Chapter 121: Jiraiya

The puppets on him would constantly feed information back to Torifū, so Torifū wouldn't miss the time to save Kakuzu. What a loss it would be if Kakuzu managed to escape on his own!

The sun was setting, and the two cranes, who had been out partying all day, finally came home. Day after day, they went off to who-knew-where, and without a summoning jutsu, Torifū couldn't find them at all. Torifū even considered clipping their feathers and making them stay home, forbidden from going anywhere. But if he actually did that, he wouldn't be able to use his summoned beasts for a while, and a flightless crane would just be a sitting duck.

Luckily, Aokumo and Ryūfū were quite obedient to Snowflake. Every time Snowflake reprimanded them, they would be well-behaved for a few days, but only a few days.

"Hehe, Torifū! Let me tell you! Ryūfū and I went to a mountain today..."

Aokumo chattered on endlessly, talking about himself and his animal friends. At first, Torifū patiently remembered every single one of Aokumo's friends, afraid that forgetting one might hurt the little crane's feelings. But in the past two years, Aokumo had made nearly ten thousand friends... Almost every mountain he went to, he would find animals bowing and scraping to Aokumo. He had clearly become the overlord of the animal world in the Land of Fire.

These days, Torifū's strategy for handling Aokumo was simple: baffle him with nonsense first, reason with him if forced, then circle back to nonsense. It worked every damn time.

Torifū left the compound and strolled through the streets for a while. He no longer heard those outlandish rumors; things like aliens had probably all been debunked. He figured his teacher must have been quite exhausted, getting involved in such a commotion right before retirement.

Just then, Torifū saw a family of three in the distance. Their clothes were ordinary, not indicating any specific clan; they seemed to be ordinary villagers. However, Torifū, with his sharp eyes, noticed the child's pupils – they were snake-like.

"That's quite a surprise; I didn't expect to see him here."

If Torifū's guess was correct, this should be Orochimaru's family. Looking at the smiles on their faces, they seemed quite happy. Torifū didn't intend to rashly disturb them. After all, they were happy at the moment, and it would be bad to ruin the atmosphere. Furthermore, at this point, Orochimaru had no use yet; at most, he could just unlock a character entry and give a thousand Peace Points. Striking up a conversation would waste a lot of time, and the input-to-reward ratio wasn't good. It would be better to wait until Orochimaru was older. Or directly poaching the grown-up Orochimaru from Hiruzen's hands would also be a good option. Hiruzen surely wouldn't be so ignorant of the situation and reject him, would he?

The only thing was, he hadn't encountered Jiraiya this time. Unlike Orochimaru, Jiraiya seemed to have been an orphan very early on. Whenever he tried to find him before, he was always delayed by various things, and when he finally had free time, he would forget about it again. Meeting Orochimaru today reminded him, so it would be best to find Jiraiya as soon as possible, while he didn't have many missions.

A trip out, and he still got something out of it. This was quite pleasant; there was nothing else left to do. The villagers on the street were also gradually heading home, so Torifū stopped wandering and returned to the compound to wash up and go to bed. He had to admit that life without a cell phone was very regular; he always went to bed early and woke up early.

The next morning, Torifū woke up early. With today's check-in reward, Torifū's Peace Points finally reached 200,000. However, Torifū wasn't particularly excited, nor did he want to celebrate; he just felt tired. He didn't need to train today. After staying home for a few hours, Torifū finally went out.

He headed straight in the direction where he saw Orochimaru yesterday. Torifū thought that perhaps the two might be friends or neighbors. Walking down this street, most of the villagers here were ordinary civilians with no clan affiliations. However, there was no oppression in the village, especially since the Uchiha clan had recently become more friendly with the villagers. After all, most of the discrimination against commoners came from the Uchiha clan, so after the Uchiha changed, everyone's lives improved significantly.

Torifū walked down this street until there was no more road, but he still couldn't find where Orochimaru and Jiraiya's homes were. So, after more than an hour of fruitless searching, he decided to ask a passerby for directions.

"Hello, ma'am, I'd like to ask you about someone." Torifū politely inquired, and the woman, seeing it was Torifū, stopped what she was doing. "Torifū-sama, please ask anything you need; I know this whole area well."

Seeing the woman's eager response, Torifū was secretly delighted; he had found the right person. "Do you know any families with children named Orochimaru and Jiraiya? They're probably around three years old."

The woman pondered for a moment, then her eyes lit up. "I think I know a little about those two families. But they live on another street, and the two families are even neighbors."

The smile on the woman's face never ceased, which showed that Jiraiya and Orochimaru's families had a good reputation on the street. Since the woman still had work to do and was quite busy, she took Torifū to the next street, pointed out the way, and then waved goodbye to Torifū with reluctance.

Torifū sometimes couldn't quite understand why so many people were so enthusiastic towards him. Was it just because he was the Hokage's disciple? The reason didn't seem entirely valid, so Torifū didn't bother thinking about it.

Walking in the direction the woman pointed, he found a white-haired little boy outside the door of a single-story house. The boy was sitting on a pile of sand, playing with it. He was happily talking to himself. Seeing Torifū, he asked, "Onii-san, who are you?"

Torifū knelt down and stroked Jiraiya's head, smiling. "I am Torifū of the Clouds, the Shodaime Hokage's disciple. And you?"

[T/N: I don't know if this will be his title or if he's referring to his clan, but Torifū of the Clouds has a nice ring to it. He's sometimes referred to as Cloud Dwelling Master.]

Jiraiya scratched his head. "My name is Jiraiya. I'm my mom and dad's son."

"And where are your parents?"

Jiraiya pouted then. "They both went on a mission. They should be back soon."

"Then do you want to play with your onii-san for a bit?"

Jiraiya nodded. "Okay! What should we play?" Jiraiya, who had been a bit downcast, immediately perked up when he heard about playing a game. He bounced up from the sand pile.

Seeing this, Torifū felt a pang of sympathy. Such a young child, and his parents were out on missions all day.

"By the way, Jiraiya, do you know Orochimaru?"

Jiraiya nodded. "Yes, he lives next door to me." Jiraiya pointed to the house next door, which made Torifū feel very relieved. He had thought he'd have to search for a while longer, but he found them so quickly.

And then, Jiraiya asked, "What should we play?!"