"What can I do for you kids?" the civilian asked. Hazō hated everything about him. Everything from his friendly smile to his attentive posture. He was fat and oily and...civilian, unable to defend himself in any way, yet he held the power to stand between Hazō and his clan's financial security.

"Need licenses," Kagome-sensei grunted. The sealmaster's face screwed up as though he were about to spit. "Gotta sell seals."

The man blinked and sat back, his posture suddenly far less inviting. "Seals?"

"Yes, sir," Hazō said, the Iron Nerve giving him the same friendly smile he had worn upon first meeting his best friend, Shiro, at the age of six. (But giving no sign of the agony he'd felt when Shiro cut him off after the other boy failed to be accepted at the Academy.) "Jirai—Lord Hokage has accredited both of us as competent sealmasters. Now we just need our licenses to sell."

The fat little toad blinked. "Well. If anyone would know, he would."

"Also, Mr. Gima, we wish to get licenses for several non-seal-based commercial activities," Keiko said. "Hazō has an idea for more efficient butchering and our team has a jutsu that creates granite walls. We would like to market this ability to civilians for use in construction and raw material supply. Beyond that, I am the Pangolin Summoner. I wish to be able to contract my summons for plowing, digging, cargo moving, and caravan guarding."

"And I've got jutsu that let me move water around," Noburi said. "I figure I can use them for low-volume irrigation, as well as for anything that requires, uh, 'substantial cutting or crushing force'."

Gima digested that. "I see," he said. "And, of course, Lord Hokage is fine with all this."

"Yeah, he is," Kagome-sensei growled. "And you better be too, you stinker, because if you're not—"

"I believe what Kagome means," Noburi said quickly, "is that yes, Lord Hokage is fine with us applying for pretty broad licenses. He specifically sent us to you." He held out a scroll with the Hokage's chop on it. "We brought a specific list of what we're looking for."

"I see," Gima said again. He took the scroll, broke it open and skimmed through. "That's quite a lot."

"Is there a problem?" Hazō asked.

"No, no problem. Just...a lot." He shook off his surprise and opened a drawer on his desk. "I'll start the paperwork, but I must warn you that it may take a while. The Council is being a bit slow lately given the recent tragedy."

"Tragedy?" Keiko asked.

"Yes, the death of all those ninja," Gima said, looking genuinely sad. "It's a tragedy when any of Leaf's defenders falls, but to lose so many at once? It's really torn a hole in the supply of ninja able to do high-end missions. The prices are sky-high now, and the Council is very nervous about potential market disruption." He paused. "Please forgive me if this is too forward but...no one's told us anything about what actually happened, simply that they died in the line of duty. Rumors are saying everything from 'defending the border against a massive assault by Mist' to 'holding back a swarm of demons released by a foolish sealmaster.' I even heard something about them ascending to the Pure Land to serve as an honor guard for the Sage of Six Paths. I'm sure it's classified, but I knew some of them. My uncle had a contract with Minabuchi Eito for clearing the critters off the farm every six weeks. They used to have him for dinner whenever he finished clearing the chakra voles out of the fields. I ate with him several times and thought he was a wonderful man. Is there anything at all you can tell me about what happened to him?"

Without looking, Hazō reached out and clamped his hand on Kagome-sensei's arm.

"I'm really sorry," Noburi said regretfully. "We might be the Hokage's clan, but that doesn't mean he tells us anything. I'll ask him if it's possible to make a more detailed statement, but I can't promise anything."

Gima bobbed his head gratefully. "Thank you. If not, I understand. I know a lot of what you people do is classified, and I accept that." He looked from each of them to the next, his face somber. "Thank you for your service, all of you. I will get you these licenses as quickly as I can." He paused. "Just...you're both sealmasters, so you'd know. There's no such thing as demons coming through a hole in reality like the rumors say, right? Reality isn't like a piece of paper."

"Of course not," Kagome-sensei said. "It's not nearly that sturdy. More like a cobweb, really."

"What Kagome-sensei means," Hazō desperately interjected, "is that yes, it's possible. It's very unlikely, however. You need a sealmaster who is working on something well beyond his abilities and even then you need to get very unlucky. Usually seal failures just explode." Or turn into talking chakra-construct porcupines, but let's ignore that for a moment.

"Oh," Gima said, digesting that. "Thank you for explaining. I'll start working on your papers right away."

o-o-o-o​

Jiraiya had arrived at the dinner table five minutes after everyone else and torn into the food like a starving wolf. Hazō politely waited for the Hokage to get a bunch of food in him before asking the question that had been burning him up.

"Jiraiya," Hazō said, "I was thinking about the Merchant Council. They don't make any sense, and I was wondering—

"Hazō," said Mari-sensei warningly. "Maybe not the best time."

"But—"

"Let him talk," Jiraiya growled. "Can't always be there to hold his hand, Mari. Only way he's going to learn not to shove his feet down his own throat is to see that they taste bad. Spit it out, Hazō. You were saying that the Merchant Council makes no sense?"

Hazō swallowed. He had clearly underestimated the foulness of Jiraiya's mood. "It can wait," he said. "How was your day, sir?"

"Peachy. The clan treasury is down to about two weeks of expenses and Hyūga just outmaneuvered me on a key trade deal that would have fixed our financial issues for the foreseeable future. Inuzuka is giving me shit about seal quotas and disapproving of the way I do business. If I hear 'that's not the way the Third did it' one more time I'm going to rip her fucking arms off. Motoyoshi, Amori, and Kurusu have formed a power bloc on the Clan Council and are pressuring me for concessions. We've got fuck-all on Naruto aside from exactly one lead which just went tits-up and burned one of my best agents in Hot Springs. There's some sort of clan fight going on in Mist which I haven't been able to get a read on because all three fucking agents I sent in came back fucking dead and, of course, one of them was from the Motoyoshi clan. Did I mention how they've clubbed up with the Amori and the Kurusu? How about the part where they asked me not to do the mission because they had an alternative that they thought would be safer, but I overrode them because theirs couldn't go off for an extra day? Because that's a thing that happened. Now the bastards are oh-so-politely smugging at me in front of the others. Nothing disrespectful, nothing I can yank them up short for, just helpful little comments that twist the knife. So please, Hazō, tell me about how the Merchant Council makes no sense. I'm just dying to listen to your theories about how things should work."

"Um...."

"Spit it the fuck out, kid!"

Hazō gulped. "Well, sir, I was thinking about how you said that the Council formed after the founding of the village and how they keep the ninja out of commerce with a threat of embargo. That seemed strange, sir, and I was wondering how it came about. Civilians don't usually threaten ninja, sir. And it seems like there would be black markets springing up that would invalidate the whole thing. And, also, even if such a thing could work in Leaf because you—because we are the nice village then it certainly wouldn't work elsewhere. And having ninja participating in the economy would boost production a lot—if we keep them out but the other villages don't then we'll be at a disadvantage and the other villages would outcompete us. It doesn't make sense."

"Sage's sweaty balls, Hazō," Jiraiya said, throwing his chopsticks down. "Don't be a fucking idiot. Of course it's not that simple. The Council is backed by the Hokage and exists to keep the ninja oriented where the should be: on military operations.

"Look, before the villages was the Warring Clans period. The entire world was a constant giant disaster. A few civilian towns that did the farming and paid tribute to their ninja overlords, a whole lot of clans running around everywhere killing each other and any civs that happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. All the clans were constantly on the move so they couldn't be ganged up on. No one could afford to have a fixed base because it just made you a target. They'd descend on a civilian settlement, loot everything that wasn't nailed down, then vanish back into the woods. As such, a lot of civilians stayed on the move themselves, traveling from place to place in heavily armed caravans which could usually survive the wilderness but still took heavy casualties. Disease was everywhere, there was constant looting, and everyone was living on the edge of starvation because the ninja wouldn't stop burning the fucking fields if a civilian mouthed off to them. The whole world was sixty pounds of shit in a five pound sack.

"Senju Hashirama was one of the strongest ninja of his time and the biggest fucking altruist since the Sage himself. Or maybe he just had a little more self-interest and a lot more brains, I don't know. He and Uchiha Madara were rivals all through their childhood. You know how stupidly overpowered the Uchiha's Sharingan bloodline is, right? Yeah, try to imagine a couple hundred Sharingan users all working together. They were an incredibly powerful clan, which made them a target for all the others. You can't keep the Sharingan running twenty-four hours a day, so a kunai from ambush thrown at the right time can still kill you. Plus, the Sharingan won't warn you about poison in your food. The Uchiha could win any stand-up fight but they couldn't entirely keep from taking losses to enemy clans. There weren't all that many of them even then and their birthrate wasn't enough to keep up with the losses. Senju convinced them to join up with him—I don't know how, but if the legends are true it involved beating the shit out of Uchiha in a taijutsu fight, then crushing him in a competitive Chanoyu match, debating him into the ground at philosophy, and making him weep tears of blood from a humiliating defeat in poetry composition.

"Anyway, Uchiha agreed to help found Leaf if Senju could solve the logistics issues—he agreed that it would be possible to hold the walls, but he didn't see how they were going to get enough food. Senju went around to a lot of the smaller civilian towns and caravans and told them about the idea. Civilians weren't real fond of ninja at the time, since pretty much the only time they saw one was when he was stealing their food, raping their daughters, or killing them for not bowing and scraping enough. They weren't really thrilled at the idea of living next door to a whole bunch of ninja; they figured it was just going to mean being poor-as-shit slaves who got killed by ninja even more often than they already did.

"Now, the legend is that thirteen groups were too cowardly and stupid to agree when Senju graciously offered them permission to join with Leaf. The fourteenth group agreed because he came along just as they were being slaughtered by members of the cowardly Hōzuki clan, who Senju single-handedly slew in a mighty battle that blotted out the heavens with a rain of blood." He paused and snorted. "Stupid fucking idea. Personally, I bet he told them to come along or he'd burn their shithole town to the ground. Either way, once he had the first group and he could point to how well-treated they were—and don't get me wrong, he treated those first batch of merchants like fucking princes because he wasn't a fucking idiot like the Hyūga and he recognized that ninja cannot survive without civilians. Anyway, once he got that first batch the whole thing snowballed.

"In the early days Leaf mostly got built by ninja. MEW was used to build the wall around the city, Hokage Tower, and a lot of the earliest buildings. The Senju's Mokuton bloodline was used to create tree-based defenses outside the wall. Ninja with Fire Element techniques burned everything inside the wall to ash so that the civilians could live safely and grow enough crops to feed everyone. Senju made it damn clear that the ninja would play nice with the civilians. For the first couple of months he personally executed any ninja who stole from or injured a civilian; let me tell you, that shit stopped real fast. Those laws are still on the books, too; the Hokage has a legal obligation to ensure that any ninja who hurts a civilian is severely punished and anyone who kills a civilian is executed. That's why I was so freaked out at your little misstep in the market."

"I didn't realize that," Hazō said, feeling himself go pale.

"Of course not," Jiraiya said. "Which is why I've been making sure you're too busy to spend much time in public since then and you've had ANBU hovering over you when you do go out. I've been waiting for all of you to decompress a little bit and then you're going to sit down for a serious education on the laws here." He grimaced. "And also on how to spot the disturbingly frequent signs that civilian abuse has happened, since plenty of them aren't willing to come forward and name their attacker.

"Anyway, back to the history lesson. The ninja were a little dubious about the whole 'fixed base' thing in the beginning, but they rapidly became keen on the idea. The clan leaders were quick to realize that they were making more money and living more comfortable lives by cooperating with each other, and with the civilians, than they had by looting and pillaging. They started setting up businesses, running caravans, all kinds of things. Leaf grew like a weed.

"Of course, every ninja who was building housing for the influx of merchants and civilian refugees wasn't defending the village and was generally too low on chakra at the end of the day to be useful in a fight. Senju couldn't have that. He needed a strong ninja force, not just to defend the home front but also to project power. Leaf wasn't self-sufficient—we still aren't—and so it was critical that we be able to trade with other settlements. That meant both protecting those settlements and guarding the caravans back and forth. He also needed to do diplomacy with other ninja clans, persuade them to either join Leaf or settle down themselves, protect settlements. 'Diplomacy' back then pretty much convincing the other guy that you had the bigger beatstick. Senju was an incredible badass and could have stomped most other ninja into the mud, but he needed them to believe that without actually having to start a fight because corpses make lousy trade partners. That meant having a big entourage with him. He also needed plenty of sandals on the ground in order to find the other clans, since they were still hiding and moving around a lot. He couldn't afford to have ninja spending all their time irrigating fields."

"So he founded the Merchant Council?" Hazō guessed.

Jiraiya gulped down another dumpling, took a sip of his water, and nodded. "Yeah, but under the table. Without his name ever being attached to it, he quietly helped the merchants create a bureaucracy that would simultaneously put the brakes on how much non-military work the ninja could do, put the burden of managing the whole thing on the civilians, and give the civilians a measure of power that would let them penalize clans who stole or killed so that Senju didn't have to spend as much time doing it personally. Plus, it distanced the whole thing from the Hokage. His hands were clean—if someone stole from the civilians then the Merchant Council would embargo all the ninja, which would motivate the other clans to punish the one that committed the crime. All that Senju had to do was stay out of it while making it clear that, even during an embargo, he would still enforce the 'no killing civilians' rule.

"Anyway, it worked. Senju got the ninja focused on military operations, and the village was still growing. The clans weren't thrilled about the whole situation, but they were willing to accept it as long as no one, including the Hokage, received preferential treatment. It's worked ever since. Enough licenses are given out that ninja who really want to start a business can, but the Council makes sure that there's enough missions at the mission desk that it's generally not worth the trouble. Ninja who want to have a side job can boost the economy, and the merchants feel like they have a real stake in Leaf and some power to affect their own destinies. The economy grows fast and everybody wins."

"And, of course, all of the other Kage, and all the ninja protecting civilian settlements in general, saw this and copied it," Hazō said, nodding thoughtfully. "Why did they keep doing it, though? Once things settled down and the Warring Clans period was really over, why wouldn't they go back to having ninja doing business? It would obviously be better for Leaf, and for the merchants, too. Their costs would drop a lot if they let ninja use jutsu and seals to do things more quickly and easily than the civilians can. Then the civilians could focus on the things that they're good at and ninja aren't. Everyone would obviously be richer since costs would drop."

"When situations change, some people lose out," Keiko said. "Markets would be destabilized and some families would go out of business. The ones who are already wealthy would prefer that things remain the way they are. Beyond a certain level of wealth the marginal value of money declines—that is, there is immense benefit gained when moving your income from a net of zero ryo per day to a net of two hundred per day, but much less when moving from two thousand per day to twenty-two hundred. At that point it is entirely rational to focus on risk reduction as opposed to profit maximization."

"But that's crazy!" Hazō said. "Everyone would be better off. So what if a few people lost out on their current businesses? They could just start different ones. And so what if they weren't as rich relative to other people? They'd be richer than they were! Even people with good lives want better lives and if you let ninja use jutsu and seals to boost the economy then things would get cheaper. All merchants want cheaper inputs to their production, so why would they actively work against their own best interests by keeping ninja out? Even if a few of them didn't like the idea, others would. We should be seeing the poorer merchants reaching out to ninja and working around the licensing rules. It's stupid for them not to!" He threw his hands in the air. "None of this makes any sense!"

Jiraiya stared at him for a moment, then shook his head. "Kid, could you please get your head out of your ass for ten seconds? The world isn't a perfect place and people aren't nice. A person can be smart, brave, honest, and thoughtful. People are fucking idiots who only care about themselves. They're stupid, they're cowardly, they're easily lead, and they have the morals of a horny mink.

"The way things are is great for a whole lot of people. The ones on the Merchant Council are ridiculously wealthy from taking more bribes than a city guardsman in a whorehouse. The clans are fat and happy because they get preferential selection of missions, so they don't care too much about not being able to water fields and raise walls. Plus, they get to use the Council as a club against civilian-born ninja, and simultaneously make themselves feel big and important.

"Do you know how much money is spent on propaganda in this town? A lot. Everyone has levers to pull. For some of the older generation it's still 'ninja are evil bastards', so they get told that the Council is a shining light of justice, protecting the common man from those evil bastard ninja who would otherwise use their magic to drive good, hard-working civilians out of business. Some people just don't like ninja because they envy us for our abilities, or resent the fact that a lot of ninja treat civilians with contempt. They get told 'look, we can stick it to those smug assholes!' The younger generation mostly think that ninja are great, so for them the message is 'Ninja must train! Spending time on commerce would reduce the military readiness of our noble protectors and get them killed! The licensing rules are in their best interest!' Everyone gets told whatever will convince them the current system is good, so no one pushes for change. Merchants caught doing unlicensed business with ninja get pressured to cut it out. Sometimes the pressure is economic, sometimes it's applied with a club. We try to keep a lid on that part."

"Wouldn't it better just to remove the need?" Hazō asked. "Wouldn't Leaf be better off without the licensing system? Let's get rid of it. Then there wouldn't be any black marketing because it would all be legal."

Mari-sensei winced and Jiraiya snorted. "Blood and death, kid. You think I give a shit? The system works. Is it ideal? No. Am I going to do anything about it? Sage's festering boils, no. I basically took the hat by force, most of the clans would love to see me out so they could push for someone more sympathetic to their specific needs. I'm trying to find Naruto before Leaf falls apart, I'm simultaneously trying to keep up diplomatic relations with half a dozen countries. You think I'm about to upset the apple cart over this? Fuck that idea with a band saw. Three Hokages before me, including my teacher who was smarter and more politically savvy than everyone in this room put together, didn't feel the need to change things. Leaf is growing in terms of population and our military power is increasing faster than anyone else's, but not so much so that the other nations are ready to start a war over it. Maybe, if we threw the current economic system up in the air like you obviously want, maybe what came down would be better. Maybe, but maybe not. Why should we take the chance?"

Hazō looked away, stabbing resentfully at his food. "It's still stupid," he mumbled.

"Welcome to my world," Jiraiya said with a shrug.

o-o-o-o​

"Agh!" Hazō yelled, hurling the demon-infested, Sage-damned, boil-festering, stinking wooden tube across the field in a massive burst of chakra-enhanced strength that sent the thing tumbling out of sight over the nearest trees.

"Still not working?" Akane asked, smiling sympathetically.

"No!" Hazō growled. "Can't get the seals to align."

"Is this a bad time?" Noburi asked lightly, walking out of the treeline behind them. "Hazō, are you tearing holes in the world again?"

"Fuck you," Hazō growled.

"Hazō!"

"Sorry, Akane," he said. "Noburi, sorry. I didn't mean it, I'm just really frustrated."

Noburi shrugged. "No problem. What are you working on, anyway?"

Hazō glared at the next wooden tube lying beside him. "You know the Lesser Barrier Formation seal that Kagome-sensei uses?"

"The chakra tripwire?" Noburi asked. "Sure. Two seals, anything that passes between them sets it off, boom."

"Yeah, well, it doesn't have to be boom," Hazō said. "An LBF can activate any seal you want, not just explosives. Storage seal, Air Dome, whatever. Which means we can make seals usable by civilians, since all they have to do is wave their hand through the beam."

"Huh," Noburi said, eyebrows rising. "Okay, that's pretty cool. Sounds dangerous though. Give civilians access to seals and who knows what they'll do?"

Hazō waved dismissively. "Eh, we'll handle it. All we have to do is only give them to the law-abiding ones. Besides, even if there's a little bit of downside the upsides are worth it. We can put macerators on the LBF and give civilians a weapon that they can use to kill chakra beasts. Or put Air Domes on it so they have a defense."

Noburi studied him dubiously. "Okaaay. So, how are you going to do this?"

"You take the two halves of an LBF and you put them at opposite ends of a wooden tube, like this." Hazō picked up one of the wooden tubes that Akane had made and its two endcaps, each of which had a seal carefully glued in place. "You should just be able to put the caps in and have the beam form inside. You interrupt it with a lever in order to make the attached seals fire, but I can't make it work. I can't get the LBF seals to align precisely enough when I can't see them."

"What's the point of the tube?" Noburi asked.

"It keeps the seals aligned so you can move them around. Plus, weatherproofing."

"So if the LBF seals are inside the tube, where are the seals that they're going to activate?" Noburi asked. "When Kagome sets up the perimeter he always puts the explosives in contact with the LBF seals. It's not useful to put them inside with the LBF and if you put them on the outside then the activation effect has to reach through the wood of the endcap. Plus, the seals you want to activate are exposed to the weather."

"Yeah, I haven't worked that part out yet," Hazō admitted. "I just wanted to get a basic prototype working." He smiled. "I call it the gunwand!"

Noburi looked at him. "Right. Well, I'm here to remind you guys that it's almost dinner time."

Akane leaped to her feet, eyes wide. "Already?!" She glanced at the sun. "Hazō, we need to go!"

Noburi waved a calming hand. "It's okay, it's okay," he said. "You've got time to shower and change. Mari-sensei sent me out well in advance."

"Thank you!" said Akane's rapidly-diminishing voice as she grabbed Hazō's hand in an inescapable grip and ran into the distance.

o-o-o-o​

Ishihara Kenta had been waiting by the door for thirty minutes when the knock finally came. He gave his best shirt one final tug, ran a hand nervously through his hair, and opened the door with a wide smile.

"Hazō, so nice of you to urk!"

Kenta had been prepared to see Hazō on his doorstep. Prepared to invite the boy that he had once told to stay away from Akane into his home and treat him well. It had been hard to accept the fact that Hazō was no longer a missing-nin and was in fact now the son of the Hokage—indeed, there were still moments when he found himself wondering if the whole thing had just been a dream, or perhaps a nightmare. He couldn't decide if he was more terrified that the boy would hold a grudge against Kenta or that he would take Akane away. Oh, he seemed to care for her well enough, but if she stayed with him she would be sucked into the maelstrom of high-level politics. Ninja died from politics as surely as from field duty.

Still, afraid or not, Kenta had been ready to welcome Hazō into his home for the sake of his own honor and Akane's happiness. What he had not been ready for, however, was to see the Hokage on his doorstep. And the Hokage's family. All of them. And two ANBU special forces wearing face-concealing animal masks...and carrying picnic baskets?

The Hokage smiled widely and extended a hand to shake. "Ishihara Kenta, such a pleasure!" he boomed. The Hokage's voice was big, even bigger than the man himself. Tall, broad-shouldered, and deep-chested as he was, that was saying something.

Kenta just stared. The Hokage of Leaf. A member of the Sannin, the Legendary Three Ninja. One of the most dangerous individuals alive. Author of a huge catalog of smutty books that both Kenta and his wife found quite...stimulating. He was here. On Kenta's doorstep.

Jiraiya's eyes were twinkling and his smile only got wider as Kenta stared. After a moment the Sannin cleared his throat and glanced towards his own extended hand. The sound seemed to restart Kenta's brain and made him immediately grab the calloused hand and pump it up and down.

"Yes! Sir! Lord Hokage, welcome! Please, come in." He pivoted, gesturing inside with one arm and almost thwapping Yukari in the chest as she came to join them.

Jiraiya bowed politely to Akane's mother. "Ishihara Yukari, I presume? It's an honor, ma'am."

Yukari returned the bow. When she straightened her face was lit up with a radiant smile. "Lord Hokage, such an honor. Please, won't you come in?" She gestured into the house far more gracefully than Kenta had.

Jiraiya started to step across the threshold but stopped when one of the ANBU coughed significantly. He rolled his eyes in disgust. "Yes, yes," he griped over his shoulder. "Go on, check the place out." He turned back to the Ishiharas as the ANBU flowed inside, their inherent threat somewhat disrupted by the brightly-colored picnic baskets they each carried. "I do apologize for this. I'm really not used to the whole bodyguard thing, but they do insist."

"Not at all, not at all," Kenta said, nervously cataloging everything in the house to see if somehow it might be objectionable to the terrifying bogeymen who guarded the lord and master of Leaf. His tobacco had been grown in the Land of Rivers; would he be considered a traitor for not buying domestic?

"Clear, sir," said one of the ANBU, re-emerging from the kitchen area. Jiraiya waved impatiently and the two masked killers turned to the owners of the home into which they had so forcefully barged. They bowed low and the one on the left said, "Please pardon the intrusion, sir, ma'am. We hope you have a lovely dinner." There was a puff of smoke and they were gone.

The Hokage's wife rolled her eyes. "Showoffs," she mumbled. "Please excuse the drama, both of you. I'm afraid those two are new on the job and they're still feeling a little overprotective." She stepped forward, both hands extended to Yukari and a wide smile on her beautiful face. Kenta found himself very relieved that the Hokage's wife wore a high-collared shirt; she was short enough that from here he would have been staring straight down her undoubtedly-impressive cleavage if she had had any on display. (A tiny and very stupid part of himself also felt regret.)

"Not at all," Yukari said, taking her hands with a matching smile. "Such a pleasure."

"The pleasure is all mine," Gōketsu Mari said sincerely. "Allow me to introduce my children. This is Keiko, Noburi, and of course you know Hazō."

Yukari laughed. "I do indeed. I must say, things have changed since the last time you were here, young man."

The boy shuffled his feet nervously. "Thank you, ma'am?" he said.

"It is an honor to meet you, sir, ma'am," the girl—Keiko?—said gravely. Her bow was exactly the correct degree, her manner far too serious for a teenager. Was she angry? Had Kenta offended her by not acknowledging her sooner? Would the Hokage or his wife restrain her if she acted on that anger?

"An honor and a pleasure," the remaining boy said with an easygoing smile and a bow. He was remarkably stocky for a ninja, his face caught halfway between a child's baby fat and a man's chiseled jaw. Still, half-grown or not, Kenta had the suspicion that the boy could break him in half without trying.

The thought made Kenta's brain jump tracks. They'd been planning for half this many seats at table—four, not eight! If Akane was at all representative, ninja ate far more than normal people; was there even enough food in the house for everyone? Would the Hokage get upset at being made to wait while they cooked more? Sage's blessed benevolence, what if the food wasn't up to his standards? What if the house wasn't up to his standards? The Hokage was undoubtedly used to dining on gold plates and sitting on silk cushions; would the utilitarian stoneware and wooden chairs of the Ishihara house offend him?!

"I hope you don't mind us dropping in like this," the Hokage said. "Hazō mentioned that he was going to be having dinner here tonight and I thought I could probably save everyone some difficulty if I came along to answer questions. Then Mari heard and insisted on coming, and we couldn't very well all go and abandon Noburi and Keiko, so...." He gestured towards the kitchen where the ANBU had gone. "I realize that you were only expecting to have the four of you, so I brought a few items." He flashed a roguish grin. "Let's say the first basket is a hostess gift and the second is a potluck contribution."

Kenta carefully masked his sigh of relief. A Hokage who was courteous enough to bring a hostess gift and thoughtful enough to ensure there was food for everyone wouldn't take offense at being asked to sit on an uncushioned chair. The evening probably wouldn't end in disaster.