A Fork in the Road

"He wasn't a hero,

Known by the world.

But a hero he was,

To his little girl."

(Memories of My Dad, R.D. Cook)

In which Jiraiya returns from his mission and suffers from both hearing problems and bizarre hallucinations, Orochimaru continues adjusting to being a father to significantly more children than he initially planned, and Tsunade laughs at both of their misfortune.

Everything is an unholy mess. Orochimaru paused, intentionally discarding that line of thought; no need to be melodramatic. Things were finally slowing down and stabilizing, after all.

Sweet, sweet equilibrium, he savored the idea.

He stood in his new office, in the building he had been convinced to appropriate and turn into his place of residence. The office was an expansive room, with walls and carpet colored in tasteful shades of green. It was largely empty of furniture: four dark brown sofas, a pair hugging each wall, and a sturdy wood table, over which Orochimaru was currently looming, his expression ominous. Said office was located at the center of a relatively nondescript apartment building, close to the center of the village proper. A building that had unusually reinforced walls and discreet escape tunnels into Konoha's sewer system...

The renovation was going well, so far.

The building was slowly becoming a mixture of dormitory, for 'former' Root shinobi, and orphanage for the children that had been Root trainees. Several lower floors had already been converted into a large nursery and daycare center.

Bouncing a happily squealing three year old on his hip, a second child clinging to his right leg and contentedly chewing on a plush kunai, Orochimaru scowled at the paperwork scattered over his desk. He was rapidly reaching the end of his rope with this nonsense. "Furniture colors?! Safety precautions, fine. Emergency exits— great. But they want to set a color scheme? There must be someone I can delegate this tripe to." Or someone he could hire to handle it; some of these requests were ridiculous. "Maybe it's time to invest in a personal assistant, like Tsunade said..."

Of course, those three were far from the only occupants of the room. A blank-faced girl in an ANBU-inspired uniform stood beside an open window. An additional four toddlers were sprawled next to her, babbling at each other, chubby arms waving as if to emphasize a point. Occasionally, one would toddle over to the center of the room and retrieve one of the myriad of shinobi-inspired toys scattered there.

Then there were the older, more paranoid and withdrawn ex-Root operatives. The former bodyguards of Danzo now watched over Orochimaru and his charges. All of his charges present in the building, at least. There was a handful lurking in the rafters.

Finally, as an extra layer of protection, over a dozen snake summons were concealed in the room. Most were under discreet genjutsu, a measure necessary to keep them free from any grabby little hands.

"Orochimaru-sama..." The one teenage ninja actually visible in the room hesitated for a moment— Root conditioning had proven difficult to break, even after months of intense therapy and the removal of several questionable suppression seals. "What is the purpose of this extensive monitoring?"

The serpent sannin glanced up at the question, staring at the girl, trying to recall— operative seventeen, squad C. What name did she choose..? "Well, Maki-chan. Group play like this allows for social development. Also, positive interactions between children and their caretakers are vital during infancy and very early childhood, particularly for emotional and mental health. As for why we are watching them... they will inevitably make a mess or injure themselves if left to their own devices."

He pushed a stack of half-completed records out of reach of the child currently on his hip and playfully tickled the toddler when he made whining noises. "No, little minion. Boring paperwork is not a toy."

Glancing back to Maki, he considered... The girl had volunteered for this duty. "Would you like for me to provide a book on childhood development?"

"It would make me more efficient at this mission, Orochimaru-sama."

"Then I shall arrange to have appropriate reading material delivered to your dormitory. If you have further questions, Tsunade-hime would doubtlessly enjoy discussing the topic."

By the time Jiraiya arrived two hours later, having been dragged to the building by an impatient Tsunade barely two hours after arriving in the village from a long-term reconnaissance mission, Orochimaru had abandoned the pretense of doing paperwork entirely. He'd sent for one of his more workaholic subordinates that handled administrative work in R&D and told him to complete it.

Instead, the dark-haired man was occupying one of the couches, half a dozen toddlers listening attentively as he read The Littlest Ninja out loud. Most of them were cuddling together on the couch, but a particularly possessive one had somehow climbed up on Orochimaru's shoulders. The little girl was clinging to the sannin's neck with one arm while chewing on the tail of a plush snake held in the other.

Jiraiya blinked, rubbing at his eyes muttering something about excessive fatigue, and then stared for another ten seconds before trying to cancel a genjutsu. "K-kai!" Unfortunately for Jiraiya, all that accomplished was irritating a mass of poisonous snake summons—who promptly recast their genjutsu, and chasing one of the hidden ex-Root watchers out of the room.

Jiraiya goggled. "Tsunade-hime. I have an important question. Have I been so obnoxious that you've dosed me with a potent hallucinogen?"

"Not recently."

"...Is that Orochimaru, or has he been replaced by a lookalike?"

"That's Orochimaru. I did tell you, he's essentially running a massive foster home due to Danzo's... permanent retirement."

"Someone forced our antisocial, sociopathic teammate to be in charge of children?!" Jiraiya choked out, looking increasingly dazed.

"Oh, no. He volunteered. Of his own free will. While completely sober... I think Sensei thought it would be good for him."

"Are you sure nobody has laced the air with some sort of drug?"

"Positive."

The sannin under discussion, having finished reading the picture book and placed it aside, shooed the children off of the couch. Reaching back, Orochimaru caught the toddler sitting on his shoulders by the back of her purple overalls. The little girl squirmed in response and shouted gleefully, "Book! Dada, wanna book!"

Expression stoic, he carefully placed her on the floor, replying, "Maybe later, Ruri-chan. Right now it's time for lunch." And turning to address his assistant of the day— "Maki-chan, take them over to the dining area. Have Kenji-kun help you with feeding them."

The girl in question herded the toddlers out of the room with a surprising amount of success, although Ruri-chan had to be picked up and carried out— she'd started wailing for 'Dada.'

And so, the Sannin were left in relative privacy.

Rising from the couch, Orochimaru retrieved the picture book, and strode past Jiraiya and Tsunade, placing it back into his desk. "Something you wanted, Tsunade-hime?" He asked casually, though he knew perfectly well why she's here.

She smiled beatifically in reply. "Nothing I haven't already achieved."

Jiraiya continued gaping at the door the children had disappeared into. Eventually, he gathered his wits enough to ask, "Orochimaru-teme... Did that child just call you Dada? You?"

"Is it not a common enough term for young children to apply to their guardian?" Orochimaru's tone is deceptively light, "Certainly better than Mama, in this case."

Jiraiya keeled over in a dead faint, causing Tsunade to cackle like a hyena. Orochimaru merely smirked, and waited for his two friends to recover.

They had to decide where to eat for lunch, after all.

Finally, the muse is back! Consider this a direct sequel to the previous chapter... This scene just popped into my head this morning.