Work Text:
23 years, two months and 3 days before the ring battles, somewhere in Arabia:
Maito Gai woke up with more hunger that he had felt after his career-crushing injury (more like his last near-death experience) and tried to jump to a sitting position on his bed. Keyword: tried. His arms were too weak to get him up.
He heard a little moan. Was there a child around? He opened his eyes to try and localise the origin of the noise and moved his head to the side. It resulted more difficult than he expected, and he searched his memories to know if he had been injured enough recently to have to go to the hospital or if he had gone drinking last night. Only memories of his dear student’s child training with his father arose. Weird.
He tried to get up with more insistence, he put so much effort that his feet kicked backward only to hit the mattress, which was ripped with the strength that the green and dark blue flames gave to his body. Uh… coloured flames? That was new.
Wait. His feet had moved!?
17 years ago, 15th of September:
Ghassan Qadir finished writing down the recounting of his and his eternal rival’s fifteenth challenge and left his pen inside the case his mother (he had a mother now! She was wonderful and strong, and everything he could have asked for a mother) had bought him for the scholar season.
It was weird to be back to the school, weirder to think that he could be studying until his late twenties in this world without being considered slow or unintelligent.
There wasn’t chakra, or at least nobody knew how to use theirs, he wasn’t a sensor, so he didn’t know, but he could still use his to enhance his body and climb up walls. He had been lucky he had decided to keep his ‘powers’ for himself instead of broadcasting them. Knowing how comic-obsessed the people there where, he would have been declared a superhero or something as ridiculous as it. Not that he didn’t like the idea, superheroes were amazing, but he was a ninja, someone who had killed for loyalty to his village, yes, but also for money.
It had been strange to get used to his new, slightly darker, skin or his finer features, but the new alphabet (and new language) had been really difficult. At least his old language (Japanese in this world) provided a barrier for anyone who tried to read his last-life’s accounts and his hair was as straight and black as ever.
Thought his mother hadn’t left him cut it in his usual style and now it was shorter, as to not get in the way when he practised martial arts (sometimes instead of in a nightmare he felt he was in a dream; all those fighting styles, and all of them taught to whoever wanted to learn them, Lee would have felt as amazed as himself).
He heard a gasp next to him and he turned around, there was a girl, with the same colouring as him but curly hair, staring at his desk, no, not his desk, his still open notebook.
“Gai?” she asked with an awed tone of voice.
“What!?” he replied with his own squeaky one.
11 years ago, June 13th:
“Do you want a bit more, Amirah?” asked Ghassan’s mother to his friend.
“No, thank you! I’m full!” she responded with a disturbingly beatific smile that his mother returned (less disturbing, warmer), and then, as soon as her back was turned, Amirah looked at him and showed him her tongue.
He would have called her childish for being the reincarnation of a past Hokage, but he often felt prey of these impulses, which he guessed were product of a younger body’s chemistry, too, so he keeps his mouth shut.
It had been six years since Amirah Ajan had gasped at his notebook with the written account of one of his more… humorous challenges with Kakashi. It had gone downhill (or uphill more like) from there; having his Hokage as a friend and the same age as he was… strange, but he wasn’t alone. He loved his mother and this life’s father was really supportive, though a bit harsh (he still was too attached to Maito Dai to consider another man a father), but having someone that knew him, not only the Arabic child, not Muslim, never Muslim, even if he respected the teachings that his mother had explained to him, or Cristian or any other religion would describe his beliefs (he only believed in the Will of Fire, and this power was wholly human), but the grown man who had lost a student and had decided to risk it all to fight a god.
He still didn’t know what to think about looking similar to his past body and Amirah’s startling (with her dark skin and curly hair) resemblance to Tsunade.
5 years ago, Brussels, Belgium:
A henged Gai admired the building dedicated to the European Union. He hoped that the Elemental Nations had evolved enough to have a similar administration now. Even if it wasn’t perfect, an alliance like that was a worthy goal to strive towards and to surpass with time.
Asiatic with a big camera was always a sure bet when one wanted to look like a harmless tourist in Europe and not be accused of terrorism while he was enjoying his stay. A similarly disguised Tsunade (even if she didn’t bother with the Hijab that would have prompted such insults when there wasn’t anyone to glare at her) looked critically at the banners that flowed in front of the building.
“Stupid” she said in Japanese “this is going to get dirty in very little time, how much do they spend in laundry!?”
Gai chortled, this hadn’t occurred to him. Trust someone who had lost all their money on a regular basis in their past lives to think about this.
“I guess that a lot…”
“Uhg, come on, Maito, I want to get to this Doctor Cho’s conference. Let these pieces of cloth dangle and get brown on their own, keep them company won’t do a difference”.
Gai followed her with a smile on his face. He had had his fun, now it was time to be bored for a while.
Gai stared to the pale man with golden eyes in front of him. Tsunade stared next to him with an open mouth. The man stared back with a raised eyebrow full of curiosity.
“Orochimaru?” she asked. The man seemed startled.
“Pardon me, why are you referring to a Japanese legend?” asked the man in English, his tone was sincere, and the man’s chakra was as weak as a civilian’s.
He didn’t remember.
Gai wasn’t surprised, he and Tsunade had arrived at the conclusion that they only remembered because somehow (emotional strain or something along these lines) they had awakened these strange coloured flames. If this man who looked (if you ignored him being a red-haired Irish man) and whose chakra felt like Orochimaru’s didn’t remember, it could have been perfectly well because he hadn’t had any huge hardships in this life. Gai felt reticent about him remembering. He knew that he was Gai foremost and Ghassan only to his parents the people he had befriended as a child before meeting Tsunade, and he knew that Tsunade was Amirah much more than he was Ghassan, but still, the older personality won out.
Who would win for this man? The mad and cruel scientist Orochimaru or the ethical and cultured Doctor Cináed McGill? He didn’t want to find out.
They were in a small café, Orochimaru with his hands on his head and glazed eyes staring at some really interesting crack on the wall behind Gai.
The choice had been ripped out of his and Tsunade’s hands; a woman had appeared when the three of them had been talking, provably impatient to carry out her mission and finding the waiting game too nerve braking. She had thrown a knife towards Gai (the most imposing figure in the corridor) and then tried to knock out Tsunade with a punch. It hadn’t worked.
Tsunade just had caught the knife flying towards Gai with her yellow flame covered hand and then caught the punch. Only to be interrupted before being able to return it by a flying kick coming from Orochimaru. Violet flames covered kick. The woman had gone flying and crashed against a wall.
“What…?” he had murmured then, looking around him, then at his hands “Why are my chakra reserves so pitiful? No, wait, chakra? This is some Chinese nonsense. No. Yes.” The clearly confused man had looked at them then “Tsunade? Maito Gai? H-how…?”
And now they were in the café. Gai felt lucky about Orochimaru being so confused, it meant that his past crazy personality wasn’t winning, for now.
2 years ago, Lleida, Catalonia:
“So these flames are something connected to the mafia!?” Tsunade yelled in Japanese, glaring at the Portuguese man that also happened to be her past teammate “Why!? That doesn’t even make sense! Politicians jump at the opportunity to use this kind of things for wars, it should have been explained in history texts, or at least in myths! But there’s nothing! At all! I would know, I have searched!”
“I know, I know, I find it strange too” said Amando Forasteiro, placating.
The man, who had been Jiraiya of the Sannin, was as tall and broad as ever, and his mane was, perhaps, wilder. The only notable differences were his facial marks, which had been replaced by makeup following the same design and the colour of his hair; an unusual, for someone living in the Iberian Peninsula, blond. He was nineteen, something that Gai found really strange, as Orochimaru was around thirty, and he had been used to perceive him as the oldest of the three of them.
BLAM!
Tsunade punched the table in the office they were discussing things, Jiraiya flinching automatically to cover his face against debris, but the table, even if trembling, remained intact. The man lowered his arms and sighed.
“Hime… there’s nothing I can tell you, those people may think of me as one of they own, but they still think about me as a young man, not the veteran I was. I lack resources, the ones who know want prove of my ‘loyalty’, and I’m not to gain it in years. Remember how my spy network took two decades to be able to tell me anything of relevance?”
Tsunade growled and sat down again. Her eyes were misty.
“I only want to know why is that happening… Why are we here and remember? Why Dan…” she pressed her lips together. Gai put a hand on her shoulder, and Jiraiya grimaced. Gai tried not to show his pity for both of them; one had found her past life’s love happily married and with children (he could be her father now), seemingly happier than he had been at Konoha with her: without conflicts, without worries, without the need to strive for a role that would only burden him further or the drive that had made them love each other in the first place; the other was seeing the love of his live(s) be affected by it, obviously not seeing him.
But while Jiraiya was already used to his burden, Tsunade was not, and she needed the support he could give.
“… A way to find more information would be to contact the Vongola, but they are tricky. I don’t know if it’s safe to approach them yet, our chakra reserves as they are. This world without war… It’s difficult to get stronger”.
There was a small pause in which they all considered their options.
“I guess I’ll have to be youthfully…! Discreet” Gai finally said, the other two stared at him for a few seconds.
“Discreet? Are you planning to get killed?” Tsunade asked in disbelief “You can stay a few days unnoticed alright, but we are speaking about long-time undercover work there”.
Gai shook his head “I’m talking about working around them, instead of trying to infiltrate, there’s always gossip near important groups and something is better than nothing while we regain our strength”.
“A shame that Orochimaru decided to stay well out of this, the slippery bastard would have helped a lot” Jiraiya grouched, slumping on his seat. Tsunade blinked.
“Wha… are you planning to act as what? A hitman?”
“I don’t see why not” Gai responded “It’s nothing I haven’t done before”.
The other two flinched. Jiraiya, ever the idealist (Gai thought that his perseverance was admirable) more so.
1 month ago:
“Are you telling me,” Gai asked incredulously over his phone “that your trainee knows Maito and is using his methods to train one of her friends!?”
“Exactly” responded a childish voice “I hadn’t thought about this possibility, but you’re too young for the amount of experience you have, Bestia Verde”.
“This… can, can I please know her name?”
“… Yes, you can” he responded after a pause in which he knew the phone was put on mute.
Gai held his breath.
“Namikaze Minato”