A long and drawn out moan preceded Naruko's return to the land of the living and awake, even as she tried to ward off wakefulness by snuggling against her pillow. It didn't work, however, and soon she found herself rubbing her eyes.
If the world hadn't been swimming around her, she might've been able to recognize that she wasn't in her own room straight away. However, as everything focused, the first thing her eyes rested on was a rather well muscled back, as it was going up and down, every muscle straining and clenching as the arms connected to the shoulder muscles connected to the back muscles clenched, and lifted the powerful frame off the ground, pushing it up once more, before relaxing and letting the seemingly chiseled marble statue fall back down once more.
Naruko blinked, and her mind caught up with her eyes.
She was in an unfamiliar room. With an unfamiliar male's back staring at her. And by the headache pounding at her temples, she was nursing a hangover.
Actually, that was kind of the most important thing at the moment, as the pain stabbed at her suddenly and her hands flew to her temples, to rub them in a vain attempt to make the pain go away.
It wasn't really working.
"Sleeping beauty's up."
That voice she knew very well. "Y-You!" Naruko said, glaring at her hated rival, pointing a dainty finger at her. "You… you must've drugged me! Are you trying to ruin my reputation!? How low!"
"You got drunk all on your own, dumbass," Satsuki said, "it's not my fault you're so dumb."
"H-How dare you..!"
A quick move had the well muscled male with a naked torso leaping from his hands into the air, and a somersault had him landing softly on his also bare feet, on the plush carpet. "Oh. That's good. I was getting worried that you might be wrong."
"I'm never wrong!" Satsuki countered, glaring at the pink haired male.
Wait. Pink hair?
Oh. Right. She did have a male teammate who seemed like he'd been chiselled from marble. Right. Haruka. "Okay. Anyway, how are you feeling, Naruko? Are you okay? You were pretty drunk…"
"Of course I am! This hangover is nothing to the daughter of the great Yellow Flash!" Naruko explained, smiling proudly and crossing her arms. "But… Why am I wearing these rags?" she asked, looking down on herself.
"R-Rags!?" Satsuki said, blinking and narrowing her eyes at Naruko. "You ungrateful little bi—"
Satsuki was stopped from continuing her rant because she was hit in the face by the nightgown they'd put Naruko into earlier, and she absent mindedly noted the soft thud of Haruto landing on his back. He had to be thankful he'd moved around the furniture so he didn't hit and break anything, 'cause she would've made him pay for it if he had.
Naruko looked around the room and quickly spotted her clothes, dressing without a care in the world, almost as if she'd forgotten that there was a male in the room. Of course, she had not, and simply didn't care.
She was a kunoichi, and shinobi, whether male or female, could not afford to be cowardly prudes. That was what her father had taught her, and he was the great Yellow Flash, the most feared Kage of them all, so of course he had to know what he was talking about.
Once dressed, Naruko stood proud once more. "What were we doing here..?" she asked, mostly herself.
"Looking for your godfather," Satsuki said, simply.
"Ah. Yes. Right. Then I know how to find him."
Satsuki had not expected Naruko to have such a clear, simple and well thought out answer to finding out where Jiraiya was in the casino.
She just asked around, who had seen either Jiraiya or at least a man in his fifties with spiky white hair and dressed in an outrageous manner. Some people, the ones who'd been around since early that morning, had seen a man fitting the description and directed them to where the guy had been seen. It didn't take long to follow the trail of breadcrumbs to find Jiraiya, who was seated alone on a poker table, chatting with the dealer.
Who happened to be an attractive young woman dressed in a skimpy bunny girl costume, with a bright red leotard and ears, a white, fluffy tail and very dark stockings.
"Oh. Hey, Princess," Jiraiya said. "Took you guys a long, long time to find me. Did you get busy in the penthouse 'fore you got here?"
Haruto went white as a sheet as soon as Jiraiya mentioned that.
"Oh ho," and Jiraiya then pounced. "Don't worry, boya, you're not gonna get any grief from me. So long as it's safe, sane and consensual, obviously. I mean, it's not like you took advantage of a drunken princess, right?"
The pink haired boy looked at Jiraiya like a deer would look at an eighteen wheeler's headlights.
"I'm just pulling your leg," the white haired man said. "Nobody's dumb enough to take advantage of the Hokage's daughter like that, and I would never expect that kind of stupidity from the top shinobi of his year," he said, chuckling lightly, "besides, the Nara here have been keeping an eye on you, to make damn sure nothing untoward happened to the princess."
"I can take care of myself," Naruko said, angrily, though the fact that she was still a little unsteady on her feet didn't help her make her point.
"No, you can't. That's what I'm supposed to fix," Jiraiya said.
"Uhm… Should we… fight for the bells, or something?" Haruto asked.
"Fight? Hm. Nah. Don't wanna," Jiraiya said, smiling widely. "Even if you three worked together, you wouldn't be able to get them unless I let you, and if I let you, that would defeat the point, wouldn't it?" he asked, rubbing his chin. "Tell you what, I'll lend you guys a pile of chips each. Let's gamble. The two with the most chips at the end of the day get a bell. Also, this counts me, as well, if I have the most chips, I'll keep both, but if I'm second, I'll keep only one. We're clear on this?"
"Yes, sir," Haruto said. "But… I, ah, don't know how to play."
"No worries, pretty boy," the dealer said, offering him a smile that he supposed was used to melt the average gambler, "we'll be taking it slowly at first, so you can get used to it. We'll go gently, and then when you're ready, we'll pick up some speed and play a little harder. You'll be having loads of fun pretty soon, I promise," she said.
Jiraiya sounded like he'd sprung a leak for a few seconds, as he snorted into his hand.
"But I'm sure a strong lad like you can take some high pressure games, eh? I'm sure you'll do just fine, and last all the way through to the end. I'm gonna put my back on it, so you better satisfy me with your progress, okay?"
Haruto nodded eagerly.
Jiraiya let out a few roars of laughter. "You're laying it on thick, eh?"
"I sure hope that's not the only thick I'm gonna lay tonight," the dealer returned.
"Heh. You're a lucky little guy, Haruto-kun," Jiraiya said, extending his large hand to clap Haruto on the back, forcing himself to turn around a little more on his stool, balancing precariously as he did.
Haruto was almost knocked off his feet, as he was quite distracted when struck, but quickly righted himself.
"You're really popular amongst women, eh?" Satsuki taunted, an amused smile on her face. "Do I have to fear for my virtue? You've already taken Naruko's…"
"W-What?" Haruto asked, red as a beet, eyes wide in shock and horror.
"Well, girls, what do you think? Are you gonna take this chance to be elite genin, or not?"
"Of course we are!" Naruko said, crossly.
"Right," Satsuki said, "we don't really have a choice, do we? I need to be an elite."
"I guess I could always back down… I don't really need to be an elite myself," he said, thinking about the career path he was most well suited to. ANBU didn't require it, and in fact, discouraged elites from joining the Black Ops.
"Yeah, no, we're not letting you back down," Satsuki said, glaring at him. "I'm not gonna be on a team with her, so you better win!"
Haruto gulped.
The three sat on the provided stools, and a basic overview of the rules of poker, particularly the Tanzaku Hold'Em variety, which was the one they were playing, and they were all given a small pile of chips.
"I'm not made of cash, so it's only ten thousand Ryo for each of you. Try to make it last," Jiraiya said, a grin on his face.
Much like the bunny girl had told them at the start, they started off slowly, allowing Haruto to get used to the rules of poker. While he wasn't completely unaware of how the game worked, it did take him a little bit of time to adjust to them. Two rounds after the game started, though, he was already getting into it, despite the small hiccup that resulted from him not knowing what the blind was.
A few rounds after that, though, a clear trend was starting to show, and he could accurately predict what the other three would do based on their specific tells.
Satsuki lied a lot, and had generally terrible luck on top of that. Unfortunately, her bluff heavy strategy ran into the road block that was Naruko, who usually did, in fact, have good cards, and who couldn't lie to save her life. It soon became clear that Haruto would reap the benefits of Naruko and Satsuki competting with each other, as they were effectively more focused on knocking the other off the game than in beating Jiraiya.
The man himself was looking at everything with a smile, and was the hardest to read, but Haruto had very good eyesight, and could see that whenever Jiraiya had a good hand and was keeping silent about it, his nose would twitch in a certain way, and while he was bluffing with a poor hand, he tended to smile more widely and showing more teeth.
The game was picking up speed, and Haruto could tell that the bet was getting a bit higher every time, and Haruto soon found himself rather low on the totem pole.
Despite her constant losses to Naruko, Satsuki was actually doing fairly good for herself, as Jiraiya had clearly not cared to win very much, and had managed to consistently lose money every round, while Haruto himself found that Satsuki's single minded focus on simply beating Naruko wound up making her a fair bit unpredictable as the distance between the two females of Team 13 grew. Satsuki was playing more aggressively the more she lost, which allowed her to make one or two big wins that had catapulted her back to second place.
And Haruto had been so sure she'd been bluffing, too…
The dealer, meanwhile, was getting more and more amused the more that Team 13's females continued to compete with each other.
Soon enough, however, came a big chance for Haruto.
He was absolutely certain that both Naruko and Satsuki were bluffing. Naruko's confidence was clearly shaky, and Satsuki's was too forced. Jiraiya was not bluffing, though, and he had to have a pretty good hand.
With three aces, the queen and jack of hearts on the table, Haruto was quite certain that Jiraiya had to have a good hand. He most likely had the remaining ace to make the Poker complete.
But it was okay.
Because when Jiraiya smugly showed his cards, a meaningless four of clubs and the ace of clubs to accompany it, Haruto smiled brightly and showed his own.
The ten and king of Hearts.
Neither Naruko nor Satsuki had allowed the other to fold, obviously both thinking that the other was bluffing and would fold, totally forgetting that they were playing on a table with two others. Both had actually lost a great deal of cash. As had Jiraiya, calling their bet.
Which was the reason why Haruto was now sitting at twenty seven thousand Ryo's worth of chips.
Following this, Haruto simply refused to play, and lose, big. The only times he actually raised a bet or even called a relatively high bet was if he had a relatively decent hand. Soon enough, the game had moved some more, and he was sitting at no less than thirty thousand Ryo's worth of chips.
Naruko and Satsuki, both shaken at the sudden shift of dynamics, had soon found out what happened when Jiraiya stopped screwing around. The white haired man soon won back most of what he had lost, leaving him holding eight thousand in chips himself.
Naruko had only managed to survive to hold the remaining two thousand on sheer, dumb luck, while the last round had officially knocked Satsuki out of the game, leaving her as the one who would not become an elite.
She was clearly not happy at this.
Feeling guilty that it'd been him who costed her the lead that would've allowed her to remain an elite, Haruto offered to let her borrow some of his chips, and pay him back once she got back on her feet.
"We're having a lot of fun," Haruto said, smiling easily at her, "and you can pay me back later, once you win back enough to do it, okay?"
"I can't accept that," Satsuki said, a grimace on her face. "You won it fair and square. I lost, and I'm never going to be an elite. That's it," she said, clearly trying to sound neutral, but bitter venom quickly crept into her voice as she talked, ending with her nearly yelling, clenching her fist.
"You're gonna give up so easily?!" Naruko protested, scandalized.
"Yes. I am. I lost," Satsuki said, glaring at her, "and you're gonna lose too, soon enough!" she said.
"Never! I'm the daughter of the Yellow Flash! I never lose!" Naruko said.
"Nevermind that she's lost money in the last six rounds…" Haruto noted, frowning uncomfortably. "But she's right. It's not time to give up yet. You can still win. Take a thousand, you'll pay me back once you win enough, and then it'd be like nothing happened."
"I don't want your charity!" Satsuki finally yelled, "I don't need yours, or anybody's, pity!"
"It's not pity. You're my friend, and you've been nice to me, so I thought I could do something nice for you in return," Haruto said, slumping slightly.
"Picking on those weaker than yourself? How despicable!" Naruko said, glaring at Satsuki. "I can't believe I considered someone as wretched as you as my rival!"
"What… I'm not picking on him!" Satsuki said.
"Yes, you are! You're being rude to him because you know Haruka won't knock some sense into you! Well, I will!" Naruko said, hopping off her stool and walking up to the still surly looking Satsuki, clearly intending to follow up on her words.
"Hey, hey, girlies, no need to start a catfight on me," Jiraiya said, grabbing the backs of their clothes, stopping them just before Naruko's fist made contact. "Something wrong, Princess? you're more violent than usual."
"Jisan, I have a pounding headache, and her attitude is not making it easy to hold my temper in check," Naruko said, petulantly.
"And you, Satchan, from what I hear from Kakashi, you hardly ever quit at anything you set out to do. So how come you're giving up now?" Jiraiya wondered, frowning at her, and pulling her up by the back of her sweater.
"Don't call me that!" Satsuki said, "I didn't give up! I lost! Everything I've been working on for the last eight years was meaningless because I lost a goddamn poker game! All my training was pointless because none of it helped me to win in a game of chance! So what's the point!? You clearly never intended to actually test us, you're just trying to get rid of one of us and left it to chance! I promised everyone I would be the greatest Clan Head there's ever been… and now that dream is ruined because of YOU!"
"Woah there, girl," Jiraiya said, "I would've thought you of all people could tell I was bullshitting you all the way in."
"W-What!?" Satsuki was stopped as she was gearing up for another rant, all of a sudden.
"Yeah. I never tested you guys. I don't intend to. I'm just fucking with you three, and introducing you guys to the shinobi vices. You know, where most of your paychecks are going to be spent," Jiraiya said, putting her down and patting her shoulder. "You guys are a premade team for a reason. Splitting you up would've defeated the point of shuffling the teams so you three wound up together, wouldn't it?"
"Oh. That makes a lot of sense, actually," Haruto said, nodding his head, "all the teams seem to have been made with some purpose in mind, and the students tend to have compatible specialties."
"We try to put students with similar skillsets together," Jiraiya said, nodding at the pink haired boy, "and give them a sensei with a similar focus. Trying to keep them able to deal with everything they might come across is also important, so that's why you see a Hyuuga, an Inuzuka and an Aburame on the same team. Close, Mid and Long Range are all covered, but they all have a focus on tracking, with a minor focus in non-lethal capture. That's a hunter squad right there. Though, originally, you were going to be in Kiba's role. Your father's abilities were very varied, but if you'd been on that squad, Kurenai would've put a lot more emphasis on your ability to create restraints from your chakra than anything else. If we'd used Naruko, Kurenai would've worked on learning how Naruko's mother's Chakra Chains work. And if it'd been Satsuki, she would've probably worked with lightning, trying to use it to paralyze instead of fry."
"Oh," Haruto said.
"Though those two were always meant to be put in a squad together, they were originally going to be under Kakashi. This here squad's purpose is very simple. We're supposed to utterly and absolutely crush the opposition. All three of you can, on some level, perform any task you're set to, or can at least learn to do it, but all three of you excel on one thing more than anything else."
At this, both Satsuki and Naruko looked to be listening just as intently as Haruto was.
"All three of you have your own, specific brand of ninjutsu that renders you a terrifying opponent to face for any shinobi. While we are adaptive in the extreme, every shinobi has a very specific fear, coming across an opponent they can't counter, an opponent that has a bloodline limit or secret technique that they're not familiar with. Because the unknown is the hardest thing to adapt to. And that's why all three of your specialties are undocumented. You three are Konoha's trump card. You're the ones who will succeed me and Tsunade as Konoha's three legendary ninja, though, if we're lucky, you won't have an Orochimaru in your ranks."
"That is… surprisingly frank and straightforward," Naruko commented, a bit confused. "I thought you were all about subterfuge and being sneaky, like a proper ninja?"
"Of course I am! But doing that with your allies is just counterproductive. It would be hard to trust me if I weren't honest with you guys when I'm being serious, right? I might screw with you from time to time, but you can trust that I have your best interests in mind. And speaking about that," he said, digging into his vest's pockets, the bells that were still attached to it jingling as it moved with his hand.
Jiraiya pulled out a tablet of aspirine, and then passed it to Naruko. "I half expected one or two of you to be nursing a hangover. Didn't think it'd be you, Princess. Heh. We best not let Minato know that I got you drunk, eh? I like my testicles right where they are."
At this, Haruto chuckled nervously. The Fourth Hokage was legendary for many things, and one of them was how overprotective of his daughter the man could be. If anyone gave the man the misconception that Haruto had drugged his daughter and then raped her, the pink haired boy would most likely quietly disappear and the only thing that would remain of him would be his screams, begging for death.
"Anyway, you guys can keep any money that you have remaining. You're free for the rest of the day. Meet me tomorrow in front of the Hokage Tower. We'll take our first mission and do our training all at once. For now, dismissed. Anything more you spend's gonna come out of your own pockets."
The three members of team 13 nodded.
"Good. Now scram, I have work to do," Jiraiya said with a grin.
Before they could leave, however, the bunny girl that'd served as their dealer put a hand on Haruto's shoulder. "Oi, pretty boy, I get off work in two hours. Call me, maybe?"
Haruto blushed once more, but when he looked to his teammates for