October 1

Hazō reached for the vegetable platter as he casually opened with, "So, I was thinking about the money situation."

"Did you just feel a shiver down your spine?" Jiraiya asked Mari-sensei. "Because I felt a shiver down my spine."

"It must be the wind, dear," the redhead said demurely. "Need to finish getting this place patched up, it's drafty."

It was true. The totally-not-haunted-honest (as the seller had described it with a nervous smile) compound had once been an elegant rival to any in Leaf, but years of time and neglect had not been kind. The elegant manor house in the center was dilapidated at best, and some of the outbuildings had so many holes that it was possible to see through them. Without the constant upkeep necessary to keep land civilized, the spacious grounds had reverted to a two-thirds wild state as chakra-enhanced bushes and trees grew up and chakra varmints moved in. The result was no serious threat to ninja and was not really all that reminiscent of the Swamp, but it did occasionally give Hazō a pang of unwelcome memory.

"Very funny," Hazō said, serving himself some of tonight's vegetable dish. It was a local dish with rice, three different kinds of beans, and a delicate seasoning that even Kagome-sensei grudgingly admitted was tasty. "Seriously, though. You were telling us that the clan is broke and we need to find ways to make money. Missions are great, but I can think of some more effective solutions."

Jiraiya rubbed his head for a moment, then knocked back his sake and refilled his cup. "Let me guess: you want to use MEW—funny name, by the way—to make granite and sell it to a construction company?"

"I thought of that one, yeah. Some others that might be more efficient, though. In Hot Springs ice was a really valuable thing; it's probably not quite as much here but I imagine it's still valuable. Akane can use her Elemental Mastery jutsu to make as much ice as she wants. And, before you ask Noburi, yes, I asked her if it was okay if I mentioned the jutsu to Jiraiya."

Noburi gaped in exaggerated shock, jaw hanging open.

Jiraiya snorted, Mari-sensei smiled, and Hazō shook his fist mock-threateningly at his friend before turning to the world's best current girlfriend and former student. "Honey, you aren't technically part of the clan—"

"Yet," murmured Mari-sensei as she took a delicate nibble on a kebab. Hazō manfully ignored her but was unable to restrain his blush.

"—aren't technically part of the clan, so you certainly don't have any obligation to do this, and you could just do it on your own. Still, I think we'd both make more money if you went in with us. The Hokage's contacts and connections could go a long way towards getting you the best prices and outlets. If you'd be willing to split the profits it could be really worthwhile.

"Anyway, that was just my first thought. Other things that might be good would be using MEW to make stone buildings or walls, selling seals—storage scrolls and explosives are useful for lots of things, and I have some ideas about making civilian-usable versions. We could take commissions to research seals that people want, or—"

"Let me stop you right there," Jiraiya said. "Those are all great ideas and would make us a fortune if we could do them. They would also be a lot easier and safer than taking ninja missions. So, ask yourself: Why hasn't some other ninja with the same or equivalent jutsu done those things already? For that matter, why are there ninja and ninja missions at all? Why isn't everyone who knows how to use chakra sitting at home in the lap of luxury?"

"Uh...."

"The world is a dangerous place that desires only death," Keiko said. "There must be ninja to hold back the chakra beasts, to patrol the borders, and to defend the nation against incursions by its enemies."

"All true," said Jiraiya with a nod. "A little gloomy, but true. Still, Leaf has a wall around it sufficient to keep out most of the larger chakra beasts, thirty thousand civilians to serve as a militia that can keep the land mostly clear, and fifteen hundred ninja who can handle anything the militia can't. Patrolling the nation and defending the other population centers is time-consuming, but not that time-consuming. Ninja typically have enough downtime to do some work on the side for extra money if they want. Most ninja are comfortable but not fabulously wealthy, and some are on the edge of poor. How can that be if it's easy to use ninja skills to make money?"

The former Mist genin looked at each other to see if anyone else had a clue and were met with equally blank stares.

"Akane, care to enlighten them?" Jiraiya asked.

"Yes, sir." She turned to Hazō with a smile that hovered somewhere between amused at the world and disappointed in its behavior. "The reason that not all ninja are wealthy, and the reason that your plans won't be as easy as you hope, is that the Merchant Council is extremely slow to grant licenses for use of ninja skills in business."

Hazō looked at her for a moment, running the words back through his mind to see if perhaps they had some other meaning that he'd missed.

"Think about it," said Mari-sensei. "The merchants of Leaf are civilians. Ninja are faster and stronger than any civilian, and we have the advantages of jutsu, seals, and being able to travel safely and quickly in the wilderness. All else being equal, a ninja with half a brain could outcompete a civilian. What it takes an entire crew of masons weeks to build, you can create in seconds with one jutsu. The civilians aren't stupid and they don't want to be poverty-stricken beggars, so they found a way to fight back: they worked together."

"The law is that no ninja skills or equipment may be used for purposes of commerce except with a license from the Merchant Council," Jiraiya said. "That means no one can pay you to create walls for them with MEW, Keiko can't have pangolins roll around a field to plow it, Kagome can't sell seals—"

"I'm not selling seals to any stinking Leaf stinker! Why would I sell seals to stinking Leaf stinkers?! That would be crazy! If—"

"Kagome," Mari-sensei said calmly, "you are now a 'stinking Leaf stinker'. Remember? This whole city is now part of our team."

"Not my team," Kagome-sensei grumbled, shoveling rice and beans into his mouth and glaring around so intently that he failed to notice some of the rice dribbling out.

"Moving on," said the ruler of the most powerful ninja village in the world, "the civilians clubbed up and made some rules. There would be a Merchant Council which, among other things, would sell licenses for use of ninja skills and equipment in trade. Any ninja who trades without a license triggers an embargo against all ninja. During an embargo, no one sells to ninja and no one buys from ninja. Period. Ninja wouldn't even be able to buy food."

"That's crazy," Hazō protested. "And so what? We lived on our own for a year. It's not that hard to hunt your own food. And we could always henge as a civilian and buy whatever we need that way."

"Sure," Mari-sensei said. "The ninja can get by if they really need to. They can provide a lot of their own needs, they can use henge to disguise the fact that they're ninja while buying things, and they can travel to other towns, or even other countries, to buy anything that they can't manage to get here. It's possible, but it's wildly inconvenient. Look around you—this house needs a huge amount of work done. I don't know how to fix a roof, do you?"

"No...."

"Okay, well, ultimately we're going to hire a bunch of skilled builders and construction workers to come in and fix it. During an embargo we couldn't do that. We could hire a crew from outside the village, but then we'd have to escort them back here and handle their upkeep for the duration of the project. We'd have to supply all their food and raw materials, since no one would be willing to sell to them as soon as it became known that they were working for us. They'd be ostracized by all the other civilians. Someone might even go so far as to hire other ninja to assassinate them."

"I thought that during an embargo no one would hire ninja?" Hazō asked, feeling somewhat desperate.

Mari-sensei shrugged. "Their embargo, their rules. Think about it—imagine that we suddenly found ourselves unable to buy food or hire tradesmen because of something some idiot Hyūga had done. Then the Merchant Council comes to us and says 'hey, if you kill these construction workers that the Hyūga hired then we'll pay you standard mission rates, plus two weeks of food.' It would seem pretty tempting, right?"

"Why wouldn't the ninja just steal what they need, or kill anyone who refused them service?" Noburi asked. "I mean, I don't mean to sound evil but...civilians can't really back up their threats, right?"

Jiraiya shrugged. "That only goes so far. Ultimately, a functioning economy depends on voluntary participation. We could enslave the populace, sure. Rule by fear and threat of death—it can be done and has been done. Not very practical, though. For one thing, civilians need to travel in order to acquire goods and raw materials. If we made things bad enough they just wouldn't come back."

Hazō frowned. "I thought every caravan needed to hire ninja for security? They could force the civilians to come back."

"Sure, but the number of civilians in a caravan is always way higher than the number of ninja guards. How is one ninja going to keep an eye on a dozen people, or two dozen, in order to prevent any of them from slipping away? Or maybe ninja take over all the outside-the-village trade, bring in the supplies ourselves. That's a lot of ninja time dedicated to stuff that they probably find very boring, and those ninja aren't available to defend the village or keep an eye on civilians and force them to work. And it puts all the traders out of work, so what do we do with them—find them another job that they don't want? Let them starve? Of course, trade isn't a simple matter of 'go to point A, put stuff in scroll, come back.' It's a skilled job—you need to bargain, recognize quality materials and shoddy goods, identify opportunities, and so on. Most ninja don't have those skills, so they either need to become merchants themselves or they get taken to the cleaners and money drains away from Leaf. Who teaches them those skills if all the civilians refuse to work with us?

"Then there's the fact that a slave economy just isn't as productive as a voluntary one. Yes, I could go into the village, round up a bunch of builders, and force them to fix this house because if they didn't then I'd kill them. They'd do a shitty job, and I don't know enough about construction to be able to recognize the problems. I could force the ramen shop to give me lunch, as long as I didn't mind getting overcooked noodles, too much salt, and a healthy dose of snot. I could go to the cobbler and demand new shoes on pain of death, but all I'd hear was 'oh, so sorry Lord Hokage, I don't have anything in your size and it will take me at least a week to make them. I'm so very sorry, please forgive my ineptness.' And when I finally got them the work would be crap and they'd fall apart in a few months.

"That's why Mist has been slowly shrinking for decades. They lack the Will of Fire."

Kagome snorted.

"The Will of Fire isn't a joke, Kagome," Jiraiya said. "It isn't a clouds-and-sunshine fantasy that is lovely in theory and impossible in the real world. It isn't a nice-to-have that can be set aside when it becomes inconvenient. It is the true source of Leaf's power, of the Land of Fire's power. We are the richest and strongest nation in the world because we grip tight to the idea that everyone should be treated fairly, that both ninja and civilian should be honorable, that everyone in this nation is family and we must work together. The civilians are the beating heart of our nation, the source of its wealth and its knowledge. The ninja are the shield held over that heart, the thin black line that keeps the nation safe. We serve with honor and the nation returns that honor. Slaughtering civilians because they refuse our trade? That is not the Will of Fire."

Jiraiya stopped talking and Hazō blinked eyes that he only now realized had been wide and staring throughout the speech. That vision...that was what he wanted for everyone. The vision of unity and peace, the image of a society's web connecting everyone into something greater than themselves...it was the essence of the uplift concept that he had been imagining ever since the team's forced travels had begun.

Jiraiya's face crumpled just slightly and there was a trace of water in his eyes. "It's funny," he said, swallowing convulsively. "Sensei gave me that speech when I first became his student, and plenty more times over the years. He always said it better, though." He scrubbed at his eyes for a moment. "And I never really, truly understood it until I had to put on his hat."

Mari-sensei lay a hand gently on her husband's arm; everyone else was silent. Even Kagome-sensei stopped eating to watch the Sannin uncomfortably.

Jiraiya smiled softly at Mari-sensei and patted her hand. Then he spread his arms dramatically, hoisting his sake cup with a bold grin. "To you, Sensei!" he called up to the ceiling. "To Sarutobi Hiruzen, a pontificating old man with a stinky pipe and a hat that looks like an upside-down wok! You've had your rest, now get your butt back here or I'll drink all your sake!" He paused expectantly, then shrugged. "More for me, I guess." He slammed the sake cup back and set it down with an exaggerated sigh of contentment, wiping his mouth dramatically with the back of his arm.

"He was a good man," Kagome-sensei said suddenly.

Jiraiya looked at him in surprise. "Hm?"

"Sarutobi. Good man," Kagome-sensei repeated. "Everyone says so."

Jiraiya nodded with a smile. "Yes, he was. I wish he were here to deal with this mess. He always made it look easy." He chuckled, the sound a little forced. "But, he's not, so I guess I'm stuck with it. Anyway, back to the original topic: Hazō, those are good ideas and we should apply to the Merchant Council to get licenses, but that will take months. Maybe I can use some subtle pressure from the Tower to move it along, but the Council quite reasonably gets very twitchy about that sort of thing. In the meantime, we'll need to find more approved ways."

Hazō frowned in thought. "Civilians hire ninja missions all the time though, right? And what about D-rank missions—they hire us for babysitting and cleanup duty and things like that. We use ninja skills for those. Back in Mist there was this one woman who kept hiring my squad to babysit her three-year-old. Brattiest kid you've ever seen, but he loved watching clones walk through tables. We would take turns making clones to keep him entertained."

Jiraiya shrugged. "First off, Mist does a lot of things differently than we do. Second, it's complicated. The basic principle is that ninja must compete with civilians on an even footing. The Yamanaka can run their flower shop, but they can't use jutsu to make the flowers grow better or whatever. Similarly, the Akimichi can have their restaurant, but they can't just send a couple of clan kids out with a storage scroll to pick up the produce from the farmers. There's decades of precedent about what's allowed and disallowed, and frankly it's a mess. A lot of it is inconsistent or even self-contradictory, but there are some reliable carve-outs and D-ranks are one of them. Academy students and new graduates can be hired for menial tasks with little economic value and they're free to use whatever skills or equipment they have. The fee is very low and sometimes even subsidized—the civilians get their fences painted for cheap and our students get some practice at teammwork, creativity, and so on.

"The thing to remember is that no one, especially not the Merchant's Council, wants to call an embargo. It won't happen unless someone actually raises a formal protest and then the Council will probably work with the Hokage to try to sort things out peacefully. The embargo can generally be avoided as long as the ninja in question is severely punished and the merchant who was hurt is made whole.

"There's lots of cheating, of course. I'd be amazed if there was no use of jutsu in the kitchens of the Akimichi restaurant, but everyone looks the other way as long as they keep it under wraps and don't put any civilian restaurants out of business. The civilians cheat too—every couple of months you get someone coming before the Council with a complaint about how some ninja used sneaky ninja magic to run him out of business or ruin his supplies, or whatever. The Council and the Hokage's office investigate and, as long as everyone agrees that it's all aboveboard then there's no problem. I've been on one or two of those investigations, and they are a nightmare. You have to be cleaner than the Sage's conscience and more open than a harlot's kni—than an open door, because any hint of favoritism is going to make it look like the accuser was right. Ultimately, it's not the truth that matters but the opinions of the people on the Merchant Council. The accusation might be nothing but spite and hot air, but if the Council believe that you're covering something up then they might just cut the cord."

"Has there ever actually been an embargo?" Keiko asked, head cocked in curiosity.

Jiraiya nodded. "There was one a few years ago in Sand, actually. It didn't last long and it wasn't pleasant, but it demonstrated the seriousness of the issue."

"Wait, this cockamamie idea isn't just Leaf?" Noburi asked.

Jiraiya laughed. "No, not just us. It started here—Leaf's Merchant Council formed not too long after Senju Hashirama founded the village. The idea spread through the Elemental Nations pretty quickly. It's not practiced everywhere—there were some places where the leaders were dumb enough to say 'that's adorable but we're just going to kill you if you try this' and then were crazy enough to keep piling up bodies until the civilians fell in line." He frowned, reaching back into memory. "I was out of town when all that went down and I don't actually remember what impact it had here. I know that our Merchant Council didn't trigger an embargo just because Sand's had, but I think at least some of our merchants refused to do business with Sand ninja until the embargo was settled. Anyway, a lot of dust got kicked up and when it was all over there was a dead ninja in Sand and business was happening again." The corners of his eyes crinkled in amusement. "The official report is actually pretty funny, in a dark-humor sort of way. The Kazekage couldn't admit that one of his people had done anything wrong or that he'd backed down to a bunch of civilians, but the Council wasn't going to accept being made to look like they had hurt the livelihoods of so many people over a mistake. They had to spin things pretty hard to find a story that left everyone looking good." He shrugged. "Anyway, enough of that depressing stuff. I'm tired of thinking about Hokage stuff, so tell me something fun. How are you guys settling in after the big announcement?"

o-o-o-o​

"Eeeeeeeeee!"

Hazō and Noburi were back-to-back, clawed gauntlets on hands and Water Whip formed, before the chakra harpy's attack screech had barely started. They pivoted as a single unit, shoulders pressed tight into oaken barrel staves, movements etched into their very bones from long experience at wilderness survival. Noburi's eyes were up, desperately seeking his target while Hazō guarded against ground assault by the bird's symbiotic— There! The gauntlet came around in a practiced swipe, top-right to bottom-left, claws fully extended. It would shred the leaper's face and smash it into the ground in position to be punted into the packmates that would surely follow, setting him up to—

Hazō stumbled, twisting awkwardly around in a move that the Iron Nerve had never seen before as he desperately tried to abort his swing. The little girl, completely oblivious to how close she had come to death, flung herself under Hazō's arm and glomped on to Noburi's leg like a limpet.

"Miyoko!" the girl's mother cried, running forward with hands outstretched. "Please, don't hurt her! Please, I'm sorry!"

Noburi looked down at the tiny child hugging his leg. He looked at Hazō. He looked at the child.

"You're Gōketsu Noburi!" the toddler said, smiling rainbows and sunbeams at him. "Lord 'kage said you left the Bad Place 'cause you're so full of the Will of Fire! You're my favorite ninja after Lord 'kage!"

"Please, I'm very sorry," the mother said, bowing frantically. Her face was sheet-white and her hands were half-outstretched, wanting to pull her child away but desperate not to seem threatening. "I'm sorry, she got away from me in the crowd. Please forgive my clumsiness. Please, I'm very sorry. She didn't mean anything, don't hurt her."

Noburi looked at the woman for a moment, utterly dumbfounded. Finally he shook it off, allowing his Water Whip to dissolve as he pried the girl off his leg and hoisted her up into the air. She came up with a gleeful shriek and reached out for him again, but he turned her around and deposited her in her mother's trembling arms. The woman shrank back slightly as he did, clutching the child tight to her chest.

"No harm done, ma'am," Noburi said, smiling a smile that shrieked falsehood to Hazō's trained eyes but apparently passed muster for the civilian woman. "I'm Gōketsu Noburi, as she said. This is my...brother, Hazō. Nice to meet you."

o-o-o-o​

"It's been fine," Noburi said with a casual shrug. "Nice folks."

Jiraiya smiled. "Great! So, no problems, then?"

"...No?"

"Hm. Well, how about the rest of you? Are you adjusting okay? Do you need anyone to take you around, introduce you to people?"

o-o-o-o​

One of the things that Kei liked best about the library was that it was quiet. Anyone making noise risked the wrath of Auntie, and bold was the person who dared reach into that fire. Unfortunately, the fierce old woman wasn't on duty today. Her replacement was an idiot, too stammering-stupid at being in the presence of the Hokage's daughter to provide useful information like where to find the data on trade between Leaf and Hot Springs from fourteen years ago. Kei had waited with outward stoicism as the woman scrambled through the index books that were kept at the information desk while simultaneously keeping up a steady stream of social babble that Keiko couldn't force herself to listen to no matter how hard she tried.

Speaking of babbling, there was a crowd of teenage males lurking about and whispering to each other. Periodically they would glance over at her where she stood by the desk. Each time they did, the whispering would intensify for a moment, only to be followed by a nervous laugh that felt like claws on the blackboard of her soul.

Eventually Kei couldn't stand it anymore. "Do not worry," she said to the fluttering incompetent at the desk, keeping her tone steady with what she felt was Sage-like patience. "I believe I know where to start." She turned and headed off into the stacks. In truth, she had only a vague idea of where to find what she needed but she simply could not put up with the woman's idiocy for another second.

The pack of males stood up as she moved and trailed along behind her, two of their number leading. She ignored them and started going systematically along one likely shelf of old, leather-bound volumes, making it very clear that she was involved in what she was doing and would prefer not to be disturbed. The pair in the lead didn't take the hint.

"Hi," said the taller of the two, leaning against the shelf with what he probably thought was cool insouciance. "I'm Yamamoto Dai."

She plucked a volume off the shelf more or less at random and pointedly flipped it open. "And I am busy."

His friend laughed and Yamamoto blinked. "Hey, c'mon, I'm just trying to be nice. I haven't seen you in here before."

She glanced at him for a moment, then turned back to her book. "True."

Yamamoto was starting to get angry. He straightened up; he must have hit his growth spurt recently because he was a full head taller than she was despite being around her own age. "You don't have to be rude, okay? I just wanted to say hi, that's all."

Keiko turned her body to face him and looked straight into his eyes.

"You are bothering me."

Yamamoto and his hangers-on recoiled in shock before turning and scrambling away. Kei watched them go for a moment, then went back to her book.

o-o-o-o​

"An escort might be nice," Keiko said calmly. "Although I do not feel the need to be introduced."

Hazō stifled a wince at the tone. No one who hadn't lived beside her for eighteen months would have heard anything in Keiko's words except a calm statement, but to Hazō's ears they might have been a shout of barely-suppressed frustration.

"Oh?" Jiraiya asked, head cocked in polite curiosity. "So, you're not having any trouble meeting people?"

"No."

"You sure? There's a lot of boys your age in Leaf who I'm sure would like to get to know you. Who knows, maybe you'd do well with some social contacts your own age."

Keiko delicately set her chopsticks down on the ivory rest provided for the purpose. She bowed to the group and even offered a polite smile. "My social contacts have been adequate. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm quite full and I have some trade data that I would like to finish analyzing. Dinner was delicious; please thank the chefs for me, Lord Hokage." She pushed herself to her feet, bowed again, and vanished.

Jiraiya sighed.

"I told you you should have asked directly," Mari-sensei said calmly, not looking up from her soup. "If she didn't come to you immediately then she wasn't going to bring it up ever."

"Yeah, yeah," muttered the Hokage waspishly as he stabbed his chopstick into an unoffending dumpling. "Next time I'll do it your way."

Hazō and Noburi busied themselves with their food, carefully keeping their eyes down and mouths full so as not to attract attention. Sadly, there was nowhere to hide.

"So, since it seems like bluntness is the only route with you lot," Jiraiya said, "tell me about how you almost killed that kid in the market."

Hazō and Noburi exchanged guilty looks.

"We didn't hurt her," Hazō tried. "Didn't even scare her. She was excited about the whole thing."

"Her mother was terrified," Jiraiya said sharply. "You drew weapons and activated battle jutsu in the middle of a crowded marketplace. You started an attack against an unarmed civilian child. Fortunately, you controlled yourself and no one was hurt."

He grimaced and set his chopsticks on his plate. "I'm not trying to dress you down," he said in a conciliatory tone. "And I'm not taking any official notice of this incident. I'm worried, that's all. You guys just came back from what turned into an unexpectedly hairy mission. You're still operating on battlezone reflexes, and that's dangerous."

"'Hairy'?!" Hazō snapped, guilt and embarrassment flashing over into anger. "Seriously? We had to butcher a boatload of people and then watch our team leader get her throat torn out because you fucked up your network!" The instant it was too late to take the words back he realized what they had been. The angry flush drained from his face, leaving him pale and shaking.

Jiraiya smiled sadly. "You're right. That mission was way worse than 'hairy', and it's on me. For what it's worth, I'm sorry."

Hazō blinked.

His clan leader chuckled at his expression and shook his head sadly. "Hazō, you can't talk to me like that in public—in fact, you can't talk to anyone like that in public—but you're not wrong. Ninja life has a few bright spots, but mostly it sucks. What you and your team have had to go through, no one should have to go through. It's not fair and it's not right, but it is what it is. I can't fix things, but I can at least try to help you deal with them. If you want to talk to one of the Yamanaka, I can arrange it. If there's anything I personally can do, I will."

"No, sir," Hazō said stiffly. "Thank you for the offer. I'll be fine. It won't happen again."

Jiraiya studied him for a moment, then glanced at Mari-sensei. At her tiny headshake he sighed and nodded. "Okay," he said in defeat. "Let me know if you change your mind. In the meantime, I'm afraid I need to get back to the office."

o-o-o-o​

Kagome-sensei's talks with Yamanaka Neira had been awkward since day one. During their first session the woman had immediately recognized that her office, comfortable and reassuring as it was for most people, was not a good place for Kagome-sensei. She had asked him where a better place would be and had not batted an eye when he chose what had previously been Training Area Number Four. Formerly known as 'that place near the big oak tree where ninja go to blow everything up for the glory of Leaf...and Science!', it was now known as 'that place near where the big oak tree used to be where the Gōketsu clan do things that will turn you into a slime mold if you look at them.' Despite the fact that potentially reality-destroying experiments went on there every day, Kagome felt safer amidst the massive number of traps and defenses of the research area than he felt anywhere else.

Today, as for the last three days, Kagome-sensei and Yamanaka sat facing one another on the east side of the field while the rest of the team stayed on the west side, in Kagome-sensei's line of sight but out of earshot.

Noburi had been lounging in the sun a few yards away, alternating between dozing and watching Hazō work through the last of the Nara training seals. When Hazō finally sat back with a grunt of satisfaction Noburi was there with a pair of sandwiches and a waterskin.

"Thanks," Hazō said, taking one of the sandwiches and tearing into it. "Didn't realize I was this hungry."

"You were out here at dawn and you skipped lunch," Noburi pointed out. "Figure it out?"

"Yeah," Hazō said with a snort. "Not exactly world-shaking but they make a good foundation. Check this out." He pulled a blank off the top of each of the eight piles he'd been working on and infused them in rapid order. "This one is Chime." He pushed a little chakra into it and it emitted a soft tone for a moment. "It's the baby brother of the alarm seal and the banshees. No proximity sensor, minimal volume, minimal duration. Nothing but an induction node and a third-factor dispersion gate. Some interesting harmonics on the—"

"Zzzzzz." Noburi let his head fall forward on his chest in pretend sleep.

Hazō glowered at him. "Fine," he grumbled. "Anyway, it's a progression. Chime makes a sound and the others build on that—play for longer, choose one of two tones, choose one of two tones and it plays longer, and so on. Good stuff. It's the first organized practicum I've seen—the book Jiraiya gave me is mostly theory with some basic seal elements as demonstration and Kagome-sensei jumps around a lot."

"'Practicum'?" Noburi said, eyebrows raised. "You've been talking with Keiko about it, haven't you?"

"Yeah, well, she was interested. I mean, not in learning sealing herself, but in the methods for organizing and transmitting information."

"Mm, sounds like Keiko," Noburi said, taking a bite of his own sandwich and chewing thoughtfully. He gestured across the field towards the sealmaster and the mindwalker. "Speaking of transmitting information, what do you think they're talking about?"

"Nothing," Hazō said with a shrug. "I don't think either of them has said a word yet. They're both waiting for the other one to talk first."

Noburi rolled his eyes. "It's been three days."

Hazō shrugged. "She doesn't seem to be in a rush."

Noburi grunted acknowledgement and finished his sandwich before speaking again. "You ever think about talking to her?" he asked very casually, looking off at a cloud formation that was moving in their direction.

"No."

"Yeah, me neither."