[Konoha — village square beneath the Sealing Card, false dawn, day forty-three of the Ranking Broadcasts]
The sky over Konoha was the color of wet ash, the kind of pre-dawn gray that meant the sun was still half an hour from showing itself but the birds had decided to start anyway. A single thrush in the plum tree outside the Yamanaka flower shop was running through its morning catalog of complaints. The chestnut vendor from yesterday had not gone home; he was asleep on his overturned bucket with his arms crossed, snoring through his nose.
The Sealing Card hung where it always hung, pale gold dimming toward silver as the night wore out. It pulsed, slow, once every four seconds — the pace of a sleeping heart.
In the group chat, the green dots were coming back.
[Group Chat — "Shinobi Ranking Live Reactions"]
KushinaUzu: is it over
MinatoYellowFlash: the hour ended four minutes ago, kushina
KushinaUzu: is HE over
MinatoYellowFlash: ...we don't know yet
HashiramaFirst: madara
HashiramaFirst: madara are you there
HashiramaFirst: madara
HashiramaFirst: madara please
TobiramaSecond: Anija. Give him a moment.
HashiramaFirst: tobirama what if he
TobiramaSecond: Anija. Give him a moment.
HashiramaFirst: ...
HashiramaFirst: ok
A long pause. The kind of pause where the green dot beside MadaraU blinked on, blinked off, blinked on again, the way a man might walk up to a door, raise his hand to knock, and then lower it.
MadaraU: I am here.
HashiramaFirst: MADARA
MadaraU: Hashirama. Calm yourself. You will give yourself an attack.
HashiramaFirst: MADARA ARE YOU OK
MadaraU: ...
MadaraU: I am as I was.
TobiramaSecond: That is not an answer, Uchiha.
MadaraU: It is the answer I have, Senju.
HashiramaFirst: madara
HashiramaFirst: was it good
MadaraU: Hashirama.
HashiramaFirst: the hour
HashiramaFirst: was it good
MadaraU: ...
MadaraU: Yes.
MadaraU: It was good.
HashiramaFirst: 😭😭😭
TobiramaSecond: Anija, you are crying into the chat again, the keyboard is going to short out.
HashiramaFirst: LET ME CRY TOBIRAMA HE SAID IT WAS GOOD
MitoU: hashirama come to bed
HashiramaFirst: mito he said it was GOOD
MitoU: i heard him sweetheart. come to bed.
HashiramaFirst: ...ok
[Konoha — Hokage Tower, war room, dawn breaking pink across the eastern face of the building]
Hiruzen had finally sat down. Not because he was tired — though he was — but because Shikaku had pushed a chair behind his knees and waited with the patience of a man who had handled three Sarutobi generations and knew exactly when to apply mild force.
The Inoichi scroll lay between them on the table. The suppression tags had been refreshed twice. The summary sheet had been rewritten in cleaner hand for the morning briefing. Outside the war room window, a pair of ANBU were changing shifts on the tower roof, their masks catching the new light — fox handing off to bear, no words exchanged, just a nod.
"Three teams," Hiruzen said.
"Three teams," Shikaku agreed.
"Itachi leads one. Kakashi the second. The third —"
"Jiraiya."
"Jiraiya," Hiruzen confirmed. "He has the network. And he has the personal interest."
Shikaku didn't ask what personal interest meant. Everyone in the room knew. Orochimaru was Jiraiya's failure in a way Orochimaru was nobody else's failure, and Jiraiya had spent twenty years arranging his own life around the slow, patient work of being ready when the call finally came.
"He's not going to like the third team's composition," Shikaku said.
"He's not going to like anything about this," Hiruzen said. "He doesn't have to like it. He has to do it."
Shikaku nodded, made a small mark on his sheet, and didn't smile, because Shikaku rarely smiled, but the line of his mouth softened by half a millimeter, which was the Nara equivalent of a grin.
Shikaku thought: the old man's back. Took forty-three days of cosmic accountability for him to find his teeth again but here they are. About time. Yoshino's going to kill me when I get home, I told her two hours ago. Two hours.
[Konoha — small apartment above the dango shop, sunrise]
Kakashi was making tea.
This was unusual. Kakashi did not, as a general rule, make things — Kakashi acquired things, foraged things, microwaved things, ate things over the sink standing up because dishes were a commitment he didn't have the energy for. But this morning, for reasons he was choosing not to examine, Kakashi was kneeling on the wooden floor of his small kitchen in front of a cast-iron pot, watching the water come to a slow rolling simmer, and waiting.
On the table behind him, beside his father's tanto in its silk wrapping, was a second cup. Empty. Set out the night before.
There was a knock on the door. Soft. Two raps.
"It's open."
Obito came in. He had changed out of his Akatsuki robe sometime in the last week — for the chat's sake, Kakashi suspected, because the robe made everyone uncomfortable and Obito had developed, since Chapter 240, a sudden mortifying awareness of when he was making people uncomfortable — and was wearing instead a plain dark blue yukata that he had absolutely stolen from a Konoha laundry line.
"You stole that," Kakashi said, without turning.
"I borrowed it."
"From who."
"...Genma."
"Mm."
"He won't notice."
"He'll notice."
"He won't notice fast."
Kakashi poured the tea. He set the iron pot down. He stood up — slowly, the way men in their forties stood up after kneeling — and brought the two cups to the table.
Obito sat.
They drank.
Neither of them said anything for a long time. The thrush in the plum tree outside kept up its catalog of complaints. The chestnut vendor down in the square began, finally, to stir from his bucket. Somewhere in the Hokage tower, a clerk was unfolding the morning's mission scrolls and beginning the long quiet work of the day.
"Kakashi."
"Mm."
"...thanks."
"Mm."
"For the tea."
"Mm."
Obito took a long careful sip. He set the cup down. He looked at the wall, at the picture frame on Kakashi's wall, the one with four people in it — a silver-haired boy with a mask, a black-haired boy with goggles, a brown-haired girl with violet markings on her cheeks, and a tall blond man with one hand on each boy's shoulder.
Obito did not look at the picture long. He looked at it just long enough.
"Tuesday," he said.
"Tuesday," Kakashi agreed.
They finished the tea.
[Konoha — village square, full sunrise, the Sealing Card brightening to morning gold]
The square was filling again. The chestnut vendor had wiped his face on his sleeve and started his coals. A pair of academy students were arguing in the alley behind him about whether the Card was sentient or just a very elaborate seal. (It was both. Neither of them would ever know.)
The Card pulsed once. Brighter. Twice.
It spoke.
"Tenth Ranking. Category — Shinobi Most Likely to Save the World. Ranking commences at sundown."
The square inhaled.
The chat exploded.
MinatoYellowFlash: oh
KushinaUzu: OH
UzumakiNaruto: WAIT MOM IS THIS ONE FOR ME
KushinaUzu: NARUTO SWEETIE EAT YOUR BREAKFAST FIRST
UzumakiNaruto: MOM IS THIS ONE FOR ME
KushinaUzu: EAT. YOUR. BREAKFAST.
SakuraH: naruto she's right eat something first
SasukeU: dobe.
UzumakiNaruto: TEME
SasukeU: eat.
UzumakiNaruto: ...
UzumakiNaruto: fine
KakashiSilverFang: good morning team seven
SakuraH: sensei where have you BEEN
KakashiSilverFang: drinking tea
SakuraH: with WHO
KakashiSilverFang: ...
KakashiSilverFang: a friend
ObitoUchihaLives: 😎
SakuraH: SENSEI WHO IS THAT
KakashiSilverFang: see you at training ground three sakura
SakuraH: SENSEI
Up on the Hokage Tower rooftop, Hiruzen Sarutobi lit his pipe — the first time in twelve hours — and watched the smoke curl upward in the new sun. Three teams were forming in three different rooms of the building below him. A snake in the grass somewhere far to the south was about to have a very bad month. A boy with whiskers on his cheeks was eating breakfast and arguing with his mother about whether tomatoes counted as a vegetable.
The day, against all reasonable expectation, was beginning.
Outline — Chapter 251 ("Most Likely to Save the World, Part One"): Sundown ranking opens. Eighth through sixth places revealed — Gaara (eighth, Suna reaction shots, Temari crying, Kankuro pretending not to), Killer B (seventh, full rap response in chat that Tobirama tries to mute and fails), Rock Lee (sixth, Guy detonates into the most aggressive flame-of-youth monologue ever recorded, Tenten quietly proud). B-plot interleave: Jiraiya's team mobilizes for the Kabuto/Orochimaru hunt, first contact with a frog-summoned intel scroll from the southern border. Cliffhanger: Card teases that fifth place is "a name no village currently recognizes."
Outline — Chapter 252 ("Most Likely to Save the World, Part Two — Fifth Through Third"): Fifth place is Nagato (reasoning: in another timeline, he was the answer; cue Jiraiya going dead quiet in chat, Konan lurking in read receipts, a long footage sequence of Yahiko/Nagato/Konan as children). Fourth place — Tsunade (reasoning: the medical revolution, the slug summons, the will to come back). Third place — Itachi (reasoning: the village he saved nobody knows he saved). Sasuke reacts. Shisui reacts harder. The chat collectively can't breathe. B-plot: Jiraiya's team intercepts a Sound four-man cell at the border. First blood of the hunt. Cliffhanger: Card announces top two will be revealed simultaneously at dawn — "for narrative reasons" (the Card has started developing a personality and Tobirama is furious about it).
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