Naruto didn't know why, but whenever Jiraiya ever promised him a training exercise, they always seemed to end up in a bar. There was never much training done either. Just Jiraiya talking, usually after he'd thrown back a couple glasses of sake. Today, the topic seemed to be the glory days. "You should've seen me, brat. That mission was the one where they started calling us the sannin, but it was really all me. There I was, the Sun princess huddled at my feet, Cloud-nin on all sides of us and Tsunade and Orochimaru no where in sight. Of course, it would've been easy to kill them all on a normal assignment, as great as I am, but it was my duty to protect the princess at any cost, so when the Cloud-nin rushed us, I grabbed her around the waist and jumped up into the air. It was then that I knew it was time to use the ultra-special technique I'd just developed."

Jiraiya languidly poured himself another glass, Naruto waiting impatiently. Most of the time, the blond genin didn't pay much attention to his teacher's bragging, but he'd always had a bit of a soft spot for tales of valor and rescuing maidens, if only because it was nice to know that things would always turn out alright in the end. "Hurry up, Ero-sennin! What'd you do?"

Jiraiya grinned; there was very little he loved more than a captive audience. "It was a rather brilliant variation on an Earth jutsu I'd learned recently. Before any of the Cloud-nin could jump off the ground to follow me, they'd all been sucked in by my technique. By the time I'd landed, there weren't any enemies left to fight. The princess wanted to marry me, of course, seeing as I'd saved her from certain death and I was a dashing and handsome young man; almost as good looking as I am now! But of course, I refused, seeing as the rescue had been my duty as a shinobi and I just couldn't in good conscience take advantage of such a beautiful young woman."

Naruto rolled his eyes. "You're making that up. If she was really as pretty as you're making her out to be, you'd have married her in a second."

Jiraiya shook his head sadly. "Naruto, Naruto. You make your inexperience all too obvious. If the same offer was made to me now, of course I would accept. But back then I couldn't pin myself down to one woman, no matter how beautiful she was. Young men need their freedom. You will learn that someday, when some sweet young thing approaches you-"

"Jiraiya." Both Naruto and his teacher turned to see the Godaime leaning against a nearby wall. Jiraiya's eyes widened. "I can't believe what's coming out of your mouth. That was the biggest pile of-"

"Tsunade!" The toad sannin attempted to jump to his feet, but had to steady himself as the alcohol began to take effect. "Mind your language; there are children present."

The Fifth Hokage sighed. "Jiraiya, it's kind of pathetic that you're inventing lies just to impress your new apprentice."

Naruto's face fell. "You mean none of the story ever happened?"

"Oh, most of it's true enough. Jiraiya, let us say, has just twisted one or two details. I'll set it straight for you. Here's how the mission really came about..."

Elsewhere...

Snake sannin and medic-nin alike stared at the enormous pile of wealth stacked at the entrance to their headquarters. After a moment, Orochimaru spoke. "Kabuto, the location of Otogakure is a complete mystery to the entirety of the shinobi world. Can you please tell me how she still manages to find out my address no matter where I move?"

Kabuto adjusted his glasses and leaned forward to more thoroughly examine a rather elaborate container filled to the brim with chocolate covered figs. "Personal team of tracker-nins, perhaps?"

"You'd think after thirty years she'd start to realize that I'm never going to accept her proposal."

"Well, you did rescue her from certain death, Orochimaru-sama. Women tend to be overly sentimental and persistent about that sort of thing. And it isn't that terrible an offer. Becoming the consort to the Empress of the Sun Country would come with all sorts of benefits. Servants, riches, unrestricted access to the royal library..."

"Perhaps I should send you in my place to marry her, Kabuto."

Kabuto shuddered. "She's old enough to be my mother, Orochimaru-sama."

Orochimaru smirked and to address the regiment of ornamented guards who had delivered the Empress's gifts. "Bring it all back. And please tell her the answer is still no."

The guards bowed and began to load the plethora of jewels, rare books, fine wines, gold, and exotic food back onto the carriages. Kabuto watched sadly as the chocolate covered figs were carted away. "We could have at least kept some of it this time around, Orochimaru-sama."

"Perhaps when hell freezes over, Kabuto."

Naruto didn't understand why the Ero-sennin thought the creepy pale guy would be such a great Hokage. When Jiraiya had spoken about his old teammate, who had mastered almost as many jutsus as the Sandaime, Naruto had pictured someone... taller. And less girly. In other words, more like a legend.

Of course, being a legend wasn't much of a guarantee of anything. Naruto just had to look at his new teacher, the toad sennin, sensei to the Fourth Hokage, one of the most well-known pornographic writers alive and second generation pervert, to know being a legend wasn't all it was chalked up to be. Still...

"You told me yourself that you would be a far better Yondaime than my student, Orochimaru. Now you have the chance to prove it."

Ero-sennin was really going about it all wrong. From the way he and the new guy were glaring at each other, Naruto would have pinned them as arch-enemies, not former comrades. The unveiled hostility in Jiraiya's voice didn't improve the already tense situation. By the way the snake sannin curl his lip, he seemed to agree.

"Tsunade's offer was far more lucrative, Jiraiya. All you can provide me with is a pathetic challenge I didn't think was worth my time ten years ago. She, on the other hand, is willing to give me what I've always wanted. Who do you think I'm more willing to cooperate with?"

"She killed Sarutobi-sensei, Orochimaru. Doesn't that mean anything to you?"

Orochimaru snorted. Sitting on the snake sannin's left, Kabuto quietly poured more sake into his mentor's empty glass, which the black-haired shinobi blatantly ignored.

"If she hadn't finished him off, I would have done it myself. It was our beloved former teacher, after all, who stopped my research."

It was becoming far too apparent, even to Naruto, that the Ero-sennin was losing his temper. When the sake glass shattered in the white-haired man's grip, Naruto tried to intervene.

"How can you refuse the position of Hokage? It is the ultimate honor of Konoha! Don't you-"

"Taking up the Hokage's mantle has a 100 mortality rate. The last thing I'm willing to do for that village is die." Orochimaru raised one ironic eyebrow in Naruto's position. "Why the interest, boy?"

"Someone needs to hold the position for me until I get old enough."

From Orochimaru's answering laugh, Naruto garnered that the snake sannin's answer was still a No.

At his former comrade’s response, Jiraiya gave an angry hiss and said in a tight, controlled voice, "Naruto, leave."

The genin shot his teacher an incredulous stare. "What?"

Jiraiya tossed Naruto a few coins. "Leave. Go get some ramen or something. We're going to be negotiating for a while, and your fidgeting will just be a distraction."

Grumbling under his breath despite the promise of ramen, Naruto slunk out of the bar and out the door. After his student's departure, Jiraiya visibly tried to pull himself back into a semblence of control, letting out a loud sigh and forcing himself to let go of the remains of his sake glass. "The council is willing to... compromise on the terms of your return to Konoha."

Orochimaru raised one eyebrow. "Really?"

"While the Sandaime had problems with the concept of human experimentation, not everyone has such stringent morals. As we acquired a number of Sound and Sand prisoners during the recent invasion, the council is willing to supply you with a laboratory and test subjects upon your return, to resume your immortality research."

At Jiraiya's words, the snake sannin actually snorted. "Immortality experimentation is illegal in Konohagakure. I can't believe the council would be that desperate for a Godaime to relax their policies so dramatically."

"Well considering the alternative is to let a pornography writer lead Konoha and have you ally with Tsunade in a declaration of war against the Leaf, their options are limited."

In the middle of taking another sip of sake, Orochimaru choked on the drink and started coughing. After several minutes of this, the pale shinobi finally recovered enough to say, "You mean to tell me that you were their first choice?"

Jiraiya shrugged, not looking particularly offended. "I told you their options were limited."

The boy didn't look up from his book. Shaking his head fondly at this expected response, the third Hokage reached down and plucked 'The Origins of the Great Fireball' out of his student's hands. It was only then that Sarutobi managed to get the pale genin's attention as Orochimaru scowled and pushed himself to his feet.

"Sarutobi-sensei, I was reading that."

The Sandaime nodded gravely. "Yes, you were. And if you didn't notice the time, my rather tardy pupil, you are already half an hour late for training. And as you know-"

Orochimaru's scowl deepened. "Every minute wasted could mean a life. I don't care about the extra laps. I just don't want to train with that Jiraiya idiot."

The third Hokage sighed. "What is it this time?"

The scowl remained, but by the way Orochimaru glanced down at the ground, Sarutobi could sense his student's embarrassment. "He made fun of my hair again."

Ah. The hair. Jiraiya's immaturity showing through. Not, the Sandaime reflected, that the white-haired genin could possibly know Orochimaru's reasons for keeping it long, but Sarutobi was beginning to grow weary of Jiraiya's childishness. "And?"

"So I hit him."

And then there was Orochimaru. "That would explain his taped nose this morning."

The dark-haired boy stared defiantly into his teacher's eyes. "I'm not going to train with him."

"You don't have to today. But you are going to train. Your body-"

"-must be as disiplined as your mind. I know."

Orochimaru, the Sandaime reflected, had really had been his student far too long if he had already memorized every single one of his platitudes. Still, he couldn't let a child get too cocky, even if said child was really too precocious for his own good. "If you know so well, please begin on those laps. I believe fifty around the Tower will do for a warm up."

Even if the scowl didn't completely disappear, it at least faded after the boy realized his teacher wasn't going to force him to train with Jiraiya. "What about my book?"

"You can get it back after training."

After a considering glance that was far too calculating for such a young child, Orochimaru nodded. "Alright, Sarutobi-sensei."

As his most prized student began on his warm up run, the Sandaime sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. Brilliant shinobi or no, that boy was going to be the death of him someday.

Jiraiya, Orochimaru had always noted, possessed the annoying tendency to do impulsive, stupid things without thinking them through first. This personality trait made itself particularly apparent during one of their numerous arguments, which happened to be over Jiraiya's irritating hobby of peeping on women in the baths. Normally, Orochimaru couldn't have cared less, but when the white-haired boy showed up to their scheduled sparring session an hour late, soaking wet but grinning like Christmas had come early, Orochimaru finally had to ask, if only to get some compensation for the taller boy wasting an hour of his life.

"It's funny, Jiraiya. You always brag on your numerous exploits with women, but the closest I've ever seen you to a girl is that one time Tsunade tried to choke you to death. Do you actually have any idea how to kiss, or have you just been blowing smoke, like how you do about absolutely everything else?"

Jiraiya had quite predictably bristled. He also quite predictably snarled, "I'm a great kisser!" The white-haired chuunin had then, not so predictably, continued with, "And I can prove it!" Jiraiya then concluded his argument by grabbing Orochimaru by the hair and quite roughly pushing their lips together.

Though Orochimaru had exactly zero experience with kissing (admittedly, unlike Jiraiya), he could tell his comrade was inexperienced, despite all his bluster. If Jiraiya had made out with as many people as his stories had suggested, there was no way their noses would have bumped together so painfully, and Orochimaru was fairly sure he should have been able to breathe. But even so... when Jiraiya finally pushed them apart, Orochimaru's face felt hot, and he was mortified to realize he was blushing. Worse, Jiraiya noticed.

"See! Even you think I'm a good kisser!" The taller shinobi grinned triumphantly, for all he was blushing too.

Both of them took care to never mention the incident, and they avoided looking at each other the next day at training. Personally, Orochimaru tried to forget about it, but two weeks later, the unexpected happened. Jiraiya had sought Orochimaru out, and had asked, with that now familiar blush reddening his cheeks, if Orochimaru wanted Jiraiya to prove again what a good kisser he was. It was a conventional pick-up line with the delivery ruined by an uncharacteristic stammer, but Orochimaru was startled to realize he was tempted. But good sense soon took over, and Orochimaru turned back to his book with a derisive snort. "Whatever strange disease you've caught that's making you act like more of an idiot than usual, Jiraiya, I don't want it spreading to me."

Jiraiya's face darkened, but this time in humiliation. He turned and ran. Orochimaru watched him go, his book, for the moment, forgotten.

Orochimaru had always been uncomfortably aware of himself. Whatever he told other people, he always took care to never practice self-deception. If whatever had Jiraiya acting oddly was a disease, he had been contagious weeks ago. But Orochimaru could never let him know. Some ailments were too embarrassing to talk about.

"You're cutting too close to that artery."

Sasori rolled his eyes. Only Orochimaru could make human experimentation a spectator sport. "No, I'm not." His left hand made a quick incision. No blood spurted. Despite himself, the former Sand-nin couldn't help but send a smirk his partner's way. Orochimaru didn't look impressed.

"Taking chances with such a valuable specimen is the mark of an amateur, Sasori. If you're going to add special modifications, you should practice first on someone expandable."

Sasori didn't even bother looking up as he started peeling away the skin covering the ribcage. "Risk makes for progress, Orochimaru."

"Foolish risks are shortsighted. Cut any closer to his heart and you're going to lose him. That would be a setback, Sasori. You know, setback? The opposite of progress?"

The puppeteer ran a finger thoughtfully over his subject's smaller intestine. "Growing cautious in your old age, Orochimaru?" His scalpel flashed. Both Akatsuki immediately leaned in to examine the wound, which after a moment started copiously leaking blood. Sasori swore. Orochimaru grinned.

"Growing careless in yours, Sasori? If you don't get that stitched up quickly, all that time and effort you put towards capturing that pesky Sandaime Kazekage will be completely wasted. We don't want that, now do we?"

Sasori's hands were already reaching for the thread. "Now is not the time, Orochimaru."

Orochimaru's smile widened. Though there was really nothing that made him happier than learning a new jutsu, winning an argument with Sasori placed a close second. "You're threading the needle wrong."

Already immersed up to his elbows in the Third Wind Shadow's stomach, Sasori still spared some time to comment on where the former Leaf-nin could cram his advice, but all Orochimaru did was laugh.

Even before he had switched bodies, Orochimaru had never possessed many scars. He wasn’t careless, and unlike shinobi such as Jiraiya, he never threw himself into the thick of a battle, preferring instead to watch from the sidelines until an opportune moment arose. Still, there had been a few instances where he had slipped up, however rare. A thin line right above his left eyebrow where a kunai had just missed its mark. A star-shaped patch of scar tissue below his right knee where a Mist jounin with spiked sandals had attempted to break his leg. The remnants of a burn on the left side of his chest where Tsunade had melted off his chuunin vest with her chakra, trying to make skin contact in time to restart his heart before brain damage set in. After that, Orochimaru had made a point to never again underestimate the sheer killing power of the Cloud’s lightning jutsus. One near-death experience was enough.

Once, Orochimaru had hated the sight, the feel, of his scars. It wasn’t a concern for aesthetics- no matter what nonsense Jiraiya spouted, Orochimaru had never cared much about his looks- but the reminder the scars presented every time Orochimaru looked in a mirror. The reminder of slipping up where he should have succeeded. And there was nothing Orochimaru hated more than to be forced to reflect on the past.

Once, Orochimaru had hated his scars. That feeling paled in comparison to how he felt now, seeing the defects that covered his body, the marks on his leg and the nicks on his hands and the plethora of other white, almost invisible flaws that decorated his skin. These scars weren’t his own. This body had a history, one his soul didn’t share. This body was disfigured by mistakes he hadn’t made. It made Orochimaru grind his teeth to think about it.

It was the Sharingan that first drew Orochimaru to Uchiha Sasuke, the unique ability to copy jutsus with one look. But it was the boy’s body- his perfect, pale skin without even a sunburn to show for all the strain the Uchiha had put himself through- that made Orochimaru want him. Too young to have made any errors that would mark him for life. Too talented to not chafe under the restrictions Konoha placed on its warriors.

Orochimaru couldn’t care less about Uchiha Sasuke, a boy driven by an ambition that gave him no benefit and would ultimately consume him. But the potential was impossible to ignore. And the chance for Orochimaru to remake himself, to be reborn in a body that didn’t remember pain or failure, was far, far too tempting to pass up. No matter what it cost him in the end.

It was really only to be expected that after chasing Orochi for something longer than a human lifetime, Susano-o couldn't help but get a little attached. They had been enemies for so long that the line had blurred, and no matter how mortals tended to assign characteristics like 'good' and 'evil' to the immortals, the immortals themselves made little distinction. Living for an eternity tended towards a little fluctuation as far as morals were concerned.

Not that any human was aware of this. It was one of many things that had somehow ended up being omitted from the human records. Another was how the Susano-o and Orochi of them had become enemies to begin with, probably because no one wanted to think that a legendary feud could rise out of something as stupid as cheating at a card game. Even less people wanted to remember that Susano-o had done the cheating, and Orochi the one who had gotten pissed off and broken her sometime friend, sometime rival's nose, thereby starting the whole debacle. Immortals were slow to forgive, if only because they literally did have all the time in the world.

The thing that had ended it all had been misinterpreted (some say purposefully) by the humans too, which just showed how selectively blind the species was when you got right down to it. It actually had involved a great deal of sake, the humans had at least gotten that much right, but a sword had only been tangentially related to the issue, and then only as a topic of discussion and later as a way to make amends. Also, no matter what the human legends say, Susano-o ended up getting a great deal drunker than Orochi. And though the man acted like he had a stick up his ass ninety-nine percent of the time, the times he cheated at cards notwithstanding, it turned out that alcohol tended to make Susano-o very... friendly.

"You know..." and at this point the legendary hero slung an arm around his enemy's shoulders, sloshing sake in the process, "You're really, really, really..." he paused at this point before regaining his train of thought, "... hot. You know that?"

Orochi, who normally had personal space issues but had had enough to drink that she wasn't sure why, just raised an eyebrow. "Really?"

Susano-o grinned. "Yeah." He paused again, as if trying to draw a conclusion from this observation. "Since I'm not all that bad looking either, you want to go have sex or something?" He had wanted to ask this for something close to fifty years, but in this case, he found alcohol was something of a necessity. Susano-o just had too much common sense when sober to even bother considering propositioning someone who tried to kill him on a regular basis.

Orochi tried to think of a reason that this wasn't a good idea. All she could remember was something about cards, and that didn't relate enough to the issue at hand to register. "Sure. Got nothing better to do."

So they did. A few months later, Orochi started getting morning sickness, so Susano-o forged her a sword as an apology for getting her knocked up. And then other stuff happened and they both died, but no one ever found out what happened to their son.

----

"Hey, Orochimaru."

The pale-skinned, golden-eyed prodigy of the Sandaime Hokage looked up from his study of one of his teacher's scrolls with a scowl. "What is it now, Jiraiya?"

"You ever wonder who your parents were? Your real ones, I mean?"

Orochimaru looked at his teammate for a moment, considering. Then he turned back to his scroll. "No."