Jiraiya paused, clearly weighing whether or not to finish the thought; when he spoke again the words were heavy and slow. "And, of course, I could always have killed you later if I had had to." The shiver was back in Hazō's spine and it had brought an entire pack of friends.

"My, what a nice salad!" Mari-sensei said, snatching up the salad bowl and giving it a practiced flick that made the contents jump out of the bowl and tumble back in, mixing them in the process. "So, who would like some vegetables with a side order of new topic?"

"So, about those seals for the pangolins," Hazō said, diving eagerly into the proffered conversational escape hatch. "We need ninety seals for this month's supply, and we'll need another ninety next month. We need to focus on training, but we should get at least the first batch done before we leave for Mist. How many do we already have?"

"I have my three sets of skytowers," Noburi said.

"I as well."

"I gave you guys mine before you left to deliver the mail," Mari-sensei said, shaking her head; the motion made the bonfire curtain of her hair sway and shimmer in the candlelight. Hazō noticed Jiraiya noticing and firmly did not allow himself to think of the implications of the Toad Sage's tiny smile.

"I've got a dozen or so stashed away," Jiraiya offered. "Handy thing, but a pain in the ass to make." He turned to the one person at the table who remained both silent and shifty-eyed. "Kagome, how about you?"

"What about me?" Kagome-sensei growled suspiciously.

"How many of the Five Seal Barriers do you have?" Jiraiya asked patiently.

"Thi— Te— None of your business! I mean, I don't have any! I used them all up while we were on that stupid mail delivery mission killing civilians—which absolutely did not bother me!—and having Dumbbutt get her head practically cut off!"

Jiraiya raised an eyebrow. "You used them all up?"

"Uh-huh!"

"You used up your entire supply of Five-Seal Barriers, which last for a full month of continuous activation and can be turned on and off repeatedly in the interim?"

Kagome-sensei's eyes flicked from side to side nervously. "...Yes?"

"Kagome," Mari-sensei said reprovingly. "Come on, you don't want Keiko to get in trouble with the Pangolin Clan, do you? She promised them we'd have the full supply in three days."

Kagome-sensei's face worked as though he'd just bitten a lemon. "Maybe there's a few in one of my old packs," he mumbled.

"More than ten?" Jiraiya asked.

More lemon-face. "Maybe."

"More than fifty?"

"N— I don't know! I'd need to check. Because I'm not even sure they're there. Probably just misremembering. Oh, but don't worry, Keiko, I'll make you some more."

"Sounds like we have a couple of dozen between us," Hazō said. "Kagome-sensei, you and I will have to make up the difference as quickly as possible so that we can train for the Chūnin Exams. Can't afford to skimp on training when we're going to be doing all that fighting, after all."

"Stupid idea," Kagome-sensei mumbled, jabbing his chopsticks into the rice and shoveling his mouth full. "Thouldn go 'o Mift," he mumbled, spraying rice everywhere as he chewed rebelliously. (With, of course, his mouth open.) He paused to gulp down the rice. "Just promote them. You're the stinking Hokage, wave your brush around and make them chūnin."

Jiraiya sighed and rubbed his face tiredly. "Kagome, I get it, I really do. Taking our family to Mist has its risks, but sometimes risks are necessary. And it's not like we're leaving them unprotected. I'll be there, most of Leaf's elite jōnin will be there, and our nastiest, most lethal ANBU agents will be keeping an eye on everyone at all times. I promise, if the kids so much as get a hangnail outside of a legitimate event, I will burn Mist to the ground, but—"

Kagome-sensei's head came up, a disturbing smile on his face and eyes shining with insane excitement. "Really? I can help with that! If you just let me come along, I could—"

"No, Kagome. I explained this already. You need to stay here with Mari and secure the compound. Can't have our enemies sneaking in here and leaving traps or lupchanzen lying around, now can we? There's no one else I would trust to keep our home safe while we're away."

Kagome-sensei seemed slightly mollified, but he still dug into his food with resentful vigor, all the way mumbling something about "stinking idiots...walking right into a trap...boom, squish!"

"Speaking of keeping us safe," Hazō said, "I think I'm about done. If you'll excuse me, I'll go start on those seals for Keiko."

Kagome-sensei's head jerked up guiltily. "I'll help," he said, dropping his bowl in his hurry to get up. Rice and heavily-sauced chicken spilled across the table, but the sealmaster didn't seem to notice as he hurried out.

o-o-o-o

Mari tapped softly at the door and waited a moment before pushing it open slowly; it didn't do to barge in on working sealmasters. She stuck her head in, checked to make sure that there were no eldritch abominations destroying the place, and then stepped inside.

"Might want to take a break," she said calmly. "You guys have been in here for five hours. It's well after midnight."

"I'm fine, no problems, not even a little tired," Kagome mumbled, focusing closely on the seal he was drawing.

"Mm-hm. Hazō?"

Hazō glanced up with a smile, then looked down at what he was doing. Even when he looked away, the Iron Nerve guided his arm unerringly through the patterns of the seal he was working on. Mari was grateful that he didn't look up for more than a moment, though; as far as she understood it, his bloodline didn't lock his entire body into a specific movement—some minor modifications were needed in order to, for example, walk on ground whose topography wasn't exactly the same as that on which the original motion had been executed. Still, she was pretty sure that the tolerances weren't high and she definitely didn't want to think what would happen if he exceeded them while scribing seals.

"Doing fine, sensei," he said. "I really want to get these done as soon as possible. Can't take a chance on some distraction coming up and preventing us from delivering on time."

"Well, you guys would know best," Mari said doubtfully. "Still, make sure you get some sleep."

"Yes, sensei."

o-o-o-o

Tap, tap, creeeeakk.

"I brought you some tea," Mari said, shuffling in wearing her pink silk bathrobe and a ridiculously floofy pair of slippers that she'd found in the marketplace. They were fleecy, with fancy beadwork on the top and purely-decorative laces tipped in small silver aglets. They looked ridiculous, didn't have great traction, and the aglets clicked against the beadwork when she walked. They were the sort of footwear that no sensible ninja would wear and she absolutely adored them.

She crossed the room carefully, making a wide circle around the various neat stacks of papers and seal blanks, and set the tea tray down next to Kagome. "It's strong, and very hot, so don't burn yourself."

Kagome set his brush down and grunted his thanks as he poured a mug of the stuff straight down his throat. He spent the next several seconds frantically sucking in air to cool off his burned tongue.

"You sure you don't want a break? It's almost four."

"I'm fine!" Kagome snapped, grabbing his brush. "Besides, Hazō's still working, so why shouldn't I be?"

"Uh-huh. Well, enjoy the tea."

o-o-o-o

Tap, tap, creeeak.

Mari poked her freshly-bathed head in, looking around just in time to see Hazō finish the seal he was working on. He lay it down beside his left knee, switched his brush to his left hand, moved the seal that had apparently just finished drying from its spot by his right knee onto the pile of blanks beside him, switched his brush back to his right hand, pulled another sheet of paper off the stack in front of him, and began drawing the seal again. Kagome was curled up to the side, sound asleep with a dab of ink on his nose.

She sighed in relief. She should have trusted that Kagome wouldn't be stupid enough to scribe for fifteen hours without a rest, even if his "stinking cheating cheater bloodline that cheats" student was still working. Apparently the world would not end today due to a seal drawn by a man too exhausted to see straight.

Carefully, she shut the door.

o-o-o-o

It had been a long night-and-morning of sealcrafting, but the work was done. Or, at least, Hazō's part was done now that the blanks were drawn. He had yet to learn the Five-Seal Barrier seal, so Kagome-sensei or Jiraiya would need to infuse them. Still, that was a lot less effort and vastly less time-consuming than actually setting brush to paper. After a certain point it even became easy enough to do without paying much attention—witness the fact that Jiraiya had simply told him to "just drop the pile on the desk with all the other papers; I'll go through them while I read the morning reports." Hazō was confident that it would be a long time before he felt safe doing that.

Regardless, the work was done and it was the Hokage's problem now. Kagome-sensei was still napping, but Hazō didn't want to waste any more time so he hurried to the training field where the rest of the Leaf teams were working out. The day was definitely chilly so he threw on a light jacket for the jog over.

Akane and her team weren't there, much to his disappointment. Perhaps their sensei was drilling them in private, or perhaps Akane had come up with some bizarre and highly youthful method of training and convinced her teammates to go along with the madness. Maybe something like climbing the Hokage Monument with only one hand and no feet while simultaneously reciting the Way of the Leaf Ninja manual at the top of their lungs.

He smiled fondly to himself. Okay, maybe not that. That was a little crazy even for Akane.

"Aburame!" Hazō called, catching sight of the boy running slow laps around the training field. Hazō waved and jogged over, falling in beside the bug user.

"Good morning, Gōketsu," Aburame said. "You are later to the field than usual."

"I was making some seal blanks," Hazō explained. "Keiko needed them."

Aburame nodded. "Unsurprising. Why? Because your family appears to use a great number of seals, even just in training."

Hazō glanced over at his running partner, wondering if that was intended to be mocking, condescending, or merely an observation. The Aburame boy was always so deadpan that it was hard to tell, and the way his glasses covered his eyes didn't help.

"Yeah, we do," Hazō said. "You've got your insects in the family, we've got three sealmasters. We all play to our strengths. Anyway, on a kinda-related note, I wanted to ask you about your glasses. I've been trying to find something like them and it's been harder than expected. Can I ask where you got them?"

"My clan makes them," Aburame said. "Why? They are related to my family's secret arts."

"Oh," Hazō said, disappointed. "I guess there's no chance of buying some then?"

"In principle, you could," Aburame said. "However, they are quite expensive, as making them is a difficult and time-consuming process. Creating glass clear enough to see through without distortion is challenging, and making ones that will improve vision even more so. There are very few people outside our clan who have Aburame glasses or goggles."

"Well, I don't need my vision improved," Hazō said, lengthening his stride slightly to leap over a tuft of spiky grass. The stalks turned and snapped at him as he went by. "I just want something that would help protect against dust or glare."

"I am happy to arrange a conversation with one of our glassmakers, if you wish. I will comment, however, that making smoked glasses such as the ones I am wearing is even more difficult and therefore expensive."

"Well, I'd still like to talk to them." Inwardly, he cursed. Why couldn't things ever be easy?

"I will arrange it," Aburame said again. "Going back to the topic of seals for a moment, your 'Kagome Maneuver' was quite impressive. If I may ask, how did you manage to set off so many seals at once?"

Hazō smiled. "Your family has its secret arts, my family has mine."

"I see," Aburame said. "Would it have anything to do with those paired seals that were attached to all the explosives and projected beams of invisible chakra between them? Beams that the three of you swung your arms through just before everything exploded?"

Hazō's smile vanished. He sighed. "Hyūga?"

The other boy nodded politely, unable to keep a tiny smile off his face.

"You know," Hazō said, studying his counterpart as they turned the corner onto the short side of the field, "if I didn't know better, I'd think you were taunting me."

"I would never do such a thing," Aburame said calmly. "Why? Because it would be unprofessional to taunt an opponent." He jogged in silence for a dozen yards before adding, "Besides, even if I were to be so unprofessional, there is no satisfaction in taunting the oblivious." His face and voice were absolutely deadpan as he glanced over at Hazō. "By the way, the Hyūga family has a bloodline called the Byakugan. It allows them to see chakra. I thought perhaps I should tell you, since you didn't seem to be aware."

Hazō eyed him sourly. "Of course you know, this means war."

"I am given to understand that there will be some sort of competition soon," the other boy said calmly, a tiny hint of laughter peeking out from behind the Aburame reserve. "Perhaps a good opportunity for an oblivious person to work on his mental perception so he does not miss the obvious again."

"And for a slowpoke to work on his speed so he doesn't get glued down again!" Hazō said, thwapping Aburame on the back. "You're it!" He took off at a sprint, leaving the surprised bug user in his dust for three long strides before the other boy got himself together again and gave chase. Hazō laughed merrily and lengthened his stride.

o-o-o-o

It was early evening, dinner was simmering in the oven, and four-sixths of Clan Gōketsu were in the living room. They'd gravitated to the room because it had a giant fireplace that did a good job of keeping the place warm. Also, there were no holes in the walls, floor, or ceiling, and it didn't smell of mildew. And, of course, furniture.

Keiko was curled up in a chair opposite the fire, feet tucked under her and her nose in a book. She had one of Jiraiya's Lantern seals on the chair arm for light and a cup of tea slowly cooling on the end table beside her. She hadn't spoken or moved for half an hour except to turn pages. Jiraiya was seated on the end of a futon next to the fire, with Mari-sensei on the floor between his feet so he could rub her back. Hazō was sitting in a giant, overstuffed armchair next to the fire, another Lantern seal beside him so that he could write lists of things that the team should bring to the Exams. He was done with the first draft of Keiko's list and was moving on to general supplies.

"Hey guys, check this out," Noburi said, strutting through the door. The cause of his swagger was apparent: the barrel on his back was newly-reinforced with extra steel bands. He was trying his best to make it look casual, but the weight was clearly dragging him down.

"After that stinking Inuzuka broke my practice barrel—" Noburi paused, raising a finger to interrupt himself. "And I do mean stinking, kid smelled like wet dog."

"I believe that is because he and his dog got soaked the first time he broke your barrel," Keiko observed, not looking up from her book.

Noburi glowered at her. "Hey, he just got lucky. Didn't do so well the second time, did he? Or the third time."

Keiko nodded soberly. "Very true. The second time we defeated him through the expenditure of over a hundred seals. The third time, Hazō elbowed him in the throat."

"You know, Keiko," Mari-sensei said casually, pouring a cup of tea as she spoke, "usually it's the boys who dip the girls' pigtails in the ink well." She passed the cup back to Jiraiya and poured a second for herself.

Keiko blushed so hard that Hazō imagined he could smell smoke. "Mari-sensei! That's not...I mean...I—"

"Dipping pigtails in inkwells?" Noburi asked, frowning.

Hazō set a hand on his friend's shoulder and gave him a serious look. "I'll tell you when you're older." Noburi glared at him in reply, and opened his mouth to say something.

"Teasing aside, that's a smart move, Noburi," Mari-sensei said, leaning forward so Jiraiya could more easily get at the middle of her back. The two of them had been gaggingly nauseating lately, exchanging kisses right out in public and everything. Even worse was when his fingers released a particular knot in her neck or back and she moaned in relief.

"Told you I was good," Jiraiya said smugly, shifting his grip slightly to get the next sore spot. Mari-sensei moaned again, her head falling forward onto her knees as she melted into his fingers.

"Yes dear," she said, the words slightly slurred with relaxation. She reached back and patted his hand. "Master of the bedroom arts, etc etc, whatever. More rubbing, less bragging."

"Be nice, woman!" Jiraiya said, taking his hands back in offense.

Quick as a wink, Mari-sensei spun around and leaned forward, both hands on his knee, looking up at him with soulful eyes. "Oh, honey, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that, that was mean. It's not bragging if it's true, and Sage knows that you have more to brag about than any man I've ever known. Please forgive me?"

Jiraiya burst into laughter. "Does that really work?"

She nodded happily. "Every time. With the especially dumb ones I make sure to look at their crotch when I say 'more to brag about'. Most men need it spelled out, you know?"

Jiraiya shook his head, laughing ruefully, and twirled his finger in a 'turn around' gesture. Gratefully, Mari-sensei turned back so that Jiraiya could resume rubbing her shoulders. The redhead sighed happily and melted again.

"What's going on in—Sage's nose hairs! Noburi, what did you do to your barrel?!"

"Hey, Kagome. Pretty cool, huh?" Noburi turned so that Kagome could get a closer look at the barrel.

The sealmaster shoved his beaky nose up against the barrel, examining the retrofitted metal bands with a disapproving eye.

"Looks heavy," he grunted.

Noburi shrugged and turned to face the older man. "Yeah, it is. Better than getting the darn thing broken every ten minutes though, right? Word seems to have gotten around and everyone keeps targeting it in sparring."

"Doesn't cover the whole barrel," Kagome said. "Could still break."

"Yeah, we experimented with some sheet steel but any thickness that was going to matter was too heavy for me to handle and still move well."

"Noburi, no offense, but, are you the only one of your family who isn't an idiot?" Hazō asked. "I mean, the barrel is your not-so-secret weakpoint. One good hit and you guys drop."

"Thank you, Hazō, for that sensitive analysis of my and my clan's combat worth."

Hazō waved the words aside in irritation. "You know what I mean. Why isn't it normal to have it armored?"

"It's sturdier than you'd think," Noburi said. "It's pretty much only going to break if a stinking dog-boy-thing rips through it with ninjutsu, so—"

"Or if a zombie punches a hole in it with a sword," Mari-sensei added helpfully. The snark was ruined by the immediate moan as Jiraiya's fingers released another tense spot.

"Your back is a mess, girl," Jiraiya said. "Seriously, I could bounce kunai off some of these."

"I know," Mari-sensei said. "You're the only one strong enough to make me relax. I feel safe when I'm with you."

Jiraiya snickered. The genin gagged.

"Anyway," Noburi said, desperately trying to distract himself, "Wakahisa barrels are sturdy. It pretty much needs ninja to break them. And we're a support clan, so it doesn't happen too much."

"Yeah, and that's another thing. Why in all the names of the Sage are you guys wasted on a support role? With some practice in your bloodline you're unstoppable combat gods."

Noburi smiled. "We—they are unstoppable combat gods who have the second or third lowest casualty rate in Mist because they're in support. Coincidentally, they're one of the largest and richest clans."

Hazō grimaced in disgust. "So they're all—" He bit back the word 'cowards' just before it escaped.

Noburi's laugh was cut short when Kagome-sensei, who had been continuing to study the barrel intently while ignoring all the byplay with an obliviousness that Hazō wished he himself could manage, poked at the barrel's new steel reinforcements hard enough to almost knock Noburi over.

"Hey, watch it!" Noburi yelped.

"Wait here," Kagome-sensei. He turned and walked out of the room.

Noburi looked after him nervously. "Something's going to explode, isn't it?"

"It's Kagome," Keiko said, calmly turning a page of her book.

"Here," Kagome-sensei said, returning with a backpack which he promptly thrust at Noburi.

The genin took the pack automatically and untied the top flap so he could look inside, then frowned. He brought the pack over to the fireplace where the light was better and set it down in front of Mari-sensei and Jiraiya. Hazō crowded in, craning his neck to see. Keiko slipped a bookmark in her book and joined them silently.

The thing was ingenious. Somehow, Kagome-sensei had taken an ironwood log, split it in half lengthwise, and hollowed out most of it to form a semi-circular frame with an attached platform at the bottom. The frame was just the right size for Noburi's barrel, as proven by the fact that the genin's spare Wakahisa barrel was already inside it, held tight against the frame with a net of cords. The net was permanently affixed to one side of the frame, spliced through holes carved for the purpose, while the opposite ends had stopper knots jammed through slots in the wood. Heavy canvas straps at the top and sides allowed it to be worn as a backpack with hip strap; both the frame and the straps were thoroughly padded with fleece. A steel plate, carved to fit, rested atop the barrel, held in place by a pair of leather cords and firmly attached to the frame by a lanyard so it couldn't be lost. The strangest part, however, were the green tubes that ran vertically up and down the sides of the barrel, woven under the netting at top and bottom.

"They're, uh, sand socks?" Kagome-sensei said nervously. "Waterproofed canvas tube full of sand, heavy leather sleeve around it, more waterproofed canvas over that. Not quite as strong as steel, but way lighter and easier to replace if they get damaged. Stronger if you put a couple layers of them on. Better against blunt force than cutting, because the sand leaks if the sock gets cut too badly, but the leather is tough and I wound some wire around the inner canvas before I put it in. You can decide how many you want; there's fifty full ones in the storage seal here." He flipped the thing on its side and jiggled an unremarkable piece of the frame until it popped loose to reveal three separate storage seals.

"Top seal's the extra sand socks, netting, and spare parts," he said, fidgeting anxiously. "Middle ones a bunch of seal blanks. Explosives, air domes, storage seals, air cleaners, alarms, earmuffs, tunneler's friends, silence mines, earbusters...everything that Hazō can infuse, really. Mostly explosives, though. I, um...I put some snacks and camping gear in the third one. Warm socks, that kind of thing. Never have too many warm socks when you're camping."

Noburi stared at the sealmaster in shock. "Kagome...I...don't know what to say...this is...."

Kagome-sensei swallowed, his eyes darting from side to side. "Stupid? Um, yeah, I know. Sorry. Probably too heavy. I should have left one seal empty for your stuff. And socks? What was I thinking with socks? That's just dumb. I'll get you something else."

"No!" Noburi said. "Kagome, this is amazing. No one's ever given me anything like this before. This is really thoughtful, and beautiful. It must have taken a lot of work."

Kagome-sensei shrugged uncomfortably. "You needed it for the Exams, I had some time, and I like carving," he said. He held his thumb and finger out an inch apart, thrust them towards the frame and whispered, "Boom!"

"You carved this with explosives?" Mari-sensei said, surprised.

"Just the big parts," Kagome-sensei said. "Did the detail work by hand. Oh, I almost forgot." He pulled back the lip of one of the sand socks and pointed inside. "Shaped charges inside each sock. Some stinker tries to sneak up on you, just reach over your shoulder and get a finger here. Boom! Squish!" He clapped both hands together as though killing a fly, then tossed them open to suggest the following rain of giblets. He looked at Noburi, suddenly uncertain. "Um...each of the socks says 'this side in' on one side. You should probably make sure it's facing in. And make sure the middle of each sock is outside the netting or it'll cut it and then the barrel won't be stable until you replace it. The netting, I mean. Not the barrel. No reason to replace the barrel. Try not to have to, though—I didn't manage to finish studying the seals yet so I couldn't make any more."

"Hang on, you were studying the seals?" Noburi said. "You should have asked first, Kagome."

The sealmaster frowned. "Why?"

"Those are secret! They're my fam...." He trailed off, looking thoughtful.

"Oh," Kagome-sensei said, sounding lost. "I thought we were...I mean...."

Noburi smiled. "You know what? You're absolutely right. We are family now, and these seals belong to all of us. I'm sorry I snapped; I guess it still hasn't quite sunk in, you know?" The smile fell away and he looked at the older ninja seriously, reaching out to clasp his forearm. "Thank you, Kagome. This is an amazing gift, and I'll be surprised if it doesn't save my life at some point. You're the best uncle anyone could ask for."

Kagome-sensei looked shocked. "Uncle?"

"Well, yeah?" Noburi said, chuckling. "You're Jiraiya's cousin, Jiraiya is supposed to be our father, I figure that makes you my uncle. I mean, if you're okay with it...? If it's a problem—"

"Yes! No! I mean yes, it's good, no, it's no problem. Uncle is good. Yes." The man seemed slightly dazed for a moment, then shook it off. "Um...you guys are leaving tomorrow, so I thought maybe this would be a good time for, um...oh! Dinner! Right, we need to eat first. Come on!"

"Dinner's about half an hour from ready, Kagome," Mari-sensei said.

The sealmaster's long, beaky face fell for the second time in two minutes. "Oh."

"What did you want to do?" she asked.

Fidget, fidget. "Um...I wanted to...have dinner?"

"Interesting," Keiko said. "I thought perhaps you had wanted to give Mari-sensei her birthday present."

"You can't say that!" Kagome-sensei said. "It's a surprise!" He clapped his hands over his mouth. "I mean, birthdays are supposed to be a surprise. Not that I have a present for her. Because I don't. I forgot it was her birthday. Didn't cross my mind at all. And you're not allowed to give presents before dinner. That was the rule. Food first, then presents."

Mari-sensei clasped her hands under her chin, her eyes getting huge and her smile gleeful. "Presents? For meeee? Gimme gimme gimme!"

"Mari," Jiraiya said sternly. "Be good."

Mari-sensei pouted. "Gimme, please."

"But...dinner," Kagome-sensei said, gesturing helplessly towards the pot on the fire. "I thought we had to eat before we could do presents?"

"Rules are meant to be broken," Jiraiya said, pushing himself to his feet with a smile and offering Mari-sensei a hand up.

Kagome nodded seriously. "I'll remember that."

"Wait...that's not what I...oh dear."

Mari-sensei patted her husband comfortingly on the arm. "It's okay dear. The village will probably still be standing when you come back. Kagome, it's okay to do presents first this time."

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"Oh," the sealmaster said. "Good. Here." He pulled something out of his pocket and pushed it into her hands before stepping back and looking nervous.

Mari-sensei turned his gift over in her hands, studying it carefully. It was a triangular prism, perhaps eight inches long and an inch on a side, of some dark wood that Hazō didn't recognize. On one side there was a silver plate inset in the wood. Sections cut from the plate allowed the wood to show through from below in the form of kanji.

Mari

Gōketsu Clan Mother

Fearless. Caring. Powerful.

Retired

"It's for your desk," Kagome-sensei said. "When you get one. You'll need a desk if you're going to manage the family accounts while Jiraiya-st—while Jiraiya's being Hokage. And when the kids grow up a little more there'll be grandkids, and you'll want a desk for them to climb on and bug you while you're working. And I checked with the Academy and they're always short on female instructors, and they're especially desperate to find people with real experience of deep-cover infiltration, so if you wanted to teach there—"

Mari-sensei burst into tears and flung herself at Kagome, pulling him down into a hug despite his frantic squawking.

"I'm sorry! I didn't mean it! I'll get you something different! I'm sorry!"

"Shut up," Mari-sensei sobbed, hanging from his neck. "Just shut up and hug me, you wonderful man."

Kagome-sensei was bent over awkwardly, his hands fluttering out to the sides like birds that would really love to take flight before the cat ate them but couldn't quite figure out how. He looked at Jiraiya with an expression that seemed to strike a curious balance between "help, your wife is hugging me!" and "please don't kill me because your wife is hugging me!"

The Toad Sage grinned and waved his hands at Kagome-sensei in a 'well, go on' way, so the former missing-nin patted Mari-sensei gently on the back a few times.

"Um...there, there?"

Mari-sensei's laughter was interrupted by a hiccup; she pushed herself back and wiped her eyes. "Sorry," she said, sniffling a little before offering them all a smile that would have been entirely convincing to anyone else. "Didn't mean to get all weepy on you."

"You, uh...you didn't see the good part?" Kagome-sensei said nervously. "The ends come off." He pointed a finger tentatively towards the wooden prism without moving his hand away from his body.

Mari-sensei poked and pulled for a moment until one end came off in her hand, revealing a four-inch stiletto, slender and elegant with two sharp edges and a wicked point.

"I made sure the endcap is watertight," Kagome said helpfully. "If you want to, you could pour some poison in the sheathe. Probably need to refresh it every few weeks, but at least it won't spill. Check the other end, though. That's the important part."

Mari-sensei fiddled a bit more until the other endcap came off. On the underside was a small metal loop, around which was tied a thread. The thread was knotted into a climbing harness worn by a tiny wooden figurine, barely the size of Hazō's fingernail. It was so tiny that it was hard to make out the detail, but the carven hair that billowed out behind it was painted red and the curves of the sides were clearly feminine.

The obviously-Mari-sensei figurine's tiny hands were clasped around a second piece of thread. As the real woman lifted the endcap off her gift, the 'rope' held by her symbolic self pulled five more tiny figurines into view from inside the hidden compartment, each of them clinging to the thread in turn. From the very end of the thread dangled a tiny scrollcase, barely an inch long.

"There's two shaped charges in the scrollcase," Kagome-sensei said helpfully. "Just in case you get thrown in prison or something. I wanted to make more but there's not a lot of room in there and the paper needs to be really thin so it tears really easily but I'm sure these are good. See, you use the threads to tie one around the top and bottom of one of the bars and boom! You're out."

Mari-sensei sniffled a little and wiped the back of her hand across her eyes before carefully replacing the figurines inside their compartment and making sure the endcap was tight. "Thank you, Kagome," she said, stretching up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. "This is a wonderful gift. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I'm so glad to have you in my family, and in my life."

Kagome-sensei went bright pink and mumbled something incomprehensible, his eyes locked firmly on his toes.

"Well, now I'm feeling a little inadequate," Noburi said nervously.

"It will be fine, Noburi," Keiko said. "Excuse me." She turned and left the room, returning a moment later with something large and rectangular, wrapped in black silk. "This is from the two of us, sensei." She nodded for Noburi to take over.

"Most people don't realize it," Noburi said, "but medical ninjutsu isn't that old—at least, not in the modern sense. It used to be secret stuff passed down from one master to the next, which is why medic-nin were even less common than today and the average state of the art was so much cruder. It's only about fifty years ago that medical jutsu started getting systematized and the information became widespread." The young med-nin unwrapped the silk to reveal a book bound in fire-red leather, the title picked out in a rich blue ink:

The Footsteps of Lady Senju

"Everyone knows Senju Tsunade as a member of the Sannin," Noburi said. "And everyone knows that she is an amazing medic-nin. What most people don't know is that she trained over sixty medic-nin here in Leaf. That's more than any other teacher has trained, ever. It's hard to find ninja who want to be medics in the first place, and not everyone who wants to has the chakra control and the willingness to study. You can make a very good argument that one of the reasons Leaf is so powerful is because of the quality of their medicine."

"Over the past thirty-five years, Leaf has suffered forty percent fewer plagues than Mist," Keiko said. "I lack reputable data on other nations but I suspect the numbers to be similar. Likewise, the lifespan of civilians in Leaf is at least fifteen percent longer than in Mist, or anywhere else we've been."

"Right," Noburi said. "Now, absolutely everyone in the hospital agrees that Lady Senju is the best medic any of them have ever seen. Every single one of them looks up to her, and most of them became medics because of her."

"She saved thousands of lives in the aftermath of the Nine-Tails attack," Jiraiya said. "She was incredible. She pulled people out from under wreckage that no one else could shift, organized relief efforts and field hospitals, healed people that the triage nurses had categorized as beyond saving...she never stopped moving that entire night. I was exhausted trying to keep up with her." He smiled without thinking, lost in bittersweet memory.

Noburi cleared his throat uncomfortably, jolting the Sannin back to the present. "This book was written by Kon Ai, one of Lady Senju's first students. Kon is now a senior doctor here in Leaf. According to the non-classified records that I was able to see there are at least two thousand people alive today who wouldn't have been if Kon hadn't been there."

"There are seven living members of the Nara clan who owe their lives directly to Lady Senju," Keiko said. "Every single living Nara has benefited in a life-altering way from one of Lady Senju's students, or from one of the students of her students. In some cases it was a wound that would have been lethal. In others it was fixing a broken bone cleanly enough that it did not leave the patient crippled. A difficult birth that did not kill the mother or the child, an illness cured quickly...there are as many stories as there are Nara to tell them."

"This is the story of Lady Senju," Noburi repeated, tapping his finger on the book. "But really, it's the story of her lineage. Kon wrote an account of her own training, and then convinced others to write accounts of being healed, learning to heal, training someone to heal, marrying a healer...each story is unique, and so is the book."

"Speaking of the book," Keiko said. "You know that the Nara invented the printing press. Well, one of Lady Senju's earliest advances was to write a series of medical textbooks and arrange with the Nara clan to circulate them widely."

Jiraiya snorted. "And wasn't that a fun time?" he said with a laugh. "She badgered Hiruzen-sensei for over a year until he finally authorized her to distribute them outside of Fire. 'Plagues do not care about borders!' she shouted, over and over and over. Can't even remember how many times I heard the two of them arguing about it. She paid for the print run herself, and then hired a whole series of C-rank missions to sell the things all throughout the Elemental Nations. She wanted to give them away, but Sensei convinced her that people would pay more attention if they paid more money."

Keiko shifted nervously. "Yes. Ah...well, the technology of the printing press has improved significantly since its development, and today there are many presses of various generations. The very first printing press, the one that was built by Nara Shikamaru's grandfather, is still kept as a historical artifact. Roughly once a year, the Nara clan prints a book on it in order to ensure that the press has been properly maintained." She picked up the book and held it out. "Here is this year's printing. A gift from me and Noburi, with the permission and approval of Nara Shikaku and Nara Yoshino."

Mari-sensei took the book with a smile. "Thank you, kids. This is lovely."

"Oh!" Noburi said. "I'm such an idiot, I almost forgot." He reached into an inside pocket and proffered a folded piece of paper. "Here. Can't read a book unless you have a bookmark, right?"

Mari-sensei opened the paper he'd handed her and read the elegant calligraphy within:

The Footsteps of Lady Gōketsu

by Gōketsu Keiko and Gōketsu Noburi

"It's a promissory note," Noburi explained. "Probably take us a few years to get around to writing it. Bear with us, okay?"

Mari-sensei sniffled again and wiped at her eyes. "You know, I had already got the point," she said, smiling. "You didn't have to be so heavy-handed, boyo." Her teasing tone was a little shaky.

"I have noticed, my love," Jiraiya said, bending down to press a kiss into her hair, "that you can be pretty dense when it comes to hearing good things about yourself. So shut up and say thank you to your very thoughtful students."

"Well, which is it?" Mari-sensei asked, looking up at him with a puzzled expression. "Should I shut up or should I say thank you?"

Jiraiya growled in mock-irritation and bopped her on the nose with one finger. "Say thank you."

She nipped at his finger with sharp teeth, but then turned back to Noburi and Keiko with a serious expression. "Thank you both, kids. This is really thoughtful and yes, it does give me some things to think about. I like the idea, and I'm sure all of you will go on to do great things." She stepped in and hugged Noburi close, nodding gratefully to Keiko over his shoulder.

"Well, as long as we're giving books," Jiraiya said after a moment. "I have one for you." He showed his hand empty, then made a magician's pass and produced a book from nowhere.

It did not stand up well in comparison with The Footsteps of Lady Senju.

Icha Icha Love: Stolen Heart was done on low-quality paper, the cover was a garish orange, and the woodcut image on the front might have been aiming for 'romantic' but it had overshot and was about to crashland just on the near side of 'pornographic'.

Mari-sensei raised an eyebrow. "You're giving me a trashy piece of smut for my birthday?" she asked. "You know that sex that you wanted to have ever again?"

"Now, now, give me a second," said the Fifth Hokage, dropping back onto the futon with a grin. "I take it that you know my Icha Icha series?"

Mari-sensei did not dignify that with a response. She merely crossed her arms over her chest and tapped one toe while pinning her unrepetant husband with a gimlet eye.

"So you know that the hero is Jun, a daring young ninja of startling power, unmatched virility, legendary musical skill, silver-tongued voice—"

"Ahem."

He laughed. "Yes, yes. Anyway, here's the truth behind Icha Icha: it's one of the primary controls for my spy network—a fact, may I add, which I would appreciate being kept quiet. Anyway, each copy contains coded messages to various agents. What page different characters show up on, the specific kanji used for dialogue, various background images...every single page, pretty much, is meaningful to one of my spies. Most of what's in the letters section at the back is actually orders—not all, but most. I do get a lot of fanmail, and I do publish it, but there usually isn't enough space to fit more than a piece or two after I've finished writing all the steganographic bits.

"Intelligence directive or not, it's popular. There are fifty-seven volumes in the Icha Icha series, and most of them go through half a dozen print runs." He laughed. "I actually turn a profit on running my spy ring, and the hilarious part is that I pay my agents, but then they give some of it back buying my books so that they can get their orders." He shrugged. "Anyway, about a third of my sales are to my agents and the rest are to people who genuinely want to read the story. For whatever reason, they love reading about Jun being chased by women, repeatedly getting trapped into almost marrying them, or getting challenged by jilted lovers or cuckolded husbands. Still, one thing people have been begging for ever since volume three is for Jun to actually find Otoha."

Mari-sensei waited but Jiraiya stayed silent, simply grinning at her infuriatingly.

"Who is Otoha?" she ground out.

"Glad you asked!" Jiraiya said. "She's the kitsune spirit that he met back in Icha Icha Purity: Heroic Heart. They had a brief and torrid affair, and then she tricked him into cutting out his own heart and burying it so that it could never be struck in battle, never be captured by an enemy, never distract him from his training and his constant quest for adventure. And then of course she captured it and ran off giggling like a madwoman.

"This," he said, waving the book around. "Is Icha Icha Love: Stolen Heart, the fifty-eighth book in the series. It is two thirds the size of an average Icha Icha novel and it features Jun and Otoha reuniting. Not just reuniting, getting married." He shrugged one shoulder with a disarming grin. "At which point she joins him on his adventures, both martial and marital. Gotta keep the numbers up, after all."

He turned serious again. "More importantly, this is the first and only time that I have ever published an Icha Icha novel which is just a novel. There are no orders to my agents in this one, no hidden maps, no secret images to decode. This is just a novel of two people coming together and making each other happy. I wrote it in three weeks. It went to press yesterday and this is the very first copy." He held it out to her balanced on both palms.

She frowned. "Three weeks? You wrote this since becoming Hokage?"

"Why did you think I was so tired all the time?" he said with a smile.

She swallowed, blinking a couple of times. Then her trademark grin spread back across her face. She took the book from him and tucked it into a pouch, then shifted her weight to stand hipshot, shaking her hair back and running both hands through it. "I'd like to think I had a little something to do with that," she purred, bringing her sunset mane over one shoulder and finger-combing imaginary knots out of it.

Jiraiya laughed, Keiko and Noburi winced, and Hazō began silently reciting the list of interactions between eighth-dimensional tensors and spiral torsion chakra structures with left-handed chirality in a desperate attempt to keep his mind's eye occupied.

"Sooooo," Hazō said desperately, once he'd found that even the most supremely boring seal theory was insufficient defense against the horror of adult flirting. "Speaking of terrible segues, it's my turn to give presents!" He took a storage seal out of his jacket pocket and unsealed a small box, about the size of two hands side-by-side.

Mari-sensei took the box and looked inside; her face promptly lit up in a smile. "Oh, perfume! From the Yamanaka shop, no less!" She tipped the box so the others could see in.

The inside of the box was lined in crushed red velvet. Five small glass vials nestled in custom-fitted slots, one in the very center with three others arranged in an arc to its left and one off to the right. Each vial was the size of a woman's thumb and made of blown glass, but beyond that they bore no similarity. Different colors, different shapes, different textures and patterns; each was unique.

"Not all perfume," Hazō said. He pointed to the blue-green stippled-pattern bottle on the right, "This one here is actually the antidote for a particularly toxic Water Country snake. I forget the name, but I have it written down in my room. This one here"—he traced his finger all the way to the left, skipping over the vial in the center to touch the brown palmate one—"is a painkiller. It's made from the leaves of a swamp plant that only grows in western Fire Country." His finger moved up and slightly to the right, tapping on a rust-red one. "This one here has a lodestone in it so that you can find your way if you get lost." His finger traced down to the bottom-most vial, a light cream color that was shaped like a scroll. "This is actually just a tiny bit of chrysanthemum tea. Yamanaka Yurie—she's Ino's mother?—she helped me pick it out. She said that you'd know what chrysanthemum meant."

Mari-sensei cleared her throat and nodded jerkily, not speaking or looking away from the vials.

Hazō tapped his finger on the black vial in the very center of the box, the stopper sealed with wax. "This one is perfume, like you thought," he said. "It's a perfume that Mrs. Yamanaka made special, just for this present. I watched her fill and seal the vial, and then I watched her spread the rest of the batch on her favorite roses. She burned the recipe in front of me. This is the only bit of this fragrance that exists or will exist, anywhere, ever. It is absolutely unique, and beautiful." He tipped the vial up in its slot so that it was easy to get at. "Try it."

Mari-sensei looked at him sharply, her eyes narrowing at something she heard in his voice. All he did was grin, so she broke the seal on the vial with her fingernails and lifted the top off.

The scent that wafted out was chocolate.

Frowning, Mari-sensei tipped the vial into her hand and laughed when what fell out was a chocolate kunai. "Chocolates and easily concealed blades. You remembered."

"Here's the actual perfume," Hazō said, taking the box back and setting it down so that he could carefully lift out the velvet lining of the box. Underneath was revealed a second layer, this one holding only a single vial: red-and-gold and shaped like a flame. He smiled. "I thought about putting some seals in the space, but that's really more of a Kagome-sensei thing." He pulled the perfume out, replaced the upper lining, and nestled the red-and-gold vial into the empty spot in the center. He ceremoniously closed the lid and held the box out to Mari-sensei.

"Happy birthday, sensei," he said formally.

o-o-o-o

The group had been expected to leave for Mist at "the crack of dawn". In practice, the crack of dawn became more like nine-thirty, with everyone waiting at the gates with varying degrees of patience. It would have been later except that Jiraiya got fed up, vanished into the streets of Leaf, and returned twenty minutes later dragging a white-haired ninja by the collar of his jōnin flak jacket. The man wore a mask across the lower part of his face and his forehead protector slumped down over his left eye, but nonetheless his expression of affront and surprise was clear to read.

Hazō did not need to be introduced in order to recognize Hatake Kakashi, the famous Ninja of the Copy-Wheel Eye, the only person to have received a transplanted Sharingan eye (or any other organ, for that matter) and lived, the only non-Uchiha in the world to possess the Sharingan. (As far as anyone outside Clan Gōketsu knew, anyway. Jiraiya had been very clear that the Kurosawa family's occasional birth of Sharingan users was a state secret.) No, he did not need an introduction. Hatake was internationally famous for being possibly the most powerful ninja alive who wasn't a Kage. Supposedly he was a master of every ninja art...well, except the art of making a good first impression. Still, late or not, lazy or not, Hatake made no trouble about keeping up on the run. Hazō avoided him because (a) he already had one living legend in his life and didn't want to complicate things further and (b) somehow, he got a real 'likes to mess with heads' vibe off the guy, and Hazō really didn't need that right now.

The peace of the road was relaxing, and he wanted to enjoy it. There was no intense training to do, no seals to write, no need to worry about politics or anything else. For two days, everything was simple: run during the day, sleep at night. It gave Hazō the time to process everything that had happened recently and to brace himself for the challenges ahead. Seeing his mother again, navigating the dangerous waters of Mist-meets-Leaf politics...winning the Exams. For that matter, surviving the Exams. He had no illusions that the team's survival was guaranteed. It would be too easy for Mist to false-flag an assassination attempt, or assign one of their candidates to play a little too rough, then apologize profusely for the incompetence of their genin and pay a fine while laughing up their sleeves. Maybe the orders wouldn't even be to kill, only to cripple. Mist was known for its ruthlessness, after all, and right now they had to be feeling backed into a corner. Desperate people did desperate things, and he could imagine the new Mizukage—whoever that was—thinking that it might be worth the risk to provoke Leaf into violent action where the other villages would be obligated to stop them. A very high-risk proposition, but Jiraiya admitted that it wasn't impossible.

Of course, the two and a half days they spent on the road were not all wasted on heavy thoughts about politics and death. No, mostly he avoided that and basked in the no-mind of running during the day, and the joy of spending unstructured time with Akane in the evenings. Jiraiya seemed selectively blind to their time together; he had no problem with Akane sharing Gōketsu family dinner, or with a little kissing and hand-holding, but anytime Hazō tried to arrange some alone time with Akane so they could talk in private...well, suddenly there were chores to do, or his Clan Leader had some questions about details of the Kurosawa clan, or some other minor task that urgently needed to be done. It was frustrating, and probably more so because Akane just laughed and took it in good humor.

Still, time marches on and all frustrations fade when new challenges push them aside. The group's arrival in Mist definitely met the standards for 'new challenges'.

Jiraiya had had them stop just outside the city limits, wash, and change into clean field uniforms. He had even, with great reluctance, put on the Hokage's hat. It wasn't the burned and battered hat that Jiraiya had thrown on the table the night the Gōketsu clan was formed. That hat was in a shadow box hung in a place of honor on the wall of the Hokage's office, directly in Jiraiya's line of sight when he sat at the desk. No, this hat was new, clean, and elegant.

When the Leaf contingent arrived at the gates of the Village Hidden in the Mist, they did so in formation. Jiraiya marched at the head, striding as confidently as the hero of his novels. To his left was Hatake Kakashi who, for this one moment, had exchanged his usual lazy saunter for a predatory stalk that would have done honor to a direcat. To Jiraiya's right strode Hatake's eternal rival: Maito Gai, Leaf's supreme taijutsu master and apparently the progenitor of the YOUTH! movement to which Lee and Akane kept trying to recruit Hazō. The man was practically a cube of muscle, and his normally-smiling face was now drawn into a serious expression that, without being at all threatening, still suggested the possibility of truly shattering amounts of violence that could be unleashed were anything untoward to happen.

Behind the three legends came a wedge of ANBU, six to a side, with Team Uplift and the other genin in the center like ducklings sheltering under their mother's wings. The jōnin-sensei and their comrades closed up the back of the wedge.

The guards at the gate of the Village Hidden in the Mist passed them in with all haste, practically scrambling to bow them through and get them on their way. Three nervous-looking Mist ANBU were waiting just inside to lead the Leaf contingent directly to Mizukage Tower in the center of the city.

Hazō found that it was a strange and uncomfortable sensation to once again walk the streets of his home city, the more so because the route they traveled had been cleared of civilians. It was like walking through a city of ghosts, and it echoed with memories both sweet and bitter. The fact that they came within two blocks of his mother's house without ever laying eyes on it was among the most bitter.

When they reached the Tower, Jiraiya stopped and turned to the rest of the group. "Time for me to go find out who they managed to scrape up for a Mizukage after they lost the last one," he said, ignoring the three Mist ANBU who were standing a few feet away. "These lovely fellows will lead you to your quarters for the exams. Get settled in, take a look around the city. The Exam peace is in place, so don't kill anyone or cause trouble. Leave the booze in the bottle but feel free to explore as long as you stay in pairs or more—gotta make sure you've got a witness who can corroborate your side of things if any of the other villages' people want to make trouble. The ceremonies start tonight, so be in the barracks an hour before sunset. Any questions?" He looked around the group, then nodded. "Okay, dismissed."

Without another word he turned and vanished into the Tower, one of the Mist ANBU leading the way and his honor guard of two ANBU, Hatake, and Gai following close on his heels. Hazō watched him go with decidedly mixed emotions.

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Things that happened offscreen:

* When you left Leaf, Mari-sensei came to see you off. Akane took her aside and gave her something the size of a shoebox. You weren't able to see what was in it, but Mari-sensei looked in, her eyes got very wide, and then she started giggling madly. You have done your level best to not think about this in the subsequent days.

* You learned the pangolin training jutsu. (Costs 25 XP, requires that both STR and STA be at least 6.) You have received training XP along with regular XP this update.

* Keiko has bonded three pangolins (we'll get you details) and is saving the other two contracts until she knows more about what will be happening in the Exams.

* You experimented with making misterators that also block LOS. It didn't work too well; adding a lot of dust just causes the water to precipitate out faster. You gave up on it in favor of more likely-to-succeed opportunities after a day or so.

* Between the two of them, Hazō and Kagome-sensei managed to make snow goggles for the entire team, as well as a pair each for Jiraiya, Mari-sensei, and Akane. Hazō then pointed out that Akane would probably want her teammates to have them as well, so Kagome-sensei grumpily helped him make two more.

* Noburi has two spare barrels stashed with the pangolins (there was already one there and he made another).

* You've practiced with sound-canceling earmuffs and various other things.