Jiraiya's secret office, which everyone seems to know the location of

Things were still completely screwed up in Sound or whatever (shitty name for a Hidden Village, if Jiraiya had to speak the truth), which only meant more trouble for him. As usual. This morning, fourteen squads of ANBU had found and raided yet another one of Orochimaru's secret hidden labs, bringing home armfuls and armfuls of crap. Now it was up to Jiraiya to wade through all of the nasty seal work he left behind.

Or, well, the nastiest seal work. The regular things had gone through the ANBU sealing division, and all the stuff they couldn't figure out they sent to Jiraiya to figure out for them. They were not incompetent, but sadly for them Orochimaru always enjoyed making his work more complicated than it was supposed to be.

He had five desks piled high with the stuff, and he suspected that those piles would only grow over the next few months. All of that, on top of that other project the Sandaime had given him, which also coincidentally involved Orochimaru and his ugly brain. And of course Kakashi, who was a special piece of work in his own category.

Barring the already massive and still growing clusterfuck that Orochimaru had left behind in his temporary death – the whole situation was made even worse with the realization that a) it would take months for Jiraiya and ANBU's fuinjutsu corps to get through all those decades of illegal research, and b) while Orochimaru had kept numerical records of how many curse seals he had left pieces of his own soul in to ensure that he wouldn't be dead even if he died, he never kept records of his test subjects' identities – many of whom had successfully escaped with their lives upon news of his death/temporary incapacitation.

Typical Orochimaru. He had never cared about individuals in particular. His old teammate wasn't one to think about whose lives he was ruining as long as he had all his numbers accounted for.

Jiraiya wasn't sure when his friend had gone wrong, exactly – Jiraiya himself had been too busy wrapped up in his own missions. What Jiraiya did remember was Orochimaru holding Tsunade as she cried over Dan's still-warm corpse, Orochimaru shedding tears every time another funeral was held for a fallen comrade, and Orochimaru refusing to speak to anyone for a month when Sakumo had taken his own famous tanto to the gut…

He used to be a good guy. He used to be a good, compassionate person with loves, hopes, and dreams. Jiraiya pored through the details of the experiments and felt sick. When did you go so horribly, irreversibly wrong, old friend?

Whatever. That old jackass could rot in a hole for all Jiraiya cared.

Knock knock.

Jiraiya turned in his chair, expecting to see Kakashi reporting in for another round of torture. Literally. He'd torture himself with the Hiraishin, and after that he'd torture Jiraiya by forcing him to lug him home.

"Not today, you little shite – I've already got enough to do; haven't you noticed?"

Instead, he came face-to-face with a very harassed-looking little boy exhibiting what seemed to be an eternally constipated look on his face.

Meaning he was probably an Uchiha.

"My name is Sasuke Uchiha," the kid said.

Called it.

So what if there was only one of them left in Konoha. Shut up. He was Jiraiya of the fucking Sannin, all right?

"So?" Jiraiya said, implying in his very posture that family names, especially those of deposed clans, meant nothing to him. He was already dealing with one self-important little prick on a regular basis; he didn't need another one bringing even more cancer than was physically necessary into his already quite cancerous life, thank you very much.

The kid shoved his hands in his pockets. "Tsunade told me to see you."

"About what?" Jiraiya asked.

His ears flushed. "Well, one of my teammates was training with her, and she said you might be able to teach me about some…things…?"

Jiraiya gestured behind him. "Sorry, kid, no can do. My schedule is already full." Stupid Uchihas. Thinking the world was out there for them to take on a silver platter. Jiraiya was not impressed. What Tsunade did was up to her; did they really expect him to take up a student just because she had?

He held out a note. "She said you wouldn't say no…"

"A letter of recommendation?" Jiraiya snorted. "Kid, you could be the Sage of Six Paths and I still wouldn't have the time – "

But before he could finish his sentence, he caught a glimpse of what the note actually said.

Please, Jiraiya, do your duty to this poor soul. If the brat is going to revive his clan, he has GOT to stop being such a total virgin.

Jiraiya blinked. Once. Twice.

And he started laughing his ass off.

The boy turned red in indignation. "It's not funny!"

Jiraiya grinned at him, still choking down his guffaws. "I'm your shishou, kid. If I say it's funny, then it's fucking hilarious. Come on."

He pouted, about to protest again, until he realized what Jiraiya had just said. "Really? You're just going to say yes, just like that?"

"Look, do you want to be my apprentice or not?" Jiraiya grunted, getting up.

"Well – yes! Of course! I just didn't think it'd be this easy – "

"Ah, shut up, runt. We're burning daylight here. Let's go!"

"But…where are we going?"

"I need a break from this shit. Lesson number one."

"What? Now?"

"Yes, now!"

"What are we doing?"

"Teaching you how to stop being such a total virgin, duh."

"But it's still daylight out – "

"…So?"

Wave Country

Ino's feet gripped the tree branch with extra force as she noticed all the color abruptly drain from Kakashi-sensei's face. "Ino," he said hoarsely, "we might have to call an abort."

Ino's head whipped back around to face her sensei, who was still gripping his shoulder tightly.

"You can't feel it, can you?" she asked quickly.

Kakashi-sensei shook his head. "No, Jiraiya did a fine job. This curse seal, mine, is dead. But even without the Sharingan working, I can tell you right now that theirs," he pointed down to the group of pickpockets, "are not."

"How did we miss that earlier?" Shikamaru grumbled angrily.

"The initial three we ran into and followed back here don't have it," Kakashi-sensei whispered. "And a good chunk of them also have civilian-level chakra."

"Be careful," Shikamaru warned. "The ground feels weird around here."

"You said there were twelve, right? Five out of the eight in front of us are civilian-level, and I don't feel anything from the four we can't see," Ino confirmed. "It's only those two girls and that boy that have enough chakra for me to pick up. Those three are the youngest out of that entire group of thieves."

"Makes sense. The guy was doing illegal experiments in a bid for immortality; the best test subjects would be younger. If we're lucky, they're not here for any reason other than trying to rebuild their lives after escaping from Orochimaru's labs," Shikamaru said. "Of course, that doesn't make them any less dangerous, if the curse seals work the way they're supposed to."

"How do you know how curse seals work?" Kakashi-sensei asked.

"I don't, but looking at them, I can see that they survived just fine while you nearly got killed taking something meant for Sasuke. Obviously they're not going to be walking away from that operation as regular human beings," Shikamaru answered, without missing a beat.

Ino saw Kakashi-sensei accept this answer and turn away, but something about Shikamaru's absolute confidence in his answer generated the exact opposite reaction in her. That answer had been too perfectly executed, the textbook description of a truthful answer.

He's lying, Ino thought. But I don't know about what, and now is hardly the time to call him out on it when we've got so many more things to worry about.

Suddenly, Kakashi-sensei said, "Fifty-two."

"Fifty-two what?"

"I smell people."

"Fifty-two of them?"

"Yes."

Ino felt her stomach drop. She had anticipated maybe one or two extra guys. She certainly couldn't sense any other shinobi-level chakra within a fifty-meter radius. First, they missed the runaway Sound experiments, and now, it was forty other aggressors? How had they missed forty other aggressors? "You said twelve before."

Kakashi-sensei pinched his shoulder nervously. "And now I'm saying fifty-two."

"Fifty-two pickpockets? The crime reports would be absolutely out of the roof," Shikamaru pointed out. "Not that the numbers aren't already high, but I did the calculations. If the other forty-four are even a tenth as successful as the eight we see here, there would be five times as many reports as the current number."

"Maybe they don't get caught," Ino suggested. "Or maybe people don't report, because they think it won't help. A lot of them still haven't gotten over living under Gato."

"I've accounted for that, too. That number I just gave you was assuming a 20% report rate. Most of the people getting their things stolen are rich tourists, so they wouldn't have any fear of demanding service or voicing their complaints." Shikamaru shook his head. "If there are forty ninja that have somehow managed to cloak their scent and their chakra, we're in trouble."

Ino's decision was made. If she had to choose between "chicken" and alive, or stupid and dead, she'd choose chicken any time of the day. "We are leaving immediately. And we need to get this information to Naruto, and quickly," she hissed, as she considered all their relative positions. "I don't know if he can see what we saw from his angle − "

"TREES, NOW!" Shikamaru roared.

Ino didn't think twice before propelling herself upward into the closest branch in her reach. Almost as soon as her fingers made contact with the wood, her world tilted sideways, and her tree careened dangerously toward the ground. Only quick reactions and a lifetime of experience as a ninja of the Leaf Village enabled her to leap over to an adjacent, thicker tree.

And then that one began falling, too.

Acrid smoke – stinging her eyes – flying debris – shards of metal – ninja designed weapons, hurtling through the air – the smell of blistering, burning flesh –

BOOM.

GET DOWN –

No words exchanged. No time for thought. Felt the flash. Didn't know what it was. But she knew what to do. That was all that mattered. (DANGER GET DOWN) Only nanoseconds between safety. Reaction time. Her body moved before her brain. Hit the dirt. Shikamaru, where was he? Right next to her. She grabbed his collar. Forced him down. Arms wrapped protectively around his shoulders. Natural instinct. A mouthful of soil never felt so good. Better than smoke. Better than fire.

Then her brain finally caught up. Fire jutsu.

Had she reacted any later, her entire upper body would have been covered in third-degree burns. Maybe she would have died. But, as long as she pretended that the whatever was happening in the compound was just their teacher being evil again, she'd live. Behind her, Shikamaru had erected an earth dome, as he habitually did every time Kakashi-sensei threw stuff at them when he knew they were in no position to dodge.

Ino had never appreciated her teacher's sadism more.

There were explosions and (smelly, poison) shrapnel raining down everywhere, not just their one spot. That meant there was nowhere to hide, nowhere to run. But that also meant whoever in there wasn't aiming for them directly, otherwise they wouldn't be firing so indiscriminately. Thank the gods for small mercies; it meant that they were well-hidden enough that their attackers didn't know where they were. The darkness was still on their side, it seemed. Ino pulled the collar of her shirt up over her nose. Remember, kids, smoke inhalation is very dangerous. Anything that would help them survive.

I wish Naruto was here. He's the only one of us who can use air jutsu.

Below her, Ino watched in horror as the entire ground opened up beneath them in a giant, gaping hole. More of Orochimaru's creatures. This is bad, very bad. Kakashi-sensei and Naruto could smell the enemy, true, but it was her duty as the sensor of the team to pinpoint their exact location. Her range, however, was still too small, too inadequate, and with all the dirt in the way she hadn't realized they were there. They must have been here, waiting to trap them this entire time, she realized. And I led my team straight into this mess. If it hadn't been for Shikamaru's quick thinking, and his tectonic locationing earth jutsu – his own invention − they would have all been done for.

She jumped again, this time, with some chakra wire attached between her fingers and the briar patch on the ground. As she flew through the air, she pulled the thorny bushes up along with her, impeding their pursuers. There was a hard crunch as the weak, dry brush snapped and gave way; it would have been foolhardy to assume that it would be enough to stop them.

Luckily, Ino had come prepared. All she needed was for them to be slowed down. In their line of work, it was impossible for them to never be taken by surprise; the important thing was to know what to do in that suboptimal situation. Be prepared for everything you don't expect.

So these guys had taken them by surprise. Big whoop. Ino had discussed this exact scenario earlier when they were going over the action plan.

You mean they only took you by surprise, a nasty little voice in her head berated her. You were the team sensor, and yet you were the very last one to figure out something was wrong. Kakashi-sensei had his spidey senses screaming at him all the way back when you split up the teams, and Shikamaru sounded the alarm based off reading data from a half-complete technique.

The worst part was, she couldn't even argue with herself, because all of those criticisms were right. It wasn't fair to blame Shikamaru for not warning them earlier; his earth jutsu only allowed him to pinpoint the source of a vibration, not its identity. A large group of people hiding very still underground would produce the same results as a particularly large colony of burrowing mole rats.

Your job was to sense the people and you couldn't even do that!

It wasn't her fault her sensing accuracy petered out at fifty meters, but at the same time, it was her fault.

Another fireball crashed into their hiding spot; Shikamaru's earth dome rocked in its foundations, threatening to fall over – but then it steadied itself, and the flames fizzled, hissing into steam upon contact.

I just have to survive, she thought, and flicked her wrist again. All the brambles in the briar patch came up once more. Of course, the ninja beneath them stomped through them like they were made of paper – but even paper had some resistance.

She wasn't stupid – she had sprayed the things with poison while she was jumping. Already she could see their cuts and scratches puffing up. She signaled to Kakashi-sensei and Shikamaru, and they both simultaneously struck the earth. Now what had once been a hiding spot was a death trap, as the sinkhole they had come out of closed up again, around their ankles.

Ino pulled her chakra wires again, and the briar patch blanketed back over the whole clearing, completing the trap. Their enemies were now right where she wanted them.

Her hands were shaking uncontrollably. This was it, right here. The point of no return. It had been so easy talking about it, but she hadn't realized the gravity of her words until she was finally staring those actions in the face.

For her to fight back now, was finally accepting, once and for all, her life as a shinobi.

Her life, and their deaths.

Who am I to decide who deserves to live and die? How could I ever make a choice like that?

She squeezed her fists.

I will make that choice. I am the team captain. I will protect my team.

The gas bomb sailed through the air. Her lips pressed into a thin line.

"Katsu," she whispered.

The words came out as cold and tranquil as she wanted them to be.

And the forest exploded.

The aerosol expanded into an enormous blue cloud of flaming gas, spikes shooting nearly twenty feet up into the air.

There, she thought. If Naruto and Yamato-sensei didn't realize what was wrong before, they've definitely seen the signal now. It's not as if we had a chance of maintaining our element of surprise after all those goons attacked us.

Ino could hear very clearly, around her, various states of coughing and screaming as they all simultaneously choked to death on the smoke while burning alive – caught with no way of escaping, while being fired at by their own side.

Why do I feel so unnaturally calm right now?

Because you're freaking out; that's why.

"INO!"

Her left side exploded in pain.

She braced herself for the sharp impact of earth, but it never came.

She just kept falling.

Since I was little, I had known that I would one day find myself in a situation where killing was the only way out. But I had only ever thought about it in a detached, hypothetical-situation way. It wasn't until Ino herself had given that order that I fully comprehended the meaning of having someone else's life on your conscience.

We were only thirteen, after all. Unusually young by the standards of most, and yet not so by our own. Ino. I had known that girl since before either of us had teeth. Seeing her now, squashing her personal feelings for the sake of our benefit…it broke my heart.

The worst part was, the night wasn't anywhere near over. Not by a long shot.

Ino's plan should have worked.

Our attackers should have had their ankles broken by my earth jutsu, their veins poisoned by Ino's spiked shrubs, their skin burnt away by our bombs. Instead, they emerged from the fires, angry and scabbed, blistering and bleeding from hundreds of pierces and scratches, but miraculously alive and very, very conscious.

And no longer human.

They were enormously strong and fast, all of them, at the level of ten Narutos on a sugar high, only much more malicious. Their muscles were disproportionately bulbous, their bodies thick and heaving, their eyes yellowed and veiny. Claws and spikes and horns and fangs protruded from all over their bodies, hands and backs and heads and gums not necessarily in that order. Thick grayish saliva dripped from their mouths. They did not seem to feel the vicious burns that left their skin still bubbling. Some of them were still burning and bubbling where Ino's flammable poisons had adhered to their skin. One of them, who had directly taken the explosion from Ino's first bomb, was missing his whole arm and half his abdomen, and yet he continued to shuffle along − a demented and energetic zombie.

I knew the curse seal did pretty nasty things, but I hadn't expected it to be this extreme.

All of this had transpired in the matter of a few seconds. We had literally gone from the upper ground to six feet under − that giant pit, which I had closed up with my earth jutsu earlier, collapsed once more.

Taking Ino and me with it.

Dark. The evening sky was a tiny speck of orange and indigo above. Everywhere else, it was black. My right hand was attached to one of Ino's arms; I couldn't be bothered to figure out which. Meanwhile, my left hand was scraping against the rocky sides of the pit as I tried to stop our descent. Not that any amount of chakra would help when the very wall you were clinging to was breaking down as well.

"Chakra strings!" Ino gasped. Out of any other options, I braced my feet against a jutting rock and latched onto her chakra wires, still attached to the thorny shrubs. But the walls were still collapsing, and if we didn't move now we'd be red boulder paint. I tried to shift my hold on Ino to get a better grip on her, but I hit a wet rough patch and she started screaming – I couldn't see her, but I knew she was definitely bleeding.

This was dangerous. If she was knocked out by the tunnel collapse she could very well suffocate. Even natural earth users could easily die if they lost consciousness while underground. Chakra could sustain them for a little while, but we were still Genin and didn't have much of it. My head was pounding, and I could feel liquid trailing down my temples. I was hoping it was simply from scratching my head on a sharp rock, and not because I was bleeding out of my ears. Desperately I attempted to create an air pocket in the earth, but one of my arms was trapped, looped around Ino's shoulder, and the dirt here was too dense for me to do the technique without seals.

Before I had anymore time to contemplate how screwed we were, however, an underground cave miraculously opened up beneath us as if by magic –

"Brace positions!" someone yelled, and I felt arms wrap around me.

− I had approximately one-tenth of a second to curl up into a ball and surround myself in a pillow of chakra. Needless to say, the impact was horribly unpleasant. My stomach was in my mouth and my joints were howling and I had definitely messed up the backs of my hands trying to cradle my head and neck –

"Kakashi-sensei," Ino whispered.

Why the heck is the Hiraishin no Jutsu so crazily useful? my pain-addled brain giggled.

"Quiet," Kakashi-sensei murmured. "This air pocket is way bigger than I intended it to be."

Instinctively, I analyzed the situation, since my pounding skull wasn't capable of much more. Obviously they're already here, waiting for us –

Kakashi-sensei clapped his hand over my mouth.

Shoot, am I talking out loud?

"Yes," he growled.

Still incorrigible, my mouth disattached itself from my weakened brain and slurred, No point; they already know we're here; hard to miss a bunch of screaming landslides −

One by one, dozens and dozens of little glowing dots appeared around us as the dirt walls crumbled. A rain of soil and rocks sprayed down upon us while the remainder of Orochimaru's leftovers, hiding in ambush, burst out of their burrows. It was something straight out of a claustrophobic's worst nightmare.

All of them were muttering something about a Sharingan; I couldn't tell exactly what because my head was pounding too loudly and my eardrums were stuffed full of cotton and I could barely see. Idiots, he doesn't have it anymore! You're all wasting your time! Leave us alone!

A terrifying rumbling interrupted me when the entire cavern violently tossed us back and forth, vibrating in all directions enough to make my teeth crack and my mouth bite itself and my jaw go slack. Next to me, Ino's muscles were tightening, and though she said nothing I could only imagine how much pain she was holding down.

Let's see... the amplitude was too small to be an earthquake; something on this scale would be a large rock coming loose at best…the back of my head felt the rumble about a hundredth of a second before either of my hands did, and judging by the intersection of their radii…square root of the squares of the horizontal and vertical components…meaning the source of the shaking came from…

In the back of my mind there was this vague sense that I was being significantly stupider than usual, that I shouldn't have needed to explicitly think about such a simple geometry calculation. But my head hurt too much for me to be making any sense of the situation. Everything around me moved like insects drenched in amber, limbs made from melting lead. Nauseous. Mouth full of cotton. Maybe I drank some extra-strong sake laced with drugs by accident and now I'm hungover and hallucinating and probably dead, I didn't know anymore −

…right above me.

My head snapped up.

Boulder. Falling.

I did the only thing I could do – I grabbed Ino and threw her away from me as hard as I could.

Kakashi-sensei screamed as if he was a wild beast gone mad.

What's an Obito? I wondered.

Something warm and wet and coppery exploded in my face.

Blood, definitely blood.

And then more blood. And more blood. And more. And more.

BONUS #36

[wwwdot] fanfiction [dotnet] /topic/185326/159240388/1/Bonus-36-Sasuke-Gets-Sex-Ed-PG-13

A/N: Thanks for all of your guys' feedback, as always.

Since this has been brought up a few times in the past, here's a question for everyone: who would you like to see more of (in terms of screen time/POV)? This is one of the things I will need constant reminders of, since I already know everyone's timelines.