"So, how'd it go?" Jiraiya asked, neatly flicking three gyoza onto his plate.

Hazō eyed the gyoza with great reluctance; Mari-sensei had made them. After the Great Congee Massacre of yesteryear she had been quietly removed from the cooking rotation despite her protests and promises to improve. He wasn't sure which was worse, having to taste the food she'd made or having to worry about Jiraiya killing them all after tasting the food she'd made.

"Hot damn, these are amazing!" Jiraiya said, wolfing down the gyoza on his plate and immediately snagging half a dozen more. "All this and a brilliant chef too? I was terribly clever to convince you to marry me."

Hazō blinked.

Suspicion blossoming in his hindbrain, he bit into the gyoza. The wrapper was crisp and slightly sweet. The inside was minced...lamb?...rich and savory, with just the right amount of spices and finely chopped vegetables mixed in.

Hazō chewed slowly, savoring the delicate flavors while looking daggers at Mari-sensei.

"These are surprisingly good, sensei," Keiko said calmly. There was just a hint of emphasis on the 'surprisingly'; for Keiko it was the equivalent of a shouted accusation.

"Way better than that congee," Kagome-sensei said, finishing his first gyoza and reaching out to snag a handful more from the nearest of the three heaping bowls. Mari-sensei rapped his knuckles with the back of her chopsticks, all without missing a bite. Kagome-sensei guiltily snatched his hand back and used his chopsticks to, carefully and decorously, serve himself four more gyoza. Which he promptly shoved into his face all at once.

"Tha' congee ftuf tafted like af," Kagome said, chewing with his mouth open and great relish. "Thif if much be'r."

"Thank you," Mari-sensei said quietly, her eyes on the delicate teacup that she was filling. She handed it to Jiraiya with a graceful gesture and smiled when he took it. The 'humble wife' tilt of her head was given the lie by the tiny and very mischievous smile on her lips. "It is a wife's duty to please her husband, so I'm glad you all like my humble efforts in the kitchen."

Jiraiya snorted. "Let me guess," he asked Hazō. "The congee was so horrible that she never had to cook again?"

"She did not."

Jiraiya chuckled and served himself some of the fishcakes. "So, how'd the meeting with Shikaku go?"

Hazō quickly related the conversation in as much detail as he could recall, the rest of the team paying close attention except for Kagome-sensei who was busily munching his way through some deep-fried fruit slices.

"Overall, it wasn't a disaster," Hazō said with a sigh. "It wasn't great, though. I think he does want to ally with us but he's trying to make us be the junior partners."

"Oh?" Jiraiya asked, his carefully neutral tone not hiding a flicker of amusement that made Hazō both nervous and irritated. "Why do you think so?"

"He was very manipulative," Hazō said. "He opened the conversation with a prepared question that required a few steps of inference to unwind, so I was on the back foot right away. The whole conversation was like that—he was always 'leading' by several steps while I struggled to catch up. I didn't realize until later that he was doing it deliberately, that he had prepared a script and was forcing me to follow it."

"Interesting," Jiraiya said, sampling a tiny pork bun. "Anything else?"

"The thing where he chewed me out for not finding a counter to skywalkers was just pure status-building," Hazō said bitterly. "So his grandfather spent two years perfecting this counter before doing anything? Bully for him, but he was safe in a village the whole time. We were literally on the run for our lives, and we did very close to the best we could by coming to Leaf at the first reasonable opportunity. Of course, he moved on before I could think of any of that.

"Then he put me off guard with that complex 'mastermind' theory that painted every action we took since being forced to flee from Mist as part of some larger plot aimed at putting us in a prime position in Leaf at an opportune time." He snorted. "I mean, sure, maybe I could see how that might sound convincing when the alternative is that we just blundered into everything, but I really doubt that anyone could seriously entertain the idea after meeting us in person, so I'm not sure what he was getting at."

Hazō poked at his gyoza guiltily for a moment before forcing himself to continue. "Um...speaking of blundering, I blundered a bit by not being forthcoming there. I shouldn't have given him that bit about 'wouldn't you rather figure it out for yourself', I should have just owned up to the fact that it was mostly luck and frantic improvising."

Jiraiya drained his teacup; no sooner had he set it down than it was full again, courtesy of an attentive Mari-sensei. He blinked and looked at his future wife supiciously for a moment before chuckling and shaking his head.

"Is that it?" he asked Hazō.

Hazō thought about it. "Yes...no, one more. A small thing, but important: when I asked about Keiko, Mr. Nara stonewalled me, then followed up with a quip about how I shouldn't 'concern himself with the other matter', without ever saying what the other matter was. I hadn't intended to ask another question, so I think this was a generic play by Mr. Nara to maintain the 'leader and follower' structure. It's like that peak/end rule that Mari-sensei told me about—Mr. Nara wanted the very end of the conversation to be me feeling slow and stupid." He sighed. "I find his methods less than tasteful and I'm worried that if he really wanted an alliance with our clan he would have treated me with a little more respect. All that said, though, he wasn't wrong about any of it."

"Okay, so, is that it?"

"Yes, sir."

Jiraiya and Mari-sensei exchanged glances before bursting out in tandem laughter. Hazō glared resentfully at both of them.

"Hazō, Shikaku wasn't making fun of you or setting you up or trying to manipulate you," Jiraiya said kindly. "That was actually a sign of respect, and a signal that he really does want to be allies with Clan Jiraiya."

Mari-sensei cleared her throat without looking up from the tea she was pouring for herself.

Jiraiya gave her a sour glance. "I already told you, woman, we are not calling it Clan Inaiya."

"'Inaiya'?" Noburi asked carefully.

"Yeah," Jiraiya said grumpily. "Why should she get top billing, huh? I'm the freaking Toad Sage."

"Yes, dear," Mari-sensei said, patting his arm.

"We are not."

"Of course not, dear. You've made that very clear."

Noburi gave a strangled cough and quickly hid his face behind a bowl of miso.

Jiraiya gave Mari-sensei one more glare before turning back to Hazō. "Kid, you have to understand, Shikaku really is that smart. He treated you the way he treats his clan members: expecting that you could keep up and giving honest and blunt criticism at what he perceived as a failure—namely, the fact that you hadn't even thought about counters. Sure, he would have preferred that you actually have a counter, but I doubt he would have criticized you for not having one given the circumstances. The problem was that you hadn't thought about it at all.

"As to him being mean or whatever, he wasn't. Him starting off by jumping way ahead was his way of giving you the benefit of the doubt—saying that he was assuming you were smart enough to keep up. The fact that he kept doing it means that you showed you were smart enough, even if it sometimes took you a second. The insult would have been if he had switched up and started being less cryptic. You can always tell when Shikaku thinks someone is an idiot because he spells everything out in excruciating detail, draws all the dots between every point, and is punctiliously polite."

"'Punctiliously'?" Mari-sensei asked, eyebrow upraised.

"What?" Jiraiya said. "I'm an author, I'm allowed to use big words."

Mari-sensei snorted. "'Author'."

"I am! My books circulate through every country in the Elemental Nations!"

"Yes, dear."

Jiraiya glared sourly at her. "You know, it used to be that husbands were allowed to beat their wives," he grumbled.

"Not in front of the children, dear. Ask me in private."

"Gaah!" cried the Legendary And Very Exasperated Sannin, throwing his hands in the air.

"On a different subject," Hazō interjected quickly, "I had some ideas about skywalkers that I wanted to ask you, sir."

"Absolutely! Yes, please, ask your questions! This is a great time to ask your questions!"

"Well, if we're going to keep the other Villages from reverse-engineering the skywalker seals, I think we'll want a layered defense, sir. First, we should come up with some distractions so that it's not obvious it's a seal at all. We could pretend that it's a jutsu, the way Mari-sensei did when we first met—"

"Yes!" Jiraiya said, stabbing his chopsticks at Hazō in emphasis. A wicked light shone in his eyes. "Yes, we are absolutely doing that. Oh, wow, I cannot wait to see the expression on the faces of those stuck up Hyūga pricks when we tell them that the seals are multi-triggered and they need to say 'Pretty Pink Pony no Jutsu!' before activating them with chakra adhesion. I am going to have to take some muscle relaxants before that meeting if I want to keep a straight face."

"Not too relaxed, please," Mari-sensei purred.

"Stop distracting me, woman!"

"So," Hazō said desperately, "there are some other distractions we could use, like putting wings on our sandals. And I could draw the seals in invisible ink."

"Hm," Jiraiya said, pursing his lips. "The invisible ink thing still gives me the heebie-jeebies, but given how your bloodline works it might be possible. I'm in meetings most of tomorrow but I think I can get away for a couple hours in the afternoon. Maybe we could give it a try then. I'd like to see what you've got."

Hazō struggled to maintain a calm and adult demeanor instead of fanboying. "Well, maybe we could also put wire up over Konoha and use Five-Seal Barriers to turn it into a protective net? It would take a lot of wire, though."

Jiraiya considered that for a moment. "Seems impractical, just based on the amount of wire needed. Still, we could put nets of wire and FSBs over some of the critical buildings and infrastructure. That would help a lot."

"Okay, suppose we modified the Poor Man's Yellow Flash so that it seals things on a timer, instead of unsealing them? If we saw an incoming projectile we could throw a crapton of those in the path of whatever it is and hope that it gets sealed away."

Jiraiya snorted. "Not a chance. Let me count the ways that that idea fails. First, if there's an incoming attack then we've already screwed up. Second, there's not going to be just one attack—'go big or go home' is pretty much the watchword if you're attacking a position fortified by enemy ninja. We'd be seeing hundreds of rocks or whatever falling out of the sky. Third, it's not practical to set the timer so that it goes off at exactly the right moment to seal away a falling object. Fourth, that would only protect against physical attacks, not gas or liquids or ninjutsu, and it would require a huge number of seals in order to have a chance. Not an efficient use of resources." He paused. "Did you come up with the idea of sealing things on a time delay yourself, or have you seen that idea in the field?"

"I thought of it myself, sir," Hazō said. "Why?"

"It's a good thought. Not original, but a good thought." He shrugged and knocked back his sake. "There's a lot of seals out there, and a lot of warfighting systems built around them. You haven't had the opportunity to learn what's already been done so you're reinventing the wheel a lot. You are inventing it, though. It's impressive."

Keiko shot Noburi a significant look; Noburi nodded back and rolled his eyes in what he probably thought was a discreet way.

"Something you'd like to share, Noburi, Keiko?" Mari-sensei asked.

Noburi startled guiltily. "No, sensei."

"Keiko?"

"Noburi and I were discussing the fact that all parents have a favorite child," Keiko said calmly. "I bet him that Hazō would be Jiraiya's."

"I didn't take the bet," Noburi muttered. "I mean, duh."

"Hey! I don't have favorites!"

Patpatpat. "Of course you don't, dear."

"I don't!"

"I know, dear." Patpatpat.

"Gaah!"

"On another subject," Hazō said, desperately trying to think about pink chakra rabbits so that he wouldn't have to think about this conversation, "Keiko, would you be comfortable telling us about your conversation with Mr. Nara? You definitely don't have to if you'd rather not. I don't want to press you."

"I have no objection," she said. "I had intended to bring the information before the group in order to seek your input." She took a thoughtful sip of her tea. "My experience of the conversation was similar to Hazō's—Mr. Nara moved very quickly and frequently jumped ahead in the conversation without filling in all the gaps. My reaction to it, however, was quite different from Hazō's; I did not feel that Mr. Nara was disrespecting me and, in fact, I found the conversation quite...relaxing? Stimulating? Positive, in any case.

"Which is not to say that the Nara were not manipulative. Even before I met with Mr. Nara, the clan attempted to manipulate me by exposing me to their library." She gave a tiny and very ironic smile. "It was an extremely effective manipulation."

Jiraiya scratched his forehead so that his face was momentarily hidden. Ninja-sharp ears allowed Hazō to hear the muttered, "Oh gods, another one." Keiko's ears must have been similarly sharp, because for just a moment her smile flicked slightly wider.

"We discussed two options for me joining the clan," she continued. "Adoption or marriage. I was assured that in both cases I would be considered a full clan member. While that is a reassuring theory, I find myself concerned about how true it would be in practice."

The awkward pause that followed was broken when Mari-sensei smiled sweetly at Jiraiya and said, "That was a question, dearest. I know it can be hard to tell with her, but it was."

"Huh? Oh. Well, as far as I've seen, yes, they treat native-borns the same as married-ins," he said. "Obviously, I'm not privy to what goes on behind clan doors, but I can speak to what I've seen on the outside. There are typically multiple exogamous marriages per clan per generation—the rate of birth defects was too high before that became the standard practice. I've never noticed any distinction in the rate at which born-Nara and married-in-Nara have been given significant missions or positions of responsibility. I've seen some Nara talk down to others or generally dislike them, but I don't recall that being correlated with marriage—every family has people who dislike each other."

"Interesting," Keiko said, nodding thoughtfully. "I would also be expected to volunteer all information I have on the Mori. I was assured that I would be revealing less than I think and, based on the evidence, I suspect that is true even after I adjust for the assertion itself."

Hazō frowned. She expected that she would be revealing less information than she expected, even after downgrading her expectation of how much information she would be revealing because she had been told that she would be revealing less information than she expected? Shouldn't that cause her to downgrade her expectation indefinitely until she expected to be revealing nothing? But then why would they be asking unless she would be revealing something? Which meant she would need to move her estimate up, but—

He flipped another trio of gyoza into the gently sizzling wok (they weren't as good cold) and focused with desperate intensity on pink chakra rabbits.

"What about kids?" Mari-sensei asked carefully. "I'm expecting that was a condition."

Keiko blushed to the roots of her hair. "I would be expected to have children," she mumbled. "Not immediately, though. And, um, extramarital relations are not prohibited." Somehow the blush got even deeper. "Also, husbands have no special rights over their wives."

Jiraiya frowned. "Well of course not. Why would they?"

Mari-sensei smiled sweetly at him and patted his arm. "I'll tell you when you're older, dear."

"Cut it out!"

"As you command, dear."

"Gaah!"

"I am not willing to be adopted into the clan," Keiko said, carefully ignoring the byplay. "Doing so would require severing past affiliations, meaning that the secrets of...our clan would be unprotected, thereby placing a barrier between myself and the rest of you." She hesitated, then continued in a shy and hesitant voice, "I would not like that."

Mari-sensei smiled warmly. "I would not like that either, Keiko," she said. "What about marriage, though? Would you still be considered a member of Clan Inouya?"

"We are not calling it that."

"Yes, dear."

"Gaah!"

"I would," Keiko said. "And since I would maintain my membership in, um, this clan, I would be able to keep our secrets."

Mari-sensei nodded. "Good." Pause. "Did he mention contraception and unwanted pregnancies?"

"Yes."

Mari-sensei laughed. "We can talk about that later, in private," she said kindly.

In repayment for abandoning Keiko to her karmic fate with Minami earlier, Hazō jumped to the rescue. "Sir, I wanted to ask you about socializing," he said. "Last time we were here we got on very well with Team Sarutobi and reasonably well with Team Gai. Would it be possible for us to see them again?" He licked his lips. "Also...when will we officially be Leaf-nin?"

"Anxious to get past Daddy Akane's rules, huh?" Jiraiya said with a knowing smirk.

"Um...."

"The Clan Council needs to meet and debate the question," Jiraiya said, letting him off the hook. "Of course, debates in the Clan Council are usually just for show—all the issues have been hashed out in advance over drinks and the votes have already been determined. The meetings are only pointful when something comes up that's urgent enough to be discussed immediately but not so urgent that we can't take time to discuss it. However—"

"The next Clan Council meeting is in a few days, isn't it?" Hazō asked eagerly.

"—however, that's just to make the decision. The process itself can't happen until the war breaks out and we can present it as a stratagem by a village suddenly forced to defend itself against a diabolical aggressor. We have to minimise the reputational impact of bloodline poaching, after all."

"Oh."

Jiraiya smiled sadly. "If it's any comfort, I don't think it's going to be long."

"Oh."

"Yeah." Pause. "Pass the fishcakes, would you?"

o-o-o-o​

"What is it? What do you want?" Kagome asked nervously, settling into his chair but sitting only on the very edge. "Why did you want to meet in the shield room? Is Leaf about to attack? I knew we couldn't trust them! We should—"

"Actually, no," Mari-sensei said. "There's no attack. We want to prevent one if we can. First rule of battle, though: make sure you know what's out there."

Hazō frowned. "Sensei, I thought the first rule of battle was 'Don't ever let them know where you are'."

She shrugged. "There are other schools of thought. Anyway, for right now the first rule of battle is to know what's out there. Kagome, you once mentioned that you spent several years in the cryptography and analysis department. You know more about what's out there in the world than I do—than any of us do—and I've been dumb to not ask you about it." She pushed over a plate of cookies and a trio of small cakes that she had taken out of the oven ten miutes before the meeting. "Also, would you try some of this and let me know what you think? I'm not sure I got the balance right on the ginger and the chocolate."

Kagome-sensei had been about to launch into a panicked diatribe but the offer of sweets seemed to derail him. He blinked a few times, then reached out and grabbed one of the cakes. He sniffed at it suspiciously, nibbled, then chomped out a giant bite.

"'s good," he mumbled, crumbs spraying everywhere as he reached for another cake.

"I'm glad," Mari-sensei said, setting her smile to 'very light stun.' "So, you were going to tell us about some of the things you learned about the world back in the day. I'm talking about strategic issues. Overall things that we should watch out for." She pushed over a tall glass of milk and another plate, this one loaded with bite-sized bits of chocolate.

Kagome gulped down the last of the cake and took a long pull on the milk. "Well," he said, wiping off the milk mustache, "obviously it all starts with the Sage of Six Paths and his brother.

"The Sage was an idiot and his brother was a schmuck. Both stupidly powerful, though. Anyway, just like today everyone was always fighting everyone else, but the Sage wanted them to be all kissy-face and peaceful." He shrugged. "Granted, his brother did too. They just had different approaches. The brother—I don't know his name, so I just call him Dummy. Dummy thought the easiest way to get everyone to stop fighting and be peaceful would be to conquer them and make them be peaceful. The Sage thought people would be nice to each other if they could communicate better, so he gave everyone chakra. Hah!" He waved his glass around, slopping some of the milk on his hand. "All that did was let 'em kill each other better.

"Well, Dummy looked at what the Sage had done and probably thwapped him for being so stupid. He wasn't much smarter though, because he promptly went off and created the Ten-Tailed Beast to help him conquer everyone. The Beast was more powerful than Dummy was and didn't want to be a glorified attack dog, so it broke loose and started rampaging around. The Sage and Dummy worked together to tear the Beast apart into nine Tailed Beasts, because of course it's better to have nine of the things when you couldn't control one. It kinda worked, though. The Nine weren't as powerful as the Ten Tails, so they had to do what the Sage and Dummy said. They were more powerful than any other ninja, though, so they could be used to blow things up real well." He sighed regretfully, clearly imagining what it would be like to have firepower of that magnitude available. "So, yeah, they blew things up real well. More importantly, though, they could take people over. Go inside them, override their chakra system and forcibly manipulate their muscles. Must have been horrible, being walked around like a puppet."

He chomped down another cookie, talking while chewing. "That's why Sand is so big on puppets, you know. One of the things has been running the place for decades and it's got a sick sense of humor." He grimaced. "Not sure which one, though. They like to claim that they have the One-Tail under control, but the reports make that look a little dodgy. Whatever, there's definitely one there."

"Do you know where any of the others are?" Mari-sensei asked. "Maybe that would narrow it down."

Kagome shrugged. "The Nine-Tails is here in Leaf, the Eight is in Cloud, not sure where the Seven is, there's no believable record of the Six in the last fifty years, the Five is in Bear—just one of the reasons the place is so dangerous—the Four has been lost for ages...well, for a while there I thought it was what was mind-controlling all those ninja from Wind, but that can't be it. The things can still only be in one place at a time." He shook his head, thinning brown hair swaying. "Probably just air demons. They like to blow in through your ears and sit in your brain, whispering for you to kill everyone. Anyway, never trust anyone from Wind. And don't drink the beer in Sand, either. It's laced with mind-control drugs. Make sure to bring your own water if you go to Sand, because they keep all the drinkable water for their own ninja, make everyone else drink the beer.

"Where was I? Oh, right, the Three-Tails. He's wearing your old boss Yagura like a skinsuit." Chomp, chomp, gulp, another cookie vanished. "I never believed the reports that the Two was in Demon. A little too on the nose, you know? Still, it's possible. I saw a report on it, in the same stack as the one about the guy who first saw a sky squid. Squids are real, so maybe the Two-Tails really is in Demon." He raised a finger for emphasis. "Oh, speaking of the sky squids, always remember to wear your forehead protectors when we're up in the clouds. That's what the things were for, originally—keeps the squids' tentacles from boring in through your forehead to eat your brain. I mean, yeah, they can go up your...um...your...." He made vague gestures downwards.

"Your rear end?" Mari-sensei said delicately.

"Yeah, that. Still, they prefer to go in through the head. They aren't too bright, so if your forehead protector blocks the first attack they'll try a few more times before going up through your, uh, your rear end. Gives you time to hit 'em back. Except you should really hit 'em back before they hit you. Much better that way.

"Anyway, Dummy is busy conquering everything, and he's getting it done. Things are calming down, less fighting. Lots of executions though...well, I think. The records weren't entirely clear. Might be that the records are distorted. Still, I think they're right. Three hundred thousand kills per year."

Hazō blinked. "Three hundred thousand? That's the entire population of Fire!"

"Duh," Kagome said. "Why do you think there's so few people these days? Used to be lots more people. Kajillions of them. No chakra beasts, either. Those came later, when people had just gotten chakra and they were messing around with the original version of the Transformation technique." He shook his head sadly and tossed a handful of chocolate bits into his mouth. "Poor idiots. Didn't realize that they would need hands to reverse the henge, and that was back before henge was patched so it would break if you hit it hard enough. Anyway, people aren't fighting but they're still dying a lot so the Sage tells Dummy to cut it out.

"Dummy doesn't like that, so the two of them start fighting. They've been like that for a thousand years—fight for a while, work together, fight some more. Not sure which is worse. Whenever they're fighting, lots of people die. When they work together lots of people end up with their brains twisted around."

"Twisted around how?" Mari-sensei asked. "You mean they use genjutsu on people?"

Kagome shook his head. "Nah, don't need to. Easier just to kill them and bring 'em back."

Hazō blinked. "Excuse me?"

Kagome looked at him like he was stupid. "Kill them and bring them back. What's so hard about that? It's why 'Sarutobi Hiruzen'"—he made the air quotes with his fingers—"has been able to make Leaf such a nice place all these years."

For a moment Hazō felt like he was back in the conversation with Mr. Nara, except the chain of logic that he was supposed to follow was far more twisty.

"You lost me there," Mari-sensei said, shaking her head ruefully. "Sorry to be so dumb, but can you unpack that a little?"

"You're not dumb! Don't call yourself dumb!"

"Okay, okay," she said, raising her hands placatingly. "Still, I didn't follow what you were saying about the Sage and Dummy killing people and bringing them back, and how that relates to Leaf."

"Oh," Kagome said, chomping on some more chocolate. "Yeah, that. So, I can't be completely sure, but it looks like the whole reason that the Sage and Dummy have managed to live for a thousand years is because they can move lifeforce around between bodies. I originally thought they were just immortal, but that's nonsense. If you know where to look the pattern is pretty clear: every few decades they suck some poor kids dry to make themselves young again, then they change their faces so no one figures out what happened. Of course, they're still using the old version of henge, the one that doesn't break if you punch them, so you only know what happens if you correlate times when someone drops out of sight for a few days and then comes back with slightly different behavior. They like to choose people without a lot of living family or close friends.

"Anyway, once you know how to move lifeforce around between bodies it's easy to kill someone by sucking them dry. Then you cut their brain out, fix it, and shove some lifeforce back into the body to bring them back. Their brain was fixed so from then on they're loyal to whichever brother brought them back."

Kagome frowned uncertainly. "Can't tell if it's both of them that do it or only the Sage. He was the first mednin, of course—that's how he was able to give chakra to everyone. I'm guessing he shared the lifeforce technique with Dummy before they started fighting. So, maybe Dummy can't control people. Maybe it's only the Sage. Not sure.

"Anyway, the whole Warring Clans Period must have really ticked off the Sage. He'd been trying for centuries to get everyone to be peaceful and they still insist on fighting. He tried giving them chakra so they were all connected, but they still kept fighting. Dummy tried conquering the world and keeping people peaceful through force, but that didn't work very well either. Then they both tried preaching, and that didn't work at all. During the Warring Clans Period everything was too broken up—no substantial alliances, no nations that lasted longer than it takes to spit, nothing for people to cohere around. So, they come up with a new plan.

"Took them a couple centuries to get everything set up. With the Sage's mednin skills they were able to encode special ninjutsu into people's bloodlines. He created the major ones like the Hyūga, the Uchiha, and the Senju. Some of the minor ones are from him, some are offshoots of the ones he created." He waved casually towards Hazō.

"The bloodlines made those clans powerful enough that other clans started either joining them or becoming client families in exchange for protection. The fighting slowed down a little just because now people are in large enough groups that there's some surplus labor, meaning that they can make things and grow food instead of having to raid. And also so that there's more guards available which makes it more dangerous to stage a raid in the first place.

"Well, this is all looking pretty good, so about a hundred years ago they decide to step things up. The Sage was calling himself 'Senju Hashirama' and Dummy was calling himself 'Uchiha Madara'. They created this whole story about how they hated each other and fought all the time. Then, gasp!"—he clapped his hands to his face, mouth wide in pretend surprise—"suddenly they're friends! And they're going to found a village!"

"So, they create Leaf. That's a big enough power base that other people have to club up too in order to defend themselves, so the other Villages are founded. There's still fighting going on but it's not nearly as bad.

"They run Leaf for a while and then 'Uchiha Madara' 'dies'. Of course, he really went off to run Rain until the Sage could fix him, so—"

"Wait, what?" Mari-sensei said, leaning forward abruptly. "What about Rain?"

"Oh, yeah, that's Dummy's latest venture," Kagome said. "Of course the Sage and Dummy didn't stop experimenting with mednin skills after creating the bloodlines, and they've been working on improving themselves. Dummy created this technique, the Shadow Clone—"

"I thought Dummy was being Uchiha Madara?" Hazō said, frowning. "It was the second Hokage who invented the Shadow Clone. Senju Tobirama."

Kagome snorted derisively. "Sure, that's what they let on. Nah. The Sage is a medic, not a jutsu hacker. Dummy created all the techniques, the Sage stuck them into people's blood. They didn't want it to seem like 'Senju Tobirama' was a medic, though, so Dummy invented a bunch of techniques—the Shadow Clone, the Flying Thunder God, the Poison Vomit—but the Sage, who was being 'Tobirama' at the time, took credit for them. Likewise the Sage kept splicing new powers into both of them, which is why 'Madara's cheating eyeballs were famous for doing so many different things.

"Anyway, my best guess is that the Sage was trying to encode the Shadow Clone jutsu into Dummy's bloodline and he made a mistake, tangled the jutsu up with the lifeforce-stealing jutsu that was already there. Dummy couldn't control the technique properly, so everyone he touched had their chakra ripped out of them and reformed into a clone. The clone isn't stable; it explodes after a few minutes and the chakra dissipates into the environment." He frowned. "No idea what happens to the original bodies, though. Maybe they disintegrate? Maybe there's just a lot of unmarked graves around. Anyway, the problem is that these weren't regular clones, so each of the clones had the same kill-with-a-touch thing going on.

"Now, this next part I'm not too sure about, but it's the only thing that makes any sense. All the lifeforce in the people who are getting blown up is tied in with their chakra, and the chakra doesn't want to stay in one place after being formed into a clone and then exploded. That means Dummy can't absorb it, which is a problem because if he can't absorb lifeforce then he's going to age and die. But the Sage can't touch him to fix the problem without having all the lifeforce sucked out of him, so there's no way to fix Dummy. And, of course, all of that chakra is building up around him, causing more chakra beasts and screwed up weather patterns and whatever.

"So, Dummy runs off to Rain—which at the time was a rathole—where there aren't too many people for him to blow up. He's been there ever since, and the rain is full of his chakra.

"That all happened later, though. At first they had founded Leaf and things were going great. Clans were condensing into Villages, society was being less fractured, standard of living was increasing. Things had gone from constant war to constant skirmishing. Then that thing with Rock happened where the Tsuchikage got eaten."

Kagome paused to nibble some more chocolate. The nibbling turned into munching which led to happily chomping on one of the cakes Mari-sensei had baked.

"You were saying something about the Tsuchikage getting eaten?" Mari-sensei prodded.

"Hm? Oh, right." He finished the handful of cake he'd been working on and gulped down some more milk. "You ever wonder why Rock is so isolationist? Place is a hellhole, you'd think they'd want as much trade as they can get. Or just to move elsewhere. Anyway, it's simple: they did too much mining. The report I saw said 'Too deep we delved there, and woke the nameless fear.'" He snorted. "S'why you shouldn't let ninja write poetry. Their reports get pretentious. Anyway, looks like the Tsuchikage's been taken over by some kind of chakra beast...based on the 'too deep' I'm guessing it was a psychic chakra rockworm. Been moving from Tsuchikage to Tsuchikage ever since.

"Well, the brothers saw that and it must have given them an idea, because that's when they founded Whirlpool."

"I thought they were controlling Leaf?" Hazō said. "Why did they need to found Whirlpool?"

Kagome rolled his eyes. "The Sage was a mednin and Dummy was a technique hacker," he said, as if that were the most obvious thing ever. "Neither of them knew squat about sealing except that it was dangerous. They gathered up a few sealmasters, put them together a long way away from Leaf, and told them to have at it. That was Whirlpool—a big R&D station.

"Well, the Whirlpool people went at it and they were really successful. Learned a lot about sealing. Then the brothers got involved. It was an idea based off the Tsuchikage incident, sort of an amalgam of Dummy's 'conquer everything and then kill anyone who disagrees' approach and the Sage's 'connect everyone so they be nice and make kissyface' approach. They combined the sealing expertise of Whirlpool, the Sage's medical skills, and the mind-control techniques that Dummy had evolved for his stinking cheating eyeball bloodline, put it all together and created the lupchanzen. Given the Sage's desire to connect people I'm guessing that the lupchanzen were supposed to let people feel each other's pain or something. What they actually got was a half-animal, half-plant thing that meat-puppeted you around and followed the orders of its creator. Not what they were looking for, but still the perfect tool for someone who wants to prevent war and isn't real concerned about morality anymore because they're a thousand years old and the people around them just look like violent children now.

"Too bad the word got out before things were ready. When the other nations heard about the lupchanzen the first thing they did was crap themselves. Second thing was come wreck Whirlpool with big stompy-clompy boots. Whirlpool did...whatever they did...and vanished, but some of the lupchanzen escaped. People don't talk about them much because they don't want anyone trying to reverse engineer them, but the information is out there if you know where to look. Ever notice how all Kage hats have those veil bits to protect the ears? Lupchanzen safety 101!

"Anyway, now you've got a bunch of lupchanzen wandering around with no orders and no creator that they can ask for orders. The records are pretty thin, but it looks like they split into factions. There's one faction that wants to get back in touch with their creators. They keep recruiting sealmasters, and they disguise what they're doing by creating that stupid myth about 'Watchers'. Pfah." He paused to turn up his lip and glare at the door as though Jiraiya might saunter through it momentarily. "Stupid Jiraiya-stinker and his stupid stinking ideas. Secret conspiracy of sealmasters? Nonsense! Too hard to work together in groups bigger than two or three. Soon enough someone chainfires a bunch of seals and some bullying idiot gets ripped in half in a way that is absolutely an accident.

"Where was I? Oh, right. So, one faction of the lupchanzen conspiracy is trying to get back in touch with Whirlpool. Another just wants to kill everyone who had anything to do with hurting their creators." He nodded approval. "Sensible. Someone hurts your team, you squish 'em. Don't want to get caught in the middle, though."

Hazō and Mari-sensei sat back in shock, digesting what they had heard. Kagome-sensei sampled another cake.

"Ooh, baked apple filling!" he said, taking another giant bite.