[Konohagakure — Hokage Tower Plaza, October 30th, 7:22 PM]
The lamps had been lit in the plaza. The dango woman had sold through her entire first crate and was making inroads on the second. The chestnut vendor had gone hoarse from calling out his prices and had given up on calling and was just gesturing at the coals with a long-suffering expression that said: the chestnuts are here, they are hot, this is all I have to offer and I offer it willingly.
The crowd had not thinned. If anything it had grown, the way crowds grew at things that were going better than expected, pulling in people from the surrounding streets who had been listening through windows and decided the window was not enough.
SIXTH PLACE.
The portrait took longer to form than the ones before it. The scroll seemed to be choosing its angles — trying perspectives, adjusting, the way a painter steps back from a canvas before committing to the stroke. What emerged was a face that the plaza recognized with the particular jolt of seeing someone from a context that didn't fit.
UCHIHA OBITO.
The plaza went through several things quickly: surprise, then the complicated remainder of the past several weeks' emotional processing, then something that settled, slowly, into an attentiveness that was neither warm nor hostile but was very present.
"Uchiha Obito. Ranked sixth on the basis of: the largest distance traveled in this category. The subject's worst day is well-documented. The subject's choice is more recent and is still in progress. The scroll does not rank the outcome. It ranks the distance. The distance here is significant."
In the war room, Kakashi read the chat notification. He set down his report. He looked at the wall for a moment. Then he picked the report up and kept writing, which was, for Kakashi, the equivalent of several minutes of public emotional response.
Obito: ...sixth.
Kakashi: Yeah.
Obito: That's more than I expected.
Kakashi: It's accurate.
Obito: You're not going to argue with it.
Kakashi: I have never argued with an accurate assessment in my life.
Obito: That's absolutely not true.
Kakashi: It's true today.
"Reward: one day, uninterrupted, with the recipient's full team. Location: the recipient's choice. The scroll notes that the team in question is aware of the reward and has unanimously agreed to the terms."
In a noodle shop in the eastern district, Rin Nohara, who had been watching the ranking broadcast from a corner table with a cup of tea and the expression of a woman who had been reacquainted with the world of the living several months ago and was still finding it occasionally overwhelming, received a notification through the small scroll Tsunade had authorized for her.
It said: Tomorrow. Kakashi says the training ground. Obito says anywhere but the training ground. Current vote: 2-1, training ground.
Rin typed back: I vote training ground.
The scroll showed: 3-1, training ground. Obito has logged his formal objection.
She set down her tea. She was smiling. Not the performed smile she had been practicing since her return, the one that had taken several weeks to replace with a real one, but the real one — the specific, slightly asymmetric smile that Kakashi had seen described in three separate mission reports as "the one that means she's genuinely pleased and is not going to make a big deal about it."
FIFTH PLACE.
The portrait was someone the Mist delegation recognized before anyone else did. A man in his fifties with close-cropped greying hair and the bearing of a shinobi who had spent his career in water-based combat and wore it in his posture. The Mist delegation, which had been maintaining its professional composure since the opening of the ranking, spontaneously stood. All twelve of them. Together. Without discussion.
YAGURA KARATACHI. THE FOURTH MIZUKAGE.
"Yagura Karatachi of the Hidden Mist Village. Ranked fifth on the basis of: the documented internal resistance against external control, maintained across years of genjutsu-induced compliance, and the partial resurfacing of autonomous decision-making in the final months before his death. The subject did not fully break free. He came back to himself in increments, small enough that no one around him saw it, large enough that the scroll does. The story changed from the inside out, without support, without witness, without the possibility of success."
The Mist delegation sat back down.
Chōjūrō, at the delegation's center, folded his hands on the table in front of him and looked at the portrait for a long moment.
He had known Yagura. Not well — few people had known Yagura well, in the Bloody Mist years, because knowing people well was not a survival mechanism that era rewarded — but he had known him the way young shinobi knew their Kage, which was at a reverential distance that gradually revealed itself to be something more complicated than reverence.
He thought: he was trying to get back to himself. All those years, he was trying.
Beside him, Mei Terumi was looking at the portrait with an expression that the Mist diplomatic protocol probably did not have a name for, because it was the expression of a woman who had spent fifteen years fighting against a system and had not previously considered what it cost the person the system was using.
She did not speak. She was Mei Terumi and she was very good at speaking, and she chose not to, which said more than speaking would have.
The scroll moved.
FOURTH PLACE.
Shisui Uchiha's reward was a scroll.
Not metaphorically. Literally a scroll — small, dark blue, tied with a cord in the clan's secondary knot, the one that meant: this is internal, this is for us, this does not go to the archives.
The scroll's voice said: "Shisui Uchiha. Ranked fourth on the basis of: the preemptive choice. Most stories change after the worst thing. The subject's choice was made before it. One eye given willingly. One village protected from a war it would not have survived. The subject did not wait to see if the choice was the right one. He made it."
The chat scroll pulsed.
Tobirama: The preemptive choice is, technically, the harder one. The subject had no evidence the choice would work. He acted on the basis of his values rather than his certainty. That is the definition of courage as distinct from confidence.
Hashirama: Tobirama that's so beautiful
Tobirama: It's an accurate analytical statement.
Hashirama: It's beautiful AND accurate.
Tobirama: Those are not mutually exclusive, anija. I don't know why you act like they are.
Hashirama: Because you usually pick one.
Tobirama: ...
Tobirama: That's fair.
Shisui, reading the exchange on his field scroll, looked at it for a moment. He was sitting on the eastern wall, watching the scroll's glow in the plaza below, because the plaza had felt like too many people tonight and the wall had felt like the right distance.
He typed: Tobirama-sama. Thank you.
The response came back in the flattest possible register, which Shisui had learned to read correctly by now.
Tobirama: You're welcome. Now stop sending me personal messages, I'm trying to watch the ranking.
Shisui laughed quietly and put the scroll away.
The reward — the small blue scroll tied with the secondary knot — had materialized on the wall beside him. He picked it up. He held it. He did not open it yet. Some things were for later, when the plaza was empty and the lamps had gone down and the wall was just a wall again.
THIRD PLACE.
The plaza went the specific quality of quiet it went when it was about to feel something and was bracing for it.
NAGATO UZUMAKI.
"Nagato Uzumaki of Amegakure. Ranked third on the basis of: the last choice. All the previous choices were wrong, or partly wrong, or wrong in ways he understood too late. The last one was not. The last one was made in full knowledge of its cost and no expectation of its reward."
Jiraiya had come back from his walk during fifth place. He was at the edge of the plaza, standing against the wall with his arms crossed and his white hair down from its usual tie, reading the chat on his scroll with the expression of a man who had been carrying a particular grief for a long time and was finding, in the public announcement of it, something that was not quite relief but was adjacent to it.
He typed: Kid. I hope you know.
The response came back from an account he had not heard from in this ranking arc. It had been quiet for days, since the Most Likely to Save the World category, and Jiraiya had noticed the silence and not pushed.
Nagato: I know, Sensei.
Jiraiya: Good.
A pause.
Nagato: The rain stopped here, last week. First dry week in six months. I didn't know what to do with the sun.
Jiraiya: What did you do?
Nagato: Went outside.
Jiraiya: Yeah.
Nagato: It was okay.
Jiraiya: Yeah. It usually is.
"The scroll will announce the top two at dawn," the scroll's voice said. "For reasons that are — narrative."
Tobirama: The scroll is developing a personality and I find it deeply concerning.
Hashirama: Tobirama I think it's charming.
Tobirama: That is because you find chaos charming.
Hashirama: I married Mito. I find ORDER charming. I just think the scroll has earned the right to be a little dramatic.
Tobirama: ...
Tobirama: That is, fine, a reasonable position.
Naruto, at the front of the plaza, turned to Sasuke. "Top two at dawn," he said.
"I heard it," Sasuke said.
"You think you're in the top two."
A pause.
"I think," Sasuke said carefully, "that if I am in the top two, it will not be for reasons I am comfortable with."
Naruto looked at him.
"That's not a no," Naruto said.
"No," Sasuke said. "It's not."
They stood together in the lamplight while the plaza emptied around them, and the scroll dimmed to its resting gold, and the dango woman packed up the second crate, and the thrush in the plum tree finally stopped complaining and went to sleep.
"Dinner," Naruto said.
"Iruka-sensei's," Sasuke agreed.
They walked.
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