The first thing Sasori said when he walked in was not a greeting.
"Where's Hanzo?"
There was a brightness to the question, almost eager. Finn blinked at him, momentarily thrown.
"He's dead," he said.
"I know you killed him." Sasori's tone sharpened with impatience. "I'm asking about the body. Where is it?"
Finn went still.
The body.
It hit him all at once — Sasori's specialty, the thing the man lived for. Hanzo of the Salamander. A demigod of the old era, a living legend with a creature of pure destruction sealed inside his body. Of course Sasori wanted him.
"That's right," Sasori continued, reading the delay on Finn's face. He stepped forward, his voice picking up speed. "My human puppet technique. You know what I can do. Hanzo is a demigod — even at a fraction of what he was, a puppet made from him would push my combat ceiling significantly higher."
Then he noticed the look on Finn's face.
The brightness in Sasori's eyes flickered. His chin dipped. "What happened to the body?"
"Ahem." Finn cleared his throat. "Well. Before all this, Hanzo had a very particular kind of enemy..."
"And?"
"...and the body is in a bit of a state."
A pause.
"How much of a state," Sasori said carefully, "are we talking?"
Finn scratched the back of his head. "Fairly broken."
"Define 'fairly broken.'"
Another pause. Finn weighed his phrasing.
"Pieces," he said finally. "Most of it is in pieces."
A long beat of silence followed. Then Sasori exhaled through his nose, and something in his posture settled.
"That's workable," he said. "Reassembled puppets are still puppets."
Finn let out a slow breath of his own. He had almost forgotten how Sasori's mind worked. The man found beauty in things most people buried and tried not to think about.
"Good," Finn said. He glanced at the Rain Ninja standing at attention near the door. "What was the name again?"
"Namnora, my lord."
"Right. Namnora — take Sasori to assess what's left of Hanzo's remains. See what's salvageable."
"Yes, Lord Finn."
Sasori was already moving before the escort finished speaking. His attention had fully relocated. Whatever else was happening in the room no longer existed for him.
After the door closed, the room settled into quiet.
Three people remained: Finn, Orochimaru, and Nohara Rin, who had spent the last several minutes drifting from corner to corner, examining things with the unguarded curiosity of someone who had never quite learned to pretend disinterest.
Finn turned to Orochimaru. "Everything arranged?"
"Mostly." Orochimaru laced his fingers together, the smile already sitting comfortably on his face — the one that meant he was pleased with his own efficiency. "It took some effort, but I brought everything I needed. The subordinates I had scattered across various locations are already moving. They'll converge on the Rain Country within the week."
"Good." Finn nodded, thinking through the organizational shape of what came next. "The Yorozuya proper stays as it is — elite, no unnecessary expansion for now. But Akatsuki, the Hidden Rain Village's existing structure, and your and Sasori's respective networks can function as peripheral management. They handle the Rain Country's day-to-day operations according to our direction. That structure keeps things running without pulling core personnel into administrative work."
Orochimaru accepted this without argument. "Understood. My first priority once I'm settled will be establishing a proper research facility. The scale I'm working toward requires infrastructure." He tilted his head slightly. "And since Danzo won't be funding me anymore..."
"The Rain Country pays for it." Finn waved off the implication. "Don't make it sound like a burden. Hanzo hoarded enough wealth over the decades to keep you occupied for years. We have the funds."
It was true. The Land of Rain was a small country by any measure, but small wasn't the same as poor. A demigod-level shinobi running an iron-fisted regime for decades had a way of accumulating resources. Whatever Hanzo had hoarded was now Finn's to allocate.
Orochimaru moved on without ceremony. "The Rinnegan. What happened with the woman? Did you kill her as well?" He paused, a distant look crossing his face — the look of a man pulling at a thread of memory. "On the way here, I found myself thinking about those three. Nagato, Yahiko, the girl. Something about them seemed familiar. If I'm placing them correctly, they may have been among Jiraiya's students during the war — the ones he trained in the Land of Rain. I had the impression they all died. I may be misremembering."
Finn was quiet for a moment.
"You're not misremembering," he said. "Those three will, in fact, become Jiraiya's students."
Orochimaru raised an eyebrow. "Interesting." He turned it over briefly, then filed it away. It was a curiosity, nothing more. Jiraiya's students were Jiraiya's business.
"As for the woman," Finn continued, "her name is Konan. She's alive. She left the Rain Country — she's probably set aside the shinobi life entirely at this point. I doubt our paths will cross again."
Orochimaru gave a small nod. "Fine. The Rinnegan, then?"
Finn drew back his sleeve. A scroll dropped into his palm from the hidden brace at his wrist. He held it out.
"It's sealed in here. Study it however you like, but the restrictions stand: observation and analysis only. Don't attempt to activate it. Don't try to transplant it. And absolutely do not cut into it."
Orochimaru took the scroll with both hands. His eyes didn't light up the way Sasori's had — his was a quieter intensity, the kind that settled in behind the eyes and started working immediately.
"I understand the stakes," he said simply.
Finn turned to Rin.
She had stopped drifting. She stood near the wall with her hands folded, watching him with that particular attentiveness she had — the kind that meant she was already two steps ahead of whatever he was about to say.
"Rin," Finn said. "From here on, you keep your identity buried."
She blinked. Then nodded, slowly. "Why?"
"The people who built the Moon Eye Project valued two things above everything else: the Rinnegan, and the Gedo Mazo. The Rinnegan is in that scroll now. The Gedo Mazo is sealed inside my storage space. Once they figure out what happened here — and they will figure it out, probably through Black and White Zetsu — they'll come looking for me."
He paused, letting that sit.
"I'm also planning to master the Rain Tiger at Will technique. If it works the way I think it does, I'll be able to extend my sensory range across the entire Hidden Rain Village. That means neither Zetsu can approach without me knowing. The problem is range — if they stay far enough out, even that won't cover them. Having both tools running at once gives me overlapping coverage."
Far enough that they wouldn't dare get close. Close enough that the technique catches them anyway. Clean.
Rin's expression had gone serious the moment he mentioned Obito's name. "What do you need me to do?"
"Can your face-change technique work on other people?" Finn asked, glancing at Orochimaru.
"Obviously," Orochimaru said, without looking up from the scroll.
"Then take Rin downstairs and alter her appearance." Finn touched his chin, thinking through the details. "From now on, she's Shirabayashi Mai."
Rin repeated the name slowly, like she was tasting it. "Shirabayashi Mai."
"You're an exiled noble from the Land of Rain. Illegitimate daughter of the Shirabayashi family. You've been wandering with your elder sister — that would be Shirabayashi Yui — and the two of you eventually found your way into the Yorozuya." He said it with the cadence of someone narrating a story they had already decided was final.
There was a reason he wasn't bothering to make the cover identity airtight. Black and White Zetsu almost certainly knew Rin had survived. Constructing an elaborate fiction that denied it outright would only close off exits — for both sides. Better to create a name, a face, and a plausible story. Something that let everyone involved pretend not to know what they knew.
If Obito ever crossed paths with her, this gave him a way out of the moment. And it gave Finn a way to steer clear of a collision he had no interest in engineering.
"Who is Shirabayashi Yui?" Rin asked.
Finn's expression shifted — something between consideration and mild amusement. "A woman I know. Something of a... personal attendant. A companion, you might say." He tucked the thought away. "I'll introduce you properly later."
Rin nodded. Still confused, but compliant in the way she always was — not blind trust, exactly, but a considered decision to defer.
"One more thing," Finn said. "If you ever run into Uchiha Obito — and I mean in any context, any situation — do not react. Keep it controlled."
"I understand."
He studied her face for a moment. She meant it. He was still not entirely convinced she could manage it in practice.
But it shouldn't come to a crisis. He worked through the logic again. When Obito operated in the world, he went by Uchiha Madara. He never dropped the mask — not for Kakashi, not for anyone who had known him before. The White Zetsu cells had restructured his body; his voice was different, his build was different. The mask covered everything else. Kakashi had stood across from him multiple times without recognizing him. Rin not instantly seeing through the disguise was more than plausible.
As long as Finn kept his own mouth shut, it would hold.
He moved on.
"What's Danzo's status? And what happened after Nagato and Yahiko's bodies turned up in the Hidden Rain Village?"
Orochimaru looked up from the scroll briefly, one corner of his mouth curving. "It seems he didn't want Hanzo's mess attached to his name."
The body situation had caused no lasting ripples, as it turned out. Finn let it go.
"Tell me what he agreed to."
Orochimaru set the scroll down and ran through the details — the supplies, the arrangements, the concessions Danzo had made item by item. Finn listened, nodding at intervals.
"Good," he said when Orochimaru finished. "Now we focus on stabilizing things here."
"'Stabilizing,'" Orochimaru repeated, with a tone that suggested he found the word slightly underwhelming. His smile took on a sharper edge. "Are you planning to develop the Rain Country? Turn it into something larger?"
"No interest." Finn didn't hesitate.
He had not taken the Rain Country to become its steward. The Rain Country existed to serve the Yorozuya — not as a nation to be grown, not as an ambition to be cultivated. He needed a base. He needed stability. He needed the geographic advantages the country provided. That was the full extent of it.
"What I mean," he said, "is that having a permanent, stable base changes what we can do. It gives your research a real home. It gives us a fixed infrastructure to recruit from, when the time comes to recruit. And it puts the Yorozuya in a position to operate without constantly improvising our logistics." He paused. "That's the track I'm talking about."
"Fair enough," Orochimaru said.
"Which brings me to the next problem." Finn crossed his arms. "I don't have anyone to actually run this place."
It was not a small problem. He couldn't manage the Rain Country personally — his time and attention were spoken for elsewhere. Someone needed to be here, translating his directives into daily governance, keeping the country functional according to Yorozuya priorities.
He turned the roster over in his head.
Orochimaru had the capability, in the abstract — he had built the Hidden Sound Village from nothing, years from now. But his mind was already three levels deep into the scroll Finn had just handed him, and suggesting he put the research aside for administrative work would accomplish nothing.
Kakuzu could manage money. Actual governance was a different skill set entirely.
Biwa Juzo was a blunt instrument. Useful in specific contexts. This was not one of them.
Sasori had the organizational intelligence, technically — but no interest in applying it to anything that wasn't his workshop.
"I'm short on administrative talent," Finn said flatly. "You know anyone?"
Orochimaru thought for a moment, fingers resting lightly on the sealed scroll.
"No one comes to mind immediately," he said. "Let me think on it. I'll have an answer for you."
"Fine." Finn nodded. "Take your time."