Fujio's neck was aching.
It—
It had happened a couple years ago, now. It had sucked, when it happened—when the prisoner had attacked him. He'd been—embarrassed, mostly. That he hadn't seen it coming. That another guard had had to pull the prisoner off of him.
He'd never told anyone about it. He'd received treatment and all that—there was a medic at the prison—but it just hadn't been something he'd wanted to admit to.
(He knew that was one of his failings.
(His pride.
(That didn't mean it was any easier to do anything about it.)
After, after he started getting neck pains sometimes.
It wasn't anything to worry about—he'd gotten that checked—but the aches never really went away, not permanently.
And it took a while, to notice.
But eventually he realized that his neck ached when he was tense, when he was worried.
His neck was aching now.
He watched Hizashi carefully, but he wasn't the danger.
His movements were fluid, perfect.
The tea ceremony was utterly exact.
Everything was wrong.
Rento couldn't tell but Fujio could.
He met Rento's eyes, demanded attention.
His nephew looked confused, looked befuddled by his worry—but trusted his uncle.
Rento's body slowly shifted into a more ready position.
Hizashi was still doing exactly as expected.
Fujio's neck was killing him.
Rento—
Rento was a sensor.
Rento had no doubt started checking the second Fujio put him on alert.
And now he stiffened, now he stood.
Fujio did too.
Hizashi didn't, kept performing the ceremony as if there wasn't a disruption at all.
And then Rento spoke. "Did you forget I was a sensor?"
Silence.
Rento was staring at a spot just to the right of the open door.
"You did, didn't you."
Rento glanced—left, a bit further from the door than he'd looked from the right, then up, near the roof.
Three, then.
Fujio—
Rento was a paperwork-nin. Fujio was a backline ninja.
They were not prepared.
But that was okay, because they were inside Konoha.
Fujo flared his chakra. Only a little—enough to only capture the police's attention if an officer happened to be nearby—but enough to warn the Hyuuga of exactly what they were risking.
Hizashi kept performing the ceremony.
And Rento relaxed. "They're backing off."
"Are you okay, Hyuuga Hizashi?" Fujio asked. He didn't turn to look at Hizashi; he already knew the answer.
There was no reply anyway.
"Flare your chakra anyway."
"They backed off?"
"Still."
Rento nodded, did as his uncle asked.
The Uchiha didn't take long to arrive.
…And someone who was clearly not an Uchiha, a recruit trotting after the partner officers who were actually on patrol. Fujio still wasn't used to non-Uchiha being police.
"What's the emergency?" One of the Uchiha asked.
"Something's wrong with Hizashi," Fujio said. "I don't know if he'll attack me if I try, but he needs to get to the Hospital."
"Why didn't you notify other Hyuuga?"
Fujio didn't bother to answer that one, and after a second the Uchiha turned to his partner, making a short series of gestures.
His partner, who hadn't stopped staring at Hizashi as the man continued to perform a one-person tea ceremony, nodded, left the room.
"Jounin Hyuuga Hizashi, this is Special Jounin Uchiha Tobio. Do you understand me?"
Nothing.
Tobio wouldn't be in the room if the Yamanakas hadn't reacted, and so it seemed as if Hizashi'd just decided to ignore his presence.
"Okay, I'll give you that it's creepy," Tobio said. He pulled out a needle, inched close enough to prick Hizashi's skin, try to jolt him out of a lower-level genjutsu.
It didn't work.
"Okay. Okay. Um, Recruit Abe?"
"Yes, sir?"
"Go get… fuck. Go get Head Uchiha. Now."
Getting a jounin of Hizashi's caliber somewhere he didn't want to go was almost impossible, but Fujio still winced at sending a poor teenager to go grab one of the few people that could keep up with a Hyuuga twin.
"Isn't his twin still in the hospital?"
The tea ceremony was wrapping up. Fujio wondered what Hizashi would do after.
"Yeah, I think so," he answered.
Rento—now more than aware of how very wrong all of this was—cleared his throat. "The Hyuuga kids are scared. Like, so much so that I can sense it in their chakra."
"That's… not good," Uchiha said. He met Fujio's eyes. What could make the kids of one of the strongest clans quake?
Well, the byoki, for one.
"Backup?"
"All the backup," Fujio agreed.
Both began sending out every signal, chakra, smoke, or otherwise, they had.
Rento did one better—he set a small piece of chakra paper on the ground and activated it, creating a beam of light visible across the whole of the city.
Well, that was one way to draw attention.
.
Sakura just wanted a little time to sit still.
Just a little, teeny-tiny bit of time to not deal with all the everything that was constantly happening.
She glared in the direction of the Hyuuga Compound.
She glared at her subordinates.
They were used to it, didn't bat an eye.
She kind of wished they'd be at least a little afraid, but oh well.
She turned to the doctor.
"Why am I here?"
"He's in a genjutsu. We can't break it."
Which, Sakura remembered the Kurama clan. Only barely from Arden's memories, but enough to make her wary—most of Arden's memories of Sakura's world involved powerful people doing powerful things.
She remembered them far better in her own memories, which begged the question of why they weren't called in.
Sakura knew perfectly well why—their star had been waning for some time, now, and this sort of unbreakable genjutsu was a bit of a signature move of theirs… and the Uchiha's, but she wasn't supposed to know that.
Sakura sighed.
The best way to break a genjutsu was to find whoever was doing it and block their chakra, and she could help with that.
"We have that far-too-complicated-to-bother-with family-chakra tester, right?" She asked.
Someone—Dan, she liked Dan—replied. "Yeah. This worth it?"
"Seems to be. Get someone with really good chakra sense to make sure we're looking at the chakra of whatever genjutsu is wrapped around Hizashi's brain, then test it against a member of every single clan in Konnoha—even the ones that have nothing to do with genjutsu." She turned to the doctor. "Good?"
"Great, thank you."
Dan could absolutely have handled that.
On the other hand, Hiashi was visibly radiating fury from his position in the corner, so she kind of understood why they wanted as high an official as possible there to make the plan.
.
Jiraiya—
He didn't want to, to admit—
Well, he knew he'd messed up.
But he'd spent the past several months hopping between his regular duties and Sensei, and he'd spent the past years searching in vain for Orochimaru, and something had to change.
It had been hardest to convince Nagato.
He still expected Konoha to be upset over how he'd killed a Konoha-nin as a child, avenged his parents.
Jiraiya could see it happening so well, could see the Konoha-nin entering the home to loot, could see the parents thinking far worse, attacking him to protect their son…
Could see Nagato, with his rare, rare bloodline.
(Jiraiya wondered, sometimes, about his reaction to it. Wondered if he'd fallen prey like his Sensei had. Tsunade had checked, of course, as had the Yamanaka clan head, but there was still so much they did not know.)
After he'd gotten Nagato on board, Yahiko had been a far easier sell.
The boy wanted peace so desperately—they all did—and for all that it wasn't anywhere close, anywhere near the tranquil lives that the three thought people should have, Konoha's reputation (for medicine, for long childhoods, for broad educations useful in both civilian and shinobi lives, for movies and entertainment and other traditional peacetime endeavors) was enough to convince Yahiko and the rest that Konoha may very well be the best place to push their peace narrative.
Plus, they had the best veterinary care in the world, and Yahiko had a dog.
Konan—
Of them all, she'd been the most willing.
Jiraiya still remembered meeting them, all those years ago.
Remembered Orochimaru's comment about killing them. He'd thought of it as a joke, then, and he wondered how in denial he'd been.
Remembered how wary Konan especially was of them.
Remembered how few immigrants were accepted, how full Konoha already was.
And so he'd decided to just help them stay alive, stay safe.
And then—
Things kept happening.
He'd kept training them.
Life went on.
And he'd never—
Never reconsidered.
Until Sensei.
Until he'd started thinking back, thinking of all his flawed reasoning, of all his flawed emotions.
He might not have Sensei's excuse, either.
Probably didn't, according to Tsunade.
And so now it was time for him to begin righting past wrongs, and one of those steps was to bring in the children.
The Yamanaka had done him a favor, too, checked them out. Said they were all in bad shape, mentally, but they weren't spies, just traumatized. Trauma didn't bar you from a life in Konoha, so the Yamanaka clan head gave him a paper, signed and sealed, to give to the gate guards, and that (combined with the paper Minato had already provided) would ensure they'd get immediate residency.
(Traumatized.
(Of course they were traumatized, he knew that.
(But if they were living on their own, out in the wilds of Rain, then they weren't exactly getting treatment, were they?
(He really should have done this forever ago.)
Konan looked up at him, face formed into a little pout as they approached the main gate. "Are you sure about this?" he asked. Always so distrustful, always so wary of people who killed for a living.
"Yes." Jiraiya said, and hoped he was right.
