“I’m Minami Nikkō,” the bouncy, chūnin-jacketed girl announced. “From now on, I'm your escort for any special visits you’ve got to make. Don’t worry, if anything happens, I swear I’ll defend you with my life!”

Hazō exchanged glances with Keiko. “Is that likely to be necessary?”

“Let’s hope not,” Minami said. “But Jiraiya says you’re foreigners, and that there’s a bunch of people who wouldn’t mind if you met with unfortunate accidents, so better safe than sorry. Speaking of which, can you believe I’m getting orders from Jiraiya of the Three himself? I am so moving up in the world!”

“Jiraiya is concerned for our safety,” Keiko observed, “yet he did not see fit to assign us an ANBU protector. Unless it is possible for ANBU to act unmasked?”

“No, I’m not ANBU. At least not yet! Now that I’ve got Jiraiya’s attention, anything’s possible!

“But no, basically the big guy’s figured having ANBU following you around is like a huge flashing sign saying, ‘Hey, Hyūga bad guys, pay attention because these kids are important!’

“Instead, you get me. I’ve been stuck with the ass-end of chūnin missions for a while, and anyone who knows me isn’t going to get suspicious at me escorting a bunch of foreign dignitaries around. I’m pretty sure the Hyūga know who I am, so they won’t give me a second glance. Not exactly flattering, I know, but hey, I’m rolling with it.”

It was far too early in the morning for anyone to have this much energy. “Um, Jiraiya said you’d be able to tell us about the Nara?”

“Sure thing! I’ve got Nara friends, and I even spent a few years dating one. Let me tell you, when they say opposites attract? Well, so do fire and kindling.

“But enough about me. You want to know about the Nara. OK, first things first, they’re smart. I know, this is the cutting edge insight they pay me for, right? Well, you’ve got to understand what that means. It means they skip steps. You say A and B, they’re already at F, and with a few more clues they’ll be at Z when you’ve only got as far as thinking about K. The older ones tend to be patient, but the younger ones can get pretty condescending when you can’t keep up. Sometimes it’s better to pretend you’re following along, and figure out what you’ve missed afterwards.

“Oh, don’t try to out-argue them unless you really know your stuff. They’ll rip you to shreds easy as breathing. That can get hard if you just want to talk about your feelings, and they’re busy spotting flaws in everything you say like it’s a debating contest. But! They appreciate it when you’re direct. That can be nice. No mind games. Or at least if there are mind games, I’m not bright enough to spot them. Maybe it’ll be different for you.

“What else? They’re pretty chill. Try not to be too excitable at them—it puts them on edge. Yeah, I’m thinking you’re starting to see why Shika and I burned out. That’s not to say they don’t have their own kind of excitable, but it’s all up here,” Minami gestured to her forehead, “and it means skipping even more steps than normal, so good luck keeping up.

“They love facts. Don’t be vague with them. They’ve got this instinct to nail stuff down, like every butterfly’s got to be pinned to a board. No, that’s harsh. Shika loved poetry, and that’s plenty vague. Kept copying it out of the clan library for me. Too bad I didn’t get any of it, I guess.

“Oh, oh! You should know about the sign language. That tells you a lot about them. See, the Nara have their own clan sign language. Whenever two or more Nara are talking, their hands are always moving, both the speaker and the listener, like they’ve got two conversations going on at once. So here are a few examples Shika taught me.”

Minami raised her hands to chest level and extended the index finger of her left hand upwards. “If you do that while a Nara’s talking, it means, ‘Stop, you’ve just said something factually inaccurate’.”

She raised her middle finger as well. “This one’s ‘Stop, I have a useful fact to add.’”

“But the left hand is for reason. If you speak with the right hand, that’s emotion.”

She raised the index finger of her right hand. “That’s ‘Stop, what you said is distressing me and we need to deal with that before I can follow the rest of what you’re saying.’”

She raised her middle finger. “’Stop, you’re being rude and don’t want to be digging yourself in any deeper.’

“Oh, the higher you raise your hands, the more important you’re making your sign. Chest is lowest, eye level is highest. But there are exceptions.”

Minami pointed to her temple, rolling her left index finger backwards a few times. “’I’m confused. Start again.’” She reversed the direction. “’I see where this is going. Skip to the end.’

“Then there are these,” she made a few quick hand gestures. “I can’t remember what they all mean, but they’re things like, ‘You’re only saying that’s true because you want to believe it’, and ‘Just because someone important says it doesn’t mean it’s right’, and ‘You’re doubling down on a bad idea because you’ve already sunk so much effort into it’. There’s also, ‘A hidden enemy is watching, so keep talking as normal’, which I think is brilliant.

“Obviously, speakers have ones too. There’s a whole bunch for things like, ‘I’m seventy-five percent confident in what I’m saying right now’, and ‘I know this sounds dodgy, but it’ll make sense once I’m done’, and ‘This is new information, so update your’... Actually, I can’t remember what you’re supposed to update, but I think it’s important.

“Did you follow all that?”

“No.”

“Yes.”

Minami gave Hazō a sympathetic wink. “Don’t worry, it’s not like they’ll expect you to speak their private language. There are only two signs it would be really useful for you to know.”

She put her hands together in a circle, fingertips touching, in front of her navel. “This one is ‘I’m processing stuff, so don’t disturb me.’ They get real pissy if you interrupt them while they’re doing that.”

Then she put her palms together, hands pointing upwards, in front of her heart. “’Please listen to me.’ It’s the most important sign in the language, or at least I think so.

“It’s what you use when someone’s doing that processing thing and you think you’ve got something important enough to bother them with. But it’s also what you do when you really, really need to be heard. That might be because a Nara’s so into what they’re saying that they’ve stopped paying attention to you. Or because they’re getting so emotional that you can’t get a word in edgeways. Or when you need them to listen, just listen, to what you’re saying, because you have thoughts and feelings too.

“Sorry,” Minami said awkwardly. “Too personal.”

After a few seconds, she perked up. “Anyway, I’ve given you the dirt on the Nara, so it’s your turn. They won’t send me outside the Fire Country, so I’ve been dying to find out what’s going on out there. Like, is it true that Mist kills all the kids that fail to graduate their ninja academy? Or that you’ll look ten years younger if you bathe in the Hot Springs hot springs every day for a month? Or that there are killer fish the size of houses in the Hanguri Gulf? Or that Cloud has trained sky squid riders?”

Minami looked at Keiko, who already seemed weary even though they hadn’t been walking that long.

“No. Maybe. Yes. Unlikely.”

The curt response did nothing to cool Minami’s curiosity. “Wow, you know a lot. In that case, boy do I have more questions for you.”

Keiko shot Hazō a pleading look, but he wasn’t going to leap in front of this particular kunai. No, he… he definitely owed her revenge for something, right? Yes, he was sure there had to be a reason why it was not only acceptable but morally right for him to abandon—er, allow karmic judgement to be meted out. He’d just be sidling out of Minami’s line of sight now.

-o-

​

“Welcome to the home of the Nara Clan.”

The two women bowing to the group in eerie symmetry were likely branch family members—to the Mori, the quality of their kimonos would have been too fine for common retainers, but too plain for the main family.

“I am Nara Mikako,” the one on the left said. “Ah, please do not introduce yourselves out here. I know who you are.”

“Nara Shion,” said the one on the right. She met Minami’s gaze and her expression turned flat. “Minami,” she said coldly.

“Nara,” Minami attempted to smile, but after a second the expression fell from her face like a hairpin dislodged by a gust of wind.

“I’ll have someone find you a place to wait,” Shion said to Minami in a tone that suggested she felt no urgency about the task.

“The master has requested to see you first,” Mikako bowed again to Hazō. “If you would please follow me?”

“As for yourself,” Shion looked to Kei, “the master has suggested that you might enjoy a tour of the clan library while you wait?”

Kei nodded so fast it hurt her neck.

But her impatience as she followed Shion could not quite distract her from the other thoughts assailing her mind. Would this compound be her future home? It was not quite at Mori Genzō’s level of design—nothing could be—but Kei knew the silver ratio when she saw it, and the mathematical precision that had gone into every angle of every building was unmistakable. Kei longed for an aerial view, and indeed, circumstances being what they were, it might not be long before she received one.

The only exceptions to the flawless order were the plants. Set aside at various points were small gardens, and these had a palpable wildness about them—the trees and shrubs left to grow how they would, save for space cleared for the occasional bench or footpath. It confused her.

She supposed she would have plenty of time to decode the principles behind this pattern when she was living here. It was only logical—the Nara would make invaluable allies for Jiraiya’s fledgling clan, and sealing that alliance would be a far greater contribution Kei could make than merely serving them as a logistician or a front-line fighter, the two possibilities Leaf held in store for her. She only wished she knew what it would mean for her friends. Would she be permitted to see them freely as a Nara? Would there be restrictions placed on their interactions once she was privy to Nara secrets (assuming she were ever trusted with those)? It would… hurt her, to lose her first and only friends in exchange for the unknown.

But perhaps marriage would be less onerous than adoption. Kei had always assumed that she would live and die alone. Unlike Ami, she had held far too little value for the clan to be the object of a political marriage. Nor could she envision a future in which she garnered attention from the opposite sex—or any sex, in fact. If she could not have the latter, it now transpired that she might at least have the former. Marrying into the clan would presumably give her some rights relating to her clan of origin (her clans of origin?), and from what she knew of the Nara, her husband would be intelligent if nothing else. Perhaps in time they could develop some form of friendship based around shared interests. It seemed improbable at first glance, but no more improbable than what she had found with the other missing-nin.

As for her marital duties… Kei’s mind flinched away from that thought. She had yet to find a man she considered sexually attractive, though in fairness the same could also be said of all but two women—one woman. Just the one.

And for all she knew, the Nara might be understanding of the circumstances of political wives, and give her flexibility to take care of her own needs as long as she was discreet. Mari-sensei’s books (which she would deny touching even under torture) implied that at least some clans did as much. Once again, of course, this was assuming she not only found someone she was attracted to, but that this person returned her feelings. No, it would be best to make her peace with a lifetime of extramarital celibacy now.

Marriage was filled with unknowns. She did not know what rights her husband would have over her, nor the rest of the clan. But what if it took adoption to be fully accepted into the clan and given access to its secrets? It would be a terrible bargain to surrender her place to belong, only to find none on the other end because her commitment had been too half-hearted.

Suddenly, Kei felt less like a guest and more like a prisoner being marched to her execution as the library complex loomed in the distance.

-o-

​ Nara Shikaku’s office was not all that different to the Hokage’s. Smaller, perhaps, and surprisingly enough, with fewer bookshelves. On the other hand, Shikaku’s desk could have been a chakra apex predator based on its sheer size, with scrolls unfurled and overlapping in dizzying patterns across its massive breadth.

Hazō cast his glance further around the room. He tried to read the spines of the books on the shelves, only to realise with a shock that they were completely blank. The other points of interest were the two decorations visible from this angle. A calligraphy scroll on Shikaku’s left read “Courage to Face Oneself”, while a painting on his right portrayed a middle-aged man in worn clothes leaning on a gnarled staff as he descended a mountain. Behind him on the left, a beautiful wooden shack receded into the distance, simple lines sketching out ivy and flowers wrapped around it. On the right, beyond the mountain, a cacophony of dots of bright colour evoked the lights of a city.

Shikaku himself was a tall, lean man with a short black beard, a ponytail and a couple of shallow scars across his face. His voice when he greeted Hazō was warm.

“Welcome, Kurosawa Hazō. I am Shikaku, for terrible sins committed in a past life sentenced to be head of the Nara Clan in this one.”

“It is a pleasure to meet you, sir,” Hazō bowed, mindful of politeness as his top priority. Well, that and not making himself sound like a crazy conspiracy theorist. Or a creator of weapons of mass destruction to be killed before he could end the world. The usual diplomatic concerns.

“While Jiraiya is in charge of this exceptional project, it is you who are the initiator and linchpin of it all. You have created a new paradigm of warfare. Tell me, how have you solved the chakra diffusion problem?”

Chakra diffusion? The amount of diffusion when using chakra adhesion was trivial. Unless Hazō and Kagome-sensei had both overlooked something crucial, it couldn’t be called a problem in the least. Hazō hated to start out the conversation by expressing ignorance, but he saw no other choice.

“What do you mean?”

“For the point defences,” Shikaku explained as if it was obvious.

Hazō wouldn’t make himself look slow twice. He forced himself to think. What would you need point defences for with skywalkers? Against skywalkers? The Hyūga could detect them as easily as the normal kind, after which Leaf could just use its own skywalkers to engage. Assuming it was facing an enemy who had skywalkers to begin with. What could you do with skywalkers that another skywalking ninja couldn’t counter?

Oh.

“You mean to defend against aerial bombardment.”

Shikaku nodded, and made some notes on a piece of paper in front of him. Oh, no. What could he be writing in response to that? Was he grading Hazō on how quickly he’d figured out what Shikaku was talking about?

“We discarded the idea of static defences quite quickly,” Shikaku said. “Skywalkers make it easy to generate levels of force beyond the power of any current technology to absorb. At least unless you have already revolutionised that field as well,” he added wryly. “If you have, do let us know now so that my engineers can get some rest.”

Then active defences were the way to go. That made sense. If you couldn’t shield against the bombs, you needed some way of catching them in mid-air, or better yet, preventing them from being dropped. How would you do it through chakra, and where did diffusion come in?

Range. The reason you couldn’t have super-long-range ninjutsu, or at least one of the reasons, was that chakra diffused as it travelled, like how light from a lantern could start out as a narrow beam but ended up illuminating a broad spot on the wall. You needed some special means of keeping it focused or bound together, and how could you do that across the incredible vertical distances skywalkers could achieve?

“What about the skytowers? If you had a network of those in the air—”

“The manpower requirement would be prohibitive,” Shikaku cut him off. “But my concern is suicide bombers. That is why I’m asking about chakra diffusion. I take it your solution involves sealcrafting?”

“I… I don’t have one yet, sir.” Hazō’s focus had been offensive, had always been offensive. Weapons were what interested him. How far could you push the laws of sealcrafting? What power could you unleash from familiar tools if you were creative about it? The idea of ways to leash that power again was secondary at best. In many cases, Hazō doubted it could even be done.

“Noted.” Shikaku’s tone was much colder. He made more notes on the paper.

“Kurosawa, my great-uncle created the Perpetual Light Technique, used to blind opponents and keep them blinded, but as a corollary capable of keeping shadows banished from a certain area for as long as one kept feeding it chakra. Do you know what he did before teaching this technique to a single living soul?”

“No, sir.”

“He spent a year devising a counter-technique that only the Nara could use, and then another testing it until he was sure he had accounted for every scenario in which a Nara could face Perpetual Light.”

Hazō suddenly felt very, very small.

“I do not know if you are the first to invent a means of mass flight, Kurosawa. I only know that you are the first to make it available to an army. It dismays me that you have done so with no thought for the consequences.”

Except Hazō had thought about the consequences. He’d weaponised the skywalkers himself when concealing the Iron camp from Captain Zabuza.

No, those weren't the consequences Shikaku meant, were they? When Nara Shikaku said "consequences", he was talking about the consequences of such a weapon being available. He was probably already thinking about not only the military, but the social and economic consequences Hazō couldn't begin to model, while Hazō was still delighting in his new-found ability to make things go boom.

“Yes, sir,” Hazō said quietly.

“We will return to this another time. Now, explain to me your plan for unifying the shinobi and civilian worlds.”

What.

Oh, right, Shikamaru. Of course he would have told his father about this strange, radical new idea he’d been introduced to. Hazō wished he’d prepared a speech. Then again, he was supposed to play it cool with the Nara, and Jiraiya had alerted him to the possibility that this topic would come up in some form. Hence Hazō was at least aware of the appropriate phrasing.

“I believe that we should adapt ninja tools for civilian use, such as motion sensors to seal and unseal storage scrolls. We should also use seals as force multipliers to allow ninja to effectively aid civilians, such as by setting up skytowers for observation and protection. Granting civilians the full benefits of civilisation, and protecting them from the many adverse forces that reduce their numbers, will ultimately benefit ninja, as it has done in Leaf but on a far greater scale. A bigger population means more new ninja and greater resource generation. A more educated population means faster technological advancement. The resulting feedback loop would uplift human society and unlock new possibilities for its development.”

Shikaku looked thoughtful. “I see now why you have been working to provoke the war to end all wars.”

Hazō had not realised he’d been doing any such thing. More pressingly, what were the implications of Shikaku believing it?

“Although I’m surprised that your Mori ally went along with it.” Shikaku gave half a second’s pause. “No, never mind, it’s obvious.”

Shikaku leaned forward. “Tell me, how much of it was truly a coincidence?”

“Could you be more specific?” Hazō reluctantly asked.

“You removed Mist from Noodle and Iron, delaying the war. Then you gave them Hot Springs, instantly polarising the continent and confining the Mist-centred faction to fighting on a single front. You positioned yourself to gain Jiraiya’s attention, then earned his trust despite eliminating one of his agents. You scouted Leaf and engaged with its key clans, then forced Jiraiya to ignore his own plans for you and allow you to leave. Now, having set the timing for the war, you return at the last moment with the skywalkers, ensuring Leaf’s victory and an elite position for yourselves within the victorious regime. And your very next step? To negotiate with the logistics experts whose support would take you further towards your ultimate objective than any other clan’s.

“There are two competing master narratives here. One is of a directionless handful of missing-nin blundering from disaster to disaster, barely kept alive by a combination of compatible talents, occasional strokes of genius, and sheer luck. The other is of a team that has manipulated the entire world in a masterful display of strategy, the like of which has not been seen since the days of the Second Hokage, in the name of an impossible goal that suddenly seems all but in the palm of their hand.

“Which is the truth, Kurosawa?”

If Hazō had learned one thing in his time as Inoue Mari’s victim-friend-apprentice, it was the power of making people guess to what extent you were being serious.

He gave his best enigmatic smile. “Wouldn’t you have more fun working that out for yourself… sir?”

Shikaku returned it. “Noted.”

His hand went back to the piece of paper. What had he noted? What kind of valuable information was Shikaku writing down that Hazō had accidentally let slip? Had Hazō just gained points or lost them? Should he have denied some or all of Shikaku’s statements?

​

Hazō had to distract Shikaku, quickly.

“Sir, about Keiko…”

“That is between her and the Nara Clan,” Shikaku said dismissively. “She can tell you as much of it as she wishes afterwards. And I wouldn’t concern yourself with the other matter. You will find it a dead end to you.”

What other matter? No, Hazō couldn’t keep asking for explanations. He couldn’t bear the thought of watching Shikaku make another note regarding Hazō’s limited intelligence.

“Why all this, Kurosawa? What motivates you to uplift human society?” Shikaku asked with a deceptive casualness.

Hazō thought carefully about his answer. What would Nara Shikaku want to hear? What would he understand? What would make him care? Jiraiya had offered him guesses as to Shikaku’s ultimate motivations, but only guesses.

“Because I believe human civilisation is dying,” Hazō finally said. “Endless warfare among the ninja, combined with the constant attrition of the civilian population,” and scorch squads, “is an existential risk. My solution is to eliminate both of those problems by leveraging technology, the only area in which an individual without Kage-level power can make a world-scale difference.”

Shikaku gave an ironic smile. “I think you will find, Kurosawa, that shepherding humanity away from self-destruction requires much more subtlety than you have displayed so far. Still, we all dream of simple solutions to complex problems when we are young.”

Tilting his head slightly, Shikaku studied Hazō’s face carefully, then made more notes on the piece of paper in front of him. Hazō could only guess at what kind of mark his answer had earned him.

Abruptly, Shikaku held the piece of paper up so Hazō could see it.

There was no writing. Just a detailed sketch of Hazō’s face.

“The leader of the Nara would hardly need to take written notes,” Shikaku said as if that explained anything.

Shikaku stood up, indicating that the meeting was at an end.

“Nothing is as it seems, Kurosawa. You will find your life in Hidden Leaf much easier, and perhaps longer, if you always keep this truth at the forefront of your mind.”

-o-​

“Nara Shikaku,” the man introduced himself. “Pleased to meet you, Mori Keiko.

“How did you find the library?”

“A manipulation as effective as it was unsubtle,” Kei told him. The Nara were supposed to appreciate directness, and given her track record with one-on-one interviews with authority figures, she would become Mizukage before she could expect to outmanoeuvre a clan head on his home ground.

The library had indeed made her head spin. They had books on real mathematics, not the children’s toys available on shop shelves. And volumes IV and V of Unagawa’s Metaphysics! She had loved the first three, and been in despair when she was told the rest had disappeared with the destruction of the Unagawa Clan. (Well, now she knew where they had disappeared to.)

Shikaku laughed.

“You have questions. Please, proceed.”

Directness, Kei reminded herself.

“Please give me the facts,” she said in her most polite voice.

“How much do you know about clan adoption and intermarriage practices in general?”

“Very little,” Kei confessed. Political marriage had never been relevant to her, and clan adoption doubly so.

“First, commonalities,” Shikaku said. “In each case, you will be deemed a full member of the Nara Clan, with all the rights and responsibilities pertaining thereto. You will be expected to volunteer all information you possess on the Mori Clan, although under different rationales. You will be revealing less to us than you may think.”

“Coins and shadows?” Kei asked.

“Indeed," Shikaku showed no surprise. "There will be no restrictions on your interactions outside the clan, so long as you protect its secrets and do not harm its interests or reputation. You will be required to marry a Nara husband and produce children in due course.”

Kei could feel her heart racing, and her field of view began to constrict. She had painstakingly avoided thinking about that aspect of her marital duties. Her, a mother? No child could possibly deserve such suffering, nor would she enjoy having it visited upon her. It would drastically curtail her freedom for years, and for what? So that she could generously pass on to her children all of the mistakes made by her parents with her, and then add a bountiful helping of her own failures?

Her panic must have shown in her face.

“The Nara make use of collective child-rearing,” Shikaku said. “It distributes the burdens, exposes children to a wide range of perspectives and fosters broad clan-level emotional ties. If you find yourself unable or unwilling to participate in raising your children, arrangements can be made.”

In other words, she could fail as a mother by abandoning her children from the start, instead of failing them by raising them as miniature copies of her own disaster. Then again, if the Nara merely wanted to make biological use of her for her bloodline, and themselves take full responsibility for the consequences, that was far from the worst of the possible scenarios.

Shikaku looked at her face again, then made some notes on a piece of paper in front of him.

“What are you writing?” she asked, because of course it beggared belief that Leaf’s counterpart to Mori Biwako should need to use a memory aid during an interview.

Shikaku gave a sudden smile, and held the paper up. There was a loose oval-ish outline on it that could have been a sketch of a face.

“An exercise to improve the visual part of my mind,” he explained. “In ancient times, it was the Yamanaka who were the verbal thinkers, we believe, and Nara the visual. I trust you see the implications?”

Kei did. Shikaku’s phrasing suggested two interesting things. First, he referred to these modes of thinking as if they were roles, with one clan taking each. That suggested that the Akimichi also had some distinctive means of thinking that was neither verbal nor visual, which was fascinating in itself, but not as fascinating as the idea that the three clans had somehow developed complementary ways of perceiving the world, and that those ways stayed complementary even if the roles changed around.

Second, the changes themselves. It made sense for the Nara who had first developed the famous shadow ninjutsu to be visual thinkers (she was not yet sure what this term actually meant, but could infer by association). If their descendants had switched from visual to verbal, then that change paralleled the clan’s own change of specialisation from ninjutsu to the management of what was primarily verbal information. What kind of mechanism was involved, and in which direction did it exert causal influence?

“The Yamanaka have researched the matter somewhat,” Shikaku said, ironically as if reading her mind, “and I have been following their work with interest. Nara Clan membership opens a number of such doors to Yamanaka and Akimichi resources.”

Kei’s imagination was captured by the possibilities of investigating the information-processing structure of the mind, but she forced herself back to considering her immediate future. At least she felt calmer after that diversion.

“What restrictions does marriage impose here, and what rights does the husband hold over the wife?”

In one of those books of Mari-sensei’s that Kei had never so much as touched, a noble-blooded blonde kunoichi lived in conditions of virtual enslavement to her abusive husband, a lisping deviant with twisted yet oddly intriguing tastes involving snake-themed whips and chains. She was ultimately rescued by a gallant ANBU captain named Toad, a heroic masked man with a mysterious past and an improbable anatomy.

“Rights over the wife?” Shikaku repeated, voice puzzled. “The Nara are a Noble Clan, not a cattle market. A marriage is a pragmatic goal-oriented partnership between two compatible individuals. Why would we institutionalise power imbalances within partnerships that the clan has already approved?”

Kei gathered her courage. “What about extramarital… relations?”

Shikaku’s expression mercifully did not change.

“The clan does not micromanage its clansmen’s relationships unless invited to do so. As I said before, protect the clan’s secrets, respect its interests and do not bring its name into disrepute. Within those conditions, you may do as you will.

“Oh, and also no unsanctioned pregnancies. If you require education on this subject, be sure to request it in advance.”

Kei could feel herself blushing furiously.

“Finally, a training regimen has been devised for you to catch you up to the other Nara genin, and this will also apply irrespective of your route into the clan.”

The phrasing implied that they were about to move onto a different subject. Kei’s prayers were being granted.

“Now, the particulars,” Shikaku added a few more lines to his sketch. “You may consider adoption a fast track within the clan. You would be treated, where practical, equally to any born Nara. The clan would work with you to choose you a Nara husband, honouring your preferences as much as is practical. And all of your past clan affiliations would be revoked, meaning any information you possess on the Mori, or on Jiraiya’s new clan, would not be protected by clan secrecy laws.”

That meant she would be expected to share any information gained during her travels with the other missing-nin, potentially giving the Nara an advantage in their relationship with them. It also meant that Mari-sensei and the others would no longer be able to share their secrets with her, erecting a permanent barrier between them.

“If you marry into the clan, you will formally hold the same rights, but in practice you will be forced to work harder to prove your trustworthiness, and this will delay your advancement, as well as your acceptance by the less welcoming elements.

“Legally you will be deemed to belong to both Jiraiya’s clan and the Nara Clan. This is a stressful position to occupy, and failure will lead to dire consequences. Since you will be adopted into Jiraiya’s clan first, your Mori affiliation will be revoked at that stage.”

A stressful position to occupy? Of course. Dual clan membership would entail protecting each clan’s secrets from the other. Otherwise a wife marrying into another clan would be free to reveal any of her original clan's secrets to it. It seemed like a ridiculous setup to Kei for any number of reasons, but given the number of political wives in the world, she supposed it must work somehow. Perhaps the Nara provided training on the subject.

“Your husband will be selected for you by the Nara Clan, and you will be expected to marry him after an engagement period. The Nara Clan reserves the right to alter the engagement period, in consultation with Jiraiya, and to unilaterally select a different husband for you at any time before the wedding.”

Kei wondered how long the engagement period would be. She supposed the Nara would wait for Jiraiya’s clan to prove its worth as an ally. In other words, depending on her team’s performance—especially Hazō’s performance—she might ultimately marry anyone from a lowly branch family member to Shikamaru himself. Kei found that she did not particularly care which.

“In the event of a clash between the two clans, the Nara will have prior claim to your loyalties.”

The sticking point. Kei already knew, of course. She wondered how such a thing might be enforced, but then again, the Nara could call upon the Yamanaka at any time. Kei could not imagine being forced to raise arms against Mari-sensei, or Hazō, or Noburi. (Jiraiya she could take or leave.)

In that event, suicide might be the most rational option. It was, of course, not a new idea, nor necessarily an unappealing one. It would be a waste of Mari-sensei’s tremendous effort, and in some uncertain way a betrayal of her bonds with her friends (who had invested so much in her), but that would no longer matter if the alternative was any degree of responsibility for their deaths.

“Leaf has never seen open warfare between its clans,” Shikaku noted, “though at times it has come close. And in any case, the Nara leave conflict resolution through armed combat to the incompetent.”

That was… moderately reassuring. Kei was certain that the Nara could destroy another clan without ever moulding a drop of chakra. After all, the Mori had done as much at the Mizukage’s direction, strangling the Kobayakawa Clan’s liquidity until Kobayakawa Tatsuya committed ritual suicide before his creditors and the Mizukage’s Office was “forced” to seize the clan’s assets and take control of Mist’s leather trade. And mere ruin was nothing compared to what Mari-sensei and the team had already overcome.

“I believe I understand what the Nara Clan expects of me,” Kei said neutrally. “What benefits can you offer me in return?”

“A place to belong,” Shikaku said simply. Those exact words. And his eyes lit up with something that had been absent for this entire conversation.

“You will find nowhere else in Leaf that can accept every facet of who you are. Even Jiraiya, a man of formidable intellect and enviable insight, decided long ago to set aside his hunger to understand in favour of ‘doing what must be done’. Kurosawa’s unpolished brilliance might reawaken that in him, or it might not, but still your clan leader will never be what you and I are, with our very blood calling for us to impose conceptual structure upon the world.

“The Nara are not the Mori. We have many disagreements, some small, some great. But with the Mori lost to you, we are the only people who share your experiences, from the excitement that can only be found in constellations of tiny details to the despair when your own limited social skills block you from telling an outsider something that could change the way they see the world. We alone have the tools you need to hone your mind into the flawless instrument that it can become, and to prevent it from destroying itself with its merciless power of self-analysis. Also the world’s finest library.”

Kei couldn’t help snerking at that.

“Behind all of the intimidating terms and conditions I have described, the Nara are waiting to welcome you as a long-lost sister. We are all outsiders in a world that does not share or even understand our values, but if you join us, we can face it together—as a family.”

It was not at all what Kei had been expecting. The arch-intellectual of the Nara Clan was being… passionate, emotive, though he now slumped back in his seat as if something had been taken out of him. After a lecture that could have been delivered by a lawyer, it was disorienting.

It was also effective. It was a kind of acceptance she had never been offered. The Mori had understood and nourished her mind on a practical level, but the people around her had cared little for her feelings as an individual, with Ami as a sole exception who could only spare so much time for Kei given her role as the clan’s rising star.

The Academy was best not spoken of.

Meanwhile, Mari-sensei, for all her brilliance, simply did not think the way Kei thought. Her analysis was limited to people, at most to military tactics, and while she excelled in that former field in a way Kei never could, she also had limited curiosity outside her chosen fields. Kagome was impossibly loyal, but his mind and Kei’s were separated by a gap she could not begin to conceptualise, never mind bridge. Noburi was an opportunity she kept missing, might continue to miss for the rest of her life, because despite being as much her friend as any of them, he kept a distance from her, and she did not know how to take the first step. Akane… there was little to say about Akane. They had learned to tolerate each other, and that in itself was sufficient achievement.

Hazō might have been the exception. They had found something, courtesy of his Clear Communication Technique, common perspectives on social interaction and information management that might have been a pathway to greater mutual understanding. And Hazō’s hunger for knowledge could not be denied, though he had a creativity that was as far beyond her reach as the sun. Perhaps in another place, at another time, they could have found greater closeness, if Kei were not so pathetic at seizing opportunities, so abrasive in response to his occasional tactless overtures, or so worthless next to the grand designs that increasingly consumed Hazō’s attention.

The Nara were offering her something she had never had, and if there was a spider’s web of strings attached, at least the strings were visible and presented up front. Nor was there anything new in the idea that she could best serve her team by leaving it, though conversely it was revolutionary that she might do so by adding positive value rather than removing negative.

There was too much to weigh here. Did she stand to gain as much as Shikaku seemed to believe? How significant, in the long run, were the losses she would suffer in return? How much of this decision was for the others’ sake, and how much for her own? What kind of life in Jiraiya’s new clan would she be sacrificing? Did it even matter, given that the Nara had presented their condition as absolute?

Her head was spinning again, and this time she was not relishing the experience. She was too young, too Mori, too… too herself to make such an important decision. She was guaranteed to make some catastrophic error that would damn her life and the lives of those who had unwisely trusted in her.

Courage to Face Oneself, said the scroll. Inspiring as an exhortation, but in terms of practical steps to follow, no help at all.

An unexpected movement snapped Kei out of her daze. Shikaku had slid the completed sketch across the table.

Kei looked down at her roughly outlined face, set in an expression of fierce determination she was certain she had not displayed at any point during this conversation.

And seeing in her other self’s eyes the resolve she couldn’t find in reality, Kei knew that any amount of rational analysis would only be justification for a choice already made.

She looked Nara Shikaku in the eye and told him what she wanted to do.

​ -o-

​ There had been a dreadful error made somewhere along the line. It was the only possible explanation. Hazō couldn’t bear to imagine the implications if what was happening right now had been a deliberate arrangement.

“So why exactly can’t I take ‘aromatherapy’ as a medical specialisation?”

“I’m not saying you can’t, sir, it’s just that there aren’t any flowers in the Lava Pits of Screaming Death.”

“Nonsense,” Yamanaka Inoichi snorted. “Look at these beautiful expanses of sunlit volcanic soil here, here and here. With the plants that grow in this kind of climate, give us a few hours before we set off, and we’ll have weeks’ worth of medicine. Then we can spend our healing potion budget on a Master Level spellbook!”

They’d been sent the wrong Ino-Shika-Chō.

Granted, Hazō hadn’t actually used first names in the invitation, and it hadn’t been implausible for the three clan heads to be having dinner together that night, since Jiraiya had just given them much to discuss. But how had it come to this?

However it had come about, it was a test, and he knew it was a test, and they knew he knew it was a test, but it wasn’t like he could tell those three to go away after they turned up. Jiraiya had joined the group in a desperate effort to prevent the whole thing from ending in disaster, had whispered, “Just act natural”, which was the least helpful advice ever, and was now playing a chibi rogue with more than a little bemusement. And Keiko was nowhere to be found, and Shikaku had brushed off his questions with some vague reply about a tour of the facilities.

And worst of all, Hazō had been given a pre-generated character.

Being an entertainer was a fine and traditional shinobi disguise, but the entertainer class was non-viable in every imaginable way. Benihime the Flower Princess’s greatest power was singing enka ballads to inspire her allies for marginal combat bonuses. She had the weapons proficiency of a dry frog and the hit points of a victim of Spontaneous Chakra Combustion Disease. In other words, Noburi’s revenge was in full effect.

Next to him, Akimichi Chōza was still struggling with the basic concepts. “So you’re saying… I have to make decisions as if I’m really my character really having an adventure, but I also have to make sure to play tactically as if it’s a wargame, or we’ll all lose?”

“Look at it like an infiltration mission,” Mari-sensei came to the rescue. “You’ve got to stay completely in character at all times, but you’ve got to advance your real objective at the same time.”

“Aah,” comprehension dawned. “But what if I want to play a sorcerer who’s secretly evil and planning to betray the party?”

Hazō was not going to facepalm at the head of the Akimichi Clan.

And then there was Nara Shikaku.

“Allow me to clarify,” Shikaku addressed Noburi, consulting the overland map. “The entrance to the Lava Pits of Screaming Death is here.”

“Y-Yes, sir.”

“And the Sapphire River runs past here.”

“That’s right.”

“And it’s a short walk to the Pure Forest here.”

“Yes.”

Shikaku clapped his hands. “Then we build a channel from here to here. What’s the next adventure?”

“I don’t understand,” Noburi said warily.

Hazō tried to read Shikaku's face (and got nothing), and went to look at the map.

“He’s proposing using the wood to redirect the river into the mouth of the Pits. It’s quite clever, actually.”

Hazō bit his tongue. He’d just described the work of Leaf’s master strategist as “quite clever”.

But a pause would only make things worse. “The water flows in. Where it hits the lava, it generates huge clouds of steam which travel upwards, cooking and choking everything in their path. Anything that survives that will drown in the flood as the water fills up the pits. And the pressure of the torrent makes sure nothing can get to the exit. So we get rid of the threat and claim the bounty with no risk to our lives.”

The look on Noburi’s face made Hazō warm to Shikaku a little.

​ -o-

​ “Bwahaha!” Chōza bellowed. “You fools, I have been worshipping the Demon Lord all along, and now you have fallen into my trap!”

“You’re betraying us, Chōza?” Inoichi demanded, aghast. “How is this possible?”

Chōza shrugged, and in his out-of-character voice said, “It says Chaotic Evil on my character sheet right here.”

“But I made a point of not looking at your character sheet!”

"I know," Chōza grinned. "You're getting predictable, Inoichi."

“Wakahisa,” Shikaku said calmly, “please read out the third of the notes I passed you earlier.”

“When we make camp for the night,” Noburi said, “I wait for Randragakhar to answer a call of nature, and slip a Rune of Controlled Explosion into his backpack.”

“I detonate the rune,” Shikaku said. “Randragakhar takes 5d6 damage, and all of the loose scrolls in his possession are incinerated.”

“You know,” Jiraiya said casually, “I’ve been aiming at Shikaku’s character for five rounds now. I’m pretty sure that qualifies me for an automatic critical hit, and my arrows are covered with Mandragora’s Blood.

“Gentlemen, make me your best offers.”​ ​ “Don’t mind me,” Hazō added despondently. “I’ll just be over here fending off the demons with my Flower Song of Peace.”​