Ch177. Jiraiya in Uzushio 1

"Welcome to Uzushio, Jiraiya-sama."

"Thank you! Eh. beautiful..." Jiraya beckoned the woman responsible for reviewing documents at the gate to the village. "Could you tell me... where can I find the hot springs?" He asked, his grin turning loop-sided, only for the woman to look at the old creeper in obvious but polite disgust.

"I... It's three streets away that way." She answered with a broken smile, fully intending to alert the proper authorities the second he left.

Clueless Jiraiya simply nodded before briefly pondering about inviting the juicy redhead wonder in front of him for a date but decided to bite his tongue. After all, he was a ninja on a mission! ... and the woman looked really repulsed by him. 'Sigh... what did I do now? Such disrespect for super perverts!' He thought despondently while shaking his head in clear amusement.

Contrary to the popular belief of anyone familiar with Jiraiya, the very first thing the Sannin did was walk around the Uzushio, creating a mental map of the village... or at least, the allowed parts of it. Jiraiya could only narrow his eyes as he noted how many areas were inaccessible by travelers despite the village not being 'officially' one of the hidden villages.

'Trading town, they call it. And yet, barely forty percent of the village could be toured. This is fishier than Sensei's relationship with Danzo. Well, no fear. First the hotel and then...' Jiraiya's face suddenly loosened, 'RESEARCH!'

Needless to say, the people of Uzushio were very startled by the weird, loud, and creepy white-haired old man running through the streets of their village as if his life depended on it while looking for a hotel, having a perpetual perverted grin on his face.

...

The evening came and Jiriaya laid on his futon in his hotel room in the Whirlpool Hotel, the best and most expensive hotel in the whole village. Well, secret mission or not, Jiraiya had enough money to splurge a lot so why should he live in some rundown motel on the edge of the city?

"I finally understand why Sarutobi-sensei always said Uzumaki are to be feared. No wonder even the Second Hokage was utterly terrified by them! These demons actually created anti-peeking seals!" Waterfalls of tears streamed down Jiraiya's cheeks as he complained at the injustice he encountered, "How dare they... criminals!"

Unfortunately for Jiraiya, his research was interrupted due to his complete inability to peek in the hot springs. That was when he was forced to take his hat off and pay respect to the Uzumaki sealmasters. Poor guy was forced to do the only other way of researching he knew... going to a brothel.

Fortunately for Jiraiya... in the past two years, Uzushio became one of the main trading hubs in the world due to the incredibly high living standards of its inhabitants and the unusual goods usually using seals to work.

This success naturally attracted all sorts of people. Thugs... the Uzushio police force could handle. These usually found themselves outside of the village with so many bruises and broken bones they would never dare coming closer than a kilometer away from the village. But as the number of visiting merchants increased, the Uzumaki clan who all but ruled the village had to make a few concessions and allow a few brothels to form.

'Ah~, the Redhead Heaven... I think I shall report to Sensei that the mission got delayed and I will be spending a few months on this heavenly ground! They certainly know how to use the reputation of Uzumaki to attract customers!' Jiraiya giggled before sighing in content as a frown set in on his face, 'Just a pity no real Uzumaki was among those redheads...' His eyes narrowed in suspicion while his lips expression twisted sourly. Jiraiya still remembered Kushina and from her, he knew the most likely features of an Uzumaki woman. Needless to say, it was easy to spot none of the girls there were actually from the Uzumaki clan if one knew what to look for.

'But... Uzushio is using brothels to gather intelligence in their own village. That's... not really good. This is one of the main trading hubs, meaning there are many people with even more secrets passing through. Who knows when some important noble idiot from the Land of Fire gets his tongue undone by a pretty big-breasted redhead just because he was foolish enough to drink that incredibly strong sake they serve.'

Naturally, Jiraiya was very experienced in this field, especially when it pertained to courtesans and their job. He dedicated a big part of his life to the small nuances of information gathering in this field, with him owning a massive chain of brothels all over the Land of Fire and even other countries under various aliases using scapegoats as his public image. He knew exactly what subtle manipulations are used to make the clients more agreeable to disclose their secrets. Jiraiya was actually quite surprised he didn't find any subtle genjutsu-inducing seal inside the establishment with this being the territory of the Uzumaki clan. He certainly used those in his establishments.

Not that he was actually persuaded there was none of those. It just meant they were competent enough to hide them even from his trained eyes.

"This is such a drag!" Jiraiya whined as his perverted grin appeared on his face again in full. "Now I just have to go there again to totally ascertain there is no ulterior motive at work and stea-, … er, unveil all their methods of getting the information! Yeah, our ninjas will benefit greatly from knowing what to expect from the place! I will gladly sacrifice myself for the Greater Good of Konoha's male population!" He nodded in complete conviction and righteous tears moistening his eyes.

Jiraiya was far from the first Konoha ninja visiting Uzushio. Many merchants traveled there and that meant a lot of foreign ninjas from all over the Elemental Nations came with them as their escort. Obviously, only an idiot would believe there was no specially selected ninja supposed to act as a spy and find out as much about the village as possible. There were naturally tons of covert spies in these 'escort' parties and yet...

'From what Sarutobi-sensei said, not one of our previous spies managed to find out what is in the restricted section of the village. I would bet my completely worthless ninja pay Uzushio is secretly training ninjas and waiting to get stronger before declaring themselves a bona-fide hidden village.' Jiraiya's thoughts again became serious. 'The plan is sound though. Like this, they will... no,' He frowned, 'Correction, they already have a lot of support from foreign Daimyos who are completely in love with their products. There is no way for any Hidden Village to openly attack them and not cause a major diplomatic incident. Looks like their previous destruction indeed taught these redheads something. They have as much time as they need to get to the level of the major five but nobody can really antagonize them. After all, they are just merchant villages, right? Why would ninja villages bother with them, no? You dare to spy, or god forbid, attack the suppliers of my favorite product? Look how I will cut the funding for your village to negative numbers, you scum!' Jiraiya mockingly imitated an enraged Daimyo in his head as he snorted. Yeah, Uzushio became nigh untouchable… officially, that is.

Jiraiya found it almost poetic. The people behind the newfound rise of the Uzumaki clan must be really knowledgeable in the way how the world worked. Uzushio didn't rise to monumental heights in two short years because of overwhelming power but because of politics and using an exact moment where all major powers were either dealing with their own problems or with each other.

In an ideal world, Uzushio would be razed to the ground the second it became public knowledge the Uzumaki clan is trying to re-establish it. They would be destroyed just because they were a threat in the past and honestly, that was completely enough for Iwa and Kumo to act. 'But we don't live in an ideal world...' Jiraiya snorted. 'Power is nice and all but politics is what really matters unless you are on the level of Madara or Hashirama.'

The only way to 'attack' Uzushio was covert one, outside of the official records. Not one spy who was sent to Uzushio was actually there on an 'official' mission to spy on Uzushio. If they died, or worse were discovered, during it, they would simply be written off as rogue ninjas working on their own. Their fates would then become not Konoha's problem anymore.

And that was what really drove Konoha's higher-ups sparse... 'Every single spy we sent was discovered AND discreetly returned to us with a mocking description of how utterly useless they were.' Jiraiya would laugh if it were only people trained by Danzo but some of these spies were trained personally by him and that made it personal. 'Worst of all, not one of them actually remembers how they were discovered. They simply blacked out and the next thing they remember is being outside of the village with a message directed to Hokage and bruised black and blue. Who knows what kind of information was pulled out of them while they were out of it!'

And that... was in nutshell the reason why the best spymaster of Konoha was currently on a vacation from chasing whor-, ahem, Orochimaru. He would find out what nefarious things were going on in this village full of gingers! Who knows what other atrocities other than anti-peeking seals were brewing up under the visage of a peaceful town. No longer was it just a job for his village. Now it was his pride as a super pervert that was beckoning him to find out for sure.

And then... Jiraiya was suddenly pulled out of his righteous contemplations as a knock resounded through his room, causing him to furrow his brows as he knew he didn't expect anybody to visit.

...

In an office in one of the Manors in the Uzumaki village, Kaya's mother, Kara Uzumaki was relaxing with a smoking pipe in her mouth and her feet resting on her desk while her husband contently massaged her shoulders and hummed a relaxing tune. Oh... Kara had no illusions how they would spend the night. Even if her selfless husband did so much only to make her feel better without expecting anything in return, it would be only fair to reward him, no?

But before that...

"You say one of the girls in the Redhead Haven reported Jiraiya of the Sannin trying to pull information out of her during the act?" Kara asked, completely amused while enjoying the hands of her husband kneading the muscles around her neck.

Her secretary, a tall red-headed man, nodded. "Yes, Kara-sama, how do you wish to proceed?"

"Ah... leave it and give the girl a raise." Kara shrugged, "My daughter is certainly already aware of our new visitor with his not-so-discreet attempt at peeking in the hot springs and he would no doubt receive his warning soon. I just really hope he will be arrogant enough to ignore it... Hehe." Kara's eyes glinted.

After all, shaming one of the Sannin? Wasn't that the best way to gain a reputation for Uzushio? How come it became so easy to become famous in the ninja circles? The opportunities could be said to be throwing at them, no?

---

Author Note:

Okay, I am completely sure there will be people complaining about topics such as whores and brothels breached in this chapter but... dudes! We are talking about Jirayia here. Not to mention those would be blasphemy! Where ELSE than a brothel would the guy go if he couldn't access hot spring.

So... nope, not going to bother with people complaining about it.