Chapter 216: Kindness Can Become the Rope That Kills You
While Onoki was still raging at the empty air in his office, Minato finally reached Jiraiya.
It hadn't been easy. Jiraiya had wandered all the way to the Land of Snow, one of the most remote corners of the known world, and the only reason Minato managed to make contact at all was because Kakashi happened to be there on assignment. The moment Kakashi spotted his old teacher's mentor, he didn't hesitate for a second. He got word to Minato immediately.
And so, in the deep of a stormy night, Minato arrived.
He used the Flying Thunder God Technique to cross the distance in an instant and materialized in the middle of a snow-covered wasteland wearing far too little for the weather. The wind hit him like a wall. He shuddered violently, pulling himself close to the campfire Jiraiya and Kakashi had going.
"Hah." He exhaled a cloud of white breath and stretched his hands toward the flames, letting the heat work its way back into his fingers.
Jiraiya sat on a log beside the fire, warming his hands with that easy grin of his. He looked at his student practically trying to climb inside the campfire and laughed. "Minato. What's the emergency? Kakashi said you were looking for me."
"Sensei, I've told you how many times to keep the kunai I gave you on your person." Minato turned to look at him, the warmth in his expression giving way to genuine exasperation. "Why don't you ever listen?"
"Ah, well. About that." Jiraiya scratched the back of his head with a dry laugh. "There was a bit of an incident. I was helping some young women who'd gotten into trouble, and there happened to be a very skilled thief in the area. Everything disappeared except the clothes on my back."
Kakashi, standing off to the side, rolled his eyes so hard it was almost audible.
He was thirteen years old. Technically too young to have access to the adult section of certain bookshops. But he was also a ninja with a flawless Transformation Technique, and deceiving a retired bookseller wasn't exactly a high-difficulty mission. He knew exactly what "helping young women in trouble" meant when it came out of Jiraiya's mouth.
Minato knew too, though he had zero personal interest in that kind of thing. He was completely devoted to Kushina. But Jiraiya had always been Jiraiya, and the years of exposure had left Minato fluent in his teacher's particular vocabulary.
He didn't believe a word of it.
Jiraiya was a genuinely exceptional ninja. The idea of a pickpocket cleaning him out completely was laughable. The real explanation, Minato suspected, was that Jiraiya had left the kunai behind on purpose. He'd probably had no intention of being found, wanting to deal with Orochimaru's trail on his own terms without Minato getting involved.
Minato let out a quiet breath and sat down on a log Kakashi dragged over for him. He stared at the fire. "Alright, Sensei. Let's say I believe you."
"What do you mean 'let's say?' It's the truth! I told you something embarrassing happened to me and you still don't believe me?"
Jiraiya sounded genuinely offended.
Minato said nothing. He just looked at his teacher with those steady, star-bright eyes until Jiraiya started to fidget under the weight of the gaze.
"...Fine! Fine. Let's change the subject." Jiraiya waved a hand. "What did you come all the way out here to tell me? In a snowstorm. Dressed like that."
"The ninja world isn't in a good place right now."
"When has it ever been?"
"The scale of the threat is different this time." Minato's voice was level but serious. "If we don't deal with this before it reaches full strength, the consequences could be catastrophic. I mean that without any exaggeration."
He paused. "Sensei, I think we should put the search for Orochimaru aside for now."
Jiraiya raised an eyebrow. "You're being serious."
"I am. We're talking about the Rinnegan."
Jiraiya went very still.
Minato blinked. He hadn't expected that reaction. The man had nearly launched himself off the log, almost scattering the fire entirely. Jiraiya was now staring at him with wide eyes, the muscles of his face doing something complicated.
"Sensei?"
No response.
"Jiraiya-sensei!"
Still nothing. Jiraiya looked like a statue someone had placed next to a campfire.
Minato glanced at Kakashi, who shrugged. The wind was biting, the snow was getting heavier, and Kushina was home waiting for him. He raised his voice. "Jiraiya-sensei!"
That finally got through. Jiraiya pulled himself back from wherever he'd gone, and the expression on his face was one of the most unreadable things Minato had ever seen. A whole storm of emotions shifting just under the surface.
"What did you say?" His voice came out lower than usual, almost worn thin.
"I said the Rinnegan may have world-ending power. Or close enough to it that the distinction doesn't matter much."
"Tell me everything." Jiraiya's tone had sharpened. "Where was it seen? What happened? From the beginning. All of it."
Something clicked in Minato's mind.
He didn't ask the question out loud. Instead, he did what he always did: he gathered his thoughts and gave a precise, well-organized account. He started from the attack on Sunagakure, covered the battle in the Land of Rain, explained the Five Kage Summit and the joint operation being organized against the Rinnegan's holder. He kept it focused, covering the important details without unnecessary elaboration. He didn't have the time for a full debriefing, and he suspected Jiraiya already knew more than he was showing.
When he finished, Jiraiya sat motionless for a long moment.
Minato waved his hand in front of his teacher's face. No reaction. He tried again. Nothing.
"Jiraiya-sensei."
"...Jiraiya-sensei."
"Jiraiya-sensei!"
Jiraiya came back slowly, like a man surfacing from deep water. His expression had settled into something heavy and difficult to name. He looked at Minato and spoke quietly.
"Let me join this operation."
Minato's brow furrowed slightly. "You can. But, Sensei, can I ask why? The reaction you just had..."
He exhaled. "Is it possible you already know the person holding the Rinnegan?"
Jiraiya was quiet for a long moment.
The silence was his answer.
So that's it.
Minato sat with that for a moment, letting the weight of it settle. He wasn't sure what he'd expected, but somehow this didn't entirely surprise him. The world had a way of being smaller than it appeared.
He didn't push. He waited.
"The boy's name is Nagato."
Jiraiya's voice was quieter now. He stared into the flames as if something in the fire was showing him a different time entirely. "During the Second Shinobi World War, I was moving through the Land of Rain and I came across three children living on the streets. I was soft about it. I took them in and taught them how to protect themselves."
He paused. "One of them, the one named Nagato, had the Rinnegan. When I saw it, I thought about the prophecy the Great Toad Sage had given me. That I would one day take a student, and that student would bring either unprecedented catastrophe or peace to the ninja world. That eventually I would be forced to make a choice, and my choice would determine which direction the world fell."
Minato absorbed that quietly.
"Sensei, why didn't you bring them back to Konoha when you found them?"
"Because the Land of Rain was their home. Ugly as it was. Broken as it was. They didn't want to leave. They wanted to use what I taught them to make it better themselves." Jiraiya rubbed his face. His expression was tired. "Later I heard they'd formed an organization called the Akatsuki. And then the next time I heard the name, it was the news that the organization had been destroyed. I assumed they'd all died."
"Sensei." Minato's voice was patient but direct. "We're talking about the Rinnegan."
"I know. But Nagato was never a cruel person. He was kind." Jiraiya shook his head slowly. "Maybe too kind for this world. In a place like this, that kind of kindness can become the rope you hang yourself with."
"And you never went to the Land of Rain to check whether he was actually dead."
Jiraiya had no answer for that.
Minato watched him for a moment, then let it go with a quiet exhale. That was Jiraiya. Brilliant on the battlefield, unpredictable everywhere else. Not unreliable exactly, but capable of extraordinary lapses at the worst possible moments. You couldn't stay angry at him for long, but you couldn't fully count on him either.
"So to confirm," Minato said. "You heard the Akatsuki was destroyed, but you never verified it yourself. You never confirmed whether any of your three students were actually dead."
"That's right."
"Then the odds are at least one of them survived. And if what you've said about Nagato is accurate, and he was a genuinely good person back then, something must have happened. Something major that changed him. That's the only explanation for why he'd end up working alongside Missing-nin Anonymous." Minato thought through it carefully. "Which means there may be a path to resolving this without bloodshed. It might be a small path. But it exists."
Jiraiya looked at him. There was something raw in his eyes. "So you'll let me try."
"I'll let you try." Minato nodded. "If it works, we have to figure out how to manage four other villages who might not accept a peaceful resolution and could use any excuse to tear up the contract. If it doesn't work, we proceed with the original plan."
He stood up, brushing snow off his shoulders.
One thing was now clear. With Jiraiya's account, the Rinnegan holder was almost certainly in the Land of Rain. That narrowed the search considerably.
"Let's go, Sensei. We're heading back to the village."
He was done with the cold. Kushina was waiting.
"Right." Jiraiya exhaled, pushed himself to his feet.
In moments they were gone, leaving only a fire burning low in the snow. With no one to feed it, the wind and the weather made short work of what remained, and soon even the embers went out.
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