Until We Meet Again (Part 3 to the TBT Trilogy)

Chapter 3

I made my way to a park bench and sat down, mentally beating myself up.

Why the hell couldn't I say something to him? Am I ever going to gather the courage to say something to him about it? He's bound to find out sooner or later. I'd definitely want to know if I was in his position.

I decided to start reading the book that Jiraiya had given to me just to take my mind off of it.

So far, I was very impressed by the first chapter. I was about to flip the page to chapter 2.

"Enjoying it already, I see,"

I looked up at the voice and saw it was Jiraiya standing in front of me.

"Definitely," I replied, shutting the book. "But I don't want to know what type of research you've been doing to make this,"

He chuckled. "I wouldn't be able to make the chapters as detailed if it weren't for my research,"

I rolled my eyes at that comment.

"Did you need something?" I asked him, noticing his expression turned serious.

"Yeah, I need to talk to both you and Kakashi, so come with me," He said.

I stood up from the park bench and put the book inside my pocket. We started walking, and I looked over at him curiously.

"Is it about the Akatsuki? Do you know anything?" 

"I'll explain when Kakashi's with us," He answered.

I sighed, now thinking about how much stress the Akatsuki was going to cause. I trained even more while Jiraiya and Naruto were gone so I could protect him better. 

We found Kakashi standing against a fence on a rooftop, already reading his copy of the new book. 

"What do you think?" Jiraiya asked him. "Not bad, huh?"

Kakashi looked up at us.

"If you ask me, it's the best one I've ever written," Jiraiya chuckled. "I was just telling Hana that I needed to talk to both of you,"

"Alright," Kakashi said, not even bothering to put the book away.

The three of us jumped down from the rooftop and started walking through the village. Kakashi was still reading his book, of course. I think he's way more invested in it than I am.

"I'm delivering Naruto into your hands as promised," Jiraiya said.

"I can see he's grown alright, but has he grown up?" Kakashi asks.

"You implying I haven't done my job?" Jiraiya quipped. "Oh, go ahead, underestimate him. You'll be sorry,"

"Well, that sounds encouraging," Kakashi replied.

"The ones we've been watching are about to make their move," Jiraiya said, causing Kakashi and I to look over at him.

I couldn't push away the anxiety that was gnawing at my stomach. We stopped at a dango shop to sit down so we could further talk about this.

"I see, they're finally coming out of the woodwork," Kakashi said.

"It's no surprise; it was bound to happen sooner or later," Jiraiya replied.

"The Akatsuki..." I trail off.

"So why do you think they're finally showing their hand? What are they after?" Kakashi asked.

"Their ultimate objective is still unclear, but I know one thing," Jiraiya answered. "They want the fox spirit that Naruto carries within himself. As to why, well, you can be sure they have some evil purpose in mind. That's why I've been going around spreading the word to all of our allies,"