[Konohagakure — Hokage Tower War Room, October 30th, 1:17 AM]
Jiraiya's report was thirty-one pages.
This was unusual. Jiraiya's reports were normally three pages, sometimes four if something had exploded. Thirty-one pages meant he had written it on the road back, using the small press-seal the intelligence division issued for field documentation, stopping twice in the dark to add sections, and arriving at the Konoha gate with ink still wet on the last paragraph.
Hiruzen read it standing up, which he had not done since the third Hokage election, when standing had seemed like the appropriate posture for receiving information of a certain weight.
Shikaku sat at the table and read a copy. He made marks on the margin in his cramped, slanted hand. He did not make many marks. Mostly he read.
Tobirama read it in the chat, because Tobirama was always in the chat, because Tobirama had apparently decided that the period after one's death was an excellent time to develop an insomnia equivalent.
The war room was quiet for a long time.
Then Shikaku set his copy down, aligned it with the table edge, and said: "He found the structural weakness in the third binding layer and said nothing to Orochimaru for eighteen months."
"Yes," Hiruzen said.
"He held a technique that would have given Orochimaru an advantage in any future large-scale conflict, and he sat on it."
"Yes."
"Because he decided the technique was morally wrong."
"That is what the report says."
Shikaku looked at the ceiling. He was doing something with his face that was not quite a frown and not quite puzzlement. The expression of a man whose model of a situation had just been handed a piece that didn't fit.
The chat scroll pulsed. Amber. Then brighter.
Tobirama: I have read the report.
Hiruzen: Tobirama-sensei.
Tobirama: The counter-protocol he describes is real. I identified the structural weakness in the third binding layer myself, seventeen years ago, when I uploaded the refined variant to the Sealing Card. I did not include the counter-protocol in the upload because I did not believe anyone in the living world had the technical foundation to implement it without causing catastrophic instability in the array.
Shikaku: And Kabuto?
Tobirama: He found an implementation method I had not considered. His approach is inelegant in three places and has two redundancies that serve no function, but the core is sound. It works.
Hiruzen: Will you authorize the release command for the three Uchiha?
A long pause. Long enough that Shikaku refilled his tea and drank half of it.
Tobirama: Before I answer that — where is Kabuto now.
Hiruzen: Holding room three. Lower level. Two ANBU stationed. He has not been restrained beyond the standard chakra-suppression tag, at Jiraiya's recommendation.
Tobirama: And his status.
Hiruzen: Cooperative. Has answered every question Kakashi has put to him without evasion. Has eaten dinner. Has asked twice whether Jiraiya-sama is available to speak with him again and been told both times that Jiraiya-sama is filing reports.
Tobirama: And Jiraiya.
Hiruzen: Filing reports.
Tobirama: ...Is he actually filing reports.
Hiruzen: He is sitting in the records room with a cup of cold tea and the thirty-first page of the report in his hand, not moving.
Tobirama: I see.
The chat scroll went quiet for another moment.
Then:
Tobirama: I will authorize the release command for the three Uchiha on one condition. The condition is that Itachi and Shisui are present at the drying house when the release is executed. The decision to go or stay belongs to each of the three individually. No one in that room is to express a preference, suggest an outcome, or apply pressure of any kind. They are informed of the choice. They choose. That is all.
Hiruzen: Understood. I'll relay to Itachi.
Tobirama: Additionally.
Hiruzen: Yes.
Tobirama: When you speak to Kabuto — and you will speak to him, Sarutobi, properly, not through intermediaries — ask him who taught him that the Edo Tensei was morally wrong. Because Orochimaru did not teach him that. I did not teach him that. That belief came from somewhere.
Shikaku: You think someone got to him.
Tobirama: I think a twelve-year-old orphan who grew up eating rice shells and watching people use him as a means to an end arrived eventually at a point where he made a choice. I want to know what the choice was for, not just what it was against.
The war room sat with that.
Outside, in the corridor, footsteps — Kakashi's distinctive quiet step, and beside it someone moving with less practice at silence. The door opened. Kakashi came in, and behind him, Naruto.
Naruto had dirt on his jacket and his hair was worse than usual and he was breathing like he'd been running, which he had been, from the gate the moment Sakura had come through it.
He looked at Hiruzen. He looked at Shikaku. He looked at the chat scroll.
"Is everyone okay," he said. It was not a question. It was the statement of a person checking a list.
"Everyone is okay," Hiruzen said.
"Sakura?"
"Filing her medic report."
"Kakashi-sensei?" Naruto looked at Kakashi, who was standing beside him.
"Present," Kakashi said.
"Itachi-san? Shisui-san? Jiraiya-sama?"
"All present. All accounted for." Hiruzen looked at him. "Naruto. How far into Fire Country did you follow the team before Kakashi-san turned you back."
A pause.
"Define far."
"Naruto."
"The Tanigakure border region may have briefly had an additional orange presence. I cannot confirm or deny this."
Shikaku, who had been watching the ceiling, produced a sound through his nose that was technically not a laugh.
The chat scroll pulsed one final time that night. Brighter than the amber. The particular gold it used when the scroll itself was active rather than the chat function.
The message was three lines. No category heading. No preamble.
It said:
The Tanigakure drying house. Third binding layer. Authorization granted.
Uchiha Tekka. Uchiha Inabi. Uchiha Yashiro.
The choice is yours.
Itachi, reading it on the field scroll two kilometers north of the tower, looked at Shisui.
Shisui was already moving toward the door.
They went together, into the cold and the dark and the specific silence of a night that was about to ask three dead men what they wanted to do next.
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