Interlude: Jiraiya's Journals, Part 1
I got in! Igotin!Igotin!Igotin!Igotin!Igotin!Igotin! I got in!
I'm in the Academy! I'm a ninja! Classes start tomorrow! I am going to kick so much ass—I bet I can graduate in, like, a year, and then I'll be doing missions and rich and the orphanage can suck it! I can get an apartment on my own and I'll have fruit every day and it will be awesome!
The Legendary Jiraiya, Grandmaster of Ninja Arts, Super Overgod of all Shinobi, Most Famous Ninja Ever is go!
o-o-o-o
Okay, that was the worst first day ever. No jutsu, no fighting, no weapons, no explosives, nothing. First thing was that we were given uniforms and assigned to rooms—okay, free clothes and a great room is pretty cool. Mine is huge! It's got a grown-up bed with only one level, a desk, and a footlocker with an actual lock for my stuff so no one can steal it!
After they got us settled, we spent the whole day stretching and doing pushups and learning p...proto...how to say things the right way and boring stuff like that. How am I going to graduate in a year if they waste all my time??!! The food is good though, and you can have as much as you want. I was careful not to have too much at lunch, but at dinner I stuffed myself because I thought we were going to bed. Nope, they took us back out for an hour of exercise and then a two-hour trail run while carrying bags of bricks. I had eaten so much that I puked during the pushups and had to run with sick all down my shirt and stink in my nose. It was gross.
But there was one cool part: I met the Hokage!
It was the last thing before dinner. Tsutomi-sensei had us all line up and told us that if we moved or made a sound he would have us whipped bloody. We all lined up and waited and then HE came in.
Aunty Kobayashi at the orphanage says to write things down so we don't forget them, especially the things we're grateful for or proud of. She really just wants us to practice our brushwork, but it makes her happy so I'll do it. I don't think I could ever forget this, though. It was like the whole room got warm and safe when he walked in. I felt tall and strong and like I'd never be hungry or weak ever again. Like I
mattered. Like I was someone that Yamato and his friends wouldn't dare steal from, or make fun of, or push down the stairs. It was like that time when I broke into the kitchen at Mimuri's after they closed down. The room to myself all night, still warm from the baking ovens, all the steak and potatoes I could stuff in...best day ever until now.
He walked up and down, looking us over. He didn't say anything, but he didn't really need to, you know? He stopped in front of me for a second, checked my uniform, and then he smiled at me and nodded, like he knew I was going to be the most amazing ninja ever and he couldn't wait for me to hurry up with it because he had important missions waiting for me.
Once he'd checked us all over he went to the front of the room and made a speech. I wish I could remember all the words but I was too excited. He said that he was proud of us, and that we had shown courage and strength and...something...by passing the tests to get into the Academy. He said that we were the best that Leaf had and that he knew we would make the Land of Fire safe and make him proud. He said some other stuff too, but I was too excited to listen. Lord Senju Tobirama, Second Hokage of the Village Hidden in the Leaves, said he was proud of me!
The Legendary Jiraiya, Grandmaster of Ninja Arts, Super Overgod of all Shinobi, Most Famous Ninja Ever: step one, done!
o-o-o-o
Taijutsu is fun, but wow Watanabe-sensei is mean. I forgot to fix my front foot after he told me to so he made me do a hundred tuck jumps.
o-o-o-o
I really need to remember about the front foot. Ow, ow, ow.
It's after lights-out, but I think the sensei have all gone to bed. I'm going to go practice for a while, because I sure don't want Watanabe-sensei catching me on that again.
o-o-o-o
This sucks. The teachers here are all crazy and mean, just like the Matron. I thought it would be better once I was a ninja, but it's not. They shout at us all the time and they smack us around just like Matron does, except they do it all the time and she only does it when she's drunk.
It's not even just the instructors, either. Today they had all us firsties line up while the second-years lined up opposite us. Then they told the second-years to punch us in the face and in the belly. We weren't allowed to move, we had to just stand there and take it. My 'partner' punched me so hard I fell down and couldn't breathe, but sensei just grabbed me by the collar and hauled me up, gave me three demerits and three quick flicks with the cane for breaking position.
Aunty Kobayashi likes to say that what goes around comes around. I'm going to find that second-year and show him that Aunty is right. I just need to figure out how.
o-o-o-o
Stupid Watanabe-sensei. The man is just mean! I fixed my front foot—didn't make a single mistake all day. Does he say anything? "Good job, Jiraiya. Not a single mistake." No! He just finds something else to pick on me about. This time it was my guard stance. He said my hands were too high, so I brought them down and he slapped me in the face. I brought them up and he kicked me in the gut. No matter where I put them they were too high or too low.
Things I am proud of:
- I fixed my front foot and didn't make a single mistake all day
- I smiled and was polite to Watanabe-sensei the whole time that he was smacking me around so he doesn't think I'm weak
- No one saw me take the knife
o-o-o-o
Ugh. Three months I've been here and we still haven't done anything exciting. It feels like we spend half our time meditating—boring!—and the rest of it studying history and math and whatever—double extra boring! Taijutsu is fun but that's the only even sorta ninja-y thing we do. When do we learn to set people on fire with our minds?!
o-o-o-o
Time to face it: I'm not going to finish school this year. The teachers won't let me because they don't want me to be better than them. The Legendary Jiraiya, Grandmaster of Ninja Arts, Super Overgod of all Shinobi, Most Famous Ninja Ever will be stuck in school for at least two years. Bleh.
o-o-o-o
I saw the Hokage again! He came to Advancement Day and watched the whole thing. Only three of the firsties failed the tests and had to repeat. He seemed really happy that the rest of us went on to become second years.
o-o-o-o
They took us seconds over to the firsties' training field today. It was that same thing from before, except reversed—they lined up and we punched them. One of the instructors explained it to me; it shows the new kids that pain is just pain, not a reason to quit, and that they have the courage to stand when they know what's coming. Also, someone always breaks position, which means that everyone else gets a lesson in what happens if you disobey orders.
Doesn't seem like that tough a lesson to me—I mean, who doesn't know that you can keep going after getting punched in the face? Anyway, Watanabe-sensei thought it was really important, so I didn't hold back. I didn't like it, though. That kid didn't do anything to me.
o-o-o-o
Things I am proud of:
- Watanabe-sensei watched me do kata #16 today. When I was done he looked sour and grunted, then went on to yell at someone else to fix their front foot
o-o-o-o
I snuck out today during chores today. I went back to the orphanage and broke Yamato's leg. I just wish his friends had been there too; I guess I'll have to go back tomorrow.
o-o-o-o
I didn't get to go back today because the Hokage wanted to meet me! He sent an ANBU to pull me out of class and bring me to the top of Hokage Monument. He was sitting on the edge of the First's head, looking out over the village. He told me to sit next to him. I was so excited I could barely keep still, but I managed it.
He just sat there forever, but finally he started talking. I thought he was going to say something important about how he had decided to take me as his student, but he didn't.
"Jiraiya," he said (his voice is so
solid!), "do you know what a ninja is?"
I told him a ninja is a great figher who can do all kinds of cool stuff. He looked disappointed, but he didn't even for a second look like he was going to hit me for being stupid.
"A ninja is a fighter, yes, but only in the way that a cooking knife is sharp—it's not the purpose of a cooking knife to be sharp, it's the purpose of a cooking knife to chop vegetables, and the knife must be sharp in order to achieve that purpose.
"A ninja is a protector. Ninja exist only so that we can protect the village, and the people who live within it.
Every Leaf ninja, from myself down to the newest student at the Academy, exists only to protect the people of Leaf. That is our purpose, that is what defines whether we are successful in life. Harming anyone from Leaf is evil. Harming other ninja, harming civilians—same thing. It is shameful, and those who do it are disgusting. Do you understand?"
I told him that yes, I understood. It was bullshit, of course. You're strong enough to defend yourself or you're not. If you're not, then you need to be good at hiding, because no one else is going to defend you. That's why everyone should become ninja and be strong. Well, everyone except Yamato. I'm glad he's not a ninja because then I couldn't bust him up as easily.
Speaking of Yamato, I bet he ratted me out and that's why the Hokage wanted to talk to me. I should break his jaw next time.
o-o-o-o
There's this freak in my class, Orochimaru. Skinny, pale, looks like that corpse I found in the garbage that one time, except he's alive. Always uses big words and talks down to people. What a loser.
I got stuck with him for 'escape and evasion' practice today. E&E is just tag in the woods, except if somebody tries to tag you you're allowed to beat the crap out of them. The two of us were told to play at being ninja returning from a spy mission and a bazillion other students were assigned to play guards and trackers. Winners got dinner and losers got two extra hours of PT.
Oooh-boo-hoo wasn't any good at stealth, so I had to do all the work on covering our tracks. He tried to pretend like he was so clever by figuring out what the other team was likely to do, but he was just guessing. We won because I practically carried him across the finish line.
o-o-o-o
I was practicing grappling with Nishitani today. We were supposed to be doing the Heaven and Earth drill but he didn't like the fact that he couldn't get me down, so he kneed me in the balls and pretended like it was an accident. His friends thought it was hilarious, but they all shut up after I broke his nose and rubbed his face in the mud. Totally worth the flogging.
o-o-o-o
Ugh, chakra control exercises. What a stupid waste of time. Just teach us the cool jutsu already! How am I supposed to be Legendary Jiraiya, Grandmaster of Ninja Arts, Super Overgod of all Shinobi, Most Famous Ninja Ever if all I get to do is stare at candles forever?!
This blonde girl named Tsunade thought she could lord it over the rest of us just because she figured out the exercise first. Okay, yeah, she said a couple useful things while she was bragging but talk about an ego! I called her Sunny until she shut up and stomped off.
o-o-o-o
Wow, here's a blast from the past! I can't believe I found this old journal again. I'm surprised I was able to keep journaling as long as I did. First year is the easy one—nothing but cals, protocol, and academics—but second year is where it really ramps up. Once the chakra exercises start you're exhausted all the time. I guess maybe I fell asleep writing one night and dropped it behind the bed? Dunno. I should probably apologize to Demura for accusing him of stealing it. Or maybe not, since I doubt he remembers now. No need to stir up trouble.
There's something right about finding it now, as I'm packing up after Graduation. I wrote the first entry in this book while sitting in my room at the orphanage at night, and I left there forever the next morning. I'm writing this new entry in the morning, while sitting in my room at the Academy, and tonight I'll be leaving here forever. Also, the previous entry was about when I met Sunny and now she's assigned to my team. Ooh-boo-hoo's with us too.
It's weird...I think I'm going to miss this tiny little room.
o-o-o-o
Ugh, I've been terrible about keeping up with this journal. I need to stay on top of it; Aunty would want me to.
Sarutobi-sensei...I still don't quite know what to make of him. Every time he guest-lectured at the Academy was a weird day. He's really good at explaining things and he's patient, but he'd pull you up short if you weren't 100% engaged and he got pissed if you quoted the answer from the book. "Speak for yourself, don't just parrot!" he'd say. I mean...what's the point of having the book if you aren't allowed to say what's in it? Still, even when he snapped at us, he was always respectful of us as people, and as ninja. He never once said "Because I say so", or cursed at us. And he never, ever raised a hand to us. He wouldn't even let students make fun of other students. I didn't know one of the answers and another kid laughed at me; Sarutobi-sensei kicked his ass out of the room instantly, told him to go clean the kitchen grease trap. Everyone was really respectful of each other after that.
I'll tell you one thing: He knows his stuff. I keep testing him to see where he's weak and I haven't found anything yet. I mean, seriously, nothing. At first I thought he was just bullshitting, but every time I check his answers it turns out that he's completely right. Jutsu, chakra control, history, math, reading, jutsu, tracking, E&E, astronomy, jutsu, orienteering, wilderness survival, literature, poetry, jutsu, flower arranging, medicine, medical jutsu...there's just nothing he doesn't know. Shoot, he knows twelve different taijutsu styles—hard, soft, and hard/soft. I'm not going to actually say to him that he's a pussy for preferring the soft styles, but he does.
Sunny is slavering after the medical training with Ooh-boo-hoo in hot pursuit; Sarutobi-sensei is always saying how he's just an interested layman and not a full doctor or mednin, but we're six months in and they haven't found a question he couldn't answer.
Also, the
way he teaches is bizarre. Two weeks ago, Sunny asked him how the humors balanced themselves through the bile networks between the liver and the heart. He told her that there was no such thing as bile networks, that that was "A scribe's corruption of a sentence from the Omuro the Elder scrolls written back in the eighth century." That answer didn't agree with the book she was studying and she called him out on it. He didn't get mad or anything, he just told us to pack our trail gear. Five minutes later we were out in the woods hunting around until we found a dire ape. He killed it and had her cut it open so that he could show her he was right: The only connections between the liver and the heart are the blood vessels. There's no separate network that runs alongside them.
Books can be wrong. What a weird thought.
o-o-o-o
Gah. Why do I even bother to have a journal if I'm not writing in it????
Ooh-boo-hoo finally mastered waterwalking, so Sensei took us skiing like he'd promised. It was the most amazing, most beautiful thing I've ever seen—the entire world turned stark and white, in places soft and rounded and in places hard and sharp as a knife. It's not like in Leaf, either—in Leaf it gets shoveled into giant piles and they end up filthy because the softfoots always scrape up dirt with the snow as they shovel. Here, it was all perfectly white and pure. Gorgeous. Crazy cold, though—we were bundled up in heavy furs and the wind made my nose ache, but in a good way.
I know sensei filed it as a C-rank training mission, but I doubt this is what Command expected. We didn't do a lick of training the whole time, just played around. Sensei taught us a signaling jutsu in case we got lost, then he showed us how to ski. It's like waterwalking, but much more repulsion and less adhesion so you can let gravity do most of the work. He made it look ridiculously easy; turns out, it's not. I ended up faceplanting over and over again. Ooh-boo-hoo needed to be reminded not to laugh at his teammates, but he'll be able to see out of the eye by tomorrow—sensei knows enough medical jutsu to bring the swelling down. Sunny got all pissy about it, like she always does, but I'm pretty sure she thought he'd earned it.
Sensei started us on the easy slopes and worked with us over the course of a week until we were going down the steep parts of the mountain. We all had to stay within bounds and signal every 15 minutes, but the bounds got bigger every day and we could go wherever we wanted whenever as long as we stayed inside them. It wasn't just skiing, either. He showed us that you can use chakra repulsion to pack snowballs better than you can do it with just your hands. Sunny immediately dumped a bundle of snow half the size of Hokage Monument on Ooh-boo-hoo's head and the next thing you know there's snow flying in all directions. Sensei joined in, but he cheats like crazy; instead of spending time to pack the snow he'll just angle his feet and use chakra repulsion to bury you in a wave of powder. We all ganged up on him but didn't manage to hit him with a single snowball. I got him later that night; while I was on watch and he was asleep I lobbed a snowball the size of my head onto him. He was a good sport about it; he tossed me headfirst into a drift, but he was laughing the whole time, and he helped me up afterwards.
o-o-o-o
Ow. My fucking nose is killing me, and if Sunny doesn't shut up I'm going to scream.
Back up, take it in order. Remember, Jiraiya: The best ninja are thoughtful ninja. Only when your mind is ordered can you plan, act, and succeed.
We were in the mountains for two weeks. When we got back, Sarutobi-sensei went off to file the report on our 'training mission' and the three of us went out to Nobutaki's for dinner. A bunch of other genin were there, bragging about their sensei and how awesome they were, and this one Uchiha kid was shooting his mouth off, saying that his sensei was miles better than anyone else except the Hokage himself and that only by a smidge. I didn't recognize the kid, so I'll just call him Dickless; wouldn't want to besmirch the oh-so-fair name of the Uchiha clan, after all! I said that no way, Sarutobi-sensei was the best. Then Dickless said that no, he wasn't, because he was just a Sarutobi and they're a minor clan with delusions of grandeur who only have any sort of power because they were one of the first to kiss the First Hokage's sandals, and that no mere Sarutobi could—
He stopped talking at that point because it's really hard to talk when your head has been rammed through a fucking wall.
Well, naturally, his teammates and their friends jumped on me, so Sunny and Oro waded in and we all started kicking ass. According to the police report there was a million ryō in damages, fourteen genin were in hospital with serious injuries, and it was touch-and-go whether Dickless would wake up again. I think it's fair to say we won.
Anyway, we're sitting at the police station now and Sunny won't shut the fuck up about how could I be so crazy and violent and did I have any idea about blah blah blah. I'm hoping that if I just ignore her and keep writing she'll piss off. I'll give her this, though—it was pretty cool how she had my back. On a mission, sure. In a random off-duty bar? Did not expect that from her, or from Oro.
o-o-o-o
Sensei spent fifteen minutes going on about how I shamed him.
...What?! I thought he'd be pleased! I had his back, why was he angry about that?!
I tried my best to smile and not say anything so that I wouldn't seem weak, but I just couldn't. It all came boiling out and I yelled right back at him.
I really did not expect the hug. It just came out of nowhere; I was expecting him to hit me for talking back, but he didn't. He grabbed me and hugged me the way Aunty Kobayashi sometimes would. I didn't know what to do and I just froze. He didn't let go, just held me until I finally relaxed and hugged him back. (God, that sounds so girly!) Next thing I know I'm crying. I don't even know why, I just was. He didn't seem disgusted or anything, just held me closer.
Eventually I calmed down. He gave me a handkerchief to snot on and told me that yes, it is the duty of every ninja to protect their own, but that I had the wrong idea of who 'my own' was. Protecting him and Oro and Sunny is important, yes, but if they're the
only ones that I protect then I'm not being a ninja of the Leaf, I'm just being a bully.
Then he started talking about the Will of Fire and I started laughing.
Oops.
I can't believe I did that. Six years at the Academy, I never so much as cracked a smile when the teachers did their Woffle blather. (I probably shouldn't write that down here; sure, this journal is ciphered
and coded
and subdivided, but someone could still crack it and I'd be in real trouble if they saw me making jokes about the WOF, even just in my private journals....eh. There's enough in here to hang me anyway, so I might as well write what I want to write.) Anyway, when the instructors started Woffling I always managed to look attentive and impressed, nod in all the right places, act like it was this super inspiring thing instead of utter fucking bullshit. This time, though, I was too torn up and it slipped out before I could stop it.
He
still didn't hit me. Honestly, after laughing at the Will of Fire I was expecting to be stripped of my headband, maybe even executed. I mean, everyone seems to take it so seriously! "Ooh, the Will of Fire! It's the wellspring of everything great about Leaf! It's super important, really! Protect everyone, make everyone's lives better, have honor in all things!"
Bull.
Fucking.
Shit.
Where the fuck was their 'Will of Fire' in the orphanage, huh? My fucking parents, whoever the fuck they were, left me on the steps like a piece of trash—where was their fucking 'Will of Fire'? At the orphanage, nobody gave a shit if food was short, or if Yamato and his friends stole my stuff because I was smaller than them. (Speaking of that turd, I wonder if his jaw ever healed enough for him to talk? I know Tanahashi was eventually getting around just fine on his crutches, but I never checked on the others.)
For that matter, where is the Will of Fire in everyfuckingday life? People starve to death all the time, right here in Leaf. A third of my graduating class are civilian-born, but go check on their families. Even with a son or daughter in the ranks, most of them are still scrabbling to get by. Their kids are risking their fucking lives for the Tower, and still they're scratching for rent money, tax money, and food? What, does the Fucking Will of Fucking Fire only apply to the rich people and the fucking clans?
I was actually crazy enough to say all that. Sage's blistering boils, how could I have been so stupid? Talk about pushing your luck. It wasn't a problem, though. Sensei listened without saying a word, then he stood up and waved for me to follow.
He didn't say a word until we were sitting on top of Hokage Monument, on the First's head right where Lord Hokage Senju had brought me that one time. Sarutobi-sensei had a storage scroll full of marmot roast, carrots, and hot tea. We sat there for maybe twenty minutes, eating and drinking while looking out over the village. Didn't look at each other, even (well, he didn't look at me), but he wasn't angry, just thinking. I need to write down the next part as exactly as I can, because I don't want to ever forget it.
"Jiraiya," he said at last, "have you thought much about the history you learned at the Academy?"
"Sure." (I was totally lying. I let that stuff go the minute the test was over.)
"Good. Then this will all be familiar.
"You and I both know that the world is bad, but think about the path of history. A thousand years ago: Constant warfare. Primitive tribes with none of our modern medicine or technology. Darkness across the earth. Then comes the Sage—"
"—with chakra and safety and knowledge for all. Yeah, sensei, I know."
Then he actually looked at me, and I shut up.
"No. He did not bring 'chakra and safety and knowledge for all'. He taught of chakra, yes, but he intended it to be a way for people to understand each other better, a way to bridge the gaps between us and promote empathy. He wanted everyone to be at peace, to work together to make everyone's lives better."
I can tell I was still off-kilter, because I actually snorted out loud at that. Sensei smiled.
"Amusing? Perhaps. If we're being perfectly honest, the Sage was a failure." I must have looked appalled and it make him laugh.
"Yes, Jiraiya, the Sage failed. He wanted to reach the goal during his lifetime—a world at peace, without disease or hunger or pain. A world where all men love each other. Not like that! Get your mind out of the gutter.
"The Sage wanted to make the world perfect, and he failed at that...but he made it better. Chakra wasn't evenly distributed, so we saw the ninja clans form. They fought each other most of the time, but they also provided enough concentrated force to keep certain areas safe from predators. Different clans used different strategies; some stayed on the move, constantly raiding and burning. Some enslaved the civilians in their region and drove them like beasts in order to build a good lifestyle for their ninja overlords. Others protected their civilians, treating them the way a wise farmer treats his oxen and cows.
"The rise of the clans didn't make the world perfect—far from it!—but it did make it better. Fewer babies died, population increased, there was enough safety that people could focus on developing their arts and technologies instead of simply on defending themselves while scratching for a living.
"Thirty years ago, Senju Hashirama founded Leaf, and other ninja villages quickly coalesced all across the continent. With so many ninja concentrated in so few places it's possible to set and enforce laws. Life has gotten better for everyone since the founding of the Great Villages."
"We never had a World War before the Villages," I griped.
Sarutobi-sensei looked sad. He hasn't really wanted to talk about what he saw during the war, but I think it was pretty bad. Couldn't be
that bad, though. The whole thing was like, what? Four months?
"True," he said. "And the next one will be worse. There weren't so many ninja a generation ago, so there weren't a lot of ninja for my War. The fact that the Clans can have roots now means that there's more ability to sustain children, so the population is exploding, as are research efforts into sealing and ninjutsu. Your War—and there's going to be one, and probably soon—is going to be much worse. More ninja, more training, more techniques, more concentrations of wealth to act as targets..." He looked tired for a second, and then waved it off.
"Regardless. The War was bad, but it was short. The concentration of power and the increase in research efforts has made everyone's life better. Again, more people, living longer. More goods, more trade, more knowledge.
"This is the Will of Fire in its purest form, Jiraiya: all of humanity, striving upwards. Every human is related to every other human, if only distantly. You have far-removed cousins who live in Cloud, and in Mist, and in Sand, and in the deepest reaches of Bear. Everywhere that a human walks, a member of your family walks. We fight, like every family does...unfortunately, we often go too far and actually kill each other. That is a tragedy.
"Yes, progress isn't perfect and it isn't straight. The human family has its share of stupid people, and violent people, and crazy people. Sometimes those get into power and things get worse for a while, but they always get better again later, because the good and decent people make it better. The Will of Fire is what inspires those good and decent people. It is the heat in their soul, lifting them up like warm air rising from a baker's oven and sparks flying up from the blacksmith's forge. Those who build and raise up are filled with the Will of Fire.
"There are those who oppose the Will of Fire. They are beneath contempt. They cannot convince women to lie with them, so they take women by force. They cannot convince people to be their friends, so they enslave others, or manipulate them, or use jutsu to twist their minds until what remains smiles and nods and speaks flattery.
"Working against the Will of Fire is what you do when you have nothing to offer. When you cannot create anything, you cannot do anything that others value, you cannot contribute in any meaningful way...and you lack the strength of character to accept that fact and work to change it. When you have nothing to offer and you're too cowardly to face that fact, there's nothing to do but tear down what others have built up."
"All ninja can contribute," I pointed out. "We're powerful. We can hunt out the dangerous animals, kill Leaf's enemies, that kind of thing. I guess we all have the Will of Fire."
Sensei shook his head. "No. Being a ninja doesn't say anything about whether or not you have the Will of Fire. Your actions are what say that." I guess he saw that I wasn't buying it, because he thought for a minute and then tried again. "Ninja are more powerful than civilians, which is just another way of saying that we have more choices. An orphanage Matron is stronger than a child, so she has more choices—she can bully the child, or protect him, or ignore him. A ninja is as much stronger than a Matron as a Matron is stronger than a child. Again, it's just more choices, not fundamentally different ones."
"I'm no different than an old civilian woman? Really?"
"No, you are not. You're human, just like the civilians. You have darker hair than some of them, and you have more chakra than any of them, but neither of those things makes you inherently better."
"Sure it does. I can do stuff they can't."
"And they can do things you can't. How good a blacksmith are you? How skilled a biwa player? Can you write a play, or grow a crop?"
"Well...no. But I'm smarter; I'm a ninja, they're just softfoots. They need us to take care of them."
He thought about that one for a moment. "I think the question of how intelligent civilians are is not quite as simple as many people think. Regardless, that doesn't matter. You're smarter than some of your classmates and not as smart as others, but simple intelligence doesn't change whether or not you should be respected as part of the human family. You aren't
better than them, Jiraiya. You're just
different. It is up to you whether you will embody the Will of Fire, or whether you will work against it. Whether you will create or destroy."
He waited for me to say something, but I didn't know what to say so I just kept my mouth shut.
Eventually, Sarutobi-sensei pointed out over the village. "This is Leaf, Jiraiya. Tens of thousands of people huddled together for warmth, keeping the darkness at bay with walls and lamps and closeness. Everyone here embodies the Will of Fire—they want to work together, they want to enrich themselves and others, they want to leave a better world for their children than the one they were born into.
"As a ninja, it's your choice: Embody the Will of Fire and help to build that better world, or don't. Be a protector that everyone looks up to and wants to be like...or make everyone in the village less safe by hurting your brothers in arms. Destroy a restaurant owner's livelihood so that his family goes hungry. Lash out at civilians weaker than yourself, break their legs and their jaws, and make them afraid of you. You can be a better man than they were, or you can be a better bully."
I probably looked a little rocked by that because he stopped talking and waited for me to process.
"Those kids in Nobutaki's were ninja," I said weakly. "It was a fair fight, and they started—
He cut me off with a sharp gesture. "No excuses. Every human is family, and every Leaf citizen, ninja or civilian, is close family. Today you smashed one of my cousins through a wall and put a dozen more in the hospital. You worked against the Will of Fire and you shamed me."
He stared me dead in the eyes, and I could feel his words cutting at me like knives. I was used to feeling warmth and strength from Sarutobi-sensei, a strength that he shared willingly with everyone around him. Those things were still there, but they were transformed into threats. The warmth wasn't a warm fireplace to sit beside, it was a house fire on the other side of the bedroom door. The strength wasn't a guardian standing between me and the world, it was the thing that the guardian had protected me from.
"You see?" he said softly. "Protect and inspire, or terrorize and bully: same abilities, different choices. Strength doesn't make you good, it only makes you strong. How you use it is what matters."
"I'm s-sorry, Sarutobi-sensei."
"I don't care," he said quietly. "I don't care if you're sorry, or guilty, or anything else. You're welcome to feel however you want to feel, Jiraiya. You can be angry with me for chastising you, or at those children for criticizing me. You can be jealous of Tsunade for her superior chakra control, or at Orochimaru for his superior education. You can have contempt for civilians. I don't care what you feel, I care what you
do with those feelings."
"I won't do it again, Sensei. I promise. If they start mouthing off about you I'll just walk away."
"Not good enough."
"But...I...what else am I supposed to do?"
"You tell me. I've been saying nothing else for ten minutes now."
I admit, I completely flailed at that one. "Please, just tell me, Sensei."
"Believe in the Will of Fire, Jiraiya. Follow its path. Be someone that people look up to, a man that they try to emulate because you're a good man, not just a powerful ninja. Power is easy to get, but goodness takes work."
"Yes, Sarutobi-sensei. I promise."
The warmth and strength came flooding back and he smiled. He stood and offered me a hand; when I took it he pulled me up and clapped me on the shoulder.
"Glad to hear it. Don't think this is the end of it, though; there's going to be some heavy charges laid, but I'll speak for you. Now, I haven't had dinner yet because
someone had to go and cause trouble, thereby forcing me to spend three hours dealing with paperwork and being yelled at. I want teriyaki chicken, and you're buying."
