Itachi was waiting in the kitchen when the first child knocked on their door. Carefully checking to make sure that he looked as casual as possible, Itachi slowly got up from the kitchen table and made his way to the entrance way to let the kid in.

He opened the door to the wary look of one of his second cousins, a boy named Hideki that was about seven years old, a year younger than Sasuke. The boy looked nervous as soon as he saw that it was Itachi that opened the door, and took a half-step back like he wanted to run. He ducked his head at Itachi, trying to hide behind his shaggy dark brown hair. "Uh… Sasuke said…."

Itachi did his best to smile encouragingly him. "Sasuke told you to come here, right?" He prompted the boy gently. "He said he was organising some sort of camping trip, and that a lot of kids were going to be turning up on our doorstep."

Hideki looked up at him in relief and nodded eagerly. "Sasuke said that everyone was going to meet at his house before we went camping."

Itachi stepped aside, waving Hideki into his home. "Come on in then, we can wait in the living room for everyone else to arrive." He tried to smile again, but he wasn't totally sure that the expression was having the calming effect he was hoping for. Hideki nervously ducked through the doorway, politely took off his shoes and made to follow Itachi to the living room.

They had barely sat down when there was another knocking at the door, a somewhat livelier tap this time around, and Itachi excused himself to the quiet Hideki so that he could go answer the door again. He padded down the hall at a quicker pace than one would expect for a dignified Uchiha, but he wanted to usher the children into the house and off the street as soon as possible; he didn't want his neighbours to start wondering why so many children had suddenly decided to congregate at the head's household.

He opened the door not to one child this time, but three. An eleven year old Academy girl with her dark red hair tied up in a braid clutching the hand of her five year old brother, her nine year old brother hovering at her back. She smiled at Itachi brightly and informed him that Sasuke had told them to come over to the house in order to meet up for a camping trip. It took a moment before Itachi groggily pulled up their names from the depths of his memory, it had been quite a while since he had been around the children of the clan. The girl was Haruna, the one clutching her hand had to be little Samuru, and the other boy was Arata. He welcomed them into the house and took them to sit with Hideki, who looked very relieved to have company.

Over the course of an hour, eight more children arrived, all telling him the same story of Sasuke's camping trip. None of them seemed suspicious that anything else was going on, and he ushered them all into the living room to wait together. Doing a head count and mentally accounting for every child of the clan, Itachi realised that Sasuke had managed to pull through for him better than he had hoped. If he wasn't wrong, the room was only missing three children under the age of twelve and above the age of four that the clan possessed, and one of them was Sasuke, who was surely going to join them soon.

"I'm back!" Itachi couldn't help but breathe a quiet sigh of relief. Sasuke had returned, and he sounded triumphant. Ducking his way out of the living room, Itachi jogged over to the entranceway to greet his brother with a smile.

Sasuke wasn't alone, he had in tow behind him the two other children that Itachi had accounting missing in his head count earlier, as well as three extras. One of the two missing children, a six year old girl with short and spiky black hair ducked his head shyly at him and murmured her greeting, but the other, a ten year old with shoulder length black hair and a scowl, was clutching at the hands of two identical brunette toddlers. Clutching at Sasuke's shorts, thumb in her mouth and light brown hair hanging over her onyx eyes, was another toddler.

The boy with the scowl gave Itachi an apologetic look. "Mom wouldn't let me go if I didn't take the twins with me." He explained. "She said that a night in the woods wouldn't hurt them, and they're nearly three, so they shouldn't be too much of a pain."

Sasuke turned to Itachi. "I told them it was okay if the little kids came too, is it alright?"

Itachi smiled down at the toddlers. "Of course it's fine. You're not going anywhere dangerous, and I was tagging along with the other kids by the time I was their age anyway."

The boy with the scowl (Matsu, his name was if Itachi remember correctly) thanked Itachi and tugged the wide eyed twins towards the living room, where the sound of the other kids laughing and chatting was coming from. The six year old girl ducked her head at Sasuke and Itachi again and followed along behind, leaving Sasuke, Itachi and the last toddler alone in the hallway.

Itachi looked down at her, then back up to Sasuke, a questioning look on his face. Sasuke reached down and untangled her hand from his shorts, securing it in his own hand instead. "This is Eri." He told Itachi. "She's Hanae's daughter, Matsu's neighbour. When she saw that we were taking the twins, she said that Eri should tag along too, she's only a month younger than them anyway." He was looking at Itachi defiantly, trying to justify bringing along kids that were much younger than the four year age requirement that Itachi had originally told him.

Itachi clapped Sasuke on the shoulder. "It's fine." He said quietly. "I'm actually glad you managed to get a couple of the really little children to come along, I didn't think you'd be able to convince anyone to let them come, so I didn't bother asking you to try and bring them."

Sasuke nodded slowly. "Yeah, probably only Hanae and Aunt Rei would be crazy enough to send three year olds away on a camping trip without their supervision." He said thoughtfully. "So what are we going to do now? Are we really going camping, or was that just what you wanted me to tell everyone?"

Sasuke was sharp. He knew that Itachi was plotting something, and camping wasn't part of it. "No, sorry, we're not going camping." He tightened his grip on Sasuke's shoulder. "I'm going to let you in on some stuff that I'm not going to tell the other kids now, but I need you to stay calm and remember that I'm telling you all this so you can help me trick the others into doing what we need them to do."

Sasuke raised his eyebrows and looked down at the toddler still clutching at his hand. She still had her thumb in her mouth and appeared to be half asleep. Sasuke looked back up to Itachi. "She's really quiet. Hasn't said a word since we left Hanae's, and she's never said much even when I've been around her before."

Itachi nodded. "When she does talk, does she repeat things?"

Sasuke shook his head. "Apparently she's a late bloomer; most of what she says is garbled nonsense. She's two and a half, but she's still at the baby talk stage."

"Good." Itachi focussed his attention back on Sasuke. "Now, stay calm and listen to me. Tonight, something is going to happen, and I need to make sure that you kids are away and in a safe place when things go down."

Sasuke's eyes widen like saucers, and his face immediately pales. "Nii-san? What's going to-?"

"I don't want to give you too many details." Itachi cut him off. "I can't. Please don't ask me to."

Sasuke shut his mouth with a click and nodded once robotically.

"What's going to happen now is we're going to go into the living room and tell all of the children that you and I are going to take them through a clan initiation of sorts, one that the children of the clan head have done for generations, and one that has to be kept secret from the adults while we're doing it."

Sasuke nodded slowly. "What kind of initiation is it?"

"None of the kids have gone into the inner sanctuary before; we're going to tell them that we're going to take them in together for the first time tonight."

"Inner sanctuary?" Sasuke frowned. "Is there one?"

"Yes." Itachi said patiently. "It's under the shrine. Not many people know it's there, and really, it isn't anything so special, but to kids, a secret room is exactly the kind of thing that they'll expect with a clan initiation."

"So we sneak the kids into the secret shrine room, and they'll all play along because they think it's an initiation and they can't alert the adults to the fact that we're up to something." A wide grin spread over Sasuke's face. "Nii-san, you're brilliant!"

Itachi smiled down at him ruefully. "So I've been told." He said. "So, you up for helping me out little brother?"

"Of course!"

"I promise that I'll explain everything to you and the other kids later, but right now, we just need to get this done." Itachi said. "You ready?"

Sasuke just grinned wider. "Of course!" He repeated. There was a fierce light in his eye. He was scared, Itachi could tell that much, but Sasuke was pushing through that fear because he wanted to live up to his older brother's expectations. Itachi had never been prouder.