[Main Quest: Advance to Sequence 5 — Dreamwalker (Completed)]
[Requirement: Find a human-headed bird spirit in the Spirit World and sign a contract with it, then drink the potion while holding one of its tailfeathers in a state of intense joy or fury; or use any other method that keeps you lucid inside a dream.]
[Reward: Wriggling Hunger]
[Main Quest: Advance to Sequence 4 — Manipulator]
[Requirement: In a gathering of at least ten thousand people, drink the potion at the peak of their shared emotional frenzy.]
[Reward: Groselle's Travels]
The prompts faded.
Sogetsu stayed where he was for a moment, eyes closed, feeling things settle.
The Hypnotist potion sat quietly in him — fully digested long ago — so there was no wild spike of spirituality, no foreign will clawing at the inside of his skull. Just the usual instability of a fresh promotion: thoughts a little too clear, senses a little too sharp, dreams pressing faintly at the back of his eyes.
It would smooth out with time.
"Base kit got buffed," he murmured, letting the new knowledge unfold.
Every advance came with an instinctive understanding of what you'd just become. The Dreamwalker pathway slid into place beside Hypnotist like an extra layer of glass, its capabilities lighting up one by one.
"Guiding and reshaping dreams from the inside," he summarized, "and using that to stain the target's spirit more deeply than hypnosis can. Softer. Harder to notice. Harder to shake."
But the real jewel wasn't in those refinements.
It was the core:
A way to let his body blur, just a step toward unreality, and slip. Into dreams. Into someone else's mindscape. From one sleeping consciousness to another, crossing the sea of the unconscious in a single sideways step.
"Good," Sogetsu said, genuinely pleased. "With Dreamwalker plus Hermes's candlestick, I can force myself to sleep, then blink into the nearest mind and out somewhere else."
Another emergency exit. Another way to be somewhere no one expected him to be.
Another piece in place.
"Which means…" He reached over and pinched out the blue-grey flame. The brass candlestick went dark; he sealed it with a practiced touch and tucked it back into its scroll. "The timetable can move up a bit."
The half-god ritual that had been a distant point on the horizon nudged closer in his mind. Not near, not yet, but no longer a dot so far away it might as well be myth.
He smiled, slow and private, then let the room, the inn, the Land of Waves dissolve into the background hum of his planning.
Land of Fire. Konohagakure.
Yakushi Nono had been gone a long time. By the time the village gates rose out of the mist, she was running on fumes and grit, the need to get home shoving her body forward faster than common sense approved of.
Spies who lived their lives in foreign countries didn't just stroll back into Konoha.
They came home the way they lived: under watch.
She was placed in a small, bare room, watched by masked ANBU, subjected to the sort of quiet, relentless examination only Konoha could perfect. The scroll she carried never left their sight until it returned to where it belonged.
To the Hokage.
Hiruzen Sarutobi was, at that exact moment, in a fairly decent mood.
He sat behind his desk, pipe between his teeth, and the surface of a crystal ball glittered nearby. Wisps of steam curled over its glass. Within, the women's bathhouse shimmered, fog and skin and the slosh of warm water—
As the Hokage, he told himself, it was his solemn duty to monitor the well-being of the village. If that well-being happened to be currently located in the communal hot springs… well, sometimes duty was heavy.
He was just getting to the good part when someone knocked.
Hiruzen snapped the pipe away and, with the smoothness of years of practice, draped a cloth over the crystal ball. He clenched his hand in front of his mouth and coughed twice, arranging his face into the calm, wise lines of the Professor.
"Come in," he said.
Rinka, one of his ANBU captains, stepped through and closed the door behind him. White mask, cropped hair, posture like a drawn bow. He approached, kneeling briefly to offer a sealed scroll.
"Hokage-sama. Intelligence from 'Owl', delivered via embedded agent 'Miko'."
"Oh?"
Hiruzen's brows lifted. Then something clicked, and a fond, slightly smug little smile crept into his beard.
"Heh. That boy must have run into trouble."
He took the scroll, leisurely breaking the seal, already composing the lecture.
"They're young," he went on, almost to himself. "A bit too cocky, a bit too proud. It's good for him to hit a wall. Only by being tempered can a stone become jade."
He unrolled the report, still wearing the indulgent smile of a senior about to red-pencil a promising student.
One line.
Two lines.
Three.
The smile didn't so much fade as freeze solid. His face stopped in place, the way a man stops mid-step when he realizes there is no floor, only air.
Color drained. Then rushed back, hot and dangerous.
Rinka watched the changes under the old man's wrinkles and felt the first cold drip of unease down his spine.
Did something happen to Sogetsu in the Land of Water?
"I, I, I—" Hiruzen said.
Three I's. No sentence. Veins jumped in his temple; the hand holding the scroll shook.
"Hokage-sama, please, calm down!"
Rinka's heart climbed into his throat. For a terrifying half-second he saw the headlines: Third Hokage Dies of Rage in Office; Cause of Death: Uchiha.
At last the pressure found a vent.
"AaAAAAH!"
Hiruzen exploded up out of his chair, roar booming off the walls. The scroll slammed down on the desk hard enough to splatter the inkstone.
Rinka flinched.
He'd suspected a big problem, but this was more than "big." This was like-when-the-Nine-Tails-came big.
"Hokage-sama… did Uchiha Sogetsu cause some major… incident in the Land of Water?"
"Sogetsu? Sogetsu?"
Hiruzen rounded on him, eyes bloodshot, beard bristling like an angry cat's fur. "He's fine! He's great! He's wonderful!"
Spit flew. Rinka stood there and took it, deeply, deeply confused.
If the boy was fine, why did the Hokage look like he was about to ascend to the Pure Land via aneurysm?
"See for yourself!"
Hiruzen flung the scroll at him.
Rinka caught it on reflex, thumbed it open, and scanned. His eyes moved, stopped, went back, and then his brain finally processed the words.
His own blood pressure surged. The back of his skull throbbed; stars popped at the edge of his vision.
"He… he… he assassinated the Mizukage?!"
He had been so naive.
A minute ago he'd been idly wondering what kind of mishap could get Hiruzen this worked up.
Now he knew.
He'd underestimated just how far beyond "mishap" Uchiha Sogetsu lived.
And near the end of the report, as if nothing about the previous paragraphs were insane, there was a neat little line:
That he had only followed Hokage-sama's instructions.
That, in order to prevent Kirigakure and Iwagakure from forming an alliance against Konoha, he had regretfully taken drastic measures to "resolve the problem at its root."
Rinka lowered the scroll very slowly. His eyelid twitched.
Strictly speaking, he thought, this was… not entirely wrong.
If you removed the Mizukage, the Seven Swordsmen, and a tailed beast's seal from the board in one play, you had, in a way, addressed Kirigakure's capacity to wage war.
"Strictly carried out my orders, did he?!"
Hiruzen hammered the desk with his fist. Documents jumped. "Is this what 'strictly' means now?!"
Rinka dipped his head, mask hiding his expression.
"To be fair, Hokage-sama," he said carefully, "though his… execution was slightly excessive, Uchiha Sogetsu did follow your directive to the letter. As for the Mizukage's death… that can technically be considered an… accident."
"Executed my orders?" Hiruzen clutched at his chest and collapsed back into his chair like a punctured bellows. "I told him to make a little scene, to give the Mist a scare. I didn't tell him to kill their Mizukage!"
His intentions had been good. Really, they had.
That they'd been interpreted in the most catastrophic way possible by a lunatic prodigy was not his fault, surely.
And yet…
Even if he went out right now, stood in the village square, and shouted at the top of his lungs, I never told him to assassinate the Mizukage!, who would believe him?
…
Wait.
Why did this feel familiar?
He stared at the ceiling, eyes going unfocused.
Slowly, dawning horrified clarity crept over his face.
Isn't this exactly how I talk about Danzō?
◇ BONUS & SUPPORT ◇
◇ 1 bonus chapter for every 10 reviews — drop a comment!
◇ 1 bonus chapter for every 100 Power Stones.
◇ Read 60 chapters ahead on P@treon → patreon.com/StrawHatStudios