Author's Note: To those about to read this I warn that this is a side fic of "Minato Namikaze and the Destroyer of Worlds" and if you haven't read that you'll be a little confused, more it's also NOT CANON.

It was a weird feeling, being a lone wolf again, or so Jiraiya thought to himself even as he stepped back into the village, the guards at the gate nodding towards him once in acknowledgement after he mumbled out his memorized identification number (not that that's much more than a pretense these days, everyone knows who Jiraiya of the sannin is). Of course, he hadn't technically been a sensei, an official sensei, for that long. Lee and Minato, there was no real pretense of holding them back through the ranks and any attempt to would just be sad a little misguided.

As a result, with the chunin exams come and now gone, the team had been more or less split apart, only Minato under his direct supervision as a chunin apprentice while Lee and Haru scattered to the wind.

So really, it'd only been a year, although there had been the years before that with those orphans in Ame, but some poor bastards were jonin senseis much longer than that. In fact, it was expected, it was a rare thing for any one student to pass their exams within the first year, let alone two out of the three. Comparitively speaking, Jiraiya had barely been a jonin sensei, he'd taught those brats in Ame for longer than he'd taught team seven.

All the same, all the same he felt, well, it wasn't like he felt adrift but more… nervous, out on a mission by himself, lurking at the edges of foreign villages with an eat shit grin on his face and a lady in one arm, he didn't look for them but instinctively he would check for his chakra and it would itch at him that none of them were there. A constant nagging sensation that he couldn't quite rid himself of even as the week stretched by.

Minato had been left behind, given a small break, but soon enough Jiraiya would be taking him on the road and out to see the world and all it had to offer. You couldn't really know your own village, Jiraiya felt, until you'd seen everybody else's. For now, though, it'd been a while since Jiraiya had done any information gathering, and it was time he'd done it.

Although, and was it sad that he was thinking this, he was glad that at least he'd have Minato with him. For a while too, the jump from chunin to jonin wasn't so casually made. And maybe, maybe then missions would be less… strange.

He sighed as he stepped inside of the village, making his way towards the hokage tower, wondering if his latest intel even warranted a direct meeting with sensei. Probably not, things were… Well, not calm, but unsurprising. Kiri was still hurting desperately from the second war, as the chunin exams had shown quite aptly, Suna picking up the pieces likewise, Kumo still slavering away like a mad dog for Konoha's blood limits, Iwa run into the ground by that bastard of a kage like it always had been, and the smaller villages just trying to hang on in the meantime. The most exciting bits of gossip, honestly, were all gossip in reaction to the eternal question of what the hell is going on in Konoha today.

Such as, how had the shodaime and nidaime hokages risen from the dead? Had they risen from the dead or was this a strange propaganda ploy? If they had, then was Orochimaru of the sannin responsible? Could more be brought back and if so why hadn't they yet, why were they not seeing warriors dead and gone from the great clans walking among the living? Was there some hidden repercussion to this technique that they couldn't name? And if it wasn't Orochimaru responsible, then who else would be capable of perfecting the nidaime's edo tensei, if that was what it was at all?

And then of course, who the hell was Eru Lee and where was the Eru clan?

Of course, the answer to this, to all of this, the mind boggling answer that no one seemed to have stumbled upon, was Eru Lee. Just that, Eru Lee of Konohagakure, for any and every reason.

But then, even if their spies, hidden among Konoha's civilian population with clever disguises, or else just outside the village as they tried to sink their hooks into shinobi passing through, could not dare to believe or say this to their own villages. It simply was that absurd, but then, that was Eru Lee for you, continually blowing everyone's mind.

His lips instinctively twitched into a fond smile, a laugh bubbling up from his throat, when a great pillar of light appeared halfway across the village, from the direction of the training fields. And even without going into sage mode it felt as if the universe itself were opening, no, not opening, like there was suddenly a great rift there like a bolt of lightning across the sky. A rift in time, space, matter, into the heart and source of all chakra and life itself, everything, all elements, even gravity bending towards this great towering pillar of white light.

Jiraiya barely noticed as everyone from chunin to jonin began sprinting across rooftops, the sensors dropping to the earth, holding their heads and ducking as if an exploding seal had just ignited next to their head.

Instead he slowed down until he was stopping, felt the smile fade from his lips, and let out a long suffering, entirely too long suffering, sigh.

"I leave her alone for a week," he muttered to himself.

Well, goddammit, it seemed like he'd be going to see the hokage after all.

It was the usual crowd, and by the usual crowd he meant the usual crowd summoned whenever Lee so much as sneezed. This consisted of a rather battered and dazed looking Haru, even now readjusting his sunglasses and trying to calm down his hair which had been blown back from his face, a somewhat more put together and more sheepish Minato who at least had the decency to look embarrassed by all of this, an almost morbidly fascinated shodaime hokage, a somehow irately awed nidaime hokage, Jiraiya's old sensei the current hokage who looked like he'd been hoping for a day without paperwork, and to top it all off a rather put upon and completely oblivious Eru Lee who looked like she had absolutely no idea why she'd be called into the hokage's office for something as unimportant as almost blowing up the village singlehandedly.

And, like usual, they were all talking over each other.

Well, strike that, it was always Senju Tobirama and Lee talking over each other.

Jiraiya might have been too young to know the nidaime properly, more the man had been two senseis removed from him, and a kage on top of that, Jiraiya had been dead last, there hadn't been time to get to know him before he'd died. Still, he'd always been so imposing, so stoic, like Orochimaru but… More so.

Orochimaru had a temper, a rather strong biting one, and he liked to think he made rational logical decisions unbiased by his own emotions but the truth was that he was as petty a bastard as the rest of them. And he held grudges, he held long grudges, long past the point that they were any use to anybody. Orochimaru just didn't like to think that, and he didn't want anyone else thinking it about him either.

The nidaime had a temper but it while it was cold like Orochimaru's it had seemed more practical, like a pen knife, one that he honed with his wit and his strategic mind until it was another tool in his arsenal like any other.

It was acknowledged by basically everyone, even the Uchiha clan, that although Senju Hashirama had been the force that had brought the village into reality, had brought peace between the Senju and Uchiha after centuries of warfare, it was Senju Tobirama who built the village itself.

Either way, the ten-year-old Jiraiya, scared and awed shitless by the nidaime hokage, would never in a million years picture the way the man could passionately bicker with a twelve year old girl.

And secretly, deep down in his heart, as Lee spat right back at him in that stubborn mulish way she always did, Jiraiya thought the man had a perverse love for it. And here was a horrible, horrible thought, if Lee was ten years older, or the nidaime instead her age, he'd have said they had some real chemistry going… He really had to stop his subconscious from matchmaking without his permission.

"Look," Lee said, raising her hands in protest, as she always did, "I just think it's all about perspective…"

Naturally the nidaime scathingly interrupted, "Perspective? You do realize half the village thought we were under attack, the older ones that the Kyuubi had escaped imprisonment and somehow given birth to triplets!"

Jiraiya watched as his old sensei placed his face into one hand, removing his hat even as he rubbed at his temples with a great heaving sigh.

"I have raised the dead, multiple times," Lee pointed out, "And risen from the dead, on more than one occasion, with no averse effects I might add. And we've always known that I had a lot of chakra to spare…"

"That was not, as you put it so eloquently, a lot of chakra," the nidaime hissed out, "It felt like reality itself had been torn in two!"

"Well maybe it had," Lee said, throwing her hands in the air, she then turned towards Minato, "Minato, haven't I been telling everyone that the universe has been falling apart for ages?"

"You do mention it frequently," Minato conceded, though carefully avoiding saying that he himself believed anything but, like all the other sane people who ignored Lee's constant doomsday prophecies.

"Right, besides, that wasn't falling apart that was… You said to put some effort into it!" Lee accused, pointing back to the nidaime now as if her pointed finger alone could place the blame upon his shoulders.

"No, I told you, to learn your goddamn hand seals like a normal human being and not an act of god," the nidaime said before motioning to Haru who looked like he'd been hoping he'd be forgotten in all of this, "I told Haru, to put more chakra into it."

Lee scoffed, openly laughed, much to Haru's grimace, "Dead Last, he doesn't have any chakra to spare! It all goes to his swirly eyes."

"Why on earth did you think I meant you?"

"Well, I thought we were doing the teaching thing. You were talking about elemental jutsus, and then we were doing said elemental jutsus, then you said to put more chakra into it and…"

Before Senju Tobirama could interrupt and add back in that this was not what he meant, that everyone and their mother knew that Lee had probably inconceivably mastered every elemental jutsu known to man without even trying, and that if anything she should put less chakra into everything his brother opened his mouth and noted, "Well, it was very… impressive. How did you… What exactly was it?"

Lee blinked, turned the shodaime, and asked, "Huh?"

The shodaime explained with a small hand gesture, "Well, there was the light, and you're speaking of your own chakra and thus your own element but it felt more… Well, more like senchakra if I'm being honest."

Then with a rather sheepish grin of his own he said, "It's, well, it's part of what makes mokuton what it is. Without it, likely it'd just be mud, trees need light and life, more than simple elements. Only… Only I've never felt anything close to that much of it, I didn't think it could be done."

"It can't, that much senchakra would destroy a normal, mortal, human being," Tobirama said with a sigh and a rather accusing glance towards Lee who only blinked back and then grinned. There was almost an obligatory awkward silence, that too, was almost tradition for this sort of meeting.

"So… Is that it?" Lee asked, clapping her hands together and looking at her audience.

"Lee," Minato said, really more sighed, as he tried to chide her into having a little more tact but it was a lost cause, ramen was likely on the mind.

"What, we do this every time and this is usually around the time it wraps up. The silence is a good sign," Lee noted in her usual blunt manner.

Jiraiya, for the first time, opened his mouth, "Lee-chan, the silence is not a good sign."

Lee didn't seem to care one way or another, and sadly, no one else did either. Everyone knew that this was the dismissal sign, that Lee wasn't wrong, that any minute now the kids at least would be sent packing and then Jiraiya and the rest of the adults would sit here, and bicker, and classify, and try to figure out what the hell to do next.

Honestly, that this was a routine now was just… sad.

"Right, well, as you can imagine, I have some paperwork," the hokage said, "Eru Lee, you're being docked pay."

"What?!" Lee cried out, her eyes comically wide as she stepped forward in earnestness, "But I…"

"You're a chunin now, you can afford it, more, you also can afford to be subtler. You've turned my village into a battlefield, and now I'll get to hear for the next six months, from every other village, how we have some god forsaken chakra cannon. If my constant reprimands mean nothing to you, then maybe this will," Sarutobi-sensei easily said over her protestations.

Lee opened her mouth, closed it, stared at him, then offered him a rather curt and short bow apparently having realized that this was one of those moments where it was best to hold her tongue.

"Now, with that, Namikaze, Eru, Matsuda, you all may leave and return to your training. I expect you'll be wanting to pick up a few D-ranks and earn yourself some extra cash," the hokage suggested even as the three made their way out the door, Lee slumping before she was even out of sight, likely preparing to rant her woes to a more or less unsympathetic Minato.

Wordlessly the rest of them pulled closer to the hokage's desk, Jiraiya pulling up a seat, and with a sigh, he said, "Well, I'm guessing we might as well add that to the list."

"I am running out of room on the list," Sarutobi-sensei griped, but none the less, he brought out the summary of Lee's file, flipping towards the section with her created jutsus, which, sadly, was almost overflowing at this point.

Yes, the truly terrifying or sad or terrifyingly sad part of all of this, was not how often it happened, or even the implications of each of these events, but rather, how it all seemed to become routine. More, how inside, internally, Jiraiya could almost breathe a sigh of relief, because if Lee was almost blowing up her own village, that meant all was right with the world.

Author's Note: Written for the 1600th review of "October" by GorgonSayanera who asked for a fic where the nidaime trains team seven in elemental jutsus while Jiraiya's on a mission and Lee does the overpowered ridiculous thing she usually does and hiliarity, and reactions, ensue. The sad thing is, even Lee's godlike abilities, at this point, well... It's almost passe, I mean, Lee, you've just done this so much it doesn't have the same effect anymore, does it?

Thanks to readers, reviews are much appreciated.

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or Harry Potter