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The coffee machine at ANBU had two settings: Scald and Regret.
Itachi stood in front of it, thumb resting on the chipped plastic button, watching the dark liquid drip into his mug with the resigned attention of a man fully aware that this was technically a health hazard and technically his fault for drinking it anyway.
Behind him, the agency hummed its usual off-key tune. Phones rang; keyboards clacked. Someone (probably Izumo) laughed too loudly at something that almost certainly wasn’t funny (Kotetsu). The cheap fluorescent light overhead flickered once in warning before deciding to continue living out of spite.
The sign over the reception desk still bore the original metal plate Minato had bolted up the day ANBU opened its doors: ANBU INVESTIGATIONS, black stenciled letters on dull white. People joked about what it stood for now - “All-Night Bureau” “Agents Not Backed Up” - but Itachi remembered the early memo with the real acronym, in Minato’s untidy handwriting, and the way Tsunade had rolled her eyes and kept it anyway when he had pointed it out in one of the drawers.
Between Minato’s inconvenient conscience and Tsunade’s refusal to shut up, ANBU had been a provocation from the beginning. A private agency co-founded by a rising-star cop and a Senju disaster, sniffing around old cases the department wanted buried. The underground network had taken it personally. They still did.
“Oi, Itachi nii! Which one is my drawer again?”
Naruto’s voice slalomed across the room before the boy himself did, a streak of orange hoodie and too-big sneakers and far more energy than the building’s wiring could safely accommodate. He skidded to a halt beside the metal filing cabinets, squinting at the crooked labels like they were an enemy code.
Itachi didn’t look away from the coffee.
“The one clearly marked ‘NOT NARUTO’” he said.
Naruto scowled. “They all say ‘Not Naruto.’”
“Yes.” Itachi took his mug. The smell was violent. “Security measure.”
Tsunade’s office door cracked open just long enough for her to bark, “Uchiha, if you’re emotionally abusing my intern again, make sure HR doesn’t find out.”
“We don’t have an HR department” Itachi replied, raising his voice just enough to be heard.
“Exactly” she said, and shut the door.
Naruto grinned, because of course he did. “Tsunade baachan says I’m a ‘junior associate,’ actually.”
“Tsunade also signed the vending machine in as a dependent on her insurance paperwork,” Itachi said. “Her classification system is flexible.”
“I heard that!” came faintly from inside the office.
Itachi sipped his coffee. It was, regrettably, drinkable.
Naruto abandoned the filing cabinets and leaned on Itachi’s desk instead, elbows planted among the crime scene photos, witness statements, and the single surviving stapler. He had a smear of something suspiciously red on his cheek; Itachi decided not to ask if it was sauce or blood. With ANBU, odds were even.
“Any new cases?” Naruto asked, rocking on his heels. “Like, real ones tebayo? Not ‘find my missing cat’ or ‘is my husband cheating’ - I mean like…cool ones.”
“You say that as if domestic disputes and property damage are not the backbone of modern civilization” Itachi said. He tapped the neat stack of files by his in-tray. “We have three missing-persons follow-ups, one identity theft, and an elderly woman convinced her neighbor is laundering money through his vegetable stand.”
Naruto’s eyes lit up. “Is he?”
“Yes” Itachi said. “Unfortunately, she’s also laundering money, so that complicates the moral high ground.”
Naruto wheezed a laugh and grabbed a handful of paperclips from the corner of the desk, immediately beginning to bend them into dubious shapes.
Itachi let him. Between the broken stationery and the occasional small fire, the appearance of a child in the building had somehow improved team morale and worsened insurance premiums simultaneously. Kakuzu sent them memos about it at least once a week.
The elevator pinged. A courier stepped out, all corporate neutral: grey uniform, blank expression, messenger bag slung across his chest.
“Delivery for… uh…” He squinted at the slip. “‘ANBU Investigations’?”
“That’s us tebayo” Naruto said proudly, before Itachi could decide whether it was worth correcting him on tone.
The courier’s gaze flicked around the room, hesitated when his eyes caught Itachi’s, then veered toward him as if drawn by a quiet gravitational pull. He placed a thin, padded envelope on the desk.
“Signed delivery” the man said. “Priority.”
Itachi glanced at the return address. Local. No company logo, no sender name. The handwriting on the label was tidy, deliberate. The kind of careful, blocky script people used when they wanted to look respectable enough to be taken seriously and anonymous enough not to be found.
He took the stylus, signed, and offered a mild nod of thanks.
Naruto craned his neck. “What is it?”
“Unknown” Itachi said.
He did not, as Naruto clearly wanted him to, rip it open with dramatic flair. Instead, he picked up the envelope by its corners, weighing it. Flat object inside, edges rounded. No shifting bulk, no rattle of small parts. The padding felt thin, cheap. The faintest whiff of cigarette smoke and mint had seeped into the paper.
He turned it over. No obvious seams tampered with, no bumps where there shouldn’t be. The folds were sharp, machine-made, not hand-glued.
Naruto was practically vibrating. “If you don’t open that in the next ten seconds, I’m exploding dattebayo.”
“That would be unfortunate for the janitorial staff” Itachi said mildly.
He slid a letter opener under the flap and cut. No hiss of gas, no spark, no powder. Just the soft tear of paper resigning itself to fate.
He shook the contents out onto the desk.
A photograph, face-down. And a single sheet of paper.
Naruto reached for the photo; Itachi’s hand came down lightly but firmly on his wrist.
“Read first” he said.
Naruto made a face, but he pulled the paper closer. Itachi leaned in enough to read over his shoulder.
You let the brat play in a nest of knives.
The last time your golden cop with feelings tried to “fix” this city, people died and the rich walked.
The Uchiha and the Senju get fashion shows and power. The rest of us get bodies.
Bright hair burns easiest.
Consider this a warning.
Naruto went very still. The only movement was his grip tightening on the edges of the page until they crumpled.
Itachi read it twice, then once again, mapping tone, word choice, and the particular cowardice of someone who folded threats into half-remembered underground gossip and thought that made them insightful.
Naruto looked up at him, blue eyes wide and hot. “What does that mean?”
“It means” Itachi said, gently taking the paper from his hands, “that someone with an expensive stationery habit and insufficient hobbies has decided to become a problem.”
Naruto blinked. “For me?”
“For us.” Itachi slid the note into a clear plastic sleeve. “You happen to be the most visible part of ‘us’ to the outside world. And your father was very good at annoying the sort of people who write this.”
Naruto scowled. “Because I get the snacks from downstairs.”
“Because you insist on introducing yourself to everyone in the lobby,” Itachi corrected. “Loudly. As Naruto Uzumaki-Namikaze.”
“Well, yeah” Naruto said. “How else are they supposed to know we’re not shady?”
Itachi stared at him for a beat.
Naruto frowned. “…Okay, less shady. Maybe like…ethically shady.”
Before Itachi could reply, the frosted glass door of Tsunade’s office banged open. She stepped out in her coat, tie loosened to an irresponsible degree, coffee mug clutched in one hand like a weapon, expression already three-quarters of the way to a migraine.
“What is this about threatening letters and my intern again, Uchiha?” she demanded.
Naruto perked up. “I’m her good press.”
“You’re Minato’s PR nightmare, and mine by law” she snapped, then skewered Itachi with her gaze. “Well?”
Kakashi wandered in behind her, one hand in his pocket, the other clutching his eternal file folder. He took in the envelope, the plastic sleeve, and Naruto’s set jaw in a single glance.
“That came through the front desk?” he asked.
“Yes” Itachi said. “Signed delivery. No immediate hazards.”
Naruto opened his mouth. Itachi tapped the edge of the photograph still facedown on the desk.
“And there’s this” he added.
He flipped it over.
It was a candid shot of Naruto, taken from across the street. The boy was squinting up at the ANBU sign, mid-gesture, mouth open in what Itachi knew was a rant about percentages. In the background, caught as a reflection in the glass door: Tsunade, arms folded; Kakashi, yawning; Itachi himself, half-turned away, hand on the frame.
A red marker line circled Naruto’s head. Underneath, in block capitals:
MONSTERS START SMALL.
“Okay,” Naruto said, voice too bright. “That’s--uh. That’s creepy.”
Itachi’s fingers tightened around the photograph just enough for the glossy paper to flex.
Tsunade’s knuckles were white around her mug. “They’re recycling the same trash they used to whisper about Minato and our agency” she said, low. “‘Soft cop.’ ‘Bleeding heart.’ ‘the agency's a set-up.’” Her mouth thinned. “And now they’re aiming it at his kid.”
“Who the hell is this from?” she demanded, louder.
“Unknown” Itachi said.
“For now” Kakashi added, lids lowering. “We’ve annoyed enough people that narrowing it down might take a while. Plus, Minato pissed off half the underground before he got murdered for his trouble. The other half prefers to pretend he never existed.”
Tsunade slammed her mug onto a nearby table, coffee sloshing over. “I want whoever sent that pinned to a wall, legally or otherwise, by the end of the week.”
“Legally” Kakashi said, because somebody had to.
“Preferably” Tsunade amended, with all the conviction of a woman who had bail receipts instead of retirement plans. “Uchiha, you’re on it.”
Itachi inclined his head. “Of course.”
Naruto tugged at his sleeve. “I can help--”
“No” three adults said in unison.
Naruto bristled. “I’m not a baby.”
“No” Itachi agreed. “Babies cry less when asked to stay put.”
Naruto’s mouth fell open in outrage.
“We keep you here” Tsunade said, stabbing a finger toward the floor, “with Kakashi. Behind three locks and an alarm. I am not losing--" she bit her tongue "--my godson because some coward with a printer and a grudge wants to make a point.”
Naruto’s shoulders curled, just a little. “I don’t want everyone freaking out because of me.”
“Too late” Kakashi said, ruffling his hair. “Welcome to ANBU, kid. You’re officially one of us. People aim at the soft spots first. And at founders’ sons, apparently.”
Naruto swatted at his hand, but some of the tightness in his face eased.
Itachi slid the photo into another sleeve, already cataloguing details.
Angle: across the street, second-floor window height. Slight tilt - taken in a hurry, through glass. Brand of photo paper: generic, supermarket. Ink on the circle and letters: marker, broad tip, slightly frayed. The reflection of the opposite building caught in one corner: bland offices, badly cleaned windows.
He had no illusions to rip minds apart with. What he had was pattern recognition, a memory that refused to forget, and a bone-deep familiarity with how people behaved when given a chance to be cruel without consequence.
It would do.
“I’ll trace it” he said.
“And then?” Tsunade asked.
He looked at the photo, at the red circle around Naruto’s head. At the small, stubborn figure with his hand on his hip and his face turned up toward the ANBU sign.
“Then” Itachi said, very softly, “we will educate them about appropriate professional boundaries.”
The street outside the agency was mid-afternoon busy. Delivery vans crawled past, a cyclist swore creatively at a taxi, a woman in a suit marched by holding three different phones like they were live grenades.
The ANBU sign over their door was an old metal panel salvaged from some defunct paramilitary program. Across the street, the office block rose in ordinary concrete boredom. Four stories. Dark window bands. The kind of building people stopped seeing within a week of working in it. The second floor had the right height and angle for the photograph.
Itachi lifted the sleeved picture, lining it up with the facade. The reflection of the street in the glass matched. The tiny distortion in one pane - someone had smacked it once with something heavy - showed up as a faint warp in the background.
Second floor, right-hand side. Three units.
He noted them, then crossed at the light.
Inside, the lobby smelled of lemon cleaner and old paperwork. The directory by the elevator listed tenants in peeling black letters:
201 – N. HARADA – FAMILY COUNSELLING SERVICES
202 – G. KURAMOTO – PHOTOGRAPHY & DESIGN
203 – SATO & CO – RISK MANAGEMENT CONSULTANTS
He took the stairs. Elevators stalled at inconvenient times, and he wasn’t in the mood for metaphors.
On the second floor, the hallway was narrow, lined with identical frosted-glass doors. Someone had attempted cheerfulness with a potted plant; it was losing.
Itachi started with G. KURAMOTO – PHOTOGRAPHY & DESIGN.
The bell above the door chimed when he stepped inside. A small studio, walls lined with sample portraits: weddings, graduations, smiling families in matching sweaters. The air smelled of printer ink and dusting spray.
The receptionist looked up from her screen, startled. She was mid-twenties, bright-eyed, nails painted an aggressive pink that clashed endearingly with her beige cardigan.
“Hi! Do you have an appointment?” she asked.
“No” Itachi said. “I’m here about a recent print job. Street photography.”
Her brows knitted. “We don’t really…do that? Mostly studio, events, that kind of--”
A man emerged from the back room, wiping his hands on a cloth. Forties, salt-and-pepper hair, camera strap around his neck. His eyes flicked, quick and assessing, from Itachi’s face to his suit to the badge clipped discreetly at his belt.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
“I hope so” Itachi said. He placed the sleeved photograph on the counter, tapped the lower corner. “Your watermark.”
The photographer’s mouth tightened. “Lots of studios use similar fonts.”
“This one doesn’t” Itachi said. “There’s a misaligned serif on the ‘G.’ It appears on all your samples.”
The man glanced reflexively at one of the framed pictures on the wall. The same subtle flaw. Caught.
“All right” he said, voice going flat. “I did the print. So?”
“So” Itachi said, “I’d like to know who ordered it.”
“Client confidentiality” the man said, too quickly. “I can’t disclose--”
The receptionist shifted, uneasy.
Itachi didn’t raise his voice. He just let his silence deepen, the way a room does when someone switches off the air-conditioning. He had the sort of stillness that made people want to fill it, or run from it.
“The photograph is of a minor” he said, at last. “Taken without consent from a vantage point that overlaps with this office. It was then used to send a threat to that minor’s workplace. If you prefer, we can move this conversation to a police station. With your invoices as evidence.”
The receptionist paled. “Joji--”
The photographer scrubbed a hand over his face, jaw clenched. “Look, I just do the prints, okay? I don’t ask questions.”
“Good for business” Itachi said. “Less so for court.”
He waited. People always told you who they were if you gave them a little silence to panic into.
Finally, the man sagged. “Sato. From next door. He rents time on the printer sometimes. Says his own is ‘unreliable.’ Pays cash.”
“Does he do this often?” Itachi asked.
“Often enough.” The man grimaced. “He likes…writing on things. Makes me wipe the marker off the display copies when he’s comparing layouts. I tell him he’s going to ruin the finish.”
Of course he did.
“Thank you” Itachi said. “You may want to consider refusing his business in future.”
“Can I do that?” the receptionist whispered.
“Yes,” Itachi said. “You can.”
He left them with that small, radical thought and stepped back into the hallway.
One door over: SATO & CO – RISK MANAGEMENT CONSULTANTS.
The glass in the door was clear enough to see the lone figure inside. Middle-aged, suit that tried too hard, tie a little too tight. The man was on the phone, gesturing, mouth twisted in irritation.
“…telling you, they let the Namikaze brat run around like it’s a playground” Itachi heard, in the moment before he pushed the door open. “No screening, no--”
The man jerked around, the rest of the sentence dying on his tongue.
“Can I help you?” he asked, voice jumping a register.
The office smelled of stale coffee and toner. Stacks of paper, binders, motivational posters about “Mitigating Risk, Maximizing Value” that hadn’t motivated anyone since 2003.
Itachi closed the door behind him with care. He put the envelope and sleeves on the desk with equal care, lining them up so their edges were precisely parallel to the blotter.
“You already know why I’m here” he said.
Sato’s eyes dropped to the photograph. The note in its sleeve. Color drained from his face, then flooded back in an ugly, blotchy red.
“I don’t have to explain myself to you” he snapped. “Freedom of speech is--”
“Not a shield for targeted harassment of a child” Itachi said, tone unchanged. “Especially one under our legal supervision.”
“He shouldn’t be there in the first place” Sato spat. “A kid with that name, in that building. Minato’s mistake all over again. He played at being a cop with a conscience, made enemies, and the rest of us got to live with the fallout. Now we’ve got Uchiha Madara on billboards, Senju Hashirama running for a third term and Minato’s orphan running errands for your pet agency. It’s a joke.”
There it was. The knot of resentment that had been tightening since before ANBU existed: rich clans, dead heroes, cops with feelings, Senju stubbornness. The underground had whispered about it for years, turning Minato’s murder into a cautionary tale to scare their own into discipline.
Itachi regarded Sato for a moment.
“You’re a risk consultant” he said.
“Yes” Sato said. “Unlike some people here, I actually think about consequences.”
“So you understand probability” Itachi said. “Liability. Exposure.”
Sato folded his arms, chin lifting like he thought his indignation could make a decent shield.
“Good” Itachi continued. “Then this will be simple. Let me outline the scenarios.”
He spoke softly, almost conversationally, ticking the points off on his fingers.
“One: if you continue to monitor and photograph a minor without consent, we involve law enforcement. Stalking, intimidation, potential endangerment. That goes on record. Your profession relies on clients trusting you to see problems before they happen, not become one. I doubt they’ll stay.”
Sato’s throat moved.
“Two” Itachi said. “If any harm comes to that child - any harm - you become a person of interest. For us. For the police. For my father.”
Sato blinked. “Your--”
“Uchiha Fugaku” Itachi supplied. “You may have heard of him. Current police commissioner. His files on threats against ANBU’s staff are…robust.”
He let that sit for a moment, watched recognition land. People muttered about Uchiha money and Uchiha power, about how it was unfair that the commissioner’s son worked for ANBU instead of the department. Itachi did not bother correcting them. Let them imagine smoke-filled rooms and conspiracies. Reality was much duller, and much more efficient.
“Three” Itachi went on, “we audit you.”
Sato’s laugh was brittle. “You audit me.”
“ANBU has a contracts division” Itachi said. “It’s mostly one accountant with a calculator and no conscience, but he’s very efficient. We review every one of your firm’s contracts. Every clause. Every ‘industry standard’ fudge. Every conflict of interest you thought you hid. We send neat, annotated reports to every regulatory body with jurisdiction over you.”
He smiled, entirely without warmth.
“Risk management consultants who can’t manage their own risk are…unpopular.”
“You don’t have that kind of reach” Sato said, but there was a tremor in it now. “You’re just a private outfit with a dramatic name and a sob story about one of your dead founder.”
“ANBU” Itachi said, “was co-founded by Namikaze Minato and Senju Tsunade. One was a cop who thought victims were people, the other is a would-be doctor who thinks bureaucracy is a solvable disease. Between them, they built very long, very stubborn networks. I inherited some of that. You are not a difficult target, Sato san. You are not even an interesting one.”
Silence stretched. Outside, a printer beeped down the hall. Somewhere, the potted plant wilted another millimeter.
“Was there a four?” Sato asked, after a moment, the words dragged out of him.
“Yes” Itachi said. “Four is the part where we don’t do any of that, because you sign the paper I am about to give you, you do exactly what it says, and you never look at that boy like that again.”
He slid a folded form from his inside pocket and placed it on the desk. The header read: ANBU INTERNAL – NOTICE OF INTERFERENCE / INFORMAL WARNING.
Sato stared at it like it might bite him. “This isn’t a police form.”
“No” Itachi said. “This is mine. The police paperwork comes later, if necessary.”
“What gives you the right to--”
“The right?” Itachi repeated, very quietly. “You took a photograph of an eleven year old child, circled his head in red, and wrote that monsters start small. You mailed it to the agency his dead father built. You invoked the bodies Minato couldn’t save as an excuse to threaten the one person who still believes in his work.”
He leaned forward, resting his fingertips on the edge of the desk. His voice didn’t rise, but something in it sharpened.
“I buried a brother, Sato san,” he said. “I watched my parents stand at two funerals - Sasuke’s and the Uzumaki-Namikaze's - and then go back to work because there were still cases on their desks. I have read more threat assessments than you have grocery lists. You do not get to stand there and lecture me about what’s irresponsible.”
The room seemed to get smaller. Sato’s gaze skittered away, then back, as if caught.
“I didn’t touch him” he muttered. “I didn’t go near him. I just--warned you. People forget. What Namikaze did. How many people died when he started poking at things. The Uchiha get richer, the Senju get their power and pet agency, and the rest of us--”
“You wanted us to imagine it” Itachi said. “You wanted him to imagine it. That is the point of a threat, isn’t it? You outsource the violence to the mind and call yourself civilized.”
He reached down, tapped the photo once, knuckles brushing the red ink.
“Here is what is going to happen” he said. “You will sign this warning. You will write a formal apology to ANBU and to the boy, which we will file and never show him. You will stop watching our building. You will stop talking about him to anyone who isn’t paid to listen to your issues.”
“And if I don’t?” Sato asked, but he sounded less like he was challenging and more like he was taking inventory of the cliff edge.
“Then we move to scenarios one through three” Itachi said. “In addition, I put your name in a file marked ‘flag.’ Any time your path crosses ours again - any case, any complaint, any rumor - I pull that file. Personally.”
He held Sato’s eyes.
“I am a very boring man, Sato san,” he said. “I show up. I file reports. I follow procedures. And I do not forget. If you insist on staying in my paperwork, I will make a hobby of you. My hobbies are thorough.”
Sato’s hand twitched toward the pen, then stopped. “You’re threatening me.”
“Yes” Itachi said. “Clearly and on record.”
He straightened, letting the weight of the moment settle.
“If you want the version of me that does not threaten you” he added, “you should have written a different sentence on that note.”
They stared at each other across the desk: one man backed by a consultancy that spent its days turning other people’s anxieties into invoices, and one backed by an agency that had been hired, more than once, when situations became too messy for official channels - and by a police commissioner father who pretended not to know how often his eldest son bent the edges of legality without quite breaking them.
Finally, Sato snatched up the pen.
“You people think you’re untouchable” he muttered, scrawling his name. “One day someone is going to prove you wrong.”
Itachi took the signed form, slid it back into his pocket with the same careful precision he used on evidence.
“Possibly” he said. “On that day, I hope they are more competent than you.”
He gathered the photograph and note, turned toward the door, then paused, as if something had just occurred to him.
“Oh” he said, almost casually. “A last professional courtesy.”
Sato bristled. “What?”
“I know where your children go to school” Itachi said.
The man froze.
“You pay tuition late, but not late enough to incur a fee” Itachi went on. “You bring them to the dentist on Wednesdays at three, when the rates are lower. You haven’t bought yourself a new suit in three years, but you replaced your printer twice in the last twelve months and still decided to use someone else’s for this.”
He looked over his shoulder, the line of his mouth very slightly curved.
“If I wanted to scare you” he said, “I would start there. I’m not going to. Because some of us actually believe what we say about not dragging children into other people’s wars.”
He let that sink in, watched Sato’s face go chalky.
“This” Itachi added, tapping the warning form in his pocket, “is me being gentle. Don’t make me demonstrate what my version of harsh looks like in a courtroom. Or in front of my father. Or on live TV when Madara decides this would make an excellent brand statement about ‘people who threaten kids.’ You do not want Uchiha Madara subtweeting you in an interview, Sato san. Trust me.”
He left Sato staring, color drained from his face a second time.
When Itachi got back, Naruto was sitting on his chair, spinning slowly, one foot pushing off the floor in lazy arcs. Kakashi lounged on the edge of the desk, book open, eye on the boy.
“Took you long enough tebayo” Naruto grumbled, as if he’d simply been waiting for a lunch order.
“It’s a two minute walk,” Kakashi pointed out. “He’s been gone fourteen. Tsunade was five minutes away from storming the place herself.”
Naruto stopped spinning. “Is it over?”
Itachi set the envelope down, calmer now, edges squared. “It’s contained” he said. “He will not be a problem again.”
Naruto squinted. “You didn’t punch him, did you? Tsunade baachan says we’re not allowed to start fights during business hours.”
“I didn’t lay a hand on him” Itachi said.
Kakashi made a thoughtful noise. “Which is, frankly, worse.”
Naruto’s eyes searched his face, as if trying to read between the lines of his composure. “You’re sure?”
Itachi thought of Sasuke, briefly, like a shadow passing behind glass. Another small boy who had once stood in doorways and glared at the world as if he could intimidate fate into behaving. He thought of Minato and Kushina, of flowers outside a closed case file and an agency sign no one had taken down. He thought of the red circle on the photo. Of the word 'monster', and who got to decide where it began and ended.
“Yes” he said. “I’m sure.”
Naruto relaxed, tension rolling off him as quickly as it had settled, because he was still young enough to believe adults when they sounded certain.
“Good” he said. “Because I still have to beat Shikamaru’s high score on the breakroom darts, and I can’t do that if I’m, like, dead.”
“Your priorities are inspiring” Itachi said dryly.
“Thanks!” Naruto beamed.
Tsunade’s door cracked open again. “Is the situation resolved?”
“For now” Itachi said.
She eyed him, then Naruto, then the envelope. Some of the fury in her shoulders bled out and left something older, heavier in its place.
“Tell me if you get even a whisper of follow-up,” she said. “Minato and I didn't found this damn place just so we could let them bully his kid out of it with stationery.”
“I’m aware” Itachi said.
“Good.” She drew in a breath, snapped the armor back on. “I need you on the budget disaster for next quarter after lunch.”
Kakashi groaned. “Not the spreadsheets.”
“Yes, the spreadsheets” she said. “Crime doesn’t pay, but apparently neither do we, and the board would like to know why Commissioner Uchiha’s son keeps billing overtime.”
Naruto hopped off the chair. “Can I help with the budget?”
“No” three adults said again, in perfect chorus.
Naruto pouted. “You never let me do anything fun tebayo.”
“If you find budget meetings fun” Itachi said, “we have failed you in ways I cannot begin to quantify. And your godfather would haunt me.”
Naruto snickered, attention already sliding toward the stray cat peering in through the window.
Itachi collected the sleeves - photo, note, signed warning - and filed them. Not under “Threats” though they technically qualified.
He slid them into a thinner folder instead. On the tab, in small, careful letters, he wrote:
NARUTO – INCIDENTS (OPEN)
The “OPEN” was for him. A reminder that this didn’t end with one confrontation in a shabby office. There would be more letters. More looks. More people who had swallowed the underground’s stories about Minato, about the Uchiha and the Senju, and thought they were brave for spitting them back out at a child.
He couldn’t stop all of them. He didn’t have miracles to resurrect the dead and ask if any of this was worth it. He had a desk, a badge, a terrible coffee machine, and a kid who trusted him enough to spin in his chair without looking over his shoulder.
It would have to be enough.
He reached for his mug, took a long drink, and opened the next file.
Work to do. Always.
And as long as Naruto was in this building, Itachi planned to make very sure that every monster who thought of circling Minato’s son in red learned one lesson the hard way:
You don’t threaten what’s left of the Uchiha.
You don’t spit on the dead’s grave with office supplies.
Not while one of them is still breathing to file the paperwork.