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“I’m banning you.”
Jiraiya blinks at the Hokage, no robes and long un-brushed hair, Inuzuka Kiba is half Jiraiya’s size. Jiraiya didn’t believe that Kiba had become the Seventh Hokage before he’d seen it with his own two eyes.
In all of Konoha’s lifetime, an Inuzuka has never even been considered for the hat.
“From what, Sir?” Jiraiya asks because he genuinely has no idea. It’s not as though anything out of the ordinary recently.
Kiba shuffles some papers. “The baths,” he says and doesn’t look up.
“The baths?” he echoes back, struggling to keep the shock out of his voice, his eyebrows shooting to his hairline. That's… not what he expected. The baths of all things?
He’s been behaving how he’s behaved forever, so what the hell did he do piss off the Hokage.
“Yes,” the Hokage says, finally looking up at him. “The baths. You can no longer go near them.”
Jiraiya almost wants to laugh. He’s being banned from the baths by the Hokage and he feels like some child being grounded.
“I think it’s a basic right that women deserve to be able to bathe in peace without being spied on and objectified by an old man who obviously doesn’t know what no means?”
The will to laugh bubbles in his throat for a moment, an instinctual reaction to being presented with something ridiculous. The Sandaime never addressed Jiraiya’s habits, neither did Minato. No one did. No one except this man.
Kiba looks up at him, a lazy grin stretched across his features and Jiraiya wonders how on earth this kid became Hokage. How on earth an Inuzuka became Hokage.
“You’ve been spending too much time around Tsunade,” Jiraiya says, keeping his voice even. He isn’t sure what Kiba’s smile means, hell he isn’t sure what to make of his Hokage at all, and that sudden notion is enough to make his insides twist.
He’s a professional at information gathering, but somehow, Kiba managed to remain entirely off his radar. He didn’t expect it at all. Somehow, Kiba worked his way from the bottom and managed to keep his head down enough that Jiraiya didn’t even notice.
Jiraiya knows nothing about that the seventh. And that scares him more than anything.
Kiba’s smile gets wider and Jiraiya is suddenly staring at a lot of teeth. “No,” he says, and blatantly refuses to offer an explanation to what that means.
Well.
“Do you understand my orders?” Kiba asks, but there is no room for any answer other than yes.
“Of course, Hokage-sama,” Jiraiya says, quietly wondering to himself how this tiny man will ever keep track of Jiraiya the sannin. ANBU guards? Jiraiya knows how to play hide and seek with the best and if Jiraiya wants to do something, no black ops soldier is going to stop him.
Kiba watches him for a moment, sharp eyes tracing Jiraiya’s face before he taps the side of his nose twice.
Jiraiya has never given the Inuzuka much thought before, but now, he wonders if that was their goal all along.
“I didn’t bribe my way into the Hokage seat, Jiraiya,” he says and there is an undertone to his voice that has Jiraiya tensing. “I don’t need the ANBU to know if you disobeyed my orders.”
It’s a warning, that much is clear. And even if Kiba is half his size, muscles tiny compared to Jiraiya’s own, still. Still. Jiraiya finds Kiba isn’t someone he wants to piss off.
“Yes sir,” Jiraiya says, keeping his voice light. Kiba grins, less teeth this time, but the ferocity is still there and he dismisses him with a nod.
Jiraiya turns to walk out the door, ready to spend the next few days trying to knuckle out the mystery that his their Hokage, when he meets another gaze, just walking through the door.
Nara Shikamaru.
Shikamaru levels him with a stare that’s so blank it would put Shikaku’s poker face to shame. He meanders past Jiraiya, his shoulders back and a steady gait to his walk that speaks more than words ever could. I’m not intimidated. Not at all.
Once, the fact that he was a Legendary Sannin was enough to send these little aspiring shinobi into a fit of excitement, and usually, that kind of admiration doesn’t fade.
But, Jiraiya realises, this generation is an odd one. A determined one. A smart one.
With Sai in the seat of the ANBU commander, Kiba the Hokage, Ino as head of Torture and Interrogation, Shikamaru as right-hand man to Kiba, Shino as Aburame clan head and Hinata as Jounin commander - all opinionated people determined to ignite change, Jiraiya realises that everyone should have expected this.
And yet, these kids kept their heads down, and just got on with it.
Scary isn’t the right word to use, as he would have described many other generations such as Kakashi’s.
This generation is simply clever. And maybe that in itself is a new kind of terrifying.