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So, the Hyuuga clan was turning out to be populated mostly by assholes. Not that Iruka was necessarily surprised to discover this - after all, the Uchiha clan was populated by mostly jerks with the rare kindhearted person trying not to be smothered by the misery of living with the rest of their clan. Or maybe he just didn’t have the right friends, and it was only the Uchiha clan members who were close to Fugaku that made lemon-faces all the time. He had a feeling it had something to do with clan politics - he hadn’t forgotten the way that hospital employee had tried to imply that the Uchiha were bad guys for not fighting the demon fox - but he also felt like they really weren’t helping their reputation by being all closed off and grumpy all the time.

Though now that he’d gotten a glimpse of the Hyuuga, he was starting to wonder if maybe

all

of Konoha’s clans were just like this. He should try and talk to Ibiki at T&I about that. Maybe get an introduction to the Yamanaka clan heads, he was pretty sure they had their fingers all over the T&I department. And didn’t they have ties to the Nara and the Akimichi clan? He could run them all through an “asshole test” to determine which clans had the worst-mannered people.

In any case, Iruka had discovered the Hyuuga were a bunch of assholes because he had tried to get through the gates to meet a “friend”, and had been turned away at every single gate. He hadn’t dared don a Hyuuga guise so soon after the kidnapping - he’d seen what had happened with the Uchiha police, and didn’t trust the Hyuga not to stab first and ask questions later.

Eventually, he wandered far enough around the compound to find an open spot in the fence, which appeared to have been caused by secret training. The secret trainee was a young boy with pale eyes and long, sleek black hair. He wore a headband-like wrap of white cloth that covered his forehead, and a scowl like it came naturally. He had the softest, sweetest face behind the glower, and a glint in his eyes that hinted at buried pain and confusion. The boy couldn’t have been much older than Sasuke, and the fact that he was already training was mind-boggling to Iruka.

The hole in the fence appeared to have been created by some sort of chakra-focused attack gone south. It looked a lot like when Iruka had first started learning how to climb trees and the tree had pushed back. In any case, it left a gaping head-sized hole in the fenced area around the Hyuga training grounds, and the little boy staring back at Iruka didn’t seem nearly strong enough to hold him off.

“Hi,” Iruka greeted, waving.

The little boy just stared, his pale eyes narrowing.

“Can I come in?” Iruka asked. “I’m trying to meet a friend.”

The boy shook his head. “Daddy said not to let anyone I don’t know come in here.”

As much as this was annoying to Iruka, he couldn’t fault the little kid. Especially since one of the Hyuuga’s little kids had very recently been kidnapped. Still… “I’m Iruka,” he introduced himself. “Umino Iruka.”

The kid just stared back at him blankly, not even giving his own name in return. Exactly as Iruka had been saying since that morning - the Hyuuga were a bunch of… well. Anyway. He felt a bit bad about calling a little kid an insulting name. But he couldn’t deny that the training to be jerks started

way early

with these guys. Thinking back, he remembered how obnoxious Itachi had been in the academy, too. He’d been so ridiculously well-behaved and such a teacher’s pet. It was annoying. Maybe the Konoha clans just had some sort of weird deep-seated desire for their kids to be perfect little teachers’ pets, and then horribly rude to everyone who didn’t fit their narrow definition of ‘appropriate’. That would sure explain why the Uchiha clan had

still

made lemon-faces at him even after he’d gotten on Itachi’s genin team. He didn’t fit the clan-approved benchmarks for an appropriate companion. Maybe Itachi was actually bucking the system even more than Iruka realized, just by choosing to be friends with Iruka.

Still, Iruka wasn’t going to give up so easily. Smiling at the boy, he prompted, “And you are…?”

“I’m not telling my name to a weird person like you,” the kid replied.

Well now it was getting to be a challenge. “Will you tell me if I guess your name correctly?” Iruka asked.

The kid narrowed his eyes even more, a hint of a scowl crossing his little baby face. “No.”

Damn, this kid was

good.

Iruka was about to give up and walk away when he heard an adult’s voice calling, “Neji? Who are you talking to?” moments before he rounded the corner of the training yard’s weapons rack. He was a tall Hyuuga clan member with long dark hair bound near the ends, like Itachi, instead of at the top like Iruka. He had tired eyes, and wore a strained expression on his face. Iruka had a split second to recognize just how stupid this whole situation was when the man threw himself between Iruka and the kid, arm flung out to hide the boy from Iruka’s eyes.

That’s when Iruka realized he

recognized

this Hyuuga. It was the clan leader he’d met yesterday, just with a different outfit, and now wearing a hitai-ate. He waved hello and chuckled at the coincidence. At least this way Hiashi Hyuuga would know that Iruka was definitely taking the security check seriously.

Then the man closed the distance between them, reaching through the fence to strike, lightly tapping Iruka’s shoulder. His entire

arm

went numb. Panic immediately flooded his body, and Iruka threw himself backwards, away from the hole. “Whoa, hey!” he yelled, “What are you doing?” Was this part of the security check? Was he supposed to

fight

the Hyuuga? There’s no way he could do that, he was a genin, and not even a very

good

genin! Panicking, Iruka plunged his

only working hand

into his hip-pouch, which he’d been forward-thinking enough to have brought along with him on this expedition. He pulled out the first exploding tag his fingers wrapped around, and flung it back at the man on the other side of the fence. It was a

stink

tag, which was probably good, because if it had been an itch tag it may have hurt the little kid. And for all Iruka was

annoyed,

he didn’t actually want to hurt the kid who was just trying to do what his dad had told him to do and stay safe.

Iruka wasn’t stupid enough to call for help, but he also didn’t think running away was a good call. So he stood his ground, his good hand gripping the upper arm on his other side, and he glowered back at the man, who had batted the exploding tag aside. The smell was

awful

and making Iruka’s eyes water. But he’d experienced it before. The Hyuuga man hadn’t, and he was

wretching,

an ugly sort of heaving sound that had him doubled over for a moment. “Who,” the man choked out past the horrible gagging noises he was making, “are… you?”

Iruka frowned. “What do you

mean,

who am I? You met me yesterday!” he was furious. Was the Hyuuga clan head

really

going to pretend they’d never met? Was this all some elaborate hoax to frame Iruka for the kidnapping?

The stink tag was starting to dissipate, and the man swiped at his misty eyes, choking out, “I’ve never met you before!”

Iruka was furious now. “Yes you did! At Fugaku Uchiha’s house!”

The man froze then, and his eyes lifted from the ground to fix firmly on Iruka. “...I didn’t go to the Uchiha compound yesterday.”

Iruka felt extremely annoyed at this point. “Oh yeah? Well then it was someone who looks exactly… like… you…”

Wait a minute.

The Hyuuga Probably-Not-Clan-Head was staring back at Iruka, a look of understanding that mirrored Iruka’s crossing his own features. “You met Hiashi-sama yesterday?” he asked.

“You’re… Hyuuga Hizashi?” Iruka asked, feeling a bit stupid that it had taken him so long to figure it out.

The man nodded slowly.

“Oh,” Iruka said loudly. “I’m sorry, I thought you knew.”

Hizashi blinked. “Knew?”

“Yeah, uh,” Iruka didn’t think anyone was supposed to know what he was doing at the Hyuuga compound, so he needed an excuse, fast. “I was given permission to view the Hyuuga Clan’s private library.”

Hyuuga Hizashi did

not

appear convinced. “Really,” he said. “And my brother had his father’s permission to grant this favor?”

Iruka swallowed. He hadn’t realized a former clan head could hold so much sway over the decisions of a clan. He also didn’t understand why a library would be protected so closely. The Sarutobi family had never seemed particularly bothered, so long as he didn’t deface the books. “I didn’t ask him that,” Iruka replied. “Should I have?”

When his eyes were narrowed, Hyuuga Hizashi’s expression looked remarkably similar to the little boy’s had, earlier. Oh. Iruka suddenly had a good idea as to why this man was acting so protective.

“This is no time for games,” Hyuuga Hizashi told Iruka. “Please leave me and my son alone.”

Iruka lifted his one good hand in a gesture of surrender, saying, “Sure, sure.” Then pointed to the other arm. “You going to do something about this?”

Hyuuga Hizashi’s glare was scathing. “It’ll wear off.” He turned, paused, and turned back around to face Iruka. “Now is not an appropriate time to be acting foolishly. Please don’t cause any more trouble.”

Any

more

trouble? What trouble had Iruka even caused? He felt insulted. All he’d done was defend himself from the Hyuuga’s attack -

non-lethally,

even! “Hey, if you're going to be scolding anyone, you should probably tell that kid to be more careful,” Iruka said, finally realizing that Hizashi must have assumed upon his arrival that the hole in the fence was made by Iruka. “He’s the one who busted a hole in the fence, not me.”

Hizashi’s eyes widened, and he turned to the little kid. “Neji! Is that true?”

The little kid was still holding his nose shut to avoid smelling the residual stink of Iruka’s tag. He scowled at Iruka before slowly nodding.

To Iruka’s surprise, Hizashi didn’t seem angry, just a little sad. “That’s incredible,” he said softly. “Such power, at such a young age…”

Iruka continued standing outside the fence, feeling as though he was intruding on a private moment. Also, he was beginning to wonder if

all

the clans had stupidly unrealistic expectations for their young children’s education.

As if coming back to himself, Hizashi turned to Iruka. “Regardless of your intention, I still believe it is best for you to go.”

Iruka didn’t agree, but had a hard time justifying it. He didn’t want to leave when he’d actually found a potential ‘in’ to the Hyuuga compound. “Can I come in for a few minutes, at least?”

Hizashi narrowed his eyes at Iruka. “Absolutely not.”

Fine. Iruka would just find his

own

way inside.

Iruka did think, at one point in his endeavor, that Hyuuga Hiashi probably hadn’t expected Iruka to invent an entirely new method of breaching wards in order to check his security system. But honestly, if Iruka could pull it off then surely someone else out there who

wasn’t

a supid genin definitely would be able to. He’d thought a lot about where he’d messed up with the Uchiha clan, and decided that one of his mistakes had been going back for Sasuke - up until that point no one had questioned him. He could probably do that with the Hyuuga, too. But he worried that they might have some sort of new wards erected at the entrance. If

he’d

recently had someone kidnapped from under his nose he’d certainly up the security wards at the gates. They probably extended over the wall and under it. He would try and dig under and go over, just to do his due diligence, but he had a feeling that as soon as he tried somebody was going to come for him, so he wanted to start with the less flashy attempts.

Which was why he was hovering his brush over a piece of chakra paper, contemplating wards and how they worked. He was tentatively calling this little gem a

skeleton key,

and he was hoping that placing it on his stomach, over the pool of chakra, would be enough to confuse the wards into thinking he belonged there. It basically picked up any sensing chakra and projected back to it a sense of

belonging

. Iruka was banking on the clans like the Hyuuga being similar to the Uchiha in that they saw themselves as a unit that was uniquely distinct from the rest of Konoha. So

belonging

would be what the wards sought out, not a specific genetic phenotype or a particular brand of chakra, or something else Iruka couldn’t predict.

Granted, it was still risky, but at least if he walked through in a Hyuuga disguise and got caught, he could ask to be brought to Hiashi. If he tried going over or under the wall, there was a higher chance of him being intercepted by ANBU first, and he wasn’t in the mood to visit Ibiki again.

Sighing to himself, Iruka began to write the seal, listening for the low bassline hum of his chakra as he channelled the energy from his stomach up until its soft thrum was sitting by his heart, warming his chest. Then he carefully allowed it to trickle down his arm into his hand, suffusing the brush and ink before finally sinking into the sensitive paper. He worked methodically, since he’d never made anything like this before. He’d seen similar lock-unlock combinations in some of the books he’d gotten from the Sandaime family library, though, and felt like with a little creativity, it could be adapted to his purpose.

He also needed to work on his Hyuuga disguise, since he wasn’t as familiar with them as the Uchiha, and transformation jutsu wasn’t exactly his specialty. Still, it didn’t take long for him to figure out where some of the retired Hyuuga members liked to relax, and it was easy enough to sneak into civilian izakayas - Iruka used to grab dinners from places like that sometimes, if he missed dinner at the orphanage and was too hungry to wait for breakfast. They rarely had security besides the big burly guys by the door, who mostly stood around making sure nobody caused a ruckus. Iruka was good at slipping in and out of the kitchen unseen, and it didn’t take much additional effort to find a few good corners and crawl spaces. He had to make friends with some interesting vermin in the process, but with the number of ceilings he’d crawled inside at this point, Iruka was on pretty good terms with most spiders. Roaches were less popular with him, but he was also not particularly popular with them, so they typically scattered when they saw him coming.

It took about two days of Izakaya research, and another day to finalize his security ward skeleton key, and Iruka was ready to waltz into the Hyuuga compound through the front door. He tried not to look nervous, as that would be a sure giveaway if something went wrong, and tried to walk in with a small goup of Hyuuga chuunin, hoping to get lost in the crowd. He’d noticed that all the Hyuuga liked to wear their hitai-ate when they were out, even when not on-duty. They also wore headbands even after retirement. With that in mind, Iruka had also found a headband to wear, and had found some light-colored clothes that he thought fit the general Hyuuga aesthetic. He held his breath as he walked through the gate, but although he could hear his chakra skeleton key hum in his ear, it didn’t seem to set off any alarms.

He

did

get a weird look from one of the chunin, who narrowed his eyes at Iruka, then glanced back to his other Hyuuga buddies to continue his conversation.

Iruka was almost convinced he was home free when the Hyuuga glanced back at him again - veins pulsing at the sides of his eyes, which were now a swirling milky white.

Byakugan.

Things got weird pretty quick after that.

“Hey you,” the chunin said, stopping in the middle of his friend group to address Iruka, “what the hell do you have on your stomach?”

Iruka fumbled. He’d tried to anticipate a lot of scenarios, but this was

not

one. He’d assumed that a discovery of the skeleton key would mean the jig was up, and so he hadn’t really thought of an excuse for what it was. “Uh,” he said.

The chunin waved his friends on ahead, then stood and stared at Iruka for several seconds, bracing his hands on his hips, byakugan watching Iruka’s belly right through his clothes. “Whatever it is, it’s draining your chakra,” the chunin finally told Iruka, frowning. “Is it supposed to do that? Who gave it to you?”

“Um,” Iruka said, glancing down at his stomach. “My jonin-sensei…?” He knew it was a stupid thing to say, but he couldn’t think of any other excuse.

“What for?”

Iruka scrambled for something to say that might make sense. “Uh - chakra regulation.”

The chunin hissed through his teeth. “I sure hope he got that approved by Hiashi-sama.”

Iruka nodded. “He said he did.”

The chunin shuffled his weight slightly. “There a reason you need your chakra regulated that bad? It’s draining a lot.”

Iruka glanced down. He didn’t think it was pulling that much. “It’s okay. It’s supposed to help me increase my chakra pool by forcing me to create it at a faster rate.”

The chunin grimaced. “That sounds dangerous, kid. You sure Hiashi-sama gave it the go ahead?”

“Well,” Iruka said, beginning to think he was in the clear, “I’m going to need a bigger chakra pool if I want to be a great shinobi, and this seal seemed like-”

The chunin’s shoulders stiffened, and his eyes narrowed. “It’s a

seal?

You let your jonin-sensei

seal

you?”

Iruka lifted his hands in a gesture of surrender, realizing he’d somehow tripped over a sensitive subject. “Not permanently!”

“I can’t

believe

Hiashi-sama would sign off on something like that!” the chunin sounded nervous, shutting off his byakugan and blinking a few times before saying, a bit more calmly, “You should really double-check with your jonin-sensei.”

Iruka nodded slowly, not really sure what he would be checking about. Not that he had actually been given the seal by his jonin-sensei in the first place.

Leaning in, the chunin continued, “It’s just… look, kid, you never know how two seals are going to interact, especially when they’re both planted in your chakra system. You’d hate to accidentally trigger the negative feedback system.”

Iruka frowned. “Two seals?”

The chuunin tapped his own hitai-ate, saying, “This one.” He pointed to his stomach next, “And the one you have here.”

“The… seal… on my forehead…” Iruka said slowly. “That you know about, even though we don’t really know each other.”

Now the chunin was giving him a strange look. “You

are

a member of the cadet branch, aren’t you?”

Iruka nodded. “Of course.” He had no idea what that meant, but playing along seemed like the best option.

“Then you know what happens if you make the main branch angry,” the chunin said.

“…I do?”

“You don’t?” now the chunin looked worried on Iruka’s behalf. “Kid. Seriously. Make sure that seal isn’t going to interfere with the control mechanism of the cage. It could really mess you up if it did.” He bent over to whisper, glancing over his shoulder like he worried someone might be listening, “It can even

kill,

you know.”

The seal could do that? Iruka glanced down at his stomach nervously. And what did this guy mean when he said

control mechanism of the cage?

He was so confused. “Okay,” he said, “I’ll go ask my jonin-sensei about it now. Thanks.” He turned, and pretended to walk back towards the gate, waiting until he saw the chunin run to rejoin his friends. Then, Iruka very gracefully dove into the nearest manicured flowerbed, and rolled over onto his back, staring up at the clouds crossing the cool blue sky.

What had he gotten himself into?

After a few minutes of staring up at the sky, Iruka managed to pull himself together. The first thing he did was consider the wisdom of wearing a Hyuuga disguise now that he was through the gate. He was still surprised that no one near the entrance had bothered checking visitors with their byakugan - unless they had been, and the seal on his stomach had somehow let him get past the byakugan, too. Or maybe because he’d been in together with the group of chunin no one had taken a second look. He’d have to ask Hiashi Hyuuga about that - maybe they should require people to enter one-by-one, and they could use the byakugan to check each person individually for a chakra cloak. Still, he supposed he had been spotted by that one guy in the group with him. Still, it didn’t look good for the guys at the gate that a random

chunin

had been the one to spot Iruka’s weird situation. He wondered, faintly, if that chunin was some sort of sensor. He knew the byakugan could see chakra, at least, that’s what he’d heard. He also knew that the chunin hadn’t been actively using his byakugan when he first noticed Iruka’s skeleton key.

Someone should get that chunin checked for his sensor abilities, Iruka thought. He made a mental note to bring it up. He thought he remembered the guy’s face, though admittedly he was one of

many

Hyuugas, so he wasn’t super confident in himself. He wished he’d asked the guy’s name, but had been too afraid of his fake Hyuuga name sounding made-up, and didn’t want to expose himself through something useless like introducing himself.

Sighing, Iruka decided it might be worthwhile to keep the skeleton key active, even if it was a bit draining to keep it going long-term. He had a pretty good idea of how much chakra he had in reserve, though, so he figured he could just shut it off if he started to get low. Now that he was inside the compound, though, he had no idea what he was supposed to do.

Maybe he

could

go to the library. He could always try and kidnap a kid or something, but he felt like maybe that would be in poor taste. Sneaking into a place that was also carefully guarded, like the private research of an old clan, would be a close enough equivalent without causing nearly as much chaos as the day of the summit. He did think it was a bit unfair, though. On the day of the incident, everyone had been out in the village on security in response to the delegation from Kumogakure. Unless… had the Hyuuga been on guard? He realized, then, that he only knew the Uchiha had been out, and that ANBU had been lurking in force. Had the Hyuuga all been

here

at the time? In that case, maybe it was easier for him to sneak in now that no one was on edge, even if they were all here still. The gate guards, like the Uchiha, had seemed very complacent about letting people who looked Hyuuga enough walk right in through the gate. They really needed to work on that.

Faintly, Iruka wondered if it would be worth sneaking into some of the other clan compounds. Then again, he didn’t have a deathwish, so he really didn’t want to try breaking into the Nara clan compound. And the Inuzukas would probably sniff him out pretty quick. He didn’t even want to think about what would happen if the Yamanaka clan caught him lurking - he’d probably

never

get out of T&I, not even if he begged Ibiki for help.

So yeah, he was just going to let them come to

him

if they wanted someone to break in, much like the Hyuuga had come to him. This was the weirdest sort of consulting job he’d ever heard of.

…was he even getting

paid

for this?!

Iruka realized he’d not really brought up terms of contract in the meeting. He’d been too intimidated, caught between Fugaku and Hiashi like that. Did that mean he could name his price after the fact?

Knowing how things usually worked out for him, he doubted it.

His next order of business decided, Iruka started out. He tried not to look suspicious, so he walked with intent, even though he actually had no idea where the library was. It wasn’t like he could ask, either. He was doing fine, making good time, even, until he came across the kid from the day before - Neji, he thought that was his name - training in one of the open yards. He’d planned to just march right on past without saying anything, and then he saw the upset look on his face. He was furious, sad, and ready to drop.

“Hey,” Iruka said, stepping up and waving a hand awkwardly in the kid’s direction.

The kid turned and stared at him balefully. “What do you want?” he demanded.

It was so weird to have a kid that young react so much like a grumpy adult. It was like seeing a younger version of Itachi - and Iruka hadn’t even realized that was

possible!

Sasuke had a bit less seriousness, compared to his older brother. But now Iruka realized what Itachi must have been like as an

extra

tiny child.

“I was just wondering if you were okay,” Iruka said, plopping down on the grass and crossing his legs. He cradled his chin in one hand, raising his eyebrows at the little kid. “You seem upset.”

The boy scowled. “I’m fine.”

Iruka shrugged. “Okay.”

The boy continued to stare at him. Iruka stared back.

Eventually, Neji returned to his practice. Iruka could

hear

his chakra sputtering, choking out of him in fits and starts. Eventually, the kid gave up, throwing himself on the ground and pounding it with his hands and feet. Iruka could relate. He wished he could throw a tantrum too. He really should have been looking for the library by now, but he was curious about this kid. Besides, he was the right age to be kidnapped. Why wasn’t anyone here watching him?

“Still fine?” he asked.

“Daddy is in meetings,” Neji muttered into the grass, voice faintly muffled by the tufts of green. “He’s been busy for

days.”

Iruka had a good feeling he knew why - surely the brother of the head of the Hyuuga Clan would be an important figure in clan discussions after the kidnapping incident. “That’s a bummer,” he said instead, because he knew how frustrating it was to not have parents around to care about you or listen to your stories or help you with your homework or your training.

Rolling over, little Neji stared up at the same clouds Iruka had been admiring earlier. “Daddy had a headache,” he said, “kind of like mine. He’s had a lot of meetings since then.”

“You had a headache?” Iruka asked, not really curious but figuring the kid probably needed someone to talk to.

“After they put the cage on me,” Neji said sadly. “It made my chakra all funny, too.”

Iruka was pretty sure that any kid’s chakra would act funny at that age, but he nodded sincerely. “Is that why you busted the fence yesterday?” he asked.

Sitting up, Neji gave him a weird look. “How did you know?”

Iruka realized, belatedly, that he wasn’t wearing the same face as yesterday. Trying not to sound panicked, he said, “Word gets around.”

Neji squinted at Iruka. “Dad said he wouldn’t tell anyone.”

“I … heard it from the kid outside the wall,” Iruka said, grasping at straws. “He was complaining about not being let in through the hole.”

Neji seemed to accept this. “He’s not sir sum sept,” he said matter-of-factly. “My daddy says it’s important to be sir sum sept.”

It took Iruka an embarrassingly long moment to realize Neji was trying to say

circumspect.

That was a ten-ryo word for a kid like him, Iruka was pretty sure most of the kids in the orphanage his age wouldn’t have even attempted such an intense word. Clans sure did teach the weirdest things.  “Your dad is right,” Iruka agreed.

“Daddy is always right,” Neji said confidently.

Iruka wanted to argue that maybe

sometimes

Hizashi could be a bit more inviting and helpful to kids trying to come in through holes in the wall, but he recognized that this was probably better not mentioned. Instead, he just hummed in wordless agreement.

The boy was rubbing his forehead, shifting his headband around. He glanced at Iruka’s headband then, and said, “Did the cage give you a headache, too?”

Iruka kept hearing that word, kept seeing Hyuugas say that word in reference to their nearly ubiquitous headbands. Was there some sort of weird seal woven into the fabric? But he couldn’t actually

hear

anything, and usually when seals were active he could hear them, if only as a distant background hum.  “At first it did,” Iruka said, trying to sound sympathetic and not like a dirty liar. “It took awhile for my chakra to settle, too.”

The boy finally gave in to Iruka’s (admittedly limited) charms, scooting across the ground to sit next to him. “I’m Neji,” he said.

“I know,” Iruka said, idiotically.

Neji frowned a little. “Because my daddy is important?”

Iruka winced and nodded. “Yeah. ” How many times was he going to slip up and forget that Neji had only met Iruka before, not his Hyuuga alter ego?

“What’s your name?” Neji asked, and Iruka panicked, a little.

Maybe it was all the talk of cages that did it, but when Iruka tossed his eyes around for inspiration, he caught sight of a fat pigeon perched on a nearby tree, and immediately went with “Hato. My name is Hato.”

Hyuuga Hato?

Really? What a stupid name he’d just given himself. It was too late to roll it back, though, so he just smiled nervously at Neji.

“Nice to meet you,” Neji said politely.

“Nice to meet you, too,” Iruka echoed.

Neji sighed, and rubbed his forehead agai
n. “Daddy said I’m not allowed to take it off, not even in the compound,” he confessed. “I can only change it at bedtime.” He glanced at Iruka. “Do you take it off?”

“My headband?” Iruka asked, tapping at it as he spoke. Why would the thing he was currently assuming to be some weirdly universal seal-headband be worn even when

sleeping?

What the hell was it for, and why was it given to such young kids?

Neji nodded.

Iruka flailed internally, but decided to play along as best he could. “Yeah.”

“Does it give you headaches? ” Neji asked sadly. “Daddy’s made him fall down.” He glanced around conspiratorially before saying in a small, frightened whisper, “I think it almost made him scream.”

Iruka felt something like ice water trickle down his spine. Whatever he was hearing about now went far beyond just looking for a security breach. Not only were these weird sealed headbands worn by nearly all of the Hyuuga clan members, but they could even

incapacitate

a shinobi as strong as Hizashi? 
He remembered his brief conversation with the chunin Hyuuga. The guy had assumed Iruka was a member of the cadet branch, whatever that meant. And he’d acted like Iruka knew what would happen if the main branch was angered. He’d said something about interfering with a cage control mechanism, and a negative feedback system, too… Iruka poked at his headband again, feeling his skin flush hot and then cold. Was the seal some form of control that some Hyuuga members exercised over other members? What did the chunin mean by cadet branch and main branch? 
The terrified whisper of the Hyuuga chunin echoed in Iruka’s memory.

“
It can even kill, you know.”

Neji gazed sadly at Iruka. “I'm not 'posed to tell anybody that,” he said mournfully. “Daddy said it’s not good to look like we are

rub belly us.

Too many other people might get sad or angry.” Neji swiped at his face, which was looking splotchier by the second. Iruka hoped the little kid wouldn’t actually start crying or he was gonna feel really bad.

“I won’t tell anyone,” Iruka promised immediately. “I’ll be…” he scrambled to remember the word Neji had used earlier, “…circumspect.”

That seemed to relieve Neji. “Good,” he said in a sad little voice. “It’s important to be sir sum sept.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Eventually, Iruka had to excuse himself from his sitting around time with Neji. He still had a job to do, and now that he’d had several weird conversations here in the Hyuuga compound, he had a better idea of what he’d be looking for in the Hyuuga library.Clearly, there was something weird going on here, and it had to do with seals and cages. How those two things were related, Iruka had no idea. But he was determined to figure it out. Fortunately for him, most clan libraries he knew of were designed in a similar way: heavily warded and centrally located. The warding protected paper documents from fire, water, and most forms of destruction (though Iruka had discovered those wards were not finely tuned enough to prevent a troublesome pre-teen from painting moustaches on all of the illustrations), and the central location ensured it was more difficult for outsiders to infiltrate.Unless said outsiders wore a simple headband and looked particularly Hyuuga-like.Iruka tried his best not to appear suspicious - especially given how on-edge many people seemed in the aftermath of the kidnapping, it seemed prudent to act as normally as possible - and slowly wandered his way towards the center of the compound. Eventually, he had to try and guess which building was more likely to house the library. He thought maybe the Hyuuga manor itself, where the clan head lived, was the most likely culprit. Also because the place was practically humming with low-grade chakra. There had to be a ton of wards inside the building if Iruka could hear them from so far away!Once he was in, it wasn’t very difficult to follow the hum of chakra to its source. Now, he felt, the true test had come. Would the skeleton key work on the door to the library? He reached for the door, tapping it gently. It didn’t open. He frowned, and pushed a bit more of his chakra into the skeleton key, feeling it heat against his stomach a tiny bit. The door wards hummed at a slightly higher pitch. Iruka tapped the door again. This time, it slid open with ease, and he was able to step inside the Hyuuga Clan library. He knew already that he was going to be looking for something likely hidden away, so he swept the room with a quick glance, looking for any unusual shapes or possible hidden doors. After spending so much of his time at the orphanage finding hidey-holes and trying to figure out where his stolen items had gone, Iruka was pretty good at finding hiding places. But the Hyuuga clan was damn good at hiding things. Frowning, Iruka stepped into the room, hearing the light tap of his feet on the wood. He took two more steps, still listening for the wards to make sure he didn’t accidentally trip an alarm wire. If he made a mistake at this point, there was a good chance of the Hyuuga stabbing first, and asking questions later. Because of his overabundance of caution, it was painfully obvious to Iruka’s ear when his footsteps sounded different as he crossed one part of the floor.Dropping into a crouch, Iruka began investigating the floor, looking for some sort of trapdoor or latch to pop open whatever was concealing a space beneath the floorboards. He ended up needing to basically lay down and put his ear on the ground to listen. The hum of chakra was coming from so many conflicting sources that at first he couldn’t say for sure which parts were coming from the hollow floor, and which hums were tied to the main library room. Eventually, he thought he could tell where the chakra was coming from. Carefully, Iruka channeled a tiny bit of his chakra into a shuriken blade, and wiggled it between two floorboards where the ward seemed to have a weak point. He didn’t count on being able to find the actual trigger point from the ground level, mostly because there was a good chance it was designed to be found by the byakugan, so it would likely be buried behind something. He hoped he’d found the right spot to pry up the floor, but since he was working with ears, not eyes, it was definitely a gamble.The shuriken wiggled between the floorboards easily, and Iruka heard a soft click sound. He had just enough time to register the fact that the floor under his feet was shifting and leap aside before the whole area of the floor folded back, falling away to reveal an entire staircase.  He stared at it in gaped-mouth awe for a long moment, then shook his head sharply, trying to refocus. All right. So there was not just a hidey-hole in the library, there was a whole secondary library underneath the first one! He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t expected that. He also found himself wondering, absently, if the Sarutobi family library had a similar mechanic. Maybe they had a secret door built into one of the bookshelves? Next time he visited, he was going to pace the outer hallway and then measure the paces of the library interior. How cool would it be to find the secret Sarutobi books, too? He was getting away from his task, though. Iruka clapped his open palms to the side of his face a few times, and took a deep breath. Okay. So far, so good. He’d found the secret library-within-the-library. Now he just had to crawl down inside and grab something to prove he’d been there. He could bring it to Hiashi later, to prove that their security had some major flaws, and hopefully he wouldn’t be too mad about Iruka busting into a top-secret clan library. Taking another deep breath to settle his nerves, Iruka crept down the staircase, keeping an eye out for traps. He realized, after a few steps, that there weren’t as many wards running down here. At first, he couldn’t understand why. Then, he realized - the Hyuuga never expected someone to find their hidden library. They’d probably assumed that anyone without a byakugan wouldn’t be able to see the right trigger point for the library door. …well that was just dumb. There were other ways to sense chakra. Iruka wasn’t even that good at it, and he’d managed just fine. Rolling his eyes, Iruka continued down the stairs. He still checked for traps (it never hurt to be careful) as he went down, but any thought of caution vanished from his mind like mist in the sunlight when he reached the bottom of the stairs and saw… he wasn’t even sure what he was seeing. It was some sort of research facility, maybe. There was chakra paper all over the place, and there were different patterns for seals Iruka had never seen before arrayed on the walls. But even that would have been fine. The problem was the floor. It was stained with something Iruka dearly, desperately hoped was ink, and not… Anyway. It was clearly some sort of seal design. But Iruka didn’t recognize what it was, at least not without a lot more research. The one thing he could tell, immediately, was that this was not the real location where the seal would be performed. If it were performed, then the ink would be consumed by the power of activation. This room was a place where someone learned how to make this sort of seal, a secret space to practice a technique that, if Iruka was parsing the symbolism correctly, was intended for use on a human. A cursed seal for use on a human. Hidden in the library. What were the Hyuuga doing that required seals on humans? They were a soft-style jutsu clan. Very few Hyuuga ever specialized in things like sealing arts or curses. So why would they have a complex curse array like this, clearly being perfected and practiced? You only did that if you intended to use the seal, and frequently enough that tweaking and adjusting it for greater utility was a possibility. Iruka could hear his heartbeat in his own ears, thumping anxiously. The Hyuuga clan was using curse seals on humans. A lot of humans. For human experimentation. He was going to be sick. His mind felt like it was spinning in circles. Seals. Human experimentation. The cage. THE CAGE!  Eyes wide, Iruka spun around again, trying to identify anything else in the seal work. It was so much more complex than anything he’d ever seen before, even in the books he’d been given. But he could see bits and pieces of things he knew. There was a symbol used to trigger an effect in one place, and another branch of the seal appeared to be intended to deal damage to what Iruka thought was probably the nervous system, though he’d only briefly touched on that while trying to put together a taser-tag, and his own work with introducing his chakra as a disruption to the human nervous system had been a total flop. But this looked like maybe someone had figured out how to do it. There was also a part of it that screamed cage to Iruka, and that was a symbol that meant ‘contain’. He often used it in barrier seals, except that this version of ‘contain’ had two extra markings added. He wasn’t sure how that might alter the way the symbol worked. Iruka sat down, slowly, on the lowest step of the hidden library, staring glumly at the inked seal on the floor, the practice symbols lining the walls. There was no way he could bring anything from this room to Hyuuga Hiashi. The Hyuuga clan would probably kill him just for knowing this place existed. What was it the Hyuuga chunin had said? ‘You never know how two seals are going to interact, especially when they’re both planted in your chakra system.’ Iruka felt like throwing up on the stupid library floor. The seal was designed to self-sustain by siphoning power from the individual’s own chakra system. He wasn’t even sure how that was possible, and certainly he didn’t have the experience to identify where in the sealwork that procedure was detailed. But the longer he stared at this room, the more certain he was that this seal was the cage the chunin had mentioned. And the ‘negative feedback system’ had to be related to the headaches that Neji had talked about. It also explained why the little kid’s chakra was suddenly going haywire.They’d fucking sealed a baby! Neji was so small he couldn’t even pronounce the word circumspect, and they’d plugged a self-sustaining curse into his - his - Iruka reached up, feeling a prickle of cold trickle down his spine as he touched the headband he’d chosen to wear, so he could fit in with nearly every Hyuuga he’d seen around the village. The forehead. They’d planted a fucking curse in a child’s forehead. Then, Iruka was sick, violently so, vomiting on the floor at the foot of the stairs, his body shuddering with the force of it. He puked so hard that some came out of his nose. It burned his throat and his sinus, but it didn’t ease a bit of the sickness he felt. He had to get out of here. This was too horrible, it was so much worse than anything the stupid Uchiha had done. Why had they asked him to investigate if they had such a horrible thing to hide?Scrambling now that he’d left evidence of his breaking and entering all over the floor, Iruka glanced around for a rag or something to wipe up the mess he’d made. He spotted some towels, coated in ink, probably used to clean up the practice seals, and threw a few of them on the vomit. Once they had mostly soaked up the cup noodle he’d eaten for breakfast, he tossed them back in the pile. He probably should have done a better job of disposing of them, but honestly, he could barely think straight. How could something like this be happening in Konoha? Did anyone else know? How secretive could a whole clan really be about something this awful?Iruka stumbled his way up the stairs, slamming the hidden library door. He fumbled around with his chakra before pushing a little bit back into the ward and hoping it wouldn’t look too weird when the next byakugan bearer came by. With shaking hands, Iruka looked around the library for something, anything he could grab to prove he’d come to the library - he wasn’t going to say a word about the secondary library, not on his life - but all he could do was stare blankly at the walls of books and scrolls. There was a sinking in the pit of his stomach, and he felt cold , like ice was trickling through his veins. His chakra was sputtering in fits and starts, his emotions too chaotic to find the fine-tuned control he needed, especially now, when he was in the middle of the private library of an already-on-edge clan. Eventually, Iruka just picked a scroll at random. He plucked it from the shelf and turned to the door. As he stepped into the hallway, though, he heard the warding hum at a higher pitch. Then, a moment later, he heard a light hiss, followed by an awful screeching noise - some sort of alarm. Shoving the scroll into his shirt before clapping his hands to his ears, Iruka moved away from the door. He wondered what could have set the alarms off, and then he realized. His skeleton key had burned out. It had held long enough to get him into the hidden room, but his reaction to what he’d found had either burned out or shut off the key. That must have been why he’d felt so cold in the pit of his stomach - his chakra had stopped circulating through the skeleton key, and with its disappearance, so had gone the warmth he’d grown accustomed to.  Since the interior of the library hadn’t been warded against intruders, the hidden door hadn’t alerted when Iruka passed back through it. But the first line of defense, the upper library, had immediately sensed that Iruka didn’t belong, in the exact moment he crossed the threshold. And now the alarms were sounding.Rather than trying to run (which would be stupid at a time like this, better to surrender than to be killed in an escape attempt), Iruka crouched in the hallway, tucking his knees to his chest, and tried to breathe, the sound of his heartbeat still thump-thumping in his ears over the screech of the alarm. A moment later, he heard someone shouting, “Hey, you! What are you doing here?”Iruka looked up, confused. “Huh?”“You know you’re not supposed to be here!” a Hyuuga shinobi shouted, marching over to Iruka and hoisting him to his feet, grip tight on his bicep. He had a hitai-ate, which he wore over his forehead. Iruka stared stupidly up at him. “I’m not?” he said, sounding dazed even to his own ears.“Only main branch members are allowed in the library,” the man said, his angry expression quickly turning to a look of fear. “You know that. Did you think it wouldn’t be warded?” Iruka still wasn’t sure what was happening right now. “I… I wanted to know what was in there,” he said, still feeling deeply confused.The shinobi bent down on one knee, eyeing Iruka with concern. In the gleam of the shinobi’s polished hitai-ate, Iruka saw milky white eyes staring back at him from a pale face. His henge! He hadn’t dropped it! He’d assumed that the skeleton key and the henge had both gone away at once, but he’d managed to hold his transformation even when the seal fizzled out! Though, if he’d had to pick one, he kind of wished it had been the skeleton key that had stuck around. Being discovered was awkward.  “Kid,” the Hyuuga said, sounding pained. “You know the main branch will punish you for this.”If they tried to seal him Iruka was going to fight them off like a wild animal. No way in hell was he letting the Hyuuga main branch anywhere near him after what he’d just seen. Apparently the look of horror in his eyes was exactly what the shinobi expected to see, because he reached over and pulled Iruka into an embrace. Which, while unexpected, felt nice. Iruka couldn’t remember the last time he’d been given a hug. He’d been carried a few times after being injured, but being hugged as an act of comfort… Iruka blinked hard, trying not to get emotional about being hugged by a total stranger. “It’s all right,” the cadet-branch shinobi murmured. “You’re strong. You’re brave. You will endure.”Iruka didn’t like how ritualistic the words sounded. Like maybe all the cadet members whispered these things to each other, when the main branch wasn’t listening. He was going to be sick again. “I’m sorry,” he said, because this man was being so kind, and Iruka wasn’t a real Hyuuga. This man was going to get in trouble because he’d made the same mistake as every other clan member, and assumed that Iruka was one of them. But he was going to be the one held responsible, simply because he’d been the first to respond to the alarms. He was going to be punished for Iruka’s sake. Iruka didn’t want to test clan security systems anymore. This was too terrible to endure. “Can’t you just let me go?” he begged, because surely it would be better this way.The shinobi shook his head slowly. “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “Perhaps the clan will be merciful. You are still young.”Iruka thought about Neji. He didn’t hold much hope for the ‘mercy’ of the Hyuuga to mean much. Rather than argue further, he just nodded, and allowed the shinobi to lead him away from the center of the manor house, towards one of the sections that seemed to be more populated. As they walked, more and more eyes landed on Iruka, stared at his headband, and then slid away again. There were glances of compassion, some looks of exasperation, and most of all understanding. They all knew what this was. They’d all been punished by the seal concealed behind their headbands. ‘It can even kill , you know,’ the Hyuuga chunin had said.Was attempting to break into the library an offense worthy of capital punishment? Iruka certainly hoped not, but at this point he didn’t trust the Hyuuga at all. Worse still, who was Iruka going to contact if things went badly? He was a nobody!  A useless orphan. Even Itachi would probably get over Iruka’s death pretty quickly. He still had Shisui and Sasuke to hang out with, what did he really need Iruka for?  Maybe the sandaime Hokage would complain. But he probably cared more about keeping the Hyuuga happy. Iruka didn’t think someone like the Lord Third would bother to stick his neck out too far for a failure like him. He didn’t have a family, and the friends he did have would probably never think to look for him in the Hyuuga compound. Well. Maybe Itachi would. But Fugaku and Hiashi had some sort of agreement in place, and if Iruka ruined that, maybe Fugaku would be so angry he’d order Itachi not to look for him!Iruka’s mind continued its panic spiral as he was marched along more identical corridors, until finally, they reached a set of double doors. “Wait here,” the shinobi said, and then glanced at one of the other people waiting outside. “Make sure he doesn’t leave.”Iruka wasn’t going anywhere. He had a feeling that trying to run at this point would just result in an even worse situation.The cadet-branch Hyuuga called through the doors, “Hiashi-sama. I’ve brought the library intruder.”“Come,” came a cold, commanding voice from within.Iruka shuddered at the sound.Nodding, the man stepped back, then grabbed Iruka’s shoulder again. He squeezed, but it was a comforting sort of squeeze, not an angry grip. “Let’s go,” he said, and then slid open the doors, stepping through, dragging Iruka with him. “Hiashi-sama. Elder,” the man bowed deeply. He shoved Iruka so hard that Iruka fell to his knees beside him. Oh. Right. Groveling was probably a good idea at this point. Iruka dropped into the lowest bow he could manage, forehead practically resting on the floor. “Explain, Tsutomu,” Hyuuga Hiashi said, his voice brittle with barely-contained rage.“I found this boy in the hallway outside the library,” said the Hyuuga shinobi, whose name was apparently Tsutomu. “What were you doing by the library?” Hiashi asked, his eyes turning to Iruka. Iruka swallowed hard. “Um. Homework…?” He knew there was no good excuse at this point. But what was he supposed to say? Could he find a way to escape punishment AND not reveal himself? Would the Hyuuga clan head still be angry if he found out the person going for the library had been Iruka, rather than a member of the clan? He wasn’t sure. “Answer me honestly,” Hiashi snarled, staring extremely pointedly at Iruka. Iruka blinked, not sure what to say. A moment later, Hiashi made an impatient gesture, and Iruka heard a very odd ping! of chakra originating from the clan head’s location. It took him a few seconds too long to realize what was happening. He flinched, reaching for his headband, but before his hand could touch it, Hyuuga Hiashi was standing in front of him, a crushing grip on his wrist as he snarled, “Who are you, really? And how dare you try and make fools of us now, of all times!”Iruka lost his temper a bit, at that point, and dropped his henge. “What are you talking about?” he demanded. “You told me to do it! Are you going to lie and pretend you didn’t?”Hiashi froze, his eyes widening as he stared at Iruka. “You… you’re the boy Fugaku recommended,” he said slowly.“Yeah, can you let go of my arm now?” Iruka snapped. “How did you get all the way to the library?” Hiashi asked.“Because you have major security flaws, you know this already,” Iruka answered, wishing he had enough courage to punch Hiashi in his flawless face. The man was so annoying! “Do you really think this is the time to be disrespectful?” Hiashi lowered his voice to an almost-whisper. “Do you think this is the time to quibble over my methods?” Iruka shot back. “I got in, didn’t I?”Hiashi stared at Iruka for a long moment, his eyes widening slowly. “…did you?”Iruka reached inside his shirt with his other hand, pulling out the scroll he’d taken. “Does this look familiar?”Hiashi released his arm like he’d been burned, snatching the scroll from his hands. “You’ve stolen from us,” he said. Iruka frowned. “No, I just borrowed it. I wasn’t going to leave with it.” Wasn’t borrowing resources the whole point of having a library in the first place? Why were clans so weirdly possessive of their things?“I think I’ll allow Inoichi to be the judge of that,” Hiashi replied in a dark tone. “Tsutomu. Kindly fetch us an ANBU.”For what it was worth, the man didn’t seem any less sympathetic now that he knew Iruka wasn’t actually a Hyuuga. His face was as expressionless and closed as it had been before. But somehow, Iruka had the feeling he wasn’t going to be getting another hug. Hyuuga Tsutomu bowed, and left. Now it was just Iruka, Hiashi, and the Hyuuga elder. Was it weird that Iruka was actually relieved that they’d decided to call ANBU and T&I? He actually liked his chances better there than locked in a room with people as morally bankrupt as the Hyuuga clan heads. Once the cadet branch member had left, Hyuuga Hiashi’s expression shifted slightly, from totally stone-faced to just mostly stone-faced. He returned to his seat, settling down and inspecting the scroll Iruka had handed him with a displeased expression.Frankly, Iruka felt like he was being unfair. He’d done exactly what Hiashi had asked him to do, and now he was the one in trouble? For what, being too good at sneaking around? This was unfair. See if he ever did one of the great clans a favor again. “Did you read it?” Hiashi asked, and for a moment Iruka panicked.Then, he realized Hiashi was likely referring to the scroll, not the top-secret seals beneath the library. “Of course not,” Iruka scoffed. “I just had to prove I got in there. I didn’t care what I grabbed, so I just picked something at random.” He was beginning to wonder if maybe he should have read the scrolls and picked one that seemed less damning than whatever scroll he’d selected in his moment of crisis. “You randomly picked a scroll that records forbidden techniques?” Hiashi asked, raising an eyebrow.Iruka felt his eyes widen in surprise. He decided the gut reaction fit the story he was telling, so he didn’t bother hiding his shock. “You leave your forbidden techniques lying around on random library shelves? It wasn’t even trapped or anything!” and how lucky Iruka was that it hadn’t been - he hadn’t even considered looking for traps on it!“It has an alarm set into the paper that is meant to react when it's carried out of the room,” Hiashi explained. “How did you manage to get all the way in, and then get caught by something so simple?”Iruka felt a bubble of frustration in his chest. His discovery hadn’t been because of the skeleton key failing after all! The doorway hadn’t been looking for the belonging of anyone exiting, so that must have been an entry requirement only. Which was also stupid, because what if Iruka had thought to use his skeleton key on the scroll? He could have walked all the way out with no one the wiser! “It must have been a dormant ward,” Iruka answered Hiashi’s question. “Those are quieter, and there was hundreds of dormant wards all over the library. I didn’t think to check if any of the wards were attached to specific documents.” He was never making that mistake again. He would check every scroll he ever encountered from now on.Hiashi was scowling at Iruka. “You mean to say you didn’t intentionally steal forbidden techniques?”Iruka wanted to scream, a little bit. As if the forbidden techniques in that scroll could be anything compared to the despicable things he’d found in the research room under the main library. “I intentionally took them, but I didn’t plan on reading the them! I just wanted to have proof that I’d been inside your library!” Iruka couldn’t help feeling frustrated at this point. He was actually telling the truth, even if he had other things to hide. Why was it so hard to believe that he’d just grabbed a random scroll? “I didn’t even draw any moustaches on any illustrations, so I don’t understand why you’re so mad about it!”Hiashi’s eyebrows jumped towards his hairline in surprise. “…moustaches?” he repeated, confused enough that the anger had fallen from his voice.“I mean, that’s why Konoha Public Library banned me,” Iruka said. “I figured as long as I didn’t deface anything, it would be okay. The Sarutobi Family hasn’t kicked me out of their library yet.”Hiashi blinked hard, twice, then said, in a very pointedly neutral tone, “The… Sarutobi Family?”“I mean,” Iruka said, realizing that somehow he’d managed to distract the clan leader from his agitation, and milking it for all it was worth, “mostly I just used the Sarutobi library for homework assignments and my exploding tags, but-” He shut his mouth, seeing a spark of something dangerous in Hiashi’s eyes, and only realized his mistake after the clan leader spoke again, his voice low and deadly. “Exploding tags? That’s… seals work, right?”Iruka shrugged. “I dunno, I consider it more prank work,” he said, trying as hard as he could to sound casual and stupid. This was going so bad. Why was it taking the ANBU so damn long to come? He wanted to be dragged to T&I and away from this situation so bad he was almost ready to promise he would never prank the ANBU again. Not that he’d pranked them recently, but he thought it was nice to at least leave the option open for dire situations. This situation sure felt dire, though, and it was a worthwhile bargaining chip.“…prank work.”“You know, like making glitter explosives,” Iruka said. “Or little glue splatters that make people stick to things.” He forced a grin. “But don’t tell the Sarutobi Family. They think I’m studying serious stuff.”Hiashi appeared only partially convinced. “Glitter and glue,” he repeated. Iruka nodded. “Yeah, and-”The door to the room flew open, allowing Tsutomu to reenter. He had an ANBU with him. An ANBU that Iruka, unfortunately, recognized.“Aw man, he got you?” Iruka whined. “Why are you the one dragging me to T&I again?”Hound turned slowly, his porcelain mask showing no emotion, though his body language screamed smugness.   “Why are you causing trouble again?” he answered Iruka’s question with a question.“I’m not!” Iruka protested, pointing at Hiashi, “he asked me to!”“The boy was merely… overzealous in his attempt to help,” Hiashi said. “I’d like Inoichi to ensure he doesn’t know more than he should.”The ANBU cocked his head slightly, staring at the Hyuuga clan head for a long moment. “You want to subject one of our own to a formal interrogation?” he asked. “Yes,” Hyuuga Hiashi said firmly.“Do you consent to the investigation?” Hound asked Iruka. Iruka didn’t bother to hide his surprise. “I can choose to not consent?”“You may,” Hiashi said darkly, “but if you have nothing to hide, why refuse?”Iruka scowled. “That’s a bullshit premise. I have the right to privacy, and you can’t guarantee that whatever they find in my mind isn’t going to affect me somehow. Plus, it’s risky, right?” he looked at Hound, who was staring back at him with what seemed to be mild approval. Which was a bit freaky, honestly. Hound was always the one looking down on him, after all. It seemed weird to have him not harshly judging Iruka’s choices.“You can refuse,” Hiashi said, “but I’ll file a request with the council. They will agree to it, and I’ll insist on being there myself.”Iruka swallowed. That would be so much worse. Aw hell, he’d wanted to figure out if anyone else in Konoha knew about the fuckery these Hyuuga bastards were up to, anyway. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll go to T&I. But they get to decide the method of interrogation, not you.” He scowled at Hyuuga Hiashi, who nodded his head in acquiescence. “Very well. Thank you, Hound, for coming so quickly. And, I suppose, thank you…” Hiashi was staring at Iruka. Iruka realized, then, that Hiashi didn’t even remember his name. What a jerk. “The name’s Iruka,” he said. “Umino Iruka. Don’t forget it.”Hiashi nodded slowly. “Believe me,” he said, “I won’t.”Iruka thought, belatedly, that perhaps he should have given Hiashi a fake name. He wasn’t sure he wanted to be remembered by any main branch members of the Hyuuga family.“All right, kid,” Hound said, grabbing Iruka by the bicep. “Let’s do this one more time. Am I going to have to drag you again, or are you going to come willingly?”Iruka sighed. “I’ll come willingly,” he said. Hound huffed something that sounded vaguely disbelieving, and he didn’t let go of Iruka’s arm, but he also didn’t drag Iruka as the two of them made their way out of the Hyuuga compound and through the crowded village streets.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Morino Ibiki did not look surprised to see Iruka being dragged in by Hound, which meant that word must have preceded them to T&I. This theory was confirmed when the desk clerk greeted him with a wink, before saying, “Hey, kid. Welcome back! I have an interrogation room with your name on it,”  and standing up from behind the desk, indicating that Hound could let Iruka go, and he would take over.

Hound lingered for a moment longer than was strictly necessary, then finally let go of Iruka’s arm.

Iruka shook his arm pointedly once the annoying ANBU finally dropped it. “I figured you’d have something waiting for me,” he sighed, still annoyed at how the Hyuuga had treated him. “Is it really going to be Yamanaka Inoichi in there?”

Ibiki just raised a solitary eyebrow. “What do

you

think?”

“I think the Hyuuga are paranoid,” Iruka answered, a little bit impressed by how bitter he sounded about the whole deal. He hadn’t realized how upset he was until he heard it in his own voice.

“Eh, most of the major clans are,” Ibiki replied, coming around the side of the desk with a small stack of papers clutched in his hands. “So, yes, it’s Inoichi-san.” He smirked, then. “No need to worry, though, he’s heard enough about you to know you’re

probably

innocent.”

Hound snorted at that, and despite himself Iruka felt inclined to agree. “Oh yeah?” he said. “That’d be a first.”

Ibiki gave Iruka a sharp look. “I may have put in a good word for you,” he said. “Don’t make me regret it.”

“I don’t think you will,” Iruka said. “I’m only here because Hyuuga Hiashi asked me to break into his house and then didn’t expect me to be able to do it. He just sent me here because he’s mad that I was actually

competent

at the job he asked me to do.” He made a bit of a face, and asked, rhetorically, “Doesn’t that say something sad about the capabilities of the people he usually asks to do things for him?”

“I think you should save this for the interrogation room,” Ibiki said, giving Iruka a vaguely amused look. “I’m not the one you have to convince.”

Iruka shrugged. It wasn’t a lie, so he didn’t see the problem in repeating himself, since the information wouldn’t change. He figured Inoichi was probably already watching him anyway, there was no way T&I didn’t have eyes everywhere. “Sure, whatever,” he said. “Am I going to be allowed to walk out on my own this time, or should I put in an advance request to be retrieved by the Lord Third?”

“You’re here of your own volition, you’ll be able to leave on your own recognizance,” Ibiki answered. “You should know,” he added, indicating for Iruka to follow him, “that you have the right to not answer any question you don’t want to answer. You weren’t brought here because of a formal investigation, so there’s no expectation for you to tell us everything.”

“Yeah, but if I give you guys the runaround, the Hyuuga clan will complain about it,” Iruka replied. “I don’t want to deal with that mess any more than I have to. But I guess if I’m asked about my history of drawing moustaches in books, it’s good to know I don’t have to answer that.”

Ibiki blinked. “Are there

more

moustaches in books somewhere that we don’t know about?”

Iruka smirked. “Sorry, I’d like to invoke my rights and not answer that.”

Ibiki huffed in amusement at that. “Get in there, you troublemaker,” he said, his voice coloring the words with a fondness that didn’t usually accompany a phrase like that, particularly when it was being aimed in Iruka’s direction. It felt weirdly nice, to be called a troublemaker and know there was no real malice attached to the pejorative.

Iruka realized they were already at the interrogation room - it was nicer than the one he’d been in with Itachi, and he wondered if Ibiki had actually been trying to ‘scare him straight’ after all. Then he wondered if it was just more fancy because it was

Inoichi’s

interrogation room. “This place is nice,” he commented, looking around. “Can I get a snack, or something?” It seemed like the sort of interrogation room where they might actually offer refreshments, and not something nasty like watery gruel and stale rice crackers.

Ibiki chuckled. “Missed lunch, did you?”

“Yeah,” Iruka admitted, realizing he’d vomited not long ago, and that was probably part of why he was feeling hungry now. He should have tried harder to keep it down, but… oof. On second thought, he might be talking about it again soon. Maybe he

shouldn’t

have any snacks. “But now that I’m thinking about it…”

“I’m sure if you change your mind something can be arranged,” Ibiki said. “Go on now and have a seat. Inoichi-san will be with you shortly.”

Iruka turned to say good-bye to Hound, only to realize the ANBU had already vanished. “Oh,” he said.

Ibiki raised an eyebrow. “Oh?” he repeated.

“My menacing friend left without saying goodbye,” Iruka indicated the empty space of hallway where he thought Hound would be standing.

“That’s pretty typical,” Ibiki said. “Most ANBU don’t stick around very long.”

Iruka nodded, and stepped though the doorway, turning around once he was inside the room, grinning at the T&I clerk. “Thanks for walking me to my fancy interrogation room.”

“If it looks like it’ll be going long, I’ll knock and take dinner requests,” Ibiki said.

Iruka was pretty sure he was joking, but it was hard to tell when the man kept a straight face. “Awesome,” he said. “I like beef.”

“I’ll see if it’s in the budget,” Ibiki replied, reaching out and grabbing the door, beginning to slide it shut. “Good luck.”

Iruka nodded, and the door closed with a soft

click

of the latch. He looked around the room again. It was fairly spacious. It didn’t have a window (of course, security reasons, probably), but it had a light bulb that seemed to be a soft, warm glow, rather than an uncomfortable fluorescent bulb. There was a table, and four chairs, two on either side of the table.  The walls were painted a warm color, not quite white but also not quite yellow, and it made the room seem wider and brighter. When Iruka made his way to one of the chairs, he was pleased to discover that the seat was soft and comfortable. He settled back in his seat, and stared at the door, waiting for his interrogator to arrive. Hopefully it wouldn’t take the Yamanaka clan head too long to make his way there.

As if he’d been waiting for Iruka’s thoughts as a cue (could he read minds without eye contact? He’d heard that Yamanaka clan members could read minds or control minds or something like that, though of course the secret was kept fairly hush-hush among clan members, and Iruka wasn’t exactly in the know), Yamanaka Inoichi swept the door open, stepping through and shutting it again before turning around and eyeing Iruka with raised eyebrows.

Iruka stood, because it seemed rude to be sitting when the man was still standing. “Hello,” he said, a bit awkwardly.

“Hello,” Inoichi replied, much more at ease. “Please, have a seat.”

Iruka sat down again. “So,” he said, “Am I allowed to ask questions, too?”

“Certainly,” Inoichi said, sitting down in one of the two chairs opposite Iruka. “What questions do you have in mind?”

“Okay, um,” Iruka considered the question. “First of all, did the Hyuugas tell you anything specific to ask me about?”

“They did,” Inoichi answered.

Iruka waited for him to elaborate. He did not. It took Iruka a moment to clue in. “Oh, that’s probably part of the interrogation, huh? If I ask about what they told you to ask about, then you’ll probably get more information from me that way.”

Inoichi nodded. “That’s generally the case, yes.”

“Okay,” Iruka said. “So I’m not going to throw darts at a wall of

things I might know about the Hyuuga clan

and hope I hit the right one, because that just gives you extra information that you may not need to report back to the Hyuugas, but might also be expected to report back.”

Inoichi was leaning forward slightly, resting his weight slightly on his forearms. His expression was open and gentle, and he seemed to be listening with rapt attention to everything Iruka said. Damn. He was

good

at this interrogation stuff.

“Anyway,” Iruka continued, feeling like he was almost picking up steam instead of cooling off, “Do you know how long this will take?”

“It depends on how much you have to say,” Inoichi answered.

That was a fair answer, Iruka decided. A bit vague, but then, Inoichi didn’t really know what exactly Iruka knew. “Okay,” Iruka said. “Last question - are you going to report back

everything

I say to the Hyuuga? Or is it possible for me to ask you to

not

tell them something that I did?”

Inoichi looked thoughtful, and he took a few solid seconds to think before he asked Iruka a question in return. “Do you think you know more than the Hyuuga clan would be comfortable with you knowing?”

“I don’t think the Hyuuga clan is comfortable with anyone knowing anything,” Iruka said. “But I also did some… embarrassing stuff. I don’t want them to know about it.” He didn’t want to make it sound like he’d found a deep dark Hyuuga secret if it turned out that Inoichi was obligated to report everything he learned back to the Hyuuga.

“I’ll be writing a final report,” Inoichi said, “and turning it over to the Hyuuga. If you’re worried about something embarrassing getting back to them, I’d be willing to let you read the report yourself. You won’t be able to remove anything from the report, but you’ll at least know what they know about the situation.”

“And what if there are things in there that turn out to be clan secrets or something major?” Iruka asked. “Or what if they don’t believe your report? Hyuuga Hiashi made it sound like he would come in here and observe the interrogation.”

“I doubt it would come down to that,” Inoichi said smoothly. “That’s why I’ve elected to do this myself. It’s highly unusual for us to question one of our own, but there are certain secrets the Hyuuga clan holds very dear.”

I bet they do,

Iruka thought, a bit viciously. “Like the scroll from their library,” he said.

“Indeed,” Inoichi agreed.

“Okay,” Iruka said, leaning back. “I’m done asking questions. Your turn.”

Inoichi nodded. “Can you tell me how you came to be in the Hyuuga family library?”

“Well it’s really the Hyuuga’s own fault,” Iruka began. “They asked me to investigate…”

“And so you decided that rather than kidnapping a Hyuuga child, you would use this… you’re calling it a

skeleton key,

yes?” Inoichi paused briefly for Iruka to nod, and then resumed, “...to try and break into a similarly secure area.”

“Yeah, which is why I chose the library,” Iruka said.

“So you broke into the library,” Inoichi said. “And you stole a scroll.”

“That was kind of an accident,” Iruka said. “I didn’t actually plan on stealing anything.”

“So you…

took

a scroll,” Inoichi said slowly, frowning a little. “But you didn’t steal it.”

“I didn’t even read it!” Iruka exclaimed. “That’s pretty surprising, for me. I would have probably paid closer attention to what I was taking, if I hadn’t been…” he trailed off, there, realizing he’d talked himself into a corner. “Um.”

Yamanaka Inoichi blinked slowly, waiting for Iruka to continue.  Iruka did

not

want to continue. They stared at each other for several seconds before Inoichi said, in a very calm and reasonable and slightly friendly voice, “If you hadn’t been… what?”

“Panicking?” Iruka said. “I was panicked.”

“What made you so upset?” Inoichi asked.

“Um,” Iruka hadn’t thought that far ahead. “I just wanted to get out of there.”

“Why did you want to get out of there?”

“I… found something that made me uneasy,” Iruka said.

“Something that

wasn’t

the scroll you took,” Inoichi said slowly, more as if he was piecing together the disjointed pieces of Iruka’s story than actually asking a clarifying question. “Something that shook you so deeply that it led to you

taking,”

he made a bit of an amused face at the specific wording, “a classified scroll from the Hyuuga clan library without looking carefully at what you took, or bothering to attempt to read it before you left with it.”

Iruka nodded slowly.

“So whatever you found there that spooked you, it wasn’t in a scroll,” Yamanaka Inoichi said.

Iruka felt his eyes widen. Oh, shit. He hadn’t thought about what that part of his story had implied. “No,” he said slowly. “It wasn’t a scroll that made me panic.”

Inoichi nodded slowly. “What was it?”

“It was something I found,” Iruka said. “Um. Something the Hyuuga

definitely

don’t want me to know about. And. I don’t know how much other people - like you, I mean - might know about the Hyuuga clan, but… it’s…” He paused, meeting Inoichi’s gaze, holding it for a long moment before continuing. “I

really

don’t want them to know that I know about this,” he said. “I don’t want my memory erased.”

Inoichi’s eyebrows were steadily climbing towards his hairline. “You think it’s worth erasing your memory over?” he asked. “Surely Hiashi was being dramatic when he said that to you.”

“Maybe,” Iruka said. “But he might change his mind if he finds out the truth.”

Inoichi waited.

“Look,” Iruka said. “You have to

promise

you won’t tell the Hyuuga this part.”

“I cannot make that promise,” Inoichi said softly.

“Then,” Iruka felt an echo of the panic in the library crawling in his chest. “I can’t tell you.”

Inoichi held his gaze. “Do you think that wise?”

“You

can’t

tell them,” Iruka repeated firmly. “Please.”

“I will not make that promise, Umino Iruka,” Yamanaka Inoichi. “If there is something you know that you should not, it may be necessary to inform them of the security breach.”

Iruka’s stomach was churning. “They’ll want my memory erased for sure,” he said in a whisper.

Inoichi said nothing, his calm, steady gaze boring into Iruka as he waited. The silence stretched taut, until Iruka thought he was going to have to scream if he didn’t say

something.

Inoichi already knew he knew something bad. Not saying anything would just make it more difficult to convince the head of T&I that he was cooperative. He had to say it. He felt sick all over again.

“They have a second library,” Iruka finally said in a rush, feeling like his words were tumbling over themselves in the rush to get them out, “Under the first one. But it’s not really a library, more like… a research room. They were experimenting…”

Inoichi’s expression went suddenly and perfectly blank. All expression dropped away, and it was like Iruka was suddenly staring at a stone wall.

Iruka stopped speaking, a bit unsettled by Inoichi’s forced

lack

of reaction that somehow felt more dramatic than all of the conversational niceties he’d been using throughout the interrogation so far. “Um.”

“Please continue,” Inoichi said, in a deliberate, careful tone.

“It was human experimentation,” Iruka said quickly. “They were practicing using seals on

humans.

Seals to enforce control over a person, to punish… and kill.” He heard his voice quiver as he continued speaking, “It’s planted in the chakra system. I think they put it on all the cadet branch members of the clan.” He heard himself laugh, a bit too-high-pitched to be a genuine laugh. It was more an expression of nerves than anything, and he certainly didn’t feel any true mirth. “I don’t even really know what a cadet branch is, I just… put the pieces together, based on the conversations I had, you know? And then when I saw the seal research room, I panicked.”

Inoichi’s expression was slowly softening again. The worst of the shock seemed to be subsiding, and he gestured briefly for Iruka to continue.

“I grabbed the first scroll I saw and ran. I was so upset that I got sloppy.” Iruka hated how stupid this last part made him sound. Everything had been going

so well

until he’d made an amateur mistake! “Leaving the library tripped an alarm. At first, I thought my skeleton key had failed, and my henge had dropped. But it turns out the problem was the scroll I grabbed. It had an anti-theft seal set on it and it triggered when I passed through the library doors.” Iruka gestured vaguely. “Then I got taken to see Hiashi and he sent me here. So that’s… that’s what I know.” He bit his lip, trying to speak without letting his voice shake anymore. “Please… please don’t tell the Hyuuga I know about the seal. The…

cage,

I think it’s called.”

Inoichi’s expression was still carefully neutral, much moreso than it had been at the beginning of the interrogation. “I’ll let you read my report once it’s finished,” he said. “I cannot make you any promises.”

Iruka nodded.

“How did you find the

second

library?” Inoichi asked.

Iruka sighed, and felt a bit of the tension in his stomach ease. Now that the truth was out, it wasn’t really his problem to deal with anymore. If Inoichi told the Hyuuga, then he’d deal with that when it happened. Now, at least, he didn’t have to work so hard to hide from the truth. “I had to hide stuff in Konoha orphanage all the time, so I got pretty good at finding hidden latches…”

Iruka finally stumbled out of the interrogation room much later than he thought either he or Inoichi expected it to be. Ibiki was standing right beside the door, a furoshiki-wrapped bento in his hands.

“Beef,” he said, handing the box to Iruka. “Follow me.”

Iruka frowned. “I’m not allowed to leave yet?”

Ibiki glanced over his shoulder at Iruka. “I thought you’d want to read Inoichi-san’s report. But if you want to just leave…”

“No! No, I definitely want to read the report,” Iruka said quickly.

“Ok, then follow me,” Ibiki repeated, sounding vaguely annoyed.

Iruka did so, and found himself in an interrogation room much more similar to the one he and Itachi had been left in on his first visit to T&I. “I really feel like the Lord Third is going to need to bust me out again,” Iruka said, dropping into an uncomfortable chair with a sigh.

“You can leave whenever you want,” Ibiki said, “stop whining.”

Iruka poked at the knot in the furoshiki cloth wrapped around the bento box. “Is this dinner?”

“Sure,” Ibiki said, and sat down in the chair nearest Iruka. “Mind if I ask you some questions?”

“As long as they’re not about the Hyuuga,” Iruka said tiredly.

“I’m wondering if you’ve made any progress on those hallucinogen tags,” Ibiki asked. “Or finding other ways to trigger the tags without using chakra.”

“I’ve looked into it,” Iruka said. “I think for the tags, if there was a way to chain tags together, or allow the chakra to travel a greater distance - maybe like through chakra wire - there’s a chance that there could be an alternate trigger system. But it’s still very much in development.”

“Huh,” Ibiki said. “All right. Anything else interesting?”

“I mean,” Iruka frowned. “It’ll be in Inoichi’s report, but I invented a seal that lets me get through clan barrier security.”

Ibiki leaned forward a little. “Go on.”

Iruka started unwrapping the bento, too hungry to be polite and wait until they’d finished the conversation. “It basically operates through the concept of

belonging…”

After about twenty minutes of chatter with Ibiki, who seemed

very

interested in the skeleton key, the T&I desk clerk excused himself, taking Iruka’s empty bento box with him. “Inoichi-san will come collect you when he’s finished the report,” he said.

Iruka wondered the report Inoichi was going to let him read would

actually

be the one he gave to the Hyuuga, or if he was just writing something to placate Iruka. It had been almost half an hour at this point, after all! What could possibly take him so long? He was getting antsy, and he wanted to be able to go back to his apartment and sleep for a million years. He knew too much and he didn’t want to know the things he’d learned. He wished he’d never invented the skeleton key. Even if Ibiki had seemed really interested in it…

He sighed, the events of the day weighing on him more now that he didn’t have anything to occupy his attention. Ibiki was gone, his bento was gone, and Iruka only had his pouch with him. He didn’t think T&I would take it well if he started experimenting on his tags in an interrogation room, so he was stuck staring at a dull wooden table, waiting for Inoichi to bring his report.

Just about the time Iruka was contemplating how much trouble he’d get into for trying to wiggle his way through one of the very conveniently placed air vents (it was probably there so people could observe an interrogation from above, not built for people to sneak

out,

but surely there was a way to get in there), the door to the interrogation room swung open, and Inoichi poked his head in.

“Hello, Iruka,” he said warmly. “I’ve finished the report, if you’d like to see it.”

“Sure,” Iruka said, sitting up straighter.

“I’m sorry for the delay,” Inoichi said, moving into the room and pulling up a chair across from Iruka. “I had to have an emergency meeting with the Third Hokage to grant you temporary A-Rank Intelligence security clearance.”

Iruka felt his eyes widen at that. “I have A-rank Security clearance?” he asked.

“For the moment,” Inoichi said, and slid a piece of paper towards him. “You’ll need it to read the report.”

Iruka accepted the report, and frowned at it. It looked very different from the mission reports he had learned to write with Yuuki-sensei after their genin team took a job. There was something even weirder than the format, though. The report was written in some sort of field code or shorthand. He looked up from the paper, frowning at Inoichi.

Inoichi stared back at him, slowly raising one eyebrow. “Question?”

“It’s in code,” Iruka said, hearing the accusation in his tone, and hating that it made him sound like a whiny baby.

“It is in code,” Inoichi replied, still with that almost-annoyingly warm and inviting tone of voice.

“Do you have a cipher?” Iruka asked.

“I do,” Inoichi said.

Silence reigned for several long seconds.

“Can I

use

the cipher?” Iruka finally asked.

“No,” Inoichi answered, still sounding as pleasant as ever.

Iruka sighed. “Let me guess - you said I could read your report, but you never promised to make the report

more readable

for me.”

Inoichi’s lips twitched, like he was suppressing a smile. “Something like that.”

“How long do I have to read this report?” Iruka asked. “What’s the deadline to get it to the Hyuuga clan?”

Inoichi considered the question. “I should probably hand it off within five hours, or questions might get asked.”

“Okay,” Iruka said, scowling down at the paper again, trying to look for a pattern. “Can I have some scratch paper?”

Inoichi pulled out a small roll of paper, and then a pen, before Iruka could ask for that, too. “If you have any questions,” he said, standing and heading for the door, “just shout.”

Iruka had no doubts someone would hear him. They would probably hear him even if he whispered. This

was

T&I, after all. “Okay,” he said, and then started copying down the strange message written on Inoichi’s report paper. He only had five hours to decode it, and he’d never been great at code-breaking. It was going to take a

lot

of concentration to figure out what was happening in this code. At least he could possibly look for repeated phrases, and try and build from there. He had a feeling the word ‘Hyuuga’ would be in there a lot, so he’d probably start with that.

He heard the door swing closed, and sighed, bending over the report paper. He had a lot to finish in the next few hours…

In the end, Iruka only managed to decode about two thirds of the report, his cipher was a bit pathetic-looking. It seemed like Inoichi had used a lot of technical language, which Iruka barely knew how to write in a normal report, much less an encoded one! He did get far enough that he thought that Inoichi had actually

not

included the part about the secret library. Or maybe he had, and Iruka just hadn’t been able to decode that.

He was getting ready to pull his hair out by the roots when he heard a knock at the interrogation room’s door, and Inoichi poked his head back in the room. “I’ll be taking that report, now,” he said.

“I made a copy of it,” Iruka said, picking up one of the scrap papers and waving it at Inoichi. “Can I keep working on the copy? I didn’t get the chance to read everything you wrote, yet.”

“Let me see what you have,” Inoichi said, taking the report and rolling it up before leaning over and slowly scooping up Iruka’s scratch paper. He shuffled through the pages a few times, his eyes dancing over the paper. Iruka couldn’t tell what he was thinking, because he was keeping his face at pleasant-neutral again. He handed the papers back a moment later. “Not bad,” he said. “This might help.” He withdrew another piece of paper, handing it to Iruka. “That doesn’t leave this room,” he said. “Destroy it - and your copy - before leaving.”

Iruka nodded, frowning a little bit. “Okay,” he said, then looked down. It was the cipher. “Oh

come on!”

he exclaimed, glancing up in irritation. Inoichi was gone, and the door was closed. He hadn’t heard the man leave. “

…showoff,

” he grumbled under his breath. He looked at the cipher, and immediately spotted the missing symbol that would have broken the code had he been smart enough to figure it out on his own. “REALLY?!” he yelled.

A knock sounded on the door. “Hey, kid, keep it down,” Ibiki’s voice sounded through the door. “Unless you’re done?”

Iruka sighed. “Not yet,” he said, and ducked over his notes, starting over with the real cipher. It only took a few minutes before he had the full report sitting in front of him. If it was the real report. He wondered if Inoichi had been lying to him about the report, like he’d suspected. It was so… uninformative. Helpfully so.

The following is an abbreviated report following the debrief of a non-hostile intelligence asset.

For access to the full interview transcript, please submit request form 1357A-C75 to the Konoha Intelligence Division head office. This document must be submitted in-person. Identity verification screening will be required before document processing may occur. Portions of original transcript files may be placed under further security protocols in accordance with Procedure Manual Section 5, Subsection 3A of the Konoha Intelligence Division Handbook, 3rd Edition, Revised.

Asset debrief began at approximately 16:43 Konoha Standard Time. Debrief Concluded at 20:11 Konoha Standard Time.

Asset UMN-01G described the methods by which they gained access to the Hyuuga compound. Infiltration was accomplished by means of exploitation of outdated security protocols currently instated at the Hyuuga clan compound. See documents submitted by Asset UCH-0605J for similar notes of outdated system protocols of major clan residences.

Asset UMN-01G described further intelligence gathered regarding the Hyuuga clan’s operations and protocols. This was largely collected via standard methods of observation and direct contact information-gathering tactics. Due to the Hyuuga clan’s outdated security protocols, the asset was welcomed as a friendly party and was able to gain access to restricted areas.

Asset acquired a document and restricted knowledge of the Hyuuga clan while operating under the impression that gathering sufficiently damning information was mission-critical in order to provide sufficient evidence of security lapse. This interviewer finds no concern with any of the information the Asset retrieved in the course of duty.

Recommendation: Immediate Update to Hyuuga Clan Security Protocols 
Recommendation: Revise Hyuuga Clan Asset Management Techniques
Recommendation: Minimum A-Rank Intellegence Access for future Infiltration Assets

This concludes the abbreviated report. Further questions may be directed to the Konoha Intelligence Division main office staff.

Iruka couldn’t believe how

little

Inoichi willingly told the Hyuuga clan. He’d even made it sound like the information Iruka got was from the scroll, and not somewhere more damning. The recommendations at the end sounded so petty and passive-aggressive that Iruka almost laughed. He felt like a weight had lifted from his shoulders, if only for a moment.

Then, that weight came crashing down again as he realized what this meant - Inoichi knew about the Hyuuga clan’s seal. He

knew.

The Hokage must know, too. They knew, and they weren’t doing anything about it. Weren’t doing anything to stop the Hyuuga clan from

controlling

their own people with a horrible trap planted in the chakra system of their own cadet branch! (Iruka still wasn’t entirely clear on what the cadet branch was, exactly. Maybe he’d figure it out someday.)

He thought about little Neji, with his headaches and his messed-up chakra. It wasn’t fair! How could they do something so horrible to such a little kid?

He immediately shoved all the papers away from himself, and said, “Hey, can I get some fire in here or something?”

Ibiki stepped in a moment later, carrying a book of matches. “Destroying the evidence?” he asked.

“I’m not allowed to leave until I do,” Iruka said, and slowly gathered up the papers, turning them face-down. “Are… are

you

allowed to see this?”

“I have S-Rank security clearance, kid,” Ibiki said, sounding slightly miffed. “They have me at the desk for a reason.”

Iruka felt a bit dumb. “Oh. Right. I guess that makes sense.”

“Besides,” Ibiki said, “I already read it.” He tossed the book of matches to Iruka, who managed to catch it. “Go ahead and burn it all.”

Iruka nodded, and struck a match, laying it on the paper and watching the small pile go up in smoke. He just wished his own memories of what he’d seen in the Hyuuga clan’s library could be erased as easily as the copy of Inoichi’s report.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

It was really late - or early, since it was almost 2am - when Iruka left T&I, and he was feeling kind of hungry, because his dinner had been quite a few hours previous. And Ibiki hadn’t gotten him any snacks while he was trying to decode Inoichi’s report. He wasn’t mad about it, but he was still broke and had been hoping to get at

least

a snack on T&I’s dime. Unless they charged the Hyuuga Clan for the trouble of debriefing him, in which case he kind of wished they’d fed him

more,

because he really wanted the Hyuuga to regret suspecting him of snooping.

Even though, of course, that’s exactly what he

had

done. But now that he’d read Inoichi’s report, he knew that the Hyuuga only had a very limited view of all that Iruka knew. And he planned on keeping it that way.

A worrying thought came to him, then. Were the Hyuuga going to take the cost of a T&I interrogation out of his paycheck? He didn’t even know what he was going to get paid, and he already felt like he was losing money! He frowned at the thought as he trudged down the mostly-empty streets of Konoha, heading for the apartment he was borrowing in the Jonin barracks, ready to crash face-first into his futon and sleep for the next ten hours.

A soft footfall sounded behind him, and Iruka spun around, paranoia getting the better of him. Had the Hyuuga come to confirm the interrogation with one of their own?!

Instead, he found himself facing a familiar ANBU, whose expressionless mask still somehow managed to radiate a feeling of disappointment and disapproval.

“Oh, hey!” Iruka greeted, grateful for once to see Hound, since he’d been the one to usher him away from the Hyuuga in the first place, so he probably wasn’t here to kidnap and torture Iruka until he confessed to knowing deep dark clan secrets. “You left without saying goodbye earlier.”

Hound stared at Iruka for a very long moment before saying, “You’re just now leaving T&I? What the hell did Inoichi ask about, every prank you've committed since you entered the ninja academy?”

“Excuse you!” Iruka protested, “I didn't start pranking until my parents died, and I started at the academy two

years

before that happened!”

In the long, painful silence that followed, Iruka had ample time to reflect on the fact that he’d maybe gotten too comfortable with sharing details of his life that were probably best reserved for visits to T&I, or maybe his teatime with old man Sarutobi.

“…I stand corrected,” Hound finally said, somehow managing to sound no more or less awkward than he always did. “So you

were

with Inoichi, then?”

“They had to get me A-Rank security clearance before we could finish,” Iruka explained, feeling a bit of pride at the thought. He was pretty sure the next highest level was S-rank, which was mostly reserved for ANBU personnel.

Oddly enough, the ANBU stiffened a bit at the revelation. After another beat of silence, he said, “I’d recommend keeping that to yourself.”

Iruka blinked. “Why?”

Hound sighed heavily. “Do you

want

people to know you have knowledge that usually requires jonin-level skills to access?”

Iruka felt his stomach clench with sudden anxiety. “People like the Hyuuga Clan?” he asked quietly.

The ANBU didn’t answer directly, but he did tilt his head ever-so-slightly, which was confirmation enough for Iruka.

“Right, noted.” Iruka said, then frowned. “Is that why you came to talk to me? To warn me?”

Hound scoffed. “As if I would waste my time checking in on an unrepentant trickster. Even if you said as much to someone, they wouldn’t believe you.”

“So you

didn’t

check up on me, I

didn’t

get A-rank security clearance, and it would be very silly of me to imply anything of the sort,” Iruka said, winking to show he was being facetious. Then he frowned. “How did

you

find out about my security clearance, anyway?”

Hound stared blankly at Iruka.

“Ohhh, you must have been in old man Sarutobi’s office,” Iruka realized aloud.

“I will neither confirm nor deny that,” Hound said stiffly. “And that's

The Lord Third,

to you.”

“To

you

maybe. To me he’s just ol’ gramps,” Iruka argued, waving off whatever protest was probably incoming. “Anyway, thanks for

definitely not intentionally

coming to check up on me after your shift…” Iruka treated him to a hard look. “Shouldn’t your shift have ended like, two hours ago, though?” ANBU shifts usually ran for 8 - 10 hours in the village, and Hound had walked Iruka out of the Hyuuga compound about 9 hours earlier. So he was probably pushing towards a late clock out, and that was assuming he’d

just started

his shift when the Hyuuga clan had called for an ANBU. Which was assuming a lot.

“I didn’t expect Inoichi to keep you in there for another five hours,” Hound said, sounding a little grumpy. Iruka wondered how long he’d been waiting outside for Iruka to leave.

“Yeah, well, my cryptography skills need work,” Iruka muttered, mostly to himself. It was a pretty useless apology, but he didn’t want to get Hound used to hearing apologies from him, either.

“Sure, you should definitely work on that more,” Hound said. “Sounds a lot less messy than weird exploding tags.”

At least it seemed like the ANBU was willing to believe the tags were really his, by now. “I’m not giving up on those, I’ll just add codes to my study rotation,” Iruka countered.

Hound’s shoulders slumped in a way that made him seem genuinely disappointed to hear this news. “Ah. I suppose that’s your prerogative,” he finally said.

“Yeah, but tonight I’m going to bed,” Iruka declared, then eyed Hound. “You should get some sleep, too. Thanks for checking up on me.”

“I wasn’t checking on you,” the ANBU protested.

“Right. Good night, thanks for

not

checking on me,” Iruka corrected.

Hound looked at him with mild consternation, which was impressive considering he conveyed this solely through the slow, deliberate way he folded his arms over his chest. “Good night, Umino. Try to stay out of trouble.”

Iruka waved off the comment, knowing better than to make a promise he likely couldn’t keep. Trouble seemed to find him whether he wanted it or not. “You too,” he said instead, enjoying the mildly confused huff the ANBU let out as Iruka turned and continued his march back in the direction of the Jonin barracks.

Iruka slept until almost noon, at which point he was rudely awakened by the sound of someone politely knocking on Shisui’s apartment door, then knocking louder, then actually

kicking

the door hard enough that the wards Iruka had set up shuddered ominously.

“Why are you throwing chakra at my door?!” Iruka snapped, yanking open the door and nearly taking a kick to his face for the trouble.

“Be glad I’m not breaking your arm,” Itachi retorted, walking into Iruka’s apartment without waiting for an invitation. “I heard you were at T&I again yesterday.”

“Does

everyone

know about that?” Iruka griped, scrubbing at his face to try and wake himself up a little.

“Not everyone,” Itachi said. “Shisui told me.”

Iruka sighed. “Who told

him?”

he demanded.

“An ANBU,” Itachi replied.

Hound.

Iruka gritted his teeth. That guy was never going to let the boyfriend thing go, was he? He’d figured Shisui would have quieted the rumors by now but apparently not. Or maybe Hound had been looking out for him, making sure someone close to Iruka knew that the Hyuuga were upset enough to have Iruka interrogated? If someone had suggested that even a day ago, Iruka would have laughed them out the door. But he

had

waited (possibly for hours?) outside of T&I just to make sure Iruka knew not to advertise his temporary security clearance. Because he was worried that Iruka wouldn’t recognize the suspicion a situation like that could attract. To be fair, he’d been right to worry, because Iruka hadn’t immediately considered that possibility. He felt a weird amount of gratitude now, which was awkward. As much as the ANBU annoyed him, Iruka had to admit that the man had been uncharacteristically nice to him in the past 24 hours.

He wasn’t sure if that made him trust Hound more, or less. Or maybe someone had mind-controlled the usually abrasive ANBU and replaced his personality with something nicer.

…was there a jutsu that could do that? Because if so, someone should probably look into it.

“It was just a debrief,” Iruka said, then felt his ire rise as he remembered, “Because the Hyuuga didn’t expect me to be able to breach their security, and they freaked out when they caught me.”

Itachi scowled. “How long did it take you to make a mistake this time? Did you greet someone while wearing an unfamiliar face again?”

“No!” Iruka protested hotly. “I learned from the last time.”

Itachi treated Iruka to a skeptical look. “Did you?”

“Yeah, this time I just forgot to check for traps,” Iruka said.

Itachi’s brows lifted. “That doesn’t sound like you.”

Why was Itachi as good at interrogation as Yamanaka Inoichi when he was still just a

Genin?

Little geniuses were the

worst.

“I got cocky,” Iruka lied, because at least his hours in T&I had given him time to think of an excuse instead of just panicking and sputtering.

Itachi’s frown softened into a look of disappointed exasperation. “Never mind,” he said, “Celebrating prematurely sounds

exactly

like something you’d do.”

As much as Iruka resented the comment, it was such a great cover story that he couldn’t deny it. “Hey,” he protested. “I figured I was in the clear.”

“Next time,” Itachi said tiredly, “at least wait until you have confirmed safety before you take it easy, okay?”

Iruka scowled. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Embarrassment is a powerful reminder.”

Itachi nodded solemnly.

Iruka sighed, moving across the room to pick up a kettle and start filling it with water. “I’m going to make breakfast,” he announced. “Do you want tea? Cup noodles?”

Itachi made a disgusted noise. “How can you eat those every day?”

“Since I can’t cook,” Iruka set the kettle on the stove, flicking on the burner and starting the cooktop extraction fan, “I don’t have much of a choice.”

“If you say so,” Itachi said doubtfully. He eyed Iruka for a moment before wandering over to Iruka’s futon, poking it with his foot until he’d made some space beside the low table in the middle of the room. That done, he lowered himself to the floor and made himself comfortable. “When will you go back to the Hyuuga compound?”

“I was going to try breaching their security barriers by going underground and overhead,” Iruka said, walking over and shooting an annoyed look in Itachi’s direction before folding up his futon comforter and picking up his kicked-around futon mattress. He set them in the corner, before turning to face Itachi with a sigh. “But after yesterday, I get the feeling they don’t want me hanging around anymore.”

Itachi nodded solemnly. “That’s why father sent me over,” he said. “He thought it would be wise to have a chaperone with you when you returned to the Hyuuga compound today.”

Iruka blinked, not sure where to start with his objections. “What makes you think I’m going back there?”

“Why wouldn’t you?” Itachi asked, his dark eyes locked on Iruka’s. “It’s not like you did anything wrong, right?”

“Of course not, but-”

“And my father had Hyuuga Hiashi-sama’s assurance that you would be fairly compensated for your efforts. You were treated quite… disrespectfully.” Itachi’s eyes sparked, like a lit coal that was ringed with near-invisible flames. “It wouldn’t be proper to allow this indiscretion to go unanswered.”

Iruka blinked in surprise. He hadn’t thought that the Hyuuga clan head’s retaliation would be something the Uchiha clan would be concerned with. They had never liked Iruka much, so he hadn’t expected anything like support from them. He had figured he was on his own. “I guess not.”

“The Uchiha clan was grateful for your help, and hoped, through your services, to show much-needed support to a fellow noble clan of Konoha. To see you treated like this is an insult not only to you, but to the Uchiha,” Itachi said firmly. “My father wishes it to be known that the Uchiha clan backs your decision to breach the Hyuuga clan’s security, and recognizes it as the favor it was intended to be. If the Hyuuga clan wishes to assert otherwise, they do so not only in opposition to the venerable Umino household, but also the great and noble Uchiha clan. And we do not take insults such as this lightly.”

Iruka’s brain felt a bit fuzzy, like he was getting poor radio reception. On the stove, the kettle started screaming, its high-pitched wail echoing the internal screech in Iruka’s mind. “Oh,” he said weakly. “Your dad said all that?”

Itachi nodded solemnly. “It was wrong for them to treat you as an adversary when you only ever intended to act as a friend and ally. Any self-respecting clan would honor that service in the spirit it was offered.” He frowned a little, then added, “besides, you’re my friend,” Itachi’s frown deepened, “and Hiashi-sama had you interrogated like a common criminal. I don’t like that.”

Most days, Iruka still felt like a common criminal. Having a friend like Itachi, who was always so perfect, felt unreal. But not unwelcome. “Oh. Okay. Thank you?”

“You should get the kettle before it boils dry,” Itachi informed him solemnly.

“Right!” Iruka leapt back to his feet, hurrying over to the stove and shutting off the heat before pouring some hot water into a ceramic cup, adding a tea bag to it before moving to his instant noodles and pouring the rest of the hot water into the styrofoam cup. He carried the tea back to the table, setting it in front of Itachi. “I was thinking it would be better to lay low for awhile, since the Hyuuga got so nervous.”

“My father made it very clear he expects both of us to visit the Hyuuga compound today,” Itachi informed Iruka, and that was that.

Sighing, Iruka retrieved his cup noodles. Hopefully today wouldn’t end nearly as dramatically as the last visit to the Hyuuga compound. But even if it did, at least this time he wouldn’t have to face it alone…

“We are here on behalf of the Uchiha clan,” Itachi said, his voice firm and confident despite how

tiny

he looked. He had an air of authority about him that Iruka wanted to emulate, but worried it would seem too much like posturing coming from someone like him. “We have secured an audience with Hyuuga Hiashi-sama.” He extended a scroll, which the guard at the gate took, and read carefully. A moment later, Iruka heard a high-pitched whine, like a chakra wire being overloaded and about to kick back. Iruka looked up from the scroll to the Guard’s face, noting his milky-white eyes and pulsing veins.

Byakugan.

The man was clearly inspecting the scroll carefully, and he turned his eyes to Iruka and Itachi next. He scanned them up and down, then said, “The invitation is authentic, and you don’t appear to be wearing a henge. You will be accompanied by a member of security until you are received by Hiashi-sama.”

Itachi inclined his head slightly. “Very well.”

Iruka followed suit, dipping his head as well. When he looked up, he was surprised to see a familiar face walking over to them - the Hyuuga clan member who had caught Iruka outside the library. He looked a bit worse for wear, his skin as pale as any Hyuuga, but with deep bags under his eyes, which were red-rimmed with a glazed-over look in them. Iruka wondered, feeling suddenly guilty, if the other man had

also

been interrogated for half the night, by his own clan instead of Inoichi. His eyes strayed to the hitai-ate tied over the man’s forehead, and he had to force them aside, to not allow his gaze to linger somewhere so suspicious, especially not here in the Hyuuga compound.

“Greetings,” the man said to Itachi, eyes flicking briefly over to Iruka without giving a sign of recognition. Iruka wasn’t sure if that was because the man had a good poker face, or because he didn’t remember what Iruka’s face had looked like outside of his henge. “I am Hyuuga Tsutomu. I will accompany you to the receiving room of Hiashi-sama.”

“A pleasure to make your acquaintance,” Itachi demurred.

“A pleasure,” Iruka echoed, but wasn’t sure about the second half, since they’d technically met before.

With no further discussion, Tsutomu turned and began walking across the compound. Itachi and Iruka followed at a respectful distance, right up until the point that Iruka noticed a familiar figure in the inner courtyard of the Hyuuga clan head’s manor.

“Neji?” Iruka said, surprised to see the boy crumpled on the ground, shuddering with heart-rending sobs. He forgot completely about the fact that he and Itachi were meant to be following Tsutomu, and rushed across the yard, crouching down next to the distraught boy. “Neji, hey, what’s wrong?”

Neji didn’t even lift his head from the ground, his only reply a half-strangled scream, followed by some words that were so garbled by snot and tears that Iruka had no chance of interpreting them.

A harsh hand gripped his arm a moment later, tugging him away from the sobbing boy, and jerking him backwards a few steps. “What do you think you’re doing?” Tsutomu snarled at Iruka, his grip firm, mercilessly crushing the soft tissue of Iruka’s bicep.

“He’s

sad!”

Iruka exclaimed, pointing at Neji, who was still crying. “Why isn’t anyone comforting him?” He looked around then, feeling more furious as he added, “Why hasn’t anyone called his

dad?”

Tsutomu’s grip on Iruka’s arm slackened for a moment, before bearing down again. “That is

none

of your business,” he growled.

“He’s a little kid and he’s

crying,”

Iruka shot back, struggling in the man’s grip. “It should be

anyone’s

business!”

Another hand gripped Iruka’s other arm, and when he turned, he saw Itachi, glaring at him in a way he hadn’t seen in a long time. For a split second Iruka thought that the boy might make good on his threat and actually break Iruka’s arm, but the rage died a moment later, and Itachi sighed.

“Iruka,” he said. “This isn’t the right time.”

Iruka wanted to strangle

both

of them. “So you’re just going to let him cry

alone?”

“I’m sure his father wouldn’t want such behavior to be coddled,” Itachi said, and Iruka felt a hot flash of anger towards his younger teammate before realizing that maybe

Itachi

had been like Neji, once, and no one had dared comfort him, either.

But he didn’t have time to dwell on that at the moment, because when Itachi had said the word

father,

Tsutomu’s grip had flexed lightly, and Iruka was starting to feel like maybe there was more going on than the man was saying out loud. He turned away from Itachi, glaring up at the other man. “Where is Neji’s father?”

Tsutomu’s eyes widened slightly. He swallowed. “That’s clan business,” he said firmly.

“It can even kill, you know.”

Iruka felt his eyes move, almost of their own volition, to stare at Neji once more. He could

feel

the blood drain from his face and knew that whatever he was feeling right now was clearly written on his face. He wasn’t even sure what, exactly, that might look like, since he wasn’t quite sure himself what emotions were bubbling up inside him like a pot about to boil over. He did know that whatever he was feeling, it wasn’t good. “Oh no,” he said, softly, more like a plea than an exclamation. He looked at Tsutomu, and saw this time that the cold, affectless expression the man wore did not reach his eyes. What he’d earlier attributed to torture and interrogation now looked much more like

grief.

Itachi was frowning at Iruka, not understanding. But he didn’t know about the

cage.

About the way the Hyuuga weighed the lives of their clan on a scale of

more or less worthy

. That they had firm delineations between branch family and main family lineages, and that there was something sinister lurking beneath the innocent-sounding words the Hyuuga parroted about. He didn’t know.

Iruka wasn’t supposed to know, either. But he did. And he was going to be sick. “They killed him,” he said hollowly, “didn’t they?”

Tsutomu’s eyes went wide. He didn’t say anything, didn’t even nod. He didn’t have to. The loosening of his grip said enough.

“Why?” Iruka asked, his heart hurting and his head pounding with the pressure building inside of him. He felt like he was going to explode. Like a tag that had been primed with chakra, and there was only a short time left before things got messy.

Tsutomu glanced one way, then the other, before saying, in a halting, tear-choked voice, “The hidden village of Kumo demanded recompense for Hiashi-sama’s indiscretion. An eye for an eye.”

Hiashi’s indiscretion?

Iruka wasn’t sure what that would be, or how it related to the current situation. Had something happened during the security wall breach? A quick glance at Itachi showed him that the young Uchiha also had no idea what that meant. Except, Itachi apparently had a better understanding of what sorts of political actions would ultimately result in demanding another shinobi’s head on a platter.

“He killed the kidnapper,” Itachi said quietly, “didn’t he?”

“His life was forfeit,” Tsutomu answered in the affirmative.

“But then why is

Hizashi…?”

Iruka felt his heart climb up his throat. “Oh. It’s because he was the spare.”

Itachi turned to look at Iruka so hard it felt like a shuriken strike. Then he looked at Tsutomu. Iruka thought about how much Itachi adored and doted on Sasuke. How much Itachi cared for Shisui. Itachi would never demand they die for one of Itachi’s own mistakes. The very thought was enough to make his teammate visibly recoil from both Iruka and Tsutomu, releasing his grip on Iruka’s arm and taking a few steps back from the pair.

“The

what?”

Tsutomu stared at Iruka for a long moment, then carefully removed his grip from Iruka’s arm. “Something tells me,” he said, in a low, quiet voice, “that Yamanaka-san’s report was… woefully underinformative. Entirely too discreet, perhaps.”

Iruka felt his stomach clench in sudden dismay. “More discreet than you’re willing to be?”

Tsutomu blinked once, slowly. “There are things I may be obliged to convey, given specific circumstances.” He lifted his hand, nudging lightly at his headband.

Iruka followed the motion, and felt his own eyes narrow. “I won’t give the main branch a reason to ask, then.”

Tsutomu inclined his head, once, in a subtle nod.

“Someone will comfort him?” Iruka asked, glancing meaningfully at Neji.

“He is not alone,” Tsutomu said, a look of compassion flitting across his normally-impassive features. “No matter how lonely he feels in this moment.”

Iruka nodded. He could understand that sentiment, to an extent. “Good.”

“I thank you for your concern,” Tsutomu added, then gestured vaguely in the direction of the manor house. “Shall we?”

Iruka glanced back at Neji. The boy barely knew him, though, and likely any comfort Iruka tried to offer the boy would be for his own benefit, and not for the sake of the bereaved child. At least it sounded like the clan wasn’t planning on sending him to the orphanage.  “Okay,” he said. “Lead the way.”

Hyuuga Hiashi did not seem at all the grieving brother when Itachi and Iruka were shown in to the main hall. After a formal exchange of greetings between Itachi and Hiashi, the man stared at Iruka with narrowed eyes.

“Umino Iruka,” he said, pronouncing each syllable with an air of finality. “My clan thanks you for the service you have provided. We would be grateful to hear your evaluation of the security status of our compound.”

Iruka wished he’d spent more time rehearsing his findings, because he didn’t want to say too much. But he also wanted to make sure he said enough to avoid suspicion. “Your clan, like many of the noble families of Konoha, relies too heavily on your uniqueness. You forget that other shinobi possess creativity and invention, and assume that if you must use the

byakugan

to do something, then no other shinobi could possibly replicate the action without it.” He shrugged one shoulder. “That’s a flawed premise, and when you build your entire security system around a flaw, it leads to weakness in every aspect.”

Hiashi blinked once. “Please elaborate.”

“Your man at the gate looked at our invitation and checked us for a henge using his

byakugan,”

Iruka said. “Which is a good start, but I have a few questions. First, does the

byakugan

identify forged paper documents?”

Hiashi’s expression twitched slightly. “Not always.”

“Does the

byakugan

identify surgery scars?” Iruka pressed.

“Yes,” the man answered, appearing smug.

“Do you

train

your guards to

look

for surgery scars?”

Hiashi’s smug look dropped slightly. “Not typically, no.”

“Do you use the

byakugan

to vet every person who walks through the gate?” Iruka asked. “Particularly if they look like a Hyuuga?”

“No,” Hiashi said, and from the begrudging tone of his voice, he knew where Iruka’s line of questioning was headed. “It would be tiring.”

“More tiring than letting someone who had their face surgically altered to resemble a Hyuuga, or wore a particularly good henge, just walk right in and do whatever they please?” Iruka pointed out. “Maybe you should assign more guards and give them more breaks to regain their energy.”

Hiashi inclined his head in acknowledgement. “It is an oversight,” he agreed. “How did you get into the Library?”

“I walked in like I belonged there,” Iruka said. “There are other types of chakra sensing abilities out there that can manage something similar to what you accomplish with your

byakugan.

I bet an Uchiha would have seen even more than I did,” he added. “I just

hear

chakra, and all the overlapping sounds can get dizzying. A sharingan would probably be able to trace threads of chakra more easily.”  He didn’t know that for sure, but with the way Shisui sometimes talked about his sharingan, Iruka figured there was a good chance that was the case. Beside him, Itachi was nodding thoughtfully.

“You can’t assume that someone who doesn’t have the

byakugan

is unable to adapt using the resources at their disposal,” Iruka said. “And while it’s true that normally we are safe here within the walls of Konoha, if you really want to ensure the safety and security of your clan, you need to think like someone who

isn’t

a clan member.”

Slowly, Hiashi nodded. “I take your point. The Hyuuga clan is grateful for your help.” He bowed, not nearly as low as he had back in Fugaku’s house when he’d asked Iruka to help in the first place, but Iruka was willing to take what he could get after the whole T&I debacle.

“I’m grateful for the opportunity to lend my services,” Iruka answered, aiming for a more formal answer but worrying maybe he pushed it a little too hard into overly-formal territory.

“About his compensation…” Itachi said then, in a low and not-accusatory, but also not-not-accusatory tone of voice.

“Of course,” Hiashi said, and rose slowly, withdrawing a scroll from within his robes. He took three measured steps forward, his feet soft on the woven tatami mats beneath their feet. “You may take this to the mission desk, and they will compensate you accordingly.”

Iruka felt his eyes widen involuntarily. He hadn’t actually accepted a mission scroll when he’d agreed to test the security, so he was a little surprised to discover that the actions he’d taken had been officially cleared with Konoha’s clerks. In retrospect, though, he never should have broken in without an official letter of some sort

proving

that he was there because he’d been hired.

He also realized, belatedly, that he didn’t know how carefully Fugaku had vetted the man in his house, or if he had some way to verify whether the man was actually a member of the Hyuuga. What if someone had impersonated the Hyuuga clan and asked Iruka to break in specifically to cause trouble? Iruka was reminded, in that moment, of how easy it was to just trust what you saw, without questioning it or expecting the unexpected.

He was glad that the mission scroll existed, because it was a way to prove what he’d done. And, in a sense, what he’d gotten away with, too.

He accepted the mission scroll, bowing as he took the rolled paper from the Hyuuga clan head. “Thank you,” he said.

Hyuuga Hiashi merely grunted in a low tone, and turned away to walk across the room, clearly dismissing Itachi and Iruka with his body language.

After exchanging glances, Itachi and Iruka both bowed and quickly made their exit. Tsutomu sidled up beside them a moment later, silently walking them to the gates. When they passed through the courtyard, Neji was gone, and Iruka couldn’t hear him crying anymore. He hoped that meant he was being held and comforted by someone he loved, but feared that wasn’t likely to be the case.

Itachi and Iruka passed through the Hyuuga gates without trouble. It all felt very anticlimactic to Iruka as he stared down at the little roll of paper in his hand. After everything he’d done in the past two weeks - observing headband-wearing hyuugas, developing a brand new infiltration method, stumbling across a secret seals research laboratory, being interrogated by the head of T&I, given cryptic warnings by ANBU - it felt strange for everything to be over. But it wasn’t a bad sort of strange.

“I guess that’s it,” he said to Itachi.

“It seems so,” Itachi agreed mildly.

“I wonder what rank this mission was,” Iruka mused, tossing the scroll in his hand lightly. “D-rank?”

“Since it took place inside the village, that seems likely,” Itachi answered.

Iruka sighed. It probably wouldn’t pay very well, then. “Ah well,” he said. “At least we’ll be going on a new C-rank mission soon.”

“Yes,” Itachi said, shooting Iruka an annoyed look. “Maybe if we can get you out of Konoha for a few days, you’ll manage to avoid trouble.”

Iruka bonked Itachi on the head with the scroll. “Hey! This one wasn’t even my fault!”

Itachi grabbed the mission scroll and tugged it out of Iruka’s fingers, flipping it around his fingers like a kunai knife before poking Iruka’s side with it. “My point stands.”

“Ow, cut that out!” Iruka grabbed at the scroll, but Itachi deftly slipped it into his other hand, then tucked it into his pouch.

“Let’s go get your money,” Itachi said. “You need to restock your chakra paper, right?”

“Always,” Iruka griped, then sighed, thinking of how fast that mission money was going to disappear.

He might be able to afford a meal at Ichiraku before spending it all, at least. Maybe, if he was feeling generous, he’d buy a bowl for Itachi, too.