Jiraya: Contemplation

It wasn't that Jiraya had anything against geniuses; Minato-kun had been a genius after all and the blond had been like a son to him. What he didn't like was arrogance and people who thought that being more perceptive of their surroundings or quicker to learn things meant they were somehow better than everybody else. Because it really didn't. Jiraya was doing his best to reserve judgement where his new apprentice was concerned, but it was very hard. The young Uchiha came across as aloof, proud and slightly disrespectful, which hurt because the Toad Sage was constantly being reminded of how Orochimaru had been back before everything had gone wrong.

Careful, sustained observation and a few prods however revealed that rather than having a natural shinobi mindset like Orochimaru, Sasuke was just very, very reserved and really didn't like unstructured social interaction. Jiraya suspected that was half a result of the trauma the boy had suffered when Itachi and Madara slew the Uchiha Clan –and damn if he wasn't pissed at Danzou over that happening– and half due to the god-awful fangirl behaviour that had gradually been allowed to take root in the Academy. Sasuke hadn't had any friends before the massacre and afterwards hadn't been in any shape to make them.

His team-mates had managed to achieve the impossible and break him out of his shell, with a bit of help from Kakashi's charming young bride, but the net result was that Jiraya had a socially deficient but highly intelligent pre-teen on his hands. The only saving grace was that Sasuke was fiercely self-motivated, knew where his problem areas were and didn't seem to care that his new shishou was spending all of his time following up leads rather than training him.

Jiraya would have felt guiltier about that had Sasuke not had access to a perfectly capable teacher of his own and an apparently endless reserve of training exercises to work on when not being taught.

Despite deliberately playing up his goofy image and being a self aware if unrepentant pervert, Jiraya was not remotely near as careless as he appeared to be with the wellbeing of his student. He'd set a tracker toad to watch Sasuke right after parting ways with the boy on their first day in Toshiya-gai and listened intently to its reports every evening before turning in.

That Sasuke's Crow Contract included the mythical tengu came as a surprise to the Toad Sage, but the bird-youkai teaching the boy genjutsu seemed to have a knack for motivating the Uchiha so Jiraya let it be. Especially considering the tengu had instantly spotted the toad watching his student from the guttering but said nothing to the boy about it.

Refraining from commenting about the regular visits to the town's most reputable teahouse was exponentially more difficult for Jiraya, but the experienced shinobi could see his apprentice improving his social and observational skills with every visit and had no intention of sabotaging that progress. There's be plenty more opportunities in the future to tease the brat once the Uchiha was comfortable enough in himself not to take it the wrong way.

Jiraya admittedly had known absolutely nothing about the Crow Summons before discovering that Sasuke had signed their contract, so the day after that first, startling report he had summoned Fukagasu and asked the old sage about the other clan. It turned out that the Toad Elder didn't know much about the Crows either as the Karasu Clan were highly reclusive, but what he did know gave Jiraya a starting point.

Firstly, the Crows included both the true corvids and the tengu. The former never got larger than goose-sized and were cunning rather than truly intelligent, but they were smart enough to spy and steal without attracting attention. The tengu were divided into konoha-tengu, who followed the usual summons' tendency to get much larger than their normal animal equivalent and be as smart as the average civilian; and daitengu, who were actually a breed of true demons rather than conventional summons and wore a humanoid form. Tengu lived in pine forests on high mountains and had a strict ranking system, with each of the ranked daitengu having their own little court of followers. The courts all served the Tengu Clan Leader, but had considerable independence and leeway and could even issue separate and limited summons contracts of their own.

Being armed with the name of Sasuke's tengu genjutsu tutor, Jiraya learned that Ajari was the lowest ranking daitengu, whose court consisted mostly of true crows and konoha-tengu. He was a capable illusionaist and a sneaky trickster, but by tengu standards he was easygoing, forgiving and oddly lacking in ambition. By human standards he was as touchy as an old-school samurai or shinobi clan elder, ten times as powerful as any jounin could dream of becoming and nightmarishly inventive in doling out retribution.

At least that was how Fukagasu said that rumour painted him. The tengu's territory was on the border of the crow clan's lands, so he was one of the better-known Crow Lords. That Sasuke called him 'Ajari-dono' was telling in itself, as the brat was stingy with his honorifics.

Slightly after six weeks after arriving in Toshiya-gai, Jiraya finally hit pay-dirt: his old kunoichi team-mate was in Tanzaku-gai, barely three days' walk away. It was a fantastic stroke of good luck, so the Toad Sage immediately tracked down his apprentice –who was practicing kenjutsu in the woods outside the twon– and dragged him off down the road at once. They never left anything in their hotel during the day and had not paid for more than one night at a time, so there was nothing to collect and no bills to pay.

However Jiraya got a shock when at about mid-afternoon the tengu summoned itself to Sasuke's side and briskly ordered the genin to start practicing his genjutsu.

"I don't believe we've been introduced," Jiraya said amiably once he'd recovered his composure. Fukagasu had insisted that manners and decorum were very important to tengu, so he would have to refrain from clowning around in their presence if he wanted to avoid offending them. "I am Jiraya of the Densetsu no Sannin, student of the Professor, Toad Sage of Mount Myoboku."

"Greetings, Jiraya-san," the tengu said with a toothy grin. "I am Ajari, Lord of Higo and guardian of mount Aso, Gatekeeper of the Crows." He then turned his gaze back to Sasuke, prompting the brat to instantly start focusing his chakra.

Jiraya studied the summons cautiously. Ajari was lean with medium-length feathery black hair that spiked dramatically around his head, a rather long but not grossly comedic nose, bloody crimson eyes, aristocratically fair skin and rather pointy ears. He worse sumptuous samurai garb, baggy hitatare and a fabulously wide-sleeved haori in iridescent purple-green-black silk decorated with large circular white crests featuring a pine tree, a mountain and a castle gatehouse. Jiraya guessed the tree and mountain might be universal to all the crows while the gatehouse was specific to Ajari and his subordinates. The summons' feet were bare with clawed nails and balanced easily on four inch tall, single-toothed tengu geta, but even that added height did not bring his eyes quite up to the same level of Jiraya's own.

The only visible weapon the tengu carried was a kama hooked over his obi at his left hip, which looked more like an afterthought than anything else. Glancing past the tengu to his apprentice, Jiraya then noticed that the Uchiha was practicing his genjutsu as ordered… without using handsigns. Or his Sharingan, come to that.

"No handsigns?" he commented mildly, fishing for details. Seal-less jutsu were usually limited to highly specialised chuunin, tokubetsu jounin or jounin.

The tengu snorted, looking down his long nose at the Toad Sage. "Handsigns are a shortcut," he declared loftily. "A master has no need of them and a promising student should not be so handicapped."

Sasuke glanced up to catch Jiraya's eye. "When Ajari-dono saw me using handsigns he spent two weeks teaching me to shape my chakra without them, shishou," the genin said dryly, "then he made me demonstrate the illusions I knew, critiqued them and made me do them all over and over again until he deemed my performance adequate."

"Which only took you another three weeks once you applied yourself," the tengu pointed out briskly. "No slacking off, Sasuke-kotori; I know you are capable of far more than this."

Jiraya shook silently at the hilarity of the fluffy-haired Uchiha heir getting called 'nestling' by his summons, easily ignoring his student's furious glare.

Notes

tengu = crow 'demon' or nature spirits, traditionally depicted with long noses.

Densetsu no Sannin = three ninja of legend.

hitatare = type of formal samurai dress with baggy hakama gathered at the ankle.

haori = kind of kimono coat, usually worn unfastened.

kama = sickle.

A/N: A short chapter, but Jiraya didn't have much to say. I typed this up as a break from Black Sky, the story my Muse is currently pushing hard.