Konoha's Hypocrites and True Villains

Jiraiya: "?"

He didn't want to become a father by accident. He was still young, and he... he liked Tsunade.

"Do I really have to acknowledge the child?" Jiraiya asked hesitantly. He already had no chance of catching up with Tsunade. If he had to raise a kid on top of that...

"Of course you do! If it's yours, you're not going to deny it, are you?" Hiruzen Sarutobi smacked the back of Jiraiya's head.

Jiraiya yelped and clutched the back of his head. He... never mind. He'd keep quiet.

If the kid was his, then the kid was his.

He was actually going to be a father.

He...

What if his child turned out to be the Child of Prophecy?

Jiraiya was pretty optimistic. He immediately came around to the idea.

Seeing that Jiraiya hadn't grasped how serious the situation was, Shikaku Nara reminded him, "You have to acknowledge the child, and marry the woman too."

Jiraiya: "?"

"You want me to marry a prostitute?!" he roared.

"Listen to Shikaku," Hiruzen snapped at him, then turned kindly toward Shikaku. "Go on. What's the reason?"

If possible, of course he hoped his student would marry a respectable woman.

"From the villagers' perspective, they know that the woman had Jiraiya have a child, and that Jiraiya acknowledged the child but sent the woman back. People with ulterior motives could easily attack him for looking down on her because she wasn't 'clean.'"

"True." Hiruzen nodded in agreement.

If Orochimaru and Zhengyi started accusing Jiraiya of looking down on women from the Red Light District, he'd have a hard time dealing with it.

Ordinarily, everyone looked down on prostitutes. But Hanako's kneeling and crying would make people pity her, letting them take the moral high ground and condemn Jiraiya.

"He shouldn't just acknowledge the child. He should go and marry her with a grand procession," Shikaku suggested.

The courage to defy convention, a love that offered salvation and equality—if they gave that Hanako a tragic backstory and marketed it well, Jiraiya could be made out to be a real man who'd stepped up.

Today's meeting had only caught Jiraiya off guard. It hadn't crushed him.

This whole affair might even help him build an image as a prodigal son who'd turned his life around and become a good husband. He could become Hokage first and get divorced a few years later if he had to.

Shikaku thought he'd easily foiled Zhengyi's scheme.

A small interruption occurred. Orochimaru showed up and, with the other three watching him warily, plucked a hair with its follicle from Jiraiya's head.

After both Hiruzen and Shikaku had persuaded him,

and, of course, under the weight of Hiruzen's decades as his teacher, Jiraiya was forced to give in.

Tsunade...

Waaah, Tsunade!!

It turned out there was no need for Hiruzen to force Jiraiya into marriage.

That afternoon, Orochimaru produced a DNA test report.

The results were in! There was only a one percent chance that the child Hanako had brought was Jiraiya's.

In other words, the child wasn't his.

Under Orochimaru's "interrogation," Hanako initially denied it. But when the scientific evidence was placed before her, she admitted she'd been trying to scam Jiraiya out of money so she could live comfortably for the rest of her life.

After Hanako was "exposed," Jiraiya nearly prostrated himself before Orochimaru.

"Orochimaru, you really do remember our friendship, don't you?"

"What friendship? Zhengyi just asked me to do it."

"Come on, don't be shy."

"I'll treat you to dinner tonight!"

Jiraiya put an arm around Orochimaru and walked with him for a while. Then he hurriedly took Hanako to Konoha's main street to clear things up, and even put out a public notice.

Seeing that his student was innocent, Hiruzen breathed a sigh of relief and helped explain the situation.

Shikaku couldn't shake the feeling that something was going on, but he couldn't put his finger on it.

One thing led to another.

The next day, Jiraiya lost all chance of being elected Hokage.

The reason was that he'd abandoned his wife and child.

That was what the villagers believed after people with ulterior motives led them to think that Jiraiya had forced Hanako to admit she'd been trying to extort money from him—all so he could become Hokage without a stain on his record.

And the conspiracy theory was pretty convincing. It even held together on its own.

At this final stage of the Hokage election, Jiraiya couldn't afford a scandal involving a child with a woman from the Red Light District if he didn't want to lose to Orochimaru.

The people of Konoha thought they'd seen through everything.

Before long, words like "Jiraiya's a hypocrite" and "Orochimaru's a true villain" spread through every street in Konoha.

The claim that Jiraiya was a hypocrite had, of course, come from Orochimaru's side.

Calling Orochimaru a true villain was Jiraiya's side striking back! Taking revenge!

They'd known there was no way Orochimaru was being kind for no reason!

So that was it! That was what had happened!

Aaaaah!! My good name, Jiraiya's good name!!!

Now he could jump into the Naka River and still never wash this away.

Whether or not he took back the child who wasn't even his, he'd still be saddled with a bad reputation!!

Enraged, Jiraiya was determined to drag Orochimaru down with him, even if it killed him.

And so both sides were saddled with infamy.

Konoha's Hypocrites: Jiraiya, Minato Namikaze.

Konoha's True Villains: Orochimaru, Zhengyi.

If the teacher was a hypocrite and the teacher was a true villain, how could either student be any good?

This time, the two sides had truly become sworn enemies.

What friendship from the old days? They'd been through with each other for ages!

My old friend Jiraiya (Orochimaru)? He'd been dead for years!!!

Now, whenever the two happened to cross paths in the street, it went like this:

"Orochimaru!!"

"Jiraiya!!!"

Zhengyi had precisely targeted and struck Jiraiya where he was vulnerable: his usual womanizing ways.

It was as if Hiruzen had had one arm broken.

He was furious too.

Everything had been going so well! Now Jiraiya had been pushed out of the race.

Orochimaru! Do you even see me as your teacher?!

With the old man taking sides, Konoha's political landscape grew complicated. It was practically split in two.

Hiruzen's Great Court versus Orochimaru's Little Court.

Orochimaru's disadvantage was that he had few people. His advantage was also that he had few people. There were only a handful of them, and they were all morally bankrupt true villains. The attacks Hiruzen launched for Minato had no effect at all. They sounded more like praise.

Lately, one saying had become popular in Konoha:

"A true villain is better than a hypocrite."

"We can tell who the true villains are, so we can guard against them. But who would ever guard against a hypocrite? You might not even realize a hypocrite has betrayed you."

The words above came from one of Zhengyi's shadow clones.

Because of those words, quite a few people began to see the villains in a different light.

Orochimaru and Zhengyi had turned Konoha upside down, but they really hadn't made life difficult for the people at the bottom. On the contrary, their standard of living had improved.

The Toy Factory Zhengyi had opened recently was doing great, and it kept hiring villagers.

He'd modeled its operations on a company from his previous life. All the profits left after taxes were distributed among the employees.

Once he became Hokage, money would just be a number. Konoha would belong to the Hokage, after all. So Zhengyi could genuinely say he wasn't interested in money and had to do everything he could to help his teacher become Hokage!!