The storm that had promised itself the day before kept its word overnight. By morning the clouds had wrung themselves dry, leaving Konoha crisp and rinsed, the streets shining where the early sun reached them and dark where the shadows clung. Jiraiya jogged the last stretch to the Academy with his bag thumping against his hip, the sting in his palms from yesterday's work a steady reminder that progress always charged interest.
The courtyard felt different after rain—cleaner, louder somehow. Students clustered under the eaves, comparing bruises and stories. Tsunade stood with her arms folded, listening to two older boys argue the merits of rushing an enemy versus drawing them into a trap. Orochimaru leaned against a pillar, eyes half-lidded as if he were drowsing, which meant he probably wasn't missing anything at all. Hayato had an audience of three, speaking with the coolness of someone auditioning for a part only he could see himself in.
"Inside," Nishikado called, sharp as a thrown blade. "Books out. Brains on. If you left yours at home, borrow a friend's."
They filed into the bright room with its ink-stained desks and long windows. Scrolls waited at the front, tied with plain string. Nishikado didn't waste time. He dumped a stack onto the table and started to pass them down the rows.
"No drills this morning," he said. "Strategy. You think fighting is about hard hands and faster feet. You'll die that way. We're going to teach you how not to."
Jiraiya felt his shoulders loosen in a way he hadn't expected. He loved movement—the taste of wind when things went right, the tidy click of a throw hitting center—but something in him leaned forward for puzzles, too. His grandfather used to hand him a length of knotted twine and say, Unravel it without pulling it apart. It had felt a little like this, waiting for the knot to admit what it was hiding.
"Inside your scroll," Nishikado said, "you'll find three scenarios. Read. Think. Then write the simplest plan that works. Not the fanciest. Not the one that lets you brag to idiots in the yard. The simplest plan that works."
He paced while they untied the strings. "If I see a single flourish for no reason, I'll make you erase it with your sleeve and start again."
Jiraiya unrolled his scroll. The ink was clean, the strokes exact. Three short problems stared back at him.
Scenario One:A two-person patrol discovers tracks that lead into a ravine with one narrow entrance. It's midday. One enemy is confirmed inside; skill unknown. The patrol must confirm the enemy's identity and capture if possible. No reinforcements within thirty minutes.
Scenario Two:A team of three must escort a medic through a forest while bandits use traps and hit-and-run tactics. The medic cannot run. The route includes a bridge over a gorge. The bandits know this.
Scenario Three:A message must be delivered from Point A to Point B through a town with many alleys. Two enemy spotters are known to be watching the main road. The messenger has one decoy, two smoke bombs, and five minutes.
Jiraiya's brush hovered. The room thinned—the scrape of bristles, the tiny cough someone tried to swallow, the faint rustle of a sleeve. Predator's Instinct hummed at the edge of him, alive but waiting. We're not throwing today, he told it. We're drawing lines the way we draw breath.
He read Scenario One again. Narrow entrance. Ravine. One unknown inside. Capture if possible. The obvious plans presented themselves like overeager actors: rush in and overwhelm; smoke out; split—one draws, one circles. The more he looked, the more each plan tripped on its own feet. Rushing into a choke was a good way to die. Smoke out—good, but the ravine could bottle the smoke and blind you more than the enemy. Splitting when you're two? That wasn't splitting. That was volunteering to be alone.
He wrote: Do not enter the choke point until you control the exit. Leave one at the entrance to feint noise; the second climbs the ravine's side quietly and secures the lip with wire. Create a no-escape roof. Use thrown line with bell to mark movement if enemy tries to climb. Once exit control is set, use smoke sparingly to limit enemy vision, not yours. Force them to the mouth, bind at the threshold with wire and weighted net. If bind fails, cut retreat—roof wire drops, bell signals movement to partner.
He stared at the words. They didn't feel clever. They felt simple in the way a door latch is simple: you either know how it turns or you don't.
He went to Scenario Two. Escort. Slow asset. Bridge choke. Bandits with traps. The answer wasn't to wish the medic faster. The answer was to make the road slower for everyone else.
He wrote: Advance guard sweeps in a shallow zigzag, probing for traps with weighted line; mark safe path with chalk on low trunks for the medic's pace. Mid guard travels with medic, shield up, pace constant—do not stop unless necessary; stopping invites encirclement. Rear guard places low snare mirrors (shimmering thread) to force bandits to commit to predictable lines. At bridge: arrive early and rebuild the battlefield. Place decoy crossing ropes beneath the bridge for a fake route; seed low-noise bells on the real railings to detect tampering. Cross not at center, but staggered: one forward, medic, one rear. If attack on bridge, cut a pre-scored plank to create a trap for pursuers at the second pace behind the medic.
He paused long enough to notice Tsunade writing hard enough to make the brush protest. Orochimaru's wrist moved like he was drawing glass—smooth, immaculate, no drag. Hayato sat upright, jaw clenched, eyes slicing the scroll like it had said something about him personally.
Scenario Three. Message in a town with spotters on the main road. Two smoke bombs. One decoy. Five minutes. He imagined the alleys—the way sound turned corners, the way feet can betray you if you let them slap.
He wrote: Decoy takes main road and draws spotters' attention, but not with speed—with confidence. The messenger takes the second alley to the right to remain parallel, then uses smoke at the first tight bend to force spotters to commit to the wrong path. Plant the second smoke one alley ahead of the decoy's predicted path to suggest a crossing that never happened. Meanwhile, messenger shadow-walks along the line of laundry ropes and awnings—use hands, not feet—bypassing ground watchers entirely. Deliver from above; rejoin decoy at exit to split credit and mask identity of actual messenger.
He breathed out. The answers had not arrived as ideas so much as the removal of the wrong ones. He checked for flourish and found none. If anything was pretty, it was because it couldn't help it.
Nishikado drifted between rows, stopping behind shoulders, letting his silence teach more than any bark could. He paused at Tsunade's desk, and Jiraiya saw the briefest nod. He paused at Orochimaru's and said nothing, which was somehow more than a nod. He paused at Hayato's and said, "Remove the second snare. Complexity isn't strength." Hayato's shoulders stiffened, then dipped, the swallow of someone who had to concede ground he'd staked with pride.
When Nishikado reached Jiraiya, he didn't speak at first. He read, eyes flicking left, right, down again. "Simple," he said finally. "I believe you could actually do these with the tools you have. Which means you understand what tools you have."
"That's the point, right?" Jiraiya said before a wiser version of himself could stop him.
"The point," Nishikado said, not unkindly, "is that if I woke you up at midnight and handed you these problems with a knife at your throat, you'd still find your breath before you found your brush. Good. But—" He tapped one line with the back of his nail. "Roof wire on the ravine. If the rock is wet or crumbly, you'll kill yourself trying to anchor it. What's your second choice?"
Jiraiya didn't panic. He let the knot admit what it was hiding. "Don't anchor to rock. Anchor to the thing I brought: a piton from my belt if I have it, or—" he pictured the ravine, the scrub, the low, stubborn brush that survived where the soil was mean "—root. Two stakes, crossed, driven away from the edge so strain angles keep the line from sawing in."
Nishikado's mouth almost smiled. Almost. "Better. You—" he tapped the escort plan "—pre-scored plank. How do you score it without telling the bandits what you intend?"
"On the underside," Jiraiya said. "Before we reach the bridge. We carry a spare plank on the litter frame and swap at the last bend."
"Weight?"
"Close enough they won't notice unless they're carpenters," Jiraiya said, and then realized how that sounded and who he was talking to. "I know a guy."
"That so," Nishikado said, and the corner of his eye wrinkled in a way that might have been humor and might have been a warning about boasting. "Fine. Now—"
The room fell away. It didn't go silent. It went clear. The edges of the world tightened, not with threat, but with that particular hush just before a string is plucked. A bell that hadn't rung yet. Jiraiya's chest loosened in the same breath it tightened, and the voice that had announced itself twice before came again, not loud, not soft, exactly the size of his skull.
[Ding]Reward gained: Analytical Insight.Connections surface. Patterns align. Translate knowledge into action.
It didn't feel like learning. It felt like remembering how to look. The three scenarios moved in his head, not as text, but as shapes that could rotate. He saw how the escort plan could borrow a trick from the town plan: false noise placed where ears expected it. He saw how the ravine plan could fail if the enemy wasn't alone, and how a simple bell on the roof wire could tell him if he'd just made his own trap. He saw how Predator's Instinct and Bullseye could mislead him into choosing solutions that favored his hands over his head, and how this was the thing meant to stop that from happening.
"Jiraiya?" Nishikado said, and it took a second to climb back from wherever the words had carried him. "Are you with us?"
"Yes," Jiraiya blurted. "And— I'd add one more thing on the ravine. If we have no wire—if we have nothing—we can still move the fight. Throw a stone with a strip of cloth tied to it out past the enemy. When they turn at the sound, we move to the mouth and take their ankles. People protect their faces first. Ankles lie."
Nishikado looked at him for a long, flat second that wasn't flat at all. "Ankles lie," he repeated, and then he did smile, just once, like a crack in a wall that let light through. "Good."
Around the room, brushes scratched. A few heads angled toward Jiraiya and then away, that subtle flocking move people made when they didn't want to be caught looking. Tsunade didn't look. She didn't need to. She knew the sound of a class pivoting in the air. Orochimaru turned his brush a fraction and wrote something that looked small and important in the margin of his scroll.
"Pair up," Nishikado said suddenly. "Trade plans. Your partner's job is to break yours. If they can't, you both failed. If you can, tell them how to fix it. If you gloat, I'll see to it your next plan is to dig ten post holes alone."
They shuffled. Tsunade dropped into the empty space beside Jiraiya and slid her scroll across without asking. He did the same.
She read fast. "Your escort plan assumes the bandits don't have bows," she said. "If they do, the stagger on the bridge makes the medic a target."
"Then we make the medic not look like the medic," Jiraiya said. "Swap roles at the bend. Put a cloak on the rear guard. Bind the medic's hair like a boy. If the bandits are guessing, they'll guess wrong."
"You're comfortable lying," Tsunade said, approving.
"Only to enemies," he said.
"Good answer." Her finger stabbed his ravine plan. "Your wire on the lip only works if the brush is there. If it's bare stone—"
"I use the belt piton," he said.
"If you don't have one," she pressed.
"Then I don't fake a roof," he said. "I fake a hole. We dig a shallow trench at the threshold and lay a thin mat over it—wicker, if the scrub gives us any. When they rush, they drop half a step instead of a whole body. That's enough to bind."
Tsunade's mouth tugged. "Ugly. I like it."
He slid her scroll back across. Her answers were bold in the way she punched: no hesitation, no apology. He traced a line with his finger and saw, not words, but the way she'd put herself where the blows would land first, every time, to make sure the medic got through.
"You break yourself before you break the problem," he said, softer than he meant to.
She lifted her chin, unbothered. "Someone has to."
"Not always you," he said. "If you fall, they all fall."
Her eyes narrowed a fraction—not angry; thinking. After a moment, she nodded. "Fix it."
"Forward guard takes first hit," he said. "You take second. Make the enemy commit twice. Put me where they don't think I am. I pull the second trigger."
"Hooks," she said, and nodded again, almost pleased by the way his brain had chosen violence politely.
Across the aisle, Orochimaru traded scrolls with Hayato. It went badly almost immediately.
"You're overcomplicating," Orochimaru said, not unkind, not warm. "Your decoy plan is theater. Spotters trained for this will read past it."
"You think you're smarter because you use fewer words," Hayato snapped. "Fewer words doesn't make fewer problems."
"Correct," Orochimaru said. "But fewer moving parts makes fewer failures."
Hayato's jaw clenched. "And what if the fewer parts break?"
"Then they break," Orochimaru said, almost gently. "And we still have breath to try again."
"You think you'll always have breath," Hayato said. "Some of us don't get more chances."
He said it too loud. The room heard. Silence followed it like a dog.
Nishikado appeared at their elbows the way instructors do when they've actually been listening the whole time. "Both of you are correct," he said. "And both of you are wrong."
He took Hayato's brush and drew a little box in the margin. "Here is your plan. Now draw the ways it can fail. Don't stop at two." He handed the brush to Orochimaru. "Now write how to fix one of those failures using only what he already packed."
Orochimaru wrote without drama. Decoy cannot run. Give the decoy the smoke. Messenger climbs. The smoke belongs where the eyes are, not where the feet are.
Hayato's ears went red. He didn't thank him. He didn't need to. The answer was the only apology that mattered.
They worked until the light shifted and the room breathed ink and thought. When Nishikado finally clapped his hands, the sound made Jiraiya realize his shoulders had been drawn tight without permission.
"Good," the instructor said. "Now, test."
Groans rose. Nishikado ignored them with pleasure. He gestured to the training yard below. Assistants had set up a miniature town—wooden screens for walls, ropes strung with laundry, bells, and buckets balanced on boards so a careless step would turn noise into confession.
"Scenario Three," he said. "Message from here—" he tapped the doorway "—to the far target. Two watchers somewhere you can't see. One decoy. Two smoke bombs. Five minutes. Don't trip my bells. Don't alert my watchers."
He divided them into trios and sent them out in staggered waves. Some teams failed immediately, bells ringing like laughter. Some got halfway and then panicked at the first bucket dump. Jiraiya watched, not to gloat, but to learn how the yard wanted to trick them.
"Your team," Nishikado said, tossing him a wrapped token to serve as the message. Tsunade caught it without looking, then tossed it to Orochimaru, who tucked it away and raised a brow.
"Assignments?" Orochimaru asked.
"Decoy," Tsunade said at once.
"No," Jiraiya said. "You're the medic when you want to be. Today, be the shadow. Orochimaru's the decoy."
Orochimaru blinked once. "Because I look like I know what I'm doing?"
"Because you walk like you should be where you are," Jiraiya said. "Spotters notice confidence. They follow it. Let them."
"And you?" Tsunade asked.
"Windows," he said, glancing up at the laundry lines. "We don't fight the ground if we don't have to."
Nishikado blew a short whistle. "Go."
Orochimaru stepped into the "street" and didn't hunch or hurry. He moved like a man who owned the corner and the one after it. Within three steps, Jiraiya saw a shadow adjust on a roofline. Good. Hook set.
Tsunade slid into the first alley, staying close to the left wall where the rain-dark wood would swallow her outline. Jiraiya went up—hands on rope, feet on the knot points that wouldn't creak. He made himself small because sometimes that mattered more than speed.
First bend. They planted the first smoke where eyes wanted to look. Orochimaru reached the corner just as the plume curled, paused half a breath as if considering something, then turned with deliberate annoyance into the next lane. The watcher's shadow followed like a cat that didn't want to be seen stalking.
Second smoke went two alleys ahead of where a normal mind would predict the crossing. Jiraiya dropped to a sill, took the token from Orochimaru as they passed like strangers, and rejoined the rope above Tsunade. He felt the bell threads with his fingertips before he trusted them to his weight.
Halfway. The second watcher guessed, wrong. Jiraiya heard the wrongness in the way a foot landed too soft on a board that wasn't meant to hold it. He flicked a shuriken into a slat at knee height behind them—a sound that sent the watcher one alley back, exactly where they'd wanted him not to be.
They slid the last turn. The target door sat three strides away. Jiraiya dropped to the ground like a coat falling off a hook, handed the token to Tsunade, and watched her deliver it with that simple finality he was starting to recognize as her favorite kind of victory.
Nishikado's whistle cut the air. "Time."
They held still, waiting for verdict. The instructor walked the course backward, eyes scanning for mistakes. He checked the smoke placements. He pushed the slats Jiraiya had kissed with steel. He looked up at the ropes and the way the laundry still swayed from a body that had passed too cleanly to leave creaks behind.
Finally, he grunted. "Pass."
It wasn't loud. It didn't need to be.
Orochimaru's mouth twitched in a way that counted as celebration from him. Tsunade's grin broke and then folded itself away before anyone else could catch it. Jiraiya let himself smile properly, because if you didn't make room for that, the work turned your ribs into a crate.
Hayato's team went last. Their decoy ran. Their messenger tried to be clever with ground routes. Their second smoke went where the first should have been. They tripped a bell at the worst possible moment, and the watcher on the roofline didn't even bother to hide the way he followed. They reached the door late, wet with sweat, anger tucked into their jaws like a knife they couldn't throw.
When Nishikado dismissed the class, the yard hummed with relief and the quiet fury of kids who would be thinking about their missteps all night. Jiraiya collected his bag and turned toward the gate. Hayato stepped into his path.
"You think you're better because you can guess right in a game," Hayato said, not loud, not whispering. "One day it won't be a game."
Jiraiya didn't step back. "Then I'll guess right faster."
Hayato's mouth pulled into something that tried to be a smile and failed. "You're not the only one who learns."
"I hope not," Jiraiya said, and meant it, which made Hayato flinch like he'd been struck in a place he couldn't cover with his hands.
Tsunade hooked two fingers in Jiraiya's sleeve and tugged. "Come on, loudmouth. If we stand here longer, Nishikado will find us more 'learning' to do."
They walked. Orochimaru fell in a step behind without being invited and without needing to be. The sky was clear now, the streets washed bright, the air smelling like clean wood and metal and a little like the future if you were the kind of person who enjoyed that sort of poetry.
Jiraiya let the day replay as they went, not to gloat, but to sand the rough edges. Don't anchor to rock.Make the medic not look like the medic.Ankles lie. Predator's Instinct purred quiet at the base of his skull. Bullseye rested in his hands even when they were empty. And the new thing—Analytical Insight—sat in his chest like a compass in a pocket: useful even when you weren't looking at it, more honest than the sun if you knew where you stood.
"Tomorrow," Tsunade said, like a promise and a threat at once. "You don't get to be dumb just because you were smart today."
"I'm never dumb," Jiraiya said.
"Frequently dumb," she corrected, but she was smiling when she said it.
Orochimaru clicked his tongue softly. "Try breathing a fraction earlier before you answer her," he said. "It smooths the release."
Jiraiya laughed, surprised and happy, because sometimes good advice arrived wearing a joke's jacket. He breathed earlier. It did feel better.
Behind them, at a window that caught the afternoon light, Nishikado watched the three heads—blonde, black, white—thread through the courtyard like they'd already learned how to move together. He didn't say anything. He didn't need to. The day had said enough for him.
And somewhere in the village, tucked into an alley where the sun never landed quite right, Hayato leaned his back to stone and stared at his hands until they stopped shaking. "I'll learn," he told the empty air. "I'll learn faster."
The air didn't answer. It never did. But it saved his breath for him anyway, in case he really meant it.