Wave's mornings started with gulls and ledgers.
Harbor clerks chalked arrivals on slate boards; dock foremen shouted berth numbers; merchants haggled in three different currencies across a single crate of lacquered bowls. Above the noise, Eclipse patrols moved in pairs—black coats, clean boots, notes passed palm-to-palm and burned by noon.
Ren watched from the balcony of the harbor office, arms folded, Sharingan dormant. He didn't need the red glow to see patterns anymore. He saw them in how a sailor kept his hood low despite the heat, in how a "carpenter" lifted his left leg a beat too carefully, in the way a "tea broker" flinched from the word taxes but not from the word toll.
Scouts. Lots of them. Different nations, different tells.
"Busy day," Gojo said, tipping his blindfold toward the water like it was a hat. "It's almost like we made ourselves interesting."
"That was always the plan," Ren said.
"Mm. So—smile and wave, or smile and close fingers around throats?"
"Smile first."
Zabuza stepped out of the stairwell with a gust of salt air, Kubikiribōchō resting across one shoulder. "Say the word, brat. I'll sort them by village with the flat side."
Ren didn't look back. "You'll break my docks."
Zabuza's bandages creased; he was grinning. "Worth it."
Haku arrived last, his cloak plain, his face composed. He handed Ren a folded sheet. "New entries. One team from Sunagakure—covered as spice traders. One from Kumogakure—two 'pilots' with a lightning-country accent they're trying to hide. And Iwagakure—bookkeepers with too-clean ledgers."
Ren nodded. "We welcome the Sand. We tolerate the Stone. We watch the Cloud."
Gojo hummed. "And Mist?"
"Mist is family in public," Ren said. "And family tries to use you. We watch them, too."
He snapped the sheet shut and slid it into his sleeve. "Positions."
They split like a ripple.
The "spice traders" from Sunagakure came ashore at Second Pier with baskets that looked too light for the price they named. The woman leading them had desert-dry eyes and a scarf that hid a scar that had healed under sand, not soap. Her two assistants moved in step—nin, not porters.
Haku met them at the end of the ramp with a polite bow. "Welcome to Wave. Your papers?"
The woman produced a stamped manifest. "Brand saffron. Cumin. Asafoetida. We're late."
"Storms?" Haku asked, skimming the ink.
"Negotiations."
Haku smiled slightly and handed the manifest back. "We have room for both."
She watched him without blinking. "We've heard your guards run a clean port."
"We try," Haku said. "We aim for no theft on our docks and no extortion in our markets."
"And your taxes?"
"Posted and predictable."
"Predictable is good," she said.
Ren watched from the balcony as Haku led them toward inspection. One of the assistants faked a stumble by a ledger desk, fingers testing a drawer for hidden lists. The drawer was empty. The list was inside the desk leg, inked along the grain where only heat would reveal it.
Haku never glanced back. He didn't need to. The assistant's hand withdrew before the trap needle fired.
Gojo leaned on the rail. "Your boy is smoother than tea."
Ren's mouth twitched. "He's practiced."
The woman's gaze flicked once toward the balcony. Haku did not turn to see what she had noticed. He didn't have to. Ren saw the way Suna's leader measured the harbor in breaths and exits, a professional sketching a map in her head.
Friendly. Hungry. Not reckless.
We can work with that.
Kumogakure's scouts weren't as careful.
They came in on a charter from Tea Country—two men with long coats cut to hide armguards, their hair tied too tightly for "pilots." When a lash snapped on their crate, the one in front caught it left-handed without looking and twisted a metal clasp back into shape with a grip too precise for a sailor.
Zabuza dropped three steps off the balcony and landed in their path hard enough to rattle the boards.
"Problem?" the taller one asked, polite.
"Not yet," Zabuza said, not polite at all. His eyes slid along coat seams, checking for concealed wire. He found none. "State purpose."
"Transit," the shorter one said. "Delivering gear to a buyer in the south inlet. Boat parts."
"Which boat?" Zabuza asked.
"Small one."
"Name?"
The taller one smiled. "Some names change at sea."
Zabuza rolled a shoulder. "Cute."
Ren descended with Haku at his flank, Gojo a step behind like a lazy storm. He stopped three planks away. Close enough to be disrespectful. Far enough to be professional.
"Wave charges a registration fee for foreign technical cargo," Ren said. "Pay at the west desk, then show receipts at every checkpoint you pass. If you skip even one, your gear gets impounded."
The taller one kept his smile. The shorter one didn't. "We've delivered all over Lightning and never—"
"This isn't Lightning," Ren said.
A beat. The shorter one's eyes dropped first. They turned and moved toward the west desk.
Haku didn't look at Ren, but his voice was pitched for only them. "Their chakra is braided right—trained. They haven't done anything we can arrest them for."
"We won't," Ren said. "We'll waste their time until they miss two tides. Then we'll suggest coming back with an appointment."
Gojo snorted. "Administrative brutality. My favorite genre."
Zabuza's bandages twitched. "Boring."
"Effective," Ren said.
Iwa's "bookkeepers" arrived late and quiet, as if fatigue could be a disguise. They wore brown, bland and clean. One carried a ledger too new for sea air. The other's hands were ink-stained in ways that matched no known abacus.
They didn't snoop. They didn't push. They watched how taxes were counted and who counted them. They didn't ask questions. They recorded times.
Ren admired the restraint. "Stone," he murmured to Gojo as the pair walked past, "is the only one that came to learn and not sell."
"Mm," Gojo said. "And that makes them dangerous because…?"
"Because they're patient," Ren said. "They don't need answers today. They need patterns."
He shifted attention to the pier's end, where a small Mist launch eased in under a plain flag—an "inspection skiff," no banner, no parade. The woman on the prow wore light armor and a gaze that measured from horizon to fingers. A Kiri handler. There to make sure "their" ally stayed properly aligned.
Ren let his eyes half-close. Mei was keeping her promise: no pressure, no arrests. But she wasn't blind.
Good. We aren't either.
By noon the harbor settled into a rhythm, visible and false. Underneath, Eclipse moved.
In the customs house, a clerk in a blue vest thumbed stamps a hair slower than normal whenever a document disguised a seal. Upstairs, a scribe spilled a cup of tea "by accident" to force a break in the counting routine, long enough for Haku to mark who looked irritated at stopped numbers and who looked relieved. Zabuza walked the pier once each hour, not more, not less; men with senses for danger began to time their questions around his absence and found out the hard way that he sometimes doubled back early just to be rude.
Above all of that, Ren orchestrated.
"Swap the third and fifth dock schedules," he told a runner. "Move the Sand crates to North Shed. Make the Cloud boys present receipts at checkpoints two and four twice. If they complain, apologize for the redundancy and do it again."
He turned to Haku. "Before sunset, I want one of Suna's assistants offered a legitimate contract to outfit guard posts with spice polls and ward-cloth."
Haku's eyebrows lifted. "A bribe?"
"A job," Ren said. "Real, paid work through a front we control. We buy cooperation and we reward it with coin and boring paperwork. It's better than fear."
Zabuza leaned on the rail. "Fear works."
"Short term," Ren said.
Zabuza grunted. He didn't disagree. He just liked fear.
Gojo propped his heel on the rail and rocked. "What about the Stone? You going to offer the bookworms a job too?"
"I'm going to make their bookkeeping easier than spying," Ren said. "We'll publish our tariffs and update them weekly at a public board. They'll get bored of watching fixed numbers."
"Clever," Haku said softly.
"Annoying," Zabuza added, but his eyes approved.
Midafternoon brought the first stress test.
The Kumo pair had cleared their paperwork. They had complained just enough to be on record as frustrated, not enough to look guilty. They headed for the south inlet with a handcart full of sealed crates, a receipt pouch, and a pace that might have been patience if it hadn't been so deliberate.
An Eclipse gate sergeant stepped into their path. "Random inspection."
The tall one's smile thinned. "We've already been inspected. Twice."
"Random inspection," the sergeant repeated.
They opened a crate. Boat parts. True. Metal clamps, rope, resin. Nothing that broke any law. The tall one kept his hands where everyone could see them. The short one watched the sergeant's pockets instead of the man's eyes. Professional.
"Clear," the sergeant said.
"Finally," the short one muttered.
"Wait," the sergeant added, and tapped the resin tin with a knuckle. "This is the wrong seal for this tin. Take it back to the desk and get it re-stamped."
The tall one exhaled through his nose. "Your docks never end."
"Welcome to Wave," the sergeant said.
They turned the cart around without a fight. Twenty minutes wasted. Ren added it to the list. Light pressure. Enough to keep them on the surface. Not enough to start a brawl.
"Cloud will test us again," Haku said, appearing at Ren's shoulder like mist. "Just to see if we can hold a line without swords."
"We can," Ren said. "If they force it, we change tones."
Gojo angled his blindfold toward the training fields outside the city. "Speaking of tone shifts—noon is coming."
Ren followed his look. Rows of Sun Guard recruits formed up on the dust like a dark stain. At the center, a lone figure rolled his shoulders once, slow. Even from the harbor, you could feel the weight of him when the sun hit the right angle.
"Keep the scouts away from the fields," Ren said. "They can hear the orders. They don't see the instructor."
Haku nodded and peeled off without argument.
Noon.
Heat shimmered above the training grounds. Escanor stood like a pillar at the center, voice cutting clear and hard.
"Shields up. Formation three. Hold."
The line lifted shields in unison. The first volley of wooden arrows rattled across them and fell away. A second volley followed, faster, aimed at exposed ankles. The line shifted, shields dipped, then returned to position as a unit.
"Better," Escanor said. "Again."
Recruits grunted, moved, sweated, endured. Escanor did not lower his voice or his standards. He raised hands twice—once to stop a collapse, once to adjust a stance with a tap. Every correction stuck. After an hour, the line moved like a living machine.
On a low ridge two hundred meters away, the Kumo pair lay prone behind scrub and glassed the field with a tube scope. They couldn't make out the instructor's face from the heat distortion and dust. They could see enough to write: disciplined, shield work unfamiliar to shinobi, coordinated under pressure.
A shadow fell across their scope.
"Afternoon," Gojo said, cheerful.
They flinched. The short one's hand went to a blade. It didn't leave the sheath. Smart.
"We're outside the city," the tall one said, careful. "Public fields."
"Public air, too," Gojo said. He sat on a rock like he'd been there since sunrise. "Great view, right?"
The short one's mouth flattened. "We're traders."
"Mm," Gojo said. "And I'm a librarian. Don't worry, I'm not going to break your notebook. Just making sure you don't trip and fall into a restricted area."
"What area is restricted?" the tall one asked.
"The one I say," Gojo said, smiling.
They held his gaze for a breath. Then they closed the notebook and stood. "We'll return to the docks."
"Perfect," Gojo said. "You can catch the tide you already missed."
They left. Gojo watched them go, then glanced sideways. He didn't turn his head. He didn't need to.
"Enjoying the show?" he asked the brush thirty meters to his right.
Silence.
Gojo sighed. "You're good at hiding, kid. But the trick to hiding from me is: don't bother."
Leaves shifted. A boy in an Eclipse scout cloak eased up, sheepish. "Sorry, sir. Ren asked me to confirm if they'd push past the ridge."
"They didn't," Gojo said. "Go tell him I said his 'annoy them until they behave' policy is adorable."
The boy beamed and sprinted down the slope.
Gojo stood, stretched, and tilted his head toward the sun. "All right, big guy," he said to the heat, fond. "Keep cooking them."
On the field, Escanor did.
Late afternoon, the Sunagakure "spice traders" returned to the harbor office to finalize their stall permits. Haku was there with a ledger open and a polite smile that never betrayed that he knew exactly how many knives the woman carried and which ankle she favored after marching.
"As promised," Haku said, sliding two stamped slips across the desk. "Priority placement on market days in exchange for a five-percent set-aside to outfit our guard stations."
"Five percent is steep," she said.
"It's fair," Haku said.
She studied him for three breaths. Then she signed. "You run your city like a shinobi village without bothering to call it one."
"We call it Wave," Haku said.
She folded the permits away. Her eyes softened by a degree. "Your protector—the blindfolded one. He's stronger than Suna is comfortable with."
Haku didn't answer.
"And the boy," she added. "The one with red eyes. We hear stories."
"People like stories," Haku said.
"They like patterns better," she said. "I'll be back in a month. If your taxes stay predictable, we'll bring more spice. If your patrols stay disciplined, we'll recommend your port to our friends."
"That would be appreciated," Haku said.
She angled her head. "And if we bring a request from Suna for… training exchange? Not shinobi. Guards."
Haku's eyes didn't change. "Write it down. We'll read everything."
They both knew "training exchange" meant "teach us what you're teaching men who are not shinobi to do to shinobi." They both pretended it meant sharing tips about shields.
They shook hands like professionals.
As she left, Ren stepped from a side door and took her measure up close for the first time. The woman didn't startle. She did adjust her assumptions—he saw that in the micro-tightening of her eyes. Boy. Leader. Both.
"Your docks are clean," she said.
"Yours aren't," Ren said.
She laughed once, genuine. "True."
"Bring your spice," Ren said. "Bring your questions. Leave your spies at the gate or make them pay taxes like everyone else. Either way, we'll still know them."
"Fair," she said, and departed.
Haku blew out a slow breath. "She's good."
"She is," Ren agreed. "So are we."
Evening fell. Lanterns lit. The harbor's noise softened to a murmur. On the south inlet road, the Kumo pair finally pushed out of the city with stamped receipts, checked crates, and the kind of brittle patience that breaks hands if you lean on it too hard. At the bend before the causeway, a group of dockworkers stepped into their path with a cart that had "broken a wheel."
"Apologies," one called. "Two minutes."
The taller one checked the sky. "Two minutes."
It took three. When the path cleared, they rolled to the checkpoint by the causeway. An Eclipse corporal checked their papers and waved them through. They made the causeway by sunset—the one tide they still could hit.
As they crossed, a shadow stepped from beneath the last lamp post.
"Evening," Zabuza said.
The short one's hand twitched. The tall one touched his wrist without looking.
"We've paid every fee, answered every question," the tall one said. "We have been patient. We have not broken your laws. We are leaving."
Zabuza tilted the cleaver until torchlight slid down its edge. "Good," he said. "Next time you come back, you tell your raikage this: we don't break first around here. We break last."
The tall one met his stare for a slow count of two. "Understood."
Zabuza stepped aside. They rolled past him without another word.
From the shadows across the road, Ren lowered his hand; the signal he hadn't needed to give. Zabuza would never swing at a messenger just to feel his blade. Not anymore.
"You're getting good at speeches," Ren said.
Zabuza snorted. "Hate them."
"Me too," Ren said.
A flicker of movement; Haku emerged from a side alley, tucking a scrap of paper under his belt. "They wrote nothing down in town. But the tall one palmed a note at the causeway marker. It was a test—signal discipline, not intel. They're serious."
"Cloud always is," Ren said. He looked out over the water where the small boat shrank into dusk. "They'll be back with more questions."
Gojo's voice floated down from the lamp's crossbar, upside-down because of course he was perched there. "We'll have more answers. Or more delays. I'm good at both."
Ren's mouth lifted at one corner. "Back to the office. We still have Stone to bore."
Iwa's "bookkeepers" spent their evening in a harbor tavern, not drinking. They watched how orders were placed and how tabs were closed. They watched who saluted whom without thinking and who got out of whose way. They watched a timid barkeep move with soft hands and write poems in the margins of delivery tickets.
Escanor smiled when they thanked him for the stew and ducked his head until his bangs hid his eyes. "I'm glad you liked it."
They didn't clock him for what he was. They couldn't. Not at night. They saw a gentle man with a steady ladle, not the sun that turned soldiers into iron by noon.
They went back to their rented room and copied their notes: taxes, regular; patrols, even; soldiers, disciplined; leader, blindfolded; second, swordsman; diplomat, ice. No boast, no weakness obvious, no rumor to exploit. Boring—dangerously so.
Stone would file it in a drawer labeled "stability," which was the worst label a rival could apply to an enemy they didn't intend to fight yet.
Close to midnight, the inner circle gathered in the map room. Candles ticked low. Flags marked the day's contacts. Ren stood at the head, hands on the table's rim.
"Report," he said.
Haku began. "Sunagakure: open to trade, open to learning. Professional. No hostile moves. Their lead is pragmatic. If we keep taxes and patrols predictable, they'll build a habit here."
"Good," Ren said. "We want Sand buying schedules, not secrets."
"Kumogakure," Zabuza said next, voice flat. "Proud. Testing. Looking for a line to cross that doesn't bleed. We gave them delays and a message. They'll try again with a different team. Next time they'll be quieter."
"Then we'll be louder," Gojo said. "But still polite. I can do polite."
"Iwagakure," Haku finished. "Patience. They counted our steps. They'll come back in a month to see if the steps match. If they do, they'll adjust their expectations. If they don't, they'll assume we're hiding something new."
"Keep the steps the same," Ren said. "Boredom is a defense."
Zabuza made a noncommittal sound.
Escanor didn't speak at all until Ren turned to him. In the candlelight, he looked like dusk—neither noon nor night. "How many can we field tomorrow if a squad of real shinobi decided to test a gate?" Ren asked.
Escanor's answer was calm. "Seven ranks in shield, four in pike, two in bow. One hundred and sixty men who will not break if someone breathes in their face. Forty who will not break if someone breathes fire."
"And if someone throws lightning?" Ren asked.
Escanor met his eyes. "Then we shelter under the shields and wait for you."
Ren nodded once. That was honest and enough.
He looked around the table. "We are not a village. We are not a clan. We are an order. The nations are testing whether we are a fad or a foundation. Today we made them write down that we're the second thing."
He tapped a mark on the map where the sea lanes crossed like stitchwork. "Keep the lanes open. Keep the taxes boring. Keep the soldiers polite until they aren't. Next week we move to phase two."
Haku tilted his head. "Phase two?"
"Paperwork," Ren said.
Gojo laughed. Zabuza groaned. Escanor smiled.
"Contracts," Ren continued. "Training exchanges, on our terms. Harbor standards stamped, posted, and enforced. If a village wants access, they get a rulebook. If they want to send observers, they make appointments. If they want to recruit from our ranks, they pay penalties to the daimyo. Make it easier to cooperate than to cheat."
"Trap them with convenience," Haku said.
"Exactly," Ren said.
He dismissed the room with a look. Zabuza left first, sword tapping doorframe. Haku ghosted after him, already making lists. Escanor gathered empty cups, the gentle rhythm of porcelain almost a lullaby.
Gojo lingered, hands in his pockets. "You're eleven," he said, voice light, eyes not. "You make rules like a forty-year-old tyrant."
Ren stared at the map. "I'm tired of men like Gato making rules that hurt people who can't fight back."
Gojo's smile softened, unseen under the blindfold. "Good answer."
Ren didn't look up. "Cloud will try to bait us again. Don't kill anyone if you can help it."
"Define help," Gojo said.
Ren's mouth tugged. "Don't enjoy it."
Gojo laughed and strolled out.
Ren stayed a while longer, listening to the building breathe. When he finally stepped onto the balcony, the harbor was quiet, the bridge a black stripe across silver.
Below, a lone boat pushed off from the inspection pier—the Iwa pair, on the late tide. They had their notes. So did he.
Two years ago, Wave had been a wound. Now it was skin knit over new muscle.
The scouts would return. More would come behind them. Some with money. Some with knives.
Let them come. We have nets ready for all of them.