​ There should have been singing and dancing, Hazō felt, or at least triumphant background music. For perhaps the first time in its existence, Team Uplift had accomplished an operation swiftly, smoothly and according to plan, without incurring collateral damage. This day needed to go down in the history books. Yumehara needed to commence his fifth volume with a detailed account, emphasising the flawlessness of Hazō’s plan and the ninja-like competence with which his team had carried it out.

Instead, the mood seemed oddly subdued. Minami was frowning as if in thought. Keiko was staring into the middle distance with the expression of a Mori modelling and discarding scenario after scenario. Kagome-sensei was silently glaring daggers at Minami, and in Mari-sensei’s absence it probably fell to Hazō to be the designated Kagome-sensei wrangler and find out what Minami had done to offend him this time. And then there was Noburi, who seemed to be quietly simmering in a depressingly familiar fashion. What had Hazō done this time, other than placing Noburi and his skills in the spotlight the way his teammate had always wanted? Couldn’t Noburi grow up a little?

At least the World’s Best Girlfriend was a ray of sunshine in the gathering darkness. She flitted from teammate to teammate, joking and encouraging and diplomatically refraining from comparisons with past performance. Hazō had missed her so much.

With the unqualified success of Hazō’s last plan, he felt optimistic about its successor. They had got off to a rocky start with Minami as leader, and he accepted partial responsibility for that, but tonight he was going to do everything in his power to nip the potential conflict in the bud. Hazō was Mari-sensei’s true heir, after all. He would use the skills she’d taught him to harmonise the team’s relations just as she would have done.

“You know,” he said casually to Keiko, but pitched loud enough for Minami to hear, “now that Minami is team leader, we should probably introduce her to our other member.”

“There’s another member?” Minami asked. “This is everyone Jira—the Hokage briefed me on. Is this some kind of riddle?”

“You will observe,” Keiko said tonelessly, “that there is nothing up my sleeve except the obligatory backup shuriken.”

She slammed her hand on the floor, making the seals look like a natural part of the same single movement.

“Summoning Technique!”

The responding voice was deep and intimidating, only not.

“I heed thy call, O mighty Summ—we’re in the air! Help! Why are we in the air?!”

Pandā spun on the spot in a blind panic, observed by a bemused Minami, before settling down and hunching over awkwardly.

“Oh, right, it’s just one of the Pantokrator’s Eyes. I knew that. I was just… analysing the strategic implications of the situation. Yeah.

“So what’s up, Keiko?”

“Pandā,” Keiko said gravely, “meet Minami Nikkō, assigned to lead our team by Hidden Leaf.”

“Nice to meet you, Pandā,” Minami smiled, her eyes tracing Pandā’s diminutive stature. “You must be a Pangolin genin?”

“Genin? That’s what you guys are, right? The bottom rank? Well, no, I’m not! I am a military liaison to the Pangolin Clan Summoner, and a full-fledged warrior of the Pangolin Clan! Underestimate me at your peril!”

“Oh, I didn’t mean any disrespect,” Minami said lightly. “Everyone talks about how incredibly strong summons are, so I figured even if you were a genin, you’d still be a huge badass by human standards.”

“Well, uh…” Pandā studied the floor briefly, then looked up. “…Yes. Yes, I am.”

“So Keiko,” he quickly turned away from Minami, “what’s up with this new team leader? What happened to Inoue?”

He raised his claws suddenly. “Wait, tell me she didn’t get herself chopped up by a jōnin. Or splorched by a crazy sealmistress. Or caught in a scary sealing accident.”

“No, Pandā,” Keiko said, her wry tone suggesting her opinion of Pandā’s subtlety. “I suppose I should enlighten you as to recent events. Jiraiya, the Toad Summoner, is currently acting as Hokage. He has married Mari-sensei, and they have adopted Hazō, Noburi, Kagome and myself into a new clan of which Jiraiya is the patriarch. We are thus now formally Leaf shinobi.

“Mari-sensei has retired from active duty, and Jiraiya has assigned us a new team leader and an urgent courier mission, which we are presently carrying out.”

“Waaait…” Pandā narrowed his eyes. “Are you saying the Pangolin Summoner is now the Toad Summoner’s daughter? Oh, this is so going to throw a wasp nest into our political affairs. It’s lucky we’re nearly done subjugating the Condors, or the higher-ups would go bonkers.

“As for you, new squad leader, it’s nice to meet you. You’re very lucky to have Keiko on your team. In fact, why didn’t Keiko get made leader? I mean, these guys have been fighting together since forever, and Keiko’s the smartest, and now Inoue’s gone she’s the strongest too, so it’s a bit weird for Jiraiya to assign some newbie to head the team instead. Is this a way of snubbing the Pangolin Clan just because our summoner now officially answers to him?”

“Pandā,” Keiko warned, “I recognise Minami’s authority as my commander, and will expect you to treat her with all the respect due such a position.”

“If you say so, Keiko.”

Hazō awarded Keiko a point in his head. Now it was his turn to follow through.

“Since you’re here, Pandā,” he reinserted himself into the conversation, “why don’t we all introduce Minami to one of our proudest team traditions? Minami, do you like board games?”

“Board games?” Minami tilted her head sideways. “Do you mean like Serpents and Shortcuts? I guess I used to play that with my kid sister sometimes when she was little.”

“Oh, no,” Hazō gave an anticipatory smirk, “we’re talking about something a lot more fun.”

“That reminds me,” Akane joined in, “did you guys have any cool games while you were away? I told you about The Lava Pits of Screaming Death before you… left. Did you try it out?”

Hazō and Keiko exchanged glances.

“Boy, did we try out The Lava Pits of Screaming Death,” Hazō began to recount, turning slightly to make it clear Minami was part of the audience. “It all began when I decided to invite Nara Shikamaru to play with us one night…”

​ o-o-o-o

​ “I… can’t… believe…” Akane choked out through the laughter, “…you let the head… of the Nara Clan… have a Candle… of Invocation…”

“The rules said it was a one-use item for boosting your spell power,” Noburi muttered. “How was I to know?”

“Typical,” Hazō gave a mock sigh. “Noburi never lets me have any fun when he’s GMing, but as soon as the second most powerful man in Leaf gets behind the gaming table, it’s all ‘Have a non-pregenerated character sheet, Lord Nara’, and ‘Here are the third-party supplements, Lord Nara’. And what do I get? Benihime the Flower Princess. I wasn’t even allowed to roll for my starting gold!”

“So,” Minami hesitated, “it’s like a tactical warfare simulation, but lighter on the command structure and heavier on the demon lords?”

“That’s right,” Noburi said icily. “Great fun until some idiot decides to ruin it for everyone by showing off how clever he is.”

That was uncalled for. What was Noburi’s problem tonight?

“Perhaps we should offer Akane the role of Game Master in honour of her return to the group,” Keiko said, shooting Noburi a meaningful look Hazō couldn’t decipher. “Minami, would you be interested in playing?”

“Sure,” Minami beamed. “I’d love to take part.”

​ o-o-o-o

​ They were including her! They were including her! Her invented-on-the-spot leadership strategy was working! They were introducing her to the team’s unique bonding rituals, and acknowledging her authority in front of third parties, and also Pandā was the most adorable thing ever!

Nikkō had to restrain herself from physically bouncing, because she didn’t think it would do much for her still-developing aura of authority. Also, it was late and an excess of energy might disturb her teammates as they prepared for sleep. They’d taken the entire evening to explain the basic rules to her and help her make a character sheet, which was embarrassing but inevitable. Structured learning wasn’t Nikkō’s strong point. Still, she liked to think she made up for it with her tenacity. If tomorrow was as uneventful as she hoped, she intended to finish studying the rulebook Kurosawa had lent her, so she could join in the “adventuring party” without making mistakes or slowing them down.

“Minami?”

Nikkō looked up from her bedroll to see Kurosawa standing a polite distance away, yet close enough that they wouldn’t be overheard by others.

“What is it, Kurosawa?”

“I was hoping I could ask for your advice.”

He wanted her advice! He trusted her wisdom and experience! This was officially the best day ever.

“Sure. Shoot.”

“It’s about being a leader.”

Hold that thought. When it came to leadership, Nikkō was largely making it up as she went along, inspired only by the examples of her own past leaders, good and bad. If she wasn’t careful here, she could easily get caught out—or worse, give bad advice to somebody who was counting on her.

“I’ll help if I can,” she said neutrally. “What’s on your mind?”

“As a Leaf chūnin, you must have lots of experience leading different teams, right? But I was more or less a fresh genin when we left, and I only have real experience with this one team. I know them well, but I’m less good when it comes to dealing with everyone else. I have… well, a history of making a mess of things when I’m in charge.”

“Like how?”

Kurosawa considered.

“The most striking example has to be a mission we took in Hot Springs. To begin with, we shouldn’t have taken it to begin with. We were hiding out in Tea at the time, and we weren’t completely broke—there was no real reason for us to accept a mission from a shady man willing to hire missing-nin, especially when there were unknown factors like the identity of the target.”

Another reminder that they had, until recently, been missing-nin. Nikkō still didn’t understand. These kids were, with one literally glaring exception, pretty nice. They didn’t seem particularly dishonourable, or murderous, or evil. Kurosawa had even tried to persuade the client to let that scumbag Shirakawa live when Nikkō couldn’t see any good reason to do so. And yet they were missing-nin. The worst of the worst. Irredeemable sinners who deserved nothing but to be hunted down and killed like vermin.

And then they’d got redeemed. Jira—the Hokage himself had not only pardoned them—pardoned missing-nin—but adopted them as his very own children. She wouldn't have believed it if she hadn't heard it from the man himself.

How was it possible to earn redemption for the kind of crime that turned a person into a missing-nin? How did they convince the Hokage that they’d been reformed? The skywalkers must have been part of it, but no Hokage could ever be bribed to accept the impure into the ranks of Hidden Leaf. Right?

There had been a lot of gaps in last night’s extended briefing. Kurosawa had cited operational security and the fact that it should be the Hokage’s decision to release information which could potentially make his clan look bad. Nikkō could respect that. It wasn’t like the Minami Clan didn’t have some uncomfortable episodes in its history, mostly involving those Hyūga bastards. But it also left her unable to reconcile the abyssal gap between this team of weird but likeable kids and the blood-soaked, diabolical madness conjured by the term “missing-nin”.

“It was a simple information retrieval mission,” Kurosawa went on. “All we had to do was go to a particular resort in Hot Springs, wait for our target to arrive, steal some records, and get away. But my planning let everyone down again. Instead of a carefully-timed stealthy infiltration, in and out with no one the wiser, we ended up killing the target and bringing down half the inn.”

Something about that sounded oddly familiar. Hot Springs. A resort. People getting killed and a building being demolished…

“You’re the Cold Stone Killers!”

Oh, Sage’s blood. It was them. She was surrounded by the Cold Stone Killers. The infamous pack of ruthless missing-nin who had violated a demilitarised zone, targeted a civilian leisure site and murdered a jōnin, not caring how many people got caught in the crossfire. The villains who had all but delivered Hot Springs into Mist’s hands.

And now her unthinking outburst had drawn everyone’s attention. The Cold Stone Killers were all looking at her. They had her surrounded. Were they going to kill her for finding out their secret?

“It was an accident,” Kurosawa said softly. “Nobody was supposed to get hurt.”

Kurosawa’s tone was, as far as Nikkō could tell, genuinely regretful. Her panic stepped down a notch. Obviously, them being the Cold Stone Killers wasn’t a big, terrible secret. Kurosawa wouldn’t have spilled something like that by accident. And the Hokage must have known when he adopted them, mustn’t he?

It was still too much for her. The Hokage had adopted the Cold Stone Killers. He’d made them part of the Will of Fire. And then… he’d put her in charge of them. She felt unsteady, like one false step would send her plummeting into darkness—and not just because she was standing on a few planks of wood hovering absurdly high in the air.

“Nobody was supposed to get hurt,” Kurosawa repeated. “I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong idea. We’re not killers—or no more so than ninja in general. And we’re not evil the way everyone thinks we are. We just made some big mistakes.”

It was too much. She didn’t know what to do. She felt lost, vulnerable, betrayed. But at the same time, if there was one thing Minami Nikkō knew, it was that she couldn’t show weakness. Not as a team leader, and not to them.

“Kurosawa… let’s end it here for the night. I have last watch, so I should get some sleep now.”

They weren’t going to kill her in her sleep. The Hokage had known when he’d assigned her to the team, and if she hadn’t been meant to know, Kurosawa wouldn’t have told her. They weren’t going to get rid of her to protect their secret. In the morning, when everyone was calm and well-rested, she could ask them all the questions she needed, and hopefully whatever it was that had convinced the Hokage would convince her too. In the end, Minami Nikkō had not made it this far in life by not believing in people.

​ o-o-o-o

​ “Stop, Kagome-sensei!”

“Let go of me! Dumbbutt has to die!”

Hazō clutched Kagome-sensei’s wrists tight, keeping the hand with the exploding tags away from the finger ready to activate them. If he’d been a tenth of a second too late…

It was Hazō’s Mist training that had saved the day as much as anything. After Hazō realised Kagome-sensei was being too quiet, it was his ability to endure so long without sleep that had allowed him to stay awake, watching silently for any sign of trouble. And what a sign it had been.

“Let go, Hazō!”

“Move and die,” said an icy voice from behind both of them.

There was a faint crackle of lightning, and Hazō knew that Soudai’s Prism had appeared in the skytower, and that it was far more than just a spying device.

“This isn’t what it looks like,” Hazō shouted urgently, even though that was a bare-faced lie.

“Really?” Minami hissed, her sword between herself and the pair. “Because it looks like he just tried to kill me in my sleep!”

The crackling grew louder, and the thought flashed through Hazō’s mind that Minami was about to cut them both down in an instant, before he and Kagome-sensei had a chance to stop grappling.

That was when Noburi, mercifully awakened by the shouting, did the most brilliant thing Hazō had ever seen him do.

He interposed himself between them and Minami, unarmed hands out in a gesture of surrender. But he was facing away from Minami as if protecting her, leaving his back exposed to her sword.​ ​ “We’re on your side. I have no idea how Hazō fucked up this time, but we’re on your side, Minami.”

Minami didn’t lower her sword… but she didn’t kill Noburi either.

“Kagome, you worthless imbecile.”

Keiko was awake.

“Can you even comprehend the consequences of killing her? Do you believe that any damage wrought by Hazō’s incompetence could compare to the ruin you nearly brought upon us and our clan?”

Compared to the lethal blizzard in Keiko’s voice, Akane’s was merely disoriented. “Can somebody please explain to me what is going on?”

“Your psycho friend tried to murder me!”

“OK,” Akane said wearily. “Kagome, did you try to murder her?”

“She has to die!” Kagome-sensei growled. “It’s the only way to keep our clan safe!”

“Kagome, you are not allowed to murder teammates,” Akane said in a very deliberately reasonable voice. “Or people in general unless they’re trying to kill you.”

“But she’s—“

“This isn’t negotiable,” Akane snapped. “Killing a teammate is betraying the team.”

Kagome-sensei flinched, but recovered. “Just because Jiraiya-stinker foisted her off on us doesn’t make her a teammate. My only captain is Inoue, and always will be.”

Minami’s eyes narrowed. “And you think that makes it OK to try to kill me?!”

“Minami,” Noburi said carefully, still staying completely still, “Kagome wasn’t in his right mind. You are part of the team, and I’m sure we’ll be able to sort all this out as long as nobody starts killing people.”​ ​ “Thank you, Noburi,” Akane said coolly. “Kagome, what has made Mimami suddenly become a threat in your eyes?”

“I can field this one,” Keiko said. “Noburi’s ability to sense and drain chakra through Mist is a Wakahisa trump card, a secret Bloodline Limit technique of the kind that clans legitimately kill to protect. The Mori have such techniques as well. All strong clans do. Now that our own clan holds the Wakahisa bloodline, it is one of our clan’s trump cards as well. If the decision were made to share it outside the clan, such as in anticipation of conflict with the other Wakahisa, it would be a grave decision made by the clan chief with input from all concerned.”

“And Hazō gave it away,” Noburi said heavily. “Just like that, to the first chūnin that came along, without even thinking to ask me first. To a clan ninja, even.”

“As a secondary concern,” Keiko added, “this kind of secret ability typically serves as the cornerstone for an eventual jōnin career, once basic skills are sufficiently developed, much like Captain Zabuza's Silent Killing or Uzumaki’s shadow clones. Uzumaki was famous for his use of shadow clones, but the full properties of this Leaf forbidden technique remained a mystery. By all accounts, Uzumaki was considered unstoppable—until he was defeated instantly by a former Leaf prodigy who would have had access to the same knowledge.

“Thus, after having Noburi’s mist abilities explained to her, and observing them in action together with the misterators, Minami became capable of greatly endangering him were she ever to be captured and interrogated by a faction capable of devising a perfect counter.”

“That’s right,” Kagome-sensei crowed. “She could have her clan blackmail us with it, she could screw up and spill it to our enemies… anything. You can’t survive as a ninja unless you’re ready to kill to protect your secrets!”

“That’s enough, Kagome,” Akane said in a level voice. “Anything else you say is only going to make things worse. Do you understand?”

Kagome-sensei glared at her for a couple of seconds, but his attempt at intimidation found no purchase.

“…fine,” he muttered.

Minami was less understanding. “He tried to murder a comrade, and you’re letting him off with a slap on the wrist? You bastards.”

The sword trembled slightly in her hands. “I wanted to believe in you. But it turns out you’re missing-nin after all. Once a Cold Stone Killer, always a Cold Stone Killer.”

Her grip relaxed. The blade stilled.​

“I guess I don’t have a choice.”