Disclaimer: The characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto and the Naruto franchise

Author's Note: Thank you so much to all readers for your patience. I'm very sorry about the update schedule of late. The previous chapter was really short, but I wanted to at least ease some suspense and give you guys something! On another note, thank you so much again to KARASU25, Rosebunse, and the Void Fox (now Hot's and Clog's, an awesome name change!) who reviewed even that little excerpt and alerted me to where I might have been unclear! To yume18, it's so good to know you've been enjoying the ride and I hope I can keep you entertained until the end. Lovely to have you on board. ;) To those who have favourited and followed, thank you as well for your support. Apologies this time round for a bit of a mess with planning on my part. Kakashi and Tsunade didn't make this cut - but they'll be back next time - and since Sasuke's section became his own section, he's taking a break this week. Once again, thank you to anybody out there who is taking the time to read this. Best, Zen

Something hard was tapping against Danzo's window - fingertips, an urgent hand in the night, trying to get his attention. He sat up, waited for the tapping to stop, and when it didn't, he pushed the curtains aside. It was the branches of the birch in the garden, blown against the glass by the wind.

Gentle moonlight filtered into the room. Danzo looked into the courtyard garden below. Winding around tended moss and a small fishpond was a thin white path. He scanned it for scuffs, disturbances and ripples in the gravel that hadn't been there before he went to sleep. Then he ran his fingers over the window sill, looking for changes in the layers of dust. There was nothing. Nothing had changed and everything was still in the night garden, except for the birch, still tapping against his window.

Danzo pulled the curtains shut and lit the lamp on the table.

Someone had been in his room.

Years of paranoia, attempts on his life, dark meetings in dark places had given him something of an instinct for it - the lingering weight of an unfamiliar shadow, a change in the air circulation. Someone had been in his room. Someone had stood over him in his sleep. Someone had been walking around him, touching his books and reading the false papers he left on his desk in case a spy ever did break in.

They were good, he gave them that, but there was no denying the shadow they left in their wake. There was no point asking the guards at the door what they had seen. They were only civilians and whatever had come into Danzo's room would have been beyond them.

He opened the curtains one more time. It really was very still. It shouldn't have been that still at all. Danzo looked at the fishpond and it was then that he noticed the fish, floating belly up in the water, dead in their little black pond.

The first thing Naruto and Neji did with the children was visit the hospital. Nagira's eye was oozing pus, the twin girls had some yellowing cuts and the whole group seemed to have contracted a stomach illness whilst scavenging for food in the streets. They needed a check-up, as well as confirmation of their latency, and the hospital was the place to go.

Once the children were settled in the waiting room, Neji stayed behind to go to his Zero Chakra class and Naruto set off to find the Keepers' Headquarters.

An old manor with a wide wooden arch, high white walls, and a steady flow of Marksmen and ninjas who smelled faintly of something like sheep or horse striding purposefully in and out of the entrance – despite getting lost at a crossroad, Naruto found the Headquarters in no time at all.

"Shikamaru! Neji said you're probably half dead but I don't believe that's true! How are you, my man?" Naruto shouted, throwing open the door.

The buzz in the office dissipated and the Keepers looked up – all except one, who dropped his forehead to his desk and groaned. Naruto smiled and, ignoring the disapproving glares and mutters, weaved his way between the desks towards his target.

"So Shikamaru!" Naruto stood over the desk and folded his arms. "What's up? How have things been?"

"Naruto," sighed Shikamaru, lifting his face from the desk and smiling weakly. "You don't change do you? Will you shut up! My head still hurts. I'd still be in bed if we weren't short of men."

Naruto's smile faltered as he saw Shikamaru's face. "They really got you didn't they? The Sixth Repentance. What happened to your eyes - ?"

"It's nothing permanent," Shikamaru cut in hastily, and he pushed the sunglasses up his nose through the film of the visor. "Just a bad flash burn. So long as we take our aspirin and keep wearing these sunglasses for about a week, we'll all be fine."

"We?" Naruto repeated and Shikamaru indicated the other Keepers going about their paperwork, many of whom were wearing the same dark sunglasses under their visors, including Shikamaru's mother at the head desk. "Damn all those crazies! I'm going to find their leader and – "

"Not if I get my hands on him first," said Shikamaru darkly, before clearing his throat. "Neji sent me a letter yesterday evening. He said that you found out something about the Repentance."

Naruto nodded and told him everything they had learned the day before. The Repentance's activities had extended to killing the ninja children in the streets, handing them poison disguised as sweets. None of the orphanages had reported any strange deaths. Neji had spent the evening conducting interviews with the matrons, whilst Naruto had looked after Nagira's gang in the Grey Cross tent. It seemed as though the Repentance had been specifically targeting the unsupervised street children – the easiest prey - first.

"Chocolate-coated konseigan." Shikamaru grimaced with disgust. "What did you do with the boy's body?"

Neji had taken the body to the hospital to have an autopsy done. The poisoned bodies the Marksmen pulled from the locked in houses were usually too old to be useful. The boy's body was their best chance to find out how the poison worked yet.

Shikamaru pulled out a lighter and played with its cap. "Let me know about the results. In the meantime, if the Repenters are out for ninja children, I'll send out a notice to the orphanages to keep an eye out for suspicious adults and to take extra care when employing civilians. Anything else?"

Nagira had told Naruto about the group of children in the North district, poisoned only days earlier. It had been a gang of eleven, led by a tough girl called Marie with a build like a junior sumo wrestler. Nagira's gang had stumbled across the Eleven's hideout by accident, when looking for a new place to sleep. Apart from Marie's bulky body was stretched out by the door, with a line of saliva drying at the corner of her mouth, the whole gang had vanished. Footprints from the scene went down to a nearby canal, where the twin girls had found sandals, a pair of glasses and an amulet snagged amongst the weeds on the banks. It seemed as though Marie's body had been left behind because it was simply too heavy for the Repenters to carry to the water.

"Me and Neji, we were thinking – "

"You mean Neji was thinking," Shikamaru corrected with a smirk.

"I think just fine," Naruto huffed. "We were thinking that since the gang in the North were targeted first, the Repentance main meeting place might be around there too."

"Not much of a lead, but I'll send a group of men scouting there, just in case." Shikamaru put his fingers and thumbs together and closed his eyes. "It's more likely the kids were targeted because they were the largest group of ninja kids on the streets. How many street orphans are left?"

"Lee says that there's a group of five down south living around the paddy fields. They steal from the granaries."

Shikamaru nodded and scratched his head. "I'll try and find them as soon as possible. Damn you, Naruto, why did you have to come and dump all this work on me? I'm supposed to be chronically lazy. I have a reputation to maintain."

"Yeah, but we can usually count on you in a pinch. You've got that reputation to maintain as well," Naruto retorted deftly.

"Whatever you say." Shikamaru leaned his head on his elbow. "Where do I take the kids when I find them?"

"The gatehouse at the back of the Hyuuga estate. That's going to be our Tigers' Den."

"Going to be? Naruto, have you even cleared this with the Hyuugas yet?"

Naruto laughed nervously and avoided Shikamaru's gaze. "Well, technically yes, because Neji came up with it, and he's a Hyuuga so -"

"But with the main locked in clan - no." Shikamaru drummed his fingers on the table, looking unsurprised and very amused. "You really don't change do you?"

As far as Neji was concerned, despite coming from a large family with a whole contingent of cousins and second cousins needing baby-sitting and tutoring, dealing with children was not his strong point.

Neji used to think that until a certain age, perhaps around three or four, children were little better than puppies. When they did something good, you rewarded them with praise and treats. When they did something bad you made sure they were scolded and flicked about the nose. They were easier to deal with as they got older, but even then he often found them baffling. Perhaps it was because they operated on a plane of logic that, although Naruto seemed to find it familiar, Neji could only view as an alien landscape, which was bizarre because Neji knew he must have been through childhood at some point.

Confusing, baffling, bizarre and illogical – that was Neji's summation of children, before they graduated the Academy and had the reality of steel drilled into them. No wonder he felt so uncomfortable sitting with the five children in the Grey Cross common area.

They sat in nervous silence. It could have been worse. He might have had to actually entertain them. One of the Marksmen had found Neji pads of paper and pens from the store cupboard and the volunteer canteen had given them a basket of bread rolls. Jo and the twin girls were drawing and one of the boys was slowly picking at his bread roll like he needed to make it last for a week, but no amount of food and entertainment seemed capable of stopping the looks they shot at Neji as he presided over them at the head of the table, trying and failing to not look intimidating.

"When's Naruto-niisan going to come back?" one of the girls asked hesitantly.

"In half an hour. Keep your voices down. You don't want to disturb the Marksmen."

Names, Neji reminded himself. The girl was Somei Shigure, distinctive by a mole under her eye that her sister Yae didn't have, but otherwise identical. The boy with the shattered glasses was Hidaka Jo. Happily for him, the hospital had given him a new pair during the check-up. The quiet one tearing his bread roll into bite-sized pieces was Tsuchinaka Mogura and, last but not least, the one doing a magnificent job putting Neji on edge was their young leader, Shidare Nagira.

After being drained of pus, one of Nagira's eyes was hidden under an eye-patch. The other was narrowed at Neji with open hostility from the moment they sat down at the table. Neji was waiting for him to make the first move. An hour of staring passed before Nagira got up and came to stand beside him. The girls and Jo looked up with interest.

Nagira opened his mouth, "You're a Hyuuga, right?"

It sounded like the appropriate moment for a cold white-eyed glare. "Obviously."

The young boy eyed Neji critically. "I was just thinking how it was a Hyuuga jounin who took me and Jo to our orphanage. Maybe it was one of your relatives."

"Maybe," Neji agreed, "but it might have been me. Have you considered that?"

"Yeah," Nagira breathed, his one eye narrowed, "yeah, I have. You know, the matron there, when she was trying to work out where she could dump us, she shut both of us in the airing cupboard and prayed that we'd die by morning, to save her the guilt of passing us on? When she came the next morning, saw we were still alive, she just gave us a note with an address and told us to go to some other orphanage. She never wanted us there in the first place, so I don't blame her, but -"

"You blame the Hyuuga jounin,"said Neji, raising an eyebrow. The boy pursed his lips. "Of course you would. It would only be natural. What are you going to do about it? You won't find a fight with me. I don't fight children barely old enough to be examined for a forehead protector."

Nagira shook his head furiously. "I'm not stupid. I'm just giving you a warning, that's all. We don't like you, even if you helped us out yesterday. Got it?"

Neji was about to reply when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He looked up to find just such a Hyuuga jounin Marksman smiling down at him. One of his relatives, but he couldn't recognise who until the figure in hazard gear spoke.

"Neji-kun," the jounin said, and he recognised it as one of his second cousins, "not meaning to be rude, but I was just wondering if you could take your group somewhere outside of the common area."

"We're only going to be for a few more minutes, Hisaki," Neji protested, lowering his voice, "and the children have been quiet. They aren't disturbing any of the Marksmen here."

"It's not the children, Neji," his cousin said, looking over his shoulder. Neji followed his gaze to where a group of Marksmen were sitting around a table with cups of barley tea. They were looking in Neji's direction with a marked distaste that Neji was beginning to find uncomfortably familiar. His cousin continued, "You know what it's like being a Marksman. The common area's a space for us to stop worrying about infection for a bit, and - ah – I hate to say this, but you've been sitting here for quite a while now, Neji. With you the way you are, you're stopping them from enjoying their well-earned rest, if you see what I mean."

"With me the way I am? You mean this?" Neji pointed at his face mask and his cousin nodded with a weak, apologetic smile. "I see. Right."

Neji stood. The children had been watching the whole exchange in a stunned, confused silence. He beckoned and they gathered with surprising obedience to follow him out of the tent.

Neji turned to his cousin, mustered up a smile that failed to reach his eyes. "Let me know how it goes."

His cousin laughed. "How what goes?"

Neji cleared his throat and his cousin leapt back three paces, as though Neji had threatened him with a knife. "How it goes when Naruto gets here and you explain to him why you kicked me and five children out of the Cross common area."

There goes the noon bell, thought Hinata, wiping the sweat and the vapour from her forehead. She was in the North wing of the Hyuuga house that afternoon, with Hanabi and three of her aunts. Unlike the glue vapour that had made her giddy and nauseous, the pungent smell wafting off the vats of dye three rooms down burned her nostrils. They smelt herbal, but herbal never necessarily meant good, no matter how wholesome it sounded. A lot of poisons were herbs after all.

Hinata was chopping and trimming madder root for the red jounin dye, her hair bundled up into a bun behind her head to keep out of the way of her hands.

"You could chop them a little finer, Hinata-chan," chided one of her aunts – the stern one, Hikage, the one Hinata had always been a little bit afraid of. She was stripping leaves off an ai plant like she was hacking off limbs. Hinata and Hanabi didn't agree on many things, perhaps most things, but on this they fervently did. Aunt Hikage wasn't taking the Hyuuga lock in at all well. As she pursed her lips and tutted over Hinata's butchered madder roots, Aunt Hikage's hands were twitching and flexing with nervous tremors.

"Sorry, Aunt. I am trying," Hinata stammered and she bent over her chopping board again.

All of a sudden, the house was filled with the sound of a wailing siren. The three aunts looked up from their work benches. Then Hikage was shaking Hinata's shoulder, hissing, "Hinata-chan, go and find out what's going on."

"Ye-yes, Aunt!"

Hinata leapt to her feet and went out into the corridor. The siren caterwauled in her ears. Slipping and sliding on the polished wooden floor, she ran through the house and soon found a cluster of bemused looking clan manservants. "What's happened?" Hinata gasped, as she approached them, sliding to a stop.

One of them raised his hands in a calming gesture. "It's a false alarm, miss. No need to worry. The siren will be switched off soon."

"A false alarm? Wh-why? What happened? I thought it was only supposed to go off if somebody tried to break in."

The manservant wrinkled his nose and huffed. "Somebody did, miss, but – ah – by accident. Your father's dealing with it right – Master!"

The manservant suddenly folded like he had been bent in half. The other servants hurriedly lined up beside him and followed suite, and Hyuuga Hiashi appeared, his hands tucked into the sleeves of his dark silk robes.

"Hinata," Hiashi's mouth was twisted as though he was fighting back a smile, "can I borrow you for a moment?"

He indicated for her to come along with a jut of his chin and Hinata followed, three steps behind, wondering who could possibly have been stupid or reckless enough to 'accidentally' break into a house locked in under council orders, and as the wail of the siren continued to clamour in her ears, she felt her face grow steadily warmer, because there was only one person she could think of who –

"I'm going to repeat the question," a cousin was saying through the communication hatch carved into the gate, "a little louder this time. Why did you try to break down the door?"

"And I'm going to repeat what I said!" came the voice from the other side, somehow managing to be louder than the siren. "I knocked and nobody answered so I tried the door handle!"

Hinata froze in the atrium and felt the blood rush to her face. She couldn't believe her ears. "Na-Naruto-kun!"

"Ah," said Hiashi, slipping into his sandals so as to approach the gate, "so at least we've confirmed his identity. Ko, stand down and sort out the siren."

Ko dipped his head in a short bow. "Yes, sir!"

He took off at a run towards the back of the house, and Hinata and Hiashi stepped out from the eaves of the manor into the warm spring sunshine. Ko had left the communication hatch open. An indignant voice was still filtering through from the other side: "Hey, hey you! You can't just leave me hanging! Come back here, you Hyuuga bastard, I'm not finished with you yet!"

Hiashi put his hand to Hinata's back and pushed her forwards towards the hatch. "Find out what he wants," he mouthed, before standing back and tucking his hands up his sleeves again.

Hinata nodded, but her mouth was going dry. Within less than a month, her world had shrunk to the several acres of the Hyuuga estate. She had kept to the monotony of the routine, moving with the summons of the bell, letting time flow and herself melt away. It was easier to bear the frustration and the anxiety of the lock in when you forgot the reality of the world outside. The inside world was real, the outside was a dream, and the two were connected by a hatch and Rock Lee's shouting.

Naruto suddenly back and swearing on the other side of the gate forced her to face the truth. Naruto, with all his noise and brightness, was a fierce reminder of the outer world's reality. Hinata had been lying to herself. She hadn't wanted the outside world to fade away, and she hadn't wanted to be locked in in the first place. She hated the lock in as much as Aunt Hikage. She wished she was outside the walls, with her friends, with Neji, and with Naruto.

Hinata wiped her hands on her apron again. Her palms were still stained from the ai plant blue she had been stripping before the madder. "Naruto-kun?"

There was pause in the ranting and railing from the other side. "Hinata? Is that Hinata? Hey! This is perfect! How are you?"

At the same instant, the siren stopped and silence of sorts returned to the Hyuuga estate. There was hammering from where clan members were fixing the roof.

Hinata chewed her tongue. "I'm coping. How have you been, Naruto-kun? Lee told me that you were back in Konoha."

"Yeah, everyone's telling me I'm stupid or a moron for coming back." She could hear him smiling. That was the nice thing about Naruto. His smiles reached his voice.

"Well, I think you wouldn't be you if you didn't come back,"Hinata continued, the words rushing from her mouth. She smiled softly. "Welcome home."

"Thank, Hinata." Naruto cleared his throat, and Hinata couldn't help flinching, thinking of the hundreds of ninjas who had done the same and died choking on their own blood ten days later. "I need your help – "

And she listened as he told her in a splurge of words about other locked in families in Konoha, the potentially latent orphans who had been pushed into the streets, a strange end of the world cult urging ninjas to kill themselves and their children, and Shikamaru's police force being attacked by the cult member civilians. Kiba was dead. Neji was infected – she had heard it all from Lee already, but hearing it again from Naruto seemed to make it more real. Maybe it was because he had spent so long fighting to make people see that he existed, he just seemed to exist more.

"Neji said we could use the gatehouse at the back of the Hyuuga estate to house the kids. They're probably all infected, but he said the distance – Ah, god damn it, he would have come and asked himself, but apparently there's some law saying infected aren't allowed within a thousand metres of the Hyuuga main house. He'd get his head cut off or something."

"He would indeed," said Hiashi at last, sliding into the conversation. "Bringing the infected children within a kilometre radius of this house would make both his head and the children's heads fly, but the gatehouse is on the boundary of the estate and near three kilometres away from the main house. You will be able to keep the infected children there certainly. Not a bad idea, if I must say. That gatehouse has been empty for months."

Hinata stepped away from the door and let her father go to the hatch. The back and forth exchange was surprisingly easy once Naruto adjusted to the knowledge that he was speaking to Hinata's father and Neji's uncle and tossed all caution to the wind, conveniently forgetting that this man was also clan head. She let her father negotiate, agree to send the key to the gatehouse to Naruto's address by the Runner who would be dropping by in the evening, before he began to pick at Naruto for more news on Konoha's situation.

Hinata's thoughts turned to her cousin Neji and the ballot papers they had drawn. She remembered the moment he had opened his slip and she had opened hers. They had opened them nearly simultaneously. Neji had been just that little bit faster.

"Hinata, do you have something to say before we let this young man get on his way?" her father was suddenly saying, as he turned away to go back into the house.

There was. There was something she, of course, wanted to say to Naruto and just to Naruto, but now was not the time. There was something else. Her father knew. Of course he did, he was clan head. He had realised something was off the very afternoon the ballot had taken place and divided up the clan Hiashi had been so desperately trying to bring back together.

"Naruto-kun?" she said into the hatch. "Could you pass on a message to Neji for me?"

"For Neji? Sure. So long as it's good."

Hinata lowered her voice, even though her father already knew what had happened. "Tell him that I was really a-angry when he switched our ballot papers and joined the Cross instead of me, but that," she chewed her lip, "I've forgiven him now." She whispered, "Can you…thank him for me?"

When they had drawn the ballot slips, it had been Hinata's ballot slip carrying the Caged Bird mark of the Grey Cross, not Neji's. Neji's had been blank, but Neji had heard Hinata gasp and seen her momentarily afraid. Before she could move to where the new Cross members were standing, Neji had snatched out the marked slip, thrust his blank into her hands and he had stepped forward in her place. Protecting her. Caging her but protecting her. If she ever got out of the house, Hinata was going to hit him (although the thought made a more than a little bit nervous).

"Sure, I'll tell him. You can count on me, Hinata." Naruto sounded as though he was smiling again. "I don't remember the exact wording, but I reckon I've got the overall gist."

In the end, Neji settled for asking the children where they wanted to go. Nagira suggested a playground in a nearby park. Neji wasn't in the mood to argue, so there they went.

Neji sat on the bench and cast an eye about the playground. He had a clear view of every apparatus in the area – the slides, the swings, the turntable, monkey bars – as well as the entrance onto the road and the doors to the public toilets. If any strange civilian tried to come and hurt the children, Neji would know. He folded his arms and settled to watch Nagira push Yae on the swings. Jo and Shigure busied themselves burying Mogura in the sandpit.

The playground gate creaked. A civilian woman entered the playground. He tensed, then saw that she was closely followed by a little boy and relaxed. It was just another Konoha mother and son. Perhaps Naruto was right. Neji was getting paranoid. There was little reason to suspect every civilian he saw by day to be a Repenter by night, but Neji was finding it difficult to forget those blank silver faces, those dirty white cloaks, and the wilful abandon with which the civilians had put knives to the ninjas' throats the moment the Keepers were down on the ground. Shikamaru had been sitting an inch deep in the blood of his comrades. The Repenters had seemed less than human.

"Would you mind if I joined you?"

The civilian woman was indicating the spot next to him on the bench. She was middle aged, greying, with sunspots on her cheeks and lines around her eyes and mouth. Her shoulders were stooped. She appeared to be a harmless forty-year old housewife who smiled as much as she worried. Perhaps a pressured mother. He nodded and shuffled along the bench to make room, ignoring the shadow of the silver mask that loomed out in the dark of his memory.

"Thank you." She perched on the seat and looked out across the playground. "You're rather young to be a father of five."

Neji felt his face colour instantly, and he found himself spluttering, "You're very much mistaken! I – "

The woman chuckled and Neji bit his tongue. "Just a housewife's joke. I used to have a son around your age and he was always much too serious for his own good. I'd tease him like that, and he'd redden, just the same as you did." She looked up at the sky. "To think it was only four days ago, when I last saw him breathe."

Neji adjusted the mask awkwardly around his nose. What could he say to that? "I'm sorry to hear it."

"He was unusual you know, a ninja coming from a civilian family," he woman continued sadly. The little boy she had brought to the playground was climbing to the top of the slide, holding one of the twin girl's hands. "Perhaps there were ninjas in my family or my husband's family somewhere in the past. In any case, my son was born with chakra and he set out to become a ninja."

"You must have been proud of him," Neji said without thinking and he immediately wanted to kick himself, when he remembered that were it not for chakra nobody would be dying of the Plague and this woman's son would be alive.

"I was at first," the woman said. She twisted her hands in her lap. "We sent him to the Academy, the first boy with chakra from our family. The bullying he had to put up with, coming from chakra-less parents! I couldn't help but think that his chakra was a curse," she shivered in the chill breeze and Neji kept silent. "My husband accused me of cuckolding him for a ninja eventually. It led to our divorce. Now, because of chakra, my son is dead and, but for my little nephew, I am alone." The woman laughed self-consciously. "I'm sorry for telling you all this. We're perfect strangers, but you do remind me of him."

Neji was beginning to feel uncomfortable. There were few things that made him more uncomfortable than being compared to a dead man by the dead man's own mother. He looked to the sky beyond the climbing frame. Columns of black smoke were hanging above the forest from the plague pits. He had only been to the pits twice and he never wanted to go again if he could help it.

He took a deep breath. "Do you think ninjas bully civilians and oppress them?"

The woman nodded. "Yes, I do. It is the truth."

The image of a silver masked Repenter in white reared its head in his mind's eye again. Suddenly Neji was feeling very, very uncomfortable indeed. He took another deep breath, and then another, steadying himself.

"They misuse their powers." The woman closed her eyes and said, as though reciting. "For war instead of peace, to sneak instead of stride, using what should have been a creative gift of good for destruction. My son was taught from four years old to kill before learning to heal. Doesn't that seem wrong?"

He looked up and saw the grey-haired woman's kind, smiling face. The mild and kindly housewife, just concerned and sad for another sick teenager, was making him, for some reason, itch for the kunai up his sleeve. What should he do? Should he refute her? Or should he encourage her on to see where she would go?

"Yes," Neji pushed down his self-disgust and lied, deciding to see what he could draw out of her, "yes, it does seem wrong."

Now how would she respond? The woman's face glowed. "I knew you would see it that way. I saw you sitting here, with your mask and the little children, and somehow I just knew," she opened her little handbag and began to rummage inside, "I knew you would understand the evils of chakra."

The woman was holding out a paper flyer.

Cold sweat broke out along Neji's neck. "The Sixth Repentance?" he tried to sound mildly interested, despite the part of him shouting to tear the little flyer into shreds and shove it into the bin beside him. "I heard they were an end of the world cult? That they think the Plague is some kind of Demon heralding the last days of man, and all that like?"

"The more extreme members do believe that." The woman watched him eagerly as Neji took the flyer off her and pretended to read it. "But mostly it's just ordinary citizens like myself, looking for merciful deaths and salvation for those cursed with chakra. We spread the teachings of the Eye of the World and work towards a future made peaceful without chakra."

Neji looked up sharply. "The Eye of the World?"

The woman closed her eyes and put a hand to her heart. "Our wise leader."

The Eye of the World. What a name. Fit for a narcissist and no doubt fit for a cult leader who urged civilians to exploit the psychological vulnerability of the locked in families, kill Keepers and poison ninja children all in the name of salvation.

"Why are you giving this flyer to me?"

"The Sixth Repentance is the Cry. The Cry is when a ninja gives himself up to the gods and returns his chakra to the heavens it came from. You're so young. You're so like my boy." The woman closed her handbag and rose from the bench, dusting off her skirt. "For the sake of peace and peace of your soul, I would like you to consider it."

"I think I understand," Neji stared at her, feeling sick to the stomach. "The Sixth Repentance. The Cry. That's suicide by chakra exhaustion, isn't it?" When the woman looked troubled, he added hastily, "Where do I find the Repentance…if I'm interested?"

The woman's eyes sparkled, but she shook her head. "You don't find the Repentance, young man. At the next Parade, simply show one of the Bishops this flyer and they will help find the Repentance for you. Any more questions?"

Neji was gripping the flyer so hard he thought it might tear. He swallowed, breathed in again to settle his nerves and tried to smile back. "No, ma'am. Thank you. For your kindness."

"It was a pleasure." The woman turned to the slide, where the little boy she had brought had just opened a packet of sweets. Neji watched the boy put the drops in his mouth before sharing them with the girls. The girls had ruthlessly learned their lesson. They had waited for the boy to eat the sweets first. "Keita, it's time to go. Give the girls the sweets and thank them for taking care of you."

The boy pulled a face but pushed the packet into Yae's hands. "Here you go. Thank you."

He jumped down from the slide and hurried after the civilian woman. She took the little boy's hand. Neji watched them round the playground gate and leave the park, before he folded the flyer and put it in his pocket to give to Shikamaru later.

Give the girls the sweets and thank them for taking care of you.

The boy had eaten from the packet, Neji told himself, watching Shigure and Yae each take a drop from the bag, one green, one red, and begin to move them to their mouths. The boy had eaten from the packet, but who had given them the packet of sweets if not the kindly Repenter housewife?

Before he could stop himself, chakra flowed to Neji's eyes and his byakugan was activated and he gasped. A cloud of dirty-looking chakra, the colour of dried blood, was seething around the packet of sweets like ants. It drifted around the girls' fingers where they held the sweets, seemed to crawl on their skin.

He cried, "Drop those sweets!"

The girls squeaked and the packet slipped from their hands. Jewel-coloured candy drops fell to the ground. Shigure dropped down from the slide and began trying to gather them up from the dirt.

"Don't touch them," Neji shouted, glaring at them with the veins bulging around his eyes until the girls backed away. He took out a kunai and began chipping at a little green drop. It went sticky in his fingers, but he soon found in the centre exactly what he was looking for – a black lentil-shaped pill.

"The civilian kid ate the sweets," Nagira pointed out, peering over Neji's shoulder. "I made sure he did, before he started sharing them out with the girls."

Neji had never looked at konseigan with the byakugan before and, now that he did, the dark red mass hurt his eyes. Now he knew. Konseigan was a chakra poison, designed to wreck chakra systems – a specialised ninja killer, in that respect very much like the Plague. There was nothing more difficult to navigate in an autopsy than a decaying ninja chakra system, so little wonder they hadn't been able to identify how the poison worked.

Neji rose to his feet. He switched off the chakra flowing to his eyes and the byakugan vision faded. "This poison won't kill the boy. It was a trick to get your trust."

To think that the Repentance were using children to deliver poison to other children! Neji threw the drop to the ground and crushed it beneath the heel of his boot. As though that were some kind of signal, Nagira and the girls jumped in and began stamping on the sweets as well. They continued until the soles of their sandals were sticky and the drops were ground into the earth.

"You shouldn't have used your eyes," Nagira said to Neji, as they left the park to go elsewhere, probably back to the Grey Cross tent because they could think of nowhere else to go. "If you're infected you're not supposed to use chakra, right? I thought you were on a special course – "

Neji snapped, "They're not going to penalise me for a little slip up. Besides, it saved the girls."

Nagira closed his mouth and Neji tried not to think about what using the byakugan had done to his body.

Somewhere in a white blood cell, a bacterium divided, and divided again.

Next time: Kakashi comes back (at last) and Tsunade prepares for the conference (at last). Kakashi raises an interesting possibility about the Repentance from the konseigan research and Sasuke signs a form. Will Danzo find out who has been in his room?

Thanks for reading!