Iruka's words landed in the calm classroom like a depth charge.
The room exploded.
Field survival drill.
For academy kids with chakra and nowhere to use it, that phrase beat a vacation hands down.
Iruka barked again and again, and all he managed was to dial the full boil down to a cheerful simmer.
At last, he gave up. The first period was the usual Will of Fire speech no one listened to anyway. He started lecturing to himself and let the whispers ride.
"Konome, team up with me."
The drill would run in three-man cells. Naruto got his invitation out first.
"Okay."
Konome accepted at once.
If she was right, the Uchiha massacre would hit in the next few days. This sudden drill was not exactly pure of motive.
Training Ground Zero was Konoha's largest and safest range. A wire fence separated it from the other grounds. It was just normal woodland with few poisonous bugs or large beasts, usually used to test and develop jutsu.
Its location was canny.
The Uchiha compound lay in the southwest of the village. Training Ground Zero was in the north, near the Land of Fire's Diet Hall and the outer watch line. It sat outside the blast radius and inside Konoha's protection. If the Uchiha lunged for the Hokage Building, the Academy, dead center in the village, might be less safe than Ground Zero.
Three days of field work.
By the end, no matter who won, the students would be untouched.
Why not just cancel classes and send everyone home.
Because not every student was a clan kid like the Nara or Akimichi. There were plenty of civilians in the mix. Cut them loose without context and half of them would be running around the village getting into danger.
Worse for security.
Most important, herding the students into one place made them easier to guard and freed up shinobi to focus on the Uchiha problem.
Two birds with one stone.
Given that the staff could not share the truth, Konoha's solution was simple and effective. Konome could not think of anything cleaner.
"We still need a third," Naruto said, pumping a fist and then craning left and right with theatrical innocence.
He had zero desire to add anyone. A two-person squad with Konome was perfect. In his head, "field survival drill" had already become "three days, party of two."
Konome let him play it out.
Teammates made no difference to her. She would be fine alone. With her combat power, the Forest of Death's Forty-Four was a stroll. Ground Zero did not even count as dangerous.
It would be a picnic.
Her real concern was that things were already drifting from the story she knew. If memory served, on the night of the massacre Sasuke stayed late, and on his way home found his clan gone. There had been no field drill.
Was this her butterfly effect nudging events.
She turned it over and still could not see how she had touched the massacre itself.
But that prickle of being watched was no illusion.
Facing a plotline that might be shifting, her inner alarms blared.
She did not even want to send training clones out. Splitting chakra meant a temporary dip in fighting strength, and she needed to stay at peak.
Starting tomorrow, no more clone practice.
Wait until it was over or until Guy came back. The Six Paths level bodyguard she paid a billion ryō for was out of the village, and it made her uneasy.
That the Third let Might Guy leave now was telling in itself.
Maybe in Sarutobi Hiruzen's eyes the Uchiha uprising posed no real threat. Maybe they already had a solution in hand.
Uchiha Itachi.
Tch.
Annoying.
She could not go near the Uchiha compound and had to infer everything from scraps of canon. Her sixth sense would not stop ringing. It was fraying her temper.
Before she knew it, the day had burned away on stray thoughts.
The sun leaned west.
Gold bled into a harsh orange at the rim of the sky.
Bags packed, the class buzzed for the final bell and a full-tilt sprint out the gates.
Iruka, model salaryman, sat behind his desk checking the clock. He too was waiting to punch out.
Thup thup thup.
Footfalls pounded down the hall.
Bang.
The door slammed open.
Konome turned toward the sound.
A lean man with sharp features and unmistakable green eyes stood in the frame, urgent to his bones.
Kazama Etsu.
Out of the hospital already.
A flicker crossed her blindfolded gaze. The bones in his chest had knitted for the most part. Cracks remained, but they no longer hampered movement. Shinobi bodies really were something.
"Notice. Dismissal delayed two hours. Self-study."
He rattled it off and left without waiting for a reaction, pace clipped.
A moment later the same shout came from the next room.
The elite class traded looks. Nothing made sense about today.
Only Konome's face went still.
Her fingers brushed her brow.
A wash of alien fatigue and images rose through her mind.
The clones training outside the school had dispelled.
They had sensed the village's shift, cut practice early, and after slipping back inside the walls and peeking with Byakugan, they had found movement.
A barrier had gone up around the Uchiha compound.
She could not see within.
Masked men filtered in and out through the veil. Whether Anbu or Root was impossible to tell.
The meaning was plain.
The Uchiha massacre had begun ahead of the bell.
No.
She looked at the color of the sky, then at Sasuke, who was still a little excited about the coming drill.
It had always been tonight. The plot had not changed. The massacre was early only relative to Konoha's drill plan, which meant the field exercise would be meaningless in practice.
A regular school outing.
"In that case, let us use the time to assign squads for the drill," Iruka said, stuffing down his own desire to clock out.
The class cheered the idea and dove into debate.
"Sasuke, team with me."
"No, me."
Sakura and Ino made their bids and nearly came to blows. Iruka had to step in.
Sasuke's practiced cool cracked into a faint smile. He clearly did not hate the attention.
Konome only watched.
Sometimes
you could not help but admit it.
Fate was cruel.
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