Over the years, Minato's renown had grown.

Matched only by sheer pettiness.

There were certain protocols taken when one entered the Hokage Towers. Visitors were logged. Their names and affiliation were written down. A reason for their visit was helpful but not necessary.

After all, an assassin was unlikely to come through the door, write down their intentions and climb seven flights of stairs to the Hokage's office. An assassin was more likely to strike from the windows where they were at less of a disadvantage. The Hokage Tower was guarded at all times, inside and out, by Anbu. Shisui, in his porcelain hawk mask, was one of them. A concession among many given to the Uchiha since the Fourth's inauguration.

Minato always said he had no head for clan politics. This was his attempt at leveling the playing field.

She paused as a shadow appeared at the corner of her eyes.

Rin dutifully wrote her name down. She told the nice, no-name chunin behind the desk that she had an appointment. The Hokage was expecting her. The no-name chunin looked unimpressed but waved her in. She could feel the eyes of the Anbu all over her.

Ten years had turned her into a stranger. A ninja in her prime. A ninja with unknown loyalties.

She had the Hokage's invite—she still had to climb seven flights of stairs on foot.

Genma was waiting for her at the top.

Noticing the slight wrinkle between her eyes, Genma laughed, "Maybe you should remember to write more often."

"Good to see you too."

She kept from snarling, barely.

Genma, slouched against the far wall, giving the impression of being supremely lazy. There was no need for a visible guard in front of the Hokage's office. Minato had a secretary. And yet.

"He's punishing me." Rin complained.

"You missed the birth of his son." Genma said unsympathetically. "You should have been there."

There was nothing she could have done if she had been there.

Rin was a good field medic and a trained medical professional. She hadn't known that Kushina was a jinchuriki, nor had she known that the demon in her belly was the infamous Nine-Tails himself.

Officially, on the night of Naruto's birth, a team from an unallied, independent village had come for the secrets of the Uzumaki. Unofficially, the Forest of Death had new tenants.

Rin ran her tongue behind her teeth.

"You missed the wedding." Genma continued. "The Fourth cried. We have pictures."

"Jiraiya missed the wedding too." Rin grumbled.

"Jiraiya wasn't the flower girl, Rin."

It took another hour before Minato decided Rin had waited long enough. Jiraiya was already in the office, looking bored with his surroundings. He paused in front of calligraphy which portended duty, honor and village before turning away with a sniff. She narrowed her eyes. She knew Jiraiya. Something was troubling him. Something serious enough that he had come to Minato's office willingly instead of being flushed out of the public baths.

Minato looked up and smiled.

He looked older. In her mind's eye, he was still young. They were all young—the heroes of the Third Shinobi War. He looked serene. His secretary, a fawn-colored tokujo she suspected was a Yamanaka, announced her by name.

"Lord Hokage, I am honored to have received your summons."

"Report."

And she did.

It didn't take long. Not as long as she thought it might. She condensed ten years into mere paragraphs. A dry map of her wanderings. The kind of maps she and Kakashi used to draw during campaigns. Strife in Kusa. A revolution in Ame. These were not new things. Just confirmations, snippets carried between Shimo furs and Taki wines. They contained none of her struggles, the sleepless nights, the names she'd worn and discarded, nor the star-shaped scar on the back of her left heel.

She made the report by rote. Facts she felt Minato should know. Facts. No embellishments. This was not one of Jiraiya's novels.

Minato observed her while the maybe-Yamanaka secretary took on the wearisome task of transcribing her words. Rin, feet apart and hands at her side, out in the open where they couldn't be mistook as a threat, finished with the encounter that had persuaded her to come home.

When she was done, Minato gathered his hands under his chin.

They had finished carving the Hokage monument. The monument did not nearly do him justice.

"Tegaki of Seifuujin is gone." Minato said.

"Gone?" Rin echoed.

Jiraiya gave one stiff nod at her glance.

"Dead or left willingly." Minato shrugged. "He had a successor."

The daughter. A girl the Honorable Tosogare had held on for. Because the Seifuujin passed their sight from mother to daughter. And sometimes, if there were no daughters to be had, mothers to unwed sons.

"She can't be more than ten."

"But powerful enough to demand refuge in Kumo."

"Kumo's always had an unhealthy interest in Uzushio." Jiraiya grumbled.

And Konoha was willing to quarrel with them for it.

"Protocol states that all field operatives need to report to T&I." Minato remarked.

"I..." She rolled her eyes sideways. "Defer to my mentor's teachings."

Jiraiya scowled at her.

Minato sighed. It wouldn't be the first time he'd had this argument with someone. It would not be the last.

"Normally, I would let Ibiki pat you down. But first things first, welcome home."

Both Rin and Jiraiya bowed at their waist.

"Thank you, Lord Hokage."

"Thank you, Lord Hokage."

"It's good to be back." She said and she meant it. Her heart swelled at the words and she straightened her shoulders just a little more because it was one thing to be missed, another when the leader of the village received you personally.

"You will of course submit a detailed report."

"Of course." She cleared her throat and dropped a sealed scroll at the edge of his desk.

"You were missed." Minato said without missing a beat. "I wish I could tell you that you may put down your arms but we are ninja. We have work to do."

Rin nodded. She had expected no less.

"I am at your service."

"Then let us begin."

Minato's secretary placed newspaper on top of his desk. She raised an eyebrow. Centered on the front page was a photo. Photo were rare. And expensive. It was luxury only nobility could afford, or would want to. As technology encroached upon the hidden villages, they found their very existence threatened. They were not armies. Photography was discouraged. They were not samurai. Their lives depended on subterfuge. The only way the picture in the newspaper could have been taken was if the subject had allowed it.

"We received report that Oto has a new leader. It's been confirmed by the Land of Sound and its allies. All hidden villages are on high alert."

"Of course." Jiraiya merely grunted in reply.

He was not surprised.

Orochimaru was one of the strongest of his generation, the hero of the Second Shinobi War. His crime was not that he betrayed his village but what he did in its name.

Murder was business. Deaths could have been pardoned in time. But forbidden techniques? Human experimentation? Reanimation? Immortality? Blaspheme and bad business all around. She barely kept herself from clutching at the talisman around her neck. The Third should have killed Orochimaru when he had the chance.

"So what now?" Rin asked because Jiraiya wouldn't. And if Jiraiya was still there, standing beside her, still in the village, it meant that he had been ordered to. Minato had ordered him not to pursue his erstwhile teammate. "Is this our new mission?"

Jiraiya scowled at the pronoun.

She glared at him in turn.

"No." Minato replied, amused. "We watch, for now."

"Orochimaru was one of our own." Jiraiya gritted out.

"And that's why we're going to watch. We lost track of him once and now he's a leader of a village. And he is not alone."

Assassination was the easiest option. Even she knew more than one way to kill a man from afar. But she didn't delude herself into thinking anyone, not even her, could hide in Oto for too long. Orochimaru had designed some of the curriculum at the Academy. There were tells. They were too obvious.

But what Rin was interested in were the guards. Guards with hair light enough to appear grey on the front page of a newspaper.

"Deidera from Iwa. Hidan from Hot Water."

Deidara was a known missing-nin, wanted personally by the Tsuchikage. Hidan, she wasn't sure. He was likely very powerful but young enough that he had missed the Third Shinobi War entirely. The Land of Hot Water was also not known for producing good fighters.

No Kakashi.

And.

"This is Zetsu."

"He's not in the Bingo Books." Because she would have remembered a half-white, half-black man wearing a giant, man-eating plant as a collar.

"He's wearing the symbol for Kusa." Jiraiya said.

Which didn't mean much. The Land of Grass had once been the no-man zone between Fire and Earth during the war. There was enough bones in the ground that superstitious merchants went around to either Fall or Rain.

It was also where Kannabi Bridge was located. The place where Obito died.

"Orochimaru has at least three missing-nin under his command." Minato said, breaking into her thoughts. "The Five Great Shinobi Nations are watching. Even the Daimyo are watching. Minor villages listen to a kage's authority. But if that balance is tipped? It could cause... conflicts."

None of them said it. The Third Shinobi War was ten years old. Its sibling, the Second Shinobi War, was seventeen and it had wiped out Senju. The First had claimed the Second Hokage.

"So we take care of it." Jiraiya said, crossing his arms over his burly chest. "Orochimaru was one of our own."

"Was." Minato repeated. "You didn't think I would send you to capture him did you?"

Jiraiya drew himself up to argue.

"The bastard was Kage-elect. I can take him. I knew him best. There is no one else you can send."

"You were also a candidate." Minato reminded him. "But the hat is on my head now. It means that I get to make decisions."

"What are your orders, Lord Hokage?"

"Thank you Rin." Minato smiled though it did not reach his eyes. "Regarding this matter? Nothing."

They both tensed.

"But." Jiraiya protested.

Minato shook his head.

"You're too close—you're not seeing the big picture. Orochimaru stopped being one of our own when he tortured fifty-nine children to death. When he struck down two comrades to preserve his own life."

When Jiraiya settled down, Minato continued, "He is wanted in all of Five Great Shinobi Nations. Minor villages as well. We are not the only ones after him."

"He should still face Konoha's justice."

"Should he?"

Jiraiya's face fell.

"I understand that he was your teammate. You miss him. As I do mine. But as the Hokage, I can no longer make decisions that benefit an individual. I must think of the village."

"Minato." Jiraiya rumbled.

"Orochimaru was a contender for this hat." Minato said, tapping its edge. "Can you kill him?"

Jiraiya hesitated, just for a second, just for a fraction of a second, and Minato twisted the metaphoric shuriken in. "If I order you to?"

"I..." Before Jiraiya could answer, Minato turned to her.

"Rin, would you kill Jiraiya if I ordered you to?"

"Yes." She said without batting an eye. It would be suicide but she knew her answer even before she said it. "Yes." She repeated, rolling the word on her tongue. Minato's secretary, standing pretty beside his desk, looked unnerved. Jiraiya held a gloomy expression. "Do you need me to kill him?"

"Not yet." Minato sounded serious enough for her to take it as a joke. "Santa here," He gestured to his secretary. "Would hesitate. He is loyal but he is not free. He has his clan to think of. But ninja are tools—we are all means to an end. And that is why the perfect one is already in place, biding his time." He turned to Jiraiya and pierced him with a look. "We are not going to do anything. Not yet."

"And if he consolidates his powerbase there, recruits other missing-nin and rise up as the Otokage? Will you risk another war?"

"Hanzo did not become the Amekage." Minato said in reproach. "One self-styled kage is nothing against five. The others will move long before that."

Jiraiya's despair was palpable. He was probably wishing that he had stayed at the public baths.

"At any rate, I've invited you here on a different capacity."

Minato unrolled a scroll on top of the newspaper. A smear of blood unsealed a scrap of paper.

"This was brought to me by Akino."

It took her a moment to remember. Akino was one of Kakashi's ninken.

"I wasn't due for a message. Which means that this is urgent."

On the paper, Kakashi had scrawled the symbol for whirlpool.

"What does it mean?"

Minato tipped his head towards Jiraiya.

"I need you to go to Uzushio with Kushina."

Jiraiya pressed his lips in a flat line.

"That place is haunted."

"Which is why you've been recruited." Minato said. "I am aware of the circumstances surrounding Uzushio's ruin."

A boy was taken prisoner during the Second Shinobi War. A boy who could summon demons and held the future under his tongue. The Third Hokage commissioned a reading when the flanking maneuver with the Sannin failed in Ame. Jiraiya was there when the Honorable Tosogare foretold the end of Uzushio.

The Seifuujin said that the war had been won for a pittance. She wondered, if the death of hundreds was nothing, if the death of a clan was nothing, if the destruction of a hidden village was nothing, then what did the Seifuujin consider a fortune to be lost?

Deep inside, she already knew the answer. The answer was deep in Kumo where the clan of onmyouji had taken refuge in the clouds.

"And me?" She asked. "Please not Kiri."

"No." Minato smiled. "Somewhere closer to home I think."

"Minato, no." Jiraiya despaired.

"It's tradition." Minato said beatifically.

Jiraiya pinched the bridge of his nose.

"They haven't even graduated Academy."

"They would have been on the frontlines already just ten years ago." Minato told him sternly. "It's always better to start them early don't you think?"

The last time she had seen that particular look on Minato's face, he had carried out the assassination of every Iwa platoon leader who had even glanced at Kannabi on a map.

Rin did the quick math.

"You're not suggesting what I think you are, are you?" She asked hesitantly.

"You are my student, Rin."

"It's nepotism." Rin stressed.

"Jounin instructors are always assigned. You know that." Minato told her. "Or did you really think we were putting together a Yamanaka, Nara and Akimichi by chance?"

"I never made jounin." She pointed out.

Minato sighed, sounding put off.

"I didn't want to do this—as your Hokage, I order you. You are now jounin."

Rin's mouth fell open. Jiraiya snickered in the background.

"Consider this payback for missing my wedding." Minato consoled her. "I'll have Santa do the paperwork immediately."

Santa did not look pleased.

As Minato began organizing his desk, Rin cleared her throat.

He looked up at her.

"Kakashi found him." She said out loud. In case, Minato didn't know. In case, Kakashi hadn't been able to tell him. In case, Minato forgot.

Minato took his hat off.

"I know."

+++++14+++++

Anko was waiting outside as they left the office; Anko scowled when she saw her.

She was standing next to Genma and one other, male, her height or shorter, and grey hair, long enough to be tied at the back.

For a second, just a second too long, her heart squeezed between her shocked lungs, she almost said out loud—Kakashi?

But it was not Kakashi who was waiting for her outside the Hokage Tower. The man was too young, too short, considering what the rumors said of Kakashi of the Sharingan. His face almost sweet, round, and most importantly, uncovered.

Not Kakashi.

Minato swept past her in his flame-patterned haori and too both Anko and Kakashi-lookalike under his arms. He grinned at them, the very expression he used when he was trying to console Obito after losing a sparring match, when Kakashi had pushed himself too hard and refused to be coaxed down from a tree, when Rin had tired of patching up hurts and punted her medical kit into a lake.

She had been replaced.