"Hiruzen. My clansmen are here. I can feel their chakra." Mito simply sipped her tea as if announcing the arrival of a grocery delivery.
Hiruzen, who was lost in thought, immediately came back to his senses before thinking about his Anbu.
The Hokage's office was a sanctum; its conversations were not for the ears of lurking Anbu, no matter how loyal.
But summoning them? That was a different matter. With a flicker of chakra so subtle it would be missed by anyone who blinked, he performed the exclusive Hokage Jutsu: Managerial Summoning: Handle It.
A single, ethereal butterfly, woven from pure chakra, winked into existence above his desk. It flapped its delicate wings once, twice, then zipped through the wall on a mission that screamed, "Where are my Anbu? I have a mission for you."
Three Anbu operatives materialized in a whisper of wind and porcelain, kneeling with the synchronized precision of a well-oiled murder machine.
"Hokage-sama!" they chorused, their voices a monotone of absolute readiness.
Hiruzen, who had seen more dramatic entrances than he'd had hot meals, didn't even look up from a fascinating ink stain on his desk. "The Uzumaki envoy has arrived at the main gate. Escort them here."
"Hai, Hokage-sama!" And just like that, they were gone, leaving only the lingering scent of ozone and unspoken judgment.
For a normal person, a trip from the Hokage Tower to the main gate and back was a decent stroll. For a Konoha Anbu, it was a mild inconvenience.
The entire round trip took all of ten minutes, and even that delay was only because the Uzumaki envoys looked like they'd wrestled a tailed beast and lost, their legendary stamina completely spent from their non-stop sprint from Uzushiogakure.
From the Uzumaki perspective, it was bewildering. They had just stumbled, gasping, onto Konoha's doorstep when three porcelain-masked specters appeared as if born from their own shadows.
"The Hokage awaits," was all they said. The clan leader hadn't sent word… had he? Was the Third Hokage so omniscient? The entire walk to the tower was a blur of silent treatment and awestruck civilians—a red-carpet ride of pure, unadulterated anxiety.
Then they entered the office.
The lead envoy, a man named Satsuki whose forties were starting to show in the silver streaks of his fiery hair—and, well, also due to his specialness—felt his jaw unhinge.
His eyes scanned past the Hokage, past the advisors, past the piles of paperwork, and landed on the woman seated calmly beside the desk.
He blinked. He squinted. His brain, a seasoned shinobi's brain, short-circuited.
"A-Aunt Mito?!" he squeaked, his voice cracking with the force of a childhood memory.
His three companions swiveled their heads between the legendary queen they'd heard stories of and the vibrant young woman with a knowing smile and not a single wrinkle of time on her face.
The red hair was a dead giveaway, but the youth… it was an assault on logic.
Mito's smile was a warm, summer sunbeam. "Satsuki. My, look at you. All… distinguished."
Tears, hot and entirely unbidden, sprang to Satsuki's eyes. This was his aunt—the woman who'd taught him to seal away his nightmares as a boy, the younger sister of his mother.
Seeing her, preserved in time like a perfect fossil, broke something inside him.
"Aunt Mito," he managed, voice thick. "The pleasure is all mine. I… I only wish the circumstances were less dire."
Mito's warm expression softened into something more complicated. She looked at this middle-aged man, this leader of a mission, and was thrown back decades.
She saw a gangly boy, only two years her junior, looking up at her with utter seriousness and calling her Aunt for the very first time.
She remembered the feeling. It wasn't anger. It was the universe tapping her on the shoulder, handing her a cup of tea, and saying, "Playtime is over, dear. You're a grown-up now." It was the same year Satsuki's mother, her own sister, had been taken from them.
A harsh, final lesson in the reality of their world.
And now, here that same boy was, a man carved by grief and duty, standing before her once more. Some things, it seemed, never changed. They just got more expensive to fix.
Mito's smile was a masterpiece of polite, motherly weaponry.
"Of course, this old relic would have preferred your company over your children's," she said, her voice sweet as poisoned honey. "But one mustn't be greedy. I understand you're a very busy man."
Satsuki, her nephew and a man who was basically Uzushiogakure's Head Paperwork Ninja, felt a bead of sweat trace a path through the grime on his temple.
He couldn't just pop over for tea; ever since Hiruzen had taken the big chair, Konoha-Uzumaki relations had gone from 'fiery alliance' to 'awkward family reunion where someone stole the recipe for sealing jutsus' (AN: for the good of Konoha).
He offered a grateful, slightly panicked smile before swiveling his attention to the man in the Hokage hat.
Ignoring Mito was a family privilege. Ignoring the Hokage while looking like you'd just lost a fight with a mud-wrestling boar was a diplomatic incident.
"Hokage-sama," Satsuki began, executing a perfect bow that somehow made the dirt on his clothes look more dignified. "My deepest apologies for our… disheveled presentation."
Hiruzen waved a dismissive hand, the picture of a man who'd seen it all. "Nonsense. A little dirt never hurt anyone. We've only just received the preliminary reports about Uzushiogakure's situation, but a firsthand account would be invaluable."
The moment the words 'only just received' left his lips, a bizarre, metaphysical shudder went through him. It felt like he'd accidentally donated a piece of his soul to a charity for chronically honest politicians.
Probably just the stress, he thought, and the sheer weight of this hat.
Across the room, Danzo, Homura, and Koharu leaned in like vultures who'd just spotted a limping camel. Mito had mentioned the Kage Summit's genocidal agenda, but she'd skipped the juicy details.
Satsuki took a deep breath, activating his ultimate jutsu: Helpless, Put-Upon Civil Servant.
"Our clan leader," he sighed, the very picture of a man who was five seconds from filing for a stress-related leave of absence, "received an anonymous letter two weeks ago. It claimed the Four Kage were planning to attack the Uzumaki. Naturally, he thought it was a prank or something like that."
He paused for a moment. "So he sent Mugetsu-sama to check."
A collective, silent gulp went through the Konoha leadership. Mugetsu. The name alone was a credibility stamp. Sending Mugetsu was the Uzumaki equivalent of Konoha sending its Kage.
Danzo's eyes met Hiruzen's in a flash of perfect, unspoken understanding forged in a thousand late-night, probably-wine-fueled strategy sessions.
He didn't need words; he needed an opportunity.
"A trap," Danzo declared, his voice like gravel being stirred with a dagger. "You've stumbled headfirst into a trap."
He turned to Hiruzen, the master of the dramatic pause. "Just before your arrival, we were discussing the armies of four villages gathering on the borders of their own nations, ready to attack. A new war is coming. For Konoha. Your 'tip-off' was likely bait to make us divert our forces—to look away while they strangle us."
Hiruzen stroked his chin, putting on his best 'Troubled Philosopher-King' face. "Now, Danzo, that's a bit extreme. Perhaps it's a bit of both? The villages may be posturing against us, and the Uzumaki situation is merely a… tragic coincidence?"
To anyone else, it sounded like weak-minded hesitation. To Danzo, it was Hiruzen speaking in their secret code.
A direct "you're wrong" meant he was serious. This waffling? This was Hiruzen's way of handing him a signed permission slip for morally grey activities while maintaining plausible deniability. It translated perfectly to: 'I agree, but my conscience needs a safe word.'
"Come now, Hiruzen," Danzo spoke, his voice the verbal equivalent of a well-oiled trapdoor. "Remember the Shodai's will for peace, but the others just started war after his death."
He leaned forward, his eyes gleaming with the serene malice of a cat about to push a vase off a shelf. "Remember that peace summit with Kumogakure we attended with Sensei but ended up ambushed? In the end, you can never guess how these villages will react—able to deceive the First Hokage and Sensei."
In Danzo's beautifully rational, psychotic mind, this was all going according to a glorious, non-existent plan. Let the fools attack.
The Uzumaki weren't just shinobi; they were walking, talking tactical weapons.
He had read the files about their forbidden techniques—it was like a list of increasingly creative ways to take down an enemy with you. 'If I'm going down, I'm taking the entire ninja unit attacking me.'
A random Uzumaki chuunin could probably feel threatened and use one of those forbidden techniques to take down a Kage with him.
His master plan unfolded in his head like a beautiful, dark flower: the other villages get their elite forces turned into abstract art. The Uzumaki are left on life support. Then, and only then, does Konoha swoop in, playing the heroic savior.
They show up after the fireworks, offer a 'helping hand,' and before you know it, they've got all their sealing techniques, a brand-new Uzumaki subdivision in downtown Konoha, and the other four villages are left licking wounds so severe after losing their elites.
Throughout the talk between Hiruzen and Danzo, Mito Uzumaki hadn't so much as twitched a single, elegant eyebrow.
She simply sat, a monument of serene, impending doom.
Her silence wasn't just silence; it was a passive-aggressive black hole that was sucking the oxygen—and Hiruzen's courage—out of the room.
"Right! Well!" he chirped, his voice an octave too high. "You've had a long journey! Please, go and rest! The Uzumaki are Konoha's greatest ally! We'll definitely and certainly help! No matter what!"
As they were ushered out, Satsuki felt a knot of unease tighten in his stomach. The Hokage's words had all the substance of cotton candy.
But one glance at his aunt's calm, unreadable face—a face that had witnessed his own birth—and the knot loosened.
No matter what, according to the estimation of their clan leader, Mito was actually the strongest ninja in the world. As long as she helped, everything would be fine.
(END OF THE CHAPTER)