Ah yes, the struggles of a fanfiction writer. Here's a prologue for a story idea I had. I have a metric fuckton of ideas for stuff I can change or tweak around within the story, but for now, I'm just gonna throw out this prologue. If it goes over well, I'll maybe do the rest of my story. But for now, it's just this (despite the full outline I've already written). There's really not a lot here because it's a prologue, but trust me, the amount of changes and tweaks I'll be making are gonna be nuts. The actual chapters will be much much longer than this.
This story is/was inspired by "Better Left Unsaid" by Kenchi618 on
Right on Time: Prologue
It had been a rough day. This day always was. Even after 7 years, it still felt like waking up in the morning was accompanied by a kick to the chest. No matter how much he drank, he still couldn't drown it out.
The grief.
Kami the grief. He'd readily admit to being a lustful person. He'd be sort of lying considering how much "research" he did. But he'd never really been a drinker. That was Tsunade's shtick. But every year, on October 10th?
You'd be hard pressed to catch Jiraiya without a bottle in his hand. 7 years ago, to the day, he'd lost Minato. Minato, who he viewed like a son. Even to this day, the grieving wasn't over. And Kushina. He didn't know Kushina as well as he knew Minato, but she was a good woman. And she'd been pregnant. Jiraiya didn't know whether to cry at the unfairness of it all or be angry at it. 3 bottles of sake down the hatch and he still felt bogged down. He felt... tired. Just of everything. He knew one day he'd be okay, but this day? This day was not one of them.
He was in the middle of waiting for another bottle when a Konoha ANBU member pulled up a stool next to him and set an encoded scroll in front of Jiraiya. "News." Was all he said, before the ANBU member lifted their mask a little, took a shot of sake, and left.
Jiraiya sighed. News? Today? Of all the days to have to decode something. He sighed. He polished off another bottle of sake before returning to the inn he was staying at. The next morning, he opened the scroll and sat down to decode it, his breakfast in front of him. Decoding this one took awhile, a signifier that it was significant. Upon finally getting it decoded, he ran his hands over his face and sighed. The Uchiha, down to one Konoha child. Hiruzen suspected it was an inside job orchestrated by Danzo, but he couldn't yet prove it, and he was requesting his help within the village. Along with this request, he dropped a bomb on Jiraiya that he wasn't ready for: Naruto was alive. How? How did Kushina live long enough to give birth? And moreover, why wasn't I already told? He spotted a second layer of code over the Naruto bomb and decoded it. This code took longer than the entire scroll. And then he understood. Naruto is the jinchurikki. That would do it. Explains how Minato did it. It also explains why Naruto wasn't a fully known existence. If he's anything like Kushinna, he's causing a lot of ruckus, but there's a good chance he doesn't know his own heritage. He sighed. Jinchurikki, man. They're people too. He wrote out a scroll in response, just as coded, and sent a toad to Hiruzen.
Looked like he was headed back home.
It was a stressful time in Konohagakure. A whole clan wiped out, save for the youngest son of the late clan head and the eldest, the murderer of said clan. Itachi was dust in the wind. Nobody really knew where he'd gone, only that he was Konoha's most wanted.
Hiruzen knew what was going on, but he couldn't really prove or give evidence for Danzo's actions. The council would be up in arms if he chose to just jail him or something. His hands were tied. The best he could do was make a deal with Itachi to be his spy within the Akatsuki.
He shared as such with Jiraiya behind a privacy seal.
The sage sighed. "That makes sense I suppose. Danzo will slip up someday. We just have to bide our time to catch him." He inhaled, and then exhaled. "Now, a separate matter." His countenance fell to a rather... upset tone. "Sensei, would you care to explain to me... how the entire fucking village knows that Naruto is the jinchurikki?!" Hiruzen's face went a little pale. "After everything Minato did as Hokage, after everything Kushina sacrificed, everything the Uzumaki clan did for Konoha, and he's reviled, shamed, and shunned within his own village?" His face was going red in anger. "Do you have any idea how much extra he has to pay for kunai? He goes to the academy with blunt and bent kunai, misshapen shuriken that fly like frisbees!" He took a calming breath. "I haven't even spoken to him. I just watched him at the academy. Whoever the hell leaked that he's the jinchurikki, it resulted in anyone and everyone his age completely blacklisting him. He sits on one side of the classroom alone because nobody else is really willing to sit near him, either out of personal opinion, bandwagon, or threat from their families. The Hyuuga girl is staying away only because she's so shy."
Hiruzen opened his mouth, shut it, and sighed. "Being honest with you Jiraiya, I don't know. Part of me wants to blame Danzo, but I can't use him as a scapegoat for everything. This is on me, and I never bothered to find out how. With the Uchiha mess being on the horizon for the last several years, I hadn't even thought about it."
Jiraiya sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Look, I get it, you've got a lot of shit going on. But putting him in an apartment by himself wasn't the move. He's 7, for Kami's sake. With how much stores overcharge him, whatever's leftover from paying for the apartment with the money you give him, all he can afford is instant ramen and Ichiraku's, and that's only because Teuchi is a saint." He shook his head. "I can't stay away anymore. Coming back at the chunin exams wouldn't be soon enough by any stretch. I still have toads around the countries doing my spying for me, including some tadpoles. My spy network will be fine. I need to raise this kid, at least until he becomes a genin." Jiraiya ran a hand through his messy mane of white hair. "The least you could do is watch over the kid through your crystal ball for more than an hour or two. You'd see what I mean."
Hiruzen sighed. "Okay. Just... don't tell him about the Kyuubi until he's a genin. He doesn't need that on his conscience yet. And unless he awakens some form of Kushina's chains or something, wait until he hits chunin to tell him about his parents. That's just for security risk's sake. Iwa would be all over him if they found out. Kumo too."
Jiraiya frowned. "Fine." He then shrugged. "Who knows, maybe I can raise him to appreciate the female body like I do?" He'd returned to his jovial self, and then promptly left the Hokage tower.