Another full day later, at first light, the gates of Konoha rose out of the morning haze.
The team slowed only enough to be seen.
Okabe lifted a hand, showed the mission tag, his voice flat and official.
The gate chūnin took one look at the blood, the state of their clothes, and waved them straight through.
A clerk stamped a slate, and a runner peeled off toward the administration wing. Priority entry. No questions.
They did not drop to the streets. They cut left and went up, shoes tapping the roof tile, chakra holding on wet clay.
The village center opened beneath them. Vendors were rolling up shutters. A cook beat steam out of a pot. Apprentices tugged carts along the lane.
A few heads tilted up as three shinobi crossed the sky, then dropped again without comment. In emergencies, this was normal, and the village had learned to live under it.
Ryusei stayed on Renjiro's back and watched. Old beams and paper walls sat next to concrete and glass. Prayer tags fluttered under street lamps.
A wire grid ran along a district wall and disappeared behind an office block.
'Strange place,' he thought. 'Ancient on the surface, a little modern underneath.'
He followed the path of a power line with his eyes and filed away the parts that mattered.
'Chakra explains a lot. Smarter brains, faster hands, more output. It also rewards war. You get bursts, then stagnation when fighting eats everything. When the knives go quiet, the curve spikes. Like in Boruto. That rise made sense.'
But Ryusei knew that this was the strongest hidden village in the strongest country.
It would not look like this everywhere. He had seen the villages outside. The gap was real.
They skimmed past the central Academy. The courtyard was empty at this hour, banners hanging still. The building sat close to the Hokage's office for a reason. The core stayed near the core.
'A city built for war,' he thought. 'Run by a single center, Hokage as a dictator, because it has to be. Urgency and control, or it breaks.'
What was a Hidden Village?
A centralized shinobi institution with full military infrastructure.
Recognized officially by its country's daimyō.
Led by a Kage (shadow) — a military dictator with executive authority.
Responsible for training ninja, conducting missions for money, defending the country, managing internal order and intelligence.
It is essentially a militarized city-state embedded within a feudal nation.
The culture matched. War first, discipline first, indoctrination worn like a second skin.
That part did not bother him. He had seen versions of it before. What held his attention was the balance inside.
Clans and civilians, both needed, both managed.
He watched an unknown small clan compound wall slide by on the right, pale stone and flawless joinery.
Two guards in plain clothes stood just inside the gate.
A civilian district opened on the left, thinner walls, fewer seals on the doors, a shopkeeper bowing to a passing patrol a little too deeply.
'This place is a strange compromise,' he thought. 'The Hokage come from clans. They fear them, they need them, they press them down, they never cut them out. They cannot.'
Bloodlines matter here. Techniques matter. People are not born equal anywhere, including the supernatural worlds. Someone always has more chakra, better eyes, a stronger body.'
So suppression stayed at a simmer, never a boil.
Assimilation, trimming, buyouts, limits on teaching, careful praise, careful threats.
Eradication was never the short game. The men in charge knew that.
They were clan men themselves. They understood what could and could not be taken.
Renjiro's grip shifted under him. Kanae kept pace to the right, silent, eyes forward.
Okabe did not look back. He set the line over a spine of roofs, then dropped them onto the broad walkway that led straight to the Hokage Building.
They passed the memorial stone on the inner path. Someone had placed a fresh flower at the base.
The air smelled like rain on dust and old paper.
The tower loomed ahead. Guards stood at the entrance, not tense, not relaxed. Okabe showed the tag again and received a nod.
They stepped inside. Cool air replaced the morning heat.
The sound of the village fell away, and the hum of the building took over.
Pens, footsteps, muted voices, the steady rhythm of a place that turned war into schedules.
Okabe stopped at the corridor that split toward the Hokage's office. His voice stayed even, but there was weight behind it.
"Wait in one of the side rooms. Because of the mission's nature, I may have to report directly to ANBU inside this building. If the Hokage calls for you, I'll bring you over."
They all nodded. The side rooms were not elaborate, just plain wooden walls, tatami mats, a low table, and a sliding door that opened onto a terrace overlooking the rooftops.
They were built for waiting, not comfort, quiet enough to make you listen to your own heartbeat.
Renjiro finally set Ryusei down. The Senju boy steadied himself, testing his legs.
Renjiro gave him a sideways glance.
"Don't collapse here, of all places. If you embarrass me in front of the Hokage Building, I'll beat you myself."
Ryusei grinned and waved him off. "Relax, if I fall, I'll just let you carry me again. You seemed to enjoy it so much."
Ryusei chuckled, but inwardly his thoughts turned.
'On most missions, Okabe just reports at the desk. This time he went straight to ANBU. That's the quickest line to the Hokage. The Hokage needs this news fast. And maybe I'm part of the reason for that.'
'Also, I can't sense a thing in this entire building. It's like stepping into a void while being flooded with countless signals everywhere at once. They must be using some kind of suppression or masking technology. Makes sense, this is the Hokage's building, after all.'
They slid open the terrace door and stepped into the open room where, years later, Gai's team would gather between assignments.
Ryusei leaned against the railing, eyes drifting to Kanae. She was as unreadable as ever, face fixed, posture still.
He cracked another small joke, light and teasing, just enough to pass for the old Ryusei.
"So, Kanae, if the Hokage decides to promote one of us today, I'll put in a good word for you. You can thank me later."
Kanae's pale eyes shifted toward him, flat and cold. "Don't waste your breath. If I get promoted, it won't be because you spoke."
Ryusei smirked, acting as though her words bounced right off. "Harsh as always. One day you'll smile when I talk to you, you'll see."
Kanae gave a faint huff through her nose, more irritation than amusement.
She turned her gaze back toward the rooftops, cutting off the exchange.
She had always disliked this about him, the current Ryusei knew.
The original owner called it 'friendliness', even 'harmless' banter, a way to seem more 'normal' and 'fit in'.
What he never realized was that he overdid it; with someone like Kanae, whose personality was especially averse to such things, it only made everything worse over time.
He had overdone it the most during those early, tedious D-rank missions.
To her, it was pestering, unwanted noise that scraped against her quiet nature.
Every time he tried, her impression of him only sank deeper.
However, the 'new' Ryusei kept smiling anyway as he repeated the behaviour of the previous owner a little. Some masks couldn't be dropped.
***
Meanwhile, Okabe was being led into one of the village's deepest secrets. The place he entered wasn't known to the majority of even Konoha's jōnin, let alone ordinary shinobi or civilians.
It was a chamber reserved for a single figure, someone so important that most of the village didn't even realize the position existed.
The Commander of the entire Anbu.
Most shinobi had never even heard of such a title. Only Anbu operatives were aware of it, and even then, they were forbidden from ever speaking about the existence of the role.
As for the Commander's true identity, that was even more tightly guarded. Only a handful of his closest subordinates knew who he really was.
Even Okabe, a seasoned Anbu operative who had served for years, had never met him face-to-face. Until now.
Led by an Anbu captain he normally reported to, Okabe's heart raced, not with fear, but with excitement.
This meeting meant one thing: he had finally proven himself valuable and trustworthy enough to be brought before the man himself.
They walked through twisting, hidden corridors that snaked under and around the Hokage Building like a buried web, eventually arriving at a solemn chamber.
Despite the daylight outside, the room was shrouded in darkness, illuminated only by dim lanterns. The atmosphere was heavy, almost suffocating.
The captain knelt first and announced their arrival with utmost respect.
Okabe immediately dropped to his knees as well, lowering his head deeply, not daring to look up at the figure seated in the shadows ahead. Even masked, the presence in front of him was overwhelming.
Only then did Okabe notice them, several other silent figures, each wearing the standard porcelain masks of the Anbu, watching from the corners of the room like living statues.