#no Jiraiya has no idea the explosive tag he's gonna set off if he manages to actually touch any of the Galahdians' braids

[a-world-in-grey]

Sola/Calling for Rain II

@secret-engima Not the meeting between Sola and Tenzo, but a meeting between Sola and a certain pervert Sage.

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Jiraiya gets pulled away from peeping on the hot springs spying for local gossip by T&I requesting his skills as a Fuuinjutsu Master. Jiraiya grudgingly goes. He's never been a fan of the place and looking over whatever prisoner they've got instead of the lovely ladies down below isn't his idea of a good afternoon.

But orders are orders, and these came hand-delivered via ANBU.

He arrives at T&I, only to discover the request isn't for a prisoner.

Uzumaki Kyoho. Vicious tempered Kusa kunoichi renowned for cutting her opponents into pieces or burning them alive with the white-hot fire that earned her the moniker 'the Inferno.' Youngest shinobi to earn the rank of jounin since the end of the Third War at fifteen, and the youngest shinobi to earn themselves an entry in a Bingo Book ever. At age eleven.

Killing a dozen Kiri genin at their own Chuunin Exams while brandishing her Uzumaki heritage as sword and shield will do that. Killing the team from Kumo started up whispers of Uzushio's ghost come to seek revenge. The Iwa team was just collateral. Supposedly. Iwa didn't have any hand in Uzushio's destruction, but Jiraiya doesn't doubt every non-Kusa and Konoha genin tried their hardest to kill the young Uzumaki.

The only confirmed Uzumaki Jiraiya's found outside Konoha.

Now one of two, according to the report on one Uzumaki Karin, Kyoho's younger sister. Defected to Konoha during the second phase of Chuunin Exams after encountering a long lost cousin in Naruto, being abandoned by her team, and then rescued by the Last Uchiha, who'd recognized Karin as a potential Uzumaki and sought her out on Naruto's behalf.

Oh, the kid apparently had pictures of Mikoto and Kushina and recognized the Uzumaki red hair that way. Which raises concerns if he has pictures of Naruto's other parent but that's something to investigate later.

Uchiha-brat vouched for Karin and petitioned the Hokage to recruit her older sister Kyoho. Who, by her younger sister's testimony, wouldn't hesitate to defect to Konoha with Karin there.

Reading Karin and Kyoho's testimonies of their treatment at Kusa's hands, seeing the reports from the medical ninja of the scars littering both sisters, some that are almost ten years old, Jiraiya can believe it.

Kusa are idiots.

But the reason for Jiraiya's presence are the seals.

The explosive tag, swiped from the alarmingly large stash Karin had on her, is nothing like Jiraiya's ever seen, and he's familiar with all the standard and not-so-standard tags used by every shinobi village. Oh, the concept is simple enough. Water-nature chakra storage with a converter to Fire-nature for the actual explosion. Common enough, though most Uzumaki favored a Lightning conversion over a Fire one, but given Kyoho's marked affinity for Fire it made sense her sister would also use that.

No, what's unusual are the kanji used to invoke the seal's power. All the sealing styles Jiraiya's ever seen invoke beings of power - dragons, phoenixes, other mythical beasts. Truly powerful seals invoke the gods, a precarious endeavor because gaining the attention of the gods was never safe.

'Tide-mother' he could sort of see, given the kanji for Tide was the same as the kanji in Uzushio, and the Uzumaki had never named their sea and storm gods to those outside the clan. But 'Cleansing Fire'?

The explosive seals from Kyoho's stash are purely Fire-natured, but they use the same kanji.

Well, if there's anyone who knows the answers, it's the woman sitting fearlessly across the table from Morino Ibiki.

There's no better insight into the thought process of another fuuinjutsu user than an up close and personal look at their sealing style, and the lovely Kyoho-chan has half a dozen seals inked into her skin. And to think he'd have to deal with an ugly mugged prisoner!

Today's looking to be a good day.

Jiraiya enters the room by throwing open the door. Ibiki doesn't twitch, but Kyoho's hand drops to an empty weapon holster. He grins at her. "I'm here to look at those seals of yours, Grape-chan. Shirt off."

The seals on Kyoho's face lend themselves to a truly menacing scowl. Jiraiya's grin widens and he ruffles her hair. Kyoho ducks away from his hand before he can tug at her braids, her deep snarl showing some impressive Summons-Marked canines. Cute.

He starts with the seals on Kyo-chan's face. Though he has to unpack the seals from their compacted, tattoo-like state first. Which means he has to slap one of his own seals on Kyoho so he can actually see her scriptwork. She's none too pleased about that, but grits her teeth, clenches on hand on the table, and stays carefully still while he gets to work.

The seals at her mouth and nose - a single line down the nose and three on her chin - filter the air against airborne toxins. Fair enough, her Chuunin Exams were in Kiri. It's a passive seal, continuously drawing on Kyoho's chakra instead of having invocation and power components.

The seal around her eyes - tiny scales fanning out from the sides, not at all like Orochimaru's purple markings - is meant to redirect light within the eye. Why?

"Kiban. Also known as Eyeshine." Kyoho sighs when Jiraiya doesn't understand the technical term. "A reflective film at the back of the eye that reflects light back through the retina, increasing the amount of light available to the eyes' photoreceptors."

Ibiki speaks up while Jiraiya's still trying to translate that into normal language. "Night vision."

"After a fashion."

That's a seal Kyoho has to consciously activate and hold, similar to a dojutsu if Jiraiya remembers Tsunade's long ago lectures on the subject during the Second War.

The black band circling her throat unravels with another unusual kanji. "Earth Smith?"

"Land-Forger." Kyoho corrects, but doesn't offer further detail.

"Earth chakra conversion." Jiraiya notes. Drawing on its hardening properties as protection. He pulls away from the seal and doesn't miss how Kyoho relaxes.

Ibiki doesn't miss it either. "Don't like anyone near your throat?" He asks, because he's an asshole.

Kyoho shoots him a withering look. "You've never had your throat slit." She retorts.

Jiraiya pauses where he's examining what looks like a regeneration seal over Kyoho's heart that might rival Tsunade's Strength of a Hundred. Glances at the black tattoo around her throat. If there's a scar, he can't see it beneath the ink.

Ibiki raises a brow.

Kyoho's smile is not friendly. "Shinen killed them for it."

Ah, yes, her giant cat of a Summons, currently on a mission of revenge for Kyoho, and capable of killing jounin according to Hawk-taicho's report. Might have been when Shinen killed one. Jiraiya idly wonders which village they were from. Kyoho's got a dozen dead jounin to her name.

A-ranked threat in three Bingo Books, and all of them want her very, very dead.

Explains the regeneration seal. It's a well crafted piece of work, even if the conversion used for it makes no sense. How does Divine Dragon of the Sky relate to healing? 'He's a god of life' helps only slightly, and Jiraiya chalks it up to it being one of the Uzumaki gods and leaves it at that. It also features the Cleansing Fire - which Kyoho translates as Purifying Pyre - for the power invocation.

The seals on her forearms though - those are fascinating. Purifying Pyre again, probably Kyoho's default invocation, but the conversion this time is 'Heavenly Light,' and the other components include both a physical converter and one for memory. He has no idea what it does.

Kyoho's explanation is long and technical and far too much like Orochimaru whenever his old teammate explained about his newest jutsu experiments. Jiraiya had happily forgotten how incomprehensible R&D types could be.

"So instead of creating a pocket dimension," like literally everyone else, "you use the seals to store objects as light? How is that even work?"

Kyoho opens her mouth, looks at him, then sighs and gives up on an explanation. "It just does."

Shifting to look at the seals on her back - taking one more look a her chest, Kyoho's no Tsunade but it's still a lovely view - Jiraiya starts at the one over the center of her spine. It's a straightforward chakra storage seal. An Uzumaki having a store of extra chakra to draw on is frankly overkill in Jiraiya's opinion, but Jiraiya recognizes that it's a trauma response to nearly dying from chakra depletion as a child.

Creating seals to protect herself isn't the worst coping method he's seen.

The last and largest tattoo takes the form of a blade-like shape along her spine from nape to the chakra storage seal, lines fanning down across her shoulders and upper back like sun rays or wings. The seal itself has the Purifying Pyre invocation and both the Heavenly Light and Divine Dragon of the Sky conversions. The Heavenly Light is paired with the physical converter and memory combination like her storage seals, while the Divine Dragon links with the Pyre-invocation. The last component is the… Four Winds?

"Cardinal Winds." Kyoho explains. "Power to convert mass into light and provide the needed force, the Cardinal Winds to direct that mass and force along the desired vectors, and the memory component to reassemble at the end."

Jiraiya rolls his eyes. R&D types. "And in normal language…?"

"High velocity movement."

Oh, yeah that makes… wait a minute. Jiraiya runs the process through his head again. Invocation for power for the speed and direction, by what's… converting into light… "Tell me you aren't using the Heavenly Light on yourself."

"I'm not using the Heavenly Light on myself." Kyoho says dutifully, the liar. Jiraiya whacks her upside the head. "Ow!"

"Are you insane?! Why would you do that?" Of all the block-headed, ill-conceived, reckless ideas- Scattered in a burst of light never to reform, reformed in pieces, running into something with enough force to kill herself. He can think of so many ways that could have gone wrong. He whacks her upside the head again.

Kyoho swears back at him. "How else was I supposed to do it?"

"Any other way! How did that not kill you?"

"Because I know what I'm doing, obviously-"

Ibiki clears his throat, pointedly. "Your opinion, Jiraiya-sama?"

Jiraiya huffs, but stands up from behind Kyoho. He'll continue to yell at the brat later. "The brat's lucky to be alive." He says, and tries not to pout when Kyoho redresses herself.

Ibiki's expression doesn't shift, but he radiates a flatly unamused air that conveys how unimpressed he is at Jiraiya not answering his question. Kyoho looks fascinated. Jiraiya rolls his eyes. "Grape-chan's not lying about being self taught. Her style isn't anything like the Uzumaki Clan's, or any of the shinobi villages. She'll need to train an apprentice before she can claim the title, but she's certainly skilled enough to be a fuuinjutsu master." Kyoho glares at him for the nickname.

"And her other seals?"

He waves a dismissive hand. "Fine. Nothing that will harm anyone." Not that Kyoho isn't capable of using those seals to be lethal, but the seals themselves aren't combat seals. And nothing that trips concerns about her being a spy.

She could have something hidden in those storage seals of hers. Jiraiya doesn't know how he'd go about forcing them to release their full contents like a standard storage seal, so they're stuck at taking Kyoho's word that she's handed everything over for analysis.

She'll have an ANBU watcher for a while. She's a foreign, jounin-ranked shinobi. They can't keep her away from Naruto once she's a citizen, not when Kyoho's an Uzumaki and under the protection of the Uchiha, but they're sure as hell not going to risk Naruto's safety.

Hmm, he should drop by a couple times. He needs to finish lecturing the brat on appropriate safety with fuuinjutsu experimentation. Maybe pick her brain a bit more - the way her imagination works is vastly different than any other fuuinjutsu user he's encountered and she's a much prettier conversation partner to boot.

And maybe poke his godson a bit more. The brat looks so much like Minato it's painful, but he reacts exactly like Kushina and it's hilarious.