Hazō wasn’t tied up, and this fact was making him very uncomfortable.

To be sure, the team had been stripped of all their weapons and equipment, and given a distressingly thorough body search (though as someone brought up in Mist, Hazō knew it could have been worse). But they, a team of highly suspicious missing-nin including at least one jōnin, were being taken into the presence of the leader of the most powerful political entity in the world, and none of them were being restrained in any way.

The Hokage didn’t look like the kind of man who was beyond assassination. A middle-aged ninja in white robes and the obligatory Kage hat, he was gazing down at a desk covered with scrolls in various stages of unfurlment, his brow lined with what Hazō suspected was bureaucratic frustration. He could have been some random mid-rank pencil-pusher in the Mizukage’s Office (or, well, its Leaf equivalent). He wasn’t that tall, and was dwarfed by the high bookshelves lining the room; Jiraiya, sitting in a chair to the side and giving them a “don’t embarrass me in front of my boss” look, seemed to project a much stronger sense of presence.

Then the Hokage straightened up, and looked directly at Hazō.

Hazō’s perspective reoriented itself. The Hokage was behind the desk and the scrolls. The Hokage was between the bookshelves. The Hokage was next to Jiraiya. The Hokage was in front of Hazō. He filled every corner of the room, defining every location and every spatial relationship without changing anything but his posture.

Oh, right. Middle-aged ninja.

“This,” Jiraiya said gravely, “is Sarutobi Hiruzen-sensei, the Third Hokage. He’s permitted me to attend while you give him a full report on the Arikada mission.”

“Thank you, Jiraiya,” the Hokage said. He sounded nothing like what Hazō had expected.

When the Mizukage spoke at public assemblies, his voice was high and cold, piercing you wherever you stood. It divided the world into straight lines of narrow steel, a razor-sharp net with no escape. There were only tools and traitors, right and wrong, sacrifice and selfishness, law and transgression. His charisma made you want to believe in a simple world where all you had to do was be one of those straight lines, and everything would be peaceful and good and right, forever. His reputation made you terrified of falling into the gaps between them, an endlessly deep void from which there was no way back.

The Hokage… was Hazō’s grandfather. Not Kurosawa Ginrei, of whom he knew only the name. Not Izuki Jirō, who had passed away long before Hazō’s birth. The Hokage was Hazō’s grandfather as he ought to be, with the overwhelming but peaceful strength of an oak tree, decades of wisdom piled up like logs against a hard winter, and kindness to warm you like a fireplace if you were ready to show the proper respect. The rich timbre of the Hokage’s voice complemented his all-encompassing aura, turning the room into a space that felt safe because it was under the Hokage’s absolute control.

Then the Hokage shifted his attention to the team. “Mori Keiko. Kurosawa Hazō. Kagome... Kagome...?"

Kagome-sensei glowered. The Hokage continued unperturbed.

"Inoue Mari. Wakahisa Noburi.” Left to right. Hazō could keenly feel the one missing name.

“You have served Jiraiya well, in your own way, and for this I am grateful. Now, report.”

There was less wood in the Hokage’s voice now, and more stone, reminding Hazō that he and they were allies of convenience at best, one step short of enemies, and that the warmth was not for them. He had to shake off the feeling that he’d just been shut out in the cold and needed to try to earn the Hokage’s approval as fast as possible in order to be let back in.

If Mist was the way it was because of the Mizukage and his predecessors, what must Leaf be like? Was this why it had been able to give birth to someone like Akane?

Akane.

“Hokage, sir, I, uh, don’t mean to be rude,” Hazō stammered as Inoue-sensei turned towards him in barely-suppressed horror, “but could I ask about Ishihara Akane’s condition first? Is she going to be all right?”

Jiraiya snorted for reasons known only to himself. The Hokage gave him a brief sideways look of disapproval, then returned to Hazō.

“Your concern for your teammate does you credit,” the Hokage said. Approval!

Hazō mentally kicked himself at the reflexive reaction.

“I have good news and bad news,” the Hokage went on. “The bad news is that you only just brought her to us in time. Any longer and she would be dead. Even now the Shinigami is hovering over her.

“The good news is that Hidden Leaf possesses the world’s most advanced medical ninjutsu, and we have dealt with things stranger than these so-called chakra worms. Our resident bioweapons expert, Dr Yakushi, is operating on Miss Ishihara right now. I can tell you with confidence that she couldn’t be in better hands.”

Hazō sighed with relief. “Thank you, sir. Sorry for interrupting.”

The Hokage nodded. “Now, the report, if you would be so kind.”

Inoue-sensei cleared her throat.

“Following Jiraiya’s instructions, we arrived at Sarubetsu in southern Rice. After establishing a base camp, we spent several days infiltrating the town and identifying figures of importance, as well as analysing the territory. We developed low-level contacts within the Irie and Hinago clans, two of the three ninja clans competing for influence in Sarubetsu, and it is our belief that the Hinago were the ones working with Arikada, though we never gained conclusive proof.

“We negotiated with Sarubetsu’s mayor, a civilian with a high degree of influence over the clans, and persuaded her to prevent them from interfering with our mission.”

The Hokage raised his hand, and Inoue-sensei fell silent.

“Were your identities, or ours, compromised at any point during the mission?”

Somebody who hadn’t known Inoue-sensei for as long as Hazō might have missed the flush of shame. Thinking about it, it was worrying that she felt it around him often enough that he’d learned to recognise it.

“The mayor, Emiya Manako, saw my true appearance, but did not get my name. Additionally, an Irie contact implied that he was able to identify Wakahisa, Kurosawa and Mori through circumstantial evidence, but he did not learn their names or appearances, and did not express any intent to make use of this information. Ishihara and Kagome’s identities were…” Inoue-sensei struggled for words, clearly remembering Hazō’s account of the Yoichi’s Incident, “…uncompromised.”

The Hokage looked Inoue-sensei in the eye. “Miss Inoue,” he said meaningfully, with an edge of reproach.

Inoue-sensei flinched. “I… should add that the Irie contact blackmailed the aforementioned three into purchasing some of his goods using the information on their identity.”

“Thank you, Miss Inoue. Please continue.”

“On the day of Arikada’s arrival, we identified her from long range, and then proceeded to ambush her. We eliminated her two bodyguards—“

The Hokage held up his hand. Inoue-sensei stopped.

“I understand that the Sarubetsu terrain is flat and lacking in concealment. What technique did you use to identify Arikada from long range without revealing your location?”

“High-altitude observation,” Inoue-sensei said reluctantly.

The Hokage’s eyebrows rose. “High-altitude observation? How did you achieve something like that on flat terrain?”

“With respect, sir,” Inoue-sensei said, “we would prefer not to discuss our methods with a third party.”

“I’m afraid I must insist,” the Hokage said. “High-altitude observation is a known counter to Hidden Leaf’s concealment strategy. We need to be able to anticipate any means of achieving it.”

Inoue-sensei glanced at Hazō. Hazō did not want to make the Hokage “insist” further.

“We constructed a watchtower,” Hazō explained, feeling a brief thrill of satisfaction at Jiraiya and the Hokage’s bemused expressions. “We used a Five-Seal Barrier to stabilise a spiral of ninja wire, which we used to support progressively higher sets of wooden platforms. With no visible infrastructure, the tower could not be seen from range.”

Jiraiya and the Hokage exchanged meaningful looks.

“Can I have a piece of paper and something to write with, Sarutobi-sensei?” Jiraiya asked excitedly. The Hokage was already wordlessly passing him the supplies with an expression of wry resignation.

Roughly two minutes were occupied by six people watching Jiraiya write and sketch. Finally, he held up a piece of paper half-covered with formulae and half with an annotated image of a tower.

“It works!” he declared, his earlier solemnity forgotten. “If you place the spiral correctly, you can apply the Inumura diffusion effect across the entire surface area! Now if we combine it with some Force Wall effects, and add a dispersion seal to the highest point… and this could be angled to support weapon emplacements…”

The Hokage gave a cough.

“Sorry, Sarutobi-sensei,” Jiraiya said, looking up. “But this is the sealcrafting innovation of the year. There are so many possible applications which could really tip the balance of power…” he trailed off, looking back up at the team. The Hokage was now looking at them as well.

“Were you the original creators of this design?” the Hokage asked mildly.

There was a long pause as Inoue-sensei visibly weighed the options.

“Yes,” she finally said.

“Hmm,” was all the Hokage said in response. “Please proceed with your report.”

“We engaged Arikada in mid-range combat. She used an unknown ability to detonate one of her dead bodyguards’ heads, but I was able to avoid most of the damage. When we pursued, she used another ability to strip flesh from her legs in a large explosion and propel herself in a hundred-metre jump.”

The Hokage frowned, but did not interrupt.

“She then extracted shinobi corpses, presumably from a scroll, and used the Edo Tensei Technique to reanimate them to attack us—“

The Hokage’s hand practically leapt up to stop her. “The Edo Tensei Technique. Are you absolutely certain that is what she called it?”

“Yes, sir.”

The Hokage and Jiraiya exchanged looks again.

“Raven!” the Hokage said loudly.

A ninja in grey armour and a bird mask appeared out of nowhere next to the Hokage.

“Have Prisoner Arikada transferred to the Ram facility. Go.”

“Yes, sir.” The ninja disappeared again. Hazō longed to know how he did that, without even any visible hand seals.

“Please describe exactly what happened.”

“When we caught up with Arikada after her jump, she was using hand seals over a set of three dead bodies. As she completed them, she shouted ‘Edo Tensei Technique’ and slapped a hand on the back of each in turn. The three corpses rose as if they were alive, and attacked us. They displayed an ability to use weapons and significant combat skills, and were very strong and durable.”

“The one I was fighting had a spike rammed into its brain through the ear,” Hazō added.

The Hokage’s expression was completely opaque. “Thank you for this information. Did you happen to see the hand seals that Arikada was using for the technique?”

Hazō had, and he was pretty sure everybody else had too. Their attention had been completely focused on Arikada, and her actions had been pretty eye-grabbing.

“I’m afraid not,” Inoue-sensei said. “She was almost finished by the time we came within range.”

“That’s right,” Kagome-sensei added quickly. “We don’t know anything about Leaf’s secret forbidden technique. It probably wasn’t Edo Tensei anyway. I heard her shout ‘Emo Tensai’, I know I did, and I’m sure Leaf doesn’t have anything like that!”

“Thank you, Kagome,” Inoue-sensei said wearily. She and Hazō had quickly talked it over beforehand, and decided that the only disaster worse than having Kagome-sensei present for the debriefing would be leaving him alone as a Hidden Leaf prisoner for any length of time.

“Please continue,” the Hokage said.

“While we were fighting the corpses, Arikada transformed some of the excess flesh on her arms and back into three… I can only call them tentacles… which she used to increase her running speed. However, we were able to capture her and persuade her to return with us using a story about potential employment by Leaf, supplemented with extensive intimidation.

“Unfortunately, she made an escape attempt partway through. She ripped out part of her chest, which was filled with explosive maggots. It was one of these that got Ishihara. Fortunately, I was able to capture and… comprehensively disable… Arikada, and persuade her to give us the acid needed to destroy the worm and prevent further damage. The amount of persuasion necessary left her in her current condition.”

“Her current condition,” the Hokage repeated. “You are trying to keep our medic-nin busy. But do not take that as criticism. Many of my best shinobi would have done the same.”

There was a part of Hazō that wished he’d been the one to torture Arikada for information. He wanted to hurt her, so much, for what she’d done to his Akane, and for what she’d nearly done to Akane, to make her scream, and he knew that now he never could.

Another part of him was looking at himself in horror, for impulses that he never knew he’d had. Did other people feel like this, feel the instinct to protect one’s own turning into a desire—a need—for violence? If it had been him torturing Arikada, would he have been able to stop when he had what he needed?

For the first time, Hazō realised why Mist trained its ninja to be tools. He’d always assumed it was to remove compassion, to avoid it staying your hand when you needed to hurt or kill. But it wasn’t, was it? Mist turned its ninja into tools because a tool would know when to stop. It would do what was necessary and exactly what was necessary, never being consumed by anger or hatred or bloodlust or any of the infinite darker passions brought out by the battlefield. It was because Inoue-sensei could turn herself into a tool that she was able to save Akane and complete the mission. Could Hazō have done the same?

“From there,” Inoue-sensei concluded, “we ran to Leaf as fast as we could, for Ishihara’s sake, and ultimately encountered a patrol team, whom we gave Jiraiya’s code. You know the rest.”

“Thank you,” the Hokage said, leaning back in his seat. His eyes were fixed on some point beyond the ceiling.

A few minutes later, he looked down at the team again. “Yes, I believe I see. I will be speaking with you again regarding other matters, partly regarding events in Iron, Tea and Hot Springs, but also about the Noodle Incident, which I believe your original mission was part of. For now, however, we must see to Arikada, and you may rest after your mission.”

“Sir,” Inoue-sensei said, “what is our status in Hidden Leaf? Are we free to move around as visitors?”

The Hokage gave a brief shake of his head. “On the contrary. Persons in your position are typically provided with well-appointed quarters, in which they are to remain until needed. But given your history with Jiraiya, I am prepared to make certain concessions. I will appoint a team of minders to you for the duration of your stay. Any activities in Leaf will need to be cleared via them, and they will escort you as necessary. You will be dignitaries from a minor village, observing Leaf as part of preparations to negotiate an alliance. However, if you appear to be trying to act against Leaf’s interests, you will be eliminated immediately.”

There was a pause.

“Miss Inoue,” the Hokage said without any particular malice, “you are thinking that we will be unable or unwilling to assign you a team of minders greater than your group in combat power. This is true. However, the team will be more than capable of delaying you long enough for reinforcements to converge on your position, so I would advise you not to take any act which could be interpreted as hostile.

“You are also thinking that, as a manipulation specialist, you will surely be able to misdirect these minders if need be, so as to allow someone in your team to pursue a course of action the minders would not condone. This is why the minder team will feature a Yamanaka, authorized to read your minds on the slightest suspicion that you are violating the terms of your stay.

“Is there anything else you wish to discuss before you are dismissed?”

“No, sir,” Inoue-sensei said.

The Hokage reached for a drawer of his desk, and pulled out a finely decorated pipe.

“I do,” Hazō cut in. “It’s about Akane. Will we be able to visit her in hospital?”

“Yes,” the Hokage nodded, “that can be arranged, subject to certain safeguards.”

“What about other people? Can she receive visits from her parents? And there’s one other person whose presence I think she’d find really helpful…”

“You need not be concerned,” the Hokage said with a touch of amusement. “Leaf takes care of its own. And the procedures for Ishihara Akane’s official reinstatement as a Leaf genin are already underway.”

What?

Hazō looked at Jiraiya, feeling the shock of betrayal. What happened to Akane’s right to decide which side she wanted to stay with?

“If she still wants to be part of your group after you nearly let her die,” Jiraiya said coolly, “she may be able to serve as your liaison with Leaf. Or spy from Leaf, or whatever official fiction we come up with. But make no mistake—she’s home now, she was never a missing-nin, and if you want to keep working with her, you will have to keep working with Leaf.”

“Why, you stink—“

“Please excuse us!”

Inoue-sensei fell only slightly short of actual taijutsu in her rush to bundle Kagome out of the office before he said something they would all regret. The rest followed in a subdued silence.

o-o-o-o

A few hours later, at the team’s request…

“I thought I’d be hearing from you,” Jiraiya snapped the book he was reading shut with a smile. “You really redeemed yourselves with this latest mission—no fatalities, no collateral damage, and the target alive and intact enough for our purposes. You need to work on maintaining cover, but nobody’s perfect, and this is a hell of a lot better than that Hot Springs fiasco.”

“Why did you do it?” Hazō burst out, angry enough not to care that he was speaking to one of the most powerful ninja in the world. “The agreement was that Akane would get a free choice of whether to stay with us or not!”

Jiraiya gave him a look. “Is that the thanks I get for arranging things so the kid gets her old life back and still has the option of working with you?”

“And we have to work for Leaf indefinitely if we want to keep her,” Inoue-sensei added.

“A happy coincidence,” Jiraiya said. “Besides, were you really planning to leave my employment?”

“You aren’t acting in good faith,” Hazō insisted. “How are we supposed to keep working with you if we can’t trust you?”

“Keep your voice down,” Jiraiya said softly. “I haven’t violated the letter or the spirit of our agreement. Akane gets her choice. Leaf gets its genin. You wanted her parents and that awful spandex kid to visit her in hospital—are you really planning to make that happen just so you can take it away again when she’s better?”

“I accept that the outcome you have orchestrated provides benefits to all parties,” Keiko said tonelessly. “However, in doing so, you have denied our agency and unilaterally changed the terms of our relationship. I question your fitness to be our employer.”

Jiraiya laughed. “Do you now? To my face, in the middle of a heavily-guarded compound at the heart of my village? You’ve got balls, girl. You’re going to go far—if you don’t get yourself killed mouthing off to the wrong ninja at the wrong time.”

His expression turned more serious.

“The thing you need to understand, and it’s best to do it while you’re young, is that the whole world is like this. You and I aren’t friends—we’re allies. You kill things for a living while I work to keep the world from falling apart. I’m a nice guy, but if there’s ever a choice between being nice to you and advancing my own agenda, well, it’s not really a choice at all. And that’s going to be true whoever you work for, except that they probably won’t be as nice as me. Or as smoking hot.”

“Excuse me,” Inoue-sensei said slightly sharply, “the role of cynical yet extremely attractive mentor is already taken. Now, given that you’ve successfully outplayed us and we’re stuck with the new status quo, can we move on to talking about our reward?”

“Wait, Inoue-sensei,” Hazō said. “There’s something I’d like to say.”

“Oh?” Jiraiya said.

“Yes,” Hazō said. “We’re not in this to kill things for a living. Jiraiya, sir, you say you’re working to keep the world from falling apart. We’re trying to make it a world where you don’t have to.”

He felt Jiraiya's attention lock onto him.

Hazō had expected to feel stage fright, trying to convince Jiraiya of the Leaf Three, many decades his senior, and a man who had dedicated those decades to making the world a better place while Hazō had barely taken the first step. But somehow the stage fright never came—perhaps because he was giving shape to ideas that had been spinning inside his head for so long, in one shape or another, ever since those first days in Hidden Swamp. It wasn’t that he knew what to say. It was that he was saying who he was.

“I understand why the world is falling apart,” Hazō said in a firm, clear voice. “Civilians are constantly struggling not to die, between the roving monsters in the wilderness and the desperate lack of access to resources and technology. Meanwhile, the ninja with the power to change all this are groomed from childhood to be cold-blooded torturers and killers, fighting for moments of territorial domination that will be gone with the next war if not before. Even if Leaf is less bad than the rest, even if it has people like you, it still exists as part of the same dysfunctional system.

“It would take so little for us to make things better. I can use the Multiple Earth Wall Technique to build in minutes what it would take a village weeks to finish, and my structures will be strong, solid stone that many villages would never be able to mine in the first place. That's the one ninjutsu I just happen to know, teachable to a thirteen-year-old. Then there are medic-nin.” Hazō gestured to Noburi. “Even a beginner medic-nin can perform miracles, fixing injuries and diseases in mere hours that will otherwise last for a civilian’s life—or simply take it away. And we use them to patch up our fighters so they can get back onto the battlefield more quickly."

He pointed to Keiko. "Education. Imagine the expertise and know-how of the ninja villages, multiplied by the numbers of the civilian population. How many problems could we figure out how to solve? How many inventions could such a community give rise to?"

Next, Kagome-sensei. "A single seal can replace weeks, months, years of civilian labour. Storage seals for secure transportation. Exploding tags for demolitions. Five-Seal Barriers for temporary structures of any size and shape, and we've only just begun to plumb the depths of what you can do with those. How many other seals are there in the world?"

Finally, he turned to Inoue-sensei, who was listening to him with an unreadable expression. "How much could we change society if we applied our stores of knowledge about the human mind to healing mental sickness and improving communication, instead of constantly refining our techniques for spying and interrogation?"

Hazō refocused his attention on Jiraiya, who was listening with a silent intensity.

“We’re starting to understand why the world is the way it is. Politics. Military strategy. The need to seize and maintain an advantage, multiplied into an arms race where nothing matters except dealing more damage and taking less. And that arms race is killing humanity.

“I don’t think it was ever meant to be this way. When you listen to people talk, all anybody wants is peace. We fight for peace. We die for peace. We go to war to prevent others from taking away our peace. And the more we do it, the more we give up what we could become. Instead we keep killing those with the most potential, and forcing the rest to spend their lives producing resources so we can do it faster.

“Humanity’s light is fading. I don’t know how many generations it’ll take, but if we keep going like this, we will eventually find ourselves in darkness. The wilderness will take back civilisation, and all the killing in the world won’t be able to show us the way out of that abyss.

“This is not an acceptable outcome."

He felt something of Keiko's steel in his voice as he spoke that phrase, and briefly wondered what it meant.

“Jiraiya, sir, you don’t understand the six of us yet—and that includes Akane, because she will come back to us. What we are to you isn’t another set of tools. What we are is a unique opportunity.

“Most hidden village movers and shakers don’t think it’s possible to change the fundamental principles of the shinobi world, or they don’t want to try because those principles benefit them, or they simply don’t care. You probably know that a lot better than me, since you’ve spent your whole life trying to get them on board. And the people outside the system—the missing-nin—just want to keep their heads down.

“But we’re different. Our journey started when Inoue-sensei saved us from the Swamp of Death because she chose to do what was right, instead of what was easy. I know we’ve made mistakes and compromises along the way, but we are working hard to make that same choice over and over again, until it stops being a choice and becomes a way of life. We’re not hiding in the wilderness and telling ourselves that there is too much suffering in the world for six ninja to ever make a difference.

“You told us you wanted to build a world where no one is sacrificed in suicide missions. We want to build a world where no one is sacrificed. Ever. We want to build a world where peace exists as a foundation, not as an ultimate goal, and where everyone’s happiness has equal value.

“Will you help us?”

Jiraiya looked at him. Just looked him in the eye, for what seemed like forever.

Hazō met his gaze without fear. Behind the fog of uncertainty and confusion through which he viewed so much of his life, deeper than all of the cracks and the flaws, this was who Kurosawa Hazō was.

Then Jiraiya chuckled.

“You know, kid, I think you and I could learn to get along.”