"This year's class is quite something."

Jiraiya crossed his arms, his hair flowing in the midsummer breeze. He stood tense, primed for a battle that he'd already won long ago. "We meet again," he murmured.

"Over half the graduates outstripped the last ten year's students in overall scores, and the majority of those are heirs to major clans."

"I told you if I saw you again I'd crush you for good," Jiraiya said harshly, with the voice of a trained shinobi. A legend. A stone cold killer. "Yet here you are, in my life. Again."

Konoha's Ninja Academy had no answer for him.

"Jiraiya, are you listening to me?"

"No."

"They've got even more potential than your own class, you know."

"Doubt it," Jiraiya said, maybe a pinch more sour than was really necessary.

He'd been gone for so long, spent so many years abroad, it felt like Konoha had become a different place in his absence. While he'd been out winning a war and teaching a child with a legend's eyes, entire districts had risen, fallen, and risen again. His home had changed. He wanted to see just how much was different, who had made it through the conflict and what they'd done with their time. He wanted to experience Konoha all over again.

But instead he was here. At the Academy, scoping out graduates.

The instructors were all men, too. What a farce.

"It's true," his sensei insisted, sparing the chuunin at the gates a smile and nod on their way through. "All the core fields have their prodigies. The heir to the Uchiha clan is a dominating force in ninjutsu, while the heirs to the Hyuuga and Inuzuka clans are ferocious taijutsu specialists. I don't imagine you'd care, but the heir to the Uchiha has a cousin, and she's shown a staggering potential for genjutsu."

"You're right," Jiraiya agreed. "I don't care."

Sarutobi spared him a sly glance. "There's even an up and coming fuuinjutsu specialist."

Jiraiya paused in glaring at the various notices and niceties that decorated the Academy's entrance hall, turning his full attention to his sensei for the first time since he'd gone off to war. That was interesting.

"She's a refuge from Uzushiogakure-"

"An Uzumaki," Jiraiya sighed. And there the interest went.

"Just because their style of sealing is different doesn't mean you couldn't teach her anything," Sarutobi said with some annoyance. "Are you my student or not?"

Jiraiya grunted noncommittally, trudging after his sensei.

He'd already been through this song and dance- just finished it up, in fact, and was looking for some hard earned rest and relaxation in and around Konoha's hot springs for his efforts. He'd gone all the way with those kids - Jiraiya winced. Poor choice of words. - and he wasn't too modest to say he'd done a damn good job with them. Future casualties of war they had been, but now they had the skills to fight for their dreams. With Nagato leading the way, they might even have the strength to see them realized.

Jiraiya wanted to believe in them. But he wondered if he'd done enough. He wondered if he ever could have, considering the man they were setting out to kill.

"Orochimaru already has a student, you know."

Tch. Orochimaru would have killed Jiraiya's students if he hadn't stepped in.

At any rate, it wasn't that he didn't like kids. For all the doom and gloom, he'd enjoyed his time with Nagato, Yahiko, and Konan more than he could really put into words. Seeing them grow and helping them take hold of their own destinies was an incredible feeling, a high like no other. Nagato especially had been a joy to teach, and not just because of those eyes- though they certainly hadn't hurt.

And there it was. Nagato had been the perfect student. He'd been so perfect that Jiraiya couldn't see anyone else surpassing him, certainly no Academy student. And what was the point if his next student wasn't better than the last? Why ruin a good thing-

Jiraiya twitched, whipping around to the nearest window.

Flash.

"What is that?"

"That," Sarutobi said, coming to a stop beside him with an air of utter smugness. "Is the reason this year's graduates will surpass your own. That's the boy that spurred his class beyond even my wildest expectations."

The boy flashed by the window again, little more than a blur of wild blond hair and pale gray sweats. Jiraiya pressed his face to the glass, watching the kid run. That wasn't the speed of anewly minted genin. Hell, that wasn't the speed of a chuunin. The boy made another lap around Training Ground B in the time it took Jiraiya to mutter a curse, breath steady, eyes focused.

"That's Namikaze Minato."

Jiraiya cursed again. "I wanted a vacation."

"No you didn't," Sarutobi said. "You expected a vacation. You wanted this."

He scowled against the glass. The kid made another two laps, leaping up into the trees to make things more interesting, in the time it took to swallow his petulant rebuttal. "Fine. Give me the run down."

"Minato has been at the top of his class since his enrollment in the Academy," Sarutobi said promptly, smugness redoubling. "His ninjutsu is always three steps ahead of his classmates, even Uchiha Fugaku, who has something of a one-sided rivalry going with him. As you can see, his speed is fearsome, and it compliments his taijutsu well. He's undefeated in the Academy spars. Though he doesn't tend towards casting genjutsu, his knowledge of the theory is sound and he has yet to be trapped in one for more than-"

"Yeah, yeah." Jiraiya waved a dismissive hand. He'd expected that much. "He's a genius, I get it. How is he that fast? What's the trick?"

It could be a bloodline limit, he supposed, but if it was he'd never heard of it. A variation of the shunshin, maybe? No, not for a kid that young. Keeping it up for this long would be murder on his reserves, not even taking into account how long he'd been doing it before Jiraiya walked by. Could be-

"You're looking at it."

... Hm? "Looking at what?"

"The trick," Sarutobi explained, gesturing beyond the glass, to the little brat zipping through the trees. "Hard work, and the finest chakra control I've seen since I picked out Tsunade for our team. That's it."

Well now. That was interesting.

"... You said something about spurring his class on?" Jiraiya asked.

"Indeed. The dynamic in this particular class is unlike anything I've ever seen. Rather than branching out from an elite group of clan heirs, it all revolves around him. Rivalries, friendships, goals- for every one of the graduates, it all begins with Minato."

"Sounds familiar," Jiraiya muttered. "Why didn't you give him to Orochimaru if he's such hot shit?"

Sarutobi smirked. "Are you my student or not?"

Jiraiya watched the kid make another three laps. Flash, flash, flash. He chuckled.

"I guess I am."

It was a question of minutes, signing the necessary paperwork and circling around to Training Ground B- Sarutobi, coincidentally enough, had all the necessary forms ready to go with the kid's info already filled in. Jiraiya caught him as he was winding down, a thin sheen of sweat and a few ragged breaths the only indication that he'd been tearing through the training ground at full speed for who knows how long.

Wait. Was that his full speed?

Jiraiya was about to ask him just that when the hurried tap-tap-tap of sandals heralded another arrival from the other end of the clearing. Exchanging a look with his sensei, who was looking even more smug than before for some reason, he decided to hang back.

"Minato!"

A girl came dashing into the clearing, a long, silky black curtain of hair flying behind her. A dark lavender kunoichi's dress without any sleeves clung to her figure, lithe with the promise of curves to come. Her new headband hung around her neck all shiny and chrome, and wrapped around each of her wrists were a pair of black bands with uchiwa emblazoned upon them.

Oho.

"Minato, you're late! You're going to miss the team assignments!"

"Ah, sorry, sorry," Minato apologized, rubbing his neck. "Have they already started?"

The girl nodded, grabbing him by a baggy sleeve and leading him off towards a side entrance. "They've already assigned three of the teams, and we've probably missed the fourth already."

"Have you been assigned yet?" Minato asked.

Was that a smattering of red on her cheeks? "No, not yet."

Minato's eyes crinkled. "So there's still a chance."

"Oho." Nagato had been the perfect student. His mythical eyes, his drive, and his thirst for peace had seen to that. But even his perfect student had been lacking where it counted. In his pants. "I'll take two of him."

A shunshin, a handful of pale gray sweats, and a very startled Uchiha girl later, and Jiraiya was sitting with his new student in the forest that bordered the Academy. Minato, considering he was the one being kidnapped, took it much better than the girl.

"Hello sensei," he said politely.

"Who says I'm your sensei?" Jiraiya asked, shoving the jounin sensei paperwork he'd just signed into his haori.

"Hokage-sama told me yesterday."

God damn it, sensei.

"Did he tell you why I chose you as my student?"

Minato nodded. "I work hard."

God damn it, sensei.

"That's right," Jiraiya said firmly. "Don't you forget it, either. Geniuses are a dime a dozen, and it doesn't take a prodigy to put a kunai between your eyes because you got complacent. You may think you're hot shit now, but make no mistake, if you don't put everything you have into being my student, you're going nowhere. Fast."

"But sensei," Minato said, tilting his head. "I am hot shit."

Jiraiya glared at him. The little brat met it without a hint of fear, innocent as could be. Jiraiya glared harder.

Then he grinned.

"That's what I like to hear." He pulled a different slip of paper from his haori, a short little list, and slapped it on the ground in front of the kid.

"These are..." Minato said quietly, scanning the kanji with sharp eyes. Jiraiya nodded.

"You're hot shit, I'm hot shit, so it only makes sense your teammates would be hot shit too, eh?" He gestured grandly at the list of names, more than a little pleased with himself. Every student on there had graduated in the top percentile of their class, and together they covered every major spectrum of the shinobi arts.

Also, coincidentally enough, they'd all been assigned to genin cells already. Jiraiya could only imagine the fits their prospective sensei would throw when they heard that their aces had been taken from them, snatched right out from under their noses. Sarutobi would have his hands full dealing with them, that was for sure.

Poor sensei.

"You're letting me choose?" Minato asked slowly, looking up at him with a curious glint in his eyes.

Jiraiya leaned forward, resting one hand on his crossed legs and propping his chin up with the other. He raised an eyebrow. "You know them better than me, don't you?"

Minato picked the paper up, and ever so slowly, began to smile.

"I guess I do."