[Naruto] Patriarch (how not to be a)
Feb. 2nd, 2007 01:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
runespoorTitle: Patriarch (how not to be a)
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
runespoor7
Rating: PG
Summary: Once, one of the brats of Jiraiya's brat stole a Sharingan.
Notes:…This started as a cracky two-line parenthesis in another fic. Then I realised it was getting to be a ficlet, still cracky, but with things that could be called serious undertones if you were feeling indulgent. Then it turned angst-drama WTF with dramatic irony like woah. Or something.
So. I make no excuse.
Once upon a time, one of Jiraiya's dreams was to be able to look into Uchiha Fugaku's eyes and think smugly that half his children were half-Jiraiya. Uchiha Mikoto was a beauty, and Jiraiya'd never liked the man.
He'd liked him even less when he started raising bureaucratic hell against Jiraiya's Yellow Flash over the fact that apparently the brat had 'let' one of his brats 'steal' a Sharingan from his teammate.
How do you steal a Sharingan anyway?
Never mind the fact that said teammate was dead; that didn't seem to concern the mighty Uchiha clan in the least.
That, apparently, was how you stole a Sharingan. Very sneaky.
The Sharingan-stealing brat got into ANBU right after that so at least this one was marginally protected by the service's status, and Orochimaru had seemed to take an interest in him – luckily Orochimaru was in the ANBU himself and had the Danzou situation under perfect control – and there were already so many people counting on him that Jiraiya didn't doubt he'd make it; the Uchiha clan would be forced to drop their doomed crusade.
No, Jiraiya was more concerned over the third brat – who wasn't actually a brat at all.
The girl was the one who'd transplanted the Sharingan. She was also the sweetest thing Jiraiya had ever met and when Jiraiya was reminded, reading her file, that she was not only an orphan but had originally been brought into Konoha as a baby when her Rock clan had been decimated, he started worrying sick over her. She was one of the brat's genins, but that would only help so much, as he had no authority regarding medic-nin duties.
Besides, there were also the tensions about the Hokage's succession. Jiraiya wished the old geezer would hurry up so they'd get a Yondaime, if not the brat then at least Orochimaru, who'd always been so well-disposed toward the brat that Jiraiya would've often had sharp words with his old teammate if he'd been that kind of sensei.
He couldn't ask his other students; the boy was an Academy teacher and the girl a hunter-nin, and there wasn't much either of them could do. Besides, the brat had already talked to them.
He'd tried to have a word about her with Orochimaru, but Orochimaru had brushed him aside. He'd expected it, but Orochimaru's reasonably stated motivations had made him feel both angry and inadequate.
"I am an ANBU leader, Jiraiya; I hold no weight whatsoever upon decisions affecting shinobi who are not in ANBU."
"Jiraiya, do you really expect she would be safer if I were to make a claim on her well-being for Kakashi-kun's sake? Surely you are aware of the current political situation? Without speaking of the fact that such a claim would be completely illegal and would thus leave me – and Kakashi-kun, and a number of others including quite possibly your student, and without a doubt your newest protégée as well – wide open for reprisals from an opposite faction, can you sincerely imagine that this would not, on the contrary, make her even more of a target?"
"Jiraiya. Do please stop panicking and consider for even half a single moment that which you are suggesting. You are not planning to rig the ANBU's recruiting system to put her under my responsibility. Yes, Jiraiya, that was what an ill-intentioned eavesdropper would infer from you hare-brained scheme – and I must admit to be half there too. Because that's what it was, Jiraiya. Yes, Jiraiya. Treason, some might call it – will call it, if you give them the chance. As for me, I am more lucid and less malevolent, so I can only advice you to calm down, not touch a drop of the godawful liquid you persist on calling sake, and sleep on it, at least until you realise how profoundly, deeply moronic it would be to send the angel of humanity and kindness you are describing into ANBU."
"Jiraiya, I'm touched, but I am not your last resort."
Oh, Orochimaru could patronize him and rub the bridge of his nose all he wanted – Sandaime's gesture – but Jiraiya, spitefully, couldn't help but think of the true reasons he'd do nothing. Like his unresolved problem with medic-nins; or how jealous he was of Anko and the company she kept.
Still, Orochimaru's last sentence was on his mind. He hadn't missed Orochimaru's odd expression – the cockeyed little smile that on anyone else he'd have called self-deprecating.
He hadn't been Orochimaru's teammate for so long without picking a few things about how to understand what he meant. Generally, Orochimaru was painfully straightforward, and Jiraiya had never known him to tell a lie, but sometimes he twisted the words so well you had to stand at some precise point of reality, on your head and looking sideways, to see how things fit.
He never did things as crude as taking things literally; no, that was Jiraiya-level manipulation. Jiraiya meant things at the letter and screw the spirit; Tsunade lied like a weather announcer, without missing a beat or batting an eyelid; and Orochimaru talked with omissions that were yours to deal with as you pleased.
He'd never wished more ardently that Tsunade hadn't left Leaf. If Tsunade hadn't left, then Jiraiya would've begged and grovelled and nagged nagged nagged until she agreed to at least try to take the girl on.
Jiraiya straightened in his chair, eyes wide when he realised at long last what Orochimaru had meant.
"You still have Tsunade."
But he didn't, because she wasn't in Konoha; but then again… she wasn't a missing-nin, was she? She'd just left for a – an unpaid vacation of indeterminate duration. Sandaime tried to stay in contact with her; Jiraiya knew he did. Without much success, admittedly, but Tsunade had her favourite haunts, and she wasn't really trying to hide, more trying to forget.
So he wrote.
Lots of letters, which were passed through Sandaime to be sent with those their sensei was sending too; letters which Jiraiya left in every casino, every gambling house, every pawning place he walked past during his missions.
He wrote obsessively, asking her to come back to Konoha because there was a girl there who could be her apprentice.
He pulled every persuasive rope he knew – and he was a writer (unpublished as of yet, but that'd change when he'd take his manuscript out of the drawer) and a ladies man (widely successful, in spite of what his teacher and his students liked to assume); he knew them all – going even so far as to write a handful in code, in the hopes that it'd pique her curiosity.
In between, he was considering the fantasy of making Uchiha Fugaku the father of Jiraiya's children. It was a fantasy that was entirely separate from getting Uchiha Mikoto in the process of making her the mother of his children.
It took a while for Jiraiya's strategy to pay off.
(When Tsunade showed up in Konoha to pick up an apprentice, she stumbled into a village devastated by the Kyuubi.
In the meantime, Orochimaru had gone missing, taking his pretty, angry little genin with him, on the day after Sarutobi had announced the Yellow Flash would be his successor; but that was already a long time ago, or so it seemed, when you looked at Sandaime; he looked twenty years older.
In the meantime, the Kyuubi had attacked Konoha, and that wasn't really a long time ago at all. If she'd just made it twenty-four hours sooner, she'd have been right in the middle of it.)
All of Jiraiya's team was dead – his dorky, brilliant brat, his deadly, intense girl, his amused, sentimental klutz – with one sacrificing himself and one who hadn't been supposed to be in a state to try and do any jutsu to protect the hospital and one, as usual, earning just the second needed to get a kid away (there's always a kid; this kid keeps a scar across his face, but considering he's alive, it counts as a victory).
So was the girl Jiraiya had wanted to protect; in a completely different way, that was something like the last straw.
On the morning after most of the people Jiraiya would've probably described as important if he'd been drunk enough died horribly, he left.
He went to Sandaime, filled a request, he guessed, in much the same way Tsunade had done years before.
In the office he found the Hatake boy holding the bundle that was the baby who had the Kyuubi sealed in him. He felt some sympathy for the both of them, and hoped distractedly they'd be alright.
He might have asked the Hatake boy if he wanted to come with him, but the idea repelled him. Taboo; he'd been the brat's brat, and Jiraiya could never shake the memory that Orochimaru had been fond of him, more or less. Neither shadow was welcome to follow him.
The bundle, Jiraiya was unqualified to take care of, but as he was staring as the sleeping kid, he let out that it might've been a good idea not to make such a drama of the affair with the kid. It was already going to be a pain growing up with his birthday the day of the massacre and the Yondaime's death, but now that the whole village knew for a fact this kid was the seal – now they'd seen him, and not just the red giant shadows of the sealing – it was going to be pure hell.
Sandaime said that he was thinking about something; an oath of secrecy of some sort.
Jiraiya was unconvinced, but he let it go.
(When Tsunade showed up in Konoha the girl she was supposed to pick up to get away from the village was dead.
In Sarutobi Sandaime's office she found another one.
Even for Tsunade, there was such a thing as penance.)
And now I kind of want to write an AU where Tsunade took Rin, or even – god forbid – Kabuto. Or where Orochimaru took Rin when he left, for some Anko-related reason, or Kakashi, or something. Or where Jiraiya failed to be stupid and realised that he could be of help to Rin. He developed this freaky doting grand-father vibes I would never have imagined Jiraiya could even feel, and for that I still make no excuse, beside 'it made sense at the time?'.
This was only crack until Tsunade was mentioned, as pre-Naruto Tsunade is drama/angst. So if you have any idea/comment/crack on how this would have gone if she hadn't somehow got involved, feel free to leave a review.
Author:
runespoor7 Rating: PG
Summary: Once, one of the brats of Jiraiya's brat stole a Sharingan.
Notes:…This started as a cracky two-line parenthesis in another fic. Then I realised it was getting to be a ficlet, still cracky, but with things that could be called serious undertones if you were feeling indulgent. Then it turned angst-drama WTF with dramatic irony like woah. Or something.
So. I make no excuse.
Once upon a time, one of Jiraiya's dreams was to be able to look into Uchiha Fugaku's eyes and think smugly that half his children were half-Jiraiya. Uchiha Mikoto was a beauty, and Jiraiya'd never liked the man.
He'd liked him even less when he started raising bureaucratic hell against Jiraiya's Yellow Flash over the fact that apparently the brat had 'let' one of his brats 'steal' a Sharingan from his teammate.
How do you steal a Sharingan anyway?
Never mind the fact that said teammate was dead; that didn't seem to concern the mighty Uchiha clan in the least.
That, apparently, was how you stole a Sharingan. Very sneaky.
The Sharingan-stealing brat got into ANBU right after that so at least this one was marginally protected by the service's status, and Orochimaru had seemed to take an interest in him – luckily Orochimaru was in the ANBU himself and had the Danzou situation under perfect control – and there were already so many people counting on him that Jiraiya didn't doubt he'd make it; the Uchiha clan would be forced to drop their doomed crusade.
No, Jiraiya was more concerned over the third brat – who wasn't actually a brat at all.
The girl was the one who'd transplanted the Sharingan. She was also the sweetest thing Jiraiya had ever met and when Jiraiya was reminded, reading her file, that she was not only an orphan but had originally been brought into Konoha as a baby when her Rock clan had been decimated, he started worrying sick over her. She was one of the brat's genins, but that would only help so much, as he had no authority regarding medic-nin duties.
Besides, there were also the tensions about the Hokage's succession. Jiraiya wished the old geezer would hurry up so they'd get a Yondaime, if not the brat then at least Orochimaru, who'd always been so well-disposed toward the brat that Jiraiya would've often had sharp words with his old teammate if he'd been that kind of sensei.
He couldn't ask his other students; the boy was an Academy teacher and the girl a hunter-nin, and there wasn't much either of them could do. Besides, the brat had already talked to them.
He'd tried to have a word about her with Orochimaru, but Orochimaru had brushed him aside. He'd expected it, but Orochimaru's reasonably stated motivations had made him feel both angry and inadequate.
"I am an ANBU leader, Jiraiya; I hold no weight whatsoever upon decisions affecting shinobi who are not in ANBU."
"Jiraiya, do you really expect she would be safer if I were to make a claim on her well-being for Kakashi-kun's sake? Surely you are aware of the current political situation? Without speaking of the fact that such a claim would be completely illegal and would thus leave me – and Kakashi-kun, and a number of others including quite possibly your student, and without a doubt your newest protégée as well – wide open for reprisals from an opposite faction, can you sincerely imagine that this would not, on the contrary, make her even more of a target?"
"Jiraiya. Do please stop panicking and consider for even half a single moment that which you are suggesting. You are not planning to rig the ANBU's recruiting system to put her under my responsibility. Yes, Jiraiya, that was what an ill-intentioned eavesdropper would infer from you hare-brained scheme – and I must admit to be half there too. Because that's what it was, Jiraiya. Yes, Jiraiya. Treason, some might call it – will call it, if you give them the chance. As for me, I am more lucid and less malevolent, so I can only advice you to calm down, not touch a drop of the godawful liquid you persist on calling sake, and sleep on it, at least until you realise how profoundly, deeply moronic it would be to send the angel of humanity and kindness you are describing into ANBU."
"Jiraiya, I'm touched, but I am not your last resort."
Oh, Orochimaru could patronize him and rub the bridge of his nose all he wanted – Sandaime's gesture – but Jiraiya, spitefully, couldn't help but think of the true reasons he'd do nothing. Like his unresolved problem with medic-nins; or how jealous he was of Anko and the company she kept.
Still, Orochimaru's last sentence was on his mind. He hadn't missed Orochimaru's odd expression – the cockeyed little smile that on anyone else he'd have called self-deprecating.
He hadn't been Orochimaru's teammate for so long without picking a few things about how to understand what he meant. Generally, Orochimaru was painfully straightforward, and Jiraiya had never known him to tell a lie, but sometimes he twisted the words so well you had to stand at some precise point of reality, on your head and looking sideways, to see how things fit.
He never did things as crude as taking things literally; no, that was Jiraiya-level manipulation. Jiraiya meant things at the letter and screw the spirit; Tsunade lied like a weather announcer, without missing a beat or batting an eyelid; and Orochimaru talked with omissions that were yours to deal with as you pleased.
He'd never wished more ardently that Tsunade hadn't left Leaf. If Tsunade hadn't left, then Jiraiya would've begged and grovelled and nagged nagged nagged until she agreed to at least try to take the girl on.
Jiraiya straightened in his chair, eyes wide when he realised at long last what Orochimaru had meant.
"You still have Tsunade."
But he didn't, because she wasn't in Konoha; but then again… she wasn't a missing-nin, was she? She'd just left for a – an unpaid vacation of indeterminate duration. Sandaime tried to stay in contact with her; Jiraiya knew he did. Without much success, admittedly, but Tsunade had her favourite haunts, and she wasn't really trying to hide, more trying to forget.
So he wrote.
Lots of letters, which were passed through Sandaime to be sent with those their sensei was sending too; letters which Jiraiya left in every casino, every gambling house, every pawning place he walked past during his missions.
He wrote obsessively, asking her to come back to Konoha because there was a girl there who could be her apprentice.
He pulled every persuasive rope he knew – and he was a writer (unpublished as of yet, but that'd change when he'd take his manuscript out of the drawer) and a ladies man (widely successful, in spite of what his teacher and his students liked to assume); he knew them all – going even so far as to write a handful in code, in the hopes that it'd pique her curiosity.
In between, he was considering the fantasy of making Uchiha Fugaku the father of Jiraiya's children. It was a fantasy that was entirely separate from getting Uchiha Mikoto in the process of making her the mother of his children.
It took a while for Jiraiya's strategy to pay off.
(When Tsunade showed up in Konoha to pick up an apprentice, she stumbled into a village devastated by the Kyuubi.
In the meantime, Orochimaru had gone missing, taking his pretty, angry little genin with him, on the day after Sarutobi had announced the Yellow Flash would be his successor; but that was already a long time ago, or so it seemed, when you looked at Sandaime; he looked twenty years older.
In the meantime, the Kyuubi had attacked Konoha, and that wasn't really a long time ago at all. If she'd just made it twenty-four hours sooner, she'd have been right in the middle of it.)
All of Jiraiya's team was dead – his dorky, brilliant brat, his deadly, intense girl, his amused, sentimental klutz – with one sacrificing himself and one who hadn't been supposed to be in a state to try and do any jutsu to protect the hospital and one, as usual, earning just the second needed to get a kid away (there's always a kid; this kid keeps a scar across his face, but considering he's alive, it counts as a victory).
So was the girl Jiraiya had wanted to protect; in a completely different way, that was something like the last straw.
On the morning after most of the people Jiraiya would've probably described as important if he'd been drunk enough died horribly, he left.
He went to Sandaime, filled a request, he guessed, in much the same way Tsunade had done years before.
In the office he found the Hatake boy holding the bundle that was the baby who had the Kyuubi sealed in him. He felt some sympathy for the both of them, and hoped distractedly they'd be alright.
He might have asked the Hatake boy if he wanted to come with him, but the idea repelled him. Taboo; he'd been the brat's brat, and Jiraiya could never shake the memory that Orochimaru had been fond of him, more or less. Neither shadow was welcome to follow him.
The bundle, Jiraiya was unqualified to take care of, but as he was staring as the sleeping kid, he let out that it might've been a good idea not to make such a drama of the affair with the kid. It was already going to be a pain growing up with his birthday the day of the massacre and the Yondaime's death, but now that the whole village knew for a fact this kid was the seal – now they'd seen him, and not just the red giant shadows of the sealing – it was going to be pure hell.
Sandaime said that he was thinking about something; an oath of secrecy of some sort.
Jiraiya was unconvinced, but he let it go.
(When Tsunade showed up in Konoha the girl she was supposed to pick up to get away from the village was dead.
In Sarutobi Sandaime's office she found another one.
Even for Tsunade, there was such a thing as penance.)
Are the gods of irony laughing at you yet?
And now I kind of want to write an AU where Tsunade took Rin, or even – god forbid – Kabuto. Or where Orochimaru took Rin when he left, for some Anko-related reason, or Kakashi, or something. Or where Jiraiya failed to be stupid and realised that he could be of help to Rin. He developed this freaky doting grand-father vibes I would never have imagined Jiraiya could even feel, and for that I still make no excuse, beside 'it made sense at the time?'.
This was only crack until Tsunade was mentioned, as pre-Naruto Tsunade is drama/angst. So if you have any idea/comment/crack on how this would have gone if she hadn't somehow got involved, feel free to leave a review.
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Date: 2007-02-28 10:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-05 08:19 am (UTC)Don't know when/if I'll come back to this, but thank you!