A/N: Hi guys, Jennifer here! This is a new fic I suddenly had inspiration to write, and it will be a detailed account of our favourite perverted Sannin's entire life, epic-style. I know, it's a pretty big task to undertake, but I'm planning for this to be a big undertaking. It will probably take me a year at least, but I'm hoping to make it worth it!

I got this inspiration from the story The Girl From Whirlpool, by SilverShine, which is an account of Minato's life. I was so impressed and enthralled and simply dumbstruck by the level of writing (as well as the sheer freaking number of words!) in that story, and I decided to take on the challenge of doing to same for one of my favourite, older (and very sadly, deceased) characters. So, enough small talk, and onto the tale! Hope you enjoy, and please review, follow, and favourite. *hugs*

Chapter 1: A Test of Teamwork

It was one of those days in Konoha during which the sun shone down brightly and ruthlessly upon the villagers, not caring if they were fully-dressed in ninja garb and waiting for one of the biggest moments of their lives to occur.

That year's graduating class stood outside the Academy in the sweltering heat, grouped off in their teams and waiting for their new jounin senseis to arrive.

Jiraiya was one of these students. He stood, fidgeting with his hands and scratching his puffy white hair (which really could be quite itchy sometimes), next to his newly-appointed teammates, a boy named Orochimaru and a girl named Tsunade. He wasn't particularly pleased to have been placed with two of the top students in the class, especially seeing as this girl was totally and completely flat-chested. Sure, she had a pretty face and nice blond hair, but she didn't have boobs. Not at all.

"When are they coming?" Jiraiya complained loudly. Some of the other newly-appointed genin shot him dirty looks – but that was just because they were on their best behaviour for these supposedly-great jounin leaders. Jiraiya had never been short of friends.

"Very soon," was the only reply he got from their strict teacher, Sayuri-sensei.

He huffed impatiently, and his annoyance only grew when Tsunade smirked at him. Why did he have to be on a team with her? Why couldn't it have been Misaki-chan? She was kind and considerate and had huge boobs. One the other hand, Tsunade was bad-tempered and stuck-up, and all the adults called her Tsunade-hime, just because she was related to some old guy. All right, sure, he was the First Hokage, blah, blah. He didn't see anything special about this blond girl. Now, Misaki on the other hand…

He stared in Misaki's direction conspicuously, until Tsunade noticed and punched him in the gut. He grimaced; her punches were not to be underestimated.

"Stop being such an idiot!" the tall blond girl barked, messy ponytail swinging. "The jounins are gonna arrive any second now." She made a face at him. "I don't want to look bad beside you."

Grumbling and rubbing his stomach, he looked up. Sure enough, the jounin had just arrived. There were five of them, for the fifteen graduates this year, and he couldn't imagine a group of five people who were any more different than the ones before him. There were four men and one woman, and they were all different shapes and sizes – and oh, that woman had a nice body! He suddenly felt quite hot, and he was sure it wasn't just from the sweltering heat.

"First is Team Takeru, which will consist of Shigeru, Tadashi, and Kazuko," Sayuri-sensei announced, deft fingers tapping a pen on the clipboard. Jiraiya scowled at Tadashi, the Uchiha boy he despised, but the Uchiha merely ignored him. "Second is Team Amaya, which will consist of Ren, Misaki, and Susumu." Jiraiya groaned quietly and slowly edged away from Tsunade as Misaki's team walked toward the female jounin. Why couldn't that have been his sensei? "Third will be Team Hiruzen, consisting of Orochimaru, Tsunade, and Jiraiya."

He looked at the line of the three remaining jounin eagerly, expecting that cool-looking jounin with short cropped red hair to step forward and beam at them...

…but it was only that weathered-looking man with a funny goatee that stepped forward.

The three of them walked up to the jounin, Jiraiya in the lead. The man – Hiruzen? – smiled at them before leading them a little ways off. Jiraiya wrinkled his nose. This sensei smelled funny.

"It's sure nice to finally meet you kids," he said with a big smile. Neither Jiraiya nor Orochimaru said anything, but Tsunade stepped forward, smiling.

"It's so nice to meet you too, Hiruzen-sensei! I'm Tsunade," she said brightly, giving her best smile. Jiraiya scoffed – what a suck-up this girl was! Tsunade shot him a glare that probably would have made him drop dead if he hadn't seen it at least twenty times in the last three days they'd known they were going to be on the same team.

"Tsunade, is it? What a beautiful name."

Tsunade practically glowed, while Jiraiya felt his jaw almost drop to the ground. Was it just him, or was there a slightly perverted glint in that guy's eye!

"Why don't the rest of you introduce yourselves?"

"I'm Jiraiya," he said quickly, still in a bit of shock. Maybe he and this sensei would get along … or they'd just have a bitter rivalry. After all, there were only so many beautiful women in Konoha, and once the most beautiful of them started shying away from the bathhouses … well, there would just be one more unhappy white-haired boy out there.

"Orochimaru," said the pale boy. He'd been at the top of the class, but he was a quiet sort of fellow, reserved and rather cold. He was extremely pale and had long dark hair that made him look like a girl from behind. He was shorter than Jiraiya, too. He'd had always thought Orochimaru was quite queer, but strangely quite a few girls actually liked him – liked liked. Maybe they were into girls … now, that wasn't a bad thought at all!

Their sensei nodded at their introductions, seeming to rest his gaze a little longer on Orochimaru than Jiraiya – probably because he looked more like a girl – before he said, "Well, let's get going so we can do our first training exercise today."

"Training?" Jiraiya echoed incredulously. Already?

"Well, we can get to know each other first on the way, if that's what you'd like." Hiruzen made it sound like his offer was extremely generous. Jiraiya very intelligently kept his mouth shut. "So tell me about yourselves. What are your goals in life?"

"I want to become the greatest and most beautiful kunoichi in Konoha," Tsunade piped up, not missing a beat and walking alongside their sensei while the two boys trailed a step behind. Personally Jiraiya didn't think this would be too difficult, seeing how insanely strong and ruthless she was already, but he didn't like to compliment people who glared at him every day. But as for the second part of her goal, he didn't think beauty really suited her…

"I'm sure you will be, young lady!"

This time, Tsunade really did glow. Jiraiya coughed a bit too conspicuously, and Hiruzen-sensei turned to him. "What about you, Jiraiya-kun?" he asked with a wide smile.

What a creepy guy. "I want to write a book when I get older," he said stoutly.

"Oho," said Hiruzen, eyebrows raised. "A unique goal for a shinobi."

Tsunade scoffed. "What kind of book – you should tell him that!" But Jiraiya merely made a face at her and their sensei hastily prompted Orochimaru to speak.

"I want to help eliminate the cruelty of the world," the boy said quietly, and suddenly Jiraiya felt a little bout of embarrassment at his answer. It seemed a bit too light-hearted and selfish now…

But that embarrassment soon dissipated like mist as they passed by a very familiar street. The street that was populated by women's bathhouses. Jiraiya itched to crouch down by that hole he knew was in the fence, the one that gave the best view, but Tsunade's steely gaze was on him, and so he clamped down on these urges as hard as he could. He knew that if he did anything like peep on bathing women in front of Tsunade, she would explode in anger and take it out on him. Though he might be slightly below average in intelligence – according to his teachers – he wasn't stupid enough to purposely aggravate Tsunade. She was the worst-tempered girl he'd ever met.

Strangely enough, he felt some strange tension rolling off their sensei. He glanced around to see if his teammates had noticed, but Tsunade was too busy glaring at him and Orochimaru had that impassive expression he always wore on that unnaturally white face. He turned back to their sensei, noticing the way his eyes crept towards that peephole closer to the bushes… Maybe that was just a trick of the light, because no respectable jounin would do something like that.

And speaking of respectable jounins… Jiraiya suddenly got the feeling that he'd heard his sensei's name somewhere before. He frowned, but couldn't seem to remember where he'd heard it.

They reached a training ground after a relatively uneventful half hour (unless you counted the little spat Tsunade and Jiraiya had after she saw him ogling a rather well-endowed woman) and by this time Jiraiya was quite bored. Their sensei had barely talked, asking only occasional boring questions, though he did happen to strike up a small conversation with Orochimaru while Tsunade and Jiraiya were bickering.

The first thing he noticed was that the training ground had three wooden posts sticking out of it. All three were scratched and dented, and had countless kunai marks and shuriken-inflicted indentations. Also, there were two small boxes on the two side posts and a small black alarm clock on the middle post.

"This is Training Ground Three," Hiruzen said as he surveyed the grounds before them. Jiraiya squinted up at the old man. Now that they were under the glaring sun, he noticed a bit of a sunspot forming on his right cheek and suppressed a laugh. Old fart. "I trained here with my team when I was a genin. There's land, forest, and water, which makes it ideal for our purposes. You kids better appreciate that I got up at five this morning to book this for us for the entire year!" He paused for an enthusiastic response, clearing his throat awkwardly upon meeting silence. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a pipe and quickly began to smoke, much to Jiraiya's surprise. It wasn't as if smoking wasn't common amongst ordinary citizens, but it was extremely rare for shinobi. Firstly, the health problems that came with it were considerable if one was a shinobi. And secondly, the smell was unpleasant, and it was something that could draw an enemy's attention to you during a critical battle. Even he knew that.

"Sensei, that's not good for you!" Tsunade piped up suddenly, echoing what Jiraiya had been thinking.

Hiruzen-sensei merely blew a smoke ring and laughed. "Be more light-hearted! It's my wife who tells me not to smoke, not you kids."

Tsunade blushed, and Jiraiya wasn't sure if it was because she'd been reprimanded by a teacher or because she'd been compared to the teacher's wife. He sighed forlornly. If only she was that meek and cheerful around the rest of them. Though admittedly, she had started becoming angrier more often towards him only after he'd called her flat-chested.

"Now, the training exercise today is simple. I'm going to be testing you by seeing how advanced your techniques are. I've heard a bit about you three." He reached into his pocket and pulled out something wrapped up in tissue. Eagerly, Jiraiya leaned closer– was it some special weapon? Chakra pills so their sensei could see how awesome their powers could be in an enhanced state? An exciting plethora of ideas and possibilities scuttled through Jiraiya's mind as Hiruzen unwrapped the object with his one free hand (the other occupied with the pipe) … but it turned out to be two bells. Hiruzen held them up by a string made a small knot, effectively tying it to his pants.

"That's not a very firm knot, sensei," Tsunade observed, seeming to want to prove herself.

"Ah, well-noticed, Tsunade." She beamed. "But that's exactly why I chose it. You see, the three of you are going to be trying to take these bells from me before lunchtime." Hiruzen moved slightly and the bells rang loud and clear. Jiraiya smirked. This was going to be easy – this guy couldn't even move without making sound, so how was he going to hide!

"Do we have to take both or something? Why do you have two?" he asked.

Hiruzen smiled suddenly, and it wasn't exactly a kind smile. It was a conniving smile, one that made it obvious there was a trick to the training.

There was silence, and Jiraiya supposed that he was keeping quiet to build suspense.

Then, "You're already pitting us against each other." Both Jiraiya and Tsunade turned at the sound of this voice, surprised that their quiet teammate had finally spoken up. Orochimaru's face was unreadable, but Hiruzen's smile only grew wider.

"I didn't say that," he said airily, dismissively. "But remember, there's a time limit for this, and the one who doesn't get a bell – if there's only one of you, that is – doesn't get lunch."

Ah, so that's what the boxes on the posts were. No lunch? Jiraiya almost groaned. He needed lunch … and breakfast and dinner and two snacks a day. He was a growing boy at the age of ten after all.

"Anyway, I want you guys to give it your best, and give everything you have. Don't hold back – trust me when I say I can take care of myself. Now, are you ready?" Two voices murmured assent. Orochimaru merely nodded. "Three. Two. One. Start!."

One second his teammates were beside him, and the next they were gone, abandoning to face his sensei one-on-one. He gaped at their sudden disappearance, surprised at how quick and synchronised they had been, almost as though they'd planned it in advance. Of course he knew that the basic rule by which shinobi had to abide was to stay hidden and strike when the moment was right, but he didn't think his teammates would flee so suddenly!

Cowards, he thought furiously. Fine. He'd just take this old fart on alone. He could do that.

"Aren't you a bit out of place?" the old fart called.

Jiraiya scowled at him. "I'll face you head-on! No problem!"

Hiruzen merely chuckled and blew another smoke ring. He hadn't even moved yet.

Jiraiya sprinted up to him, throwing punches at his gut, but his sensei just dodged all his attacks. Leaning to his left, he brought his foot up to strike at the other man's head, but his foot was suddenly caught in a hand and with a sudden twist, he fell heavily to the ground.

There was a muffled thump, but within seconds Jiraiya was back up,\ and he'd created a Shadow Clone, something that he personally was quite impressed with. Both he and his clone attacked Hiruzen from different sides, striking at the fastest speeds he could muster – but like before, none of the hits came into contact with the older man until Hiruzen grabbed both their wrists and tossed them as if they weighed nothing, his pipe still in his mouth.

Jiraiya felt his clone disappear in mid-air before he fell, quite alone, into the water, making an enormous splash. Luckily for him, the water wasn't very deep. He breathed a sigh of relief, because if it had been, he would be drowning. He couldn't swim.

"You'll have to do better than that, Jiraiya-kun!" Hiruzen called a hint of a chuckle underlying his words. But Jiraiya only smiled. He had another trick up his sleeve if it would be necessary, but he wanted to wait and see how far he could get without it. The old fart was fast, but could he dodge the unexpected?

But he had to have a plan. He had to call upon his brainpower.

He groaned loudly, pulling himself underwater, feigning defeat. But then in a flash, he pulled out three shuriken from his pouch and pitched them. Then, without missing a beat, he jumped out of the water, brandishing a kunai in his right hand.

He screamed a loud battle cry, completely unfazed when Hiruzen dodged all three shuriken with apparent ease, and swiped the kunai at Hiruzen's face while simultaneously aiming a kick at the old geezer's knees.

But instead of making contact, he felt both his foot at his wrist being grabbed.

The kunai fell from his hand, and Hiruzen released his wrist, holding him off the ground upside-down by one ankle. "You should learn to understand subtlety," the older man chuckled as Jiraiya could only stare at his shins, but Jiraiya knew his sensei had made a grave mistake.

He'd released both of Jiraiya's hands.

Jiraiya grinned, clasping his hands together into the snake seal, and suddenly his puffy white hair began to elongate, quicker and quicker until it shot out and grabbed his sensei's leg.

"Gotcha!" he cried exuberantly as his sensei released his ankle in surprise, and he stumbled before finding the ground with his feet. He focussed his chakra tighter, and strands of his hair suddenly became hardened spikes, and he reached forward to grab the bells –

"Too slow," came an amused voice, before –

Poof!

Suddenly his sensei disappeared in a puff of smoke and Jiraiya was leaning forward, completely unbalanced. With a shout, he only managed to right himself quickly enough to prevent a dangerous fall onto his own spiked hair.

Shit. That had been a Shadow Clone all along? And he'd wasted his trump card on that plan, no less! Nobody had seen him use that jutsu – he hadn't even shown it off to Misaki! Now his sensei had seen it, and he probably didn't even have the element of surprise that he'd just relied on.

He cursed as he whirled around, but he couldn't see his sensei anywhere. His jutsu was dissipating, the hair retracting into his usual furry mop, because he wasn't yet able to hold the technique for long. If his opponent had been the real thing, those spikes in his hair would have lodged deep into the flesh of the leg and he would have had more than enough time to snag those bells away before his sensei had any idea what he was doing.

As it was, he was sopping wet and was quite without the bells. He grumbled to himself – frustrated because this was the time when he usually had his first snack. Ugh. His stomach rumbled, and he shook the water out of his hair like the half-drowned dog he was.

"That was a pretty cool jutsu." Jiraiya whirled around to see Orochimaru approaching him somewhat warily. "I've never seen anything like it."

Jiraiya had always been a sucker for compliments. He grinned, scratching the back of his head in slight embarrassment. "Yeah," he admitted, "it is pretty cool, isn't it?"

The quiet boy seemed like he was about to say something else, but then a voice came from behind them.

"A good shinobi does not reveal here he is, even if the enemy seems to have disappeared," said Hiruzen, who had appeared a mere couple feet behind them. Jiraiya immediately adopted into a fighting stance, thinking that maybe the two of them could take their sensei on together, but Orochimaru merely looked frightened. Jiraiya scoffed. He hadn't expected their sensei to turn up either, but seriously, this boy had no courage!

Suddenly, something – no, two something's – jumped out of the bushes and latched onto Hiruzen. With a start, Jiraiya realized it was Tsunade and Orochimaru, the figure beside him having suddenly vanished with a puff of smoke. It had all been a ploy to lure their sensei out!

"Nice trick!" their sensei called encouragingly, seeming unperturbed by the two small figures climbing over him, hands snatching at the bells at his waist. Evidently he had a reason for his apparent disregard, because the older man's hands suddenly grabbed Jiraiya's teammates' wrists and flung them at Jiraiya, who could only form a half-shout before they tumbled into a big pile of flailing limbs. "But just so you know, Orochimaru-kun, that genjutsu your clone tried to put on me was much too weak. You'll have to try harder with a jounin!"

A snarl erupted from beside Jiraiya, and he turned just in time to see Tsunade punch the ground with surprising ferocity. Jiraiya didn't think it was a very intelligent idea to punch rock-hard slabs of stone in this sort of situation, but a little gasp came from his other side, so he followed Orochimaru's lead in leaping away.

It was a good thing he had done so without hesitation, because the next second the ground within a radius of three meters crumbled, and their sensei barely had time to find flat ground from which to push off.

"Impressive," the older man called, and he actually seemed slightly shocked. Jiraiya was beyond shocked himself – he knew this girl had massive strength almost rivalling his own, but he didn't know it was this strong! He began to develop a slight fear of this blond tomboy.

Their sensei was perched on the branch of a tree across from the two boys as he surveyed the damage the grinning girl had caused. "You have excellent chakra control."

She had used chakra to do that? When did she learn to do that?

The branch on which Orochimaru was perched suddenly trembled, and Jiraiya watched as the boy shot forth, throwing two kunai with deadly accuracy. And he continued to watch in horror as they struck their sensei right in the head. A cry of surprise came from Tsunade and Jiraiya was so shocked that he couldn't even utter a sound as blood spurted from where the kunai had hit. He snuck a peek at the other boy, whose face was terrifyingly impassive as he watched the gruesome scene.

Poof!

And then the sound of two kunai hitting a block of wood. The log fell to the ground with a thump, and suddenly their sensei had his hands on top of the heads of both Orochimaru and Tsunade.

Just then, a shrill beeping seemed to go off for a few seconds.

"Lunchtime," Hiruzen said cheerfully.

"It can't be lunchtime already!" Jiraiya accused. He knew the time of day by the noises his stomach made.

"Well, this exercise is over for now – I've seen all I need to see."

"But we didn't get any bells," Tsunade said sullenly. Jiraiya hopped down from his branch and walked towards his teammates with a defeated air. He was getting hungrier by the second.

Hiruzen laughed and gestured for them to follow him as he walked back to the grassy patch that had the three posts. "I feel a bit generous today, so I'll give the two better shinobi lunch. Orochimaru-kun, Tsunade-chan, you can have lunch." Jiraiya uttered a cry of dismay and injustice. How were they better than him? He was totally on par with their level! "Meanwhile, Jiraiya-kun – you don't get lunch." Jiraiya glared at him, furious, and in a sudden bout of mutiny, he rushed forth to grab a lunchbox – screw that old fart! He needed his food, now!

A hand grabbed his collar, pulling him back. "We'll have none of that now," his sensei said firmly. "In fact, to make sure you don't cheat and eat some of the food, I'm going to tie you to this post."

Jiraiya spluttered in anger and indignation as his sensei pulled out a wad of rope, grinning as he began to tie the young boy to the post. He looked to his teammates for help, but Orochimaru was expressionless as usual Tsunade only smirked and stuck her tongue out at him.

"Now, Team Hiruzen," their sensei said somewhat smugly, "I'll give you another chance to prove yourselves as a team after lunch, and make sure that chance counts because I'll have two servings of ice cream for you later on! I have a couple errands to run, so I'll be back in about half an hour. Tsunade, Orochimaru, don't give Jiraiya any food, regardless of how loudly he whines, all right?"

Tsunade nodded with an evil expression on her face, shooting superior looks at an irate Jiraiya. Orochimaru didn't say anything as their sensei disappeared.

Jiraiya's two teammates opened their lunches and his stomach growled loudly at the smell of pork and steamed rice. Even the vegetables seemed appetizing now, and he usually wasn't a fan of vegetables at all…

"Ahh," Tsunade said loudly and deliberately, "this sure does smell good!" She grinned at Jiraiya before slowly snapping the wooden chopsticks apart and eating a large chunk of pork. He growled at her but it wasn't very intimidating, seeing as he was tied to a wooden post.

"We need to come up with a strategy for after lunch," Orochimaru's quiet voice interrupted. "It's best if Jiraiya joins in this time as well."

"Hey!" the boy in question blurted out indignantly. "You guys just ran off so suddenly – how was I supposed to know what the plan was?"

"A shinobi is supposed to hide and strike when the time is right, idiot," Tsunade said. "What were you doing, just standing out there in the open?" She snorted, and not very elegantly at that.

Jiraiya wasn't about to admit that the concept had escaped him. "I wasn't being a coward, that's what, unlike the two of you," he retorted angrily. "And then you two just snuck off and used me as bait! I can't believe you'd do that to me! I'm your teammate, for god's sake!"

Even Tsunade looked somewhat embarrassed at this point, and Jiraiya was savagely pleased by this fact. It was pretty difficult to get that snobby girl embarrassed. Orochimaru's eyes were downcast.

"Sorry, Jiraiya," the other boy said quietly. "We probably shouldn't have done that."

"Yeah … but you were just going to be deadweight!" Tsunade defended. Jiraiya glared at her as best he could while tied to a post.

"Whatever," he said angrily, but something inside him had broken. Wasn't good enough for them, was he now? Jiraiya wasn't one usually prone to crying, but at that moment he was really quite upset. What happened to 'That was a pretty cool jutsu?' and 'I've never seen anything like it'?

Suddenly, mouth-watering food was put right under his nose by a skinny, blinding-white arm.

"Ah!" he cried as his stomach grumbled even more loudly. It was turning in on itself, he could feel it. All that would be left of him in a couple of hours would be a little stomach, completely empty! "Now you're trying to torture me too?"

"Eat some," said the quiet boy. "You'll need the energy for this afternoon."

On his other side, Tsunade looked a bit shocked too, but she seemed to trust the pale boy much more than she seemed to trust Jiraiya. She merely scoffed, "He's probably right. You'd just be even more deadweight if you're hungry … not that you could get much worse." She held out her lunchbox too, albeit somewhat reluctantly

Jiraiya was too surprised to glare. Plus, his stomach was growling too loudly to really hear the girl's words properly so he'd give her the benefit of the doubt. "But … sensei said not to give me anything."

"Psh," she said dismissively, "what does he know? He's away now anyway, so you should probably just eat. What's the worst he could do anyways? Send us back to the Academy?" She laughed.

The food was making it hard for him to think, and by then his grumbling stomach had already whole-heartedly agreed to this plan. He'd eat, and then … well, they'd get to that later, but first he'd eat!

But… "I can't," he said. "My hands are tied." And he wriggled his fingers to demonstrate.

A piece of pork was suddenly shoved against his lips and he munched down on it gratefully before realizing it was Orochimaru who was feeding him. He recoiled a little in disgust – even Tsunade feeding him would be better than this! This was just … just … gay!

But then again who was he to refuse food?

Boom!

Suddenly, the skies turned dark and their sensei stood before them, looking absolutely and completely furious. His face was contorted with rage as he stepped towards them, a thunderclap sounding with each footstep. Strangely enough, Jiraiya's hunger was suddenly forgotten. He had never been less hungry.

"HOW DARE YOU DEFY MY ORDERS," their sensei boomed, making all three of them cringe. "YOU INSOLENT, STUPID YOUNGSTERS."

"We – We were only helping him out a bit!" Tsunade cried out fearfully. "How were we supposed to work together as a team if one of us was starving?"

And for the first time, Jiraiya felt a bubble of gratitude for this girl. And a little bit of admiration – she'd stood up to this sensei who none of them were able to defeat. And also a bit of pity, because their sensei looked like he was about to kill her – in their profession, that probably wasn't a good thing to joke about…

"You dare … you dare talk back to me?" he roared. Tsunade whimpered. "Well in that case…"

Jiraiya squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for the final blow to come, the final blow that would wipe all three of them out and off the face of the world. Why did it have to end like this? He still had so many goals, aspirations … he still had to get to feel up Misaki-chan, for god's sake!

"I commend you."

Jiraiya cringed harder against the post before he realized what he'd just heard. I commend you? What? His eyes peeked open, just a little, to see that the skies had suddenly cleared into that horrible bright cloudless blue again, and their sensei had an amused expression on his regular cheerful countenance. He didn't look remotely angry.

"What?" he blurted out, and this two fellow teammates on either side were staring in equal incredulity.

"I said," the older man smiled, "I commend you for talking back to me. It's not often a young lady can do that without restraint." He sighed. "Though I am getting quite a lot of that from a woman who's much too old." Was he talking about his wife and comparing Tsunade to her again?

"But what about disobeying your orders?" Tsunade demanded.

"Well," Hiruzen said slowly, as if musing over the question. "On a battlefield, you'll often get instructions from your commanders and such, but a lot of the time, you may need to think up your own strategy, something that a commander can't instruct you to do. In that case, you've got to rely on your own wits … and those of your teammates."

"You were testing our teamwork skills," said Orochimaru. It was more a statement than a question.

"Yes," their sensei said, smiling. "This was a teamwork test that was used on me when I first became a genin." He paused and seemed to get a bit lost in memories.

"All of this was to test our teamwork?!" Jiraiya shouted, unable to contain himself. His feet lifted off the ground and he struggled furiously. "All this crap with only two bells and not getting lunch and starving me, was all about teamwork?! This is the stupidest test I've ever taken!"

Hiruzen didn't look insulted, but it was Tsunade who elbowed him. "Watch your language, idiot!"

"No, no, don't worry, dear," he said to Tsunade, laughing. "It's totally up to him what to think of my tests. But … if you think the test is stupid, then I suppose you'll think the reward is, too." Jiraiya's eyes widened. Oh yeah, he'd promised us ice cream! "So, Tsunade, Orochimaru, why don't you two come along and I'll treat you to ice cream at the new place that's opening up? Ichiro's, it's called. Jiraiya-kun can just stay here."

Jiraiya began to protest, but their sensei seemed to be oblivious to everything Jiraiya was saying and taking back as he led the other two genin away. Tsunade smirked at him for the umpteenth time that day, and even Orochimaru seemed attempt a smile.

They were almost so far away now that Jiraiya doubted they could even hear him anymore.

"At least untie me!" he shouted. "I can't get out of here!" He struggled harder against the restraints, but to no avail. "Help me! Someone! What happened to teamwork? We're supposed to be a team! Tsunade! Orochimaru!"

That's it, he seethed furiously, when I become a jounin, and if I ever decide to become a teacher, I swear I'll never, ever, use this stupid, stupid, stupid test!

So what did you think of this first little chapter? ^_^ Good? Bad? Either way, I'm super excited to be posting this now, and I hope you'll all enjoy it as it progresses. If any of you are reading my OC fic The Remnants of the Sky, I want to tell you outright that this will definitely not be updated daily, mostly because I'll be having chapters that are quite long. This one, as far as I can see now, is one that's actually quite short actually, and some chapters can even turn out to be twice as long as this.

So I guess the only way to keep up with it is to follow! Also, please review and favourite, if you really like it. :) Thanks for reading this first chapter!

-Jennifer *hugs*

P.S. A million thanks to IncessantOblivion for edits! Her writing is another inspiration for me – they taught me (at least a little bit) how to write humour. Amazing writer! 3