Jiraiya frowned, not at all subtly, evaluating the kids' performance. The girls had all fallen down in an exhausted heap, with Hikaru's dog panting at the top of the pile. They were nearly recovered now, but the Toad Sennin had some moments to watch while Naruto bounced around the fringes of the heap of girls, hoping for approval but actually provoking some resentment at his energy.
Good material, but too many mismatches. The girls were all socially developed to a respectable degree, especially for their age, while if little Naruto had been raised by wild animals it would have been a substantial improvement. On the other hand, the boy could easily wear out several teams of ANBU in sequence, one after another, and still have energy left for a refreshing marathon or two while carrying a full pack.
The girls were, needless to say, soft. Hardly unusual for girl their age, but still - not the best.
He needed for them to form a common ground, and it wasn't going to be easy. Naruto was pathetically eager to please, but Jiraiya was starting to think he'd made a mistake bringing so many girls, as at that age they could be vicious, forming packs and turning on anything they viewed as socially weaker than they - which Naruto certainly was. Hikaru was making all of the efforts he could've asked for in trying to bring them all together, but at the same time Jiraiya was an old enough ninja to know that not even the best attempt would always succeed. And Naruto, while trying to help, was actually making her job more difficult. He was clearly their inferior in both mental and social training, which Jiraiya was actually hoping to get them to help correct. But on the other hand the girls were not in any league that could even consider touching anything close to Naruto's physical endurance short of a decade or so of dedicated training. Twice already there had been complaints of scraped knees, to say nothing of the whining about missed comforts, and they hadn't even done anything all that rigorous yet.
There just wasn't any...
Jiraiya's nose twitched, catching a delicate hint of perfume and derailing his thought processes nicely. One didn't get the reputation as a mega-pervert without indulging in those vices, and as he tracked his head slowly to the left he saw that a vision of loveliness had intruded on their camp while his thoughts were busy, too focused on evaluating the nuances of Naruto's developing little group to catch the soft hints of another presence approaching.
Naruto stopped bugging the girls to play, trying his hardest to be friends, when he saw their chaperone's face turn to the same sort of expression taken by some Inuzuka dogs sighting a delicious bone.
"Sennin Jiraiya?" Newly promoted chunin Kurenai Yuhi winced when she saw the man's face focus in on her breasts, already making squeezing motions with both his hands. The man hadn't even noticed the almost-six year old Hinata Hyuuga sniffling by her side - the reason Kurenai was out here in the first place was to deliver the girl to the Sennin for training... and instead he was estimating her bra size, with admittedly too much accuracy for any woman to be comfortable with.
Her friends would later peg this as the moment Kurenai stopped wrapping her thighs with bandages as a covering and switched to pants. She would always insist the change was because she wanted pockets, however.
"Sennin Jiraiya?"
No response.
"Jiraiya?"
As the tone crept from respectful to annoyed, evoking memories of bath-house beatings galore, the Sennin shook himself out of his lust-inspired haze just enough to switch gazes to her face. Well, at least that was still cool and professional. He hadn't managed to bungle this meeting too badly yet. Faced with a bunch of kids just barely old enough to start at the Ninja Academy he wasn't going to do anything improper, which also meant at the same time he wasn't prepared to do any resisting of those improper urges he'd spent decades training into himself. So when this wonderful pair of boobs wandered into his camp...
"Ahem," she cleared her throat rather loudly.
His gaze shot up to eye level, and he plastered on what he felt was a charming expression. "Oh, hi! Was there something you wanted?"
Only Kurenai's pride as a ninja kept her eyebrows from twitching as the pervert's face fell to the level of her breasts again, as if asking the question of *them!*
Okay, her eyebrow twitched, but only just barely. Mustering a smile for Hinata's sake more than hers, the chunin knelt down next to her charge and wiped tears from the child's white eyes, also incidentally bringing her breasts down to where the Sennin's gaze must inevitably catch that she was there with a child in tow. "Hiashi Hyuuga has reconsidered, and hired me to deliver his daughter to you for training."
Proving that he still had a rational mind in there somewhere, Jiraiya's leering cut off with an audible 'click' as his mouth snapped shut, his mind already rapidly connecting facts together. Besides that, he'd already had one or two unpleasant experiences where he'd agreed to something while his brain was engaged elsewhere, so he'd taught himself when to cut it off and deal with business (mostly so he could go back to the lechery, but still).
The Sennin frowned, shaking his head. "That's impossible. I've already bitten off more than I should have bringing three girls..."
'It's for Hinata's sake.' Kurenai told herself as she casually adjusted her bodice, derailing Jiraiya's current train of thought into flaming ruins before he could fully refuse to train an extra girl; only part of her regretting that she wouldn't be able to tack the charge for a seduction mission onto the Hyuuga's tab for this extra bit of persuassion. A much larger part only hoped it didn't actually come to that, and that he could be persuaded with reason.
Still, she knew that she'd caught his attention.
Eyes glazed and mouth once again lagging open with his tongue darting out. Jiraiya made some more squeezing motions with his hands while absently telling the kids. "Uhm, why don't you go off somewhere? Yeah, play a second round of Ninja Tag, or something. Take twenty minutes, no better make it an hour. The chunin and I have to 'negotiate' whether I can even take on a new student or not."
Kurenai kept her face carefully blank while shooing Hinata off to join the other kids as they departed with a small dog.
Hinata found herself startled and leaning backwards as a bubbly redhead leaned into her face. "Hi! I'm Hikaru! Want to be friends?"
"H,h,h,h... hai," Hinata blushed as the somewhat older girl pressed uncomfortably close, staring at her with a big smile on her face.
"You are a Hyuuga, aren't you?" Fuu asked, coming up beside the pair.
"H,h,h,h... hai." Hinata desperately scrubbed at the tear marks on her cheeks, hoping they didn't notice, as Naruto came swirling into her field of vision.
"Hey!" the blonde boy the Hyuuga heir could never utter a word of her admiration for actually *touched* her shoulder. "Let's all play Ninja Tag again! Hinata? You're it."
Hinata could have happily agreed to being devoured by a crocodile just then as the other four children took off tearing into the woods. Naruto had TOUCHED her!
She may not have fainted, but the girl spent a good ten minutes in the clouds before she shook herself and followed after. If not for her eyes, she never could have found the other children after that kind of head start. They were already on the other side of a nearby ridgeline!
"I don't think we should run much farther. We don't want to be too far from camp," Umi decided.
"We're much too far away for her to find us now!" Hikaru agreed, punching a fist in the air.
"Actually, no," Fuu quietly disagreed, nervously playing with her sleeve. "With a Hyuuga's vision we have no hope of hiding from her. She could see through anything we might use for cover. Our best strategy is just to stay ahead of her."
"That's cool!" Announced Naruto, who'd never imagined those eyes *did* anything, beyond what eyes normally did anyway. But he'd never had any problem outrunning anyone before, so couldn't imagine that being a problem now.
"Let's head up the valley that way!" Hikaru decided, pointed excitedly to a point where hills rose on either side, thickly covered in fur trees. Her dog barked once in happy agreement. *Something* sure smelled good up there!
Later she would reflect it could be a bad idea to feed a puppy steaks made out of bear.
A faint smile crossed Kurenai's lips as she saw Hinata visibly come back to herself and take off racing after the other children. The little darling would be a while catching them with the head start they had. Then she sighed as Jiraiya took the absence of the last child as his cue to start drooling.
The chunin fought the urge to close her eyes and think of Konoha, or rather in this case Hinata, focusing in on the departing sounds of the child's sure steps until the combination of pine forest and distance deadened the sounds.
At least so far he was only looking.
"We should cross here!" Hikaru pointed to a narrow part of the stream they'd all been following, only to dodge back and have her hair stand on end as a large alligator took this proximity as its opportunity to eat her. "RRAAAAaagghhHH!!"
They were ninja. They had trained and honed their skills for battle.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"
They were also little girls.
Racing up the hill to get away from the scaly beast that probably weighed as much as all of them put together, they rather irrationally ran towards the open mouth of a cave, seeking safety.
"ROOOOAARRRRRRR!!!"
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"
"I'll save you!!" Naruto dashed right in between the three girls clutching each other in fright and right into the bear's path. Rescuing princesses was something REAL ninja heroes did, after all! And all of these girls had been introduced to him as princesses!
SLASH! SMACK!!
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"
Broken and bloody and tossed in a corner by the tremendous force of the blow he had taken, Naruto levered himself up on one arm and raised the other towards the bear even now towering over the petrified girls and rearing a paw back to strike, plasma once more forming around his fist.
BOOM!
Umi blinked as the bear went harmlessly sailing over the three girls' heads. Fuu went rushing over to Naruto's side and had to quickly fight the urge to barf as she saw his injuries, while Hikaru unflinched from where she'd been tensed, expecting the blow to land. Soon all three girls were at Naruto's side.
That was when the bear reared up again behind them, singed but not yet out of the fight.
"ROOOOAARRRRRRR!!!"
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"
In her tent, Tsunade rolled over and shoved her pillow down further over her ears.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"
Head pounding from her latest hangover, and mentally cursing all tent builders for not including soundproofing in their designs, the Slug Sennin rolled over the other way and jammed the pillow down harder.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"
Finally admitting that she was awake and that nothing was going to reclaim her sleep now, Tsunade sat up in her bedroll, bloody eyed enough that in that moment she could have effortlessly passed for an Uchiha, and mad enough to drive sane men fleeing in stark terror. The disheveled appearance of her hair and nightgown only adding to a visage of raw violence about to be unleashed.
"Shizune, what's happening?"
When a light snore was the only answer to her furious growl, Tsunade spared a glance to the form sleeping peacefully in the other bedroll, then to the clock sitting between them. Underneath the anger somewhere, she acknowledged that she was running her assistant too hard. After spending nearly the whole night fleeing from her creditors, they'd only been down for less than two hours. Ninja or not, Shizune could only be asked to do so much, and right now couldn't be wakened by anything less than a direct attack on her person.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"
As the spike of pain subsided from her latest screaming induced hangover agony, and even more furious now, rising and pulling on a bathrobe over her nightgown, Tsunade decided that was exactly what this noise was and left her tent determined that something would die.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"
The children raced right, followed by an enormous bear.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"
The children raced left, away from a giant tiger that must have escaped from the Forest of Death.
"ROOOOAARRRRRRR!!!"
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"
The children raced uphill, followed by a huge bear and tiger, all being chased by a humongous alligator, snapping and snarling after them.
BOOM!
The now severely singed bear and tiger raced down, followed by the children, who were still being chased by one extremely scary alligator.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"
The procession had reversed itself, with the alligator fleeing before arrows of wind and fire while Umi did her best to carry a now-incapacitated Naruto away from the returning bear and tiger.
"THAT'S ENOUGH!!!!"
BOOM!
At first when there came a massive explosion on the ground in front of them, all three girls looked to Naruto, only to see he was still slumped in Umi's quickly tiring arms. But then the dust settled, and resolved itself into a large boulder with alligator tail and legs sticking out from the corners of it. Behind them, the tiger and somewhat burnt bear had turned tail and were fleeing from the elemental force of rage and destruction their animal cunning had sensed behind them.
All three girls, plus Hinata, who'd rushed and only just caught up to them, blinked at the towering fury in a woman's dressing gown that was standing, breathing heavily, on a rise above them.
"WILL YOU STOP SCREAMING?!?"
All four girls fell to the ground and started at once to cry.
Tsunade palmed her face and, careful not to look too closely at the blood on the boy's chest, resolved between growls that Shizune had to be awakened after all.
But *Somebody* had brought these kids out here, then left them to wander alone where they got into danger and began to practically scream in her ear!
Jiraiya was almost as happy with the anticipation over what he knew was about to happen as he would be when they got to the real thing. Having waited just long enough for what he judged for the children to be thoroughly distracted by their game, he reached forward towards the chunin's blouse, with the aim of opening it, when he heard a familiar cracking of knuckles behind him that drove all thoughts of lechery out of his mind, to be replaced by mortal terror.
Grin of delight now frozen in a rictus of fear, he glanced over his shoulder to see behind him Tsunade was standing with her assistant and the five children, all in varying states of dirt and bandages, and Jiraiya felt his balls shrink as he caught sight of the Slug Sennin's expression.
Pure fury didn't even begin to contain it.
He didn't even know what, exactly, he did. Nor did he need to. The Toad sage was just suddenly on his knees grovelling. Foolishly, when he felt her hand clap down on his shoulder, he looked up, hoping beyond reason that he had somehow misjudged her facial expression and that he hadn't actually been the cause of whatever had offended her.
That was when her rising foot hit his crotch.
Jiraiya rose to his tiptoes straight from a kneeling position, his eyes bulging out to where he looked like a toad more than he'd like to admit as his throat strangled with an inarticulate scream. Had she not clamped a hand down on his shoulder, Jiraiya would have flown away with the force of that blow. But Tsunade was far, FAR too mad to let him get off that easily! First her headache, then abandoning these kids out in the woods where they almost died, then to find it was all so he could skive off his responsibilities and grope some kunoichi?
The fist not holding him began descending, over and over again.
"ACK!! NOT THE FACE! NOT THE FACE!!"
Tsunade was beyond listening. No, it was payback time. And, come to think of it, she had a few bad years full of frustrations, and it was open season on perverts after what she'd caught her old teammate doing!
"ARGG! BACK TO THE FACE! BACK TO THE FACE!!"
Hikaru's puppy hid its face in its paws, and the children went white before Shizune clustered them behind her, so they didn't have to look. And, when Naruto poked his head out to see anyway, Kurenai backed that up with an illusion so he didn't have to see Jiraiya being swung about by one arm, used to beat the ground as though it had been very, VERY naughty! Though, admittedly, when trees began smashing, broken apart by the startled pervert's now-broken body, her illusion couldn't handle that level of damage, so the chunin moved closer to shelter the kids with her own body.
Shizune winced when the final kick sent the Toad Sage flying skyward. What caused her sympathy was the man's course, which ought to have been an arc, meaning he would come down somewhere, looked perfectly straight to her as he rose up out of the range of her vision.
But more of her was grateful for that man's sacrifice, as she'd honestly never seen her boss that mad before, only now Tsunade appeared to have mostly worked it out of her system.
They all stood silently, letting the Slug Sennin pant as she overcame the last of her temper.
At last, she turned to Kurenai with one word. "Explain."
Quickly and succinctly, the chunin did so, using as few words as possible.
Everyone paused, waiting breathless, as Tsunade considered the answer.
"You're being paid to deliver this girl to Jiraiya for training?" The Sennin chose to confirm.
"Yes, ma'am." Kurenai agreed quickly. If there was blame here she'd take it, rather than endanger Hinata.
Suddenly Tsunade sighed, and the last of her rage collapsed and she began to trudge back out of camp. "Well, come along. He's bound to show up again sometime. In the meantime... what's your specialty?"
Pausing when the Sennin stopped, Kurenai answered, "Illusions, ma'am."
Tsunade grunted, beginning to trudge back to where her bed waited. "Well, now it's medicine. I'm not about to keep fixing up all the scrapes five ninja kids can accumulate, and I need Shizune for other things too often to spare her for full-time sitting. She will show you the basics. When you're not reading or tending the kids, you'll practice dodging."
Kurenai wondered why a shiver of ice just passed down her spine. "Yes, ma'am."
While she was answering her mistress, Shizune had directed the kids to pack up all of their tents and camp supplies, with a speculative gleam to her eyes as she noticed candied fruits and other delicacies they couldn't generally afford.
Choosing to pause while the children did this, Tsunade cracked a bleary eye open toward them. The heirs of the Ryuuzaki, Hououji, and Shidou families, along with the Hyuuga heir and an Uzumaki, to judge by the clan marks on their clothing. Even if they were ordinary kids, she couldn't just abandon them. But something was up here. "Did Jiraiya tell you five what he had planned for you?" she asked, managing a not-unpleasant tone.
Hikaru's hand shot skyward. "First stamina, then chakra reserves, Tsunade-sensei!"
Fuu, averting her eyes, adjusted her glasses, nodding. "Yes. His plans were first for us to run, then meditate later."
Tsunade kept her thoughts off her face while she considered this. Continuing that sounded remarkably easy, on her part, that is. Which, when it came right down to it, suited her just fine. But she had one refinement. Since she would spend part of each day tossing boulders anyway, it wouldn't be anything to just add a few flicks of gravel at the same time. "That's fine. We'll go with that. But it won't hurt his training schedule any if while you're with me I teach you what I know, so we'll add a few minutes of dodging each day to that routine, and you can all sit in on the medical lectures Shizune is going to be giving Kurenai."
Mostly because having them sit in on those lectures spared Tsunade, who'd otherwise be forced to watch the kids herself while both Kurenai and Shizune were busy. But she'd always maintained that Konoha needed more medic-nins anyway, so it wasn't entirely a decision made solely to spare herself from babysitting. Just mostly.
At least the kids had all bonded over their shared traumatic experiences today, so there wouldn't be any trouble with them not getting along.
And that was how Jiraiya became the first injured man to make a moon landing, Tsunade picked up a paid nanny on the Hyuuga tab, and Kurenai started on an adventure where she learned the fun of dodging boulders.
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(Posted Wed, 01 Jun 2011 23:03)
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