Hokage's Office --- Konoha
Kakashi arrived at seven-fifteen.
He'd been awake since five.
He hadn't been sleeping well since the Obito evaluation.
That wasn't a complaint.
Just a fact he was working around.
Hiruzen was already at his desk.
The unusual scroll laid flat in front of him.
Two cups of tea on the corner.
One for Kakashi.
Kakashi picked it up without sitting down.
Read the first line.
The Moon Temple is not your enemy.
He looked at the rest of it.
The Ōtsutsuki script was old.
Older than anything in Konoha's standard archives.
The characters were angular --- designed, Kakashi had once read in a mission brief that he'd now be very glad he'd memorized, for stone carving rather than ink and paper.
He knew what they were.
He'd known since the moment Tenzō had shown him the scroll.
Because the Sharingan didn't just copy jutsu.
It stored everything it saw.
Including twelve years of Obito's accumulated memories.
Including the walls of a certain chamber deep inside the Moon Temple that Obito had visited once, decades ago, on an errand for Madara.
Including the writing carved into those walls.
The characters had sat in Kakashi's visual cortex since the moment he'd awakened the Mangekyō.
He'd never had a reason to read them before.
"I can work through most of it," he said.
Hiruzen looked at him.
"You can read Ōtsutsuki script?"
"The Sharingan stores what it sees." He sat down. "Obito went to the Moon Temple once. A long time ago. The script was on the walls." He paused. "I'll need paper."
Tenzō produced paper.
Kakashi set down his tea.
Put on his reading glasses.
Which was a thing that existed and which he was embarrassed about in ordinary circumstances.
These weren't ordinary circumstances.
He began.
It took forty minutes.
Not because the translation was difficult, exactly.
Because Ōtsutsuki script was layered --- the surface meaning and then a second meaning written in the spacing between characters, which was apparently how the clan had transmitted sensitive information for centuries.
Kakashi worked through the surface layer first.
Then the spacing.
He wrote both out.
He put down the pen.
He looked at what he'd written.
He read it twice.
"Lord Hokage," he said.
"Yes."
"This is---" He paused. Reorganized. "The surface layer is what you'd expect. An introduction. He identifies himself as Ōtsutsuki Toneri, last surviving caretaker of the Moon Temple. He confirms the seal is weakening. He says the Temple's instruments have been monitoring the resonance since the scroll appeared."
Hiruzen nodded. "And the second layer?"
Kakashi looked at his translation.
"The second layer is an offer," he said. "The Moon Temple has an anti-Kaguya sealing array that's been maintained for three hundred years. It was built by Toneri's ancestors after the original sealing, as a failsafe." He paused. "If Kaguya breaks free before a countermeasure is in place, the Temple can activate the array remotely."
"That would---"
"Re-seal her. Yes." Kakashi set down the pen. "But only if there's someone to synchronize with it from this side. The array requires a living anchor point. Someone with enough chakra to sustain the synchronization."
Hiruzen was quiet for a moment.
"What kind of chakra requirement?"
"He doesn't specify. But he describes it as needing someone with 'the blood of the old lineages' and 'sufficient will to anchor the world.'" Kakashi looked at Hiruzen. "His words."
Another silence.
"That sounds like a description," Hiruzen said slowly, "of a very specific person."
"Several possible people," Kakashi said. "Naruto is the most obvious. Uzumaki bloodline. Will that exceeds any reasonable measurement."
"Others?"
"The Sage's reincarnations. Both of them." He paused. "Sasuke as well, potentially. The Uchiha bloodline has Ōtsutsuki ancestry further back than most people know."
Hiruzen looked at the scroll.
At Kakashi's translation.
At the window and the morning beyond it.
"...Is there more?"
"One more section." Kakashi looked at the final lines. "He says the Temple isn't waiting for permission. The array will activate when it needs to. But the synchronization anchor needs to be willing, conscious, and prepared." He set the translation down. "He says --- and this is almost word for word --- tell whoever it will be that we are not enemies of this world. We are the people who chose to stay when everyone else left."
The office was very quiet.
Tenzō, who had been standing by the door, was very still.
Hiruzen sat with it.
He thought about an expressionless young man in a Moon Temple watching the scroll all day and then choosing to write a letter.
Not a threat.
Not a demand.
A letter.
He thought about not your enemy.
About someone choosing which side they were on before the fight started.
"Kakashi," he said.
"Yes."
"Do you think we can trust this?"
Kakashi was quiet for a long moment.
He thought about Obito's memories.
About the Moon Temple walls.
About years stored in his visual cortex that he'd never intended to use.
He thought about what the scroll had said about incomplete stories.
About she gets another chance.
About the fact that Toneri had been watching all day and had written a letter anyway.
"I think," Kakashi said carefully, "that someone who wanted to use this situation against us wouldn't offer a failsafe. They'd just wait."
Hiruzen nodded slowly.
"And the anchor."
"That's above my pay grade," Kakashi said. "But I have some thoughts."
"Share them."
"Not yet." He stood. "I need to talk to someone first."
He picked up his copy of the translation.
"Lord Hokage."
"Yes."
"Write the reply carefully." He paused at the door. "He wrote to us honestly. We should do the same."
He left.
Konoha --- Ichiraku Ramen
Bai Yan was slicing vegetables when Kakashi arrived.
The shop wasn't open yet.
Kakashi knocked on the closed front panel.
Bai Yan set down the knife.
Went to the front.
Looked at Kakashi through the gap.
Kakashi held up the translation.
"You already know what this says," Kakashi said.
Not a question.
Bai Yan looked at him.
At the single visible eye.
Sharp.
Tired.
Very direct.
"Come in," Bai Yan said.
He made tea while Kakashi read through the translation again at the counter.
Ayame appeared from the back, took one look at Kakashi's face, and very quietly went back to finish the prep without being asked.
She trusted Bai Yan's read of a situation.
She also trusted that whatever this was, it would go better with tea already made.
Kakashi set down the translation.
"Toneri," he said.
"Yes."
"You knew about him."
"I knew a version of him. The scroll changed things."
"Did you know about the array?"
Bai Yan thought about this.
Honestly.
"I knew there was a failsafe," he said. "I didn't know the specifics of the synchronization requirement."
Kakashi looked at him.
"The anchor," he said. "It's Naruto."
"Almost certainly."
"He's twelve."
"I know."
"He's eating six bowls of ramen in my shop and training at five in the morning and has barely processed meeting his father yesterday."
"I know."
Kakashi was quiet for a beat.
"Does he need to know now?" he asked.
Bai Yan wrapped both hands around his tea.
This was the question.
He'd been turning it over since he'd read the Sage's message last night.
When do you tell someone.
What preparation actually looks like.
The difference between information and burden.
"He needs to know," Bai Yan said. "Not all of it. Not all at once. But he needs to know there's a role, and that someone is offering help from an unexpected direction, and that we're not going into this blind."
"When."
"Not today." He looked at the translation. "Today he trains. Tomorrow maybe." A pause. "He's not fragile. Don't treat him like he is."
Kakashi absorbed this.
"And Sasuke?"
"Same answer. He's the other half of this."
Kakashi looked out the front of the shop at the morning Konoha street.
"You've been here for seven years," he said. Not accusingly. Just noting.
"Yes."
"Watching."
"Until recently, yes."
"And now?"
Bai Yan thought about the list in his apron pocket.
About the people are ready and so are we.
"Now I'm making tea," he said.
Kakashi looked at him.
At the man who had stopped time once with a finger-flick and spent the rest of the day eating chestnuts.
Who had given a thirty-second warning and let twelve-year-olds handle the rest.
Who had, in the space of one day, gone from observer to something that didn't have a clean name yet.
"...Fair enough," Kakashi said.
He drank his tea.
"I'll draft a reply for Hiruzen to review," he said. "Something that doesn't over-promise."
"Something honest," Bai Yan said.
"Yes." Kakashi stood. "We say we received the letter. We say we're listening. We say the anchor will be ready." He paused. "Will the anchor be ready?"
Bai Yan thought about a hundred clones training in the east.
About a boy who ate six bowls and got up at five anyway.
"Yes," he said.
Kakashi left.
Bai Yan went back to the vegetables.
Ayame appeared from the back.
"Well?" she said.
"We're writing a letter to the moon," he said.
She thought about this for a moment.
"I'll add more broth," she said. "This is going to be a long day."
Group Chat:
[Bai Yan: Kakashi.]
[Kakashi Hatake: Mm.]
[Bai Yan: Tell Hiruzen the reply should end with: "The anchor is being prepared. He doesn't know it yet, but he will be ready."]
[Kakashi Hatake: That's more honest than most diplomatic correspondence.]
[Bai Yan: Yes.]
[Kakashi Hatake: ...He'll appreciate that.]
[Kakashi Hatake: Toneri, I mean.]
[Bai Yan: I know.]
[Kakashi Hatake: You always know.]
[Bai Yan: Less than I used to. Which is actually better.]
A pause.
[Kakashi Hatake: ...Yeah. Probably.]
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