Hazō found Keiko just as she was extracting the last of her shuriken from the elbow joint of a long-suffering practice dummy.

“Hazō,” she said lightly. “Have you finished sorting through your scrolls yet?”

“No,” he grumbled. “Someone, I can’t begin to guess who, rewrote all the labels. Now my seal packs all say things like ‘brilliant idea with no flaws whatsoever #256’, and ‘eloquent and well-thought-out speech #20’, and ‘display of common sense #oh, who am I kidding’.”

“How mysterious,” Keiko agreed. “And yet I cannot help but wonder if there is some subtle message concealed within these seemingly random acts of vandalism.”

“Don’t you start,” Hazō said. “I was actually going to ask what happened with the pangolin-condor mission from before. Did it get cancelled because the political situation changed? Did somebody else do it and not tell us? Or is it still on the cards?”

“As it happens, I received an update the last time I visited the Seventh Path. It seems the Condor Clan cancelled the meeting after the Hokage’s ill-fated battle, presumably because the Condor Summoner is too busy seeking new human allies for the clan now that Mist has been weakened. That and I imagine the so-called Condor Resistance has enough other concerns at the present time.”

“So there’s a Condor Resistance? They haven’t been completely wiped out?”

Hazō breathed a deep inner sigh of relief. He wasn’t responsible for an act of ruthless genocide.

“Indeed,” Keiko nodded. “The pangolins make no secret of the consequences of their victory. All members of the condor military above a certain level have been executed, as have all condors not prepared to publically swear loyalty to the new regime. Flight has been forbidden without possession of state-issued paint markings, and counterfeiting such markings is punishable by death. Large-scale forced resettlement has taken place as the pangolin population expands into condor territory, and the majority of working-age condors have been assigned compulsory labour in Pangolin Clan enterprises. Most positions of responsibility are occupied by pangolins, with a few granted as rewards to particularly loyal and/or skilled condors. Many other condor rights have been restricted or eliminated.

“There is some unrest within the Pangolin Clan over the excessively generous treatment of their historical enemy, with calls for greater punitive action, full-scale enslavement and even total annihilation. Naturally, the pangolin leadership has made certain that the condors are aware of its mercy in light of such demands, and of the fact that this mercy is their only protection against much greater destruction.

“In my personal analysis, the pangolins are taking measures to fragment the Condor Clan’s population, both geographically and across social and ideological lines, resulting in a disunity that would interfere with any large-scale attempts at insurrection. In time, new lines of privilege will be redrawn within the condor communities, centred around individuals and groups’ relationships with their pangolin rulers, as opposed to their traditional social structures. In this way, the pangolins will be able to use their well-developed propaganda machine to erase the condors’ racial identity and incorporate them as homogeneous subjects of an ever-expanding Pangolin Empire.

“It is a much more sophisticated plan than I originally anticipated, and highlights the subtlety of thought concealed behind the apparent simplicity of the pangolins’ social structure and institutions.”

Hazō struggled to take all this in. “So you’re saying that the condors haven’t been wiped out, and haven’t been enslaved, but instead the pangolins are trying to get rid of the things that make them condors in the first place?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Keiko said. “If the Pangolin Clan’s scheme is as I perceive it, then within mere generations the condors will largely be reduced to pangolins without claws or scales, and with wings that may only be used with the government’s permission. I cannot guess, however, at the ultimate form of such a society, just as Warring Clans ninja would have been unable to predict the real internal structure and politics of a hidden village such as Leaf.

“It is also worth noting that the Condor Resistance persists. Conjura, the leader of the Condor Clan, was able to escape using her mastery of space-time ninjutsu, and is even now seeking support from neutral clans while condor loyalists harass the occupying pangolin forces from camps concealed in the less accessible mountain regions.”

“Thanks for letting me know, Keiko,” Hazō said. “I’m honestly not sure how to feel about any of this.”

“Is loss of identity worse than physical annihilation?” Keiko asked. “A fascinating philosophical question, and one with no use whatsoever to shinobi like us who are in any case doomed to die young.”

Hazō and Keiko looked at each other in morose silence.

“Actually, Hazō… there is something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Keiko said uneasily.

“What’s that?”

Keiko’s gaze drifted downwards, studying the blades of grass as if a perfect knowledge of botany was an absolute requirement of their mission.

“I… well… how do you stand it?”

Hazō blinked. “What are you talking about?”

“It is something I’ve had cause to contemplate over the last few weeks, nothing more,” Keiko said just a little faster than normal, almost stumbling over the words, “and Mari-sensei is far away, and you and I have a certain commonality of communication, and please feel free to stop me if you find the subject uncomfortable or uninteresting, but…”

“What is it, Keiko?”

Keiko’s voice slowed down to something closer to its normal speed. “I am aware that my… preference… is the exception rather than the norm, and that other people likely find my aberrant tendencies confusing or distasteful at best, and it is a source of continuing amazement to me that you and the rest of the team not only tolerate but respect them. But we have never… discussed them as such, and if you don’t mind…”

“Keiko,” Hazō laughed, “there’s nothing aberrant about you liking girls. I mean, it’s kind of confusing, and maybe a little weird, but it seems to work for you, and we all know for a fact that you’re not a bad person. You can like whomever you like, and we’re always going to be there to support you or make fun of you or whatever it is people are supposed to do when one of their friends likes someone.”

Keiko assumed an all-too-familiar look of practiced tolerance. “While your vote of confidence is certainly appreciated, Hazō, I am well aware of your feelings in this regard. I would say we covered the issue, and much else besides, most comprehensively in the aftermath of my disastrous confession to Mari-sensei. May I return to the topic I actually wanted to discuss?”

Hazō now felt like an idiot, but at least it had calmed Keiko down.

“Go ahead.”

Keiko gathered her thoughts for a second.

“Hazō, how can you stand to surrender control of your body to others with such extraordinary frequency? How does physical contact not engender in you a reflexive instinct to escape or to defend yourself?

“I am told that my mother would hold me as a small child, before I displayed my lack of value and my parents lost interest in me. And Ami, my sister, holds—held a unique position of trust which can never be replicated by another person, in addition to being able to read my mood and judge my degree of approachability to a degree far beyond even Mari-sensei’s abilities. But for as long as I can remember, I have had a clear sense of personal boundaries, and I do not understand how other people do not.”

“What about taijutsu?” Hazō asked curiously. “We’ve done full-contact sparring plenty of times.”

“The purpose of taijutsu is to establish control over the engagement. To master taijutsu is to permit physical contact precisely and exclusively in the manner of one’s own choosing, and terminate it as quickly as is practical. Even then, I chose to specialise in ranged combat as soon as circumstances permitted.

“Yet others surrender their bodies to each other freely and casually, with no sense of danger, and worse, they expect me to do the same.”

Keiko looked down at the grass again. “It is not an issue I can afford to ignore forever. Not with a marriage to come, and… other concerns. I was wondering whether you had any insight to offer into how the majority of people can willingly lower their most essential defences so completely as to not merely tolerate another’s touch but to enjoy it.”

Hazō had known, vaguely in the back of his head, that Keiko didn’t like being touched, but he’d never really thought about the how and why of it. It was just one of those strange things, like how some people were afraid of spiders or loud noises.

He frowned. “So it’s about interacting with other people, not about the sensation of touch itself? I mean, you touch yourself all the time, right?”

Unexpectedly, Keiko leapt to her feet, face blazing red.

“Th-That is not a topic open for discussion!”

“What? …oh. Keiko, I didn’t mean—”

“Excuse me,” Keiko said quickly, “I need to go polish my shuriken.”

Hazō just looked at her. Keiko somehow managed to go even redder.

“I didn’t mean it like that! My equipment simply needs hands-on maintenance!”

Hazō kept looking at her.

“I—I—Goodbye, Hazō!”

Keiko fled.

Hazō could do nothing but thank his lucky stars that Mari-sensei wasn’t on this mission.

-o-

​ In the final analysis, Hazō appears to have:

​ 500 “subtle attempts at diplomacy” (exploding tags)​ 10 “OPSEC moments” (misterators)​ 200 pairs of “plans grounded in reality” (skywalkers)​ 5 pairs of “openness to other people’s thoughts and feelings” (air domes)​ 3 “efforts to not suck at life” (purifiers)​ 25 “instances of showing people the content of your plans before doing something stupid” (storage scrolls)​

Noburi must pay.​