"Well, I came upon a man at the top of a hill,

Called himself the savior of the human race,

Said he'd come to save the word from destruction and pain,

but I said, how can you save the world from itself?"

-Through the Valley, Reinaeiry

I stopped halfway up the staircase, wondering where I should go. I glanced at the mist-filled alleys around me and wondered if anyone would tell me where they went. Or I could find that green-eyed guy again and use another favor.

I looked at the sky, but there was only mist and clouds. It was early, probably. There was no one looking at me from balconies, or doorways, but it was too bright to be before dawn.

"Hey, miss! Miss with the red clouds!"

I turned around, looking at the boy who stood on the steps below me, his hands cupped around his mouth as he yelled up at me.

"Leader wants to see you!"

I paused. He was around ten or eleven and had black, flower-like markings covering half his face like the fruit vendor. He had brown short hair and wore clothes too big for him.

"She sent me to get you!"

The meat vendor?

"Where is she?" I asked back.

"Can't tell you. It's a secret! Gotta show you!"

I hummed, then turned and started down the steps. I followed him to the alley he'd come out of, and he quickly waved me after him as he walked into the mist.

"This way, this way!" he said impatiently.

I heard quiet whimpering behind me.

I glanced back. The girl with bandages around her eyes was bent over in the grass, her back turned to me, rubbing at her eyes with both hands. Her palms were smeared with fresh blood and it dripped in a steady line from her chin.

My eyes widened a little, because there'd been no one else around other than me and that boy. And she hadn't bled half as much when I'd been right in front of her.

I stared at the wall of mist in front of me again, wishing I'd brought Namekuji with me. He'd decided to reluctantly become a sensor-nin again after complaining that my chakra tasted worse than he remembered, and that Hidan's was too cold.

I'd almost brought Naga, but he'd attract eyes like he had with Mei. If he came with me Minakami wouldn't see me. They'd see a dead clan.

"What are you waiting for? She's waiting!" the boy said, bouncing on his feet impatiently as he halfway came out of the mist.

I wondered what she saw as I followed him.

He led me down a slope, running ahead as I climbed down over a ridge, and then he led me to a field of stones.

Some were small, and others tall enough to reach my knees, and they were all over. Some were straighter and in the shape of slabs, fixed into the dirt with an earth jutsu, while others had been wedged in by hand and looked cruder, sticking out at angles.

They all had words written on them, or clan markings burned into the grass under them.

果物 (Kudamono)

逆上 (Gyakujou)

打倒 (Datou)

Two lines twining around each other, like strands, burned into the ground beneath a circle of stones. I'd seen it x'ed out on the wall before.

They marked where the dead were. I watched the boy wave at me from a brick, shack-like building on the other side of the field of stones. The windows were like eyes watching over them.

I looked at him, and suddenly had the thought that he'd stood on the stairs.

Mei had said it'd be easy to blend in, and it made me wonder when was the last time she was in Minakami, because it wasn't. Even without my cloak, I would've stood out, because I didn't know all the unspoken rules.

Foreigners used the stairs. Why would anyone who didn't know the rules think not to?

I hummed, and walked on the outskirts of the field as I followed him.

"You were really cool at the market," he said when I was close, pushing open the creaky door and bouncing inside.

I didn't say anything, a few steps behind him as he led me down a short hallway. The walls were covered all over with the same symbol. It looked like a mass of thorny vines spilling out of a jar.

"I was watching how you got everyone to listen to you—"

The sound of his voice stopped, but not because he stopped or someone else cut him off. It was like he stopped existing.

Or like he hadn't existed at all. Like a clone that popped mid-swing.

I stopped, looking away from the wall towards the stitched rug on the floor in front of me without feet marks. There was no water or dirt on it, but I'd seen that type of clone before too.

It made me think of Jiraiya.

Leaf-nin, I thought automatically, before I saw the sandaled feet dangling down from a brown table at the back of the room.

I looked up slowly, taking in his pant legs tucked into the bandages around his ankles, knowing who he was before I saw his mask, but still in disbelief.

It was different, knowing he was here somewhere, and seeing him right in front of me.

I looked at his black belt and his black shirt tucked into it. His long sleeves, his hair, cut shorter than I remembered, and the white mask.

"not-Madara," I breathed out the name.

He pulled left leg up and rested his arm on his knee. He tilted his head curiously at me and asked, "You're not going to attack me? I'm surprised."

I tilted my head back until I was staring, sightlessly, at the scratched boards that made up the ceiling. "I thought this was a trap. I was going to destroy this house, and everyone hiding in it if I needed to."

I couldn't help a humorless, hard laugh. It was a trap, just not the kind I'd been expecting.

He waited patiently until I eventually looked back down at him, wiping water from my right eye. I'd laughed so hard I was crying.

"No, I'm not going to attack you," I finally answered. "Someone I know said your power was bullshit once, and I agree with him. If I try to kill you, will you sit still and let me, Uchiha?"

He didn't answer, which was answer enough.

I wiped my left eye. "Will you be good and let me take away your power so I can hit you?"

He abruptly leaned forward and pointed at me, a red pinwheel spinning slowly in his eye as he tilted his head again. "You're different," he noted to himself, stepping right over what I'd said, and it made me want to laugh again. "What paths have you awakened?" he asked with more interest.

I held out my right hand, hoping he'd remember it as the one that could absorb his chakra when it wasn't. "Let's shake hands, and I'll show you."

He ignored me again and leaned forward more. "Your chakra feels..." he trailed off, staring at me with a wide eye for a second before the pinwheel slowed to a stop. "Oh I see."

I lowered my hand.

"Did you know that every story you've ever heard in your life, and every story passed down in this world, has some measure of truth to them? All folktales and fairytales are based on real events, no matter how exaggerated they may have become in the present. And there is a fairytale told to Uchiha children that our eyes are a gift from the heavens," he said. He raised the gloved hand that had been pointing at me and covered his mask, looking at me through his fingers. "It's told that the evolution of these eyes is a sign that an Uchiha has earned the attention of a god or goddess. The tale goes that the Uchiha, who still honor the gods by naming jutsu after them to this day, are the only clan in this accursed world to still have the eyes of heaven watching over them, even if they don't know it."

He was still covering his face as he kept talking, "You have my curiosity, Oka. Just what path have you awakened to have earned the attention of a god? And that friend of yours, the missing-nin from Yugakure..." he trailed off. "Ah, now I understand. I wonder, what did he do to earn a god on his side?"

He's just there. Don't know his name.

I stared back at him, not moving. I thought of tongue-like hands tumbling over each other to grab at the man whose name I refused to learn.

Even Naga wouldn't have been able to heal his tongue. Bones could be fused back together and skin could regrow, but a completely cut tongue would stay cut, no matter how much chakra was poured into healing it.

I thought of the chakra that had disappeared, so suddenly and unexpectedly that I'd fallen to my knees. I didn't use it. It was taken from me.

Hidan had only seen a small part of the head, and it hadn't been all the way solid that first time, but between laughing he'd said, That's the most blasphemous shit I've ever seen.

He called everything and anything blasphemous, but it was only now that I realized he'd meant it then.

I didn't trust not-Madara, but I believed him. Because it was an explanation for jutsu that had none.

Jutsu that seemingly only one person knew how to use, that worked outside the rules of chakra, that frightened normal people.

not-Madara didn't create his dimension. He was handed the key and unlocked it. Hidan wasn't born immortal.

I remembered the things shaped like people trying to push through the back of that pitch-black mouth.

I'd stood on the barrier between life and death and never even knew it.

'Naraka' was different from pushing and pulling. Different from summoning. Different from absorbing chakra. Even if it had felt like more of the same at the time.

A collection of jutsu that I couldn't explain. Things I just did. That just happened. But everything else I could do bent but didn't break the rules of chakra.

But Naraka let me fix the man who's name I didn't know so that he was brand new. The power of a god.

"What god lives in your eye, not-Madara?" I asked him, eyes wide.

He stared back at me, and the pattern in his eye spun in a slow, mesmerizing circle. He closed his eye and wagged a disapproving finger at me.

"You'll have to find that out on your own, but I didn't come here just to talk about fairytales," he drawled, leaning back. The red faded from his gaze. "I want to know why you're here, Oka."

I stared at him and didn't answer.

He pointed leisurely at me. "Last time we met, you told me that you cared for nothing and no one, with the only exceptions being those friends of yours. Was that a lie?"

I didn't answer, but he didn't seem to mind my silence. He waved vaguely at me. "Because I thought that meant that I could leave you alone. That you could live as selfishly as you wanted in Amegakure until the time came. And yet here you are, interfering in a war that has nothing to do with you."

I said nothing.

"You were hired, that much is clear, but what you've done with Kisame, and how you tried to rally the people of this caste yesterday, well, that almost sounds like you want to help Kirigakure of your own free will. It sounds like you've had a drastic change in personality, and yet you're looking at me like you did that day in the forest, with those eyes, like the world could be burning and you'd still prioritize trying to kill me over putting it out," he said. "Even so, if it's an alliance you've come for, I can give you that. I am the Mizukage, after all."

I hid a smile behind the back of my hand, because that was funny, and said, "I'd never ally with you, Uchiha."

not-Madara stared at me. "Do you think these people deserve saving so badly?"

"No, but I'd burn water country to the ground with my own hands before I stood willingly next to you," I said sweetly.

We stared at each other.

"You have to know any action you take here is useless," he said. "Conflict is the lifeblood of this world. You stop it one day, and the next it begins anew. What makes you think that you, even with those eyes, can end that thousand-year cycle?"

I dropped my hand. "I don't think I can. Conflict is just another part of the world. Time doesn't stop because people die. I'm not trying to change any cycle. I've learned to live with it."

not-Madara didn't respond and as I looked at him I realized that he'd come here to try and understand me, but he couldn't.

He'd sold his dream to Kisame, but he couldn't with me, because I didn't want to reshape the world.

I wanted Amegakure to be seen, but I didn't want to take over rain country or force my will on anyone. That didn't mean I wouldn't, but only if I had to retaliate. Mostly, I just wanted Amegakure to be unbendable.

What could not-Madara offer me that also aligned with his own dream? What could he give me that I wouldn't rather take from him?

Nothing.

"Live with it?" he repeated tonelessly. "Have you forgotten how irredeemable this world is? Even without a war going on, the system this world runs on is rotted with corruption."

"I haven't."

"Did you know that those at the top of this system, the daimyo, are the ones most guilty of helping the underworld thrive with their petty squabbles? How can you stand it, knowing that those who have never seen blood, and never will, sustain the very missing-nin we ninja are taught are scum?"

I hummed. He seemed to be under the impression that Amegakure listened to the rain daimyo, that we followed that system.

How couldn't we, being in a country with a daimyo? How couldn't we, when the last thing he'd have heard from White Zetsu about the rain daimyo was that he'd sent a messenger to us?

I stared at him and understood suddenly why we were so different, even though a lot of what we believed about the world was the same.

He was alone.

He had Zetsu, but they weren't a person. He hated the world, but I didn't.

He waited for my answer, gripping his leg like it agitated him, that corruption.

I chose the system, again and again. I could've quit. Even Maho said so. And it wouldn't have been because I was turning away and covering my ears and pretending I didn't see that rot.

It would've been about me, what I wanted.

And it sounded a lot like not-Madara had never been given any choice at all. I was the war child, and yet he was what had been born from it.

Eventually I asked, "So you've given up pretending to be Madara?"

He unfroze and dropped his leg off the table. "If I were to bring a thousand witnesses before you to tell you that I am Madara Uchiha, or if I proved to you, without a doubt, that the blood running through my veins was that of Madara Uchiha, would you believe it?"

My eyes widened a little. "No."

He held both arms out in a helpless shrug, then lowered them. "One last question" he began, looking sideways at me. "What have you done to make White Zetsu disappear? There's not a single trace of him left anywhere."

I let my face go blank. "Ah, well, you'll have to find that out yourself."

He stared at me, then let his head fall forward. "I see. I think it's about time I decide to play a different game. We'll meet again soon."

Before I could respond, the air warped around his eye and he was gone.

I stood there for a second, and then I walked closer to the table and touched the spot where he'd been.

It was warm. He'd really been here.

I went still when I heard the door open behind me and half-turned, watching Kisame duck in, leaning an arm on the ceiling as he had to stay hunched.

His grin was like a polished knife.

"He was here, wasn't he? The Uchiha?"

"A few seconds ago," I told him.

Kisame studied me in silence, trying to decipher what I'd been doing with him through look alone.

I hummed. "I can get more oranges If you need a reminder," I said, half-threat, half-promise.

Kisame forced his gaze away, saying nothing as he took a quick glance around the room. He went back outside without a word and was standing with his arms crossed as I walked out and pushed the door closed with my foot.

"He has a partner, Black Zetsu," I told him, and his eyes shifted down to me. "It can travel underground and is invisible to sensor-nin. It'd warn him you were coming and might've just now. You'd never catch him by surprise."

"It?" he repeated.

"When I first met Zetsu, it didn't seem human," I answered, starting to walk back around the field of stones. "That was before I saw a lot more things that didn't seem human."

After a second, Kisame unfolded his arms and followed me. "The Uchiha, he relies a whole lot on Kamui. He even uses it when he shouldn't, like it's instinct. Samehada was able to tear through it that way," he said, like he owed me information.

I stopped walking. "You injured him?"

"I didn't take it well when I found out he was a fraud," Kisame said, shooting me a humorless grin. "Makes sense though. I rely on Samehada quite a bit too, even when it takes more effort."

"Is his dimension called Kamui too?"

Kisame looked at me. When he realized I wasn't joking, he asked, with confusion leaking into his voice. "Dimension?"

色ガラス

I walked over wet grass, feeling cold metal beneath my feet.

I heard the barely-there crunch of sandals stepping on the grass poking through the metal behind me.

I glanced to the side, at a short-haired girl sitting on a round roof, but her eyes stuck behind me, on Kisame, her hand frozen in a bag of chips.

The symbol on her shirt was two connected v's pointing in opposite directions, and I'd seen the clan name stitched into her shoulder before.

舟戸

The shop beneath her was concrete-gray, with a door that folded open, and the sign bolted to the wall that read 'seamstress'. The same symbol on her shirt was on the wall and painted bright yellow, unmistakable even with all the mist.

Another shop was on my right. It had a second story, with a sign that read 'electricity repairs'. Triangles with curving lines were painted in blue all over the door. They looked a little like squids.

A round dish on the roof of the repair shop pointed at the sky.

The road between the shops was one long grate with tiny round holes, but big enough to see the water flowing beneath it.

I hummed, and then decided to finally address Kisame. "Why are you following me, Kisame?"

"Because," he said, and I could hear his grin.

"I don't think he'll show himself if you're here."

"No," he agreed.

I stared at him, but he only looked happily back at me.

"Hey, newcomer! Do an old woman a favor and take a look at her wares, would you? No one here has any use for these old things, but you might find something that catches your eye."

I turned away from Kisame to look.

A small, makeshift table had been propped up in the tiny space between two shops. A ripped piece of black cloth had been spread over it, and on top in neat rows were gold and silver necklaces, rings, bracelets, and other jewelry.

An old woman knelt behind the table, her back to the brick wall, wearing a patched blanket as a coat. Her fingers were more like bones with wrinkled skin around them and her gray hair was thin and short.

Ignoring Kisame, I walked over, because why not?

Her eyebrows pulled together, looking behind me. "Oh, you're..." she trailed off. "I didn't realize that your... acquaintance had an interest in my wares as well."

I hummed, saying nothing about him following me as I looked over the table. I was looking for something Maho might like, or Mamoru-sensei, or even Joji or Etsudo, but then realized that I'd never seen any of them wear anything like this. But there wasn't really something like this in Amegakure. Why waste iron to make a bracelet when it could be used to make a cooking pot instead?

We didn't have the materials to spare for things like this.

My eyes caught on a silver necklace at the end of the table. I picked it up by the chain, holding it at eye level, and stared at the circle with the upside-down triangle in the middle. I'd seen it more times than I could count, drawn in Hidan's blood.

The old woman leaned forward and lowered her voice, nervous-looking as she spoke to me, "Could you, perhaps, tell your companion to wait on the road, dear? This kind of business isn't really suitable for men. You understand, don't you?"

I looked at her past Jashin's symbol. "I don't," I answered, and she didn't seem to know how to respond.

"Is it because I can see right through your chunin-level transformation?" Kisame asked behind me, sounding amused.

She froze, shrinking into herself. "I'm not sure what you mean—"

"Where'd you get this?" I interrupted her, mostly because I didn't care what she really looked like or who she really was.

"It's all fake," Kisame said.

I looked at the symbol again and hummed. "Can I give you a kunai for it?" I asked her.

Kisame studied me, saying nothing.

"I..." she tore her gaze away from Kisame, hands trembling as she folded them in her lap. "Yes, of course. I would be grateful," she said quickly, bowing her head, her voice shaking.

I reached into my pouch, only to pause as something was tossed onto the table.

A headband.

"That's too much. Something worthless should only be traded for something else worthless," Kisame explained when I tilted my head at him.

"Worthless—?" she started in surprise, then bit her tongue, bowing lower until her head almost touched the ground. "I-I understand. Please forgive my impudence."

He'd already stopped paying attention to her.

"You're sure?" I asked him.

His grin grew. "I'm not a fan of carrying junk around."

I stared at him, but he only stared back. Since it was his decision, I pulled out an empty scroll and sealed the necklace away.

She was still bowing as I went back to the road. "You didn't have to do that," I said, once I thought she couldn't hear me anymore.

"You could buy the entire table and one kunai would still be too much," he responded.

I tucked the scroll in a side pocket in my pouch, wondering if he'd regret it. "Thanks," I said, an afterthought.

"Sure."

"How old are you, Kisame?" I asked after half a minute of silence.

He paused to think. "Eighteen," he answered. "Feels like I've lived several lifetimes already."

I hummed in agreement, then said, "Being a ninja makes you feel old. I don't feel fifteen either."

Kisame didn't say anything, but something had shifted. The quiet didn't feel as awkward.

"What does that say?" I asked, glancing at a sign on the wall of another shop.

"It's a bar," he said after a second. I felt his stare. "You... don't know how to read?"

I raised my hand and made a so-so gesture. "I learned to read from a textbook. Harder words, and formal words, are easier. Katakana is annoying."

He didn't speak.

"It's better than when I was little, I think, but sometimes..." I trailed off, glancing back at the sign that I couldn't read. "Words that other people find easy sometimes don't work in my head."

Kisame was silent again, but eventually asked, "Why tell me that?"

"You asked."

"It was a yes or no question."

"Maybe I would've taken it that way if I was a mist-nin."

Kisame didn't respond.

"That one?" I asked, looking at another sign.

"It's a soup shop."

"Why is it across from a bar?"

"You'd be surprised at how appetizing an easily digestible meal is when you can't hold anything solid down."

I hummed, but I barely heard him. I was thinking of Suisai. I walked further down the road to the soup shop, wedging open the foldable door as I went inside.

It was smaller than it looked on the outside, empty, and smelled like cooked vegetables. It only had a bar table, a row of seats, and a wall separating the front from the kitchen.

"You know I don't open until the place across the road does—" the words died in his throat as he came out and saw me. He had black tattoos on the right side of his face in the shape of roses.

"You know who I am?" I mused.

Kisame ducked in behind me as I went to the front and the shop owner's eyes snapped to him, suddenly wide and full of fear. He quickly dropped his gaze to the floor.

Kisame shook his head. "You can relax, I'm not here on business. I'm not part of the village anymore."

The shop owner's head jerked up and he stared at Kisame in confused shock. Then his eyes slid to me, reassessing, silently trying to figure out how I'd gotten him on my side.

"I-I heard about those clouds," he stumbled to say as I sat. "I don't know your identity—the rumors weren't clear on the position or power you held—" he didn't finish, didn't seem to know how to.

He looked at least twice Kisame's age, with a short beard.

I glanced over a list written in chalk on a board hanging on the wall, and he waited as I did, nervously avoiding eye contact with me.

"I'll take the mushroom one," I said.

He tentatively turned to Kisame. "A-And you—?"

"Not hungry," Kisame said, not looking at him. He waited until the guy disappeared into the back before he asked, "Why?"

I looked at the board again. "The chalk is too faint to make out anything else—"

"No," he said, taking a seat. "Why are you here? What are you looking for? You've been walking, aimlessly."

I leaned my chin on my hand and told him, "I want to see Minakami, so I am."

He blinked, leaning back and studying me again like he didn't know how to accept that.

"Mist-nin don't do anything because they want to?"

"No."

"There's a bar across the street."

Kisame grinned. "No one who goes there wants to. They feel they have to drink to get away from their demons."

"Aren't you here because you want to be?" I asked.

Kisame said nothing.

I could hear movement in the back, something hissing over a fire.

"And Mangetsu—"

"He has something he feels like he has to do," he cut me off. "Involving your brother."

I hummed. "And what do you have to do?"

"I get it," he said, facing forward. "You're persistent."

"Coming from the one who's been following me around for at least an hour and won't say why."

Kisame looked at the table, quiet again.

"Do you know how old Mei is?" I asked.

He looked at the ceiling. "Sixteen or seventeen. We were on the same mission once during the war. She was thirteen then."

"How long ago did she leave the village?"

He glanced at me, seemingly always trying to find an ulterior motive.

"Nothing is stopping you from asking me questions too," I told him.

He faced forward, tapped a finger on the table, and didn't. "Is that what she told you? That she left? Chased out is more accurate. I even tracked her for a while, but that island is off-limits, especially to mist-nin."

"You were sent after her?"

He grinned at nothing and said, "The hunter-nin needed to be pointed in a direction, and their sensor-nin had their own targets from her group."

I hummed.

He refused to look at me like I might judge him for it.

"Do you think that guy can hear us?" I asked.

He glanced at me but didn't find whatever he thought he'd see. "Someone from here would know what happens to people who don't know how to keep their mouths shut. Especially if one of the seven is involved, missing-nin or not."

It took a few more minutes before the shop owner came back, putting a bowl down in front of me with shaking hands.

The broth was creamy looking, with bits of green leaves floating on top.

I scooped up a spoonful and blew on it.

"Aren't you worried about being poisoned?" Kisame asked.

I asked back, "Would you let me eat it if it was?" and ate it.

Kisame scoffed as he watched me, then shot the owner a quick glance. "I changed my mind. Garlic soup and bread."

The shop owner nodded quickly and left just as quickly to make it as I ate more soup.

It had the texture of milk, was more watery than it looked, and not half as good as Rini's soup. I didn't know why I thought it might be. Still, it was warm, and better than ration bars, which were all hard and tasteless, and the orange I ate, because it had been good, but not fresh.

I ate it all and asked for a second bowl.

"Where does it all go?" Kisame asked me, using a torn half of hard bread like a sponge in his soup.

Instead of answering, I raised the second bowl to my mouth and drank the rest of that one too, listening to the door rattle open behind me. Kisame looked, and I was half-aware of the way he quickly ate the rest of his soggy bread and nudged his bowl and what was left of the bread away from him with his fingers.

Wooden sandals clacked loudly against the floor as he or she came closer, and then he sat next to me, his straw hat tipped down to hide the top half of his face.

"It's been a fine day, hasn't it?" he asked. The curly ends of his tied-up hair spilled down his back and he had stubble under his nose and around his chin.

I paused, then lowered the bowl and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. I peered around him at the empty seat next to the wall, just to be sure it still was empty, and then stared at him.

"It's been a day, shinobi," Kisame answered, his grin meant to remind the other man who sat two seats away from him.

Said man folded his arms on the table and his wide, light blue sleeves hung off it. "It's like you swordsman have a sixth sense," he said, raising his head to meet the gaze of the frozen shop owner. "The usual for me, please."

Those dark blue eyes had looked dully at me as he called me a con-artist, and I knew who he was.

"You're the leader," I said.

"You sound so surprised," he drawled, keeping his eyes forward. "But then, you seemed a lot more imposing from the other side of the market, so you can say I'm a little surprised to come across someone more than half my junior too."

I rolled up my sleeves, showing the scar down my arm to remind him of how much of a junior I was, and looked blankly at him.

"Scary how easily you can turn that on and off," he said casually, but tipped his head down to hide his eyes.

"I thought the leader was the vendor who sold the meat," I said honestly, gazing down at my bowl as I ran my thumb around the bottom and sucked off the broth on my finger. It was how the Uchiha had drawn me into his trap. We'd both thought wrong. "You looked pretty plain," I admitted.

"My wife," he said, not acknowledging the other part. He accepted a small bowl of red soup filled with yellow noodles and black clams, and then two sticks wrapped in a napkin, from the shop owner. "She's good at drawing attention, right? It's useful, sometimes, to identify undercover hunter-nin trying to disrupt things, or learn things that are better kept private."

"You remind me of someone," I told him, swiping up more broth with my thumb. "Do you have a brother? A painter, maybe?"

He stopped. He didn't lift his head as he asked, "Lui as tu appris?" and I realized he wasn't talking to me, or even the shop owner, but to Kisame. "C'est peut-être utile."

Kisame didn't answer right away, but eventually said, "You're giving away your age, leader."

"What did he say?" I asked.

"He asked if I taught you the old language," he told me. "Could be useful, he said. But no one uses it anymore except the elders and the scholarly types that study it."

"I'll have to disagree with you there, swordsman. At least about its use here," the leader said lightly, keeping his head down to avoid Kisame's glance.

"Since you looked for me, does this mean you accept my offer?" I asked before Kisame could respond, wiping up more broth with my thumb. Somehow, it was still warm.

He didn't answer. He raised his eyes to the shop owner. "Can you give us a moment? I'll let anyone who comes in know they're early," he said, smiling apologetically. "Don't worry, they're not here to cause trouble."

The shop owner looked more pacified at that. "I needed to finish writing up the ledgers from this morning anyway," he grumbled half-heartedly. He went into the kitchen and pulled a hidden curtain closed behind him.

The leader sat up, cracked the sticks apart, and folded them between his fingers. "And what if you fail, or your client does, Taiyokage?" he asked casually, not looking at me as he wrapped noodles around the sticks.

It would be easy to say, I won't.

"What do you lose if I do?" I asked instead.

"Oh, just my people, our land, and anyone who survives gets to spend the rest of their lives on the run," he answered, then tilted his head back and dropped a glob of noodles in his mouth.

"So, nothing?" I asked.

He choked. He swallowed after a few seconds and lifted his eyes to mine.

"Minakami isn't yours, not really. It's land that the village is letting you borrow until you stop being useful," I explained. "I saw a symbol of a clan that died out in an alley. You have enough food, and if people are sick with something deadly enough to wipe out a whole clan, I haven't seen it. So, what killed them?"

I held his gaze because we both knew the answer. It was the same answer for who killed the Terumi. Mei might've earned her way into a higher caste through status, or by the blood she left in her wake, but nothing would change that she was the last one.

"If disguised hunter-nin are such a problem, then you're already running from them. You're just doing it while standing still," I added.

The leader fit a clam between the sticks and casually said, "You're indeed a wolf. You sure know how to bite."

"Do you want me to tell you how your people aren't really yours, either?" I asked.

The wide brim of his hat fell over his face as he leaned down to bite the clam. "You're doing a number on my morale," he said lightly, crunching the shell between his teeth.

"Even if we lose, they'll die for something," I said. "Better than letting the village slowly bleed you to death, for nothing. So, I'll ask again. What would you lose?"

He ate the clam in silence, then met my eyes. "If you do win and your client doesn't like your ideas about us, are you sure you're willing to toss whatever deal you've got worked out with them to pick that fight?"

It was a good question.

I hummed. "No matter how true what I said is, Minakami would still be risking everything. You could stay the way you are and it might take years or decades until every clan here is finally dead, or it'll never happen if you repopulate fast enough. You'd still have the control you do now the whole time. If you think about it like that, it's only fair that I risk everything too."

"Fair?" he echoed, like it was a foreign concept. He raised an eyebrow at me.

"You can look at it another way," I said, leaning my chin on my hand again, "If you poke the eyes of my allies out, it's only fair that I poke your eyes out too."

He went silent. He leaned down, eating another pile of noodles wrapped around his sticks. He swallowed, then said, "You've got some charisma, eh, Taiyokage? It's no surprise now how you managed to draw the swordsman to your side."

"Poking fun at me doesn't often end well," Kisame said, as casually as he'd ordered his soup.

His turned slightly towards Kisame and dipped his head in acknowledgement to the threat behind his words, but never showed him his eyes.

"If telling the truth counts as charisma," I eventually said.

"You'd be surprised how rare that is, Taiyokage, and not just among us mist-nin. It's refreshing to talk so bluntly, or to feel like we are," he said, trapping another clam between his sticks. "But it's because it's so rare that I hesitate to accept. Tell you what, I'll rally Minakami to war if you prove to me—no, to Minakami, that you mean what you say."

"Okay."

He stopped with the clam held up to his open mouth, lowered it, and glanced at me. "Not a single question? You don't want to know what I mean by that?"

"Not really."

He blinked a few times, then he leaned down and crunched on the shell. "This is the part where a deception specialist would fish for information by asking about who they can ask for help with the task I gave them and what they do, usually without prompting."

"What does it mean to be clanless?" I asked, still leaning my chin on my hand.

"Ah, those kids at the market?" he asked, not raising his head as he swallowed. "They're... hm," he finished his noodles as he thought. "You almost hit the mark when you guessed at what happens to those who don't follow the rules around here, but it's not without holes. Some hear of what'd happen to them if they get caught long before they get shipped here and hide. I don't always get the curtesy of being told when Gengetsu is offloading their unwanted. The ones that go stomping around trying to take over with force are easy enough to take care of, but the ones that want to live and are just sorry they got caught? Well, sometimes they have help. Not everyone here likes my system, but not everyone should. Blind obedience is how the kekkei genkai situation started in Byakuren and spread down to Gengetsu. I don't mind hearing out people who have problems with the way I run things. Trouble comes with those who take that defiance to the next level and have with kids with the people they're helping."

"I bet neither parent would want to claim them, because they're evidence," Kisame said.

The leader didn't lift his head, picking pieces of clam out of his broth and eating them in silence.

I shifted to glance at Kisame, trying to gauge what made him so intimidating, and he leaned back and crossed his arms.

He made a motion like pulling a zipper across his mouth.

I turned back and asked, "Even the parent from here?"

"It's... complicated. See, in most cases, the other parent is a teen. They don't think about the aftermath, or think at all. They just want to rebel in the moment. Against me, their clan, their parents, but in a way that won't end up with them dead. I don't know what goes through their thick skulls, but I know what they think after. None of them want to be kicked out of their clans," he said, pushing the bowl forward and folding his arms on the bar. "You had a taste of it yourself, Taiyokage. No one will sell fairly to you, or at all, if you're not part of a known one. You see what I'm getting at? I let clans handle themselves, and most cases end with the parent from here being ostracized and eventually becoming clanless themselves. Pride is what we all run on. Even the Mizukage knows that trying to beat or intimidate us into submission is pointless. He lets us have our pride, and we play at being real mist-nin. All some of have left is our name, and we get touchy when their unwanted try to bluff their way through the market as a member of a clan. It gives that clan incentive to go hunting. It's good for me too when it happens, because I'm only one man. They hear me coming, they flee to another hole. I wasn't born lucky enough to be a sensor-nin, unfortunately."

"Do they hunt down their kids too?" I asked.

"Ah, no, but I was getting back to the market kids. You needed context to what you saw that day, and now you have it. Those kids? They weren't thieving only for themselves, but for their parent too, or parents, and knowing that leaves a sour taste in everyone's mouth. Can't do anything permanent to stop 'em though, because they haven't done anything worse than the adults around them. And I don't kill kids," he said, then gave me a lopsided smile. "Anymore."

"How's it right that the so-called clanless have to hide when none of you are saints either?" Kisame asked suddenly.

The leader tipped his hat down. "Sure, none of us have clean hands. But what I've done here, swordsman, is draw a line. I don't kill everyone that steps off the boats. Some I have a conversation with, like the ones branded as traitors, but maybe have a bloodline too useful to let die out by executing them. Being a traitor can mean anything from murdering the daimyo to stubbing your toe in a way the Mizukage didn't like. For some, I just need to know what they did, and that's enough. Maybe that makes me a hypocrite, who knows?"

I hummed.

He lifted his head. "I think I've taken up enough of everyone's time, and I'm all out of soup. But, while I'm here, that boy you met on the stairs, who did he turn out to be?"

I met his eyes and thought of how quickly the mood had shifted in the market when I mentioned they had a leader. All those eyes watching me.

not-Madara had called out to me in the open, in front of all those windows and balconies.

"Is everyone in Minakami your spy?" I asked.

He threw his head back and laughed. "Most don't even know who I am. Makes it easier to watch."

I didn't laugh, still looking into his eyes as I said, "If I told you it was the Mizukage, would you believe me?"

He stopped. He leaned on the bar and tilted his hat down, but his mouth betrayed him, curving down. "Karatachi was here?"

"No, but the man who's puppeting him was."

His eyes snapped to mine, but I already slid off my stool. "Karatachi is—he can't be."

"Why not?"

"He's a jinchuriki. A perfect jinchuriki, they say. Your client didn't tell you? Sounds to me like you're being set up to fail, Taiyokage."

I stared at the sliding door and didn't turn around. "No," I disagreed.

I was right when I thought that Mei and Yahiko were alike. She was playing the same game as him.

Using every advantage she had, even if it was testing our knowledge by leaving out information. Who would come here, if they knew they'd have to fight a jinchuriki?

Would Sasori have come to Amegakure if he knew the village was all metal frames and stone foundations?

I half-smiled. "My client is just being a ninja. I thought you took up enough time, leader?"

Kisame snorted.

"I did say that, before you made me think all of us were about to be razed to the ground. Don't think my heartbeat is going to calm down anytime soon," he said dryly, then paused. "And what do you think of your mission now, Taiyokage, knowing what you now know?"

I hummed. "No change."

I heard him turn on his stool. "You're something else."

"You can tell me that he has a hidden kekkei genkai, or he has multiple tailed beasts—"

"Not possible," Kisame happily chimed in.

"Being intimidated, or afraid, won't change that to do what I want to do, I'll have to go through him, or that I'll still ask you to help me do it. Maybe Kirigakure needs something else."

"And there's that charisma again," he said, standing. He walked around me, adjusting the brim of his hat. "Stay and eat your fill. Tell him it's on me. I'll see you again once you've done what you think you need to do, Taiyokage. I'm looking forward to see what you think that is."

I looked at his back and said. "You never told me your name."

He stopped. "Really? Hm... you're right. It's Yorujin, but I prefer Jin. Only my wife calls me Yoru. See ya."

I watched him leave.

A/N: 色ガラス - Colored Glass

rewrote a lot of the first half of "Full Moon".

there's more to this chapter, but I couldn't find a good place to split it in half, so you get this chunk.