Akane found Himari first, and finished it.
The bowl sat full on the dark wood, and she held the long count without a tremor while Akane rippled the dream against her, wind at the window and a cup rattling somewhere beyond the door. Her hands shook once near the end and steadied, and the water never touched the rim.
"Good," Akane said. "The water work is done. Practice it nightly alone so the hands do not forget. Learn the court and write to your aunt. When the time comes to stand over what sleeps under Roran, your hands will already know the shape of holding."
Himari looked at the bowl, then at her own steady hands, as if meeting them for the first time. "And if the time never comes?"
"Then you will still be the steadiest hand in your father's court," Akane said as if it was a matter of fact. "That is no small thing to be."
He let her go back to sleep, and reached deeper for the garden.
Kaguya sat by the pond with her feet in the water, trailing her fingers through it like she did when she was content. The swing moved empty in wind that did not exist. She looked up when he arrived, and her face eased at the sight of him as it always did, as if his coming were proof against a thousand years of practice at waiting.
"You are late," she said, without any sting in it. "The water went cold waiting, and I refused to warm it without you."
Akane smiled and sat down beside the pond, and then he felt it.
Pressure on his sleeping shoulder, twice, dull and physical through the layers of dream. A familiar pattern. Akane held up one finger to Kaguya, turned half an ear outward without leaving, and hovered there, half awake, in the dark of his own bedroom with his family's breathing soft down the hall. A pale whisper reached him at a pitch below hearing, meant for him alone.
"The black one asks to be pulled," the White Zetsu breathed. "It says the sea has answered. It says the count held."
"Tell it to sleep," Akane murmured with a mouth barely his own. "I am coming."
He sank back under. The garden took him back at once, violet and still, and Kaguya was there instantly, waiting with her head tilted, having watched his face go distant and return.
"A guest," Akane said. "Mine to call, yours to receive. The black one has business."
Kaguya settled herself on the pond's edge, hands folded, attention gathered. "Then call it."
Akane thought of Black Zetsu, and the black body rose out of the dream-floor at the garden's edge, where the violet thinned into dark. It saw Kaguya first and went down to one knee so fast the movement had no middle.
"Mother."
"Rise," Kaguya said. "Report, and be quick. He is missed where he sleeps."
Black Zetsu rose, and its thin voice steadied as it saw her.
"The beast sleeps in a trench three miles past the eastern shelf, where the deep channel turns, and the water runs cold even in summer. Whale-fall bones litter the slope above it, white as chalk in the dark. Twelve boats watch it in rotation. They change at dusk and at false dawn."
It paused for a moment and then continued, "The false-dawn change leaves half an hour of blind water over the trench. Every day. Without exception."
Akane nodded slowly. Two counts from two mouths, both twelve, one white and one black. That meant the numbers were almost certainly clean.
"How do we take it?" Akane asked. "Speak freely."
"This is my counsel," Black Zetsu said. "Seal the beast where it sleeps. Bind it small enough to carry, and carry the seal away. No watch can follow what it cannot see, and no hunter can steal back a knot."
Akane let the counsel sit in the garden air a moment, between pond and swing and watching goddess. He stared at Black Zetsu for a moment, as if he knew what it had in mind.
"No," he said. "No sealing, no carrying. When it leaves that trench, it walks out in its own skin to the forest of the slugs, and sleeps there unwatched."
Black Zetsu was about to speak. Inside the black head, protest rose like bile. Wasteful, Dangerous and Sentimental. The boy was supposed to be the vessel, the strong young vessel, and instead the beast would be parked like a guest while Kiri regrouped.
But then Kaguya spoke, her tone monotone, "My words, not his. The beast will stay in the forest of the slugs."
Kaguya looked at it as she spoke, and the protest died unformed. Black Zetsu felt her attention rest on it like a mountain resting on the ground beneath it, total and incurious and able to end him with less than a thought, and every argument in its head arranged itself into a single posture.
It bowed the black head low. "Then I am the hands," it said. "Tell the hands where to dig."
"When you visit Isobu in dreams," Kaguya said, while looking towards Akane, as if Black Zetsu hadn't spoken anything.
"Take Kurama with you. The little one will listen better with kin in the room."
Akane turned that over once and found it good all the way through. "That is a good idea," he said. "The eldest speaks, and the young one believes it is safe to hear."
Kaguya smiled, pleased to have given something useful instead of only warnings. "See that you thank him properly. Old brothers keep accounts."
"Back before he counts again," Akane told Black Zetsu, as he thought of Madara keeping counts instead of sleeping.
"Serve him," Kaguya said, very softly, "as you failed to serve me."
Black Zetsu bowed lower than low. "It will be as if I never left my wall," it said, and sank into the dream-floor without another word, leaving the garden violet and undisturbed, as if nothing black had ever stood in it.
Kaguya watched the dark close over it. Before she could lean in, Akane told her quickly of the vault under the ridge, the Second's hand, the curve Mito had closed that very dusk, so that she would not learn his time secondhand.
She listened with widening eyes, and by the end she was holding his sleeve like a child owed a story. Then she leaned her head against his shoulder for a moment, companionable as anything breathing.
"Three pulls in one night," she murmured. "You will wear yourself thin, little one."
"Thin is how the light gets through," Akane said, and felt her laugh against his arm, quiet as pond water.
The next day passed in stamps and ledgers, with one noon glimpse of white past the pickle awning that was gone before his hand finished moving. The mission desk found nothing for him, for once, and he let the hours do what they wanted.
That evening the kitchen smelled of tea and rain. Mito poured for three. Tsunade sat with her hospital bag still packed, having come straight from her shift at Akane's request.
Akane told them everything the garden had given him: the trench, the twelve and twelve, the blind half hour, the forest confirmed, Kurama's part waiting.
Then he laid the taking on the table. Black Zetsu's hands would plant one relay end at the trench. Mito would hold this end with the finished array. They would move the beast on the first live test of paper that had never carried anything heavier than ink.
Mito heard her own line from the array day come back at her, and smiled a thin smile. "Some poor soul at each end. Very well. I am one of them."
"I will ask my summon," Tsunade said, "whether a beast may sleep in her forest, and what courtesy she requires for the favour. I will call a small one tomorrow at noon and put it properly. Katsuyu answers such questions kindly, but she answers them completely, so do not rush me."
"And Kurama?" Akane asked Mito.
"I will arrange the eldest," Mito said. "Tonight, I will speak with him down the old channel and ask it properly. He likes being asked properly. It reminds him he was somebody's brother before he was somebody's weapon."
Tsunade looked between them. "First live test of untried paper, a sleeping beast, and twelve boats. If the relay tears halfway, what happens to what it carries?"
"Then it falls between," Mito said plainly. "Beast, handlers, and all. That is why your summon must agree first, and why the boy speaks to it gently before anyone lifts anything."
"No gentleness, no lifting. Those are my conditions, and I am the one holding the other end."
Akane sat back and looked at the two of them drinking cooling tea, and thought that three pulls in one night had all led here, to this table.
Outside, far away, the blind half hour would open over the trench in a few hours, the way it did twice every day. It could wait a little longer. They had almost everything they needed, and the rest was already promised.
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