Inheritance

The Chunin Exams II

Jiraiya almost smirked as he glanced around the room he and several of the other Konoha Jonin were waiting in whilst their Genin took Ibiki's little test of character.

Every single one of them, except perhaps Kakashi - the unflappable brat that he was - was looking decidedly flustered at his decision to wait for Naruto and the Inuzuka girl to finish the first stage of the exam with the rest of them. It was rare enough that he was in the village at all, after all, and he was known as one of the most powerful shinobi that Konoha had to offer - but Jiraiya wasn't really as vain as to think that these seasoned shinobi were all quite so tense just because the Great Jiraiya was in the room. No, his taking an interest in something as trivial as the Chunin Exams sent a message to all the Jonin here that none of them could misinterpret.

Something big, and something dangerous was going down, and now all your cute little Genin are right in the middle of it.

"Jiraiya-sama."

The Sannin turned to meet Ibiki as he entered the room, sounding particularly grave.

"Something happened already?" He asked, not quite believing that even Orochimaru would have made his move in what was essentially a written exam.

"Not... Exactly." The scarred interrogation expert started hesitantly. "Though I have to admit, you have one hell of an interesting student - he aced the test, by the way, and we still have no idea how. Kid went to the bathroom, accompanied, was in there not even a minute before coming out, sitting down, and filling out the entire damn test. The other proctors are tearing their hair out trying to figure it out. More importantly, he gave me this." And with that, Ibiki handed Jiraiya his student's exams, complete with the fuinjutsu message still inscribed onto it.

"Pretty clever bit of fuinjutsu, if I'm honest. I've not seen anything like it before... One of yours?"

"Actually, no." Jiraiya answered, allowing a small smirk to form on his face out of pride in his student - plus, he knew full well that every other Jonin in the room was listening in. "Naruto came up with it himself. It's still in development mind you. He's looking for a way to send messages over longer distances - for now it's limited to short range communication. Still, pretty good for his first original seal, with only a few weeks of learning the art, no?" Jiraiya asked, deliberately utterly understating the impressiveness of the accomplishment - especially if you were unaware of the blond's little Kage Bunshin trick.

"Hang on-" The Jonin sensei of Team 8, Yuuhi Kurenai, couldn't help but interrupt. "You expect us to believe that Uzumaki Naruto - who graduated last in the Academy and spent his entire childhood pranking the village rather than train - has managed to learn fuinjutsu to a greater degree than most Jonin do, in a few weeks? Jiraiya-sama, I'm sorry, but that's impossible - even for someone taught by a Sannin."

Jiraiya narrowed his eyes at the Jonin - both at the questioning of his integrity, and at the doubting of his student; of whom he was becoming increasingly proud of. But the sound of a little orange book snapping shut stopped any thought of Jiraiya needing to reply on his student's behalf.

Because after all, though the village council had managed to block Kakashi's attempts to adopt Uzumaki Naruto, then block his attempts to get in contact; and though fate had decided to intervene and see to it that it was Jiraiya, not Kakashi that was to train Naruto, Hatake Kakashi had spent a good part of his ANBU career defending his sensei's son. From villagers who would wreck his apartment, and even attempt to get violent (though Kakashi and the ANBU had seen to it that Naruto never knew about attempts to physically harm him, few as they were); to a kidnapping attempt from a visiting foreign shinobi whom had been informed that Naruto was Konoha's jinchuuriki, and had decided to take advantage of his new found knowledge (though once again, Kakashi had stopped the attempt before it had even reached Naruto) - Kakashi had always done his best to at least defend Uzumaki Naruto.