
"Come in."
The voice that drifted through the old office was low, a little rough around the edges from years of tobacco smoke. The room itself hadn't changed much in the last decade.
No mistaking it - this was Hiruzen, indulging his lungs with the resin and other not-so-healthy things packed into his favorite pipe. What could you do? The head of all shinobi in the Land of Fire never really got a proper break - there was never enough time for leisurely strolls, and as the years piled on, Hiruzen had grown to savor those rare minutes between meetings and paperwork, relishing his precious tobacco.
Moments like these, Hiruzen didn't much care for visitors barging into his office. But people never asked when the Hokage was on break, or when he was ready to see them. Honestly, even Hiruzen himself rarely knew when he'd get a moment to clear his head. Urgent matters that demanded his personal attention could pop up at any time.
When he caught sight of the familiar mask and the chestnut hair peeking out from beneath it, Hiruzen smirked to himself, realizing that a certain inquisitive individual had finally returned to the village.
After the usual greetings, the Hokage got straight to business, asking Yamato about the results - and the details - of the "mission" that had been set in motion a little over a month ago by a young man named Akira.
"I haven't finished the full report yet, but here's what I have so far."
Yamato pulled a small scroll from the breast pocket of his vest and, without any fuss, stepped forward to place the sealing scroll neatly on the desk.
Just from the size of the scroll, Hiruzen could tell it was one of those so-called "light" sealing scrolls. The storage space in these was half that of the standard ones, and they were mostly used for keeping important mission items - like the mission order itself, which would be signed by the client after completion, as well as other key documents or packages, if the mission called for it. Usually, jonin kept three of these in their vest pockets, all in line with the peacetime standards set by the Second Hokage.
With a light touch, Hiruzen drew a small folder from the scroll, filled with a neat stack of blank white sheets, unbound.
The structure of these notes was more than familiar to Hiruzen - this was exactly how ANBU were taught to prepare their records for future reports.
It went something like this:
- Brief summary of the mission;
- operations carried out during the mission;
- contacts made by the surveillance target;
- encounters with shinobi from other villages;
- damage to infrastructure (optional if the mission was outside the Land of Fire);
- injuries (casualties);
- neutralized threats;
Depending on the mission type, the number of sections could shrink or grow by a dozen. Hiruzen already knew the gist of this mission: escorting and protecting the client, along with handling various D-rank sub-tasks. Normally, escort missions were C-rank, but because of Akira's special request - which included a bunch of minor and not-so-minor errands - the price went up, and the mission was bumped to B-rank, even though the actual difficulty was closer to C.
First and foremost, Hiruzen was interested in the people Akira had met during his stay in Tanzaku. After all, even if he had no proof or evidence that the young man was a spy, that didn't mean someone else couldn't have tried to recruit him.
Some of the names on that list surprised him, others made him pause and think, and one in particular made Hiruzen flip straight to the section describing the operations carried out during the mission.
Hiruzen read that three-page summary several times, his face thoughtful, before deciding to get a little more information from his subordinate.
"What does it mean here - 'the client forced you to massacre an entire gang'?"
Hiruzen asked, his interest piqued. The way it was written in the report left a lot of room for interpretation.
"It wasn't in our job description to deal with criminals at the client's whim, but it was spelled out in black and white that we were to protect him, up to and including eliminating any threats that broke the laws of the Land of Fire. Akira-san took advantage of that and brazenly wandered onto a gang's turf, provoking them to attack him."
"Was it really necessary to wipe out the whole gang? As far as I know, it doesn't take much - kill a few and the rest usually come to their senses,"
the Hokage mused, spitting out a tiny bit of tobacco leaf that had gotten in his mouth.
"Oh, Hokage-sama, you'd be surprised how easy it is for a writer to rile people up until they're practically foaming at the mouth. Besides…"
Yamato hesitated, his face showing a rare flicker of emotion - unusual for someone who wore a second mask of stoic calm beneath his ANBU mask. Seeing the signal to continue, he sighed and went on,
"Besides, while we were 'guarding' the client, just as the rest of the squad was getting into the swing of things, Akira announced that for every bandit killed, he'd add five thousand ryo to the mission bonus. The bandits were definitely criminals, and they posed a potential threat to the client, so…"
"I get it, you can stop there."
Hiruzen sighed, closing his eyes for a moment. The base reward for the mission was four hundred thousand ryo, and Akira's special requirements for the team - let's call it a 'service fee' - had been negotiated off the books, with half the money going straight to the village treasury. Hiruzen understood why the hired squad had been so eager to clean out a criminal gang in Tanzaku.
For a hundred gang members, the official reward jumped by five hundred thousand ryo, meaning each member would get just under a hundred thousand extra for a good deed that didn't take much effort.
The rest of the people Akira had interacted with didn't really catch Hiruzen's attention as Hokage, but the information about the structure built by the hired squad and Yamato, as a special expert, did catch the calculating eye of someone raised in a clan of talented merchants and shinobi.
"Shopping center…"
Hiruzen murmured the name of the project.
"At the end of the document, I attached a sheet with a rough sketch of the building,"
Yamato added quickly.
Hiruzen immediately found the page and, seeing Yamato's artistic handiwork, winced inwardly.
*Even Konohamaru could've drawn this pagoda better* he thought after a few seconds of looking it over. With a rough idea of the shopping center and the info in the report, Hiruzen more or less understood what Akira was aiming for, but even with all his experience, he couldn't say for sure whether a place with so many different businesses under one roof would catch on.
"That's what the regular market is for - everything's out in the open, no need to go upstairs,"
he mused. Still, Hiruzen decided not to make any final judgments about the economic sense of such a shopping center - after all, it would be at least another month before it opened, maybe more.
*We'll see how it does once it opens. If it works, what's to stop my own clan from opening one in Keichi?*
Hiruzen thought with a faint smile.
Having finished with that topic, the Hokage moved on to less urgent, but still interesting, information.
"Participating in a film shoot… that's unexpected."
He tapped his fingers on the desk, thinking, as he recognized a few familiar names in the report.
"He got close to the actress Yukie?"
Hiruzen asked, wanting to hear the details from Yamato rather than just reading the report.
"Hmm… hard to say. Their first meeting wasn't great, so their relationship started off pretty rocky - they barely coordinated on set. But later, as far as I could tell, they found some common ground, and Yukie even spent time with Akira-san a couple of times in a friendly atmosphere."
Yamato didn't ask why the Hokage cared about the client's relationship with some actress. His job was just to answer questions.
"How did they part ways? It says here that two weeks ago, Makino's film crew left Tanzaku to continue shooting elsewhere."
Unlike Yamato, the Hokage knew the actress "Yukie's" true identity. After all, former ANBU captain Kakashi had personally saved the Snow Country princess from her uncle and helped her settle in the Land of Fire.
And when an actress named Yukie started gaining popularity in Keichi thanks to her role, Hiruzen had ordered Danzo to look into it - after all, she and director Makino had been invited to the Daimyo's palace a couple of times.
Letting unknowns - or possibly spies from another village - into the palace would've been a huge mistake for the Hokage. Who knew what other villages might do to the Land of Fire's ruler? Assassination would be bad enough, but blackmail and manipulation could do even more damage to Konoha's economy. That's how Hiruzen learned that Yukie was actually Koyuki, the runaway princess.
"Not friends, but something close to acquaintances,"
Yamato reported, his face unchanged.
"Hm, I see. Akira couldn't have known the girl's true identity - otherwise, their first meeting would've gone very differently. And with his looks, I bet he could seduce not just a runaway princess, but even the Daimyo's wife."
Hiruzen thought, and shuddered for a second as he remembered what the Daimyo's wife looked like.
*Still… the guy's got some luck. He buys an apartment that just happens to be next door to the jinchuriki's house, and now, in a big city, he just happens to run into a runaway princess. Fate's threads, huh?*
Hiruzen remembered his late friend Maoro - an elder from the Fire Temple who loved to philosophize about destiny. After his death, the temple was taken over by his best student, Chiriku, who used to be one of the Twelve Guardian Ninja.
Shaking his head, Hiruzen forced himself to focus, not wanting to drift off into nostalgia.
*Good thing I was reminded about that girl, or I'd have forgotten all about her. Yeah… a runaway princess - that could come in handy. While the current Daimyo is trying to get the Snow Country's economy back on track, I'll leave her alone, but in two or three years, I could put a girl loyal to the Land of Fire on the throne. Yeah… just need to remember that.*
With a faint smile, Hiruzen thanked Yamato and dismissed him.
After a morning of good news, Hiruzen was in a great mood, and after Yamato's report and the little intrigue he'd come up with, he felt like he'd really earned his pay today - his good mood was at its peak.
"Ah, maybe I'll head home a little early today, relax on the couch, soak my feet in warm water, break out my best tobacco - perfect."
Hiruzen drifted off into thoughts of a pleasant evening.
As for Akira? At that moment, he had no desire to think about him at all. Hiruzen had long since decided to take a wait-and-see approach. The young man was trying to live by the rules, had no suspicious connections, and the only things that raised questions for the Hokage were his knowledge of certain jutsu and his mysterious past.
But as long as Akira kept benefiting the village, Hiruzen - unlike Danzo - was willing to let it slide. Shadow Clone Jutsu? Sure, it originated in the Land of Fire, but every other village had learned to use it, even modifying the original with elemental chakra.
That's how you got Water Clones, Earth Clones, and so on. So Hiruzen wasn't too surprised that Akira knew the technique - he could've learned it from any halfway decent shinobi in or outside the Land of Fire. Besides, Akira never used it for combat. Hiruzen still remembered the report that said Akira had used a B-rank jutsu just to clean his house and help with chores. When he read that, all he could do was chuckle and say,
"As I thought, for an untrained shinobi, ninjutsu is just a way to make life easier."
And that thought was only reinforced when he learned that Akira wanted to use Yamato's Mokuton just to make construction work easier. Poor Yamato worked harder than anyone - besides building the pagoda's staircase and interior, Akira had him make fancy patterns for the railings, wooden vases, dishes…
Hiruzen knew Yamato was a very patient man, so he was surprised to read in the earth-style team's report that Yamato had finally lost his temper. Apparently, at one point, Akira even asked Yamato to make wooden chopsticks.
According to the squad leader, when Yamato heard that "request," he put his hand on his kunai pouch - and that said it all.