Disclaimers: Consult previous installments.

Things That Cannot Be Fought

No one had ever told him crossing Gaara of the Desert was not a bright thing to do, so when he formulated his plan, Orochimaru decided that, yes, killing the Kazekage had to be done and that no, a sand-wielding demonic boy would not care. Orochimaru was intelligent enough to fear Tsunade, the master, who, in the balance of power, stood above him. He was cunning enough to stay out of the way of Uchiha Itachi, a teenager who did not calculate before he killed, but merely did so when it suited him at the moment, regardless of how it would affect his future. He felt no need for caution around Uzumaki Naruto; the fox demon within him was easy enough to work around because of the seal on his stomach.

Orochimaru had recruited the Hidden in Sand village for the sole purpose of using Gaara of the Desert in his attack against Konoha. He studied this demon's past and present, his ultimate defense and his offense. Orochimaru labored long and hard over the exact placement of Gaara in his plans to best suit him in the long run.

The fatal calculation was tattooed on Gaara's forehead.

Sakura had finally been the first to leave, only because she knew exactly where she'd be going. Naruto wanted to follow her, to go see the old hag, too, and rip her apart for taking his friends away once he'd gotten them back. It wasn't that he didn't want to train with Jiraiya, learn fantastic new moves that would propel him towards his goal of becoming Hokage and go on important missions for the village that would earn the respect and admiration of the people around him, it was that for once in his life, that wasn't what he wanted the most.

It would be the most wonderful thing in the world to go on some dumb mission where Kakashi-sensei would lounge around reading while he, Sasuke and Sakura did all the work and he would talk non-stop so that the others wouldn't even have a chance to tune him out and they'd be forced to listen to him and notice that he was there. And be happy that he was there and he'd be happy that they were there. And he'd tell them all what he learned about his dad, because even though he'd already told Sakura-chan, Kakashi-sensei and Sasuke hadn't heard yet. Maybe Sakura-chan would bring up his mother again and they could all wonder about what sort of person she'd have been.

It was wishful thinking, of course. Since Sakura already knew, she'd tell him to shut up whenever he paused to take a breath. Kakashi wouldn't listen in the first place. Sasuke wouldn't want to hear about anyone else's family, not after what happened to his.

The world was even taking away his wishes now, Naruto realized. Killing off his parents, locking a demon inside him and making everyone hate him wasn't enough? He wasn't even allowed to think that maybe things would be different after all the lessons they'd learned about being together?

Practically speaking, what this new revelation meant to Naruto was that he would have to find Jiraiya and train even harder than ever before to become Hokage so that they would see that he was someone worth listening to. But Jiraiya, it seemed, wasn't hanging around any of his usual haunts, the bathhouse or the waterfall or even any tall buildings wear he could watch unsuspecting female passerby with a small telescope. Screwing up his eyes in thought, Naruto wondered if Jiraiya was possibly training himself. Naruto had never seen Jiraiya show any indication of seeking a higher level, but it was likely enough that Jiraiya just didn't do such things in front of his pupil.

Not knowing where Jiraiya lived, if he even had a residence in Konoha, or where he would go to train, Naruto did the only reasonable thing that he could think of. It was mid-afternoon and he hadn't eaten anything since dawn, so he headed to the Ichiraku noodle bar. After a few bowls of ramen, he would be refreshed and able to start his search fresh. Perhaps Jiraiya had booked one of the fenced-in training grounds or went somewhere outside the gates of the village.

Evidentially, someone had been counting on Naruto stopping by for a bowl of ramen, because the proprietor, instead of asking for Naruto's order as usual, told him a note had been left for him.

"A note?" Naruto echoed. He received mail, mostly bills and notifications and the occasional no-occasion card from Iruka, but the idea of someone just leaving a message intended for him lying around was foreign. "Give it here, then."

The ramen stand man—Naruto wondered why in all his years of coming to the Ichiraku he'd never bothered to learn the names of any of the workers, just thinking of them as 'old man' and 'big sister'—handed over the note. It was decidedly anti-climatic, Naruto decided, for the first note he'd ever received to look like it was torn off a scroll and folded in half. The white paper even still had a bit of curl in it, so that the two halves didn't lay together flat.

Naruto read it and the sense of abandonment he'd been feeling but hadn't been able to place sharpened painfully.

It said:

Naruto,

I'm leaving Konoha for the time being. Princess Tsunade doesn't know; bet she'll be mad. Don't know when I'll be back.

Jiraiya

Naruto's eyes only scanned it once before he curled the note into his fist, his eyes closed and body trembling. He'd never really considered being left by Jiraiya; the old master had come into his life so suddenly and his head was so empty he always figured he wouldn't mind it all that much if Jiraiya disappeared. Now, Naruto realized, in a very short time, he had discovered his true father and lost the only man who had ever treated him like a son.

Naruto wondered what he should do now, but he said "Why didn't he take me with him?"

The old man behind the counter smiled in a reassuring sort of way, "Miso ramen? It's on the house."

Bent over and panting, hair dripping with sweat, Sakura was relieved to finally see the tiny swirled shell she had worked so long to summon lying idly in the center of the bloody thumbprint she'd left on the ground. Even after the lengths Tsunade had gone to explain the exact art of her summoning skill, it had been hours of hard work before the empty snail shell appeared. Mixed feelings on the matter aside (Sakura wasn't sure whether she should shout in triumph that she'd managed to summon anything or wilt in disappointment over how far she had to go on this newest venture to catch up to Naruto and Sasuke), she couldn't help but feel that now that she'd made some progress, the taming of slugs could only get easier.

Tsunade had spent the hours since she'd explained the technique and brought out the scroll alternating between watching Sakura's progress and reading the reports that had come into the village and preparing new missions. The company was good, though. Whenever Tsunade felt herself wanting to let her thoughts linger over the similar war that had cost her brother and lover their lives, she could wander over to Sakura and focus her energies on teaching. She had to curse circumstance, though. Like the Third had said when she suggested medical specialists, their enemies would not wait. Orochimaru wasn't going to put his vendetta on hold while Sakura ran laps to increase stamina and physical energy or mediated to augment spiritual energy. Training so heavily was drying up her charka reserves and she appeared to be exhausted near a state of collapse. Tsunade half considered healing Sakura physically so that she could continue refreshed, but medical techniques did nothing for the heart; if the girl's soul was tired, there was nothing Tsunade could do.

She wanted to tell Sakura to go home and get some rest, but the more she watched Sakura, the more she didn't think her new student would appreciate it anymore than Naruto. She had the same determination and single-mindedness as Naruto that made Tsunade wonder why Sakura hadn't achieved more, or at least why Kakashi had never made note of it in any of his reports. But unlike Naruto, Sakura was patient. She didn't expect results right away and moved in small steps better than large leaps.

Tsunade wondered where these traits had been before.

Kakashi had never recognized them for what they were.

Sakura knew she had focused them all on the pursuit of a boy rather than on her training.

He was laying spread eagle on his bed with one of those garden snakes coiled happily on his stomach while a man and a woman discussed something in hushed voices behind a closed door. It was almost like having parents again, Sasuke would have thought, if his mind was not still reeling from the revelations of a few hours ago. All the same, being that the door was made a glass and lead to a terrace which belonged to him, since, after all, he quite clearly didn't have parents, Sasuke had his options.

He could have read their lips. Well, Anko's, at least. Kakashi's profile had a way of never looking like his lips were moving behind his mask, despite the fact that the material was very thin and shouldn't be capable of concealing much of anything.

Or, he could have kicked them out all together. They wouldn't have left without a fight, of course, and they were both jounin, so it would have been a losing fight, but Sasuke had always gotten a measure of satisfaction from attacking. Dwelling on a lose would have at least given him something else to think about. There was even the possibility of either of them using a technique he hadn't seen before.

He could have done either of these things if he cared that Kakashi and Anko were out there, making decisions regarding his future as if either of them had any say in what he did. At the moment, he chose not to acknowledge that they were his teacher and his apparent guardian and instead be angry and frustrated at the world in general and the Hokage in particular. While he was ignoring things, there was also the attempt on his life to conveniently forget, if he could.

Either because he was twelve years old or because he was used to being worshipped, it failed to cross his mind before that afternoon that in return for whatever power Orochimaru gave him, the master of snakes would expect some form of payment. Now that he thought about it, Sasuke realized that Orochimaru approached him because he wanted something from the boy, not because he wanted to give something. It certainly made more sense.

Still, Sasuke had a history of listening to the wrong people, making the wrong decisions. Whether Anko had figured it out herself or had been told by someone else, she had decided it was high time Sasuke started listening to her, regardless of the fact that their paths had only recently come to intersect. She was going to have to explain to him, sooner or later, that what he wanted and what was best for him weren't always going to be the same thing.

Moving faster than anyone really would have wanted to give him credit for, the ninja master known as Jiraiya had finally set out on a journey which he hoped would take him to Orochimaru's gate. While no where near as idealistic as the Third Hokage had been, Jiraiya still didn't like the idea of fighting Orochimaru to kill. Up until the attack on Konoha, Sarutobi hadn't believed Orochimaru beyond redemption, he probably even hadn't believed it when he struck to kill. True, the deathblow failed, but was that because he was just too old or because he didn't want to make the choice between the life of someone he had been close to and the village he lived to protect? Trapped in the hell reserved only for those who attempted the Fourth's final jutsu, the world would never really know for sure.

But, Jiraiya was not as idealistic and not prone to hesitating out of a higher morality or past connections. He'd avoided a final showdown with his old teammate because he hadn't quite seen it as necessary yet, but battles between the Leaf and the Sound were escalating in number and ferocity. The Princess was both deploying troops to go on the offensive and others to defend the village, determined not to be caught unaware like her teacher had. Tsunade was the least idealistic of them all, and more often then not believed the absolute worst of people, unless you started spouting the same sort of nonsense the Infallible Ones, Nawaki and Dan, had. She'd had the opportunity to kill Orochimaru all ready, but she was so enraged that she thought more about inflicting pain than ending the conflict at the time, and the snake-slime was rescued by his medical ninja sycophant.

Since Tsunade had accepted the post of Hokage, something he, Jiraiya would never be so foolish to do, her days of using her fists were probably over unless trouble came right to her. It was rather absurd that once a ninja was acknowledged to be the most powerful in the village, he, in this case she, was wrapped in special robes, guarded day and night and buried in bureaucracy so deeply that actually getting out there and using those skills was nearly impossible unless a demon came along and killed everyone standing between it and him.

Orochimaru had made it quite clear that he had only been bidding his time up until this point. Now that his attack on Konoha had begun, he wouldn't be retreating back into obscurity. To Jiraiya, it was time for the clash he had been awaiting his entire life, one he'd been torn between anticipating—the final showdown between himself and his lifelong rival—and dreading—the final battle of his life. Konoha lore dictated that the Toad Master could not defeat the Snake Master, but even if he couldn't win (Jiraiya wasn't willing to let a legend dictate his life), he was confidant this battle could at the very least end in a double death.

The Village Hidden in Sound masqueraded as an ally of Konoha for the first year since Orochimaru founded it, so while the Leaf ninja knew little about it, they did have some information, such as its location within one of the smaller countries north of Fire. Previous to the chuunin selection exam, Leaf ninja had no reason to go there outside of the initial treaty negotiations. Afterwards, their reasons were mission and war related, though few got past Orochimaru's subordinates.

The Uchiha boy had yet to provide any information, but nor had Tsunade asked for any. She knew she was taking a gamble with trusting him even a little. Jiraiya suspected Tsunade didn't want to lose this bet yet, so she kept the boy under a tight watch, asking no questions and receiving no lies. Any true information he did have would have been in the Leaf's favor, but it was likely he didn't know anything. Orochimaru would have used Uchiha's desire for power over all else to keep him in the dark, about the village and about his eventual plans. If Orochimaru had given Sasuke information, it would have consisted of lies and bait.

It took Jiraiya about two days to reach the gates of the Hidden in Sound. It would have been longer, but in his haste he made use of rivers and summoned toads in addition to Leaf ninja preferred roads, the trees.

Of all the sites that greeted him, Jiraiya did not expect to see the corpses of his village's enemies littering the ground outside the gates or the sentry that bore the forehead protector of Hidden in Sand. Jiraiya acknowledged the Sand also as an enemy who had faked an alliance with the Leaf, and was therefore prepared to fight.

"Jiraiya of the Leaf," the sentry acknowledged, not moving from his post.

The face of a ninja, no matter how powerful and respected, should not be so well-known, Jiraiya reflected. Unaware if what he said was the truth or not, Jiraiya replied, "The Fifth Hokage has not received any intelligence reports that the Sand would be staging an attack on the Sound."

"We released no information that could reach the ears of our enemies," the sentry stated. "The Kazekage is unaware of who outside of our village can be trusted and is skeptical of alliances."

"I should hope no village would ally themselves with the Sand for fear of betrayal," Jiraiya said. "The Leaf had been the Sand's most loyal supporter since your village was formed, and still the Sand tried to crush us."

The sentry nodded, much to Jiraiya's surprise. "The Third Kazekage is aware of the grave mistakes of his regrettable predecessor. Please," the sentry gestured to the gates of the Sound, "as a show of good faith, pass."

"Where can I find the Kazekage?"

"The morgue that lies against the west wall of the village."

"Thank you."

With that, Jiraiya passed through the gates. The village inside was nothing like Konoha. The buildings were sparse and did not give the impression that the village was a fully functioning town. Ninja could survive and train, but it didn't have the welcoming touches that his own did—no restaurants or little shops or even a school or hospital. No one had ever been born there, married there or enjoyed old age and retirement. People were tools and nothing more.

All the passerby enforced the notion that Sound had been thoroughly conquered by Sand. Most Sound nin were lying dead in the streets or alive, but roughly handed by Sand nin captors. Other Sand nin were involved in a clean-up effort and it looked to Jiraiya as though they intended to rebuild Sound into their own vision, rather than Orochimaru's.

Walking the streets, Jiraiya was forced to reconsider Konoha's Legend of the Three Masters. The masters were invincible to anyone within Hidden Leaf and bound by a balance of power among themselves, but were other villages immune? Was the destruction of Orochimaru, the worst and most powerful menace ever known to the Leaf, an entirely different undertaking to the Sand? Or was it the minds of Leaf ninja what made the Three Legends powerful? Perhaps the idea was so engraved within the psyches of Leaf ninja that the masters defeated them before they even began to fight. Jiraiya had wondered often in his youth where this legend came from and how bound by it he was. Some villages, he knew, tried to put a stop to Advanced Bloodlines, while Konoha embraced them. Maybe Konoha should direct some effort to putting a stop to creating reality from old dusty legends.

It seemed fitting to Jiraiya that Orochimaru's throne would be in a morgue, where he would sit surrounded by the body pairs of people he had killed in his quest for immortality. It was startlingly like Orochimaru's last few years in Konoha, when his home housed genin he'd killed. In wasn't quite so organized in the Sound morgue, though. Orochimaru had had more room to spread out, Jiraiya supposed.

Likewise, it seemed fitting that the Kazekage, who sat in Orochimaru's chair, was surrounded by the dead. Jiraiya had heard plenty from Naruto about the demon called Subakuno Gaara.

Next—"He made my sister cry."

Author Notes Productions Presents: How I Wrote Myself Into a Corner

When I started this story, I absolutely had to get rid of Orochimaru; that was a given from the beginning. The story just isn't about the characters getting stronger physically but maturing emotionally. Initially, I'd thought that the balance went ToadàSnakeàSnailàToad, when it went the other way. Therefore, Jiraiya couldn't kill Orochimaru like I'd wanted.

Then I started playing around with Itachi killing him. I was going to reveal that the reason Orochimaru was afraid of Itachi was that he was an Uchiha, who by leaving the village when Itachi was a little tyke, had escaped the massacre. He was afraid that Itachi would find out and come after him. Also, being an Uchiha that didn't have Sharingan would help with why he wanted Sasuke so badly.

I'd decided this was a total cop-out, but was going with it anyway when I started writing this chapter. Then two things happened: one, Gaara returned in the manga and two, I got my computer back. I'd been writing on my sister's computer since my own's hard drive was shot. In making the computer switch, I lost what I'd already written. Also, I'd started tossing around the idea of doing a similar story to Things dealing with Gaara, Temari and Kankuro. Kankuro's general lack of any interesting qualities and the too strong temptation to make Temari's portion just a romance between her and Shikamaru caused me to drop that idea. I still wanted to play around with Gaara-growth, though, so he has entered this story.

I don't know why I couldn't get anything done during the summer aside from one SasuSaku short. I think this fic may be an escape from school life for me, since my writer's block disappeared once the semester started. Anywho, thanks for waiting.