Published: 4/25/2020

Previously: Jiraiya shares something about Minato; Suzu is hospitalized after an accident with chakra cloaking; Souhei and Jiraiya butt heads when Jiraiya comes to visit.


"So the General Forces will be split," I repeated. "The genin teams and a portion of the general platoons will be responsible for coordinating the evacuations and guarding the shelters. The Jounin Commander will take charge of the rest to establish perimeters around the most vulnerable structures. Meanwhile the Special Forces will be searching for Obito. You will be with the Barrier Corps to manage the village wards and prevent the Nine-tails from entering the village on the chance that it breaks the seal."

"That's the plan, more or less. The ANBU won't know Obito by name, of course."

"...And what about Kushina? Are there no extra protections there? If she becomes separated from Minato, the Kyuubi's as good as out," I pointed out. That was exactly how Obito had managed the attack the first time.

"We've anticipated that," Jiraiya replied as he pulled out a small sheaf of sealing paper. "Here. Reinforcement and containment seals. In case Minato gets pulled away like he was in your story, Biwako-sama and her student will use these. The ANBU guards will have them as well. It should be enough to hold things in place long enough for him to make it back."

"And Obito?" I asked doubtfully. "The first time around he slaughtered everyone besides Kushina and Minato themselves. What will happen if Biwako-sama and the others are taken out?"

"That's the point of the roaming ANBU squads. Obito won't get near the safehouse this time."

"How can you be so sure the ANBU will manage to locate him? Moreover—how can they even detain him? They won't be able to lay a finger on him."

"The ANBU Commander and his men have been apprised of our 'mysterious enemy's' abilities," replied Jiraiya as he made air quotes with his fingers. "They are working out countermeasures. Failing that, well… Minato has been putting together a void box. A seal that can restrict space-time ninjutsu."

"A… void box?" I repeated. "To restrict—is that working?"

"Of course it is," Jiraiya snorted. "He's been throwing out prototypes left and right. Right now he's testing them by breaking out with Hiraishin. This is the same brat who shit out an improvised stasis seal fit enough to use on a live human being, remember? He came up with something like that with nothing but a few minutes and a body bag scroll. Who knows what monster prison field he'll have time to make before October."

Indeed. If Minato could devise a seal to save Rin's life in a handful of minutes, there was no doubting what he would achieve to save the lives of his family and village with over half a year at his disposal.

"Okay," I said and pinched the bridge of my nose. "Okay, so let's assume everything goes as planned. Everyone is evacuated, the village is secured, Kushina is safe, and Obito is detained by ANBU. What happens then? Void box or no, we can't just keep a half-insane S-ranked missing-nin locked up in the village forever. He will find a way to break out and we will all still be in danger."

Jiraiya winced. "Well."

Oh no. I didn't like that. "What?" I asked warily.

"Minato—well. Minato thinks that he can talk Obito back to our side."

I paused. Then I said, "In the series, Obito killed a lot of people before he turned back."

"So I read." Jiraiya sighed. "But you realize that in this whole village no one but Minato himself would be powerful enough to defeat him."

I paused again. Then I twisted my fingers together and mumbled, "When I told Minato-nii he needed backup, he refused and told me he would take care of it."

Jiraiya tipped his chair back and groaned. "That idiot. Acting like he has the room to indulge his damn complexes."

"Is that it? It's not that he just hates me now and won't work with me?" I hung my head.

Jiraiya looked at me and then sighed. "Kid, I told you you needed to sort this out."

"Easier said than done!" I bit back angrily. "He's not your big brother! You didn't grow up loving him the same way we did. Niichan is the whole reason I became a ninja in the first place."

And then, quite before I even knew what was happening, I found myself bursting into sobs. Jiraiya jerked back, startled.

"What can I do?" I wept furiously. "I know I was wrong! I know I should have told him sooner! I should have done something before Obito became this way. I should have done something before any of it came to this! But it's already happened and I can't change it anymore. All I can do is try to help now. But he won't let me. I can't do anything!"

"Hey, hey! Kid! Shh!" Jiraiya panicked and began patting my back anxiously. "Kiddo! Don't cry! If your uncle hears you he'll come in here and murder me before either of us will have a chance to explain, classified info or not. Hey, shh, it's okay! Calm down. It's okay."

Several moments passed before I managed to stop crying. "I'm sorry," I hiccupped miserably.

"No, kid, I'm the one who's sorry," Jiraiya groaned and scrubbed his face with his hands. "I shouldn't be bullying you about all this while you're in the hospital of all places. Don't apologize. I know you're trying your best. Minato understands that, too. And you know what, kid? Let me tell you something. The reason why he doesn't want you to come along isn't because he hates you. It's because he doesn't want you to see him struggle. He doesn't want to be seen without his mask."

"You mean…?" I managed to squeeze out. Jiraiya heaved a sigh.

"I always told him being two-faced would come back to bite him in the ass," he muttered under his breath. "Figures it'd bite mine, too."

"Jiraiya-sama…"

"Don't worry, kid," Jiraiya patted my back again. "Give it time. He's off balance and he doesn't know how to present himself to you right now; give him a chance to regain his composure. Everything will be all right."


April came and my heart returned to normal. After confirming that my tenketsu were functioning properly again, I was released from the hospital once more. By chance this coincided with Kakashi receiving permission to resume combat duties, and then suddenly we, carried through by the force of many years' habit, found ourselves lined up at the Missions Office again.

We had become a strange pair. Our partnership was a very uneven one. Without exception Kakashi was more advanced than me in every single combat field; ninjutsu and genjutsu, taijutsu and bukijutsu—there was nothing in which I could compare. And how would I be expected to? Even if he was only a year or so older than me, he was prodigy and a jounin. But despite all that it could not be said that he was necessarily better at me in everything, because he was not.

With release from the hospital came the sudden advent of hiding superpowers. Maybe it was all the reading I had done when I had first been hospitalized, but even without relying on signature erasure something about concealment techniques seemed to just click. Blending and layering—there was a strange groove to them now, and somehow it was so much easier to listen to the chakra all around me and find small crevices to disappear into. I could just take a moment, synchronize my breathing, and melt away into it... I had found my spot in the quiet and not even Kakashi could join me there. The feeling never ceased to amaze me no matter how many times I practiced.

"So did you fight the bandits, neechan?" Haruka asked raptly.

"I didn't," I replied as I ruffled her hair amusedly. "I snuck in and took back the goods. Kakashi was the one who provided a distraction. He managed to draw everyone out of the base with just a shadow clone."

Kakashi was stiff as he sat on the veranda with us. His back stayed ramrod straight no matter how many times I invited him inside, but lately Auntie and Uncle—who had recalled tales of vicious bullying—had stopped eyeing him with so much suspicion. Haruka began scooting forward as she regarded my teammate with shiny eyes.

"Oh, wow," she mumbled. "That's really cool."

I could not help but begin laughing behind my hand as Kakashi squirmed under my baby cousin's gaze. Though lately she was a baby less and less; apparently she was doing very well at the Academy.

"Do you like Kakashi-nii very much, Haruka?" I asked teasingly. Haruka, though, turned to me without an ounce of jest in her eyes.

"When I get bigger I'll marry him," she informed matter-of-factly.

A stunned silence fell over the room. Kakashi froze. I heard Uncle suddenly excuse himself to the kitchen; a moment later there was the telltale gasping of muffled laughter.

That day Kakashi seemed to gain the trust of my foster parents. A little while later Auntie came over with popsicles for the three of us, and Haruka began to hang over his lap with blissful ignorance. I suspected he didn't know how to react to such open physical affection; I doubted his childhood had been filled with many hugs or cuddles.

"You can stay for dinner if you like," I offered when he made to rise half an hour or so later. Haruka had been drawn into a game of ninja with her agemates and wandered off into the village some ten minutes earlier. The pleasant smell of roasted vegetables wafted through the warm summer air, and I found myself thinking it'd be an awful shame to send him home to an empty kitchen. At the very least we owed him a meal for the entertainment of enduring Haruka's newfound love. Kakashi, though, just shook his head and mumbled something.

"Pardon?"

"No," he said a little louder. "I… shouldn't. I'm sorry about today."

I blinked. Kakashi refused to look me in the eye.

"...Auntie, I'm gonna walk Kakashi home," I called a moment later.

"Be back in half an hour, dinner'll be done soon," she yelled back.

My teammate's shoulders were slumped as we walked the road out of the compound and onto the main street. For a while we were silent. Then I asked, "What's wrong?"

"It's nothing really," Kakashi muttered unconvincingly.

I gave him a look. Then I asked, "Why were you sorry?"

"I—" Kakashi started. Then his shoulders slumped again. "Your cousin. Haruka."

I stared at him again, but he didn't say anything else. "...What about her?"

"About… you know, what she said."

I didn't know. Kakashi saw my uncomprehending face and let out a frustrated breath.

"She—she likes me."

"Yeah..." I agreed quizzically.

"And you're okay with that?"

"What, with Haruka having a crush? I was surprised, but now that I think about it she is about that age..."

"No, that's not what I mean," Kakashi made an agitated gesture. "You're okay with her liking someone like me?"

And there was an interesting sight into the mind of my teammate. I halted on the street and gave him a scrutinizing look. Kakashi stopped as well. His neck immediately bent and his eye fixed on his sandals.

"I'm okay with it, yeah," I said. "But you aren't."

"I…" Kakashi said haltingly.

A long moment passed. I waited patiently to hear what my teammate had to say, but he remained stubbornly silent. After a while I opened my mouth to speak once more, but suddenly we found ourselves being swarmed by a crowd of Academy students.

"Kakashi-san! Imouto-sama!"

It took me a moment to realize that I was being addressed; at that point in my life, "imouto-sama" was not a name I knew. For a moment I was bewildered. But then, as if summoned, a distant Earth memory floated towards the front of my mind: Konohamaru, running angrily from the Tower, and the guards shouting omago-sama after him. Omago-sama—Honorable Grandson.

Honorable Little Sister?

"What… what is it?" Kakashi managed to ask as he speedily disengaged from their grabbing hands. As soon as he had gotten free he planted himself firmly behind my shoulder, leaving me to pat frenetically at the heads of the children suddenly surrounding us.

"Kouji and Kaneko told us about you!" the boy at the front of the crowd exclaimed. "And it's true! You're in the Bingo Book just like they said. Here!"

This proclamation was accompanied by another child thrusting a Bingo Book under my nose. I had to cross my eyes a little, but sure enough they were there: Kakashi's entry and my entry, appended to Minato's.

"Yes, that's right," I said a little dazedly. "Um…"

"It says here that Kakashi-san is an A-rank ninja!" the boy said wildly. "How come you're so strong even though you're not a grown-up yet?"

"It says you have a Sharingan! Are you an Uchiha?"

"You really do have a ponytail just like this one, imouto-sama!"

"Is it true you killed a whole company of Iwa ninja?"

In an instant Kakashi and I were cringing in horror. They held no malice as they fell upon us with their barrage of questions, but childish innocence did very little to soften the cut of their queries. For a moment we stood as if against a wave, and Kakashi and I caught one another's hands as we stumbled backwards. His grip was as white-knuckled as mine. But then a savior appeared.

"Hey," Itsuki-sensei said firmly as he inserted himself between us and the tiny mob. He was carrying a large crate on his shoulder, but he used his free hand to reach out and gently flick the forehead of the nearest student. "What are you all doing? It's nearly one o'clock. Shouldn't you kids be heading back to the Academy before recess ends?"

A shout rose from the group when they looked over their shoulders at a large lamppost clock. As quickly as they had come, they went, waving over their shoulders and shouting farewells. Kakashi and I, panting heavily, found our feet and took a moment to catch our breaths.

"Mighty are the masses," Itsuki-sensei commented as he watched their retreating backs. "Any rank would struggle against that enemy."

I immediately released Kakashi's hand and threw my arms around Itsuki-sensei's waist in reply.

"Oof," he said as he lifted a hand to stabilize the load on his shoulder. Once he had, though, he patted my head. "Hey, Suzu-chan. Feeling all right these days? No aftereffects from the spring?"

"I'm okay," I said into my teacher's shirt. "Thank you, Sensei."

"Thank you, Mikawaya-san," Kakashi said. When I looked over he was rapidly straightening his clothes and clearing his throat in an attempt to salvage his usual cool composure.

"Not at all, Kakashi-kun."

When Itsuki-sensei resumed walking towards his shop I found myself right on his heels. Kakashi stood still for a moment before trailing after me.

"So you two are back to business as usual, huh?" Itsuki-sensei said once we had arrived and he'd set his burden down. He looked at me sidelong with his question clear in his eyes. I wrung my hands a little and shrugged helplessly. He gave me a worried look.

"Yes," Kakashi answered, seeming to miss this exchange.

"Well, so long as you don't overdo it," Itsuki-sensei told me softly. "Take it easy. And come by anytime."

"Yeah," I said. We found ourselves both looking at Kakashi together. "...Yeah, I figure I'll come by again soon."

Kakashi tilted his head back at us, and I found myself wondering for his future. If I retired, he would be alone. He would have no reason to come to the House and write reports with me on the veranda, and Haruka's crush would come to nothing.

Maybe he would like that, I realized distantly. As my teammate turned and began wandering towards the back of the shop, I looked up at Itsuki-sensei.

"Sensei, why did you stay a shinobi for as long as you did?" I asked quietly. Itsuki-sensei gave me a knowing look.

"I could tell you that," he said after a while. "But it wouldn't help you. You're asking a question no one else can answer, Suzu-chan."

For a long moment I couldn't find the words to speak. I thought of sitting on floor in the dark with my aunt. Then, unexpectedly, a feeling of burning anger rose in my chest.

"Don't you think I've been looking for an answer on my own already?" I asked in a furious whisper. "Don't you think I've been trying to figure it out on my own? I can't go on, but I can't stop. Every time I think of trying I talk myself out of it. You all say I have to find the answer for myself, but how can I when no one will help—"

Suddenly my teacher caught my hand and held it. My voice caught in my throat.

"I know, Suzu-chan," he told me quietly. "I know."


The day of October the tenth dawned. If the civilians were wise to the true nature of the "drill" they did not elect to display it. The ninja, on the other hand, were blatantly on edge. None but the top echelons had been explicitly informed, but the rest of the Forces could tell well enough that there would be an attack today. I did my best not to give anything away to my family. This effort was met with decent success; I found I had become good at not giving things away lately.

I had just finished filling my pack and restocking my master seal with wire when Akira appeared in the doorway. He twisted his fingers together anxiously as he waited for me to finish fixing my hair into a low bun.

"What's wrong?" I asked. The House children were all in the portion of the Forces assigned to the shelters. I had purposely lingered; most of my cousins had already gone ahead.

"It's—" Akira bit his lip and then began motioning me out to the hallway. Curious, I stood and followed him to the stairs. "It's Auntie and Uncle."

Together we kneeled down on the landing and peered past the railing into the sitting room. Auntie and Uncle were standing across from each other and exchanging heated words under their breaths. Realizing what Akira wanted me to do, I looked to him for confirmation. He nodded worriedly, so I began making the seals for the eavesdropping jutsu.

"—please, Souhei."

"I can't tell you, Reiko."

Auntie made a small, frustrated noise. "Souhei," she said in a low tone, "I know there are things in your life you can't share with me. And I understand that there are times when you have to go away. But if you are planning to die today, you can't just walk away saying 'I can't tell you.'"

My eyebrows shot up. Akira caught hold of my sleeve and opened his mouth to say something, but I quickly held a finger to my lips and continued listening carefully.

"It's not anything like that," Uncle Souhei muttered. "I never said anything like that."

"Then tell me, what are you saying, Souhei? You won't look me in the eyes. You refused to speak with the children this morning. You are acting like a man getting ready for a suicide mission."

"...It's nothing like that. Nothing will happen to me today."

"I don't believe you," Auntie told him flatly.

"Believe what you want, then," Uncle finally snapped back. "I've already accepted that what will happen will happen. If you want to spend this morning picking a fight with me, then do as you like."

"Souhei—" Auntie raised her voice as my Uncle broke away and went for the door. "Souhei! Souhei, come back here and talk to me, you—!"

The only reply was a curt slam.

Akira and I exchanged ashen looks. "Something's wrong with Uncle Souhei," I whispered as we both stood. "Auntie thought he was hiding something and wanted him to tell her what was going on, but he got angry and left."

"Ohh," Akira mumbled, pulled at his hair anxiously, and quickly pattered down the steps. As he made a beeline for Auntie I shot down the stairs and out the door after my uncle.

"Uncle Souhei," I called after I'd used chakra sense to find him on a nearby rooftop. He was looking over the compound with grim resignation on his face. When he turned to me, his eyebrows creased.

"Suzu," he muttered with enough grief to make me stop short. "...Did your aunt send you?"

"No, I eavesdropped," I admitted. Then I regarded him worriedly. His eyes were tortured and his face was crumbling into so much sorrow that one would think the whole clan was inches from annihilation. I opened my mouth to ask him what was wrong; but then quite suddenly I found myself being crushed in an embrace. He pulled my head into his chest and held me there.

"I'm sorry, Suzu," he whispered. "I'm sorry. No, it's not me that's going away. I don't know why—I don't know why things are happening differently—but I'm still… still—"

"What?" I was flummoxed. It was not that my uncle was necessarily averse to physical affection; he did, after all, give out hugs and forehead-kisses with frequency. But by and large he was a very stoic man and not at all prone to dramatic emotional displays.

"I'm sorry," he repeated. He held me a little longer. Then he released me. "I just—you should go. I'm sorry I wasn't a better father to you, Suzu."

"What are you talking about?" No wonder Auntie had been concerned. What else could that sound like but suicide talk? "You're always watching out for your family."

"Except for when it counts," Uncle said. "Never when it counts."

He made to leave, but I opened my mouth to protest and darted a hand out to stop him. He paused when I caught his sleeve. He was still long enough that I thought he had decided to stay; but then, with shocking coldness, he pulled his arm away. He had vanished into the streets before I had a chance to make a single noise.


I stood conflicted for a long moment before I was forced to acknowledge there was no time to pursue Uncle Souhei. It would be evening before Obito arrived, but I needed to be within the hospital well before then, and I had a feeling that the infiltration would be neither quick nor easy.

Getting into the hospital itself was no problem. To get past the perimeter I only had to imply in a sufficiently harried manner that I had an urgent message for my supervising officer. Once I was actually inside it was just assumed that I was meant to be there; I made my way toward the secure wing without any harassment. But that was where the lucky breaks ended, for standing watch at the head of the hall was a lion-masked ANBU. He was plainly on high alert, and his gaze swept up and down the corridor with a hawk-like sharpness.

I pulled up my black hood and let out a sigh as I ducked around the corner. It was, I reflected, both good news and bad news. The good news was that if there was an ANBU guard here my guess was almost certainly correct—that if Minato intended to try and talk Obito back to Konoha's side, he would do it by showing that Rin was still alive, and that destroying the village would destroy her. The bad news, of course, went without saying.

I considered my options carefully. I was already cloaking. Since my hospitalization earlier in the year I had been very careful not to reinjure myself, but since I had become aware of the actual mechanics of total signature erasure it was easy enough to put into practice. If there were sensors in the guard—and of course there were—that would hide me from their view. The issue now would be avoiding visual contact. Thanks to my time in I&E I had a variety of disillusionment techniques in my toolbox, mostly genjutsu-based. But choosing the right ones to use would be the real challenge. Projection-type genjutsu would help me avoid grabbing the attention of any specific guard, but if they had illusion wards—and they very likely would considering that our opponent was an Uchiha—my position would be gone in an instant. Hooked genjutsu—genjutsu visible only to a specific person, made possible by creating a "hook" in his or her chakra system—would help me avoid tripping a ward, but I was not a specialist. I didn't have much confidence that my attempts at environmental reconstruction would be good enough to fool anyone with even a small amount of advanced resistance training.

In the end I decided against genjutsu and instead deployed the more technically difficult meisaigakure no jutsu—the Hiding with Camouflage Technique. It was more difficult because it required the user to saturate her skin with chakra and use it to manipulate the bending of light around her whole body. Because of that it also had the added disadvantage of creating a slight visual distortion; from a distance, this was not very noticeable, but it would not hold up under close inspection. But if genjutsu concealment was too risky camouflage was still better than nothing.

After I had concentrated hard enough to get the technique in place, I threw on the usual trinity of heat-masking, scent-concealing, and sound-suppressing jutsu before I ducked back out to the main hall and looked for a window. Once I had confirmed that there was no one around to see me I silently opened it, slipped out, and shut it again. Then I carefully made my way around the eaves and towards the hall which the ANBU was guarding. From there I could see that there were several others patrolling.

I spent nearly an hour stuck there to the side of the building, waiting for my chance and wondering if I would be better served by finding a different point of entry. It was a secure wing so most of the actual patient rooms didn't have windows; and even if I were so lucky for Rin to be in one of those few windowed rooms, they were all heavily warded. The time it would take to penetrate each one until I found her would be prohibitively long. In fact, it was going to be a challenge to even get in through a hallway window.

Finally a gap in the patrol game. I quickly scooted over to the window and set to examining it. I was careful not to touch it without identifying any alarm seals first. It didn't take me long to find them, though; they were posted at the four corners of the frame and they were all inaccessible from the outside.

Well, that would be a problem. I shimmied away from the window again to think. Then I crouched, stuck myself by the feet to the underside of the eave, and began rummaging in my pack for my scrolls. I went through several before I found the one on sealing security systems.

It was another half hour of poring over the diagrams before I found a quartet-type barrier seal that matched the one I had seen on the window. It was very old—almost from the time of the Shodaime—and once I had read more in particular about its mechanisms I realized that there had been several innovations in fuuinjutsu that had since rendered the thing obsolete; Kushina, after going through a few similarly dated barrier seals in Minato's old notebooks with me, had told me as much. Thus enlightened, five minutes later saw me using a felt-tip marker to draw hurriedly on the glass.

The seal I drew was a set of five mechanisms colloquially referred to as "the lock picks." I was not wise enough in the ways of sealing to know the exact workings of it, but I was good enough at memorizing set arrays; I wouldn't be able to use the Strings of Fate jutsu otherwise.

After I had finished my scribblings I slapped a handful of chakra on the glass and held my breath. The black markings glowed briefly blue before they faded, signalling success. Silently pumping my fist, I took another cursory glance around before I quickly opened the window. The frame was stiff with disuse, but with some effort the pane lifted and I was able to squeeze inside. After landing in the hall I hastily forced it shut again.

The halls were very still and the silent run through them was surreal as a dream. I sensed carefully, moved quickly, and checked around corners with a mirror to evade guards. I had to concentrate so hard I couldn't even marvel at making it so far. There was no leisure to even think such things.

But then, after several long and worried minutes, I found it: Rin Nohara's nameplate. My breath caught in my throat as I peered out from my corner. She was here. I only had to hide myself inside.

I rose from my crouch. Then his blade was at my throat, and in the very same moment, mine was at his. My breath was caught only for a moment; then I realized what had happened: I was staring into the dark eyes of a painted mask. The patrol had found me, and we had one another at knifepoint.

"This is a restricted area," the ANBU said. "Identify yourself at once."


A/N: Lots happening in this one. It's a beefy chapter more than 1,000 words longer than usual. I had a hard time with it; my writing muscles are very rusty and I had to edit with a lot of prejudice to pare it down into something readable. Even now it still feels pretty disjointed… But this story will never be finished if I keep going at it with perfection! tweezers, so alas. Up it goes.

Thanks as always to my readers for waiting and staying with the story. Can you believe there was a time when HSS updated once a month? I never thought I would look back on college and think, "Wow, I was so free and unbusy!" But as it turns out adulting is way more time-consuming than even college was.

Cheers,

Eiruiel