And a bottle of rum
In light of recent events hanging out with an academy student probably wasn’t the least suspicious thing that she, as a jounin could be doing. Especially since she might still be under suspicion for involvement in the debacle with Genma, and Raidou, and a whole set of mini InoShikaCho kids. The fallout from that one had not been pretty. That was about the point when Shikaku had ceased to find the whole situation funny, and had started to get annoyed. Personally she suspected he was mostly annoyed that Genma and Raidou had managed to run off with Shikamaru before he could manage it, but you didn’t say shit like that to the jounin commander. Not if you didn’t want to be permanently stuck on B rank escort missions for spoiled nobles.
In any case, hanging out with Kiba, probably a bit suspicious, and considering who his family were, probably ill advised. But what the hell, she did love living dangerously, and with most of her drinking buddies now out of the village, she was bored. She certainly wasn’t going to stop, the kid had talent, and a really inspiring sort of enthusiasm, and she’d always wanted a little minion of her very own.
…
“We need a ship’s medic.” Itachi had said flatly after the third near miss. Knife throwing, it turned out, was not a skill easily taught in the close confines of shipboard life, but the kids were organised enough that any attempt to stop the lessons would probably result in a minor mutiny, which Naruto would take as an excuse to summon the monsters of the deep. Nobody wanted that. Itachi’s suggestion of an on board medic to deal with such little incidents, along with any injuries from their actual pirate activities, did hold some merit.
But where would they find a medic crazy or desperate enough to sign up with a pirate crew made up entirely of insane ninjas and their overpowered spawn. Zabuza pointed out as much, along with the fact that it would be best if the medic was at least marginally competent. Hatake had looked thoughtful for a moment, then calculating, then deranged. It was a fairly disturbing transition to watch.
“I say we continue as we begun. Kidnapping necessary staff is a fine old maritime tradition.”
“You’re saying we should shanghai someone?” Kisame sounded reluctantly impressed, with a slight edge of glee. All his childhood dreams were coming true.
“Yep.” There was a manic edge to Hatake’s voice that Zabuza had long since learnt to decode as a warning sign. He had strong suspicions it might have been there right before Hatake abandoned his village and started this whole mess. Itachi waved a hand casually in the air.
“I feel like I should stop you there and ask how exactly you shanghai someone.” He said in the weary tone of someone who knew he was the only person in the room not in possession of all the facts. Kisame smiled a wide sharks grin and launched into an excited explaination.
“Well traditionally, the captain and his loyal supporters would go around the local sailors bars at around half past fuck in the morning, and drag anyone too drunk or hungover to escape back to their ship. By the time they sober up, you’re safely out to sea and they have to work for you or drown. Of course if you’re looking for a specific skillset it is perfectly acceptable to, well help nature along a bit by buying your target extra drinks.”
“So where do we find a competent medic careless enough to get blackout drunk in some dodgy sailors pub.” Itachi wondered aloud. There was a brief pause as they all came up with exactly the same answer.
“Tsunade.” Itachi sighed mournfully.
“Tsunade” Hatake confirmed with a grin of vicious satisfaction.
…
Tsunade woke feeling sick. Horribly, horribly sick. What had she been drinking last night. She couldn’t really remember. I fact she couldn’t really remember much about last night. She used a quick application of healing jutsu to keep from losing her dignity by throwing up all over herself. As the jutsu took effect she started to realise the queasy up and down motion wasn’t just her stomach’s reaction to dubious alcohol. She opened her eyes. Yep, definitely on a boat. What the hell.
Then the Hatake brat appeared in her field of vision with a truly obnoxious smile on his face, and everything started to make sense.
“Congratulations Tsunade hime. You are now the official ship’s medic of the bad ship Calamity. Welcome to your new life of adventure and piracy on the high seas.”
If she hadn’t been so hung over that punch would have connected and wiped that smile off his face once and for all. They’d better have brought Shizune along, she was carrying their entire stock of hangover cures.
…
When Shizune had imagined how she’d meet Haku for the first time, this, really wasn’t how she’d pictured it happening. Maybe she should have. After all she’d learned long ago that anything involving Naruto would always follow the most absurd path imaginable, and Naruto had been the one who introduced the two of them in the first place. Of course their first meeting had turned out as utterly ridiculous as all the other Naruto related incidents they’d suffered through over the years.
She had considered trying to stop the depressingly unsubtle group of highly dangerous missing nin when they picked up her passed out drunk Shishou and carried her off to their ship, but honestly, it just didn’t seem worth it. Shishou would probably end up in some kind of trouble either way, she might as well spare herself the bruises. Besides, she was curious.
So instead she’d followed them on board, realised just who was running the ship and resisted the urge to methodically bash her brains out against the side of the ship. Of course Naruto was running a pirate ship, by Naruto standards it was almost a reasonable course of action. She should have seen this coming from the moment she saw her Shishou dangling upside down from a sharkman’s shoulders. This situation had Naruto written all over it.
It got worse of course. Naruto wasn’t the only miniature menace on board. Uchiha Sasuke was there too, as well as a very green kid who introduced himself as the most youthful Lee. The only thing missing was the creepy squad. Oh kami she hoped the creepy squad didn’t show up. Haku agreed with her on that. He really was the best sympathetic ear.
Actually, meeting Haku in person kind of made it all worth it. Haku was every bit as sensible, and reasonable as his letters had suggested. He was smart, and competent, and knew a hundred different ways to paralyse someone using only senbon. He was everything she’d ever wanted in a friend.
Also, he had a solid plan to keep the miniature menaces away from the rum supplies, which showed the kind of forward thinking that would probably save the world one day. It was nice not to be the only sane man in the room.
…
Raidou wasn’t sure if he should be glad they’d managed to lose most of their clients in the chaos of escaping the crocodile pit, or deeply concerned about what they might be up to unsupervised. They should probably try and retrieve them, it was unprofessional to just leave your clients to die in a booby trapped ancient temple to powers man was not meant to know, even if they were raving nutjobs.
The crocodile pit had been slightly embarrassing actually. He and Genma really should have seen that trap coming. His only defence was that he was distracted by the utter chaos of all their clients simultaneously double crossing each other in the middle of the treasure room. Still at least the kids had enjoyed it. Ino had a new crocodile skin handbag, and shoes, and belt, and coat. He should probably give her a talk about moderation and good taste at some point because currently she looked like the spoilt wife of a small time crimelord, it wasn’t exactly classy. Chouji had managed to whip up a pretty decent crocodile stew from her leftovers, which was going a long way towards making Raidou feel better about the situation. At first glance it didn’t seem like Shikamaru had bothered to take any souvenirs, that is until you looked closer and noticed his shiny new crocodile tooth necklace. When Raidou asked he just sighed and muttered something about it being Ino’s idea, and it being more troublesome to argue.
There was a low and repetitive whimpering coming from the only civilian they’d managed to keep track of. Luckily it was the most important one, aka the one that was paying their wages. Professor Katsura hadn’t taken the sudden appearance of hungry crocodiles in his travel itinerary very well. Which was fair enough, he was a civilian, crocodiles were a perfaectly reasonable thing for him to be scared of. It was actually quite impressive how quickly he managed to pull himself together when Genma suggested cutting their losses and leaving.
“No.” He shouted in a panic, the sort of panic that left Raidou at least curious to know what could be terrifying enough to break through the man’s emotional crisis over the crocodile pit. “No we can’t leave. We must find the left Eye of Darkness before the others do. If we don’t, the world itself may be doomed.”
Raidou was sceptical. Katsura must have seen it in his face because he continued desperately. “You have to believe me. You saw what happened to Kirihara, he must be in possession of the right Eye, it has already woven its evil influence over him, and now it seeks to unite with its other half and bring a thousand thousand years of darkness upon our world.” Ok what had happened to Kirihara was pretty freaky, but still, there probably were other reasons for that kind of thing. Genma looked at him, on the other hand it was unprofessional to just abandon a mission, and if the man was right it would be pretty bad if the whole world ended because they couldn’t be bothered. Raidou sighed.
“Fine, we’ll find the bloody Eye of Darkness.” The look of utter gratitude on Kirihara’s face was actually quite heartwarming. Maybe he’d even pay them extra when all this was done.
…
Sakura needed to prove herself to Jiraya sensei. Her dream of being a superspy hung in the balance. It would have to be impressive though, to win his approval after her terrible first impression. She would just have to show him that she could spy on someone, just like in the movies. She gathered her gadgets, and her basic ninja supplies, and set out in search of a target. It would have tp be someone powerful, and paranoid, someone with resources, and skills, and minions, someone with… a fluffy white cat.
…
Jiraiya shouldn’t have got up out of bed this morning. He’d woken up with a bad feeling, he hadn’t listened, and now he was paying the price. He should have paid attention to his gut, it had never led him wrong yet.
It was the pink haired kid from last week. It turned out she’d taken his refusal to train her as a challenge, which, did happen, some people reacted to rejection like that. Most people didn’t respond to the perceived challenge by spying on bloody creepy councilman Danzo. Most people had more self preservation than that. Not this one, he wasn’t sure where she’d gotten the idea that ownership of a fluffy white cat was evidence of sinister plans but spying on Danzo clearly hadn’t done anything to dissuade her of the idea.
Actually that was one of the worst things, not only had she tried to spy on Danzo, she’d succeeded, and then come back to him with the evidence. Of course Danzo almost certainly knew about it but still, Jiraiya was impressed. She was after all, still in the academy, and she’d managed to spy on a kage level ninja. And now of course he either had to give in, and take her as his student, or leave her to Danzo’s tender mercies. He was tempted, she had after all brought it on herself, but in the end he really wasn’t quite that heartless. Besides, it wasn’t like he didn’t like teaching, it might be good to have a young mind to mould along the road. Maybe she could make friends with Tsunade’s apprentice. Of course he’d have to take her quietly, he didn’t think Danzo would just let him leave with such a promising recruit. He’d sneak her out of the village and then it would be fine, once they were on the road they’d be more trouble than they were worth to track down.
Fuck, he’d just been manipulated into doing a Hatake by a seven year old. That was embarrassing. Not embarrassing enough to leave her to Danzo unfortunately but still, he was never admitting to Tsunade how he ended up with the kid.
…
Tenzo sat in the bar and listened to rumours, and tried not to panic about the trouble Sai might be getting Shin into back at their hotel room. Those kids really needed some practical socialisation in a controlled environment.
Then he heard it. Some guy was rambling on about piracy and falling standard when he let slip that Taicho was Captaining a pirate ship. After a quick interrogation which involved buying the man a drink and then staring at him until he spilled the beans, Tenzo had a name, “The Calamity”, and the estimated next port of call. He grinned in anticipation, if he was lucky, this might be exactly what he needed. A safe place for his kids to socialise with others their age, a paid job with actual money, or at least loot, and last but not least adult company. He loved his adorable little kids, really he did, but the prospect of a real conversation with someone his own age was intoxicating. He called out as he got back to their room.
“Shin, Sai, pack up. We’re going to sea.”