The person Konoha sent to take over was Mitsuki.
He wasn't wearing an Anbu uniform, just a grass-green short jacket washed nearly white. He had cleanly suppressed the aura of his snake summons and carried only a standard medical-team aluminum case. As he walked into the village along the muddy road after the rain, not a speck of dirt splashed onto his shoes.
Serina was behind the village school, twisting scrap copper wire into a new drying rack. The little girl with hornlike pigtails crouched beside her, passing her pliers. The two worked fairly well together. When she spotted Mitsuki in the distance, the girl shrank behind Serina's sleeve-the lingering dread of the Silence-Sound Guest's low frequencies still remained, and children had developed a reflexive fear of any adult in uniform.
"Teacher Shikamaru asked me to check in." Mitsuki skipped the small talk. He crouched to meet the child's eyes, smiled, then took an orange candy from his medical case. "I'm not here to inspect anything or take anyone away. I'm just delivering an official seal to Serina."
He took an iron box from his pocket and opened it. Inside lay a new, cold-rolled access card, with an extra line embossed on its back: Non-Ninjutsu Response Division · Authority to issue temporary deployment orders.
"From now on, for backwater villages like this, just sign the orders and have the resident medical ninja report to my master." Mitsuki handed her the box. "Also, Lady Temari asked me to give you this-a briefing on psychological rehabilitation in the Sunagakure camp. She said your revised line, 'We'll cook porridge tomorrow morning,' made it into the new construction code."
Serina accepted the box and ran her fingertip over the embossed line. The metal casing was cold, much more official than her previous iron plate,