The Hokage's office was quiet, which mostly meant everyone had gone home to worry somewhere else.
Hiruzen Sarutobi sat alone behind his desk, staring at the latest stack of reports without really reading them. Outside the tall windows, Konoha was a dark bowl of rooftops, lanterns flickering like fireflies. Somewhere far below, he could hear the distant echo of teenagers shouting and laughing as they left the Academy building.
Chūnin Exams. Kids with headbands and big eyes, signing consent forms that boiled down to: if you die, try not to make it the village's fault.
His gaze drifted to the corner of the desk where a fresh set of Forest of Death waivers sat, all neat lines and legalese. Anko's scrawled signature sprawled across the bottom of the proctor authorization page like a threat.
Training Field 44: lethal fauna, hostile flora, internal security barrier active.
He took a slow breath through his pipe, let it out through his nose. The smoke curled up toward the carved faces on the far wall.
Sound. Sand. Orochimaru.
The kanji blurred for a moment. He saw instead a white-eyed prodigy falling, a boy with yellow hair turning his back on the village, three teenagers drenched in blood on a border that had moved three times in one war.
He rubbed at the bridge of his nose.
A soft scrape broke the quiet as someone slid the office door open without knocking.
Hiruzen didn't look up immediately. Only one man in the village still walked into the Hokage's office like it was his own.
"Working late, Hiruzen," Danzō Shimura said. "Again."
"Someone has to read these," Hiruzen replied. His voice came out rougher than he intended. "Or we'll be assigning genin to border patrol and ANBU to cat retrieval."
Danzō's dry chuckle was as humorless as always. He limped into the room, cane tapping lightly on the wooden floor. Bandages swaddled his right arm and half his face, as if he'd wrapped himself in all the secrets he wouldn't let go of.
He stopped in front of the desk. The shadows from the lamp caught the lines around his one visible eye, carved deeper since the last war, never softened.
"I hear the first phase of the Exams has concluded," Danzō said. "Minimal… casualties."
Hiruzen's jaw tightened. "None," he said. "This time."
"Ah." Danzō's mouth twitched in something that might have been displeasure. "You sound disappointed."
"I sound tired," Hiruzen said. "Children shouldn't die for promotion tests."
Danzō's eye flicked to the Forest of Death paperwork, then back. "No," he agreed. "They should die for their village."
Hiruzen didn't rise to it. Arguing definitions of patriotism with Danzō was like arguing with a stone. It only left you bruised.
"You didn't come here to lecture me on exam design," Hiruzen said. "What is it?"
Danzō inclined his head, accepting the correction.
"I came," he said, "to reassure you. We have increased security."
That made Hiruzen look up.
Danzō took that as his cue and stepped closer, resting both hands on the top of his cane.
"After the… regrettable defection of Orochimaru," Danzō began, as if they were discussing a misplaced file, "and with the presence of Otogakure teams in the Exams, it seemed prudent to assume the worst."
"I have already assumed the worst," Hiruzen said. "Twice."
"And yet," Danzō went on smoothly, "you still allowed them to enter. Sand and Sound, side by side. A new minor village headed by your former student. A foreign Kazekage with unstable health, an ambitious council. Many… variables."
He let the word hang.
Hiruzen tamped down the coal in his pipe with his thumb.
"Get to the point."
"Of course." Danzō's eye narrowed, a hawk choosing which small animal to dissect first. "ANBU rotations have been doubled around the perimeter. There are now four-man squads at each gate instead of two, with Root support reinforcing from the shadows when needed."
"Root is disbanded," Hiruzen said automatically.
Danzō ignored that like smoke. "Ongoing surveillance around the Exams themselves has been increased. The Barrier Corps has been instructed to keep the four-corner barrier at full sensitivity—any foreign chakra signature will be flagged immediately. We have also repositioned several sensor-nin… more flexibly."
Hiruzen heard the words, but underneath them he heard the old song: I have moved pieces you did not see. The board is already different, Hiruzen.
He stared at the stack of mission slips for out-of-village genin teams. Kumo. Iwa. Suna. New Sound.
"And?" he asked quietly. "You didn't come here just to tell me you have ANBU doing their jobs."
"No," Danzō said. "For something like this, we need… deniability."
There it was.
Hiruzen's stomach sank.
"Deniability from what?"
"From the perception of weakness," Danzō said. "The other Kage are watching. So are less… civilized parties. If word spreads that Konoha's security can be breached during its own Exam, our position in the balance of power degrades. Our enemies need to see a strong stance. Our allies need to believe we control our own streets."
"And if we don't?" Hiruzen asked. "If someone is already inside?"
"Then we catch them," Danzō said simply. "Before they can do more than sniff at the walls."
He shifted his weight, as if the next part were a formality.
"To that end," he said, "I've taken the liberty of hiring several external operatives. Independent specialists from minor countries. No village affiliation, no public history with Konoha."
Hiruzen's eyes hardened. "Mercenaries."
"Assets," Danzō corrected. "They know the terrain between nations, they know how to move without flags on their backs, and they have no interest in the politics of the Five Great Villages. All they care about is the contract and their own survival. Useful traits."
Hiruzen saw again, in the mind's eye that never turned off, a boy on a training field, laughing as he promised to protect his friends. Another boy, older, turning away with cold eyes and a curse mark blooming on his neck. A third, their sensei, caught between them.
"You brought outsiders into my village," Hiruzen said, very softly, "during an international exam full of children, without informing the Hokage first."
Danzō's fingers tightened on his cane. Just a fraction.
"I brought an extra layer of teeth around the village," he said. "In case the ones you already have prove too blunt. These operatives understand the value of keeping their presence discreet. To the other Kage, they will look like traders, wanderers, the usual detritus that gathers when so many people converge in one place."
"And when they inevitably report everything they see to whoever pays them more?" Hiruzen asked. "What then?"
"They won't," Danzō said. "They've been made to understand that betraying Konoha's interests would be… terminal."
There was a particular calm in his voice when he said that word. Hiruzen had heard it before, over maps and casualty lists.
He set his pipe down with deliberate care.
"And who," he asked, "selected these 'assets'?"
"My people vetted them thoroughly," Danzō said. "We've worked with their ilk before, on… delicate matters bordering Rain. They have no love for the great nations. No loyalties but the ones written in their contracts."
Hiruzen thought of Ame's endless downpour. Of whispers about a small, ruthless organization that picked off missing-nin and war orphans and turned them into ghosts in black cloaks. Stories even ANBU told each other around late-night campfires when missions went quiet.
"You are inviting wolves to guard the sheep," he said.
Danzō's eye gleamed.
"Wolves keep out other wolves," he said. "Dogs… only bark."
For a moment, the old anger flared hot in Hiruzen's chest. Not the tempered frustration of paperwork and policy, but the sharp, ugly spark from decades ago, when he'd first realized how far Danzō would go and how many graves it would take to stop him.
"You always did confuse fear with respect," Hiruzen said.
"And you," Danzō replied, "always confuse compassion with weakness."
The silence between them stretched, old and tired and sharp-edged.
Finally, Hiruzen leaned back, lacing his fingers over his stomach.
"Fine," he said. "The operatives stay—for now. But if they touch a single civilian, or interfere with the Exams without explicit orders, I will have them removed. Personally."
Danzō inclined his head, as if they were discussing the weather.
"Of course," he said. "They know the parameters. Their role is simple: observe. Report. Intercept only if an external threat breaches our lines."
He turned, cane tapping toward the door. At the threshold, he paused.
"You worry about Sand and Sound," Danzō said. "About Orochimaru slithering back through some crack. Let me worry about the shadows behind them. Between us, the village will remain… secure."
Hiruzen watched him go, the lamplight swallowing him inch by inch until the door slid shut with a soft click.
Secure.
He picked his pipe back up, but didn't light it.
From somewhere deeper in the building came a knock at the inner door.
"Enter," Hiruzen called.
A barrier-nin stepped in, vest slightly askew, dark circles under his eyes. He bowed quickly.
"Hokage-sama. Apologies for the late report."
"Go on," Hiruzen said.
"The perimeter seals registered several brief flares along the western wall," the man said. "High-level chakra signatures, in and out too fast for our trackers to get a lock. No physical breach detected. We believe they were… probes. Testing our alertness."
"Foreign?" Hiruzen asked.
The barrier-nin hesitated.
"Hard to say," he admitted. "Not the usual feel of our own ANBU. Whoever it was, they knew how to skim the edge of the barrier without triggering a full alarm. We've already increased sensitivity and notified the ANBU captains. Root has assured us some of their… friends are also watching that sector, so—"
Hiruzen held up a hand. The man stopped.
"Thank you," Hiruzen said. "Get some rest. Rotate your team. I want the barrier manned at all times during the Exams. No lapses."
"Yes, Hokage-sama."
The man left, door sliding shut behind him.
Hiruzen sat there for a long moment, staring at the wood.
Friends.
Akatsuki. Mercenaries. Orochimaru. Suna's silence. A new pink-haired genin who signed a death waiver this afternoon and walked toward a forest that wanted to eat her.
He could feel the village's chakra even here: a low, constant hum, full of bright, foolish sparks and the slow, steady burn of older lives. Under it, something else now—faint, unfamiliar notes weaving just outside the usual chords.
More ANBU on the walls. A sharper barrier. "Independent assets."
Security.
He thought of a saying his own sensei had once used, back when they were all younger and the war had different names.
A cage keeps danger out, Tobirama had said. It also keeps whatever's inside from seeing what's coming over the horizon.
Hiruzen closed his eyes.
"I will keep them safe," he murmured, barely audible in the empty room. "Even from the help you think I need."
Outside, unseen in the dark streets and on the rooftops and beyond the walls, new eyes were already mapping Konoha's arteries. Counting guards. Marking habits. Testing the seams of its defenses.
The Forest of Death would open in the morning.
The village was "more secure" than ever.
And for the first time in a long while, Hiruzen Sarutobi felt like the walls he'd spent his life building were being held up by other people's hands.