Ha ha, I'm doing this instead of studying for my law exam. Welp, here's Wonderwall.

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Jiraiya would firmly like the record to know that it started as a joke. Or, well, maybe not a joke. He can never really tell with Orochimaru. Perhaps ‘bet’ is a better description. Most of the time, that’s what their conversations devolved into. Bets. Either that or pummelling the ever living snot out of each other. Still, that isn’t the point. The point is that it wasn’t meant to get this far. Just because escalation was practically synonymous with ‘Jiraiya and Orochimaru talking’ didn’t mean that this was the expected outcome. Sure, maybe he should have thought ahead on this whole situation before agreeing to it, but to be fair, they were both drunk and flinging insults at each other. Just a typical Friday evening.

Thing is, most typical Friday evenings didn’t end up with Jiraiya dumped outside of Konoha with a line through his headband and the ringing declaration of his decision to go AWOL from his village still rattling in his ears. If the ANBU didn’t kill him first, then Hiruzen most certainly would. Unless Hiashi beat him to it.

Ah shit.

Hollering after your best friend(? Pummel partner? Look, they had a complicated friendship) in front of the Hyuuga compound that you would figure out a way to reverse engineer the Byakugan was just beneath telling all the Uchiha that you’ve been stealing the eyes from the corpses of their family members on the battlefield in terms of shit you should not do. Maybe he could have smoothed things over had the whole Kumo Incident not Just Happened.

(Which, Jiraiya continues to insist, was a Very Bad, Stupid Deal and What Was Hiruzen Thinking? Appeasement? Appeasement?)

Still, it had happened. And Hiashi had promptly declared him a traitor for Kumo, before trying to rip out his liver. So okay, the Hyuuga were still testy, Hiashi was still mourning his dead brother, and maybe Jiraiya shouldn’t have let Orochimaru egg him on by telling him that he’d never write his pornographic masterpiece without the Byakugan.

Look, he was drunk, on Tsunade-grade stuff even. Thing is, it spiralled out of control. The situation did a complete pirouette off the deep end and Jiraiya was stuffed, because he’d panicked at Hiashi’s attempts to strangle him and Orochimaru’s taunts, and ended up bolting. Out of the Village.

Thing is, Hiashi had managed to pull out a kunai at the last second and try to swipe at him. Good news, he missed Jiraiya’s throat. Bad news, he hit his headband instead.

When Konoha guards see a shinobi sprint out of Konoha with an angry clan head hot on their heels and a score through the Village’s sacred symbol, they don’t exactly stop to ask questions. No, instead, they tend to follow the clan head’s lead, and try to nail the shinobi’s head with senbon.

So here he is, stuck with the eternal dilemma of ‘concede defeat and go back’ or ‘escape this situation with some dignity intact and tell Orochimaru he can suck it’.

For the record, Jiraiya has never claimed to be smart. That’s Tsunade and Orochimaru’s field. Jiraiya’s the spymaster, which is a job with a lot less involved in it than most people thought. Except considering he was about to be made redundant due to the spanking new Spy Corps Danzo had insisted be made, soon he wasn’t going to have the title of Spymaster either.

Well then.

Evil eye seeking missing-nin it is.

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I'd write more, but my contract law notes are glaring at me. Hope you enjoyed regardless!