Chapter 117: A Man's Appointment

Kiba entered the classroom with Akamaru balanced upon his head and selected a seat near the middle.

The front offered too many opportunities for a teacher to ask questions. The back made it too easy to become distracted. Tonbo had made him list the advantages of each position until Kiba understood that choosing a seat was apparently a tactical decision.

He placed his first-year text upon the desk and opened it before the lesson began.

"Starting today," he whispered, "we work toward the Hokage's seat."

Akamaru barked agreement and nosed open a set of illustrated cards. Guided Insight was absent; Tonbo would not place an instruction seal inside the Academy without Iruka's permission. Kiba still heard the questions it had trained him to ask. What did he know? What had he inferred? What did he merely want to be true?

He studied the faces arriving around him. A boy with a lazy gaze chose a place suitable for sleeping. A pale-eyed girl sat quietly near the side. A loud blond boy argued with the arrangement of the desks. The Uchiha took a seat as though the room had been built around him.

Future subordinates, Kiba decided.

Then he reconsidered. Desired, not known.

Shikamaru noticed the boy and dog reading before class and sighed. "Troublesome. If that becomes normal, teachers will expect it from everyone."

Ino followed his gaze. "He wants attention."

Her interest shifted to Sasuke before she finished speaking. He had placed a small Itachi figure upon his desk and was examining it with an expression warmer than the one he offered any classmate.

Tenyu and Maki had delivered it the previous afternoon. They admitted that the price was their invention, offered to return most of the payment, and explained the reinforced frame and voice seal. Sasuke tested the figure with a training kunai, failed to mark it, and kept both the purchase and Tonbo's written maintenance instructions. He fed it a thread of chakra beneath the desk.

"Little brother, no mission today. Shall we practice shuriken?"

Sasuke's mouth curved upward.

Ino recognized the texture of Tonbo's craft. A figure of herself had once spoken two embarrassing compliments whenever she supplied chakra. She had hidden it from visitors for years and still kept it inside a locked drawer.

Embarrassment was a small price for useful information.

"Did Tonbo-sensei make that?" she asked, moving closer.

Sasuke covered the figure with one hand. "Why?"

"Because I have one too. I can show you how to stop the voice seal from repeating when you add too much chakra."

Sasuke's suspicion fought with practical interest. Before either won, Naruto leaned across the aisle.

"You paid half a million ryō for that."

The entire row became silent.

Sasuke stared at him. Ino stared at Sasuke. Kiba looked up from his book and decided the fact belonged under known, astonishing, and possibly stupid.

Iruka entered before the interrogation could begin. He paused at the sight of Naruto. For an instant, grief supplied an older image: ruined streets, the Nine-Tails above the village, and parents who never returned. Then memory placed Tonbo's lessons beside it. A child was not the beast sealed within him. Hatred that ignored that distinction would only grant the Nine-Tails another victim.

Iruka smiled at the class. He recognized other inherited burdens as he surveyed the room. Hinata carried the expectations of the Hyūga main family in the set of her shoulders. Sasuke measured himself against a brother no child could easily match. Ino, Shikamaru, and Chōji would eventually inherit an alliance older than their parents. Teaching them meant seeing the child before the surname without pretending the surname had no weight.

"Welcome to the Academy. Put away everything except your introductory texts. Yes, that includes the dog cards."

Akamaru whined. Kiba obeyed.

By the time Iruka began taking names, Tonbo had left the Academy district and reached the mountain training grounds. Tenyu and Maki circled high above on a woven eagle, secured by harnesses and surrounded by a barrier that would deploy a second construct if the first failed.

Tonbo stood before a cliff and reviewed Balanced Frame. The technique no longer forced strength through the body as Reinforced Frame had done during its dangerous first test. It aligned bone, muscle, breath, and chakra into a brief chain, then limited output before the chain could damage its weakest part. Two years of refinement had raised the safe ceiling and shortened the recovery between uses.

He formed a single seal. Darkness spread across his right forearm as the illusion body overlaid its command upon flesh.

Tonbo struck the cliff.

Stone collapsed inward. A hollow wider than his shoulders appeared around his fist, edged by radiating fractures. He withdrew his hand without pain and examined the result. The impact still lacked the effortless scale of an Akimichi expansion or Tsunade's monstrous strength, but it could serve where genjutsu found no purchase.

"Dad broke the mountain," Maki said from above.

"Only a little part," Tenyu replied. "I could do that with enough explosive tags."

"You don't have any explosive tags."

"That is the only flaw in the plan."

Footsteps approached along the path. Might Guy came into view walking upon his hands, his green uniform unchanged by time and his smile bright enough to challenge the morning.

"Tonbo! Your youthful discipline has brought you here before me."

"I arrived on my feet. It was more efficient."

Guy flipped upright and studied the cavity in the cliff. Excitement replaced curiosity.

"Was that taijutsu?"

"Entirely. Today I intend to fight you without an external genjutsu."

"A splendid declaration!" Guy raised one thumb. "Your courage burns almost as brightly as mine."

"Do not celebrate yet. I asked you here because testing the technique against a stationary mountain has limited value."

Guy began stretching with violent enthusiasm. "Then I shall show you the power of Konoha's Sublime Green Beast of Prey."

"That title grows longer every time you say it."

"It grows with my youth."

The woven eagle descended enough for the twins to hear.

Maki pointed. "Is that the man you said dresses like a vegetable?"

Tenyu nodded. "The other one should be the man with one eye and the improper book."

Guy looked wounded. Tonbo looked toward the path and found Kakashi approaching with *Icha Icha Paradise* open in one hand.

"Your children have excellent powers of identification," Kakashi said.

"Their manners remain under development."

Kakashi closed the book and surveyed the cliff, Tonbo's uninjured arm, and Guy's gathering excitement. He had agreed to the appointment partly from friendship and partly because Tonbo never invited two elite shinobi to observe a new technique without purpose.

"Rules?" he asked.

"No lethal attacks. No deliberate damage to the Eight Gates pathways. You stop us if either of us loses control."

Guy completed the Seal of Confrontation. "And when I win?"

"You may choose the restaurant."

"When Tonbo wins," Kakashi said, "you agree not to order the largest serving as a consolation prize."

Guy gasped at the cruelty of the condition, then accepted.

Tonbo raised his hands. The twins settled into their harnesses with snacks between them. Kakashi moved to a clear vantage and exposed his Sharingan.

A leaf twisted down through the still air.

The moment it touched stone, Tonbo and Guy vanished.