Shinobi Isekai!

Boundaries

Jiraiya ran a hand through his hair as he rushed through the building. People dodged him with practiced ease, not even pausing their conversations. Everyone was busy; too busy to pay him any mind. The village had to be rebuilt, the injured had to be healed, alliances had to be reaffirmed—none of that mattered to him, though. The village had long since become less his home and more a nebulous entity which occasionally made demands of him in exchange for more freedom than most shinobi even dared to dream of. He was old and intelligent enough to acknowledge his loyalty was little more than a habit left over from his youth, but one that formed too much of his identity to be abandoned. As easy as it was to pretend he wasn't Jiraiya of the Sannin, a legendary shinobi of Konoha, he didn't have the courage to just throw it all away the way Tsunade had. If he wasn't Jiriaya, then who was he?

That wasn't an issue, anymore, though. He had a new identifier, now, one he would wear proudly if only he could find that stinking brat!

"Kakashi," he said as he slammed the door to his late sensei's office open. "Where are you hiding my grandchild?"

The Fifth Hokage looked up from the scroll he was reading. Miserably tall piles of paperwork sat on his desk and Jiraiya once again offered up a silent prayer of thanks to whichever god or spirit had decided to let Kakashi take the hat instead of him. The newfound responsibility was already getting to the Copy Ninja, if the oversized robe he was wearing was any indication. Bundled up from ankles to chin, the poor man looked like he'd crawled out of bed and taken most of it with him.

"Mah, whatever do you mean?" His one visible eye closed in that infuriating fake smile of his.

Jiraiya crossed the room in a few long legged strides and took one of the available seats with a huff. "Don't play with me, Kakashi. I've looked everywhere in this village for her and no one has seen her. She's not at the hospital and all of her little accomplices are worried, and, yet, here you are, doing paperwork. There's no way you'd be this calm if you didn't know exactly where she was, so spill."

His glare bounced off Kakashi's smile like so much air. "Mah, you make a good point, but are you sure you looked everywhere?"

"Of course, I'm sure," he snapped, frustration finally getting the better of him. "Would I be here if I wasn't?"

Kakashi's expression didn't change, but the atmosphere in the room shifted and he knew, he just knew Kakashi was laughing at him.

"Really?"

"Yes."

"Really, really?"

"God damn you, Kakashi, where is she?"

"Shush," the damned brat had the nerve to raise a finger to his masked lips, smile never fading. "You'll wake her up."

Jiraiya watched as Kakashi pulled his arm out of the sleeve of his robe, lifting the thick fabric from the inside. Doing so revealed a child curled up on his lap, her head resting on her father's chest as her slender shoulders rose and fell in her sleep. A small brown and white dog lay nestled in her arms, snoring contentedly. She recoiled unconsciously from the light, burying her masked face in Kakashi's flack jacket in a bid to escape it. The Hokage chuckled quietly as he covered her in his robe again, cutting off Jiraiya's line of sight.

"I don't think you looked everywhere."

Jiraiya's face twisted in a sneer, but he kept his grumbling at a minimum. The anxious knot that had tied itself around his heart loosened now that he knew where she was. It was a new feeling, that anxiety. Every moment he spent apart from her was a moment she could disappear, never to return. He knew he had no one to blame but himself. If he had paid more attention, had stayed with her instead of abandoning her, then she would never have returned like that.