Tsunade chugged enthusiastically on the cheap alcohol, gasping happily when she finally came up for air. "Man that's good!"

Shizune sighed.

They were sitting at an outdoor bar in some dusty town in the middle of nowhere. There was a small amount of foot traffic, but otherwise they had the street to themselves. They hadn't been there long, but Tsunade was already at the deep end of drunk. Yet another debt for the list.

"That's…" Shizune stopped and started again. "Tsunade-sama, I-"

Tsunade hiccuped.

"I think you should cut back on your drinking."

The cup shattered in Tsunade's hand. The bartender's face drained of blood, the passersby grew silent and a bird flew headfirst into a tree. "I thought I raised you better than this." rasped the Sannin.

"You didn't raise me." Shizune pointed out. "Nor do you have the money to pay for anything you just drank."

"What!" shouted the barkeep.

"I'm not going to lecture you on your health, since I know you can just heal the damage to your liver before anything permanent happens. Our debts are just getting too out of control."

"Are not!" slurred Tsunade. "They're so under control they're virtually my sex slaves!"

Shizune told her how much they owed. Another bird flew into the tree.

"Holy crap!" croaked Tsunade. "That's… How-?"

"The booze."

"Oh."

"I'm sorry to say this master," Shizune was now gritting her teeth. "But you're going to have to start offering medical services."

There was a long, tense silence.

"...No." said Tsunade finally. "Never again."

"How can you say that?" exploded Shizune. She leapt to her feet, sending her stool skidding across the ground. "Aren't we med-nin? Is it not our duty to save lives? If someone is dying and we choose not to save them, how is that any different from killing them ourselves?"

Yet again, a bird flew into the tree.

"Okay, why does that keep happening?" Shizune shouted.

"Please keep your voice down," said a new, calm presence. "You're not the only people here."

Somehow, the blond young man had gone unnoticed throughout their entire exchange. He had a laser pointer in his hand that he was aiming at passing birds; mostly they just swerved in brief drunken spirals as he blinded them, but sooner or later he would score his fourth goal. Beside him, a dark haired young man read a scroll on obscure chakra control exercises whilst munching on a cheese and tomato sandwich.

"How could you do that to those innocent creatures?" demanded Shizune. Another bird crashed into the tree. "Stop that right now!"

"...Fine." He was pouting, as though she was the unreasonable one. He threw the laser pointer over his shoulder, where it hit an innocent bystander on the back of the head. "You know, I heard what you were talking about earlier. I think you're seriously misunderstanding the roles of med-nin."

"What would you know about... Stop that! That's disgusting!" The blond had begun to pick his nose insolently, growing bored with what she was saying. The dark haired young man with the sandwich kept snickering and glancing at them out the corner of his eye. Bastard.

"Let's put it this way. Which do you think is more important, the 'med' or the 'nin'."

"I-"

"Obviously, it's the 'nin'. Everything you learn as a ninja, no matter how you try to swing it, is learned with ultimate goal of turning you into a more efficient killing machine." He grabbed a chicken from under the nose of a nearby shopkeeper. "Observe."

His hand wrapped in the light of a Chakra Scalpel, he beheaded the bird in one smooth motion.

Some of the blood landed on Shizune's face. "...Why? Why would you-?"

"Because I'm a big fan of visual aids." The blond abruptly hurled the headless corpse into the air. "Catch!" Briefly turning from his food, the dark haired boy spat a fireball that perfectly blasted the chicken out of the air. "High score!" The pair exchanged a juvenile fist bump.

"You… You little monster!" snarled Shizune. Tsunade had been very quiet since the first sight of blood. "How dare you carelessly ruin an innocent life!"

"It was a chicken. You were eating some literally minutes before we started talking."

"That's not the same thing! Who the hell are you anyway?"

"I am Frank!" Dark clouds gathered in the sky, lightning crashed and the dark haired young man sped through hand seals for his localised, pointless and incredibly cool atmospheric jutsu. "Chief Warlock of the Brothers of Darkness!"

Shizune blinked. "What's a warlock?"

"Basically a jack of all trades in regards to my family techniques."

"The Brothers of Darkness?"

"Warlocks that dual-class as med-nin."

"Why-?"

"Because it's cool, okay."

"What sort of a name is Frank?" wondered the store owner.

"Coming up with fake names is hard." shrugged the blond. "It was the first one that came to mind."

"Then can I be Igor?" These were the first words the second boy had uttered. "I want a fake name too."

The blond frowned. "Why Igor?"

"I just like the way it bounces around the mouth before leaving it."

"Okay, sure." He paused, then blinked in confusion. "I've completely forgotten what I was supposed to be doing."

"The real estate, Doctor." Igor was still not giving them his full attention. His had started fiddling with the exercises in his scroll, which seemed to involve using fire to create a perfect replica of his face over his right hand. He had managed the the mouth, which copied his movements when he talked, but everytime he tried to make a decent nose it kept growing teeth in odd places.

"Oh, right!" Frank pulled an enormous storage scroll out of goddamn nowhere and dropped it on the counter. "I'm here to buy your house!"

"...What?" Shizune finally realised how pale Tsunade had become. Her eyes were scrunched up, her face was averted from the bloodstains and she had ever so slightly begun to shake. "Why should I… why should sell my family estate to… to…" She swallowed heavily. "To someone like you?"

"Because you have incurred the biggest debt in the history of drunken gamblers." said Frank frankly. "I have several million ryo here to buy it with, and from what I heard you saying earlier you're not in a position to refuse."

Tsunade gritted her teeth and opened her eyes long enough to shoot him a glare. "The day I sell you my ancestral home is the day my team has a reunion over barbeque."

Frank cocked his head. "Really?"

There something about the serious, contemplative manner in which he said this that made her do a double take, but she was interrupted before she could think about it too hard.

"Everybody freeze!" An enormous number of military personnel now filled the street, directing various pointy instruments at the foursome at the bar. "The two of you are under arrest for crimes against the state!"

"I knew it!" shouted Shizune; she leapt to her feet before the man could explain himself. "I knew the two of were up to no good!"

Frank blinked and pointed at himself quizzically. "Moi?" Behind him, Igor went back to his sandwich.

"A despicable man like you…" Here she adopted a fighting pose and revealed a senbon launcher from beneath her sleeve. "I'll kill you myself!"

In one smooth movement, Frank grabbed a middle aged man from the crowd of spectators and used him as a human shield. About eighty needles hit him with enough force to knock the blonde behind him back a few feet. Not even the massive gouts of blood could hide how thickly they clustered on his chest.

"Holy fucking shit!" screamed the barman, who staggered backwards so hard he hit his head on a shelf and knocked himself out.

"Wow." said Frank. "Brutal." He allowed the body to hit the floor.

"...What?" Shizune had frozen in her melodramatic senbon shooting pose. "That's… But… I didn't…"

"The look on your face is a memory I shall cherish forever."

"Poppa?" All eyes went to a small boy at the edge of the crowd, his large eyes misting rapidly. "Poppa?"

"Hah." snorted Igor. "Classic."

"Are you going to kill him too?" asked Frank politely. Shizune had fallen to her knees, and was staring hollowly at the man's corpse. "Or can I go ahead?"

"...Shizune?" Her mentor's face could not be described with words. The man's blood had reached far enough to hit her in the face. "This is corn syrup."

"...What?"

"Looks like the jig is up." grunted Frank. He ruffled the boy's hair. "Good job with the fake tears."

"Thanks." The boy's eyes were now totally dry. "I had fun."

"I… That's…" Shizune seemed quite overcome with disbelief. "Why would you even-?"

"I'll tell you why!" The perforated bystander hopped to his feet, scaring the crap out of everyone nearby. "Because of vengeance!"

"He came back from the dead!" squealed Shizune, backpedaling so hard she almost knocked her mentor off her stool. "Holy crap he came back from the dead!"

"Three years ago you drank all the liquor in my pub and refused to pay," the man snarled. "Now I have nothing. My establishment was repossessed, my wife ran off with a younger man and my family disowned me for losing my grandfather's legacy. That pub was in my family for generations you bitch!"

"N-now hold on!" Clearly, Tsunade did not expect to suddenly be held accountable for her actions. "That wasn't my fault!"

"Oh, so someone forced you to gamble and drink your way across the country, is that right?" This outburst had clearly been building for quite some time. "Or could you be referring to the loss of your family? Well newsflash blondie, but you're not the only person to ever lose someone! Yes, you can mourn, but then you GET OVER IT like a GODDAMN ADULT instead of dragging everyone else into your downward spiral." Tsunade opened her mouth to respond. "No! Shut up! You don't get to talk! It's my turn! And I have something I've wanted to say to you for the past three years!"

The crowd watched in tense silence. It was quite apparent that they all wanted to see what came next.

"When you die and reunite with your loved ones," the man asked coldly. "How exactly do you think they'll react to the fact that you've turned your skills to ruining lives instead of saving them?" Grabbing his son's hand, the man turned on his heel and left.

The atmosphere had frozen. The horrified masses were stunned into silence, while Tsunade stared into the distance and her jaw worked soundlessly. Shizune just watched miserably, unable to refute anything the man had said. Frank glanced back and forth, feeling the situation was missing something.

He started to clap.

After a few moments someone joined in. As the the noise spread people began to cheer, until the whole town shook with riotous applause. "That was the most awesome guy ever!" someone screamed hysterically.

Because no matter how hot you think you are, someday, somehow, someone will call you out on your bullshit.

"Alright, everybody calm down." It took a while for the forgotten military dude to regain order, but he managed it. "As I was saying, the two of you are now under arrest."

"Why?" This was asked totally seriously, as if he hadn't spent the last five minutes causing ruthless emotional injury to a pair of doctors. "What did we do?"

"Not you," said the policemen. "Them."

"Us?" Tsunade jumped to her feet. "What did we do?"

"Your debts have grown to be a national problem. The both of you are a menace to society."

She snorted. "In what country?"

"All of them."

"Oh…"

"Okay, hold the phone." Frank had risen to his feet, and behind him Igor was packing up his things. This was their first clue that shit was about to go sideways. "I'm afraid I can't let you arrest them."

Even the med-nin looked surprised.

"What?" blinked policeman. "Why not?"

"Because they have something I need." Frank glanced at them over his shoulder. "And until I have it, I can't afford to let them just disappear off the grid."

"Ignoring the fact that you just threatened to obstruct the law, there are a lot more of us than there are of you." The man had now fully shifted gears into 'cocky asshole' mode. "How exactly are you planning to stop us?"

Frank seemed to ponder this. Igor had finished getting ready and was making frantic hand signals at Tsunade and Shizune. "Well for starters, I'm going to throw this smoke bomb at you."

It was hilarious, really, how little civilians were prepared for smoke bombs. The street was flooded with irritating smoke before one heartbeat had moved on to the next, which was almost as much time as it took for Tsunade to grab Shizune and run for it.

Oddly enough, she didn't feel nearly as bad as she should have for leaving the annoying young men alone. She could imagine them now, hands in cuffs and being locked-

Her happy thoughts were interrupted as she suddenly lost control of her chakra, barely avoiding landing on Shizune as they tumbled to the ground. A cloud of dust and debris puffed into the air as they landed, the way the pavement crumpled causing her to reflexively ball a fist in anticipation of a weight joke.

"Not so tough without your chakra, are you?" The speaker was another militia officer, whose men were now moving to surround them. They had been brought down in a pointlessly large courtyard, which if her sense of direction was right should have been at the edge of town. "Scattering so many of these chakra nullifying fields was definitely worth the cost."

Tsunade dragged her disciple to her feet, glaring at the officer and trying to act like he was the bad guy. "So you really think a cheap trick like this is enough to take me down?"

"Of course," nodded the officer, who was clearly one of the more reasonable people she had met today. "Every trick you ninjas have is, in one fashion or another, dependent on chakra. Your jutsu, your seals, your gadgets and even physical capabilities are all fueled by the same resource. Now that we have cut you off from that resource your abilities are worth nothing." He spread his hands in an earnest plea for surrender. "Honestly, without chakra, what do you have?"

"We have a catapult."

"Holy crap!" Shizune dramatically recoiled from the annoying blonde, who had appeared a some point when they weren't looking. "How long have you been here?"

"Since always."

"Doctor?" A few steps behind Frank stood Igor, who did indeed have a giant ridiculous catapult to his left. Part of the town's defenses, perhaps. "When should I fire?"

"I think that 'now' has a good feel to it. Fire now."

The dark haired young man whipped out a kunai and cut an important looking rope on his siege weapon. The payload was launched clear into the countryside, at which point it became clear they had tied a rope around it and left the end coiled on the ground. The two boys were each holding onto it along its length, and would soon be dragged along into the sky. Frank held out the end of the rope.

"Want to come along?"

Tsunade narrowed her eyes. "No."

"Okay, fair enough."

Frank looked at Tsunade.

Tsunade looked at Frank.

Frank held out the rope.

Tsunade took the rope and grabbed Shizune with her free hand.

"I hate you."

"I know."

With a squeal from Shizune, a sigh from Tsunade and an enthusiastic "I! CAN! FLY!" from Igor the group hurtled into the sky. The courtyard and its shocked inhabitants faded into dots, the town into a smudge on the horizon. Gravity disappeared, trees and grass zipped by underneath them and even after their chakra reasserted itself their stomachs still floated queasily within their torsos. Then someone shouted "Brace for impact!" and they hit the dirt, opening a massive crater in the side of an innocent mountain. Battered, bruised and in dire need of a bath, they pulled their tired bodies out of the ground.

"Everyone," said Frank. "I think we're in the clear."

An ear shattering explosion shook the earth as a fireball the size of a house struck the ground. It had landed dangerously close, and only Tsunade managed to remain standing. "What now?" she snarled.

"Mass ninjutsu." said Frank. He pointed to a large crowd far enough away to blur together, running their way from the direction of their getaway. "They must have been posted outside the walls as a last line of defence."

"What are we going to do?" panicked Shizune. "We can't fight law enforcement! This is-"

"I have an idea!" shouted Igor. He pointed at a tiny hole in the mountainside. "I made this cave look smaller using genjutsu. We can escape through here!"

Shizune frowned. "Are you sure-"

A second explosion went off, this time closer than the first. "Now!" Shizune lunged for the tiny hole, hitting her head against the rock and knocking herself out. "Ha. Worth it."

"Is this really the time for childish pranks?" snarled Tsunade.

"It's always the time for childish pranks." argued Frank.

The rock around Shizune's body gave way, and within seconds she had disappeared into the dark cavern.

"A mountain that eats people?" blinked Igor.

"I want one." breathed Frank.

Tsunade shot them her dirtiest look yet. "Aren't you worried about escaping?"

"What's the rush?"

There was another explosion, and Frank's lab coat floated lightly in the breeze.

"That's the rush!" Tsunade hopped down the hole, and the two young men cheerfully followed. Almost before they made it through another explosion echoed out overhead, and with a crash the roof caved in behind them. Igor snapped his fingers, and a merry flame lit the cave. With a groan, Shizune pulled herself to her feet.

"Ugh… What happened?"

"Cave in." said Tsunade. She smoothed back the younger girl's hair and gave her an unusually gentle smile. "Don't worry. It's nothing worth getting worked up about."

"Really?" Frank cocked his head curiously. "Usually people consider being trapped under several metres of rock to be a big deal."

"Then what am I supposed to say?" barked Tsunade, her mood souring all over again. "Just tempt fate again like you just did?" She flung her hands in the air and began to speak in a sarcastic high pitch. "Oh goody, we finally got away from the bad men! We're safe, we're sound, and nothing could possibly go wrong!"

"I'm surprised, Tsunade." They all jumped at the unfamiliar voice. Electric lights on the ceiling began to flicker on one by one, illuminating a long dark corridor they hadn't realised they were at the entrance off. At the end, a tall, pale figure with long, dark hair slowly walked out of the darkness. "After all," sneered Orochimaru. "I thought only Jiraiya was trying to hunt me down."

There was a long, awkward pause. "So…" said Igor finally. "Tempting fate, huh?"

"You're Orochimaru?" Frank separated from the group, stepping down the corridor to stand face to face with the missing nin. His gaze was intense and unwavering. "As in mad scientist?"

Orochimaru gave him a cold smile. "And if I am?"

Frank pulled out a pen and notepad from inside his coat. "Can I have your autograph?" he asked politely. "I am such a fan."

"...What?"