Chapter 78: The Kazekage Arrives
The night was clear. The moon was full and cold.
Orochimaru stood on a rooftop at the edge of the village and watched Konoha's Hokage Monument from a distance, a cup of sake raised toward the light. He drank it. He didn't particularly enjoy alcohol — it dulled his processing, introduced imprecision into his thinking — but tonight something had moved in him, and he'd followed it here.
"Didn't expect to find someone like you drinking alone."
A shadow materialized at the roof's edge. Danzō's voice, carrying its particular weight of unspoken things.
"Elder Danzō." Orochimaru's smile was slight and unmoved. "Coming to bring a traitor in for questioning?"
Danzō didn't answer that. He crossed the roof and sat down beside him, noted the extra cup that had somehow been set out, and poured himself a measure. He drank it slowly.
"Skip the pleasantries," he said finally. "What's your next move?"
A pause.
"Jiraiya and Tsunade are both back in the village. Your plans from the exam are dead. Hiruzen's new student is harder to kill than anticipated." The single visible eye turned toward Orochimaru. "Even you couldn't put her down."
Orochimaru said nothing.
"Tonight, Tsunade, Jiraiya, and Haruno Sakura are all at Hiruzen's house. Kakashi too. Even your old student." Danzō let that sit. "And here you are. Drinking alone in the cold."
The edge in his voice had something almost like amusement in it.
"Any regrets? About everything you threw away?"
Orochimaru looked at the Hokage Monument. The carved faces, still in the moonlight.
"Who can say."
He raised his cup again.
"Though, my dear Danzō — you're Hiruzen's peer and his former teammate, and yet here you are. Drinking alone in the cold. Right beside me."
Danzō's eye narrowed.
A long silence.
"...Hmph."
He looked at his cup. Looked at the empty space between them on the roof.
"Not even a cucumber," he said, with profound distaste. "Just drinking straight like this. I don't know how you manage."
He turned to the empty air beside him.
"Ryūma. Go find something to eat."
A pause. Then, muffled:
"...Yes, sir."
Sarutobi Residence
"Cheers!"
Cups came together in the warm light, a clean ringing sound. Sakura, Sasuke, Naruto, and Konohamaru were holding orange juice. Everyone else had sake.
Hiruzen sat at the head of the table and drank and looked at the people filling his house and felt something settle in his chest that he didn't name.
How many more times will I see this?
"Nobody stand on ceremony tonight," he said. "No Hokage, no Sannin. Eat, drink, be here."
He needn't have bothered. Nobody in the room had been planning to stand on ceremony. Tsunade and Jiraiya never had. Asuma was his son. Anko's default mode was unceremonious. Kakashi was a permanent abstainer from effort on principle.
Naruto and Sakura went without saying. Sasuke was formal in ordinary life but not at a dinner table.
Only Shizune sat with the composed attentiveness she brought everywhere, quietly keeping Tsunade's cup full.
Konohamaru had been trying to steal someone's sake for the last ten minutes. He thought he was being subtle.
Jiraiya poured himself another cup. His face had gone pleasantly pink. His gaze drifted toward Anko, who was arm-wrestling Konohamaru for the last chicken leg with the focus of a professional, and something wistful crossed his expression.
"Such a shame..."
"You picked your road." Tsunade, across from him, didn't look up from her plate. "Whatever it cost you, you walk it to the end."
A few decades of history passed between them in the silence after that. Jiraiya's smile didn't disappear, exactly. It just went somewhere more complicated.
Danzō and Orochimaru — one chose the village over everything, one left. Jiraiya had chosen the road between, and sometimes it felt like neither.
Kakashi, beside Asuma, looked at the two of them and decided not to be present for this part of the conversation.
"Thinking about something?"
Asuma touched his cup to Kakashi's.
"Just thinking that there'll probably be more people at the next one." Kakashi turned, slipped his mask down in one practiced motion — years of muscle memory — knocked his sake back, and had the mask back up before anyone could say anything. "These three are going to grow up and start collecting their own students eventually."
Asuma laughed. "No question. Few years from now it'll be a full house."
Across the table, the full house was already generating noise.
"That prawn is mine, bastard—"
"I had my chopsticks on it first. Dead last."
Naruto and Sasuke's utensils were locked in direct combat over the last piece of fried shrimp, neither willing to yield, both completely committed.
Sakura looked at them.
Chewed. Swallowed.
He really has gotten good at this, she thought, not for the first time tonight. If Naruto opened a restaurant in Konoha, Ichiraku would have competition.
Something tapped her peripheral awareness.
She looked left.
Konohamaru had his hand inching toward the sake flask with the air of a child who believed himself invisible.
Sakura's hand came down — light, precise — on the top of his head.
"How old are you."
"...Sorry, Sakura-nee-chan."
He retreated with the look of someone who had known this was going to happen and had tried anyway.
The others could probably get away with it. The pink-haired one was an actual medical-nin and would absolutely notice the exact moment sake hit his bloodstream, and she had opinions about it.
The next morning
Clear skies. Good weather.
Kotetsu and Izumo were running the morning gate shift when the visitor arrived — a brown-haired man in a white robe, bearing the particular bearing of someone accustomed to being the most important person in any room he entered.
"Good morning," Kotetsu said. "Can I see your travel permit?"
His eyes moved, professionally, to the group behind the man. Sand headbands. Three of them, standing with the particular alignment of personal guards.
The man made a small gesture. One of his escorts produced the documentation and handed it across.
Kotetsu read it.
His eyes went slightly wider.
Fourth Kazekage — Rasa.
Plus three Kazekage honor guard.
He glanced at Izumo. Izumo had read it too.
"Please — come in. I'll notify the Hokage immediately."
Kotetsu was already moving at speed toward the center of the village before the gate had finished swinging open.
(End of Chapter 78)