[Konohagakure — Multiple Locations, November 3rd]
Three days after the Most Heartbreaking Decision ranking, Konoha did what it always did after something heavy: it kept going.
The academy reopened from its unplanned hiatus. The mission desk processed seventeen D-ranks and one B-rank before lunch. The chestnut vendor sold out before noon for the first time in the scroll's entire run and stood behind his empty cart with the expression of a man who had finally achieved something.
Life was, in the specific Konoha way, continuing.
In the Sealing Card chamber, it was not continuing. It was concluding.
[Sealing Card Chamber, 9:07 AM]
Kabuto set down his brush. He rolled the final scroll closed. He looked at it for a moment — the full counter-protocol, complete, annotated, tested in theoretical conditions and one controlled field application, written in a hand that was precise to the point of being impersonal and warm in exactly zero places except the double-trigger mechanism, which was warm whether Kabuto intended it to be or not.
He slid it across the table toward the Sealing Card.
The Card pulsed.
Tobirama: This is complete.
Kabuto: Yes.
Tobirama: The integration layer resolved correctly. The field test confirmed it.
Kabuto: Yes.
Tobirama: The counter-protocol will require Kage-level authorization to implement at scale. I will present it to Hiruzen-sama and recommend adoption.
Kabuto: I understand.
Tobirama: ...
Tobirama: I want to say something and I want it clearly understood that this does not constitute forgiveness, absolution, or a reduction in the severity of the charges you will be facing in the formal review process.
Kabuto: Understood.
Tobirama: What you built here could not have been built by anyone else currently alive. The double-trigger mechanism specifically. In thirty years of working on this problem, I did not find that solution.
Kabuto looked at the Card.
Tobirama: That is significant. It should be recorded accurately. Whatever else is true, that is true.
Shikaku, in the corner, stopped writing. He looked at what he had written. He looked at it for a long moment.
The note said: T-sama: "What you built here could not have been built by anyone else currently alive."
He underlined it once. Then again. Then he put the pen down and went to find Hiruzen.
[Hokage's Office, 10:34 AM]
Jiraiya was already there.
He had been there since ten. He was sitting across from Hiruzen with his scroll on the desk between them and his hands folded and the expression of a man who had organized what he wanted to say so carefully that it had taken him six days to get here.
"Orochimaru," he said.
"Yes," Hiruzen said.
"I want to go to him. Directly. Not a hunt — a conversation." He met the old man's eyes. "Kabuto told me something in the debrief. About the night Orochimaru told him the Edo Tensei was the one thing he would take back. Kabuto said it was the only time he ever saw something in Orochimaru that looked like — not regret. Something before regret. The thing that happens right before the door opens."
Hiruzen was quiet.
"I've been chasing him for twenty years," Jiraiya said. "Chasing doesn't work. He runs better than I chase. But he never runs from a conversation. He stops for conversations. He always did." He paused. "I want to knock on the door."
Hiruzen looked at him. The man who had trained Jiraiya. The man who had known Orochimaru since the boy was eight years old. The man who had, somewhere along the way, stopped being surprised by what the people he loved were capable of — in every direction.
"If you go," Hiruzen said slowly, "you go alone. No team. No backup positioned close enough to intervene in a negotiation. If it goes wrong, it goes wrong on your terms."
"I know."
"And you will tell me what he says. Everything. Complete and accurate, like the Kabuto report."
"I know that too."
Hiruzen picked up his pipe. Lit it. Exhaled.
"Give it two weeks," he said. "Let the scroll finish its arc. Let the village settle. Then go."
Jiraiya nodded. "Two weeks."
"And Jiraiya."
"Hokage-sama."
"Don't get killed."
"I wasn't planning on it."
"You never plan on it. Plan on it this time."
Jiraiya almost smiled. "Yes, sir."
He stood up, tucked the scroll under his arm, and walked out. The door closed behind him with the quiet click of a decision that had been made.
Hiruzen exhaled smoke at the ceiling.
"Two weeks," he said to the empty office. Then he reached for the Sealing Card notifications.
The scroll in the plaza had begun to pulse.
[Hokage Tower Plaza, 12:17 PM]
The noon pulse was new. The scroll had never activated at noon before. The lunch crowd in the plaza froze mid-bite. A genin team dropped their training weapons simultaneously. The chestnut vendor, who had just returned with a fresh supply, looked at the scroll and said several words that were not appropriate for a public forum.
The scroll's voice came through the air with what Tobirama had described as a personality and what Hashirama had described as charm and what Madara had described as an affront.
"Category thirteen. Beginning at sundown. Most Likely to Cause a Scene."
The plaza took one full second.
Then it erupted.
Not the reverent eruption of the heartbreaking ranking. Not the stunned eruption of the villain ranking. The loud, immediate, everyone-talking-at-once eruption of a category that hit differently, and the category that hit differently was the funny one.
Naruto: MOST LIKELY TO CAUSE A SCENE
Naruto: THAT'S ME. THAT IS ME. I AM THAT.
Sakura: Naruto, you don't know that.
Naruto: SAKURA-CHAN. IT'S ME. WE BOTH KNOW IT'S ME.
Sakura: There are other candidates.
Naruto: NAME ONE.
Sakura: ...
Sakura: ...Okay I cannot immediately name one but that doesn't mean —
Sasuke: Lee.
Naruto: Lee is top five EASY but I'm first.
Sasuke: Guy-sensei.
Naruto: Also top five. I'm still first.
Sasuke: Killer Bee.
Naruto: BEE-SAN IS TOP THREE MAXIMUM. I. AM. FIRST.
Madara: The brat is almost certainly correct.
Naruto: MADARA-OJII SAID I'M FIRST
Madara: I said almost certainly. Do not quote me selectively.
Naruto: YOU SAID IT.
Madara: I am regretting it already.
Hashirama: HAHAHA!! This is the one I've been waiting for!!
Tobirama: It is refreshing to have a category where nobody is weeping.
Mei: Tobirama-sama, is that a joke?
Tobirama: It is an observation.
Mei: It sounded like a joke.
Tobirama: I do not make jokes.
Hashirama: He makes jokes! He made one in 1582! I was there!
Tobirama: Anija.
Hashirama: It was about a duck and a river and it was HILARIOUS.
Tobirama: I am ending this conversation.
Tsunade: I want to hear the duck joke.
Tobirama: There is no duck joke.
Tsunade: Hashirama. Tell me the duck joke.
Hashirama: OKAY SO —
Tobirama: ANIJA.
Naruto read the exchange from the plaza bench where he had sat down approximately thirty seconds after the announcement and had been typing without stopping since.
"Sakura-chan," he said.
"What."
"Top five. Final answer. Me, Lee, Guy-sensei, Bee-san, and—" He thought. "The Raikage."
Sakura raised an eyebrow. "Lord A? He seems very controlled."
"He spun for fourteen hours when the villain ranking came out."
A pause.
"...Fair point," Sakura said.
"I know these things," Naruto said. "I'm observant."
Sasuke looked at him. "You once ran into the same sign post three days in a row."
"I was THINKING."
"You said 'ow' every time."
"The thinking was LOUD."
Sakura was smiling. Not the polite smile — the real one, the slightly helpless one that appeared when Naruto and Sasuke were doing the thing and she had run out of energy to moderate it.
Sundown was five hours away. The village, which had spent two weeks in various degrees of emotional excavation, had found something it needed more than it had realized.
The permission to laugh again.
The scroll pulsed once in the afternoon light, gold and warm, and the plaza filled steadily as word spread from street to street, because Most Likely to Cause a Scene was exactly the kind of category that spread from street to street.
The chestnut vendor sold through his second supply before three o'clock.
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