Jiraiya was sitting cross-legged on the rooftop, telescope in one hand and a wad of tissue paper in the other, wiping his nose with the focused efficiency of a man who had long since made peace with certain facts about himself. The roll beside him was significantly depleted.
"Incredible," he muttered, with the reverence of a professional. "I haven't been back to Konoha in months and the village somehow got even better. This is absolutely going into the next volume."
He had just settled back in when a familiar presence materialized behind him.
"Jiraiya-sensei."
Jiraiya went very still. He put the telescope down with deliberate calm, the way you set something down when you would very much prefer it had never been in your hands. Then he turned.
Namikaze Minato was standing there with the expression of a man who was trying very hard to be patient and finding it a significant effort.
"This is romance, Minato," Jiraiya said immediately. "It's research. You have to understand — unlike you, I don't have a wonderful wife at home to —"
"Jiraiya-sensei."
"The great Toad Sage of Myoboku Mountain cannot simply suppress —"
"Sensei."
Jiraiya ran out of words. He looked at his student, at the quiet helplessness on Minato's face, and deflated slightly. "Fine. I won't do it inside the village anymore. I promise."
"What about outside the village?"
"Let's not get into specifics." Jiraiya stood up and dusted off his knees. "Why aren't you at home with Kushina? The war isn't properly over yet. When you have time off, use it on your wife, not on lecturing me."
Minato let the deflection pass. "We found Rodriguez Finn in the village."
The change in Jiraiya's face was immediate. "Where? Have you fought him? Is anyone hurt?"
"He's in the Third Hokage's office right now."
Jiraiya stared. "You left him alone with the old man?" He was already moving, stepping off the rooftop ledge. "What if he's here to assassinate someone?"
"He doesn't really seem —" Minato started.
But Jiraiya was gone, making for the Hokage Building at a pace that suggested he had already decided the situation was dire. Minato watched him go and scratched the back of his head.
He would have told Jiraiya that this particular man had spent three days drinking companionably with him in the Land of Earth, then killed the Daimyo approximately ten minutes after leaving the establishment. That information might have shaded Jiraiya's confidence that "he seems kind" was a reliable predictor of anything. But the moment had passed.
The Hokage's office.
The desk had been pushed aside. In the center of the room, a shogi board sat on a low table, and Sarutobi Hiruzen and Finn were seated across from each other, mid-game. A pot of tea had been brought in and mostly finished. Two cups sat cooling at the edges of the table.
Finn touched his chin, studied the board, and advanced his rook. "Konoha has the strategic advantage at this point. Why not press it?"
"The external picture and the internal reality are different," Hiruzen said, moving a piece without looking up from the board.
He left it at that. There was no reason to explain Konoha's internal politics to someone like Finn, and the generality was enough to be honest without being informative.
"Every village has its own problems," Finn said, matching the register without pushing.
"Indeed." Hiruzen glanced up briefly. "And yours?"
"Mine?"
"The Third Raikage. The Daimyo of the Land of Earth. Why?" He made it sound casual, then added: "If it's not something you want to discuss, don't feel obligated."
Finn looked at the board. "The Third Raikage died in the Land of Earth anyway. I was interested in his lightning ninjutsu, so I moved early enough to be in position. That's the whole story." He moved another piece. "As for the Daimyo — it's useful to be known. If I hadn't built a reputation, would the Third Hokage be playing shogi with me right now? Probably not."
Hiruzen was quiet for a moment. The logic was entirely consistent with everything else he had assessed about this person — ruthlessly practical, with no moral decoration added or removed. He didn't question whether it was true. If Finn had wanted to be evasive, he could have said nothing at all.
"Speaking of the Daimyo," Finn said, without changing his tone. "Was the bounty posted by Konoha?"
Hiruzen looked up. Then he shook his head, deliberately. "Konoha would not arrange something like that." He picked up his gold general, turned it between his fingers, and set it down on a different square. "In the case of Konoha — the outstanding bid is for the Daimyo of the Land of Water."
Finn looked at him steadily for a moment.
That explained several things. The Hidden Mist Village's entry into the war. The specific shape of the hostility between them and Konoha. Dark world contracts between the major villages and their nominal civilian leadership were supposed to be contingencies — quiet instruments that were never meant to be traced back. They usually weren't. Finn had the advantage of knowing who'd used one.
"I'll forget I heard that," Finn said.
"I would appreciate it." Hiruzen's expression was completely neutral, but something in it had shifted fractionally — the slight unbending of a man who had decided, in a calculated way, to show a hand. It was a gesture of confidence dressed as candor, and Finn recognized it for what it was.
Old man knew what he was doing.
They played in comfortable silence for a few moves. Then Finn said, "On the subject of exchange — does Konoha have ninjutsu worth trading for?"
Hiruzen raised an eyebrow. "What kind of exchange did you have in mind?"
"Two options. First: I have a significant library of Hidden Cloud lightning ninjutsu. The Third Raikage's personal techniques are in there. That's tradeable material." Finn pushed a piece forward. "Second option: if there's something the Third Hokage needs handled that Konoha can't easily do directly, I can be hired for it. Payment in advanced ninjutsu."
A pause.
"Killing off the Uchiha clan, for instance," Finn added pleasantly. "That wouldn't be a problem."
Hiruzen's hand stopped halfway to a piece. "Absolutely not. The Uchiha are an essential part of this village. Please don't think along those lines."
Finn smiled. "Strange position, given your teacher."
Hiruzen looked at him.
"Tobirama Senju," Finn said. "He had no patience for the Uchiha clan. No confidence in them whatsoever. Honestly, my impression is that if he hadn't died as suddenly as he did, there might not be any Uchiha left in Konoha by now. Am I wrong?"
Hiruzen had no clean answer to this, because the honest answer was: no, not particularly. Tobirama Senju's feelings toward the Uchiha clan had been a specific and deeply held thing, never quite crossing into open persecution but never fully pulling back from the edge of it either. He had managed it through institutional channels — the Uchiha posted to police duty, separated, monitored — rather than through force, but the direction of his intent had been visible to anyone paying attention. His death had interrupted something that had been in motion.
Finn didn't push it. He looked at the board instead. "If something comes up in the future that requires a particular kind of capability, keep me in mind first."
"I'll remember that," Hiruzen said, and meant it. He had already been turning over the possibilities. There were things a Hokage needed and could not easily authorize, and a person of Finn's capability operating at arm's length from Konoha's official apparatus was, from a purely practical standpoint, a resource worth maintaining the relationship with.
"Checkmate," Finn said, and set his piece down.
Hiruzen looked at the board. He had let the conversation pull his attention, and the result was clear — his king sat boxed in, no legal move available, the lines of Finn's approach having been running quietly for the last several exchanges. He shook his head slowly.
"You look young," he said, "but your mind is very settled."
"I just look young," Finn said.
Hiruzen seemed on the verge of asking what that meant when the door opened and Jiraiya stepped through, eyes moving immediately to Finn with an expression that was running through a rapid recalibration from urgent to bewildered. He took in the shogi board. The teapot. The two men sitting across from each other in the unhurried posture of people who had been talking for a while and were not in any immediate danger.
He exhaled.
Finn turned to look at him. "You came back to Konoha. I thought that wouldn't happen until later."
"I'm from Konoha," Jiraiya said, recovering his composure with reasonable speed. "Coming home is allowed." He looked at the board again. "Old man, did you lose?"
Hiruzen cleared his throat.
"Apparently so." Jiraiya shook his head with the fond exasperation of a student who has witnessed his teacher beaten at something. He looked between the two of them, reading the room, and then said to Hiruzen directly: "You've got work to do. Let me show Finn around the village. He came to see Konoha, so he should see it properly."
Hiruzen considered this for a moment. He could not, in good conscience, simply let Finn wander Konoha unsupervised — the security implications were obvious, and overt surveillance was inappropriate given the tone of the past hour. But Jiraiya taking him around under the guise of hospitality accomplished the same purpose without the awkwardness. And Jiraiya knew Finn better than anyone else in the village currently did.
"That seems reasonable," Hiruzen said.
He stood, and Finn stood, and as they moved toward the door there was a brief moment in which all three of them understood, without saying it, exactly what the arrangement was: Finn was being accompanied, Jiraiya was providing cover for it, and everyone present had already decided not to make this any more complicated than it needed to be.