Jiraiya was completely stunned by the scolding.
"Uh, first of all, I don't think this really counts as something bad, does it? How can you say I only think of you whenever something terrible happens? For all you know, their village leader's student might be a gorgeous woman."
As Jiraiya spoke, he looked toward Tokiwa, silently urging her to back him up.
"To be precise, she's our current village leader. The previous leader who made the agreement with you has already... Never mind. In any case, our current leader really is beautiful," Tokiwa confirmed.
Jiraiya immediately adopted a smug expression that said, 'See? I told you.'
"What does her being beautiful have to do with me?" Konan was beginning to grit her teeth.
"Well, maybe their village leader has extremely flexible fingers... I mean, she might be very fast at forming hand seals—AAAH!"
Before Jiraiya could finish his joke, he was violently blasted out of the room.
He flew straight through the towering command center's window and plummeted toward the ground below.
"Please leave. That promise belongs to your village, so go find Jiraiya's student, Uzumaki Naruto, and make him fulfill it. It has nothing to do with us."
With a cold expression, Konan dispersed the paper wings she had just formed.
Tokiwa turned and left awkwardly.
She hadn't expected Jiraiya to remain every bit as shameless after all these years.
He was even making those kinds of degenerate jokes about his own students now.
No wonder he got launched out of the building.
Wait.
That wasn't right!
Tokiwa suddenly realized something and hurried toward the exit.
A fall from that height was nothing to a ninja, much less a legendary Sannin. What if he used the opportunity to escape?
To Tokiwa's surprise, Jiraiya hadn't run this time.
After falling, he landed on a nearby rooftop and was now sitting there, sighing in melancholy.
"If only I'd taken on more students back then... Can Naruto really handle this?" Jiraiya scratched his head in frustration.
There was Sakura, whom Naruto secretly liked, and Sasuke, whom he openly obsessed over.
And even setting those two aside, Naruto still had the Tailed Beasts.
During his stay in Amegakure, Jiraiya had also learned from the toad elder, Shima, that Naruto visited Mount Myōboku and received that terrifying prophecy.
With so many potential targets already waiting for him, how could a mere village leader from Nadeshiko Village possibly handle Naruto?
"Jiraiya, those two students of yours both refused. What are you planning to do now?" Tokiwa arrived beside him and asked.
"Ahem. Actually, I deliberately handled things this way to preserve your village leader's dignity." Jiraiya put on a profound, wise expression.
"What do you mean?" Tokiwa didn't understand.
"What do I mean? Tokiwa, did you really think the agreement between me and your former village leader was merely to arrange a blind date between our students?
Our promise was for our disciples to fight another match under your village's traditional rules, with marriage as the wager. If your current village leader truly wants the promise fulfilled, then she'll have to defeat Nagato or Konan in combat. I don't know how well your current leader has been trained, but there's absolutely no chance she can defeat either of them."
Jiraiya sighed. "Nagato and Konan wouldn't spare her feelings. They definitely wouldn't hold back. Naruto, on the other hand, might..."
"That's true. The village rules do state that the man must be defeated first..." Tokiwa sat beside Jiraiya and sighed with him.
"That's exactly why our village leader sent me to Amegakure. She wanted me to find a way to obtain technical support for that cloning procedure. But now... sigh."
The two remained silent for a while before Tokiwa spoke again.
"So what are you going to do? Let your other student, Naruto, try?"
"Your village leader wouldn't be able to stand against Naruto either. Even though Naruto has a kinder personality and might deliberately hold back, he would never surrender on purpose. The best possible outcome would merely be another draw, just like mine."
Jiraiya shook his head and rejected the idea.
This time, he didn't dump the responsibility on Naruto.
Admittedly, doing so would be the easiest option. He could simply tell them to go find Naruto.
Whether it solved anything or not, it would at least delay the headache for quite a while.
"I've got it!" Jiraiya suddenly thought of a solution.
"Got what?"
"I know what to do." Jiraiya spoke excitedly. "Naruto is already preparing to spread Sage Mode throughout the shinobi world anyway. We can simply let your village learn it ahead of everyone else.
Once you master Sage Mode, you won't have to worry about your village growing weaker with every generation because of those ridiculous marriage rules.
If that power-scaling problem is solved, then your village leader won't need to obsess over finding one of my students to fulfill the promise anymore, right?"
"Sage Mode? Seriously?" Tokiwa looked astonished.
She never expected Jiraiya to offer them something so legendary.
'Wait.'
'Something still felt wrong!'
"Do we really possess the talent to learn something like that?" Tokiwa voiced her doubts.
This wasn't low self-esteem. She simply had an accurate, grounded understanding of her own abilities.
"Of course you can. My student, Uzumaki Naruto, developed a physical shortcut for it. Let me explain..." A shamelessly lecherous smile suddenly crept across Jiraiya's face.
Smack!
Something heavy struck Jiraiya on the back of the head, then bounced into Tokiwa's arms.
It was a scroll.
"Ow! Who did that?!" Jiraiya clutched his head and spun around.
Once again, it was Yugito.
After Yugito handed the Sage Mode manual to Makoto, he immediately scanned its contents and forwarded it to Orochimaru's research team nearby.
The original scroll was no longer needed, so Makoto returned it to Yugito.
As for the delicate matter involving Matatabi's, Yugito felt it would be better discussed somewhere much more private.
Talking to Makoto about it in front of Nagato and Konan felt completely inappropriate.
So she arranged to have dinner with Makoto—claiming she wanted to discuss matters related to the Tailed Beasts—and then left the command center.
After stepping outside, she happened to overhear Jiraiya enthusiastically pitching the shortcut once again.
Jiraiya's desire to spread Sage Mode to Nadeshiko Village came from good intentions.
However, judging by that incredibly creepy grin, his intentions probably included a few extra, highly inappropriate motives.
Therefore, Yugito—the seemingly cold but secretly warmhearted passerby—threw the completed Sage Mode manual straight at his head.
"This is the manual compiled by Uzumaki Naruto and the others. With it, Nadeshiko Village won't need this perverted old man as an instructor."
After calmly leaving those words behind, Yugito leaped away.
"Huh?"
Jiraiya hadn't betrayed Naruto this time, yet Naruto somehow managed to sabotage him from hundreds of miles away!
He opened the scroll and discovered that its contents were meticulously thorough.
Some details were things even Jiraiya himself had never known.
Reading them would benefit him greatly.
They truly had no need for him as a teacher anymore.
Jiraiya sank into deep depression.
"What?! This shortcut is way too... This has to be fake, right?!" Tokiwa only read the beginning before the physical requirements completely horrified her.
That reaction was perfectly normal.
No reasonable person could read it without being deeply disturbed.
"It's real. Even if you don't trust me, you should trust the woman who just delivered it. And if you don't trust her either, you can ask Nagato and Konan. I'm guessing she was in that room earlier precisely because she came to deliver this exact manual to them."
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