Jiraiya settled his bulk slowly into the rickety wooden chair with a deep groan of satisfaction. He and Naruto had been walking for a week now- straight from Konoha to as far away as a winding, unpredictable path could take them.
With a negligent flick of his hand, he motioned both for Naruto to take the seat across from him, and for a waiter to come over.
The inn was a small, cozy place- a bit of a favorite of his whenever he came through here. The firelight crackled merrily in the fireplace near the main center of the dining room in the log building, and rustic, though not particularly tasteful, decorations adorned the place- mostly the skulls of various large animals the local men had brought down for food.
Naruto was unusually subdued, as he had for the past week. Some of it, Jiraiya knew, was that he had been forced to leave his friends- most without even a simple goodbye. It would be up to the schoolteacher to pass on the news.
The other was that the boy seemed to pick up on his own urgency and unwillingness to talk. The boy wasn't the sharpest crayon in the box, but he was by far the brightest.
Plunking his elbow onto the table and resting his chin on his knuckles, Jiraiya retreated into thought while they waited to be served.
He had to be careful about their movements at first, he knew. Once they managed to get around the various tails and dropped off the gossips' radar, they would be home free and nearly impossible to track down.
Their appearance here was a calculated ploy that fed into nearly every expectation anyone would have of Jiraiya. They were in a small town at an inn about four days from Konoha, halfway between Konoha and the Land of Hot Springs. They appeared to be moving slowly, and complacently, towards a country filled with everything Jiraiya was known to love about life.
They were actually heading to the Land of Earth, however, on the other side of Fire. Now that they had been spotted back here, estimates would backtrack closer to Konoha, and towards the obvious target. Tonight, instead of heading to bed, they would set out full speed back towards, and around, Konoha, straight for River Country and then to Wind.
The desert- and Suna, which any trackers would be unable to near- would hide their intentions as they headed north straight into Earth, instead of going into Sunagakure. At that points, as long as they were not be predicted or intercepted, they should be able to avoid their trackers.
"Your orders, sirs?"
The waitress had arrived. Jiraiya just nodded to Naruto to let him order first.
"Do you serve red bean soup here?"
"We do, sir."
"Then I'll have a bowl, please."
It was odd hearing Naruto so quiet. Poor boy was probably feeling intensely guilty for not wishing them farewell. He would cheer up soon though, with some food and the talk they would be having.
"I'll have your special, please, and I would like my tea very hot."
"Right away!"
That was one of the reasons Jiraiya liked this place- their special was chicken kaarage, one of his favorite foods. They were also clean, prompt, and had very nice beds.
Jiraiya let his eyes wander off to the waitress as she left- making sure she was out of ear range, keeping up the stereotype he projected, and, well, she did have a nice rear.
Once she was a suitable distance away, he snapped his new apprentice out of the probable guilt he had been stewing in for the last week.
"Naruto."
His head snapped up, eyes wide. Understandable, given that it was the first thing Jiraiya had said to him in a week- after telling Naruto they needed silence and speed. "Yeah?"
"We need to talk about what kind of things we'll be covering during this training trip. Consider this your syllabus, boy."
A large grin began creeping onto Naruto's face even as he zoned out, no doubt imagining dragons made of fire, huge explosives, and being extremely stealthy.
"You're probably not going to like it... at first. And keep in mind that if you have objections, make them quietly. We can't afford the attention. Understand?"
Naruto nodded slowly. The boy seemed to bracing himself. Good. Probably best to drop the bombshell first. "There won't be much jutsu training. Nothing over C-rank, at that-"
Naruto's eyes went wide as he turned pale, fantasies crashing down around him. "What?" he breathed, sounding strangled.
"Bare with me boy, and remember to keep it down. We're not going to do much at all with genjutsu- too much time to make it worth it, not enough reward. I'm too shoddy at it anyway, its not either of our styles."
He was calming down- still pale, but not as badly, and his eyes weren't trying to combat his whiskers for his most defining facial feature. The bit about not bothering with genjutsu- which Jiraiya knew Naruto hated- seemed to be calming him down.
"We will be keeping up with your taijutsu and chakra control. We don't want you falling behind in those, because that would cause irreparable damage down the line. But those will be an afterthought."
"Jiraiya... why...?" Naruto choked out, disbelief warring with despair on his face
Naruto looked like his dreams and hopes were crashing down around him. And lost. He looked very lost. Jiraiya sighed, suddenly feeling very old.
"Naruto, answer this question for me. It's very important to me, because the answer should be very important to you. Why do you think you need massive, powerful jutsu and mighty, fast taijutsu?"
The answer was immediate and thoughtless, almost a knee-jerk reaction. "So I can get Sasuke back and become Hokage!"
"Naruto, why would more power help with getting Sasuke back?"
It took Naruto a second to realize that Jiraiya had responded with a question, and not just shot the idea down out of hand. He was evidently used to people doing that.
Sad, really. And a bit telling. It looked like his idea for this training trip was more than a good idea- it was what Naruto needed.
"Because then I can make him come back to Konoha, where he needs to go!"
Jiraiya nodded thoughtfully. "Let me rephrase that- why would you need more power to make him come back?"
Naruto winced minutely and closed his eyes. "Because he beat me. He was better than me, so he got to walk away to Sound and I failed all my friends. Him the most."
"He wasn't stronger than you, really. He didn't even beat you, Naruto."
"Wha-"
"You beat yourself in that fight, because you held back. It was, in theory, the right idea, Naruto, and not something you should blame yourself for- he's your friend, and that means a lot to you. Fighting him was hard, because you weren't just fighting him- you were fighting the side of you that didn't want you to fight him. You could take Sasuke in a fight, Naruto, if you both went all out."
Jiraiya put his teacup down with a authoritive clank.
"This brings us to what I'm going to teach you over this trip. I'm not worried about you getting Sasuke back. You have a three year period to do so, and I think you could take him. I'm not worried about the Akatsuki either- unless they catch us while we're on this trip, I have faith that when it comes time, you could triumph."
Naruto's eyes were glassy at the impromptu show of support. "Ero-sennin... you really think so?"
"Yes. Which is where I come in. Getting Sasuke back, beating the Akatsuki... you don't need my help with that, Naruto. And we have a three-year time out where I can teach you. There's more to being a ninja- more to being a Hokage- than just power and speed."
Naruto was hanging on to his every word.
"Right now, if you bring Sasuke back, he will be branded a traitor and executed, and he wouldn't be there of his own free will which would only expedite the process of execution. There's nothing Tsunade could do to stop it. Her hands are tied. Yours aren't. Do you know how you could keep him from being executed as a nuke-nin when you bring him back?"
Naruto blinked, caught off guard by the sudden question. "Obaa-chan wouldn't do that!"
Jiriaya shook his head. "She would, kid. She would hate it, she would feel terrible for it, and it would rip her apart to do that to you, but like I said, her hands are tied. Now, how would you stop her from being forced to do that? I know that Sarutobi-sensei watched over you sometimes when you were a kid, and told you about how the village worked. How would you game the system?"
Naruto's mouth opened and closed a few times. "Well, we could... make it look like it was a super secret mission to spy on Orochimaru, couldn't we?"
Jiraiya valiantly refrained from palming his face. "Alright, how would you get people to believe that? There are mission records, the Hokage Council- that's Sarutobi's old teammates Homura Mitokado and Koharu Utane, as well as occasionally and unofficially Shimura Danzou, his old friend- but I digress, the Council must be informed of such black-ops missions. He would need a handler too- someone who he would have been passing information too. How would we spoof all this, and get the nessecary people to back it up? Tsunade, for example, would be against it- she wouldn't want him dead, but she wouldn't want to pay Uchiha- reward him- for the 'mission."
Naruto fell silent.
Jiraiya opened his mouth to continue, thinking his point made. Instead, Naruto cut across.
"Well, the mission record... I don't know how I could falsify that. Tsunade could do it!"
"Tsunade wouldn't- remember, she wouldn't want to reward him."
"Then I would have to make it worth it for her. Maybe we could like, pay off her debts?"
"Do you have the money to pay off her debts, brat? I didn't think so."
"But, but! We could take Sasuke's 'reward money' and use that! Have him use his 'mission pay' to pay off Tsunade's debts out of gratitude or something- appear to willingly give it up! We could, um... say that maybe she got him out of there early, because it was detrimental to his health or something! No one would argue with Obaa-chan about health, she could just say he was falling ill from being underground and stuff!"
Naruto was clearly on a roll, and speeding up as he was honing in on his idea.
"It's not like anyone would think a twelve year old would want to be on a long term infiltration there! He would be happy- well, as happy as he gets- to get out early! And he has his inheritance, he wouldn't need the money anyway!"
"Not bad, but what about the council?"
"Uh... maybe we could act confused too? Or, wait, no, could we say that the old man didn't have time to tell them before he died!"
Naruto beamed at his logic, clearly thinking he was still on a roll from his earlier, admittedly decent, idea. "We would have no way of knowing that, boy. It would suspicious to say the least."
"Then maybe just being confused, but making sure they know the date of it- make them think they figured it out!"
Tricky. An excellent idea, but very, very hard to pull off.
"As for a handler, it would need to be someone in on it, but it's really easy!"
Now Jiraiya was intrigued, just a bit. Naruto was doing actually pretty decent at making this plan- he had known Naruto was good at making plans by the seat of his pants, but it was still impressive to see in action. He was also ballsy enough to try it and actually have it go through by sheer charisma. But it would be messy, there would be complications, and it would hurt his candidacy for Hokage later. It still needed honed.
And as for it being really easy... did Naruto have someone who owed him a big enough favor to do something like this? Because knowing Naruto, it would be quite the story.
"Me!"
This time, Jiraiya wasn't able to keep from palming his face. "Naruto, that would never work, you're-"
Naruto bulldozed right over him though. "No, no, listen ero-sensei, think about it! I've already made clear that I want to bring him back. And more importantly, that means I would go after him every chance I get. No one would blink twice at us meeting up, they all know I'm trying to find him! And aren't you like, some super big shot spymaster or something? I'm your apprentice, people are probably already expecting me to be learning more than toads!"
Well hot damn. The only problem, of course, was...
"This all hinges on Sasuke's cooperation, though."
Naruto squinted his eyes, looking like he had just tasted something sour. "Yeah, I'm still working on that. It's hard though, because what makes me stay drives him away!"
Jiraiya nodded. "In any case kid, this kind of stuff is what I'm talking about- espionage, subtlety, some economics and politics- the ability to bullshit a lie past people. That's the kind of thing we're going to be working on. Your ideas are decent, if naive. You have some latent skill in this area, and you're charismatic and ballsy enough to bluff with the best. But, you don't know enough about Konoha yet to know that, while your overall idea is good, if reliant on things outside your control, the devil is in the details and would blow the entire thing up faster than a tag. You don't have experience."
He took a long, savoring sip of his tea. "We're going to cover getting you experience. In leading, as well. The running of a village too, how it works. You want to be Hokage. That means understanding your village, not kicking butt. If you're serious about your little scheme, then I need to teach you the things a handler would need to know. What a spy would know too, so you could teach Sasuke if you can convince him."
"I.. "
"Of course we're not going to the Land Of Hot Springs to peek! I'm going to the land of Hot Springs to peek, and you're probably going to be annoying and interrupt your master's research, you ungrateful brat!"
Naruto blinked at the sudden change of topic, before he noticed the waitress approach carrying their food, frowning mightily at Jiraiya's pronouncement. Jiraiya could literally see it click in Naruto's head.
"You stupid pervert! You need to teach me cool jutsu, not violate privacy! We're supposed to be touring the world, not sitting like ducks in Hot Springs so you can ignore me and be a creepy old man!"
Naruto's soup was swiftly slid to him with a small dimpled smile, and Jiraiya's plate of chicken narrowly missed his fingers with a rather ominous thunk.
"Enjoy your meal."
Jiraiya hid a small smile as he began tearing at his fried goodness, sharing a quick wink with Naruto who, by his grin, was somewhat proud of how fast he had managed to pick up on their little ploy.
The two enjoyed their food, and no more words were spoken. It was the beginning, as they say, of a beautiful friendship between master and apprentice.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
So the idea is basically taking the assumption that, instead of Jiraiya training Naruto to fight, Jiraiya instead went "Meh, he's got that shit." and instead focused on making naruto a legitimate Hokage candidate. The story would slowly diverge from canon there, or possibly stay true to canon at the end.
Some of it would be simple slice of life between master and apprentice, where everything is both more than it seems and exactly as it seems, much like Jiraiya checking out the waitress's ass.
Most will be coherent storylines in chunks, such as Jiraiya using some favors to get Naruto working closely with a minor to medium lord in earth to see how things work, which would be the first chunk. Jiraiya also, of course, certainly didn't pick a favor from that specific lord because he has a daughter naruto's age, heh.
Anyway, thoughts? I also need ideas for a title/summary that doesn't suck.
Right now I'm leaning towards "Of Hookers and Economics" just for the lulz.
With a negligent flick of his hand, he motioned both for Naruto to take the seat across from him, and for a waiter to come over.
The inn was a small, cozy place- a bit of a favorite of his whenever he came through here. The firelight crackled merrily in the fireplace near the main center of the dining room in the log building, and rustic, though not particularly tasteful, decorations adorned the place- mostly the skulls of various large animals the local men had brought down for food.
Naruto was unusually subdued, as he had for the past week. Some of it, Jiraiya knew, was that he had been forced to leave his friends- most without even a simple goodbye. It would be up to the schoolteacher to pass on the news.
The other was that the boy seemed to pick up on his own urgency and unwillingness to talk. The boy wasn't the sharpest crayon in the box, but he was by far the brightest.
Plunking his elbow onto the table and resting his chin on his knuckles, Jiraiya retreated into thought while they waited to be served.
He had to be careful about their movements at first, he knew. Once they managed to get around the various tails and dropped off the gossips' radar, they would be home free and nearly impossible to track down.
Their appearance here was a calculated ploy that fed into nearly every expectation anyone would have of Jiraiya. They were in a small town at an inn about four days from Konoha, halfway between Konoha and the Land of Hot Springs. They appeared to be moving slowly, and complacently, towards a country filled with everything Jiraiya was known to love about life.
They were actually heading to the Land of Earth, however, on the other side of Fire. Now that they had been spotted back here, estimates would backtrack closer to Konoha, and towards the obvious target. Tonight, instead of heading to bed, they would set out full speed back towards, and around, Konoha, straight for River Country and then to Wind.
The desert- and Suna, which any trackers would be unable to near- would hide their intentions as they headed north straight into Earth, instead of going into Sunagakure. At that points, as long as they were not be predicted or intercepted, they should be able to avoid their trackers.
"Your orders, sirs?"
The waitress had arrived. Jiraiya just nodded to Naruto to let him order first.
"Do you serve red bean soup here?"
"We do, sir."
"Then I'll have a bowl, please."
It was odd hearing Naruto so quiet. Poor boy was probably feeling intensely guilty for not wishing them farewell. He would cheer up soon though, with some food and the talk they would be having.
"I'll have your special, please, and I would like my tea very hot."
"Right away!"
That was one of the reasons Jiraiya liked this place- their special was chicken kaarage, one of his favorite foods. They were also clean, prompt, and had very nice beds.
Jiraiya let his eyes wander off to the waitress as she left- making sure she was out of ear range, keeping up the stereotype he projected, and, well, she did have a nice rear.
Once she was a suitable distance away, he snapped his new apprentice out of the probable guilt he had been stewing in for the last week.
"Naruto."
His head snapped up, eyes wide. Understandable, given that it was the first thing Jiraiya had said to him in a week- after telling Naruto they needed silence and speed. "Yeah?"
"We need to talk about what kind of things we'll be covering during this training trip. Consider this your syllabus, boy."
A large grin began creeping onto Naruto's face even as he zoned out, no doubt imagining dragons made of fire, huge explosives, and being extremely stealthy.
"You're probably not going to like it... at first. And keep in mind that if you have objections, make them quietly. We can't afford the attention. Understand?"
Naruto nodded slowly. The boy seemed to bracing himself. Good. Probably best to drop the bombshell first. "There won't be much jutsu training. Nothing over C-rank, at that-"
Naruto's eyes went wide as he turned pale, fantasies crashing down around him. "What?" he breathed, sounding strangled.
"Bare with me boy, and remember to keep it down. We're not going to do much at all with genjutsu- too much time to make it worth it, not enough reward. I'm too shoddy at it anyway, its not either of our styles."
He was calming down- still pale, but not as badly, and his eyes weren't trying to combat his whiskers for his most defining facial feature. The bit about not bothering with genjutsu- which Jiraiya knew Naruto hated- seemed to be calming him down.
"We will be keeping up with your taijutsu and chakra control. We don't want you falling behind in those, because that would cause irreparable damage down the line. But those will be an afterthought."
"Jiraiya... why...?" Naruto choked out, disbelief warring with despair on his face
Naruto looked like his dreams and hopes were crashing down around him. And lost. He looked very lost. Jiraiya sighed, suddenly feeling very old.
"Naruto, answer this question for me. It's very important to me, because the answer should be very important to you. Why do you think you need massive, powerful jutsu and mighty, fast taijutsu?"
The answer was immediate and thoughtless, almost a knee-jerk reaction. "So I can get Sasuke back and become Hokage!"
"Naruto, why would more power help with getting Sasuke back?"
It took Naruto a second to realize that Jiraiya had responded with a question, and not just shot the idea down out of hand. He was evidently used to people doing that.
Sad, really. And a bit telling. It looked like his idea for this training trip was more than a good idea- it was what Naruto needed.
"Because then I can make him come back to Konoha, where he needs to go!"
Jiraiya nodded thoughtfully. "Let me rephrase that- why would you need more power to make him come back?"
Naruto winced minutely and closed his eyes. "Because he beat me. He was better than me, so he got to walk away to Sound and I failed all my friends. Him the most."
"He wasn't stronger than you, really. He didn't even beat you, Naruto."
"Wha-"
"You beat yourself in that fight, because you held back. It was, in theory, the right idea, Naruto, and not something you should blame yourself for- he's your friend, and that means a lot to you. Fighting him was hard, because you weren't just fighting him- you were fighting the side of you that didn't want you to fight him. You could take Sasuke in a fight, Naruto, if you both went all out."
Jiraiya put his teacup down with a authoritive clank.
"This brings us to what I'm going to teach you over this trip. I'm not worried about you getting Sasuke back. You have a three year period to do so, and I think you could take him. I'm not worried about the Akatsuki either- unless they catch us while we're on this trip, I have faith that when it comes time, you could triumph."
Naruto's eyes were glassy at the impromptu show of support. "Ero-sennin... you really think so?"
"Yes. Which is where I come in. Getting Sasuke back, beating the Akatsuki... you don't need my help with that, Naruto. And we have a three-year time out where I can teach you. There's more to being a ninja- more to being a Hokage- than just power and speed."
Naruto was hanging on to his every word.
"Right now, if you bring Sasuke back, he will be branded a traitor and executed, and he wouldn't be there of his own free will which would only expedite the process of execution. There's nothing Tsunade could do to stop it. Her hands are tied. Yours aren't. Do you know how you could keep him from being executed as a nuke-nin when you bring him back?"
Naruto blinked, caught off guard by the sudden question. "Obaa-chan wouldn't do that!"
Jiriaya shook his head. "She would, kid. She would hate it, she would feel terrible for it, and it would rip her apart to do that to you, but like I said, her hands are tied. Now, how would you stop her from being forced to do that? I know that Sarutobi-sensei watched over you sometimes when you were a kid, and told you about how the village worked. How would you game the system?"
Naruto's mouth opened and closed a few times. "Well, we could... make it look like it was a super secret mission to spy on Orochimaru, couldn't we?"
Jiraiya valiantly refrained from palming his face. "Alright, how would you get people to believe that? There are mission records, the Hokage Council- that's Sarutobi's old teammates Homura Mitokado and Koharu Utane, as well as occasionally and unofficially Shimura Danzou, his old friend- but I digress, the Council must be informed of such black-ops missions. He would need a handler too- someone who he would have been passing information too. How would we spoof all this, and get the nessecary people to back it up? Tsunade, for example, would be against it- she wouldn't want him dead, but she wouldn't want to pay Uchiha- reward him- for the 'mission."
Naruto fell silent.
Jiraiya opened his mouth to continue, thinking his point made. Instead, Naruto cut across.
"Well, the mission record... I don't know how I could falsify that. Tsunade could do it!"
"Tsunade wouldn't- remember, she wouldn't want to reward him."
"Then I would have to make it worth it for her. Maybe we could like, pay off her debts?"
"Do you have the money to pay off her debts, brat? I didn't think so."
"But, but! We could take Sasuke's 'reward money' and use that! Have him use his 'mission pay' to pay off Tsunade's debts out of gratitude or something- appear to willingly give it up! We could, um... say that maybe she got him out of there early, because it was detrimental to his health or something! No one would argue with Obaa-chan about health, she could just say he was falling ill from being underground and stuff!"
Naruto was clearly on a roll, and speeding up as he was honing in on his idea.
"It's not like anyone would think a twelve year old would want to be on a long term infiltration there! He would be happy- well, as happy as he gets- to get out early! And he has his inheritance, he wouldn't need the money anyway!"
"Not bad, but what about the council?"
"Uh... maybe we could act confused too? Or, wait, no, could we say that the old man didn't have time to tell them before he died!"
Naruto beamed at his logic, clearly thinking he was still on a roll from his earlier, admittedly decent, idea. "We would have no way of knowing that, boy. It would suspicious to say the least."
"Then maybe just being confused, but making sure they know the date of it- make them think they figured it out!"
Tricky. An excellent idea, but very, very hard to pull off.
"As for a handler, it would need to be someone in on it, but it's really easy!"
Now Jiraiya was intrigued, just a bit. Naruto was doing actually pretty decent at making this plan- he had known Naruto was good at making plans by the seat of his pants, but it was still impressive to see in action. He was also ballsy enough to try it and actually have it go through by sheer charisma. But it would be messy, there would be complications, and it would hurt his candidacy for Hokage later. It still needed honed.
And as for it being really easy... did Naruto have someone who owed him a big enough favor to do something like this? Because knowing Naruto, it would be quite the story.
"Me!"
This time, Jiraiya wasn't able to keep from palming his face. "Naruto, that would never work, you're-"
Naruto bulldozed right over him though. "No, no, listen ero-sensei, think about it! I've already made clear that I want to bring him back. And more importantly, that means I would go after him every chance I get. No one would blink twice at us meeting up, they all know I'm trying to find him! And aren't you like, some super big shot spymaster or something? I'm your apprentice, people are probably already expecting me to be learning more than toads!"
Well hot damn. The only problem, of course, was...
"This all hinges on Sasuke's cooperation, though."
Naruto squinted his eyes, looking like he had just tasted something sour. "Yeah, I'm still working on that. It's hard though, because what makes me stay drives him away!"
Jiraiya nodded. "In any case kid, this kind of stuff is what I'm talking about- espionage, subtlety, some economics and politics- the ability to bullshit a lie past people. That's the kind of thing we're going to be working on. Your ideas are decent, if naive. You have some latent skill in this area, and you're charismatic and ballsy enough to bluff with the best. But, you don't know enough about Konoha yet to know that, while your overall idea is good, if reliant on things outside your control, the devil is in the details and would blow the entire thing up faster than a tag. You don't have experience."
He took a long, savoring sip of his tea. "We're going to cover getting you experience. In leading, as well. The running of a village too, how it works. You want to be Hokage. That means understanding your village, not kicking butt. If you're serious about your little scheme, then I need to teach you the things a handler would need to know. What a spy would know too, so you could teach Sasuke if you can convince him."
"I.. "
"Of course we're not going to the Land Of Hot Springs to peek! I'm going to the land of Hot Springs to peek, and you're probably going to be annoying and interrupt your master's research, you ungrateful brat!"
Naruto blinked at the sudden change of topic, before he noticed the waitress approach carrying their food, frowning mightily at Jiraiya's pronouncement. Jiraiya could literally see it click in Naruto's head.
"You stupid pervert! You need to teach me cool jutsu, not violate privacy! We're supposed to be touring the world, not sitting like ducks in Hot Springs so you can ignore me and be a creepy old man!"
Naruto's soup was swiftly slid to him with a small dimpled smile, and Jiraiya's plate of chicken narrowly missed his fingers with a rather ominous thunk.
"Enjoy your meal."
Jiraiya hid a small smile as he began tearing at his fried goodness, sharing a quick wink with Naruto who, by his grin, was somewhat proud of how fast he had managed to pick up on their little ploy.
The two enjoyed their food, and no more words were spoken. It was the beginning, as they say, of a beautiful friendship between master and apprentice.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
So the idea is basically taking the assumption that, instead of Jiraiya training Naruto to fight, Jiraiya instead went "Meh, he's got that shit." and instead focused on making naruto a legitimate Hokage candidate. The story would slowly diverge from canon there, or possibly stay true to canon at the end.
Some of it would be simple slice of life between master and apprentice, where everything is both more than it seems and exactly as it seems, much like Jiraiya checking out the waitress's ass.
Most will be coherent storylines in chunks, such as Jiraiya using some favors to get Naruto working closely with a minor to medium lord in earth to see how things work, which would be the first chunk. Jiraiya also, of course, certainly didn't pick a favor from that specific lord because he has a daughter naruto's age, heh.
Anyway, thoughts? I also need ideas for a title/summary that doesn't suck.
Right now I'm leaning towards "Of Hookers and Economics" just for the lulz.
