Ways to advance your career
Orochimaru couldn’t believe his luck. The boy, his shiny new apprentice, was perfect. He hadn’t even been looking for a child to steal when he went in to do recon on Konoha. Honestly he’d just been trying to get the lay of the land an check what Danzo was up to. But then on his way out, he’d tripped over an adorable little silver haired kid doing an almost professional job of vivisecting one of the leeches from the forest of death and he hadn’t been able to resist. It was the work of a moment to tranquilise the kid and carry him off. He was a Konoha missing nin, it was practically a requirement. He wasn’t getting soft, he was just… keeping up with popular trends.
Kabuto it turned out his new student’s name was and he was surprisingly relaxed about having been kidnapped by a notorious missing nin. Apparently he was an orphan, and most Konoha kids now accepted jounin kidnappers as one of life’s unavoidable hazards. Some of them, especially the orphans, actually tried to seek it out. Kabuto had never bothered, but upon being stolen by the greatest scientific mind of the age he was quick to see the benefits.
He still couldn’t quite believe his luck, almost tripping over such a brilliant young mind to nurture. He couldn’t have found a better apprentice if he’d tried. Kabuto was an aspiring young scientist with a talent for medical jutsu. Thhe kid was a genius, and a kindred spirit, and his sheer joy in learning and scientific progress reminded Orochimaru of himself as a child. He hadn’t known having a protégé could be so inspirational. Kabuto’s enthusiasm and fresh perspective reignited Orochimaru’s own joy in Science. For too long he’d been focused on the results rather than the joy of exploration, but now with his bright eyed curious student present he found himself truly appreciating his work once more.
Kabuto’s delighted smile when Orochimaru had shown him his labs, and research notes had been… nice. Orochimaru wasn’t sure what to do with the warm fuzzy feeling that developed as Kabuto asked him questions about everything under the sun and suggested a new medical technique that could keep half dead test subjects in suspended animation indefinitely, for later study. Maybe he should teach the boy sealing. There were all kinds of potential biological applications that Orochimaru had never had time to explore
“Orochimaru sama”, Kabuto interrupted his train of thought, “I had this really awesome idea for cybernetically enhanced limbs. Can I have one of the test subjects to try it out on?” Orochimaru felt so proud. Eight years old and already coming up with his own experiments. He was just so cute in his little labcoat and goggles, standing over a test subject with a scalpel and a look of intense concentration. Orochimaru just couldn’t resist taking a photo. It could go in the album along with Kabuto’s first human dissection, and Kabuto’s first death ray, and Kabuto’s first accidental summoning of an abyssal creature from the twelfth dimension. If this was what having a kid felt like then no wonder Tsunade had taken one when she left the village. Next time he saw Jiraiya he would have to show him his photo album.
…
Kakashi and Naruto had been relaxing quietly at a seaside resort while they burned off the money they’d earned on their last job. It was a nice resort. Targeted mainly at missing nin, rogue samurai, off duty spies, rich bandits, and other people with money to burn and a desire not to draw the attention of the law. The sheer variety of dodgy customers, ensured an uneasy kind of truce, no-one wanted to be responsible for starting the free for all brawl that would call the authorities down on the facility, and ruin the holidays of all the meanest criminals in the area. The armed détente was actually surprisingly relaxing. Kakashi liked it there a lot. He had got to relax by the pool while being served peeled grapes and cocktails by scantily clad waitresses. Naruto had got to run wild on the adventure playground. Things had been… peaceful.
Then Kakashi heard a sound in the distance, a not quite echo on the wind. Someone almost on the edge of hearing shouting “Rival” in an all too familiar voice. He dismissed it as his imagination running wild. After all there was absolutely no reason for Gai to be there. Gai was back in Konoha a thousand miles away. It had been years. It wasn’t like Gai had any way of knowing where he was.
Then he heard it again closer. Surely not. It couldn’t be. Kakashi had a feeling denial wasn’t going to help him this time.
He was right.
Actually for a second Kakashi thought he was seeing double as two green jumpsuits made their way towards him at high speed. But no, one of them was considerably smaller than the other, for all the uncanny resemblance. A small child, that looked like Gai, and dressed like Gai, and as far as he could tell acted like Gai. Had Gai… spawned?
It turned out the kid wasn’t actually blood related to Gai. Apparently Gai had met the kid, been impressed by his flames of youth, and decided to steal him. Sort of like Kakashi had done with Naruto, but with a little more buildup. At least that was what Kakashi gathered from the dramatic speech Gai made. Kakashi was reluctantly impressed, it had taken him years to get Naruto to the level of mini me that Gai had managed to get Lee to in weeks. He also wondered if he should be flattered or concerned at the way all the other jounin seemed to be copying his example and running away with small children. Was he a… bad influence.
It appeared that now Gai was also a missing nin, and therefore able to spent time with Kakashi without trying to arrest him, he wanted to reignite their eternal rivalry. Kakashi had always had trouble saying no to Gai. Most people did. Gai could be an unstoppable force of nature when he wanted something. And if there was a part of Kakashi that had secretly missed Gai’s challenges, well no-one ever needed to know, and if anyone did figure it out he was more than competent enough as an assassin to kill them before they could tell anyone.
Within the space of about ten minutes Gai had replaced Kakashi’s peaceful poolside relaxation with a high energy race to see who could complete a thousand laps of the pool first. Gai won. Kakashi pretended he didn’t care while plotting his revenge. They had maybe gotten a little too caught up in their competition, because while they were swimming they’d left the kids largely unsupervised. It was with the benefit of hindsight, probably a mistake.
It turned out Naruto and Lee got on like a house on fire, complete with screaming, and chaos, and large scale property damage. If the resort hadn’t made absolute unflappability, and ability to deal with ninja antics one of their selling points Kakashi suspected they’d all have been banned for life. As it was they’d just been saddled with the repair bill. He looked morosely at the string of zeros. There was no help for it, they’d need to run another job, to pay it off.
…
Sasuke stared, and stared, and then stared some more. He couldn’t help it, he’d never seen anything so awesome in his life. Apart from Itachi of course but that went without saying. Nothing was more awesome than Itachi, whatever that moron Naruto might say.
“Don’t stare Otouto. It’s rude.” Itachi sighed. Sasuke switched his gaze to his brother, his awesome brother, his awesome brother who would totally let him have this if he just looked cute enough.
“I want him. Let me keep him.” He demanded, tugging at Itachi’s sleeve.
“He’s a fellow ninja Sasuke. We can’t just keep him. I’m sure he has lots of other things he needs to be doing.” Itachi tried reason. Sasuke pouted, he hated it when Itachi tried to come over all sensible and responsible, they were internationally wanted mass murdering criminals, even Sasuke knew that sensible and responsible were a lost cause.
“But, he’s a Sharkman Itachi nii-san, he’s so cool. And I bet he knows all sorts of cool jutsus and he could help you out on your missions, and he’d be much better than that Kakashi weirdo. Please can we keep him.” He gave Itachi the puppy dog eyes, Itachi was weak to puppy dog eyes. Itachi sighed again before turning to face Kisame, who’d been looking unsure whether to be disturbed or amused by the conversation.
“Kisame right? Look, do you want to travel with us for a while, it’d make my brother really happy and we can probably earn money easier working together.” Kisame considered for a moment before shrugging.
“What the hell. I guess I might as well. Not like I’ve got anything better to do.” The man seemed sincere enough. If he thought he was just humouring them then so much the better, it would make it far easier to gradually assimilate him, if he didn’t realise what Sasuke was doing. If they did it right, he wouldn’t realise until far too late that he was too attached to leave.
…
The job was… well to be honest it was more than a little fishy. A team of archaeologists and scientists had hired them as protection for an expedition to Jungle country. That was al well and good except… universities and museums were respectable institutions with a public image to uphold and funding from the Daimyo. What on earth were they doing hiring missing nin instead of going to one of the official licensed legal ninja villages? And since when did academics carry that many weapons, fair enough jungle country was dangerous, there was a reason they needed a ninja escort, and sometimes a bit of extra personal protection could go a long way, but some of those professors were carrying nearly as much edged steel as Genma was and he was a fucking professional mercenary. There was definitely something deeply dodgy at work.
Still, professional mercenary meant part of his paycheck was labelled keep your mouth shut and don’t ask awkward questions, and they really weren’t in a position to be fussy. Turned out Konoha, or at least the portion of it in charge of the jounin patrols (i.e. the Nara), weren’t too happy about him and Raidou absconding with the minions, and so rather than the clean getaway that seemingly everyone else had managed including mass murderer Uchiha Itachi, jinchuriki thief Hatake Kakashi, and Maito Gai, voted most visible Jjounin in Konoha five years running. A part of Genma wanted to label that as unfair, but if he was honest, he and Raidou had been very drunk when they grabbed the kids, they may have been less… subtle than they could have been. Besides, if you kidnap the kids of the jounin commander and his best friends you had to expect some kind of reaction just on general principles, even if the parents did secretly think the kids might be better off out of the village.
Anyway it had got to the point where they could hardly take a step without nearly tripping over yet another hunting party. Fire country and its surrounding areas were getting way too hot and a long trip to a country right on the edge of the map seemed like it might just be good for their health. Besides the Yamanaka girl, aka Boss Minion, had heard the best chocolate came from Jungle country and if they backed out now they’d never hear the end of it.
Still, it couldn’t hurt to stock up on extra supplies, just in case. After all, it wasn’t like extra weapons were ever a bad thing, and the minions could probably use some of their own anyway.