I was three rooftops away when I heard someone screaming. A woman's voice, laced with panic, calling out a name I couldn't quite make out. I changed direction mid-jump, landing on a lower roof closer to the source.
"My son! Has anyone seen my son? He's nine years old, brown hair, wearing a blue shirt—please, someone, anyone—"
She was in the street below, middle-aged, dirt and ash smeared across her face. Her eyes were wild, darting from one end of the street to the other. A few other villagers stood nearby, their expressions sympathetic but helpless. One older man shook his head slowly. A woman with a child clinging to her leg looked like she wanted to help but had nothing to offer.
I dropped down beside her. "Hey. Take a breath."
She spun toward me, grabbing my arm with both hands. "S-Shinobi-sama! You're a shinobi, right? Please, my boy is missing and I can't find him anywhere. He was just playing in the yard and then the fires started and I turned around for one second and—"
"Okay, listen to me for a second." I kept my voice as calm as I could manage. "Konoha shinobi are already handling the situation. We're sweeping through the whole village right now. If your son is out there somewhere, we're going to find him."
"But what if he's—"
"We'll find him. Right now, the best thing you can do is go back inside your house and stay there. Lock the doors, stay away from the windows. It's not safe out here. When we find your son, we'll bring him straight to you. I promise."
She hesitated, her grip on my arm loosening slightly. "I can't just sit inside doing nothing while he's out there."
"You're not doing nothing though. You're staying alive so he has someone to come back to when we find him." I gently guided her grip off my arm. "Please. Just let us do our job, okay?"
She looked like she wanted to argue, tears streaming down her face, and I was about to say something else to convince her when I suddenly froze.
One of my clones had found them.
Minato and Nawaki.
"Go inside." I gave her one last look before launching myself back onto the rooftops.
She called something after me, but I was already gone, moving fast across the tiles, my feet barely touching the next roof before I was airborne again, pushing more speed into each leap.
It didn't take long to reach them. Two of my clones were already there, standing behind trees at a safe distance from the action, keeping themselves hidden. They pointed ahead when they sensed me land nearby, and I followed their gesture to get a look at the situation.
Three hostile shinobi. Minato was standing between them and Nawaki. The scuff marks on the ground and the way everyone was breathing told me this fight had been going on for a bit.
Then I looked past him at Nawaki and had to grimace at what I saw.
The kid was completely out of it. His body was crumpled on the ground behind Minato, unconscious, and his left leg was bent at this angle that legs really aren't supposed to bend at. Broken, obviously. Badly broken, from the look of it. The bone might've even punctured through the skin, though I couldn't see clearly enough from this distance to be sure. Either way, he definitely wasn't getting up on his own anytime soon, or possibly ever, if someone didn't get him proper medical attention pretty quickly.
I shifted my attention back to the fight itself.
Stalemate. That was the word for it. Or maybe stalemate was the wrong word. A stalemate implied equal footing, a mutual inability to progress. This wasn't that. This was more like watching someone run on a treadmill. Minato was moving, fighting, doing everything right, but he wasn't getting anywhere, couldn't get anywhere. Not while Nawaki was lying there vulnerable and unconscious, a weakness the enemy could exploit, which meant Minato was stuck playing defense instead of actually trying to win.
Every time one of the hostiles tried to circle around toward the downed genin, Minato had to adjust and put himself between them and their target. It was defensive fighting at its core, and defensive fighting was a losing game. Maybe not immediately. Maybe not in the next five minutes. But eventually, stamina ran out. Or luck did. Or both at once, which was usually how these things ended.
There was a body lying about ten meters to the left side of the clearing. Another hostile shinobi, throat slit clean, blood pooling beneath him in the dirt. That one was definitely Minato's work. So there had been four enemies originally, then. He'd managed to take one down before the whole situation had devolved into this standoff.
I shook my head. Minato was good. But as long as he was trying to protect Nawaki, he wasn't going anywhere. The hostiles knew it too. They were taking their time, probing his defenses, waiting for an opening. Smart tactics when you had the numbers advantage and your opponent couldn't retreat.
Time to fix that problem. Or more accurately, time to remove the problem so it stopped being a problem.
I made a quick gesture to my clones. One of them nodded and started forming seals for Moguragakure no Jutsu. The other stayed put, waiting for my next instruction.
The first clone sank into the earth, disappearing like someone diving into water. The ground swallowed him whole, leaving only disturbed soil where he'd been standing.
I gestured for the second clone to go get Nawaki. It took off immediately, diving into the earth after its twin.
That's when I noticed the treehouse.
It was a small thing, tucked up in the branches of a tree about twenty meters from where Minato was currently fighting for his life. And there in the window was a small face pressed right up against the glass, eyes wide open, watching the whole thing unfold below like it was some kind of entertainment. Like he'd paid admission for front-row seats to a show.
I let out a sigh. The missing son. Of course it was.
The kid looked like he was maybe nine years old, with brown hair just like his mother had described, and he was completely absorbed in the battle happening below him. His nose was practically flattened against the glass from how hard he was pressing forward to get a better view. He probably thought he was being really sneaky up there, hidden away in his little treehouse. He wasn't. Both Minato and the hostile shinobi had almost certainly noticed him by now, he was way too obvious. The only reason the kid was still breathing was because everyone down there was currently too busy trying to kill each other to worry about some random civilian child watching from the sidelines.
Well, time to deal with the lost brat. And maybe later, once this whole mess was over and everyone was safe and accounted for, I'd have a word with his mother about properly disciplining an unruly child who thought sneaking out during an active attack to watch shinobi fight was somehow a brilliant idea.
I used Shunshin a few times, flickering between trees to break up my silhouette and make it harder for anyone to track my movement. In a rapid flash, I landed behind the treehouse without making a sound.
The window was locked. At least the kid had that much sense, even if his overall decision-making was questionable at best. I worked the latch from the outside, my fingers finding the mechanism and applying pressure in exactly the right spots until it gave. Took me about two seconds, maybe three. The latch popped free with a soft click, and then I slipped inside through the now-open window.
The kid was completely focused on the fight happening below. "Come on, blondie! Kick their asses! Show those ugly bastards what happens when they mess with Konoha!"
My mouth twitched. Colorful vocabulary for a nine-year-old. Someone had been spending time around shinobi, or at least around adults who didn't watch their language around kids.
I reached out and grabbed him by the collar, lifting him straight up into the air.
The kid let out a shriek that could probably be heard three streets over and began flailing his arms and legs. "Hey! I'm a shinobi! You can't just grab me like this! I'll report you to the Hokage! I'll tell everyone that you—"
"Yeah, my ass you're a shinobi." I held him at eye level so he could get a good look at my face. "You seem to be having a great time up here while your mother's out there in the streets worried sick about you."
His face flushed red. "I wasn't enjoying it! I was gathering intelligence for the village!"
"Intelligence," I repeated flatly.
"Yeah! Important reconnaissance work! Someone has to keep track of what's happening!"
I just stared at him for a moment. He stared right back, trying his best to look defiant despite the fact that he was currently dangling in the air by his collar like a misbehaving cat.
Before I could say anything in response, an explosion suddenly erupted from somewhere below us. The whole treehouse shook slightly. The kid jerked in my grip, and I saw his bravado crack just a little bit as real fear flashed across his face for the first time.
I set him down on his feet, listening to the sound of the explosion rolling up from below. My clones always did have pretty good timing when it came to these things.
Time for another little exercise, I guess.
I pushed my way out through the treehouse door and dropped down to the ground below.
One of the hostile shinobi was already on the ground, clutching desperately at the bloody stumps where his legs had been just a moment ago, letting out screams so high-pitched and raw that they made everything else fade into background noise. His two remaining companions had jerked back instinctively when the explosion went off, weapons already raised and ready, their eyes scanning the area frantically as they tried to figure out where the attack had come from.
Minato didn't waste the opening. He moved while the other two were still trying to figure out what had just happened to their friend's legs, and honestly, by the time their brains caught up to the new reality of the situation, it was already too late for one of them. Minato's blade caught him across the throat, opening it in a spray of red that looked almost black in the fading light, and before that guy had even finished falling Minato had already moved on to the second strike. Kunai punched through the ribs, straight into where the heart was doing its thing, and that was that. The body dropped.
I was already moving before he realized the others weren't breathing anymore. He brought his kunai up on instinct, good instinct, wrong place. My blade slipped past the line of his guard and bit into his forearm, nerves snapping like strings. His hand forgot how to hold things. He stumbled back, maybe thinking distance could save him, but I was already there, inside his reach, tracing every opening he didn't know he'd left. Steel whispered. Once, twice, three times. By the time his body remembered to be afraid, his throat was already open, and I was already looking for the next target.
The legless one was still screaming when I finished with his companion, making these awful sounds that existed somewhere between human and not-human anymore, noise a body makes when it's trying to process information that the mind has already understood but refuses to accept. I ended that too, quickly enough that I don't think he even registered what was happening, which was probably better for everyone involved. People call that mercy sometimes, putting someone out of their misery, but honestly the screaming was just getting on my nerves. There's only so long you can listen to someone make those sounds before it starts drilling into your skull, becoming this constant background noise that makes it impossible to think about anything else.
Silence settled over the area after the last body hit the ground. Minato was standing there breathing pretty hard, blood splattered all across his clothes and face, though not all of it was his, from what I could tell. He just stared at me for a moment, like his brain was still trying to process the fact that I was actually standing there in front of him. Then this smile broke across his face, genuine relief mixed with something that looked almost like joy at seeing backup finally arrive. He glanced at the bodies scattered around us, then looked back at me.
"Shinji. What are you doing here?"
"Just helping out some friends," I said with a shrug. "You looked like you were in kind of a tight spot back there, so I figured I'd drop in and save your ass for you."
He let out this breath that might've been a laugh if he'd actually had the energy left for it. "Your timing is pretty impeccable, I have to say."
"Yeah, well, I try my best." I shrugged, flicking blood off my blade.
Minato glanced around at the bodies. "So do you have any idea who these guys actually were?"
"Rogue nin, probably. Or maybe just mercenaries working for whoever's paying." I looked them over again. "Subpar skill for chunin. Real village shinobi would've been more trouble."
Minato stared at me for a second, his expression somewhere between confusion and resignation. His mouth opened like he wanted to say something, then closed again. He shook his head slightly, apparently deciding whatever he was thinking wasn't worth the argument.
"What?" I asked. "You obviously want to say something."
He hesitated. "They weren't subpar, Shinji. I spar with chunin at the outpost nearly every day. These guys were solid. Average, maybe, but definitely not subpar."
"If you say so."
He shook his head again, a small gesture that said he wasn't going to waste energy debating my standards. He wiped some of the blood off his face with the back of his hand, though it didn't really help much. "Are you here by yourself?"
"Nah, I've got clones scattered all around the village right now. Sent them ahead when I first got here to cover more ground." I looked over toward where my clone was currently holding onto Nawaki's unconscious body. "Speaking of which, I actually ran into Miyabi and Yua a few streets back from here. They were in the middle of dealing with two more of these nin when I found them."
Relief flashed across his face immediately. "They're okay though?"
"They're banged up pretty badly but they're alive. I left one of my clones with them to finish healing up their injuries and keep them safe."
"Good, that's really good to hear." He paused for a second, and I could see tension creeping back into his shoulders. "What about the others though? The four chunin who were traveling with us as part of the convoy team?"
"Haven't seen them yet. Just Miyabi and Yua so far, nobody else."
Minato's expression hardened slightly at that. His eyes dropped down to look at Nawaki instead, taking in the very obviously broken leg and the fact that the kid was completely unconscious.
I walked over to where my clone had the kid. The leg looked even worse up close. Compound fracture, probably. The bone hadn't broken through the skin but it was close. "How long has he been out like this?"
"Five, maybe ten minutes." Minato moved up beside me to get a better look. "One of them hit him with some kind of earth jutsu. Caught him in the leg and I heard the bone crack even over the fighting."
Not exactly ideal circumstances, but I could work with this. "Alright, so here's what we're going to do. My clone is going to take Nawaki up into that treehouse over there and start working on healing him. It's safer than just leaving him lying on the ground down here, and the treehouse gives us some cover if more hostiles decide to show up looking for trouble."
"Can you do it?"
"I mean, it's not that hard to do, but we don't really have enough time right now to fully heal something like this." I gestured toward the treehouse. "I can stabilize it though, keep him from losing the leg. That's good enough for now. While my clone handles all that, you and I should probably go find those four chunin from your convoy team and try to link up with Commander Minoru and his men. We're going to be a lot more useful if we're all working together instead of being scattered all over the place like this."
Minato considered that for a moment, then nodded. "Yeah, that makes sense. Let's get moving then."
I turned to look at my clone. "Oh, and don't forget to return the kid to his mother once you're finished with Nawaki. She's probably still out there worrying herself sick about him."
The clone gave me a lazy salute. "Yeah, yeah, I got it. Heal the broken genin first, then deliver the brat back home to his worried mother. Sounds easy enough."
...
The thing about running across rooftops is that it's faster than you'd think. No alleyways to navigate, no corners to check, just straight lines from point A to point B with the occasional leap between buildings. Minato knew where the storage buildings were since he'd been here before, so I just followed his lead and let him set the pace.
We didn't run into anyone on the way, which was either really good luck or really bad luck depending on how you looked at it. Good because, you know, not getting stabbed is always a plus. Same goes for not getting exploded, poisoned, or set on fire. I'm particular about keeping all my organs on the inside where they belong. Bad because it meant all the enemy shinobi were probably concentrated somewhere else, doing something we weren't going to like when we found out about it.
I kept my eyes moving anyway, scanning windows and doorways out of habit more than anything else. Most of the civilians had the good sense to stay inside, but I could see them through the gaps in shutters and curtains. A father holding his daughter close in one house, both of them pressed against the far wall like that would somehow make them safer. An elderly couple in another, sitting at their table like it was just another evening, except their hands were clasped together. A mother covering her son's mouth in a third, probably to keep him from crying loud enough to attract attention. Normal people doing their best to survive something that had nothing to do with them, just caught in the middle because geography decided their village was strategically valuable. The usual shinobi world bullshit, in other words. We fought, they hid, and afterwards someone would come through and count the bodies while calling it a victory.
"Storage buildings are this way," Minato said, angling toward a cluster of structures near the village's eastern edge.
I followed his lead, scanning rooftops and alleyways as we went.
We rounded a corner, and there they were. The storage buildings. And yeah, there was fighting.
Two of Minato's chunin were still standing, kunai out and keeping each other's backs covered. They looked like hell, blood everywhere, breathing like they'd just run a marathon, and moving a bit too slow. Three enemy shinobi were circling them, taking their time about it, testing their guard every few seconds with probing strikes. They weren't rushing in for the kill, which meant they were smart enough to know that cornered animals bite hardest right before they go down.
Storage buildings were obvious targets in any raid. Food, weapons, supplies. Things both sides wanted to control or destroy. Minato's team had probably figured that out the same time the enemy did, which meant everyone had converged here at roughly the same time for roughly the same reason. And somewhere in that convergence, things had gone wrong for the Konoha side. Four chunin in Minato's team. I could only see two still fighting. Which meant the other two were somewhere we couldn't see them, and given the blood on the ground and the way these two were fighting like their lives depended on it, because their lives did depend on it, that somewhere was probably a very permanent kind of somewhere.
Minato's eyes met mine, and I could see what he was trying to say without saying it. We'd spent enough time playing together by now that communication had become this weird shorthand thing where a look meant more than a whole conversation. I knew what he was thinking. He knew what I was thinking. The plan formed in that space between one second and the next, and we both nodded at basically the same time. Then we disappeared from the rooftop like we'd never been there at all.
Ambushes are funny things. They work best when the people you're ambushing are too busy with something else to notice you coming. In this case, that something else was trying to kill two chunin who were barely hanging on. Perfect distraction, really. I went left, Minato went right, both of us dropping down from above and coming in at angles that put the enemy shinobi right between us and their targets. No matter where they looked, someone was in their blind spot.
They didn't look up. That was their first mistake, and also their last.
My kunai flashed once, then twice more, three quick thrusts in a blur. The first buried itself between the shoulder blades, right where all the nerves cluster together. The next two found their marks before the man even had time to scream. He made a strangled choking sound and dropped like someone had cut his strings.
At almost the same moment, Minato's blade opened the second guy's throat in a spray of red. Two down before either of them even realized they'd gone from hunters to hunted. The whole thing took maybe three seconds from start to finish, which had to be some kind of record for going from alive to very much not alive.
The third enemy, though. He was faster. Or maybe just luckier. He saw his teammates drop and immediately bolted toward the opposite side of the clearing.
Couldn't blame him for that decision. Two fresh shinobi suddenly appearing out of nowhere while your friends were bleeding out on the ground? Yeah, running away was the right choice if he wanted to stay alive, which was probably higher on his priority list than dying for a lost cause.
Too bad for him, Minato was already making his move. The blond moved like water, closing the distance in three strides and cutting off the escape route with a kunai slash that forced the enemy to dodge left. Another slash. Another forced dodge. Minato's taijutsu wasn't flashy, but it was relentless. Each strike pushed the enemy exactly where Minato wanted him, herding him like a sheep toward slaughter.
I flicked my wrist, feeling the familiar tug of chakra as the storage seal in my glove activated. Four shuriken appeared between my fingers. I threw all four shuriken at once, angling them toward the enemy's back. The motion started in my core, because power was useless if you couldn't put the shuriken exactly where you needed them. My obliques twisted, my shoulders engaged, then my forearm, wrist, and fingers, each releasing at fractionally different moments. The hard part wasn't throwing them, it was throwing them so each one would collide with the others at exactly the right point midflight. Millimeters of difference in release angle, microseconds in timing. Get any of it wrong and you just had four shuriken going four different directions instead of calculated death.
The guy had good instincts. He heard the whistle of metal and immediately spun, weapon up to block. But that spin meant taking his eyes off Minato, and that was the opening the blond needed. His kunai lashed out, catching the enemy across the collarbone. Blood sprayed. The man grunted, stumbling, but still managed to bring his own kunai up to deflect my shuriken.
Here's the thing about throwing multiple shuriken at once, though. If you know what you're doing, you can make them do interesting things in midair. Collide them. Change their trajectories. Create angles that shouldn't be possible.
All four shuriken met in midair with metallic clang that probably sounded like wind chimes to someone who wasn't about to die from it. The collision sent them careening off in completely different directions, spinning wild and unpredictable like boomerangs thrown by someone who'd had way too much sake.
The enemy nin's eyes went wide when he saw four pieces of spinning death suddenly change course and come at him from angles that shouldn't have been possible. You could see the moment his brain tried to process what was happening and came up with absolutely nothing useful. He did his best, I'll give him that. Brought his kunai up and managed to knock one shuriken away with a desperate parry. But the other three were already past his guard. One buried itself in his left eye with a wet sound. Another punched straight through his throat. The last hit dead center on his chest, only to stop halfway in, caught by the flak vest's reinforced plate. Not that it mattered. With two holes leaking faster than he could breathe, he was already done.
He gurgled something that might have been a curse, but Minato was already there. The kunai went deep into his throat, right next to where my shuriken had hit. The man dropped as if someone had pulled the plug on his body.
Silence settled over everything for a moment.
The two surviving chunin just stood there with their weapons still up, breathing hard like they couldn't quite process the fact that the fight was actually over. Their heartrates were probably through the roof, that post-combat adrenaline dump where your body needed a few seconds to realize it wasn't about to die anymore.
"You two doing alright?" I asked.
"We're alive," one of them said, and his voice came out really rough and exhausted. "That's... honestly that's more than I thought we'd be about five minutes ago."
The other one nodded, finally lowering his weapon now that he was starting to accept that the danger had passed. "We lost two in the attack. They came at us really hard and fast, didn't even give us time to try calling for backup before..." He trailed off there, his jaw tightening up. "Commander Minoru and his men managed to draw most of the enemy shinobi away from this area. We thought we were completely done for when three of them stayed behind to finish us off, but then you two showed up out of nowhere."
"Yeah, well, good timing on our part I guess," I said.
"Shinji," Minato spoke up, "can you handle their injuries while I secure the perimeter and make sure there aren't any more hostiles hanging around in the area?"
"Yeah, I've got them," I said, already moving toward the wounded chunin. Medical stuff was part of my job description anyway, and these guys looked like they needed it. But I stopped mid-step, glancing back at Minato. "Be careful out there."
He gave me a look, probably wondering why I was bothering to state the obvious. The area seemed clear enough. But I gestured to the clones I'd left hidden earlier anyway, and they melted out of the shadows to follow him. "Take them with you. More eyes means fewer chances of someone getting the drop on you while you're checking corners."
Minato nodded, accepting the backup without argument, and headed off with my clones trailing behind him. More eyes meant fewer chances of getting ambushed while we were standing around congratulating ourselves on not dying.
Now for the wounded chunin. I walked over, already running through the mental checklist of which injuries needed immediate attention versus which could wait. Kunai wounds, blood loss, possible muscle damage. The typical menu of stab wounds and blood loss that came with the shinobi profession. I was about to kneel down and start healing when I got a good look at both of them.
Dudes. Both of them were dudes.
And just like that, about seventy percent of my motivation to personally handle their medical care evaporated into thin air. I made the hand seals and created two more clones in puffs of smoke. "Heal them," I said, jerking my thumb at the wounded chunin.
Both clones turned to look at me with identical expressions that very clearly said "really?" Without saying a word, they managed to convey their complete understanding of why they were suddenly doing the work I should have been doing, and their complete judgment of my priorities.
"Just do it," I told them.
They moved toward the chunin without another word, but I could feel their disapproval radiating off them like heat. Whatever. They were me, which meant they'd do a good job anyway, even while silently judging me for being shallow.
I jumped onto the roof of the storage building to get a better view of the village. Most of the fires were already out, which was good news. Only two buildings were still burning in the distance, and I could see people working to put those out. Homeowners, neighbors, regular civilians doing their best to save what they could. They were moving around in the open too, not hiding or cowering, which meant they felt safe enough to focus on the fire instead of worrying about getting stabbed.
And there was the reason for that confidence, one of my clones standing on a rooftop near the burning buildings with his cloak billowing gently in the wind, looking like he'd just stepped out of some propaganda poster about heroic shinobi come to save the day. The clone was just standing there, but somehow it managed to project an aura of absolute certainty that everything was going to be fine, a presence that made people believe things would work out simply because this guy said so.
The villagers were eating it up. They kept glancing up at my clone like he was some kind of guardian deity watching over them. Their eyes were practically glowing with worship. Most of the shinobi who'd come to help had been too busy fighting the enemy to spare a thought for civilian concerns like, you know, their houses burning down. But my clone had apparently decided that protecting normal people was worth his time, and the villagers didn't forget when someone actually gave a damn about whether they lived or died.
I looked back down at the two chunin. They were chatting and laughing while my clones patched them up, perfectly content with the situation. One clone was getting worshipped by grateful villagers, two more were getting casual appreciation from these guys, and I was up here by myself after passing off all the actual work to my clones, reaping a harvest of pure loneliness.
...
Somewhere in Lightning Country, in a townhouse that looked unremarkable enough to be completely forgettable, the clone sat at a table drinking hot tea. Across from him, Jiraiya was doing the same thing, which meant they were both just sitting there in silence, sipping tea like this was some kind of zen meditation session instead of a meeting between a legendary spy and a shadow clone who was technically a walking time bomb of information.
The silence stretched out for a while. Long enough that the clone started wondering if this was just going to be their entire afternoon.
Then someone knocked on the door.
Jiraiya grunted something that might have been acknowledgment, and the door cracked open just wide enough for a piece of paper to come flying through. He snatched it out of the air without looking, then started reading whatever was written on it. His eyes moved across the page, taking in the information, and as he read the clone could see his shoulders gradually losing that tension they'd been carrying. He let out this really long sigh that sounded like it was equal parts relief and exhaustion all mixed together.
"Good news, I'm guessing?" the clone asked, keeping his tone casual even though he was absolutely fishing for information.
Jiraiya glanced up from the letter, his expression unreadable for a moment. Then he grunted. "You're not getting executed, if that's what you're wondering."
"Wasn't really worried about that," the clone said, which was half true. He'd been maybe fifteen percent worried. Twenty at most.
Jiraiya's eyes narrowed slightly, unhappy with his reaction. "Village leadership decided your actions, while completely unauthorized and arguably insubordinate, didn't constitute grounds for serious punishment. They're... overlooking it. This time."
The clone couldn't help but smile, letting smugness creep into his expression. "See? I told you nothing was going to happen to me. Everything worked out fine, exactly like I said it would."
Jiraiya let out a long breath through his nose. "The only reason you're not sitting in chains right now is because you actually got results. Don't go mistaking political convenience for approval of what you did." He tapped the letter with one finger, like he was emphasizing his point. "It also helped your case quite a bit that the Raikage ended up getting injured by the Bijuu during the whole incident. Your merit exceeded what they thought the punishment should be, which is why you're still sitting here instead of in a cell somewhere."
He opened his mouth then, probably getting ready to launch into another one of those lectures about responsibility and consequences and all the other stuff that adults love talking about when you do something that technically worked out but really shouldn't have.
But then he just stopped, closed his mouth again, and let out another sigh instead. This one sounded more defeated than angry, like he'd already worked out in his head that trying to scold this particular clone was basically a waste of his breath. The kid was stubborn, that much was pretty obvious by now. Talking at him more wasn't going to change how he thought about things.
"You don't need to look so disappointed," the clone said, reading Jiraiya's expression easily enough. "I'm not planning to do something that reckless again, you know. I'm not completely stupid. It was really just a slip of the finger, that's all."
Jiraiya stared at him. Completely speechless. A slip of the finger. The kid had just called an incident that nearly sparked an entire international conflict, managed to injure a Kage in the process, and could have very easily gotten him executed, he'd called all of that a slip of the finger. Like he'd accidentally spilled a cup of tea on his homework or something equally minor.
"Look," the clone kept going, "I saw Kumo in the middle of sealing their Bijuu right there in front of my eyes. Just happening, right there. And I guess the temptation ended up being a bit stronger than I could resist at the time, so I decided to pick on them a little. But it's not going to happen again. I learned my lesson."
Jiraiya stared at him, his face completely deadpan. Then he said, in probably the flattest tone imaginable, "Right. Until the next time you happen to see something that's too tempting for you to resist."
The clone opened his mouth to argue, then realized he didn't actually have a good counterargument for that.
He waited for the next jab or sarcastic comment, but the old man's expression was distant and contemplative as though he were working through a problem in his head. Whatever he was thinking about, it clearly wasn't making fun of him anymore.
The clone watched Jiraiya's face go through this entire mental journey and felt this overwhelming urge to just lean across the table and say "Hey, Dad" with the biggest shit-eating grin he could manage. Just to see what would happen. The jumpscare potential was incredible. Jiraiya would probably choke on his tea, and the clone would get to enjoy one perfect moment of pure chaos before everything went to hell.
But he didn't actually do it.
Because somehow, sitting there looking at the old man's stupid expression, the clone had this feeling that the original Shinji would be absolutely pissed if his clone started jumpscaring their secret father without him being there to see it. That seemed like something the original would want to experience firsthand, not just get through memory transfer later. So the clone kept his mouth shut and just sipped his tea like a good, loyal second-gen clone who knew how to follow the unspoken rules.
Unlike those third-gen clones who kept doing whatever they wanted whenever they got the chance. Those guys were the reason he was stuck in Lightning Country having tea with Jiraiya in the first place instead of doing literally anything else. Third-gen clones had no sense of discipline or chain of command. They were chaos agents masquerading as useful tools.
The clone sighed into his tea cup.
"I've got it, let's do that then." Jiraiya suddenly said, and his expression had shifted into something excited. "Listen, while nothing serious is going to happen to Shinji, you're going to become my subordinate for an S-rank mission, so follow my every command."
The clone opened his mouth to say something about that, probably something about how he technically wasn't obligated to follow orders from anyone except the original Shinji, or maybe about how "without question" seemed like a pretty dangerous clause when you were dealing with clones who had opinions, but Jiraiya just kept talking right over him like he hadn't even noticed.
"We're going to sabotage Kumogakure's Bijuu sealing."
The clone's lips twitched at that. So after all that scolding about not messing with Kumogakure's bijuu, now Jiraiya wanted to do exactly that? The old hypocrite. And what he was really saying was that he wanted an endless supply of expendable clones to throw at this incredibly dangerous mission. Meat shields with the bonus feature of being able to think and gather information before they got destroyed.
"So this must be the official mission you got from the village leadership or whatever," the clone said after a moment, "but even so, is it really okay for you to just do whatever you want like this?" Because honestly, someone had to point out the obvious problem here. "I'm pretty sure the higher-ups aren't going to want Shinji or any of his clones anywhere near Kumo after everything that just happened. That's going to make a lot of important people really nervous."
Jiraiya turned to look at him, and there was genuine surprise in his eyes. The clone had reached that conclusion on his own, figured out the political complications without needing them spelled out. Either this kid was unnaturally good at understanding village politics, or those genes really were showing themselves in remarkable ways. Probably both.
"It's fine, don't worry about it," he said after a moment. "I'll be the one personally overseeing this entire mission, which means I'm the one taking full responsibility for whatever happens. Nobody's going to argue with me about my decisions on this."
Then he squinted at the clone, studying him with this calculating expression that made the clone immediately suspicious. "You know," Jiraiya said slowly, like he was working through the idea as he spoke, "you actually seem pretty talented at gathering information and reading situations. Have you ever thought about becoming my apprentice? I could teach you the spying arts properly. You've clearly got the knack for it."
The clone's lips twitched again. So not only did the old man want to squeeze all the juice out of him and eat the meat, but he also wanted to eat the bone too. He wanted free labor, expendable scouts, and a student to pass his knowledge to, all wrapped up in one convenient clone-shaped package. What an absolutely opportunistic old man.