I keep revising how many more chapters there will be, but I think now it's probably at around three or four. I can't even believe that I'll be done with this by summer or sooner. Ahhhh! All of your guesses about what is going to happen next are awesome, thank you for letting me know what you're thinking! And thank you all for reviewing, it boggles my little brain to see so many on this story which (I've said before) is still a little one-shot in my head somehow.

This next week is finals and the next after that is spring break, so you will see another Samurai update the first week of April at the EARLIEST. I apologize for this, but there is just too much for me to do at the moment. Sorry! At least this fatty chapter weighs in at 3,600 words or thereabouts before the funfacts and such. Speaking of funfacts, I can't do a chapter without a cultural lesson or two…

Funfact: Samurai would change their name upon reaching "adulthood," once their shudo mentorship had run its course. Whereas their childhood name had been forced on them, their adult name (or names, I'll get to that) could reflect their loyalty or patrons to their family. Sometimes samurai would change their names several times throughout their lives (Tokugawa Ieyasu changed his like five times if I remember correctly), and then when they died they'd be given a different, Buddhist death-name. For all those boys named Sue, sort of idea.

Funfact: Hideki means "splendid opportunity," and Tenzou means "divine creation." No, Tenzou will not be going by Hideki, silly-faces. Guess-channel is open as to what name he's going to take in the futuuuure…

Funfact: The 17th century Tokugawa allegedly kept close ties with one of the last, large shinobi clans and had them guard one of the gates leading into Edo (the east gate I think). So there's that!

Funfact: Tokugawa Ietsuna had five regents who ruled for him during his minority, four of whom I could easily find the names for and one of whom I could not. Cue Jiraiya!

Funfact: Shinobi and Ninja DID exist, just not as we see them now. They did "come out of nowhere," and did occasionally kill people, etc, but revenge and espionage in feudal Japan operated at a glacial pace compared to the western ideas of such things. A shinobi would be planted in a large household as a gardener or a cook or a maid or something, and they'd spend months or years just working there. Once they gained a certain amount of trust within the household they'd gather information or shank someone, or whatever. SilverShine used this to great effect with House of Crows, if you want an example.

The all-black clothing of ninja developed because of how Westerners saw Japanese theater. Japanese theater differs from Western in that Western tries as hard as possible to make it easy for the viewer to suspend disbelief—Japanese theater basically says "You're watching a play. If you see non-play things, DEAL WITH IT." This is important because stage hands for Japanese plays wore all black and were to be ignored. So when the play required a ninja to shank someone or somesuch, the actor would dress up as a stage hand. So yeah, people equated that to how ninja dressed just normally.

Funfact: The super speed, supernatural abilities of ninja were actually largely myths created by the old shinobi families to increase their mystique and basically make people crap their pants at the thought of shinobi running around. Shinobi were also terrifying in a society where no one moved between classes, and if they did they moved ONE class. Shinobi were high born enough to be trained in how to read, write, fight, and they would dress up as a cook for three years just to poison some guy. Dressing up as a higher class was frowned on, but understood—no one wants to be on the bottom. Dressing up as someone of a lower class? Incomprehensible, therefore all the more terrifying when your gardener shows up in your room one night knowing his way around a blade.

Yes, this led to a lot of paranoid lords of the house.

So, without further ado, Enjoy!

Orochimaru woke up late and waited a few hours before dragging himself through the motions of getting ready for his day visiting the court of the Shogun. Anko had failed to show up yesterday, but that was almost a consolation after Sasuke's…delivery two days ago. His daughter had inherited his flashing, judging eyes, and he was in no mood to see her exulting over the death of the lover she so disapproved of. Besides, she was apparently being sheltered by Gama Jiraiya and that hateful man would have no doubt invented some reason to detain her even if she had wanted to come. As he bathed—a solitary exercise for him unless sharing the space with a lover—he looked at his long fingered hands, the pale skin holding all of him together.

He was getting old—aging far more gracefully than Jiraiya, although that was easy because the man grew more weathered and grizzled every year. He could feel the wrinkles on his face, kept barely at bay by his constantly neutral expressions. There was something in his bones, also, that told him he was in the darker half of his life. He would be fifty six this year. Orochimaru shivered despite the hot water surrounding his body.

Jiraiya had seen to it that Orochimaru had lost his oh-so-promising heir, leaving him bereft. Unless he found another, his position within the house would pass to a minor niece or nephew or perhaps a cousin from one of the second-rate families of the clan. His daughter was married to a country noble, destined to produce heirs for a powerless daimyo. Orochimaru didn't berate himself for marrying her off before he had an heir secured—when he had married her off, he did have an heir secured. Sasuke had been all of thirteen, but had been quite amenable to the idea of being adopted by a lord from Kyoto with connections to even greater power. Sasuke's actions had been natural ones, and Orochimaru had been more than willing to play along in return for the young man's devotion. The entire thing was to be expected, of course. Illegitimate sons got more consideration than second sons did in the world, everyone knew that and everyone knew where they'd stashed their bastards just in case of a rainy day or scandal—!

Right in the midst of pouring steaming water over his body and combing his fingers through his long hair, Orochimaru suddenly realized his oversight. A grown, twenty seven year old, heir-shaped oversight. He could find another lover easily, but not one groomed since puberty to lead a clan. Sasuke had been a rare gift of the gods. But that boy, his unwanted son—that boy had been deprived of so much in the world that he would be very willing to take his place as Orochimaru's son and undergo the rigorous training he would need to assume Orochimaru's place as head of the clan.

That horrid princess, it seemed, had actually proved herself useful a quarter century after her death. His awkward bastard son had been the connection that won his daughter, Anko, the hand of the future Sarutobi daimyo, Umino Iruka—Sarutobi Hiruzen had a soft spot for bastards and had taken Tenzou in when Orochimaru had needed to properly hide him—and Anko's connection to that family would allow Orochimaru to quietly collect what was his. So nice of those country bumpkins to keep his son safe over the years—yes, Tenzou would do nicely as his newly-legitimate son indeed.

If he remembered correctly, the boy even took after him a fair amount. Settling into the tub for a well-deserved soak, Orochimaru decided he would collect the boy in the autumn, and present him at court in the spring. Satisfied with his come-back to Jiraiya's murderous and grisly actions, Orochimaru summoned one of his servants into the bathhouse to help him relax.

Very briefly there was a flurry of birdsong, before the flock seemed to move towards better fields than his own—Kakashi's scarecrows were some of the best in the valley. He'd learned how to make them so well after choosing the name he would grow old with—if he couldn't make a proper scarecrow after naming himself after one, he wouldn't be able to bear the shame. His choice, when he was fourteen, to become Kakashi had been to reassure his father that he would never leave the family—the Uchiwa family had been making noises of perhaps adopting him by marriage, whispers of which had to have reached his father Sakumo's ears.

Rather than tell his father that such fears were unfounded, Kakashi had chosen the path of action—a scarecrow never left the field it was first placed in. It might be modified, and wear different clothes, but it would remain there until it fell to pieces. Kakashi was not so bad a name, either—certainly better than his childhood "Enoki," the name his father had quarreled with his mother over. His mother Shiori had wanted to name him "Botan," which his father had strongly disagreed with.

Sakura was deeply asleep in his arms, warmed by him at her back and the early afternoon sunlight, coupled with a few breaths of cool aired breezes. He swept one hand along her curved stomach and kissed her ear. They would name their son Botan—or Akahana if they had a girl. He liked the idea of naming his children after flowers, as Sakura's family had done. Besides, the name Botan already felt like a name which belonged in the family. Or, he smirked a little as he heard two voices playfully quarreling in the distance, perhaps Tenzou in honor of the servant-soon-to-be-babysitter.

A few birds twittered, probably hoping for a bit of the fish Tenzou and Naruto had gotten. The yellow haired man plowed through fish so fast that they had had to start buying extra dried cod from the merchant in town—Masaki had bargained to lower the price, having worked with many of the merchants in the region for many years; and Sakura said that they always undercharged Sai for some reason, leaving them with a hefty amount of money left over in their budget. As Tenzou came around the fence—and Naruto climbed over it, preferring to plough straight ahead no matter the obstacle—Kakashi pressed his lips against Sakura's hair. He had thought that the Uchiwa family had the best-managed homes he'd ever seen, but that was before Sakura had come here as his wife. Now he knew that his own home was far better organized than any he'd ever lived in—she always knew how much food they needed, their clothing was always clean and beautifully kept, and she worked within a miniscule budget so as to save as much money as possible from the rest.

"Naruto, hush," Tenzou said softly as Naruto squawked as he failed to land properly from jumping down from the fence. Sakura twitched a little but didn't wake. The birds—Kakashi had never heard so many it felt like—squawked along with the foreigner for a little but soon quieted. One seemed to be on the house, calling shrilly every now and then until another bird sang out briefly. Tenzou and Kakashi twisted their faces a little at the thought of a bird on the roof—once they'd had a family of birds take up residence on the very peak of the roof, and it had been a young Tenzou's job to shoo them out after Kakashi had fallen and nearly broken his knee.

"Is Sai home yet?"

"No, although he should be returning soon."

"I see—we were a little late ourselves, Naruto fell into the river several more times than I think he wanted to and had to dry out. But we have his precious fish, which counts for something yes?"

"Tenzou dropped me into the people-eating river on purpose, Kakashi!" Naruto was a testament to Kakashi's patience in that this loud, Sakura-waking outburst brought out only a blink in him and a long glance towards Tenzou. The brown haired man immediately had his hands up in defense.

"I maybe didn't tell him that the whole tree he was climbing was rotten through. I just told him not to climb it, everything that happened to him he did to himself," Kakashi rolled his eyes, and Sakura laughed, still a little sleepy from the nap she'd been interrupted from. Naruto, however, squawked again and lunged at Tenzou who quickly managed to drop the fish without spilling them too horribly. As they wrestled against one another, Kakashi indulged in a bit of cackling laughter at the sight of two grown men rolling over each other like children fighting over a toy. Tenzou, of course, had the disadvantage because he'd been ambushed but was managing to hold his own and turn the fight towards his favor.

Sakura joined in with a few more giggles of her own at the curses Naruto and Tenzou were growling at one another as Tenzou valiantly tried to have the fight away from the summer vegetable crop. Kakashi grinned between egging the two of them on until he decided that they'd had enough fun and he needed to put an end to it. As he stood up and stretched his legs, the shoji behind him hissed a little as it opened.

"Sai, come help me—"

Sai stood on the porch, quite at ease as Gama Jiraiya slipped quietly out of the house and onto the deck of the porch. Kakashi choked on his words as he thought of the million things he had to do at once—he had to bow, and Sakura as well—actually no, he had to hide Sakura—and he had to get Tenzou and Naruto to stop fighting and bow as well and—

"Sai, please, help those two help themselves," a woman's voice said from behind Jiraiya, saving Kakashi from one of his problems but leaving him still paralyzed. A black haired woman—pretty, but not really his type anymore—settled herself down next to Jiraiya, her hands folded in her lap elegantly. Sai moved with a silent, fluid grace towards where Tenzou seemed to be trying to strangle Naruto. His movements were calculated and precise as he pried the two men apart. He slapped Naruto once on the side of the head with a short insult to the character of his manhood, and dusted Tenzou off briefly—mostly focusing on pulling bits of grass out of Tenzou's brown hair.

Kakashi's knees wavered and he managed to make the collapse look nearly graceful as he bowed his head completely to the terrifying old man standing not three feet from him. The birds tittered to themselves as Sai prodded Naruto and Tenzou up the steps to sit with Kakashi and Sakura, and the woman who had come with Lord Gama. The birds. Kakashi's vision blurred out of focus for a moment as he realized that the usual migrations of birds in the area left the transition between summer and spring nearly silent—and that all day the birds had been on fire with song. His stomach knotted in on itself as he looked at Sai out of the corner of his eye, and remembered the bird singing so stridently from the rooftop not twenty minutes ago.

It had clicked into place immediately, why Sai knew and obeyed Lord Gama, why Sai was so easily able to break up a fight between two men determined to fight—why witless Sai always wanted to go to town and why the merchants and villagers there nearly threw their wares at him as though they feared him.

There was a shinobi on his porch. There had been a shinobi in his house during his journey to Edo. His pregnant wife had been feeding and clothing a trained killer, his servant-near-brother had been sleeping in the same room as a mindless killing machine of a man. Sai had planted himself in their household with an ease which Kakashi had thought himself above—surely he would notice a shinobi in his house, it would be hard to plant someone in a household of three and a dog. The stabwounds he'd arrived with—Tenzou had said, months ago, that they were odd. Self-inflicted. Sai knelt next to the woman Gama had brought with him, his smile just as witless as it had been this morning. An act. An artist with enemies, wanting access to an inkstone and paper, kindly offering to go to town for the poor samurai who hosted him through a long winter—a ploy to allow him to communicate with his master. With Gama Jiraiya.

Kakashi had met a shinobi before, as a young boy, one hired by the Uchiwa to spy on one of their fellow religious deviants—they kept close tabs on their "brothers and sisters," so as not to get caught if those "brothers and sisters," were found out by the bakufu. It was not an experience he wanted to relive. He had been probably ten or eleven, and the man had cheerfully explained in great detail how to remove fingernails with the most pain and the least blood, as well as how to reseal documents so that the recipient had no idea there had been any tampering. Shinobi were terrifying, and only used by those who had something to hide, something to steal, or against those who had a reason to be silenced.

Tenzou would never be anything more than a servant, and his mother and father-in-law would never look after their grandchildren or travel between Iimori and Fujimi ever again, and he would never see his child or Sakura's green eyes again—

"Daughter, would you make some tea? I'm parched after that walk and it looks as though our host might pass out after his next breath. Sai, if he does please don't let him hit his head against anything," Gama said cheerfully as he took a seat, "and do relax yourselves, there's no one to see us being improper." His daughter got up and went inside, not asking for help or even directions around the house. As Kakashi reluctantly sat up properly, he wondered if she'd been sent inside to she wouldn't see all the blood about to be spilt.

"Now, let me have a look at my boy," Gama's mouth was wide with a smile as he turned towards Tenzou and Naruto. Naruto straightened up a little and looked Gama right in the eye—at least until Sai reached out, lightning fast, and flicked his ear and then swatted his shoulder. Tenzou glanced everywhere at once, realizing that the focus was directed all on him. Gama put an elbow on his knee, resting his chin on his palm, as he studied the brown haired servant. Kakashi barely resisted fidgeting. Sakura wiggled a little, trying to sit comfortably without drawing attention to herself.

"…uhm…" Tenzou cleared his throat, clearly meaning to take Gama up on his offer of a relaxed social setting.

"You look quite like your mother, you know. Not at all like that monster who fathered you. I'm glad for that—Sai has been painfully spare on the details of your appearance over the last few months." Everything was silent for a long moment, even the…birds…were quiet. Kakashi watched Tenzou's jaw work for a little as the man tried to figure out what to say exactly—and Gama seemed more than pleased to wait.

"Please excuse me," Tenzou started, bowing shortly, "but I don't know who you are or why you care about who my parents are—or even why you're here." His dark brown eyes flicked once towards Kakashi who had nothing to offer him. When he had returned from Edo there had been little reason to talk about Gama Jiraiya—he had saved Sarutobi-sama's son, he would come to collect Naruto at some point, and that was the end of it. The craggy old man had mentioned nothing about Tenzou. Gama squinted his eyes and pursed his lips, obviously considering his next course of action carefully.

Kakashi suddenly wondered what Sai would have done if Sarutobi-sama had sent him to another household—gone home? Wandered over to the Hatake land just to observe the family servant? The thought made him almost ask just before Gama broke his silence.

"Your mother was a princess, a cousin of the ruling family—Tsunade-hime. She would have been my wife barring the actions of your father, a lord from Kyoto—Hebi Orochimaru. You would have been raised as my son, who I had fully planned on renaming Hideki. And you want to know who I am?" There was a whimsy to his question despite his face betraying nothing of it.

"Yes." Tenzou was unfazed—he'd spent his youth living with Kakashi's tricks, he wasn't easily baited when it was obvious. Gama's eyes twinkled.

"I am Gama Jiraiya, one of the five regents of Shogun Ietsuna—I am the man history will forget, because I am the man that makes sure Ietsuna lives long enough to be remembered. I'm here, Tenzou, to collect you as I was prevented from doing more than twenty years ago," he finished with a flourish.

"Why now?"

"My master believed you dead, Tenzou-sama, for twenty years. He has been carefully looking for you these last five years—"

"That's quite enough Sai," Gama said, turning his head just barely to put Sai into his peripheral vision. Kakashi's heartbeat sped up and his breathing was slow and shallow suddenly—if it had been frightening to see his guest turn into an obedient killer before his eyes, it was eerily terrifying to see the switch between a jovial older man to this one who was so coldly in control. Kakashi's head spun when the happy old man returned.

"Your mother's family told me you had died, which was why Tsunade-hime killed herself. It wasn't for a very long time that I found out that you had been hidden in the imperial palace for several years, and then placed under the care of your father for a few more, before disappearing once again from any records I could get my hands on. It wasn't until Orochimaru married off his daughter to a legitimized bastard from the northern country that I thought to look here."

"Father, the tea you asked for," the young woman said as she returned, gracefully kneeling down and placing their tea tray—a gift from Sakura's parents from their wedding, Kakashi remembered through the shocked fog he'd been sitting in for the past several minutes.

"Shizune, thank you," Gama said with a wide smile as his daughter filled all of the cups she'd brought out with her. Everyone else was quiet. Sai with his fake smile—somehow, Kakashi realized, he'd always known it was fake despite everything. Sakura maintaining her most demure attitude—which must have been killing her inside, he knew, because of how tightly she clenched one of her hands. His wife probably would have been yelling at Gama by now if not for the probability that they'd all die within minutes of any raised voices. Tenzou was resolutely staring across their small circle at Gama, his hands curled into tight fists on his knees while his shoulders were rigidly straight.

Gama had a few sips of tea in pleased silence, his eyes flicking around the group and studying their faces it seemed.

"Now, I've come here to take you as my own before Orochimaru realizes that he should have claimed you as his natural son years ago. There wasn't a moment to lose, which is why there has been no fanfare of my grand arrival," for the first time in a long time, a smile played on Gama's lips.

"I fear I got a little carried away in depriving him of an heir—he had been just weeks away from formally adopting his young lover as his heir before the boy was arrested as a traitor. Unfortunately, his elder brother—Uchiwa Itachi—killed him about two weeks ago. I merely delivered the young man's body to my old rival."

Kakashi's blood, already thick and sluggish to his racing heart, went cold. Itachi? Surely Gama meant another man—perhaps Fugaku, or one of the other cousins? Itachi had barely been able to stomach meat for the thought of the suffering of the animal it came from. But…if Itachi had killed his own brother, it explained who had exposed the entire clan to the bakufu.

"You kicked a hornet's nest and then lobbed it in Lord Hebi's face, Father, which is why we had to bring along so many of my mother's sons rather than just me," the young woman said as she refilled his empty cup. Gama shot her a look, expressive in its indignation.

"Why do you need me if your wife has already given you many to choose from?" Tenzou's question was a good one. Gama's face was close to splitting in two as he answered with a grin.

"Because the boys my wife raises are orphans and foundlings, she and I are their only family aside from each other. You, Tenzou, should have been my natural son if Tsunade-hime hadn't been stolen from me. You are going to marry my daughter to help her do my job in a few years—also, now I don't have to bother with finding her a husband or you a wife. Shizune and Sai will keep you safe from Orochimaru until he figures out that he can never have you. This time I will take care of keeping his greedy hands off of what is mine."

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