"Does that mean you're in?" Hazou asked, trying hard not to hold his breath. The dream of improving the world...it was huge. There were times, when he thought about the goals that he had set for himself, that he felt them looming above him like a massive and unscalable cliff. Times when he thought that it was impossible, that there was no conceivable way that he could actually accomplish any sort of meaningful change in the world.

And then there were times like now. If Jiraiya joined the cause...Jiraiya of the Legendary Three, Jiraiya the student and friend of the God of Shinobi, Jiraiya the spymaster of the Leaf and all the power that entailed...if Jiraiya threw in his full efforts then the cliff went from unscalable to merely steep.

Jiraiya surveyed the team thoughtfully. "A little naïve," he said to Inoue-sensei. "You haven't done much political training, huh?"

She shrugged. "Hasn't been at the top of my priority list," she said dryly, "what with all the wilderness threats, Yakuza, enemy ninja, blackmailing Sannin, overly-aggressive kenjutsu jounin, and insane bioseal experts that we've been dealing with for the last year." She paused, then continued in a more serious tone. "Don't dismiss him out of hand, though. The world he's picturing...it's a place that I'd like to live. A much better world than the one we've got. And yeah, he's thirteen and naive, but I think we'd do better to work for his world than to make him settle for ours."

Jiraiya's eyebrows went up. He turned back to Hazou and considered the nervous genin thoughtfully for a moment before speaking. "The thing you need to understand, kid, is that Konoha is my first priority, and I will do anything for it. I love this city with every trace of my being. I love its aggravating, impossible, brilliant ninja. I love its buildings and its twisty little streets. I love the fact that we have built a place where people are safe, where civilians can do their jobs with a reasonable belief that they'll wake up in the morning.

"Do I care about making some random foreigner in Mist or Earth happier or safer? Not really. It would be nice, sure, but if it ever came down to that foreigner's life versus some Konoha citizen's, I'd terminate the foreigner and sleep well that night. Every major village and most of the minor ones have a ninja who is my counterpart"—the red-painted cheeks crinkled in a smile—"although, of course, not my equal. Anyway, all of those ninja feel the same way I do. They care about their villages and their people, and they don't give a rat's ass about Konoha."

Despite his best efforts, Hazou's breath stopped in his chest. The words were the doom to his hopes, yet there seemed to be a 'but' hanging at the end.

"On the other hand, if the entire world was safe and rich then Konoha would be safer and richer too, right? And so would the villages of all those not-as-good-as-the-real-thing Jiraiya counterparts out there. And here you are, another starry-eyed kid telling me that you want to make the world shiny and happy for everyone and that doing it will mean everyone is safer and richer. It's a great thought, sure. Ask yourself two questions, though: first, do you really think that you're so much smarter than everyone else that no one has ever had this thought before? And, second, assuming that someone has had the idea already, why does the world look like it does?"

This was not the response that Hazou had expected, and he found himself fumbling for an answer. "Because...some people want power, and they think the best way to get it is by pushing other people down? And most people aren't willing to stand up to them?"

"Sure," Jiraiya said. "There's an element of truth to that. The balance of power in the Elemental Nations is largely determined by where a few dozen people live. The various Kage, the jinchuuriki, the S-rank ninja...nations that have more of those people are more powerful and can get more of what they want, leaving less for everyone else. That cuts both ways, though—I'm one of the ten most powerful ninja in the world, and I'm here in Konoha. Sarutobi-sensei is here. The jinchuuriki of the Nine-Tails is here. Gai, Kakashi, Tsunade, the entire Hyuuga clan, the Uchiha, the Aburame, the Nara—they're all here." He caught himself and shrugged. "Well, okay, Tsunade isn't in Konoha proper, but she's still in Fire. Point being, Konoha is a powerhouse that no one wants to mess with. Furthermore, Fire is a resource-rich area; we've got plenty of iron, coal, wood, water, arable land, precious metals, and everything else you need to be mostly self-sufficient. Let's stipulate for the sake of argument that not everyone in Konoha is stupid or a mustache-twirling kabuki villain. Given all that, why isn't Fire already this paradise that you're wanting to build?"

The voice was calm, the tones those of a teacher leading a pupil. Hazou could feel his heart speeding up as he cast around for the answer that Jiraiya clearly wanted him to get to. When the Sannin laid it all out like that, it really didn't add up. Fire should have been able to build the world that Hazou envisioned, so why hadn't they?

"I...don't know, sir?"

"Any of the rest of you kids want to take a crack at it?" Jiraiya asked. "Why isn't the whole world—or, at least, the Land of Fire—this super-happy paradise that our young friend here wants?"

Silence.

"Hm," Jiraiya said, pursing his lips in disappointment. "Well, think about it. In the meantime, I think you were due a reward for bringing Arikada in. I figured that's why you were here in the first place, so what is it you're looking for?"

"We haven't really had a chance to discuss it yet," Inoue-sensei said. "Mind if we get back to you tomorrow?"

The Toad Sage shrugged. "Sure," he said. "I'm in no rush. Anyway, if that's it...?"

"Actually, sir, I wanted to ask you about that, uh, thing that we gave you back in the Hokage's office?" Hazou asked. "You know, the 'invention of the year' thing."

"What about it?"

"We put a lot of time and effort into that, sir," Hazou said. "You took the idea...is that going to happen every time we come up with something new? What are you going to give us to incentivize further creativity?"

Inoue-sensei's eyes went wide as saucers and Kagome started frantically scrabbling in his pockets for a pair of ringboxes that weren't there. Noburi and Keiko turned in their seats to stare at Hazou in horror.

"Excuse him," Inoue said, grabbing Hazou in a headlock, one hand over his mouth. She pushed herself to her feet, effortlessly dragging Hazou along with her. "He's been having a bad case of no-brain lately. We'll just be go—"

Everyone froze as Jiraiya started laughing. "Relax," he said, waving them back into their seats. "Kid, you seriously need to work on your manners. Say something like that to any clan head in this village and see how well it goes for you. To answer the question: Ideas are worthless. Execution is what matters. We don't pay people for ideas, but we do buy professional-quality designs with working prototypes, so if you get us something usable it could be worth a pretty penny. Now, if you'll excuse me, it's late and I still have a lot to do before I can hit the hay. The very nice ANBU lady outside will take you to your quarters and won't kill you as long as you're polite. Ocelot?"

The door slid open to reveal a tall, slender woman in ninja camo and a mask painted to suggest a stylized cat. She turned to leave the doorway clear, one arm extended in pointed invitation.

o-o-o-o​

Their quarters were surprisingly comfortable—a suite with a spacious sitting room, a modest bathing room, a galley kitchen, and two bedrooms. The beds were even comfortable, and there were plenty of blankets.

Perhaps more importantly, the bathing room contained four large tubs of steaming hot water. Inoue-sensei almost squealed in delight when she saw them. "Firsties!" she called, rushing in and pulling the curtain around the women's-side tubs. Clothes flew everywhere and moments later there was the muffled sussurance of a tired body sinking into hot water.

Hazou chuckled in amusement, but forbore to use the tubs on the men's side. By now he'd been up for a ridiculous number of hours, fought a pitched battle against a bioseal expert, seen his student nearly die, run halfway across Fire, had interviews with the Hokage and Jiraiya, and only just now come to accept that he and his friends probably weren't going to die before morning. Falling asleep in the tub and drowning would be a ridiculous end to the night; better to just go to sleep. It wouldn't be the first time he'd gone to sleep dirty, and it probably wouldn't be the last.

o-o-o-o​

The beds were soft and morning came all too quickly. Knocking on the door presaged a genin leading four pairs of civilians. The genin stood by the door looking bored while the civilians came in, each pair maneuvering a cart loaded with a tub of hot water. The servants bowed profusely, apologized repeatedly for disturbing the great ninja, and quickly swapped out the new tubs of hot, clean water with the tubs from the previous day before disappearing back from whence they'd come.

The implication was pretty clear: it was time to get moving.

Konoha was polite enough to leave them alone until they had all had a chance for military-speed baths, gotten dressed, and scarfed down a bit of the bread and cheese that had been laid out for them. In a subtle reminder of where they were, the knock on the door came at the very instant that Noburi had finished stuffing the last of the cheese into his mouth. Moments later another silent ANBU—this one a huge man with a bull-styled mask—was escorting them back to Jiraiya's office.

The Toad Sage was busy with paperwork and didn't look up as they came in. He grunted thanks to the ANBU and waved the team into chairs, then ignored them as he kept shuffling through reports. The team sat silently until the door opened again and in filed the ninja who would presumably be the team's minders.

Hazou eyed the new arrivals carefully. Standard genin squad: two boys and a girl, their jounin instructor behind them. The jounin was tall, solidly built, with a thatch of carefully-styled black hair and a neatly trimmed beard on his jawline. A thin cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth and a pair of fighting knives were strapped to the insides of his forearms. The most notable thing about him was how such a tall and powerful man could seem so...invisible. There was an inner calm to him that gave nothing for the eye to catch on.

The genin were far more noticeable. The girl was blonde-haired, blue-eyed, and starting to develop in ways that made Hazou a little uncomfortable in his skin. The boy on the left was fatter than any genin Hazou had ever seen, with two horn-like tufts of hair and an amiable smile. The boy on the right was thin but athletic and must have spent a great deal of effort practicing in order to master an expression that loudly proclaimed him both Bored and Smug.

"Team Asuma reporting, sir," the jounin said, looking at Jiraiya. "These the ones we're escorting?"

"Yes," Jiraiya said. He leaned forward, hands folded on the desk. "Allow me to introduce you. Ladies and gentlemen, these will be your escorts while you're here in Konoha. Miss Yamanaka and Misters Nara and Akimichi will be your primary contacts. Their jounin-sensei is Sarutobi Asuma, son of the Third Hokage"—he pointedly ignored Asuma's irritated sigh—"who will also be available should you have any questions.

"Asuma, the leader of our little band of misfits is Inoue Mari. She is a taijutsu champion and a brilliant spy. She is also known as Mari the Heartbreaker; she gets that name not from her heartbreaking beauty or highly-developed and quite exhausting seduction skills, but from the fact that she is one of the best genjutsu mistresses I have ever met. She has apparently literally killed people with her genjutsu."

Asuma raised one eyebrow and flicked his cigarette to the other side of his mouth. "Hm."

"Sir, I didn't think that was possible," the Yamanaka girl said, studying Inoue-sensei carefully while taking care not to make eye contact.

"It's not," Inoue-sensei said, smiling. "Not just with genjutsu itself, anyway. Still, if someone has a weak heart and you frighten them enough...."

"Troublesome," Nara muttered, only to be shushed by the Yamanaka girl.

"Beside her is Mister Kagome of the unknown given name," Jiraiya said, sounding amused. "He is an expert sealmaster—"

"No I'm not!" Kagome said. "I don't know anything about seals! What's a seal, anyway? Never heard of them!"

"—an expert sealmaster," Jiraiya continued, "with a penchant for explosions. He should definitely not be underestimated, but he should also be treated with the respect due his skill. Miss Yamanaka, as a professional courtesy from one sealmaster to another I am ordering you to stay out of Kagome's head unless he gives you strong reason for suspicion. Should you need to go in, you will do nothing that could endanger his mind."

"Yes, sir."

"You better not, you stinker!" Kagome said, his eyes wide. "You stay out of my mind! And my friends' minds! I'm not going to let you—"

Inoue-sensei put a hand on his arm and he cut off. "It's okay," she said, smiling at him. "I promise, it'll be fine. We're valuable to them, they're not going to do anything unless we give them cause."

"Why not? Stinkers could just rip our brains apart and put them back together sideways," Kagome said, honestly puzzled and clearly not thinking about the fact that the stinkers in question were right there. "Why they haven't put lupchanzen in our ears already I'm not sure, but the minute that Yamanaka has us alone, she'll—"

"She will do nothing as long as you don't blow your cover or try to harm Konoha," Jiraiya said loudly. "Moving on! Next in line we have Wakahisa Noburi."

"No barrel," Nara grunted.

Jiraiya nodded a compliment to the boy. "Indeed. Which is actually a thing I had meant to bring up. Wakahisa, you'll need a barrel in order to be fully functional. The one that was brought in was damaged—do you want it back so you can repair it, or do you need to build a new one?"

"Uh," Noburi said, flummoxed. "I could repair it."

"Fine," Jiraiya said. "Asuma, that's your first stop after you leave here. Go pick up his barrel from Secure Storage, and also get him whatever supplies he needs to repair it. You can draw against the Materials and Equipment account for that."

"Yes, sir."

"Mister Wakahisa uses a mid-range Water Whip as his primary combat tactic. As with other members of his clan he can suck the chakra right out of you as long as you're standing in the same water he's standing in, so I suggest not sharing a hot tub with him unless he likes you. Also, note that his head is full of clan secrets and scanning him would be an act of espionage unless he was clearly acting against the interests of Konoha. I leave it up to you to define what might constitute Konoha's interests in this case.

"Beside Mister Wakahisa is his teammate, Mori Keiko. At the tender age of thirteen she is already a special jounin focused in long-range weapons use. Oh, and she's the Pangolin Summoner."

Asuma's cigarette fell out of his mouth; he caught it before it had dropped more than a few inches and stuck it back between his lips.

"Very troublesome," Shikamaru muttered.

"Please note that the Pangolins and the Toads are allies," Jiraiya said seriously. "She is here under my protection; any unprovoked attack on her will cause me political difficulty, so be polite."

Yamanaka preemptively elbowed Nara before he could say anything.

"Finally, Miss Mori's bloodline may represent a cognitive hazard," Jiraiya said. "If she gives you cause for a mind scan, call for help. The entire group will be taken to a secure cell and a Yamanaka elder will perform the probe. Clear?"

"Clear, sir," Yamanaka said, her eyes wide.

"Troublesome," Nara muttered. His teammate was too busy staring at what she clearly thought might be an eldritch horror to bother hushing him.

"And, last but not least, Kurosawa Hazou," Jiraiya said. "Like his young friends he's got a head full of clan secrets, so be discreet. When it comes to a fight young master Kurosawa is an expert at taijutsu, as well as having been taught the Earth Clone and the Multiple Earth Wall by a handsome and incredibly talented ninja master. Oh, and he's also a burgeoning sealmaster in his own right."

"No he's not!" Kagome yelped. "He doesn't know a thing about sealing! I wouldn't have taught him sealing, that would be crazy! He's dumb as a box of rocks, so teaching him anything about making seals would be crazy, and he definitely hasn't made any or done any research or anything! He's so stupid that he can hardly write his own name, let alone create brand new seals, so there's absolutely no reason you should chain him to a desk in your seal factory!"

Hazou facepalmed.

"Kagome, I assure you that none of you will be chained to a desk," Jiraiya said, using the tone that one uses to tell a child that it was just a nightmare and they should go back to bed. "I promise. No lupchanzen, no seal factories, no mind alteration. You're more valuable to us as willing allies than as prisoners. So long as you and your friends are honest with us and don't work against our interests we will treat you with respect. Even if you do decide to go against us, I promise that the worst we'll do is kill you."

Oddly, Kagome seemed to find that comforting. No one else did.

Team Asuma and Team Uplift sat, looking at each other in silence. Seconds ticked past until Jiraiya waved his hands at them like a farm wife shooing chickens.

"Well?" he demanded. "What are you waiting for, an engraved invitation? Go on, git! I've got work to do!"

"Troublesome," Nara muttered, turning for the door. Hazou couldn't help but agree, although he kept the thought to himself as he followed his...guide? escort? captor?...into the hall.