They moved through Agakure without drawing attention.
After slipping past the outer defenses, no one gave them a second look. Three travelers passing through. Nothing worth stopping. As long as they stayed out of trouble, that held true.
Agakure shinobi still patrolled the streets and waterways. Whenever one ca close, the three adjusted their route without discussion. They had done it enough tis that it required no coordination anymore.
At this pace, they would be out of Agakure and into the Land of Grass within a day.
They were almost clear.
Yuji felt it before he heard it.
A pressure in the air, chakra, radiating from sowhere across the water. Then ca the sound: a low concussive roll, dulled by rain and distance, but heavy enough that it wasn’t sothing you dismissed.
Soone was fighting out there.
Sasori and Yuji both felt the chakra from where they stood. Arai’s expression shifted the mont it reached him. Whatever was happening out on that lake, the output was not from an ordinary shinobi. The scale of it made that plain without needing to see it.
The three moved toward it.
They stopped at the treeline and looked out.
The lake was a ss of steam. Thick white columns rolled off the water and broke apart in the rain. Large sections of the surface were still visibly boiling.
Two people stood on the water.
On the left: a man with long white hair, wearing wooden clogs, dressed in a way that didn’t match the village or the weather or much of anything else. He stood with the kind of ease that ca from not having been seriously threatened in a long ti.
Across from him: a girl. Young, close to Yuji’s age. Her breathing was labored, but she hadn’t broken her stance.
"Fire Release," Arai said quietly, reading the steam patterns. "Had to be substantial."
Even in the rain, the lake hadn’t cooled.
But none of them mistook this for a real fight. The man wasn’t trying to end it. He was pushing her, putting enough pressure on her that she had to respond with everything she had.
The girl recovered and ca forward again.
She moved fast across the water, hands already cycling through signs, and paper erupted around her, dozens of folded sheets spinning out in tight arcs, shooting toward the man.
They didn’t land.
He stepped once, and the barrage passed him. He said sothing.
She reset.
Sasori watched without expression.
Arai studied the man’s posture, sothing turning over in his mind.
Yuji stopped moving entirely.
The white hair. The clogs. The way he stood.
It landed all at once.
There was no one else in the shinobi world who looked like that. The appearance alone was enough, but then Yuji looked at the girl again, at the paper orbiting her like a second skin, responding to her will, and any remaining doubt disappeared.
Jiraiya.
And Konan.
’It’s them.’
He ran the tiline in his head.
Judging from Konan’s hand sign speed and the output of her chakra, she hadn’t been under Jiraiya long. A year, maybe pushing into the second.
By the 42nd year, the three students would finish their ti with him and go their own ways.
Which put Nagato sowhere nearby.
"That silhouette," Arai said. He was still studying the man across the water, working toward a na. He hadn’t placed it yet, not because he didn’t know Jiraiya, but because Jiraiya in Agakure wasn’t sothing you anticipated.
Arai was a veteran. He had made it his business to know dangerous n. He wouldn’t stay uncertain long.
Konoha and Suna had no warmth between them.
Too many wars, and bodies on both sides. And the Three Legendary Sannin weren’t famous because of the title Hanzo had given them, they were famous because of what they had actually done during the war. Jiraiya. Tsunade. Orochimaru. Any one of them, by their record alone, was soone you didn’t forget.
"Jiraiya," Sasori said.
Yuji glanced at him.
Sothing had shifted in his expression the mont the na left his mouth. His hatred for Konoha ran deep. That much had always been clear.
Jiraiya had already noticed them.
Before Sasori even finished saying the na, Jiraiya had stepped out of his fighting stance and gone still on the water. He turned his head slightly, and looked toward the treeline where the three of them stood.
He had known they were there for so ti.
The mont Yuji heard the na leave Sasori’s mouth, he felt Arai’s entire body go rigid beside him. Then, without a word, Arai grabbed both of them by the arm and moved.
He moved fast.
He didn’t slow down to assess. He simply ran, pulling them through the trees with everything he had, and he did not stop.
There was nothing pathetic about it. Arai understood exactly what Jiraiya was, and he understood what he himself was carrying, not just his own life, but theirs. The war between Suna and Konoha had cooled, but it had not ended, and a man like Jiraiya did not need a reason to act. n who had done what he had done on the battlefield were not governed by the sa calculations as ordinary shinobi. You did not linger near them. You left.
Arai left.
The forest broke apart around them as he pushed deeper into it, branches whipping past, the rain loud against the canopy above. He ran for nearly a quarter of an hour before he set them down.
Nothing followed.
"We’re changing routes," he said. "Let’s move."
On the lake, Konan watched Jiraiya go still and asked quietly, "What is it?"
He stared at the treeline a mont longer. Three people. He turned the question over. Agakure shinobi, maybe. If they were, there would be so trouble, not for him, but for Konan and the other two.
Fortunately, this wasn’t their hiding place, or ’ho’, it was just a training ground.
When he turned back to Konan his expression had already changed, the seriousness dropped. He scratched the back of his head and laughed. "Nothing. Got distracted. I was thinking about dinner."
Konan looked at him.
"Let’s continue," he said.
She smiled, said nothing about it, and got back into position.
She had learned early that Teacher Jiraiya was sotis baffling. It didn’t change how she felt about him. He was kind. He was her family. That was what mattered.
"Mhm," she said, and raised her hands to begin.
...
Sasori spoke first once Arai put them down.
"Why is he in Agakure?"
He asked it plainly. Whatever he felt about Jiraiya, he understood the situation clearly enough. The three of them could not handle Jiraiya.
Arai shook his head. "I don’t know. Among the Three Sannin, Tsunade and Jiraiya both pulled back from the front lines after the war. They’re rarely seen." He paused, still thinking. "And that girl, she’s Jiraiya’s student. She’s from Agakure, not Konoha. That’s worth knowing." He looked between them. "This goes back to the village. Even if we can’t use it ourselves, passing it to Iwagakure or Kumogakure, or letting Hanzo know, that’s enough."
He didn’t need to say more than that. The major villages had fought each other across generations, but beneath all of it ran a shared understanding: Konoha’s rise was nobody’s interest.
Yuji said nothing.
He was thinking about Konan.
Konan was the one who would eventually approach Sasori with the invitation to join the Akatsuki.
...
Stones?
User Comments
0 comments from readers