​ Slowly, the smoke cleared. Kei reflexively shifted into defensive stance as she beheld the full scale of the creature. It loomed over her like a living, predatory fortress, its eyes aglow with merciless attention and claws the size of her forearms ready to decapitate her with a single swipe.

Its maw, easily large enough to consume her head, opened wide.

“Why hast thou dared summon the great Panjandrum, puny mortal?”

Kei sighed, sheathed her kunai, and fixed the pangolin with a piercing stare honed to perfection over a year of reining in Hazō and Noburi’s shenanigans.

Panjandrum lowered his claws sheepishly.

“Sorry, Summoner. I couldn’t resist. Ui didn’t appreciate it either.”

“You knew Ui?”

Panjandrum’s tail awkwardly swept some snow back and forth.

“A trivial matter, of no interest to anybody. So! Summoner! You’ve called because you finally have a challenge worthy of the great Panjandrum, no? Perhaps this time I can teach your inept minion how to make a hearty salad?”

“Another time, I think,” Kei said diplomatically. “As it happens, I was merely curious about your past in the pangolin military. Do you think you could tell me where you served?”

“Where haven’t I served?” Panjandrum boomed proudly. “Why, I was a founding member of Panchari’s Angels!”

“’Angels’?”

“Legendary unstoppable war machines of the Deva Path,” Panjandrum said offhandedly. “Almost as impressive as pangolins.”

Kei nodded sceptically. “And what activities did these ‘Panchari’s Angels’ pursue?”

“We were the elite of the elite!” Panjandrum said. “A top secret unit under my command, responsible for most of the great unacknowledged feats of Pangolin Clan derring-do! It was we who stopped the Bear incursion at Big Rock. It was we who negotiated a settlement with the Rat Clan, and who made the Jackal Clan’s spymaster weep like a little cub! Yes, those were the days!”

“If they were a top secret unit, how is it that you are telling me of them now?”

Panjandrum’s tongue flicked in and out. “Oh, they were disbanded. In the end, none of others could keep up with me, so I was made a solo operative. But at the time, their secrecy was absolute, so if you ask most people now, they will have no idea what you are talking about.”

“Hmm,” Kei said slowly. “And how did your career path take you from ‘the elite of the elite’ to being a cook?”

“A cook?” Panjandrum demanded. “Say rather a master chef. As for how, it is the usual story, no? Jealous subordinates, superiors afraid for their positions, lies, rumours and false accusations… so fall all heroes who rise too high.

“But there is no need to look into my recent past too closely,” he added quickly. “There is nothing of interest there to a summoner like yourself. Rather, why don’t you tell me of your own exploits?”

“I graduated from the Ninja Academy of the Village Hidden in the Mist a year ago,” Kei said plainly. “A few months after my graduation I was assigned to a large-scale mission, betrayed by my superiors and forced to flee across the continent after Mist unfairly branded us traitors. We have spent the past year evading hunter-nin while seeking a means of survival.”

“A year after graduation?” Panjandrum said. “That doesn’t sound like very long at all. How old are you, Summoner?”

“Fourteen years old,” Kei said. “I celebrated my birthday earlier this month.”

“Fourteen years…” Panjandrum repeated thoughtfully. “Multiply that… round down… carry the four… you mean to say you are a young child?!”

“I am a fully qualified shinobi of Hidden Mist!” Kei snapped. “Or I was. My age is irrelevant to my abilities or accomplishments.”

“But… fourteen human years?” Panjandrum said incredulously. “No wonder you are so small. I just thought you weren’t eating enough, and that’s why they assigned you a pangolin of my culinary talents!”

“My diet is entirely satisfactory,” Kei growled. “My height and weight are within acceptable bounds for my age, and my… proportions… are none of your concern!”

“Of course they’re not,” Panjandrum attempted to placate her after his highly offensive implications. “But still… you mean to say that as a fourteen-year-old child, no, even younger than that, you were cast out of your clan and forced to flee the hunters of your own military?”

“Yes,” Kei said testily. “Yes, that is an accurate summary.”

Panjandrum fell silent.

“You know,” he said eventually, “this weather is very refreshing, but it must be tiring wading through this snow on those small legs of yours, no?”

Kei’s eyes narrowed, but Panjandrum’s next words took her completely off guard.

“Keiko, would you like me to give you a ride?”

“A… ride?”

“A ride! Come, climb on my back and I’ll show you why they call me Iron-Legs Panjandrum!”

Kei looked at him, and at his large, broad shoulders. There were few riding animals in the Water Country, by virtue of its terrain, and in any case such frivolities were inappropriate for shinobi who could run much more swiftly and efficiently than any tame animal.

Besides, this was not Ami giving her a piggy-back ride. This was a virtual stranger, inviting physical contact.

Panjandrum gave her an amused look. “Come on, Keiko, you won’t hurt me. Why, I’ll hardly notice that tiny body of yours—and even if you use every last bit of your strength, which you will once you see the kind of speed I can reach, I’ll barely feel it through my invincible scales. Just pretend you’re riding a wheeled supply platform!”

The near-spherical pangolin turned around and leaned low to give her easier access.

After twelve seconds of internal conflict, Kei tentatively touched one of Panjandrum’s scales. She instantly flinched back, but Panjandrum didn’t appear to so much as notice the contact. She laid a hand on the same scale, waited a little to see if anything happened, then placed her other hand on a different one. Gradually, step by step, she climbed onto Panjandrum’s back.

The second she was on top, he accelerated like a kunai being thrown, forcing her to apply urgent chakra adhesion to stay in place. Whatever the truth of his other boasts, Panjandrum’s speed had not been exaggerated.

The wind buffeted her face and sent the loose parts of her furs billowing behind her as she clung on for dear life. This… this resembled a piggy-back ride much as a megalodon resembled a goldfish.

“Faster! Go faster!” she shouted over the howling of the arctic gale.

“I thought you’d never ask!” Panjandrum bellowed, snow flying left and right as the ceaseless motion of his claws cleared it from their path. “No mere elements can slow the great Panjandrum! Ho ho ho!”

​ o-o-o-o

​ “All right, kids,” Mari-sensei said grimly, “I’ve put this off long enough. Do you want the bad news, or the really bad news?”

“What about Keiko?” Hazō asked. “Shouldn’t she be here for a team meeting?”

“We can fill her in later,” Mari-sensei said. “I just want this over with.”

“Sure,” Noburi shrugged. “So what’s the bad news?”

“According to the merchants in Yuni, Hot Springs has been hiring Mist mercenaries on a large scale for peacekeeping and guard duties to try to restore its reputation after the Cold Stone Killers incident. In other words, Hot Springs is swarming with Mist troops who have local support and no reason to leave. Ever. We've single-handedly given the Mizukage a major new income stream, a solid military foothold on the continent, and the ability to freely deploy troops anywhere north and east of Fire.”

In his mind's eye, Hazō saw the straight lines of the Mizukage's will slicing through the entire world, a network of power for those who obeyed and an inescapable net for all traitors. "One day, we will claim the riches of the mainland that have been denied us by the treachery of our ancient foes, and teach the primitives that now inhabit them the joy of perfect, unbending order." And the Mizukage always, always kept his promises.

“Well, crap,” Noburi said. “That cancels out all the losses he got from when we ran away and ruined the invasion of Noodle for him, huh.”

“And then some,” Mari-sensei said. “You remember how rich Hot Springs was. All of that is going to be pouring into Mist’s pockets. And once they have bases on the mainland, it’s going to take another war to kick them out again. Which we’ll probably get soon enough, because the Mizukage holds onto grudges like nobody’s business, and now he’s got Leaf, Cloud and a bunch of neutral states within arm’s reach.

“Plus, now he has double the incentive to hunt us down because restoring Hot Springs’s reputation translates directly into more money for Mist’s coffers, and deploying hunter-nin to the continent just got a hell of a lot easier. Frankly, at this point we’d better hope the next war rolls round soon so he can have something else to focus on.”

Hazō gulped. “So what’s the really bad news?”

Mari-sensei glowered.

“We’re still in fucking Snow.”​

o-o-o-o

​ “Hey, Noburi,” Hazō said, climbing down into the latest addition to the camp’s cave system. “How are you finding your new place?”

Noburi grinned. “It’s fantastic. You know, I used to think that you and Kagome were weird for getting excited over your ‘sealcrafting research facility’ like it was your newborn baby. And don’t get me wrong, I still do think you’re a pair of weirdos, but I love having my own science lab.”

Hazō grinned back. “I know, right? Have you started putting up signs yet?”

“Sure have!” Noburi pointed to a piece of paper stuck on the wall which read Advanced Scientific Laboratory: Trained Medical Professionals Only, and another below it which said No Girls Allowed.

“I’m thinking of getting a couple of those alarm seals to put in here too—not so I can have them switched on, but just because a proper lab needs security systems to protect its top-secret research, y’know?”

Hazō understood completely. “You should get some specialised equipment, too. Like a protective mask, and storage scrolls with hazard symbols on them. I can show you the system Kagome-sensei and I have worked out—we have signs for everything. I don’t even know what a memetic hazard is, and Kagome-sensei refuses to explain, but we have a symbol for it anyway.

“Oh, and get some weapons stacked up in the corner, in case your mad science experiments go terribly, terribly wrong and you have to single-handedly save the world from the horrors you’ve unleashed.”

“Gotcha. Hey, this is good stuff.”

“Of course it is,” said Hazō to his bright-eyed junior in forbidden research. “I've been learning from the best, and now you are too.

"So how are your experiments coming along? Created any new chakra beasts yet?”

Noburi’s smile disappeared. “Nothing going.” He gestured to a stone slab splattered liberally with blood and viscera. “I’ve been trying to analyse the chakra coils in those rabbits we caught—gotta say, things went a lot easier once Keiko suggested getting me and a bunch of misterators involved—but not being able to see chakra sucks. I wish I could just borrow Hyūga’s eyeballs for this. Hey, maybe I should try and be the guy who finally cracks Bloodline Limit transplantation.”

“That sounds… dangerous.”

“Yeah. I dread to think of all the things that could go wrong if I tried to stick bits of Hyūga deep inside my body.”

Hazō just looked at him.

“I, uh, you know what I meant. It could be dangerous to have Hyūga's fluids intermixing with mine and I'll shut up now and we shall never speak of this again.”

Hazō smirked. It was satisfying to watch Noburi be the one tripped up by his own tongue for once. However, after a few seconds of watching Noburi try to get the images out of his head by means of concussion, Hazō took mercy on him.

“How about those chakra water experiments?” he asked, gesturing to the cages in the corner, where a pack of Snow rabbits bared their fangs in terror at his gaze.

“I’ve been upping the dosage, but they’re not responding at all,” Noburi happily changed the subject. “I can’t tell yet whether this is a dead end, or whether I have to wear down some kind of chakra resistance. Besides, there’s not much detail I can get out of their primitive organs. I wish I had some more humanlike animals to work on.”

Hazō raised his eyebrows.

“I’ve been thinking about this hypothetical scenario Yakushi-sensei brought up once,” Noburi explained. “He gave me an imaginary ninja with a Bloodline Limit that protected him against disease, so you could save hundreds of lives if you studied him and figured out how it worked. Suppose he was an enemy ninja. Would it be worth sending ten, twenty ninja to capture him if you knew most of them might die in the process?”

Hazō didn’t take long to consider. “Of course. You’d be giving up a few lives to help everyone.”

“Right. That’s what I said too. A no-brainer. We sacrifice dozens of lives for the sake of our villages all the time. But then he asked: what if this Bloodline Limit ninja was one of our own as well? Would it be OK to kill him to find out how his Bloodline Limit worked? And what if you had to kill those other two dozen ninja as part of your research? Would it still be the same?”

Hazō took a little longer to think about this one. “I think… if you’re prepared to end entire villages to save the world, then it would be hypocritical to balk at killing a few people to save hundreds.”

Noburi blinked. “End the entire what now?”

“Oh, sorry,” Hazō said. “I’ve just been thinking through seal ideas. Uh, don’t tell Kagome-sensei. He’d overreact, and it’s not like I’ve tried to prototype anything yet.”

Noburi eyed him uneasily. “Riiiight. Anyway, he explained to me how the Hokage refused outright to follow that line of thinking, and how when his most brilliant researcher, Orochimaru of the Three, stood up for human experimentation, the Hokage immediately tried to have him killed.”

“Huh,” Hazō said. “So Orochimaru became a missing-nin because Leaf turned on him first?”

“Apparently,” Noburi said. “Yakushi-sensei told me that, in Leaf, only the properly chosen leader had the right to order their ninja to die, and how it was wrong for Orochimaru to usurp that authority just because he thought advancing human knowledge was more important than protecting the village. He was very clear about how that kind of respect for human life made Leaf the best of all the hidden villages, and how that mattered more than, say, Cloud’s huge advancements in understanding how the brain gives orders to the body. But I have to admit... for once I'm not sure Yakushi-sensei was right.”

“You realise that in a world where experimenting on Bloodline Limit ninja was OK, you and I would be first on the dissection table?”

“Yeah,” Noburi gave a wry smile. “I’m still trying to figure that one out. I mean, we kill people all the time. That’s what being a ninja is. Experimenting on them is different. And it’s not like you can know in advance that an experiment is going to be worth doing. Imagine effectively torturing somebody, only to find at the end that it was all for nothing.”

“I can see that.” Then again, when you assassinated people, you didn’t know in advance whether it would have the effect you wanted either, and Hazō was under no illusions that it would take a lot of bloodshed to reach his vision of a better world. For every diplomatic idea he could come up with, a dozen weapon designs competed for space in his head.

“I wonder what Mari-sensei would think,” Noburi mused.

“You mean Mari-sensei who talks about how horribly cruel she’s always been to her targets, and can’t seem to decide whether she’s proud or ashamed of it?”

Noburi’s eyes widened. “I always forget that one time in a million you actually manage to notice something about other people.

“Anyway, point. This is probably one of those things I have to work out for myself. But do me a favour and don’t blow up the world until I’ve had time to come up with an answer, OK?”

Hazō smiled. “No promises. Sealing failures are still a thing, you know.

“But let’s forget about ethics for a bit. I’ve had a bunch of great ideas about weaponising sound that I wanted to run past you…”

​ o-o-o-o

​ It had been worth every second, Kei decided. Even after Kagome had caught them and spent two hours lecturing them on operational security while forcing them to layer fresh snow to cover the signs of their passage. At least he had not disassembled the snowmen, though he’d insisted that they be moved into the cover of the cave. And after all the exertion, nothing could have been more satisfying than Panjandrum’s modification of a traditional pangolin dessert to produce “shaved ice”.

Overall, the “ride” had been an excellent training exercise, and one she hoped she would have the opportunity to repeat in some more OPSEC-friendly form. Yes, a training exercise. It would be unreasonable to suggest otherwise. And if Noburi claimed she was bouncing, well, that was only his immature interpretation of her body’s natural response to a surfeit of stimulation. And if Hazō agreed with him, that only confirmed her opinions on the perceptual deficiencies of teenage boys.

Regardless, the physical training had left her in good spirits, and also successfully dispelled much of the lethargy she had been feeling since arriving in Snow. The Mori Voice could be heard much more clearly here, and it had been growing more difficult to resist its seductive suggestions regarding comforting blankets of snow, and how easy and pleasant it would be to fall asleep and never wake…

But not today. Today she was feeling energised, and it was time to report to Mari-sensei for her negotiations training. She did not regret her pact with Panjandrum, but next time she faced the pangolins, she would have the expertise to compel a much more even trade.

Mari-sensei, unfortunately, was in a less positive mood.

“Snow!” she exclaimed, stomping back and forth across the cave. “A real leader would have vetoed the idea on the spot! Snow!”

“Mari-sensei?”

Mari-sensei spun around to face her.

“What is it, Keiko?” she demanded.

“We were scheduled for training?” Keiko asked cautiously.

“Yes,” Mari-sensei said. “Training. Why don’t you go talk to Noburi? He’s the only one of us who hasn’t had a catastrophic screwup—let him train you!”

Kei shivered. She didn’t think she’d ever seen Mari-sensei like this.

“Mari-sensei, is something wrong?”

Mari-sensei spun to face her. “Is something wrong? We’re in a frozen deathtrap that makes Iron look comfy and hospitable, and you’re asking if something’s wrong? I can’t step outside without getting snow in my hair, and my mouth, and my eyes, and all sorts of places where snow really, really doesn’t belong. And even if I suck it up and try to get some fresh air anyway, I can’t take a step without leaving tracks for every ninja in the fucking country to follow! And I let all this happen, when I could’ve put my foot down and made sure we were relaxing on some sunny tropical beach right now!”

She reached for her kunai pouch, and in one sharp movement threw a kunai at the opposite wall of the cave. It took a chip out of the stone before rebounding to the floor.

“Mari-sensei?” Kei said, now a little frightened.

“I’m sorry, Keiko,” Mari-sensei said through gritted teeth. “I’m sorry for getting us all into this.”

“You were the one who objected,” Kei observed. “It was Hazō’s plan, which the rest of us supported.”

“That doesn’t matter! It’s my responsibility to make sure this team does the right thing. I’m the one who has to filter out the dumb suggestions from the good ones, and stop something like this from happening. He thinks all the good decisions cancel out all the bad ones, but look at us. We’re going to die here, in this lifeless hellhole, because a leader only has to make one bad decision to get everybody killed. That’s why leaders are appointed—out of the best of the best—instead of randomly being chucked in because they’re in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Mari-sensei…” Kei repeated for lack of anything better to say.

“Go on, go talk to Noburi. Maybe he should be team leader. Sage knows he’s got a better record of good decisions than I do.”

It might not have occurred to Kei at any other time. It still felt like blasphemy, like a violation of the fundamental laws that governed this world. But in her present frame of mind, she was able to recognise the thought, to accommodate it and even to accept it as true.

She was seeing Mari-sensei as a child… throwing a tantrum.

It felt like reality itself had twisted around her, like a Mori training cube reconfiguring itself into a new form beneath her fingers, a final, solid click confirming that she’d found the solution. Everything about Mari-sensei recontextualised itself in her mind as, for what may have been the first time in her entire life, Kei understood another human being.

“Mari-sensei,” she said with such gentleness as she knew how to put into her voice, “do you remember how we first met?”

Mari-sensei stopped pacing around. “Of course I do. I saw you sitting on the overhang by the edge of the water. Your feet were dangling over it like you didn’t care if something came up from the depths and bit them off. I leaned over to tell you to be careful, but when I saw your eyes… it was like there was nothing behind them.

“Why are you…” Mari-sensei winced. “I’m not suicidal, Keiko. I’m sorry if I scared you. I’m just… very, very stressed.”

Kei shook her head.

“Mari-sensei, when I learned that I had been sent on a suicide mission, part of me was… relieved. I had spent my life as a drain on the Mori Clan’s finite resources—on the village’s finite resources—without any value to contribute in return. This assignment was a final statement of the clan’s readiness to discard me, and a release from the impossible struggle to satisfy those around me.

“Instead Shikigami-sensei brought me to the Swamp of Death with the others. That group had vastly inferior resources, whereas my value had not changed at all. Arguably, it had even decreased, since I could no longer serve as a member of Sumie-sensei’s logistics unit. However, lacking initiative, my only option was to wait patiently until Shikigami-sensei also found the time to discard me, or alternatively until I was killed by a predator.

“Then you saved me. For reasons I could not begin to imagine, you devoted great time, effort and ingenuity to intervening in the spiral of despair in which I had found myself. You persuaded me that there may still have been something in the world that only I could do, and that it would be remiss of me to die without first making a good faith effort to discover it. You showed me hope.”

Kei took a deep, slow breath.

“You were perfection itself. The pinnacle of power, insight, and compassion. My guiding star. I fell instantly, deeply, hopelessly in love with you.

“And for that, I apologise.”

Mari-sensei looked at her in confusion.

“You… do?”

“Yes,” Kei assayed a smile. “Because you never were any of those things, were you?”

“…” Mari-sensei said dazedly.

“I am aware that you have adult issues and circumstances which I in all probability will not live long enough to experience for myself. I do not mean to diminish their significance. However…

“There is a part of you which is like me,” Kei went on, half-disbelieving the words even as she said them. “Had I been able to see you clearly, I might have understood this from the beginning, when you quite literally told us that you were in despair and could see no way out except to abandon everything and escape. You accepted the mantle of leader, yet you left it to others—primarily Hazō—to make proposals and develop plans. Exposed to the same conditions as the rest of us, you must have suffered from your own emotional difficulties, yet you have never confided in anyone as far as I know. And as I observed during the Jiraiya incident, and again now, you are quicker than anyone to punish yourself for your perceived mistakes.

“Mari-sensei, did you save me because you saw yourself in me?”

The question struck Mari-sensei like a sledgehammer. She slumped to the floor, opposite the mark she had made on the wall.

“You were supposed to be my absolution,” Mari-sensei said so softly it was almost a whisper. “I looked at you and I saw my own twelve-year-old self, and I thought if I could save you the way she hadn’t been able to save herself… then maybe I could stop being the person she’d become.

“Spoiler alert: it didn’t work. I thought this journey with you kids was my chance to reinvent myself, to stop being the Heartbreaker and become… I don’t know what I wanted to become. A responsible adult? Somebody who could look after others? A big sister, or maybe a mother?”

She turned her hands inwards to point at herself.

“But no. I’m still me. You’ve grown so much, and I haven’t. And now,” she said bitterly, “you’re so grown up that you can see me for what I really am.”

Kei sat down next to Mari-sensei, as close as she dared.

“Mari-sensei, I am not condemning you for being like me. I am me, and I have nothing but sympathy for anyone forced to endure the same experience. So if I may… I would like to suggest a coping strategy that has shown itself to be highly efficacious for people who are me.”

Mari-sensei raised her head. “What’s that?”​

“Friends,” Kei said simply.

“You should never have had to be our leader, Mari-sensei. It was a mistaken act of kindness on your part, and an unreasonable imposition on ours. Our group does not need a leader. Each of us has an equal part in decisions because each of us equally suffers the consequences. If you can contribute the skills and experience of a jōnin, that is no different to Kagome contributing his extraordinary dedication to security, or Hazō contributing his ability to form a plan of action in the blink of an eye. You are one of us, and you should be able to derive the full benefits of a non-hierarchical relationship with the people who love you, as I have.

“If, now or ever, you need space to be a flailing, helpless girl whose ineptitude and poor decision-making skills cause endless trouble for all around her, I assure you there is a niche set aside in this group for that exact purpose, and that I am willing to share it for as long as you require.”

“Keiko…”

“In other words,” Kei said with a trace of mischief, “I am grateful for your feelings, Mari-sensei… but I think we should just be friends.”