A strange new life

Jiraiya’s smile turned brittle before he burst out laughing.

“Hayahahya. You’re that brat’s little heartache, huh?”

I scowled. Crossed both arms, made the perfect denial X across my chest. My threads even propped my comms board and wrote the message.

“Denied!”

Jiraiya laughed even harder. Beside me, Ino snorted, glared at the old man. The other adults just smiled, like they’d seen something nice, not Ero-sennin blasphemies.

It took a moment longer until Jiraiya calmed down. Once he did, the man summoned a frog and sat on top of it. No one batted an eye or complained. I wouldn’t have dared to, either. For all his bluster, Jiraiya was op as hell. The man could very well do whatever he wanted.

I took notes, however. I remembered the horse-sized badger guards. Would they let me use them for improv seating?

…

Next time, I would seal some chairs or stools. That way, I could sit down.

Conversations between the adults happened while I was distracted thinking about seating arrangements. The sannin greeted Shizune, exchanged a few quiet words with her. He greeted Ino, Inoichi, and Shisui.

“Out with it,” Jiraiya said, looking at the Hokage. “What was so important that I had to stop my research?”

I noticed Shizune also looked curious. They hadn’t been told?

Shisui looked at me, I saw the unspoken question. I nodded.

“Young Hinata is another survivor of Orochimaru’s experiments,” the Hokage said.

Shizune’s face turned into a blank mask. Jiraiya nodded. Well, I guess the Sannin already knew most of the details.

“Inoichi informed me of new developments.” Shisui turned to me. “Could you explain?”

I looked around. The area was big enough. I walked further from them, placed my hand on the ground. Black chakra lines spread from my hand, replicating the diagram Orochimaru had branded into my mind that day in the Forest of Death.

Once it was done, I took a few steps to the side, imprinted the key, a few more steps, and the lock I cobbled together.

“This is the seal,” my threads wrote. “Until a month ago, it was under control, but I ran out of chakra escaping, and now I can’t stop it anymore.”

Shizune was the first to approach, looking the seal over. Jiraiya was next. The frog went puff and the sannin walked around the black lines, scratching his chin.

“Shikoku Fuin,” he said, glancing at me before turning back to the seal. “Kakashi taught you that?”

I nodded, but the sannin wasn’t paying attention to me. Inoichi, Ino, and Shisui also approached. They looked interested, but not the same as Shizune and Jiraiya.

“This…” Shizune started, then stopped. She looked at Shisui, then at me.

“Yes.” Jiraiya confirmed.

What were they seeing? I knew all the details of the diagram, even if parts of it still made no sense to me. I knew what it did and what it was doing. But was there something more?

“It’s incomplete,” Jiraiya said, still walking around the first diagram.

“See here?” Shizune had approached the frog sannin. “You think?”

“Yes,” he nodded.

What were they seeing? I approached, looked over the same area they were looking at. That one part dealt with the reinforcement of my body, the reason that I got stronger the older I got.

“And this part here,” Jiraiya said, pointing to another node. That node wasn’t referenced anywhere in Orochimaru’s data dump. I could only guess what it did.

He turned to me.

“Is there more?”

I nodded, then shook my head. I took my board, erased the words, but before I could write, Jiraiya stopped me.

“Let’s fix this first,” he said, approaching me.

I looked up, then up some more. The man was huge.

“I’ve seen examples of his work to keep his victims from speaking.” His finger burned with visible chakra.

Under my disbelieving eyes, he poked me in the throat. It stung and burned, like whatever the seal on my throat was didn’t want to be modified. Then it stopped.

“Can’t remove it without more preparation, but with this, you should be able to speak for a short while and not hurt yourself.”

I felt things around my throat. Like Jiraiya said, the seal now had an on/off switch. That was the best way I could explain it. It wasn’t free. I had to burn chakra to deactivate it, which seemed paradoxical.

A horrid feeling brewed inside of me. I schooled my face. Took a deep breath. I wanted to scream. To claw his eyes out. To punch his face. To bust his damn balls.

If it was this easy, why the fuck hadn’t he done so before?

Seven years. Why the fuck had it taken seven years?

Tears fell from my eyes unbidden. I looked away, wiped my eyes.

Jiraiya mistook the sentiment, smiled, patted my head.

I did my best not to slap the offending appendage away. Thankfully, Ino was soon by my side, smiling and crying, giving me a reason to get away from the sannin.

“Hinata-chan,” she whispered.

“Ino,” I said back, buried my head on her shoulder, wrapped my hands around her to avoid doing something stupid.

There was a bit of conversation behind us, but it entered one ear, left through the other, no words were captured.

I knew I was being irrational. I knew I was overreacting. I just couldn’t stop. It felt so cheap. In my mind, I’d master fuinjutsu, break the seals on my own, surpass Orochimaru. I never complained, even from the beginning. It was just another reason to learn more, study harder, another minor inconvenience I could deal with.

I pulled deep, wheezing breaths, my face still hidden on Ino’s shoulder. I was making a mess there. I hope she’d forgive me.

Minutes dragged on, and the more rational side of my mind got to work. For one, I knew Jiraiya had often been away from Konoha. Years, if I wasn’t mistaken. He might not even have been here when stuff happened in the years that followed. Two, Jiraiya didn’t have the motive to seek me out and help. Why would he? I was just another poor sod suffering in this world, out of sight, out of mind. I think he only did something here because he was just there, and it cost him nothing.

I don’t think Jiraiya was the type to go out and seek the poor and desperate.

The situation was different if that poor and desperate just happened to be in front of him. Take the original Akatsuki orphans, for example. The man abandoned the war front for three years to train the kids.

Calmer now, I released Ino. She looked worried. I wiped my face, forced a brittle smile. It was fine, this changed nothing. If they wanted to help now, that was only in my favor. It didn’t matter that the more they acted like they cared, the worse it felt.

I couldn’t shake the feeling they were building to something horrid.

My recovery was noticed. People gave me kind looks, not knowing what went inside my mind. I nodded, smiled again.

“Thank you, Ero-sennin.” 

My voice was still a bit scratchy. Damn, all that work for the sexy husky down the drain.

Jiraiya rolled his eyes. “Don’t learn Naruto’s bad habits. It’s Frog-Sannin.”

I cast a brief look around. Shizune and Shisui were discussing something near the imprint I had created. Inoichi wasn’t here anymore. I hadn’t seen him leave.

“From what I know,” I said to Jiraiya. “There’s still two more seals that I don’t know what they do. In my heart, in my eyes.”

The conversation between Shizune and Shisui stopped, they approached.

Jiraiya scratched his chin, looked at Shizune, who shook her head.

“The good news is,” he said, looking at me. “No one tried to remove the seals when you were younger. You’d not have survived the attempt.”

I glared at the man. That was his good news?

There was another unspoken conversation between Shizune and Jiraiya.

“If nothing is done, you’ll die in a few months,” Ero-sennin said, still scratching his chin.

The growl escaped me before I could stop it. “So, I should wait until I croak, then?” 

Ino gasped, grabbed my arm. “What?” she demanded.

I really, really wanted to kick his nuts.

“I can help you contain the seal; it won’t last forever but it should give you time to find another solution.”

“Can’t you do anything?” Ino demanded.

“If Tsunade was here, perhaps.”

“What if you had Orochimaru’s research notes? There was another diagram there, similar but different.” I said, teeth still gritted.

“That might help,” The Ero-sennin said. “But the problem is that you won’t survive without Tsunade, maybe not even with her.” Jiraiya pointed to the node that I didn’t know what it was or did.

“This part here will fight back if we try to remove the seal,” he looked back at me. “You already saw part of that when you ran out of chakra, it triggered some of the fail-safes to prevent removal.” He looked at the other diagrams I had inscribed, then back at me. “Not to mention we’d need to cut you open to reach the seals.”

Great, fantastic.

Now I had to find the lab data. Track down Tsunade. Deal with the council. The dinners. The Hyuga.

Peachy.