They moved through Amegakure without drawing attention.
After slipping past the outer defenses, no one gave them a second look. Three travelers passing through. Nothing worth stopping. As long as they stayed out of trouble, that held true.
Amegakure shinobi still patrolled the streets and waterways. Whenever one came close, the three adjusted their route without discussion. They had done it enough times that it required no coordination anymore.
At this pace, they would be out of Amegakure and into the Land of Grass within a day.
They were almost clear.
Yuji felt it before he heard it.
A pressure in the air, chakra, radiating from somewhere across the water. Then came the sound: a low concussive roll, dulled by rain and distance, but heavy enough that it wasn't something you dismissed.
Someone was fighting out there.
Sasori and Yuji both felt the chakra from where they stood. Arai's expression shifted the moment it reached him. Whatever was happening out on that lake, the output was not from an ordinary shinobi. The scale of it made that plain without needing to see it.
The three moved toward it.
They stopped at the treeline and looked out.
The lake was a mess of steam. Thick white columns rolled off the water and broke apart in the rain. Large sections of the surface were still visibly boiling.
Two people stood on the water.
On the left: a man with long white hair, wearing wooden clogs, dressed in a way that didn't match the village or the weather or much of anything else. He stood with the kind of ease that came from not having been seriously threatened in a long time.
Across from him: a girl. Young, close to Yuji's age. Her breathing was labored, but she hadn't broken her stance.
"Fire Release," Arai said quietly, reading the steam patterns. "Had to be substantial."
Even in the rain, the lake hadn't cooled.
But none of them mistook this for a real fight. The man wasn't trying to end it. He was pushing her, putting enough pressure on her that she had to respond with everything she had.
The girl recovered and came forward again.
She moved fast across the water, hands already cycling through signs, and paper erupted around her, dozens of folded sheets spinning out in tight arcs, shooting toward the man.
They didn't land.
He stepped once, and the barrage passed him. He said something.
She reset.
Sasori watched without expression.
Arai studied the man's posture, something turning over in his mind.
Yuji stopped moving entirely.
The white hair. The clogs. The way he stood.
It landed all at once.
There was no one else in the shinobi world who looked like that. The appearance alone was enough, but then Yuji looked at the girl again, at the paper orbiting her like a second skin, responding to her will, and any remaining doubt disappeared.
Jiraiya.
And Konan.
'It's them.'
He ran the timeline in his head.
Judging from Konan's hand sign speed and the output of her chakra, she hadn't been under Jiraiya long. A year, maybe pushing into the second.
By the 42nd year, the three students would finish their time with him and go their own ways.
Which put Nagato somewhere nearby.
"That silhouette," Arai said. He was still studying the man across the water, working toward a name. He hadn't placed it yet, not because he didn't know Jiraiya, but because Jiraiya in Amegakure wasn't something you anticipated.
Arai was a veteran. He had made it his business to know dangerous men. He wouldn't stay uncertain long.
Konoha and Suna had no warmth between them.
Too many wars, and bodies on both sides. And the Three Legendary Sannin weren't famous because of the title Hanzo had given them, they were famous because of what they had actually done during the war. Jiraiya. Tsunade. Orochimaru. Any one of them, by their record alone, was someone you didn't forget.
"Jiraiya," Sasori said.
Yuji glanced at him.
Something had shifted in his expression the moment the name left his mouth. His hatred for Konoha ran deep. That much had always been clear.
Jiraiya had already noticed them.
Before Sasori even finished saying the name, Jiraiya had stepped out of his fighting stance and gone still on the water. He turned his head slightly, and looked toward the treeline where the three of them stood.
He had known they were there for some time.
The moment Yuji heard the name leave Sasori's mouth, he felt Arai's entire body go rigid beside him. Then, without a word, Arai grabbed both of them by the arm and moved.
He moved fast.
He didn't slow down to assess. He simply ran, pulling them through the trees with everything he had, and he did not stop.
There was nothing pathetic about it. Arai understood exactly what Jiraiya was, and he understood what he himself was carrying, not just his own life, but theirs. The war between Suna and Konoha had cooled, but it had not ended, and a man like Jiraiya did not need a reason to act. Men who had done what he had done on the battlefield were not governed by the same calculations as ordinary shinobi. You did not linger near them. You left.
Arai left.
The forest broke apart around them as he pushed deeper into it, branches whipping past, the rain loud against the canopy above. He ran for nearly a quarter of an hour before he set them down.
Nothing followed.
"We're changing routes," he said. "Let's move."
On the lake, Konan watched Jiraiya go still and asked quietly, "What is it?"
He stared at the treeline a moment longer. Three people. He turned the question over. Amegakure shinobi, maybe. If they were, there would be some trouble, not for him, but for Konan and the other two.
Fortunately, this wasn't their hiding place, or 'home', it was just a training ground.
When he turned back to Konan his expression had already changed, the seriousness dropped. He scratched the back of his head and laughed. "Nothing. Got distracted. I was thinking about dinner."
Konan looked at him.
"Let's continue," he said.
She smiled, said nothing about it, and got back into position.
She had learned early that Teacher Jiraiya was sometimes baffling. It didn't change how she felt about him. He was kind. He was her family. That was what mattered.
"Mhm," she said, and raised her hands to begin.
...
Sasori spoke first once Arai put them down.
"Why is he in Amegakure?"
He asked it plainly. Whatever he felt about Jiraiya, he understood the situation clearly enough. The three of them could not handle Jiraiya.
Arai shook his head. "I don't know. Among the Three Sannin, Tsunade and Jiraiya both pulled back from the front lines after the war. They're rarely seen." He paused, still thinking. "And that girl, she's Jiraiya's student. She's from Amegakure, not Konoha. That's worth knowing." He looked between them. "This goes back to the village. Even if we can't use it ourselves, passing it to Iwagakure or Kumogakure, or letting Hanzo know, that's enough."
He didn't need to say more than that. The major villages had fought each other across generations, but beneath all of it ran a shared understanding: Konoha's rise was nobody's interest.
Yuji said nothing.
He was thinking about Konan.
Konan was the one who would eventually approach Sasori with the invitation to join the Akatsuki.
...
Stones?