"Sarutobi Asuma was injured. We found him with his back to the Daimyou's safehouse door and a whole sea of the dead at his feet." Minato took another bite, chewed, swallowed. "He gave us the first account of the coup, and the Daimyou and the surviving guards corroborated. The Twelve split down the middle, apparently, and Sarutobi was the only survivor. I brought him back with me. Daimyou wanted to keep him, but—Sarutobi said he'd had enough of Hikouto politics."

Well, Sarutobi had fought his former comrades to a bloody end in the wide palace corridors. And after nearly seven hours of questioning, Shibata had agreed that Sarutobi was telling the truth. Minato still remembered that relief, overwhelming: he wouldn't have to execute the Sandaime's son, after all.

"Shiranui will be pleased," Kakashi murmured. His gaze had focused somewhere in the middle distance, giving him a peculiarly bland, distracted look that Minato recognized as his expression for processing eighteen different thoughts at once.

"Shiranui?" Minato said, just in case there was anything more to that thought than random chance bringing one to the surface before the rest.

"My lieutenant. They were friends." Kakashi twitched his shoulders, shaking that off as currently unimportant—as though he took a personal interest in other people any other day of the week. Just what had his team gone through, buried in that mountain of paperwork somewhere up on Minato's desk? But if there was more to the story he didn't say it, just ran his fingers lightly up and down the ridged sides of the sports drink bottle for a long moment. Finally he said, "Six is better than all twelve, but this has been a bad year for loyalty."

"Wait till we send you out to kill another feudal lord," Minato said tiredly. He scraped the last bite of rice from the bottom of the bowl and set it aside in exchange for Kakashi's bottle. "I don't know… Maybe we're wrong and there is someone behind all of this, pulling strings. We didn't hear a whisper after the attack at the Trials, but then not two weeks later the Daimyou's palace erupts in flame and treason. Shibata says there's no link, and Sagara says it's not his style, but what if the snake is behind this, too?"

"If he is, at least I know I'm not crazy," Kakashi muttered.

"We call it paranoia," Minato informed him kindly. "It's a job requirement." He took another swig from the bottle, capped it, and jostled his shoulder against Kakashi's. "The water's still hot. Come keep me from falling asleep and drowning in the bath, and I'll think out loud at you."