes this makes him even more horny when he sees his seed leaking from your cunt. It takes a lot of willpower for him not to take you once again. That being said, he’ll ask you if you’d like to shower, or maybe have something to eat to refuel so you can go a few more rounds before the night is over. Jiraiya is sweet, but he is very horny. 

B = Body part (their favorite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)

Jiraiya doesn’t really have a favorite part of his body...wait, scratch that. There is one part of his body that he really does think is his best asset. It’s his cock! It’s huge, veiny and makes women scream in pleasure. There’s nothing better than having a magnum cock.

On you, it’s definitely your tight little cunt or your tits! He can’t get enough of either of those, and he loves that no other man or woman can have access to them. He loves filling your pussy up with cum, and your tits are so soft and sweet, he loves to kiss them and lay his head on them.

C = Cum (anything to do with cum, basically)

Jiraiya loves cumming deep with you, and he enjoys fucking his cum deep inside you. He’ll pump load after load inside you, telling you what a good girl you are. You take his cock so fucking good, it makes him hard just thinking about it. He also enjoys cumming all over your face and tits, and he just drenches you in his seed.

With you, Jiraiya will make you cum until you’re literally crying for him to stop. You don’t have to worry about Jiraiya, he’ll take such good care of you. He needs to, because he adores you so much.

D = Dirty secret (pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

This man has no dirty secrets. He writes glorified smut for a living, so all of his fantasies are out in the open. They are open for display, and he doesn’t care who reads them. He enjoys how nasty he is, and he will let you know about any of his sexual fantasies.

E = Experience (how experienced are they? do they know what they’re doing?)

Jiraiya is very experienced. He knows all the ways to make a woman squirm and squeal in pleasure, and he’ll have you cumming in no time. He’s been with lots of women, and though he seems sleazy and perverted, that does generally help him discover all kinds of new techniques in bed.

F = Favorite position (this goes without saying)

This is a tough one, because Jiraiya actually loves almost all positions. He does enjoy doggy style for when you’re being a brat and he wants to dominate you and fuck you hard. Missionary and spooning is when he’s feeling more loving and wants to be near you as close as possible. The mating press is for when you awaken his breeding kink. Jiraiya also enjoys having his dick between your tits, and your mouth around his cock.

G = Goofy (are they more serious in the moment? are they humorous? etc.)

Jiraiya loves to have fun and be funny during sex a lot of the time. He’ll say some pretty perverted things about your body, but you are more than used to it by now. He enjoys saying dirty things, and he’ll degrade you a little if you let him. It makes him rock hard if he gets to enjoy your body and compliment you or call you his little cumslut. If the situation is more romantic, he’ll be very sweet and serious.

H = Hair (how well groomed are they? does the carpet match the drapes? etc.)

He is quite well groomed, but the hair he does have is white and wild. It’s fluffy and soft more so than coarse, but he enjoys trimming it and keeping it clean down there for you. He doesn’t want you to swallow any hairs, but you don’t give him a hard time if there is a bit of landscaping to be done.

I = Intimacy (how are they during the moment? the romantic aspect)

Jiraiya can be so romantic if you allow him. He’ll hold you close, kiss you sweetly and make you so wet. He’ll tell you how beautiful you are, and he’ll make sure you know how wanted you are. He enjoys the intimacy just as much as anyone else, despite his perverted nature. But, if he’s feeling particularly horny, he might be a little less romantic and a little more nasty. 

J = Jack off (masturbation headcanon)

It’s well known that Jiraiya likes to take care of business when he can’t be with a woman. There’s no exceptions there when he’s with you, and if you are gone for a long period of time, Jiraiya has some toys that can help him get over the edge. His mind is always filled with thoughts of you riding him as he fucks himself into the fleshlight and he’ll moan and groan as he cums hard.

K = Kink (one or more of their kinks)

Jiraiya literally enjoys so many kinks, it’d be easier to write down what he’s not super into. He loves having your consent for all of them, otherwise he won’t do them. Jiraiya adores you, so he is only willing to practice his kink if you are alright with it. His favorites might include BDSM, titty fucking, thigh riding, whipping, collaring, slight ageplay, face riding and face fucking...

L = Location (favorite places to do the do)

Jiraiya adores doing it at home. He likes to be able to fuck you in peace of his home, and he’ll be able to fuck you better and for longer if he knows no one will interrupt. That being said, the man is definitely not opposed to fucking you anywhere he can. He loves the thrill of getting caught, and it’s definitely never stopped him before. Catch him in the onsen, and you’re definitely going to get fucked if you’re the only two there.

M = Motivation (what turns them on, gets them going)

Honestly, it doesn’t take a whole lot to get Jiraiya going. He’s mostly always horny, but he is a good man. If you really want him to fuck you, just rub his thigh and bat your eyelashes at him. Then you lean in to whisper “fuck me, please, Jiraiya-sama.” in his ear and he is as good as yours. You don’t have to do much to get Jiraiya in the mood, and that’s honestly one of the best things about having Jiraiya as a lover.

N = No (something they wouldn’t do, turn offs)

Jiraiya will not do anything involving faeces or urine, and he’s not really into anything that’s really going to hurt you. He loves you, and he will do nothing to hurt you or make you feel uncomfortable. He’s willing to try almost anything with you, but he will always get consent first. 

O = Oral (preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc.)

Ohhhh boy, Jiraiya will lose his absolute mind if you kneel in front of him and deep throat him. He’ll tug on your hair and praise you, while fucking your pretty mouth. He loves thrusting into your mouth and watching you gag and drool all over his huge cock. It turns him on to see you this way.

On the flip side, Jiraiya adores going down on you. Just the smell of your aroused pussy sets him off. He’ll lap at your cunt for hours if you’d let him. He loves the feel of your thighs squeezing around his face, and if you tug on his hair, well he’ll be so happy for that as well.

P = Pace (are they fast and rough? slow and sensual? etc.)

That all depends on what kind of mood you are in. If you need him to be sensual and slow, you better believe that he’ll fuck you so nice and proper, and he’ll be so caring and loving, it’s very romantic.

If you need him to fuck you hard and get out some frustrations, he’ll dominate you and degrade you a little. You’ll be his little sex kitten that night, and he’ll spank you and grab your hips hard enough to bruise you. Whatever you need, Jiraiya can be that person. He’s very versatile.

Q = Quickie (their opinions on quickies, how often, etc.)

Oh ho ho! Jiraiya is a big fan of quickies. Any chance he can get to fuck, he’s not going to deny it. He loves quickies when you’re somewhere where you can both get caught fucking. He loves pinning you up against a wall and pumping into you, making you whimper and making your cunt clench around his huge cock.

R = Risk (are they game to experiment? do they take risks? etc.)

Jiraiya is a huge risk taker, and he’ll definitely tease you any chance he gets. If he feels like commenting on your body in front of people and making you blush, he’ll do it. If he feels like rubbing your wet little pussy while you’re in public somewhere, you better bet that he’s going to do it. He’s not going to stop himself, unless it’s going to get you hurt or killed, which is never the goal.

S = Stamina (how many rounds can they go for? how long do they last?)

For an old man, Jiraiya can last quite a long time. He does need quite a bit of time between rounds to recover, but he’s more than willing to finger you or eat your pussy to make up for it. If you feel like going for a shower or food in between rounds, this makes him very happy. He’s into refueling to fuck again.

T = Toys (do they own toys? do they use them? on a partner or themselves?)

Jiraiya has lots of toys. He’ll use some of them on you if you’d like, and he’ll use some on himself as well. He enjoys vibrators a lot, since they can give pleasure to the both of you. Lots of times he’ll get you to put on vibrating panties and he’ll take you shopping. If he can make you cum without you causing too much of a ruckus while you’re shopping, he’ll buy you whatever you like.

U = Unfair (how much they like to tease)

Jiraiya is a huge tease, and he loves to fluster you as much as he possibly can. He’ll slide his fingers up and down your wet folds, only to pull away when you think he’s going to penetrate you. He loves using his cockhead to tease you, whether it be around your lips or around your pussy, it’s one of his favorite things to do. He enjoys watching you squirm and wiggle to get the pleasure you so hope to receive. He’ll call you desperate and a cumslut, but you love when he’s like this with you.

V = Volume (how loud they are, what sounds they make, etc.)

Jiraiya is very loud. He grunts, groans and moans. He’s not afraid to make sounds to let you know he’s enjoying himself. He also loves to talk dirty, and he’ll call you all kinds of pet names while you’re riding his thick cock. It feels so good, so he needs to let you know.

W = Wild card (a random headcanon for the character)

Jiraiya is a huge fan of titty fucking. He loves seeing his cock between your tits, and he’s a fan of every size and shape of titties. He’s not picky when it comes to that, but he loves the feeling of you squeezing your breasts around his thick and meaty cock, and he’ll cum so fast if you lick the head while he fucks your tits.

X = X-ray (let’s see what’s going on under those clothes)

Jiraiya has a HUGE cock. It’s a good 10 inches, very very girthy, and it’s got a lot of nice veins that rub nicely on your walls. Despite having a huge cock, he does not cum quickly. He’s literally been so gifted by the gods or chance to have such a wonderful appendage. Other than that, he’s beefy, huge, muscly and so well toned, you’re surprised that he is actually that much older than you first perceived.

Y = Yearning (how high is their sex drive?)

Jiraiya literally has the sex drive of a teenage boy discovering Playboy for the first time. He always wants to fuck, and you can literally get him rock hard in seconds if you play your cards right. He’s always willing to fuck if the time is right and you’re willing to as well.

Z = Zzz (how quickly they fall asleep afterwards)

Jiraiya enjoys making sure you’re well and comfortable before he spoons you and falls asleep decently quickly. He needs the reassurance that you’re all taken care of before he can even shut his eyes.

[mixelation]

This is the same icha icha anon, and the idea that Jiraiya's best female character is Orochimaru (who is, actually, wearing a woman's body underneath the disguise of himself at the time of the chuunin exam invasion) is absolutely hilarious to me. Does Orochimaru read Icha Icha? Does he KNOW? I bet Tsunade doesn't read icha icha unless she HAS to for her job, but Orochimaru is definitely curious enough to do so on his own initiative... but does he?

reference post (and also here's a related post)

I AM GLAD YOU ARE INTERESTED IN MY INTENSE AND USELESS HEADCANONS, ANON. I have debated this a bit, mostly because this headcanon is canon to Plasticity and potentially also pivotal to the plot of Plasticity? But right now I'm leaning towards:

Tsunade has read like, part of one Icha Icha book, after a combination of nagging from Jiraiya, boredom, and mild curiosity that's a result of both her interest in Jiraiya as someone she grew up with and Hatake Kakashi's weird obsession. She read enough to realize the sheer depth of how bad Jiraiya is projecting his personal issues into the book (and also the kinky parts aren't even that good in her opinion). It gave her secondhand embarrassment for Jiraiya and she had to stop reading and refuses to pick up another book by him again. Jiraiya is still alive so I'm going to say she hasn't actually read any sex scenes involving her own insert character, although she knows they must happen.

I'm sure Orochimaru physically cannot restrain himself from reading whatever shit Jiraiya is writing. Orochimaru probably sometimes even intercepts Jiraiya's written correspondences just to keep tabs on him (and, like, annoy him). Of course he's written Icha Icha. He's thrilled that he and Tsunade are main characters. He LOVES that Jiraiya has written all of his personal hang-ups and insecurities for the world to see. It's great entertainment. He is both smug and flattered that Jiraiya has a psychosexual obsession with him. The only thing holding him back from teasing Jiraiya about it to his face is that he's about 70% sure Jiraiya has no idea he's doing this and he doesn't want him to stop. Instead he sometimes writes Jiraiya anonymous letters requesting the Orochimaru character do certain things, or disappointment in the lack of weird kink in a certain scene. Jiraiya has recognized at least a few of these "anonymous" fan letters as being from Orochimaru and has no idea what to make of that.

What I go back and forth about the most is the degree to which Jiraiya realizes he's written his teammates into his books. Like I'm sure he at least realizes that the Tsunade-insert is similar to Tsunade in a lot of ways, possibly some of them intentional because the nature of Jiraiya's "research" makes me think he likes to base characters on real women. Like I can see him being like, "Well, Tsunade is SUPER hot and also an awesome kunoichi, I gotta use her sexiest features for my main female character!" and then also intentionally not giving that character Tsuande's tragic backstory because even though it would make good fiction, he doesn't to be cruel to her. HOWEVER, I'm leaning towards the Orochimaru character being completely unintentional/subconscious on Jiraiya's part. He made main girl #1 (who I call Junko in my brain) to be busty, blonde, loud and blunt.... so he had to make main girl #2 (who I call Satsuki in my brain) dark-haired and quiet and reserved and also maybe horribly manipulation and her silky hair is full of secrets and she's a backstabbing bitch, but the main male character is still in love with her anyway and--

--and Tsunade reads that and is like Y I K E S. Satsuki is humanized and three-dimensional enough that only people who know both Orochimaru and Jiriya really well would ever connect the dots (bc Orochimaru is a scary one-dimensional monster, duh). So Kakashi might not ever realize ON HIS OWN but if someone pointed it out..... well. He'd be upset. :(

Also Hiruzen definitely reads and enjoys Icha Icha and is in as much denial about Jiraiya's obsession with Orochimaru as he is about the Uchiha Massacre.

[peepingtoad]

@oc-lootcrate cont. {x}

Ari had never allowed himself to drink as much as he had tonight, and he was sure that he’d most certainly regret it in the morning. He never had been a lightweight or anything, but he does remember drinking without care when he was a bit younger and experiencing the worst hangover in his life that made him think twice about drinking without considering the consequences. To be honest, he thinks the only reason he had allowed himself to go so far was that it was Jiraiya with him. Maybe he wasn’t the best influence on him, but as Ari took another shot and grimaced at the slight burn in his throat he certainly didn’t mind.

He couldn’t help but look at Jiraiya out of the corner of his eye, noting that the sannin certainly looked much more relaxed and accustomed to a night on the town, sipping his sake from his ochoko and looking at Ari in amusement with a brow raised, looking almost as if he were biting back some witty comment on Ari’s appearance. 

A part of him wished he would, though.

Ari hesitated to order another drink, already feeling like he was floating and that his mind was jumbled, though that voice in the back of his head was telling him that he’d already gone far enough so why not go even further? With that, he gave the bartender another wave to indicate that he was willing to keep going only to hear Jiraiya’s amused chuckle at his side.

❝What’s so funny?❞ Ari couldn’t help but get a little red in the face as he watched his drink be poured, using it as a distraction to force himself not to look at Jiraiya. He eventually caved, of course, looking over just in time for Jiraiya to wave the thought away with that damn grin on his face. Why did he have to smile like that? 

❝I hate it when you do that!❞ All thoughts were out the window at this point, almost as if Ari was completely unaware that he was in a public area. Thankfully for him though, the bar was pretty full this night meaning that anything he said was most likely going to be ignored by anyone other than Jiraiya and the bartender who had focused his attention on another pair at the other end of the bar. ❝While you wave things off with that damn smile of yours like there’s nothing wrong, I get to sit here and think about it for the rest of the night!❞

The shot glass is once again in Ari’s hand as he tips his head back and swallows it all in one go, slamming it down on the table but thankfully not hard enough to shatter the thing. One arm rests against the surface of the bar while the other runs through his own hair, pulling the stray strands away from his face and tucking them behind his ear. 

❝God, sometimes I wish you’d just take me into the bathroom and fuck me until I can’t walk, but instead, I just sit here like... like an idiot!❞ Ari’s not even sure if he’s angry anymore, but he does know that his face is hot when he looks over at the sage again, debating whether or not he needs another drink, especially after a confession like that.

Nothing, absolutely nothing out of sorts had ever happened between them, and yet here Jiraiya was having convinced Ari to come out yet again, with his arm draped ever so casually over the backrest of Ari’s stool, while feeling very much afflicted by an acute case of déjà vu. Of course, if there was a certain been-there-before quality to the picture they currently painted, it was obviously completely and utterly imagined. After all, this was only the second time they’d decided to come to this particular bar, having made a habit of visiting the many other places Konoha had to offer at the behest of the busy Jōnin’s schedule.

One thing certainly stood out as new here though—that being that Ari had drunk much, much more than the sage had ever seen him drink before, and with no sign of stopping just yet either. The change in the man this seemed to bring about… well. 

It was pretty entertaining, to say the least. 

Seemed that alcohol had a way of revealing some of his rougher edges, which might have been just plain attractive if he wasn’t such a soft bundle of nerves the rest of the time.

So of course, that contrast made it just a little more funny than sexy, a fact that Jiraiya made very little effort to hide. Even less so when Ari decided to question him on it (and rather irritably at that), because it was all too satisfying to keep playing it smooth compared to… well, that. The fact the word ‘hate’ had come out of that mouth at all was telling of how far gone the man was getting, and it almost had the sage thinking he should quit enabling him. Almost.

But something he said plucked a chord of curiosity in him, which may have shown in the brief spark of his eyes, if Ari happened to be of the right mind to catch it. It was the part about thinking about it for the rest of the night, and Jiraiya couldn’t help but wonder exactly what sort of thoughts his amusement had provoked in the past, and when.

“Psh! I’ve got no idea what yer talkin’ about~” he said with a teasing lilt, watching as yet another shot was downed in one. He himself wasn’t exactly nursing them, having paced out the drinks just enough to keep from straying into ‘smashed’ territory, but it was undeniable that everything was starting to become tinged with that familiar hazy filter. All very relaxed, in contrast to the other.

... That is, until he said something that truly and genuinely surprised Jiraiya to his core, to which he drew back his head with a definite stiffness of the shoulders and neck, blinking repeatedly while he just… processed that. It took only a second for it to sink in, though, before he recognised the familiar rush of warmth throughout his body for what it was; a luxurious sensation that soon had his eyes darkening to a more sultry charcoal as his muscles relaxed, his body sinking forward to share a more intimate space with that embarrassed, agitated face now staring right at him.

“Really now, Ari…” he purred the name, a hint of canine showing through the smirk that teased the corner of his mouth as he canted his head coyly, leaning close enough that the man might feel his booze-sweetened breath on his skin. “We haven’t even kissed yet, and you’re thinkin’ about stuff like that?”

With no thought of sparing the man any mortification, he tutted softly while offering the barest shake of his head in pseudo-disappointment.

“Y’know, nothing’s ever stopping you from not sittin’ there like an idiot.” Nothing... except on those occasions where a certain someone makes a hasty escape after an awkward incident. That may well be a cause from some idiotic sitting… hypothetically. “I’m right here, Ari. There’s no invisible wall in the way or anything.”

Potential was a heavy and stifling presence between the two men, going largely unspoken, and very much danced around. And although Jiraiya recognised that fully and was playing it somehow rather cool, he wasn’t about to let anything happen right here and now. Not with so many people around, and not now that the reason for that déjà vu was being slowly acknowledged as reality (inwardly, granted, but at the same time finally).

“Aaaaanyway,” he said breezily, reverting to his usual, playfully melodic tone as he flashed a playful wink-and-grin at Ari. “M’goin’ to the bathroom!”

There was a definite, loaded gravity to those words despite his airiness as he pushed himself from his seat, and the hand curled around the back of Ari’s seat lingered for just a moment before sliding away with a feather-light brush of fingertips over his back.

The bathroom was empty, aside from him. 

Propping the window open was a two-by-four—or at least, that’s what it looked like at a glance, until closer inspection revealed it was in fact a red lacquered geta sandal that some moron had no doubt left there by 'accident’. But if all was right this time, there shouldn’t even be time to consider making a hasty escape. He was right here, like he’d said. All Ari had to do was not sit.

[koorinohebi]

I am curious: how would you describe Kiomi's relationship with Jiraiya? And with Koji Kashin? What you've shared about them so far seems very interesting and I must know more!

Thank you for dropping by and asking about my life blood for Kiomi! xD

Kiomi's relationship with Jiraiya is by far one of my most favorite things (it ties with Sarutobi Arai, another OC whom she formed a really strong bond with over the years, to the point where they are like sisters).

A little tidbit before I begin; to be perfectly honest, with the amount of stuff I dish out that's Jiraiya related, one couldn't have guessed that he was one of the characters that I absolutely HATED back in the day. Whatever admiration I have for Jiraiya mostly stemmed from Kiomi. 

Now, where do I start...

JIRAIYA

I have 3 verses for Kiomi's interactions with Jiraiya. One follows the anime/manga, one is my main verse for her which follows my RP with the Jiraiya she came to know as her sensei, and then one verse with which I've started a long long time ago (and still ongoing with @ambitiousparagon​). Since the most fleshed out is her main verse, I'll be talking about that. 

Truthfully, Kiomi's relationship with Jiraiya is supposed to border on platonic going to enemies. However, fate has a funny way of letting the stars align.

The initial plot for this was Kiomi's desperation to prove herself useful to Orochimaru that she agreed to not only get intel on Konoha, but also take down one of the 2 remaining Sannins. A suicide mission, I know. Since Tsunade had value to Orochimaru as a healer, and someone whom he believed he could still EVENTUALLY sway to his side, her lord instead sent her after the most rumbunctios one of them all. He wasn't going to tell her how to do it. Since she’s so eager to prove herself, he allowed her to plan everything. Which she did, starting with pretending to be a defector from Otogakure. Kiomi had plotted with a few of the Otonins to help her out, set an attack, do as much damage as she could while she escaped to Konoha with pretty valid info (about Sasuke, and maybe a few plans here and there) to try and earn their trust. And while she was accepted, Konoha wasn't so stupid as to simply believe a previous underling of Orochimaru. SO. In order to prevent her from doing any sort of damage, and at the same time to keep her under surveillance, Tsunade had assigned Kiomi as a "student" to Jiraiya who had just returned from one of his reconnaissance missions. And with Jiraiya being a person who doesn't stay long in the village, it seemed like a good course of action to take, one which also worked to Kiomi's advantage because it brought her closer to her goal.

Their student-teacher setup starts out very platonic. Kiomi has always been quite the curious kid. She does her best to learn whatever it was that she could. With her arrangement of being a student, it allowed her to work closely with Jiraiya who, well...being Jiraiya, mostly had his nose stuck in a hot spring somewhere. This made her wonder if this was some kind of weakness that she could exploit when the time was right so she kept a close watch. She'd been warned about his lecherous ways, but since she was a teenage kid who didnt really see herself much of anything, she could care less about his reputation. In fact, there are times when she would wonder if his so called "research" was worth all the broken ribs and bones. Often times she would also use Jiraiya’s love for women and sake as motivation to head to a new village for whatever work they need to do.

Eventually though, the more they traveled the more they kept ending up in trouble's very welcoming arms. And these were the moments when a bond of trust formed between the two. Kiomi had been very open about her principle of not caring about other people's live. Who died and who didn't. After all, she was groomed to be a tool. Her mentor, however, was not having any of that nonsense. Jiraiya instills in her repeatedly the value of human life. True enough that taking one was easy, but preserving it along with learning how to understand one another despite all the differences was the goal of being a shinobi. He also pretty much treats her like an actual human being rather than just someone expendable, which sparked Kiomi's curiosity all the more. Because while Orochimaru had been kind (manipulative), Jiraiya was a very warm individual who didnt seem like his kindness had any strings attached. He also allows her to just bloom into her own person, encouraging her to rediscover herself as more than just a Shinobi, but as a living breathing human being. More than being a mentor on jutsus and other skills, what endeared Jiraiya to Kiomi was how much values and lessons about life she learned from him. To the point where she could no longer push through with her mission of assassinating him, and instead permanently defecting to Konoha. It also helps that Jiraiya hinted that he knew about her supposed betrayal. Where one would have normally sentenced her to execution because she was the enemy, the Toad Sage believed in her, and it was that benevolence that ultimately defeated her.

So it went from platonic to an eventual slow burn of becoming a ship. Which was all accidental, because apparently, due to all the trouble they got into, and due to always having each other's back, the sage developed his own brand of protectiveness over the girl and vice versa. That ended with him being half in denial and half in acceptance of what he was feeling, despite knowing it was probably wrong. He doesn't act upon it though as their bond as Master and Student was what was most important. At the same time, Kiomi who is as dense as a rock had no idea about what exactly it is that she feels. But when she realizes what it is, she tries to avoid it at all cost, as being Master and Student was also more important to her. Every once in a while though, a little bit of their feelings slip through. Mostly when one of them is half dead. (And they get into so much trouble that at the end of a specific arc, one of them is either REALLY injured, or near death, and in one occasion actually died.) There are also times when it just slips on its own from either side, due to careless words, or perhaps impulsive actions that creates a bit of awkward situations.

Here is an example of when Kiomi gives in a little to her own feelings.

===

What am I doing?

She couldn't sleep. She ended up shifting for a while there, turning to look up at the stars that Jiraiya had been so keen on seeing. Everything was pitch black which made her, for a moment, appreciate the little specs of light that seemed to glisten in the vast distance of space. Pretty. However, beautiful as they may, they gave her no comfort. The moon that had so graciously lent them its light was now hiding behind the midnight clouds, shying away from her sight. I can't sleep. At this rate, there would be no rest for her for the entire night.

That was when she felt just a slight shift beside her. Curiously, she took her first glance of him after that short period of silence. A soft sigh passed through her lips. At least, one of them was getting some sleep after a long day of training and misunderstandings. Still, from the looks of how his face was contorting, his slumber didn't seem all too pleasant. I'll check just a little.

And so, she sat up, silently and cautiously moving close enough so that she ever so slightly hovered over him. He didn't look like he was having a good time at all. See, this is why bed was the better choice. The mental note was made. Maybe she should wake him up, just in case he was having a nightmare. In that moment wherein she wanted to call for him, no words came out. Instead, a free hand moved on its own in an effort to touch his face. But they stopped. Just inches away from his cheek. Kiomi remembered the way that he had caressed her own (when he seemed under a delusional trance), but she had no courage to do the same. Even when her mouth moved to speak, only soundless words came out. And even those, she couldn't even finish. Again, she bit her lip inwardly. She didn't have the right to say them. After all, the expression on his face from earlier...the one that enthralled her to the point where she couldn't think straight, wasn't even meant for her.

So instead, her hands retreated to a few strands of hair that was long enough for her to take. Gently, just pressed her lips against them before finally relenting, retreating back to her own spot. And apparently just in time, since a few moments after that, she felt him move. Heard him speak. She had to hold her breath for a moment. Again, pretend to sleep. Closed her eyes.

What...am I doing?

===

In this main verse (where Jiraiya survives through the 4th Shinobi War), we've gotten to a point where they've admitted to what they feel (above is a prelude to said revelation), BUT! More than the awkward lovers they end up as, what's most important first and foremost is their relationship as teacher and student. It’s always the main element, everything else is basically secondary. Their relationship whether it's platonic or romantic, has always been one of learning.

And as proof to that, here is a scenario wherein Kiomi and Jiraiya were having a small lecture on the workings of the heart-- affections vs. unconditional love. She, out of curiosity, blurted out the question, "Isn't it frustrating if you can't touch the person that you love...?". To which the answer came as such:

===

"Hold that thought." He replied as she spoke the last of her words, wanting to take the time to address the prior question which was awkwardly blurted out on her behalf earlier. "It's very frustrating, yes, but...if you can't touch a person's heart with sincere feelings first, then no amount of hugs, kisses, or anything else can fill the void inside of you. There were many things that kept the woman that I loved and I apart. War. Misunderstanding. My own personal faults, but I find that I would've given anything within reason, even not being allowed to touch her in ways that would've held significant meaning for us both, just to be accepted as someone that she loved and was genuinely in love with."

Indeed, he had harbored those feelings for someone else. The unrequited love of the century, in fact, but what was worse in his mind was to succumb to the despair of not being accepted, was giving up on the prospect of being loved or in love at all. This was the man who believed that a ninja's worth was measured in his determination not to give up on their mission. So come what may, this brief skirmish of feelings with Kiomi had strengthened his resolve to maintain that belief system all the more no matter what the outcome between them would be.

"The better question is, why are you alright with hiding so much from yourself?" A contrast sharper than the edge of the most menacing blade, the internal conflict that she was experiencing was the true focus of his next words. "In other words, you won't get anywhere in life if all you do is hide from what you feel for anything." There were no exceptions going to be made, because this was suddenly about far more than mere affection or literary prowess. It was the central issue of Kiomi's very being which needed addressing in its own due time. Jiraiya felt that in the moment, it was his duty to plant the seeds which might otherwise allow her to consider the best options about how to confront and move past so daunting a thing. And there, without ever needing to say a word, his argument was given it's apex example. It didn't matter what realizing the truth of that matter cost if she could manage to pull it off. No price would be too high to pay, even their sacred bond, if it meant that she could grow past the limitation of inhibition which had placed a virtual strangle hold on her heart and mind.

===

Obviously talking about Tsunade in the first part. She feels an irrational bout of jealousy over a person who didn't even choose him, and feels her own emotions to be ugly. It's definitely a different type of envy compared to when she's jealous of Sasuke being Orochimaru's choice for a vessel.

And Jiraiya here made a really good point. The more she hides from what she feels, the more she doesn't get anywhere, which is why in verses where he is dead, Kiomi is left with an overwhelming regret of never having the chance, let alone courage to admit to her feelings and confess. Because she knows that he loves Tsunade, she is prepared for any sort of rejection (and knows that it'll even probably legitimately make her cry all the tears she can cry). If she had just allowed herself that little bit of honesty, then she probably wouldn't be stuck in the mud, unable to move forward in the years to come.

Ultimately though, Jiraiya's happiness is what's important to her. Which is why after the war, Kiomi works closely with both Otogakure and Konoha in order to protect the place and people that her mentor loved and died fighting for.

At the end of it all, I believe that for these three verses, the finality of her relationship with him is one of absolute trust and loyalty. Whether or not her feelings are reciprocated, she has already accepted the fact that Jiraiya ignites a flame within her, not necessarily one brought about by romance, but in the trust that he puts in her. He never was the type to give answers directly. It wasnt a mind game, but Jiraiya's brand of teaching encourages a belief in one's self to find an answer that the student can believe in, something in which he too comes to have faith in.

Kashin Koji’s route comes in a separate post. 

[chemicalmagecraft]

I Would Totally Kick Jiraiya’s Butt Chapter 14

Chorono: I really, really like the way you think, but there's kind of only one Ketsuryugan and a whole complicated mess of the timeline around that, so unfortunately Kouki will not be able to get it any time soon, if at all.

That one guest: Yeah I totally get where you're coming from, and that's a bit of a worry of mine too. Luckily I was already going to do something that's a solution for that problem: nobody'll think Kouki's particularly broken if everyone's broken! Unfortunately I won't be able to show that much of that in this and probably the next few chapters, but let's just say that there will be so many irons in tons of fires by the time of the Uchiha massacre. ;P

kukukuku~

Hinata's palm struck me in the jaw, causing me to grunt. "Kick his ass, Hina-chan!" Kurama cheered from the sidelines. It was nice seeing how well those two were getting along, even if it meant him encouraging her to beat me up. The two of them actually helped each other a lot. Hinata warmed Kurama up to humankind and got him to be slightly less angry, while Kurama made sure to rub some of his "I'm better than you lousy humans" pride off on her, causing her to be a bit more confident. Plus he liked imparting little bits of arcane knowledge upon his favorite human, meaning...

I just barely noticed with my chakra sense that Hinata was leaking a small amount of chakra out of her fingertips, so I jumped back. Unfortunately, I'd determined with my eyes that expressing too much interest in obtaining the Byakugan with my chakra assimilation would only cause most of the clan to grow wary of me, so I didn't have the ability to actually see her jutsu, but at least I knew to stay away. I made a few seals, but had to stop when the barely-there chakra rushed me. Even though I moved my arms the chakra swerved faster than I thought it would, causing my left arm to go completely numb. "Ow," I said despite the fact that the problem was that I couldn't feel any pain in my arm. "You're getting faster with that, aren't you?"

"Yeah," Hina-chan said. "Kurama-chan helped me figure it out."

I tried to move my arm, but couldn't. Eight Trigrams Heavenly Will as it was called by most of the family, or much less pretentiously Tenketsu Puppetry Jutsu by Hinata, was a jutsu Hinata invented by combining the basics of Jūken that she was learning with the chakra threads I'd showed her how to make and then some sort of advice from Kurama. In addition to acting like a ranged, though technically much less potent, version of Jūken, the threads stayed inside the tenketsu of the victim meaning that not only was any recovery from the attack blocked until they were removed but she could also, as her name for it suggested, puppeteer my arm. "Impressive, sis, but you know that that doesn't exactly work on me." I raised my right pointer finger, causing a single link of yellow chain to form on it. With a bit of concentration, I changed the yellow Adamantine Sealing Chain to a purple permutation, Adamantine Destruction Chain. I swiped at roughly where I felt the chakra threads with it, managing to snap all of them and suck the foreign chakra from my body.

I'd figured out that my assimilation could also adapt powers that were compatible enough together. I was already working under the assumption that I couldn't just make new elements by combining people's affinities because that would be broken, but I did alchemize Ai's Adamantine Sealing Chain together with the Kikaichū's Parasitic Destruction to make chains that could drain chakra as well as disrupt it for some extra chakra cost. Plus, the disruption and absorption effects synergized, enhancing each other's performance. And there was also the || combination, Parasitic Sealing, which allowed me to cover my body in an aura that disrupts and absorbs chakra. But I digress. I pointed the chain link at Hinata, shooting an entire chain at her. The general consensus of anyone who I used my special chains on was that if I got a grab in the fight was over. Sure, I could still only have more than a few links out for a few seconds without any boost, but between the draining and the throw I could easily pull off with with the chains I only needed one good grab to wear down even adults. At least enough to jump in with a few cheap hits to finish them off. Hinata obviously knew this by now, so she ducked under my chain, then rolled out of the way when I tried to pin her to the ground. I was expecting her to do that, though, and had already prepped my next jutsu. Metal marbles, designed so I could hurt but not kill with my magnet release, scored hits on her side. I charged, and she blocked my foot with her hand. I winced, realizing my mistake when my leg turned numb from the near-instantaneous point-blank Heavenly Will. I used my core-based flight to try to kick her with my other foot, but she got it before I could.

"Full body takeover, eh?" I asked as the rest of my body below my neck was wrested from my control. Really, having a relatively non-draining jutsu that might as well be an automatic win to anyone in melee distance is even more broken than I am...

"Sorry, but can I practice this for a bit?"

I tried to shrug, but remembered the futility. "Go ahead. I still have control over my sage cores, so I can catch myself if you slip up." Hinata spent the rest of the sparring session finding stupid dances to make me do, egged on by Kurama. I did get her to work on her proxy chakra control a bit, though. She could almost make me do Jūken by the end.

kukukuku~

Tenten said something, probably about how much it stank that we had to go to school, as we walked ourselves to school. Well, they walked and I floated because I actually may or may not have a bit of trouble matching other people's walking paces, especially if I'm not paying too much attention. I don't know what she was saying, though. I was thinking. I mumbled something in response and pulled out my sealing notebook and note-taking pencil, which I used to write down the formula I thought of. I tuned out their conversation as I sketched the complex seal down as best I could. "You messed up a little there," Tenten said as I was finishing off the last strokes.

"Hm?" I asked.

She pointed to one of the runes and oh my that was very wrong. "I'm not sure, but I think it'll just tear a hole in the fabric of space if you don't fix that stabilizing rune." I thanked her and hurriedly fixed it.

"I feel like maybe you should not write down a seal that could potentially tear a hole in the fabric of space itself until you're absolutely sure it won't do that?" Neji said with more than a little concern.

To be honest, I didn't blame him, but... "Graphite's pretty much the worst for making seals," I explained, "which means that it's really good for practicing making seals because it's almost impossible to activate it without noticing."

"Well why didn't you have me use a pencil when you were trying to teach me seals, then?"

Finished, I stowed the notebook. "Okay in my defense I wasn't expecting you to screw up the easiest seal in the book when given detailed instructions, much less screwed up enough to accidentally make an incredibly simplified explosive seal. And with the last seal I had you do, I think we both know that you should always assume that there will be an explosion when making a paper bomb." I tried to teach Neji fuinjutsu once. Turns out he's literally the worst at it. He somehow managed to turn a basic light seal into a thankfully tiny bomb with only a big enough blast radius to burn itself off of whatever it's written on, which apparently was a theme with him. No matter what, he would always make bombs out of whatever seal I gave him. And then, when I tried to have him purposefully make a bomb, hoping that maybe he was just some sort of bomb savant, he somehow managed to make a seal tag that teleported itself and whatever it was touching to a random place within a fifty meter radius. Which, okay, free spacetime ninjutsu, but how? "I'm still scratching my head on how you managed to make a short-range teleport out of a bomb. Speaking of, what's your mom make of it, Tenten?"

"She's still on that high from the wedding, so she's been more concentrated with being all lovey-dovey with Mommy than looking over the seal, but she did say to never let Neji near a seal again when I told her it was supposed to be a paper bomb."

"It wasn't really that bad, was it?" Neji asked.

Tenten laughed and shook her head. "Not at all, Neji..."

"...It's much worse," I finished her sentence with a slight grin. We high-fived. "When I looked at the seal you were making with my eyes, I saw a lot of different possibilities. Random teleportation was one of the better ones. You don't want to know what the worse ones were."

"Right." He didn't believe me. To be fair, I did tend to mess with him... And was messing with him. "So what's the seal you were working on supposed to do? I'm assuming it's somehow related to spacetime."

"Yeah, normally when people screw up seals that have nothing to do with spacetime, the result doesn't do anything to the fabric of reality," Tenten said, elbowing Neji.

"Shut it."

I shrugged. "You're right, though. It was most certainly a spacetime seal."

"Yeah, it looked a bit like an object summoning seal, but a little different," Tenten said. "Was it meant to swap objects between two paired seals?"

"Close. My hope is that it'll form a portal between two locations when chakra's input on both ends, and that it's compatible with demon sage chakra. It's still a little rough around the edges, though."

"Let me guess, secret base," Tenten said.

I brushed my hand through my hair. I was combing it less now, so it was a bit curlier and fluffier. "Obviously. In fact, I have an agent working on finding the location right now. Haven't found anything good yet, though."

"How do you have an agent?" Neji asked me.

"Magic." I noticed a certain building and pointed at it. "Hey, isn't that the school? That looks like a school."

"Yup, that's the school," Tenten said. "Mommy took me here a lot. Mama's job is a little less kid-friendly, plus the teachers looked after me when I didn't want to sit through Mommy's classes."

"Oh right," I said. "Your mom's a teacher."

"Yeah, I said that earlier, weren't you paying attention?"

Something about that sentence felt a little doomy, though I couldn't tell why. "No, I was thinking about how to breach through spacetime to reach another location without accidentally summoning Mega Neo Beqthulhuzillaon, Destroyer of Souls and Eater of Worlds."

"Is that an actual concern?" Neji asked. "Are you messing with us or could you have actually summoned some sort of eldritch horror monster?"

I smirked. "You should know the answer to that question by now. I'm assuming you know the way, Tenten?"

"Duh."

kukukuku~

I tried very hard not to groan. "My name is Uzumaki Tenko," our teacher for the next few years said, writing it on the chalkboard. God I hate chalkboards. If I were Hokage I'd make chalkboards illegal. "I look forward to teaching you." I slumped in my seat. It's not that I didn't like her. Tenko was really nice. No, the problem was that she knew I was a literal genius relative to my age level, and with that comes... expectations... Before, my plan was to just rest on my near-complete high school-level education to put the bare minimum amount of work into the actual academic parts of ninja school, which considering what grades I got with how little effort I put into school before would've made me best in class or thereabouts already. But Tenko already saw me put actual effort into something, meaning she might have been able to tell when I didn't put in the work. So if I didn't want to hear about it from her and Tenten both I'd have to at least half-ass it. Ugh...

I sound like Shikamaru, don't I?

"Didn't I tell you she was going to be our teacher earlier?" Tenten muttered to me. I guess that was what I missed... "And why are you so annoyed Mommy's your teacher?"

"Because she'll actually care if I don't put any effort into my work," I whispered back.

"How terrible," Neji snarked. I flicked him with natural energy. Using natural energy without sage mode may have been a lot weaker, but I could at least flick someone sitting right next to me hard enough to feel. He flicked me back, though. My Neji may have been completely seal-illiterate, but he was just as much of a ninjutsu genius as in canon, and figured out how to feel and manipulate natural energy just by watching me do it, though he hadn't quite managed sage mode yet. We proceeded to engage in invisible and incredibly petty warfare that Tenko would probably have stopped if she were a sensor. Luckily, Tenten was too amused to turn us in. She almost gave us away with her giggling, though.

"Now, why don't you introduce yourselves?" I'm not saying that I completely tuned everyone's introductions out, but I am saying that the only names that I retained aside from Hyūga Neji, Uzumaki Tenten, and Rock Lee was someone whose family name started with something in the ka line and whose given name was Kaede. Kaede is a pretty awesome name. Why couldn't I have been a Kaede?

"Hello. My name is Hyūga Kouki," I said when it was my turn. "The reason why I don't look like Neji despite us having the same family name is because he's adopted."

"What!?" Neji spluttered. "No! You're the adopted one!"

"It's nice to meet you," I halfheartedly finished, pretending Neji said nothing. He flicked me for my troubles when I sat down. I flicked back, and as if someone assassinated a duke or something, Flick War II began.

kukukuku~

"Just remember that these are friendly matches," Tenko said when we were all sitting on the ground by the sparring ring. "If I feel like someone is being hurt too badly, I'll stop it there. And once more, it's taijutsu only."

"Why'd you look at me when you said that?" I asked. Her glare turned a little more accusatory. I shrugged. "I wasn't gonna do it anyway..."

"Right," she said, turning away from me. "You may now look at the slips of paper I gave you. Who has one?" Tenten and a boy I should probably have known the name of raised their hands. "You two are first. And Tenten, try not to rough him up too badly, okay, sweetie?"

The unnamed kid grinned maliciously. "I hope teach doesn't get too angry after I beat up her precious daughter." Neji and I exchanged a look and snickered. Right, like that kid stood a chance. When they were told to start, the kid jumped in for a punch. Tenten dodged easily and shoved him to the side. He stumbled and fell.

"Get him with your Uzumaki strength, Tenten," I cheered dully.

She scowled at me. "For the last time!" Tenten shouted, then picked up the nearest object. Namely the unnamed kid. "I'm not!" She hoisted her hapless victim above her head. "Freakishly strong!" She threw Hapless Victim at me. Without even blinking, I deployed the demon sage cores hanging from my earlobes. One formed a springy barrier in front of me that safely absorbed the impact of the collision without too much damage to Hapless, while the other formed a barrier under him to cushion his fall.

"I have no idea why I would think that," I said as I recalled my cores. "Truly, your ability to lift over your body weight in small child despite being yourself a small child is totally unremarkable." She blushed and growled at me.

"Kouki, please stop antagonizing Tenten," Tenko said. "The match is over, Tenten wins."

"How did you do that?" another small child I probably should've known the name of asked me.

"Magic."

Hapless (I was now trying to commit his face and chakra signature to memory so I could keep calling him that) groaned and sat up. "I thought we weren't allowed to use jutsu!" he complained.

"You weren't," I said. "The Uzumaki bloodline manifests itself passively in the form of enhanced vitality and strength, something that Tenten definitely has even if she doesn't quite have the traditional looks."

"HEY!"

"So really, you didn't stand a chance." Hapless stomped off to his seat and the rounds began again. After a few, it was my turn, as well as, "coincidentally" enough, a young Rock Lee.

"Remember, no jutsu," Tenko reminded me.

"Yeah, yeah," I said, then got into my fighting stan- "Ah, crud," I muttered. I had not been doing regular old sparring enough. I couldn't even remember the last time I'd actually practiced fighting someone without ninjutsu or genjutsu.

"Start."

I dodged a really shoddy punch. To be honest, it was pretty weird seeing Lee suck at taijutsu. I leaned away from another punch, then caught his arm. "Stop," I commanded. I uncurled his fist, removed his thumb from his palm, and then forced his hand into a proper fist. "It's a common mistake," I assured him. "If you punch someone with your fingers around your thumb, you'll probably break it. Oh, and hit me with those two big knuckles, not the entire fist." When I released him, he cautiously punched me. "Good," I said after catching his hand with mine. "However, I'm afraid that now I have to..." I twisted around and slung his arm over my shoulder in an attempt to suplex him or something. "Finish you!" Key word being attempt... I may or may not have only lifted him onto my back...

"I don't think you did what you were attempting to do..." he said.

"Stupid physics. I always hated that subject..." I shrugged and just dropped backwards in what I hoped looked like a planned move. I really needed to work on my taijutsu.

"Okay, that was not at all what I was expecting..." Tenko sighed. "Kouki wins, I guess..."

"You okay?" I asked as I got off Lee.

He sighed. "I am fine..."

The third noteworthy match was Neji versus a hotblooded Yamanaka girl with orange hair like that one Fū guy and red eyes. While Neji was technically a pseudo jinchuriki by now from my experiments, his powers were weird and technically even his "passive" strength would be considered an active jutsu, especially because he could turn it off. The Yamanaka, on the other hand, was surprisingly strong for a Yamanaka. Maybe she was part Uzumaki? She did have red hair. At any rate, while Neji was almost overpowered at one point, he beat her. He was a genius after all.

kukukuku~

"Hey," I said, then sat down on the floor next to Lee. Okay, I actually floated just a bit off the ground, but the sentiment was there... "Sorry about beating you so bad."

He sighed. "No, it's okay... I already knew I would not do well here. I cannot use ninjutsu or genjutsu, and you saw how my taijutsu is."

"Can you channel chakra into things?" I asked. I really wanted to know what would happen if I started him off early.

"I can, but no matter how hard I try, I will not be able to use a jutsu. The doctor said that there is a problem with my chakra coils, so I am incapable of moulding my chakra into jutsu..."

I shrugged. "Not exactly a dealbreaker, if you're willing to work extra hard."

"What do you mean?"

I summoned my crystal ball. Yeah, I know it's kind of a stereotype, but I'd made the jutsu from that crystal ball jutsu Sarutobi used to see Naruto in the first episode, so blame Kishimoto. "Watch this." I waved my hands over the floating crystal ball, casting the jutsu. Despite not activating my Shōraigan, the crystal ball changed to show another location. By using a physical medium, I could show my vision to others and didn't have the same backlash, though with the downside that it wasn't private and I didn't get nearly enough information. "See that man?" I said, pointing to Gai training. "He used to be about where you are, but now he's one of the most dangerous shinobi in Konoha through taijutsu alone. Do you want to know how?" I put away the ball and looked at Lee. His eyes said yes. "An insane amount of practice, training, and diligence, combined with challenging himself to do something even more difficult whenever he fails a training exercise. You should probably take time to rest every once in a while, especially at first to keep from permanently damaging your body, but I see a fire in you. There's no reason why you couldn't become as good as or perhaps even better than him one day."

There were stars in his eyes, and he was almost crying. "Do you think so?"

I gave him a small grin. "I know so. Also..." I pulled out the other thing I had for him. "This is a bit of a beginner's fuinjutsu kit, at least my version of it. Try and see if you have some aptitude for it. You may not be able to inscribe seals with chakra alone, but if you pick up enough you could work wonders with seals." Imagine Rock Lee with the ability to make and use seals. To be honest I have no clue what would happen but I do know it would be amazing.

He stood up, energized, and gave me a deep bow. "Thank you very much! I will make sure to become a splendid ninja!"

My grin was genuine. "I'm sure you will."

kukukuku~

Usagi

I lurched along the dirt path. My new body of stone was not suitable for travel in the slightest, but I had no other alternatives. It seemed that compatibility with myself was not quite as common outside of Konoha as I assumed it was at first, and the rabbit was either a stroke of luck on my part or perhaps somehow related to how Kurama was present in End Valley at one point. Perhaps his chakra acted as a primer. Still, I did sense a few scattered people in small villages who had compatibility, though I couldn't in good conscience simply abduct and kill an innocent person. I needed to find a bandit with compatibility.

"Well well well, what do we have here?" a source of malicious intent jeered as two men appeared from behind trees. Speak of the devil. The two bandits, however, were nowhere near compatible.

"There's a toll to use this road," the other bandit said, brandishing his sickle. They had yet to realize my anomalous existence on account of the cloak, gloves, and mask I had fashioned for myself.

"Oh," I said. "I do apologize. I was not made aware of the toll. You really should put up a sign."

"You gettin' smart with us?" the first bandit asked. "We'll rough you up!" I probably didn't look like much of a threat either. The body I'd formed for myself was rather on the short side, to save energy. It was still definitely in the adult range, but not by much.

"You two are bandits, aren't you?" I asked. I already knew the answer, of course.

"Of course we're bandits, now give us all your loot!" The sickle-wielding bandit rushed me. That was a mistake. My body became fluid, the eyeholes of my mask gained two red lights where my eyes should have been, and I dodged effortlessly. I removed one of my gloves, then placed my hand on his face.

"Do you take chakra instead?" I asked, then infused his body with demon sage chakra. He dropped his weapon as his brain itself was altered in such a way that, while he didn't technically die, he certainly couldn't have been said to have been truly alive anymore. I removed my hand, revealing red markings across his face.

"What the hell!?" the other bandit shrieked. Without turning to him, I sent a signal to my new thrall. The bandit that I had just "killed" snarled like a beast and rushed at him. The... I suppose the best word for it would have been "zombie" bit the man on his arm with partially crystallized teeth. The man shrieked, throwing the zombie away and running in terror. I nodded to myself and split my attention in two, one half of my mind focusing on breaking the zombie down into more demon sage cores and the other tending to the bandit. When my zombie bit him, it infected him with my chakra, causing the cells in his arm to start to transform into the demon sage core-like material that I'd used to zombify his partner. I altered the rate at which the infection spread, causing it to slow near the surface while speeding up within his blood and bones. My hope was that he'd notice the infection, cut his arm off and assume he got it all, then hurry back to his leader while carrying the infection. That would be fun. When I was done with the carrier, I turned my full attention to the zombie, which was almost prepared. With a final command, the corpse disintegrated into red powder. Some of it scattered to the wind, where it would be carried elsewhere. The rest came to me. About half of it went behind my mask, where it bolstered my existing core. The other half I formed into another core that I hid within my cloak. With that done, I placed all of his belongings into a bag I had tied to my makeshift body under the cloak. I wasn't to know fuinjutsu, after all. I continued down the lonely road, ever-so-slightly quicker than I had before.

kukukuku~

A/N: Just FYI, the ka line is any of the hiragana/katakana sounds that start with a k- noise (ka, ki, ku, ke, ko).

I thought of a power for Tenten to have, but it's kind of even more out there than usual. Like, technically it has a slight basis in canon, but exaggerated far beyond what that canon basis is, even more than what I have planned for and alluded to with Neji. Figured I'd say that cryptically now so I can tell if I need to make changes if too many people object. I think it's cool, though, so I'm probably going to do it unless literally everyone tells me not to. And possibly even not then.

[nenastrology]

you should rate the arcs. share your wisdom with us. (or rank them by craziness /wtf moments)

ok i think rating them is easier than ranking them i can add craziness as a category alright alright

ok this ended up being nightmarishly long so im just putting it all under the cut for anyone who feels like reading giant blocks of text on my opinions on every single naruto arc

land of waves - classic very good i genuinely wish there could have been more arcs like it to show team 7 really bonding and growing together before sasuke ends up feeling alienated its got a really sweet touching story and naruto and sasukes relationship starts off already at a pretty high level of crazy like oh yeah right out of the gate they are trying to die for each other this can only get crazier from here i would have probably liked it more if id read the manga first because the anime murders the pacing of the fights here but overall i do really like it

chuunin exams - i love lots of chunks of it but it did really feel like a slog to get through parts of the forest of death and a lot of the more minor fights because kishimotos really just not very good at writing fights that he doesnt put his absolute most effort into i really love how the anime added to the part where sasuke gets the curse mark and how naruto is separated from him its really emotional and strong sakura actually feels like shes trying to become a character here i love her fight with ino and cutting off her hair legendary and im not a monster gaara vs rock lee still makes me scream the craziness of this arc is actually finally not riding on sasuke being crazy finally gaaras carrying the craziness hello blood drinking 12 year old i hope you get better soon 

konoha crush since i guess its a different arc - ok i actually really love all the weird political stuff kinda added in here the hints at some actually interesting village conflict i wish thats what the ninja war arc could have built from and orochimarus definitely the most comprehensible villain in the story and i love naruto vs gaara so much like thats really peak and tbh extremely satisfying to watch the shitty old bitch hokage kick the bucket like killing gaaras evil dad and hiruzen really was the best thing orochimarus done finally gaara has more help with craziness cuz narutos losing his mind too and sasukes getting some crazy seeds planted for later craziness harvest

search for tsunade - i feel like i really like this arc but when i actually read it im like hmm theres all these parts i dont like but i really love all the character stuff itachis introduction is iconic and i really do love tsunade and her fighting orochimaru was like highlight of everything its weird i dont have a lot to say but i do actually like this arc a lot in a way im like not sure why craziness is kinda low except for sasuke whos absolutely losing his entire mind which stresses me out so much and this is where i start getting extremely sad about sasuke

sasuke recovery mission - 80% of it is the absolute worst part of part 1 and 20% of it is the absolute best part of part 1 like this is really where all the warning signs of quality dropping and like kishimotos lack of skill writing fights really really starts to show like really all those fights do is kill the emotional thread running from the hospital fight, sasukes goodbye to sakura and sasuke and narutos fight which are like the best things hes ever written the craziness is turned up as high as it can get the emotional stakes and pain and love are also so high this is peak naruto if we just pretend the fights against the sound 4 never happened just skip them

kazekage rescue mission - this is where all the omens from sasuke recovery mission and the quality drop really like finally start meaning something because really this arc SHOULD be good and its like really really good in certain places like any time naruto and gaara are talking thats just love right there and all those moments really make it almost worth it except that kishimoto really took such a nose dive on understanding how to pace fights the parts that dont have gaara and naruto gazing tenderly at each other feel like pulling teeth like sasori vs sakura really should be absolute peak and its got some truly fantastic moments but it just goes on for so long i feel like im gonna die before sasori ever does that fight could have given us womens rights and the craziness is really high like naruto is just losing his mind about gaara and sakura killed a man with her bare fists

tenchi bridge - oh the love its palpable here and so is the craziness like naruto going to 4 tails because orochimaru just says a few things about sasuke like wow and their whole reunion is so good the passion and weird emotional issues all coming to the surface i love yamato here hes a fun guy and i really like the new team 7 dynamics they are fun i like lots of parts of it but i cant think of anything else to say its what it says on the tin emotional sauske and naruto reunion

akatsuki suppression mission - alright full disclosure i fucking love this arc this arc is the reason i sometimes throw my brain right out of my head and start talking about how much i love shikamaru i prefer all the emotional moments in the anime a lot it felt very rushed in the manga and like that whole episode of team ten processing their grief was so good but god im so so mad that only shikamaru got to have a big important fight like ino and choji should have been helping equally and i really really hate the fight with kakuzu its just more badly paced bullshit for kakashi and naruto to get to be super op when this was supposed to be a bonding moment for team ten this is a little crazy but its team 10 crazy not team 7 crazy which means they are still pretty normal well adjusted people with brains in their heads who are just having a moment

itachi pursuit mission - sasuke killing orochimaru really was so incredibly perfect and forming taka? this arc is about gay rights uum its really short so i dont have the most thoughts but yeah sasukes like maybe at his least crazy until the end of the story like hes got a real concrete plan find gay friends and kill his brother but hes really got a big storm coming 

tale of jiraiya the gallant - i really do not like jiraiya all that much hes just boring and weird but i love the chunks of rain trio backstory we get they are really the last bit of complete villain characters we are gonna get very tragic idk the fight is like alright for this stage of naruto but it still lasts too long and pains powers still make no fucking sense and feel just too overpowered you know also zero crazy which is very disappointing all naruto arcs should have crazy

pain fight - ive got lots of conflicted feelings like the fights not very compelling at first because genuinely the pain bodies are just too strong its very weird and narutos got this big power up which is what it is i really love pain as a villain like hes literally right about everything hes saying but it has to be bizarrely undercut by just bonding awkwardly about jiraiya and yeah theres some very cool battle moments theres some good shit in there but long drawn out battles arent exactly my thing but naruto going 8 tails was still pretty fucking cool and god it was such a cop out that everyone came back to life at the end COWARD KISHIMOTO

kage summit - the one the only kage summit absolute peak craziness like sasuke trying to take down the entire world government thats absolutely iconic i love him for it so much narutos having his own melt down about sasuke sakuras decided she doesnt actually need a brain anymore and has also lost her whole fucking mind in the whirlwind of chaos like this arc feels like an anxiety attack at some points but god do i love it naruto and sasukes whole confrontation is absolutely peak ill bear the burden of your hatred and die with you?? the love the tragedy this is truly peak gay drama thats really like hes planning a lovers suicide and we are all just along for this crazy fucking ride love it

war arc - how did we go from kage summit to this like kage summit felt like it was maybe actually going somewhere but the quality drop is just like an elevator was cut and we are now all speeding to crash at rock bottom here what the fuck happened why was this written why is it literally 1/3 of all of naruto why has god abandoned us itachi and sasukes reunion was very good and needed i loved all the parts with hashirama and madara and really for one sweet moment it seemed like madara might just be a dumb sexy villain who just wrecks shit until all that spiraled down into garbage if i think about obito for too long i start to go crazy thats the real craziness of war arc is how fucking stupid it is and that is making everyone whos ever read or seen it go crazy right along with it

wiki is telling me the kaguya bit is its own arc so lets go with that - ok kaguya fight is pretty cool im into it to a certain extent her weird portal powers are fun i like that but thats really not what we are here for now are we no we are here for the conclusion to 15 years worth of crazy we are here for sasukes final massive lose his mind time and naruto to go right along with him the love and the tragedy but the hope it offers as well love was really invented by the second valley of the end fight and the anime said gay rights and made it the prettiest thing you will ever look at and also adding all the extra tender moments between them like this is it this is why you watch naruto you watch it all for this and god do we love it but wow the trying to be serious stuff about hokage really is so fucking stupid lets pretend that never happened 

wow i really just typed that all out shout out to u 2 loyal fans who read all this shit i guess it was only a matter of time before i wrote something this long and stupid see i do actually like naruto i feel like i couldnt really hit the balance of complaining or praising so idk it might sound more positive or more negative than i actually am but there are really some good parts yes i watched the whole war arc no you shouldnt

[lovestruckay]

WIP Game

Talk about the WIPs you’re intending to work on this year.

I was tagged by @crimsonriley and this looks like a good opportunity to taunt all my readers lot of fun!

I’m going to tag @vesperlionheart, @shyyynobi, and @beyondthemoor to join in on the fun. And, because I absolutely count WIPs as including art, I’m going to tag @yomi-gaeru, @byelawliet, and @maybe-please! <3

I have a number of WIPs (over a dozen) but there are only a few that are going to be actively worked on this coming year.

Homeward

MadaSaku, Time Travel AU, Eventually Mature

[FF - AO3]

This is my most popular fic and my main focus as a writer. It’s an AU where Sakura is thrown backwards in time during the battle between Danzo and Sasuke. The majority of the story so far is her amassing a reputation as a miracle healer and as an incredibly powerful kunoichi. I thought it would be more realistic for Sakura to have to survive and eventually thrive in the past before she came across one of the major clans (well, except for the poor Fuma clan). 

The story has already gotten to the point where she meets Madara and Izuna (in a pretty flashy way). This is my pride and joy and it’s a fic I’m very happy to write. I love writing Sakura as this incredibly powerful and indomitable woman who demands respect wherever she goes while simultaneously being this sweet, openhearted healer and friend. And I love writing Madara as being this powerful, intelligent and calculating, yet kind man who people have to work to earn a way into his heart. I always envisioned Madara as being a man who needed a indomitable woman like Sakura to make him happy. A woman who could challenge him yet encourage him at the same time. And this woman would certainly be Sakura.

Snippets

“But you have blood on you,” she pointed out, taking a step towards him and reaching forward to touch a splatter of blood on the neck of his high collared shirt.

He nearly shivered as her fingertips brushed his clothed collar bone, his sharingan flickering on of its own accord. The world around him became sharp and crisp and the sight of her reaching out to touch him embedded in his mind before his sharingan returned to inactivity in the span of a heartbeat.

“It’s not mine,” he muttered in a tone deeper than normal as he stared at her concerned expression.

...

He turned his head to face her and could feel heat rising to his cheeks as he noticed how close they were, their noses nearly touching. All he could see of her was her half lidded eyes and her dilated pupils, the black heavily encroaching on the sea green of her irises. She stared right back into his lazily spinning sharingan, her own cheeks taking a red hue.

Uchiha MC

MadaSaku, Outlaw Biker AU, Mature

[FF - AO3]

This fic was actually the beginning of me rejoining the fanfiction world. I had written a couple fics but this was the first one I actually went out and posted. It started as a oneshot but I combined it with a couple other WIPs I had and created this awesome story that I was just giddy to write. It has turned out a long longer than I had anticipated although it has been so much fun to write.

It has just begun to rapidly escalate. The story is a little more than halfway done but there is going to be a lot of incredibly intense and “holy shit” moments coming up that are going to keep everyone on their toes! The story is really at a pivotal moment right now so any snippets will give away what’s going to happen. Sorry!

Untitled ObiSaku

[FF - AO3]

ObiSaku, AU where Obito comes back to the village, non-massacre, Mature

EDIT: I posted this fic while I was doing Sakura Week 2018. It didn’t turn out as absolutely filthy as I had previously planned as another fic (a MadaSaku fic - FF, AO3) I wrote decided to take the whole choking kink. While this fic is still smut, it’s not as dirty as I had originally planned.

This fic is one purely written out of spite. Some random user on AO3 was talking poorly about one of my MadaSaku fics and asked if I was going to do an ObiSaku fic too (because that’s soooooo ridiculous). So I replied with a “you better fucking believe it” and put together an outline for this pure filth with a heaping of fluff and plot.

Some aspects of this fic: Rin will be alive but her, Obito, and Kakashi will be non-romantic best friends. How Kushina and Minato will live and how Minato be Obito’s mentor as he trains him to take over as Hokage. Kakashi will still become the sensei for Team 7 and how Team 7 will split up to train individually, Sakura and Naruto going on journey’s with Tsunade and Jiraiya respectively and Sasuke going with Shisui to train with the Military Police. There will be a lot of self hate, kink self-shame, angst, and a wide age difference.

Nesting

MadaSaku, alpha omega beta AU, founders era, Mature

This fic was entirely inspired by the “nesting” phenomenon in ABO fics. And the fact I very much wanted to write a MadaSaku ABO fic.

Sakura is the leader of the famous clan of healers, the Haruno clan. The Harunos are close allies of the Uzumaki clan, hailing from the same region, and Sakura and Mito are such close friends they consider each other sisters. It is because of Sakura’s influence that Hashirama puts fourth a peace treaty in exchange for him healing Izuna (much to Tobirama’s horror). When the village if finally founded, there is a meeting where all of the clan leaders that are allies of the Hidden Leaf join together to discuss the future. And this is where Madara and Sakura finally meet and everyone makes the catastrophic (at least for a city block) decision of trying to drag them apart.

There will of course be ABO smut with mating bites, pupping, womb sex, etc. But a huge aspect of it will be Sakura and her “nesting” behavior as she chooses a place to make her nest and have her pup. Very sweet and fluffy.

Nonsensical

[FF - AO3]

ShisuiSaku, soulmarks AU, Mature

A cute and kind of funny little one shot made because there is a drastic shortage of ShisuiSakura fics. Depending on how long it turns out being I might break it up into smaller bites. It’ll be a non massacre fic with a healthy amount of angst, some super bad first impressions, some happy endings, Sakura being a badass, Team 7 being bffs, and Hokage Itachi.

Here are a coupe snippets although they are very rough because they are part of the outline and not actual written material.

Snippets:

Shisui didn’t get his soul mark until March 28th when he was eight years old.

He had gone to bed that night with clear skin and woke up that morning with his soul mark written across his left pectoral in a flowing, feminine script. He was excited to learn that he did in fact have a soulmate but the fact that the phrase now inked across his chest was the most random, nonsensical bullshit he had ever read in his short life dampened the feeling. Was his red string connecting him to a psychopath?

He couldn’t think of any other reason as to why someone’s first words to him would be “Pants are not ripe water grass bastard”.

What in the hell does that even mean? Was it some sort of secret code? Was she going to be drunk? Was she insane?

...

Sakura has had her soul mark since she was born although she didn’t learn this until she was a young girl.

When she had asked her parents why she didn’t have one, at the tender age of five after her friend Ino had shown off hers, her parents had laughed with mirth, given her a hand mirror, and told her to find it. After a solid fifteen minutes of searching and acts of stretching that contortionists would be proud of, she located her soul mark printed in a small, professional script in the crook where her inner thigh met her hip. While part of her had been disappointed it was in a very personal place, a spot she could never show up, she had been overwhelmingly satisfied with the words on her soulmark.

I didn’t know angels had pink hair”.

Other Fics (may or may not get written)

Broken Trust

ObiSaku, Uchiha MC branch off, lots of angst

Guardians

MadaSaku fic where Impure World Reincarnation is never outlawed and instead becomes a technique for raising “Guardians” to protect the village. Izuna becomes the first guardian and leads to the formation of the village. Madara, Hashirama, Tobirama, all the hokages, Itachi, etc become Guardians and never technically die, instead being treated as well respected protectors

Fighting Dreamers

MadaSaku MMA AU, Sakura “Cherry Bomb” Haruno and Madara “Wildfire” Uchiha

The Chances

MadaSaku soulmark AU, takes place during the war

Three Rejects

NaruSakuSasu, dark fic where the trio runs away from Konoha after suffering through years of abuse and neglect. Sakura is an orphan, stolen from her clan of incredible healers following the massacre of her family. They can only trust each other and only love each other, ends in tragedy for the rest of the world but bliss for them

Wake Up

MadaSaku fic where Sakura, Madara’s wife, is in a coma in the Warring States Era and imagining her life in the future

Like the Ocean

IndraSaku fic where Indra goes on his journey to help the distant village to determine if he would become the next leader of his village and comes across a strange woman on the beach, part of an even stranger clan of healers and mystics who live on the ocean’s edge

Cosplay

I have a new wig from Shippuden Sakura that I’m very excited to try out. I even got a pair of customized boots that are pretty incredible! I even met a Sasuke cosplayer who is so incredibly sweet and is just as into cosplay and Naruto as I am! So you may or may not see me and Sasuke at Anime Matsuri in Houston, TX this year.

[neraawritesxx]

My dear anon, I don’t know whether I was to kiss you or to curse at you. The first thing that popped into my head at this prompt was 'Naruto on morphine,' and I figured I could write a cute little drabble about it.

Three headaches, four days, and eight pages later, I have this half-assed one-shot set in an alternate universe that I now want to spend all my time writing about and expanding lol. I think in the future I’m going to go back and re-write this idea and make a multi-chapter story about it. Until then, here’s a little preview. I hope you enjoy!

title: morphine dreams prompt: telling a stranger your life story pairing: naruto x sakura word count: 4,843

The elevator doors closed with a miniature 'ding.'

Sakura absentmindedly watched the numbers above the metal entryway light up, signaling her descent.

Chewing on the inside of her right cheek, the petite woman tried to wrap her mind around one single thought, her temples throbbing as she strived to formulate some type of order to her unmethodological mind.

Typically, the end of her workday was filled with excitement, especially if the end of said shift would be followed by the next two days off of work. Instead of basking in the delight of having some time to herself, Sakura felt thoroughly anxious. There were too many things on her mental 'to-do' checklist, and the pinkette found herself distractedly preoccupied; her attention drawn inward, unintentionally ignoring colleagues and coworkers who filtered in and out of the lift during her downward journey.

There were a few stops she had to make on her way home, the grocery store being the first on her agenda. The food pantry in her apartment had seen better days. If Sakura had another bowl of cereal for dinner this week, she was sure she was going to turn into a Cheerio.

There was also the issue of Ino's birthday present. Her best friend's party was coming up this weekend, and Sakura had yet to find a gift that would be considered perfect for the occasion. Though the blonde insisted on nothing over the top, Sakura still wanted to spoil Ino on her special day.

Maybe she could take a detour on her way home and stop at that day spa? Ino would appreciate a voucher for an all-inclusive day of pampering. With her best friend getting further along in her pregnancy, Sakura was sure that the days Ino was spending out of her home were numbered. It would be a welcomed reprieve before the blonde was placed on bed rest.

The rosette was brought out of her musings when the door to the elevator slid open, revealing the absolute pandemonium that happened to be the emergency room.

Sakura scrambled into the fray of bodies, expertly maneuvering through mayhem towards the large, automatic glass doors on the opposite side of the room.

The scent of blood and anesthetics filled her nose, and for a moment, the cherry-haired woman found herself smiling despite the frantic setting. There was never a dull day at Konoha University Hospital. She had started out as a medical student, thrown into the intern rotation of the emergency ward during the first semester of her junior year.

The ever-changing scene, filled day to day with different doctors, unique patients, and arduous tasks gave Sakura a such a rush; it made her feel alive. There was nothing better than assisting a patient in the fight for their life; to see that person mend and heal under the tips of her fingers.

It was a euphoric high; the elation and adrenaline she felt during those shifts was beyond compare. Though Sakura loved her mentor for taking her under her wing – and thus jumpstarting her career in the neurology ward – she still found herself sometimes wishing for a position that had a little less paperwork and a bit more action.

Halfway to her destination, someone called out to Sakura, breaking her from her reflections.

"Dr. Haruno!"

Begrudgingly, she bit back the groan that threatened to escape her lips, smothering her face with her hands. 

Fleetingly, Sakura wondered if she remained like that if the person seeking to get her attention would completely overlook her. Maybe they would just take the hint and find the aid they needed with another physician?

She was so close; so, so, so close to the end of her shift, and there were far too many tasks for her to complete unrelated to the hospital. Now was not the time to be drawn into something that would most likely sidetrack her for the next hour.

Her salvation was beyond those doors, and after a fifteen-hour day, Sakura wanted to do nothing more than to make a run for it. She may not be particularly fast, but she figured she had a good enough head start to make it to the exit before whoever was looking for her caught up with her.

At the constant hail of her name, Sakura knew that she had hesitated too long, and the emerald-eyed woman bitterly concluded that she would not be going anywhere anytime soon. Lifting her face from her palms, Sakura turned to regard the short, brown-haired girl as she drew near.

Straightening upon the nurse's arrival, a small, strained smile playing on Sakura's lips. "Yes?" The pink-haired doctor inquired. "Can I help you with something?"

Sakura didn't recognize the younger girl before her, so she could only assume that she was either a new employee or a student in one of her first rotations.

"I'm really sorry to bother you," The blue-eyed girl apologized, panting as she caught her breath. "Tsunade-sama sent me to come find you. She warned me that you might be on your way out, but I'm glad I caught you in time."

At the mention of her mentor's name, Sakura's lips pursed, drawing down into a tiny frown. There were very few reasons why her boss would send someone to hunt her down, especially when Shizune was working the same shift. Whatever it was, it must have been urgent, because the brunette before her was fidgeting impatiently, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.

"What is it? Is there something wrong?" Sakura asked.

"If you could follow me, please?" The girl questioned, half-turning away. She gestured for the pinkette to follow, making a beckoning motion with her hand before she began to weave into the crowd around them.

After only a moment's hesitation did Sakura begin to follow, instantly falling into step beside the shorter female.

"My name is Yuma, by the way," The shorter girl quickly clarified. "An old friend of Dr. Senju's came in a little while ago and brought in a couple of his…friends…for treatment. They're beat up pretty badly. Tsunade-sama said that she would like you to take a look at them."

There was something about Yuma's tone, it was edgy, and it made a wave of unease was over Sakura. Whenever Tsunade had a 'colleague' – and she was using that term loosely – come to visit, her supervisor tended to get herself into some type of trouble. Hospital protocol went out the window when a companion from her mentor's past was around. Sakura, along with most of the other staff, tended to overlook the older blonde's antics. The thought of herself currently being dragged into one of Tsunade's side projects made Sakura slightly cautious.

The duo slipped out of the crisis ward, and Yuma lead Sakura down a separate corridor which housed the wing of private examination rooms.

At the end of the hall they turned down, Sakura observed three figures huddled together. The closer they drew, the more details she could make out. The trio was made up of all men, two of which, were standing with their backs towards her.

One was tall and somewhat lanky, with an unruly mop of silver hair. The other was closer to Sakura's height, though she couldn't get an accurate read on his build because of the loose fitting, navy-blue tunic he wore. The second man's onyx hair stuck out at an odd angle, but what caught her immediate attention was the dark smear of crimson that stained the back of his neck, tinting the collar of his shirt a vibrant purple.

The third and final man easily towered over both of his companions, and he was the only one facing in her direction. Sakura couldn't make out his face; his body was slumped, leaning towards his friends as they continued their discussion. 

What caused Sakura to relax slightly, was the third male's mane of white hair, which was quite hard to miss due to its bushiness and length.

She repressed the urge to smile, her nose scrunching up as she fought against the impulse. Sakura would recognize that head of hair anywhere, and though it had been years since she had last seen him, Sakura was confident in her hypothesis of just who Tsunade's guest happened to be.

"Jiraiya…?" The pinkette tentatively called out.

At the sound of her voice, all three men stiffened, the two with their backs facing her pivoted in her direction, movements tense, as three pairs of infinitely dark eyes regarding her suspiciously.

Jiraiya glanced at her from over the heads of his associates, holding the same expression of wary apprehension at the sight of her. After his analytical gaze slid to her bubblegum pink hair, however, a broad, feral grin curled on his lips and recognition dawned.

"Sakura-chan!" He bellowed in welcome, pushing past his two comrades to rush to her side.

Immediately, he enveloped her right hand in both of his own, bringing it up towards his face so that he could brush his lips across the back of her knuckles.

"You're as lovely as I remember," The older gentleman practically purred.

Sakura snatched her hand back as if scalded. 

"And you're just as much of a flirt as I remember," The green-eyed woman countered, though there was no real displeasure in her barb.

A tiny smile pulled at the corner of her mouth. "It's good to see you," Sakura said, her voice filling with warmth. "It's been far too long."

"Indeed, it has," Jiraiya agreed with a sagely nod. "It's been, what? Four years now?"

"Sounds about right," She coincided. "I was actually beginning to miss you," She commented dryly, her sarcasm earning her a soft chuckle.

Sakura had known the older male from her earlier years at the hospital. To this day, she wasn't exactly sure what the relationship between Jiraiya and Tsunade was, nor did she have any idea as to what white-haired male actually did for a living that brought him around to the hospital so frequently. 

Jiraiya had a habit of showing up out of nowhere, either prowling around the nurse's stations or spontaneously showing up in her mentor's office uninvited. Having been working with Tsunade closely then, Sakura was prone to dealing with him and his…amorous tendencies.

Despite his odd behaviors, she felt a sort of kinship with the older gentleman. Jiraiya was a breath of fresh air that the hospital needed, especially on some of the darker days.

"So, it's safe to assume you're the old friend of Tsunade's that came to visit, but who…," Sakura cocked her head to the left, peering around Jiraiya so that she could catch a glimpse of the other two men. "Are they?"

Now that she held an unobstructed view, the cherry-haired woman could fully discern both males and their state of unruliness.

Despite the color of his hair, the taller of the two was younger than she originally anticipated. Though a surgical mask covered a majority of his face – odd, but not unheard of when visiting a hospital – the lack of crows feet around his eyes, paired with a lack of age lines wrinkling his brow, made Sakura believe he had to be in his late thirties, possibly early forties.

Dressed in a simple outfit of baggy, acid wash jeans and a short-sleeved black t-shirt, nothing else seemed out of place save for the excessive number of bandages that covered his right forearm. Whoever wrapped him up did so in haste, and apparently, had no medical training whatsoever for the dressings hung loosely and haphazardly.

Viridian eyes slid to the dark-haired male, who seemed to be more worse for wear than his companion. His face was covered in blotches of purplish-blue, and there was a small gash above his right eyebrow that was still bleeding. He seemed closer to Sakura in age, but she really couldn't tell with all the discoloration caused by the bruising.

The stain she had noticed earlier wrapped around from the nape of his neck, settling into a large mauve pool on the front of his shirt. He had been – and still was – bleeding profusely, and instinctively, Sakura took a step in their direction.

She didn't make it very far. Jiraiya, who quickly caught on to her intentions, sidestepped in front of her, successfully cutting off her path.

Emerald eyes flicked back in the older male's direction, a brow raised in question. In response, the white-haired gentleman rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly, releasing a short, nervous chuckle.

"Ah, those two are fine," He stated hurriedly.

Jiraiya reached out then, wrapping an arm around her waist, propelling her - none too gently - towards the examination room that was closest to their group. "Introductions could be made later. Right now, I need you to take a look at my apprentice."

"Apprentice?" Sakura parroted in a disbelieving tone.

"Yes, you see, a…." He toiled with the right word for a moment. "Scuffle broke out, and my dear apprentice found himself smack dab in the middle of it. A wrong place, wrong time scenario, if you would. Usually, Tsunade handles these types of situations should they arise, but she's tied up at the moment. She sent me the next best thing, though: her number one student."

Sakura narrowed her eyes at Jiraiya's sweet words, and her skepticism grew tenfold. Not only was she not fond of his vagueness on whatever it was that was going on, but he was also stopping her from treating a wounded man that was standing right in front of her. And what on earth did Jiraiya do that allowed him to have a pupil?

Shaking out of his hold, Sakura turned to confront Yuma, who had been watching the entire scene with wide-eyes, apprehensive eyes.

"What did Tsunade-sama say to you exactly?" The pink-haired doctor asked, gesturing towards the injured men. "Did she specify who should be treated first? Or if I should be treating any of them, for that matter?"

"Well...not exactly," The young intern replied timidly. "You see, Dr. Senju simply said, 'Whatever Jiraiya says, goes.'"

Slightly confused, Sakura's lips parted and a frown formed between her brows. She merely starting at Yuma, trying to discern why her boss was getting her involved in something like this.

She blinked once, then twice, before her expression morphed into a scowl, her frustration cutting through her surprised stupor.

Sakura growled out her inquiry. "And where exactly is Dr. Senju at the moment?"

Yuma flinched back at her tone. "S-She had a surgery scheduled for this evening. She said that you would take care of everything."

The rosette shifted her hardened gaze towards Jiraiya, who, much to her chagrin, didn't seem to be phased by the glare. After years of being friends with Tsunade, he was probably invincible to anyone's leer.

Slowly, Sakura shifted to peer towards the two other men, both of whom seemed just as unperturbed as Jiraiya. Realizing that she was not going to get any answers out of anyone at this point, Sakura settled her glower on the white-haired male once more.

"Anything else I need to know before I go treat him?" The question was directed towards Yuma, though she kept her eyes level with Jiraiya, who was now grinning at her cheekily.

"Well…" The brunette trailed off, her voice soft. "It seems that the first nurse to see him gave him a dose of morphine to help with his pain. Only after did she notice Tsunade-sama's handwritten note in his chart to not give him painkillers of any kind."

Sakura's head snapped in the intern's direction, her inquiry holding a hint of panic. "Is he allergic?"

Before Yuma could answer her question, Jiraiya placed both hands on her shoulders and resumed pushing the pinkette towards the door.

"The effects are adverse, but not deadly," The older male assured. "He just tends to get a little out of hand. I really just need you to sew him up and give him a clean bill of health. Then, we'll all be out of that pretty pink hair of yours."

Somewhat fed up with being manhandled, Sakura broke free of Jiraiya's grasp once again, rounding on him. This entire scenario screamed 'unnatural,' and if Tsunade wanted to get involved with whatever game Jiraiya was playing, that was her prerogative.

Personally, Sakura would have liked to remain blissfully unaware of her mentor's secret dealings. She should be on her way home right now damn it. 

"I may not know the full story of what is going on here," She ground out, forcefully poking the white-haired male in the chest. "But I will have my questions answered when I'm finished with him."

Without waiting for a response, petite woman spun around in a flurry of pink hair, stomping the rest of the way towards the examination room. Yanking the door open, Sakura composed herself somewhat, straighten her spine before she slipped inside, the door snapping shut behind her.

It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the brighter lighting of the hospital room, but when her vision cleared, Sakura finally caught a glimpse of her would-be patient.

Sitting propped up on the large chair in the middle of the examination room was a man, who, much like his onyx-haired friend on the other side of the door, was riddled with bruises. Without a shirt on, Sakura could see that there was not a patch of his sun-kissed skin that wasn't unmarred and she couldn't help but give a cringe in sympathy.

He was tall; taller than her at least, tousled blonde hair damp and clinging to his forehead in certain spots. Most of his weight was shifted to the right side, his awkward lean barely keeping him upright. His left hand pressed a sheet of gauze into his right bicep; red bloomed on the alabaster cloth, the stain visible between his splayed fingers.

He looked up at her entrance, vibrant emerald locking with hazy cerulean.

Momentarily, the rosette thought that she had seen him before, somewhere in passing, but she couldn't quite put her finger on where she should know him from.

Brushing the thought aside, she took a step further into the room.

"Hello," Sakura greeted. "My name is Dr. Haruno. Tsunade-sama sent me to take a look at you."

He didn't reply, and the lack of continued communication caused an unpleasant silence to descend on the room.

After a short stretch of strained noiselessness, he finally spoke. "Oh…" He stated, airily. "You're absolutely gorgeous."

Thrown off canter by the spontaneous compliment, Sakura's eyes widened a fraction, and she almost – almost – found herself blushing like a schoolgirl.

"Um…Thank you?" She hesitantly responded, trying to relax her rigid stance as she cautiously crossed the room towards the cot.

His stance swayed slightly, and a Cheshire grin curled on his lips. "You're quite welcome," He rasped in a tone that sounded suspiciously similar to the one Jiraiya used when he was trying to pick up one of the nurses.

Ignoring the way that his eyes followed her every movement, Sakura focused all of her attention on his wound. Plopping down in the stool next to the examination chair, she reached over and seized his hand in one of her own, gently trying to pry it away from the injury.

Her first two attempts were met with resistance, and after another minute of failing at loosening his grip, Sakura sat back with a huff, green eyes narrowing.

"Can you please move your hand?" She asked with feigned civility.

He ignored her plea and instead, reached up with his with the hand not clasped against his bicep and seized the lapel of her lab coat, yanking her forward so abruptly that Sakura almost fell out of her chair.

"The name's Naruto," He cooed, breath ghosting against her cheek. "What's yours?"

Their sudden closeness, paired with his brazenness, disrespect, and the downright bizarreness of the entire situation, caused Sakura to flush in anger and mortification.

"Not interested!" She snapped, smacking his hand away. He jerked back and wobbled, unable to get a proper bearing on his balance. For safe measure, Sakura scooted her stool back a smidge.

She was suddenly all too aware of what Jiraiya meant when he said that his pupil became problematic under the influence of anesthetics. 

The kid acted like a drunk lecher.

Just how, how, did she end up in these situations?

"I need to take a look at your injury to assess the damage," She explained through clenched teeth, unable to hide her mounting ire. "To do that, I need you to move your hand away. Can you do that, please?"

The blonde's foggy gaze slowly slid from Sakura's face, to where his left hand was gripping the opposite arm. With an excruciatingly robotic stiffness, his slender fingers lifted off the bandage one by one, allowing the sheet of gauze to fall to the floor with a wet 'plop.'

The slash was a thick, jagged laceration, blood now trickling from the wound without the bandage blocking its path. Luckily, whatever caused the injury hadn't torn through too much muscle tissue. Crouching down so she could further inspect the damage caused, Sakura pivoted her head from side to side, appraisingly examining the cut from different angles.

She stood from her chair with a click of her tongue. "That is definitely going to need stitches. Luckily for both of us, you're already sedated."

Sakura ventured towards the cabinets that hung on the opposite wall, rummaging through their contents to gather the supplies necessary to sutra the abrasion closed.

When she turned back around, objects procured, Sakura found the blonde – Naruto – staring down at her legs with appreciation, the skirt she had worn that day hiding nothing from her knees, down.

"Hey, buddy! Eyes up here!" The pinkette barked, shaking one of the metal clamps in his direction.

Naruto's head snapped up so quickly that it threw him even further off his already unstable equilibrium. The momentum propelled his upper body further backward, and he ungraciously slumped back into the pads of the examination chair.

"Woah…" He murmured, befuddled. "The room is spinning."

Emerald eyes rolled skyward, and Sakura released a dejected sigh, shoulders slumping.

"Just do me a favor," She muttered defeatedly. "Please stay there. Don't move. Don't sit up. Just stay."

Naruto released a small snort, awkwardly raising his left hand to give her thumbs-up.

The next few minutes passed with little interruption from the fair-haired menace. Sakura was able to reclaim her perch next to the table and start cleansing the wound. When she began to sew the laceration, shut, she had expected some sort of outburst on his part, but to her surprise, he didn't even flinch.

For an instant, Sakura thought he had fallen asleep, his breathing deep and even. She was proven wrong, however, when she glanced up from underneath her lashes and found sky-blue eyes trained directly on her face. There was something about the way he looked at her that made Sakura skittish, a queasy feeling fluttering in her stomach.

With a grumble, Sakura turned back to her task and only after another lull of silence passed between them did she finally gamble in asking, "Want to tell me how it happened?"

Naruto huffed dramatically before responding, "This is what happens when your caretaker is a pervert, you coach is a lazy piece of shit, and your best friend is a bastard."

Sakura paused in her stitching, looking up from his arm with a raised brow.

"Care...taker?" She repeated, slowly. "Coach?"

The blonde grunted in confirmation, theatrically waving his free hand in the air as he continued to explain. "I live with the old pervert. You know, the one with the crazy white hair and the insatiable need to hit on every woman that breathes?"

At Sakura's dumb nod, Naruto continued. "Jiraiya took me in after my parents died. He's a retired kendo fighter, and after a few years of training me, he noticed that I had a knack for different styles of martial arts. He reached out to the scarecrow with legs, the one outside with the prematurely gray hair and bam I now have a trainer and a coach."

Naruto tried to clap his hands together for emphasis, but Sakura's hold on his right arm kept him in place, preventing any further injury to his person and damage to her work.

Her mind was working a mile a minute, trying to make sense of all the knowledge that he had just graced her with, while also attempting to comprehend why he had told her such personal information.

Well, the morphine was most likely the cause for his loose lips, but then again, none of what he was telling her made any sense.

The one thing that did stick out, over everything else that he had rambled, was that he was a fighter. Emerald hues perused her client, giving a slow once over, honing in specifically on the scar-like whiskers that were hidden under the blotchy, bruised skin on his face.

Realization hit her swiftly, the force of it practically stealing the breath away.

"You're that guy that they're always talking about on the news!" She accused, shock written on her features. "The mix-martial artist!"

The pitch of her exclamation was too high for Naruto's liking, and he cringed, using his free hand to cover his left ear.

"…Pretty and loud…," He murmured under his breath before his hand fell back down to his side, resting limply on the cushion. "But, yeah, that would be me."

"But…but what are you doing here?!" She asked, still flabbergasted.

"Granny's my personal doctor," He explained as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. It took Sakura a second to realize that he was talking about her mentor, Tsunade. And suddenly, Sakura understood exactly what her boss was involved in.

Azure eyes regarded favorably, a smile – one which Sakura could only describe as predatory – pulling on his lips as he said, "Though, I wouldn't complain if you were going to take over that position."

At the waggle of his eyebrows, Sakura shot him a deadpan look. "Still not interested."

Turning back to her work, the pink-haired doctor found herself fighting down the childish urge to poke him unnecessarily with the needle.

"None of this explains why you're here," She spoke offhandedly. 

She paused for a moment, shifting the forceps further down along the wound. When she was satisfied with the new grip, she continued with her assignment.

"It's all their fault really," Naruto affirmed. "The old man opened his mouth and hit on the wrong girl. The next thing I knew, the entire bar was after us." After a slight pause, he sulkily added, "Didn't help that neither Kakashi-sensei or Jiraiya just stood on the sidelines. Sasuke and I took most of the beating."

Sakura accepted his explanation, concluding that the two names she didn't recognize must have been the other men who had come to the hospital with Jiraiya. The room lapsed back into silence then, and it didn't take much longer for Sakura to finish sewing his injury closed. 

After applying an antibacterial ointment around the sutras, the rosette placed a fresh gauze patch over the area, wrapping it securely in place with cotton bandages.

Relaxing now that her job was finished, Sakura pushed back from the examination chair, standing from her stool. Seeing that she had accomplished her task, Naruto sat up abruptly, wavering slightly with his sudden movement.

"Easy there, tiger," Sakura reprimanded, somewhat amused. "Don't go messing up my handiwork."

Naruto bobbed his head in acknowledgment, though he said nothing. Instead, his focus was directed toward the patchwork on his right arm, curling and uncurling his fist so that he could gauge the soreness in his muscles.

"Leave the current wrapping on for the next forty-eight hours. After that, you can change them daily. Make sure you put ointment on it every time you change the bandages. In about two weeks or so, you can come back, and Tsunade will take them out."

It seemed the blonde's lucidity still had yet to come back because all he did was stare at her absentmindedly, nodding his head every so often.

Blowing out a breath, Sakura brought her right hand up to rub her temple. "I'll have the nurse relay all this information to Jiraiya, and we'll make sure you get the supplies you need on your way out."

Straightening, she turned towards the door, offering a small wave "I would say that it was nice meeting you, but this has been the strangest encounter I have ever had with a patient. Next time, let's hope that they read your chart before administering any painkillers."

"Hey!" Naruto called out to her, causing the petite woman to stall her exit. "Go on a date with me!"

Sakura graced Naruto with a smile, one that was all pearl whites, before she turned back to the door, chuckling under her breath.

"Still not interested!"

Send me a pairing and a prompt from any of these lists! [x] [x] [x]

[modernart2012]

Grave Robbing for Fun and Profit (Mostly Profit)

@sumigakure ​ Halloween Event 2017

Bonus Prompt: Grave Robbing

Word Count: 14170

On AO3

Summary: Aka - Kagami may have lost the battle, but he will win the War.

Takes place in the same Universe as You remind me of (Home). Consider this the sequel that also ate my brain

Kagami bursts into the room, panicking at a decent Level 7. “Profess - FIRE GOD’S FLAMING BALLS MY EYES!” He recoils trying to erase what he had just seen from his retinas, but then remembers who is following just behind him. “MINION NO!!!! DON’T COME IN!!!!” Trying to cover his eyes and block Orochimaru’s eyes simultaneously was pretty hard, especially since Kagami isn’t precisely sure where Orochimaru is.

  Orochimaru pauses behind him somewhere, unfazed, “Kagami, I am best friends with Jiraiya. I have undoubtedly seen and heard worse.”

  Kagami doesn’t think that’s a valid defense. “No! Bad! Minors shouldn’t be exposed to these sorts of R rated things!” He bops Orochimaru on the nose like a particularly misbehaved puppy, and gets a startled look for his efforts. He’s going to regret that when his coffee is exchanged for decaf pumpkin spice - a vile monstrosity on all parts - tomorrow. Today. Whenever the next most convenient time/place was. Whatever, live fast die young and all that. Then he whirls back around to his cousin and his … actually what are they? Dating? Boyfriends? Lovers? Is this the right time to ask if they’ve DTR’d?  Wait, that isn’t the point, “Why were you doing that sort of thing in a place where anyone could just walk in on you?!”

  Cousin Madara makes a high pitched whine of horror and abject humiliation, and Professor Senju simply quirks an Eyebrow of Doom at them. “This is my private residence. The door was locked.” Kagami wants to frown disappointedly at Professor Senju - they’d known each other how many years now? A locked door means nothing.

  Orochimaru calls over from the bookshelf, “Kagami picked the lock.”

  Cousin Madara groans harder, covering his face with his hands. Tough luck, but it really didn’t do anything for his disheveled hair and half-unbuttoned shirt. Or Professor Senju’s missing shirt. Which, good job Cousin Madara, Professor Senju is fit. Would this be the time to send a Subtle and Discreet Thumbs Up? “Is there a particular reason you broke into my home at … 8:16 pm on a Saturday, Kagami?”

  Oh. Oh yeah. “I,” Orochimaru interrupts with a pointed cough, “- I mean we - fixed the issue with the Reanimation technique.” Both Cousin Madara and Professor Senju blanch simultaneously. Kagami hadn’t known either of them could go any paler. “Wait, no, we made it work on a dead dog. There are no supernatural zombies this time.”

  “This time?” Orochimaru perks up, interest piqued. Oh, Fire God’s balls.

  “NO. BAD MINION. NO SUPERNATURAL ZOMBIES FOR YOU.” Maybe Kagami should invest in a spray bottle. Properly training and socializing one’s minion is hard work. How did Professor Senju ever get him trained? He catches Orochimaru glaring at him with calculation in his eyes, turns his head and sees the exact same look on Professor Senju, as if both are contemplating the best way for him to die. He resolves to work on his death glare. Clearly that’s what he’s been doing wrong this whole time.

  “And this couldn’t have been a text message why?” Ah, there’s that throbbing vein in Professor Senju’s forehead. Kagami’s old friend.

  “Well, see, that’s a long story….”

  500,000 ryo, two favors of his choice, a house, and a left kidney (extraction pending) was the final pot that Cousin Izuna won. Plus a second date with Tōka Senju, though that might have been incidental to the actual bet if the way he was walking funny was anything to judge by. Kagami wonders where he had gone so wrong, to lose out on that much stuff. Did no one pity the young and their student debt? Cousin Izuna didn’t need that stuff, he had a job that paid well. Except the date with the Senju lady, he’d been starry-eyed long enough over her. Kagami is still holding out hope on a double wedding - tensions are still rampant with the Senju, so having a two-for-one wedding would limit the amount of dead bodies created. Unless it was Uncle Setsuna, in which case, fuck Uncle Setsuna.

  Cousin Hikaku is unimpressed. “Kagami. Please stop clutching my leg and crying in public. You’re scaring the children.” Kagami looks over at where Orochimaru and his friends are staring at him impassively over various forms of ice cream.

  Kagami considers for a moment, “They are minors.” Genius minors that were revolutionizing their chosen fields of study, but still minors. It still wasn’t enough to stop him from flopping pathetically over Cousin Hikaku’s lap. He had no shame, and Hikaku was the best for cuddling.

  Jiraiya blusters around his mint chocolate chip mouthful, “We’re 16, not idiots!” Tsunade ducks his wildly gesticulating spoon, calmly sipping at her milkshake.

  Orochimaru eyes Jiraiya skeptically, “Are we absolutely sure about this.” When Jiraiya chokes on his ice cream in his haste to disabuse Orochimaru of the statement, neither he nor Tsunade made a move to help.

  “Aren’t you studying to be a doctor?” Kagami asks Tsunade distractedly. He didn’t know people could actually turn that color. Maybe he should take pictures? Jiraiya might want to know, he is a writer and he needs descriptions.

  “The Medic’s Oath only applies to those who are your patients. Jiraiya is not.” Over the sound of Jiraiya coughing, Tsunade adds, “Besides, he’s coughing. He can breathe.” With a move that spoke of years of practice, she punches his breathing back into normal pattern. “Are you finished having your pity party over losing one portion of the betting pool? I want to know so I can decide if I need to get another milkshake or not.”

  Kagami slumps over. “No, I’m done.” The youth were so jaded and cynical these days! Where were their hearts? Their sympathy for their fellow struggling humans?

  Cousin Hikaku decides that he’s going to be nice for a moment and scritches Kagami’s head like he did when they were little. Long suffering and patient. “There there, Kagami.” It felt good where his hair was still growing back in after having it burned off by Cousin Madara - who knew Cousin Madara had such excellent aim even without being able to see? Luckily he had been in a hospital already.

  “What’s the big deal about having debts anyways?” Orochimaru asks. Jiraiya and Tsunade nod, because genius and young meant that they had caboodles of money falling out of the sky into their laps for their achievements. “You just have to make something and patent it and you get money for it and pay off the debt.”

  “Says the Baby Experimental and Theoretical Magician Who’s Already Famous for Their Experimental Magic, the Kabillion-times Awarded Writer Renowned Throughout the Elemental Nations and Has People Falling Over Themselves to Buy Their Books, and the Medic Who’s Already Revolutionized the Medical Field Plus Invented New Magical Technology.” Kagami accuses. “The most groundbreaking thing I’ve worked on is already owned! By the military. A little to the left Cousin Hikaku, ah, right there. Perfect.”

  “It’s kind of scary, but you really can hear the capitals,” Tsunade muses. Orochimaru nods once in agreement. Jiraiya looks intrigued.

  “You know, this is giving me all sorts of ideas for my next novel,” Jiraiya comments over the edge of his notebook. “Kagami, would you say you’re feeling pampered and well-cared for?” He thinks for a moment, “Actually, would you say that you’d call Mr. Hikaku ‘Big Brother’ or ‘Master’ in this situation? Or is this more ‘Peon/Servant’ like?”

  Tsunade and Orochimaru exchange speaking looks, then Tsunade punches Jiraiya in the head. Kagami blinks blankly. Come to think of it, what kind of books did Jiraiya even write?

  “It doesn’t matter, the project is a dud for want of control of the subject.” Kagami groans into Hikaku thigh. They’re very comfortable, unlike Cousin Mikoto who apparently has never heard of skipping leg day and has thighs that could crush a man’s skull. Then the Idea hits him. “Wait! THAT’S IT! I just need to invent and patent a fool-proof control seal, then when the Man wants it I can name my price!” He grabs Orochimaru, “COME MINION! LET US AWAY!” He’s a good Mentor, so he makes sure Orochimaru has his ice cream cone and napkins before he drags him away. Rule One of Minion Keeping: Take Care of Thy Minion.

  As he dashes out of the ice cream parlor, he faintly hears: “Hey, Mr. Hikaku, how much is the minimum amount to place a bet in the betting pool?”

  “Tsunade-hime, no.” Jiraiya moans in despair.

  “Tsunade yes.” Kagami feels the fingers of the Lady of Death wrap around his coffin and shivers, but Experimental Magic waits for no man and he forges on.

  Kagami pauses as he hears a stomach growl. “Minion, why didn’t you say you were hungry?! This is unacceptable. Professor, I’m pressgang-ing your kitchen. Come along Baby Snake.” He marches confidently out of the room, because his cousin’s whatever’s house was his house too and all that.

  Cousin Madara splutters, “Kagami you can’t just tell people you’re taking over their kitchen.” Because Cousin Madara didn’t do the same regularly. The hypocrite. Besides, Kagami needs to know how Professor Senju keeps his kitchen before he gives Cousin Madara his blessing. Kitchens tell you a lot about a person, after all, and it wouldn’t do to have a kitchen heathen in the family.

  Professor Senju looks at his - whatever - in askance, “Is that the only issue you with that?”

  Cousin Madara shrugs, “It’s Kagami,” as if that explained everything. Which, maybe it did but that’s because he’s sensible and everyone else around him is slightly insane.

  Orochimaru seems to concur, “We had ice cream for breakfast yesterday because Kagami said he needed to eat his feels and it’s proven to be good for mental health.” Still he gets up and follows Kagami like a good minion, and receives a piece of candy for good behavior. Cousin Madara and Professor Senju trail behind looking perturbed. Whatever, they just don’t get his genius.

  He sets the dishes in the sink to cleaning as he pokes around for ingredients, because 1) eww, who wants to have to do dishes on date night?, 2) he’s pretty sure he’s going to need that spatula because Orochimaru likes eggs, and 3) it take less than a thought, so why not. “Professor Senju, where do you keep the rice?” Omelette rice was simple and tasty, but he’d been practicing making egg curry rice balls and he needed guinea pigs to taste it before unleashing it on the unsuspecting masses that was the grad student lunch-luck. He was going to beat out that asshole Inuzuka in the Medical Pharmacology department if it was the last thing he did in graduate school. Choices choices.

  Professor Senju ignores him in favor of asking, “Is this like the House Thing?” Oooh, fresh tomatoes. Curry it is.

  Cousin Madara nods while Orochimaru looks up from where he’s perched on the counter petting his snake, “What House Thing?” Then he pauses and corrects, “I don’t want to know if it’s something kinky.” Kagami passes him another candy. Good behavior must be rewarded. Cousin Madara makes a dying noise and collapses into a chair.

  “That doesn’t matter, you heard Tsunade make a outrageous bet and didn’t think twice about your course of action?” Professor Senju asks while pinching the bridge of his nose. He’s somehow managed to procure a shirt, boooo.

  Orochimaru speaks around his mouthful of candy. “To be fair, Tsunade is usually wrong.” She usually is - there was a reason all the local bookies were fighting over if it were fair to tell people what she had bet on. It tended to drive up business, but people tended to win more, so it’s pretty much an even split as to opinions.

  “Before we go any further, do we really need to know anything that transpired in the last 24 hours?” Cousin Madara sounds pained. Maybe he’s eaten something that doesn’t agree with him? Kagami isn’t surprised, the man likes his spice with extra spice and that’s not easy on the stomach.

  Kagami sets the rice to cook and pulls out the first of the (frankly lacking) vegetables to be chopped. “Well, yes, mostly because I’m pretty sure the military and international police are hunting for us.” At least one, possibly two, but that wasn’t important, really.

  Kagami is pretty sure Cousin Madara is praying for a lightning bolt to kill him dead right now. Someone really ought to keep an eye on that, praying to die is probably a sign of depression and/or suicidal thoughts.

    “Kagami, why are we breaking into the Restricted Archives.” Orochimaru nods and smiles at the librarian at the desk, because he’s somehow gotten in good with them and Kagami would like to note it’s entirely suspect because his minion routinely fails Socialization 101 so him being in good with anyone is questionable.

  “We’re not breaking in.” Kagami protested as he scanned his universal access card that he had copied from the Dean’s Office. “We have an appropriate pass and everything! And it’s broad daylight!” Nothing illicit happened in broad daylight.

  “A pass the administration doesn’t know you have and that I would stake my third undergraduate degree on you having obtained through less than legitimate means,” Orochimaru points out.  Kagami pretends to not notice as Orochimaru subtly picks his pocket and clones the pass on his phone. Of course his minion wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to have access to knowledge!

  “Baby Snake, have I ever led you astray?” Kagami leads the way down the long aisles of books, looking for the shelves with the advanced and forbidden sealing techniques. There was some book about mind control seals, something from the heyday of sealing in Uzu no Kuni. Kagami had seen it before, back when he had been packmule-ing texts for Professor Senju.  

  He walks confidently down the corridor to the rotunda where the shelves started.Forbidden fire magics, forbidden earth magics, forbidden water magics (oooh, Kagami would have to remember that there is a text on torture methods, that one’s new), forbidden air magics, forbidden nature transformations, forbidden bukijutsu (weren’t all bukijutsu forbidden?). They should be getting close, sealing was usually hidden deeper in the vault of libraries, where the wards were older, stronger, and more sensitive to intruders trying to forcibly break through.

“Kagami, you regularly get lost. Do you really want me to answer that?”

  Kagami swears the quality of minion has gone down since his day. That’s it, Orochimaru gets to re-calibrate the micro pipettes, no wet bench experiments for him. “Ah, here we go.” Finally the right shelf. A quick perusal of the titles gained nothing significant, so Kagami takes the most promising titles and then dumped the less promising ones on Orochimaru. “To the research tables!”

  Four hours of scribbling notes and painstakingly copying seal matrix elements later, they had exhausted the texts they had claimed and started in on round two. Upside, Kagami is pretty sure he could pass any pop quiz Professor Uzumaki gives on sealing and it’s theory in that moment; downside is that he’s running low on candy to bribe the minion with. He stares moodily at the latest betrayal: the right text (finally!) but one written in code. “If this ends up being a puzzle like in Full Metal Alchemist, I’m going to invent time travel just to go back in time to punch the author,” Kagami informs Orochimaru.

  At the blank look he gets in response, he fears the worst. Then, “Wouldn’t you rather use time travel for something … more humanitarian? Like, ending wars before they started?”

  “And jeopardize my own existence? I think not.” Honestly, did Orochimaru think he was born yesterday? Kagami has a healthy appreciation of the Grandfather Paradox. What if he were to end up with multiple Uncle Setsunas? He’d have to go to jail for pre-mediated multiple homicide, no matter that he’d be doing the world a service. Objectively, it’s not worth it.

  Orochimaru considers Kagami thoughtfully before nodding, “Fair enough.” Then, with slightly too much magic, he twisted air and lightning-flavored-fire together and the air was awash with books flipping through their pages madly, pausing open on certain pages. A second twist, this time water via a snake hand seal and the blank loose leaf surrounding them began to fill with information. As soon as the information from each paused upon page was noted, and the rest of the book checked for relevance, the books returned to their places on the shelves.

  Kagami had to admit it was a neat use of magic, but also, “Are you trying to blow us all up? Air and fire together is liable to cause an inferno! Channeling water through a primarily earth magic hand seal? It could have exploded the entirety of the University! Where would you get such an idea from anyways?” He keeps thwacking Orochimaru over the head until he steps out of range.

  Orochimaru rubs the back of his head where Kagami had whacked him petulantly, “Professor Sarutobi’s done it before.”

  “Professor Sarutobi has practiced in a controlled environment, with more hand seals until he could do his spell with only a few hand signs, and not just experimented on the fly. And don’t try to tell me that you didn’t just make up those spells just now.” At least Orochimaru has the sense to look guilty. “Seriously! You’re a genius, did you not think that through at all? Just… don’t do it again. Get the notes and let’s see what we have.”

  What they have is a hot mess. Not even the fun kind of hot mess. Time for trial and error then. “Grab your tablet, we’re going to have to test seal matrices.” Thank the Four for Professor Uzumaki developing a seal and ward prediction app. Draw in your proposed seal or ward, and it would spit out what it would do. No more explosions in the Sealing and Wards department! The only downside is the drawing - Kagami isn’t in the Sealing and Ward department for a reason. Glancing over at Orochimaru’s chicken scratch, it’s clear that there is a good reason he isn’t either. It was going to be a long day.

  “Actually, wouldn’t it just be easier to scry for the right elements?” Orochimaru, that sly bastard. “I mean, we should have enough moon-harvested water around, and we have a thrice-mirrored bowl?” Kagami waits patiently for the answer to become obvious - there’s a good reason they can’t use scrying here and it would compute in 3, 2, 1 … “Oh, the symbols.”

  “Exactly. Premontionary and Clairvoyant magic is a lost magic for a reason, and it isn’t because we can’t do it. We just can’t focus in on when or what we want to see.” Kagami chews his lower lip in concentration; the whorls of the external enclosing planes had to be precise for energy direction. Would an earth based element as a part of the directory pathways help or hinder the process? Air elements wouldn’t be right, they weren’t look for knowledge, they wanted mind control which was as opposite of knowledge that they could get, but water’s malleability conflicts with earth and it’d become a muddled mess.

  It was an unfortunate shortcoming, but the application wouldn’t, or rather couldn’t tell you where you went wrong. Just that the seal didn’t work, or that the energy pathways ruptured, or memorably, with one frustrated scribble, death and destruction to the bonds between molecules. From that point, things rapidly devolve as their eyes begin to blur with strain. They had created a 13th brand new variant of explosive seals - really, they’re easier to make than anyone wants the average person to believe - when the latest seal matrix is announced to probably have mind control properties. Kagami nearly drops the tablet in shock. “Holy Fire God’s blessed ashes. We did it!”

  Orochimaru catches the tablet when Kagami finally finishes fumbling it around. “It only says ‘probably’, though.”

  Kagami doesn’t stop dancing in celebration, “It’s good enough for a test! To the graveyard!” He moonwalks to the door and is halfway down the hallway before realizing. “Wait! Save that seal,and the rest, and print out like seven copies of each on seal paper. Plus the Reanimation seal! Let’s test the lot!”

  It wasn’t a long trek to the graveyard, but they’d stopped to pick up lunch and snacks, plus water bottles and a bag because who knows how long it’d take to get through all of these seals. Proper hydration and feed was the undisputed key to excellent research, everyone knew that. It was also around lunchtime and research did not wait for growling stomachs.

  Then they realized that it was an exotic pet cemetery and no one really needed a tiger on the loose on the off chance that the seal failed to work and had to go to the opposite end of town for the regular pet cemetery attached to the regular human graveyard way in the back.

  “This one seems promising!” The headstone read “Spot”, and that was a normal pet name. Easy enough, really. Probably a dog, maybe a rabbit if someone had a rabbit with a spot -

  “It’s a cat.” Orochimaru boggles from where he’s prized off the top of the casket. “This is ‘Spot’?”

  “Now now, minion, we can’t judge people on their naming sense. Afterall, ‘Spot’ is a human name too.” And he had always wondered what had happened that Uncle Tajima had agreed to that name. Aunt Akane really must have put the fear of the Four into him….

  Kagami shakes himself out of his spiral of thinking when he hears the crunching of gravel. “Quick, hide,” he hisses at Orochimaru, then scrambles into the bushes. Grave robbing is a crime still, no matter that this is in the name of Experimental and Theoretical Magic, and Kagami would like to not go to jail, thank you.

  Two figures in dark cloaks trudge up the path carrying flowers. Small Lords of Ash and Smoke, please let them not pause at the dug up grave please let them not pause at the dug up grave pleasepleaseplease - The figures stop in front of the dug up grave. Fuck the Water God’s sacred duck.

  “What’s happened to Madara?” The tall one with the face cloth cries, part horror and part vengeance-will-be-mine. He drops to his knees in the mess, sifting through the dirt and grass pensively. After a long moment, “They can’t have left too long ago, Hidan. The soil is still freshly overturned.”

  Kagami and Orochimaru exchange looks and in an unparalleled instance of reading each other’s minds sprang into action simultaneously. Orochimaru sprints in the opposite direction while Kagami leaps out and blows the strongest fire spell he can muster into the face of the two men.

That should take care of that - “Flame of the Fire God!” A scythe rips through the fire ball, closely followed by the bare-faced man, Hidan, who looks remarkably undamaged for having taken a fire ball point blank.

  Kagami makes the executive decision to run. He’s halfway back to his car, dodging sweeps of the scythe and vaulting over headstones, to where he hopes Orochimaru has gotten in and started the engine, when he feels a solid thwack to his skull and the world goes dark.

    Cousin Madara groans from where he’s watching tomatoes stew down on the stove, poking at the mass warily, “Every time I think this can’t possibly get any worse, it does. First with the breaking and entering, then the grave robbing, and now kidnappers.” He points the wooden spoon that’s been stirring the sauce in Kagami’s face. “You are never allowed out without supervision again. Ever.”

  Kagami pouts, “Excuse you, but you’re not the boss of me.” He sticks his tongue out for added effect.

  Professor Senju had pulled out a cooling compress around the time they got to the graveyard, and lifted the corner that was just over his eyes. “You did say ‘Hidan’ correct? Was he by chance with a man named Kazuku?”

  Orochimaru perks up from where he’s been patiently shelling field peas, “Do you know them Professor?”

  Professor Senju pauses, then states baldly, “Kazuku tried to kill me and Brother once.”

  He replaces the cloth just in time to miss Cousin Madara whirls around, “When was this?!” Tomato sauce flies off the spoon as Cousin Madara gesticulates frantically. Kagami really hopes it won’t stain the pale Iron blue Professor Senju had painted his kitchen. Even if it was mostly for show.

  Then the thought occurs to him, “Ah, to be fair, they were more like jacks-of-all-trade rather than just kidnappers? They did ransoms, sacrifices, assassinations, bounty hunting, serial killing/mass murder - what’s the difference by the way? - plus or minus some contract killing, but that could be the same as assassination. And odds jobs, as long as they paid.”

  It’s like a record had jumped and scratched. Professor Senju and Cousin Madara exchange a Look, and how sweet, they’re at the stage where they could hold entire conversations with their eyes! Practically married! “And how did you come by this information?” Professor Senju queries calmly and carefully.

  Orochimaru answers from where he’s digging his snake out of the pea shells, “Oh, we talked to them.”

    Contrary to what the movies would have you believe, getting knocked unconscious tended to be traumatic and leave one with a ringing in the ears and a throbbing in the skull. Unfortunately, the lack of light in what appeared to be a car trunk meant Orochimaru wasn’t able to check him from concussion, and the lack of room meant neither of them could risk a small flame to see either. As it was, someone had disabled the emergency escape latch in the trunk so rolling out and getting to a medical facility was completely out of the question. Or so Orochimaru tells him, Kagami is a little too nauseous to check for himself. The bouncing of the car tells him they’re not on asphalt, more likely gravel or one of the many forest roads that are covered in rocks and tree roots. Either one is not a good sign - neither of those are features of roads anywhere near the University.

  Telling Orochimaru that would do no good; Frightening the Minion is Not to Be Borne. So instead Kagami announces with as much dignity as he can muster laying on his side curled into the fetal position. “I think I am going to vomit.”

  The car comes to a screeching halt. “Oh, fucking no you don’t! I just got the Chariot of Fucking Destruction detailed!” Ah, the dulcet tones of yelling. They don’t help Kagami’s swimming head, or the building roiling of his gut.

  Which is how Kagami projectile vomits all over Scythe Dude when he yanks open the trunk. He flops over the rear bumper and moans pitifully. He wants ice like burning and the cloud-blanket Cousin Izuna had knit him that felt like a hug when he snuggles in. And his mom to pet his head like she did when he was little. That wasn’t too much to ask, was it?

  Apparently so, because he gets hoisted up into a fireman carry by Mr. Strong Arms and - Holy Fire God he has muscles. ”Do your workouts work out?” He squeezes the bit of bicep he can reach, and pokes at the trapezius on his other side. The robe gets in the way a bit, but thank the Four for partial nudists!

  Orochimaru follows sedately behind. “I apologize in advance for Kagami.”

  The Veil-Face nods sympathetically, “I as well; Hidan always uses too much force.”

  Orochimaru extends a pale hand, “Orochimaru. I’d say it’s a pleasure to meet you but - ”

  “Kazuku. Don’t worry about it, we’re consummate professionals. We will ensure that this is as painless as possible so you are inclined to leave a positive review about your experience.” The handshake they exchange is firm and cordial. Kagami thinks he needs to set up a module on Kidnapping 101. This is most probably not the proper thing to do when kidnapped. Professor Senju never had to give him that lesson; he can’t even trawl through Professor Senju’s archives for help. He moans, he doesn’t want to have to create a new Power Point, they take forever and what does he even say? If the University finds another incident of suspicious search history….

  “Oi! If you puke on me again I’m sacrificing you to Jashin-sama!” Hidan barks over his shoulder, apparently concerned by the pitiful sounds Kagami is making.

  Kagami thinks about it for a moment, over the murmur of conversation Orochimaru and Kazuku discussing … immortality and magic natures, or something like that? … before going for broke, “Who’s Jashin-sama?”

  He takes Kazuku’s, “Lady of Death preserve me in eternal life,” at face value. There’s only a select few people who would ever call on the Lady of Death and only the movies would have you believe they’re all crazy, much more likely he’s a follower of the Lady of Death. Weird, but much more plausible. Immortality was myth and legend, and not even a Lost Art myth or legend; at least those had some evidence towards being real and replicable.

  “Jashin-sama is a great and benevolent God, heathen! Take a page from this wretched soul and listen to the word of Jashin! Maybe you’ll be saved!” Hidan crouches to let Kagami down at the base of a tree, and then gestures at Orochimaru to get himself over there too. Then he starts rummaging through his pockets, apparently that cloak had a lot, and deep ones too. Kagami’s impressed, he’ll have to ask after the make and model and get himself one. It seemed useful, like a lab coat only socially acceptable to wear outside of lab.

  Kazuku sighs heavily, before stating blandly, “If either of you have people willing to pay ransoms for your safe return, and/or pay for repairs to Spot’s grave, speak now.”

  Orochimaru eyes Kagami speculatively, before taking the proffered call phone and dialing. “Professor Sarutobi? I’ve been kidnapped. So has Kagami. Yes, Kagami Uchiha. Please comply with our kidnappers requests.” Orochimaru listens intently, nodding to whatever Hiruzen says, before handing the phone back to Kazuku.

  Kagami can feel the disappointment from Hiruzen already. He’d bet last night’s authentic Uzu ramen that he’s going to be lectured at the next faculty meeting. He’ll have to bring a discreet snack, Hiruzen tended towards long-winded and unnecessarily complicated explanations and lectures that were probably best delivered in vernacular rather than high-brow concepts and metaphors. Where he even picked up that tendency was anyone’s guess, Professor Senju was concise and to the point and definitely was not a dick about things like Hiruzen. Maybe if he threw a glove to issue a challenge? Kagami could take Hiruzen in hand-to-hand combat. He only had nitrile gloves though, did that even count?

  “Aha! Found it!” Hidan bellows in triumph, breaking Kagami from his stupor. “Time to enlighten you heathens to the truth, to Jashin-sama!” He unfolds a small booklet, before straightening his spine to pronounce with gravity, “Tenet the first: Everything is destined for utter destruction.”

  “Makes sense, the second law of thermodynamics.” At Hidan’s blank look, Kagami expands, “You know, entropy? Everything is in a constant state of decay, everything in the universe is on track to be completely destroyed? Everything tends towards destruction? It’s basic physics!”

  Hidan looks conflicted, “Your heathen science has somehow found the truth, yet is still heathen and ought to be rejected.”

  Kagami crosses his arms, “You can think of it that way, or you can think of it as science being the explanation for the Unknown Mysteries of the Universe. ‘A Search is what They have wrought for length, and depth, and wideness.’”

  A series of thoughtful nods, then Hidan clears his throat. Kazuku reappears from between the trees, phone call over. Orochimaru asks him conversationally, “So, what is it that you do?”

  Hidan continues, “Tenet the Second: To wreak Destruction upon everything is the highest calling. Anything less is a sin. Tenet the Third: Discard those who fear death, for there is nothing more holy than the end. Death is the absence of fear. Tenet the Fourth: Those who undergo the mystic rituals will find immortal life by the will of Jashin-sama.” He pauses, then, “Remember these tenets, because they will be the core of your life henceforth! You, once you have accepted Jashin-sama and the teachings of Jashinism, will live and die by these fundamental truths.”  

  Kazuku looks up from his notebook and calculator, apparently tabulating something, “We do a bit of this and that. Whatever pays most at the time, kidnapping, ransom, contract killing, bounty hunting. Odd jobs, as necessary. Keeps the bank account flush.”

  Hidan spits, sidetracked, “Of fucking course, because this heathen piece of shit only worships money. He’s killed monks and destroyed temples for money. Blasphemous motherfucker, sold out his own country for a quick buck.”

  Kagami would like to point out the obvious, but it might not be a good time. Considering that Hidan pulls out his scythe - which, on second look, is really impractical, given that it has three blades on the same side, meaning that unless one uses it in a primarily overhand chopping manner only one blade is ever going to do the cutting - and Kazuku is queuing up magic like it’s a Magic combat tournament championship. “Are you going to sacrifice me to your Jashin-sama? Without praying? Am I neighborly enough to qualify for killing, Hidan?”

  And now would be the time to duck for cover. Because Kagami hasn’t heard that level of vitriol and barely leashed rage since the time someone made a sexist remark about women in front of Koharu. He’s willing to stake his life on the fact that they’re about to see a similar level of beat down, with the same exact sum number of witnesses: none. “Minion, move.” He pushes at Orochimaru’s shoulder with as much this-is-imperative-listen-to-me desperation as he can muster, because they are both in danger of dying and -

“Fucking rot in Hell.” Before Kagami can react- even think about shielding Orochimaru from what’s coming, because he’s too young to see something like murder - Kazuku’s neck is severed. Blood gushes forth, and then thousands of thin black threads that quickly attach Kazuku’s head with no other apparent damage beyond the new set of stitches to his throat. It is easily one of the most horrifying yet fascinating things Kagami has ever seen.

  “Fire God’s Eternal Flame.” Kagami can’t stop replaying the scene he saw over and over and over in his head. Orochimaru is the only thing holding him upright; his bones have turned from jelly to water. There’s no way - Kazuku moves lightning quick, or must’ve, because the next thing Kagami can see is that Kazuku’s fist is through Hidan’s chest. Hidan only laughs maniacally.

  “Like that sort of thing can kill me fuckwit.” The scythe swings down and slices through Kazuku’s arm for long enough that Hidan slides straight off the end of his arm. The gaping absence in the middle of his chest starts to close over before their eyes. Right. Immortality. Damnation of sulphur and ash.

  Luckily, the duo seems well matched in terms of ability and wholly focused on trying to murderize each other. “Orochimaru. Tell me you got the keys?” Kagami whispers lowly as they stumble blindly through the woods. Every now and again the sound of a massive collision roars by, tinged with different magic types equally. Monsters, the both of them.

  A cloud of dust and high-speed wind has them ducking behind one of the massive trees that Hi no Kuni is known for. It adds a new level to the ringing in his ears. Kagami wants to blame his still throbbing head, but he would swear that they’re not getting any farther from where the immortals are duking it out. “Come on Kagami, only 500 meters to the car, we can make it.” Orochimaru, such a good minion, being supportive… and supportive, given the fact that Kagami’s arm is around Orochimaru’s neck and the teen is half carrying him since his legs are failing to support him properly without assistance. Once Kagami got a chance, he was going to promote Orochimaru to Head Minion. Maybe Chief Lab Assistant. Definitely put him up for the “Best Minion Award” at the next departmental grad student meeting.

  The crack of a twig that didn’t come from their footfalls first alerts them that there is something else out there that isn’t just them and the still clashing monsters wreaking havoc across the landscape. There were red laser dots flitting across the tree trunks, but that was probably a hallucination - Kagami really needs to get his head checked out. “Shit.” And Orochimaru is cursing. Since the last last time Kagami had ever heard a curse exit Orochimaru’s mouth was after he paralyzed his arms, he’s suitably alarmed.

  Orochimaru picks up his pace, moving diagonally to flank the dancing dots. They’ve nearly gotten behind the shadowy figures gliding through the dappled shadows and dust clouds when a low and dangerous growl starts up behind them. “I would stop moving if I were you.”

  “Would this person happen to have white hair? In a completely non-regulation ponytail? Scary, but nice scary? Younger than Kagami but Older than Orochimaru?”

  “Uh, he had a wolf?” Really that was the most memorable thing about him. That thing was clearly suffering from gigantism, or whatever the canid version of Marfan’s Syndrome is. If it even was a regular canid and not some beast of myth and legend. Kagami got a hair sample. Just to be sure. Who knows, maybe Celestials and Spirits had DNA like normal mortal creatures. “Do you prefer vinegar and sugar rice, or just plain rice in your rice balls.”

  “This explains why I got a phone call about someone who looks like an Uchiha cavorting with known criminals and fleeing from the military.” Cousin Madara looks conflicted, then passes the vinegar and sugar. Kagami would have to be sure to add extra spice to the curry to balance it out then.

  “And you didn’t expect Kagami?” Thanks Professor Senju, Kagami’ll be sure to give him a rice ball with all the pickled plum. He didn’t get into trouble that often, and most of his family are employed in law enforcement.

  “Look, you try meeting the Wild Hunt and not fleeing. I have things to achieve and they all start with no getting scooped by the Fair Folk and spending eternity hunting things down. Or being hunted. Or being eaten. ” Kagami grumbles, then floats over a mug of coffee. Going 24 hours without the nectar of the Gods is pushing it, okay. He needs his fix.

  Cousin Madara makes a pinched face. Kagami adds a pinch of asafoetida, anise, and turmeric to the curry - indigestion and constipation is normally the cause of faces like that. “Sakumo Hatake isn’t Fae.” Shows what Cousin Madara knows.

  Orochimaru protests, “He had a massive wolf! That’s not normal for humans.” What’s left unsaid is that it’s normal in the stories for Wild Hunt to have large predator companions. Like massive wolves. That thing was easily the size of a bear. Not a small bear either, like a bear on steroids. Some Princess Mononoke animal shit.

  Kagami agrees, “Definitely a Heavenly Dog.” To add more garlic or more soy? He leans over to proffer a spoon to Professor Senju - whatever he says, the opposite. Unless he says it’s fine in which case both, plus chilies. Kagami’s sure he saw a dried Ghost Pepper in the spice cupboard…

  “Fuzzy isn’t a Heavenly Dog.” the statement is bald and matter-of-fact, but what does Cousin Madara know? It’s amazingly clear Cousin Madara knows nothing. Then Cousin Madara stops to think, as if reviewing the conversation because something’s not adding up. “Why would you even think that the military was the Wild Hunt?”

  Kagami is too busy trying to wrestle the soy sauce bottle away from Professor Senju’s control, Fire God’s Flame he was strong, so Orochimaru answers instead. “Immortals are a thing. Who knows what else is out there?” He pauses to consider, then, “But since you know the white-haired Fae, please apologize for us about the screaming. And running. And the fire. There was a lot of fire.”  Oh look, Cousin Madara can look even more horrified. Kagami should take a picture for the databook.

    Kagami would like to contend neither he nor Orochimaru screamed shrilly like small children. They scream like terrified grown adults, thank you very much. Even if the response is confused whining and pained distress on the part of the wolf and a startled look on the Fae’s.

  Granted, Kagami’s automatic response is to punch the human-looking one in the face. It’s sloppy, and Kagami resolves to return to the dojo with Cousin Madara and Cousin Izuna because apparently just being in academia does not mean that he’s exempt from needing to throw punches.

  Though, since it lands and has the Fae stumble back in surprise, Kagami will take it. He feels the cold-prickle-shhhh-shiver of Orochimaru’s magic, and ducks on instinct. He’s not surprised when a blast of fire flies over him, or the yelp of both Fae creatures as they scramble away from the flame. Idly, Kagami notes it’s blue, but then he’s too busy running in the opposite direction to note much more.

  Neither he nor Orochimaru are concerned by stealth anymore; clearly the jig is up and was always up since, you know, Wild Hunt. There is but one choice, and only one: to go sprinting through the underbrush at top speed (or rather, at a fast stumble) and keep firing the most destructive magic they know at whomever crosses their path and dodging the magic sent their way, plus or minus Heavenly Dog. Heavenly Wolf. Whatever. It’s not like they need to worry about  permanently hurting anyone they come across, since one group is immortal and the other is … immortal. Huh. Tonight has been wild on the things Kagami thought he knew for a fact. Maybe he should have Orochimaru research immortality for his senior thesis….

  Orochimaru pulls them both into the boughs of a particularly ancient oak with a fancy twist of air magic, bringing them safely out of the reach of snapping wolf jaws. “We’re - ,” there’s a crackle of lightning and Kagami tackles Orochimaru flat to the wood as the bolt flies through where their heads had last been. “We’re not good, Four Almighty.”

  Orochimaru snarls as lightning strikes the tree proper and shakes it violently. “Kagami, hold still.” He startles then feels the distinct feel of cold-prickle-shhh-shiver and his headache alleviating. Ooooh, healing magic. Magic fingers.Kagami could sigh with relief.

  “When did you learn healing magic?”

  “One of my closest friends is a prodigy healer. Where do you think?” Right, pissed off Orochimaru is snarky. Must remember. Kagami isn’t going to complain, because his head feels clearer than after a 4 coffee morning and it’s a minor miracle. He opens his mouth, only to be cut off, “No I will not be doing this regularly. Deal with your caffeine addiction like a normal person.”  then Orochimaru launches into a complex series of hand seals and Kagami takes that as his cue to be cute and distracting.

  “Hey~, Mr. Wild Hunt. Are you looking for little old me?” He calls innocently into the shadowy forest. “Wolfy?” Kagami almost misses the nearly silent exhale Wolfy breathes next to his ear, but does manage to stick his hand in Wolfy’s mouth just in time to feel it so it all works out anyways. He never knew that such a massive, powerful animal could look so startled, but then again, Kagami is also technically a member of an apex predator species and he’s definitely surprised to find his hand in a mouth unexpectedly. They make awkward eye contact, and carefully Kagami extracts his hand from Wolfy’s mouth. “Let’s never speak of this again,” he intones solemnly, and he’d swear Wolfy agrees.

  The forest around them rings with the sound of spells and shouting, but the bubble around the two of them is uncomfortably silent. Kagami likes to think they’re each trying to figure out where to go from here, because what does one do after they stick their hand in someone else’s mouth without prior consent? Is there some protocol after removing one’s hand? He’s probably already missed his window to apologize, and now the situation is stuck.

  Kagami’s about to ask how Wolfy’s finding the weather when he’s saved by Hidan and Kazuku bursting through the tree-line in a flurry of scythe and magic, swiftly followed by the Wild Hunt wielding guns and military-grade spells. It takes some creative dodging of what looks like a particularly well-executed evisceration magic, ducking of a three bladed scythe, and fleeing-for-his-life-ing of bullets - which, huh, Wild Hunt must have gone modern, who would’ve thunk it - to get away. For a given value of “get away”, since he’s muddy, covered in leaf litter, being chased by a massive wolf (though, Wolfy seems to be playing with Kagami and trying to eat Hidan and/or Kazuku, and that’s a small comfort really), the Wild Hunt (also aiming to kill Hidan and/or Kazaku, whomever’s more open), and Hidan and Kazuku (one of whom is bellowing about sacrificing Kagami to Jashin-sama to free him from his irrational fear of death, and the other of whom is hissing about Kagami being necessary for getting the ransom). This is also discounting the various tree roots, rocks, and …other things Kagami bolts over. The less noted about those the better.

  He’s about to dart over a river-creek-moving body of water thing when he sees shapes surface from the middle of the river. Fire God’s Fury, weren’t Fae supposed to be unable to cross running water? Or was Kagami confusing them with the undead? In any case it didn’t matter, because Orochimaru finally finished his overly-complex set of hand seals and the world turned to smoke and ash and roaring flames as far as the eye could see.

  Not that it seems to bother the water Fae. Kagami flails and backtracks back towards the chaos of the pursuing vanguard since he has no burning desire to experience the hospitality of the Fae now or ever. Running for so long has left him a little winded, but hey, there’s nothing like getting in a bit of adrenaline-fueled cardio in the afternoon. Plus the leaping, evading, sending spells blasting off in every which direction, and avoiding the general mayhem is easier said than done, even if the Wild Hunt are doing their level best not to hit him. Or hit Wolfy, who’s been following him like a cat playing with a mouse, and Kagami feels especially hunted - Wolfy seems to be herding him, but that can’t be right because wolves are not sheepdogs. Really, all the near-misses of nipping and circling is unnecessary. Can’t he just run for his life in peace? Is that too much to ask?

  Apparently so, because he’s just ducked Hidan’s electrically-sparking scythe - no clue if that’s because it’s actually electric or simply electrically-conductive - and managed to stumble his way out of the firefight with minimal physical damage. His magic pools are running low- he’s not a monster like Cousin Madara or Professor Senju - but that’s okay because that will fix itself with enough time and rest. And then he rests his eyes on what is possibly the most horrific sight today. This time his shriek is shrill. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!”

  Orochimaru perks up from where he’s pinning a very twitchy white-haired Fae to the trunk of a tree. “Oh good, you’re here.”  Still, he makes no move to release the Fae and Kagami curses whatever God decided that he needed a Minion like this.

  The Fae makes desperate eye contact while trying to maintain the maximum amount of distance between himself and Orochimaru, “Please get him off of me.” That was clearly begging. An extremely powerful Fae is begging.

  “But I haven’t finished seducing you.” Orochimaru purrs. Even worse then Kagami initially suspected. Wolfy begins to sidle away with a confused whine but stops and whines even harder, ears flat, clearly conflicted. Kagami is similarly conflicted, since on the one hand, this is horrifying beyond all reason and is completely inappropriate, yet on the other hand he wants to claw his eyes out and unsee this scene with prejudice. Unfortunately, there is only one correct answer.

  “Four Almighty, this is sexual harassment. This is so much sexual harassment.” Kagami fists his hand in Orochimaru’s collar and pulls him off the Fae. “I’m so sorry about this, I promise he was raised better than this.” Then to Orochimaru as Kagami shakes him, “What in the Twelve Hells possessed you to think that was okay?” The Fae looks traumatized - Kagami hadn’t known you could traumatize ageless beings who hunted people down in various gruesome ways for fun; he really hoped there wouldn’t be a complaint lodged with HR at the University. Given his luck, there would be.

  Orochimaru looks unrepentant, “But it worked! It bought just enough time for you to come without him messing with the seal.”

  “That doesn’t make it better!” Then Orochimaru’s response processes, and then Kagami has to double check that he heard that correctly. Suspicion colors his tone, “What seal.” It does not escape his notice that the Fae and Wolfy are sidestepping away as if they’re both insane and liable to go bonkers at any moment. He can’t decide if that’s good or bad - on the one hand, they’re too insane for the Wild Hunt, on the other, they’re too insane for the Wild Hunt. Kagami clearly needs to rethink his life choices.

  Orochimaru beams, “This one!” Then there’s a massive burst of magic and the world turns into a whirling light tunnel.

    “There are so many things I want to say, I have no idea where to begin.” There is a distinct air of resignation to Professor Senju’s tone, and Cousin Madara preemptively left 15 minutes ago to get medicines to combat both of their growing headaches. “The idea that you’d encountered Fae, the fact you ran from the military - and incidentally caused an International Incident, by the by, it was on the news- of not one, but two different countries, the fact you,” He glares over his steepled fingers at Orochimaru, “thought sexual harassment was a viable path for a distraction, or that you used a seal for travel.”

  “It worked!” Orochimaru throws his hands up in defeat, then stalks out of the kitchen. His snake remains curled happily on top of the still warm rice cooker, flicking it’s tongue out at intervals.

  Kagami exchanges a Look with Professor Senju, before saying, “The department is doing a refresher course on sexual harassment in a week, I already signed him up.” He has a spoon whirl between the oil poaching eggs cooking sous vide to make sure they’re not sticking together, then fishes out the seaweed from the drawer. “And in all fairness, the seal did transport us elsewhere. Just not where we expected to go.” He tastes the rice, before adding a dash of sugar. “What’s this about the news?”

  Professor Senju just groans.

  The seal has some of its intended effect in that they’re transported from point A through space to point B. Though given that Point B ends up being smack into a tree several hundred feet above ground, it’s a mixed bag.

  The nausea it causes isn’t ideal either. But hey! It worked! They’re not dead or lost to the space-time continuum! This is a win for Experimental and Theoretical Magic! With a little tweaking it’d be fine!

  “Where were you aiming for?” Kagami asks in between retching. It’s a small comfort that Orochimaru is also retching and green.

  “I was supposed to aim?”  Right Orochimaru is no longer allowed to transport them anywhere.

  “You didn’t pay attention in the lab meeting regarding the Teleportation seal?” If Kagami weren’t already alarmed he would be now. The lab meeting had only been preliminary, after all, and had only reviewed the basics of a Teleportation seal, or rather what remnants had been found and pieced together from ancient sealing treatises. That seal hadn’t been complete, and yet apparently Orochimaru tried to use it.

  “I usually tune out the lab meetings.” And that explains a lot. Kagami knew Orochimaru couldn’t be taking such detailed notes, the slippery little worm.

  Kagami really can’t wrap his brains around the fact Orochimaru used an unknown seal on live human subjects. “You could have killed us.” An unfinished seal, was a surefire way to die.Not to mention entirely unethical. Was this actually one of the Twelve Hells and Kagami just didn’t know? It might be, since everything due … left  is scrub. Were any of the Twelve Hells scrub land?

  Orochimaru winces as he twists onto his back. “I doubt I could get it to work again - Idon’t have enough magic left to try it again, and a few magic pathways ruptured in trying to get the seal to function.” Kagami winces at that proclamation. The only one of the two of them who had any clue how to do basic first aid was the one who was injured, with ruptured magic pathways, and Kagami has no clue where they are. It’s nearly nighttime, though, and Kagami has been forced through enough wilderness survival training camps/simulations/exercises by his relatives to be competent at navigating them via the stars.

  He fishes through the pack that’s miraculously stayed with them, mostly intact. “Here, have a sandwich and water. It should help some. Slowly.” It would go a long way to dealing with magic replenishment, but not if it was just vomited back up again. Rule One and all that. He digs around some more and finds a bag of candy. Oh good, ginger flavored - great of anti-nausea. “Suck on this too.” Kagami popped a piece himself, for the ginger and the sugar content. Neither of them had eaten since breakfast, and it shows by the way his stomach growls. If he’s hungry then Orochimaru must be as well. Kagami takes a moment to peer over the edge of the branch they landed on.

  It’s not too far down to the ground, not if he uses a few well placed bursts of air to slow his descent into something more manageable. There look to be some edible berries, and since Kagami has no clear idea of how long it will take them to get back to some form of civilization, it’d be best to gather some and save the snacks they had brought for if they ran out of edible foods. The act taxes his magic pools, but not noticeably enough given his magic’s already depleted state. At least he’s not completely exhausted like Kagami suspects Orochimaru is, no matter that the teen is trying to play it off like he’s got something left. Orochimaru isn’t finished growing, and so long as his body is in flux, so are his magic pools. They’ll even out eventually, and probably into the upper end of the spectrum, but for now they’re still developing.

  There’s a glut of blackberries, but Kagami avoids them. Fae fruit are suspect, and he doesn’t need another set of Fae on their case at the moment. He whispers an old rhyme to appease them anyways, because who even knew what rules ruled interactions the Fair Folk anymore if they were going around with guns - gunmetal had iron in it, right? A few meters away he finds a large strawberry bush, the berries brilliant red and ripe. Good fortune, which Four know they need more of. He fills his two handkerchiefs, and the already emptied sandwich container before eating his own fill of the berries. He knows they’re a stopgap measure at best - the terrain is rugged, and there probably isn’t much by way of travel options beyond “on foot”. With that in mind he pulls up some dandelion greens, and nettle greens nestled in among the branches of the strawberry bush and eats a handful. Mmmm iron.

  It’s only when he hears the low telltale hiss of an agitated snake does Kagami freeze. He knew he was forgetting something important; strawberry bushes attract snakes. Okay, that’s not necessarily true, but for all intents and purposes of this situation, Kagami is going to simplify into ‘strawberry bushes attract snakes’. Damnation of sulphur and ash.

  “Hello little one.” And now Orochimaru is involved. Professor Senju and Hiruzen would gang up and kill him dead, reanimate him, then kill him dead again if their precious prodigy is even slightly injured; Kagami is afraid to think of what would occur if Orochimaru dies out here. “And what’s your name?” He’s cooing at a snake. A - Kagami checks the shape of the purple reptile’s head - probably venomous species of snake. Fire God’s flaming balls.

  Kagami eyes where Orochimaru is petting the wild snake, then at the dandelion greens. He’s absolutely sure those are dandelion greens and not hallucinogenic, but he hasn’t been bitten by a snake - and snake species native to Hi no Kuni  don’t have venom that cause hallucinations. His eyes drift skyward, only to be met by twilight still. So either he’s hallucinating realistically, or this is reality. Kagami will take the hallucination, thank you very much.

  Orochimaru and the purple snake stare at Kagami judgmentally, which isn’t fair because hallucination snakes don’t get to be judgemental. “Why not?” And the snake speaks. Thanks brain.

“It’s not the little one, Kagami.” It knows his name. It knows his name. What. How. Why. Even Orochimaru looks surprised, so win for hallucination.

  “Kagami.” That’s an alerting-warning tone if Kagami ever heard one, and he turns to look behind him, where Orochimaru’s eyes are fixed.

  He makes eye contact with a massive black snake, one who’s easily as thick around as a tree trunk and could easily fit Kagami in it’s mouth if it chose to. And now it’s laughing. Why is it laughing. Kagami wasn’t built to deal with hallucination snakes laughing at him. Can he quit this adventure in favor of fleeing back to the University and Professor Senju’s lab? It was safe there, or at least it lacked hallucinogenic agents that weren’t properly labeled with warnings.

  “Greetings, Honored One. This one calls himself Orochimaru, and this one Kagami. May we be honored with what you are called?” Pros of Orochimaru and his obsessive compulsive need to know everything- he’s got a surprisingly good grasp of the classic tales.

  “This one is called Kuroda. The little one is called Manda. And I know your names human.” The tone is amused, and has an odd double timbre to it that echoes around Kagami’s skull, all the way back to the very recesses of his lizard-hindbrain.

  It clicks faster for Kagami than Orochimaru, feat of feats. “You’re a telepathic Celestial Snake.”

  “Indeed. You’re much faster on the uptake than most humans.” The last bit is tinged with idle curiosity-noted-respect. “You must have been well taught as a child. Rare these days.”

  With good reason, because Celestial Snakes are currently thought to be tiny (comparatively to the massive snake in front of them) tree dwelling snakes in the coastal forests of Uzu no Kuni and a tiny part of Hi no Kuni that ate birds and other small creatures and prized for their rainbow scales. The whole telepathic and massive thing was supposed to be just legend; then again, Kagami’s met not one, but two, count ‘em two Immortals and more Fae than he can count  in the last 24 hours so this doesn’t surprise him at all. Not even the slightest bit.

  “Honored Kuroda, can we request your assistance? We are far from home and would like to go back.”

  Kuroda raises himself up to squint down at Orochimaru, who is standing tall and composed before the Celestial Snake. “You are strange little human. Your soul is something cold, yet warm, deadly and safe to those you love, a thing that squeezes tight and sinks it’s fangs in deep and does not let go. A snake-souled little human if there ever was one.”

  “I am honored by your words, Honored Kuroda of the Celestial Snakes.” Orochimaru bows neatly.

  Kuroda continues as if Orochimaru had not spoken at all. “I think I shall have Manda stay with you to see what you become, snake-souled Orochimaru. He knows the way back to human civilization, and will lead you there. Travel well, little humans.” Kuroda must have deemed the conversation over, because he turned his huge body around the tree and disappeared into the encroaching twilight.

  “You thought you hallucinated a snake.” Cousin Madara paused where he was shaking out pills from the bottle that proclaimed it to be ‘migraine strength!’ anti-headache medicine, then shook out two more apiece for himself and Professor Senju. Awwww, significant others taking care of each other. Reminds Kagami of his parents being lovey-dovey and taking care of one another.

  “A massive Celestial Snake, yes.” He pauses in forming the rice ball, neatly packaging it in a strip of seaweed, before plating it before Orochimaru. A smaller rice ball with more egg and less curry is placed in front of Manda. “I’m not entirely sure it wasn’t a hallucination though.”

  Orochimaru strokes Manda’s head, offended. “But Manda is real and took us to Yu no Kuni.”

  “And how. I never heard Manda speak. For all I know he’s a normal snake.” Manda bares his fangs in an obvious threat display, affronted. Probably. In any case, Kagami gives him another rice ball.

  Orochimaru rolls his eyes, “Kagami, he’s telepathic. He was talking to me the whole way. How else did we find that multi-terrain vehicle?”

  “Luck? I had strawberries!”

  Cousin Madara swipes some rice balls, and gives half to Professor Senju before digging in. “So what’s this about Yu no Kuni, and would it have anything to do with why half of its hot springs district is demolished.”

  Kagami and Orochimaru share a Look. “The Hot Springs Destruction was entirely the fault of the Wild Hunt and the Yu no Kuni military. We just happened to be there.”

    By dint of winning rock-paper-scissors, Orochimaru gets to drive when they stumble across the jeep. Or Manda leads them to the jeep. Whichever makes the most sense, since Kagami hasn’t heard a peep from the supposedly asshole snake. Kagami takes a minute to demonstrate how to hotwire the car, but after that it’s all Orochimaru. It’s not like anyone’s around to call them out on the fact that Orochimaru doesn’t have a learner’s permit, and there’s no one around to crash into or injure, both important when teaching a beginner driver. This is a proper, normal learning experience and Kagami is willing to let his Minion have it. Plus, it’s nighttime and this can count as his nighttime driving experience! It’s a three-for-one!

  It’s also easier to navigate when he can stick his head out the roof and call out directions instead of having to keep pausing and rechecking directions. Though the point of that is rendered moot by Manda who is supposedly telling Orochimaru what to do - Kagami hasn’t heard a word out of the snake. At least so far, though, he and the snake are in agreement - they’re in western Hi no Kuni and headed to Yu no Kuni because that’s the closest site of civilization. Also, least likely to be suspicious of their lack of passports and the easiest way to reorient themselves into the direction of the University.

  On top of it all, Kagami found a massive wad of cash in the glove compartment, and it’s more than enough for a swanky inn for the night, including baths, and dinner. He knows he has enough grime, leaf litter, and other associated muck on him that a bath would be glorious.

  The moon and stars are bright and  light their path, so they make good time. It’s a little past 1 am (according to the probably wrong car clock) when they finally pull into the hot springs district of Yu no Kuni. The town is still bustling with activity, so they blend in seamlessly, for a given value of seamless. Some people look at him scandalized, as if he’s done something terribly illegal by tromping through the town disheveled and dragging his younger companion (also bedraggled) behind him, but it’s usually people who look like tourists rather than residents of the town.

  First things first, though. Kagami leads the way into a small clothing shop, since he’s fairly sure neither of their outfits can be salvaged. They’re going to need a first aid kit too, and then a hot meal and a bath. Actions one and two are completed quickly, and so is checking into a nice looking inn. The innkeep directs them to the baths,  saying dinner will be delivered after they’ve had their fill of the mineral rich waters. “Ahhhh, there’s nothing like a bath,” Kagami sighs happily as he pushes open the door between the dressing room and the baths proper, towel tucked neatly around his hips. He cleans off dutifully at the provided showers and stools, scrubbing away the accumulated grime and dirt from his hair and skin, humming happily. It was such an underrated luxury, to be clean. Orochimaru, with his long hair, will take longer and Kagami leaves him to it.

  The baths are sparsely populated at this time, with only a handful of other patrons lounging in the bath. The steam rising from the water occludes their faces, giving a nice hint of privacy, and Kagami gratefully slips into the hot water. The sounds of the night are muted, the laughter and noise of the crowd still on the streets dulled by the high walls surrounding the baths, the only discernable noise is … giggling? Kagami tries to tune it out, return to relaxing and letting the stress of the past day flow out of him, but the giggle rises in volume, and sounds…. Close?

  His eyes fly open -who the fuck giggles late at night like a perverted child flipping through a skin mag when sane people are trying to relax? - and Kagami whirls to confront the hooligan, temper snapping. “Oi, knock it off, or by the Small Lords I’ll make you.”

  His eyes meet Jiraiya’s startled (and guilty?) ones, then move to the notebook Jiraiya’s clearly been scribbling in, then the hole in the partition between the men’s and women’s baths. “Are you  peeping?!” It’s just Kagami’s luck that the quiet murmurs around them fall silent just as he speaks. In the blink of a moment there’s chaos, screams of outrage and terror filling the space. Someone on the women’s side - someone with spectacular aim - lobs over a stool, then a tub, then a rock, and each misses Jiraiya by centimeters as he scrambles out of the space.

  Orochimaru sighs from where he was just slipping into the bath. “By the Four and the Heavenly Courts, Jiraiya.” He gets up and rewraps his towel, disappearing into the misty after his erstwhile friend. Kagami decides it might be best to leave the area, since he knows that look on his Minion. Someone’s going to be eviscerated, and it’s still a 50-50 split on if it’s going to be verbal or physical. Getting viscera in his hair right after he just got clean is not a pleasant thought.

  A massive stone splashes violently into the bath from across the barrier - someone on that side must have a terrifying temper - tossing Kagami about like a toy boat caught in the currents of the Nanako.  He headbutts straight into a well developed pectoral, and he’s about to apologize, but - “Hey I know that bicep!” Just to be sure though he feels it up, and yup, he’s encountered that particular bicep before. Now, just where -?

  That particular question is answered quickly when Kagami ends up pinned by the throat to the side of the bath. “Oi! Heathen, ready to be sacrificed the Jashin-sama?” Oh good. Immortal One, Hidan. And where one immortal is, there’s bound to be - ayup, Immortal Two, Kazuku. They both look terrible, a mess of stitched over wounds, bruises, scabbed over cuts and burns plus or minus what look like bullet holes.

  There is only one recourse and that is to scream. Screaming in bath houses drew attention, and not of the good kind, and for good reason. No one wanted a pervert preying on someone in a bath. Hidan drops Kagami like he’s hotter than burning and starts quickly paddling away, but not quickly enough. One of the men at the other end stands, “Hey you! What were you doing?!” He’s built like a brick shithouse and is coming this way like a bull rampaging.

  Kagami takes the quickly escalating altercation as an opportunity to go fishing around his toiletries tub, thanking whatever God is looking out for him that he stuck a few disintegration seals in there prophylactically. He’s just about to pick one out from the bottom when he hears Kazuku loom up behind him. “We meet again Kagami Uchiha.”

  Sweet Flame of Heaven, could that man be any more menacing? Kagami turns rigidly, hoping that the Immortal won’t notice the crumpled wad of sealing paper in his fist, “Ah-hahaha, fancy meeting you here Kazuku! Are you enjoying your soak?”  Please please let societal conventions trap him like it had Hidan.

  Kazuku’s face veil hides any visible reaction beyond the narrowing of his eyes. “Better having found our missing ransom prisoner. I’m afraid I must insist you return.” Kazuku clamps a hand on Kagami’s shoulder, fingers digging in painfully. “We’re awaiting quite a sum of money in exchange for you. Pity no one specified ‘living’, though.” And there came the creep-factor. A+ Mr. Immortal.

  Kagami pretends to mull it over as he rises to his feet. “Just out of curiosity, how much am I worth?”

  Kazuku’s taken aback. “What?”

  “How much am I worth? Like, how much money are you expecting to get for me? I’m not a prodigy like my Minion, I’m not famous or rich, and I’m not paid all that much so I’m not someone with a massive net worth or anything. I can’t imagine anyone I know having the money to pay a ransom, except Minion and he probably wouldn’t because I’m pretty sure he’s not all too fond of me and is probably lulling me into a false sense of security so that when he finally decides that I’m of some specific use, he can play up the ‘favorite Minion’ angle and get away with whatever he needs, probably something entirely unethical, immoral, and/or illegal. It’s a toss up at this point. Either that or he thinks I’m a hilarious bumbling fool and is humoring me for comedic effect. In any case, he wouldn’t pay a ryo for me; nor would Uncle Setsuna cause he’s an asshole. All in all, I’m really not sure that you could’ve asked for all that much money, so I have to ask, how much am I worth? And is all the hassle of kidnapping me really worth the pittance you’re going to get?” Kagami hopes his nervous sweat is taken instead to be water from the bath. He’s only got one shot at this, and keeping Kazuku on the back foot with his anxious babble is imperative.

  “Aah- that is- Um, how should I say -,” Kazuku is frantically trying to think up something complimentary, and Kagami moves. The seal slaps down onto wet skin and adheres as Kagami forces magic through. Black veins scrawl out like a spiderweb of death over Kazuku’s silent scream of pain until they’ve covered the entirety of Kazuku in ink, and then with a underwhelming puff disintegrated into dust.

  Kagami sets fire to the ashes just in case - Immortals. One more thing to add to the list of traumatic incidences of the week, but on the bright side he’s got another functioning seal to patent. This one is all his, too!

  He trots towards the exit, hoping that Muscles McMuscley over there can keep Hidan occupied, but has no such luck when Hidan gets thrown across his path into the decorative stone wall. Experimental and Theoretical Magic holds that any result could be due to random chance, so repeated testing is necessary. Kagami looks at his spare seals, and goes for broke with a shrug. He’s already offed one person today, might as well  go for broke and collect the set. Hidan puffs off without so much as a farewell, and Kagami immolates his ashes too. For symmetry, and poetic justice. Unfortunately, it does nothing to fix the damage caused to the bath from the violent response to Jiraiya peeping, but Kagami is not responsible for that in any way shape or form. Things are looking up, finally.

  Almost immediately he has to reverse that opinion. The white-haired Fae is trapped in the entrance, Wolfy-less, by Orochimaru and Manda. The poor man - Kagami hopes the Fae is male, but really doesn’t want to go ask about gender and pronouns of the Fae since it’s really not his area of study - looks like he’s been through the wringer and then some, but also like he’s humoring Orochimaru who’s looking interested in all the worst ways; Kagami has to sympathize. A swift kick to Orochimaru’s butt fixes the situation nicely. “Minion! No sexual harassment in the the baths!”

  “Ah, no it’s fine, really we just bumped into one another -,” The Fae cuts himself off, then quickly does a double take at Orochimaru, then Kagami. “You’re the pair from the forest.”

  “And you’re Wild Hunt.” Kagami hurriedly ducks into the pants and shirt he’d laid out. “How’s Wolfy? I know things are still awkward about the whole ‘mouth’ thing, but can you apologize for me? Wolfy was pretty cool when he wasn’t trying to eat me.”

  “Wild Hunt? What mouth thing?” The Fae is perplexed, but shakes himself from it quickly. “Never mind that, you’re both wanted by the military. Stop!”

  “Oh, would you look at the time. We’ve got things to do, place to be, we should catch up some other time! See ya!” Kagami flashes the Fae a peace sign, then exits the room. He’s halfway down the hall when he hears the thunder of many feet pounding across the wooden floors behind him. Kagami bolts out back onto the streets, which are still crowded, and ducks around groups carousing drunkenly in the streets. Thank the Four for tourist destinations, this would never work anywhere else.

  He sees Orochimaru and Manda slip into the mouth of an alley, and follows. Just in time, as the mass of (uniformed! Since when do they have uniforms?!) people dash past. Some straggle behind, flashing badges and questioning drunks in the street. Orochimaru peers out, then starts digging through the pack. “Here, I think I can wrangle a disguise together, but you’re not going to like it.” Manda peeks out from where he’s acting like a hair tie for Orochimaru’s impromptu ponytail.

  Kagami stares at the assorted items Orochimaru has pulled out, and has a sinking feeling.

    “Does this explain the … outfits?” Cousin Madara asks around a bite of ice cream.

  Kagami has to take offense, because they look great. Arresting even. “ You’re just angry you can’t pull something like this off.”

  Orochimaru lays back and kicks a leg out like a pinup girl, crossed at the knee and everything, like it’s Exhibit A in their defense. Manda hisses, but Manda is biased and can be bought with egg yolk treats, so it might just be him begging for more food. Kagami obliges him either way.

  “This still doesn’t explain the destruction of the hot springs.” Professor Senju prompts around a spoonful of coffee ice cream.

  “The clothing - is- was rather integral to that. Still not our fault though, for want of us not doing much magic flinging.”Orochimaru shrugs.

  “That’s not no magic flinging.”

  “In all fairness, we only had one spell. Is that ‘no magic flinging’? No. But is it ‘town decimation level magic flinging’? Also no.” Cousin Madara opens his mouth, and Kagami slams on the coffee table, “THERE’S NO EVIDENCE BEYOND THE ANECDOTAL YOU CANNOT CONVICT US.”

    “Why did you even buy this stuff?” Kagami would like to lodge a protest with whatever court will take it that he is only doing this under duress. Not that he thinks it’s wrong to crossdress, if that’s your thing - and dresses are really comfortable, even though this one is kinda clingy and short-  but walking in heels. He is only wearing heels under extreme duress.

  “Here, heat the stick bit of this earring.” Orochimaru hands him a pair of dangly earrings. Kagami eyes them, then Orochimaru’s unpierced ears.

  “Minion no.”

  “I’ve wanted pierced ears anyways. Think of it as teenage rebellion.” Putting it that way helps, especially the bit where Orochimaru has him shove hot metal through his ears. Kagami considers the studs left in the pack of earrings, but ultimately decides against it for want of a mirror and stability. Seriously, he’s standing still and wobbling like a newborn fawn.

  Orochimaru pauses from where he’s sweeping on dramatic purple eyeshadow, lone bracelet sliding down his forearm, “Give me a minute, then we’ll sneak out.”

  “Remember, the game plan is drunk. Just until we get to the outskirts of town.” He once overs their appearance in a puddle, then has the hike the top of his dress higher. The lack of straps wasn’t doing him any favors, especially given the fact that raising the top meant raising the hem, and there was no way to make it non-scandalous. He looks at Orochimaru’s much more conservative dress, with it’s sleeves and leggings, and calls shenanigans. “This was rigged, wasn’t it.”

  Orochimaru links their arms at the elbow, then sniffs, “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” before they stumble out into the street. The soldiers give them a wide berth since two underage looking drunk girls is a recipe for a career ending headline should someone snap a badly staged photo, and Kagami gets a good look at their badges when he stumbles into one of the younger looking ones. Who knew Yu no Kuni had an active offensive military - last time he checked, they supposedly only had a defensive branch.

  All things considered though, the disguises work well. Entirely too well, as they stumble “drunkenly” into the woods. It’s nearing dawn, and they’ve been traveling across the Elemental Nations for almost a full day, they’re Four knows how far from home, and there are crows. Too many moving to count, though Kagami does try, because that old rhyme hasn’t steered him wrong yet. Orochimaru starts poking at some half moss covered rock, then starts digging.

  He stops counting when he feels a rush of magic - the size and quantity that makes people nervous when it’s not in a controlled environment. “Minion - “

  Then he sees the dog. Wolf. Massive Canis Whateverus. “Fire God’s flames.”

  Orochimaru looks proud, “The control seal works. Guess you have something to patent and sell for a lot of money to the military after all.” What. Right. What they set out to do. That thing. Somehow it feels tawdry, like it pales in comparison to the journey, but considering that had immortals and Fae and shooting and massive telepathic hallucination snakes and sky high heels… maybe it’s because it’s anticlimactic? Now whatever life lesson about messing with the forces of life and death, and the role of humans in the vastness of the cosmos, trying to take the easy way out, the value of thinking before acting - whatever he was supposed to be learning and internalizing - has become moot. He would have been successful even if they hadn’t been caught in the original graveyard, only with less property damage and displacement. Does that fact mean anything? Is it the journey, not the result that’s ultimately worth something, something better than financial stability and security? “Kagami, now is not the time for a meditative trance.”

  “What? Oh. Right.” Kagami scrambles up behind Orochimaru on the back of the … let’s just call it a dog. “Time to head home?”

  “Time to head home.” Poor Manda yawns and uncircles himself before draping himself like a particularly scaled scarf around Orochimaru’s shoulders. The eyeshadow - sharp like winged eyeliner, or whatever Cousin Mikoto likes to proclaim - and Manda match, for a given value of all purples match, and Kagami is struck by a wandering thought.

  “Hey, Orochimaru - “

  “Kagami. Duck.”

  “What duck?” Kagami whirls about on the gently trotting Reanimated dog. Then he sees. “Oh.” And promptly ducks.

  The flaming boulder is large, surprisingly so for Yu no Kuni, which according to legend (and famously) repurposed all its rocks for bathhouses. It still misses by a wide enough margin to be called a warning shot, though, which is a consternation best left for another time since the dog freaks out. It bounds into the town, leaping over buildings and landing neatly in streets as waves of magic buffet them - first an earthquake hemming them in on one side, a wall of fire bearing down on them from due north, a gust of hurricane force gales from above, and Kagami is just waiting for the tsunami of water as he hangs onto the patchy fur of their ride as it bounces around in what might generously be called evasive maneuvers. He tries not to think about the mass destruction such massive spellworks must be leaving, or that he’s still too low on magic to do anything about it. Also, considering that even a most basic shielding spell needs at least two other people (besides himself), he’s still up a creek about stopping the military from wrecking up their people and country’s main source of income. Kagami hopes they have good insurance.

  He stops caring for things outside his gastrointestinal tract around the time they smash a tank - which is painted a completely different design than the Yu no Kuni uniforms, so it might a completely different group, fun - ,though, since he’d rather not given his minion blackmail leverage from puking all over him. Also Manda is in the way, probably would take offense at getting human digestion peristalsis’d all over him, and is still probably highly venomous besides. Kagami decides that focusing on breathing would probably be best and leaves the heavy duty stuff to Orochimaru. It’ll probably be more appreciated long term.

  Maybe he should invest in an anti-motion sickness charm - it might be useful to have on hand, especially given recent events. “Oh, for the Air God’s sake,” Kagami vaguely makes out Orochimaru grumbling caustically, then his world goes black.

    “In all fairness, you were projecting quite loudly according to Manda, and making you go to sleep saved us all the hassle of having to clean up vomit.” Orochimaru shrugs unrepentantly, “I’m not sure why you’re complaining, we got back to the University in one piece.”

  “Doesn’t mean you couldn’t have asked. Also, there is no way you had enough magic to pull off the Reanimation, power the control seal, and knock me out.”

  Professor Senju sighs, resigned, “Not if his current research project is magic storage in crystalline structures.” Orochimaru waves regally, showing off the stone bead bracelet he had pulled on around the time of their outfit change.

  Kagami has never felt more betrayed in his life. “You are an awful awful person and I hope you get caught in shady business and end up in the weirdest situation you could ever hope to imagine,” he informs Orochimaru candidly. “And when that transpires, I will laugh in your face.”

  Cousin Madara takes a hard swig of the brandy bottle Professor Senju had unearthed. “So this is how you ended up on the run from international law enforcement, the military of Hi no Kuni, and the military of Yu no Kuni. Yet you came here why?”

  “Oh that’s easy. We need an alibi. And to patent the seals. Uh, plus we may have broken into the Registrar’s office.”

    Omake:

  “So, who all bet against Tsunade’s bet?” The show of hands was depressing. No one would have any reason to suspect that the regular goings on of a Friday night would make international headlines, much less cause International Incidents.

  Hikaku read the bet slip.‘There will be wild adventures by persons in this pool that cause an international incident tonight.’ Innocuously phrased, yet almost prophetic.

  “All in favor of banning Tsunade Senju or any proxies from betting in any future pools, raise your hand?” The show of hands was unanimous.

[mishamoonberry]

Onmyouji AU

you would (always be by my side) CH. 1 - AO3/FFN

This AU is inspired by Shounen Onmyouji and some spirit AUs in the Naruto fandom.

This is also written for the Kakasaku Month 2017 Week One – Myth/Fairytale AU (and can touch the yukata prompt too tbh bc feudal eraaaaaa). Please do check out other KS Month works by other people on tumblr and AO3/FFN (they're tagged usually so it's easier to find them!) and give them the feedback they deserve! Make this month enjoyable for all of us KS shippers!

Okay, enjoy reading!

They say there exists a spirit that guards the town’s oldest and most beautiful cherry tree.

They say there exists a cherry tree spirit that watches over the people living in town, remembering their names and their deeds.

They say, the spirit is lonely.

XXX

“You have the demon’s eye,” is the first word she says to him, full of wonder and curiosity. The man blinks. Looking left and right and finding nothing, he looks up. On top of a large cherry blossom tree in the middle of the district, on the particularly sturdy branch, sits a woman wrapped in a white kimono with pink red floral patterns. Her hair is pink, reaching her waist and decorated with a simple sakura kanzashi. Her hair is parted in the middle, showing her forehead decorated with a strange purple diamond shaped tattoo.

If Kakashi doesn’t see the ethereal and mystical glow that seems to surround her, he’ll think of her as a random woman too bored with life that she decides to take tree climbing as a hobby.

But no, he recognizes that aura.

She’s a spirit.

And Kakashi is willing to bet his left ass cheek that she’s the spirit of the tree she’s currently sitting on. Spirits—the friendly ones anyway—don’t like to mess with other spirits’ territories after all.

Kakashi stares at her, left eye closed and expression blank, choosing not to answer her simple statement of his ‘demonic’ eye.

It’s not like she’s wrong.

He’s an Onmyouji, one of the practitioners of the Onmyoudo. Basically, he’s one of the specialists in magic, spells and divination. Onmyouji are known to be able to protect other people from evil spirits, and although not all of them may have the sixth sense, Onmyouji are trusted to protect the capital and the people inside it.

One of the largest clan known for their strong onmyouji is the Uchiha Clan. While the civilians simply think that they are blessed with a strong sixth sense, it is merely an excuse to hide the fact that they are cursed.

The tale—probably true or not, although many spirits claim it is true—said that it started with the ancestor, named Indra, who had an actual sixth sense and fucked up real bad during a quest in a mountain, angering the mountain God and thus him and his kin are forever cursed with the Sharingan, the red eyes that enable them to see and feel the spiritual world around them.

It’s perhaps a blessing for those who want to become an Onmyouji. But becoming an onmyouji requires both dedication and talent, not just an uncannily strong sixth sense.

Also it explains why civilian Uchihas are often very skittish when they are out of their warded homes. The spirits are everywhere, whether major or minor, tame or evil, little ones that like to prank or big ones that cause destructions, or ones that are simply bored.

Just like the spirit who is staring at him right now.

“Are you an onmyouji?” She asks, titling her head. “You don’t look like an Uchiha, their aura feels different. Why do you have the demon’s eye?”

“I,” Kakashi drawls, “have no reason to answer that.”

It is her turn to blink.

“Why not?” She presses on, then, “it’s not like I have anyone to tell anything to. You do realize I’m this tree’s spirit, right?”

“I have no interest to tell you anything,” the silver haired man continues pleasantly, smiling a sweet smile so fake his teeth will rot if he keeps it up much longer, “now if you would excuse me.”

“What?” Kakashi ignores her confusion, humming as loud as he can while he speed walks away. He doesn’t want to deal with a nosy spirit, no matter how pretty she is. “Hey!” The spirit calls, indignant. “Where are you going? I’m not finished talking to you!”

She is left ignored.

Xx

“You’re such a rude human.”

Kakashi jolts from his seat on the porch of the Onmyoudo’s dorm, turning around with frantic heartbeats to find the spirit from a few days before floating there, arms positioned on her hips in the typical scolding manner.

“Ha…” the Hatake breathes out, bewildered. “What are you doing here? Aren’t you bound to that tree?”

The spirit has the gall to roll her eyes and scoff. “Don’t mistake me for a cursed spirit, human, I am free to wander as long as I do not bother the Gods.”

“You are…” He trails off, gesturing with his hands, “…bothering me, you know.”

She raises an eyebrow.

“Are you a God?”

“…No…”

“Then I can bother you as much as I please,” she concludes pleasantly, lips quirking up in triumph. Though Kakashi can’t understand what is so very good about bothering a non-Uchiha with the Uchiha demon’s eye, the eye that—contrary to expectations—he did not want. If his best friend could rise back from the dead and take back his eye, Kakashi will give it back happily. The Hatake Clan has had members with sixth sense before, Kakashi included. He doesn’t really need the Sharingan other than that it makes his sense stronger than ever.

Seriously, though, what the hell. He doesn’t understand the spirit’s motivation for even one bit. What is it that she wants from him? She is, as she says so herself, a simple cherry blossom tree spirit; the kind of spirit that causes no prank or malice to other creatures, the kind of spirit that is free and probably loved by everyone.

There is absolutely no reason for her to bother him.

He says at much.

“Well, you can see me, so I have a reason to bother you, now!” She counters, her smile showing her teeth.

Kakashi twitches.

“Repel,” he says, muttering out strings of spells. The spirit jerks, then, looking panicked.

“No, wait!”

It’s too bad that Kakashi is having none of that.

The spirit is forcibly thrown out of the area, and all is peaceful for the Hatake once more.

XX

“You,” comes a snarl from behind him, and Kakashi sighs behind his book, “are very rude.”

“The rude one is you, you know,” he doesn’t take his eye off of his book, “you’re the one who bother me.”

“But that doesn’t mean you can just repel me! I landed thirty kilometers away from my tree, you asshole! If I had landed on an unfriendly spirit’s territory, I’d be dead.”

“Oops,” he says, thoroughly unrepentant, and finds delight in how the spirit seems to try to withhold her furious shriek. Minutes seem to pass afterwards, with the spirit staring at him intently and Kakashi being very content in ignoring her existence altogether. Who knows, maybe she’ll disappear if he ignores her long enough.

Probably not.

“Why are you so against in talking to me anyway?” She says, then, “your life is so boring. You only study, train, read that porn of yours, and patrol. Isn’t it nice to have somebody talking to you?”

Kakashi doesn’t answer, simply flipping the page of his book—and it’s not porn, thank you very much! It’s romance, the spirit must be quite dumb not to recognize romance—and continues on ignoring her.

“Are you even listening to me?”

Junko is being very loud in this scene, he’s afraid Akiko next door will be able to listen in to their—er… nightly activities.

“Hey… Hey!”

…No matter what people says, he really is reading this for the romance.

“Hey, don’t ignore me! Hey!”

…Really. It’s the romance, not the porn.

“Ugh, you’re unbelievable! Hey! I just wanna talk!”

Well, the sex scenes are definitely a plus, he thinks, and also the insight about an onmyouji’s life is very detailed here. As much as he’d expect from the Legendary Traveling Onmyouji Jiraiya. Nevertheless, Junko is truly a beauty, although Jiraiya could have added more description about her face and expression rather than her bulbous—

“…If you don’t answer me, I’ll throw that book into the pond.”

Kakashi’s finger twitches.

She doesn’t seem to notice.

That’s good, because if she actually does according to her threat he’ll not only have her repelled, he’ll have her bound to the tree forever.

“…Hey, hey, come on. Talk to me? Please?”

…Where was he again? Oh, yes, Junko is really a beauty. He wonders if Jiraiya got this inspiration from somewhere. Not Tsunade, because she’s obviously the model for Akiko, whose description could fill in a whole page. Perhaps from some of the women he met on the streets? Or a spirit? Though the thought of seeing a spirit and using her as a romance novel material is a bit—

“Hey, I’m sorry if I was rude but it’s rare for people to be able to see me that are not the Uchiha and I just want to have someone to talk to, you know? The Uchihas have sticks up their butts and they are not good conversationalist, so I just thought you can be a nice person to chat with! That’s all, really! I don’t have any malicious intent, I promise.”

She could’ve talked to some other spirits, why is she so keen on talking to humans? And the Uchiha? Only a few of the Uchihas are as non-Uchiha as they can be; case in point, his dead best friend and a little bugger called Shisui who cracked his head a few days ago because he was lured to the cliff near Naka River by a mononoke called Danzo. It was a wonder he’s still alive.

Ah, why is he even focusing on what she’s saying? It’s better if he just go back to his book, truly.

“…Are you going to continue on ignoring me?”

Well it’s not like he ever wants to talk to her in the first place.

“…”

Has she left?

“I’m just…”

…Nope. Nevermind. If she’s going to ramble again, he’ll just go back to his book, easy peasy. He’s done this ignoring thing since Obito and Rin died, he can manage this, no matter if this is a spirit, not a human and certainly not Gai (although he can never seem to manage to ignore Gai, but he digresses).

And then, she says—

“…It’s lonely, you know?”

The whisper is like a fluttering wind, and probably is not meant to be heard by him. Despite himself, he can’t help but to be intrigued, and thus he finally looks up from his book to look at the spirit properly.

But she’s already gone, leaving the space she previously floated around somehow empty and achingly lonely.

XXX

For the next few days after that, there is no nosy cherry tree spirit trying to talk to him.

However, ‘nosy loud spirit’ seems to have upgraded into ‘nosy stalker spirit’ because she’s been following him around for days. The only places she leaves him alone are the Onmyoudo’s dorm and the Hatake Clan’s compound, in which it’s probably because the latter is warded against unfamiliar spirits.

He’s not even kidding. The pink haired spirit is always at least five meters away from him, peeking from behind the tree or wall or window or anything, looking at him with a pout and that sad kicked puppy look on her face…

…He likes puppies—has like eight of them but shhh—and that look on her face is just unfair.

And so, Kakashi finally relents. He sighs, staring balefully at the spirit that stares back at him with both hope and ferocity that could’ve made a lesser man melt, and motions her to get closer.

“What do you want from me?” He asks, because surely to be persistent, this spirit—however non malicious she may be—must want something from him. He’s had some spirits chasing after him so they can eat the Sharingan, and he wonders if such a pure spirit such as hers would also think of Sharingan as a delicious meal…

The spirit lands in front of him, an almost frown forming on her lips. “I just want to talk,” she says, and when Kakashi raises as a disbelieving eyebrow, she presses on. “I’m serious! The city has been boring for quite awhile and while I can wander, I can’t leave the city lest the tree dies and then I’ll die, talking to small spirits gets boring after a decade and, well, I miss talking to a human.”

Kakashi’s interest is piqued, and he asks, “you’ve talked to a human before?”

“A little boy, this little Uchiha tyke,” a soft and undeniably fond smile is present, and Kakashi figures the boy must have left quite the impression on her. For a spirit that says the Uchihas have sticks up their butts, she seems to be quite fond of this Uchiha. “I haven’t seen him for more than fifteen years, I presume; since he had to move to a neighboring city for Onmyoudo practices.” Then her eyes turn sad, as she whispers, “I think he’s dead.”

“Maa,” Kakashi drawls, “that’s mean of you to think so.” Very rarely Uchihas die out of town, mainly because they prefer doing jobs for this town that is already big enough as it is, other because when they’re taken to other towns, they’re more than capable to protect themselves.

Accidents can still happen though.

(That, or a reckless teammate that ultimately brings your demise).

(Kakashi restrains himself from touching his left eye).

“I’m serious!” She exclaims, sounding offended, “he didn’t go back with the rest of the group that left with him. And the Uchiha did a funeral afterwards; I can’t see the tombstone to make sure of it because the place is warded!” And then, softer, “he promised to come back. Obito never broke his promise.”

Kakashi very nearly bites his tongue off.

“What?” He almost demands, staring at her wide eyed.

“What?” She parrots, blinking. “I said he didn’t come back.”

“You said Obito,” he whispers, jaw trembling. It couldn’t be—

“Yes,” she confirms, “Uchiha Obito,” her expression clears and she lights up, looking hopeful. “You know him? Have you seen him anywhere? Is he well?”

Kakashi doesn’t answer. He isn’t able to. Here in front of him is a spirit who knew of Obito, his (dead dead deadeaddead—) best friend, the one who gave him this eye she seems to be interested in. She doesn’t seem to realize that the eye in his left eye socket belonged to Obito; or perhaps she unconsciously does, which explains her efforts in getting close to him.

Spirits are, after all, sensitive by nature and when they cling to something they deem precious, they will always cling onto it. The only reason she probably allowed Obito to leave the town is mostlikely that she’s not a malicious spirit and has quite the understanding of responsibilities an Onmyouji has.

She belongs to the oldest cherry tree in town; he’s not surprised if she knows some stuffs.

But—

But she doesn’t know of this. She doesn’t. Because Obito never returned and the Uchiha grounds are fucking warded from bottom to high ground and not even a non-malicious spirit can get close; only gods and their blessings may touch upon the Uchiha grounds. She has no way to know and she looks so excited, so happy and—

Has she been waiting for Obito this whole time?

The spirit, probably seeing his deafening silence, lets her excitement fall. She watches his expression, as he seemingly opens his mouth behind his mask and closes it again, at loss on how to reply.

Oh.

Oh.

Her eyebrows furrow, and with a downcast expression, she asks the question she fears the answer of.

(But she knows the answer already, doesn’t she?)

(Because Obito never broke his promise).

(And Obito never returned despite his promise).

“He’s dead, isn’t she?” She whispers, eyes watching the silver haired Onmyouji’s every move, and when the man flinches as if struck, she knows her worst fear has come true—has been true for the past decade.

She closes her eyes.

(I’ll be back, Sakura, he said with a wide smile. He looked manlier than the scrawny little kid that long time ago scuffled toward her tree to ask her to be his friend).

(I heard the neighbor town has these pretty kanzashi on sale, so I’ll buy you one, he promised, a hand grasping her own. With a teasing smile, he said, and then you can finally replace the one I bought for you long ago).

(I’ll be back).

(I promise).

He never comes back.

XXX

Is that hints of past ObiSaku? It is. I am a multishipper, I ship Sakura with a lot of people.

I apologize for the lack of Kakasaku in this chapter, but it will happen next chapter, I promise!

This story will be short, probably only having three or four chapters before it’s completed. I hope you can enjoy the ride as much as I do.

Review please!

[actuallysaiyan]

Hot Love(Jiraiya x Fem!Reader)

Word count: 1,443 Pairings: Jiraiya x Fem!Reader Warnings: Slight smut, oral sex Summary: Reader has been pining for Jiraiya since she first met him when she was a genin. He’s always had his eyes on Tsunade, until Tsunade plans a mission for both of them and tries to set them up. When Jiraiya sees reader naked for the first time, he can’t believe how blind he’s been all these years...

For years, you always felt like you trailed behind the three legendary sannin. You were a few years younger than them, and both Orochimaru and Jiraiya saw you as a bother when you were a child. Tsunade was the only person who actually decided to take you under her wing, and she trained you good. You grew up admiring all three of them, but truth be told, you were absolutely smitten with Jiraiya. Even if he saw you as a bother and a nuisance for years, you couldn’t help the way you felt.

And now, years later and you’re all grown up, you still had those feelings for Jiraiya. These days he was way too busy with his books to think of you as a nuisance, and Tsunade was now Hokage. You were just a jounin, spending your days training your own team and shaping up the future shinobi. You were proud of yourself, but you always wondered what your life would be like if you had pursued Jiraiya.

One day, you found yourself in Tsunade’s office with Jiraiya by your side. The years had been very good to him, as he grew to become a very handsome and sexy older man. You couldn’t help yourself by checking him out a little as Tsunade explained to you the mission you both would be going on. Tsunade was sending you and Jiraiya to a small village to gather some intel for her about the Akatsuki. You didn’t mind that at all; in fact, you were hoping to get a little alone time with Jiraiya.

Unfortunately, the first part of the mission didn’t go as planned. Jiraiya basically ignored you as he continued to plan ideas for his next book and was quiet almost the whole way to the village. You tried your best to keep your frustrations to yourself, but you weren’t sure how long you could keep your secret feelings to yourself. It was driving you mad, and you thought for sure that finally, you were going to be able to tell Jiraiya how you truly felt.

“Don’t you think this mission is a little silly for both of us to be going on? It just doesn’t seem like Tsunade to send both of her most trusted friends and some of the best shinobi in the village to go on a simple intel mission.” You said, trying to pull Jiraiya from his perverted thoughts.

“Hmmm...maybe. But I think she trusts us the most, so it would make sense to send us. She’s got a lot on her mind lately…” Jiraiya says, and he mutters something under his breath that you don’t quite catch.

Once you get to the village, Jiraiya suggests that you both go check into the inn that Tsunade has made reservations for. You are a little annoyed by this point, but you do like the idea of retiring for the evening. You notice that there’s a sign that says there’s an onsen at the inn, so you perk up a little.

The hostess shows you to your room, and you’re not surprised to find that you’re rooming with Jiraiya. You’re a little ticked off now, but you decide to go soak in the hot springs. Your emotions hang heavy on your heart as you watch Jiraiya start flirting with some of the women at the inn. It hurts, but you don’t want to show it. You’ve got way too much pride.

In the hot springs, you are surprised to find that the women’s side is completely deserted. You’re a little relieved to have some peace and quiet, but you’re still meditating over your feelings. You wanted this to be a chance to get close to Jiraiya after all the years you spent apart, but it looks like it wasn’t going to happen after all.

Sighing, you get undressed and sit in the hot water. It feels so good on your sore muscles. You couldn’t help but admit that you were getting old, and you weren’t as spry as you used to be. It was a little embarrassing, but you knew you were still an attractive woman.

Jiraiya, on his side of the onsen, was getting undressed as well. He was very confused to find the place deserted. Nevertheless, he figures he’ll be able to peep on the women without any interruptions from the other men. This made him that much more excited, so he slinks over to a small hole in the wall. He chuckles to himself as he prepares to get an eyeful of gorgeous, young women.

Instead, he’s shocked to see you sitting alone in the hot water. You slowly get up, adjusting your position. Jiraiya can feel his blood pressure start to skyrocket, and he’s having to hold his nose so it won’t bleed. Jiraiya can’t believe how gorgeous you are; since when did you grow into such a sexy person? He’s been so blind with all these younger girls that he’s completely ignored what’s been in front of him.

He sits in the water, trying to compose himself. It’s the first time he’s seen you naked, and he fucking loves it. You’re curvy, and slinky and your legs are so long, and your tits are huge!!! What a jackpot!

Jiraiya decides to get another eyeful, and this time, you know he’s watching. You can hear his heavy breathing and nervous chuckling, so you decided to give him the eyeful he wants.

With your hands on your tits, you squeeze them together and start massaging your own body. You blow a kiss towards Jiraiya and the old man almost has a heart attack. You can hear him panting and wheezing, trying not to have another crazy nosebleed. He hears the door to your side slide open, and he’s a little disappointed he didn’t get to see more from you…

...when you show up on his side, wearing only a small towel. Jiraiya clutches his chest, backing up towards the end of the hot springs. You throw your towel away, swaying into the water as you approach him. Finally, you have his attention.

“Y-y/n, what are you doing here?” he asks, trying to be a little nonchalant.

You just walk right up to him and press your lips to his, not answering his question at all. Your hips grind into his, earning a groan from the older man. He’s rock hard and ready to fuck you, but you want to tease him just a little longer. Jiraiya pulls away from the kiss and he growls.

“How long have you been hiding this body from me?” he demands to know. He knows he’s been stupid about not noticing you earlier, but growing up together made it a little weird between you two.

“Since you never cared to pay attention to me and only had eyes for Tsuna,” you explain, tracing your fingers over the scars on his chest.

“I’ve been an idiot this whole time then,” he says, smirking at you.

You both resume your kiss, this time his tongue slides into your mouth. You can feel a warmth bloom in the pit of your stomach as you grind against him harder, hoping to find some relief from this sexual tension.

Without warning, Jiraiya places you on the edge of the hot springs. He leans in so that his face is at the same level as your sopping, wet pussy. Jiraiya groans as he smells your juices, and this is what spurs him on to start devouring you like a starved man.

He laps at your weeping cunt like his life depends on it, while you tug at his long white locks of hair. You pull him more into your pussy, whining and whimpering as he starts to finger you. You’re both unaware that you are in public at the moment, and you can feel the coil in your stomach start to become tighter. You’re so pent up with sexual energy that you’re going to cum very soon...and very hard.

“Ahem!” you hear from the door, and both you and Jiraiya break apart. You jump into the onsen to try and hide your naked body from the hostess, who is looking at both of you with a playfully scolding look.

“Please, leave the affections for the bedroom. The onsen can be hard to clean if you were to…” she says, and then she leaves you guys to get dressed.

Jiraiya is laughing, and you can’t help but chuckle a little. Then, he pulls you in for another kiss.

“How about we take this to our room?” Jiraiya asks, and you agree.

Finally, you had his attention.

[nikkigrand]

Cinema

Summary:  Tsunade thinks Sakura needs to relax, and everyone knows the best stress reliever. Need she say it out loud? Thankfully, there's this stupid mission from Jiraiya's slice of heaven and who better to send than Sakura? And, well, Team 7.

 "What do you mean the actress doesn't want to star in the film anymore! And what do you mean you won't pay us if I don't fill in! This is porn!"

Rating: M

Pairing: Sakura/Team7

[Part 1]

If there was one thing the ninja of Konoha were universally aware of, it was that gossip traveled fast. In the amount of time it took for a person to whisper in another’s ear, a certain blonde kunoichi was already gossiping to her pink haired friend about what she’d heard, and said cotton candy haired female would then casually tell her other loud mouthed blonde best friend over ramen, who would move on to scream it from the top of the Hokage mountain for all the world to hear.

So it was really no surprise when Kakashi (and Genma, and Raido, and Kotetsu, and Ebisu) came crashing through all of the windows in Tsunade’s office to beg her for the mission scroll containing the details to the A-ranked escort mission. Normally, shinobi avoided escort missions like the plague; they were more often than not uneventful, and most shinobi hated catering to snobby little lords and ladies. However, these missions were vital to the village’s prosperity, and Tsunade didn’t give a flying rat’s ass if her ninja didn’t want to go on those types of escort missions—they were going.

And if they thought they had a choice…well, she’d simply punt them through five layers of sedimentary rock for just thinking they did. Besides, the Elemental Nations were in a time of relative peace, so escort missions were essentially Jonin pay for a Genin task. She couldn’t fathom why anyone would turn down easy money, but these younger generations were different.

Tsunade’s honey eyes scanned each and every pleading eyeball (Kakashi’s best impression of his summons was in full effect, that brat), then narrowed at Ebisu’s pleading hands, Genma’s trembling lower lip, and the other two’s ridiculous glossy eyed supplicating stares with their hands clasped behind their backs.

Very different, indeed.

“What the hell do you idiots want?” She crossed her hands over her generous chest as she leaned back in her chair, watching with ill-concealed amusement as each man stumbled over each other in an attempt to speak first.

She, of course, already knew what they wanted from her—she wasn’t elected as the Godaime Hokage solely for her fists of fury, y’know—but the day had been an absolute bore and Shizune had hidden her sake again.

Also, Naruto was very loud.

“Tsunade-sama—er, Hokage-sama!” Genma gasped from where he was being held under Kakashi’s armpit, “I hear you have an escort mission for, like, right away, and, y’know I just so happen to be free—“

His sentence was cut off with a choke as Kakashi’s arm tightened around his neck, and the latter man sent her that annoying eye-smile of his.

“Maa, Tsunade-sama,” God, his voice was so sickeningly sweet. What happened to that pole-assed brat she met over 20 years ago? She missed him. “Genma here is actually very busy spreading his germs around the village—“  

“Hey!”

“Therefore, he can’t go.”

Tsunade raised a finely shaped blonde brow. “Is that so?”

Kakashi nodded sagely, and by the slight tensing of the muscles of his forearm and Genma’s reddening face, he’s determined to either strangle the poor man or make him pass out.

“Yes, Tsunade-sama,” he replied smoothly, voice falsely sympathetic, “It’s a shame really. Genma here,” Genma who was digging his nails into Kakashi’s arm and practically wheezing, “is a fine ninja. I, however, am readily available. Every day. Specifically, on those mission dates.”

“Kakashi,” Tsunade snapped, her fingers itching to reach for the paperweight on top of her mountain of paperwork, “Let go of Shiranui or you’re definitely not going.”

He let go of Genma instantly and took a large step away from him, his hands held by his sides, and shrugged helplessly at his friend’s somewhat betrayed glare.

And to think all of this was for porn.

Before the other three man-children in her office started pleading their cases, Tsunade pulled out five random mission scrolls from the APPROVED drawer in her desk and placed them in front of her. One of them had the details to that ridiculous A-ranked mission and the others were basic escort or courier missions.

She didn’t particularly care who went on the damned mission, she just wanted the   buffoonery to end. Hell, if the mission wasn’t for personnel strictly over the age of 18, she’d have already sent a team of freshly minted Genin on it for mission experience—it was that easy.

And, if it didn’t pay so damn much, she would have sent it back to the pits of Hell from whence it came.

Gesturing towards the five scrolls before her, Tsunade had each man choose one. They were uniform on the outside, so no one—not even she—knew what scroll contained the mission. It was fair, undebatable, and hopefully they’d leave her alone.

But if Raido’s disappointed face was anything to go by, she was about to be subjected to many man-tears within the next ten minutes. She heard a sniffle come from Ebisu and she braced herself; men crying over porn was never pretty and she had Jiraiya to thank for those experiences. Genma groaned as his eyes scanned the details of his scroll, while Izumo merely sighed.

The only person who was conspicuously devoid of a reaction was Kakashi.

The man calmly placed his scroll inside his hip pouch, patted it once, and then pulled out his ever-present smut novel to bury his nose in it. Well? What did his scroll say? If she were to go by how much his current attitude juxtaposed the one he had when he first crashed into her office, she’d say that he didn’t get the scroll either—but she knew better. The other shinobi in the room stared at him curiously, and Tsunade sighed. Hokages help her, the man was a pain in the ass.

“Hatake,” she deadpanned, exasperated at the fact that she had to ask the obvious question, and grit her teeth when the man hummed in response. She was going to ban those goddamn books and movies from her village after this, Jiraiya’s legacy be damned. “Do you have the scroll?”

“Oh,” Kakashi intoned, sparing her a brief glance from over his book, “yes, I do.”

Tsunade nearly groaned—professionalism and appearances be damned—but instead reached for the necessary paperwork she needed to fill out stating he was undertaking the mission. The faster she briefed him on his task, the faster he’d be out of her hair with his annoying flippancy.

“Then I trust you understand the parameters of this mission, all the necessary risks, and coverable expenses,” the usual mission briefing drivel was said offhandedly as she neatly scribbled his name on the forms, “This is a two-man mission, and I expect you to work with your partner cohesively and effectively.”

“Ah, yes, Tsunade-sama,” Oh, so now the brat wanted to respect her, how convenient, “The scroll did mention a two-man team.”

Tsunade observed him expectantly because she had just said that it was a two-man mission, but Kakashi was not one for meaningless reiteration.

“So,” the silver headed man jerked a thumb at Genma, “I volunteer this snazzy ol’ shinobi right here as my mission partner.”

Genma gasped and placed a hand over his heart, his lower lip quivering slightly, “Bro…”

The boy thought he could choose? Oh, how precious.

“No.” Tsunade flatly replied as she went back to filling in the blanks in the forms. God, she hated paperwork. At this rate, she’d die of carpel tunnel or something equally as pathetic—like being bored to death. She, the Senju Tsunade, one-third of the Legendary Three, dead at the hands of a papercut—imagine that?

The blonde headed woman ignored the other three’s sniggers as Genma and Kakashi fired off rapid reasons as to why they should be partnered up on this mockery of a mission in favor of neatly writing the characters to his partner’s name. She supposed that she should ask the other party if they’d be willing to go on the mission, but she was the Hokage—she can do whatever she wants.

Gathering the forms together and stamping them with her official seal, Tsunade was pleased with her choice. The girl needed a vacation—she was driving her crazy.

Tsunade-shishou, what is your opinion on the Uchiha clan’s ocular degeneration?

Tsunade-shishou! I refined your super-strength technique!

Tsunade-shishou! I’m in the process of reforming all of the new medics’ training curriculum and then rearranging their training jackets in alphabetical order!

Therefore, when Sakura said, “I don’t need a vacation, Tsunade-shishou! I love my job!”

Tsunade heard, “Tsunade-shishou, I’m totally and completely overworked but I just can’t stay away from the hospital or the training grounds! Please send me on a vacation!

Sakura was a great kunoichi and medic-nin, but the girl didn’t know how to stop. That type of dedication and work ethic was great during wartime, but they had been in a wonderful state of peace for a long time now. There was no reason why she couldn’t take a vacation, relax, and maybe get laid for once.

God, the girl needed a good romp in the sack—maybe that way she’d spend most of her time in bed than tending to others in theirs. Their sick beds, that is.

What better way to awaken that long dormant libido than by sending her to the set of a porno and the subsequent premier?

Tsunade smirked as she felt the subject of her thoughts making her way rapidly towards her office. Speak of the devil and she shall appear, right? The girl had an uncanny way of knowing when people were talking about her.

But then Tsunade realized that it was Sakura’s turn to handle the mission archives that week and her nostrils flared. The doors to her office opened and a pastel pink head peered from around a large stack of paperwork with a breathless grin.

“Tsunade-shishou!” Don’t say it, Sakura, don’t you dare, “I’ve got some forms for you to fill out for the genin participating in Sand’s chunnin exams this year! Then I have those statements, regarding that incident where the guard was caught—ahem—engaging in coitus while he was supposed to be manning the walls, that you need to read and sign. Oh! And the council has also sent you the files to every ANBU member to review for promotion.”

If Tsunade were allowed to quit, she’d quit. But instead, she points at Sakura as the rosette places the stack of papers on her desk and says, “Sakura, you’re going on a mission.”

Then she points at Kakashi, “Kakashi, Sakura is your mission partner.”

“What.” Both deadpan, but Tsunade is already throwing a voucher containing their mission stipend at their heads.

“Kakashi, fill Sakura in on the mission details,” she directs as both stare at her with wide eyes—Sakura more so than Kakashi—and quickly loses her patience when they open their mouths to question her.

“You’re dismissed, all of you!”

They all snap to attention at her bark and, in unison, formally bow to her before turning and leaving her office. Sakura spares a look back, but quickly shuffles out when Tsunade hurls her paperweight at her head.

The blonde eases back into her plush chair with a sigh while rubbing her temples, stopping mid-motion as an errant breeze drifts through the destroyed windows and scatters most of the paperwork on her desk around the room.

“You there!” She barks at the ANBU guard stationed at her door and he snaps to attention, “Find someone to fix these goddamn windows!”

“Hai, Hokage-sama!”

tbc

[peepingtoad]

𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐚𝐜𝐜𝐥𝐚𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐥𝐲 𝐚𝐝𝐨𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐈𝐜𝐡𝐚 𝐈𝐜𝐡𝐚!~

(Answered from a post-war perspective)

► Name ➔ “I’ve go by many names! The Toad Sage, The Village’s Madness, The White-Maned Toad-Charmer, The Legendary Hermit Of Mount  Myōboku, That Bastard Who Still Hasn’t Paid Off His Tab (it’s coming soon, I swear!)... but most know me simply as Jiraiya. Ogata Jiraiya is my full name nowadays, ever since I was accepted into the sacred clan of the Myōboku toads!” ► Are you single? ➔ “Eternally, it seems—but don’t let that fool you! My diary is never short of upcoming dates. Speaking of, are you free next Friday?~” ► Are you happy? ➔ “The happiest I’ve ever been! Not everything in life is perfect, even now, but I’m enjoying it to the full!” ► Are you angry? ➔ “Do bratty theatrics count as ‘anger’? I know, I know, it’s quite a glaring flaw of mine...” ► Are your parents still married? ➔ “My dear, I don’t think my parents were ever even considered an item. Who knows if they ever met again, but given my age I doubt my father is alive now, either.”

EIGHT FACTS

► Birth Place ➔ “Konohagakure, born and raised! My mother, I believe, was from what would become unified as the Land of Fire, but my father? He was from the Land of Lightning, as far as I’ve been able to deduce.” ► Hair Color ➔  “White as the clouds on a sunny day in Spring! About as fluffy, too. Touch it, if you like~”  ► Eye Color ➔  “They look black, until you come up real close. Then, you’ll find that they’re a deep yet piercing grey.” ► Birthday ➔ “Eleventh of November—a nice, simple eleven-eleven, no matter where you’re from!” ► Mood ➔  “You don’t have to spend much time with me to see that I take life with a relaxed, humorous and cheerful attitude, but... haha. I can be a little prone to childish outbursts, I can admit.” ► Gender ➔ “Just a manly kinda dude. I’m not sure, to this day, what exactly makes a man—but I’m comfortable being one.” ► Summer or winter ➔  “I feel like if I had to choose one, I’d only miss the other before long. I appreciate all the changes that come with the seasons... but I suppose, in general, I’m more of a summery type.” ► Morning or afternoon ➔ “I’m definitely an early bird kinda guy. I like to rise early, have breakfast and coffee while watching the sun rise, and I find it’s when I’m the most inspired to do things. But I must say, nothing beats a lazy afternoon nap after a productive morning!”

EIGHT THINGS ABOUT YOUR LOVE LIFE

► Are you in love? ➔ “Perpetually. I’m in love with the very idea of love. It sure helps with writing romance, I’ll tell you that much for free!” ► Do you believe in love at first sight? ➔ “Perhaps not love, with all the weight the word has, but I definitely believe in that spark. The feeling you get when you’re compelled by some unexplained force to learn more about a person, to spend time with them and see what makes them tick. Lust, on the other hand... well, that’s certainly something that can rear its head in a flash.” ► Who ended your last relationship? ➔ “The last one, I believe, ended with a mutual, amicable agreement. It’s something that is sadly quite commonplace with my travelling lifestyle, but I like to maintain contact with those I’ve cared about and who care about me in turn. Usually by letter—although, I admit, sometimes even that connection gets lost with time.” ► Have you ever broken someone’s heart? ➔ “I’m pretty sure I’m incredibly guilty of this. Especially in my younger years, I was a little careless with people’s hearts, by lack of forethought, rather than a lack of care for their feelings. I do what I can to be upfront and avoid it now, but sometimes these things can’t be avoided. It’s hard, you know, being this addictive!” ► Are you afraid of commitments? ➔ “Hmmm. Romantically speaking... I wouldn’t say I fear it, I just... avoid it, for the most part. I don’t want to make that promise unless I’m absolutely sure I can keep it... and I guess that scenario just hasn’t come up for me, yet. So worry not, there’s still a chance for all you single ladies out there~” ► Have you hugged someone within the last week? ➔ “I’ll hold my hands up and confess that I’m a hugger, through and through. I couldn’t tell you who, or how many people I’ve hugged recently—it’s just second nature for me to do so!” ► Have you ever had a secret admirer? ➔ “Judging by some of the love letters I receive in the old PO Box, I’d go as far as to say I have them in multitudes. Heh.” ► Have you ever broken your own heart? ➔ “Hmm. I feel like in my past, I’ve sacrificed many chances in favour of other duties and paths I had to commit to. And I think, yes, I was the cause of my own heartbreak at various points thanks to that.”

SIX CHOICES

► Love or lust? ➔ “In an ideal world, both. Is that cheating? They can both end up feeling rather incomplete without the other, in the long term. And for me, lust comes part and parcel with love—but that’s not necessarily the case the other way ‘round... Bah. I couldn’t possibly choose! My novels wouldn’t be so exciting with such clear-cut distinctions, and I say the same applies to life!” ► Lemonade or iced tea? ➔ “Definitely iced tea. I’m much more a fan of still drinks—unless it’s beer!” ► Cats or Dogs? ➔ “I’m not allowed to say frogs, am I? No? Well... I do like both cats and dogs. Though I must say, a cat that acts like a dog is very charming. I think, equally so, a dog that acts like a cat would be charming! But I think, if you’re really gonna press me about it, I’d choose cats, whether they’re doggish or cattish. They’re a lot more easygoing and less dependent. Plus, there’s nothing more relaxing than having a big, lazy cat snoozing on your lap!” ► A few best friends or many regular friends? ➔ “I’ve always been one for small, tightly knit circles, as much as that can often lead to more... complicated friendships.” ► Wild night out or romantic night in? ➔ “I hardly think I can answer that, given it depends entirely on the mood at the time! I’m gonna say neither, because my favourite way to spend time with someone is out, but somewhere intimate, where we can talk. A cosy bar where we can people-watch, followed by a walk along the riverside or along a nature trail... and maybe, if we’re feeling daring, some canoodling beneath the stars~” ► Day or night? ➔ “I love the day, but it can get very busy and overly exciting. It’s wonderful when night arrives, and you can just unwind from all that. Plus, all the good bars, casinos and other establishments open at night, if you catch my drift. Which, I guess, isn’t conducive to the whole unwinding thing, but I’m nothing if not capricious at times!”

FOUR HAVE YOU EVERS

► Been caught sneaking out? ➔ “I didn’t exactly have anyone to catch me sneaking out, but I’ve certainly been caught, uh... sneaking around, in general.” ► Fallen down/up the stairs? ➔ “Not that I remember, and that’s all that matters, alright? ... Ah, but there was that one time the other week—” ► Wanted something/someone so badly it hurt? ➔ “I don’t think I’m capable of wanting something any other way. When I want something—or someone—I ache for it. With all my being.” ► Wanted to disappear? ➔ “... In a way, yes. Never to disappear entirely, not at all. There’s too much to live for, but... I have thought it would be better for me to disappear as far as others were concerned, at times.”

FOUR PREFERENCES

► Smile or eyes? ➔ “Easy—eyes. You can see a smile in the eyes, after all.” ► Shorter or Taller? ➔ “Being as... gifted as I am, in height, I must say it's always novel to have a taller partner. It’s happened, a few times, and I rather liked it. But I do enjoy the feeling of being a nice big presence for my partner to cuddle or drape themselves over, too. There’s merits in both. I can’t possibly choose!” ► Intelligence or Attraction? ➔ “Attraction is the most important thing of all—and there’s so much more to a person’s mind and heart than their smarts. I say this as someone who perhaps isn’t what one would consider typically intelligent.” ► Hook-up or Relationship? ➔ “Oooh, difficult. I don’t think life would be complete without a variety of experiences. But I’ve had so many hook-ups, and with all the relationships I’ve ever had coming to an end along the line, I can’t say I’d be opposed to exploring one more deeply. Especially now that life is more relaxed in general.”

FAMILY

► Do you and your family get along? ➔ “The family was only ever ma and me, and she was around so little... but yes, we did get along. I have a feeling I’m more like her than I’ll ever truly know...” ► Would you say you have a “messed up life”? ➔ “As a shinobi, I really must say, don’t we all?” ► Have you ever ran away from home? ➔ “I prefer to say I srategically retreated.” ► Have you ever gotten kicked out? ➔ “No, but perhaps my absences were... encouraged, at times. But that’s something I’ll never know for sure.”

FRIENDS

► Do you secretly hate one of your friends? ➔ “If I hated anyone, I certainly wouldn’t keep it a secret!” ► Do you consider all of your friends good friends? ➔ “Y’know what? Yeah. I like to think I’m a pretty good judge of character, and all those I consider my friends are solid people.” ► Who is your best friend? ➔ “My fellow Legendary Sannin, of course! No matter the difficulties we’ve faced, those two’ve been there since the beginning, and we’re all stubbornly alive and kicking today; my feelings for them have never changed, and I doubt they ever will.” ► Who knows everything about you? ➔ “Hmm... I don’t think anybody in the world knows everything there is to know about me. Even with those closest to me, there are things even they don’t know. But I like to think I’d be an open book, should they ever wish to.”

[iamapoopmuffin]

I got tagged in a thing by @suitcasesoffeathers so here have a thing!

Are you named after someone Nah. And thank goodness because I hate naming after people. It was just my mum’s favourite name for a guy that didn’t have a freaky spelling. Her all time favourite was one of those Irish names that nobody can spell or pronounce.

When was the last time you cried Last Friday. I got super frustrated and I had a slight breakdown over overall stress and what may have been an anxiety attack and I always cry during anxiety attacks and I had to keep doing the same thing over and over and all my belongings kept breaking and I messed up an audition more than I’d ever messed up before and it was just a terrible day in general. Incidentally, I just got home and my right eye is running like mad so it looks like I’m crying on one side.

Do you like your handwritting My handwriting is illegible.

What is your favorite lunch meat Idk. I don’t normally have meat sandwiches or anything. I either just pack a snack (if I have to go out for work) because my appetite is so low in the mornings that entering the kitchen can turn my stomach, or I have breadsticks and dip. My fiancee did not buy breadsticks when she went shopping this week. I gave her a list, dang it.

Do you have kids No, not yet. Still not sure if I want them or not.

If you were another person, would you be friends with you Sure! I’m great! A total dork and really annoying but great!

Do you use sarcasm I’m sure I do, but I use it sparingly. I’m not a sarcastic guy. That’s what Phillip is for.

Do you still have your tonsils I do believe so, yes.

Would you bungee jump I always wanted to when I was little but then I developed anxiety and now I’m not sure if I could without having a panic attack. Meanwhile my best friend has been sky diving, which I wouldn’t do in a million kajillion years...

What is your favorite kind of cereal Chocolate cereals of all kinds (because they flavour the milk so I don’t waste said milk) or Golden Nuggets because yes. Mmm, mid-afternoon cereal.

Do you untie your shoes every time you take them off Nah. I accidentally bought boot laces when I relaced them (which had to happen because the laces they came with were weird and elasticated and thus didn’t tie right) and so they’re super long and I don’t have the patience to septuple knot my laces after every dance practice. I have to take them off and put them on again several times a day, y’know. Or I just wear my Heavenly Host Theatre shoes, which are slip-ons.

Do you think you’re a strong person Physically, yes. Mentally/emotionally, maybe. Lots of people say I am, but...eh...

What is your favorite ice cream flavor Peanut Butter Cup. It’s the Ben and Jerry’s one with Reese’s in it!

What is the first thing you notice about people Dunno. Whatever happens to stick out, it varies from person to person. For instance, my friend Phillip, when I sat next to him the day I met him, I noticed he only had one whole ear. The other had a large chunk from the top lopped off. Sakutaro, I noticed he was hella tan and hella strong and had a lip piercing. Sherwin, I noticed he was short and feminine looking.

Red or pink Probably red.

What is the least favorite physical thing you like about yourself Uuuummm...oily skin and hair and how prone I am to certain illnesses and conditions? As a dancer, I am eternally frustrated that I’m not as flexible as my friend, even though he teaches ballet so he should be hella flexible. Also how much taller than my fiancee I am.

What color pants and shoes are you wearing right now Uhhh...black with white stripes, mismatched socks, one is blue and white stripes, the other is a sort of grey-green with a picture of Jiraiya on it and some writing in yellow and white. I own two pairs of shoes, neither of which I am wearing right now, but there’s a silver pair and a brown pair. The brown pair is for work only.

What was the last thing you ate Crisps. It was one of those ‘grab a snack for lunch’ days so that’s literally all I’ve had today. They were salt and vinegar flavour.

What are you listening to right now Every Day Is A Winding Road

If you were a crayon, what color would you be Uhhh...black. It’s my hair colour. Or grey. Or maybe Orange because I own a lot of orange tops and jumpers.

Favorite smell Uhh...currently I suppose that sparkly coconut body butter in the bathroom. Body shop stuff is nice. I’mma get Myra loads of it and then use it all myself.

Who was the last person you spoke to on the phone Uh...my dad, I think.

Favorite sport to watch Uh...I only watch sports via sports anime. My current favourite of those is Kuroko no Basuke, so I suppose the answer is technically basketball...followed very closely by figure skating. Generally speaking, I hate sports.

Hair color Black

Eye color Grey

Do you wear contacts I got me some 20/20 vision.

Favorite food to eat I liiiiiike...steak. And kit kats. My friend had a whole pack yesterday and every time he got one out he kept insisting it was his last one.

Scary movies or comedy I don’t really like either. I’m an action kind a guy. I did however like the Scary Movie series.

Last movie you watched Uhhhh...I don’t remember. There was an absolute unholy mass of films on over Christmas and some more on during January and I can’t remember what I watched when...I watched The Incredibles on my laptop recently (because my fiancee wouldn’t let me watch it on TV) but I’ve also watched something on ITV since...

What color shirt are you wearing Dark red. I had to pull down the neckline of my jumper to check. All my jumpers are orange.

Summer or winter Winter. Winter means warm hugs and cozyness and before we got a new microwave it meant I could cuddle up with one of those scented heatable teddies but apparently I can’t put it in this microwave because reasons. Summer I get sweaty and heatstrokey and dancing is horrible and gross. Also this winter it actually snowed for the first time since I was, like, 15.

Hugs or kisses Uhhh...I like both. A lot. I hug more than I kiss though because I hug everyone. I’m so over affectionate.

What book are you currently reading Uhh...I’m not really reading any books right now. I used to read constantly...I did start rereading the Skulduggery Pleasant series and trailed off on Last Stand, and I’m also working on (but have read through) a script for a play called Decades. I also started but never finished a Red Dwarf book.

Who do you miss right now No-one especially...I suppose I was talking about an old school friend recently (because we were playing Corpse Party again (hence the slight influx of CP related posts) and we got to Tooth and got talking about a guy we knew called Cai and a guy we currently know also called Cai and a kid I used to babysit called Kai who had a neat afro) and damn now I miss the kid I used to babysit...and now I miss all the children I’ve ever babysat. Thanks, meme.

What is on your mousepad My finger, mostly. And a small speck of white dirt that has been there since time immemorial.

What is the last TV program you watched Monty Python’s Best Bits

What is the best sound Silence Motorhead

Rolling Stones or the Beatles I suppose I’d have to go Beatles because, though I’m sure I’ve listened to more than one, the only Stones song I could name (and that I have on my MP3 player) is Paint It Black.

What is the furthest you ever traveled Uh...well, I’ve been to Canada...which is probably the furthest I’ve been. Jasper, specifically.

Do you have a special talent I’m a dancer and an actor. Not amazing, but on a level that I can do stage and teaching work. I can sort of sing, but I go a bit flat sometimes, especially on higher notes. I like writing and have been told I’m good at characterisation.

Where were you born On the maternity ward of a hospital in England.

People you expect to participate in this survey I dunno...nobody, really. I’m not going to tag anyone because I’m still essentially a stranger to almost everyone, and tagging people would probably send my anxiety skyrocketing! But hey, porn blogs, if you’re swarming this one the way you did my last personal memes, I demand you do them too.

[peepingtoad]

It was always over such superficial things that they seemed to quibble. Maybe an achievement in itself given how affable and gregarious the so-called Sannin was supposed to be. Exerting that subduing aura of his, eyes locked with the man, Madara's head canted in a predatory consideration while closing the proximity between them, seeming to have effectively rendered him speechless with that predator's gaze. "A frog always quails before the falcon, doesn't he?"

// @asaraltu

Jiraiya was no stranger to those who considered his outlook–and especially those who presumed to know his outlook based on everything but his own plain words–to be cheerful nonsense of an insufferable sort. He’d persevered through many years of best friendship with exactly the sort, and found himself rather adept at dealing with it as a result.

But the question on his mind here and now was as follows: was this particular brand of doom-and-gloom bastard the type who could roll with his return punches, or would he strike?

So curious was the potential answer to that question that Jiraiya had bitten back at one remark, as fast as lightning did strike sky-reaching treetops, and in a manner that the great Uchiha may have found surprisingly brusque.

… And that was the moment he would learn two things: first of all, that Uchiha Madara had moves other than simply rolling and striking, which brings us very conveniently to the second; Uchiha Madara was gorgeous.

But by no means was this a regular type of gorgeous. No, this was a switch flipped so suddenly in his awareness that although those eyes remained dark as jet, he immediately presumed it was a particularly misleading genjutsu. However, when he tried to release it, there was… nothing.

Nothing at all. No chakra disturbance that he could speak of, although he was no sensor in his usual state, and to make matters worse, the aforementioned switch-flipping rendered him unable to fathom changing that circumstance. His entire world was consumed by that face–the noble cast of his jaw and nose, the curve of his mouth, the way errant dark hairs brushed his cheek as he loomed closer and closer…

The worst thing he could possibly have done, he realised in a small internal voice (which was barely even audible beneath the thick fog that clouded his brain) was to draw away from those eyes. It allowed the Uchiha to force his back up against the tree trunk where he sat, staring with wide eyes made wider by the angle as the man leaned down to ensnare him more completely in his overwhelming aura.

And what’s this?

His hair, mainly the finer follicles on the back of his neck and forearms, stood up from his skin the very moment Madara spoke. That man’s voice was music, Jiraiya had learned that much the very day they met–but it was the content, the blatant threat and condescension of it, that made him shiver with antici…

But wait. Didn’t he usually need a little more obvious chemistry with a person to start fancying the verbal beat-down? In most cases, this was the sort of animal kingdom, predator-prey Orochimaru-esque bullshit observation that would agitate him thoroughly–coming from anyone but Orochimaru himself.

With immense difficulty, after a pause between question and finding his wits, the sage cleared his throat–although still, found himself quite unable to tear his eyes away from Madara’s.

“Ahhh, on the contrary,” he managed to utter, albeit through a far drier mouth than he’d had moments prior, after which he continued with rather forced cheer, “a wise old toad who understands the world around him will simply remain still, blend in with his surroundings, and allow the impatient predator to bypass him entirely!”

That said, Jiraiya did not remain still. There wasn’t a great deal of space between them, but it was enough that he could push his elbows into the bark and crane his neck forward without bumping noses (or worse). Anything to show that there was absolutely no quailing going on here, madly thrashing heart or not.

“Failing that, when the foolish bird strikes, the unaccounted for venom means both will probably die. Either way, just goes to show what underestimating others does for anyone…” His mouth cocked up into a crooked smile. “And also that someone doesn’t have a very good understanding of herpetology. D’you think licking toads will do anything but give you a really bad stomach, too?”