Jiraiya sneered down at his godson, the little Minato clone scowling back up at him with equal ferocity. Gods, but he looked like his mother when he made that face. Behind him stood a girl no older than ten, her dark eyes watching them with dry amusement above a white mask not unlike Kakashi's.

"Listen, brat," he said with an edge to his voice. "I don't know what you think of me, but I have no interest in little girls. So, your little friend can just," he made a shooing motion with his hand, never even looking at the girl. Honestly, what was Naruto thinking, bringing his little girlfriend around when they had serious training to do?

"Excuse me, Jiraiya-sama," the girl interjected, placing a hand on Naruto's arm before he could go off on a red faced tirade. "I would like to speak for myself before you dismiss me, if I may."

Well, well, well, a kid who knew his name. There was no way Naruto had told it to her, the cheeky brat.

"Fine," he allowed, squatting low so he could look the girl in her dark, dark eyes. "Speak."

She bowed, her brown curls falling forward with the motion. "My name is Hanako Hatake, Jiraiya-sama, and I dare presume Hokage-sama has told you about me."

Well, damn. That mask wasn't an imitation of his obnoxious grand-student's, it was an inheritance. What was it Sensei had said about the littlest Hatake? Something something murder, something something adoption...

"I apologize for approaching a man as important as yourself for this, but there is no one else who can help me—."

Jiraiya waved his hand crossly, already annoyed with the thick flattery. "Just get on with it, kid. Naruto and I have training to do."

She met and held his gaze, the weight of it too old for someone her size. "I would like to receive a mastery in fuinjutsu."

Oh.

Well, damn. He really was the only one who could help her, huh?

He sighed and rolled his neck, looking the kid over with new eyes. She was little, even more so than Naruto, whose height had suffered due to childhood malnutrition. Her eyes were large and dark and way too mature, set beneath straight dark brows and a head of shoulder length brown curls. She wore a white shirt/mask number under a pale green haori and black pants tucked into worn, closed toe boots.

Definitely not standard ninja wear.

"Alrighty, then," he rose to his full height, towering over the two genin. "You can come with. While Naruto's doing his exercises, you can show me some of your seals."

She bowed, unmoved by Naruto's loud complaining. As he led the way to the riverbank he and Kushina's mini-me had been using for training, he wracked his brain for info on the weird little girl.

Naturally, he'd been notified of her existence when she joined the Hatake clan all those years ago, but he couldn't recall anything beyond her exceptional grades and something about an apprenticeship. Oh, well, if it was important he was sure he'd remember it.

He set Naruto and his army of clones off onto the running water of the river, working on staggering the amount of chakra each clone contained. With the hellion occupied, he squat down once more and gestured wildly at the girl.

"Well?" He prompted. "Go on."

She stared blankly at him for a moment before throwing off her haori, exposing slender, freckled arms and dark, winding tattoos. She held out her hand to him, palm up, and began speaking as he took it.

"I've memorized the Second Hokage's sealing arrays and theories," she said as he traced the edges of what was clearly a seal—and one he'd seen before, if his fuzzy memory could be believed. But where? "I've also read all of the Fourth's commentary and additions to the literature. Your think-piece on the role of redundancies in action based arrays has proved very influential in my own seal designs—."

"Ah!" He tugged on her hand, twisting it as he followed the loopy writing system around her arm. "Ume!"

He smiled down at the confused little girl. "Hey, kid, mind taking off your mask? I wanna check something."

Her brows furrowed but she pulled down the white fabric with her free hand. The face that looked up at him was familiar, in a far off, diluted way. There was the pointed chin and the full upper lip, but the nose was wrong, too small and missing a storied break. That look in her eyes, though, that unasked 'are you stupid?', confirmed his suspicions.

"You," he said with a smile. "You're Ume's kid, huh?"

She cocked her head, and he did some quick math.

"Wait, no, grandkid. You're Ume's grandkid!" His smile began to fade as her expression remained unchanged. "Ume? Ume Sumigawa?"

The kid looked away, dark eyes filled with more confusion than recognition. "I'm sorry, Jiraiya-sama," she said softly. "I don't recognize that name."

Huh.

"Ume Sumigawa," he began, already lost in the memory. "Was a beautiful woman, with seals just like yours. I remember watching her use them for the first time—hey, use them, for me, yeah?" Sure enough, that blue glow was the same. "Yeah, it looked exactly like that! She was one heck of a woman, with the best thighs I've ever seen—!" He cleared his throat, shrinking away from her unimpressed glare. "Aha, anyway, you look like her, too, kid, so I'm willing to bet you're related, even if you don't know her name. Although," he took his chin in his hand. "One must wonder how you got here, when Ume lived in Kiri."

"What?" The kid's eyes were wide and Jiraiya found himself in the odd position of looking down at his past lover's expression on a child's face. Eugh. Why the hell did people have kids when it was this freaky to look at them? "Kiri?" She bit her lip, revealing a sharp set of the Hatake's signature double cuspids. "Then, would she have left when the kekkei genkai hunting began? Or my mother?"

"I dunno, kid," he said with a shrug, once again running his fingers down the thick, black bands that were her tattoos. "This seal isn't a kekkei genkai, though I guess Kiri wouldn't have cared all that much, back then."

"What do you mean?" She asked, gaze following his fingers like a hawk.

"Just what I said, kid. It's a hiden, not a kekkei genkai. I remember because Ume made sure I never saw the whole thing, even when we were—ahem!"

That glare was all Ume. There was no way this kid wasn't a Sumigawa. The hair, the freckles, the tattoos!

"Sumigawa," she said quietly. "My mother's name was Rin Sumigawa." She looked up at him, a wide smile splitting her face. A pair of deep, all too familiar dimples made their presence known and a yawning cavern of dread opened up in his gut.

Oh, no.

"H-hey, kid," he let her pull her hand from his, sweat beading on his forehead as he ran panicked math in the back of his mind. "How old are you?"

"I'm eleven, why?"

"A-and how old is your mother?"

Her smile dropped. "The coroner said she was probably in her early twenties when she died."

Oh, oops. But...

Damn, the numbers lined up.

"Kid," he said as he stood, placing a large hand on the little girl's head. "I'm gonna ask for some weird things, and I'm gonna need you not to ask any questions."

She craned her neck back, staring up at him with Ume's patented 'you can't possibly be this dumb' glare. "Why?"

"Just listen to your elder and do as you're told," he snapped, heart beating a mile a minute. "I need a blood sample, and access to your mother's autopsy records. Can you do that for me?"

She stared up at him and for a moment he thought she might actually say no. Then, her eyes narrowed in an expression all her own. "Fine. But can it wait until after we've gone over the mastery stuff? I want to get it done while you're still in the village."

He nodded, hiding his apprehension beneath a layer of half felt enthusiasm. "Yeah, sure, no problem kid."

"And another thing," she said, expression and tone deathly serious.

He swallowed thickly. "What is it?"

"Are Hitomi's tattoos in Icha Icha Expedition Volume Three based on Ume's?"

Huh?

"What the heck is a kid your age doing reading Icha Icha Expedition?" He demanded, unexpectedly cross.

She shrugged. "My dad's your biggest fan. We have the whole collection on display in the living room."

Oh, geeze.