"Huh," Kozu said.

Marusa Shunichi didn't bother looking up from the issue of Icha Icha that he was reading purely for research purposes into the mind of Leaf's spymaster. "Whatcha got?"

"Some kid just walked into Hashimoto's and asked for med-nin training."

Marusa looked up, one eyebrow raised. He swung his feet off the desk and allowed his chair to come upright from where it had been leaned back on the rear two legs. "What's a med-nin student doing going to Hashimoto's?"

Kozu shook his head, the missing eye and ear giving the motion a macabre lopsidedness. The Kozu bloodline ability to detach their body parts and use them from a distance made the clan second only to the Hyūga when it came to intelligence gathering. Hide an eye and an ear in someone's shop and it was as good as standing there.

"Got me," he said. "Sounds like he studied with her before, and she wasn't real happy about it. She agreed to take him, though. Hand me the kit, I want to get a sketch of these two before they leave."

Marusa snagged the box of writing materials off the desk and tossed it gently to his counterpart. "Two of 'em, huh? Who's the other one?"

Kozu shrugged, his eye and eyesocket locked on the paper as he sketched quickly. "Dunno. Woman, about forty, mole under her left eye. If the kid's a ninja then it's likely she is too, so it's probably a he—" He cut himself off, laughing. "Well, the kid was henged, anyway. Hashimoto just stabbed him with a scalpel and then told him 'stop whining, you needed something to practice on.'" He peeled off the sheet on which he'd finished drawing a fortyish woman and started sketching the image of a short, heavyset boy who was still multiple years from needing to shave. Beside him was an oversized and clearly heavy backpack.

Marusa pushed himself to his feet with a groan, stretching hugely. "Do you think they're affiliated or freelancers?"

"How should I know?" Kozu asked. "They didn't exactly walk in with a big label on them that said 'undercover operative from put-village-name-here'."

"Yeah, yeah, you don't have to be sarcastic. What do you think, flash it back to Mother or wait for more intel?"

"Wait," Kozu said. "The next pickup is in a few days and it's pretty clear the kid is here for weeks. Even if his teacher leaves him, they'll meet up again. Right now we've got pretty much nothing."

"You're the boss. I'm gonna get some noodles. You want anything?"

"Nah, I'm good." He laughed. "Oh, man, she is salty."

Marusa chuckled before letting himself out. Stakeouts were so much easier when you were partnered with a Kozu and could do the watching from three blocks away. For one thing, you didn't need to worry about being spotted when you went out to get lunch.

o-o-o-o

The man known to his agents as 'Mother' sighed as he shuffled through the latest stack of Priority dispatches. The work that he did at this desk was more important than anything he'd done in the field back in his long-gone active service days—he knew, because he told himself that in the mirror every morning. Shuffling papers, tracking the output of mines and lumber mills, the shipments of that output, the amount of food imported into civilian towns and ninja villages, all the tiny details that made up the ebb and flow of the Elemental Nations. That was what actually made a difference, not the assassination or retrieval missions handed out to a then-chūnin who was brilliant at analysis and strategy but only middling at taijutsu, as clearly proven by the kunai wound in his knee that had put him behind the desk permanently.

Field work had been so much more satisfying, though. It was simple, focused, with clear criteria for measuring success. Paperwork...wasn't.

The Priority messages were a prime example of that. Most of them had to do with his ongoing efforts to penetrate the intelligence networks of the other villages, especially Jiraiya's. Counterintelligence was the least simple, least focused, and least clear of all the things 'Mother' dealt with. Jiraiya's network was wide, deep, and mostly focused on minor assets. He recruited chambermaids and acolytes, not nobles or senior priests. Each of his agents had only scraps of information, which meant that compromising any one of them was rarely of significance. Worse, with Hyūga, Nara, and Yamanaka at his disposal the Leaf spymaster could easily vet any agent that he thought might have been turned. Bastard.

Of course, there were a few high-value targets. Targets like Hashimoto, the retired med-nin in Yuni who had finally been positively connected to Jiraiya. She was an arms-length asset, not a true spy—she patched up his agents and reported on any patients who might show up with suspiciously ninja-like injuries, but wasn't called on to do anything outside her own shop. She was carefully firewalled from the rest of Jiraiya's network—she didn't know who any of the people were that she doctored or anything else that Jiraiya had going on, so observing her was far more valuable than attempting to turn her. She also wasn't a frequently-tapped resource and she lived in the middle of a big city, so watching her was something of a plum assignment that could be used as a reward for good work or as a rest for stressed-out or overworked agents.

Unfortunately, anything coming in from stakeouts on an HVT was automatically classified Priority, so every week Mother had to wade through a pile of useless lists of how many people went in and out, how many of those people had been there before, how many traders came by, and on and on. All minutiae, with the occasional nugget of—

His thoughts froze as he got to the picture of Wakahisa Noburi. He quickly skimmed back through the summary before reading the full debrief, making a point to note the name of the stakeout team leader who had made the decision to send this with the regular dispatches instead of as a Flash Priority. Four days delay before the information was dispatched, six more for the civilian caravan to take it through Rice to the relay in Hot Springs, a day to run it to the coast, and then a bad storm that delayed the courier ship for twenty-four precious extra hours. And it would take at least two days, probably three, to get a response team back there even if they left this minute.

"Is Zabuza back yet?" he demanded.

"No, sir," his secretary told him. "He's due in day after tomorrow."

Mother sighed. Clearly, the kami were bored and had decided to take it out on him. Catching the Cold Stone Killers and bringing them in for a nice public trial would cement Mist's presence in Hot Springs and give them the moral high ground. Even better, if they could 'find' evidence that the team had been working for Jiraiya when they caused the incident it would put Fire on the back foot and force them to spend their energy mending fences instead of making progress on whatever their current goals were. That all hinged on being able to mount a response before the targets vanished, though.

If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

Still, if Wakahisa was applying for training he would probably be onsite for several weeks. And it would take a few days for the Document and Supplies team to forge the necessary evidence, so it didn't really matter that Zabuza wasn't available immediately. Speaking of which, he'd need to send a good minder with Zabuza—the swordsman was a great attack dog, but not as good at patience or intelligence-gathering. Catching the kid wasn't enough, they needed the whole team to get the proper effect.

He grabbed a brush and started scribbling notes, humming happily to himself as he worked. There were times when paperwork was way more satisfying than fieldwork.

o-o-o-o

"Thank you for having me," Kei said politely, forcing herself to smile. It was harder than usual; the dish that Pandā had just put in her hands was filled with fried cockroaches that had been split in half lengthwise, scooped out, and then refilled with some kind of mashed-up paste. It was too dark inside Pandā's...house?...burrow?...to tell exactly what the paste might have been made from. The only light came filtering down the entrance tunnel that slanted up to the surface.

"No trouble!" Pandā said, scooping some of the insect dish out of the pan and into his own bowl. He carefully moved the pan off the cookfire before slurping up a tongueful of the cockroaches. "Nice to have you," he said, the words somewhat indistinct because he was still occupied swallowing.

"So..." Kei said, forcing herself to keep a calm expression as she picked up one of the cockroaches. She'd had to eat worse things during the Academy's Hell Week. She bit in and chewed. No, she had not had to eat worse things, ever.

"It's very spicy," she said, trying not to drop the bowl in her haste to grab her drinking gourd and drain it dry.

"Oh, that's not spice," Pandā said helpfully. "That's the ant blood from the formic paste." He sucked on his tongue thoughtfully for a moment, savoring the flavor. "A little weak, actually. Sorry about that; I'll use fresher ones next time, but I've been spending so much time with you guys on the Human Path that I haven't been able to go shopping for a few days."

"It's fine," Kei croaked. She cleared her throat before setting her bowl aside as unobtrusively as possible and wiping her streaming eyes. "Actually, as long as we're here I've been wanting to ask you a few questions about the Seventh Path."

"Sure! What did you want to know?"

"Panteon mentioned that the Pantokrator forbade sealing on the Seventh Path. Why was that?"

"Oh, well, seals are corruptions of the Pantokrator's work, of course," Pandā said. "They distort the fundamental reality that was the Pantokrator's creation and so making them is an abomination in his eyes. Not like jutsu, which work within his creation by reshaping natural energies. Um, not that you guys are abominations or anything."

Kei waved the thought away. "Who is the Pantokrator?"

Pandā blinked. "The creator of the Paths and all that live on them?" he said. "He made the Human Realm and humans first, molding them according to his physical form. Not satisfied with that he went on to create the next five Paths. Finally, he used all that he had learned to make the Seventh Path as his most perfect work, and made the Clans to live there. He made us according to his soul, and of the Clans he made the Pangolin Clan the greatest so that they could act as stewards of the Seventh Path once he departed."

"Wait...the Pantokrator made chakra?" Kei asked. "The Sage of Six Paths gave chakra to the world."

Pandā shrugged. "Sage, Pantokrator...the Duck Clan calls him the Ahiru Master, but it's the Pangolin clan that really preserves his truth, and his true title is Pantokrator."

Kei thought about that. "The Sage lived a thousand years ago," she said carefully.

Pandā nodded. "Yep. My grandfather used to tell me stories about him. Apparently he was a really funny guy when he wanted to be."

Kei thought some more. "Your grandfather...knew the Sage of Six Paths?" she asked carefully.

Pandā puffed out his chest. "Yep! They used to play hshthk-stones every week." He looked sad. "Mom told me that there were sketches of Grandad and the Pantokrator in the archive at the Great Academy. I wish I'd been able to see them."

"You mentioned the Great Academy before. What is it?"

"It's the Great Academy," Pandā said, as though that explained anything. "The greatest center of learning on the Seventh Path, built by the Pantokrator himself and given to all the Clans equally. His works were archived there along with the greatest book collection anywhere. The wisest and most learned of all the Clans taught there, and inter-Clan disputes were arbitrated in its College of Justice. Before the Condors cut us off from it, of course." He fiddled angrily with the dinner pan. "Stupid beakfaces."

"Why would they do that?"

"Their power to soar the skies made them arrogant and conceited, so they forgot the teachings of the Pantokrator," Pandā said. "They attacked the Pangolins because they could not bear to see the ascension of the Pantokrator's true heirs."

"I see," Kei said carefully. These were clearly deep waters and, given the un-examined fervor of Pandā's answers, it seemed wise to change the topic. She scrambled around for something to change it to; her mind stayed stubbornly blank for long seconds before finally coughing up an option. "What about the Tapirs? They are enemies of the Pangolin as well, are they not?"

Pandā nodded. "Yep. They were allies of us and the Condors before the Great Betrayal. When the beakfaces stabbed us in the belly we appealed to the Tapirs for aid, but they chose to stay neutral."

"They didn't actually do anything to harm the Pangolin Clan, then?" Kei asked.

Pandā's mouth gaped open and his tongue flickered in and out. "They stayed neutral," he said. "They were called to honor their commitments to an ally who had been betrayed and they just stood by. That's worse than doing something to us!"

"I see," Kei said. The waters were getting yet deeper, and Pandā was getting more upset. "Um...who are the Clan's allies, then?"

"The Toads," Pandā said. "We have been for a long time now."

Kei wasn't terribly good with people but she also wasn't Hazō so she managed not to say 'Just the Toads? No one else?' Instead, she decided to fall back to something safer. Well, conversationally safer anyway.

She grabbed a firey-pain-hot stuffed cockroach and gulped it down, trying not to chew too much. "These are quite impressive," she said, fighting not to gag. "Did you make them yourself?"

It was about the least smooth topic change in the history of the Seven Paths, but at least it got them away from the subject of religion.