Chapter 259: The Hokage Is Going After Rin!
Because the explosion had originated inside the Hyuga clan grounds, the noise had been considerable, but with no follow-up incident the broader impact was limited. The ninja academy's opening ceremony proceeded largely undisturbed — the only visible change was that the number of guards stationed around the academy had quietly tripled.
The ceremony concluded without incident.
The children began their first day of school.
Ten classes per year, forty students each, four hundred new enrollees in total.
Not all of them would graduate. Any student assessed as lacking the fundamental aptitude for ninja work would be redirected to a different school and educated toward a different future. The graduation rate hovered around fifty percent in a given year — roughly two hundred students making it through each cycle.
That rate was not fixed. During wartime, when the front lines ran critically short of personnel, the Third Hokage had lowered the graduation examination's difficulty threshold and accelerated graduating classes ahead of schedule. Kakashi had come up that way — a genuinely exceptional student, and still by the time his classmates were graduating at twelve he had already been promoted to jonin.
"Itachi." Kakashi glanced over as they stood outside the academy gates. "You graduated after only one year, didn't you?"
"That's right."
Uchiha Itachi nodded. "Kakashi-senpai, I heard you weren't there much longer either. And you made jonin at twelve."
Kakashi raised a hand in mild deflection. "My situation was different. Graduation standards were much lower in wartime. What you did — graduating after one year in peacetime — that's something else entirely."
It wasn't entirely flattery.
This ten-year-old was a talent of a genuinely different order. Even the Fifth Hokage had praised him by name, calling him the likeliest candidate to become the Uchiha clan's next exceptional fighter after Uchiha Shisui.
"Wartime..."
Something moved across Uchiha Itachi's face at the word — an expression too complicated and too heavy for a child his age. He glanced at Kakashi. "Senpai, do you think there's going to be another war?"
"Hm?" Kakashi looked at the boy, who came up only to his shoulder. "What makes you think that?"
"The explosion this morning. From the Hyuga clan grounds."
"Just from that?"
"If the explosion had been anywhere else in the village — even if it was my own house that blew up — I wouldn't read too much into it. But it was the Hyuga clan."
Kakashi's eyebrow lifted slightly.
The phrasing was a little awkward, but the meaning came through clearly enough. The Hyuga clan was Konoha's undisputed premier family right now, by virtue of producing the Fifth Hokage. For someone to have entered their grounds and caused an explosion of that size, in spite of everything that implied — and for the guards around the academy to have been tripled immediately afterward, which any observant person had already noticed — that wasn't nothing.
"Honestly? I don't know." Kakashi sighed. "I'm a few years older than you and I've been through a war, but I genuinely can't tell you whether another one is coming."
Itachi's brow stayed furrowed. He seemed to want to say something.
Then someone called out from down the street.
"Kakashi!"
Kakashi stopped and turned.
A young woman from the Hyuga clan was sprinting toward him at full speed, calling his name as she ran.
He waited for her to reach him.
"Akiba. What happened?"
The person now standing breathlessly in front of him was his former teammate Hyuga Akiba.
Six years had changed her considerably — the girl had grown into a striking woman, though her habit of speaking before she thought had remained entirely consistent. She grabbed his attention immediately: "Kakashi, it's Ritsu-nii — I mean, the Hokage — he's going after Rin!"
Kakashi stared at her.
Beside him, Uchiha Itachi, who had been about to excuse himself, froze instead. He immediately regretted not having left thirty seconds sooner. At ten years old and very much ahead of his age, he understood perfectly well how inconvenient it was to accidentally overhear the private affairs of powerful people.
Fortunately Kakashi knew Hyuga Akiba's communication style. He recovered quickly and frowned. "Akiba. Say that again properly. What's happening to Rin?"
Hyuga Akiba seemed to find nothing unusual about how she had phrased it. She kept going at the same pace. "The Hokage is planning to release the Three-Tails from inside Rin and give it back to the Mist ninja."
"What?"
Kakashi's eyes went sharp. "You're serious."
"Just come with me and see."
Akiba wasn't interested in elaborating further. She turned and ran back the way she had come. Kakashi watched her go and exhaled, then turned back to Itachi. "Itachi, I'm sorry — you can see I have something urgent to deal with. We'll talk another time."
"Go ahead, senpai."
Itachi said it with easy understanding and watched Kakashi disappear after Akiba. Then he stood where he was, making no move to leave, and looked down at his own hands — thin, young, still so much smaller than he wanted them to be.
He let out a long, quiet breath.
Still too young.
If a war did come, he would be nothing more than a minor figure in it right now. Never mind protecting Sasuke — he wasn't sure he could protect himself.
Konoha Hospital.
This was where Nohara Rin worked.
Most villages kept their jinchuriki isolated, treating them as perpetually unstable threats to be separated from the general population. Hyuga Ritsu had never shared that view. Rin had not been assigned to some distant corner of the village to live out her days alone. She worked at the hospital she loved, studying medical ninjutsu and practicing it alongside the rest of the staff.
Today, though, Rin wasn't buried in work or studying in a corner. She was doing something she almost never did — wandering through the hospital's garden with no particular direction in mind.
"Rin!"
The voice startled her. She turned to find two familiar figures vaulting the garden wall, and her expression settled into something that was half fond and half tired. "Kakashi. Akiba. The gate is right there."
"I saw you from over here and just kept going in a straight line."
Akiba grinned without any remorse.
Kakashi's expression was not grinning. He looked at Rin steadily. "Rin. Akiba told me the Hokage is planning to release your Three-Tails. Is that true?"
Rin didn't answer immediately. She looked at Akiba, who tilted her chin away and started whistling at nothing in particular with the complete lack of guilt of someone who has already decided not to care.
"It's true," Rin said. "He came to speak with me about it a little while ago."
"You didn't agree to it."
"I did."
"You — how could you agree to that?"
The outburst came from Akiba, not Kakashi. She grabbed Rin by both shoulders, white eyes wide. "Rin, why are you going along with this? Has Ritsu-nii lost his mind? Have you? A jinchuriki dies when their Tailed Beast is extracted, everyone knows that!"
Kakashi's jaw was tight. "Rin, Akiba's right. Don't treat your own life as something you can just hand away. I made a promise to Obito — I would look after you. Even the Hokage doesn't have the right to pressure you into giving up your life."
"That's right, and if Ritsu-nii actually tried to pull something like this, I would — I would —"
Akiba's sentence ran out of steam before it found an ending.
Rin looked at the two of them and couldn't quite decide whether to laugh or not, but she was genuinely moved. She could feel the worry behind everything they were saying.
"Kakashi. Akiba. You're worrying over nothing. The Hokage told me he has a way to keep me alive after the Three-Tails is removed."
A pause.
"Is that actually possible?"
Kakashi sounded like a man who had just been told the sky was a different color.
And it wasn't an unreasonable reaction. A jinchuriki dying when their Tailed Beast was extracted — that was one of the ninja world's longest-standing certainties. Even Uzumaki Kushina, with her Uzumaki heritage and her abnormally vast life force, had died when the Nine-Tails was taken from her.
"I don't think he has any reason to lie to me about something like this."
"But that would mean —"
"Of course he can do it. This is Ritsu-nii we're talking about."
Akiba had already switched sides completely, the earlier outrage gone without a trace, replaced by proud endorsement.
Kakashi looked at her without comment and returned his attention to Rin. "Can you tell me why? Why is the Hokage choosing to do this now? Why release the Three-Tails and return it to the Mist?"
Rin's expression became uncertain. She genuinely didn't know the full reason. Ritsu hadn't explained much — he had told her what was going to happen and then left.
"I'll take that one."
A familiar voice came from behind them.
"Aika!"
Akiba's face immediately brightened.
Uchiha Aika stepped into the garden. With that, the old team was complete — captain Hatake Kakashi, and members Nohara Rin, Hyuga Akiba, and Uchiha Aika.
Once upon a time these four had been pushed to the edge by Mist ninja, and it was Hyuga Ritsu arriving in time that had pulled them back. Six years had taken each of them somewhere different since.
Kakashi had spent a stretch in the ANBU, longer than most, before stepping back out. He was a jonin now, an ordinary one — or so he would have said, though few people around him would have agreed.
Rin, because of her Three-Tails status, couldn't be deployed on field missions. She had found her way to the hospital and stayed there, pouring herself into medical work with the kind of dedication that left her perpetually busy. She didn't mind at all.
Akiba had settled into a comfortable orbit around the Hokage Building, nominally serving as secretary and spending most of her time running errands for Ritsu. The work suited her. The only real difficulty in her life was her mother's increasingly pointed remarks about marriage every time she came home.
And Aika. Four years ago she had gotten married ahead of the original schedule — her son Hyuga Ryuchi was five years old now, though you wouldn't know from looking at her that she had ever been pregnant at all.
Aika looked at the three of them and smiled. "Ritsu told me you'd all have questions. He's a bit occupied right now, so he asked me to explain."
"Then tell me." Kakashi didn't bother with preamble. "Why is the Hokage releasing Rin's Three-Tails? Why now?"
"Because if he doesn't, Rin is in danger."
"What do you mean?"
"You all know about the explosion this morning."
Aika let out a quiet breath. She had dropped the children at the academy and gone straight to the Hokage Building afterward, where Ritsu had told her everything — what had happened, and what he was planning to do about what was coming.
She looked at the three of them. "The vessel sealing the One-Tail was stolen. The one who took it was the deceased former Second Tsuchikage, Mū. The person behind it is almost certainly Uchiha Madara or Orochimaru."
"They're moving forward with the Moon's Eye Plan."
The details of the Moon's Eye Plan hadn't been a secret for some time now. It wasn't common knowledge, but anyone with a reasonable position and connections knew the broad shape of it. Kakashi and the others fell squarely into that category.
"The Moon's Eye Plan..."
Behind his mask, the lines of Kakashi's face were tight. "There's really no other way to stop it?"
"None." Aika shook her head. "Madara and Orochimaru are too good at staying hidden. If they choose not to surface on their own, there's no finding them, and they're perfectly capable of coming after Rin any time they choose. There's something else you should know — the Two-Tails jinchuriki from Cloud Village has also gone missing."
Kakashi went very still.
The One-Tail's vessel taken. The Two-Tails jinchuriki gone. The next in line was the Three-Tails — and the Three-Tails was Rin.
He pressed his hands together slowly. They felt empty. Like he was trying to hold onto something that wasn't there.
Because the ones targeting Rin were Uchiha Madara and Orochimaru.
And he was not their match.
Aika continued. "Kakashi, to keep Rin safe, we have to move first. If the Three-Tails is already gone from her body, Madara and Orochimaru have no reason to come after her at all. And it isn't just Rin — the Nine-Tails inside Naruto is going to be released as well."